Most want to search for the “How-to” of investing. But is there another element that significantly increases your odds of success in investing?
Our guest, and partner in Left Field Investors, Jim Pfeifer, will share how having a community of investors around you actually increases your odds of success exponentially. Tune in to learn how you can do it, too!
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How Can A Community Improve Your Chances Of Success With Jim Pfeifer
This show is for you. Those of you that work so hard for your money and you want your money to start working harder for you today. You want that freedom of cashflow now, not 30 to 40 years from now but you want it today so you can live that life that you love with those you love. It’s not just about making a lot of money. It’s about creating a rich life. As you are blessed financially, you also have a greater capacity to bless the lives of those around you. That’s what it means to be a Rippler.
I’m so proud to be one of the ripples with you. I appreciate you guys letting me help educate you, and to be able to help you do this by you bingeing. You’ve been sharing these episodes. You’ve been doing all you’ve been doing. You’ve been taking action on this because it’s so important that you’re not just tuning in, but you’re doing something with this education so that your life makes a difference. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you haven’t done so already, go check out our calculator on MoneyRipples.com. One of the cool things about that is you can use it to figure out how much passive income you could create in the next twelve months. Definitely check that out and see what your number is today.
I’m bringing on an interesting guest. It’s almost like it’ll be interesting to see what direction we go with this because Jim Pfeifer has got a similar background to me, but I know we have different experiences and whatnot. He was a former financial advisor, but then it is converted over to the light side or the positive side of the force versus the dark side of the force. He’s not Sith Lord anymore in financial services. He is now a Jedi.
I’m excited to have him on here today because like me, he was sped up with this whole “one-stop fit everybody into a little box” approach. Even though you’re a round peg, you’re trying to get stuck in a square hole. This guy, he gets it. He understands it. He’s in the real estate space. He’s got Left Field Investors. I invite you to check out their show as well. I’m excited to talk to him about his perspective and what we see as a way to help you be able to grow and progress in this space. Especially because it’s not as publicly known as if you go with the Wall Street way. The Wall Street method has been sold, but not so much this main street real estate type of method and alternative investments. I’m excited to have Jim on. Jim, welcome to our show.
Thanks for having me. I’m excited too because we do have similar backgrounds. We made similar leaps and I’ve been tuning in to you for a long time, so I’m excited to be on the show.
Give us some more background. What was your a-ha moment?
I was a financial advisor. When you do that, they teach you about finance and teach you about money from the start. I thought I knew it all already because I did that as career number four or something. At the same time, as I was starting this out, I was an accidental landlord because we couldn’t sell our house in 2008 and we bought a new one. We couldn’t sell the old one, so we rented it out.
As they were teaching me these money concepts and I went from an accidental landlord to an intentional landlord, I was learning that this stuff that I was doing, the stock market, the mutual funds, and a lot of these products seemed like speculation to me. You’re investing it and you’re buying a piece of paper. Now, it’s an online piece of paper. You hold it and hope at some point, you could sell it to somebody else for more money. That’s it. There’s no current benefit. You might get a few dividends here and there, but there’s no current benefit.
Meanwhile, on my real estate side, I was investing and getting a current benefit in the form of cashflow. Appreciation was what I hoped for, but I didn’t need it because I was getting tax breaks and cashflow already. It stuck with me, “What am I doing here?” This financial advisor stuff is okay. You make some money on it as an investor, but if you go into the alternatives, you make more money, you pay fewer taxes, and it’s less risky. It’s investing. It’s not speculating.
That slowly seeped in over a few years, and then I realized I can’t be a financial advisor because I prided myself in investing in the same things my clients were. Now, I was moving most of my assets over to real estate. It was active at the time. Now it’s completely passive. That’s a minor shift. I couldn’t do it anymore. Your financial advisor isn’t going to help you with real estate for two reasons. One, they don’t make any money on it. You can’t run a business if you’re not making money. That makes sense. The other thing is they’re not licensed for it. They could get in conflict with all the licenses I had. I had to give up most of my licenses to do what I wanted to do in real estate.
That was my transition. The light bulb slowly went off, and then I’m like, “What am I doing? I’m coming into this office doing financial advising, but I’m spending 90% of my time on my own real estate stuff and ignoring my clients.” That’s when I realized that I need to move on and be done with financial advising and get into real investing for cashflow, which is what I do now.
You’re like Batman, aren’t you? By day, you were the rich billionaire a.k.a financial advisor. By night, you’re like, “I’m making way more money over here. This is way cooler than my day job.” You saw that difference. You were able to compare apples to apples right there in your own personal laboratory.
That’s the thing. I like to invest with people or work with people that are eating their cooking. As I did that less and less and got more into real estate, I started a real estate group. Once I went passive, I started Left Field Investors. None of it was intentional. It was just like, “I’m over here now on these assets that make more sense to me, so now I got to go find people to help me. I got to build a community.” In the Wall Street world, you can talk to all the old financial advisors and everyone knows what to do, the 401(k) and all this other stuff that everyone does it because it’s so robotic.
On the alternative side, it’s totally different. I found myself there and I wanted to learn. I started tuning in to shows like yours and others. I then started my own community which was supposed to be a little mastermind, but the pandemic happened and we went online, and then it blew up from there. Now, we’re a 1,300-member community.
Speaking of community, why do you call it Left Field Investors?
Perfect for you. When I was talking real estate with all my financial advising colleagues, they’d go, “Jim, you’re way out there in left field.” Left field happens to be not right field, but the correct field in my mind. That’s how I came up with the name.
It’s much greener over there.
Yeah, much greener. Exactly, yes.
It doesn’t matter that it got the big green monster over there. It’s a good one to hit a home run for, isn’t it?
Exactly right.
Even now, are there financial advisors? The guys you worked with before, have they seen the light a little bit or are they just doing their thing, staying as salespeople more than anything?
Some of them are investing in syndication, the ones that I talked to, not through Left Field Investors, but with our help. There are a few who are doing that. The other ones have their blinders on. They are so confident that they’re going to get wealthy in the stock market. Maybe they will because they are putting other people in the stock market and they get paid no matter what. I don’t know anyone that has gotten wealthy by investing in the stock market. Some people say Warren Buffett, but he buys companies more than he invests in the stock market. Most people that have generational wealth and financial freedom type of wealth get it from either something real estate related or owning a business. It’s not just throwing money into the stock market. You’ll never get there.
Most people that have generational wealth and financial freedom type wealth get it from either real estate, something real estate related, or owning a business. And it's not just throwing money in the stock market, you'll never get there. Click To TweetThis brings up something interesting. There’s this amazing guy. I’m not going to say his name because he’s a mentor of mine but he’s successful in the business space, and even in the real estate space as well even though it’s the real estate business space. You get what I’m saying. He helps a lot of people there. It’s funny because somebody was asking about finances. He’s like, “I think you should have 50% of your portfolio in real estate, 20% in stocks.” All of a sudden, I yelled out, “Boo.” He’s like, “I know. For you, real estate guys, that’s not a big thing.” I can’t remember if he even remembered that I used to be a financial advisor. He’s like, “No, even though they say all the millionaires have been proven they have real estate, most of it is their personal house.”
I’m like, “I want to argue with that.” There are a lot of people that are millionaires because their house did appreciate, they got equity in that, and that helped put them into the millionaire status for net worth. He’s like, “Most people make their money in the stock market.” I’m curious to get your thoughts on that because you just said something there that sparked the memory of that. You said a lot of those guys don’t make money in the market. They’re making money by selling people to get into the market. What’s the truth? Are people actually making money in the market and that’s what makes some millionaires? Is it just so happens that people that are millionaires also might have some money in the market, but that’s not what’s making them the money?
You might be a millionaire by putting money in the stock market in your 401(k). People do make money in the stock market, but they don’t make generational wealth. You can’t quit your job on the cashflow from the stock market. You can’t quit your job from the gains you’ve made in the stock market most likely. Most of it is probably in a 401(k).
I changed my position. When I first started in real estate, I got rid of all the stock market stuff. We call it left field or alternatives. Right field is the traditional stuff. I was 100% in left field, but then now I’m thinking about creeping back in a little bit for a very small allocation to some indexed mutual funds or something like that because that gives you liquidity. The problem with real estate is there’s very little liquidity.
I want to have a return on my dollars. Putting some of my liquid capital in the market might make sense. To your question, “Does that generate?” If your mentor said most people make money in the stock market or however he phrased it, I think a lot of people do make money in the stock market, but they’re leaving money on the table because you can make so much more in alternatives. More than that, in real estate, you don’t pay taxes if you’re doing it right. The biggest eroder of your wealth is taxes. Even if the returns were identical, which they’re not, but if they were identical between real estate and the stock market, you’re making more money in real estate because you’re keeping more of it in your pocket.
There’s no way around paying the government when you make money in the market. There are lots of legal ways to avoid deferred tax on real estate. That’s the difference for me. I do think there are opportunities to make money. You could become a millionaire in the stock market. I don’t think you’re going to become financially free, which are two different things.
I had to think about it too because I thought the same thing. I was like, “Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’ve been teaching everybody wrong on this show” I had to go back and it’s like, “What have I seen as a financial advisor? As I’ve watched those people’s portfolios grow over time?” Even after I left being a financial advisor, still when we’re working with people one-on-one, we see their portfolios over time. I then start to realize that the real money that people made was probably more from their job or their business, first and foremost. Just like you said the financial advisors were. That’s true.
If they were to be honest, they’d say, “Your best investment would probably be investing in your own job to find ways and make more money there in your career and/or your business. People are taking all that money they’re putting into the stock market, and they’ll make some growth over time in the stock market. There’s no doubt for sure. I had to think, “Is it the stock market that’s the cause? Is it causation or is it correlation?” It’s what I had to start asking myself over this last week. I realized, “Maybe it’s more correlation, more than causation.”
If you put a ton of money in the market, you’re going to make some and it’s going to grow over time. Here’s an example, if you don’t mind me giving an example.
If you put a ton of money in the market, you're going to make some and it's going to grow over time. Click To TweetLet’s go back to our days as financial advisors. When someone comes to us with $1 million and they want to retire and that’s all the money they have. A financial advisor is going to say, “You don’t know when you’re going to die, so you need to keep that at $1 million.” You can only take out 4% a year. That’s the number. That’s $40,000. That’s your income for the rest of your life, hopefully. You’re going to pay tax on that. Let’s say that’s 25%. Now, your net is $30,000. That’s what you’re going to earn every year for the rest of your life. That’s the high point.
It’s unlikely that you’re going to get over $1 million because you’re always taking money out. Even in down markets, you’re going to take money out. You’re hoping that $1 million stays there and you can have $30,000 to live on the rest of your life. Contrast that with the same person. Forget that we’re financial advisors. Now, we’re just real estate guys. Someone says, “I got $1 million. What should I do with it? I want to retire.” Put it in real estate. Let’s say it makes 7% cash on cash return. Now, you’re at $70,000 a year, that’s what you’re earning. You don’t pay any taxes on it. That’s a whole different discussion. You can earn that tax-free.
That’s the low point. You’ll never have less than $70,000 because you’re never taking principal out. You’re just taking the money you earn, and 7% isn’t huge cash on cash return. Call it 6% if you want, $60,000. That’s net. No taxes. That’s the low point because as you go on 5 years to 10 years, that $1 million are going to turn into $1.5 million, $2 million, and $3 million. All of a sudden, you’re no longer living on $70,000. Your wealth is growing and your cashflow is growing. That’s the main difference to me. When I look at it like that, it’s a no-brainer. That’s the power of real estate in my mind.
I know what you do best. It’s one of the things you have with Left Field Investors. Many people feel like, “This makes sense.” I get what you’re saying but still, everybody is doing this. Everybody is putting their money into these retirement plans. Everybody is following these financial advisors. It doesn’t seem like there are many people doing this alternative path or this Left Field path. Am I alone in this? The truth is you don’t have to be, do you?
That’s the key. I always say you need to join a community if you’re going to be successful in alternatives. It could be my community. It could be your community. I don’t care. Just join a community. The way we look at it is there are three types of personal finance. Traditional, which is Wall Street, and all that we’ve talked about. Alternatives, which we’ve also talked about, real estate, and other things like that. What we call community personal finances, where the traditional stuff is easy like Wall Street. Everyone is doing it. You make okay money and it’s just easy and safe.
Alternatives are scary because you got to send a wire to someone you’ve talked to for twenty minutes. The investments might be hidden because you can’t advertise some of these, and it’s scary because no one else knows about it. That’s where community personal finance comes in. What we do at Left Field and you do at Money Ripples is we turn community into a verb. We don’t know about this operator, let’s community the operator. We’re looking at a deal, let’s community the deal, which means everybody looks at it together.
Now, what you get is you get confidence because you’re working together on these alternative assets. You get access because everybody can introduce you to their favorite operator. Now, nothing is hidden. You get to see all of it. You have a network that helps, and then you get education from the group or from the members of the group. Now, when a deal comes, I’m talking to 10 to 20 different people, “What do you think?” It’s like a mastermind.
Community personal finance is the only way to be an effective investor in alternatives. As I said, it could be any community of people that are all working towards the same goal. We want like-minded people, not robots marching on their orders. We like people who are working towards the same thing like you and I are working for financial freedom. What does that mean to you? It means something different to me probably. For me, it’s time freedom and location freedom. That’s what I want. I don’t want to have to work if I don’t want to. When I do work, I want to be working whether I’m in Hawaii or Columbus, Ohio. That’s what community personal finance is. It liberates your finances.
From my investor brain, all I hear you saying is leverage. It’s like creating leverage. You’re trying to create financial independence, but not being independent. You’re able to have a community where you’re able to vet deals together and balance ideas off each other. I even know for myself, I’m trying to vet my own deals, even for our own community.
Still, if they have something else, they say, “You know what? I actually know that operator. I’ve known them for many years. I would warn against that operator. Don’t use that one. This is what’s been in reality. Maybe this is what they’re saying, but this is what happened.” It’s good to have that community and that feedback to be able to come from different directions and different angles and approach it from different ways. That’s brilliant what you created there with Left Field Investors.
It doesn’t have to be just one community. Why can’t I join my own community, and then I’ll join Money Ripples, and then a couple of other communities? You get siloed. We get our favorite operators and all that. If you’re in multiple communities, you get more of it, and then you can choose where you want to be for each one. By the way, I’m going to steal your leveraged comment because that’s brilliant. In real estate, part of the reason that we’re able to make better money than we do in the stock market is because you’re constantly using leverage. Either you’re getting a loan or the asset you’re investing in has a loan, so you’re leveraging it. Now, not only you’re leveraging the capital, you’re leveraging the knowledge or the community for better results. That’s awesome. I love that.
Before I forget to ask, if people want to look into Left Field Investors, what would they do to look into that community with you guys?
The easiest way is to go to LeftFieldInvestors.com. There’s a button on there that says “Connect with us” so you can schedule a call with one of the founders. You can reach out directly to me, Jim@LeftFieldInvestors.com is my email address. I talk to investors all day long, so I’m happy to get on a call and tell you about Left Field or share ideas about sponsors or operators, or whatever. I love talking to investors.
Is this for active investors, passive investors, or both?
Mostly passive. We’re focused on passive real estate and syndication. There are plenty of people in our community who are more active with single-family turnkeys or maybe some small multis and stuff like that. Usually, when they join our group, they’re joining because they’re thinking of transitioning to something less active. When I invested in single-family turnkeys and small multis, I thought I was passive, but there’s no way. I was not passive at all.
In the passive investing that we do, there is a lot of work upfront to get to know the underwriter or the operator, analyze the deal, and all that. Once you send that wire, you’re done. There’s nothing you can do. You have to be passive at that point because you’re just sitting around waiting for cashflow and reports, so it’s very passive from our community’s perspective.
Last question for you. What’s the big message that you feel is like your mission or your why? Why are you doing this? Why is it so important for you to be doing what you’re doing today?
It’s because I hated being a financial advisor. I hated trying to convince people like, “I know what’s best for you.” I felt like I did. I could help those people. Even in traditional, there’s a place for that. My passion now is showing you that there’s another way to do it. It’s a better way. You make more money and you pay less tax, but nobody knows about it. You walk out your front door and you start talking to your neighbors about personal finance. They’re going to be talking about the interest rate on the mortgage and their 401(k)s. You’re going to say, “What about real estate syndication?” You turn around and no one’s going to be there because they’re going to think you’re nuts. You got to find a community.
My passion is sharing this message with as many people here. You don’t have to be super wealthy to do this. You do need some capital, but we use a company called Tribevest. That’s a whole other story. They help you invest in groups. We can reduce our minimums from $50,000 to $10,000 on certain deals. You don’t have to be wealthy to do this, but you need to know that it’s out there. If you don’t know, you’re never going to do it. Our passion and my passion is sharing the word. I don’t care if you join Left Field Investors or Money Ripples, but if you get into this ecosystem, you will make more money.
It’s a noble effort. You’re a Rippler in that sense. You’re your own Rippler. You’re creating your own ripple effect with your community and I know that they appreciate it big time. Jim, I appreciate your time today. This has been a great episode. It’s been very insightful. It’s good to know I’m not crazy either. If we have our own community of formerly financial advisors that have since repented, it’s good to know that we’re in good company and that we see a lot of those same things. I definitely appreciate you being on today.
Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. I’ve been listening to you since I was a financial advisor and I was thinking about making a change. Everything you say resonates with me. I got some confidence in a lot of things from tuning in to your show. I appreciate the contributions you’ve made to me and to my journey.
I appreciate that too. Everybody, go check out Left Field Investors. If you feel like you want to have that community that bonds, check it out. It’s definitely something to consider and look at. Who knows? Maybe that’s the very thing you’ve been looking for and you just heard it now. Definitely go to LeftFieldInvestors.com. You can tune in to this stuff all day long, but once you start to act on it, your learning curve speeds up, you make more progress, you get better results, and you create that life of freedom that you’ve always wanted. Go and make it a wonderful and prosperous week. We’ll see you later.