RG 310 – Building a Community of Outstanding Passive Investors with Ian Ippolito

Real estate investing can be highly competitive. But sometimes, the best deals are born when investors work together.

Like most entrepreneurs, Ian Ippolito started in the corporate world. After a long time of being a computer programmer, Ian decided to find a better way to use his talents. He created multiple businesses in the software industry, but his endeavors eventually fizzled out when the dot com bubble crashed.

Luckily, Ian found his way to the real estate field. Today, Ian is a real estate investor, serial entrepreneur, and the founder and CEO of The Real Estate Crowdfunding Review, a community that helps fellow investors make the most out of crowdfunding ventures.

Interested in becoming an Investor with Reed? Click here to join his Investor email list.

Take the time to learn about Ian’s journey from the software world to the real estate industry, how The Real Estate Crowdfunding Review came about, and what goes into creating such an outstanding community of passive investors.

Key Takeaways

• You can generate a lot of wealth through active investing, but it will take a lot of time and effort.

• Every investor is different; each falls somewhere in the spectrum between very conservative and very aggressive.

• Sometimes, the best deals result from passive investors working hand in hand.

• The bigger the group of investors, the better the deals get.

LINKS
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ianippolito/
https://www.therealestatecrowdfundingreview.com/
twitter.com/ippodude?lang=en

Be Bold, Be Brave and Go Give Life a Crack!

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Reed Goossens (00:00):

Good day Good day guys. Now, before we dive into today’s show, I want to let you know that some of you may be aware that over the past eight years, I have built a substantial multi-family real estate portfolio here in the US worth over half a billion dollars. And in that time, my passive investors have received fantastic double-digit returns. And now you too can invest directly into my deals for as little as $50,000. So if you’re an interested investor, head over to Reedgoossens.com to find out more that’s reedgoossen.com. Now back into the show,

Ian Ippolito (00:41):

I, I didn’t really design this to be like a, a typical, like, it’s not like an, a business that I had done with my previous ones. Like my primary goal was like, I wanna find good investment deals. So I don’t ever wanna do anything that kills that. Mm. And so that’s why, for example, no, one’s charged to join the club. People are referred to sponsors. No, one’s, there’s no fee being charged to refer people to sponsors, which a lot of clubs kind of run themselves that way, but then they get conflicts of interest. And so I wanted to keep it very clean. So, you know, the club is from my point of view, it’s working and doing what it’s supposed to do, which is, you know, bringing in all these deals that we can take a look at, allowing a place to do due diligence.

Ian Ippolito (01:17):

The, the other thing that’s nice is sometimes because there’s so many of us that we can bring an amount to a sponsor together, an aggregate that makes it worth it for them to give a discount, excuse me. And I couldn’t get that by myself if I went to that sponsor. So the bigger the club gets just the better it gets. So, so yeah, my goal, my goal is to grow it and to, to grow it. And, but we want quality referrals and want people coming in. And so we want all that good stuff, but there’s no plan to change it. It’s basically, it’s, it’s working

Speaker 3 (01:55):

Welcome to investing in the US a podcast for real estate investors, business owners, and aspiring entrepreneurs looking to break into the US market, join Reed, as he interviews go getters risk takers and the best in the business about their journey towards financial freedom and the sheer joy of creating something from nothing

Reed Goossens (02:15):

Good day a good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to another cracking edition of investing in the US podcast from Los Angeles. I’m your host, Reed goossens good as always every with us on the show. Now I’m glad that you’ve all tuned into it to learn from my incredible guests and each and every one of them are the cream of the crop here in the United States. When it comes to real estate, investing, business, investing and entrepreneurship, each show, I try and tease out their incredible stories of how they have successfully created their businesses here in the US, how they’ve created financial freedom, massive amounts of cashflow, and ultimately created extraordinary lives for themselves and their families life by design. As I like to say, hopefully these guests will inspire all of my cracking listeners, which are you guys to get off the couch and go and take massive amounts of action.

Reed Goossens (03:02):

If these guys can do it. So can you now, as you know, I’m all about sharing the knowledge with my loyal listeners, which is you guys. And there’s absolutely no BS on this show, just straight into the nuts and bolts. Now, if you do like this show, the easiest way to give back is to give us a review on iTunes. And you can follow me on Facebook and Twitter by searching at Reed goossens. You can find the show wherever you podcast on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and Google play, but you can also find these episodes up on my YouTube channel. So head over to reedgoossens.com, Click on the video link, and it’ll take you to the video recordings of these podcasts, where you can see my ugly mug, but the beautiful faces of my guests each and every week. All right, enough outta me, let’s get cracking in into today’s show.

Reed Goossens (03:50):

Turn the show. I’m the pleasure of speaking with Ian Polito. I is the founder, an alternative asset investment group called the private investor club. Now the club has over 5,000 members with over 8 billion in investible assets, and it gives investors access to high quality deal flow, detailed due diligence and special deals that they couldn’t find on their own. So I’m really pumped to talk to Ian about that, but the E is also been featured on USA today, Bloomberg news, the wall street journal and realtor.com. And I think the most passionate thing in has in his life is this community and creating a community of like-minded passive investors to gain access to these lucrative real estate investment opportunities. So he can help people change their financial freedom and future so they can achieve that financial freedom, but I’m really excited and pumped to have him on the show today to share his incredible insight and his knowledge, but nothing to me. Let’s get him out here. Good IAN. Welcome for the show. How doing today, mate? Good

Ian Ippolito (04:41):

Day. Hi Reed. How are you doing great to be here,

Reed Goossens (04:44):

Mate. Absolute pleasure. But tell the listeners, where are you dialing in from today?

Ian Ippolito (04:48):

I’m Ian from Tampa, Florida.

Reed Goossens (04:49):

How is the weather down in Tampa?

Ian Ippolito (04:52):

Well, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s warm. It’s actually, it’s actually kind of hot already here, so it’s like 80. I would just walked outside. It was like 86. Wow. So yeah. Okay.

Reed Goossens (05:01):

Getting, getting swamp summer

Ian Ippolito (05:02):

Is coming already. Yeah.

Reed Goossens (05:03):

Uhhuh. That’s awesome. Well, look, I like to ask all my guests when they come on the show, the first question, the first came off, the rank is rewind the clock. And tell me how you made your first of a dollar as a kid.

Ian Ippolito (05:13):

Sure. Okay. So, I mean, it was a long, a long time ago. A lot of kids like maybe their, their parents give them like a, uh, some sort of allowance or something like that for it, but I didn’t really have that. But what, what it was was, um, there was a, so I worked at, I, I, my, I was at school and my mom wanted to help raise money for the school. And so what she did was there was like a school fair and there were different booth that were set up and she, so I I’m half Italian and half Chinese. So my mother is Chinese. And so she basically, she’s really a really good cook. So she made all of this really great Chinese food. She made like egg rolls and, you know, fried rice and all this sort of stuff. And she huge amounts of it, brought it out to the school fair.

Ian Ippolito (05:59):

And I was the one that was in charge of serving it to the customers, taking their money in doing all that sort of stuff. And it was the first time that I really interacted one with the general public and then like that. And then two, I mean, I was seeing those like, wow, this is pretty cool. It’s like, you know, we’re, we’re creating something and they’re like paying us these, this huge amount of money. And at the end of the day, you know, we counted it all up and we donated it to the school and it was just, it was awesome. And I was hooked because I was like, this is a pretty cool thing. And, uh, you know, I wanna learn more about this and it definitely made me wanna learn more. I, it led to me getting a paper route and doing all sorts of other things.

Reed Goossens (06:36):

Awesome. Awesome. Well, I wanna say Italian Chinese. I don’t know. How’s that? How does, how does those cookings come together? Because that would be,

Ian Ippolito (06:45):

How

Reed Goossens (06:46):

Does it happened? Yeah. Spaghetti with, uh, with, with fried rice. That’s uh, I got a pretty, you know, uh, curious palette. I don’t know. Even if that mixing those two things together would, would, would, would, would, would satisfy me. But how, how was that like growing up in a, in a, in a jewel or international household?

Ian Ippolito (07:01):

I mean, well, so first of all, like my, so my dad and my mom, they met each other in the peace Corps. So my dad was in the peace Corp, went overseas, met my mom there, brought her back over to the United States. And, um, I, you know, I didn’t know any different, I didn’t know it was special or anything like that from my point of view, it was just great because, um, yeah, you know, tomato sauce does kind of go with everything. So, uh, ,

Reed Goossens (07:23):

That’s

Ian Ippolito (07:23):

Awesome. But yeah, I, it was great because I had, you know, from my mom’s side, you know, I think her family actually, they, they were, I didn’t realize it, but they were like a bunch of entrepreneurs, which is kind of the route that I went and they had, you know, family businesses and stuff like that. And, you know, my, my dad had a lot of mathematical background and things like that. And I, I kind of got a lot of good things from both of them. So I’m very grateful for that.

Reed Goossens (07:45):

That’s awesome. Well, let’s walk us through your journey of where you’ve got to today. I, I, I know you run the passive investor club and we, I mentioned that in introduction, but what was your life pre club, you know, and, and, and did you come from the corporate world and, and really what was the start to get involved in real estate investing passively?

Ian Ippolito (08:04):

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, my very first start. Yeah. I started off in the corporate world, probably like most people do and, um, you know, it, it wasn’t a great fit for me. I was in it for a long time. I was, I was a computer programmer. Mm. I started off as a computer programmer and it was, it was frustrating for me because I would, a lot of times just see, you know, I was like, I’d like to make this change, but being, you know, the new guy or, you know, whatever it is. A lot of times I wasn’t listened to, you know, that’s just the way that it is. And I felt I had a lot of good ideas. They weren’t listened to. There was a lot of politics that was going on and, you know, so I was like, you know what, there’s gotta be something better than this.

Ian Ippolito (08:41):

This is driving me crazy. So I I’d like to try something on my own. The first thing I tried was trying to be a consultant and, you know, and, and that was better than being an employee for someone else, but I was still like a, you know, a computer consultant and at least people were listening to me now expecting me to know what the answers were, but you know, lots of long hours and, you know, and again, uh, I, there wasn’t a lot of continuity. I didn’t feel a lot of, like, I would work on something and then it’d switch me to something else, switched me to something else. And, you know, I didn’t get that kind of pride owner ownership of like moving something all the way through. And it still wasn’t quite what I wanted. And so in the back of my mind, I thought, you know what?

Ian Ippolito (09:17):

I really wanna do. I wanna be my, I wanna be an entrepreneur. I wanna be my own, my own business. You know? And I, I, I was always trying different things and it took me a while to get to work. I failed a lot of times. I, I tried the first time I, cause I was a software person. I wrote a piece of software, spent a long time doing it. No one, no one bought it. uh but I learned a really good lesson. It was like market research. I have to do my market research. So I AF after a couple months I picked myself up. I tried again, I created another product. And this time it was, it was a thing to create help files, which, um, was a long time ago. But it, it worked, it, it worked enough where people, every single month were paying me money.

Ian Ippolito (09:59):

I would open up my, my mailbox and checks would start coming in. I’d be like, wow, this is, this is cool. And I bought myself a car and I, I wrote the software one time and they would keep paying me, you know, as new people signed up for it. So like, this is, this is pretty cool. So I, I like that for a while. Until once again, I got stomped on, which is basically, uh, Microsoft came in like the big elephant and squished the little guy, which was me. Uh, they were like, you know what? It is really inconvenient to create these help files. We’ll create something that’ll make, make it easier for people. So great for the users, terrible for my business, because I just went from, you know, doing sky high to boom, nothing just like that. My whole business was gone.

Ian Ippolito (10:38):

So I was like, I dusted my, it took, you know, it was disappointing, but after a little bit of time dusted myself off, tried it again. And the next one was creating. I, again, I created something for computer programmers. It was one of the first open source sites. It took a long time to get it going. Like years. It started slowly. I didn’t have a lot of money or anything, but over time it actually became, it was the first open source site for anyone who knows computer stuff. It’s like a way that computer programmers share their, their, uh, their information. And, um, you know, at, at its height, it was getting millions of programmers coming in every single month. And this was the time of the.com boom. So it was, um, it, things were crazy back then. I mean, it was, so it was ridiculously easy to make money because what would happen is like, say Oracle.

Ian Ippolito (11:27):

So Oracle, they make databases and they would pay a ridiculous amount of money like today, if you have a website and you, you, you get paid by Google. You’d be lucky if you get, you know, 50 cents per a thousand, you know, people coming in or thousand clicks, whatever, it’s like, you’re not gonna make a lot of money back then. I was getting like $50 just to show their ad to a thousand people. Wow. So, yeah, so they, no one really understood how the internet worked and there was a lot of money. And so people were just, and, and they, no one wanted to be left out. So they were all like, no, no, we, we want your space. We want your space. So they were all competing, you know, to be on it. So it was, it was a really good time for, for the site.

Ian Ippolito (12:06):

And, you know, I, I grew that business, uh, and it was really just myself and an employee or two. And I ended up, this was before like broadband. So I actually had to have T1 lines, these old fashioned computer lines hooked up these physical lines into my house. And they were coming into my house to run this website. And so, and, and I was like, wow, I don’t have to do any work. And, you know, the advertisements are running and, you know, and these companies are paying me. So I thought I was set, but you know, again, let’s see. So this was just before 2001. So 2001 came the.com crash and all of a sudden one or two of my customers were like, Hey, you know, we can’t pay you this month. I’m like, all right. Okay. um, and then the next month, a few more, oh, we can’t pay.

Ian Ippolito (12:52):

And all of a sudden the advertising just dried up just like that. And it was like almost overnight, the.com crash hit the stock market, went down and all these companies, the first thing they yanked was their advertising budgets. And meanwhile, I had these T one lines, which were on long term contracts, each one costing, you know, a few thousand dollars per month and that I couldn’t get out of and that I owed money on. And, um, I was like, oh my gosh, I am sunk. It’s like, I have no money coming in. I owe all of this money. It’s like, I’m in, I’m in big, big trouble. And, um, it was, uh, that was probably one of the worst times ever, because it was like, I was deep dark times. And I was like, what am I gonna do freaking out? And eventually I just kind of like, I had to calm myself down, which was not easy.

Ian Ippolito (13:39):

And, uh, you know, think about lo well, what are, what strengths do I have? What do I have here that I can turn it around with? And I was like, well, you know, no one wants to pay for these, this audience, but it is an audience it’s, it’s got value because you know, it, it’s a people it’s people and, you know, there’s value for you if no one wants to pay. And I was like, what else could I do with this audience? And so I thought, you know, what I could do. I always I’ve always had this problem. And what it is is people as the website owner, they would come to me and they’d say, Hey, Ian, can you write this program for me? And I’d say, I don’t have time to do that. Sorry. And I would, and I was like, you know what?

Ian Ippolito (14:12):

I could create a website or connect together. You know, I’ve got these millions of programmers and I’ve got all these people that need programming worked at why don’t I create a website to do that. Now at the time, there was no such thing as a website that connected people together for freelance work or anything like that. So, um, I actually created one of the first websites to do that. And at the time it was called rent code. And so what rent coder was was, was exactly what I talked about, but, you know, I was in deep financial distress. So, uh, you know, the, the, the gun was to my head basically. And I was coating up a storm working late at night, just trying to get this thing to work, putting it out there. I was like, but I felt it could work. It took me like about a month to just even just write the first version.

Ian Ippolito (14:56):

I put it out there. And I think it made that first month, it made like five bucks or something. . So, um, I was like, well, you know, better than a loss, I guess, but, uh, you know, that doesn’t pay the bills. So I, I, I, but I just kept working at it and working at it and refining it and changing it and changing it. And, you know, $5 became 50 and 50 became 5,000 and 5,000 became 50,000 and month after month. And I just, I just stayed on top of it because I really had no other choice. And, um, eventually turned it around and a big break really came the one day where a wall street journal. Um, he was a reporter basically was using the site and he’s like, wow, this is really cool. I just hired a programmer from like, around the world. I don’t even know him. And he asked him questions and the guy like sent him pictures and he goes, I’d like to do a, an article on your company. Is that okay? I was like, yeah, of course it’s okay. And that was the beginning of just really, you know, turning it around and, and hitting it big. And, you know, so that was the start of a, a very interesting and, and, and fun journey.

Reed Goossens (16:01):

So what, what happened did you sell, did you, did you get to, did you get to a, a happy ending?

Ian Ippolito (16:06):

I did. I did it, it did ramp up and eventually, you know, got larger and larger. We changed it from rent code to V worker where we expanded into all sorts of other, uh, um, remote work. So writing, it was, uh, translations, all sorts of things. And eventually I sold it to a company in Australia that wanted to get into the us market. That was in 2013. I had my exit, I was retired. I was done for the time being anyway.

Reed Goossens (16:33):

Was that Atlassian

Ian Ippolito (16:35):

, uh, freelancer actually. So freelancer.com. So, um, you know, now I

Reed Goossens (16:42):

Donunno, if you know

Ian Ippolito (16:43):

Old names. Yes. I do know that. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Like the back then there were, there was Elan and there were, and these eventually a bunch of ’em got consolidated and it it’s a different market today, but right. Then there were a lot more competitors. Got

Reed Goossens (16:56):

It. Got it. Well, well, congratulations on finally getting through from 2001 all the way through to 2000, and I’m sure you were coding before that, but that’s yes. It just goes to show how fickle those markets can be. And the businesses can be in trying to create software and new ideas and, and stuff like that. But, but kudos you for keep going, because I that’s. Thank you. That’s it seems like, so a lot of people would’ve stopped right. With no money. Yes,

Ian Ippolito (17:20):

Yes.

Reed Goossens (17:21):

Go back, get a job. Mm-hmm I dunno if there was any family pressures. Hey, Ian, there’s there’s a roof over here. They got, there’s gotta be food on this table. Like what the hell

Ian Ippolito (17:28):

. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, you know, I, I, I was lucky that I, you know, I wasn’t married and didn’t have like a child, like I do now. I would not have been able to, to go through the same road. I was able to take more risks. Got it. Yeah. So I was very fortunate. Yeah.

Reed Goossens (17:40):

That’s that’s awesome. That’s awesome. So, so 2013 comes, you’ve hit a big time. Did you take some time off? Did you go kick, kick back on the beach

Ian Ippolito (17:48):

Somewhere? I did. I did. I took some time off and I just relaxed and it was weird because that first month after doing something for like 10 or 11 years, it was at first, I was like, okay, this is weird. I’m not sure if I like it. And then the second thing was like, this is awesome because it’s like, the stress of, you know, I didn’t, and I didn’t realize it. I always thought, ah, it doesn’t bother me. You know, the stress doesn’t bother me, but when it was all gone, it was like, wow, a, a weight just came off of my shoulders. And, uh, it was, it was very good. It was very good. I’d say for a few months. And, uh, but what I found is that it’s also a little bit boring unless, you know, someone has like some people, they might play golf every day, but I I’m really not into doing that. You know, people have their different hobbies. If you have a hobby, you know, it’s great. But the thing that had always made me most, the most interested was, you know, really diving into something and I wanted something to dive into. So, uh, that’s what kind of took me to the investing world basically.

Reed Goossens (18:47):

Awesome. Awesome. And, and, and were you, did you start out in the real estate world with the cash that you, you, you acquired to just get it to work or so to, to get it working for you? Was that the idea behind that?

Ian Ippolito (18:59):

It was at that time beforehand, I actually had made some real estate investments when I was earlier on went back when I had like, pretty much no money actually. And, um, you know, I, I had bought some rental properties and had some okay success and, uh, you know, didn’t lose money. Didn’t make a ton of money either. And then I had bought into a syndication right before. Uh, let’s see. So what time are we talking now? So, yeah, right before the great recession, bad timing, because I ended up, it was a, it was a syndication in, uh, single family homes. So not good timing, but I didn’t know what I was doing and I didn’t know how to do research. And so, so, yeah, so I had, I, I dabbled in it before, but now all of a sudden, like it was my job, like this is like this, I have a certain amount of money unless I can make more money out of it. There’s no more coming. I, I don’t have, you know, so I was like, I gotta be a lot more serious about this.

Reed Goossens (19:53):

And so what the idea of the club, where did that started to come from? Where sharing your, was it just to be surrounded by other people who thought like you and be on the passive side? And I guess the question before that was, did you always think that you wanted to be passive, like coming out of the, the, the 11 years of working hard and stress and all that sort of stuff, you clearly sounded like you found your role in? I like just to be passive in, in, in these scenarios.

Ian Ippolito (20:19):

I mean, I, the way I look at it is like, first of all, I can’t criticize anyone from being active investor because it’s like, you can generate incredible wealth as an active investor. You also have to put in a lot of time and effort. So, um, it’s, it’s basically a job. So, you know, I look at it as, you know, I I’ll do that if I have to, but if I get to the point where I don’t have to, I would definitely rather not. That’s the way I look at it right now. I actually, even today in my portfolio, I have directly owned properties that I, I still own, but I don’t, like, I’m not the one that’s gonna go. And like, if, if someone has a toilet broken, you know, I’m not gonna answer the phone and, you know, fix their toilet or something like that. You know, I outsource a lot of it, but, you know, if I can do passive, you know, I, I, it, it’s, it’s hard to, it’s hard to beat. I’m not gonna get the same returns as, you know, putting in all the sweat euity of, you know, something else where I do it. But when I’m in a situation that, uh, it works, I like it.

Reed Goossens (21:12):

Yep. No, no. A hundred percent. And that’s, it’s, it’s important to define what that is because so many people coming into this space, including myself, you know, I, I very much had the active mindset being young when I was 26. When I bought my first property, you know, six months fresh off the boat here in the United States, it was like, I tried to buy the most amount of units with the money I had at the time. And I, I didn’t, I didn’t even, I didn’t really understand syndication at the time. I was just like, I know I needed to get a deal done. So being active and I always had the, the, the, the, the active side of me came through strong. Now, depending on where people listening to the show, people in your, your club, you may come be at certain times in your life like yourself, or you’ve already grinded for 12, 13 years, 15 years, you build something you’ve, you’ve got toward a successful exit. Now it’s like, all right, let’s go take some chips off the table and let some other people do the hard work for a little bit. So, yes, I think there’s, it’s important to understand where you are in your life to then back into what’s that decision you’re gonna make in terms of passive or active investing. Um, but Ian, when did the club come around? Because obviously was that from straight from day one, or was it, you know, slowly building up, like you sort of built up your software businesses.

Ian Ippolito (22:23):

Yeah. It was more like the software business. So the first thing, it was just, I just needed to invest my own money. And so I, at the time, this is 2013. So crowd funding had just started taking off and there were a lot of crowd funding sites. And so I was like, well, where do I invest? So I hired an assistant and we went in and we interviewed investors and we talked to the people at the, all these different platforms and we analyzed them and we went into the legal contracts and I created this, you know, document where to figure out where I wanted to invest. And what happened is the word kind of got out. It’s like, oh, Ian has this list of stuff. You should ask him like this great list. And so after like the hundredth time of like, you know, giving it to someone I’m like, okay, fine, it’s out on this website.

Ian Ippolito (23:03):

If you want it, I’m gonna put my information on this website. So that became this website called the real estate crowdfunding review. It’s still out there, you know, it gets, you know, I can’t remember the latest numbers, but, you know, it’s getting, you know, several tens of thousands of investors every single month coming in, looking at real estate information, you know, real estate crowdfunding stuff. So it was great. I was like, this is awesome. But I was like, it’s not really what I’m looking for because so many of the real estate deals, they’re, they’re under nondisclosure. You can’t talk about them. You know, you can’t talk about them on the public internet. And, uh, but I want access to those deals, you know, and I, I might not know where they are. It’s like, you know what? I need like a private club where people can kind of share, you know, Hey, I found this great deal.

Ian Ippolito (23:48):

We can share it with other people. And, you know, maybe I don’t know how to do due diligence and that sort of thing. In, for example, even just in real estate, there’s so many areas of real estate. Maybe I know multi-family, but I know nothing about self storage or maybe I know real estate, but I don’t know private equity or, you know, there’s all sorts of things that I wanted to cover everything that was basically not the traditional, you know, invest in the stock market and all the public market stuff. So, you know, that was kind of the idea and, you know, it, it, and like you said, it, it was like the software business. It just built slowly and by word of mouth started off with, you know, a few people. And they told their friends and their family members and they referred people. And it grew, uh, until, like, until it became kind of the snowball effect, which just got bigger and bigger and bigger to where it is now. And, you know, it eventually got to the point where there were so many people just applying that I had to hire. There’s actually, what three people now working, just to look at the people that come in, uh, we, we, we have to vet people because with, with so many investors, there’s, there’s bad actors that will try to come in and take advantage of that sort of thing.

Reed Goossens (24:51):

So

Reed Goossens (24:54):

For those of you who are interested in staying up to date with all the latest happenings in my business, or to learn more about passively investing directly into my multifamily value, add deals, then head over to Reedgoossens.com and sign up for my monthly newsletter by signing up, you’ll automatically be notified about my new up and coming investment opportunities. You’ll be able to stay up to date with all the latest real estate news here in the United States, and much, much more. So head over to reedgoossens.com and sign up today now back into the show. Awesome. Awesome. And what are the numbers today? What’s the group? I think I mentioned five. Is it 5,000 people? Yep.

Ian Ippolito (25:35):

5,000. Yep. Latest number. I mean, I could go look it up, but I believe the latest was something like 9.6 billion investible assets. Wow. And yeah,

Reed Goossens (25:43):

So, so, so the club now is this all accredited investors or have you got some unaccredited as well?

Ian Ippolito (25:48):

In the early days, we thought that there would be, you know, accredited investors, but it, it just the deals, almost all of them require accredited investor status. So we ended up just saying, you know what, we don’t wanna waste your time, you know, cuz you’re really not gonna find what you want here. You need to be an accredited investor. So the club became a credited investor only

Reed Goossens (26:07):

You’re a credit investor. Got it. Got it. And, and so I assume with so many people talking about different deals that you, and again, we’re not gonna name names here, but you’d have a lot of information gathering, right. So do you have internal lists that you’ve created about, who’s a good operator, who’s a bad operator. Don’t go to this market, go to that market, you know? Uh, do you know, is there anything, are you sort of cross crosschecking? Oh, here’s what happened on my deal? What the good, the bad, the ugly, so to speak? Well,

Ian Ippolito (26:35):

The, the whole thing is about crosschecking and due diligence and people sharing their experiences. Um, but I will say the club also it’s, it’s weird because of the regulations, the club has to be very legally careful. It can’t be seen as an investment advisor to the investors like, and saying, you should invest in this or don’t invest in that. So the club actually is not allowed to, to make a stance and go here. These are the, these are the ones that we like, but these are the ones that don’t like it. Yep. Yep. But what happens is, you know, you have 5,000 people in there and someone says, Hey, what do you think about this? And uh, someone says, well, you know what, they, they promised me this and they underperformed on the performa or they exited this deal and it was, you know, this terrible thing happened or, or it’s like, yeah, this was a great sponsor. And they did everything that we wanted and you know, I love them. Okay. So effectively that information is there.

Reed Goossens (27:22):

It just is just whether it’s captured or not as another thing, it’s sort of been sort of subconsciously in the minds of other people. And

Ian Ippolito (27:28):

So it is it’s there, every sponsor has like thread basically where they’re discussed. So it’s like someone brings up on the sponsors, like, okay, here’s the thread they’re discussed then when they have their, their deals that goes up on another thread. So people can dig into that individual thing. And then all the information about that is there for someone who’s willing to take the time to read through it and just kind of see it. Yeah. Then they can make their own decision. Hopefully

Reed Goossens (27:48):

That’s, that’s, that’s super interesting. That’s uh, I wonder if, uh, I’m sure a lot of sponsors don’t know if they’re up there or not. Right.

Ian Ippolito (27:56):

Yes. They probably don’t. They probably don’t but they’re probably there because they’re, it’s like, if they’re big enough, you know, they’re, they’re probably discussed by someone

Reed Goossens (28:05):

Probably. Right? Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure. No, that, that that’s awesome. Well, uh, what’s the goal of the club now, moving forward into the future, are you looking to grow? Are you, are you looking to pivot? Like, are you, what’s the, you know, you you’re, you’re a, you’re a software tech guy. It’s all about growth, growth, growth, growth, growth. So, so where, where does this go in the next 10 years?

Ian Ippolito (28:24):

Well, I mean to answer that question, so I, I didn’t really design this to be like a typical, like it’s not like an, a business that I had done with my previous ones. Like my primary goal was like, I wanna find good investment deals, so I don’t ever wanna do anything that kills that. And so that’s why, for example, no, one’s charged to join the club. People are referred to sponsors. No, one’s, there’s no fee being charged to refer people to sponsors, which a lot of clubs kind of run themselves that way, but then they get conflicts of interest. And so I wanted to keep it very clean. So, you know, the club is from my point of view, it’s working and doing what it’s supposed to do, which is, you know, bringing in all these deals that we can take a look at, allowing a place to do due diligence.

Ian Ippolito (29:02):

The, the other thing that’s nice is sometimes because there’s so many of us that we can bring an amount to a sponsor together, an aggregate that makes it worth it for them to give a discount, excuse me. And I couldn’t get that by myself if I went to that sponsor. So the bigger the club gets just the better it gets. So, so yeah, my goal, my goal is to grow it and to, to grow it. And, but we want quality referrals and want people coming in. And so we want all that good stuff, but there’s no plan to change. It is basically it’s, it’s working.

Reed Goossens (29:30):

So my, my mind’s curious about how the advice after starting a club like this, you’re, you’re an active investor and you know, I’m not trying to get the, the secret sources, but is there any sort of like couple of nuggets of gold that you can advise to other passive investors looking to either come into your club or they’re looking to get into this syndication world? Like what’s the biggest couple of piece of advice that you can give to them when they start looking?

Ian Ippolito (29:55):

Yeah. I mean, maybe I can kind of tell you like what people tend to look for in

Reed Goossens (29:58):

Investment

Ian Ippolito (29:58):

Would’ve seen over, over again. And so, you know, and first I’ll just say that every investor is different. And so what I’ve learned first is like, there’s a spectrum and you’ve got the very conservative and you’ve got the very aggressive and most people are somewhere in between. Um, now I, I happen to be on this side just because, you know, as you know, that’s kind of where I am. I it’s kinda like where you are in your life too, that hasn’t, mm-hmm, , it’s like, you know, um, uh, but there were times where I was over here and I, you know, I’ve been everywhere and, and the club members are too. So for example, for me, the things that I’m looking for, you know, like in a sponsor, like I wanna see that they have, uh, skin in the game, for example. So I’m looking for some sort of skim in the game.

Ian Ippolito (30:37):

They’ve got some sort of co-investment, um, I’m looking at their track record, how have they done in the past? You know, that sort of thing I’m looking for, I’m not looking for crazy leverage. I’m not looking for something to knock it out of the park with super, super high projected returns. I’m looking for good steady, you know, a steady return that works for me. Now, someone over here would be like, that’s terrible that I’m not gonna go for any of those deals. They, they, they wanna see some they’re like, well, you know, this is not gonna make a difference to me unless it’s going to, you know, hit it out of the park. So, you know, they wanna see higher leverage. They want to see, you know, you know, Morere more aggressive plan. So there’s no one thing that’s right. For every single person. I think it’s all about, hopefully the club allows people to kind of figure out where do I fall in that? And then, you know, what am I looking at to figure out what would make sense for me?

Reed Goossens (31:26):

Got it, got it. What’s the, what’s the number one thing people are investing in, in the club? Is it multi, is it, you know, syndication? Is it single family, like, and having been started since 2013, you probably would’ve seen some ebbs and flows of certain asset classes, right?

Ian Ippolito (31:42):

Yes, yes. Yeah. I mean, real estate has always been a big part of it. And, um, originally it was a hundred percent I’d say now it’s probably about maybe 60% of what we seen. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. So there’s a lot of alternative asset classes too then inside real estate. Yes. Multi-family has far away been like the number one and it continues to be, it’s got a lot of strengths. It’s like, um, you know, and, and now, you know, with the possibility of inflation and the ability to adjust your rents every single year, that could be a very nice thing. Um, it it’s historically performed well, it’s easy to understand. Mm-hmm, , it’s like, Hey, if I own a home, I, I can kind of understand multi-family, but it gets more difficult to understand, oh, well, you know, some of this triple net lease or self storage or some of these other things are a little bit, little bit more out of the, the realm of someone’s understanding.

Reed Goossens (32:31):

And when you say understanding, you’re talking about why would someone have a self storage or like, because I own a home, I need a roof over my head. I get multifamily. Is that what you mean?

Ian Ippolito (32:42):

Well, I mean kind of like, yeah, in a way, but like, how do I, like, they’re like, well, how do I even do due diligence on self storage? Like, I don’t know enough about that business to know if this is a good deal or a bad deal. That’s, that’s what happens a lot, right. Where they, they look at multifamily go, well, you know what? I’ve paid rent in my past and I, I can go on and go, well, you know what, probably, if that rent looks like it’s in a reasonable range for that area, well, they’re probably gonna do that and people can get more comfortable with it. Right. So that’s what I’m kind of talking about versus like the being able to, to pull the trigger requires someone to say, Hey, you know, I feel comfortable after the due diligence process. And people tend to feel much more comfortable with the multifamily, hopefully though, through the club, they gain experience in some of these other things and they can learn from other people and learn about some of these other asset classes too. That’s

Reed Goossens (33:27):

Awesome. That’s awesome. Um, I know you’re not, you don’t wanna give out the clubs secret sauce, but personally, what are you seeing in the multifamily space, in the commercial space with inflation and, you know, cap rates, compressing, and, and you’ve been involved since 2013, probably back in the day when cap rates were a lot more expanded than what they are today. So gimme your yes. 2 cents on, on, on, on the market, the temperature, what you think and, and maybe where you think we’re headed to in this sort of, um, rising interest rate environment.

Ian Ippolito (33:58):

Mm, well, yes, I, I have seen a lot and it’s interesting because at almost every stage, there’s always been that prediction of, you know, what interest rates can’t go any lower and, uh, you know, the cap rate, uh, it cap rates can’t continue compressing. And we’re, we’re in for like, you know, a, a big, a big bear market. And I mean, since 2013, I’ve been hearing that from every year. Now. I’m not saying that it’s not gonna happen. It will happen. It will definitely happen at some point. What I’m trying to say is it’s really difficult to predict when it’s gonna happen. So I kind of go in the, this is the way I look at it. It’s like so hard to predict, like, even with inflation, like we can all see that inflation’s a serious issue right now. It’s like a year ago, we were like arguing about it, you know, is it gonna be bad?

Ian Ippolito (34:42):

Is it not gonna be bad? You know, now we can see it, it, it is, it it’s historical highs. Mm-hmm . And then the question is, how long does it stay that way? And how does it affect my own investments? And if I knew the exact answer to that, it’s really easy because it’s like, oh, well, you know, it’s gonna stay this long for two years. So I’m gonna switch into this something right now, like the, the eye savings bonds. I don’t know if you’re familiar with these, but they adjust with inflation and, uh, they’re, they’re guaranteed by the us government. So they’re, you know, they’re not gonna, the odds of default are extremely low. And so, um, and they’re yielding like seven, 8% right now. Wow. The, yeah, the, the, the limit, you’re not, you, don’t only limited to like $10,000 per entity and there there’s limits.

Ian Ippolito (35:22):

So you can’t invest your whole portfolio, but it’s like, if inflation is gonna go nuts, there are definitely ways that you can invest and do well. If inflation is just temporary though, it’s a different strategy. And it’s like, you don’t wanna go too crazy and try to protect from inflation. You’re basically giving up returns over maybe the next nine or 10 years, you know? So especially if you’re locking in for the long term, this is the way I look at it personally. I, I, I actually particularly look like, I, I don’t feel anyone can really know for sure. So I try to cover as many bases as possible. That’s what I do. So for example, with real estate, it, it’s kind of the same way where people are allow always like, well, do you think this is gonna be the year that the, the, the big crash happens?

Ian Ippolito (36:01):

And I’m like, well, you know, I don’t know. I, I don’t know if this is gonna be the big year, but instead I, I do a vintage year strategy. So what it is is I invest every single year. So, you know, if I had been around in the great recession and I had invested in 2006, I would’ve done great. 2007, I would’ve done okay. 2008, I probably would’ve been terrible. 2009 was like one of the best 2000, you know, 10 was again great in 2011. So that’s the way I deal with the risk. I, I, I keep, it’s almost like a index investor or someone who’s like in investing in the stock market, just continually just putting in a little bit of money every single time as it goes up and down, I feel that’s kind of the best way from a passive investor point of view. Hmm. Every single year I invest in real estate and I also get the tax deductions, which I can’t complain about because they’re very good. So, um, that’s how I kind of deal with it.

Reed Goossens (36:53):

No, I, I actually like that because, and for those listeners out there, you you’re being consistent. Right. You’re consistent in the market today. So you, yes. Might have bought at a six cap or a seven cap in 2013, or you’ve invested a deal that was a six or seven cap back then, but today’s market is three or three and a half, right? Yes. And you have to still be active in today’s market and, and, and, and history is a good indication of future. But to your point, you’ve gotta react to where you are today in order to keep the tax down in order to keep, you know, the, the, the, the passive income coming. And when you over a 20 or 30 year horizon, which I think is what you’re sort of getting at, you are gonna look back in those blips where it’s gone a little bit awry, or it has become a bear market will be so much less than, than, than the consistently growth of your wealth over that time. Right?

Ian Ippolito (37:45):

Yes. That that’s exactly right. So I’m not gonna put everything in, in one year and throw it all in by spreading it all out. It, uh, definitely I feel mitigates the

Reed Goossens (37:55):

Risk a hundred percent. No, that’s, that’s a really great piece of takeaway advice here for everyone who’s listening is to don’t, don’t sit on the sidelines because you’re hoping something’s gonna happen. You have to always be active in every single market. You’ll still continue to make money if you have a long term mindset. And I think that’s, that’s, that’s what we’re breaking down to. Um, Ian, I wanna be very respectful of your time. I probably could talk to you for hours and hours and hours, my friend, but, but just information where people can go to get more information on the passive investor club.

Ian Ippolito (38:25):

Sure. So it’s a www not private investor

Reed Goossens (38:28):

Club.com private investor. Sorry, my, my, my,

Ian Ippolito (38:30):

No, that’s okay. And, uh, there, there’s a link there with all sorts of information about the club, how it works and, uh, contact information. And if someone wants to register, they can do that there too.

Reed Goossens (38:40):

Awesome. Awesome stuff. My friend, well, look at the end of every show, we like to dive into the top five investing tips. You ready to get into it?

Ian Ippolito (38:46):

All right. Let’s do

Reed Goossens (38:47):

It, mate. What is the daily habit you practice to keep on track towards your goals?

Ian Ippolito (38:51):

What it is is I, I eat the, I eat the frog every morning. I don’t know if you’ve heard this phrase before, but

Reed Goossens (38:55):

Basically

Ian Ippolito (38:56):

Yes, I have. Oh, you know what? Okay. So’s the book I read. Yeah. A genius book. It’s so counterintuitive, but just take the worst thing. That’s on your list. That thing that’s just draining your energy every single time you see it. And you’re like, I wish that was gone. And if you do it, and if you make it a habit of doing one of those every single day, all of a sudden your list gets like really, really small mm-hmm . And, uh, so that’s what I try to do

Reed Goossens (39:17):

Most eat the frog. I love that. I never actually read the book and I love the name of it, but I’ve always heard saying, so question number two is who’s the most influential person in your career to date?

Ian Ippolito (39:28):

Oh, well, you know, if, if it I’ve got so many people that, you know, I, I, so many people that I’ve learned from, I mean, hard to pick just one from all like, cuz I was a computer programmer. I learned a lot in that. I learned a lot, you know, in the investing world I learned, but I love, I love following the call them the classic investors, the best investors of all time. It’s like, and it’s hard to not like Warren buffet. Mm-hmm because it’s like he’s he’s he’s self-made he’s so down to earth. Yep. And, and he happens to match up. Maybe, maybe I’m biased. He happens to match up with a lot of the ways I think about things. So, um, I I’d say he’s probably number one.

Reed Goossens (40:07):

Yeah. No buffet comes up a lot. I think the reason he comes up a lot, he’s not even being successful. That what you said he’s down to earth. He’s not an, he’s not a Dick with his money, you know, he’s not,he’s not mm-hmm flaunting it. I think I saw that he does he live in, um, where does he live in Idaho? No, um, he’s in

Ian Ippolito (40:23):

Nebraska, Nebraska. And he lives in just a modest house. Right. He drives a beater. An old car. Yeah.

Reed Goossens (40:30):

Yeah. Like that’s, that’s just an everyday Joe, you know, that’s, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. Mm-hmm uh, question number three is what’s the most influential tool in your business. And when I say tool, it could be a physical tool, like a phone or a journal, or it could be a piece of software that you just can’t run the business without. What is it?

Ian Ippolito (40:46):

Mm, well, I mean, for me it is, uh, basically, I mean, I don’t know how helpful this is to, to, to your, to your members, but the thing I’m on all the time. So the, the club forum mm-hmm so basically the software that organizes everything, groups up things into threads and allows me to see, oh, well who’s talking about this and you know, what’s going on today and allows me to quickly kind of jump into the conversations where I want to.

Reed Goossens (41:08):

Awesome. Okay. And did you create that software yourself?

Ian Ippolito (41:11):

Oh, I wish I did. No, I didn’t.

Reed Goossens (41:13):

what’s it called by the way?

Ian Ippolito (41:15):

Well, website toolbox

Reed Goossens (41:17):

Website toolbox. Okay. I always like to get, uh, ideas, uh, you know, ask people about the cool different software gadgets and gizmos that’s going on. So that website toolbox. Okay, cool. In one sentence, question number four in one sentence, what has been the biggest failure you have faced in your career and what’d you learn from that failure?

Ian Ippolito (41:35):

I mean, I’ve had so many failures and I, I feel that without them, that wouldn’t be where I am right now. So I have to pick just one. Um, let’s see. So biggest failure. Well, you know, I, I guess I’ll pick in the investing world since we’re talking about investing. So I kind of briefly talked about, but I didn’t really tell you the details, which was that first passive investment that I was in investing in exactly the wrong time, which was, uh, I invested in single family homes right before the great recession hit, which if, if people aren’t aware, I mean, that was, it started with homes and basically went from there. And so the whole housing market crashed big time. And I was relying on this great marketing that said, oh, you know, the housing market has, the markets have never crashed across the country since the great depression.

Ian Ippolito (42:22):

So, you know, you can’t lose your money and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I didn’t really know what I was doing. And so, um, you know, I got into that. It took me that was supposed to be like a five or six year investment. I think it took 10 or 11 years for that thing to eventually exit. Um, I actually was very lucky because it was excruciating that time, but they actually, they pivoted, they pivoted to multi-family and they tried to make back a bunch of the money and they actually kind of broke even by the end, you know? So in, in the end it wasn’t that horrible, but it was excruciating. And each year I would have these, I would have to pay, I have to pay taxes on Phantom gains and on this investment that was underwater. And, and I just beat myself up over it, over and over again.

Ian Ippolito (43:04):

And, but I just made dumb mistakes. And I learned from them, which was one, I didn’t know what, I didn’t understand what I was investing in two. I didn’t understand anything about, uh, markets and timing and you know, it’s like, when should I be doing it? I had no clue what any of these things. And three, you know, I didn’t even understand how to read the, the legal document, which later I found that, you know, allowed them to do a bunch of things that I, I didn’t really want them to do. And you don’t find these things out unless things go wrong. Unfortunately, sometimes. But, and so I promised to myself, you know, I’m not going to get into something where I don’t understand it fully. So I started reading, which some people will think is crazy on these private syndications, because these things can be a hundred pages long, but I would read, and I do read all every page of them from now on. So ,

Reed Goossens (43:49):

Well, I’m sure you’d, you’d be pretty handy with the PPM review. Uh, you, you can jump straight to the section. You’re like, no, these four sections that you gotta watch out for. So, uh,

Ian Ippolito (43:58):

It’s funny, even though there’re so long, a lot of the things just happen over and over again. So after you see maybe 50 of them, if not something hundred,

Reed Goossens (44:05):

Hundred percent. That’s awesome. Well, mate, where last question is, where can people reach you to continue the conversation they wanna be in your sphere? I think you already mentioned the website, but maybe let’s remention it again. And maybe where people can contact you if they wanna get in touch with you personally.

Ian Ippolito (44:17):

Yeah, well private and www.privateinvestorclub.com. There’s a link there to, for example, my LinkedIn page and, uh, someone can get in contact with me there.

Reed Goossens (44:26):

That’s awesome, mate. Well, look, I wanna thank you so much for taking some time outta daddy, jump on the show. And I just wanna reflect some of the things that I took away from today’s show. And I think what we mentioned earlier, your resilience in the software business in the beginning, I think really helped you. And maybe it’s from your mom and dad, or maybe it’s from your, your upbringing, but you didn’t say no like that. Would’ve been so crushing to have things start and fail, start and fail start and fail. And then you hit it big time and you hear a lot about on, you know, how we built this and all these, they, they’re hard to, they’re hard to build those, those software companies. Everyone thinks everyone thinks I’m gonna start a software company and, and smack it out of the park. Yes.

Reed Goossens (45:01):

And, and, you know, your, your proof that it takes time and it takes a couple of reps or more than just a couple of reps to get to something that is gonna be scalable, that ultimately you, you went on to pave the path that you are today and create the foundation that you can go off and do whatever you want with your time do become the ultimate passive investor. And then, you know, passing it forward now with the, the, the private investor club and helping other passive investors get involved in alternative assets, which I think is, is really, really awesome. And, and then the, the last thing you mentioned there about, you know, reading the, uh, understanding the PPMS and understanding where the risk is for an investor in investing passively. And I think, you know, I’m sure you talk a lot about more that inside the club.

Reed Goossens (45:45):

So, um, but, but I think those are the, some of the things that I took away from, from today’s show. Did, did it leave anything out? No, that sounds great. I appreciate it. Awesome, man. Well, look again, thank you so much for jumping on the show. Enjoy the rest of your week and we’ll catch up very, very soon. Okay. Pleasure being here. Thanks. Well then have another cracking episode jam pack with some incredible advice from Ian. Remember if you want to check him out, go over to privateinvestorclub.com. His LinkedIn page is gonna be there. You better contact him through LinkedIn. I wanna thank you all for taking some time outta your day to tune in, to continue to grow your financial IQ, because that’s what we’re all about here on this show. If you do like to show the easiest way to give back is to give it a five star review on iTunes and all the notes and the links from today’s show will be up on my website at Reedgoossens.com. Don’t forget to like and subscribe, and we’re gonna do this all again next week. Remember be bold, be brave, and go give life a crack.