Living Life by Design with Melanie McDaniel

In this episode, Melanie McDaniel, the founder of Freestyle Capital Group, will discuss high-net-worth individuals looking to invest passively in private offerings, as well as people interested in a non-conventional lifestyle who are seeking passive income in order to live their dream life. Tune in and learn the purpose of passive investing.

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Living Life by Design with Melanie McDaniel

Hey, everybody, welcome to The Real Estate Run Down. This is our second season. And one of the great things that I have the opportunity to do on this podcast each and every time is to interview people that I see in the world that are doing things just a little bit differently, but really, really loving their life. And I’ve actually met this person in person in Idaho. So, guys, I want you to give me a warm welcome. If we could hear you, we could know that you are welcoming my friend, Melanie McDaniels, Melanie, how are you?

I am great. And we almost met in Mexico. We just didn’t make it happen. But

We did. We did. But we’ve met in Boise twice. And you know, the great thing about that is, you are totally nomadic. At this point in your life, you have made some choices, you’ve made some decisions that have allowed that to happen. Tell us a little bit about what your background was. Why have you been all over you? I mean, I get to play Where’s Waldo with you, every time I talk with you about where are you at now? Where are you at now? Where are you at now? Right? And now what are you looking forward to?

You’ll always know at least that’s kind of where I have my hair. If my hair is straight, it is a dry climate. My hair is curly or messy. I’m probably right.

That’s right. That’s right. And you are in Arizona now. Right? Very dry.

Yeah, shortstop. But yeah. So my background I was raised, you know, to go to school, get a job, that whole Rich Dad Poor Dad thing I read in the book changed my life, of course, so. But I’ve also had this traveling spirit, this curiosity to be in the world. And it’s probably something to do with my sixth-grade teacher who taught class from her personal slides about the Etruscans, about the Romans, about the Egyptians, whatever. And then, in junior high, we had foreign exchange students in the home, maybe that’s part of it. My parents were really great about traveling, we had a little trailer, we didn’t have boats, and my grandparents were in different states. So as a young person, I got to branch outside of my community out of my state and stuff. So maybe that’s all led up to who I am today. Or maybe I was just born to be this curious traveler. I don’t know. But I was. I first joined the military because I was 17. And oh, I wanted to be when I grew up. And I knew I needed to mature. I wanted to get some life experience. And by the way, I was insured to travel the world if I joined the Navy, so I chose the Navy and the other services, which was beautiful. My first duty station was in Italy. So check in the box there.

There you go.

Then when I was getting out of the Navy, I’m like, Well, what do I want to do? What do I like? I didn’t still didn’t know. So I studied travel administration. I have a bachelor’s degree in travel. Okay. That’s who I am. Right?

Right.

Um, yeah, I just, I want to travel and move around. I joined the Navy. And that moved me twice. And then I’ve just been nomadic since going to college, maybe to Hawaii three different times. And I just have this wanderlust, I guess I don’t really know. But at some point, I thought I needed to settle down and get a job. So I got a federal job. I was a park ranger for nine years. And I was miserable. But I didn’t know it. Because it was just good enough. You know, those golden handcuffs they talk about,  right?

Right. just broke. Yeah, all the analogies that we hear.

So unfulfilled?

Yeah, yeah. 

In two ways, the work itself, and then of course, not being able to travel about so when I left that, or when I got the mindset that I could do this different life. I was very intentional about how I designed it. I knew if I worked from a computer, all I would need in life is Wi Fi. And so that’s what I set out to create.

But there were some other steps along the way. I mean, look, I think we met two years ago, roughly, we met in.. 

We met in 2020 during COVID times.

That’s true. That’s true. If you know, you lose a year when COVID wishes right. So we met then, and you have been on the go since with no fixed base for a job with a fixed base of operations. How have you set up to support that so that you could go be nomadic nomadic?

Well, I just knew that I work from a computer that I could do it in at the moment, I’m just starting now in my new venture. I have some partners, and they’re in Atlanta in Salt Lake and I’m everywhere. So it’s still not sticking out. Yeah, it’s very challenging, because you have to tell the IRS where you are. So if you ever get sued, people can find you right? So you have to have a, like a lawyer who will receive your mail, right? So you need to have some sort of mailbox, right. And I use my sister’s which isn’t, you know, you rely on people for that. So there are 15 bucks a month, you couldn’t have stuff sent to a place that will scan your mail and send you and then you either pick to shred it or send it to me or I’ll pick it up or whatever. Anyway, it was just a journey of figuring out how to support them. nomadic lifestyle. But I’m not a I’m not a pioneer in this. I just did what other people were doing. There’s a huge community of nomads worldwide. And they’ve kind of figured all this out. So I really just had to study that. So I knew how to find an address, or what a co-working space was. When you look on the Internet what questions to ask, Do I need download upload speed, like all that stuff matters when you’re building a business because you don’t want to be on an investor phone call and be a bad connection? Because you’re in Thailand. By the way, if you’re in Thailand, trying to do business, you better be prepared to work through the night.

Yeah, no. And I did that. I did that in 2019. It took 10 days, and I went to Thailand. And that was the thing right, so I’m, you know, getting up at three o’clock in the morning to be in somewhat of a common timezone. But, you know, how has that been over the last? I mean, you’ve been nomadic for the last 30 months, two years.

December 2019, Yeah.

Okay. So for the last 2022 months, 23 months, you’ve been doing whatever, whenever, honestly, how awesome is that?

It’s awesome in its own way, but it’s a pain in the butt and other ways. I mean, so just to tell you, I’ve decided to get stuck in Austin for 2022 to support a breakthrough year because the Nomad life is disruptive. If you have to move every month you have to find a new accommodation you have to move in or make the move move in find your new routine find you know, get to know the space I lose three or four days of productivity between destinations that I was on a like a one month and it increased to about a three month depending on where I was in the world when I was doing you know, get sticky for a month get sticky for up to three months backs and yeah, it’s disruptive. So it’s okay as long as you schedule it in and you know that you’re going to have those hiccups and you schedule it and you know what to expect it’s great. But it is an extra like people who have a home probably don’t have to figure out where they’re gonna live every month right so that’s time effort energy it’s it has its own stress, but it’s it’s stress I choose there’s other stresses you have to mow a lawn you have to feed dogs and Water Babies are and feed plants.

Yep. And I agree with that right and I have to some degree I mean I live a nomadic lifestyle as well right my businesses are in Boise, Idaho and my residence I spent 183 days or greater in Puerto Rico. But I travel with a suitcase or a briefcase right? I mean, I just need eight hours worth of things to occupy me while I get there. Get from one place to the other I open up one door all of my stuffs there I opened up another door All my stuff’s there so I’m not really nomadic in the sense that I’m going to a different place I’m just residing in two different places like have a split personality right one that loves the beach and then one that one that loves Idaho in the summertime and you know fears the cold anymore I feel like an old man but but you know there’s there’s some benefits to that but but when you’ve made all of those adjustments, where is it that you’re focusing now and what business are you are you looking to expand into that is working that with that nomadic lifestyle?

Yeah, so what allowed me to go nomadic so I’m in real estate, I buy large commercial properties. So on the DEP the general partnership in the purchase of a large acquisition, there are lots of jobs, there’s the acquisitions guy, there’s KPS that back loans, there’s people who underwrite there’s people that are the asset manager, there’s all these jobs. Well, one of the jobs there is to find investors and get investor capital, right? And to speak to people and pull in investors, you don’t have to be anywhere you just need to be able to have a phone call or a zoom call is my preference. So first of all, I love that piece of it. I don’t like acquisitions, I don’t want to talk to brokers. I don’t want to figure out the financing. I don’t want to do any of that stuff. I don’t want to tour the properties. I get no joy out of touring classy, crappy apartment complexes where I’m tiptoeing around people’s underwear to like, look at, not even exciting, but I love what it does for wealth and for everything. So I love to talk to investors. So I just decided to focus on that skill set. And it also is one that I can do nomadically or virtually or whatever. I just work..

You know and that’s where I found myself too. I mean in 2018 I was working on Zoom a lot and nobody really thought I was really avant garde for let’s get somebody else to pop it in here.

We were talking about the nomadic lifestyle, and I went to raise capital. And that’s how I designed my life. And then you were gonna say something.

Yeah. So when we were looking at how you interact with your clientele, you are able to do this virtually. And I was doing it a lot in 2018, as well. And people didn’t understand that we had this capacity with us, right? If we would have known that, Melanie, I think we would have both invested very, very heavily in zoom in 2018. And, and then a lot of these conversations that we’re currently having, won’t, wouldn’t have been necessary, but but the way the world works now in the way the technology is, not only can you get anywhere in the world, in a matter of hours, you can also talk to anyone in the world like this, these podcasts are a supreme example of still allowing education information to go out people to get to know other people in an in a scenario and a place that feels common. That feels connected, even though we’re about 700 miles apart right now.

Yeah, I mean, even as a real estate agent, because that was my stepping stone between being a park ranger and what I do now, even as a real estate agent in 2018, I saw these phone calls, great text messages, not so great. Definitely emails, you’re nobody. You’ve got to get someone’s face quick. And when people were moving to the area, I targeted people living in Virginia in Norfolk, Virginia, which is a big military base, my clients were people moving to the area. So if I get them on a zoom call real quick, and they can see my personality, they can see my face, we can have smiles, we can share interactions, I was very much more likely to be their agent when they came. And I was willing to go on virtual tours. So I was ahead of the game. So yes, zoom. But I was also exposed to this Nomad world and knowing the tools people were using to be virtual. So I kind of got started on that in 2018. And that’s, I think, why my business was so great as an agent. But yeah, it was easy for me to just move right into that, and 2021 Everything’s shut down. Very easy.

You know, and one of the things too, that you’ve that you’ve seen in your travels, both, you know, internationally and across the United States in your nomadic period, we’re gonna think of this like art culture, right, we’ve got the nomadic period, we’ve got the sticky period, right? We’ve got but when you’re looking at that, and people are talking about financial freedom, you know, that can mean a lot of different things in different areas of the country and different countries in the world. What does that look like in other places that aren’t here in the US?

Well, I will tell you, it’s called geo hacking, right? The American dollar if you can make money in the American dollar and go live in a third world or at least a cheaper country, Thailand, Mexico, your dollar your American dollar goes a lot further in those countries.

Yeah.

So I call it hacking.

So now your your your, your Are you paying taxes here in the US? Are you paying taxes in Mexico? How are you? How are you doing the tax thing?

No, I’m, I’m the typical base, like at the moment, my LLC is in Arizona. So that’s where I’m paying taxes. I am moving to Texas, officially. So that’s where I’ll pay taxes. So I have not mastered or tapped into the game of doing the Puerto Rico thing or trying to not, you know, there are definitely higher places for that for sure. But I’m also not making the sort of income where I need to, like go to that extreme yet.

Well, the reality is, too, though, you know, you’re able to be a lot more flexible with, you know, there’s always rules, right? There’s always this balance. And I think, you know, I think that I see a lot of I have a lot of admiration for you, because you found the balance that’s working for you at the time that you want it to work for you. Right, and the biggest thing about this whole thing is you’re the one that’s picking the balance, you know, there’s nobody saying you have to be at this location at this time. It’s you saying I’m going to be at that location at that time. Right. So when you’re doing your business you said you got partners in Atlanta you got partners in Salt Lake you’re doing large scale real estate, you’re doing syndications. You’re doing the investor management role of that, how are you looking to maximize that going into this next period of your life where you’re able to be part of all that with everything that you’ve learned over the last couple of years?

Man, so it is a journey and it’s funny, just when you think you’re learning something you never know it all for sure you just expand and expand and expand and expand so now I’ve launched a fund. I have a fund and that is the next thing so one of my partners is my underwriter and he’s like the technical brains behind everything. I’m still the relationship person finding deals, finding investors and we marry it all together in a nice little fund investment. And it’s, that’s the next step. So it’s Yeah, and I can go into the structure. It’s not like a blind fund or anything, if you want to talk about that, but that was the expansion. It was from, okay, I want to do my own deals to Okay, I’m gonna raise capital for other people and code up. And now it’s like, no, I’m gonna start a fund because I don’t want to, I don’t want to limit it, I don’t want to Sky one.

Let’s talk. Let’s talk about that. So I mean, so you’ve got your syndication, that is your, typically your single asset deal where we, you know, we’re buying either Class A or class C, and we’re turning into a B, we’re building something. So that’s a typical syndication, what’s a blind fund versus your fund? And why did you pick what you picked?

So a blind fund is kind of after you’ve created a, you have a track record, and you can buy and sell assets, and you’ve, you know, people know that you’re good at what you do, then they may say, you know, what, I trust you enough to say, here’s my money within these parameters, go buy and sell assets on my behalf and pay me right, that’s kind of a blind fund, where I think you probably have a fund or you have a model that could absolutely be a blind fund, because you do the same thing all the time, and you have a track record. So if, instead of raising capital, for every single deal, you can just be like sending me your money, now I’m gonna go buy and sell and you have the flexibility to do that. So that’s blind. What I do is I call the customizable fund. So my fund is the investment people invest in the Fund, don’t send me your money till I have a deal. But once you see a deal you like, you fund your account, it sits in cash until you allocate it to that specific deal. So I can have value-added multifamily, I can have triple net, I can have assisted living, I can have development, I can have everything. And the investor gets to look at each individual deal and decide if they want to participate and allocate funds to that deal. So it’s kind of like Robin Hood, for stocks. It’s Robin Hood for syndication, they can take smaller shares of five different deals, rather than putting 50k in one deal, they can put 10k and five deals potentially. And then at the end of the year, because the fund is what they’re investing in, you get 1k One, but you’re diversified across asset classes, operators, and geographies. You can diversify in your own portfolio and you are the one you put your portfolio together with.

So is this kind of like, like, you know, when I when I hire a, an asset manager, you know, and, and they say, Okay, we’re gonna put, you know, 10% in high risk, we’re gonna put, you know, 10% and, and cash flowing. So what I hear you saying is that if I’m, if I’m a typical investor, is this a 506, B or a 506? C,

506 C

Okay, so we’re 506 C. So we’re accredited investors only. And I’m going to show up with the $50,000, minimum, into the fund. And you’ve got, once I get in the door, I paid my $50,000, quote, unquote, cover charge to join the club, then I can see the four assets or the eight assets that you have. And I say, Man, I really liked that. That multifamily deal over there, I want to put 30,000 there. And then I don’t want to put anything in the triple net. But I want to put some over here in the single family portfolio. And just for example purposes, let’s say that the single family portfolio makes 10%, the triple net makes 12. And the multifamily makes 20. Right, we’re just and am I gonna get a I only get returns on the two that I’m invested in. So I would get how you guys account for that on the back side? Is that just you guys doing the accounting? And then I don’t have to. You’re making it simple for me?

Oh, yeah. So simple. So it’s a software program. It’s a company, it’s not me, I’m not figuring it all out, there is a company that has created this platform, and their software tracks everything. So it’s tracked by the deal by the day you came into the deal, because we can close on the deal and then sell the shares. So if you don’t come in till week two, your timing starts on week two, I mean, so you have these 14 days of a five year deal, not a big deal. So it’s calculated per deal per day in what’s called de units. So it counts per day, which deal you’re in and its software, and then we generate at the end of the year, the data from the software, give it to the CPAs the CPAs figure it out, they issue 1k one to each investor.

So then

Education, everything upside down.

Yeah,

It’s a pass through still, just like it

Sounds to me like you guys are taking down the asset first. And then putting it into the fund where most indicators are putting the asset under contract Raising the funds closing on the deal with OPM. And that’s how they do the syndication.

Right. So right now it’s kind of a hybrid until we build the fund that was just launched last month. So this one, we’re raising half of it and pre-funding half of it. So we’ll send the guys a million dollar check right but 50 grand will pre raise and 50 grand will backfill to backfill later so that’s but as the fund matures, we’ll have more deals at the same time and we’ll pre fund them ideally we want to hear from them? Yes.

And with your job being in the relationship game, you can have a really good idea of who’s wanting what type of asset so that you don’t have a bunch of people wanting Mini Storage, for example, and you guys go buy retail space, right? I mean, so you can kind of know what your people want. Because, you know, the one thing I figured out pretty early on in this game, Melanie is nobody gives you their last 50 grand, right? They give you 50 grand. And then they want to know what else you got. Right? Once they once they’re done with that. And we’ve done the whole gyrations and we’ve gone through all that. And we’ve been through the process. And then it’s like, a week later, they call you back on the go. So what else you got, right? So this allows you with one vehicle, instead of making a bunch of buses, you got one vehicle that says, hey, I’m investing in that I’m investing in that Melanie, you got any more multifamily Come on, we got some common in in q2, and we can do this and we can do that, then everybody kind of knows what’s going on. And it does make it pretty simple and trackable for you. And where you are able to be diversified without having to go one asset, one raise another asset, another raise, I can see how that might be a little bit simplified, a lot simpler, quite honestly.

Think of the economies of scale, think of all the PPM you have to pay for if I have one ppm for the whole fund versus 20 ppm. For all the deals in the fund, think about the money that was saved, that can just go back to the investors.

Right. And so what you have is you have basically a thesis that we’re going to do real estate investments, and inside of that y’all are going to be able to make your choice. And so you’re not having to say, these are the rules for this deal, even though the rules are exactly the same as the other deal. The last seven deals are just a different picture of a different asset in a different town.

Yep. Yeah, I’m really excited about it also, because my fund can only have 99 investors. So with my partner and I have we each had 50 people, 49 people, I want 49 People that don’t invest one time, I want 49 people who I do life with, and I mean us in the fund, as long as I can keep good deals going to them and they keep investing like I don’t need at some point, I have my sponsors I like I have my investors and I really the efforts can like, minimize once the fund was kind of up and running.

And I found that exact same thing to be true as your investors get to know you. They like certain deals better. They like certain asset classes better. And they definitely like certain syndicators better. And I’ve also seen where we’ve got people or I’ve referred people out because I don’t have what they want, right. And so I have to send them over to somebody else or I get sent somebody because, well, you know, Johnny’s got 50 grand burning a hole in his pocket needs to get invested, and I don’t have what he needs. Whereas if you’re if you are the fund and reaching out to a lot of different syndicators, you have you have I mean, we all hear about the syndicator that vets 100 and buys two, right. Well, you’re now looking at 100, syndicators that have already vetted 100 and bought two

That is picking the cream of the crop of those.

Right, exactly, exactly. Well, that’s exciting, Melanie. So what else are you planning to do in 2022 that you haven’t been doing for the last two years.

This is why as the fund is my focus, I do have a partnership with I don’t want to mention it yet because it’s not public, but he’s a big guru in this space that wanted to do a partnership with me to do SPVs have about 5 million per deal and help other people who want to be quote unquote capital raisers. I use that term quite lightly, but there’ll be fund managers helping them raise for the first time and have a vehicle to do that with a great deal because we’re able to with $5 million dollars get the best of the best right?

So you mentioned SPV

SPV is a single purpose vehicle so it’s an entity formed it’s a fund. A single purpose entity single purpose vehicle fund of funds is also just whatever you call it. So create one entity raised capital invest as an add the entity investors and LP in a syndicators deal. And it’s closed. Like that’s it. One deal. One single purpose is done. So we’ll form one SPV, do one deal, close it.

So you will , that’s kind of like a syndication would be where it’s one deal. You know, but you will be partnering with this with another GP on the deal.

The fund will be an LP and the sponsor’s deal on it will either be on the GP or negotiate some sort of GP shares but also GP ownership? Because if we’re putting in Philip by a million bucks, we need to be able to step in if they start dropping the ball and their deal.

Yep, no, I totally get that. So then, I know that you’ve got You’re on. I’m gonna see you in Los Angeles this weekend.

Ticket.

I was able to find somebody Michael, like connected me with a guy that was trying to get rid of his ticket. So I was able to connect there, but I’ll see you there. So what? I see you going to a lot of conferences okay and friend for a nomad, I get it. But I also see that you continue to go to a lot of conferences, even though you’re now getting sticky. What are you getting from these conferences? And why are they still important to you?

Oh, man, so many things. So obviously, to meet people, and it could be investors. Sure, I might meet investors. But that’s not my target, my full time job is to find great investments for my investors. So I need to meet the people that are doing the deals, I want to know the gossip, I want to know who’s doing what. I want to know who should have been sued and who didn’t, but they were still guilty of being a criminal. Like I want to know the dirt on people. I want to know how people operate and what kind of reputation they have. Because the jockey is the most important thing when it comes to a deal.

Right?

People matter the most. So I also am looking for the best people out there, the kindest hearts, the people who run a great business. I’m seeking and learning and finding out who the best sponsors are and making relationships with them. That’s why I go to conferences. I mean, of course, I attend and I get economic updates. It’s my favorite thing in the world, learning about new models about, you know, tokenizing real estate, like why wouldn’t I want to be ahead of that. I just go to learn, but mostly to just connect with people and figure out who the good ones are. And then maybe a few investors too, but it’s not my target usually.

Well, and you know, that’s the thing, right? You’re putting yourself in proximity with greatness, right? I mean, you can, you can learn a lot. And when I heard you just say you can learn a lot about who’s doing the good stuff, and who’s doing the bad stuff, just by watching just by being in the room and seeing what’s going on. And that’s exactly you know, that’s one of the things that I am starting to do more and more of, you know, as you probably I think I told you, the podcast was a huge step out of the box. For me, I’m a very private person, I don’t like being out there. So I thought, well, I can do this, and nobody will know, it’s me. Now I’m having to go into groups of people and not stand in the back, right. So I’m branching out that way. But I’ve noticed that as I go to these, I mean, it’s not that I know everything, but I come away with something all the time, new relationships, new insight, new trends that are coming, because you’re combining all of these brilliant minds. And you’re hearing from the best of the best. And people that have been doing this for a while on what they see coming. And it’s funny, because we all tend to focus on our little sliver of the world, until we walk into a room and there’s 600 People from all these different slivers of the world putting this whole thing together. So I commend you for not only going to these things, but being part of them and being you know, on the moderator panels, and all those kinds of things. Because you’re already stepping into that give back role, where you’re actually becoming one of the ones that’s giving information to others. You’re becoming one of those that has now seen it, done it and given back and I love that I love to see you do that. So what other conferences are great that if people are listening, they should be going to

So January, Intelligent Investor Real Estate conference, that one’s in the LA area, and they are part of Phoebe for investors by investors, which is a nonprofit, and then Hunter Thompson. So that’s kind of that group, best ever conference with Ben Lapidus, who is from Spartan storage or whatever. And then Joe Fairless. Of course, that’s the February conference to go right in Denver. I think the real estate guys have a lot of really great products. I know you’ve been to them, they’re one of Billy’s. I have not been to one of their events, but I want to go but in general, I think those guys do a great job overall. And I’ve met Robert Helms and Russell Gray a number of times, I think they’re solid. I go to Michael Blanc, Steelmaker Live, which is in July in Dallas. I went through his program. So it’s kind of like home for me. That’s my home base when it comes to conferences, but I’m starting to branch outside of just real estate specific conferences, because I want new ideas. So last year, I went to the New Orleans investment conference. I was exposed to gold silver oil.

How did I miss you there?

Oh, there we ate dinner together. I have a picture of us there.

I just forgot to mention it because I mentioned earlier in the show that we were both I’ve only seen you in Boise but that’s not true. We did see each other in New Orleans. 

Last year I went to this one and it’s a great country and uncommon. Cody Sanchez puts it on and mind blowing so they do have real estate but she loves storage units and mobile home parks. She’s big on cash flow, but she’s also big on boring businesses like buying laundromats, buying car washes, things where there aren’t a lot of employees but have tons of cash flow so she’s huge, contrary and unkind. Loved That was mind blowing. And I met a ton of investors there because these people are outside of the box thinkers, but they’re not only real estate thinkers, right? They’re open to YouTube channels and how to get leads from Twitter and you know, whatever these guys were into what else? So those are my favorite so far. I mean, you have broad cliffs events, and you have Brad Sumrocks events. I mean, there’s so many you could go to, but let’s see, what else did I do? I did nine conferences last year. I’m trying to remember.

You know, the reality is and you know, you’re seeing different styles. And you know, I mean, Rod Khalif does it differently than the real estate guys does it different than Michael blanc does it different than Hunter Thompson. But these are all great leaders in space. And you know, Joe Fairless is probably one of the biggest in the space, right. And so to put all that together, you’re really getting a well rounded education. And it’s something that, that I often see a lot of other syndicators in, but I don’t see a lot of investors in which, if I was getting ready to invest 1000s of dollars, hundreds of 1000s of dollars, I would want to know what everybody thinks so that when I’m talking to one particular person, I can see oh, you’re influenced by this one. Oh, I can see where that’s coming from. And you understand the investment model better.

This is my take on that. And this is why I do what I do is because LP investor people just want to invest passively. They believe real estate’s great and they want to get in the game, but they don’t love it. They don’t want to sit and talk about it over a glass of wine, I can talk about real estate from noon, or morning to night. Like I love it, they don’t love it, they like tech, they like being a doctor, they like whatever they like. So for them to go invest the money invest the time, they go to a boring conference on a topic they they want to participate in, but they’re not really into

It’s true.

That’s like that would be workable.

That is great.

That’s where I step in, that’s where I tried. That’s where I find the best sponsors and underwrite the best deals, and then they just need to vet B, of course they need their own deal always. Or hire someone to do it out, you know, always third party checking right, trust, but verify. That’s why I do what I do. That’s why I have the fund because they get to have the cream of the crop, and then they get to decide for themselves if they want to participate there. So I feel like that’s the service I give if I go to the conferences, I meet the people, I find the deals I bet the deals and then I’m like, here it is on a silver effing platter to one in or not.

And you know, and that’s, those are all very valid points, you know, and then they’re able to do a little bit of work where, you know, I even had a guy, I have one unhappy investor. And the guy made a great return, but he didn’t read the PPM, and he didn’t pay attention to even that. So I totally understand what your thought process is because he was being so passive that he didn’t realize that this was a growth deal and appreciation deal, not a cap, passive cash flow deal. And so he was looking for his check every month and didn’t realize that that was very clear in the PPM. And so I totally get what you’re saying about them not really wanting to do a huge deep dive into all the details and all the underwriting options and how do you get this and the economics of all that stuff so that’s a very valid point. So where can people go ahead

I would make one recommendation then for people like that one book, if you don’t mind? It’s not my book, and I get no benefit from pushing it. But Dan Kruger, and Anthony Pacino did a really great book recently. I think they put it out even last year. It’s called passive investing made simple. There’s indicators up in Minnesota but their book says you can drink from a water fountain on that versus a what is the one what’s his name? Burke Brian Burke wrote the Brian Burke wrote the one that it’s just so technical, I can’t even get through it. But for a passive investor, I highly recommend passive investing made simple by those guys edits, at least it will tell them hey, you should read the PPM and understand what it says like you should get your sponsor, you should look at the underwriting or hire that out you should have some market knowledge you should know what cash flow versus versus IRR is you should know their development. And yeah, so at a minimum read that book and then find then it’s the people it’s all about the jockey if you get the jockey right, everything else should be right.

Yeah, no, that’s true. You make a lot of valid points there. So since we don’t know where you’re going to be, where can we always find you?

Well, I’m on all the social networks. I mean, LinkedIn people find me there on Instagram not that you know is whatever they find if they like Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn, they can find me there. They can always find me by emailing me Melanie at freestyle capital group.com Freestyle Capital Group is a website as well they can join the investor club and get through the portal right get through the funnel eventually get to me at the end of the day, I want people to get to me not deal in my like social space. I just want to connect with people and if we don’t vibe we don’t vibe. Like I don’t want to waste my time. I don’t want them to waste their time but if we vibe I want people to be my people. Right?

Yeah, and you know, that’s one thing that I do appreciate about you is that you are reachable, right? The people aren’t getting into a funnel that leads nowhere. And then they’re either left to make a decision or left, right, where people can actually get in touch with you and they can actually talk to you about what’s going on and what do you see on the horizon and, and really start to do something that most people forget when the words connect financially plan, something with financial planning, right? Know what’s coming and know where, where deals are going to be coming from and where you think things are going to be at and when they can deploy capital. So I would encourage everybody to reach out and connect with this young lady because she does a phenomenal job. And you guys have gotten a glimpse of that today. So I want to thank you, Melanie, for coming on the show today. I want to thank you for joining us from very dry Phoenix, Arizona. I hope the hair survives. And everybody else we want to thank you for joining us on The Real Estate Run Down. Don’t forget to like and share and subscribe to the Real Estate Run Down on Spotify, iTunes or wherever you get your podcast to get your automatic updates. And you’ll know when we drop another episode also leave us a review. We’d love to hear from you. We’d love to see who you’d like to have on as our next guest. We’ll see you guys next time on The Real Estate Run Down.

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About Melanie McDaniel:

Melanie is the founder of Freestyle Capital Group, a boutique private equity firm that partners with passive investors to invest in private equity real estate transactions across a variety of recession-resistant asset classes. Melanie offers a boutique experience to her investors and aims to have a personal relationship with each investor.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/freestylecapitalgroup 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melaniemcdanielinvest/  
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freestylecapitalgroup 
YouTube: Your Passport to Financial Freedom
Twitter: https://twitter.com/freestyleinvest