This is episode #415, and my guest today is my good friend, Edwin Kelly, CEO of Specialized IRA Services.
I talk to lots of real estate investors, or those aspiring to get started. A common “need” from investors is access to more capital, and usually it’s said with the underlying belief that it’s difficult to get access to money.
Today Edwin shares how there’s more than $25 Trillion (yes, capital “T”) in retirement accounts, much of which is looking for a new home. In fact, there’s over $500 Billion already in self-directed retirement accounts, and that amount is growing rapidly.
The money you need to grow your real estate investing business is all around you. You just need more direction on how to tap into it, and direction on how to do it in a way where you’re providing incredible value to those folks in the process, certainly relative to where they have their money parked today. We talk all about it on today’s show.
Please help me welcome Edwin Kelly to the show.

Highlights of this show

  • Meet Edwin Kelly, CEO of Specialized IRA Services and a leading expert on self directed investment accounts.
  • Learn how there’s over $25 Trillion in retirement accounts, much of which is looking for a new home (safer, closer to home).
  • Join the conversation on how you as a real estate investor can tap into these funds in a way that help you get access to capital, and helps your lender get a better return than many other options they have access to.

Resources and Links from this show:

Listen to the Audio Version of this Episode

FlipNerd Show Transcript:

Mike: This is the flipnerd.com, Expert Real Estate Investing Show, the show for real estate investors whether you’re a veteran or brand new. I’m your host Mike Hambright, and each week I bring you a new expert guest that will share their knowledge and lessons with you. If you’re excited about real estate investing, believe in personal responsibility, and taking control of your life and financial destiny, you’re in the right place.
This is episode number 415, and my guest today is my good friend, Edwin Kelly, CEO of Specialized IRA Services. I talk to lots of real estate investors or certainly those aspiring to get started. A common need from investors is, access to more capital. And it usually is said with an underlying belief that it’s difficult to get access to capital. Today, Edwin shares how there’s actually more than $25 trillion, yes, that’s a capital T, in retirement accounts much of which is looking for a new home, someplace safer, something to invest in that people believe more in, maybe even something closer to home. In fact, there’s over $500 billion already in self-directed retirement accounts, and that amount is growing rapidly. In fact, expected to more than double over the next 10 years or so.
The money you need to grow your real estate investing business is all around you. It’s right in front of you. People may not have a lot of cash in the bank account, but 7 out of 10 Americans have a retirement account. It may not just be in the right account yet. You just need more direction on how to tap into it, and a direction on how to do it in a way to where you’re providing incredible value to those other folks in the process, certainly relative to where they probably have it parked today.
We talk all about it in today’s show. Please, don’t ever let lack of money or capital to be a real estate investor or to grow your business get in the way again after today show. Please help me welcome, Edwin Kelly. Hey Edwin, welcome to the show.
Edwin: Mike, thanks so much for having me man.
Mike: Yeah, good to see you. Good to see you my friend.
Edwin: It’s always good to see you.
Mike: Yeah. So, I am really excited. I always love talking about self-directed stuff and opportunities to build wealth, because there’s so much opportunity out there. And I’ve kind of found that a lot of real estate investors when they’re getting started they’re so focused on getting started and just the day-to-day hustle that sometimes a long periods of time go by, I could be maybe explaining myself here a little bit, to where you have a successful business but you don’t learn about the opportunities to kind of shield yourself from some of the taxes, and do some long-term wealth building.
So, a lot of folks just get started, they’re so focused on getting going that they don’t necessarily think about being tax effective, and they don’t think about wealth. They’re thinking more about paychecks early on, but also the bigger topic. I’m really excited to dive into this. And you guys if you listening right now, there’s a huge opportunity to raise private money.
And truthfully to help your friends and neighbors, people around you build a better retirement because I think Edwin is going to share some examples today that a lot of Americans are really going to be in a difficult situation if and when they try to hire here ultimately.
Edwin, and before we get started here, I’d doing all the talking right now, tell us a lot about you and your background.
Edwin: Well, so, I’ve been doing this Mike for 23 plus years. And I say 23 plus because that’s kind of important to me because you know, my marketing team says that every year I have another year in the business I need to update that number. The problem is a few years ago I found out, I’m single again. And I realized every year I updated that number I was just dating myself. So, I put the plus sign after the 23 now. And so 10 years from now when we do the next interview or whatever it’ll be 23 plus years’ experience in this business.
Mike: I get it. I get it man.
Edwin: So, I’m not ever going to be on 23 years now, but yeah I know. I’ve been doing this for a long time. And it’s interesting. I spent every day effectively of the last 23 years of my life convincing people to give me their life savings. And so today I know we’re going to take a different perspective on self-directing and talk about how you can use self-directing to raise private money to fund your business, fund your investments in your deals. And it’s a topic I don’t really get to talk about very often because I’m always talking about from the other side.
I’m always the guy who, I’m extracting money from the room in a sense that where you know, people want to give their retirement account over to invest. And so we’re talking about it from that side. This is a totally other perspective. But this is the side that I’ve lived for 23 years. And so it’s fun for me when I actually get to talk about because it doesn’t seem like it happens very often.
Mike: Yeah, and the great thing is a lot of it real estate investors, they know there’s a bunch of money sitting on the sidelines somewhere, but they don’t really know how to get to it. And I think you’ll give some perspective today on just how big that pool is, and how much opportunity there is.
Honestly, I do a ton of coaching and mentoring, and coaching events, live events. And if I asked people, “What’s holding you back from getting started or taking it to another level?” I can promise you that if I limit them to three, not enough money, access to money is always one of those things. And as a veteran, a real estate investor I’m like, “That is not a problem, like that . . . If that’s your problem then you don’t have problems. You just have to know how to tap into it.”
So, well, why don’t we dive in? Let’s talk about . . . I mean what is the . . . you know, there’s a lot people that have . . . when I was raised I knew nothing about IRAs or anything. I mean, truthfully, my family was very blue collar. So there were conversations about pensions and stuff like that, but it’s a whole nother world now. Why don’t you kind of explain where folks invest for retirement and kind of how that split up at a high level?
Edwin: Yeah. So here’s the reality of it. There’s never been a better time to be a real estate investor particularly if you need capital. Everybody knows that private money and at least when I say everybody knows, everybody talks about private money right now in our circles. And everybody says, that’s the best place to go to get money. The problem is, is that only 1% of Americans are considered wealthy and have actually any money to invest.
So, the challenge that everybody has when it comes to private money is, “Well, how do I find the private money?” Because we’re talking about a very small percentage of the population. However, when you understand that you can use someone’s retirement money or they can use their retirement account to invest in your deal, invest in the real estate project that you’re working on, you just opened up Pandora’s box, because 67% of Americans over the age of 35 have a retirement account.
So you go from 1% of the population to about 70% of the U.S. population. So now the money is all around you but if we take it one step further Mike, it’s interesting. And I use this example all the time because we all go to events, we all travel around, we do this stuff, and I remember I was having a conversation not too long ago with a friend of mine who’s a real estate investor. He’s like, “I really need to figure out this private money thing.” And he says, “I’m just not sure how to approach it, how to get started,” which I’ll share all that today with you. But we’re sitting at the bar having a drink . . .
Mike: And thousands of our friends here.
Edwin: Yeah, exactly. Thousands of . . . And so it was at the bar having a drink and I said, “Here’s the thing.” I said, “You’re sitting at the bar and you’re just look at all these people here in the hotel, you know, we’re just here and there’s like . . . there’s like 10 of us at the bar, 10 people at the bar beside Peter and I. And I said, “You know what, Peter?” I said, “He’s the thing.” I said, “You look around the bar and you just see people having drinks.”
I said, “What I see is, I’m sitting here at the bar and I know statistically 7 out of 10 Americans have a retirement account, but because we’re in a nice hotel, I’m talking of Marriott. I’m not talking like a Ritz Carlton or anything like that, just Marriott. We’re sitting here at the bar, I said, “Truthfully probably eight and nine of the people at this bar have retirement accounts.” The average rollover or transfer when somebody opens a new account and specialized is about $100,000. So I said, “What I see sitting at this bar right now is anywhere you know, from $700,000 to $1 million sitting at the bar right now and you don’t even see it.
So the key with retirement account best thing is to understand it the money is now all around you. To put it in perspective, and this is why I say it’s such a great opportunity. In 2017, there was $24.7 trillion, that’s with a capital T in retirement accounts. 2018, there’s $25.3 trillion in retirement accounts. That number grows year after year after year because people in companies all around the country have money come out of their paycheck every single week and deposit it in the company sponsored plan.
And every few years they change jobs, and that money gets unlocked. And if you do that, by the time so it’s 35, 40 years old, guess what? They’ve accumulated $100,000 or more in a retirement account. So, that’s the whole thing. Now, here’s the thing. I’m going to write a question to you, Mike, and this is going to be a guess on your part because I’m guessing you don’t know the answer to this, most people don’t know the answer to this, so I’ll just see what you think. There’s $25.3 trillion in retirement accounts today. How much of that do you think is self-directed?
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Edwin: So that’s the whole thing. Now, here’s the thing. I’m going to throw out a question to you Mike. And this is going to be a guess on your part, because I’m guessing you don’t know the answer to this. Most people don’t know the answer to this, so I’ll just see what you think. It there’s $25.3 trillion in retirement accounts today, how much of that do you think is self-directed?
Mike: I bet, let’s just say 3%.
Edwin: 3%. That’s a high number.
Mike: I was going to say 1% but I thought I’d . . .
Edwin: Well, it’s $500 billion. That’s an estimate by the GAO, because they did a report last year on the self-directed industry, which we contributed to, they contacted us. But at any rate, there’s $500 billion. Now here’s the interesting thing about it. In the next decade, so the next 10, call it 10 to 13 years, we’re estimating that another $10 trillion will come into the retirement industry, and self-directed assets will go from $500 billion to $1 trillion.
So if you stop and think about it for a second, that means, and it could be higher but the reality is, is that, by all estimates and run-rates there’s going to be an additional $500 billion in cash coming in to self-directed accounts looking for investments.
Mike: Yeah. That’s awesome.
Edwin: Mike, and that’s the opportunity. That’s the opportunity.
Mike: Yeah. There’s a lot of people who listen to the show, there are some people that know exactly what we’re talking about right now. There might be some people that are newer, that don’t really get it yet. So, just maybe differentiate real high level.
I’ve got money in E-Trade and a whole bunch of other places in retirement accounts versus a self-directed custodian that allows me to invest in real estate or businesses and things like that, where you get more control, maybe just really high level.
Edwin: Yeah. So, in fact, here’s where it all kind of tee it up. If you want to raise private money you need to know what your competition is. So, retirement accounts fall into two categories. First is what I call plain vanilla and the second is what I call truly self-directed, truly self-directed.
So a plain vanilla account, if somebody is in self-directing, say a specialized or one of our other . . . you know, it’s a small industry. There’s not that many, I mean, there’s probably 20 or 30 of us that do this nationwide. So it’s a small industry. If somebody’s not with one of those 20 to 30 companies, they’re not self-directed. They’re in a plain vanilla account. When they’re in a plain vanilla account like a bank or a brokerage generally they’re doing one of two things, and this is your competition so you want to make note of this.
First thing they’re doing is something called stable value. Stable value can look like a money market fund or a CD. And if you look at CD rates right now, people are getting less than 1% unless we like we were talking, because the bank advertising, “Hey, we’ll give you a little bit over 1% but you’ve got to lock up your money for 10 years.”
Mike: Yeah. I just saw. I saw a bank near me here, I know bank app but they have their marquee 1.3% CD rates for 10 years. You’ve got to lock it up for 10 years.
Edwin: Yeah. And so that’s the first thing that people do and so there’s no yield. People are losing money, going broke slowly.
Mike: Inflation is clearly outpacing that.
Edwin: Clearly. And that’s why I call it going broke slowly. So the first thing that someone’s doing in a plain vanilla retirement account is going broke slowly. That’s one of the possibilities. Now, if they’re not doing that then they’re doing something else. And the question that comes up is, “Well, why do people choose to go broke slowly? Why do they put their money in a CD or a money market?”
And the answer is, because they’re afraid of going broke quickly, because that’s the only other alternative in plain vanilla IRA. You take your money from the CD or the money market and you put it in the stock market, usually via a mutual fund, and now that thing goes all over the place.
It’s interesting because after the last presidential election, there’s been all kinds of positive press about new record highs that stock market sets. Well, then you look at the newspaper headlines from this year, and what is it? New record lows or a drop.
Mike: Yeah. Everybody’s freaking out.
Edwin: And that’s just how it works. I there’s no predictability. And so, that’s what your competition is. That’s a plain vanilla IRA. When I talk about the $25.3 trillion in assets in retirement accounts, that’s where the money is. So, by contrast, what is a self-directed retirement account?
A self-directed retirement account is one where the account is held at a custodian that allows you or that investor, that IRA owner to invest in anything allowed by the government. So, real estate, notes, precious metals, crypto currencies, all these kinds of things are things that we’re allowed to invest in, it’s just that the banks and brokerages don’t allow us to do it because they make a lot of fees and commissions on those products that they sell. So that’s the distinction.
Mike: Yeah. So for folks listening, you could . . . and if this is new to you, you know, where there’s no way in one show, we’ve got plenty of other shows. Actually, this is the third time Edwin’s been on over the course of the last three years or so here. So, we’ll add links to his other shows below.
But it effectively allows you to take control of your retirement account. You can roll over your retirement account. Like any job I’ve left, I kind of rolled it over into an account somewhere else, but it allows you to invest in real estate. And if you listening to the show, I know you’re going to be interested in real estate investing. If you can’t do it actively yourself, you could use those funds and you could become a lender.
You could effectively lend to other real estate investors that you can effectively be a hard money lender per se or a long-term lender, whatever you want I guess. But it kind of allows you to have a lot more control over what you’re doing with your money. And companies like Edwin’s, like it’s a custodian for people to do this, understand that business in the E-Trades of the world, and the Merrill Lynches and all that, they don’t get it, and they don’t even want to get it because they can’t tag a bunch of fees onto it so they just pretty much act like it doesn’t exist, but obviously as Edwin just stated here, a growing America. Americans are kind of waking up, that they can take more control over their precious assets, I guess.
Edwin: Yeah. I mean, you know, Mike, one of the reasons why I love this business, Mike, and why is that I went down is because what made this country great was basically Main Street. It’s all the people with dreams and ambitions, and the entrepreneurs who start businesses and make things happen in their local community, and that’s what made this country great.
And so what I’m talk about is, you can do better for yourself taking your money off Wall Street and put it back on Main Street. That’s to me, one of the big benefits of self-directing.
Mike: Yeah. And one of the things obviously about real estate that we believe is that it allows people to take . . . if you’re an investor, it allows you to control your life. I teach, I do these events all the time here in the Dallas area, and we teach a lot of online that truthfully, our goal if we were to tell you our goal for FlipNerd, is to help other real estate investors achieve financial freedom.
So it’s kind of like taking control with what you do in your activities instead of having a job per se or maybe in addition to, if you haven’t bridge that gap yet, it’s used real estate investing as a vehicle to help achieve financial freedom. And self-directed IRAs are a vehicle to get access to the money you need, and it’s a way for you to help other people that don’t have to put their money in a bank and get 1% on a CD. You can show them how to get 6%, 8%, 10% or whatever you decide, right?
Edwin: Right, yeah. Or better.
Mike: So it’s a huge opportunity out there. So let’s talk about, maybe talk a little bit about some of the challenges that Americans have, and maybe as a real estate investor, how you can impact other people’s lives?
On one hand selfishly, I say selfishly, you want to get access to money, but maybe talk a little about on the other hand, how you’re actually helping people by showing them that they could use some of their retirement accounts to invest in things like real estate, things that are local.
Edwin: Yes. So for people who have retirement accounts, and if people don’t have retirement accounts ,their big challenges that they’re getting killed by taxes, you’re always going to get killed by taxes, because they’ve got no plan to eliminate or reduce or manage taxes if they don’t have a retirement account.
So, if we go to the folks who do have a retirement account, the challenge that they have is, and I always tell people, don’t take my word for it, check, fact-check me and go to Walmart because you don’t have to buy anything, just walk into the store, and look at the people that greet you and look at how old they are. These are people who are typically in their 60s and 70s, and the reason why they’re working there is because what they’re doing isn’t working for them. So they can’t stop working, they have to keep working.
Well, what didn’t work? The two things I just told you. They put all their money in CDs and/or mutual funds. That’s what they did when they saved money, and it didn’t get them to a point that they could retire. There’s no yield in the CDs.
So first of all, take it this way. One way you can help an investor is, can you give a better yield than 1%, because if you can get a better deal than 1%, you just beat the bank. Now, let’s take the stock market. Can you provide a more consistent return to the investor? If you can provide a more consistent return or you’re securing their money, because there’s no security at the stock market, that’s why we see the fluctuation, and it’s not consistent, if you can provide one of those two benefits to retirement account investor, then you just outperform stock market.
And so the way that people need help is, and this is the thing that I always say when it comes to retirement planning, the challenge isn’t so much the rate of return. Rate of return is important but it’s not the most important thing. Everybody gets caught up on either rate of return on the one side or cost to capital on the other side. It depends which side of the coin you’re on discussion. And those are important but they’re not most important.
If you’re on the side where you’re trying to build a retirement so that you can step out of your job at some point, and these are the people that you’re talking to as potential private money investors for you, investment behavior is the most important thing, because if you look at the stock market, that’s why people have a hard time retiring, because they can have a good run-up but then the market takes it away. And then by the time they get their money back, it’s what? It’s time for to go away again.
So if you can give somebody a consistent predictable return, that’s way more valuable than that volatility. So, this is what I say, and this why I love it because there’s a problem out there, that 95% of Americans have, and the problem is, they can’t really afford to retire. And you and I, you the real estate investor, us the IRA provider, self-directed IRA provider can help solve this problem because we can hold the account, you can help them make those investments that give them those solid returns, that give them more predictability in their portfolio, and when they have that going for them, that’s what enables their account to grow and generate an income to where they can eventually retire and they can chuck the Walmart job.
Mike: Yeah. That’s awesome. I think, you know, everything we do in real estate, when you . . . When I first started , and not everybody is this way, but when I first started, I think there’s this impression for new people that, in real estate investing, in order for you to win somebody has to lose. And that’s just simply not the case.
So a lot of people are like, “Well, if I bought a house from somebody, then that means I’m have to take advantage of them. And if somebody sells a house to me, then that means they took advantage of me.” It’s like, why not? Everybody always wants to pay less for what they get. And when you sell to something, you always want to get more. But, people need to come to terms. When they come to terms, everybody agrees and you know, presumably, everybody can win.
It’s the same thing in lending. You, like as hard money, when you’re borrowing from hard money lenders, we always want to get a better rate or you’re borrowing for any lender, you always want to get a better rate. But I think there’s a way to create a win-win where you can say, “Hey, I could potentially borrow from friends or family members or people that I know or people that I meet in the process of my daily life, and show them how they can get a much better return on what they’re doing.
And it’s also still a really good return for me better than it would be getting it from a traditional lender or certainly more flexible because I’m dealing with a person instead of necessarily a company, right?
Edwin: Yeah. 100%. And that’s the thing. I mean, I think a lot of people suffer from a win-lose mindset. Life just isn’t like that. It really isn’t. There’s a lot of different ways to win, and it’s about helping people get what they want. You know, it’s like you said on the house side. If you’re buying a house, somebody wants out of that house. You’re giving them an exit strategy. If that’s not taking advantage of something. If they agree to it, it’s the same thing on the lending side. If somebody has . . . I’ll give an example.
I actually had a friend who raised money at 6%, which a lot of people say, you can’t raise private money at 6%, he did. But the way he went about it was a very specific way. But he targeted people who were investing in CDs. So some people say, “Well, 6%, that’s not much of a rate of return.” Well, it is compared to what they were getting at the bank, I mean, five-fold increase.”
Mike: Yeah. It’s all relative.
Edwin: It’s all relative.
Mike: Yeah. So let’s talk about . . . one of things that I used to think with real estate investors tapping into self-directed money was that, you needed to find somebody that understands it, and is already doing it. But as you know, the market for people that are not yet there, are not yet using self-directed accounts that need some education on, “Well, you could move your money over to this type of accounts and see some benefit there.”
Talk about kind of that process of investors, and obviously as a leader in the industry, your company is trying to educate people on that, there’s self-directing out there. But talk about how investors like me or people that are listening to the show can help educate prospective lenders to us and customers to custodians like you.
Edwin: Yes. So, it’s actually an extremely simple process which is the good news, because one of the things that I’ve heard over the years is that investors will say, “Well, I’m not an IRA expert. I don’t know how to talk about this stuff to a potential investor.”
So, it’s super simple. When I’ve raised money for my own personal projects in the past and I’ve used private money, here’s how you introduce it. It’s really this simple. If you’re talking about somebody investing with you, whatever that investment looks like, I always say, these two things in conjunction and I never separate them. It’s you or your IRA could make this investment.
You or your 410K, you or your retirement account. And when you say that, what happens is, after a few times, they say, “What do you mean my retirement account?” and then the following question is, “Do you have a retirement account?” They say, “Well, yeah I do.” “Okay. Well, you can actually use that retirement account when it’s self-directed to make this investment.” “Well, how does that work?” “Well, that’s where we come in because actually like as you know, we appoint a single, a direct point of contact at our firm.”
So, when investors are out raising private capital, they have a person that they work with on my team that they have their own number, email, blah, blah, blah and all they do is connect it. And then my staff has all that conversation. So, nobody has to be an IRA expert. All you have to know is how to introduce it. Now I’ll give an example you how funny this is.
So, I happened to be . . . we were talking, we had a mutual friend, and on Saturday I was at his event speaking, and I was . . . and that was one of the question that came up, but I don’t . . . I’m not IRA expert. I don’t know how introduce this. I said, “It’s simple.” Here’s how you do it.” So this guy, while I’m up there say this, jumps on Facebook and he made a post. He says, “Are you investing in real estate in your retirement account? If not, why not?”
Before I got off stage he says, “Hey, you know I made this post when you were talking about that.” He said, “I just had a guy hit me up and say, “I had no idea I could do that.”
Mike: Exactly.
Edwin: He said, “Well, let me connect you to Specialized and then I’ll talk to you because I’ve got it he’ll go right now that you could jump into. So look, a little one Facebook post just asking the question and boom right there’s one private investor for, that’s a lesson.
Mike: And I found you know, that there’s a lot of people that are just . . . I mean, so I have a Undergrad in Finance, and my intention was to work in investments, not real estate investments at the time, it was just the stock market. I was always interested that, fascinated with it. And then I went to work for a large bank. And I was like, “Well, this is . . . ” you know, I was like an auditor, so it wasn’t even fun. I was there working in investments.
My wife, I think you know Lindsay, worked on Wall Street. She was an investment banker. So we were kind of geared to like interested in investments and Wall Street, you know. But now honestly as a real estate investor, I hate it. Any time we have some money sitting around, we’re like, “Let’s invest it somewhere. Where you want to put it?” I don’t know. It just seems like a bunch of you know, I don’t feel anywhere, I don’t feel confident at all with it because with real estate I can touch it. I understand the business. I understand how it works.
And even though maybe your prospective lenders out there don’t know it from our perspective from an investor’s standpoint, I think there’s a lot of people probably baby boomers and people that are like you said, starting to think about how to be a little more risk averse, that just generally speaking, are interested in real estate investing, don’t necessarily want to do it themselves, but if they had the opportunity to invest in their backyard, would do it in a heartbeat if it was somebody that they trusted.
Edwin: Yeah. And I could say that’s 100% the case, because the conversation, you know what’s interesting as long as I’ve been doing this, the conversation has changed in the last decade. It used to be, when the stock market went down, self-directed account opens and the cash coming in would go up. And then when the stock market went up, self-directed accounts would go down.
However, we’ve been growing at a very, very steady cliff. And the reason why is the conversation has changed, because literally, and I can summarize it this way, I had a conversation with a new client last week. And the person said, “I just got back my money from the last big downturn, I need to get out before the market takes it away from me again.”
In other words, people have been through enough cycles that they get it. And so, they want an alternative. They want to be able to diversify and not rely on that because they know that’s not working for them. What’s the alternative? You and I are the alternative. I mean, that’s the only alternative there is. There isn’t another one.
Mike: Yeah. So for those listening, if you think there’s not an opportunity here, you’re mistaken. You talked of kind of figure out how to go about it. What’s the right approach? Do you kind of find, Edwin, that people . . . what’s a good place to start? Is it kind of talking to family and friend members, or is it people like in your inner circle? Like, what’s kind of a good way to get started?
Edwin: Yeah. There’s a lot of different ways to start approaching. I’ll tell you, a couple of . . .
Mike: Yes. And similarly, some restrictions on family and friend relationships there, by the way.
Edwin: Yeah. And we could always get into that. But just to say on the surface level, to start talking to colleagues or people that you’ve worked with in the past, other people that you know, just friends and neighbors. I mean, I can’t tell you how many people I know who, you know, you’re a successful investor and people see your success and are like, “How did you do that?” Well, that’s the open door. Right there’s a private investor for you, right?
Mike: Sure.
Edwin: Another great place to go though as well, which I love is, are the REIA clubs. And the reason I like the REIA clubs is because you have, and we work in the REIAs. So I open a lot of accounts from REIA clubs members, and I see the dollars in them. What you have in a lot of REIA clubs is a lot of people who have an interest in real estate. They have invested money in getting educated on real estate.
And for most of them, they haven’t done one real estate transaction. And so, you have somebody who’s now educated about how it works, they have a desire to do it, they’ve invested money and time in it so they really feel motivated like they need to do something so that this investment of time and money becomes worthwhile. And when you step into that room and talk about a deal that you’re doing and that you’ll allow other people to participate and get into real estate investing with you, let me tell you what? That’s another great venue for unlocking dollars.
Mike: Awesome. Well, Edwin, I’m going to post . . . so, we’ve been on the show a couple of times before obviously. I want to post links in the show notes down here so people can get back to this, because some of them we explained more about 410K versus IRA, self-directed 410K versus IRAs, kind of some of the differences in accounts. And so I want to make sure that people are listening to this and they don’t quite get that yet, that they have a resource for that. Where else can they go to maybe learn more about how this works from your perspective?
Edwin: Yes. So, what I always says is, if you’re interested in raising private retirement account money, and you want to learn more about how to do that, we actually have a book that talks about that as well as it breaks down some of the accounts. You can get that by going to our website and signing up.
We’re actually giving the book out for free right now. And then the other thing is that we’re offering up currently, Mike, a free consultation with the self-directed specialist. So you can sign up for that as well on our website or you can call the 800 number on our website. And you’ll get with a key account manager, and you tell him what your goals are and what your intent is.
If your goal is, “Hey, I want to raise private money. How does this work?” They’ll spend the time with you on the phone. They’ll set up the consultation, and they can go through that with you, what your business looks like, how much you’re trying to raise, you know, how this works and how to put it together.
Mike: That’s awesome. And to get the access to the book, if they just go to, do you know the link off the top of your head or just go to your main home page?
Edwin: Yeah. You go to the main home page. It’s on the home page. So, specializediraservices.com. And our 800 number is there on that page as well. So, either way, you could sign up, you can call in, either way works.
Mike: Awesome. We’ll add the links . . . I’ll dig the links up and we’ll add them down below on the show notes here though. Edwin, thanks for spending time with us today.
Edwin: Yeah, man. It’s been great.
Mike: Good stuff. Good stuff. If you’re a real estate investor and you found yourself saying that what’s holding you back is access to money, that’s not a good excuse anymore. We don’t want you to find any new excuses ,but if you need access to money . . . I will tell you this. We each people that you don’t really have to have a lot of money to get started because you can assign properties and there’s some things you can do. But I always kind of follow it by saying, “But if you have money, it makes things a lot more easier.”
There’s going to be opportunities that you come across that you want to rehab or build wealth by buying rental properties or other cash-flowing assets and specialized accounts, self-directed IRA accounts is a great way to kind of get access to that money and help other people out that think they have to settle for just some crappy return to keep their money safe. So Edwin, thanks for sharing your information today.
Edwin: Mike, thanks for having me on as always man.
Mike: Awesome, awesome. Everybody, this is episode number 415. We’re going to keep them coming at you. If you haven’t yet, please go out to you iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Google Play, wherever you watch us at, it could be on YouTube and subscribe, and give us a positive rating. We appreciate that. And we’re going to keep these shows coming at you. So everybody, have a great day. We’ll see you next time.
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