Glen Mather  0:00  

People are drawn to us that have unshakable belief in themselves. And if you think of a group of three, you wouldn’t want an airline pilot that’s insecure and not sure. Now, it doesn’t make them any necessarily an investor’s, but they believe they are. And, you know, they have the confidence. So those kind of people are drawn to us. But, you know, there’s lots of people that have those same psychographics that don’t have those qualifications. They’re also drawn to us. And what’s neat is, is they talk amongst themselves We do lots of events and we now we’re doing them of course remotely with COVID. But, but it gives them more confidence once they say yeah, you can do this. This is how you do it. And there’s a powerful component about this Darrin, which I love, is the fact that you can partner your IRAs

Intro  0:47  

Welcome to CREPN Radio, for influential commercial real estate professionals who work with investors, buyers and sellers of commercial real estate coast to coast.  Whether you’re an investor, broker, lender, property manager, attorney or accountant. We are here to learn from the experts. 

J Darrin Gross  1:06  

Welcome to Commercial Real Estate Pro Networks CREPN Radio. Thanks for joining us. My name is J Darrin Gross. This is a podcast focused on commercial real estate investment and risk management strategies. Weekly we have conversations with commercial real estate investors and professionals who provide their experience and insight to help you grow your real estate portfolio. 

Today my guest is Glen Mather. Glen is the founder of NuView IRA and has been its leader since 2003.  In 2018, he also created NuView Trust, expanding the growing business of self directed IRAs into new services to further reduce and eliminate taxes. In just a minute, we’re going to speak with Glenn about how you can use a self directed IRA and a little bit about the difference between a custodian and a fiduciary. And, but before we bring Glenn in, I’d like to remind you, if you like our show CREPN Radio, there are a couple things you can do to help. You can like, share and subscribe. And as always, we love to hear from our listeners, please consider leaving a comment. Also, if you’d like to see how handsome our guests are, be sure to check out our YouTube channel. And you can find us on youtube at Commercial Real Estate Pro Network. And I also would like to encourage you to subscribe there as well. With that, I’d like to welcome my guest, Glenn, welcome to CREPN Radio.

Glen Mather  2:51  

Thanks Darrin. It is intimidating that you have a handsome test on your guests but I hope I am able to survive that.

J Darrin Gross  3:00  

I think you’re gonna do just fine here where we’re in good shape. Glenn, before we get started here, if you could take just a minute and share with the listeners a little bit about your background.

Glen Mather  3:11  

Yeah, it’s kind of interesting because it may not be much different than a lot of your listeners. I came out of college and and I got a job at a little company on the West Coast called Lockheed Missiles and Space Company.  I worked there 13 years. One of the first things that I did in 1980, when I started was I got enrolled in their 401k program. And that was interesting. It was Northern California, expensive as heck to live. But I kind of talked myself into putting 2% in. It’s a great way to say, by the way is to promise in the future to do something and rather than doing it at the time, but I said to 2% and what I’m going to do is every time I get a pay raise or bonus, maybe I was too optimistic, but I was assuming that one would come, I’d put 50% more into my 401k After I left Lockheed 13 years later, I had a I had a massed what I thought was a lot of money about $125,000 completely painless, through the 401k program.  So I understood the power of payroll deduction, because you don’t miss it. And best of all, your spouse never sees it. So through that process, I was able to do that. As I went on, and I became a strategy consultant, I was traveling a lot and I read about in the paper about the fact that you could actually take your IRA and invest in real estate. That thrilled me because I felt like I didn’t have a chance in real estate or in the equity markets. And in real estate, I’d had some small successes, I didn’t have a lot of money. My largest amount of money was in my 401k, which had rolled over and became an IRA. This is traditional for most Americans, most Americans wealth, at least their cash or disposable wealth is in their retirement plans. And so I just felt like real estate was my best option. I looked around Chicago for weeks to find someone that would do it. And I finally snuck into that process through the wealth department of of a bank in Chicago. And that bank did it as a favor. I didn’t deserve there. I didn’t have enough money. But because I knew some, some people in the company they allowed me in. And so for $2,000, I bought my first piece of real estate. That was their fees to do it. In my IRA, that was about 23 years ago, and that was my first inkling you could do it. I watched that double in price. It was a place in South Carolina in a in a gated community. It was just a lot. And I realized later on in my life. I had moved to Florida, and I decided to start my own business. I had read about this in the paper about a company that did it. So I opened up an affiliate of Entrust back in 2003. I knew nothing about the business except the fact that I was passionate about it myself and I figured other people would feel the same way. Most the people I’ve talked to over the years didn’t really know it. They still don’t know it today and how it works. It’s been transformative, not just for our clients, but from my own retirement. Because I have the enviable position, Darrin, of being able to learn how to invest through my clients. Because as a self directed administrator, custodian, I don’t direct our clients to do anything. I don’t sell anything. So it’s a safe place. It’s a Switzerland of investing, safe place to go. Our clients choose our clients direct. And it’s been an amazing, amazing ride for us. And we now have about $1.3 billion of client assets that are sitting on our platform. More than half of it is in real estate today.

J Darrin Gross  6:52  

Wow. That definitely, percentage wise speaks to the attraction and the power of real estate. You mentioned custodian, and I was hoping we could we could take a little bit of time and just differentiate between the custodian role versus the fiduciary role, and how that different or how that is different from the traditional role of like, you know, a typical advisor, a financial advisor Now, can you do that?

Glen Mather  7:28  

Well, sure, a financial advisor, according to the rules right now is that they they are acting in a fiduciary role generally. And what that means is they’re not just selling you something, they’re selling you something appropriate to your particular financial situation, age, etc. So as you can imagine, that means that you have to spend a lot of time with each investor to understand them. The processes are longer and the fees are pretty high because it has to represent the getting to know and potentially even the legal risk that the financial planner and advisor may be under. That is one type of investment and and they’re making it advices. And perhaps the older you are, they would put you in something with less risk or maybe generate more cash flow. It may be contrary to the desire of the of the individual doing the investing, but they still kind of have to follow along with that path based on industry standards. So that’s what you’re going to get is you’re going to get investments based on industry standards. A custodian has a different role a custodian Think of it as your church custodian or your school’s custodian. Their job is to take care of something that doesn’t belong to them. So in essence, as a your custodian at NuView, we take care of your money in the sense that we we place it wherever you direct it to be when it’s not directed. We maintain it. We Have to control control it, we put it in a bank that where it’s going to be safe, and we wait for your investment decisions and we direct those funds based on your investment decisions. The reason why Darrin, you need a custodian is you have to have one with an IRA. So in other words, there’s no there’s not a chance for you to opt out. You have to have a custodian. And so what what you’re looking for is a custodian that serves your needs, whether it’s education, certainly good record, keeping in administration or reporting to the IRS, and stability has been in the business a long period of time.

J Darrin Gross  9:36  

Gotcha. And I think, correct me if I’m wrong, but the the, the opportunity for investments, the custodian, you have kind of the wide range, I mean, it’s like you said wherever the investor chooses to go, with just a few limitations. Were as a fiduciary, the traditional investment advisor is going to lean more towards the the non alternative investments Is that fair to say?

Glen Mather  10:07  

I think in almost all cases, they’ll be it provided, what you’re looking for is legal shelter, if you’re a fiduciary, and the further you get away from the normal types of investments, the more you’re perceived or actually placed at risk. If things go badly, and investments, things can go badly, whether you self direct, or you’re certainly in the traditional markets, they can go badly.

J Darrin Gross  10:35  

Because I was saying, I don’t think I’ve ever come across or talked with or met a, an investment advisor that even recognizes or or would encourage somebody to consider an alternative investment is that have you found anybody like that?

Glen Mather  10:54  

Well, in a perverse way I have, they don’t recommend it to their clients, but guess what they do themselves.

J Darrin Gross  10:59  

They do it.  Gotcha. No, the the IRA, or so that. Are you saying that you found people that are doing their self directing their own IRA or is theirs? They’re acting as a financial advisor for others?

Glen Mather  11:14  

Yes, very much so. And because they understand the limitations of what the traditional markets give, and they want exposure to other markets mean that the thing is it’s not choosing all it can be choose partial, you can have as many IRAs as you lie. So if you if you want to be with Charles Schwab or Fidelity, Fidelity is actually the largest IRA holder in the country, you can.  But you can take if you want to invest in startups, for example, you can take 10, 15 20% of your portfolio, move it to self direction, go do it that way. If you want exposure to commercial real estate, you can take a piece over. I think the irony is, is we watch the money come and go so so we have lots of accounts that are just fractional. In other words, people have money other places, we don’t always Know that necessarily, we would have to be involved in the transfer the funds, but we see where the funds go and self direction is a very healthy narcotic, you basically want to do more and more of it and have less and less direction from other people that are charging commissions, etc for it. Because you simply measure, it’s the freedom, right how you feel about your investments, sometimes it’s just as valuable as the return you get. And so how you feel about your own ability and knowledge. That’s one of the reasons that that they’re going to watch and listen to your podcast. It gives people knowledge to act, and it’s not after the first session or the second session, but all of a sudden, you’re around a group of community of people just like your listeners and viewers. It makes them more confident in their own choices. And usually that lack of confidence is just lack of education.

J Darrin Gross  12:52  

So I’m wondering, can you identify what a typical client of NuView can you kind of give a scenario who describe the average person that that kind of NuView.

Glen Mather  13:10  

Okay, I’ll do that understand that I’m missing most of them when I do that, because it’s going to be a vanilla person. But I will tell you that within our our portfolio here or our group that is on our platform, the average person owns a little less than two assets. So whether it’s to apartment buildings, whether it’s to single family homes, whether it’s to loans, whether it’s to silver and gold and precious metals, they own two assets. This is the average so that’s what I’m giving you the average person is aged 50 to about 60%, male 40% female and the they have $150,000 or so self directed That’s the average. We have. We have three and four year old babies, toddlers that have IRAs with us. And I think our oldest client is 99. I don’t know if it makes you older or I mean, it makes you live longer. I think it live makes you live without less stress when you’re older, maybe it does make you live longer. So, we have many clients, I would say that probably I haven’t even looked at this, but I would guess it maybe 20% of our clients are in the retirement years and about 80% are still building towards them. 

There’s a certain psychographics Darrin I mean, the psychographics think about this in it’s it’s really strange, but it plays out because one of the questions that we’re, we’re required to ask actually an IRA applications a strange one, but I have I’m supposed to know your profession. So we start to gather that data and look at it and we end up with a tremendous amount of attorneys, an airline pilots and doctors. So I’m thinking well, that’s good, you know? They’re well heeled, they have a lot of money. But it’s really the psychographics. The people are drawn to us that have unshakable belief in themselves. And if you think of a group of three, you wouldn’t want an airline pilot that’s insecure and not sure. Now, it doesn’t make them any necessarily and investors, but they believe they are. And, you know, they have the confidence. So those kind of people are drawn to us. But, you know, there’s lots of people that have those same psychographics that don’t have those qualifications. They’re also drawn to us. And what’s neat is, is they talk amongst themselves, we do lots of events, and we now we’re doing them, of course remotely with COVID. But, but it gives them more confidence. Once they say, yeah, you can do this, this is how you do it. And there’s a powerful component about this Darrin, which I love, is the fact that you can partner your IRAs, and I love doing this because why would you ever want to go out on your first venture alone when you could partner 50/50 with someone you get 50 percent of the reward by making 50% of the investment, and you get 100% of the brain and knowledge from your partner. I do this all the time I sell them on my own until I really feel good about the asset class. And then I go off on my own. And also by doing this, you get the phone calls, and you get the recept people saying, Hey, would you like to come in on me with this, would you like to do this, and it may be $10,000, it may be $100,000. But in any case, I get a percentage ownership of a pair pursue what I put in. So that’s a great way to learn through doing and not wait until you have all the knowledge to get comfortable.

J Darrin Gross  16:39  

That’s a great point because I think that one of the thoughts I had had with with specifically real estate and that was more than that, that people were buying like a something in total. Whether it be a lot or a single family rental or or You know, something controlling it, solely.  But as you mentioned me, one of the powers of real estate is that, you know, if you can, you know, you can either leverage or or pool with others so that you can control a bigger asset. That’s, that’s definitely one of the, the attractions.

Glen Mather  17:23  

I think it’s one of the it’s one of the practical ways to invest in commercial simply because of the size, you don’t find commercial opportunities at $10,000 slices, you know, so there’s ways that you can get in and get exposure to a particular asset class without risking making a big risk first time out.

J Darrin Gross  17:45  

So when people come to you, do they typically have an investment they want to participate in, in mind, or is it more of just the concept of I want to be able to direct my money?

Glen Mather  17:56  

Wow.  Darrin, you just asked one of the most important question questions that we struggle with and deal with as a custodian, which is I really wish it was the second part of this, which is, people need to understand the power of this and why they should get an account even before because it’s in essence, what happens is people usually do the opposite, which is exactly that they, they find out that they might be able to use their IRA sometimes even after they locate the investment. Here’s the problem with that, first of all, well, the problem is it gates the number of clients that were able to serve because they don’t come until, they have an impetus. Maybe they meet you, maybe they find out a syndication you’re doing or one of your one of your listeners are doing and that’s what caused them come. Here’s the problem. A lot of times in real estate, things come with a clock attached to it or a calendar attached to it, right, they have to be done within a certain period of time. So what we’ve seen many times is people will actually open an account to make an investment, but they’re out there. Going administrator that’s holding on to their money really tight like it’s their own won’t, won’t move it over quick. There is, by the way, there is no federal guideline or federal law that says that a custodian or an IRA administrator must move the funds over within a period of time. I’ve seen them held on to six weeks, really that because they want the asset counted on their platform, there may be some sort of bonus attached to it. And it’s a crime because they view that since my my clients leaving me, I’m going to punish them on the way out, I don’t care how I treat them. I mean, in our company, we don’t do that we pass everything out within within seven working days without question, but not everybody does that. So what happens is, is the fact that they may lose that investment, because of timing. That’s the one reason that I would suggest the other thing is, is of course they get to be part of the community and get to learn a lot more about this through a lot of session, a lot of education that we do, I would like it to be the fact but the fact right now is the greatest impetus is when you have to buy that forces people to get their act together and move those move from a traditional custodian to NuView.

J Darrin Gross  20:16  

So, let me ask you just in the the mechanics of the the shifting from the traditional fiduciary investment advisor to working with NuView.  If I like to do that in my current investments or in Mutual’s that are that are you know, common, Mutual’s they’re not like ones that are unique to a particular brokerage, right. Can I not move those in, in the vessel they’re in to you or do I have to liquidate those to get them into my self directed IRA?

Glen Mather  20:53  

Well, there’s a practical answer to that. And there’s one that we can do. Certainly I think most custodians would rather, unless you’re on a on a stock, you have a stock trading platform, which we’ll have in about six months. We don’t have it right now. I would suggest you liquidate it. Bring it over. We have, we have a relationship with Ameritrade now, where that account can actually be opened under ours. You we can actually do the transfer with Ameritrade. But it’s uglier and it takes longer. So I would just suggest if you’re if your trading costs aren’t that high, and we’d even probably pay them for you. So it’s not it’s not like it has to the money has to do with that, you know, you won’t be exposed for the market for those days that you’ve moving it from one platform to our platform. The reason that you’d want it on our platform potentially is this. If you want to be able to dictate to ameritrade sell it and move the money over to new view in an expeditious, expeditious manner. We can cause that to really happen because we’ll have a relationship with NuView because it’ll be or with Ameritrade because it’s our umbrella over the top of it. That’s what makes it valuable. However, this may also get to a point of you have so much money that you want to expose to self direction, so much money in the market, just leave that alone. You know, if you like the way it’s working, just leave it alone, and just move over the amount that you want to invest. So there’s there’s choices, whichever way you want to do it, you can do it.

J Darrin Gross  22:24  

I would think that would be a big win for you guys to have that additional option available just from a standpoint of his people age and you have to take your minimum distributions and trying to sort through everything and the sale of certain assets, and especially if you’re in real estate, trying to time that. Does that. Does that kind of make it? I mean, I think there’s a there’s a little bit of strategy that needs to be involved in order to work within the guidelines. Is that fair?

Glen Mather  22:57  

I think it is fair, I mean, RMD’s are real required minimum distributions. As you may be aware, the Cares Act actually shifted the age it used to be 70 and a half, it’s now 72. And if this is for all investments that were made pre tax, so if you got the tax benefit upfront, unlike a Roth, then your start to force to take minimum distributions, and it’s relatively small, like 2% of starts 2%, at age 72. What that what you’re pointing towards that is you need to have a liquidity, right? You need to have cash in your account. If you’re 100% invested in real estate that is not producing cash, then you’re going to be in trouble. Now rmds can come from any IRA you have, so they don’t have to come from your self directed part. You could always sell stock if you had more assets on the other side. That’s one of the reasons that an IRA requires you to have a declaration of value every year because as you get older is for two purposes. The Treasury wants to forecast how much tax you’re going to get out of you. Even if you’re 30 They need to forecast out to when you’re 72. And in some sort of growth manner on that. So, yes, you do need a philosophy or strategy to make sure that you’re investing in things that are in cash, probably by the time you’re 72, it is a good idea that you have part of your portfolio generating cash, you probably shouldn’t be 100% speculative when you’re 72. So you just need to make sure that you have enough cash generated so that you can make those minimum distributions that are required.

J Darrin Gross  24:32  

Right, no and again, it’s it’s, I feel like I’m kind of one of the slow skis and remember, there was a, some sort of an ad for the internet there, but that’s typically the way I learned it seems like I’m in the slow lane a lot of times on this stuff. But the just the realization of that there are these RMD’s you have to have in the mechanics of the how you get your money out. I think that’s one of the things I’m becoming more and more aware of is how much of our time is spent on how to grow something or invest in something or you know, to make it bigger and bigger and bigger irrespective or without any thought on how do you get the money out of the vehicle or you know, what’s involved on the back end kind of thing. And, you know, the RMD’s are clearly something that’s, that’s kind of something you have to pay attention to them. So

Glen Mather  25:21  

Well, you call yourself a slow ski, I appreciate that. Because you’re all you’re communicating to me and I, I learned slowly so that’s, that’s a plus. You know, and what happens is as we get older, and I won’t ask you your age, because you’re not a client yet, but I’ll no one should become a client. But in any case, bait as we age, we do become naturally concerned about cash flow. I think it’s, you know, it’s like because we take a look at our end of our traditional work, whatever that might look like and you say, Okay, how am I going to fund the rest of my life will it be a drop off and I want to touch on this for just a minute if you’ll give me some airtime, because it, it really bothers me how traditional Investment Advisors look at you and your retirement. They look at you and your retirement. So your job is to amass and save, and we’re going to invest it alongside and maybe it’s an average, if you look at the stock market’s an average of 6%, you plug it in. And I’m not suggesting it’s not a good long term investment, I think it is, but it’s just one type. But what they do is they say your job is to pile up money. And if you’re a professional, maybe you need $3 million. Right? And based on maybe you’ll retire at 67, we’re also tend to be a little bit older now. So what we do is we take a look at that money, we take a look at your lifestyle needs and whatever else you’ve invested in, and let’s say you have to draw down 40,000 the first year or 45,000, nothing to do with the RMD’s just what you need to live on. And what they do is they basically watch that pile go down, and then there’s a safety piece that says maybe there’ll be half a million dollars left when you die. I think to myself, are you kidding me? Is that how is that how that yes, that’s how America plans. 

What I want to do is when I die, I want to have more assets than I ever had before the day that I die, not less. Because you don’t have to do that with self direction. You don’t have to do that with real proper real estate investments. You don’t have to do this. So you won’t be searching for an annuity that pays you one and a half percent when you’re 70. Because you’re scared to death about losing your money. So that’s so basically have no more earnings, you’re basically got distributions with a little bit of frosting on top. That’s not what I want. Because I want to be able to pass this on to my children to charities, I want to pass on to my children, not just the equity, but understanding how equities work and how they build. And that’s the beauty and I think that’s what you do whether you’re inside an IRA or you’re outside an IRA. That’s what your goal should be. It should not be that you continue to have to sell off all your good stock to live on it and all of a sudden you have less of what was really good. I would suggest that you could have more that’s really good and it’s not. It takes a little bit more work. Yes. And it takes you stepping out of line with different advisors and different people by listening to podcasts like this. It can inspire you because we needed inspiration to move, but we need education to move smartly. And I and I, I see all of this available. I see what my clients are doing. And it’s stunning. One guy came over about nine years ago, he told me a story came over with 90,000 or $70,000. He had lost it. Almost all of it in the 2006 2007 crash. And he now has 1.3 million just by moves he’s made primarily real estate moves. And now is is getting bigger. What happens is you don’t have to make as big a bet you can lend money so he’s lending part of it. So he’s taking part of the risk off the shelf and doing it other ways. That’s the power of self direction. That’s the power of educating paying yourself by the way, a lot of people pay 1% of their asset fee to their financial planner. I would suggest you pay 1% a year on going to webinars and seminars and learning more and buying books and learning from masters. And now it’s all you’ll you’ll own all the knowledge asset and you won’t pay anything more for it.

J Darrin Gross  29:21  

No, I appreciate you going into that because that that is one of the I guess the the concept that I grabbed hold of when I first understood investing in the stock market and I think it came from a place where dividend stocks were kind of you know, presented to me and that’s what I understood. I remember my dad talking now you invest in the company they pay a dividend and that was just that concept of that the the nest egg was still there working and producing. But since then, I think the the stock market I don’t have a ton in the market but it’s pretty much A very speculative thing, it’s about, you know, you’re hoping that you’re going to buy something for less today than somebody else would be willing to pay for it tomorrow, without any distribution of any cash without, you know, unless you sell. And it’s, I, it did not occur to me until, you know, more recently here where I’ve had to get kind of more involved with my mother’s finances and stuff and just become aware of just how the mechanics like you talked about. And, you know, the basically the financial advisors, you know, the map is, you know, well, you, your life expectancy is here, you know, yeah, you won’t outlive your money. That’s basically the that’s, that’s the summary there. I thought, wow. Not exactly the plan I had I was I was expecting to have, like you said a bigger pile of money then than ever before and something that was thrown off cash and, and could continue to work. So I like that. So Want to ask you? So the cost of you mentioned like the 1% is what? You know, I don’t know if it’s a 1% or whatever, there’s usually a percentage. Now everybody’s going into this assets under management kind of pricing model. How, what are the fees, the pricing for doing a self directed IRA?

Glen Mather  31:25  

Well, there’s two elements of it. One is deciding to do it. And the second is what you’re actually buying and holding inside it. But But our fees are very simple. Our fees have not changed, I think in seven and a half years. And the way it works is $50. To open your account, it’s $95 to make your first investment, so let’s assume that you’re maybe in a syndication, real estate syndication and you’re putting $50,000 into a strip mall somewhere that would cost you $95 in it and then 295 a year to hold it. And with that, Do you get, you’re going to get our full custodian, our record keeping our tracking or reporting to the IRS. And also access to all of our events, which is probably just are more valuable than doing the accounting and the record keeping for your IRA. It gives you the ability to buy and sell on your portal or on your on your phone, you can actually buy a piece of real estate on your phone. So it’s very quick and basically get you in the game. What’s nice is that cost does not increase when your asset value increases. So don’t worry about what watch it go up and enjoy it. Your fees don’t go up, they stay the same. So it’s a relatively small price to pay for freedom. And that’s what what is freedom of choice. You’re making the choice. You’re doing the hard lifting, we’re not. But we are providing all of the tools, the techniques and the platform for you to make these choices.

J Darrin Gross  32:55  

No, it’s great.  I want to ask you You know, we’re in the middle of this COVID-19 thing. I’m curious, have you seen a change in the way people are viewing the self directed IRA or is it brought more opportunities to you?  Has it made people rethink?

Glen Mather  33:21  

Any disruption in the market is good for us. I mean, it’s it’s really strange, bad news is good for us. And, and although it’s not good for us individually, it’s good for us as company, you know, you know, all the way from running our company. I mean, we, we are fortunately designated as as required or necessary or what was the word they used? Very important workers that could continue working. And, and so, we’ve not we’ve not stopped at all working from a perspective of watching what our investors do, there was probably a two week period where there’s a run on cash, meaning people drawing down. And the Cares Act actually included a provision that said that you can take IRAs out without penalty as long as you pay them back in within three years. And so I expected all of that to be draining. It wasn’t significant at all. And but we thought there was there has been a pause on investments. The challenge here isn’t so much. It’s just figuring people figuring out where to go next. You know, there’s a period of indecision. So it’s unlike any other kind of market downturn. Typically market downturns come with clear winners and losers, right?  And, you know, obviously in real estate, you can clean up right after that, that trough You know, a lot of people did in 06 & 07 and have been sort of buying it up and we’ve seen prices prices going up. We haven’t seen prices decline, certainly in Florida and probably probably about 40% of our clients are in Florida, but many pockets of the US. It’s been Because the government dumped in so much money.  So they’ve artificially stimulated pricing. So what do you do as an investment, I expect people to scratch their heads a bit and kind of figure it out. We’ve seen, we’ve seen Wall Street bigger money from Wall Street in the private investment side moving towards those things that tend not to get hurt. So we’ve seen apartment complexes being extremely strong, because it’s first tier housing. You know, it’s where people have to go. We’ve seen things like storage facilities, any disruption where people are moving storage facilities get full. So they like those kind of investments, office buildings, you know, we’re not sure what this is going to do. People are working out of their own home, what types of office buildings are structures, we’ve seen really good move up in investment in in storage, commercial storage, and anything that has to do with moving and transporting, especially foods. That’s been excellent, cold storage and everything has been very, very strong. So what’s happening is individual investors have to find this because Don’t forget, that’s what we are. We’re we’re a group of individual investors. So as they find it, that’s the doors that I seem to be opening and people are investing more and then maybe the traditional vanilla stuff that, that as the traditional markets were moving up before this disruption they, they felt good about. So we’ve seen that the the, what I’m really proud of from an individual standpoint is people are contributing to their IRAs and 401k’s now, that’s great to see. That means they feel better about it. They haven’t stopped their contributions. And they’ve stopped taking out more than just their RMD’s that are required. They’re required minimum distributions so that I think it’s caused a pause in fairness, it’s caused a pause to think about what are those things that are going to do well in a sideways market? A choppy market that we’re really not sure that maybe based on when we find a cure, you know, that may be the thing. I just think that I can’t believe that when they find a cure, there’s not going to be like all sorts of craziness going on the market. Yeah, there will be so much coming into the alternative space. That that’s going to be amazing. And I think we’re gonna see that’s going to be where inflation is going to start to crop its head. When everybody feels like we’re back to square one, we can now grow. There’s going to be such a pent up demand for so many things that I think that’s when it’s come. But until until that until we get the cure, or some sort of ways to deal with COVID-19 I think things are still going to be uncertain in many ways.

J Darrin Gross  37:47  

Yeah, no, I think uncertainty is kind of the theme. I’m convinced now that whatever opinions I hear just that there’s no nobody has a crystal ball.  We’ve not been here. You know, So, take it all in and try and process it and just kind of keep, keep listening and paying attention to the, you know, what’s going on there. But definitely interesting times, that’s for sure. 

Glenn, if we could, I’d like to shift gears here for a second. As I mentioned to you before we started recording by day, I’m an insurance broker. And I work with real estate clients to assess risk and determine what to do with risk. And we typically look at one of three strategies we look and see can we avoid the risk? If we can’t avoid it, we look to see if we can minimize the risk. And then if we can’t minimize it, we look to see if we could transfer the risk. And that’s what an insurance policy is risk transfer measure. And I like to ask my CREPN Radio guest if they can look at their business and their clients and identify what you consider to be the BIGGEST RISK. And for clarity, I just wanna make sure you understand I’m not necessarily looking for a, an insurance related answer. But with that, if you’re willing, I’d like to ask you, Glen Mather, what is the BIGGEST RISK?

Glen Mather  39:19  

is this? Are you asking us for my clients and self directing?

J Darrin Gross  39:23  

Yep, I’m gonna let you define it for you to kind of, however the BIGGEST RISK, you see, what would you see that is, if it’s a client’s that’s, that’s great.

Glen Mather  39:33  

I think when you go well, with any kind of investment, you kind of have two choices. You can invest based on the recommendation of others, or you can invest based on your own knowledge. And certainly, maybe alongside recommendations for others where you can actually do your own due diligence on the process. That’s what self direction is all about. And if you just get tagged if you’re just coming along and doing an alt with a recommend from somebody else, that you don’t really know the basis of it, then you might as well be in the stock market. It’s no different. I think the the risks, the risks are no greater or less, it’s when what you’re doing is you’re mitigating some of those risks, as you said, or lessening some of those risks through your own knowledge. And, you know, I’ve certainly heard that Warren Buffett say several times about he won’t invest in any business he doesn’t understand and I take that to heart is I don’t invest in anything and I get some pretty creative things that are thrown at me. And I just recall something if I can tell a brief story, there’s a new freeway that’s going around Orlando, on the on the west side of Orlando, and it’s it just completed almost all of its stops. And, but when you when you build a ring around the city, you generally go through wilderness, right? There’s nothing there yet. The freeway effect which we learned in LA right, which is you put a freeway houses are going to come When you own the land around interchange, it’s valuable beyond belief, right? So I had I invested in something like this similar that worked out and then the guy told me, he said, I got another interchange, I go great. Bring it in and show it to me. You know, and by the way, it’s only for me, it’s not for my clients, I don’t share it with my clients. And he talked about how he has a land option is going through this company and then you taking that you’re splitting the depreciation off and you’re moving it to a third company. And then there’s a developer who gets 15% of the back end load. My head was about to split. You talk about being the slow guy in the room I was I couldn’t get it and I I stopped it after about 30 minutes of trying to sketch it out on a pad and I said I can’t invest in it. You guys got a phenomenal track record. All I’d be doing is throwing you money and I trusting you and I don’t want to do that I promised I’m not going to do that my with my IRA and or my any over my retirement. So that’s been my mantra, the less I know, the more I’ll go to partnering until I know, without a lot of money, so, so my risk is mitigated by the fact that generally on my investments until I get to an educated state, is that I’m in it with you. If and if I’m in it with you, Darrin, I suggest that you’re probably pretty interested in your money and your segment, you’re going to make sure it’s as good as your education. So that’s kind of as close as I get to risk is, I may look at a deal. I’ll educate as much as I can, and then I’ll go in at 20% with Darrin. And if Darrin is screwed me is screwed himself 80% you know, and you’re not going to do that. So I think it’s a pretty fair and easy way to learn and to reduce the risk. But make no mistake, it’s on you. No one else is making these selections. It’s on you. So that’s where the risk lies. And and I don’t think that you should be somebody anyone should be scared. Do it with their retirement plan and be Cavalier enough to shove it to somebody else and say go manage it for me. We’re in it’s stunning because I talk to well educated people. And they’re very quick to wave off and say, I don’t know anything about investing. I make 600,000 a year but I don’t know about investing. So I have my buddy take care of it. I just like it.  It shocks me.

J Darrin Gross  43:26  

Yeah, no, it’s there’s a lot of opportunists out there and and you know, if you’re not someone, yeah, I mean, guarded defensive of your, what you created, you can end up with, you know, nothing. So, I appreciate that. 

Glen Mather  43:47  

We would all like to think that there actually is a green path that you have to follow like Fidelity says and, you know, you have the happy couple who look like you know, they’re retiring very young and they Walk down hand in hand in this path and it just kind of rolls out in front of them. I mean, you talk about fiction. I mean, that’s completely fiction. The only they don’t show you that that Green Path actually stops before you do not right. Right. That’s the problem.

J Darrin Gross  44:18  

Not good. Hey, Glenn, before we wrap up, Where can the listeners go? If they would like to learn more connect with you?

Glen Mather  44:26  

Yeah, I think the best place to start is is where our website is, and but I don’t want you to end it that way. And, and, you know, one of the things that we that we pride ourselves in that is that we answer 98% or more of our calls with a live knowledgeable person. So do call in, but certainly to whet your appetite to learn more, go to NuViewTrust.com and it’s spelled misspelled NuViewTrust.com. Go there and it’ll kind of teach you we deal with very special money managers. And we also deal with individuals just like you and just like me, who are just trying to get started and understand it. There’s videos, there’s podcasts, if you don’t mind, we’ll put this podcast up so that people can find us that way too. And it’s a great way to kind of understand it and and maybe you can even learn from some of our clients that have their success stories up and what they’ve done to change their retirement too. So it’s NuViewTrust.com.

J Darrin Gross  45:27  

Got it. We’ll have it in the show notes. Glenn, I want to say thanks for taking the time today. I’ve enjoyed speaking with you learned a lot and hope we can do it again soon.

Glen Mather  45:39  

I appreciate the opportunity. Thanks so much.

J Darrin Gross  45:42  

All right. For our listeners. If you like this episode, don’t forget to like, share and subscribe. Remember, the more you know, the more you grow? That’s all we’ve got this week. Until next time, thanks for listening to Commercial Real Estate Pro Networks CREPN Radio,

Intro  46:02  

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