Lincoln: Welcome to Funds That Won, where we dive into some of the world's most renowned investment funds. We'll interview investment managers across the alternative landscape and learn how they built their million and even billion-dollar asset management empires. We'll explore teams, structures, strategies, and best practices in launching and running alternative investment funds. Well, Nick, thank you so much for coming on today. Great to be here with you, my friend. We've known each other for, what, I don't see four or five years now, it seems like. Why don't you start off by giving us the elevator pitch on Saint Investment Group?

Nic: Sure. So I'm Nick D'Angelo. I'm president at Saint Investment Group. Really, Saint started off on the acquisition side of the business with a handful of really high net worth, great individuals, family offices, et cetera. Eventually, over time, that grew and swelled to where we added an asset management component. So now we're handling the acquisitions and then the asset management, making sure that performance gets done. And then we added on some capital raising and bringing in new investors. So where we're at today, we just crossed 200 million actually 206 million in assets under management. We have exited seven projects. 5.5 IRR on those. And we have 19 projects in process today that we're projecting around 31% IRR. So that's our syndication side. And then today, our real focus, all these really sophisticated, really high net worth, really amazing people that we have long relationships with. really hit us and said, look, we need to go a different direction. We want to go on a fixed income approach. It's much more flexible. So we put together a package of real estate assets. And that's what we're focused on today is a fixed income approach with Saints Income Fund. So that's a shoot that this is my 20th year in real estate this year. So it's 20 years in, I don't know, 90 seconds, but that's kind of the quick version.

Lincoln: I love it. I love it. So you've got 200 million under management. You've got a syndications business. You've got a fund business. You've also got a separate asset management businesses that services those properties. Is that right?

Nic: Correct. And they're all kind of under one umbrella. They overlap quite a bit, but yeah, those are our divisions. That's for sure. Gotcha.

Lincoln: Okay. Well, let's talk about the fund then. So how many funds do you have? Is it just the single income fund or what are you running?

Nic: Yeah, so that's what we're focused. Really, our approach is the barbell approach, right? Because for so long, money was so cheap. And there's that it was the everything bubble. So who could actually put yield together and offer that to people? And well, my background is acquisitions, particularly distressed. So we were pretty good buyers. Right. So we focused on syndications because it was deal by deal. We could put people together at the same time. But really, the goal was to transition away from that more to the fund model just for all. I mean, you and I have talked infinitely about that. And you're one of the biggest salespersons for saying like, Nick, knock it off and get on the fun side. And so we took that to heart and wanted to transition to that fund piece. So Really that's kind of been the focus is making sure we can add value on that side, a little bit bigger with a fixed income approach and the growth approach. So where if somebody is looking for a higher return, then we can offer that, but it's going to take five to 10 years. Yeah. Right. So market today where there's high inflation and maybe our investor base is starting to get into 60s, 70s, maybe 80s. five to 10 years is a different discussion than when someone's in their fifties. So we have a 12 month lockup and a fixed income, you know, 8% return that we can return money in 90 days or less after that.

Lincoln: So, um, wait, wait, so it's, sorry, it's an open ended vehicle then.

Nic: Correct. The new, the new is to offer that. So we have that high, long higher return, you know, five to 10 year, uh, horizon. And then we have a 12 month minimum on the other side. So between the both, we want to give someone a fixed income option and a high return option.

Lincoln: Okay. And so you said you're paying out a, your target return on that is 8%.

Nic: Correct. The income fund pays out an 8% return. It doesn't fluctuate zero fees. So 8% is net to investor.

Lincoln: And is that, uh, are those paid out quarterly, annually, monthly?

Nic: So we don't let the tail wag the dog. We try not to tell our investors what they need, and everybody's like, just pay us monthly. So we're like, no problem, we'll pay you monthly. So we do monthly distributions on that.

Lincoln: Gotcha. Okay, so 8%, that's awesome. So open-ended vehicle, 12-month lockup. And tell me about the assets that are being held that are generating this, you know, 8% for yield for investors.

Nic: Sure. So I'm a real estate dog. You know that I'm not not changing my stripes anytime soon. So it's real estate, but it's focused mostly on real estate debt. So our job was to say, if we're building an income fund, How do we build something that's decades strategy, a decade, multiple decades of strategy that is a really insulated asset class, that's not going to have the boat rocked drastically from anything that we're seeing upcoming. The best vehicle we found were U.S. mortgages on residential homes. So that is the vast majority of the fund, 90, 95 plus percent of the fund is represented there with 500 plus mortgages. So most of these are 20, 30 year mortgages. They're really competitive rates and we can provide a yield that gives our investors not just something probably around twice what they'd get at a bank, but also is very flexible. So that's the absolute best asset class that we found for an income fund model in real estate.

Lincoln: Gotcha. So let's, let's jump into the weeds there a little bit. So walk me through like where you're sourcing these, you know, these deals from how you're underwriting them, how you're evaluating them, how you're, you know, the, from a liquidity, how you're managing liquidity on those. Um, yeah, let's, let's, let's, let's fire away on it.

Nic: Sure. Let's dive in, man. I love this. So my backgrounds and acquisitions, like I said, and we were purchasing primarily distressed by distressed, mostly foreclosures. But we ramped up and because we started off with residential, not enough zeros for our group. Our group at the time was saying, look, it's 2008, nine, 10. We have this chunk of cash and there's more deals than we know what to do with in the market. So let's go after the bigger deals with bigger zeros and bigger opportunity. So when we started really taking shots at more and more and more, eventually working our way up to, you know, many weeks, 10 million a week, that we were purchasing at the courthouse steps from banks. So, I mean, when you purchase that volume, you have a lot of banks that you have the attention of. They know that you have the cash. They know that you're good buyers. I mean, you're buying at the courthouse steps, like there's no, it's buyer beware. That's how easy that transaction is. So then, you know, conversations evolve, you keep in touch, what's on your REO list, what, you know, what do you have coming up? And then we got interfaced with banks directly. So eventually, they say, hey, properties are great, but have you taken a look at all these mortgages? And we're like, look, it's not our business model, that's not really where our heads at, we're kind of property guys. And eventually, we took a deeper look, we took a deeper dive, found some that we liked. So started buying some over the years and found that we really like the assets, they have different advantages than owning the actual property, you know, owning the debt versus owning the property. We actually found that we liked the residential mortgage market more while we didn't like owning homes, we actually like residential debt more. So you speed up to today when our investors were saying, hey, you know, we really need something more flexible. We don't trust the longterm market as it fluctuates with different rates and different inflationary pressures. So we want something shorter term. That was a good package to put 500 plus mortgages together into that. So that's really kind of the acquisition strategy in that side of the business is almost entirely relationship based. There is no costar or loop net or, you know, you know, large brokerage firm that has pocket deals or anything, this is direct relationships with banks because they have reputational risk that's far beyond anything in the property sector. So like, let's say, you know, Link, you go out and you want to buy an amazing multifamily building from a fund. Hey, I want to buy this from an institution. If that institution sells that asset to you, they don't really have a lot of risk after they've sold it, as long as they didn't misrepresent something. Once they sell you that asset, whatever you choose to do with it and whatever your group chooses to do, you're responsible and you're the decision makers and you get to choose. That's not debt. That's not residential debt. There's reputational risk where, let's just say Wells Fargo sells those mortgages to someone else. And then they just, you know, foreclose on a bunch of people and do all kinds of below board things that are completely not appropriate. That usually goes back to Wells Fargo because their name is still on the alonges and assignments. And they're a bigger name than some no name, you know, company. So reputational risk in that space is huge. So that means that responsible relationships are even more important.

Lincoln: So, okay. So the bank doesn't want, I think it's important to explain this because so banks don't want to keep the debt on their balance sheet. It's a long term liability, right? So if I go buy a mortgage, you know, for a million bucks, they don't want to keep that, uh, They don't, they don't want to keep that on their balance sheets. Right. And so they are going to go and sell that debt off to you. Now, what happens if I don't make a payment? What happens if I miss a payment on my bond? Do I, do I go and I have a conversation with Nick about that or where, or do, does the bank still warehouse that relationship? What does that look like?

Nic: Love it. So, and I I'll, I'll go inside baseball as much as you want on this. Cause I love this topic a ton. Let's say that they miss payments for, you know, again, not Wells Fargo, but a Wells Fargo, a top bank. If they miss payments to that bank, this is a long time has passed since the 2008 global financial crisis. Banks do things completely differently now. So how you said, I mean, you pretty much hit the nail on the head, is that they need to get non-performing or underperforming or sporadically performing debt off of their books. A big bank's job, especially in residential, most oftentimes they're really good at originating debt, producing debt, creating debt. Long-term servicing, they typically sell those off, whether they're performing or not. When they're below performing or semi-performing, it's a different tier that makes that loan non-compliant with Fannie and Freddie. So they can't package those into 20,000 loans at a time and sell them to another person or another large fund. So they have to split those off and there's a little scratch, a little dent here and there, because maybe someone's carrying three, four months of non-payment during COVID, right? The bank might have to foreclose on that. Right. This is still covid debts. Yeah. Whereas they sell to a group like, you know, Saint or many others. We can just call the person like, hey, what's up? Why isn't this working for you? Is it the payment amount? Is it that you just can't pay this balance off, but you can make your monthly payment so we can do things like, you know, reduce a balance and extend the length of the loan or really drop a payment and maybe change the rate and move the loan out. So there's a few levers that we can pull that a big bank can't that keeps the borrower in the house. I mean, again, our typical borrower has almost 40% equity, so they don't want to walk away. They're much more willing to make something work for everyone than try to stiff the bank in this case. So, I mean, I can go deeper.

Lincoln: Tell me where you want me to- Okay, so what about this though, Dick? So I picked up another property earlier this year at 5.37% interest rate. I timed it very fortunately. It was great. Yeah, great. you know, how, let's say, you know, how are you able to capture a margin on my product? So I give the bank, you know, I buy this loan. Yields haven't been over 8% in a while. So how are you, how are you capturing alpha? Where does your alpha come from?

Nic: So we buy at a discount is the simple, is the simplest way to put it. And to quantify that discount, let's say it's a hundred thousand dollar mortgage. Right hundred thousand hundred percent. We buy around 20 to 30 percent discount on that. So our yield hurdle if we want to really really really go inside baseball we're looking from 10 to 14 percent on our yields which lets us pay out our investors at the eight and then we make the spread on that. So if we're buying on the discount, even if the rate might be a 5%, because we're buying below the unpaid balance of the loan, unpaid balance loan, a hundred grand, if we buy it, let's say 75 grand, that 25% offers us a cushion where we can make the balance, pay our investors and, you know, have some yield there.

Lincoln: How can the bank justify marking down those assets 20% and selling it off?

Nic: you or I, this would sound insane, right? This sounds ridiculous. It sounds insane. But again, if you look at like an amortization table, right? That's one answer is look at how all the interest is front loaded on that. That's one. Two is many lenders and you start drilling down into the debt space more and more. Many people operate on points and fees. Right. So they're not worried about what the amortization balances at year 17 and a half. They're saying, well, we got a point up front. The broker got a point. We had our, you know, loaded up fees on the front. And now we sell that to somebody else to service and manage the actual payments. So when you start really drilling down on banking, and you really start drilling down on the cost of the funds when they have dead weight, especially with their compliance concerns, comptrollers, foreclosure compliance, et cetera, it's almost always cheaper for big banks to sell off to third parties than it is to manage through everything on their own for residential small balance, smaller homes versus class A office for 300 million, right? If it's that small niche, that residential niche, very often they're selling that off.

Lincoln: Hey guys, thanks for listening. As you know, we don't run ads on this channel, so if you could really help me out, if this podcast has added any value to you or your business, please subscribe, rate, and review. I would appreciate that greatly. Thank you. Gotcha. Gotcha. Well, that's awesome, man. That's a very institutional great asset, if I don't say so myself. That's pretty freaking cool.

Nic: We love it. We love it.

Lincoln: Uh, they don't look for any sort of outset. They don't need when when you're managing 10 billion dollars or 100 billion dollars Like you just need to make a couple percent and you're great, right? You don't need to you don't need to hit home run. So that's that's pretty cool Um, but nick, let me ask you candidly I mean this asset was probably super sexy a few years ago and you know, the risk-free rate was a few bips, you know, a few percent, but you know, now we can go out and get a treasury at, you know, high five, mid fives right now. Like how do you, you know, how do your investors think about, how do you think about that? And what's the, what's kind of the defense there?

Nic: Yeah. So I really liked the question and I think it's, it's well put, right. It's a, it's a good thought for it. One is the likelihood of the US government just completely defaulting is pretty low. Right. So let's just just to simplify numbers, let's say it's at 5% for US Treasury, just to simplify kind of the difference there. We have a lot of we're we have the benefit of having really sophisticated investors. Many groups, many funds, many, you know, whatever investment groups are kind of concerned about that because they're worried about the sophistication level of investors being too high or that there's going to be some like they can go somewhere else thing. We know that the more sophisticated and the more educated our investors are, the more they understand our asset class and kind of that where that fits in their portfolio. So let's take a five to an eight. Let's say they can get treasuries today at five. 8% is 60% more than 5%. It's not three, right? It's a 60% increase, right? And then when they go, well, what's your fee structure, cowboy, right?

null: Have no fees. 8% is net to investor.

Nic: They go, ah, okay, okay. It clicks in differently. right? It fits a piece of a portfolio where that 60% increase from five to eight is much different than say, well, it's only, you know, two, 3%, right? Like, you know, how, how much different can it be? They know they're sophisticated guys with long track records that if you extrapolate that 10, 20 years, the trends get very, let's see, there we go. Trends go very different directions, right? So that's one two, then they have to say, well, how legit are you guys? Are you going to pay your bills? Right. And we go, sure, we're going to send you our backup showing we've never missed a distribution that includes during COVID. We've never not returned funds to someone who's asked for them back. So they go, OK, good track record. And they go, well, what about the underlying assets? you know, our residential mortgage is going to fail. I keep seeing all this stuff in the headlines about all these housing crisis and problems. And then you dig it, you dig into the economics of real estate debt and single family, which is all that housing issue. All those housing issues are for a minority of the market. I believe the most recent number I saw was between 80 to 90% of us mortgages are three and 4%. Wow. So think about that, Link. So all the crap we're seeing in the headlines about how bad housing and it's a crunch and is it a bubble and all the crazy opinions and all the different, that's like 10 to 20% of real mortgages. 80 to 90% is completely unaffected. So when we send them, Hey, here's the real data. Here's the other half of the media that they're not covering. Here's our track record. It's a much different sell. We pay 60% more than a 5%. We have the track record. We don't miss payments. We're really conservative. And most of our investors that tracks really well.

Lincoln: Gotcha. That's awesome. I love it. Well, thank you for, honestly, you just made an 8% sound sexy to me, man. That was great. That was phenomenal. You definitely know how to present that. That's great. So, Nick, I want to shift gears here. The name of this podcast is called Funds That Won. So we like to identify the winners in the alternative landscape. So I want to pose the question to you, Nick. What do you think makes a fund win?

Nic: Man, I'll give you my answer across the board. I think there's stages of funds, and you know this better than anybody, Link. I know you know this better than me. But early on an early emerging fund, I think there has to be an experience component where people actually know the assets, what they're doing through and through top to bottom. And the other half of that is, I think it's a product market fit. Again, I'm really proud of what we've done on the syndication side and we'll transition that into a growth fund in the future, but that's not the product market fit that we have today. We can go out and throw around crazy, amazing numbers that we've proven, But if it's a 10-year hold, that's not a product market fit. Our investment community doesn't need that. They don't want that. They don't want the higher returns for the longer hold period. So if you have the experience, and you've done what you're doing at scale, And now raising money for that and now bringing investors into the fold. And now you have the killer team. I think that's really valuable. And there, and then you have the product market fit, what you're offering and what the, what the investment community needs is lined up very well, huge upside on an early fund.

Lincoln: So that's, that's the biggest KPI is product market fit. You think.

Nic: Yeah, I think absolutely. Because even if you're the best in the world at something and it's the wrong timing, I just don't see as much of an investment interest. Because right now, it might be 3x, 5x harder to raise money just in general. And then you want to mix in where nobody wants your product? It's just too many rowing against the current too many times in too many ways.

Lincoln: So if I was someone brand new, how do I go out and know if I have product market fit? How do I know if I fit the mold?

Nic: Oh, I love that. So what I would say is first off, dig into the research. We, I will be a hundred percent. Well, I could sit and tell you that we spend a lot of time on economics. We do, or that we really, really, really drill down in the data. We do. A lot of what we do is looking at the big guys that have $60 billion and what bets are they making and why, right? You can usually peel back layers and get a lot, a lot of insight, trying to see ahead from what they're doing. So, you know, this morning I'm listening to an interview with Bill Ackman, or the other day it was Rick Reader, Howard Marks. A lot of these guys are looking at 10, 20 years because they have to with that much money, right? And they can tell you trends that are successful and on track to achieve or underachieve or at least with the higher likelihood of odds. Again, there's a lot of testing that you can do with paid ads. On the other end, if you want to really put numbers to an interest level and quantify that, you could go out and produce paid ads and see if a fixed income fund is going to be sexier than a long-term growth fund, or if a crypto is going to be better than a debt. Those are things that you can go test in the market for hundreds of dollars and get a good idea. So if you wanted to quantify it on a paid ads level, you could do it very easily. As far as the big picture, like what a global like decade plus strategy might look like. I looked at some of the big guys that are really putting their money, literally billions where their mouth is.

Lincoln: I like it. Nick, how did you know it was time? It was the right time for you to start a fund.

Nic: Well, I have good friends that twist my arm to go the right directions when I'm doing syndications and need to be doing funds, but that's one. I mean, you and I catching up was a big thing and kind of, we were already going the direction of putting together an income model that was really going that way. But we had the experience and it's a scalability issue at some point, right? Like I can go, and I'm sure we've talked about this, but I can go to the trough over and over and over, let's say four to 10 times a year, hey, new syndication, hey, new deal, hey, it's the next thing. At some point, you actually tap your audience out, you tap your investor base out in a way where they kind of like your volume gets turned down and the attention on the next thing, it's too hard for them to differentiate. Whereas if a fund Early funds have, at least in real estate, early funds have the issue of trying to explain this blind box, this, you know, hey, what properties are we buying? How are we doing it? What's the strategy? It's your first fund. How do you do that? I think the advantage there is having a very tight buy box. So you say, we don't have property addresses 123 Main Street, but this is what we're going for. This is what we're pursuing. And we have a track record of doing this in other ways. If you can communicate that to investors in a way where they fully trust you and fully understand, then the scalability of a fund is no question infinitely bigger than doing deal by deal. The scales there, the financing is more interesting, the bank relationships are more interesting. There's great groups that have done syndications up to the multi-billions, but I don't know any that have done it at the tens and tens and tens of billions on a syndication level, right? Maybe, maybe 5 billion, not 50, right? Not 500. Everybody ends up in the fun space. So I wanted to move earlier than later, if we're going to do that anyway.

Lincoln: Love it. Well, Nick, why you insinuated at this earlier, you know, talking about introducing, uh, you know, opportunistic products into the future, but, you know, paint me a picture. What is, what does St. Investment Group look like for the next five or 10 or 20 years? Like where, where do you see this business going?

Nic: So the amazing thing about the fund space, the long term investment space, is that we can make bets on a longer term basis. I think economics, you and I were kind of talking about that before, we let the economics guide us on a lot of the big decisions. So here are our big bets for the future and what we think is going Early on in real estate, we did a little bit of everything asset product type wise. What we found is we absolutely only are interested in things that were top tier at like literally top 1% of 1% can compete with the best. So we really like the debt side. We want to keep an income approach and an income investment model, an income fund available for people at all times. So that's one side is giving them the flexibility and a fixed income product. On the other side is putting together more of that growth fund approach. Again, we have we're really proud of our numbers. So what would I bet on for 10 to 20 years? Right. That's the real question. Growth sounds great. But, you know, if you read any headline right now, what is it? Commercial real estate's, you know, down the tube, the apocalypse of commercial reals, all these horrible headlines. So what would I bet on for 10 to 20 years? Well, we're really good at industrial. We're top tier at industrial. We really, truly understand the drivers. We've pulled great returns out on that. My bet is only several markets in the US, but I'm betting on those. I think right now, my crystal ball, what it would say, I don't have one, can't, you know, whatever, not financial advice, whatever. I would say that my bet is industrial real estate in the US for the next 10 plus years. I really think like 20, but conservatively 10 plus years is what we're looking at.

Lincoln: That's the next big investment opportunity, right?

Nic: Oh yeah. Yeah. We've been doing it for a number of years. I think it has a long road ahead as the world shifts away from made in China. And we start looking at what the next steps are. Is it made in India made in Malaysia? Is it made in Mexico made in America? Right. Uh, industrial plugs in well with all of those. So the import export, we invest in import The Port of LA, Port of Long Beach, parts of Texas has a lot of shipping, has a lot of infrastructure that distributes away manufacturing. If it's made in the U.S., where do you produce those? It's industrial properties. So we have a big bet on that, on the economics of the U.S. and the strength of the U.S. So that's where our bet is on the growth side, is putting together longer term deals in the investment or in the industrial space.

Lincoln: Hey guys, so if you want to learn more about investment funds, how they work, how they're structured, if you want to become a fund manager, how I became a fund manager, visit our YouTube channel for more free value.

Lincoln: The link is in the show notes. Thank you. Yeah. So, I mean, let's just touch on that briefly here. Some of the characteristics, you know, that are different between an industrial asset versus a multifamily, like, why would I want to do industrial, like maybe explain industrial to somebody who doesn't even understand it?

Nic: Sure. So, Simply put, industrial or, you know, large warehouses, more or less, that have, you know, a bunch of different uses and applications, usually very large footprints, usually very sturdy build. So very commonly today's concrete literally poured into slabs and tilted up and put together to create a concrete tilt up building, right? Usually looking at, yeah, I love that investment type. It's amazing. And while I like multifamily, and while I have concerns about other parts of real estate, industrial for us, lets us bet on more of economics directly, lets us bet on businesses directly. So the big subsectors of industrial are going to be heavy industrial, maybe more manufacturing or fabrication, or light industrial, more distribution and warehousing and logistics. So if you break it down further, we're more of a logistics landlord group. We focus more on the logistics side. So we're going to be closer to things like ports with huge imports into the U.S. It allows them to store huge amounts of that and distribute throughout the U.S. And I'm really bullish on the import-export U.S. strength relative to the rest of the world and the U.S. economy compared to others. That's, that's, I mean, you know, I could drill down 15 layers, but that really is, that really is kind of the overarching.

Lincoln: So from getting from 206 million under management, uh, billions or tens of billions of dollars, you think that, uh, industrial is going to take you there, huh?

Nic: I, you know, industrial has the nice ability to have a lot of really high value assets. Yeah. we typically focus today on the, let's say 15 to 20 million on the low end to like the 50, 60 million on the upper end. We really like playing in that just sub institutional, but above mom and pop space. That's kind of our, uh, but Hey, you kind of hit it early on that as money increases and scales and all those things, you just have to place more money. So 2% starts sounding a lot sexier. than somebody who's on a different phase, an earlier phase. So there is scalability like that in industrial, where other assets might not have that as much. Multifamily definitely does, right? Office does, but there's some big concerns there. So where else would we go? You know, industrial is a good bet for us. under management in just debt. So between those two, we think we can get there 100%.

Lincoln: Well, I'm just going to reemphasize something you just said, because I love it so much. The larger you get in your AUM, the harder it is to generate a multiple on capital. Right. To generate a three X on 30 million is way easier than generating a three X on 300 million and generating a three X on a hundred million is on is way easier than a billion. Right. Like it literally gets incrementally more difficult to, uh, you know, produce multiples. So those are the, those are the pains of growth in the asset management business. Right. It's exactly right. Nail on the head. Nick, what would you say to somebody who is just starting out, you know, just getting into this mold? You know, what's something you, you know, now that you just, you just wish you knew when you were just starting out?

Nic: Oh man, I would, what I would tell them is you have to get into a position of like, I started out in a larger circle of really successful people. So that's one side is, they need to be insanely resourceful, because they're not going to have like no matter how much time you put towards something which you'll have to work your butt off. Right. And no matter how smart you are, which you do need to be smart and learn very much resourcefulness. and finding where the leverage points are for these people, right? The people you want to be around, your investors, what are the buttons and what are the levers to pull that take it to the next level? So what I would say is get around as many people who are doing something better and longer and more experienced than you is one. I'm part of probably a dozen different entrepreneur groups, various niches, you know, entrepreneurship in general, you got to plug in. That's non-negotiable. Two is there is so ridiculously much information out there right now that wasn't out there 20 years ago. There are, I mean, Link, you personally, right? Just what you put out or what I put out on my stuff or what anybody puts out on their niche information that wasn't around previously. So somebody's finding strategic content They're around people that are day-to-day doing what they're trying to do. I think they can glean a ridiculous amount from there. And then it's getting feedback step-by-step on their models. I still do that. Am I missing something here? Am I presenting this correctly? Is my strategy sound? My friend group, thank God, has improved over the years. I pay a lot of money to be around bank CEOs and fund managers and other really successful people where I go, my thesis, my theory is this. This is what we're planning. This is what we're plotting to. Tear this apart and tell me where I'm dumb or where I'm really smart. Tell me the goods and the bads. And so I think if they're testing what their strategies are and their hypothesis are against really smart people when they build their network, and they're adding new information and regularly, they can climb very quickly and navigate through the best and worst practices. And again, we're in the fun space. Everyone listening is very interested in the fun world. So figuring out how to be a top operator has a huge upside for them as well.

Lincoln: It's great. I wanna push on something you brought up. You said, find mentors, find out what their buttons are, their levers. Can you give us maybe an example of how you applied that? Or maybe someone, you don't have to name names, but maybe walk us through an experience of how you implemented that in your life.

Nic: Oh, so it was, I'll give quick context I'll give you your exact answer because it's something that's very close to my heart and it's somebody who's still like family today. Right, like a, like a dear family member. So I was starting off and it was in the wake of the global financial crisis. So for those that don't remember, this was the hiring process hey I'd like to work for you. pay for we can't even afford people that are non salaried, meaning if Commission only we don't even hire non Commissioner, excuse me, we don't even hire Commission only people right now, we can't even afford the phone lines for the Commission team. So you want to work for us? Absolutely not hiring was at a standstill in finance. So I'm like, well, you know, I'm too young to have any real experience. I'm too dumb to know that I should probably be doing something else because I want to do real estate. I want to be in the investment world. So what am I going to do? I'm going to knock on as many doors, I'm going to identify who I want to be around. And I'm going to bug them to death until they say yes, is basically what my strategy was. So what I did was I realized very quickly, I took one of the guys out to lunch, he was a friend of a friend of a friend that I commit, you know, I just said, please, like, I'm a college student, or I'm, you know, I'm in the middle of college, and I want to be doing what you're doing. I'll help out value of I can, can I just take you to lunch? And he took you know, grace on me and, uh, and took the lunch appointment. So we went out to lunch and I was like, I got the deal for you, pal. Okay. You, this is something you can't say no to. I'm going to work for free. Okay. I'll work for free. I'll do whatever you need me to. And I'll add as much value as I can. What do you think? And he's like, oh yeah, I can't afford you. And I'm like, what? Like, did I just get rejected for offering free everything? You know? And the answer was, yeah. He's like, I have no possible chance to afford you right now because the amount of time that I have to put towards training you and getting you up to speed and giving you attention and walking you through stuff is something I can't afford when the world is falling apart around me. So instead, he's just like, look, I respect you. Thank you for taking me out to lunch. I want to add value, but a job is not on the table. So what I did, I was like, Oh my gosh, I can't believe I just got rejected by, you know, offering literally working for free. So instead what I did was I was like, this guy has an issue right now. And his issue is he's not making money. He can't stay afloat, big landlord, big family office, multi-generational wealth, but they were scraping by. So I was like, how can I add value to a guy like this? Well, I had already kind of networked around and I had put been putting together lists, kind of like my own CRM. just trying to meet people and put them in boxes. And I actually, even in the middle of financial crisis, just meeting enough people, put together a pretty big list of people who were trying to buy apartments. Pretty weird. Like that's a very niche thing at that time. My list hit 500. I had a newsletter that was going out to these guys, telling them the different investment groups in the area. Cause I was already going to everything, trying to network. I might as well send that to other people and build a list of that. And then people would say, Hey, I want to buy apartments too, or I want to invest too. So then I went back to this guy and I said, look, I can't, I can't offer you a lot of experience. I can't offer you a lot of value. I know I'm actually taking more time from you than you're getting from me. So understanding that, but here's what I can offer you now that I understand your perspective. Here's a list of 500 people that want to buy apartments in the southwestern US that are looking for multi-million dollar apartments. You have a brokerage part of your family office. You have a brokerage portion of your business. They can call this list of active people that want to buy right now, and they will buy apartments, and you can get the brokerage fees. That's income today, right? That's all I can offer. These people are engaged. They're on my newsletter. They're going right now. So that's, I literally had to barter my way and he's like, okay, your desk is going to be like a hallway and people are going to bump into you and just don't drink too much coffee. And I can't get you your own phone number. And it was like, And I was like, that's fine. Just let me in. Just let me in the family office that has success in the past. And so he ended up being a dear friend, and we became extremely close. And he's just like, you son of a gun. I don't know how you convinced me to take a kid with no experience in at a time like this. But they made money off of my list, and I made infinite amounts of experience just being around this guy. Became like family to him. Was at his daughter's wedding. I mean, he told me that we've been like family, and we've kept in touch So he's still very close to my heart. I'm incredibly thankful for the opportunity he gave me, but I had to work my ass off and barber my way in to be clear. So that's kind of like, that's how I started off.

Lincoln: Wow. I love that story. That is incredible. Thank you for sharing that. What a, what an incredible story of getting your foot in the door and, and, uh, look at you now, man. That's that's awesome.

Nic: He's a great guy and it's out there. Even big companies, they like making money. They like doing things in better ways. They like progressing. And when someone's young, they have fresh perspective more than they think, especially in how advanced technology is today and how smart younger generations are. If you're younger and you're starting off and you want to do this, you can add value to other people. You just have to be creative and find their leverage point that adds the most value. That's all I can really say on that.

Lincoln: I love it. I love it. Nick, as we wrap up here, I want to ask a few questions on the personal side of your life. Any habits that you feel like have, that have attributed to your success, either personally or in business?

Nic: Absolutely. So, um, I'm big on health. I'll say that. And I, in most previous generations, I don't think health was as much of a focus for people, right? It was like, 14 hour days, chain smoking cigarettes, coffee for dinner, right? And health is a big thing for me. I'm always needing a new mountain to climb in anything I'm doing. So I'm power lifting right now. That's been really fun. I'm trying to hit some goals there. And then the other side is the education side is endless. I have to, you know, for me to give my team the strategy and the direction and the best that I can offer them, I need to have the best information possible too. So I'm very clear on that with myself. I'm very clear on the standard that I want to set for our company and our growth being a core value for us. So I'm reading constantly. I'm finding ultra crazy niche information and digging into economics and digging in with fund guys and seeing different models and how we can apply that. And always trying to find that new information has been, um, you know, you can test it and you can discard what doesn't work, but when you find something, even if it's one out of a hundred ideas, and it's a really good idea, it's exponential growth and it's exponential value. So making sure I'm always digesting the newest and the best out there.

Lincoln: Love it. How do you, how do you make time for both health and reading? You know, like how do you structure like, gosh, that's what I run into. I mean, we were just talking before this podcast started. We, we had children like a week apart from each other. I had my first Nick, you had your third, right?

Lincoln: Yeah. Yeah.

Lincoln: Your third. So how do you make time for family and work and also fitting in the health and, and, and reading? And so what do you do?

Nic: Yeah, it's, um, It's a big question that I've spent a lot of time on. There's not a perfect answer. I'll start with that. I'll just share what I figured out as the best balance for me. One is, is my lady is like all in. She is, she fully gets it. And so our, our division of like who does what and how it all works together and how we support each other is like streamlined completely. And it has to be that way. It has to, right. For home to work and for her not to go insane with three kids, right, because that's a lot to ask. Three kids is, and we have three boys, so I don't know, do without information what you will, but she has somebody full time that helps her. And I work really hard to make sure that we're successful and have enough money coming in to have somebody to support her so she doesn't go insane, right. On the other side is schedule wise, dude, I work weekends. I work many weekends and her and I understand that. And our give and take is that we travel plus or minus every six weeks. We try to get away, not just her and I, often with the kids and to get out. And I take two, three days of uninterrupted every handful of weeks. That's one. Two is I take one day off a week, completely uninterrupted with the family. Sometimes it's with the larger family. I have a very large family. Sometimes it's just our family. Yesterday, we sat outside and ate Chipotle in the sun and played soccer, right, for a whole day. And it helps me unwind. Most of the time during the week, I'm working crazy hours. I try to carve out an hour a day with my kids uninterrupted, phone in a drawer, and do that. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't. But making sure I'm always at the big things. We take vacations every six weeks. Usually it's very local, very mellow, but just away from home. And then my girl and I just being really on the same page with stuff has been really the big difference.

Lincoln: That's phenomenal. I love that. Um, on the flip side of things, do you have any business or personal pet peeves? Uh, things that just drive you crazy that people do?

Nic: Yeah, I, uh, I'm always shocked when people are bad schedulers. Bad schedule. Yeah. So, so it's like, you know, you and I even to be able to carve this time out, it's like a lot of going back and forth and aligning calendars and doing all that. But that's because you're busy and I'm busy. That's a good thing. Yeah. That's a problem. When people are not efficient at that, I'm like, you don't do this often. Like your schedule is not that crazy. You don't. So it's, it's like really like, it's really tough when people haven't Navigated a lot of things. So, um, that's one.

Lincoln: And then, uh, before you move on, do you use, uh, so you have a personal assistant, right? And that, that's probably where you do everything, right? Is that, is that the problem solver for that?

Nic: Oh yeah so as far as that goes we just take initiative on everything we on our side I have a I have a personal assistant she's amazing she's a killer she's she's fantastic and I just say you book everything you know what I mean like you take the initiative you follow up you confirm things don't assume that someone else is going to be equally as on top or as organized. You are like most people aren't. So that's the directive I give her is you initiate everything, you organize everything, you invite to all the calendars. So that has been the absolute game changer. I do that for family also by the way. So, you know, I, again, I have a very large family, you know, every weekend is multiple things. So in order to schedule that it's months in advance and it's very organized and if it's not, it's tough.

Lincoln: Yeah. And is it like, were you just, cause you, I mean, you've got to be the gatekeeper ultimately though. Right. You don't give her full discretion. Uh, you, you know, she probably has a process. So if someone reaches out, wants to get on with you, you say, and then she comes like, Hey, do you want to take a meeting with so-and-so? And you just say yes or no type thing, or do you actually give her discretion over your calendar?

Nic: So we organize calendars with upfront, so it's like the buy box of real estate, right? This is this, this is that, this is what we do, and this is what we don't. And maybe some things are in the gray area, we're like, that's really interesting. Only maybe 10% of things, 5% of things, are a great area for her. She's dialed. She's dialed. So she needs, if someone like in this category is requesting a meeting, they actually need to connect with asset management, which is this individual who's, he'll handle that, he'll crush that all day long. If they're requesting this and it's investment, you know, investment success, investor success, that's what this individual, and he really has all the information and he's available right now. So by the time something gets to me, the way our system is structured today, She knows exactly what category it is. If it's, she's given feedback immediately. Hey, this Saturday you have this, but it conflicts with this. You want me to reschedule this and move this here? Thank you. Yes. Right. And the other proactive, Hey, if there's a problem, give me like you suggest a solution before I don't want to be smart. I just want to be efficient. Yeah.

Lincoln: Well, I think it's a great pet peeve because I can concur. I think a lot of people don't know how to manage their time appropriately and don't even know how to point people in the right direction. So, uh, so you were, sorry, I cut you off though. You were going to tell me another pet peeve you have.

Nic: Oh, um, I mean, shoot. Thankfully we, we work with a lot of good people. Uh, communication is probably the other thing, just it's having, you know, knowing the balance of cadence. It's not every five minutes, you know, we need, you know, self starters. We like working with self starters. And then the other flip side is, um, a deadlines, just stuff like that. It's operational stuff at some level. Our team, thankfully, is insanely high tier. And I feel very blessed for that. And that took years of just restructuring the hiring to be able to find people at that level. But once you're dealing with really top tier people, it's it's being able to get out of the way when they're all get them on track and then get out of the way kind of thing. Yeah, you can you can set performance objectives you can meet with them and and set realistic goals and where we can enter interlock a lot of KPIs with others, but Communication's huge. I don't care. You know, sometimes people prefer nights over days or whatever, but not getting it done or missing deadlines or not communicating when something's changing or adjusting drives me nuts because on my side, and I know you know this on my side, I have four other departments, eight other individuals that all intertwine. So if one thing falls off track, that might knock things four different things back. Yeah. We're threading the needle at all times. That's a business, right? So that's the communication side is the respect for everybody having their responsibilities, making sure that those can play well together.

Lincoln: Love it. Love it. Well, Nick, I am excited about St. Investment Group and what the future holds for you guys. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing some great nuggets of wisdom. I really appreciate your time today, my friend. All information shared are the sole thoughts and opinions of the author. Do not take any information as legal or financial advice. You should seek a certified accountant and a professional legal team for taking any further action. We are not selling or soliciting a security in any way, shape or form. This content is for educational purposes only and is not to be construed as financial or legal advice. Clients of FundLaunch or Black Card Capital Partners may maintain positions and securities discussed on this podcast.