GI111: Becoming a Fulltime Passive Real Estate Investor with Travis Watts

Watch The Episode Here:

Listen To The Podcast Here:

Transcript:

Announcer:
Welcome to the Global Investors Podcast, a show that focuses on helping foreign investors enter the lucrative US real estate market. Host, Charles Carillo, combined decades of real estate investing experience with a professional background in international banking to interview experts in all areas of US real estate investing. Now here’s your host, Charles Carillo.

Charles:
Welcome to another episode of the Global Investors Podcast; I’m your host Charles Carillo. Today we have Travis Watts. Travis is a full-time passive investor. He has been investing in real estate since 2009 in multi-family, single-family and vacation rentals. Travis is also the Director of Investor Relations at Ashcroft Capital. So thank you so much for being on the show, Travis.

Travis:
Charles, thank you so much for the invite. Thrilled to be here.

Charles:
Definitely. so tell us a little bit about yourself personally, professionally before where you are now as a full-time passive investor.

Travis:
Sure. Yeah, I guess pre pre real estate we’ll take it from that angle was an interesting journey. So I guess I’ll start with childhood. So my parents split when I was five and so kind of grew up kind of, you know, switching hands, so to speak you know, week after week and, and both my parents were is still, are very frugal. And so everything I was ever taught about finance all encompassing was only about personal budget, which was great. And I’m very grateful for that, but it was all about shop the clearance rack, use the coupon, buy the off-brand, don’t buy things you don’t need. And so that was instilled in me from a very young age, created quite a bit of a self-discipline. I realized as I branched out on my own and a college and everyone’s throwing money every direction and I made my ramen noodles and, and turning down these invites to restaurants and all this.

Travis:
And so it kinda made me the, the outcast for awhile. And you know, I was really into music. Actually. I was a drummer. I was a singer in, in several different bands throughout Florida, and I was going to take it that direction. I was actually going to college for sound design, audio mixing. I just wanted to be involved in that scene until I actually got an associates branched out, went to New York city and actually started mingling, networking and doing that stuff. And I thought, wow, this is nothing like what I thought this was going to be. And so I sh I shifted gears. I went back to Colorado where, where I was raised and actually took a job in the oil industry, which is completely unrelated, but it was a high-income paying job that allowed me to get into real estate. And so that was kind of the first steps towards that.

Travis:
And so I guess why real estate was a book? My dad had found at a garage sale when I was younger. I was in probably high school. I forget what age. And, and he brought this home. He said, here, you might like this, no rhyme or reason he hadn’t heard of Robert Kiyosaki, no affiliations. And it was rich dad, prophecy, not rich dad, poor dad. And so all that book really me was, Hey, listen, we’re going to have a big stock market meltdown. So don’t be in the stock market. I mean, that’s not directly what he says, of course, but that was the general take away for me anyway, at the time. So I thought, okay, so I planted the seed about real estate early on before I was in a position to ever do anything about investing in real estate, but I just knew, Hey, one day I want to be in real estate, like Robert Kiyosaki.

Travis:
And so in, in 2009, right after, you know, the, the recession hit that’s when I jumped in, it was September of 2009 as the housing market for the most part had corrected. It was actually still on a downtrend in the market I was in, but that’s where I bought my first home two bed, one bath you know, 90 5k, a townhome. And I rented out a spare bedroom to a college student. And so before house hacking was cool or, or even a term, that’s what I was doing, you know? And so that was my first awakening, I guess, to passive income and just to real estate investing in general and all of that. And then from there, the story goes on from active and into passive, you know, over the next what decade or so.

Charles:
Yeah, the house hacking my first real estate investment, which I still own today is a three unit. I bought an oh six and it was, I, people have told me like several years later they’re like, oh, your house act down. I’m like, what? What’s how’s hacking. But it was something that I like rented out two floors. I was ready. I was like 22 years old. So I was renting out first floor, the third floor. I rented out my second room on my floor. Like, you know, I was like, you know, you’re still acting like a college kid. I was like, I’ll run out my family room, someone in Luna now here. But it was like, yeah, I mean, it was it was such a great way, especially when you have other friends that are spending all this money. Cause they’re moving different places and cool places where they want to live and you’re doing this and you’re like, oh, I actually made money last month. You know what I mean? On the rental. So it’s definitely a great way of getting involved and getting a little taste of investing in multifamily and a little bit of like self you know, your, your kind of like self property management, you know what I mean? And you really learn the business, but where did you go with that after? So after you had that first property, where did you go from there? Like, what was your next a couple of investments and getting you into passive?

Travis:
Yeah, Exactly. So as I mentioned, I took an oil field job and I did that solely for the pay. I’m not a fan of, of working, you know, 14 hours a day or swinging sledgehammers in negative 30 degree weather or 120. I worked in Saudi Arabia for the summers. It was crazy. So yeah, it was brutal, man, brutal, but you know, and I’ll get to this probably later in the episode, but you know, my whole philosophy back then before I knew about things like the fire movement or anything else was just let me make as much money as I can make and save as much as I can save and put that into real estate, which was my at the time and still is my passion. I mean, it’s an asset class I’m very passionate about. And so where that led was I did house hack actually for several years and several different places that I lived.

Travis:
And what I would do is I’d buy a place. I’d live in it as an owner occupant, I would house hack it. And then after a couple of years or whatever, the rules were about my loan and financing, I would move on to another home and purchase that and have roommates and house Hackett. And I would turn the last one into a full-time rental with a longterm tenant. And so that’s kind of what I was doing for several years. And then I, you know, I got, I got bored and I thought, you know, I ought to do like fix and flips. Right. I’m just, I like, so thinking back as so naive, like the things that were coming into my life, the messaging and the, you know, the advertisements and I thought, yeah, I’m gonna, you know, I’m watching these TV shows, I’m going to be a fix and flipper.

Travis:
And so got into doing that you know, did it successfully, but I’ll caveat that I did it successfully because the market went in my favor. Right. So I was at a great time, 2010, 11, 12, 13 in Colorado between Denver and Fort Collins, if anyone’s familiar, it was just kicking man. It was boom. And it was like 10% appreciation a year. So yeah, I was doing well. But it, it also got me paranoid after a while that, you know, markets don’t always go up. I was always, I guess, smart enough to understand that I thought what happens if the market went the other way on me? And I started thinking about those situations and I thought, okay, I can’t do this longterm or sustainably. Plus it took a lot of my time, you know, I mean, long story short, 2010 to 2015, what happened was I worked the W2 job ton of hours.

Travis:
And I tried to scale up a single family portfolio, which was very active and hands-on, and I burned out five years in, I’m burned out, you know, and, and I guess I had this goal early on of, you know, I’m going to have 50 or a hundred of these homes and I’m just going to retire off of this and be a landlord full-time or something. And I wasn’t even 20% of the way there. And I was just maxed out. I just couldn’t, I just couldn’t handle it nor did I enjoy it. And that’s a critical piece, right? You got to do what you love, you gotta do what you enjoy. So I had to make a change. And so in 2015 I made a shift and I said, okay, I had learned through some, I finally got educated. I finally listened to podcasts like yours and read books and did real estate meetups.

Travis:
And I found actual real mentors that were doing this limited partnership stuff. These, these syndications, you know, and at first I thought, eh, that’s too good to be true. You know, like I’m looking at some of these proformas and the projected returns, and I’m thinking, I make those kinds of returns doing what I do, but I’m doing all the work. So you’re telling me I could participate passively in someone else’s deal and get potentially the same kinds of returns. And I was very skeptical. So it took me a while, but I eventually pulled the plug on one syndication deal. And as only because I was selling a single family home, it was coincidence. It was a timing thing. And I thought, okay, I got some good equity right here. I’m going to put like half that equity, whatever the number was into the syndication deal.

Travis:
And I watched the reporting come in, I watched the distributions come in and I fell in love with this concept that I could be participating in real estate, but not having to be so hands-on and so active because what I wanted more than ever at that time was to leave the oil field job, which I, I desperately didn’t want to be in. And just to be financially free. You know, those were really my, my goals. And this allowed me to do both, you know, if I were to sell everything I had in terms of my, my single family and then convert it into these passive investments. So that’s what I did 20 15, 20 16. You know, it takes some time obviously to offload a, a portfolio, but yeah, I just, one led to two and two led to five, five to 10, and however many I’ve done 35 deals or something as an LP.

Travis:
And that’s what I help educate people on today is that you can, you can be passive in real estate if you choose to be. And there’s pros and there’s cons and there’s risks. And just like with everything. But for me, this, this allowed me to free up a lot of my time. It allowed me to pursue other career paths that I was more passionate about. And it’s not really a money game, in my opinion, it’s about flexibility of your time and your lifestyle. So that’s what I help you know, trying to be a voice for, for the passives out there. There’s not a whole lot of education out there.

Charles:
So what is your criteria now for when you’re passively investing in real estate? Obviously you, you, you have a lot of you have a lot of experience with residential. Are you sticking more with multifamily? Are there other asset classes that you’re have invested into? What are you, what do you have going forward?

Travis:
Yeah, I think that the overarching philosophy for me is that, you know, that I tell everybody invest in, you know, your highest and best. What makes the most sense to you? What do you know the most about what do you feel most comfortable with? And that’s different for everybody that, that could maybe not even be real estate altogether, but for me, it is multifamily in the value add space, at least since 2015 through today, things can change, you know, as, as markets shift and policies change, but I like B class, you know, 1980s, 1990s, early two thousands value add multi-family unit size of 200 to 600 units, ideally monthly distributions, because it’s my income. I just prefer that frequency. I mean, that’s again different for everybody and diversified markets, you know, I like, I like you know, like Texas and Florida have no state tax, for example, a lot of companies are moving there.

Travis:
A lot of people are moving there. So I’m looking for, you know, inward migration and a diversified employment, you know, in case, you know, I don’t want to be the Detroit example in the last recession, you know, where, you know, there’s one industry kind of lifting a market for the most part. And so, yeah, that’s some of my, my criteria. So I do 80%. I invest 80% in what I know and understand best, which is multifamily for me and 20% I like to diversify and experiment. So I’ve done all kinds of things, you know, publicly stuff, stocks and REITs and ATM machines and self storage. And, you know, I don’t know, there’s all kinds of platforms, but yeah, I definitely want to have a pulse in other areas in case drastic market shifts happen, which I’m sure they will. And in my lifetime, I want to have some backup plans and know a little bit about a lot. It’s kind of my philosophy on that. Yeah.

Charles:
But you’re investing with what you’re knowledgeable in, which is definitely a fantastic recipe for making money and making that consistent income. So 35 deals, how do you vet these syndicators? How do you vet the deals? I mean, obviously you have some criteria we just went through, but you obviously like growing markets, which I think most indicators are focusing on. But how are you vetting the syndicators and what do you want to see? Say if you start speaking to a new syndicator today, what would you be looking at to kind of review them?

Travis:
Yeah. Now it’s a good question. There’s to me it all gets back to risk, right? If you’re going to be an investor in any capacity, you need to be focused on risks. So to me, there’s generally speaking three areas of risk, right? You have the team or the sponsorship, the general partners, to your point, you have the market that we talked about a little bit, and then you have the deal itself. So all three of those play very critical roles I would put away to the emphasis to me personally is like 50% on the team. So that’s where I spent a lot of time bedding and then 25 on the market, 25% on the deal. And, and I can share, you know, stories on each of those of why I came to those conclusions. But w so it starts with a little self-education first, you need to be aware of what exists, what things you can invest in kind of what the pros and cons are.

Travis:
So there’s plenty of great books and resources for that, or mentorship programs, all kinds of things. So start there then start identifying your criteria. Like I just discussed a couple of minutes ago, then what I do is I try to find groups that are doing my criteria, that they’re focusing and value, add B class multifamily and Texas, and Florida, et cetera. Now, how do you find them? It’s another great question. Everyone’s going to have a different take on that. But you know, I started locally with some, some local real estate groups. You know, some people referred me out to like bigger pockets and online forums. I would network there and then I’d be introduced to seminars and webinars and conferences, and it just kind of grew and grew expanded, expanded, and I’ve gone to a ton of conferences and seminars. So I’ve built a network.

Travis:
Now I know for me, anyway, I have enough deal flow. Let’s say through all the operators I invest with more, more than I have enough capital to put to work. So, but you know, that took years in my first perception. This is important. I didn’t think many deals existed in this space back in 2015. If you were to say syndication deal, I would say, well, maybe there’s like three or four out there nationwide at any given time, but false. I mean, there’s so many, there’s, there’s an incredible amount. It’s just that a lot of these companies can’t publicly advertise. So you’re having to really network and it’s a relationship business, reach out things like that. So back to your point, I, I try to align my philosophy and criteria with operators. So I’ll hop on a call with them, send them a few emails, I’m checking for response time and, you know, thorough answers, not just quick, you know, shove it off to the side, you know, given kind of a half-assed answer.

Travis:
And then yeah. Hopping on a zoom call. It used to be, I would, I would meet face to face, but, you know, COVID and everything else, plus it’s not always logistically feasible for some people to go fly out and meet someone face to face. But yeah, that’s how it starts. And how did I find this group in the first place is through networking through relationships. You know, you know, I have people in my network now that I’ve met that are other LPs, you know, who are you investing with and, and what do they do? And what’s your experience been? And so I’m always taking notes and, you know, researching different firms and companies, and, and then I get on their distribution list. You know, I let them know kind of my risk tolerance, who I am, what my goals and objectives are, making sure I agree with kind of what they’re doing.

Travis:
And I like what they’re doing, their track record experience makes sense, all that good stuff. And then I’m just keeping in touch, you know, what deals do you have coming up? I’m usually notified by email and I’m just making a decision from that point after I bet the deal in the market and check, hopefully most of my criteria, it’s never going to be a hundred percent probably, but I have a lot of criteria, so maybe 80% plus, and then I, you know, if I had the liquidity and, you know, I’ll do a deal, you know, and operators that under promise and over deliver, I’ll do a second deal and a third and a fourth. And, and that’s kind of how it works, at least for me. So yeah, that’s been the last, what, six years or so has kind of been doing that actively passive.

Charles:
Yeah. the first LP deal I was involved with years back was I found I met them the group, or I met someone and then introduced me to the group through a conference. So it’s, you know, you’ve got to really get out there and it’s difficult now, hopefully later this year, it opens up, but go out and do a lot of networking and meet a lot of people. And yeah, you got to vet a lot of people and I know there’s going to be people listening to this that want to be syndicators, and you might have the option of partnering with a, someone that’s done deals before, let’s say, and they might want to you to partner as a, you know, maybe as a general partner, the great way of vetting them too is maybe go to them and say I want to invest passively with you and kind of see how that communication is.

Charles:
I like doing that as well. And seeing the communication, seeing how open it is what are they providing on these monthly updates? Do I just, you know, on one deal, I, I never heard back from them like six weeks later, I was like, Hey, what’s going on? They’re like, oh, we just closed this afternoon. And you’re like, well, you know, like, you know, give me a little bit of an update on what’s going on. And you know, it’s those, these are little things that would I not do another deal with them. Maybe not. Would I then just stay on top of them a little bit more with what’s going on, possibly depending it’s just these different things that everybody has certain communication that they want. Like we have investors that never respond to an email I send. And then you have investors that respond to every email you send, you know what I mean? So it just depends on how much conversation they want with you. So it’s very interesting when you’re vetting a sponsor because it’s really a personality between them and you. So it’s not one size fits all for sure.

Travis:
Yeah. I appreciate you sharing that. And that’s so important. That’s what I meant by the way. If, if, if any of your listeners, I, sometimes I say things abstractly and I don’t really define what I’m talking about. So what I mean by aligning my philosophy is is just that. And also it’s part of my criteria that I like, if I send someone an email or I leave them a voicemail, I’m talking about a general partner. I like a returned call or email within 48 hours. I just like that personally. And to your point, there’s been operators that I I’ve thought about investing with and I’ll say, Hey, I just have a couple of questions about your, your deal, a and B. And there’ll be two weeks before I hear back, or I never hear back. And it’s like, you know, if that’s the kind of communication I’m going to get, I’m not going to invest with. And, and that stuff is so critical, you know, having that self-discipline to follow up even if it means sometimes checking your emails on weekends or whatever, you know, that stuff can be important to some people not to everyone, but to me it would be.

Charles:
Yeah. And the other thing too, is who’s responding. Is it the, actually one of the, the operators of it or is it just some, no offense to VA’s or anything like that, but if you’re sending over tens of thousands of dollars, I’d rather speak to someone that’s actually on the PPM, the private placement memorandum VAT we’re dealing with. Right. Not just some, an assistant, right. For most parts, obviously there’s a time when that’s fine. But so you have this you talk about this fire roll, the 4% Firo. Can you explain a little bit about that in regards to passive investing?

Travis:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. That’s that’s not my rule by the way. It’s it is so fire movement for anyone listening that may not be familiar is something I followed for a very, very long time. But before I get to just like house hacking this, this term didn’t exist back when, you know, in my childhood. But what we were doing was, was fire. Basically my, my, my parents and I, so financial independence retire early, that’s the acronym for fire. So what this is basically from a high level is folks who subscribed to this idea that, Hey, look, I’m young, I’m in my twenties, et cetera. I make good money. It’s just, I don’t want to do this until I’m into my sixties or seventies, whatever it is, you know, you’re it engineer, doctor, Dennis, lawyer, attorney, whatever. So I’m gonna make the money now.

Travis:
I went to school for it, whatever I’ve got vested time and energy here, but I’m also going to be very frugal for a period of time. Okay. And I’m going to invest as much as I can early on so that I can basically retire early. I mean, when I’m, when I say retire, that’s the part that gets scrutiny is like the R he retire early. Doesn’t mean retire in the sense that, you know, you’re going to sit on your couch or go play golf until the day you die. That’s not retirement. You know, retirement is different for everybody, but what it means is that you, you don’t have an obligation to have to go work in the traditional sense, the nine to five Monday through Friday office job, whatever it is, you don’t have to do that. You have enough financial independence to choose not to do that, either a, not to do any kind of formal work or beat more importantly, in my opinion, to pursue the work that you love.

Travis:
And that can be very lucrative and that can pay a lot of money, but at least you’re doing something that you love and enjoy to me, that’s the point of the fire movement. So the 4% rule is kind of this old school wall street, you know, idea that, you know, whether you have IRAs, 401ks, brokerage accounts, whatever you lump all that together and say, you’ve got a million bucks just to use simple numbers. If you withdraw in retirement, whatever age that is for you 4% a year that allows for a little cushion in your portfolio for both inflation and hopefully historically, and statistically speaking that the stock market performs more than 4% in a given year on average. And so you’ve always got this little buffer. So if you pull 4% out of a million dollar portfolio, that’s 40,000 per year, this is what you would be living on.

Travis:
And, and again, it’s all kind of, you know, this theoretical concept that you’re just pulling a little bit out of your nest egg, but it’s growing more than what you’re withdrawaling. So therefore you can actually adequately retire in your accounts, probably continue going up past the million dollar mark. So you’re not, it’s not like cash where you’re pulling out 40 K a year and you’re depleting that million down to zero. But anyway, so the fire movement, a lot of these people are doing just that they’re putting their money and say like a, a stock index fund that tracks the overall stock market. And they’re dumping everything into just that one thing for the most part. And then they’re going to be pulling 4% out at some point to live on, you know, in, in a frugal sense. So there’s elements of this. Hopefully that makes sense by the way.

Travis:
And I described that somewhat understandably, but that, you know, where I disagree with that in a sense, at least from my perspective as real estate from day one, and through today has produced in a decent cash flow. You build for me anywhere from say 6% on a low end to maybe 13% on a high end, and I’m talking about an annualized cash flow. So what I came up with for myself, this isn’t investment advice for anybody else, not a financial planner, not licensed licensed advice, but w you know, for me, I came up with this 8% rule and I said, okay, so real estate, as many listeners know, you can make money in, in numerous ways, right? Through appreciation and through the tax advantages and through cashflow and all these different things. So I said, okay, if I could get 8% on average in my portfolio of cash flow from my real estate, I can live on that, which is double the 4% rule, which means either you need less invested or you’ll have a lot more money potentially to, to pull from, however, you look at that.

Travis:
But then hopefully the real estate is also going to increase in price over time, just due to inflation and other, you know, forced appreciation. So I don’t even calculate that personally for things there, for the money that I live on as a full-time LP. I only look at cashflow. So for me, it’s, I’m living off the current cashflow, which is an average of 8%. So I’m a six I’m as 12, whatever. I’m just finding a happy medium there, conservatively in my opinion. And then as, as property sell and appreciation happens, that’s great. But also recognize that markets go the other direction. You mentioned that the property you bought in 2006, so, you know, cycles can come down. And so you can’t always just be predicting that, oh, I’m going to get this 5% bump every year and appreciation. It just doesn’t work that way. Everything has a cycle to it.

Travis:
So instead, just like you did with house hacking, you know, I relied on that income to live on despite what my property was worth. And so that’s how I, I do it myself. That’s a little bit about the fire movement and, and frugality, and kind of how that concept works. And I guess I’ll add one more thing real quick. So my formula of fire, my adaptation of it is number one, earn as much as you can earn using your highest and best potential for me, at one point, that was an oil field job fixing and flipping houses, doing vacation rentals, doing little side hustle, jobs, and businesses. I was doing everything I could full-time to make money. And then for a period of time live frugally. And when I say a period of time, this is what is important to understand this doesn’t mean use coupons by clearance items, by the off-brand for your entire life until the day you die.

Travis:
You don’t want to do that, but let’s say for five to seven years, approximately you could live frugally in your lifetime. It’s a sacrifice and it’s tough and it takes self-discipline. But if you can do that, that allows you a nice margin right there, right. Of, of what you’re earning and what you’re living on. And if you invest the difference into whatever makes sense to you, stocks real estate, whatever, for me, it’s cash flowing assets. Then you can build up financial freedom rather quickly, especially if you’re not using some of the accounts that exist out there, the IRAs and 401ks that you can’t touch until you’re 60, but instead have brokerages LLCs trust things that you can use now, currently. And that was kinda how I, I engineered this whole system. And so I had more cashflow than I had living expenses. So that gave me financial independence to choose what I did with my time, choose different career paths and jobs.

Travis:
And again, everyone’s different whether you want to move from full-time work to part-time more time with kids and family travel more like my wife and I, we travel a ton, whatever it is, right. Everyone has their, their why. And number four, very last avoid bad debt. What I mean is credit card debt and car loans and things that are going to draw back from your investing potential and take away from, you know, your, your asset column, you know, because it’s going to be transferred to a liability. So those are the four steps that I followed and easier said than done simple, but not easy, but wanted to share that in case that’s helpful

Charles:
To anyone. Yeah. It’s very helpful. So you’re dealing with a lot of passive investors. I imagine you found some that are great fits for passive investing and some that probably aren’t well, who do, who do you think are the best people or best? I guess you would say avatars for being a passive investor.

Travis:
I think the first thing to recognize about passive investing is it is a capital intensive option or strategy. So let’s, let’s run a couple examples. So let’s say I have $10,000 to invest, and I find an investment, a real estate investment. That’s going to give me 10% a year in cashflow. Well, that’s, that’s going to give me $1,000 a year or $83 per month. Great. Right. I can, I can pay for my cell phone bill, but it’s not very exciting. You know, that, that doesn’t motivate many people to say I have $83 a month in passive income. At least I wouldn’t have for me in the beginning. So most people are, are, are focused more on, you know, buy low, sell high and, and capital appreciation and equity and all that good stuff. But here’s the point. And I’ll, I’ll get to your question here after this example.

Travis:
So let’s say instead I have a million dollars to invest at 10%. Well, now that’s a hundred thousand dollars per year or $8,333 a month. Now that’s impactful for most people. So just recognize that on the passive journey, it’s going, gonna take some capital. So if you, if you’re someone who has a million dollars to go invest, plus this can make a ton of sense free up your time, give you a nice cushion of cash flow and a little backstop to your job or working career, et cetera. So to your point, most passive investors are high income or high net worth individuals. So we’re talking about medical professionals and doctors and dentist and attorneys and pro athletes and business owners, entrepreneurs, anyone who’s very focused on what they’re doing. Full-Time, that’s their highest and best, right? But they do want to park some excess capital that they have somewhere, and maybe they don’t want to put a hundred percent of that into the stock market. So these real estate, private placements may make a lot of sense for them to generate that, that cash flow. So, yeah, I mean, in general, it’s, it’s, it’s a credit that investors high worth high income that invest passively.

Charles:
Interesting. Yeah. The it’s one thing too, is that I see people that want to become syndicators and they just swear off of passive investing. And I always stay on top. I’ll stay on all the li the lists of other syndicators that I know and see what other people are offering, because at some point they might have something in a different area or something in a different asset class, within real estate that I’m not aware of, that I’d love to spread myself into. So I never all, you know, I always kind of tell people, yeah, you know, you should always keep it open too, because you might, you might be doing these smaller deals. You might find something in another growing market that you’ve read about that you’ve heard about. And you can invest now with someone there instead of you doing it yourself. And now you’ve spread yourself from your home market to a different market. And which is always a great thing. You get a little geographic diversity in your portfolio, which is fantastic, especially with you know, if you’re investing just in Florida and there’s a hurricane, right. In one part of it, or you’re investing Justin, you know, all these different places and everything that’s happened over the last couple of decades. So what are the main factors that have contributed to your success? Travis?

Travis:
I would say honestly, if I, if I really evaluate that, there’s, there’s a couple things that stand out to me. Self-Discipline is very tough, but I’m, I’m pretty good at that. And not everybody is, but it can be learned, you know, and it’s just learning how not to procrastinate, put things off, like, hold yourself accountable. I I’ll give you a prime example. In 2015, when I was making that transition from active to passive, I told myself, January one, I said, listen, you are going to read one book per week, all year long, and you will do that. This is me in the mirror talking to myself, and I read 52 books that year, you know, and I ha and I really did that. I held myself accountable. That was not easy to do. Most people would probably be, be given up by February, but, you know, a self-discipline, you’ve got to hold yourself accountable to would be self-awareness.

Travis:
And what I mean is be aware of what are you really doing? And I didn’t have good self-awareness early on in the investing side. I was just frivolously experimenting with just whatever I was doing, flips and a vacation rental and a buy and hold and a house sack. And a, and I had no rhyme or reason. It was just, I was bored mentally, and I was just trying different things and it’s okay to experiment. But had I been clear upfront that my objective is like this amount of cashflow per month or financial independence by this age or this kind of net worth by this timeframe. And I did that stuff later, but I didn’t do it in the beginning. And so I probably wasted a good three, four years just kind of scrambling around doing stuff that didn’t really make any sense. Some things that, that really didn’t make any money. So I wish I’d been more clear and self-aware of what I wanted and why. So it takes some time, you know, there’s lots of great coaches and mentors out there, a big fan of like Tony Robbins and my wife and I had been to his events and I’ve read his books for years and years, you know, about motivation mindset, you know, human psychology and getting yourself to take action and stuff like that. So, yeah, those are the two self-discipline self-awareness.

Charles:
Yeah. Which is just gets harder and harder every day with so much stuff, especially if you’re an entrepreneur mindset and the shiny object kind of thing. Everything comes up. Cause I mean, everybody, there’s not one entrepreneur that can be honest and say, they’d never had been affected by that. Right. And but it’s just have that clarity, have those goals and you know, focus is power Tony Robbins, right. So it’s just, it’s, it’s super powerful. So wrapping up here, you have a number of resources for passive investors. Can you tell us more about all the content you put out?

Travis:
Sure. I, I try to put out as much content as I can absolutely for free on different outlets. I’ve got an Instagram and Facebook @passiveinvestortips. I’ve got LinkedIn and bigger pockets and all that stuff. Travis Watts, w a T T S I have a PDF guide. If anyone wants that on real estate, private placements, which is what I invest 80% in. If you just want to learn industry terminology, how did that a team, a market you know, a deal, things like that. It’s 20 pages and, or a 15 minute one-on-one call with me. No upsells, no sales pitches, just questions you have about passive investing versus active or whatever. Happy to give you, you know, 15 minutes of my time, absolutely. To anybody, both of those can be found at Ashcroft capital.com forward slash Travis. And you can just opt into either of those. And again, no upsells, I don’t sell any books or programs or anything like that. So happy to be a resource for anybody looking to learn more.

Charles:
That’s awesome. I will put those links all those links into the show notes. And I want to thank you Travis for coming on today.

Travis:
Thanks Charles. Appreciate it. Thanks everyone for tuning in.

Charles:
Talk to you soon. Bye-Bye.

Charles:
Hi guys! It’s Charles from the Global Investors Podcast. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you’re interested in get involved with real estate, but you don’t know where to begin, set up a free 30 minute strategy call with me at schedulecharles.com. That’s schedulecharles.com. Thank you.

Announcer:
Thank you for listening to the Global Investors Podcast. If you’d like to show, be sure to subscribe on iTunes or Google play to get new weekly episodes. For more resources and to receive our newsletter, please visit global investor podcast.com and don’t forget to join us next week for another episode.

Announcer:
Nothing in this episode should be considered specific, personal or professional advice. Any investment opportunities mentioned on this podcast are limited to accredited investors. Any investments will only be made with proper disclosure, subscription documentation, and are subject to all applicable laws. Please consult an appropriate tax legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of Syndication Superstar LLC exclusively.

Links and Contact Information Mentioned In The Episode:

About Travis Watts

Travis Watts is a full-time passive investor. He has been investing in real estate since 2009 in multi-family, single-family, and vacation rentals. Travis is also the Director of Investor Relations at Ashcroft Capital. He dedicates his time to educating others who are looking to be more “hand’s off” in real estate.

Are You a Fan? Subscribe, Rate, Review & Share – Click Here To Learn How

What question do you always wish I would ask but I never do?

Connect with the Global Investors Show, Charles Carillo and Harborside Partners: