Title: How to Stay Compliant While Raising Millions with Bronson Hill
Summary:
In this episode of the Mailbox Money Show, host Bronson Hill interviews Seth Bradley, an accomplished attorney and entrepreneur known for his efforts in passive and active investing. The discussion revolves around the significant shifts in the real estate market post-COVID-19, including rising interest rates and the challenges passive investors face with underperforming deals. Seth shares his experiences with multifamily investments and the importance of selecting the right financial structures, highlighting how his focus on fixed-rate loans has insulated his deals from the volatility that adjustable-rate loans often endure.
As they explore other investment avenues, Seth discusses their ventures into various businesses, including gyms, e-commerce, and oil and gas projects. Both entrepreneurs illustrate how innovation and technology, particularly artificial intelligence, can significantly improve investment decision-making and operational efficiency. Their combined expertise offers valuable insights into the world of multifamily syndications, risk management, and leveraging technology for investment insights. The episode concludes with Seth’s perspectives on effective communication between investors and sponsors and the importance of due diligence documents in passive investing.
Links to listen and subscribe:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/4pogVHik6rHwh0k5yFLs1U
Links to watch and subscribe:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xrvBhGtS5w&t=396s
Bullet Point Highlights:
Transcript:
hey guys this is Ken mroy and you are listening to the mailbox money show with Bronson Hill hello hello and thank you for joining the mailbox money show my name is Bronson Hill I'm very excited for this episode with Seth Bradley you're gonna really like him he's done a lot of things he's like the renaissance man like he has done uh passive investing he's done active investing he owns a couple gyms he's starting another one he's got a couple startups he does he's got all kinds of things speaking
very intelligently to a lot of different topics he also has a show called The passive income attorney actually also an attorney as well and puts together syndication paperwork so he does a lot of different things and so I always love talking to people that are doing many things because first of all inspires me that I'm not doing enough and then secondly um you know they'll speak very intelligently on kind of trends that are happening so he's talks about what what we're going to talk in this interview
about what happened over the last few years he's doing less real estate looking at some other things and just what do you do if a deal does not go well what are the steps you can take as an investor so I think you're really going to enjoy this we also get into Ai and some awesome other topics so let's jump in Seth welcome to the mailbox money show Bronson what's going on buddy good to see you again hey man we're both in Southern California I know we're not that far apart but you're in like the better part especially lately with all
the fires up in La recently uh you're in San Diego man I don't know anybody that says they don't love San Diego yeah man I mean there's no better place in the United States that's for sure I mean I've seen some some beautiful places around the world and I don't know San Diego still might beat it um I get a little bit used to it because I've been here for quite some time now but San Diego is really tough to beat yeah awesome man well I'm excited to have you here today I know you're an attorney you have your podcast called
the passive income attorney podcast and you also work with tri vest which helps investors and you have a lot you to say around uh diligence around deals going bad we've seen deals uh We've we've had a couple deals that have really struggled uh I've been an investor passively in deals some deals that have struggled people don't really talk about this as much and I think it's really important to talk about um but let's let's talk about kind of what's changed the last couple years interest rates have risen um obviously if you're a
multif family investor the deals maybe aren't as juicy as they were the projections are a little lower a a little little far between as far as you know deals that actually cash flow or deals that make as much sense but uh what have you seen the last couple years and how have you kind of shifted a little bit of your business and your investing for sure I mean it's been um it's been an experience right I think a lot of the past investors out there that are listening or if you're an operator or lead sponsor out there the same thing
I mean we've we've gone through a period of time starting I think back when Co hit in 2020 that was kind of the first dip in the market that we've we've seen in this kind of generation right like the jobs act well I I should say the previous dip was in you know 2008 2009 that was one cycle but that was before the jobs Act of 2012 so the jobs Act of 2012 is where some of these private Investments started being opened up to more people and more people like ourselves were able to get involved and start raising capital and and do deals
and you've just seen that market kind of exponentially grow since 2012 um so we haven't seen a downturn until Co hit in 20120 and that one was kind of weird right because it was just kind of a blip it wasn't because of the economy it was because of something that just you know nobody's going to be able to predict um but that's the first uh crack in the armor that we saw and then after that then we saw the interest rates go up in in 2020 towards the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023 and that's what really
started um you know giving us this experience that I'll say that we're we're still kind of going through because the interest rates are still a little bit higher than what we've we've seen over the past years and we're we're seeing more deals go go bad right or or at least you know there maybe a capital call or or two or perhaps um you know some of your distributions if you're a passive investor might be on pause and these are things that we're just not used to seeing because we're just used to seeing over the past you know 10
years up till 2022 all the deals have just gone really really well so it's a surprise to us and it shouldn't be because you know it's it's cyclic but we we'll figure it out and you know you're just seeing these things that we've all been warned about and they're now coming to fruition yeah yeah it's interesting you know I think if you between 2010 and 2020 you know 2021 even if you just owned a multif family apartment you were a genius right because things were just only going up and to the right and and
then sudden like there's that quote by Warren Buffett says you can only tell who's been swimming naked when the tide goes out kind of thing the tide interest Rising the tide goes out it's like oh my gosh this isn't work in the way we planned it um and now you in your portfolio you guys have done very well you've had some some great you haven't done as many deals more recently but um your deals have done well is that because you did kind of fix interest rate or is just the markets you chose or I'd love to hear a little more about
that that's right I mean fixed interest rates to be honest were a huge thing um that that's one thing that we really pushed for in our deals and that's and that saved us a little bit when these interest rates started to r that protected us um you know you saw that those were the deals that got in trouble those those adjustable rates got people in trouble and you know there towards the end like let say 2021 22 it was really hard to make the deals start to like continue to work and get those returns that we promised those passive
investors without taking those adjustable rate loans so you know those folks that got in in 2021 2022 maybe the beginning of 2023 those deals had adjustable rate loans and that's where they got into some trouble yeah yeah it's interesting kind of how things have changed now it's interesting too there was um a time not even that you know just a few years ago that that real estate was Cash flowing pretty well especially multif family real estate and now it's pretty tough because you know you got rates are
higher uh cost you know the price maybe have come down a little bit but you got higher Insurance you got higher other costs other inflation things you know there's not a lot of cash flow so a lot of you know syndicators or multif family investors have kind of just stepped out or maybe they got pitched on a deal here and there so we we've shifted a little bit to do we still do some multif family in in specific situations but um we' switched to go really focus on oil and gas we're doing uh other types of
businesses like I mentioned we're buying this business that's a e-commerce business High cash flow and then there's also debt funds you know debt these days there are debt funds paying like Equity was paying with less risk than it was a few years ago right so if you can get not debt funds are the same there's some that are first position that are low leverage and things like that uh what are are there anything else that you're finding for cashow or that you're finding attractive right now as an
investor yeah I mean I think you got to just look a little bit deeper I mean there's still some decent multif family deals out there too and that's always going to be to me kind of like bread and butter right like that's something that we're always going to need it's always going to be um it's always going to be something that people are interested in um because we've all lived in apartments at some point in our lives and I think it's an easy thing to grasp mentally okay like I'm going to invest in a
multif family or apartment building because I've lived in one I know what it's like I know how they work people pay rent you collect you you know expenses that sort of thing um but it's it's a lot tougher to find those deals um so people have looked at other things so I've seen a lot of um you know debt funds like you said a lot of people pivoting to um you know even smaller multif Family Properties um you know before we were looking at like 100 200 250 unit properties um now I've seen a lot of people kind of Ratchet that down
a little bit and look for some better deals in in some smaller properties maybe in the 25 to 75 unit range range that sort of thing um I've seen people like get into mobile home parks and RV parks after cuz we saw that go quite up quite a bit during CO as well and then came rocketing back down um but now you can kind of see like where where it really sits like now you can see like what the value of that asset is so you can see that the you know what those what they really are without like that big spike for covid and those are
turning out to be some pretty good Investments to get involved in too yeah and I know um you know we talked about this before we started recording um you and your wife you guys also operate a business or you guys have a a gym a couple gyms that you operate tell us about that and it's that um I know you're sounds like you're spanning so it sounds like it's going well I need to pop into a gym I'm probably get my butt kicked if I pop in there and you g through the Seth Bradley workout there right so yeah man we have a we have a
couple of gyms right now we have one open in Oceanside this is in San Diego uh San Diego County one in Oceanside one in Poway getting ready to open up a third one in anas it's under the burn boot camp franchise fly FL so it's a franchise um and I got uh really interested in franchises for that and then I ended up buying into another franchise I ended up buying into a water restoration franchise called Al dry so we've got a few businesses going um but those gyms are great right like once we battled through again I hate to keep
bringing up Co but it keeps coming up um but we battled through Co we opened up right before that hit uh actually one week before it hit so then we had to shut it down and work out outside workout inside we had to do um on online workouts those sorts of things um had our lead trainer in our apartment recording videos and me and my wife were in the background doing the exercises um pretty insane what we had to go through but they're they're doing really well now and luckily my wife has taking over that business and she runs
the whole thing so I don't do anything she doesn't even want me involved anymore so it's fantastic it it's actually turned into passive income for me for you it's passive income right for her it's right it's it's Fitness income right but that's you know really a lot of people like um lifestyle businesses you know where you're like it's just I think it's just a cool thing to say I own a gym or own a restaurant or I own this thing I mean a lot of like really wealthy people be like oh yeah I own a
Vineyard or I own a I own a horse racing thing or something like that but is it is it I mean you don't have to get into specific numbers but is it pretty it's you're opening another one so it's pretty lucrative to do it it sounds like it's working out well the it's a boutique gy that does kind of boot camp type stuff and you have certain classes you go in and those have become super popular all over the us but especially in big metros like Southern California for sure and look I don't want to say
that it's easy because it's it's definitely not you have to have the right mindset you've got to be an entrepreneur you've got to be able to fight through the hard times but you know these these types of businesses they're they're kind of done for you to a certain extent they give you the marketing plan they give you the business plan they give you kind of the proforma that you should be aiming for um especially with a franchise there's there's dozens if not hundreds of other franchisees that are doing the exact
same thing you are so you any qu any question or any problem that you're going through they have already went through it or they're going through it so you can bounce ideas off of you know kind of similar to like a mastermind right something like that where you get involved with a few people and it's like oh how can I get around people that have the same problems as me in a franchise there's that's already built in and it's even more it's even more dialed in because these are very specific like
brand specific industry specific questions and problems that you can balance those ideas and have those questions answered by your your fellow franchisees um but as far as like profitability again it's great because you can you can predict it like the idea behind it you buy one you figure it out then you buy more and then you keep going you stack and stack and stack and that's how you really make a lot of money in franchises you hear people that own dozens or you know hundreds of Papa John and things like that like you need
to be able to stack them um but they're definitely profitable um and they're fun they're it's a fun business like you said it's fun to be able to say that you own a gym it's fun to like walk into your own place if it's a gym or a restaurant or whatever it is and you're the owner it just feels good right it's a little bit more um you know rewarding I should say than some of the other businesses that that we're involved in for me it's you know a law firm and um buying real estate and it's this is just
a little bit more rewarding just like being there just the presence and having a um you know having a a brick and mortar space it's pretty cool yeah know I love that it's really interesting you guys I didn't realize you guys are are really Ser serial entrepreneurs I you guys are really both as a couple um is that like tell me a little bit about that dynamic as a couple that you and your wife do that like how is that something you've more LED is it something she's done is it kind of like you just kind of stay in your lanes and
like because a lot of times one one spouse or partner will be really risk you know averse or one would be much more risk tolerant and so has that been just like a really you guys are both kind of willing to take risk and kind of move forward in that yeah I think we we both have a really good temperament for it as far as risk tolerance and for me personally that's that's interesting because I'm an attorney so typically attorneys are not risk tolerant um but I I am I have that trait and and she does too um we have certain
trust in each other to be able to handle and stay in our lanes um she especially for the gyms you know she's operations right now I handle finance and and Prof formas and those sorts of things and obviously the legal stuff that comes up and I'm the maintenance guy too of course but um but everything else like operations she does that and then when she knows that she needs me for these certain things she'll bring me in um we've explored trying to figure out some other businesses uh that we might be
able to get involved in together and I think you know having that experience in the gyms gives us a good idea of how it would work out with some others yeah as she ever teaching the class like if you're in the dogh house you got to take a boot camp with her and she'll be extra tough on you or something ah she's she's not a trainer luckily I would I would I would avoid those camps for sure I think that'd be pretty funny no I think it's great man I love how you've created that you know for yourself that you guys and of course
you know I think I've noticed this too a lot of uh there's a lot of people they'll have they'll be really excited about real estate they'll be really excited about investing and then you get one that's one spouse is very risk averse what what do you say to someone who guess their spouse is pretty risk averse and you know maybe they're concerned whether they're a passive investor or they're interested in doing business things are like this like how do how do they kind of get that person on board or what have you seen is kind
of work to kind of help them to kind of work forward with that move forward yeah I mean it's tough it's tough right like you have to you have to choose your significant other wisely and it's probably the biggest decision that you'll make in your life not only for personally but also in business because if you have someone that just can't get on board with what you're doing or doesn't understand what you're trying to do um and you don't mesh very well on that side of things it it makes things a lot more a lot more difficult right and
you see that all the time you see couples fighting about business and somebody's working too much and the other person's not working enough or those sorts of Dynamics um but I think a lot of it can be solved with education you know a lot of it is just kind of this other person doesn't know enough about the business or the investment or whatever it might be and they just need some education so they're not the person they're not like us every single day just immersed in this and getting on podcasts and you know
listening to podcasts and reading books and all this stuff about these Assets in these businesses so you have to keep that in mind like they need to they need to understand to a certain extent so they can get comfortable with it I mean that's you know when people are scared to make moves it's usually because they're just not educated enough to be able to to assess the risk and move forward or not now if they are educated enough and they do know enough about the asset and they still say look this is a
bad deal well then maybe maybe you should look at it again and make sure that it's not a not a bad deal but there there's definitely some you know give take there with personality types and how much risk that each person's comfortable with or not comfortable with yeah absolutely I think that's definitely I just I love when I see couples that are like really on the same page and are like yeah we're in this and you're you know you're doing it which is great and be both be active which is awesome um so let's talk a little bit
about um I guess you know kind of circle back to you know investing in deals you know as a passive investor um you know if if someone invests in a deal that doesn't go well um how to you know how should a passive investor respond to that or what are the things that you know someone can do if they're not getting the communication that they need I mean I know there's some legal things you can do but then it starts expensive and like what I guess what are some options as a passive investor let's say
your sponsor is having struggles or they're just not communicating is there some like what are the what are the what what can you do to try to get that to change yeah I mean this is why paperwork is so important like people don't want to deal with that and you know I'm an attorney so I'm on the front end all the time like telling you telling everybody hey like make sure we hash this out now like let's be have a a really transparent conversation let's figure out exactly what each part is getting
into and let's not like hold back at all you know a lot and some of this applies to passive investing some of it doesn't because you you know you have certain things that you can ask for certain things that you can't but be as transparent as possible upfront and with the paperwork and pay attention to what you sign and what you sign up for because at the end of the day when things start to go wrong that's what the fallback is the fallback is okay this person isn't communicating any longer or they're not doing the things that they
said vocally they're going to do what can I do and at that point that's when you have to look at the paperwork so if you have a contract and in this case it would be an operating agreement or a limited partnership agreement that you've signed or subscription agreement to you have to go back to that paperwork and look and sometimes they may have put in that paperwork for instance that they do agree to give you a quarterly report or maybe they agree to give you a an annual financial statement or maybe they
didn't I don't know it depends on what the paperwork says but that's the first step see what your rights are contractually and that's a good place to start because if you do have a contractual right that they have to give you a quarterly report or they have to give you annual financial statements or if you request it they have to give you certain Financial reports then that's the place to start and you say look I know things aren't going as well as they should be going I really want to get this thing back on track let's let's
start communicating but you know pursuing to the operating agreement I I need to see a quarterly report or I need to see this financial report um and put that in writing and writing can be just as simple as an email or text but get it in writing make sure that that communication is documented um not just verbally because if something does go wrong if if there is some sort of and this is unlikely but if there is some sort of fraud or gross negligence or anything like that going on at least you have that uh that written communication
between the parties that down the line you can be like look I asked for this five times I still haven't received it they said they would do this and then you can start saying okay at this point maybe we're not just talking about somebody not doing a great job or maybe we're not talking about the investment not going well as well as anticipated maybe now we're talking about some sort of negligence maybe now we're talking about somebody misrepresenting what they said they were going to do versus what
they do um but you need to have that in writing so that at the end of the day you can put that together um and and show it to whoever it might be your lawyer their lawyer or maybe a court yeah yeah it's interesting you know there's some new tools out there as well a lot of times these documents sometimes are 80 to 200 pages and there's a lot lot of you know legal Le and boilerplate stuff and just a lot of fine print and I found that one and I'd actually love to know your opinion on this but i' I've done this occasionally
where I'll take uh I'll take some some documents or ppms or marketing whatever I'll put them in chat GPT I'll just be like hey you know I'll start asking questions Hey what how does this work how does that work whatever and it'll kind of like go through and pull that out of there which is just kind of like a timesaver I just find for a lot of investors it's like I don't want to spend two hours reading this really you know thick language and I know you're an attorney so that's what you do and um
but I mean is that something that you've uh seen some people do or is it I know obviously things can be missed but it's it can kind of help you get to give you the gist of in this situation this happens or in this situation is that something that you kind of seen a little bit 100% and maybe not all attorneys would agree with this but I I encourage that I think it's perfectly fine like you've got to leverage technology and that technology is unbelievable it's unbelievable and it gets better every
single day like you just see a new iteration every couple of weeks now it's absolutely insane what it can do and you can certainly upload your PPM your operating agreement your subscription agreement into it and ask it questions now if it's something very nuanced it it won't it won't get to it if there's kind of like a lot of times there's like different Provisions that layer on top of each other it doesn't understand that yet it will at some point it'll be there and probably very very soon but a lot of
the questions you ask if they're nuanced um it won't understand it um so what I recommend is do that get a good high level overview you can also ask questions and then I would verify so like once it once it gives you an answer and it's something that's very important like you're like this is the answer that I was looking for ask it be like well what section did you pull this from and then get the section and then look it up yourself that particular section and verify that what it told you is actually
the answer yeah it's amazing the uh the tools we have I mean we really are in an an age where there's so much information everywhere but it's being able to access it quickly and it's like AI and some of these things can help with it and I don't think you know just a side note on AI I don't think it's that AI is going to be robots that's going to take over and kill us all or we're going to lose our jobs just to an AI bot or something but it's people using AI right that are are able to become a super employee or a
super business owner or super investor and really be able to get more information so I think it can be really powerful um what are uh what are some trends that you're kind of watching um I know actually I want you to talk about this too you're involved with a group called tribe vest which helps uh basically syndicators they have a portal and they can kind of have ways to be able to access uh certain deals and and and pass that information but what are what are also some Trends in relation what are some trends that you're seeing
as far as investing uh for Passive investors that are just things that can are good to watch or things that are helpful yeah I mean I think one really good thing is is what you you talked about already it's it's using Ai and and using software to make you a better investor so you can you like before you get this 200 Page PPM and you're like what what in the world do with this and maybe one out of a 100 investors will read that line for line if that and even if they could read it they probably don't understand it unless they they
happen to be a Securities attorney or some sort of transactional attorney they're not even going to get it um fun fact a PPM is actually supposed to be in non-legal ease it's supposed to be in in layman's terms that's the whole point of it is so that you can understand your investment in layman's terms but ppms have turned into you know a legal document so yeah even longer um but yeah I mean I think you can start leveraging Ai and software to just be a better investor and not just from you know
reading legal documents like we had mentioned earlier that's a good example of of you know when you're looking into an investment maybe put that PPM into chat gbt ask questions about the investment ask if there's any inconsistencies between the PPM and the operating agreement things like that um but you can also use it for underwriting and due diligence and things like that um I'm actually an adviser for a startup called brixley and we are working on kind of a due diligence type of process process where we're aggregating all the
due diligence documents we're putting them into a software and then you're able to evaluate the deal so you can evaluate that deal based on your buy box and those sorts of things and it's just it and things like that just change the game quickly right like before it just takes a lot of Manpower um a lot of hours and now it just takes minutes but you still have to have somebody skilled enough to prompt and skilled enough to ask the right questions and skilled enough to make sure that you're not believing the AI and it's not
hallucinating um that sort of thing because you've got to make sure that the information gives you is right because right now it does spit out some things that that don't make a lot of sense so you just gota gota be be very careful but people if you aren't leveraging AI in just your everyday life then you're you're getting left behind yeah yeah know you got a fact check on other stories of attorneys like I guess there was an attorney in New York that like just took his whole thing and put it into AI a chat jbt and it wasn't even
right it was like totally wrong and they got disbarred or something for doing that so it's obviously an investor the the risk is not going to be disbarred typically it's more you might lose your shorts or something so it's makeing sure you're doing it the right way yeah for sure yeah you gotta be careful you got to be careful but like I said it's getting better every single day like I I think in you know two years it's going to be unrecognizable in in five years we're going to have a humanoid robot in every home that we
have like yeah yeah it it really is changing so fast and that's where I think it is really important important to pay attention to technology to try new things if people are not like as a listener if you're if you haven't used chat GPT there's an app you can use for free there's the website get familiar with prompting which is just going in and just being commands I literally use it I'm going to Columbia we're recording this I'm going this week to Columbia and I want here's my nine days I'm going to
be here create an itinerary for me like literally created an itinerary based on my values what I want to do and and I can always like go off of that but it's like it's so helpful right it's amazing yeah it's such a time saer it's insane it's insane yeah it is it is uh well Seth I really appreciate you you being here today I just feel like you add so much value both as an investor a business owner an attorney um just love what you're creating with your content and uh can you just share how people can
follow your show and how they can hear about you and and some of the things that you're doing absolutely man best place to go would be Seth paaul bradley.com and that's where I have kind of all my social media links you'll have a link to raay law my Securities Law Firm as well as try best fun of funds in a box and the podcast as well awesome brother thanks for being here man all right thanks Bronson appreciate it all right I hope you enjoyed this interview with Seth I just I love the stuff at the
end there about AI if you you know you want to go back and Rel listen to that just using chat GPT in your life in your business to look at ppms and even as an attorney said yeah some attorneys don't like that because it will miss things but it's really a timesaver we use it all the time we use it all the time in our business I use it all the time in my personal life and it's just so helpful I literally it's kind of replace my Google search now because it's so much better and instead of we used to go spending
time on Google you spend 30 minutes researching something now it just kind of spit out the answer for you which is really great so I use it for health stuff for travel or business topics all kinds of different ideas just find it really really helpful so hopefully you got something out of this interview you enjoyed it if you have not en joined our investment Club you're not hearing about our amazing deals that we're doing right now and that we're really excited about so um if you want to check that out you
can check out the link in the uh show notes or the link below or you can go to Bronson equity.com and hit the join button we'll start a relationship with you set up a call with you and you can start hearing about our awesome upcoming deals so thank thank you for taking the time to educate yourself seriously it humbles me it excites me it gets me fired up because the best investment you make is in your own education we look forward to seeing you on the next episode you've been listening to the mailbox money podcast for more free
resources articles and videos go to Bronson equity.com there you can download your copy of the Special Report the single best investment strategy during and after a pandemic none of the information shared here is an offer to buy a specific investment and this is for education ational purposes only consult your financial legal and tax professionals and use your own Common Sense before making any investment decisions thanks for joining us and be sure to tune next time for more mailbox money [Music]
Links from the Show and Guest Info and Links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xrvBhGtS5w&t=396s
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1762572444669041
Seth Bradley’s Links:
https://www.youtube.com/@sethbradleyesq
www.facebook.com/sethbradleyesq
https://www.threads.com/@sethbradleyesq
https://www.instagram.com/sethbradleyesq/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sethbradleyesq/
https://passiveincomeattorney.com/seth-bradley/
https://www.biggerpockets.com/users/sethbradleyesq
https://medium.com/@sethbradleyesq
https://www.tiktok.com/@sethbradleyesq?lang=en
Bronson Hill’s Links:
https://www.instagram.com/bronsondavidhill/
https://www.instagram.com/bronsonequity/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bronsonhill/
https://www.facebook.com/bronson.hill.37/
https://www.tiktok.com/@bronsonequity2020