Ben Oberg, break down something I see high earners get wrong constantly. If you're making three hundred fifty thousand dollars a year and going out to house hack a duplex, you're playing in the kiddie pool with your investments while you're playing with the big kids in your income. It's…
This used to be a water runoff area. There was a bridge across it that was basically rotting and falling apart. We turned it into an outdoor event space. Fire pit, lights at night, elevated about two feet so you'd never know all that water runoff is still underneath. Tenants…
I could've rented this space out to another business. Instead I put in a gym. Most tenants won't use it. But that's not the point. It's a magnet. They walk through, see how nice the space is, and want to lease something here. Same reason an apartment complex puts in…
Most investors think buying stock in an oil company means they're investing in oil. But direct oil and gas investing works very differently—and understanding that distinction opens the door to an entirely different set of potential benefits and risks. In part two with Ben Oberg of The Capitalist Network, Caleb…
This used to be an x-ray room. Lead walls and everything. Honestly, this isn't a building most people would've wanted. It needed to be completely repurposed, and that scares a lot of buyers off. Now it's a co-working space with 24/7 tenant access, cameras at night, individual private offices with…
You've probably heard of house hacking. Buy a fourplex, live in one unit, let the rent cover your mortgage. We needed an office space, but not one this big. Then this whole building came up and we bought it. Four offices in here, most of my team is remote so…
You don't find deals. You create them. Sure, every once in a while one falls in my lap. But most of the time it's me seeing an opportunity someone else walked past. A value driver sitting right there that another person either wasn't willing to take the risk on or…
We didn't need a building this big. We needed four offices. But when the whole building came up, I bought it anyway. Old medical space, exam rooms, sinks in every wall, nothing anybody wanted. That's exactly why it made sense. I turned the extra space into rentable suites, a gym,…
I've been remote with my team for a couple years. We just bought an office building and we're gutting the whole thing to move everyone in. Not because remote doesn't work. Because three things matter more than convenience. One, separation. When I'm home I want to be home. When I'm…
There are only two sources of yield in any real estate deal. Macro market. Value drivers. I like to say it this way: it's yield you hope for versus yield you create. Value drivers are internal. Things you control, things you can force, expenses you can cut, income you can…
The deal that feels safe is not always the deal that is safe. Most investors think if it has cash flow, it's a good deal. That's just fundamentally not true, and it's an amateur way to think about it. Cash flow can mean your business plan is working. Or it…
What happens when your income has outgrown the way you invest? In this episode of Own The Exit, Caleb and Aaron sit down with Ben Oberg of The Capitalist Network to unpack what high-income accredited investors are actually prioritizing as they move beyond traditional financial strategies and take greater ownership…
Cash flow does not mean you found a good deal. I hear this constantly. If it cash flows, it's good. That is amateur hour thinking. Cash flow can mean your business plan is actually working. Or it can just mean you got lucky on the debt. Cheap, floating rate debt…
Eighteen months in, we recapped a deal and returned investors close to a 1.4 equity multiple. Now we're getting ready to refile after the renovations, and we're about to return investors thirty to forty percent of their invested capital, on top of the cash flow distributions they've already been collecting.…
I lay two circles over every deal before I touch it. Macro market. Value drivers. Most people only look at one. The good deals live where both circles overlap, where the market's tailwind and your own operational work are pulling in the same direction. If you're only checking one circle,…
Most investors think the yield on their deal is because of something they did. Half the time, it's not. I asked Aaron this straight up, what's actually producing the return. And he broke it into two buckets. The market, the macro cycle doing what it's doing... and value drivers, the…
Cash flow shows up after something else happened. Appreciation shows up after something else happened. So thinking cash flow and appreciation are how you make money in real estate... that's wrong. It's like saying the way you make money at your job is your paycheck. No. The way you make…
Cash flow is not where your money comes from. It's proof that something else already happened. Same with appreciation. Both of those numbers on your statement, they're outputs. They show up after the real work is already done. Most investors chase the output and never ask what actually produced it.…
Most investors are out hunting for “good deals”… but what if the real money isn’t found—it’s created? In this episode, we take you inside a real project that sat vacant for three years and show how it was transformed into a high-performing asset with multiple income streams. We walk through…
Under the pipe, I realized I could get somewhere between one hundred eighty and two hundred forty thousand a year just by changing the order things happen in. The pipe is assets built to pay first, real estate cash flow, private credit interest, energy distributions, income first. And the asset…
The pile way has a name, the 4% rule. Sell down four percent a year, hope the market cooperates for thirty years. On three million dollars that's about one hundred twenty thousand a year. But every withdrawal in a down year does permanent damage to the pile. That's not retirement.…
If you make good money and you still feel stuck, ask yourself the question that actually got me moving. It's not what's your net worth. It's not what are you worth. It's what did you get paid last month? Save this for the next time you catch yourself feeling rich…
If I was starting over, the third thing I'd focus on is moving one brick. Not the whole pile, just one brick. That's what I did. I didn't liquidate my life, I took one asset and pointed it at something that pays me monthly. And I'll tell you, the first…
This is the exercise I actually did. Audit your pile, line by line, whatever you've got. And ask one simple question for each line. What actually paid me last month? Not what it's worth. What it paid. Send this to the friend who keeps bragging about their net worth and…
