SUMMARY KEYWORDS

investing, notes, fred, people, learning, conversation, life, long, property, world, investors, real estate, question, happened, buying, education, pay, important, income, listen

SPEAKERS

Billy Keels

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Billy Keels  00:00

Today's conversation is sponsored by first generation Capital Partners. If you're an accredited investor, and you want to know about how we're helping other accredited investors keep more of their income, go to firstgencp.com, forward slash going long.

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00:12

Think about what your priorities are, and they will change for sure over time throughout your life. Family needs change, different circumstances and situations come up throughout your life. And so it's important to really pay attention to that.

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00:30

You're listening to the going long podcast with Billy keels, the number one podcast for long distance real asset investing.

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Billy Keels  00:39

Welcome to the go long podcast, we're back once again to continue to help to educate you so you feel much more comfortable as well as confident investing beyond your backyard. Yes, I'm your host, Billy keels back once again, another amazing conversation. But before we get to the conversation, just a couple things. Number one, if you have already left your honest written review, as well as reading thank you so much, if you're still thinking about it, go ahead, you can do it. It's really easy, Apple, Spotify, there's even a link here in the video, and really want to thank those of you who continue to share the podcast across social media, specifically on LinkedIn, and Instagram, we really, really appreciate that. tagging us, it means the world to us. So also, if you want to find any of the previous episodes, go to first ncp.com forward slash podcasts. Once again, it's first ncp.com forward slash podcasts. And you can find transcripts, audio, video, anything that you would ever need or want. And for those of you today, this is about today's conversation, like if you really want to understand how you can increase new vehicles into your long distance investing portfolio, like today is a conversation that you're really going to want to listen to because today's guest is an expert in the world of notes, and how you can go from like paying money every month to receiving money every month, he's going to break it down for you to give you some educational ideas and concepts. And they will really help you with your long distance investing portfolio. But because you can be anywhere, literally. So we're gonna get to the conversation with Fred Moskowitz, and we're gonna get to that just after this. Are you a busy high paid professional, someone who's made $200,000 The previous two years and also expected to earn $200,000 This year, or maybe as a couple you filed jointly and you've earned $300,000, the previous two years, and also expected to earn $300,000 together this year, or maybe yourself or as a couple, you have a million dollars in net worth not including your home? Well, if you meet any of those criteria, then the IRS considers you to be someone who is an accredited investor. And so that probably means you're a top producing software sales executive, or maybe you're a highly paid consultant, maybe you're a lawyer, maybe you're a doctor or a business owner, you may even work for a professional sports franchise, well, one way or the other, you've done a lot of really hard work to get to where you are, you've done 100% of the work. And nowadays, you're continuing to get crushed by taxes. And that means you're only bringing home 50% of the reward. If you're tired of doing this over and over and you're looking for a solution to start to keep more of your money, you can go to firsthand cp.com forward slash invest so that you can start to keep more of your money, which means that you can start to have the freedom to choose what you want to do when you want to do it with whom you want to do it. So once again, go to first gen cpe.com forward slash invest, to see how we can start to help you today. Once again, that's first gen cpe.com Ford slash invest. So if you're a busy professional who wants to understand how to get paid, while you wait, as you build your long distance investing portfolio, then guess what today's conversation you're gonna want to listen to until the very last word, you know why? Because today's guest after college, well, he found his way to the world of alternative assets, which sounds like really, really cool to me. He is also advocating for ongoing education for busy professionals as well as entrepreneurs. And he's going to tell us a little bit more about how he's doing that. Guess what he's even written the little green book on note investing. Really want to hear more about that. And you know what I'd like to welcome to today's conversation public speaker, entrepreneur and author, Mr. Fred Moskowitz. Fred, welcome to show man.

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04:08

Hello, Billy, thank you for having me on. It's great to be here.

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Billy Keels  04:11

Yeah, man, I'm really, really looking forward to it. I've appreciated the pre conversation, I love the things that you're doing the space that you're in, and it's also going to help our long distance investing family get even closer to their goals and dreams and desires. So as you know, Fred, I'm going to ask you five questions you're going to get to in the beginning, you're gonna have three in the end. Well, actually, you know what, I'm going to ask you more than five questions. Those are the only five questions that I know I'm going to ask you some other stuff in between. I just don't know what those questions are yet are going to be.

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04:39

Will come they will come and they'll

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Billy Keels  04:42

be good to go. I feel like we're gonna have a great conversation. Help us understand, Fred. First and foremost, where do you call home in the US?

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04:50

In I'm in Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on the East Coast. All right,

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Billy Keels  04:54

fantastic. Over on the right coast, not too far. A couple hours south of New York City Got a lot of stuff going on there, which is, which is also fantastic. So outside of Philly, the other thing is Fred, I'd love to know, what's the most positive thing that's happened to you or for you in the last 24 hours?

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05:13

Wow, the most positive thing that's happened is last night, last night, when I was at the gym, had a really good conversation with someone I was, as I was leaving, and it was one of those conversations where you, you get that feeling that notion that the other person walked away, feeling a lot better than they did when the encounter first happened. And that's something I love that there's little moments that happen where you have an opportunity to make an impact. And you never know about how you can affect someone else, either through the energy which with which you show up in the world, or something you said or topic, or you changed someone's perspective are open them up to to looking at things in a new way. And I just love that I really love that. And it's those little happen stances in life that come up when you least expect it.

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Billy Keels  06:27

And I love being able to have that positive impact on others, and really having that feeling of, hey, listen, that person went away having a better feeling than they did prior to. So I appreciate you sharing those two things with us. And you know what, Fred, here's the thing. I know, we just kind of met, but most of the go along family knows that I am a recovering perfectionist, which means I try to do things sometimes that are like impossible to do. But it's just this gene that I have. And so sometimes I try to do things that are impossible, like tell your entire backstory in like one and a half seconds, that was never gonna happen. You've done way too much. You've impacted way too many lives. So I would love to ask for your help. And also I need to ask for a favour. So the thing that I'd like to ask your help for is, number one, if you could tell your own backstory, in your own words, you can take a lot longer than one and a half seconds, because you're our special guests. So tell your backstory number one. And then if you could talk to us about some of the major decisions that you've made to get to this point in your journey. And then we'll see you and I take the conversation from there.

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07:25

Okay, great. Absolutely. A little bit about my background, I came from having a very long successful career, I was working as a computer engineer, I spent many years working on all these different technology and startup companies. And I love that I love that field. But what happened was, I watched my entire industry, it got turned upside down completely, because we had the bursting of the.com bubble. And if you remember around that time, that was immediately followed by the September 11 terrorist attacks. And so there was all of this turmoil in the world, the tech industry was in shambles. And I came to this realisation that it was way too dependent on the income from my job, it was my only income source. And even though I loved my job, it was just full of all the circumstances completely out of my control. And what I learned was that no matter how talented of an engineer I was, or how valuable of an employee I was, if things were not going well at the company or in the industry, I could lose my job very quickly, through no fault of my own. And so that made me come to the realisation that I needed to start to find other sources of income. So I wouldn't be so dependent on the paycheck for my job. And with that, I turn to alternative investments. I really started learning about the idea of buying and building assets, assets that you can own, you can control, and they generate income for you. So no matter what you're doing, you're getting paid while you wait. And that's what was very appealing to me. I've wanted that cashflow and the income streams even if I didn't need them at the time. That's what gave me a huge amount of stability in my financial life slot.

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Billy Keels  09:44

Fantastic. So yeah, so you know, it's really interesting. You talk about a couple of major events, right the.com bubble, the the terribleness of things that happened in on 911 back in 2001. For those people who don't remember I was actually in New York City at the time. Um, but you recognise that all of these things were happening and you were in computer engineering that you needed to do, or you wanted to do something a bit differently because you didn't want to have the dependency on the job. It's interesting. He talked about alternative assets, but one of the things so like, I don't come from money, and there's a lot of people that listen that they didn't necessarily come from money, but they're a first generation accredited investor, right? And so I was never really exposed to the alternative asset world. So my thought My thing was, when I got started in corporate, I just they told me to sign up for 401k. And Iran, I had some people with some mutual funds. So maybe just a little bit. Yeah. Talk to us about your journey about how you actually were able to find, like the world of alternative assets, because I find it's easy for everybody.

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10:48

Absolutely. Absolutely. I was right there with you. You have that 440 1k plan at work. And for so many people, that's all they know about investing, that's the only thing they do. They sign up the the pick a half dozen or so options and say, Hey, I'm diversified? Well, guess what? All of those options, it's 100% in stock market. So no, it's not diversified, not at all. And what I was seeing in my own life was over and over again, different people that I knew, personally, that had built amazing amounts of wealth through owning real estate, and holding it long term, I saw people that were certainly not of any means by at all. They lived a very average very discreet lifestyle. But on paper, they were million multimillionaires because of the real estate. And I recognise that right away, I said, that's something that anyone can do, anyone can learn. And so I started my own education with that. There were no podcasts at the time like this one that you could listen to and learn from. But there were books I joined. This was pivotal thing for me, was joining a Real Estate Investment Association. They exist everywhere, and they're clubs where you can go and join and meet, they exist for the purpose of educating. And so that's what I started soaking up all the different education training, there were workshops on the weekends and learning about that. And real estate has been a great vehicle. For me, it's an asset class I love, there's a lot of great benefits to it that I feel that everyone should look into. And what happened over time was I started learning a little bit about notes as part of real estate. And most of it came from the perspective of buying property with owner financing or selling a property with owner financing. And I thought, wow, this is really cool. I'm not sure how it can be relevant for me, I don't have any way of, of being able to invest in notes. But I top that in the back of my mind for a few years. But a number of years later through some relationships and that I had and people that I knew in the investment world, I had the opportunity to buy notes. And when I had saucer tunity I jumped. So

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Billy Keels  13:42

just just just to cut you off really quickly, because there may be some people who are listening for the very first time and I know that you've even written the book, like literally written the little green book of note investing, but just break it down help that person. What is a note and what is yeah, what is it?

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13:57

Yeah, what is a note, a note is a prop a promissory note, a promise to pay, and so you're buying a debt obligation. That's what note investing is. And when it comes to real estate, a lot of people invest in real estate houses and multifamily apartment buildings, even vacation properties. But we're talking about investing in the paper and the financing portion of these transactions, which are the notes and mortgages associated with those properties. It's a debt instrument that's secured by collateral. So that property is backing the note. And that gives you a lot of downside. A lot of protection, downside protection, and it's a really interesting part of the real estate business. And what I found is that a lot of real estate investors they don't pay any attention to it. Most people when they think of a note and a mortgage They think of being the borrower, and not as being the lender. And so with note investing, you're basically stepping cross the aisle and becoming the bank. And this allows you to transition from being the one making the monthly payments to being the one receiving the monthly payments. And what I love, it's, it's a great way to increase the stability and predictability of your cash flow. And so that was very appealing to me.

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Billy Keels  15:31

So, so you talked about stability and predictability. And that kind of leads into one of one of the questions I wanted to ask before. So you said it was for you? And maybe I'm stating the obvious, but so for that person who is like trying to figure out okay, yeah, this sounds pretty cool. Notes, I can go from like being on the paying side to actually receiving the money. like who is this person who is the person that you have found that most moves towards this world of note investing?

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16:02

Many people, many people, but there's some primary characteristics. This is something I've seen folks in with a lot of experience with real estate, maybe they've owned property for many, many years, I'll share a story I have. I have a friend Helen, that she's a spunky woman in her 60s, longtime landlord for years and years and years, she had, she had a rental house that it got trashed by tenants. And she said, I was going to be renovating this property for the third time throughout my ownership of it over decades. And so she was getting tired of doing that of managing the property, she managed it herself did a great job of it. But she said, Look, life's too short. And so she renovated that property one last time, and then sold it. And then she took the proceeds from that sale, and bought some notes. And, and what she found with those notes, is that she basically doubled the rate of return, and double the income that she had beginning from the rental property. And she didn't have to manage anything. They were just notes, she was the lender. Her notes were secured by real estate, and she was collecting payments. And so what it reminded me of was, you know, if any of you like playing the game Monopoly, it's kind of like the idea of you take your four green houses and trade them up to red Hotel. That's what she did. But she did it through through financing. And so there she was now earning, earning cash flow getting payments every month. And she didn't have to manage the property, she didn't have to deal with tenants, none of that. And so that that's just an example, an example of the power with this, what I like is this ability to scale because if anyone is, don't get me wrong, real estate is great. I love the asset class. But if you're buying properties, in particular single family homes, there's a limit to how much you can scale up to. And once you hit that limit, it starts to become very painful, very stressful. And it starts to impact your lifestyle. And the way you feel with notes, it's very easy to scale into a large portfolio, you're only limited by two things, the amount of capital you have, and the access to notes. And but if you can keep buying them, you can grow into very large portfolio. And that's what we've seen in the industry is a lot of investors have been successful. And they've scaled up pretty nicely.

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Billy Keels  19:13

Okay, so as you continue to scale up in notes and write in this was one of the other ways, right? Because we want as, as a long distance investor, we want you to be able to continue to build your portfolio, right? And so what, Fred, what you're helping us do is to get more insight into that. Trusting that you're enjoying today's conversation. And you know, if you're tired of getting crushed by taxes, and you're looking for greater freedom, to be able to choose what you want to do when you want to do it, make sure that you go to first ncp.com Ford slash going long and see how we can help you today. Let's get back to the conversation. Talk to us about because it seems like you know how they always say it seems too good to be true. Like what's the catch? Talk to us about the role of education and really how you get to de risk. We have to educate right and so what is the role of education in terms of of notes and being able to realise if this is the right type of asset for someone's investment portfolio. Yeah, there?

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20:10

This is a great question. There's there's a lot of factors that come into play. The first one and I feel the most important is how much time do you want to devote to note investing, if it's something that you want to do, you can be involved as an active investor buying, analysing and managing notes. And that's great, but that takes time. And for others, you may prefer a passive approach. And so you can invest in a note Fund, which is actively managed, it operates very similar to how a real estate syndication works, where the fund managers raise capital from investors that have an offering. And then they raise capital, they'll go out to the secondary market, and buy the notes and they'll perform due diligence and acquire the notes and then manage them and pay return to the investors. So for some people that want a more passive approach, that's better. And there's no right or wrong answer really comes down to how much time you have. And what I find is that for someone that's a busy professional, to have their own business or their career in career that's keeps them really busy. They like the the approach of passive investing through a fund, but other people love being hands on and being involved. And so for them, it's active actively buying notes, and managing a portfolio.

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Billy Keels  21:48

Okay, understood understanding that and also to just really, as you as you break that down, given the one, number one, how actively do you want to be involved? And how much time do you want to actually be investing? There are options for both, as you said, there's no right or wrong answer. It's just really about being able to understand yourself and having access and education to this world is one of the things that will be the most important to your to your long term success. But listen, before we get into our into The going long, final three, Fred, one of the questions I did want to ask you, so I know you have a pretty particular thought on this. But talk to us about the having the a holistic approach to growing your overall your business as well as your image.

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22:33

Yeah, absolutely. As far as growing, growing your your business and your business activities, it really comes down to where are you focusing your time, focusing your time, maybe you're a business owner, and you're focused on growing that maybe you are a professional, specialised professional, a physician, and attorney and engineer. And are your work in finance and you're focused on that in that career. Or maybe you want to be a business owner and you're focused on on growing that business. think II think about what your priorities are, and they will change for sure over time throughout your life. Family needs change. different circumstances and situations come up throughout your life. And so it's important to really pay attention, attention to that. And in addition, it's your own growth and development as a person, as a professional as a human being. All of that I feel that it's so important and this is something it hard myself is to be a strive to be a lifelong learner. Always investing in my own education, investing in new things, learning new technologies, right, my engineering background never left me. So I always want to learn new new technologies, new skills. There are so many areas, they can be business skills, they can be life skills, they can be creative and artistic skills, which has its own whole set of benefits to for or relieving stress for giving you getting you in a mode of creation of being open and being creative. And what happens with that is even if you're pursuing some type of an artistic activity, you can ideas about a new business you can start or a new investment tactic that you can put into place. I feel that's so, so valuable. And it's something that often gets overlooked. People will get so serious Oh, I'm going to focus on work, focus on business focus on investing. What about doing something, taking off an activity that is fun, that's creative, might be playing a musical instrument, or playing in a sport. You know, speaking of sports, what one of the best things that we can do is physical activity. Because we feel good. We're, we have fitness. We're out there moving, specially me, I'm sitting in a chair all day long. And so that's something that's very important to me. Get out there, get that blood flowing. Because what happens is oxygen goes to your brain, you get energy. And then that energy is something you can carry forward in other parts of your life. And that's something that everyone can benefit from. Yep,

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Billy Keels  26:03

absolutely. And looking for those benefits and having that holistic approach, looking at what are the things that are important to you as you evolve over your lifetime, and the things that will help you get closer to your goal. So listen for it. Here's the thing, man, we got to get to the goal long final three, because that's what everybody wants us to do. But as our special guest. I'm never gonna get you asked you they'll go along fine on three unless you tell me that you're ready. So my question for you is, are you ready? Absolutely. Absolutely. You were born ready, man. So here we go. So we started with you over in Philadelphia, PA, or near Philly. I'd like to bring it back to this side of the pond. Even though I'm from Columbus, Ohio. I've been living in Europe for the last 22 years. So I would love for you to share with us. What is your favourite European city that you've either visited, bred or still on your bucket list to visit?

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26:51

Wow. I'm going to answer both. I'll tell you both. So my favourite that I've been is Paris. What's on my bucket list is going to Portugal, Lisbon and the surrounding areas. I really look forward to spending some time there. And it looks so interesting. I love cities where there's centuries old culture and architecture. I'm fascinated with that.

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Billy Keels  27:25

Fantastic. So we're if it's okay with you. We're going to take Paris, I started my journey in Paris a long time ago. So and Lisbon, by the way, is pretty awesome. It's pretty amazing. So I appreciate appreciate you sharing that in the vision as well. Here's the next the next question. And you know what, I'm just going to ask this directly. Because normally, I had like to play a game with this and all this other kind of stuff. But I do want to know from you, Fred, like, when you think about all of the different. Like, it's happened to me a lot. You know, you'd want to go out and you try new things, and you try things and they don't work and they fail and you have a learning opportunity or a failure or a mistake or whatever, like you don't get the result that you want. I don't want you to think about like that that failure event. Or what happened. What I really would love for you to share with me in the going long family is what's the lesson that you learned that you know that that lesson that you want to pay it forward and share it with with us here today at the going long family? What's what's one lesson that you've learned as a result of a of a learning opportunity, a failure that you want to share with us today? Yeah, I

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28:26

love this. This is such such a key question. This is something I learned from a mentor of mine. Such a important concept is that we become the sum of all the failures and obstacles that we've overcome. And so in life all throughout life, there's going to be failures and setbacks and obstacles, but they will happen inevitably. And what I would say is don't spend time being disappointed, sad, discouraged. And instead, why not get curious, get curious and start asking the questions like, what's the learning opportunity here for me? What can I take from this that's going to allow me to grow and evolve and become a better person on the other side of this? So get curious. Look for the learning lessons. Look for the opportunities. Don't be sad. Don't be feeling bad. Don't spend time in that place. Spend time instead looking at what am I going to learn? How am I going to grow? And what happens a lot of times is gonna end up with a pretty great story to talk about in the end. But there's always growth growth in these situations in these learning lessons, and that's something that I I feel so important.

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Billy Keels  30:01

Absolutely. So make sure that you continue to be curious in spite of what's going on around you stay curious, ask the question, you know, what can you learn from this opportunity and move forward. So appreciate that. And then the last thing, right, and I just want to remind everybody that you have already written the little green book on note investing, so you got to check them out, look, look for that. And I'm sure he's gonna give us a way for us to find out more about that. But also, Fred, just to kind of wrap things up, I always like to leave us with new knowledge. So what is one book that you would recommend to the going long family today,

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30:31

one book that I would recommend is called the power of who, by Bob Bodeen. This is such an impactful book, it's about how to build relationships, using not going out and finding new people and meeting new people, it turns upside down that traditional notion of networking, but instead going in the network that you have, the people that you know, already, that's your most powerful network. And so this is a really impactful book. And I think that it really turns the idea of networking on its head. And I highly recommend reading it. Bob Bodeen is the author and it's called The Power of who

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Billy Keels  31:19

awesome bubbled in the power of who we're gonna include that in the show notes. So don't worry, everybody, if you're running, if you're driving, don't do anything that will distract you, we're going to have a click link in you're going to be able to find that there really, really easily. So listen, you know what, Fred, I, you know, I think about the gym conversation that you mentioned, that happened yesterday, and just the positivity that came away from that, sharing with us your computer engineering background, the things that happened around 911 and the.com. Bubble and you realising that you are 100%, dependent on your role, you then sought out and were able to find the world of alternative assets, it's helped you not only to be able to create your own life independence, but also now helping others to be able to do the exact same thing, helping others to be able to realise that, hey, listen, creating different types of opportunities, growing your portfolio with different vehicles, that something that's going to give you the ultimate freedom that you're looking for. So everybody just wants to know the question, though afraid, like, here's the thing, they're like, really just shut up and ask them the question. So I'm going to ask you the question, what is the best way for the going long family to find out more about you and what you're doing and how you they can participate in some of the things that that you're doing or get more education from you.

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32:28

Yeah, thank you appreciate that. Best way to connect with me is to visit my website, which is Fred moscowitz.com. However, I'll tell you, if you prefer an easier spelling, you can go instead to gift from fred.com. And that'll take you to my website. And so you can sign up for my newsletter, you can request that I'll send a special report about note investing, talking a little bit more about this asset class that I love. And for anyone that's located in the US, if you rather text me, you can send a text message by sending the word money to the phone number 215-461-4433. And then follow the prompts. And I always love connecting with investors, building new relationships, and learning about what other investors are doing. Because there's so many different areas specially in alternative investing, and always looking to learn new things and meet people. Thank you.

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Billy Keels  33:41

All right, fantastic. Well, Fred, thank you so much. Listen, go on family, we're gonna make it really, really easy for you to just have the links and click the link for it's given you a couple of different ways to get in touch with him. If you're in the US, he's got a text number, we're gonna get all of that to you. Listen for it. I just want to say thank you very much for deciding to invest your time with me and the entire go along family really appreciate it.

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34:00

Thank you for having me on. It was a great, great conversation. Thank you.

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Billy Keels  34:04

All right, fantastic. And Fred, give me like 1015 seconds just want to wrap things up. Listen, everybody, Fred just gave you a like the world on alternative assets talk to you really broke down the notes. Part of of things helped you to understand if this is a word that you want to understand more about, and he's even giving you access directly to him. So take today's conversation, share with some other people that you know, want to hear about alternative assets notes and want to learn continue with Fred as well. Share that conversation, have conversations about it and get Fred involved. He's made it really easy to get in touch with him. So while you're taking action, I'm going to be here preparing for the very next conversation. So until then, go out and make it a great day. And thank you very much. Trust that you enjoyed today's conversation and once again, today's conversation was sponsored by first generation Capital Partners. If you're an accredited investor want to find out more about how we're helping accredited investors to gain their personal freedom even faster. Go to firstgencp.com forward slash going long.

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