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

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  00:21

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. And yes, I am your host, Billy keels. And I'm back for another one of these super cool solo episodes, we're gonna fill in some gaps on some things that I was having a conversation with a potential investor or family member earlier this week. And I realised that there's probably something that many of you either you don't know, you thought you knew, or you or been wondering. So I'm going to make sure that I fill you in on that. But before I do that, I just want to say thank you so much to all of you who continue to tag who continue to share the goal on podcast across social media, you're helping us to continue to stay in the top 1.5% of podcasts globally, it just to give you an idea, like there are over 3 million podcasts, you being here, week, after week or twice a week, is really continuing to help us to help others. So thank you for that. If you also want to leave an honest written review, as well as writing, especially if you're on the Apple platform or the Spotify platform, we'd really appreciate that. And listen today, let me just this is not going to be a very long episode, because I like to keep these solo episodes relatively short, because well, you want me to keep them relatively short. And so that's I aim to please as much as possible. So here's the thing I was talking to, you know, because we're at the beginning of the year, a lot of people were looking at what they can do. And you may be even thinking to yourself, like, Okay, I gotta get ready for my investment portfolio and strategy and all that kind of stuff. And so I've been speaking to people this week, a lot of people who are interested in being able to not only generate income, but be able to keep more of their income tax, because we do something very specifically for accredited investors, we want to keep more of your income tax, and also make that money grow. So if that sounds like something that you may be interested in as well, you may want to just go to, we've made a nice little PDF, where you go to first gen cpe.com, forward slash going long. And you can find out about that, especially if you're an accredited investor, looking to keep more of your income tax as well as make that money grow. So anyway, so one of the things that happened is we had this conversation and that guy was speaking and he was like, Well, you know what, I don't really know your, I don't really know much about you. I don't know your backstory. I've kind of heard you on a couple of podcasts. I've seen some of the stuff on your blog over at first uncp.com forward slash blog. But I don't really know, like your backstory, would you mind telling me and I was like, oh, you know, that's pretty good idea. So what I thought I would do today, and this is very Reader's Digest version, showing my age, I thought I would give everyone just a very quick understanding of who the host of your going long podcast is Billy keels. And I'll probably do another one of these in a couple of months, because life is always evolving. But here's the deal. Billy keels comes from a very humble, middle class, lower middle class background, like I watched both of my parents struggle financially, meaning that there was always food in the house. But you know, I just watched them, they had the education that they had around money. And so it usually meant, like most people, they were struggling to make more money, their idea of making more money meant working more hours. And as you and I both know, at the end of the day, that's a loser's game, because you can't, you can't win that way. The wealthiest people in the world don't just try to work more hours. They're looking to leverage the efforts of others at the end of the day. I digress. So by the time I was 12, we lived in three different states. I was born in Ohio, we brother and sister born in California, in Colorado, and then we eventually moved to Texas where we were there for a while my dad was in, in the oil industry, mom went down there as well was really involved in church. And one of the things that we always saw, no matter what, where we were was, our parents always said, continue to work harder study, get the good grades. And when you do that, then we wouldn't have to do the same types of jobs that they did. So that was like the motivation. And then we were very fortunate because we always were in very good school districts. There's a really good part of that because we got access to great education. The kind of downside to that was, we didn't physically we weren't able to afford the things that most of my friends were able to afford because my parents were working two jobs it wasn't daddy work and and mommy at home or mommy working and daddy at home, which is what happened with a lot of my friends. And so what that did is it added another motivator for me like continue to work hard because I was surrounded by really cool nice people who had good lives. And and I realised I could also be a really good cool, nice person just had to work hard, get some specialised knowledge. So not only did I do that got really good grades in high school, really good grades in college where I went to school at Miami, Ohio and southwest of Ohio. I guess I can say go Redhawks at this point in time so you're called something different back in the day. But here's the deal, even with two degrees, really great grades. I got rejected twice for my dream job because I wanted to work for Procter and Gamble. I'd never been used to being rejected. That was like the hardest, most humbling thing for me ever. I decided when I got rejected the first time with one degree I moved overseas got a second degree because that was a Spanish degree on marketing and Spanish. And even with that second degree overseas experience, I got, like, rejected again, really difficult to deal with. But if it wasn't for a very good friend of mine named Andy, and massive shout out to Andy because this dude is just amazing. So Andy tells me about these people who were travelling around the world have based in St. Louis, Missouri, there were about 26,000 people that applied for the role. I was one of the 26 who got accepted right before the 1996 Olympics. That thing absolutely just changed my changed my life, right? Because between the ages 21 and 26, I'd worked and travelled throughout some 58 different countries. It was amazing. Game Changer working, travelling 2528 days a month, tested so many different things that I thought were reality, tested the way that I approach situations, and just overall helped to make me a better person. And so I didn't see myself going to a normal nine to five job. So what I did was like everybody, you take a one year sabbatical when you're 26 years old, right? I say that kind of tongue in cheek. But I took the one year sabbatical. As it took the one year sabbatical went overseas got accepted to a great university in Paris called the sunburn. In the beginning, I used to say the sore bone. But it's less urban, which was very fantastic. Made a lot of great friends learn how to Salsa dance, believe it or not learn more about wine. And yes, I did learn about French language and culture. After that, didn't want to go back to the States worked with a lot of really influential fortune 500 people. And fortunately, I started working in the IT sector got into hardware left Paris moved down to monopoly, which was absolutely fantastic, great town full of really cool young people from all over southern Europe. It was absolutely fantastic. And guess what happens? Well, right before I get ready to move to Italy, I meet this young lady who's from Spain, and she was on our way back to Spain, she moves to Spain, she and I stay in touch. I'm living in Italy, I'm starting up the sales team, she visits me in Italy, we stay in touch, blah, blah, well, I moved back to France. And eventually I moved to Barcelona, Spain, because that's where she was from. And so that's where I wanted to go. went to Barcelona for love, and, and ended up getting married, had two kids. Kids are now you know, 11 and 13. So they've grown a while. And also, during my time in corporate, a couple things happen. That some real life situations happened to me, I went from a hardware to software got into the enterprise software space. While I was there, I realised that I had no control over the financial outcomes of my life because the stock market crashed in 2000. And then it crashed again in 2008. What I'd always been told was, if something happens once, shame on them, if the same thing happens twice, shame on you, in the stock market had my control of my financial life, which I didn't really know a lot about, but I knew it was really important. So I decided to start investing in real estate started with small multifamily buildings that were in the state of New Jersey would never ever, ever do that, again, bless everyone who's investing in New Jersey, just but at least I got started. Unfortunately, I got into a number of different assets. So I bought a mobile home park got into ATM machines with other people found that I was an accredited investor, I think I've told most of you that before. And I figured I could put a couple $100,000 with other people, they do the work and then I get the return. And then I also found out the difference between active and passive income, because all of the things I was doing was passive. And I was still paying massive tax bills. And so then I got into the energy sector. And eventually that energy sector is what helped me to be able to keep more of my income tax, which is a very different thing than tax efficiency, I was keeping more of my income tax and I was making returns on that. And that really helped accelerate my ability to leave corporate because it was something that I needed to do, or wanting to do in December 2021. When my dad got relatively ill, I kind of had this real big decision to make, and I realised that I really liked corporate, but I loved my life. And so it was time to change. Since then, I've now put my full time and energy, no pun intended into helping other high wage earners, high income as well as high net worth individuals to be able to invest in with a very small exclusive group of invest in family members. And we're helping them to keep more of their income tax at the same time helping to generate more more returns on those income. And so though I came to Barcelona as well, I came here for love. I am staying for legacy because this is an absolutely amazing place to see. My two children grow up. It's a fantastic city. And there's so many so many opportunities here. So I feel like I hadn't really necessarily told my backstory in a while and I'll probably tell it every once in a while. But listen, I appreciate that the person I was talking to is interested in becoming a part of our investor family member wanted to know about that and hopefully you found this solo episode useful to you. Hopefully it hasn't gone too terribly long. But anyway, yeah, if you want to More about how we're helping high wage earners as well as high net worth individuals investing in, in the energy space to be able to keep more of your income as well as generate returns on that income. Just go to first ncp.com forward slash going long. And listen, I'll be looking forward to welcome you back to the very next conversation. And that will happen pretty soon. All right, make it a great day. Thank you very much. Press Did you enjoy 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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