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The Digital Executive
Building Wealth with Hard Assets: Ben Reinberg on Real Estate, Leadership, and the Future of Investing | Ep 1118
00:13:44
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FOREIGN.
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B
Welcome to Coruscant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive Podcast. Welcome to the Digital Executive. Today's guest is Ben Reinberg. Ben Reinberg, founder and CEO of Alliance Consolidate Group of Companies, a commercial real estate investing company with a large footprint in the medical office building sector across the United States. And he's also author of the book Hard Assets and Hard Money for Hard Times. Ben's company is on the front lines of managing large transactions for commercial buildings with a portfolio valued at more than 500 million. Ben and his team specialize in driving investments in industrial warehousing, medical retail properties, offices, and multifamily housing in major markets across the United States. Ben is a respected authority on commercial real estate acquisition and investment as well as the development and structuring of transactions. He is well versed in the 1031 exchanges and assessing the needs of investment capital. Well, good afternoon Ben. Welcome to the show.
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Thank you Brian. I appreciate it. It's a pleasure to be here and look forward to adding a lot of value to your you and your audience.
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B
Absolutely, my friend. I appreciate it and making the time today. I know you're headquartered out of Chicago, but you're in my old stomping grounds there, Newport Beach, Huntington Beach. I love that place. So I appreciate you making the time. I'm in Kansas City now. So Ben, if you could, let's just jump into your first question. You grew up in a middle class family in Chicago and began your career as a CPA before transitioning into commercial real estate. Can you walk us through how those early experiences shaped your vision for building alliance?
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A
CGC well, I appreciate the question. Coming from Chicago, I saw some of the biggest billionaire families in the world between the Pritzkers, the Crowns, et cetera. And I said to myself, how do they build law and they build wealth through hard assets, which is reflective of my new book, Hard Asset and Hard Money for Hard Times. So what I love about hard assets is it's been proven by families all over the world that you need hard assets report for them to build wealth. And so that was being a numbers guy cpa. Seeing that after a year I decided I need to build wealth. I want to be on my own. I was influenced by a billionaire. I was on audit and and inspired me to go out of my own and start my own business as an entrepreneur. And so from there, Brian, it was something that I wanted to do and I like the tax benefits of commercial real estate. I see real upside in what it does. Hard assets have survived through the test of time and you put leverage, commercial real estate, so there's a real opportunity to build wealth with great tax benefits. That's what I saw early on. And I said, this is who I am. This is what I want to do.
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B
Thank you. I appreciate that. And it's interesting. I love the backstories on these podcasts. Get to hear a unique story. Every time is, you know, you looked at some of the, the big wealthy families out there that were doing it and, and learned from them. Obviously, as a numbers guy in the finance space, as a cpa, you kind of put two and two together in those hard assets. So certainly great investment. So, Ben, your new book introduces Hard Asset Empire Blueprint, aimed at building generational wealth. Are the pillars of that framework, and why is it especially relevant in today's uncertain economic landscape?
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Well, what's important about the hard asset blueprint is for too long, we've been taught a lie about money. We've been told to work hard, save, earn, and hope. And I'm here to tell you that's a losing strategy. And savings accounts, while seemingly secure, are actually bleeding value and eaten away by the opportunity cost that drains it. Inflation, taxes, and the relentless march of time. So the book talks about not being here to be rich. You know, being rich is about how much money you have. Today, I'm here talking about being wealthy. And so the hard asset blueprints allows you to secure your future, control your destiny, and build your empire. Won't last. That's what's behind it. And the secret to true, lasting wealth, Brian, is importing cash. It's in the power of hard assets. And obviously my favorite hard asset is real estate, commercial real estate. So when I design the hard asset blueprint, it's your cheat sheet for building wealth. You know, you have your pillars of data, develop discipline and durability. And it's free. You can go on my website, BenReinberg.com and download it for free. Free. You could see it in the book. Throughout, it talks about it. And if you want to bring the book to life, you can take courses by going to benriinbert.com and so I wanted to create this cheat sheet for building wealth because I wanted to make learning easier with the Harder Asset Blueprint. No one's ever done it because it's important for me that you can transform your financial future, starting right now, because when you sit on the sidelines and market moves, you start falling behind. And so hard assets, Brian, just don't protect wealth. They grow it, even in chaos. And so with that Being said, let me share you a quick story, okay about my first deal which will help you why this is important. So let me take you back to early 1990s and I had no network. I didn't even use the language of network. I was at a place where I look at my bank account at night zero and but opportunity knocked in 95,000 square foot industrial building droppers right on the line. And so I pitched the bank board, raised 2 million bucks. And in 30 days, yes, 30 days I raised that money and not because I wanted to, because I had to. And to everyone out there, nothing is easier. And as soon as we raise that 2 million, we closed on the acquisition. Right after I closed, I lost a tenant at closing and proof half the income was gone. So instead of panicking, I problem solved. I subdivided, renegotiated and improved. And this was the turning point that taught me one of the greatest lessons about investing the ability to hold. And four years later we 3x our investors capital. But Brian, the payoff wasn't the 3x return. It was in what I learned and what I share with you today. And so everything I learned in real estate and building wealth I put into the hard asset blooper. And so you can achieve your goals a lot faster with way less ups and downs. And so the hard asset blueprint will show you how to deal with data and privacy and, and how to establish foundations and, and market positioning. And it allows you to really come up with what I will show you as resilient cash flow strategies and ability to build wealth. And this is a book that I wanted to be evergreen so you can pull it off the shelf whether it's you, your kids, future generations and always use it because it'll never go out of its way. And I wrote it. It took me over a year to write and I wrote it for the Ben REINBERG Starting out 32 years ago to the billionaire. Anyone can use it because people see it and they say wait a minute, I didn't think about that. You think about succession partner. I didn't think about charity and fun stuff or how to make a low rounded and my favorite chapter of the book of hard assets and hard times for hard money is what's important about hard assets and hard money for hard times is that it shows you a way to build wealth but also shows you that anyone can do it if you put the work in and you're persistent and I inspire people to do that. And I show people it's not for the faint of heart. My last chapter in the book is about mindset. And the reason why it's important is because when you're building Hard Asset Empire, which reflects to the blueprint, you're gonna shrink your inner circle. You're gonna have family members, drop off friends. And so I say, show me your friends. I'll show you your future. So you really want to be mindful. And I talk about mindset showing up every day, how to continue to improve yourself as a person, do personal involvement. It's important when you're doing the hard Asset Empire. It's part of the holistic approach I take.
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B
Thank you. I appreciate that. Love the story. And you're right. I just wanted to highlight a couple things. One, they don't teach you that, you know, school teaches you the wrong things. You know this. And you come out of college thinking, gosh, I'm broke. What do we do here? And I'm seeing more and more people catching onto it. A lot of people out there that really are influencers, maybe in your space or other spaces that have kind of figured out there's a better way to do this. So thank you for sharing that. And your book's going to be awesome. Of course. Ben, you've noted that successful future CEOs must excel in communication and delegation, and you've personally in learning body language. How are these soft skills integrated into your leadership style at Alliance CGC Well.
- [08:53]
A
I love this question, because being a good leader, you have to inspire. And in order to inspire people, you have to be a good listener, you have to be empathetic. And a, a founder and a CEO doesn't need to know everything. You have to hire amazing people and delegate. And that's what I've learned. And so if you're a young CEO or you're going to be a CEO, you got to remember something. You don't have to know everything. But to be a good leader, you got to be a good listener. And you have to be proactive and you have to understand human nature and behavior, which is what I've excelled at. We have our own chief human behaviors in our company because we want to make sure that our people are supported because your personal identity is a big into each other. And we realize that. And so at the end of the day, it's really important that you continue to work on yourself as a person. I've evolved as a person. I continue, I continue to grow. I continue to learn. You can never stop learning as an executive or CEO. You have to strive to keep learning, keep growing, keep reading whatever you have to do. And that will allow you to challenge a good rear, a good leader. The other thing that's important is how do you handle yourself emotionally? How emotionally intelligent are you? So I meditate, I work on myself. I do personal development because I want to show up as the best version of myself for my team and all our employees, that alliance, you know, in the United States. And how do I do that? I work on myself. I work. I'm a work in progress every single day. It doesn't matter how successful I am, doesn't matter who I am. I want to make sure that I show up as the best version of myself on every call, every, every discussion with our employees, what have you, and be a good role model to them. And so these are the things that help you. And so, you know, you don't need amazing talent. You got to do the hidden things. You know, showing up early, working on a weekend, those quiet moments when no one's looking. That's what a good leader does. A good leader doesn't need to pound his chest and say, look how good I am. Let's good theater. Your actions will speak for your words. Inspiring and listening are the key to inspiring people.
- [11:06]
B
Thank you. I appreciate that. Really do. And people are the center of your business, the center of your world. Right. And I think as a leader, you do need to be a good listener, as you mentioned, but also continue to work on yourself so that you can be better. And when you show up to perform and help these people, you want to be at your best. So I appreciate that. And Ben, the last question of the day I have for you. You've embraced AI, enhanced transparency and virtual property tours to transform the commercial real estate experience. How is technology reshaping your investor relationships? And how do you see it evolving in the next five to 10 years?
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Well, commercial real estate is always slow to adopt new technologies. We decided a couple of years ago to jump in on the AI. And so we're using it to make things more efficient, to cost savings. And we're using it for property management purposes, maintenance, we're using it for human resource department, we're using it for acquisitions, we're using it for marketing. So we said to ourselves, we have to get involved in AI or we're going to fall behind. And by doing it, we had to do soft skill development for our staff because you don't want people fearing they're going to lose their jobs. We don't want to let them know we're enhancing their jobs. We're making it where we can use AI to make their jobs easier, more efficient, more timely. Time is your biggest asset. And if we can save money through time and energy, that's what we did. So we're excited. We're a leader using AI in commercial real estate farms. We feel one of the first one adopted it a long time ago and we're going to see it keeps learning, keeps evolving, and it's going to allow us to really be able to manage our portfolio, acquire new properties, be able to do due diligence and really enhance the investor experience in our company.
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B
Thank you. I appreciate that. And we I talk to entrepreneurs CEOs all week long on this podcast and AI has been a hot topic for the last two years. But I'm glad that you jumped into this and embraced it early and I like what you highlighted there. You know your most valuable asset is time. And of course, if you can be more efficient at a lot of those mundane and repetitive tasks, you're going to be well ahead of the game by leveraging the technology. So appreciate that. And Ben, it was such a pleasure having you on today and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
- [13:33]
A
Thank you. I appreciate Brian, thanks for having me on.
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B
Bye for now.