Welcome to the gold color investor podcast with your host Pancham Gupta. This podcast is dedicated to helping the high paid professionals to break out of the Wall Street investments and create multiple income streams. Here’s your host Pancham Gupta.

Hi, this is Joe Fairless if you want to diversify out of Wall Street investments and listen to the gold collar investor podcast.

Pancham Gupta  

Welcome to the gold collar investor podcast. This is your host Pancham really appreciate you for tuning in. Let’s get into today’s show. I am excited to have Aileen on the podcast. Her story is a great example of anybody trying to create passive income and create financial freedom for their family. She and her husband have a young family and demanding jobs. Still, they were able to achieve so much in the last couple of years. That it’s just amazing story to hear a bit about Aileen before I bring her on. Aileen is the co-founder of Bonavest capital where she helps people generate passive income through real estate syndications. She’s on the path to creating time freedom for her family and two young children and believes real estate is the best way that can help her, and others achieve this dream. Aileen received her MBA from Northeastern University and has over 10 years of experience in the aerospace industry, as the finance lead on several multimillion dollar projects. She is also the host of five day per week real estate podcast, how did they do it? Real estate where she interviews top experts in the real estate industry with the focus on personal growth and real estate investing. If you stay towards the end and listen to the entire episode, you will get to hear Aileen has a great gift for you to share. And that gift is on the due diligence checklist that she and her team has put together on how to do the due diligence on multifamily sponsors where you’re looking to invest with someone for the first time. And stay on and listen to the end to get that check test. Hey, Aileen, welcome to the show.

Aileen Prak  

Hey, Pancham. Thanks for having me on the show.

Pancham Gupta  

So glad to have you. I know we connected on your podcast long time back. I don’t remember how long ago it was. It was I had a lot of fun on your show. And you know, glad to have you here. Before we get started. Are you ready to fire up my listeners break or a Wall Street investment?

Aileen Prak  

Absolutely. Yes. Let’s get started.

Pancham Gupta  

Awesome. Awesome. So, you know, before we get started, why don’t you tell us about your background, and more importantly, the person behind that background?

Aileen Prak  

Yeah, so me, I started off with you know, like the traditional path, I went to go get my education, got my four-year university education, then went on to get my MBA out in Boston. And then after that, I started a family with my husband. So now we have our two little children have a background in aerospace engineering, not as an engineer, but in finance. And so, I do you know, I’ve experienced budgeting, risks, and opportunities analysis, I do forecast and making sure that we have enough budgets to cover our projects that we’re working on. And then also, you know, I just had the privilege of working with intelligent people in the space had a really great opportunity, just got a good, solid foundation for myself, and then just had a lot of great lucky opportunities along the way. That’s where we’re at at this point.

Pancham Gupta  

That’s awesome. So that was very quick. So, I’m sure there’s a lot to unpack in between. So, did you get your MBA right after your bachelor’s degree? Or did you work before that?

Aileen Prak  

Absolutely. So, I yes, I so I went to go get my MBA right after my bachelor’s because in our family, the way you know, I’ve been taught and grown up is really get a good solid foundation for yourself. Education is very important. And so, before we go out and get into the workforce and everything like that my parents had always instilled in me, make sure that you get a solid foundation for yourself, get a good education, and then you can go do whatever you’d like to do.

Pancham Gupta  

Got it. So, so right after you got your MBA, and are you working in that space right now, aerospace engineering,

Aileen Prak  

I started off in that field while I was getting my MBA started off as an intern. And then you know, eventually just really liked the space, and then moved up the ladder and then just continue to work on it.

Pancham Gupta  

That’s awesome. So, aerospace engineering. I’ll tell you being an engineer myself. It’s one of those fields where like people with big brains that they go So it’s awesome. And I think it’s that space is kind of quite booming at this point, given what’s all going on, everyone wants to go to Mars. So that’s great, Aileen. So, you started, got your education, you got your MBA. And now I know that you’ve been investing. So how did you get into your investing career? Let’s talk about that.

Aileen Prak  

So, it wasn’t until after I had my first son, I guess we’ll go back a little bit. So, we had always been looking for different ways to, you know, get passive streams of income first. So, we were searching for different options. We looked at creating side businesses doing off little things to create different streams of incomes, but nothing really was interesting to us. Nothing really stuck out. We always went back to real estate wanting to get into it wanting to go and invest in real estate.

Pancham Gupta  

So, you never actually started with 401 Ks like everyone says,

Aileen Prak  

So, yes, I did. So, 401k is invested in with my, my company, you know, you would put in whatever the contribution was, and everything like that. And that was like the extent of what, like me personally, investing in the stocks and on Wall Street is, you know, just through the employer’s 401 K’s that they provided to you, but I just like, put it in there, set it and forget it, in a sense, because it wasn’t something that I could control and nothing that I could really, like, manage. And it just wasn’t as, like interesting to me. And so, I would just, you know, like that’s all we really learned is put in your money for the 401 K’s so that you can have enough money saved up for retirement. So that’s what I did. I just scrolled away money over there and just let the market do its thing.

Pancham Gupta  

Got it. Got it. And so, at what point did you realize that no, you know what, that is not enough for I want to connect, look out.

Aileen Prak  

Yeah, so it wasn’t until after like, we had our first site. And it was back in like 2018, when we really started looking at like really, really, truly looking for different ways to create passive income for ourselves. Because what we realized was time was what we were looking for, we wanted to get more time freedom for ourselves, be able to spend it with our son, we realize like the amount of time that we have with him is very short and fleeting, because he’s growing up so quickly. And so, the light bulb went off. And so, we’re like, really need to start now. And so, we went back to real estate investing. And we started off with investing in single family home. And then we liked that model. But it was a little bit not exactly what we were looking for. But it was all we knew. So, we started studying a little bit more, we started talking to different peoples. And that’s when we came across something called the multifamily syndications. And when we learned about that model, it changed our perspective on investing and how we could scale and build up our real estate portfolio tremendously.

Pancham Gupta  

Got it. So, you were investing in single family homes, I was doing the same thing. And eventually, you know, had portfolio in five states. So did you at what point did you realize that oh, you know what, this is not scalable. Let me go and investigate syndication. Is it right after your first or second one? Or, like where did that happen? That switch. So, we started

Aileen Prak  

back in 2018. And then it wasn’t until the end of 2019 when we started looking into syndications. And we started getting into it. So only about like a year and a half or so when we made that switch. So not too too long. And so, yeah, that’s when we started.

Pancham Gupta  

Got it and what like, given it’s been only a year and a half. And I’ve had a lot of people here who’ve done this for many years and people who are listening, and they want to do this tell us like how difficult for you want to get into syndications and someone looking into it right away? How can they do it.

Aileen Prak  

So, in the beginning, it was really trying to understand the concept. First, because it was something especially if you’ve never been exposed to it, the idea of a group investment, investing with something outside of the traditional Wall Street stocks and bonds, you know, was very new twist, we really had to do our due diligence and really build up our education base up first. And so, then after we really got more comfortable about the concept and kind of understanding the ins and outs of it a little bit, what we wanted to do was we wanted to invest first with the sponsor who had a great track record somebody that we felt like we can trust our money with. And then so that’s what we did, we went and search for our sponsor that we could take that first steps with and really, truly learn about the feasibility of this model.

Pancham Gupta  

Got it? So, you basically invested passively before, right after you found out. Yes, yes. Okay. So how many if I can ask like how many passive syndications have you done? Like invested passively.

Aileen Prak  

Yeah, so by the end of this year, we’ll have done about 10 investments.

Pancham Gupta  

Wow. So, anyone listening? This is awesome, right? Like you started a year and a half ago, about 18 months ago. And now here you are, after educating yourself you’ve invested in 10 Separate syndications as a passive investor, right, yep. So is that your goal to become very educated, passive investor or your goal is to become active in this space.

Aileen Prak  

When we first started off, it started off as just wanting to do it passively. And then as we started meeting more and more people in this space and having more and more conversations, it organically transformed into wanting to do this more actively. And so, what happened was, we ended up wanting to, you know, we had these conversations with people, we started, you know, getting some mentorship and coaching in this space. And then we really liked this model, and we really believed in it. And so, we were getting questions as well about like what we were doing. And so, as we were getting those questions, we were educating other people as well. And so, we realized that we can also do this on the active side as well, because we really enjoyed it. And when I say we, it’s me and my husband who do it together. And so, we started our podcast, we started networking, not just as a passive investor, but as wanting to get into active space as well. And so, in 2021, now, we’ll have done our fourth partnership as a general partner on the active side.

Pancham Gupta  

Wow. That’s just awesome. So, you guys, I mean, Aileen and Sila, they’re like, wonderful couple, you know, like they have this amazing podcast. How did you do it? Right, is that the name? That’s the name of your podcast.

Aileen Prak  

How did they do it? Real Estate? Yeah,

Pancham Gupta  

so, anyone who wants to get started, I would encourage you to check that out. So, a year and a half. This is amazing. I think this is probably the quickest I’ve heard where from start to being general partner on four days and passively investing in 10 days, just in a year and a half time span. It’s awesome. So, what advice would you give to someone who is looking to get into, let’s talk about two things, looking to get into syndications just passively, like meaning they’ve never invested anywhere else. But they want to get into passive investments. And second, if they want to become active.

So, if they want to do passive investing, first, really getting started with the education piece of it, because especially if it’s your first deal, really understanding what type of investments you’re getting into, really, truly vetting the sponsors that you’re working with. Because I think, for us, because we had such a positive first-time experience investing with our sponsors, it just made the experience so great, and really made us truly believe in the model even more. And so if you’re working with a good sponsor, I think that that will help build up your confidence because they help with your education base, they help answering the questions that you have all the hesitations that you have all the questions and try to clear up all that gray area that if you don’t have any experience in it, that helps to build up your confidence and when you’re investing as a first time investor. And so, you know, one of the books that I really recommend, as a passive investor is the hands-off passive investor by Brian Burke, because he breaks it down as a good like bits by bits and makes it easily digestible, understandable for the investor who’s looking to get into it passively. It breaks down the models for you, like you know, the different calculations on it, and just breaking them the business model that makes it much more easily accessible to you, as a passive investor. And so, then after you get your education and you find the sponsor that you’re working out with, you know, the next step that you would do is you really have to act, and you really must take that leap, you’re not going to know what you don’t know in the beginning. And so, the only way you can know is if you take that action, and you do as much background as you can. And when you get to that point where there’s nothing much left that you can do it is but to take that next action, that’s the only way that you can learn and get your feet wet is by doing that. And so that I feel like has been the biggest propeller of moving forward in this space and getting into, you know, multiple other deals because things start to open, you’ll see more and more opportunities available to you once you take those actions.

Pancham Gupta  

So, would you say the same thing for being an active trying to be being an active? Okay, so let me ask you this. Now, given that you’ve done this, you’ve done 10 passive investments and for investments as general partner, if you were to do this again, go year and a half back, and what would you change?

Aileen Prak  

I don’t know what I would change only because every action that I’ve taken so far has gotten me to where I am. And so, I’ve only learned and grown from what I’ve done in the past,

Pancham Gupta  

would you do something differently? Or you know, that knowing what you know now, right, that if you have someone listening, and they want to learn from your experience, what would your kind of do differently?

Aileen Prak  

I think the biggest thing that I would do, especially if your end goal is to become like an active partner on the syndication space is starting with a podcast or a thought leadership platform early on. I think that that has been the biggest factor of us being able to get into the active side of things building up your thought leadership platform becoming more I’m an expert in the field by starting the thought leadership. So, if you take that and start that much earlier, you know, you can get much further faster, I think.

Pancham Gupta  

Awesome. All right. So let me ask you this, then a totally different question, what is one goal that you are really inspired by and at the same time very uncomfortable with where you’re working towards one goal that you’re working towards now, that you’re most inspired by and at the same time, very uncomfortable,

Aileen Prak  

it’s working to get towards that point in time where we can or we had that choice, whether you want to stay in your full time W2 job, or be able to, you know, pivot into real estate full time. So that’s something that we’re very excited about, because now we would have that choice to get into, you know, doing whatever we want to but at the same time, it’s uncomfortable, because it’s not the traditional path is not what people are typically seeing. And, you know, it’s a very gray area where you’re, you know, you have more control over yourself, you’re doing things as an entrepreneur. So, it’s not something that people typically see. And typical people talk about, or they do very often. But it’s something that’s very exciting to us. But it’s at the same time, it’s very scary.

Pancham Gupta  

It is very scary. Trust me, coming from W2, there is a saying that entrepreneurship is like jumping off the cliff, and building the plane on the way down before you hit the ground. So, I guess I will totally attest to that. And, you know, it’s not easy, but something like if you asked me that, I should have got sooner than when I did. So good. My last question, before we move on to the next section of the show, I would ask you this. Do you have a morning routine that you follow? If so, what is it? And do you think that attributes to your success?

Aileen Prak  

So, the morning routine is, first, I have two little children. Now the morning is dedicated, just solely focused on them, and getting them ready, spending their time filling up their cups with like, time with them with love and everything that so that they’re ready and prepared for the day. And then after that is done, then we can go ahead and start our days. But that morning piece of it is just focused on the kids. And I think that that really helps to remind us of our Big Whys of why we’re doing it. And it really sets the foundation for our entire day.

Pancham Gupta  

That’s awesome, right? I know as little kid when you have little kids, I have my little one now is that five years, so I can totally remember my time and they were it’s just you can do anything else but just focus on them. Well, that’s great. Thank you, Aileen, let’s we’ll be back after this message. Do you ever feel overwhelmed by the thought that you have no time after work, and family time to learn about investing? Do you feel left behind that you are not putting your money to work for you? Do you want to create passive income, but you do not know where to start? If so, I have good news for you. I have created an investor club which I call the gold color investor club for accredited investors, I will be putting together investing opportunities exclusively for this group. These are the opportunities where I have done my part of the due diligence for you and will be investing my own money alongside you. If you are interested, please sign up on thegoldcollarinvestor.com/club. I repeat thegoldcollarinvestor.com/club, I will reach out to schedule a 30-minute phone conversation to discuss your investing goals. Once you sign up, this can be a good opportunity to diversify and take some chips off the hands of Wall Street to produce some cash flow. And in case you are wondering what an accredited investor credited investor is is someone who has earned more than 200,000 as filing single or more than 300,000 Filing Jointly for the last two years. Another way to qualify as an accredited investor is if your total net worth is more than $1 million, excluding your personal home. It includes your stocks, 401Ks, IRAs, cars, etc. Just not the equity in your personal home. If this, is you, I would highly encourage you to sign up? So, let’s move on to the second part of the show which I call taking the leap round here. I ask these four questions to every guest on the show. My first question for you Aileen is when was the first time you invested outside of Wall Street? It

Aileen Prak  

was that first time we’re invested in the single-family home. It was outside of California arm pull market. And then that was the first time where we decided

Pancham Gupta  

to reach market again. It was in St. Louis. St. Louis. Okay. You still, have it? Yes, we do. Okay, are you happy with?

Aileen Prak  

it? It is cash flowing. I’ll tell you that. And so, it’s not too much maintenance, but at the same time, we may potentially be looking to convert it over to multifamily later, we might look to selling it.

Pancham Gupta  

Got it. Alright, so my second question, did you have any fears to overcome when you first bought that that two out of state as your first investment?

Aileen Prak  

Yes, absolutely. Because first, it was out of state, we didn’t get to see it, touch it something that we didn’t, you know, something that we’re used to is being able to invest in your backyard. And so, this was completely out of state. So having to rely and trust on a team outside of your home market where you can’t see touch or meet them in person, you know, was a biggest mind shift challenge for us. But we’re glad we did it, because it was the first step and opened a lot of doors for us.

Pancham Gupta  

Right. So, you’re in California. That’s a long flight. Did you go and see it before? You got it? Yes. Okay. All right. Yeah, I’ve had a lot of investors who’ve never seen it, they buy it sight unseen. I personally could never do that being an engineer. So, I always went and checked it out when I was doing single family homes. Alright, my third question for you can you share with us one investment that did not go as expected?

Aileen Prak  

One Investment that didn’t go as expected, I guess, within Wall Street or outside of us like our real estate, either one doesn’t matter. Yeah. I talked about one of our multifamily ones that we had worked on, there was a deal that we had put an offer in, it was an off-market deal that we had to establish a relationship with the seller, and we thought it was a great deal. It was totally off market. And as we started doing our due diligence on it, we realized that, you know, we were thinking like, Oh, hey, we can do this on our own, you know, me and my husband, if we need to bring in partners, we could potentially bring in partners if we needed to, or we can just do it on our own, we could just purchase it and then just make the cash flow off of it, it’d be really great passive investment for ourselves. However, as we started to get more and more involved in the due diligence of it, we realized that it was a heavy value, add property. And because it was out of state, it was going to require somebody their full time to manage and oversee it. And because we didn’t have a strong enough relationship with, you know, somebody in that market to help us oversee it. And because we wouldn’t be able to invest that much time to it, we realized that we would have to pull out of this investment and not do the deal. And so, we made that tough decision, because when we outweighed the risks and the opportunities for it, it just didn’t fit our investing model and what we were looking for, it would have been a great deal for, you know, the right investor, but we realized that it wasn’t the right investment for us.

Pancham Gupta  

Got it. So, did you lose any capital there? 

Aileen Prak  

No, luckily, we did not lose any capital on that one.

Pancham Gupta  

Got it? Great. I mean, yeah, that’s a tough choice. But I’m glad you made it.

Aileen Prak  

Yeah, we only lost a little bit of time capital, right, as you’re doing your due diligence and studying it. But at the same time, we’re gaining the education as we’re learning from that experience.

Pancham Gupta  

Yeah, that’s one thing, I’ll tell you that doing all this DD, due diligence on any of this stuff, you never, ever lose any of that, that just takes you. That’s a steppingstone towards the next step. And you never know, when this knowledge of that submarket or that deal, or that particular seller, or that broker, doesn’t matter, like you know, will come in handy in future that has happened to us multiple times already, where we thought after it’s all said and done, it’s a waste of time. But lo and behold, at some point that came in handy and helped us in getting the deal or doing whatever that was, was the case. So, my last question for you is, you already answered this. So, what is one piece of advice would you give to people who are thinking of investing in Main Street you said, really, to educate yourself? Right?

Aileen Prak  

Yes, to educate yourself. And another thing is to not limit yourself on what’s out there. Because once you open your mind to the possibilities of other options, and availabilities, and the things that you can learn from and gain, it really opens a lot of different doors out there. Once we, you know, shifted our mindset opened the possibilities that you know, the syndication model really does work, educating ourselves, then it really did open and has really fueled us for the future.

Pancham Gupta  

Great advice. Aileen, I know that you after spending so much time you have a podcast, and you did so many syndications active and passive. You put together a guide, apartment syndication, due diligence checklist for passive investors who are looking to passively invest. Can you tell us about that guide like what you really have in there, and then how can people get it?

Aileen Prak  

Sure. So, for that guide there we put it together. Basically, when we were me and my husband, were looking at it Is waiting apartments ourselves as passive investors. So, we put in together in a checklist, where people who you know, don’t have too much experience in the space or looking for just a place where they can just remember different little aspects to look for, as they’re vetting the sponsors, looking at the different markets, things that you should be kind of looking at, as you’re evaluating different opportunities. So, it’s just a checklist that we put together for ourselves that we’d like to share with your listeners as well if they’re interested.

Pancham Gupta  

Great. So how can they get it? There? Is this email address?

Aileen Prak  

Yes. So, they can just go ahead and email at Bonavest@thegoldcollarinvestor.com and I believe that checklists will be sent out to them.

Pancham Gupta  

Yeah. And you know, if you need to reach out to Aileen, and you know, her husband, there will be information right there. And this checklist is great for someone who’s starting out to at least see right like you know, what to look for. You just don’t know what you don’t know. And just I will rely on that. So, thank you, Aileen, for your time.

Aileen Prak  

Yeah, thank you so much for having me on Pancham.

Pancham Gupta  

I hope you learned something from Aileen story. Thank you for listening. I would highly encourage you to get the due diligence checklist for passive investors by emailing at Bonavest@thegoldcollarinvestor.com And if you have any questions do not hesitate to email me at the at P@goldcollarinvestor.com This is Pancham signing off. Until next time, take care.

Thank you for listening to the gold collar investor podcast. If you love what you’ve heard and you want more of pension Gupta, visit us at www.thegoldcollarinvestor.com And follow us on Facebook at the gold collar investor. The information on this podcast are opinions. As always, please consult your own financial team before investing.