Dr. Roderick Capelo: Orthopedic Surgeon Finding Wealth In Multi-Family Real Estate
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE ON:
Dr. Roderick Capelo founded his own practice, Pediatric Sports and Spine Associates in 2006. As medicine evolved it became clear that the ever-changing landscape of medicine was beyond his control. He studied different ways to create income streams outside of medicine and landed on multi-family assets thanks to being introduced to several seasoned real estate investors. In the past 4 years he's helped acquire 2,400 units in 5 states. He is also the author of 2 best-selling books, "Purpose, Passion, & Profits" as well as "Persistence, Pivots and Game Changers: Turning Challenges Into Opportunities. In addition to still running his practice, he's also helping his colleagues, family, and friends achieve true financial freedom through real estate.
In this podcast hosted by Mike Swenson, we discussed:
- How people think doctors are rich but it's more complicated than that and they really struggle with time freedom and building something beyond their medical career
- Personal development is really important so that you are making yourself better to get what you want.
- Three Phases in Real Estate Investment as you build trust investing with others
- Taking my money and losing it, so that I get less back than I gave you. Obviously this in not ideal.
- Net Zero: I get back the same amount I give you. This is still not ideal, yet at least you didn't "lose" anything.
- I trust that you're going to make money for me and at the same time you need to have a good reputation, performance, and time to achieve that trust. These are the people we want to invest with!
- The life of your business also depends on picking your partner whether they’ll complement your skill set and be honest with you.
- It's all about partnering with the right people who are honest and transparent.
- Coaching programs can be a great place to accelerate your learning curve, when you are in the right group.
- The value add you provide in taking over a large complex is you can clean up the operation of the business by means of removing non-paying tenants, improving the property, and increasing the rents to efficiently run the business.
- Buying properties with different sizes, locations, and strategies has a lot of moving pieces.
- You need to have transparency in communicating to get things done well.
- You need to trust and know who you’re working with to get good results.
- Leverage each strength and talent of your team.
- How Roderick went to 6-10 conferences in real estate to educate himself before doing his first deal.
- Your network is your net worth so increase your network and build relationships in real estate.
Timestamps:
0:00 - Intro to Dr. Roderick’s Career
2:31 - Medical Background
8:12 - First Investment
12:09 - Learning Curve
14:00 - Selecting Investments
15:15 - Investment Criteria
27:01 - Next Steps
30:26 - Advice
34:57 - How to Find Dr. Roderick
FOLLOW DR. RODERICK 👇
https://fortisequitygroup.com/
https://www.facebook.com/FortisEquity...
https://www.linkedin.com/in/roderick-...
https://fortisequitygroup.com/special...
SUBSCRIBE IF YOU'RE LOOKING TO BUILD WEALTH THROUGH OPPORTUNITIES IN THE REAL ESTATE INDUSTRY
✅ http://relfreedom.tv
GET STARTED INVESTING TODAY AND ACCESS OUR DEAL LIST!
📈 http://investwithelite.com
PARTNER WITH US ON BIG DEALS!
💵 https://eliteadvantagepropertieshq.com
BUILD YOUR REAL ESTATE AGENT CAREER WORKING WITH INVESTORS
👨👩👧👦 http://eliteadvantageagent.com
LEARN ABOUT REL FREEDOM & HEAR MORE REAL LIFE STORIES
🎙️ http://www.relfreedom.com
FREEBIES: DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE FREEDOM FOUNDATION BLUEPRINT
💵 https://www.relfreedom.com/blueprint
LOOKING FOR A REAL ESTATE AGENT ANYWHERE IN THE US? FIND A TOP AGENT IN YOUR COMMUNITY
🏠 http://www.eliteagentreferral.com
JOIN OUR FACEBOOK COMMUNITY
👨👩👧👦 https://www.facebook.com/groups/relfreedom
SUBSCRIBE TO THE REL FREEDOM PODCAST
🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rel-freedom-podcast/id1535281574
🎧 Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5idXp6c3Byb3V0LmNvbS8xNDA3NjIyLnJzcw==
🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5nXA5hLHbDzRwxypc2wLur
LET'S CONNECT
👉 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mswenson13
👉 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/getrelfreedom/
👉 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@relfreedom
🏠 Minnesota Real Estate: https://www.eliteadvantageteam.com
Full transcript here:
Mike Swenson
All right, welcome everybody to another episode of The REL Freedom Podcast where we talk about building wealth, gaining time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. And one of the things that I love is for many people, they view folks in the medical profession as that's the be all end all if I could be a doctor, if I could be in the medical field, I'll have enough money, I'll have everything that I want. And what we find is, that's not always the case, you don't have the time freedom, you don't always have the chance to do what you want, call your shots. And so on this podcast, we've had a few people that have come from the medical field and have got into real estate investing.
Mike Swenson
So that's the case with today's guests. We've got Roderick Capelo, he's a pediatric orthopedic surgeon, out of the Dallas Fort Worth area, and now a seasoned real estate investor. So you've co founded paediatric sports and Spine Associates back in 2006. And now today, kind of jumping ahead, you have about 2400 multifamily units and five states you founded for US equity group, co author of two best selling books, purpose, passion and profits, as well as persistence pivots, and Game Changers turning challenges into opportunities. And so we're here to talk about multifamily apartments, we're here to talk about building wealth using the medical field as an opportunity to springboard your real estate career. And so Roderick are so excited to have you on the show.
Dr. Roderick Capelo
First of all, thank you so much, I really appreciate you having on the show. It's fantastic. And you know, you hit the nail on the head when you said, you know, you thought that profession is the end all be all, I thought the same thing. My dad told me my dad was the quintessential poor dad, you know, go to school, get good grades don't have any debt. You know, you'll be financially sound. And you know, that might have been true when he told me 35 years ago, 40 years ago, but the game has changed. And really insurance companies are in control federal regulations are in control. And so yeah, I just was decided to make, you know, to create a second stream of income, additional medicine and circumvent some of the work to be towards real estate.
Mike Swenson
you want to just kind of share a little bit about your medical background and how that came to be. And even as an entrepreneur, starting a company, and just because you have a medical background doesn't mean you're great at running businesses. There's there's lots of skills involved in that. So I'd love to just hear that before we springboard into the real estate piece.
Dr. Roderick Capelo
Yeah, yeah, so pediatric orthopedic surgery. So that's like bones and joints on kids, sports injuries, and adolescence, scoliosis and stuff like that and did a bunch of stuff you're gonna be born with it you're never heard of. And, you know, I was really, it's a calling, I love doing what I do, I really enjoy what I do. But if I practice that, if I don't see 30 patients a day, I don't make money. So that's the pressure of how to run a certain amount of patients to the day when you want to give them great customer service. And you feel that pressure of volume, volume, volume. And whether you like you like medicine is irrelevant. If you're running a business, you got to get that going. So I guess at the time, I didn't know it when I decided to start my medical practice with my former partner. But I am an entrepreneur, I have an entrepreneur that happens to practice medicine, which by the way, is a very challenging way to make money because you can leverage that.
Dr. Roderick Capelo
I'm an entrepreneur that has created a real estate company. And they didn't know what that meant at the time. But I started my medical practice and things were doing well for a while making good money, working really hard. And then your life changes. After a while I have kids and my perception, my perspective change. It wasn't about being in the hospital doing all these surgeries late at night, and getting paid well for it. It was about being home with my little babies and in being able to have energy to spend with them. And so, you know, just like anything, your perspective changes over time. And then after a while, I'm sort of getting dissatisfied with medicine, getting dissatisfied with the fact that I had the pressure of having to see so many patients having to do so much work, just to keep just to keep the doors open, to be honest with you. Everybody thinks doctors are rich.
Dr. Roderick Capelo
For those listeners, mostly doctors are not rich, they might have two really nice cars, and really big house, but it's all leveraged, they can't stop what they're doing. And they can't take six months off of work and keep their same lifestyle. So to me, that's not the definite definition of rich. So you know, things are going great. And this is gonna give you a long story short story. I learned the hard way that we're not in control of the medical situation. hospital CEO made a decision that cut my compensation by about 50% In the same month, but I'm supposed to close on my dream mortgage is about to double. And so I did whatever we could doctor would do. I join network marketing, and to make a secondary stream of income. I say that facetiously but the blessing was
Dr. Roderick Capelo
I learned some folks in marketing they exposed me to this positive personal development, you know, making yourself better to get the things that you might want in life, helping those around, you get where they want to go. So you get where you want to go. And that really changed my perception of things. My perspective caused my former business owner, my business partner, and I ignored separate ways because our our philosophies of how to run a business diverged, I believe in pouring into my employees, making them know how much I care about him, telling them how awesome they are. And so they don't have to learn to be happy, there's happy work because they like the environment, the culture. And so as my perspective and ideas of how the business changed, I had that very challenging financial situation with the hospital CEO. It was just the time was right, I met some folks and my own story, but my circumstances led towards real estate, I put one foot in front of the other again.
Mike Swenson
Yeah. Well, and yeah, that that is the story that you hear, at least the folks that I've interviewed on the podcast that have had that background in medicine is, is Yeah, you don't get the the the lifestyle freedom, you don't get the chance to make choices, because like you said, you you have to do surgeries, you have to show up, it's long hours, it's grueling. And then to when you fast forward that 1020 30 years down the road, you then don't have the passive income to be able to show for it like you would in real estate. And so as you continue to do it, and once you turn off that faucet, the faucets off. And so that's at least the story that I've I've heard from folks in the medical background that do then get into real estate as look, with real estate, I'm building something that's growing, and being able to use the income that I'm earning, at the same time to help start to feed that and then to there's lots of groups of medical professionals helping each other invest in real estate as well, because you've got the shared experience. And now you're able to do something and build something together.
Dr. Roderick Capelo
Absolutely. Well, the other thing is we get pitched everything. Everybody knows the doctors have so expendable income. So if you're a financial planner, or you want the moon but we get we get pitched all kinds of stuff. And so when I got into all the real estate work started having some success as a passive investor, I realized, you know, what, I understand there's no I didn't know what cash on cash flow meant from a preferred preferred return when I got started. But when I when I split, realized I could speak real estate, and I could speak doctor. And I was investing with people that were not my friends, there were just people that I knew people that I invested with many times with vacations with them and hung out with them. I can bridge that gap between what do I do with my money, trust this person over here. But this guy over here is a doctor like v. And he knows these people. And he's investing alongside me that only that I feel there was an opportunity for me to bring stuff to my fellow colleagues. But also, I felt that over calling I felt like I was I was doing them a disservice if I didn't share it, because I was so happy with the way things were going for me that I couldn't just hold it in to say, look, here's what I'm doing. And if you like it great. And if they don't work, that's fine.
Mike Swenson
Well, and to you know, people want to work with people they know, like and trust. And yeah, if you guys have that shared experience together, you're in the same profession, at least there's that common ground, and they know where they could find you if they needed to find you and say, hey, you know, shake, shake, shake the cages a little bit and say, What are you doing? So talk about those early days, how that first investment, first couple of investments worked? How did you find the people? How did it come together?
Dr. Roderick Capelo
so like I mentioned, I got involved in because of the financial crisis, with the with what I mentioned, I got involved with network marketing. And it was a great company. And and so they introduced me to the concept of personal development, started reading books by, you know, Jim Rohn, and all kinds of different people. And one of the one of my friends said, Hey, would you like to go to a Business Mastermind, the whole of Jim Rose business partner? And I said, What's a mastermind? Doctors, don't mastermind we already know everything. What would you go somewhere to learn? Right? And so I went, and it was a group of people, a lot of real estate investors, some network marketers, some attorneys and different couple doctors. And they were just there was a super positive environment, people tried to help each other. And I honestly, I thought they were all being fake, I don't think completely fake. So I went back the next day, it was the same people acted the same way. And after a while, I realized there's actually people that are happy, that have a great outlook on life, that look at the positive side of things and don't want to hurt people around them.
Dr. Roderick Capelo
And that's not typically the way you describe a physician, just in general as a stereotype. And so there was a couple of successful real estate investors and after getting to know them for a year, year and a half and you know, looking at the Performa and tried to ask, you know, try to not sound dumb. Last couple of good questions. I was ready to go and I got cold feet, but I didn't do it. The next one came along and next opportunity and I finally invested it's really cool that I got involved. Another one came along, I got involved and I got passively invested in five or six different syndications mostly multifamily, and they were just doing really well and so I met those folks through this mastermind group. It just got to know them really well as people first. So my comfort level was good for the person I was investigating. I didn't know anything about how to you know, study market. role models and, you know, occupancy rate, those were pretty new terms at the time, funny story, I go back and look at the performance of the marketing sheet, and they gave me for a very first investment. And I look at that. Now, I think there's not even enough information here for me to, but at the time, I didn't know what else to do it. So it was part of a bigger.
Mike Swenson
Yeah, well, I think that's where, you know, I've heard from people that in, you know, when you're talking about real estate as an investment, there's kind of three phases to what they want to know, the first one is, number one, are you not going to take my money and run away, like some sort of Ponzi scheme, you know, something like that. So that's like, the lowest level of investment is you're not going to take my money and run away, kind of level two is, I'm actually going to, I'm going to give you my money, and at the least, I'm probably going to get it back, you know, where it's, it's a net neutral, zero of, you're not going to run away with my money, I'm not going to get rich, but at the same time, you're not going to lose me money. And then the third level is kind of Yes, I trust you that you're going to make me money. And that comes with time, performance, a good reputation, to know like, Okay, I'm gonna give you my money, you're gonna grow it, I trust you to grow it, and then we'll go continue to grow it after that. So yeah, you know, you're still kind of figuring out how at least at least, you're not going to run away with my money, right?
Dr. Roderick Capelo
It's funny that you say that, because one of my very first investors was the guy I met a data or soccer team about four years ago, and we were just chatting real estate. And I just lost a bunch of money in a single family, my first foray into real estate, I didn't even could cover that. I've lost $40,000 in a single family investment as a partner with the wrong guy. I got a bad taste in my mouth and said, I don't want to do that. And so that's what syndication came out with. But I had an opportunity to invest in one of the soccer dads said, hey, it sounds good. But the minimum was whether he wanted to invest. So we put our funds together to meet the minimum. Anyway, long story short for three years later, when it sold, and I gave him his money back, almost plus double his return. It was like a annualized. It was like 28%. And he said his response was, yes, it's not a Ponzi scheme, as it that you're worried about. He said, Well, you don't really know to get your money back. That's right. So it's funny that you say that a lot of people think that I think eventually, they will tell you that. So
Mike Swenson
So talk through then the learning curve for you. Obviously, now, it started with, Hey, I got this sheet, I didn't really have enough information in hindsight to make a good decision. Walk through that process of educating yourself on real estate, finding people that are going to teach you what you need to know to where now you're, you know, raising a lot of money, you have a bunch of units yourself.
Dr. Roderick Capelo
Yeah, so certainly, it's a process. And, you know, going back to my history, as a doctor, what do you do you study for a long time to go to school for a long time. So innately, my response was, I gotta learn this. So I started going to conferences, that were held by the people that I met in a mastermind group, and I went to, you know, probably four or five conferences a year for a year and a half before I did my first investment. So yes, educating I had no cash on cash for preferred return, I didn't know, we get vacancy from, you know, whatever. And so you just start to learn, learn a little bit at a time. So that's one thing is educate yourself to have a base amount of knowledge. The other thing is, it's really in partners, I think, the life and business that everything is just about who you pick, as a partner, and, you know, they're gonna complement your skill set, or they're going to be honest and have integrity. And so I got really fortunate that I met these folks first.
Dr. Roderick Capelo
And so I felt very comfortable with those people, before I invested with them. And so things went well, because as it turns out, looking at retrospect, I partner with the right people, the very first single family investment and partner with the wrong guy, they lost $40,000. And so one of my friends says, there's no lesson like a lot less than you pay for the lessons, you're gonna remember that so I remember that lesson. But but, you know, it's partnering with the right people, people that have honesty, integrity, transparency, and so that one of the the blessings of that was, as I started my own real estate company, it was very easy to know how to emulate them, because that's the way they treated me. But I had questions it was all aboveboard and so just kind of pass those lessons either to my investors.
Mike Swenson
So now you know, you have your forest equity group, talk through what your role is, what you guys are doing and how you're selecting investments raising money talk through that process. Yeah. So
Dr. Roderick Capelo
along the lines of educating myself, I also job showing a couple of coaching programs and not where you have to pay to invest but you know, there's people that are there coaching you and so it's an environment of lots of books doing doing real estate for very some people are brand new, so we we've been doing it for a while. And but it's again, it's an environment of abundance and scarcity. So anybody that knows what they're doing, was happy to pass that along. And so so there's a lot of folks sourcing deals is focused on doing different aspects of it. So as I as I invested passively and Jordans coaching programs, and meeting different different people, you know, kind of realizing, hey, that person thinks like me, this person things like me, just getting in small groups and surrounding syndication groups in general partnerships. I don't do most of the deal sourcing. Usually I get, there's a good there's a whole group of people that have deals and when they find a deal they like they'll approach me and say, Hey, listen, you know This is a deal we're looking at. And I'll do a lot of Investor Relations and do some of the due diligence, some of the capital raising. And some of the, you know, at risk capital, things like that, just however, I can contribute that value to the partnership.
Mike Swenson
And what's kind of your criteria, what generally are you looking for location sizes? That's,
Dr. Roderick Capelo
yeah, that's usually a Class B, C, typically value add 100 to 400 500 units. And in the southwest United States, typically, we're in Texas, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina. So you know, business really states in the Sunbelt area 100 affordable units, typically, like, typically value added.
Mike Swenson
Okay. And so, did you kind of scale up to that? Or were your initial syndications you just had a smaller piece of the pie? Or were you kind of always 100 units plus in your syndications.
Dr. Roderick Capelo
So usually, as a part of a group, we like I said, we're gonna be scraping burgers, it's a group that was put together, so. So the ones I was passively invested. In fact, I don't think any of the units are passive, or part of the general partnership team. So it's just sort of the criteria that we look for in our training. And so and so it's we all have common goals that regarding vote coastal country, with, hey, there's a development deal here, this deal over here. And, you know, it's it's been hard to be disciplined and stay away from the bright, shiny and really stick to fundamentals if at this point, I might learn more about those and branch out at some point, but I really wanted to dive really deep with with multifamily, so that I felt really comfortable with that. And, and, and so the size of the units at all, that's really just what we all as collectively, as a group are looking for. Again, people look at other things and bring it to the group, I just, I would have picked up to this level
Mike Swenson
to Vandenberg. Do you dive deep into kind of the property management side? As far as really scrutinizing, okay, we think we can take this value add either renovate the units and update it, is it Hey, property management is really the issue right here, we're gonna need to clean house and fun, but find somebody new. Because there's that key part is managing that asset moving forward to be able to get the returns, right, that you're projecting. And so kind of walk through that that side of the piece of of the value add in the property management side, and you're gonna see that return grow.
Dr. Roderick Capelo
Yeah, you bring up a good point. Earlier, who do you partner with, right? It's always who you partner with who you're working with, they can make or break a situation? And so yes, the answer the question is all of those things, right. And so sometimes, when I think of it is that buying real estate, think about you're buying a business, you might have businesses underperforming, whoever's running, the business is doing a poor job, you know, they don't have enough tenants or their, their market rents are too low, or the rents are lower than market average, or it's just being poorly run. And so any opportunity to clean up the property to make it look nice to to get rid of the folks that are paying their rents, to increase the rents if they need to be as we made the property nicer. And just to clean up the operation of the business, make it run more efficiently, as you know, the increases that are being acknowledged by the property.
Dr. Roderick Capelo
So it's really just, I think a bit more in terms of looking for, you know, a poorly run business, and you go in there and you make the business run more efficiently. And then someone comes and buys the business, wherever you are, you just keep running the business and enjoy the profits. But would you would you valid initially was someone had a business and they really weren't putting it properly. So it was your opportunity to come in, and very quickly turn things around. Because there were some problems you could address from the very beginning. Again, I mentioned some of them are tenants, the you know, mom and pop shop without an increase the rents in 15 years, and the places dilapidated, can come in and make it look really nice, provide some really nice amenities heated to the the same rents as average market in the area there. And everybody was right, investors make money. The tenants are super happy with the place they live. And it was way better than it did before. And in wrapping them, we're able to help both groups.
Mike Swenson
And is the strategy typically some sort of cash out refi or sell after you've raised the value and then go move on to something else?
Dr. Roderick Capelo
Again, the answer is yes. But I love about real estate is there's a bunch of options, you just got to keep your mind open. Certainly it really depends on just the overall situation. We've done a cash out refinance in the past and return our investors a large chunk of sometimes almost 100%. And then just, you know, keep up keep cash flow for a while until someone makes us offer we can't refuse, or sometimes, you know, we've gotten in situations where there was maybe a few things that we didn't anticipate and that everything is as beautiful as it seems that we get it right that every first date is the second or third date is just as good. So there's been a couple of situations where things are going great, but it just made more sense to sell it was able to increase the value of the property. So it really it's whatever makes more sense to our investors and to the group as a whole. That's what we're what we do. And you know, the interesting thing about what's going on now that's a little it was a little bit but who knows what that what the endgame was going to be over the next 18 to 24 months because the environment changing so much right now.
Mike Swenson
And on a project like that, just to give folks a little bit of perspective, how many invest STRS are part of that group. So if you're taking down 300 units, you know, roughly how many investors are going to be a part of that deal? Well, it can
Dr. Roderick Capelo
vary greatly, you know, because some folks will bring it up to 30 ones and larger chunks of money and things like that. But it could be, you know, 20 to 80 100. You know, maybe they add a lot, but then, you know, 20 to 6080, somewhere in there. Typically, it's a network upside, or is it ever to all our general partnership group, but we all bring into our network and add people we know, invite them to invest alongside us. And we all of course, invest passively, alongside our investors. That would make any sense for me to say, hey, like, there's a great deal here. You say, Robert, what about your university? No, but I think it's a great deal for you. But that would make any sense. So we all invest alongside passively, of course?
Mike Swenson
Well, I think what you're talking about speaks to the relationship, the key of the relationship, because if you're buying properties of different sizes, different locations, different strategies, right, there's so many moving pieces. And even we talked about exit strategies, right? There's multiple things you can do. People need to know that they're working with people that they trust, because if I'm one of those 20 to 80, people, okay, this strategy we might be executing here, but now we're gonna go over this state to a different complex and do something different, I have to know that you're going to take care of me. And that, that we're going to work through that and to line up at people be kind of on a similar page to where we're all bought into this project is important. And so that's where I think it comes back to the value of the relationship, the trust capital that you've already built with these people to say, Yes, take my money, we're gonna do this, and we're gonna grow it together.
Dr. Roderick Capelo
Absolutely. And the transparency, communication, right, you have to communicate with things go really well. And maybe things don't go so well. Or here's where we are, who's just got to be able to communicate all the time. So people know exactly what what what page you're on. But to your point, you know, one of the probably one of the the times I felt most validated as a good friend of mine, who was an anesthesiologist, he was on a regular basis, just chit chatting in the operating room. He said many times, I just don't really feel comfortable talking about money and stuff like that. And I said, Well, I think a lot of it, I'm very, very comfortable talking about it. I've just been talking about what I'm doing over time and putting no pressure on him.
Dr. Roderick Capelo
And I invited him to jump on a webinar where I was presenting a property. And he did and, and, you know, I followed up with him. And, you know, he tried to ask a few questions that can seem like a pushover. And he basically said, Rod, you know, I don't really know anything about this. But if you're putting your money in it, and I trust you, I'm going to invest because I trust who you are. And, to me that was like, you know, that's, that's, it validated what I'm doing. Of course, it also motivated me to work even harder to make sure that he gets good results. But you're right, it's about trust, it's about who you know, it's about who you're working with, for sure.
Mike Swenson
Well, and to because the the end game here, you know, what's going to make life a lot easier for you is, is I give you my money, you helped me make money on this property. Now we're gonna go do it again, and again, and again. And so it's, you know, I'll give you $2, turn it into four, turn it into eight, turn it into 16. And we go from there. So that's where that relationship is really important. If I give you money one time, and you mess around with it and screw up, I'm not going to be very likely to give it to you again. So you have to earn that relationship, every time every deal to be able to continue to grow that with them. And if you do that, you don't have to find as many new people because you've got that great pool of current investors built up.
Dr. Roderick Capelo
Absolutely. It's interesting you say that, because that's one of my, one of my mental blocks, I guess, if you will, early on was, you know, this is me putting my money into these projects, but it was going to people and talking to them about it, not because I didn't believe in it, because you're terrified when you take somebody's criminal votes. I mean, you know, you've heard a lot from somebody, that's, that's nerve racking, it's makes me more nervous to doing surgery to be honest with you. And so, but that's what you know, because I feel a an obligation to do the job. You know, it's one thing, it's my money, but if it's someone else's, it's even more have an obligation to do a good job. And so yeah, like you said, if you do a good job, then it was okay, great. I like that, when where's the next one. And so hopefully, that'll happen this year, we're looking at it. So it looks like we're gonna be selling soon. And, and we're always looking for good deals as
Mike Swenson
well. And if he kind of, to put it back into the medical analogy, like, if I'm trusting you to, you know, with, with my body with the ailment that I have with the procedure that you're going to do, if it gets screwed up, and you know, I can't walk right, or I gotta come back, we got to do it again. That's a big problem. And it's the same thing here too, like you said, and yeah, these are people's dreams, goals, future plans, you know, second homes, homes for grandkids down the road, and if you're building generational wealth that can really move on. So there's a level of weight that we have to have with that money knowing that this this is a big deal for people that I'm really giving you my life savings and a lot of cases to to help make me money on this asset.
Dr. Roderick Capelo
Absolutely. And one of the things that we do that is there are other options is usually Wall Street which will go down that road but you know, that's I see. This liberty is a way better option for many reasons that are not probably part of this discussion today. But when you have that confidence of knowing I'm doing the right thing, again, my mother is riding alongside, there's my mom and dad at 77 years old, their money is right alongside as well. So that that speaks volumes as to, as to the confidence I have the projects and the teams that are a part of it really, you know, some basic principles of a letter to the mastermind group is, you know, never be the smartest person in the room. That's easy. Probably not smart people. But with our teams, our sponsorship teams, there's a lot of folks that are very talented, very smart, and we leverage each other's strengths, right. And so. So yeah, it's been a blessing overall, for sure.
Mike Swenson
And I was also gonna say, to kind of going back to the the medical analogy, really trusting the training and the work that you've put in, you know, when when you're doing surgery on somebody, or you're doing a complicated procedure, you got to trust all that work, all that knowledge that you gained all the practice that you've had going into that here, when somebody says take my money, you got to trust the work, the knowledge that you've put into it, that this is the this is a good asset to
Dr. Roderick Capelo
absolutely loves you even further. There's been times in surgery where not everything goes as planned. And so you got to realize, okay, I played a, that didn't work so well. But I also had Plan B, C, and D, in my back pocket. So let's see which one it was worth saving on real estate, you can see this is our private property. Well, something changed. That's no longer going to be the best option. So being able to have other options available based on your training. You know, those are there's a lot of good analogies. Oh, for sure. No question about it. Yeah. Wondering whether yours is different, though. This is leverageable. And medically, I always tell people, I'm gonna be a plumber. If I don't have a plumber to fix my plumbing, you don't get paid. If I don't do surgery, see patients I don't get paid, it might be a larger number per hour. But at the end of the day, I can leverage it. I can't go do what I do as a doctor by the beach, or the mountains, but I can do real estate on the beach or the mountains.
Mike Swenson
And yeah, as you continue to build that cash flow is going to continue to grow too. So yeah, I mean, you can you can build a business, you can have your own practice. There's ways to leverage others but but Yeah, real estate's just different. So what what's kind of the the next steps for you what's the future hold in terms of your your practice your medical business that you have, as well as your real estate.
Dr. Roderick Capelo
So hopefully it goes live. You know, here's the thing when I joined a mastermind group, and I joined, remember marketing, I was stressed out, burned out kind of angry, not, not the guy you see him for you today, my perspective has changed, I look at the bright side of things as much as possible, because now that I have an escape plan, if you will, life looks like we're less daunting than when you're just nose to the grindstone with no escape plan or hoping your financial planner is telling you the right stuff. So when I realized that I really love what I do, I love practicing or doing surgery on children. What I don't love is the grind of having to run the business and the volume. So my ultimate goal for the practice perspective, we've just been working two days a week pro bono just have somebody come in person to practice whether you're running or working on my pas and nurse practitioners and, and really just go and see as few patients that I want.
Dr. Roderick Capelo
If I want to stay in chat, and I take my time per patient instead of 30 a day maybe just gives me 10 a day. And I pick a salary, I do it for free or charge the patient, because I have something else paying my family's overhead pay for my dreams and my insurance and my travel and all my family stuff. And so that's my goal is to be able to to back away from from the the trap that medicine is where you have to just work so hard and do it for free. But on my terms on the days that I don't want to schedule president, I just, I just don't, I don't have that freedom right now. As far as real estate goes, you know, to get there, I've got to get the message out and just help more people don't away I get ready to do what my dreams is that other people create passive income for their dreams. And so it's really much of the same. It's it's looking for more deals and partnering with more people, although my ultimate goal is to have various asset classes. So have my multifamily partners, have my self storage partners have my, you know, residential assisted living partners?
Dr. Roderick Capelo
You know, what are the things that we do when we help people create passive cash flow is we created tax bombs. I'm also working in the oil and gas industry for tax mitigation investments that really help you reduce your tax load, which is also great for high net worth folks like doctors, lawyers, engineers, things like that. So what's on the futures is continuing to get better at this and streamline these processes, but also sort of branched out into other asset classes. So that ultimately, were more fluid. Like there might be a time if this asset classes were better than this one. That's great. We have options we have. There's not just one thing that we're doing. So we dove deep with with multivariate initially. And the tax mitigation through the oil and gas industry is our our next thing we're looking into 2023
Mike Swenson
at That's awesome, that's really exciting. And it's just fun to hear, like you said, the change of your life how you were you know, angry, little bit more angry, a little bit more frustrated, didn't really know kind of how to get out. And now it's like, yeah, you see the light at the end of the tunnel. Because of professional development, you've become a different person. And, and so that's what what real estate can do and also just working on yourself, right? The personal development, I believe this is really important as well. That's exciting to hear.
Dr. Roderick Capelo
Absolutely, yeah. But it's because at the end of the day doesn't matter what you're doing, whether it's from your family, your spouse, your friends, your job, your real estate, the way I tell my kids, there's a thing that happens to you. And there's a story that you tell yourself a relative who happens to you. And that's really what what you focus on. So if you would have a different response to yourself a different story, so instead of a positive story, this is what happened. That's okay. It's gonna be good. And here's what Oh, shucks would I do? What was me? Anybody at all?
Mike Swenson
What advice would you give to somebody that's looking at getting into real estate, somebody in the medical profession right now that's like, gosh, I'm just feeling the grind right now. I don't necessarily know people in real estate. I don't really know where to get started. But I know I want to do something, what would you recommend?
Dr. Roderick Capelo
I think what I'd recommend is to suddenly educate yourself a little bit, Namaste, and asking them to go to six or eight or 10 conferences, real estate conferences a year like I do, but at least get, you know, some idea of what is out there real estate wise, you go to different corporate investor conferences, or a bunch of different ones. And then and then it's create relationships at those conferences, you might even be people doing deals or asking a bunch of questions, ask your friends and colleagues, hey, do you have anybody you know, anybody that's investing in real estate and, and, you know, increase your network represent your network is your net worth, well increase your network and create those relationships, it really, it really, you have to have a base dollars to know that that I mean, if you can't do speed to performance, you probably shouldn't be investing, be an expert, but have some base knowledge. But really, it all boils down to people and partnerships.
Dr. Roderick Capelo
And so five people, like I said, race, race, different ways that are doing that, you know, become friendly with, get to know that see if that's the kind of person you want to partner with. But at the end of the day, it involves education, which usually revolves around either a podcast or conferences or these things. There's all kinds of online conferences, and you could find, there's a bunch of resources out there, I think people just look.
Mike Swenson
And I think the challenge for some people probably too, is not really understanding, is this a good resource? Is this a bad resource, because there's a lot of junk out there too. And so for somebody new, I would say, sometimes people are hesitant to take action, because they're fearful of taking the wrong action. And so that's where education comes in, the more you educate yourself, the more you'll be able to help determine who's a great resource who's maybe not such a great resource. And that's the hard step. So people tend to just get into not doing anything, because they fear that they might do the wrong thing.
Dr. Roderick Capelo
Well, you hit the nail on the head, you know, my first investment was in a single family home, and I lost $40,000, right? So you can imagine when I fast forward about a year and a half, when I was looking at these performance thinking, Okay, I've got the money, and the spec sets, I got coffee twice. I said, Okay, do I want to have 30? I said, What about loss for you gotta invest. And so I did, anyway, great. And just maybe wish I'd waited. You know, I invested in the deal to two deals before, but it's a good day, it's about education. But you right, you don't really know, if you partner with the right person until you get down the road a little bit, right? It's always 2020.
Dr. Roderick Capelo
And so I'm not sure how you avoid that rather than just try to do due diligence and ask them questions. And for me, personally, I can get the sense really quickly. And if I want to do business with you or not, I mean, I can, I can have a 10 minute conversation with someone and think to myself, my eyes, my mind is open to do business with me, or, you know, I just don't see myself doing business with that person. That's me. Now I just, there's certain parts that I look for, you know, people, their mentality, their positivity, their outlook, things like that, that everybody has, is able to do that. I couldn't do that five years ago, that's just me now, in the way I kind of look at life and look at things.
Mike Swenson
And I think one thing to to add on top of that is embrace the suck, like, you're not going to necessarily know what a what a homerun deal looks like your first time out. And so you have to get through the first, the second, the third, the 10th, to the 20th to really know like, Oh, this is gonna be awesome. Too many people think that the first one's got to be perfect. And you have to kind of go through that learning curve and treating it like an educational expense. You had a $40,000 educational expense, your first property, and now you're making more on your future deals because you went through that?
Dr. Roderick Capelo
Absolutely, absolutely. I don't recommend people to make a $40,000 educational expense, like I did, but you're right. I mean, my my friend says there's no less than like a ball lesson. You certainly remember that. For sure. You don't have to gotta go, you know, through. Sometimes it's getting a smaller deal at first or, or maybe it's a deal with someone you bought from sometimes it's a friend of a friend. So they bring something the trust factor there. But you have to take action at the end of the day. Fortunate favors of those to take action. And so that's one of the things I've learned is I can as a surgeon, I can analyze all day, I can complicate anything, be honest with you, but you don't. The magic doesn't happen until you take action.
Mike Swenson
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on and sharing for people that want to know more about you and learn more about what you're up to. How can I do that?
Dr. Roderick Capelo
Thank you. [email protected] That's freedom at Fortis equity group f o r T I 's equity group.com to send me an email and or you can go to fortisequitygroup.com website and schedule a call. I'd love to connect with folks who just want to know what we're doing and see if it still fits into their overall game plan if it does look to help him and if not, there's lots of options. Okay. Thank you so much for having me on. Appreciate it.
Mike Swenson
Awesome. Thank you. I'm excited that you're able to just share your wisdom with everybody and to see how real estate has had such an impact on your life and excited that you're wanting to help others do the same. So thank you so much for coming on.
