Sam Silverman - The Freedom Framework

Sam Silverman is the founder of Silverman Capital and host of the Freedom Framework Show. Having started his career in sales, he took on leadership roles, then managing teams, and started closing multi-million dollar deals. Looking for something more, and wanted to create more impact to help others, he moved over to real estate investing and raising capital. With a focus on building relationships, creating wealth, and solving complex financial challenges, Sam's expertise has made him a trusted partner for investors and operators alike.

In this episode, you will be able to:

• Discover the secrets to achieving financial freedom through real estate investing.
• Explore the benefits and potential of starting in real estate with single family rentals.
• Learn the strategies for transitioning from a limited partner to syndicating deals in the real estate market.
• Uncover the advantages of buying businesses for passive income and wealth accumulation.
• Learn how joining a vibrant community designed to support and empower real estate investors can be helpful for your career growth.

The key moments in this episode are:
00:00:00 - Getting Started in Real Estate
00:05:24 - Lessons from Single Family Homes
00:09:25 - Transition to Syndications
00:11:53 - Importance of Networking and Community
00:14:12 - Free Information vs. Paid Execution
00:15:23 - Real Estate vs. Buying Businesses

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 Full transcript here:

Sam Silverman
When you look at getting started, there's really two things that matter quite a bit, right? One is, can you find deals? And two is, can you find capital? And for me, like, my background was all in sales and hunting, and I could network people around me. So I'm like, let me go partner with people I've worked with and play more of a role on the investment relations capital side of the house, where I kind of dove deeper in that area, versus on the operational side.

Mike Swenson
Welcome to the Real Freedom show, where we inspire you to pursue your passion to gain time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. I'm your host, Mike Swenson. Let's get some real freedom together. Hello, everybody. Welcome to Real Freedom Real Estate Leveraged Freedom, where we talk about different ways that people build time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. I'm your host, Mike Swenson. If you want to get started on learning more about what your journey could look like, check out our website, free freedom through realestate.com. we've got articles, all of our podcast episodes up there to be able to get started, because nobody's journey is the Same. Everyone's different. And we decide to interview quite a wide range of people to be able to share different stories. We want to find something that resonates with you, where you're going, what you're excited about. There's so many different things that you can do inside of real estate. So we're excited to be able to show different people's paths for you. Today we've got Sam Silverman here. He is the founder of Sam Silverman and host of the Freedom Framework Show. A lot of experience, capital raising syndications, buying businesses as well, kind of putting it all together, have an awesome community of people doing the Same. And so you're. You're changing a lot of lives. And so, Sam, we're excited to hear you share your story. So welcome to the show, Sam.

Sam Silverman
Yeah, Mike, thanks for having me on.

Mike Swenson
Why don't we get started, maybe talk about a little bit about your background, getting into real estate, kind of what was it for you? And we'll go from there.

Sam Silverman
Yeah. So I got in, like I think a lot of people do, where I was in sales. I started earning more money. My lifestyle didn't creep up. And, you know, all I really knew was, hey, passive income, buy some rentals, right? Started buying single family rentals. I built a portfolio of, call it 10 houses. And I quickly realized that I absolutely hated it. And what I found was that being in the role that I was in, right. I was in a, in a sales role where if you perform really well, you can make 3 or 4x what you should make. If it didn't perform well, you'd make half of what you should make and be close to getting fired every single month. And for me, the trade off of the time, effort, headspace that went into managing that portfolio of single family rentals was not worth the opportunity costs. People usually. Look, opportunity costs in dollars. This was a direct correlation to my performance, my job and my mental well being. So sold the whole portfolio off. Like at the time, Zillow was still buying homes and started investing as into deals as an LP. I got into about 20 or so deals as an LP from people I met on podcast, YouTube. Right. Different place of kind of, you know, going through content, interviewed folks, found some good people to invest with, got about 20 or so deals and then realized that there's opportunity in the more active side and started syndicating my own deals, partnering people in any kind of a fund to fund capacity and just getting much more involved and, and pretty quickly.

Mike Swenson
So where were your single family homes?

Sam Silverman
They were in a submarket of Jacksonville, Florida, like St. Augustine, ish area and the close downtown but still forest land area. That's where they were.

Mike Swenson
Okay, and is that where you lived at the time?

Sam Silverman
No, no, it's probably like three or four hours from me. So I had found the first property I bought on roofstock.com which was like a single family transaction place. It's supposed to be totally turnkey. It was nowhere near turnkey. Horrible experience overall buying through them and found the seller on the closing documents, called him from a connection I found on LinkedIn and like, hey, if you have more of these properties, I'll go buy them. We can save the real estate commission stuff too. Long story short, the owner was a builder and under a level of financial distress. So I ended up buying two properties at a time from him every 45 days in cash and would do delayed financing because I was just covering his build cost because he was underwater credit wise. So essentially I ended up with like 10 houses there, probably $50,000 in cash all in as I was pulling my cash at every transaction through delayed financing and great experience. And also gave me a lot of clarity too on what I don't want to do going forward as well.

Mike Swenson
Yeah, that's one of the things that, you know, I share with people is part of getting into real estate is to figure out what you like and what you don't like. And I think A lot of times people don't leap in. They're scared of screwing up or doing something wrong. And they think that wherever they get into real estate is going to be where they land. And so it curves and it changes. And so obviously you realize the single family life wasn't for you. Get out and sell it now. Did you sell all of them to Zillow?

Sam Silverman
Every one of them.

Mike Swenson
Okay.

Sam Silverman
Which was awesome. Right. Because these are probably quarter million dollar give or take homes. And most people buying a home that price point, it's an FHA loan, which means that they're putting three and a half percent down. Where there's no money for contingencies, your appraisal comes short. Oh well, right. So it's those people typically. Right. If you're putting that much money down, you lucky, don't have the cash to go make up an appraisal gap or if the financing doesn't come through properly, you have huge risk of doing it. Right. So they were offering above market rate with a 1% commission versus a 6% commission and just say all cash buy transaction. It was a no brainer. And I'm super grateful they were still buying homes at times because the other side of that transaction, like the likely buyers of those homes would have a lot of risk in a transaction as well and likely a lot of headache on my end to go do it for most likely less net, net net proceeds. So I got super lucky. They were still buying homes at time and again people asked to. It's like, hey, a single family, a great route to go. I got lucky as the timing of when I bought them and how I bought them. Right. So I don't necessarily think single family is a good way to go for anyone going forward. I think it's a good. It worked out well for me a lot of it based on luck and timing of what it was. Not because it is something like creative or innovative or just like a lot of luck and ties to it.

Mike Swenson
So then after that went into becoming a limited partner on syndications, correct?

Sam Silverman
Yes. About 20 or so deals after that you can use the proceeds I got from those homes. There's like a million bucks or so in total. And then just broke it up in about 20 deals over the next six, nine months.

Mike Swenson
In placing capital for people looking that have money. I think, you know, syndication is a great opportunity for people to get into real estate without having to do a lot of the, the work themselves. Obviously they're really tying themselves to the relationship of the person that is managing that property and Kind of running that as the operator. But talk about, you know, being able to. To maybe diversify or kind of what were you looking for in those deals?

Sam Silverman
Yeah, so I think like anything you're betting on the people, right? In a deal like that, where your hands off the biggest thing you're betting on is who are those people and do I feel confident in them to be ethical to execute a business plan? Do I feel aligned to the actual strategy itself? So on mine, I think at this time I was like 23, right. So I cared. I don't really care about cash flow. I want to get exposure. I kind of viewed all of that as like a big learning experience. So most people wouldn't take the Same route I took in doing it because not that I didn't care about the money, I really viewed it as more of an exposure and kind of entry point to it versus saying I need to go maximize every dollar of return and scrutinize everything. There's I was much more carefree with how I allocated the capital, right. So but when I'm looking at it now, like how I really go do things, I definitely go bigger allocations and less deals now, right. Versus the smaller allocations kind of and super widespread just for you know, ease of tracking too honestly and ease relationship. Like the biggest thing I look at is one the people, they have skin in the game and I let me. I mean less so capital, more so as relates to reputational risk like someone's first deal, right. They have no likely brand equity. So for example, if you have Joe the brand new guy syndicating a deal starting out and you just go shut down, no one really cares, right. If you work with a bigger name group, right. There's a level of brand equity they need to go hold intact. Right. If you lose a dollar of someone's money, it costs you way more than a dollar. If I lose a dollar, my own money cost me a dollar. Right. So you kind of look at that level as well too things the deal itself aligns with the intention you want. Whether if you're looking at. If you're 65 years old and living off of your cash flow, put your money into a venture capital type deal that has no cash flow and will go 0 or 50x maybe not the best route for you to go pick. So it's understanding does this deal in intention line up with what I want to go do? And then lastly it's do I believe in the market, the asset class, the macro environment, do I feel comfortable with the sponsors fees Term structure. Am I protected in that way? But again, to me it all starts the people that you're working with all day long for sure.

Mike Swenson
So was a lot of that then apartments?

Sam Silverman
Yes, we did apartments, we did single family portfolios of homes, we did mobile home parks, we did storage, we did debt. Like most things you can name in real estate, I've at least, you know, test the waters in.

Mike Swenson
So then getting to deciding to do your own syndications, I'd love to hear kind of your thought process of moving along those lines.

Sam Silverman
Yeah. So when you look at getting started, there's really two things that matter quite a bit. Right. One is can you find deals? And two is can you find capital? And for me, like my background was all in sales and hunting and I can network people around me. So I'm like, let me go partner with people I've worked with and play more of a role on the investor relations capital side of the house where I kind of dove deeper in that area versus on the operational side. And the reason was that I was still working full time job. I was a VP of sales, big company, a very demanding type role. And what I didn't want to have happen was I have a deal, I'm working or managing and my work picks up in a massive way and I have to go neglect that deal for whatever reason. In terms of time, I don't put people's money at risk because of my time being spread thin. In certain ways. When you're kind of playing the role as a fund manager, a capital partner, your operational involvement can be minimized at times for the people who are playing bigger roles than yourself. So it allowed me to go be involved but also own less of deals, kind of play roles. That allowed me to go do both at the Same time because I'm a big believer too. If don't go leave your job and go start something new. If you have nothing built, go build it, then go leave. So for me, I spent two plus years building it while I had a job still. So understanding my time capacity and like headspace and what I can do to go work with it allowed me to go build it while having the job and then transition once that was stabilized to your point of becoming an actual business.

Mike Swenson
Yeah, for sure. That's great advice for people. And if you have the luxury to be able to do that and want to do that. Yeah, hold your job as long as possible. Are you looking to get started or scale in real estate investing but don't know your next step? Are you overwhelmed thinking about Finding deals, analyzing deals, doing due diligence and managing properties on top of it. Go ahead and push the easy button and invest with us. Real estate investing is what we do full time. We've done dozens of deals with hundreds of doors. We have the knowledge and experience to hand pick the best deals that most investors can't find. We've got large off market deals all the time where you can hopefully find returns and economies of scale that you just can't find on your own. The best thing is it's 100% passive to you for less capital than you put down trying to acquire a property on your own. Don't let this year go by where you don't make the leap, add to your portfolio or you just sit in analysis by paralysis. To find out more, visit freedom through real estate.com and click on Invest. You can book a call and learn more there. So get to scaling your portfolio now with us by your side. Talk a little bit about this community that you're building with people. Obviously it can be lonely. Networking is really important. You know, there's a ton of value of networking with other like minded people. So how did that idea come to be?

Sam Silverman
I honestly started the community by accident, right? At first it was, I was in another group that was somewhat similar to actually what I originally started with and I'm like, I can do this differently and in my opinion with less frills for much more effective price. When you give more people access, right? I think what people, what happens for certain people is that when you start having some success in a given area, a lot of people reach out to you about something, right? Asking for help, asking for advice, and in turn like, okay, I'm having the Same conversation over and over and over again. And selfishly, when you first start too, like you'll talk to anyone, right? When you're first starting a business, as you get more further along in your journey, you become, you say no far more often because you have to go protect your time. And I was having all these people reach out to me the Same questions over and over again. I need to honestly see somewhere to go put them, like push them to that I can go solve all those Same problems at the Same time. So in turn, rather than taking on a very high four figure hourly rate for consulting, I'm like, why don't I go make this much more attainable to people as it relates to cost? And they're asking all the Same question, why don't I go record content, bring in coaches to go support other areas that I have less competency in, right. Because I know there's a few things I'm pretty good at and a lot of areas that people way better at than myself. Let me go bring those people in to go help support the members as well too. So it kind of stemmed from the angle of, like, to give an example, when I first started out in the corporate world, I'm like, hey, if I can make 100k, I'll be in great shape. Then I saw people making 200 grand. If I can make 200k, I'll be in great shape. And I started making $400,000, then a million. Then you start realizing too, hey, these people are making a million dollars, but they're miserable in their life in the corporate world. And I'm like, okay, there's a better opportunity to go do things. We actually have ownership. Do them your way, right? And you have a better overall balance of life. So I think being around the right people helps you think differently. I think there's a huge opportunity right now where people are kind of waking up to realize it is that I want to be able to go have control of my time. I want to go own things that are actual business. I want to have a level of brand equity versus just working for most my entire life too. So it was kind of a culmination of a lot of those things. And I think a huge value of just having people who have been there and done that in certain scenarios, you can go ask questions to again, all this information that we share in the community is free. Almost every group that you're joining, you can go find the stuff that they're teaching in that group, on YouTube, on podcasts, in different books, but you're paying for the speed of execution. And people there you can go reach out to people there you can go dive deep into a deal with. Like, early on in my. In my career, there are deals I would have paid six figures to not have done that I did right just in the awareness of I don't understand certain things. So that's a huge piece of it. And people around you who are all focused on doing things similar, even if in different ways, is hugely, hugely valuable. Like, at times I was in the corporate world, like, you know, like, hey, I'm going to go leave a job or make $600,000 a year to go do my own thing. People like, you're out of your mind. I mean, people around you can go talk to and relate to and who wants more things themselves, Even if the path they take to get There is still a bit different than how you would do it. So I think just a combination of all those areas kind of why we put a lot of effort into building this.

Mike Swenson
Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Like you said, and I hear this from a lot of people of like, yeah, I can learn anything that I want on YouTube. The hard thing is, is the connection of the right piece of information at the right time, or being able to bounce an idea off of somebody that's been there and that and save you. Like you said, the speed of execution, being able to save you time, maybe.

Sam Silverman
Going down the wrong paths or buying the wrong deal. Right. Like right now in real estate, there's a little bit less variance where if you buy a bad deal, it won't kill you in terms of like bankrupt you. If you buy a bad business, it can bankrupt you 100%. Right. Because most people, if you're buying a business that say is doing, you know, a million dollars a year of, of EBITDA, right. You're buying it for $3 million, putting 300K down, you're taking SBA loan out for $2.7 million. That could bankrupt a lot of people. Right. If that deal goes south, it's personally guaranteed. So I think part of what having a group people around you, whether it be coaches, mentors, people you can go relate to in a similar spot to yourself, of passing on certain deals is actually the best thing you can go do. Right. Like we had a student recently who we got in a call with that was under contract in a deal too, and it was a bloodbath. And like them, passing a deal will hopefully save them millions of dollars in the future. So it's not always what you buy, it's more what you don't buy. How you choose to allocate your time and resources going forward as well.

Mike Swenson
Now, you'd also mentioned about buying businesses in addition to real estate. So talk about for folks considering that or even too. Yeah. As a way to escape a W2 job, maybe by buying a business instead of buying real estate to replace that income. Would love to hear kind of your thoughts of, of moving in that direction.

Sam Silverman
Yeah. So I think when you look at buying real estate, you likely need a few transactions to replace your income. So take first multifamily, most multifamily. If you do it right, you're buying kind of smaller stuff. Not the 100 unit plus stuff. Right. That you're building a whole business around. If you're buying some smaller stuff. Right. The eight 12, 16 year properties you likely need, you know, 40, 50 doors to go replace 10, 15K a month of income. If you structure it in a way where you're kind of raising some money as debt, raising some money as kind of decent equity in it, you probably need 40, $50 to replace that call 10k a month income. When you look at doing that through real estate or sorry, through buying a business, you may only need one transaction. So a good rule of thumb is if you're looking to get replaced, call 10k a month and you buy a business doing $400,000 a year of profit. You probably have about $150,000 going to your SBA loan and you probably have 100k going to your manager. Going to a manager or GM to go in place, and you have $100,000 left for yourself there as well. So no growth, nothing else. So it's definitely harder to go find one good business to go buy. But one transaction, you can go replace your income much more quickly. So what I say is it depends. Some people like the real estate can be a great slow burn. If you go buy deals, you're disciplined, very predictable path to be done. Thousands and thousands people have done it with multifamily. Like it's a great route and going to do so. Especially if you're buying deals that are smaller, like think stuff, sub 50 units. Once you're above that, you're competing in deals that are, that are trading at what their actual market value is, right? When you're buying below that, you're truly getting a good basis on a product because you have more unsophisticated sellers and buyers in that market. So I think you have more opportunity there. But again, it really depends on what route you want to go do. Like, there's tons of different ways to go do it. And not like one's not right, one's not wrong. It's figuring out what do you want your legs to look like, what path you want to go take to get there, what timeline do you want to go have, and what pains or stressors are you okay dealing with? Right? So each one, each, every scenario is different and they'll all have different pains with it.

Mike Swenson
Now, I know we could spend hours and hours talking about the business piece, but for those people that are curious, like buying a business like the example you gave, you know, you know, 400k, people are probably asking like, why would that person sell their business if it's making money? And they could just hire a general manager manager to replace their time and just keep that income why wouldn't they do that versus selling it?

Sam Silverman
So it really depends. Like, if you look at it, there's a huge shift in ownership, right? Most people, they call it half businesses now, are owned by people who are in the baby boomer category, where they may not have an actual succession plan. They may not have the systems and process to do so. So, for example, right now I run a fund called the Pave. We're going. I'm buying paving companies. And a lot of these owners are pavers, right? They have done the work themselves for generations, and they're not particularly the best businessmen. Always right for them. They built, they're great at paving, right? But in terms of operational process, in terms of, like, things are held together at times with duct tape and paperclips, right? Like, it's not actually run how business should be run, but they have enough scale where it doesn't matter to them. Like, for them, taking the business from doing a million dollars a year, $2 million a year, just extra headache. Like, for example, if we bought a company recently, they didn't even have a website, right? So, like, things like that allows for so much opportunity. So what I'd say is that owners are tired, right? They're. They're over it, right? Because they've been doing a lot of the work themselves. So there's a great value in finding companies in which you can go replace the owner through a manager in a certain way. There's a lift in doing that process. But for a lot of owners who have been trapped in their business, at times it becomes tough, right? Or they look at it as, hey, I've had my time, I want my payday, and I want to call it a day. Or they may not even realize that they can actually go sell it. So there's a lot of different reasons that someone actually looks to go sell for it.

Mike Swenson
I like that strategy, too.

Sam Silverman
Of.

Mike Swenson
Yeah, like you mentioned, finding one good business can certainly make up for a lot of real estate deals. And then at least that gets you out of a W2 job, gives you a chance to make some money on your own or add to it to be able to save up and put different places. And it's all kind of about starting that snowball that's just going to continue to grow and grow over time, for sure.

Sam Silverman
And it's how I view it is that if you can go get to a place where you've covered your monthly expenses, right, and you can go be more intentional in what you want to go do. So, for example, we have a friend in my community as well too, who he got kind of his freedom by multifamily, right? He had 40, 50 units replaces, you know, 12 DK month of income. And he's now good, but now he's like, hey, I want to go build a business around flipping houses and now I'm going to build a business around syndications, right. Which are potentially longer term plays. So for him, now that he covered his short term, right, his livability, he can go think differently and bigger in the long term and delay the gratification and go potentially shoot for bigger goals around things. So again, not a right or wrong answer. It's kind of solving for what gives you the optionality to be more selective as to what you want to go.

Mike Swenson
Do as you've kind of picked up a lot of experience along the way. What are you going to be focusing on here for kind of the next season for you?

Sam Silverman
So real estate? Less so for me right now, definitely more in kind of partnering on businesses. I think there's different levers that can be pulled there right now. So I'd say more so on the buying business piece of it, both in things that I personally own, right. Like an accounting firm right now or things that I can go get a level of scale to along with investors, right? So I'd say it's kind of two main buckets, right? Things that I own myself then also things that I can partner with investors on to have a level of scale.

Mike Swenson
For people that want to reach out to you, learn more about what you're doing. How can they do that? Sam?

Sam Silverman
Yeah, so super active on LinkedIn and then our podcast is the Freedom Framework Show. We also have a new YouTube channel under Sam Silverman official as well.

Mike Swenson
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on and sharing. Excited to hear where you're going to continue to grow and best of luck to you in the.