OZ Pitch Day - Nov 14th
The 3 Essential Habits Of High Net Worth Investors, With Andy Hagans
Today’s podcast episode is a replay of a live webinar presented by Jimmy Atkinson and Andy Hagans, wherein we described what hard-earned experience has taught us about investing, and the 3 habits that we have found to be essential for High Net Worth investors.
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Episode Highlights
- How Jimmy and Andy arrived at these three essential habits, and why they are important for investors once they reach the “High Net Worth” stage.
- How institutional investors and successful family offices use an Investment Policy Statement to state their goals and adjust their portfolios over time.
- The major impact of the three drags on returns — fees, taxes, and inflation.
- The importance of being a lifelong learner, and knowing enough to be dangerous.
Featured On This Episode
Guest: Andy Hagans, Mastiff Equity Partners
About The Opportunity Zones & Private Equity Show
Hosted by OpportunityDb and WealthChannel founder Jimmy Atkinson, The Opportunity Zones & Private Equity Show features guest interviews from fund managers, advisors, policymakers, tax professionals, and other foremost experts in Opportunity Zones and the broader private equity landscape.
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Show Transcript
Jimmy: Welcome to today’s WealthChannel webinar. I’m Jimmy Atkinson, co-founder of WealthChannel. At WealthChannel, we help high-net-worth investors grow their wealth with alternative investment strategies. Today’s webinar is 45 minutes, and we’ll also include toward the end a special offer for our upcoming investor conference, taking place in the Dallas-Fort Worth area one month from today, on June 16th. We’d love to see you there, so please stick around to the end so you can get access to that special offer. Today’s webinar is titled “The Three Essential Habits of High-Net-Worth Investors.” My co-presenter today is my business partner, Andy Hagans, the other co-founder of WealthChannel.
Andy, welcome. We’re gonna get to you and started with our presentation momentarily. But first, a few announcements, and one, I wanna know, hey, where’s everyone joining us from today? Drop us a note in the chat, click the chat button in your Zoom toolbar, and let us know where you’re dialing in from. I’m in Fort Worth, Texas. Andy is located in Western Michigan. So, just be great to find out where everybody else is joining us from today. I also just want to let everyone know that yes, today’s webinar is being recorded. We’re gonna circulate a recording of this webinar to everyone who registered, by tomorrow. And actually, this is also going to get released as tomorrow’s podcast episode. So, it’ll get distributed widely. But if you’re here live, you’re in for a special treat.
Secondly, we want this program to be interactive. And here’s where we’re counting on you, our live audience. If you have any questions for Andy or myself, please use the Q&A tool in your Zoom toolbar. Or use the chat. We’ll monitor both. Don’t be shy. We want a lot of questions, and we’ll save some time toward the end of our 45-minute period for some live Q&A with our audience. And with that said, Andy, it’s great to see you, pal. How you doing?
Andy: I’m doing fantastic. I mean, it’s a beautiful day in May. And I’m excited for this webinar. I mean, as you said, this is the first webinar of its type that we’ve ever done. We’ve seen pretty big registration count, you know, for this, so I’m excited.
Jimmy: Yeah, most of our webinars are educational webinars, directed at advisors a lot of time, or we’re joined by an accountant or an attorney, to walk us through a technical topic. Or sometimes we have private offering pitch webinars with fund issuers or real estate developers who are raising capital. But today’s meant to just be educational. It’s just me and Andy, and we’re just talking directly to you, the high-net-worth investor, about the three essential habits that we have developed over time, and that we think are essential for any high-net-worth investor to have some success. Andy, we’re gonna dive into the formal presentation in just a minute or two. But I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about the topic today. We’re talking about the three essential habits of high-net-worth investors. But Andy, how did we arrive at these habits, and why are they so important?
Andy: Well, we arrived at them the old-fashioned way. I think maybe that’s fair to say, you know, through maybe trial and error, through mistakes, lessons were learned, the school of hard knocks, whatever phrase you wanna use. But you and I, we’ve been business partners for basically 20 years now, right, since we were college roommates. And in our 20s and early 30s, we built up, and scaled, and then sold four different businesses that we co-founded together. We had those liquidity events along the way. And with those liquidity events, they, you know, forced us to become investors, you know, kind of in a overnight kind of a way.
And, you know, one of the themes that I think we’ll talk about today is, there’s so much good investment advice, investment, educational content out there, right? So, just to name, like, one example, I remember reading Ramit Sethi’s “I Will Teach You To Be Rich,” like, 10 years ago, and my wife read it. And there’s lots of books like that. You know, Dave Ramsey’s, Suze Orman…just, you know, hundreds, thousands. But most of them have that kind of basic advice, which makes sense, because it’s applicable to 90% of people out there, which is, you know, spend less than you earn, max out your 401(k) and IRA. You know, inside the 401(k) invest in low-cost index funds or ETFs. That is sound advice, you know, up to the point where you’re a high-net-worth, accredited investor. The issue is, once you’re an accredited investor, especially if you’re a self-directed accredited investor, then everything gets way more complex. And then there’s a relative lack of information or educational content geared towards high-net-worth investors.
So, I think, you know, you and I, we’ve had some definite successes along the way. We’ve made mistakes along the way. We’ve also gotten to know a lot of other, you know, family offices, high-net-worth investors, professionals, and just had a dialogue with so many people who have shared with us their mistakes, their wins. And so I think we kind of, you know, earned this knowledge, I would say. Is that fair to say, Jimmy?
Jimmy: I think so. And, by the way, that’s the reason why I started OpportunityDB, a resource aimed at educating high-net-worth investors all about Opportunity Zone investments. And it’s also why you and I started WealthChannel, right, Andy? Just to try to disseminate this information to the individuals who are high-net-worth investors and are looking to grow their wealth. But those everyday resources, like you mentioned, may not be as readily available. So, at what point, Andy, does it become crucial to start implementing these habits as an investor? At what point along your investing career do you really need to start thinking about these habits and incorporating them into your life?
Andy: Yeah, I mean, I think that’s a good question. And it, you know, might be different for every person. So, you know, for instance, I have always had a passion for investing, that I was literally reading “The Wall Street Journal,” like, as a teenager. Like, just for fun, you know, I’d pick it up at 7/11. So, it’s different for every person, but I would say, you know, you need to implement these habits when you cross that threshold into being a high-net-worth individual, you know. So, you know, if we’re gonna use a litmus test, let’s say the accredited investor threshold. And, you know, high-net-worth, maybe it differs, depending on what area of the country you live in, cost of living, all that sort of thing. But I think that demarcation line is a pretty good one, because once you’re an accredited investor, there’s a whole new menu of investment offerings that are now open to you. And then at the same time, there’s that lack of information about those types of investments.
And again, most of that information that’s published educationally about investing is geared towards that 90%, which is, you know, spend less than you earn, max out your 401(k), invest in low-cost index funds. There’s nothing wrong with that information. But once you become an accredited investor, I think, it’s not that you outgrow that information, but it’s more that you now have the opportunity to build on it, right? But the cost to entry, the barrier to entry with a lot of these other opportunities, is knowledge, right? And, for instance, if you don’t know about the Opportunity Zones program, how can you take advantage of it?
Jimmy: Great, Andy. Well, with that, let me go ahead and share my screen here, and we’ll officially get going with today’s presentation, “The Three Essential Habits of High-Net-Worth Investors.” And again, for those who just joined in the last few minutes, or in case you missed my earlier announcement, we are gonna save some time at the end of today’s webinar for some live Q&A. So, if you have any questions for us, please use the Q&A tool in your Zoom toolbar. We were also asking earlier where everybody is joining us from today. Andy, you should pull up the chat and find out if anybody’s in your neck of the woods maybe. I’ll read those off a little bit later, I guess. Let us know where you’re dialing in from if you haven’t yet, though. I’m always curious to see where everybody’s joining us from. And we’re also gonna have a special offer about our WealthChannel Summit event that we’re hosting in Fort Worth, on June 16th, if you stay toward the end.
So, but let’s dive in, “The Three Essential Habits of High-Net-Worth Investors.” At WealthChannel, we’re the number one private marketplace for high-net-worth investors. And I’m Jimmy, he’s Andy. Our mission is to help you, as an investor, achieve financial freedom, and build generational wealth for your family. If that all sounds good, and if today’s presentation goes well, hopefully, you’ll want to come join us in Fort Worth next month, on June 16th, WealthChannel Summit. I’m gonna tell you more about this toward the end of today’s educational segment, so, Andy, don’t let me forget. But let’s dive in now, “The Three Essential Habits of High Net-Worth-Investors” as we see them.
The three habits are, number one, have a goal, and review it annually. You need to know where you’re going, and you need to reassess it periodically. Number two, thinking in terms of triple net returns. And we’ll look…by the way, we’re gonna dive deeper into each of these in a minute here. And number three is to be a lifelong learner, and to learn every day. These habits are really essential for, I would say, any investor. But particularly when you get to the point of being a high-net-worth investor, an accredited investor, worth at least a million dollars, or bringing in a certain level of income. The SEC defines accredited investor as anyone with a million dollars net worth or who has income greater than $200,000 a year. So, we use that term as a rough shorthand of what a high-net-worth investor is. It’s important for those individuals, especially these three habits, because it’s at that point where taxes really start making a meaningful difference for you, and you have maxed out your tax-advantaged accounts, typically. And also, there’s just not a lot of knowledge out there, as Andy alluded to in the intro. But let’s dive in to each of the three habits right now.
So, habit number one is to have a goal and to review it annually. And we aren’t making this first one up completely. We’re relying on, we’re looking at what institutional investors and what successful, sophisticated family offices have been doing for decades. And they all have, at least the sophisticated, successful ones, they all have in place what’s referred to as an investment policy statement, where you clearly outline your goals, you clearly outline your time horizon, your risk tolerance, your asset allocation, a tax plan, and also a process for reviewing regularly your investment policy statement, its goals, and your asset allocation, a plan for rebalancing your asset allocation. I’m gonna show you an example of an investment policy statement that Andy and I have been working on for some time. We call it the WealthChannel Investment Policy Statement Worksheet. We’re gonna get to that in a moment on the next couple of slides here.
The second bullet point here is a calendar. And it’s kind of reiterating the last point, of having a process in place. It’s really important, first of all, to define your goals, so you know where you’re going, and you know whether or not you have achieved your goal or not, if you’re on track or off track. But you also need to have a calendar in place. As Andy and I like to say, “If it’s not on the calendar, it doesn’t exist.” This is the type of thing that needs to be reviewed annually. At least annually. Some people may choose to do it every 3 to 6 months, I think. More or less, though, I would say annually is probably a fair place to start. That’s what I do with my portfolio. I think Andy he does it with his portfolio about annually as well. Set a reminder on your calendar for June 1st or April 30th, whatever you want, and always review on that date. Andy, I don’t know if you have any thoughts on this before I start showing examples of the investment policy statement.
Andy: Well, you know, just a little bit more context, you know, why the investment policy statement is so important to me, and I think to self-directed high-net-worth investors. It’s because a lot of times as investors, our worst enemy is ourselves, right? Behavioral risk, chasing the shiny new thing. And by writing down your investment policy statement, you know, what your goals are, what your time horizon is, your risk tolerance, it gives you self-accountability. Right? And it’s honestly very, I would say, freeing. It gives you freedom, in a way. Because now, when I’m reviewing any type of new opportunity, any type of new investment offering, I’m not just asking, like, “Is this a good investment?” sort of in an abstract sense, but I can evaluate it in the context of, “Does this fit into my overall portfolio? And, does my portfolio reflect my goals, as an investor, as a human being, as a dad, as a husband,” you know, big picture, life stuff? Because this should all be integrated and consistent. So, this might seem like something really simple, but without this, you know, I think a lot of investors are just kind of floating along, you know, without any self-accountability. And statistically, we know that a lot of investors are their own worst enemy.
Jimmy: Yeah. I think that’s oftentimes the case, is, investors can be their own worst enemy because oftentimes you get into trouble with psychological or behavioral issues. You see the market turn down, and to cut to the chase, a lot of times, you see investors buying high and selling low, which is not exactly what you wanna do. You wanna have a plan and stick to it. You wanna not panic during market downturns. Let’s move along, though, Andy, and actually take a look at an example of an IPS, an investment policy statement. By the way, these can be 100 pages long, if you’re a very sophisticated…
Andy: If you’re Harvard.
Jimmy: …institution, if you’re an endowment fund at a university, or you’re an enormous family office, and you have hundreds of millions of dollars, or billions of dollars to play with. If you’re a ordinary high-net-worth investor, like me and Andy, you know, we might just have a one-page or a two-page investment policy statement. And that’s actually the example that we’re looking at here, is just a one-pager. And I’ve kind of split it up into three parts here. So, the next three slides, we’ll go over the investment policy statement.
So, first, at the very top, define the goal. What is your investment goal? For example, “I’d like to grow…” And this should be qualitative and quantitative. So, actually define numbers in here. “I’d like to grow my net worth from X to Y, so that I can Z,” is kind of the formula that we’re following here, before age 55, or whatever. So, that’s a very clear investment goal, that you can review annually, per your calendar, and you can see whether or not you’re on track there. It’s qualitative and it’s quantitative. And I would also suggest, Andy, you can adjust this goal over time, as your life may change, and factors in your life may change, as your family grows, or as you get older, you can tweak this goal over time.
And it ties in well with the second point, which is your time horizon. If you’re just starting out, you’re in your 20s, you have a very different time horizon, and therefore very different goals, and a different asset allocation than you might if you were in your 50s or your 60s, and approaching retirement. Or if you were in your 60s or beyond, and you were actually in retirement, you’re gonna have very different investment time horizons there. Andy, any thoughts on these two points before I move on to the next couple of points?
Andy: No, let’s carry on. This is great.
Jimmy: So, part two of three here, risk tolerance, asset allocation, and then some tax planning features here. So, risk tolerance, you can define it in any one of a number of ways. Here, we are comparing, in our example, our investment portfolio, we wanna have relatively low risk, and we want it to be less volatile than the S&P 500. And oftentimes, this risk tolerance will then dictate the next point here, which is our target asset allocation. If we wanted to be very risky, we would be majority stocks, or vast majority stocks, or maybe 100% stocks, or 100% private equity, or something like that. But in this case, we’re going a little bit less…a little bit more conservative, we want our portfolio to be less volatile. So, target asset allocation, and this example is a certain amount in stocks, certain amount in fixed income, and a certain amount in alternative investments, like Qualified Opportunity Funds, or private equity real estate investments, or what have you.
And then finally, on this, to close up this second part, and then we’ve got two more aspects on the part three, wrappers accounts and tax planning. So, all of this just goes under the umbrella of taxes. And this is why, by the way, this is in particular is good for high-net-worth investors to focus on. Because oftentimes, as a high-net-worth, you may be a business owner or an entrepreneur, who has limited access to a retirement plan. It’s not like you have an employer that you can just say, “I want to max out my 401(k), and you’re gonna match it.” Sometimes you are the employer, sometimes you are the business owner, or sometimes you’re a small business owner, and you don’t have the same access to the same tax-advantaged spaces as, you know, the ordinary type of Main Street investors that are covered in the books that Andy mentioned earlier, the people that are helped by Dave Ramsey and Suze Orman and Ramit Sethis of the world.
By the way, we could probably do an entire webinar on just tax planning for high-net-worth investors. I’ll save that for another time. But suffice it to say, in this example here, max out all of your tax-advantaged spaces, your 401(k), your IRA, maybe you have a SEP IRA, whatever, with your least tax-efficient investments. And then make sure that your allocation to alternatives includes a lot of tax-efficient investments as well, such as energy investments, Opportunity Zone Funds, I love, as Andy knows. And then, for the traditional investments and those that may not be tax-advantaged, at least attack what you can. Control what you can, which is using low-cost and efficient wrappers, mainly ETFs, and I would say even index ETFs, in this example, right? Andy, any comments on this before we move on?
Andy: Well, I just wanna comment briefly on, you know, risk tolerance. This is something where it, you know, you need to be honest with yourself, right? Because I will say, as an investor, and, you know, we talk about we earned this knowledge. You know, going into 2008-2009, the Great Financial Crisis, turned out, I thought my risk tolerance was higher than it was. And through that experience, I learned, no, I have more of a moderate risk tolerance. It’s not extremely low, but, you know, I thought I had a very high risk tolerance. And then I learned, oh, wow. I only have high risk tolerance in a bull market, Jimmy. I think that’s probably pretty common. So, be honest about that. It’s not a contest to see who’s willing to bear the most risk, right?
And then another…just one other note on the wrappers, accounts, and tax planning section. You know, this is kind of planting the seeds of that triple net returns framework that we’re gonna talk about later in the webinar, which is so, so, so important for high-net-worth investors. That we’re not…we’re no longer just analyzing investments in terms of the underlying assets. Now we’re analyzing investments in terms of what is the asset, inside what kind of wrapper, inside what kind of account, right? And then you can do that triple net framework analysis to find out well, what are the true triple net returns flowing to me? And if it’s all inside a 401(k), you don’t need to worry about that, right? But now that you’re a high net-worth investor, you do need to be thinking that way. So, this is just planting that seed.
Jimmy: [inaudible 00:20:23] before we move along, we got people joining us from all over the country, Andy. We got D.C., Austin, Texas, couple people from Oregon, Chandler, Arizona, Irvine, California, LA, Santa Fe, Boston.
Andy: I love all the Texas and Southwestern folks, because that’s just gonna be, what, a short drive or a short flight to our upcoming event, so…
Jimmy: That’s true. That’s true. South Jersey and Daytona Beach represented too. Just wanted to get all those in before we moved along.
Last part here. Habit one, we’re spending a lot of time on. We’ll go through habits two and three a little more quickly. They’re a little more straightforward. But the end of the IPS here, the last couple of aspects have… We’re talking about the process. The calendaring system, like I mentioned. You should have a process for rebalancing your portfolio. Some people like to do this annually. I don’t think it needs to be done annually necessarily. It could be done every two to five years, I think. I would say at a minimum, probably five years, and that’s what our example says here.
Rebalance your portfolio every five years at a minimum, or annually if conditions might warrant it. If we’ve had a huge run-up in the stock market in one year, you might be overweighted in stocks after, just 12 months after you last rebalanced. Maybe it’s a good time to rebalance, or we were at a big drawdown as well, maybe the inverse is true. So, portfolio rebalancing, should have a process in place to accomplish that. Doesn’t necessarily need to be on a particular date every year, although some people adhere to that. I would say do what feels comfortable for you. Do what also feels realistic for you. What are you most likely to accomplish? Perfection is the enemy of the good, as we like to say.
And then finally, a process in place for just reviewing this IPS, this investment policy statement. This investment policy statement, you don’t write it once when you’re 22 years old and then it lives in stone forever. You need to adjust it over time, as your family grows, as your life situation changes, as your income increases, as your net worth increases, as your time horizon shrinks. And we strongly recommend you do this portfolio review and your IPS review every year. January 1st, although, quite frankly, who wants to do this on January 1st, after you’ve been out drinking the night before on New Year’s Eve? But maybe February 1st or February 28th, or, what’s today’s date? May 16th, for instance. I don’t know. Pick a date. Stick with it. Do it every year. Andy, you ready to move on to habit number two?
Andy: Let’s do it.
Jimmy: Habit number two is thinking triple net returns. There are drags on returns, and when I mention returns, I’m talking about projected returns that you might find in a prospectus, projected returns that you might find in a pitch deck, actual returns that you might read in a quarterly statement or an annual statement from your brokerage account, or your, you know, quarterly statement from your, an investment fund that you might be invested in. Just know that with every investment, there are drags on those numbers. And those drags, specifically, are fees, first of all, and then taxes, and then inflation. And oftentimes, these numbers get disregarded or swept under the rug one way or another. Sometimes returns are reported net of fees. Oftentimes, you’ll see projections that are net of fees as well. But don’t forget about taxes and don’t forget about inflation. And if it doesn’t specifically mention that they’re net of fees, maybe that’s before fees are taken into account. So, Andy, what are some of your thoughts here on minding the drag, and considering these three factors when you’re looking at returns?
Andy: Well, it needs to be a habit. It needs to be…you know, and if it’s not a habit, needs to be something you make into a habit. It needs to be almost automatic when you’re looking at an investment. You know, back to the example of, you know, a typical investor, 90% of investors, who are mainly, they’re making their house payment. That’s a form of savings. And then they’re investing through their 401(k) or maybe an IRA. There is very little control, really, over any of this in that situation, right? Because if I’m investing solely through a 401(k), you know, the funds that are available to me inside that 401(k) are baked in. You know, I guess I can look at the menu and maybe choose some lower-fee funds, but it’s essentially out of my control the fee structure of the funds that are included in that 401(k).
And by the way, 401(k)s, especially if there’s any kind of company match, are such a great deal for the investor, right? They’re a fantastic deal, that, you know, the fees, you could almost legitimately say the fees, like, hardly even matter, in the sense that they’re gonna be greatly outweighed by the advantages of investing in a 401(k). You know, the taxes, again, in a 401(k), you’re not paying taxes on those gains on the income and the gains and the returns from that account. And then inflation, there’s really nothing we can do about inflation, although we need to be aware of it. So, you know, I think the reason that this is hard is when you’re investing in that 401(k), when you’re a non-accredited investor, this return framework is just simply way less relevant, and you don’t necessarily need it.
Once you are an accredited investor, a high-net-worth investor, you generally will have these sorts of accounts, your 401(k)s and your IRAs, maxed out, so you’re out of tax-advantaged space. And so now you’re choosing investment offerings, you’re choosing what sponsors you’re investing with, what managers you’re investing with. So, that’s control over fee structure. And also, especially if you’re investing in alternatives, the world is your oyster in terms of tax advantages. There are all sorts of different tax-advantaged products, you know, from, on the kind of light end, you have REITs, you have energy programs, all kinds of underlying assets, that, you know, may have tax advantages. And then there are also wrappers, like not only REITs, but Qualified Opportunity Funds, DSTs. If you’re investing in real estate directly, you have 1031 exchanges. And those can really make or break your returns, right? Because let’s think about…let’s take, like, a bond fund, Jimmy, just as an example, like a high-yielding bond fund, that’s yielding 7% a year. And let’s say that the fees are 100 bips, you know, so you’re paying 1% in fees. So, right off the bat, the 7% is a 6% net return, right?
And then, because that’s ordinary income, it’s taxed at roughly, if you’re in that highest income bracket, it’s taxed at 40% or even higher, depending on state taxes. So now the net returns, net of fees, and net of taxes, less than 4%, and inflation is totally wiping out the rest, right? If you put that same bond fund inside a 401(k), the return is positive. Outside a 401(k), it’s negative. So, you know, once you’re kind of in this wild west of being a high-net-worth investor, investing in these taxable accounts, a lot of times, this triple net framework is the difference between high return and low return, or even positive return versus negative return.
Jimmy: Yeah. Well said, and holy smokes, Andy, we’re in a pretty high inflationary environment here. I guess we’re in a disinflationary environment. Technically, inflation’s coming down, but I don’t think anybody was really thinking too much about or too worried about inflation being one of the primary drags on any of their returns 18 months ago. For the better part of a decade, inflation was so low…what did we have? Inflation was, like, 2% a year?
Andy: I bet some of our attendees and listeners maybe had an inkling of what was coming. But you’re right. It did kind of catch people by surprise, especially in this current environment. This framework is more important than ever.
Jimmy: Absolutely. Well, let’s move on to our third habit that sophisticated investors and high-net-worth investors implement to have success. And it’s, this one is pretty simple. And actually, I think it applies to everyone, whether you’re an investor or not, whether you’re high-net-worth or not. But it’s particularly important if you are a high-net-worth investor, and it’s become a lifelong learner, and learn every day. And the reason why it’s so crucial for a high-net-worth investor in particular to implement this particular habit is that, well, as Andy likes to tell me, no one cares more about your money than you do. So, what we mean by that is, you can’t merely rely on the counsel of everyone else around you, your friends, your family, your advisors. They can advise you in different ways, but you need to at least know enough to be dangerous.
And frankly, I would actually say, Andy, by virtue of the fact that you all are here in attendance today, or you’re watching this or listening to this, you likely are already adhering to this third habit. We’re kind of self-selecting our audience here with this one. But probably pretty much everybody here in this room or everybody who’s watching or listening live, or the recorded version, is a learner, in this sense that they raised their hand and said, “Hey, yeah, I do wanna learn about the three essential habits of high-net-worth investors.”
So if you’re here, you’re doing something right, and I think that’s great that you’re learning. And it’s what Andy and I do, too, by putting together the resources that we put together at OpportunityDb, with our Opportunity Zones platform and education, and now at WealthChannel, with our alternative investment strategy education. We’re teaching you how to be a high-net-worth investor, and how to take advantage of these strategies that aren’t very well-known, or that are typically only accessed by the ultra-wealthy. It’s really crucial that you continue to educate yourself. So, you don’t need to know every single nitty-gritty detail about section 1031 of the tax code, or section 1400Z of the tax code, which is Opportunity Zones. I mean, you should at least know enough to be dangerous, enough to have a fluent conversation with your tax advisor, with your attorney, with your financial advisor, and with the operators, the GPs that you invest in, or with your fellow GPs, if you are an operator. Andy, what are your other thoughts here on this last habit?
Andy: Well, I’m gonna use a baseball analogy, because as you know, I’m a huge baseball fan.
Jimmy: I love your baseball analogies.
Andy: Well, so, in this analogy, baseball and investing are the same thing, right? And if you’re the investor, you’re the franchise owner, right? You own the team, you own the franchise. Doesn’t mean that you know the nitty-gritty of every little thing about pitching, or, you know, how to scout in single-A or high-A, and, you know, find those prospects, those hot bats. You’re not gonna know every nitty-gritty of the game of baseball. You might say, “Well, I have a general manager, and I have a pitching coach, and I have a hitting coach in my organization.” But you need to know enough to hire the right general manager, to hire the right coaches. At the end of the day, you own the franchise, so its success, its failure is really going to affect you the most. So, in my own case, I love my CPA, right? And he and his team, I mean, I think they’re geniuses. But not every CPA knows about all of these different tax-advantaged programs, right? And there’s a lot of CPAs who have no idea what an Opportunity Zone is, for instance. Or they might know about, for instance, 1031 exchanges, but not be a specialist in them.
So, really, it’s not so much about just the knowledge. It’s also about that motivation, where no one is going to be as motivated as you are to maximize your investment returns, you know, or to achieve your investment goal, maybe I should say. Right? No one’s gonna care more than you do. So you at least need to know enough to be dangerous, to use Jimmy’s words. And if you have a passion, you know, speaking about alternative investments, which is a passion for me, you know, it can be, that passion can be profitable, right? If you’re really interested in real estate, sometimes you can follow that passion into learning about that niche, and then, you know, to make investments in that niche. So, it doesn’t mean that you need to be an expert about everything, but just remember that ultimately, no one is gonna care about it as much as you do.
Jimmy: I think Andy just uttered words that no other human has ever said before, which is, “I love my CPA.” But hey, good for you, Andy. I love it. So, that was the three essential habits of high-net-worth investors. Have an investment policy statement. What was the second one, Andy? Think triple net returns, and learn every day. And if you liked that presentation, it was actually a sneak preview of a more in-depth workshop that we’re going to do with our audience at WealthChannel Summit, which is the first in-person conference that we’ve ever put together. It’s coming together very nicely. We have almost all of our speakers lined up. We have a lot of people signed up to come and join us in Fort Worth, on June 16th, 2023. And I wanna tell everybody in the audience right now a little bit more about it, and also give you a special offer that’ll save you some money on tickets, and also possibly get you a free gift. We’ll get to that in a minute here.
Give me a couple of minutes to just kind of tell you a little bit more about the event, what to expect. It’s just a one-day event, exclusive one-day event, just for our network here at WealthChannel. And it’s gonna be a smaller event than a huge industry conference. We’re limiting it to 100 people in the room. That’s a view of the hotel that we’re gonna have it at, Hotel Drover, here in Fort Worth, Texas. If you’re interested in learning how to use passive alternative investments like the ultra-wealthy, I think you’re really gonna enjoy this. You’re gonna get to learn from a network with some of the top investing minds around the country, some of the top leaders in the alternative investments industry. People like Erik Hayden of Urban Catalyst, DJ Van Keuren, who is the founder of the Family Office Real Estate Institute. Andy’s gonna do a fireside chat with him. Steven Pesavento of VonFinch Capital is our keynote speaker. Ashley Tison, a lot of you know from OZPros, Taylor Trautloff at StarPoint Properties, Peter Ciganik at GTIS Partners. This is just a sampling of some of the speakers who have committed to be in attendance and to speak at the event. There’s more speakers available on our website.
Why attend? When you attend WealthChannel Summit, you’re gonna be able to leverage the expert knowledge that our expert speakers have, so you can help supercharge your investments, building valuable connections with like-minded individuals, investors, and world-class professionals. People who are kind of in the WealthChannel tribe, or have followed me at OpportunityDb or followed Andy and me at WealthChannel for a long time. It’s gonna be really fun to get together and kind of network with all those different people. And also, we’re gonna teach you how to uncover some of the strategies that are typically only used by the ultra-wealthy to invest for generational wealth.
So, if you’re an investor, an entrepreneur, a business owner, maybe you’re a real estate operator or a real estate investor, a fund manager, or an investment professional. If you’re interested in learning how to invest for generational wealth, if you’re interested in learning more about tax-advantaged investing strategies, you’re interested in learning how to grow your wealth with passive income, I think you’d be a good candidate to attend. Some of the topics that we’re gonna cover include, the green bolded one there is the one we just kind of worked on, the three essential habits of high-net-worth investors. What Andy and I just did was kind of a miniaturized version of what we’re gonna do at this event. Our keynote is gonna focus on the investor mindset.
We’re also gonna have topics on wealth development with real estate, how to invest like a successful family office, tax-advantaged investing strategies. Of course, we’re gonna talk about Opportunity Zones and beyond. We’ll have a panel that’s more or less fully dedicated to OZs. And then we’ll have a few other topics we’re gonna cover throughout the course of the day as well. It’s at the Hotel Drover, one month from today. Friday, June 16th. We’re one month from when we’re recording this, anyway, if you’re watching the recording. We’re within one month. This hotel is located within 25 minutes of the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, and we do have discounted rooms available for the next couple of weeks as well for conference attendees through our WealthChannel group rate.
Let’s cut to the chase, ticket information. Limited tickets are available. As I said, we’re gonna cap it at 100 people. We are currently running, if you check our website, we’re currently running an early bird special, which will save you $200 if you purchase your ticket through June 2nd. General admission gets you into the full conference. And you get free breakfast and lunch. You get all the sessions. You get to network with everybody. Our VIP package, you get everything from the general admission, but then we’re also doing a special VIP event. After the event, we’re gonna take everybody to the Texas Rangers ballgame that night. Andy was just saying he’s a big baseball fan. We’re gonna go to the Texas Rangers game. And we’re gonna have a private suite at the game, with dinner and drinks. And so, hopefully, you’ll consider that as well. We are limiting the VIP package to 20 people max, and I think we’re already about half full on that VIP package.
The pricing down there, regular price for general admission is $397. The early bird cuts it to $197. And then you see pricing for VIP packages, $997. We’ve cut it to $797 for our early bird special, but we wanted to do something even more special than this for anybody watching this presentation today. So, a special offer, this week only. We’re cutting the general admission price to $97, and the VIP package to $497. You can access this offer now by heading to wealthchannel.com/offer, or scan the QR code on your screen if you’re able to watch us. That’s $97 for general admission, and $497 for the VIP pack. And so I hope you’ll join us in Fort Worth on June 16th. Again, this offer will expire Friday, May 19th at midnight. And Andy has just posted a link to the special offer page in the chat if you just wanna click that link. So, that’s the offer for this week. It expires Friday, May 19th, at 11:59 p.m. Eastern time, $97 for general admission, $497 for the VIP package, which is a great deal. Head over to wealthchannel.com/offer to learn more about the event and to take special advantage of this special offer, which, again, expires Friday, this Friday, May 19th, 2023 at 11:59 p.m. Eastern time.
Well, that’s all the time that we have for today. A special thank you to you, our audience, for watching today’s presentation. To watch more of our podcasts, webinars, and events, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Just head to wealthchannel.com/youtube, and you’ll be the first to get notified when the recording of this webinar is made available. That’s wealthchannel.com/youtube. And that concludes today’s programming. Thank you very much.