Are you looking to make the most of this tax season and invest in real estate simultaneously?
Meet Mat Sorensen, a tax expert and best-selling author of The Self-Directed IRA Handbook, the go-to resource in the SDIRA industry that has sold over 40,000 copies.
Mat has advised thousands of investors on self-directed retirement plan law, business entity formation, tax law, real estate, and securities law.
Join us on the podcast as we tap into Mat's wealth of knowledge and explore the latest trends and strategies in real estate investment, just in time for tax season.
Whether you're a seasoned investor or just starting, you will want to take advantage of this expert's insights on making the most of your investments and staying ahead of the game.
Contact Info:
Mat’s Profile
linkedin.com/in/matsorensen
Websites
Live free. Get Educated. Master Your Money.
Subscribe to our Podcast here!
https://investingstuffyoushouldknow.buzzsprout.com
Youtube Videos now up as well! Subscribe here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1kV60Yxx4ntgLqAwOCR1Pg
Are you looking to make the most of this tax season and invest in real estate simultaneously?
Meet Mat Sorensen, a tax expert and best-selling author of The Self-Directed IRA Handbook, the go-to resource in the SDIRA industry that has sold over 40,000 copies.
Mat has advised thousands of investors on self-directed retirement plan law, business entity formation, tax law, real estate, and securities law.
Join us on the podcast as we tap into Mat's wealth of knowledge and explore the latest trends and strategies in real estate investment, just in time for tax season.
Whether you're a seasoned investor or just starting, you will want to take advantage of this expert's insights on making the most of your investments and staying ahead of the game.
Contact Info:
Mat’s Profile
linkedin.com/in/matsorensen
Websites
Live free. Get Educated. Master Your Money.
Subscribe to our Podcast here!
https://investingstuffyoushouldknow.buzzsprout.com
Youtube Videos now up as well! Subscribe here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1kV60Yxx4ntgLqAwOCR1Pg
Hey, everyone here at the Investing Staff Should Know podcast, where we bring you expert insights into the world of investing. My name is Johnny Nelson. As you always, my name always is, and we're thrilled today to have a special guest, Matt Sorensen. Matt we know you're an expert. You have so many channels. You've written books in the self-directed IRA space and alternative in other spaces like that, so welcome board. Thank you for joining us.
Mat Sorensen:Yeah, my pleasure. Happy to be here. I think we're gonna talk about the stuff I love. I love real estate, I love investing and saving for retirement account alternative assets, all that stuff. You don't want my NCAA bracket picks or anything like that? Totally worthless. Okay. Not yet. So I don't ask those questions, Johnny, I want.
Johnny Nelson:I might ask you like some hockey questions, the college hockey, since maybe you're maybe a basketball guy, maybe I'm a hockey guy. We'll just have to lift out that, divide that partition, just sit there and then talk about things that we both resonate with. Okay. There we go. Matt, if you would explain to the audience. Your credentials, your expertise, and why that if they don't know, if they haven't, if they've been living under an investment rock, why they should listen to you and the kind of background and the size of the company that you run and manage and the kind of people that you're part of. Love this. Why
Mat Sorensen:they should listen to you. Now, I've been perfecting this speech to my three daughters, okay? A little different emphasis points there. But I'm an attorney. I'm c e o of directed i r. We have over, we're 1.3 billion, about 1.4 billion in assets under administration, over 12,000 accounts. We've been around for four years. And what we do every day is we help clients use their IRA or 401K dollars to invest in alternative assets. This could be, a recent one with a Mexican soccer team, a client bought with their retirement account a piece of it. We have clients buy livestock, crypto, all these things, private funds, startups that go public. We've had all those things happen here, even in a short amount of time. But the most common thing, the bread and butter of our business and what we're doing every day, what I do myself with my own retirement account, is buy real estate. The most common asset people wanna buy when they set up an account. Is investment real estate. And so that's what we, our expertise is in. I've been an attorney for almost 20 years now. I wrote the number one book called The Self-Directed IRA Handbook which has sold 40,000 copies. So I've been around the block. I eat what I cook, so to speak, in the kitchen. Cause I do this myself. Yes. And so this is one area where I do feel like I'm an expert and I can be helpful. But that's me. I'm married, got three great kids. Like to cuddle and hold hands. Take long walks on the
Johnny Nelson:beach. There you go. And str Strange man. Strange man. But we'll still listen here, we'll still listen. So just for the audience and for ourselves, Matt we'll we'll talk about some of the things that you're very familiar with and then maybe we'll go to the edge a little bit on some, obviously we're, it's March of 2023. And there's some real banking distress. Neither one of us, I don't think is banking experts, if you're, I know you're in the adjacent space, you know how some of these things affect, the real, the realta the retirement space. And it'll be very interesting to, to discuss that. So we're gonna start out really basic. And so essentially I know that you wrote the s st IRA book ing book. Talk to us about as if I was professional and I wanted to get into real estate let's just assume it's real estate. It could be these other asset classes like you mentioned. Let's just keep it simple. Say it's real estate. What is a self-directed i r a. How does that work? And then what are the basic
Mat Sorensen:steps? Yeah, so self-directed IRA is essentially an IRA that can invest in any asset allowed by law. But a lot of people come here are like, Matt, did the laws change? What happened? You can buy real estate in an ira. Nope. You've always been able to do that since they came around. The thing is the financial services industry has dominated the conversation, right? The Fidelity, the Merrill Lynch, the Morgan Stanley, all those companies, they've dominated the conversation to tell you can buy stocks, bonds, and mutual funds with your ira. And the reason they tell you that is cuz that's what they sell. And if you have your IRA at Northwestern Mutual or New York Life, what do they tell You can buy with your i r. What they sell. You can buy annuities. Okay. Or insurance-based mutual funds. So those are the assets most people are familiar with an IRA or 401k. But you've always been able to buy real estate with a retirement account. Now this has to be investment real estate. We're not talking about like a second home or a property you are gonna live in or your kids are gonna
Johnny Nelson:live in. People just had flashbacks of excitement like, oh my God, I could buy a vacation home with my retirement
Mat Sorensen:money. No. Yeah, you can like, and we have clients that buy the Airbnb or the V R B O. You can't stay there, right? Think of this as your retirement account. The government allows you to make investments, right? You can, small businesses, private companies, crypto, all these, things I've mentioned, but real estate has been a tried and true asset for so many people. But it's available to retirement accounts. And if you take a step back, Some people are like, Matt, I don't even care about retirement accounts. I'm 30 years old. I'm not gonna retire for another 30. I'm gonna worry about it later. Great. I don't want to convince you. I think that's stupid. But let me not convince you, but let me tell you what's important. Yes, there's 35 trillion in retirement accounts in the us. If you're someone raising money for real estate, doing deals, starting a business where you need capital, where's all the. Banks aren't gonna give it to you, especially now, where's the money? It's in US retirement
Johnny Nelson:account. Banks. Banks don't have it. Folks
Mat Sorensen:just as a sidebar, they lost it. They've spot some crappy bonds. The fbi, C'S gotta become, bail'em out. But seriously, this is where the money's at is in retirement accounts. And so knowing this, Whether you want to grow your own little sliver of that 35 trillion or whether you want to just access other people's money for your deals and business opportunities is a huge, this is a huge asset to you to just learn and have this knowledge base can make you a lot of money, can grow your own retirement account or help grow your business or investment holdings.
Johnny Nelson:What's some of the largest objections? So then like we're straddling the fence here, Matt. So we have the, perhaps the investor, maybe the syndicator or the sponsor fund manager. And then of course, then you have the concerned professional that has, a nice nest egg and a 401k here. What are some common objections and what gives them confidence? Hey, I'm smart enough to do this. I'm not gonna get scammed what you like. You can get scammed. You can get scammed anywhere. But what are some common objections and what are, let's say, Direct responses to some of those things. I don't know what this is what about feast and all these I'm sure you've heard everything probably 20 times in your day.
Mat Sorensen:I think the greatest, the greatest hurdle is laziness. Let's, I'm, I'll be honest I can give education and when we, I'll hit some other points, but the greatest barrier is education. You know what? Wall Street knows it. That's why yes, they're, you Just fill out a questionnaire and answer questions in your 401k that you enroll in at work and you save them for 20 years, and now you got half a million dollars and you have no idea what it's invested in. It's invested in a mutual fund or some target date index fund. You don't even know what it's called and what that investment is, what the fees are. You have no idea why, because you just clicked a bunch of buttons at one point in time and enrolled and said, I'm 30, I wanna retire when I'm 60, and I am aggress. They just pick some investment for you that they've been throwing your money in, right? Yes. And they know that you're lazy. And that's what people do. Now. Some people get a little more involved and they'll pick the stocks that they're gonna invest into. Some people have success, frankly, most people don't. They can just buy the s and p 500 and do a little better. I don't know. But self-directing, I sometimes tell, and I even tell my team here at Directed Diary, it's not for everybody. Yeah. If you wanna
Johnny Nelson:be that's a good point. That's a good point.
Mat Sorensen:Yeah. If you're, Not interested in going out to find deals, be involved, analyze. You don't have a belief that real estate's gonna do better than the stock market. Or particular real estate deals can outperform the stock market. Self-directing is not for you. Most people who self-direct and that are successful in it have a belief in a certain asset class. And even within that asset class, they feel like they can quote, unquote, beat the market. Yeah. And So first I think you're battling just laziness. And,
Johnny Nelson:Just by, as a quick aside. Yeah. Does your company, does your team, is that something they've targeted is to provide that education, bridge those gaps? Yeah. Or Yeah. Is that something, and so just, I guess it's like where would a person find resources? Yeah. And I think your company is a fantastic spot for that. But you could just give that, people like, I don't know. Maybe I am lazy, but maybe I'm trying to grow out of that lazy news or that uncertainty. I think it's a mixture of things. It's maybe lazy, it's uncertainty. It's a lack of confidence in yourself. It's the poor financial education in our, across our society, like a whole stack of stuff here. But yeah. Could we chip away at parts of that? And then so what's what are some things we can actually do? And I think that's some education resource, educational resources that your company offer.
Mat Sorensen:Yeah, so the first thing is definitely education. That's one way to overcome this, to get engaged that, okay, I can do this right. Sometimes people hear self-directing and they're like, they start Googling, they get some bad information, some misinformation. So we have a ton of resources in addition to my book that I mentioned. We have a corrected IRA podcast that's just about
Johnny Nelson:this, yeah. It's a great podcast, by the way, folks. So I listened to all the episodes. Thank you. Yes,
Mat Sorensen:thank you. Yeah, and we have our mainstream business podcast, which is more tax and legal in general, but we have our webinars. We're always trying to provide content, but what I tell clients, People new to self-directing is, it's like playing a board game. You can't just do it open the, the game and roll the dice and start moving pieces. You gotta play with someone that's done it before. Yeah. Or read the rule book to know how you're supposed to play the game because this is the tax code. Let's be honest. It's involved here, but it's not rocket science. Like a board game, you ju but once you played it a couple times, it's the same thing over and over again. And so just learning how to do that deal a little differently cuz it's your IRA in the real estate deal versus you personally. And just learning those little pieces, it might, may seem a little tricky at first, but it's the same thing over and over again. So think of it like the board game, invest a little bit of time doing your first or second deal, but once you've done a. It's not hard. You know the steps, you know the process, you know the form, you know what you can't do, what you can. And but think of this too as you're doing this for 10, 20 years of investing. It's not just this first deal you're doing. So I think if people approach it that way, like the board game it's much easier to digest. But I, you can't, on the other hand, Not learn anything and just think you can just do it tomorrow. Yeah. And not read up on it, or not ask questions. We have a team too. Like you can get a free call to set up an account with one of our people that'll go through your questions in the process and what you need to do too, so you can rely on your IRA custodian too, on process questions, what you can and can't do. What's my next step type?
Johnny Nelson:That's amazing, man. And I love the digestible and the common thread there. The common theme, we've all approached a new game before, board game, a car game, whatever. And it's like this, like tiny print little manual of all the rules. It's oh, this is like a headache and I don't get it all. And you read it six times, you still don't, still don't conceptualize the whole thing. And like you said, it's still essentially like a game or there's some kind of particular objective. There is a set of rules you play with someone that's. And after a couple times it becomes very, not road, but very, repetitive. You can actually have fun doing it actually something you enjoy and you can actually learn and you look forward to doing more of it. So that makes it very attainable to people versus oh, like this, I'm stepping to the edge of the unknown. There's probably more rules than I'll then I'll ever understand or under get Hey guys, it's just, I'll liken it like Matt said to a game and that's a very, that's an excellent way to just work through that. Kinda overcome that those challenges.
Mat Sorensen:And you don't have to master at all. If you're a real estate investor, you don't need to learn about crypto, you don't need to learn about private companies or startups. Pre i p o companies don't, you don't need to stress about those rules. Just stay in your lane of what you're planning to invest in and learn that. And then you're just gonna, because what most people do that they come here, they do one deal and that deal's done, and then they go do another one that's the same thing. They just, they're a private money lender. Next year, they're a private money lender. It's just a different deal. They're, they invest in private syndicated funds or deals. Five years, they're doing the same thing. So most people stay in their lane of what they like and they know, and they're just repeating the same stuff they already have.
Johnny Nelson:That's awesome, man. And that's just, it gets a high level kind of place to find that how it works and what how just I guess your, anyone with a retirement account might be able to do that. Talk just real quick about the difference between a 401K and I r a and some of the details there. Just like a minute or so of some of the rules there, exiting a job, I know there's some important guidelines Yeah. Around those items.
Mat Sorensen:Yeah, so 401ks are employer based plans, and typically the employer's gonna kinda have control of that plan while you work there, and they're gonna control the investment options. So if you work at Dunder Mifflin, let's say, you're a Toby, in hr and of course, so you enroll in the 401k, but you're a, you're the 401K plan's at Vanguard, right? Toby can't invest there, right? He's an employee of Dunder Mifflin Steel. He's. You know he's gonna have Vanguard investment options. Cause that's what Dunder Mifflin picked. Correct. Now, correct. When Toby hits 59 and a half, and if you stay with the office here, Creed is definitely 59 and a half. All right? Yes. Okay. He still works there, but he's hit retirement age so he can actually roll the money out of Vanguard to an i r that can self-direct. So that's just called a direct rollover. He could roll up from Vanguard to directed ira. That's our company. And now those funds will let you invest in real. Take let's say go back to Toby. Toby can't invest or Jim or Pam, right? They're all stuck. They'd have to quit and Jim quit in the show, if you remember that for a while. Yeah. Yeah. For first thing. Okay. So when Jim quit, he could've rolled his 401k out to an IRA that directed I rra, and he could have started self-direct. So the one category of people I'm trying to emphasize here is like people that have a day job where they're still employed. The, that current employer, they're locked in. But if it's a former employer or you've hit retirement plan age, you can roll your 401k. Now IRAs are easier because you can always move an ira. You got an ira, TD Ameritrade, it's traditional IRA rolled over to a traditional ira. At Directed ira. You got a Roth IRA at Fidelity, you can transfer it over to a Roth IRA at directed IRA transfer piece of it. The whole thing depends on what piece you wanna self-direct. So your IRAs are easy to move around. And you can mo again, move the whole thing or just the piece you wanna specifically self-direct to do real estate or other assets you're doing. 401ks are where you can sometimes get stuck because you're in a current employee, not yet at retirement Plan h.
Johnny Nelson:That's an excellent overview, Matt, and thanks for clarifying that. Yeah, I, and I know quite a few people, thirties and forties similar to my own cohort professionals and they some of'em often, oftentimes they do have, some have a long career trajectory at a company. Yeah. But often they've left a company or two in their past and they have just. Kind of almost dead money just sitting in that 401k for the past company. Yeah. And that's ripe opportunity for you to get, take control of your financial future and put yourself, and maybe it's not the u maybe it's not the most lar, maybe it's not the largest account, ever, but it's some, it's enough for you to get get comfortable with it and tap and dip your tail into it and see how that goes.
Mat Sorensen:Yeah, absolutely. And there's so many kind of lost money or orphaned retirement accounts out there of people that, that, then again, it goes back to laziness, frankly. Yeah. It just goes back to this just ah, it's there. I'll go back to it one day. We have this kind of mantra here of take control of your retirement. Like we've trademarked that. That's been in my video. Oh, really? Okay. I didn't know that. 10 years. Yeah. Yeah. That's trademark not to be used by the Express Rank Consent of Math, Sorens and Inc. Or Major League Baseball. Okay. So yeah, we've. But that's been, as I was talking to clients over the years, I'm like the people who, self director, the people who are like, finally, damn it, I'm gonna take control. Yeah. I'm gonna, this is my money. I wanna have a retirement. I'm looking forward to actually, some people are scared to death of their retirement. We talk to clients in their fifties and people like that in my law firm and even at directed, and they're like, they got like a hundred grand and they're terrified. Like they're behind and they know it. Yeah. And yeah. And one of the reasons they're behind is they have not been proactive in it. They've left it to wall. Even if they've been disciplined in saving, right? They've put their money away they've gotten the match at their employer. Maybe they even contributed to an IRA here and there. They've just gotten a little lazy with how it's investing and over time, that really hurts you. So we kinda like to say take control for those people who are like entrepreneurial real estate investors, small business owners, like they're the type that gets self-directing cuz they're already. They get that in everything else they do in their life, investing in real estate, in their small business, whatever, it's they're like our perfect clientele. And frankly, it's like the most common person who self-direct.
Johnny Nelson:That's awesome, man. That's awesome. All right, we're gonna, the second half of the show here, we're gonna pivot a bit to something a little more, a little on the, more on the edge of definitely my knowledge and more probably the more little overlap in some of your knowledge here. Let's talk about, right now we're going through, what people are calling, a 2023 banking crisis. We know that Silicon Valley Bank was shut down signature Bank. Actually, I opened up a fund two months ago, and what bank did I use? I used Signature Bank, very disconcert. Yeah. Republic Bank, so yeah. So we're, there's some, and then credit suites just just got bought by ubs. So yeah, there's a lot of turmoil in the banking world here. How does, at a high level, Matt, how does the the monetary policy or the ba the money supply impact or affect the retirement accounts? Like you've mentioned the trillions of dollars in a retirement accounts, how and what's the linkage, what's the connection there? So people understand at a high level how those different pieces Yeah. Affect their retirement.
Mat Sorensen:I think the message, which is actually an exciting message, is this is opportunity for people that have money. And even if you think, man, the only money I have is in my retirement account. Kinda like the people you talked about before, there're gonna be a lot of working professionals that have good money in their retirement accounts, but they've never really put it to work. They don't quote unquote taking control. It's scary up there to see when, a bank gets taken over and the government's starting to backstop this and some of these banks are getting acquired at the end of the day, so hopefully capital's okay. Even just yesterday we had someone investing into a fund that was at Signature Bank, quite honestly, one of our larger accounts, and we're like, are you sure you wanna send money there right now? Yeah. And they're like, yeah, it's gonna be fine. We're like, okay, we're just checking. It's weird to think that are, it's just
Johnny Nelson:a little, and it's are you sure? Do you wanna send money to a bank? Like where the hell. Yeah, that's
Mat Sorensen:in the newspaper every day. I was like, okay. But I really think there's opportunity out there. And as there's a little bit of chaos in the financial world, I'm telling you, and I have clients. My largest client has a 300 million Roth ira. I've got a lot of clients with 10 million accounts. They make money, they are gonna make money right now. They'll realize it later. Yes. But the investments in the decisions and the moves they're making right now is what grows their accounts. It was not a year ago when the market was on fire. They were realizing the decisions they made 10 years ago, quite honestly. Ah, yeah. And so think of the capital you have and this is where you want to get proactive about where the opportunities are. So for the self-directed investor, this is where they get to think about their retirement accounts and okay, where's the opportunity now? Where's the value? Where's the asset classes? I think that are gonna be safe, or they're gonna overperform based on all this correction and stuff. We have, and it can be in different ways. Quite honestly. I think some people, when I say that, Oh, I gotta go find some home run deal. No, that's not what I'm saying. And we have clients that are private money lenders. I have plenty of 10 million plus accounts here. I'm telling you, they started with 500,000 or less. Alls they do is loan money privately for 10% interest in two points. If you run the math on that, in 10, 20 years of doing that, you are gonna have a 10 million account, and they're just gonna far outperform the. But but that's base hits to me, that's not hitting a home run. 100% return on one type of deal in a year type thing. But look where the opportunities are and realize that those who have money to invest can find opportunities right now. So I think it's scary. And this is. I'm trying to put icing on the cake. Or it's not really a cake. I'm trying to I
Johnny Nelson:think it's a, I think it's a, I think we're putting icing on the turd here. Yeah.
Mat Sorensen:Icing on the turd maybe. Yeah. I was like, there's not much of a cake here being baked but but I don't, I just, I'm trying to spin on it, but I do think it's true. I, it's when people make money, yeah. No, it's,
Johnny Nelson:And I love that positivity, man. I don't think it's just Pollyanna-ish, just just oh, no, overly, glib sense of, optimism. I really do think, yeah, if you Either start now, or maybe you've already started about, getting your own financial house in order and working on the educational piece. I really do think it's a, it's an opportune time to, to make some moves and like you said, the bases, you don't have to be like, wildly aggressive oh, the latest crypto startup, somewhere, yeah. But when you see pain and this kind of people scrambling around and banks failing your bank, your money is still, it's, I if it's still. And then I look at it, it's still there to do something with, so you can leave it in the bank, which is we're losing some confidence there. Yeah. You could put it into the stock market. There's, depending what stock you're going into, right? Yeah. And then of course, and there's these other alternative asset classes and I like to think of it, and I'm not so much anti Wall Street, but I'm really pro Main Street. And if you can take that money that like you were saying Matt, about, 10 million accounts and you're doing private money lending, oftentimes that's like a very regional, you're even in a city type of thing, so you live in an area, you know these six contractors or flippers or whatever it is. Yeah. And you're trust them, know them, and you're very much control, you're really contributing a lot of value to your local economy. You're not sending it to Wall Street, the financial powerhouses of London and Zurich and New York. You're actually keeping that in, in local. Yeah. And I think it's extremely powerful. I think it's gonna revitalize, it has the op opportunity to potential or potential opportunity to revitalize sections of America sections around the world that otherwise would be started with that capital.
Mat Sorensen:Yeah. Yeah. And this is one of the investments that we've had on a bunch of accounts invested into recently is just here locally in Phoenix, and it's a local fund and they raise money often. And they're, right now we have a housing crisis here in Phoenix, like apartment stock is way down, way behind. And they're like, re. Extended stay hotels into apartments, and that's cool. Like we have people in town here that like go look at that project. They can put their eyes on it and be like, I own a half a percent of that deal right there, yeah. And it's just cool because it's more tangible to you to see it. To know where the money's going to be able to talk to the person doing the deal. And a lot of people who are raising money in this way, they're accessible. You're not gonna get a call with the c e O of Coca-Cola when you invest in there, right? You can't even get a tour of the plant. You get stuck at the gift shop, but in these things you can be more in touch with your money. It can be invested in your community, which is cool too if you're, if that's important to you. But But also you can be invested in assets you think have value. That's a high value thing right now. If you think of it from an investor who's wanted to put money to. A lot of our clients like that's an awesome idea. Like they know that's needed right now and that's gonna be a successful asset, but they can't do it by themselves. They need someone with that idea that's gonna run the deal, that has the connections, that has the contractors, that has the capability, the zoning stuff that's gotta happen to, to pull that off. But they can be a piece in it and financially benefit it from it and grow their retirement account. I can give tons of examples even when covid. We had clients using their retirement accounts to bill their small businesses out. Oh really? Wow. Yeah. They were getting equity in the business for cashing, providing them cash to keep'em afloat. Yeah. Which is keeping people on payroll, which is keeping a business in their community that's been around for years that was otherwise profitable. But what was, had a tough time making it through, being shut down through Covid. There's lots of cool little things I think that do happen from a community standpoint that are a win-win. It's opportunistic in some ways. Because we're looking for good return for our retirement account, but it's also doing some good either, and I don't mean this in an E S G type doing good thing, I just mean it in there's connection to the money it's valuable, it's needed. It can make a difference. You can lay eyes on it type thing.
Johnny Nelson:That's awesome, man. A off the wall question here. When a retirement account, like a large institution, let's just pick on svb for example. Silicone Valley Bank. Yeah. What happens to their, when they have that, they have I imagine they had a, 401K and a retirement plan and a bank gets bought and all that stuff. Where does that, who, where does that money go? Where does that retirement account go?
Mat Sorensen:Everybody's retirement accounts are already invested into something for the most part, but, Silicon Valley Bank might use fidelity, ah, okay. And Fidelity may have all the cash but eventually someone else is gonna acquire the bank. Probably at Silicon Valley Bank. I don't know they've had an acquirer yet. I think Signature has, and I, you mentioned Credit Su has. I think there's still even Silver Gate, if you remember back the other the other bank that went before, even svb, the crypto bank. But but I don't think
Johnny Nelson:that did make quite as much ways, but yeah, that was actually that, that did happen. Yes.
Mat Sorensen:Yeah, I think even First Republic Bank I heard was getting bought by JP Morgan today maybe. Yeah. But the employees there and those retirement accounts, they're just gonna, they're, they should be fine. Although this is gonna be an opportunity for them to roll their money out if they want. So if you're an employee at Silicon Valley Bank and you wanted to self-direct, actually there's new Silicon Valley Bank like receivership entity now and a change of ownership of the company does allow for a rollover in most instances where you can roll out. So plus they might be losing their jobs anyways, but I don't know. So I think those accounts though are gonna be like a Fidelity or somewhere like that, so likely able. Likely fine. Maybe be able to roll out depending on change of control of the.
Johnny Nelson:Awesome, man. As a kind of the final episode of the show here, where do you where does the, I think your company is pretty young, but where do you see that your company growing and going, and why? Why would it, why would that momentum keep happening here? Is it, is education and knowledge as people learn more about it, or just you, just because the level of service and the quality of service and the level that you provided it, is that why you're gonna attract customers? Or can just be more people out there, which I'm, hopefully, I'm hoping to, I want to, I wanna hear a particular answer, but I don't want you to tell me what I wanna hear. How why is your company growing and do you think this is gonna like just get more and more commonplace out there, your company and others like
Mat Sorensen:it? Yeah, I think the industry and space as a whole will grow. Yes. Quite a bit actually, because people have an appetite for this. They don't like just being invested in stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. You know what's funny, even just look at my presentation slides over the years, I always show a chart of our industry of just the retirement plan industry in general. And, I show this chart 15 trillion in retirement accounts. I've been doing it this long. There's 35 trillion in retirement accounts now, right? There's so much money in it. And this is where people really are investing today. And so as people get more and more money in their retirement accounts, they're changing jobs more often, they can roll out and self-direct more easily. And so it's a growing industry. Our goal at directed IRA is to be number one. That's when we started the company. We wanted to be number one. And some of the problems in our industry is that a lot of our competitors do not make it easy to self-direct. Sure, yeah. As I was an attorney, I would send hundreds of accounts a month to my com to the people who are now my competitors as referrals. Yeah. Cause I was an attorney in this space. I wrote the number one book. I get lots of referral opportunities and they would frankly fall in their faces. I did not think the companies were doing a good job. I was like their freaking customer service department. And I'm like, I sent you the business. So we were like, I'm like, we gotta do this different. I wanna be able to take care of the customer. Make it easy on'em. So our mantra is making self-directed IRA investing easy. Yes. Making investing in alternative assets or real estate easy with an IRA or 401k, take some of the pain points out of it. And we do that with electronic documents, with the knowledgeable staff, with fast turnaround times and just like first in class customer service. No matter what business you're in it's super important to have really good customer service. And you can even, anybody Googles us, you can see our reviews and stuff and compare'em to our competitors. Once, and we've scaled pretty fast. We're at 1.3, 1.4 billion in assets in four years. 12,000 plus accounts we're growing. Probably one of the fastest companies in our space, I would think. I can't, my estimation of everyone's numbers is that we are, yes. And I say that, organic growth. We're not buying other companies or accounts. Yeah. But that's what we wanna be number one in our space. And but I think the differentiator is, See, you can see the problems in an industry, and I don't care what business anyone's in, you can see the problems going on and be like, Ooh, I know how to do that better. I know how to solve that and be better than company X. Yes, people have millions of ideas about how to do that. But can you execute on it? Yeah. That's the hard thing is execute on it every day and building a team that can execute on it. And that's like what I've realized is like I just recruited some of the best people in the space. I brought other people into the space that I knew and like we just have a team that just. Knows how to execute and do it at a high level and create that culture for everyone else that comes in here. So when someone comes in here and new, they're like, this is how they do it here.
Johnny Nelson:That's super exciting, man. Super exciting to hear that. And also, cause I, I've actually referred your team or your company I've referred a couple of, clients essentially to, to you guys here. And they've given excellent feedback. So it's been exciting to be able to confidently, and you're a little. Out there oh, who do I recommend? And you ask your network. A network. A network, yeah. And then, yeah, so passing that along, as you connect. And then it's a win for the client. It's a win for me as a fund manager or a syn indicator. Of course. And it's a win for your, and whoever the team is that hopefully Yeah, they can provide that high level of service. So that's really it's good to, you want to know, the, the kind of recommendations you can, a hundred percent recommend with no reservations and just say, go for it. You're gonna be taken care.
Mat Sorensen:That's what we're going for. Because at the end of the day, that's our brand really. And for someone like you that can feel that confidence and that's people who we want to feel confident, people raising money, doing syndications, like these are professionals, attorneys like I used to be. We want these centers of influence that are gonna be like, I referred that person, I got good feedback, or I saw them go through the process. I'm raising money, and like their money was in here a week later. Holy crap. The last company I sent'em to took 60 days. Yeah. And so we pay attention to those things and that's what's really important, will set like us apart from our competition.
Johnny Nelson:Awesome, man. Final, the final thing here. Let's talk about your social media presence. I know you know you have Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook. I'm just reading through Instagram, YouTube, so a lot of stuff fine. Yeah. Would do you think that is Now we're talking a high level here. So now first we're talking about, the successful professional, it has retirement money. Then we touched on kind of the banking and we the banking sector and how that influences, whether it's you're a fund manager or it may be professional, how that might influence and how you approach it. The final thing here, maybe. As an entrepreneur. And then also the thing that the end customer sees is like, what is the power? Why do this social media game as hard as you guys do it? And what kind of results do you think it enables? Or if you didn't do it what kind of growth curtailing might that, might that have.
Mat Sorensen:I think for us is we just want to get content out, yes. I still, for me, I'm like, I'm an industry expert in self-directing, and I can talk to a lot of different topics. I've grown and scaled a business successfully. I can talk about a lot of tax and legal stuff as an attorney, but I try to stay into what I'm an expert at. Yeah. And I'm trying to build my brand more in that way. And it's not easy, but it's. I'm try still trying to figure it out, but the best thing for us has been a podcast. Yeah. And so now we, my partner, mark and I have been doing the Main Street Business podcast for 12 years. We have like almost 500 episodes, but we have it's a lot of man, 2 million downloads of the podcast and definitely have popular following it. It works when we record and we have the directed IRA podcast too. Which is more niche. So the mainstream one's like a big audience cuz we're any small business owner, real estate investor, entrepreneurial person, like wealth building, tax legal planning. We hit all that. Very applicable to a big audience. Then we got the self-directed one, which is very narrow. But there was something like I heard from Tim Ferris about building your audience on social. You really recommend he has a podcast episode on building your. It's pretty good. And he, I'll tell us for that.
Johnny Nelson:Yeah. I'm eager to check that out actually.
Mat Sorensen:Yeah. Yeah. Give it a good listen. It changed my thinking on it is you don't necessarily want a big audience. You want an engaged audience and so that's that's in your lane. And it's funny because when we used to do our podcast, I'll give an example of why I think it's important. We used Mark and I, we used to have a syndicated radio show for the podcast, yeah. We were in like 50 markets and we would just record remote and upload it to the radio show. We'd go into a local station and they'd send it out to their network and then go on all these channels and we'd get a little bit of traction for it. But then these guys were like, Hey, people are starting to do these podcasts. It was partly a thing back then. Yeah. If you once the file, you can upload it to like the web and do a podcast and. Why not? It's already done. Yeah. Just throw it up. And then what would happen is people would call our office and they'd be like, Hey, we listened to your podcast, and our staff's what's a podcast? And the difference was, see, going on radio, there might have been. Listener base. There are hundreds of thousands of people in all those different markets. But they didn't choose to listen to our show. We am five 70 in their market at that. Just going in
Johnny Nelson:their Saturday, have to be going in their ear, coming out, coming outta the speaker, going into their ear. Like white noise. Or they didn't choose
Mat Sorensen:to listen to that. They did not pick it. It was just on. And sometimes we entertained them and they caught something and whatever. Yeah. But the podcast is, people pick. They choose that topic, they choose that show to follow and subscribe to. And so it's a very curated like audience of people. Ooh, I need to learn about this. Yeah. And and so we find out to be so much more powerful cause I'd like rather have a thousand people subscribe to a podcast than be on a radio station that hits 200,000 people. You know what I mean? And so if you take that kind of the social media too, it's we just wanna have the right connections. And focus on I'm trying to figure this out right now by the way, but we figured out more on the podcast, but with social media is just build that brand and that audience of what you do, but have something you can sell. Cuz like me talking about self-directed IRAs, if I didn't have a self-directed IRA business. It'd be really hard to be motivated in that. And frankly, I don't sure good at it, yeah. If you raise capital, for example, why would you not have a podcast that I'm missing in real estate? I'm like, like so many people they become I wanna talk about business. Okay. What do you do? Like, how does that, what do you have to offer and sell? And I mean that in like a positive way of. Do you do that every day? Can you speak to that? Can that cust that person who listens to you be a customer
Johnny Nelson:of what? That's a, that's an interesting perspective, Matt. I really, I'm just, I'm thinking about it. I'll have to, I'll have to like actually adjust that with kinda what you're saying there. More like the kind of, there's a certain authenticity. And deep connection. And like you said, even for yourself, like it drives a certain passion of there's a reward here. Not only do I love talking about it, but then also there is can be, a, a monetary reward for me and the team and the things that I do. So there's like a very, very authentic, which I think is speaks to capitalism itself. A very tight circle there that, that feeds on top versus just saying I love talking about, parakeets and, Hey, we have a bird parakeet, or a bird cage. Amazon channel and sell that, or like
Mat Sorensen:a book on parakeets or something, but I think like having the, and I love the book idea too. That was something really important for me.
Johnny Nelson:Yeah. I've seen a few other people do that as well that, that find some success or like just happen to coincide with their focus and their niche and then they happen to write a book and then sometimes kinda hard to differentiate between was it success be success because of your kind of ongoing business success and happened to con be concurrent with the book or did the Yeah, did the book hap, did the book generat it, so which one caused it? Sometimes it's hard to piece that apart. Yeah. But oftentimes it does happen and sometimes it really is attributable, correlated to when the book finally arrived on the scene. And then you see, someone, maybe your own or someone else that you know Yeah. Their name really get out there and explodes. It's kinda, it's very interesting dynamic there. Yeah.
Mat Sorensen:Yeah. And I think sometimes the people with the book that are like, let's say you're subject matter. One, the process of writing the book for me was like, I really had to distill some concepts down into an easily digestible format, and that's what good writing is yes, take something complex, make it easy for people to understand, which no one had really done in my space at least. And that helps people get mass adoption. But it also gives me something where it's I wanna learn more, or, I get the engineer client, the pilot, the like person that wants to know every detail. Our account's 295 bucks a year. I'm not gonna be able to do that. But I wrote a book and those people will read it. I have those clients and they'll be like, oh my gosh. I'm ready now. I had all these questions and your book answered all of them. I'm like, I know. I've worked in that space for 10 years advising clients. I settled all the questions. I answered them in 18 chapters. But they'll have clients, and I hate to say it, it's my real estate agent clients. Some of my real estate investor clients, they're not gonna read a book. They won't. Yeah. But they'll listen to a podcast in their. Tune
Johnny Nelson:so different. So now we're talking about different presentations of the same information. So some people are visual learners, audio learners, some people like to read, and there like different ways of information being conveyed to a person. It could be like their brain, the way they're made, whatever it is, like the, that's why that's the beauty of these different platforms is the presentation. And like obviously when you went from just the spoken word to the printing press was so revolutionary. Oh my god, this is gonna change the world. And it did. And then we had the radio revolution and then we had the TV revolution. Now we have. All those combined in and more and more in the palm of your hands, in the palm of your hand and more. And so that's been just so revolutionary and amazing. I'm just, it's glad, I'm glad that we live in the, we're living in a modern an incredible age, Matt. People like, forget, like all this trouble, all this banking stuff and strife. Yeah. We live in such an incredible time. I'm grateful to be alive and I'm grateful that to be just part of this. It's an incredible time to be on this. It is. And
Mat Sorensen:I think that's where, when you just mentioned the word information, what I wrote in my book is what I talk about in my podcast, what I talk about on this show with you, is those am stuff, but people need it in different formats and different versions at different times of their life. And so we're what I'll just give one last example and this, I'll just leave all my marketing stuff here. It's we've been Again, we've only been around for four years. There's companies in my space that have been around for 30 years that have 200 plus accounts. The number one company in our space, it's got 200,000 plus accounts. It's been around for 30 years. If you Google the word self-directed ira, yes. The number one company that pulls up a natural search is directed Ira. Now, why is that? They have, I'm competing with companies that have been around for 20, 30 years that have had websites for a long time that have content. We just try to dominate content. So we're just trying to get content, education content, other, but you can't just have content. You have to have good content. People are gonna stay on the content. They're gonna continue listening. They're gonna keep reading, they're gonna teach'em something new when they come back. And and one thing that's successful is you gotta create a schedule for. But that's really been really important to us too. And our success is we really dominated content, which helps us on the website. We don't pay for seo O I'm not, a lot of people are like, you have outside people in my industry. Like, how are you guys kicking our ass, basically? And I'm like, we just put out content. They're like are you paying for this? Who's your SEO guy? I'm like, He's some 25 year old. I got, it's not like I got like Mark Zuckerberg behind the, curtain here or something, he was like, I don't, but it's just like a commitment to getting the content out, being regular. And it's crazy how that gets rewarded over time. But I'll say this too, is it's like you have to have patience in that process too, and just stick with. And also you get better at it, for sure. Yeah. I can talk about this forever,
Johnny Nelson:but yeah it's fascinating. It's fascinating and I love it. And it's actually, I think it's a nice little section in kind of the kind of bookend, the tail end of our convo with, it's not really expected, and it's a fascinating field. And again we're pulling out like the entrepreneurial thread and all the different things, which is common across all many industries, the kind that you're in, but you're very generalized. What does help social media and how do you do it, and SEO and search optimization and all these different things here. So it's very applicable to a lot of, entrepreneurs and even just people in general that are trying to start their own brand. So those things are very relevant right now. Especially, just it's constantly growing, constant being demanded. It's constantly changing and you do kept keeping your tones. On your toes about it. But so enough said there. So everyone, we thank you for joining us, for being part of this episode. Matt, if you wanna take us out with a few words here what's the best place for people to get in contact with you? Just find Google. Yeah. In your channels.
Mat Sorensen:Yeah, directed ira dot com's the easiest place to go. You can find our podcast there, our webinars. You would schedule a new account appointment with one of our new account reps. If you're like a syndicate or someone who raises funds like Johnny, said, like you could, we don't have business development department, they can help you and can give you some tools too to raising capital cuz we wanna help people take control, make it easy to self-direct and invest their IRA in assets they actually care about. You can also find me@mattsorenson.com. That's m a. Just one t Sorensen, s r n s e n.com. And I'm also at Matt Sorensen everywhere on most social channels. So thanks for having me. Let us know where you can be resourced for you guys.
Johnny Nelson:Awesome man, and thank you everyone for listening to another episode of The Investing Stuff You Should Know podcast. Until next time, thank you.