1157: Aspen Sage: From Landlord to Banker with Aspen Sage Investment Fund Owner Tiffany Alexander

Robert Plank 0:00 Hey, welcome back. It's the marketer of the day podcast, and Tiffany Alexander is here from Aspen, sagefund.com, and we're neighbors. What are the odds? Right? I'm in Turlock. She's in Modesto. Most people don't even know where either of those locations are but, but that's okay, and Tiffany is embarked on her real estate investing journey in 2006 and she has seen all kinds of strategies employed, all kind of strategies, short sales tax liens, flipping, multi family properties, but her focus has shifted to promissory note investing, and Tiffany specializes in buying notes as investments and employing specialized investment strategies to maximize gains for herself and her clients. She's helped over 1000 people in real estate to identify and achieve their investment objectives through real estate and note investing. So we're going to find out some of these secrets from Tiffany of why notes what we can do. And she also is a just a smart, clever business person and motivational and has a lot of good things to say. So we're gonna get some real juicy and good secrets here. So Tiffany, glad to be speaking with you.

Tiffany Alexander 1:15 I'm so happy to be here. I love that we're neighbors. We could have just did this in person together, shoulder to shoulder, but it's so easy to be on Zoom nowadays.

Robert Plank 1:22 And I don't know if you've ever done that, it's so awkward you have to, like, you know, different people like leaning in with the microphone. And I've actually tried that in person. I ended up just like, going in a different room, even though we were, like, in the same room. So I'm just like, I go with what I know until I find something better. And like you said, so we might as well be in a different one room over, but we're neighbors, and we finally made this happen, right? We did a lot of like, kind of back and forth on LinkedIn. And as you know, you have an exciting, up and coming podcast. You know, some podcasts, just a podcast is a great way to know someone, because it gets recorded. You have this permanent record. And you're not just necessarily chit chatting, but you're getting to the the real important stuff, right? And it has a lasting effect that can change many others lives. So we introduced you a little bit. We gave people a kind of a tease of what you're all about. But what's your current focus and passion? What should people really know about Miss Tiffany Alexander?

Tiffany Alexander 2:16 oh, that's a great question. Can I can I unpack that a little bit? So let's do it. Primary focus right now is I'm raising capital for my fund, and that fund is dedicated to investing into discounted mortgage notes in the first thing in position, we're able to secure those from pretty big hedge funds, where they're releasing so much quantity of them per month, we just happen to elbow our way in. It's kind of an interesting niche, or niche that you can get into, and from there, the bigger vision is, hey, we want to buy these bulk packages and then put them on a website. So that way the little guy, the little investor, would be able then to, in turn, buy them, had a pretty good rate of return, because we're looking, usually people are staring at a yield, what's their return? What's what's my investment? So we want to help the little guy that wouldn't be able to create all these relationships with with the people that we've been able to do for years. But personally, that's, that's what I do for myself. I used to be a landlord. Have a lot of investments in rentals and flips, and I decided, oh my gosh, that was so hard. Someone showed me, I say, come to the dark side. We decided to just sell all the rentals, stop flipping houses, and now I'm the bank. I own my own mortgages. That's kind of what I do day in and day out. A little bit of fun stuff here and there. I like to consult and help with people. I'm becoming a little bit of a super networker, master connector. And if somebody says, hey, Tiff, I need a guy. I'm like, I know a guy. Let me. Let me share with you who it is that I know I love to help you grow and thrive in your business. And I'm a big fan of Alex hermosi. So if you want to know any sort of content, I want to give it away to you for free, because I want my free content to be better than paid content that's out there as far as like real estate notes and all that jazz goes, and then also my day in and day out. Life is, I have a three year old and a six year old, so I play mom a lot, and we we Tea Party right now. That's our season the life that I'm in.

Robert Plank 4:10 Very nice, very cool, and I have a four year old, and I've just found that ever I used to, like, make fun of people that had parents when they say, like, oh, you changed so much, but definitely in these last few years. Like, just figure it out, like, being patients and then realizing, like, how, how short life is. Isn't it like you see your kids grow up, and it's like, man, every day is just like, they're a little bit older, and so there, there's just, there's no point in struggling and just chugging along and churning, like, especially if, if you're own these properties, and you're landlording and you have to unclog the toilets and get out of bed at three in the morning, if it's not working, then figure a way out of your situation, and figure out a way to not just give up, but like, evolve into the next level, which it seems like that's what you've done, right? You've you've turned it into just the the notes on. Paper. But then you've also said, Okay, well, in order to continue with my own growth, I have to embrace the spokesperson publicity aspect of it, and the Alex hormoziness of like, giving away your stuff for free. So the and, like, I love where he says, like, something like, well, give away so much stuff for free that people are like, saying they want to buy something from, like, asking you to sell them something. It's like, okay, and, and especially with YouTube and social media, like information, it's so like, disposable now, isn't it? Like you teach something about real estate, and four or five years from now, it's completely worthless, and it needs to, you just need this continually new, this, make this information and teach, and also have this daily activity to be speaking with people. And so, I mean, tell me about was there a deliberate decision to transform from the flipping houses into what you are now, or did it just kind of evolve over time?

Tiffany Alexander 5:56 Ooh, that's a great question. There's like three main chunks of my story within that. And the first one is, I, I'm a dropout aerospace engineer. I was, like, my degree by trade, working my in myself in the airport, trying to figure out, wow, I'm just going to get a job to, uh, deciding to flip on the TV late one night, seeing my very first infomercial to say, hey, you can flip houses with no money down. And that was like it. I thought, wow, I've I found it. I know what I want to be when I grow up. And I did that for 12 years, and I thought I knew all the secrets. I thought I'd been to enough seminars. I thought I learned it all. And I was doing an event where I was actually a consultant in the back to be paid to be like an expert in the room. And I'm shoulder to shoulder with another guy, and he's like, Hey, you tell me about some of your deals, but I think, I think you're a tired landlord. And I was like, what, what are you talking about? I'm, I'm doing my thing. You know, I was sort of in denial, like justifying that my tenants were fine. You know, they talk about the the problems with tenants. They call them the three T's, tenant, their termites, toilets and turnover. Well, I dubbed a fourth t, which is tears from the terrible tenants that you've had over the years. And he said, Did you know that you could do all this with out the headache of the tenants, but just be the bank? And my mind, it broke. I thought, what I thought I was doing this the great way. I learned from all the experts, all the gurus, all the seminars. And he said, No, let me show you. And it was literally him, like, three nights in a row at dinner, just penciling out for me, this is how it works. This is why it works. Here's how you go and make it happen. And I thought, this is changing my world. I went back home, doing more math, weeks of phone calls, and I decided. I told my husband. I said, I'm gonna list all of our rental property. I don't want to do that anymore. And he's like, whoa. What are you talking about? I'm like, This guy blew my mind, and so it was just one conversation for one person to show me this space that's still within real estate, but it's so unheard of that people aren't aware that you can tap into it. It's just difficult to find unless you know exactly what to Google. Because how do you Google? How do I buy a note? Well, what like, like, a sticky note? Like, what are you talking about? The internet doesn't know what that means, but if you're in the note space, we know what that means. So that was my transition from having that epiphany, my Tiffany epiphany of like, wow, I don't want to be a landlord anymore. I don't want to flip houses anymore and deal with contractors and deal with banks and deal with all this stuff. I can actually just become the bank. Because if you think about it, most of the downtowns and everywhere in America. What are the names on all of those buildings? They're usually all bank names. Banks are not owning all this property. They're just controlling it. They're controlling us, and they're able to do that with leverage and being able to show people that, I love opening a can of worms for people, because what do they say about that? You can't you can't unthink that thought. Now we have to go deeper and further into it, and that's and that's what I want to share with everybody.

Robert Plank 8:45 Wonderful. And it happened to you, so now you're passing it on. You had that origin story, hero's journey of sorts, right? Your Obi Wan Kenobi came to you and said, Hey, you're doing you're doing okay, but you're struggling too much. You're working way too hard. Here's a better way of going about it, and so you're saying that. So this is this kind of, this technique of, like, getting, buying the notes and bulk from the bank, so to speak, like you say that it's kind of not very well known or not very well used, but, I mean, why isn't it like, why hasn't it caught on more? Sure, you can't Google the phrase, but why have been people just been putting out, like, tons of like, courses and content and YouTube channels. Why hasn't it become more mainstream?

Tiffany Alexander 9:25 That's I guess, it depends on what you're Googling. There are several leading experts that I would trust entirely for you to go and take their seminar and that you would learn from them. The problem is, it's still a little bit of a gatekeeping type thing, like you're going to go, you're going to pay $1,000 for three days, and they're going to say, Cool, here's a little bit of information. And then they're going to say, Oh, by the way, you can buy our 2540, or $50,000 package fee to really know everything, but then you're still going to have to DIY it. Like, if I could just give you maybe a couple of books, and you could take condense all that information, I believe, like we're in the internet age, that you can find all. Of the information that you probably would need to know to crush it, to just make it happen, to make it happen. So it's a matter of finding what's the most pertinent information, and then then your brain power has to kick in, of the confidence of the being able to stick with it, and believing in yourself that if you just do enough of them, that it's going to kind of roll out. So there are experts in the industry, and I would suggest you find them and follow them. If you want to crack into this, just be careful if you're going to go spend a lot of money into this, that you're really, really committed and you're not going to quit, not give up on yourself until you've at least gotten your investment back.

Robert Plank 10:36 Okay, well, fair enough. And this is a good lesson that you're introducing here, that information is only one element of success here, right? Like, it's sure you need to learn these things, but you also need to sort what's important and what's not, because the internet is just a waterfall of information, and it's easy to get distracted. So it's like, we'll focus on what's important, but there's also the implementation and the confidence and the follow through and the problem solving and all these other aspects. So like, we all think, Oh, if only I, like, had this one lesson, or read this one book, I know exactly what to do. And you'd say, well, you know what to do. But as far as like, getting that finish line, there's like, 18 more steps that happen after that. And so as far as so you you get these, these these notes from the the bank, and then, like, who is your target market? Who are you? Are you then selling them to?

Tiffany Alexander 11:26 That's a great question. So there's, there's a number of different things you can do with them. And one of my favorites is you can buy one so you come up, maybe use your retirement account, self directed. Maybe have your savings account, if you just have a little bit of money you want to allocate into an investment, you can actually go and purchase one of these notes, and you can do something in the industry that's called recapitalization, meaning, let's say you buy a cute little note in Ohio for $50,000 because that's what they owe in their house. Maybe their house is worth 70 or 100 well, you can actually borrow all of that money back out from that mortgage and go do this another deal, or the same deal over and over again. So you actually don't need a ton of money to get started. And it's a matter of who is like, what's your end goal of this? So your end goal would be to keep them all for yourself, which I did for a long time. And I realized, gosh, I know so much, I need to share this with more people and help more people out with their finances, instead of me keeping all this information so you can build up little lists of people, you can tap into existing lists of people, like meetups and Facebook groups, networking yourself to say, hey, I have an amazing investment. Would you want to be a part of it? And we're not talking like, you know, two 3% at your savings account in your bank. We're talking about much stronger returns with very low risk, almost like boring assets, just they're gonna pay and they're gonna pay.

Robert Plank 12:46 Very cool, and it's almost gives me, reminds me of, like the BRR a little bit, right? Except for, it's a except for on paper, just the get the note, cash out the equity, and move on to the next step. And you know, whenever you hear people talk about real estate like they're, I mean, YouTube's this lousy with real estate experts, and they always trash talk our area, right? They trash talk California. And they're saying, like, hey, you know, Florida and Ohio and all these other kind of the frontier states are more exciting, and I've never really understood why. Like, what is the beef with real estate investors in California and like, what's the better location to be?

Tiffany Alexander 13:26 I'm not even mad about real estate in California. It is expensive, and so if you are keeping it as a rental, the numbers don't work well, which is fine, and we live in a very inexpensive side of California, we can get properties under 500 grand. Still with that, it's like, well, gosh, those numbers don't work as a rental. Well, do they work as a flip? We've got to buy it really, really low. So people might be just having beef with us in general because of the price of our properties. But as far as a note's concerned, California is fine, because if they stop paying that's actually a whole nother direction that we could head, that it's even better, because now I own their mortgage for less than they've even owe on their mortgage to their original bank. Now I am their bank, and I can just foreclose and take their house, and it's relatively short and easy to do in California, so I'm not mad at California, but all the flippers and the holders are.

Robert Plank 14:18 Okay. Well, you figured a lot of things out and and it's still, it sounds a little like scary to me, just like hearing some of this, it's like it almost like it seems too good to be true. So like, what's the downside here? Like, what is there ever has there been any thing like that you didn't know going in? You're like, Hey, I wish I'd known about this potential danger.

Tiffany Alexander 14:37 That is a great question, and I have a couple different ways to answer it. The downside is, you get into this not knowing that. Wow, whenever I buy a rental property or I buy a house, we actually go through title and we get like a clean slate, because they take care of everything in the past, and you're just moving forward with you being the owner of the landlord. And then you get that clean, documented paper, paperwork. Now, when we buy a note, we're buying whatever the shoes that were placed in existence when that note was originated. So the one thing I didn't realize was, oh my gosh, I need to pull a title report, and I need to make sure that that title report is good and accurate, and that could be a difficult thing for people that can't read these lengthy documents or understand what it is they're reading and the nuances of the paperwork, but if you can get someone on your team for very inexpensive that knows that space, you don't have to become an expert. I want you to stay in your lane. Let's figure out what you're good at, and let's do what you're good at, because that's still fun. So let's hire out a guy for 100 bucks. Hire out a guy for 50 bucks. If you can hire an attorney for $150 to get all the paperwork done for you. It is such a low cost of entry for the paperwork side, even the management side. So it's like, gosh, if I got a rental and there was a downside to having a rental, the management could be bad, the tenant could be bad, the property could be bad. There's, there's 1000 different ways that rentals can go wrong and have gone wrong with me, and from there, it's just awful. Whereas, like, whoa, what's the downside here? Well, gosh, the paperwork could suck. The people could you buy it and it's performing, and the people stop paying, like, Well, gosh, what? That's not even a downside for me, because if they stop paying, I get their house, or I can help them out. The downside may not even be that, because I can get them maybe paying again, or I can get them due to, like a cash for key situation where I'm helping them out even more, or go into foreclosure and the house is just destroyed. So that's why we make sure we buy at a very good rate. To pad in those numbers, that if I have to go and fix the house, if I'm going back into like an REO, a bank owned situation that we're accounting for that, so you got to make sure you buy right, like we do in all real estate deals. Those are some of the downsides.

Robert Plank 16:51 Okay? And I love your problem solving logic here, because the the average kind of untrained logic in a situation like this is someone to say, like, Okay, well, let me look for the ways this can go wrong, because that that's natural, right? That's like, the the human brain, how it functions. You're, you're driving a car down the street, okay, what are, what's, what's going on in front of me? Like, is a car on fire, or someone running a red light? Like, what's the danger? But then it seems like, if you're not careful, you just, you keep searching until you find a way you're to talk yourself out of that opportunity or that risk. And then you say, See, I was right all along. But then you're saying, well, let's if you find that that, you know, fly in the ointment. Then you unpack that and say, Okay, well, I'm worried about this. What if my tenant doesn't pay, or what if there's this bad stuff with the title, and he say, well, here are some solutions to either make the problem less scary or to have a plan if it does go south. So that's just kind of good. Good, good, like roadmap in general, right for us to be more optimistic and to have the more like entrepreneurial mindset instead of employee mindset. And so something that you've also mentioned, that I like a lot about what you've said, Here is the social aspect of it, right? And like, you know, some of us, the socializing doesn't come naturally, or we have to work at it, or are always looking for ways to be better. So what do you have to say about like, you say you're always networking to kind of find potential investors and buyers, things like that. So what are your lessons to tell us about networking and maybe, like, what don't people talk about enough when it comes to the socialization?

Tiffany Alexander 18:29 Oh, I love that you asked me this question. I'm a wild extrovert. Not a lot of people are. I think you may even say you're a little bit of an introvert yourself. People are generally very selfish not to say, like entrepreneurs, we're giving right, where we have a heart self is in a manner of they are so concerned about themselves that if you trip over a word, or if you introduce yourself funky, or you you didn't say it right the first time. Generally, a lot of people are forgiving of that, but they're not worried about you, so I want you to go out there, put yourself out there, because people are not staring you in the light that you're criticizing your own self. So I just need you to shake that off and go ahead and go meet some new people. And I don't even care if it's in a grocery store or if it's in a meetup group, or if it's in a zoom and you don't even want your camera on you just got to let people know what it is that you need and what you want and what how you can maybe offer them a help. I like to start my conversations with, Hey, I love problem solving. Is there anything going on in your business that maybe I can find a solver for you? Oh, wow, that's so awesome. What do you do? And then, almost like this law of obligation, where they're like, how Tiffany's like, just free, willing to offer to help me out. How can I help her out? I really want to go in with just such a giving heart that even if there's nothing that ever came back to me because I'm not expecting it, that they know like, wow, I can come to her and she'd be willing to help me out. So just you can be yourself. It's okay. People aren't really that worried about you. Shake it off and. Go meet some people and let them know what you need, and find out what they need, and let's figure it out so we can all help each other out in this crazy world right now.

Robert Plank 20:07 Just do your reps right that it's like, if you go to the gym one time and lift some weights and say, Oh, why aren't I rich? Well, it's not going to be a equal exchange like that. But if you make it a habit of going to the gym, then, like, eventually you'll get some results. And in the same way that you're saying, if you make it at a habit of talking to people at the grocery store or whatever situation, you just kind of up your game and make it a point to overcome the cringe you're saying that. Well, hey, you know how concerned you are about your own appearance and concerned about stumbling over your words. Well, hey, they might even be even more concerned than you are about yourself. So instead of being like every everyone else out there be someone different, because it's rare for someone to listen and ask them about their problems and ask how you can help. And so along those lines, what are your current problems? Tiffany, I'm here. I'm already implementing seconds later, what you just taught me. So what is on the future, the horizon for you? What are you struggling with? What's happening soon?

Tiffany Alexander 21:08 Oh, that's great. I love that we're actually, we're currently in problem solving. So we're looking to help those that are looking to put maybe money they have laying around in savings or in very low risk assets that they would prefer to park in my fund. You know, we're paying 8% on very low, low risk assets with first lien position. And so as a need that I'm I'm wanting to do is to fill up my fund with a certain amount of money from investors that want to come to me. And what I'm doing is I want to solve that problem for them, so they know that they can have their money at a better return or a better yield to them that's sitting in something that they would have just probably sat in their savings account. Because I do want people to go get their double their money or their Bitcoin money. That's not the space that I play in. So what we're looking for is new investors that want to come pop their money into the fund, learn to trust us and live vicariously through us with the amazing assets that we're doing, and then you guys can participate. A lot of people are gonna be like, Wow, Tiff, I love what you do. That's so cool. And at some point you want to be in so bad, but you're like, Oh, I give my my throw my hands up in the air when you do that, because you don't want to go learn everything I've learned. You just park your money in my fund and you get to see all the deals that we're doing. To say you're a part of it.

Robert Plank 22:17 Very cool. So you're and this has been a repeat topic in our conversation here, that one person can't do everything, so if there's something that you need help with or need to do, then pay someone else to do it, or get someone else on your team, so to speak, to be that part of it. And this investing idea is exactly what that is. But then we have also been saying that people find all the reasons in the world will talk themselves out of stuff. And so how much money does someone need to invest with you? If someone's saying, like, oh, well, you know, I will do this someday, but I need to, like, pile up X amount of money. Like, how much does someone usually start with? Or how much does someone have if they want to look into these 8% returns?

Tiffany Alexander 22:58 Oh, that's a good question. We are looking for new investors, because we have our current investors right now at the $250,000 and up level, and a few investors we'd like to bring in like the one in $5 million level, because we're going to be at probably $100 million in the next 12 to 18 months.

Robert Plank 23:15 Awesome. Well, cool. And so what are some next steps here? Like you have a website and a YouTube channel and LinkedIn. If someone says, I'm so impressed with what Tiffany had to say, like there's an easier way than landlording or flipping, and I want to find out more about what she has going on. You have your book, a consultation button on your website, etc. So where should someone go? What are some next steps? Call to actions here. Oh, you're muted.

Tiffany Alexander 23:43 They can run right over to our website. It's aspensage fund.com and there's an appointment calendar on there that you can book time directly with me. And we can identify that if your needs with what you're looking at in your investment would be a good fit for what we have. They can. Also check out some incredible videos that we have on our YouTube channel. When you type in Aspen sage fund, some introductory three minute ones, some baby chunks for you to say, you know, what is a note I need to learn more about that. Well, I've got those on there for you too. And then a little bit deeper dive of a nine minute video of what our fund is really currently all about. That's the best way to find me. And of course, you can always find me on LinkedIn too. So that way you can see some social posts we're doing and just learn more about me.

Robert Plank 24:27 And to find Tiffany Alexander on LinkedIn, in case you get mixed up with the other Tiffany Alexander, search Tiffany Alexander Modesto, and that way you can find the correct one. She's local, she's nearby. And then Aspen sage on YouTube to find those three minute videos, but most importantly, that website, Aspen, Sage funds.com, you can go there. You can have that meeting with Tiffany and her team, because she practices what she preaches. Right? She says that it's so important to do this one on one interaction, the customization and. Is you're putting your money with her, and so it's a, you know, it's can it can be scary, right? You can have questions, you can have doubts. So she's here to say, hey, is this the right fit? Does this match with your needs? You have that conversation by going to aspensage fund.com. That's A, S, P, E, N, S, A, G, E, F, U, N, D.com. Aspensagefund.com, Tiffany Alexander, who has got this real estate investing thing figured out. She's from Modesto. And as we're wrapping up, winding down our conversation here, Tiffany, I like to stump my guests, put them on the spot a little bit, and ask them for a fun quarter lesson that has helped them in their journey. To use your keyword. I know you love that word journey. So in your journey, what's a fun quarter lesson that you've learned that you can pass on to us?

Tiffany Alexander 25:46 Oh, the lesson I'd like to leave with people is actually applying to real estate. So if you want to get jump in, you can't just go out there and make one offer and accept that offer to be get gotten accepted on your behalf. You have to try 100 or 1000 times and be willing to prepare yourself for the nose. So don't stop. Don't quit. Don't give up on you or yourself, or your dreams or goals, because it's out there. It's just a matter of what number of door that it's going to be behind that you open it.

Robert Plank 26:11 That's cool. It's like a game show, right? Is it behind door number 782, or number 907, so go out there and have fun and learn and fulfill and just get to that next step in your real estate journey. But the first step after listening to this podcast is go to aspensagefund.com, book, that call, have that conversation, and you can finally make things a lot easier, right? You don't have to do the the flipping or the dealing with tenants or the writing the stock market or the low returns, any of that, see what's possible. Explore some possibilities. Talk to Tiffany Alexander and her team@aspensagefund.com invest in yourself and build the future you want. So wonderful. Speaking with you today, Tiffany.

Tiffany Alexander 26:56 I appreciate your time so much. It's amazing to hang out.

Robert Plank 27:02 We really appreciate you being a listener of the marketer of the day podcast. The place to go right now, if you want to know more about running your own podcast, is dfy podcast.com/free go there right now, claim your free gift. Dfy podcast.com/free you. Transcribed by https://otter.ai