Heroes in Business - Carter Wilcoxson, Brion Crum VP of Wealth Development at Caliber Funds, Health and Wealth Podcast Show
Episode Date: May 27, 2023Brion Crum VP of Wealth Development at Caliber Funds. Brion talks about how growing up on a farm in Ohio and watching his father's entrepreneurship made him realize the value of business ownership and... investing in real estate. https://www.thehealthandwealthpodcastshow.com/episodes-1/episode/7fb2273c/vp-brion-crum-encouraging-investment-in-economically-disadvantaged-areas
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Shut up and sit down.
Welcome to the Health and Wealth Podcast with your hosts, Tim and Carter.
What's trending, Enrichers?
Carter Wilcox, founder of CSI Financial Group here,
with my co-host and former Wealth Advisor, Tim James, founder of?
ChemicalFreeBody.com and your new health advisor.
This is the show where we reveal the connection between physical and financial
abundance. Hey, welcome back and richer. It's Carter Wilcox and coming to you from sunny Phoenix,
Arizona. It is the week before the masters, which I'm only saying that because I will be attending
the masters next week. So I'm very excited about that. And as normal, I am joined here by my fantastic co-host, Mr. Chemical Free Body himself, Tim James. Timmy, how are you, my man?
Hey, I'm doing really good. And I'm going to add a couple more things to my name now. I want to be known instead of just Chemical Free Body, I want you to call me Mr. Stressless, Mr. Chemical Free Body, and Mr. Nutrient.
Mr. Stressless, Mr. Chemical-Free Body, and Mr. Nutrient.
Okay.
Okay.
That's a lot.
And Mr. Guitar Hero, apparently.
Well, yeah, playing guitar and stuff like that.
Mr. Frequency.
There we go.
Add frequency to it.
But no, it's like, dude, I just, like this person today was asking about eczema.
And I was on this other gal's radio show.
And she said she had a client, their daughter or something, had eczema. And I was on this other gal's radio show and she said she had a client,
their daughter or something had eczema after they got vaccinated. And I was like, well, I said,
there's basic fundamental things that work for everything, right? There are targeted things for certain things, but there's also basic fundamentals and stress and toxic buildup in the body and the cellular level and nutrients are always going to be there.
It's like that's how simple nutrition is.
But we'll save that for the third segment because we want to get to our guest today.
Brian, is it Brian?
Brian, right?
Yeah, it's just spelled different.
B-R-I-O-N.
Brian Crum, VP of Wealth Development.
So take it away, Carter.
Hey, well, hey, and Richards, we're very excited about having our guest on today. This is a
gentleman that I've gotten a chance to know here locally. He's got some great opportunities. I was
introduced to him from one of our alliances campaigns that we went to that I showed up at.
And in fact, the round table that I was able to attend
was really, really awesome.
And Brian attended that.
Brian and I have been talking for a while
about having him come on the podcast.
And I finally was able to wrangle him up
and tie him down to get him on here.
He's flying all over the place all the time,
trying to help do his caliber funds and caliber companies.
He's got all this stuff.
He's going to be talking
about that momentarily. So let's go ahead and bring Brian on, who just happens to be in
Scottsdale, Arizona right now. Brian, how are you doing, bud?
I am fantastic and glad to be back in sunny Scottsdale, Arizona.
Yeah, well, that's kind of funny because whenever we were talking about getting you on the podcast,
you were in Hawaii, which I know is like horrible
weather for the most part, but you grin and bear it, right? Yeah. As long as you can survive the
hurricanes and the volcanoes, you're in good shape. Perfect. Awesome. Well, Brian, you know,
our enrichers, as we call our listenership here, you know, we like to start off with a little bit
of a history lesson, go back in time and discuss a
little bit about what brought you into the arena and the industry that you're in today, financial
services, generally speaking. So take us back in the wayway machine on what was it that got you
started going down the path in which you're on right now today? Yeah, Carter, I appreciate that
opportunity. Great to be on the
show with you guys. Love meeting fellow alliances members that have a media platform so we can
share some wisdom with others. So it actually goes back to when I was growing up on a farm in Ohio.
So I'm originally a farm kid from Ohio, small town. And when I was growing up, I didn't really
understand what entrepreneurship was.
I lived on a farm. My dad was a farmer. My dad had a job that he went to every day.
And it wasn't until after I had really gone to college and realized that the reason why my dad
had a job is that he was a business owner. So my dad is a farmer and a gentleman who owned a diesel truck dealership.
The reason he had a job is that he was an entrepreneur and he was a business owner.
And once I realized that, and I asked myself, why was my dad able to retire in his fifties?
And it was because of business ownership, investing in real estate, the family farms,
and it was something that enabled him to get to the point where instead of having to
have a day job, he was able to live off the investments. So when I moved to Arizona back
in 1997, after I'd graduated from Ohio State with a finance degree, I was working in the
hospitality industry, really kind of launched what became a world-class luxury resort called the Royal Palms.
And during that time, I also was getting into financial services. I was learning about finance.
I was learning about investments. I got an insurance license. I got a mortgage license.
I had a securities license. But I was always, for the most part, doing it on behalf of
people because I wanted them to have a good experience with financial services. So if I had a friend that needed insurance or a friend that was buying a
house, I wanted to be able to make sure that they were being treated well. So I always had this
self-employed financial services business that I was able to use really as a part-time job while
I was working full-time at a hotel. So let's fast forward a few years and it's going to talk a
little bit about
why I helped some friends start the Alliances Entrepreneurship Community that you mentioned,
and then why I left the big financial world of traditional investments and insurance to get into
real estate investment development through Caliber. In 2010, I had a choice. I had to
decide, am I going to be full-time in financial services and part-time in hospitality, or am I going to do a flip-flop? And at that point, I decided I wanted to focus 100% on financial services.
their financial services training program. And after being one of the only advisors that actually made it through the program and graduated, I was at that point where, do I continue building my
book of business at Merrill Lynch, or do I do something a little more innovative and independent?
And around that time, I had met the founder of Caliber, which is where I work today,
and really liked the story about how they help
successful people reinvest back into their own communities through real estate. So at that time
in 2014, I made the decision to leave the traditional financial services world where I was
working at Merrill Lynch and joined Caliber, which at the time we were only in our first year of being an Inc. 500, Inc. 5000 fastest growing private company in America.
And then I was able to transition some of the great relationships with successful entrepreneurs that I met over the years so that they could then start investing directly into real estate that they owned through our different deals.
real estate that they owned through our different deals.
Nice. So you grew up a farm boy in Ohio. Is that what I'm hearing? Is that pretty much? That is correct. I am a farm boy from Ohio.
Yeehaw. Carter was already on this pathway already. He was talking about wrangling you
up and tying you down. So I was like, where did this come from? He's like going
redneck cowboy on me.
He was going back to farm days. tying you down so i was like where did this come from he's like going redneck cowboy on me he was
going back to farm days yeah so uh so what was it like then growing up uh because i remember you
know pre-show you're talking about it was a very small you know farming community right so what
was that like growing up and then when did you decide that you weren't going to get into the
family business so to speak what was it like growing up on the farm and ultimately why you decided to go elsewhere or go a different path?
You know, when you grow up on a farm, it doesn't matter what time of day it is.
There's always some sort of work that you have to do.
So, you know, you wake up, you have to go get some work done.
So you wake up, do some farm work, go to school, come home, do a little bit more farm work.
So you wake up, do some farm work, go to school, come home, do a little bit more farm work.
And that's just, you know, anyone that grows up on a farm knows that there's a lot of, you know, hard work involved.
And I think it builds character.
So that's the first part of the question. The second part of the question is, how did I decide to go into financial services?
And there's actually a little bit of a pivot that happened
there in between. I actually started learning how to fly when I was 15. So my mom actually had to
drive me to the airport because I was able to fly before I was able to drive. So as a little girl,
I always wanted to be a pilot. And this was right around the time the Top Gun came out. So everyone wanted to be Maverick.
So I was able to start flying when I was 15 years old. And my original intention was to be a
professional pilot. So I started flying when I was 15. I had done some solo flights, which means
I'm literally up in the air, you know, 16 years old, flying around an airplane by myself before I can drive. And then fast forward a couple of years
after starting flying, I graduated from high school and I was going to enroll at Ohio State
to get an aviation management degree. And this was right when the first Gulf War started, so 1990.
And I remember I was in my aviation management training class and our instructor at one point said, I've got bad news for everyone that's sitting here in this room.
Those kids that are flying around overseas getting their asses shot at, they're going to come back and they're going to get the jobs flying planes that you thought you're getting trained here today.
So I'm like, hmm, I'm wondering if I should have a backup plan to being
a professional pilot. So at that point, I added a second major in finance and ended up getting a
part-time job or an internship, as it were, working for a Raymond James financial advisor.
So I started learning how to do financial planning, learning about what business owners do with their money,
the tax advantages of certain types of investments. So I was able to pretty quickly
transition from this plan to be a professional pilot to learn how to do financial planning and
financial services through this part-time job that I had when I was going through and completing my aviation management and my finance degree at
Ohio State. Wow. So that's interesting. So what kind of influence did your dad have on you
from a financial services perspective? Or did he have any at all? Or did you guys sometimes
not see eye to eye? Or were you able to, because you, as you mentioned earlier,
he was a business owner. You just didn't recognize what exactly that meant. So what
was that like with him? Correct. You know, I think the two things that I really learned
was about the fact that if you own a business, make sure you also own the real estate behind it.
So that's a very important lesson for people to learn because if you own a business and it fails,
you at least still own the real estate associated with it. So if you're a farmer and for some reason
it's not a profitable year, at least you have this fallback position of owning the land that
you can then replant the next year. So one thing I learned was to make sure that you always
physically own either land or the building that your business is
in. The second thing is that he did not like making investments that he didn't understand.
So my dad almost never invested in anything in the stock market. I think the only investments
that he really had were when he was a shareholder in our local community bank. So one of the things I learned from my dad was that, you know, be a business owner, be a real estate investor, and invest in things that you understand and can control.
Nice. That's pretty important.
You know, that kind of sort of harkens back to, I'm sure you've probably seen the movie The Founder, right?
I'm sure you've probably seen the movie The Founder, right?
And the whole McDonald's story and the whole Ray Kroc.
People think about McDonald's, they think Ray Kroc.
They don't understand that he actually was the one that recognized that this was a real estate deal.
It wasn't necessarily the McDonald's process that ended up making that such a huge deal.
So that's basically what you just got to talking about. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. In fact, when, uh, when my dad retired and they sold the business,
uh, they actually shut the business down and the only value they had was actually from the,
the actual physical garage, the structure that the business was in.
Wow. So then, uh, so what was it like with, um, with mom, you mentioned mom, she's taking you to, you know, the airport so you can, which is a crazy story.
I mean, you're flying before you're driving. I can say that that is a first on the Health and Wealth Podcast.
We've never had anybody that's been on here that was actually flying a plane before they were driving a car. That's crazy.
So what kind of, I don't think I've ever met anybody who's done that.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying. That's crazy.
Man, anybody's done that.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
That's crazy.
Yeah, if you start talking to pilots, find out what age they started flying.
A lot of people don't realize that you can start getting your pilot's license before you get your driver's license.
That is just, that's a whack-a-doodle to me.
And then at 16, you're up there flying solo.
Mm-hmm.
Now, what were you flying? It was a little Piper Tomahawk.
So it's actually a low-engine plane, or I'm sorry, a low wing plane.
So it actually looks a little cooler than what most people find, which is a Cessna 150 or a Cessna 152.
So it looks like a cool little plane.
You know, there's only two seats in it.
It didn't go very fast, maybe 110 miles per hour.
But once again, you're flying much faster than you ever
drive before you learn how to drive. So it's kind of fun when you think about it that way.
Well, I guess the question then that's on every enricher's mind right now is,
what made you want to start becoming a pilot then initially?
It was definitely something that I always have been interested in when I was a little kid. I remember at our county fair that we went up in a helicopter and then we had a glider come out.
So between flying in a helicopter when I was a little kid and then going up in a glider from our little, you know, county airport,
I just always loved that experience of being up in the air.
And I was also a very poor artist,
but the only things that I could actually draw were airplanes and boats. So I just had an interest
in things related to the military. And then of course, Top Gun came out and I'm like, hey,
that's like really fun. Not only do I want to be a pilot, I want to be a naval aviator.
So I did actually have the intent of going to the, uh, either the air force
or the Navy. And I was enrolling to go into the Naval reserve. And a funny story. I actually had
an ingrown toenail when I went through the medical processing station up in Cleveland, Ohio, when I
was also, I think 17 or 18. And they said, you know what? You have an infection on your foot.
We're not going to process you through.
Why don't you come back to us once you've got this cleared up?
And I'm like, I literally have an ingrown toenail.
So after that, I had enrolled at Ohio State and decided that maybe that was a sign for me that I was not supposed to be a naval aviator.
The old ingrown toenail story.
Save me from getting shot at in a desert storm, apparently.
If you want to bring that up in the third segment, for those listening, I'll show you
how to deal with an ingrown toenail at home without having to go to the doctor.
I may have to take you up on that.
All right, guys.
Great for segment.
We're going to take a quick break.
We'll get back.
We're going to get into what Brian's doing with all that real estate over there.
Might be a good play in today's economic market.
We'll be right back.
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What's up, Enrichers? Tim James here. I'm back with my co-host, Carter Wilcoxon. Today in the house, we've got Brian over at Caliber Funds. Brian Crum. Brian, so thanks for your backstory, man.
Let's get into what you're doing today.
So what are you doing over there at Caliber?
Is this real estate investment trust?
You said you were sourcing.
You're actually raising the money yourself.
What are you doing over there?
Yeah, I'm going to give you a little bit of a backstory about Caliber
because it actually directly pertains to the types of real estate deals that we're doing now. Calibra was started back in 2009 by a group of young entrepreneurs who
are our current founders and our CEO or COO are our two co-founders. And the reason they started
Calibra was to help successful people access real estate deals during the last great recession, where they're
literally going down on the courthouse steps, sourcing deals, buying on behalf of investors,
doing a lot of fix and flips. And then the market shifted away from deep discounts on single family
into distressed real estate on multifamily assets. So originally they would get a good deal on an underperforming apartment complex,
maybe even buy some non-performing notes, take the property over, do some renovations, distribute
income to the investors. And then when you sell them, then you distribute the rest of the profits.
And then in 2014, which was when I joined the company, we were able to be one of the first companies to
take advantage of what's called the JOBS Act or the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act,
which is what allowed equity crowdfunding to occur. Prior to the JOBS Act of 2013,
it was actually typically illegal to openly solicit for a lot of real estate funds. So a
lot of these deals, that's why they're considered to be
deals that you would pick up on tips at your country club. Because companies like Caliber
literally couldn't broadly advertise that they had these real estate funds available.
So under the rules of the JOBS Act, we were able to start promoting our real estate funds
on websites, being able to use social media to advertise what we
were doing. And because of those rules, we had to make sure that all of our investors were
accredited. So they had to have a net worth over a million dollars, excluding the value of their
primary residence, or they had to have an income exceeding $300,000 as a couple or $200,000 as an
individual. So when I joined Caliber, I was limited to only raising
capital from accredited investors, which was one of the reasons why I really wanted to focus on
how do I meet people that are successful business owners? Because they typically had excess profits
that they were able to invest maybe into a retirement plan. Maybe they had a SEP IRA,
maybe they had a defined benefit plan.
And all of those were actually eligible to invest into private real estate funds.
So part of what we were doing was educating the investor about how they can tap into these
different pools of assets to make local real estate investments. And then really the fundamental change in Caliber's business model occurred in 2018
when the federal government created a tax-incentivized investment program called Opportunity Zone
Funds.
So what an Opportunity Zone is, is one of about 8,700 designated census tracts around the country that based on the 2010 census were
designated to be at or below 85% of the average median income or had an unemployment rate typically
over 20%. So if you invested the capital gains from a prior successful investment into one of these 8,700 designated tracks
around the country through an opportunity zone fund, you started getting some pretty
significant tax benefits, which I'll go into a little bit later.
So in 2018, after the program had been created by the federal government, Arizona was one
of the first states in the country that actually picked where these opportunity zones were
going to be.
Caliber looked at our business model, typically of acquisition of an existing property that needed significant renovation,
or buying land and then building some sort of real estate of value on it,
and realized that most of the deals we were doing were actually in opportunity zones and met the rules of the program.
So at that point, we launched an opportunity zone fund.
We were one of the first companies in the country to actually launch multi-asset,
multiple state opportunity zone fund.
And we were able to start directly target marketing to people when we found out that
they had a capital gain because a lot of these events was public information. It could have been the sale of real estate. It could have been a venture funding deal.
It could have been outright sale of a business. So it enabled us to take advantage of a government
incentivized program and do a much better job of directly marketing ourselves
to people that had some sort of a capital gain.
marketing ourselves to people that had some sort of a capital gain.
So how about that? Well, you've been with the company for how long then? I know the company you said. Yeah, I joined Caliber in 2014. So I joined in our first year being on the Inc. 500,
Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing private companies. In 2018, we launched the Opportunity
Zone Fund, which enabled us to continue growing.
So I think we made it to that list for eight years in a row.
And now that we're in the process of going public, we'll also be a public sponsor of Opportunity Zone Funds.
So now were you you stumbled upon the opportunity or were you recruited in from somebody or how did you guys, how did you
connect with the caliber to start with? Yeah. One of the reasons why I helped David
Kogan found alliances, which is the entrepreneurship community that we met through was because I wanted
to find ways to meet local successful entrepreneurs and find ways for them to invest locally.
So as part of my networking, I was at a Scottsdale Chamber of Commerce meeting back in 2014. And I sat at the same lunch table as Chris Loeffler, our CEO. And we were listening
to David Schweiker, our congressional representative, who had actually written some
of the regulations that became the basis for equity crowdfunding. So we were having a great
conversation. And it was around
the same time that I was becoming a little disenchanted with the traditional Wall Street
wire house business model. And I was able to find a way to transition away from Merrill Lynch
to help Chris and the team grow Caliber in 2014. Nice. So talk a little bit about that. Now, are you talking about like the Reg CF? Is
that what sort of changed things whenever, like in 2018, and that's what you've been
sort of leading the charge on then? Yeah. So there's several different ways that you can do
equity crowdfunding. We started off by just broadly advertising all of our deals, which
meant that we had to follow Reg D private offering requirements, but we weren't actually raising money through a portal.
That's where you move over to what you referenced as Reg CF or Reg crowdfunding and then Reg A plus.
So Caliber actually did do a Reg A plus offering on Seed Invest between 2020 and 2021,
where we raised about $12 million from both accredited and
non-accredited investors, which at that point, after we completed that regulation A-plus round
with Seed Invest, we were technically at that point a public reporting non-trading company.
So we did then, through that experience, understand how you can best
utilize social media as well as the internet in order to attract investors. And then after we did
that offering, we also ramped up our efforts to look for investors using the Opportunity Zone
Fund as one of those main marketing vehicles.
All right. So are you getting most of your investors from Arizona primarily, or do you get word of mouth and then somebody talking to somebody, maybe alliances, maybe that's sort of
how you filter through that networking, which is, by the way, David Kogan, thank you for, you know, Eliance is a great opportunity for some of you entrepreneurs that are out there.
But, you know, are you getting them through, you know, word of mouth or is it primarily Arizona
or are you getting them from all over? Yeah, in the first few years I was at Caliber, it was very
heavily oriented to friends and family, direct referrals, a lot of in-person events. So we had
a majority of investors from Arizona at that point, and also some neighboring states, especially
if it was someone in the Midwest that might've had a second home here. So they spent a lot of
time here, a lot of investors from California. But when the Opportunity Zone Fund was created,
it really broadened our reach to across the whole country and even internationally.
So at this point, we probably have an investor in almost every single state, including some
international investors, because what will happen is someone will hear about the Opportunity Zone
Fund Program, but want to learn more. They're going to go online. They're going to do some
research. And what Caliber is doing from a digital marketing standpoint is recreating a
combination of content that people can find when they're searching or through participating in
pitch sessions and even webinars like this. So a lot of it is content creation, digital marketing,
and then also there is a paid component where we do have people that are looking for what we do and they'll pop up as a Google lead.
So we have a pretty broad based approach that we use from a digital marketing standpoint.
We integrate all of our social media, all of our databases with HubSpot.
We actually have a whole marketing team that's in-house.
And then we also partner with people that are like, you know, world class experts at digital marketing.
And that's also been a way that we've been able to expand the company.
Nice. Awesome. And obviously, you know, with what's been going on over the last three years, having those communications, you know, digitally, virtually.
Right. That makes your job probably a lot easier. Right.
It does. Yeah. When COVID hit and all of the in-person pitch events basically went away,
every single person that was looking to make an investment, whether it was a private company or
through real estate, started going online. And because I was right when we launched that online
stock offering through Seed Invest, we ended up getting a lot of people that the only way that
they could learn about these investments was going online and watching Zoom presentations. So now that we've kind of continued in that world where a lot of people
are very comfortable doing some research, maybe meeting people virtually at first,
we do have a lot of people that do want to come out to Arizona and Colorado and Texas,
some of the three main states where we have investments, meet us in person, do their due
diligence, walk through the actual
buildings. If they're going to be in Arizona, let's walk them through an actual Caliber project.
This is a hotel that we just built. This is a hospital that we did as an Opportunity Zone
Fund investment. This is a ground-up construction of an apartment building. So we do have a lot of
people that do want to physically experience that, but they will likely have learned about
Caliber and found out about us somehow through the internet. So a lot of people that do want to physically experience that, but they will likely have learned about Caliber and found out about us somehow through the Internet.
So a lot of these people are looking at this as an investment, but you touched on a little bit about tax breaks or tax opportunities or advantages.
Do you want to talk a little bit about that angle as well?
Yeah, I'm going to walk through an example of what would happen if someone had
a capital gain. They wanted to invest into the Opportunity Zone Fund program. So I'm going to
talk through the first initial steps, which is really the tax advantages. And then I'm going
to break it down into a couple of the types of real estate investments, or even investing into
actual operating companies that we've been able to do through our Opportunity Zone Fund.
actual operating companies that we've been able to do through our Opportunity Zone Fund.
So there's certain rules that you have to follow in order to take advantage of the tax advantages of an Opportunity Zone Fund. The first one is if you're an investor and you have a capital gain,
and it could be from the sale of any asset, not just real estate, not just stocks.
A lot of our investors come to us after they've literally sold their company.
A lot of our investors come to us after they've literally sold their company.
Maybe they were a partner in a venture fund or a VC deal.
So any type of capital gain, including from cryptocurrency or collectibles.
So if you have a federally eligible capital gain and invested into a qualified opportunity zone fund, which Caliber has created several, within typically 180 days of that transaction,
the first benefit you get is deferring owing any of your federal, and in many cases, state capital gains tax dollars out through tax time of 2027. So initially, there's a several-year
deferral period. In Caliber's case, once someone has invested with us, we're typically going to deploy that money either into a ground up development of apartments,
although we have built hospitals and schools, but we're typically going to either buy land and build something on it in an opportunity zone,
or we're going to buy an existing building that needs to be substantially renovated.
to be substantially renovated. One of our first investments we made was an acquisition of a vacant assisted living facility across from the largest hospital system in Phoenix. And we tore it down
to the studs and rebuilt it as a behavioral healthcare hospital. So we do have a component
of our portfolio related to medical, which sounds like we're going to be able to talk a little bit
more with the wealth hero, the health hero towards the end of this conversation. So then the main benefit, however,
is not just that deferral period. It's what happens after 10 years of being in an Opportunity
Zone fund, which is where you actually have a 100% exclusion on all future capital gains
generated over that 10-year time period. So initial benefit is a
deferral. The main tax benefit is 100% exclusion of future capital gains after a 10-year holding
period. So it's a little bit like doing a 1031 exchange if it was related to real estate with
a Roth IRA on the back end of it, where you end up with that almost a lifetime exclusion of future capital gains taxes. Wow. So there's a lot of reasons why people want to get in contact with Ryan Crum from Caliber.
Is it Caliber Funds? Is it Caliber?
Caliberfunds.co. That's the name of our broker dealer affiliated securities.
Caliber Companies or caliberco.com is the whole company because we also do direct real estate
investments. So we do own some investments or we're building something on behalf of tenants
saying a long-term lease that may actually not be a fund only investment. So we are a vertically
integrated, diversified real estate asset manager, but the majority of our capital does get raised through Caliber Funds.
Gotcha. And we'll make sure, and Richard, we'll have all the show notes and everything in there,
the ability to be able to get in contact with Brian if you're interested in any of that stuff.
So since a lot of our listenership actually are other financial advisors,
is there anything you want to say to them on how you might be able to work
with them potentially? Absolutely. We like to educate people in the financial services industry
about how these Opportunity Zone funds work. It is not a neat and tidy Wall Street type product.
In fact, to my knowledge, there's only one publicly traded Opportunity Zone fund. Almost every single Opportunity Zone fund is set up very similar caliber, almost all limited partnerships, private placements.
The caliber funds, our Opportunity Zone funds in particular, are approved on multiple platforms where advisors could custody an Opportunity Zone investment on behalf of their client.
So there are reasons why financial advisors would want to plug into this. Typically, it's going to be a purely independent
RIA, maybe a broker who is using both a broker-dealer and a hybrid RIA platform. We have
family offices that invest with us. So if someone is a financial advisor and they're on either the combining TD
and Schwab platform or Fidelity, you can actually put a caliber fund in your client's portfolio.
So it shows up as an asset under management, or you could also just charge, you know, based on
consulting services. So it definitely behooves financial advisors to better understand how an opportunity zone fund could be appropriate for their clients.
Because in many cases, these are assets that are privately held.
It's a business.
It's real estate.
It is not currently an asset under management for most advisors.
So if someone sells their business and they have to pay taxes on it, you know, guaranteed that tax money is never coming
into your portfolio. So if someone has a client, they do their due diligence and invest into an
Opportunity Zone Fund, that's also very likely to be very sticky money because you're not going to
sell it before the 10-year time period is up or you're going to miss out on that main tax benefit.
So I love educating financial advisors about how the Opportunity Zone Fund program
can be used as a prospecting tool, as an asset gathering tool.
Well, let's say somebody has like a couple and they sold a commercial property
and they have $500,000 tax gains to pay.
How would they work with you and how would
you offset that like what would they have to put into the fund because we used to do some like oil
and gas stuff where if you put in night you know it was it was 90 90 tax credit right that for that
500 000 was gone anyway let's go into the irs let's see you later so we're like hey what if we
put in you know like you know we could put in 500 and whatever it is 60 000 or whatever and you have
you pay no tax but now you have all that money and investment it's super high risk but it's not
more high risk than paying taxes right yeah yeah if you get a chance to get it back yeah you know
one of the ways that we uh help explain this program is it's like getting an interest-free loan from the government for the first several years of the program.
So if someone had a half a million dollar gain, they had a half a million dollars in taxes.
That probably means they had a couple of million dollars in gain.
So right now, you know, historically, it's tough to argue we're not at a relatively low point for capital gain taxes.
So, you know, if someone is in the top tax bracket, they've got 20% at the
federal level, probably have the excise tax, and most states actually participate in the program.
So let's say 25% to 30% of their sale is going to be taxable. They can invest either the whole
amount of the gain, and then they're protecting all of the capital gain, or they could choose
to invest a portion of it. So there's also a lot of the capital gain, or they could choose to invest a portion of it.
So there's also a lot of flexibility with this.
So you could choose only to invest $100,000, pay tax on the rest of it.
That's where it's also more flexible than a 1031 exchange related to business assets, where it's kind of an all or nothing type of investment.
Now, you mentioned something about 180 days.
Did I hear that right?
Like, I have this, you know what, and I sold it, and then all of a sudden I stumble upon this financial advisor that goes, hey, by the way, I know you just sold your business.
Is that too late, or was that 180 days?
Is that what you were talking about?
Yeah, so the 180 days is the eligible amount of time from the time you sell the asset until you have to invest those profits into an Opportunity Zone Fund. However, there are some very important exclusions to that
timeline. That is referring to someone that holds an asset typically in their own name or maybe
joint with Rights of Survivorship. If you owned the prior asset or business in a multi-member LLC,
a limited partnership, certain types of trust,
or an S corporation, so basically anything other than your own name and a C corp,
you may have 180 days from the time that you sold that asset and the taxable end of that taxable
year for the entity in order to make the investment. And this is why the IRS put this
exclusion in place. And I'll use a specific example. You might've been a partner in a venture fund. That venture
fund had an exit in January of 2022. You as investor don't even get your K-1 until some
point in 2023. So everyone would have missed their 180day rule at that point. That was the reason why they
put these exclusions in place because they realized a lot of investors weren't even going
to know what their eligible capital gain was until after the end of the taxable year when
their tax returns were being created. So there are definitely situations where someone could
have sold certain types of assets under one of those ownership entities, and they can invest
at least through June of 2023 and sometimes even further based on their own circumstances.
And that's something that if I don't know the actual rules of their timeline, I can get that
information from one of our attorneys or CPAs that we partner on that are the actual absolute
experts across the whole country relating to some of these unique roles. Well, I can tell you right now, if I was a
financial advisor listening to this, I'd be getting your contact information because I was
always loved finding little niches and stuff like that because there's always taxable events
happening. And the flexibility that comes with this is pretty cool. So great segment. We're
going to take another break. When we get back, we're going to flip the script and we'll talk about health.
We'll be right back.
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What's up, enrichers?
Tim James here.
I'm back with my co-host, Carter Wilcox.
And today in the house, we've got Brian Crum over at Caliber Funds.
He's got some really cool niche over here, guys. Somebody that I think that I would definitely have in my
Rolodex. Hey, right before we, Brian, right before we get into the health segment, I wanted you to
talk to specifically to the financial advisors about there was a certain third-party verification
for what you're doing. Why don't you explain that because it's kind of important. Yeah, thanks for asking me about that. For a
financial advisor that is going to start looking at doing due diligence on true alternative
investments, there are several organizations. One of them is called MCLAW and the MC report.
The other one is FactRight. So FactRight is a third-party due diligence
platform that they dive really deep into the business models and then the funds and the types
of investments that private companies are making. So Caliber Funds and our Opportunity Zone Fund
has a FactRight report that a financial advisor could use as part of their third-party due
diligence. And if anyone is an advisor that
has gone to fact write conferences, there's a possibility that you've already met a representative
from caliber at those. Awesome. Awesome. Cool. That was just an important point.
So, all right. So what questions did you have for me in regards to your health, family's health,
friend's health, public health? Okay. So I'm going to share a little bit about my health journey first.
So when COVID hit and the gyms all shut down, everyone in the world had to change.
And I was in a fortunate circumstance where when our company went 100% remote and my gym closed,
I actually started getting more exercise because this became my morning routine. Instead
of waking up early, getting ready, driving to the gym, working out at the gym, getting ready,
and then driving to the office, I would get up and I would immediately walk out my front door
and hit hiking trails in Northern Scottsdale. I would hike sometimes for two, three, or four
hours every single morning and actually lost about 50 pounds in the first several months of COVID.
And while I was doing this, I've always had two phones.
So I'm doing emails and talking to people on one phone and then I'll be listening to friends doing podcasts on the other.
So, Carter, you'll appreciate this.
As I started listening to all my friends around these different podcasting platforms, a lot of them were Reliance's members.
So I'd be listening to friends interview other friends while I'm doing my hikes in the morning.
And I just thought that that was a great kind of new routine to get into that I've actually kept up until this day.
So I no longer typically go to traditional gyms.
typically go to traditional gyms. I get up every morning and I do what I call my walk and talk, where between emails, phone calls, and listening to podcasts, I'll hike several miles or maybe do
a beach walk, hiking up and down the side of the mountain in Hawaii. And then after I've had my
first several Zoom calls, if I have a period of time where I only have to do phone calls or emails,
then I'll jump in the pool. So I actually have found a way to incorporate getting a lot of exercise into my day. And I
actually feel like I'm more productive, I'm healthier. And I actually have improved my
financial performance and all my metrics as a financial advisor, as far as raising capital,
the number of meetings that you can have by going 100% remote and
incorporating pretty flexible, but vigorous exercise routine into it. That's really interesting
you bring that up because that your health is directly related to the performance of your
investments and you're raising money. Because I had a guy that was in sales, used to work for me
when he was younger. He's doing about 8K a month.
And I said, hey, let's just, you know, he called me because he had anxiety.
And he literally was in the middle of closing a deal and he couldn't talk.
Like that bad.
And so after a couple of those things happened, he called me.
He was like, dude, I need help.
I'm like closing deals and I can't talk.
He's like, that's a problem.
And so we made a goal.
Within two and a half months, he actually broke 10 grand, which he'd never done before. And I say that because I went back and I started going through
the numbers and calling up my clients that were on commission or owned a business. And we noticed
in six months of health coaching, they had a 21% increase on an income over overall average,
which was quite profound. And this is actually makes sense because it's like the vehicle that's driving everything is this physical body.
And it's like people really, like those companies, are doing fact-checking on due diligence on this real estate fund or whatever,
making sure everything's check, check, check, check, their 86-point checklist or whatever.
But what are we doing to our bodies?
This is the most important building or asset you're ever going to invest in. And anytime you invest in yourself,
whether it's your physical body or your, your growth increasing in skillsets, you're always
going to get a six X to 10 X return. Wow. That's amazing. I can definitely see that.
Yeah, absolutely. And you, you've, you've actually experienced, and I actually,
when holding up right here, I was looking at your, your, the picture of you that Carter sent over to me on your Calibers page, you know, your About You page.
And I was like, dude, that guy's lost a lot of weight.
Yeah, I actually got up to a peak of about 180, dropped down to about 130.
dropped down to about 130. And now I've kind of regulated in the 150 pound range, which for a five foot, nine foot frame is, you know, not bad. Yeah. Good. Good. So thanks for sharing.
Did you have any other questions? Yeah. It's more of a statement. I'd love to get your feedback on
this. There is a huge focus on wellness and regenerative medicine.
There are a lot of people, and I think successful people that want to be able to, you know,
live a long and prosperous life might put a bigger focus on this.
But what are your thoughts around a variety of aspects of regenerative medicine?
Kind of broad term, but there's a lot of examples of it.
Yeah, there's a lot of that. And I think that there's obviously some good stuff in there for people to be had if it's done right and it's done with nature. And I know some guys don't really
care if it's synthetic or chemical or they just don't even know, but they just don't care. They
just want results. But the reality is that all that stuff already exists. It's called nature.
Nature.
And that's where we're from. And it's where we have billions of years of evolution here. And there's, you know, six trillion human cells. Think about that profound number. Six trillion human cells. But you have 60 trillion bacterial cells in your body. It's called the microbiome, right? Bacteria, the bacteria. Then we have like
380 trillion viral cells in our body and fragments called the virum with a V. So you think about
that 6 trillion, 60 trillion, 380 trillion. That is a tremendous amount of cells in this body.
Imagine all the interactions that are happening.
Throw in the hormones, the nervous removal system of the body called the lymphatic system.
It's this huge sack full of cells and just electricity and all this crazy stuff going on.
And what I've noticed is in my own personal journey, when I went to the Hippocrates Wellness Center,
there was people that had been working there that had plugged their bodies back into nature, that had worked on removing stress from their life, got toxins out of their gut and out of their body, including living foods, including bacteria and things like cultured foods and stuff like this.
Yeah.
So it's like just keep things natural.
Well, yeah.
But the bottom line, though, is you have to get first-person experience.
If there's some new age type medicines type stuff or it's regenerative medicine, stem cells kind of is ringing a bell because it's a big deal.
But for those people that can't see, but normally I'd be doing this when I'm on a podcast.
As soon as I'm off the podcast, I'm back on it.
That is called a Brown's gas machine.
the podcast as soon as i'm off the podcast i'm back on it that is called a brown's gas machine but the guy that developed it basically made a thirty thousand dollar quality unit for under
three grand so what i'm what i'm doing with that one if people are listening that are thinking
about because they got achy knees and all this stuff stem cells has been very interesting for
me for 10 years and i finally um i actually had a guy on my um on my show
pull it up here um while i'm talking here but um we we talked about stem cells i was always
concerned about like you know using your own stem cells i heard that it's just not as good
right but if you use like stem cells from, uh,
from a placenta, from a newborn baby that was born,
that was really good.
But I was always concerned about what,
what's in the blood.
Right.
Cause I know all the umbilical cord studies are showing that there's over
180 cancer causing chemicals in the blood,
212 chemicals cause developmental and brain disorders.
I'm like,
geez,
I don't know if I want to get that stuff pumped into me.
You know what I mean?
I might get this one benefit here but i'm gonna am i gonna have a long-term downside from getting some weird something pumped into me that somebody else manifested from
a breakdown of their immune system i worked so hard to build my immune system well then
on this podcast uh or i was interviewed to this guy and guy, which I'm bringing up right now, he was actually Tony Robbins had used him for stem cells and recommending and stuff like that.
And he did it a little bit different, and he became like a leading expert on stem cells.
And I'm scrolling through right now.
But what they did was different.
Are you familiar with homeopathy at all?
I am, yes. Okay, so for the listeners out there that are you familiar with uh homeopathy at all i am yes okay so for the
listeners out there that are not familiar with homeopathy it's like the energetics it's the
energy of the substance not the substance itself like give an example like we put off heat as a
human body you might not be able to see it but it's coming off there as an example okay so what
it was dr ross carter it was example. Okay. So what it was Dr.
Ross Carter.
It was episode 109 of my show.
It was called anti-aging breakthrough with nanoparticle stem cells.
So these nanoparticle stem cells were basically the energetics of the stem
cells to jack up and get your own stem cells rocking again.
Right.
And the guy wrote a book about it.
People are paying five, 10,000 bucks.
They're flying to Mexico.
They're all, they're paying big money for this stuff for this stuff yeah well this machine that i have behind me um one of the
things it produces is hydrogen what's the big deal with that well hydrogen is the major macro
nutrient for the human body it's the most important thing it's 62 of your body by volume 40 by weight
um whereas uh if you're going by volume oxygen is is 24%, carbon is 12, and the rest,
the 2%, the minerals and everything else, right? But 62% of your body's hydrogen. In your
gastrointestinal tract, you're supposed to have specialized bacteria breaking the carbon-based
food that you're supposed to be eating, breaking that hydrogen-carbon bond, releasing the hydrogen
into the system. And that does very special things.
One of them is it keeps your stem cells rocking and rolling.
If you have scar tissue on your body, it is a clear indicator you are hydrogen deficient.
Most likely because those bacteria have been whacked.
Because if you got cut or stabbed or whatever, like I have a cleat,
I have all kinds of injuries and stuff like that from working on the farm hunting fishing construction work baseball whatever sports um
if you have scar tissue surgeries could have scar tissue from surgeries wrecking your bicycle when
you're 10 years old going over the handlebars on your chin like i did stuff like this that is a
clear indicator that you are hydrogen deficient and most likely because of the 1960s what happened
chemicals the chemical companies after war had to stay in business pesticides fungicides herbicides
larvicides chemical fertilizers antibiotics like all this stuff that we've been pumped in who
hasn't had antibiotics as a kid i can't i don't know many those things are whacking killing the
good back not well certain parts of bacteria in your body. So we don't have the bacteria to
break the hydrogen carbon bond and release enough hydrogen. And that's why you got scar tissue.
And this is also why we're not regenerating at the level we're supposed to. And staying
is healthy and young looking because our natural stem cell production is down because we have low
hydrogen. And that's why exactly why, as soon as I get off this podcast and I go back to work,
I'm putting on my, my hydrogen machine and I machine i'm gonna be i breathe it all day long while i'm working right and then
i breathe it while i sleep i just i just learned this like this is like profound and i can tell
you already carter keep an eye on it see that little age spot in my hand there yep it's almost
half the size it was since in december and i have scar tissue my body the scar tissue is going away
so ge George said it
took him about eight months, but usually with eight months to a year, the scar tissue disappears.
This is big stuff. Like we're, we're cranking up your stem cells to naturally with hydrogen,
right? So this is, this is the kind of stuff that I'm interested in, Brian, because I don't,
there's no downside to it, right? I'm just putting something in that should have been there in the first place. So for, you know, anti-aging type medicine, I think this is like, you know,
one amazing thing you can do. And we have a chemical free body or my company, we have all
kinds of stuff. That's what I've been doing for 12 years is learning this stuff. And I've stacked
it into my lifestyle and created habits. And Carter's not doing all
the stuff that I'm doing yet, but he's doing some of it and he's gotten results. And a lot of people,
they just add this stuff in as they go. But if somebody comes into regenerative medicine,
they find something that works. There's also a lot of work on telomeres, which is really
interesting stuff. There's these little tails in the cells and if they get shorter, you age. So if you can
stop them from getting shorter, you don't age. Right. And I actually had a telomere product when
I first launched my company. I don't have it now, but I'll, I'll probably bring one out again. But
anyway, I, I just think that for me, I really want to do everything as naturally as I possibly
can. Cause I'm, I'm just, I'm a little concerned about anything synthetic. So as long as this regenerative medicine is using something in nature in a very profound way, in a simple way that it's not going to cause any adverse effects, then I'd totally be down for it.
And unless there was like some long term studies and a lot of this new stuff, there's no long term studies because it's new. Right. So that's my take on that. Yeah. No,
that's fascinating.
Cool.
Any other questions about anything,
anything for yourself and your health,
your kids,
wife,
whatever.
You know,
I will share that one of the other health benefits that we believe we have
is from being plant-based.
So,
you know,
putting organic food in particular that has been maybe
even raised in our own backyard is something that makes us feel really good and healthy as well.
Of course. It's because you're plugging into the mothership a lot better that way.
You guys do any sprouts in your house?
We're not doing our own sprouts, but we typically when we plan our sprouts then we put
them into the garden uh but i do i do love um uh sprouts i add a lot of sprouts into uh different
meals a lot of salads cool cool cool we are big proponents of living foods and sprouts sprouts
themselves sunflower sprouts pea sprouts buckwheat sprouts of clover sprouts, red clover, onion sprouts, broccoli sprouts,
alfalfa sprouts, sprouted nuts, sprouted seeds, sprouted beans, sprouted grains.
Go sprout crazy.
These are living foods.
The amount of nutrition in them is like 10 to 30 times more powerful than a fresh cut
vegetable out of your organic garden out of the back of your house.
So think about the power of what I just said, 30, 10 to 30 times, right? So that's anybody that's a time management person would say,
wow, that would be a really smart thing to do because I can eat a lot less, get way more
nutrition and not be flooring the gas pedal in my rental car because this body is rented for a
short period of time with, you know, overconsumption, overconsumption, overeating
because you can never get full because you're not getting really any nutrition because it's all cooked and processed and grown in nutrient deficient soils.
Yeah.
Right.
Exactly.
So one thing I would recommend is lots and lots of sprouts.
And then also don't forget about bacterium.
And we talked about that.
So they've been whacked.
Okay.
They've been whacked from these chemicals.
So replacing them and recalling them is very important.
You can do this through kefirs. Okay. You can do this through cultured foods. You can do it through things like kimchi
and sauerkrauts, raw stuff. And then also there's certain strains of bacteria like lactobacillus
reuteri, lactobacillus gasseri, bifidobacterium infantis, all these things. You can actually
culture these in yogurts, in yogurt mix in your house and transform your freaking health, transform your strength, transform your sleep.
And so bacterium are also living foods.
So sprouts are living foods, bacteria are living foods.
And these are things that I've done over the years.
You can't do it all at once, but you just slowly but surely add one thing, get it down, add another, get it down. And all the answers to all this stuff is in my podcast.
And probably in the last, I don't know, 60, 70 episodes that we've had,
there's some really profound stuff in there.
All the stuff on the cultured foods is in there and saunas and all that stuff.
So thanks for your questions today, brother.
I really appreciate you.
I'm really excited about the niche you're in and what you guys have to deliver over there.
Because it's not just what you make.
It's what you get to keep.
And with the volatility in banks today and the banking system and all the other stuff that's going on,
at least with real estate, you do have something tangible that you could even lock the doors up and wait it out
and then open it back up again when things are going well.
Yep, absolutely.
Yeah, good for inflation hedges as well.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, for sure.
So, hey, enrichers, I want to thank you for joining us for another episode of the Health
and Wealth Podcast and having Brian Crum from Caliber Funds here and Caliber Companies here.
If you want to see all of our previous wonderful guests like Brian, you can go to our website at
www.thehealthandwealthpodcastshow.com and make
sure to like share and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts apple spotify google podbean
wherever that might be so for my fantastic co-host mr chemical free body and a whole bunch of other
things let's see if you can pull that on you have have all kinds of them that we're going to start calling you.
Nutrition King.
Mr. Frequency.
I am Carter Wilcox, CEO and founder of CSI Financial Group.
Thank you for joining us for another episode.
Ryan, thank you so much for finally being able to find the time to come on here and everything.
It was really a pleasure.
Thank you so much for coming on the show. Thanks, bud. Really enjoyed the time with
you guys today. Thanks a lot, Carter. Thanks a lot, Tim. Absolutely. So, Enrichers, until next
time, this is the Health and Wealth Podcast Show. Aloha. Hey, Enrichers. Thanks for tuning
in to another episode of the Health and Wealth Podcast. I'm your host, Carter Wilcoxon.
And I'm your host, Tim James. And by God, we are committed to helping you guys have fat wallets,
flat bellies. So tune in again for another episode and make sure to like,
share, and drink a lot of water or beer.
You have just listened to the Health and Wealth Podcast with Carter and Tim.