The Level Up Podcast w/ Paul Alex - Foreclosure Expert to High-Yield Medical Equipment: The New Asset Class — Christopher Craig Explains

Episode Date: May 29, 2026

In this episode of The Level Up Podcast w/ Paul Alex, Paul sits down with Christopher Craig, a Foreclosure Surplus Expert, tax strategist, and serial entrepreneur, to discuss why the traditional "American Dream" of real estate investing might actually be keeping you trapped. Christopher breaks down why he is selling off his massive real estate portfolio to invest in a low-maintenance, high-yield asset class: legal arcade games and medical equipment. Instead of dealing with tenants and broken roofs, he explains how business owners and high-income earners can use bonus depreciation to legally zero out their taxes while generating true, hands-off passive income. In this conversation, Christopher shares: Why traditional rental properties are a "slow burn" that trap your equity How to legally offset 100% of your taxable income using bonus depreciation The exact blueprint for investing in legal arcade machines and medical equipment Why adaptability and taking the first step are the true secrets to leaving the W-2 grind This episode is a must-listen for business owners, high-income earners, and anyone looking to build real passive income while mastering the tax game. Connect with Christopher Craig: https://www.instagram.com/christophercraigofficial/ Your Network Is Your Net Worth Make sure to add Paul Alex on all social platforms: Instagram: https://jo.my/paulalex2024 Facebook: https://jo.my/fbpaulalex2024 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@levelupwithpaulalex LinkedIn: https://jo.my/inpaulalex2024 Looking for a secondary source of income or want to become an entrepreneur? Check out CashSwipe: 👉 https://www.cashswipe.com Get a FREE copy of Paul Alex’s book: 📘 Blue to Digital Gold – The New American Dream 👉 https://www.officialpaulalex.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Toronto, every arrival is a statement, and nothing says it better than this. Cadillac Optic was the number one selling luxury EV in Canada for 2025. Find your rhythm across a seamless 33-inch display and an immersive 19-speaker AKG surround audio system. This city demands agility, and Optic delivers with precision to make every drive extraordinary. Let's take the Cadillac. Find out more at Cadillac Canada.ca. Luxury sales claim based on S&P Global Mobility Canadian New Vehicle Total Registrations for calendar year 2025 for the Cadillac definition of luxury. And I said, listen, lady, we'll give you $30,000 cash for your house and we'll take over the mortgage.

Because your house is going to auction. If you don't take this offer, you're going to be on the street, like an eviction in like two weeks. And then she said, God will help me. And I said, I'm the messenger from God. She still declined the offer. Think of Dave and Busters. If you're in a community that has or a lot of people have been to Dave and Busters, how much money are those arcade games making?

A ton. And what do you get from that? You get tokens, points, prizes, okay? That's a form of gambling, kind of. Yeah. But it's not. That's still gambling. But the difference is, depending on state law, is it's called a game of chance or a no chance game or what they call a pre-reveal game.

Everything that's going on with inflation, dude. I mean, I just sold the majority of my portfolio and I'm sitting in liquid right now. And I'm like, dude, like, yeah, I'm doing credit card processing, but what else could I do? Things related to sin, like alcohol, cigarettes. gambling, those businesses always stay level no matter what's going on in the economy. Hey guys, welcome back to Level O podcast with Paul Alex. Today I have a special guest. He goes by the name of Christopher Craig. Christopher Craig actually had his first episode where he was talking about everything real estate, foreclosure surplus, I mean absolute gems that helped thousands of

entrepreneurs nationwide learn the game of real estate. Now he is back and he is back with a new venture, some new ideas on how you guys can get into bonus depreciation for your taxes and cash flowing assets. Chris, welcome back to the show, brother. Thank you, Paul. It's a pleasure having me, especially down here in Puerto Rico. It's pretty cool. I haven't been here since I was in the Marine Corps like 30 years ago. Of course, there's new buildings. Of course, I wasn't on that part of the island. I was down in Roosevelt Roads. But yeah, it's been a cool trip. Red Eye Flight. I'm a little bit tired, but we'll get through it. It's adapt and overcome. That's going to be a good man, I mean, going through the jungle, getting here to civilization, having a nice steak dinner,

or not steak dinner, but steak lunch. And now we're here on the set. So it's good to be back, man. And it's good to see you, my brother. So Chris, for the people that didn't watch you on the first interview, who are you exactly? And what was life like for Christopher Craig before entrepreneurship? life like for me look I'm Chris Craig I'm 51 years old today I'm an April baby so I'm an Aries so I'm a type A personality in general I just kind of like to say it how it is I don't really pull punches you know some people you either like me or you don't but you know start off you know like any other young kid high school no direction was getting a lot of trouble. It was either, you know, my dad kind of, my dad's an Air Force officer. So it was either

shape up or ship out. And so it kind of shaped up and shipped out to the U.S. Marine Corps. And, you know, that kind of gave me my direction. What year did you go to the Marines? 1993. 1993. Did you deploy? Deployed, uh, was in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Deployed over to Bosnia. How was that, man? Life changing. It's all a shit show, man. Yeah. You know, it's just like, I don't think you really wish that on anybody. Yeah. You know, it's like it's, uh, and it's not a lonely world.

It's just you, you serve for the men and women on your left and right. Right. Right. It's not really about this freedom game because you're fighting some old guys war that's in the white house that doesn't even have any kids in it. So, you know, you know, it's kind of you do it. I wouldn't change it for anything. I loved it. And you love to learn pain.

Yeah. No. That's it. Absolutely. So Marine Corps got out, you know, basically typical track was going to be a cop like you, tested high on all the, you know, Denver Police Department, Atlanta Police Department, CHP for California. And then I got a job that paid double that.

What was that? Working for Pacific Bell. Okay. Right. In San Francisco, in San Mateo. So San Bruno was the yard. And, you know, that was $110,000 a year job coming out of the first. Marine Corps.

And what are you? Was that? 1997. Dude, 1997, you were making $110,000? Yeah. But that was with overtime. That's still badass. That was crazy.

That's crazy money. Crazy money. And even then back then, like the Bay Area, like, I couldn't find an apartment to live because it was still too crowded. Yeah. So I literally was subjected to finding a room to rent. And even a room to rent back then was like $900 bucks for just a box. Right.

Right. So first time. I'm out of the world paying rent like $900 a month when you're used to the military paying for everything. So, you know, worked at Pacific Bell. My other friends from the military worked for other technology companies. So like the longest I've ever had a W-2 job was for eight months. Wow. And it was job to job to job, not because I was getting fired or nothing.

It was just because the opportunities opened up. Now, one of the opportunities opened up, I took a pay cut in half, but it was to learn. more skills and then let's just fast forward 2,000 hits it's the dot-com bubble yeah so I was out of a job us technology guys at that point were a dime a dozen so I you know basically it's like you know it's feast or famine how are you going to survive you know with a military mindset was okay I only oh I only have these skills yes I could learn more so a friend of a friend put me in touch with the guy by the name Doug McCabe he was a big real estate guru foreclosure guru and uh we're still like a bestest friends today you know

so that was one of your first mentors that it was my first mentor yeah first mentor that i never had a mentor and went to my he went to his office he goes hey i need a foreclosure database built and i was like okay yeah i you know i knew all the data guys the software programmers to make that yeah it's like how much he's like and i said 80 000 bucks i was that was going to be my first like entrepreneurial gig like where i was in a pocket like 70 grand he's like that That's too expensive. I go, you're probably right. He goes, how much you think I really could get it done for?

I was like 10. He was like, thanks for being honest. He goes, but, you know, so why don't you come work for me? And so he taught me how to be a loan officer. And then he taught me distressed real estate. And he just basically brought me in his office and said, hey, look at this is how it works with me. You're going to sink or you're going to swim. I like that.

He knows, he knows, and I think he'll swim. So it was basically in an office on a whiteboard. You know, this is how the money system works. This is how mortgages work. This is how the foreclosure game works. This is what the notices that happen. This is where you go find the data. He goes,

so you're just going to tag along with me for the next three months to all of my real estate appointments and you're going to learn. You're just going to be a fly. He goes, then you're going to go do it. So doing everything is like, it's one thing to learn the skill, but you have to get out there and get after it and do it.

And you got to go get your nose bloody. You got to go fall on your feet. You got to fail a few times, like fail forward. You know, so like one of the stories, I tell is like my first like door knocking experience. I knocked on this like ladies door in northeast Portland and her house is going to the auction like you know two or three days from now.

And you know like we say God has a plan for everybody right. That's right. So the plan for that day was me to be the angel or the messenger. And I said, listen lady, we'll give you $30,000 cash for your house and we'll take over the mortgage because your house going to auction. And if you don't take this offer, you're going to be on the street, like an eviction in like two weeks. And then she said, God will help me. And I said, I'm the messenger from God. And she still declined the offer. Wow.

So we end up buying the house for a dollar more than the opening bid. We kicked her out of it. Wow. Wow. So with real estate, then, you know, distress. real estate. It was very not competitive back then. So in the foreclosure space, you would only have five or six guys in any major big city doing foreclosures because it was like a kind of a secret society. You either knew how to do it or you didn't. And there was nothing that would teach you,

not like classes and streaming and Pace Morbys and all these other guys that are doing this stuff. You had to know somebody. You had to get a mentor. Or you had to pay like a Russ Whitney and go to all these, you know, he was Ron LaGran, Russ Rittany and some other guy named Mr. Brown. They were like the gurus of late night TV real estate, right? So, um, then 9-11 hit. Interest rates went down. I was in the mortgage business at that point, was still knocking on doors. And, uh, literally I was refinancing people's houses that I just refinanced two months ago because rates dropped like 2%. Right. And so I made a lot of money in the mortgage game. But understanding the money game first, like how does money work where it comes from? The debtor creditor system, banks, the leverage banks get that, you know, as small folks don't

get, is eye-opening. And for the real estate world, you really need to understand the money part of it first to understand the mortgage system. Then you understand the law. And it's a big education. It's not something you're going to learn in 60 days. I can't teach you this in 60 days. I've been doing a long time so it comes easy for me and then you know a couple years later we had a big you know real estate boom and prices appreciation about 2005 six is really when the crash started happening you know builders were dropping brand new home prices by like 25% 30% so you bought your house six months ago and now the builder you bought the house from me he just dropped the price 50% well be pretty pissed off too you know absolutely and so in those

couple years I started learning this game called surplus proceeds because the real estate field started getting more crowded and distressed real estate, more investors, more door knockers, so it became harder to compete. You know, hedge funds started getting involved in the game. You know, when you've got five, 10 million dollars, sounds like a lot of money to back you to go do something. It's not really a lot, right? Well, especially when you're comparing it to a hedge fund. Yeah, they've got hundreds of millions or billions, right? Yeah. And they can take a smaller margin. us guys on the street because we got bills to pay. So I started doing this thing called surplus proceeds. And you can go watch the episode we did last year in September. Surplus

proceeds is basically a good way to help people out. If they owe the bank 100 grand, that's their mortgage. The house is worth 500, let's say. And they put their head in the sand because of divorce, death, or whatever problems they have. Then you have, it goes to the auction. and let's say it sells for $200,000. The difference between what the bank was owed and what it sold for at the auction, that surplus, the homeowner's entitled to it. But again, it's almost like a secret process

on how they get that money. Because the way the eviction process works, the homeowner will almost be out of the house two, three, four weeks before the letter from the trustee comes saying, hey, the letter says you may be entitled to surplus proceeds. It never tells the homeowner how much.

The problem with people in foreclosure is they're getting inundated with marketing mail, legal mail. It's just not foreclosure. That's their problem. They've got other life problems going on, maybe medical issues. They're not paying their house payments, probably not credit cards. So they got lawsuits going on. You know, so from a mental side, it's just overwhelming for a common person that maybe lost

their job, whatever's going on their life. And so they're not going to open up the mail. They're never going to know about the surplus. And so by you being the messenger from God to tell them, you are the angel. I'm here to help you. I built a $10 million business around that, surplus proceeds. Now, the game is a little bit harder today. Now, that's 20 years ago I did this. One, it's information. Two, nobody's opening up the door. Not a big guy, bald guy like me, can go and knocking someone. Who are you? I'm not expecting you. It's just everyone's on heightened alert. I mean,

even my, I mean, I'm a big guy. I can defend myself and all that other stuff. But even the skinniest guy. Some kid knocks up on my door today. I don't open it because I'm not expecting a visitor. Right. I don't think anybody opens their door today. You're not expecting anybody because of home invasions and you just don't know what kind of character they could have a gun or what any, you know, and it's two seconds and you're shot and they're in. That's it. So fast forward, surplus. It's a viable business out there in some areas, but it's becoming a crowded space now. You know, you've got more than one competitor doing the same thing. So, you know, I'm a serial entrepreneur.

I've got peptide stores going in right now. Started one in Las Vegas like a month ago. It did six figures in one month. And I see the shirt, man. Yeah, Biomod peptides. We are online as well. So now I'm starting basically this, this, a dealership model for peptide stores. Super smart.

Right now it's the gold rush. It's the gold rush. And it's only going to get bigger as more people learn about it. Because, look, I'm taking them. I think you're taking them. I mean, everybody in this room is probably taking peptides down here. It's life-changing. It gives you energy.

I wouldn't tell you to take them if you're like a 20-year-old kid, but as soon as you start hitting your mid-30s, you probably need them. 100%. You know, subject, go get the information from your doctor, you know, or your health coach. I'm not a doctor nor a health coach. So then I'm an accounting firm. You know, I'm into all lot of different things.

So I have my tax practice. And so my clientele that makes six, seven-figure years a year, they're looking for rideoffs. Okay. And when you're looking for rideoffs, expenses hurts you, depreciation helps you. What I'm going to explain with that is you got to be bankable. And what I mean bankable is if you have zero income,

you can make 500 grand a year, but if your adjusted gross income goes to zero because of expenses, you're not bankable, meaning the bank will not loan you money. You can't get a home loan because you have, they're saying, how can you afford it if you expensed everything out? Right. And so what you're looking for, if you're a business owner

or a high income W2 wage earner is you're looking for depreciation. Depreciation zeroes out your income dollar for dollar, but also from a bankability standpoint, it's an ad back. So you can have a million dollars of income and a million dollars of depreciation. You have zero income on your taxes, but the bank still looks at you like as you made a million

bucks. That's interesting. So they'll lend to you based on a million dollar income. So basically, I'm always looking for an asset class. I have a lot of rental real estate. It's a burn. It's a slow, long burn. And the American dream tells you to buy real estate. And let's take a small pivot on that. So to slow burn, as you say, Chris, what do you mean by that? Here's an example, let's say you're, I mean, with current housing prices, you know, being so high on the affordability issue. So let's say you're, I mean, in California, you're not even going to find a house for 500 grand, you know what I'm saying? But let's just say you found a property for 500 grand. You got to go get a bank loan. It's a rental property. You're putting 20% down, so that's like

$100,000 out of your pocket today. Okay. And let's say at current interest rates, principal interest, tax, insurance, you know, you're going to be, you're going to be, you're going to be, you know, six percent, you're going to be like $3,500, $4,000 a month. But that house might only rent for $2,500 in today's market. It's not going to cash flow. Okay, let's say you can get it to, you know, you're going to break even on it. So somebody else is making your mortgage payment. But guess what happens when the toilet breaks? Guess what happens when you've got to do a roof repair or the HVAC? That's coming out of your pocket. Now let's switch gears and let's say like some of my properties that cash for like $1,500 a month.

That's a really good cash flow on a rental because somebody else is paying down the mortgage. I'm getting like my five, six, seven, sometimes 10% a year appreciation. But I'll give you the, what just happened in the last, like this last year. One of my rentals, the HVAC went out and it needed a new roof. Yeah. Okay. Roots in Vegas are very expensive. Huge.

So it was like a $40,000 expense. And that rental property gives me like $1,000 a month cash flow. So 40 months of profit was. gone in one week. Okay. Gone. I already spent that money over the last couple years. So did I really make anything? No. Headache finding the contractor, babysitting them, you know, doing all that other stuff. And of course, the house is aging, new roof. What happens? Plumbing issues, electrical issues, all these things. The dishwasher needs replaced because it's six, seven years old, refrigerator. You as a landlord are replacing all that stuff.

great people say oh if you make a lot of money you're going to be able to take the depreciation well the depreciation really offsets the rental income so sometimes you generate a loss sometimes you know but the loss is really not big enough for you really to make a difference on your income right and so you know I've got all this equity trapped in these properties like some three 400,000 dollars in equity okay long term it looks great but it took 20 years for these properties to gain that much equity. So it's like where can you get the best yield or the best bang for your buck now there's this thing called cost segregation with real estate. So if you buy a 500,000 dollar property and let's say the lot's worth 50 grand you back out the cost of the lot. So you get

450 you get a cost seg report that'll be about 20 to 25% of the purchase price of the house. So let's take this example you put 100 grand down and you're going to get 90, let's say, keep numbers simple. You're going to get $90,000 of depreciation. So you get accelerated depreciation for $90,000. If you're in a 30% tax bracket, what's your win?

You're saving $27,000 off your taxes, but you just came out of pocket $100,000. It's not worth it. You're negative. Yeah. Right. Now, if you can go find a seller-financed house, seller carry for 5% down,

really low interest, you can win the game like that. And that's what my money. my friend Pace Morby teaches, and people do very well. But again, the cash outlay, you're not getting back unless you're profiting significantly on the rental income. And then you're doing it through appreciation, but you're never going to pull your appreciation out until you sell the property.

You know, so you're waiting all this time. So you can have millions of dollars in equity. But if you can't put that money to work, it's really useless. Right. Right. So I'm going through a paradigm shift right now. I've been a longtime real estate investor, builder, developer. done all of those things, I'm selling everything.

And I'm going into a new asset class. And it's the dumbest, simplest, simplest asset class ever. And, you know, I'm looking at the cash flow on this asset class is I could never get a 30% cash on cash return in any piece of real estate from day one. You can't find a 20% cash on cash from day one. typically you may be able to get five to 12% cash on cash return, but you're never going to see anything more than that unless you, unless you steal the property and somebody like an estate sale or something,

they're just like, give me 50 grand for a 500 grand property. Then you're going to be, you'll get one of those deals a lifetime. Yeah. You know, which makes this exciting, it's an exciting opportunity you're about to talk about.

But before you get into that, brother, Pace Morby, a big real estate guy. You've been in his inner circle for a very long time. You're actually one of the main lead community members in there. A lot of people get a lot of advice from you. I mean, I've seen your socials. Okay.

Did something recently happened like personally where you were like, dude, you know, life is short or, you know, I want to enjoy my money or, you know, me and you, we have these conversations, too. Yeah. It's just like, we need to experience things now. right while we can. Right. So what was the mindset shift on that? Because a lot of people, they're like, invest, safe, safe, safe. My parents are still like that.

And I'm like, dude, we can't take it with us. That's what we're taught. Yeah. The American dream says own real estate and save your money and earn 4% on it annually. That's the American dream. That might work for some people. Yeah. And it does for a lot.

And if you're disciplined and you're okay with that, that's why we have an American dream. You can do whatever the hell you want. The change was, Paul sent me a text, a group, could you give this girl 30 minutes of your time? And I'm thinking, okay, sure, fine. And typically it's, hey, we're looking to raise $5 million. That was the original pitch.

It was. It was. I said, I don't have $5 million, but I know somebody that does. Right. Send me over all your paperwork, right? I started evaluating this thing, and we're getting to that point. I'm not telling you what the asset is yet. I looked at these numbers with this asset class that they have.

And it's a two-stage asset class. It's like a chassis and software play that generates money. And I was like, holy Toledo. They are making. And when I say 20% cash on cash, it's greater than that. It's closer to like 60, 70% cash on cash return. And some of these things are pulling in 100, 30, 140% cash on cash return. And so it's an asset. It's based on location. Okay, location and foot traffic. And so I started

looking at this number. I said, okay, I can help you guys raise your money. I don't want a fee for it. I just want my little carve out. I want to be able to have an exclusivity for five years to be able to package this thing up as a tax strategy that people can offset 100% of their taxable income and get passive income as well with no headaches, no plumbers, no broken toilets, no broken roofs or HVAC, like it just plugs into the wall. So we're talking about true passive income. True passive income. Now, passive income, we want it, but you want to create an active income stream so you can take the ride off. Have that figured out for you. So there's a structure because the IRS says, look, An active trader business, you've got to spend significantly all.

You've got to spend all of the time providing the services in that business, or there's a 100-hour rule and a 500-hour rule. So I've packaged this thing up to at least meet the most stringent rule of 500 hours a year. So this can all be done from your home, from your laptop or desktop computer, okay, to achieve your 500 hours. Okay. So basically what this is, is an archaic. game that mimics a casino-style slot machine.

Interesting. Okay. So because it's like gambling, but it's not because of the way they tweak the software. And let's break it down, obviously to begin, because people automatically, the thing they're listening to is gambling machine, right? but how would you go ahead and articulate this to the average person on why it's not an illegal gambling machine, but it's a legal gambling machine. So there's a thing out there called gray market machines.

Okay. That's like you can you can Google this and find it. And they're like they're all over everywhere until the authorities. Nobody's going to jail over this. Right. They're just going to basically unplug them, red tag them and say, you can't have these. They don't, that's considered their seizure. They basically give you the warning letter.

If you violate again, then they'll actually move them to their state. It's a state issue, not a federal issue. So think of Dave and Busters. If you're in a community that has or you've, a lot of people have been to Dave and Busters, how much money are those arcade games making? A ton. And what do you get from them?

You get tokens. Points, prizes. Okay. That's a form of gambling, kind of. Yeah. But it's not. Or you're giving them money. Or money?

They're giving you an exchange or value if you win. Right. I mean, some of the little balls in there, if you do the claw machines, you might win 100 bucks. Okay. That's still gambling. But the difference is, depending on state law, is it's called a game of chance or a no chance game or what they call a pre-reveal game. Interesting. So the pre-reveal says, here's your odds of winning and here's all the combinations you could win on the next spin.

before you put your money in. Wow. So it's 20%, 30%, 80%, you know, people like me, I'm not a big gambler, but I'll throw 20 bucks in just to test my luck if I'm idle time. Yeah, why not? 10, 20 bucks, okay, I might lose it all.

Maybe I win a few bucks or I'm going to win some prize or merchandise or something. Or if I'm with my kids, we're spending 100 bucks in a machine. That's a very expensive stuffed animal. Yeah, absolutely. It's more of the experience, you know? Why not, right?

So you're starting to see a lot of these like claw machine, like stores pop up. My friend owns two in Vegas. They do very well. Nice. Interesting. And it's all the kids just trying to get that stuffy, right? So these things, you actually win money. You get a cash voucher, and it cashes out.

So that's interesting. Some states allow it. Some states don't. Interesting. So some states, you'll have to modify the software so that they win merchandise. and that merchandise might be a red cup that you get a free drink with. Ah, I see. Okay.

Okay. So it's all in the software. And then there's a certification process of that software. So like certain gaming commissions in the state, they want you to have your software certified by a company called ECT, Eclipse, something technologies. It's like a $30,000, $40,000 software. It's like a certification. That's how much it costs to get your software certified. Right.

So to build the software itself is about $150,000, $60,000, including the certification. Now, if you want to accept digital payments, there's another $40,000. The software cost alone is like $200,000. Wow. The arcade chassis itself is a couple grand. Yeah. Now, that offers huge opportunity for depreciation. So think of this.

If you could put $20,000 down on a $200,000. item, get $200,000 of depreciation, and then the dealer or the seller of the machine will carry the financing for you for the next 20 years. No credit check. For $20,000, you can put something in service and asset, right, and get roughly $1,100 a month and passive income on that asset every month. So we're talking $11, $12,300 a year on a $20,000 investment. Wow. The cash on cash return on that is above 50%. Now that's based on those numbers on that machine, those dollar figures I'm giving you is not the bare minimum, the average of like five grand a month gross income on the machine. Now, a lot of these machines, I'd say 80% of them are pulling in over

$10,000 a month per machine. Now, that's gross income. The revenue shared with the venue, obviously the players, and the software licensing and maintenance. Then the net is yours. Okay. So if the game pulls in, let's say, 10 grand a month, which 80% of them do, then you're talking about a cash on cash return, let's say about $2,000 a month. Right. So you're achieving almost 120% cash on cash return in year one.

Yeah. So you put your 20 down, you got your money back in year one, or at least 50% of it back in year one. And this is an asset class. Once you park it, you don't have to do anything. There's no toilets. There's no HVAC. It's just software upgrades that are done wirelessly,

game upgrades done wirelessly through Wi-Fi and technology. and if something breaks, the manufacturer fixes it. Wow. And you just log into your dashboard, pull your daily logs and reports to get your active participation. There's your one and a half hours a day to meet the IRS compliance requirements.

So let's look at this. If you live in California and you make $200 grand a year and you're single, you're paying about $50,000 a year in federal taxes and another $20,000 plus in state taxes. So you're like $70K So for 20K, you're zeroing out all your taxable income with depreciation, dollar for dollar.

Now, California is a little bit different with depreciation. You can't take all the depreciation in year one, but you can take a third of it with this asset class. So you're going to reduce your taxable income by $60,000. So, you know, let's look at this. $20,000 investment, you're going to get a 100% refund on your federal taxable. tax return, let's say that's 50 if you're single. If you're married, the tax rate drops a little bit. So you'll be like 44,000. So your net savings is like $24,000. Your return on that is 100% plus on the federal tax savings, plus you're going to get some more refund on your state savings. But now you've

also got a cash flowing asset. So this is something you can do every year. Like as an income strategy, I buy one game a year. You start building your portfolio. It becomes like a retirement strategy. Let's say the games are making the bare minimum, $1,000 in a month, then income. You got 10 of these. That's $10,000 a month,

kind of passive slash active income. Okay. It's better than rental property. Absolutely. So I own these games myself. I have 30 of these right now. I'm selling my real estate to buy a hundred of them. Okay.

And so if I have a hundred of these, these games, my minimum is going to be about $110,000 a month in cash flow. And it could be as much as, say, $200,000 a month, depending on where the location's at, right? And the traffic. The cool thing about this is if you put it into a location and it does well for six months and then, you know, maybe management's horrible, their service is horrible, the food's horrible, the drinks are horrible, whatever the place is getting horrible, you just move it.

Yeah. It weighs 175 pounds. you can ship these things from coast to coast for 600 bucks. Same size as an ATM, brother. ATMs are around 200 pounds. And you know what I call that when it's able to make you money and then you move it if it's a bad location, a floating asset?

It's a floating asset. I love that. And so that's, in essence, I started looking at this thing and I'm going, okay, I've got a lot of money trapped in equity. And it's not even earning 10% a year. Right. because by the time I pay the mortgage, the expenses, even though with depreciation, it kind of

zeroes out, but I'm not getting enough depreciation loss to really put a dent in my income. So I'm looking at this thing now, and I was like, okay, simple, done. I'm done with real estate. Like, I'll still do it if I can do a quick flip and make $100,000. Right. But do you know how hard it is to find a quick flip to make $100,000? in. Yeah. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. And this is like boneless, brainless, simple, no headaches, not managing people, just locations. Absolutely. And Chris, just a few

questions for our audience. I'm pretty sure people are super excited about this. I mean, it sounds like a great opportunity. I know you're very knowledgeable with the tax code. Give the audience a brief rundown on your actual training experience with taxes so here's my background i mean distressed real estate when the market crash let's say 0607 08 i didn't like you couldn't wholesale property you couldn't find anything anymore uh so i went to work for my attorney as a paralegal nice and then while as a paralegal i was going to law school and so you know got my MBA got my law degree and even then after that I went and got my master's law on taxation okay and so I did in that law firm we worked on business bankruptcies real estate law and tax right so we did so I got a lot of my

experience working the law firm side by side with an attorney um love it and so 15 years working inside a law firm yeah you know so I've got a lot of experience 250-something bankruptcy cases, chapter 11s, which are very difficult. And then in 2018, I went and took what they called my enrolled agents license. Yeah. So it's like an enrolled agent and CPA were equivalents, but an enrolled agent just cannot certify financial statements. So that's kind of the only thing. I can represent any taxpayer before the Internal Revenue Service on any matter, an administrative matter, except tax court. So I started getting into the tax planning strategy. So I went and spend another $40, $50,000 on self-education, learning tax strategies from attorneys,

go into these two and a half day courses that cost $20,000, taking Mark Kohler's course, which I find to be the best one out there for anybody wants to learn tax planning and tax strategy. And I've done all the certifications in tax planning. I love that, man. And so it's more of, and I'm doing another certificate. I try to get two more certifications a year, just not in tax stuff. the one I'm doing right now is called Certified Exit Planning Advisor called SEPA.

And that's business valuations. And then I'm doing the NACFA one to like be a business appraiser. Right. So I'm still always developing my knowledge. I don't quit. Yeah. You got to, the day you stop learning is the day you die.

Absolutely. Okay. And so it's just more tools for my belt, right? And then Chris, I mean, you've been. dealing with the tax law for a very long time. And that's why it makes you so knowledgeable in these type of business is bonus depreciation and also cash flow and assets. You really know what you're talking about, brother. How many people would you say? And I know you're probably going to be like, dude, I've helped so many people. But how many people would you say from your 15 years of experience

you've actually helped with taxes? Oh, thousands. Like tens of thousands? No. I mean, look, my client base is about 200 clients a year. And then, you know, I just, I add them slow, look, I don't add anybody. I got to make sure we're good foot because, you know, there's, like my personality will conflict with a lot of people. Right. For sure. Right.

So. You're a straight shooter, man. Yeah. If we're going to have a personality conflict, you know, this is probably not the right client, right? And I'll tell people that like, hey, look, I just don't think we're going to work well together. But you do deal with people one-on-one. Yes, correct. Okay.

There you guys have it. I mean, if you guys want to deal with somebody that has the knowledge, just like Chris, the certification. I mean, he's able to go ahead and help you guys with your taxes. Right now, you guys are looking to different investments and you want to diversify besides real estate, especially with everything that's going on with inflation, dude. I mean, I just sold majority of my portfolio and I'm sitting liquid right now. And I'm like, dude, like, yeah, I'm doing credit card processing, but what else could I do? Cash is king right now.

Cash is king. It really is. Or like with credit card processing, you know, I mean, it's like, look, that's that mattress money. It is, dude. Cash flow. Right. Sign them up. Get paid, right?

So, kind of like the same thing with these arcade games. But with the tax strategy, you lose, depreciation's your friend, okay? And buying assets that you can depreciate to offset income and still be bankable. I mean, you get the best of all worlds right there

and you don't have maintenance issues. Yeah. You know, with real estate. And then depending on what happens in the market, in real estate, well, we'll take it like this. Things related to sin,

like alcohol, cigarettes, gambling, those businesses always stay level no matter what's going on in the economy. Interesting. Interesting. If the economy's down, people drink more or smoke more. Now, I don't know. Smoking seems like less and less

and people are smoking, but from the sin aspects, I think an investor told me one time, I only invest in sin-based companies. Interesting. Very interesting. In the stock market. I was like, that's interesting. but it's, I'm going to make another thing.

This is another strategy I just came up with like about a week ago. So there's a lot of like new health treatments available out there. The equipment is very expensive. So I'm putting a strategy together with medical equipment. So you can buy the medical equipment, take the depreciation, you own the equipment, we put it into a doctor's office and we do a revenue share. right so some of these treatments on these pieces of equipment are six and $8,000 of treatment and people are lining up to get them done give us an example uh look at

joe rogan for instance and i think gary brecker they talk about plasma phoresisus okay and what does that do it filters your blood at the end of the day okay it pulls out all the toxins and like i guess heavy metals and you know i haven't looked into another i just know i'm buying a machine Yeah. Okay. Very similar to, you could say, dialysis for the people that are mentioned this right now. Very intricateness. The average treatment cost is between $6,000 and $15,000 depending on where you're at. Right.

Okay. So think of you had one of those machines and you put it in the doctors. Doctors can be very cheap. They won't buy a new equipment because it's not necessarily they're not smart. They are smart people. But they might not have the business mind like some entrepreneurs to see it as a cash flowing asset. Right. And so if you help them do the marketing to drive traffic,

and that's what I'm getting ready to do, is we're going to build out a brand with these machines, have a funnel, drive traffic to the doctor's office, get paid on our machine. So think about it, if we booked three treatments a day on this machine at the lowest price, $6,000, that's $18,000 a day, five days a week. And let's say you're giving the doctor,

the lion's share of the revenue, but you're only taking 20% of it. It's amazing, man. You know what this exactly reminds me of? I mean, back in 2018, I was doing it with ATMs, but I feel like you're doing it now with medical equipment, but just at a higher level, brother. You know, simple concept, guys, ATM machines.

You buy the machine for two grand for the manufacturer. You put it into a liquor store. You give the owner 20%. You're making maybe 500, 600, 600 bucks. The liquor store owner is making 300 bucks. And that's it. That's all it is. And then if it's a bad location, you change it.

It's a floating asset, right? you're doing the exact thing with medical equipment. Now with medical. Like I'm not a doctor. I'm not a medical thing, anybody, but I've partnered with a doctor. I've partnered with a nurse practitioner. And then I'm thinking,

hey, look at my clientele needs depreciation for taxes. They can be the investors in the medical equipment. Right. We can still now place in medical equipment that's needed for health and wellness for people that need this treatment. Because like the plasm's for eces machines, there's maybe like 20 of them available in the United States.

I mean, don't quote me on that, but it's very low numbers because the expense of the machine. And they're busy. And they're busy. Like they're lined up for four weeks to get an appointment type of scenario. Right. So the same mindset with ATMs or real estate, let's buy the asset, but the numbers, the dollar figures are higher. It's a lot higher. Take the Eboo machines, okay, EBO Extra corporal blood, oxygenation, odorization, it filters your blood out and then oxygenates it.

Okay. The average cost of treatment there is $1,500. It's like an hour-long treatment. So drop the price, make it affordable, say $1,000. Right. Okay, so five people are doing a treatment a day. And I bought the machine, took a couple hundred thousand dollars in depreciation. Now, here's the cool thing I'm going to put together.

You're only putting 10% down because we're going to get the rest financed. Wow. I'm going to be the bank. Okay. So I'll say my pension plan will be the bank. So if you're making $1,000 a day, let's say you're the, you're the, you're the machine owner, you got your depreciation, let's just dumb it down even simpler.

You're making $100 bucks of treatment as your cost, you're cut. We're giving the doctor and the nurses of the lion's share because they're the providers. So if it's booked five times a day, you're making $500 a day of your machine that you only put, let's say, 35 grand down on. So you're making $10,000 a month.

Wow. If the machine's only open, you know, 20 days out of the month, right? That's 10 grand in your pocket. to place this in a doctor's office. That's amazing. Right? Yeah.

And that's only like 10% of the revenue. Now if you're getting 20%, now that doubles. So like you're getting your downstroke back in two months. Yeah. Right. Now is this going to work in smaller cities? Probably not. The population base is not there.

And sometimes the income base is not there on smaller cities. So it's going to work morally in the larger like, you know, I'd say minimum population needs to be at least a million people. but with the manufacturer of these machines, they said, look, we'll do the research and we'll tell you where there's a need. So they'll go out and figure out the demographics and say, yeah, we need one in this city,

we need one in this city. But like, I think in L.A., there's only two or three of these plasma phoresis machines available. That's amazing. And there's probably room for 20 or more. So, Chris, I already know the way my audience is probably thinking right now. And they're thinking like, dude, 10,000 or how much would you say what the investment would be with the legal gambling machines?

20K. 20K? So let's say 10, 20K initial investment. You're talking about true passive income as their investors. The first question that I know they will ask is who finds the location? Who does the installations? Who is actually dealing with the business owners? How does that process work?

The manufacturer of these games already has the placement agreements and contracts in place to put these into high traffic locations like truck stops, busy bars, restaurants, and stuff like that. So you don't even have to find a location. Wow. You know, same with the medical equipment. Medical equipment's a little bit higher price on the downstroke. Same level of depreciation. You're getting like 10x, 15x depreciation on your money. So, you know, take the guy, let's say like this, let's say you need $500,000 depreciation.

You're taxable, you're taxed that you're going to pay the federal government on 500 grand is about $125,000, maybe $150,000, depending on where you live. Okay. So for $50,000, you zero that out and you're getting $100,000, you're getting all $150 of it back that you paid in. Or if you're a business owner and you're getting ready to strike, write a check for $150, this is costing you 50 and now you're saving 100 and you're making cash too. So it's like, I just say pick your poison. Yeah. Yeah.

And you're making it sound pretty easy a no-brainer offer, man. Question on this. Who would you say is the ideal avatar? Who's your ideal client for something like this? Realistically, anybody who makes $150,000 or more fits into the game strategy. Okay. because it's a lower downstroke. Okay, so when I say pick your poison, come out of pocket, you know, 10,000 today,

maybe 10,000, 60, 90 days from now. Because I can work with you. We can make the financing attractive, but your minimum downstroke is 10K on the games. Okay, 10K on the games. You're going to get $200,000 depreciation. When you get your tax refund, the other 10Ks do. Okay. So $150,000 taxable income.

you're paying at least 20% 30 grand. So would you rather pay the IRS $30,000 or give me 20? And then you keep 10 of your 30 and you're making $1,100 to $2,500 a month. Wow. Okay? Wow. And then you can do this every year under the tax code. These provisions aren't going away.

They're permanent in the tax code. So you can start building up an asset class that can provide a retirement, you know, kids college education, vacation money, new house, new car, whatever it is that you, you know, you want to spend your money on even more retirement for the long haul. So now medical equipment, you probably need to make at least $300,000 or more because the downstrokes higher. Right. So, but minimum income, 150, I can help every one of you guys that are $150,000 or more, zero out your taxable income. Now, depending on the state you live in, California, New Jersey, New York, and some of these other states that don't recognize accelerated depreciation, we can only eliminate a third of your income.

Got it. So that's kind of the, we'll save you 100% on your federal. Some states 100% on your state. But in states like California, New Jersey, and New York, you're going to only take straight line depreciation on the asset based on its cost. So because this is more built on the games as software, it's a third. I love that, man. So, I mean, either way, if you guys are making $150,000 a year, which now, let's be honest, with inflation, the jobs that are going out there right now, guys,

there are quite a bit people that do meet that threshold. So we can say there's a huge market for you. Market of this right now, guys. So what I would recommend, just schedule a call with Chris. Chris, where could they find you? Let me give you the website. This explains the law, the tax code, and it's probably too overwhelming, but I did a very good job to make it very explanatory.

So it's called 168, the letter K, bonus depreciation.com. Okay. www.168K. Those are the numbers, bonus depreciation.com. or you can go to the tax firm.us. Look, there's a scheduling tool on there. It says book a call with Chris,

put in your information, put it on my calendar. There's a slot open. We'll get on Zoom or we'll get on the phone call, whatever you want. If you're in my local area, you can come to my office in Las Vegas. Surprisingly, most of my clients

do not live in my local area. Right. It's interesting how you're an expert, never in your local area, but always outside your area. That's the way it goes. So that's how you get a hold of me, learn about these strategies.

And then that's that. I'll probably start doing more content on my various social media pages about some of these strategies. I do have some ads running out there on meta and stuff like that that talks about this game strategy with my content guy in Vegas. So.

Yeah. And guys, if you guys actually want to see Christopher Craig live speaking about this opportunity, bonus depreciation and cash flow and assets with legal gambling machines and medical devices. He's actually going to be a keynote speaker at my next event with one of my mentors, Andy Elliott on September 17th in Scottsdale, Arizona. It's called the Passive Income Conference. Pretty catchy name, right? Yeah, but it kind of fits, you know. It kind of fits the scenario, guys. So if you guys are in sales, you guys make a minimum of $150,000 a year on my first responders.

I know you guys do. And you guys are looking for another opportunity to pay the bills. I mean, at the end of the day, I tell people, hey, the goal is not to be a multimillionaire. The goal is to be financially free first. That's the first milestone. Look, you're not going to be, I'm not a millionaire overnight. It took me 20 something years to make my first seven figures, right? It's a grind.

Yeah. And a lot of times, people. people want to say, oh, you're a business owner, you have all this freedom. Folks, it's not as easy as it looks. No, it's hard. You know, when you've got people working for you, the business owner's the last one to get paid.

Absolutely. I tell my guys that all the time. Yeah, I don't know. I get paid last. Yep, exactly. So guys, once again, if you guys are looking for a real opportunity to make some true passive income, go check out Chris. We're going to actually drop all the links on the bio.

We're also going to be putting this on YouTube. Guys, right now we're currently ranked number in entrepreneurship. We are back, guys. Had to wait a little bit because I just had a son. But I'm glad you guys are viewing. I'm glad that you guys are listening. And we're having three new episodes every day. Okay. So make sure to check us out. Make sure to check out Christopher Craig. All right. Well, that's a phenomenal interview, man. I'm glad you came back. And I'm glad to see you again, dude. I'm excited for your keynote speech on September 17th with Andy. But you already know, dude, we're going to have to end the show with something motivational.

something that gets people really thinking out there, right? Because people want to level up. So what do you think separates the people that stay stuck financially from the people that eventually level up and build real freedom? You have to be able to adapt. It's all about adaptability. You have to overcome. You have to fail forward.

But if you tell yourself when an opportunity presents itself, and a lot of times people say, I'm not ready. I've never been ready for everything. I just jumped on it. Okay. Whether I failed or sometimes I win, sometimes I lose. Sometimes you have more losses than more wins. But eventually you'll win. As long as you keep trying, just don't give up. And from an entrepreneurial standpoint, trying to get out of the W2 because you're making lots of money for somebody else. Okay, start small. It's just measurable. Basically, you got to get your ass out of bed in the morning. Yeah. Okay. You got to get to the gym. If you're some fat slob, how can you be a leader of your own

household? Facts. Facts, right? And so whether you do one push up today and two tomorrow, you got to start somewhere. An entrepreneurship, find a mentor. Don't be scared to ask for help. Plenty of people will help you. I help a lot of people. I give a lot of my time solving other people's problems, but I also try to walk them down a path so that they learn, right? Ask them tough questions because tough questions become hard answers, but they get easier as you go. Yeah. But at the end of the day, you just have to,

you have just to get up and try and do it. Okay. And don't be afraid if you're a passive type person, you got to break out of your shell. Okay. And that's it. I was a W-2 guy before, but I was in a position. I had to do something, so I was kind of like forced into it.

And then maybe sometimes the greatest things that can happen to you are the worst things that happen to you in your life at that day. But if you look at like Times Magazine, you know, and you think your life's really bad and open that second or third page and usually there's that homeless kid in Afghanistan or something like that, you know, compare the children of Somalia or some of these other kinds of countries, would you trade places with them? Your life ain't that bad. Right. Facts. Facts. So really, it's just, you know, get out there and get after it. Okay, even if it's starting small. You're not trying to make a big home run the first one and make a million bucks. Go make your first thousand.

Yeah. Then make your first, then the next 2,000, 3,000, 4,000, 5,000, then start saying, I'm going to make 10, then 20, then 100. But you have to dream big. You have to manifest. You have to pray whatever your higher power is. But at the end of the day, there is a plan for you. And there's going to be forks in the road. And you might take the wrong fork this one. But there's a plan to get you back to the right fork at some point.

You're just going to have to fail for the times to get back on the right fork. And then it's going to fork again. And I've been down this path all my life. Okay. So things are going good right now. But they could change tomorrow. We're a day, a dollar, a banana pill, car accident away for death or disability. Amazing.

Amazing. Christopher Craig, guys, make sure to check them out on all socials. We're going to drop it down in the bio. Guys, you have to get uncomfortable to get comfortable and to level up in 2026, guys. Make sure to check out Chris. Guys, this is Paul Alex with the Level Up podcast. Make sure to share this with a friend. Make sure to subscribe.

Make sure to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcast. We'll catch you guys on the next. one. Peace!