Chad Ackerman - Wealth Beyond Your W2
Can you build meaningful income through real estate without becoming a landlord or adding another job to your already busy schedule? Chad Ackerman is a former corporate HR and compensation executive with more than 25 years of experience who realized his financial future was far too dependent on his W2 income. That realization sent him down the path of passive real estate investing, where he made early mistakes, learned valuable lessons, and eventually co-founded Left Field Investors, one of the largest communities for passive investors, later acquired by BiggerPockets.
Today, through CARE (Chad Ackerman Real Estate), Chad helps busy professionals move from confusion and overwhelm to clarity and confident action as passive real estate investors. He shares what he wishes he knew when he started, how to evaluate passive investment opportunities, avoid common mistakes, and create income streams without dealing with tenants, toilets, or day-to-day property management. If you're a high-performing professional looking to diversify beyond your W2 income and build a path toward greater financial freedom, this episode offers practical insights to help you take your first, or next step into passive real estate investing.
In this episode, you will be able to:
- Learn how to build multiple income streams instead of relying on a single paycheck or W-2 job.
- Discover why passive real estate investing appealed to Chad more than becoming a traditional landlord.
- Understand the strategy behind using passive real estate investments to create enough income to eventually leave a W-2 career.
- Explore how to overcome analysis paralysis and find a real estate investing path that fits your goals.
- Gain insights into creating a personal “buy box” to avoid chasing shiny objects and quickly identify the right investment opportunities.
- Find out how understanding your “why,” goals, and investor identity can help you choose the right real estate asset classes.
The key moments in this episode are:
0:00 The Wake Up Call For Income
2:00 From Corporate HR To Real Estate
4:19 Why Passive Beat Being A Landlord
10:25 Scaling Passive Income To Leave W-2
12:35 Teaching Kids Wealth Through Deals
17:52 How Left Field Investors Took Off
20:19 LP Education And Building A Buy Box
26:51 Avoiding Misaligned Deals And Regret
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Full transcript here:
Chad Ackerman
I had a friend who was in his late 30s who had a heart attack and was down and out for about a year and a half that he couldn't work while he was recovering. And I had heard this on podcasts and stuff of like, hey, what if? What if you got sick? What if you couldn't work? What if you lost your job? Or what if a family member was sick? And seeing him go through it, that really kind of hit me of like, yeah, this multiple income stream thing seems like a viable thing that I should be looking further into.
Mike Swenson
Welcome to the Real Freedom Show. We inspire you to pursue your passion to gain time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. I'm your host, Mike Swenson. Let's get some real freedom together. If you want to get started on your real estate journey, check out our website, freedom through realestate.com. It's where we put all of our content, all of our interviews with the goal to inspire you through stories, finding somebody that connects with you to get into real estate, find your path, and eventually figure out what the right path is, but you probably don't know it from the beginning. And so that's why we're here. And so love putting great people in front of you to interview and help share their story. And so today, super excited. We've got Chad Ackerman here. Chad is the founder of Care, Chad Ackerman Real Estate, previous life, corporate HR for 25 plus years, decided, had enough of the W-2, wanted to get in real estate. Also co-founder of Left Field Investors that was acquired by Bigger Pockets and have been passively investing in real estate for the better part of close to 10 years now. So I'm Chad, excited to have you on the show and share your story. So thank you so much for coming on.
Chad Ackerman
No, thank you, Mike. I appreciate it. I'm really excited to be here as well. Look forward to the conversation.
Mike Swenson
Take us back what seeds were planted in that real estate space and kind of what was churning in your gut, and we can go from there.
Chad Ackerman
Yeah, yeah. So, like you said, you covered a lot of it good. Um, I was a W-2 guy, I was in compensation and HR, not exactly the stepping stone to you know real estate investing paths, but I always like to say I have a path, not the path that people can listen to. Uh, but I was plugging along in my W-2. I was living two miles away from my corporate job, so uh not a lot of commute time. And I took a different job at one point in time that gave me some windshield time. And while I was there, I was also talking to one of my colleagues that she and I had worked together for a few years, and she was talking about looking for multiple income streams. And that kind of triggered with me that I'm like, well, I've got this dashboard time now. I need to like dig into this because that sounds interesting. And started listening to bigger pockets of all things to begin with. I think a lot of people that got into real estate start there as well, and then started collecting their books and listening to the audible books and my way to work. And I was just stuck in that analysis paralysis of, hey, all these things sound awesome, but I don't know how to deploy, I don't know how to scale while I'm still my W-2. I don't know how to make this work. So I chased a lot of shiny objects, but I could never figure out what my path was. And through bigger pockets, I found a local meetup group here in Columbus, Ohio, where I'm based out of, and attended it. And the fourth meeting, fourth or fifth meeting that I went to, one of the founders got up of the meetup and talked about how he left his W-2 from passive investing in real estate. And that was like a big switch that flipped in my life of like, oh, that that sounds like the thing I'm looking for. I can stay in my W-2, I can invest in real estate, I can grow scale as much as I want because I don't have to go be a landlord. So this sounds really intriguing. Found out the guy lived in the same suburb of Columbus that I did. We got together for beers, he taught me some things, and I deployed my first investment into a 17-story building in Cleveland, Ohio. And away I went. It was kind of uh, I don't know, history after that, I guess, of all the things that followed after there. But yeah, that's the start of it anyway.
Mike Swenson
Right. And I and I know kind of how the tr transition happens for you, and we can get into that a little bit, but talk about being in the corporate world where they tend to, you know, really focus in on your 401k and you've got your profit sharing plans and and different things like that. I think so many people are just naturally trained to think that way, or you're investing in stocks, and obviously you can diversify, right? We we there's lots of options, so it's not 100% in real estate. It can be, however, like just kind of talk about that world where most people like that's the path they go down. And the real estate thing kind of sounds cool, or you see some things on HGTV, been maybe plant some seeds, but not a lot of people take that step uh because they just think my 401k is good enough.
Chad Ackerman
Yeah. No, I was uh I was, I mean, that was what I was taught. I grew up on a farm. My mom was a teacher, my stepfather was a farmer, so they didn't have a lot of experience in the corporate world. So I was making all this up as I went along anyway. But I understood, hey, max out your 401k, get all the match you can get out of them, maybe set up a Roth. I I bought into all that and was doing those things. The thing that kind of triggered me, I had a friend who was in his late 30s who had a heart attack and was down and out for about a year and a half that he couldn't work while he was recovering. And I had heard this on podcasts and stuff of like, hey, what if? What if you got sick? What if you couldn't work? What if you lost your job? Or what if a family member was sick? And seeing him go through it, that really kind of hit me of like, yeah, this multiple income stream thing seems like a viable thing that I should be looking further into. And that's what really sparked it for me was don't just rely on the 401k, don't rely on one single paycheck. I worked in compensation, so I was helping other people build their wealth or their income, but it was through a W-2. It wasn't outside of. And so the more I started scratching the surface of I knew real estate, I had been it, I had my real estate license years ago. I kind of knew it, I understood it, I'd done well in some single families that I had owned a living and then sell a few years later and made some good money on them. Um, but I hadn't really chased the investment side of things much because I watched my friends that had rentals, and every weekend they're going to the rental. And every, you know, three nights a week they're going to the rental. And I'm like, man, I just, my kids were young. I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to take on another job. That landlord thing just seemed like a drag to me. And when I found the passive side of things and the tax benefits that go with it, it really just set me off of like, this is, I think, what I've been looking for. And I haven't looked back since. You know, I've been doing it, I got my first deal in 2018 and I haven't looked back since with it.
Mike Swenson
Yeah. And a lot of people that do decide to get into real estate, yeah, go that active route. And I remember I had launched a real estate team in 2020 and we started to go more investor focused. And so I wanted to do a project with my team to do a flip together so they could get some investor experience and spent nights and weekends away from my family doing that. And long story short, the last bit of profit we were going to have remaining when we sold it went away when the furnace went out the week before we were listing the property. And so kind of that last chunk went away. And I looked up and I said, you know, we we were fortunate we broke even. We earned commission as agents right on the sale. But I looked up and I was like, I took time away from my family for doing things that I think were gonna help me spend more time with my family. That doesn't make sense. It's not my and you broke even, right? And and I I did construction in college, so I like doing that work. So I was like, I've got to find something that I can't insert myself into. Unfortunately, not too much later was when we stumbled across an apartment building to invest in. And I was like, okay, it's not near me. I can't go get can't force myself into this, and it is much more passive. So then it becomes finding those right opportunities. Yeah. Um, but yeah, you're right. There's so many people that try to take that active route and either get a second full-time job trying to make their properties run. Yeah. Um, so so finding a way to get the win of real estate and the passive side is is the the double win, right? Yeah.
Chad Ackerman
Well, it's it, I think there's a lot of myths around the passive side. The people just think I gotta have a ton of money, or it's only for the really sophisticated uh real estate people. That's part of what I try to do with the education that I teach now is that hey, that you know, this isn't a uh as big of a deal as a lot of people make it out to be. This is open to anybody. You don't even technically have to be accredited to invest in it. You could be non-accredited and find 506B deals, not to get into the weeds, but um, but you know, there are avenues out there, just get educated on it, go learn about the space so that you don't have all those fears, get past those myths so that you're you're more informed and confident going into this to look into it. And then, you know, there's risk involved in any deal, in any investing you do, whether it's stock market, real estate, whatever. But there's so many different ways to get into real estate that I, you know, I studied wealthy people, and everybody I studied had real estate in their portfolio, and everybody had whole life insurance policies in their portfolio too. So I'm like, there's got to be something to that, there's gotta be some value to that. Um, growing up on the farm, you know, I understood real estate from that standpoint of hey, the more ground we can get, the more we can farm, the more we get out of it. Uh, and I understood that it appreciates and has value. Well, I wanted to be able to take advantage of that with what I was putting my wealth towards. Not uh, I did, I am a 401k liquidator. I did move it all over and invest it all in real estate. I don't preach that to people, that that's what you should do. I think diversity, like you said, is a big key. Uh, luckily, I'm married and she's in the stock market, and so I view my diversity as a family diversity, is what we got.
Mike Swenson
Kind of pick back up where we left off in terms of you you got into your one deal. So, kind of talk about that journey now from doing that to ultimately what what led you to quit your W-2.
Chad Ackerman
Yeah, so I did the one deal. I got super excited about it. I still have the the first check that I got up behind me here on my bookshelves because I love the idea of it. I it I say I had two switches that flipped. One was hearing about passive investing, and then the other was once I got into it, I was like, no, this feels like my space. This feels like what I'm really excited about. And so I started going wholeheartedly. I I was looking around saying, this is the thing I feel like I need to do. All it takes is capital now. And I looked around and that's why I liquidated my 401k because I'm like, well, I feel like I can do more with that money on my own, investing it in real estate, than I could leaving it my 401k and waiting until I'm 67 to be able to do anything with it, that I decided to pull the trigger on that. That's what led me to be able to leave my W-2 then was to dump enough money into the machine that it was producing enough passive income for me. So that drove to solve my goals of what I was trying to do with this business. Along the way, the other part of my why was I wanted to be able to teach my kids about this at a much earlier age than I learned about it. So I actually took my two kids, I put them in a tribe with me. They were teenagers still, and I started investing alongside with them. And I would bring three deals to the tribe and say, okay, let's talk about these three deals. What do you think is the pros and cons of these and which one would you pick? Ultimately, I would make the decision which one we go into, but it was teaching them at least about this space so they could make better decisions earlier on in life about their wealth than what I was making by just following kind of the routine of a W-2 and 401k and everything else. So all of that led to just where I ended up being able to get out of my W-2, stay in this business, and start teaching my kids about the space. Um, and then left fields sprinkled in there in the middle of all that, too. That's a whole nother conversation.
Mike Swenson
So, out of curiosity, you mentioned your your kids are are in their 20s now. Um, what what is their interest level in real estate?
Chad Ackerman
It's good. Both of them are my daughter went to college and she got a degree in architecture. So she's leaning in from a different angle to play around with, but she wants to invest once she gets into her career and gets some income to go. Um, and she I think she's leaning more to the passive side of things. My son went the other direction, decided to get into the trades, and he's becoming an electrician and he wants to go active. He wants to house hack and get a duplex. He's 20, so he's he's still kind of feeling out where he is. But both of them definitely have an interest to stay in the space. That I'm I get the allure of the active side, especially in your 20s. You can make money quicker there than you can passively. That I get the the idea behind, especially when you have hustle to add to the mix. But as we saw, the half of the reason the bigger pockets came and talked to us about acquiring left fields was because they called it we were tired of seeing our active investors graduate to passive. And then they didn't offer passive uh information at the time. So they were looking to add that to the mix. And we said, yeah, that you know, most of the people that were in our community were active investors at one point and then started migrating to the passive side over time. So it seemed like there's a bit of timing involved with it. To me, once I understood the tax benefits of being passive versus active, it was kind of a no-brainer because that bonus depreciation benefits you get out of the passive side didn't hold a candle to the pressure of 1031 exchanges and stuff like that. Again, not to get into the weeds of all this, but yeah, but that's kind of what all fed into all this journey that's been going on for the last several years.
Mike Swenson
Yeah. It's interesting to see because yeah, kids, um, you know, my my take has always been as we build and grow what we're doing, they can choose to be involved if they want. And if not, no big deal. Um, and yet still, what we're building is gonna be something that will have some value to them down the road. Um and yeah, if if they want to be involved, great. If they don't, um, you know, it's exciting. Um, just hearing my my kids talk about uh I'd kind of planted a seed of you know them helping to build websites. Um I've got a a ninth grader and a sixth grader, and so now they're talking about you know being able to do that. So just kind of planting the entrepreneurial bug wherever that goes. But yeah, you never you never know, but you're exposing them to things that yeah, we we weren't exposed to at that age.
Chad Ackerman
Exactly. No, and I when I started thinking about pulling the kids in, I was talking to one of these investors I was in a deal with that had pulled their kids into the into the mix as well already. And I said, Yeah, well, my kids are you know late teen, they're about to graduate high school, go off to college. So once they get done with college and they're in their career, I think I'll pull them in then. And they're like, Why? Like you're gonna miss so many years that you can educate them. It doesn't have to be that you know they're investing their own money, but there are many things you could do to start teaching them. I even went out and got the cash flow board game from uh Robert Kiyosaki, and we play that. And then as I started to bring deals to them, they'd be like, Oh, this is kind of like the 3-2 model kind of thing. I'm like, Yeah, you're you're getting it. That's good. So they were starting to, it was just any exposure. And knowing teenagers only have so much attention span to listen to dad anyway, you know, that uh I tried to keep it simple, just start dropping nuggets and showing them things. And it stuck. Like I'm seeing it now with them where they are. They had an interest, they haven't totally circled back around and want to like start investing with me yet, but they're at least have passion around it and want to learn more, which is the best I could do right now.
Mike Swenson
Are you looking to get started or scale in real estate investing but don't know your next step? Are you overwhelmed thinking about finding deals, analyzing deals, doing due diligence, and managing properties on top of it? Go ahead and push the easy button and invest with us. Real estate investing is what we do full time. We've done dozens of deals with hundreds of doors. We have the knowledge and experience to handpick the best deals that most investors can't find. We've at large off-market deals all the time where you can hopefully find returns and economies of scale that you just can't find on your own. The best thing is it's a hundred percent passive to you for less capital than you put down trying to acquire a property on your own. Don't let this year go by where you don't make the leap, add to your portfolio, or you just sit in analysis by paralysis. To find out more, visit freedomthroughrealestate.com and click on invest. You can book a call and learn more there. So get to scaling your portfolio now with us by your side. That's freedomthroughrealestate.com and click on invest. Both of their careers lend well to be adjacent to where they're gonna build connections where if that is the right path, boom, they can they can jump in. It's yeah, yeah. It's not like an HR to real estate jump, right?
Chad Ackerman
Not quite. Well, I joke with one architect and one uh electrician. I'm like, you guys could start a business, like you've you've got your own operator system here that uh you know you guys could work together someday, but they're there still have too much rivalry, uh competition between each other to do that yet. But maybe someday.
Mike Swenson
Yeah. Okay, so talk about kind of now you're you're full-time diving in. You had mentioned, you know, left field investors, you know, curious for for you to be able to share a little bit more about that, and then obviously what what you're doing right now with your current company.
Chad Ackerman
Sure, yeah. So Leftfield Investors was um the intent was just to be a local meetup to get 10 or 12 passive investors together around a restaurant table to talk about their investing, share stories, get like-minded people together. We were just going to try to keep it, you know, branch off from the active meetup that we were involved in and start a passive investing one instead. And our first meeting was scheduled to be March 18th of 2020, and the world shut down three days before that with COVID. And so we got put on Zoom like we're doing now. And we said, well, you know, since we're on Zoom, we could invite more people from out of state, whatever. And it just kind of was the right timing that it just snowballed that we ended up with about 2,000 passive investors in our community before it was all said and done. Um, we would host Monday evening meetings and we would have people in Asia that had joined our community eating their breakfast while we're having our dinner conversation that I thought was really cool. We ended up doing a couple local meetups here in Columbus as well, and had people come in and did a conference, and it was great. And it was a great experience because I had people come up to me, especially in that first one. I had three or four people that came up to me and said, I want to thank you because you changed my life with what you built. That I've never had that experience. HR wasn't giving me that experience in my life. That it was so cool to say that, you know, we were selfishly building left field just to become better passive investors ourselves, because we knew if we heard other stories, if we had notes we could compare, we would do better. And and it was 100% true. Well, the fact it was helping other people out too was just sugar on top of the thing. And so we we did it for four years. Bigger Pockets came along and was asking us about it, and jokingly they said, well, maybe we'll buy you out someday. And we thought about it a little bit and we said, Well, why don't you buy us out? Because we were kind of getting to a point where it was getting tedious for us to keep up with it. And we thought Bigger Pockets was a great portfolio or platform for it to go to. And it's it's now called Passive Pockets. If you go to their platform, you'll find it in there. And I love the fact that it's existing there still and moving
Chad Ackerman
- And so I went back after we did our transition, I got certified as a business coach, and then I blended that business coach education resource with my left field and my passive investing. And now I try to get education to the LPs. I think the biggest gap I've seen in this industry is there's a ton of education to teach you how to do single family work. There's a lot of education on teach you how to be an operator and operate a be a general partner, but there's very little education around teaching how to be a limited partner, and it's a viable industry to be in. So I'm trying to do education now to teach people about this limited partner space and see if it's the right fit for them.
Mike Swenson
Yeah, certainly. I mean, for limited partners who want to find good deals, who want to know what is a good deal, because I I feel like you know, so we're in the 506B space primarily with our network, and they like investing with us because they know they can't do it themselves. There's an economies of scale to multifamily. But at the end of the day, if if push were to come to shove, if I were to you know give them a quiz, they probably don't have a great understanding, they just are relying on the relationship, which is what the 506B tends to do. You're relying on who you know, what they've done, and I know that person well and I trust that person. But yeah, you get into 506C, and it's just uh there's an open market of opportunity. And how do you find what's a good fit for you? You're um, I was on a call this morning talking about you know, every investor has different risk tolerances, things they like, things they don't like. What are red flags for you might not be red flags for other people, and so there's there's a lot, a lot.
Chad Ackerman
To learn out there, it's a lot to learn, yeah. And that's that's what I focus on with my education is that foundation structure. There's a lot of groupthink that goes on, like you're saying, that we saw it with left field as well. I want to teach people that, yeah, they're not all made the same, and not everybody's goals are the same. So take the time, you only have so much capital to invest. Take the time to understand your goals, your strategy, your identity, your investor identity. What do you want out of this? Then I help them build a buy box to kind of build guardrails around so you don't chase all the shiny objects. There's a lot of shiny objects in this space. But then once you have all of that, then you can really hone in on what deals are out there that fit to you. And my main goal, what I tell people, is I want to teach you to be able to say no to things quicker because there's going to be a lot of deals that hit your inbox. And I don't you only have so much time to spend on this too. I want you to be able to say no a lot quicker so you can get to a maybe. And then that maybe you can dig deeper into and see if it's a yes or not. But it saves you a lot of time if you've got all these things instead of just, oh, well, I know Chad and Chad's been doing this since 2018. So I'm just going to invest in what he's invested in. Well, maybe I need cash flow, but you're in a W-2. The cash flow isn't important to you, that you want to build wealth. Well, that's an important thing to understand as you get into this, and it will affect what asset classes you should get into, even too, so that you align to the right kind of investments so you're not frustrated by seeing different results than what you would expect to be seeing out of all this. So that's what I try to spend most of my time on from an education standpoint is get you grounded so that you're making good decisions going into it.
Mike Swenson
Yeah. And understanding, you know, not only the different goals, but the different asset classes because they accomplish different goals because they are very different. Yeah.
Chad Ackerman
I purposely walk you through if I'm coaching you. Let's talk about your why, let's talk about your goals, let's talk about your investor identity, let's talk about your strategy, let's build a buy box. Then we'll finally start talking about asset classes. Because then I understand you and what you want out of this enough. And hopefully you understand yourself a little better now, too. And then we can say, yeah, if if you want cash flow, we shouldn't look at ground up development because that's not going to cash flow for years. So we can, if any of those ever hit your inbox, you can just skip them right out of the gate because you know that's not what you're looking for. So it's very important, I think, to go through all of that and not just be, oh, Chad's been doing this a while. I'm going to invest in what Chad's investing in. Well, that may or may not align to what you really want out of this space. And then you're stuck in something, you know, there's there's a long hold period for a lot of this past investing. So I don't want you to wrap your money up into something that isn't what you really want because you can't get it out of there for a while. So let's get you set up straight to begin with and then go from there.
Mike Swenson
Yeah. Yeah, that's been an interesting thing for us. A lot of our investors had previous experience with people on our team that did flips. And so the idea of hang on, we're going to hold something for three to five years. Right. Uh, they're like, wait a second, and like, you know, 12 or 18 or 24 months later, they're like, now where are we at on this? And they're like, we're still giving up. So like we're keeping you updated on the project, but then they're kind of realizing the the oh wait, this this actually is three to five years, and I kind of forgot about that when I was excited about the opportunity. And so just helping them to understand the the ramifications, not necessarily bad, but just different.
Chad Ackerman
And so it I find myself in a great spot that I'm out of capital right now because all my capital is invested, that I haven't invested in some, I've only invested in one deal the last two years. That's prevented me from making a lot of bad decisions while the economy is the way it is right now. So it's actually proven to be a good strategy to have all my capital deployed right now that I would be investing to save me the trouble. Whereas if it was turning over every six months, then you're constantly having to get that back out and do it again. And that for a lot of people, again, as they graduate, as bigger pockets would call it, that's the part that gets exhausting of like they have to keep looking for another deal. They have to keep that money in the system and keep it flowing. Well, these longer hold periods give you a little more breather on it and gives you a little more time to educate yourself on what do I need now? Let me pivot if something's changed my life. But at least understand the spaces I'm gonna meet, go meet new operators that are doing the same kind of thing, that line. Educate yourself more, whatever it is, so that when capital does come back, then you're ready to go with whatever's next. Versus that every six months I got to crank out, I got a 1031. I've only got so many days to do it. You know, that that gets cumbersome to people after some time. So we we call it the lazy 1031 in the passive side, where you've got the calendar year to reinvest that money to really get the benefits of bonus depreciation still.
Mike Swenson
Yeah. So in in terms of maybe just kind of to close here, you know, so you're helping limited partners, providing education, um, really helping to understand what it is they're getting into. Any other kind of maybe common questions or things that you go with somebody who might be newer to the passive side of real estate?
Chad Ackerman
Yeah, we we hit it. My biggest thing is spend time on your why, get back to your why and understanding what you want out of it, and then find out what asset classes align to that. That's the biggest misalignment I see is people just say, oh, well, you know, this deal came across my my inbox and it looked really good. Um, so I jumped into it. I I'm guilty of it. My first deal I got into was a 17-story building in Cleveland that was an office building that they were gonna gut and turn into residential. I want to cash flow, but didn't realize it at the time. Well, that was more or less a ground up construction. So it didn't cash flow for years that I never should have gotten into it. So I'm proof positive that you should take the time to understand what you really want out of this and find out what asset class is aligned to that before you deploy. If anything feels out of whack or misalignment, it's probably because of those kind of things that you're investing in something that really doesn't fit what you want out of it. So take the time to understand what that is. And there's people out there that'll help you think through that if you need some help.
Mike Swenson
It's interesting. I remember I had an investor that I was working with on investing into a property, and you know, kind of they were kind of giving it some thought, you know, deciding whether they wanted to do it or not. And then uh got back to me one day and said, Yeah, um, I'm not going to because I just got a call this morning from a friend of a friend who might have a property to sell me, so I'm gonna do that instead. And I was like, totally different asset classes, totally different strategies. And it's like, you know, kind of realizing like you're not as close as you think in that regard because they still have to figure out what they want and and giving them the time to know what to say yes to is really important. And I think that's the other thing too, learning with investors is like it all has to be in their timing, right? Like I tell people, my goal, like, I'm not trying to sell you anything, I'm trying to put opportunities in front. If it's a no because you don't understand it, well, then let's talk about it. So when the next one comes along, you do understand it, or every deal's different, you know, because people they like to say, like, well, typically, as like there hasn't really been a typically in the deals we've done because everyone is so different from each other. And so helping them to understand what's a fit for them, and like you said, aligning with your goals, aligning with your why is really important.
Chad Ackerman
It's important. And and the one thing I will say to that, I felt like I heard this story over and over again with Left Field, with the community that we had. You aren't alone in this space. You you aren't the only one that's struggled with figuring out what your why is and what your goals are, and maybe being misaligned on a deal or two or whatever. Get involved with the community, go find like-minded people. This it there aren't a lot of people doing this, unfortunately. There's plenty of them out there, but it's it's not easy to talk to your neighbors about this or your family about this because they might think you're crazy to be doing this space. Go find a community of like-minded people that you can go hear more stories and get more feel of what were other people's paths and find one that feels like it's close to yours. And that will help bring you some alignment as well and give you some direction of what you need to do. Your podcast is probably great help for that for people hearing other people's journeys of how they got to where they are. Spark something with somebody probably every time they listen to one of your podcasts. And that's great. I think that's a great resource. You're doing a great service to the investors out there to offer these stories up because it's what motivated me. It's what clicked with me was hearing other people's story. Like, okay, I could do this, and maybe I'm just not aligned properly and I got to figure that out. But it kept me going. It kept me from getting too frustrated with it and giving up and going back to the stock market. And I'm so glad I didn't. Thank you for doing what you're doing.
Mike Swenson
Fantastic. Chad, thank you so much for coming on and and sharing your story. For people that do want to reach out to you, kind of learn more about what you got going on. How can they do so?
Chad Ackerman
Yeah, easiest thing's my website. Um, I got a special one that has a starter kit on it so people can go get a starter kit and get a feel for what this space is. It's at uh Chattackerman Real Estate dot com slash start. Chattackerman realestate.com slash start. It's a big long one, but it'll get you there. It'll show you some stuff that I've developed and put out there for people to try to get them, get them chasing. I I want to flip the switch for people like it did for me. I just try to find people that are interested, let them know there's stuff out here to teach them how to do this and keep going.
Mike Swenson
I think I love real estate. There's so many cool things you can do, and it's getting over that barrier of not understanding what it is and the benefits. And once they see those benefits, I think for me, right, for the people that it's a right fit, it's it's awesome. And it's cool to see people's eyes be open, realizing, like, oh dang, my tax bill uh went down a ton this year because I invested in your deal. Like that stuff really matters, and people just don't understand that because they don't have the education on it.
Chad Ackerman
So that's exactly right. Yeah, if you spent time learning anything specifically about this industry, one thing I would say focus on tax to start with and the benefits that real estate offers to you, and that can really send you running. And I get I get passionate, you can probably hear it in my voice. I lean up in my chair and get all excited, but I love finding other people like yourself that are passionate about as well, just to keep me going and motivated, also. So I appreciate it.
Mike Swenson
Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Chad, for coming on. Thanks for sharing, and we will link to uh your starter kit here in the comments of the episode. So thank you so much.
Chad Ackerman
Thanks, Mike. Really enjoy the conversation. Thanks for having me on.
