The Power of Self-Belief with Ben Reinberg
Audio: Welcome to the REI Diamonds Show with Dan Breslin, your source for real estate investment, Jewels of wisdom.
Dan Breslin: All right, Ben, welcome to the REI Diamond Show. How are you doing?
Ben Reinberg: Good. Thank you for having me, Dan. I really appreciate it. It’s a pleasure to be here today and we’re starting to get some great weather in Southern California, so I’m very grateful for that. But everything else is good and appreciate you having me on your show.
Dan: Yeah, for sure. For context, for the listeners, I think we were talking about you leaving Chicago and me moving to Chicago from another state. What was it that drove you to go to California? Was it the weather of the environment, or something else?
Ben: It was part of it. Part of Chicago, my heart is always in Chicago and I am a Chicago kid. I lived there for 52 years and I was actually commuting back and forth from California to Chicago for a year and a half.
Dan: Oh, wow.
Ben: My kids, I have two kids in college at USC, one just graduated and my daughter’s at Dana Hills High School as well, and then my spouse is here as well. What I realized was I had a choice. When we first looked at where to move, I wanted to move to Texas or Florida on the other side. My family said, “Well, everyone’s out here.” My wife’s family was out here too, so it just made a lot of sense to move to California. The climate in Chicago, the rules and ordinances, and the way they handled the pandemic to the amount of violence in Chicago now, where I’ve walked the streets of Michigan Avenue for years and I see security guards, armed security guards, three four of them in a store up and down Michigan Avenue.
I just realized that this is not the place where I was born and raised and grew my business and it was time to make a change. I’m sad to say that it breaks my heart to say that. Chicago is near and dear, and I go back because my headquarters for my company Alliance is in Chicago so I go back. It’s a treat for me to go back, but I don’t miss it like I thought I would. It’s interesting how my mindset has changed. I really gravitated to California. I live in the Orange County area. I love it. The networking’s great. The people are wonderful here. The people in Chicago are wonderful too, don’t get me wrong. But it made a lot of sense to come out here, especially with launching my personal brand, which is growing rapidly.
My podcast is growing rapidly and it made a lot of sense as I get older I’ve been in this business, Dan, for over 28 years, and it just gets to a point where I was waking up and it was gray and dark when I woke up and it was gray and dark when I went home from the office in Chicago. I missed the food, I missed the people. I definitely missed my sports teams. But at the end of the day, it was a really healthy change for me to be in California. So I’m very grateful to be here.
Dan: Nice. Yeah. I have a soft spot obviously for Chicago in my own heart. I remember when I was starting the company and it was like Nascent and Nothing, if not close to bankrupt back in, I don’t know, 2009 or 2010, somewhere in that range. I remember telling a friend of mine, I’m going to move to a world-class city and I’m going to build a world-class company, and that city is Chicago. It was probably 3, 4, or 5 years later that I finally made it remembered saying that, making that prophecy, if you will. I loved it here. This is great, I’m probably never going to leave. I’m from the East Coast. We have the Jersey Shore, so this is like the Jersey Shore combined with downtown Center City, Philadelphia is like the vibe of Chicago at the beach.
Ben: Yeah.
Dan: But then I spent the winter in Florida this year, maybe a similar point in my life as you, where it was like, “Hey, I can do this. I’m going to try that this year.” I was surprised how much I didn’t miss Chicago for those couple of months, and then I got back. But I’m sure I’ll feel better once the weather breaks and then the sun is shining again here.
Ben: This is the best time in Chicago because April’s around the corner, baseball season starts, and the city starts opening up and becoming alive. I remember as a kid growing up in Chicago that I always looked for this time in March, it’s March 16 as we speak. I would always look for that once we hit the 20s, like the 24th, 25th, and 26th, you’d start seeing that break of snow would be melting. Ice is gone. You’d see the dirt on the roads and your driveway. You would see the pounds of snow outside my house start diminishing.
Once I knew them, like spring’s on the way, the birds would come back and then April came around and then you get the crazy rain and trees falling down and lightning. I remember all those days and I remember now, ice melts and flooding is relevant in the Chicago area. I feel for those people because I remember those days you see flooded basements and a lot of damage, but April’s an exciting time because that’s when the weather starts breaking and more people are out and walking around and you go downtown in the city and it’s vibrant so these are great moments in the city of Chicago.
Dan: Yeah. I hope some of the listeners who are my friends from Philly will hear that sales pitch and maybe come out and visit me. Right?
Ben: It’s a great city. First of all, I raised my kids in the Chicago area and I can tell you there are not many better places in the world. If you’re going to have a family, and you want to raise kids in the Chicago land area, the schools are outstanding. The people are great, and the values are good. The food is second to none. Maybe New York is comparable, but in Chicago, we have just incredible food and great sports. In a lot of cultures, there are art museums and there are tons of different museums. There’s a lot to do. You could touch a restaurant, oh, the entire year, not go to the same restaurant in Chicago. That’s for all of Chicago land and all of Chicagoland’s great. I grew up near a town named Highwood, which was next to where I lived, and they just had incredible restaurants that were just growing. Yeah, I missed the food in Chicago for sure.
Dan: Nice. Maybe we’ll get together when you come back out here.
Ben: Absolutely.
Dan: Ben, so people can get to know you in Alliance, maybe you could give us a snapshot of the business model, a progression over the last, what was he saying? 28 years in real estate?
Ben: I’ve built over a million square feet. Let me just start. I am an office industrial and retail expert. That’s how I cut my teeth. A lot of my colleagues start off in multi-family in Chicago because we had some icons they would go work for. I wanted to do something different. I said, “Well, I don’t want to be a multi-family guy in Chicago.” They do very well. They’re great, great people, very successful. But I wanted to do something different. I got into office industrial to start, and then we cultivated into retail. I started a company called Alliance when I was younger in my 20s. We’ve built millions of square feet of office industrial. I’ve done hundreds and hundreds of syndications. And we just launched our launched fund, it’s called the Alliance Medical Property Fund. 17 years ago, out of my 28 or 29-year career, we decided that medicine was a really good place to be.
It was being scrutinized. I phrased this term, “The human body is never going on a style.” Because of that, we looked at and we did very well so we’re experts in medicine, we do veterinarian properties. We own and manage our entire portfolio. We’re in a lot of states around the United States. We invest in the South and Southeast, Southwest Mountain, West Parcel, and West Coast. We’ve still had some in the Midwest. That’s really where we focus and we’ve just had incredible careers run at our company. I’m in the prime of my career. I’m 53 years old and just ready to take another leap. We’re actually going the other way. We’re actually hiring people. We’re hiring about 6 people. We just hired about 5, and hopefully going to hire another one in the next day or two.
Just really exciting. I’m doubling down on marketing and growth. I’m excited about opportunities, and excited about where the future goes. We’ll be doing some larger funds for biomedical, industrial, and various other products as we grow further and I’m really excited. I have a great leadership team with 200-plus years of experience. People like investing in Alliance. Once they do, they don’t want to leave. I understand why because we are one of the first companies to establish an investor portal and it’s very transparent and I’m very proud of that. The people here at Alliance should be proud of themselves as well because the people at Alliance are just incredibly talented, wonderful people.
It resonates with all the third parties we deal with, it resonates with our investors, just couldn’t be more proud of the group of people that carry the torch for me and help continue my legacy within this company. I’m really excited about the future. I’m excited about this year. Obviously, I touched on my personal brand, which helps significantly with Alliance, and my podcast Ben Reinberg: I OWN IT is very significant to help as well. I do love it, we just relaunched our social media campaign for Alliance. It’s Alliance CGC so if you follow us, you’ll learn a lot. It’s really dropping a lot of knowledge, adding value. That’s our purpose. We’re here to serve and teach people what we do, how we do it, and make them extremely wealthy. We have a great track record, Dan, In medical, just to give you an example, we’re the mid-20s, an IRR track record. If you look at all the ASK Class around, we’re probably upper 20s if you threw an industrial in retail and all the deals we’ve done throughout the year.
It’s a long game of commercial real estate. It is a marathon business. I won’t sugarcoat it. People say, well, how do I become successful? Guess, show up every day. You got to keep going. You have to keep pushing forward. At the end of the day, you’ll create success and its ups and downs. One day you have a great day, one day you have a lot of noses and you might be down, but you have to work on yourself in your inner game in order to become effective in commercial real estate. I really believe that. I really learn what the secret is and it starts with yourself.
Dan: In the alliance business model, from the investor’s perspective, I guess the fund, are these like a hold forever type of philosophy or more of like a buy, get in, sell it after say 3 to 7 years and cash out?
Ben: Yeah, it’s exactly right. It’s usually, it’s a 5-year hold we’re in and out. You have the ability to extend it, to protect the capital if need be. But generally speaking, we think this fund will probably grow. We might even double it over time. We’ll be in and out in 5 years and we project, we’ll probably be high teens, or low 20s IRR when we exit. I’m really excited about it. It’s phenomenal. We’ve had a great response. We’ve already acquired five assets for the fund, which is exciting. We did that towards the latter part of this year as we launched. We continue to raise equity, which is exciting. Investors can still get in if they’re interested.
It’s just a wonderful vehicle. I believe in it strongly. I’ve committed a significant amount of money to it in all different aspects and there’s no one’s a bigger believer in what we do than me. I back it up and I love it. I haven’t found a better investment than what we do. I love the fact that you can kick the bricks and mortar and you can see that all our different properties serve different niches. Dan, anything that you and your family go and visit for medical services? That’s generally speaking what we own.
Dan: Okay. What are some of the insights you had over the course of your career? I’ll give you an example, for me. One of the big key insights that led to where we’re at today’s company, is there are three components to a deal, typically in what we’re doing, at least our piece, we’re not necessarily doing the management piece, but you have to have the capital. Most people think you got to have the money first and that’s the hardest barrier to entry. Some people have a lot of money, they come to the game, and the capital is what they’re bringing. That’s the thing of value as a partner that they have. The other aspect would be, let’s say the construction, the management, or the operation of the deal, we’ll call it. In the management context, that would be the other piece. You can be a very great operator, a great developer who’s going to build these properties out.
That can be your strong suit and that could be your really valuable piece of the partnership and then the other piece was the deal itself. To me, I didn’t have this great extensive construction background. I certainly didn’t have the capital to bring to the table or anybody with capital. I decided no one else in the world was going to do more off-market deals than Dan Breslin. That was my niche and I hadn’t done very many when I decided to, and it’s a very different story today and still to this day. It’s the deals we bring the deals to the table. That’s my insight and that led to what I built my career on. Do you have any other insights similar to that, that may have happened, maybe even one or two? As you pivoted along the way, I think the one you did share was that medical is a good place to be. I am curious if you had any others, Ben.
Ben: Well, I have a lot of knowledge from being in this business for almost three decades. We’d be here all day if I start dropping knowledge, but I’m happy to share whatever you guys want. But at the end of the day, it’s really finding deals, capitalizing deals, and getting financing. You have to show up every day. You have to be persistent. You have to work on yourself and your inner game. It’s what allows you to create because you have to be able to create in this business. Creating is the niche you want to play in creating how do I get a deal done? How do I find a deal? If you find the right deal, you’ll capitalize it. You’ll find the right equity, you’ll find a loan.
It mitigates, it offsets experience when you’re first getting started for all your young listeners out there, or for all the people that want to get involved in commercial real estate or any type of real estate, it starts with you and belief and your limiting beliefs and gets rid of them. It’s not that easy. I’ve been working on that for years and finally, I’ve accomplished that. But it was a process to do. To share some insight I would say to everyone is know what outcome they want and go after it. That’s the best advice I can give you is to know your outcome, go after it and put the blinders on, and go after it hard. Get right in the water and commit.
Dan, commitment is a serious term that people don’t adhere to because most people say, “Well, I’m committed.” Are you? Will you show up on a Saturday? Will you go on a Sunday? Will you raise equity over the weekend if you have to? How committed are you to getting what you want in life?” I know I was, that’s why I’m wildly successful in this business, is I’m committed. How committed are you and how badly do you want it? That’s the best advice I can give because commitment is a term that people take lightly. They don’t understand what it means. So for example, you see all these people that walk into a cold plunge. Right? That’s commitment. You sitting there for a minute or two, that’s commitment. That’s what commitment means. You keep your word, that’s your commitment.
Most people lie to themselves. They don’t keep their words to themselves. When they say, “Hey, I’m going to be home at 5:00, you be home at 5:00. When I say, I’m going to be on a podcast at 10:00 AM I’m going to be on a podcast at 10:00 AM, my word is my bond. That’s integrity. That’s what’s important in this business or any business. Finding deals is one thing and there are all different ways to do it and everyone does it differently. Capitalizing deals, there are different way people do it. But the best advice I can give is to be committed. Keep your word, follow through on what you want, and understand what the outcome is. If you can understand this, everything else will become a lot easier as you progress in your career.
Dan: You mentioned starting with beliefs and you said it’s been a process for yourself. Can you give me an example or two of some of the limiting beliefs that surprised you when you finally identified them and reconstructed them?
Ben: Well, I’ve been an introvert for years in an extrovert position, so I had to fix that. A lot of that was just confidence, believing in myself and not having imposter syndrome and living my authentic self, who I am, and knowing that I’m good enough. It didn’t matter how much money I had in the bank, how many deals I’d done, or all the success I had, I didn’t feel I was good enough to be who I’d become. That has to do with childhood experiences so I’ve had to clear all those experiences and go back and say, “Why is this happening? Why do I feel this way?” Because I am a gift. I’m wildly talented. I have people that made multi multi-millions and it’s not just investors, employees to third-party resources that work for us. Long story short, I offer a lot of value and I wasn’t loving myself.
I wasn’t appreciating who I was. I had to learn like, who is the real Ben Reinberg? What’s his value? What’s his gift? I had to appreciate myself and love myself. Once I started loving myself, it opened up the door saying, okay, confidence rising, deals rising, more open-minded, less judgmental and all these things started to come together. It took a while to learn. It’s not that I just fell off the cart and figured this out. I had to bring in mentors and invest in myself, time, and significant money, to become the best version of myself, which I am today.
I’m very proud of myself for how far I’ve come. Again, when people say, “Well, what can I do?” I say, “Work on yourself. Come to the best version of yourself, whatever that means starts small as you make more money, and you can invest more money.” Dan, there is no better investment than yourself. I could say medical office investment with Alliance is the greatest thing since sliced bread and it is. But at the end of the day, when you can invest in yourself, that’s the best investment you can make.
Dan: Yeah, I’d agree. The ROI is compounding on your own internal knowledge skillset. I’m a fan of the podcast who’ve heard me talk about this, we speak a lot about assets, guys are listening, and gals are listening to the show. “Oh, I want my assets in the column and fewer liabilities and all that.” But what about sitting down and figuring out what your strengths are and what your assets are first, what about deciding that you want some of these more intangible assets into that column? Maybe it is some of the belief things. Maybe it is underwriting a medical office deal, right? Maybe it is a million dollars in cash that you want in the asset column. That would be more of a physical thing. But you’re going to have to become the person if you don’t already have that, who’s going to earn and create that value out there.
Again, that probably circles back to that insight I shared, right? I didn’t have a lot of assets at all, but I could figure out, to your point, how to be creative and figure out how to get deals. That ended up really being helpful to recognize that this was my asset. I had this nascent skillset and a bunch of time and willingness to learn how to and then invest in building that, compounding that over time. Then it did turn into some of the other things in the coms that people will point to and say, here’s the brick some mortar that Dan owns, and here is the evidence of this guy’s quote-unquote success or whatever it is that maybe people were like striving for on the front end.
Ben: Let me add to that, which is really important. What you said for your listeners is you use the word create and create is such an important word in business, especially in commercial real estate, or residential real estate of what you do. At the end of the day, in order to create, you have to open up your mind and have enough mental space. What happens is we get bogged down as people, we listen to society, and we have certain standards and expectations that have been instilled in us for years. You take a step back and you look at all this and you realize a lot of it’s an illusion. When you realize that and you look at it and you become grateful for everything in your life, you start opening up your mind, you start clearing things, and integrity starts coming to the forefront.
Then what happens is gives you the ability to create, so take your example where you say, “Hey, I can get creative in my residential deals and look at how to structure and all that.” It all stems from you Dan, it all stems from you becoming the best version of yourself and you have the open mind space to be able to create, so for all your listeners out there, learn how to create and slow down. You don’t have to walk so fast, you don’t have to have a hundred meetings in a day.
Dan: Okay.
Ben: Sometimes less is more because it allows you to create and think and give you space. I had to learn that as well. I’m a guy where if you looked at my calendar, you’d freak out because I always have like 10 or 12 Zoom calls in a day. But I tell them, I say I need space. I might take some off, or I might say, “Hey, I need a half hour in between meetings in order to take a breath.” Dan, I’m big into meditating, I’m meditating in the morning, in the evening, and also sometimes throughout the day. I do that to create my mindset and my mind, right? Because it allows me to create.
I want to touch on that because if you have the ability to create, it allows you to be solution-oriented, not focused on problems, and calm when you’re negotiating. It has a tremendous impact. That’s why I always advocate saying to people, “I want you to mentally eat healthily. I want you to be sharp, I want you to be confident.” It’s so important for everyone to think about that because when you are the best version of yourself internally, and externally, you will show up and people will gravitate to you and that’s how you make money. That’s how you do deals, that’s how you attract resources into your life.
Dan: Yeah, I love the meditation piece. I think I’ve been meditating consistently every day without missing one for at least three or four years, probably before COVID and then sporadically for the few years before that. I’ve noticed a level of creativity goes way up in there. I think it was Einstein who used to like to sit quietly. I might be wrong. I know for sure that Thomas Edison did. He had a chair and he would just sit there and literally think through the problems. My meditation will have some semblance of that. Neurology and I forget the networks in the brain that do it, but there are two kinds of things that will occur in meditation. One can be this stream of consciousness thoughts.
The goal is not to judge, not to grab onto any of them, but just to observe the thoughts. That section or function of the brain has a name, which I don’t recall, and that’s its job. Some people have developed this like a random thought idea generator that’s firing off all these different ideas. If you’re watching them on a consistent basis through meditation, some really good ideas are going to come there. It’s like the theory is that that’s how you become more creative by watching this normal network that’s producing the random stream of consciousness, though some of it’s crazy, a lot of it’s not going to work. Then sometimes there are jewels that sound like they’ve been handed to you from the voice of God.
If you ever sat down to pay attention to that, you’re going to miss that thing, that gift that the universe was giving you. Then the other aspect of the meditation is to absolutely become quiet, silent. Whether there are not even any stream-of-consciousness thoughts, maybe this is the second five minutes in a 10-minute meditation where the second five minutes is silence. There’s not even an observer. There’s nothing, there’s nothing at all. It’s just silence. I find that my benefit in the negotiation stressful situations from the second five-minute chunk of that example is where that calm demeanor and the ability to control my emotions really start to shine for me as I put that practice into play.
Ben: It’s well said. One of the important aspects is when you do have an idea or you want to do something is go get it done. Just do it. Don’t worry about failing, you might fail, but that’s okay. For all your listeners out there that are listening and wondering, “Okay, well, what’s holding me back from making that decision?” It’s confidence. If you could work on your confidence and work on yourself, you’ll make those decisions. Guess what, that’s where growth happens. It’s just the way it is and so whatever you could do to stay healthy mentally, and physically, I’m a big front and I’m a huge health nut. I work out at least 6 or 7 times a week, 5 days with a trainer, eat healthy into Biomed and all those good things stem cells.
But at the end of the day, I realize that it makes me a better version of where I could perform and make sure we’re a good shepherd for our investor’s capital and my employees as well. I am a big proponent of what you just said and it’s been a part of my life it’s helped me really gravitate to become the best version of myself as well so I appreciate what you said.
Dan: Yeah, you too. The thing I found on you in doing some research, Ben was I wrote down in my notes from prep for this, it’s the name of your podcast, but I wrote it down as the I own it philosophy or like operating principle and people who are listening as real estate. “Yeah, I own it. This is great.” But it means more than that. Would you mind expanding?
Ben: Yeah, when we started the show, everyone knows that I’m a commercial real estate mogul. I own a lot of real estate around the United States. I’ve been doing this for a little under three decades and we have a wonderful company alliance. We’re headquarters in Chicago, and we have different offices around the country, but it wasn’t about owning real estate. It’s a double meaning. Yes, I own it and I own commercial real estate. It’s really about owning your life, being responsible for every aspect of your life and owning it and being fully committed to your life and who you are as a person. We bring on incredibly talented celebrities, and ultra-high-net-worth folks from all over the globe. They come on and they share their value and their stories and I’m so grateful for it because they’re contributing to my life and I learn a lot.
Then my audience learns a tremendous amount as well. I’m really grateful because I get to meet wonderful people. But we always ask one question at what point in life did you not own it fully? That way they give examples because people are then authentic and real. They’re saying, “Hey, I went through this experience.” They share and they open up and they’re vulnerable. It’s a wonderful place to learn when you log onto my podcast and listen, it’s a wonderful place to learn about health, wealth, fitness, business, commercial real estate selling mindset, mind, and body breathing. We touch on every aspect of a holistic approach to becoming successful in your career no matter what business you’re in. When you hear this Friday we have incredible guests coming on and we’ve had just talented men and women and it’s all about adding value to you and the listener.
That’s why we do it. I really enjoy it, Dan, because it allows me to give back, which is really important to me now in my life is, I always want to know like, how can I serve? How can I help people? How can I contribute? How can I act from a state of love and not a state of fear and give back to people? I do that. You’ll see me on the street and I see homeless people. I give them a few bucks. I did that third day. I saw a lady who broke my heart, she hasn’t eaten for three days. I gave her some boxes and I said, “When was the last time you ate?” She said, “Three days.” I said, “You got to eat.” I gave her some money and that’s what life’s about.
It’s about contributing and helping and becoming a great part of society and as I’ve aged, I’ve evolved into that person and I think it just resonates with me. The show, the Ben Reinberg: I OWN IT show and it’s on all the different platforms you can follow me on social media as well to see it, but it’s all about how can I contribute and how the people that come on the show will contribute as well so that’s what I love about it. It really makes me feel grateful and it’s so satisfying to be able to give.
Dan: Nice. Couldn’t agree more. I have a couple of wrap-up questions because I know the clock’s getting a little long on us here. The first of which, Ben, what are your 5 favorite real estate markets and why?
Ben: Oh, my God, I have a lot of real estates. Obviously, I’m a big Austin, Texas fan. I’ve been doing business there for years. Raleigh Durham’s good. Tampa and Orlando are special to me. Dallas Fort Worth is good. Phoenix Arizona’s a great market. Salt Lake City. Reno, Nevada.
Dan: Too many, [crosstalk] five in a couple of reasons.
Ben: It just depends. I look at our business where we buy, okay, I love the southern states. I’m really a Southern kid live who grew up and was born and raised in Chicago. People are great, with great healthcare markets, population growth, and great pro-healthcare policies. For my niche, that’s what I found. I like to invest. But you can invest in Chicago and have great multi-family, good industrial. It’s a good industrial market. I believe you, I understand it very well. I love Chicago. But what we do is, that’s why I look at, so I would say Tampa, Orlando, Raleigh, Durham’s great market. Charlotte is Austin, Texas, Dallas, Fort Worth, and Phoenix. There are so many great markets that I can give you more than just five, but that’s just a little sample and those are some of the tastes of the areas that we invest in.
Dan: I appreciate that and the context and market selection are a theme on our show. It has been forever. We’re a little more real estate-oriented here versus the broad audience. I personally have gotten into business and found very fruitful markets as a result of some of the guests sharing some of those things. I know for a fact that quite a few of the listeners actually have gotten ideas and literally picked up and moved to other markets in other states from stuff they’ve heard from guests like you. That question has been helpful for the audience for sure. What are a few books, not necessarily ones you just read recently, Ben, but what would be one or two that had the most impact somewhere along the line for you?
Ben: Well, if you watch the latest episode of my podcast, Ben Reinberg: I OWN IT, you will see my story. I interviewed Sharon Lechter, who’s a friend of mine. When I was a young man in my 20s, the way I opened the show, you’ll learn a lot about what impacted me, her book, Rich Dad Poor Dad, inspired me to get into commercial real estate. That was 30 years ago.
Dan: Wow.
Ben: That was a really powerful book for me. Obviously, Rich Dad Poor Dad is a great book. Thinking Girl Rich is a great book. There are so many great books out there. It’s interesting because a lot of the guests on my show, send me their books and I read them and there’s a spectacular. I’ve had just incredible real estate icons on my show to different people. I’m not biased towards one book, but I do know that Rich Dad Poor Dad definitely inspired me and helped me create my life and my journey where I wanted to go.
Dan: Yeah, that makes two of us and quite a few of us on the podcast as well. I occasionally get a chance to go to Chicago, the Love Institute is a nonprofit that I support and they bring in kids that are probably, they have elementary school level programs for kids, and then they have kids that are usually in the high school age and maybe even 19 and 20 years old who come in. A lot of them are in the foster system and have a chance to share my experience and story with them.
Whenever I do go to share, Rich Dad Poor Dad is one of the books, I’ll buy 25 to 30 of them, bring them in a box, and pitch the book, if you will, pitched that first seed that it was for you. It was a first seed for me. I think I was 17 or 18 when I read it for the first time. I don’t know if that is going to sprout in germinate. It’s only been happening for the last 4 or 5 years, but I’m confident that the information in Rich Dad Poor Dad, it’s been life-changing for me and I do my best to try to bring that to other people whenever I get the chance.
Ben: Yeah. And it was a special moment for me that I get to spend time with Sharon because it allows me to say thank you and show my gratitude towards her. We had such a special moment when she came on my show because she saw that it wasn’t thanking her like you changed my life. It was thanking her that you inspired me because everyone out there, you have to do it on their own, you can’t really rely on anyone. That’s what I did, I did it on my own. I didn’t come from money. I was just in a position where I was driven and hungry to become who I am today and she inspired me. The ability to take a step back and thank her and tell her how much I appreciate her and what she did for me was just a really special moment for me. This past few weeks.
Dan: Cool. If we could go back in time, 28 years, you’re about to start in commercial real estate in your career, knowing everything you know now, Ben, what is the crown jewel of wisdom that you would take back and share with yourself at that point?
Ben: At that point, I would say work on yourself. Look at your deficiencies and double down on how you improve and work on yourself. Work on your confidence and know that you’re good enough, you’re good enough, and you’re just as great as everyone else. All of us Dan, have different DNA we’re all special. Just having the ability to recognize that and understand me and say, “Okay, here are my insecurities, here are my deficiencies. I’m going to double down and work on them.” If I would’ve known that as a young man, oh my God, I can’t imagine who I’d be today. But I’m very grateful for how far I’ve come. It wouldn’t change a thing. I would definitely tell myself to work on myself.
Dan: Ben, what is the kindest thing anyone has ever done for you?
Ben: I think I look at my mother, there are so many people that I’m thankful for, that I’m grateful for, but my mother was the one who encouraged me in business saying, “You can do it. Keep with it. Don’t quit and just stay focused and keep pushing forward.” I owe that to her, especially when you’re young and people are putting thoughts in your head and you’re not good enough. You need that extra moral support. That was one of the best things that ever happened to me.
Dan: Good stuff. Ben, where can people listen go to find more information about you or Alliance or anywhere else that you would point people?
Ben: Sure. If you go to benreinberg.com, you’ll be able to follow me on all social media platforms. We have an entire staff posting all day and we do great content and reels and it’s all about adding value. If you want to learn about real estate and even commercial real estate, I do a lot of content creation for social media, and it’s all about adding value and helping you learn from start to finish how to get involved in real estate. You can also go on to any platform list of my show Ben Reinberg: I OWN IT if you want to really become a well-rounded businessman or woman out there or just personal life as well.
Then you can go to my company’s website, alliancecgc.com, that’s alliancecgc.com and which will allow you to see, and learn about commercial real estate. You can see testimonials on us. If you want to invest in our brand new fund, the Alliance Medical Property Fund, it’s the hottest fund on the market. It’s phenomenal. You can reach out to us, DM me, or do whatever you want to do, if you’re looking to passively invest in medical office space and really build wealth with us, we’ll show you how to do it so that’s the best way to engage with me.
Dan: All right. Cool. Well, hey Ben, I appreciate your time here. I got a couple of pages of notes. I had a good time. I appreciate you coming to the show.
Ben: All right, thanks, bud.
Audio: Thank you for listening to this episode of the REI Diamond Show with Dan Breslin. To receive email notifications of new weekly episodes, sign up at www.reidiamonds.com.
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