Experience Financial Independence - Brandon Rooks - Rockstar Capital Development Group, GP & LP

SPEAKER_00 0:04

This is the Beyond the Story Podcast. A show that goes way beyond the story. Brandon, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Sebastian. It's great to have you here. You and I met uh earlier this year in uh Las Vegas for the Super Bowl. Uh we were uh we were up in the air. 58 floors up in the air. That was a good time there. So great to finally connect here. We had chatted back then about getting you on getting you on the show and uh we're finally able to make that happen. So I sure appreciate you taking a few minutes out of your day to hang out with me here on the Beyond the Story podcast. Love telling people a story. I love backing up a little bit and going back to the beginning of the story. I know that you're actively involved in the world of real estate investing and you help people do some really cool things within that space. Excited to learn more about that. But before we get into that, let's help our listeners better understand a little bit more about you and your backstory and what really brought you to present day on what you're doing.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

Oh, crap. Um, all right. Well, I grew up poor and uh uh divorcing parents, my mom remarried military, got moved all over the country. Um, I learned from an early on age that if I ever wanted something that all my friends had, I would have to work for it. So, I mean, I started working and you know, mowing lawns and picking up sticks and shoveling driveways and running a lemonade stand, but I sold comic books and cookies at the same time. I wasn't just doing lemonade, and I think it was just always ingrained in me. And I also did door-to-door sales, like at nine and 10 years old, selling out of a catalog, you know, and I just I've it comes natural. I love it, but you know, the I knew that being in sales was a way that I could get whatever I wanted, and you know, went through the gamut of living in multiple states. I've lived in 15 states, probably three times as many cities. Uh, I went right into the Navy, right out of high school, and did six years in the Navy, served three tours in the Persian Gulf. I'm a Desert Storm War veteran. And um, yeah, I just uh I was in the advanced electronic warfare field. I had a top streak of clearance, top secret clearance, and I got out of the Navy and I hated electronics. I was like, I don't ever want to look at another troubleshooting diagram or a piece of electronic component component equipment ever again in my life. And I went right into sales. I sold cars during the day, MCI long distance at night, and I started a mobile disc jockey company with my buddy that also got out of the Navy when we lived a little bit north of Denver, Colorado. And it was really a sales career. Um, and it just kind of morphed. You know, I stepped into I got headhunted into a couple other sales industries. I ended up in the mortgage industry in 2000. And from 2000 to 2006, I shot out letters to all of my water treatment system clients, my people I sold cars to, people I sold MCI to, because I kept a list of all my clients. And we also owned a small tanning salon in our town that I opened up for my wife to run. And uh, we sent letters out to there, and I never made a cold call after 2000. I sent out letters. I started making six figures a year in the mortgage industry. I got connected with a contact that was bringing me turnkey rental and properties that they were building. And I gave all of their clients an interest rate that was on average 1% lower than any other lender in the country. And a lot of people are like, How the hell did you do that? Well, I wasn't greedy. So what I did is I charged a point and a half up front, and then I gave everybody a par rate. So, in other words, I was the mortgage lender that didn't try to make money off the bank. I tried to give every client the lowest possible rate I could, which meant I was going to be saving those clients money thousands and thousands of dollars over the life of their loan. So that made a better investment for them. A lot of my clients, you know, that was in 2000 to 2006. A lot of my clients were able to retain their properties they bought, where a lot of investors lost what they bought because they had a higher rate, 5% down. They were just in a worse type of loan, right? So that's really kind of how I got into uh that aspect of it. And then I got headhunted into selling multiple, you know, large projects. Um we'll kind of stop there because that's quite a lot of information. You can you can pose other questions, but well, yeah, I know.

SPEAKER_00 4:44

So, what I mean, you know, uh that that's how you got into the real estate world and and and uh which which which makes sense on you. You kind of found your groove uh within the mortgage space on here. When did the whole real estate you also help people find money for investments too, correct? Not just I do okay, cool. So let's talk about what's going on present day.

SPEAKER_01 5:05

Present day. So um being in investment real estate since 2000 and living in multiple states myself, I've made a lot of connections across the country. And I never charge any of my clients a fee. I only help them find investment opportunities that'll make them money. And I make my money from either the seller or the provider or you know, whoever I'm bringing them to. So that's one of the differences between me and a lot of other people when they go to look to invest, and they may be charged fees to do it. And that's one thing that I definitely did not want to do. And I'm not greedy either. So I'm always trying to find the best deal I can. I'll work down the seller, I'll work down the provider, I'll work up a higher uh rate of return for my clients. And it's it's never been about me and the money I would make. It's always been about how do I help my clients get a better deal than they would get through anybody else that's in any kind of the industry I'm in. So what happened is from about 2000 after the real estate collapse, which hey, that that kicked me in the ding ding just as bad. Yeah, you know, I lost, I lost about five and a half million dollars in 08. I had I was all in in one area. I had 80 million dollars in projects under contract with a hedge fund down in Lake of the Ozarks, Central Missouri. It's a resort retirement, second home destination. A lot of Kansas City Royals and Chiefs and movie stars have homes there, right? And uh when the market collapsed, that place just turned into a ghost town. And everything I had under contract went completely out of contract. But basically, I got back into the business in 2010, just started, you know, helping people find uh ready-to-build lots that they could buy cheap, that they would sit on and wait. And then we got back into the turnkey rental, and I was finding renovators and new construction builders across the country. And then I partnered with somebody in 2014, Buller River Developments and Astero Developments, and they were just building a handful of properties in a couple of different markets, and I it was really that partnership that came together that was kind of like these guys are going somewhere, and I've slowly filtered away a lot of the other affiliates and stuff that I helped raise capital for because I have the investors, I have people that want to invest, but where do they put their money to invest? And I saw the opportunity with these guys, and it kind of became a thing. At first, I was raising capital for my investors, and we put it together in a first lien lending deal on new construction projects that they were building. Then eventually it's like, okay, we have way too many people doing this. So I created the Rockstar Capital Fund, and that was a way to bring all of my investors into one house so that I could be the one facilitating all the transactions and it sped up our process and it allowed us to simplify and streamline and grow. And then we became pretty damn popular and soon learned that one fund wasn't enough. So we had to open up a second fund, and we actually had to open up a third fund, um, which I can explain a little bit later. But in essence, what we do now is investors come to Rockstar Capital, they invest with us, and that can be anywhere from you know, it starts as low as $10,000, which is kind of nice. You know, not a lot of uh opportunities out there are that low. Um, for the accredited investors and for a little higher return, you start at $50,000 and you get an a preferred annual return. So as soon as you invest, I put that money to work in these entities. We're the bank, we're the lender, and we start earning a really nice interest rate because they're my general partners and because they know that we're striving to always ensure that our clients make 15% annualized return on their money or better. So everything we have structured is designed to ensure that our clients will make 15% return or better. And when you invest with us, all we're funding is dirt. So people are like, what do you mean? I'm like, we fund their land acquisitions for their build for rent. We fund their raw ground acquisitions that they take through the entitlement process and get it permitted, and then they sell it off to some of the top 25 national builders in the country. So Rockstar is in and out at dirt or in and out at land, which is beautiful because there's not a lot you can do to screw up land, you know, and it's also one of the highest profit centers I've ever seen in the in the real estate industry. So the long and the short of it is it's nice when it in a time when everybody's watching their stocks, you know, take a hit, take a beating, their 401ks are like losing money, their crypto just, you know, we all know what that did, right? You can invest in our fund, and the principal investment never goes down because we keep it lending, we keep it working, we keep it moving in land and dirt, which is always stable, will always go up in value. And if you're taking land to a point where someone can build on it, the profit center is just it's huge. So very simple. You invest with us, you start earning regular quarterly distributions, plus the way I have everything structured, there's profit sharing on top of that. Now, just to give you a little example, I won't talk about what we're expecting on the other funds, I'll talk about what fund one did. Sure. Fund one was was opened at the very end of 2018. So I really started capital raising in 2019. And by the end of 2019, we'd raised 10 million, closed the fund, I put all that money to work. All of our investors earned 12% return in 2019 in fund one. In 2020, during COVID, there was profit sharing and they earned 15% total that year. Last year, still dealing with COVID aftermath, everybody earned 16.5% in the fund. And guess what? If they invested 100K, that 100k is still worth 100K. And guess what? If they wanted to sell their shares for $100,000, we'll let them sell their shares. They'll stop earning 16 and a half plus percent return, but they can sell their shares for $100,000. I don't take any fees, cash them out. Somebody else, believe me, we'll take their shares because that is already up to where it's doing regular profit sharing. So, you know, when I when I looked at setting up funds, I looked at the things I didn't like about other funds. I didn't like that some locked you in and you couldn't get out if you had, you know, an emergency without paying penalties and fees and and deducting what you'd earn and taking losses. You know, well, if something happens to one of my clients and they call on me and they're like, Brandon, I'm I'm having, you know, my business is taking a crash. This and this, I really could be able used to be able to get some of this money back out. I'm like, okay, well, do you want to sell some of your shares or all of your shares? And, you know, they tell me, and this is pretty rare. I've had had it a few times. Um, and I'm like, that's fine. I said let's figure out the most you need, or the, you know, whatever. So anyway, I turn around and sell the shares for face value. I don't take any fees. They get their money back within probably two to four weeks, depending on, you know, the process. But uh, they know that they can come to me and they're not stuck, you know, and they're not and they're not waiting three to five years to see some money come back to them, right? There's a lot of real estate deals like that. There's a lot of funds where you don't see the the pop until five years later. You know, there's a lot of funds you don't see regular quarterly distributions. You might get one a year. There's a lot of funds that uh lock you in and and charge you all kinds of penalties and interest uh or you know deductions when you leave. And I just looked at all at all the things I didn't like about the fund world because I like to be different. You know me, you've met me, right? I'm not your average cat. And uh I just call myself kind of like the blue jeans investor, you know. I come from nothing. You know, I remember times when my mom told us we were only allowed to use four squares of toilet paper to wipe our ass. I mean, that's how poor we were, right? And it doesn't matter to me if you're a big investor, a savvy investor, you can invest a million or or more with me. It doesn't matter if you're an investor that's just starting out and you can only invest 10K. I believe I was put on this planet to help other people achieve their financial goals, no matter how big or small. And when I set this up, it's like everything's been culminating and coming up to this. And now I'm in, I've been in the real estate game for 22 years, and I'm more excited now about what we're doing than I've ever been because you always there's always going to be new homes going up. That number might rise or lower, but there's always gonna be new homes going up all across America. We have a shortage of about five and a half to six and a half million homes right now, and the builders can't even get back to pace to keep up with just annual demand because of all the COVID aftermath, supply chain disruptions, material shortages, labor shortages. You know, they're supposed to build about 2 million homes a year. And last year they they permitted 1.6, they closed on 1.2, which means that's about an 800,000 unit deficit in any given year. So the number just keeps climbing. Yeah, but you can't, you got to start with land. We're now dealing with the big boys, I'm not dealing with small local builders, custom builders, you know, regionals. When we do business, we're dealing with the big boys, the guys that have to continue to give a return to their shareholders. You don't just go to, you know, DR Horton doesn't just go, well, we're just gonna stop building for six months. Doesn't happen. If they stop, uh it's so many people are affected. The machine, you know, it crumbles. Um, it's almost that too big of a failure. They have to always continue to build. They have employees, they have staff, they have shareholders. So that's a lot of information. I feel like 15 minutes is never enough.

SPEAKER_00 15:34

No, that you know, that that's exactly what I wanted to better understand how this whole process works. I I remember I'm pretty sure you were you sponsored the event we were at in Vegas, and you got up.

SPEAKER_01 15:44

I was one of the sponsors.

SPEAKER_00 15:45

Yeah, yeah. And you got up and you shared, you know, you did your your your elevator pitch there, and I thought that's extremely interesting as far as you know the average person being able to say, you know what, uh, I'm able to invest $10,000. Uh, I may not be an accredited investor, but I have an opportunity to do it, and it's a solid opportunity and it's transparent and it's not like the norm, like you said, you can put some money into some of these things and you're sitting and waiting. In fact, you probably forget about it after a couple of a couple of years on here. But this is something where you can you can take action uh with as little as $10,000 and be able to get into the game of investing outside the norms of the stock market in 401ks. I just think that's absolutely brilliant. I look forward to uh to get in the mix with that. Now, you mentioned um the other two funds too. What purpose do those serve?

SPEAKER_01 16:30

So exact same thing. We just didn't have uh we closed fund one because when you set up a fund, you you have um certain criteria for certain funds and went to an attorney and said, This is what we want to do when we set up a fund. He said, I recommend, since you have some non-accredited investors that you already work with, which by the way, when you as a non-accredited investor, you can invest with this, but we do have to create a relationship. I do have to do some transactions or a transaction with you outside of the fund first, which that's okay. I there's always a way, right? Sure. And I have opportunities to make that happen so that we build a relationship. And I I want to point out real quick, that's important to me too. I don't mass market any of my funds. I don't just want to work with any Tom, Dick, Harry, or Sally that says, Oh, I heard about you, I saw you, I want to invest with you. I want to get to know every single investor that invests with me. I want to have a personal conversation with them. A Zoom meeting is great, or they come meet us at any of the one events that we sponsor or you know, that I attend during the year. But I kind of lose face. So the fund one closed out at 10. It was a 506B. We rate we raised to a certain amount that was set for the fund. And once we did that, we closed the fund. So, but we still had a machine that was growing. My partners that are doing land development and build for rent were just, I mean, multiplying. Uh they have goals of finishing 800 to a thousand properties a year for the build-to-rent space. That's a lot of properties. That doesn't make these little guys. And then on the land development side, I mean, Lindsay, Mr. Lindsay Jarvis is in negotiations right now with, let's just say, one of the top builders in the country for a package of 6,000 lots. Keeping in mind the average lot price sold at dirt level, um, that's permitted, shovel ready. You know, we don't even put in any of the infrastructure, sells for around $30,000 a lot. And they have 15,000 lots under their control right now. But you can do run the numbers since that's $450 million, right? Rockstar is only a small part of that. Now they um so basically we had to open the second fund. So I went to another attorney because I was gonna set something up in Florida. We do a lot of business on the East Coast in Charlotte, Charleston, Southwest Florida. And I set up a fund there. And he goes, Well, I think you need a 506C. And a 506C means accredited investors only. We're looking for investors that can bring a minimum of 50,000, you know, um, are used to doing this. And I did this based on I knew that I'd be talking to people with more and more money, um, like family offices or private equity groups and things like that. So he recommended that. And then what happened is this became so popular and we started having so many referrals. Some of my clients that are accredited or some that are not accredited, like wanting to send me referrals or they're wanting to invest more. And I'm like, oh crap, well, you can't invest in this fund of 506 because you have to be accredited and it has to be a 50k minimum. So he opened up another fund to mimic fund one, right? And then before we even hit 3.5 million raised, I hit 35 non-accredited investors. I'm like, and that's the cap. So I actually had to open up fund four, which is just like fund three and fund one. Now I went to my attorney, I'm like, dude, uh, do you just do this so that I have to continue to use you and pay you to set up new funds and it keeps you on the payroll? And he goes, Well, no, he goes, I don't. And I says, Is there a better way? Right? Because I'm always looking how how can we do this better? And he goes, You really need a reg A fund, which I won't I don't want to let the cat out of the bag, but uh that's what I'm working on now, which if all goes well, a reggae fund allows me to merge all of the investors from all the funds into one. I no longer have a cap on how much I can raise. Well, actually, it's like 75 million a year, which is more than I intend to raise. Um, I don't have a cap on how many non-accredited investors can be in my fund. And I can market that fund to everybody, like the Apex Network, Insider Investor Club Network, some of the networks that you're very familiar with. Um, do podcasts like this, and you know, if and go through that. Anyone that, of course, comes to me that's listening to you, I want them to say, Hey, I heard John Sebastian's podcast, right? So I want to uh it so anyway, I'm working on that. And that will simplify and streamline everything. And what's really great about it is it means I cut down on registrations, bookkeeping, QuickBooks, bank accounts, tax returns, company entities, EINs, yada, yada, yada. It it shrinks our overall expense so I can deliver more profit to my clients. It allows me to increase the preferred return, it allows me to increase the profit sharing back to the investors. So invest now, and it's only gonna get better. And if you have any thoughts about it at all, just remember that you basically get to be the bank. If you invest with us, we're the bank. We finance or lend to my general partners and we hold note or a mortgage or an assignment of contract, and we have some controls. So even if all hell breaks. Loose and construction comes to a screeching halt, we still control the dirt. And you know, it's it would it mean some changes? Yes. But you know what? If all construction came to a halt in America, we've got bigger problems than where your money is sitting at that point in time, right? So yeah, um, I I hope that's not rambling. No, it's gonna get excited about it.

SPEAKER_00 22:29

No, I know that you know the goal. I mean, number one, I want to connect further with you. Number two, I want to get you on the show and talk about what you do. Number three, I wanted to learn how it all works or at least a good overview, good 30,000-foot perspective. And you have been impeccable at being able to describe it. I mean, fact, it's on my now, I it's now on my list. Get in the mix with Brandon Rooks uh and uh and my friends over at Rockstar Capital Fund. By the way, you're listening to this right now, you're thinking this is something I've been looking to do, didn't know where to start. RockstarCapitalFund.com. For more information, that link's gonna be available in the show notes. You'll be able to also be able to connect with Brandon over on LinkedIn and on socials. I'll be sure to include the links on there. Uh Brandon, I I I'm sure this is um the first of many conversations uh you and I are gonna have. So I'm excited to continue to get to know you, better understand um what you guys are up to and how I I personally can get in the mix uh as I venture off and enter into my world of uh you know investing, uh, et cetera. So, which is all somewhat new uh for me as my business continues to grow. So I'm excited about all that. Any uh any uh final thoughts for our listeners?

SPEAKER_01 23:33

No, I am gonna put my uh uh my cell phone and my personal email address in your chat, which I just did. Perfect. And I'll go ahead and type out the uh rockstarcapitalfund.com. Um, you know, you can go to the website, it's pretty interactive. If you're an accredited investor, you can actually go right in to the investor portal and view the PPM and the docs and a PowerPoint and uh a webinar that we did with me and Mr. Lindsay Jarvis and Vanessa Peters, which is one of my GPs. But um, I want to speak with everyone personally. So if you if you have questions, shoot me an email at Brandon at Rockstar Capital Fund.com. What I'll do is I'll have Dylan Rooks, which is my son uh that works for me, is also our client relations manager. Sebastian, you met him as well. He's also a singer-songwriter. He's got he goes by Kez, K-E-Z-Z. He's got about 28 tracks out there on Spotify, Apple, and streaming. So yeah, go look him up. Kez, that's my boy. Um, sorry, I had to plug him. And uh um basically, yeah, just reach out to me and let's get on a call. Let's get a call set up. Dylan will work with you guys to get a call set up. I want to answer any and all questions. And you know, it it this is when things like this happen in America, it's not a time to run and hide. And I'm hearing so many different investment gurus or mastermind gurus or financial advisors say, hold your cash, you know, don't, you know, just reserve your cash, don't invest. Which there's always opportunity. And there's usually more opportunity uh in the streets when there's blood in the streets. I'm sure you've heard that before, right? Yeah, uh, when everybody else is running scared, that's when your opportunity arises. And so what we do is so simple, and it's actually not sexy, it's kind of boring. We just we're the bank and we fund dirt. And you know, but guess what? It pays really well. And uh yeah, you know, I I look forward to um, you know, talking with anybody on this. We love doing doing what we do. Um, it's a passion of mine. And again, I my goal is always how do I make it better? How do I help all of my clients reach their financial goals? And I will take as much time with them as they want. I mean, I'm pretty much always available. Um, I don't know what to do with myself if I'm not working, I'm sure you understand. Um, which is why sometimes we're up at 5:30 in the morning for roll call. And uh because I can get more work done from 5:30 to 9 before I start getting bombarded with calls and emails and texts and Facebook messages and LinkedIn messages and WhatsApp messages and all this stuff. Yeah. So that's when I, you know, we get up and we start creating work, right? Sure. But uh man, I just love talking with new people. I I want people to know you don't have to be afraid. Um, you know, there's great opportunities to invest in, but the only way you hear about us is through a referral or somebody like Sebastian, absolutely doing a podcast. You know, I don't just mass market, I want all of my relationships to be organic and I want it to come from, you know, someone says, Man, I know a guy you need to invest with, and this guy's a rock star, and then you know, yeah, we can talk more about that later. I know we got two minutes to the to uh the 15-minute mark.

SPEAKER_00 26:55

So um any other questions for me? Or no, that was it. That was great, man. That was a wealth of information. I'm excited, I'm encouraged. I look forward to having some further conversations about what's possible with us working together. If you're listening to this right now and you know me, reach out to me. I'll make a personal introduction to Brandon and his team. Make sure you guys connect and uh we'll go from there. Brandon, thanks for taking some time to hang out here. Look forward to connecting uh even further on here, and we'll have to have you back on the show at some point.

SPEAKER_01 27:20

Be happy to. And when do I see you next?

SPEAKER_00 27:23

I I'm headed to Dallas tomorrow, but I don't know if you're gonna be in Dallas tomorrow. But I won't be there.

SPEAKER_01 27:28

Are you gonna make the uh IIC August 25th, 26th event?

SPEAKER_00 27:33

Is that are they welcoming non-members? Not a member. It oh well, you know, you know, Jeff. You were there, so let's let's take a look. Yes, absolutely. I look forward to sooner rather than later, I guess is the right answer there.

SPEAKER_01 27:45

Sooner rather than later. I will be at the uh Apex Live uh August 11th.

SPEAKER_00 27:49

I'll be in Hawaii somewhere, but um yeah, won't make that one, but that's a good excuse not to make it, right?

SPEAKER_01 27:56

Hey, I lived there for two years, Eva Beach on Oahu. Yeah, as part of my Navy deployment. Um, Hawaii was nice, great place to visit. I don't think I could live there. Not much going on there. It's a busy, packed, expensive island, and uh man, I just traveling from there to come back to the States to do all the things that we do wouldn't be that I don't like obviously, none of us like flying commercial right now, so yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:23

Not looking forward to looking forward to the cruise, though. That that that is for sure. Hey, thanks again, Brandon. Blast. Sebastian, we'll talk to you soon, buddy. Absolutely. Until next time, friends. Until next time, friends. Until next time. Damn it, Brandon. Let me close the show out. Until next time, friends. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of the Beyond the Story podcast. Be sure to appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show. This way you'll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined, please leave us a review. Be sure to appreciate it. Signing off from the podcast, LaunchLab.com studios. We'll talk to you next time.