Ep47: The Ultimate Retirement Investing System with Parker Pursell

[00:00:00] Parker Pursell
The control piece is great, but at the same time, you have to know how to vet deals. You have to do due diligence. You have to understand how to vet the operator. There's so much more that goes out there on both ends. I've seen big wins and I've seen really bad losses, and people left calling us like, I need help.

[00:00:17] Podcast Intro
You are working professional but struggling to balance the workload of your career, family obligations, and preparing for your financial future. If so, this podcast is for you. You've spent years learning your craft, and now it's time to focus on your financial future. This podcast will teach you what you need to retire wealthy and happy. Let's dive in.

[00:00:40] Roger Jacobsen
Welcome to the Retire Wealthy and Happy podcast today. Anthony and I are hosting Parker Pursell that is the CEO of eQRP. 

[00:00:48] Parker Pursell
Welcome to the show, Parker. Thanks guys for having me on. 

[00:00:51] Roger Jacobsen
Why don't you start off by telling us a little bit about what you do and what you've done and your history and stuff.

[00:00:57] Parker Pursell
Yeah. So currently I serve as CEO of the eQRP where our mission is really to just empower financial transformation in our members lives. And we do that via way of the self directed retirement industry. And how I got here come from a family of entrepreneurs born, raised in rural Alabama. I live here in Birmingham right now, but our family grew up 110 year family fertilizer business. So that's where I kind of saw the entrepreneurial journey of my grandfather and my father really play out. So sitting at the dinner tables and watching them make decisions, go through kind of the seasons of entrepreneurship. But we ended up selling our company in 2006 to a company in Canada. And really what got us to that point was. As we had started off really with a cotton gin back with my great grandfather and grew it into this, I'll call it the apple of fertilizer. That's what the product was to the market. My dad had this creative idea to build a golf course to sell our product. And so typically an industry that's riddled with just a lot of friction with your golf course superintendents, they work 12, 15 hour days, their labor, they're always short staffed.

[00:02:11]
They're always dealing with budgets. Like, when did they ever have an opportunity to buy and think about buying something that could help make their product, which is the course that they serve better. And so we just saw a massive opportunity to really change the way that the selling was done. And so my father said, Hey, we're going to take our corporate headquarters out to our farm. We have a 3200 acre farm here in Alabama, and we moved. The corporate headquarters out there and then we built a golf course and now the whole ploy with that was to bring them out of their environment and take them to us for a three day, two night experience to where we had all our product out on the golf course. So think of it as like a living laboratory and it was always fun 1st. So when these people got out there, they were like, Hey, 1st things 1st is we're going to get you a nice fat steak. You're going to get a great night's sleep. You're going to. Wake up feeling rested and then first thing tomorrow morning.

[00:03:03]
We're gonna go play some golf and they're like, oh man, like That's gonna be awesome And so as they played each hole had either a different type of grass a different blend of grass with different Application of our fertilizer on it. So as they're playing it was also educational so our superintendents and staff was out there telling them about what was happening and And so not only were they getting to have fun, they were actually getting to see the product that we were trying to sell them on the thing that they managed on their day to day. And so we ran that whole strategy for about three years, had over a 90 percent conversion rate, you know, of prospects to clients or new customers, and that's when we sold in 2006. After that happened, we were really left with an opportunity to figure out what's next. And we never actually saw ourselves selling the business, but you know, sometimes somebody says, I'll never sell it.

[00:03:56]
Well, everybody's got their number and a company made it an offer. We couldn't refuse and de risk ourselves. And that happened in 2006. And obviously a couple of years later, you know, what happened in the 08 financial crisis. So it was really a blessing in disguise for us. So for the next 10 years, we were really trying to kind of figure out what we were going to do with all those assets on our property. And, you know, at the time when it sold, I was freshmen, sophomore in high school. And so I went off to Auburn University, got my degree there in marketing. And while we're kind of in the middle of figuring it out, I went and started working for Chick fil A. And wanted to go learn how to run a business myself. And so for three years I spent in Pensacola, Florida, ran a store down there, general manager down there, essentially, and got to travel the country, open up stores across the country, which was really fun, great learning experience and wanted to go be an operator. That's kind of was my goal of what I wanted to go do.

[00:04:53]
But then my father came back and started talking about, okay, I figured out what we're going to do next. And I'm like, all right, well. What is this? And so I remember coming home and being on the kitchen counter, he has all these plans laid out on the table. And my dad's a visionary by nature. Like if you can't see back here, like in the corner, he's an artist. So he draws golfers. This is Tom Watson. It's signed right there, but he's got probably 20, 30 different things that he's drawn and they're hanging up in the Butler cabin in Augusta National, the World Golf Village. Like he's very renowned in what he's done. He's done it for a passion never sold. But he says, Parker, look. We're going to build a hotel and I'm like, what you're going to do what he's like, we're going to build a hotel and we're just going to continue doing what we do best, which is love on people and serve people. And really, that was the foundation of our fertilizer business. And the way that we had built it was around hospitality.

[00:05:44]
So it made sense, but obviously. We were like, all right, now we're going to go get into the resort business, hospitality business full time. So then there's that FOMO that kicked in for me. You know, I'm working at Chick fil A. I'm grinding out. I'm loving what I'm doing. It's awesome. And then I'm like, feeling this pull to want to come back and help my dad, like build this dream that he's done. And so. I ended up leaving and going back to the farm, work with him for four years, getting that up and running and COVID hits 2020. And obviously everybody else's world blows up in their own way. And so for me, I kind of got to a point where I said, okay, I've got to pivot in my own mind. I saw my dad and my grandfather build this thing. I saw them get to a place that I was very fortunate growing up to where I had all the resources to be successful. I took advantage of every opportunity given to me, but. I didn't know how they got to where they did. They didn't really teach me money management skills in the sense of like, Hey, I'm going to teach you all the unique and creative ways that you can use money to help position you to where you want to get to.

[00:06:46]
And I was kind of left answering that question for myself, had a great work ethic, but just didn't know how to apply that, especially when it came to money. And so I said, I just really want to go take a bet on myself and go figure this out. So I went and jumped into the unemployment pool and was unemployed for about eight months, went and pressure washed with a buddy of mine and really felt like I had a clean start on figuring out what I want to do next. And I love what we do at our family business. Don't get me wrong. Still a part of it and help in a lot of different ways. But I had this opportunity to eQRP come up and I didn't know what it was at the time. And honestly didn't even know an IRA or 401k really was I'd heard of it, but never contributed to 1.

[00:07:23]
I was like, oh, well, didn't really have much faith that that was going to get me to where I wanted to go just by dumping your 6, 000 in a year or doing your company 401k match. And. Like I said, there's gotta be another way to help propel me further faster. And so when this opportunity came, I just saw a place for me to build, grow, use my entrepreneurial skills. I'm a builder by nature. I wouldn't say I'm much of a visionary. I am on some capacity by just like efficiency systems processes. So I came in and helped three years ago. My first day was actually November 2nd of 2020, which was the day that the elections happened. And from there, just kind of fast forward, 3 years later, I'm now running the company with an amazing opportunity to work with great people and my life has changed because of it. I've learned more about money in these past 3 years than I did in the first 30 years of my life. And I would attribute that to the people, people like yourselves, right? You got podcasts, you've got different types of education that's out there. You got people. That are doing things. Don't get me wrong. I don't necessarily like to listen to people who talk a lot versus, hey, show me what you're actually doing and show me how you got there.

[00:08:32]
And those 3 years for me have just transformed my life. And so for us being in the, now we get to help people take part of their financial legacy per se. And then they're wrestling with all the same questions that we do. Right. But they might say, well, I don't have money to invest in real estate. Well, that's not true. Like if you've been contributing to retirement accounts your whole life, well, yeah, it's like, okay, well now you have access to hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe sitting on the side. And are you comfortable with how it's performing? Well, no. Okay. Well, do you like real estate? Right. Do you like all these different options? Like, well, yeah. Have you wanted to invest in it? Well, yeah. It's like, okay, well, these opportunities out here, the greatest investors in the world, they aren't a one trick pony with how they got to where they did. Right. They may have a portion of it there, but they invested in businesses. They invested in real estate.

[00:09:20]
They had this whole strategy of how they preserve and also grow themselves. And so you have to let go of your paradigms, and I had to do that. I had to let go of what I thought. I had to let go of really some deep seated fundamental beliefs, but they weren't mine. They were somebody else's. And in that process, I had to figure that out. Like, when someone would say, Hey, go take a cash out refile in your house and go invest in this. I'm like, whoa, like, that's bad. But let go of that. How might this be beneficial? Could this actually get you to where you want to go? Is there another way? And so I started taking these steps and doing it now. I'm like, man, if I continued with that way of thinking now, it's saying wisdom and discernment or like, you still need that in your life. But like, if I kept that type of thinking, I wouldn't have gotten to where I did. So hopefully that gives you a clear picture of who I am, what I do. And I'm a, I said, I just born in Alabama, just love to work hard. Love my college football. Like a good cup of coffee in the morning and just love to help people who fundamentally are where I saw myself three years ago and get to help them kind of explain their journey and guide them to financial transformation, which is awesome. It's a great story. It's pretty incredible.

[00:10:31] Anthony Esparza
I'm a little bit younger than both of you guys. You guys are both still pretty young, but you kind of grew up in the entrepreneurial space and took some time for yourself to find your way. What are some of those key things? I don't know if you have You can summarize it or there's a few key points, but where are the big things about money that when you learned about him, it flipped that switch in your head and started looking at it a little bit differently.

[00:10:55] Parker Pursell
I think there's a couple of things that money is the only thing I feel that in this world is comes without a operating manual in terms of. If you give a dollar to a child, then they're like left to kind of figure out what they want to do with it. Right. But if I give them a Lego set, it comes with a manual. If there's anything else that they need to give them a car, it comes with a manual. But money, when you give it to them, it's like, oh, well, what do I do? So, principally, I think that first off, money, we have to recognize that we're stewards of it. It's not ours to begin with. Therefore, how might we manage this in a way that can help preserve and protect us? But I think that's like the most important thing first, what's your filter for determining how you use that money? And I didn't have a clear filter starting off. I saw it modeled for me, but applicably, scared money doesn't make money either. So you can't save your way to wealth. There's no way you can do that.

[00:11:50]
Like, I'm 33. When you're younger, we have more opportunity to take risk. And it's really not that bad. Like, my first investment that I did, 50, 000 ended up losing. Like, just was like, well, dang, like, that sucked. I remember after it happened, like, I called Damien, who's the founder of our company, and I was wrestling with it, just the emotional side of the loss, and said, like, hey, like, I just need some help knowing it's going to be okay. And so he was like, Hey Parker, do you have a great family? And I was like, yeah, you have a house to live in? Yeah. It's like, can you pay your bills? I'm like, yeah. He's like, well, then what are you worried about? It's like, it's just part of the game. And he said, you're going to continue to lose. This isn't the first time, but just consider it an MBA you just got. And I was like, oh, so I think that for me, it was like one of the big structures is knowing that like scared money doesn't make money. And when you're younger, you can take more risks than you can, the order you get. All risk is, is lack of experience doing anything right? Skydiver that goes for the first time considers it risky. A skydiver that's done it 10, 000 times like, oh, it's just another thing. Right. So I like that outlook. That's really good. 

[00:12:52] Roger Jacobsen
Yeah. I got a MBA on losing money just, just last year.

[00:12:54] Parker Pursell
How much has your MBA cost you in the course of your investing career? 

[00:13:00] Roger Jacobsen
I've had a really good career and I've done. A slower movement through doing a lot of construction, so it's been always a lot of me adding elbow grease to the deals. Yeah, it's not been as big because there's also that wage that gets added into it. But usually it's much more cut and dry than what it ended up being more recently. 

[00:13:24] Anthony Esparza
So yeah, my MBA isn't too expensive, but hopefully I can get it over with quickly. Right. So I can start getting back on the upside. 

[00:13:34] Roger Jacobsen
That's great. So why don't we go more into self directed accounts, what types there are, how people can use them, different kinds and such.

[00:13:42] Parker Pursell
Yeah. So the self directed retirement industry, when most people hear it, how it's traditionally pitched to you, especially if you're coming from a company sponsored plan or you've got a financial planner, right? Like what the self directed will say is, okay, well you can pick and choose your Like you can self direct that it's like, okay, well, I've seen over the past three years, especially when 2020 happened, this whole new surge for self directed retirement in the alternative investment space. That's what people are really looking for, right? Like when they say self directed, they're like, no, I want to actually put my retirement dollars to work in alternative asset classes. Like real estate, like oil and gas or private lending, single family, you name it. There's all sorts of things that you can do now for your listeners. If you're wondering like, okay, well, how is this different from my company sponsored plan that I have?

[00:14:36]
And can I actually even do it? The short answer is yes, you can self directed IRAs are really easy to open and self directed 401ks are really easy to open the difference between the two is that the IRA is more of like anybody can get into the self directed 401k is for individuals who have like. They're side hustlers. They've got their own business. They're solopreneurs. You be high income earners because the 401k limits you can contribute more than you can traditional IRAs. So in that though, begs to answer the question, okay, well, there's two different types of tools. Which one is better? For my strategy, right? And that's another really important question. Well, what do you want to do? I would say, if you're going to go invest in real estate, the 401k route is very beneficial for you. So getting a self directed 401k allows you more flexibility. You can have. Checkbook control over your retirement funds to basically wire money out to these different deals that you get access to.

[00:15:38]
So if Roger, let's just say he was doing a rehab and he's like, Hey, Parker, can you loan me 60, 000? I didn't going to do this flip and I'll have your money back to you in 10 months. So I said, okay, well. Let's set the terms and in a matter of a day, I could wire money out to him from our retirement account. He could go do the work and then I could make 12, 15 percent return on my money. And now in 10 months, I've just taken 60, 000 and made 15%. And then now start thinking if you do that, you know, in perpetuity, how much further that could get you than doing it the traditional way. Hoping it works out right. Nobody's gonna care about your money as much as you do. Therefore when you take control Over your money that gives you more empowerment to say okay It's on me if someone else loses your money you're still left holding the bag so if it was me, I'd rather fall on my own sword and Everybody has the ability to do it If you're telling yourself you can't, that's garbage.

[00:16:37]
Like three years ago, I didn't know what I was doing. I had no idea. And I told myself all those things, ah, like it's just too complicated. Like, ah, like I'll never be able to, I don't know where the deals are. Like you could say whatever you want and why you can't, but the reality is that you can. And it comes by educating yourself and the self directed industry is getting bigger and bigger and bigger because people are losing more faith in the traditional system in and of itself because you're also fighting inflation on the other side of that, right? So if I can have the opportunity to make 15 percent with Roger or maybe even 20 or whatever the opportunity could be. Well, then if you just net out inflation on that, you're ahead versus, well, if I leave it in the stocks and mutual funds or whatever, everybody takes their cut, their fees net, what am I left holding? Okay, well then I got to pay taxes on it at some point. Then you've got the inflation to fight with. So what are you really left with? Right? So you just have to ask questions. That's like so important. 

[00:17:34] Anthony Esparza
I like the things you're saying about self directed because you can take your money, put it over here, compound it. Seems like you can just pull it back over. Traditional, yeah, there's a lot of fees, you're fighting inflation. It's only going to really pay off if you either started really early or if you're in it for 20, 30 years, right?

[00:17:50] Parker Pursell
Yeah, and I'll say this too, like, I'll say it like this. The way we've built our company is on a service based model. Meaning. People like myself, we have 22 people that work in this company that all started off essentially where I did, and we've all grown together financially. We've all grown in education, we've all grown in knowledge, and the people that come in, we get to help take care of all that brain damage for them that comes with, well, how do I do this? I've got all these questions about how this thing works. What about the compliance? Like, you don't even have to worry about that. Because we take care of all that for our people. Really what we're focused on is like, okay, let's get a clear reality of where you're at in terms of your finances. And not only does that mean your retirement accounts, but that also means other things happening because it all bleeds together, right?

[00:18:39]
Because it's all a strategy. And then let's get clear on where you want to go. And then we just help them map that out. So as they're coming across different deals, then we can say, give them guidance. We aren't advisors, but we can say, this is what you can do. This is what you can't do. Well, actually, if you do it this way, then you can do it like that. So we can take deals that are also a no and how they want to do it and then creatively work around it and structure a different way to where they can do the thing that they want. But a lot of times you work with people who are just reading off call sheets or running down their list on, I call them legacy providers. They kind of give you the tool and then you're like, all right, have fun. But that's just not how it works. Like, Roger's like, hey. Parker, here's 60, 000 for a rehab. Good luck. And I'm like, I've got a million different questions. We don't leave our people like off to just do it themselves. We help do it for them and it makes it easier because they can focus on the thing they need to focus on, which is like taking their money and 10xing it.

[00:19:38] Anthony Esparza
So I actually don't have any retirement funds and after listening to you talk for a little while, I'm like, Oh, great. I better go sign up for 1 today. 

[00:19:47] Parker Pursell
Well, here's the good thing is like Realtors. We work with a lot of Realtors. So preneurs, you name it people who earn 1099 income, schedule, see whatever and they need a place to put that money. Right? If you're going to have a massive taxable event, Then you can use a vehicle like this to put money into, and then also go take that and invest it in other people's deals. And that's, what's great. Like for you, you have all this knowledge about real estate where you could take that and then apply it to your retirement funds. And then there's also creative ways for you. Like I'm always a big Roth fan. So if you can get to Roth, meaning obviously no taxes ever, then you can use your real estate professional license to help even offset Roth conversions. And I'm not going to go too in the weeds on that, but there's a lot of creativity for you to get to where you want to go. If you've lost a job, you've got old retirement accounts hanging out there. Like a lot of people just don't know that. You've been job hopping and you've been at a place for a long time, then you can take that money and put it into something like this as well. So there's a lot of different ways you can get access to that money and our team helps you figure that out.

[00:20:58] Anthony Esparza
Nice. Sounds like you guys are a business full of resources and I like how you're very. Customer service based, you know, sounds like it's important for you guys, man. 

[00:21:06] Parker Pursell
I'm the same in my work too.

[00:21:11] Anthony Esparza
I think customer service comes above anything else. And it's really frustrating when you're calling, uh, whatever it is, you may be calling to pay a bill or to pay some utilities or to pay your mortgage, et cetera, et cetera. Sometimes it can be so frustrating to talk to someone, get your answers. So I even think in this space, you know, like you said. I get this all the time and I've gotten it from people who I went to school with and they call me and they're trying to sell me on something and I'm like, I don't even understand it. You're not explaining it. 

[00:21:38] Parker Pursell
You're just trying to, you know what I mean? So give the people what they asked for. Like, right. I think it goes along. Okay. Well, how can we help? I need this. Okay. We'll take care of it for you. And if we don't know the answer, I mean, we're going to say, we don't know, That doesn't mean we aren't going to find out because we have a lot of institutional knowledge here at this company, and it's just fun. Like, we learn more probably from our members. And that's part of our learning process is the things that they're doing. I remember reach out to me and try to explain to me a deal that he wanted to do. And I was using the filter of the knowledge that I knew, right. Of the things that you can and can't do inside of a retirement account. And I was like, okay, well, we basically worked through this 30 minute call. And there was one caveat that I just couldn't make a determination on because I just never heard of it. I was like, I'm not saying you can or can't, but I am unclear. Therefore, I'm not going to say yes or no. And so I said, Hey, let me just give you a buzz back and come to find out he could do this specific thing that he was trying to do, and now we're both better off for it.

[00:22:38]
I'm like, oh, this is new. If somebody comes in wanting to do this specific thing, then we've just eliminated all that friction of trying to find out. But we're critical thinkers. Like, we're not just going to say just because we don't know. All right, bye. Good luck trying to figure it out. I mean, that's not really serving the individual on the other side. They need confidence. And that's what we want them to do is to give them more confidence that they're doing the things. Right? And they also feel better about their future doing it. That's awesome. 

[00:23:03] Roger Jacobsen
Absolutely. On that topic, let's say somebody just started out. They put in 6, 000 into a self directed IRA. What are some of their options? What can they do? What can they put their money in? How do they find partners? 

[00:23:18] Parker Pursell
Yeah. So, I mean, like I said, it all comes down to your strategy. Like if you're looking to invest passively in a deal with 6, 000, you can't really do much, right? Cause most deals are going to require minimums. Some may not just depends on what you come across. But your options are limitless. The only things you can't invest in is like collectibles, art, cars, wine. I'll say NFTs because that kind of falls off the side of art. And you can't invest like in a vertical lineage, meaning let's just say Roger. You're my granddad, Anthony, I'm your dad. And so we're all three sitting in a bloodline. Like we all couldn't invest with each other in that way, but if Roger's my uncle and you're my cousin, then I could invest with y'all on a horizontal line. So we handle all that brain damage for our people when they're talking through their deals with us, but with the self directed IRA in particular, it's just a matter of figuring out what you can, what your opportunities are. And then it's just a matter of just sending that money out to work for you. 

[00:24:18] Roger Jacobsen
Thanks for your answer, by the way. On the self directed 401k, the contribution's more like, 000 a year?

[00:24:24] Parker Pursell
Well, with the deferral, I have to look back at the numbers, but I want to say it's closer to like 65, and that includes the like profit sharing side of it. So if you're a high income earner, you've got your minimum deferral that you can put in. And then you've got the profit sharing side of it, which a lot of business owners take part in. We do have the ability for business owners with employees that want to self direct and invest in alternative assets. They can do that too. So a lot of them take advantage of it. So for the contribution limits are massively different, but. Like I said, the 401k really supports, when I say business owners, people who are conducting business activity. With the IRA, it's more retail side, meaning anybody can jump in, but the limits are lower on what you can contribute.

[00:25:07] Anthony Esparza
That spiked my curiosity. I was just kind of thinking in the back of my head, but I might be completely wrong here. I'm just trying to pick up what I've heard so far, but if you're in self directed and say you got 100, 000 in there, And you send that over somewhere. Am I on the right page so far to make that money work for you? Whatever deal is going on, what are some like crazy gains or maybe crazy?

[00:25:29] Parker Pursell
I don't know if you've seen losses or just some crazy, you know, returns that you've seen. Yeah. So I hear what you're saying. So we don't have visibility. Like we don't work on an AUM type schedule to where we are tracking what people are doing, which is kind of the beauty of it. Like we're not the middleman. We're more of a. Service provider. I like to call us like a guide per se like a coach, but our members do tell us a lot I mean, I've seen people, very credible people, this isn't outside because there are really like institutional grade deals out there that are. 40%, 50 percent you invest in businesses and you come across a really great opportunity. Like there's a lot of money to be made there. I've seen some incredible gains there. And on the flip side, I've seen Ponzi schemes. I've seen people lose majority of their net worth and they get absolutely screwed. And that's tough to watch. So the control piece is great, but at the same time, you have to know how to vet deals.

[00:26:33]
You have to do due diligence. You have to understand how to vet the operator. Like, there's so much more that goes out there. And so on both ends, I've seen really great big wins and I've seen really bad losses and people left calling us like, and I don't say this without empathy, but. For us, the fact that they would call us when something like that happens makes me feel even better about what we do, because now they're like, I need help. I need help thinking through this really bad time of going through a divorce. We've had members in our community take their own lives. And the person's left holding the back, like, life happens. And so, in that though, I love the fact that we can serve the people at their highest of highs and their lowest of lows. 

[00:27:18] Anthony Esparza
Right. And you've been there when you lost the 50k, as you spoke about earlier.

[00:27:21] Parker Pursell
So, Yeah, it's all relative, right? Like, for me, that was a lot, because that was the first time I'd done anything, and it hurt. It sucked. And you're left, like, you want to know that it's going to be okay, and you need people who've done the thing to let you know it's going to be okay. Like I want somebody else that's lost to be like, hey, you're gonna be fine. I'm like, okay I'm not at the bottom of the barrel by myself. I love it. I got another sideways question I don't know. 

[00:27:42] Anthony Esparza
I'm just things are going off in my head. But have you ever seen anybody? For example, take a helock and i'm thinking because like i'm just in my own head right now thinking about my situation You ever seen anybody take a helock out?

[00:27:57] Roger Jacobsen
Don't do it. Don't do it, Anthony. Whatever you're asking, I'm gonna say, don't do it. Sign. 

[00:28:01] Anthony Esparza
Sign me up. Sign me up, . I was just curious. Okay. I was gonna ask if you ever have people take HELOCs out and invest them, invest that money. 

[00:28:12] Roger Jacobsen
Well, you could definitely do that. If you had like something that was gonna happen that would come back, but you're gonna fight a negative interest rate. Well, that's not your games. You'd also have risk and liability and personal guarantees. 

[00:28:27] Parker Pursell
And now I've talked to a lot of people that do it, but I think Roger coming from where you sit and all the experience that you have, you've got a lot of wisdom. You just got years on Anthony and myself. So you've seen more life. You've seen more deals. You've done more deals. And so your assessment of risk is valid in that. And I would have said, so for me, I actually did that. Okay. But I did that back when interest rates were near nothing. So for me, and I don't chase shiny things, like if you go and take that money out and put it to work in something that you're like, Oh, this is like the next big thing. Like, don't do that. That's stupid. Don't chase your emotion with the investing. But. If you've done your due diligence and you understand, like, but that's part of the risk, like, as we're young, and Roger may not agree with this, but from where I'm sitting, if we lose, we have time to come back, right? If I was in Roger's shoes, I wouldn't bet the farm where he's sitting.

[00:29:20]
I'd be like, I got a family, I got all these things I want to do, and right now, it's just mitigating my own risk. The things I won't do Is leave my family high and dry like I will never invest my way to where it puts my family at risk of not being able to provide and take care of them. It might suck for a little bit, but that doesn't mean that I don't have what it takes to get us out, but they aren't going to be worrying about where's my next meal coming from. Right? Right. Yeah, and everybody's situation is different, so this isn't like a one size fits all thing. I think depending on your situation, what you got going on, it may make sense for you. I've had a lot of people tell me that they do it with their stuff, but at the same time, it just depends where you are and what you're comfortable with.

[00:30:04] Roger Jacobsen
Absolutely. I'd like to go down a little bit of a rabbit hole. Let's say we have a typical realtor. Okay. That's making about 150, 000 a year. Okay. They don't have any type of retirement and they've opened up an account where they've got a self directed 401k and they've got, let's say, 100, 000 in the. Joe Schmo or Roger Jacobson or whoever wants to borrow and use for flipping. What kind of protections advisory do you do? Do you vet anybody? Like if Anthony has an account and he's like, Oh, I've got a friend that wants to borrow the money for a flip. Do you say, okay, think about getting a lien on the property in the self directed retirement account? And do you also like know the legal jargon for like syndication? So if Anthony says, Oh, a 506 B syndication, is that something you would stop them if they didn't know that? Or would they just be. 

[00:31:00] Parker Pursell
So yeah, like on some level, the control is the greatest and worst part of this. So a lot of the education falls on the individual going and doing the deal because we don't have optics on what people do. Like, if they don't call us and tell us what they're doing, then we have no idea, but we aren't liable for the things that they do. Right. Because we're a service provider for them, but we help give guidance. Right. So. Can they invest with you? Absolutely. Now, when you start talking about mitigating risk on that investment, we don't step into that unless that's like a big concern from them. And then we'll figure out that situation as it happens. But most of the time when people come in, they already have something they want to do, they know what they want to do. Now it's just the validation of, can I do the thing with this money that I want? It's like, yeah, okay. And then they might come across some different things.

[00:31:52]
Right. So, in terms of helping them fill out documentation, we'll do that using their retirement accounts. Like, we'll help them work through the documentation. But we don't do any type of legal clarity on reading contracts for people or what. We'd have to triple the size of our team to be able to do that. And that's not something we necessarily want to, like, pivot down. But we do have legal counsel that we can reach out to for specific questions or if things come up. So we have resources at our disposal, but it's not part of our arm to where we will. Go that deep into when I say protecting the individual, they're at risk and whatever they invest in. It's their job to vet it and we will provide all the education when it comes to vetting. We'll have educational webinars for people within our community about how to vet deals, what due diligence looks like, like those types of things. And so they take that and then apply it to the investments that they're doing.

[00:32:43] Roger Jacobsen
Pretty cool. It would take a large legal team to considering all the different facets of investing that you could have and you'd have to have a syndication attorney on your legal team. Just constantly answering phone calls that were just ridiculous.

[00:32:54] Parker Pursell
Yeah, you would never not be talking to somebody. 

[00:32:59] Roger Jacobsen
Well, I've done 5 syndications and so I've seen a lot of people and we are definitely going to see. A lot of people lose their money in syndications because of bad management, lack of property managers, and just losing the appreciation with the high interest rates and stuff like that. So there's a lot of questions out there of how many dollars are going to be lost. And yesterday I was chatting with a couple of friends and the number varies. So widely, depending on who you're talking to, which asset class we were talking about up to like 3 trillion worth of real estate, that's going to be like foreclosed and REOs and stuff like that over the next year.

[00:33:41] Parker Pursell
I saw some number that McKinsey put out the other day about commercial real estate and major metropolitan cities. It is 20 percent of office space didn't renew their lease in Q4, which was up like near 2%. From the year before, and so like the values of all that commercial space, it's kind of like WeWork. Just look at what happened to WeWork and it's what's happening to all these other places is because the need for it, not saying you can't repurpose it, but there is a lot of bad things that are happening. And I don't want to be a doom and gloom type person, but I'll hit the nail here. Like this point tells you why you should self direct your retirement. Cause all these other things that happen will affect where your money is. And if you don't have the ability to be nimble and move, like you can do all the things traditionally that you want with a self directed account, right?

[00:34:30]
You can still invest in stocks and mutual funds or whatever, but if you see something about to happen and you feel really uncertain, well then you could like liquidate all your stocks. You could go buy gold and then just sit on it until everything like calms down. Right. Or you could go pull. Money from one industry and go put it in something else Like that's the beauty of it is being able to be nimble and being able to move when things get weird, right? Because you may say okay. Well real estate may be going down But here's a great opportunity to go do some private lending and that's a really popular investment right now we're seeing with our members is they've kind of migrated to this private lending sector because it's a little more I guess in their mind, it's a little less risky because they understand the thing that they're lending to the person that you're dealing with. And it's simple. It's clean. So hopefully that like, I'm trying to get on a soapbox there, but it's, it's so important to be able to have control over your money. Yeah. 

[00:35:27] Roger Jacobsen
And to add to that story about office space, the COVID taught us that you do not need to be in an office and still get worked on, but the average office lease. Is 7 years, so there's offices that are being underutilized and when their lease ends, they're just going to abandon and shrink and go from the 13, 000 square foot space to a 3000 square foot space and we're just not even seeing it because it's not nimble. It's a. You know, an average of 7 to 10 years, and so they're just sitting there going, we don't really have to pay to rent this office space because we're giving everybody the right to work at home and it's working like, depending on who you talk to. I think Elon Musk was the best example when he said, everybody's coming back to work. I don't care where you work after 40 hours. 

[00:36:20] Parker Pursell
Yeah, I mean, you got to either have a strong hand or you don't. So, like, those things, it's, we don't know what's going to happen, right? Like, I think it's the outlook for the commercial office space is definitely doesn't look pretty. The bridge debt. That has been taken out on multifamily over the course of, you know, the zero interest rate environment. They didn't even think about what was going to happen years. The interest rates going where they are now. And you already seen it in the news, like all these guys and these syndicators that went out and basically just levered. And now everything's crashing out from under him. And so I'm almost more attracted to the non sexy stuff. Like, if someone says, Hey, I got a 7 percent return right now, we're just going to hold. I'm like. Okay. Cool. You got a fixed, you got fixed interest debt? Yep. That sounds good. But they're salesmen and they'll sell you the moon and that's what I hate too.

[00:37:12]
What stinks is the lack of education people get preyed on. And all while it's more important to have a group of people to be able to talk to, which is what we get to do with our members and help them think through what they're doing. And we'll go as far as they want us to go with them. We are only aware of the things they tell us, but they do ask us very thought provoking questions. Like, what do you think about this? Well, we just ask questions like, have you asked this question? Go ask this question. Go ask this question. Because a lot of times, really, the power lies within the question. If you don't ask the right question, then you could be setting yourself up for failure. But you ask the right 1. Then it might save you a lot of pain and heartache. 

[00:37:48] Roger Jacobsen
There's a quote that is the better your questions, the better your life. 

[00:37:53] Anthony Esparza
Yeah, all goes back to due diligence. Um, If you skip over the nitty gritty, then it might cost you down the road. Seen it happen in real estate all the time. Kind of hover over small things, you know, end up becoming really big issues later.

[00:38:07] Parker Pursell
Yeah. And for us, like I said, it's just like, we're really building this company to be a place where people can walk away better investor, right? So if I can help someone and think through the Aspects of what it takes to get into a deal or what it takes to think through the deal and due diligence or ask the right question. So, when we empower people to take control over their financial lives, like, we have to provide better education and that's what we're doing. Like, I wish people could come in to our company and see what happens on a daily basis. Like this is actually like our office space because we're redoing right now. So all the meetings are held in my office, which is fine. I have a big fat wall TV. You can't see it. It's right there, but I like the pillows. Yeah. You like that little farm theme right there, but like we're saying, what resources can we give to our people to help? Make them more confident how we can empower them to take more control over their financial lives.

[00:39:06]
Like that's the question we come in asking every day and striving for. So we're not trying to be a legacy based business. Like we're pushing the limits, right? Like, we're looking at how we can implement tech into what we provide. And deliver a better experience for them, help them feel more confident, comfortable with their picture. So that's what I love about us is that when I say a service based company, it's not, I don't want to use it as a tag tagline because everybody says, Oh, we got great customer service. Like, okay, what does that really mean? I think listening to the person, like actually helping them, not being like. Well, go call your CPA or go call this don't push the problem back on to them. Like no help solve their problem That's customer service. Like when they come to you, they're saying help me. Don't put the thing back on me. Help me that's why I called you because I didn't know and At least let them feel heard and that's what's got me most excited about what we're doing here and so if anybody's wants to self direct anybody has questions about it like That's what we're here to do.

[00:40:12]
And we can help people get to where they want to go as fast as they want to go. It all just starts with taking action. And I'm sure you guys come across a lot of people that they see the deals, they see the opportunities that are put in front of them, but they're just like, uh, I don't know. I don't know. It's like, no, you have to start, like you have to take a step. Like you have to get clear on what you have. You have to get clear on your finances. And once all that is there, then start moving, start taking action. You aren't going to get to where you want to go by doing nothing. You're just going to be exactly where you are. 

[00:40:44] Anthony Esparza
And Parker, do you operate only in Alabama or all 50 states? 

[00:40:47] Parker Pursell
Oh yeah. All 50 states.

[00:40:49] Anthony Esparza
And where might the viewers. 

[00:40:51] Parker Pursell
Yeah. So we have a newsletter that we launch every single week. They can go to turnkeyretirement. com, basically where we give the self directed investing game away for free for anybody that's interested. That's an easy place to get engaged. If they also want to learn more about us and they want to start a self directed retirement account, they can just go to eqrp.com and schedule some time to talk with one of our people here. And that's the easiest way to get in touch with us. 

[00:41:19] Roger Jacobsen
That's great, and we'll list that in the show notes as well. Let's, uh, jump into the final four. Anthony, you wanna lead us off? Yeah, let's do it.

[00:41:27] Anthony Esparza
So, marker. Let's start with question number one. What is your favorite business book? 

[00:41:32] Parker Pursell
Ooh, favorite business book? Well, I'll say the two that I've read recently. That has changed my outlook on growing business is Alex Hermosi's 100 Million Offers and the 100 Million Leads. I'll say both of those because they go collectively together. But if you're just interested on how to sell, if you're interested on how to get more people attracted to the thing that you're doing, those two books have been fundamentally game changers for me in my business and the way that I look at business.

[00:42:02] Anthony Esparza
Awesome. I'm a fan of that guy. I actually haven't read those books, but I love his videos all the content he does Moving on question number two. 

[00:42:10] Parker Pursell
What makes you happy? What makes me happy is My relationship with God like I have peace in my life is the thing that I strive for Therefore, a lot of things are outside of my control. And so if I can wake up each day and have peace going into the day and peace when I lay my head down at night, that's what makes me happy. So it's a pretty simple answer for me. 

[00:42:34] Anthony Esparza
Question number three, what is the best way of giving back? 

[00:42:38] Parker Pursell
The best way of giving back? I think the best way to give back is. I kind of said earlier in the show, look at what you have. You're managing the things that you have. If you can't take it with you when you die, then do you truly own it? Therefore, that would then go to say, are you just managing the things that you have in life? So if there's opportunities for me to give, then I take advantage of that opportunity. I don't worry about the outcome of that. I do. And answer the call of what's in front of me. And the more that you take that approach with your finances specifically, there's a lot more joy that can be found and says in scripture, it's more blessed to give than to receive. And I guarantee you nobody's ever given money away to someone that needs it and regrets doing it. Absolutely. 

[00:43:29] Anthony Esparza
And that brings us to our final question. What does your future retirement look like? And, or do you have one?

[00:43:35] Parker Pursell
A lot better than today. That's awesome. Yeah, I got a lot of different things working for me. So, yeah, I've got a retirement plan is involved a lot of different things, but I'm taking the approach of being nimble and anything that I do is going to allow me to have complete flexibility, whether it be with my, whether it be with my other investments outside of my retirement plan. So, but I will say it is much better than it was three years ago and it's much better today. And it will, and it will be much better, you know, three, four years from now. Awesome. 

[00:44:13] Anthony Esparza
Well, Parker, it's been a pleasure having you on today. 

[00:44:16] Parker Pursell
My pleasure. 

[00:44:18] Anthony Esparza
Yeah. I appreciate it. It's been a fun one. I'll, uh, get my heel lock down here shortly and hitch up.

[00:44:24] Roger Jacobsen
Yeah, the nice thing about doing that stuff through your retirement is the tax free side of it. So we got a lot of other things that we didn't get into, like the tax for business income, that's debt related and stuff like that. But maybe on a future podcast, we can have you back and do a little bit more of a deeper dive.

[00:44:43] Parker Pursell
Yeah, for sure. And, you know, a side note, if. If you ever, uh, Roger want, if you do more, when I say one to many, like you have live webinars you do with your people, your investors, or you, and you want to have them ask questions, we love to be able to speak if you do those types of things. So just know that that's a resource for you that you don't have to necessarily try and answer yourself. You have something in your back pocket. You say, I'm just get this guy and he can answer all their questions. 

[00:45:11] Roger Jacobsen
Absolutely. There's a lot of things that we do that are a little bit of how do you do it and what is allowed and that kind of thing. So it'd be great. We want to thank everybody for listening. Remind you that we've talked to Parker Pursell about. His company eQRP and running self directed IRA accounts and self directed 401k accounts. This podcast is for educational purposes and is not legal or financial advice. Thanks everybody for listening and we'll see you next time on the Retire Wealthy and Happy Podcast. 

[00:45:44] Podcast Outro
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