From Combat Deployments to Real Estate Investing: The Mission Behind Building Generational Wealth

Charles White (00:00)
Well, stewardship is—is basically people when people come in, people don’t invest in a project. They don’t invest in a property. They don’t invest in—in—in a—a—a triple-net investment or a multifamily investment. They invest with the person that they’re investing with. And—and in that light, they’re entrusting their future, their dreams over to us to make those dreams come true.

Meghan Escobar (01:56)
Hello everyone. Welcome back to Real Estate Pros Podcast, hosted by Investor Fuel. I am your host, Meghan Escobar, and today I have the pleasure of sitting down with an incredible young man, Charles White, who is the owner-operator of Omega Property Investments. Now I’ve been looking forward to this conversation because, you know, Charles is really bringing a unique approach to the way that he fuels his business. And I think our audience is going to walk away with some incredible insight from your journey in the way that you have founded and built your business. So thank you again so much for being here with us today. Appreciate having you as a guest.

Let’s—you’re welcome. Let’s dive in. First off, for people who may not be familiar with your world or what it is that you do, give us a 30,000-foot view of what your main focus is these days in the—our markets that you’re operating in.

Charles White (02:53)
My markets are pretty much nationwide. I—I—I’m doing a fund-of-funds business. When I started, I—I enlisted in the military when I was 17 years old. I did a 33-year career in the military. I—I crossed from in the enlisted side over to the Naval Nurse Corps about halfway through. So I spent the—the last half of my career as a Navy nurse, had multiple combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. And what that really impressed upon me was responsibility. I—and you know, over there I was responsible for—for people’s lives. Well, I came back, I finished my naval career, I started a career with the—the VA taking care of my brothers and sisters and veterans, and when I finally retired from there as well, and decided I needed something to do. So I decided to start this business, Omega Property Investments. And I decided to start it with the same core principles that I learned while I was in the military: honor, courage, commitment, integrity, and the transparency that go into this. You know, over there I was being entrusted with—with their lives. Now I’m being entrusted with their livelihoods and their—their life savings. So, and we take each of those with equal importance, equal respect.

Meghan Escobar (04:14)
Yeah. I love that. And you know what caught my attention was the way that you incorporated—you said this very specific word, stewardship, into—into your—your—your business plan, if you will. You know, and I think—I think our—our audience would be curious to know, you know, what that means to you and what’s keeping that—what is keeping your machine running smoothly.

Charles White (05:31)
Well, stewardship is—is basically people when people come in, people don’t invest in a project. They don’t invest in a property. They don’t invest in—in—in a—a—a triple-net investment or a multifamily investment. They invest with the person that they’re investing with. And—and in that light, they’re entrusting their future, their dreams over to us to make those dreams come true.

So what—the stewardship is being responsible for those funds, being responsible for—for returning the—returning the returns that we—we—we promise and living up to our word. If you’ve been in the market lately over the last probably about five, ten years, there’s been a lot of capital calls. There’s been a lot of deals that have lost money—a lot of deals that had—have had to go to the closing table when they’ve sold out and—and had to take money to the table when they sold out. And we’re not going to do that here at Omega Properties. We’re going—in our due diligence that we have is extremely in-depth. We go through and we tear apart every single deal and we—we go through everything from the financing, make sure we get the appropriate financing, to—to the property itself, make sure that the property is—is—is well—is well maintained and represents what we—we think it represents. It doesn’t have to be a—a crystal, pristine, brand-new property. It can be a—a distressed property. That’s fine. But what we don’t want to do is we don’t want that property to come out in five or ten years and—and be in distress as well. We’re going to take and we’re going to responsibly delegate those funds to—to improvements to the property and—and make sure that well, we come out much better than we went in.

Meghan Escobar (07:20)
That’s an incredible way to approach business. And I think, you know, the folks that are probably going to be doing business with you will be very grateful to know that, you know, you have such integrity and honesty behind the deal that is at hand.

Charles White (07:35)
I—I hope so. I’m hoping.

Meghan Escobar (07:36)
Yeah. So every operator I know, Chuck, has always had a moment where things got real. And I know you guys are fairly new into this business, but we all know as entrepreneurs and business owners that there’s always a deal that’s going to go sideways or a time that you’ve got to pivot really fast. Have you had one of those occur yet?

Charles White (08:03)
We have not yet. We have not yet. One of the things that we’re doing to kind of mitigate those is we know that there’s going to be—a deal go sideways. Any—any time, plan A only lasts to the point of—enemy contact. So one of the—one of the things that we’re doing is we’re here at—at Omega Properties is we’re building a foundation. We’re building a foundation of solid investments such as triple-nets, fund-of-funds, where our—our income is—is for the most part pretty much guaranteed. Again, any investment, something can go wrong, but we’re going to have some stable income to build up—to set that foundation so that when we do advance into our own—multifamily property or our own commercial property deals, wildfire comes through, hurricane comes through and completely wipes the place out, that we—we will be able to—to, one, take care of our tenants and, to, take care of our investors as well, and make sure that nobody loses money on the way out.

Meghan Escobar (09:08)
Well, that’s—that’s awesome. So you’re basically setting yourself up to—what’s the word I’m looking for?—prevent—or not prevent, but to—dang, I can’t figure out the word that I’m looking for right now.

Charles White (09:22)
We—we’re going to do our best to mitigate any risk that we can—we—

Meghan Escobar (10:01)
Yeah. Yeah. Sounds that way. You’re putting all the things in play. Well, you know, that’s the kind of stuff that most people just don’t talk about enough, right? The—the—the back-end stuff that could go wrong, not just the—the deals that follow through and, you know, the success made through that. But I truly believe that’s what separates folks who are here to dabble versus the ones who stay in the game long-term. And it sounds like you guys are taking precautions to, you know, handle these things as they come up.

Charles White (10:29)
Yes, we’re—we’re—we’re not here to chase the next shiny object. We’re here to be the investment firm that—that people are going to come to twenty, thirty years down the road. You know, what by the time I’m long and gone, Omega Property Investments will still be around.

Meghan Escobar (10:44)
I love that. And let me ask you this. What do you feel like you guys are most focused on or scaling next? What is the next real big goal for Chuck and Omega?

Charles White (10:55)
Right now we’re in the kind of capital acquisition phase. We’re—we’re building that foundation. And we’ve—we’ve got triple-nets on the line, we’ve got this fund-of-funds for several deals—that I mentioned previously. And we’re going to build up from there. Like I say, it—it’s going to depend on the deal that comes along. We—we—we’re going to go in, and any deal that’s brought to us, we’re going to go through, we’re going to tear it apart, and we’re going to make sure that it—it’s going to be something that’s going to last and something that’s going to produce for our—for our investors.

Meghan Escobar (11:27)
That’s big. So it sounds like you’ve got your hands in the next best move—in the next move that’s going to help you guys compound things and get you to the next level.

Charles White (11:37)
Yeah, we’re—we’re—we’re constantly going through—I don’t know whether I’m in more real estate investing forums right now or—or AI forums, because AI is—is going to be the future of this—of this in every, pretty much every business. So we’re—we’re taking and we’re going—we’re implementing, you know, AI principles and—and stuff into our—our groundwork. You know, underwriting, due diligence, everything.

Meghan Escobar (12:06)
All the tedious tasks that don’t—don’t help you build or scale the business, but help you run things on the back end. Gotcha. Okay, beautiful. So I know a lot of our listeners are either early on in their journey or, you know, they’ve been in the game for a while and just looking to level up. And I really think that they would benefit from hearing this. And we—we touched a little bit up on this prior to hopping in here—building relationships, you know, you mentioned this is something you can’t do alone. So when it comes to Chuck, building your network, what has made the biggest difference for you?

Charles White (12:14)
Exactly.

Charles White (12:43)
Probably—probably attitude. Everybody in—I treat people the way I would like to be treated, living by the Golden Rule. You know, you don’t have to be, you know, a church-going Catholic or Protestant or whatever, but, you know, God’s got a plan and, you know, you treat everybody with respect. You treat everybody with dignity, and—and—and that’s going to get you a long ways. So, you know, treat people the way you would want to be treated and get to know people, get to know your neighbor, get to know, you know, people in your business. And like I say, there’s not—there’s not a group out there that’s an adversary to us. We don’t—we don’t look at anybody as an adversary. We—we look at everybody as a potential partner.

Meghan Escobar (13:32)
Mm. That is a really great way to look at it. You know, that—that’s something you just can’t fake in—in this industry. Relationships truly are everything. You know, like you said, you can’t do this stuff alone, right? You need to have a team. You need to have people that you can rely on, you know.

Before we wrap up, if somebody wanted to connect with you and learn more about, you know, what you guys are doing over at Omega Investment—Omega Property Investments, what would be the best way for them to reach you? Are you guys on socials? Are you, you know, looking to—would email or what’s the best?

Charles White (14:51)
omega property investments dot com is our website. We are on Facebook, we are on Instagram, we are on TikTok, we’re on X, we’re on YouTube. We’re starting to get on YouTube right now—we’re working on that one. They can email at the website. It will take you through. You can schedule a call. You can email me at [email protected]. Phone number is right on the website there. So please feel free to give me a holler. I love that. Best or partner.

Meghan Escobar (15:19)
Perfect. Well, listen, I appreciate your time, Chuck, your story, and more importantly, your perspective. I think it’s so important to, you know, bring integrity and honesty into this business specifically. There’s too many folks out here that are just looking to create a transaction. And it sounds like you’re looking to create partnerships, you’re looking to create relationships, and really go out of your way for the client. So I think that’s super important. And we need more people in this space who are doing things the right way. So thank you again for being here.

Charles White (15:52)
Thank you very much. Everybody win, win, win. Yeah.

Meghan Escobar (15:55)
There’s enough for everyone to go around for sure. Very good. And for those of you that are tuning in, if you got any value from this, please be sure to hit subscribe and like. We’ve got more conversations coming in with owners and operators, just like Chuck White here, who are out here building real businesses in real time with real people. We will see you on the next episode.