Unlock Wealth: 7 Proven Real Estate Strategies for Retirement Success

John Harcar (00:01.161)
All right. Hey guys, welcome back to our show. I’m your host, John Harcar. And I’m here today with Brett. And we’re going to talk today about the power of investing in what you know, especially when it pertains maybe to your retirement. Guys, remember at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers, all real estate entrepreneurs, two to five extra business by helping you

Brett Synicky (00:09.91)
Sure, perfect.

John Harcar (00:29.663)
Learn the skills to help grow the business you want to grow and live the life that you want to live. So Brett, welcome to our show.

Brett Synicky (00:36.11)
Thank you, sir. Appreciate being here.

John Harcar (00:37.771)
Good, excited to talk about your journey, excited to talk about the power of investing in what you know. But before we get into all that, why don’t you tell our audience a little bit about you, kind of your background, your journey and what got you here?

Brett Synicky (00:50.488)
Sure. Well, I born and raised in Southern California, been here my whole life in the Orange County area primarily. And I have, for the first part of my adult life, I worked like right out of high school. worked a retail job, moved, moved my work, my way up to management, managed a large retail drug chain store and bounced around a little bit doing that for about 15 years. in the middle of that.

back when anybody who could fog a mirror could get a mortgage, I started buying rental properties. mind you, I had great W-2 income, my credit was good. I I was like the best borrower in the eyes of like what a lender would want, right, at the time. And so I started buying single family homes. I’ll talk a little bit if I have time about, you know, a couple lessons learned on that, but.

John Harcar (01:24.791)
Yeah, right.

John Harcar (01:37.143)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Brett Synicky (01:46.446)
Did that in mostly in the mid to mid to late 2000s and then fast forward to 2014 So my wife’s pregnant with our first I didn’t want to work the retail job anymore and nine to five more like nine to nine and you know nights weekends holidays all that so I Actually cold turkeyed don’t necessarily recommend that but I cold turkey got my real estate license

And people started lining up at my front door to buy and sell real estate, right? Actually, that’s not actually how it went, but that’s okay. Lots of lessons learned in trying to sell real estate in Southern California. Actually, my intention was to get my license to literally and figuratively open up more doors for myself. And it did, but I kind of lost track of that. You know, I wanted to use it to invest in more real estate.

John Harcar (02:41.452)
Mm-hmm.

Brett Synicky (02:41.517)
And I got, I got sucked into this, uh, retail buyers and sellers thing, which is okay. There’s nothing wrong with it. You can make a lot of money in real estate, man, but it could also be a little bit of a grind. So, um, I did that for, and I still have my license, although it’s not my main focus right now. Uh, but I’ve had it for about 10 years, a little over 10 years now. Uh, actually it’s 20, 25, isn’t it? Almost 11 years now. And, um, fast forward to a couple years ago.

And actually I should go back. in 2014, when I got, became truly self-employed as a licensed agent, I opened up a solo 401k with a company called Sense Financial and had that for a while. I started hiring people, W2 employees, assistants and such. So I couldn’t qualify for the 401k anymore. So I got rid of it. Fast forward to a couple of years ago, the owner of Sense Financial taps me on the shoulder and we’ve been friends for a long time. He said, Hey,

You know, I’ve been the only one really doing these consultations for almost 15 years. Do you want to come on with me and you know, the product we have, you know, you have this background in real estate sales and investing and I have similar background and I could kind of clone myself through you. Do you want to help me do some of these consultations? And so I kind of said, yes, without too much thought to be honest, cause I already knew that I wanted to do it. And,

John Harcar (03:59.882)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (04:05.441)
Sure.

Brett Synicky (04:06.837)
And so, yeah, that was a couple of years ago and that’s been my primary focus ever since is helping people establish either self-directed IRA or solo 401k if they qualify and invest in alternative assets.

John Harcar (04:18.647)
Okay, awesome. Well, let’s go back a little bit, right? I like to talk to you. I like to find out when folks got into real estate and different struggles, maybe different mistakes they might have made, which could help our audience, you know, listing that might kind of be in those newbie shoes. So I think you said in 2011, were buying single families for long or 2000, you were buying single families for for more long term rentals.

Brett Synicky (04:41.057)
Yeah, was 2005 is when I bought my first one actually.

John Harcar (04:43.519)
Okay. Okay, perfect. Give me some of the mistakes you think he might have made. some of the challenges when he first got into it and then the mindset to help you overcome and be successful.

Brett Synicky (04:50.445)
Mmm.

Brett Synicky (04:55.425)
Yeah. Appreciate the question. Well, first off, betting on appreciation as opposed to ensuring cashflow from day one. Okay. So that was mistake number one. You know, the market was going to continue going up. I had, you know, money to cover the negative each month. I was okay with that for the foreseeable future, at least 10 year interest only loans, primarily.

So, you know, those chickens were gonna come to roost at some point and they did. Okay, so 10 year interest only loans, I could cover the negative. These things were gonna keep going up. I was gonna 1031 them and they were gonna have babies. And I was just gonna continue to do that over and over and over again, okay. Now, my story is probably similar to a lot of other people in that time, but you know, the market didn’t keep going up, obviously. 2008, nine ish happened here in SoCal and.

John Harcar (05:29.0)
Right?

Brett Synicky (05:52.182)
and beyond and these were not properties in California. They were outside California, but you know, the whole country was hit right with this great recession. And so they went down. I really didn’t want to deal with the negative anymore. And so I parted ways with some of them, actually did a couple short sales, which is a big pain. I did a few loan modifications. I kind of did as much as I could to see if it made sense to keep them. I was able to cashflow actually on a couple after doing some fancy work, but

John Harcar (06:15.543)
Mm-hmm.

Brett Synicky (06:21.805)
You know screws up your credit does all kinds of nasty stuff, right? But That’s what not to do. I think if I could go back Obviously, I would have bought with cash flow and eat immediately. I didn’t know the concept You know you make money on the you make your money when you make the purchase not when you sell or whenever like you got to buy smart, right the numbers have to make sense and for me

John Harcar (06:24.407)
And of course.

John Harcar (06:41.973)
right on the buy.

Brett Synicky (06:47.775)
It was just like a bull in a china shop. I’ve got this money. I’m going to do these 5 % down 10 year interest only loans. And also I fell for this is one key thing and I’ll be done after this. I really fell for the pro forma’s from these agents and in some cases, property managers that were largely inflated and the rents that they projected were not really close to reality. that so, so

On paper, they actually looked okay, but I didn’t do my own due diligence and they ended up not cash flowing out of the gate like at all. So.

John Harcar (07:24.865)
Okay, so what type of mindset got you through that crash, that dip when everything just went to you know where?

Brett Synicky (07:33.911)
Man.

John Harcar (07:36.843)
Because a lot of people might’ve just hung up their shoes, right?

Brett Synicky (07:37.015)
Gosh, just…

Yeah, yeah. Well, okay. So let me finish up my journey as far as real estate investing goes. So that’s kind of been on pause for me. I haven’t hung up my gloves, so to speak, or shoes or whatever, but I haven’t purchased another single family home since then. And that’s partially because

I went, I wanted to be self-employed so badly that I was going to do it no matter what. And I’ve made a promise to myself, good or bad, whatever you want to call it, that I was never going to go punch a clock again. And I really, I still stand behind that. And so what that did though, is it caused me to, the, the, the consistent income was elusive for a long time. And then in the meantime, I’m married.

We’ve got a couple boys too now. And so, you know, the income required to kind of live the day to day kept going up and my income kept going up a little bit, but not to the point where I had enough disposable income to start buying more rental properties. So I sort of did get out of it and, and still am actually technically out of it. I don’t have any more single family rentals right now at this moment in history, but plan to get back into it at some point. So.

John Harcar (09:00.375)
Okay, very cool, very cool. So then you, so you got your license, but then now you’re working for Sense Financial. Are you working for them? Are you just being a consultant? How does that relationship look?

Brett Synicky (09:12.818)
Yeah, I’m a consultant, so I’m 10.99. Yeah.

John Harcar (09:14.879)
Okay, cool. What do you like about what you do there, right? mean, tell us a little bit more about, know, just for people that may be around here that don’t know, what is a self-directed IRA? What are these tools that you help people use, teach, et cetera?

Brett Synicky (09:31.192)
Yeah. Yeah. So the easiest way to say it is you can have a 401k or an IRA that’s either with a custodian that most people know, right? Like Vanguard, Fidelity, Schwab, just to name a few, there’s hundreds out there probably, and you can invest in what they offer, right? Stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and ETFs primarily. So the custodian is who actually restricts what your IRA or 401k can invest in.

And it’s a broker dealer. So it’s easy for them to just have you invest in stocks and they can structure the fees easily. And, and they make a lot of money, right? Those custodians. Okay. Now that’s not what the IRS allows you to invest in. The IRS actually only tells you what you can’t invest in and using your IRA or 401k. And that’s, not to get too far into the weeds on it, but that’s essentially life insurance and collectibles.

like wine and art and stamps and baseball cards. And that’s it. Otherwise the sky’s the limit. And there’s some prohibited transactions regarding disqualified parties like you and your immediate family that you have to be aware of. But that doesn’t impact the type of investments that just impacts who you can invest with. And so it’s literally life insurance. S corporation stock is another one because you have to be a person and collectibles. And so what we do is we create these

IRAs and 401ks as self-directed vehicles. Self-directed meaning I can choose to invest in anything allowed by law. So most of our clients are investing in real estate or private lending, syndication, crypto a little bit, precious metals, some, and there’s a whole bunch of different stuff, but mostly it’s real estate in one way, or form.

John Harcar (11:06.292)
you want.

John Harcar (11:25.729)
Do people come to you and tell you what they want to invest in or do you kind of sit back or look at them and what their goals are and say, hey, this is where we recommend.

Brett Synicky (11:35.222)
The latter for sure, although we don’t provide investment advice, we are not financial planners. We’re not attorneys. We can answer questions like that from the standpoint of let me put myself in your shoes based on what you’re telling me. Here’s what I would probably do. But we always encourage people, you alluded to this at the beginning, John, we always encourage people to invest in what they know. And that’s the beauty of self-directing is like, if I understand how buy and hold

rental properties work, it’s going to, and I have experience doing it. It’s going to be hard for me to lose money doing that. Right. If I do it smartly and it’s cash flowing from the beginning and I screen tenants properly, I have a good property management company. So that’s the beauty of self-directing is you choose to invest in whatever you want. And I always recommend people invest in what they know. So when they come to me and say, what do I invest in? Which happens often, I say, well, what do you have experience investing in?

And sometimes it’s just Wall Street. And that’s a kind of a different conversation in a different direction. But if it’s not, it’s privately. I’ve been doing hard money loans for fix and flippers for the last 10 years. Okay, well, that’s probably something you should start out with. I’m not giving you advice, but that’s probably not a bad way to go.

John Harcar (12:46.807)
Yeah. Yeah.

John Harcar (12:51.467)
Yeah, well, since we’re on the topic of the power investing and what you know, what if someone, you know, they have no idea about anything with real estate, right? They have no idea about crypto. They don’t know about anything. Like where now if someone had to come to you and say, hey, I don’t know what I’m doing. Where do I go? Where are some good areas where people could make some good returns?

Brett Synicky (13:13.581)
Yeah, well, usually I’m able to find out what they have an interest in, even if they have no experience in it. And again, it usually revolves around real estate, right? Hey, I’ve always wanted to invest in real estate, I haven’t had enough money personally to do it, but I’ve got this orphaned 401k from a former employer with 400,000 or whatever. And so I’d love to invest in real estate.

John Harcar (13:32.631)
Mm-hmm

Brett Synicky (13:39.04)
And I’d say, okay, are you more of, you know, I kind of guide them down the path, right? Buy and hold, or would you rather be more passive and maybe lend money or be a part of an owner of a giant apartment complex? Like what, what are your goals? And so I have resources in the form of just relationships that I’ve built up over the years with people I can connect them with. That might be a syndication operator as an example.

John Harcar (13:43.063)
Got it.

John Harcar (14:04.417)
Okay, yeah.

Brett Synicky (14:05.311)
And they have education upon education upon education on that topic. And so we refer them to them. They have to do their own due diligence. We’re not telling them to invest in with anybody. Right. But I can point them in the right direction. And that’s generally what I do. Now, if they tell me, look, I only want to invest in wall street. say, okay, great. I’m happy to help you with this. First of all, don’t misunderstand me here. You don’t need us to invest in wall street. You can go to fidelity or Vanguard and do it just fine.

John Harcar (14:14.913)
Sure.

Brett Synicky (14:35.499)
However, if you want a little bit of a better experience and at some point maybe you want to invest in alternative assets outside of Wall Street, we should probably have the conversation about setting up a self-directed 401k or IRA now as opposed to later. But we could always have the conversation later too. I’m not strong-arming anybody. I’m just giving them the options.

John Harcar (14:55.478)
Right.

John Harcar (15:00.439)
So what are the mistakes that people are making?

Brett Synicky (15:05.356)
man, going to a competitor of ours. No, just kidding. Sort of.

Brett Synicky (15:13.045)
rolling money in and then not doing anything with it.

John Harcar (15:19.468)
What do mean?

Brett Synicky (15:21.581)
So they have, let’s call it hundred thousand dollars in the S and P 500 at fidelity. We create this sole, I’ll just use solo 401k as an example. We create this solo 401k for them. They initiate the rollover from the current custodian fidelity into the new solo 401k, which by the way is a checking account. Okay. So this is just a regular checking account. There’s it’s non interest bearing. So they roll this hundred K and they have these plans.

and then they don’t execute on the plans. And this 100K is sitting in the checking account, not earning anything. And three years later, they contact us, just as an example, and they say, hey, I haven’t done anything with this. Can you remind me again about how to invest this money? And I say, you mean it’s been three years and you have 100K in here and you haven’t done anything and the stock market’s gone up like crazy and then it’s gone down a little bit and then it’s gone up again and you could have had maybe 150 now by now, whatever.

John Harcar (15:57.131)
Uh-huh.

Brett Synicky (16:19.349)
So that’s the biggest mistake people make is they have this plan and they don’t execute on

John Harcar (16:25.815)
What kind of trends are you seeing? Or are you seeing any trends?

Brett Synicky (16:31.565)
Hmm. I don’t think so. Not necessarily. I guess I am seeing a trend and that’s I will let me retract that statement. More and more people are interested in crypto than they ever have been. That seems to be trending up for sure. Part of that may have to do with the new administration and people think that, you know, Trump’s going to be friendly with crypto, so to speak. We’ll see. I mean, maybe. I don’t know.

I’m not an expert in crypto, so I wouldn’t necessarily invest in it myself. never have. Still real estate, again, in some way, shape or form is the most common investment, but crypto is trending up for sure.

John Harcar (17:14.451)
Yeah, and we’re all hoping that real estate and it’s starting, I think it’s certainly starting to get a little tick up again, but you know, it’s been a difficult past couple of years for someone that has a 401k self-directed RRA, you know, how would they be able to get in touch with you as far as, know, those next step and being able to use it and invest and make money?

Brett Synicky (17:36.396)
Yeah, appreciate that. I’d say our website is the best place. There’s tons of education on there and then you can book a consultation. There’s a link for that on just about every page you’ll go to. And that is Sense like Common Sense, not like dollars and cents, sensefinancial.com and just check it out. There’s tons of resources. Again, Demetri, the founder of our company believes in keep it simple.

And so we only specialize in two products, the Checkbook IRA and the Solo 401k. So that’s, you’ll see information about those two products only on our website. And so it’s, it’s pretty straightforward.

John Harcar (18:07.393)
Easy.

John Harcar (18:13.799)
Awesome. And then what would you like to leave our audience with one last thing regarding, you know, the power of investing in what you know?

Brett Synicky (18:21.133)
Hmm. Think about it like this. If you have your 401k or IRA primarily in the stock market, S and P 500 as an example, um, you may not see it directly depending on the way the setup is with the broker dealer that you’re at the brokerage, but there are fees mixed in whether you see them or not, right? They come out of the transactions. come out of the gains, whatever.

There’s fees. Those companies wouldn’t be in business if they didn’t have fees and make money. Same with us. I mean, we have our fees, right? But all of our fees are flat. So we have a flat startup fee and we have a flat annual fee of $250. The annual fee is like nothing. And so when you get a return of a thousand dollars from whatever the investment is, a hundred percent of that thousand dollars goes back into your checking account. There’s nothing taken off the top.

John Harcar (18:50.295)
Right.

Brett Synicky (19:17.069)
There’s no transaction fees. may have a wire fee here or there that’s 20 bucks, I think on the way in. but there’s no transaction fees. So in, if you set up a self-directed account and you invest wisely for a decade or more, you can very easily take a hundred thousand dollars to well over a million dollars in a decade. Like no problem. And by the way, you can do this in your Roth or your pre-tax account. So I would just urge people to count the cost of.

continuing to do what most people do as opposed to self-directing. I would just caution them against just sitting back and relaxing. Not that you can’t do okay in the stock market over a long period of time. I know that you can, but 10 % on average in the S &P 500 for the last 60, 70, 80 years, whatever it is, is not 10 % when you factor in the expenses and the costs of having that money invested and everything else. But that’s a true percentage or

John Harcar (19:50.999)
Hmm.

John Harcar (20:13.015)
All right.

Brett Synicky (20:16.033)
darn close to it in the self-directed environment.

John Harcar (20:19.217)
Good. Well, I appreciate you coming on here, Brett, and really sharing all this stuff. I’ll put all your contact information, the show notes, all the stuff that you sent to us. So folks, if you’re out there and you’re in the Orange County area or anywhere, you want to talk with Brett about using your money to make money from your IRA, reach out. Guys, I hope you enjoyed the show. I know I did. And I look forward to seeing you guys in the next one. Brett, thank you again.

Brett Synicky (20:43.32)
Thank you,