Why Financial Education Is Broken and How The Modern Investor Is Fixing It

Nathan Sillyman (00:00)
What it actually is is them reducing the share price by the amount of a dividend and then sending it to you, essentially taking money out of your left pocket and putting it in your right pocket. There’s no creation that occurs when a dividend is ⁓ produced. And that’s a notion that not a lot of investors know about. that’s the kind of topic I break down so that ⁓ investors that

can walk away with a new bit of understanding that they probably aren’t learning it in other finance channels.

Scott Bursey (02:02)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros Podcast. I’m your host Scott Bursey And today we’re diving deep into discussion with Nathan Sillyman the founder of The Modern Investor. Nathan, thank you for joining us today.

Nathan Sillyman (02:18)
Scott, thank you so much for having me.

Scott Bursey (02:21)
This is wonderful to have you on the show. Before we dive into the how, I want to know about the who. For those just meeting you, tell us about the path that led you to the modern investor and the core mission that drives your work today.

Nathan Sillyman (02:37)
Great question, Scott. ⁓ Yeah, the mission that drives my work forward and drives me forward is the idea of bringing financial literacy to the masses. ⁓ I think that you could probably agree with me. The ⁓ youth are greatly underserved when it comes to a proper education around financial strategy, investment strategy, taxes, budgeting, and real estate investing as well.

⁓ We’re expected to leave ⁓ high school with a complete understanding of how to file our taxes without any learning or ⁓ course given to us on how to do so. And there’s breakaways like that in the ⁓ challenges of adulthood and the actual preparation that our education system provides us in many different respects. And so my hope is that

the modern investor can provide an ⁓ easy pathway for people to receive the education that they should have been promised and were never provided.

Scott Bursey (03:45)
That is outstanding and what a great mission. What are some of the core strengths as you see it for the company right now?

Nathan Sillyman (03:56)
So, you know, two pieces, Scott. One, I’ve done a ⁓ secondary ⁓ kind of business offering under the ⁓ channels that I do from social media. And that business offering is basically for individuals that are looking for ⁓ the tightening of their economic plan. That’s what we do here is we both tighten and we teach economics.

⁓ Let me ask you, Scott, do you have a portfolio of managed investments anywhere or have you had your investments managed by a broker, dealer or financial advisory firm?

Scott Bursey (04:31)
No.

Nathan Sillyman (04:33)
You’ve always managed those yourself.

Scott Bursey (04:36)
My son manages them. We have a small operation here, but let’s touch more on your story.

Nathan Sillyman (05:33)
Yeah, well, the question, you know, pertains to the fact that most investors that have that do not understand the fact that they are able to negotiate the price point with their financial advisors. It’s oftentimes given to them as, you know, it’s 1 % for my fee. And this is the investments that we’re working with. And if you’re unattuned or don’t have the background, you know, that I’m a Series 7, SI 66, 63, 65 and Life and Health Insurance licensed.

So I’ve been in all different facets between being a gold broker in 2013 all the way to being a financial advisor for the past 10 years at broker dealers like Fidelity and Charles Schwab. I know how these ⁓ investments are often priced and how they’re often portrayed to clients. And it’s not that they’re portrayed improperly, but the… ⁓

notion that you can actually negotiate these price points is unbeknownst to a lot of investors. And that’s where I come in. ⁓ You know, can hire me for a rate to bring me into these kinds of meetings and help negotiate better price points on, what is often good strategies, but ⁓ through reverse compounding and that fee coming out each month can really do, you know, damage to the long term outlook or ⁓ something in which by tightening the economics, you can improve it quite a bit.

Scott Bursey (06:56)
Makes perfect sense Nathan, and this has been on my mind since we booked you. When underwriting multifamily deals today, what’s the single most important metric you are now advising investors to focus on?

Nathan Sillyman (07:12)
⁓ repeat the question for me, Scott, when underwriting multi.

Scott Bursey (07:18)
family deals in today’s market. If you could illustrate what may be one of the single most important metrics that you’re advising ⁓ new investors to focus on if you care to elaborate and take us down that road a little.

Nathan Sillyman (07:36)
Well, one thing that I do, ⁓ Scott, is remove myself from the investment strategies themselves. As a content creator, ⁓ I feel like I have an opportunity to really be ⁓ transparent and ⁓ offer a ⁓ unique view of investments by being, removing myself from the investment strategies themselves. So while financial advice is my background,

⁓ I have since, you know, becoming a business owner, removed myself from that part of the business. I operate only under the idea that, you know, there are certain tightening ⁓ of screws that you can, you know, push on with regards to manage strategies and just general, like, you know, investments ⁓ overall that, you know, with the right conversation and the right knowledge of products, you can kind of, ⁓ you know, reduce costs and improve outlooks in that way.

But from the core of my channels, that’s what we’re providing is the education piece. And that’s probably where our conversation could focus here today. ⁓ The strength of that part of the business comes from my background as an actor, really, and my ability to entertain. ⁓ One of the things that we’ve talked about before, Scott, is just what I was trying to ⁓ bring to…

market is an ability for people to learn in a frictionless environment. And that’s something that I feel like is pretty unique.

Scott Bursey (09:09)
Very unique. And if you can elaborate a little bit more on the modern investor, what’s some vision? What’s your ultimate goals? And let’s speak about the educational, the academic portion of your mission.

Nathan Sillyman (09:22)
Yes, Scott. mean, at the end of the day, what I would like to do is help end poverty in America. And what that starts with, I believe, is bringing that education that wasn’t provided to kids ⁓ to the, ⁓ I mean, as simply as to the social media channels that they’re watching already. So if we can bring learning to the phones of, you know, young people and provide it in a way that they want to watch it because it’s entertaining to them.

and it just so happens to suddenly teach them finance. That’s the core mission and what we’re trying to accomplish with every new video that we put out. And it’s been a challenge and ups and downs, certainly, a big learning curve, but I think we’re getting better and better at it with each video we put out.

Scott Bursey (10:07)
I cannot think of a better mission. What you’re adding to society, the world is outstanding. Let’s talk about opportunities as you see it, Nathan. What are some opportunities to enhance that mission?

Nathan Sillyman (10:26)
core opportunity, is actually getting into the education system. ⁓ If I could provide a course curriculum that’s particular to, ⁓ let’s say a private school wants to, for example, I’m Jewish, maybe a Jewish school in town wants to be able to provide a finance learning course to the ⁓ kids that are going through K through 12. That’s something that I would be very interested in.

creating core content for an education system that’s willing to bring that kind of a thing in. Because I think that in order to really engage kids at this point, you need to have an understanding of that attention economics that we talked about. How do you hit kids, you know, because you’re adding a new science into their life. So how do you do that in a way that’s going to be engaging, enthralling, and appetizing to them from that first 2.5 seconds it’s introduced?

Scott Bursey (11:21)
Absolutely. And what is some of your strategy in that regard?

Nathan Sillyman (12:00)
Ooh, Scott, well, mean, big intros. That’s the biggest thing. They talk about hooks a lot in the industry. ⁓ It’s been a very big uphill learning curve, because I will tell you, my 10 years in finance professionally, I stopped social media altogether, So LinkedIn, Facebook, ⁓ TikTok, ⁓ Instagram, Snapchat, these are all things I do on a daily basis now, but November, I had no…

context of how these things were run starting in November. So it’s been an uphill battle for me, but daily posting and daily, you know, ritualizing ⁓ the ⁓ continuing posting, continual posting of content and trying to improve on every single video is how I’ve, I feel like I’ve started to find some success in what I’m doing.

Scott Bursey (12:52)
Absolutely. It sounds to me like you get up and you try to improve a certain percentage each and every day. And I tip my hat to you on that. What does your team consist of? Let us go down that road. Do you have a core team?

Nathan Sillyman (13:09)
You know, that’s a great question, Scott. I’m a one man shop though, for right now. Now I will tell you that’s been a huge bottleneck for me because I’m not an editor. Like when it comes down to it, I have gotten way better at editing, but so much of what I do is editing. And if I could at some point in the future, you know, partner with a school or a brand that could provide me some help with editing, I swear to God, Scott, I could produce five times the amount of content that I’m producing right now.

Scott Bursey (13:15)
Ahem.

Nathan Sillyman (13:41)
just by having that one job taken off my plate. It’s been such a burden. Even so, I just got a new ⁓ setup where I have in my home, five different layouts for different studios. You’re in one of them. This is my podcast one ⁓ called or for my podcast, Dobros. So you’re in a very narrow shot of what that looks like. But I have five different setups. And then I also have a green room where

360 degrees everywhere. It’s all chroma key UHD green, which is the industry standard for green screen replacement. I’m ready to go. And so the hardest part has been the editing and it has severely ⁓ hindered my ability to get content out quickly.

Scott Bursey (14:28)
Okay, and what sort of safeguards are you going to take? What are you going to do to enhance that issue that you have? What’s your main focus to correct that situation, I guess?

Nathan Sillyman (14:42)
Well, the big thing is find that partnership, Scott. So that’s, know, for any of your viewers that are listening, certainly I’m open to reviewing. I have one foundation that I’m working with on trying to find an alignment on that is actually in the school systems here locally. But ⁓ it’s one of what I would expect to be many partnerships. I would need to really do this successfully and at the scale that I’d like to. So, you know, my plan is I’ve developed

course curriculum already, Scott. I actually have a 10 book ⁓ children’s series that I read to my son on a regular basis that is financial ⁓ terms and ⁓ education brought to you by an entertaining ⁓ kids children’s series. So it’s like a little book that I read 10 different books that I read to my son at night that,

use him as a character and take him through different, like opening up businesses and different ⁓ financial ⁓ lessons that I can provide through that. I also have a 10 course curriculum that I’ve developed and just haven’t really ⁓ had the right model to actually implement into anything meaningful. So that’s the next step is finding those partnerships.

And that’s going to probably take, you know, some door knocking on some of these school districts and trying to find, you know, the right ones to partner with.

Scott Bursey (16:13)
Sure, building those relationships

is everything. Let me ask you this, Nathan. What is a takeaway or a golden nugget you’d like our audience, our listeners to know about the modern investors?

Nathan Sillyman (17:08)
Well, just that it’s a noble pursuit, right? I’m not trying to make a million dollars overnight. I’m not trying to throw a particular investment understanding to lead you to a certain objective to buy life insurance or to get an annuity. I have no business behind me that’s encouraging me to sell a certain product or anything. I have 13 years of experience in the investment world.

I have worked for the biggest names in broker dealers and RIAs and ⁓ different firms that give me a very holistic and well-rounded understanding of investments. And the advice and the education that I’m providing now comes from a place of wanting people to get into better situations and develop better outcomes for themselves and their families. And so while my not every video might hit Scott.

Just know that that’s my that’s pursuit and long term I hope that you guys will engage with me and find a value in what I’m trying to do here

Scott Bursey (18:15)
That is awesome and the value is here, Nathan. We’ve covered a lot of ground here today and I know people are going to want to tap into your brain. For the listeners who want to build with you or just follow the play by play of your journey, what’s the best way for them to reach you?

Nathan Sillyman (18:34)
Well, Scott, I would love to give you, mean, I can share with you my dot profile. I don’t know if you guys, if you know this brand dot, but they do like these wearables and like different cards you can put in your wallet where you tap someone and it brings up your whole profile of all your contact details. So I’ll send you that great networking tool by the way. ⁓ But also TikTok is probably my most viewed profiles, ⁓ brief.but.crucial.

is basically my channel that does little snippets of investment nugget information. There’s no real acting there. It’s just me giving you information about one investment or another. And then ⁓ good.advisor.bad, that is actually ⁓ a channel where ⁓ I’m actually interacting with myself as different characters. One is a client, one is kind of a secretary, and then one is an actual advisor to talk through real life situations.

that investors might find themselves in offices with investment advisors. it kind of gives you a behind the door look of what that is like, whether you’ve been in those situations or might be in those situations in the future. ⁓ It’s kind of a fun ⁓ way to understand and learn new investment strategies. ⁓ Also, the Decent Broker is another channel where that takes you through my time as a broker. That one’s a little bit underdeveloped as well.

⁓ But it’s a new channel where I’m going through my time as a broker and talk through different things that you might not have, ⁓ you may not see unless you’re actually on those phone calls with brokers. like breaking down what an actual dividend is. Like, for example, Scott, do you know what, do you know the mechanics of what a dividend actually is coming out of a stock?

Scott Bursey (20:25)
You can explain it to our audience if you like.

Nathan Sillyman (20:29)
Most people don’t understand. Most people, when you say dividend, they think of it as profit sharing, right? So a stock giving a portion of the profits away to investors for you to either hold in cash or reinvest back into the stock.

Scott Bursey (20:43)
Okay, awesome.

Nathan Sillyman (20:46)
What it actually is is them reducing the share price by the amount of a dividend and then sending it to you, essentially taking money out of your left pocket and putting it in your right pocket. There’s no creation that occurs when a dividend is ⁓ produced. And that’s a notion that not a lot of investors know about. that’s the kind of topic I break down so that ⁓ investors that

can walk away with a new bit of understanding that they probably aren’t learning it in other finance channels.

Scott Bursey (21:18)
That is awesome. You have a natural ability to take those terms and break them down where it’s very understandable. And what you’re doing is so noble. Your mission is so noble. And Nathan, we can’t thank you enough for joining us today.

Nathan Sillyman (21:29)
Thank you very much, Scott.

Well, I really appreciate it, Scott. It’s been really fun.

Scott Bursey (21:38)
this has been more than a pleasure, Nathan. And you’re welcome back anytime and then we can get into other avenues of discussion. And for our listeners, we appreciate you. If you got value out of today’s episode, please make sure you’re subscribed. We have more conversations coming up with operators just like Nathan.

Until next time guys, keep your standards high and your vision clear. We’ll see you in the next episode everyone.