Why “Rent Dirt and Be the Bank” Is Catherine Bell’s Real Estate Wealth Strategy

Catherine Bell (00:00)
So my twins were 14 at the time. And at that time I had actually created 13 streams of passive income for my family. And it let me take a year off and grieve with my twins and figure out what I was gonna do. And so ⁓ I took that time and I got really clear on a few things is that chasing money wasn’t the answer. That making an impact was.

Scott Bursey (01:53)
Welcome back to the real estate pros podcast powered by investor fuel. I’m your host Scott Bursey and pros. we ever have a powerhouse joining us today? We’re talking about massive meaningful moves in real estate. Our guests, Catherine Bell from Titan impact group, isn’t just playing the game. She’s redefining the entire playing field. Catherine, welcome to the show.

Catherine Bell (02:15)
Well, thank you for having me. Super excited to be here.

Scott Bursey (02:20)
It is wonderful having you here. And for those that may not be familiar with your journey, please tell us how did your career start and what’s your main focus now?

Catherine Bell (02:29)
So my journey actually started, I’m originally Canadian. I came to the country in 2001 when I married my late husband and he had a dream and we took his dream. We turned into a multi-million dollar company. So I was a millionaire by the time I was 30 and during that time we ended up adopting our twins out of the foster care system. They were four months old then, they’re now 21. And we took that company, we

sold it in 2008 and then in 2009 the economy absolutely crashed and wiped out everything and we had all our assets in one single asset class basket. That’s the lesson number one. Make sure you diversify your investments into different asset classes. Don’t keep them all in the same basket. So we ended up losing everything and we including we ended up becoming homeless. And so from there my husband got

super,

super sick and I ended up having to go from being a stay at home mom to having to go back to work and provide for my family. And so I was working 80 hours a week and burning the candle at both ends, taking care of my sick husband, my twins, and I just knew that that wasn’t sustainable. And so that was when I learned that the average millionaire had seven streams of passive income. And learning that changed the course of my life forever. So was like, I gotta figure this out.

investing and I started out doing ⁓ wholesaling, buy and hold. Then I ran a program here in Arizona called Flipping Females. So we partnered with women teaching them how to invest and we flipped about 500 properties here in Arizona. And then I went on and started my own hedge fund. We did vacation rentals and then I did residential ground up developments, commercial ground up developments. And then in 2018, ⁓ my husband died very tragically, leaving me a widow and a single mom.

on.

So my twins were 14 at the time. And at that time I had actually created 13 streams of passive income for my family. And it let me take a year off and grieve with my twins and figure out what I was gonna do. And so ⁓ I took that time and I got really clear on a few things is that chasing money wasn’t the answer. That making an impact

So moving forward I knew that anything I had anything to do with that we were gonna make sure that every project left every person, property and community better than we found them.

And so that’s where Titan Impact Group comes from. So Titan as being the sentinels of the American dream. Impact is that everything we do makes a difference. I believe we can do good and do well at the same time and group is set up so that anybody can plug into any of our deals and our investments and create those passive streams of income for their families. Because again, it’s the more families I talk to, I realized that when I speak from stage, I have people hold up their hands and tell like, show me how many fingers of the five D’s they’ve dealt.

with and most people have dealt with three of the five D’s so it’s death, divorce,

diagnosis, downsides from the economy or being dumped from their jobs. So most families have already had three and all of them are emotionally devastating, but financial is even worse because they didn’t have those seven streams of passive income into the different asset classes. So from my journey, I share this because I want people to get the lessons and make better decisions. know, one of my favorite books is by Keith Cunningham. It says The Road Less Stupid. He says,

need to be making more better decisions, we need to be making less stupid decisions and thinking through them and learning from other people’s paths. So that’s why I share this so that people can make less stupid decisions and learn from my lessons and do better for their families. And so to answer the next part of the question, what am I focused on? ⁓ I got clear through that journey that all the types of investments that I did, I love two things. I like to be the bank and I like to rent dirt. So those are my things.

And that’s what I love to do. So I do a lot of triple net lease. I have notes. I have a whole bunch of things that we invest in. are right now, we got a couple of data centers that we’re working on. And then we also have luxury RV parks that we’re working on with tiny homes and all of that, which is super fun. So again, all about renting dirt. And again, the triple net lease with the data centers and, you know, making all that happen. So

That’s like and moving into opportunity zones. So that’s the other piece is that for those people who may or may not know, we are actually coming up to the sunset of Opportunity Zone 1.0 program. That sunsets December 31st of this year and the sunrise is the 2.0 program, which is January of 2027. And I’m super excited about that. We’ve been working with ⁓ the ⁓ Arizona government officials in

helping them actually map out where all the opportunity zones are gonna be. And what does that mean? That means that we get to be a part of making sure that the state is set up with the local cities, local towns, communities, these developments come in so that all these developers are being a part of leaving every person, property, and community better than we found them. So investors’ money is not only getting the tax advantage to it, ⁓

Growth benefits from it, but literally the impact and the legacy that they’re able to leave is absolutely extraordinary So those are just a few of the things that I’ve been working on

Scott Bursey (09:04)
and very impactful, very, very much so. And I can tell that you have passion for your causes. I must ask, what is the biggest strength of an impact-driven real estate strategy that you’re employing now?

Catherine Bell (09:20)
The biggest strength, it’s all about who, not how. It’s the connections. So one of my favorite books is by Dan Sullivan, and he talks about who, not how. So when we ask better questions, we get better answers. And so rather than asking, how do I do this? How do I do this? The question is, who knows how, and then getting in contact with them and plugging into whatever it is that they’re doing. So now we can actually do it together and do it faster, rather than me having that steep, learning curve of figuring it

how just having the people around and the team to be able to move it forward faster.

Scott Bursey (09:58)
It sounds like collaborative learning

and I’m all about that. That is perfect.

Catherine Bell (10:36)
100%. Well,

and that goes back to to ask, like, what is my strength? What is my weakness?

What I’ve learned like decades ago, it’s like whatever my weakness is, like know what my weakness is and let it go. Hire somebody who has my weakness as their strength. Rather than me trying to work on my weakness, really I’m only gonna reach mediocrity, right? Where if I hire that piece out and have that person come in and that’s their superpower and I continue to develop what my strengths are and my superpowers, now you got two superpowers working together and then a team of superpowers.

I was working together. Now we can do so much more rather than a bunch of mediocre everybody, you know, working on their weaknesses. Like, no, that’s dumb. We got things to do.

Scott Bursey (11:30)
Absolutely,

absolutely. Couldn’t agree with you anymore. And what do you feel is one of your biggest opportunities right now?

Catherine Bell (11:39)
the biggest opportunities I would say definitely leaning into so we were just at another conference.

⁓ two weeks ago and they were actually doing a market update on what’s happening and where institutional capital is moving. And it happens to be in the two spaces that we’re in, which I’m really excited about, which is data centers and these luxury RV parks, which is amazing. we are, ⁓ I’ve been in this space for a long time and ⁓ because of that, being able to grow it out and what’s happening with AI and all the things and the demand that’s coming,

moving forward in all of these spaces and understanding like the silver tsunami that everybody’s talking about and you know all the generations that come if you actually follow the buying trends of all these generations and what’s happening ⁓ this these two components are a significant part of where

they’re projecting where our economy is actually going. So we’re just getting, excuse me, getting out in front of the wave to be able to have our investors benefit from it.

Scott Bursey (12:52)
Staying ahead of the curve, that is so smart. Is there any challenges you’re watching closely?

Catherine Bell (13:01)
You know, obviously what’s happening politically is a big concern for everybody. We are also in the oil and gas space. So it’s really interesting to be watching strategically what’s actually happening out there. And again, it’s all about legislation and policy. And again, where

Where are the buying curves happening with all the generations and what are they leading into? Like again, it’s the paying attention to, we had a call the other day with a group of people who had several hundred acres and they had this idea and they were like, we’re gonna do this, this, this with it. But here’s the reality, when we actually dug into it and pulled it apart for them, we actually were able to show them like, that’s a great idea for you but nobody’s actually

going to want that or only a handful of people where they were projecting hundreds of thousands of people were going to want that. Well, you need to understand who your ideal client avatar is like with a really deep intensity. one of the things that I’ve done is used AI to actually build out my ideal client avatar. And we have a whole program. So I’ve had family offices and PE firms hire me to come in and actually build out this AI team. And so when we build this

being able to have an actual conversation with your ideal client avatar and have your ideal client avatar say no this is a crappy idea and here’s why or if you want this to work adjust it this this this way and then it’ll actually work

that has been hands down one of the most valuable things we absolutely could do. Along with we use AI to ⁓ underwrite and analyze our deals. And so we’ve built out this really robust AI ⁓ agent. And what it’s done is, my gosh, this tool has been amazing, is what used to take me like three weeks to three months to do due diligence, we’re literally doing it in under 15 minutes

with all of the sources attached.

Like it is extre-

ordinary. So again, money is time, time is money. And so being able to have that time back and my I say to my team all the time, we’re collapsing timelines and adding commas to bank accounts. So we can collapse timelines by using AI to do this underwriting. It is like game changing for all the deals that we’re doing. So yeah, we actually teach about it and we run our deals live every morning at 9am. People can come log in and watch us doing this

It’s pretty cool. Yeah. It’s super cool.

Scott Bursey (16:25)
That is pure gold. It is really cool. Is there any other groups are

super cool? I would say yes, absolutely. That’s working efficiently. Any other causes that you’re involved with?

Catherine Bell (16:41)
So I have two nonprofits. ⁓ My one nonprofit is Wealthwise Women. And so it’s family-centric. that came out of… ⁓

And when my husband passed away, my twins were 14. And when they were 15, I woke up one night like freaking out that they were gonna leave one day and they needed financial literacy, communication skills, and relationship skills. And my husband was gone and ⁓ the school wasn’t gonna teach him, so it was up to me. So when they were at the super fun Darth Vader stage, the…

That phase, anybody who’s teenager has been through it. ⁓ I said, listen, we’re gonna have a family financial mastermind. You’re gonna show up at my dining room table every second Friday. Do all your homework all the way right away with a happy heart. You’re gonna participate fully, all of that, and as much as teenagers can. And the whole time, it was stupid, it was dumb, blah, blah. So. ⁓

They fast forward, they’re now 21, they went off into their life and my son, when he was 19, he called and he was serving as a US Marine over in Japan and he called and he said, I got myself in trouble, Mom, and I was like, oh my gosh, what did you do? And he said, I got a really big tax bill. I’m like, buddy, you make three bucks an hour, how big can this tax bill be? He said, no, Mom, I did what you taught me how to do and I made $250,000 investing.

as a US Marine at 19 years old in another country. So from that, I’ve had so many families come to me and say, what did you teach your kids? So we have well-priced women and now we teach the whole family, the husband, the wife, the kids, everybody comes together and we literally have gamified it and we have a virtual summit happening in May, another in-person summit happening in the fall, and we’re bringing the families together to literally teach them what I taught my kids and this will change

the financial legacy of their families forever. And what that leads to is I believe that we can do good and do well at the same time and if we can, we must. And so that leads into my, why I believe God has me on this planet is that my other organization is called ChosenForever.org and it is all about being chosen. So there are over 120,000 adoptable children in US foster care system and

available for adoption because the parental rights have been severed. So what does that mean? It means that these children, if they don’t get adopted by their 18th birthday, they experience Black Trash Bag Day, their final one on their 18th birthday. And that means they’re handed a black trash bag. told to put all their belongings in it. And statistically, these kids end up homeless. So 70 % of our population, our homeless population, came out of foster care, which leads to drugs, prostitution, and being trafficked. 60 % of the kids being trafficked came out of foster care.

And two thirds of our incarcerated population came out of foster care. So the solution, literally, it’s not about getting them jobs or a place to live. It’s about having them have a family because that changes their neuron pathways in their brains and allows them to form healthy bonds with other adults when they grow up and become adults so they can go on and become productive contributing members to society rather than repeating the cycle that they were born into. So it really is about adults.

And so a lot of people think that it’s all only older kids. We adopted our twins when they were we got them when they were four months old Right, so it’s it’s not just older kids. It’s like all kids and so we created the five five five club and so for five hundred fifty five dollars people can literally join that club and that Literally gets a child adopted. We’ve already gotten 69 children adopted and so I know it’s that may sound like

like a lot, for 120,000 kids, it’s not. And so we are definitely on a mission to make that happen. And we’re working with AI and connecting all the resources and other nonprofits and everything and adoption agencies so that we literally can find the right families for the right children and literally eliminate all of these problems. It’s the one cause that literally it’ll, it.

like seriously deals with the homeless situation, deals with kids being trafficked and incarceration. Like this is the one cause that solves so many problems in our society today.

Scott Bursey (21:18)
What a wonderful cause, what a wonderful mission. Catherine, for those of our listeners who I know are gonna wanna reach out and follow your journey or collaborate with you, what’s the best way for them to reach you?

Catherine Bell (21:31)
You can reach out to me on I’m on all social media or you can talk to my clone CatherineBell.AI you can actually talk to a version of me Or you can go to meetCatherineBell.com I’m a five-time international best-selling author and my books are there and my story is there all my

all the things to connect in any way that I can help families create those multiple streams of passive income so that they can collectively go make the impact in the world that they’re there to make. Like that is my whole purpose.

Scott Bursey (22:06)
And that is so wonderful. Catherine, it’s been wonderful having you on the show today. Thank you so much.

Catherine Bell (22:12)
Thank you. Thank you for what you do and for spreading this message. And this education is critical. So thank you for all that you’re doing to make this happen. This is amazing.

Scott Bursey (22:24)
And to our listeners, we appreciate each and every one of you. If you got value from today’s episode, please subscribe. We have a lineup of exceptional people just like Catherine coming up down the road. And as always, keep your standards high, everybody, and your vision clear. We’ll see you in the next episode, everybody.