Listen Here
Today, we have a remarkable guest joining us, Brandon Cobb. Brandon is the 
co-founder of HBG Capital, a name known for its transformative impact on the real estate development sector. With a journey that took him from the world of medical sales to becoming a successful real estate developer, Brandon shares his insights into turning setbacks into opportunities.
Brandon’s path wasn’t always smooth. He experienced financial losses in various investments like crypto and the Iraqi dinar. However, he found his stride in real estate, focusing on areas he understood deeply. His career pivot was driven by an unexpected firing, which pushed him to take control of his financial future and invest in what he could influence—real estate.
In this compelling episode, Brandon dives deep into the transformative power of understanding one’s investments. He shares how HBG Capital focuses on entry-level housing and land development, leveraging multiple exit strategies to mitigate investment risks. Brandon also discusses the importance of creating meaningful life experiences, both in business and personal life, especially since recently becoming a father. His journey underscores the value of resilience, discipline, and informed investing.
Listeners will gain valuable insights from Brandon’s experiences, including his focus on building lasting family memories and how he’s used real estate to support a lifestyle rich in intentional living and travel.
In This Episode
- Brandon’s transformative journey from medical sales to real estate development.
- The significance of understanding one’s investments.
- Multiple exit strategies in real estate to reduce investment risks.
- The importance of creating meaningful life experiences and family traditions.
I have lost money in crypto. I’ve lost money investing in the Iraqi dinar. I’ve lost money in so many different things that I invest in. It wasn’t until I started investing in things that I understood that’s when things started taking hold.
Welcome to the Wealth Strategy Secrets of the Ultra Wealthy podcast where we help entrepreneurs like you exponentially build wealth through passive income to live a life of freedom and prosperity. Are you tired? Tired of paying too much in taxes, gambling your future on the stock market? And want to learn about hidden strategies for making your money work for you? And now your host, Dave Wolcott, serial entrepreneur and author of the bestselling book, the Holistic Wealth Strategy.
Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Wealth Strategy Secrets of the Ultra Wealthy. I’m your host, Dave Wolcott and today we’re diving into an inspiring story of resilience, reinvention and purpose with Brandon Cobb, co founder of HBG Capital. Brandon’s journey is one of transformation from being a top performing medical sales professional to an unexpected career pivot that led him to become a successful real estate developer specializing in entry level housing communities. Along the way, he faced challenges, learned from failures, and discovered his true calling. Creating wealth and unforgettable life experiences for himself and his family. In this episode, we’ll explore how a career setback became the catalyst for Brandon’s entrepreneurial journey. The strategies behind HBG Capital’s innovative approach to land development and entry level housing.
Why creating unforgettable experiences with loved ones is the ultimate return on investment. Brandon’s powerful morning routine and the role discipline plays in building success and the importance of understanding your investments and taking control of your financial future. If you’re looking for inspiration to design a life aligned with your purpose and gain actionable insights for accelerating your wealth building journey, this episode is for you. Let’s jump in. Hey, Brandon. Welcome to the show.
What’s going on? Good to see you.
Yeah. Awesome to have you on and I guess I should start with congratulations on becoming a father.
Yeah, we were chit chatting about it beforehand. I really appreciate it. It’s a new world, people don’t lie. When you have a kid, everything gets structured around that kid. My wife and I, we’ve been making those adjustments.
Yeah, I will never forget, you know, having our first and just how it changed our lives forever. And I mean, it’s just, it’s such a miracle. It really is to, you know, have kids and, you know. Just changes your life and really makes you think about things. Right. Which is. Which is actually like a great segue right into this conversation, into this show as we’re recording this, you know, we’re just about to get into Christmas. We’re in the holidays and, you know, thinking a lot about gratitude and lifestyle design and what’s really important and having family is just.
It’s so special. Right. And you’re just at the beginning of that, which is so cool.
Yeah, well, I’m going to say the real miracle is the fact that you had triplets, because right when you think it’s hard, there’s always another level. So I’ll remind myself that next time. It’s 2am in the morning and I’m a little irritated at the lack of sleep. I’ll just think of Dave and be like, well, at least there’s not three of them right now.
Yeah, no, it’s always great motivation. I love to tell people who only have one baby to just think about, okay, what if you were doing that with three and then you had a to toddler to boot. On top of that, it really changes your perspective. And actually, even in the hospital we met, there were quads next to us. So that completely put us to shame, too.
Holy schmoly. I can’t even think about that. If I told my wife, “Hey, look, it looks like there’s triplets here.” On the ultrasound, she probably faint because of how big her belly got. I don’t see how it’s even possible. It truly is a miracle what women do. When I saw that boy come out, the size of them, I’m like, “God, dog, man, women, they are literally miracle creators.” I just can’t comprehend how they carry those things for that long and then it comes out and, man, it’s just absolutely amazing.
So you’re right. Gratitude’s very big part of that and I’m very thankful for my problems and what I’ve got because I could be sitting in the hospital next to you guys for the quads going, holy shmoly. It can be a whole another level to this.
Yeah, well, that’s amazing, Brandon. Yeah, welcome to the club. It’s so great to be able to create and there’s no better way to do describe it really, than a miracle. So congrats on that and for those in the audience.
Who aren’t familiar with you, you know, maybe we can dive into your origin story a little bit. I know you’ve got kind of a sales background and, you know, saw the light in getting into real estate and passive Investing and everything. So, you know, why don’t we wind back the clock and start there?
Yeah, you know, it’s kind of funny. Had someone told me eight years ago that we would be inventing these neighborhoods. I looked at you like you had seven or eight heads. You know, today we focus on entry level housing and so we do a lot of development where we’re developing land and we’re getting it ready to sell to these national home builders that then build these affordable neighborhoods. But that, that wasn’t my calling, to be honest with you. I never had this drive to be an entrepreneur, which is kind of weird to say.
I was sort of forced into it. I loved what I did. So I used to sell medical devices. I was the guy that a lot of the shoulders and knees, a lot of sports related injuries, so a lot of labral tears, rotator cuff tears, ACL reconstruction. I sold allograft tissue. And you know, let me tell you, like, I followed the playbook that my parents gave me. Like a lot of people, I saw the job as being a means to the end.
It was, “Hey, live as conservatively as possible. Save your money.” A lot of times I just wanted what everybody else did. I wanted the job to max out my 401k and my Roths and my IRAs and just keep saving, saving, saving and investing. You know, one day, 40 years from now, I can maybe retire, right? And so that, was my game plan. And so that’s what I did and I played it safe. I got the corporate job.
I had really good salary for a guy my age. I had the company car, the company gas card, you know, the benefits. I mean, everything that my parents wanted me to do, I did. You know, I was very in tune with wanting to make my parents proud. Like that was my goal out of college, make my parents happy. And so I did that by going the safe to getting the job. And it wasn’t until one sunny Friday afternoon, I’ll never forget it’s 4:50pm I met my boss at the Starbucks over on West End, and I had one of the best days you could have as a sales rep.
The other competitor actually did some things to upset the doctor. I mean, it was like your best day ever. Your competitor screws up right in front of you, annoys the doctor. He says, “Hey, I want to use your stuff next time.” The hospital, his company going, “Hey, the power equipment trial went really well because I sold capital equipment like drills and saws and stuff.” And I’m like, “Man, like one of the best days I could have.” And before I could sit down and explain how great of a day I had to my boss, he fires me and I was completely shocked.
I didn’t see this coming. I was like, what about all the sales awards? I got the rookie of the year sales award. All I do is work like this is my livelihood, my blood, sweat and tears. I poured everything into this and all of a sudden it was just ripped from me. It was taken away and so that was kind of my light bulb moment where I learned that nobody was going to look out for my financial well being. You can be as loyal as you want to a company. You can spend decades climbing the corporate ladder and investing in that job, but at the end of the day, that company is going to do whatever is best for them.
And that day it was letting me go and so I realized that I was the only one that was going to look out for my financial wellbeing. And so this is what turned me onto the entrepreneur path and why I say I was forced into it. And I had, you know, I had many failed entrepreneur startups. I had a company where I was trying to train people on how to get into medical device sales. I go, okay, if I’m going to do this entrepreneur thing, focus on what I’m good at. What am I good at? Well, I’ve had a lot of people reach out to me and ask how I got into this industry. Maybe I can create a course to help them out.
That completely flopped. I thought, well, I really enjoy Tony Robbins stuff, like I’d like to maybe be a life coach. And so I started a little life coaching business. Turns out that not many people want to take life advice from a 27 year old. Who could have thought of that? So that failed. And then I was really into motivational stuff, so I started an online motivational blog and I was writing articles and that didn’t pan out either. And so it kind of sucked. Like you’re just doing all this work for nothing and working for free and you’re not making any money worse, you’re losing money.
And it wasn’t discovered real estate that things really started to take off. And so when I had the first opportunity to flip my house, I mean I went all in. I stopped all the other businesses, I cut off the life support to those. I poured all the life support into the real estate business. I sold all my retirement accounts, paid the penalties, everything, so that I could buy this house, cash and I could flip it. And we ended up making about $30,000 off of that flip. Now, mind you, I’d work for six months, didn’t have anything to show for it, and now I actually figured out how to make some money. So I had about $30,000 at this point.
And that was really where everything started. We started flipping those houses. We’re very familiar with that entry level housing product and how well it did, just how the market needed that, and everything now has just cascaded from there. So I’m very blessed. I made a lot of mistakes. You know, we’ve built houses, we’ve developed, we’ve lost money on deals. We’ve had some just really heartbreaking stuff. You know, it took over 187 transactions, I’d say, until we really started to figure out and get our feet underneath us on like, how this business worked and what business, most importantly, we wanted to be in.
And so I say all this because I don’t want someone in the audience spending decades of their life, you know, climbing this ladder thinking they’re on the right track just to get the rug pulled out from underneath them. You know, if you listen to this, you know, Dave has some awesome resources. There are so many ways to create wealth that you’re not dependent on a company. And so start doing that today.
Yeah, no, really, what a great, powerful story, right? And I, you know, I kind of had a similar journey right, where I, I felt really handcuffed right into corporate. And you know, we have these paychecks that are coming in and you get, you have to pay the bills, right? You know, to keep, keep things going. Especially when you’ve got a young family, you’re just trying to, you know, build your career. And then the deeper you get into it, it seems it’s even harder, right, to kind of, you know, bust out of that. And I think what’s really interesting is it’s really about finding your purpose.
And, you know, we started off kind of talking about kids and you know, now, you know, my kids are actually 24 and we’re spending a lot of time masterminding in the family about helping them really find their purpose so they don’t have to bounce through, you know, different jobs before they figure out, you know, how do you wake up every day and be fascinated and motivated about the work that you’re doing to create impact in the world? And you know, I appreciate you sharing all those stories and pitfalls that you had because, you know, I know other people can, they can shortcut that, right? They don’t have to go through as much pain, you know, by sharing these stories with people and just get really clear on your, you know, your intentions, your vision, you know, where you want to head to it and, and for it, right?
It’s really about finding your purpose.. How do you wake up everyday and be fascinated and motivated about the work you’re doing? To create impact in the world.
Oh, 100% and that’s what I love about real estate is it helps you. It’s the vehicle to help you design the life that you want. You know, now it’s given me the freedom. I go on a lot of international trips like you talk about lifestyle, design and purpose. You know, my why is to create as many unique, unforgettable life experiences with those that I love. I see life as this game of who can collect memories. And so real estate is the tool that allows me to create the freedom and the income to produce those memories because that’s all we retire on.
And much like you make an investment in like a stock early on in your life, the longer you own that stock, the more dividends it pays you throughout your lifetime. I see memories is the same way. You can get a better ROI and more dividends off creating these memories earlier on rather than later on. Because I joke that you could have a billionaire who’s 80 years old and could spend $2 million on a private yacht trip to Europe for a week and they’re not going to get a fraction of the Joy that a $5,000 trip for a 20 year old who spends a month in Europe at hostels, slumming it, but meeting people, that person’s going to get so much more joy from that experience. So the money doesn’t give you as high of an ROI on your experiences later on in life. And so for me, I’m trying to generate and create as many of those early on as possible.
My why is to create as many unique, unforgettable life experience with those that I love. I see life as this game of who can collect memories? And real estate is the tool that allows me to create the income and freedom to create those memories.
Yeah, love that, Brandon and so what are some of your top unforgettable experiences so far?
Oh, man. So every year I have a annual mom son trip that we go on. So this past year we just went to San Antonio. My mom is a retired history teacher and so she’s never really had the money to go and travel to all these places that she’s taught about for 25 years in these textbooks. And so San Antonio is known for, remember the Alamo. So, man, we got to go there and see the history and just be immersed in it. And she loves this stuff, you know, the year before we went to Savannah, Georgia, the year before we went to Charleston. So I’m good to do these annual mom son trips every year.
And I just look at it as a collection, right? Because one day she’s not going to be able to do the traveling thing, and we’re going to be able to look at this basket of memories that we’ve created and look back and be like, “Wow, how freaking cool is that?” I do the same thing with my siblings, my brother and sister. We get away, we go somewhere on someone’s bucket list. This year, we went to Sedona, Arizona, and we hiked the beautiful red rocks everywhere, and we went to the vortexes that have the magical healing powers. And we went and we did the psychic readings. Like, you know, my sister had always wanted to do that, so that was really cool. I also do an annual father son trip. So my dad, he is just a huge bourbon and whiskey lover. That’s like his thing.
So last year we did the Bourbon Trail in Kentucky. He just got to visit some of his favorite distilleries and see the history. And my dad’s not somebody that smiles very often, so just being able to take a weekend and see the smile on his face throughout the whole weekend, that was absolutely priceless to me. And this past year, we did the Whiskey Trail here in Tennessee. So I’m all about design. I’m all about creating traditions that are designed to bring the family unit closer together. I feel like that’s what’s really missing in America.
We have these very detached family units for whatever reason. And it’s not like that in the rest of the world. In fact, in the rest of the world, what I notice is the more I travel and the more people I get to meet is the family units are very close. Like, a lot of times, the grandma will even live with them and help out, help raise the kids, or there’s just a lot more visits with the cousins and the uncles and everything. I mean, family dinners or like a weekly thing where the aunts and uncles and cousins, people get together on a weekly basis. You don’t have that in America. And I just think that that’s terrible. And so I’m trying to make a push and bring back more of those, really, the founding principles, I think, that the country was started on is how do we design a life where we bring the family unit as close together as possible.
That’s really what I’m focused on right now.
Yeah, that’s fantastic and so inspirational for those out there. I know I’m always thinking about. How to create unforgettable experience and what does it look like? And I think you just had us really think there that it doesn’t have to be the size of the check that you actually write. For the experience. It’s actually about the experience itself, which can be super authentic and super meaningful and takes a lot to think about that. So thanks for sharing those.
Definitely inspirational, for sure. Yeah.
And you don’t need a lot of time either, right? I probably take a month off and I travel every year at least. But you just need a weekend, a Friday or Saturday night, you know, Saturday, Sunday night, to get away with whoever it is that you want to reconnect with. And it just takes a little time and focus on how to optimize that experience. Like, you know, I could have traveled anywhere with my mom, but I was like, hang on, wait a minute. She’s a history teacher. She loves history. Let’s go somewhere historic. Like next year, I think we’re gonna go to Boston and we’re gonna do like the American Trail.
And so a lot of the reason, the whole reason why I say this is everybody wants to make a lot of money. And they say, well, why? If you ask, why do you want to make a lot of money money? Why do you want to retire? Why do you want to create passive income? They’re going to go, well, because I want to spend more time with my family. Right. You know, I want to relax a little bit. And what they’re really saying is, I want more quality time with my family. But nobody can define that. Just spending time with somebody is not quality time with somebody. It takes a concentrated effort to actually think, like, okay, how do I build an experience around this time that I’m spending with somebody? And that takes some focus and it takes some thought.
And you don’t have to have a bunch of money to do it. You can do it right now. You can just get away for a weekend and spend 5, 6, $700 on an Airbnb or something and create something where you can really remember it for the rest of your life. So it doesn’t take a whole lot of time and money. So for everybody out there that’s listening that thinks they have to wait until they’re retired to start creating these experiences, I’m here to tell you that you don’t. You can do it right now with the time and the money that you do have.
Yeah, awesome. Tell us about your real estate model. So what does your business really look like?
So we turn raw land into entry level housing communities. We do that by working with the local municipalities to get these developments approved. And once they’re approved, we really have, you know, four different exit strategies. And we’re just focused on two right now. But what I love about what we do is the multiple exits. I know there’s a lot of heartache. There’s been a lot of heartache in the multifamily and commercial world for a little bit since rates have done what they’ve done. And a lot of that has to do with the exit strategies.
There’s not that many of them. You’re pretty much tied to whatever that net operating income is and how much it can produce based on the cap rate. What we do is a little bit different. So once we get the community approved, we can do one of several different things. First is we could just sell the paper to another developer, or we can land bank it with ourselves and our investors. Typically, when we land, bank it, imagine that island that’s floating out in the middle of the ocean, right? There’s just. It stands out, right? There’s nothing else around it.
Now all of a sudden, imagine that island is surrounded by skyscrapers and buildings. I mean, there’s just tons of development around it. All of a sudden, that island becomes a lot more valuable. We do that with parcels of land that have a ton of development going on around it, because we know that if we hang on to it for a year or two, that it’s going to be worth a lot more money once all the development finishes around it. And so we force appreciate the value of that land by getting it approved from farmland to 50, 100, 200 homes. You can put a lot of forced appreciation when you do that. So that’s one exit strategy that we’ve got, is just buying the land, hanging onto it and just selling it. The second is we actually develop and sell it to a builder, typically a national home builder.
These are your Dr. Hortons, these are your Lennars of the world, right? They’re publicly traded, they’re funded by Wall street, and they can literally buy an unlimited amount of land from us. And so what we do is we get a contract from a builder and they’ll like. For example, we’ve got 74 home sites that we just got a final plat delivered on. Final plat means the city has approved it and you can go get building permits for it. These 74 lots, we contracted them for $85,000 per lot. So the builder said, “Hey, when you finish them, I’ll buy them to you for 85,000 a lot.” I think that’s somewhere around 6.3 million or so.
We bought the land for about $9,000 per pad, undeveloped, and it cost us, right, about $53,000 to develop it. So we’re all into this piece of land for somewhere around 60 to 62, 63,000, something like that. And we’re selling it for 85 a pack. That’s an example of a deal that we’re doing right now that we pre contract out. We put the roads, we put the water, we put the sewer in the ground, and then we just sell those finish pads to a builder that we pre contract with. And right now they’re very hungry. Over the last five years, two of those years, they didn’t buy anything. That was 2020 during COVID and that was 2022, 2023 when interest rates went up.
So nobody has done any building or purchasing for two out of the last five years. So every builder is playing catch up and they are scrambling to hit their growth numbers because again, the publicly traded companies, they have to grow or the stock price falls. And so we’re the middleman that’s just feeding these big machines, these land development opportunities. And it all falls underneath this entry level housing umbrella. Because, you know, you and everyone else has heard on the news how affordable housing is an issue. When I say affordable housing, I’m not saying Section 8 or government housing. I’m saying like that first time home buyer product, that, that $2,500 per month mortgage, like that’s what a family who’s purchasing a home for the first time, that’s what they can afford to pay. And so those are the types of products that we’re delivering.
So those are our Main 2 exit strategies right now. Now we can build the houses. We built tons of houses in the past. We just are recognizing that there’s an opportunity here because we started getting bought out of all of our land positions. So all these pieces of land that we were going to build houses on, we started getting knocks on the door and getting crazy offers from these national home builders. And at first we’re like, “Hey, you know, we don’t want to sell, sorry.” Like “We’re good, right?” And then they said, “Well, what if we offered you this for it?” And all of a sudden we said, “Yes, it’s for sale, you can have it.” And so if need be, we can always build the houses.
And then, you know, the fourth exit strategy is, you know, if we build them and we get another market event, we can always build and rent them out. So we try to underwrite every deal for at least the first three exit strategies. And then we’re trying to get build to rent to pencil as the number four exit strategy on all of our land deals that we do.
Yeah, interesting, and what markets are you primarily in?
Just Nashville, Tennessee. So if it’s a stone’s throw away from that market, we’re in it. And, you know, there’s a ton of reasons why we like Nashville, but, you know, we don’t have to go into that. But, yeah, you want to be in a city that’s preferably growing and has lots of population growth, which. Nashville is one of those.
Yeah, I’ve been there recently, and you can definitely see the building and the influx of people kind of coming in. But I love that having multiple different exit strategies. Which really, at the end of the day, as an investor, that reduce your risks. You’re not just locked into one, you know, business plan that has to be executed on.
Yeah, that’s a huge part about what we do, that having the exit strategies and then the multiple layers of how we’re mitigating the risk. There’s a lot of reasons why we really like it. And it’s kind of funny. It’s a very unknown strategy. Like, not a lot of people know about it, but if you live in a house like this, there was an investor, an investment group that developed that land, that put the house on there. And so it’s as popular as building houses, but it doesn’t get quite the notoriety.
Yeah. What do you think is the biggest risk in the model?
One of the biggest risks is having to hold on to the project in the event that you get another interest rate rise or something like that, and the buyers flock to the sidelines. And so the way we structured these 74 houses is we bought it where there’s no interest payments on the debt, and we pretty much own it outright with our investor group, so we could afford to hang on to it. In fact, we bought it in September of 2022 at the worst possible time to probably buy a piece. Piece of real estate. Right. And so we bought it. We had some contracts from some builders. When the rates went up, everybody frog to the sideline.
And so we were forced to hold this asset for a little over a year and a half until the market bounced back. And once it did, we got the green light and we’re just now finishing up the development. So that’s a big part about it, is you want to be able to hold the asset because you don’t have as many buyers out there for finished lots as you do homes, for example. You know, you can put a home on the market and there’s a ton of consumers that can purchase that home, but you have lots that are out there and the only person that’s really going to buy that is a homeowner that wants to build on it or a builder. And so you have a much smaller buyer pool. And because of that, there’s a little bit more risk to it when the market does turn. You need to be ready to hang onto that asset for the long haul in the event that you get some kind of market risk.
Other than that, it’s kind of the same risks that come with doing development, construction. You know, make sure that you got a really good civil engineer, right? They’re the ones who are designing everything because you’re going to be reliant on that engineer to make sure that they didn’t screw something up. I’ll give you an example. We had, we were doing 36 townhomes and the civil engineer was off about 6 inches on the depth of the development. And so this was over like a seven acre track. So we had to remove six inches of dirt over seven acres. It was pretty expensive. I mean, it was a, it was a multiple six figure mistake that cost us.
Now luckily we bought the deal really well, so we had tons of equity in it and an upside and so it didn’t hurt us. But that was something that was a risk, right? Making sure that you’ve got a really good civil engineering firm. Those are going to be the, two biggest risks in this particular type of deals that we do.
Yeah, got it. Brandon, I know you’re a big personal improvement junkie. What can you share with us about your morning routine? Maybe, maybe pre baby and some of those things that are really foundational to you in terms of having, you know, going into the day in peak performance and peak mindset, you know, so number.
One is sleep, which again, I’m fighting that right now with the newborn. You know, I wear a Woo boost device and I measure my sleep. I’m religious about it. And it’s funny, the whoop has been freaking out the past four weeks. It’s like, what are you doing? So I’m very, very in tune with getting enough sleep. Nothing more affects my conscious reality, my brain performance, my workouts, my health, than getting enough sleep. It’s kind of funny if, if some pharmaceutical industry came out and the FDA approved this drug and all you had to do was take this pill and all of a sudden you had more energy, you felt better, you had better workouts, your risk of stroke reduced by 50%, your risk of heart attack reduced by 22%. Everybody would be buying this pill and they would be paying enormous amounts of money for it because they’re getting these great benefits from this pill.
Well, that pill is free. It’s called sleep and everybody can get it. So that’s number one is trying to get enough sleep. Number two is I work out in the morning. I do a different, I switch it up.
I was doing weights for years until I started getting a little older. I noticed that wasn’t enough to start to stop the belly from stretching out the jeans. And so I started doing HIIT, high intensity interval training. And the HIIT was very easy on my joints and it was very. It burned a lot of fat. So it allowed me to help tone my muscle to a point where I could start getting rid of some of the body fat that I noticed that was naturally developing around my love handles and my abs, which, that never happened before this started happening, I think after I turned 30. So I do HIIT on and off with weights, and that really mixes things up for me.
So I’m in the gym doing that pretty much every single day now. I come home and I always do a green smoothie. So this was probably the number one life hack to feeling good, to being healthy. I eat the same thing every single day. It’s on the weekends. I’ll have some cheat meals and I’ll introduce different things to my diet to see whether or not it makes a difference. And if I notice a difference now, I feel in my energy levels, I will keep that thing and I’ll remove whatever I replaced it with. And the one thing that’s really stuck with me over the years is a green smoothie.
So I shove that thing with either spinach or kale, raw carrots, a little bit of yogurt or avocado as my fat, blueberries or some kind of frozen fruit. And then I can throw in any variety of like protein powders or collagen mixtures or whatever supplements. Supplement you want. That by far has been one of the best things I’ve ever done because I immediately feel better. I have lots of energy and I am getting very healthy. I’m getting all of my. I’m getting half of my vegetable and fruit intake intake just for that. So I always have a green smoothie and the final little kind of coupe de grace here.
And this might seem a little kind of pop culture, but this changed my life. And that is, I bought a cold plunge three years ago. So that thing sits on 55 degrees. I get in it every morning. And contrary to what you see on a lot of articles on YouTube out there about the benefits and health benefits of cold plunging, I actually don’t do it for the health benefits, though there are some. I do it because it allows me to think more clearly throughout the day and I don’t have to have that Buddha period in the morning where you get a cup of coffee and you’re kind of groggy and then you get kind of the coffee crash. And so if you jump into a vat of cold water, 55 degrees, I don’t care how tired you are, you do not need a cup of coffee. Every cell in your body is awake and alive and it sucks.
Every morning for about three minutes, I do it, but I get out and I do my jumping jacks. I get the oxygen back in my blood or enrich my blood with oxygen right afterwards and I feel fantastic. There’s no boot up period. I can think clearly. There’s no brain fog. If you’re somebody that suffers from brain F, I’ll tell you the quick hack. If you want some similar kind of wake up benefits, if you take a hot shower the last 30 seconds, just crank it on super cold and just shove your head underneath it and then kind of work on integrating like the rest of your body, just the last little bit of that shower and you can kind of feel some of these benefits. That’s a little hack for those that don’t own a cold plunge or can’t handle doing the full submersion.
Like just turn the shower on super cold the last 30 seconds, get your head underneath. You can do your full body great. But that’ll help kind of wake you up and keep you alive. And so that’s, that’s my main thing that I do for my morning routine.
Yeah, awesome. Yeah, I’ve got a cold plunge as well and I would echo the sentiments as well. And I think it just helps you also just handle, you know, becoming more resilient as well and just handling, you know, adversity. It’s really, the first minute is the hardest. And then after that your body actually does get used to it and everything. But yeah, it’s a great habit to develop.
And I, I’ve really enjoyed doing that. And then to your other point, I would say definitely to the listeners out there, if you do not have a wearable device, either an aura ring or a whoop, put it on your Christmas list, definitely get it. Because the real time metrics that you can see on how your body is performing. It’s really amazing and it just keeps getting better too. Like the new technologies, like you can actually predict if, if you’re about to get sick because you’re traveling and things like that. You can actually track it, you know, through your HRV. So really powerful.
Yeah, that’s cool. So you’ve got one as well and that it’s interesting that you say that about the discipline piece because there is something, there’s a cross pollination between doing hard things and being able to achieve your goals in life. And that’s one thing I’ve noticed. If you’re able to get in something if because your body does not want to do it, it’s like standing on the edge of a cliff. You know, your body’s sensing danger, danger to get away from the cliff. And there’s some natural biological responses that kick in. It’s the same thing.
Your body does not want to get in that freezing tub of water because I think it knows it’s going to die if it stays in it for, you know, if you’re in it for a long, long time, you’ll get hypothermia. That’s where you get out after a few minutes. But it’s funny that you mentioned that because I’ve noticed the same thing. It helps you develop that habit of discipline and which can help you in the other areas of your life as well.
Yeah, awesome Brandon, if you could give just one piece of advice to the listeners about how they could accelerate their own wealth trajectory, what would it be?
The best. Here’s the best advice that I follow. I have lost money in crypto. I’ve lost money investing in the Iraqi dinar. I’ve lost money in so many different things that I invested in. It wasn’t until I started investing in things that I understood that’s when things started to take a toll. Warren Buffett is famous for not investing in Internet or tech stocks in like the 90s, like, you know, the biggest boom effort, because he said he did not understand that industry. That’s the advice.
I don’t invest in anything that I don’t understand what the risks are, what the upside potential is, the downside potential, what would happen for me to break even, what would have to happen for me to lose money. And that’s why I like real estate. I know it, I understand it really well. I know what the risks are. And so that’s the first layer is investing in only things that I Understand the second is I mostly like to invest in things that I have some level of control over.
Like I can invest, influence the value, you know, so like when we take these pieces of land and we rezone them and change them from farmland to entry level housing communities, I love that because of how much value gets created and we do it before we buy it so we don’t take the risk of buying it and hoping that we’re going to be able to force appreciate it with a rezone or getting it entitled and approved for a new development.
We do that while we’re under contract and once we get all the approvals in place and the values there, then we go in and we raise money with our investor partners and our own money and we put it into these deals and that’s how we’re able to make a lot of the magic happen. So that those are the two, the two big things, you know, if you can only invest in things that you understand and if you can also only invest in things that you have some level of control on.
I know a lot of people can’t do that, but that’s what’s worked well for me.
Yeah, no, totally makes sense. Really appreciate you coming in today, Brandon. It’s really been insightful and appreciate you sharing your wisdom with the audience. If people want to connect with you or learn more, what’s the best place?
Yeah. So if you’re somebody who’s interested in adding land and development to your portfolio as a diversification play, you know, we’d love to talk with you. You can go learn more at our website hbgcapital.net it’s pronounced harrybobgarycapital.net I joke. Someone stole the.com so it is.net but on our website we’ve got a free ebook. 100 questions business owners Ask Before Investing. I wrote that ebook because I got a call from one of our investors who had a friend that lost all of his money investing in a real estate deal. He was asking for advice. It became very evident early on in that phone call with his friend that the reason he lost all of his money is because he was very green.
He did not know how to perform due diligence on the deal. He didn’t know how to vet the operator. And so because he was so green, he lost money on the deal. And I just remember thinking like, is there something I could do to prevent this from happening to just one other person? At least just one other person? Because it was very, very sad. I felt horrible for the guy. And that’s why I put together that book, 100 Questions Business Owners Ask Before Investing. Because questions unlock the answers that you need to make more informed investing decisions. Questions are the keys to getting the information you need to not lose money.
And so I’ve put that, that ebook together in the hopes that it could help somebody else avoid, you know, that kind of catastrophe. So again, you can go to our website, HBGCapital.net and you can grab that for free. We’ve also had you on the show on our podcast, the Recession Resistant Real Estate Radio. So if that’s your thing, you can go catch the episode we did with Dave there as well.
Awesome. Really appreciate your time, Brandon. Thanks again.
Yeah, it’s been a pleasure. Thanks for having me on.
You bet.
Thanks for listening to this episode episode of Wealth Strategy Secrets. If you’d like to get a free copy of the book, go to holisticwealthstrategy.com. That’s holisticwealthstrategy.com. If you’d like to learn more about upcoming opportunities at Pantheon, please visit pantheoninvest.com. That’s pantheoninvest.com.