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Through his vision and leadership, Ellis Hammond has led Symphony Capital Group to a milestone of more than eighty-seven million dollars in real estate investments.
Ellis is also the founder behind Kingdom REI – a coaching community for faith driven investors that helps them multiply their portfolios with joint ventures or collaborations through mentorship programs on how they can do it all themselves without any financial help from others!
With a plethora of different opportunities available to you, the real question is not about which one will give your money more security; “real estate was not the game but it was the starting point”, shares Ellis, describing how the biggest wealth is having options and the ability to choose far beyond capital.
In This Episode
- Ellis’ background and how he was inspired from a faith calling to investing
- How the industry has changed and how to stay in the real estate game
- What is the biggest wealth strategy for Ellis
- What are the fundamentals of wealth management and Ellis’ steps to multiply capital
Join Ellis in this episode and learn about the fundamentals of wealth creation in four simple steps that will help you stream your income and multiply your capital. Don’t miss out on his thoughts about what’s to come for investors and how to thrive in the current market!
Hey guys, welcome to the show today. Today we are joined by Ellis Hammond. Ellis has led Symphony Capital Group through the acquisition of more than $87 million of commercial multi-family real estate and is the host of the Kingdom REI Podcast and the Future of Real Estate Podcast. He’s also the founder of Kingdom REI, a mastermind and coaching community for faith-driven real estate investors who want to multiply their real estate portfolio, income, and impact through joint ventures and collaborations. Ellis’s career began as a full-time college pastor. He saw firsthand the need for marketplace leaders focused on creating profit to support impact ventures like his own. He began purchasing real estate in 2018 and began to build a team to support his growing portfolio. Ellis, my friend, so good to have you on the show.
Hey man, what’s happening? Good to be here.
Tell me, how did you go from being a full-time college pastor to getting into real estate and kicking off your career?
Wild journey, man. The Lord is good, dude. I mean, I would say honestly, you know, in some ways the same reason I went into college ministry. My faith is a massive part of who I am and who I’ve become, you know, my faith in Christ. Even in my marriage, my wife and I have always said faith is such an adventure, right, as we get to follow God. By the way, my daughter’s crying upstairs—part of the adventure—so you guys are going to hear that in the background. Sorry, that’s just part of it today. But you know, about four years into our ministry, I remember a young man came to me. He was on our team, and we were building, we were in college ministry, we were raising every dollar that we needed to support our ministry, us, my family, their families. So funding, you know, was just part of our life—like fundraising and whatnot.
One of the guys on our team had been a part of our ministry as a student, graduated, and come on staff with our team. We were beginning to grow and thought things were really doing well. But this young man came to me one day, and I could literally see him coming across the lawn. I’m like, oh, this is not good because this guy’s typically really upbeat and just a fun dude to be around. I remember him getting over to me, and I’m like, man, what’s wrong? Just go ahead and tell me. He’s like, what are you talking about? I’m like, dude, it’s all over your face, man, all over your body language. He’s like, well, I’m like, what is it? He’s like, Ellis, I don’t have enough money this month to buy groceries. I don’t have enough money coming in to put food on the table.
That drastically, I’d say, that changed my entire outlook on money and the mission of my life. Up to that point, man, I really just didn’t want anything to do with money. I didn’t want anything to do with capital. It had such a negative impact on my life up to that point—my parents being divorced and my dad always complaining about money. My dad died at 55 years old, and he complained about money. The whole last 15 years after he retired, it was always a sword between him and my mom. I hated it, dude. I just was like, I don’t want anything to do with it. I never thought I’d be a good steward of it, so I went to ministry.
But it was in that moment, man, where I realized I had really missed the point. This dude was trying to live his life for a massive purpose, and yet he still needed money to really live out his mission and his purpose. That was a wake-up call where I’m like, I gotta figure out this money game too. I cannot just ignore it my whole life. By the way, all that I just shared took me a couple of years to absorb and figure out, but it’s really clear to me now why. Why I’m so passionate about this idea of capital creation, capital multiplication, and capital stewardship, you know, and what we do with it.
Long story short, man, that was the turning point. I share all that backstory, but without that, I wouldn’t be so aggressive with what I do today. We just learned about money, figured out real estate. I remember, it’s a real quick story. I know you’ve asked me one question, and I’m just going to keep going, but I think it ties in. I was hungry, like, okay, now what? I heard a radio ad. The radio ad was “come learn how to build wealth through real estate.” That two-hour seminar, which was actually an upsell into a fix-and-flip type model, changed my life. I didn’t end up doing that route, but it changed my life because it showed me that real estate was actually not the end game to wealth but the starting point. That was the beginning, man. We bought a duplex, bought an apartment building, and never looked back.
That’s awesome, quite an interesting transition for sure. Given your background, and I know you and I really share a similar philosophy around a holistic view on wealth building and everything, what would you say in terms of the psychology of money? What does wealth really mean to you?
Yeah, I think that’s a great question. For me, wealth is options—having options, having the ability to choose is what wealth is to me. It goes far beyond capital because when you’re wealthy, that’s way beyond money. There are a lot of rich people who don’t have options. There are a lot of people who have really big corporate jobs and W-2 opportunities or are CEOs of big companies, and they don’t have an option to go to work. They don’t have an option to go spend a Wednesday afternoon with their families if they want to. They don’t have the option to take a week off and go take their kids on spring break. That’s not wealthy in my opinion. You might be making money, but you’re not wealthy because you have no optionality in the way that you spend time with your family and where you’re going to spend your time. So for me, wealth is much more about the ability to create options.
It’s interesting, your net worth might be ten times more than mine, but in some ways, I could be more wealthy than you because of the way that I’ve structured my business, my companies, my life, the way that I generate income, and I’m in control of that. For me, that’s really important.
Yes, so well said, Ellis. I think it is really multi-dimensional and covers a lot of different aspects. Often, people get very confused with the topic of being rich versus wealthy. That’s why we always like to talk about on our show, really being wealthy and creating wealth. It’s really a mindset, right? It starts with a mindset. What would you say in terms of having that wealthy mindset, having a billionaire type mindset? What does it really take?
Well, I’m still learning, man. I’m definitely not there yet, but I study a lot of billionaires, and I like learning about them. I think that’s the first thing. Where I’m at in my journey, I mean, I’ve passed the million-dollar mindset now and the million-dollar mark of what it takes to become a millionaire, which is even crazy to think about—pastor to millionaire, that’s a good headline for you. But that means nothing for me, man. That’s net worth, it’s tied to, what does that even mean, and what does that even matter? What’s probably more important is the mindset I’ve had to create and evolve in order to become that and to want to go beyond that.
Part of it is just being open-minded. I don’t know anything. Even in this position, I’m still so hungry to just learn and see. I think what’s so interesting about the guys I really respect who have built massive things is that they’re still hungry. There’s something about the billionaire mindset—it’s really never about the outcome, it’s more about who you become in the process. There’s always more, another level to grow and to, you know, joy is progress.
That’s 100% mentality, man, and I truly believe that. I think that’s true in the Christian faith too. We’re saved by faith, and that’s maybe a one-time event, but there’s also the sanctifying process. We’re being made more like the image of God as we grow and as we’re sanctified. That’s a lifelong journey. The more you are sanctified, the more you enjoy God. It’s the same journey in wealth building, in evolving as an entrepreneur and investor. What is the next level?
This is a long conversation, and some people say, you know, I don’t know. My wife is, there’s a good balance of contentment. There’s a fine line because I probably struggle with not being content with where I’m at sometimes too, and that’s probably a flaw of mine. I have a good wife to keep me at bay. But I also think, for those who are ultra successful, there’s just a little discontentment there, or maybe a lot of discontentment there, for good or for bad. I probably got a little bit of that.
Well, that’s the entrepreneurial mindset, right? You just cannot sit still and you must be growing. It’s really all about having this growth mindset. I mean, how many people do we meet in the course of a day, a week, a month, that you talk to them about diet, religion, politics, and their views are already shaped, and they’re not bending at all. They have this belief system from maybe their childhood, the people they’re around, the media they’re consuming, and they’re not willing to take on new ideas.
What I love about an entrepreneurial community is that a lot of entrepreneurs are focused on solving problems. They’re always asking questions. Even when you fix one problem, okay, what’s the next? Or it creates a different dynamic. I mean, listen to Elon Musk talk. It’s all about solving problems that, in some cases, haven’t even been thought of before.
So you’re absolutely right, you need to be an inquisitive person. The way we come at this thing in terms of building wealth, we’re asking questions about all this conventional wisdom that’s out there that doesn’t really make sense. When you start to look under the covers and get more into it, it’s like, hey, there’s a much better way to do this, right?
Yeah, 100%. That’s a whole topic, man. We can get into that, but I think you’re right. The key there is growth mindset and being around other people who are growth-minded is so key, especially when it comes to investing as well. Think about the majority of folks in this country. Maybe people listening to this episode, maybe this will be a good wake-up call. The majority of people work the majority of their lives working for a dollar, and then think about this, we’ll give that dollar that they’ve worked their whole life for to someone else to manage or to look over.
I talk to a lot of investors. I believe in what we do, man, we’re crushing it, we’re going to make good returns, double-digit returns. We’ll beat your financial advisor in the stock market all day long. However, I’ll talk to my family back home, and they’re like, guys, we’re making so much money in our deals. I promise you, I’ll beat your financial advisor.
Their response is, “Ellis, sounds good, but we just like our guy. We just trust our financial advisor.” And this is the response: “It’s how I’ve always done it.” That’s literally what I hear over and over. I look at their life, and I look at their friend’s life, and it’s all the same. There’s a contentment in ignorance.
Dave, that’s okay. Truly, truly, I say that with a full heart—it’s okay. That’s just not me, and the investors that we work with, that’s typically not them either. I think that’s the waters that we swim in. We’re a little discontent with what the world’s given us, what traditional wealth-building advice has given us for the last four or five decades.
Yeah, 100%. So, I mean, what do you think’s really holding people back?
Well, I mean, part of it, man, is a mindset that has been beaten into people through big agencies, through big institutions, through Wall Street. It’s not necessarily their own fault. This is what has been beaten into us from the media and from the government for so long. The middle class, dude, was a dream. Think about this, to be middle class where you had home ownership, that was options back in the day when most people had to go work in a warehouse or a factory. Getting to the middle class was the dream.
Well, today, man, the middle class is bondage, bro. You lose your job, and you no longer can afford all your big payments. Or you get sick and can’t work—then what? What used to be the thing that was promoted, the American dream, now truthfully, with inflation and the cost of things today, the middle class is in danger.
A million dollars, truthfully, you’re still poor, I mean, just to be real. You’re vulnerable, is my point. No, you’re not poor—there’s poverty, and then there’s poor. You get my difference there. But you’re vulnerable, and I think that is what I think maybe is keeping people holding back. They don’t realize how vulnerable they really are, and I think that needs to be a wake-up call.
Yeah, and I think we’re getting there. I think we’ll get there. Our government did a lot during COVID, man. We could have seen a lot of blood on the streets during COVID. The government bailed out the middle class, and good for them.
Yeah, no, I definitely agree on that. I think it’s education. When Robert Kiyosaki came out with his book, his whole tenet is financial education. It’s interesting because we’re not able to learn these concepts in any academic arena. They’re not taught, even if you’re a doctor, lawyer, or whatever your profession is, you’re not really taught these things. You’re primarily taught it as an entrepreneur going through it, trying to scale a business and survive. You learn how to read a financial statement and a balance sheet and what makes things work. But taking control of it is a whole different thing.
That’s so true, man. That’s what I talk about. Most people just trust their financial advisors. I don’t mean you shouldn’t have somebody steward your money. Dude, if you’re not a real estate entrepreneur, don’t come and start a real estate business. Give me your money or give Ellis your money. Let us go invest in real estate for you. However, you still are responsible for that. You wouldn’t know about alternative investing. Here’s the thing, you just have to take responsibility and ownership for that.
I sat down just last week with an oil and gas investor. He was telling me all about the space, and they got more money than they know what to do with right now. I was telling him about the benefits of multi-family and about bonus depreciation, how we can accelerate depreciation through real estate and why we use leverage. Leverage allows us to have a little bit of equity in but take advantage of 100% of the depreciation of the asset, which is massive.
We might only have 20% of the equity, but we’re getting all of that depreciation. Then what that meant for his portfolio and how we could use that to offset other passive income. If that is over someone’s head right now, that means you should probably go figure that out. Research what I’m talking about because if that didn’t just click with you, then you’re missing out on something really key for your portfolio right now.
He was like, “I never knew that.” This dude’s a multi-millionaire, and he’s like, “I never knew that.” For him, it was a light switch. He’s not going to necessarily go start a multi-family company; he’s going to maybe start investing with me. The fact that he took the initiative to sit down with me and try to learn something that he had never learned about really said a lot about why he is in the position that he’s in today.
Right, and he was open-minded to asking the questions and learning, despite how far he had come. I think a lot of people just aren’t in that position to ask the questions. You don’t have to be an expert. That’s what I love about the space of real estate and private equity. This is a team sport. There are various different roles to fulfill. You’ve got acquisitions, you’ve got asset management, you’ve got investor relations, property management—there are so many different components.
When you talk about leverage, you’re able to get so much leverage from a financial perspective in buying the asset, but you also get phenomenal people leverage. Where can you get a double-digit return where you’re investing with professional investors that all they do is acquisitions every day? They have relationships for the past 15 years to even uncover the deal you just found.
I think that’s really powerful. As you educate yourself, it’s about knowing how to ask the right questions.
Yeah, I agree.
Ellis, do you have a personal wealth strategy that you follow yourself? Is it written down?
Not really. I mean, it’s not very complicated, Dave. I think we were talking about this last time. My wealth strategy and the wealth strategy I teach everyone that asks me about building wealth is four steps—super simple. Step one, you need an income stream, and you need an income stream where it doesn’t have a ceiling, meaning it’s tied to your effort or your ability to create. Unless you’re working in a W-2 and you can make several hundred million dollars a year, but if you’re tied to something making you $50,000-$60,000 a year and that’s your ceiling, you need something else. You’re never going to get wealthy making $60,000 a year.
You need a different vehicle. If you’re wondering what that means, maybe you need to spend your nights and evenings building a skill so you can make yourself more valuable to someone else, another company, or an entrepreneurial endeavor to lift your own ceiling.
Step one is you need a cash-flowing vehicle, a cash-producing vehicle. Step two is you need a vehicle that can multiply that capital. Now that you’ve made it, you need a vehicle that protects and multiplies your money. That’s why you and I like real estate because now that I’ve got it and I’m making it, can that vehicle protect and multiply my money? That vehicle might be your own business.
For a lot of entrepreneurs, I’m not saying real estate is the end-all-be-all, I’m just saying it’s a predictable vehicle that can multiply your money faster than most W-2 people can. For an entrepreneur, that vehicle might be their own business or other businesses. For a lot of my buddies and friends, they’re investing back into their business because they can put a dollar into that business and get four dollars out. That’s a pretty good return. There’s a cap to how much they can invest back into their business, so they’ll take the rest of that and put it into real estate with me.
Step three, we’ve already talked about, is leverage. The wealthy take out debt—fixed debt or low-interest debt—and they invest that into assets, businesses, real estate, stuff that produces more income and appreciates more. The fourth step is just to repeat. It’s really three steps, and then the fourth one is to keep doing that.
That’s my journey, man. That’s my wealth strategy. I have two companies: one is a company that makes cash, and the other company is a company that buys assets. That’s it, dude. That’s all I do. That’s my wealth-building strategy. I take my cash and put it into my assets, and then I just keep that cycle going. I use leverage to buy those assets, and that really is about all that I do. I do own Tesla stock. That’s been really good for me because I like that company, and I like Elon. I think he’s the ultimate innovator, and I’m betting on Elon. That’s it.
Yeah, so tell us about your portfolio allocation.
Just broadly, I would say probably 25% is in Tesla, probably 5 to 10% is in Bitcoin, and I’ve even kind of started to scale out of that a little bit just because I wanted to learn it. So I was investing a lot in Bitcoin, and I still think it’s a great asset, but I’ve done, I understand it a lot more where I think I know when to buy in and when not to buy in. Right now, I rather have, I rather be out of it. The rest is real estate—multi-family deals in cash, that way for opportunities. As an operator, I need a little more cash maybe than most because I need it for the business. I need it for hard money, I need it to be able to put up money for deals. So I may be a little bit more liquid than others because, in order for us to secure these assets, we have to have cash on hand or I have to go give equity to somebody else who has cash. That’s pretty much it. I really truly am building wealth alongside our investors.
Ellis, what does your strike zone really look like for purchasing assets? What is your buy criteria?
We are strictly multi-family investors at the moment, typically $20+ million multi-family assets. We’ve bought a couple of markets in the past eight months. I really like the Midwest, particularly Kansas City—a true value-add play there. That’s more of an equity play for us where we have a really clear value-add plan model. We’re buying at a low cost basis, putting in a pretty good chunk of money per door, called $15,000 a door. Then, we might be selling it for $50,000 or $60,000 more than we paid for it per door. So it’s a really clear value-add play where we’re just multiplying money.
The other market we’re really in love with right now, even though it’s not anything new, is Dallas. It’s just a great place to be investing in—lots of jobs, lots of people moving there. The play in Kansas City may be to buy older assets where we can do the value-add play. Honestly, the goal in Dallas is to buy upstream. We want to buy nice assets where we can get this really good organic rent growth and hedge against potential dips in the economy. I want to be buying upstream in those types of markets because I know more and more money is coming into that market, rents can continue to steadily go up. At some point, there’s going to be like the “oh, I can only pay so much” moment, especially in lower-class assets. Somebody on a fixed income can only make so much, and their income is not going to go up $30,000 next year. But maybe the nicer you go, that’s not necessarily the case—there’s still room for their incomes to grow, and they can pay more in rent. They’re looking for nicer facilities.
That’s our strike zone, our sweet spot in that market. We’re looking to buy more deals upstream, nicer assets. For investors, Kansas City is great for young buddies who want velocity of capital, willing to take some risk, want their money back in two years and hope to double it. Dallas is more for traditional real estate investors who want good cash flow, aiming for that 12 to 18% per year mark. We’ll either sell or refinance and return a majority of the equity in about four or five years, then decide what to do with the asset—probably sell it, but maybe hold on to it depending on where interest rates are.
You don’t think Dallas is overvalued right now?
No, I don’t. It’s amazing what has happened in the last two years in Dallas and where asset prices are compared to two years ago, but the market supports it. Most people’s rent-to-income ratio is still in the mid-20s—very affordable. There are organic renewals with 15% rent growth. We’re not underwriting that for three years, but I think and believe that can sustain for a while because of the affordability of that market traditionally. People may get pushed out of Dallas, but there are people who got pushed out from other markets moving to Dallas where it’s more affordable for them now. So I think Dallas has a long run.
Yeah, there’s just been so many major corporate relocations there too from California. Here’s a great example of why I think Dallas is so interesting. My neighbor, who lived literally right there a month ago, is the CEO of one of the fastest-growing companies in the nation—an Inc. 5000 company. I won’t say who he is or the name of his company. His company has $17 million in cash sitting in the bank right now. He was renting because he was priced out of home ownership in California and decided to rent.
He picked up his family and his company, moved everyone to Dallas because it’s more affordable. That’s your new tenant in Dallas. That’s your new homeowner in Dallas—the California CEO with $17 million. That’s just one example.
Why I think Dallas is still affordable in the grand scheme of things and why Dallas maybe wasn’t that attractive 10 years ago is because it didn’t have the scene that it has now. It didn’t have the retail, the shopping, the restaurants, the diversity. It was much more redneck. That’s not the case anymore today.
Yeah, don’t get me wrong, there’s still a bunch of rednecks in Dallas. I am from South Carolina, so in some ways, I am a little bit of a redneck. That’s not being offensive to anyone. I know my people, and I know what Texas is.
What would you say if you were to give just one piece of advice to listeners about accelerating their wealth journey?
I mean, figure out where in that wealth journey you’re at. For a lot of folks, the first step is if all you have is 50k and you don’t know quite how to replace that yet, if you invested that 50k and you don’t know where your next 50k to invest is coming in, then you’ve got a cash generating issue. You don’t have an investing issue; you’ve got a cash generating issue.
Again, it might be skills, mindset—take that 50k and go invest it back into education. That’s what I did, that’s what I continue to do. I spent six figures last year, Dave, just on myself—education, mentorship, coaching, all these things. I believe those to be assets to invest in, so don’t overlook that.
But if that’s not an issue, just stick it out. My goal every year is to put six figures into our deals, multiple six figures if I can. I encourage my investors, don’t think about investing in this deal as a one-time thing. Think about it from a portfolio perspective. Each year, can you give me 25% of your portfolio or 25% of your investable income every single year to put in these deals? The repeating of that, us being able to take that equity, multiply it, put it in the next deal, multiply it again—that’s going to be life-changing.
Know what your strategy is, commit to it, and I would just say this: make sure you pick the right vehicle. If you pick the wrong vehicle, and you spend 10 years doing it, and you look up like, well, that was silly, you’re going to regret it. Make sure you’re picking a vehicle that’s proven.
That’s why we love multi-family. Even if this amazing run in multi-family of 20-25% a year stops and we are down back to 12 or 15% a year, okay, we’re still above fundamentals. They’re just so strong in multi-family, just from the supply and demand side, and it’s forecasted that way for the next 10 years.
Yeah, you’re absolutely right. Even if the IRR starts to come down a little bit, where else can you get that multiplier effect on your capital?
Exactly. So I would say those two things: make sure you have a good cash generating vehicle, and make sure you’re picking a great investing vehicle. Bigger is better. That’s why I don’t like single-family duplexes.
Actually, that’s a great question. Can you elaborate on that a little bit more, Ellis? Because you’ve got a lot of experience from there—you kind of started there, and then you got into multi-family. Can you elaborate on that?
Well, it’s just a hope, man. You can’t build wealth on hope. Unless you’re going to be actively… I’ll tell you what a duplex and single-family is: it’s a great step one. If you can flip those deals, like you can go in there, add 20k, and get 50k out, that’s a great first vehicle. All the guys I know doing that big time are taking their gains and putting them into commercial. I have nothing against that route; just know where it is in terms of my four-part process. It’s not number two; it’s for sure number one.
The guys who are doing that and really building wealth there know that—that’s their money generating vehicle. However, it’s not their… unless they’ve built systems and processes so great and so big that they can step away from it. Most of them, man, it’s the cash, it’s the money-making activity, but then they still take their gains and put them into something that can be more passive and can multiply and protect that capital.
I just think it’s knowing what that is or where that is in the process. Fixing and flipping deals as a secondary income is a great strategy. I think we’re still in a great market. If you can find people who want to sell their house in today’s market, you can make a lot of money. I think it’s a great strategy, but know that that’s step number one, not step number two.
Yeah, it’s early on in the cycle because it doesn’t really scale. Most people are doing that, like you said, if you have that cash creation issue, that’s a great way to do it. When you start… like my daughter’s doing that. You’re able to do that, but at some point, it just doesn’t scale. You can only manage so many properties.
Right, unless you’re just great at scaling into a business. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of guys who do that really well, and it could become number two, but we’re talking about massive scale with teams and systems and processes. Very few people are doing that.
Right. Ellis, it’s been great having you on the show. Where can folks find you? How can they connect with you?
Yeah, thanks, Dave. This has been really fun, man. I always love getting to chat with you. Listen, we’re trying to build a multi-billion dollar portfolio and would like to do that in this decade. We want to connect with anyone who’s hungry to do that—investors, deal finders, capital raisers. I know one thing, man, we cannot do this alone. It really does take a tribe. It’s why we’ve tried to build a community around everything that we’re doing. SymphonyCapitalGroup.com—that’s SymphonyCapitalGroup.comis our website, and there’s a contact form there.
I encourage people to contact me there. Then on Twitter is probably the best way you can interact with me. Ellis Hammond underscore, or maybe it’s Ellis. You can look me up and find me there, but my Twitter account is Ellis_Hammond. So hit me up on Twitter. Those would be two places.
Awesome. Ellis, thanks again for coming on the show today. Always such a pleasure to connect, and thanks for providing so much value to our listeners.
Loved it, man. Thank you.
Awesome.