Adam Torres and Benjamin Kogut discuss Rooster Equity Partners.
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Show Notes:
New book alert! In this episode, Adam Torres and Benjamin Kogut, CEO at Rooster Equity Partners, explore Rooster Equity Partners and Benjamin’s new book, Mission Matters: World’s Leading Entrepreneurs Reveal Their Top Tips To Success (Real Estate Vol.3, Edition 2).
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About Benjamin Kogut
Ben Kogut, Founder of Rooster Equity Partners.
With a degree from the University of Texas, he quickly found the commercial real estate investing world through my mentors. It was an immediate fit. Over the next 20 years, I grew from the youngest broker in Texas to achieving the prestigious CCIM certification and establishing his own brokerage. This led me into the world of commercial real estate and alternative assets.
However, it wasn’t until he began personally investing passively in their deals that he realized the power of wealth building with commercial real estate. Since then, he invested in over 45 deals and exponentially increased my portfolio in a risk-adjusted manner.
About Rooster Equity Partners
For the seasoned investor, true wealth isn’t found in high-stakes gambles or ephemeral assets. You understand the importance of risk-mitigated returns and comprehensive diversification across various asset classes, all to safeguard your capital while ensuring sustained portfolio growth.
At Rooster Equity Partners, this is how they operate. they pin-point and rigorously evaluate risk-mitigated commercial real estate and alternative assets located in America’s high-potential markets. their team completes rigorous analysis and robust stress-testing for each investment opportunity, ensuring they can withstand a changing market to continue providing you portfolio growth and ongoing tax benefits.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres. And if you’d like to be a member of our community, head on over to missionmatters. com and hit community to apply. All right. So today is a very special episode. Let me tell you, I’ve been trying to get this guy on the line for, I don’t know, going on six months, seven months.
He made some time for us today. We have Benjamin Kogut on the line and I’m proud to announce that he’s launching. Two things today is business. First off, or which is called rooster equity partners. And also we have a book that we released together for those of you that have been watching this show or listening for a long time, you know, I love promoting authors, their work and getting the word out.
So first off, Hey, Ben, welcome to the show. Thanks, Adam. It’s an honor to be here. Man, Ben, we got a lot of catching up to do today. I’m excited. We’re going to, we’re going to have some fun. And just to get this, to get this interview started, we’ll kick it off the way that we start them all with what we like to call our Mission Matters Minute.
So Ben, we at Mission Matters, we amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives, and experts. That’s our mission. Ben, what mission matters to you? A lot of missions matter to me, in particular right now, community, take care of community, being involved in community and helping people in the community. And that’s a lot of communities that I’m a part of right now for my business.
It’s my investor community, helping investors. Access quality risk adjusted commercial real estate investments. And yeah, it’s been a lot of fun teaching people about the benefits of investing in commercial real estate. And it’s been a great journey and it’s been fulfilling to help people fill their own you know, freedom, a wonderful thing to come with that and yeah, it’s it’s really just a fun journey to be on.
So Ben we’re, we’re of course going to get into rooster equity partners. And of course I want to know what you’re up to nowadays, but let’s go a little bit further back to get us started. So like, where did, how did real estate make its way into your life? Blessed to have some fantastic mentors in my life who have shown me the benefits of commercial real estate and the, and the life that comes with that.
And. And then beyond that, towards the mission matters purpose, being able to utilize the network and the resources and money to be able to give back and help people in the community, both locally and as well as around the world. And so that that really is what drives me. I am really proud to be involved in a lot of different nonprofit organizations, and I wouldn’t be able to do that had it not been for my mentors who taught me how to live a life of meaning.
And. I’ll be able to get back along the way and truly it’s I feel so blessed to be able to do that. So a lot of different ways that you can be involved in real estate, whether it’s you know, as an individual investor, as a syndicator, I mean, you can be on the, on the sales and service side, and there’s a lot of different ways.
So real estate is so broad. What I know you for, and what I’ve seen through the years is, is you working really on the syndication arm of real estate. What drew you to that? Syndication is, you know, to me, it’s like a fancy word for crowdfunding. Yeah. And I started as an investor, I, you know, had some money and I was looking for a way to start building towards my own personal financial freedom.
And so I made an investment with another syndicator and then that was kind of like the, the taste that I just loved and, and just kind of started learning more and learning more. And then got to a point where I, you know, had so much experience that I started teaching others about it and then seeing how that.
Impacts their lives and, and just like I’ve made a decision and I just have been going after that and I never look back, man. That’s great. It’s great. And and I know 1 of the things that you’ve led and the way that you lead with your investors and otherwise is with that education component. So I know you, I know you as a, as a teacher, somebody like, and you, and even in the way you answered the question, I just asked, well, syndications is a fancy word for crowdfunding.
Like you’re always, is. Teaching, you’re always trying to bring somebody else up, which is one of the things that I admired and admire about you. So going into the education component of things, where do you think like that average investor kind of fails in their education? Like how, where’s that disconnect?
Because some people try real estate. They said, did it work for them? Like things like that. Where does the education disconnect happen? You know, I think that making time for it is, is challenging, you know, sifting through some some of the not great advice. I feel like, you know, there’s a lot of people who are focused primarily on multifamily and not to say that there’s anything wrong with multi family, but I found that talking and educating people about the triple net side of commercial real estate syndication is really where I get to you know, You know, Excel, because there’s not as many people talking about and educating about and actually doing those deals.
And so I think that that’s really just it, just like being able to you know, do things like this to be able to have a platform to be able to share about what I know personally, which is just like you know, access to financial freedom. And so that’s what I’m preaching. And I, I think people understand, you know, understand the concept of it, but they just don’t necessarily have as much access to this type of information as, as I’d like to see.
Let’s talk a little bit about the book here today. So creating passive income through commercial real estate investing. What was a lot of things you could have wrote about like that? That’s just the bottom line. You’ve been doing this long enough. You have a wealth of knowledge and expertise. Why this topic?
Why now? It’s been a journey. I have been doing commercial real estate for over 20 years. And for the last five years, I’ve really narrowed in on, you know, helping people learn about passive income. And then frankly, you you inspired me, you know, getting my getting access to coming on podcasts and start sharing.
I, I wasn’t really. Putting a lot of emphasis on that before I just kind of, you know, do it the old school way, just talking to people. But then when you invited me on the podcast, and then I ended up starting my own podcast and going on a bunch of others and sort of starting to create opportunities, I decided that, you know, Hey, it’s time to write a book and be able to put something in writing in a, in a, in a form, you know, I got it right here.
That I can actually hand to somebody and provide the wisdom that I’ve been lucky enough and blessed enough to learn from my mentors along the way. And then just through my own experiences. And I just felt like. This is this is a gift that I can literally give to people. And so it’s been extremely positive so far.
I mean, I’ve barely, you know, started getting the word out about it and it has just been, and it’s fun. So like, you know, how let’s have some fun along the way. That’s really yeah. I like that. I like that. You mentioned the fun part because I tell people all the time. I’m like, all right. Yeah. Okay. There’s, you know, we want you promote marketing.
That’s good. But if you’re not having fun with it, there’s something wrong. Like you gotta be having fun. Otherwise, it’s too hard. Otherwise, it’s not worth it. I’m going to pick out a couple things from the book and for everybody watching, just so you know, we’re not we’re not going to hit on all of them today, but I’ll read some of the themes and then we’ll go.
We’ll ask Ben to kind of to delve into a few of them, but I’ll, I’ll kind of go through these briefly. So some of the, some of the headlines in within Ben’s writing. So choosing goals, due diligence cash now or cash later, diversify, invest as a lender, ground up development. Bill to rent syndications, tax advantages.
So these are all different themes and topics that Ben wrote about within the book but just to get us started in the book side of things, Ben choosing goals. I thought it was interesting that you started there with, with your, with your writing, but then I was like, man, doesn’t that where it all starts in the first place in anything you want to do.
Yeah, it’s definitely what I think is where I’d like to start a conversation, especially with someone that’s new to this world of commercial real estate investing or new to me in particular. And so I I’m not the sales kind of guy that just wants to start pushing something down your throat. Like, that’s never been my style.
I’m more just like to come at it from a, you know. What are your goals? Because like from there, then we know which direction to go. Otherwise, you know, like every individual investor has different goals. And so let’s start with the fundamentals. And, and so I wanted to, to share a little bit about my thoughts on, on how to approach that because sometimes people you know, they don’t really know what their goals are.
And so. That’s a, that’s one of my favorite things is to be able to sit down and have that conversation and learn together and, and then come up with a plan. Now you’ve worked with through the years, hundreds of investors and some of them watching this, they’re going to be more, you know, advanced, some of them are going to be just starting and they may even have gotten tripped up a little bit on that word you used earlier, which is triple net lease which we won’t go, I mean, we won’t go that far into that part of the conversation today, but give us a little bit of maybe behind the scenes of how you normally have or start out that.
That conversation with maybe a new investor. That’s maybe new investor to you, or Hey, maybe new investor altogether. Well, I have I, first of all, I created some educational content so I can provide that to them and then in addition to this book, and so that way they can come to the table with a foundation of, you know, basic terminology.
Cause I prefer to start not, you know, ground zero, not so that way they can on their own time. learn some on their own, and then we can come to the table with that basic foundation of understanding and knowledge and then kind of grow from there. But really, it’s very personalized. It just, you know, it depends on the individual.
Luckily, I’m a pretty patient person. So, That’s fine. I’m not really concerned about, you know, where they’re at on their journey. It’s just more of like you know, having a like minded you know, core values and, and figuring out together what the best path forward would be for them and their family at that point in time.
So rooster equity partners. So first off congratulations on launching this this new venture again, you’re not new, new in real estate. You’ve been doing this a long time, like you mentioned over 20 years, but this is a new firm that you’ve launched. So first off him, man, I just want to say congrats.
That’s never easy. Congrats on launching. I saw the website. It looks amazing. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, it’s it’s been a journey just to get here. I took some time off to come up with the vision and the mission and mission matters and took a lot to get to this point. And it’s just like, so fulfilling.
It’s been so positive. The more I share it with people and I’m really excited. Thank you. Tell us a little bit about what your, what your aim is to, to focus on with rooster equity partners. Like what, what’s the focus in terms of a deal deals and deal flow that you’re looking at? So first I want to just throw a real quick, why rooster?
Oh yeah. That’s a great one. Yeah. Rooster equity. Yeah. A lot of people like rooster. Well there’s a few reasons why rooster, first of all. So my last name is Kogut, K O G U T. And I and my, my great great grandparents are Polish and rooster, or sorry, Kogut. Is Polish for rooster. So I, you know, I just didn’t really want to call it.
And so I thought, you know, rooster, it’s a little bit different. You know, most people out there are like does it a capital or rock this or this tree or whatever. And I was like, you know, I don’t want to just do something. I want to do something that sounds out a little bit differently. I talked to a friend of mine, that’s a patent attorney.
And he’s like. That space is wide open. There is no rooster equity. I got the domain and you know, there’s, you know, then I started doing some research on symbolism around the rooster and basically every every culture. That I could find had some very positive symbolism around the rooster side.
I thought, okay, well, from a branding and marketing perspective, you know, we can have some fun with that. And so, and then you can imagine all the different, you know, metaphors with, you know, nest egg and early rising. Yeah. Awesome. , you know, like the C word, which I don’t know if, yeah. I like the dust dig.
That’s great. I can already see the, I can already see the commercial. That’s hilarious. Yeah, exactly. And the logo looks great. I’m looking at it over your head. Like logos. Amazing. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. So there’s the logo. There’s, there’s my puppy and there’s our book right here. And so Yeah, go back, back, back to it.
Thank you for sharing that by the way. Cause I was wondering about, about the name and where the name came from. So what, what areas are you going to focus on with, with the company? Like tell us a little bit about the investor side of things. So I am I started an investor club. Where people can go to roosterequity.
com, join the investor club. And within that, they’ll have access to quite a bit of different investment opportunities that are private. And you know, typically, so what kind of deals are we doing? So my personal background has been investing in triple net investment properties. And so that is that’s where we’re starting.
So these are deals that are they’re stabilized, they’re cash flowing. They typically have great tenants that are, you know, occupying the space with great lease terms. And we’re typically structuring them to make a monthly distribution starting right away. So you’ll start seeing passive income that, you know has all the benefits that you can think of.
So there’s that side of it. In this particular environment, where at the end of 2023 going into 2024 the lending market is challenging to say the least, which creates opportunities. And so I am seeing a bunch of opportunities to partner with some friends of mine who have some specialty lending opportunities.
The word equity. Is 1 of the is 1 of the opportunities that we’re pursuing where we can get incredibly great. You know, passive income, great returns. With, yeah, I wouldn’t say no risk because there’s always risk, no matter what, but it’s incredibly risk adjusted. Like, I really can hardly find where the risk would be.
I mean, so many, so many things have to go up for their green risk. And then, so like, that’s, that’s really what I’m doing. And then, and then on top of that another you know, path that I’m pursuing is I have in my network, many friends who have incredible track records. They have deals and deal flow and they may or may not have the time or the resources to raise the equity.
And so they’re calling on me at rooster equity and they’re saying, Hey, Ben, I got this deal. Can you help me raise capital for it? And so I will negotiate preferred terms, just some just some really great terms. And then my investors in my investor club, they’ll have access and they’ll have the option on whether or not they want to invest.
Those particular projects. And so it’s, you know, we’re hoping to do our first deal in the first quarter next year, that’s. That’s the goal for this particular new venture. And you know, I’ve already, you know, over the last 5 years, I raised like 110 million from around 300 different investors and this similar type of model, and I’ve personally invested in 45 of these projects and I plan on continuing to invest alongside my investors.
And you know, it, it warms my heart to be able to help my investors, my friends who you know, are looking for a great place to allocate their, you know, their hard earned money. And then I have another batch of, you know, great friends who are great commercial real estate operators and they’re looking for you know, great investors.
And so I’m in a blessed position to be able to, you know, kind of put the two and two together. Maybe tell us a little bit about just the market overall, what’s going on and like, and any geographies maybe that you’re looking at or types of properties or otherwise, just to give the, I mean, just give the, you know, potential investors that are watching this a flavor for your thought process and what goes into making deals.
I am seeing a lot of, a lot of opportunity. I mean, with the slowdown in the market, there really creates tremendous amount of opportunity. Let’s focus maybe on the triple net space. Cause that’s where I see that’s where most of my experience is. The triple net business is still extremely strong.
There’s a lot of capital that’s in the market and sitting on the sidelines. Cap rates have come up a little bit, but. Not to dive too much into cap rates, but, you know, it’s an important metric in the commercial real estate business, but in certain asset classes it’s still strong as ever, you know, without getting too much into like suburban office.
I mean, that’s in the news and. It’s definitely a struggle. So that’s not an area that I’m really involved in personally medical office is, is is strong. You know, there’s a lot of restaurants that that are strong right now. And yeah, I’ve been seeing some opportunities as well of the, of the the chain in cold storage.
Hmm. So there’s a huge amount going on that’s basically just a, a big industrial box. That’s frozen inside. Oh, yeah, our, our company, our company produces the cool times podcast. So big shout out to them. So I’m actually familiar with the space. Exactly. Exactly. So there, there is a ton of opportunity and then same thing on the the prep equity or the MESDET side we’re seeing.
Great companies that you know, they have their money involved in certain projects. And because the banking environment is so challenging right now, they’re looking for alternative ways to to raise capital and to access capital. And so that’s that’s across that’s a opportunity that I’m seeing a lot of right now as well.
Yeah, that’s awesome. And I feel like, well, going into the holidays. So you mentioned wanting to, you know, put together some deals in Q1. I know when we’re recording this December 14th, 2023. So we’re, we’re just heading into the holidays. But that being said, I mean, give us a little bit of your vision, like 2024 and beyond, like, tell us, I, I loved and I’ll tell you why I asked this question, Ben.
Because I love being on the front end. I love making these announcements. I love other entrepreneurs and when they launched these ventures when they launched their companies and ventures. So when you watch this five years in five years and you look back and you’re like, Oh, I remember that I was just having that, what’s your vision going forward?
Let’s dream a little. Good question. I am visualizing starting the first deal. So like, let’s not get ahead of ourselves one deal at a time. I think the capital raise will be somewhere between one to 3 million on whatever that particular equity need is. And I would in a perfect world, I’d like to do a deal every month or a deal every other month.
So have regular opportunities for the investors in my investor club to you know, put their capital to work and and then grow into team, you know, bringing people on board who are also passionate about helping others and you know, giving back to the community and educating and all the fun things that come with that.
And then it’s a good question beyond that. You know, I, I do have a 20 year mentality with the start of this company. So. I think that it’s just going to just be a slow, like, I’m not in a rush. I’m trying to be slow, methodical and set up all the systems in place so that it could be scalable. And so that at the end of the day, what’s most important is that I take care of my investors.
And so building those relationships and making sure that I have the the back end to be able to take care of them is really what’s what’s most important. And I think I pretty much have all that set up. I mean, it’s always gonna be room for improvement, but luckily I spent quite a few spent a lot of time and money getting all set up.
And so now, and now we’re here. We are. So letting the world know that man. This is awesome. I love it. I’m happy to be a part of this. I’m happy to bring this to our audience and to continuing to to spread the word of what you’re doing. So I think it’s awesome. And and again, great name again, rooster.
I’m in for it. That being said, if somebody is watching or listening to this and they want to follow up and they want to learn more about your investor club or they want to follow you or just, you know, follow the journey in general, like how do they do that? Well, it’s a rooster equity dot com.
First of all, I have a an opportunity where you could download this as an ebook. So go ahead and check that out. So that, that’s probably the best, you know, then at Ben Kogut on all the socials to, to keep opening socially and yeah, just, just really honored and grateful to, to get to connect with anybody in your audience and, and have a relationship.
That’s awesome. And for everybody listening or watching this, this is not the last time you’re going to hear or see of Ben. We got we got a whole lot more to do and we’re just getting started on promoting this book as well. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters or tuning into an episode So we’re all about bringing on business owners, entrepreneurs, and executives and having them share their mission, their vision, the reason behind that mission, and really what motivates them, what gets them excited to go out into the market and into the world and to make a difference.
If that’s the type of content that sounds interesting or fun or exciting to you, we welcome you hit. That subscribe button. We have many more mission based individuals coming on the line and we don’t want you to miss a thing. Ben again, thank you so much for coming on the show and make it some time for us.
So happy and proud and excited to launch this book with you. And then of course, to see you take a rooster equity partners live. So thanks again for coming on. Thanks so much, Adam. It’s a, it’s been an honor and a pleasure.
