Evaluating Investment Opportunities with Chris Larsen

Chris Larsen is the founder and Managing Partner of Next-Level Income. Since “retiring” after 18 years in the medical device industry he has dedicated his time to helping others become financially independent through education and investment opportunities. Chris has been investing in and managing real estate for over 20 years. While completing his degree in Biomechanical Engineering and M.B.A. in Finance at Virginia Tech, he bought his first single-family rental at age 21. Chris expanded into development, private lending, buying distressed debt as well as commercial office, and ultimately syndicating commercial properties. He began syndicating deals in 2016 and has been actively involved in over $500M of real estate acquisitions. In addition to real estate, Chris has invested in equities, oil & gas, and small business lending, as well as being active in Venture South, one of the nation’s Top 10 Angel Investing groups. Chris lives with his wife and two boys (and Viszla, Lucy!) in Asheville, NC where he loves spending time with them in the outdoors and enjoying the food and culture that the region has to offer.

Episode Highlights Here:

Chris:

Whether you’re a sales professional, you’re a business owner, you’re an entrepreneur, you’re an investor, get to look at is your model scalable.

Pierce:

How did you go from medical sales to full-time real estate? Honestly, that’s exactly what I did. I was in medical sales device, DME, that type of thing. And, you know, there’s still a little piece of me, that’s like, Man, that’s a good gig, like, do I want to give that up? How did you make that transition?

Chris:

So you can. You probably can relate. And my buddy said, when I left, he was like, What? Do you hate money, Chris? You know you don’t want to keep making good money. So, person, you know, it’s a mindset. And I’m like, if you’re listening today, you have a similar mindset. You have to think like an investor. And I always thought of an investor. I wanted to be an investor. And that’s what I did. I just didn’t have the capital to do it. And then, you know, when you get pulled into the corporate world, especially sales, which, you know, I’m sure a lot of people, either business owner sales, you get pulled into this world. It’s alluring, you know, like, oh, you make President’s Club, you make, you know, $100,000.02 $100,000.04 $100,000, you’re making more and more money. And it’s, it’s exciting. You know, there’s, there are titles that are bestowed upon you, sometimes along the way, and you’re chasing a career track. But ultimately, you know, when I thought about it, you know, my boys are 10 and 12. Now, so, you know, the answer to your question is, I started out as an investor, but I left that career because my father died when I was five. And I didn’t, I didn’t experience time with him. And I didn’t want to miss my son’s lacrosse games. I didn’t want to miss, you know, the time at the dinner table, or, you know, sitting there in the mornings with the kind of those magic moments. And, yeah, I walked away from, you know, some potential success there in my career, but ultimately, have been able to build a community. And you know, our business around the syndication world concerning the commercial properties, but I couldn’t have done it if I hadn’t invested in the space in the first place.

Pierce;
No, that’s, that’s super interesting. So really, what it came down to is just you retired trading your time for money.

Chris:

That’s exactly right. We just saw the path to, you know, time for you. That’s right. That’s exactly right. And, you know, I talked about in my book, I say, you have to look, you know, whether, look, whether you’re a sales professional, you’re a business owner, you’re an entrepreneur, you’re an investor, you have to look at is your model scalable, right? The single-family property model is scalable to a point, but nobody wants to manage 50 or 100 properties, like when it comes down to it, you know? But yeah, it’s a pain in the butt, right? So it’s not. It’s not scalable. Do you want to be chasing down rent from 100 people every month? Or do you want to put a manager in place to manage one property with 100 doors in it? Like our first property, we bought my first partner, and I’m, they can do that for you that’s much more scalable, you know, and if you can scale your time, you can actually control your time. You can control the results a lot better as well. And there’s ultimately less risk if you do it that way.