Ready to shatter financial limitations and unlock multiple streams of passive income? Martin Saenz has been doing it successfully for over 15 years – but what was the key lesson he learned along the way that could help you get started even faster? Explore how Martin empowers individuals to build thriving passive income streams through education and accountability, regardless of their initial capital. Discover how his revolutionary approach is paving the way for countless individuals to achieve lasting financial stability.
Martin Saenz, C.R.O. and managing partner of Bequest Funds, shares insights into his mission of spreading monthly passive income to the world. He has been generating passive income through real estate investing for himself and his wife since 2005.
In 2020, he launched the Quest Income Fund to help others achieve the same financial goals. The fund acquires cash-flowing assets like mortgages in order to produce predictable monthly payments for accredited investors.
Martin emphasizes the importance of focusing on suburban and tertiary markets with stable employment to mitigate risk. While running his own federal contracting business from 2005-2013, he wishes he had paid closer attention to financial planning and setting goals to build passive income streams at an earlier stage.
Now, through real estate education resources like his book "Cashflow Dojo" and the Bequest Income Fund, Martin aims to help more people understand how to acquire assets that can provide them with monthly financial stability. His key lesson learned? Wishing he had started prioritizing passive income goals from a younger age so he could be even further along in his financial independence journey today.
Key Takeaways:
02:25 – Martin shares his mission of spreading monthly passive income and his journey in real estate investing.
05:29 – Details on Martin's approach to acquiring performing mortgage notes and building monthly passive income.
09:54 – Risk factors and considerations in passive income investments.
12:55 – Insights from Martin's book, "Cash Flow Dojo," on increasing passive income streams.
16:27 – Understanding the investor profile and strategies for individuals seeking to increase passive income.
19:42 – Reflections from Martin on lessons learned and the importance of early financial planning.
Connect with Martin@:
Contact Number: 7039655188
Website: https://www.bqfunds.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martin-saenz-45073b7b/
Ebook Collection Link: https://www.amazon.com/Martin-Saenz/e/B072MMBF7Q?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_2&qid=1600712454&sr=8-2
Connect with Corwyn@:
Contact Number: 843-619-3005
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/exitstrategiesradioshow/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxoSuynJd5c4qQ_eDXLJaZA
Email @: corwyn@corwynmelette.com
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CORWYN:
So good morning and great day to you! Guys, welcome to another fabulous episode of Exit Strategies Radio Show. Hey, I am your host for Corwyn J Melette, broker and owner of Exit Realty Lowcountry group in beautiful North Charleston, South Carolina. Hey, If this is your first time, look, I know we all got to start somewhere. And if this is your first time hitting us on this dial, or tuning in, or downloading our podcast, Hey, you are in for a treat. Because our mission here is very simple. That is to empower our community through financial literacy, and real estate education. We are that mantra, that #legacybuilding. That is who we are. So guys, look, we’ve been doing some amazing things here with the show. We thank you for being a part of the journey for being along with us on the ride. And today is no different. But we normally tell you about your kitchen while you’re cooking breakfast sometimes alone. Yeah, some of y’all, but others guys, look, we just want you to strap in a ride with us. So I’m gonna ask you today guys to grab your seat belt. Make sure that you adjusted properly get in snug, because we have an awesome show today. Now, if you’re able to, I want you to write notes, I want you to take notes, because I guess today is going to lay the foundation for a successful financial house. I can’t wait. So guys, today we have with us none other than Martin Saenz. He is the CRO – Chief Resource. I love it. He is a resource. He’s the plug guys, and managing partner of the quest funds. Martin how’re you doing today?
MARTIN:
Corwyn? I’m doing great. It’s a great morning. Thanks for having me on.
CORWYN:
Well, you’re quite welcome. Quite welcome. So Martin, if you don’t mind high level overview before we get down into the trench? What do you do? And how long have you been doing it? And what got you to doing if you can hit those three things for our listeners, so that we can deep dive into a deeper dive into how what you’re going to plug today can be a benefit to them?
MARTIN:
Sure. So I only have one thing to say. And that is we’re on a mission to spread monthly passive income to the world. That’s what we’re about. And we’ve been doing it through an Income Fund since 2020. But my wife and I have been grinding in self employment in real estate investing since 2005. So we’ve been doing it for ourselves for the good part of our business career. But then more recently, as of the past four years, we’ve been doing it through an Income Fund and helping other investors achieve monthly passive income.
CORWYN:
Wow. So look here, you said one of my favorite words in there, passive. That was interesting. I literally was just having a conversation this morning with Mark, for our listeners, the reference, I’m real with it. One of my homeboys, we go way, way back. And we’re now connected later in life in a different fashion, we are connected in the same family. And he’s a business owner who has been on this grind for a number of years. And that’s exactly what we’re talking about this morning about leveraging passive income, so that he can quote unquote, take his foot off the gas on the active side and live out his days retirement, all that stuff, look forward to retirement, etc. So Martin, how do you do that one? What drove that? I’m pretty sure I know the answer. But for our listeners, what drove you to explore and be on this mission of creating financial freedom and passive income opportunities for others?
MARTIN:
Yes. So when my wife and I first met in 2003, we stumbled upon a guy that’s unknown that wrote a book that nobody read called Rich Dad, Poor Dad. And we knew that was it, we were like, We need financial freedom. And one of the first tenants we learned from the book and from Robert’s guidance was, you need a business, you need something that’s going to create cash flow. So you can take the cash flow, you can take the profits and roll it into purchasing real estate. And so we launched a small business for ourselves. And we did corporate America, we did small business ownership. And what we learned is that you’re working incredibly hard for active income. And that’s great when you’re younger. But as you get older, you have less energy to expend normally, right or you have other life circumstances, you have a family things come into play, where you need a more of a balance in life and you can’t be hitting it 100 hour workweeks all the time nor should you be and so that’s where this thing called passive income comes in, and you need to start building it, not at a later point in life when you’re looking to retire or slow down. But you need to start building monthly passive income and having those goals in place as early of an age as you can do it.
CORWYN:
Exactly, exactly. So you guys do what particular arenas avenues, obviously, real estate century. So what specific things are you guys doing? And why in order for you to meet these goals?
MARTIN:
Sure. So we acquire cash flowing real estate in energy assets at a discount, and we buy them into our fund and these assets cashflow on a predictable and consistent basis. And then we turn around and pay our investors on a monthly basis. But what I’ll say is, though, is an important point. And we and I’ve been doing this since 2009, when we acquired our first commercial building. And what I can say is that it all starts with having a living financial statement. So in other words, have an understanding what your income situation is your expenses, your assets and liabilities. So things again, back to Robert Kiyosaki, he wrote about it and Cashflow Quadrant is I think, was the second book. And in that financial statement, you should be breaking out the income that’s coming in by way of active effort, and the income that’s coming passively. And I’m talking true passive, I’m not talking landlording, what you’re doing the whole tenants and trash and toilets thing, you know, on a regular basis, like true passive, where you just wake up on a certain day of the month, and the money’s in your bank account. And so what I learned is that it’s great running a business, and we have a 20 person team now. So I’m very much a small business owner still. But the beauty is that we have built an asset portfolio based on residential mortgages, commercial medical office building real estate, as well as some oil and gas purchases. And these assets are not tied to Wall Street. They are something we control. And there’s something we understand. And they cashflow every month, and they allow us to have investors come into our fund and we provide them monthly passive income and in return
CORWYN:
So that is, Martin, I get excited about this stuff, man, because I truly obviously being in this space, I see things go by all the time and some of the things that go by, or what you guys are doing. So you essentially, to for a little bit of clarity, if you will for our listeners, you guys buy real estate portfolios, does that sound about right?
MARTIN:
We buy real estate mortgage notes from the secondary mortgage market.
CORWYN:
Okay, fantastic. Yeah. Okay, any particular, obviously, the mortgage can be associated with anything. But is there anything in particular that you try to avoid? Obviously, you don’t want to non performing or underperforming note, because you don’t want to go through the expense of having to foreclose and what have you on it, but anything in particular that you guys focus on as far as types of properties or anything else associated.
MARTIN:
So in the income fund, we buy in only performing mortgages that are seasoned. Now, my roots are in the distressed mortgage state in business. So about 10 years ago, I started buying pools of distressed mortgages. And what I did is I created systems, I created an asset management company by which we worked with the homeowners to keep them in their homes with payments they can afford. And we were able to make those concessions and make that happen, because we had bought those mortgages at such a deep discount. And so over the years, we accumulated a lot of performing mortgages that had a scratch in debt. At a prior time period. Someone had a divorce or a medical issue. And these folks are good people and they’re back on their feet. And they have a good loan modification in place and they’re doing the right thing is because they’re good people. And so when they meet certain parameters, we will buy those types of mortgages into our performing mortgage Income Fund. Now we try to stick with suburban and tertiary markets, we stay away from ultra rural or to densely populated city regions, and we look at employment factors where the jobs are. That’s why we stay away from the rural markets because there’s not as much jobs. And so we have other parameters in terms of fair market values that we look for our average fair market value is about 377,000. And we try to stay within that range. And we also do a lot of underwriting of the homeowner, just like a mortgage lender would do. And so we have certain borrower profiles we look for.
CORWYN:
Okay, so let’s talk about most times people don’t want to talk about the pitfalls and, quote unquote, what could go wrong? But what does that look like? What does if it doesn’t work? Well, what does that look like?
MARTIN:
Yeah, so there’s a few risk factors when looking at an opportunity like ours, or any other opportunity in general in the real estate space. For one, we look at the equity coverage, that’s very important. So we strive for 65% investment value of percentage for our fund, and we’re sitting at currently 61%. So that means that we have a 39% equity cushion on our portfolio. So if someone does stop paying, and we try to work with them, because we have those systems by which we can work with them and come up with creative solutions, if that doesn’t work, then we have to go through the foreclosure route, we do have the equity coverage to go and recoup our capital investment into that mortgage loan. Another risk factor that we look at closely is collectability. So anytime someone’s looking at a fund that produces income, you want to look at, okay, what is the consistency by which the assets are producing cash flow, because that’s ultimately going to determine what’s going to pay you. So we sit at about a 96.3% collectability percentage, which means that out of 100, mortgages, 96.3 paying as they should be paid. So that gives us and that gives the investors a comfort level that everyone’s paying on time. I would also say, knowledge of the asset knowledge of the industry is important from an investor standpoint. So if you live in a home, if you rent a home, if you own a home, then you have an idea about what a mortgage is. And you understand that gets paid every month. And then that in turn goes in what pays you the investor. If you put gas in your car every week, then you understand some of the oil and gas investments that we make as a company. And so having an understanding of the asset classes is important from an investment standpoint. So I’d say those are a few things to look for when evaluating an opportunity that does produce income for you.
CORWYN:
So Martin, you are an author, your books cover is interesting. You know, when you talk about Robert Kiyosaki, I think cash flow blog, and stuff like that, because that whole business owner, investor and self employed employee thing, yeah, that just leaves me out every time I’m like, let’s go, we don’t want to. But you wrote a book called Cash Flow Dojo, that is a name for a book.
MARTIN:
Thank you.
CORWYN:
What was your intent? And what is the premise of that book? And why should people pick it up? That’s one of the books for our listeners, guys. So we got others. But Mark, who was that for?
MARTIN:
That’s for everyone. That’s where my heart goes out to all the people out there that feel like they’re being left behind in some way. They’re working extremely hard. They’re doing the right thing. They’re raising families. And what they see is the level of raises and bonuses they’re getting per year, is not matching up with inflation, what they’re paying for, I don’t care what the government or the media sells you on, when you go to the store and eggs are $7 a carton or milk is over five bucks a gallon or what are the price of beef is astronomical right now, like people know, they’re getting hammered in a major way. And so what you can do is you can just sit there and max out your credit card, you can take it the rough way. Or you can say no, this is enough, I need to go either decrease my standard of living, which is probably needs to happen is some way but pruning the bushes but you need to say how can I earn additional income, now you can get a second job, you can start a business, you can moonlight all these things. But there’s also this thing that very few people know about. And that is you can build multiple passive income streams for you and your family that will pay you with consistency and predictability without any effort outside the initial vetting and the initial acquisition of that asset or opportunity, but it’ll pay you an add to your income levels on a monthly basis.
CORWYN:
So I love that because you’re adding to you’re increasing your given people and showing people methodology first of all, why should they but a methodology to achieve it? That is awesome. So a couple of other books are surrounding the note investing the fundamentals and things of that nature. And then you go a little bit deeper in a second book where you even break that down a little bit further. So tell our listeners, Martin, what is the biggest lessons that you’ve learned in this process over the years?
MARTIN:
If you’re committed to education and committed to earning monthly passive income and you put in the work. You can find assets and you can add monthly passive income into your portfolio, even without a lot of money upfront. And that’s where a lot of people that hear this Cashflow Dojo, build your home on multiple streams of income. Oh, that’s great. That’s only for this guy or gal, that’s not for me, I barely paid my mortgage last month. So there are a number of steps that you can take starting with building a financial statement for yourself, maintaining it on a weekly basis, reviewing it with an accountability partner in building goals. And with milestones by which you’re going to make strides in your life, to acquire assets that produce monthly passive income, there’s a way for any one of us to go and increase their level of monthly passive income in their life. And I know this, as someone who didn’t come from a lot of money, and I just know it’s possible. And that’s what I want to convey in the books.
CORWYN:
Your company, you guys do this on a larger scale. Obviously, as you’re doing this, you’re helping people as good people getting some education, these processes. What does that look like? And then who is your ideal? Let me take that take our deal out? Who are your investors? Not by name, or anything of that? And yes, what is your investor profiles look like?
MARTIN:
Sure. So right now, as it stands, we only take on accredited investors, so they meet certain net worth or income criteria, however, we are working on something on the reggae level, so we can take on non accredited investors, and that’s where my art is at. Because I want to spread monthly passive income to the world, and not just as long as you’re accredited. And so that’s actually going to be more on that very soon.
CORWYN:
But the person that is listening today, watching in is trying to figure out how I’m gonna get, quote, unquote, over the hurdle over whatever it is. So how do you bridge that and help someone to get over.
MARTIN:
So half of our investors are entrepreneurs, they’re business owners, they are people that have worked extremely hard for their money, they’re not doing the Wall Street thing, because all the money they bought, and they put right back in their business, I think you can understand and appreciate that. And so they’re invested in their own selves and their own operation. Now, there comes a point where folks, as your business owner, you have to realize, hey, there’s no golden parachute, there’s no 401k, that’s you’re gonna cash out down the road, and you’re gonna, hopefully, by the grace of God, be able to sell your business at a good price point and make off how you need to make all. But instead of playing that strategy, or where there’s hope involved, you want to strategize for certainty. And how you do that is you make strides in the present, to start accumulating assets that produce monthly passive income, these assets could be houses, these assets could be an Income Fund, like Bequest, they could be I even talked about in cash flow dojo, even if let’s say you’re an H back technician, and we have disparate specialty trade, you could make training videos and sell it on Udemy. And you could sell it on teachable.com. And you could create a whole online course community, you can go and do weekend workshops, you can start a cometo club, and offer services through the meetup club. There’s a number of different ways you can build income in your life. And we have a lot of real estate investors. So those individuals, myself included in that, like, we understand some hard lessons learned and some hard roads. And so what happens, especially if you’re on the flipper side, you’ve been through the roller coaster one too many times. And you get to the point in your life where you’re like, you know what, I’m looking for something that I can just hold on to a little stability in my world. And that’s where the Bequest comes in to provide consistent monthly.
CORWYN:
Good. So Martin, look, we’ve quickly gotten towards the end of today’s show. And I always ask of our guests a question. hindsight, we know what it looks like– that’s clear., because you just went through it. So you remember every little piece of it. So if we’re applying hindsight today, what have you been through? What have you learned that if you would have known this in the beginning would have catapulted you beyond where you are today?
MARTIN:
Yes, I would say my wife and I spent was 2005 to 2013 running a federal government contracting company we started and we work 100 hour work weeks and we started building our real estate portfolio in ‘09 but I wish that I would have paid I need more attention to what I’m talking about here in terms of building, paying attention to my financial statement, having goals set for monthly passive income, and really just kind of working towards it. When I had those youthful years, I’d say I’m well, I’m 50. I have more energy at 30, if you will, but so I would just say that I wish I would have done a little bit more of what I’m doing now then.
CORWYN:
good deal. So Martin, thank you so much for being on the show with us today. I really appreciate it.
MARTIN:
Thanks, corn.
CORWYN:
So, guys, as we are quickly getting to and as we’re ending closing today’s show. I want to thank you all for tuning in. I want to thank you all from wherever you are, from the bottom of my heart for being a part of the family. Martin, you thank you for being our guest today. And for being a part of the Exit Strategies Radio Show Family. We appreciate it. For our listeners. You know how I feel. Y’all know how I say it. And y’all know I always put the two of those things together. And I give it to you this way, which is I love you. I love you. And we’re gonna see you guys out there in the streets.