Alice Chen : Capital Pulse

Brandon Parker00:00This is Brandon Parker. Welcome to the Legends of Land Show where it's my job to deconstruct the tactics of elite land investors and entrepreneurs, how they think about business and strategies that drive their success. My guest today is Alice Chin, a former m and a lawyer who graduated with her JD. In 2013, Alice was recognized as a top 40 under 40 by Business in Vancouver. She's founded multiple companies with 7 figure revenue and 8 figure valuations, achieving three successful exits, including one to PwC. Alice co founded a family office fintech software company that was featured in Forbes in 2023.

Brandon Parker00:37Her experience spans raising capital for private equity funds as both a capital raiser and a sponsor as well as securing venture capital funding as a startup founder. She's now a partner and cofounder at Pender Hastings Capital. Without further ado, please enjoy this wide ranging conversation with Alice Chen. The Legends of Land Show with Brandon Parker. Deconstruct the tactics of world class land investors and learn tools to build a 7 figure land business. The Legends of Land show is starting now.

Alice Chen01:11Welcome to the show, Alice. How are doing today? I'm great. Thank you, Brandon. Thanks for inviting me onto the show. A pleasure to see you always.

Brandon Parker01:20Yeah. Pleasure to see you too. Me and you have a cool origin story, so we'll maybe pop into that a little bit later. But, yeah, to get us kicked off, what first drew you into the land development space, and what was your moment that made you wanna launch your fund?

Alice Chen01:36Yeah. So in the past sixteen years, I've been a serial founder. I've been an entrepreneur across different industries. And throughout this journey, I've also been a multi time fund manager. So in Canada, I ran a fund of funds that aggregated the best of the Canadian private equity space. So I've always been a very big fan of alternative investments. And as a private equity investor and now a professional capital allocator, my business partner, James and I, were very much looking at interesting strategies in The United States.

Alice Chen02:12And we wanted to look for something that's in real estate and spend the last couple of years deep diving into different potential strategies and eventually landed on land development. And there's many reasons for that. In a way, we're kind of lucky because I met our first land development partner at a conference about a year ago. And so it's an area that's not talked about very much, as compared to multifamily syndication, for example. I mean, during the pandemic, it seems like everyone and their neighbor started multifamily syndication.

Alice Chen02:45So a lot of deals are not penciling out these days. So what we're looking for as a private equity firm is, first of all, we're looking for a really big problem to solve, right? Because we are going to be pouring a lot of bandwidth and human capital, time and energy into solving a problem, we wanna make sure the problem is big enough so that it's gonna be something we can work on for the next five, ten years. So land development fits that. And yet, we want to be agile enough so that we're not just going into something that really major players like the Blackstones and BlackRocks, they can come in and just all of sudden take over in the market.

Alice Chen03:22And so that also fits that thesis. And thirdly, we're looking for something that has a high barrier to entry. And land development is definitely one of those asset classes. So, let me tell you a little bit more about what land development is. It's really two parts. It's land entitlement as well as horizontal development. And I'm sure you're familiar, but just wanted to make sure the audience knows. So land entitlement is where you go and you work on the paperwork, right? So you're working on getting the right zoning and permits, doing the environmental studies so that your raw land can become a piece of buildable land.

Alice Chen03:58So, once you have the land entitled, then you go into the process of horizontal development. So, as opposed to vertically development, developing something like that's building a house or building tower, horizontal development is where you in and you build the roads and infrastructure on a piece of land so that you turn the raw land into buildable lots. So we're the capital partners to best in class land developers in the country that turn raw land into buildable lots for national home builders, like the D.

Alice Chen04:32R. Horton, Lennar, Toll Brothers, a lot of them public companies. So that's what we do.

Brandon Parker04:38And why is there such a high barrier to entry in the land entitlement and horizontal development? And why does that make it so someone like... A company like BlackRock isn't agile enough?

Alice Chen04:51I think it's a two part. So first of all, there are a couple of public companies in land development. Like, example, the Four Star Group is one example. So it is definitely a multibillion dollar market company. But in this industry, it's very interesting. It's polarized. You're either on a smaller scale or you have to be a really big company. And the reason is because for every land development project, let's say if you're building a project of 500 single family homes, you're looking at probably a minimum of $10,000,000 of land acquisition and construction costs.

Alice Chen05:25And the developer has to actually personally guarantee the loan. And the loan would be 75% of the capital that's required for the project to take place. And the rest of the capital stack would be deposit from the national homebuilder or the homebuilder that's buying land from you as well as equity. And so I think most land developers are real estate operators by background, so they're not good at fundraising. And that's why we constructed a fund to become their capital partners.

Alice Chen05:57So, we invest in the equity piece of that capital stack. But because the capital stack with the 75% being the debt piece, with the requirement of the land developer having to personally guarantee, that really limits a lot of players, right? So how many players do you know can personally guarantee tens of millions of debt? There's not too many people that can do that. And so it's kind of interesting where we want to become the capital partners to land developers that have the ability to scale beyond being more of a smaller scale operation, doing small projects like one or two at a time.

Alice Chen06:34So we have luckily very strong operating partners that want to get scaled and become the next four star.

Brandon Parker06:43And how did you find your operating partners, and how long did that take? How many did you have?

Alice Chen06:49So it's a little bit of a lucky break. So as I said, we found the space of land development by happenstance. So about a year ago, I was at a real estate mastermind conference and I stumbled across a land developer. So he's our first major operating partner. And then he basically told us about this little known area of horizontal development. And so as we dug into it, we're like, wow, this is amazing. And what's really amazing is that you actually have a signed contract, a forward purchase contract, with the homebuilders coming in to buy the land from you after your project.

Alice Chen07:28So they either come to you and say, We want to build on this piece of land, or they invite you to participate in the bid process. But let's say if you win the bid, then what happens next is that you work out the terms. You know how much you're buying the entitled land at, and then you know how much they're going to pay you once you're done the horizontal development. So you lock in the delta, you lock in the profit on day one, and you have a papered exit that's built in. I've been an entrepreneur for sixteen years.

Alice Chen07:59I haven't seen too many business models like that, if any, where you work on something, but you have the exit built Show me something that works like that.

Brandon Parker08:11Yeah, you're almost market making for land.

Alice Chen08:14Yeah, exactly.

Brandon Parker08:16That's slick. How often do you have a directive from the national homebuilder? Like, we wanna buy in this area, and then you're going out and hunting down the land. And how often is it where you find the project and then shop it or do it the other way around?

Alice Chen08:32Yeah. So everything 's very data driven. And so most likely than not, like most cases, it's... We're being approached by the national homebuilders. So they come to us, and then they say, we're looking to build a master plan community of 1,000 homes on this tract of land. Can you do the horizontal development? Or can you do the entitlement? And so there's zero guesswork. There's never a chance where we go and do the work on a piece of land hoping that, oh, three years later, five years later, someone's going to come and take it from us.

Alice Chen09:04It doesn't work that way. We work in reverse engineered ways so that we have the exit on day one. And everything is very data driven, so everything's based on migration data. So even on the part of the national homebuilders or any scale homebuilder, they don't blindly go and create a community based on what they hope the population would gravitate towards. Really... It's more a science than an art, and that's how we work with them.

Brandon Parker09:36When you look at the model, you've derisked it a whole bunch. What do you think the main tail risks are?

Alice Chen09:42It's mostly macro risks. So, for example, the macro risks relating to the behavior of the homebuilder. So right now, we are in very uncertain times. Right? So the markets are kind of fluctuating every day, and there's talks about the tariffs and it's just a lot of uncertainty. So one thing to keep in mind is that our projects are forward looking. So just because the market's tanking today doesn't mean people don't need homes two years from now, three years from now. So it's just like people in the stock market.

Alice Chen10:15Everyone's saying, okay, it's a good time to buy today because you're buying the dip. So when you're buying the dip, you're looking for harvest in the recovery. Same thing in our space. So when you are just noticing, okay, the market is good, the sales data is good, and there's a lot of inventory of new homes being built that's being moved. By the time you notice that and you want to jump in, it's too late. You have to do the prep work. Right? So right now, we're doing the prep work during the hard time so that in two years and three years the market turns around, that's when we harvest.

Alice Chen10:48And so the major risk is really in the home builders' behavior. If some sort of very large scale unforeseen macro events that happen to move them away from those projects, even though we have a signed contract, those contracts are typically honored. So unless something catastrophic happens, I think the risk is quite mitigated. And at the same time, our land development partners actually shop the project around.

Alice Chen11:19So even if they have a contract with D. R. Horton, they make sure that on the same site, maybe a thousand lots can be split off into two or three chunks, and then they shop around with other kind of plan B alternative developers that want to come in and build the homes. So you just never know, but we do everything we can to mitigate the risk.

Brandon Parker11:40And macro seems like there's been this thing going on where home prices are inflated, but there's also constrained supply. Do you have insights like how the homebuilders are thinking about that? Obviously, they're continuing to build. So are there any unique angles that you've heard on that

Alice Chen11:58high prices versus this constrained supply and how that might play out? Yeah. So definitely, we have a very constrained supply. We are short about 4,800,000 single family homes in The United States. And that's been a bit of a legacy pent up demand since the last financial crisis. And so, homebuilders kind of really slowed down around the twenty ten times. And so that's why we have such a big supply gap. And a company like a D.

Alice Chen12:30R. Horn, they're the biggest home builder in America, dollars 35,000,000,000 annual revenue company. Guess how many homes can they build in a year? Just take a guess.

Brandon Parker12:41I I I don't wanna embarrass myself.

Alice Chen12:45That scale maybe a 2,000,000 homes. Okay. Pretty likely. No, no. They build about a 100,000 homes a No, okay. Yes. They're moving slow. Yeah. Wow. Okay. Yeah. And then we're talking about the next one down being Lennar. I think there are 70,000. And then the third one is down to 50. And so the top 50 homebuilders altogether, it takes them all building at capacity about ten years to fulfill that 4,800,000 supply gap. So this problem is not going away anytime soon.

Alice Chen13:17We need a lot more homes to be built. But given the current uncertainties, sure, maybe some of the home builders are sitting on more inventory than what they're used to in the last couple of years, but it doesn't mean that they're not moving inventory. They're in the business of building new homes, they so have to move the inventory. So they may be adjusting their margin expectations, but they're still moving the homes. And maybe they're adjusting product types. So instead of building fancier houses, they're building smaller ones. So we're seeing some of those type of adjustments.

Alice Chen13:49But overall, it's still pretty robust.

Brandon Parker13:53Yeah, I think that that's surprising. I would definitely guess that the biggest homebuilders all combined would be building more houses. And that I think that that's probably kind of a common misconception people don't even know they have. It's just like, oh, well, they can just build a million houses. Like... But... Okay. Most know time. Yeah. Myself. Very cool. And what other maybe outside our standard framework ideas have you heard to address that supply faster? Like, if we stick it at how we're doing it, it could take ten years.

Brandon Parker14:27But is there any, like, outside ideas where, oh, these people are coming in and they're building 800 square foot houses with,

Alice Chen14:33you know, with robots or something, and they can pump out a million a year? Like, is there any interesting ideas on the horizon that could address that faster? Yeah. So for us and for our operating partners in land development, we don't get involved with the vertical constructions, but that's a great question. I think a lot of people are exploring steel frame builds. So modular, that's a different term for it. So when you talk about modular construction, it's not necessarily those container homes. It just means that the parts are assembled in the factory, kind of like cars.

Alice Chen15:04And so you can build homes pretty fast, within a couple months, using the steel frame modular framework. So that may be something that can accelerate the home building. And of course, the home builders have their own economics that they have to maintain and uplevel. So I don't know the math of whether it makes more sense for them to go in that direction or continue with the stick build.

Brandon Parker15:32How do you see investor demand evolving over the next year or two? And and, like, what kind of investor do you think that your fund is a perfect fit for?

Alice Chen15:45Yeah. So our fund is a perfect fit for an investor that is not highly reactionary to the market conditions and understands that, okay, there is a big problem to be solved and we're solving the problem alongside our operating partners. So it's an investor that recognizes that, okay, the 4,800,000 single family home deficit has to be fulfilled. And maybe times are a little bit uncertain right now, but they believe that there's going to be this continued demand to be fulfilled.

Alice Chen16:18So an investor that is looking to quickly accelerate the growth of their capital because of this area being very highly profitable. So this is a way for them to get into the participation of land development. And we are short duration funds, so we wrap up the fund at year three. The projects we invest in are twenty four months to thirty months, and then we exit the projects and start distribution to the investors. We're looking at high 20s in terms of the IRR.

Alice Chen16:51And so within three years when they get their principal investment back and the return, they're looking at a very high equity multiple. So 1.6 to 1.9 equity multiple. So someone that's in their prime capital growth years, I would say maybe age 40 to 55, they're wanting passive income, they're wanting the money to work hard for them while they maintain their active business or professions or other things, I think this is a great way for them to diversify and to see their capital quickly accelerate.

Brandon Parker17:25And you've been a part of some successful exits before, and you've raised funds before. Just at a higher level, how's this how's this project feel to you compared to things you've done in the past? And just as an entrepreneur, what's this one feel like?

Alice Chen17:42I think the most exciting part about this that I have not yet encountered before is that built in exit. I mean, I wish that both of the endeavors I was involved in had this type of built in exit. As a GP and LP in other funds I mean, I'm oftentimes LP in other people's funds it seems like the exit timeframe is always very long, right? So if they say, Okay, we're targeting five years, it's most likely seven years, if not ten years. So I appreciate an opportunity where the horizon is much shorter, the time horizon for exit.

Alice Chen18:19And I very much appreciate the fact that the exit is actually built and then papered. I mean, I've been a fintech co founder and a co founder of other industries. That exit is very difficult to achieve. So to have that on day one, and as a reminder that, okay, if I just execute on my strategy well, on my job well, then I'm going to hit this exit, that's unheard of and I think that excites me the most.

Alice Chen18:49And so it feels exciting. It feels really great. It feels really grounded, actually. That's what it feels like to me.

Brandon Parker18:57Yeah, that's epic. Mean, that's like you've been through a few different iterations of business and being able to see... Being able to really appreciate that angle is cool. What's the most interesting place you've met one of your investors just kind of, you know, outside of your standard channels?

Alice Chen19:19You can meet investors really anywhere. It's just about keeping an open attitude and sharing your mission with people. So I think I've met some on the plane. The person sitting next to me happened to be from big family office. So things like that happen a lot. Or I meet people from communities I'm involved in. So for example, I'm part of the entrepreneurs organization. I'm on the board of the Silicon Valley chapter. So I've met people there. I've met people in other masterminds.

Alice Chen19:50I'm a big believer in personal development. I do a lot in that and go to events and walked on fire twice at Tony Robbins events. And so you meet a lot of growth mindset people and those type of people that tend to be open minded and wanting to learn, and they make great investors.

Brandon Parker20:09Yeah, for sure. That was a bit of a leading question because I wanted to get in here that you and I met at a breathwork event. Yes. And it was like... Calling it an event, I think it's a little bit overstating it. There was like six of us, and we showed up in the house in the Santa Cruz Mountains and did breathwork. And so that was very cool how we came across each other. So something interesting about you is you do a lot of personal development things. And so maybe talk about how you keep yourself mentally balanced as you're going through this just kind of hardcore entrepreneurship?

Brandon Parker20:42How do you do the rest of your life?

Alice Chen20:45Yeah. So I make sure that I just have a really awesome life overall. So business is a big part of my identity. So I think the day that I left my job as a lawyer, I have just never worked again. So the day that I started as an entrepreneur is day one of me not working ever again, because work is play. Play is work for me. So I just am really great at enjoying the challenges as well as the rewards of being an entrepreneur. On a day to day basis, I have a lot of mindset and longevity practices or biohacking practices to keep me in a high performing state.

Alice Chen21:24Of course, some days are better than others, but I try to maintain a very high performing baseline. So I had many chats about, for example, saunas, so detoxing is very important. I do yoga in a heated room, so that's along the same lines of giving yourself some space to detox, not only in terms of sweating things out, but just detoxing your mind as well, purging your mind. So in the mornings, I have a pretty regimented practice of six habits.

Alice Chen21:58So before noon, I make sure I do six things. It's movement. It's waking up with gratitude. Right now, I'm experimenting with something called lofty questions. So lofty questions would be something that helps you transform your identity. So to up level yourself, it's not just a matter of willpower. So for example, if I want to be a great podcast guest, right, so I have to first believe that I can be a great podcast guest. So it's about transforming identity.

Alice Chen22:30So a lofty question I would ask myself would be, why am I such a kick ass podcast guest that's welcomed at so many shows? So asking yourself those questions or things like, why am I such a great investor? Or why am I always attracting the right investment opportunity? So ask yourself those type of questions. Those are called the lofty questions, and they're meant to really help you transform your identity and your self understanding. And over time, it's the whole be, do, have principle.

Alice Chen23:00You're going to first become the person or be the person you want to be. And then from that place, you then start to do the things of that elevated Brendon 2.0, Brendon 3.0. And then you'll have the stuff that you want to see achieve in your life. So I think morning practices of gratitude, lofty questions, movement, energetic conditioning. I listen to podcasts or motivational stuff in the mornings. Maybe in the shower, I'm listening to Tony Robbins' Priming Exercise. There's different things that I experiment with.

Alice Chen23:32I'm kind of an evolving process just like everybody else. So I tweak my process all the time and try to optimize. So that really helps.

Brandon Parker23:42The lofty question is a cool angle at there's this personal development thought of trying to get your brain to believe something as if it's already done. You just live and act as if you have this goal already achieved, and then your brain figures out the way to do it. And it's almost like lofty questions as a little brain hack to help yourself really do that type of thing. Yes. That's cool. When you started your entrepreneurial journey, did you have these mindsets in place?

Brandon Parker24:13Do you feel like they helped you get there? You feel like they developed them over time? Or, like, what was your mindset when you first just started when you got out of being a lawyer and into entrepreneurial?

Alice Chen24:24Yeah, I think a little bit of both. So I started my personal development journey around the same time I was practicing law. I practiced law at a big Canadian law firm for about three years. And so I think right around the beginning of my legal career, I have a high school friend that became seminar leader at the Landmark Forum. So Landmark Forum is kind of like the grandfather of all the personal development courses. I mean, it's great, so recommended. It's been many years since I was in that round, but I would say any type of personal development is great.

Alice Chen24:57It could come in different forms too. You don't have to go to events if you're more of a podcast listener or if you're a book reader. But I think being involved in personal development gave me the mindset of, okay, well, there's something out there. If I don't love my life right now, I have what it takes to actually change my life. I have what's within me to change that. So I think that gave me the first boost or the courage, initial courage to lead my 6 figure profession. I mean, was a young person at the time, like 26, 27.

Alice Chen25:30So to leave that type of salary, I had awesome office, I had assistant when I was 25, 26. So to leave that surrounding and go into the unknown, I mean, it's a scary thing for anybody. So I think the inner work is what gets you the outer results. So that kind of helped me. And then along my journey of being an entrepreneur, I continued to deepen my personal development. And then the more I develop, actually the inner work, the better I do in the external world.

Brandon Parker25:59Do you feel like the inner work has taken you... Like, the focus off how hard you grind and more towards how effective you are with your time? Or what's your thought on just hard work in general? How many hours a day do you work weeks... Days a week? And how do you balance that and think about it? Yeah. That's a great question. So I

Alice Chen26:19really demand high performance out of myself. So high performance doesn't mean necessarily the longest hours. Like, for example, I don't believe that working eighty hours a week is good for your well-being or your business. I think if you are very aligned with your soul's purpose, if you will, or in another way to say it, your authentic self or your highest and best self in business terms, you shouldn't feel like things are grinding. If you're feeling like you're grinding, then that means that there's some type of inefficiencies that's going on.

Alice Chen26:55So one, you could be maybe working on something that's not super aligned with what you're supposed to do. So, that's one thing. So, you'll have to look at that. And secondly, if you feel like, yeah, you're in the right lane doing the right thing, then maybe it's a systems issue. Do you actually have systems? So, have you created systems to incorporate leverage? Leverage could be more capital, more humans, more whatever. I know you do a lot of AI. So, the grinding feeling, I think, sometimes comes from not having systems.

Alice Chen27:26Either not being aligned with your purpose or not having the right systems or not having the right people or even the right technology to help you accomplish your mission.

Brandon Parker27:38Yeah, I think that every once in a while, I'll get into the perfect flow of something that I'm I'm just loving the project, and then it's all of a sudden, I'd work just unlimited amount of days in a row without it, just because I'm loving it. Yeah. But it's not grinding. And that's being the flow. And I love that when that happens to me too. Mhmm. And that's, yeah, that's the best. And so I try to, like, keep myself bouncing between projects, of course, that are focused with our mission, but try to keep myself in those where I'm most effective and then try to hopefully delegate the stuff where I start to feel like I'm grinding.

Brandon Parker28:15So what's your longer term goals with this project and then in the future ten years down the road?

Alice Chen28:24Yeah. So I actually feel... I don't know why, but I feel a strong resonance with land development. So one is a very big problem to solve. I see the opportunity from a business perspective. And at the same time, I always work on something that I find meaningful. And so if you look at what we do, the ultimate meaning is that we're part of the value chain or supply chain that helps people express themselves through home ownership. Home is so important. Home is the first place where you self express.

Alice Chen28:57And it's so important to me because it's a sanctuary where I return to. So that's where I live my life. So, after a hard day's work, you go home and you maybe see your family or maybe whatever your situation is, home is so important. And I think that providing that place for connection and self expression is such a meaningful thing that I feel I'm making the world a better place by doing my part in the supply chain. So I want to continue to focus on this and really amplify the excellent people doing excellent work here.

Alice Chen29:32So I really enjoy working with some of our operating partners, and I think helping them amplify their game is something that I can really take pride in and also feel really proud about. I want to be involved in a team that makes a unicorn company, so I haven't had a chance to do that. And that's something very much on my bucket list. So don't care about becoming a billionaire, but I would love to become part of a team that's so focused on this mission that makes a great impact in the world that gets to unicorn status.

Alice Chen30:06So that's, I think, for the next ten years of my career, that's what I'll be focused on.

Brandon Parker30:12How do you find A plus players on your team and partner up with them? And what's the first iterations of that look like from idea to putting together the small group founding, co founding like you did? What'd that look like, and how do you think about that?

Alice Chen30:29I think over the last sixteen years, I've had my fair share of failed or excellent partnerships. So a lot of it has to do with just meeting enough people but being very selective. So it's a bit of a numbers game. And at the same time, it has to do with you knowing yourself. So you have to know where you shine and where you have shortcomings and be very honest. So, I would partner with someone that has the skills that I don't have. Or I would look for people that I resonate with, where on the same frequency or vibrations.

Alice Chen31:06There's different ways to call out that resonance. But basically, you're looking for people that you have ultimate alignment. So in business terms, you're looking for alignment in values and in vision in how you work, right? And so, for example, because I don't believe in working eighty hours a week is the ultimate solution, I just explain why. So then if I have a business partner that works eighty hours a week, and if they believe that's the only way to go about creating a really successful outcome for the business, then we have an energy leakage or a values discrepancy.

Alice Chen31:46So then I don't think that would be a really successful and fruitful long term partnership because of this values discrepancy. So I think you want to think about yourself as a captain, right? So if you're leading your boat on some expedition and you're going through the storm, challenging times, you want to make sure that the people that are in your crew, on your boat, are aligned with you and, first of all, believes in your vision, shares your vision, and in your co pilot, your co captain, you want to be very aligned. Otherwise, you're canceling each other out, right?

Alice Chen32:18So you're going in this direction, but then they're going in the other direction, and ultimately you go nowhere. So I think that alignment is very critical.

Brandon Parker32:27And you have a cofounder, it sounds like. What's the... What are your roles? How do you see those broken down? What are you both good at at a high level? Yeah. So I'm actually very honored. My cofounder is actually my original mentor in finance. So I

Alice Chen32:42met him about twelve years ago when I had my first exit from business and had some capital to invest in. At that time, I was very focused on learning finance and learning private equity. And James was just starting his first private equity fund. And so I was an early investor, did really well, and just kind of learned a lot from him and fundraise for his fund. And later on, of course, I branched out to look at other fund managers and invest in other things. But this time around, it's a little bit like the band members kind of disbanded, but we all came back together on the reunion tour.

Alice Chen33:15Yeah, so I'm very grateful and honored to partner with my original mentor. He's very quantitative. So he is a CPA for twenty four years. And he was an auditor as well as a partner in corporate finance at a major accounting firm. And from there, he branched off to start his private equity fund. So he brings a very quantitative skill set to the table. And of course, seniority. He's older than me, so more senior in terms of the time and market. I bring to the table legal skills.

Alice Chen33:46So I do a lot of risk assessment and litigation from a legal perspective. And we're very complementary.

Brandon Parker33:55That's great. And for investors who are listening, possible investors, what should they consider when they're deciding to invest in your fund versus other types of real estate opportunities? I know that the derisking.

Alice Chen34:10Yeah. There's a couple things. I think one is if you wanna get into real estate, there's two buckets. So do you want to be involved or invest actively, or do you want to invest passively? So, if you're someone that likes to do home improvement stuff or manage properties or manage tenants, okay, then you're probably a good fit as the first type. So if you like high degree of control, doing things yourself, then go ahead and do fix and flips. Go ahead and do, I don't know, Airbnb rentals. There's different ways to make money in real estate actively.

Alice Chen34:41But if you're someone like me, I don't like tenants, toilets, home improvement, property management, all of that, then learn to invest passively. So if you're learning to invest passively, then start learning to figure out how to do due diligence on the fund manager, on the operator, on the thesis. I actually have a lot of educational materials on my YouTube channel. You can go to my website, it's alicechengcompanies.com, and there's a link to my YouTube channel. I teach a lot of masterclass content on private equity fund construction, due diligence process, how to create passive income through investing.

Alice Chen35:21So, I mean, Of course, there's way more information out there than my content, and so I think just start learning and start investing. Investing is kind of like riding a bike. Until you start to do it, you don't really know what you don't know.

Brandon Parker35:34Give a rundown of the investment opportunity again. How much are trying to raise? Minimum investment? Other numbers around it? Just to kind of summarize that for people. Sure.

Alice Chen35:46Yeah, so we have a fund that's open right now. Our target raise is $15,000,000 The minimum investment amount is $100,000 You have to be an accredited investor and you're looking at a three year fund life, right? So in three years, you'll get your money back in the return. You're looking at high 20s in terms of IRR. So about 27% return per year. And by the end of the three year period, you can expect an equity multiple of 1.6 to 1.9.

Alice Chen36:17So that means if invested $100,000 when the fund wraps up and you get all your distributions, you should be expecting to get back 160,000 to 190,000

Brandon Parker36:31And you're actively raising capital right now. What's your vision for success look like twelve months down the road?

Alice Chen36:38Yeah. So we want to have the fund raised and closed and want to have deployed into six projects across different geographies. So the same type of projects we explained, and then just geographically diversified with different homebuilders as ultimate customers. And so with $15,000,000 we can deploy into four to six projects. So that would be a success. Beautiful.

Brandon Parker37:05This is a fun question that I usually wrap up with. Last question I usually ask is, if you could send one message out on Twitter or X, everyone in the world would see it. So it's just gotta be short and poppy, and everyone in the world could see it. Doesn't even have to be business related. Just one message. Everyone would see. What would it be?

Alice Chen37:24Oh, that's a hard one, so let me think. Yeah, that's my one message to the world. I think stay centered and stay grounded and cut out the noise and follow your instincts on doing the right thing. So I think in a time like this, it's important that we all get centered and all get grounded and not be too reactive in terms of making business choices or life choices.

Alice Chen37:59I think cutting through the noise to get to the truth is something that we all need to practice right now. So I would say that would be my message today to the world.

Brandon Parker38:10Big time. Well, Alice, it's been wonderful talking to you, getting to know more about your business, and I can't wait to hear from one of your operating partners here in the future. And what's the best place for people to find you online and get ahold of you?

Alice Chen38:22Yeah. So I invite everyone interested to visit my website. It's alicechen companies. Chen is spelled c h e n, alicechencompanies.com. Over there, you'll find a way to get in contact with me, a link to my YouTube channel, my LinkedIn newsletter. Yeah. I look forward to hearing from you.

Brandon Parker38:41Alright. Wonderful. Thanks for coming on the show, Alice. See you again. Hang out with you again, and, we'll talk soon. Okay. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Now. Legends of Lands show.