Podcast 201. Sustainable Coffee Company: Investing in Green Byproducts with Cole Shepard

Average Joe Finances:
0:00

Hey, Welcome back to the Average Joe Finances Podcast. I'm your host, Mike Cavaggioni, and today's guest is Cole Shepard. So Cole, super excited to have you on. Welcome to the show.

Cole Shepard:
0:10

Thank you for having me, Mike. Great to be here.

Average Joe Finances:
0:12

Yeah, Absolutely. So Cole, I would like to start this off the same way I start every podcast. And actually before I even get to that I wanna let all my listeners know too that this is a little bit different than some of the other topics we've discussed in the past. So I'm really excited to have Cole share what he does here today. So the first thing I want to do Cole, is ask you if you could share a little bit about yourself. Share your story, and tell us who is Cole shepherd?

Cole Shepard:
0:39

Sure. So I'm Cole Shepherd. I live down here in Metagene Columbia. I would say most of my time on the work side of the life is really dedicated to a company called Green Coffee Company, which I founded in 2017. It started off as what I would say as a small consolidated, almost like a real estate asset management fund product. And we since grown to the largest coffee producer in the country of Columbia. For any of the listeners who don't know coffee is the national product of the country. So I sit on the board of that company. And then the other company that I'm heavily involved with is the company on that I'm recording from today called Polygonas, which the Digital Arts and Entertainment Company, part of it's an academy telling our teaching people how to work in video game production and Netflix productions. And the other side is actually developing video games.

Average Joe Finances:
1:29

Awesome. Short, sweet, concise, but to the point.

Cole Shepard:
1:33

There you go.

Average Joe Finances:
1:33

Cole that's pretty awesome, man. Coffee Columbia's known for coffee, right? Yes. As a matter of fact, as we're sitting here talking I was just drinking my coffee now. I love my coffee out here in Hawaii cuz this is where I live, right? And I can get the local Hawaii Hawaiian coffee. Pretty easily cuz it's right in my backyard. But when I still live back on the mainland, colombian coffee was always a staple, right? That's what everybody, preferred. Everybody liked Colombian coffee. It's a rich, darker coffee, right? Very enjoyable. Yeah I'd like to get into to that a little bit. If we could talk about how you got into the coffee business and what brought you down to Columbia in the first place.

Cole Shepard:
2:10

Sure. So I'll start at the beginning. I graduated from North Carolina State University when I was 23. Went to undergrad in accounting and finance, did a master's in accounting and finance a year after that. Started with PWC right outta school. A couple years in, in Raleigh, North Carolina office. Moved to Bermuda when I was 25, started doing financial services, auditing of banks, insurance companies, asset managers, private equity. And then I moved with the same firm to Hong Kong. I was in between Hong Kong and Beijing actually before I moved to Columbia. And my background was in financial services and mergers and acquisitions. So when I moved down to Columbia, what I was looking at is potentially trying to run M&A teams with the firm that I was previously working for. When I came down, I saw a world of opportunity of what I saw. And so when I came down, I started doing my own projects. I decided to quit the corporate life, put all my money into the, vet on yourself basket. Started doing real estate deals down in Columbia, and I still had a bunch of contacts in Asia. I found that this trade corridor between Latin America and Asia is quite light. No, not many people specialize in that. And got into trading commodities. So I ran my own little, I would say like a commodities trading book, primarily with fresh cut flowers. For listeners who don't know, Columbia is the number two exporter of fresh cut flowers in the world behind the Netherlands. I and I focus primarily on Asian markets, right? It's like South Korea was a big market for us, Japan, Southern China, Hong Kong, obviously. And when I got into that, we started looking at coffee, cacao, other commodity based products. So we came across a group of real estate investors who wanted collateralized asset exposure, and they wanted an ag project, right? They wanted something that can compete with commercial real estate. And then we, basically, what we did is we created that investment product for them by starting this coffee company with their original business thesis of buy farms at scale, consolidate infrastructure, and then sell as far down the value chain as you can get. And so originally that was that, right? We were just basically competing with commercial real estate. And then as we got into the business we say, man, if we really invest in this, we can really have something special. So about two years in the project, we really invested in international management teams, kicked up the capital raise to another notch. And started really acquiring new farms, acquiring technology, and most importantly is the human talent right behind what we do. In last year, we became the largest consolidated producer in the country. This year will be two or three times larger than our, our nearest competitor in the country. And it's only, to the moon and not from there.

Average Joe Finances:
4:49

Yeah. That's awesome. And when did you start this business?

Cole Shepard:
4:52

2017.

Average Joe Finances:
4:53

Wow. Okay.

Cole Shepard:
4:53

So it's quite new, right? So it took us five, five years to go from a project in one's head into explaining it to initial round of almost it's the early stage company, almost like you're building a blueprint and to become the largest player in the country. So as of today, we've deployed 57 million in, so only in equity into Columbia.

Average Joe Finances:
5:14

That's amazing that.

Cole Shepard:
5:15

Thank you.

Average Joe Finances:
5:16

That is amazing, Cole.

Cole Shepard:
5:17

Thank you.

Average Joe Finances:
5:17

I was expecting you to tell me, oh yeah, we started this back in 2005 and.

Cole Shepard:
5:21

No.

Average Joe Finances:
5:21

Wow, man.

Cole Shepard:
5:21

No, we're still fairly, we're still fairly new to the game. A lot to learn, but we're a major player now. And and also for anyone who doesn't know, Columbia's the third largest coffee producer on in the world. So being the largest producer here. We get a lot of access into what's happening in the world in commodity markets, what's happening in coffee, and it's pretty cool. It's pretty cool.

Average Joe Finances:
5:42

Yeah, absolutely. So what's interesting is that, when you first started this off you had investors approaching you, right? Looking to get into something else, and diversify their portfolios. And you said hey, Let's structure something more around the commodities here. Structure it like a real estate deal and raise the same way.

Cole Shepard:
6:01

Yes.

Average Joe Finances:
6:01

Which is what you did to start the the coffee company, with the green coffee company.

Cole Shepard:
6:05

That's right. That's right.

Average Joe Finances:
6:05

So that's amazing. And, to structure it that way obviously you were able to take the same principles that most real estate investors use to scale very quickly, cuz.

Cole Shepard:
6:16

Yes.

Average Joe Finances:
6:16

2017 to now to being the largest coffee manufacturer in Columbia. That's amazing. I want to ask you a little bit then, like when it came to actually structuring how you put this together. Like you said, you built this blueprint. What, what was like, the beginnings like, like how did that first. When did investors start approaching you and say, Hey, we want to get into something and you said I got this idea up here. Sure. What does the birth of this look like?

Cole Shepard:
6:42

Sure. I would say the birth of it really is the desire. I think the desire from us, higher net worth individuals is the desire, right? It is the birth of it. The company was born out of a desire to move capital outside of the United States for interesting investment opportunities. So my background besides M&A was a lot within asset management, right? So our business was a lot with obviously high net worth individuals, but, private equity funds, corporate buyouts, things like that. What I've seen in the course of my career is a lot of US accredited or high net worth individuals, they're looking for international opportunities. Most of them that say take everything away from like public markets, like public equities, public debt. On the alternative side, the private markets, they really only have access to real estate. Like most investors really have difficulty finding opportunities outside of real estate. And especially when you're thinking about 2017, 2018 time period, when we're doing our initial cap rates, cap rates were quite low. So you're looking at, if you wanna do a multifamily deal in Texas or Arkansas or Missouri or wherever during this time, maybe you're getting cap rates, 5% 6% of your money. So a lot of investors were looking internationally. So the group that approached us, they were already looking at Columbia and they were comfortable with the risk return profile of Columbia. So the reason why people like agriculture is because typically it can yield higher than what you would see in a commercial real estate market, right? And if you have, if you can pull enough capital together, You can have something special. So in the US if you're gonna do a high level ag deal, like you really need to be working with. I'd recommend like 50 million and up probably kind of capital stacks. Here in Columbia, price tags come down significantly. In the US it's really institutional capital that's really playing there, but the yield will be higher than commercial real estate. And what in markets like Columbia where you can buy huge amounts of land for what would be a fraction of the price in the United States. Yield profiles are really attractive. So I would say as much as the coffee industry was fragmented and it still is fragmented in Columbia, there's a lot of opportunity. There's a lack of, I would say, both human capital and that's, say U S D or peso capital flowing into the markets. It's the US high net worth individuals who were looking, I guess would be like the frontier or the pioneer investors who really drove a lot of what we did and have supported us ever since the beginning. We have a lot. As of this morning, I probably have, I dunno, 430 investors, all high net worth us, almost all US base accredited investors, and a lot of'em invested with us almost every single round since the beginning.

Average Joe Finances:
9:21

Awesome. One of the things you had mentioned earlier and now I'm starting to put it together in my head, is you said, as you were expend as you were growing, one of the biggest things you were focusing on was growing those international teams buying farmland. And now I'm going back to the you buying farmland piece. When you just mentioned how you can get land, like large pieces of land in Columbia at a fraction of the cost.

Cole Shepard:
9:43

Yes.

Average Joe Finances:
9:43

And now is. There's plenty of places in the US you can get land at a fraction of a cost. And it's usually like in the desert in Arizona.

Cole Shepard:
9:51

Yes.

Average Joe Finances:
9:51

So when you mention, land like that, are you purchasing really good rich areas for farming to grow the coffee business.

Cole Shepard:
9:59

One thing you need to look at is, there's a lot of global studies on where the most valuable agricultural land is in the world, and Columbia's right at the top of the list. Columbia has one of the, one of the biggest things about agricultural land, if you're gonna do like outdoor grows, not like hydroponic grows or indoor grows, is you need access to water. And obviously climate is massively important, right? So in Columbia you have everything from jungles to mountains to flat grazing area for cattle, but almost everything grows in, in Columbia. It's like almost like a tropical climate. So you get like a free pass on a lot of, on a lot of the agricultural goods. But, if you were to compare it to us farmland, like I would expect 25, 30% on the cost of US farmland with significantly better growing conditions for a lot of the crops. So when we go out and acquire, we acquire for, is this gonna be good coffee land for the next a hundred years? And is it productive? Is it not productive? Do we need to build it out? But yeah, we only buy the best of the best with agricultural land, for sure.

Average Joe Finances:
11:00

Awesome. Now I want to ask you about Legacy Group itself, right? So not just the coffee piece, but what else is part of Legacy Group and what do you do besides coffee in Latin america?

Cole Shepard:
11:12

Sure. So I started Legacy Group when we came down, or when I came down to Columbia. And the idea really was, I started, actually the initial companies were set up in Hong Kong. And the additional, the idea around legacy was, the word itself is one part. Legacy people think of capital, right? Like leaving a legacy to your kids or legacy is, what do people remember you for? So I named it Legacy Group cuz I only wanted to do projects and deals that I was proud of being a part of. And obviously they have to make money, but there's always gonna be a capital aspect to it. So I like the play on words with, or the meaning behind the word legacy. So when I came down to Columbia, I started doing deals in businesses that, that I was excited about. And so originally it was, real estate deals that I really liked and then getting the commodity trading.

Average Joe Finances:
11:54

Yeah. So Cole, I was gonna say, because you were talking about. When you first started, it wasn't like you just went down there and started in the coffee business, you went down there doing real estate.

Cole Shepard:
12:02

That's right.

Average Joe Finances:
12:02

Doing the stuff you knew, right?

Cole Shepard:
12:04

That's right.

Average Joe Finances:
12:04

Yeah.

Cole Shepard:
12:04

Real estate. In my background, like in in Hong Kong, a lot of my deals were based around buying insurance companies, buying banks. So my knowledge of financial services, would be more than the average guy. I knew financial services really well. I know how banks work, I know how global lending works and when I came down to Columbia I saw massive discrepancies in the availability of capital, especially related to debt. So when you see that, you see all these mismatches, there's always gonna be arbitrage or areas that you can find interesting things in real estate. Cuz real estate is primarily driven by access to capital, primarily debt. And that'll drive valuation bubbles or.

Average Joe Finances:
12:40

Right.

Cole Shepard:
12:40

Recessions or whatever. What I saw is debt was very uneven. It's very difficult to get, very low penetration rates. So I was trying to find anomalies in real estate, and then also do businesses that I was excited about. I love the commodity and trade business. So things like fresh cut flowers that I thought was a real cool business. Anything in agriculture I always thought was a really cool business and focus on trade corridors that I thought were cool. Besides just coffee, the other big one that we do down here that I'm saying is with polygonas, where I'm recording today, my favorite part of their business is the academy. So the Academy was grown out of their core business, which is the production, really the production of video games, so this is a group of very talented artists and software engineers that their background is creating video games, of course. But what you're gonna find in any. I guess emerging market is an emerging talent pool, is you need more talent, right? So they actually created an internal academy to create the talent internally in Columbia so they could have a recurring labor pool so they could actually make video games. What they found was the academy almost has more demand than the video games itself. If you take kids and millennials these days they love playing video games, but if you could teach 'em how to work in video games and make that a real job, like they're all over it. So two years ago they struck a deal with government here to start teaching kids how to work in video games. And so they're the only, only one of the only academies in Latin America that teach people how to really work all the way from, let's say, artistic concept art, all the way to making it 3D modeling, all the way to take it to unreal engine and make it into live video games. And so I'd say in the last few years they've taught upwards of two 3000 kids how to work in the industry. And not hypothetical, like this would be, how you would do it if you do this, like actual trade work is saying at the end of this, if you can get through these programs, you can work in the industry in a real job.

Average Joe Finances:
14:40

Yeah. That's pretty amazing. Giving them all the tools necessary to go out and start their career as soon as they graduate, as soon as they finish. And yeah, building, building a system like that so that you can keep that labor pool constantly filled. It's the best way to do it, right?

Cole Shepard:
14:55

Absolutely.

Average Joe Finances:
14:56

You're gonna constantly have folks that even if you're not hiring them and they're going out into the workplace separately, but you're gonna constantly have that workforce there that, you'll be able to fill your cup first before having to worry about, where else they're going. So that's pretty awesome.

Cole Shepard:
15:10

That's exactly right. That's exactly right.

Average Joe Finances:
15:12

Yeah. So you're doing a lot more than just coffee, right? So that's pretty cool. And it's very diverse, right? So that's one of the things I really like about this too, is that you're not just in one specific industry, right? So you give your investors, these different options that, that they can. Be diversified as well. They're not just That's right. In one particular industry which is great because, there's a lot of real estate investors here accredited investors too, that are looking to get into other things besides just multifamily or commercial real estate. Yes. And maybe they're looking outside, they're looking, oh, how can I invest overseas? And get into some international investing international companies. And this is a great way to to do that. So speaking of, I'd like to ask you like, what type of investment offerings does Legacy Group have for accredited investors, and what problems do they solve?

Cole Shepard:
16:01

Sure. So when we raise capital, for instance, we're finishing a 25 billion capital raise right now for the Green Coffee Company. We got, I think, $900,000 left. We do 506Cs, right? So a hundred thousand dollars minimums. What we found over the course of the last five years of raising from accredited US investors for green coffee is one they like to invest in Delaware companies, US structures, or best even for international companies. All of our companies are structured out of Delaware, right? So we basically dual track all of our companies in a traditional international corporate structure. So that either can be sold out in a corporate sellout, or you could do an I p o track and list it on a public market, right? So most real estate investors, you don't usually set up syndicated real estate to go public on a public market. Usually you've exit at some kind of hopefully heightened asset value. But what we do is things like the coffee company could easily be structured as something like a fund where you're gonna get some kinda asset valuation. But in reality it operates as an international corporate. And so we wanna get enterprise valuations with the ability for what I like to call this big boy exits, right? So when we go into both capital raises and how we structure our business to take one step back, myself and my partner, we put huge amounts of our own capital into our businesses. And we only do, we don't like bifurcate our efforts into too many businesses at one time. Like we're not a traditional BC that'll take, 20 portfolio companies on. We like to make really big concentrated bets with our own capital and make sure that we spend our time appropriately and make sure these opportunities work for our investors. So we only focus on like the two that I gave you are actually the two, the only two that we work on. And then two of those two companies are successful. We likely won't take on more portfolio companies, but yes, I would say the key things that we try to solve. To go back to your question, Mike, Really our heightened returns for investors access to international, I guess projects and companies outside of the scope that most accredited investors, especially us investors, have access to something like Columbian Coffee. A lot of our investors love because, one, they understand coffee, they love it, and two, they've never been, A lot of our investors have never been introduced to a Latin American project of a real company. Something that's wow, this is actually a multinational corporate, and I can get it in a private early stage before it hits public, and I'm paying, heightened valuations where you're competing against, the Canadian Pension Fund on valuations. So I'd say those are the big ones that we try to solve.

Average Joe Finances:
18:30

Yeah that's awesome. Again it's it's the options that are offered to your investors. So that's just fantastic. What about, so being a coffee company, right? Obviously, farmland's a big thing that you guys need, right? You have to grow the coffee beans and, there's always that picture of what is like the social or environmental impact that. Companies, larger corporations are doing. So for you being a coffee company for the coffee company side of it, and with the name Green Coffee Company I'm thinking in my head that this is more of a, a green quote unquote company that is looking to help with just the environment itself and that's what I wanna ask you about. So what is it that you guys do or your focus on producing that positive social and environmental impact?

Cole Shepard:
19:21

Absolutely and in coffee to, again, from a macro perspective, it's something I always tell our investors. If you're not doing things in this space, especially in the environmental space in coffee, you're not gonna be around in 10 years because guys like our team are gonna basically eat your lunch. Green coffee is actually to take a another step back on the name, the core product of a coffee company is called Green Coffee. Most people don't know that the coffee that goes into a coffee roaster, it's green in color and it's called green coffee.

Average Joe Finances:
19:48

Yes.

Cole Shepard:
19:48

Is what it's actually traded.

Average Joe Finances:
19:49

I've actually watched the process get done at one of the coffee farms here.

Cole Shepard:
19:53

There you go.

Average Joe Finances:
19:53

In Hawaii. So yeah, I absolutely love kona.

Cole Shepard:
19:55

That's so cool. Absolutely. And so when we were coming up with the name of the company when we started, I loved it because we knew we were gonna do sustainable farming from the start. And I love the name Green Coffee Company One because of its simplicity, and two because if you're gonna name yourself Green Coffee Company, you better be green. So like things we have a whole ecosystem built around that theme actually, and we're really in the coffee industry in Columbia. I would say we're probably the only ones that actually ring true to that theme. And I'll give you a few examples. So when we go into infrastructure development, for instance we build everything from scratch and we build for the best brightest machinery that you have anywhere in the world. So let's say water usage is a massive issue in commercial farming. So water usage on a typical, let's say a pound of green coffee, typically in Columbia, it's somewhere between 20 and 30 liters a pound. We can do it for less than one liter of water per pound. And so what that means is, in layman's terms, we're like 30 times better just with water usage than the average farmer. Other things that I would say are as well as like the capitalism side, but as on the sustainability side are things like the use of byproducts, right? So for viewers who don't know, coffee comes in a cherry. What you're drinking when you drink Kona Coffee, for instance, when Mike's drinking in Hawaii, you're drinking the roasted seed, but over half of the weight of the cherry typically is like thrown in a river in most of the parts of the world. It ferments and it pollutes when people do that, right? Some people say they use it for fertilizer. The majority of it is wasted and it's pollution material. One of the things that we're doing is focusing a large part of our business on what do we do with byproduct. So one of the cool things that our investors in the US personally are ecstatic about is we're building an industrial scale distillery to make food grade ethanol, right? And so ethanol is a fancy word for moonshine that we can make our own line of spirits from, right? Vodkas, gins, and Colombia. The big alcohol is Aguardiente, which is like an anise type liquor and so we'll be able to produce 12,000 liters of ethanol a day. Now, something like that works on the capitalism side and say, look, you can make profits and revenues outta something that's free, but on the other side, you're also reducing your levels of contaminants. I say lastly, the biggest thing in, large scale ag farming in places like Latin America or that's, say Africa. This is another large coffee producing region is, full-time labor and they're actually paying real wages. I would say it's estimated probably in agriculture in Columbia, especially coffee, farming, maybe 1% of employers actually pay pension wages, health benefits. And so all of our full-time laborers, like they really receive pensions. They have vacation time, they have health insurance and for most of the US listeners listening, you'd say, yeah, that's a standard. Everyone does that zero people do that. Actually in large scale agriculture in Columbia, it's a massive rarity that people actually pay realtime wages because they just have seasonal workers who work, for $10 a day and after they don't need 'em anymore, don't show up. It's a very aggressive lifestyle and building communities around the actual business is massively important for obviously retention, but actually being proud of the business that we're creating.

Average Joe Finances:
23:14

Yeah, that's fantastic. That's. So you're able to provide, you're doing job creation in the country, right? But you're not only job creation, but you're creating jobs that are sustainable. For the people that live there. That's correct. You're paying them better wages, they're getting benefits, where you normally wouldn't get that anywhere else. You would, you just show up, you get paid for the day and.

Cole Shepard:
23:35

Hundred percent.

Average Joe Finances:
23:36

You don't show up when you're not needed anymore.

Cole Shepard:
23:37

That's right.

Average Joe Finances:
23:38

I'm pretty sure with the way that you guys are doing things, people show back up and they come back.

Cole Shepard:
23:43

A hundred percent. A hundred percent. Yeah.

Average Joe Finances:
23:45

All right, Cole I have to ask you now, so if you. If your guys are taking the byproduct right and you're able to create ethanol from it, You're able to create ethanol from the actual like bean shellings the leftover pieces. How does that process, what does that process look like?

Cole Shepard:
24:01

Sure. So if you were to take a coffee, it actually, it comes from the coffee cherry, the sugars, and the coffee cherry. Okay. So growing up in, I grew up in North Carolina. I know you can make moonshine from anything. You can make it from tree bark if you want to know, so all you need is, a sugar source and you can make alcohol from that sugar source. So basically you're just extracting out part of the membrane of the cherry, and you can create. Ethanol from that sugar source. But in reality, you have a byproduct of a byproduct. The byproduct of an ethanol process will be long stream fiber and protein, right? And so that can be, you could actually create fiber extracts that can go into food additives, a anything to make, commercial food, basically. Or you can make antioxidant mixes. Things like Korean beauty creams, they use a tremendous amount of antioxidants. Coffee cherries have more antioxidants than blueberries, actually. And everyone reads about blueberries having the most antioxidants out of anything. Coffee, cherries have some of the highest in the world. And lastly.

Average Joe Finances:
24:58

Drink coffee every day.

Cole Shepard:
24:59

There you go. You're gonna live forever. Yeah. All yeah. Then then you have protein as well. And so protein, you mean like an easy byproduct for people to understand After you soak out the sugars and you make ethanol, you have this long stream fiber, antioxidants, and protein, you can have animal feed from that, right? And you could have, you basically have byproducts on byproducts. So part of what we do is you have an ecosystem of value and make sure you make the most of everything you have.

Average Joe Finances:
25:24

Sure. Yeah. So Cole, I wanted to ask you too, do, besides the ethanol, do you guys take any of the other byproduct, like the fibers or anything and do anything with that as well?

Cole Shepard:
25:33

Yes, actually we're doing research right now on what is the best use case for that. We've used it for, you probably have seen things like, called like Cascara Tea, which Starbucks have done in the past. There's a couple small, I would say like RTD kind of drinks that are doing Cascara Teas. We've done some experiments with that. We've sold some coffee cherries like that. A lot of it will go, some of it will go to animal food. In the future, we have some potential contracts lined up for that. But some of it is actually in the research and development phase. A lot of research has happened in the past around coffee cherries, but no one's actually industrialized it. Especially in Columbia. Cuz no one's actually created a company the size that we've created. So they haven't had the resources or the manpower or the human capital really to tackle some of these issues. So we're on the frontier of what to do with this byproduct. As we speak. So this ethanol is actually one of the largest investments into the byproduct usage case of any product ever used out of Colombian coffee cherries in the history of Colombian coffee.

Average Joe Finances:
26:34

Yeah. That's amazing. You guys really take that name green, seriously. And and I can say I really appreciate that because, if more. Bigger company started doing something like that, and just really paid attention to their impact. It can make a big difference just in the world in general. You guys you're crushing it. Cole, thank you so much, man. This has been fantastic. Now, what I'd like to do is transition this into something that I call the final round. It's where I'm going to ask you the same four questions I ask everybody that comes on the show, and it gives us a better idea of how. How you are under pressure and what your decision making looks like.

Cole Shepard:
27:07

Sure.

Average Joe Finances:
27:07

Which I'm pretty sure we already know. You're gonna kill this game. Look what you did from 2017 to now.

Cole Shepard:
27:11

Yes.

Average Joe Finances:
27:11

So I'm pretty excited about this. So if you're ready to go, we'll get this party started.

Cole Shepard:
27:15

Let's do it. Let's do it.

Average Joe Finances:
27:17

Let's do it. So Cole, first question is, what's the biggest mistake you've ever made in business?

Cole Shepard:
27:24

Sure I would use it almost as a relative example is waiting too long to make what you know is the right decision, even if it's aggressive. So letting a business or maybe an employee or someone that you like, Stay on when you say, look, this really isn't the right choice. Maybe it's gonna improve in the future, and in your gut it's not going to, you need to make hard decisions immediately. And so that's one of the biggest things I've probably learned after running my own businesses the last decade is even if you have a tough decision and you know it's the right thing to don't delay it. Do it immediately.

Average Joe Finances:
27:58

Awesome. I appreciate that. Actually the next question kind of ties into that, and you touched on it, so maybe some we'll go into something else here. Sure. But what is something that you've learned that you wish you knew when you first got started?

Cole Shepard:
28:09

Sure. I would say, when I started in business, I was going into the cpa, a world, the financial services world. I thought what mattered was the ability to have CFA exams or CPA exams, all these MBA credentials, masters of credentials. What it matters the most is experience, right? Make mistakes, learn something, especially if you're gonna be in the entrepreneur route. The more mistakes you can make and the faster you make 'em, the better. Don't try to be perfect. Don't try to make everything great. When I look at candidates that are coming to work with us I honestly don't care if guys are MBAs or have CFAs or have jds or whatever. I wanna see what they've done in the past and if they can accomplish the goals we have laid out for them. So all the I guess all the acronyms beside your name mean less to me than they ever did before.

Average Joe Finances:
29:03

Awesome. Yeah, that's fantastic. You know it, I wish more people thought like that, but I wrote that down. How experienced matters more than education and that is so true. Just even in the real world, it's what especially for real estate investors, right?

Cole Shepard:
29:16

Definitely.

Average Joe Finances:
29:16

A lot of times their experience has become their education, right? Those mistakes that they made become very expensive and almost the same. Cost of MBA.

Cole Shepard:
29:25

I agree with you. I agree with you. I agree with a hundred percent, Mike.

Average Joe Finances:
29:28

You're gonna get your education either way. It's either gonna be through experience

Cole Shepard:
29:31

Yeah.

Average Joe Finances:
29:32

Or education.

Cole Shepard:
29:32

And you're gonna pay for it either way.

Average Joe Finances:
29:34

Yeah, absolutely. Alright, Cole do you have any tips or tricks that you would recommend to someone that is just getting started out today? Let's say somebody just got themselves completely outta debt and now they wanna start investing. Where would you what kind of tips or tricks would you recommend to somebody who's pretty green?

Cole Shepard:
29:53

Sure. The first thing is I would set aside a pool of Capital One that you're comfortable losing, right? One is say, okay, this is my learning capital, and invest in some projects that you can go and learn amongst, right? So you'll never be the best investor in the world on your first run, especially if you're issuing, let's say you're buying equities in private markets or something that you know is outside of your complete control or complete foresight. But the most important thing to me is to get started and start learning, right? Especially if you're young, you have time to learn. Put a little capital aside. Don't make gigantic bets. Don't bet at all in one place, but bet on things and invest in companies and entrepreneurs that you think can be successful and try to learn from them. And Right, especially in private markets, in real estate especially, you'll have sponsors all over the place. You'll have a assets that are all over the place. There's tons of assets out there, but there's very few sponsors I would say, that are really excellent, like really excellent. And those are the guys, Mike, that you probably referenced to the experience guys have done it over and over again and you'll, and it'll be very difficult. I would say both define them and to vet them your first time around. So it takes. A lot of time and effort to understand how things work and understand what works for you, honestly. So again, this is a long way around of saying just get started with an amount that you're, say, comfortable, even if you lost it all, but use it as your education capital.

Average Joe Finances:
31:19

Cole absolutely love that that response. It's fantastic. I love how you even talk about how, new investors should bet anybody that they're investing with. I think that's super important. Definitely. There's something I talk to people about all the time that are just getting into multifamily and they'll come to me and they'll say, Hey Mike, how do I know if this is a good company to invest with? And I tell 'em like, Hey, look, don't just trust the slides, but do your own market research on the asset that they're purchasing and if it fits your buy box. Then go with them, right? If the numbers they're showing you are accurate, then you know you vet it yourself as well. But I think that's super important that you vet whatever partners you go into a deal with. So I really appreciate you bringing that up, Cole?

Cole Shepard:
31:59

Yes, sir.

Average Joe Finances:
32:00

Okay. Final question of the final round.

Cole Shepard:
32:03

Yes.

Average Joe Finances:
32:03

And Cole, that is, do you have a favorite business investing or real estate related book or podcast or both?

Cole Shepard:
32:11

Sure. I do the Amazon audio books. I will tell you that, a lot of, I think investing, I'm a big fan of learning about the history of the world and understanding how cycles work, market cycles and, it repeating itself on a lot of things. I like the theme. It's history doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes. One of my favorite books, I like that. I always. I always say is the ascent of money. It's written by it's a British author and it basically talks about the history of the world relating, from the times of stock markets opening up in the Netherlands and Amsterdam, all the way to the modern days with crashes and whatnot, and it's driven by human behavior. So I think understanding how markets have behaved over time, a lot of it's driven by humans. Human emotion drives a lot of this. World wars can be driven by capital, the movements of capital. I think it's important to understand, rationalize how things work in the world and don't always, go into today thinking like this is the first time the world's ever experienced this macroeconomic issue. It's not. Problems are manageable and they're forecastable. And not everything is always a disaster that can never be solved.

Average Joe Finances:
33:18

I like that though. That's a great recommendation. I had to write that one down because it's. If you look at it from the beginning yes, things moved a little bit slower back then because you didn't have instant notifications on certain things. Like nowadays, a billionaire can tweet something and it can affect the entire market. That's right. That's just, that's right. That's just the reality. Reality we live in and that's why, everyone out there that's investing needs to just pay attention to what's going on to the world around them, not just. The market itself, but see everything that's right. That can affect the market. So yeah, that's right. That's gonna be a great book recommendation. So I appreciate that's now that is it for the final round. But I do have another question for you, and this is probably the most important question I'm gonna ask you today, because people are listening and saying, wow, this this company that he's put together, Legacy group and what they're doing in Latin America. Just every little thing about it I want to know more about and I want to know more about coal and we'd like to be able to provide that to our listeners. So if you could, can you share where people can find more information about you? You have a website or social media, anything like that people could follow and check out?

Cole Shepard:
34:22

Sure, absolutely. I guess our social media outlet that we're most active on will be LinkedIn can look for us at Legacy Group at LinkedIn. We will be the only one operating outta managing Columbia. And then the other is our website, which is www.legacy-group.co. And you can see, all of our active investment offerings, what we do, who the team are on ev basically everything that's going on. So I'd love to have any of your listeners followed us and hopefully think that what we're doing is pretty cool.

Average Joe Finances:
34:49

All right, Cole, fantastic. I'll make sure we have those links in the show notes to make it easy for everybody to find you. So to my listeners, you can copy and paste or click away. Just don't do it if you're driving. I really appreciate that. Thank you so much. Okay, and Cole any final thoughts for our listeners?

Cole Shepard:
35:05

Not too many. I had a great time on the show, Mike. I think, my big takeaways are for investors get started. Get started, get out there and learn as much as you can.

Average Joe Finances:
35:15

Absolutely love it. Again, Cole, thank you so much for joining me today. This was fantastic. I learned a lot about you, I learned a lot about your company and what you're doing. And li how the name Green really does mean a lot to you. And it means a lot that you know, that you actually. Take action. You put your money where your mouth is, right? And not only that, I also wanna bring up the fact that one of the things you talked about too is, you and your partner investing your own capital into these bigger deals that you're doing. That just shows that you have skin in the game. Like when we were talking about vetting potential partners or companies you want to go with you wanna look for people like Cole that are taking their own capital and putting their own skin in the game. That's one of the first things I look at when I'm gonna invest with somebody. Cole, again, thank you so much, man. This was fantastic. Now I also wanna thank my listeners for joining me and our special guest Cole Shepherd, on the average Joe Finances Podcast. Go leave us a five star review. And tell us what you liked about today's episode with Cole. Aloha from co from Hawaii and Columbia, and have a great rest of your day.