On this episode of The Passive Income Attorney, Seth sits down with Clive Davis. Clive discusses his former career in law and what made him realize that it wasn’t for him. Clive eventually escaped the golden shackles of law and turned to real estate and passive investing.

 

“I would encourage anyone who’s in the legal world now to just to explore some alternatives. To the 401k, work hard, put your head down people, explore some alternatives because that’s the only way you’re going to know whether or not something is more appealing to you.”

 

HIGHLIGHTS:

0:00 – Intro and background on Clive
3:04 – Clive talks about his previous law practices and explains what he loved and hated about his job
7:19 – Clive explains it wasn’t a particular moment that lead to looking at real estate
9:06 – Seth asks what doors law opened for Clive and what doors it could open for others
12:35 – You have to have a transferable skillset, which is something a law degree gives you
16:07 – Clive talks about how he broke free from law and moved into real estate, describing the first property he purchased
20:27 – Clive is asked his opinion on what he thinks of traditional investing compared to alternative investments like real estate
33:09 – Clive offers his advice on how to get over the hump of just working and relying on your 401k in the future
39:30 – Before the responsibilities come into your life, you should think about what you’re going to do with your money and start educating yourself
40:32 – Clive never strays too far from his humble beginnings, so his lifestyle didn’t change when he left law
42:16 – The Freedom 4: In an alternative universe where you weren’t involved in real estate what would you be doing
43:29 – What’s the best thing you do to keep your mind and body healthy
44:24 – Where were you at 5 years ago and where do you see yourself and your company in 5 years’ time?
45:46 – How has passive income made your life better?

 

FIND | CLIVE DAVIS:

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/clivedavisesq
Email: clive@parkroyalcapital.com

Clive began his professional career as a corporate transactional lawyer with a Wall Street law firm headquartered in NY, with assignments in Menlo Park, CA and Hong Kong, China. He spent six years as in-house counsel, in a variety of roles, with the then biggest pharmaceutical company in the world, before transitioning into the compliance space where he ultimately served as the chief compliance officer for a Belgian biopharma’s Americas business. After twenty years of corporate life, Clive made an entrepreneurial pivot into the world of commercial real estate where he is currently an active investor and operator focused primarily on multifamily investment opportunities.

 

FULL TRANSCRIPTION:

Seth: Good day, everyone. Thanks for joining us for an inspiring new episode. Whether you love your practice or career or hat it, you should be thinking about how to insulate yourself and your family from the risk of becoming too dependent on a single source of income. There could be an economic downturn. There could be changing winds in your industry, or you might just get burnt out and tired of it. If you’re looking for a blueprint on just how to do that, while still working full-time and a fast-paced career today’s guests will lay it all out there for you on how he accomplished just that same feat.

Clive Davis is a Columbia law grad and former big law and in-house corporate attorney who has successfully escaped the rat race through investing passively in well over 2000 units in multifamily and hotels diversified across the nation and is now focused on continuing to build his passive wealth while also investing actively. Okay, let’s get going.

Seth: Clive my man, welcome to the show.

Clive: How are you doing Seth?

Seth: Doing great, man. Doing great. So, we’ll just dive right in man. So, you’re a pretty, pretty, very well experienced attorney, but fully recovered at this point. Is that right?

Clive: Fully recovered. You know, I went through that transition, but I’m now on the other side, the lighter side, I would say.

Seth: Nice, man. Well, tell me a little bit about your story and just feel free to brag a little bit.

Clive: Yeah. So, the story is, come from humble beginnings. I’m an immigrant born to Jamaican parents. I was actually born in London. Parents transitioned to the US in the mid-eighties and you know, I’m a public school kid, until I made the decision to go to law school which is when I made what I think is the right decision to attend Columbia, which I’m represented today. So, one of the best law schools in the country and one of the best cities in the world. So you know, I had the fortune of attending there and being in close proximity to some of the best legal minds in the business, both on the peers, student side, as well as faculty, as well as alumni. So that really turned me on to a lot of the opportunities that I was later able to go on and take advantage of.

Seth: Awesome, man. Yeah. Columbia is not too bad of a school.

Clive: I think so.

Seth: Yeah. So, tell me a little bit about your previous law practice and what you loved about it, what you hated about it.

Clive: Yeah. So the funny story is that when I went to law school, I had no idea that I was going to end up being a corporate transactional lawyer, which is what I would go on to do. And the reason I knew, I had no idea that I was going to do that cause I had no idea of what a corporate transactional lawyer was before I went to law school. But I got my start at a wall street white shoe law firm, a big law. And you know, I did a basic rotation through mergers and acquisitions. I did a little bit of general banking, did some real estate got to work on some trophy assets in Manhattan. And ultimately, I assigned to the capital markets group and became a securities lawyer working on debt and equity offerings for the likes of Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and you name it. So, you know, it was really a world that was really brand new to me and gave me kind of access and insight into, you know, how things are done at the very highest levels. And so, you know, I love that exposure. I love that opportunity, from work-life balance, I was still young enough where work-life balance wasn’t something I was thinking about on a day-to-day basis, but then at a certain point when you know, you decide to get married and the children start come in, that’s when you start thinking, okay, going into work and not necessarily knowing what time you’re going to come home, if you’re going to come home whether or not you’re going to need to catch some Zs under your desk. And then freshen up in the rest and relaxation room. Not knowing whether or not you’re going to get that call on Thursday that says you need to be doing due diligence in DC in an office with no windows. You know, those are the types of things, which are all examples of you not necessarily being able to control your life. So, you’re highly compensated, you’re well compensated. But your life isn’t necessarily your own. And so, I like many people before me started looking for what’s my out of this situation. I didn’t have any delusions or aspirations of becoming a partner in that world. Even if that was something that was viable, which I am not sure it was. That wasn’t something that was of interest to me. So, you know, I kind of pivoted like many before me have done and I decided to go in-house. And so, I transitioned to be in-house counsel for Pfizer, which happened to be about a block or two away from where I was at the firm. And I did a number of things within that world. I’m pretty much a generalist within that world doing a little bit of strategic acquisition, consultant, little import export, products support, marketing support. So, gave me a broad exposure to a lot of different aspects of that business. So that was really great. And then ultimately, I was in the early days of setting up Pfizer’s compliance program, there were a lot of hands on that, a lot of contributions to that effort. This is in the early two thousands now. And ultimately, they transitioned me to Atlanta, which is where I’m located now. And a couple of years beyond that, I went on to become a chief compliance officer for a Belgium biopharma. So, all throughout that period, I was getting further and further away from what I would call traditional law practice. And you know, it worked for me and you know, all in all, I had a, a strong 20-year corporate run before making the transition to real estate, which we’ll talk about.

Seth: Gotcha. And at what point in your career did you have kind of that aha moment, like, you know, you transitioned out of your traditional practice into in-house and then you were thinking, Oh, man, I really want to get out of this as well and start looking at real estate or alternative investments in general.

Clive: Sure. I’m not sure it was any one moment. I would say that just the way that I got into kind of law school and kind of fell into corporate law. When I went to law school, I kind of have bought into with a law degree in hand, you can pretty much do anything. And so, I always had aspirations of being, at least what I thought an entrepreneur was. And so I figured until I could figure out exactly where I’d find my niche, you know, go get this law degree because at the end of the day, that’s going to be very useful to whatever it is that you do. So my aha moment may have been, even before I actually started it just took me 20 years or so for me to work my way back to you know, what I initially envisioned as being kind of where I was destined to be and so a great journey and experience get into it. But I knew very early on that, you know, the lifestyle of kind of big law was not something that I wanted to do long term, surrounded by successful people that would be successful by any measure. But that was not the lifestyle and that was not who I envisioned myself as being for kind of the rest of my life.

Seth: Gotcha. Yeah. I mean, that all makes sense. And then you’ve mentioned that, you know, your law degree you know, opened up a lot of doors for you and, you know, it can open up a lot of doors for all of our listeners. Could you maybe dive into that a little bit more about, you know, some of the doors that it opened for you or just some, you know, some knowledge on, you know, how that opens up the doors for everyone, because some of us are stuck in our practice and we were like, Oh man, should we even went to law school and wasted all this time, but really you can use that law degree for anything.

Clive: Yeah. And that’s so true. I mean, there are actually books out there to talk about making the transition from kind of traditional law to so many other things. And because we’re so close to it, we don’t necessarily see that. We don’t appreciate how valued the profession is by those who are not necessarily directly in that world. And so you know, for me as I’m making the transition now into real estate, you know, I mentioned to you earlier that I’ve been investing kind of passively kind of peripherally in real estate for almost a little over 20 years for that matter. And now that I’m making that transition, full-time into real estate and this business is all about relationships. And so, when you’re trying to break into something, you’re trying to establish relationships, credibility is key. And so, you know, the first thing anyone’s going to do and kind of sizing you up or assessing you is they’re going to try and see, you know, is this person legit, what’s their background and your ability to say that I’m a practicing lawyer or I practice law, or I practice in this particular area gives you immediate credibility. Whether it’s earned or not, it gives you immediate credibility because people kind of attribute to you a certain level of seriousness and also a certain level of success. Because you know, you don’t just go to law school and kind of flop your way through. You’ve got to be disciplined. And you’ve got to kind of have that certain level of seriousness. So, you can take that with you into any kind of relationship building that you’re trying to do. Any network that you’re trying to break into that is going to give you immediate credibility, and that is not to be underestimated. So, a lot of times when I’m looking to have conversations with folks and you know, they look me up, they look at my background, they see what I’ve done. While it doesn’t directly relate to real estate. They again attribute a certain level of credibility to my background and what I’ve done and what I’ve been exposed to. And that gets me an entry way into conversations, into rooms, into networks that I might not have had access to otherwise. And so I think that’s going to be true for anyone who’s done any level of kind of legal work and you know, has put in the work to go to law school and then go delve into, again, it doesn’t matter what type of law you’re doing. There’s no one size fits all corporate lawyer, as a generalist, obviously has you know, it lends itself to you being useful in a number of different areas. But pretty much it’s the discipline. It’s the legal mind, it’s the analysis, it’s the skillset that you gain as a lawyer that is really going to be valued.

Seth: Yeah. I couldn’t have said it better myself, man. It comes down to credibility. I mean, it just opens doors for you. As soon as someone hears that you’re a corporate attorney or a real estate attorney, or just an attorney, you know, their ears perk up and you’re automatically, already taken to another level. So, you shouldn’t undervalue the value of your degree.

Clive: Absolutely. And so, you know, when you’re trying to break into new areas, you’ve got to, you know, that’s got to be part of your cell is, you know, just like when you go into an interview even if you don’t, you’ve not done the job that you’re seeking, you’ve got to be able to say, look, I have a transferable skill set that would serve this position, serve this company, serve this partnership, whatever it is and go into it and add it from that angle. And again, I think that law degree is going to serve you well, you paid a lot for it, so you might as well leverage it to the extent that you can.

Seth: Yeah, absolutely, man. I want to circle back to kind of a topic you’ve touched on a little bit, but I think a lot of our listeners, you know, that are high income earning professionals suffer from this problem and they don’t even realize it. But, you know, maybe describe your experience of being kind of shackled to the golden handcuffs, so to speak.

Clive: Yeah. And it’s a problem of privilege, right? So those of us that are privileged to say that, you know, whether we are now where we were in the past, that we earned a high income, the deeper and more experienced that you get in that world, the problem becomes bigger because your generally your compensation is going to improve over time, your participation in stock options, bonuses, and things tend to improve over time. And so, it becomes harder and harder for you to envision or imagine yourself living without that high compensation. And so, when you start assessing what are my alternatives and how do they stack up to what I’m being compensated now, most things are not going to rise to that level. And so you’ve got to make a decision at some point in your life, and I’ve made it a couple of times during my career that I’m okay with taking a step back from a, either a compensation standpoint or a position standpoint, because I know I’m doing it purposefully, and I know the reason that I’m doing it. And sometimes you got to take one step back in order to move in the direction that you want to move. And so, you really got to be planning and establish kind of a runway in front of you. If you know that you want to exit the legal world and you’re currently highly compensated, you’ve got to be positioning yourself so that either you’re saving or investing aggressively. So that, that land end is going to be softened when you ultimately decide to step off. And so, I think I was pretty purposeful about that. And there was nothing abrupt about my departure from corporate life. I had been thinking about, okay, you know, I’ve reached a certain level of success. Yes, I’m highly compensated, but is this what I want to do for the next 20 or 30 years of my life? And the answer was a resounding no. And so therefore something’s got to give, and in my case, it was okay for some period of time, I’m not going to be as highly compensated as that. But I can work my way back to that. And that’s kind of the game plan. So, you take that step back in order to step forward.

Seth: Yeah. Yeah. I love that, man. So, let’s talk about that kind of transition out and how you broke free.

Clive: Yeah. So, I mentioned that I’ve been investing in real estate since actually my very first real estate investment kind of was a little bit of creative financing. I think it was my final year of law school. I still had a little bit of loan eligibility remaining. And so, I leveraged that loan eligibility to invest in what was my first real estate purchase which was my first home out of law school in New York City in Long Island City, New York. And we were able to get a one-bedroom, one bath condo right out of school, which is for most new Yorkers, unheard of. And so, there’s a backstory there, but I’ll spare you those details, but we were able to acquire something right out of school. And I still own that property until this day we haven’t lived there since 2001. But it’s actually on the waterfront, across from the United nations in Long Island City, New York, it’s actually adjacent to the parcel of land that Amazon was looking to place its headquarters, its second headquarters at before that whole deal fell apart. But in any event so I’ve been investing all the way back since then, 1997. Along the way, even while I was a lawyer, I was acquiring a duplex here, a five unit there, but it was always peripheral. I was never relying on it as a primary source of income. And you know, it’s really at the end of 2016 when I flipped that on its head and decided to make the transition into real estate full-time and I wanted to do it at scale. So, no more kind of onesy twosy. So, I made the decision that I’ve got to work my way into or maneuver my way into large-scale multi-family, which is what I was most familiar with. I know some people who have had success with it. And so, I kind of set out on a journey of educating myself via podcasts, books, attending conferences, which is something I had never done before. Any conferences I had attended before it was because it was related to my job. And you know, someone else was paying for it, but the thought of being paid to attend some conference for education was unheard of before that. And you know, again, totally flip that on its head because I started attended in-person real estate conferences in Dallas and in DC and, you know, across the country, all with the mind of learning about real estate, educated myself what it takes to get into this space. I eventually got into a mentorship real estate mentoring group. And you know, that gave me exposure to people who are professionals from all walks of life. You know, doctors, lawyers, engineers, people in IT, all of whom have had some measure or level of success in their professional life but were seeking an offering. And so, for some of them, you know, they were kind of setting out on, in five years I don’t want to be doing this anymore. And so, what can I be doing in the interim and what can I be doing, you know, five years from now? There are others who have more aggressive timelines. There are others who love what they’re doing professionally, have no plans of leaving what they’re doing professionally, but they know and realize and appreciate the benefits of investing in real estate, especially given some of the alternatives that were traditionally pushed towards and pushed into without necessarily knowing that there were other options that are at our disposal.

Seth: Right, right. What’s kind of your opinion on, you know, those traditional investments versus some alternative investments such as real estate or, you know, other types of alternative investments, but what’s kind of just your general opinion on how we get kind of pushed in that. And a lot of us just don’t even know anything other than that. And then you talk about real estate. And the only thing we think about is, you know, flipping a house or buying, you know, a single-family house and don’t realize that you can invest in commercial real estate projects, you know, actively or passively.

Clive: Absolutely. So, when you get into the corporate world, however you get into it you’re going to be steered towards and told you need to invest in your 401k. It would be irresponsible for you not to, and here are the options that you should be looking at. We have these 10, these 12 options and you should have a diversified portfolio. It should be split between, you know, maybe it’s 30% bonds, 60% equities, 10%, you know, you’re given this cookie-cutter model that is serving others interests because, you know, there are so many fees in the millions and billions that are being generated off people invest in these cookie-cutter portfolios where you have no control over your investments. If the market is up, things look good. If the market’s down things don’t look good. And, if you’re looking to exit at a time when it’s down, then you know, you’re not exiting and you’re going to work for another five years until the market’s back up. So if you’re looking for some level of control, I think, and it’s hard for us as professionals who are working, especially, you know, you’re a lawyer and you’re putting in 60, 70, 80 hours a week. The last thing you want to do is to really be kind of actively managing your investments. The prudent thing to do is to turn that over to a professional, who’s going to do that for you and take that off your plate. But you’ve got to realize that that’s not necessarily in your best interest, longer term. And so, while I, for most of my time, I’ve invested in the stock market responsible thing to do.

And that’s what I knew. I didn’t necessarily know about alternatives. The real estate, even that I was investing in was kind of go get the duplex or the, you know, the two-unit or the one-unit. I didn’t know about the world of commercial real estate and the different entry points. And so even as a capital markets attorney working on Reg D offerings you know, I didn’t appreciate that, you know, that’s how people are investing in these opportunities. And so, for me you know, I said, okay, when I left corporate life, I pretty much moved all of my money out of the stock market. And so, I had no idea. I came to learn, and I talked about that education earlier. I came to learn about self-directed IRAs. And so, it’s nothing more than a marketing phrase, it’s basically an IRA. An IRA is an IRA, with a self-directed IRA, affords you the opportunity to move any legacy 401k monies that you may have from a prior employer that you have sit in ideally somewhere that’s in one of those 10 or 12 different investments. In one of those safe portfolios, it gives you the opportunity to move that into a self-directed IRA where you now are the hundred percent primary person responsible for your investments. And so, either that money sits in cash and does nothing for you, or you actively deploy it. And so, I think of all of the money in self-directed IRAs, probably 60% to 70% of it is being deployed into real estate or more broadly commercial real estate. But you can pretty much invest in anything. I think the only things that you can’t invest in are collectibles. And I think precious metals. I think those are the two things. But you can look that up if you want to know more about that. But outside of that, you know, sky’s the limit. And so, you want to be an educated investor. So, if you’re now going to be deploying your funds, and this is kind of your retirement, essentially, that you’re putting in play, you want to make sure that you’re doing that responsibly. So, for me getting educated and then even the investments that I was making was part of that education, right? So you know, as an accredited investor and I’m sure your listeners are familiar with that term, they’ve heard that before, but as an accredited investor, someone who’s either you have a net worth of a million dollars excluding your personal residence or you in the last couple of years, you’ve made 200K or more with an expectation of making the same, the current year, as an accredited investor, many of your listeners are going to fall into that category. You have the opportunity to invest into investment opportunities that most people will never hear about because they just are not in those circles. They don’t meet that definition, but if you meet that definition, now you have the opportunity to invest in passively, to invest in opportunities that are being offered by high-level institutional levels sponsors who are raising private equity to put into these deals. And so, I’ve had the opportunity to invest in stabilize, multifamily opportunities, development and redevelopment opportunities. You know, I’ve invested in San Francisco, DC, Florida, Georgia, all across the country, primarily stabilize multifamily, but also ground-up development. I’ve done a few deals now; I’ve invested in a few deals now where I’ve been able to get into some pretty unique projects whether they be micro-unit developments in San Francisco where workforce health is almost unheard of. And it’s, you know, it’s so challenged for that, like most of the country. And I’ve also been able to get into kind of redevelopment of office space into multifamily. So, my general approach tends to be invest in things that I would invest in where I, the sponsor, you know somewhere down the line. And so those are the projects that are sexy to me that also gives me the opportunity to learn even while my money is working for me.

Seth: Yeah. I mean, that’s a beautiful part of it is diversification. I mean, you said you’re investing in San Francisco and all over the country and in different types of asset classes and properties, and that’s the beautiful part about it. You can not necessarily have to be an expert in each one of those asset types or markets and still diversify in that way.

Clive: Absolutely. I’m also investing in hotels here in Atlanta. Now hotels are experiencing, and hospitality generally is experiencing a rough time right now with COVID, but, you know, in the longer term, you know they’ll recover. And, you know, that’s part of my general kind of diversification. That, that’s one thing I learned from those traditional investments that you’re pushed into when you kind of get into the corporate world, if diversification is a good thing, that is a universal truth.

Seth: So once we get that education that self-education you know, many of us are caught at a crossroads where we’re, you know, we want to explore real estate and we’re at the point where we’re wanting to take action, but then we need to decide, you know, at what capacity do we want to get involved? So what are your thoughts about, you know, attorneys and other professionals that are currently working at W2 and getting paid well for it, but what are your thoughts about, you know, considering active versus passive investing?

Clive: Yeah. So, I think passive investing is kind of the perfect way for you to determine is this something that I want to do potentially actively down the line? And so, you may invest passively, you continue working, you’re doing your nine to five or nine to nine or whatever it is, continue to do that. But it gives you an entryway to say, okay, I think I might be interested in real estate. I hear all of the positives about investing in real estate. I hear about the tax benefits of investing in real estate. And therefore, I want to put some money to play. So, I’m not advocating you to totally exit and stock market and the way that I did. But maybe 30% or 40% of your disposable investment dollars get redirected outside of the stock market and a good portion of that.

Maybe it gets directed into real estate. And the way to do that is to get exposure to sponsors, to individuals who are doing the types of deals that you have an interest in, and maybe, you know, you put 50K in one deal, you put 75 and another. So, nothing that’s going to sink the ship. But it gives you enough exposure for you to say, okay, I’ve seen this. Now this goes full cycle. Like I kind of seen it from A to Z and you know, maybe you want to put some more money at risk. And so maybe instead of the 50 or the 75, you want to put a 100K in or 125, you know, whatever your particular situation is. And that’s a way for you to earn educational knowledge and experience, as well as the return on investments over the time of that hold. So if you’re looking for passive income, you’re not necessarily relying on it, but it starts to give you a taste and flavor for how you can generate money without necessarily, you know, swinging the axe metaphorically. And so, in seeing those deals and getting exposure to those deals, you’ll get a sense for, is this something that I think that I might want to do myself. Now, if you’ve been doing that for one, two, three years before you ultimately exit your work life, your legal job or whatever your career is, you’re going to be making relationships over the course of that time. You’re going to be familiarizing yourself with the market particular geographies, particular asset types. And so, again, you’re putting your money to work, but that’s also a part of your education. And so, I call it my self-directed real estate MBA is what I’ve been doing. So, I’m deploying my own money and putting my money where my mouth is. And I’m getting educated by some of the folks who are doing it at the very highest levels. And you know, that’s the only education that I want at this point. I’m not going back to school. So that’s as close to it as I’m going to get.

Seth: That’s fantastic advice, man. That’s, I’ve heard that time and time again. It’s like, why don’t you invest passively, learn the ropes. You get self-educated so much just by investing in one passive deal, and then decide later if you want to get on the active side after you’ve done it a couple of times, and it might be something you want to dedicate more time to, and then transitioning out of the law or stay in it and just keep investing passively. I mean, that’s a very viable route that many people have done as well.

Clive: Yeah. It also informs you on what type of sponsor you may want to be. So, in my world of multifamily investment, there are sponsors who are very communicative. And then there are responses who it’s like, is this person still alive? I got to send out, you know, call 911, I can’t get a response from this person. And so, you can also see what good looks like just on the passive side. And if you have that itch to become an active investor, you’re probably saying to yourself, well, that looked good. I want to do more of that. And not so much of that. And so again, all of this is laying the groundwork for you, if you ultimately want to make that transition.

Seth: Yeah. Yeah. I love that, man. So, you know, a lot of attorneys are just conservative by nature. I mean, how do we, what’s some advice on getting people kind of over that hump of just put your head down and bill a bunch of hours, bill, bill, bill, and then, you know, just rely on your 401k for retirement.

Clive: Yeah. I mean, I think everyone’s got to do that self-reflection and ask themselves, what do I want out of life? And that’s got whatever that it is you got to figure out is the path that I’m on now, the best way for me to get there, or are there alternatives that are shorter or maybe more circuitous but nonetheless are going to get me there in the way that I want to get there. And so, when you do that self-reflection, you know, that’s going to kind of give you your North Star as to, you know, how do I move forward? But you know, it’s going to be different for everyone. And I think it’s going to be based on your circumstances, but you got to make that decision that you know, this is what I want. And the path that I’m on is either serving me well in that pursuit, or it’s not. And if you have an inkling that, you know, working hard and the 401k is not going to cut it, or that’s not what you want to be doing in five, 10, 15, 20 years, you got to start thinking about, okay, I’ve got to find the off-ramp. And so again, there are things that you can be doing while you continue to work you know, continue the billables. If that’s what you do. But think about what you can do alongside that. And I wish someone had given me the advice that even what I’m doing now, I didn’t need to wait 20 years to start investing in the types of real estate that I’m investing in. I didn’t need to wait 20 years to start getting the education that I’ve been getting over the last couple of years. I could have been doing a lot of that in a parallel track. And so I would encourage anyone who’s in that legal world now to just to explore some alternatives, to kind of the 401k work hard, put your head down, explore some alternatives because that’s the only way you’re going to know whether or not something is more attractive to you, more appealing to you. And yeah, I get it. I’m a lawyer too. So, I’m conservative by nature. But diversification I think is a principle of risk management and just relying on a high-paying job and a 401k. I think that’s very risky. And so, I now find myself in a position and I was mentioning this to a friend of mine recently that, I’m an entrepreneur now. And for me, I spend time thinking about, well, if this doesn’t work out, I may have to go get a job. That’s my worst-case scenario. I’d rather be in this position than be in a job. And my worst-case scenario be, what happens if I lose my job? You know, if I piss my boss off or the company that I’m working for has other plans, or it’s moving in another direction, I’d rather be in a position where again, we talked earlier about having the law degree and the benefit of having that law degree in the worst-case scenario, if you kind of venture away, decide, you know what? I am going to return to that world, there’s a road back for you. So, for me, I’d rather be in the position of my worst-case scenario being go find you a job and a job that’s going to pay you pretty decently. Rather than being in the opposite position of worrying about what happens if I lose my job through no fault of my own or, you know, the stock market tanks. And along with it, my 401k prospects until there’s a recovery. So again, diversification is a key principle to follow and adhere to.

Seth: No doubt about it, man. I mean, if you’re totally relying on one stream of income, I mean, that’s a very risky position to be in.

Clive: Absolutely, absolutely. And so unless it’s a family-owned business where you’re a kind of love within the family you know, I think that you know, even if you’re going to continue doing that, make sure that you’re working on light in some fires outside of that. So, you have something to fall back on and again, if it’s something that ultimately proves to be appealing to you, well, that’s your perfect place for you to land next. You know, if ultimately you decide you want to make a transition, maybe because you’re burned out you’ve, you’ve done it. And you know, it’s not necessarily generating the challenge or the juices for you in the way that it was five years ago, 10 years ago. Again, I think we need to think about things more holistically and you know, there’s more to your life than, you know, the 60, 70, 80 hours that you’re putting in at the job. And you know if that is doing it for you. Great. But even then I would say that you should be looking down the road for what does retirement look like or, you know, if I were able to shape the world in the way that I want it shaped, what would it look like and where would I fit into it? And there’s a good possibility that may not be in the role that you’re in today. And so why wait until you know, 20 years later to explore that?

Seth: Yeah. I mean, can you imagine if you started out, you know, right out of law school got a great job, and then you invested $50,000 to a $100,000 every year into these syndications, these commercial real estate deals kind of how quickly your acceleration of money would have happened. It would have been unbelievable. You’d probably be retired in 10 years or less.

Clive: Absolutely. And before, you know, the children start coming and the responsibilities of being a husband and a father you’ve got this disposable income. So, you know, you should be thinking about, okay, yeah, they’re telling me to put it into a 401k, but you know, that’s only what is it? 19,000 a year that you can put in, something along those lines. But many of you, many of your listeners are going to have more than that they can put to play. So, put into play. So, you know, start educating yourself on those alternatives. And even if you end up spending 15, 20 years you know, in the world that you’re in now you’re going to have a nice nest egg that you can manipulate. That’s waiting for you, you know, when you get to that point in time where you say, okay, time for me to exit stage left.

Seth: Yeah. And try to put off those golden handcuffs, man, like you don’t need to buy a new five series every three years.

Clive: Even when I was highly compensated, I always, I mentioned I come from humble beginnings. So, I never got too far away from who I was as a kid. And how I saw my parents managing money or stretch and money to make ends meet. And so, I’ve always been an advocate of living within your means. And so it, wasn’t when I ultimately decided to step away from corporate life, it wasn’t a shock to the system because it wasn’t like I had to, you know, I had the lease on the Lamborghini and the vacation house in Martha’s vineyard and this and that. And I had to reign all of that in, that wasn’t who I was. And so, while I took a substantial step back in terms of, you know, income and compensation, my day-to-day lifestyle didn’t change much. And you know, that’s something that folks need to be thinking about is, am I living a lifestyle that I could support if this job ended tomorrow? And if the answer is no, you’re kind of handcuffed to that job. And so, goes that job. So goes that company, that industry, that sector so goes you. And so, if you’re not looking for those alternatives or planting those seeds you know, you can find yourself in a position you don’t want to be in.

Seth: Yup. Yup. And I share a similar story. My mom’s a schoolteacher. My dad was a coal miner and, you know, humble beginnings. And you’ve just got to kind of stay practical. All right, man. Well, let’s jump into the freedom four, so in an alternative universe where you weren’t involved in real estate, what would you be doing? Feel free to be creative.

Clive: So, when I think about that, I think about why am I doing real estate? Right. So, for me, it’s a pathway to freedom. And so, the question, another version of the question is what would you do with your freedom? And so, for me travel, so the ability to travel and do that at my discretion and my leisure. That’s something I’d probably be doing. I love and it’s related to real estate. I love kind of interior design. That’s something that I’ve always had an interest in, but, you know, I thought, you know, as a lawyer, you know, lawyers don’t interior design. That’s one of the things that I was able to discover as I kind of ventured off into this path, yeah, you have an eye for it and this is something that brings you pleasure and joy. So, I’d probably be doing some form of travel and interior design.

Seth: That’s cool, man. My wife’s an interior designer. So, what’s the best thing you do to keep your mind and body healthy?

Clive: Exercise. Although I don’t do it as consistently as I need to, but I definitely try and do exercise on a daily or every other day basis. And I’m also getting into mindfulness more so these days. My wife has done it a fair bit over the years now. And I think some of that’s rubbing off on me. So, I’m starting to incorporate that into kind of my exercise with the mindfulness just to kind of clear my mind and you know, clear the cobwebs.

Seth: Very cool, man. Yeah. You’ve got to have those things to kind of clear it out and perform your best from a business standpoint. So where were you at five years ago. And where do you see yourself and your business five years from now?

Clive: Yeah, five years ago, I was a chief compliance officer. I had kind of built from the ground up a compliance department and I had gotten to the point where things were kind of on autopilot. I wasn’t necessarily being challenged and stretched and growing in the way that every individual should want to. And so, you know, I think I was probably in a comfortable place if you will. And you know, when I put that behind me and kind of stepped out on faith and kind of stepped outside of my comfort zone and embarked on this journey of real estate you know, I think it’s now taken me to a direction where, you know, five years from now I will be heavily immersed in the world of real estate and not necessarily just the space that I’m in now. I see myself run off and get an into the world of development in an active way. And so that seems to be a natural steppingstone for many people in the real estate world. And that’s probably a place that I see myself being in the next five years.

Seth: Awesome, man. Awesome. So how has passive income made your life better?

Clive: Passive income has sustained me past few years without a W2 job. It certainly hasn’t, you know, I didn’t get to the point where it replaced the income that I kind of left behind. But my passive investments in rental real estate, my investments in those rentals that ultimately, I either hold on to ultimately sold, has been able to sustain me. And so for me, it’s been the bridge to what is next and you know, without it, I’m not sure that I would have had the opportunity to have stepped away in the first place and have stayed away almost four years now that I’ve been away from corporate life and all that goes along with it.

Seth: It has given you freedom man.

Clive: That’s the goal. That’s the part of the why.

Seth: Yeah. Yeah. All right, Clive, it’s been an awesome show, man. Where can the listeners find out more about you? How can they get in touch with you?

Clive: Yeah, so listeners can reach out to me. I love talking about real estate. I’d be happy to talk to especially lawyers and help them into recovery. I want to be there. So, they can find me, email Clive, C-L-I-V-E, @parkroyalcapital.com. I’m active on LinkedIn. I’m active on Facebook. So those are two destinations you can find me. And yeah, I’d love to chat with your listeners and talk real estate and talk recovery from the legal careers that we want to leave behind.

Seth: Ah, that’s great, Clive. I really appreciate you coming on today, man.

Clive: Thanks Seth. I appreciate it. Glad to be a guest.

Seth: Yes, sir. Clive delivered so much value. I barely needed to say a word. Everything that he said was pure gold. He painted a clear picture on how we can invest passively while still practicing or working full-time in a highly demanding career. We’ll definitely have to have Clive visit us again in the near future. If you want to get more information on investing in alternative assets on main street, get over to www.passiveincomeattorney.com and download our free passive investing guide. All right guys, got to run for now. Celebrate the journey.