Julian McClurkin: Hey everybody, Julian McClurkin here, your Chief Storyteller with Tribevest. Today, I'm talking to Brian Pownall. He has a six member tribe, and a year ago he didn't know any of them. But now they're doing investments all over the country. All of that and more on today's episode. Stay tuned. 

My name is Julian McClurkin. It is a pleasure to meet you. I want to know a little bit more about you.

Brian: Hi, Julian, nice to meet you. Appreciate you having me on. 

So, I’m actually born and raised in the Midwest and St. Louis, Missouri. I found my way down to Texas A&M for college. I love it down here. My wife's from San Antonio, so we live in Houston, and we’ve been here since spring of ‘15, and I've got a two-year-old daughter and another wonderful way this September.

Julian: Congrats! That’s awesome, man! Tell me about your experience with Tribevest.

Brian: I was doing a lot of reading and research into different ways to diversify my income. As I was doing some Googling, I stumbled upon a passive investing group online that was using Tribevest to band funds together. It just was a really unique way of doing some investments as a group with similar-minded folks. A lot of the opportunities have minimum investments of, let's say $50k to $100k, sometimes $25k. And so if you're making that type of investment and you're the average American, I mean you really can't do more than one. [For] many people that’s probably out of reach, and so Tribevest gives people a way to really diversify, and I'm a huge fan of diversification. That's the whole reason why I started looking into alternative assets in the first place. 

Julian: So how are you going out and finding partners or members to be part of your tribe with you?

Brian: This was through a forum and had kind of a common contact that put five or six of us in touch. It's funny, none of us are alike; We've got a couple of medical guys. One’s in Arkansas. One’s in the Boston area. We've got a Silicon Valley guy on the West Coast. We’ve got a guy up in the Midwest, one in Florida, and then I brought in a buddy of mine in oil and gas in Houston.

Julian: Why real estate? Why not do one of those bubble stocks that you're talking about or bubble currencies crypto and NFT’s? Why not something like that?

Brian: My new passion in real estate is several fold. One, it’s a physical asset. It’s one of the only core needs of all human beings. We all need sleep, food, and shelter, and so it's never gonna go away.

Julian: Yeah, I'm with you there. I got into real estate myself. Just a year ago, I got my license, and it was during the pandemic. My main job is I'm a professional basketball player with the Globetrotters. Yeah we got furloughed last March, so I had to figure out something as far as providing for my family.

Brian: I can't see you there. How tall are you over there?

Julian: Six, eight Yeah, all muscle.

Brian: I’m guessing I couldn’t drive on you then.

Julian: You could try. You could try. 

I was afraid of the competition. I was like, “am I gonna be able to compete with all these different people who are looking to list and buy houses and represent buyers and sellers and investors like yourself?”

But what leveled the playing field for me was getting the information in the knowledge space that I needed. People, investors in particular, when they go out on their own, that can be pretty daunting.

Brian: So if you're in a hot market, and there's a ton of deal flow and you've got options from Salt Lake City, all the way down to your backyard in Houston, with a variety of different syndication groups... How do you choose which one to go park a large sum of money, whether that be $25,000 or $50,000? So if you tell me that you can now do a fifth of that amount because you're gonna bring four other people, five other people in with you, you're getting into more deals, you're seeing more deals, you're having other folks put eyes on an investment decision rather than just your own stuff, so it builds in a lot of safety nets. I think it makes your investment portfolio a lot stronger.

Julian: How many people are part of your tribe?

Brian: It'll be six including myself.

Julian: What particularly drew you to these people?

Brian: So in this day and age, it's easy to meet folks online in Zoom meetings, virtual meetups, etc. And so then the key is, how do you trust someone that's behind a screen? I like you. You look like you play for the Globetrotters, like to have a good time, happy guy. But you need to dig a little bit deeper than that. So I think for us what we found the key is setting up a number of meetings before we submitted that LLC with the state to kind of check off a variety of boxes. One, introduction, get to know each other. Next call or second half of the call, okay, what type of investments are we all looking to do? Are we all aligned on our thoughts on market, asset class, size of investment?

Julian: And where do you primarily invest?

Brian: Yeah, so we are just getting going. We renamed it Double Play Investments. We like the baseball entendre right there. But we're looking in the Sunbelt so like many, it's no secret the Sunbelt is a great place to be right now with all the manufacturing jobs that have left. Some of the gateway cities and markets. So we'll be actively looking in places like Phoenix and the major Texas markets. We love Tampa, Jacksonville, and some of those in the southeast.

Julian: You ever heard of Buc-ee’s?

Brian: Yeah, that's definitely the common stop along the highway for us Texans. Yeah those are incredible.

Julian: Oh my gosh, listeners and viewers, if y'all have never been to Buc-ee’s, you have to go. You can get brisket. You can get jerky. You can get chocolate and nuts. Everything is so delicious and fresh there. It's a beautiful place, but I would love to bring one of those franchises up here to Ohio because I know mainly right now it's down in the south. Tribevest might just be the vehicle that can help me get one of those up here in Ohio. We can group together. That will be our first time together, me and you.

Brian: I like it. Thanks, guys. It was a pleasure meeting you all. I enjoyed the conversation, man. 

Julian: Yeah, man. I'm glad to link up. I go down to Houston a lot. I fly there because my sister is a professor at A&M Yeah, so I'll be down there. I’ll hit you up when we come. 

Brian: Yeah, if you're down here, hit me up. We’ll get a coffee or beer or something.
Julian: Huge thank you to Brian for that amazing interview. And Brian, I am a pretty nice guy. I would love to try out for your tribe. But look, if you guys want to invest in your own tribe, go to Tribevest.com. Until next tribe. See you next time.