[00:00:00] Julius Oni:  When we get to those levels, we need to like start figuring out ways to start generating significant passive income. Income that actually is made when you’re sleeping, eating, brushing your teeth, on vacation, wherever you are, you know, that that income is still being made. And it’s not the same thing as being self-employed. Yes, if you’re self-employed, you’re still a little better than those people that are employed, but guess what? You’re still trading your house for dollars, too. You’re still paying relatively high taxes, but maybe you have a little more wiggle room there to, like, you know, offset some of your tax liabilities, but the amount you can make is still limited to when you are actually physically present or actually actively, you know, working at that particular job

[00:01:18] Nicole Pendergrass: Hey guys, how are you today? Thanks for coming back and joining us again on another episode. And today we actually talked to Dr. Julius Oni, and this was a very insightful conversation. We actually got to talk about a lot more than real estate. He is a real estate syndicator, but he has a mission that really touched my heart. And you’ll hear that near the end of the episode. It’s like how he got started. He actually is an orthopedic surgeon and his path to becoming an orthopedic surgeon was really based on wanting to help his grandmother, which he, ultimately, I won’t, no, I’m not even going to give too much detail. I need you guys to listen to this whole episode because it’s really good. And he really gives a lot of information and mindset and thought just in his journey that he’s gone through. And all the years he spent going through school and education to become a doctor. And then how that transitioned into real estate and why he even looked at real estate at all.

[00:02:20] Nicole Pendergrass: And he actually had a stint as an angel investor. I won’t even say stint ’cause that kind of implies that it’s over, but he still is an angel investor, maybe not as actively, but he has his investments. And so we touched a little bit on that and. I actually got my eyes open to a whole other world that I didn’t know existed. And it’s so easy. There’s so many different avenues for creating wealth. And it really kind of just depends on where you’re starting from, the assets and resources you already have, and what your goals are, where you want to go, and, like, your risk tolerance and things of that nature. We touched on so many different things that it’s really hard just to even pick one thing from the conversation that stood out the most, you know. This is definitely going to be a two-episode-part series because we talked for a long time, but that’s how much information was being shared there. And you don’t want to miss it. You want to listen to the full episode, both parts, but just to talk a little bit about what else he’s been doing.

[00:03:23] Nicole Pendergrass: Julius started as the CEO and co-founder of XSITE Capital Investment LLC. And that is his syndication real estate company that he has three partners and they all have the mission of bringing opportunities to underserved communities that we’re not normally privy to this type of information. And if that sounds familiar at all, because it’s very similar to my mission and that’s why I connected so much with him. And that’s why we had so much to talk about during this episode. In any case, listen in, and I hope you enjoy the episode. Please feel free to reach out to him if you have any questions or you want to connect and you find out how you can be involved with his company. He has a lot of educational resources on his website and you would be very remiss to not take advantage of that. In any case, here we go.

[00:04:14] Nicole Pendergrass: Hi everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Share The Wealth Show. This is the show where we talk about strategies to grow, maintain, and develop minority wealth. And today we have with us. Dr. Julius Oni. And thank you so much for coming and joining us today. I’m really excited, actually, to dig into our conversation, because I know about you peripherally. I’ve seen you as some stuff, we’ve had some light conversations, but I really want to dig in deep and get to know more about you, your company, your mission, and everything that you’ve been involved with. So, firstly, thank you for coming. Secondly, I gave a brief overview of your background and kind of what we’re going to talk about earlier, but can you dig in a little bit on what you’re doing now? And maybe, I don’t know how far back you want to go, but from childhood or whatever, to like, what made you want to be a doctor and then what made you want to get into real estate? What was that path like?

[00:05:14] Julius Oni: That’s a great one. Yeah. Thank you so much again, Nicole, for the opportunity to speak on your platform and get into this discussion. I was particularly excited to talk to you because, obviously, we are aligned in our mission to try to expand the minds of people in our communities and to increase the wealth-growing capacity of folks that look like us. And certainly, we’ve all kind of gone through multiple different ways or journeys of getting here, but it just warms my heart every time when I see, you know, another minority professional, you know, expanding the mindset, doing it completely outside of the box. And it warms my heart and I want to commend you on all that you’re doing so far.

[00:06:09] Julius Oni: But to your question, how did I get here? Well, currently an orthopedic surgeon and real estate investor. Well, prior to me identifying as that, I was just Julius Oni, the little kid growing up in small town Nigeria, up until I was about 16, 17 when I made the transition to start college in the US. So came to the US went to undergrad in upstate New York, was fortunate to do it very well, got into medical school at Howard University College of Medicine. After that, I was fortunate to match in orthopedic surgery at NYU Hospital for Joint Diseases where I did about five years and finished up my training at Rush University, School of Medicine, where I trained in a fellowship to be a specialist in joint replacement surgery. Since then I’ve been in practice, three of those practice years were in Philadelphia at Einstein Medical Center. I had a clinical appointment at Thomas Jefferson, and I segued from that job into my current position where I ‘ve worked at Johns Hopkins as a joint replacement surgeon for the past six years, going into seven years now.

[00:07:27] Julius Oni: So it’s been a windy road and that pretty much kind of talks about my medical path so far. Now, if you want to talk a little bit about my investment journey so far, obviously prior to becoming an orthopedic surgeon, a little over nine years ago. Oh, actually a little over 10 years ago, I didn’t do much of an investment you know, there was, there was no money to be invested. But, very shortly after becoming an orthopedic surgeon, I actually also didn’t invest much either. I think all the delayed gratification of, you know, spending over 14 years either, you know, from undergrad to finishing fellowship. You know, 14 years of delayed gratification will make you kind of spend money anyhow, you know, at some point and try to keeping up with the Joneses and, you know, that’s what just like any other person who’s gone through that experience with not much significant financial education. It’s not unusual to just lose your mind for a little bit and find it again at some point. But, that moment of just going all out and trying to, you know, buy whatever luxury item you can get your hands on. It was relatively short-lived for me ’cause you know, even though it was fun, I quickly realized that I didn’t necessarily derive that much pleasure from getting, you know, liability if you want to call it that.

[00:08:57] Julius Oni: And I started investing with my first home that I bought, you know, I bought a residential home at that point in Philadelphia. And then thought that I was going to start getting a single family, own every single year for the next 30 years, you know, and eventually developed this fantastic single family portfolio that I’m going to sell as a portfolio, as an alternative to my classic traditional 401k, you know, investment. But, I quickly realized that I was a poor landlord because I didn’t like to deal with toilets, termites, or tenants, really. And it wasn’t because tenants are not fantastic people. I was just busy, too busy with my primary day job that it was kind of tough to be the primary person responding to those folks.

[00:09:46] Julius Oni: And even when I try to use property managers, that just even further decreased my cash flow significantly ’cause you were still responsible and you still had to kind of actively participate in the decisions. If the HVAC machine went out, you still got to pay for it. And you still got to, you know, talk about, you know, all the different options for it. And, and if the doorknob was broken, then you got a pretty big bill for it and you know, and you have no choice but to pay for it. So quickly I realized that single-family wasn’t going to be the way to go after, I think about, after buying my second property.

[00:10:22] Nicole Pendergrass: So that was year two.

[00:10:25] Julius Oni: That was about year two. And then around year two, I discovered angel investing. And so I started investing, you know, because my brother actually had a startup and I invested in a startup. And then from that point on, I discovered demo days and started to invest in different early stage startups, pre-seed round, and with the expectations that these are high-risk, high-reward investments. And they were like long-term plays meaning if you are going to be a serious angel investor, you know, that maybe 10 to 20% of your investments are going to be the source of the majority of your success. So that was fun. That was really fun to evaluate those companies, you know, and come up with, you know, your own little criteria for determining what companies you were going to invest in. But the fact is that was not going to replace my cash flow, you know. And that was relatively high risk, high reward. Thankfully, a good number of them about 20% of them are still doing very well. So I think I’m on the right path with those investments. So between the years of 2015 and 2020, the vast majority of my investments were in startups and I invested in quite a few of them.

[00:11:43] Julius Oni: So around 2020, at the beginning of 2020 was COVID, the pandemic struck. And for the first time in a long time, I started to question my sole identity as an orthopedic surgeon, right? Because for three months I was stuck at home, couldn’t operate. And my identity up to that point was fully encased in my status as an orthopedic surgeon. I love operating the operating room is my happy place. And anyone who knows me well would tell you the same thing. So all of a sudden, I was home. One thing I did discover though, while I was home was I also loved hanging out with my family, and I loved the time freedom I had, and I love discovering other, you know, ways of learning. I mean, all the things that were outside of orthopedic surgery. For the first time, I picked up a couple of, you know, fictional books. I picked up a couple of personal development books. My partner, my current partner, Leslie Awasom, who was a CRNA, who worked as a CRNA with me on my current job, had mentioned multifamily to me at some point prior to that, but I just kind of ignored it a few times.

[00:12:54] Julius Oni: So I finally got to dust up whatever materials he had shared with me and read a little bit about it. So I started to realize that, man, this is an incredible wealth-creating tool that we could use, that I could use to buy some of my time freedom back, that I could use to potentially buy some of my geographic freedom back. That I could use to, you know, spend whatever, do whatever I want with whoever I wanted for however long I wanted, you know, in whatever place I wanted. And that’s kind of the definition of financial freedom for me. And so, when I realized that this was the case, then the question was, how do you do it? How do you actually start buying apartment buildings? How do you take advantage of the economics of scale that multifamily presents to you? How do you take advantage of the amazing tax benefits of multifamily? How do you take advantage of the fact that it’s so recession-proof, you know, or maybe not recession-proof, but at least recession-resistant, right? How do you take advantage of the incredible fact that it’s a tangible asset, you actually could touch it, people understand it?

[00:14:06] Julius Oni: And how do you start democratizing access to this asset? Because when I started looking at all the conferences and started actually engaging with it, I didn’t see that many healthcare professionals represented in the folks investing in this asset class. I saw lawyers, I saw business people. I saw engineers. Certainly didn’t see that many healthcare professionals who are represented. And then I saw a lot of people from different ethnic backgrounds. I didn’t see that many, you know, black people. I certainly didn’t see that many women, you know. So there were some very clear underrepresented minorities, you know, when it comes to folks that were participating in this incredible wealth generating, you know, asset class.  At that point, I realized that there was a great opportunity to take the gospel of multifamily into our communities of healthcare professionals and of underrepresented minorities, of immigrants, and of, you know, people that just did not have ready access to this asset class. And that’s how XSITE Capital was born.

[00:15:12] Nicole Pendergrass: Wow. Wow. That story. Oh, my goodness. You touched on so much stuff. Like, I was sitting here trying to jot down notes and keep up, but okay, let me look through here and see where I want to go first ’cause I don’t know what direction I want to take it.

[00:15:28] Julius Oni: Well, you, you asked for it. You told me.

[00:15:30] Nicole Pendergrass: I did I did ask for it and you gave it all, like, and I love it because there were so many hidden things within your journey that other people can like glean from. I think one of the biggest things is we talk about high earners and especially when you get into, you know, doctors and medical professionals and things of that nature. We talk about lifestyle creep and we talk about how a lot of times, high earners, as they start making more money, they start spending more money and their expenses become higher. So it creeps up with their income. I just shared an article not too long ago that, like, majority of people who make over or families that make over $250,000 a year, have a, like, either, I forgot what their net worth or they still live paycheck to paycheck or was something crazy where, like, they just didn’t have the assets or the net worth to match their income. But you put it into perfect perspective because you said it took you 14 years of schooling and struggle and delaying your gratification. So it’s not that you don’t know how to delay gratification. You have delayed gratification to get to the goal that you wanted to get to, which was that career. But then now it’s, like, all right, I delayed gratification long enough.

[00:16:43] Nicole Pendergrass: Now I made the money. Like, now I can spend it. I could do what I want with it, you know what I mean? So that just makes you appreciate more and not scorn the high earners, you know, that just spend all their money on keeping up with the Joneses, and the big house, and the fancy car, and all that stuff because you really get to understand from a person’s, like, their mindset. Because if I had to delay gratification for 15 years before I did anything ’cause I’m always working, even you make a little bit of money, you don’t even have time to spend it ’cause you’re busy, you know, with rotations and whatever else you’re doing.

[00:17:13] Julius Oni: Yeah. Yep, absolutely.

[00:17:15] Nicole Pendergrass: So that is completely understandable. And I think that will talk, speak to a lot of people’s mindsets who have made it, and they’re like maybe the first generation in their family or someone who’s, you know, making a lot of money at a certain career. But now either they’re helping their family out who needs help ’cause they’re the most successful person. So they’re helping people with bills and issues. Then they also want to live a better lifestyle ’cause they’ve been delaying their gratification for so long. But then we kind of stopped there and you have found the key of not just letting it sit there because like you found out with the pandemic, if you stop working, what, if you couldn’t go back to being a surgeon? You didn’t have no more income, you know what I mean? And it sucks to say you got to delay a little bit longer, but you at least got to put some things in place where you can like, still enjoy the fruits of your labor, but then still try to build up for the future, yeah.

[00:18:08] Julius Oni: Absolutely. I think you make some amazing points there. And I think just to add a little bit to that before you move on to the next point. The fact is, as high earners, as high-income professionals, we are just highly skilled wage workers, you know? That’s it, for the most part, you know, especially if you’re in an employee position, right? Highly paid skilled workers is what I meant to say, highly paid skilled workers, you know. We have a skill and we get a lot of money for it. But with that responsibility or with that kind of pay, especially in an employed situation, comes high taxes, right? So the gross usually looks pretty good, but that means you’re, like, in the highest tax bracket for the most part or close to the high, highest tax bracket. And that means your tax liability are going to be much higher. Another thing that really, really hurts us as highly paid skilled workers, particularly medical professionals, is that we usually also have relatively high loan burdens. So you have a, yeah, you do get paid a good amount, but then you’re paying relatively high taxes ’cause it’s a W2 income. They take that, those taxes even before you can see anything, right? And then you have to still pay your loans down ’cause now finally you’re making some money and all those loans you’ve been deferring, you got to start paying them down.

[00:19:41] Julius Oni: And, on top of that, you had the lifestyle creep to it ’cause now everybody’s looking at you. You’re the orthopedic surgeon. You’re the cardiologist, gastroenterologist, anesthesiologist. How come you’re still driving your Honda Accord from undergrad or medical school, you know? So you want to keep up with the Joneses, you want to take a vacation, nice vacation with your family, you know? You want to buy a relatively nice house so that, you know, you’re not embarrassed when people come in to see this doctor house, you know, so, and then, you know, you have kids now, your kids want to go to, like, the nice private schools and things like that. And so it starts to add up. So it makes sense, the article you’re talking about that folks that make $200 thousand plus that still, you know, live in paycheck to paycheck, makes absolute sense to me. But what we have to realize is. When we get to those levels, we need to like start figuring out ways to start generating significant passive income. Income that actually is made when you’re sleeping, eating, brushing your teeth, on vacation, wherever you are, you know, that that income is still being made. And it’s not the same thing as being self-employed. Yes, if you’re self-employed, you’re still a little better than those people that are employed, but guess what? You’re still trading your house for dollars, too. You’re still paying relatively high taxes, but maybe you have a little more wiggle room there to, like, you know, offset some of your tax liabilities, but the amount you can make is still limited to when you are actually physically present or actually actively, you know, working at that particular job. But when you have true passive income, well, you just could be sleeping, eating, you know, doing whatever you are and the money is still coming right into the account. That is when you really are starting to create true wealth. And that’s why when you start stepping onto that journey of financial freedom, of financial independence.

[00:21:38] Nicole Pendergrass: And, you know what, and I love that. Okay. And we’re definitely going to talk about the real estate side and how people can create that passive income, especially with the multifamily real estate in the field that you’re in, with your company. But I kind of want to touch a little bit on the angel investing aspect first because that’s so new and so different. Like, not new and different. For us, maybe, but I haven’t had anyone on my show yet who has been an angel investor or at least that they didn’t share with us. But I know you got introduced because your brother was starting a business and you were investing in his business. What resources did you find? How do people find out how to be an angel investor? Is there a certain income limit? Because I know I’ve heard that that’s not just open to anybody. Like, if you aren’t making a certain amount of mone that those doors are not going to be open. And then that’s where, when you’re putting seed capital in, by the time it gets to the stock market or IPOs, the angel investors get the bulk of that profit. Like, people who are buying stocks, they’re getting the scraps left over. Honestly, like, yeah, you can make money on stocks, and I’m not knocking people’s stock portfolio. Don’t come from me, guys. But the risk is upfront. So, like you said, it’s high-risk, high-reward. So first I want to say, how do people even get into that world? And what are the barriers to entry? Like, what do you have to have, like, checked off on the checklist to be able to angel invest?

[00:23:05] Julius Oni: That’s a great question. So first to answer your questions, what’s the barrier to entry? I think typically you have to be an accredited investor, which is just meaning as an individual you make $200,000 per year for the past two years with reasonable expectation of continuing to make that in the next couple of years or $300,000 in income as a couple or a million dollars in net worth, right? It’s the same thing for multifamily right? If you’re going to do a private placement, especially a 506(c) which we can go into later, right? You have to be an accredited investor. So it’s the same thing. That’s just the, that’s the lowest barrier, right? Oh, with regards to the expertise to actually, I guess, get access to…

[00:23:52] Nicole Pendergrass: And to know what you’re investing in, you know.

[00:23:55] Julius Oni: And to know what you’re investing in and knowing how to, like, you know, assess them and things of that nature. Just like anything else. It takes quite a bit of research. To me, it was serendipitous somewhat that I kind of fell right into it. So after investing in my brother’s company, MDaaS Global, his company was selected into an incubator called Techstars in Austin, Texas. That’s another incubator called Y Combinator in Silicon Valley. That also has a bunch of like good startups that you can evaluate. But there are actually crowdfunding sites also, where you could just like, on the real estate side, you have CrowdStreet and Fundrise. There’s actually an equivalent of that for angel investing to where you could put, you know, a little bit of money, a thousand dollars, $2,000, $3,000 or whatever to invest in some of these companies, I am not sure what the names of those companies are, but, you know, people could just type in angel investment, you know, crowdfunding or something like that. And they should be able to find that on the internet.

[00:25:04] Julius Oni: I have not done those crowdfunding type investments, but because I kind of got, saw my brother go through the process of trying to raise money, pre-seed or family and friends rounds, you know, seed round. I was kind of able to learn almost alongside of them and slowly but surely I started to identify some companies that I would love to invest in and started to cold call or cold email, like founders of those companies. And just say, you know what, I’ve been looking at this for a while. I’m interested and they would present to me and I would invest. And eventually, I developed enough of a relationship with some of those founders. You know, when they discover or their friends, you know, starting something that they think I would be interested in, they’ll pull me in or, given my background, if it was like a healthcare-related startup, they’ll be like, oh, I have one of my investors who has this background who may be able to kind of help you with this company. And then they’ll pull me in, I’ll review it, you know, and either invest or advise or whatever they need me to do.

[00:26:13] Julius Oni: And through that process, I essentially became involved, not just at the investor level, but on the advisory board of at least for those startups that I invested in. But there’s multiple ways to access that. But I think the first thing first is to educate yourself about what angel investments are. You know, kind of start maybe with, and people could go to the Y Combinator website.

[00:26:38] Julius Oni: You could go to the Techstars website, T E C H S T A R, Techstars website. Those are two incubators, you know, one in Austin, one in Silicon Valley. And just reading their websites and kind of seeing what they do alone gives you a nice little idea of how angel investments work and potentially how you can participate ’cause they have what we call demonstration days, demo days, where you can literally travel to their places and just sit there and listen to multiple startups present.

[00:27:13] Nicole Pendergrass: Wow.

[00:27:13] Julius Oni: An angel invests all over the country, go to these demo days and just listen to different pitches and then decide which ones they want to like invest in.

[00:27:23] Nicole Pendergrass: Wow. So those incubators, those are not crowdfunding incubators. Those are normal accredited investor-level incubators.

[00:27:31] Julius Oni: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:27:32] Nicole Pendergrass: Okay.

[00:27:32] Julius Oni: So those are, yeah, absolutely. Those are not crowdfunding incubators. These are, like, great incubators where they literally see through thousands and thousands of applicants, of founders who have great ideas and want to explore them. And then they select which ones they think they want to help build up or develop. And so they now bring those founders together and provide them with the tools to take their companies from one level to the next.

[00:28:02] Nicole Pendergrass: Yeah. Okay.

[00:28:03] Julius Oni: And by doing so, then present them to, and also essentially bring them in, develop them, and then bring in a bunch of investors onto their platform to invest in those companies.

[00:28:15] Nicole Pendergrass: Okay. All right. That’s great. And just for everyone who’s listening, if you are not accredited, the crowdfunding websites, where you can find out about angel investing, those are ways where he was saying you could put in a thousand, 2000 or something like that. Crowdfunding is basically for anyone, income level. So even if you’re not accredited, you can play angel investing at a small level just to get your feet wet and get started until you become accredited since we’re working on that. But in any case, okay. Actually, that just, it’s just a whole other world. You know, like, when you get into real estate and you’re so, like, you’re surrounded by real estate stuff all the time. You just get used to it. You’re just engrossed in that world. But then other people don’t really realize what’s going on. And that’s how I feel like when you were explaining about the incubators in these demo days and everybody’s traveling, all these angel investors are coming, but that’s just like their normal world.

[00:29:05] Nicole Pendergrass: And we don’t know that’s existing, you know, because it’s so outside of the realm of what, you know, mass, main street investors and anyone else does.   I just think that that is something that I would be interested in looking into and just exploring what that world even looks like. But one thing that comes to mind is do you get a rush kind of the same as gambling with investing as an angel investor? ‘Cause I feel like it’s just, it’s high-risk, high-reward, but it’s like pulling that lever every time you find a new company.

[00:29:37] Julius Oni: So I’m actually a poor gambler and I don’t like gambling at all. So with high risk comes high reward, right? And you cannot make that type of investment in your main source of investing if all you playing with is relatively small funds, right? So I wouldn’t recommend that that’s all, like, someone should use that as their main strategy to invest. The vast majority of investors have actually accumulated a little bit of cash to invest with, and then they use that to invest. So because of the nature of it, you know, so I would say for those that are starting out, yes. Oh, and I think that company, actually, for the crowdfunding is SeedInvest or something like that. You got to have people look it up. Yeah.

[00:30:28] Nicole Pendergrass: We’ll put all the links and the show notes to all these different incubators.

[00:30:33] Julius Oni: SeedInvest. So anyway, I mean, I don’t get much of a rush from investing blindly. No. All my investments are very educated investments, right? Now, one thing I realize quickly over time is that without taking some risks, you cannot really grow wealth, right? And so my strategy to investment is to do relatively lower risk, higher percent annual return type investments like real estate and combine that with, you know, higher risk. And then it starts from there. And then continuum kind of goes onto then, you know, higher risk, higher return investments in stable markets or developed markets like the US and others. And at the highest level of risk, which I also do is, you know, investments in emerging markets where obviously, you know, you kind of invest that money and forget about it, but then those actually have the highest return of all. So my investments, you know, goes from the lowest risk, you know, I guess the lowest risk is really just living your money and your bank account, but that money is actually losing value a little bit, you know?

[00:31:55] Nicole Pendergrass: Yeah. I don’t know if that’s the lowest risk. They’re risking it in other ways.

[00:31:59] Julius Oni: Hey, no, I mean, you’re definitely a risk in it because, you know, especially with six to 8% inflation, that money is losing value on a yearly basis, you know? Yeah. But you could, I guess say certificate of deposits, you know, money markets, things like that that gives you like maybe the tiny little percentage. Those bonds or, you know, things of that nature that then you can do. And I have a little stock portfolio, too, that I have a brokerage manage for me, a brokerage account that is managed for me. You know, that’s not my main source of investment, so I don’t really, I just let them do what they do with it. But real estate is what I’m most passionate about. It’s so tangible. , I understand it. Now over the last two years, where I’ve seen it work and I’ve seen us help others create wealth with it. So for me, it just makes sense, you know? And oh, to the point that I made earlier, you actually could create stable cash flow also with it, you know, unlike some of these other strategies that I just mentioned earlier.

[00:33:00] Nicole Pendergrass: Yes. Very true. So, okay. Well with that, we’re gonna move over into the real estate side of things.