Silverman Capital Origin Story

Similar to some of you reading this, I always wanted to work for myself - to build something that was mine.

At the time, I had ZERO clue what that was going to be.

So, naturally, I went into sales. My goal was to earn as much as possible, while learning skills that I could take with me in my future ventures.

Luckily, I wasn't awful when I first started. Not great, but with enough work ethic, able to outwork the learning curve.

After one year in a smaller start up (~30 people), myself and the rest of the organization went into work one day to find out the company was shutting their doors. 

While we had great people, hard workers, decent product - we were too late to the game to make an impact.

The investors decided that their capital was better used elsewhere rather than continuing to try to grow the company.

This was my first taste of the "corporate" world. Even when you do your job, your job security, or lack there of, can be taken from you.

Myself and a handful of my team members started working at a competitor quickly therefore after. 

Yes, we were in entry level sales roles, pounding the phones, emails and cold outreach on LinkedIn. 

To this day, I am firm believer that sales is one of the best career paths that you can go into.

Quickly after starting my new role, I had my first realization as to why the above statement is true.

My first four months in the new role, I earned as much as the last year in my previous.

This trend continued, my income grew, but my monthly spend remained relatively unchanged. 

I had always heard of "passive income" and wanted to start building some for myself.

Naturally, my idea was to start buying single family homes with long term renters in them and that will be passive. 

Simple enough, right?

Things were going well, I had purchased my first two homes within the year. Each home was producing ~$300/month of free cash flow. 

At the time, I thought if I can get to $10,000/month, I would be set, wouldn't have to work for anyone else ever again.

I started running the numbers, I would need ~33 homes.

What I didn't realize...

How quickly profits can be wiped out when things don't go as planned - HVAC systems, septic, roofs etc. 

My plan was to stay the course and keep building up my portfolio, which I did.

I was able to grow my portfolio to 10 single family homes at it's peak.

What I didn't realize was how much of a strain this was going to take on me.

Yes, I had a property management team in place.

Each house would cost me dozens and dozens of hours to close, between finding the deal, working with the lender, insurance, tenants etc. 

By now, I had moved into a senior leadership role in a larger company, managing a division of sales.

This was one of those roles that you can earn 3x your goal if you perform well OR you can earn half of what you should and run the risk of being fired for performance every single quarter.

While the houses I owned were performing fairly well, they were COSTING me significant potential earnings in my day job. 

The headspace, time and energy that the portfolio was taking up, was hurting my performance in my day job.

While I was earning $2,500-$3,000 per month, paying off a bit of my mortgage and capturing appreciation - I was costing myself multiples of that in my day job, along with the added stress.

During the last week of the quarter, one of my tenants drunkenly drove over their sewer line with a lawn mower - how did that happen?

Who knows.

For any of you in sales, the last week of the quarter, especially in a public company before earnings calls, is busy and STRESSFUL.

While I had a property management team in place, I was being called 3-4x per day to approve repairs, someone the tenants managed to get my cell phone number as well...

That was it.

Within the week, all 10 homes I owned were being prepped to hit the market.

I was over it.

Luckily, at the time, Zillow was still buying houses at massive scale.

I was able to disposition all 10 homes over the next six months to Zillow, which was an extremely favorable place to be.

During the time of my portfolio sell off, I spent a ton of time and effort learning about other ways to create passive income - targeting options that were legitimately passive. 

Unlike owning single family homes...I stumbled onto syndications as a limited partner - the ability to buy fractional shares of larger assets while receiving cash flow, tax benefits (depreciation) and potential profits upon refinance or sale.

I was hooked.

I spent hundreds of hours listening to every podcast, watching every youtube video and speaking to dozens of different operators.

From there, I was ready to go. Since it was my own capital (rather than being a steward of investor capital like we are today), I moved quickly.

I wanted to see which asset classes, operators, markets and opportunities offered the best experience and return profiles. 

Each of these different combinations put together into a deal offers something different - wether that be cash flow focused in the short term, equity growth in the long term, stability, tax optimization etc.

I'll go into more detail on portfolio creation in another article and video to follow.

Fast Forward another nine months and I had made nearly 20 investments across 11 different operating teams, nine markets and five asset classes.

Each project provided either a monthly or quarterly update and usually, a distribution of cash flow.

More importantly, zero calls from property managers, tenants, lenders, realtors or vendors that I became so accustomed to.

Due to this, I was able to put far more headspace, focus, effort and time into my day job.

This allowed me to double down into my passive income streams.The process became really simple - earn active income through my sales role and buy passive income by investing as a limited partner.

Now, I wanted to focus on providing others access to opportunities that we invest into ourself.

Our goal is to help others invest with confidence in deals that we have vetted with sponsors that we perform significant due diligence on.

Over the next three and a half years that went by, Silverman Capital was formed and has helped over 300 investors start or continue their journey investing passively across debt, real estate and private equity.

If you have ever thought about investing passively, have questions about what to look for in deals or want to learn more about the types of deals in our pipeline - schedule a call with me here.

To your success,

Sam