Hey everyone. My name is Julian McClurkin, your Chief Storyteller with Tribevest. Today we meet Eric Ward who's going to tell us how without Tribevest his investment journey would look completely different. All that and more on today's episode.

My name is Eric Ward. I'm from Greenville, South Carolina.

When did you discover Tribevest? 

About a year ago.

Who introduced you to it? 

Jim Pfeifer with Left Field investors.

Never heard of him. LFI. No, no we did an entire masterclass with Jim. 

Yeah, no, I heard your I mean, your masterclass I have referred to at least 20 people to it. 

Is there like what do you do and what are you investing in? I said, just here, listen to these two podcasts. And if you're interested, call me back.

So has it been able to help those clients and kind of help you disseminate?

It's more family and friends. Yeah, clients, but I've had a few people keep coming back to me but you know, there's always that fear of investing if they're going to take my money as a snake oil.

Does Tribevest kind of help you ease their minds when it comes to investing?

Oh, for sure. Yeah, for me it decreased the risk. So I could get into new asset classes, I can get into new opportunities and evaluate operators so instead of going in at 25 grand I can go on in 5 grand. 

Eric, what's your day job?

I'm an engineer, software engineer. I just sold, I started a software business and I just sold it. So part of that's kind of where all this came from a couple years ago knowing it was coming and what am I going to do next and how do I invest this money?

You're a software engineer, right? How does tie best compared to some of the other software that you use for your day to day investing?

It's so tightly integrated with the different facets of that you need to run a company or you know, an investment company like this. I haven't seen anything that has it all together in one package, right. So it's a one stop shop. I have written software a lot for 20 years and so I understand the mechanics and the work that's going in and the infrastructure that it takes to run this stuff. It's impressive, for sure.

Talk to me about how comfortable it makes everybody go in that they have this platform that is communicating all of the data to them that they need to know about? 

What I like to say is Tribevest is really doing the heavy lifting for us, right so people have comfort in knowing that the LLC is formed correctly. The operating agreement and we'll get templates so that was easy. Maintaining the LLC with the rock required reporting banking, equity table, and the voting, the fundraising, the distribution, so it's a place where everyone can go in our tribe and really see what's happening. 

How many tribes are you involved with? 

I'm in three tribes. So all of them through Left Field Investors, one of them is a I call it, I'm on the main tribe, but it's nine people. And Jim Pfeifer introduced us. We didn't know either any of any of us didn't know anybody. But we knew that we wanted to try it right. So after hearing the masterclass and then the commercials on the Left Field podcast and talking to Jim, in the forums, we all just kind of posted so we're looking for a Tribe.. And he brought us together and then we went through probably four months of just video conferences of talking and getting to know each other. We start with 16. We ended with nine and then we formed the tribe. And then now we're in three investments with a fourth and just us so it's pretty fun. 

And then I'm in a crypto tribe with lithium, so a group of Left Field Investors got together and we invested in some bitcoin mining and then another just Bitcoin or another crypto fund and then the newest one that I'm a member of is call it the Farm Team, but it's outside of the box. We're looking for investments that are really out there, you know, that that we really wouldn't do on our own. That might that are a little not riskier, but maybe a little riskier, that we're we can invest in and we're doing this group and that. Those are the other two, one on ones nine, the other ones 10. The other two I think are 10 each.

Can you tell me a little bit more about the short term rental opportunities that you've invested in?

Yeah, so we invested in a short term rental fund, and this fund is very tech driven, which obviously a software engineer that that really spoke to me. But they looked at a lot of the metrics to choose which house which apartments or houses or condos to buy and they're there all over the country. So from east to west, and they the fund really focuses on the the user the customers experience so they have Instagram walls,, where every house has a place where you have a can do multiple sometimes Instagram pictures, so they're at the beach or the mountains. I mean, they're in college football town so it's all over the fun looks for opportunity. Where and the people who are running the fund are super hosts, and they have they've built a portfolio of their own. And now they're expanding it into a fund and bringing in other investors to continue to grow it and they do upgrades and updates and so there is some forced equity or forced appreciation with some of it's much smaller than an apartment complex, but it definitely they raise the bar when they buy it. So they'll buy it from other hosts or wherever.

It's been a pleasure. We appreciate you coming out and spending time with us today and talking more about Tribevest and LFI. We appreciate you so much.

All right, nice to meet you. Thank you.

Wow, that was a great interview with Eric ward. Now look, if you want to learn more about Left Field Investors, just click right here and if you want to learn more about Tribevest, click right there. Till next time, I'll see you next tribe.