5 Talents Podcast

David Spellman is a fiduciary and registered investment advisor with Money Concepts Capital Group who works in San Antonio alongside tax strategist Ed Guerrero. On this episode, host Abel Pacheco and David lay out how business owners actually keep more of what they earn: save on taxes first, protect the assets second, build the wealth third.

In this episode:

• Why most people run the order backward. As David puts it, "the tax savings, protect the assets, and then build the wealth." Taxes come first because a dollar you legally do not owe drops straight to the bottom line, no new sale required.
• DIME, a simple way to size life insurance: debt, income, mortgage, education.
• The multiply by 10 discipline. A $5,000 tax saving looks small for 1 year. Held for 10 years it is $50,000 you kept in your family.
• Why the fiduciary standard, being legally on the hook for the advice you give, is a feature and not a burden.
• Abel's own scar: a first business that earned good money while he took nothing home, and the decade as a W2 employee that followed.

Abel Pacheco is a San Antonio real estate operator who went from 8 single family houses to a share of roughly 1,500 apartment doors, and now works as a fractional Chief AI Officer helping small and mid sized businesses put the back office on autopilot.

Go deeper and connect:

• Abel Pacheco
• 5 Talents, fractional Chief AI Officer
• The Open Door, the book
• 5 Talents commercial real estate

Kaaren Hall is the founder and CEO of uDirect IRA Services, a company she grew from nothing to about 1 billion dollars under management. On this episode, host Abel Pacheco and Kaaren break down how everyday investors move retirement money out of Wall Street and into real estate, notes, and private placements through a self directed IRA.

In this episode:

• What a self directed IRA actually lets you own: private equity and syndications, notes, tax liens, even precious metals, with private equity as the top asset class.
• "It puts the self in self directed." Nobody babysits this for you, so the diligence is yours. Log into your account every month and read the statement.
• Do your due diligence during the investment, not only before it, and run the SEC, FINRA, and NASAA background checks before you wire a dollar.
• Why the best time to start funding retirement was 10 years ago, and the second best time is today.
• Abel's own first passive deal: money from an old 401k rolled into a 100 plus door multifamily syndication.

Abel Pacheco is a San Antonio real estate operator who went from 8 single family houses to a share of roughly 1,500 apartment doors, and now works as a fractional Chief AI Officer helping small and mid sized businesses put the back office on autopilot.

Go deeper and connect:

• Abel Pacheco
• 5 Talents, fractional Chief AI Officer
• The Open Door, the book
• 5 Talents commercial real estate

Justin Smith is the founder of RelEquity and a ground up development specialist who runs deals "dirt to keys": land, entitlement, design, financing, construction, operations, and exit. On this episode, host Abel Pacheco and Justin walk the full development life cycle and the discipline that keeps a deal alive when the market turns against you.

In this episode:

• "Dirt to keys." The whole development life cycle as one staged continuum: entitlement, design, capital, construction on scope, budget, and schedule, operations, then exit.
• The off ramp at every stage. Each stage carries its own risk, so know where you can walk and where you can add value before the next one begins.
• Permission to specialize: "it is okay to only do one piece. You don't have to do the whole thing."
• What to do when the macro turns. A deal Justin once chased at a 2.7% rate became a 5.7% lock, and his answer was to shrink the frame: keep occupancy high, tenants engaged, investors happy, and manage the little pieces you control.
• "You make money when you buy," and sometimes a no is the best decision you make.

Abel Pacheco is a San Antonio real estate operator who went from 8 single family houses to a share of roughly 1,500 apartment doors, and now works as a fractional Chief AI Officer helping small and mid sized businesses put the back office on autopilot.

Go deeper and connect:

• Abel Pacheco
• 5 Talents, fractional Chief AI Officer
• The Open Door, the book
• 5 Talents commercial real estate

Sarry Ibrahim runs Financial Asset Protection and hosts the Thinking Like a Bank podcast. On this episode, host Abel Pacheco and Sarry break down infinite banking: using cash value whole life insurance as a source of financing you own and control, so you can borrow against your own policy to fund a deal while the cash keeps compounding.

In this episode:

• The reframe most investors miss: "You didn't create a business, you created a financial instrument, a tool that's gonna make you money."
• How the mechanic actually works. When you borrow against the policy you are not subtracting from the principal or from its market value, so the cash keeps growing even while it is deployed.
• The arbitrage in plain operator terms: grow your liabilities all you want, as long as the asset column outpaces the liability column by 2 or 3 times.
• Why time, not money, is the real scoreboard. The wealthiest clients optimize hours, not dollars, and buy back their time until they simply own the entity.
• How Abel thinks about the same math on his own deals: keep the asset column growing faster than the liabilities.

Abel Pacheco is a San Antonio real estate operator who went from 8 single family houses to a share of roughly 1,500 apartment doors, and now works as a fractional Chief AI Officer helping small and mid sized businesses put the back office on autopilot.

Go deeper and connect:

• Abel Pacheco
• 5 Talents, fractional Chief AI Officer
• The Open Door, the book
• 5 Talents commercial real estate

Tim Little is a multifamily general partner with around 500 doors who climbed a deliberate ladder: crawl, walk, run. On this episode, host Abel Pacheco and Tim talk about the threshold that turns a student into a real investor, and why this is a pipeline business, not a one deal business.

In this episode:

• The line that separates the two: "until you take action, then you're not actually a real estate investor."
• Crawl, walk, run in real numbers. Crawl was a duplex with $25,000 down. Walk was a first passive syndication at $25,000, waiting on that first distribution check. Run was a first general partner deal, a 59 unit portfolio.
• Why one deal does not set you free: "This isn't a do one deal and you're financially free kind of business." It is a pipeline you keep full.
• Abel's own turning point: single family for 8 or 9 years, about 10 houses, then the math said he would need another 20 or 30 years to replace his income, so he went looking for a different way.
• What conservative underwriting looks like now: rate caps, lower leverage, and planning 2 to 5 years out.

Abel Pacheco is a San Antonio real estate operator who went from 8 single family houses to a share of roughly 1,500 apartment doors, and now works as a fractional Chief AI Officer helping small and mid sized businesses put the back office on autopilot.

Go deeper and connect:

• Abel Pacheco
• 5 Talents, fractional Chief AI Officer
• The Open Door, the book
• 5 Talents commercial real estate

Israel Linares is a senior market analyst at CoStar covering Austin. On this episode, host Abel Pacheco and Israel turn raw market data into decisions: how to read supply against demand, and why one metric will lie to you if you ignore the one beside it.

In this episode:

• The demand metric that matters, defined simply: net absorption is "the net change between move ins less move outs."
• Why a single number misleads. Austin white collar jobs grew about 20 percent since 2020, yet office sublease listings jumped 65 percent to an all time high, because headcount and space "doesn't correlate one to one like it used to."
• The supply caution that should bend a pro forma: about 35,000 units under construction, roughly 13 percent of inventory, which pressures rent growth and pushes vacancy up.
• How Abel underwrites against it: moving rent growth, expense growth, taxes, insurance, leverage, and interest rates all at once.
• Israel's rule that doubles as the operator's: be "an objective teller of what the data says."

Abel Pacheco is a San Antonio real estate operator who went from 8 single family houses to a share of roughly 1,500 apartment doors, and now works as a fractional Chief AI Officer helping small and mid sized businesses put the back office on autopilot.

Go deeper and connect:

• Abel Pacheco
• 5 Talents, fractional Chief AI Officer
• The Open Door, the book
• 5 Talents commercial real estate

Sue Hough has built for more than 20 years and completed roughly 100 projects, and she is now developing 118 acres in the Smoky Mountains. On this episode, host Abel Pacheco and Sue talk about the real thing that stops most people before deal one, and how to move fast without moving blind.

In this episode:

• The enemy is not money, it is preparation used as a hiding place: "people need to have so much education and knowledge to prepare them for their investment that it becomes paralyzing."
• Her fix, action with a realistic loss expectation: "just do it. You have to realize you could lose money, but if you want to do this, you will figure it out." Out of the first 5 deals, expect to make money on 4 and lose some on 1.
• The math under the courage. Sue underwrote the entire 118 acre deal on pre COVID numbers as a safety net, so the base case survives a down market.
• Abel's discipline from the passive seat: never invest your last 50K, the money you need to survive on.
• Why 100 deals of hands on reps let her decide quickly and correctly, from a $32,000 flip to a syndicated development.

Abel Pacheco is a San Antonio real estate operator who went from 8 single family houses to a share of roughly 1,500 apartment doors, and now works as a fractional Chief AI Officer helping small and mid sized businesses put the back office on autopilot.

Go deeper and connect:

• Abel Pacheco
• 5 Talents, fractional Chief AI Officer
• The Open Door, the book
• 5 Talents commercial real estate

Nick Aiola is a CPA whose virtual firm works only with real estate investors. On this episode, host Abel Pacheco and Nick break down cost segregation and why tax is a planning game you win before the year ends, not after.

In this episode:

• The most expensive mistake: "the worst thing that you can do as a taxpayer is go to your CPA after the year's over. You can't go backwards and rewrite history."
• Cost segregation in real numbers. On a $500K property, straight line depreciation gives about $14,500 a year, but an engineering study can front load roughly a $100,000 write off in year one.
• Why depreciation is "a deduction for something you didn't actually pay for," especially when you bought with leverage.
• Abel's lived proof: $100K into a 128 unit deal negated about $60K in tax and returned a $30K refund, which "felt like a 90% cash on cash return." Nick's line: "you get a property for free."
• The knowledge that keeps the money: the $150K passive loss wall, the real estate professional test, and the short term rental door.

Abel Pacheco is a San Antonio real estate operator who went from 8 single family houses to a share of roughly 1,500 apartment doors, and now works as a fractional Chief AI Officer helping small and mid sized businesses put the back office on autopilot.

Go deeper and connect:

• Abel Pacheco
• 5 Talents, fractional Chief AI Officer
• The Open Door, the book
• 5 Talents commercial real estate

Jeff Greenberg has done roughly $200 million in real estate and 2,000 plus doors across multiple full cycles. On this episode, host Abel Pacheco and Jeff talk about the fund of funds model and why the scarce resource in this business was never capital, it was the time and judgment to screen deals correctly.

In this episode:

• The shift from chasing deals to screening them: "I get to look at the deals that somebody else has looked at 100 deals... all I have to do is evaluate that one deal."
• The discipline that protects investors: "I say no to more opportunities than I say yes to."
• How Jeff evaluates, defense first: "how are you protecting capital? Fixed rate debt, low leverage, significant reserves, low breakeven occupancy."
• Abel runs the same way, looking at all 100 deals until the one they say yes on, because good stewards of investor capital have to say no a lot.
• Where it started: catching falling knives in 2008, then building through multiple full cycles.

Abel Pacheco is a San Antonio real estate operator who went from 8 single family houses to a share of roughly 1,500 apartment doors, and now works as a fractional Chief AI Officer helping small and mid sized businesses put the back office on autopilot.

Go deeper and connect:

• Abel Pacheco
• 5 Talents, fractional Chief AI Officer
• The Open Door, the book
• 5 Talents commercial real estate

Curtis May calls himself the Contrarian, and his whole practice is financial defense. On this episode, host Abel Pacheco and Curtis make the case that you build more wealth by plugging leaks than by chasing winners.

In this episode:

• The core idea: "there's actually more opportunity to minimize the losses in one's financial life than it is trying to pick winners. So I focus on efficiency."
• The leaky bucket most people never measure: taxes, interest cost, and "opportunity cost, which most people never calculate."
• The roles he drew on air: "Curtis is the defensive coordinator. You're the offensive coordinator, Abel."
• The mortgage trap. Rather than sending extra money to a mortgage you cannot get back, aim to be "balance sheet debt free."
• The line under all of it: "Most people don't have a money problem, they have a philosophy problem." Make your saving automatic and systematic.

Abel Pacheco is a San Antonio real estate operator who went from 8 single family houses to a share of roughly 1,500 apartment doors, and now works as a fractional Chief AI Officer helping small and mid sized businesses put the back office on autopilot.

Go deeper and connect:

• Abel Pacheco
• 5 Talents, fractional Chief AI Officer
• The Open Door, the book
• 5 Talents commercial real estate