Joel Friedland talks with Jason Barnard about the debt-free empire.

Debt-Free Empire! Joel Friedland, CEO of Brit Properties, reveals his proven strategies for building a $100M industrial real estate syndication without debt. Drawing from his 43+ years of experience in Chicago's industrial market, Joel shares how he transformed relationship-based investing into a scalable online business model. Learn why debt-free investing creates "Steady Eddie" passive income and discover how to leverage AI and digital presence to attract accredited investors.

In this value-packed episode, you'll discover:- The debt-free syndication model that survived the 2008 financial crisis- Why industrial real estate generates consistent 7-8% annual returns with 20-year tenant retention- How to transition from offline networking to digital investor acquisition- The "Claim, Frame, and Prove" method for building credible online authority

This conversation delivers actionable insights for real estate professionals looking to scale their investor base through strategic digital marketing and personal branding.

#RealEstateInvesting #IndustrialRealEstate #RealEstateSyndication #PassiveIncome #DebtFreeInvesting #AccreditedInvestors #RealEstateMarketing #DigitalMarketing #PersonalBranding #WealthBuilding

What you’ll learn from Joel Friedland

This episode was recorded live on video July 22nd 2025

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B777ak0xoiI

Links to pieces of content relevant to this topic:https://youtu.be/iS2gk69Zfdw?si=et9BciRxo4OFs_YYhttps://youtu.be/Df3qxQhC9ng?si=hmWscw8XtUum5ORxhttps://www.youtube.com/@investingwithjoel/shortsJoel Friedland

Transcript from Joel Friedland with Jason Barnard on Fastlane Founders And Legacy. Debt-Free Empire

[00:00:00] Joel Friedland: One guy told me yesterday, 60% of his investible money is with me. That's bad. That's dangerous. That's dangerous because there's no diversification. What happens if, God forbid, industrial real estate becomes like office real estate where you can't fill an office building 'cause people are working at home.

[00:00:22] Joel Friedland: I don't think that's gonna happen in industrial 'cause people have to actually work with their hands and be on site. In industrial manufacturing operation, there's trained labor. So industrials likely not to have an implosion like office did 'cause of COVID. But the message that I want to get to people is, yeah, you should put three or 4% of your net worth in my safe stuff.

[00:00:52] Joel Friedland: That's a steady Eddie that gives you passive income but not 60%. But some people do that with me and I'm grateful to have them. But I wish that it would be more diversified.

[00:01:06] Narrator: Fastlane Founders and Legacy with Jason Barnard. Each week. Jason sits down with successful entrepreneurs, CEOs and executives, and get them to share how they mastered the delicate balance between rapid growth and enduring success in the business world.

[00:01:24] Narrator: How can we quickly build a profitable business that stands at test of time and becomes their legacy? A legacy we're proud of. Fastlane Founders and Legacy with Jason Barnard.

[00:01:36] Jason Barnard: Hi everybody, and welcome to another Fastlane Founders and Legacy. I'm Jason Barnard, and a quick hello and we're good to go.

[00:01:43] Jason Barnard: Welcome to the show, Joel Friedland.

[00:01:48] Joel Friedland: I love it, Jason. I love when you sing.

[00:01:50] Jason Barnard: Thank you. You said you watched a couple of episodes and that's what caught your attention. Not the content and the interesting insights you get but the song. Lovely to meet you, Joel. You've built a hundred million dollar empire of debt-free investment in industrial real estate. And you've done it mostly through your network and the people you knew. And you've made the step to move all of this online. And created a social profile or social presence. And realize that your competitors have got the jump on you because they've already got social media teams working and you are struggling.

[00:02:32] Jason Barnard: So we're gonna talk, first of all about debt-free, empire debt-free real estate, industrial real estate, and your hundred million dollar business. And then say, how are you building it online? And what can you do to improve how you are reaching out to these investors who need to have 25 to $50,000 to invest with you and need to have a million dollars or more in the bank?

[00:02:52] Jason Barnard: If I've understood correctly.

[00:02:56] Joel Friedland: That's what we do. We own industrial buildings only in the Chicago area. We're laser focused on one niche.

[00:03:07] Jason Barnard: That's super smart and very difficult to do.

[00:03:10] Joel Friedland: It is. I've heard this before, the riches are in the niches. And our niche, and I've been doing this for 43 years.

[00:03:20] Joel Friedland: Having started working for a family business, not my family, but a family business, where they owned a lot of industrial real estate in Chicago and taught me how to lease buildings, sell buildings, and buy buildings, and how to raise money from investors. Because what I do is I put together what's called a syndication, which is a group of let's say 30, 40, 50 investors who each put in between 25,000 and a million dollars. Most people average about 50,000. So we buy these buildings. They're oKalicube®pied by manufacturing companies primarily. Some are very large corporations on the japanese stock exchange, the london stock exchange, owned by private equity groups. We have the US postal service as a tenant, and we have the Chicago professional soccer team where they have a warehouse and an office in one of our buildings.

[00:04:19] Jason Barnard: Even cooler.

[00:04:21] Joel Friedland: Yeah. Yeah. So we're in the business of owning and managing. These buildings were very interesting, fascinating, operations take place inside the four walls.

[00:04:33] Jason Barnard: Yeah. And it's a kind of shared investment system, which means that it's low risk.

[00:04:44] Joel Friedland: Okay. So in 2008 with the global economic crisis, I had 50 buildings and I had debt at seven banks. I had mortgages at all the buildings and when things went south, it was very difficult for me because you have to pay the bank back. They have no sense of humor and when I had 10 buildings out of the 50 that were struggling with tenants who couldn't pay rent or who moved out when their leases were up when I expected them to renew the leases and stay longer, most of our tenants stay in our buildings for 20 years. We buy a building and sometimes the tenants already been there for 20 years and we think they're gonna spend another 20 years there. And we'll collect rent, and the rent goes up a little bit each year. So the investors are in it for the passive income where they make about seven or 8% starting the first year.

[00:05:39] Joel Friedland: And my investors love it. They are loyal repeat investors. We have 23 buildings and we're buying one now, and we've got about 25 investors who are entering the deal with us with a minimum of 50,000. But I'm struggling with something that you're an expert at. Which is my competitors no longer just put deals together with their friends and their family and their longtime clients. They have an online presence and a social media department. I'm behind the times, man. I watched you and I thought it made me sweat when I was listening to you talk to your other guests about how important it is to use the internet and AI properly, and you're the expert and I'm struggling to get investors through that where there are maybe 400 syndicators in the United States who have a department that does what you know how to do and I'm new at it.

[00:06:51] Jason Barnard: In fact, you're talking the riches is in the niches and what we've done. Because optimizing your Personal Brand or your Corporate Brand in Search and AI is something that everybody should be doing, every company, every business leader. And we're focusing in on the business leaders, the entrepreneurs who are actively investing in their Personal Brand through social media, through podcasting, through writing articles, through writing a book.

[00:07:17] Jason Barnard: And helping them to take control of the narrative in Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and the other AI, and helping them to amplify the work they're already doing on social media, on podcasts, in books and whatever through that channel. Because if you think about what ChatGPT, Google AI mode, Perplexity are is they are having conversations with billions of people every day, trillions of niche conversations with people who trust them and trust their advice. So they actually become by far the biggest influences in the world. And you need to be involved in that conversation and your social media presence is a way to get involved in that conversation. And what we'll do actually now, we've actually gone through six minutes because you've explained that brilliantly.

[00:08:02] Jason Barnard: And we can then move into this entire topic because here I looked at Google's AI mode, and that's recently been launched a couple of months ago. And what it does is it takes your the query, which is Joel Friedland subtitle: CEO Brit Properties. So I've made sure it understands who you are, and I've asked it, not a specific question, but implicitly I've said, who is this person and why should I trust them?

[00:08:30] Jason Barnard: And AI mode has then created what we call cascading queries. So it's made three or four, maybe six different queries. Who is he? What's his job? Can you trust him? Is he credible? What was his career? And finds the passages and pages online and then stitches them together in the way that ChatGPT does?

[00:08:53] Jason Barnard: And I've put a little red arrow there to say, number one, we're in AI mode,