The Sage Investor

There’s $50 trillion sitting in retirement accounts—almost all of it tied up in stocks, index funds, mutual funds, and bonds. Their returns? Around 4% - 10%. The ultra-wealthy’s returns on retirement accounts? Often double that. How? Self-directed IRAs (SDIRA). Instead of trapping themselves in traditional retirement accounts, family offices and high-net-worth individuals tap into this account, un...

I spent a week surrounded by the best real estate entrepreneurs on earth—and something surprised me. This wasn’t a casual meetup that most real estate investors are used to. This was Harvard Business School’s YPO (Young Presidents’ Organization)—an elite organization of entrepreneurs, CEOs, family offices, REIT executives, and exceptional investors doing seven, eight, and nine-figure deals.  It qu...

Anyone can buy a mobile home park, but only a few can run one. Your pro forma may look perfect on paper, but the way you manage, maintain, and mold your community changes everything about your returns. Today, we’ve brought on a pro, Todd De Leon, who has over two decades of experience in mobile home park management, overseeing more than 20,000 sites across 20 states and operating these assets as e...

Investing isn’t the end goal—freedom is. Lane Kinney put three kids through college, took numerous trips to Africa, became a record-setting crossbow hunter, and now enjoys a comfortable retirement, all thanks to building a portfolio that prioritized freedom, not riches. No one would have expected a state law enforcement officer from rural Florida to become a sizable self-made entrepreneur, but tha...

Most investors spend all their time maximizing returns, but the Sage Investor focuses on something much more meaningful: after-tax cash flow.  A great return means much less when Uncle Sam gladly takes tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of dollars out of your hand. So, what’s the “magic elixir” that allows you to take almost all of your gains home, while staying in the governmen...

Do you own a business or just a taxing, high-stress, often low-paid job? Without knowing how to delegate tasks, the “business” you run slowly begins to run you. You’re making every decision, signing every check, putting out every fire, dealing with every client communication, and before long, you burn out. I’ve been there too, but made a pivot at the right time, choosing to delegate in business ra...

A decade ago, Kevin Bupp and I ran Sunrise Capital Investors as a lean lifestyle business. There were no huge teams, global workforces, or hundreds of millions in assets under management. It was Kevin and I, finding deals, closing, integrating, and repeating, with some family and friends along the way. Now, in 2026, we manage over $400M in assets. No capital calls. Zero principal loss. Close to a...

This is what financial freedom looks like. Within a matter of months, Adam Cranmer is packing up his family and moving abroad to Spain—not for a few weeks, but for good. His goal of expanding his son’s worldview is becoming reality, and Adam’s life of European travel, slow days, and savoring Spanish wine has only just begun—and it’s being funded by passive cash flow. When most people think of fina...

Most wealthy investors don’t need more deals—they need to structure deals more intelligently to survive taxes. Imagine keeping the same portfolio and getting higher after-tax returns without gimmicks, risky tax strategies, or chasing every deduction.  It’s more than possible if you’ve got the right real estate tax strategy.  Today, we’re welcoming our first guest to The Sage Investor podcast, Kim...

Many investors spend their entire life building wealth, amassing a sizable nest egg, on the premise that it will fund their retirement, support their children, and give them the peace they’ve spent decades sacrificing for. This is a lie—and it’s why many Americans, even high-net-worth investors, are riddled with anxiety, sitting on a fragile foundation that won’t support their life the way they in...

Most limited partners spend hours analyzing the deal, the market, and the potential returns. They see a high IRR, growing demand for a property, and maybe even economic tailwinds. They put tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of dollars into the deal, assured that it would be a home run. Then months go by, distributions are paused, a capital call email lands, and the investors are wond...

Most high achievers spend their lives accumulating—growing their bank accounts, growing their investment portfolio, growing their legacy. But what if you’re saving for a life you’ll never live? All those millions of dollars represent decades of discipline, every penny put in its place so your family can live a fuller life than you experienced. And while it’s a noble pursuit to strive to put your c...

One day, I woke up in a single-wide trailer, thousands of miles away from home, months away from my wife. On paper, it looked like I made it. The business was growing, we were scaling, and I was accomplishing what I set out to do. But as I stepped into the shower that barely had enough water pressure to keep a constant drip, a thought entered my mind, “How did I get here?”  Our business was boomin...

Everyone is chasing the next big thing in real estate. 20%+ IRR (internal rate of return), a two-year exit, a quick, profitable flip on their deal.  You’ve probably been handed an offering memorandum that says the same thing: high IRRs, a quick and easy exit, and a plentiful return for you in a matter of years. Many investors took the chance on deals like this in 2021 and 2022—now they’re facing p...

Black swan events don't announce themselves. At any point in the market cycle, one is closer than it appears. This is how you survive the next one. September 11th. The Great Financial Crisis. The pandemic. Nobody was prepared for these events. Many investors lost their entire legacy in a matter of days, even hours, as markets reacted to the chaos. Most people act as if a black swan event isn’t com...

"Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked." Buffett was right. In 2026, we're seeing exactly who took on too much risk—and what it cost them. There is a way to compound your wealth while carrying the lowest investment risk in the industry—and most investors scroll right past it. It's how we've been able to deliver distributions across 30+ consecutive quarters—through r...

We don’t pay taxes; we defer them indefinitely. And then, we delete them.  It’s not magic. It’s not tax finagling. It’s something every high-net worth investor can be doing right now.  Imagine making millions of dollars from an investment and walking away with a tax loss on paper. Your money is now growing at a speed unparalleled by most investments. It’s not being taxed, the compounding never get...

"Selling your winners and holding your losers is like cutting the flowers and watering the weeds." - Peter Lynch Most investors know this principle. Few have the discipline to live it, and even fewer have paid the $6,000,000 price I did to learn why. There's a moment every investor faces: the offer looks right, the market is moving in your direction, and you've doubled, tripled, or quadrupled your...

With just one mobile home park investment, we turned $2.6M into $10M, returned all investor capital within the first two years, and created a cash-flowing machine that generates hundreds of thousands in pure profits while paying $0 in taxes. Most investors would have sold this park after a 200%+ gain. We didn't. Here's why—and what it's earned us since. This wasn’t luck. It wasn’t market timing. A...

70% of wealthy families lose their fortunes by the second generation. 90% lose it by the third.  All that work. The decades of investing. Granular financial planning to put your children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren in a better position—poof. This is avoidable, and the wealthiest families in America—the Rockefellers, the Kennedys, the Buffetts—follow the same three principles I’m sharin...

Warren Buffett once said, “If you have a really wonderful business, it is very well protected against the vicissitudes of the economy over time and the competition.” I sleep well at night managing hundreds of millions in assets—not because of sleeping pills, hope that interest rates will fall, or because things are working out today. I sleep well because every investment I’ve made has one thing in...

This is costing you millions of dollars—and you don’t even know about it. That’s not a theory or a scare tactic. I’m going to show you today how one simple thing is quite literally costing you seven figures in wealth and adding decades to your timeline for reaching financial freedom.  The bright side? It’s easily avoidable, and at Sunrise Capital Investors, we’ve proven this wealth killer can be s...

“Our favorite holding period is forever.” Most investors say they agree. Almost none invest like it. Buffett wasn’t mistaken when setting forth this guiding principle—and it has made him billions in profits as a result. For Buffett, Munger, and a long line of sage investors, buying at a low price and hoping for a high price is not investing—it’s speculation. But, in today’s economy, it seems that...

“It’s insane to risk what you have and need for something you don’t really need.”  Most investors make one massive mistake: they think success can beat out survival. When a deal is going great, you look like a genius, a hero, a person who has “won.” Then, liquidity dries up, cash flow disappears, you’re searching for a buyer, hoping to limit your loss as the value of your investment sinks lower an...

Most investors have it completely wrong.  Their portfolios run on theory, hope, and speculation—an educated gamble (at best) that they pray will pay off.  What if there was a way to ensure your hard-earned capital was put to good use, grew stably, and had such a definitive upside that it’s almost impossible to lose? There’s only one way to do it, and every investor can: Add value.  We’ve done it—a...