"Trust is earned drop by drop, invest wisely, question everything, and never chase the ‘next big thing.’"

Rise Capital Investments

Watch Out for Red Flags Before You Lose Green

So many scams out there, I know you are wary. How can you know who's reputable and competent?

Crypto, Ponzi, fake courses (I'm looking at you passive income course that tells someone to start an affiliate marketing or online course business, that's not passive!)

People have asked how I find any investors in an environment so polluted by cheats, fakes, and wannabes.

The answer is simple, but that doesn't mean it's easy.

I keep showing up.

I'm a real person who posts on social daily, goes to lunch with you to talk about investing, who has a family life outside of business, who drives a 2005 minivan because we reinvest so much of our capital, putting our money where our mouth is.

Trust is earned slowly, drop by painstaking drop.

That's one reason we structured our fund the way we do: our fund minimum is $50k, but each deal minimum is only $10k, and loans are 6-9 months on average, so you get paid often.

So you can buy in at very small amounts and get to know us by actually working with us.

Red Flags and How to Avoid Them

Here are the red flags to watch out for before investing with anyone, and how we structure our fund around green flags:

🆘 Red flag: You don't know what exactly they are investing in.

✅ Green flag: We have docs for every property you lend on, so you always know exactly where your money is. We keep it minimal so you can "set and forget" once we establish that level of trust, but we never hide it.

🆘 The returns sound too high to be true.

✅ Industry standard for short-term real estate loans (hard money) are 10-12% for 1st lien loans, so that's what we pay our investors. Our expenses and profit come from origination and service fees (points) paid by the borrower.

🆘 The returns are higher than average while they promise risk is lower.

✅ Again, industry standard for private real estate loans is 10-12%, risk is managed by holding the note in 1st lien position. It's a rinse-and-repeat business model with historical track record. A discussion of risk factors should be realistic and practical, not to build excitement or sell an investment.

🆘 It's the "next big thing!"

This works in venture capital, but most businesses never make it. The key to VC success is high diversification looking for the one that hits.

✅ Our fund is boring, we lend money to flippers in the mountain west where we live and can help the borrower be successful, or take over the project if needed. Predictable, built on relationships and local knowledge. We don't need to hit it big, we need to just keep doing the volume where we are experts.

🆘 We've known one another for years!

While this business is indeed built on trust, it should be PROFESSIONAL trust, not personal. I don't go on vacations or to church with my surgeon, I check credentials, get a second opinion, and patient referrals. Some of my best friends are therapists and cannot see me as a patient.

✅ We are easy to get a hold of at Rise using our partnerwithrise.com calendar, and you can reach any of us individually with our custom calendar links at partnerwithrise.com/emma partnerwithrise.com/chris partnerwithrise.com/zasha partnerwithrise.com/harmonie and partnerwithrise.com/troy Set an appointment with us any time to talk about business, investing, real estate. Going on family vacations together is totally optional!

🆘 First time they're doing this thing, or haven't been through a downturn.

Experience matters more than anything else in this industry, so understand if you are investing with someone new that increases the risk.

✅ We've been lending hard money on many projects since 2018, we've borrowed hard money on our own projects.

We ourselves use the income from our own money in these loans to actually live on, we're not playing.

🆘 Their personality is too charming, too calm, too excited, too anything...

Research on white collar criminals shows zero correlation between personality traits and dishonesty or incompetence. You do have to enjoy working with the person, so if there's a personality mismatch, walk away. But the opposite is also true: doing business just because you like someone's personality is an unreliable way to vet an operator.

✅ While we hope you like us, we want our track record of business and real estate lending to speak louder than we do.

🆘 They're broke.

It doesn't matter why they have no money, from mismanagement or just being new or young: not having any backup funds to "save" a deal that's not listening to the business plan is a major risk factor. Unless you have additional emergency capital set aside that you're willing to put in, make sure the operator has something for a rainy day.

In addition, a heavy money motivation may cloud an operator's judgment. Most of us have experienced financial stress when money is tight, and that panic or stress mode changes our decision making process to take unnecessary risk, be overly optimistic, or too afraid to make bold choices when needed.

✅ The partners at Rise Capital Investments have all left successful careers to retire early and pursue investing full time as entrepreneurs. We are not using our money for riding in private jets—we are making sure we can invest alongside you and bail a deal out if needed.

Christopher Borden was CEO of a billion dollar annual revenue retail chain in Hawaii before leaving to focus more on his family with his wife and business partner 🎼Harmonie Borden🌺

ZASHA SMITH, P.E. was a civil engineer in Maui before she left to focus on a real estate career.

Emma Powell as a homeschool mom retired her W-2 IT husband Troy Powell when he was 48, and they now work together helping other families discover their own financial freedom. None of us are taking private jets anywhere, but we also fund the majority of our deals with our own money, each of us are accredited investors on our net worth and have multiple six figures invested in the fund, not counting other investments in diversified offerings.

🆘 They're rich.

Seems like this one disagrees with the previous one, but hear me out. Wealth should support credibility, not create it. Ultra wealth can often cloud a person's experience over time, they might lose touch with themselves and their investors.

We once knew someone from church who seemed like an average, friendly dad of one my cub scouts, just like many of us. In just a few years, I watched him transform into one of the most notorious white-collar criminals in Texas history, ultimately stealing over $50 million in a massive Ponzi scheme and now serving a 17-year federal prison sentence.

During the trial, the mental gymnastics he performed to justify his actions were staggering. What started as a seemingly well-intentioned legitimate business spiraled from his incompetence into deceit, entitlement, self-importance that famous people were associating with him, and finally massive theft and fraud. He has never apologized and continues to assert his innocence that it was just some business deals gone bad.

Watching our mutual friends suffer through that experience as victims taught me that wealth and charisma can be powerful distractions, often masking poor ethics and incompetence. In short, people change. Keep an eye on them to ensure they are upholding the investor interests that made them rich in the first place!

✅ Philanthropy and giving back is one of our Core 3 Rise Tenets alongside above-average returns and lower risk. Why do we want to gain financial freedom? To have time and money to donate to worthy causes without having to work to keep the lights on, or the private school tuition paid!

To me, a lavish lifestyle is a huge turn off and a big red flag. When I watch Chris and his wife Harmonie using their wealth to run a non-profit supporting business education and agricultural entrepreneurs in west Africa, or Zasha sponsoring an affordable first-time home development in a rural area of Hawaii, I know these are the people we want to be associating and investing with.

🆘 They can't give referrals, the current investors don't really understand what they are investing in, or the true risks involved.

✅ We have investors who have trusted us with multiple 7 figures up to our fund maximum of $2.85M, relying on us for a substantial portion of their reliable annual income. This requires an enormous amount of trust in our honesty and our capability. We have several who are happy to talk to you about their experiences getting paid on time, with frequent communication, and a commitment to continuous improvement to product and customer service quality.

🆘 Pressure to invest too much money on a "sure bet."

Those deca-millionaires I mentioned above who trust us with their income capital still aren't investing all of their cash with us. They diversify with other funds and other assets. Don't get too excited to invest more than you can afford to lose.

Watch our for long-term schemes intended to get you to invest a little, show you a paper return or even return your capital, only to later ask for increasingly larger investments. This is investor grooming, plain and simple.

✅ Also watch out for over caution: it's important to take action with an appropriately sized investment to build trust, sleep at night, and build wealth. No matter how careful you are, eventually, you will lose money. Hopefully never with us, but in this investing journey, you must accept that you will lose money. Keep it spread around and keep it boring to keep it safe, but don't sit out of the game.

We make sure that our investors' goals align with whether and how much they invest with us. While we are not financial advisors, we want an overwhelmingly successful track record and cannot afford to allow an investor to overexpose themselves into our fund. Most reputable fund managers will have a fund minimum (ours is $50k) and maximums ($2.85M) and sometimes even a cap as a percentage of net worth. Operators and managers who respect and encourage your diversification long term are a key indicator of trustworthiness.

That's one reason we only work with accredited investors: from a business standpoint, fund economics require a higher minimum at $50k, and we don't feel comfortable allowing most unaccredited investors to commit that to one deal or even one fund. That may change in the future, but our current fund is only open to those who demonstrate a financial ability to participate.

Navigating the red flags in today’s online national and global investment environment where you know so many people who can help or cheat you is no small feat. But there's also a diversification advantage with knowing so many people with so many options!

We want to be one of the real estate investment managers you trust, but just one of them. Trust is earned through transparency, experience, and aligning interests. We live and pay our own bills by these principles every day, offering you a stable, predictable way to build wealth.

Whether you’re ready to dip your toes into the trust pond with a small initial investment or looking for a powerful income stream with our fund maximum, we’re here to help you achieve financial freedom one smart, boring, secure investment at a time.

Join our accredited investor portal today if you are an accredited investor looking to earn the easiest passive cash flow you've ever made. Give us a try at 10 or 12% returns and see why our investors trust us with their financial futures.