Considering a Life Switch?

**Barbara Friedberg** (0:01)
Welcome to the Money Tree Investing Podcast.

**Joel Steele** (0:04)
Stock market, wealth, personal finance, value stocks.

**Kirk Chisholm** (0:08)
Invest in your life. Hello, Smart Money Tree Podcast listeners. Welcome to this week's show. My name is Kirk Chisholm. I'll be your host. So today, I'm joined with Joel Steele. How are you doing, Joel?

**Joel Steele** (0:18)
I'm great, how are you?

**Kirk Chisholm** (0:19)
Great, we're glad to have you in the show. For listeners that don't know you, tell us a little bit about your background.

**Joel Steele** (0:23)
Well, my day job is I'm a financial advisor. I've owned my own practice, going back to 2006 or so. I started as an insurance agent, got into investments, and then I just branded myself as Steele Financial because I wanted to make sure people knew that I wasn't just trying to sell things, I was trying to help them solve their problems. And so Steele Financial Solutions, that third key word, really summarized what we did. And other than that, I've gotten into other things that have continued to keep me balanced and focused. I've got into professional sports ownership, I've become an author, I do some private equity, not just to make money, but to meet interesting people and try to solve some of the world's problems. And so I do things that are interesting, keep me sharp, keep me balanced, and keep me doing my day job, because at the end of the day, Kirk, you know we are helping a lot of people, because for some reason, finances are like a foreign language to most people.

**Kirk Chisholm** (1:18)
What are you doing with professional sports teams? How does that fit into what you do?

**Joel Steele** (1:22)
Well, about halfway through my career, so maybe about 12 years ago or so, I got a little bored. My income, my net worth were really going up in a great way. I was very happy about that, but my level of passion and purpose were really declining at an alarming rate.
And I said, you know, I had a business before this. I was in the restaurant business and that didn't work out, which we'll talk about maybe later. It's a very interesting story. I was making the money. All the things that you would think would make someone happy, but money isn't the only thing that makes us happy. And money is not a replacement for living with passion and purpose. What do I miss? What's missing from my life? That's why I feel like this. And one of the things was I miss sports. I miss playing sports. I miss watching sports and all those things. And so instead of just putting more money in an index or putting more money in the bank, I said, how can I write out a check and sort of play with my money? And that's where I started to look for opportunities in pro sports, specifically basketball. I looked at the NBA and I realized that I could not afford any percentage or fractional percentage of any NBA team.
But the NBA G League was something that I could afford to be a part owner of. And so I looked around at the landscape. There were not a ton of opportunities, but I did find one. And that's been an amazing experience. I've done that for five years now. And I also bought into a couple other different sports teams. It's just been fun. So to answer your question, it's a way to make money, but have a lot more fun with it and open up doors of opportunity to other people, other investments and all that good stuff.

**Kirk Chisholm** (2:52)
Are sports teams profitable? I mean, a lot of people do it just because they want to participate, but is it a profitable endeavor or is it just, you know, you're doing it for enjoyment?

**Joel Steele** (3:01)
Well, look, there's all different categories, right? One of the teams I was looking to invest in was out in Houston, and they wanted to put me into almost like a mutual fund where it was like, yes, you got involved with basketball, but it was also women's bull riding. And the rodeo association and some other obscure sport, and those, I think they'd probably do lose money. But I did it ultimately to try to make money.
But I'd say the experience so far is, you know, we do typically run a small loss, but you do have that appreciation play. And that's something I think people realize and expect with ownership is you might not make a lot of money with the revenue, but you're looking for that pop and that appreciation. And so far we are seeing that. So I'm very happy with my investment from a financial perspective.