Marcus Chan

Helping AEs earn $500K+ and max their potential to achieve freedom, fulfillment, & security without grinding or slimy sales tactics | Team + Individual Programs | 4X Salesforce Top Influencer | WSJ Best-Selling Author

Three quarters in a row, the number slipped.
The CRO was out of answers.
Reps were burning out, the board was circling, and pressure was suffocating.

After one framework from our Revenue Engine OS™, that same org hit 114% the next quarter — with no new hires and no extra leads.

A $40M HR tech firm was losing 6 out of 10 deals to “no decision.”
Their pipeline looked full. It was fiction.
After installing our discovery system, deal velocity jumped 65% and win rates climbed 47%.

A fintech startup took 14 months to ramp reps.
After Venli, they did it in 6 and doubled first-year retention.

That is where we step in — when chaos meets quota pressure.

At Venli Consulting, we help CROs, VPs of Sales, and Revenue Leaders fix the invisible breakdowns that quietly drain $2–$10M+ in revenue every year.

Every strategist and trainer on our team has led sales organizations from the trenches.
We have carried quota, built teams, and scaled revenue firsthand.

Because most sales orgs do not have lazy reps.
They have leaky systems:

→ Discovery that fails to create urgency
→ Demos that die in silence
→ Managers stuck chasing deals instead of building people

I’m Marcus Chan, Founder & CEO of Venli and creator of the Revenue Engine OS™, a proven system used by 100+ organizations to turn chaos into predictable growth.

Before Venli, I led a $195M/year Fortune 500 sales organization, earned 12 promotions in 8 years, and authored a Wall Street Journal bestselling book.

Recognized by Salesforce, LinkedIn, and Forbes, I’ve spent my career helping sales leaders stop gambling on effort and start scaling with systems.

If you lead a sales organization generating at least $10M+ annually, I can show you exactly where your revenue is leaking — and how to fix it systematically so you can scale to $100M and beyond.

👉 Benchmark your revenue engine: https://venli.co/47c-sta-vsl

📕 232-page tactical playbook (50,000+ leaders): https://venli.co/xxt-sfss-book

💻 100+ hours of elite B2B sales training: https://urlgeni.us/youtube/channel/marcuschan

Predictability is not luck.
It is engineered.

President / Founder

We help AE’s earn $250K-$500K+ and develop record-breaking sales skills.

We provide proven sales coaching + training for reps and teams teaching the exact President’s Club winning system that helped me close $140M ARR and hit 100-250% to quota 13 years in a row.

With over a decade of winning awards, crushing sales quotas, and sales leadership experience, we can help you transform your results! Yes, we are sales coaches that have actually achieved real proven results consistently before we started the business!

In under 5 years we've grown from 0 to 600+ clients and have achieved a few of the following things:

✅ 4X Salesforce Top Sales Influencer to Follow
✅ Wrote a Wall Street Journal and Amazon Best Selling Sales Book
✅ LinkedIn Top Voice - Sales: #5 out of 300M+ active users
✅ Featured in Forbes, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! News, MarketWatch, CNBC, and more!

Make sure to access our free most popular free training resources including our on-demand no cost training in the Featured section of my profile.

Grow Your Cashflow

Grow Your Cashflow helps accredited investors ($3M+ net worth) build diversified passive income portfolios through strategic, cash-flowing alternative investments. Our mission is to simplify investing, empower financial freedom, and enable our clients to live life on their terms.

What We Do:
→ High Cash Flow Investments: Deliver consistent monthly income by focusing on opportunities in real estate, private equity, and other alternative assets.

→ Strategic Partnerships: Partner exclusively with top-tier operators to ensure stability and expertise. We invest in every deal alongside our clients, aligning interests and building trust.

→ Hands-On Guidance & Transparency: Provide end-to-end support—from deal analysis to execution—helping investors navigate the complexities of alternative investments confidently.

Key Achievements:
→ Helped clients generate over $120,000/yr in monthly passive income.
→ Curated a portfolio of 6+ vetted investment opportunities in 2023 alone.
→ Built partnerships with operators managing over $5 billion in assets.

How We Help:
→ Eliminate the stress of managing volatile markets by offering reliable, cash-flowing investments.
→ Build portfolios tailored to each investor’s financial goals.
→ Empower investors to reclaim time and freedom while building wealth.

👉 Ready to start building your financial independence?

Message me directly or sign up for your free Passive Income Starter Kit (link in bio).

Founder & CEO

Pascal Wagner Holdings

Pascal Wagner Holdings is my personal investment and advisory portfolio, focused on high-yield real estate investments, high-growth startups, and alternative assets. My portfolio reflects a strategic approach to wealth building through diversified investments and trusted partnerships.

Advisory Roles
Serve as Board Member/Observer for:
→ Forecastr (forecastr.co) – Financial forecasting software for startups.
→ Cubby Beds (cubbybeds.com) – Transformative sleeping solutions for children with special needs.


Investment Portfolio
Pre-IPO and Angel Investments:
→ Forecastr – Financial modeling for startups.
→ Enaia – Innovative tech solutions for scaling startups.
→ SpaceX – Space exploration and advanced transportation.
→ Stripe – Online payment processing for internet businesses.
→ PadSplit – Affordable shared housing for workforce tenants.
→ Sheets & Giggles – Sustainable eucalyptus bedding products.
→ Machinery Partner – Equipment marketplace for small contractors.
→ Favs – Community-driven e-commerce recommendations platform.


Real Estate Investments (Co-Living Capital):
→ Built a portfolio of 11 co-living properties in Atlanta, Georgia, generating sustainable monthly cash flow.
→ Developed rental models achieving 90%+ occupancy rates by transforming underutilized assets into vibrant, cash-flowing communities.


Real Estate Funds:
→ Oil & Gas: LCP Chocwell 10A.
→ ATMs: Real Asset Investor – Fund 5.
→ Self-Storage: Reliant Capital Management – Fund 3.
→ Debt Funds: DLP Capital – Debt Lending Fund, Preferred Credit Fund.
→ Multi-Family: Rise at Suncrest, Cardone Capital – Fund 20, Quantum Capital – Highland Park & Penn.

Founder

Techstars

As Fund & Portfolio Manager at Techstars, I led the deployment of $150 million across three years, investing in over 200 high-potential early-stage startups. My role involved creating scalable systems to identify, evaluate, and invest in top-tier opportunities, ensuring strategic allocation across diverse industries and geographies.

Key Achievements:
→ Capital Deployment: Oversaw the allocation of $150 million in venture capital investments, driving portfolio growth and targeting startups with exceptional scalability and market potential.

→ Deal Sourcing & Evaluation: Developed a comprehensive system to analyze thousands of startups, enabling efficient decision-making and ensuring investments focused on the most promising companies.

→ Board Participation & Founder Mentorship: Provided hands-on support to portfolio companies as a board member, guiding founders on growth strategies, fundraising, and operational improvements.

→ Portfolio Value Creation: Played a critical role in securing equity positions in high-growth startups, aligning investments with Techstars’ strategy and contributing to a high-performing portfolio.

Fund & Portfolio Manager

Walkthrough (a PlanOmatic brand)

After buying & selling 4 properties, I realized how backwards and outdated the real estate industry was. 

I searched on Google & Yelp for photographers, inspectors & appraisers only to find many of them couldn't help me within the next 3 weeks to meet a deadline. After 15 phone calls and hours of searching I finally found someone who could meet with me in 2 weeks but they would only accept checks and took their sweet time getting everything I needed back to me. 

In the age of being able to instantly book a ride (Uber) or vet different places to stay (AirBnB), I knew there was a great opportunity to bring the industry to the 21st century. 

To solve these problems, at Walkthrough we enabled agents (and any other home owners) to book the services they needed, when they needed it, and at the best price without sacrificing quality. All of this was done through an easy online app, filled with reviews & instant booking.

We built what I wish I had when I bought & sold my first few properties. I went on to sell the company to a national photography firm called PlanOmatic in 2019. 

---Here are a few things I accomplished---
‣ Pre-sold $5,000 in orders from customers before any code was written or product existed.

‣ Grew Walkthrough from $0 to $10,000+/mo in revenue in 6 months and ultimately to above $55,000+/mo from 3,000+ customers.

‣ Scaled the company from just an idea to 47 team members and launched 6 markets. 

‣ Tested 27+ acquisition channels before focusing on a channel that repeatedly converted at a 33% conversion rate with a ~$30 CAC.

‣ Raised $2M+ in funding, directly managed 3 engineers and an 8 person operations team, as well as negotiated & led the company to an acquisition.

‣ 3x company learning speed by introducing the ‘Northstar' growth framework and running 1 experiment per team member per week.

‣ Used the weekly ‘Traction’ framework to align the Support team to reduce ‘time to ticket resolution’ from 40 hrs down to ~4.5 hrs in less than 12 weeks.

Chief Executive Officer

Online Ad Labs (Acquired by PosterBrain)

I helped ecommerce businesses who advertised on Facebook get a higher return on their ad spend. 

Some of these companies we're pretty awesome to work with like Barbell Shrugged, The Amazing Seller, Inflowstyle, and the multimillion dollar brands Masterclass, Mahabis, & BC-Loans. 

After reading "Work The System" by Sam Carpenter I systematized everything and then grew the team to 5 people. It allowed me to live the 4 hour work week, live in Bali and travel all across Asia for 9 months. 

I learned how to hire & manage people, build processes & procedures, and how to fire clients that I didn't like to work with.  Thankfully, I was lucky enough to build something someone else thought was valuable. In June of 2016 I sold the company and moved on to bigger and more inspiring projects.

---Here are a few things I've accomplished here---
‣ Signed & managed 54 contracts with advertising budgets totaling over $1,200,000 delivering on the Facebook & Google platforms.

‣ Grew the team to 5 members and systematized operations to be turn-key, ultimately leading us to an acquisition.

‣ Increased ROI on Ad Spend by 7x for ~80% of the 54 companies we took on (typically reducing their cost per lead from ~$8 to below ~$1) through proper copywriting & detailed customer segmentation.

Elevate Mastermind

After graduating college I realized that a lot of my success would be determined by the people I surrounded myself with. I didn't know many entrepreneurs that could be my support system so I pulled in a few friends to help me organize an event to meet all of the entrepreneurs I had been following on "the internet" for the last several years. 

I rented a huge mansion in Breckenridge to throw our event in the first year, and then found a beach house in Bahamas the 2nd year. Somehow I managed to figure out how to have my favorite entrepreneurs buy tickets to attend an event put on by me - some random guy who just graduated college. The flow of the event focused on building deep relationships so instead of sitting around conference tables, we went on adventures, had snowball fights and went deep sea fishing together. 

I now have a solid new group of people I can call friends that have helped me achieve and become the man I am today.

Co-Founder

NotaryElite

Sick of trading time for money, I went through a program called The Foundation which taught the fundamentals of how to start a software company (i.e. building a product instead of a service).

I got on the phone with Notaries (I don't even remember how I fell into this niche) asking them what their problems were, what solutions to those problems could be, how much they'd pay to have those problems solved, and then somehow convinced several of them to pay me 6 months up front for a discount so I could use their money to build their dream product. 

I called it NotaryElite. It was my first crack at building a software company which answered calls on a notaries behalf and scheduled appointments for them in their calendar while they were unable to answer the phone on the road or in meetings. 

I was super proud of building this company - it took a lot of sweat and hustle to get this off the ground but maybe a little too late, I realized the probability of ever earning more than $10k in revenue per month with our product was extremely unlikely because the market size was too small. 

Lesson learned.

You better believe I'll do my research of market potential before starting any new company in the future.

Pünkt IT Consulting

This was my first step up after selling candy bars between classes for $0.50 profit in high school (which apparently is pretty illegal) to buy my first macbook. 

With the goal of making ends meet and graduating college debt free, I helped local companies build websites, provided them web hosting, and had my first shot at helping companies with Facebook marketing. I even fixed a few computers and ran a computer tech shop. 

It was the first time I learned to sell to businesses, write an invoice, charge ahead of time for my services instead of chasing people for payments, and learned what it was like to trade time for money.

Everyone wants to build passive income, and I figured out how.

With over $250K/year in passive income from 30+ investments, years of venture capital experience deploying $150M at Techstars, and a proven system, I can help you build a reliable cash-flowing portfolio (without spending years figuring it out).

→ In 2020: I started from scratch with $0 in passive income.
→ In 2021: I took on the responsibility of managing my family’s finances after losing my dad, ensuring my mom could retire with peace of mind.
→ In 2024: I built a $250K/year portfolio and helped 10+ executives start their journey to financial freedom.

I’ve worked with busy, high-earning professionals to eliminate stress from volatile markets, create passive income portfolios tailored to their goals, and regain time for what matters most.

Here's how I can help you:
→ Download my Passive Investing Starter Kit—trusted by 1,000+ investors. It’s your first step to building a reliable cash-flowing portfolio. (Link in bio)

→ Join the Cashflow Academy to learn how to create your own investment thesis, find pre-vetted opportunities, and start generating passive income.

→ Explore Curated Investments with exclusive access to pre-vetted opportunities, including multifamily real estate, high-yield funds, and alternative assets with built-in tax advantages.


If you're not ready for any of that yet, no worries! Stick around—I share insights on investing smarter, building passive income, and creating a portfolio that works for you.

See you on the feed 👋.

Pascal Wagner

Want to avoid losing $50,000+ on your next real estate deal?

Here are the 4 assumptions that will make or break your returns — and most investors never stress-test them.

We all (should) know that projections are just guesses.
But these 4 variables have the biggest impact on the outcome of a deal.

From reviewing 1,000+ commercial real estate deals, here’s what consistently moves the numbers the most:

1) Rent Growth Projections

Are they assuming modest rent bumps or aggressive increases?

You can cross-check their numbers in 5 minutes using YoY rent data on Zillow or Reventure.

If their assumptions outpace the actual market, that’s not a business plan — that’s optimism.

2) Occupancy Rates

Are they projecting occupancy above the market average?

If yes, how are they getting there?

→ Lower rents?
→ Better amenities?
→ Stronger execution?

If they can’t articulate it clearly, don’t trust the projection.

3) Exit Interest Rates

What rate are they assuming when they sell or refinance?

A lot can change in 5 years.

If the returns only work when rates fall… that’s not underwriting — that’s hope.

4) Operating Expense Growth

Are they assuming realistic increases for insurance, taxes, maintenance, and other operating costs?

In many markets, the biggest expense lines — especially insurance and maintenance — have been rising 4–8% per year, not the old 2–3% underwriting standard.

If they assume flat expenses, the deal’s in trouble before it starts.

And the best part?
These are all 5-minute checks you can run on any deal.

You don’t need hours of research — just a simple stress test.

A deal might “look great” on paper…
but if the assumptions are off, your actual results can look very different.

Am I missing anything? What else do you check before investing?

Sharing How I Built $250K+/Year Portfolio with 30+ Investments | Best Ever CRE Podcast Host (200K+ Monthly Listeners) | Ex-VC @Techstars, Deployed $150M in 3 Years | Join 1K+ Investors Using My Free Starter Kit👇

A few things I’ve been reflecting on as we head into Thanksgiving:

1) Living in Miami

Miami has honestly been such a gift. The pace, the energy, the weather, the people — it’s a city that makes you feel alive and pushes you to dream bigger. I didn’t expect to love it this much.

2) More time with family

I got to see my mom a couple times this year. Those trips weren’t long, but they meant a lot. The older I get, the more I realize how rare it is to get time like that back.

3) Trips with Ashley

Getting away together — even just for a weekend — has been a reset button for both of us. Some of my favorite memories from this year came from those small windows where it was just the two of us.

4) The team around me

This year, a few people stepped up in big ways. It’s hard to put into words how much that matters when you’re building something that feels bigger than you. I’m grateful for the people in my corner.

5) Taking a bet on myself

I built a mentorship program from scratch and turned it into a real consulting revenue stream. It took longer and required more belief than I expected, but I’m genuinely proud of it.

→ As the year winds down, I’m taking time to reflect, simplify, and double down on what’s already working.

Do less — but better.

And keep improving the things that are already moving in the right direction.

Everyone was loading up their Amazon carts yesterday…

I loaded up on Bitcoin.

Didn’t realize Cyber Monday came with a BTC sale—down almost 5% this week.

Better than 99% of the deals I scrolled past.

Not sure what I was doing all these years. 😂

Ever driven past a parking lot and wondered who owns it — or how much it actually makes?

I recently sat down with Kevin Bupp, founder of Sunrise Capital Investors, to break down one of the most overlooked (and surprisingly profitable) niches in commercial real estate: parking.

Kevin’s team has acquired more than $400M in assets — including 4,000 mobile home parks and $150M in parking garages and surface lots across the country. With 20+ years of experience and multiple market cycles under his belt, he explains why he’s doubling down on this niche… and why almost no LPs are watching it.

Here’s what we covered:
 ✅ Why parking lots often outperform multifamily on a hassle-to-return basis
 ✅ How Sunrise blends mobile home parks and parking assets in one fund to balance steady cash flow with long-term appreciation
 ✅ The macro trends driving supply compression and stable demand in parking
 ✅ How self-driving technology, urban redevelopment, and zoning shifts could transform this overlooked sector
 ✅ Why “highest and best use” can create asymmetric upside for investors
 ✅ The biggest mistakes LPs make when evaluating alternative asset classes

If you’re an LP looking for stable, tax-advantaged income and diversification beyond multifamily, this conversation will show you how institutional investors are quietly repositioning capital toward these low-volatility, cash-flow-driven assets.

YouTube link in the comments 👇

“Time freedom is more important to me now than hitting another bonus.”

That line came from a conversation with an investor last quarter.

For years, he thought more income would fix everything:

The stress.
The long hours.
The constant pressure to perform.

But every raise came with more responsibility. 

More meetings, more people to manage, and less time to live.

Eventually, he realized what most high earners figure out too late:

Increasing your active income doesn’t buy freedom.

It just buys a fancier treadmill.

Freedom starts when you convert your earned income into passive income.

Because that’s what lets you pull the ripcord when you’re ready.

It’s not about quitting tomorrow.

But it is about building options today.

So if you’re still chasing the next raise, pause for a second and ask yourself:

“Am I building income that keeps me trapped…or income that sets me free when I’m ready to walk away?”

Because one path gives you more money.

The other gives you the power to choose how you spend your time.

P.S. If you earn $250K+ a year and want to start converting your active income into passive income, check out my Passive Investing Starter Kit.

It gives you instant access to 25 cashflowing deals averaging 18%+ returns — so you can start planning your exit while you’re still earning.

Visit my bio to get your copy today.

I’ve got $1M in redemption requests out right now.

And every day that passes, I trust the GPs less.

A redemption request is when an investor asks a fund to return their money.

If an investor requests redemption, they’re not making a suggestion.

They want their money back.

This isn’t a “take your time” situation.

Because liquidity matters more than ever right now. 

I’m playing defense with my money, moving more into cash and Treasuries to build up dry powder.

But I’ve got over $1M in redemption requests out right now across several private funds.

Some have been pending 45+ days.

One since July.

Technically, most funds say they’ll process within 90 days.

But when the fine print says “quarterly liquidity,” that can easily turn into six months.

And let me tell you, those six months feel long.

Every week that goes by, I start to wonder if I'll ever see the wire.

At this point, it's really killed my trust with some people. 

And when you invest $100,000+ with someone, it's concerning when they avoid you. 

→ But private funds aren’t the stock market.

They’re illiquid by design.

I understand that. 

But how you handle redemptions says everything about how you handle your business. 

Because when someone redeems, it’s not a suggestion.

It’s a request for their money...now. 

P.S. For GPs reading this, how are you communicating with LPs when redemptions stack up?

It’s surprising how much your life improves when you stack tiny habits.
 
A few things quietly made my life better this year:
 
1) Walking more
 
When I moved to Miami, I told myself, “Alright, I’m ready to step up and finally get a six-pack.”
 
At the time, I was averaging around 7,500 steps a day. Nothing too impressive.
 
Then I bought a walking pad for my desk and started walking during one meeting a week.
Then two.
Then most of them.
 
Now I regularly hit 12–15k steps a day without thinking about it.
 
I look leaner, I feel better, and it’s honestly one of the easiest habits I've ever built. 
 
(Photos to come soon 😉)
 
Wild how such a simple thing can change your whole baseline.
 
2) Treating social media like a craft
 
This one surprised me too.
 
Posting consistently takes time and effort — way more than people think — but it’s been worth it.
 
Every single client I’ve worked with this year came from social.
 
On LinkedIn, I’ve been growing around 350 followers a month.
On YouTube, my videos now get 300+ views in the first week.
 
It’s been fun to learn, fun to iterate, and fun to feel like I’m finally getting the hang of it.
 
It’s starting to feel like a real skill.
 
3) Building momentum slowly
 
Not everything has to be sprint → burnout → repeat.
 
Some things get better when you show up a little bit every day and let the reps stack.
 
Walking more.
Creating more.
 
Being a little more visible.
Just nudging things forward.
 
None of it is flashy.
But it’s working.
 
Can you tell?

Bitcoin just dropped 30% — from around $126K to the low-$80Ks.

Whenever we get a move like this, I catch myself doing the same thing:

I start digging. Charts, articles, graphs… anything that helps me double-check whether I still understand why I own this.

A lot of my friends say the same thing every time:

→ “I don’t get Bitcoin. It doesn’t cash-flow. What’s the value here?”

I used to ask that too.

But then you step back and look at what’s actually happening around us:

→ The dollar losing ~25% of its purchasing power in five years
→ Government spending exploding
→ Savings getting quietly eroded
→ A financial system that chips away at you slowly

At some point, owning a scarce, non-sovereign asset starts to feel less like speculation… and more like insurance.

Bitcoin isn’t perfect.
It’s volatile.
It’s frustrating.
It doesn’t send distributions.

But it does protect you from something every investor underestimates:
→ your dollars getting diluted while you sleep.

Here’s one of the pieces I revisited this week during the drop:
https://lnkd.in/ebaPBZG5

Did you hold through this move?
Or did it make you second-guess things?

Open article: Part 1: Coup to Code - The End Run Around the Fed by marylandhodl.substack.com

Part 1: Coup to Code - The End Run Around the Fed

Everyone wants more affordable housing. 

But no one wants it in their backyard.

That’s the core issue no one in real estate wants to talk about.

People say they want lower rents.

They say they want to “solve the housing crisis.”

But the moment you try to put an actual solution next to them…

Like co-living, micro-units, or shared housing…

They fight it. 

I’ve been looking a lot into why we have an affordable housing crisis, and the more I dig, the more obvious it gets:

 It's NIMBYism. 

"Not in my backyard." 

No one wants a house next to them that has bedrooms added by dividing living rooms, dining rooms, or garages.

They don’t want micro-units.

They don’t want co-living.

They don’t want anything that looks like it’s meant for someone who isn’t a top-echelon high earner.

Because there’s a stigma:

Micro-units = slumlords, crime, mental illness, drugs, homelessness, and overcrowding.

And because of that, cities make it nearly impossible to build them.

→ Look at Seattle.

Back in 2012, they allowed micro-apartments.

Developers actually started building them to spec.

Then the city slowly raised the minimum square footage you had to have per bedroom…

And then, a couple years in, they changed the zoning to basically not even allow them.

It’s wild.

There are plenty of people (myself included) who would build these structures.

But regulation blocks it.

Not economics or demand. 

But red tape from cities. 
 
→ So how do you solve the problem?

A few ideas: 

1). Stop pretending you can fix affordability without changing zoning.

2). Call NIMBYism what it is: “I want solutions, just not where I can see them.”

 3). Let developers build smaller units instead of forcing luxury square footage.

 4). Recognize that micro-units work in Asia, Europe, New York (and they can work here, too).

 5). Stop raising design requirements after builders already commit to projects.

Until something changes, we’re stuck in the same loop:

People say they want affordable housing....

They’re just not willing to live near it.

Writing on LinkedIn almost every day has been way harder than I expected.

Most mornings I’m asking myself:

“Do I actually have something worth saying today… or am I about to break the streak?”

I’m not doing it to “build an audience.”
I’m doing it because distribution is leverage—and the ability to communicate clearly online is only becoming more valuable.

But the process is messy.

I worry about sounding dumb.
Or watching something that felt sharp in my head fall apart on the page.

I’ve tried writers.
I’ve tried systems.
Still—my best ideas arrive late at night.

ChatGPT helps, but not by writing for me.
It helps me see my own thinking.

I’ll read a draft and immediately feel,
“Wait… that’s not quite right. What did I really mean?”

That’s when the real work begins—pulling on the deeper thread I almost skipped.
And here’s the surprising thing I’ve learned:

Your voice doesn’t appear fully formed.
You find it by publishing imperfect work in public.

It’s uncomfortable.
It’s messy.
But it’s also how you grow.

If you’ve ever considered sharing your thoughts more often, I’d encourage it.

The reps don’t just improve your writing—they sharpen how you think.

You've invested $250K across 5 deals.

But you still don't have a plan.

Some tax plays here. 
A little equity growth there. 
A syndication your friend told you about.

And now you're wondering why it all feels disconnected.

I've been there.

A few years ago, I was doing the same thing. 

Not gambling — just evaluating each deal in isolation instead of as part of a full strategy.

I only invested in things I believed were high quality:

→ Real estate in downtown Denver (because I knew the area)

→ Funds from well-known operators (because I didn't want to lose money)

→ Passive deals through my friend group (because I wanted to spread the risk)

I was investing in what I had access to...

But the market shifted, and the plan I had wasn’t designed for the conditions we ended up facing.

So if you've built your strategy from podcasts and LinkedIn posts, I get it. 

But you're not positioned to win, either.

→ Because when you invest without a plan, your portfolio isn't optimized for what you actually need. 

Maybe you need cash flow now, but half your capital is locked up in long-term equity plays.

That's why you need to ask yourself some hard questions:

→ What do I want my portfolio to look like in 5 years?
→ How do I balance cash flow vs. equity growth?
→ How do I know which deals fit my goals?

At the time, I wasn’t asking those questions yet — because my plan was built for a different stage.

And it left me with capital tied up in deals I wished I could reallocate.

But now I know better.

I'm not falling in love with deals that look good on paper.

Instead, I'm creating a structured portfolio with:

→ Targeted equity positions with clear upside
→ Monthly cash flow from low-volatility debt funds
→ Diversification across operators and asset classes

Don't wait until your portfolio underperforms to realize you needed a strategy from the start.

It’s the end of the year… 

You’ve made great income,
Your CPA mentioned you need depreciation, 
And every operator is promising massive write-offs.

But before you wire that $100K, here’s the truth: not all write-offs actually lower your taxes the way you think they do.

In this solo episode of The Passive Income Playbook, Pascal Wagner breaks down the 3 types of income the IRS recognizes — and how to align your investments so the write-offs you earn actually hit your tax return.

After personally investing $3.3M across 23 private deals, and managing capital professionally at Techstars ($150M deployed), Pascal shares the framework that turned one painful $40K tax surprise into a repeatable system for year-end planning.

Most investors chase “tax-advantaged” deals without understanding which bucket their income sits in — active, portfolio, or passive.

Once you learn how they actually work, you’ll never look at write-offs the same way again.

In this episode, you’ll learn:
✅ The 3 income buckets the IRS uses — and why mixing them up kills your deductions
✅ How to know which type of investment actually affects your taxes
✅ The 3 rare ways to offset active income (and when they actually apply)
✅ Why depreciation only works if your income is in the passive bucket
✅ The real reason wealthy investors “stack” funds and real estate strategically
✅ How to engineer after-tax returns instead of chasing headline IRRs

If you’re looking at deals right now and wondering “Which of these will actually help my taxes?” — this episode shows you exactly how to tell before you invest.

Youtube link in comments👇

Can you guess the #1 reason investors get wrecked?

(It’s not bad deals)
  
It’s not bad economics or poor operations, either. 

→ It’s because people invest in assets they don’t understand. 

I just came across a music royalty deal. 

They’re on their 4th fund. 

They’re crushing distributions. 

But I’m still hesitant to invest. 

Because I don’t understand how music royalties work and it’s completely outside my niche. 

So it carries even more risk because it’s unfamiliar to me. 

If you’re an investor, take this lesson to heart: 

My highest-performing investments were made in asset classes I researched and understood well. 

Education is your money’s best friend. 

I have never regretted digging deep into research before investing. 

But I have been burned by making rushed decisions. 

The good news: 

If you want to learn about passive investing, there’s never been a better time. 

There are hundreds of opportunities out there. 

And by reviewing them, you can build your knowledge as an investor. 

Want to start learning?

Grab my Passive Investing Starter Kit. 

It’s like a shortcut to finding great cashflowing deals.

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The Battle

Marcus Chan

Pascal Wagner

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taplio

The Battle

Marcus Chan

Pascal Wagner

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Pascal Wagner's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScorePascal Wagner's LinkedIn Performance