Welcome back to another episode of the IRA Cafe podcast! Join Kyle Moody, Business Development Manager at American IRA, as he welcomes special guest Charlie Wessel, Principal at Cordell Capital, for an engaging discussion about self-directed IRAs, relationship-building in business, and the unique investment opportunities offered through private equity real estate. 

In this conversation, Kyle and Charlie explore Charlie’s professional journey from general contracting in Charleston, South Carolina, to founding Cordell Capital after seeking more time with family and better ways to invest. Charlie shares the value of relationships in life and business, recounting his path from running a roofing company and managing rental houses to structuring large-scale apartment and office deals for investors, many of whom use funds from self-directed retirement accounts. 

You’ll gain valuable insights into how deals with Cordell Capital are structured, why accredited investor status matters, and why Charlie prioritizes conservative investment strategies. Plus, the episode dives into the practicalities of using self-directed IRAs, what clients should expect when investing, and the meaningful “why” that drives Charlie’s business and personal life.

Key takeaways:

1. Relationship-Driven Business: Charlie Wessel emphasizes that all success in business and investing is grounded in building and maintaining genuine relationships, whether with partners, clients, or collaborators, and this principle has guided him throughout his career.
2. Transition to Private Equity Real Estate: After selling his general contracting firm to spend more time with family, Charlie discovered apartment complex investing, eventually moving into medical and law office deals and launching Cordell Capital to open up these opportunities for friends, family, and the public.
3. Working with Self-Directed IRAs: Cordell Capital collaborates with American IRA and other custodians to help accredited investors use their retirement funds in non-traditional assets, and Charlie notes that American IRA is notably easy to work with throughout the process.
4. Accredited Investor Requirements and Process: To invest with Cordell Capital, clients must provide an accreditation letter from a licensed CPA or attorney, and Charlie walks through the timeline and steps needed—from setting up a self-directed IRA to submitting all necessary documentation before a capital raise closes.
5. Conservative, Transparent Investment Approach: Charlie’s conservative philosophy, inspired by his grandmother Cordell’s prudent approach to money, means Cordell Capital avoids risky short-term debt and prioritizes transparency—providing clients with comprehensive due diligence materials, regular updates, and accessible communication through their online portal.

Whether you’re considering diversification for your retirement funds or simply want to understand how private equity real estate deals work, this episode offers a wealth of practical knowledge and thoughtful perspectives. Tune in to hear Charlie’s story, get expert tips on vetting investment opportunities, and discover how self-direction can help you achieve your own investment objectives while staying grounded in your personal “why.”

Ready to take your financial future into your own hands? Visit IRACafePodcast.com and book a quick call to learn more.

Hi everyone and welcome to another podcast installment on IRA Cafe hosted by American ira. And I'm Kyle Moody, the business development manager here at American ira. We are glad you're with us to learn a little bit more about what you can do with your self directed ira, how can you, and how you can invest that and how you can meet your investment objectives. We're so glad today to have our special guest, someone who actually goes all the way back with me on the days that I started here. As we've talked about it, Charlie Wessel, who is a principal at Cordell Capital, we, we, as we've talked about it, we think that he actually referred over one of my first clients that came in and that has been over eight years ago. And it has been great to have that business relationship. As Charlie and I've also talked, it's always been business back and forth, but we've never had the chance just to really, you know, kick it back and just really talk about each other there, really how we got into what we're doing. So I'm really glad we have that time today.

And as we all know in business it's always really good to know who you're doing business with. So, Charlie, thank you so much for joining me today.

I. 100%.

Yeah. And you know, I'm going to let you just take it away with your introduction about yourself, a little bit about yourself, background of how you got where you got, and we'll go from there.

Yeah, for sure. Kyle. Yeah, man, Yeah. I tell my son, I have a 16 year old son and I tell him all the time, man. Everything that I do in work is all about relationships. I mean really, everything we do in life is all about relationships. I mean, from, you know, him getting his girlfriend, you know, any kind of relationships we have with our investors, relationships that we have with you guys there at American ira. It's been a good run.

We have a lot of, a lot of yalls. A lot of yalls. Participants in a good bit of our deals. As a matter of fact, probably five or six deals of ours that we have seen. Self directed ira, people from American IRA and anybody that comes to us that doesn't have a self directed ira, I always send them an email straight over to Kyle.

Well, great, great. Appreciate that as always. So who's Charlie Wessel? Charlie, tell us how you got to be the principal at Corel Capital. Maybe a little bit of your background and what brought you to the stage?

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I sold a business back in 2016. I was, I had A general contractor firm here in Charleston, South Carolina that we built up pretty big. It was, it was doing well. It was just a lot of time and effort put into it and I was kind of ready to exit. I had small kids at the time and just never really, you know, I barely remember my son from the time he was born until he was about 44 years old. So I wanted to start making some more time for them. So I sold that business, started a roofing company.

When I did sell that business though, I have not missed a single field trip since 2016. For the kids school that was, you know, it was fun at first. Now it's embarrassing to them, but I'm still there on every single one of them. So anyways, you know, just to make time for my family and stuff. So I started the roofing company. You know, we had some money so we needed to invest it. We had rental houses. That was a gigantic pain in the behind doing rental houses.

So I knew that there had to be a better way. I'd lost a lot of money, you know, in the stock market before, so I was looking for something different. So that's when we found apartment complexes and you know, just the economies of scale. Currently we have just around a thousand doors of apartment complexes that we have brought investor capital to. Some we've exited and made our investors very happy with their final returns and some that we are currently have right now. I know a lot of people have been burnt by apartments that people, people bought probably two to four years ago. The good thing about us is that we are very conservative in what we bring our investor capital to. We did not get into any bridge debt or any short term debt on our apartments that we brought investor capital to.

Everything was long term. And so we're still making distributions to our investors where a lot of deals that got the short term or bridge loans, they had to refinance after a couple of years and that did not work out well for them with the, you know, current rates. So with that, I mean we, we've also in the past couple of years we kind of steered away from apartments for the time being. And it will have their apartments will have their place and time again, I promise. But you know, in the past year, couple of years we've closed on two medical office spaces, a law office across the street from a big courthouse full of different law offices. Both. All those deals were really about, you know, the tenant structure. There are triple net deals where it's just a boring deal which we like.

We like boring deals for our Investors, you know, those have made good returns, good, you know, depreciation for, for people that are able to take that as well as, you know, those were about location as well. Currently we also have a debt validation fund out that a big handful of your, your self directed RA customers have been involved in. And we're paying back 20% average average annual on that, paid out quarterly. So we've made a lot of your guys very happy with the deals that we've done.

Wonderful. Great. And you know, while we're on that track there, if anyone is watching or listening this and they've been wondering about how to get in this space, whether they're, you know, one of the things we talk about, I've always heard for years, especially in the investment space, is find your niche. You know, find one or two things that might interest you and put your money there. If you spread it out on every single thing that you can do, it might not be the best decision. So find your niche. And let's say somebody is deciding on a real estate transaction. They're deciding on private lending on something.

It seems like yours is almost a little bit of the best of both worlds on that where someone is able to funnel their money from their retirement account to you and you folks are taking care of the real estate. So tell us a little bit about why, what that investment looks like and then if someone is considering the self directed option, really what that looks like when working with American IRA as they're investing in Cordell Capital, for sure, believe.

It or not, we work with several different custodians out there. And American ira, and I'm not just saying this because I'm on your show, man, is by far the easiest one to deal with. I mean, you know, granted the due diligence part from a couple of them is just so over the top. But I get it that, you know, they're being careful, but you guys are just easy to deal with. You know, y', all, y' all make sure that y' all vet the guys like us that are, you know, bringing these deals to your investors as well. But as far as, you know, coming into these deals, I mean, you know, when, when we have one of these opportunities available, you know, just reaching out to us. And we were in constant contact with the good people at American IRA and they, you know, we team up and make sure everything runs smoothly. But it's, you know, we have a portal that all of our investors invest through.

So all their information is placed into that portal. They're able to see all the different investment opportunities that they're in. Also, the different investment opportunities that we offer that they're not in, that they, you know, they either chose not to do or, you know, didn't have. It wasn't the right time or whatever. But, yeah, so that, that, that portal, when they go in, we walk them through how to set everything up, and, yeah, they can see all their distributions, all the monthly and quarterly, you know, investor relation emails that we send out to everybody. So it's, you know, we try to make it easy for everybody to get into deals like this. That's usually not offered to the public people. I mean, this is why I started Cordell Capital was to bring opportunities like the ones that I was finding to invest our money in to my friends and family.

I mean, that's the reason I started it, really. I, you know, we didn't need to start it, but I just wanted friends and family to become involved. And once the friends and family came in, I was like, hey, let's offer this to, you know, the public out there. You know, you do have to be an accredited investor in our deals, but that's not really hard to do with the majority of your clientele there at American ira.

And that actually segues into one of my questions that I've been thinking about. I got this question yesterday, but yet it was from one of our clients. So assume that it's not an American IRA client or it's not someone that you have referred over to us yet. What are the questions? You've got to have a few questions that, you know, after the years of doing this, you're like, yep, that's getting ready to be the first question this person's going to ask. And there's, number two, what are the top questions that you get when someone is just on the ledge? They're getting ready to start with the investment. They think this is the direction they want to go. What do you normally field? And then follow that up with, what does your typical client look like?

Well, a big one is the accredited investors. I mean, not, not a ton of people know what that means. And that's, you know, all of our deals are set up with a SEC attorney. So we have to follow those guidelines. I mean, you know, accredited investor is someone that makes $200,000 or more per year filing single or $300,000 or more filing jointly, or they have a million dollars of net worth not including their personal homes. So that's a big question because not a lot of people know that when they're getting, just getting Started into this space, they can have a letter drafted by a licensed CPA or an attorney stating that they are an accredited investor. And that's the easiest way to do it. There are third party verification services out there but you have to submit ton of information to them.

It's easiest just to get your, your CPA to write that up for you. That, you know, our quarterly distributions, you know what that looks like, how that gets deposited back into their self directed ira, you know, and you know, we try to make it, like I said man, we try to make this as easy as possible for people. We, you know, it's, there's enough difficult things out there in the world that this, you know, investing in these types of deals doesn't need to be another one of them.

Great. You're definitely right about that. And I think one of the things that people notice in the self directed space that at least we've heard of is at least the paperwork, not just with us, but the industry out there. And, and then you know, that's usually it's an easy answer. It's, it's going to be just the, really the norm. It's not just the investment you're making, but you're making it with your self directed. Well, with your retirement funds. And so everybody wants to make sure there's also levels of compliance out there.

And you noted it earlier the, the SEC and then also the irs. We always want to make sure that everybody's always in check for that protection. So tell us a little bit about what someone needs say from American ira. You're getting ready to do a capital RA and you are referring someone over. Tell us a little bit about the timeline, the lead time that someone's going to have to be able to invest with you. As you know we have our timeline that it takes to really get someone's account open and then get it funded, which is always going to be the piece that takes the longest as we're waiting for funds from the outbound custodian, wherever they're bringing their funds from. But give us a little bit about the flavor of the timeline to invest with you, what you might require and if they're using their self directed ira, what that looks like, what you normally are expecting to have them bring in from us. And then what the typical investment might look like in the form of the distribution, excuse me, the dividends coming back in.

Yeah, so yeah, we look for, you know, first things first. I mean we need the accredited investor verification letter that and it's also really good if they Already have the account set up with you guys. Like, I mean the first call that I have with any invest, any new investor is are you going to be using a self directed ra? If they ask what that is, they're going to get an email introduction to you. So you know, we, we try to steer them in that direction to help them out with their, you know, retirement funds and taxes and all that stuff. And you know, we let you guys talk to them about all that. We, you know, I'm not a CPA or tax attorney or anything else, so. But you know that the accreditation letter, you know, even if we don't have a current opportunity ready to go, it's good that we already have that in hand for when the opportunity arises that they're ready to go. Because I do know it takes a couple of weeks, I think to set up the self direct IRA and all that stuff.

And you know, we, depending on the size of the raise it, we may fill that up in anywhere. I mean we filled up five to $10 million raises in anywhere from a week to three to four weeks is usually our timeline on getting that money in. So if they haven't already set up an account with you guys, that's gonna bite into that timeline. And also CPAs are not the fastest guys out there on getting that, that accreditation verification letter back. So that usually takes, you know, a week or so to get that from those guys as well. And that letter is good for five years. And they can use that not just with our firm, but most of the firms that, you know, deal with your clientele, if they have to be an accredited investor, if it is a 506C offering, then they will need that letter. So it's best just to go ahead and have that in hand.

Yeah. Probably cost you 100 to 200 bucks from your, your CPA to get that.

I was just about to ask you that is who is usually, who do you require that letter is provided from? Is it going to be a cpa? Could it be their financial advisor? Could it be their personal banker? Or is there a certain person that that needs to come from?

It has to, per the SEC regulations, it has to be a licensed CPA or attorney.

Gotcha. Gotcha. And really quick, for everybody that's listening out there, this is actually important. I'm glad that Charlie said this because I don't want anyone to think that we also give any advice. We do not believe it or not, even though we are the conduit for the self directed retirement accounts. It's your retirement account, whether that's going to be a traditional or a roth, a Solo 401K. And those funds are going to be used to make any of the investments that you're wanting to make. And the alternative space, we actually are not permitted to give any tax, legal or financial advice, suggestions or opinions.

We're not a fiduciary. We don't even hold one cent of your funds in house. It's all going to be held in the bank. Right. So for us, we're just the record keepers of your account. And with that, we only legally and lawfully move the monies where you direct us to do so. So if you are new to this space and you keep hearing us talk about self direction, I will tell you really quickly, a self directed ira. An IRA is an ira, but self directed is where you have the ability to truly invest in the non traditional asset diversifying out of a portfolio that you might have in the stock market right now to where Vanguard or Merrill lynch is not going to custody this, this private entity investment with Charlie's group.

But we are the account that you'd be able to have to make that investment objective become a reality. Just know that if you do have any questions on the legality of anything on a taxable event that might occur, you are always encouraged, whether we tell you or not, whether you think so or not, you're always encouraged to run everything by your tax professional, tax attorney. If you do have questions on anything, you always want to do your due diligence on any of your companies out there. So I'm glad that Charlie had mentioned that because. Yeah, to kind of piggyback on that.

To kind of piggyback on that. I mean, on our portal, on every deal that we have on our portal, there is just a slew of documents on the particular investment that they're looking at. So we always hold a webinar. If they weren't able to make it to the live webinar, then there's a recording of it. There's all the, you know, all the SEC docs, the, you know, subscription agreement, the ppms, you know, all the information we have about that specific investment is all on our portal. And they are definitely, you know, we want them to do their own due diligence on each deal that we offer out there.

Great. And you know, that actually also reminds me of something. I got this question yesterday and it's fitting and unfortunately we in our space, we're not permitted to steer. So where Charlie can refer folks to us all day he has known for years that it can't be reciprocated because we can't say, hey, call this group, invest with them. We're not permitted to do that. We can't broker anything. However, imagine somebody does not have a self directed account yet and they are looking to get into this type of investing world. One of the questions was, well, how do I find a company that might be doing this? I told folks, well, you know, start googling capital raises.

Maybe you wouldn't believe what might be right around the corner from where you live right now, but what are some tips that you can, what are tips that you can give someone to drive them to your site to learn about you?

Yeah, I mean we're, we're on, you know, all kinds of social media. We're on Facebook. LinkedIn is a big one for us because we really do kind of cater to more professionals and as well as retired guys as well. And, and you know, we have Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and you know, I guess if they were to go online and look for, you know, any kind of private equity or you know, real estate syndications or something like that, they would be able to find, find some operators that are out there. You really want to vet these operators and make sure that they, they've, you know, done what they said they were going to do. And you know, how many, how many deals have they done? How many have they exited? You know, what are the returns from those exits? I personally know a lot of people in this business in the private equity space and private equity, real estate as well as traditional private equity. And I mean, it really is full of good guys. You know, it really, I mean, the bad actor thing, rarely do you hear about it.

They are out there. But it's, you know, it's a lot of people, you know, in our group that really just want to help, help share the opportunities with everybody else that's out there. I mean, you know, these, these opportunities 15 years ago were just held for the top 1%. I mean these were for the very wealthy guys in our, in our world and not really shared with a lot of the traditional public people that are out there. I mean, yeah, you have to be an accredited investor, but that certainly doesn't mean you're taught, you know, you're part of the 1%. I mean, it's, you know, so we're glad to be able to offer these kind of investments to the everyday guy with a good retirement fund.

True, true. What, how many deals do you think you might have going on at any one time at Any one time.

We have had two going on at one time, and that was one too many. We prefer to stick to one. One. Yeah, I'm kind of a one horse, you know, one. One pony show. I like to just focus on one. Like I said before, man, we don't have to do this. You know, this is.

This is fun for me.

Right?

It's fun. I mean, I'm in the office Monday through Thursday. I play golf on Fridays, and I'm dad Saturday, Sunday, and every day after I get off from work, I'm Dad. Except for Fridays. Fridays I play golf. That's Dad's day.

I think one of the things that people are hearing on that, definitely me as well. The. The father of somebody who's getting into fishing and then also a travel, baseball. Dad is for. For those of you out there, it's called finding your why or knowing your why. And Charlie definitely found his why on that one. And I always ask folks, it'll actually going to be a part of a presentation that I'm doing tomorrow. There will be a what is your why? And that's so important, whether you're in Charlie's chair or definitely whether you're in front of your own screen right now getting ready to make the leap into investing.

So do you have a current deal going on right now, or when's the next one coming up?

We do. We have a debt validation fund that we have still have a couple million dollars left to raise on this deal. And if you'd like some more information on that, I mean, it's, you know, it's a. It's something. It's more private equity than private equity real estate. So it is. Yeah, it's a tremendous deal. It's offering 20%, you know, average annual return, and that's API.

That's like per year. We pay that out. So we pay out 5% quarterly to our investors. And it's, you know, we're putting it into a single company. So it's, It's. It's a really good deal. It's a very unique deal. But my partner who is in it is.

He is a licensed CPA and he is in their books every single month. He's deep in it. So it's something that I feel comfortable with, you know, presenting to our. Our investors. Wonderful.

Wonderful. I tell you before we wrap up, and I let you hop here, unfortunately, it's only Tuesday, so won't. Won't be able to let you hop out to the golf course. You got a couple more days for that. But what are some closing, what are some closing thoughts? You have any tips for anyone before we wrap up? Charlie?

You know, if you, if you're interested in anything that we have had going on or just to find out more about us, you know, you can reach out Cordell Capital c-o r d e-l dash l capital dot com. And our. My email is charlie cordellcapital dot com. You're more than welcome to reach out. That way you can find us on Facebook, Instagram, you know, we're out there. Cordell is actually my grandmother's name. She was very tight with her money. She was raised during the Depression and when she passed away, she left us a good chunk of money that we wish she wouldn't have.

We wish she'd have spent it while she was here. But. So that's kind of how I want to, you know, focus. My company is in the conservative way that my grandmother, you know, took care of her money and took care of her family, really.

You know, and one of the things that this is actually, this is funny how many of you out there can know someone for a long time and you'll just be sitting there over dinner with a group of folks and the person you know for a long time says something and you're like, I, I didn't know that. I've spoken to Charlie numerous times per month over the years, over eight and a half years. And I've always wondered where Cordell came from. And folks, I'm with you right now when I'm telling you that I just learned that Cordell was Charlie's grandmother's name. So I always want to make it a point to learn something every day when I'm in a conversation with someone about this, them and sometimes no matter how long I've known him. So Charlie, I appreciate, I appreciate getting them to learn something on that. So.

Yep. And there's a picture on this side right here that's actually me and her right there, right behind me. So.

Gotcha. Gotcha.

Me holding her hand.

She's always with you. Well, listen, if you want to learn more from Charlie, he's giving you his information. And if you want to learn more about how you can move funds into a self directed IRA with American IRA and how you can use that to reach your investment objectives, we'd love to be a resource for you. If this is something that you've been thinking about doing you've heard a lot about. One of my biggest things is education and sharing the information and then being able to get you started on your journey, so you are more than welcome to as you see it there, visit american ira.com feel free to book a consultation with myself or a member of our sales team. You can reach me at Kyle k y l ericmericanira.com and my direct phone number is 828-412-8123. I'd love to be able to answer any questions you have and see how we can get you on your investing journey. So Charlie, thank you so much.

I greatly appreciate it. It's always good to see you and and talk to you and thank all of you out there for taking some time out of your day to listen to this, to watch this. I hope you've learned something and we look forward to seeing you again on the next installment of the IRA Cafe.

American IRA LLC, a North Carolina LLC, acts as a third party administrator for New Vision Trust Co. A state chartered South Dakota trust company as a neutral, self directed IRA Administrator. American IRA does not recommend or endorse any investments, individuals or entities, including financial representatives, promoters or companies. American IRA and the IRA CAFE are not responsible for other statements, representations or agreements, nor do we evaluate the quality or profitability of any investment American IRA does not endorse. Guests on the IRA Cafe podcast guest opinions are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of American Irish ira, its subsidiaries, associates or custodian. Participation in the podcast is voluntary and no compensation is provided. American IRA is not a fiduciary and cannot offer financial advice. Please consult your CPA or another professional before making financial decisions.