From rural England to the heights of high-net-worth circles, Ash Atkinson’s journey offers a rare look into the elite equestrian world and the luxury investment strategies that followed. In this episode, Ash reveals his strategic approach to market timing, reputation-building, and managing wealth across borders. Listen in to uncover the untapped opportunities and unique insights in today’s investment landscape.

Key takeaways to listen for

• [13:29] Building trust in the luxury market and expanding to various asset classes
• [16:57] Why timing and market insight is essential in the exotic car investment space
• [21:04] The role of Pearson Equity Group and how private equity creates new opportunities
• [23:22] Benefits of the fund-of-funds model in providing rigorous due diligence for investors
• [26:48] Why pooling capital helps negotiate better terms and boosts investor returns
• [30:16] The value of investing in legacy businesses during a generational wealth transfer

Resources mentioned in this episode

• [20:41] Pearson plc

About Ash Atkinson

Ash is a seasoned business development professional with a global background in equestrian management, luxury assets, and high-net-worth investments. Originally from Sudbury, England, Ash began his career managing top equestrian operations in Germany and Mexico before moving to the U.S., where he expanded into luxury real estate, jet charters, and alternative asset investments. Now based in Wellington, FL, he works with ultra-high-net-worth clients and SMEs, focusing on business growth, efficiency, and strategic exits. Holding multiple Florida licenses, Ash leverages his diverse experience to optimize businesses and drive innovation.

Connect with Ash

• Instagram: @ashatkinson1
• LinkedIn: Ash Atkinson

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Sponsored by Nomad Capital

Looking to invest in self-storage? Nomad Capital converts vacant big-box retail spaces across the Southeast into climate-controlled storage, with a target of 20% annual returns. Our fund combines low leverage and high depreciation for strong growth and valuable tax benefits. By buying properties at deep discounts, we often achieve break-even at just 40% occupancy. Join a proven model in a resilient asset class that continues to deliver, even in today’s market. Learn more at nomadcapital.us/tpi. Accredited investors only.

If they want something, we have to figure out a way to get it done. And that comes down to reputation. Yes.

But being extremely resourceful, having the network, the contacts you can provide, whatever it might be that's required of you and whatever they want.

Welcome to Truly Passive Income. I'm Neil Henderson.

And I'm Clint Harris. And today a guest is Ash Atkinson. And I'm excited about this one. I met Ash, it's been about a year ago now.

We met in Asheville, North Carolina at a billionaire boardroom meeting. He and I were both speaking and his topic was fascinating. We'll talk about that a little bit later.

But we had a chance to connect over a weekend and it's taken me this long to get him on the show, but I'm happy to have him here. So as grew up in rural England with an early passion for horses.

That led him on to Germany and then Mexico and eventually the US where he's big in the equestrian world. So he's worked with some of the top clients in equestrian sports. Also he's leveraged that into high end real estate, luxury lifestyle management.

He's currently residing in Wellington, Florida. He offers a range of investment options and services from equestrian and services.

I know he's done jet and private yacht charters in the past as well. A lot to unpack today. Ash, thanks for being on the show. How are you man?

I'm great. Thank you so much for having me. Excited to be here. I know we should have done it sooner, so.

Well, that's all right. I'm excited to catch up. I know you've had a lot going on the last year, so I can't wait to unpack it. So tell us a little bit about yourself.

And I think it's safe to say we're coming up on 80 episodes on the show.

We've never had anybody from the Inquestrian world, but you do so much more than that and a lot of it has come from the relationships that you made in that space. So tell us a little about what your role in that world is and some of the other things that you're into.

Yeah, a hundred percent. So I think for your audience's benefit.

Probably makes sense to me just to give brief background as to who I am, what I started out with, obviously from the intro.

I'm from England originally, grew up in a small town now north of London and pretty quite rural, quite industrial type town, very blue collar, but obviously a lot of farmland where I grew up.

My family is somewhat was in farming and so obviously animals as well were a lot of animals around growing up and started running horses as a kid was something that was done in my area and I started riding horses, really developed that into a big passion for myself. And then through my teenage years, really got competitive about it, specifically show jumping.

And when I Left school at 18, I was like, the super two avenues, right, is do you go on the route of getting a college degree and going down and see that route of things that everyone knows about, or do I take the risk, not go down that route, pursue my passion and pursue what I want to do, which is ultimately what I decided to do. So didn't go to college.

I ended up pursuing my career in being professional in the equestrian world, which then, yeah, led me to Germany initially, as we said. So I spent two years working for the largest horse breeder producer on the planet, 5,000 horses a year, just a massive operation.

That was really where I learned how to actually produce horses at a younger age, bring them on, learn the sort of the marketing, the buying and selling of horses. And in an operation like that, of course, it brings in people from all over the world.

So it allowed me to meet people from all different parts of the world that are in my sport, in my profession, allow me to actually network with these guys. I learned how to speak German, not fluent by any means, but learn East Mat German.

And then after a couple of years there, in quite a hard environment, the Middle east got an opportunity to go to Mexico. And so then I was down in Monterrey, which is like about two hours south of the Texas border, and spent almost two years there.

I was then with another barn, another branch, if you want to call it down there, guy that owns it, billionaire guy. That's legitimate. Billionaire, should I say.

And whereas, like in Europe, for example, it's more, I don't want to say inclusive, for lack of a better word, where you can just show up and compete a horse that cost maybe a couple of thousand dollars and go to a field and compete. Whereas in the US it's very big facilities, big training programs, Very expensive to actually go compete horses to buy horses.

And so for me I really saw an opportunity whereby I could actually go to back to Europe, find horses that would fit the American sort of amateur type model, by which I mean typically very easy to ride, very easy to train horses that these ultra high network like individuals, specifically like younger females or would it be actually compete and show those horses very quickly. And so what I started to do was bring investors together.

I would buy those horses in Europe when we like to syndication, typically structure, bring them to the United States, have them for a while and then hopefully not very long sell them on. And obviously we make a profit and just continue that cycle.

And it's from doing that a lot but obviously pretty expensive network of all trainer with individuals from those invested in us, but also actually those I was selling horses onto go down the Forbes list. Pretty hefty amount of those individuals that I've networked with or clients of us.

And that's really I would class as the, I guess everyone classes like the home, the capital of equestrian, especially United States, if anything probably the world.

This is really where between sort of December and May is really where everyone that's involved in the equestrian world of a very high elite status typically comes for the wintertime. Obviously as you know, Florida is generally speaking snowbirds. And so this is for equestrians. It's the heart of that.

We've had somebody who syndicated beef before ATMs. We have yet to have anyone who has syndicated horses before. So I'm curious just from my own education, what does that involve?

What's a high level horse cost from Europe and getting it over the United States, just out of curiosity.

Yeah. Obviously the numbers are very broad from a travel cost.

If we just look at the actual logistics costs, it's definitely increased over the past like three or four years, obviously with gas prices going up. So cost of flights. So first of all we always fly them to the United States. They don't go on a boat or anything like that, they come in a plane.

There's a few airlines like FedEx, Emirates, these guys that do a lot of that. And there's a couple other like KLM based out of Poland.

But some planes are actually fully cargo planes, others are actually half commercial, half cargo.

And the horses actually travel in a big cargo container where you can fit two or possibly three Horses, that container just lifts up, goes straight in the plane and that's how they ship. So without trying to go too complicated into the nitty gritty. So obviously you have male horses, female horses.

So male horses that haven't been cut or castrated, those are stallions. Those are the most expensive to ship to the US because when they get has a big 30 day quarantine period when they get to the United States.

So that can be anywhere from 20,000, $25,000 per horse down to then geldings, which are like castrated male horses, which can be around sort of 8 to 10,000. And then on the mares, which the female horses can be around 15,000, 12 to 15,000 again because there's a quarantine person on the back end.

So that's like the cost from the transport side. There's only three airports in the United States. Actually can three or four. Forget off topic. No four, sorry that it can.

Actually horses can land in which is in New York, Chicago, Miami and lax. So that's like the logistics side of things in terms of the acquisition cost. It's almost the way I look at it is like real estate.

You can buy horses from anywhere from 5,10,000 up to millions of dollars. When I've been involved in transactions where horses cost up with the $5 million. So there is a big variation for sure. And that's.

I just like to point out that two hours ago I was getting made fun of for too often in our podcast episodes using the phrase about betting on the jockey and not the horse. I'd just like to say that I was ahead of my time, was wildly apropos.

And we talk about picking LP investments and things like that, and that looking at the deal versus looking at the operator on the deal. And this is literally a situation where, you know, yes, you're investing in the horse, right?

You're investing in the value delta between what this horse is worth in Europe or wherever it came from and what it's going to be worth to a different buyer pool with different training and basically the pedigree that it comes through from not just on the animal, but on the person representing it.

And this is literally a situation where you better be betting on the breeder or the trainer or the jockey, whatever it may be, versus the actual deal itself. Right? So first of all, to rub your nose in that.

Secondly, this is one of those things I Can you imagine, like the insurance costs and something like this. This is a living, breathing animal that has a fairly short shelf life. I would Expect in terms of what the career for a jumping horse looks like.

So I know that you also, for a long time, and I'd like just throw a few quick numbers at us. You've turned over a lot of exotic cars as well. And I know that you also have done yacht and jet charters and things like that.

Is this a situation where your career in equestrian just opens you up to this new world and then you're looking at these consumers and what they're into and you're just like, oh, I can provide that, I can do this. I know how to source this, I know how to create this, I can see what this is worth over here.

I'll go do the work of bringing it here because I know where the buyer pool is. Is that how that evolved naturally? Just understanding the people that you're running in the circles with.

Yeah, a hundred percent.

I think the main thing to point out is that at that level of elite, obviously as we said, it's the.01%, the population that is a very small group of people and within that there's a very small group of people that those individuals would trust with really anything alive.

So it's very common that for example, if someone is flying into dried horses from us five horses or their, their clients of ours work because we also train clients too. So they come and they stable with us. We train the horses, we train them to ride. Likelihood is they're in a variety of other high asset services.

So as you said, private jets, exotic cars, luxury real estate, like they're all typically in that same realm.

And it's very common for me to meet someone that for example, I was doing a lot of exotic car, what as you mentioned, I'd be doing a deal there, find out that they are friends with someone that I know that I'm doing a deal with on a horseback purely like randomly. They could be in different parts of the United States.

But it's very common, as you said, that high net worth world is very, very exclusive, obviously very elite.

And so to your point with that, Yes, I noticed that taking the network that I had and then on top of that, people that actually trust me because I know I've delivered, for example, in the horse world that they know that I can provide or they at least know I'm a trusted resource in other asset classes.

Yeah, for example, when I was doing a lot of buying, selling other cars, those clients were now, okay, they could go to a dealership or a mainstream dealership, maybe not have the service or maybe have other issues. As we know, especially in a car world, a lot of things can be very sketchy and not quite legitimate.

So they know if it comes through me highly degree of certainty that vehicle is what I say it is when it comes through or saying whether private jets.

If I'm providing private jet service, it's going to be a high quality brokerage firm I'm working with that understands the client that's going to provide the best service. It's not just some random out there to stop shop last week and it's just white labeling jet services.

So before we move on to some other questions that I have, throw some quick numbers at us. In terms of exotic cars. What's the most expensive car that you flipped and how many and what different types of cars are you typically working with?

In the past, yes, I've been fortunate enough to really work most ends of the spectrum on that side of things. So lower end 30, $40,000 cards up to. And the most expensive we did was the Bugatti Chiron. That was about 3.5 million at the time.

Which those actually haven't really changed that much in terms of value. They've been about the same. But like I would say that I negotiated and did everything on was the new 4GT which was two years ago now it was about.

I wanted 1.1 million. I negotiated down to it was around 920,000. So we had a. And we knew the car was valued around a million to one a bit. So like we had a decent spread.

Right. The gate the guy obviously, yeah, the guy had two of these and needed to sell one.

And this one actually had the highest mileage of any of the Ford GT on the market. So of course that gave us a negotiating standpoint to work with and we were willing to hold that car.

So of course we're buying a 6,000 mile car. There was a time obviously with those cars have to catch up to us and those limited units. So we knew we weren't going to depreciate.

So that was a longer term play as a car.

Wow, that's amazing. I never thought about it like that. So let me ask you this, especially importing, exporting horses, cars, whatever it may be.

And again, you're talking about 0.01% of the population that those people don't really have borders like these are world travelers. They're all over the place. In my opinion, the most valuable thing that you have by far is reputation among that group.

Obviously a very elite group that knows each other. But also it's international experience and your ability to navigate going from one country to the other.

These are globetrotting people that have property all over and you're basically a logistics guy. Like you're handling, you're so much more than that. Right. It's a relationship and it's a trust thing which is the most important thing.

But your job is to navigate the strategic logistics of moving things around to where the buyers are and recognizing value in one place and bringing it someplace else. So you're handling a lot of different assets and just detail oriented logistics.

Sometimes with very valuable items like a car, sometimes with living items that are also very valuable like a horse. So a lot of fine attention to details that fair to say?

Yeah, for sure. Very fine attention, detail. And above all at that level is typically speaking older money, I would say generational money.

To the extent there is an understanding the value of a dollar, let's put it that way. So there's, you see a lot of this new money now where it's.

They're just throwing money around like crazy, not understanding the value of anything it's worth. And obviously that we know what that leads to.

But I would say a lot of clients I work with, they're older generational money, they understand you, but also they want a good deal. But at the same time, generally speaking, money is no object. So if they want something, we have to figure out a way to get it done.

And that's comes down to reputation.

Yes, but being extremely resourceful, having the network, the contacts to know you can provide whatever it might be that's, you know, required of you. And whatever they want, there is obviously a fine line between the two. And of course getting it on the timeline that they ideally would like.

I love that. Let me ask you this. So you talk about timing the market specifically with that one vehicle and waiting for the other cars to catch up.

Also, a lot of what you're dealing with is going to be very cyclical. Like we're. The market's tough right now. We're facing a lot of economic headwinds.

So in terms of value going up or down or stabilizing, it makes sense to me to do different things at different times depending on what the market is telling you to do, especially in your ability to listen to the market and the consumer. So tell me, I met you in the capacity of being on the board with the Pearson Equity Group and working with a fund.

So tell me what you're working on now, what you're excited about now. And I know you're still taking a lot of time in the equestrian world. Understand you're not doing cars as much these days.

So outside of what you're doing with the equestrian world, which sounds like it's fairly seasonal, tell me what else you're working on and what you're excited about.

Yeah, so I've been with Dan Pearson literally since the start. He asked me to join. We actually connected through another group since about four or so years ago now.

And at the time I was doing quite a bit in real estate and I think he had a property potentially that I think it was like a hotel or something that he was working with a seller on and I had a potential buyer for it. And so that's how we originally connected. And he'll tell you the story.

But literally on the first phone call we had, he was like, hey, also I'm starting this fund. Do you like, do you want to be on the board for it? Just literally in the first conversation we had.

He's been on the show before and so he's a young hungry guy. No, I know he was been on with you guys. Yeah. So he asked me to join and here we are four years later. I'm more active now.

I'd say I moved up into more of an aging partner position alongside him. More from the fact that I've been around longer than everybody else. But yeah, with Dan, obviously right now we're on Fund two.

We had great success with Fund one clowns were very excited to working with you guys with Nomad Capital. Like I said, we met you guys quite a while back. Now your business model. I've had some experience in the self storage sector.

I licensed in Florida and I used to have it under a brokerage that was also the largest acquirer of self storage in the United States. So I learned a lot about that business model. I love the self storage sector.

And then obviously to see what you guys are doing and how you've actually not just taken that asset class, but brought in a whole new perspective on that asset class and just lowered your entire cost base is really phenomenal. So yeah, right now we're very excited to be looking to raise our funds too, to be actually deploy some capital into you guys.

Thank you, sir. Checks in the mail. Appreciate that Plug.

But seriously though, I honestly think there is something to dig into here from an educational standpoint for the listener. That's this whole thing is obviously an educational platform that we're obviously trying to learn ourselves, but we want to share value as well.

You guys are operating with a fund to fund strategy where you are putting together a group of capital from investors, say let's make up a number of $10 million and you're taking on the responsibility of finding not just operators but also deals that you like and say it's going to be 30% self storage, 30% car wash, 30% multif family, 10% exotic, whatever.

I'm making up these numbers, by the way, but whatever it may be, investors are putting their money into that fund and that fund is being deployed in a way that for them it's a single investment, but it's the equivalent of an alternative investment strategies mutual fund that you guys are basically, you're vetting the sponsors and things like that.

But talk a little bit about with the fund of funds model, what's one of the benefits or some of the benefits to a limited partner investor by investing with you guys that they get just besides the fact that you guys are doing deeper due diligence and they would likely do on their own. Right. What's the benefit that comes with.

I'm putting $100,000 or $500,000 with Pearson Equity Group versus investing it myself, maybe even with those same operators. What are some of the benefits that come along with that?

Yeah, I think going back to what you said down the Due Zealand side, obviously for us we have our networks.

Myself and our other partners have our networks of investors that want to work with us that we've known for a long time and I think based upon my experience in life too, that when I've referred deals to people that, or should I say when I've connected a deal with a potential investor, once that's done, there's an element of I have no real control in what happens.

So if there was something just to go south, regardless of What I've done to make sure it doesn't listen, something could happen there and then I potentially spoiled a relationship with that investor.

Or there's an element of them not really, it's not the lack of trust, but there's an element of them just being more cautious about maybe going into an investment where I'm necessarily not involved per se. So I would say to start with, yes, of course we are vetting the deals much more rigorously than maybe they themselves have the time to do.

For example, if an investor just looked at you guys directly or looked at an investment directly without us being an intermediary, obviously they've got to spend their time, their energy, potentially actually looking at investment.

Understand these guys really going to work with or somebody else myself down our partners, we're taking the time to look at the vector opportunities and really going deep dive into the operators, those fund returns, a thesis and basically everything from a risk mitigation standpoint. So I would say that's a big part for us. But then from our side of things too, it's.

We are coming in, for example, with you guys as a real analogy, we're coming into you guys with a bigger piece of the pie, right?

We're coming in a bigger capital injection, which of course allows us to then be able to negotiate with you guys a bit on some of the returns, et cetera.

So it allows actually our investors to potentially get a better return than necessary, coming with a smaller piece, a smaller chunk of the pie directly to you guys. And I think that's something as well that's been very keenly received by investors we're talking to, on, on the fundraise right now.

Yeah, the idea is that a group of investors pooling their money together into a larger amount can negotiate better terms or hit a higher threshold to get a better preface, whatever it may be. And I'm certainly not encouraging you to come negotiate with us on that, but the reality is there's value there, right?

And I'm saying this for the benefit of the listener here, is that there's value if you're going to come to an operator.

For example, with Nomad, if you're going to come with say a hundred thousand dollars, it's going to have a 6% pref and it's going to be like a 19% IR or so.

If you're coming with anything over 250, it's an 8% pref and it's closer to a 22% IRR and there's a million dollar share as well, so that there is value there because from the operator standpoint, it makes sense for us to have less investors on a deal with higher amounts of money because it makes the communication easier and the legal easier as well. And there's value there. And the operators typically are inclined to give that up for the higher share classes.

So it's again a situation where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and a group of investors can pool capital together and deploy it together, making sure they're hitting the rules in terms of accredited investors and everything else that comes along with that. Right. So there's obligation from a moral standpoint and ethical standpoint.

But beyond that, the ideas of the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. And for the people doing the work of putting that together as a fund, there's certainly value there together that can be enjoyed all around.

And it fascinates me constantly not just how many different types of deals there are RV parks or tiny homes or hotels or apartments or car washes or whatever it may be, but there's basically an unlimited amount of deal structure and fund of funds and co GPS and everything else. And that's why I think the education side of things is so important. So Ash, let me ask you this.

I would classify you as a man who understands value and you've got an eye for recognizing a good deal, right? Whether that's in a horse or a car or something else. Like you've got an eye for recognizing that.

So tell me, in the current economic environment and where we are in the life cycle of our generation, the older generation, the younger generation, what are you excited about right now? What do you keep an eye on?

Yeah, I think we're in a very interesting market right now, I would say because the fact I have so much exposure in a variety of different high net worth arenas primarily, I think it gives me a better gauge of actually, because what I've seen is especially in exotic car world now, exotic car prices have come drastically down. They've come down to back to the depreciation curve that they were on, that's for sure.

Now that inventory has come back, cars are flying the market, Obviously other factors are at play, right? Interest rates, et cetera, cost of capital. So therefore there's more exotic cars in the market. Crypto obviously taking a hit too.

And for me I am very keen on getting more invested into private equity wealth, into buying smaller businesses, especially businesses that are heavy, like blue collar type businesses that aren't going to be disrupted by AI, that aren't going to be disrupted by a lot of those newer technology pieces, but are ready to be upgrades to be brought to that technology.

For example, stuff like we're looking heavily at home service businesses, everything from H vac, roofing, visual contracting, even like screen in porch services. Companies that are always are going to be around for at least the next generation, theoretically speaking, that aren't going to be disrupted.

And I think there's a lot of these companies now that are as baby boomers retiring their kids are not interested in inheriting those businesses. They're too busy becoming Instagram influencers and things of that nature.

That there's a lot of value there, as we talked about, that is ready to be captured.

And I think for savvy investors to come in at a relatively low interest from a cost standpoint can come in and quality subsidy businesses with infinite upside potential, that for me is what I'm very excited about. That's really where my focus has shifted a lot into the past sort of year or so. And that's where I'm going to be pushing a lot going forward.

And what's your play there?

Are you rolling up these mom and pop businesses, professionalizing them, increasing the EBITDA and trying to package them all up to a private equity group and selling them. Is that basically the basic.

Yeah, to an extent. So our branding is called keep acquisitions because the goal being want to keep the legacy of the companies we're actually acquiring.

Because talking to a lot of sellers we speak to and a lot of baby boomers, they potentially worked in this business 30, 40 years.

Probably they spend more time in this business than they have in their marriages with their families though legacy is a big important factor and it's really what I value tremendously for myself and of course for businesses I work with, investors I work with, et cetera. So for us the goal is yeah, to acquire businesses within the same sector that we can, yeah, professionalize. We can streamlined services, for example.

Rather than each of these companies having their own accounting, own marketing, own sales, we would have them basically one umbrella effectively that operates where we have each of those different sectors that basically provide their services to each those companies as we bring them together and really see what it looks like potentially that rolls up into a bigger private equity play.

Really my goal is to acquire these business and actually keep them within a portfolio and continue to grow and, and to build them up and just keep adding on and moving it forward. That's really what I'm more passionate about in this story, to just like bring it together and it's selling it and be done.

So with everything that you've done in the past, I have no doubt that you'll have success and taking a lot of different types of businesses and rolling it together, honestly just seems like the next natural step with everything you've done so far. That's great. Listen, Ash, thank you so much for taking time with us today. I want to tell you how much I appreciate you coming on.

You have a very unique perspective. A lot of it came through a lot of hard work and natural talent that you grew upon.

So you got relationships all over the world with a very elite network and that's come with some really unique life experiences. And it's fun to see you using those relationships and experiences to further yourself and do good things for the people around you at the same time.

So, Ash Atkinson, thank you for coming on board.

If anyone wants to connect with you, find out more about you, or invite you on for an interview on their show, what would be the best way for them to do that?

Probably either Instagram, just Ash Atkinson, then a number one or LinkedIn. Just look up Ash Atkinson. You can find me pretty easy there. Probably the easiest two ways I would say to connect with me.

Sounds great, Ash. Thank you again man. We really appreciate your time. Thanks for coming on the show.

Thanks man. Thank you so much for listening and watching the Truly Passive Income podcast.

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