Hi {{first_name}} ,

The first Personal Financial Statement I ever built fit on a Word doc. I didn't even need excel to detail it, it was so simple.

To be fair, I was right out of college. My parents had paid for my education, so I didn’t have student loan debt to deal with. In fact, when it came to debt, I paid cash for my Isuzu too.  The liabilities side of my ledger was empty. 

The asset side was pretty slim too. A checking account. A brokerage account that I managed to secure $6,000 in, of course that was down from the original $10,000 I'd put into the Nasdaq in 1999. The tech bust really got me off to an impressive start.

But staring at that bare page helped me understand something. I needed to add to the asset side if I was ever going to get where I wanted to go. Owning businesses, real estate, and having equity in things that produced income, or at least appreciated in value. But what and how do I fill that column up? There wasn’t a map to know how to start. 

So I did it the slow way. For years, my PFS barely moved. I kept trading time for a paycheck, same as everyone else. It took buying my first business to experience owning something you control, and have “good debt” in, changes the math. That first business taught me more about cash flow, leverage, and risk than a decade of index funds. It also taught me what a lock-up actually feels like. That money wasn't coming back next week if I needed it, and living with that discomfort turned out to be some of my earliest education. 

Today, after acquiring 10 companies outright over 20 years, I've actually made more money (on paper) investing than I ever made running a business. But I wouldn’t have been good at it without an MBA coupled with acquiring and operating SMBs, but today I’m an allocator.

Nearly 162 million Americans own stocks. Almost none would call themselves investors. They identify by their job, or their W2. The brokerage account grows in the background.

Becoming a private investor is different. It means making decisions nobody else is making, and building a portfolio that reflects your own judgment instead of everyone else's. It's the shift from participant to allocator.

This issue is the map I wish someone had handed me back when I was staring at that bare bones document. That’s why this week I am outlining:

Walker

— Walker Deibel
WSJ & USA Today Bestselling Author of Buy Then Build
Founder, Build Wealth

P.S. At Build Wealth we’re developing both a community of investors and a dynamic PFS for private investors. If you’d like to join the waitlist, hit reply with the words “Build Wealth.”

If you want to see our real offerings that show what I’ve been investing in directly, you can always see them in our portal here: buildwealth.investnext.com. I’m the second largest investor across our portfolio.

You know how to invest. You've been doing it for a long time, and you enjoy it. You've built a portfolio and you understand risk. There's a good chance you've outperformed people who talk more confidently than you do. None of that goes away when you enter the private markets.

Private markets just run on a few of their own rules. Their own paperwork, timeline, order of operations. There's always been a behind-closed-doors feel to them, and spending decades in the shadows made them seem inaccessible and complex. That's changing, and there's no reason left to figure it out by trial and error. Those doors are more open, the steps just need to be taken in the right order. Becoming an investor asks you to follow a sequence, follow the map. 

1: Build your scoreboard.

First things first. Becoming a private markets investor will mean you need to adopt a slightly new measurement for financial life. 

In public markets, you could watch your ups and downs on your digital statements. As a private markets investor you are more of an active builder of wealth. Starting with your own Personal Financial Statement. Think of it as a simple two-column ledger. Assets on one side, liabilities on the other. List every asset you own at fair value, and every liability at its current balance. Net worth is the gap between the two totals. This is your scoreboard now. Every private asset you acquire, every fractional position, every fund investment, every business interest, adds to the asset column and grows your number.

Update it quarterly. Private assets don't have a ticker, so there's nothing to check daily anyway. It could look something like this. 

2: Confirm your accreditation and know what that is.

Here's the first real taste of what's different in private markets. Nobody checks your accreditation before you buy an index fund. With private deals though they do. What is accreditation? It’s the legal status that determines whether you're allowed to view and invest in private deals. There’s three ways to qualify (only need one):

Once you qualify, two kinds of deals open up:

Most of what you find online is 506(c). The 506(b) deals, the ones more established operators tend to prefer, can't be advertised at all. You only hear about them because someone inside the deal already knows you and brings you in.

3. Get your accounts set up.

Two account types do most of the heavy lifting here, and they are new if you haven’t done private deals in the past. 

Most retirement money sits in mutual funds by default, simply because nobody ever mentioned the account could hold something else. FYI. Setup takes 30 to 60 days, so open one before you have a deal you're excited about, not after.

These accounts hold your private investments but they don't replace the more advanced tax moves, like offsetting earned income through energy infrastructure, which are worth exploring once you've made a few deployments.

4: Get into rooms where deals are happening.

This is the biggest hurdle and it takes time, practice, and commitment. Unlike public markets, private investing runs on relationships. The best deals don't get posted anywhere public. They move through operators you've built trust with, and through communities where people who've already deployed capital are evaluating opportunities together, out loud, in rooms you have to walk into. Even when a deal is allowed to advertise, that doesn't mean you'll actually see it. The ad still has to reach you, in other words, it’s not a Google search. 

Find one of those communities and get to know the operators before you're anywhere close to writing a check. Watch how experienced investors question a deal, and you'll start to hear the difference between an operator who knows their numbers cold and one who's just good at pitching. 

There's no shortcut for this step and no fixed timeline. Everything else in this sequence is a task. This one is a habit. 

5. Decide how you'll hold what you buy.

Not every deal requires a legal entity. But it's a real decision either way, and one worth making deliberately. You can invest personally, through an LLC, a trust, your Self-directed IRA, or a blend of these. Each option changes your liability, your taxes, and what happens to the asset in your estate later on.

Settle this with an attorney who actually and truly works in private markets, ideally one who comes through a referral from the community you found in step 4. FYI, do this before a deal, fixing it later costs far more than taking the time to get it right at the start.

6: Learn to evaluate a deal before you see one you love.

The worst time to learn how to underwrite a private investment is when you're excited about one.

Before your first real opportunity arrives, read a deal you have no intention of investing in. Request the PPM and subscription agreement from a deal that's already closed or one you know you won't pursue. Read both end to end. You're looking for how the manager gets paid, what the waterfall looks like, what the redemption rights are, what happens to your capital if the fund winds down early. You are building the vocabulary and pattern recognition you'll need when you see one you actually want.

Build your operator checklist before you need it. 

This checklist is built in advance, not assembled on the fly when someone is pitching you.

7. Prepare for your first deployment.

This is where you go looking for something that interests you, even inspires you. Size it small enough to treat as your education, since the first one always teaches you more than it earns you.

The lock-up is the design. It's the mechanism that protects the strategy from the panic-driven habits that quietly erode most public market portfolios, and getting comfortable with that idea matters more here than any spreadsheet.

This week's Playbook walks through the actual mechanics of executing your first deal. For now, just know this is the point in the journey where the real fun starts.

8: Build your professional team, through referrals.

Your first deployment will teach you what questions you want to ask a professional. 

Building the team you rely on may start with the people already in your investing community. Ask the operators and investors you've gotten to know who they use for tax strategy. You're looking for someone who has a history with private market investors. They will understand K-1s, IDCs, bonus depreciation, and cost segregation. 

Schedule a strategy session and consider bringing your PFS and your first deal's documents. Have them map your current tax exposure and walk through what changes once income starts returning. 

The Crossover Into Private Markets

Maybe you’ve already asked yourself if you are doing this correctly. There's no ticker to check, or analyst rating to lean on. Moving into private markets means you are relying on your own judgment and the steps you've taken. 

Somewhere down the road, for those that choose it, the W2 may even stop being the primary money plan if the portfolio itself can carry the life they want. That number looks different for everyone, and reaching it is both a financial milestone and an identity shift. 

Almost everyone who makes this crossing says the same thing though.They wish they'd started sooner. The timeline from a first private investment to a portfolio that can carry a life is almost always shorter than it looks from the outside. The map exists. You just didn’t have someone to hand it to you.

Image: Nicolas M. in attendance at Build Wealth’s Delphi Launch Party, May 2026.

Being able to follow a map on the road to private investments is priceless. However Nicolas had to make the shift into private markets by learning as he went. 

The start of his investing journey was traditional. He waded into individual stocks first. Quickly, he learned that stock picking is a skill, but there's more luck to it than we care to admit. So he took a step back, did more research, and pivoted to index funds.  

That’s what "being a traditional investor" looks like. You get good performing funds and let it ride for 40 years, keeping the W2 running in the background.

Then in 2014, he and his wife were presented with an opportunity to buy a rental property in San Antonio. 

It didn't pay off exactly the way the spreadsheet promised. Some years the returns were negative between property taxes, a property manager, an AC unit that ate up plenty of dollars (it is Texas after all).

"Your cash flow from something like this is almost embarrassingly low," Nicolas said.

But the mortgage kept getting paid down, and slowly the returns added up. They added a few more properties. Then in 2018 they moved to Chicago, and running a landlord business from another city wasn’t as simple. By 2020 they'd scaled back to a handful of properties and settled into what looked like a long-term plan. Work hard, manage the smaller rental portfolio, invest in the public markets. 

A New Wealth Avenue

Moving into 2024, Nicolas’ wife took notice of a wave of online creators talking about buying small businesses (think the unglamorous but vital businesses like laundromats and plumbing companies). Nicolas got curious, and found Buy Then Build. He read it and started building toward an acquisition of his own.

In the process, he stumbled into fractional ownership of private deals. A world he didn’t even know existed. 

"That's kind of where the real eye-opening opportunity was," he said. "Investing is a lot more than just putting money into public markets or owned real estate."

There was a learning curve. He knew venture capital was a segment of private markets, built for big money that could take on big risk. This was a different avenue entirely. The hardest part was building out the network. Lawyers, tax strategists, legal setup, making sure his CPA understood what needed to happen. He built it from scratch, but it was solid. 

By October 2025, he was ready to bet on it.  He quit his job. His family pooled capital together, and Nicolas became the manager of his own private investment office. It’s similar to a family office but smaller with an income bucket, a growth bucket, and a liquid public-markets sleeve to draw from for life’s expenses.

His first private allocation was a short-duration private credit deal, chosen because the shorter lockup was like training wheels for illiquidity. Private investments often carry a J curve, where money sits tied up and paper losses show up before any income starts flowing. A shorter deal meant a shorter version of that wait. Accepting that he couldn't sell tomorrow was uncomfortable at first. Now it's the feature that protects the whole plan.

Today, Nicolas is becoming more comfortable telling friends and acquaintances that he runs a private investment office. They don't always know what that means, but neither did Nicolas two years ago. You can build knowledge in a short amount of time. What he likes most is the flexibility that comes with it. No W2 dictating his schedule, more time for his family, more say over how he spends his days.

"I've switched from being a spectator in my wealth, and I’ve become an allocator instead,” he said.

Looking back, he wouldn't change the path he and his wife took. He wishes he'd known sooner that a middle ground existed between the rentals and the index fund game. But you don't know what you don't know. He's grateful he went looking for the answers.

You got through the initial work of getting set up, determining your accreditation, and putting yourself in the right room(s). What's next is actually executing, the part where capital moves and the education kicks up a notch.

Each step as you get comfortable executing on deals has a suggested target timeline. The key word being suggested. Make it work for you. Let the moves begin. 

Step 1: Find something worth a real look.

Skip the safest option on the table, and skip the flashiest one too. What's usually worth your time (especially when you are still building your foundation) is something fairly boring. Real cash flow, a team with a track record you can verify, and a business model simple enough to explain to a friend in a couple of sentences.

If nothing in front of you clears that bar yet, it's fine to wait. There's no pressure to act today, so a slower month costs you less than a deal you didn't fully believe in.

Timeline Target: One deal identified within 30 days of finishing your setup.

Step 2: Request the full deal package.

Ask for the PPM and the subscription agreement directly, rather than relying on a pitch deck or a call with the sponsor. Decks are built to persuade. Documents are what you're actually agreeing to. Read both from start to finish before asking the sponsor questions, since you'll naturally ask better ones once you've seen the terms.

Target: Documents requested and read within a week of finding the deal.

Step 3: Score the deal against four questions.

Make sure you know the following and can score it. 

If you can answer all four from the documents alone, you're ready to move forward. If not, that's a sign to get the sponsor on a call.

Target: All four questions answered before moving to Step 4.

Step 4: Ask about the minimum.

Published minimums often aren't fixed. Many sponsors will accept a smaller check than what's listed, particularly early in a raise, since a new relationship can be worth more to them than the size of a first check. This is especially true if you're bringing genuine curiosity and the likelihood of investing again later. It's worth asking directly, since the worst answer is simply no.

Target: Minimum discussed with the sponsor before wiring anything.

Step 5: Size the check for the education, not the outcome.

Public market mistakes can be cheap. Buy the wrong stock, and you can hopefully sell it back. Private market mistakes aren't like that. Your capital is locked up for a time period, there's no live price to warn you something's wrong, and the only real feedback you get is the operator's quarterly update and your own judgment.

That's why the first deal is worth treating as tuition as much as an investment. The return is part of what you're getting. The rest is learning to read a K-1, learning what a real operator sounds like versus a good pitch, and building the pattern recognition that only comes from having actual money on the line. A two-year MBA from a solid program runs $150,000 to $250,000 all in. A handful of properly sized private deals over a few years can teach you a comparable amount, with the difference being this version pays you along the way instead of the reverse.

Target: Check size chosen based on the lesson, not the projected return.

Step 6: Wire the money, and get comfortable with the lock-up.

Accepting that your capital is genuinely locked up, no selling tomorrow, no changing your mind next week, feels uncomfortable the first time. That discomfort tends to fade with experience, and what replaces it is the knowledge that the lock-up keeps you from making a panic-driven decision, the same kind of decision that can erode a lot of public market portfolios over time.

There’s a learning curve to getting comfortable with illiquidity, just like Nicolas did when he first entered the world of fractional ownership.  

Target: First deployment completed within 90 days of finishing your setup.

After Step 6 is Done

Once the first deployment is done, something shifts. You're no longer researching private markets, you're actually in one. The next deal will move faster, since you'll recognize a real operator, a fair fee structure, and a deal that is built to last. That's the real return on this first deal.

At Build Wealth we’re developing both a community of investors and a dynamic PFS for private investors. If you’d like to join the waitlist, hit reply to this email with the words “Build Wealth.”

"The ability to do what you want, when you want, with who you want, for as long as you want, is priceless. It is the highest dividend money pays."

— Morgan Housel, The Psychology of Money

That dividend is what Nicolas is building toward now. The PFS scoreboard, the rooms, the first deployment, every fractional acquisition after it, all of it is aimed at that one payoff: a life that isn't rented out to a W2.

The map exists. This issue hopefully handed it to you. What you do with it from here is your call.

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This is not financial advice. Illustrative output of a reasoned thought experiment. Not a backtest, guarantee, or prospectus. Actual results vary based on market conditions, fund selection, timing, fees, taxes, and factors not modeled. Private credit, CRE, and leveraged strategies involve significant risk including loss of principal. Consult a qualified financial advisor.