The Deals You’re Not Seeing (And Why That’s By Design)

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been laying out the three major shifts happening in how wealth is built: the move from public to private markets, from investment advisor to family office paradigm, and from net worth to cash flow.

If you’ve been following along, you might be thinking: Okay Justin, I get it. Private deals, cash flow, family office approach. But where do I actually find these opportunities?

It’s a fair question. And the honest answer might frustrate you at first.

The best deals? You’re not seeing them. And that’s by design.

Why the Best Deals Are Invisible

Here’s something most people don’t realize: 

The best private deals are never publicly announced. They’re filled before they ever reach a platform, a newsletter, or a public offering.

The operators doing the best work? They don’t need to advertise. They can fill their entire raise with existing investors. Their reputation precedes them. Their investors from the last deal want into the next one.

So they go to people they trust – people who have already done business with them. And the deals close before most investors ever hear about them.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth… 

If you’re finding deals on the open market, especially in the private space, you’re getting what the institutional capital doesn’t want.

Read that again. Because it’s one of the most important things I can tell you about deal flow.

The Hidden Conflict in Your Advisor’s “Deal Flow”

Now, you might be thinking: But Justin, my wealth manager shares alternative investments with me. Doesn’t that count?

Let me tell you something that might be hard to hear.

The reason alternative investments are becoming more mainstream in wealth management shops is because they need to offer them to compete. But here’s what nobody talks about: They’re all getting kickbacks.

Why does one deal make it onto a platform and another doesn’t? It’s not because it’s the best deal, it’s because that deal has the best terms for the advisor – affiliate fees, broker commissions, revenue sharing.

I’ve had people say, “Oh, my advisor didn’t like that deal.” Well, probably not – because they’re not compensated on it. They’re pushing this deal because this deal pays them.

That’s a structural conflict of interest, and most people never even think to ask about it.

What “Invisible Deals” Actually Look Like

So what are we actually talking about when I say “invisible deals”?

Private placement offerings. Credit funds. Real estate syndications. Off-market businesses. Deals that never get sold to the public.

Sometimes it’s a deal that’s truly off-market: a business or property that was never listed, where the seller just wants to move on and the buyer found them through a relationship.

Sometimes it’s data or trends suggesting that something isn’t mainstream yet, but is about to become mainstream. I call this “following the invisible.”

When I invested in mobile home parks, people told me I was crazy, but the data suggested it was a good asset class. When I got into single-family rentals early, that wasn’t even a recognized asset class yet – there was no such thing as “SFR” as a category. But I knew after the global financial crisis that’s where things were heading.

It’s not that these opportunities were hidden in some vault. It’s that they weren’t mainstream, and by the time they became mainstream, the best returns had already been captured.

The Real Access Problem

These invisible deals are reserved for insiders, family offices, sophisticated networks, or accredited investor groups with existing relationships.

The only way in is through a network that already exists.

And that network takes years to build, unless you join a room where that network already exists.

I was talking to one of the members in our community recently – he’d built a family office for clients over 20 years. He said something that stuck with me: “Almost all the deals we did were off-market. They were not published deals.”

And then he said this: “You make your money on the buy side. There’s a lot of due diligence, a lot of work to be done in investigating any opportunity. And you should expect to turn down most of them.”

That last part is key. 

Finding invisible deals isn’t about saying yes to more things. It’s about having access to enough opportunities that you can be selective, that you can say no to 90% of them and still have a pipeline of great options.

But Access Isn’t Enough

Here’s the thing: Access to deal flow is necessary, but it’s not sufficient.

Just because a deal is private doesn’t mean it’s good. Just because it’s off-market doesn’t mean it’s safe. I’ve seen plenty of private deals that were absolute disasters.

Our COO, Ryan, often tells a story about joining another investment group before ours. Within the first week, he got five direct messages pitching deals. He sent one to our due diligence team – a multifamily deal that looked good on the surface. Our analyst emailed him back in 40 minutes: “This is awful. Not even a chance.”

The point? When you’re new to alternative investing, everything looks good. That’s exactly when you’re most at risk.

So next week, I want to give you something practical: the five filters I use to evaluate any deal that comes across my desk. It’s the framework that’s helped us say no to the 90%, and find the 10% worth doing.

Until then,

Justin

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