Offshoot: The Fident Capital Podcast

Offshoot is a passion project that stems, quite naturally, from my years of experience at Fident Capital. One of the best aspects of the gig is interacting with brilliant people on both the operator/borrower and investor/lender sides of transactions. I love the diversity of their viewpoints and experiencing the horsepower that’s behind their performance. I aim to give these experts a venue to share their knowledge and experience, build relationships, foster connections, and support real estate entrepreneurs. We talk shop on real estate and finance, and we talk personal performance, delving into daily routines, habits, and beliefs that underpin these individuals. I hope you enjoy the conversations.

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Latest episodes

01 June 2026

Aleks Gampel: We're not trying to reinvent the wheel. We're just trying to make it spin faster.

On this episode, Kevin chats with Aleks Gampel, co-founder of Cuby Technologies, a hardware and software company that's built a completely new type of home construction. With 243 people across three continents and a million engineering hours invested, Cuby has developed a mobile micro factory: a containerized, plug-and-play factory in a box that ships to any market and manufactures single-family homes with unskilled labor at roughly $100 a square foot in 30 days.

Aleks walks us through how Cuby has built the antithesis to traditional modular construction by localizing manufacturing rather than centralizing it. He gets into why construction is fundamentally a logistics problem, how 168 shipping containers and 600 SKUs come together on a 6.5-acre site, and why the company chose to manufacture its own windows, framing, and sandwich panels rather than relying on third-party suppliers.

He also gets into the economics of the mobile micro factory at roughly $25 million all-in, why Cuby targets regional home builders who can't compete with the Lennars and DR Hortons of the world, and how the company bridges two capital worlds. Venture capital funds the platform while infrastructure equity and debt fund each factory as its own SPV.

On the business side, Aleks shares why most startups fail on partnership dynamics, what drew him to a problem nobody has cracked, and why solving for housing sits at the base of Maslow's hierarchy. His take on building inside a conservative industry is straightforward: don't try to reinvent the wheel, just figure out how to make it spin faster.

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26 March 2026

Derek Myron: It's not what you make, it's what you keep.

On this episode, Kevin chats with Derek Myron, Managing Partner of Centura Wealth Advisory, a San Diego-based registered investment advisor specializing in ultra-high-net-worth families. Since founding Centura in 2014, Derek and his team of 62 professionals have grown to $1.4 billion in assets under management.

Derek walks us through how Centura has built a practice that goes well beyond traditional asset management into comprehensive tax planning and financial engineering. He gets into how sophisticated strategies around index replication, hedging, and tangible property regulations can materially change the tax picture for high income earners, and why that planning conversation is fundamentally different from what most advisors offer.

He also gets into how RIAs like Centura think about allocating into real estate, where private market investments fit within a UHNW portfolio, and why real estate remains a core tool in the tax planning conversation, not just an asset class.

On the business side, Derek shares how he thinks about building a firm, designing accountability around roles before people, extracting genuine core values from top performers, and why he prioritizes his team's growth above everything else. His advice for entrepreneurs is straightforward: stay humble, find good mentors, and build a peer network that functions like a real board of directors.

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11 December 2025

Jay Rollins: People first, deal second - building platforms, not just portfolios

Kevin chats with Jay Rollins about his 40-year journey building and selling four companies, from RTC-era distressed acquisitions to growing JCR Capital to $1.6 billion in AUM before selling to Walker Dunlop in 2018. Now Jay's doing something different with Canopy Real Estate Partners—scouting real estate operators between 35 and 45 who've proven they can do deals but have never recruited institutional capital. His pitch: let Canopy put discretionary capital in your hands, teach you fund management, and help you build a platform, taking no equity in your company beyond what's earned at the project level. Jay discusses how he's matched his fund product to investor appetite with a structure that behaves like a real estate bond—6% current return, four-year duration, 18% at exit, with only 50-55% leverage—designed for LPs tired of "trust me, I'll call you in five years." The conversation covers why having discretionary capital in the middle market is a massive competitive advantage, how proper promote structures and vesting drive team alignment, and why basic interpersonal skills like looking someone in the eye and remembering their name will put you ahead of 95% of the younger generation.

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13 November 2025

Mark Roppolo: Two deals a year when nothing pencils, the power of patient capital allocation

On this episode, Kevin chats with Mark Roppolo of HFS Capital Partners about operating in the space between family office and traditional fund. Mark explains how this structure allows HFS to maintain unusual discipline—sometimes doing just two deals a year when market conditions don't warrant more. The conversation covers their approach to sourcing deals exclusively through operating partners rather than marketed opportunities, why they underwrite the sponsor as much as the asset itself, and how they've deployed $280MM across over 70 deals without a single failed capitalization. Mark shares his philosophy that success in real estate comes from tenacity and deal flow rather than being the smartest investor, discusses the accountability framework he learned at the Naval Academy, and explains why staying closely connected to operating partners through daily conversations drives better investment decisions than spreadsheet analysis alone.

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09 October 2025

Tony Yousif: I Haven't Asked for Business in 10 Years - Lessons from Distressed Real Estate

On this episode, Kevin chats with Tony Yousif, Executive Managing Director of SVN, about building a nationwide distressed real estate advisory platform through relationships rather than transactions. Tony shares his journey from working at a convenience store and borrowing from his now-wife's salary to survive, through 2.5 years of 100-hour weeks before his first $25,000 commission check. The conversation explores how he positioned himself as a "conductor of the orchestra" between lenders and local market experts rather than just a broker, working with institutions like Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and Fannie Mae to navigate troubled assets. Tony explains why he operates as a farmer rather than a hunter—planting seeds and nurturing relationships instead of chasing deals—and how this approach has given him the freedom to fire clients and walk away from $80,000 monthly retainers when relationships aren't mutually respectful. They discuss the difference between relationship brokers and transaction brokers, why banks' "extend and pretend" strategy looked genius through the last crisis, and Tony's philosophy on harmony versus balance across the three circles of life: business, friends and family, and self.

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17 July 2025

Jeff Pensiero: "Baldface Lodge: 36,000 acres of Pure Conviction”

On this episode, Kevin chats with Jeff Pensiero, founder of Baldface Lodge, a legendary backcountry snowcat skiing operation in British Columbia's Selkirk Range that many consider the pinnacle of snowboarding lodges. Jeff shares his 26-year journey starting with $40,000 borrowed off a stated-income mortgage, bootstrapping the operation from a canvas dome and single snowcat into a world-class facility with 3,000 people on the waiting list and wait times stretching 8 years or longer. The conversation explores how falling in love with his wife Paula led him to Nelson, BC and sparked the vision for the lodge, his connections with snowboarding legend Craig Kelly and even the Foo Fighters, and the reality of reinvesting every dollar back into the business for 17 years with little to no personal income. Jeff opens up about the realities of entrepreneurial commitment, his refusal to accept failure, how high standards and strong vision helped weather countless challenges, and the role trusted mentors played in cutting the path forward.

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