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0:00 Introduction to Art Investing & Wealth Building
2:14 Clare’s Entrepreneurial Journey Into Finance
5:48 Lessons Learned From Working With Billionaires
8:06 Why Art Has Outperformed Traditional Markets
10:35 Real Estate vs Art Investing Explained
13:02 How Scarcity Drives Art Appreciation
16:11 Avoiding Bad Art Investments & Speculation
17:35 Finding Emerging Artists Before They Explode
19:08 AI, Digital Art, and the Future of Investing
21:24 Tax Strategies, Lending, and Passive Income From Art

WELCOME BACK TO THE REAL ESTATE INVESTING CLUB PODCAST! 🎙️ In this fascinating episode, I sit down with investor and financial strategist Clare Baukham to uncover the hidden world of art investing, alternative assets, wealth preservation, and financial freedom. If you’ve been focused solely on real estate investing, rental properties, multifamily syndications, or the stock market, this episode will challenge the way you think about building long-term wealth and protecting your portfolio during uncertain economic cycles. 💰🏠🎨

Clare shares her incredible entrepreneurial journey from floral design and acting to becoming an options trader, financial advisor, and eventually one of the leading voices in alternative investments through art. Along the way, she worked with ultra-high-net-worth individuals, billionaires, private equity professionals, and elite investors who helped shape her understanding of how wealthy people truly build and preserve generational wealth. This episode dives deep into the mindset, investment strategies, and asset allocation techniques used by the wealthy to create financial security and maximize returns. 🚀

If you’re interested in passive income, portfolio diversification, recession-resistant investing, tax strategies, or finding unique ways to grow wealth outside of traditional real estate, this conversation is packed with actionable insights. Clare explains why contemporary art investing has become increasingly popular among high-net-worth investors, how art can outperform traditional investments like the S&P 500, and why scarcity creates massive upside potential in the art market. We also discuss how investors identify emerging artists before they become globally recognized and how insider industry relationships can dramatically impact investment outcomes. 📈
#RealEstateInvesting #PassiveIncome #FinancialFreedom #AlternativeInvestments #WealthBuilding

Want to learn more about our guest? Connect here: ClearArtReserve.com

Want to learn more about the REI Club Podcast, how to invest with Gabe at Kaizen, or join our community of active real estate investors on Skool? Visit the podcast website at https://www.therealestateinvestingclub.com
or click here: https://linktr.ee/gabepetersen

Category

📚
Learning
Transcript
00:05all right we are back with another episode of the real estate investing club i hope you guys are
00:10having a great day great week wherever you are and whatever day it is for you as always it is
00:16friday on the podcast so we're bringing that good friday energy to you and if you guys are listening
00:20live or if you listen to the last episode you'll know that here in seattle it is snowing we haven't
00:26had snow i don't think we had any snow last year but it's snowing and it's fantastic because i got
00:30to take my daughter out and experience snow for the first time which is great we we sledded down
00:35the hill she absolutely hated it but hopefully next time she'll like a little bit more because
00:41she's two and so i think the the speed kind of freaked her out but anyways it's good day for
00:46a second reason because we got claire bockham with us on the show from clearartreserve.com
00:50um this is going to be a bit of a different type of episode you you know you guys i
00:55uh i have a lot
00:56of curiosity and usually we talk about real estate today we are going to talk about real estate but
01:00um we have a little bit different of a topic we're talking about investing in art um it's just an
01:06interesting topic and i'm really excited to jump into it and claire is the expert in it so claire
01:10i'm excited to jump into this uh thanks for hopping on yeah thanks for having me absolutely um i told
01:17you before we got on here we always like to start with stories we like to hear how
01:20people got to where they are i'm sure you got a good one you're uh you've done financial planning
01:24you've invested in multi-family and uh you do art investing which is really unique so why don't
01:29you take us to the beginning of your story in uh in your career and just tell us how you
01:33got here
01:34oh the very beginning well actually i began as a floral designer believe it or not um so i'm from
01:42the toronto area and i worked in the underground and actually i saw a lot of very affluent individuals
01:49coming into our store and that started to intrigue me but of course you know you're on a path in
01:54your
01:54life and you're young and you're like well i'll just keep going on this because what else am i
01:57going to do so i actually went and i opened a flower store myself in a very affluent area um
02:03in
02:04like the mississauga port credit area so if you're from that area you know exactly what i'm talking
02:08about there's just pure mansions just beautiful right on lake ontario so when i was there the same
02:13thing was happening all these rolls royce and like s550 mercedes all these are pulling up and i'm like
02:18what do these people do for a living so i got talking to some of them so oddly enough you
02:23know
02:23the universe works in mysterious ways i developed a severe allergy to flowers so i ended up leaving the
02:29business i sold my company and i actually went into becoming um i became a professional actor and i
02:35studied with um some of the top people in the country and i started to get a lot of eyes
02:41on me from
02:42the hollywood area and in toronto and vancouver and i actually went and started a theater company
02:48and you know the thing is is with that is that's a that's a big ladder to climb and i
02:55decided i'd
02:56rather be rich than famous so while i was acting i was working at my parents lawn and garden equipment
03:02store i have such entrepreneurial background i've tried it all and they wanted to retire and i decided
03:07i didn't want to keep them in the business because you know as a child if you buy your parents
03:11business they're probably going to want to keep their hand in it a little bit right so i decided
03:15to let them go and i went off and my journey in finance began i became a um options trader
03:22on the
03:23u.s and international markets so i was trading these high beta stocks i started to get a really i
03:28was
03:29really good um just naturally so i started to get this name about myself in the trading community i had
03:34a lot of people ask me if i could trade their money so i thought awesome i'll start a hedge
03:38fund that
03:38makes sense to me i love this so it turns out you need a license for that otherwise it's illegal
03:44so not wanting to be in an orange jumpsuit um i decided to go and get myself licensed and what
03:51easier way than to become a financial advisor so that's what i did i remember my husband saying to
03:56me why don't you go become a financial advisor and i was like oh god no who wants to become
04:01a
04:01financial advisor that's horrible but i did so and i met some of the top guys in the company
04:07very early in my career probably within three to six months of my career and i started winning
04:13awards and becoming one of the top advisors in the country myself so it was really fun i thought you
04:19know what i'll just do this get my licenses and get out of here and go start my hedge fund
04:23which
04:24for me as well being this is a real estate podcast real estate was absolutely part of the equation as
04:31a part of um well allocated portfolio but we'll come back to that so um i kept working with these
04:38top advisors and you know i think when you when the snowball's rolling you don't just stop and go and
04:45do something else you make your money and you kind of see where it goes right so i did that
04:49for
04:51just over a decade i ended up switching firms to a firm in canada that's owned by a billionaire
04:57so thus always getting closer to the wealth right you can see this is a trend in my life there's
05:05always wealth coming to me surrounding me showing itself to me so i thought okay i understand i'm
05:11working with this billionaire i'm sitting down in the um boardroom that's overlooking his helipad
05:17i took his hand in mine i shook his hand and i said so how'd you do it he sat
05:22me down for two hours
05:24and told me the whole story so i'm dealing with him i'm dealing with my mentor who's probably in
05:30the hundred million dollar net worth dealing with my husband's mentor so my husband at that time was
05:35working in private equity helping um company become yeah we you say unicorn when it gets to a
05:41billion so it was a double unicorn because it got to two billion right from startup um and we're
05:46dealing with all of this experience and everything that we're learning and at the end of the day i'm still
05:51sitting there in this traditional financial advisor zone licensed zone where compliance is on top of
05:59me if i want to have a conversation about real estate or any private equity or anything with my
06:03clients i'm getting zinged for it right so i'm thinking that's great this is great i'm making great
06:09money but for me this is not how people grow and amass massive wealth it's through business ventures
06:20it's through alternatives so fast forward a little bit and i'm working in a a mansion a 65 million
06:28dollar mansion in bel-air with a mindset coach so we're we're in the the mansion for the day studying
06:35you know sitting getting cuddled up in the couch journaling thinking about how it would feel to live
06:39there right and at the end of the day the um owner of the house is there and of course
06:46you want to know
06:46the owner of a 65 million dollar mansion so i walk up to him hi my name is claire bockham
06:52nice to meet
06:52you and right beside him was the art dealer and the art dealer interrupts and he says so you're in
06:58finance i said yeah and he said have you ever thought about art as an alternative investment class
07:03and i said i have but in this world we're not trained at all about art a little bit about
07:11the
07:12taxation of it but nothing else and before our call you mentioned art can be very speculative unless
07:18you have the right team behind you right unless you know you have that inside information which
07:24in real estate and in um art is not illegal obviously in the stock world it's very illegal
07:31right so we stay away from that so through my conversations with him my goodness it's been
07:37what has been about three years now with him um the more education the more the further down the
07:43rabbit hole i went the more i saw the opportunity i couldn't believe some of the facts and stats on
07:51art
07:52where you know we're all looking at okay how if i'm buying this um like a 300 million dollar
07:58building downtown toronto right great you've got the the the cap and you've got the um the return and
08:04you've got all of the like how can i improve it so i can increase rent and so on and
08:08so you guys all
08:09know the story there but with art i'm looking at these we talked about a thousand percent rate of
08:15return on the the andy warhol started as 2.5 million i think it was four or five years later
08:20became a 28
08:21million dollar painting right so how can you always choose winners how can you buy art that is so art
08:28over
08:28the last 25 30 years has beat the s&p 500 so i don't believe in art as your total
08:35portfolio but i
08:36definitely believe of in art as the alpha in your portfolio so you guys are looking at okay most of
08:44your most of your listeners probably have their own actual stock portfolio they definitely got real
08:50estate in their portfolio it's probably those two things once those two things have been really
08:57capitalized then we start moving into other alts like art as the alpha you want that little piece
09:05that you're going to add to the portfolio that's really going to rocket for you so the pieces that
09:11before you go on i just so it sounds like you're you're going into the details of art which is
09:15great
09:15we do want to get into there i do want to wrap up your story though because it was pretty
09:18unique you
09:19went from a flower shop to an actor to a theater company options trader financial advisor you went through
09:24up and down through everything until you finally landed on art um so talking about art you know we
09:31talk about real estate real estate's the main thing that we invest that we talk about here the only thing
09:34we talk about here um and the reason i like real well there's a lot of reasons i like real
09:39estate but
09:39the main reason is real estate produces cash um real estate is a is an income producing it's a business
09:44and so you buy it and the next month you have money in your bank account that is something that
09:49does not
09:49occur with art and so walk us through first um you know lessons from every different type of
09:56investment can be applied to other investments and so i'm curious how the lessons from investing in art
10:01are applied to real estate so walk us through first why would someone what are the benefits of investing
10:07in art why would you consider it because it's like i said it's it's uh i see it as something
10:11that's
10:12incredibly speculative that's just based on other people's opinion of it almost like crypto obviously
10:16crypto has made many millionaires um but i've you know i invest in crypto i made a bunch and then
10:21i
10:21lost a bunch and i was like i'm no longer doing this i'm sticking to real estate real estate makes
10:26money and so why why do you feel like art is a solid investment for investors so is real estate
10:32not
10:32based on investor behavior like that yeah but it's based on um like true needs of people need housing
10:43and that is something that is uh that that's just never going to leave but people don't
10:48necessarily need art it's uh it is just something that they enjoy it's something that they um it's a
10:53nice to have but it's not something that's required i think that's the interesting thing is i've i've come
10:58into this marrying the wealth and investment world into the art the beauty the cultural asset so it's kind
11:06of funny for me because i just i was in los angeles last week at freeze they had the um
11:10the art fair for
11:11the week right and i'm walking around and all these people are talking about how beautiful the art is
11:15it's great it is beautiful some of these artists are our next level they're unreal at their vision
11:21but for me i just look at it as an asset so everything is based on investor behavior the stock
11:31market goes up and down only because not because the company yes okay sometimes the companies are losing
11:36money but mostly because of investor behavior real estate goes up i would uh i would push back there
11:42though because um and yes it is based on investor behavior but that behavior is based on understanding
11:48of the value that the thing provides and so for instance um you know lily the company lily they
11:54make pharmaceuticals they make drugs that save people's lives people will invest in that company
11:58because on partially because they know that you know that revenue is not going to disappear people
12:04aren't going to stop buying you know insulin for their diabetes tomorrow because that is a that is
12:09required for life recession-proof assets recession-proof assets basically so right so when the world starts
12:17to kind of swirl downward and you start to see real estate go down and you start to see uh
12:22the stock
12:23markets go down and bombing here and this person's doing this and all of the things this is where the
12:300.001 start pulling their money out of those more localized or more like uh what's it called um
12:38uh publicized i should say assets and start throwing it into art not gold not crypto why art here's the
12:47cool thing if i buy a painting so i bought about a 160 000 painting last week that painting will
12:55never
12:56lose that value ever now defend that position no why wouldn't it lose 160 000 just based on what
13:07what people think the value is it just it just doesn't that artist will never make that piece again
13:13right so there's a there's a huge scarcity effect in it right where i'm not i am absolutely not saying
13:20art over real estate i'm saying both i'm saying all and i'm not saying art over stock market i think
13:26you'd be crazy to not be diversifying way more and i think that's the beauty of art is in these
13:33times
13:33i have people saying to me look i know you said five or ten percent but i want to do
13:37more because i know
13:39it's going to hold its value if not go higher so when i was walking around freeze last year the
13:44year
13:44before with my team i was pretty new to it and i said well guys you know the what about
13:49the harvey
13:50weinstein thing you know the whole hashtag me too situation like what if an artist starts doing
13:54something like that and they said you know what art is so funny because that's making the person more
13:59more notorious so people will want to buy that art more oh this was from the era where he was
14:05doing
14:05that right so it's really twisted and for us who are in uh more like commoditized stocks etf you know
14:14a public portfolio and real estate it's so hard for us to wrap our head around
14:18it was just that the more i looked into it i i just the more i couldn't believe it so
14:25i said
14:25what if the guy dies and they said it's even better that's horrible but it's so true because
14:32again uh warhol all of his paintings actually gained uh for much further once he passed away so
14:40this is something that has just it's been historical it's you know when you're looking at well how do you
14:45know a stock's going to do well you look at the financials you look at the technicals and you look
14:49at the history so with art you look at the history art has always been this way and i believe
14:55it always
14:56will be it's it's it's even like people will talk to me about gemstones and buying hermes bags and all
15:00these other alternatives as well but art holds well i so um and i i'm not attacking you directly
15:07i'm very interested in in the whole idea because i do know that there is um incredible value in art
15:12and people make a killing on investing in art and so it you know it is a fact that money
15:17is made in
15:18art um but again i go back to the fact that there is art really has no value and that
15:23that's why i
15:24keep getting uh so i think of beanie babies and i and i don't mean to bad compare beanie babies
15:29to
15:29right but beanie babies at one point the individual beanie babies were selling for
15:35whatever and even today pokemon cards i've seen tiktok videos of these pokemon cards selling for
15:41250 000 which blows my mind um and people are doing this as an investment but if you take the
15:48case of
15:48beanie babies they they did peak but then they completely lost their value because people stopped
15:53caring about them yeah um how how do you make sure when you're investing in art i know there's a
15:59lot
15:59of appreciation there's a lot of value to be made how do you make sure that you're not investing in
16:03a
16:03beanie baby in something that is completely you know just based on the current um interest in that
16:11that piece of art and i'm not comparing art to beanie babies but it's a good comparison actually
16:17how do you uh so i have a team behind me who has been very very specifically curated and hunted
16:27down um i have a market maker on my team where he has taken people from we're not necessarily looking
16:35at you know 20 30 year holds we're not looking at three to five seven maybe 10 year hold depending
16:42on
16:43the piece so we're looking at a little bit of a short shorter term hold not a flip we don't
16:48like to
16:48use that term in the art world um where so for example my market maker has taken um artists and
16:54he
16:54will bring them into a residence program for a month and basically cultivate them and send them
17:01and the galleries are waiting for him basically to say this is the next big thing so he's taken them
17:06from being a five thousand dollar a piece up into the 1.5 million dollar a piece artist interesting so
17:13you're so i'm just reframing um the conversation here so you're not investing in you know uh leonardo or
17:21or whatever people who who right in the situation that you just described you guys are investing in
17:28current artists new artists yeah you see potential in yeah and then um and then you know grew i don't
17:37know what specifically you're doing to the problem is game with the blue those are called blue chip
17:44masters basically right it's all those leonardo's and everything mona lisa whatever absolutely those are
17:49all great um my team's actually working on an 85 million dollar picasso for a client right now
17:54those are great those are more of those passion pieces you really want to hold the piece that is
17:59more of a let's take the wealth and um hide it not hide it but put it into this asset
18:06let it sit there
18:07it'll appreciate not very much though i'm looking for so there there is a company who does that and i've
18:14unfortunately seen a lot of people complaining the fractionalize a piece like that uh and a lot of
18:19people are complaining they're like i'm not even making eight percent a year on this thing which
18:23is kind of your eight to ten percent should be your average in like a moderate totally exactly like
18:28you're not even keeping up so what was the point of it right so for us we're looking for those
18:32huge
18:32two three four uh thousand percent rate of return over the course of five say five to ten years on
18:39average okay yeah and you're doing that by identifying current artists that uh that you
18:46feel have potential and that's so that is uh it sounds like that in order to do that successfully
18:51you need to have taste my other question where i mean just going down that rabbit hole um how are
18:57you hedging against ai because ai is is able to make art um i mean digital art but once it
19:05gets into
19:05a robot it'll be able to make physical art as well um how how do you how do you hedge
19:11against that
19:11two things i think that ai first of all a lot of you you see all these posts that are
19:18ai now
19:19and you're like oh that was ai right it's like i don't know about you guys for me i i'll
19:25i'll scroll
19:26and i'll see something i'm like oh i thought that was real okay forget it i don't care you kind
19:30of
19:30dismiss it right so i don't think things made by ai especially in cultural art pieces i don't think
19:40that they're going to be as relevant as we think because it's those are more for like you know the
19:45people who go to like home sense or a target and buy a print to hang on their wall it's
19:51that totally
19:51great let them do that that's wonderful um second ai will not have the information like my team has
20:00about the artists who we know personally because their network is incredible who is uh who just
20:06scored a huge residency program with the one of the largest galleries in the uk for the next two
20:12years you know what i mean so that information that is the that is the key for why we can
20:19get the
20:20results that we're getting basically interesting yeah cool um so generally we have run into the into
20:27the clock here so it's the 20 minute mark uh usually we go into the quick question round but
20:31because all those questions are related to real estate specifically and we're talking about investing
20:35in art i do want to just ask a few more questions about um about the investing side of art
20:40is uh
20:41more specific questions um one i know that there are well maybe i don't know this are there tax
20:47benefits to investing in art there can be uh depending on how you invest
20:55okay go go uh go one further yes so you'd appreciate art like how how does it how does
21:01you can you can there are some little loopholes that i won't say publicly i'll definitely tell you
21:07offline um but there are some loopholes that you can you can utilize um just in the uh it's kind
21:13of
21:13like gemstones in how it's evaluated um art is strictly capital gain so as you guys know there
21:22can be capital gain you guys in the states i'm from canada but we don't get to roll capital gains
21:26into the next project like you guys you guys don't have 1031s horrible horrible horrible i'm moving to
21:32the states by the way um but there there are some ways to um eliminate capital gains in different ways
21:40so but we get into a lot of like um a hundred million dollar portfolio where we'll get lending
21:45from a overseas bank for 50 million we get to deduct the interest so there's it's it's our there's i
21:53didn't yeah yeah you just made a statement that i just clicked in my mind i didn't realize so there
21:58are you can go to a bank and get a get a loan for a piece of art it's not
22:03they even though it's not
22:04cash flowing they're just yes just yeah and we can we can make it cash flow as well so our
22:11collection
22:11the clear art reserve collection for example will start to do a tour and it'll start to create a
22:16dividend basically to kick back out so and a lot of the investors don't always know that they're just
22:20there for the strict capital gain aspect and the security of their money aspect um but yeah we we
22:27have we have rental systems where we send them out to you know legal offices and corporate and so on
22:32um we don't get too far into that right now but i can see it in the future uh museum
22:39uh so you like
22:40you you can rent a piece of art to like a museum or a private collection whatever and they'll pay
22:46you
22:46x amount per month or a thousand a month depending yeah exactly yeah yeah yeah cool yeah um so what
22:55is so someone were to invest in art uh and i'm sure you you've got a good amount of data
22:59to go
22:59on here but what is your uh what is a typical return um if you invest in art and hold
23:05it for
23:05what three years five years something like that yeah between 60 and a thousand percent depending on
23:11the piece interesting 60 and a thousand percent it's better than real estate it's pretty crazy
23:17yeah but it's so specialized right yeah knowledge is like yeah like i had clients who got super excited
23:24and they're like we bought art and i'm like without us what'd you buy we bought some prints and i'm
23:29like
23:29they're like but they're gonna depreciate i'm like don't do that don't do that interesting
23:35interesting yeah cool well uh that does wrap it up it has been you know art is such a unique
23:40investment
23:41um uh vehicle uh and it's something that is it's always been interesting to me because i i do like
23:48art but um as an investment you know i don't i don't feel like i have a good uh artistic
23:53sense and so
23:53i feel like i would make bad decisions you need the team yeah exactly but it's definitely a very uh
23:59very interesting strategy um before we leave i uh do want to give you an opportunity for people who
24:04are interested in getting involved in this world they want to invest in art um how can they how can
24:10they find you and then what can they expect when they reach out yeah i think that for your people
24:14um what you guys are kicking out basically um um rental income that that's like that's the biggest
24:21kick out right from from real estate is rental income which is great but it's also fully taxable
24:25of course after all of your deductions right so number one i think for your audience is how are we
24:31dealing with that fully tax the beautiful if you don't have a tax problem you have a problem we want
24:36the problem but we also want to make sure that we're dealing with it so from a structural standpoint
24:40which is what i do with clear wealth group from a structural standpoint how are you dealing with that
24:45how can you make how can you jump ahead of the taxes and make sure that you're getting all of
24:49that money back first of all second of all what are we doing with basically the retained earnings
24:53that are sitting so i know you guys have talked about the burst strategy we do that as well so
24:58that's a really good uh way to get money out of your corporation art for your corporation is a
25:04beautiful investment so if they do want to get involved or they want to have a further
25:09conversation um just hit me at clearartreserve.com um we have instagram as well i think it's at
25:15clearartreserve or my personal at claire bockham no problem and i'll answer questions without you
25:20know no problem especially let me know that you did come from from this podcast as well
25:25perfect i'll put that link in the show notes so if y'all want to reach out all you got
25:28to do is
25:28click a little more in the description it's going to pull down that full description and in there
25:32you can find claire's links all right that wraps it up claire thank you very much for
25:37hopping on the show thank you that was great absolutely for everybody who's with us today thank
25:43you guys for showing up you are the reason we do this so if you guys have any questions reach
25:47out
25:47to me gabe with the real estate investing club.com if you guys want to support the show just leave
25:51us a comment review anything like that other than that i hope you guys have a great week keep
25:56rocking real estate and i look forward to seeing you on the next episode
25:59you
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