Why I Started a Self-Directed IRA Company: A Tax Lawyer’s Journey to Financial Freedom for Everyday Investors

When people ask me why I started a Self-Directed IRA company, the short answer is simple. I saw a massive disconnect between what the tax code allows Americans to do with their retirement money and what the financial industry actually lets them do.

The real story, however, is far more personal and far more frustrating.

It is a story that begins not in the alternative investment world but in the traditional legal and financial system. I spent years operating at the highest levels and still had no idea that retirement accounts could invest beyond stocks, mutual funds, and Wall Street products.

That realization ultimately changed the trajectory of my career. It led me to leave the practice of law and sparked the creation of IRA Financial—a company built to give Americans the freedom Congress intended them to have when retirement accounts were first created.

Today, more than 27,000 investors have used that freedom to take control of over $5 billion in alternative investments through our platform.

But none of that existed when this journey began.

My Background: A Tax Lawyer Who Didn’t Know the Truth About Retirement Investing

Before entering the self-directed retirement space, I was a tax attorney by training and profession.

I earned a Master’s in Tax Law (LL.M. in Taxation) and spent years working at some of the largest and most prestigious law firms in the world.

My focus was tax. Complex structures, compliance, regulations, and planning.

I worked with sophisticated clients, major financial institutions, and high-net-worth individuals.

And yet, despite operating at that level of the financial and legal system, I had never been taught nor had I ever encountered the idea that an IRA or 401(k) could invest in alternative assets like:

• Real estate
• Private equity
• Venture capital
• Hedge funds
• Private businesses
• Precious metals
• Tax liens
• Even cryptocurrency

Looking back, that realization still shocks me.

How could someone who spent nearly a decade practicing tax law not know something that was clearly permitted under the Internal Revenue Code?

The answer, as I would later learn, is simple. The system was never designed to promote investor freedom. It was designed to promote asset gathering.

The Moment Everything Changed

In my eighth year practicing as a tax lawyer, a partner at the firm asked me to research whether a client, who happened to be a partner at a large hedge fund, could use his IRA to invest in his own fund.

This seemed like a narrow, technical question. But it would change my career.

I remember sitting in the firm’s library researching the issue. After digging through shelves of tax materials, I found only a single detailed tax treatise discussing the tax treatment of retirement funds and alternative investments.

Just one. That alone was surprising.

But what truly shocked me was what the research revealed. Yes, retirement accounts can invest in alternative assets. And not only could they invest in them, but the restrictions were also actually relatively limited.

As long as you avoided:

• Prohibited transactions under IRC Section 4975
• Investments in life insurance for IRAs
• Collectibles
• Dealings with “disqualified persons” such as yourself, your spouse, lineal ascendants or descendants, or entities they control

You had enormous flexibility. I remember being blown away.

Here I was, a tax lawyer at a global firm, and I had just discovered that retirement accounts were far more powerful than anything Wall Street had ever explained.

The Second Shock: My Own Money Was “Not Allowed” to Do What the Tax Code Permitted

After learning this, I did what any rational investor would do. I asked my financial advisor if I could use funds from a former employer 401(k) to invest in a real estate opportunity my friends were involved in.

His answer was immediate. “No.”

He explained that the platform they used, at the time Fidelity, did not allow investments into that type of deal. That made absolutely no sense to me. The tax code clearly permitted it. ERISA never restricted retirement accounts to stocks. Congress never said retirement investors were limited to mutual funds.

So why was I being told I couldn’t do it? The answer was not risk. It was business model.

Large financial institutions generate revenue from:

• Assets under management (AUM) fees
• Proprietary products
• Revenue sharing
• Trading spreads
• Managed portfolios

Alternative assets do not fit neatly into that structure. And because they are harder to custody, harder to scale, and less profitable, they were simply excluded from most platforms. Not because investors were prohibited. Because investors were inconvenient. That realization was the moment everything clicked.

Discovering the Self-Directed IRA Industry and Its Problems

Once I understood that retirement funds could legally invest in alternative assets, I began researching companies that offered self-directed retirement services.

What I found was deeply disappointing.

Many providers:

• Charged excessive fees
• Offered limited support
• Provided almost no investor education
• Did not help with ongoing compliance
• Left clients to figure out IRS reporting on their own

In many cases, investors were paying high custodial fees for very little value. As a tax lawyer, this was alarming.

Self-directed retirement accounts involve:

• Prohibited transaction rules
• UBIT considerations
• Reporting obligations
• Structuring issues

Yet investors were being handed complex tools with almost no guidance. It was clear the industry was built for transactions, not for long-term investor success.

The Big Realization: Congress Intended Retirement Freedom

As I dug deeper into the legislative history, something became crystal clear. When retirement accounts were established under ERISA in 1974, Congress did not distinguish between:

• Accounts that invested in stocks
• Accounts that invested in alternative assets

If lawmakers wanted to restrict retirement accounts to Wall Street products, they easily could have. They did exactly that with 529 plans. But they didn’t do it with IRAs or 401(k)s.

Instead, Congress placed only a handful of guardrails:

• No life insurance in IRAs
• No collectibles
• No prohibited transactions with disqualified persons
• Certain rules around leverage (UDFI)

That’s it. Why?

Because Congress understood:

• The importance of diversification
• The value of private investment
• The potential for alternative assets to generate alpha
• The need for Americans to build long-term wealth outside traditional markets

The intent was freedom with reasonable safeguards. Somewhere along the way, the financial industry replaced that freedom with convenience and profit.

Leaving Law to Build Something Better

At that point, I faced a decision. Continue practicing tax law at a large firm or build something that solved this problem. I chose the harder path. I left legal practice and spent the next year developing the business plan that would become IRA Financial.

The mission was simple but powerful:

Give Americans the ability to invest their retirement money the way the tax code actually allows.

But I wanted to do it differently.

The Problem IRA Financial Was Created to Solve

The problem wasn’t that retirement accounts couldn’t invest in alternatives.

The problem was that:

• Most investors didn’t know they could
• Most platforms didn’t allow it
• Existing providers were expensive and outdated
• Compliance support was minimal
• Education was almost nonexistent

In other words, the system was stacked against investor control. Americans were being told, “You can only invest in what we offer.” That was never the intent of retirement law. IRA Financial was built to change that.

A New Model: One IRA, Every Investment, One Flat Fee

From day one, the vision was to create a retirement platform that:

• Allowed investment in all IRS-approved assets
• Charged one simple flat fee
• Provided education and support
• Included ongoing tax and compliance services
• Made the process easy and accessible

No AUM fees. No hidden transaction costs. No platform bias toward proprietary products. Just freedom within the rules. The goal was to let investors focus on investing, not paperwork.

Why the Big Institutions Don’t Offer This

Many people assume that firms like Fidelity or Schwab restrict alternatives because they are too risky. In reality, the primary issue is economics.

Their platforms are designed around:

• Scalable securities
• Managed accounts
• Fee-based portfolios
• Product distribution

Alternative assets disrupt that model.

They are:

• Illiquid
• Customized
• Operationally intensive
• Harder to monetize

So they are simply excluded. Not because investors shouldn’t have access, but because they don’t fit the profit structure. IRA Financial was built specifically to solve that gap.

The Impact: 27,000+ Investors and Over $5 Billion in Alternatives

What started as a legal insight has become a movement.

Today, more than 27,000 investors have used IRA Financial to:

• Invest in real estate
• Fund private companies
• Participate in venture deals
• Hold precious metals
• Allocate to digital assets
• Lend money privately
• Build diversified portfolios beyond Wall Street

Collectively, our clients have invested over $5 billion into alternative assets. These are not just institutions or ultra-wealthy families.

They are:

• Small business owners
• Doctors
• Engineers
• Entrepreneurs
• Real estate investors
• Everyday Americans

People who simply wanted control over their own retirement future.

Why This Matters More Than Ever

We are living in a world where:

• Public markets are increasingly concentrated
• Private markets hold much of the growth
• Unicorn companies stay private longer
• Real estate remains a core wealth builder
• Inflation reshapes portfolio construction

Limiting retirement investors to only stocks and mutual funds is no longer aligned with how wealth is actually created. Alternative assets are not a luxury. They are a necessity for diversification. That’s exactly what Congress envisioned decades ago.

The Bigger Mission: Financial Freedom Through Education and Compliance

One of the biggest mistakes early SDIRA providers made was assuming investors could figure out the rules themselves. As a tax lawyer, I knew that wasn’t realistic.

That’s why IRA Financial was built with a strong emphasis on:

• Education
• Compliance
• Tax reporting
• Ongoing support

Our goal was not just to provide access but to provide confidence. Investors should never have to choose between opportunity and compliance. They should have both.

Why I Started This Company

I did not start a Self-Directed IRA company simply to build another financial services business. I started it because I wanted to fundamentally disrupt the way retirement investing was being done in America.

What I discovered early in my career was deeply troubling. Millions of Americans were being unknowingly denied investment freedom that the tax code had already given them decades earlier. The law clearly allowed retirement accounts to invest in a wide range of assets, yet the traditional financial system had quietly narrowed those choices to a small menu of products that primarily benefited the institutions offering them.

As I looked closer, I realized the problem was not just one issue. It was several layered on top of each other. There was a massive knowledge gap, where investors simply were never told what their retirement accounts were actually allowed to do. There was a platform gap, where most large financial institutions did not offer the infrastructure needed to hold alternative assets. There was a service gap, where the few providers that did exist often failed to offer meaningful education, compliance support, or guidance. And perhaps most concerning, there was a trust gap, where investors were led to believe that limited choices were the result of risk or regulation, when in many cases they were the result of business models and profit incentives.

I believed this system could and should be fixed.

That belief is what led to the creation of IRA Financial. The mission from day one was to restore the original intent behind retirement accounts as envisioned by Congress: to give Americans true control over how their retirement savings are invested.

At its core, IRA Financial was built around a simple but powerful idea. Retirement investors should have the freedom to invest in what they know, the freedom to diversify beyond traditional markets, and the freedom to build long-term wealth on their own terms within the rules that already exist.

The Bottom Line

When I first discovered that retirement accounts could invest in alternative assets, I was shocked. I realized most Americans were being prevented from doing so, not by law but by industry structure. This was frustrating. And when I saw how poorly the existing solutions served investors, I knew something had to change. So I left the legal world and built a company dedicated to giving retirement investors the control they deserve.

Today, tens of thousands of investors have taken back that control. And the mission remains the same as it was on day one:

Empower Americans to invest their retirement savings in everything the IRS allows, not just what Wall Street wants to sell them.