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In this special episode, we revisit four incredible conversations with visionaries who have left lasting impressions on leadership, entrepreneurship, and wealth creation. Each of these guests has shared profound lessons and strategies, and together, they form a tapestry of wisdom for those seeking to elevate their lives and businesses.
The Art of Service and Leadership with Charlie Garcia
Charlie Garcia’s life exemplifies the essence of service, leadership, and love. As a decorated public servant and founder of R360, he reveals how true wealth transcends financial assets, encompassing family, relationships, and personal fulfillment. Dive into Charlie’s journey and learn how his leadership philosophy and groundbreaking work in business and entrepreneurship inspire societal betterment.
Unlocking Entrepreneurial Potential with Dan Sullivan
Dan Sullivan, the visionary founder of Strategic Coach®, offers a masterclass in entrepreneurship. With over 40 years of experience, Dan simplifies complex concepts, guiding entrepreneurs to harness their unique strengths. He shares transformative insights on self-investment, freedom, and continuous growth—keys to thriving in both personal and professional spheres.
Lifestyle Investing with Justin Donald
Justin Donald’s story is one of bold investments and remarkable success. From his first mobile home park investment to creating eight-figure wealth through strategic partnerships, Justin shares how to break free from the traditional work-for-pay model. His strategies for building passive income and wealth through alternative investments are an inspiration to anyone seeking financial independence.
Building Systems for Success with Nic Peterson
Nic Peterson, co-founder of Mastery Mode, takes us on his journey of entrepreneurial highs and lows. Through his ventures, Nic highlights the power of efficient systems, continuous learning, and the implementation of hard-earned lessons. His framework from Bumpers offers practical strategies for maximizing productivity and achieving a life of abundance.
Each guest brings unique perspectives, yet they are united by a commitment to growth, service, and impact. Tune in to this compilation episode to gain actionable insights and timeless inspiration from these thought leaders.
Welcome to the Wealth Strategy Secrets of the Ultra Wealthy podcast where we help entrepreneurs like you exponentially build wealth through passive income to live a life of freedom and prosperity. Are you tired of paying too much in taxes, gambling your future on the stock market? And want to learn about hidden strategies for making your money work for you? And now, your host, Dave Wolcott, serial entrepreneur and author of the best selling book, the Holistic Wealth Strategy.
Hey everyone. Welcome back to Wealth Strategy Secrets of the Ultra Wealthy. I’m your host, Dave Wolcott and today we’re celebrating the best of 2024. In this special episode, we revisit four unforgettable conversations with visionaries who have profoundly impacted leadership, entrepreneurship and wealth creation. This year, these guests have delivered timeless wisdom, powerful strategies and actionable insights that can elevate your life, your business and your mindset. Together, they represent a tapestry of excellence, growth and impact. Here’s what’s in store for you. The Art of Service and Leadership with Charlie Garcia.
Charlie shares his life’s work as a decorated public servant and founder of R360centimillionaire community. His lessons on true wealth, leadership and love showcase how success transcends money to include family, relationships and purpose. Unlocking entrepreneurial potential with Dan Sullivan. The legendary founder of Strategic Coach distills over 40 years of entrepreneurial wisdom. Dan’s insights on freedom, self investment and maximizing your strengths are essential for any leader looking to achieve extraordinary growth. Lifestyle Investing with Justin Donald from his first mobile home park investment to creating eight figure wealth, Justin’s journey is an inspiration. He breaks down how to create passive income, escape the work for money cycle and achieve financial freedom through alternative investments. Building Systems for Success with Nick Peterson.
Nick’s story of entrepreneurial highs and lows reveal the power of efficient systems, continuous learning and maximizing productivity. His Bumpers framework provides a clear path to achieving abundance and success on your own terms. These episodes are a masterclass in growth, service and wealth creation. If you’re ready to gain clarity, learn actionable strategies and get inspired by some of the brightest minds of the year, this episode is for you. Let’s dive into the best of 2024.
Nowadays, I actually have people come up and compliment me about the way I think. They say, “Wow, I like the way you think, Dan”. Dave, so tell us a little bit about what that really means to you. Thinking about your thinking?
Yeah. Well, there’s different kinds of thinking that people do and thinking about their thinking is the least that they do. Okay and so I’ll just talk about it. There’s people who think about things, you know, and if you’re in a conversation with them, they’re talking about their things, their home, their cars, their cottage, you know, the technology that they’re working with and their life is mainly world of things. Okay and then there’s people who primarily they think about people. And that’s why I think social media has been such a, you know, a huge phenomenon was that, you know, they’re interacting from the time they get up in the morning till the time and, you know, bringing each other up to date, but it’s all about people.
They’re talking about people and you know, in the first two levels mix, they’re talking about people and their things, and then there’s a third level which is thinking about thoughts. And pretty well your entire upper echelon of the educational system is people thinking about thoughts, but they’re not their thoughts. You’ll have a professor at Harvard who is an expert in President Lincoln and he examines President Lincoln’s writings, his speeches, you know, and his thoughts. But they’re not, they’re not thinking about their thinking, they’re thinking about someone else’s thoughts and everything else. And I would say those first three levels really are 99% of people’s lives and thinking about thinking is on another level. And I think that entrepreneurs are better at this to start with and not know that they’re really good at this and they can’t quite explain why from a very early age.
I mean, when did you have your, Dave, when did you have your first inklings that you probably weren’t going to be a good employee?
Probably in school, back to grade school. Yeah, I was very disobedient.
Yeah and I find the entrepreneurial road, which is a fork, and they take one fork in the road, 90, 95% of the population takes one road where they know they want to get a good job and they want to, you know, they maybe in the course of a lifetime have five or six different jobs, but they’re always an employee. And the entrepreneur right from the beginning says, there’s no way that I’m going to take orders from someone else, you know, and starting with parents and teachers.
Yeah.
Where in Connecticut, where in Connecticut did you grow up?
So I grew up, sadly, people know the town Newtown, Connecticut, because they, you know, they had that shooting there in school, which was really tragic. But, you know, I grew up in a middle class family and you know, to your point, I mean, it’s just. It’s so interesting, right, because I followed that, you know, recipe of success like so many of us do, which is go to school, get good grades. Life is just going to work out.
Don’t go to jail.
Yeah, and you’ll be fine right? And I did the ROTC program in the Marine Corps, and I know you served in the army as well, Dan, and, you know, it was a complete, you know, bureaucracy. It was a hierarchy, it was just this system that, you know, I really struggled inside of that system.
I liked being mission driven, but I didn’t like the system. And then when I got into corporate America, it was completely more of the same right? Which is this corporate hierarchy and all of these, you know, rules.
It just.
What was the industry?
I was in the tech industry.
Oh, yeah, so there’s this. But I, you know, I’ve done a lot of anecdotal research on this topic. You know, when did you get the sense that you weren’t operating the way the other kids were? You know, and it’s before 10 years old, I would say, easily, you can see it before 10 years old. The other thing I notice.
How old are you now?
54.
54, I would say at 54, you’re probably more like you were when you were 8 years old than almost all the people, you know, who aren’t entrepreneurs.
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, there’s something about a childhood playfulness that entrepreneurs hold on to that other people don’t, you know, and, you know, just tinkering with things and, you know, doing things that are not ordinary. So anyway, back to your original question, where it started. So we started in workshop form, and it’s just grown, you know, it’s just every year it grows. We’ve had 35 years, we’ve had two years where we just broke even, we’ve had 33 years where we made a healthy profit and profit’s good.
Absolutely.
It’s one of my favorite things. One of my favorite things is making a profit because it buys you time, it buys you resources, it buys you freedom.
Right, freedom and that’s really the key, Dan, because, you know, again, when I went through these years of being in corporate America and being in, you know, in institutions and everything, it was. Was all really about, like, this system, you know, you were stuck in someone else’s machine. And it was so refreshing the first time I really heard you to realize that. You know what? It finally dawned on me that I’m playing on someone else’s chessboard, and I need to be on my own chessboard.
That’s right.
Making my own moves and get out of the gap and get into the game.
Yeah, I think, it’s some. I mean, you just made reference. They said, if you were playing chess, what would you rather be? Would you rather be the white piece or the black piece? And he says, “Well, I don’t want to be either of the pieces. I want to be the board.” And I think that’s what entrepreneurs. It’s a great.
IIt’s a great thing, I want to be the chessboard and I want to make the rules.
Yeah, exactly. So that you’re winning more than.
So that. Yeah.
So, Dan, we had. It was interesting. We just had our annual summit with our mastermind group, and we talk a lot about creating holistic wealth in your life, right? And looking at all the different elements, including, you know, health and mindset and all these different things.
And we did this really cool exercise.
We did a wealth visioning, mind mapping, and it was so fascinating to see what unanimously showed up for everyone, which, you know, the answer to which was at the center of this. It wasn’t about how many zeros are in your bank account or how big your portfolio is.
It was all about freedom.
Yeah.
So tell us about, you know, your concepts around freedom.
Yeah, well, there’s two types of freedom, and one of them is freedom from. Okay, so I’ll take you back to Connecticut and the school and, you know, your experience in the Marine Corps, your experience in, you know, in corporate life. One thing that drives you to be an entrepreneur is that you want freedom from what you don’t like about something in your past. Okay, you know, and I would say that the vast majority of entrepreneurs that I have met their entire life is still governed by freedom from, they’re still, they’re very successful.
You’re 54. They’re very successful, and they have achieved things that they couldn’t have imagined 20, 25 years ago. But they’re still trying to get away from something. Okay, and what I say is, because you’re not really thinking about what you really want. Okay. Freedom.
When you get freedom, too. So I’m totally in freedom, too. You know, there’s something I’m getting to. And I’ve got an update on that, and I’ve just been talking about it for the last couple weeks so we can reveal it on this show. And I was saying to a group, and I haven’t draw a picture. I’m kind of gifted visually, you know, as a born artist and in the ad agency I did a lot of, you know, layouts and things like that. So I’m very good at that. So I just had him take a sheet of paper and turn it sideways, a blank sheet of paper.
And in the lower left hand corner I had him draw a little circle and put the word here, there, here next to the little circle. And then go to the upper right hand, there’s a big circle and put there. And then draw a straight line from the little circle to the big circle with an arrowhead that touches the big circle. And I said now above the line write the word striving. And they write the word striving. And I said this is a picture of your life. You’re here and you’re trying to get to there. And I said how many of you? I’ve just drawn a portrait of your life here.
They’re always striving.
So I grew up in the Republic of Panama and I had a difficult relationship with my father. And he really wanted me to go to an Ivy League school and all these things. And the last thing he wanted me to do was to serve. But I had this calling to serve. So I applied to the service academies. I wanted to be a fighter pilot and I got accepted to the US Air Force Academy. So I went that route, but unfortunately lights out was at midnight and I was studying under the COVID with a flashlight till 2, 3 in the morning.
So unfortunately my eyes went from 2020 to 2100. So I couldn’t fly airplanes anymore. But I decided I used to watch all the James Bond movies. I said, I’ll be an intel officer. So I went to intel school and in the 80s there was guerrilla warfare going on all over Central America, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and I got sent right into the middle all of that, and I spent about five years doing all kinds of interesting things.
And then I was working for a four star general, John Galvin, who was the head of Southern Command. And he had introduced me to, I had written, I wrote a lot, I’ve always written a ton. And I wrote a cover story in May of 87 that Mort Zuckerman, the editor of U.S. newsmoral Report published. And it was about how the Cubans were using drug traffickers to infiltrate arms and then they were laundering money through a bank that was set up and he had been on the regional selection committee for the White House fellows. So he told me I should apply and he wrote me a letter of recommendation. So in the last six months of the Reagan administration, I went to work for a guy that became a mentor, former chairman of Goldman Sachs, John Whitehead.
John had been the Deputy Secretary of State under Schultz. So he really got me thinking about the finance background. That came a little bit later. And then Bill Bennett came in and I love Bill Bennett. He was appointed to drug czar. So I helped write the first, the nation’s first national drug control strategy. But then I decided to get out of the Air Force and I ended up going to law school and at Columbia I also was the first person in my class to publish on the law review. But I found out that, you know, law was really a business and there’s better ways to make money than every six minutes writing down what client you’re thinking of to get paid.
So I decided not to go on a clerkship when I graduated from law school. And I started a hedge fund focused on the banking and thrift industry. And two hedge funds later, I started a broker dealer in 1997 that we grew to 60 offices in eight countries. We were the fastest growing private firm in Florida for two years, the fifth or sixth fastest growing in the country. And then fortunately we were bought in 2006 because we cleared Bear Stearns, which a few years later disappeared. So I got lucky in that regard. So that’s really my entrepreneurial journey and how I built wealth as a veteran. And I did not have an MBA, I had a master’s in public administration.
So somebody told me to join the young president’s organization, YPO and then they said they had a competitor called Vistage, it was called Tech back then and they were both peer to peer groups to help you be a better chief executive officer. So I joined them both and when I sold my business, I left Vistage, but I stayed in YPO, and then somebody told me about Tiger 21, which was an organization I joined in 2011 and that taught you to be a better investor. And I was pretty good in stocks, bonds, options, equities, but not as familiar with real estate, commodities, all kinds of global investments, private equity, credit, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
So over a period of eight years, I became very familiar, learned a lot. But then I wanted to do something different because at least in my case and others, it was really about our families and ensuring that the wealth that we created did negatively affect them or my great great grandchildren on Evermeet.
Because at the end of the day, I believe that money is just energy to make transformative change. Either in your life, your children’s life, the world. But that energy can be both positive and negative if it’s not handled correctly. So I decided to create a different organization, a different peer to peer group where we could use the privilege of wealth to form a new paradigm where we collect individuals with a generosity of spirit that are going to use their God given gifts for the benefit of the world, humanity, the health of our planet, and creating a legacy that their heirs will continue with these values and continue solving some of the world’s most intractable problems by putting their entrepreneurial mojo to work. So that’s kind of my story. I’m married, the love of my life is Christina. I have four unbelievable children, two grandchildren, and I’m very happy that I’m still here. My dad died young when he was 61, and I hope to be around for a very long time so I can be a guiding force in my immediate family and my extended family.
Yeah, such a powerful story and evolutionary in nature as well. Charlie and I can relate. You know, I think it’s so difficult, right, leaving school, going into the military, and then kind of coming out. Did you have a period of time when you were at the law firm or shortly thereafter when you, you knew you had to become an entrepreneur? Was there some type of itch or some type of sign that led you down that path?
Absolutely, I had a classmate that ended up going to Raymond James, but I was at Greenberg Trarg in Miami and we were taking these banks public. And what I noticed is that they were coming out of 50 cents a book value. It’s like Peter lynch, who was big in those days, wrote an article in Barron’s. It’s like you buy a used car for ten grand, you go home to wash it, and you see in the glove compartment there’s a bag with 10 grand in there. And you’re going, oh my God. And that’s what it was like. These stocks would come out at 10 and open up at 17, 18, 19.
So one of the bankers on the deal, one of the associates said, “Hey Charlie, would you like some stock?” And I was a little bit older when I went to law school. I was 32 because of the military. So I said, sure, I’ll buy 4,000 shares. So sure enough, the next day it opens up at 19 bucks. So it’s like, okay, four times. Wow, I just made $36,000. Well, guess what? My starting salary was going to be the next year when I showed up, it would be 72,000 and I would have to work 3,000 hours. And I remember asking my executive assistant at the time who worked with various people and I asked her how much she made.
And when I calculated 3,000 hours by 72,000, she was going to be making more money than me. And I was so happy but when I saw the associate, he kind of was looking down at the floor and I said dude, you just made me 36 grand. And he said no, you know, I told the partner in charge of the deal, he said it was in kosher and to cancel it. And I said what? He canceled it and at that moment a light bulb went off like hey, law is a business. If I can make half a year salary in an investment, that’s a no brainer where they’re coming out at 50% of book value.
So what did I do? I started a bank and thrift hedge fund. That’s what I did. It was at a time where there was a lot of consolidation in the banking industry. I opened up over 300 accounts at mutual funds all over the United States. In those days they weren’t as particular that you had to show up with. As long as you had a UPS PO box you could sign up. Then if that bank decided to go public, the mutual owners were the people that had accounts and you could buy up to 4.9% of the IPO. So there was just no way to lose when you have a fund that only invests in these banks that are going public that are coming out at 50% of book value.
So we had a 37% compounded annual return for three years. And I decided to get out because my partner had half his money in there. He happened to be my ex father in law and he was super happy that I had taken his money and he had put in 100 million and I doubled it in basically two years. So I wanted to take a three year record and go out and raise a billion dollars. But he didn’t want to do it. So that’s when I decided to go off on my own.
My rule was this, no two people in the same industry that do the same thing. I didn’t need the money and I get bored easily. So I wanted to see how many, all these different domains, how many things can we, how many patterns and principles can we identify that cross over into these other domains? Those 36 grand a year and in the first month I had 44 people. It’s 44 people that did 44 different things and I did that for two years and I spent all day every day just because I was fascinated with everything going on, just identifying these patterns that show up over and over and over, regardless of what domain you’re in, what you’re selling, what you’re investing in.
And through that, the most interesting, the ones with the most alignment out of those 44 people, I started pulling partnerships, started partnering with them, and that’s where most of my companies come from now is just say, hey, I want as many diverse, different people as possible. Coach them. And then I just kind of wound down the coaching and focused on the handful that I think are doing something really cool, really interesting, really impactful.
And that’s what bumpers R3. Everything that I write about, fundamentally, it’s. I’m mostly only concerned with the repeating patterns. I don’t get. I don’t get super deep into. Like, if you’re in medicine, there’s things that apply to medicine and only medicine. It’s not me. I’m not a doctor.
I don’t need to know all that stuff. But those experts do tend to miss the, like, the fundamental recurring patterns. And that’s, I think, where I am the most helpful or useful to them.
Yeah, really fascinating and so would you say all those patterns are really encapsulated in your book bumpers? Would that kind of be the essence of it?
No, but I think if we talk about highest return, I think those are the highest leverage, most common. So in bumpers, you have appreciate when bad things don’t happen, raise the floor, can’t win a race you don’t want to be in. Like, those are, like, the first. If you want to get from A to B, it’s really helpful to not get blown up, like, step on a landmine. And it’s really helpful to actually go in the correct direction, you know, like. Yeah, those are the two things that if you can just avoid dying and you’re pointed in the right direction and you’re the kind of person that’s probably listening to this podcast, you’re a driven person. Those two things are enough.
Like, just don’t go the wrong direction or kill yourself.
Yeah, so why don’t we just unpack that a little bit more for the listeners? So if people haven’t read the book yet, I mean, let’s just get into a little more detail on bumpers about, you know, killing yourself.
And also, I mean, it’s a really interesting concept, but I was also kind of, you know, contemplating that as well on some of the other, you know, theories that are out there. You know, things like, you know, Ying and Yang and there’s so many versions of reaching peaks, then you’ve got lows and that’s kind of life and kind of managing that. So, so tell us a little bit about bumpers.
Yeah, I love that, you mentioned Yin Yang theory because I’m in a, I have a grandmaster, so I’m, I have to study all five phases of Yin Yang.
Yeah.
So bumpers is, it’s so one of the recurring patterns and I saw this first in fitness and I’m really grateful. For a while I was embarrassed, like being a fitness professional because they don’t always have the best reputation. But I’m so grateful that I learned everything I learned in the context of biology because it’s a complex system, it’s adaptive. And so if you can learn things through, if you can learn through the lens of biology, complex systems start to make more sense. Things like emergent properties and et cetera. So watching these gym goers, my clients, at first you recognize, and I’m a resource allocation guy. I learned really young when I was going, I went pro and strongman and my coach told me, give me this whole spiel about how important it is to conserve energy. And it really stuck with me.
So from a resource allocation standpoint, the number of people that yo yo diet so they gain 30 pounds, they lose 30 pounds, they gain 30 pounds, they lose thirty pounds. And you see like the tremendous amount of resources that go into losing that 30 pounds each time, it’s a significant amount of time, effort, bandwidth, money. And so from again, from a resource allocation standpoint, it was like, what is going on? Because if you could put all of that effort that you’ve put into losing the same £30 over and over to making progress, you would be so much further along and in such a better place. And that’s where it like, that’s the pattern we kept seeing is okay, so you had a million dollar month and then you had two months where you lost a million dollars, you know, and then you had a million dollar month. It’s like, well, if you could just avoid the losses or in this, in the first case, if you could just avoid the weight gain in the first place, you could recapture all that time, effort, money and resources and put it into inching forward and making progress. So why aren’t you doing that? And my observation, and I talk about this quite a bit, is if you have a family member that is pre diabetic and has maybe struggled with their body image and weight for some amount of time, and they lose 30 pounds. What happens? They celebrate. You celebrate, everybody celebrates.
It’s a massive dopamine hit and then let’s say your sister never gained the weight to begin with. Nobody’s celebrating her, right? There’s no dopamine for avoiding bad stuff. And so what our brains learn over time is if I want a dopamine hit, I could just dig a hole for myself and dig myself out. Woo, free dopamine. Whereas making progress is, as you know, it’s hard, it’s painful, there’s not a lot of rewards.
So a lot of people get stuck in this loop of. It’s like the entrepreneur shows up at the office and starts a bunch of fires so that they could put out a bunch of fires and go home feeling like they’re a superhero firefighter. And so I just see this pattern over and over, which is why I wrote bumpers, which is saying, “Hey, can we appreciate?” I understand why we celebrate getting out of a bad situation, but that’s still not ideal because you were in a bad situation, you lost time, you lost money, all that stuff. Probably damaged relationships. Can we celebrate or like rewire our brain to at least appreciate when a bad thing doesn’t happen? And that was most of, like, we had people come in for coaching in the mastermind and they would start making progress in leaps and bounds. And most and everybody. That’s why we had so many people come in through referral.
Like, what’s the magic? What is Nick doing? What secret tip or trick does he know that nobody else knows? It was like, yeah, let’s just. Here’s what we do. We go back, we identify all the bad things that happened, and then we figure out how to avoid them in the future. And that’s the secret sauce. So that’s really Bumpers. Is that kind of foundational, you know, how many entrepreneurs, how many people in general investors, they want so that they’re looking at crypto, they’re looking at AI, they’re looking at high upside assets because on some level they’re trying to push harder on the gas. They’re trying to get to wherever they’re going faster.
It’s like, okay, I get it, but maybe, maybe we should take our foot off the brake first. Yeah, like that’s what bumpers is. It’s just take the e brake off, then push on the gas and yeah, it’s been surprising. It gets more surprising to me. I wrote it six years ago. It gets more and more popular. So I think hopefully people are starting to appreciate or at least think about avoiding bad things.
Yeah, now, totally love that, Nick. And I really recognize that pattern in investing, and that’s when. In 2000, when I took a complete bloodbath in the. You know, when the tech bubble happened, right. And, you know, the. The market just kind of blew up. And I was in the tech industry, so I was heavily invested in it.
You know, I believed in it but I really recognized this pattern that I think a lot of people don’t see on the, you know, equity side of the equation, which is that, you know, one of the biggest, you know, wealth destroyers is actually, you know, stock market losses over time, right? So everyone thinks about, hey, last year I did. It was 15%. It was great. You know, year before, it was 18%, we were up 12%.
Right.
You know, we’re doing great. I got that statement, and everything is good. But they forgot that, like in 2008, you know, when the market was down 30%, that takes your compounded number of where you were brings it all the way down. And what you have to do just to even get back to where you were takes, like, an enormous, enormous effort, right? And that ties exactly to your metaphor, right, of losing weight. It’s the exact same thing with investing, and it’s all the psychology of it, but people just. They lose, like, every time.
Right?
I mean, that is really invest.
I really need to start buying assets that produce income, so I’m not always trading time for money. And that’s really what, I guess, catapulted me into investing in our first real estate endeavor, getting into mobile home parks. I can tell you that whole story if you want, but we’ll come up for air and. But that’s kind of how it all got started.
Yeah.
No, makes sense. So, I mean, was there a particular moment, or did you learn from a mentor. Mentor or read a book or something that inspired you to really kind of, you know, change, you know, and make that shift into the passive side?
Yeah, probably all the above. I mean, at that point in life, I was really living life on default, not life by design. It was just going from one thing to the next, putting out fires, problem solving, really not spending time for myself or. Or even proactive, like, what do I want life to look like? And so, you know, I had a coach, I had a mentor. I’d been reading Robert Kiyosaki at that time, so I had just finished Rich Dad, Poor dad and Cash Flow Quadrant. I read those back to back, and my eyes were just kind of open because I was. I remember sitting In. In my office on a Friday night, my friends were reaching out, wanted to go out, you know, can I meet up with them? And I remember sitting here and this was early on in my business where it was just me and I didn’t have a team.
I didn’t have any. I think I had one receptionist and she was long gone for the day. And it was just me at like 10pm on a Friday night. And I remember thinking, I’m okay doing this right now, this season of life, this grind, this is good for me. But I’m not okay if I’m in my 30s or 40s and I’m doing this. And it’s at the sacrifice of spending time with my family and doing Friday night, family night or whatever it is. And so I just remember sitting on the floor in my back office preparing for a hard day of work the next morning. Saturday morning, which I was in at probably 5:30am was kind of my normal time and just, you know, to prep.
And so I remember thinking, okay, I’m going to do this different. And I remember reading something that Robert Kiyosaki said that basically, you know, I told all these people, you know, people are like, what do you do? I’m like, “Oh, I’m a business owner.” But the reality is I wasn’t a business owner. I was owned by my business. I was actually a slave to my business. My business owned me, my possessions owned me because I had, you know, payments that I had to make in order to keep them. And so the reality is I wasn’t really a business owner. I was more of a sole proprietor.
I remember reading where it said, like, hey, you’re not really a business owner until your business can run without you. You’ve got systems and people in place for a year or longer with the same output or greater than if you were there. And I was like, wow, okay, I miscategorized myself. And then I started thinking, well, do I even want this? So one, while I’m in this business, I better get better at working with people. I better get better at building out systems. But do I even want that? Do I actually want to be on the investor quadrant side of things where I invest in businesses, I invest in assets, and the light bulb just went off and I said, that’s it. That’s what I need to do. So I’m going to stay here and I’m going to figure it out while I’m here.
But my transition over time is I’m going to move to this investor quadrant and I’m Going to move, move out of basically trading time for money.
Yeah, no, that definitely resonates. I really credit Kiyosaki. He’s just changed so many people’s lives. And for me it was the same thing. I really didn’t know anything about investing except that the fact that I wanted to save for the future. And I had read the Purple Pill as well when it just came out in 99 and then cash Flow Quadrant and Cashflow Quadrant to me was so illuminating because this is how the game is played.
That’s right.
But the biggest shortfall that I saw in that was it didn’t tell. There’s no blueprint, there’s no strategy, there’s no what’s next. It’s like, well, okay, I like that. You know, I want to be a business owner, I want to be a professional investor. But what does that even mean? You know, how do I really get there? Real estate seems like a great asset class and I started chasing some single family rentals and you know, to your point, you know, trading my time for money, just doing something else, chasing a real estate deals. So it’s really fascinating way, right? Because we’re 25 years past when that book really launched and you’ve seen how many different people have taken this whole passive income theory and really taken it in different directions. And that’s what’s I think really unique about your story as well is how you’ve really taken this and how you’re trying to help people right now using passive income kind of strategy.
We all understand that we want our passive to exceed our expenses so that we can live a great life. But what does that really mean? Right. So why don’t you break down, maybe this is a good segue into your model, Justin.
Right.
Because I know it is quite unique.
Yeah, sure and you bring up a good point because I remember looking at Cash Flow Quadrant and I was like, all right, this book, I would still say today it’s the single most impactful book that I had ever read at that point in time. I would still say today is the most pivotal book. But I remember thinking there’s nothing now I know what I need to do, but I don’t know how to do it. And so that was kind of my whole purpose in writing the Lifestyle Investor was to lay out the framework for how you actually transition, you know, from a W2 to an investor or from a business owner to an investor. I mean that, that to me was, was really important. But I did it in one specific asset class. I remember I had friends that thought I was crazy because I started investing in mobile home parks.
And they’re all like, this is a crazy idea. I had mentors, they’re like, this doesn’t make sense. You know, this sounds like you’re just throwing money away. And I remember waking up in the middle of the night some nights in a cold sweat, like, am I throwing money out the window? Like, is this a bad decision? But whenever I would let logic set in, I would say, well, other people have done it, and if I follow their blueprint on how to do it, I should at least be, I don’t know, 60 to 70% as good as they are. And over time, I can get better and that just seems better to me than trading time for money for the rest of life. And so I took the leap, and we bought our first mobile home park.
And again, I mean, my friends thought I was absolutely nuts, but this one park retired my wife. It was funny because what that produced in cash flow was within $1,000 of what my wife was earning as a teacher at that point in time. And so my wife retired as a teacher, and that’s when we had our daughter. So, you know, it was great. We bought her time back. I bought a second mobile home park, and that one replaced our survival income. And so at that point, we didn’t have to work. Now, it wasn’t lifestyle, but it was all the main bills.
But it does take a huge weight off to know you don’t have to work. You know, it’s transitioning from having to work to getting to work. And so you get to be smarter about what you spend your time on. And, you know, you’re not as afraid to delegate out certain responsibilities or things you don’t like to do. And so I got smarter about where I spent my time. And then we bought a third mobile home park, and that one replaced our lifestyle income. And then we did a 1031 exchange on that, flipped into two others, and that replaced our earned income. So the goal here, like, I could have walked away a lot sooner from the business I was running, but my wife really appreciates safety and security.
So instead of taking a big risk, it was, “Hey, we can methodically do this. We can do this over a period of time. we can replace the income.” So that way it’s not like a, you know, a major life change. And for us, life just continued on the same. Nothing changed because the income was there. And that was the safe way, the way that got my wife on board. I mean, she at first thought I was crazy.
But, you know, as we slowly did this, she’s like, okay, I can see this working because, you know, her parents grew up, you know, basically telling her, find a safe job, you know, work for the government, get a pension. That’s what her parents did and so I get that and so I, you know, but I also, for me, said, instead of like, “Hey, let’s live life from this budget.” I’ve always looked at it as, well, if I want to live a certain life, why don’t I just figure out how to get the money to equal that life? I’m not going to live the life before I have the money. But if I know that it costs a certain amount to have an ideal life and I can break it down on a monthly basis, then I can achieve what that number is over time.
Yeah, makes perfect sense. And I’d love to really unpack this topic here with you because I do think it’s pretty fascinating. We all really talk about passive income, right? I mean, everyone in this space and what it’s going to kind of do for you. But you brought up a great point, really, around security, right? So if you think back to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, right, I find that based on people’s own investor DNA, their background, maybe, you know, their belief system, where they were raised, you know, all those different things, you know, lifestyle, investing, security all means different things, right? To different people, right?
So is passive income, right? If you do reach that place of having your passive income exceed your expenses, you know, have you really just achieved a level of financial security that provides you a certain security in life, you know, or are you taking it up the next level to, like you say, maybe having a little bit more abundance in your life? Because I would actually be contrarian here for a moment and say that some people can actually get trapped in their goals. So I could achieve that goal, and I have achieved that goal when my expenses were low, right? And you say, hey, this is great.
And I, you know, I, what I would call that is actually abundant complacency, right? And so how now am I, how am I going to move to the next level now? You may not move to the level of, let’s say, Johnny Depp, who’s spending seven figures a month on his lifestyle, right? But what is really important to you and also thinking past the money, right? Because at some point, right, you’ve hit the financial security, you’re doing what you want in life, how are you going to get to, I would say, higher on the Maslow’s hierarchy towards fulfillment.
Thanks for listening to this episode of Wealth Strategy Secrets.
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