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Today’s episode features the inspiring journey of Gary McDermid, a 
former Navy officer turned entrepreneur, real estate investor, and “cash flow engineer.” Host Dave Wolcott welcomes Gary to share how he transitioned from enlisting out of high school to building a life of financial freedom—leveraging real estate, passive income, and smart business acquisitions along the way.
Gary’s story is anything but typical. What began with a life-changing piece of advice in Navy “A” school—buy real estate at every duty station—set him on the path to replace his active income with cash-flowing assets. Gary opens up about the mindset shifts and self-limiting beliefs he overcame, his engineering approach to wealth building, and the actionable steps he took to ultimately create scalable, lasting wealth. Today, he strategically acquires tax and accounting firms, pairing his technical background with finance to maximize cash flow and leverage overlooked tax strategies.
Gary also discusses his new book, “Set Your Own Goals Or Someone Else Will,” which reveals the five steps and mindset changes that helped him take back control of his future.
Gary’s journey is a testament to the power of thinking bigger, taking control, and “engineering” your path to prosperity. This episode is packed with practical advice for anyone ready to escape the rat race and design their own financial future.
In This Episode
- How military advice jump-started Gary’s real estate and wealth-building journey
- Transitioning from a technical career to business ownership and passive income
- The power of tax planning and acquiring businesses for scalable cash flow
- Mindset shifts for breaking free of self-limiting beliefs and setting your own goals
The self-limiting belief that I’ve had was one of the things that prevented me from getting to it quicker. So I would just leave it as simple as think bigger. 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. Today’s guest has an inspiring story that truly embodies the mindset of ownership, service, and financial independence. I’m joined by Gary McDermott, a former Navy officer turned entrepreneur, real estate investor, and cash flow engineer. Gary’s journey is anything but traditional.
He went from enlisting in the Navy straight out of high school to creating a life of financial freedom through real estate, passive income, and strategic business acquisitions. What’s most impressive is how Gary applies engineering precision to wealth building—systematically replacing active income with cash-flowing assets while leveraging tax planning and acquisition strategies to scale.
In this episode, we unpack how a simple piece of advice in the military launched his real estate journey, his transition from nuclear engineer to full-time investor and business owner, how he’s now acquiring tax and accounting firms to create scalable passive cash flow, the overlooked power of tax planning as a wealth multiplier, and, finally, what it really means to engineer your financial freedom.
Plus, we dig into Gary’s new book, Set Your Own Goals or Someone Else Will, where he shares the mindset shifts and strategies that helped him take back control of his future. If you’ve been searching for a step-by-step way to get out of the rat race and create lasting wealth on your terms, you’re gonna love this conversation.
And if you guys have been enjoying the show, please go ahead and subscribe to the show and share it with a friend so that they can learn as well.
Let’s dive in.
Gary, welcome to the show!
Thank you, Dave. It’s happy—happy to be here. Glad we were able to connect today.
Yeah, it’s a real pleasure to have you on the show. Always great to connect, and I think the audience is really going to enjoy your story. I mean, not only serving our country and the Navy—I so appreciate your service there, as well as a fellow officer—but also, you know, this path that you’ve taken to, you know, creating passive income, to creating financial freedom.
And I think it’s a really inspiring path that everyone’s gonna wanna learn from today. So, you know, why don’t we kick things off there and just, you know, kinda talk about your career, your trajectory, and how you even got into this whole space of, you know, cash flow engineering and passive income?
Sure, absolutely. So, it’s kind of a roundabout way, as probably most people will relate to. A lot of times, you end up doing something you never thought you would, and that’s been my trajectory. Right? As for the military you mentioned, that is the defining genesis of my career. At 17, I was a senior in high school, outside of the Washington, D.C. area, and my father woke me up. It was January of that senior year, right around the time when you’re getting ready to apply for colleges, which, as you can imagine, was my dream.
Then he told me, “Son, I got some good news and some bad news.” The bad news was that there was no money for college, but the good news was, “I have a plan—get in the car.” We drove to the recruiting station on Georgia Avenue, the border of Washington, D.C., and Silver Spring, Maryland. My mom didn’t even want to leave the car, but we went in. He opened the door and said, “Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. Take your pick. I recommend Navy so you can see the world.” I could say the rest is history, but that was my foray into the career. It’s not necessarily the best way to start with passive income or entrepreneurship, but thankfully, after boot camp, I was in an A-school class, and a Master Chief gave advice to the whole class. One thing about the military is mentorship and camaraderie.
He told us, “Buy real estate everywhere you get stationed, and you’ll make more money than the Navy will ever pay you.” That little nugget, as small as it was at the time, was what set me on this path. And, you know, I could give you the short story or the long story. Didn’t know…
Yeah, no. Tell it. So, actually, how did you transition then from enlisted and then getting, you know, becoming a submariner? Right? How did you get into it? How did you make that transition?
Yeah, so that was, you know, that’s actually an—I guess it’s a little detail that I’ve somehow tried to forget. But one of the challenges with being forced to join the Navy out of high school and actually taking a pay cut—because I actually had a pretty decent job, I was getting promoted quite a bit at the local diner, and I worked my way up to be the assistant manager. I was already opening and closing, putting quite a bit of effort in, and then this happened.
So, the way that I joined the Navy was the plan I mentioned. I went into the recruiting office, and then we enlisted. But I also, at the same time, applied for an ROTC scholarship because that would have been, you know, going to college and getting the commission. It just so happened that one of those is instant gratification, so to speak, and the other one is delayed gratification. So, when I went into the recruiting station, I signed all the paperwork to enlist—the delayed entry program, and then I also applied for an ROTC scholarship. Sometime within that couple of days, I found out I got the ROTC scholarship, right before I shipped off to boot camp. The recruiters basically pulled me in. They somehow talked me into turning it down because they said, “Why would you? We’ve been in the military for a long time, and most of the officers that were prior enlisted were the ones that we really respected.”
They said, “That’s what you want. So, if you got the ROTC scholarship now, why wouldn’t you just go get some enlisted experience? And then, if they gave it to you once, wouldn’t they just give it to you again?” So, they convinced me that it was the best career move to turn down the ROTC scholarship and enlist. And so, that was what really—you know, you asked—how did I make the transition?
Really, for a moment in time, after I figured out what was going on—when I was staying up late, on the night shift cleaning classrooms for some of the officers I would have been alongside if I had done the ROTC scholarship, it was a little bit of a curveball. I thought, well, maybe I should try to see if I could apply again. The recruiter said so.
That was the moment I enlisted, and I knew that I wanted to become an officer and get that commission. The way I went about it was a little counterintuitive because I turned it down, got the enlisted experience, did about two years, tried to apply, and actually got turned down. I was a little surprised. I remember checking that list about 50 times the night it came out, looking for my name like there must be something wrong. But I got it the next year. Then, after about three years, I did my commissioning program—the Senior Admiral Program. I was the second class in that. Got the degree, was able to get the commission, and then I completed that checklist. Then, the nuclear power program. I actually went to aircraft carriers, not submarines. That was a little bit tough, but I did complete the engineering.
And all that time, I was saving my money so that I could follow what that Master Chief told me—right out of A-school. Bought my first house at 21, and then tried to do it at every other duty station.
Okay, awesome. So, that was really your first tip into real estate—taking that piece of advice. And, you know, folks, stay with us here. Gary’s got an amazing trajectory—from where he’s been to what he’s actually doing now, which is really interesting. But I wanna walk through this sequentially because I think it’s important to grasp some of the learning lessons you’ve had, those transitions, and pivotal moments.
So, that was really your foray into real estate. You started getting going with real estate. How did that evolve? What did you do with real estate? How did you learn about passive income, financial engineering, and then transition to buying different tax practices? And, of course, what you’re doing today?
Right. So, you know, it’s an evolution. I’ve always been a very cautious person. You know, most engineers are, right? We’re not necessarily risk takers. My father was actually a CPA, and he was probably one of the most conservative folks I’ve ever met. So, for me to even just follow the trajectory, it took quite a bit of time.
But the one thing I realized with even the first couple of rental properties is that it is passive income. So, for the most part, you get income without having to trade time for money, and that was always one of the biggest concerns. As a technical person, even after I got out of the military, or if you’re in the military and something happens to you, right? What is your ability to reproduce that income? And the more I had those thoughts, I didn’t know how to get a career out of the military. But thankfully, there are groups that target prior nuclear field officers, and these headhunters line you up with all these interviews. It’s not to say that I haven’t interviewed for an agricultural company, a pump manufacturing company, and others. I just took what I knew, so I was a consultant for nuclear power plants.
It was almost the same lifestyle. The nuclear power field is one of the most demanding, inflexible fields. You have to be perfect because there’s no room for error when dealing with nuclear power—nuclear anything. And so, that type of lifestyle, whether it’s high-speed in the military or high-speed consulting, comes with the chance of burnout. So, then you always wonder—what do you do if something happens? And I didn’t really have a good answer. What I did know was that I had a rental property, then a couple of rental properties, and they provided passive income. That, to me, seemed like the safest sort of insurance policy, given the knowledge I had. So, I started transitioning to that—even 1031 exchanging. I studied from someone who had perfected a model, and I implemented it.
Just like in the military or a franchise, when you get an infrastructure, a business in a box, or some type of model, you replicate the model and do it well. Same as following orders, but you’re following a structured plan. With this, I learned how to help a family that wants to own their own home but currently can’t due to credit or other reasons. We provide that opportunity for homeownership, and then it becomes a win—you get passive income, you help a family, and that was the model that propelled me to transition, increase the portfolio of passive income, and eventually replace the active income.
So, that’s the trajectory. After doing nuclear design and consulting, there’s a certain challenge. Buying real estate—single-family residences—is simple after a certain point. Some of what you do as an engineer is very complex. Like, can you start this auxiliary feed pump when you don’t have the priming pump? Can you bet the engineering plan on that? You have to do an analysis. That’s hard, very complex, and challenging. So, when real estate gets a little simple, sometimes you’re left wanting more. That was why I ended up doing angel investing—investing in companies—because there’s a level of complexity I had the itch for. When you look at a company and decide whether to invest, that’s another level of complexity and challenge.
That was the next step in my journey—now that passive income was stable, I wanted to do more. Eventually, I realized buying businesses the same way I buy real estate—and including them in my portfolio—could align with passive income-producing assets. If you buy a company and don’t have to be active—the first one, I was very active—over time, you can generate the same type of passive income and build wealth quicker through business. That happens because businesses are valued differently, and multiples grow when you aggregate similar businesses with the same infrastructure.
Yeah, so how are you able to bifurcate really, making, as a purchaser of a business, that passive versus active? Because I know anytime I’ve ever been involved with, touched, or anything in business, I’m always ready to roll up my sleeves.
Right. And that is, you know, in my trajectory, right, that is still sort of continuously evolving. And what it boils down to is, now that I’ve done a few of these, and on the next ones, what I’ve learned is that the acquisition criteria is everything. So, if you set the acquisition criteria and you’re buying a business that has a certain amount of revenue, a certain amount of employees, and a certain amount of profit margin, then, if you do it with the design or the end in sight that you do not want to be active in the business, then set the acquisition criteria such that you will have the result of not having to be active, and then you could be working on the business instead of in the business.
And so, a lot of times, it’s like, well, when you’re learning this, you know, the business that already has the higher revenue and the higher profitability is certainly a lot more expensive.
So then, how do you structure, and how do you get the financing? That was kind of the missing piece. And, over time, I started understanding how to acquire and then put those together, but that’s a whole other—it’s a continuous—it’s something I’ve always been a continuous learner, and it’s something that I’m still continuing to perfect and get to that next level.
Yeah. And that’s cool. So, what is your portfolio look like today, Gary?
Yeah. So right now, we’ve got quite a few single-family homes under the program that I described. We’re in two major markets. We’re, yeah, two major markets, two states.
And several investors, we we we that that’s going pretty well. Have the have a property management company that manages all those interests. And then lately, I’ve been buying tax and accounting companies and offering higher-level advisory, so tax planning. Our average client that we last year, we saved $44,000 in tax with, the per client on that business. So it’s just one of those things if, especially now, accountants are in quite a bit of demand.
And if you have a good service or you acquire that type of business, and then you offer tax advisory, which is not typically offered in most tax preparation or accounting firms, now you’re able to take a business that’s already got a good clientele. It’s got good profit margin, and then you’re adding a service that’s well needed and not currently offered to that client base. So those two things in and of itself are ways that you could continue to buy an asset that produces income and then has the ability to increase that revenue in a shorter amount of time.
Yeah. Yep, and have you been taking a lot of the things that you’ve learned on the real estate side with taxes and kind of doing financial engineering and trying to bring that to, you know, these tax firms?
Yeah. And that’s just kind of one of the benefits. If you just look at saving tax, but you also look at generating wealth, which is what most folks wanna do. They wanna save money on taxes and invest the savings into something that produces more income or wealth.
And so real estate, as we’ve discussed, is a very good way to do that. So, how do people get into real estate? You know, everybody has different levels of it. And then to the extent that we’re able to save on tax and then we’re also able to look at real estate, we have an experience. My business partners and the tax businesses are also real estate investors and have been doing real estate for a significant amount of time.
We can explain some of the complexities of a real estate professional status, losses due to depreciation, cost segregation, accelerated depreciation, and then, using some of that strategically. All of those things go hand in hand, and so it actually positions us fairly well to get somebody that can benefit from the tax savings and is looking to reinvest that. There’s a lot of conversations and advice and and and just general counsel that could be had. So it really creates a win in a nice little ecosystem.
Yeah. I think you really hit the nail on the head. And and and people I always tell people it’s like the biggest opportunity they have that’s right in front of them because most people are always just thinking about investing by, you know, what is the yield, what is the asset class, what is that shiny object that we’re going after. But if you really step back and look at it, if you could reduce your number one biggest cost, and that’s even in your business or in your personal financial statement, it’s taxes, you know, bar none. So, a 10% savings, fifteen, twenty, 30 percent savings, you know, that’s massive.
And if, like you say, if you can, you know, redeploy, alright, that difference into an asset, an investment vehicle, I mean, those are some significant returns. Right? And with proper planning, that’s actually compounding. You know, you put a good tax plan in place. It’s not just a one-time shot. Right?
Yeah. Exact, and so that’s just you know, it’s always, I always look at it as creating that win. And if we can create the win on the tax savings, the win on the investment, or just any of those things that help folks accomplish their goals, that is a recipe for increasing the success of everybody involved.
Yeah. Any top, you know, tax strategies that you could mention on the planning side, before you know, besides the kind of the popular ones we know of, like, you know, real estate professional status and cost segregation, bonus depreciation, any other things, that you like?
Yeah. A lot of us so like, what I always there’s a couple of there’s some there’s some ones that are specific that folks can benefit from, and there’s some also ones that, like, business owners. Right?
So if you look at just how entities are structured, a lot of times, the way that you structure your company or the way that you change that structure over time as the company grows, there’s tax tax-efficient ways to do that. And when you look at exit planning so something as simple as without going on because it is a pretty complex topic, but one a lot of the clients that that we have or a lot of the customers when they come in, they might have the one entity or they might have several entities, and they really only need the one or two. So there it’s always a mix. And so when you optimize the entity structuring, so just as simple as if you take a real estate investor. Real estate investors, they might be doing they might be doing flips.
They might have short-term income, which is taxed as ordinary income. They might have passive income through rental properties or notes. So all of those things, you know, passive income that like, if you just look at how you structure that, you want the passive income to be taxed as a partnership because there’s no self-employment tax, and you want active income to be taxed. Ideally, you know, an S corporation would if, depending upon your income level, an S corporation, if you tax the active income to that, then there’s an extent that you can reduce some of that self-employment tax. So how do you knowing that a lot of these investors, like, have all these different types of income? How do you work on that structure so that you can quickly and efficiently segregate the type of income?
That’s just some of the stuff that we’re able to do, and then you combine that with asset protection and estate planning. And, you know, we definitely involve some attorneys for some of those things. But just having that understanding, being able to walk somebody through that as they start, as they grow, as they increase their properties and entities, we can do that in a very tax in a tax efficient manner, sets them up for long term estate planning and also for risk mitigation or asset protection. So that’s one strategy. And then for personal, there’s some folks that, you know, maybe they donate quite a bit of money to charity every year.
There’s some other vehicles that we can use where maybe you can set up a a vehicle where they could make that same amount of donation that they were gonna make anyway that they normally make personally, but it’s in now a vehicle that they put they that that they basically can acquire more property with investment property. Now, the money that they were going to write for charity comes out of this vehicle, and then they get an upfront tax, a significant tax deduction for that first year. And then after a period of time, they get all of those assets back. So there are certain things like that. That’s just a little bit of a mix for a business owner or an individual that comes to us. There’s so many different ways, and that’s just a little snapshot of some of the things that we can do.
Yeah. No. Some great strategies there for sure. What about actually conservation easements right now? Have you heard anything on those? I know they were kind of a little bit on the taboo list or people kinda taking advantage of some of those, but any any any thoughts on that on the latest?
Right. Actually, I think we traded a couple of emails right around the tax time on some of those strategies. That one is, that’s a little bit more, like you mentioned, it’s a little bit more attention gathering. There, there’s still ways that that could be acceptable.
It’s not necessarily a strategy that we’re actively pushing right now, although there are some variations of that that don’t necessarily have to be a conservation easement, but there are some variations that we could look at case by case. There’s some other similar concepts with, the oil and gas, and some the solar that could be done. And so these are more strategies that benefit somebody that’s like a higher two that can’t creatively take advantage of some of the business deductions or some of the real estate deductions that we talked about. But there is there are some ways that if you dot the i’s and the t’s that you could do that. It’s just not something that we’ve been really pushing.
Can you explain what it means to be the cash flow engineer and how that mindset really helps people build lasting wealth?
Yeah. So cash flow engineer is sort of, it’s hard with you know, if you do something for a while, you sort of identify. Right? So that, like, when we’re buying some tax firms from CPAs, you know, that’s the identity.
So for myself personally, I’ve been an engineer for the majority of my professional career, and I do kind of identify. It’s just what I what I found, though, is I may not be doing designer analysis for nuclear power plants now, but just the way that, you know, if I get a business owner and and they want a tax plan or they wanna get more passive income, it’s the same skill set to that that I would use in designing a system or an improvement for a nuclear power plant. It’s the same skill set that I would use at looking at the root cause. Okay. So if there’s a problem, let’s look at the root cause of that problem.
Let’s not just jump to a solution. Let’s take the problem that we’re trying to solve, look break it down, look at the root cause, and then identify complement or solutions that fit. And so when you look at cash flow engineering, it’s like everybody has things that they like or things that could benefit them. And, yeah, everybody could be a real estate investor. Does that mean everybody should?
Everybody can own a business. Does that mean they should? So, how do you meet with somebody, break that all down, and then engineer something that works? And that’s really what I look at, cash flow. When I say cash flow engineering, it’s that process to just break it down, look at something that fits that person, and set it up.
Yeah. I really love that, Gary, and I can relate to that. I mean, I’m far from an engineer. That’s for sure. But I love building systems.
I love solving problems. And I think to me, when I started my journey, that was this is was actually the problem. Right? The problem was, you know, how can I stop trading my time for money? How can I create passive income?
You know, rich dad, poor dad, like, just came out at the time, and they said, hey. You know, you can invest in real estate. It’s like, okay. Well, that’s one vehicle. But, really, yeah, how can I engineer something, right, that’s going to systematically, you know, produce passive income for me, and what are the strategies to do that?
And it’s funny, right, because to me, this is what I really think financial planning should really be. Right? But in reality, the way traditional financial planning is is it’s basically, you know, they’re helping you with some allocation mix of stocks, bonds, mutual funds, you know, trading what those could be, right, and doing that all on a single platform. But this is truly financial engineering. It’s cash flow engineering to determine how can you create cash flow, how can you mitigate your expenses.
And everyone’s scenario is a little bit different. Right? But there’s certain, you know, vehicles we can use, such as real estate, you know, that can help us kind of maximize that solution to get there. But, you know, sadly, not enough people really talk about them. Right?
They’re just you can only learn about them from, you know, books or podcasts or things like this.
The real secret to building wealth? It’s not just what you invest in. It’s how you plan it.
Right. And that’s just, that’s one of the things that’s like, even just the concept of passive income, I’ve always thought when I learn about passive income, how important it is, probably it’s almost like water, right? It’s one of the most important things that you should have for your for your for your your total well-being and and it’s one of the most almost unattainable if because you have to understand it, recognize it, and figure out how to get it and it’s just not for for some reason or another, it’s not readily accessible or taught. And and maybe there’s a way that, like you mentioned, it’s it’s podcast, but maybe there’s a way that that permeates and and then it becomes more mainstream because just a little tweak, you know, maybe you find a way to save some money and buy a property every couple of years.
Just having that mindset, understanding it, and seeking it out is gonna be far better.
Yeah. I mean, tell me what you think about this, Gary. Right? Because, you know, I really as I kinda reflect on this and really think about it, right, I think that, you know, 99% of investing is really all Wall Street driven.
Right? And a lot of that comes from when you kinda peel back the layers, it’s really because that’s how the model works. It’s based on assets under management. Right? So they’re only recommending solutions typically, right, that kind of support that model.
But that model, when you look at it from a bigger picture, is really based on this accumulation theory. So that is that you subscribe to building up to this certain amount of, you know, portfolio dollars that you will actually turn into passive income. They don’t call it passive income. They say you’re gonna retire and take out 4% or even less than that nowadays. You know, at age 65, you start taking out that income and then hope you don’t outlive your money.
But what we’re really saying with passive income theory is that you’re actually creating income today, however old you are, and then you’re trying to build up that income so that if you lose a job, you have a medical issue, you transition, you know, a career, or you do want to retire early or whatever that is, you have the control and the ability to do that rather than waiting till you’re 65 to to build up some nest egg that may or may not actually deliver.
Right. And that’s, you know, it’s it’s it’s a little bit of a challenge. And and and if you just take that for what you just said, right, if and you look at how a lot of the mainstream vehicles get, I guess, get paid.
Right? The like you mentioned, assets under management. So that model, there’s some challenges where in up and down markets, you know, the fees are still paid. Right? So in the approach that we’re talking about like, you can have a lot more control over that, and you can set it up in a way that you can make income now.
And and and and so there’s a lot of maybe it’s the more conventional or more mainstream way, but that’s also a little bit scary. Like, just when I was looking at engineering the passive income for myself, it’s like I could put all this money in something traditional, but what if I don’t have the control, or if it goes down, and then you’re still taking the fees? We talked about how tax return, you know, taxes are kind of like one of the largest expenses that most folks have, but don’t know what that amount is. I remember because I’ve had some traditional stuff before under the conventional assets under management, and only after I learned what I know now, it’s like it’s the same thing that we were saying with taxes. What are the fees in one of those conventional vehicles?
It’s actually a little bit harder to go take the statement. It might show that you made 30-something percent last year, but how do you actually look at, like, what was the cost of that? Like, is there a fee? Was was the was there also a fee taken when when there was when the money was placed? Was there a fee taken when the assets were under management?
Was there a fee taken, in some other way? And sometimes it’s a little bit tough, just like finding out what the taxes are, what were the fees. So whether or not one model is right or the other, if you’re engineering something for yourself, you can look at things like do I want income right now? Do I want to ever accept negative cash flow? Do I care if do I buy for appreciation or do I do I buy for cash flow now?
All of these different factors or these different things that you want, just like you asked about buying businesses that you don’t you’re not operating in. Right? The same thing when we talk about this engineering the portfolio, what is it that you need to have? What is it that you wanna have? And if you don’t know what you need, because sometimes what you think you need isn’t what you need, get some advice, and then get that criteria, and then just go out there now that you have the design and just go out there and execute.
But that hopefully kinda it’s hard to say. I don’t wanna say something is right or wrong. It’s just there’s something that’s a fit for everybody, and we just have to figure out what that is.
Yeah. Or it’s the fact that you don’t put all of your eggs in one basket, right, and hope that’s gonna work.
And I think this, you know, track that we’re going down, really talking about it from an engineering perspective, like, is completely spot on. And as I was kinda going through my journey, right, this is how I created alternatives in real estate because I was driving this. It was data-driven. Right? I was looking the results that I could see, and then I was modeling out and doing some analysis that nobody does or no one talks about.
Right? So, again, like, if you if you model out your passive income, you know, right now, and if you start accruing, right, some some real estate assets, some alternatives, right, that are tax efficient and things and start modeling out what that tax flow or the cash flow is today and what that could be over the next ten, twenty, thirty years. And then you compare that to any type of market scenario, is essentially like a seven and a half percent return. I don’t care what you’re really invested in, but just look at it over time. You know, plus, you have taxes, fees, and inflation that erode that.
Right? So go with what you make some assumptions, plug in the data, right, and see what really makes sense for you, and then where what chips do you wanna place on. You know? You know, you don’t necessarily need to put everything in real estate. You know, I don’t think that’s that that’s not what we’re saying.
But similarly, why would you put everything into a liquid portfolio, right, which has a lot of limitations to it? So I think investors are getting smarter about that. And, actually, we’re seeing a big shift. Even some of the institutions now are trying to get into alts and real estate. But you guys have to understand.
Right? If you get access to a REIT or an alternative that’s on a publicly traded market, you’re not getting the tax benefits. You’re just investing as a retail investor. So you’re getting exposure to some that asset class, but really only from a yield perspective. You know, we may not necessarily be getting the direct cash flow or those tax invent incentives that are so, you know, powerful for us.
Right. So that’s, that’s just the summary is diversifying, making sure that you’re designing, have that criteria, the acquisition criteria. You know, whatever it is that you’re doing, whether it’s acquiring an investment, whether it’s acquiring a company, having that design, looking at what what’s needed, and and then and then executing the the play, that’s essentially the the what what I’ve learned over over this roundabout journey, having to start as the, you know, listening out of high school, figuring out passive income for the first time, and then just trying to take it to the next level.
Yeah. No. For sure. Gary, tell us about your book. I know you just, you know, just launched a new book called Set Your Own Goals or Someone Else Will. Tell us about the inspiration for that and what that’s all about.
Yeah. So so I actually did did just release that. In 2021, I I was, I did a talk on Amazon Prime Video, on a TV show called Speak Up. I had my own episode where I did about a fifteen minute, just just a talk. And the the talk I did was set your own goals or someone else will.
And that was a little bit of the story that I kinda shared with you today, is my I basically, since high school, grew up following orders. You know? I was following orders for for for navy navy officers. I was following orders. And when I left for corporate vice presidents, and and I never really thought because when you’re at a young age you you join the military and you that’s what you know you know it’s almost like you’re a people pleaser you you get you get the job done you get it well but you you do it well but you get the job done and and it was only a little bit later on that I I started to realize, like, you know, what if I wanted to set my own goals?
Is that something that I could do? Do I have to just keep following the, you know, the military? They tell you what to do. You have the job. You just follow orders.
Then when you get out, I didn’t know how to get a job. I the the headhunters basically threw up a couple of things, and I took one of those. It was only it took a little bit of time. I never thought I mean, we talked about the entrepreneurial journey. I never thought I could do that.
I kinda wanted to, but I never thought it was possible. So it took a serious amount of mindset shifting. And then when I put that talk together based based upon after having successfully started my own businesses and then started growing them, I did that talk, and then after that talk, it was filmed in front of a live studio audience. I had a couple of folks basically pull me aside in the audience afterwards and and told me how it actually gave them something to think about and inspired them, and and I was encouraged to just kinda because just the five the little fifteen minute talk that I did with five steps on how to set goals was was not just something you could take and give. Right?
There’s a mindset shift that had to be made where we were just as powerful and necessary, and so that was what basically spurred the idea to turn it into a full-length book. And I take the five steps that I used to be able to do everything that you heard me talk about today, and then I just share the mindset shifts that I needed to make to be able to even take the advice of how to execute those goals and and think big and and basically overcome in my case, it was self limiting beliefs that I didn’t think I could do any of these things. And so really, I just took all of that, was encouraged by the talk that I did on the TV show, turned it into a book, and that’s basically brand new. It’s the, you know, set your own or setyourgoalsbook.com. And I’ve got that something to give back on this next trajectory of my career.
Yeah. That’s awesome. Congrats on the book. And, you know, it is interesting because I if I think about, you know, all of these things, right, these learning lessons we talk about and kind of conceptually, you know, what we’re trying to do by take this alternative path to Wall Street, a lot of it really is about taking back control. Right?
So you you are in control, right, rather than outsourcing. We work so hard to create our own financial wealth, and what that is. So why just, you know, take all of that and then just completely outsource that to somebody else and then be at the whim of kind of the gyrations of the market. Whereas, you know, when you have real estate and some of these other assets, you can actually have more control in your portfolio, more say in actually what you’re doing, and really have it aligned to your investor DNA and really what’s important to you in life.
100%. That really is what it came down to. It’s just set your own goals. Take control of your own destiny, whether it’s your personal goals, whether it’s your financial goals, whether it’s your health, whether all of that’s all of those different things, just having that flip that switch and realizing that you can do it and then knowing how to do it and how to think bigger and just get it done, that that is really what we’re we’re talking about, and it and it’s exciting to have that conversation.
Real wealth isn’t just building assets; it’s taking control of your financial destiny.
Yeah. Awesome. Gary, if you could give just one piece of advice to the listeners about how they could really accelerate their own wealth trajectory, what would it be?
The number one thing that I would just just everything that when I look back, you know, it might be easy to just say think bigger. And part of that the the first mindset shift that I had to make was it was a visualization technique, and it’s it’s the saying you might have heard that, do you have to, do you have to see it before you believe it, or do you have to believe it before you see it? And so the one point that I will just say is think big. Like, believe in it.
Like, if you can use visualization to believe in something bigger than you’re already doing, then you will see it. And it’s not that you have to the the there’s the self-limiting belief that I’ve had was one of the things that prevented me from getting to it quicker. So I would just leave it as simple as think bigger. And for the most part, you know, like any coach, right, the coach’s job is to get you to be a little bit better over time, and everybody can do that. So think a little bigger and just do a little bit more every day, and and and all of these goals that you never thought you could do will magically start happening.
Love it. Gary, really appreciate your time today and sharing your insights and your journey with us. If anyone would like to, learn more and connect with you or reach out, you wanna throw out the URL for your book again, what’s the best place they can connect?
Yeah. So, on the screen, it shows my name, MacDermid. So on all social media, Gary MacDermid, and the, book is setyourgoalsbook.com and GaryMacDermid.com. Happy to reach out and have conversations just like this.
Awesome. Really appreciate it. Thanks again.
Thank you, Dave.
Thanks for listening to this episode of Wealth Strategy Secrets. If you’d like to get a free copy of the book, go to holisticwealthstrategy.com. That’s holisticwealthstrategy.com. If you’d like to learn more about upcoming opportunities at Pantheon, please visit pantheoninvest.com.
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