Creating Passive Income & Making Work Optional w/ Tom Burns

Good evening my friends. Good to see all of you. If you are watching live, please say hello in the comments. Tom Burns, welcome back to Wine with Wyan.

Glad to be back.

You know, you were.

We were together for Wine with Wine right before the world melted.

That's right.

Yeah. When we could do these in person and do fun things like that.

Shake hands and hug.

It is is very good to see you. If you guys are joining us, please say hello, say hi to Tom, tell him welcome back. What's up, Justice. Good to see you. Hey, Samantha. Hey, Tony. Good evening. Hey, Susan. Hey, Scott. Rhino. Good to be back here with you. Hey, Ted. Hey, Tony. Good to see you. Thanks for hanging out with us, everybody. So. Hey guys. Hey. Hey. Merch Metrics. Good to see all of you. So, Tom, congratulations on the publishing of this book, why Doctors Don't Get Rich. There's a reason, there's a reason why we made it our book of the quarter. So you can add, you can add best selling author to your long list of accomplishments. Now, I just want to be clear about something. We're doing this at night as opposed to our normal morning schedule because I believe you performed surgery this morning. Is that correct?

I did. I had a little. Little something else to do this morning.

That's right.

So you still practice. And so we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about. And you work by choice, not because you have to.

Absolutely, absolutely.

We're going to talk all about that and passive income tonight. But first we have to do something to kick this off.

Tom.

And do you know what it is?

I can guess.

It's something called the simultaneous sip. We ripped it off from Scott Adams. So for all of you who are watching, grab your cup or mug or glass, chalice, stein, tankard, thermos, flask or.

Bottle of wine and join us now for the unparalleled pleasure that makes your passive income go up. It's called the simultaneous sip.

Ah, perfection. Perfection.

And better to do that now than in the morning.

Who said.

Especially, right?

Can you share what your surgery was this morning?

It was a knee surgery.

Just.

Just the one. And then had some patients to see.

Okay. Like follow up patients. Correct?

Yes.

So you're an active doctor who is. Who works because you like it.

Right.

And you make way more from your passive income investments than you do from your doctor practice, is that correct?

Likely because I make so little in my doctor practice.

But that's a fair statement that you far out earn your doctor's salary. It's optional for you?

Absolutely. We're talking about a dozen years ago, finally eclipsed my full time surgeon's salary. And it's grown since then.

Yeah. That's great. So now you get to be completely at choice. Your work is totally at choice. So I'm curious for you and I have some specific questions that I want to ask you. That came from the book, but why do you keep working?

So, you know, first you, you start, you know, I started this journey as a doctor, didn't know I was going to do the other things.

I enjoy it. It's the connection. I just did a, I did a goal setting retreat recently and did my core values and they ended up being, you know, connection, growth and adventure. So I like the connection of meeting people every day. I get to meet 20 new people every day, get to help them out a little bit. I sort of thought a few years ago about maybe not being a doctor because I can probably get more done, might be able to grow a business, grow my income, but I didn't like the feeling of not being able to go in and see folks that maybe I've been seeing for 15 or 20 years and so still do it. Because I like it. I like it.

That's awesome. That's great. And you said 12 years ago you eclipsed your doctor's salary.

Yeah.

So what was that like when you realized that that had happened?

It kind of just kind of, it kind of hit me like walking through the house one day because all I was doing was creating passive income, putting the money back into whatever business or real estate I was investing in and sort of trying to pay little bills at a time and cover my lifestyle. I'd sort of done a little thing in my office and realized I covered all of my lifestyle, including the past two vacations that we had taken. And I realized I didn't have to work anymore. And so it was, it was a little heady. I kind of sat around and fantasized about what I might do and ended up going to work the next day and continue.

I hear you. Hey, a bunch of you have just joined, so. Hey, Judy. Hey, Tiffany. Hey, Kyle. Hey, Olga. Hey, Kenan. Hey, Jamie. Hey, Kerry. Hey, Justice. I'd love to bring you into the green room, by the way, and introduce you to everybody. So there's, there's a link inside the Facebook group for you to come join us. And any of you who want to get in line to run a question by Tom or by me if you want to run it by about your Business. Feel free to go ahead and get in line. The link is in your is in the Facebook group for you to jump into the green room. Hey, Ben, Good to see you, dude. Thanks for joining us. Hey, Kay. Hey, Alicia, good evening. Brian, good evening, everybody. Thanks for being here. Hi. How many of you read Tom's book why Doctors Don't Get Rich? So.

This was assigned reading.

For this quarter. And the reason why it was assigned was.

So many of you work full time or are in businesses that you haven't made that pivot yet. Where it's by choice, where you're in business and you're doing the business for the cash flow, which is totally necessary for a while, or you're working in jobs that. And you're bridging both worlds right now, you got one foot in business, you got one foot in your work, and there's a dance there. There's a balance there. Right. So Tom has navigated that. But here's the thing that is so fascinating about this. Tom has been a surgeon for how many years?

Oh, golly, 35 years.

35 years, right. So.

He'S been, he's been a surgeon for 35 years. He's not replacing a $50,000 a year income. He's replacing a much higher income. But also at the same time, if you've read Tom's book, or at least started to read Tom's book, and a bunch of you are saying in the comments that you read it, you know that high income earners are on a bigger rat race than people who are starting out with nothing. They're often more stuck than people like you. And so I tell you all this because I want you to see that, like, if Tom can overcome this hurdle and help people get off that rat race, he can help you too, regardless of if you're an entrepreneur or if you're just looking to make that pivot. So, Tom, real quick, before I jump into kind of my set of questions, why do you think high income earners like doctors struggle to get out of that rat race more than most people?

Sure. You know, I think a lot of it comes from our education system and not a knock on the education system, but we're, we're trained that way. We're trained to be specialists and good ones. You know, you want your doctor to be laser focused on being a doctor and making sure that he or she does what, what needs to be done to help you out. Same thing with your lawyer, your engineer, your accountant, and anybody that's doing something for you. So that's one thing, we're trained to be specialists. We're not trained so much to be generalists like an entrepreneur needs to be. We sometimes aren't trained to delegate people. So. And then what happens is we get rewarded for the time we put in. We get paid sort of that high hourly wage. And, you know, you can get to feeling pretty. Pretty cocky about that. You know, how much you get paid per hour.

And it creates the. We call the gold handcuffs. You know, you make a lot of money, but, you know, Parkinson's principle. The.

Expenses rise to meet your income.

That's right.

You know, eventually you're. You're sort of on a. On a treadmill. So it takes a little bit of. It takes a little bit of awareness to try to break out of what you learned in school and try to learn, you know, from people like you and what's out there in the books and seminars and things like that. So. And I.

And I see this with entrepreneurs, too, where entrepreneurs get into a business. I was actually. I had a consulting call with a client today who was talking about how they've got into business. They're doing very well for themselves, and they've got the golden handcuffs on their own business.

Right, right.

On the business that they built, that they created, now they got the golden handcuffs. And we had this very long conversation that looked a lot like a reminder that we got into this game because we wanted freedom and it. And that was freedom to work if you want to. Freedom to step away from it if you want to. And what I so admire about your approach, Tom, is you. You say that your kids, friends remember you as the fun dad.

Yeah. My greatest.

You and I, if. Remind me if this is correct, do I remember you telling me that you always were there when your kids got home from school?

Yeah, I was almost always there in the afternoons because I got home fairly early. Not always. And it got better as each year went on, but tried to always be there when they got off the bus, if I could be there.

So all of this to kind of set the table for the conversation that I want to have. Which is what passive income, like. The goal of this conversation, specifically about acquiring passive income, is really designed to set you free so that you can pursue the things that you want, whether that is work or business or something else.

Exactly.

And your approach, Tom, is a little bit different. You really hammered this home in the book of you pursue income.

Not.

You're not a speculator. Right. You're not betting on things going up.

Correct.

You are pursuing income only for that reason exactly Right. So. So you are not a bitcoin buyer.

That's correct.

You are, you are not a Wall street buyer.

That's correct too.

You are. And I think, forgive me if I'm sharing secrets, but you told me on a walk that you exited Wall street after the Great Recession and never looked back.

Yeah, I actually, actually exited before the Great Recession. So one time in my whole life I looked smart and it never went back. So, yeah, you know, maybe I'd have been smarter if I'd have gone back in when it went down to 67.

Well, so, so you are, you are an income investor. You pursue cash flow.

Yes.

And that, and, and that has set you free to let, to live at choice. And so that's all we're talking about tonight, guys. There is, you know, there's, there's a reason why our class called Investing for Entrepreneurs is so focused on cash flow. Because.

The game we're playing as entrepreneurial minded people is to not be financial advisors or market timers. It is to have freedom so that you can pursue the things that excite you, whether that is going all in on your business or it's just traveling and being with your family.

It.

The name of the game we're really playing is the one that sets us free to live the lives that we genuinely want to pursue, and that comes from cash flow. So, Tom, I want to stick to chapter eight and on, because chapter eight is really where you get into, like that's, that's the, the get into the game chapter. It's really where you start going into, into strategy. And there was something that you brought up in here where you broke the, the different asset classes that kind of match your criteria into, into four different types. I'm trying to find the page. But you had, you had business.

Business.

Real estate.

Paper. Paper and commodities.

Paper and commodities. Right. And I, this was, this was my favorite section of the book because, because I loved that you had businesses first. Because as entrepreneurs, we often think about businesses as entrepreneurs, which means taking on a job, which means working in the business. So would you explain a little bit about how you're thinking about business when you classify it as a passive income asset?

Sure. Like the person you were talking to on your consulting call, did that person create a business or did they create a job? You know, like if you're a doctor, you know, you might have a doctor business, but you are the business. And so that's not, that's not freeing, you know, and that's not passive. So a, a passive Business is one where you leveraged it out enough where you have, you know, the perfect businesses. You're the owner, you've got a qualified president that you, that knows everything about the business. They report to you once in a while while you're in Tahiti on the beach, and your business grows. So as one of my mentors said, you know, if you've got a good business, it grows while you're gone. So, and as we know, most of the people that made their money in the world have made it in some sort of business. You know, real estate's a nice part of people's wealth programs, but business is far and away the lion's share where all the money was made. So that's my version of a business. If I had the smarts to do it like you do, is to create it, leverage it with the right people, use systems, and then that business grows. You keep your finger on the pulse, but you're not necessarily doing the physical work yourself.

I'm going to tell a very quick story about a business that we invest in. In the fund, I have an investment fund called the capitalism.com fund. We invest in businesses usually that are right around a million dollars in top line, sometimes, sometimes more, sometimes less. But that's usually where the entrepreneur hits exactly that sticking point where they're now working a job rather than building a business.

They don't feel like they can afford quality help so they can't really scale it. And so we help unblock those and liberate the entrepreneur to go build that business. And we have a company that we're invested in and one person show.

And.

We looked at his business and found some very low hanging fruit, I mean, very low hanging fruit from like the way he was selling it. We were able to just tweak the sales process a little bit and save him about $100,000 a year per profit, pure profit. And so he did not want to run this test that we suggested to him because he was like, look what I got is working and I don't want to mess up the system. And so then I, then I said it like this. I said, okay, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna run the test because if it works, it's a hundred thousand dollars a year in pure profit. Well, you know what we're doing with that hundred thousand dollars a year? We're gonna get you a really sweet operations manager that is going to actually operate the business and liberate you to be the entrepreneur. And he went, wow, I Like you, Ryan, he ran the test. It worked. And now step two, we're hiring for that operations manager because that person is making that pivot from being an entrepreneur to being an owner. And, Tom, you talk about passive investing versus active investing in the book, and my understanding is that being a passive investor is. Is being an owner, but not an operator. And then active investing is a little bit of blend of both.

Exactly. Would you.

Would you tell us, like, kind of walk us through a little bit of the difference? Yeah.

You know, as it pertains to business. Yeah. You can be a. I mean, you can go to Wall street and be a passive investor for sure. But. But sort of in the private world, in your world, as you. It's so hard to get out of that mindset of it's, you know, nobody can do it better than me. What I see, you know, what's. What's the song Frank Sinatra sings? Nobody does it better or something like that wasn't Frank Sinatra. But.

If you can get your mind eventually to grow into the fact that leverage is where it's all at. And what you just described was using leverage, hiring an operations manager. You can be the entrepreneur, so you can scale and grow the business while somebody else is actually doing the footwork. So that's. That's my. That's my version of passively and passively investing in a business or passively owning a business, you can just be the money if you want to. But if you've got control, if it's your idea and you set up the people underneath you, that's the sort of the holy grail of passive business ownership.

I love what you. How you just use that word leverage when talking about people, because we think about it in terms of debt or in money, but we don't often use the word leverage when we're talking about people and partnerships. And that is really just when one plus one equals five. That is a great segue, by the way. Justice, is it okay if I introduce you here? I'm gonna call just a little bit of a pivot. I want Tom and the rest of you to meet Justin Marimi. What's up, Justice?

Hey, what's going on, guys? Can you hear me okay?

Good to hear you loud and clear, man. So I just wanted you all to meet the newest member of capitalism.com, justice Marini. So Justyce is in charge of product and community, and we knew pretty much upon first conversation that.

We were meant to be.

Come on. But Justyce and I have only been working together for about Three weeks. But it is exactly what Tom is talking about of justice is leveraging our infrastructure and our community and we're leveraging his knowledge and experience with entrepreneurs to create a better product and a better experience for our members, which, you know what that's going to do. It's going to make our memberships go up, it's going to make our stick rate go up, it's going to make our profits go up because we're collaborating together with, with, with a goal. Justice. You've worked with a bunch of entrepreneurs as a coach and as a mentor. Can you speak to what you've seen about that bottleneck of people being in their own way and, and not being able to get out of that, that rat race as a high income entrepreneur?

Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's funny because I'm working with an entrepreneur, you know, right now who I believe. Thanks, Sue. I believe that every single entrepreneur has a sweet spot, something they're unbelievable at. And the best example I can give of that is, hey, I'm working with a realtor right now that can get business like nobody else. I say she's an assassin, she can get business left and right. They come in. But she has what we call a savior complex, which is, I need to be with every buyer all the time, help them show, help them do all that stuff instead of leveraging a buyer's agent. That's gonna cost money. And yes, that's kind of scary. But I believe the more time you're free to be who you're created to be and what you're really great at, you can actually leverage that to bring more in. So what I see with a lot of entrepreneurs is they actually have a low view of self and a high view of the little micro skills that help the business go along. And they can't believe that there might be somebody else that might be more passionate about small things and allow them to get above the master, work on the business instead of steady working in the business. And so a little bit of shaker complex, a little bit of a fear of letting go. But what I love is that I hear Tom and I'm like, if I have an injury, I want a surgeon that is free to do what he loves to do it with his free time. He's going, I'm staying in the game because I'm passionate about it. I'm not worried about making another buck. That's taken care of. I do this because I'm passionate about it. And I, and I want to see people taken care of. That's the surgeon I want. And that's the same thing that I want for every entrepreneur, that they're doing it because they're passionate about it and because they're free to do it, because they've leveraged other things to allow them to be free. And that's what we want for entrepreneurs. We want you to be free, do what you're great at, so you can grow unbelievable million dollar brands and invest and do a lot of other great things.

You know, Tom, I think it's chapter three in the book where it's called why we need Rich doctors.

Yep.

Which is exactly what justice is saying. It's like I want, I want exactly the guy who does not need to be there.

Yeah, yeah.

And it's like. And justice, you know this like as a coach. Yeah, the, the, the, the client wants the coach that doesn't need the sale.

Yes, absolutely. As a coach, one of the things I often will actually start off with with my clients is, hey, I just want you to know up front, this initial conversation is not a sales call. I actually tell 25% of the people on this call that they actually just need a therapist or I think this was enough just to put them at ease because they're going, do you need me? I don't want someone that needs me. I want someone that like, is. It has the freedom to be passionate about me. And that's what I think. You're absolutely right. I don't, I don't need you. I have time and I want a few that I can be passionate about and do. And so you do unbelievable things with your life and with your business.

Yeah. And so that, that is why the passive income conversation is so important. Because if you've got the passive income as an investor or as a business owner, not operator, you're free. You asked me such a beautiful question this week just as I was going over the next hire that I want to bring onto the team. And I started mapping out the job description this week and you asked the question, what would this free you up to do? Would this help you serve at a greater level? Yeah, that question is everything. And Tom can attest to having passive income frees him up to serve as a more present doctor. Wow, justice, we're so pumped to be working with you, man. I just wanted to introduce you to the group since our first live, since, since we started.

Pumped to be doing this.

Good seeing you.

All right, have a good one, guys.

Tom, there's this on page 122. There's this section about chasing home runs. Yeah. And.

You talk about how doctors and really anybody is attracted to high risk, high reward. You caution people against this?

Yep.

Would you share why?

There's nothing, nothing wrong with having high aspirations, swinging for the fence once in a while. But the purpose of that section there was that it was probably born out of some of my colleagues that.

You show them a way to make a few extra dollars a month every month for the rest of their life. They don't get that excited. But you show them some super high risk deal, some crazy hair brain scheme, and it sounds good to them and they'll drop money in a heartbeat. So the philosophy is basically this. You know, most people, when the gal is using a baseball metaphor, you win that, you hit a bunch of singles. You don't have to hit any home runs. You get enough singles, you're enough runs ahead, then you can start swinging for the fences if you wish. In the passive income world, if you just hit a few singles, end up to where you have enough money to cover a portion of your lifestyle, or all of it, whatever you choose, it's then that you've got a little bit of a backstop, you've got a concrete foundation to work with. And now you can start swinging for the fences because if you strike out, it's not going to affect your life. And you can, you can take another one of those swings later. It's a. It gives you confidence and it gives you the security that people think they have with their job, but they don't.

Well, we just completed a three week class on dividend investing.

Yeah.

And there were a couple examples that I gave throughout the class. One of them was Walgreens. Walgreens at the time of our class was paying a like 5.25% dividend, which looks like nothing, right? Like, to most, to most people, looks looks like nothing. And you even tell the story about how.

You'Ve run through the numbers of certain Doctors where it's $1,000 a month in passive income. And they're like, well, I could just do another day of surgery and make $1,000. And you're like, no, you're missing the point. It's a little deposit into that bucket that sets you a little bit free. And 5% on something like Walgreens, some people would overlook. But since it's a increasing dividend, next year it's 6%. The year after that it's 6 and a half, it's 7%. Since we even recorded that class, Walgreens is up more than 10%, which doesn't. Which is not buying Bitcoin at its low, it's not buying Tesla at its low, but it's a little deposit into the asset class that ultimately sets you free. So, so would you. Would you tell that story about the thousand dollars a month and doing. Just doing another surgery or selling another thing or whatever it is?

And it's. Yeah, it's the compound effect. You know, we keep forgetting that that 5% is going to grow. It's going to grow, and one day it's going to start making little babies. And that's what we want. We want our money to make babies. So the story.

You know, it was back in the day, it was a long time ago, and I actually would never solicit any of my. Any of the surgeons or doctors. I just waited till they asked if they wanted. And somebody asked about, you know, what's this I hear about what you're doing, Burns? And so I told him, and I had it. I. I had a project, and it was essentially $100,000 investment and no return for a year. But after about a year, it was going to start clicking off about 12%, which is $1,000 a month until forever or until the thing sold. And he looked at me and he said, that's not that much. You know, I make X amount of dollars a year. I said, I understand. He goes, besides, if I want an extra thousand dollars, I can just take call. Now, for those of you, you know, doctors, when you take call, that means you typically don't sleep through the night. You're up working all night, and then you go to work the next day. But Maybe they'll pay $1,000 to do that. That's great. I said, okay, you're right. You win month one, you win. What are you going to do? What are you going to do month two? He goes, well, I'll just take call again. I said, okay, I got you. What are you going to do month three? And you finally got tired of me asking that. But you know, the process, and you can do it out on a piece of paper. You know, he's going to. He's going to work all night 12 times a year. Make that $12,000. He'll be up $12,000 before the end of the year. Then I start catching up with a thousand dollars. Whether I'm sleeping, I'm in Tahiti, I'm with my kids. And that goes on forever. His thousand dollars a month. If he gets hit by a bus or gets Covid or something like that, it stops In a heartbeat. So the point of the story was that passive income, like your 5% from Walgreens, it doesn't seem like much, but there is a compound effect, and Darren Hardy wrote a book effect, and Einstein talks about it. That stuff grows over time. You know, my wealth didn't hardly blip the screen when I started, but it just grew. It just grew a little bit. And eventually the graph started rising. So that passive income, you. You get it coming and it starts. It starts funding your next investment, and then they start rolling over and it really compounds quickly. And then one day you realize you're. You're free or you're partially free.

And the thing is, it starts really, it starts so insignificantly that most people overlook it.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Like that. That doctor that. That emergency room doctor passed up on $1,000 a month because it was insignificant to his life.

Right.

Missing the point that that compounds over time until it replaces your income.

Go ahead.

Go ahead.

What he missed is he missed. Maybe he's missing $1,000 a month. He's missing the education he would have gotten and the feeling and the adrenaline rush of getting that check for not doing anything. You know what that does? That encourages you to go do it again. So not only did he miss just a thousand bucks a month, he may have missed creating his own freedom in five or ten years or less.

Yeah, Tom, I have some questions about Chapter 11, which is about leverage. But before. Before I do that, we've got a full green room of people who want to run something by you or me. So, Tiffany, Mike, Ben, Paul, I was. I was wondering if we could pivot over to some Q and A. You down for that, Tom?

You bet. Let's do it.

All right, so Tiffany, you were first. So I would give you the floor, but your camera's not on. So I'm gonna skip you while you put your camera back on. And I'm gonna go over to the good doctor. Ben, if he is down, I haven't seen him in quite some time and he's wearing a Sriracha shirt, so I. I gotta bring him on. Here we go. Ben. Dr. Ben. Welcome back. It's been a while. Good to see you, my friend.

You too. Has been a while. Hey, Tom. Nice digitally meet you. We got Liz, my wife here in the back.

Hi, Liz.

Joining us. Anyway, I wanted to. To hop on because, well, I found your book through Ryan's investing course with course, which I went through, you know, like that and just ate it all up. So. Hey, this book looks really interesting. It's talking to me. So I'm a. I'm a radiologist, all right. My residency in 2017, and then promptly retired from that as I started a physical products business during residency. So a lot of the stuff that is in your book, I'm only about 100 pages in so far, but it's really resonated with me. So I remember thinking a lot of those things during residency that you were describing.

And in. In 2018, about six months after I finished residency, I got hit by a metaphorical bus with a health issue and was out for, kind of out of commission for, like, three months, which made me really, really appreciate the fact that the team that I built in the business was still running everything, still bringing in money, not passive income, still have to work for it. But I was able to take a little hiatus and still be okay.

So I can really appreciate that. And I guess my question is maybe a little bit more specific than Ryan was thinking it could be. But my business partner, Peter, who is an ER doc, we're both doing this business stuff kind of full time now. I work, like, two days a month at the VA hospital, and we recently closed on a $2.2 million apartment complex syndication. We got a group of physicians together that knew what we did with business, and they were looking for ways to get involved. And we said, hey, we're going to do this real estate thing. And I was really interested with, you know, the talks that you had in your book about real estate and everything.

Yeah.

And so my question is, we partnered with some guys that are experienced with syndications and are working with them on that, and we want to do more and bring more physicians in. And I guess my question is, what advice would you give to somebody who is on this path? It sounds like, you know, you were on a similar path very early on in your passive income journey.

That is a great question, Ben.

You know, kind of like Ryan says in his book 12 Months to a Million, document your journey and kind of get it out to folks they like hearing. People love to hear about success, especially when it's people like other doctors, you know, they'll really resonate with you, get around people that are doing it. There are. Well, there were. There's now virtual conferences everywhere where you can kind of connect up with folks and, you know, off the side, we can have a side talk. When this is over, I can kind of tell you some specific places to go and people to connect with. It's the networking thing. It just starts happening. You know, people. People will know you're in the. They'll know you're in the industry and it'll grow. And just always, always take care of your investors first. They're the, they're the ones. They're like customers. Ryan talks about. Investors are your customers and they mean everything and they'll stick with you for a long time.

That's what I told Peter. I said, if we're going to do this, we got to make sure we always put the people in the group first.

Always.

And us second.

You're there to serve them.

Yeah, exactly. And then I think my wife, who she's a lawyer, so I think a lot of the professional angle of the book will, will speak to her as well. But she had a question. Did you want to. Sure.

This is, this is an easy softball question, but I was joking with Ben last night that I feel like since I married him, my job has become optional. He said, passive income. And honestly, I feel like I work for a big law firm, one of the top 100 in the country. And I was a nurse before, so I do healthcare law. I really love it. I'm very passionate about it. I feel like I'm a better attorney for not having to work. I'm lucky enough where it's optional for me at this point, courtesy of my sweet husband. So my question is, do you honestly feel like you're a better doctor because being in the profession is now optional for you?

See, 101%. You know, when it really happened, I found that, you know, I, number one, I could just eliminate the stuff I didn't like. You know, and, you know, Ben, you know, our world. I eliminated insurance companies. Some hospital tried to say, you know, I stopped taking call in the 1900s. And, you know, one of the hospitals said, well, if you'd stop taking call, you can't work here. And I said, bye. You know, left. So it gives me time to spend with my patients. The only reason I'm doing this, it's not because I love doing surgery. That's nice. I like the people. That's just. I like people. So I, you know, I sat today for 25 minutes with an 86 year old lady who just had a list of questions. None of them were really relevant to an orthopedic surgeon. I didn't examine her, I held her hand. But I've got enough leverage. I've got a physician extender that was seeing the other people. They know that they might not get to see me all the time. I sat there and held her hand for 25 minutes. We had a great time. She's 86 years old. Want to know if it was okay if she could walk five miles a day, hang her own laundry, do her gardening and feed the cattle. And I said, you're okay, go ahead. You know, but it's made it a lot more fun, so I still like it.

Great. Well, I appreciate you having me on the call and the offer to connect afterward. I'll definitely take you up on that.

Yeah, please do.

So, Ben, I've got a question for you. So this was your. This was your first real estate deal that you were transacting, correct?

Well, Peter, you remember Peter in the group, he has been doing real estate deals for two or three years now. A couple of them with these sponsors and things like that.

But it's your first, right?

Well, yeah, Well, I have a. I have one rental property duplex. But that's.

But, but I mean, but you raised. You were raising money, right?

550,000.

Okay, awesome. So I want to know, how did you, since this is your first one, how did you find the deal and what gave you the confidence to be able to go and make that ask? Because that's. Those two things are the biggest thing that keeps people from implementing the stuff that Tom talks about in his book.

Sure. Yeah. So the way that we found the deal was because Peter has been actively. This is sort. This has sort of been his area of interest while I was more marketing sort of thing. And he was like, I'm going to go look at real estate stuff. So he has been in Omaha, where he lives, he's been sort of networking and going to events and talking to people. And he connected with this company who has their 46 million under management, 700 something doors, something like that. And so he's been working with them on partnership deals. And then that kind of evolved. He said, hey, maybe we could do this syndication with a group of doctors. And the reason we had this group of doctors was during residency, while I was doing all this stuff, all of my attendings would see what, you know, like what I'm up to. And they're like, hey, how can we get on that? How can we get some of that? That sounds great. You're not even going to practice, you know, cardiologist after residency. I was like, well, that's not. Yeah, I'm not planning to, but. And so we did a couple projects with them that actually ended up going really badly. And they lost money. Most of it, like three. Two of the three that we did lost money, and one of them was like a big enough Mistake that we just said, you know, we're gonna, this is our fault. We're gonna make you guys whole because, you know, it was, it was bad, bad diligence on our part. We're gonna make you guys whole, and maybe in the future we can do something together. And so the reason, because we showed that if things went wrong, we were going to do the best that we could to make it right. People were willing to go again, and this time we did it smarter. We did it, you know, more due diligence. We were more careful because we're wiser after making those mistakes. So that's how we were able, able to do it.

That's. That's beautiful. Well done, Ben. Well done.

Nicely done.

It's good to see you, man. Thanks for hanging out with us tonight.

Yeah, you too. Look forward to hearing the rest of the call.

All right, see you then. Bye. Liz.

I want to get to Mike Damero in a second, but Tom, I wanted to hear from you about the deal flow that you pursue. Because right now.

World'S different. And I remember before March of 2020, you saying women bought a deal in a while, like things are overvalued. I'm not getting the cash flow that I want in order to get into a deal I haven't bought anything for. I'd like to, but there's not a whole lot that I'm pursuing. So what about now? Are you, are you seeing things come around and where do you get your deal flow when you're getting it? Tell me about that.

So things have, they've not come around. In fact, cap rates have declined, which means prices have actually risen slightly during COVID It's shocking. But had, you know, so, you know, apartments, we're in the apartment world. It's. There's still, we're still under built. There's still quite a demand. You know, you certainly can make mistakes. But there's a lot of money out there, institutional money that's chasing deals. And so they're selling at really, really high valuations. You know, we use what's called a cap rate, which just, you know, it's. Is the lower it gets, the more expensive. So that's one thing no deals yet do. We know there's some problems out there. There's a lot of single family homes that are at the 90 day point high. Percentage of single family homes are 90 days delinquent. We know that. So what's that going to do? And there's a point to this. Most people might, may or may not lose their Homes. Where are they going to go when they lose their homes? Yeah, they're going to go to apartments. Their apartments aren't perfect but everybody still wants them. It's still a darling. Along with self storage and industrial. So.

We can. We haven't found anything to buy yet. Others seem to be finding some, but I see the deal flow really contracting and folks are getting some deals. They're either, they're either finding a needle in a haystack or maybe they're more optimistic than we are on a pro forma basis. So we still build. Where do we get our deal flow? It's just we've been getting it from, we know brokers all across the country, lenders across the country, developers, contractors. So it's that huge net and network of people that continuously bring us stuff and eventually we put it together, you know.

And since I asked you, I'll comment as well where my deal flow comes from. I don't look for deals because I am not a full time real estate investor. So I have a point to this. Stick with me for a second. I invest in real estate but I am not a full time real estate investor. It is where I put my money for cash flow. I put a portion of my portfolio into long term dividend paying stocks. I put the cash like the profits at the end of the year into other cash flow assets like real estate. But I do not pursue deals because how many of you think that I can find a deal before Tom does?

Not going to happen. Why? Because Tom's been doing this for 30 years. He's got a network of people, he's got a track record. They're not going to talk to me. Now if we were to flip it. If one of you is looking for a business advisor and business investor, you're not going to call Tom. You're going to call me. You're gonna call me because I have that record, I have that deal flow, I have that network. But guess what? When Tom finds his next deal, he can call me and I'll wire him money. And that's called participating in a private placement. That is, that's investing with the investors. Because as a passive investor I can make it easier for Tom to acquire more properties because he's got this group of people that will invest with him and that allows him to go pursue more deals and it allows me to participate in some of that passive income by being a passive investor. So that's called participating in syndications. And that comes from your network too. That comes from going to meetups and Being involved in the groups and pursuing those relationships that can make those possibilities happen. And by the way, Jason Hartman, who was on the call tonight, just put a comment down. He helps people find their deal. That deal flow, too. So there's people in your network. He helps. A lot of people do that.

A lot of people.

A lot of people do that. So he's a good person to go to. You should call Jason Hartman if you're looking for deal flow.

Mike Damro, are you good to. Come on, Give me a thumbs up if you're ready to join us. All right, let's do this.

Hey, how are you tonight?

Good. How are you doing?

Well, what you got?

So my wife and I, we've been on Amazon, you know, like everybody, for about five years now, heavy into grocery and moving a different way after, you know, I listened to the book. My wife read the book, so whatever.

But are you talking about 12 months to 1 million? Okay.

No, I'm sorry.

Your book. Yeah.

So, yeah.

And we got a lot more excited about it after listening to that book, after listening to the book, after being on Amazon and kind of being in their sandbox for a long time. And that'll always be at some point, I'm sure. But my question really is. So we've had our product is we in the pet space. We've had this dog since she was a puppy, use the shampoo on her forever. And then we were gonna go with this lady that made it to have her pl it for us. And that kind of fell apart. But we ran into actually a better product that we're gonna probably go with, and we already had samples and that sort of thing. So the long, long story short is, and the only question I really have for you is in the book, you talk about building your audience, obviously, and building your audience. So do you need your. Since we already have a product which is about. Or a line which is about eight different products, and it's. It's kind of like as a system, would you sell those as like, a package together? They, you know, like a number one and three that work together, or would you sell as single products and then, you know, suggest they have other ones based on the problems they have with their pet?

Mike, what is the total volume of your store right now on Amazon altogether?

Well, right now we're just. Just on Amazon with wholesale and, you know, in grocery and stuff. And this year we're a little bit down, like around that 450 range.

450,000 total for the year, yeah. All right. So packaging your Products as a kit or as a bundle is fine, but not until you're at the million.

Right, right.

But what we're doing now, just, just so we're clear that the stuff we're doing now is just grocery through the pet thing is brand new for us. It's brand new. Just come in. So what we're looking to do is, you know, bring that product on, continue with Amazon obviously for cash flow and starting this other product with a gentleman that makes it.

This is a new business.

A new business.

New.

Yeah. It's the product that you talk about in your.

Are you gonna be selling it on Amazon?

Yeah, Amazon and other places. Even. Even retail.

Yeah. Okay, so. So you're already thinking too wide.

Okay.

I'm gonna sell it on Amazon, my own store retail. Should I also bundle it with this other kit? Right. Like you're already stressed and the business hasn't started yet. Sure. So your job. And Mike, people hate me until they love me because I tell them to keep it simple. Okay. Your job is to get one of those products to 25 sales a day. Okay.

Yeah.

And then it's to launch top product number 2, 3, 4. That'll get you to the million. Then we can talk about kits. Okay. And after that, then we can talk about retail. Okay. And then you can show up at the retailer's door with like, hey, here are my numbers.

And the retailer goes, oh, hot damn. This ain't a new business. They've got the funding, they've got the inventory, they've got the supply chain. They've got their shit together. Okay? Now we can trust them on our stores. And now you've got exponential growth. So entrepreneurs. And we're just meeting. Have we met before, Mike? No.

Brand new to the 1%.

Yeah. This is our first conversation, but I'm going to dive real deep. I'm just going to go. I'm just going to go for the jugular here. That is why the first business is only at 450,000 with eight products. Because you're going to wide too quickly. So, so if, if, if you were to fall on the sword of whatever your one hero product was and get that to 100 sales a day, the rest of the business would grow faster.

Right.

But the, the Amazon is other people's products. Wholesale, grocery. It's not our product. So that is just.

That's, you know, that's your cash flow for you.

Yeah, it is.

Yeah.

So avoid the temptation of doing too many things before you have proven the idea, proven the marketplace, proven the price Points proven, the brand. And so many people bite off more than they can chew and then they try to force it. You want to be more like Tom, where you do not need this business to grow through retail because you're doing so well on Amazon that retail is optional. You want to not have to launch that product that looks good on paper because the other products are selling so well because people love them. You want to not have to be at Amazon's beck and call because you've got a raving customer base that loves what you've put together. Right? That's a business.

And you can only do that if you start with that small intent of, I'm going to make one really great product, I'm going to launch it to that seed audience. That seed audience is going to carry me to 25 sales a day. It's going to look real slow at first, but then you're going to get that cash flow that's going to make product number two faster and then faster and then faster. And you'll look up a year from now and you'll have a million dollar business with the raving customer base that will buy from you on your own store and that will go to the retail store and buy it. This last week I saw a product that I had seen on Instagram and I saw it in stores, I was like, hey, I know these guys. And I bought them off the shelf right? Now, had I never seen them before, I would have never bought them. I wouldn't even noticed them on the shelf.

Right?

So that's why this is, it's a, it's a linear progression that then hits an exponential growth curve.

And my last question would be, so when we talk about, in your book about building, you know, your, your raving fans or your, your base and that sort of thing, when you start that, whether it be Facebook or Instagram or whatever, are you starting it with your, your actual brand? Are you starting it as a discussion group to have that base start and then introduce your product?

At some point, I think you should.

Do it as your brand, unless for some reason you find it easier or more advantageous to do it as something else. Okay, so perfect. The path of least resistance here is really your friend when, when it comes to audience building, because, and the reason is because most people will overthink it and force it and thus sacrifice the connection and the intimacy that actually makes building an audience special.

Okay?

Right. So, like, the reason why.

You will trust me moving forward is because we're having an intimate conversation right now and that. That couldn't happen if I was worried about the numbers on this discussion. Right, Right. So, like, the secret to building an audience is remembering that it's person to person. So whatever frees you up to operate in that place, start from there, and you build the audience around that. Ask somebody who has made that mistake several times before of, like, thinking about what the strategy should be rather than remembering that it's just people.

And.

And that's. That's what will help you build the audience.

Perfect.

I really appreciate the time. Thank you.

Great to meet you, Mike. Thanks for being here.

Thank you.

All right, take care. Tom, I want to ask you about leverage.

Yep.

So chapter 11 is all about leverage. And I. I've had. I had to come full circle with my relationship with debt and things like other people's money and the responsibility of what it means when I take on other people's money as.

Somebody who is in charge of overseeing a return. Right. That's. That. That's. That's some pressure. So I was hoping that you could talk us through good debt and bad debt.

Yeah.

And also, just when you got comfortable leveraging other people's money.

Sure. Good debt, you know. Well, bad, bad debts. What most of us have, we got a car payment, we got a house payment, believe it or not, have car payment, house payment, furniture rental. Anything that you've got to pay that.

Number one, has to be paid by you. You've got to discharge that full debt and doesn't make you money. So bad debt comes out of your pocket and doesn't make you any money.

We do need those things, but it still can be called bad debt. We'd rather not have a car payment. Good debt.

Puts money in your pocket, and typically it's paid by somebody else. What I mean by that is if you have debt on a rental property, and Mr. Hartman's on the show, he knows this back of his hand. You have debt on a house, and somebody's paying you enough rent that it covers all your expenses plus your mortgage and puts a few dollars in your pocket. Well, that's good debt because it puts money in your pocket, and your tenants are more than happy to pay that for you because you've given them a nice house to live in, a nice backyard that they like, good school district, that sort of thing. So that's my easiest definition of good debt.

And you've got, in. I think it's the last chapter of the book. You've got. One of kind of the pillars of real estate is amortization, which is which is other people paying down that debt.

Exactly.

And.

I always kind of saw it as like a burden to carry that, to carry that amount of debt. My buddy Shaquille Prasla says he now brags about not how much money he makes, but how much debt he pays every month because he has so many businesses and investments that he's got debt on. When did you start to get comfortable with carrying that?

So it, you know, my first debt was debt that I had personally guaranteed. But I felt so good about the, you know, it's part education, you know, the business world, you know how to grow an Amazon business and a bunch of other kind of businesses. So you're pretty comfortable when you see something likely and you know that you could probably take a little debt on it. I know if I see a certain property, numbers don't lie, do the numbers? The numbers will tell you what to do. That's a quote from a friend of mine. But if I know that I've got a huge buffer between what should be or what is now and what could be bad enough to make my debt a problem, I'll pull the trigger all the time. And it's never been an issue. So it's education, it's knowing your market, knowing your niche, knowing kind of what you're doing. As things went on the, you know, obviously the zeros added, the numbers got bigger.

And you know, then again, it's part education and part the fact that I started moving into non recourse debt. So non recourse debt means the property itself is, has enough value that the lender doesn't underwrite you, doesn't look to you to pay it back. It looks to the property and they'll give you enough, they'll give you enough money on your debt to do what you need to do. But they know that if they take that property back, it's going to be able to take care of the debt that they, they've given you. So that certainly did help. So I like having debt that I don't necessarily have to pay back. Yeah. You know what I mean?

Yeah. But so in other words, once you build up a certain track record and get to a certain level of deal flow, then other people, or then the people who are lending you, lending you money, are guaranteeing that based on the deal rather than you.

Exactly.

So you're at your, you're not the one holding the bag.

Correct. They do look at you too because they want to make sure as an operator that you can operate the property. So it not helps to Have a track record. And that just. That just came over time. You just get comfortable. You know, you so easily spit out how to. How to help the last guy do his business. Same thing happens in real estate. You just get to know it so well that you don't get that nervous getting the debt. You know when you really get nervous, when you take somebody else's money as an investor, that's when. That's when the, you know, the blood pressure goes up because it's more responsibility. I don't mind losing my money. I just don't want to lose my investors.

Right. Yeah, I gotcha. I'm going to go back to the green room. Valentin, you're yelling at somebody, but I'd love to bring you on. Give me a thumbs up. Give me a thumbs up. All right, here we go. Let's do this. Good evening. How are you?

I'm doing good, man.

How are you guys doing?

Doing well.

Thanks for joining us tonight. What can we do for you?

No, I'm just. I'm excited to listen. I got my buddy here, Peter. Him and his wife runs a dentistry here.

And Peter, how you doing?

So I'm getting him in on the 1%, you know, bit by bit here.

Good man.

I'm just gonna take this off top.

He's looking. He's an awesome consultant. He knows way more than like he think he does. And then he runs the office taking it to above a million fairly quick. They've had things go against them three times.

A hurricane got destroyed by a hurricane and then a pandemic which shut us.

Down.

But they kept rising it back because of the quality. Now I keep telling him, hey, why don't you start going into consulting? And he thinks he's not ready.

That.

That kind of mentality is what I'm like. And I just want to throw it.

At him right now.

That mentality is he is more than ready to do that. I'm sure that he is. But how do you get over that? How do you, like, at what point does he feel that, you know what, I can do this and he can start training other dentistries that are opening up and showing how to do that.

I thought I got invited for drinks.

No, you're fine.

I'm fixing this shit right now.

Well, I mean, I'll answer this from a business perspective, and then Tom can add his 2 cents from. From his medical background. But in consulting, you have to kick yourself out of the equation. So the key to consulting is remembering that your goal is not to be a certain thing or be better than anyone or even be qualified. It is to find the problem for the client and solve it. It's to find the problem that is holding them back and serving them by helping them solve that problem. So for example, I have a client in actually the medical sector. I have no business being in this business, but I can very clearly see their problem from a business perspective. And I am qualified to help them solve their problems because I see it clearly and can help guide them towards the solution. That's your job as a consultant. It is not to have a specific set of knowledge or to have a certain skill set or qualification. It is simply being able to see the problem better than the client and knowing the path to the solution. And so your past track record, your past business failures, your past wins are all irrelevant. All that's relevant is if you can help the other person navigate a certain challenge. Tom, I'm curious from, like, from your medical experience of like, of how you would answer this question.

Sure. Now don't forget now as a consultant, you're still trading your money for your. Still trading your money for your time for money. But passive wise, it's not necessarily a passive activity, but it's a good one to create money, to get some passive income. You know, sometimes people suffer from things that I've certainly suffered from myself, which is, you know, a little bit of imposter syndrome or a lot of imposter syndrome and self limiting beliefs. You know, if you can just sit back and look what you've done in the past, if you believe you can help people, like Ryan said, find their problem, you don't necessarily have to have all the answers. But if you, you know, if you have a willingness and a desire to help other people, that's going to ooze out of you. They're going to see that. And, and I think, I think the best way, kind of like chapter eight says, just get in the game, give it a try. If you crash and burn, you crash and burn. You might just find you really like it.

Thanks, guys.

Good stuff.

All right, great to see you guys. Thanks for being with us tonight.

Appreciate it. Thank you so much, guys.

All right, see you guys.

Hey, final call for the green room. If you want to come hang out and ask Tom a question or ask me a question, go ahead and click the link inside of the Facebook group and you can come join us. Amanda, I see you. Paul, I see you. You guys, if you guys turn on your cameras, I'd be happy to bring you guys on. Tom, I've asked you this question before, but it still surprises me.

You are a very successful investor. You have. I mean, and you're building a lot of these properties. You are. I mean, that sounds complicated. I don't know if it is, but it sure sounds complicated. You operate your practice and you do surgery several times a week, yet you've always got time for me. Like, I have never called you. And you be like, I'm way too busy right now. Like, I am busier than you, which boggles my mind. I blame it on my two. I have two kids under six, so I'll blame it on that. But, I mean, you are a very active parent. You.

We go for long hikes together. Like you've never. You wrote a great book. And you wrote the thing, right? I mean, you did. You wrote the thing. Yeah.

So there's like. I guess my question is, like, how the hell do you have time and peace of mind getting so much done?

You know, I'm not Superman. I'm not as cool as you make me out to be, but.

Yes, you are.

Who wouldn't answer Ryan. Ryan Moran's call? But I've gotten, you know, I'm still sometimes a little poor at delegating. I'm still, you know, we're all still working on stuff. I'm still working on my own leverage for my own businesses. But, you know, I just gravitate to the things that give me joy in life and that really make. Make that make a difference and that are most important. So I just prioritize. So, you know, as you've said before, there's certain phone numbers that no matter what you're doing, you answer them. You know, I also answer the important ones. I hit. I hit, you know, delete or ignore quite a few times on other calls, but usually not if they're in my phone book. Because people are important. I believe every connection is important. And if they're in my phone, they're important to me. So if there's a name on it, I'll answer it. And even if I'm busy, I'll say, can I call you back? So I don't know how. I may be probably not as busy as you think. I've got two awesome kids. I don't have to parent so hard anymore because they're as old as most of your students, probably. But they're great kids, and they don't require parenting time anymore. I get to hang out with them a lot. So I don't know. That was kind of a long, I don't know answer. But I try to do things that are important to me in life, which is what that passive income gave me the ability to do.

Yeah. But there's. There's also such. There's such a nugget of wisdom in this, is you only do what is important.

Yeah.

Right. And so, like, I'm still learning this lesson as an entrepreneur of how much dumb shit I do. It's like, how many. How many calls. I don't take a lot of calls, but how many emails I answer that I shouldn't be answering or even that I'm doing it from a space of. I'm already overwhelmed. So when I get the email, it's just another thing on the plate. And what I've noticed about you is because you're so at choice, you choose a lot of things and you're happy in them.

Yeah.

Like, you choose to. To mentor that person and you enjoy it.

Yeah.

You choose to write the book and you enjoy it.

Yeah.

And so there's like, there's. You have peace of mind, and then it's like you have freedom. And then. And most people do the opposite. It is. I'll do the thing so I can have freedom. I will take the client I don't like so I can have the freedom. I'll start that business I don't want. So I have freedom. And you say no, freedom first. And then.

And I used to think, Tom, that you had peace of mind because you had wealth, but now I realize after I've gotten to know you, is that you have wealth because you have peace of mind.

And you talk about this in the beginning of the book where you say that wealth is. Is a mindset, that. That freedom is a mindset, that that the way we think about things is everything. It's a little bit surprising to start a book about wealth with.

Some thoughts. About thoughts. So tell me why you decided to start the book there.

Look, it. Everything starts there. Everything starts in the mind. Every product that's ever been produced, every. Every play, every movie, it all started as a thought. And if you've got. If you've got negative thoughts or thoughts that aren't successful, for lack of a better word, then it's not going to manifest into something that. That's beautiful. It's not. The magic's not going to happen if it doesn't start in your brain. So. And you have to. And it determines. It depends on what you think wealth is. You know, wealth doesn't have to be a bunch of money.

You.

You can. You can make a small amount of money and have small expenses. And if you're just free and you want to just travel the world or travel the country or whatever, whatever your.

Pocketbook allows you to do. If you're free, if you've bought back your time, then you're a wealthy person. So I was asked the other day on a podcast. It was run by a millennial. He was a super guy. He was 23 years old, and he wanted to know what my number was that. That demonstrated wealth. And he hated the it depends answer. And he's a great. You know, it depends. It always depends, you know. So I have a story in the book about a guy who makes $50,000 a year, but he's free. He's bought his time. You know, what. What is that worth if you're 30. 30 years old and you bought back your time forever? So I always. I'm not perfect. I am again, man. I want to be the guy you think I am. Um.

Be the person your dog thinks you are.

But the guy I think that you are is somebody who wakes up and enjoys going to the office most days, is present with his patients, come home, comes home and either reads a book or watches TV or has lunch with one of his kids or his wife, takes a call from a friend or a mentee and then goes for a hike or, or. Or does something fun for recreation.

That.

That's.

And sounds pretty good.

And that's the guy I think you are, and that's the guy that I want to be when I grow up.

Well, you know, we. I appreciate that, and it is. It is fun, and life is not perfect. But I always. Even back when my wife and I first got married, I always told her, and we had no money, didn't come for money. We didn't have any money. I said, whatever we do in life, let's just make sure we have fun while we're doing it. So I know, because she reminds me. I said that. And we were pretty dirt poor back then, so, uh, so maybe that's what it was. I've always wanted to have fun. I mean, we're not here to. We're not here to not have fun. So you can make anything fun if you use your mind for it the right way.

You know, Tom, I wanted to ask you the question because it's kind of cliche, and I know some people are thinking, and I'm looking at the chat box coming through, and I wanted to ask the question, propose a question, like, where would you suggest somebody who is just starting out in their journey Start. But I kind of think you've answered the book by saying you've got to be in the game. It's almost like you start once you get in the game, not.

You figure it out and then you go. And I think the answer to that question is you just start super small and you buy dividend paying stock, or you get an investment that pays you 100 bucks a month or, or you do something that adds a little bit to the passive income side of the equation. Is that how you would answer that question or would you answer it differently?

No, you did a good job. It always starts with finding out what's out there. You know, some people you talk to and they'll say, I had no idea. So that's one thing. Learn what's out there. And that's easy. There's books, you know, there's stuff online, there's stuff. You can get it everywhere. But you're right, getting in the game. It's like our dentist that we talked to, you know, he can just, just give it a shot, do it. Do a consulting gig, you know, either blows it or finds out that he's awesome at it. And then you start learning more and your reticular activating system starts kicking and starts working and you start finding the things that really resonate with you and you get good at it. And you're right. Start small, because if you make mistakes, you may have. If you make mistakes, you'll have small losses and those grow from there.

So, yeah, I want to give the floor to Curtis, who just joined us in the green room. Curtis, give me a thumbs up if you're ready to come on here. All right, let's do this. Good evening, Curtis. How's it going?

Good, how are you doing?

Doing well, sir, what can we do for you?

So, Tom, just want to say nice to meet you. I'm an investor and Pizario.

So great, Excellent.

Great to meet you. Thank you very much.

Yeah, so my only question is just like, so right now I'm still very much on the operator side of the business, so agency of about 50, 60 people or so. And I'm just thinking about how to make the transition over to the owner side and the manager side as opposed to just being the operator that's in the business.

I don't know how relevant it is to this conversation specifically, but just want to get your thoughts on that. If you guys have gone through that or any kind of dots to help out there.

Is it a, a real estate business or.

It'S a marketing agency, but I'm thinking about it from now, you know, in like how everything is being operated now to now only future businesses as well. So just kind of thinking about the transition from operator over to, you know, kind of the manager side.

Well, for, you know, now, one, if it was there was real estate, I could give some pretty good information. The first thing I'd do is I'd find somebody that's done that before, tap their brain, pay them whatever they, whatever they need to get and learn how to do it. I'd find somebody that's done it before because it is, it's that, it's that kind of quantum jump, right Ryan, from being the operator and being in there forever to finding out that or to figuring out how you can, how to manage the thing. So that's right. I go find somebody that's done it before.

Curtis, how big is your, your team right now?

So the, the business about 60 people.

So that's 60 people. Okay, so if you're. So you're used to hiring people, you're used to managing people, so what is keeping you out of the owner's chair of being replaced?

So for myself, I'm more of the in the weeds, hardcore kind of nerd side where I'm managing the accounts. I'm really in the business. It's like really built off of that standpoint. Hey, that's a, that's a, that's positive in my eyes.

So, so here, let me a brief story. I don't know if you were here at the beginning of the call, but we were chatting with, with, with justice, who is a member of our team that just joined us starting about a month ago. And his job is to spearhead the quality of our products and improving the quality of our products in our community. Guess whose job that was before?

Me. And I pride myself on creating a great product. But you know what it did? It kept me stuck in the business and actually prevented me from creating a great product. It allowed me to create good products, but not great products. I need help to create great products, you know, and the role that I'm hiring for right now is somebody who is in charge of email marketing. Guess who has sent every email that capitalism.com has ever sent?

And so I am taking little splinters and this is how it relates to what Tom is talking about.

I'm basically reinvesting in my business and sacrificing a little bit of short term cash flow to create leverage that will lead to long term growth.

But it took a big humble pill for me to realize that it was actually best for my customers for me to be replaced. It's best for my team members if I am replaced and that being in the weeds of everything was actually a disservice to them. So you running a team of 60 people and still being in the weeds is a little bit confusing to me. So I either need some more data to be able to help or you need to.

Tell me what's keeping you back from doing that.

Yeah, I mean it's more just like the skill set side. So obviously an agency and we have a bunch of different, a couple different partners where everybody kind of handles the different pieces, whereas I'm more on the strategy side, account management with clients and things like that. So I've always just done that really, really well. So I've always wanted to make the transition. But it's kind of the thing where, you know, it's hard to hand over the reins of a lot of that stuff because the classic like, oh, you know, we have great people but like nobody's ever going to do the same job that you can because obviously people don't care about it the same way as you potentially would where you're able to do, you know, you want to do anything and everything to make sure everything's perfect. So that's always been my core struggle.

So Ryan, can I say something please? I'm a, well I'm a big fan obviously. I'm a big fan of Robert Kiyosaki. He's a friend of mine. He's got a thing called the cash flow quadrant. You know, a lot of people have seen it. Well, in the bottom left corner is the S quadrant which is the self employed, A non scalable self employed, like a doctor. We are basically are the business. What you're struggling with right now is crossing over that vertical line because the S is the self employed business is not scalable. The true B business is scalable. And it's hard, it's. Nobody does it better than me. Right, I heard you say that actually. And it's, it's tough. Ryan's got the business brain but at least from standing back and looking, it's, you know, you gotta go. I would think you gotta get over that hump and figure out how to, how to hire that person to be you, how to figure out how to train them and let go somewhat that only, only you care about it as much as anybody else. So that's just my two cents. I'm not a business guy, but that's what I see from the outside and.

My feedback is that the thought that nobody can do it like me or will care about as much me as an assumption. It's a thought that you've created and that you keep repeating. And you're hiring with that assumption, which means that it's a self fulfilled prophecy. You're hiring with the assumption, well, nobody's going to do it better than me. And then that creates the scenario in which they haven't done it as well as you though. It has taken me years to get over this. But what I have finally done is look at the areas that are causing me the most stress and free and preventing me from serving at the level of capacity that I genuinely want to serve. And I know that the way that I serve the best is when I'm working two to three hours a day with a lot of time to recharge and think and be creative and write and record content and do the things that I love to do. Because that's when I'm at choice. Like we've talked about, when Tom has passive income, that puts him at choice, which makes him a good author, a good speaker, a good doctor. I need to be at time choice in order to be. So like today I got into a fight with my team about how many meetings I have to attend because it's like I need time, freedom to be able to serve at the highest level. And so I am now isolating, okay, what are the things that are preventing me from actually doing that? And like right now it is lead acquisition. I put so much time and thought into lead acquisition and I'm not that good at it. That's the next I think I'm good at it. Results say otherwise. I need to hire for that specialty and get the hell out of the way. I do so many coaching calls and so much like unscalable shit for our members and for clients. I need help with that and I hire justice for that. So it is isolating those individual pieces. Nobody is going to be a better vision caster for capitalism.com than me right now. But there are definitely better product managers, email marketers, media buyers, and those are all the things that I'm doing because no one cares about it more than me. And so you're wearing, my guess is you're wearing nine different hats right now and you might need nine, nine people to replace you in order to do that. But what you'll find is that the business grows enough to pay for them and sets you free to go pursue the next thing.

Yeah, totally agree.

Curtis, how did you discover Presaria.

I think, I mean, it must have been through you or it was either through you in some fashion or it was.

I think Tom was on your podcast or something at one point in time, but I think I might have found Tom right before. And then I was like, wow, that's, that's great. But it was, it's one of those two.

Well, I appreciate you, Curtis, that's for sure.

I. I'm just trying to justify that I provided some amount of value to Tom in our friendship and our life. That's all I was trying to do there. So thank you for making me feel good. Good about myself. All right, Curtis, good to see you. Thanks for hanging out with us tonight.

Hey, we're going to conclude the night. Ben requested two more minutes with you, Tom.

Okay.

Had one more question. And I mean, how do you say no to a doctor in a, in a sriracha shirt? So let's, let's do it. What's up, Ben? What, what, what did you want to wrap with.

Yeah, thanks for the second go around here. Liz is back here just loving this, this whole thing. Good. I just. My very strong old fashioned. So hopefully I can articulate a good question here. But. Okay, so you mentioned that. So. So real estate was your vehicle of choice for drawing your passive income. And you mentioned apartment complexes and self storage and, and one other thing that I can't.

Industrial.

Industrial.

Yeah. At least that's what's, that's what's kind of doing well right now.

Okay, so my question is, from the perspective of both real estate and passive income as a whole, what is your take on the concept that diversification is for wealth preservation and concentration is for wealth creation?

You know, I think that's Warren Buffett, you know. Yeah, I agree. Now, you know, I agree. I think, I think focus maybe creates more wealth. And that's, you know, focus is maybe something I've lacked in my 35 years, but that's why I keep going, I guess. But diversification certainly is helpful. You know, I mean, I don't go so far as like Warren Buffett, somebody says diversification for people that don't know what they're doing. If that was me in the stock market, absolutely that would make sense for me. But you know, focus, the thing about focus is it grows. Once people know that you do something really well, they keep coming to you and opportunities keep coming to you. And so I think focus is, I think it does grow things bigger, faster. And I fully admit I've lacked focus over time, but that's My answer for that.

So from the context of real estate and having a fiduciary responsibility to your investors, at what point would you say, you know, you've already invested in five apartment complex syndications. I think you should probably try something else to kind of spread your, your investment out a little bit.

I mean, if I'm talking to one of my investors, yeah, I do that all the time. We just tell them we want part of your portfolio, we want to be a portion of your portfolio. Because even just within the narrow thing of real estate, there's so many different, different types. So now I can't stop them if they just fall in love with apartments and want to invest with us all the time. And that's great, you know, it makes us feel good and it's fun. But if they ask, I will suggest maybe get something different, you know, because as we talk about today, apartments are doing well. Industrials really picked up the last several years. Self storage did well through Covid. Retail's doing horrible. Hotels are doing horrible. So had you been across those five, those, those five sub markets in our industries, you'd still probably be okay. That kind of spreads things thin because as an investor, you sort of want to know what you're investing in or you really want to know the people you're investing with. That's the two ways people invest. They either understand the product type or they really, really trust the people that do it. And, you know, we kind of have both people. We have some people that just say, I'm in. And we ask them, don't you want to see the paperwork? They're like, no, it's been 15 years, you know, which is nice, you know, so that's my answer, you know, for you as a sponsor, you might want to stay pretty narrow as an investor. Nothing wrong with trying out other stuff, right?

I actually want to comment on this. So it, when this happened, for me, it was in the context of business, so it's just slightly different, but, but I think the principle is the same. So.

We'Re working with a new team member who started just over a month ago. His name is Alex and he was brought on to help with our video content and with YouTube growth. And if any of you who are watching this have noticed a shift in the quality of our content, that's Alex's handiwork. And Alex has really fallen on the sword and advocated that we need to pick one platform and just absolutely go all in on this platform. And if you've been following me for a while, you know, I'VE been all over the place. I have a podcast, a YouTube channel, a blog, an email list and an Instagram. And sometimes I do political rants on Facebook and Twitter. So I am the exact opposite of focus. Even though I feel focused, I haven't been in practice. And finally, after several weeks of chat with Alex and starting to get a little bit of a snowball rolling, I said, I finally understand. And this is hours of conversation and looking at examples, I said, I finally realize that if we go along with this plan that you've outlined, it's kind of like I've been scattering seeds for a long time and one of these seeds is just starting to sprout a little bit. And what I've been doing in the past is overlooking the sprouts to plant more seeds. But now I realize what I need to do is just water this one seed. Because over time, what will happen is that will grow into a tree and it will produce fruit that will drop under the ground and plant other trees. I'll never have to think about planting seeds ever again.

The point at which you might advise somebody to diversify is when your performance on their investment is producing that other fruit in the same way that it's time for me to look at actually building an Instagram following when my YouTube presence is so impactful that I can put up a video and it puts 100,000 people on my Instagram.

So when your tree, your investment port portfolio is spitting off so much cash that you can go buy Ethereum or you can go buy Walgreens dividend paying stock, that's when you diversify. That's when you tell a client to diversify and you're like, alright, guys, we got a nice tree here.

Take your apples and go buy apple.

Right? So that, that would be my advice is, is I can't tell you how much more peace of mind I have just knowing now that I'm planting a tree and it's a little baby sprout right now.

But go plant a tree, man. And go plant a tree with your investors and then go have them diversify.

Gotcha. All right. Plant a tree. Feed your stallions. Thanks, guys. I'm out.

All right, see you, Ben.

We'll talk, man.

By the way, if you want to help me out by planting a tree and you're watching this on YouTube, like this video and hit that big old subscribe button. Tom, I love every minute of us hanging out.

Me too. Absolutely.

And now we officially know that somebody has found you from your three appearances on capitalism.com. that's good news. We'll keep it going.

I don't think you're taking on new investors right now, but if you are, give a quick plug of where they can find you. And if not, I know you're starting to do the whole personal branding thing.

Oh yeah.

So give us a quick plug for where people can find your work.

Okay, guys? Yeah. So I'm learning how to do all this stuff Ryan just talked about.

But it's fun, it's a journey for me. So you know what I did, Ryan? I just got in the game so I just put stuff out anyways. You can find me two places and I should. She should be focused. I'm going to give you two things. So my new deal is richdoctor.com that's new brand thing. That's. I'm learning a lot trying to put out some good educational stuff. But Curtis probably found us on@presario ventures.com P R E S A R I O ventures.com. that's the investment arm. Educational arm is you know me at rich doctor.

If you found value in this conversation, go tip Tom by by spending your $7.99 on Kindle or 20 bucks for the physical copy. I mean it's his life's work. Go, go tip the man by buying the book on Amazon for goodness sake. Give the man a tip.

The man, man obviously needs 799 guys.

Yeah, I got, you know, it's like I tell people I need that 15. I need that 7.999 won't change my life. It might change yours.

That's right. That's right. You know, if you're watching, if you're watching this.

On a replay somewhere, I'd love for you to put a comment on a question to somebody, something I have been asking Tom and telling Tom that there are people who would pay a premium to work with him and a small group of people and participate in possible deal flow or networking that came from Tom's several decades of relationships and advice. Would you just leave a comment? If you're the type of person that would want something like that. All this does is help me prove a point to Tom that he should release some sort of mastermind offer or premium offer that gets into his network and involves hikes and coffees and smoothies with Tom to work on their mindset and their strategy and then participate in his network and his deal flow when they're at the level where they can do that. So if you are that person, reach out to tom richdoctor.com and let him know. And I'll teach Tom how to put together a waiting list for people who want something like that because I think it would be a huge value add and Tom's not sure he believes me yet that people would want that. And, and so I want you to tell me there's already yeses coming in in the comments so we might get you your buyers list after this call.

Tom, you guys have a great resource here and he said they'll push you to succeed. So yes, you can give me a tomichdoctor.com and somehow we need to go tip Ryan as well.

Tom, I so appreciate you, man. I'll see you on our next hike.

You bet you, buddy. Let's get, let's get to it soon. Thanks to everybody else. I really enjoyed the time.

All right, thanks for being here, everybody. Have a great night. Talk to you later.