Ep 171: The Family Board Meeting with Jim Sheils

It's about intentional quality, one on one time with each of your children, with your spouse. If you separate the parts, you will strengthen the whole of your family. And that's something now we've been doing for 12 years. There's probably 300,000 families using what we do now.

Welcome to the Next Level Income show where it's our goal to take your income, your investments and your life to the next level. I'm your host, Chris Larson. If you haven't yet, get a copy of our book for free at our website, Next Level Income.com. that's www.nextlevelincome.com. just click on the book link and I'll even send you a copy if you put your address in. On today's show we have Jim Shields, a real estate expert with extensive knowledge in the build to rent niche. He's a partner at Southern Impression Homes, a company that specializes in building rental portfolios in Florida's high growth markets for individual investors and institutional buyers. In addition, Jim is the co owner and co founder of 18 Summers. 18 Summers provides family education services to entrepreneurs and professionals seeking to strengthen their relationships with while succeeding in business as well. We're going to talk about Jim's awesome book which I've read and implemented with my family on today's podcast. Jim, welcome to the show.

Hey Chris, good to be here.

Yeah, man, I am excited. We read your book earlier this year and you know, we're going to kind of share a little bit more about 18 summers with the audience and kind of the impact it's made on our family's life and kind of how you came up with that later on in the episode. But first I'd love for you to share a little bit more about your background, Jim, your professional background as well as your company.

Yeah, I guess what I'd be considered my main vein, which other things came out of is being a real estate investor. 24 years ago I just took a leap. I went and looked at tons of different businesses and real estate kept calling my name. I liked the tangibility and the strategies I was coming across and I saw a quote that 7 out of 10 millionaires in the US made their money in real estate estate. And I like those odds. And I came from the northeast New Jersey area near Wall Street. I never liked that. It didn't make sense to me. So I went into real estate 24 years ago. You know the classic starting with one property and I remember hyperventilating when I got that first property under contract. So my go with $152,000 for a three family house. You know, but that was the starting point. And I slowly, surely with many steps back, went into rehab, bulk rehabs, foreclosures, bulk foreclosures, renovations. And then about almost 10 years ago, saw some writing wall of how could I scale differently and start to avoid things like the three year curse, which I'm sure we'll talk about today, provide myself and clients with better properties. And we fell into something that's now called the rent. Yeah, and the rent is building properties specifically for high end rental or higher end rental and the ability to resell down the road. And that's what we focus on now. And that was an experiment. About nine years ago we did about $3 million in new construction build and then last year 185 million in sales. So we've been able to blanket across Florida. And it's the best niche that I've been a part of to not only give us the best, I see to build a portfolio that really lasts for that freedom of time, you know, freedom of space to do things you want to do without a lot of the headaches. And that's why I hung up my rehab shoes many years ago. And I only do new. So that's my main focus now. And as you know, we were talking before, I have five kids and I'm never say I want to spend as much time with my family as that I can and my friends. So I always want to leverage my business to be running as best as possible without me having to miss that part of my life.

No, I love that. And you know, our listeners are well accustomed to, you know, the story about how real estate can provide financial independence and time freedom, those sorts of things. But it's not always, it's not always the case. Right. It's, it can be, it can be creating another job in a lot of ways, especially the single family side if you're doing your own work. I know, I know quote unquote investors who, you know, do their own repairs and they get, you know, stuck in this position where they're self managing, you know, to get that cash flow. Would you mind sharing a little bit about, you know, your, your initial strategy, Jim? You know, buying that first property sounds like we're, you know, I bought my first Property was a three bedroom townhouse at the age of 21 years. Yours was similar. You paid just a little bit more than me. Mine was what, just under $100,000. But why, why did you, why did you start with that? What was your Original plan.

You know, I had, I had taken some classes. I got really clear that I like this thing called real estate investing. Going, wow, I can, I can leverage. I don't have to come up, you know, when I looked at stocks, if you bought $100,000 worth of stocks, you had to come up with a hundred thousand dollars. If you, you know, we're buying a $100,000 piece of real estate, maybe 20,000. I said, Gosh, that makes sense. And looking at that, I had learned a couple of simple recipes. What would you look for? Like, you buy it for this and your mortgage would be this, and you can rent it for this and if those numbers match up, it be a good deal. Or if you have to repair this. So. So yeah, that first property in Lompoc, California was out in California, which people, oh, you can't find affordable property near the coast. I was in Santa Barbara, very affluent area, but 45 minutes north was northern Santa Barbara County. Lompoc was a very different market than Main Santa Barbara. And I just found an agent that was crazy enough to start putting in my offers. And we made an offer on a three family house. So this was your classic, don't want her. It was a old landlord that had died. His children were given the properties. I guess he had five properties and two of them and swiped right away. She showed it and they were asking 150,000. So I asked for 152,000 with 2,000 in closing costs. I went, you know, big.

Yeah.

And that was my first deal. And it was your classic. I knew if I could buy it and I could fix up each unit, the rents were at like 680 at the time, and I knew were more like 950, 975. So it just had those little levers to pull. But I was terrible. I was, I was terrified because this is all things I had read. I never put the rubber to the road, Chris. And I don't know you, but people always go back to me. And I've spent a very high six figures, if not seven figures now. My education and mentoring and consulting and people said, what's the best real estate class you took? And I'm like, oh, that's easy. 432 North M Street by far.

Yeah.

Things I've been learning for the two years before. Very hyper focused on learning real estate investings. Unless you pull the trigger, it's all kind of useless at some. You got to put the cards on the table. You got to step onto the playing field and being able to See, when you're on the playing field, you start to realize some things are just more fringe or the garnish. Other things are the meat and potatoes. Right. And, and that's what that first deal taught me. And it also started to teach me the mechanics of, of how to do more and how to do more deals at volume. But you got to start with that one.

I love that. And yeah, I mean, I spend more now on an annual basis, Jim, than I, I made as an early professional, you know, and it's, yeah, it's, it's absolutely invaluable, I think, you know, not only to, to receive coaching and mentorship, but also to coach and to mentor. It's interesting how you learn those lessons and, and you stay sharp when you're, when you're helping others that are early on in the process. And also it helps your blind spots because you say, wait a minute, if I can't explain this, or maybe I'm not, if it's, maybe it's not working anymore, maybe something has shifted and done that. But you mentioned something else and this is a conversation I have with investors a lot. They say, I'm going to do my research. And look, I'm that guy. Like, I spent a year doing research before I invested in my first multifamily property 10 years ago. So people ask, well, how long did it take you? And I said, you know, I explained the process and what I did. And I say, but the thing is, until you invest that money, let's say you write a $50,000 check, you're just not going to care as much, you're not going to pay as much attention. And there's just something, you know, about actually doing it yourself. And that applies. I was telling my 13 year old son this, you know, I said, practice is one thing, but a game is a different thing. And you know, you gotta, you gotta do both. You have to practice. You also have to get yourself in the game and do that. So that's such a good lesson. So, and then, you know, you said, you know, you were scared to death. So for those people that are out there that are listening and saying, hey, like I'm, I've done all this research, I've done it. When, when is the right time, in your opinion, to make that leap? Make that jump.

The right time is when you have a level. Here's the problem. You have to, I believe, develop a level of proficiency, which I think you can do within, within a year of understanding real estate fundamentals. You're not going to Be, you know, a guru, nor do you have to be or, or an expert, but you're going to be proficient. And with that level of proficiency, that's the time to try. Because the problem is, I remember in the first five years I went into real estate, Chris, there were guys, they were brilliant at breaking down the strategies, explain explaining the numbers and they were always just about to make their first offer and that and that really telling for me where I was like, wow, these people are smarter than me. I don't understand some of the strategies, but they're not putting anything to use. And so. So I think what the good news is, yeah, it's very rare. If you've done your proficiency and you do some checks and balances, we have this build up like that first, that first townhouse or that first three family home that I bought is going to ruin my life. It's going to bankrupt me. It's going to, you know, it's. That happen? Yes. Are the odds lower if you've done some proficiency, you know, homework? Yes. And the good news is as well that get the momentum going. It's like when you first start lifting weights, you put a little bit on the bar and then a little more and a little more. And so that should encourage people. Yeah, it goes both ways. And also on the other side, that first townhouse or that first three family house wasn't going to retire us.

Right.

People put pressure like that first deal if they're retiring. Yeah, I'm not. Well, that's silly. This is singles and doubles. This is building blocks. And you gotta have extra moves in the game to be able to level you want to get to. So if you're trying to put that first deal, man, it's got to like basically retire me. Well, I think you're never going to start, you know, the same way of having fear that it could ruin you. The fear? Yeah, the expectation it needs to retire you. That's something I've seen as well. And I think I used to put that pressure under myself. And just now I look back and laugh and go, man, that wasn't realistic at all.

That's such a great lesson. And you know, I like to tell investors like I'm, I'm kind of a Moneyball kind of guy. And if you haven't read, if you haven't read Moneyball, it's actually, it's actually written by one of my favorite authors, Michael Lewis. And I like, I love his Wall street stories and everything. But, you know, if you're going to the plate and you're trying to hit a home run every time you're putting all that pressure on yourself. You know, it's, it's, it's more glamorous, it's more fun to talk about at cocktail parties. You know, we all know the story with Bonds and Sosa and that's exciting, but those guys strike out, you know, more often. And if you can get up and say, hey, look, I'm just, I'm just going to get on base, single, maybe I'll hit a double, I'm just going to get on base and less pressure, it's easier to do that because, you know, there's a lot more field to hit to. And it's, it. You know, I think that sometimes we do a disservice to our younger members in society when we say, oh, take risk early in your life. You know, it's the, the corollary to that is swing for the fences. Go swing for the fences. And if you follow that path, like I just said, it's, hey, don't be afraid to strike out. But then what happens is if you strike out several times now, you're in your 30s, you're in your 40s, maybe you have student debt, you got a family, you got a house, you got some cars. Well, now, now you have created an environment where you kind of are trapped. And if you just started out like you said, Jim, and said, hey, let's just hit some singles and doubles for 10 years, create some cash flow, you know, over a longer period of time. Now, how much risk can you take if you're financially independent by the time you're 40 years old, it can be unlimited. You know, you mentioned, you, you picked my, you picked my interest. You mentioned the three year trap. Can you tell us a little bit more about what that is?

Oh, the three year curse. Yeah. Three year curse.

Sorry. Yeah.

So, you know, doing, you know, over a thousand rehabs and now, you know.

That'S a lot of rehabs. For those that are listening, done a.

Lot on my, and including my building partner that would double versus new construction property. Building a property from start to finish instead of, you know, classic model, which I support. It was my first avenue from near poverty to wealth, you know, fixer upper homes.

Yeah.

Here's what I found though, Chris. The three year curse. I was buying tons of houses here in northeast Florida from the four 50s, 60s, you know, and even if I did a new roof, new heating, cooling, new plumbing, updated kitchens, baths, the whole nine, after three years, I just, just, it would just set in that I needed to up my budgets for maintenance and repairs and with maintenance and repairs and that kind of things, turnover was. And it's not that these are bad houses. You just have to, you just have to be really aware and realistic, you know, because a lot of the time we won't take true inventory on that. And again, watch it. And that's, that's where it can get pretty dangerous. And this three year curse, I really like it. I mean, I own old houses, so I'll still deal with it. But a lot of our investors, like you said that we work with Chris, it's our job to save them time they want to game without being creating a second job. And so, you know, management intensity, tenant turnover, that's not what they want. So once we started to do the new construction, you know, being nine years in on this now, we still haven't seen the three year curse. And why is that? Well, we're building right from scratch, you know, so the building standards are, and how we're laying out the desirability of the overall plan. You can, you can get tenants to longer and we're building in a little higher area than when where I was rehabbing properties to make them work. And that attracts a better tenant, which is easier on the property. So three year curse, it relates to older properties that you just have to account for more maintenance and repairs. It seems like it, three year mark, those things start to acquire more. And with new construction, you know, nine years in, we still have not seen that.

Yeah, no, it's, we've seen the same thing in our multifamily properties. And yeah, it's interesting. I talk to investors, I talk to coaching clients. They're like, I'm getting a 30% cash on cash return on my, on my property. And I say, okay, great, so who's managing it for you? Because we're talking about time, freedom. Oh, I manage it myself. Oh. Well, how many, how much money are you setting aside annually for maintenance and repairs? Well, I haven't had any of those yet, so. Okay, what about, what about turnover? I have my tenants, you know, I've been able to rent back to back. So, you know, it's interesting, you know, you have these investors that are early on and they're not treating, you know, their first one or two rentals really like a business. And when you talk to a bank and a bank says, hey Jim, we'll give you 75% of your rental income as credit. Why is it 75%? Because the bank knows you got to set Aside about that much for all those things that I just mentioned. So I really think, you know, when we had our single family rentals, we set aside basically 30%, you know, 10% for management, 10% for repairs, 10% for vacancies, and hey, if those numbers were lower, great, we turned a bigger profit in that year. And then we also see that today we have, we have gone from 70s and 80s, built multifamily to newer sometimes in case newer construction. And one of my favorite areas and actually our top performing here in our portfolio are build our builder rent properties. Jim. I think we have five if you count the apartments that have builder rent component. I guess share a little bit about what are you building townhomes? Are you building single family homes? Is build to rent. What types of properties are you guys building for your investors?

Yeah, we're in about a dozen different markets in Florida right now. And our main menu, Chris, is single family duplexes, lots. So everything that can be financed under residential real estate because, you know, people want to get that better rate. And we have, what's great for us now is we've gotten to the level where we can pre buy mortgages, which is key right now. So we're buying stuff for our people and getting them locked in at 4.75, which in today's market is pretty unheard of. It's expensive for us, but it's good for our cash flow. So we stick to that residential. Now with that said, we build whole duplex communities and quad communities. And we've worked with several family offices, small syndication groups, even Haven Realty, who is JP Morgan's arm of property ownership. So, you know, we've worked some of those bigger guys, but individual investors is, is our, our big bucket of business, you know, where people who are looking to build a small portfolio of probably five to eight properties, which is our average people. And again, it becomes a solid little soldier without that second job.

Yeah, no, I love that. And, and I imagine you probably have better, better management. You have the ability to scale management when you're building in these communities as well versus somebody running around all over town to individual properties.

Yeah, well, let me, let me give you a story on that, Chris.

Yeah, I would love to.

You know, we were, we were around 2,000 properties and you know, our property management was getting spread thin. And what we found was There was about 200 properties which I bought them 10% of our portfolio. Now remember, when you, when you have a property management company, you don't own all the properties. You also manage for other people. Well, there's about two properties in our management company that were in tough areas that, you know, my partner and I didn't personally own in were deferred maintenance properties. And when you're a manager, you get stuck in between the middle of a landlord not wanting to put in money they should and a tenant who's screaming, you look like the bad guy.

Yeah.

And what was funny about these, Chris, is these properties as a manager perspective, they were the most amount of work and they brought in the least amount of revenue. As a manager, you know, the rent lower, so the amount we collected were lower and fees were lower. So what we did is lightly fired those 200 properties. We said, where are these? They're in tough areas. Landlord's not doing the work, we look bad. And it brought back so far ability to serve our other clients because it wasn't all being wrapped up in this. And that was our big aha. Where the new construction like that really does allow us to be in better areas with better condition. And if you're in better areas, better condition and you're set up properly, you can attract better tenants. That just gives an overall flow to the goal, which the goal is to have real estate, but again, not be involved with it. On a day to day, most clients, they want to spend, you know, a half hour a month on their portfolio and that's it and let us do the rest of the work. Tougher to do in old properties in tough neighborhoods, easier to do a little higher end neighborhood in new construction.

Today's show is sponsored by Money Insights and their investment optimizer strategy. In my book, I share how I use the same strategy starting over a decade ago to invest my money in two places at one time. This strategy has been used by the wealthiest for generations for estate planning, minimizing taxes, preserving wealth and increasing stone stability for their investments. Now you can do the same thing. In addition, you can build a plan to build an emergency fund, pay for college, fund a business plan for retirement, and ultimately optimize your total financial picture. To find out more information, check us out at the banking link at next level income.com I love that. And I think you know what you just described, Jim, can be applied to so many areas in life. I've talked to my wife about, she's an architect. I was like, hey, you can raise your fees. And like, I'm like, who? Who are the people that give you the hardest time about paying, you know, your rate? And she's like, oh, they're the ones that have the smallest projects and give me the most trouble and all that. It's the Pareto principle, right? It's the 80, 20 principle. You can. Yeah. If you can look at those bottom 20 and do an inventory, if you're listening in your life or your business or your investments and say, hey, what are those bottom 20%? Can I take that? Can I take that? What happens is you take that bottom 20% and it's probably about 80% your energy. What if you could devote that same energy to your top 20% or your new top 20%? What would that do in your life? It's amazing if you're able to do that. And that really brings us kind of to, to, to the next part of the conversation, which is, is buying back your time. And Jim, I, I read, I read your book. The. The family board meeting. It's made a tremendous impact in our family. And we've been talking about the vehicle which for both of us has been real estate in our, in our investment lives, our investment careers. And I'd love to talk about demographics in Florida and why you moved from California and all that, but really, I think the question is, like you've alluded to several times, how do we create more time to do what's important to us? How do we buy back our time? Can you tell us the story behind 18 summers?

Yeah, I think from the real estate realm, I got invited to come to some pretty big stages at a very early age, well before I had a family. And, and Chris, it's the old saying, don't get too close to your heroes. Because I was able to get on stage and then I was able to get backstage. And what I saw on stage was there were guys who had really big balance sheets and had really good slide decks. You know, the picture of their family in the Caribbean. And I said, wow, that's cool. But when I got backstage, their lives were a mess. They had no relationships in, in harmony. They were in shambles. And that scared me because I was not too proud to say that could be me. And so I always said I wanted to. For 18 summers. I started to build my own family like I talk about in the family board meeting. You know, I have five children now, three adopted, two biological. And it, it makes you think of time that you have. And a good friend of mine, David Bach, he's a nine time.

Yeah. New York best seller, Automatic, Automatic, Millionaire, et cetera.

Finish Rich for Women. He's. He's been a big friend and mentor. And he said it to me years ago Jim, the years are not all created equal. And what we used at. Chris, I don't know if you got this was there was really bad advice out there, especially, let's stick with real estate investors. Hey, yeah, put your head down for the next five to 10 years. Your family understand. I think that's horrendous advice because the years are not all created equal. So I wanted to figure out how can this grow in. In unison, in synergy? You know, if I'm successful in real estate investing, I want to be successful at home. At the same time, I don't want to be a successful real estate investor and a failure at home. And at the same time, I've gotten really clear. I love doing interviews and having conversations with this Chris. Yeah, I am more interested in being famous at home. I am being famous in our industry. It just doesn't matter that much to me. I want it. It provides for me. I love the brainstorming and the strategies around it. But when all said and done, I'd rather be famous at home. And that, that helps dictate a lot of what I, What I've decided in my career. Taking inventory of where do I be, how do I want to work, who do I want to work with? You got to make some tough decisions. But what I found is, is anyone who's telling you that as a real estate investor, you just need to cut out family time and that's the price that it costs. I just don't agree. And I think that for 18 summers for me, I wanted to help create a community and kind of a learning resource that people could fall on like you and I, where they didn't have to be family therapists or psychologists to figure out how can I stay in harmony with my family as I grow my business. And that's what 18 summers is all about.

Yeah, man, it's. I, I forget where I heard this. You. You may know, I'll be really embarrassed if it was you, but it's, it's the juggling analogy. And I used to juggle quite a bit, so I'm. I used to be in math club too, in the band. So I'm kind of, kind of a nerd at heart. So we'll, we'll just, I'll just not even, not even sugarcoat that. So when you're in middle school and you're playing instruments and you're juggling in the math club, you know, in your spare time, you know, you just have to kind of accept where you are in life. But still. So I love this juggling analogy, because it says you have your career, you have your health, you have your, you know, you have your friends, you have your family. And, you know, you can juggle all these balls, but there's one glass ball, and that ball is your family. You can't drop that ball. You can't drop that ball. And, you know, you. You know, it's, It's. You can set your career aside for periods of time or your business, and you can pull back. You know, you can even sacrifice your health at times and get that back, as long as it's not for too long. I talk about that a lot on the podcast, so people know how much I think health is. But if you sacrifice your family, you may never get it back.

Yeah, I agree. The years are not all equal. And that just goes back to that again. And you're right, that ball will shine. It will not bounce back. And unfortunately, being in this now a dozen years, getting to work with some incredible organizations out there, had family retreats from, you know, all over the world with some pretty cool influential people, we all are challenged by the same issues. And so just because you are famous, just because you do have a big balance sheet doesn't mean you can escape this. That's what the aha came. Sometimes that can make it even worse.

Yeah.

And so the. The good news is we're all in this together. And what I've learned, Chris, this is one of the most encouraging things I can say out there. In over a decade of doing this, working with thousands of families, I haven't met one perfect family. Not one. And what I've gotten clear on is whoever created that silly, awful saying of the perfect family really did us a disservice, because we don't even realize how much pressure that puts on us, our marriage. It's not about perfection. It's never been about perfection. It's about bridging imperfections and making the most of the time we've got together.

That's it.

That's what it's for me. And I think if we can keep that and you take a little bit of that perfection pressure off, like it's going to show up in your relationships, the camaraderie, the fun, the adventure, you know, the trust, respect in your family life. And, and it's doable. You know, I don't prescribe to. To the, the, you know, the stigmas out there, all once. Once they reach their teen years, all once they, you know, I don't prescribe that. And, and I haven't. And we're far from a perfect family, but we also haven't had to go through the norms of what people have said.

Yeah, no, I have a saying and you know, when it comes to family and relationships, I say, and I, I am sure coding this, but I say effed up is normal. You know, people say, oh, I went through this, I went through that. And I said, oh, you're normal. Like, don't worry about it. And I often, I tell people, and this might, this might sound, this might raise some people's eyebrows, but Malcolm Gladwell talks about it. He talks about desirable difficulties and one of the things he talks about in David versus Goliath or David versus Goliath is children that lose parents. I lost my father at 5 and I say I'm lucky because I, I knew how important and how valuable the time is with children and that really drove me for a lot of years to achieve the financial ability to, to spend the time with my boys. Now I get to coach my son's cycling team. After we wrap up today, I'm going to be taking my boys to lacrosse practice and I get to hang out and watch them. And you know, I know that they're not, they're not going to be here in the house day to day for, for that much longer in the grand scheme of things. And when I read the family boardroom, I'd love for you to talk about the methodology because we, What I loved is the simplicity of it and the ability, like you just said, to not have to be perfect. It's very simple in its strategy. The time seems almost insignificant in a way, yet I found it to be so powerful.

Yeah, well, going back to 80, 20, right?

Yeah. Results.

20% of the activities and, and that's what we see here. And probably like your background. I was gifted at a young age with knowing it didn't last forever. Knocks I went through your loss, but my father did. My father lost his, my grandfather when he was 6. And it lives with him grandmother for as long as I can remember. And so it always gave me an understanding. I lost my dad two years ago and but it gave me. But, but again, like to hear how, how, how much luckier I got, you know, moving forward from my dad and your experiences. I always had an understanding of that. So I said, how do I harness this? It's not going to last forever. And what I found is in some of our entrepreneurial pursuits, there's some good things that can cross over. Not everything can cross over from entrepreneur life to family life, but rhythms can, you know. And I would talk to people were. Oh, I talk to my biggest clients once a month. Boom. On this day every week I have a finance meeting with. With my accountant Thursday from 12 to 2. Go over it. Well, my children I figured out were my, you know, thinking in that entrepreneurial mindset. Whether it sounds impersonal or not, it. It's very deep to me. The most important investors, clients, team members, whatever you want to call them. So I need to set time them. So I designed a rhythm very easily that every quarter I spend a half a day with each of my kids one on one. And there's only three guiding principles and it's all in the book. But I spend it one on one. Intermittent tech fast and. And we do fun activities.

Intermittent. Yeah. Intermittent tech fasting. I love that. Yeah. Sorry, sorry. I caught. I caught you. Yeah. So good.

Yeah. That was something we coined a few years ago where it's like we're not. We're not giving up electronics. I'm not telling you got to move to the survival ranch hand. But there's times you have to be completely and totally unavailable. Just like if you use intermittent fasting for your health, you know, then you're not giving up eating. But there's discipline times. Between this time and this time I'm not eating and I'm spending this one on one days with my children. What I call board meetings. I'm one on one. My wife is not invited. My friends are not invited. Their friends are not invited. Their siblings are not invited. We're putting the magnifying glass on that one relationship.

Yeah.

Positive way. And it rarely happens. It rare. You're rarely, especially if you come from a big family able to have that. I never remember that with my father, ever. And so one on one, the intermittent texting and then let them plan the day you want to. Oh, I want to know more about my kids gifts and talents and interests. Well, let them plan a day with you at a young age. 20 year old. He owns his own charter fishing business today. Guess where he wanted to go on a lot of his board meetings. You want to go fishing?

Yeah.

And. And so you just never know what would come out of these things. And truth be told, if I have the chance, Chris, to go surfing or fit, I will choose surfing 10 out of 10 times. So it's not that I love.

I'm in that. I'm in that same boat. No pun intended. Yeah. Yeah.

So you get it. So. But that's what it's about. And what I found is you will set this rhythm with each of your children. It starts to keep, you know, your, your relationship synchronized. You know, that one drum beat put keeps the, the whole song together, right?

Yeah.

And my wife always calls these kind of the reset for each of my child's relationships with me. Every 90 days, every 90 days and a half day together, one on one without electronics, you know, intermittent tech festing and then doing a fun activity of their choice. And then at the end we spend some time to talk. And you know what happens when we talk, Chris? This is not some like Hallmark movie like long conversation all the time. Sometimes we've had a few of those. Other times this conversation could be as short as three minutes. And usually what I've found that I was not very good at because I just wasn't raised that way. It's the opportunity, Chris, where in all the busyness I've been able to deliver to them directly without distraction, a sincere compliment or a genuine apology. And that's really important. That's super important because a lot of times we don't. And as entrepreneurs that are busy, sometimes we give ourselves immunity and we don't deserve it. You know, you know how hard I'm working. I'm running two businesses.

Yeah, Yeah.

I might have bulldozed over them or been like that or forgot to compliment on something they were working hard on, but I'm working hard over here. Look, you can you. That'll work for a while. Become those summers. The best way to get your kids coming back for more once they reach the 18 summers is to do those first 18 summers.

Right? Yeah.

And, and that's what today is all about. It's about intentional quality, one on one time with each of your children, with your spouse. If you separate the parts, you will strengthen the whole of your family. And that's something now we've been doing for 12 years. There's probably 300,000 families using what we do now. And, and, and what I love you gave me that compliment. We've been using it, we're seeing it works. And gosh, it's so easy. I mean that's what I want. User friendly. If it wasn't, you know, all over the place, ADD entrepreneur like me wouldn't use it either. So that's what I was trying to.

I know, I know. I got a lot of heads shaking up and down on that one. Well, and what's, what's neat is my boys are in a school. And look, most schools have like an odd day off, like you know, Monday or Tuesday, like a Teacher work day. And we use those days for. For our. For our family board meetings. We say, oh, what are we going to do this Monday when the kids are. Well, well, hey, we're. That. That day's blocked off. That day's blocked off. And, you know, we tell the boys, hey, this is. And now my. My son's actually asked, like, when's our next board meeting, dad, When's our next board meeting? Yeah. And then you say. And then you say. You get to say, well, what do you want to do? And now here's what's. Here's what. Really, the light bulb went off for me, and you just kind of explained it, Jim, you know, saying, hey, like, we do this in business, right? We have our board meetings. We have our quarterly meetings. I was in sales. I ran sales teams for years. I would. We would have our quarterly meetings. I would sit down with my. My individual. I would have a call every week with every one of my reps. Every quarter, I'd sit down for a detailed meeting. I do the same thing. It's really interesting. We go and we talked about the importance of coaching. We seek coaching to help us in the gym. We seek coaching to help us in our business. But you. You go and you seek a coach for your marriage, and people say, oh, that's weird. You're going to a counselor. What's wrong? I had a good friend, fortunately, that was going through a divorce, and he said, you guys seeing a counselor? I said, no. And we were, you know, we were trying to figure out some stuff with my. My older son at the time. He goes, you should. And I'm like, yeah, but we don't have. We're not having any problems. It's like the old. Old dandruff commercial, right? Yeah. Yeah. And he goes, you should go, like, go start seeing a counselor. Talk through these things and develop. And I was like, wow, how cool is that? And I really. I. I don't mind telling people that my wife and I still do that. We're actually now in a couple's great mentorship group. And guess what we do. We meet once a month together, and then that inspires meetings. So not only have we applied the family board meeting with our children, but my wife and I are doing something similar in our relationship. And look, if. Whether it's, you know, if you can do it in your business, you can do it at home. And like. Like we were just saying, Jim, the cool thing is it actually doesn't take as much time at home and with the people that you Know, you, you spend as much time with as it does, you know, in your business necessarily.

Yeah. 100 and. And I think that goes back, Chris, to a lot of people's high expectation. Like family is very personal. There's a big pride. I mean, if we're, if our family life is lacking or, or malfunctioning, we take that very personally and very hard and because it's important to people. But again, that pressure out there of the perfect family, the perfect marriage, I just, I don't prescribe to that. It's. It's about bridging imperfections. And when you look at that, never shy. My wife and I on our podcast or in, in our business meetings to talk about challenges that we've had, things that we do, you know, couples therapy or, you know, or couples events or, you know, same thing with our children. And, and if we're just open to that and don't put the pressure on us, well, we should know how to make this perfect on our own.

Yeah.

I mean, can you imagine if we did that with, I mean, if I, if you and I had taken that approach with real estate investing?

Yeah.

We don't exactly zero properties right now. Most.

Yeah, it's, it's, you know, it's interesting. We talk about abundance and scarcity mindset, and it's the same thing. It's like you kind of shut down. You don't want to. You don't want to, you know, look for help and do those sorts of things. And we inherently know it's not good in business yet. So somehow it. We. We don't think the same rules apply at home. So, yeah, again, a sincere pop, A sincere thank you for what you've done for our family. And listen, if you're, if you're listening to the show today, real estate is a vehicle. It's a vehicle to help you create more time in your life. But if you have sacrificed those things that you want to spend time on, then what is it really for? So I encourage you to check out 18 summers from Jim. I encourage you to check out the family board meeting. And what's neat is when you have that motivation to spend more time with your family to do those things, it makes it easier to do the work and spend the time to develop the financial acumen and financial resources to actually make it happen. So, Jim, thank you for being on today. What is the best way for people to learn more about your. Your business with respect to real estate as well as 18 summers in your.

Book and to learn about both. You could really go to the JJ playbook jjplaybook.com that's actually about our second book coming out the beginning of next year. Awesome. About how did we leverage Build Ton real estate to buy back our time and create a legendary family life. That's what it's all about. And all legendary family life for us. Chris is doing all the things I dreamed to do as a child but we never could do, you know, and then getting back to our fathers. All the things my dad struggled with money his whole life, all the things he wanted to do that he wasn't able to do. I've kind of picked up the torch and I'm continuing to do on a couple of things and that for me has been worth its weight in gold. And that's all from the goal of real estate. So go to jjplaybook.com that'll start to introduce you to that.

Awesome. We'll have that in the show notes here. We'd love to have you back when you launch your new book to share it with the audience as well. Jim, thanks and again, thank you so much for being on the show today. Thanks for sharing with our audience.

Thanks Chris. Good being here.

Hey Chris, here again. I hope you found this episode valuable. Now I have one more thing to gift you. We have a page for my coaching clients where you can get a free copy of my book as well as much more from previous guests on the show. Just check out nextlevelincome.com coaching to get a free copy of my book, audiobook and much more. I'll send you a copy of my book and cover all the shipping costs as a thank you for listening to the podcast. Also, please like share and take just 90 seconds to give us a rating on Apple Podcasts.