Dumber people are making MILLIONS - Why Can't You?

You have to play in the money game. You can't opt out. You need money to survive. You've got to pay rent. You've got to feed yourself. Unless you've got somebody in your life that's providing for you with all of that, you've got to be able to get in the game. And once you're in the game, you need to figure out the way to win. Because without winning and being dedicated to the pursuit of winning, you end up struggling and suffering your whole entire life because you're going paycheck to paycheck, or you're trying to figure out how you're going to be able to afford something foreign.

Hey, everybody flipping Danny here. Welcome to the Freedom Show.

I'm just letting you do all of that.

Yeah, yeah. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. And welcome to our new. This is our new podcast recording area, also known as our living room. Don't tell anyone.

That is true. So we were talking to our marketing team, and we were talking about the fact that when we are in our studio, which is upstairs in our house, it's kind of weird when we're actually doing solo episodes because we're sitting side by side looking at each other this way. And, you know, we like to keep it real all the time. So we thought we'd tell you why we are down here is because we're trying to find a new place to do some of our solo episodes where we can actually have a conversation back and forth.

Yes.

With each other. And just make it be just a little bit more natural.

That's right. Yeah. I love it.

Instead of our freedom, family, investments, background, you actually have Mickey, Minnie, and Pluto. Yes, yes. Disney fans. We are. So we're gonna jump into today, and it's hitting on a topic that we talk about often, and that is that if we can do it, you can, too.

Absolutely. 100%.

And we try to preach that message because we want to give people the confidence of being able to take that first step. And do you want to share the diving board story? I think we might have shared it before, but I think it's a perfect story to go into what we're talking about today.

Yeah, absolutely. And I always relate this because this actually happened to me. You know, I think it was. I was probably like 11 or 12, and I was away at camp, and we all. Everybody at this camp, we went to this really big university and they had those platforms, you know, I think it was 1 meter, 3 meter, 5 meter, 7 meter, and 10 meter, which. That 10 meter, that's 30ft, you know, Ish.

Pretty high.

That's pretty high.

Yeah.

Especially when you're 12. And so, you know, everyone was trying to get us to go and, you know, so I. I worked my way up and I did the one and I was. That was at school. And then I did three. Now that was cool. But after the three, I. Screw it. I can just. I can do the 10, right? I skipped the 5 and 7. Typical flip right there at 12. And so I went right to the 10 and I got up to the 10 and I couldn't jump. I could. Not at all. I got to the edge. I'm looking down. Holy crap, that was far. Felt like a mile, you know, and. And I was freaking out and I'm standing on the edge and I' what am I going to do? And everyone's going jump, jump, you know, and now. Now I'm like, oh, crap, now everyone's watching.

Yeah.

Finally I end up. And it took forever to get off there, but when I got in the water, got out of the water, I was like, what did I want to do? I wanted to do it again.

Yes.

And so I was right back up to the end. And then after that, I was like, right. Right away, you know, there was no waiting and no hesitation. And so. But that's, you know, the diving board story. It takes a lot to work up to it.

Yeah.

And it takes so much in your, you know, your being to do it. And then once you do it, like, oh, that was easy.

Yes.

And then you do it over and over and over and over.

Yes.

So that ties into the topic for today, and that is that dumber people than you and me are making millions of dollars. And we don't mean to call people dumb. It's meant to make a point. If Flip and I can do it, you can do it too. And that's why we're always very real on our podcast. And we just keep it real because we want you to understand that we're not super intelligent creatures. We aren't doctors, we aren't scientists, we aren't any of that goodness. That said, we got perfect scores and we wanted to be some of the elite people in the world. We just wanted to live a life that was full of freedom, full of joy, laughter. You're the king of laughter. You put the fun in funds. I read that today on one of our social media sites and it just made me laugh. And we were really just truly after freedom and peace of mind and having the financial ability to do what we want, when we want, with whom we want and where we want.

That's right.

So that journey has led us to where we are today. And this is actually an article that we read, and it was dumber people make millions. Dumber people than you make millions of dollars.

That's right, yeah.

And we thought, well, it's probably not how we would speak, but let's just share it because it's reality and we want to actually make a point here.

Yes.

So the very first thing that they talked about in the article is that you have to be smart to make money. And there's a truth to every single item that we're going to talk about. And the truth is that the richest people in the world aren't smarter than you and I. So we talk about this all the time. And we talk about the fact that we got into this not with a mentor. We didn't have anybody in our family who was in real estate. We didn't know anybody that was in real estate. We didn't say, hey, we see what you're doing, and we want to do that too. It looks like. Great. We didn't have anybody holding our hand. We literally got off cruise ships and said, what's next? Actually, cruise ships. And then we went and did land art auctions. Right. And it was traveling, like almost every weekend. And we said, what's next? And so I tried three different things and I said, I don't know, let's just try a few things and see what we like. We ended up liking real estate. And so what do we do? We went out and found somebody in real estate who we could hang our license with, because we thought at that point in time, the only path into real estate was being a realtor. And we found Esmeralda and we worked with her in our brokerage. Luckily for us, and maybe not maybe, definitely divine intervention, she was also a real estate investor.

Yes.

Right. And so she introduced us to two different worlds of the realtor path and the real estate investor path. We ultimately fell in love with the real estate investor path. And we won't go into that story here because we've told it many times already.

Right.

And as we became a real estate investor, we did seek out other mentors who had found success in real estate, because that's what we chose to do. And we wanted to just simply cheat the learning curve and follow in somebody else's footsteps to get where we wanted to go. But you have to be smart to make money. That wasn't smart on our part. We were Literally like playing, you know, which one are we going to choose? Where are we going to land? We have no idea what we're doing. We're just going to figure it out as we go.

Yeah.

And here we are.

Yep.

And we weren't incredibly smart about it. We didn't have a, you know, destined path into this. Even though your name's Flip.

Right, right, right. We, we were getting there. But yeah, when we started all this, I mean, Facebook was out, but it wasn't what it is today.

Right.

You know, and YouTube is out and.

It was not what it is.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

People call YouTube University. Right.

Yeah, yeah. And. And, and so it was. Facebook was. I mean, in fact, I was on Facebook for like a year or two before you even got on.

Okay.

Which is odd that I would be the one on and before you. But it was because it was before it was anything. It wasn't. No one else was doing it. It was. I mean, not no one. It just isn't as big as it is today. And so we didn't have that outlet.

Yeah.

You know, we didn't have social media leading us or telling us what we should be doing or having YouTube influencers showing us the ways or even fix this house or any of those shows that we. That we knew of at the time. It was just that that was the path of least resistance for us at that time. You know, because right when we did this, of course, the story, it was right when it crashed 2008. So doing traditional real estate at the time was not very fun or very easy, but doing real estate investing was. So it was like, woo hoo, let's do this, you know, so it worked out great. I mean, I loved it and boy, it gave us stuff to do every day because we weren't reliant on other people to make money. We could make money ourselves.

That's right.

By just going out there and grinding, which is our middle name, you know, but it's. Yeah. Anyway, so it was. That was so much fun. So much fun.

Yes, I agree. All right, so let's jump into number two. Number two is you can't opt out of the money game. And the truth is that you need money to survive. So you can't opt out of the money game. You need money to survive. So we talk about the money game a lot and we talk about our desire to have money is really from our upbringing. And it wasn't that we were poor. What's the line?

Yeah, we weren't poor, but we just didn't have Any money?

Yes.

Yeah, we were rich in love, poor in finances or something like that. So we had a wonderful family, just a wonderful life growing up, but we didn't have a lot of money. And we both had a desire to be able to do the things that we wanted as we grew up. And so I don't know if I was really necessarily chasing money, but to some extent always was chasing freedom, at least. And money was the vehicle to give me the freedom, the freedom to live the life that I wanted, the freedom to be able to take care of my parents. You have that same desire. And I actually wrote right here, freedom in all capital letters and getting to the point where financials are no longer a factor in your decisions. And then I wrote, in order to win the money game, you have to actually try. And so we're going to go back to the diving board story, right? A lot of people who are. Are not investing right now or are not where they want to be right now is because of fear, and they're just not quite sure of. And I'm about to say two things that are number three, four, and five.

So I'm don't get ahead of us.

I'm trying not to reveal the secrets, but I'm just going to say fear. They're afraid to try something that they don't understand, they don't comprehend yet, or they don't know who to trust. We always say those top three questions, which path is right for me? Who do I trust, and where do I start? And so they don't know how to answer those questions. And so they're listening still to podcast, fortunately, like this, and they're trying to explore it and they're trying to answer it for themselves. But reality is, you have to play in the money game. You can't opt out. You need money to survive. You've got to pay rent, you've got to feed yourself. Unless you've got somebody in your life that's providing for you with all of that, you've got to be able to get in the game. And once you're in the game, you need to figure out the way to win. Because without winning and being dedicated to the pursuit of winning, you end up struggling and suffering your whole entire life because you're going paycheck to paycheck, or you're trying to figure out how you're going to be able to afford something that came up. And right now, with rising interest rates and inflation, I know interest rates are going down as the recording that we're having right now, but just the environment that we're in. I think my brother posted on Facebook that he spent $90 on groceries, and it was like, he listed, like, five things. It's a big deal. And for those people who are not focused on winning the game of money, they're seeing this hurt their bottom line. Right. And so this pursuit of freedom, I think, is really, really important. And you have to ultimately make a decision, am I going to struggle for my entire life, or am I going to go all in in our pursuit to freedom? So I don't know if you have some stories in our life where we. These roller coasters or these decisions where we said, hey, we're going all in.

I don't think that there was ever a time in our. In our history to the day that we met that we've never been all in. We've been all in.

Yeah.

Since day one.

Yeah.

Even when it was, you know, our backs are up against the wall, you know, everything's coming at us. We're all in.

Yeah.

Let's go. What do you got?

That's right.

You know, and so, yeah, there's never been a point that we haven't been all in on. And it's. It's interesting, too, because what I love is. Is it's so true, because you need money to survive.

Right.

And. But there's so many people. When I saw this, when I. When I read through this and I saw that for the first time, I'm like, oh, yeah, well, that you can't. Yeah, but there's so many people. I don't need money, you know?

Right.

You know, it's. It's like. It's like, well, no, we're doing this to make money, so that way we can do this, this, this, this, and this. Oh, I don't need money. I don't need money to do anything.

Yeah.

You know, but you kind of do.

Yeah.

Yeah. You kind of do. So.

Yeah.

But anyway, that's what I thought was funny about that.

Yeah.

Number three, and this wasn't even the one. The two, that I was going to talk about. So number three is afraid of looking stupid. And that is a big fear for who? Smart people?

Yeah. Yeah.

Because the topic of the article that we read was people dumber than you are making millions. So the dumb people, they don't care. They're like, oh, I don't know. Everybody thinks I'm dumb anyway.

Hi, my name is Philip. End of story.

So you're not afraid of looking stupid?

Nope.

Like, you're okay with.

I Grew up looking stupid, so.

Well, stop. No, I didn't even hear before I went.

Yeah, no, I mean, I. I mean, that's what I feel. I feel like that. So I. I don't have a problem with it. You know, that's what I'm saying. I'm just. I'm used to it, you know? Plus, I like to play. The keyword is play. I like to play the dumbest guy in the room.

Right.

You know, I always say I want to be the dumbest guy in the room, and even if I'm not, I'm gonna play it.

Yeah.

You know?

Yeah.

No, I think that's important. We always have strived to be the dumbest people in the room. And if we were the smartest people in the room, we changed rooms.

Yep.

Right. We said, okay, we've learned all what we can learn here. It's time to move up.

And that's.

That's been like our path from the very, very beginning is always just saying, hey, we're committed to doing this, and we're going to figure out a way. And to figure out a way, you got to find the people who can help you and hold you by the hand to some extent. And our broker, fortunately, that didn't cost us anything. It was just us getting into real estate and learning the game of real estate, and then we led to investing. That's when we actually spent money, but we didn't even spend the whole entire amount ourselves. We had five of us all splitting the cost of one mentorship with this guy. Like, we just literally did whatever it took to figure it out. And I think that's really key to the dumb generation of we're not smart enough to think, I'm going to look stupid or that's not going to work, or, you know, we just. We don't say those things because we're like, I don't know, they did it.

Yep.

So let's just figure it out. And so the truth of afraid of looking stupid is if you want to get rich, you can't follow common wisdom to get uncommon results. So I love that statement, because the educational system in America, at least, I can't speak to other countries because I don't live there, is broken. Like, they tell you to go through school and then go to college, get a degree, get a job and work for somebody else for the rest of your life. And although that may work for a majority of people, if you are somebody like us who is in a pursuit of finance, freedom and to live a life on your own terms and freedom means so much to you, so much more than just financial, then you don't want to be following the common wisdom of what you're taught in school and going to college and putting yourself in debt when most people who go to college don't actually use their degree. That's just reality. That's why YouTube University is so popular these days, because you don't have to go to college. And I'm not knocking college. I. I seek wisdom daily. But we went to college. I don't use my music degree. That's what I went for. Because at the time I was going to college, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I knew I was naturally good at playing the trumpet. And you same thing.

And I loved college so much, I went to three of them. And I used to say, I'm still paying them off. But we finally paid those off.

Yes, yes. Fortunately I had a full scholarship. But there's still just the expense of even time. And sometimes at that age you really don't know what you want to do. And you don't even know what you want. I didn't know what I wanted at that point in time. So it was just a matter of discovering and exploring who you want to be. And I think generational wealth doesn't just come in money and financial reasons. Generational wealth comes in wisdom. And the fact that you can pass on things like this to the younger generation to allow them to explore things early on. Right. I see teenagers in our masterminds these days. I see teenagers and kids under the age of 10 flipping houses, going with their dad to a closing table and signing as part of the agreement and going to the house and being responsible for the things that are being done, cleaning out the house. And that type of generational wealth is so much more valuable than money. I just think that is something people don't take into consideration when they're thinking about their kids and thinking about what they want to pass on. They're just work, work, work, work, work, work to make all this money, to be able to pass it down. If you haven't taught your kids exactly how to do the same for themselves, they don't have the lessons and they don't even respect wealth because they didn't have to work hard for it. And it's far, far greater to what does it teach them how to fish or give them a fish? There's like that type of. It's that thing. It's far greater for them to have the wisdom to be able to make the money themselves. And at that point, they're starting to understand, oh, look at this world and look at this opportunity and what I get to do. Right. So how did that apply to you when you were growing up? Because I know we met on cruise ships. So what were your thoughts going into college, going into cruise ships and your journey?

I didn't know what I was going to do. I didn't anything about anything. I wanted to get through high school, and I wanted to go to college. I wanted to get out of the house, and not. Not because the house was a bad place. I just wanted to go somewhere different. I wanted. I wanted to go out and I wanted to be in the world.

Yeah.

I knew I wasn't going to stay, you know, because I was living in Michigan at the time. And anyone who's lived in Michigan, most people don't last long. They go somewhere else.

Right? They're transplants.

Yes. Yeah, exactly. And I knew that I wanted to go somewhere else. And so it was a matter of just getting out and starting to do other things and get my. Seeing what direction I wanted to go. I went through so many different things. I went through so many different majors in college and all while playing the horn, you know, but. And I didn't realize that's what I wanted. Wanted to do. I didn't realize I wanted to play my trumpet. I wanted to do all these other things. I was like, wee. Yeah. I mean, I didn't know what I. And it took me a long time to figure out what I wanted to do. And so it's just. I was just canceling. I was, how about this? Try this, try this. And that sort of leads to the, you know, afraid of looking stupid. I didn't care. You know, let's try this.

Yeah.

I was making, you know, having fun, saying, hello, my name is Philip. I've looked stupid my whole life because I didn't care.

I'm just.

I'm gonna go try this. Yeah, let's try this. You know, what about this? And so, I mean, it took me, you know, a very long time to figure out. And then it was. I sort of was led into doing art auctions. I don't know how that happened. If you know our history, you'll have to figure that one out or go back and. And hear that whole story, because that was. I was. I was led into that one.

Come here, honey.

Yes, and. And. But I loved it, you know, I didn't care.

Yeah.

You know, here's a microphone. Here's a guy. We'll go okay. You know.

Right.

And then, and then after that, you know, when we went into real estate, it was like, woohoo, let's do it. Yeah, I didn't really care. And you had the same mentality. Let's go.

Yeah.

It comes down to the curse of intelligence. Right. And that when you aren't incredibly smart and you don't think you know it all, you've got nothing to lose.

That's right.

All you have to do is just go out there and try, try, try, try. And you end up probably exceeding your expectations and other people's expectations as opposed to feeling like you are stupid or look, look stupid because you've achieved so much in life that people expect you to succeed. And even then, if you're one of those people who is smart and people expect you to succeed, there's nothing wrong in failure. Right? We fail all the time. We embrace failure. The more I fail, the more I learn, the more I succeed. That is like the secret of success is failure. Because the bottom line is you have to fail multiple times in order to get to where you want to go. So I think, yeah, I love that one in particular.

There's a. It was, you're fired. The. You remember that show?

Yes.

Yeah. Right, right. Well, his right hand guy, George. Remember George? You know, we saw him and I just saw this was a quote on my Facebook, in my history on Facebook. And, and we, we saw George talk and, and you know, he talked for a couple like I think it was an hour or two and it was just, it was golf. All gold.

Yeah.

You know, but one of the things he said was perseverance. Pl equals success.

Yes.

Yes.

Let's roll into number four. So number four of why dumb people make millions. What is it? I love it. People dumber than you are making millions. Number four is it's too risky. And the truth is you can't navigate life without taking risk. So it's too risky. You can't navigate life without taking risk. A couple things that we were talking about were, and that was in the article was you could have a cliff hiker, cliff diver, cliff diver. You could have a cliff diver. And then you could have somebody that is speeding in traffic all the time and they both think that the other one is risky. One is going, you're crazy. Jumping off these cliffs, that's insane. And the cliff diver's going, you're crazy. Most people die in car crashes. Flying in a plane, you're crazy for speeding all the time. And so risk is a matter of perspective. Right. And trying something new could seem risky. And I think we feel that every time that we've tried something new, I think we feel the risk in it, but we also feel the risk of staying the same. And I think that is the greater risk in life of staying the same, staying in your comfort zone, never growing and never getting to where you want to be, which ends up in regret. And you looking back wondering what you could have achieved in some type of suffering because you don't have everything. You could have had the potential that was lost, the years that were lost. Like, there's so much regret that can happen towards the end of life that I think that's a bigger risk than looking stupid or just not taking the chance. Even if you don't have a guide, just going and finding the guy.

Right. I mean, everything in life has risk.

Yes.

Everything.

Yes.

It's just what. What the degree of risk is. And it's funny because you just said about the cliff diver and the guy speeding on the highway.

Yeah.

Right. They're each. They're both looking at each other saying, it's crazy. That's so risky. And it's funny, I immediately thought of that's the person who's got the 401k who's letting somebody else invest his money compared to the person who's got the 401k that's taking it and taking control of it and investing it in real estate.

Yes.

They're both looking at each other going, ooh, that's risky.

Yes.

You know, but it's.

Yeah, Yeah, I love that. That was a really good example, and it's something that we've talked about a few times recently. So define risk. That's what I wrote down. So worst case scenario rarely happens. And that is something that, you know, we can. All our minds will always take us down the path of, what if I do this, you know what's going to happen? You know, am I going to lose all my money? When you're talking financials, that is the biggest fear. So I'm going to lose all my money because I didn't put it with somebody I could trust or I just didn't choose the right investment. I wasn't enough to put it in the right thing or do the right thing. So losing money is the biggest fear of people when they're investing money. But reality is if you just stay the same, that's the bigger risk because you didn't step out of your comfort zone to be able to do it. And so people will think of that. Worst case scenario over and over and over. And that fear is what stops them from taking the next step. But how many people can you talk to around you, especially in real estate, that are investing with the right people? How many times did they lose money? And if they lost money, how many times did they lose all of it and were 100% decimated, where they lost absolutely everything? I have probably heard some stories of people choosing to go to bankruptcy, but it's probably one in a million. I don't even know what the stats are, but it's so, so rare. But the fear takes over.

Right.

It's just what you're thinking of all the time, when in reality, the worst case scenario rarely ever happens. Some of the people that I talk to are people who were private money lenders with maybe the wrong person and they lost some money, not all of their money, but guess what? They're getting out there and they're getting back in the money game because they know they can't opt out of the money game. Money is a requirement to survive and to live a good life. And so I just think that's one of the most important things to realize is our brains are always going to go to the worst. It's just a part of being a human.

Well, so I'm going to keep on the same theme here. So you said there's one in a million chance that that's going to happen. Right. And I immediately thought of the movie Dumb and Dumber when he goes, so you're saying there's a chance, you know, and, and it's. But that's what our brain thinks.

Yeah, yeah.

And now that there's. There's one in a million, you know, possibility your brain's going, it can happen. Yeah, it can happen.

Yes.

And I'm gonna be the one in the million.

Yep. Yeah, exactly. And that worst case scenario, honestly, I'm conf. I'm. I'm sold. That worst case scenario is just a fancy way of saying worry.

Yeah.

That's all it is because it's. You're thinking of all the worst case scenario. You're thinking of all the worries.

Yeah.

And it does you no good to worry.

Yeah.

And well, you need to be prepared. Okay, that's great. Think about it once and then move on.

Yes.

You know? Yep. Yes, that can happen. I'm gonna get in my car, I'm gonna turn my car on, and I'm gonna drive to the store. Worst case scenario is I'm gonna get in an accident. But that doesn't stop Me from driving down the street and going to the grocery store. So it's just get it out of your mind and move on. So you're saying there's a chance.

Yeah. So for full disclosure, too, I do want to say that we're not saying that there's a one in a million chance that you won't.

Oh, yeah, yeah, right.

And I'm the one that came up with a quote, and we're like, we're using it a little bit. So there's people who have lost money in syndications, for example, and there's a recent Texas property that got foreclosed on. Right. And all of the investors in that particular syndication lost money. I don't know how much they lost. I don't know what their recourse is. I haven't read the article. You have to do your due diligence, and you have to be okay with the risk that you are taking. And again, define risk. There's risk in everything. So if you diversify and let's just say, you know, we invest in ourselves, right? We have apartments, we have houses, we have business investments. You have stocks and crypto, because you.

Wait, I need to check. Where am I at right now?

But you diversify so that all of your eggs aren't in one basket. And you know what? Sometimes something might happen and always be prepared for the fact that it might happen. And you invest wisely where you have maybe some and so in a very, very what you would consider a safe investment and then some and maybe a little bit medium risk so that you're going to get a higher return and then some that you say, I don't even care. This is my shot for glory, right? I'm just going to go for a home run. And whether I, you know, win or not, it really doesn't matter to me. This was kind of a fun. That's what we call. It's our fun. Our fun investments. So you have to understand that there is risk in everything that you do. And you have to make the decisions that are comfortable for. And let's just talk about us as spouses, right? If you are ultra conservative and I was super risky, like being okay with risk, and you were 100% not okay with risk. We have to find a way to meet, right? And so hopefully there's not a situation where your spouse is like at zero and you're at 100, you know, hopefully it's more like you're at 40 and 60. And you have to find a way to say, hey, are we gonna Meet in the middle and do something that we're both kind of a little uncomfortable with, but also comfortable with because it didn't go all the way to the other. Or are you going to go to the more conservative approach, which I've heard spouses have done as well? So if you are like, okay with 40% and I was okay with 60% and 60% for me was riskier, then I go to your 40 because then we both feel good, right? And then maybe I take a bucket of money and say, this is my money, honey, and I'm going to go to the 60 or, you know, whatever I want to do. So I think it's important to have the conversations and understand that there's risk. And I just wanted to say that out loud because. Because even though we're talking about right now, that there's risk in everything, I don't want anybody to come back and say, hey, flippin Danny, you told us take this risk and look, we lost money. So just get comfortable with it. Be comfortable with who you're investing with. And I'm just gonna leave that where it is because a lot of people do listen to us and take what we say and take action on it, which I love and appreciate because we wouldn't be where we are today if we didn't do the same thing. You know, we follow our own advice. So anyways, I just. I'm done with disclaimers. I just wanted to throw it all out there. So it's too risky. That's why dumber people in this case and what we're talking about in this podcast are making millions as opposed to smart people who have all of these objections. One of them thinking that things are too risky. So the fifth one, fifth and last one. I don't know what I don't know, man. I say this all the time. So I love that this one came up on I Don't Know what I don't Know. And the truth is you can't win if you don't start and you can't lose if you don't quit.

Right there. That's the one. Rewind that. Go back 10 seconds on your little podcast Beat Recorder.

We're just going to say it again. You can't win if you don't start and you can't lose if you don't quit.

That's right.

So you don't know what you don't know. So this example is saying is the dumber person is going to understand they don't know what they don't know, and they're going to go, well, there's as much risk of me just sitting here doing nothing as there is of me taking a step towards the direction that I want to go and starting to learn. I don't know what I don't know. So let's go get a realtor's license. Let's start to learn real estate and see where it takes us. And then, oh, we met Esmeralda. Oh, she invests, huh? Let's go get a coach. We don't have, like, all the money to do it. Let's team up with five people and do it. We didn't know what we didn't know. We just did it. And we asked the mentor, can we do this? There's five of us, and this is the only way we're gonna able to afford it. And he said, yes. And that gave us accountability. And so we. Everything that we've done, we walked in not knowing anything, but we're willing to just go after it, ask the right questions, and get to a comfort level where we would take bigger risks because we had gotten to a point where we're like, okay, we've learned a little bit. Let's take a little bit bigger step this time and, oh, okay, we've learned some stuff here. Let's take a bigger step, and we can continue to grow. So what do you want to share on that? That part of the. You don't know what you don't know, because this has been a theme for our life.

I just love it because you don't know what you don't know. I mean, I've said it so many times. You know, it goes back to the whole. I've tried everything.

Yeah.

I don't know what I don't know. So I don't know better.

Yeah.

And because I don't know better, I'm gonna do it anyway.

Yeah.

And then going into the. You can't win if you don't start, start, and you can't lose if you don't quit. I was taught at a very young age, if you start something, finish it.

Yeah.

Don't quit, finish it. Always finish everything you start.

That's right.

And I can count a couple times that I actually quit something, and it burns me. I can list them because it burns me. I mean, there's plenty of things that I started and finished, but. But I can't think of them all, but I can sure remember the ones that I quit. And I'm like.

Yeah.

So I think what I love again, about this topic is that fear gets in the way of too many people. And it's one of the things that we've had. Fear. We're not going to lie. Of course we are afraid. We are scared of doing new things. And we thought. We didn't know what we didn't know. We thought other people could be smarter than us, and we're not very smart. We don't know if we're gonna make it. We definitely knew that there was risk. Well, we weren't afraid of looking stupid. We had that for us. You and I were okay not being able to opt out of the money game. We just. We simply knew that. We knew that, you know, we were on the road to find our way to freedom, and freedom included financial peace of mind. So I just think it's really, really important to continue talking about these types of things and just continuing to get real, because a lot of social media is a highlight reel. A lot of the successful people. It's getting better and better. Authenticity is growing. And that makes me so, so happy because I think people are leaning towards the people who are being really incredibly authentic and who are just trying to say it like it is and say, hey, if we can do it, you can do it too. And we've, in life, encouraged each other, even as friends, business partners, and spouses like that, that, hey, we're in this together, and let's just figure it out. Let's just be okay that we don't know everything and be okay with trying something new and sucking at it or failing and saying that wasn't the right, you know, path. We actually need to, you know, take two steps to the right and go this way because this one didn't work. And we've just always been okay with that. And we're continuing down that path. This. This house in Florida and where we moved was such a blessing and such a dream for us. And we're not stopping here. We're already looking, like, an hour, like, away.

We are. Yeah.

That's all on you, man.

I have no idea what you're talking.

About, but you don't get where you want to go without, you know, just being okay with saying, I'm gonna go after it.

Yep.

And I'm not okay staying where I'm at.

It's funny, there's one. One time that back in our days of art auctions and we were promoted inside of the land team, we got promoted to bigger markets, and we were walking into an auction in Houston, Texas, and it was January of. I think it was 05 and we'd not done a room that big before. And so there's about 150 to 200 people in the room. There was a world famous artist painting in the back of the room during the auction. 200 people in the room. Our boss, one of the. Because we had many bosses, but our direct head boss was in the room. There was, you know, a lot of big time artwork in this room. You know, six figure people were paying six figures for these pieces of artwork. And we're getting ready to start the auction, and we're 15 minutes away from starting the auction. And I look over and there was about 100 pieces of auction of artwork that needed to go up in the auction. And like we do maybe 60, and there's well over 100. And I've got 200 people in a room. You want to talk about fear? And. And this is when I realized that the being stupid, that's kind of like my. It's like my superpower and it. And it defeats fear. Because next thing I know, because that 15 minutes before the auction started, I don't know what happened in that 15 minutes. Next thing I know. And it was the unconscious conscious. Right. You know, the being able to do something.

Unconscious competence.

Yeah, yeah. Doing something where you don't even realize you're doing it. You're doing it. Right. So next thing I know, I'm on the microphone, I'm talking through the conditions of the auction. Next thing I know, it's two and a half hours later and there's only two pieces left. I mean, I don't believe I. Did I breathe?

I think I did.

I might have took a breath or two.

Babe, you had to breathe.

Yeah, yeah, right. But I don't remember. I don't remember anything. Next thing I know, I remember being at the back with the artist. But that talk about fear, I was scared. Yeah. So. But anyway, I use stupidity as my. That's my superpower.

Well, I hope that this episode just gives you more confidence to do maybe what you haven't done yet. I have a piece of paper here that flip. Thank you for doing this math here for you because I wanted at the end of this podcast to kind of talk about the diving board story, which you already shared, and about taking that first step. And for some of you, this economy and the market that we've been in over the past year or two has put some fear into you. And a lot of those people are starting to go, hey, you know, I'm looking around and things are looking good. Things didn't crash. So I'm ready to go ahead and start getting my, you know, getting myself back in the game. Or some of them, like, just took back, like, half of what they invested. So say they've got $2 million in investment. They said, hey, we're gonna put take a million dollars back and just kind of keep right here, but we're gonna keep a million dollars in. And everybody was a little bit different. Some people were just like, oh, no. You know, I've been working with you for a long time. This market does not scare me. I know you guys are shifting and adapting. It's fine. Keep on going and adding money the entire time. And some people pulled out completely. So there's this wide range of people and where they were. But right now we're going into 2024, and there's a lot of opportunity in the marketplace. You know, when we were grabbing deals and nobody else was there, people are starting to come in, sellers are starting to go, okay, things, you know, I'm not going to be able to get the price that I wanted, that I was hanging on for. And now at this point, I'm having to sell for less than I could have seen sold for last year. All of this is actually happening right now. And so we are seeing more and more deals, you know, out there. We're doing more and more things, we're raising more and more Capital, and 2024 is really just going to take off. So one of the things that we've created is for people who are just not quite comfortable with that first step and. Or create. We've created something that allows you to do so with ease, make a first investment with ease. So I love this episode because we're always talking about what we're doing. And one of the funds that we recently launched, or I'm assuming is live by the time that this is recording, is the fund that we're calling our liquidity fund. And it allows people to invest for 90 days for one year and for three years. And one of the reasons why we do episodes like we do today is because we believe in telling people, hey, we didn't get where we are today with six real estate companies and where we are financially, by a stroke of luck, we didn't inherit it. We actually worked really, really hard for it. And we learned how to invest. We learned how to make money on our money, and we are trying to help other people do the same. But there are people that, like today's episode, are afraid of what they don't know. They're Afraid of risk. They think they have to be smart to invest. So we want to give people an easy opportunity to be able to invest at very, very low risk so that you can get your money out quickly and you can just test the waters. So we just encourage you to reach out to our team because this fund is really, really incredible way for you to get to know us, get to work with us, and just test out the waters. Almost all of our lenders at the very beginning, and I'm going to say 100% of them were private money lenders who were just testing us out. They were doing one loan with with us just to see how it worked. And then after that one loan, we said, hey, all right, you just tested the waters. What do you think? Do you want to invest again? And then they invested again. I don't think that we had one person not reinvest. And so it's just a way for you to test the waters and do so simply and not even have to take a full year if you don't want to. You could do the 90 day fund and do something very, very short term to be able to accomplish something that gets you off the diving board. And once you jump off the diving board, you start getting excited because you just saw your money earn money and you're like, oh, Kevin o', Leary, oh, I can send my money out and it's gonna come back with more money back to me. That is so cool. And so we're doing everything in our power to be able to do things like that for you. So I hope you'll go to chatwithfreedom.com and just talk to the team about it and explore your options. If you love real estate and you want to own property, we can do that too. But we're always just listening to you and what you guys want so that we can serve you better. So I hope you enjoyed this episode. Any final words? Flip?

No, I just. I love episodes where I'm dumb.

All right, we appreciate you guys. Thank you so much for joining us and we will see you next Wednesday.

Bye. Nothing on this show should be considered specific personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions and information on the show are not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss.