Fundamentals of Real Estate Success : 3 Most important Questions Answered

You should be afraid of stocks and all of the things that. Where you're putting your money and you don't know exactly what's going on and where it's being used and what type of return you're getting, what your risks are. Do you have true wealth preservation? Is it safe? Is there a safer alternative? And what is the comparison on your return on investment? What type of tax implications are there based on where you're investing? Are you actually adding to your tax burden or are you reducing your tax burden? There's so many questions that people don't know that they should be asking at the very, very beginning. So that's what I really want to dig into in this episode.

Hey, everybody. Flipping Danny here. Welcome to another exciting episode of the Freedom Show.

Yes, welcome. We're so excited to be here today. And today we're going to have a Flipping Danny solo episode.

But it's not really a solo episode. It's a duet. Come on.

Oh, yeah, Good call.

Yes. This is a duet. This is not a solo.

All right, Mr. Musician.

Whatever. Come on. Everybody knows that.

We were actually talking about before we jumped on the air of what we wanted to talk about today. And many times if you followed us in our Freedom Through Passive Income podcast, where we did 365 days in a row, we literally would wake up and be like, hey, we gotta record some podcasts today. And sometimes we would do two or three in a row, just a batch, because we would have meetings and sometimes we'd literally be getting up and doing it just a podcast every single day. And so it was always. It got to the point where, I mean, I was planning. Right, right. So at the beginning of these episodes, you would have seen me with like this iPad in front of.

Oh, man. It was detailed listing of everything we talked.

Like, we're talking about, like, the five biggest mistakes real estate investors make, or, you know, what does a cost segregation study mean? Or we're talking about inflation or our tax benefits or whatever the topic is. And I've got my iPad out. I've got the title of the episode, and I've got some notes for us both. And it eventually got to the point where we just said, what are we talking about today?

Yeah, towards the episode 300, it was like, are we talking about something today? Let's go and record.

That actually happened way sooner than 300. So literally, you know, as we jumped. Jumped on this podcast, it's not that we're not really pre planning what we're talking about. It's just, I Think that we talk to so many investors all the time, that we know what the questions are that, that people are asking. We know the battles that they're having, we know the mistakes that they're making. And many times it's not just conversations with other people, it's stuff that has happened to us. And so, you know, as we, you know, prepared for this podcast, just a few minutes ago, we said, what are we talking about?

Right.

And we brainstorm a few things and, and really went, what type of investor are you? And I think that that has been the biggest mistake we've seen over and over and over of people not knowing where to start when they get involved in real estate.

Yep.

And I'll say this over and over again. The top three questions are where do I start? Which path is right for me and who do I trust? And if you don't answer those questions, then you end up going down the wrong path most of the time. Right. So I know you're about to add something in there, so I didn't mean to cut you off.

Yeah, no, I was just. But when we were talking about, like, what we're going to talk about today, we also don't, you know, we don't have things pre canned for like five, five episodes. We talk about something relevant, something that's today, something that's fresh, something that, you know, came up yesterday, something that came up the day before. And so that's also a reason why we don't plan these. Like, what are we talking about? Well, what's happened recently.

Yes.

You know, and so that's, that's what makes us so exciting too.

Yes. Yeah, it keeps it fresh for us too. Right. Because if something crazy happened, then we get to talk about it because we don't have anything like, oh, but we are going to talk about interest rates.

Boring.

That is so boring. So let's talk about probably one of the biggest mistakes real estate investors make. Funny that I actually referenced that just a second ago. And it really is going down the wrong path out of the gate. I think a lot of people are interested in real estate. I think a lot of people are not sure how to get into real estate. They think that they can't get into real estate because of whatever reason, maybe knowledge, maybe because they, they think that they have to have a bunch of money to be able to buy something outright. They don't understand the mechanics of real estate. And so what happens is you end up, if you're, if you're really serious about real estate and learning a little bit more about it so that you can understand how people are building wealth. Then you end up going down a path of how do I get started? So that's where do I start?

Right.

And as you answer that question, you start realizing that, okay, well, I could become a realtor, which is the path that we took.

Yes.

And then it could be, I could be an investor, but that means I'm going to probably buy a rental property. Buy and hold is probably the most common thing taught when you're talking about real estate investing or the brrr method or something like that. Those are the easier to understand ways to get into real estate, especially if you're a busy professional. And we use the term busy professional simply because most of the people that want to get in real estate and build their wealth are doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs, business owners, just high income earners. Like, you've gotten yourself into a position where you absolutely love what you do, you're really good at what you do and you understand, hey, but you know, what do I do with all this money? I've got all this active income and at some point in time I'm going to want to retire and what do I do so that I can be growing this income in a safe way? And I don't understand real estate. I don't understand necessarily stocks and mutual funds and things like that. But yet so many people invest in that. So many people put their money in the bank and they have no idea what the bank's doing with their money, right? No, lots.

Your money's not doing anything for you. Sorry, that's what your, your money's not doing anything. It's doing a lot for the bank, just nothing for you.

Yes, exactly. So reality is, is that wherever you put your money, it's being used for something. And you probably have a lack of understanding of exactly what it's being used for. And so our admonishment, I guess, at the beginning of this episode really is not to be afraid of real estate.

Yes.

Because it's like anything else, you should be afraid of stocks and all of the things that where you're putting your money and you don't know exactly what's going on and where it's being used and what type of return you're getting, what risks are? Do you have true wealth preservation? Is it safe? Is there a safer alternative? And what is the comparison on your return on investment? What type of tax implications are there based on where you're investing? Are you actually adding to your tax burden or are you reducing your tax burden? There's so many questions that people don't know that they should be asking at the very, very beginning. So that's what I really want to dig into in this episode. So do you want to go back to just a short recap of where we got started? Because we too didn't know where to start when we decided we wanted to get into real est. You know, actually I went into the mortgage business before I did anything else. And then we got into real estate. So do you want to kind of talk about that story and then talk about the. Probably a common question we get asked a lot and what our answer is, and then we'll kind of roll into, you know, some other.

Yeah, absolutely. So a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, we both decided that we wanted to be, we wanted to go into real estate. We didn't want know if we wanted to be real estate investors or realtors. You know, we didn't know what we wanted to do. We knew we wanted to go into real estate because you were in the mortgage business and, and you had gotten your, your, you dipped your toe into essentially real estate because you were on that side of things. And, and I was coming out of the, the art career and, and we both, we were both intrigued with, with real estate. You know, I wasn't intrigued with stocks and bonds, thank goodness, but we were both intrigued with real estate. And so we did what most people do, not all people, but most people do, and we went out and studied for our realtor's license and took the test, passed the test. We got, we got our license September of 2008. And you know, and, and people, we always laugh. This is the worst time to get your license. Actually, it was the best time for us to get our license because if you can learn and figure things out there, you know, when it's at the bottom of the barrel, then, you know, when it's at its height, then it's just easy, easy going. And so anyway, so we got our license and it took eight months to do a deal, which was depressing. And, you know, we burnt through a lot of money. And that was when we like, you know, hey, what's, you know, what's, what's this about being a real estate investor? You know, why don't we be investors? And you know, you found someone that was teaching 12 ways on how to buy and sell real estate, you know, and with, with basically with no money, right? And so we took the class and learned and did everything they said and, you know, we hit the ground Running and. But we started learning right there. You know, we. We, like. We went blend. We went blindly into being realtors, you know, because that's what you do. I mean, was that the bad thing to do? I don't think so. I mean, it just. I wish we could have shortened that. Eight months of doing a deal.

Sure, sure.

But we learned a lot about real estate. We learned the foundation of real estate, which helped us, you know, help propel us once we went into the real estate investing side of things, you know, and people ask us, you know, because we went into, you know, short sales and. And, gosh, you know, sub twos, sub two wraps, and, you know, just whatever we could get our hands on. And back then it was, you know, 2008, 2009, and, you know, all of those deals, we, you know, we couldn't throw a rock without hitting a short sale. And. But people ask us, you know, if we could do it all over again, would we do the same thing or would we do something different? We both have different answers. And you want to say what your answer is?

Well, I actually have two answers.

You have two answers. Okay.

Why don't you say yours?

Well, mine is. I mean, yes, I wish we would have gotten into multifamily right then, but we didn't know. You know, we thought we had the. This goes to, you know, the one that you don't know what you don't know. Right. We just thought that we needed money, and we just did a course. We learned how to do 12 ways and how to buy and sell real estate using no money. Well, that's cool. I just spent eight months burning through my, you know, savings. I got no money. Let's do it, you know, and. And so. So we did that. But, you know, I had no. No idea that, you know, any of these things that we're doing today. If we would have known then, you know, about all these strategies and getting into multifamily, and, I mean, I would. We would have jumped into multifamily. At least I would have. I don't know about you.

Y. Yeah. So I have two answers. One is really the right answer. The one that I believe. The answer that I believe is that we were on this path for a reason.

Right?

We are here because we are meant to be here. Everything that we've learned has been. Has gotten to us. Where we are today. I do not regret one thing about where we are today. I think God has us right here for a reason and a purpose. My second answer, though, is, had we known about Passive investing. Had we known about passive investing from the get go that we could find a team that we trusted that was already skilled and experienced and had the knowledge and years behind them, many hundreds of deals behind them, has proven track record. Had we known that we could invest with them and get a return on their money, we at the very least likely would have split our funds and said, hey, we have a bucket of cash. Let's take half of this and invest it in this way. Or we would have gotten on some type of strategy call and said, and somebody would have taught us, hey, when you have money, you want to have different buckets. You want to have a bucket that is liquid so in case you need it, you've got access to it, you have peace of mind, you can sleep at night. You want a bucket that's really focused on, on preservation of wealth, right? You're not going to shoot for the moon with this bucket. You're going to, you're going to probably invest it in real estate that's going to give you really returns, but it's a solid asset class. It's not going to go to zero. Or you have this third bucket where you are going to, you know, you're going to just shoot for the star, shoot for the moon, and you know, pretty much say, I'm burning this money, but I'm hoping it's going to go like crazy and I'm like going to be one of those, you know, fortunate people that, you know, just made millions because I invested in this early on, right? And so maybe we would have gotten on a strategy session call and been taught about the different buckets and there's many more buckets than just that. There's a tax, you know, a tax benefit bucket, there's a cash flow bucket, there's all kinds of different buckets and reasons that you invest and goals that you have for your money and what you want it to do for you. Maybe somebody would have had that conversation with us and we would have said, hey, we're going to take half of our capital and we're going to put some in the, in the bucket that we want liquid and some in the bucket that we just want. We want growth, but we also want the confidence of wealth preservation and some of it. Maybe we're going to shoot for the moon, shoot for the stars, whatever it is. And maybe we would have done that and, and we wouldn't have like tapped out, you know, all of our savings, you know, chasing this realtor thing. Maybe we would have said, hey, we have Spent this much money, now whatever was left. And we need a new direction. Maybe we'd have found our new direction a little bit faster, and we wouldn't have waited as long because we had the cash to wait. We had the cash to keep on learning and keep on, you know, pursuing, but it eventually ran out. And when it ran out is when we said, it's time, you know, it's time to do something new. And it's not like we were at, you know, $0 in the bank account, but we were close enough that we said, all right, we need a new strategy.

We need to correct our course. Yeah, yeah.

So that if we were going to change anything, I think I would have wanted to be educated. I would have wanted to listen to a podcast like this that told me, hey, there are different avenues for you to go. If you want to invest in real estate, you don't have to be active. You can go the passive route. Here's what that looks like. And I don't know what that. Where that decision would have led, but having the knowledge would. It would at least have given us the opportunity to make a better decision. Right. I could have said, hey, we did the exact right thing because we had all of the information in our fingertips right then in 2008. Instead, we didn't know where to start, and we thought, well, let's get our license, you know, and let's just see where it goes. And that's what we did, and it brought us here. So I'm ecstatic for where we are. And maybe those lessons were meant to be so that we could share it on a podcast like this. Right? Maybe everything that we've gone through was meant to not only get us to success, but be able to share with other people to say, hey, this is what we did, and we can help you not make the same mistake and lose years and years and years. And maybe that's not a loss of years to us. It was just meant to be. So now we go and start talking about this particular topic and tell you what we say you should be doing. And that is answering the question, the questions of where do I start? Which path is right for me and who do I trust? And as one of our investors recently said, you should really ask those questions in the reverse order. So really ask, who do you trust? If you're listening to this podcast right now, I hope that we are one of the people that you trust. And why would you trust us? Because, quite frankly, we're just the real deal. We talk about the goods, we Talk about the bads. We don't care about being transparent. We don't care about sharing our failures. We actually think it's a benefit to you. Because if we teach you the challenges that we've had, the failures that we've met, and show you how we solved the problem and the lessons that we've learned, it helps you to avoid those mistakes. And I really think that that's part of our path and why we're here. So in you looking at our track record, looking in our testimonials, looking and talking to our clients, looking at how we've built our companies, looking at who we are as people and what happens when we do fail on something, how are our investors treated? How did the deal turn out? Looking at the character of who we are, which we about a lot when it comes to trust. I hope you've already answered that question. That's why you're listening to us right now. But then now go back to where do I start? Which path is right for me? And so we talk about the lifestyle design, and that's really a worksheet that we share with people that starts you on the path of answering the questions of what you want.

Right. I just want to go back to the trust thing, you know, and you hit on all the, you know, the transparency, you know, and we show you everything and our character. And I mean, what it comes down to is we're not telling you to trust us. We're telling you that you can trust us. And if you don't trust us, that's fine. Yes, that's. We're not. We're not forcing you to trust us. We're giving you everything and to. We're giving you all of the information and then you do it with it what you may. And you know, by being transparent, by showing you our highs and lows and showing you what we've done and showing, you know, know being completely 100% transparent. But again, we're not forcing you to trust us. I don't want anyone to think that we're. They told me to trust them. No, we're telling you you can trust us. So just wanted to throw that in there because I just wet. It's. That's important. I don't want people to think that we're forcing them to trust us.

I don't think we can force people to trust us. So the great thing about Flip and I is we always think opposite. So if you hear conversations like this, this is actually happens in real life life, we just have both have different points of view. So I'm glad that he shared that point of view. Okay, so let's get back to, you know, where do we start? So that's the next question that you want to ask. And we like to talk about the lifestyle design. And that's a worksheet that we provide to you. And you can just email us investeedomfamilyinvestments.com if you'd like a copy of this, then just say lifestyle design worksheet and somebody will send it to you. It's free, no charge, but it's six boxes, essentially. And what you're going to want to do is you're going to want to fill it out. And you can either answer the questions of what do you want? Or what don't you want? So I think it's easier to answer what don't you want? Right. So let's talk about travel. Flip. What don't you want when it comes to travel?

No, travel. I want travel. I always want travel. I don't know what I don't want about travel. I don't know know what I don't want about travel. I don't want to drive long distances. Yeah, you know, that's. That's one thing I don't want. I don't know what else I don't want on travel. That one? Yeah, you stumped me on that one.

Yeah. Okay, so let me pick something else. Geography. What don't you want?

Cold.

Okay, could I have said that faster?

I don't think I could have said that faster. I don't want cold. I want warm. You know, nice warm climates 12 months out of the year. Yeah, would be preferable. What else do I don't want? I don't want to be in the middle of the woods.

Okay.

As nice and peaceful as that may sound, I've had one too many run ins with critters in the last couple years. That. That's where the critters live and they can stay there. I'm a city boy, so I don't want to be in the middle of the woods. I don't want to be up in the mountain. I don't want to be secluded, you know, because I like having access. Access to things.

Yeah. Okay. So for travel, I think I would say I don't want to be forced to travel.

Oh, there you go.

You know, I want to travel because I want to travel. I also don't want to be traveling so much that I'm barely home. We have dogs and we love our dogs. Right. And so those of you with kids can relate to replace dogs with kids. Right. So you may not want to be traveling a lot because you want to be home with kids. You may not want a second career or second job that is on top of the job that you love because you want to be with your family. You want to be with your spouse. You want to have date nights. You want to be at your kids soccer games. You want to just be a part of their life and allow them to learn from you and have. And create those memories while you can. I know that there's a book. I can't remember the title of it, but it talks about you have only 18 summers with your kid. Oh, right, right. And so I thought that's really impactful to think about. You think 18 years, you're like, oh, my gosh, 18 years. But when you think of it as summers, because summers are when most families get to have a vacation or they get to spend time with their kids, and you think, I only have 18 summers with my kid, like, that suddenly puts it in perspective of how quick life can go by and how little time you have to spend with your kids at each age increment. So this book even talks about taking your kids out. Like, if you have three kids, each kid gets to choose, hey, this is what I want to do, and this is my day with you. And you do that like once a month or something like that. I can't remember. I didn't read the book. Because we have dogs, and our dogs just don't care. They care that they get cuddled and fed and loved and pet and all that type of stuff. But those are the things that you fill out on this worksheet. So this worksheet really has six boxes, and it's. And it's got the boxes, and you could be saying the things you want to do or you want to see and you want to get out of life, or you could be saying the things that you don't want, and either are good. You could do both. You could split the boxes in half and be like, I want this. I don't want this. Because the don't want really starts providing clarity of what you do want. So that's really the first exercise that we like to talk about a lot, because had we done that, that I, again, don't know what path we would have chosen. And for us, we may have chosen both because we like to be exploratory, right? We like to explore different things and experience it firsthand. We were coming out of a career that we were intending on changing careers anyway. So it wasn't like we had a career that we loved and that, that real estate was going to be a second job. Right, right. So when we were in this position, we were really open to all of it. It's just that we could have made different choices had we been a little bit more educated about our options. So I think that's where you start. Where do I start? It's really answering. It's filling out that sheet. And that sheet is going to ultimately lead you to this. Do I want to be an active investor or do I want to be a passive investor? And now Flip's going to talk a little bit about, about like two circles, because we say actively passive and passively active sometimes. And we're going to talk about that a little bit and he's going to explain, explain why we say that.

Right. So what you want to do is just imagine two circles, but they sort of overlap just a little bit. So there's that little tiny section right there in the middle where the two circles, you know, overlap. So if you're in, in that little tiny section, you're actually in both circles. And so one circle would be the active investor and the other circle would be the passive investor. But little tiny circle or the little tiny section where the two circles overlap, that's what we like to call either actively passive investor or the passively active investor. And there's just a few things that can actually fit in that spot because most everything is either you are just truly passive or you are truly active. So like a truly passive is, you know, like a private money lender, right. A syndication and funds like, here's my money. Make it work.

Work.

Don't call me, just give me checks. Right. Then there's the active investor, you know, like fix and flips. That's. I don't think there's more active than that. But then like the actively passive or passively active, whichever way you want to look at it, would be sort of. I like turnkey. Turnkey real estate, because. Turnkey, yes, it's. You're, you're passive because you're not buying the house, you're not rehabbing the house, you're not putting the tenant in there. But you know, because we're, we're doing, because the company does that. But, but you still, once you buy the property from us, then you still monthly have the, the, the notice from the property manager and you know, the water heater just blew up, you know, or the, the, the Tenant poured cement down the toilet, you know, or whatever, you know, so you still have stuff that you have to deal with that, you know, because most of the stuff. Stuff you'll tell the property manager, just deal with it, you know, don't tell me about it. Just cover it, whatever. But there are things that you actually have to still do or the tenant, you know, decides to leave and move out of the country or whatever. Now you got to get a new tenant and redo the house or whatever. So there are things you have to do, but it's still passive because, you know, we're the ones doing all the work. So it's, it's, it's weird. That's why it's that little tiny sliver. But all of the other passive stuff, they're all by itself over here. You're not. Not having to be active for those other, those other strategies. Same with the active side. It's very active and what you like to do. I don't know how far you want me to go into this, but when you're. When active, it, it is. It's another career.

Yes.

You know, it's another job, you know, and they'll even. I think that's probably the one thing that those fix and flip shows do on tv. They show you how much work it is. There's not. There's so many things about those shows that are 100% fake. Sorry, spoiler alert. If you didn't know that already, you know, but, but, but one thing is, is that, you know, because it shows them constantly doing work, you know, constantly doing. So. So I think that's probably the one thing that they really show. That's true. Yeah. Is that. That is. It is another career, but with passive side. It's not a career. It's. You're just building wealth. You're, you know, for your future and for your family's future. And so, yeah, those are my circles.

Yeah. So I really love that he described that there's. We could go down many avenues right here, but that would be a very, very long podcast. I, I think what we really want to hit on is that many of the investors and, and what we've seen is many investors will go down the active route not realizing that. That they know that it's. It's extra work. Right. They know that after they get off their job, they're going to go ahead and start pursuing this. They might go to a real estate club. They might. Jv, which stands for joint venture with another investor, but it's still an extra job after they get done with their career, their W2 or whatever it is that you do, where you earn your active income. Now you're going to go and do something else with this, you know, activity of real estate that you are pursuing and that that activity takes away from your life and your family. And people only realize that 6 months, 12 months, 1, 2, 3 years down the road, and they're like, crap, this is not what I was looking for. This is not what I intended. And suddenly they are now backtracking, trying to sell a property or do something different after so much time and effort invested, so much time lost from their families, that they regret making the mistake of going down this active route because they didn't understand, hey, I can just do the passive, or maybe I can do both. And over the next six months, I can actually evaluate what have I done in six months on the active side, what has my money done for me in six months on the passive side. And they can actually put a decision tree benchmark right there that says, what do I want to do? Because I've just experienced six months of exploring the active and exploring the passive. And that is a much wiser way to, to walk into the real estate world is understanding your options. And if you want to explore both, then do something like that. As opposed to losing so much time and for many investors, losing so much money because reality is investing in real estate is not easy. You will lose money. And even as much experience that Flip and I have and the team that we have and all the safeguards that we've put in place because of the mistakes that we've made and the lessons that we've learned and the processes we've put so that we don't make those mistakes again, we still lose money on deals. It's just reality. We tell our investors, this is reality. It's why we do volume, because we are mitigating our risk by doing 10 deals, knowing that maybe two of them are going to lose money and the other eight are going to be fantastic. So if eight are fantastic and only to lose money, we're good. Like, we're, we're in the plus side of things. So if you're not mitigating risk in that way, you have to go into this knowing, hey, I'm going to lose some money at some point in time. It's just, where, where is it? And, and was that time away from my family and that extra work and that extra stress worth the learning curve that it takes in real estate? When experienced people like us who have been in it for 15ish years are saying we still make mistakes. So knowing and understanding that reality because you're going to see on Facebook and you're going to see on the Internet and you're going to hear ads of hey, become a wholesaler, become a fix and flipper, you're going to make thousands of dollars, you're going to make millions of dollars. You're going to become, you're going to reach all of your dreams. And they don't you about the hard roads, they don't tell you about the lost money, they don't tell you how long it's going to take for you to get your first deal. They don't tell you any of that. And so so many people are chasing this active real estate role when all they really could be doing is taking that money that they're investing in these courses and actually investing passively and earning money that way and then getting to enjoy life. Because that's what we all want, right? We just want to enjoy life. We want to have a really great time. I'm going to stop right there because I'm going to continue on on the rant. But you are here with flipping Daddy and the Freedom. We are going to take one quick short commercial break and we will be right back.

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To the Freedom Show. I was on a little bit of a rant and I stopped myself so that you could, we could get that commercial break in before we got so far in that I had forgot to actually stop for a second. So I think I'm just really, really passionate about saving people the time and the money because we have one life and that life is very, very important to you, to your family, to those that you love, to everything that you want to accomplish, to the things that you want to give back to. And if you're spending it on a second career, on a second job because you're so interested in real estate that you think that you want to jump in, but you go the active route, not understanding all of your options and not taking the time to actually evaluate what it is that you want by doing that lifestyle design, then, then you're going to lose years of your life and fortunately for us, I don't feel like we lost years of our life because of where we landed.

Right.

But it could have turned out differently. Right. So we're just really trying to do our very, very best to convey what to ask, what to talk about, what to explore before you actually make the move. And when you're ready to make the move, then just be confident in the choice that you made and be confident that you can set some time parameters on that decision. So that if you said, hey, I actually do think that I want to be a wholesaler, maybe that's what I want to do. I'm going to go out and find deals, put a timeline on what that looks like and what you want to earn and, and make your decision tree that if I succeed at this in six months and make this much money, I am going to continue. And if after six months I have not made this much money, then I have proven to me that it is not meeting my goals. It's taking time away from other things that I could be doing and I could have a more passive route, route that is actually going to build more wealth because I don't have the learning curve, I don't have the mistakes, I don't have the lost time, the last money, and I'm going to live a higher quality life. So those are the things that you want to talk about? Those are the things that you want to discuss, I would say, discuss it with your family first, your spouse, right? Sit down. Flip and I sit down to talk about things like this all the time. And, and really it happened, I think, at the point where 20, 22, when we were finally on that road of, hey, you know, we did it. After all this work, we finally did it. We started saying, what do we want to do? When we went to the doctor, we were okay because we were working nonstop and we got a clean bill of health and we said, okay, now, now what? What does this look like? And I think up to that point, just that previous year, we had started taking quarterly vacations just so that we could get out and away, you know, for a little bit. But even then it was hard because, you know, the business is still going. And we're always worried about, you know, building these businesses as fast as they've gone. So we're always available to everybody to make sure that things are going okay. So you don't have to do that, right? You don't have to get to the point where finally you're like, oh, we made it. You can do it a better way. A Wiser way. And that's what we're really trying to share today, is really find the team that you trust. Well, once you find the team that you trust and you talk to your family and you fill out that lifestyle design worksheet, then talk to somebody on that team. So if it's our team, you're going to talk to Ben and CJ Jr and you're going to talk to them about, hey, this is what we discuss. This is what we like, we actually want to be. We're going to try a little bit active. Maybe we want to dip our toe in just the passive. And then we want to try maybe this circle of actively passive where you have turnkey or the Equity Advantage program. And maybe that little circle of equity advantage and turnkey gives you the mix of active and passive just enough that you love it. You've got the control that you want. You've got a little bit more of the cash flow, especially in the equity advantage, that you would if you wanted to be a fix and flipper. And maybe that's where you. Where where you want to live is right in that middle of both circles. And then, or maybe, maybe if you're like me now that I've learned everything I would like, I'm so glad that our team is doing it all, because I don't want to be doing it anymore. I don't want to be physically out there doing all of this hard work. I love that we have a team that is doing it for us. So we've learned how to be passive in a very different way. Right. We just hired the people that we trust and that we oversee to be able to do the active part of real estate investing so that Flip and I can continue to be passive investors because we are more focused on our quality of life together as a couple and as just humans in general, of what we want to do in life and the causes that we want to give back to. And doing things like this, like doing a podcast, it's not like we make revenue from doing a podcast. We're here to. It's one of our ways to give back. Many of the speaking events that we go to, it's not like we're paid to speak there. We actually pay to travel there. Why? Because we are very interested in giving back and teaching other investors why we do what we do, why we've made the choices that we have made, what the pitfalls were of those choices. And, you know, where we are now. And, you know, I think looking back is really, really important to Share. And it helps people live a higher quality life. And, you know, we just want to expose real estate to everybody.

That's right.

What else? What did I miss? What did you miss over the last 15 years?

Let me, let me see if you missed anything. No, I mean, I love it. You know, everything happens for a reason. But, you know, we were meant to do what we did to be able to learn all of the things, and we learned them all in a specific order. To be able to start building our companies and to build our companies one by one by one by one, faster than anyone else thought was possible.

Yes.

So. And it was because of that foundation that we started back in 2008, even, you know, as realtors, we started that foundation of learning real estate. Learning the basics, learning, you know, the stuff that they don't teach you when you're a real estate investor. They don't teach you all the other stuff. Stuff that, you know, they teach as realtors. So, so no, I think everything was, was done on purpose. And, you know, like I said, you know, it's. It is what it is. That's not what, what I, I just said. It. It was. Everything happens for a reason.

There you go.

You know, so. And I love it. I love it. You know, we always talk about, what would you do different? I. I'm, I'm with you. I'm, I'm this. I'm. I'm super excited about everything that happened and the way it happened.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I don't think we need to belabor the point anymore. I think we've, like, done a good job of sharing our story and telling you what, how we think is the best way to proceed. We will recap it here real quick. So, number one, find a team that you can trust, and if that's us, then utilize us. Right? And so if you're still asking, where do I start? And you're scared you haven't taken that first step, we encourage you to sit down with your spouse and your family and email us@investreedomfamilyinvestments.com Ask for that lifestyle design worksheet. We'll send that over to you. Sit down and just fill it out. Even have your kids fill it out. What do they want? You know, that's just super cool. If you've got a family, how neat is it for you to teach them this step, this process of saying, hey, you get to have anything that you want in life. PlayStation, what is it? And allow them to contribute to, you know what this looks like? What a fun family activity. And then once you've kind of filled it out, then jump on the phone with Ben, CJ Jr. Talk to them about, you know, this is what my family talked about. We actually want to be more passive. We both have incomes, active incomes. We both have careers that we love. We both, we have a family that we want to spend time with. We don't need an extra job. We don't need an extra career. We don't need the risk of trying to be an active investor and then losing that money. We'd rather just put it to work passively so that we can enjoy life and have that peace of mind. So those are the things that you want to talk about. And then they're going to tell you, hey, here's the types of investment opportunities that, that fit in your bucket. So as they share those investment opportunities with you, you're going to be able to then sit down and evaluate them and determine, are these going to meet my goals? You actually might learn more things on those calls. And those calls are no obligation. They're absolutely free. We're here to educate you. We're here to be a resource for you because you feel confident that you did the upfront work that allowed you to say, hey, this is the life that I want to live. This is where the vehicles that are going to get me to where I want to. And man, I mean, what happiness that would give me if we would have, like, had that education right up front. So we encourage you to go to our website. You can go to chatwithfreedom.com Again, Ben and CJ our funds, private money lending, syndications, Master notes. Very, very passive. J.R. is you going to want to talk to if you think you're in that semi passive. And he's going to talk about turnkey real estate. He's going to talk to you about equity Advantage, where it's very much, I think the other day you said it's bird like the bird. Yeah, yeah. You're going to buy a property at a very steep discount. And our team can help you renovate it, our team can help you manage it, our team can help you sell it, depending on what your exit strategy is. And you're going to get a good chunk of equity just by taking advantage of that type of program. It does mean you're a little bit more active. So just keep that in mind. And that's why they're there to really educate you on these options. So we just wanted to really share this, this mistake that a lot of people make. We wanted to share the education to hopefully set you up for success so that you can make the right decision. Um, and we always like to end our podcast with things that we have going on right now. Um, so I'm trying to think about when this is going to air. It's actually going to air within like a week.

Yeah.

Um, so I think the big things right now are still our masternote program. It's the most popular program that we have for passive investors. You're going to get a high 10 to 12% return. It also meets the liquidity angle. Um, you can get it out any year that you choose and it's just really super simple. Um, so if you want to be a passive investor, again, that's probably our most popular program. We're in between funds at the moment, so I know by the time this one airs, our new fund will not have launched. So you can even, you can ask about it. It's just not ready yet. So private money lending, masternote program, Turnkey Properties, Equity Advantage properties, all of that, those are opportunities that you can look at right now. We still have Cottonwood Townhomes available for you right now. If you are looking for tax benefits, that's what you're going to want to look at, right? If you call your CPA and you say, hey, what's my 2023 tax burden? And he says it's high, why call us about that? Cottonwood Townhomes, because you will be able to invest and get like somewhere. If you invested $100,000 as an example, you're going to get somewhere between a 30 to $50,000 tax write off. That is real money. That is like that. That is how the 1% of the 1% get wealthier is by legally being able to reduce their tax burden every single year. So if you hear everybody go, I didn't pay any taxes this year. It's because they're finding investment opportunities like that. Um, so that's very limited and it's a real game changer when it comes to your wealth building strategy. So Cottonwood Townhomes, call the team and ask them. So, yeah. Chatwithfreedom.com just scroll down. You're going to see everybody's calendar. We make it super easy for you. All you have to do is just jump on, find a date and time that works for you and you're going to get to talk to them and it's fantastic. And if there's anything else that we can do for you, always just email us. That's why we give out our email, investamilyinvestments.com say, hey, I'm listening to your podcast. I would love for you guys to talk about this. I would love for help on this. We do ask active. We do passive. We do it all. So we are here at your fingertips to do and help in any way possible. And we want you to use us. That's what we're here for. We love to help. So never be afraid to ask for help. Don't be afraid to get started. We're here to help you take every step from the very start all the way to, hey, we did it. We met our retirement goals. We're super excited. And yeah, that's all I have. Flip. Anything else?

No, No. I love it. I love looking back and trying to figure out, did we do the right thing?

Yeah. Yes. Mistakes and lessons learned are always very, very powerful. So we hope you enjoyed this episode. We are looking forward to the next one. I believe the next one is a guest and we are. I believe having. I'm not gonna even. It's not even. No, no, I'm not gonna give it. It's a really, really awesome episode. Episodes. We're breaking this one in into two parts. You are going to learn so much. So don't miss out on next Wednesday's episode. It's going to be a surprise and lots.

I think this one, this one's supposed to air right before Thanksgiving.

So happy Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody. Yes. I'm glad you remember that. All right. All right. Thank you, everybody. 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 launch.

So you can even, you can ask about it. It's just not ready yet. So private money lending, masternote program, Turnkey properties, Equity Advantage properties, all of that, those are opportunities that you can look at right now. We still have Cottonwood townhomes available for right now. If you are looking for tax benefits, that's what you're going to want to look at, right? If you call your CPA and you say, hey, what's my 2023 tax burden? And he says it's high. Call us about that. Cottonwood townhomes because you will be able to invest and get like somewhere. If you invested $100,000 as an example, you're going to get somewhere between a 30 to $50,000 tax write off. That is real money. That is like that. That is how the 1% of the 1% get wealthier is by legally being able to reduce their tax burden every single year.