Inside the Mind of a Finance Maverick | Aaron Chapman Exclusive

I came back to Arizona, my wife and infant son here I was driving back and forth 10 hours one way to go to work for 13 shifts. And I couldn't find work to save my life. Everywhere I applied, I was overqualified, overqualified, overqualified. And then it got to a point where we were so broke that my wife gave me a coupon for free diapers as I'm walking out the door to go apply for a $10 an hour truck driving job to Hall Landscape Rock. And I got there and again I got the exact same response as BS word overqualified. And I didn't understand how can be overqualified for something. You either good at it, you're not, you can either do the job or you can't. I didn't understand it. So as I'm leaving there wife and tears, I get in my truck, I started up to drive away and I've got my coupon to go to the store, get those diapers. My gas light comes onto my truck and I'd not driven that truck very far on the gas light to know how far you can get. So I found the closest grocery store that had a gas station on the corner. So I pulled up to a pump, had a debit card. That's all I had. I said a quick prayer, I swiped my debit card and I got a decline for having an overdrawn account. Hey everybody, flippin Danny here.

Welcome to the Freedom Show.

I love it when we enter these episodes and we're both cracking up.

Yeah, yeah.

Right before we started. Welcome everybody to the Freedom Show. Sorry you're not behind the scenes, we're weirdos sometimes.

But we're super excited to be here.

And today we have a really special guest we're super excited to introduce to him. But before we do that, we always like to talk about a little bit of. A little bit of a little bit stuff right at the beginning of the episode. And I wanted to hit on something.

That we're actually having a conversation with.

Our entire company about today. I gave him a project today and it's called the Excellence Project.

Yes.

So there's a book that I'm reading, I love to read. Um, in fact, on last week's episode, Flip asked me what I wanted for Christmas. And I said, oh man. Like what I always default to is just a bunch of different books. And I say pick one because I love to read. So this particular book that I'm reading right now, it really is about excellence. That's really the core of what it really talks about it talks about, you know, the people who make it to the top are very, very, very few. And it's because of the idea of excellence. Like people don't take it seriously enough. They don't like dial in every single part of their business in a way that when people come into their world, it's such an amazing experience that they couldn't even think about going and working with anybody else because it's just above and beyond and not just in performance of maybe the, the product. It's not just the team and the vision liking them. It's, you know, it's the combination of their communication. It's a combination of the care that they convey and everything that they do. And that for us comes across in authenticity and transparency. Right. Because we say we, we're not there yet. We're not like the best of the best, where our reputation is just amazing. I mean, it's really good, but we're still human, we're still growing. Like we literally built seven companies in six years. And that's way too fast. But just as we talked about in our last episode, it was that or we failed. And so we just went the too fast route because we knew that we would be able to see it through. Yeah. As opposed to the alternative of actually failing at what we were doing. But we're at a point in our companies where we're like, hey, you know what, we have an amazing team and it's the people who got us where we are today and it's the investors who've trusted us that got us to where we are today. So now is the time to have a book like that that says you are right now at this time on your pursuit of excellence. This is the time I told him 2024 is going to be our benchmark year. And so the project was. You tell them about the project?

Oh, no, no, I'm still working on my project.

He is actually, he sent me a draft of it. So I've been posting excerpts of the book like in our main communication channel in Google chat and I, you know, one of them is just like reputation. Like if it's a no brainer, what your reputation speaks for itself. Like the word of mouth is just, I mean, what happens? Let me ask you, let me ask you Flip, because they can't talk back to you.

No, they can't.

Let me ask you. So when you have an amazing experience with something, what do you want to do?

Tell everybody.

Exactly. So that's really what this book is about, is about these Stories about restaurant owners or, you know, experiences that people go in and they're like, oh, my gosh. And once they experience it, they don't want to work with anybody else. Once they experience it, they're telling their family, they're telling their friends. And we've experienced that. We've experienced our investors saying, my dad's investing with you. My sister's investing with you. My friends, you know, investing with you. We just got Steve messages today in Google Chat, just going, hey, you know, one of our guys that just is working with us for, like, maybe only two months, he's like, oh, he just referred somebody that he knows to come work with us. And it's really a proud moment when your team is bringing people in because your team sees behind the scenes, right? That we get to see where we go, shoot, man, we screwed that up. We gotta go fix it. They get to see all the mistakes that we're making, every single one of them. And if they're still saying, I love this company, I stand behind this company, and I'm inviting other people to get to know this company, bam. That's just incredible. So excellence project was me going into Google Chat and saying, hey, here's another excerpt of this book this morning. I want everybody to take on this project. And this project is for you to, from your perspective, whether that's in your seat. So if you're an admin, admin person, or a maintenance technician or whatever it is from your seat, you tell me, from your perspective, how can we create excellence in your role or in something you see within your company or something that you see across the entire family of companies? How can we create excellence in 2024? I just wanted every single person's perspective. And there we have, I believe, 65 team members. And so I literally kind of put it on the line. And I, I, number one, gave an example. I said, I'm the CEO, right? And then I wrote like five or six lines about what I felt I could be doing better, how I could provide excellence to the team and the company and to our investors. And then I even gave myself a deadline. And I said, and I can do this prior to our annual planning meeting so that I'm setting up ourselves for success here in 2024. I said, so there an example of how to write this. It'll take less than 15 minutes, so everybody send me an email. You have to send it to me by Friday, 9:00am and if you don't, if it's not there by 9:00am, one of our assistants is Going to be checking off everybody who sends it and compiling all the notes on a document.

And if you don't have it there.

By 9am it tells me a story. It tells me that you don't prioritize the company and our investors experience that you couldn't take 15 minutes out of your day to say, here's where I see I can be more excellent or my company that I work with can be more excellent, or the family of companies can be more excellent. Here's where I see from my seat that we can improve. And I don't usually do that. I'm so overly nice most of the time. But you get me like in a, you know, I don't know, a mood or something. I'm just like, no, no. And for me right now, it's like, I want to take it to the next level. Yep. I am so freaking excited about taking it to the next level, I cannot even tell you. And so I'm just like, hey, you get it, but. Or you're just not. That you're not the right fit. You know, we gotta sit down. If you don't get it to us by 9am Then you're just not somebody that's gonna fit for our family of companies. And I've started to see responses roll in and funny that not only are people in, the people that I think are going to do it, they're. They're doing it very quickly. They're also saying, wow, that post was inspiring, that it was authentic, it was real and raw. Somebody else had mentioned, you know, I work with this company because of the pursuit of excellence. One of the things I learned from this company is communication and how important it is to be have quick communication back and forth because it really shows how much we care about our investors, that we have prompt communication that we're taking care of them. And I was just like, oh, wow. You know, and there was something in a couple of them that was very much like they appreciated the fact that, hey, you were drawing a line in the sand, that, hey, we do want to work with other people that care. Because it stinks for A players to have to work with B players.

Right.

It stinks for A players, especially to work with C players. We're just like, kick them out. You don't deserve to be here. Like, we're on a mission and we want to achieve it. So I was just super excited about that project. I wanted to mention it today because I think it's something that everybody should do in their life. One of the people actually Even said, here's what I'm doing on a personal basis. Here's what I'm doing in 2024 to. To pursue excellence. And they defined excellence at the very beginning of the. Of the email. Like, this is what excellence mean. This is what I'm doing. And like, I was like, man, I love our team. Okay, so I've been ranting and raving.

Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, I'm still working on mine, but chat GPT went down, and so I couldn't finish before this recording.

You're such a cheater.

Hey, ChatGPT, how do I achieve excellence? Thank you.

Oh, my gosh.

AI, it's. It's just ruin. Ruining our brains. It's doing all the work for us. It's just crazy.

Half the words, I don't even know what they mean.

Okay, well.

Flip is not pursuing excellence in his efforts to actually write me this.

I am too. I'm using my resources.

So, guys, we are super, super excited. Do you want to, like, intro this guy? Like, I know we intro him in the actual episode.

Yeah, we talked about him at the begin. But what's funny is that, you know, we. We got to know him from our mastermind, and we talk about this and, you know, and you'll hear in the recording, but we got to know him in the mastermind. And I mean, this guy's. This guy's. He's.

He's gold.

Yeah. Yeah, but I mean, he's.

He's cool.

You know, he's. He's. You know, he's. He's like in a crowded room. I want to go hang out with him, because I bet you the stories he's telling are going to be way more colorful than anyone else in the room.

Oh, that's 100% true.

And that's not just because of the. His vocabulary.

Just his.

His. I mean, he just.

I mean, for me, he's a real deal.

Oh, yeah.

Like, you don't get, like, he's just real.

Yeah, yeah. No, and.

And. And I love it.

And then. And then. Then we found out what he was. What he did.

Yeah.

And we're like, oh, my gosh, we.

Have to work with you.

And then we tell the team about him. Oh, my gosh. We know this guy. His name is Aaron Chapman. And Tiffany, our transaction quarter. He goes, oh, yeah. We've been working with Aaron for years. Like, you kidding me?

We actually go into that story a little bit in the very beginning and tell you why that story. And Aaron hit the nail on the head. So we are going to go ahead and roll right into that episode. We hope you enjoy this show.

You're tuned into the Freedom Show. We are in the studio having a conversation we're really excited to share with you. Today's guest is Erin Chapman.

Erin, we're so excited to have you here but please, before we dive in, we are going to let Flip introduce you to our audience.

Aaron Chapman is a veteran in the finance industry with 25 years of experience helping clients better understand source and finance cash flow positive investment properties. He advises over 100 clients a month in the acquisition and financing of their investment properties and primary residences.

And we're one of them.

Aaron is ranked in the top 1% of mortgage loan originators in the country. In an industry of over 1 million million loan originators closing in excess of 100 transactions per month, Aaron was ranked number 7 of the 1 million-plus for the number of transactions closed in 2022. Welcome to the show.

Woohoo.

Thank you for the intro. Is one thing that's interesting about that you would think when you reach certain points and you achieve certain things that you would talk about a lot like I will give that to people for the bio thing. So when they're talking to me or introducing me to their, their audience, you know, you're not deal for me doesn't know what they're talking about. I've got some experience in it and it's not education, it's experience. To me that's a bigger difference. You know, there's a lot of people that are very, very educated that's got a lot of degrees on theory on and, and speculation but they don't have the experience on how it really, really works in the real world when you apply a theory. I didn't have any theories to apply. I just got in the industry and man, you learned a lot when you're just taking it right? Taking a fist right to the face every single day.

That's right. Yes, yes, yes.

We love it. And we created the Freedom show as the first podcast. It's season two of our podcast and it's the first time we're bringing on guests. So Aaron is actually part of our network and that's what we've told everybody is that we're bringing on our network. This isn't people that we don't know. This is people that we actually have experience with. We work with, we're in masterminds with, we know like and trust and we're introducing them to you. And so what I wanted to say was something funny that we talked about right before we started recording was Aaron, we started getting to know you through the power Room, a mastermind that we're in together. And I was so super excited after you spoke on stage. And I said, man, I want to share this with our team. Aaron, can you come and, you know, do a virtual meeting with our team?

I'm going to get, you know, some.

Of the most important people in there so they can listen to what you.

Have to say and be able to share it with our audience. And as soon as I told the team that day that you agreed to do it and we were going to.

Set up a time, Tiffany, our transaction coordinator goes, dude, I know Aaron. We've been working with him for a while now.

He's awesome.

I love him.

Is so funny.

That's one of the greatest compliments in the world. Honestly, is. Is when somebody's like, I already know who that person is and I'm already on board. Yeah.

Yes, yes.

It was just phenomenal. And that just kind of also speaks to the fact that Flip and I have elevated ourselves enough that the team really knows what they're doing.

Right.

They find the players that are going to add value to our company as a whole and they latch onto them. And so even though we think we're bringing them value, they're like, hey, we already found this guy. You know, we got it going on.

So yeah, we're super exc. Have you on the show.

What also is cool about that fact is usually when you, you, as you said, ele. Elevate yourself out of the day to day routines, you're not involved in. What happens on a moment by moment basis is if you did know my name, it's because something was going wrong right in your world or your space is going to hear about it. That's me. I only get to hear about the bad stuff. I never get the. I never get the. The. I rarely get the compliments. I rarely get the good things. I rarely hear about how many closings we had till it was done over. I hurry up. I hear about the problems and what needs to be fixed all the time. So it feels like when you're in our position, it feels like everything is just coming apart around you all the time. 24, 7. You're solving problems. Like, I'm like, I'm expecting me to be completely broke with all the shit that I'm constantly having to deal with because it feels like everything's blowing up and then come to find out we closed all these deals. I'm like, how many close to me damn deals when, like, literally I'm dealing with all these problems, but it's a little bit of problem and a ton of good things that you don't have to get involved in.

Yes, absolutely.

And Flip and I experienced that same thing. It's such a. It's the perfect way to describe the world once you get to a higher level in your company. And I love having the trusted team, but like, we're like, hey, can you. Can you share some good news every now and then? Can we have like a shout out channel that says, look what we did so we're not having to just chase the fires all the time?

So I love the way that you.

Describe that, but I want to kick off the show, Erin, with having you share your freedom story. So the freedom show and what Flip and I talk about all the time is the different types of freedoms that we have, what's important to us in life, in business, and we love hearing other people's stories. So what does freedom mean to you? And can you share your story of.

How you achieve freedom in your life?

Freedom for me, is truly the mindset of how you go about what you're dealing with every day. We just talk about the fact that when you become successful dealing with problems and when you. When that's how you achieve success. But when you become successful, your life seems to be nothing but problems because of what you have to solve all the time. You become something to other people because of your capability of solving those issues. And so to me, the freedom was. Came from just understanding what. What it was that I was trying to achieve. And that once you achieve it, you've never really achieved it because there's no such thing as having a. To me, no matter what goal I ever. No matter whatever goal I achieved, I've never been happy with it. I've always been happy in the process, but never with the outcome. Even when you got exactly what you planned on getting, like, okay, well, now I got to do that crap again, you know, so we live in our. We live in the real estate world where we do everything in the. In the form of a month and a quarter and a year. Right? So at the end of the month, yes, we kicked ass. We accomplished what we want to, and what happens the very next day? You start at zero. You got. It's like. It's like getting to Everest. They drop you right back off at the borders of Tibet and you got to work your way, way across. It's not just climbing the mountain from base camp to the top getting to base camp is all is hell, right? So you're starting over every single month. So there's that, that and there what word it really comes from. I think part of this understanding of freedom comes with one of my assistants years ago, she said to me, she goes, boss, life is hard. I need the cheat code. Like you just figured out the cheat code. She goes, what's that? I said that life is hard. And so the second person understands what you have in front of you and how difficult it's going to be, you literally can start moving instead of sitting there thinking, man, something's, something's not working right. It's the people that think that there's a cheat boat. It's the people that think that somebody got ahead because they had something special about them or they had this, you know, they had this, this leg up or somebody gave them something. Those are the guys who get a really, really miserable and don't have freedom. The person that realizes that life is going to be tough and it's going to beat on you, it's going to crush you, it's going to smash you, but you can still get back up. Those are people actually achieve the understanding of freedom, which is the ability to just continue to keep moving in the, in the face of adversity.

Yes.

That is so very powerful and something I think that doesn't get talked about a lot. So I'm really glad that you hit on that subject. So many people think that it's overnight success because they hear the great stories, you know, they hear about all the successes, but they're not in the day.

To day mud of what we deal.

With and what we have to go through. And if you embrace that, just like you said, then there's a, I don't know, satisfaction of going through it every single day. This is reality, this is what we do and this is what I'm good at, good at solving problems and that's why I'm successful. So that is very, very powerful. So on your freedom story, it wasn't an overnight success, right, for you to get where you are today. So where did you start? And, and, and tell us a little bit about how you got to where.

You are in, in the mind.

You guys said I was ranked number seven in the United States last year of over a million people that do the type of work that I do. That's number seven in just in the industry as a whole and number one in my space, which is focusing on helping real estate investors almost exclusively. We still do all the Other stuff, as you'd mentioned, owner, occupy, stuff, whatever. But we really, really focus on the real estate investor because that's the hardest thing to do by achieve number seven in the, in the entire industry and number one in my space in year 25. So that's not an overnight success. That's 25 years of this. Then you go back before that. I got to take it all the way back to high school. I was working in the. On a cattle ranch. My family had a cattle ranch. And that's what was my first real. I mean my exposure to work was day one, I think my parents didn't even let me sit there as an infant. I was like, you got to do dishes or something, right? We, we learned as kids never let your par. Sitting because they will find something for you to do. So if you're going to sit, you better be hiding. And that was how. How we went about life. And then you did the cattle ranching and yours never any sitting. You were constantly working. You start to understand business. The actual simplest business plan in the world, which is planting crops and harvesting crops and taking care of the crops, that kind of thing. So that's where that started. And I, I realized when I was in high school, it's like I want. I felt like there's something more to do with my life. So I tried the college courses in my senior year. And I hated, in fact I was really good at picking locks. And that's how I was able to engineer the seed that I got all through high school so I could graduate because I couldn't stand doing the schoolwork. I figured out how to get people their tests. I figured out how to take those tests. I figured out how to trade that for homework and for attendance because I did. I was hunting, I was four wheeling and I was snowboarding more than I was doing anything else when it comes to high school. So then I was able to engineer getting out of high school halfway through my senior year. And I went to work in the oil fields of Wyoming. And then from there I went to work running heavy equipment and driving truck. And I ended up in the mines of northern New Mexico in 1997. And that was the greatest job I ever had. It was amazing. Absolutely loved that job. But they shut down the project. So then miners typically are like, they're like military guys. They always go to the next mine. Everybody's moving around to the next place. And I came back to Arizona, my, my wife and infant son. Here I was driving back and forth 10 hours one way to go to work for 13 shifts and I couldn't find work to save my life. Everywhere I applied, I was over qualified, over qualified, overqualified. And then it got to a point where we were so broke that my wife gave me a coupon for free diapers as I'm walking out the door to go get to go apply for a 10 an hour truck driving job to Hall Landscape Rock. And I got there and again I got the exact same response, this BS word overqualified. And I didn't understand. How can you overqualify for something you either good at it, you're not, you can either do the job or you can't. I didn't understand it. So as I'm leaving there wiping tears, I get in my truck, I started up to drive away and I've got my coupon to go to the store and get those diapers. My gas light comes onto my truck and I'd not driven that truck very far on a gas light to know how far you can get. So I found the closest grocery store that had a gas station on the corner. So I pulled up to a pump, I had a debit card. That's all I had. I said a quick prayer, I swiped my debit card and I got a decline for having an overdrawn account. So I rummaged in my truck to hoping to find a lost dollar. I found some coins, I locked the doors and I started walking that parking lot. And what seem like a couple of hours had passed, I collected enough change to get 2 gallons of gas. Now this is 1997, right? Gas is 80 some odd cents a gallon, way different than what we're paying now. And people still carry change. So yep, I had the ability to get enough of it to exchange that time for that gas. I went inside, I found those, those diapers. I stood in line with that one item to go check out with a damn coupon. Just it seemed like another punch to the face. And as I'm walking out with my head down, avoiding all eye contact, I my name being called. And I turned to see a guy that I used to work with when I was running heavy equipment. He ran the office. I was one of the guys who ran one of the crews. He asked me how things were. I explained a little bit of what I just explained to you guys, but very, very, I glazed off it really, really quickly because I didn't want to share where I was at. He was embarrassed. He said, let's go to dinner. I told my dude, I can't afford dinner. He goes No, I got a gift certificate to Red Lobster from a client, Mike. Okay, cool. So my wife and I met him for dinner and that's where he shared with me that he was in the mortgage industry. He slid me a business card for a broker shop and he connected with his branch manager. So I called those guys, see if I could at least check this out. I had no idea what, what this was. The only thing I knew about mortgages was the old man, the old lady losing their farm to this thing called the mortgage. So it was very, very negative in my mind. And that was the things that you watched on tv, right? The old black and white movies. So I shaved, I cut a foot off of my hair, my mom bought me some business like clothes and I went in and interviewed and they started me as a telemarketer in 1997 7. And let me just tell you, there's no more miserable place in the freaking world to start in any industry is that as a telemarketer that freaking sucked. But I got to understand the language, right? So that was a beating itself. I was learning the language and talking to people. And I convinced them after I generated 10 leads, I'm like, can I work a couple of these, these leads? So then they introduced me to another loan originator, say hey, he'll train you on your first 10 deals. And I went through that and then, you know, it took me. I was able to get a job driving truck to Sacramento and back and then try and work in the office three days a week. And that was miserable. I quit that. Driving a truck to California through California every week is. There's nothing worse in the world except telemarketing. I got another job. I was able to get back on, hired on with a company that was digging swimming pools for. I get up to the get up every day at 3am, be at the yard by 4, be back by noon, be in my office by 2 every day for a single, for an entire year sleeping four a night till the rates dropped below 7% in 1998. And I was able to actually replace that income with enough deals coming in. Prayerfully considered leaving the second job and just doing the one. And I've never looked back since. And it's been, it's been, it's been brutal. It's been a brutal battle. You got all that, you got the crash 2008, you got the cycles, got all these beatings that have, have happened in my world. And it was honestly, if I didn't have that negative of an experience and if I Could find a job that was going to keep me that. That world that I was in as a, you know, heavy equipment operator or a truck driver. I'd probably still be doing that. But I needed people to make my life that miserable to the point that I was walking a parking lot. And not just walking a parking lot. But the timing had to be perfect. If I picked up too many coins too quickly, I would have gotten that gas too early, and I would not have seen Keith. If I didn't find coins fast enough and it took me longer time, I would not have seen Keith. The timing was absolutely perfect. And so. So when I look on that prayer that I said to get my. My debit card to go through the decline. At first felt like the prayer was unanswered, but in reality, it was the greatest answer I could have ever gotten.

Yes, yes. Fate, destiny.

I don't know how many words we.

Could think of to. To relate to that story, but wow. Yes.

Divine intervention. That's right. That's right.

That's right.

Had just. I just. I'm. I'm so blessed that it worked or it didn't work. And I had to go through that and the beating that came after that again, just because God steps in. And I'm going to say that there's many comments. People can tell me there's no such things. I don't give a damn what you have to say. I know where I was at and what I was dealing with at that time, because God stepped in. He didn't literally just drop $10 million in my account. No, he said. Said, here's. There's two bucks out there. Go get that $2.

Yeah.

And then go do this and then go do this. And 25 years later, here's where we sit. And is the market easy? No, the market's tough. I mean, have I not. I've restarted several times since that. Since 1997, I've taken bigger beatings than 1997. And we still move forward because it's those little lessons that you got to learn. And hell, I'm probably sitting in an ass whooping right now. They just don't realize I'm taking.

Thinking, yeah, that's right.

The freedom is you are getting the. Out of you, and you don't even know it because you're. You've gotten so damn tough that you've stood up every single time. Right. 2008. Right. Everybody remembers 2008. Everybody knows the hell that they went through in 2008. August 8th of 2008, which has always been my lucky number. I'm on a Harley going out of town to get my head clear for four days and a kid takes me out at 80 plus miles an hour. I wake up in a hospital with the inability to walk. My memory gets erased and I have to learn, go through all that healing and physical therapy to get taught how to walk again and then train my brain how to remember because it would, it would cycle every three minutes. I would erase my last three minutes every three minutes. So coming back from that and rebuilding a business and getting a business going, when everything's obliterated to go, then start working with the real estate investor and then start developing this business that goes from Arizona to Indiana to Texas to Missouri. And this continues to grow into 30 states. That's not an easy achievement either. It's every single day of getting the kicked out of you all day, every day. And it's not just the market. It's not just the people that you're trying to get business from. It's not your clients, it's not your co workers, it's your company sometimes. And it's the fact that everybody else out there starts to know your name. They're trying to take your business from you. It is brutal out there. And so if a person thinks that it's easy to achieve and then you just put your feet up and put your feet back and say, I can relax. You can't just like anybody climbing ever Everest. You get to the top of Everest, you don't just sit down and relax and crack open a beer, that will kill you. You get the hell down and go to the next goal.

That's right. That's right, man. I was thinking through your story and.

I'm just like, he.

If Aaron talks like we do, like if, if. I'm not gonna even say that part, but you cuss like a sailor. Like I cuss like a sailor. We were talking to the Slaughters yesterday. We're in this accountability call with him. And so Flip goes, hey, we're talking to Aaron Chapman tomorrow. He's going to be on our podcast. Oh, we're gonna have to go beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.

The hell out of myself because of the family investment. Damn it. There's gonna be kids listening to this. Hell, out of everything I've said so far. No, no, no.

I love it. I cuss a lot, too. And a lot of people don't even know that depending on what they're listening to, but I relate to you.

I talk in church and I still let it just fly because I'm like, sometimes my. My mouth is faster than my mind. I can't. I can't stop it.

It's okay to believe in God and love God and still cuss. That's my rule. So what I really, really enjoyed about that is that very much like we do when we are, when we're talking about our story and our freedom story, our journey of building these businesses, we keep it real. And so I told you before we started this podcast, we were going to jump into. Into a get real segment that I don't feel like we even have to touch because you just kept it real from the very second we started this podcast until now about your story, how you got there, and the shit that you have to deal with along the road. So just thank you for being that type of person that doesn't always talk about rainbows and sunshine. Right? Because it's not always pretty.

It's tough.

And you have to get up every single day and face the challenges and go to bed at night, wake up next day and do it again. And there's not enough people that talk about that.

So I just want to say, you know, so glad to have you on the show.

I think that. And God bless the people that talk about that kind of stuff, because they need that to remind themselves that, yeah, they're getting their asses kicked, but it's still very good. But I think that gives people the wrong impression of what success is. They're too busy, you know, walking through the line at the grocery store and they see the fashion magazine. They're like all the. They're literally looking down on themselves because of how pretty that person is on the COVID That person just went through $10,000 of bullshit just to take that picture, picture. So just know that when they woke up that morning, they were probably uglier than you. And so wrong thought process. In our mind, we limit ourselves. And when I tell everybody you're not limited. You. You. The only person that's limiting you is you. The rest of the world is not. Just get off your ass and do something. And you may not even see the fruits of your labor that day. That's what really, really sucks about trying to get in shape and trying to lose weight. It takes you a year to see a difference, and it's. It sucks. But it's a matter of changing your thought process, changing your lifestyle and just doing something, just moving, making it a part of your life every single day. I saw that recently because you know, two years ago, I said, damn it, I need to get back into some sort of shape because I've had so many injuries. I've broken 56, 57 bones in my life.

Oh, my gosh.

Both shoulders repaired. I finally went to the physical therapist in 2021. I think it was like, listen, I need to be able to, to, to work this again. Finally. They will do a push up again in November of 2021. I spent all of 2022 trying to get my body back into some sort of shape, and it took all of 2022 and is the most frustrating crap I've ever experienced. You guys know Aaron Nimmo and his team?

Yes.

A stupid amount of money I had to spend just to learn how to not eat dumb and then give me a bunch of things to do every day, and now I just do them. It's part of life.

Yeah.

And it changes your life. If you just do the same things that, you know, you're supposed to do every single day repeatedly, then a year or two down the road, like, holy, I look what I accomplished. Because you do a little bit of stuff every single day.

Consistency. It's all about consistency. I couldn't agree more.

All right, well, welcome back.

Sorry.

That was part one.

Yeah, it was.

We had to split it in two episodes because the one thing that I wasn't going to do, and I don't think you were going to do it either, was cut him off.

I'm just.

Because, and, and wa till part two because it's just, it gets even better. But just, I mean, we've, we've known Aaron for, for a few years now and we've heard a lot of stories from Aaron and, and how, you know, But I, I, I've never heard the $2 story. Yeah, you know, I didn't, I've never heard that story. That, that just. Boy, that just grabs you.

Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it really does. And, you know, just his stories about breaking 56 bones, I think he says in his journey back.

Yeah, 56 or 57, I think.

Yeah.

You can't remember. Yeah, I think I would remember.

Yeah.

And that journey back, it's funny because he mentioned discipline equals freedom, which is a Jocko. I actually think somebody else actually has credit for that quote. Yeah, we know that Jocko is somebody that. We bought his book Discipline Equals Freedom. And it's something that I've seen, you know, recently, especially as you and I have kind of gone back into really refining our routine and doing things that are new and that are kind of transforming who we are as people. And we just recently over lunch, we're just talking about, you know, holiday break and, you know, how we want to use that and how we want to continue to gain some traction, what we want to do versus what we don't want to do. Because it's also very much about, you know, life stuff, you know. Right. And what I really loved about Aaron's episode in this particular one was he talk, he talks about, about how tough life is. And if you just embrace the fact that life is tough, like life's hard, there's struggle, there's suffering, like there's challenges, there's also fun, there's joy, there's freedom, there's, there's happiness. Like it's so fantastic. But you never get over it, never gets to the point where you don't have challenges. You never get over the fact that there's going to be software suffering and there's going to be trials and tribulations. And if you just embrace the fact that that's what you wake up to every day, what you wake up and have to deal with every single day, if you just embrace the fact that you also woke up today, right. And you have the privilege to be somebody who is solving problems, who is getting to embrace those challenges that are coming your way, those that the suffering. And you're getting to, you know, do something that maybe other people don't still don't have the opportunity to. Something you and I say a lot is, gosh, I'd rather be having all these struggles with seven companies than be starting from the beginning all over again. The problems get bigger as you grow. So I'd rather have our huge freaking massive problems than to be back at the very, very, very beginning. And so Aaron talks about, you know, discipline equals freedom. And his story of, you know, his journey back to being able to like do push ups and you know, do certain things in exercise. And I think it was really fantastic. And you guys know that we love the get real stuff. We love just, you know, be genuine, be authentic. Just say it like it is. Because none of us like to deal with somebody who is just telling you all the good, wonderful stories and they're not telling you about the hard stuff, right? Because the hard stuff is what teaches you lessons. And boy, Aaron spent the whole first, first half of this episode really digging in to the hard stuff and telling the stories of, man, this has not been easy. And this is what I've gone through and this is how I got through it. And this is what I learned. And he just keeps it real. And we brought him on because we love him being in our network. He is a great value to our network. But he really proved today that he also aligns with us as people. He aligns with what we believe in terms of getting real. So I was just really excited.

I like that I could be. I could be getting a beating right now, and I don't even know. I could be taking a meeting right now.

Yeah.

Yeah. Because, like, I'm just used to it. Yeah, I'm just used to, like, suffering and going through, you know, trials and having challenges all day long. That. Yeah, he doesn't. Yeah, I love that line, too. That was really good. Okay, so part two is going to be next week. We're really, really excited about that. Part two. He's going to go into what I call his superpower. I think he. He rephrased it a little bit, but, like, there's people that have what. What I say are superpowers. Like, it is what they do so freaking well. You don't want to work with anybody else because they're so good at it. Next week, he's going to be talking about that, and you are going to be blown away. Bring a calculator to the episode. Unless you're driving in a car, then just listen and. Actually, we didn't have a calculator during this episode.

Yeah, you can see that. We didn't have.

So we're doing math in our heads. So you can do math in your head while you're driving. And you're going to hear when we make a mistake. And I think you made a mistake once, and then I made a mistake, like, the next time I attempted to.

Do math in my head.

So it's a really fun, fun episode. It's so incredibly educational and powerful. He really goes into why you should not be sitting on your hands right now. Right. In real estate, and why it's so important to be taking action. He gives you his cell phone number, and. And you're gonna love it. It's so exciting. So. But before we go, we just want to remind you that we have the Cottonwood syndication. It's a townhomes in Menorah, Ohio. We are just finishing up this raise. This is the last chance to capture tax advantages for the year of 2023. If this does not backfill by the time 2023 ends, we are taking the tax advantages for ourself. We have held off on doing so because we want to give it to investors who are Joining us in this incentive in this syndication. We are already ahead, ahead of schedule. The property is performing. It's a fantastic property. John actually did a video walkthrough of it. Like just the other day he sent me a, a video compilation that I think we sent out to our email. It is a 560. You have to be an accredited investor to get in. There are very few spots left. Again, the tax advantages, when you take advantage of these things, this is the 1% of the 1%. And this is how they get wealthy. They know how to reduce their tax burden so that they can add to their wealth and the growth of their portfolio by simply legally not paying taxes. So we have the opportunity for you for bonus depreciation. This is the last chance for 2023 where you get it 80%. Next year it goes to 60%. So every single year you're getting less and less of your bonus depreciation. So I would jump on the phone, go to chat with freedom.com, jump on the phone with CJ or Ben, ask them about it, get that those funds in there. We already have a couple people that we've been talking to that we said call your CPA and ask them what your tax burden is. Ask them how much this is going to affect and reduce your tax burden and then jump in. Because once it's full, it's full. And if we don't fill it by the end of 2023, then hello flipping Danny and the company family of. We're going to take on the tax benefits ourselves, which we don't mind doing, but we would rather give them to you. That's why we're here, to be able to help us all win together. So again, thanks for being here, thanks for listening to this podcast. Aaron is freaking awesome and we're excited to have him next week again for part. Dos, dos, dos. All right, everybody, we are going to see you next Wednesday.

Nothing on this show is 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.