226: Millenial Mindset, Success Traits & Investing Rules with Client and Wealth Strategist Jaden Zubal

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Welcome to the Heroic Investing Show, a podcast for first responders, members of the military, veterans and anyone looking to improve their financial future and gain some freedom with their time. We teach America's heroes how how to build passive income, build their startup business and safely grow wealth through real estate and other alternative investments. We help current and prior first responders put protections, systems and a team in place to help them build a life where they can focus on their passion, that service or product that they are uniquely gifted to share with others, making the world a better place for all of us. My name is Gary Pinkerton and I co host this show with Jason Hartman. This is episode 226. Today's episode recently ran on the Creating wealth podcast and it's Jason interviewing a dear friend and business colleague of mine, Jaden Zubal. Jaden and I teamed forces almost two years ago now and his growth in both real estate investing and as a wealth strategist with me at Paradigm Life. He is absolutely fantastic. And I think all of those of you out there that are in the millennial generation or that are a couple decades younger than me at least, will really value the insights and the thought process, the motivating perspective that Jaden brings to this podcast.

Let's go to our client case study Young guy doing great things. Let's talk to Jayden and learn something from from what he's doing. And by the way, if you have young people in your life, kids, other people's kids, strangers on the street, people on Facebook or social media, wherever that you are connected with, recommend this interview to them because they can learn something and you can help them get ahead in life. Okay, here is our client case study with jd. It's my great pleasure to bring Jaden Zubal on the show. He reached out and volunteered to come on and just share some of his experiences. He is a wealth strategist and loves income property as an investment category, kind of integrates that on what he does with his clients and such. But the great thing about Jayden is he's attended many of our events and he is only 26 years old. And so he's getting an awesome head start on life and really internalizing some of the principles. He's located in Salt Lake City. And Jayden, welcome on the show. Thanks for coming on.

Jason, thank you so much for having me.

Yeah, it's my pleasure. Tell us a little bit about your background real quick and let's dive into your investment strategies.

Excellent. Yeah. So as you mentioned, I'm 26 years old. I got my start in the investment world through your platform. Actually, I am located in Salt Lake City. I'm part of a group called Paradigm Life. And in my experience with that group, I came across your group where I attended Meet the Masters. I want to say the first one was 2016, maybe 2017, one of those two.

So you were only 22 or 23 then, I guess. Right. And doing the math. Yeah, exactly.

I was very, very young when I came across your group. And at the time, I was just getting started in what I wanted to do in the investment world as far as real estate was concerned. I had listened to your podcast a fair amount up to that point. Right. And I knew that it was a really interesting pathway for me. But I have to say that Meet the Masters is what really sold me on your group and just the turnkey world in general.

And by the way, for those who might be listening and don't know what that is, that's an annual conference that we hold. It's usually two days, sometimes two and a half or three days, and we have a lot of different speakers come in and talk at that conference. And it's always been, at least so far in Southern California. Now we have another annual event called Prophets in Paradise, and I just saw you there last weekend. That was in Orlando, Florida, this year. The year before it was in. In Hawaii. Now, I think you also went to our JHU event in Salt Lake City, I believe. Right. A few years back.

I actually haven't been to the JHU yet. If you end up doing another one of those, I'm sure I'll be there. But up to this point, I have not. Now, I have to say that with profits in paradise in Orlando this last weekend, something that stood out to me there that I actually wanted to mention was James Malinchak, what he spoke about. Absolutely incredible guy. Just the idea behind how you speak to people and how you present yourself was really an incredible presentation.

Yeah, we try to have some stuff that's not just directly on real estate investing or income property per se, but some things of general interest. So, you know, we. We have Various speakers over the years. We've had Ron Paul talking about liberty, G. Edward Griffin talking about the Federal Reserve and the monetary system, and James Malinch talked. He did two talks for us. One that was kind of a. I'll say a more general success talk, but one that was a persuasion talk as well. So that was great. I'm glad you enjoyed it. And also when I interviewed him from the stage, he talked about how he suffered some online trolling with a, you know, person that wanted to get even with him after he wouldn't let him speak at his events anymore. That's what I've been saying, Jaden. I don't know if you heard about that, but any success, you know, people get attacked and it's a lot harder to keep it together than it looks from the outside. You know, when we look at successful people in the world, we kind of think, oh, my gosh, they're just so lucky or fortunate or they just have it made. But you always encounter these forces from the outside which will try and keep you from your goal, right?

Oh, absolutely. I completely agree with that. In fact, there was. I'm trying to think of the quote as you were speaking, but there's a quote that I really, really love that ties right in line with that. I can't remember off the top of my head now, but I'll have to come back to that if I think.

Of it, and I might think of it, too, and I'll bring it up if we do. But anyway, you talked before offline with me about some of the different Ten Commandments in my teaching about investing and which ones were most helpful and meaningful to you.

Yes, absolutely. So, as I mentioned a few minutes ago, you know, listening to your podcast really got me involved in this and got me thinking about it. You know, the education that's involved there and particularly the Ten Commandments, just seem to resonate really well with my own philosophies and my own thinking. So the ones that I really wanted to mention here are the first. Right. So becoming educated.

Yeah. Thou shalt become educated commandment number one.

Exactly. I can't express enough how important that is to success and the success that I've achieved over the last couple of years. Right. Because as we said, I'm fairly young, so within the. My stated real estate goal, I bought the first property that I've ever purchased last year. So I'd actually been to. I think I'd been to two of your conferences and was about to come to the third. Right. I had registered and set up Everything for the third conference when I bought that first property. From that point forward, my stated goal has been three properties a year. And that all came about because of the education side of things. Right. My drive is to educate myself and everything involved in the process before I get involved in actually investing. And so that they educated, drove me to. The very first thing I remember doing in that process of educating was watching your Proforma video on your website homepage.

Right. And that's just so everybody knows. That's@JasonHartman.com it's right on the front page. And it's how to analyze real estate investment, which really is how to analyze a pro forma and how to, you know, understand the numbers. So I would highly recommend that free video for anybody. You know, it's 27 minutes long. And if there's one thing that sort of sums it up, that would be it. So, yeah, I'm glad you liked it. That's great.

Yeah, yeah. So that was amazing. And then I'm going to skip here to commandment number three, I believe it is. And it's the stay in control. Right. So maintaining control, being a direct investor in what you're doing. Part of what I teach as a wealth strategist is something we refer to as the hierarchy of wealth. And that hierarchy of wealth is. Jason, have you ever heard of the hierarchy of needs? Maslow's.

Yeah. In fact, I think Maslow left two of them out on the hierarchy of needs. I've. Ever since my college psychology class, I've thought about that. And do you want to know which ones I think he left out?

Jaden, of course. Yeah.

Maslow on his hierarchy. Now, granted, of course, you know, one of the things on there is your basic needs is shelter. Okay. So that's what we provide as investors. But getting more esoteric than just talking about shelter. His highest level at the top of the pyramid of self actualization. For Maslow. Sorry, that is it self actualization. Right. But I think there are two other things he left out. One that I'd say is higher than self actualization. And I think it should be the top of the pyramid. And I think that's spiritual actualization. You know, throughout human history, there has been some form of organized religion. And even before that there have been spiritual pursuits. And I think that goes above self actualization. Certainly self actualization. It's important. I agree. But I think spiritual actualization is actually above that. And then the other one he left out, and I don't know where it should go on the pyramid is human beings have always been interested and fascinated by and had, I think, an actual need to change their state. And certainly, you know, many people will think, well, they do that with substances and drugs. And that's true. But they also do it with roller coasters and skateboarding and movement. People do it with alcohol. I'm not saying every way they change their state is positive. I'm just saying they do it, you know, they do it through physical activity. You know, we've all heard of runners running these long, long distances, getting what they call runners high. That's the reason many people are addicted, and you could argue that's a good addiction, is to fitness and working out because of that high we get from the endorphins that are released. So the need to change one's state, I think it belongs on the hierarchy. Maslow is out of business. He missed two things. What do you think?

I agree with that. Particularly the spiritual actualization that you mentioned. You know, I had never thought about it in that way, but it definitely is an important part of life. Right. It's something that we all have some sort of attachment to.

Absolutely.

And would have a major impact on us.

Yeah. Couldn't agree more. So you were talking about the investor hierarchy, and this, I believe you said, is in Patrick Donahoe's book.

Yeah. So Patrick Donahoe's book, Heads I Win Tells yous Lose talks a little bit about this, and then I often will talk about it in meetings with clients as well. But the idea behind it is taking what Maslow created and turning it into a financial picture. So we're taking the bottom of the pyramid, which in Maslow's case is things like food and shelter. Right. The basic necessities of life. And we're turning that into what do you need to safely grow your money and keep your money protected so that as you're climbing the pyramid? So the way we usually have it set up is in four tiers. Tier one would be things like a savings account, money that needs to be well protected. Tier 2 would be, I always say, turnkey. Real estate investments fit very well in Tier two, because what you can do is you take the money that you protect and grow in Tier one and you shift it up into Tier two. Then if anything goes wrong in Tier two, which often does when you're making investments, you don't fall off the pyramid and go back down to square one. Right. You have something protecting you so that you can slowly work your way up that pyramid.

Okay, good, good. So having a safeguard is basically what you're talking about, right?

Exactly.

Yeah. A plan B, if you will. And that's why I just like the conservative investment strategy that, you know, we talk about all the time, because, you know, it's just likely to work. You know, all of these speculators and people with all their big talk, I don't know, see very few of them ever getting rich.

Exactly.

They sound good, but in practice, it doesn't seem to translate.

That is so true, Jason. I've seen that numerous times. We work with thousands of people across the country, and a lot of the advice that's given is just very, very poor.

Yeah. Isn't it amazing? Why is that, do you think, Jayden, that so much of our culture believes these crazy investment mythology that's out there?

When you say that, I think of 401ks, right. The stock market. It's not necessarily that it's bad to put your money there, but I don't think it's where people should start. And I believe people go for that because it's the only thing that's taught. If you look at mainstream, what people see today and what they learn about, everywhere you look, it's, where are you putting your money in the market? What are you doing with your money over here? How are you investing your money in your 401k? That kind of talk. There's never any talk of, you know, what are you doing with your real estate investments? And what are you doing with the money that you need to protect? Right.

Yeah. I think that Wall street just does a great job of marketing and. And they're just great at it, but they have the mediocre investment, whereas the real estate industry does a lousy job of marketing, yet they have the best investment. It's. Yeah, it's sad that it's that way. You know, more people should know, but they seem to be figuring it out. So that's good news.

Yeah. No, Wall Street's the best marketers in the world. Right. I listened to a podcast episode just a couple days ago, and you were talking about when you go down to the boat harbor, right. And you're talking about your yachts.

Right.

And this Wall street gentleman's standing there telling the. His client, you know, here's my friend at this brokerage firm's yacht. And this brokerage firm's yacht. Right. But then the question is, where are your clients? Yachts.

Yeah. Right. The clients don't have any yachts. The insiders do.

Exactly. It's always the insiders.

Yeah, yeah, it's. It's really? It's really absolutely crazy. Okay, so anything more on investment hierarchy or commandment number three, or do you want to jump back? Because I want to ask you specifically about your generation, the millennial generation, in fact. You're so young, you're almost Gen Z. Not quite, but almost. And, you know, and kind of how they view investing and kind of the future of that, that demographic cohort. I'd like to get into that, too. So let me know when you're ready.

No, let's go ahead and jump into that.

Okay, so it seems like, I mean, like any demographic cohort, right? Millennials are a mixed bag. Some of them seem very conscientious and prudent and frugal, and it seems like others have just kind of given up and they don't want to play the game at all. Right. They're just. I don't know what they're waiting for. Maybe they just don't have the foresight to see that, you know, they've got to invest, they've got to take care of themselves and take care of their financial future. But, you know, firsthand, because you have friends and peers in that group, obviously. What do you think? What do you read on this?

That's a really good point. I've recently been reading the book called Big Shifts Ahead from John Burns.

Yeah.

In fact, I actually got that book from one of your conferences. But the reason I bring that up is you mentioned, like, millennials getting down on their luck. Right. The idea that they. They just feel so encumbered in student loan debt and all of these other weighing factors that they don't take any action. They don't do anything to better their situation. I personally have noticed that very commonly, you know, in the workplace and as an example, if I look back at people that I went to college with and into high school with, there's a good portion of those, those individuals who still struggle to get their life moving. I'd say the biggest factor is student loan debt. That's really a weighing piece on people.

What's going to come of that generation then? I mean, are they waiting for an inheritance or, you know, I mean, the student loan debt is a huge problem. We've talked about it extensively, and as a public service, by the way, I'm going to be talking about an article I read recently of how to get out of student loan debt. And it is not easy, but there are a few possibilities. So we'll talk about that on a future show.

It's hard to say what would come of this generation you know, I. I spoke with somebody not too long ago who was attempting to shift around their investments a little bit and put themselves in a better situation. And he had just finished school and his student loan debts were just coming due, so he had to start making payments on this. He had set aside a couple thousand dollars a month that was specifically for investments. Right. This was going to be his real estate dollars, that kind of thing. And the stud debts came due, and I think it was, if I remember right, it was about $1,700 a month that he had to start paying, and that just wiped out.

That just makes it impossible. That's like a mortgage payment on quite a nice house, actually.

Yeah, it completely shifted his. His goals for, you know, the next 10 years. So it makes a huge impact. And it's hard to say where that's going to take our generation. But the way I try to look at this, too is there's a quote by Zig Ziglar that says you can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.

Yeah, I love that quote.

To me, that says, take action, right. Do something with your life to help other people, to add value for other people. And. Right. There are some major weighing factors, but it's what our generation has to deal with. It's the thing that we have to work around.

Yeah, absolutely. We do. We do. No question about it. So talk to us about the real estate you've purchased. I think you've got a few properties now, right?

I do, yeah. So I bought two properties in the last year, and we are looking at buying the third one before 2019 ends. So hopefully, you know, here in the next month, month and a half, we'll be getting that nailed down. So right now I own a property in Jacksonville, Florida, and then another one in Memphis, Tennessee.

Okay, so you've got Jacksonville and Memphis, and you bought one of those through our network and one outside, I believe, Right?

Correct. Yeah. So one of them through the network, and then like you said, the one out and the one. You know, the distinction I would make between that is there was a considerable amount of value added in buying through your network when it came to the investment counselor. I think that's actually one of your commandments. But it. Right. It says the idea of seeking guidance, getting somebody to help you and guide you as you go through that process. Well, there's not a lot of companies out there that do that. Most of them will simply say, okay, here you go. Right. Here's the property. Now figure out how to. How to deal with it.

Right. They're just basically referring you to the property rather than providing a support system.

Right, exactly. Yeah. And there's been a lot of value in working through your network with an investment counselor. So in particular with Jacksonville, when I purchased that property, it's an older one, and I had a fair amount of maintenance that came up right out of the gate. But dealing with your network meant that I had Sarah on my side to kind of walk me through that. Right. And she was able to help me go back and forth with the group that I purchased it through until everything was solved. And it was a very, very simple process. Right. That could have been something that cost me five or ten thousand dollars, and rather it didn't. You know, I saved a considerable amount of money just by having the right people on my team.

Yeah, we really approach this as a service business, like in a sense, a traditional real estate company, you know, that has a person, a counselor to help you all the way through the entire process and for life afterwards. I mean, as long as we're around, we're going to be here to help our clients. So, you know, you, you purchased property through our network five, 10 years ago. We're here for you. And of course, you know, more immediately as well, but definitely afterwards as well.

Yeah, I can absolutely see that. You know, anytime I've had any questions, concerns, anything like that, it's a simple email or phone call and we're taken care of.

Good to hear. So what are your plans for the future in terms of additional properties or anything else you want to share?

Plans for the future look like I've really enjoyed the Florida market and I've listened a lot lately to the idea where, you know, in the past episodes, we're talking four or five hundred episodes ago, you used to mention that you had properties in 11 states and 17 cities.

Yeah, that was a mistake. Too many. Too many. Too much diversification. Yeah.

So I've definitely internalized that lesson. And what I'm trying to do now is stay in Florida and Tennessee for a while. But with the provider in particular in Florida, he operates a lot with new build properties now. So I'm very interested in picking up probably two of those in 2020. So short term goals are continue on the three, you know, three properties a year. Probably two of those will be new builds. And then as time goes on, I'll probably just continue to lean towards the new build approach.

Yeah. Okay. So you want to go for the higher end properties of the rental market. Right. You Want to buy the new properties, kind of the class A properties, right?

Yeah, yeah. And my reasoning for that has been like we've talked about, I'm 26 years old, I'm going to be in this game for a while and I can only imagine how much maintenance will come up. So I feel like the new build approach will give me a little bit more time on the maintenance side of things.

Right. That'll be better in the long run. But you know, when you go and you look on our website@jasonhartman.com and you look at the properties, you see some stuff, Some of the rehab properties that they do look better. They look like a better deal than the new properties. Right. How do you balance that out?

They do, yeah. In fact, that was originally when I started buying properties. That was my thought process. Right. It was okay. If I look at these properties and I see, I don't know, 200amonth in cash flow on a new build and then 300 on an older property, that is probably the purchase price is probably 50% of what the new build is. I was thinking to myself, why would it ever make sense to buy these new properties? But what changed my mindset there is actually dealing with the older properties. Right. When you start buying them and start dealing with maintenance that comes up, you realize that it's just part of the game. If it's a 50, 60 year old house, there's bound to be things that happen that you didn't expect.

It always, always comes up in tenants in the lower end properties. You might get lucky, you might get a good one, but by and large, in the law of averages, you're just going to get better quality tenants in better quality properties and you're just going to have a better experience. But hey, you know, we have many clients who are kind of the more the bargain hunter type and they want those class C properties and they usually, after a few years of doing those, they usually decide, you know, I want to get some nice class A new stuff. It's a funny thing how that happens.

I can understand that mentality 100%. It was a shift for me. And I do think that there's a lot of value in the class C properties still. It just depends on your willingness to deal with them. Right, right. Part of what you've talked about quite a bit lately has been self management. And that's another big key for me is, you know, right now I'm using property managers for everything. But at some point, as I get more experienced and better with the real estate investments, I'd love to try out the self management and I think that new builds will be a lot easier to self manage.

Absolutely. I agree with you. Now I do think though you're in two markets, I do think that you can diversify into three markets. You should at least have three markets in your portfolio and not more than five. That's what we've always said. Based on the mistake I made of going into too many markets, I don't think you can own too many houses, but you can be in too many markets. So do you have an idea as to your next market to add and get three?

I do. So part of this came from the last two conferences. So the last Meet the Masters in the spring and then profits here just last week. And then part of it came from just looking at properties on the website. But I think that York, Pennsylvania really interests me. They're kind of the townhome style. That's what it looks like. Most of the properties are. I don't believe they're sold as townhomes. I think they're sold as a single family. But I like the idea of, you know, the rehab on those looks incredible. It seems like they do an amazing job in that. In that area. They always have really good rent to value ratios and that's been a big factor for me. I always kind of look at and determine things based on that rent to value. And then the provider there seems like a really good provider.

Good stuff. Good stuff. Jaden, anything else you want to say to wrap it up?

I would just say that, you know, I would reiterate that for me, a big deal has been making sure that I'm taking control of my life where I can take control of it. And again, I go back to Zig Zuler's quote of if you want something in life, make sure you're helping other people get what they want. Right. Add value for others. Do. Do what you can to help others out in life. That's really the key to success in whatever field you're or whatever endeavor you're going after. So I would just add that. And that's great.

Yeah, good stuff. Yeah. So as a real estate investor, you're providing one of people's primary needs, housing, shelter. You know, they say the three basic human needs are food, clothing and shelter. And we're right at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy there. We haven't even gone up the ladder and you got to get those taken care of. So that's what we do as real estate investors. We provide shelter, a very important need for people. So that's excellent. Jaden, do you want to share any contact information or website or anything?

Yeah, I'd love to. So if anybody's interested in talking about, you know, what I do and how I got involved in working with you specifically, please feel free to shoot me an email. You can reach me at jzubal that's spelled z u b a l aradiglife.net or you can just get on our website, paradigmlife.net and click the about us link and you'll see a picture of me right there. It'll say Jaden Zubal. Go to that and you'll be able to get a hold of me.

Good stuff, Jaden. Thanks for joining us.

All right, thanks so much, Jason.

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