2372: THE Wealth Blueprint for 2026: Mindset, Control, and Action with Michael Zuber

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Hi, I'm David Krantz. I've known Jason Hartman for 15 years now and I wish I came here 15 years ago. This has been a great event. I really appreciate you having me here, Jason, and your crew. It's been a terrific event and I've been so impressed with what you've done. I can't wait to be back here next year, not just as a vendor, but as hopefully a new client for you. Well, if you're thinking this event is for you and you're not sure if coming here or not, spend the time. A little bit of the investment for yourself is well worth the investment for your time and the money. Thanks, guys.

Welcome to the Creating wealth show with Jason Hartman. You're about to learn a new slant on investing, some exciting techniques and fresh new approaches to the world's most historically proven asset class that will enable you to create more wealth and freedom than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine, self made multimillionaire who's actually been there and done it. He's a successful investor, lender, developer and entrepreneur who's owned properties in 11 states, had hundreds of tenants, and been involved in thousands of real estate transactions. This program will help you follow in Jason's footsteps on the road to your Financial Independence Day. You really can do it. And now here's your host, Jason Hartman with the complete solution for real estate investors.

Folks, welcome to 2026. I know a lot of you are interested in getting rich. Getting wealthy. Lots of you have chosen real estate investing as your vehicle, which I think is a wonderful idea if you do it right. In great news, you've got over 50 years of experience here between Jason and I, maybe 60 years. And we're going to talk about what do you need to do right now in January to set you on the path to getting rich or getting wealthy. Jason, thank you for being here. Thank you for coming on the show each and every week. The audience truly loves you.

My pleasure, Michael. Happy New Year to you and to everybody else out there. 2026 is going to be a great year in the real estate business. And you know, compared to what, it's been kind of slow for a couple of years now. So it's definitely going to be better. Pretty much every forecast I look at says that transaction volume will pick up by about 20%, give or take this year. And I, I couldn't agree more. And I think finally we're going to see some, you know, really good direction in the market. So there's going to be a lot of opportunity. But, you know, even if that wasn't true, Michael, there would still be opportunity. And I. I guess I want to start with that idea that the most important thing is your mindset. Get your mindset right, okay? Stop being influenced by the wrong people. Misery loves company. There are always opportunities out there. You know, eagles fly alone and turkeys congregate together.

There you go.

Yeah, so I love that, I love.

That you start there, because I'm working on a goal in 2026 to write a lot more. Right. I don't write well. Writing is effort for me. So I'm going to take on a hard challenge of trying to write five days a week. And one of the ideas I'm working on is kind of like the 12 pillars of wealth building. And pillar number one is belief or hope. Right. Because if you don't have that, all the other pillars just don't matter. So I'm glad that you started there. What I would tell someone, they say.

Without hope, people perish. Right? And that's definitely true. But you don't want to be hopium, right? Like false hope. But you need to have the proper mindset. I mean, just think about this whole idea of entrepreneurship, right? Entrepreneur is a French word, right? And loosely, you know, don't quote me on this, but it stands for someone who, you know, assumes the risk for a venture, right? And that whole idea, like, you literally have to be crazy to be an entrepreneur, okay? And if you're a real estate investor, you are an entrepreneur. You have to have faith in yourself and your ideas. Regardless of what everybody else says, regardless of what the culture says, you just have to go for it. You have to burn the bridges and you have to just be kind of a little crazy, but you're. You're never going to get anywhere without that mindset.

Yeah. The first thing I would tell somebody coming into January 2026 is a lot of folks that I talk to frankly, have the wrong goal. Their wrong goal. Their. Their goal likely says something like, I want to buy one or two investments this year. Investment houses, duplexes, whatever.

Depending.

Yeah, yeah. While I admire that as a goal, I think it's actually the wrong goal, especially as starting the year. What I want people to understand is your job is to figure out what an average deal is, right? Does an average deal have a 5%? Cash on cash, negative 5%, you know, what is it? And again, how do you figure that out. Focus, discipline. We'll talk about that in a minute because it's next on my list. But I just want people to have the right goal or target. The goal or target for me is I'm going to study my market, I'm going to get a buy box, and I'm going to articulate probably in 90 to 120 days what an average deal is. And then what do you do with that information? Okay, great. Then and only then do you start writing offers, turning deals into good or great deals. Again, the goal is not to do a deal. The goal is to do a great deal. And I think too many investors come into this with the wrong goal is I'm going to do a deal in 2026 when all they're doing is gambling. And I don't want that for you because I know one thing for certain, if your first deal sucks, you won't do a second deal. So do a little bit of legwork, get, get clear on the goal, learn average, and then write great offers. That's my first one.

Okay, so commentary on that. I, I get where you're coming from. I will take issue with you just a little bit because everything in life is a balance, okay? And Stephen Covey, the late Stephen Covey, great author. I had the good fortune of meeting him on a CR cruise once. Never interviewed him on my show because that was before, you know, that was before my time on the show. You know, he wrote the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and many other great books, too. Anyway, I read them all. They were great. You know, one of the things he talks about is the P versus PC balance. This is really important, folks, okay? The P versus PC balance. And what that stands for is P stands for production and PC stands for production capacity. Okay? Now, this may be a long way of getting to this issue that you're talking about, but just bear with me for a minute because this is really important. On one side of the spectrum, there are many people in life who are getting ready to get ready.

Yes.

Okay. You know, I used to train real estate agents in the 90s, okay? And then into the 2000s, when I had a whole bunch of real estate agents working for me at my old company. And there were the kind of agents who were always, like, working on the greatest marketing scheme and the greatest systems, and they never did a deal, like get busy and do some deals. But then there's the other side of the spectrum, right? And these are the people that just go out there and get at it, and they're good but they have a flaw too, okay? They don't ever develop systems or processes for their business to make it a real business. Theirs is just a hustle. Okay? You know, there's an old saying, I think it was Abraham Lincoln, possibly. He said, if I had seven hours to chop down a tree, I would spend six hours sharpening my ax. Okay? And you know, yeah, I get the idea of that, right? You want to have a balance of the P versus PC. When I was a kid, I used to mow lawns to earn extra money, okay? Boy, I bet your millennial and Gen Z kids didn't do that. But. But you know, I used to mow lawns to make $5, right? And we just had one of, believe it or not, push lawnmowers. It had no engine. It had one of those rotating blades where you push it and that's how you power the thing. And that's what I did. I pushed that mower and I. I mowed the lawns and I made five bucks. Now, sometimes the people who I mowed lawns for had a power lawnmower and I loved using their lawnmower. It was way better, right? So you could spend the time repairing the power lawnmower to increase your production capacity, or you could spend time with the manual lawnmower and just pushing it a lot and increase your production. Which is the right answer there. The right answer is a balance between the two because that's where you're going to get the greatest efficiency. So back to your point. Don't agonize so much about the deal being the right deal. But on the other hand, don't be reckless either, okay? There's a balance between these two. I've had a zillion investors come through our network over the years. They come to my live conferences. I'm sure you have this too. They listen to my shows, they listen to my YouTube podcast, whatever. They read my newsletter and they know everything. They do nothing, okay? There is wisdom in action. And people who get ahead in the world are the ones who take action, not the ones who think about action. But then again, you don't want to be reckless and just take action willy nilly, right? There's a balance. That's all I want to say about it.

I like it. I like it. Where do you go next? You got that bright eyed new investor making saying 2026 is going to be their year. What are you telling them to do again? Focus on that first month. How do you make that first month of effort successful?

Look, our business, we Help investors buy turnkey properties nationwide. We do not have a do it yourself program. Your audience is different than mine because your audience is more a go out and hustle, find deals, find the ugly house, fix it up, you know, whatever. Do deals. Right. Like a lot of work in that, but maybe higher reward, too. Okay. Our businesses providing turnkey properties to people that have businesses and careers, then they're too busy with those. Right. So we're kind of more of a done for you on the spectrum. And yours is a, you know, do it yourself model. Right? I mean, would that be fair?

Yeah. I mean, again, turnkey is the right answer, I think in some environments for sure. But again, it's all about what's the best deal. And today, to your point, certainly the last couple of years, it's definitely been find the elderly ducking, find the value create, you know, have the elbow grease. That's. That's certainly been the case the last couple of years.

So that first month, right? Get your mindset right. Make sure your mindset is right. Go out there and learn stuff, but don't be too busy learning to do things and stop investing in other people's deals, okay? This is the biggest thing of all, folks. I mean, there are so many syndicators and so many fund managers that have ripped off so many investors, it is shocking. Some of these people are very quote unquote reputable, but their investors are suffering. You'll never hear about this. They almost never write about it anywhere. They're afraid they're going to get sued. They don't want to write online, but they tell me. I hear these stories constantly, okay? Do your own deals. Stop investing in someone else's deals, okay?

Amen.

Stop trying to vet other people, okay? Stop trying to vet some syndicator and figure out if it's a good syndicator or not. Because everything's individual. Everything can change tomorrow. Own your own properties. My commandment number three of my ten commandments has been the most well received, Michael. And I know you know what it is, but I'll tell you for your audience, it's thou shalt maintain control. It means be a direct investor. Buy your own stuff, okay? When you don't do this, when you relinquish your financial future to somebody else, you leave yourself susceptible to three major problems. Number one, you might be investing with a crook. We all know about crooked syndicators, crooked fund managers, crooks on Wall street, okay? I mean, the scandals are rampant. They're everywhere. It's terrible. Okay? So you might be investing With a crook, you're going to lose money. Number two, you might be investing with an idiot and you're going to lose money just because of their incompetence. Okay, so that's a second problem. But let's assume you pass those first two hurdles. They're honest, they're competent. Number three, they take a huge management fee off the top for managing the deal. Why should you give a sponsor 25 to 50% off the top? They put no money in the deal, and then you give them a quarter to half of the revenue. But wait, it's worse than that because they're charging all kinds of other little fees, okay? They, they get to control how your money is spent, okay? They have, they have the defense of what's called the business judgment rule. And as long as it's within reason, which is a very wide latitude as determined by courts, they can spend your money however they want. They can use their own companies to provide services to your investment. And they're just basically money laundering. I don't mean that in the sense of like money laundering is a crime. I mean they're just moving money out of your hands and out of your nest egg into their own. And this is what they do that you don't even see most of the time, that they have these affiliated companies that are just siphoning, siphoning money away from you. So be a direct investor.

Okay?

Thou shalt maintain control.

Love that one. Love that one. What I would tell someone, again, getting involved, they're really excited, is you got to get in the right rooms, you know, in the right communities. I, I did for five years. I did everything by myself, but I'm kind of broken. That's not the way to do it. Again, if you're trying to get rich in real estate, you got to get around other people in real estate now, obviously.

And you can do that in February.

Yeah, you do that in February. We do an event in February in Vegas. You can come to it. Still a couple of seats left, but where I think you should go is school. It's actually right there on the screen or at. It's, it's ridiculously. It's 67 pennies a day, 20 bucks a month is all it is. But you'll be around 510 active, everyday wealth builders. And the reason I say you have to do this is this is hard. It's time consuming, it's risky. You want to be in a community of other people doing the same thing you are. If you want to get fit, get around fit. People, you want to be a millionaire? Get around millionaires. Show me your friends. I'll show you your future. You know, there's just no better place on the planet now that we can do this from our phones and computers. And if you have a price point at 20 bucks, it's not gouging anybody. It's just, you know, an entry fee. And, yeah, you gotta. You gotta get it around other people doing what you want to do. That's, you know, that's paramount to start in January, in my opinion.

Absolutely. I agree. You know, you're. That's going to expand the context of your. Your mindset. Right. Is just getting around other people that are actually doing it and doing more of it. Then, you know, you don't want to be the smartest person in the room. You don't want to be the biggest fish in the pond. You want to be around people that are doing more than you, because that's just going to expand your thinking. It's just sort of this very natural thing that happens to us when we just get around people doing bigger stuff.

Yeah, yeah. Again, one of the things, again, I try to go on a health journey this year, and one of the things that really helped with that is getting around other people on that same journey, people that had done it before me, and it was amazing seeing what worked, what didn't work, and being around other people that were losing weight, gaining muscle, really helped me do that as well. So, again, if you want to be in real estate, get around other real estate people.

Absolutely. No question about it. Very, very good advice. Okay, so the new year is going to be a year of great opportunity. This is the time that people set their resolutions, their goals, all that kind of stuff. But, folks, you want to make these just out of reach, but not out of sight. You want to make them semi reasonable, not too reasonable, because then it's too easy. Right. Something needs to stretch you. It needs to be ambitious, and it needs to be toward the goal of your financial freedom. You know, we call the 4th of July financial Independence Day at our company. Right. And I really want you to get to your Financial Independence Day, where your wealth is just constantly growing and growing and growing, where you've sort of. You've started the flywheel. Right. The flywheel is hard to start at the beginning because it's very heavy to move it. But once you get it going, it has an energy of its own. And that's one of the wonderful things about real estate investing.

Yeah. I mean, when you really think about what people could be starting in 2026. That flywheel is going to feel like, you know, really heavy. But it will. I mean, there's just so many other people that have done it and it just starts its own momentum, you know. Again, inflation induced debt destruction as you talk about all the time, you know, does anybody really think inflation is going to be, you know, nothing for the next decade or two? It's just not coming, folks. You know, inflation is a feature, not a bug. Invest like it. Again, if you could buy an asset that is indexed to inflation and has cash flow and tax deductions and this and that, and you get leverage, right? You put 20 down, but you get 100% of the appreciation. It's just like there is no other game in town.

Yeah, no Income Property is the most historically proven asset class in the entire world because it's multi dimensional. You know, the prices don't have to go up for you to make money. Okay? Appreciation is the icing on the cake. You know, it's great, we love it, but you don't have to have it. You can make money in all of these different ways. And that's one of the wonderful things about it. It's a very unique investment from that perspective. Lately, at the time of this recording here, I don't know when people will listen to this, but people are talking about gold and silver and precious metals because they've done well lately. Now they were very sleepy for a very long time. They did like nothing. Okay, it was just a boring asset class. But lately they've had a little bit of a run and it's been great. And you know, it's a one dimensional asset class, right? The whole game is buy low, sell high. That's it. Okay, with with income property, you buy low, you sell high, you get cash flow, you get tax benefits, you get inflation induced debt destruction. My trademark strategy, you get all of these benefits, mortgage pay down, et cetera, et cetera, leverage. You know, you're just making money in so many ways.

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