2469: Michael Zuber's Five Life-Changing Books for Real Estate Success

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Thank you, Jason. I would not have as much money today if it wasn't for you. You know, Sissy and I both made a ton of money and, you know, thanks to you and your guidance and your show and everything, it's been great. And now cash flow for all your clients on top of it. Not only appreciation, but cash flow. You made a lot of people rich, my friend. You're a good man. Thank you, Jason.

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. Jason Hartman is 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.

Welcome, real estate investors. It's great to see everybody today. Today we have got a great show for you. Recently I shared some of my favorite books with Mr. Zuber, and today we're going to flip that and he's going to share some of his favorite books. So Michael, welcome, fire away.

Thank you, buddy. Yeah, I appreciate that. So we're back in Vegas where my main, you know, library is of books I've read.

Where your bookshelf is.

Well, my several bookshelves, because I've bought a lot of books over the years and keep the ones that I enjoy. And I have for you today 5 that kind of mean different things to me. It's a wide smorgasbord of things, and I'll tell you the story of each one. But I appreciate the opportunity because I don't think I've ever done this before. But this is the first one, The Millionaire Real Estate Investor by Gary Keller.

Yeah.

And yeah, while 90% of the book is very blocking and tackling to me, it was the stories in the back where he had a picture of a real estate investor And it told their full story. Joe, Virginia Beach, 8 years, 30 deals, just all of these different stories. And it was really what got me through the first 5 years of suck because I personally didn't know any real estate investors. I certainly didn't know any real estate investors with years or decades of experience. I didn't know anybody that doing more than one deal a year. And this book was a godsend. And again, the book's okay. It's very 101 if you're starting out, but those final, I don't know what it is, 30 pages, 15 stories were life-saving to me because I just needed to believe it was possible. Right?

Right.

I got the math, I had the spreadsheets. It made sense intuitively, but I didn't know anybody, Jason. I didn't have a network. I didn't have family. I didn't know anybody who had more than one house. So this book was a lifesaver and frankly was the inspiration for my second and more valuable book, 15 Conversations with Real Estate Millionaires, because what this lacked was depth. It was really 2 pages max of every investor's story. So instead I wrote a book that had 15 full chapters of investor stories called 15 Conversations with Real Estate Millionaires. But without this book, I'm not sure One Rental at a Time exists. I wore out those last 20 pages. I read 'em probably 200 days. So what you're saying is Yeah.

So the stories showing that real regular people did all this stuff that you wanted to do is what just brought it to reality for you, right? Yeah. That's, that's all.

It just gave me a level of comfort. Like, oh, you know, the classic, if they can do it, I could do it. Like when you're trying to smash the 4-minute mile and people are telling you it's impossible, nobody does it. And then suddenly somebody does. And then in the next like 90 days, 12 other people do it. It was kind of that for me. So we'll do this one next, a little bit out of order, but, uh, you know, Grant Cardone has written lots of books. Uh, most people talk about 10X. This is the one that probably meant the most to me, Be Obsessed or Be Average. And it was because what spoke to me about this was I've always been unbalanced. I've always been all in or zero. I'm not much for diversification. I'm not much for— Soft commitments. If I'm in, I'm in, and if I'm not, I'm not. And this book made me, frankly, made me feel normal, right? It made me feel like, okay, your obsession with whatever it was is okay. And if you stay at it long enough and it's something that can get you to build wealth, you can really build something. For all his warts and whatnot, you may or may not like him. This book gave me permission to be comfortable in my own skin.

Right.

So that was an important one for me.

Yeah. Yeah, that's good.

All right. We got another one off the wall. I'll highlight the name. It's called Embrace the Suck.

Oh yeah.

Stephen Madden. This one's very much around the CrossFit ecosystem. And again, at the time when I read this, I was in CrossFit. I was, I was in CrossFit for 5 to 7 years. I was in the top 5% for my age group repeatedly.

And you are in good shape. I gotta say. Yeah.

Thank you. Yeah, this book means a lot to me because again, I always tell people the first 5 years suck, right? And again, sometimes just knowing the suck is coming and you can get through it is important. And the thing that CrossFit taught me, other than, you know, body control and all of those things, was just keep going. Like, if you're working on a complicated chipper, which is, you know, a set of movements up and down or whatnot, You just got to keep moving. It's not about being the fastest or doing the most. It's, you just can't stop. You know, there's a lot of this, a lot of real estate investing you could kind of take away from Embrace the Suck. You know, it's also something Navy SEALs say a lot is embrace the suck. But yeah, it was important to me. So I got 2 more for you.

This one you've probably heard of. Before we leave that one. Oh, and that next one's really good. I love Atomic Habits. Before we leave Embrace the Suck, Michael, It's interesting that you said 5 years, because everyone will tell you that in business, if you have a small business, it takes 5 years to kind of get it off the ground to make it work. And if you think of that, and I've never made the comparison between a small business and being a real estate investor, but that's about the same. There's a lot of sucky parts in the beginning. But you get 5 years in, man, and it's life-changing. You know, you buy a few properties and you're 5 years in, you've gathered some equity buildup, some appreciation, some inflation-induced debt destruction. That is a great comparison, I think. And I have not made that comparison before. So thank you.

No, I think that's an important thing. Again, I think if we tell people, hey, you know, it's a 10-year journey, but oh, by the way, the first 5 years are the hardest, you know, again, they suck. People are prepared for it and they're like, they go through it and they're like, okay, this sucks, right? Embrace the suck. Hence that book title. That, that means a lot to me. So I think we have to lean into that. Again, the thing that, you know, you and I don't do, um, that many others do and many others are, are, I don't know, more known is they, they kind of preach get rich quick or get rich with no money.

Right.

You know, both of those things can happen, but they're not the right thing for most people.

They're not likely to happen though.

Yeah, they're not likely. Yeah, it's not impossible. We're not saying it's not, but for most people, it's just a bad strategy. So I think, I just think we need to just keep being consistent. Atomic Habits is awesome. You know, the whole 1% better every day is something that I take on anything. There are so many other stories in this, but this is a book. If this is one I wish I read earlier in life, I didn't read this until I was in my 40s. If I could have read this in my 20s, I think my life would have been even better. So this one, this one was, you know, I wish it came across.

I'm not sure it existed in your 20s though.

No, it didn't. No, it didn't. But I wish, I wish it did. It did not. And this is the last one. This one is the one I read. Actually, you can see I still got like little Post-it notes on it. This was written by a friend, uh, Sean Connell. Uh, obviously I created a YouTube channel in 2018. I had no idea what I was doing. And Sean's been a personal friend and helped me in the very beginning. He reached out very early and, uh, If you're ever getting started on YouTube, there is no better book, no, you know, better than YouTube Secrets. So shout out Sean for this. I think he autographed this one. If not this one, the other one upstairs. Yeah, I have 2 of these. So one that he autographed. So those are my 5 books, all different genres.

And I'm sure you've got a lot more than 5 books, but you have to—

Oh, I probably have 500 in this home.

Absolutely. We all do. So those are great. It is so important for people to manage their expectations and their emotions when it comes to real estate investing, you know, the embracing the suck concept. What's interesting to me is I have this, this friend, you know, he's been pretty much a stock market investor all his life. You know, he's, he's owned some houses that he, he's lived in and, you know, his wife's lived in and so forth. And, but the, the interesting thing is I was thinking today about how many things are going on at any company in which you may have purchased stock in. Right? How many challenges, how many disasters? One of their warehouses burnt down. One of their employees is suing for unlawful termination. Another one is suing for sexual harassment. You know, another one got killed on the job. There's all this litigation. Their competitor is suing them for violating their patent. You know, there's all this stuff, right? It's all happening. But you don't feel it except in your return on investment because you just own the share and they never bother you with management things. And some people might think that's good, but the reality is you're paying that company, that C-suite of executives, a huge handling fee for managing all of that. It's still going on. The suck is happening. It's happening everywhere in the world, in every business, in every government, in every real estate investment. There is suck all over the place. And when you can control your own emotions to embrace the suck yourself, you get paid handsomely for doing it, right?

Mm-hmm.

But if you're going to let someone else deal with it and just buy a share of their syndication or their stock or whatever it is, You're just gonna get the crumbs, right?

Yeah, couldn't agree more. Uh, Jason, this is just fun. Again, folks, if you have your favorite books, let us know below. If there's books you think Jason or I should check out, love to see the list below. Uh, Jason gave his list about 2 weeks ago, just gave mine.

empoweredinvestor.com or my podcast or YouTube channel, any platform, just type Jason Hartman and you'll find me there.

Thanks, buddy.

Take care. Have a good week.

Happy Labor Day.

Happy investing.

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