Dana Robinson — Passive Income Hacks / Legalities Of An Online Business

This is an intro. Intro, intro, intro.

Hustle and Float. Shark with your boy. My boy, Matt Wolf.

Joe Fear.

Hey.

What are you laughing at?

It's Halloween tomorrow.

Well, not when this is coming out. It was Halloween, like two weeks ago when this came out.

Oh, well, it's almost Halloween here in present time, but not in. What is time anyway, Matt?

It doesn't. It's a human construct. Let's not get into this discussion because then we'll have like a two hour intro.

Matt, time is freedom. Let's free up your time on this podcast with Dana Robinson.

But it's also a man made construct. I mean, we all just made up time as a linear form of.

Okay, you're not Joe Rogan yet.

Maybe one day. All right, today we are talking to Dana Robinson. What's happening?

I'm just upset that he said I'm not.

Oh, that was. That was a mic drop, by the way.

We've been doing this all day long. We're just very, very feisty now.

I think we're feisty. We're t. And we need to take a walk and get outside. But that's okay, because today's show with Dana Robinson, he created something with his partner Nate called Opt Out Life. And essentially this is, hey, let's leverage your time best. Let's just do the highly leveraged things that you want to do in your life, in your business, and actually make really fucking good money without killing yourself. So that is essentially the crux of everything that we're gonna talk about. Dan is amazing. He's a lawyer. He actually owned a landscaping company. I didn't realize that, like, when he was in school. Still. He did. He's done a lot of stuff. I've known him for over 10 years. He's been our legal counsel for a while now in multiple businesses. He lived for over a year in Bali, wrote a book, has a podcast, has done a ton of real estate.

Yeah. Rental properties that he rents out. And, you know, so let. So some of the things we're gonna talk about. This is sort of a wide ranging conversation, but the main focus of this episode is really on, you know, how do you opt out of the. The sort of quote, unquote, rat race? How do you get out of the normal day to day nine to five, go to a job grind? And that's what their whole brand is about. And so we're gonna discuss all sorts of ways that we did that or to do that. You know, we discuss it from our perspective and his perspective, the way he did it, he just moved to Bali for an undetermined amount of time and basically had to figure out how to create a bunch of systems in his business to make him to help support that. So we dive into all those systems that he created to make sure that could happen. We talked about the real estate and how that generates passive income, but it's.

Like real estate with a different angle. It's not like, hey, let's just get a bunch of houses or condos. It's very strategic.

Yeah, I mean he's, he's willing to lose money on his real estate and we'll get into exactly why that is, but he's totally willing to lose money on real estate because there's other benefits to losing that money.

Quote, unquote. Losing money.

Yeah, so we'll get into that. But then, you know, he is a lawyer, so we had to ask him some legal questions. I wanted to, I wanted to clarify some legal stuff that's commonly asked. Things like, you know, using stock photos, using stock photos on your website, your terms and conditions, your privacy policies, gdpr. All of the legal buzzwords that keep popping up that, you know, you're, everybody's kind of scared about approaching and they.

Use these templates online that, you know, for, for all these policies and stuff, terms and condition that might are probably hurting you more than helping you.

Yeah.

So we dive into all of that, but we're also really, really focused around this opt out life and how do you systematize things so that you can get yourself out of your business. And he has some amazing advice. And I mean, I think we got the most excited when he started talking about the real estate stuff.

True, it's. I mean anybody could do this stuff. It's super simple. But a lot of this hinges on getting the right systems and people in place in your company transition to our sponsor seamless. So nailed like that.

Bam.

We're still working on this whole thing. It's new to us, but. All right, so we've been using this thing gen M G E N M. Yes.

You got to make sure you spell it because otherwise people might go gen like J E N. Like Jenny.

Not like that. G E N M. Yes, Correcto Mundo. So what that is is it's essentially this big old database. It's a company that's aggregated a bunch of willing students who are marketing trained, but they just need someone like you, a business owner who has some marketing tasks that they don't have the capacity to do or they shouldn't be doing or whatever. But you want to use some help who is willing and capable and very inexpensive. So for 50 bucks a month, for free, 40 hours per month of work, up to three months kind of term there you can get someone of this caliber, this high caliber and actually do some of these tasks in your business that you probably shouldn't be doing. Yeah, stuff like driving traffic and doing copy, blogging, video editing. I mean, there's all sorts of different things in your business that you're probably not thinking about.

Death by a million, cuts, SEO, et cetera. Yeah, I mean, we're so we're using GenM ourself. So we're actively using this service and paying for it. They're not paying us to. They are paying us to say this, but they're not paying us to use. Not to use. Use their service or anything. We're not getting it paid for. We do pay for their service.

We were using it prior to being. To them being a sponsor.

There you go. That's the best way to say it. Now. The best way to explain it is to send you to evergreenprofits.com GenM G E N M and they actually made a video that explains it probably better than we possibly can explain it. So go there. It's basically a way to get work labor in your business, essentially for $50 a month and get 40 hours a month of services from. From people.

A virtual apprentice.

A virtual apprentice or a virtual intern for 50 bucks a month. So go to evergreen profits.com/genm. There's a video on that page that explains the whole process. We swear by it now and we love it in our business.

Go check it out. Evergreen Profits.com GenM now on to the show.

Dana Robinson, here we come.

Hey, Dana, how you doing, man?

Good. How are you guys doing?

Awesome. It's our podcast day. We love these days, as I'm sure you do on yours too.

I do. It's the funnest thing that's hard to describe. Sitting down with people and being able to just, I don't know, get curious with them and ask them anything.

Yeah, well, you do it kind of like where we. You have your own, like in person studio and all that stuff. Do you do everything in person or is it kind of a mix?

Yeah, yeah. For now, everything's in person. So it's just part of the style. We're trying to keep with kind of the radio quality and the interaction you get when you're staring someone in the face or drinking some scotch with them. And, you know, we want people to Feel like they're with us having a beer with this person. So that's part of the method is actually being there with the person.

Yeah, for sure. So you are a scotch guy, right?

I do. I like, I'm sort of into bourbon and rye now, but I mean, maybe when we first met Joe, I might have been hosting a scotch tasting event for one of those networking events. It was fun. We. We put up nine bottles of brown bagged whiskeys, you know, essentially all scotches. And the number one was, the most expensive was a Macallan 19 year. I think number two was Trader Joe's like $28 12 year scotch.

So this was like a blind taste testing. Everybody just kind of took a sip out of this brown bag and that. That's how it sort of panned out.

Well, there was little with little tasters went to Ikea and bought like a hundred little tasting glasses and put a bunch in front of each. So you'd literally just like take a little sip of each. And then we had a whiteboard and you'd rank them right there. So everybody ranked and at the end we tallied it up. And so, yeah, no one had to share the brown bag.

Like you were just passing the ground.

Yeah, like a homeless derelict drinking $300 whiskey out of a paper bag.

So these weren't like shot glass samples, because I imagine by the time you get to like 10, you're like, I don't know. These all fucking taste great.

They were shot glasses, but in theory you weren't supposed to fill it up. I mean, it was for tast. And then you pick the one you want. And we had full size rocks glasses so you could pour and put some ice in or whatever you wanted after that. But I ended up with most of those scotches. Lasted for several more events. So I have to believe that with 60 people at the house, we probably did okay. Not getting shit faced. There was plenty of leftovers.

I do remember that party. I think it was in La Jolla there. Yeah, yeah, no, you and Nate, your partner Nate has always. You guys have always held some really cool parties. And obviously the event, the opt out event, you just had or opt out life event, we found ourselves. Actually, Matt and I were wearing the shirts from your event on the same day when we were recording our last podcast recordings. And we're like, dude, we shouldn't be wearing another person's brand on the same day. We didn't have our own shirt.

You're representing us. Thank you. I appreciate that.

I think even on video somewhere I don't know what we recorded.

It was a little weird, but I.

Was like, we're making cool swag. The backup plan if people just hate the podcast and hate the opt out life platform is we'll at least have some cool T shirt designs we can sell for sure.

And that's something we're lacking. So ask who your designer is. Talk about that later. But yeah, give us the scoop, I guess. Catch everybody else up. You've. And I probably don't know half of the stuff you've done or what you do now. You kind of do a lot, but also not do a lot, which is the whole opt out thing, opt out life approach. So give us a little background and catch us up to where you're at now.

Yeah, I mean, historically I'm technically a lawyer. So my, I guess you'd say my job, my day job, my profession is lawyer. But even before I went to law school, I was an entrepreneur. And when I was 19, I started a landscape business. Ended up growing that, acquiring another business, and then selling that. I started a coffee house toward the end of my landscape season while I was still in grad school. And then I actually went into the ministry. I was a pastor and principal of a vice principal of an elementary school at a large church complex up in Escondido, and then left that and went to law school.

And in law school, I was really not planning to necessarily be a lawyer. I just wanted. I wanted a secular degree, a profession, something I could do to make money with my time and kind of claw my way out of the sort of blue collar lower rungs of the middle class that so difficult to claw out of. So law school just sounded like it might get me there. And in law school actually started something that I didn't realize I probably could have built a business around. I reserved a domain name and learned, taught myself to code and built a website called freelegalaid.com and I didn't know at the time, but this is like in 99, 98, 99, I probably could have got DC money and funded a startup and sold it to somebody before the market crashed. But I built a site thinking, this is what you do when you learn how to Write HTML and JavaScript.

That site's actually a side gig of mine that has allowed me to do a lot of cool stuff because it makes about $3,000 a month right now and I don't do anything to it. So on the one hand, I missed the opportunity to become like a tech startup entrepreneur in the, in the year, you know, 98, 99. On the other hand, you know, here I am 20 years later with something that throws off 30 plus thousand dollars a year that I don't have to work that hard for.

Yeah, it didn't crash. You're still spitting out cash.

What does this site do? I didn't catch that.

Well, it's a site with free legal resources essentially. You know, it does what I, what I built it to do in the late 90s was just have free resources and then figured lawyers would write articles to advertise themselves and like just contribute, you know, free resources. You know, you want to know how to do this? Fill out this form, find this resource. It turned out at the time lawyers were scared of the Internet and no one wanted to contribute. And I got like shunned from. One of the biggest lawyer BBS is a bulletin board for even the thought of doing something commercial.

But I came back to it and built more content around it and maybe 03 and 04 and plugged in Adsense and just started like letting the Adsense make money. And I remember it hitting 50 bucks a month. And I was like, wow, in a month I'll get a payout, you know, because the payouts were at a hundred bucks a month. So every other month I'm going to get $100. This is amazing.

And you know, a few years later I was doing $500 a month and then I had one point, got it shut down for not having new content and some. That's about the time I was making friends with Nate and a bunch of guys in the search engine marketing and web marketing space. And so I learned a lot and actually used all that knowledge to rebuild the site and redeploy it. And that's how I started growing and making some more substantial money.

Yeah.

So yeah, free legal aid is kind of my go to side gig to describe for people like what's. What do you do for side gate? Well, publish a website with cool content that has information people want and then make money from ads.

That's brilliant. So what other cool stuff has that site specifically led you to? You said there's quite a bit of things.

It became my ticket to not being a lawyer and hanging out with non lawyer people. It's kind of funny, if you go to network and you're just a lawyer, then people don't really, I mean, unless they need what you have, then you're sort of the odd man out. I wanted to hang out with cool people and go to networking events around technology and kind of be there as an entrepreneur or at least a side gigger. And so it gave me something to talk about. And in fact, when we first went to this event called Think Tank, that mutual friend of all of ours named DK Love Think Tank Tank, Dr. Klein put us all together. And, you know, I wasn't there to get people to use me as a lawyer. I didn't care. I want to learn from them. I was there to be curious and meet cool people and drink too much. And I did all of those things and along the way learned a bunch of cool stuff about, you know, the web search, marketing, you know, better ways to code. I started rebuilding that site on Drupal, and I was then learning to build stuff on WordPress, you know, before it became du jour as the sort of what everyone uses. So it became my ticket to hang out with cool people. And that opened the door to a lot of other relationships and other sites that I've built that haven't done as well. But yeah, it's been a fun journey. And I think that crazy side gig I started when I was working in a library in law school, free legal aid, was one of the catalysts for all of that.

Now, are you still creating new content on it or how is it still going?

Yeah, I create new content. We actually at this point can charge people to put content. We have at least enough authority that we can charge a little bit. So there's a few hundred dollars a month that comes in and paid articles. If people post really good articles, we'll post them for free, even if they've got some links in them. And then always looking for content we can curate.

Most of the new content I'm building now is once a month. I might spend a couple of hours and just sort of go in and build a static PA and coalesce some content that's already in the site around that. So it's more like I'm curating what I have than adding a lot of new stuff to it.

That's probably a good SEO approach.

But yeah, you know how it is with Google likes you better if you've got fresh content on a regular basis.

So that's kind of the way we're doing it right now. It's just adding articles. In the beginning, I paid writers when I realized I needed a lot of content to just hit lots of search terms throughout the country. I paid 20 bucks an article and just had a whole bunch of articles done and then someone else to drop in resources. And we have a mapping system so that if you put in an address, it shows you the location. So I paid small amounts of money for offshore help to do a lot of that.

Yeah, that's what Matt was saying. He was like, that's a steal for 20 bucks. Jesus.

Now, are you still. How much time do you actually spend doing lawyer stuff these days? I mean, outside of creating content? I know you still review contracts and stuff because you've reviewed a few contract for us. How much time are you spending on that. That side of your business?

I'm trying to spend as little as possible now. I mean, the. The. I guess, you know, I can take you back to a crisis that I had. I mean, as an entrepreneur, I've known, you know, Joe since back at the, you know, DK days, 10, 12 years ago, and hosting events at my house. You know, at that point, I had a couple of side gigs. I had invested in three different properties, so I had 90 units of apartments. I had money and time with maybe six other ventures that I'd helped co found. And the market had crashed. And so I was like, working as a lawyer as much as possible all through that. And about the time the economy was kind of turning around, my daughter had gone off to college, and I was still on this rat, like, hamster wheel kind of thing. Just kind of going crazy, working a lot. And I wasn't seeing a lot of.

Money at the bottom line. And a lot of my time being spent on other ventures was not really bringing me any fruit either, either happiness or money.

So I came home one day and said to my wife, we should just sell everything, move to Bali. It was like a moment of exasperation.

She looked at me, cocked her head, and said, I was just thinking the same thing yesterday.

There's no reason that she should have been thinking that, but she was. And so I was like, all right, this is serious. Let's go have a talk.

Like, specifically Bali.

She was, yeah, yeah. I mean, the only thing we knew about Bali was that maybe four months earlier, our favorite bartender at a restaurant in La Jolla was a surfer. And he's like, hey, guys, I'm moving to Bali. And we're like, for how long? He's all, no, like, I'm moving. And we go, oh, how do you do that? That's crazy. And so maybe it planted a seed that Bali was a place to just escape. And we had traveled all over the world, but never been to Bali.

And I don't know that Bali was necessarily the ultimate destination. When we sat down and talked, you know, I was like, okay, well, Bali is just a proxy for. Let's get out of dodge. What do we really want to do? We want to get control of our time and our lives again. We want to do something fun. We want to have some way, kind of like get out from under what seems like this rad race that we should have more control over. Because work for myself, I have some side gigs. I'm invested in what should be some decent assets, but, you know, it was suffocating in a way. So we actually talked about, well, there's Panama and there's Costa Rica, and we had been to parts of Vietnam and Thailand and they're cheap, but we actually decided on Bali and spent six months kind of extracting from life.

So how did that, like, how did you do that? So you have this legal firm. I know you have a team, you have properties, you had all this other stuff happening. How did that transition look like?

Yeah, that's what took so long. I mean, it was a very disciplined effort, oddly. About two weeks after we came to this conclusion, I had a planned little meetup with basically two people that were full time working for me. So I had a lawyer that worked full time for me and a paralegal. And we were supposed to have a little planning retreat in Hawaii, which was mostly just vacation goofing off. But, you know, we did. We were going to do some annual, like, sit down, have a little come to Jesus, like, what are we doing? And I think they expected it to be planning. And I originally did too, but instead I popped this on them. I said, well, guys, I know we're supposed to plan on what to do with the firm, but I need a break. And I think I'm going to move out of the country for, you know, indefinite period of time. I can get you guys jobs if you want. You know, probably make more money, someone else than you do for me. And both of them, without even talking to each other, basically were like, we could keep it going. Like, you know, we like you, we like what we're doing, we like our control over our time. So why don't we just empower you to do that and not work very much and you'll still make some money probably. So it was a cool, like something I didn't really plan to happen. Driven by their motivation to kind of keep a cool thing going that, you know, like, I'd say my paralegal could probably make 50% more pay if she went to work for a firm, but she'd be absent chair, you know, nine, five or whatever you know, the clock is so, you know, she and the lawyer were both motivated to preserve a life they liked. And it was cool because then they basically were able to make that whole law practice like a side gig for me.

And do the work. And we had like four cases in litigation. I have a base of several hundred clients. But Kayla, the lawyer had worked for me for a few years and kind of knew the routine and knew how to handle things. And so I took a chance and I made that. We did a lot of planning. That was probably the number one thing was how do you plan to manage your life when you go from full time as a business owner, lawyer or whatever to an hour a day?

Let's talk about that because I'm just curious and just to relate to what you're saying here. Matt and I aren't going to Bali anytime soon. I mean, I'd like to, but after.

This episode I might.

But the short term goal that we have is work three days a week. That's time behind the computer, get stuff done. The other days are, you know, spend however we wish. And exactly how you said Kayla and your paralegal basically supported you. That's pretty much what Shannon, our ops manager is doing for us. She, she knows of our goal and she's purposely telling us, okay, let's track your time, let's analyze that. Let's look at the stuff. You don't, you shouldn't be doing that non high value stuff. And she's, she's driving it and it feels amazing. We didn't have that. This is the first time we've ever actually put that kind of person in place. And it's huge. So I love that.

Yeah, delegation is important. I think, you know, the, the I loved. It's funny because I read 4 Hour Workweek like 10 years ago and I remember thinking this is cool stuff. But there's no way to pull this off as a lawyer. I mean, I'm a professional. I have to be available for my clients. I can't just delegate everything and disappear like, you know, Tim Ferriss Gohan, Spain. And it wasn't until I was already in Bali doing it that I was like, hey, wait a minute, I'm doing that stuff. Like it was an epiphany that, you know, came back to me that I was pulling off some of this four hour workweek kind of stuff without having gone back to the old bible of Tim Ferriss work and reevaluated it. It was just sort of a seed planted and it worked. So delegation is important, which Means you do have to have people that love what they're doing, that you treat well, that can do the lifting. But a lot of it's like, how do you manage the death by a thousand cuts? Which is this constant email barrage that sort of fills our day. And I remember at the time thinking, geez, I get 200 emails a day and I have to reply to many of those. And if you add those up and just say each one's four minutes of my time, not including a little buffer in between that you need to clear your head. You're talking about hundreds of minutes which turns into 10 hour days where you. And that as a lawyer often doesn't even bill doesn't even get paid. You're just like flying through the day, managing. And then you come home at night, have to actually do the work that you didn't do because you were, you know, getting slaughtered by emails all day. So our first approach was to do a live test of foldering all of my emails through other people. So basically the staff would get access to my emails, organize those emails and prioritize those and then deal with anything they could. And then they would, you know, for example, an urgent folder means this needs to happen today.

And billable folder means this is where you go for billable stuff. But if we didn't put it in urgent, it's not urgent and we're probably managing it. So just get to it when you can. And then you know, a personal folder that, you know, look, this is where family stuff goes and friends and you know, you just get to those when you want to. And we did this before I left. So we set all that up and created that system that included a little bit of delegation and a little bit of digital organization. And so that was one of the key things that we did prior. And then I had to go through all of the, I mean we digitized, we got out of paper as much as we could.

And as a lawyer, a lot of lawyers are slow to get out of paper. So it just forced us to become as digital as possible.

I like what you said there with death by a million cuts, because I think we all probably have something that we do every day and it's probably email for most of us that you don't quite add up. Because I know when we're tracking our time, Matt and I both me more so because I'm more dealing with customers and prospects, all that stuff. I could definitely relate to that, that feeling of I can handle this. But then the second you want to step away you're like, oh shit. So I like what you did there.

Look there. There was.

A famous author, wrote a book called the One Minute manager in the 80s. And the principle, one of the main principles was never touch a piece of paper twice. So you know, you avoid the stacks, you're efficient. Something comes in, you address it immediately because you're already distracted by, you're already touching it. And the problem with email is if you follow this, then you're productivity could be very high in terms of. If productivity includes answering emails. But the problem is that so much of email is someone pushing something to you that I think, you know, or organizing them and prioritizing them and then waiting to respond to them becomes a necessary piece of a process you have to implement if you want to get distance from the emails and not be forced to react all the time. And it does mean in some cases touching the same thing more than once. But I just think that One Minute Manager approach isn't relevant. In an age of paperlessness. There's too much ease of someone communicating with you through all these media to immediately react to everything all the time. Even though it's satisfying, it's not a productive way to run a business. You lose mind share the entire time. Right. And, and as a business owner, your ultimate value is actually and not necessarily in replying to those emails. It's what you say and how you say it and the conclusions you come to. Right. Mindshare is what we're good at once you master your business.

Yeah. Now is there. So when you left for this trip for Bali. I know, so you got the Gmail all kind of. Or the email all systematized. So people are filtering into folders. Were there any other things that you kind of had your hands in on a daily basis that you had to find some new systems for?

Yeah, yeah, there were several. I mean, I still had, I had sold one of my two of the apartment complexes and so I was involved to some extent with one last apartment complex. But we just delegated that to a management company, which I'd been hesitant to do because I have horror stories about management companies. But the management company hired was managed by my other business partner in that building. So that felt good. So it was kind of this extraction where you go, okay, I'm going to let that partner deal with the management company and now I'm out. And then, okay, let's take this business. Does this business deserve my attention? Am I getting paid for my attention? Do they really need me? And you know, resigning. I resigned from A nonprofit board. I sort of assessed each business. And I had some of these little half finished websites that nag at you that kind of eat some of your time and also eat mind share. And some of those you just shut down. You just go, okay, I'm. I was progressing on this. Another website that publishes content. I'm just going to stop. I'll leave it. If I get back to it in a year, good. If it's 10 years, good. I own the domains. I'm just going to not spend time, give that any mind share. And so it was a matter of taking all of those, you know, the business interests and investments and paring them all down. And then the last two were my most significant business partners at the time was a shoe business and audio books. And I just told them what I was doing and said, I'm here if you need me, but there's going to be some distance. So just, you know, keep that in mind. And just the distance and the time zone change forced them to be more cognizant of my time, probably in terms of communicating. And then I tried to deliver when they needed me, I tried to deliver the best I could for them. So it was a little bit more of going from quantity relationships with my business partners to quality. And for those two, they're good friends, people that I love and who love me. And so it was an easy. Those last two pieces that were the most important investments turned out to be not a burden to sort of keep because there was respect for my time. So, yeah, there was a lot of this besides turning that law practice way, way down, taking all of these what seemed like dozens of moving parts and just pruning and narrowing it down and turning the communications around.

I was just going to add real quick, did the income take a big hit as a result, or did you manage to stay pretty steady?

No, the law practice did like 40% better the year I was gone.

And then when I came back and I worked a lot the first year coming back because I thought I needed to, I shouldn't have. My revenue went back down.

Got two in the weeds.

Yeah. And then at the beginning of 2018, I said, oh, wait a minute, I've been back a little over a year. It didn't go well. I looked at my financials because those are always, you know, smart way to evaluate whether you're doing the right thing. And I went, man, I had more people, more staff, more time, more hassles. I didn't progress much on the thing that I was most focused on, which was the opt out, finishing the book and getting the podcast up. I didn't do any of that in 17 and made less money than when I was in Bali, not working very much. So I sat down again with, with the main lawyer and I'm like, all right, I'm doing something wrong. She's like, yes, we took on too much. Let's scale it back and treat it like we did before. And so I kind of 2018 has been running my ventures the same as I did when I was in Bali, but without having to move time zones.

Yeah, I'm just thinking like, this is the mindshare thing. I think it's like the hidden gem that we all have is I just think back of the time Matt and I have worked together 12 years now, off and on. But mindshare, just getting so sucked into all these different areas in business. It sucks that mindshare, but you don't really realize it unless you assess it like you did or maybe force yourself to leave for a little bit.

Yes, it is forcing yourself totally. And it's hard to force yourself. I mean, with Bali, there was no choice once I was there. And the time zone there helped a lot in terms of forcing everyone to comply with my will. Because it at between 5pm and 6pm here on the West coast in California, it's 8 to 9am tomorrow in Bali. So for example, today at 5 o', clock, if I want to have a phone call with a buddy of mine that's in Bali, it's going to be 8 in the morning. And so what I was able to do from Bali side was know that I just, I'm available for that hour in the morning, sipping tea, taking care of business. I'd answer the emails and then it would go silent. There was no one to call me, no one to email me. And so, you know, because no one wants to start their work when you start yours, right. I'm not going to have business partners and, you know, staff and clients even bugging me at 7pm on the West coast, which is going to be 10am for me in Bali. So it freed the time. It forced the sort of like freedom. If you're going to do it here, you have to have way more discipline. Because for you guys, for example, you take those two days that you use to do your thinking and creativity to get out and hike or surf or whatever you want to do, you're gaining mind share. But you have to have discipline to do that because you don't have a time zone difference. That's Going to force it on everybody.

Would you almost recommend someone to do a Bali type move? Maybe a temporary few weeks or so?

I think it's a great idea to just sort of like. It's not a bad segue. And I can tell you that if you're a busy entrepreneur and you really want to kind of find an extraction where you say, okay, I want to tone things down, automate, delegate, want to do those things, set it up with a one month sabbatical in Bali. I mean, Bali is wildly cheap. It's the time zone thing makes it perfect because as I described, it forces you into a sort of time warp that no one else can undo. And.

Why not have a month of like break, you know, a mini sabbatical where I tell you, the first like two weeks I just slept a lot, you know, I mean, you guys know from being entrepreneurs, it's physically exhausting sometimes. And so to just have days where you just go, okay, I took care of business an hour in the morning, I got nothing to do. I'm going to take a walk on the beach, get tired, you take a nap. You know, you go surfing, you come back, you take a nap. So it was a lot of the things that I think a lot of entrepreneurs and creatives need to re energize that you get from an extended vacation. And if you did this as a tool, then you're basically saying, okay, staff or virtual assistant or however you set up your organization to give you this extraction. It's not a bad segue to experiment with and then to say to people when you come back here is, we're going to use these folders and these digital systems and my availability will be as such. And if you force it, then.

It'Ll work.

Yeah, I know personally, for myself, I'm sure you too, Matt. We almost have this as entrepreneurs. If we build it, it's like, this is part of me. And you kind of want your hands in the mix at all times, even though that might lead to less money in your pocket at the end of the day. But for me, it's almost like a guilt. Sometimes if I'm away on a vacation, I'm like, oh, shit, I got to check in really quick or Matt or the team might need something. So it's like, I feel like what you just described, the month sabbatical, forces you to do it. Different location, different time zone, all that stuff where for myself, I think that would definitely kind of splice that guilt feeling.

Yeah, I mean, I think there's really two elements of it there's the two elements that are reasons why we don't really do that kind of stuff. One is the, you know, the sort of guilt of feeling like we're pushing it over to other people. And then the other thing is.

The feeling that the people we're pushing it to aren't gonna do a good job. Like, I don't know if I totally trust the people I'm delegating this to to handle it as well as I would handle it. And I think those are really kind of two big sort of barriers to going down that route for most entrepreneurs is just that fear of delegation out of those two reasons.

Yeah. And if you ever have an organization that grows to a certain point, you'll find that it can't grow any further once the entrepreneur, until the entrepreneur actually crosses that threshold. So on our, we've had a couple of recent guests on the Opt Out Life podcast. Let's see. Adam Moyer. Knockarounds is a sunglass company started as a kind of college campus experiment with a few hundred dollars and now is a 10 million dollar business. If I remember right. Well, he had a couple of years that were rocky and on reflection he's like, why is revenue down? Well, expenses up? He was doing too much and needed to delegate. And it's the same lesson whether you're me with two staff people or you guys with one staff person.

What you learn is that if you have good people, they're more capable than you are. And so you need to get yourself out of the way as much as possible and empower them to do what they need to do. And they need you to do that because they're relying on us as sort of the producers, as the, as the creative aspect that's feeding fuel into this, into the engine. Right. So they're here, they're the engineers keeping the engine going. We're the ones feeding the fuel. If you don't get out and get mind share, how can you be that person if you don't go to conferences, which you should only be going to at your stage, at my stage, you should only be going to conferences that are fun. If you don't get out there and hang out at those like we had for the opt out beach camp. And that involves learning, being overwhelmed, drinking too much, you know, coming back, you know, energized with new ideas, that's what the people who are your staff and who you delegate, they need you to do that. So there shouldn't be guilt about that. And it, you know, think of what you get from just a hike, if you're an outdoor person or doing that, you know, sport for a lot of people in California, surfing, it just gets you out. And, you know, you can't do much when you're sitting on a surfboard in the middle of the water. Right. It sort of forces you to let your mind go into different places, and I think you can't feel guilty about that. And overcoming that guilt is your problem and your challenge, and it's your responsibility to overcome that and to take those days where you chill, where you go sit at the coffee house and do your thing, write creatively, journal. All these things that feel unproductive are actually the very thing that you need to continue the journey.

Yeah, the journaling. Actually, you just mentioned that, because I took that up recently, just every morning, and that has just done wonders for me. Just kind of write at least about a couple, three pages or so. And is that something. Is that kind of like a daily practice of yours or something that helped you get through this process?

Yeah, it was in the last few years. I haven't. I mean, in Bali, I think journaling for me for about 10 years helped me craft my ideas and led to the clay that became the Opt out book. So for me, journaling was really, really useful, especially in the. In the crucible, in the fire. You need to journal. And for me, the journaling was very often venting about whatever was going on. But that kind of is therapy. I mean, if you. You can dump some stuff that won't distract you in your journal, and you can put down some good ideas, too. So journaling isn't always the sort of like a Zen, like, creative process. Sometimes it's rage. Oh, yeah. You just need to dump some of that. And by putting it down on paper, you're able to let it go from your mind and the day moves on. And you said it, you know, like, you know, I feel out of control because of this, this, and this. I want to resolve these things. You know, you get the emotional part over, and then you move on with solving the problem, which is, you know, a lot easier when it's. Solving the problem is not an emotional reaction or a result of stress or.

Anxiety, I actually find. So I'm a big journaler as well. I've actually kind of fallen out of it over the last couple weeks. But I've always been a big journaler, and I. And I found personally that the journaling helps me solve problems that I'm pissed off about. Like, I'll start journaling, and I'LL start saying, I'm so pissed off right now because of this, that and this, and this is really frustrating. And I don't know what to do. And I just start to, like, let my brain free and just unload whatever's going on. And by the end of my journal, I usually have a solution to whatever problem I started with.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's. If you think about what a good counselor or life coach does, they get you talking and they ask a few questions, and at the end you've answered your own questions, right? You've solved them your own problems. And they're smiling like, there you go. You just did it.

It's a lot cheaper to get a notebook.

Totally.

So I love, I mean, the premise of all this is literally this mindshare, all this, everything we're saying is your opt out life concept. And I think it wasn't until the event, the beach event, which thank you for holding because that think tank event. I've harassed DK so many times. I know mutual buddies like Dan Ryan, and I don't think he's bringing it back, but he should. But it seems like you're kind of bringing up that legacy in your own fashion. But the opt out life, everything you do, it's like, do enough. It seems like, create that mind share, create that financial freedom that you want, but don't kill yourself over.

Was a good aha. Even though we've heard this before. But it's like when you're actually in person, like with you, with n everybody else there, it was just fucking awesome. And I was just like, this is life. This is what it should be about. Talking about all sorts of stuff, not just, hey, my info product I'm launching. Like, no, let's talk some real estate. Let's talk about some. All this other cool stuff you could do and leverage your time.

Yeah, I mean, I remember when we first started having these, the events Nate and I hosted, like we called it. So Cali and I remember meeting people, a lot of them from that whole DK think tank group and thinking, you know, these guys, they got something that people don't realize. You know, they got a little side hustle or two. They're making 10 grand on, you know, a digital product or, you know, they've got enough and they're living the life they want. They're using that money to go hang out with cool people and learn more. And at the same time, I think everyone still had a little ambition to do something bigger. I think what I liked about it was, I felt like. But they're doing okay, right? This is. This isn't the feast or famine of, like, startups fundraising and trying to get VCs to fund your new idea and chasing that with such slim odds of succeeding.

What I liked was that these people had built lifestyles around their skills. And at the same time, you know, they're doing some little investing, a little experimenting, and hoping that one of those businesses hits and you've got those stories of guys that had whatever base hits. Chris Hedgecock's been on our podcast and told some of his stories about some of the businesses. You get them to grow, you make some money, maybe you sell it, use that to leverage yourself into the next thing and level up. But no one needs the story of the $40 million exit. And I like that because I think that creates. That creates anxiety. It creates false expectations and false hopes. It means that everyone's trying to win this lottery, and I just don't buy it. I think that's a rat race that I want to stay out of, and I want to be around entrepreneurs that aren't in it either. And at the same time, I wouldn't mind if one of my ventures hits and sells for $40 million. That's cool. I have permission to have some ambitions with that, but I'm not going to pour my life into that and let it rise or fall on that, or I'm going to lose what really matters, which is the control over my time and my life.

Yeah. Yeah. I think.

It'S funny because I sort of have to remind myself constantly, and Joe and I have this discussion all the time, too, about we're constantly. Not constantly, but we have a lot of stress and anxiety and stuff that bugs us out about our business and things that we're not happy with, with, and, and stuff like that. And one of the conversations we have to sort of force ourselves to have every once in a while is there's a lot of people out there that would kill to have the lifestyle we're currently living. You know, Joe and I, we both work out of our house. We do the. The three to four day a week, work week pretty well. You know, some weeks we're working three days, some days it's some weeks it's four. I don't think we ever put in 40 hours a week at least. You know, I get to see my wife and kids every day, all day, most of the time, because they're around the house and, you know, how many people. And we live in San Diego, you know, how Many people would, would, would kill for this lifestyle. And so some of the times we have to bring our own sort of problems into perspective. You know, like some of the, some of the issues that, you know, we might have, like a cash flow issue where we didn't make sales on one of our products for an entire day and we're like, oh man, we're fucked up. Right? But then like when you put it all into perspective, actually, no, we're still pretty good.

I know it's all those like, short term things. I think it's those like short term little like freak out moments that can really push into like an entire week if you let it, or even further. And then it. That could be a downward spiral for a lot of business owners. Yeah, we've been faced with that. We're like, oh, pump the brakes, hold up.

And saying that we know, we know quite a few people that are in the, you know, the sort of eight figure earner level or have exited and that kind of thing. Pretty much most of them that I know, with one exception being Roland Frazier, pretty much most of them that I know are not super happy. They're not that much happier or enjoying life a whole hell of a lot more than we are.

That just reminded me, I think I got to introduce Roland Frazier to get on your podcast. I forgot to do that. Sorry. Dana, making a note right now.

All right. Send that email.

Yeah, right.

Sort of this massive money chase.

You can't guarantee it's going to happen. There's so much that can happen in life that it's just not really worth the approach that so many people take, I guess. And I think again, I like the idea that people have permission to dream big, permission to try to get something that takes off. But the do or die.

That you'd see, I think in Silicon Valley culture amongst startup entrepreneurs is sort of killing families and relationships and good people who very often when you talk to them at the other end of that have horror stories. We have one guest I've been trying to get on the podcast for a little while who's been through the full VC funded business and who was miserable. And he actually did an exit at $18 million, which was exactly what they needed to pay back all their investors so he could walk away with nothing.

The next venture he did a little different and did a little better.

And I think had a partner. I think the newest one is just him. So he's on the full gamut and is in the best place that he could be now that he's in control and doing it his way. So.

I like the idea of opting out of that whole culture at the same time. Look, if you've got a business that's growing and you hit a point where it's VC fundable, then give it a shot. I'm not a hater. I see the fantasy get chased at the expense of everything else.

Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of grass is always greener going on between like the. At least, at least from our perspective because Joe and I have dabbled in the startup world. We were involved in a startup that actually did eventually exit and we thought the grass was greener on in that world. And when we got into it, we thought that was way more miserable than what we're doing now because it turned into this type of thing where once you have a whole bunch of investors, you have a whole bunch of voices, you have a whole bunch of, of people that want to have opinions that, that, that there becomes more red tape, there becomes more things that slow down processes where us being a small business, we're nimble, we can iterate fast, we can experiment fast. We don't have to get other people's opinions. We don't have to run things by investors or ask for more money or things like that.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's. And your odds of success in the venture without all of those other things are probably higher. I mean, I'm not an economist, but just from practical and anecdotal standpoint, I think you've got way higher odds of success with a venture that you totally control over. Having all the money and then having all of those voices and opinions and people who think they're experts and things you have to spend money on, they wouldn't. I mean, as a lawyer, I'll give you a quick anecdote. If you want to pick a trademark for your little business tomorrow, you don't need to get an opinion, you don't need to do a search, and you can file for 225 bucks. If you've got venture money involved, you have a duty of due diligence now to your shareholders. You need to spend $4,000 on trademark searching and due diligence. And now you have more opinions than you need, then you're going to run that by your marketing people. And then when you file, you're going to drop a thousand or two thousand dollars on legal because you, you can't do the homemade version of things. You can't take risks with other people's money. So just imagine that compounded with every decision you make in a venture funded business and that's not even including the voice of the supposed smart people that are supposed to be there helping you out.

That's very true. Yeah, you're on the Bean, I think where we want to transition to now.

Yeah, no, I actually have one trademark for one of my old podcast. We actually have a trademark on beyond the Hype, which was insanely easy to get. I actually filed a form online and like a year later I had a trademark. It takes forever. But going down the vein of some of the tech law stuff, I wanted to ask a couple kind of quick questions. I didn't want to dwell in this area for too long because I think some of the other conversations are a lot more fun. But I know there are a lot of listeners that would have questions about some of these tech law kind of questions, mostly regarding things like terms and conditions on your page, privacy policies, disclaimers, and then like, you know, the new GDPR stuff that's all coming out. I know all of this stuff. A lot of online business owners that are sort of creating online softwares and info products and things are always kind of concerned with this sort of thing. So I'm kind of curious what your thoughts are and what sort of advice you give people who are setting up online businesses. Because there are a lot of like automated systems where you can go answer some surveys and it'll spit out terms and conditions for you. So I'm curious what advice you give people for. You know, that gamut of things.

Right? And here it depends on your economics. But I give you the you're not broke, but you don't have a lot of money scenario. I would rather have you file your own trademark and pay a lawyer to do your terms of use than bootleg the terms of use and pay a lawyer to do your trademark. Because filing your own trademark, as you've said, Matt, is something that people can do. There's online tutorials. I'm working on an info product that would let you do searching and due diligence and tell you how to do everything without using a lawyer. But crafting your terms of use is difficult to find the perfect analogy. I have clients, for example, that do a few photos and videos that you upload for, say, churches. And so you've got creatives uploading their content. You want like an agreement with them, and what if they, what if they have stolen that content from someone? Like, you need those terms done right? And then the church that licenses and uses those, how do you get them to agree to use it the right way. And you're kind of brokering this transaction so you address who owns what intellectual property. So that document will cost you $3,000 from a mid range law firm like ours. And then you're probably safer unless you could find somebody that's doing almost the exact same thing. And you really are a technical kind of writer, in which case maybe you could save money and draft that terms of use yourself. When it comes to privacy policy and gdpr.

We'Re turning people away who don't have us only websites because the liability is so high in Europe and the kind of technical drafting can be done by other people cheaper. So for example, we probably charge you $3,000 to do a privacy policy that's hopefully GDPR compliant. And there are services online that will do a fixed fee for 1500 bucks and they insure basically against you being in violation. So I would, I would just pay one of new kind of flat fee services for doing your privacy policy.

And that way you get terms drafted by a smart lawyer that helps you actually think through the transaction from a legal and business standpoint. You get a fixed fee privacy policy that is basically an insurance policy. And now your relationship with the outside world is locked down. And then, you know, if you're tight on a budget, do your own trademark due diligence, be sure no one's using your trademark and file it yourself. And there you go. I mean.

I have clients that will do all of that through a firm like mine. I would avoid big firms unless you are funded by someone who wants you to use a big firm. They just cost more. I mean it's just part of the infrastructure. That big fancy office that they have. I'm 450 bucks an hour as a lawyer in my 20th year of practice and I've taught this subject for eight years at law schools in San Diego.

So it's like literally an overhead type thing.

Yeah, it is. I mean it's an overhead and everyone getting a piece of the pie. So there's big partnerships with lots of profit to share between partners. I would get $900 an hour if I was working at a big city law firm with just my resume. So you're paying half price by getting me at that price. My lawyer that works, my junior partner, she's half of what she would get as well. I think she'd probably, she's 260 an hour and I think she would get 550 if she was billed through a bigger firm. So I highly recommend using smaller Law firms and finding people that are relationship based that are going to remember you when you come back and have a sense of who you are and what you're doing and not going to just pass it down the line to some associates who's going to just try to fulfill their minimum billable hour requirement. And at the end of the day you pay and you don't really get any better service.

Makes sense. And Kayla's awesome by the way.

Thank you. I think.

So.

You better because she's running your company well. I don't know, maybe.

Thanks Kayla.

So is there anything from a legal side that typical business owners. I know it's very broad, obviously.

Let's just say online. Business owners online.

Yeah.

That have an online presence that we.

Should at least be aware of or address that we didn't bring up just now.

Yeah. The number one thing that seems to be happening over the past two years is that people of all intelligence levels think that they can take a picture from the Internet and use it. So whether it's Google Images or it's web blogs, you may not use photos unless you get them from a Creative Commons with attribution properly or you get them from a licensing site like a royalty free stock images like Shutterstock or Istock photo or Getty Images. I think Getty owns all of those. But basically you need to get licensed content. When it comes from the Internet there's very few exemptions for that. And the consequences to my clients are, you know, thousands of dollars in legal fees and thousands of dollars you have to pay the rights.

And those photos are all full of metadata. So all they have to do is write a bot that tracks down where their photo was used and they find you. So.

The sort of easiest way to stay out of trouble is all original content. Take your own photos or license the photos regardless. I don't care whether it's a slide deck or a blog post that you're putting on your website. We have some information products that have pictures inside and those are all licensed. I think the only exception are logos of companies and we pull those from those companies style guides. So if we want to put Facebook's logo up or LinkedIn's photo up, we go pull those from their websites and that way we're using it properly in that sense that they're granted the right to use their logos. But other than that we've never used a photo that someone else might own unless we've taken it from a website. We've paid for a few of those sites that are free.

Yeah, no, that we've actually run into that in the past where we actually were using VAs to create some of our content for us. And apparently they were using Google Images to just find related images. And we actually got a kind of a nasty message from the Associated Press.

No, it's from Getty.

Oh, was it from Getty? I thought it was from apartment okay.

Yeah. Either way, it was a big company.

It was either Getty or ap, but we got a message from them basically with a giant number saying, here's how much you owe us.

Yeah, 800 bucks, I think.

Yeah. So.

That'S interesting because that actually makes me a little worried because one of the ways we actually make our podcast images is we, I mean, I guess we get permission from all of our guests to use their image though.

So, yeah, like if you guys go, my images I have purchased, you know, paid a photographer to take, or I took them, or my wife took them or Nate took them. Right. So, you know, I have the right to tell you, you know, you can use my image. And no guest is going to sue you for using their image because they're here.

You saw our intake form. What we do is we basically ask for a guest to share their photo with us. And if they don't share a photo, we basically say we'll go find one from your social media profile. If you don't share one and you give us permission to do that, that's essentially how we approach it. But I mean, I never have any idea who owns the rights to the images that they share with us. Even if they're in them, somebody could still technically own the rights to them. I'd say that's probably fairly rare, but technically they could, right?

Well, yeah, that's actually another good point for entrepreneurs of all levels is that when you have a photographer take your pictures, the photographer isn't selling you the pictures, they're selling you a license to use the pictures. So I use Flavio Scorsato, a longtime friend who does a lot of athletes and MMA fighters. So he's pretty high profile, high paid photographer. And when, when I pay him to do a sitting, I'm not buying the photos, I'm buying the right to use those photos. And so I probably have the right to grant you the right to use it because it's within the scope of this implied license. Right, but let's just say that you guys get Tony Robbins on your, on your podcast. If you just go grab an image of Tony Robbins, whoever his photographer is might be pissed because that photographer Might have written a license that says you can only use these pictures for X, Y and Z. And you in particular didn't get permission from the photographer that owns those rights. And so by using that picture, you could get that photographer suing you, even though Tony might not care.

That's actually a. A perfect example because I ran into that. Exactly that exact thing with Tony Robbins as I was creating.

Really?

This is no shit. I was working with Mike Koenigs back in the day for some sales videos, and he had a partner who essentially had Tony Robbins in the mix and this whole thing as someone, you know, she worked with. And I think I was using some image from Tony's, one of his websites, and she was like, whoa, hold on, we can't use that image. Or actually, I don't think you can use any images with Tony unless, you know, he obviously license it from them. But he was. Yeah, he locks his stuff down. So.

Yeah, well, and that's. The other piece is if the photographer. Tony can't give you permission to use a photo unless he acquired the right to the photographer. But Tony could also. The photographer can't give you the permission to use the photo without Tony giving you his right of publicity. Right. He has to release the right to use it. And of course, if you've interviewed him or used him in something, he probably would. And you might even get that consent in an email. But typically you'd ask for a model release from the. From the person whose image it is, and then you'd ask for a photographer's release of the copyright from the photographer. So, yeah, if you're doing a lot of that, you know, your listeners can hit me up. I created one for our shoe company because we have a lot of people that are kind of like, we're not sure if they took the picture or the photographer did and they're the model. And so when it's opposed to social, we have them sign, like, a pretty short combination that's basically like, I'm the photographer or the photographer is so and so, and they're consenting to this, and I'm in the picture, so I'm waving my right of publicity. So, yeah, if they take their own picture, then you can have them waive the right of publicity and give you permission from a copyright standpoint, all in one little form that you have them sign. And then you're not worried about someone haunting you down later and asking you for those thousands of dollars.

That's smart. Yeah. Did you say you had a little checklist or form that yeah, just we.

Created, you know, we realized people don't want to sign long forms. And when the photographer is the model, we just put. Put the two into one so I can genericize that, pull our company name out of it, and give it to you guys if you want to put it in the show notes or something.

That'd be super cool. Please. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, this is good stuff. I know. We're going. We're at an hour now. There's, like, a lot of stuff we can go down, but there's a handful.

Of topics we haven't even gotten to yet.

I keep talking if you guys want to keep talking. I don't know if you have a time limit.

Actually, we don't, luckily. I'm really curious, and I know we. You held a panel about real estate at your opt out beach camp, and I was really fascinated by your approach, and I just wanted to kind of introduce that we don't have to get super, super deep like you did there. But essentially my takeaway is tax breaks. And that's kind of like one of the big motivators for real estate for you, it sounds like.

Yeah. So I think I can condense it so that we're not wasting a whole bunch of people's time. The I have this, like, baby bear approach to real estate. And, you know, I've had the pava bear. I had 90 units across three apartment complexes all within maybe five blocks in downtown Phoenix for a decade. And, you know, I had all the ups and downs and lots of downs. I've had management companies that use my credit cards to buy paint for their properties. I've had managers who steal prescription drugs from tenants. I've had managers girlfriends who was sipping all the vodka out of everyone's freezer. Turns out that when you have cheap apartments, almost everyone's an alcoholic. And they all have vodka in the freezer that another alcoholic who has keys can slowly sip down. You know, the one building, my bookkeeper called it Jerry Springer, she'd be like, we got problems in Jerry Springer today. She just meant the Lexington. She just meant this one whole apartment building. So when I finally extracted myself from that, I did. I sort of did the math. With about the same value of owning 33 units, I could have a fourplex in a really nice neighborhood, and I get all the tax benefits. You get a passive loss of up to $25,000 that you can write off against your other income. So that's about eight grand a year in my pocket. Even if a property breaks even, I can manage it myself, which saves me 6 or 7%. I can fix a few things myself, which saves me 6 or 7%. And then I can manage contractors when they do show up and they've got to look me in the eye. And when you've got a big apartment complex, they're just going to screw you. I'm saving another 6 or 7%. So if you look at all the savings that you make and then you have better tenants, you build relationships with them and treat them well.

And you basically can have a 4 Plex that does far better. I mean for me, about double the financial performance of a 33 Plex that had about the same value.

And so. And it gives me just enough real estate to get all the benefits without all of the burden that you get from a lot of real estate. And in the long run, I mean, just take a million and a half $4 Plex in 20 years that's going to be paid off and throwing off $15,000 a month in cash flow. So if, you know if. And the mortgage is getting paid by the tenants.

Yep. So you're breaking even in more.

Exactly. I mean, the first year of 14 Plex, I broke even the first year. The next year I was making about a thousand a month ahead. This year I'm 2,000amonth ahead. Next year I'm going to redo the exteriors and the following year I'll start pouring all the extra cash into paying the mortgage down. And you know, as entrepreneurs, I think it's a great backup, you know, like.

In 20 years if whatever, my 401k traditional investments don't perform and my businesses don't sell for millions and no one likes my book or podcast. I still have a retirement plan that's pretty fucking good, right? I mean that's like if that performs and there's no reason it shouldn't, unless a sinkhole opens up and sucks my fourplex down into it. Like there's no reason why people won't want to keep renting the units in this property. So you know that my approach is this, like just enough and that that might be enough, just one might give you all of those benefits depending on kind of where you live in the country and you don't need more. So why, why burden yourself with like trying to become a real estate mogul and have 100 units if one 4 unit complex gets you everything?

Yeah. And I love that you are in San Diego, your fourplexes and like, like one of the hottest parts of the county, the city and you're still pulling this off, you know, and it's not a lot to manage. It's a part of town I know you said you love. I love it too. And yeah, it's just crazy. And I think the aha for me was the break even thing. Like, when you're looking for a property, you don't have to get cash flow from day one.

It's like, break even. No. Well, and look, if you. If you have a property that is, just take my example, $8,000 a year negative. But you have $8,000 a year in tax savings, and they're paying your mortgage down, you could be negative for a couple of years, and you're not really negative because the tax advantage is actually giving you that money back. You breaking even and paying the mortgage down by virtue of the renters covering your mortgage for that time. And another cool trick is you can use FHA financing with 3.5% down if you just move into one of the units. So a lot of people don't realize, like, you want that dream house. That's stupid. Buying the biggest house that you can for your money is not the right move anymore. Buying a house with a unit behind it, you can Airbnb. Or buying a fourplex and living in the main house and renting the other three units. That's the way to get the freedom that you want and have these other people paying your mortgage. And then at some point, you can move out of that four plex and rent the main house and buy something else if you want. But you can get in that kind of deal cheap, gives you all these cool benefits, and a lot of people just kind of miss that opportunity.

Now, do you have more than one fourplex or.

Yeah, I have two.

You have two. What are you looking for when you're looking for those fourplexes? Like, what sort of criteria are you going after?

Number one is neighborhood. I want to be where people want to be. And, you know, for me, you know, buying in North Park, I like the zip code. I've got one on either side of 92104.

And, you know, because people, you just know when they show up, they're gonna be like, yep, I like this neighborhood because I can walk to X, Y, and Z. There's bars, there's restaurants. I think millennials are way more responsible. They like Lyft. They're not driving drunk as much. You know, they want to, like, get high and walk to the bar and not have to think about getting in a car.

And, I mean, north park is like, I Mean, anybody listening who doesn't know San Diego, north park is like craft beer capital of San Diego.

Yeah. So it's like great food, great bars, restaurants, great music venue called the Observatory. So it's a walkable place in San Diego. And it actually has multiple walkable neighborhoods. So there's like four major districts in that zip code, and you could live near any one of them and then uber across to the other or walk to the one that's closest to you. And I think that's the number one thing I'm looking for. And then I'm looking for unmonetized value. I'm looking for some owner who was ambivalent out of money, deferred maintenance. The first four plex I bought, she hadn't done anything for 20 years. And so it took a little time and I did some rehab. The second one, the other owner rehabbed. And I'm not sure if the partners were in dispute where they needed money, but it was just a good deal with rent that hadn't been raised for a while and there was not really any deferred maintenance. So you get to come into that and just kind of like put some fresh paint in the units, the kitchens and bathrooms are redone and raise the rent.

That's an easy one.

They were under market a little bit.

I wish I had the foresight in North park like 15 years ago because that used to be a scary place to go in San Diego.

I know, I know. Me too. Me too. When I was buying out in Phoenix, I should have just been buying in north park. And it took that experience, I think, to do the math. I mean, there was a point at which, I mean, we have a condo at the beach and at one point say it was worth a million. Three, we had a property in Phoenix that was probably worth the same. And my wife managed the beach condo in her spare time in between tennis and has, you know, no management issues and no hassles. And then the revenue is just as good as like a property, a big giant property that has all those headaches. So, yeah, sometimes it's just a matter of like having the experience teach you. And then I'm just trying to teach that to people. Is like you. The opt out approach to real estate is this idea of just getting enough and understanding why, why are you getting it? And then you just go for it for that reason.

Yeah, it's awesome, man. I love it.

It's definitely a world we want to get more into. I mean, my experience and Joe's experience with real as of right now is just the houses we live in, we own, right?

Yeah. And that's fine. But I talk about trying to monetize that. I tell people, rent it while you're on vacation. When you take your next vacation, lock up some stuff. And one of our guests, Adam Daley, wrote a book, how to run away and take your kids with you. How to run away from home.

I need that book.

I like that.

I want to do that.

Yeah. Listen to his podcast. And at the end, he's talking about. He's finishing this house. It's like a million plus doll house up in the hill in La Jolla. And he's like, I can't wait to finish so that I can take a vacation and rent it while I'm gone. That was awesome. Because he's not, like, thinking about this house being protective of, like, I don't need to even worry about what if they break something? I don't care. I'm gonna have someone pay me ten grand a month while I take a vacation with my whole family that only costs six.

It's amazing. That's. We literally, my wife and I and parents in law, we.

We each have an acre out in East County, San Diego, and we live next to each other. It's not too close, but it's enough distance. But we thought about. We're like, we could totally just put this on VRBO or Airbnb and make it in a state. Just big parties. It could be a family gathering or something. But we've actually thought about exactly what you said, did some math, and it was like, it was enough cash to be like, yeah, I'll go on vacation, take over the house. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, that's a way to make the house. You have an asset. And then, of course, the other way is. In my book, I talk about building a Fonzie flat. I date myself because Fonzie is from a TV show that no one younger than me remembers.

Happy Days.

Yeah. So, you know, on Happy Days, Fonzie lived above the Cunninghams. And, you know, it's just extra money for them. And a lot of people don't realize they could carve out a room and just rent it to a grad student or somebody and. Or build an attic or put something over the garage. And you get all that income without having to go buy a duplex. You know, if you really like the house you're in, find a way to. Find a way to build something, a unit that you can Airbnb. Short term, long term, whatever you do, it's just extra money.

I could totally do an Airbnb at my house. I got enough rooms. We got, we literally have rooms in my house. We don't fucking use.

You of all people should be Airbnb. Yeah, my, my parents in law, they're doing that and crushing it on Airbnb.

My thing is I want, I'd want a second, second entrance into whatever room.

I'm giving it straight in. Just take, take a window and turn it into a French door and that's lockable. And then deadbolt. Like put a solid core door on the inside and put a deadbolt on it so they can't get in your house.

That's right.

Could totally do it. Could do that in the room we're in right now. Yeah, no, I mean I have a five bedroom house and literally one of the rooms we call the cat's room because the only use it gets is that our cat frickin sleeps in it all day long.

Long.

It's a knowing cat too.

Cat.

Shut up. All right, so yeah, there's a, there's a lot of cool stuff you can do. Real estate. This is. Yeah, we just start here at home, Matt. And yeah, read that book or the audiobook because I think that would be.

Well, I need to get the opt out life book and I also need to get the how to run away from home and take your kids book. I need both of those.

Well, let's get them, damn it.

But so the, the sort of last little rabbit hole I wanted to go down with you is to talk about podcasting a little bit because obviously we have a podcast. You have a podcast. And it's always fun to kind of chat about podcasting for a minute. So I'm curious what your goal starting the podcast was. What was the reason you decided to add a podcast into the mix?

It was a way to get the word out and I think an environment that's welcoming of podcasts. I mean, I feel like it's. It's funny because I was, I did a podcast over 10 years ago with a bunch of guys that were all kind of ex church people. So we started a podcast called out churched. And all we did was get on and like riff about our experiences kind of on our way out of church. And it was more. More catharsis probably than anything that would have helped a lot of people. But you know, it was corny and nerdy 10 years ago to be like podcasting, you know, I mean, it was, you know, using a platform, basically. It was like a WordPress based platform. And we didn't know what to do with it. I mean, got out there and we got some listeners, but Nate and I sat down and we're like, how do you get the message out? What's a good way to craft this? And we realized opt out. We don't want to be gurus that are like, listen to us, follow us, do what we say. We want to tell other people stories and say, that guy got it. Do you hear his opt out story? And then we want to teach you through that opt out story and inspire you and let you get, you know, little clues from other people's stories about ways you can build your opt out life. So it was more like engineering the message in a way that we want to convey on top of the book. So it's like, look, the book is here. It's a manual. The podcast is a tool that lets listeners kind of come in. Then ultimately, we want to build a community that has people at all levels. And we're not really even sure how to segment that because we've got people like you guys that are like, you know, opted out in some level and around a bunch of other people that have, you know, running businesses of their own, have had business experiences and can learn from each other and that, for example, I can bring some great tools to guys at your level, but we also have newbies and people that are like, I want, you know, I'm 21, I want the opt out life. And so, you know, we want to build a community that can feed them as well. And we'll probably, you know, monetize it from subscriptions. You know, our thinking is just something attainable. Might be 100 bucks a month, it might be 50 bucks a month. There might be some premium one that's got a whole bunch more interaction, that's more. But, you know, if we can get a couple thousand people into a group that are helping each other find their opt out life and resources, legal tools, all the stuff I bring Nate brings with marketing and kind of like be the pastors of that little church.

Then it's a good business. And I'm not afraid to make money from helping people. I think that's a cool opportunity for us to be like, all right, here's the stuff we're doing. Is this worth 100 bucks a month to you? And we're bringing value to that. And if we can make great money from that, then we don't have to be gurus that sell you anything. I mean, I feel like so many of the platforms are built by someone that's constantly got to reinvent something that some reason and that you should keep being energized by their cult of sorts, their cult of personality. And for us, we want to build something that we're leading, but we're handing you tools and there's a reason to hang out in that community for years into the future.

Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, you're speaking our language too, because we're still trying to achieve our. I mean, we've opted out in some ways. Obviously. We don't have to go to a day job. I actually sold my. I don't even own a car anymore because I don't leave my house. And when I do, Joe's got three cars and Uber's available.

I bought more, but they're all paying for themselves, so it's.

Oh yeah, Joe actually rents out his cars. He's got a passive cash flow from his cars.

I love that. Yeah, the Turo or one of those.

Platforms, Turo and got a free Tesla out of it. So sweet.

Yeah, but I mean, like, I feel like we're still trying to get our own opt out status. I guess that it's sort of a moving target though for a lot of people. Just like once, once you kind of figure out what you want and then you get to that point, then you realize there's something else that you probably want to, you know, get rid of in your life. And, and for us, we, we. We're not. I don't know if I should be saying this publicly on the podcast, but we're not really a fan of selling info products.

Oh yeah.

You know, we do have our online courses and info products around traffic and marketing strategies and stuff. And it's kind of the first thing that we want to get rid of in the business because we'd rather share information for free and make our income from other places. So that's sort of our next level opt out goal is to finally get rid of selling info products in our business.

Hashtag opt outgoal. Yeah, I like that.

Love it. Yeah, I love it. That's great.

Yeah, maybe it's. Well, I know the membership you guys are talking about. When you explained at the event, I was like, well that's a no brainer. Just with your legal advice alone, monthly I'll be like, yes, please.

I mean that is kind of one of the things we're trying to do with our courses is we're trying to shift them away from selling courses and shift more into selling the community. You're Getting access and you're getting community and you're getting like minded members. And we're trying to shift our sort of messaging on the products that we sell more to the community messaging and less to the specific tactic that you're going to learn from us.

Right? Yeah, yeah, that's definitely where we want to go to.

So what are your plans with the opt out life event? Is that something you see doing annually and growing it bigger and bigger each time or where do you see that going?

Yeah, so this year was the first and it was an experiment. When we first mapped it out, we thought we'd pitch it to our big, to our user base and we realized that it was going to take a lot of energy and money and we scaled it down and decided we'd make it only people we wanted to hang out with, like the people who are opt out already or are kind of on the journey self employed and get them together and get them collaborating. Have those panels, do the speed dating, kind of like meet everybody and just bring people together and have fun. Make it something you want to come back to. So the goal is to do the same thing and probably make it bigger next year. But I'm not sure even next year it's going to be the kind of thing that we can resource someone who's totally new. I mean maybe we'll have room for a few, but. But I picture next year double in size. But we also are having talks with somebody that's pretty connected at EO about trying to make it bigger, bigger and we'll see. Because I think to do that we need somebody who's experienced at running events, make it right, budget it right, figure out what the sort of strike prices are for the different levels of participation. So we don't know, but we like beach camp. We like the time of year we like like doing it in La Jolla or San Diego where the weather is great and connecting good people. And you know that that is how Nate and I really met at an event like this. We talked about think tank. We, we started our own group called socali, which we're basically turning into an opt out kind of thing. I mean I can envision a meetup in every city. That's basically an opt out meetup that people who are, you know, embrace the theory, run without us, you know, that just kind of like bring people together and you know, maybe we do roadshow and go hit some of those events throughout the year and help boost them. But I think bringing people together in an informal way to learn from Each other and collaborate has been invaluable to us in getting here.

We're gonna have to connect you with part of that. We'll have to connect you with James Schramko. I'm not sure if you're familiar with him, but he's in Australia. But he kind of has put on larger and larger annual events. But he's also done that model where there's actual local events all around the world that are based on his super fast business brand. And they're, they're sort of locally organized meetups all over the, all over the place.

Oh, and he does retreat style things like he did with Opt Out. Yeah.

Doesn't he go, Is it Bali that he goes?

Where does he go to Maldives.

Maldives. That's where he goes. So he goes there once a year and he takes like a group of, of his customers, his, you know, his higher ticket customers, and they all do a big surf trip out in the Maldives.

That's awesome. Yeah. Love to see the message grow for opt out life and have people, you know, get their lives changed. And I don't need to be, you know, responsible. I love, I love the fact that I'm just kind of taking ideas from our guests, from the people we know in our network and showcasing those and saying to people, there's a better model for you than the sort of, of things that you think it takes to be successful. Look at that guy or that woman and learn from them. And you go do that and that's going to be success. Yeah.

Shouldn't be any harder than that, Dana. Yeah, I love it. My man. Well, thanks for hanging out with longer than normal.

My pleasure. Thanks for having me, guys.

For sure. And really quick, so two more things. Any books or, or anything that you just typically reference often that you'd like to recommend here?

Yeah. I mean, there's a life changing book that I think anyone who wants to sort of be self realized, actualized, empowered, ought to read. It's not very mystical. It's written by a psychologist named Dr. Scott Peck in the 70s. It's called the Road Less Traveled. And he wrote a follow up called Further along the Road Less Traveled. Two of the number one self help books I would tell people, read this. It will change your life.

And then, you know, the books that entrepreneurs read are just worth reading and rereading for our work week. Rich dad, Poor Dad, Millionaire Next Door, the Richest man in Babylon. These are, you know, the Think and Grow Rich. How to Win Friends and Influence People. You know, just.

The E Myth. Great Book.

One minute Manager. Might as well throw that in there. We were a little critical of some of the methods, but still, these books are great and life changing and they're popular for a reason.

All the books you just named. I don't think we have to ask this question for another two months or so.

Somebody actually mentioned the road lesson.

How about the Subtle Art of Not Giving a fuck by Mark Manson?

I actually haven't read that one yet, but I've seen that mentioned a lot. Yeah, the Road Less travel book somebody actually mentioned on the show recently, and it was the first time I'd heard it, but now that we've got two, I'll have to definitely pick it up.

Two is a winner. All right, Dana, where should folks go? Check you out. I know you have your Opt Out Life podcast and some other stuff.

Yeah, just go to opt outlife.com there's a button that says start here that kind of gives you a bit of a pitch. It's a sales page we wrote, so it's a little salesy, but we wrote it so it's to up.

You can still join.

Yeah. And there's a, there's a button to just join the email list. We, you know, we're pretty deliberate with what we email you. You know, we ask people to tell us their opt out story, where they at, and then when they reply, we write them back. You know, like we're, we're actually trying to interact with people. So if you're listening to this and you dig it, then go to our website, opt out life.com and get on our emailing list.

Freaking awesome. Yeah, it's worth every, every second there. So go check Dina and Nate out. Thank you, Dana, man, it's been a pleasure.

Thank you both.

Yeah, we'll probably have Nate on here shortly. We'll drag him in here.

Sounds good. All right, thanks, guys.

See you.

Talk to you later.

All right, thank you. And I hope you just enjoyed this episode you just listened to. Now right now before we sign off, I have a few things I would love for you to do. So the very first thing is to go find our guest on Facebook and tell them that you loved their episode with us. That's going to help them just feel good about themselves, but also it's going to spread the word a little bit more for us. Go find them on Facebook. Everybody's on Facebook. And go say that you love their episode and maybe one cool thing that you learn there. The second thing is to go to itunes and subscribe to our podcast. Just look up Hustle and Flowchart and hit the subscribe button. And the very last thing, the third thing, is to leave us a review on itunes or wherever you're listening to this podcast and help us spread the word more. That's how more people are going to get this awesome knowledge, this, this cool podcast training, and a whole bunch of other cool free training that we give out@evergreen profits.com so that's about it. Go find them on Facebook, go subscribe on itunes, and leave us a review. You would be amazing if you did that, but you're always amazing. So thanks for listening and we'll catch you in the next episode.

You're awesome.