Episode 489: Getting Freedom of Time and Money with Eric Davis

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind, where we get real world insights on winning from people who have accomplished amazing things. I'm your host, Larry Wydell, and let's get going. I'm talking with Eric Davis this afternoon. Hello, Eric.

Hello, Larry. How are you doing?

I'm doing great. And you're out in la, is that right? Southern California?

Yes, sir.

And just got back from flying up to San Francisco to the playoff game.

Talk about that.

Talk about that.

Well, it's starting to become tradition if the Lakers are not in the playoffs, which is quite often now, my wife's birthday is May 6, so it's always during playoff time. So if she's not. If the Lakers are not in, we're flying somewhere to go watch a playoff game. So we've flown to Utah before. Never been to Utah, but I flew to Utah during her birthday just so I could see. The Houston Rockets played Utah a few years ago, and this time it happened to be San Francisco, which was closer, you know, to LA than Utah or anywhere else. And we had a ball, went to the Warriors, Memphis game, had great seats, Went, flew there that morning, flew home the next day. So we got back from Mother's Day. But it was just. It was just a great time. She act like she didn't have a good time with. She'll say stuff like, this is for you. This is not for my birthday. I'm like, we had a great dinner, we had a great time and stayed out of nice hotel. Yes, this is for you. I just happened to enjoy it a lot.

She's not quite the playoff basketball fan you are, I guess.

Absolutely not. So unless we go to a Laker game, we'll go to a Laker game. And she's so busy, it could be fourth quarter with 15 seconds left, and she's looking around the crowd, looking to see what stars she recognized, the actors she recognized. Oh, there's such and such. There's such. I'm like, the game, the game is right. What are you talking about?

Well, whatever rocks your boat. I'll tell you a funny thing. Years ago we went to the LA Forum and the Lakers are still playing there. And I'm walking. I tell you what, I had a long layover and I went over. There was a game going on, so I took a cab over there and I was watching the game and I just went in and I was just trying to find a seat, and this girl came up and she said, hey, how are you? I know you, you know, like I was a celebrity or something she said. I mean, I've heard about you, you know, read about you, but, man, it's exciting. You're Andy Young. And for the rest of y' all on here, you won't know the difference. But me and Andy are nothing alike. I thought, yeah, how did you know? But people.

That's funny.

People are so, so accustomed to looking for celebrities in the crowd. They'll make them up, you know. You know, I would have loved to be Jack Nicholson or something like that. Anyway, yeah. As you, you know, you're a young guy, successful in your own business. And I wanted to bring up that thing about the. The advantages of having your own business and being financially independent and getting to a level of success. Still got to work. But it's fun to be able to be able to take those timeouts because you've only been in your own business for about 12 years, is that right?

Absolutely. 12 years. I've tried other businesses before. None of them panned out longer than six months because I didn't know what I was doing, didn't have the right mentorship. But I always. I was taught just like most people, go to school, go to college, get a great job, but it just never seemed like it was enough for me. And you couldn't really run your own show working for somebody else. They dictate your schedule, basically dictate where you live, on the location of where that job is. And I didn't have any freedom, and I didn't have the freedom of time or money. So when this opportunity came across, I came across this opportunity to be entrepreneur. It was different. And now life is better than I ever anticipated it could be. Like, I just never knew I'd have this type of freedom of time, freedom of money, being able to make my own decisions. But with that, it comes. It still comes with a whole lot of responsibilities. When you build a big business, a lot of people are dependent on you for guidance as well as reassurance that they're doing the right thing or reassurance that you're mentoring them the right way. But the advantages. The advantages come with, like, being able to send my daughter. I'm in la, so she would technically be going to LA Unified School District. That's not happening. So she's at a private school. We wouldn't be able to afford that if I was still a parole agent.

And so what? You got a lot of education before you got out in the job market. You didn't just, like, go to work. I mean, you prepared, you got your education, talk about that.

Well, I had old school parents. My parents, when I was born, My dad was 48 years old, my mom was turning 42, and they were old school. They believed in get your education and got my education. But their education was more powerful than mine was because at the time, if you had a bachelor's degree, you had a master's degree, you can get a job that will last your lifetime and retire the right way. And office of the sunset. By the time I became an adult, that thing that had changed and. But they are. It's always ingrained in me. Go to school, get a good job, go to college, get. I mean, go to school, go to college and, you know, plant your flag at the right company that's going to be stable. It's more about stable. Instead of excelling or, you know, living a life of luxury or anything like that, just be middle class. Just make enough to pay your bills and, and be stable. That's what I was taught. So education would help you get one of those stable careers where you can make money and get a good retirement program. That's what I was taught coming up.

And so how did that play out?

Well, you know, I finished colleges in three and a half years and I went back to get my master's degree. I was a probation officer at age 21. What I realized was you had to be there 10 years before you can be eligible for a promotion. Like, imagine you get there, you're doing everything you're supposed to. You're working hard. You can't get a promotion for 10 years unless you had a master's degree. So I went back to get a master's degree, pay 20,000 just so I can be eligible to get a promotion early. Got a promotion early and realized I still wouldn't be able to retire to like 65 years old. So I went from probation to parole because parole would allow you to retire about 10 years earlier. Earlier than that, maybe 50, 51 years old. Retirement structure was better. So I ended up leaving probation to parole. But I always had a second, second job because there still wasn't enough stuff in California. It's very, very expensive. I bought a house through what's called the officer next door program, where I allowed you to get to buy a house half off. But it was in bad neighborhoods. Like, I bought my first house. Yeah, I bought my first house in Compton. It was half off. I ended up making a lot of money on it years later when I sold it. But. But it just wasn't enough. I'm like, I'm doing all the right stuff. I'm getting a master's degree. Why am I not living like I see people live on TV or living in that hill up there or living on the beach. I'm still living in the hood after I have a master's degree. What's going on? So I would see business opportunities like we ended up. I ended up talking to a guy in the neighborhood and he was a trucker and he seemed like he was doing well in his trucking business. Now I had saved some money and I ended up investing in a diesel business that I knew nothing about diesel trucks. Just because I'm trying to find another way to make some additional money. Within six months I ended up selling that diesel, losing thousands of dollars and just was looking for more. I was always somebody who was never satisfied. Always looking for more. Just didn't know where to go, didn't know what to do. I did everything I was doing working 60 hours a week. And I still have this little house in Compton. And so when the opportunity I'm in came across I looked at it as another opportunity to make part time income rather than a career change. But I looked around. It was a lot of successful people in the business I was in and ended up taking it more seriously. And one thing led to another. Now we're million dollar earners in the business.

Yeah. And which is pretty dramatic after just 12 years. And because it's in financial services it's a whole lot more stable once you build it up and you get it coming through. Income is a whole lot more stable than it is in a lot of industries. Because what I liked about financial services was the fact that the first thing I heard because I came out of construction which is up and down on basically seven year cycles, feast or famine. But it was back then. I don't know what the cycles are now or if they're predictable at all. But first of all I said I'm going to shop for an industry before I'm going to shop for a job. And that's why I look at it financial services. Because that was the one industry that did not go down during the Great Depression. So I said there's got to be a spot for me in that thing. So you did well in financial services. Although that was probably a strange choice for you when you're a parole officer.

Absolutely, absolutely. I had no formal education in finance at all. At all. Even though I liked finance and I like numbers, I just never, I never went that route as far as my education was concerned. So it Was a strange choice. So when I was initially introduced to the opportunity that I'm in now, it wasn't about the financial services. It was just at the time, like, I just need to make extra money. It wasn't about a career change or anything like that. I didn't see the big picture. I really didn't. I just need to make extra money. And I seen the ability to make money with the license, you know, the license that is required quickly. And it just looked to me like another part time job or part time opportunity. When I, when I seen the bigger picture, that's when I looked at, okay, this is a financial service career type change thing that could be a real business. But initially it wasn't that.

Yeah, how. I'm curious that you came out of college. What kind of background did your parents have? What were they in?

My dad was an engineer. Actually he was. He was in the army and then he was in the army. He was a paratrooper and then he went to the navy, and then he became a navy. Maybe he went to the army and then he became a civilian that worked at the Navy shipyard in Long Beach.

I see.

And he was an architectural engineer, like helped draw the plans for the different ships and stuff. And my mom was a preschool teacher. But they're both, both college educated and.

They'Re probably just over the moon. When you came home and said, I'm getting the job working at the prison.

Well, a lot of times you kind of do what you see. And I'm the youngest by several years. And I always paid attention to what others were doing. My older brother, who's the oldest, was kind of like the black sheep in the family. And he was like, what not to do. So I paid attention to closely what he was doing. I don't want to end up like that. I'm not doing that. My sister became a probation officer. She became a probation officer. She got her degree. She ended up getting her master's degree. So I kind of followed her in her footsteps because I seen no other way to do it. And my parents always talked about getting a good job. It looked like her job was, okay, let me go to probation. But I always had a want for more, so I knew it wasn't enough. I was always trying other things, but that's just paying attention to my older brother and sister and the difference between their lives is what had kind of formed what I wanted to do.

Yeah, and when did you start making your own decisions like that? Or when was the pressure on you to take the initiative and get that job, you know.

Well, I was kind of a person that kind of did a lot of stuff quickly. I just was like that. Like when I was in high school, I was going to Cal State Dominguez and taking college courses before I actually graduated from high school. So I had some courses already. And every summer I would take college. You know, every summer I would go to summer school. So I was able to graduate my master's at three and a half years. My sister immediately called me and say, hey, you're already eligible to be a probation officer at 21. That's kind of rare. I applied. By the time before I even walked the stage for my graduation, I was hired by the Los Angeles county probation department. So that's pretty much how it happened. I was just looking, trying to get paid as quickly as possible. I had student loans to pay off. And.

Coming out of what, what drove you, what was in your mind to get that education started early in the game? What, what was in your mind didn't want to be like your older brother?

Absolutely. I didn't want to be my other older brother. And everybody, you know, my mother, my father, my sister, were college educated. So I knew I had to go to college. And you know, most people during that time, if you went to college, you were going to be sinette doors significantly better. Significantly better than people that didn't go to college. That might have changed now because the world has changed, but back then you had a college degree of certain things you could apply for that others could not. I was never good with my hands. My dad was an architectural engineer. He was good with his hands. He was good at stuff like that. That wasn't me. I was not going to be doing construction. I wasn't going to be doing anything that I had to make money with my hands. It was not happening. So I knew I had to get some kind of formal education and do something where I had to. I could use my brain rather than my, my, my motor skills. And, and that's just how. That's just what happened.

It's funny, you know, kids are going through these decisions, they start thinking about them. A lot of them do, not all of them earlier than you would think. And as you're, as a kid, you're starting to look, look down the road and say, where am I going to end up with income? And it's interesting that you figured out early on you didn't want to be working with your hands. Why didn't you want to be working with your hands? Just because you were no good at it, or it was limited.

I was no good at it. I don't know if it was limited or not, but I remember one particular time. I might have been seven years old, eight years old. My dad used to always come out here, boy, let me show you how to get under the house and work on this and working on that. And I never was into it. And I remember I was paying attention to what he was doing, and he swung the hammer and I was too close, and he hit me in the head with the hammer. Had a big old love on my head. I fell out on the ground crying and hollering and whatever. And that was it for me. Like, at seven years old, Like, I'm not. I'm not messing with these hammers. I'm not messing with these nails. I'm done. But. And it kind of like, I remember that was the first time really remembering, like, I'm not interested. Seven years old, getting hit by the. Hit in the head with a hammer by my father showing me how to do some manual labor.

That's hilarious. It reminds me of the Michael Jordan story, you know, like his dad was a big mechanic, could do anything. Fixing the cars on the weekend or at night, you know, and the other brothers were out there, and he did the same thing. Come on, Michael, get out here. Or long, it was, michael, get back in the house with your mother.

Exactly, exactly.

They wondered how all through. All through college and everything, he did his own ironing, you know, he could cook, he could do this. And he was in there with his mother growing up, learning those kind of skills.

My mom had me doing my laundry in, like, the fourth grade. Like, that's kind of. Yeah, so it's very similar. Very similar. Yeah. But I couldn't. I couldn't change brakes. I couldn't change the oil, none of that. But I could. I could do the laundry.

Yeah, yeah. So moving up, what. When you got into the prison system and working at that level, what things did you start noticing that impacted you that you used to carry into your business? Years later, you know, what kind of foundation was formed?

Well, this is kind of off the subject, but I remember it started giving me post traumatic stress because I didn't realize what that was. But at first, I worked at a juvenile hall, and I worked at a juvenile hall with. In my unit. Those particular guys were like 15 and 16 looking at life because they did murder a murder or murders. And they used to do a lot of fighting in those units sometimes. And I would hear. So you'd hear shuffling of the feet. You wouldn't hear no talking or anything. You'll hear shuffling under the feet and people are fighting. You look up and they're fighting. So I'd be on the street, hear somebody shuffle their feet, and I'd be like, not even at the prison no more. And I was only in there for a year and a half. That particular juvenile hall for a year and a half. But. Or at night I would go to sleep and I would see orange because they wore orange jumpsuits. I didn't even realize I was going through PTSD back then. Just being around that situation because it's so high, intense. But what helped me do was be able to de escalate situations like dealing with folks that are maybe mad or upset, learn how to de escalate the situation. So in business, you know, you have somebody's mad or upset or something, you know how to talk to them in a certain way where you don't escalate the situation. You try to de escalate every situation and come up with a quick resolution so you can move forward. And I think I would learn that in working in that type of setting because any small, any wrong move or anything can incite a serious situation very, very quickly. So dealing with that outside of that situation became very, very easy for me.

And so did you start noticing patterns of success and failure? You know, that, you know, you could just recognize when things were going well, when they weren't going well. Do you notice how the people above you handle things?

I'm going to be honest, that type of situation is not a very rewarding. You're not rewarded too often. Like a reward is, I didn't have any fights on my watch today, or this person didn't go back to jail or, you know, so. And you're not getting patted on the back for that. That's just your job. Like, it's very, you know, if you go through a day without major incident, it's a good job. But no one's going to say good job today. It's just, that's what you're supposed to do. So there's no fulfillment or like goals you can set there. It wasn't, it wasn't that type of situation. It was just like, oh, I made it through another day rather than, oh my God, I had a great day. I did this and that. Like in business, you can point to, this was my best day ever. This is my record, my record breaking accomplishment for a month. There's none of that in that type of situation. You just do your work, you do your hours and you leave. There's nothing rewarding about it, nothing to look forward to but retirement 20 years from now.

Now, and when you combine that with when you went in there, you can't get a move really up for 10 years, get a promotion or anything like that. It's like one day after another for 10 years. You get, you know, you turn numb. You know, that's one thing I've said about people who work in the military for 20 years. You know, get in young, 20 years, I can retire and get out. I said, just be. Just be aware that you don't let yourself become numb dealing with authority and the bureaucracy for 20 years to where you may be 40 and you get out and you have the rest of your life and you got a pension to kind of support you a little bit. You got a retirement you can get. But if your get up and go has already been beat down and numbed out of you, that was too high a price to pay for something like that. So you were wanting to go places. And I want to take time going through that. Appreciate you sharing, because it's important for people to realize, here's a young man who was on track to be an employee his entire life. He was trained, he was educated to get out, get a degree and get a job that would give you stability and security. And he had that with the prison system and did well. But it was what it was inside him that made him different, and that was wanting to do extras, wanting to move up, not being satisfied, always looking around. Didn't have a great success his first time, you know, with the trucking experience, but he had that drive and went on up to build a business. And in 12 years after the business starts, he is tracking over a million dollars in income a year and climbing and is in an industry where he can look forward to that being the norm for the rest of his life. You know, like, you have. You can have one best day ever right after another. And so I wanted to put that in there, and I want to get into that transition. But, Eric, thanks for sharing that first part. Because just because it's important for people to know and people to be told that just because you're educated that way, that's your mindset. That way you don't know there are other opportunities out there for you, and you're just trying to make your way doesn't mean you have to be stuck there. It doesn't mean that you can't break out and stumble across some kind of opportunity. You never even have heard about, knew existed. Nobody in your family or your neighborhood might have been aware of it. But you keep looking and you come across opportunities and there's of course new opportunities being created all the time and find something you can get excited about and your life can change. Like Eric, probably the possibility of you getting on a plane and flying up and watching a playoff game up in San Francisco was not on the horizon when you were working with a prison system.

Absolutely not. Like I said, that particular situation is not rewarding. The defining moment was looking around at my co workers. Imagine you look around and at the time I was in my 20s and look around and people that are 50, let's say 53, they've been there 30 years and they still gotta go another 10 years doing the exact same thing I was doing at. No, I was doing something at 23, 24, 25. Yeah, they're 50, but they look older than what you look like now. You know, I mean they look like they're 80. Yeah, because it's so such a negative environment. And that's not just a prison system. When you're in a situation where you have really nothing to look forward to but your two week vacation and your retirement and you're just expected to do the job without any real reward behind becomes difficult and what happens is you become disgruntled. So I looked around at all my co workers. Most of them were a lot older than me. And I'm like, everybody here has been here 15, 20 years longer than me, but they're getting paid slightly more than me because they've been here longer. Maybe a couple hundred dollars a month more than me. Is this my future? Am I going to be a disk rental looking older than I am employee in a negative environment for the rest of my life, there's no way I could do that. Because most jobs are set up where it's just not a positive environment because there's no, there's no, there's nothing to look forward to. There's no dreaming. The dream is done. You're never going to have that mansion, you're never going to have a house in the hill. You're never going to have the car you want in the. At the same time that you want, that's over with. So most people don't have nothing to really look forward to in that way as far as their career. Maybe outside of the career they can. But I didn't want to be that disgruntled, negative person the rest of my life. And it just wasn't about the money. It was about feeling like you can do more than what the cards you've been dealt or the situation you're in. And I just made sure I never got complacent and then I'd just grown old place that everybody else was in.

Absolutely. All right, thanks so much Eric. Appreciate you sharing that part And I want to get into how you made the transition to a business of your own and I know you feel like you're still learning just getting started but you know you've done a pretty good you got off to a pretty good start. So thanks so much ma'.

Am.

That wraps up this episode. Consider leaving a rating and review if you like what you heard. In addition, I have a free video for you and it contains my best insights from 20 years of running my own business and also coaching million dollar earners. You'll find it at whitelownwinning.com webinar thanks for listening and do it big.