Episode 83: From Working 100 Hours a Week to Having 100 Percent Passive Income with Director of I...

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm Larry Weidell and let's get started. Welcome. I'm here this afternoon with Travis Watts. Travis may get into explaining what this is, but he's a full time passive investor. But he didn't start that way. He started in a whole other end of the industry and also the, the other end of the shovel, more or less. And he's been investing in real Estate since 2009. He's been the, he's the director of investor relations at Ashcroft Capital. They have almost, I guess, closing in on $900 million in assets. And he's got his training on Wall street with a company investment company with assets of over 4 billion. So he's been in the big time for a long time. He's learned from the best and he's moved up through the ranks and has quite a pile of lessons he's accumulated about what it takes to win in the real world, how you coach yourself to success. So welcome. Travis, thanks for joining us.

Hey, Larry, thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Well, it's, I know you're a busy guy. You've got a lot of people calling you and you're familiar with helping people on the way up. And I appreciate you taking your time out to maybe approach things from a little bit different side. And that is the personal side of how you've kind of coached yourself to success, starting from a lower place on the totem pole, pretty much where we all have to start. And so tell us where you came from and what your background is.

Sure, yeah, absolutely. I guess just foundationally, we'll start with just how I was raised. So I was raised by two parents that were extremely frugal. They taught me at least one side of the coin very well, which is how to save and budget and live below your means and kind of make it happen from that standpoint. So I had many years where I was living on probably 8 to 10,000 per year and making it happen, not taking on debt and just kind of pushing through. And so that was great. I'm very grateful to have that type of structure. From the beginning, I was the weird kid that had a budget and kind of a net worth sheet when I was mowing lawns when I was 16 and 17. And so, yeah, you know, my parents, like a lot of kids younger, really wanted me to go to college. You know, they did not come from that world. I felt like that was very important. I, on the other hand, didn't feel that it Was that important for me personally. So I just kind of picked, hopefully I don't offend anybody, but kind of a BS degree in live show production, audio video, stuff like this. I wanted to travel. That's really what it was about is traveling and being out on the road and you know, quickly realized after getting out of school that's really not what I wanted to do. I did not like that industry. So shifted over to real estate in 2009, started investing just through single family home, did all kinds of crazy stuff, did fix and flips, vacation rentals, you know, house hacking, having roommates, lots of hands on active real estate to the point that I burned myself out. Just I was working 100 hours a week and actually the oil industry, another crazy pivot in my life and you know, just, it was too much, it was just too much for me to handle. And you know, we were talking before this interview there. There's only so much time in the day, right? And I was, I was capped out, you know, know 110%. So made a pivot into passively investing, leveraging other people, you know, partnering on bigger pieces of real estate where I didn't have to actually do anything hands on or manage tenants or find these properties or spend my weekends and time off trying to source deals. So that's what I do now I'm full time passive investor as you said, which just means a hands off investor mostly in apartment communities, leveraging a lot of other groups, some great, great groups out there, a great track record, great experience, just kind of partnering up with them to make this stuff happen. And I have a passion of giving back. So I spend my weeks on these 15 minute free Q and A calls with folks Everywhere from the 18 year old getting started to the 70 year old wanting to know what a syndication is and how that works and everyone in between.

How do you work? How do you get a. How do you get into working? I can, I can see working 100 hours a week fixing and flipping houses because I was in construction when I came out of school myself, but I can see that. But how did you, how did you get into the oil business? What are you out there digging, digging for oil 100 hours a week. And don't they have machines to do that?

Boy they should. That's one of the most outdated industries. It's getting there. It's a slow process. Yeah, funny, funny story. So as you pointed out how much time and effort it takes to fix and flip homes in general and to do vacation rentals and flips. And everything else on top of 100 hours a week. What happened was this. I had read a lot of books, I'd met a few people. I'd become very inspired to want to get into real estate. I didn't know how, I didn't know when, but I knew one thing. I got to have a little bit of money to get started, or so I thought. That was my limiting belief. You know, a lot of people think you got to have money to make money, which turned out not to be true. But in my case I felt like that was true. So I was working this job out in Colorado, not happy with it at all, not fulfilling, not part of my degree, 20,000 a year income. And I thought, God, I've got to branch out of this. I've got to make this happen. So put about 150 applications out there and ended up in the oil field with a six figure job just out of the gate, which was pretty crazy. No experience or college needed, but giving up your life in return for income. So that's kind of what spawned into that. And I took those principles of my upbringing to be very frugal and diligent and still live like a college student on ramen noodles for a while and parked all that capital into real estate and just kind of made it happen the old school way. There was no shortcut there, but just saved a lot, invested a lot in myself and into real estate to unfortunately burn myself out. But in the process figure out there's a better strategy that really ended up helping me accomplish what I wanted to accomplish.

Were there role models? I mean, you have to learn things for yourself and people can tell you this. The thing that, you know, do you want to haul water all your life or you want to build a pipeline where the water just flows, you know, and you can hear all these stories, but until you're out there working like a mad dog and you know, I never mind working hard, I just wanted to get paid for it, you know, something proportionally. But you know, I didn't want to work like a. On one hand I wanted to work hard, but I didn't want to work like a friggin lunatic all the time. Which seemed to be just fine with the guy I worked for in construction. You know, he didn't have any trouble with me working 100 hour work week, you know, but the light bulb went on some way in your mind that I, not only do I not want to do this, I don't have to do this the rest of my life. That's a Big point to get to in your life.

Isn't, is it? Is that moment for me was, was 2015, which is about five, six years into this grind where, you know, not only was there not a light at the end of the tunnel, to me, it was like everything was close, closing in. Every property I acquired seemed to be one step closer to burning out and maxing out with the strategy I was using. So, yeah, 2015 was my big pivot. You know, found mentors, found role models, started networking with people that were actually doing the syndication investments, these private placement investments. And that's kind of, that was my light bulb moment, was, wait a second, I can still be in real estate. I can still get the appreciation and the cash flow and the tax advantages and everything I love about real estate. But I don't have to be spending all of my time, as I said, finding the properties, managing the tenants, all this kind of stuff. So that was the pivot that I took. I saw a scalable solution. Finally, the light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak. And I sold everything. I sold all my single family homes over about 12 to 18 months. And I went 100% into this passive investing strategy. And so it made a huge impact on my life. And so that's what I want to help educate others on, because I know there's not a tremendous amount of education in the space around this.

Well, did you realize this before or after your experience in the oil business?

Yeah, good question. So I was starting to kind of seek the answers as I'm going through the oil business. And so what happened was I actually, I made a shift in the oil business from working these hundred hour work weeks to actually going overseas where I could get an equal time off schedule. So I would do 35 days in the Middle east and I would come home for 35 days. And on those 35 days I had at home, I would be researching and reading and networking. And that's really where it came through for me, is just immersing myself in the industry, you know, tenfold what I was before, where I would read maybe a book or two a year, I read actually 52 books. And in 2015, which was crazy, and I wouldn't actually advocate that anybody do that, but I thought that would be the quickest way to cut the learning curve while I had the time to do so. And so, yeah, it was really 2015 was where it all kind of came together.

You talk about mentors, developing contacts and advisors and things. How did you go, how did you go from reading Books and watching videos to where you're actually in direct contact with some of these people.

Exactly. Yeah. That's in, you know, to be honest, mentors and, or coaches, whatever term you want to use. Role models made the biggest difference. They were the ones that actually helped me cut the curve even faster than reading 10 or 20 books. How did I go about doing it? I started joining networks, I started jumping on online forums, things like biggerpockets. Then I started connecting with folks and real estate meetup groups. Then I started attending real estate conferences. And so I really had to see for myself firsthand that not only is this a viable asset class and niche and thing that I can really do myself, but that people have actually been doing this for 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 years sometimes. And that was seeing as believing to an extent. Right. And so that really helped me find the certainty that I was looking for to actually take action and make this change.

And did you find yourself gradually slipping into that and that becoming more of an occupation with you than where you could afford to give up the 35 day trips to the Mideast on the. Working in the oil. Oil fields?

Yeah, there was, there was literally a light bulb moment. It was quite simple what I did, but it's funny how long it took to get to this moment, but I sat down for the first time ever and I just said to myself, okay, if I sold everything, if I sold every single home that I own, including the house that I live in, everything, and I went liquid and I paid the taxes and the fees and the penalties, everything, then what would I have as far as a net worth, a true net worth. And then if I were to take that amount of capital and start putting that into these passive investments, given a conservative cash flow number that I projected off of, what would that mean in terms of income? What would that mean in terms of lifestyle? What I found out, this was my motivator. I found out I could quit the oil business. A job I did not like, a job I was not passionate about, a job I did not want to continue, nor did I believe that I could continue if I wanted to because oil is such a boom and bust industry. I felt like even if I loved it five, 10 years out, I'll be unemployed anyhow. So that gave me the push is I really saw the numbers in front of my face and I thought, I have to do this. And that's kind of what directed me, as you mentioned at the beginning of our interview, into working for a brokerage firm, learning Wall street, working for these Private placement groups. I really embraced what I wanted to learn things that I actually got true fulfillment from and not just working for money and trading my time.

Well, how did you make that jump to Wall Street? Like, you know, buy a suit and wash all the oil off and show. Yeah, show up on Wall Street.

Yeah, what a difference. You're exactly right. I. I literally didn't own a suit. And so I got these oily coveralls. I'm thinking, oh, my God. So I find myself in men's warehouse, you know, getting fitted. And so. Yeah.

So let me ask you a question, Travis. Let me. Did you like the way you looked?

I was ready for any kind of change, Larry.

Okay. All right. Okay.

Yeah. I had a buddy, he was in Texas working for this brokerage company. I was telling him kind of about my dilemma and what I was going through, and he goes, you know, if you ever, you know, need a referral or whatever, you know, I'm here for you. So I took full advantage of that. And so I got hired. And so, you know, my idea was this. I already, to an extent, I already understood real estate and kind of the fundamentals, the concepts here. Something I love, by the way. You made a video called, you know why you don't need to know everything and major on the majors. This was kind of my pivot to that. Right. I was starting to kind of zoom out, look at the big picture, think, what's something sustainable I can do for the next 20, 30, 40, 50 years as far as an investment? I don't want to be constantly losing my ass every 10 years, or having to retrain and relearn learning bitcoin and cryptocurrency, and then it goes away. And then I got to start all over again. So what I thought was this, if I knew real estate to an extent, what if I learned that the stocks, bonds and mutual funds world, and then I could be this all inclusive, well rounded financial guy or guru or something. And that was the thought process. But when I entered that industry, I was just personally disappointed on the lack of education in the space and how investing really wasn't the topic of training. It was about pushing mutual funds and things. And I thought, you know, this really. A, isn't something I'm passionate about, B, I've got all my money in real estate and almost none in the stock market. So I just felt a huge misalignment of interest with folks I was talking to. So I had to just pull the plug on myself and go back to real estate, figure out a new strategy that was going to work well.

I'm really excited to have you on the call. I really appreciate you sharing the step by step how to steps you went through to navigate yourself from startup to where you move back into. You know, you've really identified your calling, which is in the real estate and found your way bouncing around different industries. But the thing is, I noticed, you know, you educated yourself along the way and you really all. You probably find yourself using all of that education today, am I right?

Most of it, yeah. I mean, you know, statistically, of course, we only retain a percentage of what we read and learn, but. But yeah, that's why when I said earlier, I wouldn't advocate anybody go read 52 books a year like I did in 2015, because it's information overload. Your brain can only take so much. You can only absorb so much. And if you're not taking action, if you're not actually trying some of this stuff, you know, what a waste. Especially if you wait a few years, you virtually remember nothing. Yeah.

And what a beautiful segue because I think it's time for us to wrap this segment up. I appreciate you coming in and, you know, taking the time, finding the time to share these thoughts with us because I know there's a lot of people this will resonate with when they're trying to sort through what their next steps are going to be in their career. So thanks so much, Travis.

You bet.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Million Dollar Mastermind with me, Larry Wydell. If I've helped you in any way, leave us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. For more information like this, listen to our other Million Dollar Mastermind episodes and check out my Widel Academy YouTube channel and visit us on widelawnwinning.com I'm the million Dollar Mastermind. And until next time, go, go, go.