A speaker reflects on seeking true freedom—financial, time, and location freedom—and argues that building residual income (rather than trading hours for dollars) is the only path to that freedom. They describe the personal costs of growing a traditional real estate investment portfolio (time, peace of mind) and explain why they pursued a hybrid approach: maintaining a real estate business with strict boundaries while bolting on revenue-share-based residual income and an equity stake in an emerging company.
I got very clear on that residual income, not trading hours for dollars was the only way to have true freedom. And when I think of true freedom, like having that financial freedom, time free location freedom, all those three things, like, really what it means to me is like, I'm happy and I have peace of mind. And while I could have, over time, I'm sure built a nice size investment portfolio through selling real estate, the peace of mind that I've had to sacrifice for 10, 15, 20 years to get there, the cost would have been too high for me. And I set some pretty solid boundaries around my business. Only work listings typically have my phone shut off by like seven at night, six at night. Didn't take calls on the weekends. Like, my sellers knew if we got offers on the weekends, I would negotiate them on Monday. So like, I had some pretty solid boundaries around my real estate business, but it was still like, it's always on your mind and we only have one life at this. And I'm like, I'm thinking, I don't want to be thinking about real estate. 80% of my waking hours, 90%, 100%. Like for the next 30 years, this, the price seemed too high. So when I saw exp, what got me really excited was the opportunity to continue building my real estate business, building my real estate team, but just different kind of bolting on having a separate part of my business plan to build residual income through revenue share. And then the stock piece seemed intriguing. At the time, it was basically a penny stock not yet on the nasdaq. And now it's kind of blown up. And it's amazing. It's just killing it in terms of where the price has gone over the last few years. But the residual income piece, I was like, okay.
