008: How to Become a Time Billionaire with Christina and Amon Browning

But studies show if you compare people that are picking individual accounts versus these passive index funds, index funds have historically performed better. And so it's no surprise when you fired your financial advisor and you started investing for yourself and you compared the difference, you're already performing better.

Attention is power and creators harness it better than anyone else, but they're not using that attention to create the biggest impact possible and are vastly undermonetized. Hi, I'm Rachel Rogers. My co-host Nathan Nathan Barry and I believe you can be a billion-dollar creator. Sound impossible? Over the last 10 years, we've followed each other on our own quest to build billion-dollar companies. We've studied creators and seen how entrepreneurs build traditional audiences and use them as a launching pad for a massive business. And it got us thinking, if it can happen for them, it can happen for us. And if it can happen for us, then why not you? Billion Dollar Creator is a show teaching creators how to capture attention and turn it into real wealth. We will deep dive into brands, celebrities, and entrepreneurs who have done it before and show you how you can apply it to your business as an everyday creator. Join us weekly as we learn from both the wild successes and the missed opportunities, the grand gestures and the integral mistakes, and through that, help you become an expert at building your audience on your journey as a billion-dollar creator.

Hello.

Hello, my friends. Welcome back to Billion Dollar Creator. Creator. Today we have a very special treat. I am so excited to be talking to Christina and Iman Browning of the YouTube channel Our Rich Journey. They are incredible entrepreneurs and investors who have become time billionaires. Okay? So being a billionaire with dollars is not the only option. You could become a time billionaire, which means that your time is your own. You get to spend every minute, every hour, every second of your life doing only what you feel like doing.

And it not being connected at all to your ability to pay bills, right?

Imagine if you had all the money that you possibly needed to enjoy your life and you get to wake up every day and say, what do I feel like doing? That is what is true for Christina and Iman. And they're going to share exactly how they did this, what it looks like, their exact details of their investment strategy they're sharing in this episode, whether it's investing in the stock market, investing in real estate, building and selling a business. We're talking about all of it in this episode, and I am so excited to introduce you to them. They also just happen to have a YouTube channel with almost 700,000 subscribers, over 30 million views. They have an incredible business as well, and yet their time is completely their own, and they were retired by 39 years old. Can you even imagine? Listen, it sounds so good. Here's the thing though. It is actually doable, and I'm so excited for you to hear this. So this episode is in front of a live studio audience of my clients. These are my mastermind clients that are all making millions of dollars themselves and learning about these financial strategies to really become a time billionaire as well as have lots of money, right? So get into this episode. You are going to love it. You're gonna learn so much, and I'm so excited. To hear what you think of this incredible episode with Christina and Iman Browning of Our Rich Journey. Please enjoy.

So, when we started researching about investing and really thinking about like, how do we actually get to FIRE? How do we get to this point where we're government employees, we can quit our jobs and never have to work again, right? So, we started thinking about investments and we discovered index funds and we discovered ETFs. And if anyone's unfamiliar with this, they're very, very similar.

They're very similar.

So I'll sort of talk about them synonymously. There are slight differences, but what they do is they hold a bunch of investments in one fund, a bunch of different companies in one fund, and they track a particular index or sector like a tech sector or things like that. So like, for example, they have an S&P 500 index fund. An S&P 500 index fund, if you invest in that, then you invest in a portion of all of the companies on the S&P 500, which are the 500 largest companies in the US stock market. So you're owning a portion of all of these companies. You don't have to go and say like, oh, I want to pick— let me research how do I think Facebook's going to do in the future? How do I think Netflix is going to do in the future? Right? It gives you a diversification in your portfolio so that if one company does really bad, and you invested in that single company, your money goes— drops significantly. But if one company out of 500 does really bad, then you've got 499 other companies to do well. And, you know, the stock market fluctuates significantly, right? So we learn to think about investing long term. So we're not saying we're going to put our money into S&P 500 right now and then next year we're going to take it all out and we're going to put it in something else. The idea is long term, because if you look at investing, You're looking at the stock market, it goes like this and this and this, but it slowly goes like this and this and this, and it goes higher, right? But you have to think about it in the long term. But that's how we really got to FIRE, was discovering index funds and ETFs, because it allowed us to invest in a broader range of investments without having to try and cherry-pick what we think are the best ones, right? With all of the work that you'd have to put into individual investments, how difficult that can be versus doing something more passive like an index fund or an ETF. So But go back to what Rachel said about firing her financial advisor, right? Financial advisors will cherry-pick investments for you. At a minimum, they'll be picking individual investments for you, or they'll put you into a mutual fund, an actively managed mutual fund, not an index fund where it's passive and it's just tracking something. They're trying to, like, you know, convince you that they're worth their money. So listen, I'm going to pick this for you and this for you. I'm going to put all this into your account. Into your investment account. But studies show if you compare people that are picking individual accounts versus these passive index funds, index funds have historically performed better. And so it's no surprise when you fired your financial advisor and you started investing for yourself and you compared the difference, you're already performing better than your financial advisor. And we read this book, it's called The Bobblehead's Guide to Investing. It's The Boglehead's Guide to Investing. Boglehead, it's B-O-G-L-E-H-E-A-D. Boglehead's Guide to Investing. It's a great book, especially for beginning investors, and it's so well written, so clear. You could finish the book in a day. So in this book though, it talked about the passive investing through index funds, through ETFs, and it taught— there was this really great story that it told about these Mensa investors. Like Mensa, these people who have these insane IQ levels, and you have to be invited to be a part of this group because you're so brilliant, right? They started an investment group, and they were picking investment stocks, individual stocks, and, you know, putting their brains together, thinking about the best investments for a portfolio. Well, they studied their picks compared to the total stock market, the return of the total stock market, And the return of the total stock market, like an index fund that you can invest in, performs significantly better than these Mensa, you know, investment groups, than the brainiacs.

Yeah.

So I think, you know, part of this idea is understanding financial independence, understanding the amount of money that you need in order to get to financial independence, how to calculate it, but then also how to get there, right? If you're interested in investing, in stocks, in bonds, if you want a portfolio, it's possible to do this by yourself. And it's possible to get rid of your financial advisors and to actually end up performing higher than your financial advisor in the process.

That's counterintuitive, right?

Yeah.

Find a financial advisor. They will have investing appear like it's supposed to be this hard, arduous thing they're doing. You know, they're working all this magic. When, like Christina said, if you just keep up with the total return of the stock market, historically, stock market has always gone up. You will do well over the long run. And for us, when we're thinking about living off our investments over the long run, we don't want no crazy volatility, right? We want to know historically how the stock market has performed, because that's how it's going to work out our money over the next 30, 40, 50 years that we're alive and living off of our investment funds.

This is going to probably prove your point, but we met with our like wall painter because that's what all of my Westmans are telling me we need to do. And we use someone that her people are using. And also that's what I thought I was supposed to do until Rachel was telling me about FIRE and you guys. And so I haven't given her any money yet. And because I was asking, I was like, what percentage are you getting? And she was like, well, 6%. And I was like, and then you take percentages? She's like, no, that includes my fees. And she got really awkward about it. And I was like, okay, like I'll just end it here. But that is perfect. You guys are getting what, 10 to 12 right now?

Oh, over 10 to 12 now because the market is doing so well. Right. But say it's 10%, right, that the market is returning, but then your advisor takes 6%. So we're going to take the 10% and then you get a 4%, right?

That's just like she was getting 6% returns. I think she's taking the 4%.

Oh, I see. Yeah, but still, right?

But yeah, but she's taking 4%.

Yeah.

And the power of compound interest is that Over the years, that 4% or however much they're taking really adds up. Right. So we've gone and looked at people's portfolios over the same time period that we've been investing, and their portfolios have a drag on them. They're not performing well because of the fees, because their financial advisors are taking 1 or 2%. Oh, it's only 1 or 2%. But over time, that compounds, and that is a significant amount of wealth. That you're giving away to someone that is most likely underperforming. So it's this financial literacy, and I don't even like using that word financial literacy.

It sounds—

but the more you get involved in this, when you go to talk to your financial advisors, you realize, you know, you can spot bullshit. You can charge me to buy it, you can charge me to sell it. This is It's outrageous. You know, one of the things about investing is that our parents before us, they didn't teach us anything about investing. And that's not their fault because they didn't know, they didn't have access to it. There's so many different factors. Now there's no excuse, right? The information is out there for you guys to just absorb it. And just like, you know, just like you know how to open up a Spotify account or how to create a playlist on that, whatever the case is, Snapchat. If you can do all these things, you can buy a low-cost index fund, right? It is so simple. It is so straightforward. And I think, I think it's really, really empowering because no one else is going to care about your money more than you.

That's a fact.

Yeah. And I think, you know, the other thing too is what you were saying, what you were saying is like when you were talking about, oh, you ask questions and things got awkward, right? They want to pretend like they're doing the work that you can't do. Right. And I think Also, as entrepreneurs, it seems sort of counterintuitive to think the less work that I put in, the greater return I can get, right? The less work by putting it into, for example, a total stock market index fund, putting your money into that and letting it grow. It's so passive versus— wait, as an entrepreneur, I've learned that the more work I put into my business, I can expand my business. So the more I can put into it, work with other people, and the energy that I put into it it can reflect in the returns of my business, right? But it's so the exact opposite when you're investing, when you're investing, because there are passive ways to invest where you can own everything in the total stock market if you want to, and you can have your returns reflect the returns of the market. Now, of course, the market, like I said, is going to be fluctuating up and down, but the market has always consistently gone up over the long run. So if you're thinking about long-term investments, then tracking the total stock market is a passive way to get those long-term investments and to grow your money versus giving your money to an advisor.

Yeah, because historically, like, 12%, right?

What's that?

Historically, like, on average, last 100 years, 12%, 10%, 10%.

But, you know, the 12% is like, you know, it goes up sometimes, it's 12 and more, way more, right?

And sometimes it's under.

But yeah, that helps you invest your money where it's not in a savings account, not even keeping up with inflation, but over the long term, it's growing and it's compounding, and you're getting dividends and you're reinvesting those. And that's helping your portfolio grow.

So let's start back at the beginning. What made you start this FIRE journey? Like, when did you hear of it and what made you change your entire lives behind this journey?

Yeah. This guy here, he's the one who came up with it. You know, a lot of times when we talk to couples, it's like one person discovers something and then brings the other person.

Yeah.

Then you have to sell it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I didn't have to sell it.

Yeah. Yeah.

That was the thing. And that's always been the thing about our relationship. Is that we all, you know, that first impression makes such a big difference. So can I tell a story? Yeah. So when I came home from work, it was just, it was a rough day. And I came home to Christina and I said, we got to figure out, we got to figure out something else. And when I said, I've been thinking if there's a way that we can, and I'm so abstract, if there's a way that we could, you know, live off of our investments or try to develop some sort of real estate or something like that. And Christina, Christina said, okay, okay. She was listening. She said, I'm liking what I hear. I said, basically, I want to quit my job, right? I want to retire early. This was before the FIRE movement. This was in 2011 or something.

Whispers of the FIRE movement.

Whispers of the FIRE movement. And Christina is all about putting a plan together, action. And so when I came to her with this abstract idea, she put it on paper.

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

I love it.

This is how we can do it.

Yeah.

But you know what I think is important too, because I want to go back to this, because if you guys have partners that you have to try and convince about this, I think one of the things that was— is so helpful with us is that when he said, I want to retire before I'm 40, like, who says that, right? You're like, what? That— I don't even know if I knew anyone who had retired at that point. My mom was still working. So it was like, before you're 40, people can think like that, right? And to me, like, one of the things that helps us move forward as a couple, as a partnership, is, is saying yes at first, right? Thinking of how do we get to yes. If I'm like, we don't know how to invest, you know, we're government employees, you know, there's So many reasons why you can say no that if you start from, okay, let's figure out how we can actually get—

let's explore that.

Yeah, right.

Okay, this is a tangent, but I have to say this for this group. So we did a session when we were at Miraval. Does this sound familiar to those who are at that workshop? So we did a workshop about couples and sex, and it was like the same thing. It was like, start with a yes and then say, under these conditions, right? And this sounds like the same thing you're saying. Yes. However, let's put a plan in place and let's agree on what the plan's gonna be. So it's like, I'm seeing a theme here when it comes to like relationships and navigating life with a partner. It's like being open to the idea, right?

Exactly.

To exploring it and saying, let's come up with a plan, let's make it work for both of us, right? You know, so it works for sex, works for finances, works for dreams.

How, how How frustrating can that be? Like, it just— even thinking about in your businesses, right? If you have a business partner and you have these incredible ideas that you want to implement, can you tell your business partner and they're like, no, that's not gonna work, and you just shut down constantly and constantly and constantly? It drags on you and you don't feel that support of like, okay, well, I mean, I either do it alone or I just— let's, let's try and think of something else.

Yeah, exactly.

So I think it's about having that mindset too. I think that pursuing financial independence has a lot to do with mindset. Just having this positivity as you approach things and figuring out how to get to yes. Like, I, I went to law school and I read this book, and it— I think it was actually called How to Get to Yes. And getting to—

I read that book too, right?

And it's like, oh, okay, you know, there's these different routes that you can take, right? But how do you get to the end route, which is yes, right? How do you get to where you want to actually be? And so I think when you embrace this mindset of positivity, and it hard. If you're, you know, originally you're just like, uh, this, this seems like really hard. Maybe you don't have the confidence in doing particular things, right? Surround yourself with people that have the confidence for you to do it, right? I always talk about like, there's this thing when we are in our circle, our family, people that we really love, we will talk them up so much. Like, oh, you're so amazing. Like, our daughter Sanoa just had a basketball game last night. She was incredible. We're like, man, you killed it. You did so good, Sanoa, right? We have so much faith that we put in our loved ones, but we have to have that same type of love and support for ourselves. Yes. Right. Like, give— receive from yourself what you give to other people that you love to and have that confidence in yourself as well. That helps you create that mindset for success.

I love that so much and totally agree. Okay, so you started— it sounds like you had a North Star, which was, I got to get the hell out of this job, right? So tell us if you're willing. What were your jobs and how much were you making in your jobs? Or give us a range if you're willing, so that we can get an understanding of, okay, this is where our starting point was.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, well, I'll start by telling you there were parts where I wasn't even working. I mean, I was almost like— so our daughters are now teenagers. I went to law school during the time, so for 3 years I was a student.

I was all on the journey.

I wasn't making any money. And then after that, we moved to San Francisco, and I worked in San Francisco.

And then we—

so you moved to the most expensive city in America, right?

Right.

I love it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so at the time in San Francisco, as a first year, I was making like $150,000.

Oh, it wasn't that much. I don't think—

like, I feel like it was around $150,000, maybe, because I—

as a first-year lawyer.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Working at a big firm.

Yeah.

I was a first-year lawyer working at a firm, but I had gone, you know, the 3 years without working. But then after that How long did we stay in San Francisco? For 2 years. And then we moved abroad. We went to Japan, and I took a significant pay cut because I worked for the federal government and I had already had my, you know, couple of years of experience. And then in Japan, I was making under $90,000.

I think over the course of our journey, how much we averaged at our jobs was I was probably around $90,000.

Although not in San Francisco, we had a—

but the majority of our journey was, you know, we were like kind of all over the world. And I think I was around 90 and Christina was probably around the same.

Yeah.

The thing with working for the federal government, it's your— I don't know if anyone has experience knowledge with this, right? You're at a G— it's called a GS level. And so you go in, it's not like you get to negotiate this huge sort of like, I came from, you know, this salary, I want to get this. You don't get to do that. You come in and they give you like a set salary that you, that you fall into. And so one of the things that I think is really important too, that actually helped us grow, was that I was in San Francisco, then we moved to Japan, took a pay cut, but there were so many more opportunities for us, right? So we got to live in Japan, we had our housing paid for, we had all our utilities paid for, we had this beautiful house in Japan right next to the ocean, you know. So there are things sometimes you think like, this may not work, right? Because why would I, why would I want to take downsize? You know, why would I want to cut things? But for us, we realized globally, you know, yeah, we're making a lot less money, but we're also not living in San Francisco or in the Bay Area.

We're in Oakland.

We're not working in San Francisco, having to drive in all that, all that time and having those Bay Area costs, right? So I think that that actually taking the pay cut helped us move forward. It helped us move forward because we were actually able to save more. We just, we were really creative. We invested in real estate. Also when we were in the Bay Area to just try and like supplement the high cost of living when we were in the Bay Area and then moving to Japan and having that pay cut and still being able to, to reach this FIRE goal.

Yes. I love your story because it also is not one of lack, right? Because I think that's what people associate with FIRE. And that's why a lot of people are like, no, thank you. It's not for me.

Yeah.

Because they associate it with like, okay, we're going to live off of nothing. We'll like never have any conveniences, right? Like we'll save every single penny and live off of as little as possible so that we can eventually enjoy our lives. And your journey sounds like y'all were enjoying your lives, trying new things, having fun, traveling, living in new places, investing in real estate, flipping houses, right? Like trying all kinds of fun stuff. Like, so it's not this boring journey. It can be actually really fun and it's just having the focus and like saying, where is there some money? That I can, which is a lot what I teach, right? I'm always teaching my clients, like, find the money. Where is the money, right? Like, what expertise do you have that you could just sell? You know, you can start by just saying, pick my brain for $300, right? And then that— every time you get one of those $300, you put that in your investment account or whatever, right? So it's like, it's all about like, where's, where's there some opportunity where we can take advantage of to add some extra income?

Yeah, I think definitely, you know, when you're on your FIRE journey too, you're always looking for that opportunity. Your mindset Switches. You have this positive mindset, but then you're also saying, oh, I see an opportunity here. I see an opportunity here. Let's go try this opportunity. And so you're developing this like sense where everything is sort of snowballing, where you're getting opportunity after opportunity because you're in that mindset where you're looking for these things.

Right.

It goes back to having that fire number, right? When you have that as a guiding light, you find ways to get to that.

Yes.

It's that, it's that guide. And so our 9 to 5 incomes, that, that wasn't going to get us to financial independence. It was the stuff that we were doing outside of our jobs, the side hustles, the investments, all of these things, the real estate flipping. For us, we had to be very, very resourceful. And it was important that we took this journey on and had fun with it because we had very small children and we didn't want to, we didn't want to live that life of deprivation and scarcity and that rub off on our children or us deprive our children of certain things.

Such a good point.

Right. And so for us, we made this journey really a family affair.

Yeah.

If you've ever met our daughters, or if you've kept up with us, you know that they were a part of everything that we did. They're in there renovating homes with us, they're in there decorating with us, and it was, it was a fun activity. I would pick them up from, from school.

I said, hey, we're going to Home Depot. It was fun.

That's so cool. And they get to see, like, listen, we're all trying to get free. So like, we're going to get free together, right? We all got two hands and can contribute in whatever small ways. And then they get to see what confidence it builds, right? Because then they get to see like, oh, I built that cabinet. I stained that floor.

I painted that wall, right?

And they get to see the finished product and then you sell it.

And then they're like, look, we made money off of my effort, right?

You know? And not only that, not only the efforts of of being part of renovating the house and doing all these other things, they're investors also. They have their own investment accounts. They each have their own investment accounts right now, over $25,000 each for both of them. It's like, okay, they get money from side hustles, they get money from their, their allowance, they get money for birthdays, they get money for Christmas, you know. They're all thinking about, okay, putting— how do I put that?

You've installed that mindset in their minds, right, where they're like Grandma gave me money, opportunity, right?

Like, and you know what else we do too? We said, okay, we're gonna be your 401k match. You put some money in and we're gonna match that money. Oh, they're like, you know, because our youngest is a bit of a saver, right? She'll have like hundreds of euros in her room. We're like, you need to— baby, you need to invest some of that money.

You don't need all that cash. Like, you know, like she got it tucked under her bed. Like, no, no, no, we got love in here. We I'll do that here. So he said, okay, well, how much are you going to invest?

Because we're going to, we're going to match that investment. She's like, okay, let's start counting this out. But you know, that's that incentive. And it's not just about, you know, giving them money here, here, we're going to match this. It's about really teaching them, okay, when you're putting your money into these investment accounts, look at how this money grows. Look at what you're investing in. You don't even have to do anything. We have it, you know, we've put it into your account, it will automatically go and you make that money, we'll move it over for you automatically. You don't have to do anything. And then all of a sudden you're at, you know, I— my goodness, I wouldn't have even dreamt of having $25,000 at their age when I was a kid.

Are you kidding me?

My mom didn't even—

I was 25. I couldn't imagine $25,000. Right. Twice that.

I mean, they're talking now about, okay, I could use this. I could buy a house with it. You know, I put a down payment on a house. And when I go to university, what if I put— use this money as a down payment? I get my roommates, they're gonna pay for it. They're exploring all these ways to, you know, get that wealth, grow that wealth, and get these assets associated with it.

Oh, so good.

Yeah, I love it. I love it.

Okay, so how long did the journey take? So how long do you feel like you were on your FIRE journey until you hit that guiding light number?

Yeah, that was about 10, a little less less than 10 years. Now, I, I would say, like, don't use this as the number of—

I was gonna say less than 10 years is short, right?

When you consider most people save for 40 years of work, right, or more. Yeah, to get to a retirement that usually they're not happy with, right?

Right.

Yeah, yeah.

But if you think about— okay, so the stock market was just on fire. I mean, like, we were talking about average 10%, you know, annually historically, but we're talking about over 30%, you know, like, all of insane returns, it just seemed like it kept compounding greater and greater and greater. So I wouldn't necessarily say, oh, think about you're going to do this in less than 10 years. I mean, if the stock market performs amazingly, then that's of course possible. But I would—

it's also right, like just being in there.

Exactly.

Right now, everybody talks about like, you know, the state of the economy, and we're heading towards a recession. Great. This is a great opportunity to invest. Because think of it as like the stock market is on sale right now.

Oh my, I'm so glad you said that. Because I think once you become mindful about your investments, once you decide, okay, I could do this myself, right? You start seeing those opportunities in the market where there's a crash. You're like, this is great for me, right?

When you have your money with an advisor, you're like, what, what's going on?

Like, why, like, why is my account down, right? You see this as an incredible opportunity. If you consistently invest every single month or week or whatever your schedule is, right, consistently investing, that means you're investing when it's high, when it's low, you're capturing average return of the market. But those times when it's the dip, when it goes down, you'll see as an investor, once you start doing it and you feel confident with your investments, you're like, wow, this is a great opportunity to invest. Whereas other people, when they don't really understand their investments, or they don't feel comfortable with making their investments, they think, oh my gosh, my account is down, everything just dropped, I need to pull out. And when you pull your money out, it's like a significant— that's the worst thing.

I'm like, so wait a minute, the whole point of investing is just just look away.

What you're saying is do nothing. If I just do nothing, I will have more, right? Right. Wonderful. This is the best deal on earth, right? Yeah.

People get so like emotionally attached to the number going up and down. I'm like, who cares? Like, I— my account is going up and down every day. I just don't pay attention to it. I pay attention to over time what's happening. Over time it's trending up.

Yeah.

So that's what's important, not the day-to-day. So if you're gonna be obsessive and check it every day, it's almost like better to, I feel like. Yeah, check it regularly, but maybe not every day.

Yeah.

Because you— and just like, because you're, you're basically asking, you're requiring yourself to stay calm, not touch things. Because if you take it out, like, you've committed to those losses now. Now you've made those losses real, where the losses aren't real yet. You still have the opportunity to go back up.

So you just leave it. Yeah. And then what happens with those people, right? The market starts to go back up and they're like, oh, I'm gonna get back in again, right? You get in high, you get out low. The exact opposite. I'll tell you, there was the big crash in March of 2020 with the market, right? It was like COVID. Then there was a big crash and people were like, what do I do? What do I do? So we said, hey, y'all, we're going to create this account. We'll invest some money in it. Look, we're, we're, we're creating this. We're going to show you guys, put that money in. And people on the comments, like people who really follow us, who know what we're doing, they're like, that's so great. That's so great that you're sharing this with people. Other people are like, y'all are catching a falling knife. This is crazy. Why would you do this? Wait, it was such a small blip. It ended up being such a small blip of like maybe a month of down and then it just shot right back up. And then afterwards people are like, They're like, that was so great. Like, what, you know, how did you know? And we're like, you— and we told people, it's down now, and it can continue to go down. If it continues to go down, we're going to keep investing anyways. Either way, we're investing. But if you don't have that mindset of like thinking, oh, this is an opportunity, right? I can, I can capitalize on this, then you're in this situation where you're pulling money out low. And then when you start seeing it go back high again, then you're like, okay, now I'm high back in.

And it's like, that don't work because math.

You know, that's the thing.

It's like if you just put $1,000 in and watch it, because that's how I started. You just put a little bit of money in, put it in an index fund and just watch. And when you watch it, you're gonna see what's happening over time. And you're gonna be like, oh, and then you're gonna be like, okay, I'm in now. Now, I started with $1,000 once, then I started putting $4,000 a month, then I was like, oh, I see what's happening here. Then I started doing $10,000 a month, right? And then you just slowly increase it. And it can be monthly. So I want I want y'all to think about how can I add this as a line item to my business? Every single month I'm taking 10% off the top and putting it in an investment fund, right? So it's like you as the owner get a portion of the profits, take your profits. And I, by the way, this is what I teach my team to do as well. Like we've got our 401k. So there were a couple people who didn't sign up and I was like, what's happening? Why are you not in there? Yeah, get in there and put as much as possible in there. Like we, we put it in whether it's not a match, we just put it in for them, a percentage of their salary. Salary. And so we're like, look, get in there. And then I watch and I can see, like, I can see the back end of our 401(k), so I can see who's investing and who's not. And I'm like, we've been talking forever about how we want to teach an investing class to our team because I want them doing it too, right? So that everybody understands, like, this is how you get ahead. You work, right? You do labor in exchange for money, and then you take some of that money and you buy an asset, and then that asset does the labor of increasing right? And so you don't always have to work for every dollar if you take a portion of your dollars and you put it into an asset form that can grow, you know? And everybody can do this, right? Whether you have a job, you're an entrepreneur, or whichever. And it just needs to be ingrained in us because there's so much opportunity. And it's like, immediately— it's not gonna make you rich tomorrow, but next year you're gonna be like, oh, look at this, right?

I put in $20 grand, now it's $40, right? Like, you get excited, right?

Because you can see what's happening and then think about Okay, let me do the math. If I put a bigger chunk in and it grows, then what, right? And it gets very, very exciting.

And that's the— it goes back to our timeline to achieving financial independence. So when you think about retirement in the most traditional sense, most people put away 10 to 15% of their income in order to retire in 30 years or so, right? But when you're thinking about FIRE, the more you put in, the sooner you get to that goal. And I think we should be talking a lot more about this when we're talking to people about saving for retirement. So you can put in 10% and you're going to retire at 65, but if you put in 50%, you'll retire at 35 or 40, right? Right. And so when we finally— like, when we realized that, it was like a light bulb went off.

Yeah, it was like, you can't unknow it.

Yeah, the more I put in, the sooner I get to it. It's common sense, but we don't—

we don't realize that because it's not what we're taught, it's not how we're socialized, right? Because, right, the goal is to keep us as cogs in the machine, right? We've already opted out of the machine, everybody here, right? Whether they've chosen to work 7 or, or be an entrepreneur, right? Like, we've chosen an alternative path, and our team members, same thing, right? We've chosen an alternative path to like the traditional work at a big corporation and, and work that system. And that's what they teach you— put a tiny bit in and that way you can be here till 65, right? And it's like, no thank you, right?

I wanna—

that way you're doing what you wanted. You're, you're showing up to do the work because you want to, not because you have to, right, to get by.

Yeah.

So it's so magical. So to that end, tell us what life is like now. So you did 10 years, right? And, you know, for some of us, it will be a longer timeline. For some of us, it probably could be a lot shorter. There are folks here who are making millions of dollars a year, right? And so there are people here who could be taking hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and putting it in an investment account and seeing big shifts happen really quickly if that's what they want. So tell us what it's like on the other side so we can be like, okay, wave from the other side and tell us, what is it like over there?

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's nice. It's nice.

You know Because we get this question a lot, and we got this question when we told our coworkers, when we told our friends and family that we were quitting. And financial independence and retiring early, it's not about doing nothing. It's about having the ability to do anything.

Yeah.

So we wake up and having this ability to plan our days without the constraints of a 9-to-5 5, it's so empowering. I can't tell you, there's never a boring day. Every night feels like Friday night and every day feels like Saturday.

When you wake up in the morning, you're like, wow, I know, listen, that sounds pretty good.

You really enjoy it.

So we do a lot of traveling, we do a lot of mentorship, we can be present because we have bandwidth mentally, emotionally. You know, when we were working I would come home from work and I would try my hardest to stay engaged with my daughters, but in the back of my mind I was thinking, I got work tomorrow, I gotta get some rest. Or— and then when I finally laid down, I would be laying down thinking about, I have to do a briefing tomorrow. And, and all these things will be running through my mind about like, okay, I gotta remember, when you're working, you're never off, right? Always on.

And the same thing as an entrepreneur, because when you run the business, you are that business is in your head 24/7. Yeah, you are constantly thinking about the business whether you have days off or not, right? You're constantly solving problems whether you have days off or not. Like, there is no— so the mental rest, I think, is, is very resonant, I think, for everybody here because you just— your business is just— it's your baby, right? And so you're constantly thinking about what's next for it, solving a problem that's coming up, thinking about the future of the business, etc., right? Yeah. So yeah, it takes up a lot of mental space for sure.

I mean, I think also it's like, okay, so we this freedom, uh, you know, this freedom in our head, you know, of like not constantly worrying about, okay, what do I have to do tomorrow? But we have such a great, amazing set of friends here too that it's like, I mean, every night we could go out, right?

It's like, wait a minute, but are they fire people? Because like, can they really hang out?

Yeah, some of them are fire, or some of them are working here remotely where it's like their hours are different, right? So people are always going in and let's go out to this rooftop happy hour. You know, just last week, we— his friend from out of town came and we went to a happy hour, this rooftop happy hour. We go out to brunch with friends, we go out to eat with friends. Now the beach is, you know, not as nice, they're not as warm, but we were going to the beach all the time. It's just like all of these are like— this Thursday I have a ladies brunch that we're doing. And so it's like, you know, there's kinds of stuff like I was saying, we live only a 10-minute walk from here, and so our oldest daughter plays basketball, so she'll jog around this area, and I'm not the jogger. So me and my younger daughter will walk back and forth. Like, every day we get to go out and we get to go for a walk, and it's like, it's so, you know, I mean, we have—

we're always doing something. We're traveling. We still dabble in real estate, so we're always doing renovations and things like that. It's just that, that freedom.

Yeah, you can choose what you want to do today. Like, do I want to go paint that wall today, or we're going to say, you know what, we're going to happy hour, we're going to have a lazy day today. And then we'll paint this weekend.

Right, exactly, exactly.

Because there's no like, I need to get the money out of this immediately.

Yeah, yeah.

So you get to like move at your own pace, which is really exciting.

Yeah.

That's amazing. One like mechanical question, 'cause I think it's something, it's a question in my mind, I'm sure it's a question that they have too, which is, well, how do you pay bills? Like, so like what is the mechanics of living off of your investments? Like how do you get the money and pay your bills?

So there's no— Where's that money coming from? How you doing that?

I like to say the big 3 pay our bills: dividends, interest, and capital gains. That's how we pay our bills. And so from these accounts, those 3 things, you can pull dividends, you can grab the interest, or you can sell stocks and pay your capital gains. And just like how you put money into your accounts through automatic investing 2 weeks every month, you can have that money come right out and pay yourself.

Yes, you're right, because when I invest in an index fund or any different investments that I have, I have, it's always like, do you want to reinvest the dividends? And I'm like, absolutely.

Yeah.

But then when you get to retirement, you don't reinvest it. You're like, no, no, send that my way.

Right.

And that's your paycheck.

Yeah.

And it's— it could be different too, because we're talking right now, we're talking about investing in the stock market, right? But we also have Airbnb properties here. So if you have real estate properties, that's another form of income that's generating that you can, you can live off of that income as well. So there's different sort of ways to get to where you want, you know, either pulling from the stock market, or if you have estate, pulling from your real estate income, or doing a combination of both. But I think you asked earlier about, you know, pulling from your portfolio and the investment— does that— you're assuming that it continues to grow? Didn't you ask that earlier? Oh, sorry. So bigger purchases, like, what if you want to buy, like, a bigger purchase? How do you pull it out? Oh, that's a good question. So for example, we just sold a house— we just sold a house here, right? And so ultimately, we're going to be reinvesting that into a property here. And so what we did was we put a majority of of that into a money market fund. So this is the thing too, when you're investing in the stock market, you have to be thinking long term. Our investment— so because we sold our property here in Portugal, Portugal has a leniency where you have 3 years to reinvest that, 3 years to reinvest that into a property and avoid capital gains taxes, right?

In the US, it's like months.

Yeah, yeah.

We talked to someone who just was like, I just screwed up, I, you know, the sale didn't go through and I didn't get it I have to pay capital gains. And we're like, and we got 3 years for this, right?

Oh yeah.

But at the same time, we're like, okay, we don't— we want to have access because maybe it won't take 3 years. Maybe what if we find something, you know, next month? We're going to want to have to access that money. So when you're thinking about investing in the stock market, you don't necessarily want to put money that you need short-term, right, into the stock market. Because what happens if the stock market dips right when you want that money? You don't want to have to pull it out at a loss. So there's money market funds that invest in more secure type of investments. You know, it can be like a bond fund or, or different types of things within this fund where it's— or CDs— where it's a more stable return. It's a much lower return, but at the same time it's stable so that you're not thinking, okay, if I want to pull this out in a month, I'm going to have— I could potentially have half of what I had. There's nothing like that. So we put that money into a money market fund so that we can access a large amount of money if we to purchase our next house with it.

Yes.

Yeah.

Okay. So I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about your YouTube channel. Oh yeah. At what point in the journey did you decide to start that?

Oh, that's a good question.

I'm curious, like, you know, was that like you were, you had retired or did you start it before you actually retired? What made you start it? And like, what makes you continue to keep it going? Because it's totally optional.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I love the journey. So it was— we didn't want to like telegraph our past telling people we were gonna quit. Trainings would have went out the door, promotions.

It was one of those things.

I think we're about a year and a half out of Portland, you know, retiring. And so we started this YouTube channel inspired by one of our friends that said, you guys are always preaching about this stuff, you're always telling us that you should do a YouTube channel. And we knew absolutely nothing about YouTube. We didn't even really watch YouTube. YouTube. And so when we went on there, we started, we started sharing our story. So many people had had questions and we're like, wait, how do you decide? And our channel really grew off of, off of the community, right? And we had a relatively small channel. I think we were about at 20,000, and then we retired. We said, you know, we quit our jobs, we made that announcement, and everyone was like, wow, these people really did it.

Like, they're legit, right? They used to talk about it.

Yeah.

And once we did that, our channel just exploded. And it was almost like when we, when we were working, we were doing 3 videos a week. It was crazy, right? And then we retired, and now we only do 1 video a week, and our channel, it just, it just, it just keeps growing and growing. And I think it's because people know that when we, when we get on there, talk, we talk about, you know, what we talked about earlier, about how financial independence Consistency and consistency allows you all these benefits when you, when you have it. And as an entrepreneur, I guess we fall into entrepreneurship, it's allowed us to be more authentic.

Yeah.

So when we get on there, people recognize that we're not trying to sell you NFTs or crypto or something.

Yeah.

We're just saying, if you're consistent, we're talking about mindset. Our channel has just, has just exploded.

Yeah.

And when we really started to be more intentional about it and say, okay, let's listen to the they said, we want trainings. So I said, okay, let's do a training. We want, we want meetups. Now we have this amazing community of people that come to Portugal and hang out with us for 5 days. And we go from Lisbon all the way up to Porto. We drink, we have fun, we just celebrate our achievements thus far, right? It is such an amazing community. People have gotten jobs from these communities. People just leave just so inspired. Inspired to take action.

Yeah, yeah.

And I just love talking about that journey too, because man, if you guys look at the very first video that we did, and then some, and then—

I mean, even now, if you look, there's always room for improvement, right?

But I think like our very first video, it was like, okay, we're gonna sit on this for— it was probably less than 2 weeks, but it was still like pulling that plug of like, okay, we have to put this up.

We made it. We—

but we have to expose ourselves to people. Yeah, like, you maybe they, you know, think it's a weird video, or, you know, it's like, yeah, there's gonna be weird comments.

Yeah, right, right.

But I feel like, you know, if we would have been hindered by that, if we were just worried about, okay, what if people, you know, think I'm blinking too much, or, you know, whatever it is, right, right, you know, whatever weird thing maybe you do that you don't know that you do, if you don't, if you don't get past that, get past that thing that's holding you back, because you, even though you know that it could turn into something great, right? You can share this information, you can make these connections with people. Like Amon said, we had almost 500 people, around 500 people come visit us for these meetups here in Portugal, came from all over the world, right? But none of that would have happened had we not taken that step and said like, let's just do this, let's just post it, right? And we're not— we, we do not look for perfection when we do things, right? It's like, it's just unattainable, right? If I looked at every— I edit our videos. I think it's so much fun to like sit and edit and do videos. But if I was critiquing myself on everything that I did, like, those videos would not go up. It'd just be like a mon, you know, a cut video. We give to others the love, you know, that we should also be giving to ourselves. And so it's like this point where you're like, you know, I'm so happy that we took that step. Yeah, that we moved past that and said like, this could be something way more amazing than than if we don't do it at all.

Yeah.

So we just took that step and it's just been an incredible, incredible—

yeah, I mean, it's amazing. And I mean, like, I think your courses are amazing. They're so— they're very accessible in the way that you teach. You make it so clear and so easy, and they're like short videos, so it's like easy to get through the content. And then the worksheets are amazing. Like, the content is really good that you teach. And so that's my other question for you. So you have this huge audience. How do you— like, I'm sure you get people telling you all the time, you know what y'all should do?

You know, it would be a great idea, right?

You know, you can monetize this audience even more, right? I just started a podcast that's literally all about the— this idea of monetizing the content that you're creating, right? And so I'm so curious for you, how do you keep yourself from saying yes to every business idea that you have? Because I'm sure you have ideas ideas every day, right? That if you took action on all of them, then you wouldn't necessarily have as much flexibility anymore. Or like partnerships or things that you're pitched, you know, how do you keep yourself in this retirement mode and not taking advantage of everything that's out there for you?

Yeah, I think that's one of the amazing things about financial independence, right? You don't need to take something if you don't want to take something, right? And so again, Iman was telling about being authentic and saying like, you know, is this a relationship that we want to curate with somebody? Is this something that— is this a person we're interested in? Oh, Rachel, we're interested in meeting you. We love your vision, what you're doing, right? But someone else comes to us— like, we've had people that are way bigger than us that have millions of followers that have reached out to us and said, hey, we want you to come speak on our podcast, we want you to do this or whatever.

And we're just—

we said, no, you know, we're retired, we sort of, we don't want to do it because, you know, to be honest, those people, they're brand— I, I could think of two people specifically, two different groups.

I'm not gonna say it. We want that too. But they're, they're—

they don't—

a lot—

their thinking doesn't align with ours.

Yeah.

And so I think that when you have that financial independence and you're not saying like, oh, I need this sponsorship money, I need to go collaborate with this person, I need to do this, you water down your authenticity. To you because it's like, why are you doing something with—

yeah, you gotta find a way to make it work. You gotta do mental Olympics, right?

Right.

So for us, it's like, okay, do we find this as like, this would be a really fun challenge to do this type of thing with someone, and we're looking for that? Or, or do we want to meet this person and like, you know, could we see ourselves having a relationship with this person in the future? So we look at like, do we want to— would we want to have coffee with this?

Yeah, right.

I want to hang out with them, or I'm going to be running screaming, or are you like, okay, I gotta go now, you You know what I mean? Yeah, like where you're looking at the time like, somebody call me, please get me out of here. I'm just gonna go to the bathroom real quick, right? And then you're, you're gone, right?

What is that, an Irish exit?

Yeah, just disappear.

Leave your jacket.

Like, you gotta commit, okay? Sacrifice the jacket to get out of there. But then you don't have to do that, which is so exciting. Exactly. But do you ever have—

do y'all ever have ideas that you're like, man, that's a good idea, but might take up too much of our time?

Yeah, Amon has a really fun idea, and I'm like, that would be fun, but— oh, you're talking—

okay, wait, I think I know what you're talking about.

There was one—

oh, we'll give you two examples because I think I know this is what happens with me. I, I have these ideas, and as I start to go down, go down the rabbit hole, all right, that's too much work.

For real.

So, so, and, and I love giving the ideas away. I have an idea, I said I'm not going to use it, you You take it.

I love it. It's like, make it happen.

I'm going to throw this out here and I hope someone does it at some point, but you know, I wanted to start a, a black wine label here.

Oh, listen, I will invest in that.

We can get that popping right now.

Somebody, somebody, somebody do that. And we even went down the road of looking at a commercial space.

These are both the examples.

We negotiated the commercial space. Space. We were going to sign the lease the next day. It was a beautiful space. And then we said, nah, that's too much work.

I absolutely love it. So I love it.

I think we told someone else, said, you should, you should, you should get on.

Listen, we've already negotiated it. It's a great space. Yeah. Yeah. You just setting up things for other people to get the home run.

But it's like, you know, it's like what you said, like, especially with this, this commercial space, because because I love like events and planning and bringing people together. And I was like, oh, we can have like, you know, on Mondays we'll have this, and on Friday, why don't we have brunches? You know, like all these like things where I'm like, oh, it's a great opportunity to bring people together. And the night before, everyone's like, are you sure? It's work, right? Like, are you gonna do this yourself? Are we gonna bring in staff?

Like, yeah, you know. And then that's when we pulled back.

Cause we're like, you know what? The idea, we love it, but maybe someone else has to do it. You know, like maybe it's too much work to put in for what it will take too much time for all the other stuff that we want to do. And so it didn't work out, but it was a fun exercise though.

We love it.

And it's just, you know, in spirit, we're entrepreneurs, right?

Yes.

But in reality, we don't want to be.

You dabble.

I feel you. Listen, these are the conversations that we have with Brittany. I have with Brittany all the time, who's the president of my company. And so I'm like, ooh, I have this great idea. Wouldn't this be great? And she listens and she's like, mm-hmm, that sounds awesome. Yeah, that would be so fun. And she listens to me talk about it and then she's like, are you sure? And I'm like, well, yeah, I think it's worth at least trying.

And she's like, okay.

Okay.

And then she like starts looking like she's about to start writing notes and I'm like, okay, about to kill this plan. She's like, well, what about this? Have you thought about this part? And who would do that? And how many times a week would you be available to do that thing? And I'm like, oh, I don't want to do this. Never mind.

Thank you.

It's like your conscious, right?

Exactly. Shut it down. Sure. Exactly. I'm not going to get to yes on that one. Exactly.

You got to like save me from myself. Self-made.

Right, right.

But I love that idea of the black wine label. I love the idea of the commercial space. It's like you want these things to exist. And so I do think there is this interesting pathway that I hope more of us will start to explore, which is like, could we partner with an operator who maybe is at the beginning of their journey and really hungry and ready to put in work, right? Who is interested in like taking that challenge on and being like, yes, I want to do it. I mean, it still won't take up space because you're an owner in it. But like, can we be like silent investors in some things, you know, to help make things happen where we can put our dollars behind it, but we don't necessarily have to put all our time and maybe some advising, right? But not— I'm in charge of it on a daily basis, right?

That's an incredible idea, you know, because it's like you can see your vision flourish but not necessarily with the work entailed if you're doing it yourself, right? Yeah, being a backer to someone and like providing that mentorship. But like you said, someone who's in in that hustle mode. Yes, you know, because we were really in the hustle mode on our FIRE journey, and now we're like, we got there, let's, you know, now we're done.

Enough people that are ready to hustle. Listen, that is a word.

Enough is enough is a word. Yeah, yeah, because that's something I said. We live in a society where it's like, it's never enough. Yeah, yeah, you know. And so now I'm running an 8-figure business. My husband said to me, he's like, well, what are your goals? What do you want?

I'm like, I can't think of a single thing that I want. Wow.

Like, I truly cannot.

Yeah.

I don't— there's nothing that I want.

I don't care.

Like, I have a fabulous wardrobe. I don't feel like I need to add really all that much to it. Although you probably will see me shop.

But like, you know what I mean?

Like, if I see something that gets me excited, yes. But I'm not actively looking to— there's like, I go on the vacations I want to go on. Like, and now it's so funny. It's like my vacations have gotten less fancy.

They were getting so fancy for a while.

And now I'm I'm like, now we're going on some whale tent thing on the beach in Mexico to see whales up close. And it costs $2,500.

You know what I mean? And we're gonna stay in a tent, you know?

And I'm like, I'm gonna pay the extra $300 to have my own bathroom.

So, and by bathroom, I mean like a camp toilet, basically, or some shit. So like, now it's like, now I just want the, these experiences. Yeah.

It's not really about it all being fancy.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

So it's like, it almost creates this freedom of like, I have the money to do that, but do I want to do that?

Yeah.

You know, do I want to spend my money on that? Like, it's so funny. I've been wanting to go to St. Barts for 2 years for my birthday, and this happened to me 2 years in a row, and I'm like, they got me again. So the first year I wanted to plan this trip, and I started down the path of planning it, and then I'll tell you why in a second. I didn't go through with it. Then the second time I was like, you know what? I messaged my friend Robert. I messaged our friend Susan, like our little group, and I'm I'm like, my treat, we go on to St.

Barts for my birthday. Okay.

I'm getting a little like house and it's going to be fabulous. And like, you know, it's going to be a great time and it's on me. You just get yourself there. So I'm going to sign the contract. They send me the contract and I was like, this number seems strange. It's a very large— I was like, is that insurance?

What is this number?

I thought that the nightly rate was the weekly rate.

Okay.

So I thought it was like 10 or 15 grand or something like that for the week. And it's 15 grand a night.

And this is the second time I have tried to plan a trip to St.

Barts and confused the nightly rate for the weekend. And I was like, never mind, I'm basic. I'm not on y'all's level.

Let me stay my ass right on the island that I'm already on. St. Barts ain't for me. Second time in a row. I was like, how do I do Again, I was so mad that they got me again. Two different venues.

St. Mark's is very expensive.

But I was like, listen, could I spend that money?

I can. I don't want to. I don't want to go on a $100 grand vacation.

Like, it's just— that's too much to blow in a week.

I ain't on that level yet. I'd rather take that $100, put it in my Charles Schwab account and just watch it.

Exactly. Awesome. I love it. Well, one last thing that I'll share is that with an audience like that, I'm sure like all of us in here would be like, give me that audience because we about to sell software, we selling more courses, we got all kinds of things, all kinds of programs we'll be selling all over the world. So have you thought about that? Like, like for example, y'all could create the, the Mint for FIRE people, you know, like, like the daily financial software.

Yeah. Yeah.

For FIRE people, especially with the audience like that, it'd probably make $1 million in a day.

Okay.

Okay. This is brainstorming time.

No, we did. We have thought about creating an app, not necessarily like a budgeting Mint app, but something more similar to our 365 program. Like, you know, having these all that material. Yeah. Like help you build into your plan of doing— like, what we talk about is like, if you can start structuring your days where there's just a little tiny bit of time you set aside for learning about financial literacy, you know, developing your financial literacy, or learning about investing, or, you know, taking some time to calculate your FIRE number, just small amounts of time. It's like a micro habit, right? Of, I could just take some time, maybe I'll listen to a podcast today, maybe I'll do this. And that's sort of like our program, right? And we thought maybe we could develop an app that's sort of geared towards that.

I I love that. Having seen the program— so the program is 365 Days of FIRE. So every day you do one task, right? It's like you get these 30 days of tasks, right, for the month, and there's a theme for the month, and every day you do a small task that takes you towards your FIRE journey, right? So in an app, that would be brilliant.

Yeah, so we've thought, we've thought about that, and of course, you know, this is a, you know, a process.

Yeah, we're at the thinking stage.

Yes, we've been there for a while.

So that you need that hungry app developer.

Yeah.

Exactly, that's right.

You'll be the face of it. They do the work, you give them the brilliance, right? They make it all happen.

Yeah, our meetings will be on the beach though. You have to come meet us.

Exactly, yeah, yeah, with cocktails, or on a rooftop. There you go, there you go.

All right, y'all, well, thank you so much. This was so amazing. Was this helpful, y'all?

Yes, thank you so Yeah, thank you for inviting us.

And I didn't give y'all question time. Do y'all— does anybody have a burning question we didn't cover?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, so everyone always talks about retirement, feels really long-term. It's not something I really wanted to use my money towards. Like, I have investment accounts, have financial advisors, all those things. Well, like, I want money now to play with. So how do you do that? Invest in these index funds and do all that, but still get to like buy a house or buy a car or like have life. Yeah, before you retire, it's really all the budgeting, right? So it's almost that idea of like— I mean, like specific to accounts, like I know how to spend money. Like we have like friends who want to buy a house, so we've been putting it all in a savings account because we wouldn't be able to use it. Worried that if you put it in like a brokerage account or something, you can't touch it. Are you allowed to touch Oh, that's a great question. Yeah, so yes, you are allowed to touch things. What I would say is, you know, like for the house, I think you've got a great plan. You've got money set aside into a savings account, right? Like we were talking about our— us doing a money market fund. It's like you're having it in more secure money. But let's say you didn't have a savings account, you were still just consistently investing in your stock market. Doesn't mean you can never pull from it, right? The idea Ideally, you don't want to pull from it when it's down, right? But if you're saying, I want to buy a house— a house is another form of an investment, right? It's like you invest in stocks, you invest in real estate. So it's okay to pull from a real estate investment to invest in a house. You're just switching assets. It's still an investment. But you want to make sure that you have some flexibility, because if you find a house and you have it in the stock market, for example, and the stock market drops, then you don't really want to transfer that money, right? And so you sort of have to play around, like, what is your plan? Like, how are you going to access money? What do you need that money do you want it for a house, do you want it for vacation, do you want it for these things? And then you also have to understand the repercussions of everything you do, right? You put your money into the savings account, that's great because it's secure, you're not having that flexibility. If you put it into the stock market, you have to understand the repercussions of maybe wanting to get access to money when the stock market's down, or pulling that money and then you have a smaller account that now you're working on building that compound interest again and growing that account even more. But if you think about it with a plan of saying these are the things I want short term, so I'm going to put this money into these accounts, or I want to have this type of experience, I'm going to put my money into this type of account that I can access. And just know where all of your money is going. And then ultimately you may decide, yeah, I'm gonna— the stock market's doing amazing, I'm going to take out some, you know, some profits from that and invest it in a house or invest it in an experience. But it's all about outlining how you want to spend your money, and then ultimately where you're going to access your accounts in order to spend that money. You know how the accounts work. Yeah, exactly.

And then you have money— yeah, right, you have money aside for a house, and then you have money aside for your long-term future, right? So you can have a short-term account and a long-term account.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What was your question, Jacqueline?

It was kind of on that term too. So like, we recently moved to Los Angeles, like, so we also want to buy a house. That's probably a huge chunk of the money that we're going to make in the short term versus being able to start to do that. So we do have a financial advisor, he's like 1%. The way he has it set up right now is like all of our money is like liquid in a way that we could save. And so it's like we're on a plan, a 3-year plan to buy a certain price house. So with this FIRE situation, I have a high fat FIRE number, like probably like $50 million. And so how do you, in like the amount of working time that I have left, think about buying a multi-million dollar living that life in Los Angeles and saving up $50 million. You know, like it's a, it feels so big. So is it like Rachel's way or it's like go make more money and then like put—

Well, it's not just that, right? So it's make more money, but also think about like selling the business. And that was one of the questions I was gonna ask you. Like your business is also an asset, right? And so that's why we teach you at Hello7. We are very, very committed to teaching you how to build a business that is an asset you can sell.

Sell.

That's why we talk about having a team, having a management system, right? Like having a scalable offer, all of those things. Because then the business is an asset separate from you. You have to work in the business for it to function, it has less value, right? So if you're an owner-operator, you can sell it for 1 to 3x the revenue, right? But if you have a team, you can sell it for like 3 to 5x the annual revenue. If you have a management team, now you're talking like 5 to 10x the annual revenue you can get for your business because you have a team who's leading that business and it's not all dependent on you. So that's why, like, so if, if your number is really big and if your business is where you're investing most of your time and most of that money is going to come from, then you have to think about, okay, am I building an asset? What is going to make this attractive to a buyer who would want to come along and buy this business? Who, what kinds of buyers would want to buy this business? And then start, to Christina's point, have a plan for how you are moving this business, moving yourself, and not being face, having it have its own brand, and moving it towards something that can be acquired. And then that acquisition provides you with a good chunk, maybe not all of it, maybe all of it. So then you're saying like, okay, so if I want to be able to get 5x my revenue, I need to get it up to $10 million in annual revenue. And when we hit $10 million, I'm gonna sell it with the goal of getting somewhere between $30 to $50 million. That's a huge chunk of that number, right? And then, you know, then you've got time. Or maybe you say, I only want to sell if I can hit my FIRE number, you know? And so just figuring out what that looks like.

Yeah, we did a combination of things. So we were setting aside money into the, into the stock market just from our income, right? But then we had these, we had these real estate deals that gave us these big windfalls.

Yeah.

So whenever we had a huge chunk of money, we knew exactly where to put it towards our FIRE number. So I think, I mean, you really have to be, you have to look at it holistically, but you should always be putting that money aside for your long-term goals, right? Because let's say you're, let's say your business fails and you know, you don't it's almost like investing in one asset, one individual stock.

And nothing else.

Yeah, if you're just banking on selling your business in order to achieve financial independence, you know, that's very, very risky. You got to put that money aside. You have to put some money aside into the stock market or into other assets. One of the reasons why we feel so secure in our financial independence is because we have a diverse portfolio, right, of assets. We just don't have investments in the stock market. We also have real estate. We also have, you know, income that was being generated from our, from our other businesses as well. So, and we're not, we're not involved in those businesses, but I think it's important to look at it from a holistic approach and have multiple things going on.

Yes. Same. I'm invested in all of those asset classes. And I'm also invested in tech startups, which are more risky. And you know, they're all like, there's one that's the riskiest. There's one that has huge, huge potential, but it's also risky. And then there's one that's pretty safe because of how long they've been in business. Business. So it's like, and so that's money that will eventually be able to go into that pot, right? When they, when that business sells or IPOs, right? And so those are different asset classes that I'm in— real estate, also stock market, and then also Hello7, right? So you can, you gotta diversify. It's an important part of it. Yeah, a part, part of the journey to make sure you got all your money isn't just in your business. Some of it you're pulling out and putting in other classes. Okay, last question and then we're going to wrap up because I think we got to go to lunch.

I also would tell you when you're looking at a house, go ahead and contact a real estate agent. Can you find a house where over a set number of years you can put like some investments into it because it is an asset?

So then as part of your plan, you can make like a million to $2 million, right?

Exactly. So it's like you could buy it in an up-and-coming neighborhood, or you can buy a really— like I did this twice. I've I bought the wackiest, most broke-down house in the baddest neighborhood ever, right? And so it's like, there's a lot of work to be done over time, but then when you do that work, there's a huge upside. So it's like being strategic, right? So that it aligns— like, what you purchase aligns with your plan, multiplies the asset.

My question was on those terms. I'm really interested in international real estate and adding that to our portfolio. Allison, my wife, and I really like Spain or Italy, but I know Portugal allows more of that. So just what should be on our radar as far as looking at international properties and how that works if we want that as part of our fire plan?

Yeah, so, you know, when you invest abroad, I think one of the things that a lot of foreign investors— one of the biggest challenges are the changing laws and regulations. So one of the things that's happening right now, especially in Portugal Portugal, Spain, and I think a lot of these Southern European countries is that prices are going up so high that it's not becoming affordable for the locals. And they're seeing foreign investors like, oh, they're trying to make it harder for them to get involved. So that's your biggest issue when you're investing abroad is understanding what the regulation and the investment climate is like for foreign investors.

Yes. And you can find an opportunity that aligns what is helpful to the locals and actually what would benefit you as well. Like in Puerto Rico, there's this huge opportunity. Trying to make hospitality a bigger part of their GDP. And so they will give you investment, like they will give you huge tax incentives to buy like something that you turn into a bread and bed and breakfast, they're trying to get more hotel rooms available on the island, right, basically. So like not necessarily short-term rentals, they're gonna give you money for an Airbnb. But if you set up a little like small boutique hotel, or bed and breakfast type situation, they give you a massive tax incentive to to do that because they know it's in their interest, it's in their part of their economic plan to bring more tourism into Puerto Rico. And so that's what they're trying to do. So you can get that huge advantage, right, and be contributing in a way that Puerto Rico is asking you to contribute. And so then you're aligned. So I think if you do research, you can find those opportunities where there's alignment there, and then it makes sense because, you know, through agents or economic folks or—

Yeah, you know, the agents aren't really going to get you there.

I feel like you got to know people there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You really have to connect with local investors, people that are, people that are involved in that. And there's investment groups. There's, there's, there's—

And there's YouTube channels too. I learned actually what I just shared with you. I learned on a YouTube channel and then had it confirmed by locals. Yes. So great question. All right. Thank you so much.

Hey y'all, I hope you enjoyed this episode and learned so much. I hope you took notes and I hope you plan to go take action on some of what was shared by Christina and Iman during this episode. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review. It makes such a difference in helping our podcast get discovered by more people who wanna learn how to become a billion-dollar creator. Creator, and we will see you next time. And don't worry, Nathan will be back next week.

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