EP 480 – Building Your Lifestyle with Tom Sylvester

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Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everybody. Welcome to this episode of the no Closer Show. As always, Scott Carson. Excited to be here. I'm even more excited today because we got the blue shirt memo here. We do. I've got my buddy Tom Sylvester join us today. Tom and his wife. And Tom and his wife Arianna are not only successful entrepreneurs and real estate investors, but they've also got this amazing book coming out. It's called Lifestyle Builders. And you see, if you're watching this, you see the book over Tom's shoulder. There's. I'll pull up an image of it as well. Oh, there you go. Lifestyle Builders. Build your business, quit your job and live your ideal lifestyle. And I absolutely love that. It's just such a great timing right now, especially being summertime and people looking to do something different, especially the second half of the year. But Tom, thanks for joining us this morning on the nocloser show.

Absolutely, man. Thanks so much for having me on. And this is a topic that I just geek out about. So excited for it.

Yeah, man. You've got an amazing podcast, too. And we've met, we went at Podfest last year. Not this year. We've met a couple of times. We hung out and drank a couple Coronas in the lobbies and some stuff there while networking. And that's the beautiful thing. We've got similar friends in the business with Tyler Scheff and Sean Yesner and a few of those other crazy guys out there that we've had on. But Tom, why don't you take a second and just share kind of what your journey up to where you're at right now and we'll talk about why that's relevant to everybody that's listened.

Absolutely. So I'll actually start with where we're at right now. So we have three very different businesses. We have a real estate investing business, which is mostly buy and hold rentals, residential and commercial. We've done some flips, some wholesales, but buy and holds our core. We also have a wine and liquor store and then we have a coaching and consulting business. And so through those three businesses, my wife and I have both been able to leave our Jobs. My wife did it in her late 20s and I did it in my early 30s. That's really enabled us to be able to design and build our own lifestyle. So you talked about summer, and we actually have our daughter that's now home from school. And last year we were actually able to do something called Friday family field trips. And so we take every Friday off and we just have experiences with our kids. We take them to the zoos and museums and really just get to design our schedule. So that's the entire goal. But the journey to get to this point, you know, there were a lot of ups and downs along the way. So my wife and I actually met the first day of college and I had a degree in computer science, she had a degree in zoology. And as we got ready to graduate four years later, I started looking ahead and I was like, you know what, I don't know if I made the best choice here. I don't want to sit in a cubicle with computers for the next 45 years. And she was struggling to find a job because even though we had all the debt from student loans, there really weren't many jobs for a zoology degree. And so at that point I just said, you know what? I want us to be retired by 35. I have no idea how I'm gonna make it happen. But I figured if I said it, it's long enough till I'll figure it out, but it's not so long that we'll have to kind of miss our life while doing that. And so Ariana's like, yeah, it's another one of your crazy ideas. You'll let it go. And I didn't. So every time I try to start a business, she would shut it down. It kind of came to a culmination when I was driving home from work and I tried to do stocks and MLM and starting a business, and she just shut everything down. And I heard an ad on the radio that said, hey, want to start your own business? Want to do all this stuff, come to this free two hour real estate seminar. And I'm like, yes, that's it. So I go to the free seminar, and if anyone's been in any of these circles, you know how this goes. Then I go to the three day event, then I go to, and they go to upsell you into this really expensive package. And I was like, you know, we can't afford this. We're like nine months away from getting married, $200,000 in personal debt. But I had this thought in the back of the mind of like, if I don't do this, it's never going to work. And so I whipped out two high interest credit cards, put the $7,500 on it, and then realized I had to tell Ariana afterwards.

And so that there with you, she was not there with you.

She was not there with me.

Okay.

And so that was kind of the moment where we had a lot of very tough conversations after that. But what came out of that was when Ariana asked me a key question and she said, why would you do this? And that was the question that changed everything. Because what I had realized was myself and so many other people out there, we get excited about an idea and we just go all in and we know our why, but we don't express that. So when I shared with Arianna, I was like, I don't want us to be slaves to a job. I, I want us to be able to the life and be able to be there for our family. She's like, you know, I want the same thing. And it was through us then aligning on that that we were able to then say, okay, now that we know where we're going, what are the steps and what are the things we gotta do to get there? And that really set us up on our journey.

That's awesome. And that's always an interesting thing. Yeah. Signing up for a higher interest high. Someone on the credit card and you didn't tell the wife. Now you understand. 1,000 bucks, 500 bucks. 7,500 bucks. I bet the paint on the wall peeled a little bit that night when he got home, huh?

Absolutely. And you know, if you're listening, I would not recommend that path. There's a much easier ways to go and learn from other people's mistakes. That's what, you know, a huge lesson. You don't have to experience all this yourself.

So you were working and you decided you want to go to real estate. So was real estate really the first business that you kind of launched out of the three that you currently have?

Yep. And basically we got to that point where it was, it was kind of like, you know, you always get to these decision points. And it was like, okay, well it's been done. Where do we go from here? And it was like, give up on this, go back to the job and work on paying it off. Or we've already invested in this, now let's go and get our return. And so even though the training itself, like, wasn't really valuable and wasn't what I needed, I used that as Motivation and went out and bought my first duplex within the next couple months.

That's awesome, man. And so you bought a duplex and how many, you know, you built a rental portfolio, is that correct?

Yep. So it's gone up and down over the years. We've got 19 units right now. And that business basically at this point, we basically just set up for autopilot. So we spent a lot of time building it. We put a lot of work in early on and now it's really set up to where there's systems in place. We got a team in place, monthly cash flows coming in. And so that's really our view on how you build businesses and how you build wealth is you find an opportunity and then you put in the work. Because early on there is a lot of work. But you always ask this question of what would it have to look like for this to be able to run every day and pay me money without me having to be there. And that's going to help you identify what systems do you need, what team members do you need? And then over time, you start putting those pieces in place. A lot of people look at us now and they're like, oh my gosh, you guys are so successful and you're doing really well. And it's like, yeah, but you didn't see the 12 year journey. And you know, the weekends where I was out ripping drywall out. Or you know, the weekends or the nights where I was up analyzing deals and sending out marketing materials like you didn't see all that stuff. And that's what I really try to tell people. It's like, look, you can do this, but it's going to take time and you have to really be intentional with your time and where you're spending your resources.

One of the big nuggets I want people to think about is you said something, is that you've got to think about it and plan your business so that playing it with the image of you not being there to have to run it on an hourly basis. I think it's such a different mind change there. And I want to ask you if that was something on your front end side or something that's evolved over time because so many entrepreneurs, we're control freaks, especially the real estate side, let's face it, we got to control everything. We got to touch it, we got to taste it, we got to rub on the carpet. That's why I like the note business, because we can do it remotely quite a bit. But the thing is that has that been something that's evolved along the way. The 19 doors, or was it something that you tried to set in place immediately?

Yeah, it definitely evolved. Shared like. One of my early mistakes was when I was analyzing a deal, I didn't factor in some of the costs, like for example, property management, because I'm like, oh, we'll manage it ourselves. So I don't have to include that. So basically what I was saying was we'll manage it ourselves, so I'm going to work for free. Like, you know, huge mistake that so many of us make. And what, what ended up happening was then at the point where we wanted to hire a property manager out, we didn't have money built into that calculation to be able to do it. So that's why I said there's a lot of mistakes that you learn along the way. And that's why if you can find people that are actually doing it, not a weekend seminar that comes to your city, but people that are actually doing this, they can save you so much time and mistakes like that.

Yeah, that's such a huge thing. It's seeking counsel, not getting advice from your next door neighbor, but seeking counsel from others that have been there, that are successful doing it. Is all your portfolio in roughly one or two areas or pretty close to where you're at. Are they spread out across the country?

Yep. So we invest about an hour away from where we live. It was actually my hometown and the surrounding areas. So I knew the area and the way that I set it up was basically it was close enough to where if there was an emergency, I could be out there. But it's far enough away where it's an inconvenience. So it basically made me set up the systems so that I'm not having to go out there. And what we've been able to do is over time I was able to do less and less physically there. So that like now when we buy a property or renovate it, I usually am not seeing it until after we purchased it or after the renovations have been done, because we've got people on the ground that are able to take care of those things.

Yeah, that's. That's smart. And where's home for you?

Rochester, New York.

That's right up in New York. Now, Rochester, New York is totally different than like New York, New York, let's face it.

They're like two completely different areas right now.

That. But that's the thing, is that there's great price point at the neck of the woods. I mean, it's a very affordable Higher average rent crates compared to a lot of other areas out there, too. So that's a great place to build a portfolio. Our good buddy Jack Kripie's at the neck of the woods.

Yep.

You know, we spoke in the neck of the woods, too. We got some great friends up there. But, yeah, that's smart. You're within an hour away. So if you did have the emergency, you could go do that. That's smart thinking. And go on that route. Now, let's talk about. Because you moved into a liquor store and wine, were you just a big fan of Gary Vee that you had to emulate him? Business for business, basically.

It's so funny you mentioned Gary, because I first came across Gary with all of his videos in wine, library, tv, and a lot of people that know Gary now don't know his backstory. And so basically that kind of happened. Like, I'm a big fan of what I call planting the seeds. So thinking about the future and doing things now and kind of cultivating and watering that so later on I can benefit. And so when I was in college, my father actually called me up and he was having an issue where his friends were getting divorced. One was selling a building, one was selling the liquor store in the building, but they couldn't come to an agreement on it. And my father was looking. He had a background in construction. He was looking to retire. And I said, you know what, if you buy this, you can put apartments in the upstairs, you can get into real estate, and then you can run and manage the liquor store, and that'll let you retire from your job. And he's like, well, I don't know anything about running the store. And I said, all right, we'll do this. You buy it. I'll help you get the store set up and running, and then you'll be able to do that. And so that seed was planted, like, years before. And when we had our real estate business, there was a liquor store for sale. And I said, you know, I've already been through this process once. Let me go and just add another income stream. And we actually got into real estate in 0708 when everything was shopping. So I knew that we wanted. We were going to have success in real estate, but I wanted to start diversifying over time. And so we went to buy another liquor store. You know, it was overpriced, location was poor. But I said, you know what? I know the business. We've got a real estate company. Let's go buy a building and we'll open A business in there. So we bought a 4 Plex, two commercial units to residential, opened our liquor store in there and then basically repeated the process that we did before, built the team, built the systems there. And we've had that for like eight years now.

That's awesome, man. Congratulations.

Thank you.

You took what you know and you applied it and you found instead of looking, going out and hiring tenants, you became your own tenant for the most part, knew what the business would generate. I'm sure you've got that structured so you're paying rent to yourself and things like that.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Well. And you know, it's funny when that comes up, like I talk about this a lot when people want to achieve success. Oftentimes I look at other people and they've got one of two questions or one of two views. They'll say, they'll either say like, well of course, Tom, you were able to invest in real estate. Your father had a construction background. Of course you were able to get a liquor store. Your father had one. And I always tell people, I'm like, look, we all have unfair advantages. We all have things that we can do or that we have in our network that other people don't. And if you identify your unfair advantages and take advantage of that, that's what's going to help you succeed. But a lot of people will just look at it and play the victim and say, well, of course you could do that, but I couldn't do anything like that. And so that mindset is so important because then as you're looking around, like when you're clear on where you want to go and you're looking around at opportunities, you can find the ones that will align and help you get there.

Yeah, too many people play the whiny aspect of things, the Debbie Downer in life on stuff there. And yeah, people look for excuses, well, I can't do that. We've got some really good friends that we've tried to help to get into the real estate side of some sort. Talking about, well, we don't have any money. Like, well, you can raise capital. There's plenty of people in your neck of the woods, you know, oh, I'm not as good as that. And so it's just a matter of like, listen, you can't, you can lead a horse with water, but you can't make a drink. And people have to take that journey and come to the conclusion individually. They've got to go through the two hour seminars to the upsell, sometimes the hard knocks of life, tuition that we like to call things right, find their why.

Absolutely. Well, and it was funny because that was such a traumatic experience for us, and I never wanted anyone else to go through that. And so I never planned on coaching people or helping other people. But when we got into that, I thought my purpose was to be able to save people from that. And what I realized over time is that I can't save people from that. All those challenges we go through cause us to grow and really challenge us to say, are you ready to be able to do this? So I actually wasn't doing people a service by saving them. What I had to do was let them experience what they needed to to grow and become that person. But what I could do is be there as a support and as a leader so that when they proved they were ready to put in the work, I was there to then help them with that.

Yeah, that's such a great point. You've carved that path to able to help walk and lead them down the path. They just had to make the turns themselves. Now, let's talk about, as you're sitting down with somebody, a couple or person, what are some of the biggest mistakes that you see entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs, as I like to say, make as they're trying to get to where you're at and where you're trying to lead them to?

Absolutely. You know, one of the biggest ones is that they immediately jump right into the business. And it was funny, like, when we were writing the book, we were sharing it with some friends afterwards, and one of the friends just was like, you know, people aren't going to read this. Like, this isn't connecting with them. And I was like, that's so weird because we've done this with all these people and we've had other people read it and no one gave that feedback. And then Ariana called it out afterwards and she was like, you know what the person you were talking to is, Sam? It's that person that just wanted to jump into the business and they forget that they got to get their personal life figured out beforehand. So the first thing we have people do is we take them through this activity. We call it the Life planner, which basically it's kind of like a gps. So you figure out what do you want your life to look like in the future? The destination. You figure out where you're at now, and then you build out a roadmap to help get you there. And that roadmap is basically taking your vision and your goals, breaking it down into pieces and then chunking it out into 90 days. And what that will allow you to do is to get clear on where you go and then make intentional decisions of where you spend your resources. Because we all have money, we all have time, we all have energy and focus. And people that are successful leverage those in smart ways because they're being very intentional of where they invest that to get to where they want to go. Whereas people that struggle, if you look at where they're spending time versus where they say they want to be, they're not connected. So first step is to really get that figured out, because that's going to guide you. And then the second thing that a lot of people don't realize is that your personal habits are going to translate into whatever business you get into. And so, for example, when I started my first business, we were over $200,000 in personal debt, and we got there because I was terrible at managing money. And so when you don't figure that out, you're gonna go and make those mistakes that I talked about of, like, not paying myself for the business. So the next thing we do is just have people really get their personal habits down. Like, you know, do you have your personal finances in order? Like, if you have debt, do you have a plan to pay that off? Do you have a way to have more cash flow coming in every month and going out with your time? Are you intentional with where you spend your time? Are you able to carve out time? Like, if you have a job, are you able to carve out time to set aside for the business and do that consistently? Do you have the right mindset? So we do a lot of work with people before we ever get to the business to help make sure that they're ready. And a big one is making sure that your spouse or family's on board. Because even if you're the only one doing the business, it's going to have a huge impact on everyone around you. And you, as the entrepreneur or the real estate investor or whatever you pursue, you need as much support as you can get. And any resistance that comes up is just gonna make more challenges for you.

That's such a huge thing. It's easier when your spouse and family's rowing the boat with you versus rowing against you. Like you said, it's okay if you're the only one doing it, but they've gotta be there as a supportive net, a supportive sounding board to be there. Because everybody has ups and downs every day. We all have. You need that support because otherwise, if you're going in directions, it's not going to work in some sort of fashion?

Yeah, absolutely.

Personal question. What has been the biggest hurdle along the way with you guys in your strive to build this perfect lifestyle for you?

Yeah. Well, I'm going to really say two. So the first one, to be completely honest, was my ego and having to get over that. And so I was young, I thought I knew a lot, and especially when I had some early success, I got to a point where there was a couple years where I didn't ask questions because I was worried about what people would think, well, oh, well, he's having success. If he's asking questions, maybe he's not successful. I got to a point where I thought I knew everything and I wasn't seeking knowledge or seeking more information. And then I actually spent quite a bit of time where I was doing business consulting for these Fortune 500 companies. And I got to a point where I started to really, like, doubt myself. And what I realized was that I had to truly come to grips with what I knew and what I didn't know and be open and vulnerable to ask for help when needed. And I'll tell you, that is a tough transformation for people to go on. And, I mean, the only reason I really got through it was because, you know, I had my wife and family supporting me. You know, even though, like, Ariana didn't know everything that I was doing in, like, my day job, you know, she was my biggest fan. I had peers in my network that were either further along or had been through it, that helped kind of coach and mentor me. And once I got over that and I realized truly why I was doing things, and I didn't worry about what anyone else said or what anyone else thought about me. I mean, it allowed me to propel so far.

Tom, that's such. I'm so glad you shared that with you. And I know it's not always the easiest to share is when we have bruised ego, but a lot of times, entrepreneurs, we have to step back and say, hey, I can't do this all myself. I don't know it all. I think we all are guilty of having an ego. Otherwise, why would we want to get out from working for the man and doing our own thing?

Right? Yeah, well. And, you know, like, having an ego is not bad. Like, with anything, if you're on either extreme, you're usually, you know, going to have an issue. So there takes a certain amount of ego to say, this is the vision I have for the future. I have no idea how I'm going to get There, But I know I'm going to be dedicated every day to making that happen. That takes a certain level of ego, but we've got to counterbalance that with vulnerability and saying, like, I have confidence that I'm going to get there, but I know I don't have all the answers, and I'm going to look for all the help and support I can get along the way.

Yeah. My buddy Greg Reed likes to say, if you have a $50,000 mindset, there's no way you can make it to a million dollar mindset. You've got to grow that mindset first before you can grow, the finances will follow. And that's such a huge, huge thing there. And you said that that's what you did. You had to sit down and figure out, okay, I need to help, I need to listen, I need to talk with the experts to help me get over this hump and help me grow as an individual. What was the other thing you said? There's two things, so having an ego and putting your ego aside. First thing, what was the second thing that you mentioned?

Yeah, the second thing, to be honest, was really getting Ariana on board. And when I say getting her on board, it actually says a lot more about me than it did about her, because what I was doing for so long was trying to drag her along. And it wasn't until I took a step back and said, instead of me trying to drag you along with this, let's really have some conversations and understand one, why we're doing this, two, what each of our roles are. And we actually did something really cool last year. We do annual planning, and then we replan every 90 days. And so last year, one of the things we said was, okay, we built three businesses. We had a couple years where I was traveling consultant away four or five days a week in another city. We've got two kids that we've been raising, and there were some challenges with sleep and all this there. And we said, you know what? We really got to start putting ourselves first even more than we've done before. Take care of our health, take care of our mind, take care of our relationship. And so one of the best things we did was starting to go see a marriage counselor. And when I first tell people this, the immediate response is like, oh, my gosh, are you guys okay? Or like, I didn't realize things were so bad. And when we went to our first session, our counselor actually said, she's like, you know what? You guys are doing this, right? She's like, you guys Have a good relationship. Obviously there's some stuff that you guys can work on to make it great. But you're coming at this now and you're investing into it way before anything ever gets bad or gets too far gone. And that's a big thing that we like to share with people now. It's like, look, if you want to build a great business, what do you do? You go hire a business coach or mentor. Someone's been there. And what's more important than your life and your relationship with your significant other? And so it really took a lot of, one, getting over my ego, but then two, really just saying this is the most important thing, our life, our family, and investing time and effort into that. Because part of it was reconnecting and knowing who we are, why we're building this life together, and why we're building the businesses. Because we've seen, like, I actually my first coaching client, when I transitioned from corporate into entrepreneurship, he was like, $40,000 in debt. He was trying to build this business, and we helped him build a million dollar business in like 18 months. And my ego took a nice, like, pat on the back for that. I was like, this is great. My skills are able to help other people. This guy was able to actually move his family to another country. Like, I thought everything was great until like three months later, he reached out and he's like, tom, like, I really need your help. And I'm like, all right, well, whatever it is, we'll get through it. We got through all the other challenges. And he said, you know, she left me and she took the kids. And I'm like, what? And he's like, yeah, we're getting divorced and she took the kids. And for me, that was like a punch in the gut. And I had to. I didn't do a lot of soul searching. And I had a lot of conversations with Ariana to say, you know what, what are we doing here? Why are we helping people? Are we just helping people to build a business and build a business that might negatively impact their life? And we realized that wasn't the case. And that's where lifestyle builders really came from. Because we said, you know what? We want to make sure that we're helping people build the right business to amplify their life, not take away from it. So, you know, we had a couple different, like, iterations of our coaching business. And it took a lot of those mistakes and challenges and a lot of growth from both of our perspectives to say, this is really our purpose and why we're Doing this now, that's huge.

That's the difference of being a business builder and a lifestyle builder. And you're exactly right. Most people go, oh, my gosh, you're going to counseling. Things must be wrong. And it's not that. It's mostly you just say, hey, I'm going to marriage coaching. You know, you're a coach. You took it valuable. Some people get upset about counselors or dealing with shrinks or whatever like that. I'm like, listen, it's just somebody to bounce things off of, to bring together a third party so you can really listen to the other people. Unfortunately, most people aren't listening to their spouse or they're speaking on the wrong tune or the wrong love language. And you have to understand, sometimes you need somebody to connect those dots for you. Because let's face this, us guys, we aren't very good at reading women and understanding women.

Some things not at all well. And I mean, one of my biggest takeaways from that was I'm a problem solver. And most entrepreneurs, most of us high achievers, are problem solvers. And one of the biggest things I would always do is Arianna would come to me with a challenge and I would immediately jump in and try to solve it. And what I had to realize was I had to stop and take a step back and be like, okay, what are you looking for from me here? Are you looking for help solving the problem, or do you just need me to listen and support you? And, I mean, that's been such a huge challenge, but figuring that out has just helped with so many things.

Yeah, I think a lot of us are. I know I'm a problem solver. It's one of my love language. Let me go fix it for you.

Yep.

But you're exactly right. Steph comes to me and sometimes I jump in. She's like, I don't want you to fix it. I just want you to listen, idiot. I'm like, okay, I'll just listen.

And when I tell people that that's a trap a lot of us fall into is, you know, our intentions are good, but we don't realize that the way we're going about it actually doesn't serve the purpose.

Yeah, but that's also very relevant. A lot of times as an entrepreneur, with our partners, our vendors, our staff is. Sometimes they just want you to be there to listen and bounce ideas off of. They don't need you to fix it. They would like to fix it, but they just need to bounce some things off to it. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs aren't listening effectively to people. I mean, God gave us two ears and one mouth. I think a lot of times we've got to do that in direct ratios before we just spout off an answer, actually listen, think about it, and actually sometimes ask. Because a lot of times our solutions are right in front of us. We just got to ask for them, Right, Tom?

Absolutely. I mean, it's funny, people, we talk about life a lot, we talk about business a lot. And I say, you know what, there's underlying principles that apply in both. And the one you just described is key. So often we want to advocate our position, we want to go and tell other people what we think. Whereas one of the best things that's been able to help me is just being curious when I meet someone new or when I find a new opportunity before I immediately pass judgment on it, I'm trying to understand, I'm trying to ask questions because by doing that I can then respond and better understand how this fits in or how I can provide value in a situation. But I think far too often, especially when we let that ego come up, we just want to jump in without really understanding. And it's that clarity and that curiosity and that understanding that will help you succeed in every relationship, whether it's life or business.

So those that are listening out there, watching us on YouTube or Facebook or listening on the radio and stuff like that, what are some simple things that they can start doing to prepare themselves to make that leap or to take them? Maybe not that leap of that transition is probably a better term for building a lifestyle, right?

Absolutely. One of the first things is, like we said, getting clear on what you want the future to look like and doing that with your spouse or with the people around you that are important. That was one of the biggest things Arianna and I realized is the first time we did this, we actually both wrote our goals out on post it notes and then we put them up on the wall and like 80% of our goals were the same, some of them were different, and that's fine. And then the second thing we did was we started sequencing them. So we started building our own roadmap. So for example, Ariana wanted a new house, so she put that on like a two year timeframe. And so when we put other stuff up there, it was like, wow, this time period is really heavy. Which of these is more important to us to do first? And so once we had that roadmap laid out now it was like the GPS was there and all we had to do was execute on it. So then we were able to be very intentional about, like, okay, in order to achieve this, what do we have to start doing? More importantly, what do we probably have to stop doing? And then we can really make sure that our actions and all of our resources were focused that way. Another thing too that people have to think about is what does the financials look like. So for example, if people want to leave a job, you have to know what we call your freedom number. That is how much money do you need bringing in a month to cover all your expenses? And when you go to leave a job, that's not just what your budget is today. When you leave a job, you got to think about things like insurance, you have to think about things like self employment, tax, all these expenses that you may not have today that you're going to have when you leave a job. So let's just say that number is like $5,000. Now you know the target of what you have to replace. And so then when you start thinking about the lifestyle you want, how much time, money and energy you have, where some of your unfair advantages are, now you can start looking out for the opportunities and saying what makes sense. Does investing in the stock market get me there? Does investing in real estate get me there? Does starting a business get me there? We can now be very intentional about how we get there once we know where it is we want to go and what some of those mile markers are. From a financial perspective, that's good.

It's, you know, if you need five grand, you figure how many deals you've got to do is bring it in $500 a month in cash flow, that's 10. Figure out what your other expenses are. Because a lot of times when you're leaving a job, your expenses may go down because maybe you don't have to have the travel expenses. Maybe you're not eating out as often, maybe you're not wearing the monkey suit on a daily basis. You know, maybe you're working from home so your commute and travel costs go down. There's a whole lot of things to keep in mind. But I love what you said about building the timeline. You throw every goal and you want to accomplish on a board and then you start fitting the pieces together. It's like taking looking at the stars and then putting the constellation together by connecting the dots, right?

Absolutely. And then we always talk about a gps. Having a plan is great, but we all know life happens, stuff comes up. And so just like a GPS will constantly Check in and then tell you, hey, redirecting, you got to take this turn. We do the same thing. So we have a meeting cadence set up where every 90 days we're really reflecting on the last 90 days and planning the next 90 days. But then it really comes down to like, daily we have a quick meeting to set our intentions for the day. Weekly we have a focus so we understand what are the key things we're going to do this week. Monthly we have a check in to review our finances, review how we're doing towards our goals. And so all of these things work together to make sure that not only have we set the goals, but we've got a plan working towards those. And then when we're off track, we realize it sooner than later. So then we can say, okay, based on that, what do we do from here?

Totally makes sense. And that's a great thing. Now are you doing just as a house or are you getting away every 90 days to have a check in or. I know, I understand the weekly, the daily stuff, but 90 days it sounds. Are you hopefully taking a little bit of a trip to get away from the hustle, bustle and life?

Absolutely. And that's actually one of the critical things. Like this is actually something I stole from my corporate consulting days. Big companies do what they call off sites. So every 90 days when they do this quarterly planning, they actually go somewhere else. And part of it is to do the planning, but part of it is just to enjoy yourself, have experiences. So one of the things we always try to do is go to a different location. One, so that we're out of our normal context and we're not sucked into any of the business stuff. But two, just to create experiences. Because you and I met at a conference, one of the things we do is we go to a lot of events, we speak at some, we attend some, but we try to integrate life in business. So where so many people try to like have a work life balance, like, to me that's BS because we're trying to balance everything. It doesn't make sense. What it makes sense to do is to integrate it. Say, how does this support this and this support this. So when we go to a conference, for example, we'll tack a trip on top of that. You know, we'll go see things. And a lot of that is actually a tax write off because the primary purpose is business. So there's lots of things you can do like that. There's lots more options that you have when you build your own business or you have control of this compared to, for example, when you're working a job and there's some restrictions you have on yourself.

That's the truth. Let's recap a little bit here. Talking Tom Sylvester here, the author, co author.

She's good.

Let's not forget Ariana out of this because she's 50% of the thing of lifestyle builders plan is okay, figuring out where you want to go, throwing it all down, getting your spouse, getting your family involved and throwing it all on there, then kind of organizing it to kind of see that roadmap, that kind of path that you want to go, Planning your financials. Hey, what does that look like? What kind of income do we need to be making to get to where we want to be? Whether one's leaving our job or two are leaving the jobs as a dual income household. Right, Tom. And then figuring the expenses of whether you've got insurance or private school or, you know, other expenses or less expenses, and planning that out on a realistic timeframe or adjusting that timeframe as you go. Right, yeah.

And so we like to set that timeframe and then work backwards and say, well, what has to happen at each point along the way? And one thing we always advocate that a lot of people I think do wrong is they leave their jobs too early and they really don't have a smart way to figure out when that is. So one thing that we've developed that's really helped a lot of people, it helped us, was like a startup business. They have what's called a Runway. And that basically means how much money do they have before they're gonna be out of money? And so what we do with people is we say, well, let's set up your personal Runway. Let's figure out based on the incomes you have now, the savings you have, what your monthly expenses are, what your burn rate is, and how much money your business is making. If one spouse was to leave at this point, how many months would you have to build the business to where you'd run out of money? And so by running through a couple of these scenarios, you could say, well, if I left, we'd only have three months. Even if I'm optimistic, that's probably not going to work. So what this does is allow you to have an idea and be really realistic and get on the same page with your spouse to say, let's run through different scenarios and then see when is the right time to leave. And in the ideal scenario, you've replaced your income and then you leave your job. But most people don't wait to that point. So what you want to see is you validated your business, whether that's real estate or whatever else. And that means people are paying you money and you've got some consistent money coming in. And then you see the path forward to where if you leave your job, you know how you're gonna be able to use the extra time, the extra resources to close that gap and move beyond it. So that's really the point most people wanna look at when they're gonna leave their job. Unfortunately, a lot of people just leave haphazardly. And then when they don't have a plan and they don't have some of these routines in place, they end up back in the job, you know, three months, six months down the road. Now they have. Now they're demoralized. Now they've burned through their savings. And it's a lot more challenging to then try to go back and find a job and do it again than it is to just stick it out or even switch jobs in the meantime so that you can build the business and build these income streams.

That's such smart advice, smart counsel, I should say, because you are right about that. You have to be serious about that. Not waiting and just quitting because you get pissed off, because you don't want to do it. But if you've got those things in place, building that Runway, as you say, the longer the Runway, the more likelihood of success versus what's the small business success rate in America? 95% in the first year or something like that. It's ridiculous.

Yeah, it's tough.

It's tough out there. But that's the thing is most people have an idea, they don't have a plan. And you are really starting with the end in mind. You have to have a good plan, a good blueprint for success on where you're going. And I always say, hey, don't be afraid to have to stop for a little while. Especially if you're working to put your goal on hold for a little bit because you've got to make money so that you have success in the long run. Extending your employment for three months or four months for you to be able to make that big leap is such more valuable. And honestly, if it's, you know, if it's just you and me, it's a different story than if you've got kids or a spouse. That's a whole different thing when you start messing with the nest, right?

Absolutely. And, you know, the big thing is, like, I always tell people I'M like, just because you hate your job doesn't automatically mean you should be an entrepreneur or a real estate investor or any of that. If you hate your job, switch into a job that you enjoy. And there's a lot of ways you can be very intentional. So you can move into a job that maybe even is less pay, but you're picking up skills that are going to help you with your business or with your real estate. For example, I was a software developer in the company. I then became a project manager and started working with teams and all this stuff. And when I left that job, I could have gone out on my own, but it wasn't the right time, especially with a family. So what I did was I actually started becoming a business consultant. And so it was tough. I traveled for a couple of years. My kids were young. But that gave me so many skills to. When I did finally leave, one, we had more money. Two, we had more time to build our businesses. And three, that company trained me. I got to see how an entrepreneurial business worked. I got to see how consulting contracts work. And now when I left and started doing that on my own, I had so many more skills than I did years before. So a lot of people don't realize that, yeah, you might not want to be in a job forever, but there's a lot of benefit you can get from having the right job and having the stability of consistent income while you're building your business.

It's such great counsel. You're giving great nuggets out there for everybody to listen in. Let's face it, we all have stubbed our toes and done a variety of things. You mentioned about MLMs. I'm sure you drew a few circles and some white boards trying to build that entrepreneurial spirit, huh? Tomorrow.

Oh, yeah.

I'm gonna be a double Diamond Eagle in six months.

Yeah, you know, it was. The good thing about the MLMs was I went to a couple of meetings, and I knew right away that that wasn't my vibe and how I was gonna do it. And that's actually a really important thing, too. Like, when we talk to people and we're having them figure out where they want to go and what their ideal life looks like. One of the things we really focus on is your core values. And because what ends up happening to a lot of us is that we get overwhelmed and there's so much going on, and we get this, like, decision fatigue where we've got to make all these decisions, and it can burn us out, especially as entrepreneurs. And when we have families and all of that. So knowing your core values, like, it takes a little bit of time to figure out, but what those basically become is a filter for any of your decisions. So when you know where you want to go, that's a filter, because if something isn't aligned to where you want to go, you, you immediately know you're not going to do it. Your core values act the same way. And when I was working with the MLMs, or not even working with them, like testing them out, I knew right away that this wasn't how I wanted to be able to get us to where we want to go. And so like, for example, our number one core value is do the right thing. So whenever we come to a decision point, we just step back and say, what is the right thing in this scenario? And we're going to go ahead and do that. Sometimes that, you know, isn't what I would naturally do. Like, let's say we screwed up and a tenant had an issue and it was really our fault. We'll, we'll do the right thing. We'll credit them, we'll take care of them. It might even be a loss to us, but it aligns to where we need to be. So when people are looking for those opportunities and trying to make decisions for themselves, understanding your core values and what's important to you will guide you in a lot of those decisions.

That's good stuff there. Now I have to thank the mlms for helping me to ignite some of the entrepreneurial spirit I've already had. But it was nice. Oh, they were feeding. You have the self motivation or the motivational stuff. If it wasn't for an mlm, I wouldn't have read Rich Dad, Poor dad or Thinking grow Rich initially. And so that kind of helps you build the mindset of things. So I'm sure you've got a bit. Besides core values, you also probably have a big chunk of helping work with people's mindset along the way, correct?

Absolutely. Well, like you said, you know, like, I hated reading growing up. Like, I did everything I could to avoid it. And when I set that goal to retire, I had a friend give me a book called the Automatic Millionaire by David Bach. And I loved the concept. The thing I didn't like was I was like, I don't want to wait 45 years. I understand compound interest, but how do I compress it? And then it was through that and doing some other research that I found Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Since then, I've read thousands of books and the reason that I do that and the reason I recommend them to other people is because we've all got to get that desire and that motivation. And a lot of it is shifts because we grow up and depending on who our parents were, what life we had, what school we went to, we've got certain views. And in order to get to where we want to go, oftentimes we have to let go of some of those views or some of the stories we tell ourselves. And I think the reason so many people reference Rich Dad, Poor dad is because it is one of those books that just changes your perspective. You're like, oh, my house isn't my biggest asset. It's actually a liability because it takes money out of my pocket. And that shift of saying, okay, I want to look at things, do they give me money or do they take money away? And so I think for a lot of people, it's finding whatever that means is for you, if it's books, if it's a podcast, if it's going to events, whatever that is, to get you into the right mindset, to get you inspired, and to get you around like minded people, we all need that ongoing support.

Mm. That's the truth. Entrepreneurship is not. It's sometimes a very lonely road when you're out there dealing with things like that. So you've gotta have that mind shift, you've gotta have that mentality, you gotta have thick skin where others would kind of go crying back to their mama. You know what I mean? Go screaming back to their mama. Now, what's the best way? I mean, what's the best way for people to get in contact with. But before I Remy, we go to that, you guys have also have the lifestyle Builders podcast, correct?

Yeah. So basically, as we were working with people, we started having a lot more people reach out to us. And what I found was that we can't respond to everybody. And we're seeing a lot of the same questions come up. And so we actually started with the podcast and it's Ariana and I. And then periodically we'll bring on guests or we'll have certain themes, but it's just us talking about and answering the questions that we see a lot of other lifestyle builders have. You know, and sometimes they're business questions, sometimes they're personal ones. Like, we have our daughter home for the summer. So like, we just shared an old episode we did. Like, how do you work from home with kids? Just some of this stuff that really comes up. And so that's been amazing. It's open to a lot of doors for us and it's also allowed us to get that message out to a lot of people. And then what's been cool is that then the book, we were able to take a lot of the same topics but actually logically organize them in a way. Because if you listen to podcasts, it might be the business one day, life another day. But the book was really cool because at a very low cost, people can now logically go through the advice and the stuff that we do in our coaching programs.

Yeah, I love the banter back and forth between you and Ariana. It's, it's, it's. She gotta love, gotta love what she gives back on everything, man.

Yeah, well, you know, so we get that feedback all the time and people like, actually a lot of our followers have started doing this like team Tom, Team Ariana. Because we almost always have the complete opposite like views on things. So it's like, oh, do you actually like, if you work from home, do you get dressed to go to work or do you go in your sweatpants? So are you team Tom or are you team Arianna? And what was cool when we wrote the book? Cause we were trying to figure out how do we write this together because we're so different. And so what's cool is at the beginning of every section we actually tell a story that was pivotal in our journey. And I first tell it from my perspective and then Ariana tells it from her perspective. So you're like, are they even talking about the same thing? Because oh my gosh.

Well, that's the beauty of it. That's the beauty of having two people that are close to get in on the same path. You do see things through different shades of, you know, shades of glasses I should say, depending on what's going on there. But as long as you come to the final conclusion and the final point in destination, that's what the most important thing is. You do have curbs. It's not a straight road. And that's the beauty about having a close knit group like you and Ariana are couple, I should say not group to making things happen. So what's the best way for people to go out and grab a copy of the book? Because it's not quite available yet, but you can pre order on Amazon. Correct?

Correct. Yep. So we've got everything we're doing@tomandariana.com but if people want to grab the book and see what's going on there, they can go to lifestylebuildersbook.com awesome.

Lifestylebuildersbook.com or Tom and Arianna.com out there. Well, Tom, it has been a pleasure having you on the note closer show. You dropped a lot of great nuggets for our note nation out there all across the country because there's so many people that are tired of the 9 to 5 or the 40, 40, 40 plan. You know, we've got such a huge entrepreneurial spirit still in the United States and it's actually gotten a lot more flexible people being able to go out and accomplish their dreams. I take it that, hey, no matter what you want to do, you can go accomplish it if you just put your mind to it and start planning things out on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly basis like you guys talk about in lifestyle builders.

Absolutely. And I mean, you know, for anyone listening, there is more opportunity than ever now and that's great because if you want to do something, there's so many resources to help you do it. I'll tell you though, on the flip side, part of that means that everybody's going to try it and the barrier to entry is so low. So for you to succeed and for you to have that longevity, part of it is you really committing to it and committing not just to the end result of what you want to achieve, but commit to the daily practices that will get you there and you'll find a lot of people will get started and they'll, you know, they'll, they'll be gone, you know, three months, six months, a year down the road. If you truly want to succeed, there's more opportunity than ever. But you got to commit to doing the core things every day, every week. Even when it's fun, even when it's not fun.

That's the truth. It's the day in, day out grind if you could and plan to delegate it on the front end if you, if you can too. Right, Tom?

Absolutely.

Well, hey Tom, thank you so much for joining us on the no closure. Sure. You dropped a ton of knowledge bombs. Like I said. Like you said. Everybody out there go check out the book. Lifestylebuilderbook.com or Tom and Ariana.com go Team Tom.

Here we go. I need more fans. To be honest. Ariana is killing me.

Well, give her a big, big high five for us. Big fans of what you guys are doing. Looking forward to having the book. Get the book received. And this is also going to be one of the books going out and our WCN membership and our swag bags for our WCN families we're excited about to get that as well. So thanks for that.

Thanks so much for having me on and thanks for everything you're doing.

Hey man, glad to have you. Looking forward to spend some more time with you here before too long. All right.

Absolutely.

We'll see at the top. All right everybody that's gonna wrap it up for this episode. Like I said, go check out the book. Pre order the book on Tomandaryana.com or Lifestylebuilderbook.com you will not be disappointed. They have a great way of writing like he says, sharing a story. What better way to make a point than than storytelling. Nobody wants a dry book and Tom and Arianna are far from dry when it comes to sharing their knowledge, their counsel, their ups and downs and help you get over those potholes and hurdles that life likes to throw our way. So go make something happen everybody and we'll see you all at the top. Bye.

Sam.