EP 516 – Start Planning For Your Business With Aaron Young

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This is the no Closer show where you get the latest developments in distressed note investing and learn the secrets of how you can control millions of dollars worth of property for pennies on the dollar. Get educated and entertained by someone who has closed thousands of deals and lives to support you in achieving the same. Now here's your host, CEO of We Close notes, Scott Carson.

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everybody. Welcome to this episode of the Note Closer Show. As always, Scott Carson. Excited to be here with you today. As always, we have our wonderful brother from another mother, Aaron Young, joining us here on our regular monthly episode of the no Closer Show. We have a big shout out to Lawfulness Associates for being one of our core sponsors for the event for our podcast. So yes, little drum roll there. Yay. Thank you as always. We just wrapped up our September virtual note buying workshop this weekend. Had a great turnout there with everybody, lots of great questions, lots of people taking action. And of course, we had Aaron speak on it, talking about the corp veil protection and kind of what Laughlin Associates does to really help entrepreneurs out there with their businesses, their llc. So if you're listening to the podcast for the first time or listening to it on one of our radio station networks, highly encourage you, drop me an email and I'll be glad to send you the replay of Aaron's special breakout session that he did. Aaron, why don't you take a second here to share what in a couple minutes, kind of roughly what Laughlin Associates does for online or on air listeners out there across the country.

Yeah. Well, hey, it's good to be here as always with you, what Laughlin does. So we're coming up on 49 years in business. We're almost at our 49th birthday, and we've helped over 200,000 business owners form hundreds of thousands of companies. And the main thing that we do is we help people no matter where they are, if they're at the beginning, they're jumping off point, they want to start a business, they're growing, they're seasoned, they want to sell. We've got tools and strategies and education for people in any of those situations. And of course, we're one of the largest incorporators in the United States. And then one of the things that we do, and of course that's what my talk was about at your program over the weekend, was about our corporate veil protection service, which basically is this. All corporations, all limited liability companies are required by law to keep what's called board formalities, your board of directors formalities. And yet the vast majority of businesses in the United States have one owner, one director, often one employee. And if you're a real estate investor, odds are it's kind of you on your own. So when you're by yourself, the idea of holding a board meeting seems a little silly. Like why would I hold a meeting by myself with me and write down notes and keep minutes and pass resolutions. If I'm the only owner of a company, why would I have to issue share certificates? Don't I own all of them? And so what we talked about in your event and what we do for tens of thousands of companies is we provide that board secretary sort of position where we're gathering the information from the client, putting together the minutes, the resolutions, managing the stock ledger and so on, so that even those one owner companies, maybe you're a lot bigger than that, but you're moving quick and you don't know much about those formal things that are supposed to be done. We do it for you. We do it for, like I say, tens of thousands of companies. It's a great system. Our clients love the program because it keeps them defending themselves against lawsuits. It protects them in an audit. It helps them if they want to go out and get funding. It helps them if they want to go get a government contract. Or even worst case scenario, you must have these things in place even if you want to go bankrupt. So that's a worst case. But the point is you must act like a real corporation, a real llc, or if you're ever challenged, you won't get the benefits, the legal benefits or the tax benefits. So that's kind of it in three minutes.

That's a lot for three minutes.

We can go deep, baby. We could go deep on all of it. The main thing is, is that it's got to be done. Most people don't know how to do it or don't want to do it. They didn't get in business to do lots of little nitpicky paperwork stuff. And if for a few dollars a month you can get it done, less than 100 bucks a month. As a matter of fact, once you've been with us for a year, less than 50 bucks a month. And it's unlimited documents, you don't have to know anything. You just have to be willing to get on the phone with us for five or 10 minutes and we do it. And it's why almost 90% of the clients that use the service renew it because it's required by law. It's not just like a nice idea. It's required by law. We take all the pressure off. You can stay focused on making money. And we're less expensive than probably a work's worth of trips to the coffee shop.

That is the truth, well worth it. We have Debbie that calls us all the time here, get on the phone, fill out the forms, send the forms in. She sends back the forms and I just put them right straight into my leather bound document binder over here on the shelf there to stay compliant with everything, which is great. So one of the things that as we're getting into, we were talking a few minutes before we got rocking, rolling because it's now September, depending on when you're listening to this, either the beginning or the end September. And so basically we're entering very soon the fourth quarter of the year. It's hard to believe 2018 flew by, but 2020 is just around the corner. I call it the hindsight year. Hindsight is always 2020, right? And you guys have a workshop coming up in November. But the biggest thing I think we were talking about beforehand is us as entrepreneurs, business owners, we're always busy like you talked about. We're in the business of doing business, not doing paperwork. But we really need to start planning our next year, our next move, and start putting those things in place. Building that list of big rocks, as I like to say, or action items that maybe we didn't get accomplished this year, but we need it. We really want to see those things happen next year or a bigger year take place. We really need to start planning now. Right, Aaron?

Yeah, 100%, I agree with you. It's no matter what year we're in, we always want to be getting ready for the next year, fully embracing what we're doing. But making plans, if we're just flying by the seat of our pants every day we get up probably there are a lot of people that are listening who do that and they probably wonder why they're not getting the success that they were hoping for. People that have a lot of success are always looking. They're working right now, but they're always looking six months, 12 months, two years, three years ahead. I woke up this morning, I was telling you about this. So Michelle and I, we go out in the morning and drink our coffee out on the patio. And we live on a farm and we look out at the horses and the goats and the barns and the fields and it is beautiful and we love it. We love it. But we went out this morning and we both had these big blankets around us because it was about 52 degrees and raining. So I thought, wow, where did summer go? Where did the summer go? We had this beautiful summer, and then somebody flipped a switch. This weekend it's been full on fall, pouring rain, leaves falling, cold mist on the fields. And I'm like, man, where does the time go? I remember as a kid thinking, looking forward now I'm older than you, I'm 55. I remember looking forward and thinking, man, the year 2000, I'm going to be 36 years old. Like I was a teenager going way out there in the year 2000. We're two decades past that now. We've just. I remember Getting ready for Y2K and 20 years or 19 years has flown by, and I'm telling you guys, we get busy, and we get so busy doing that, we stop planning. And when we stop planning, we leave ourselves vulnerable to the winds of change that are happening just like that quick. It was fall in the Northwest. I'll tell you what, all of a sudden, an opportunity, Boom. An opportunity comes up. Are you ready to take money? Boom. A lawsuit comes up. Are you ready to defend yourself? Boom. It's time to do your corporate taxes. Have you got your stuff ready? Can you actually defend all the things that you want to claim as a deduction? Or boom, Somebody sends you an audit notice and now it's too late to get ready. Right. Time goes by and we put off things that are out of our comfort zone. We put them off, we delay, we delay, delay. I don't care what it is. If you're trying to get into the note business and you're just getting started and you haven't done your first deal yet, and you keep going to the events and reading the books and showing up for things like this, but you haven't pulled the trigger. One year will go by, another year will go by and you'll say, oh, yeah, I'm going to invest in notes and you'll miss the opportunity. Scott, were there great opportunities five or six years ago that do not exist today?

That's correct. Yeah, definitely. So that's my biggest thing, is I should have bought more. I should have taken action and bought more in the past when it was better price. There's still opportunities, but.

Yeah, but are there opportunities coming up two or three years from now? People right now can't even imagine how good the opportunities are going to be. We're going to go into kids, we're going into another recession. That's going to happen. It always happens. People go, don't be negative. Don't be a bummer. We've had an unprecedented boom. We've gone longer than we should have. It's like the tectonic plates off the Pacific Coast. They're on top of each other. There's going to be an earthquake. There will be one. I'm not being gloom and doom. It's going to happen. So the question is, are you prepared? Are you unprepared if we know that someday, Scott, you live in Texas, you guys could get a tornado. If you get down by Houston or further south, you could have a hurricane. It's not that it happens every day, but you've got to get ready because these things do happen. And so now we're getting to the end of the year. Have you gotten all the deductions figured out that you could get for this year? Have you spent money on things that you should be doing now because of the current tax climate that maybe will change when we get a new president? If Trump doesn't get reelected, will whomever gets reelected come in and change everything that's been done? Who cares if you like Trump or don't like Trump? There's a certain environment now and it will change. We used to have a 90% tax bracket in the old days, right? Things change. I'm on a soapbox. My point is, we're coming to the end of 2019. We have three and a half months. Are we just figuring out, do we have any money for Christmas presents? I should start buying now. Are you guys figuring out okay if I think, when do I think we're at the top of the market? Should I be getting out and getting into cash right now, or is there another year of growth? I should buy now because I'm going to end up with a more valuable asset a year from now. I don't know, whatever your belief system is, are you taking action or are you sitting on the sidelines and just watching the show? You're watching the parade, but you're not in the parade.

As I'm not talking to investors, you're talking to entrepreneurs all across the country. Investors, people that want to do something. They have all the intention and goodwill of doing something, but they never take the time to either a carve it out of their calendar and schedule it, to step away from everything. Because we all know that there are distractions. We all know that we're all capable of drifting. If you've ever read Outwitting the Devil by Sharon Leichter, Napoleon Hill, I saw you just had an interview with Sharon.

On your podcast on My pack. She's so great. But the idea of drifting. Keep going with your thought. But drifting is the bane of anyone's hoped for success. Being a drifter, which is almost everybody, they're the ones that just go, what happened?

What happened Exactly. And we're all guilty of this. Everybody in the world is guilty of drifting. It's a matter of a. If you recognizing it and deciding to do something different. Like, we had the workshop this weekend. A lot of people were excited about it. Well, it was also the kickoff weekend of the NFL, and people were like, oh, I can't make it because I got to watch my big game. Like, okay, that's fine. Watch the big game. But that tells me exactly where your priorities are at. You know what's going to have more impact on your bottom line on your 2019 through 2020? The fact that the Dolphins got blown out. The Cowboys scored 35 points, and I'm glad they won. But I was in the office here yesterday working even afterwards to make sure that the students that were part of it have the replays to have the things that they get going. I'm also filling out forms for Debbie at lawfulness, such as make sure she's got the things to do so I can finish up my taxes that we put an extension on actually, too. So that's the thing is you just.

Got carved time, you know, Scott, I love what you just said. There's nothing wrong with watching a football game or a basketball game or. I mean, as a matter of fact, I bet half the sporting events I've ever attended were with you. But you sit there and watch that game and you give three or four hours to an NFL game, right? Plus going and buying your refreshments and getting ready and maybe having somebody over making seven layer dips, whatever you're doing to get ready for the big kickoff of the big season, right? And then you watch a bunch of people who are making millions of dollars a year because they're not sitting around watching I Love Lucy. They're working their butt off, practicing getting in the best physical shape, really knowing the plays, figuring out how to assimilate into a team, and then executing on teamwork so that they make millions of dollars. So you're sitting there and you're like, hooray, Isn't it great that they're making millions of dollars while I sit on my ass? And I mean, it's the great irony. It's the great irony of watching being fixated. And I'm telling you, most of the people there's nothing wrong with watching the game, but if you're fixated on it, you're probably a drifter. You're watching the parade go by instead of being in the parade. And I say to people all the time, even when they're going through a down cycle, I say, but isn't it cool that you're actually in the game and not just watching and wondering why you don't get any great opportunities? Get in the game, you're going to lose some games, you're going to miss some field goals, you're going to miss some opportunities, but you're at least going to get in the game. And maybe you're going to get the decent paycheck or maybe you're going to get the ring. Get in the freaking game. Whenever I see myself, I'll just give you an example. I don't want to say I was drifting. I intentionally took July and August off. I pretty much didn't do any work and I just spent a lot of money and a lot of time indulging myself and my family. And we went to the beach house for an extended trip and we went on some other trips. I went on a week long horseback riding trip because you guys, if you don't know, I raise horses. And then I got to the beginning of this month, September, and I came back into the office and I thought, well, revenue's way down right now. Now, don't feel bad for me because I have a lot of revenue streams, but on the unshackled owner side, that part of my business, this office, not the Laughlin office, not the other businesses, this office, revenue is down and I have expenses here. And I thought, well, this is what happens when business is completely dependent on me to generate the revenue. I have other team members. But in this company, if I don't show up, money stops. For how many people listening if they don't show up, does money stop? Right?

Yep, that's correct.

If you don't show up, money stops. And so I'm having to do what everybody else has to do right now is go, oh, it's time to start to prime the pump again, get the well flowing again. When we do that, money shows up. But I'm just telling you, for almost all the business owners in the United States, they are directly tied to the revenues of their company. I'm blessed because I'm able to make a huge income from other businesses that I built that now operate without me. But most people have one business that's generating their revenue. If you're listening to the show now. And that's you. What are you doing to get out of your easy chair and make money or get prepared to get all the tax deductions or get prepared to take advantage of changes that are coming in the economy next year? What are you doing? The resources are here for all of us. Scott's a great resource. I'm a great resource. Truthfully, you mentioned early the Magnify youy Wealth summit that we do in San Diego. That's first full week of November 7th, 8th and 9th. And there we will have the experts talking about what's coming up. What should you be getting prepared for, what's changing and get out ahead of the game, ride the front of the wave, get rich. Instead of going, oh, everybody's buying foreclosures. That's been going on for 10 years. Oh well maybe I should try it. The people that were buying in late, 8, 9, 10, 11, they're the ones that got rich. Now people are making a living at it, but we're preparing for the next wave. There's another big wave coming, folks. Scott probably talks about this all the time. I think whether you're buying real estate, buying intellectual property, buying companies, there's going to be a buyer's opportunity. When everybody else is tragically suffering because they didn't pay attention. Who are you going to be? Are you going to be the one selling at fire sale prices or buying at deep discounts? But you've got to start planning.

Yeah, you start planning. I mean that's the thing. If people are jumping in right now, there's opportunities and you have to get yourself. That's why I tell people right now, now's a great time to jump in so that you set yourself up.

You get learn, learn, learn what to.

Do, learn to earn. So that by the fourth quarter here, November, December, as the banks start to dump their inventory, they start to get rid of the non performing stuff. You're available and ready and rock and roll, you got your marketing plan. But most people, when we had our Note Camp convention last month, I sent a survey out and I asked the attendees to fill out a survey. And we get about 30, 40% of those that attend to fill out a survey. And I asked them when was the last time that you sent an email out to your database or how often do you send out to your database? Once a week, twice a month, once a month or never. And over half have never sent an email out to the database to market and the same thing, okay, how many times have you ever sent an Email blast out to banks and asset managers or picked up the phone and called at least 50 minute gaming time, same thing. Over half have never done that. Which tells you and tells me that a lot of people like to get up and watch the parade.

Oh yeah.

And wave at those in the parade. Wave at those that a spent the weekends working out or spent the days getting up early, eating right. Spending the days making the phone calls and getting the no's, the rejections, the figuring out the email blast or calling the asset managers to be transferred a million times. And that was one of the things that I did this last week in our virtual workshop on Friday. Friday's never really a good day to call bank, but I still did it on in front of people called asset managers. One I got a voicemail, one they said no and one I talked to the guy, he's like, yeah, because I hadn't thought about that in a while, but I'll send me an email and I'll shoot you over what we got available. Three calls, three phone calls, and one was a yes.

See, it's not really that hard. What's hard is doing what's unfamiliar, right? So if you're unfamiliar with it or if you think, well, what your fear is, what if somebody actually answers the phone, what will I say to them? Well, it's okay to have a bunch of false starts while you learn. And if you pay attention to a mentor like Scott for that industry, you'll be able to hear little words, you start to have a little bit of an understanding so that when they say, well, what are you looking for? You can say, well, I'm looking for this. Or what do you do? Well, I do this and I tell you there's nothing more emboldening than having a yes. You get a yes, you go, well, geez, let's call some more. If you got three no's, your people watching would probably go, well, there it is. It's impossible not knowing that maybe on the fourth call would have been the perfect one or the 10.

Yeah. When I first started doing the phone calls, asset managers back 10 years ago, I got 53 no's before I got my first yes. I made 53 phone calls and said, no, we don't have anything. No, no, no. And then that yes turned into a lady out of Houston who I remember, her name is Kim. She was a company called Aegis Mortgage. She was not having a good day because it was her and the president of the company were the last two employees at this bank. And she was tasked with selling this last portfolio of Houston notes.

Wow.

It was a $5 million purchase price. We made five points on it. I ended up having to split those five points with four other people because it took four people for us to get together. But I still made 50 grand on that 54th. No.

And, you know, there are people who work all year long for 50 grand or less.

Yes.

And then there's some people who feel like they're well, employed at 75,000 or $100,000. Very few people make $100,000, and yet we know that one deal can make $100,000. My very first fix and flip was because we were able to divide up two other lots off the main lot. It was a house on three acres. So we sold the house on one acre and two other lots when the market was good. And I made, like, $450,000 on that deal. And I remember distinctly thinking, where has this been all my life? How did I not know this was possible? And it was a huge success. It was one of the biggest single. Well, it was three transactions, but I made $450,000. And, Scott, that was after expenses.

That's pretty good. That's okay.

That was not bad. And it took me maybe to do the whole thing, Maybe six months of not full time, but it took time to do it. Well, who doesn't want to make a half million dollars or that would come out to $900,000 a year. Who doesn't want to make that kind of money? It's not that I'm so brilliant or that I had magic wands or something. Somebody told me about this house. I went over and talked to the owner. I made a deal with the owner. She was thrilled. Then I found out I could divide it. I thought it was a good deal, just a house on three acres. Then I found out it could be. I got with the county all of a sudden. It got better and better. But somebody said something. I took action. I took some more action, Found out there was more opportunity than I realized, and I made a bunch of money. And I don't want to say it was dumbbell easy, but it's way, way easier to make money or make progress on anything in your life if you actually do something instead of just watching, picking up the calls and making 52. Was it 52 or three?

You said 53 no's before.

I got 53 no's, and 54 was $50,000. You can make 53 calls in less than a day. So if you could work for one day of prospecting to get $50,000. Is that worth it? In case anybody's stammering on this, the answer is, yes, it's worth it.

Hang on a second. Hang on.

Give me a Y. Give me an E. Give me X. One of my favorite quotes from Henry Ford is, men spend so much time working, there's no time left to make money. And it's from the ninth wealthiest person to walk the planet ever. And we get so bogged down in everything that's hard, we quit looking around for the opportunities. It's the end of the year. What opportunities have we missed? What opportunities are still available for us? What new things can we learn still in 2019 to take in? Or will 2020 be the hindsight year? We look back and go, shoot, what should I have done?

And that's the thing I think people have to look at. It's now is the time to be looking back at what you haven't accomplished this year in 2019, and start taking the action that you haven't done. Start doing the little things now. Start putting those habits into place so that they are a habit come the first year. That way you're not sitting here a year from doing the same thing and stammering and wishing and aw, shucks, I wish it had done that. Because honestly, like you said, taking action is. That was easy. You know what I mean? It's the easiest thing to start taking action because you just got to do it and it gets easier and easier and easier and everybody thinks that we're going to. You're going to roll out of bed and press suit and be the perfect at whatever you're doing. And that's not the case. You screw up. I was talking this weekend about embracing the suck I only get at calling banks because I've made and been told to know and hung up on thousands of times more than most people ever thought about it.

I have two things have come to mind. While you were just talking, that last thing you said was, what's the quote? The master's failed more times than the student has ever tried. And the other thought I had, as you were talking about a minute ago, you said, I look back and I wish I would have bought more back then. Or we talk about the hindsight year and that Crosby Stills Nash song came to mind. And the lyric is, I'm older now. I have more than what I wanted. But I wish that I had started long before I did. And it's really true. We get good at something and we go, well, that wasn't that hard. Right, like your little thing right there. Well, that was easy. Once we do it, we go, well, that wasn't that hard. Then we go, why did I wait? And we're not getting any younger folks and we don't know how long we have. And so what is the risk of trying? What's the big failure, this big embarrassment that's keeping you away from your dream, that's keeping you away from the wealth that it would take to put you and your family on a cruise ship and go for a week long cruise or go tour Europe or go whatever it is that you would be. You go, man, I wish, I wish, I wish. But I can't do it today because it's the big game. I'm going to watch somebody else fulfilling their dream. Well, I sit on my butt and watch.

And that's why I think we love watching. I think that's why people love sport and heroes and things like that. I'm a big fan of baseball. I love baseball. And baseball is one of the few sports that doesn't penalize you to taking action on the best of your team. Whether it's a sacrifice bunt or a.

Sacrifice fly, they don't have a.300 batting average. You're good, which means 70% of the time you're failing. Yes, you're not getting on base, right? But if you're on three out of 10 times, you're in the hall of Fame, you're good. Yeah, you're successful, you're a successful single.

I mean, that's the thing. You look at Tony Gwynn, who's one of my favorite players, number 19, played for the Padres, his own team, never hit a lot of home runs, but he always led. And you look at him, he does not look like an athlete with his stomach hanging over. He hit a lot of singles, one of the best contact hitters out there. But his aspect was that he hit a lot of singles. He didn't try to go hit it out of the park and get upset. I mean, you look at like Crash Davis or Chris Davis here with the Orioles, who earlier in the year went over 44 in a row, striking out all the time without a hit and stuff like that. And he's one of the highest paid players in the Orioles. Started a world here, but he's still in the major leagues. He's still swinging, he's still taking his cuts. And that's what happens is that we often as entrepreneurs get up there and we get afraid to take our cuts. We get afraid to do the things that we need to do. We're like, well, I'll get to. I'm scared to. Well, no, just get in there. It's not as difficult. You got to take the batting practice. There's your peers, your mentors are here to help you take the swings. As I was talking with people on the workshop this week, like, listen, get out and make some offers. Don't sit here taking a three day class is great or a four day workshop is great. But if you really want to make the instructor or the person teaching the class happy, actually implement the things that you do. Implement the things that you need to do. And one of the things that we wrap up with on the workshop is we always. I'm a big rocks kind of guy. I hate to do lists because a lot of times we lie to ourselves to do lists by checking off all these little things that can be done at any time and avoiding the big things. But we sat down with big rocks. Like after an event, everybody gets all jazzed to come out of an event. I'm going to go do this. And then life gets in the way and slaps us around. Start making that big rocks list. That big rocks list is you need to get your books in order. Get your books in order. If that big rocks list is you need to have the corporate bail protection to have. So you're incapable of holding yourself accountable to getting the documents together. Hire a Loughlin.

Everyone needs that.

Start taking the actions to separate yourself. I mean, let's face it, most people, they're in a job, they've got their specific requirements that they do on a daily basis. That's not really an entrepreneurship aspect of it. If you're gonna be an entrepreneurship, you'd be raising capital, you'll be marketing. You've gotta do those things in your side hustle. And as we joke about Gary Vaynerchuk saying that everybody has a side hustle from 7pm to 2am what are you doing with those times? If it is sitting in front of the TV and watching Monday Night Football tonight. Oh, and guess what? You've got two or three games that are back to back to back today if you wanted to to really waste your time. Okay.

Is that right?

Yeah. At least two Monday Night Football games back to back to back. But what's that going to help you in your income? What's that going to help you in the long term? Unless you're betting on the games? Not much. Not much at all. Right, Aaron?

I'm thinking about fall again. I keep coming back to this because if you could see what it looks like out here, it looks like fall is here. I know it's 100 degrees where you are, but where I am, it's 58 degrees. There's a poem, and I'm not going to recite the poem, but you mentioned it during the workshop the other day. When the frost is on the pumpkin and the fodder's in the shock. And I was thinking about how the poem is about fall and it's all about this guy who's a farmer, just a small farmer, right? But he talks about when the frost is on the pumpkin. So we know there's pumpkins in the field and the fodder, which is the cut up haylage that they make for it to feed the animals. And he talks about the straw stack in the meadow and you got the horses now put away in their stalls and you're talking about all these things around the farm. As a guy who lives on a farm, I can't help but think every one of those having the pumpkins there to reflect on, to see them, means you planted pumpkins and you planted other crops. Having the hay that's put up for the winter means you cultivated, you fertilized, you let it grow, you cut it, you swathed it, you bailed it, right? This is all work that leads to the moment of repose where you can sit back and look at it and go, oh, look at how fabulous it is. But it all comes from work. It comes from work that takes time. You can't have hay immediately. You have to plant the field and you have to let it grow for months. When the window opens up where it's perfect to cut it and let it dry for three days before you bail it, and you're not going to get it wet during that time, you have to wait for the moment and then do it now as the opportunity arises, everything that we look back on and go, wow, it must be nice for that person. Must be nice to live in that house, must be nice to drive that car, must be nice to have that kind of money all came. It must be nice to get paid $8 million to run the football up and down the field sometimes, right? The reason is because the work got put in. Whether it's the work of commission, the work of the things we did, or the omission, the things we didn't do. We're going to at some point have to reconcile the work that we did and what happened from it, or the opportunities that we just didn't do that we Missed out on my grandpa, my grandfather, who worked his butt off standing at a lathe his whole life, first at a machine shop and later at a wood lathe where he made trim. I mean, he was. He should have gone to the Second World War, but they froze him in his job so he could build wood components for the ships that the Navy was ordering. So instead of going to fight, he fought domestically by building naval ships. Okay, Southern California. Montebello, California. I can't tell you how many times my grandfather said, I could have bought land in Anaheim. It was nothing but orange groves. Land was cheap. I'd have been rich now if I just bought. But then they built Disneyland. And then all these things happened and I missed it. And I'm like, well, okay, but you didn't buy land. You didn't even buy it once Disneyland started. You didn't go out a mile from Disneyland and buy land. You didn't do it. You watched, you complained, you bemoaned the fact that you didn't do it. But guess what? You didn't do it. So what good is the tears? What good is the moaning and groaning? You didn't do it. You sat and you watched other people take the risk. How many people that are listening to your show right now are going as soon as. But if. If only. It's never easy, folks. Matter of fact, almost all your heroes that are rich did something that almost nobody else is willing to do, which is lived a harder life, a lower life, financially restricted themselves so that then they could come out and say, I've put 10,000, 30,000, $100,000 together. Now I get to play.

That makes me think of a story. When I was a banker for JPMorgan Chase, back in the day, it was a business bank. And I would go out, one of my clients would say, his name is Mr. Nguyen, and Mr. Nguyen owned the local Chinese restaurant in the food court here in the mall, okay? And him and his wife came here from Asia and traveled over here. He got lucky enough, he started working as a busboy and a dishwasher and saved enough money so he could buy a spot and at least a spot there in the food court, which is a lot cheaper than opening up his own restaurant somewhere out there and a lot less overhead. And get this, him and his wife, they bought this place, they set it up, they would clean up at the end of the day at 9 o', clock, and then they would sleep on the floor in the kitchen of the restaurant because they didn't have a place. They didn't have an apartment.

This was all there. Everything was tied up in this thing. Keep going. I love this story already.

They slept on grass mats. They did that for eight years. And then they came about time. They put enough a way to do a either buy a house or an opportunity came up to buy another restaurant or another take over another restaurant in a different mall. They decided, we'll wait. So they bought the other restaurant, and for another three to four years they slept on the floor in the kitchen again while they ran both restaurants. And eventually that led. They bought a house, but they had enough income at that point. It didn't affect their cash flow. They bought a third or fourth. Now he owns 20 different restaurants around Austin. Huge house. But they don't realize that for over basically a decade, he slept on the floor in his restaurant to do everything he could do. And that's the type of dedication that you've got to do to get away. We all could do a lot more. We could all do more with less than what we're doing. But the point is, he's successful. Everybody in the community was, oh, you're so successful, successful. And he's like, well, he goes, scott, I had people that made fun of me, had three or we had basically five shirts that I rinsed out, five pair of pants more than that, and underwear and socks, but that we basically recycled out. When people, when my friends and families were off doing other things, they were making fun of me because we stood very diligently to get this done. Now they're in the opposite direction of where they were. They live paycheck to paycheck, hand to mouth, whereas we could do whatever we want to with life. But it's. The fact is that we put that investment in on the front end. It was very, very hard to say no to that first house. It was very hard for me. And my wife decided to put off having a family for a couple of years because we had a bigger picture in mind. We had a bigger goal of what we wanted to accomplish, and we listened to us versus trying to keep up with the Joneses or trying to keep up with everybody else around us that would say any other thing.

It's such a great story. And we hear these stories from. I mentioned Mark Cuban a lot because a lot of people know him, especially there in Texas, right? The mavericks. But he talks about eating packages of ketchup from McDonald's because he couldn't buy food. And your story is a great one. The whole world changed in the mortgage industry. You sold everything you had you and your dog jumped in the truck and off you went for a couple of years just teaching about notes, not having a home, living basically from place to place and putting in the effort. Putting in the effort. You got to go out, see the people. You don't have to live fancy, but you got to get out and you got to do something. And that established you as a leader in this industry. And I don't need to talk about me, but I'll tell you that I've chosen to live low when I didn't have to in order to push the business forward. I've been willing to lose my home in a short sale in order to push the company forward and grow it. And people didn't understand that. And it's like, well, I mean, guys, I love the expression about you can choose to eat the goose that lays golden eggs. If you're super hungry and you think, well, I got to eat, then you can eat the goose. And then just forget about gold eggs. They're gone. Or you can say, I'm going to go eat the pig food. I'm going to live low, but I'm going to make sure the goose lays golden eggs, has a nice dry nest, is safe, is out of the weather, is good, is taken care of, because that's going to take care of me way into the future. And sometimes we have to make big sacrifices in our personal comfort, just like your story, in order to get the big payoff. That's the other quote we've heard a million times. Almost seems trite. Some people will live like nobody else is willing to so that someday they live like nobody else can.

Amen.

And everybody wants their two flat screens, two cars, microwave oven, their home, you know, their comfortable place. They need all that. So they're going to pay for that instead of paying to do something. It's the biggest mistake I see business owners make is when they start to make a little money, they increase their lifestyle, and then they wonder why they can't grow. Well, they just sucked up all the money and then they're still not rich. They think, oh, if I could make 3,000amonth, that would solve my problems. They get up close to there they go, well, if I could make 5,000amonth, that would solve all my problems. If I could make 9,000amonth, that would change everything. They've tripled their income and they're still paycheck to paycheck.

Yeah, that's the truth.

I know we're getting close to the end. It's the end of the year. We can't change what we've done, but we can make a commitment to do something different, to achieve more. We can make a decision to get up off the couch and walk and get our steps in. We can make a commitment to put away the Oreos and eat an apple once in a while, which, believe me, is struggle for me because I like Oreos. You can make a choice to only watch one of the back to back Monday Night Football games and spend a little time looking at investment opportunities. You can make a choice to fix your company so you can take all the deductions that you want, or to take money out of a retirement plan and put it to work. You can make a choice or you can sit back and go, boy, sure would have been cool to get up on the stage. Sure would've been cool to be in the parade. Would've been cool to buy property in Anaheim. Would've been cool. I wish I would've done it. We can always be sad in hindsight of what we didn't do, or we can take action and do something. And even if we're going to get 53 no's in a row, know that 54 means $50,000. It's just a matter of choice, folks. And I hope I don't sound like I'm preaching. I'm just saying I'm 55 years old. I have more years behind me than in front of me. I've just decided I don't really care about the failures. I'm going to just keep swinging.

Amen.

Anyway, back to you, Scott.

Huh?

Back to you.

Well, but that's a great point there. And I think the biggest thing that we have to talk share is like something we said earlier on is get off the curb and get in the parade, get off the bench, get in the game. You're going to be better off. You're going to take your share of strikeouts, getting dings, whatever. Just get in the game and look at what you want to accomplish. And take the next 90 days. I think we're 106 days till Christmas. So the next 110 days till the end of the year. And make these 110 days. If you worked two hours extra a night, two hours, that's an extra. That's 200 hours. That's basically five weeks of a side job to get ahead of where you want to be. Where would you be five weeks from now? If you really put something into your side hustle, your passion, your project, investing, fixing, flipping, whatever it may be, Think about that two hours a day. Instead of ending the day at five and rushing home, maybe you do go home at five, but then you work from seven to nine o' clock on your dreams and your passions and make.

It happen or just make that first phone call that you're terrified to make.

That's the thing. It gets easier the more you do it. And so I think that's a great place to wrap it up here. Aaron, thank you so much for joining us here on the NutCloud show. As always, thanks for being a part of the virtual no Buying workshop this weekend as well.

Great to be here. Can I just put a plug in? We've talked about a lot of important things. We have this in November 7th, 8th and 9th in San Diego. You've spoken at it many times. I can't remember if you're going to make it at this next time.

I'm not going to be able to make it this time.

Yeah, we have conflicting events, but I love you're part of the family there. I mean, you're regular part of the event. It's called the Magnify youy Wealth Summit. If you want to learn how to make money and there's not a bunch of selling, you're not going to get sold a bunch of programs. This is teaching you hard facts and sitting down with all the experts so we can answer your specific questions and get you pointed in the right direction. You go to magnifyyourwealth.com and check it out and if it's right for you, we'd love to see you there. We're about two thirds sold out right now and it always picks up the last month. So just go check it out if you want to. If you say I'm ready to get off the curb and get in the parade, maybe this is the place to start.

Great place. One of the best ways to get started there to get your year on track and so that everything is put in place so that you can really magnify your wealth in 2020. So great stuff, Aaron. Thanks as always, brother. Have a great day.

Thanks, pals. Talk to you soon, Scott.

All right, guys, this is gonna wrap up for this episode like, check it out. Magnifyyourwealth.com Great event, great mentors, great place to network with other entrepreneurs, raise some capital. And it's in sunny San Diego in November. Who can go wrong there as well? Have a great day, everybody. We'll see you at the top.

Bye.