Mountains To Climb: Overcoming Our Own Challenges With Joe Saul-Sehy

Foreign 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 panties 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 nodes, Scott Carson.

Good morning, good afternoon and good evening, everybody. Hey, welcome to this episode of the Note CL show. As always, Scott Carson. And I'm super jacked up today for this special episode. You know, when podcasting six years ago, I went attended event called PodFest and was figuring out what we were going to do with a note closure show and who can I talk to and shows that I could admire. And the special guest today was one guy, heard him speak on the stage there and I've been following him since then and just absolutely jacked up. Now you may know him. If you're in the financial space, you listen to podcast, you know, only co host the number one financial podcast out there, only has an amazing book out there that's picked by CNN as one of the top 15 financial books last year. Who am I talking about? Well, I'm talking about the amazing, the rock star, the badass, the name of names, the man of mystery from Texarkana out there, my good buddy there, Joe Salsa. So what is going on, man? How you doing today, Joe?

Scott, Stop. Keep going. Stop. Keep going. Stop. Keep going.

All right, let's go. This guy, he works out of his mom's garage.

I don't know if that's a plus, but the rent is low in mom's basement, which is great.

Exactly. Now that's, I mean, it's, it's great to have you on here and looking forward to having you on. Since we talked back in at fincon a few minutes back and things been rock and rolling. How's everything going this driving metropolis, Texarkana this week?

What's funny is the Texarkana, before we moved here, I had to look it up on a map. But I love this town. It just is such a nice place and people that come here, like, I'm a total advocate for Texarkana. I just spoke it at a Rotary club and they wanted me to talk about podcasting and I'm like, nice people are going to become podcasters. If anybody knows anything about Rotary, it's a bunch of retired people that get together and, and chat and they're all kind of community leaders. Instead, I talked about why we moved away from Texarkana and Moved back. SCOTT not only do I live in Texarkana, I moved to Detroit for a couple years and then when we were deciding through a series of events that we were going to move like we were, it was kind of like, where do we want to move to? We decided to come back to this. So I don't like Texarkana. I love Texarkana. What a great come visit us.

Yeah, it is a great city there. I like those non. I mean, I live in Austin, Texas, which is big. But I'm always like, I'm going to get out of the big city, the big, big city metropolis of the craziness here because it's nice. I think people are a little bit more sane in normal cities out there in a lot of cases versus a lot of the craziness that we see happen in major things. But you've lived in some big cities. Detroit you mentioned there, I mean you were worked for Ameriprise and American Express is a financial advisor for years. Can we talk a little about kind of that aspect of his? That's your big passion about finance. But you talk not only on the podcast, a little bit about the changes that took place to get you where you're at today. Can you share a little bit of that backstory?

Joe oh, absolutely, man. The big thing that happened was I was a money disaster. We can talk about that. I was still a disaster when I was teaching other people to be great with money. Then I realized what a double standard that was, that it's amazing that you can tell people all the right things to do but think they don't apply to you. And they totally did apply to me. I got my house in order. Still a very good Advisor. One of 12 advisors in the United States that spoke on behalf of American Express. In the media, I was like a subject matter expert, did TV twice a week. But I had this guy who was, you know, I own my own company, but it was like a franchise. The guy who was the local guy overseeing my franchise wrote this letter. SCOTT that was a like a two weeks notice letter where he writes this letter that goes, you know what, I've been lucky. I've saved a bunch of money. I don't know what I really want to do. I know it's not financial planning. Financial Planning is like 90% right? But I don't want to live my life at 90%. I want to live my life at 100%. And the frustrating thing is I work so many hours in financial planning working with people like me that I don't have time to figure it out, right? So he said, I think I have other mountains to climb. He said, I'm turning 40 at this point. And I go, you know what? I like financial planning. I don't love it. I don't love the one on one meetings. I love the topic of finance. I love teaching it to people. But I really like teaching. I've been lucky. I got my house in order, I built this business, I'm going to sell it and I'm going to go back to school and become a high school teacher and a track coach because I've got other mountains to climb too. Now what's funny was for me it was a metaphor. Other mountains to climb meant doing this thing. I love that. God bless teachers, but you don't get paid very well. I go and sell my business. Well, you know what Chris did? Chris actually went and climbed the highest. It wasn't metaphor at all, dude. He went and climbed Everest twice. He now runs an adventure travel company. And not only did he inspire me, he inspired a bunch of people around me that life is finite. We only have so much time. And the whole, the whole thing about money is in the end it's not really about money. It's about deploying it and having money to deploy it on those things that you really love in life. It's funny, I have this friend in Australia, she has this thing that she calls the s h I t 2 gold ratio. And she's like, you want to get rid of the S and you want to get more gold. And the cool thing was is that with this move I was able to do that. Now what's funny is I didn't become a teacher. I started taking teaching classes. I went back to school, which is weird by the way, being a 40 year old guy. And the woman next to me is wearing a class ring where she just graduated. And I'm like, she's graduated from high school. Whitney was her name. I remember Whitney is half my age. It was so weird. But what they taught me was, was that I wouldn't be able to really teach. I would have to jump through hoops. I didn't want to go. Don't send anything to administration because they're not going to handle the classroom problem the way that you want to. And anyway, during my off time was I kind of bored in school. My friends that I had done PR with are now suddenly hiring me to write their newsletters for their clients. They're writing me to write their scripts for tv. I'm doing what I Love doing. I'm teaching about money and I'm ghostwriting a bunch of stuff for people. I do the mascot and I figure out I'm making as much per hour in shorts and a T shirt and I'm home for my kids who are in high school. Then I'm home every day when they come home and I'm living my best life. Why wouldn't I do that? Well, that became a blog. The blog became the podcast. The podcast then somehow blew up, which, I mean, we could talk about how that happened, which was kind of weird. But anyway, when Kiplinger called us the best podcast in America, that kind of changed it for everything. Best personal finance podcast in America.

Yeah, it's just a little bit when that gets shadow got there for. But the reason I wanted to bring that up too is so many of our listeners out there are working in their 9 to 5. They're working their career, but they like to think about real estate, invest. They want to become full time or they want to switch the course of their ship. They don't like the path that it's on. They're frustrated. They don't necessarily have their house in order to trying to get things done because they've. What I always joke about is so many investors go to event after event, event, trying to figure things out properly. I'm like, well, you gotta figure out what's best for you, not what's best for the guy selling from stage or what your best friend is doing or stuff like that. What's best for you. And. And honestly, sometimes let go of the rail and take some steps to the right place so you can climb your own mountain.

You get frustrated seeing people that jump from diet to diet to diet. That's what I was doing when I was bad with money. I was looking for shortcuts. There were two lies that I told myself. Lie number one was none of this applies to me. I already went over that one. Lie number two was if I just make a little more money, it'll solve the problem I made. This is 1993, my first year as a financial advisor. I made around 85,000 bucks, which today that's like making what, 170,000 with inflation? Just to put that in perspective, I make like 170. You know what's funny? I made 85,000 bucks. It wasn't enough money. If I would've made a hundred thousand, I would have spent 120,000. If I made 120, I would've spent 150. 150, I would've spent 180 because my habits, Scott, were so bad, right? My systems were bad, my habits were bad. And it wasn't about more money. What I needed to do was create a moat between what I brought in and what went out. And once I did that, I had to do that. And then the second thing I had to do is I had to hide money for myself. And when I hid money from myself, it then became available for stuff I really wanted. That was like the game of hiding money from myself. I can't advocate that enough. Like, get your direct deposit moving into places where you can't spend it, and good things happen.

Well, that's one of the big things, is that if it's there, we're going to. It's like putting a bowl of candy in front of us. If it's there, we're going to devour it. And I think about, you know, when you say hide money, my mom would take money and, like, hide it in books. My grand. Because she learned that from her grandmother. You know what I mean? I'm like. And so I'd be like, we had all these books. I'd open a book, that'd be like 200 bucks. I'm like, oh, it's two bucks. You know, that's not for you. That's for something else. I'm like, do you remember where? You should know. But when I needed it, imagine shows up. You know what I mean?

That's fabulous. I love that. I used to do the equivalent. Here was the thing. I would have my checking account at a bank that I banked at all the time, my savings account. I had a different account that I direct deposited in, and it was all the way across town. I had no access. I didn't have any online access to it. I made sure I got rid of that. I got rid of the debit card. I physically, Scott, had to drive across town to get that money. And what's amazing is, is humans, we are lazy enough that our brain. If that money's in a bank right in front of me, I will go blow it. Like 200 bucks. What can I spend that? And Also, I got 500 things I could do. But if it's across town, miraculously, my brain comes up with five different ways I can solve that problem and not drive across town like it is. It is amazing how creative my brain gets going. Yeah. I don't know. That's not really worth it. I.

You know, that's not a bad idea for a. Like a grub hub. You get a money hub like you just drive around your town and picking up your money for you. I think actually I got a buddy that sells weed in California. That's what he does.

That is what he does.

Give me your ATM card, go in the bank, 300 bucks. Okay, here's your card back your doobie, you know what I mean?

And we got it. And you get a little nice relaxer later.

Yeah, exactly. I'm glad you shared that out there. I mean, it's a lot of folks, they struggle with that. And if you can put it outside, that's. We're a big advocate of people putting away money, starting an IRA account. Start putting money inside there and then you can use it as a self directed account to, to buy a note or invest in a property or even lend it out to other people out there.

And this is a cool thing, by the way. Let's talk about notes for a second. One thing that people always talk about when it comes to money is locking up your money is bad. Locking up. Putting it in something that's locked up is bad. But I got to tell you, the number of times that my clients save their ass because their money was in something that was kind of illiquid. Now don't get me wrong, you don't want every last dollar in something that's illiquid. If I've got my money in a note, the thing that you do. And yeah, I can go through the hassle of trying to transfer that sign to buyer for that note. That's gonna take me a little while. That's gonna be a pain in the butt. That will help you go the right way because of the fact that it is locked up. I used to think locked up was always a bad thing. I don't want my emergency fund locked up. I want that across town in a bank I can go to. But man, with my investments, if my investment in something that is long term and it's going to pay if I just don't touch it, what a great lesson.

Amen to that. I mean, that's the thing is everybody wants the whole get rich quick. What do I got to do? How much bitcoin do I need to buy to double up or how much Gamestop stock can I buy? You know what I mean? The point is, investing is not a short term game. It's not get rich, it's you got to invest to get build wealth over time. And we literally harp that with our students all the time. Like, hey, buy a note if it's paying you 304 bucks a month. Great. That's not exciting. They'll pay the electric bill, but if you do that monthly for 24 months, at the end of 24 months, you've got a six figure autopilot income coming in that you can say, hey, F you, if you don't want to work and go go climb mountains, then.

Do you know Alan Corey? Alan Corey's got a great story about this that I love. Alan's approach, Alan was like, you take that 300 bucks. The way Allen looks at that, he's like, okay, that 300 bucks pays my utility bills at home. Now I never have to worry about those again. Those are gone. Then he accumulates a bunch more money and he's like, okay, that's my grocery budget, all right, that's my cell phone. And thing by thing, instead of looking at life from how do I build this mountain of money with no goals quicker? Instead he's like, how do I hit the easy button by buying more stuff? Before you know it, Alan's like, I've got all these properties and it's all paying for my lifestyle. I never quote, need to work again. It's like the back way. Alan kind of did the back door into financial independence that way. And I love it.

I think that's literally a lot of the times people get so discouraged thinking about retirement. Oh, I got to save 4 million bucks or I got to save 6 million before I can retire. And I'm always like, no, no, no. If you can build cash flow that's going to generate the income off of that 4 million, would it be you can? Actually you're a lot closer than you would. You just got to systematize it. Unfortunately, most people see that. And I think you guys did an episode recently where you talk about, I think the average. Is it the average 401k OG mentioned something like 150 or 140 maybe or something like that. And they're never going to get to that point because they give up. But well, you can generate some cash flow off of that if you invest it properly, not just go do scratch offs.

Agreed. Well, and I get it is frustrating to see the number of people out there that get frustrated. You know, they look at these big numbers they see in the media and they think I'm never going to get there. But man, some of the stories I've seen a woman named Becky Heptig, she's the co host of a podcast called Catching up to Fi and a good Friend. Becky and her husband started at 50 and they retired at 60. Now she'll be the first one to tell you. They also had some good things that happened to them during those 10 years. Her husband got a big promotion at work, but they had to still take that money and save it and get it invested. She had to do all the legwork around that, but she made it happen. I feel like sometimes people are like, well, not even sometimes. I hear it all the time. People like, it's too late for me. No, man, start from where you are.

Yeah, I mean that's the thing is plant your flag and start taking actions now. It's always the difference. It's kind of like the same thing. I need to lose £20. I need to go to the gym more than just January 2nd because I'm too sore on January 3rd and I give up on January 4th. That's the same thing. I'm going to take a class. I mean, I got to do a little bit of work. Like yeah, you got to do a little bit of work. You got to market. You got to put some energy behind it and give it time for your little small amount of work or you then to actually grow and blossom. That's the thing. It's just aggravating as people don't understand the time frame. We want that quick fix, that quick hit for success. We don't give it, we go on to something else. Well, you're never going to find success just bouncing around from action to action without giving something time and let your energy and actions actually grow like a seed, you know. Now you have been a big fan, different city level list of podcasts, Laughing OJ and even Paula Panta is hilarious on there. When you have her on there afford anything podcast which is great there. Where do you see the podcast going the next year? And maybe, I mean it's got to be mind blowing about where you came from when it first started off, huh?

It is. I can't believe that the number of people listen that are listening. The way that we're headed is really frankly not just with the podcast but with everything that we do is trying to meet people where they are. Dude, I went from a few years ago. We had this college kid, Richie that worked with us. Now we have like a team of eight people. Richie was awesome, but he was a part time college kid that went to school at Texas A and M Texarkana branch and was just a cool kid. Come over after school and he'd like help me edit shows and do some social media posts. But I feel like people are really spread out on where they are. You got people on TikTok, you've got people on Instagram, you've got people on Facebook and certainly we can't be everywhere, but we definitely become multi platform. So two days a week now we do Instagram lives and people have told us they like those versus the podcast because they get to ask the guest questions, like they get to participate. And all I am then is MC and sure I ask some questions of our Instagram live guests, but they get to literally participate, which is super fun. And I see that not backing down. I see that continuing YouTube becomes a bigger part of what we do all the time. That said, the basic product, which is better on the podcast because we've done it for longer. I still really like the formula. I think life is really about fun and I think the way to teach people is to make it fun. I love the fact the only negative criticism I see about us, it's the same negative criticism all the time. People go look for our negative review. The negative review you're going to see that we will never change is that we screw around too much. And you know what those people that want more tips per minute are missing, in my view, they're missing, number one, you're not gonna be everything to everybody. But number two is I think they're missing the joy in life. Like talking about finance can be so fun. And for every money nerd that I lose, hopefully we pick up three non money nerds who are like, wow, these guys are hopefully kind of funny and they're talking about money stuff. Like, how is money stuff funny? Well, it's so serious that our blood pressure goes up and we think we gotta be perfect all the time. And we see these people on social media and they all seem perfect and nobody's perfect, but we think they are. And so we get all worked up and our goal is to be more like the Tonight show. And you know, you wind down your day, maybe open up your favorite beverage and sit back with Joe and OG and neighbor Doug and whoever our mentors are that day and chill out. Or on a real estate podcast with Crystal and I, you know, same vibe. We picked up Scott Carson in Ruth the Realtor's car, drove around Texarkana and then booted his ass out at the end of our discussion. I want to do more of that in our videos as well. We're not good enough yet at that medium to be able to put the humor in it. We got good at audio first and then we level two, I think is then the audio stuff is so second Nature. Now we can spend time designing a show where we screw around. That's where our video's going to. And by the way, for all our detractors that wants to screw around less, sorry, man. Well, we're going the other way.

That's the beauty thing. And you said the thing, you're not going to be everything to everyone out there. But I think that's when I, as an ex financial advisor myself and a banker for Chase, back in the day, I came into being a banker, getting my securities license and working with Smith Barney and some other companies. And then I saw these new financial advisors are coming and trying to talk investing to clients at the bank, talk about PE ratios and all this other stuff. And they're just, I mean exact gloss over. And that's one of the things I love about Stack is you're like, you're not going to find the acronyms in here. You're going to find straight up salt of the earth information that you can provide with our wacky humor that you and Aaron wrote me about. And that's the thing I think people don't realize is you got to explain to people in a comical way. Some people take I'm explaining at a fourth grade or fifth grade level, but that's really what you need to do. And then it's okay to poke fun at yourself and say you're not perfect. Not everybody is. I think that's one of the most things that you can do to get people to empathize with yourself. When I'm talking like our borrowers, we get distressed borrowers all the time. They're all stressed out because they're losing their face and losing their home. I'm like, sure, okay. I'm like, I've been there. You were hiding from the mailman to show up with another certified letter. Right. Call blocking that phone number. I get it. Let me help you. Let's. I've been there. Got the tattoo, the T shirt and the scars that go along with it. Let's help overchange that by just laughing about it. And let's make a change today and move forward in the right direction versus just being bad.

You are singing off my song sheet because what we found out very early. When I first started writing on the Internet, when I made that transition and I started my blog, I thought like, I'm going to give super serious tips about finance and I'm the only dude writing about finance and the Internet. Number one, I found out I wasn't the only one. Number two was I also Found out that nobody wants to read the boring ass. Here's the rules around a Roth ira. What people want. And this blew me away, too. They either want you to talk about the emotions around what you do and how scary it can be. And I think the reason that resonates with us is because so many people are doing this bravado crap where they're not afraid of anything. And I'm more manly than you are. When somebody hears you go, no, man, this was seriously scary. I didn't know what the hell I was getting into, and I did it anyway. And when you hear that, you're like, oh, well, then maybe I can do that. Like, I can face that fear then. The second thing is we discovered also that people want to hear about how we f stuff up. Like, stuff that we. Mistakes we made. Those are the stories that resonate the most, I think, with our listeners, is when somebody's got the balls to come on and go, you know what? I totally. Here's, here's. It's hilarious now because I lived through it and here's what I messed up. And, man, if we can tell stories about stuff we messed up, or you come on and tell stories about stuff you messed up and have these great conversations, then, heck, hopefully somebody's going to avoid that mistake. They're going to go, oh, I remember when Joe and Scott stepped in this. I'm not going to make that mistake.

And that's the thing about being an entrepreneur. You're going to make mistakes and doing something new. You're going to learn along the way.

Make them faster. I'm 55 years old. I realized I'm not going to stop making mistakes. I need to make them faster.

Amen to that. I made a few mistakes a few years ago. I had a couple of deals go south, and it was just horrible dealing with that. But we overcame that. We took care of folks best we could, and then we just kept moving on. Say, hey, that's not always going to happen. We had some things. Let's keep marching forward to make some things happen. But here's what you can learn from my mistake along the way so you don't make that same mistake. It's so valuable out there. It's funny. As you see, a lot of folks, I have a new episode coming out tomorrow. I'm getting feedback from, like, students. And not, like, I'm trying to trade with a guy and he's just being an asshole. Me, he's being rude. So I literally have an episode called, hey, Note Traders, Quit being To new note investors.

It's true though.

It's so true.

It's so true. Karma's such a bear too. It is such a bear. That's another. This will be an old guy lesson for people, hopefully. But that's the other thing is when I became financially independent, I felt okay. I felt great. You know what I really felt awesome though, Scott, was when I realized that I had enough people around me that if I ever got really in a bind, I had enough people around me that would take care of me. That was like the true blessing. And it was because of the fact that instead of worrying about my net worth, I was worried about taking care of my community. And if I take care of my community, my community will take care of me. When I all of a sudden had the realization that I just frankly can't imagine how bad I could screw stuff up to have all these people abandon me at this point. I gotta have to be really bad to have that happen. But it makes me want to give more. You and I have talked about this before, but we haven't done on a microphone. The number of people that get attracted to real estate type investments because they think that you're getting something for nothing or they think that they can sit back and do nothing. I've been in the sit back and do nothing. When I sold my business, that's the first thing I did before I decided to the teaching thing. You know what? It's super boring. You start wondering, is this all there is for life? The fun in life is serving other people. It's a blast. Such a blast. And so fulfilling and so fun. Go find somebody to serve and man, is it a good time. But yeah, being a jerk to somebody so you get one little step ahead of them. Good for you, buddy. Good for you.

Yeah, well, it's the thing, we all start in the same position. So I was telling my investor students, I was like, listen, don't worry about it. He or she was in your shoes like two years ago. I got the photos to prove it right here. I got the emails, I got the receipts from in here. So they darn their doesn't still stinks. You know what I mean? They made funny mistakes too. Don't worry about it. Just that's. I think the most successful people out there are the most giving of the time. They want people to succeed. They want people to avoid making mistakes. Like, listen, here, do this, let me help you. I always say, don't ask for opinions, ask for counsel. Opinions is like everybody has one. Doesn't Mean, it's necessarily good opinion, but counsel is usually where somebody's been, where you're at now or where you want to be, and they can actually guide you along that path much more efficiently versus just listening to any Tom, Dick, and Harry give you an opinion.

Absolutely. It's funny. Emily and I decided to end our book talking about that. Talking about good advice and good advisors and this idea that we will stand alone and not have. And this is prevalent in the fire community, the Financial Independence Retirement Committee. You don't need an advisor. They're just ripping you off. You got to do it yourself. And I agree, there's a bunch of crappy advisors out there, but every smart person I worked with, Scott, every single smart person I work with when I was an advisor could have done my job themselves. And this was the big aha for me, was that they had me in their corner because they were moving fast at a target, and they needed to surround themselves with somebody that would disagree with them, somebody that would fight with them, somebody that would say, hey, Carson, you're messing this up. What are you doing? Somebody that had your back. Mary Barra, just to make an example. And a lot of people don't know who Mary Barra is. My dad, as I mentioned, was a GM guy. So Mary Barra is the CEO of General Motors. Mary Barra has a bunch of advisors running General Motors. Those advisors I call vice presidents. When they sit in a room, I hope like hell and I look at how, you know, GMs not the best company in the world, but the fact that she's kept them relevant has been pretty damn amazing. She has these vice presidents to keep them relevant. I hope they fight with her. Like, she goes into a closed door and they're like, mary, we can't do that. And by the way, I'm sure that's what they do, because GM's still on the map. Because at one point, that company was gone. They were done. What Mary doesn't do, and this is what the average person does when they have advisors. What Mary doesn't do is show up for work twice a year, knows zip about a car, knows nothing about a car, and goes, hey, guys, how's this car thing going? A lot of people think that when you hire financial advisors or tax advisor, whatever, that excuses you from going to the meetings, from knowing the stuff, from reading the books, from listening to the podcast. That's not what a good advisor does. A good advisor takes somebody who's super knowledgeable already and gives you that edge. And I think it's so important to surround yourself with these super, super good people. I've never seen the person that truly gets. And if they tell you they got there on their own, they're so lying. They are so lying.

Yeah. It's all about having coaches and advisors help you along the way and help you gain that competitive edge. But you still got to clock in for your own knowledge and your own success. On otherwise, as we see with a lot of professional athletes or things like that, they show up bankrupt and their money got blown doing something they had no clue about.

Yeah. Billy Joel.

Yeah.

They have people go, look up that story. If you don't know that story, that's exactly what we're talking about.

Just. Yeah, it was funny. I actually bought a note on a Miami Dolphins cornerback. It was a note on a condo. It was in foreclosure. And we finally get to the right person on it, and I'm like, hey, what happened here? You haven't paid. You bought this. What happens was an advice by somebody who had access to my accounts, and they took care of it, like, okay, well, sorry to hear that. This is your signature, the dial line. He's like, yeah, it's my signature, the dial line. I'm like, okay, well, here's what we do. We're gonna let you get out of this. But we saw that happen with a lot of folks. You think about Steve McNair had issues like that, or Vince Young dealt with stuff like that. Something that the Texas guys, you know here. And I'm like, you gotta. Gotta check in with what you've got going on. No matter what you do, if you're investing your bucks, you need to know where that buck is going. Otherwise you're gonna end up having somebody else spend it, and it'll fund somebody else's dreams.

Yeah. Surround yourself with good people.

One of the great things I love about your book stacked out there is the home study course, too, is phenomenal out there. Talking about goals. All right. And I love how you start off by saying on that, hey, you have all these goals, you want to come? You got to identify, like, the top two or three that are the most important to you out there. When you think about what's going on the next 12, 24 months, where you want to go, what are three goals that you're really that are number. Top three goals for yourself, Joe, for.

Wow. I've never been asked that, man. I am lucky. I have everything I want. My top three goals, though, actually are very simple. I want to be more involved in my local community. I need to continue to find great people to work with on our team that I can let those great people run more and more of our organization. I don't want out. I'm not going anywhere, and I love what I do. But, man, as my people have upgraded, it becomes great, because then I can do two things. I can focus on the piece of the business that I frankly have a unique talent at. And then number two is I can then get more involved locally, which gives me a lot of excitement. You heard how excited I get about Texarkana. I take part in this nonprofit called Partnership for the Pathway. We build walking trails around town, and I love that. Like, I go out on my morning run, and it goes by three schools along this trail that we help build here in town. And there are kids walking to school very safely up and down this trail that we built, and it's fantastic. And by the way, a lot of people don't want trails in their backyard. Like, when we first go and we go, hey, we're going to put a trail behind your house, they're like, nope, not doing that. No, sir. Don't want that. And then we show them the numbers, and they're like, bring it. In most cases, a trail going through your community will raise your property value not by a little, but by a lot. Potential buyer sees the fact that you got a greenway right behind you, and they can go work out without having to jump in the car. And especially the younger they are millennials like it even better. Gen Z likes it even better than millennials like it. Trails, number one, believe it or not, people worry about safety, especially. What's funny is, in most places, crime goes down when you've got a trail. You know why? Because the bad guy or the bad woman does not want to do a bad thing in an area where somebody might walk by. And so you find crime actually goes down, property values go up. Anyway, I want to do more on that. I get excited talking about that. So that's number one. Number two is I also want to do more public speaking. I really like doing that. I was fincon, where you and I saw each other last in person. I got to be the closing keynote speaker. That was great. I want to do more of that. I really want to talk to more audiences. I joined a group, and this is good advice for people. Always find your who, like, who is the right person. And there's a lot of people. And you see this, Scott. I was just at podfest this year, and everybody's like, do Your TED Talk. And you know what? I don't believe any of these people, like, they are just seem like the slimiest. Just I'm like, yeah, no, no, I'm not doing it. I found a woman that I trust a lot who's in a group that I trust a lot called Strategic Coach. And at a Strategic Coach meeting, this entrepreneur told me she's like, I joined National Speakers Association. It's a phenomenal organization. I joined this thing huge. I realized in one meeting all the things I'm doing wrong. Trying to do more speaking gigs, I'm doing so much wrong. And in one meeting, they cured all that. So find your who. I want to do more speaking. I don't want to be like this one woman who taught me at one of the National Speakers association meetings. She does 125 speeches a year. I don't want to do that.

Wow.

I want to do like 20 maybe, but if I could do that, that would be great. And then the third thing that I want, I already do a bunch of traveling. My spouse and I spend every Tuesday together doing whatever the hell we want. We generally go to movies or go to out for walks or whatever. So time with my spouse is important, but I already do that. What I really want to do over the next three years is I want to extend that. My kids are doing some pretty fun stuff right now and they're in a busy time of life. But a friend of mine talked about is he's older too. Creating a vacation where you're extended, where your family, if your kids are my age. My kids are 28. We all get together in some city. I buy the hotel rooms for everybody. Go do whatever you're going to do during the day and we just have dinner together. My daughter, her fiance, my son, Cheryl and I, we go to a place. We were just in Telluride, which is a super expensive town, but we could get a hotel for a couple days for not over the top money and stay in this really cool, quirky place. And you can go up over the mountain and go to another town. You can go wherever you want without a car. We're close enough, we can get together and do our stuff. We're far enough apart that we won't spend every minute together and maybe have the big family fight that nobody wants. But I want to start doing like this. I go to enough conferences, I think I want to do like less conferences and do a family retreat every year.

I used to travel 36 weeks out of the year on the road and kills you it totally kills me. And we went to virtual workshops and virtual summits about six years ago. So everybody was all scrambling around Covid. I was like, oh, that's going to be. Business is normal. We're working from home now for the most part. But that's one of the first things that we do every year is like, okay, let's figure out, Steph and I were just talking about this last night. Where do we want to go? What do we want to do differently this year? And let's figure out how we plan that and work that into the schedule to make things happen.

Well, and that's important because when I talk early in our book Stacked about goals, right away everything drives off that. If you never put those block off that time, if you never put those fence posts down and say, nope, I'm doing this this year. You never get to it. What I used to do was, I'm like, well, I'll see if I can get time off work. I've got a nephew who I keep telling he's doing it wrong. He's like, well, I can't get time off work. I'm like, Dude, 10 years are going to go by. You're going to look back and go, crap, I don't remember any of that. Like, I remember those days. And don't get me wrong, I think when you're young, you kind of got to hustle to get ahead. I know people go, no, you need to do meaningful work. Well, you don't get meaningful work when you're the average 24 year old. Right. You got to swim a moat. Well, I think there is value there. I do wish I had stopped just a little bit. And when gotta go have some fun.

Amen. And not just go hang out at college universities with 20 year olds. They're trying to learn something. Like you did back in the day, right?

Exactly. Yes.

Who's the creepy guy? He looks like my uncle in class with me.

Well, oh man, that's a different story. I remember my dad and my dad and my dad's cousin, older guy than in his 40s. They stopped when I was at Michigan State to pick me up and to go on this fishing trip. And my dad's cousin, his eyes are going out of his head at these coeds. Oh, look at that. Oh, look at that. I'm like, what a pervert. Like, dude, you are just a per. Just calm down, man.

We had a client of ours is an older guy. He goes, there might be snow on the mountain, but there's still fire in the Furnace.

Oh, my God. No, no. I did have a client who was in his early 80s. His name was Art. And I remember Art telling me when I was in financial play, he goes, you know what's great about being 81? I'm like, probably a lot of stuff, Art. He goes, well, what's great is that 81 year olds look great and 25 year olds look great. He's like, the field just keeps getting wider. I'm like, I didn't need to hear that, Art.

He's got something with, with Hugh. He never dates me over 25.

Yeah. Oh, no. This guy was happy with 81. He was probably happy with 85. 87. A cougar.

Yeah, that's. That's not a cougar. That's something else. That's cougar squared.

Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, we can spend all the time on here talking, but I know you got a busy day at Heavy Joe. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast, guys. He is the once again, if you're listening out there watching, make sure you check out the Stacking Benjamin's podcast. And then also he's also co host with our friend Crystal Hammond, Stacking Deeds. And then go out anywhere that you like to get your financial books at and pick up the copy of the book stacked as well. But Joe, thanks for coming on the show today.

There it is. Thank you, Scott. Fun as always, my friend.

Yes, sir. We'll see you later. All right, guys. Go out there, Joe, talk about what's your mountain that you want to climb? Quit putting it off. Find a way to go do it. Plant your flag on your three most important goals and take actions this year to make some things happen. Go out and do that. I guarantee we'll see at the top. Hey everybody, Scott Carson here. Just want to say thank you again for listening to the podcast. If you've been listening for a while, you're subscribed to the podcast. First of all, thank you. Second of all, hey, you know, if you're, you're not one of our coaching students or you haven't signed up for one of our three day workshops, here's an opportunity for you. You want to check out our WCN membership. This is the biggest bang for the buck of the notice. Besides our one on one coaching, this is our monthly membership for 97amonth that gives you access to all of our online training, our virtual workshops, our note weekends, our special one day masterclasses that we've taught in the past, anything that we have going in the future, as long as you're a live member, I can't make you or save you $97 a month. I'm doing something wrong but save you paying 997 or 99 bucks or 399 here or anything like that. We make it affordable at $97 a month. Like I said, it gives you access to all of our past replays, our upcoming classes, our access to our special classes. We also do weekly coaching calls with our WC members and also our WC members also get first crack at tapes and lists of notes that we get in after our one on one coach to take a look at them. But it's a great way for you to go. You can also schedule call with me anytime to go through deals that you're working on, marketing things, questions you got going on about a deal. We're here to help you. So how do you get signed up for that? Really easy. Just go to noteumbrella.com that's noteumbrella.com get signed up there for you 97amonth guys. Like I said, biggest bang for the buck of the nursery and we want seeds of the family. So let's get you signed up today. That's notumbrella.com welcome to the Note family buddy and thank you for always for listening.

Sam Sa.