Invest Like a 9 Figure Founder | Justin Donald

It was really cool to achieve financial freedom, but it's kind of like, okay, what, what's next? Like, it felt good in that moment, but then that moment passes and it's like, okay, well, what else is there? And the sense of satisfaction that I get helping others achieve financial freedom just dwarfs the original emotions that I got from figuring it out for our family. I just find a lot of people invest in a way where there's not clear clarity on buying their time back. There's clarity on, like, I want to have a big business, I want to grow my wealth, I want to do all these things, but it's almost like it. At what expense? And so a lot of people, they're buying jobs.

Yeah.

They're buying another business. It costs more time. They're doing an investment that requires much more of them. And so I've just learned that there's a lot of these experts, leaders, gurus, whatever you want to call it, that have no real expertise except that they've been able to build a following.

Guys in for a treat. Man, I'll tell you what, not too many times do you see folks actually really care about making you well. And not just well in the grand scheme of things. Well, in the well of finance. So many times we're taught that a 9 to 5 job or somehow is going to be our linchpin of humanity, and somehow that is going to lead us to fulfillment. And my good friend Justin Donald is going to take us down that trail to show you that's not the case and tell you what it means to be a lifestyle investor. Guys, we hope we welcome the one and only Justin Donald. Dude, what's going on, man?

Hey, thanks for having me. It's good to connect again. As always. Love, love. Just kind of circling back and seeing how many mutual friends that we have as we continue to grow our friendship. So it's. It's fun.

Yeah, dude, I'm excited about it. Look, you know, there's a lot of. A lot of hype in the investing world in general.

Yes.

I think that's one of the reasons why I had to have you on is because one of the things I love about what you do and how you do it is you genuinely care about putting out quality information, not just quantity, like, just not just throwing stuff out there to see what sticks, you know, it's interesting to hear someone say, yeah, he's the next Warren Buffett. That's. That's a pretty, pretty heavy mantle man. So walk me through just a little bit of the journey because I want the audience to fully appreciate, understand how you found your way down this pathway and why you care so deeply about serving others. When it becomes lifestyle investor, yeah, sure.

You know, it's heavy burden to bear when anyone compares you to a great right, so Entrepreneur magazine, it's like, hey, thank you. But also he's world class, so I don't know that I need to be mentioned in the same breath as him. But we've done some cool things over the years and you know, we've got a community of really impressive individuals and I love to teach, so, you know, I share with people all the time. It's like, you know, if you do it right, you get finance, you hit financial freedom once and then from there you just continue to grow. You have multiple streams of income. But the reality is that feeling that, you know, whenever you can retire, you don't have to work, you know, you have divorced time equaling money, right? That it is assets producing income. You really don't have to do anything. You learn real quick a couple of things. Number one, life is really boring if you're not doing stuff right. So, you know, that was the first thing. But then the second thing is it was really cool to achieve financial freedom, but it's kind of like, okay, what, what's next? Like, it felt good in that moment, but then that moment passes and it's like, okay, well, what else is there? And the sense of satisfaction that I get helping others achieve financial freedom just dwarfs the original emotions that I got from figuring it out for our family. And so, you know, in our community and you know, people that follow me, it's, it's fun watching the story, being a spectator on the sidelines, but often with a front row seat and, and it's just, it's cool seeing the, the victories, you know, we just shared in, in our mastermind. We just had our big annual event for both of our communities this last week and we always do this thing every year. It's like, hey, share your 20, 25 wins. And it is so cool seeing all the things that our members are up to and, and even in the greater community that, you know, if, if they're not technically a mastermind member, we've got a pretty big extended community. And I just, I love it. It is so fulfilling.

Dude, that's awesome. Yeah, I was just thinking one of the byproducts. We'll jump into this a little bit later, but one of the things that you just mentioned is actually this understanding. Even once you achieve financial freedom, how empty it can be. Unless you're already built for ready of service. And I think that's such an important thing because I feel like there's a lot of what I refer to as guru mentality in the world, meaning, hey, look, come look at the fancy thing. Watch me drive the fancy thing. Watch me stand beside the fancy thing. And then if you're like me, you can do this to kind of concept, rather than this concept of no. What does it mean to actually be wealthy? Like really be wealthy? Not just financially wealthy, but wealthy as a whole being, I think, is a. Is a really profound thing. And I. It's funny, I went through the very similar thing where I made a bunch of money, thought I was set. One of my emptiest moments was sitting in a house I used to own in Utah. And just like, I'm. I got the stuff, but now what? Right?

Totally.

And then one of the things I realized was there was a lot around along the way that I just. That I just didn't understand about financial wholeness and wellness in general. What are some of, like, the major big misnomers that people get wrong, especially when they start leaning into investing? Because I historically try not to invest in things I don't understand. Yeah, I understand it. There's a good chance I can invest in it.

Yeah. You know, that is a fantastic question. And I love that we can really dive deep. So part of me is like, hey, do we do a little surface level and cover a few things, or do we really dive into this? Because I have a lot of opinions and thoughts around it. But, you know, you mentioned something earlier which was like, there's so many people out there. There's these gurus or people that project to be gurus. And what ends up happening is people in today's day and age say, well, hey, that person must know what they're talking about because they have a large social. Social media following. But that doesn't mean that they know what they're doing. That means they know how to market. You know, it means that they know how to. You, you had said even something like, you love the content that we put out because it's quality content. It's not, you know, just putting a ton of content out there, but if you want to hack the algorithms, it's about putting out as much content as you can. Several posts, often in a day, certainly, you know, over the course of the week. And so I've just learned that there's of these, you know, experts, I'm using air quotes, leaders, you know, gurus. Whatever you want to call it, that have no real expertise except that they've been able to build a following and they are making their money based on many other ways of monetizing it that have nothing to do what they are a quote unquote expert in. And so, you know, I just want to be as far away from that as humanly possible. So, you know, when you say, hey, what are the risks? Well, the risks are find the, like it's easy to find the wrong people. It's hard to find the right people. The people that you want are the people that have done it. They are living it. They've experienced that, they've gone through it, they've gone through the highs, the lows, they've made the mistakes. They're an expert based on actual experience, actual time doing it. And I think that is kind of like the first thing that I would say. But you know, digging beyond that if really going, you know, deep, finding people that have 10, 20, 30 years of experience, right. Not just a certain cycle. They have to know what they're doing. Like if you look at what, what do the billionaires do? I study all the single family office data. Well, the billionaires are doing it way different than most. And there are common themes through and through and what they're doing based on the quality of deals they're doing, the types of deals, the quality of deals, the actual asset allocation that they have. Most people think that wealth is created in the stock market, but if you look at the billionaire class, 50 to 60% in alternative investments, and I know that you know that yeah, they only have about 15 to 25% in public equities in the stock market. And so, and often those dollars are leveraged. They're there so that they can leverage against them to buy other alts. And so I think that there's a lot of bad actors out there. I think there are people that think they know what they're doing, that don't have enough years, don't have enough market cycles, don't understand the economy enough to actually be able to perform in any and all seasons. And then, you know, just even looking at the fee structure, there's a lot of what, what we call fee structures for retail investors, meaning a novice unexperienced investor, where they're going to pay way more working with these sponsors and these type of investments because they don't know any better. And I think have to, you know, the old Jim Rohn quote of like, you are the sum of the five people that you spend the most time with that really applies, you know, when it comes to investing, creating wealth, you know, all these things. It, it basically boils down to like, who are the mentors that you have in your corner and what is the peer group? Like, what do they look like? Are those individuals playing the game of life and business and health and wealth creation at a higher level than you, or are they not? And that should really inform a lot of your decisions moving forward. Yeah.

I'm a big believer that your time allocation should mimic your investment allocation. Right. So 100. I say that because you and I are. I mean, it took us a while just to get back on the calendar. Like, we've been, we've been at this for a couple of months just trying to make sure you and I could connect and actually have a quality conversation and get, you know, like, really spend some deep dive here. And part of that is because we are both. Yes, we have, we have passive income streams, even some active income streams that we're using to repurpose and put in towards investment, but we're actually busy building endeavors, busy building people, busy building businesses. And what strikes me as odd is about 60% of my time is in that world. 20% of my time is in content creation or trying to figure out what the audience really needs from us. I'll give you an example. One of the things we really recently realized is I'm a person of faith, so God keeps putting me in places to serve leaders, people who are already doing and leading big things. Yeah, Right. Where I. Everything that I did for the longest time was after just the anybody and everybody entrepreneur who was just right. Because I was a bootstrap guy, built my companies from nothing. Right. And the other balance of my time is being very intentional with the people that I love and care about.

Yeah.

And the reason I want to bring that up is because you just got brought up a really big point that I don't think people fully appreciate when they're trying to decide who they can trust and who they should listen to when it comes to any kind of content class. Right. So in this category, we're talking about investment and financial stewardship and financial wealth. There are a lot of folks who spend more time creating content on the financial picture than. But haven't actually done the financial work to create the financial picture in the process.

Exactly.

So what I want to do is, if it's all right with you, is I know you've. I know you've got essentially the. The 10 laws, 10 principles of investing wisely. I'D like maybe pick a pick maybe the top three or four that you see that get the most impact the quickest for people, how you learn them, like how you realize that they were important. Maybe something that you weren't doing that you realize you should be doing. Maybe as a byproduct of hanging out with a lot mutual good friends or you teaching them. It's really cool to actually watch my good friends who are all very successful coming to your mastermind groups and actually sitting there taking notes and watching and learning. It's incredible. So maybe, maybe let's start there. Our audience historically could be the accelerating achiever and entrepreneur, if you will, and already established. So I want to kind of maybe if you could kind of position a little bit to maybe land on both of them.

Yeah, yeah, most certainly. So, you know, this will be a lot of fun to dig into. I mean, what I can tell you is I've made a lot of mistakes through trial and error. And so a lot of my lessons came from that. And I like when people can learn from my lessons and my mistakes so they don't have to make the same ones. Number two, early on, I did a very good job of. Of elevating my peer group to a group of individuals that just play the game of life and business and wealth creation at a higher level. And number three, I've never been shy about paying for the highest level of coaching in the areas that I want to get great at. So hiring mentors, not that our coaches or our, you know, life coaches or, you know, whatever. I mean, this is. Is truly people that are, you know, top of their class and whatever it is that they do that have the track record to be able to back it up. Because in today's day and age. Yeah, today's day and age, everyone's a life coach, right? So you really have to be careful. There's. And so my faith is really important to me as well, and it really guides a lot of the decisions that I've made. And, you know, I feel like as I try to do more myself, I have these lessons learned and, you know, when I can do less myself and surround myself with godly people and people with experience, my learning curve shortens as well, which is important. But, you know, if we're going to dig into like some of the key, you know, so. So the lifestyle investor book I wrote, and I never thought it was going to have the success that it's had. Right. Yeah. Well, that's super kind of you. I mean, back when I put this thing out. I didn't have a following. I didn't have an email list. I didn't have a social media presence. I did all this kind of behind the scenes. No one knew. My family didn't even know, you know, when some of these articles came out kind of highlighting what we were doing. And my family's like, like, what. How did we never know this? And it's because I don't want things to change. I'm not, you know, I'm, I'm. I'm living my life and I'm not trying to showboat or anything like that. And so as I developed the. The really is the ten commandments of cash flow investing for passive income and financial freedom. It's, it's my 10 investment criteria that have led to a lot of success in what I've done. And really, you know, some of them come from mistakes, as I mentioned, but some of these are just being around people that really know what the heck they're doing, you know, and, you know, even greats like Warren Buffett, you know, informed one of my, one of my commandments. And so this, you know, this book ends up taking off, ends up, you know, becoming a number one Wall Street Journal bestseller. Come. I mean, as of today, it's the top 1% of all books ever sold based on volume.

That's awesome.

And all the pro. Thank you. All the proceeds go to fight human trafficking. So I feel really good about that. I'm. I'm honored to be able to partner with the groups that we've partnered with, with Love justice and Tim Tebow foundation, and just I think the world of, of the work that they're doing, and I like that we can be a source for good in that. But if you break it down, you know, the, the second commandment, you know, actually I will start with the first commandment, because the first commandment is lifestyle first. And so I, I just find a lot of people invest in a way where they are. There's not clarity on buying their time back. There's not, There's. There's clarity on, like, I want to have a big business. I want to grow my wealth. I want to do all these things, but it's almost like it. At what expense? And so a lot of people, they're buying jobs.

Yeah.

They're buying another business. It costs more time. They're doing an investment that requires much more of them. An operator fails or quits or just isn't cutting it, and they become the operator. And so this whole idea of lifestyle first is how can we invest in a way that's in alignment with our values but also doesn't tie us down? It's not a transaction of time for money. So I really want my investments to produce on their own. I want them to produce whether I'm working, sleeping, traveling, hanging with my family. I just want what I think is best from, you know, a values aligned standpoint and then really just the boundaries that I have placed. So how, how to invest in a way that supports your lifestyle and can help you live your lifestyle without needing to have the W2 income, have the 1099 income, have the business income, because I promise you will make better decisions in your business, in your work, in your personal life, if you don't need that income to survive. Right. You will make better decisions.

Yeah. No, I think that's brilliant because I, I was just thinking, it just dawned on me and, you know, it's. I love when what I call life truths just pop in your head. And the live truth that just popped in my head is very simply, if you can't clarify the lifestyle that you ultimately want, how are you ever going to build for that lifestyle?

Totally.

And I think that's the difference between something that I've been working on now for about the better part of a year is helping people go from striving into flow, like literally stop striving for what you want and start doing the things that open up the gateways, if you will, to allow those things to flow to you. And I can tell you from personal experience, when I'll be honest with the audience here, when I was, quote, unquote, producing wealth, I had no idea what to do with it. So I was essentially a person who was creating wealth, who couldn't steward it. Therefore it would slip through my fingers.

Yeah.

And then I would have to go out and recreate it over and over and over again. And you. Thank God he gave me the ability to do some of that. But at the same time, eventually, when I was. I think it's a maturity thing. You start getting more mature, like realizing, wait a minute, there's got to be a better way. All these other folks like Warren, gosh, there's so many that I want to rattle off top of my head, but almost all of them do one, one, one principle that I see that most of America does not do. And it's the principle of compounding.

Yes.

And it's not just compounding money, it's compounding time, talent, and resources, you know, so I'm. I'm so glad you Started there because I see so much of what I refer to as the con, the five constraints. My audience has heard it before. So I'll just take out number two, the second one, which is ignorance. Like we're just ignorant. We don't know what we need to know. We're not even pursuing the fact that we need to know it.

Yeah, you know, it's. You bring up a good point because. So when I look at money, I kind of look at a quadrant and I'm kind of. Ever since I read cash flow quadrant, I've just kind of looked at these four quadrants for everything. Right. And so I think when you look at the quadrant of like making money, I think most people aren't even on the quadrant because most people are not good at making money. And then you have your select few that are good at making money, and that's kind of like phase one. But those that are good at making money rarely are good at managing money. And so you see a lot of people that can make money, but you know, they're not able to steward it well, like what you talked about. Well then all of a sudden, you know, you've got an even smaller percentage that can manage money. They can manage the money they've made. Sometimes the people managing money aren't the ones that made it, but it's even better if you made it and you learn how to manage. Yeah, but I think the quadrant that is most impactful is, is the next quadrant, the third one, which is multiplying money. There are some people that have the gifting, and I believe this is my gifting where I can really multiply results and I can see through, you know, bad deals. And I, I can gravitate more to good deals, good sponsors, the, the diligence that we do. You know, we spend over $300,000 diligencing the deals that we do in our community. And so there, there's all kinds of frameworks, there's background checks, there's all, all these hoops that people have to jump through to even get access to our community. And so very rarely are people good at multiplying money. But, but that one is like just a huge difference maker. And then from there that fourth quadrant is making money matter. And you know, I think for anyone that has figured out how to make money, that's, that's a responsibility and obligation that we have to actually do good with it. At a certain point, consumerism, like, you're not getting more, like at a certain point, joy doesn't increase. Like, you know, you want more money means less problems, typically certainly less financial problems. And the goal is to upgrade the quality of problems you have. But at a certain point, more money like you buying more stuff for you and your family isn't serving. It's. It's actually hindering. And so I think as you can find ways to have impact there, that. That's really what creates a lot of fulfillment. And it's. It's really fun. Like, that's when I think money becomes way more of a game than a mode to survive.

Yeah, yeah, no, that's. That's so true. It also had me just thinking, when it comes down to what I've witnessed, yes, you can get to a place where you. You get the. What I. It is. There is a tipping point. But I have just. I'm just. If I'm being just honest with you, I've had just as much trouble learning how to be diligent and use the diligence, you know, processes and frameworks, if you will, to create a methodology to make sure I don't take advantage of bad deals, because I've had my fair share of those, had my share good.

Ones, as every investor will at some point in time. It's. I mean, that is part of the learning.

Well, the flip side of that is the. Also one of the things that I love about wealth or creating wealth in general, is the ability to create overflow. And overflow, by definition, to me, is putting that money to work for a cause just as much as, you know, for, you know, compounding, if you will.

Yeah.

And I'd like to hear your thoughts on how you may be diligent or how. How you maybe look at diligence for looking at deals and deal flow versus how do you decide where you want to put that money to work in a cause, a nonprofit like Tim Tebow or something like that? How do you know what to do with it?

You know, part of that's through prayer, Right. Part of that is like having a clear vision of the impact that we want to have. Part of that is just getting clear on what it costs us to live and getting there. So I think like step one is, what does it take? What does it cost me in my life just to survive and get by? Nothing fancy. Just to get by. All right, that survival income, what is that per month? How do we get passive income to cover that? Step two, how do we cover our lifestyle income so it costs more per month to live the life that you want with eating out and vacations and toys and all the Stuff that you want, and then how do we get there in passive income? And then, you know, number three is kind of like ideal lifestyle. So you're at a point where anything above and beyond your lifestyle, there's two choices. You can either grow your lifestyle and subscribe to a little bit more consumerism or just upgrading life. But the other aspect. Aspect for me is I see it as, okay, once I hit that, you know, you called it overage or overflow. And I've just, you know, same thing. I call it surplus income. Everything above what it cost me to live. Well, now I have all these dollars that can go to wealth creation and impact. Okay. And so early in my career, I worked hard to save 15, 20, 25% of what I made so I could invest it so that I could get ahead. Well, once you're in surplus income, 100% of those dollars can go towards impact and wealth creation.

Yeah.

And then it's figuring out from there what percentage makes sense to you and to your family, and how involved do you want them to get? David Green, who's a mentor of mine, who I am just so impressed with, had him on the podcast, spent some time with him, spent a weekend with his family office, actually, and got a chance to tour his. His facility at Hobby Lobby, the headquarters in Oklahoma City. And he said, if you. If you want to become a radical giver, give to the thing that breaks your heart more than anything else. And when you do that, you can be joyful, you can be radical, because you found the thing that just really touches you deep. And so for me, it was human trafficking. How do we prevent this? And the more early in my life, I gave begrudgingly. It was like I was taught to do this. I was taught to tithe or give 10% of everything that we make. Um, and, you know, and it was hard. It was hard till I instilled that habit. And you hear people all the time. They're like, well, when I have more money, then I can give more. But no, the reality is, until you can build the habit of giving, you actually aren't. The more money you make, the. The harder it is because you've ingrained a poor habit around it. And so I just really think that when you can find that cause, well, now that giving is joyful, you're seeing impact. You're seeing stories shared. You're part of something bigger. You're you. You have the. This new community that you're part of that has shared values. And so I think the more successful you get, the more Generous people in that camp are based on the habits that they've had leading up to it. So that's kind of how I'd look at it. But it's. How fast can you get to covering your entire life with passive income? That truly is passive. Right. No, no hooks, no time commitment. And then from there, how much more radically generous can you be? How much more can you give? Because there's only so much you and I and our listeners need.

Yeah, yeah. And in the end, there's so much, only so much of that you can take with you, which is none.

That's right. Right.

So that I think that's, I think for me, one of the things that obviously I haven't shared a whole lot about my background, but it's fairly public, but I grew up in a very scarcity based environment.

Yep.

Right.

So me too, by the way.

Oh, yeah. Well, that, yeah. So let's dig into that for sure. Because I feel like when I'm watching. Okay, so now I become, now I'm, I'm kind of like I'm you. I, I observe, I'm constantly observing. Right. And when you observe and you, and you walk through things and see things, you see how they interconnect, and then you can say, okay, well, this person's sticking point is here.

Yep.

And then, you know, as a leader and a teacher, you can go say, okay, well, I'm gonna help them understand that this is, this needs to be fixed or fixed or reconnected in sort of, sort of a way. And I know that you and I share the importance of mindset. So scarcity is a mindset. It's a mindset that's tied to an emotional set.

That's right.

And you had mentioned the, you know, giving begrudgingly, and I used to deal with that too, and be giving. Giving begrudgingly was very much tied to if I give it, I won't have it if I need it.

Right, right.

Which is a scarcity.

Scarcity mindset.

It's a scarcity mindset. Right. So stewardship on the other hand, is very different. So I kind of look at scarcity as one major angle on the left and my left because that's what arm I'm using right now.

And Right.

And then on the other side is the stewardship piece. Right. And you know, so it's kind of like what have you seen, even in your own, even in your own, even in your own world of moving from a scarcity based mindset towards a really, truly based stewardship? Because I'm a big believer in the five talent principle. You know, if, if God gives you five or six, double it and, and you'll never have a need. And what I love about Justin, one of the things I love about you, man, is I know a lot. I know you and I both know a lot of very wealthy people. Oh, yeah. It's very seldom that you, that you have folks that you meet along the, along the journey that have both wealth and fulfillment.

Yeah, right.

You know, you spend so much time pursuing wealth and wealth and wealth and wealth. And then I, I work with these people on a regular basis. They've been super successful in life, but they've kind of made money but lost meaning.

Yeah, well, and there's this disease of maximizing wealth. So you might have more than everyone else, but you, you obsess about more, and it is so easy to fall into that trap.

Yeah. Well, let's talk about it because again, I feel like part of scarcity mindset is also the inability to have delayed gratification. Investing by definition means you're planting a seed that's going to grow into something else over time, which means you're not going to give a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand dollars today and put it into a vehicle and then take it immediately, you know, back out unless it's a very specialized vehicle a year later. Right, right. So let's, let's, let's talk about scarcity. Let's talk about, you know, delayed gratification. Let's talk about stewardship.

Well, I think the more money is the driver. So if money is the top of the totem pole, I think generally you're living in a scarce place. I think the abundance comes from putting money in check. That money is not what drives and controls your life. So the more that, that is the pilot, the more that you're living in this world of needing more and what you have is not enough, even though what you have is greater than what maybe you ever thought you would have, because the goalposts just continue to move. I think when you can shift that and say, you know, impact or teaching, you know, or partnering with people or relationship building or, you know, the different things that you can put in, in the front seat. And for you and I, it's, it's putting our faith first. I think that you operate from a different playbook, a different operating system where money doesn't have that type of grip. When you are generous with what you've been entrusted with, and when you are allowing other things to drive the ship, it becomes A lot easier to give that money because you see it more abundantly. You see it flowing through you see the impact it's having. It makes you desire to do more from the giving standpoint, not the con, the consumption standpoint. What else can I get for me versus what other good can I do in the world? And so I do think it's, you know, who is your co pilot or who is the primary pilot that's literally driving the ship. That, that is, that's it. I mean, that's the key if you want to put money in check. Don't allow it to lead. Don't allow it to be, you know, the first person in the way that you operate and negotiate and interact.

Yeah, no, I think that's, I think that's really wise. I also think there's a lot of, there's a different frame of reference. I, I saw this one time, I forgot where exactly I saw it, but essentially said and I, and it's funny, you and I both live by this principle. And you know, I wasn't even paying attention to it until I was like, oh, it's been said. Which is you don't buy things. You essentially invest in things that pay for the things.

That's right, Right.

So that way there's nothing. It kind of, it kind of prevents loss in many respects, unless you're not doing your diligence. Right. So that's right. What are what. There's so many different directions I want to go with the conversation. I'm trying to figure out which, which one is like the, the one God wants me to go with the conversation. When I lean in deep, I feel like he wants to bless more people with more, but he's not comfortable with what they would do with more. So to me, that's the the anchor, if you will, the starting point, if you will, of where the shift needs to happen first. I'm to like you. I thought that once I had money, I would invest money, I would give money, I would do these types of things. What I discovered was that if I didn't start doing the little things with the money that I had, being faithful with a little to be made, master over much, it would never happen. That's right. So where does someone get started if they're, they're solely working for a passive or an active income. Right now they're 9 to 5 worker, they're worried about AI taking their job. They're. They don't like being chained to a machine. Like when I say chained to a machine, chained, that they're not having the ability to at least influence their overall outcome. Like how, what, what's the biggest shift?

Well, first of all, you know, I think it's important to recognize that there are different people that are going to earn money, different ways they're going to show up to work different ways they're going to have different outcome. And so, you know, I hear a lot of these groups that it's like, oh, you know, W2's bad and business owner's good. And I, I just totally disagree with that.

I think I agree with your assessment.

Yeah, I think W2 can be great. Okay. I think it comes with a set of pros and cons. And then I think business owners like that, like, that's great. And it comes with a set of pros and cons. Now, if you are a W2 that can't stand what you're doing, you. You despise your job or your boss or whatever it is, well, then that there's probably reason to make a pivot. Maybe the pivots to a better W2 outcome. Maybe that pivots to something on the entrepreneurial side of things. But I think it's more like getting clear with what you know, are you in alignment with who you are, what you want to do, your value set. And for some people, they are. For some people, they love what they do. They're just overworked. And if you can figure out how to do it inside of time constraints that allow you to have the time and space to spend with family, friends, hobbies, passions, then you can keep doing it. You know, for other people. They're, they shouldn't be a W2. They're not built that way. Maybe they're afraid to make the pivot, but they would thrive if they converted over to, you know, to something else. But then I see a lot of business owners that they truly just become a slave to the business that they built. And, and it's just, it's. It's virtually the same thing as the W2 trap because you're making more money, it costs more time. Your. Your business is growing, though. And so it's like, I know all these super wealthy people that don't own their time, right? They're, they're, they work harder. They.

I was that. I was that person.

Yeah, and so was I. Yeah. And, and so it's. You, you have to understand, I think what you desire, it's like spending time proactively building out what is an ideal life for me. What's an ideal work schedule for Me. What's an ideal income for me? What's an ideal charitable giving piece for me? What's. How do I want to spend my time? It's getting clear on that and then it's building the work, foundation and relationship around that. That's what I would say. Like you have to know what your goals, your dreams, your ideal is before I think it makes sense to, to do some of the other work.

No, I thousand percent agree with you. In fact, one of the things that was. I want to iterate that point about getting clear. Most of us will spend more time planning a family vacation than we will on getting clear.

Yeah, it's easy.

What do you. I was gonna say what do you think is keeping us. Because it sounds like to me. And again I'm using my language because your frameworks are brilliant. Everything that you do, how you get to investment vehicles is brilliant.

Thank you.

How do you see people? People, person, Maybe maybe think about, maybe imagine one of your, your, your, one of your, you know, beginning clients who is very early in the journey. How do you get them to get clear? Because again, most of us are so busy with our day to day going to and from the grocery store. Maybe we're into doordash like I am a lot. I don't know. Right. But we're, you know, but we're doing the things right. We're, we're trying to, you know, we're trying to be good parents, we're trying to be good spouses or partners. We're trying to be good at our job. We're trying to figure out what lights us up and we're trying to figure out how to do it in a very short amount of window of time called life. You know, this little blip on the earth. Right. And try to do it with meaning. So like the reason I keep going back to the beginning is because I know that if I can get them to understand the why, then working with you and your team and doing the mastermind and doing other things, I mean you've got got fantastic digital courses out there that can help them walk through some of this stuff. But if I can get them just to start right then, then nature, the inertia will take care of itself.

Yeah. And I think people have to be willing to, to make the start. So I mean at all of our events, I just know people don't carve the timeout so we actually put inside of our events this time where people can have carefree timelessness and can do some planning, can do some thinking. We do Journaling sessions at virtually every event that we do where we force people to just sit down, get rid of electronics, and just think. Write down what. What were some of your biggest wins from last year? What are some of your goals for this year? Who are the people in your life that are pulling you up? Who are people in your life dragging you down? What's your relationship with your spouse? What's your relationship with your kids? Is it where you want it to be? What would it look like if it was where you wanted it to be? You know, it's. It's. You have to. You have to create that time. It is a proactive thing. Otherwise, you get caught in a reactive world, and then you live life on default. And so you know something my wife and I do every single year, We've done it for 17 years. 18. It'll be 18 years this month. Is. We have this marriage and family planning document that we walk through. It's very robust. It's. I don't know. I think it's like somewhere between 10 and 15 pages. And we carve out minimum of a day where we do this together and we talk about everything. Like, there are prompts for everything. Like, where are you with your career? How satisfied are you? How fulfilled? What are the things that fulfill bill you the most? Where are we with money? Where are we with active income? Where are we with passive income? Yeah. Where are we with sex life? Where are we with parenting? How. You know, how are we doing with. With influencing our kids? Peer groups? How about education for kids? So it's like all these questions, and we have just been intentional about carving out at least a day once a year to go through that and then to touch back on it once a quarter just to make sure we're kind of in alignment. And part of that is me getting clear with dreams and goals that will inspire me, and then helping my wife do the same, helping my daughter do the same, and then I need to help support her in accomplishing those, Both of my ladies in accomplishing those. But I think it all just comes down to scheduling the time, having the outline. I'll share it with you. You guys can have it.

It.

Yeah, but you just schedule the time and you do it and don't feel like you have to do everything on there. You know, maybe it's. You pick out five different sections, and you do five sections and you get started. But I don't think you get the clarity without the. You have to interrupt the interruptions. That's what you do. Life is a bunch of interruptions. And if you don't interrupt them to figure out what a. You know, being proactive on your terms, what is. What does an ideal life look like? Life by design. If you. If you don't have that, how are you ever going to arrive?

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. It's funny. It all comes back to be still.

Yeah.

Be still. You know, it was the. It's been the hardest but most profoundly rewarding part of my pro. My personal process is to learn to stop being so active that I can't be still. When I started thinking about all the major shifts that I've had in life and business and stuff like that. Like, when I say the major shifts, I mean like the divine downloads of sorts.

Yeah.

They've never come in a barrage of activity.

Nope.

They've always come in a barrage of surrender.

You're too preoccupied. Right. I mean, and it's hard for me too. Like, it's not like you master this and all of a sudden you're good at it.

Yeah.

I still am tempted all the time with being too busy going back to. So, like, I have to just be intentional every year. I have to reevaluate my calendar every year. I have to reevaluate my relationships every year. Every year I have to be proactive. Otherwise, the default, like, life kicks in.

Yeah, man. Well, let's talk about some investing. We talked about the mind and the soul that creates the investing, which I. Which always is my jam. I love that. I love that side of the world because I know that mindset, emotion set, and spiritual set create behavior set. So I always like to jam there. Let's talk about some of the vehicles that. That you're really excited about, that you've seen be really reliable, you know, because there's a lot of things that come and go or come and go, and big spikes, I should say, that have allowed you to be. Create a sense of financial freedom and fulfillment that you've seen also get a lot of success for your clients.

Yeah, you know, it's. It's interesting. We were talking earlier about, you know, my ten commandments. I went through one of them. I'll actually cover another one right now because it segues in perfectly to what we're talking about. And so. Well, real quick, my second commandment is to reduce the risk. That's a total Warren Buffett take right there. And it's enough said. Just don't lose money. It's hard to make it back. It erodes the annual compounding that you get. So I'm Just going to say that. But let's move real quick to the third commandment, which is finding invisible deals. And what does that mean to me? That means off market deals. That means where there's no competition or little competition. That means paying attention to trends. What is the data telling us? If we know that millennials over the next really 10 to 20 years are going to inherit somewhere between 80 trillion and $105 trillion from baby boomers, which like this is, this is all fact, then we have a great data set for what is going to be popular in the future. Like, pay attention to what millennials like to do. How do they spend their time? How do they, what do they do for recreation? How do they travel, how do they work, how do they eat, how do they live? Like, there's so much there and there's so much data. So I, what I love doing is kind of aggregating all this data. I love sharing it with our community. And, and it's talking about like, what, what are the, what, what are the economic trends? What are, what are we seeing with interest rates? What are we seeing with the economy? What are the impact? What impact specifically is happening with tariffs? What does that look like down the road? What does it look like if we have a sovereign wealth fund? What does it look like? I mean, the, the list goes on and on. But part of the reason that I have been ahead of the curve is that I'm using this data to find what I think is going to be relevant. That's going to be a trend before it's a trend before it's mainstream.

Such a good word. Data. I can't tell any times. I hear, in fact, I know of a recent time where someone went deep with one investment thinking it was going to be the get rich quick or get whatever.

Yeah.

And proceeded to lose it all.

Yes. Happen.

It was emotional. The data wasn't there to support the decision.

Yeah, well, and even if the data is there, I still like part of what we do. When members join our mastermind, the first thing we have them do is build out their investment criteria, which is a one or two page document of why they will, or why they won't invest, you know, yes or no type of stuff. I need to see this. I need to see that sponsor needs to have 20 plus years. It needs a cash flow or, you know, whatever it is. Right. And one of them that we always have on. There is Never more than 5% of net worth in any single deal. Never more than 5% of net worth with any single Sponsor, deal or asset class? Deal and sponsor. So if you break down the asset class, I mean, we have the blueprint. I mean, look, look at all the, the billionaires that are out there. There aren't that many. There are about 20,000 and you can figure out actually there, there's about 30,000 centimillionaires. So 100 million and above. It's actually about, no, I misquoted. I think it's over 2,000 billionaires. And so if you look at that data, you will see a consistent trend. You'll see, generally it's about, I mean, if we start on the higher side, it's, it's usually 10 to 20% in real estate. It's usually 15 to 25% in public equities. So sometimes you see it as low as about 5%. Even Harvard's endowment, I think, has it somewhere between 5 and 8% right now. In, in the, the most robust, you know, stock market, you know, valuation that we've ever had. You, you have private equity, that's generally about 25 to 35%. You got venture, that's generally about 3 or 4 to 10%. You have angel investments or seed or pre seed super early. That's, that's half a percent to 1%. You've got cash at 5 to 10%, fixed income, 5 to 10%, private credit, 5 to 10%. You've got, you know, agriculture, like oil, gas, 1 to 2%. You've got Bitcoin 2 to 5%. And I mean, we could go through everything but that, that's what the billionaires do. So I just, I follow that data and then I pay attention to the other trends that I'm seeing. So it's like, you know, what are, what are the other things that could be hot right now? Not emotionally based on actual information. And by the way, the family offices have the most of this data. They spend the money to have access to this. But it's like, you know, I got ahead super early in my career because I started investing in single family home rentals before it was ever an asset class. I started investing in mobile home parks before it was ever popular, before private equity ever had a dollar in that space. Yeah, I started a single family home maintenance company because I saw that institutions were gobbling up single family homes. I got into hard money lending super early when I saw the banks weren't, weren't doing it on the private, you know, on the private side, we could solve for a lot of things that the banks wouldn't do. I mean, the List goes on and on. And so it's like what is happening in the future? What are we noticing? I mean with some of the, some of what is being passed from a legislation standpoint we know more on shoring is happening. We know that border towns are more important than ever. We know that port cities are more important than ever. So you know, industrial around there, housing around there, like all that is important. The more that we move to E commerce, the more important. Industrial is both industrial outdoor storage but also like industrial, you know, high quality, you know, basically distribution centers. You know we've seen private credit grow a ton over the last 10 to 15 years. There's a lot of bad actors out there but it's still an asset class. If you get the right people that a lot can happen. We're seeing SMB, small medium businesses taken off just you know, acquisition. We're seeing sports gambling and prediction markets, esports, web gaming, blockchain defense.

Was it called Poly Market Gamble on everything? I think it is.

I'm a super early investor in that company. Several rounds. So it's like all these things, it's like I'm paying attention. Like fintech has become huge, Defense tech has become huge. Decentralized finances become huge. Robotics AI like so we, the, the information is there, right? But most people are so busy that they don't have time to think about it or maybe they don't even know how to interpret it. But they're not willing to get around the people that do know how to do it. You know and that's where I think it's. There's only so much we can outsource of our investment education, of our, you know, financial education and stewardship. We need to bring things in house and there's this epidemic of people outsourcing this to less than qualified people. I mean we're still at a point today where in the last 15 years only 5% of money managers have outperformed the S&P 500 index. And in the last 30 years it's less than 1%. But most people are doing that and most people have the majority of their net worth there. So they spend more for less performance. The Cobasi report just showed that in the last, since 1926 you only have 3% of all S and P, all companies on the stock market that have produced all the returns. 3%, 3.66%.

Well it seems like to me most of the money is also being made and to your point, non public deals, like just deals. And I mean I've been In rooms before where, hey, somebody's got to, hey, I got, got, I got a good friend of mine who loves the multifamily space and has done really, really well and he's brought me and a few other people in at different times and we, it's, it's worked out like, you know, so let's talk about, about how to get in front of some of these off market deals especially because I assume that I, I assume that most of the off market deals you have to be a qualified investor rather than, you know, somebody who's just getting started, I would assume. But you can correct me if I'm wrong.

Yeah, you need to be accredited for a lot of these, although that's being more democratized as we speak. And we're going to see 401k money opening up. $12.4 trillion is going to be able to move into that in 2026. And then there's some deals that you got to be a qualified purchaser, 5 million net worth and above. But this is all becoming a lot more available to your average investor. You just need to be around the people that give access and that have the bandwidth and expertise to sift through because most deals are garbage. But to your point, the stock market 20, 25 years ago had over 10,000 companies. You know, now we're at under 4,000 companies. So it's eroding. But if you look at all the.

Other 10, and I think the top 10 of those 4,000 make up most of the.

That's right.

Stock market.

Yeah, that's right, Yeah. I mean you can even say top seven.

Yeah.

You know, so like, but what people don't understand is that there are tens of millions of businesses in the US alone. There are hundreds of millions worldwide. But if you just look at the US the stock market is a representation of only 0.16% of all available businesses. So most people are investing the vast majority of their Net worth into 0.16% of, of the offerings with a money manager that's charging them more than if they just invested on their own. And, and they're getting worse returns and paying for more of it. It. And then they think they're diversified because they're in 60% stocks and 40% bonds. But in the last three years, two of those three years, it's been the worst performing. 60, 40 split is the worst performing allocation in the last century.

Wow.

So it's, so, I mean, we were behind closed doors with Rick Reeder, the CIO of blackrock, and he's on record. I mean, he's not going to publicly say this, but he's on record in that room for saying the 60, 40 allocations. Dead. It's been dead since the 80s and 90s. That, and, and you know, the wealthy families use alternative investments to grow their wealth. That's how they do it. It's, it's just that simple. So people that are outsourcing their financial education to others are missing a huge opportunity to grow their wealth and to even do it in a safer manner than what the, the overexposure to a single asset class like the stock market is.

Yeah, man, it's, it's funny. I tell people all the time it's, it's impossible to get 40 plus years of experience down in 45 minutes.

Right, right.

In one phone call or one Zoom call or podcast for that matter. I want to, I want to talk about the Mastermind because it sounds like this is where you can actually go, like you can go really deep, very specialized, getting clear on the objective, getting clear on the vehicles that work for you, getting in the room with other people who can actually kind of of hold themselves a bit of accountability. Partners. I know you guys have grown the Mastermind to a, a really successful mastermind, but tell me more about it. Where can people find out more about. I know you guys, I know you just did your, your end of the year big shebang, but I'm even more interested in, in the Mastermind myself, so.

Sure, yeah. So, I mean, if you go to lifestyleinvestor.com you can find everything we do. I mean, we have coursework, we did a vetting deals course to teach people how to invest and real estate and you know, what to look for, what to look out for. You know, we've got a passive income masterclass. We have all these courses, all these master classes, all these programs. But our flagship product is the Mastermind. You know, for a long time we were waitlisted at 100 members. We have opened that up. We're going to go to 125. We're at about 115 right now. And, and we've just kind of capped it so that everyone gets to know everyone in that group. Group. It's, it's high price point. It's 55k a year. But our members, I mean, there's not a single member that didn't write off 55k worth of taxes that they would owe. Just. I mean, we have a master Tracker that has 70 unique tax strategies that most CPAs have never even heard of these are from tax professionals, tax attorneys, tax strategists. So most people write it off there. We have world class education, we have world class deals. You know, our success ratio on our deals is through the roof. It's some of the best numbers in the industry and we're really proud of that. Um, and so, you know, and for anyone that's interested, I'd love to offer this to your community. We generally do these strategy sessions for people that are like, hey, I want to figure out what's next, how do I get from point A to point B, how do I get started? Or how do I make this move or that move? And we do these strategy sessions. They're generally 500 bucks. We've got a team that, that does them. But for your audience, if anyone would like to take me up on it, we'll just do it for free. So if you go to lifestyleinvestor.com consultation, you can set up a free strategy sess with someone on our team that can really, you know, kind of speak to you and where you're at and what some good next steps might be. We're, we're pretty hardcore about who actually gets in the mastermind. We've got, you know, we've got a lower tier called tribe of investors. It's 25k a year and it's, you know, it's, we turn away a lot more people than we bring in because we're, we've got a high standard for who makes it.

But we're also, we also have a high value offer.

Yes, for sure.

This is not a, this is what I was. I think one of the things that I was secretly, I wanted to help the audience understand way before the conversation got started is there's a lot of people who want to sell you stuff. There's not a lot of people who want to serve you. Well.

That's right.

Justin. You and your team seek to serve well. And it's one of the things I appreciate about what you guys do well.

Thank you. And, and for us, like, we don't, we don't need membership. You know, like, this is, I built this as a passion project. It was never to make money. It ended up becoming a profitable business. But we're not going to compromise who we are or we're not going to let come in that it's not the best. Like if they're financially not in the place for it, we're going to direct them to something else. You know, it's. We really want right fit. Yeah, man, it's refreshing also being in a room where like we've all been in Masterminds, we've all been at conferences where it's like you got to meet 100 or 200 or 300 people to meet like the one person that's like, oh, I found you versus like I wanted to build the group that every person you meet, you're like, whoa, that's a home run. Like, any person I talk to is amazing.

And I, hey, I've again, I've got friends in your room. So it's, it's really. I know. They already speak volumes of just the, just their attendance. They don't play. They don't play the game lightly, let's put it that way. So. Well, dude, I appreciate everything, man. Is there anything else as far as like finding you on, on social, anything like that you want to mention?

Oh, I'm under Justin Donald on most things and Lifestyle Investor. So yeah, I mean, check out the website. We've got a podcast, Lifestyle Investor. Check out the book. Book. We got a kids book coming out here in January that I'm so excited about. We've got a young adults mastermind that we just started this year that is for 18 to 34 year olds and that's taken off. That's been really cool. Very rewarding. But yeah, and it's mainly adult kids of our Mastermind members who requested it. So it's pretty neat.

That's awesome, man. All right, guys, that's going to do it for this episode of Build. Remember, we're always here to help you rise, lead, and last and make sure you go pick out the book Lifestyle Investor to get started. If you're interested in the free consultation, I'm telling you right now, Justin and his team are world class what they do. It's not going to hurt you to get a call. So until then, we'll see you on the next one. Take care, guys. Much love. Peace. Hey guys, I hope you enjoyed that amazing conversation. And if you want more just like that to help you level up your life and your business, you're not going to miss this next one. Check it out.

She was describing Jesus to someone and she said he wasn't a theologian, he was God telling stories.

One of the ways we can kind.

Of relax as leaders, as communicators is like you don't even have to do jokes to use here.

You can tell stories about your own life or use metaphors and we are.

Just drawn into stories.