Build a Second Stream of Income to Enjoy Life More with Steve Davis

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the land geek with the favorite niche real estate website, thelang.com and on this week's Art of Passive Income podcast, I have a very interesting guest because him and I are totally aligned on wealth and passive income. My guest today is Steve Davis. If you're not familiar with Steve Davis, for the last 30 years, Steve has helped teach and coach tens of thousands of people on how to use real estate to build wealth and passive income while focusing on maintaining a balanced life. Why did he do this? Because he's done it. He quit corporate America, started investing for himself. He eventually invested over 4,000 apartment units and created over 80,000amonth in passive income. Now he consults, helps others become totally free. He's going to help you with everything. Single family homes, apartments, self storage, senior living, and more. With his radio show, total wealth academy.com Steve teaches his students how to build a second stream of income that meets and exceeds all their wants and needs so they can simply enjoy life more. He's kind of like my doppelganger, Steve Davis. Welcome.

Thanks for having me. Yeah, I do feel like we're aligned, as you said. And it's really exciting to talk to you because it's fun to knock some ideas around and see where the differences are. And maybe I can learn something from you.

Well, absolutely. I know I can learn something from everybody and. Yeah, but because I'm interviewing you, I don't know if you're going to learn anything from me. It's a Steve Davis show, so.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay, let's just.

Yeah, let's rewind the tape and kind of walk us through your journey of finding real estate and why you picked apartments to start creating your passive income.

Well, what happened to me was I. I actually knew from a very young age, probably about 16, that I wanted to be a millionaire. And I remember thinking that everybody did. I thought everybody wanted to be a millionaire. I found out that wasn't true, and I started reading. I had a really great mentor, Colonel A.I. thomas. He gave me a copy of a Zig Ziglar book and. But it took me till I was 27 to wake up to the fact that it was time to do something about those goals.

And what happened at 27?

What happened was I was working 70 hours a week. I placed first place in a national sales contest in. And they sent me to Hawaii for a week. When I got back from Hawaii, they cut my pay by 20 grand a year. And what it did was it made me realize that nothing I was Doing was ever going to get me in the financial position that I wanted to be in, that the company didn't care about me and I'm not mad at them. That's what a corporation is. You know, highest and best use, make the most profit, blah, blah, blah. So I started. I couldn't sleep at night after the pay cut because I went negative cash flow and I got behind on payments and things like that. And I couldn't sleep. So I was watching late night TV and I came across Carlton Sheets, Dave Deldato, Tommy Vu, all those gurus from the 80s. And I started literally buying everyone I could get my hands on. I spent about 30 grand on credit cards, of course, sure. To get this material. And since I had bad credit, no money, I had to start off wholesaling. As soon as I was able to pay all my bills, get out of debt, I started flipping. Then I started doing single family rental. Then I bought a little 10 unit apartment as my first foray into apartments. About, about three years later, a kid came up to me and. Because by then I was, I was probably 35, to me, was a kid, because I think he was 25, right. And he comes to me and he goes, why don't you give me some of your money and I'll go buy a big apartment. Well, I had never done anything over 40 units. And I said, no, that's crazy. But there was something about him. And he persisted. He even offered to work for me for free just if I would mentor him. Finally one day I said, what have you got? He goes, I got a line on an off market 216units. I said, okay, I'll put up some of the money, but let's find some other people to put the balance up. And we did. And about nine months later, he got me an 85% rate of return.

Wow.

I said, I said, you know, Trey, I'm selling all of my real estate and giving you all of my money. I want to go passive because it was funny, I realized when that occurred that I love teaching more than I loved running real estate. Yeah, I'm a good operator, but I want my money with great operators. But I'm a great teacher, at least. I know that's vain to say, but I. I love it. I feel good doing it. And that was when I decided to become a mentor and coach. And then the rest of it was just. Every dime I made, I was giving to these syndicators until I got up to about 4,000 units.

Amazing, amazing. So you really tested the market for Yourself as an operator, decided that teaching was your passion, gave all your money to people who were operators full time so you could focus and help other people start creating passive income. Which leads me to my next question, which is what does your typical student that you meet? What is their avatar? So are they typically younger, middle aged, older? Are they married, are they single?

Sadly, they're usually above 45. People don't wake up till midlife. You know, 35 times 2 is 70, 40 times 2 is 80. So middle age is really 35, 40. But they show you on TV the 55 year old guy and they go, middle aged, Mr. Smith, he ain't middle aged, he's not gonna live to be 110. Middle age is 35, 40. And people, it's people who are waking up and going, I've worked 40, 50 hours a week for 20 plus years. I'm not in the financial position I want to be in. And they have an epiphany that if they do the same thing another 20 years, they're still not going to be in the financial position. So like me at 27, they start looking for something different. And then they come across my radio show and then they come see me.

So they're coming in, they're in some type of financial pain, they're waking up to it. And now, because I teach as well, and you and I both know the model might be simple, like the land model is simple, but nothing worth doing is easy.

That's right.

So in your experience, what makes a successful student?

It's got to be for me. And I know some people are going to say Steve's kind of negative, but it's pain. Pain is the big motivator. It's I, I subscribe to Tony Robbins concept that you'll do three times as much to avoid pain as you will to gain pleasure. If I just got on the radio and said, come with me, I'll show you how to make a bunch of money and you'll be happy. Nobody would respond. But if I go, what's your present financial position? What do you have in the bank now? What's your passive income now? If you retired today or got sick, would you have any money coming in and creating pain and people coming to the realization that they really are in trouble? A lot of people are delusional. They're 45 years old, they don't have a million bucks in the bank. You goofed up. You had 25 years and you don't have a million bucks in the bank. Come on, what you're doing doesn't work, you gotta change. So it's pain, pleasure. The people that come to me in the most pain always take the most action. If they come in their little pain, they take a little action. If they come to me and they're comfortable, a lot of them don't do a dang thing.

Yeah, I, I have to agree with you. And the way that we talk about it is they've got to come in with a burning desire.

Absolutely.

And usually that burning desire, the, the real baseline of it, the fundamental piece of that burning desire is that they are in some type of pain. A great example is Scott Todd, who knew he was about to lose his job at a Fortune 50 company, was a vice president. His whole world's going to be turned upside down, completely motivated and in his first year does all these deals and was able to replace his income in 17 months, three days.

That's phenomenal. What's that guy's name?

Scott Todd.

Man, that's impressive. But I'll tell you, that's why when I consult people, I try to get them to line out their pleasure points and their pains, which it's always funny to me that it's sometimes harder to get people to admit what they, what brings them joy and happiness than it is. They know what causes them pain. They can tell you right now, this, I don't like this, this, this and this. And then you go, okay, what makes you happy? I, I haven't even thought of it. So I think using a combat as a mentor, I like to use a combination of pain and pleasure. Find out what their pain points are, find out what their pleasure points are and set up a system that gets them more pleasure and eliminates that pain. And then those people will take action. I'm sorry, I kind of got off track there.

Yeah, no, it's, I totally agree with you. So when you say action, do most people that come to Total Wealth Academy, are they looking to syndicate apartment buildings? Are they looking at single family home rentals?

Combination, yeah. And a third one which is the passive investor. I would say that of the active members, about 20% of them are active. They're single family, fourplexes down. Then you've got probably about 5% who their passion is operation. Those are the syndicators or sponsors. That's only about 5%. The rest of them are the passive investors. There are people who have a good job, they're working 40, 50 hours a week, they're happy with their job. Believe it or not.

I don't.

They, they Just come in to passively invest.

Okay. So given the current economy, and not even just the current economy, you know, we're, we're in a time of inflation. Asset prices are going down, which they've needed to come down for some time. The question is really, what would you say is the worst advice you see or hear given in your area of expertise of helping people build passive income and real wealth?

Whoa. The worst advice. The worst advice is to confuse income generating investing with speculation.

Like, give me an example of that.

Yeah, an example would be when Warren. But Warren Buffett 30 or 40 years ago made this point. He said, never depend on a sole source of income, a job. Always invest to create a second source of income. Well, people went out and they bought stocks, mutual funds, gold, silver, crypto. Those are all speculative. He wasn't talking about that. He was talking about income producing assets like real estate and other businesses. So the worst advice, I think is telling people to gamble in the stock market, speculate in crypto or gold. People need cash flow on a monthly basis because they have bills on a monthly basis. And I think the worst advice people get is that real estate requires massive amounts of time because that's what the financial planners are telling them. And you need to just. You're not good at it. You're. It's tenants, toilets and taxes. You just need to speculate in the stock market. They need to do a combination, in my opinion, and I've seen it for 33. It's actually 33 years. I've seen it work so well for thousands of people. They build a small second stream of income that eventually replaces their earned income on the side. Sure, they have some stocks, some mutual funds, but the majority of their income and the majority of their wealth is in that real estate.

Yeah, you're definitely preaching to the choir. And my friends Russ Morgan and Joey Murray have a great podcast you love called Wealth Without Wall Street. And really this is what they talk about as well. They come to our boot camps and discuss this. But the typical financial advisor is not working for you and your freedom. They're really looking for their fees. And it's, it's a huge casino and it's crazy. The whole culture is about this. And you go on MSNBC and Jim Cramer and they're talking about these companies and no one knows, no one knows what's going to go up. No one's going to go. It's going to go down. No one knows. It's all speculative. And then at the end of the day, it's Financial insecurity. That's your reward. It's financial insecurity. Because you might have a million dollar, two million dollar paper profit, but it's just paper. And we can just pick on Elon Musk, who lost 20 billion in paper profits of record. Now, sure, he's still a multi billionaire, but if you're, if you. If we take it a smaller scale and you've got $5 million and you lose half of that in paper profits, well, you certainly don't feel wealthy anymore. And in reality, you're not wealthy at all. You're just playing this game of, you know.

And you're right, it is gambling. And people get irritated. Stock guys get irritated with me on my show because I go, that is gambling. No, it's not. Yes, it is. Because you're gambling that the market doesn't crash the year that you retire. If it does and you're still in there, you're screwed. If it's 2007 and you need to retire, you're in trouble. That's a gamble. So I agree with you. It's a giant casino. But I want to pick on financial planners for a second. I think you'll enjoy this one. I Googled it. What's the average financial planner in the United States make? Came up to about 100 grand a year.

Yeah.

So here's what people do. They go to a financial planner and they say, hey, I know you don't make a lot of money. I know you're not rich, I know you're not retired, but can you teach me how to get rich and retire? It doesn't make any sense. They can't help you.

It makes absolutely no sense.

No sense.

And yet that's what most people do. And I wonder why that is. I think there's this myth out in the world where people want to be a Warren Buffett and they think that's their way to wealth. Well, Warren Buffett's Warren Buffett simply because he understood one simple concept, which is compound interest. He's just been doing it longer than everybody else. But he's also buying the companies.

Yes, See, I'm so glad you said that. Because the reason people misunderstand Warren Buffett is because they haven't picked up his book. He specifically says, I do not buy stocks, I buy companies.

Right.

And he'll buy a mobile home manufacturer, and then he'll buy the carpet company that makes the carpet for the mobile home. He'll buy the appliance company that makes the appliances for the mobile homes. It's Genius. Genius.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's, it's so funny. So is there anyone you think shouldn't be investing in passive income? Who's this not for?

I think if, you know, Robert Kiyosaki brings up this point, if you add up all the challenges, 95% of Americans do not retire by age 65. But if you study the 5% who do, almost all of them have second streams of income. Some of them 3, 4 and 5 and 70% of them used real estate according to that statistic to generate that passive income. I believe that passive income is for Everybody. I've got 20 year old student, well, they're in their 20s, students with $20,000 a month in passive income. I think it's for everybody because even if you say I'm just gonna cover my bills with passive income, you add up your bills, they're 5,000amonth and you go get 5,000amonth in passive income, you're financially independent, you can go pick the job that you love and be happy at. That's a high quality of lifestyle.

Absolutely. Well, Steve, this has been fantastic. It's so nice to meet my passive income doppelganger. We're now at that point in the podcast where I'm going to ask you for your tip of the week. A website, a resource, a book, something else actionable for the art of passing listeners to go improve their businesses, improve their lives. But before you do that, I'm going to give a shout out to my sponsor, which is flight school. Learn how the next 16 weeks can transform your life. Go up that mountain of land, investing quickly, safely, efficiently with Scott Todd, who's done it thousands of times. You're going to start making that passive income without renters, without rehabs, without renovations, without rodents. Learn how you can get an ROI of 300 to 1,000%. Oh, yeah, and that flight school tuition ain't going to cost you nothing. Guaranteed you're going to make it back 180 days or less. Learn more go to thelandgeek.com forward slash training. Thelangeek.com forward slash training. Steve Davis. What is your tip of the week?

I think my tip is going to be to refer out my favorite book. The book that changed my life the most is Stephen Covey's work, the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I think that there is not one person, person on this planet that that book is not going to change their life. In 3, 4, 5. It changed my life in dozens of ways. So that's my tip of the week. Read the 7 Habits of Highly effective people. It will make you a better husband, a better parent, better wife, better business person, better employee. Whatever your position in life is, it's going to make you better at it, but it's also going to encourage you to move to the next level. It's just a. It changed my life.

I love that book. It's such a classic and one that now I'm going to revisit my tip of the week. Steve Fisher is Learn how to grow your passive income Become totally free. Go to Total Wealth Academy.com Total Wealth Academy.com check out what Steve's got going on. Listen to the radio show. Yours truly was on it as well. And I can't say enough good things about what Steve is doing, how he's helping people become financially free, solving not just their money problems, but also their time problems. Steve Fisher, are we good?

We're good. I appreciate it.

Well, thank you. I want to thank the listeners. Remind them the only way, the only way I'm gonna get the quality guests like Steve Davis From Total Wealth Academy.com is to do three favors. Follow Rate Review the podcast. Send us a screenshot of that review. Support the Land Geek.com I'm going to send you a signed copy of Dirt Rich Add. It's a thank you, but do it selflessly for yourself as well, because Steve Davis looks at our reviews and if we don't have a lot of reviews, he's not going to come on the podcast. So please do that. All right. Steve doesn't know I'm doing this, but 1, 2, 3, let freedom ring. Thanks, everybody. Thanks for listening to the Art of Passive Income podcast. Are you ready to learn how you can start building a passive income without renters, rehabs, renovations or rodents? Schedule a free consultation at the land geek.com.com forward slash training. Let freedom ring.