How to Create Wealth by Changing the Way We Think with Russ Morgan

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the land geek with your favorite niche real estate website, thelandgeek.com and you've got a treat, dear listener. A treat. Russ Morgan, the slow talker from wealth of Our Wall street, is back on the podcast. He's going to teach us everything we need to know about building wealth, legacy. It's just every. And actually, I mean, I. I don't know how many times Russ and Joey have been on the podcast. It's just Russ today. Every time I interview these guys, I get a little smarter as. As will you. So if you're interested in having your passive income exceed your monthly expenses, you want to build legacy. You want to learn about really living your life abundantly and not skimping out on your daily frappuccino because you want to save your. You know, you save yourself to sustenance, then this is a podcast for you. Russ Morgan. Welcome, brother.

Dude, so good to be with you as always. Thank you for having me on the show. I'm excited to jam.

Okay, so I'm very excited about the book Wealth Wall Street, Three Steps to Freedom Through Passive Income. So the first question is, why did you guys write a book?

Wow. The fact that we wrote this book, Mark, this is, like the greatest achievement. Like, I feel like I could go back to all my English teachers that I ever had, you know, at all levels, and be like, I did it. In spite of what you said, I did it. No, it was just a good. Really, for us. It was a way for us to just take all the things that we've learned over the last, like, 10 to 15 years and just put it down. Like, I. You mentioned legacy in the intro. Thank you for that. I mean, that's super important to me and Joey is that we have seven, nine kids. Good night. But I. I got lost there. My math is off. He has five, and I have four. And so legacy is super important to us. And I. I wanted something that they could pass down to their kids and their grandkids. And. But also, whenever you write out something, as you know, you're. You're an author several times over, is that it forces you to get really clear to your message and to help people better, because if somebody can't follow it, it's going to be hard for them to have success. And I wanted to make sure that people knew that the path to financial freedom was much easier than what I'd been taught as a financial planner in the past.

Yeah, I mean, I've read the book twice now. It's really clearly laid out and these are heady concepts and this is why it's so important that keep talking about the, the infinite banking concept because the first time I heard it I didn't really get it. The second time I heard it I'm like wait, this makes a little more sense. It's like it took like. And I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but it took me a while to get it. But then once I got it I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm just sick that I didn't do this 20 years ago. It's like a tree, right? When's the best time plant a tree? But so you got three steps, you got step one, a crystal clear goal. Step two, have a plan and step three, find a support system of like minded individuals. And there's sub chapters there. So let's just talk about changing the way you think. What, what is? What is, how do we get in our own ways financially?

I think the change in the way we think is too many of us have learned from someone else the wrong way. Right. Like there's a great. And I probably shared this on, on here before and I've had a chance to meet this guy. He's from, he's an engineer out of Huntsville, Alabama. He has a, a great YouTube site that I'm going to remember in a second. I'm not remembering the name of it, but the, the video is called the Backwards Bicycle. If you go watch this video, it's seven minutes long and it talks about how this guy built a bicycle that actually when you turn the handlebars to the left, it goes to the wheel goes to the right and vice versa. And the concept was is that everything's as easy as riding a bike, but yet you learned it one way. So if you had to do it, the opposite is really way harder than you think. And so he actually tried to conquer the ability to ride a bicycle where it was opposite. And it took him like eight months. Well, changing the way we think is important from that perspective is to know that everything that we've learned up to this point has been ingrained into us. So we have these neural pathways that are running and we are just commonly falling back to that status quo. And when it's good, that's great. But if it's not actually good information, then now we're leaning on bad stuff. So what my mentor Nelson Nash used to say is that we have to think about our thinking. Like we have to really think about what's being taught to us and come at it from a different framework if it's not right. So this book was built out of, hey, you maybe have been taught certain things about money that may actually not be true. Now that's okay. But if that, what you thought to be true was turned out not to be true, when would you want to know? And so this, this book kind of lays out some of those areas where the common financial ideas that prevail in the financial markets in the mainstream media today, most of them are actually not getting us closer to financial freedom, they're getting us further from it.

No, absolutely. And I, I mean I think we've talked about this. Like for me personally, like I love my family and then second is I love iabc, I love my policy and, and the reason being is that it, it's bringing me all the best things in life that are important to me. Right. So it's, it's, it's a vehicle for my, to expand my passive income, number one. But number two, it's got legacy piece as well. And then number three, I, I have compounding going on. It's, it, it almost feels dirty. Like I'm using other people's money to make these investments and, and to grow my passive income, my wealth, you know, way beyond my, my fixed expenses. And then, you know, you show up or Joey shows up and I can just tell you guys, you know, sorry, I don't, I don't need to talk to you guys. Like I could do whatever I want. It's totally free. But why, but what is it that, where do people get stuck in that, where it's like, okay, I, I don't, you know, I hear the word whole life insurance and I immediately tune out because someone said buy term, invest the rest. Yeah.

And thank you, by the way, this is you. And I wouldn't be having a conversation right now if it wasn't for infinite banking. Infinite banking was the tool that led me out of the, the financial prisons that I personally had set for myself. Right. My wife was a, a dentist, made good money. You know, I was a financial advisor, certified financial planner, was doing really well. But I had tied all my money into the market cycles of the ups and downs. And I was going to be tied to a job, a high paying one, so was my wife. Had I not learned about infinite banking. Infinite banking was the thing that unlocked all of that cash that I was pushing away till age 59 and a half. And I would have never had a conversation with you because I would have never had access to my Money I would have never thought about, hey, how do I start doing this weird thing like buying land and selling it on terms to create passive income? Why passive income? Oh, well, passive income is when I have that and it exceeds my monthly expenses, then I'm financially free.

Right.

I do whatever I want to. I can track across the world to Bali if I want to. Right, right. I could do whatever I want to. So infinite banking is ultimately more about the process of thinking about how we control our money. And then there's this product out there called whole life insurance. It's been around 200 years. This is boring as all get out. Right. But it's, what are we doing with it? Right. How are we using this tool? And so Joey and I are, you know, we just love to, you know, mimic successful people. So when we use whole life insurance, we're probably not using it the way maybe your granddad did or your State Farm agent maybe told you about. We're using it in a way where we're borrowing against the cash value that is built up if we put cash into it and using it to buy assets. And this is not new. Right. The wealthy have been doing this forever. You go look up the, the richest banks in the world. I think I've got a list of the top 24 bank banks in the nation that has over a billion, $1 billion in cash value life insurance, with the top one on the list, bank of America, having almost $25 billion. This isn't new. This isn't, you know, small thinking. It's just the way we think sometimes. It's small.

Yeah, I mean, you know, speaking of your, your land business, I think you guys are over 30,000amonth now in passive incomes. Not, not bad.

I mean, I, I think, I think it's like 32, 33. Yeah, I think so. I mean, you know, like, hey, I'm, I'm, I'm excited about that. That's, that's, that's pretty awesome.

Yeah, yeah. If you're, if you're listening to this and you're accredited investor, you know, we do have a program for you, but you have to, you have to reach out to me one on one to learn more about that. I digress because what's, what's interesting to me, what I think I had to get over, I think a lot of people have to get over is debt is bad. How, how do we, how do we get over this mindset that I don't want to have any debt? And you know, I listen to Dave Ramsey's Like I pay cash for everything. Right, right. How, how do you, how do you sort of shift that in, in people's mindset so they can become financially free? But to really accelerate it, they have to use other people's money in their policy, which is the life insurance companies. I mean, it feels like it's your money, but it's, but your money's compounding. Right.

Well, the concept of debt is definitely an emotionally charged issue, as we know. Right. And that's why Dave Renzi is become, you know, one of the most powerful people in the financial world. He has people come all the way to Nashville, Tennessee to do the debt free yell and it's emotion backed. And I think a lot of times when we think of that, we think of Bible verses where I don't want to be slave to the lender and hey, I, I don't want to be slave to anyone. Right. Like I, I want to be free. Isn't that the choice? So why wouldn't I not be in debt? And a lot of times most of the debt that people have acquired is not, is not debt. We need, is debt. We need to absolutely figure out ways to not want to acquire, but if we've acquired to figure out how to get out of it. But when we talk about debt against a life insurance policy, that's a little bit different.

Right.

And the word. Right, A loan for a life insurance policy seems like a word like that when we go to the bank and we get a loan, or if I go to my father and I get a loan. Right. We use the same words, but we know all the words aren't the same. Right. Like the word bank, for instance. The word bank can also mean how a plane is turning in the air. It can mean the way that, you know that what we're walking on is we're walking next to a river. Right. There's so many different uses of the word. So sometimes we have to know with English language, which is the greatest language in my opinion, because it's only one. I know. But it's, but it's also super complex. It has lots, like one word can mean lots of things. So when I hear the word loan on the insurance policy, you have to understand that there's a little complexity to that word that doesn't mean what everybody else thinks. A loan for insurance policy, Mark, is, is a, is a, a prepayment of your death benefit. Let me, let me say that different.

Say that again. Yeah.

Let's assume that you had a million dollar death benefit. That's What? That's what everyone who is the beneficiary of your life insurance policy would get at your death, right?

Right.

If you take a loan against the cash value, you have to have cash value in the insurance policy. What they're going to do is reduce your death benefit mark by that amount. So let's assume that you took out a $100,000 loan and you had a million dollar death benefit. If you died the day after you got it, what would your beneficiaries receive from the insurance company?

$900,000.

$900,000. So a loan against an insurance policy.

Tax free, by the way.

Tax free. Income tax free.

Income Tax free.

So that not that $100,000 loan is nothing more than a prepayment of the death benefit. Now for all those termites out there, the term, the term people, right? That's something that you can't get. There is no value unless you die. Right. So there's no way to get that prepayment. And for most people who buy life insurance, they, they buy it as a precautionary measure. They know that they're going to die at some point. They just don't want to die too early before their family would be protected by maybe the assets they accumulated. But for everything that we do, we're not really as interested in what's going to happen from the death benefit perspective. You know, 10, 20, 50, 100 years down the road, whenever that is, is more about what can we use the cash for. But the insurance company, their liability is give is the death benefit. So as soon as you take a loan against it, they're like, great. Sounds good, right? That just reduced our, our liability on our books. So I tell people when you think about taking loans, don't think about going to the bank and taking a loan is the same as you going to the insurance company taking a loan because there's a different asset that they're using to reduce it by that has nothing to do with. So if I don't go back and pay back the bank for any loans that I have, not only whatever I've gotten the loan for, they can come back and take, but they also can detrimentally hurt my credit, which would prevent me from being able to go get other loans and could make everything that I buy from that point forward more expensive. Right? Well that doesn't happen with an insurance company. One, there is no credit checks, there's no reporting to any credit agencies and they have no right to any asset that I've purchased as a result of taking that Loan. The only thing that they can do is it's, is the lapse the insurance policy that I have in the event that the cash value went to zero or pay me less, pay my beneficiaries less of the loan balance based upon the prepayment of the death benefit. From the, from the beginning.

Yeah, it's, you know, the way you guys set it up, it's, you feel so flexible. You're flexible like a yogi financially with this and it's, it's really interesting and I don't want to get too much into the weeds about how you, you guys set these up so that you have a lot of financial flexibility. I mean, the last podcast, you know, Joey told a story about, you know, losing his job and, and having to pay the premiums and, and the flexibility in it. But what, what's really great about wealth without Wall street is that there is.

A.

Sort of this hidden benefit because, you know, there's a lot of people I've talked to about infinite banking concept or becoming your own banker. And that's it. Oh yeah, we're going to set up your policy. Okay, then what? And then, then what is what makes wealth without Wall street really interesting. And that's where the book gets really interesting for me is all the places you guys have taking out loans to build your passive income and, and you say, hey, look, this is what we did. But really, let's get down to you and focus on you and your investor DNA. So let's see. Okay, based on your investor DNA, here are experts that we've already talked to and we have education for you so that if this is in your buy box, we can just shortcut it and you don't have to go out and you know, figure out like, how am I going to start using my policy? You, you like, oh, who can help me implement this? Whether it's E commerce, whether it's land, whether it's, you know, crypto. I don't, I mean you guys are into so many things now. You, you've, you are testing it all yourselves. You're reporting on it. And then based on what, you know, your investor DNA is, you're like, oh yeah, this is great. And you're, you're collapsing the time of. I'm making this, I'm, I'm building my bank, but now I can utilize it right away.

That was the thing that early on I wasn't taught exactly where and how to build passive income. That just didn't exist in any textbook. It definitely was not being taught to Me in my traditional financial, you know, planning, training, and I had to go out and. And get on podcasts and listen to podcasts and go to webinars and go to events and meet people like yourself to figure out that there's so many different ways to bring in income. But we all want the easy button, right? A guy approached me at the gym, says, hey, I know that you're that wealth without Wall street guy. I've got blank amount of cash. What would you tell me to do with it? You know, like, we just want the easy, but just tell me what to do with the money, right?

And.

And that's why we. We've been in such a bad predicament so far, financially, most of us, because all we did was just took it, put in the 401k, and we asked our buddy who'd been there a little bit longer, which one of the funds did they choose? And we did that one, too, right. And we were no closer to financial free than probably further away. Well, for us, we had to learn it. And some of it was just learning without understanding. And we. We got the experience, and we got some understanding. We started realizing what not to do. And I was like, well, man, I want to teach my kids. I want to teach my friends. I want to teach people that are clients of ours. How are we going to do it? How are we going to systemize this in a way that someone else could follow this and have the same sort of successes that we're having? I don't want us to be just the unicorns. I don't want us to have, like, hey, you're doing $50,000 a month in passive income. Oh, well, good on you, because you guys must be, you know, brilliant in all these different areas. So for. For us, it was like, okay, well, how do we connect the dots on that market, as you know, is like, we're all uniquely built. Like, we're all. We all have this framework the way we see the world. We're all have these unique skill sets. And so everything that we invest in, if we don't invest from that perspective, we're going to miss out on opportunities to use those gifts. And so we basically took this personality assessment and said, okay, well, you know, Mark, you tend to see the world from a more analytical viewpoint, right? You see the fine details, you love the processes you love finding systems you love, then being able to hand it off and watch those systems grow and scale and become big things. Well, then, you know, here's what you're doing with land. Well, Tell me about, like, why do you like that? And what is it that, though, about land investing that you don't like? And tell me some of those, like, real key details of, like, what would it take to be involved? And we started doing that with every single expert we met. And along the way we started doing it too. And so then we built out what we call this passive income matrix where we take the 10 or 15 best strategies that we've come across. We're not that it's not a complete list, but it's what we've come across. And we're like, hey, these are great. And for every person who sees the world from this perspective, a driven personality or an influencer personality, or more empathizer, more steady, dependable person, or, you know, cautious, analytical, like yourself, how would you see these different things? And we tried to give people a shortcut to saying, hey, well, let's weed out the 10 or 15 of these that don't fit and get it down to one or two that are a fit. And along the way that we've tried a bunch of them that we shouldn't have tried, but we tried it really for education purposes and been able to share that journey. And it's led us continuing to refine our, as you said, our investor buy box. I think everybody needs one of those. And if you get really clear on what all of those things are, then you'll have success because you're using those gifts in light of the way that you're built and connecting it to the investments that allow you to do it.

Well, I think, yeah, absolutely. I mean, what, what a gift you guys are, because you don't need to do it. Like, you guys are financially free and yet you continue to, you know, pour into other people so that they can solve not just their money problems, but also their time problems so they can live their best lives at the peak of their life. It's not, I gotta wait till I'm 59 and a half. And then we don't know what our health is going to be like. We don't know what our energy is going to be like. And you're just, you're just shortcutting it so that we can live our best lives at when we have energy, when we have time, when we have resources. And then if you want to go big to give big, you guys talk about that as well. So it's, you know, the, the book and everything you guys are doing, it's, it's really the peanut butter to our jelly because it's you know, we're one. We're one strategy that you can get there to solve your money and time problems. And the vehicle to get there is, well, we need money, but why not have our money compounding and then use that money to. And, you know, to go and buy assets, whether it's land, whether it's, you know, multifamily real estate, whether it's E commerce, business, depends on your. On your DNA and, and really start intentionally working on having your passive income exceed your. Your monthly expenses and, and do that. And so many people out there are just giving you one little piece of the puzzle and, and wealth out. Wall Street's like, no, here's the whole puzzle. And, and based on. You complete the puzzle and it will help you do it. I mean, it's. You're just a blessing, brother. Just a blessing.

Hey, so just one beggar showing the other beggars where the bread is, man. That's the way we see this. It's like there's so many things that I don't know that I continue to know. And a friend of mine, mentor of mine, and I think I put it in the book, he. He gave me this analogy, and I love it so much, is that he said, if you. If you took like a penny, a dime, some coin, and drew a circle around it, what you would know is that whatever was in that circle possessed all your knowledge, and everything that the edge of that circle touched was all the things that you didn't know. And he's like, you know, so time goes on and you start gaining more knowledge so you get a bigger circle, right? So, you know, he'd take a cup and he'd draw a circle around that. He said, russ, look how. Look how much more, you know, aren't you happy? And I'd be like, yeah, I know so much more. And then he would say, but look how much knowledge that you don't know is right, because as my circle got bigger, it started touching more of its area was bigger. And he's like, that's going to continue to happen in your life is that the more you know, the more you're going to learn that you don't know. And so I just continue to seek opportunities to be with people like yourself, to have opportunities to be on shows like this. Maybe there's one person that's listening to this that never heard of Infinite Banking, for instance, and says, what's that? And they go, google that. Or they jump on a call with one of our coaches and they figure out, hey, that just Unlocked for me, cash that I had not been able to use. And by understanding my investor DNA through this process, maybe now I understand how I can go buy my first property, right? How, where am I going to take the cash flow that comes from these properties? What am I going to do with it from that point forward? And, and if you're a business owner, you're thinking like, man, got all these employees and I'm trying to, to help them. But man, if I'm learning that not putting my money in jail like qualified plans do I really want my employees putting their money and qualified plans and putting their money in jail, and they start trying to figure out how do they help their team. So all these things to me are just like one little puzzle piece, as you said. But it, it starts all coming together and then you have this beautiful masterpiece at the end that not only you're enjoying, but others who come around can enjoy from it as well.

No, I, I, I love it. It's, it's so true. So, Russ, I could talk to you all day, but I gotta be respectful of your time. So we're at that point in the podcast now where I'm asking for your tip of the week. A website, a resource, maybe another book, something else actionable for the art of passive income listeners. Go improve their businesses, improve their lives. What have you got?

All right, so I, I couldn't come up with the name of the YouTube page. It is Smarter Every Day. And that, that is one of the best YouTube channels I follow. The backwards bicycle is one of my favorite on there. But he just does a lot of fun and interesting things. So if you, if you love that kind of stuff, you like kind of geeking out on, on ways things could be done better, go to the YouTube page, smarter every Day. First watch the backwards bicycle. But then I'm sure anything else you watch on that page would be cool.

Bro, you've been keeping this YouTube channel for me. I'll have to check it out. All right, I want to check it out. Well, my tip of the week is learn more about Russ Joey. Wealth, Wall street. Go to wealth wall street.com forward/ and we'll have a link to this. Art of passive income, wealth, wall street.com artofpassive income and, you know, be an overachiever. Get the book. Read it three times. I've already read it twice. But it's three steps to freedom through Passive Income. And they really break down these heady concepts in a really relatable way. The stories are great and I think even Yours truly is in the book a few times, which is super cool. So Russ, are we good?

Yes. Thank you so much again for having me on. Look forward to visiting with you again soon.

Same here. All right, I want to thank the listeners. Just remind you the only way I'm going to get Russ to come back and maybe with Joey if you do three little favors. Follow Rate Review the podcast Send a screenshot of that review to supportlangic.com I'm going to send you a copy signed copy of Dirt Rich. Dirt Rich 2 is coming out, so maybe I'll send you two books. Please do that. And just selfishly for you it helps as well. And we'll go from there. Also, Today's podcast is sponsored by Flight school. Go to landgeek.com training schedule call learn how you build that passive income without renters, rehabs, renovations, roads. I know you're thinking the the tuition tuition ain't going to cost you nothing. Guaranteed you're going to make it back 180 days or less. Just show us your work the land. Geek.com forward/training all right, thanks again, Russ and let freedom Ring.

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