Roadmap To A Fulfilled Life—How To Create The Best Life Possible

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the land geek with your favorite niche real estate website, www.thelandgeek.com. and I'm really excited for today's guest because we don't often get somebody who actually retired so young they're able to just run a nonprofit. But before we talk to our guests, I would be remiss if I didn't properly introduce my co host. You know him, you love him. Scott Todd from scotttodd.net, landmodo.com and most importantly, if you're not automating your Craigslist and your Facebook postings, postingdomination.com thelandgeek Scott Todd, are you ready for this? Mark?

I'm Ray. Let's go.

All right, Our guest today is Tim Rhode from onelifefullylived.org Tim got a late start in life, but but figures it out. Sells tons of real estate, retires young and through passive income, and now he runs a nonprofit teaching us how to live our best lives possible. Tim Rhode, how are you?

I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on. Mark and Scott, looking forward to helping your listeners dream, plan and live their very best lives possible.

Okay, so, Tim, dream plan and live their very best lives possible. Start us from the beginning of your superhero journey to where you came to the realization that I'm gonna help people dream, plan and live their best lives possible.

Yeah, I love you. Say superhero's journey. I'm sure you've read the Hero's Journey by Joseph Campbell, and, you know, I think mine fits into that. I grew up in a small rural town in Northern California. I was the kid in the back of your class throwing spit wads at you or, you know, just doing anything but paying attention to the teacher because I didn't want to learn the periodic tables. So I looked up at 25 years old and I was a part time grocery clerk working 16 hours painting addresses on people's curbs to buy diapers for my two small kids. I found my niche selling real estate. I averaged listing and selling around 18 homes a month for the next 18 years. And I looked up at 40 and was like, wow, you're a millionaire. You're financially free. Boy, you've come a long way. What's next? It's like I never want to sell another house again. Well, what are you going to do? Well, you just flipped a home. You got some rentals. Now you just buy a home every month and just go play, get the goods in the woods, ski 100 days, go to the ocean do the things you like, and while you're out there, think about what's next. Where are you going with the rest of this? And, boy, I've been able to just create my own magnificent future. And now my mission is. It's kind of like I've seen Oz, and I want to take as many with me as possible.

I love it. I love it. Tim. I mean, what do you think of when you hear the word successful?

I think it's shallow. Candidly, I don't think it has a lot of depth. I like the word fulfillment. It's success with depth. And to me, too many people are just. How can I put this? And I don't want this to sound wrong because you've got to kind of put the oxygen mask on you and become financially free before you can live an incredible life. But to me, fulfillment better fits what I'm all about. The balance wheel. If you're just looking at success, career, money, finances, there may be other pieces within that balance wheel that you really need to work on to live a rich, full life. Hope that makes sense.

It totally makes sense. I mean, when I think of success, I just think of Scott. Todd, right? So here's this guy. He has a plan, gets out of his Fortune 300 job, has passive income, and now he's learning to fly a plane. He's on the boat. He works where he wants, when he wants, with whom he wants. Scott. I mean, when you. When you thought like when you were younger, Scott, like, what did you think of success? Did you think fulfillment like, Tim. Or was it like money, career?

No, I always saw success is kind of like, you know, the big house, the million dollar house, the nice car. You know, it's the. It's the stuff that you hear about, like, you know, lifestyles of the rich and famous, right? You know, like, it's that kind of stuff. And then what happens is you start to realize that, like, okay, like when, you know, Mark, when I. When I became a VP for the Fortune 300 company, you know, like, literally, I remember, like, the next day I was like, okay, now my title says vp, but what does that mean, right? Like, what have I done? Okay, I make more money and I have this title, but nothing in my life changed. Like, you know, you think like, okay, well, when I make it to this big point, something's going to change. But I was living in the exact same house, right? Like, I lived in the same house, I drove the same company car, had a title, and it's like, okay, I've made it to I've made it here and now what? Right? Like, you know, now I've got more stress. You know, man, does the money even justify the stress, or should I just stay in my old job? And I mean, like, that was kind of a piece of cake, you know, at the time. So, you know, I think that success and what it means to you kind of evolves over time, because when you, like we're. Tim was saying, like, he's out, you know, he's out painting. Painting numbers on curbs to pay for diapers. The reality is, is that, you know, success at that point does become a big house, you know, money and everything. But then you start to realize, like, a number, a number of money is not necessarily how you identify success. I mean, you know, if somebody's making $60,000 a year and they are roaming the country or living the life to their fullest, they are successful far beyond somebody who's, I think, is stuck in a. In an office, you know, working 40 to 60 hours a week and miserable. Like, I'd rather. I'd rather have less money and be happy than more money and miserable.

Yeah, Tim, I mean, do you. Do you agree with that? Or what's. What's your thought as far as, like, what it takes to be fully fulfilled and what are some of your. What's. Some of your advice or tips or like a roadmap, if you will, to live a fully lived life?

Well, I think Scott pretty much hit it on the head. You know, we've all met miserable people who are. Who are successful and very wealthy, and some of the happiest people I ever met were living with dirt floors in Jamaica when I was on my honeymoon. You know, so I don't think that really, you know, that doesn't necessarily equate success financially. I think a lot of it comes from inside. I think far too many people are looking for external things on the outside, and, you know, there may be a few tweaks they need to make in their own personal life to grab that inner peace that's going to lead you to make more money, to be more charitable, to have better relationships. And I think these are the things I've learned, and I'm sure both of you can relate to this, is it starts with loving yourself, and it starts with having a really good understanding of who you are at your core and what's most important to you, what your values are. And this is the things that I learned. Spending a lot of time out in the boonies, just hiking and walking. And if you've ever read the book the E. Myth. They talk about working on your business, not in your business. I'm talking taking a step further. You're working on your life, not in your life. Sometimes we can just be have that tunnel vision because we're just after that next thing in front of us and we're not really thinking about, you know, who am I? What's my dream, what's my plan, where am I going with all this and who do I want to show to share?

Yeah, I don't want to disappoint my parents, though, so I'm just going to live there. Their dream, their values? No, but I think a lot of us just unconsciously just take that on, and that is kind of a burden, if you will. What does it take to step back and live with that full awareness of, like, what's really important to me and sort of drop the baggage of the first 18 years of my life, of the parental sort of, you know, way of, you know, this is what's important, you know, get a good education, get a good job, you know, get a big house and provide us grandchildren, please.

Well, first of all, the communities that I, you know, I started, one life fully lived. I'm also one of the founders of something called gobundance, which is one life at a mastery level. And the ecosystems I operate in were very non traditional. Okay? Just like myself. I barely graduated high school, didn't go to college. And a lot of my friends are, I was going to say successful, but are living fulfilling lives that didn't go the traditional route. And we highly encourage questioning everything at a young age.

Okay.

And especially going to college and getting a bunch of debt. I think that is, frankly, unless I got a friend who went to college. Friends, kid, She's a pharmacist. She has 150,000 in debt. She'll make 150,000 a year. That makes sense. She's got a, you know, this is going to pay for this. But if you get 100,000 in debt and go be a bartender, what the heck were you thinking? You know, and that's the word is thinking. So we highly encourage people at any age to ask themselves these questions. And by the way, one life fully lived has a literal roadmap. And those are the questions we ask. Who am I at my core? Do I like to be indoors, outdoors, with people, by myself? Think, talk, write? You know, what makes me come alive? What can I not stand to do? What's my dream for my magnificent future? When I look up, no matter what Your age is whether it's 18, 28, 38, 48, 58, 88, what's the next 10 years of your life? Where are you going with all of this? And these are some of the questions we ask that make us very tuned in and turned on to our lives and going full out playing our game to where we know we're living the best life we possibly can.

Scott Todd, what are your thoughts?

Well, I mean, I mean, I got many of them, I would tell you that. Mark. It's funny because, you know, in flight school and also boot camp, I teach like when I teach about like building your VA team and all that stuff, I talk about like, what's core to you? Like, what's your core? And I think obviously I don't go into the same depth that Tim's going to go into in his teachings because of time, but essentially I think that when you can sit there and identify what is core to you, and then you want to hold on to that stuff, you know, great, and then figure out how to get people to do the work that's not core to you. And I mean, like, there's work that I do and I know that there's work that you do that's core to you. It's stuff that you enjoy and you know, whether it scales or it doesn't scale, it doesn't really matter. It's what you enjoy and that's the work that you do. Everything else you kind of like let go. And then Timmy, like you were, you're talking about, like, you know, determine whether or not college is a right, right fit for somebody. And you know, like I, I'm somebody that went to college late. You know, like I went to, I went to college, I got an AA degree and then kind of took a, took a longer break. And then I went back and I got my, my bachelor's degree and I got my master's degree, like, all right.

Right back to back.

And you know, that's a, that's a question that I like, kind of debated whether or not like the value of a college degree is important or not. And like, for me, what I found is like the jobs that I wanted, the jobs that I felt like would open the doors to get me to the next level. They all required that like four year degree, right, for me to get on the path that I wanted. But what I was cautious about is like, there's no reason to go and run up, you know, 50, 60, $100,000 out grand. This is some time ago, but a huge Student loan debt. If you're not going to get that back, you know, it's return on your capital. Right? And, you know, I think that there's. There's value, and I think that it's up to each individual person, you know, can I. Can I get ahead? Can I. Can my degree or can this degree that I'm about to go get, can it open the doors for me? That I feel like you're looking at it and saying, you know, can it. Can it open the doors for me or not? And I think what. A lot. A lot of times what people do is they just go to college because their parents told them, you got to go to college and get a degree. And like, I like what you're saying about just asking questions. Maybe college isn't right for everybody, and there's nothing wrong with that, and then maybe it's right for them later on in life. There's nothing wrong with that, and there's nothing wrong with pivoting. But I think you got to ask the question is, you know, will this degree or will this training or will this open the doors that I want to open? If you're just following blindly, I think you're in trouble.

Right.

Makes sense.

Tim, what is. What do you. I mean, what do you believe to.

Be.

You know, normal or cool or real that other people would think is crazy?

Well, let me give you some examples, okay? I think that's the best thing I can do. There's people in our community that started as entrepreneurs at a young age, and one of them's a dreamer. That's coming to mind. He is not a U.S. citizen. He got a job with Chevron with full benefits through creativeness, bought his first property about five or six years ago, and now he owns 12 rental properties that provide about 10,000amonth in passive income. He quit his corporate job about two years ago and sells. Makes a couple hundred grand selling real estate. So he's 27 years old and he's going to be. He owns a website called financially free by 30. And I can give you example after example of different models of people not going down the traditional path and thinking for themselves. And instead of incurring debt and wasting time getting started, they're in the trenches at an early age, either working for somebody else and really minding their finances. And I'd love to touch on that piece. And then taking all their extra money and putting it into passive income sources, which we call horizontal income. Let me just touch on that. Most people want a bigger paycheck that's vertical income. And in the communities I operate in, we want horizontal income. We want a lot of paychecks. And one of our heroes, his name's David Osborne, he helped create gobundance with me. He wrote a book called Wealth Can't Wait. David has somewhere between 200 and 250 paychecks every month. Runs like four different businesses, three levels deep. I spent time with this guy. His phone never rings and he's just got mailbox money coming out the wazoo because he works it so well.

Yeah, I mean we're all about mailbox money. That's basically our business model is, you know, passive income and real estate without headaches. But let's go back to the finances. Let's say that, you know, you're Talking to my 16 year old son Noah and he goes, uncle Tim, give me some financial advice. What would you give him?

Okay, so Noah's over at my house and we're about to climb Riker Peak, which is a mountain in my backyard. Okay. And Noah and I are going to climb up there and I'm going to tell them, Noah, it doesn't matter how much money you make, it matters how what you do with the money you make. Okay? And if you want to get somewhere in life, Noah, you got to know your financial ABCs. A, what's coming in from all income sources, B, what's it cost you a month to live? And C, how are you going to, unfortunately for too many people, reduce debt? But if you have no debt, how are you going to invest wisely? And I've come across a lot of Noahs and had this conversation at 16 with them through our one life fully lived conference and have them meet some of the kids like the dreamer Diego Corzo I talked about and some of the others that are young and crushing it because they understand this concept. A, what's coming in just absolutely knowing these numbers? B, what's it cost me per month to live and see what's left to invest and how am I going to invest? Wisely. Huge piece of the whole quotient.

I love it. I love it. What is some of the worst advice you see or hear given in your area of expertise?

Well, let me take the opposite of what I just said. I've coached people. I coached a lady who made a million a year for 15 straight years and then I coached her and I met her three years later. She had nothing to show for her $15 million. When her income was at 200, she spent 199. When I went to 500. She spent 499. When it was at a million, she spent every dime and she had nothing to show for it. And the worst advice is what most are doing, they're not paying attention. The biggest piece is the what's it cost me to live? Vince Lombardi said defense wins championships. The people that know what it cost them to live and are focused on eliminating leakage and learning all they can about investing are the few that I've seen that are able to retire young, financially free, and then have the choices of what you want to do every day. You're worth it, people.

Yeah, but Scott Todd, what do you say to your spouse, your children, or, you know, your buddy that says, oh, come on, Scott, like, fly business class, fly first class. You only live once. Come on, man, you know, get the hundred thousand dollar Bentley. You can afford it. You only live once.

Well, Mark, I mean, like you would say, like, you know, you can always make more money. You can make more time. Right. You know, and so it's, it's a little, it's a little bit different though. You know, you're. In your analogy, you're always talking about, like, paying for something that will create more time for you as opposed to just kind of like flushing the money down the toilet. And I think that, I think it's, it's good in order. Like, I think it's good that you can, you know, go and spend money on fantastic things. But at the same time, just like you use the analogy, you can always make more money. You can, but you can make more time. Well, if you can apply that same logic to the money that you have coming in the door, if you can just put off some of that self gratification of like, I'm gonna go do this today, and you just invest that money. Well, man, you're, you're taking a little bit of sacrifice today to make a big, big leverage point later on because you're, you're, you're deferring the instant gratification. Yeah.

And then everything compounds, right? I mean, the magic of compound interest applies to everything in life, not just money.

Then you can fly business class. Then you can retire, you know, at the age of 45, then you can do it, do whatever you want to do, then you have the freedom. But it's not about being gratified necessarily. Always today, it's about, you know, how can I take these marching soldiers, these dollars and have them go out and create more dollars so then I can do the stuff that I really want to do?

Tim, what do you think?

I think that's spot on. And, you know, a piece of all this, you said you can always make more money. That's a huge piece of this is looking for. How can I do what I do better? You know, provide better service, find something ancillary. Like when I sold real estate, I'm flipping homes, I'm buying rentals, I'm doing notes, I'm doing stuff that's related to what I do. And then that way, you know, and by the way, I'm not talking about being a tight wad and never going on vacation and living like a miser and not giving the charity. Of course you want to do the things that make up a rich, full life, but it's just a matter of knowing your numbers, trying to increase your A, trying to have your B stay the same, increase your C, and then learn all you can about investing for the best, for your risk tolerance, if you will, to where you get the best bang for your buck on your investing.

All right. I love it. I love it. Well, Tim, we're at that point in the podcast now. We're going to put you on the spot, and your mentorship has been great, but we're going to ask you for one more tip. A website, a resource, a book, something actionable where the art of passive income listeners can go right now, improve their businesses, improve their lives. What have you got?

Well, I mentioned the book the E. Myth, and if you haven't read that book, please do. But. But also the book the Richest man in Babylon, I probably read that. And I hope you know, maybe this is one your listeners are familiar with, but if you haven't read this book, please get it today. And the money concepts in that book, you know, I read that over and over. And then one more bonus one is play the game Cash Flow by Robert Kiyosaki, because that is everything we're talking about here. Getting out of the rat race, becoming financially free. You learn how to do it in a game, and then you get a balance sheet of what's coming in, what's going out, what's it cost me to live. And the object of the game is to have your passive income be more than what your expense is. And when that happens in the game, you get to turn your game board over.

And.

And in life, it's the same thing. You want to turn your life's game board.

Yeah, I mean, that's. That's our whole business model, by the way, is helping people get to that point. So, you know, you're preaching to the choir here, Scott Todd, what's your tip of the week mark?

Are you a digital pack rat? I think you are. Like, I think, I think, like, I know at boot camp when I see your computer and you have like 50 gajillion like tabs open and then like on your Chrome browser and you're like hunting like, is it this one? Oh, no, it's not that one. Is it this one? No, no, it's not that. It's not that one. Check out this link. Okay, Check out this tip of the day. It's a Chrome extension called gototab. And if you go and you load it, what happens is the, it puts a little thing on the side of your screen, like up on your icon bar up there. And all your open tabs, they all just drop down in a nice orderly way that you can find them. And if you have so many open, you can't like decipher which one it is, you can at least start typing in the URL and it will take you to that one.

So I'm so embarrassed that I love this tip so much because I am a digital pack rat.

I know. Like, I mean, I see you at boot camp, you're like, oh, wait, here. No, no, that's not it. I can't find it. You get like stressed out and this is your solution. You're going to like, every time, every time you go to use this, you're going to think of me.

Just another reason to love you so much. It's fantastic. Great tip. All right, my tip of the week is learn more about how to live a fully fulfilled life@onelifefullylived.org Tim's got a special little art of passive income podcast discount for us. What? Tim, tell us about this.

Well, Our conference costs $325, 395 at the door, but for your guests, if they register early, they get to come for $250. And it's the code is 1Life250. Just put that in as the code coupon code. When you go to register, bring the family. Kids come for $100. We have one life next gen conference going. While the main conference is going, we're teaching people how to dream, plan and live their best lives. We have guests like billionaire founder of Priceline.com, jeff Hoffman. We get amazing speakers. This thing should cost $5,000. I've been to. Ours is better than some of the conferences I've been to at $5,000. We have over 30 world class presenters from all walks of life. All areas of living a rich holistic life. And it's only $250 for your. For your listeners. October 21st and 22nd, Sacramento, California. Hotel rooms are $89. We try to do everything as reasonable as possible because we want you there.

Fantastic. Fantastic. All right. Well, Tim, are we good?

I feel good. I love what you guys are doing. I'm a firm believer in passive income. It sounds like we're on the, you know, a lot of the same beliefs. So thank you so much for having me as a guest on your show.

Thank you. Thanks. Thank you, Scott. Todd, are we good? Mark are great. All right. I also remind everybody, you know, the only way that we're going to get the quality of guests like a Tim Rhode is if you do us three little favors. You got to subscribe, get a rate and get a review the podcast. Send us a screenshot of your review to support thelandgeek.com going to send you for free the $97 passive income lunch kit. And also, if you want to learn more about Tim, you can also go to gobundance.com gobundance.com we'll have a link to that as well. And today's podcast is sponsored by posting domination.com/forward/the land Geek. You can always make more money. You can't get more time. By the way, in the time that I just did this, I just posted 120 ads on Craigslist by pressing a button. Pretty good, huh, Scott, you like that?

I love it.

Love it, Mark. I love the voice, the voiceover.

I could take it or leave it.

But take it or leave it. Alright, fine. I gotta go with my voice. Yeah.

Be yourself.

All right. Today's podcast is sponsored by hostingdomination.com forward/the land geek. All right, well, I want to thank all the listeners and let freedom ring ring. Thanks, everybody.