Why Is Creating A Distinction Between Your Passion And A Job Necessary?

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the land geek with your favorite niche real estate website, www.thelandgeek.com. and I'm super excited to see today's guest again. However, I'd be remiss if I didn't properly introduce my co host. You know him, you love him. The brain, the professor, your fight school shirt boss. Scott Todd from scotttodd.net landmodo.com learn anything about anything. Investor ninjas. Scott Todd. How are you, Mark? I'm great.

How are you?

I'm a little intimidated because it's weird to have, you know, Allie Boone, the Ali Boone, as a guest a second time. She was one of the best passive income model. And then all of a sudden she's like, look what I did, Mark. Boom, I wrote a book. So, Ali Boone, welcome back.

Thank you. I'm so excited. I've been excited about this all morning. You have no idea.

Well, fantastic. So just for the listeners who aren't familiar with you, can you give us a little bit about your background?

Oh, boy. So I am a corporate dropout. I was working the corporate job. Typical story. Grow up, get good grades, get job security, college, blah, blah, blah. And basically the minute I walked into my first corporate job, which was a pretty rowdy, awesome corporate job, by the way, I was in aerospace engineering. Like, it was about as cool as it could get, but it was like it wasn't my dream job type of thing. So basically the minute I walked in, I was like, uh, oh, I gotta get out of here. So it took me about five years to figure out how to get out. And I wasn't set on real estate, but somehow kind of real estate became the thing. And I started investing on the side thinking, well, while I still have my corporate paycheck, I might as well do something smart with it. And one thing led to another. I started kind of almost accidentally networking. And I started in kind of a different strategy, but I ended up really in turnkey rental properties. And that's what really kind of propelled everything. And it became such a big hit because everybody was like, what are you investing in that you don't have to do all that work and swing hammers and all that. So I started telling everyone who would listen about turnkeys. And it became such a big thing. Biggerpockets took me on as a writer and I ended up leaving my corporate job to basically run through Turnkey World for God, the last eight or nine years. So it's been a total whirlwind. I've had My own turnkey properties. I've been learning on mistakes, learned. And I've been helping other people buy turnkeys. Now I've got like a turnkeys face. But honestly, I've tried to get out of turnkeys. I'm like, I'm over it. They won't let me go, so I stay in the world. But I like it because it helps new investors. It helps a lot of people who may not have gotten into the industry otherwise. And so it's a really cool kind of niche. And like we said, I just put out my first. It was my quarantine project. I had started a book a couple of years ago, and I kept getting lazy about. Turns out publishing a book is really hard. Way harder than real estate, I think. So as soon as the quarantine gates hit, I was like, well, now I have an excuse. So my book is actually not turnkeys. It's just general real estate investing. So I'm pretty excited about it.

I'm really excited to learn more about it. Scott. Todd, what are your thoughts?

It's funny, Mark, because a lot of people go down the corporate route, right? That's what you're supposed to do. And so we do what we're supposed to do. And then it's funny how many people, like, hate it. Like, they hate it instantly. I mean, like Tate, for example. Tate. Tate made it to lunch. Okay? Like, literally, the guy, his name's Tate. Like, he went to his corporate job with the state of Nevada. I don't think he made it to lunch. He basically went to lunch and told him, like, I don't think I'm coming back. Like, no, you don't get paid for not coming back. But anyway, like, no, it's weird because you go down this path and then what happens is you realize, like, it's not. For some people, it's a great path. Okay? Like, for some people. But then other people, it's not the best path. And they're like, for me, I did it, you did it, Mark did it, we all did it. But then we wanted to get out of it. And one of the things that I hear a lot or I think a lot about.

Oh, Scott, his wifi is a little off, so we're losing him here. But if I could just complete a sentence because I know him so well. It's, you know, it's not that I. You know, if I had a guess, Al, it wasn't for you about getting out of a bad corporate job, right? Because aerospace engineering is probably super sexy. Yeah, Scott, we lost you there for a second. But it's about. It's about total freedom. Working when you want, where you want and with whom you want. And you use turnkeys as a vehicle to become totally free. Scott, Todd is totally free. I'm totally free. Not as free as Scott because he's a pilot. And, like, he just wakes up one day like, I'm gonna fly here. Okay, now the two of you.

I'll. I'll drop off.

Listen, Ali, thanks so much for coming on the show. Scott, you can take it from here with your fellow pilot.

And we shift aviation.

And discuss flight plans.

I'm sorry. Like, what I was gonna say, Mark, is like, we go down this path of, like, this is what we're supposed to do, but yet then we identify it. That becomes our identity, right? And I think that one of the biggest challenges that people have is, like, leaving that corporate identity because people get afraid of, like, I see it all the time. Like, they're afraid to go create this new self, New life for themselves. And they'll say, like, well, I can't post properties on, like, my Facebook because my co workers might see it. And I'm like, who cares, right? Like, just because you're doing something on the side to build an investment doesn't mean that you're cheating. And I'd like to know, like, from Ali, like, how many people do you. Do you, like, encounter that they feel like they're cheating on their day job by creating something on the other end for themselves? And then, like, how do you get people to move past that? Because you're not cheating your corporate employer if you're doing something after hours or investing. To me, it's like, if I buy stock, they're not going to yell at me that I cheated the system. I just bought some stock.

Yeah. I think, you know, and I love the cheating reference because it's like. I think the cheating feeling is, like, it's more of the fear of getting kicked out. So if your corporate job catches you cheating, right. They're gonna dump you. And so it's like, well. And that really seems to be, I think, the biggest fear of everyone trying to leave what they know is not meant for them. But it's like, it's that fear of, what if it doesn't work? Or, what if my corporate job fires me? It's this big fear of leaving the known thing. And part of it is rightfully so. It's like, yeah, you leave it. You may not have a paycheck, and if you Have a family to support. For sure. There's actual, like, logistical things you have to take into consideration. But ultimately, I think, you know, the cheating part and everything really ties back to a huge fear of leaving that job, either for monetary reasons or, you know, feeding yourself or, you know, the identity that you talked about or just kind of like, what if I do this and I go out on my own and I fail? You know, that's a big fear for a lot of people. So I think it's just really the fear that is that complete, huge barrier. And there's so many directions that fear can come from. But, you know, at the end of the day, you do you like, you know, the rest of the world really doesn't matter if they catch you cheating? Well, consider it a godsend, you know, like, whoops, I got fired, let me now let me go live my dream kind of thing.

Yeah, I love that attitude. And you know, we talked about this before, this Tim Ferriss fear setting exercise, where when you break down your fears, you can either. You pretty much know how to handle them and there's nothing really in life now that's, that's really going to set you back that far. It's just kind of facing it. But I want to pivot now because I'm working on my second book and I know how hard it is so for you to write your first book. It's the most miserable thing. Right? But I love your title. You're not. Not your how to Guide.

I wanted to be very clear on that because I knew I'd get reviews saying, well, there was no how to guide in there. I was like, we're going to nip that quick?

Yeah, yeah. It's life lessons on hacking your mind before you hack your wallet. So what are we going to learn in this book, Ali?

So my big focus and the things I love talking about are, is like, mindset. It's psychology. And, you know, if you're a beginning real estate investor and you Google like how to become a real estate investor, all you're going to hear is like, oh, my God, go flip properties, be a wholesaler. Here's how. Everyone's just like, here's what you should do, da, da, da, da, da. And nobody, I feel like, really kind of breaks it down. So I consider this book like the prerequisite to the how to Guides because that's most of what you find is how to flip a property, how to buy a rental property, how to get creative financing, blah, blah, blah. All of that is fantastic. But I feel like, there's such a big failure rate in real estate investing, for one. It's a complicated industry. Most of us didn't learn anything about it in school. And there's. It's not a black and white type of thing. There's so many different intricacies and whatever and. And it can be overwhelming. And quite frankly, it can be a little dangerous if you're like, oh, yeah, I want to go do that flip, it'll be fine, I'll do that shack. And you know it's going to work out because the guru said it's going to. Well, my thing, like, I really try and talk to people is like, you've got to take a step back. I know it can be frustrating because it's like, I want to get in real estate. I want to learn how to do it right now. Cool. But, like, how do you know the thing that you're doing is right? Because, you know, if you go barreling off into some strategy and it might be a really risky one, and then you lose everything and then you're frustrated and then you think, I hate this industry. You've just unnecessarily kicked yourself out of what can be a really amazing industry. So like I said, I consider this, like the prerequisite, like, this is mindset. And I even tried to make it a little fun and, you know, entertaining. I put my own stories in it because that's the other thing about real estate investing books, like, God, they're not all that exciting. So I include. I kind of break down the industry, like, what makes it different than basically any other industry really in the world. Some myths, I kind of bust those. I go through different concepts like leveraging and stuff. But again, in more of a fun context. There's technical details, sort of, but it's broader picture. And then kind of my own ideas on things. And then I actually did kind of throw a how to guide in. I put in like the, literally the six steps that got me out of corporate, which are the same six steps you can use to succeed in this industry, in my opinion. It worked for me. And then at the very end, I included interviews from successful investors who are in all different strategies. So that way you get kind of like a day in the life of like, okay, this person flips properties. What does that actually entail? Because nobody really talks about that. They're like, here's how you do it. But what does that translate to in real life? So I thought it'd be kind of cool to bring in actual people who are Doing it to say, here's the skills you need, here's the things I have to deal with on a daily basis, here's how much time I actually spend on it, here are the risk factors, blah, blah, blah. So I'm pretty excited about how it turned out, honestly. It's a fun read and I gave it that subtitle, the Life Lessons. Because you can use a lot in there. Not real estate. So even a lot of my friends who ended up buying the book, who could care less about real estate, they even enjoyed it because it's stuff that can pertain anywhere, just kind of happens to be. Real estate is the vehicle for explaining them.

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I have some strong opinions on this, but I want to hear from Scott. Todd, what are your thoughts? Scott.

I do think that the mental side of this whole thing is, is really the missing component. Right. Because it's not about the how to. It really isn't. Because there's enough information out there that you can go do.

Okay.

Like the biggest part of, I think the biggest challenge that we all have is breaking outside of our own mindset and our self limiting beliefs. Okay. Like, because you can literally do anything you want if you believe you can do it. It's like what your parents used to say. Oh, you can do whatever you want as long as you know you can do whatever. You're a smart person. Yeah, you got to say that, mom, you know, like that whole thing. But the reality is that they're right, like literally. I mean, we go and we tell our kids that we can do whatever you want to do, but you got to believe you can go do it.

Right.

And so if you can get out of your own way and stop like putting self limiting beliefs on yourself, wow. You'd be amazed at what you could create. And so I think that, you know, if you have kind of like that six step or that how to guide of like here, go get out of this. And then you can show like you did the six steps that you used to get out of your corporate job. I think that, I think that that's what people need, right? They need a roadmap to like change where they are. Because we're given a roadmap. The roadmap is go to school, go to college and get a job and then work the job for four years. The job that you hate, by the way. But that's okay. So give them a new roadmap. I think that's incredible.

Yeah. And just like you're saying like a big part of that Is that fear of failure? Like so many people don't want to get into it because they're terrified of failing. So there's quite a bit of talk in there about like I was like, I don't even want to use the word failure because it has such a negative connotation. Oops, you made a mistake. Cool. Pick up from it, learn from it. You know, it's like how to navigate that part of it. Because exactly what you're saying is it's that self limiting beliefs, not believing you can do it in the first place and then thinking, well, maybe I could do it, but what if I fail? Oh, I better not try. So yeah, I'm right there with everything you said for sure.

Yeah.

No, I really feel like the Truman show, right? Like don't get in that boat and sail in the water because you're going to drown, you know. So Truman was like afraid of the water, but then when he finally got in the boat he realized he's just on tv.

Right. But what I love about this book, Ali, is it is the foundation to not just real estate investing, but anything you want to do in life to get out of your comfort zone. Because until we get over sort of these mental hurdles, all the how to in the world is not going to help. And Scott and I talk about this all the time in our one on one coaching program. 90% of it is mental.

Totally.

10% of it is how to. So I want to talk about one of these chapters in your book.

Oh, I'm so excited. Which one? Which one?

The three true currencies.

What are everyone's talking about?

The three true currencies.

So I have my own personal theory. I assume people can buy into it or not. I think that there are three true currencies in life. The first one is money. We all know that you trade money for what you want. But the two that I feel like are never talked about are time, insanity. And so when I look at any scenario and I kind of break it down in the book is like I gave the example, I think in the book of I want to build some bookshelves. Okay, cool. Do I do it myself or do I hire somebody? For me personally, of the three currencies, the way that I value them for myself, sanity is number one. If I'm going to lose my sanity on any project, anything I'm doing, staying in my corporate job because my sanity was totally at stake there, then I need to make a change. For me, money actually has the least value because I value my time and sanity more. And that may be different for everybody. Some people may be more money focused, but when you can actually look at any scenario and look, okay, what am I going to spend in order to get this thing? So I want to get bookshelves built. Well, I'm either going to spend a lot of money to hire someone or I'm going to do it myself and lose time or potentially sanity. Some people are great at building shelves. They're not going to lose sanity. So it's like, well, what are the give and takes and how does that rank for me? And so for me personally, if I'm going to have bookshelves build, I would rather spend the money to have someone else do it than in lieu of saving my time and sanity. So I think it's a good exercise in anything in life is looking at those three things because you are absolutely spending one of those three things or more. And you know, if you can know for yourself what is most important, then you can make your decisions properly. So like if time, for example, is your most valued component, let's say you, I don't know, work a corporate job and you have a family of five kids and whatever, do you want to take on a full time job as a house flipper or a wholesaler or whatever or. Well, that doesn't really make a lot of sense if time is what you're trying to save because those are very active strategies. It's honestly kind of my favorite chapter in the book too because I think it's game changing when you actually, because nobody takes the time to really think about that. We just assume, oh, well, I need to save the money, should I hire the house cleaner? I don't really want to spend that money. Well, what's the alternative? I think it's fun exercise because when you really just start a, start applying it to like random little things every day, like, oh, maybe I don't want to do it that way. And especially for real estate investing, that's huge because all of the strategies vary as far as how much money they're going to require or get. You like turnkeys don't have the highest returns, but for me, I get to keep my time and sanity most of the time. And you know, so it's, it's how to gauge what strategy you want to get in based on what's the most important currency to you.

Yeah, yeah, you're definitely preaching to the choir here, Scott. Todd, what are your thoughts?

Hey, Marcus. Like what we talk about all the time, right? Like if you're doing something that you're not good at, well, then it's gonna take you longer to do it. It's not gonna turn out that great. You know, like, I always use the example that, you know, Eric Peterson, for example.

Mark.

Yeah. He's a graphic designer. Okay. So, like, you could say to him, hey, go create this logo for me. And he's going to do it probably like in 15 minutes. And it's going to look like, you know, like, just incredible. I'm going to go do it. It's going to take me three to four hours. I'm going to sit back, I'm going to lean back in the chair. I'm going to be like, hey, Eric, what do you think? He's going to be like, it's okay, right? Like, it's fine. And deep down, size, like, this is wrong, and this is wrong, and this is wrong. And I'm looking at it going, oh, wow, great. I'm good. So when you have just a little bit to be dangerous, you're dangerous. You're dangerous to yourself because you're costing yourself time, money, frustration, mind, whatever. You're probably destroying relationships because you're grumpy, because it's not turning out the way that you want. Just do what you're good at and leave the other stuff to the people that are good at that thing. Get out of your own way.

Yeah, no, absolutely. And comparison is a thief of happiness. And I was joking about you both being pilots, but for me to become a pilot just because I'm jealous of both of you would take a tr. Like, it would just take a tremendous amount of time and mental bandwidth that I'm right now not willing to commit because I don't think for me it would be so joyful. So, you know, like, if we look at like, just like the Marie Kondo method of life. Right. Does this bring me joy for everyone? It's going to be different where some people love to cook and they don't mind spending that time where other people look at it from like an engineering perspective, well, it takes 45 minutes to do, do this and this, another 30 minutes to clean up and five minutes to eat. Why on earth I ever cook.

As good if I cook it and it.

Never tastes as good as I could. So. So just individually, what brings you joy? But from a, from an investing perspective and a life perspective, I think it's a really interesting exercise to really know what gives you, what keeps you sane and really, really valuing your time. In every aspect of life. We're all terminal. And until you embrace that, you're completely terminal. Do you really want to spend 20 minutes looking for a parking spot when you can just valet and spend eight bucks? You start looking at life completely differently. Do you really want to go into wholesaling if you have a full time job when you can just go into turnkeys? Right. It's just, it's just completely different perspective. So I love that chapter.

Thanks. I like that one. It's kind of one of my favorites too.

Yeah. So we're almost at that point in the podcast. We're going to ask you for your tip of the week. A website resource, a book, something else actionable. But before we do so, it's very important that we talk about today's podcast sponsor, flight school. Learn in the next 16 weeks can literally change your life. Go up the mountain of land investing with Scott Todd. He's done it thousands of times. Go up there quickly, safely, efficiently. Start building passive income without renters, rehabs, renovations or rodents. Start valuing your time. Even Ali Boone would be like, this is a great idea. Learn more. Go to land Ally approved. Go to langley.com forward/training. Learn how flight school in the next 16 weeks can really start moving the needle in your life. All right, Ally Boone, we are now at that point we're going to ask you for your tip of the week website, resource of book. What do you got?

Well, so I'm a brand new author and I would love to share my first book with all of you guys. So I made a link specific just for all of you listening. It's so my company is Hipster Investments. For the record, I'm not a hipster. Hipsterinvestments.com artofpassive so if you go to that link, you can get a free digital copy of the book. It sells on Amazon for $14.99. It's free for you. All I ask in return is if you like it, share with people who you think could get value from it. And if you're so willing, leave me a book review. Because that's the big thing on Amazon. As the brand new author is, I really need those reviews. So free copy of the book to you. Hopefully you'll leave me a review in return. But then you can also, you know, on that same link, you can get my information, links to contact me, reach out and say hello anytime. But go get the free book. That's my tip.

I love it. I love it. Scott Todd, what's your tip of the week mark?

Sometimes you need to have like a confidential conversation with someone. Like maybe you need to pass to them a credit card number or a password. Right. Like you don't want to just send it through email and who knows who gets it? So check out this website, Keychat Online. And if you go to Keychat Online, right there on the page, it'll say like, you know, start a new chat or join a chat. So I just gave you the link, the, the code, five digit code to join a chat.

Right.

And if you went in there, it would be a private chat between you and I. I could pass to you a secret password or I don't know, you know, credit card number, maybe to a VA or somebody. So it's not. There's no sign up required. It's a good fast way to do something. Check it out.

Wait, I'm going on there now. I don't see where to put in my, my code up at the very top. Okay.

When you get there, it says, it says start.

Start a. Oh, share the secret code to start chatting.

It says enter in. See, I started a chat.

Okay.

On the front page, if you just were the. The five asterisks are. If you just enter the code that I shared with you, then you and I would be. It says it doesn't exist now because.

Oh, I see. I see. Okay. Enter with secret code.

Yeah. So basically.

Oh, nice.

Yeah. So there you go, man. Like, you get the idea.

This is a really good tip. This is a really good tip. Well along the lines of Ali Boone and not your how to guide to Real Estate Investing and mindset. One of the things that I love to do is meditate and have a meditation practice. But you know, there's all. There's. There's headspace and there's waking up and these are great apps, but it's kind of one guy's voice and after a while you kind of get sick of that voice. So I found another app. It is called Simple Habit and it's all these sort of meditation experts and their different voices, all different types of things. So check out Simple Habit app. I even think it's on for Android. I know for sure it's on iOS because all the hipsters are on iOS but if you happen to be one of those Android people, it's probably there as well. And so that's going to be my tip of the week as well as. Look, Free book. Give a review. Hipster investments.com Ali Boone, thank you so much for sharing. Are we good?

I think we're good. I love it. I'm so excited. We got to do another episode.

Same here. We could do another one. Just talk more about the book.

Works for me.

You know, Scott, Todd, are we good?

We're good, Mark.

All right. I want to thank the listeners and just remind them the only way, the only way we're getting the quality of guests like an Ali Boone is if you do us three little favors. You got to subscribe, you got to rate, you got to review the podcast. Send us a screenshot of that review to support thelandgeek.com we're going to send you for free the whole tailing course. How to double your money, 30 days or less. Normally 97 bucks, but get it for free and do that. So, Scott, we ready? One, two, three. Let, let freedom.

Freedom.

Ring.

Ring.

It was pretty good. Not bad. Thanks, everybody.