Create Wealth, Not a Job with Justin Donald

Foreign. Justin Donald joins the Todd cast. I love it. All right, so Justin's a dear friend of mine and I am delighted to introduce you to him. He is one of these remarkable people. I think it was Forbes that said he is the Warren Buffett of our day. 1. What can you take away from him? Well, many things. On every episode of the Todd Cast, I'm going to introduce you to my remarkable people that I interact with on a weekly basis. In fact, tomorrow I've got a call with Justin Donald on my calendar and I can't wait. It's a recurring. What do you get out of this interview? The opportunity to discover how Justin got his life to the next level. Because that's my hope for you with this show, is you can look at what people are doing really well, lift up their blueprint, lay it down in your life. Justin got his life to the next level when he realized he needed to be working smarter and not harder. He's the author of the Lifestyle Investor and what does he do really well? He finds investment opportunities that that generate money for him every month, recurring revenue so he could quit that full time job he had or retire his wife from her teaching job and then continue to invest in things that will grow his revenue even more. He's a remarkable person to learn from. And Justin and I, with a group of remarkable people, spent four days in Cabo right, right at the beginning of the pandemic, and we all went down there and we mastermind together on how we all are going to learn new things so we can do more, serve more and be more, look for the blueprints, unravel his story and allow me to guide you so you can leverage Justin Donald's secrets to get your financial life to the next level. But first, a word from our sponsors. This podcast is brought to you by the Wirebuzz team. Now, if that name sounds familiar, it's because I've spent the past decade growing Wirebuzz into a digital marketing powerhouse designed to maximize clarity in complex sales processes so we can help accelerate revenue. And we do this in three phases. Phase one, we transform your website to function like your best salesperson and then also incorporate persuasive on demand sales videos. Now, your entire team is aligned on messaging and they're injecting massive clarity into your prospect's head. So your site looks great, but it also has engaging content that helps your team sell on demand 24. 7. The next phase. Phase two, we train your sales and marketing teams to sell remotely or in person to expand the impact of your sales team. And the third phase is we develop and run targeted ads to your prospects. Scale those ads to help you achieve more business results. Sign up for the Wirebuzz Company newsletter to learn more about effective and simple ways to improve your company messaging, attract more digital attention, and ultimately make more sales. Justin, what is up? How are you, man?

Good. It's good to be here, Todd. And by the way, very catchy. The Todd cast you've got just rolls off the tongue.

Well, leave it to a marketer to come up with a catchy name and wrap his name with some branding out. Justin and I, in the interest of full disclosure, we're friends. Justin, how long. How long ago were you in town? Like two weeks ago?

Yeah. Yeah. A couple weeks ago, you and I got a chance to hang out and I stayed at the Fairmont Princess Inn where I guess I saw the aftermath of the debauchery of the Phoenix Open. Yeah, that golf tournament. And man, it was. I mean, I think that was the place to be. That place. It had some fun.

It sure had some fun. And with fun comes recovery. People see it financially when they have some fun and they spend too much like a drunking sailor, and then they have some recovery, like a hangover to deal with financially. Hey, let's start at the very beginning, at inside of your. Let's start with a foundational point. Why is the. Why is your ethos creating wealth without creating a job? Let's start at that foundational point. Let's unpack it. And then if you could, because I know your life story is filled with these inflection moments where you've been able to accelerate your results and other people. Let's start unpacking those so people can understand the moments that are playing out in their life where they can seize an opportunity to get next level. Sound good?

Yeah, sounds great. So, you know, it's interesting when you kind of look at, you know, the life that I live to the life that I live today, and I kind of had different paths. You know, I started off on more of an entrepreneurial path. I ended up kind of more on an investor path. And then now I'm kind of in both worlds pretty evenly. But I really like the world of being an investor. And I want to talk a little bit about it, and I want to talk about kind of how I got here. So when I grew up, I grew up, you know, very middle class, kind of middle, probably middle to lower income in a suburb of Chicago. And I don't know that I noticed a whole Lot. I think my parents did a great job raising me, but they taught me early on that if I want to have my own money to spend, I need to go earn it. I need to go have a job that there is no bank of Justin, that I just need to go out. And they weren't going to be the source of my money anymore. And so I remember getting a job in seventh grade and I sold newspaper subscriptions door to door. And for a kid that was pretty shy at that point in my life, and I really wasn't good at it. I really. I mean, it took me a while to become good in sales. I just took so much personally. I mean, this is a total commission job, and the whole first week I didn't sell anything. So, like, I worked a whole week making no money. And it might sound crazy now, but, I mean, what we did back then is someone would drive you to a neighborhood, drop you off, you'd go, you know, door to door until they come back later, you know, an hour later, and the cold let you warm up, then you go back out and you do it all over again. But I learned some great lessons. And the lessons that I learned were, you know, once I could get good at something, once I could master something, learn a script and learn to handle objections, I got really good at that thing. So if I focus energy, I get good results. And then I noticed that the harder I worked, once I was actually good, the more that I made. And I felt like I could never be bound to an hourly type of wage or a salary type of job because I knew I could outperform those numbers. I always wanted to be kind of based on paid, based on my performance. And so in my college years when I worked with Cutco, it was the same thing. I was able to sell the Cutco product line, and that's how I paid for my college at the University of Illinois. And I was paid very well because I worked hard and I performed very well. And I eventually got into management with their company and learned how to leverage systems and leverage human capital and to really kind of build this camaraderie, this team, this culture that could really continue moving even when I wasn't there. So that the first phase for me was learning that if I worked hard, I could make money. But it was all based on my time. Then I had this realization, well, what if I just got a bunch of people that worked with me and I had people that ran things and I had people that sold things? Well, now I have this magnifying effect, this Leverage, where I'm getting returns and results and income based on many people, based on leveraging other human capital, human talents, making sure they're very well compensated, just like I was when I first got started. And then I was able to earn more, the better I did at developing people, at recruiting people, at training people. And that was kind of like a cool, like, experience to kind of level up, if you will. But then I had this big realization. I was sitting in my office. Think about, like, starting a business and having no staff, no anyone. You're brand new. And I remember sitting in my office and this is many nights in a row where I had gotten there at like 5:30 in the morning, and it was about 10:30 at night. I was still there. It was just me. I was running a sole proprietorship, but calling it a business. And I remember thinking in this moment, like, it's a Friday night. All my friends are out, they're texting me, they're calling me. They want me to meet them at the bars or they want me to go out. And I keep saying no, I'm, you know, in my busy season for work. But I remember this, you know, I had this moment where I was sitting on the floor, like, kind of getting ready for the next day because I was working Saturday. I mean, I was working seven days a week then. And I remember thinking, this is a season. I don't want this season to exist. Once I am seriously dating someone, once I get married, once I have a family. But this season's all right for now. I'm going to put in the time, I'm going to earn what I need to earn, and I'm going to transition myself out so that my time isn't going to be responsible for the amount of money that I make, that other factors are going to influence that. And it was shortly after that that I was able to really raise enough cash to invest in real estate and kind of spread my wings there as the first real investment asset class that I got into. And there are several inflection points in that. But that's kind of the start where I went from a sales guy to a business owner to back to kind of like starting another business all by myself. No one there but being able to scale it faster, but realizing that if you're a business owner to some degree, the business always relies on you at some point. And I just didn't want that demand on my time anymore.

There's so many things here that I love about your story and where I'd like to start. With you is about this friction that you felt, this, like, irritation that was happening psychologically, where you knew you had to put in the time, but you also knew that this was not an acceptable way to go forward with your life. I've discovered that there's, like. It's a feeling I don't like, but it always comes before this big breakthrough that happened in my life. And without that friction, without me, like, I've gotten to the point now where I just bless it when I feel it, because I know that if I bless it and I'm excited about it and I thank it for being there, the breakthrough is going to happen that much quicker. But when you were sitting there on a Friday night when all of your friends were going out, you had to be going through a miserable moment, but it sparked something great inside of you to create a life where you could generate revenue without having to physically be doing the work. That's. That's accurate, right?

Yeah, without a doubt. Yeah. I didn't want to miss out. I didn't want to sacrifice today for tomorrow always.

And as you've gotten older, you pretty much are surrounded by a whole culture that doesn't have that ethos.

Correct.

Right. Which makes you really unique because people typically come to you when they've gone too far and they need to revisit what their ethos is.

Yeah. You know, I think that's a fair assessment. I think we live in this world where most people have no clarity with what they want, but they're very aware of what they don't want. And I see this all the time when I say, hey, you know, with people I'm coaching, what. Tell me what an ideal life looks like? What does an ideal week look like? What does an ideal day look like? And people have the hardest time articulating what that looks like. But what they're really good at is, I'll tell you what I don't like, and I don't want to do this anymore, and I hate when this happens. So people are very aware of what they don't like. But most people don't take the time. They're too busy responding to life rather than carving out time to be proactive, to think, what do I want life to look like? Who do I want to spend time with? How much do I want to work? Where do I want to work? Like, what actually energizes me and inspires me? And what are my gifts and talents? Like, where would I actually thrive the most? With the skill set and with the gifts that I've been blessed with. And I think if people did that, it could be a game changer.

Yeah, I totally agree. And the one thing I would add is trusting those gifts that you've been given earlier. Like, if I would have leaned into my gifts sooner, I could be celebrating more often and doing less, apologizing to my wife. Right. And for me, that was a really big lesson. Take me back to 35 year old Justin Donald. Can you remember back that far?

Yeah, because that was really a transitionary period in my life. I mean, that was when I made my first big leap. So I remember it very well.

All right, so over a 20 month period, 21 month period, your investments drove enough passive income for both you and Jennifer, your wife, to leave your jobs. This is like, for most people would be like the greatest moment of their Life. In that 21 months, you probably learned a lot. You probably had a lot of doubt that you're even on track. Walk me through some of the steps of the big takeaways that helped you get next level, in fact, helped you and your wife get next level on how you wanted to live your life. And at this point, do you have any even thoughts about the concept of being a lifestyle investor?

So at this point, the whole term lifestyle investor and lifestyle investing didn't really exist. I mean, I, I didn't own the trademarks to these. I mean, this was a few more years down the road. But I knew in essence what it was. I just didn't know how to articulate it in such a nice package. I feel like that phrase lifestyle investing that encapsulates so much of what I believe and so much of what I think people want. And so it took me a while to find the branding, the words to kind of articulate this feeling of freedom that I wanted to feel and that I wanted to help other people feel. And so I remember the nerves of investing in something new, investing in something I had never invested in. So I'm going from this company that I had scaled where I'm working a lot of hours, but I've made some cash and I'm looking to make the biggest investment that I've ever made into a mobile home park. And when I first heard about this, I thought, this sounds like a horrible investment, you know, why would I ever invest in this? You know, and one of my buddies invested in it and did very well. And so that kind of opened my eyes. I was like, okay, well maybe the, the strategy that I was thinking about doing with real estate, maybe I should be shifting from these Three and four flats that I wanted to do in Chicago and single family homes to many units in a mobile home park. And so I bought my first mobile home park. And I gotta tell you, the very first park, this was a stressful, like, scary situation because it was the most money I'd ever invested at one point in time before. And I would wake up sometimes in the night, like, freaking out, is this, should I be doing this? Like, am I just throwing my money away? Is this a horrible investment? But I just also remember I knew people that were doing it and if they could do it, I could do it. And if I just copy what they're doing, I'll do it maybe like 70% as well as them. And that gave me confidence. And I just realized that my mind was being irrational. My mind was saying like all the worst case scenarios to me, even though the worst case generally doesn't happen in the best case generally doesn't happen. You know, I think most people's, I mean, some people have, you know, this default of like, best case everything, and they're always let down. Most people have a default of like, worst case scenario. Very few people kind of, you know, work between the two and say, well, these two extremes are probably not going to happen. But right here in the middle, this is actually pretty likely. And so when I bought that first mobile home park, the cash flow that we earned on that replaced my wife's income immediately. So that was a huge turning point for us. My wife didn't have to work anymore. She was able to have her daughter stay home with her daughter. I mean, this was just extremely valuable. And at that point in time, my busy season was the summer and her time off was the summer. And then my other busy season was like winter break. And her time off as a teacher was winter break. And so our schedules were opposite. So not only did we buy her time back, but we bought freedom and flexibility for our schedules for our lifestyle to be able to be on the same pattern doing life together. And I think that was really a huge shift. And the next shift, Todd, was with the next park purchase. Because one of the things I always teach my community, the lifestyle investor community, is you want to figure out what your survival income is. What does it cost you just to get by? Bare minimum. We're not talking about vacationing or fancy, you know, dinners or anything, just bare minimum to survive. Mortgage, utilities, car payment, groceries, whatever, just to get by. And then from there you want to figure out what does it cost you to live today? So what's your Lifestyle income. And then what's your ideal lifestyle income? What does that look like? I mean, if you could have just this epic life, what is it? Because it's generally going to cost you a lot less than you think if you break it down on a monthly basis. And so the second park that I bought replaced that income, that survival income. And it felt like I took off the largest weight that I'd been carrying in a backpack, you know, with my shoulders and back weighed down. Like it was like I could just drop it, and I was free. And it was one of the best feelings in the world. And it wasn't like we were killing it financially, but it was the moment I didn't have to work. And that was powerful.

That's incredibly powerful, liberating. And for those that are listening right now, look at what just happened. Justin's mess. Sitting there on the floor on a Friday night and trying to figure out how he would be able to later on spend time with his wife when she had time off. And, you know, so there weren't two ships passing in the night, which is quite common for a lot of homes, including my wife and I, when we were 35, we. I felt like we barely saw each other. But what Justin was able to do is he turned his mess into his message. And that seems to be, for me, like, one of the reoccurring themes that I see out of successful entrepreneurs is they struggled with something, then they mastered it, and then their whole plan got diverted, and now they're teaching other people how to go from the mess into something that looks more like a miracle. Justin, this is a really cool inflection point in your life. When you started to do this, did you look around and go, if I'm going to teach this, what did you get to the idea or the concept that this could be valuable for other people if you could only teach it?

Well, it started happening quickly because my friends figured it out. You know, my friends were like, holy cow, help me do this. Like, how did you make this transition? And so they saw it real time. They saw my wife stop working. When their wives were working, they saw me not have to work. And by the way, I still worked for a period of time. And I can explain this a little bit more, but the attitude I went to work with was so much different. Knowing I didn't have to work and I get to work. You know, I worked different hours. I worked on projects differently. I easily, like, delegated things that I didn't want to do or I didn't feel Like I needed to do or someone else could do better. It just, it really gave me this freedom to say, hey, I can do things in a different way. I can try this person in to run the business here and if it doesn't work, that's okay, I'll find someone else. I'm not desperately relying on this income so I can make better quality decisions. I think when you make decisions just based on money, it's just too small of and just not like an enlightened enough area to really like help you make the best decision. It's just one component of a multifaceted thing where you're making decisions. And so when you can solve that problem financially and you can make decisions that have nothing to do with money, they're generally better decisions because most people make make decisions primarily based on money and, and the outcome may not be what they think they want.

Right. Well, you know, one of the things I know about you is you have an introspection that allows you to make smart decisions and how that works best for what your needs and desires are. By the way, you guys should realize that you're probably saying to yourself, well, Todd, how could you get possibly the lifestyle investor on the Todd cast when you know he has to come in and work? And you should know that he works like 45 minutes for an entire week. And the only reason, I'm just kidding, the only reason that he's here right now to do this is I actually have photos of him in a Speedo. And so it's true story. So the, so he's doing this as a favor or because I blackmailed him. Now, Justin, revenue has continued to increase for you as you followed your, your commandments in lifestyle investing. And at some point you decided to start teaching this to other people. And when you start teaching it to other people, you have to start developing a framework, right, where you take your mess and you figured it out and unraveled it and now you start developing that message so other people can 1, 2, 3, step through it. Walk me through that step because there's another inflection moment in your career when you were able to go from teaching this to friends to teaching this to many, right?

That's right. Yeah. And you know, real quick before, let me give you one more inflection moment because this one was maybe one of the more eye opening ones. One of them was like me being able to take the baggage off. But the other, this next one, I worked really hard. I stayed in like the business. So basically I had a company that Was under the umbrella of another company. And I worked in this until. What I wanted to do is I wanted to replace my income. I had a certain amount of earned income. I wanted the passive income to exceed that earned income, which happened. And then I was able to step away. But the funny thing is, that was the safe way. And I knew there were two ways, and I thought that was the best way. Lifestyle doesn't change. That's good. But I had this moment where one of the parks I bought. So my third park that I bought, I bought it. The down payment was the most I had put on anything at this point in time. But I made 101% cash on cash return. So basically, I made more than the down payment back the very first year of investing in this, and then I sold it a year and a day later. And my total profit for this was $500,000 in a year and a day where I worked maybe five hours a week, if that. Okay. And that was more than I was making at the business that I was grinding at. I was working so hard. I was putting in so many hours. And it was just so apparent, like, why am I working this hard? Why am I not working smart? What I need to do is buy my time back. Because if I own my time, then I can make better decisions. I have more time to create wealth. And I'm not distracted by just responding to everyone, responding to my business, responding to this person, responding to a fire, a theoretical business fire. And so that allowed me to say, okay, I have to step away. No if, ands, or buts. And then once I stepped away, kind of that next inflection point, as I kind of grew our real estate portfolio, I had all this passive income. Because once you get above kind of like your ideal lifestyle, you have surplus. So you either increase the quality of life or you increase your investments. And we got to a point where we didn't have to work. We had an incredible lifestyle. But I took this. So make a long story short, I took the year 2018 off, and my family traveled the world. You know, we. We went to 13 different countries, just had an amazing time. And my goal this year was to, like, just figure out what's next. What's the next chapter of my life. And so I was journaling pretty regularly. And one of the big ahas that I had was that there are a few things I did every day. I read every day. I looked at deals and kind of analyzed deals every day. I'm kind of a deal junkie. I just like getting a Good return, it's fun for me. Like at a certain point, money becomes a game. Returns, investing, it all becomes a game. And at that point in time when you can release this like pent up, like scarcity mindset of holding money so tight that you can't let it go and you can't let it work for you, it's amazing what can happen. So I was looking at deals, vetting deals, and then the third thing is I was coaching my friends to financial freedom and I had several friends that I coached through and help them gain financial freedom. And in that moment I said, gosh, maybe this is what I should do. Maybe my hobbies, which are the things that I'm doing for free, no one's paying me, I'm just doing this because I love it. Maybe I should just start like teaching people these things. Maybe I should just keep doing deals because I like it. And then maybe I should teach people why I'm doing these deals and how I think about investing and how I think about passive income and that you don't want to do these risky investments or have all your eggs in the stock market basket or have all your eggs in your business when you first can take money, create passive income to cover your lifestyle and then do the riskier investing. And so that message, I think very few people kind of think about money that way. They think about it as a net worth number. And I think that's the wrong way to look at it. It's how we've been conditioned. It's what Wall street kind of wants, is they want all your money as much as they can get it because they're going to get a great return on it whether you do or not. And so you're kind of growing, you're putting all your eggs, most people into one or two baskets and then you're looking at what is your net worth and what are you going to have when you retire. This whole nest egg. Like I have X dollars or X thousand or million dollars in my nest egg. And I think that's the wrong way to look at it. When you think about business, yeah, your profit and loss is really important. But in the day to day the most important is your cash flow statement. Because you can have a manipulated nice looking P and L, but if you don't have cash flow, you're in trouble. And cash flow for your life is the same thing. So how do you kind of stop focusing on aggregating everything in one place and having this net worth and this nest egg and start like paying attention to cash flow, because when you do that, your net worth by default grows. It's a natural byproduct. And so now you have utility on your dollars today. They're not locked up till you retire. They're not tied to a stock market that you have no control over. And so I just started teaching that. So that was kind of one of the next big moments, is I wrote my book, the Lifestyle Investor, and I never knew if it was going to do anything. I hoped it would. And it took off. It became number one Wall Street Journal bestseller, USA Today bestseller, on and on. Kind of had a mind of its own. And I took my investors club and transformed it into a mastermind and built this private coaching practice and then kind of developed a bunch of online courses and master classes and my podcast. And it's just been such a fun way to teach people. And so many people in our community have collaborated on many of the things that I do with my website, with my business, with my blog, you name it. It's been really just cool seeing everyone come together and share wisdom and insight.

One of the things that I love about this story, one of the many things, is you got nerdy and you started enjoying the process of looking for deals. And it became part of your daily function. It became your jam. And in order for people to get great at something, they've got to invest the time. You know, as you know, the big guy says repetition's the mother of skill. And so by you getting into repetition, looking at deals, you also had a very developed, a very discerning eye. Now, one of the things that I've noticed in people with. With where they invest their time is often people invest time in something that has no marketable value outside of themselves. They could get really good at video games, and there's no return. There's zero roi. Right. But when you started to get nerdy and look at deals, was it enjoyable at the beginning or did it suck at the beginning? And maybe it was frustrating, but as you started to get little wins, you started to see this acceleration that was happening inside of you when you started generating more confidence and results. Tell me about that part and what that transition was like for you to the point where now it's part of your essential process. Even when I was with you and we left, you were going to go look at a deal because it is your jam.

Yeah. You know, at first it was really intimidating because it was not my space, it was not my expertise. Maybe I'd been successful in one segment of it, but that didn't mean that I knew how to evaluate these other areas. And so for me, part of the fun is being curious and being on this journey where I don't know everything and I have to figure it out. And I likely will take way longer figuring out on my own than if I just connect with people that have expertise piece in that space. And so I take it as this opportunity to learn and grow from and through someone else so I can make it fun by adding that camaraderie and adding that relationship. But when I first started, you know, I was nervous, like, am I actually good at this? Am I going to lose money at some point? By the way, every investor is going to lose money. And it will build character if you let it. If you choose to learn the lessons of why that deal didn't work out and what you can avoid in the future, you know, that's great. And so some of my expertise and experience and lessons came from things not performing the way that I had hoped. And others came from having the desired results or results much more than desired. And a lot of it is just partnering with the right people that have the expertise that I don't yet have and just kind of riding their coattails because they've got decades of experience.

Okay, so one of the things that we could all learn from that Justin just talked about, about how he accelerated was at the beginning, it was frustrating. Each and every one of us. When we get out of our sphere of genius and we start learning something new, we go through a frustration period. That irritation that builds up is us going from expert into a completely different vertical where we feel like a novice. But the people who spring forward from all interviews that I've done, the people that spring forward go into slightly a different lane than their guru dumb. And they start to nerd out on that, and they get comfortable in the novice stage. So they don't just live entirely in guru stage, but they get into this novice stage, and before they know it, they start learning and liking and appreciating. And it goes back to what I mentioned earlier, which is looking at that frustration and just recognizing that it's a blessing of great things to come if you're willing to ride it out and learn it. And when you go into a different vertical of investment, do you have that same similar frustration as you start to dig in?

Oh, yeah. I mean, there's definitely some similarities on, you know, where I can gain confidence and say, well, hey, some formula of profit from one industry to the next is still profit. I need to learn what that is. But once I can get there, profit is profit. And then understanding how a business is valuated, some are based on profit, some are based on revenue, some are based on monthly recurring revenue, some are based on annual recurring revenue. You know, some have a lower multiple, some have a higher multiple. So there's some similarities for sure. But overall, yeah, whenever I get into something new, there's a little frustration, like, why don't I just know this the way I know this other stuff? Like what?

Right.

Why can I not make a decision here? Why do I feel so indecisive, like I have no, you know, direction or not enough direction? So without a doubt I experienced that.

And yet you do tell yourself that this feeling is okay. Right. And that you're willing to ride that feeling until you get certainty one way or another.

Yeah. And for me, I just, I'm not going to take a gamble and just guess I'm going to take this as an opportunity to get educated. So I think for me, I have a hard time relaxing on it until I have clarity on it. So I'm going to be a little obsessive until I can connect the dots in my mind and then once I can connect them, then I can relax and then I feel like I can kind of get past that plateau and grow to the next level. Because I'm getting more of a foundation with every industry specific investment that I can learn or, you know, how to evaluate a deal in a different arena. Like, I started with mobile home parks, but now, you know, I've invested in every type of real estate. I invest in operating companies, I invest in senior secured debt. You know, I invest in pieces of companies, I buy whole companies and put in operators. So I've done all kinds of different types of deals. But it all started with what's the commonality of what do I know and then what all don't I know and who can I learn it from? And then as I learn it, I'm just building, you know, I'm equipping my tool belt. I have more for the next deal that comes along. So deal number two, I had way more confidence than deal number one. But deal number 20, I'm feeling pretty good, even though it might be a little bit more in an industry that I need an industry expert to help me in.

One of the things that I just extracted from you is your comfort level in being not being the smartest person, but being the most resourceful. And the people who think they've got to be the smartest are the ones that Develop a whole different level of frustration and typically don't go forward. But the one who's the most resourceful recognizes that that's a choice. The smartest is just a birth blessing, but the choice is you start resourcefully reaching out to people that have expertise in certain areas so you can glean some knowledge and accelerate into making the right decision. I got that right, didn't I?

Yeah, without a doubt. And for me, just the whole idea of becoming the smartest is like really time consuming and just frankly an impossibility. But it's really easy to assemble really smart people because I'm very intentional about hanging out with really smart people. That's stimulating to me because they're gonna teach me things I don't know. So I enjoy it. I enjoy being a total novice. I go to these conferences and these events where I'm pretty sure I'm the most uneducated person in that specific niche there is. I remember going to my very first traffic and conversion summit where I had done nothing in the online space. I didn't have a brand, I didn't have anything. I showed up to a 6,000 person event as probably person 5,999, maybe even person 6,000 in terms of expertise and knowledge. I mean, it was so bad that I remember leaning over to someone who I didn't know at this event and I remember like someone kept on talking about like the word copy, you know, hey, what do you do for copy? And then copy this and then copy that. And I'm like, I'm already lost. And I leaned over this total stranger. I'm like, what's copy? You know, and they kind of like laughed and they're like, oh yeah. It's like the words that you're using like to describe something or that are on your. And I'm like, wow, now that I get that, a lot of these talks make a lot more sense. I mean, I'm telling you, I was like as novice as I could be. But I. But I thrive in that because I like being in a space where I'm forced to learn. I like being around smart people. I like to learn and I like to remember what it feels like to not know how to do things.

Yeah, that's a. Is that trained or is that something you've always felt?

I've always enjoyed learning, so that is probably more innate. Like I just have this curiosity where I want to learn and understand everything. But I think the training comes in where I can allow myself, I can allow my ego to go Somewhere where I'm just, I know nothing, you know, and it's funny because all this stuff in the world of online, like I actually do it now. I mean, I have a team that does it. I don't do it, but I learned it, I understood it, I recognized that I could step into this space. And I was like, oh man, I'm so glad I went to these events because I went to them not even knowing what my future was. But I just went because I knew I needed to learn this because I don't know it well enough. Like, I just need to be educated. Even though it has nothing to do.

With investing, but it's diversification. And that's one of the foundational principles of investing. And one of the things that Justin and I have in common that we didn't realize at the beginning was that we both were both followers of Tony Robbins. Justin's been to every Tony event. And one of the things that I like, love about the Tony audience is these are people that are on a lifetime. They're lifetime learners and they're committed to like putting themselves in positions where they can accelerate their learning. Oh, even more than that, there are people, there are two types of people in this world. Those that take the slow path and frugally learn on their own and the others that pay somebody who's already been there and allows the Sherpa to take them there quicker. And the Tony audiences you've experienced are people that hire Sherpas who are going to get them to their end goal destination significantly faster. That's had a big impact on your life, hasn't it?

Yeah, without a doubt. I mean, even just on my scarcity mindset. So I mean, first and foremost, you've got this education, you've got this group of people that want to learn, that desire to learn. Plus I can just sit there, I can learn from anyone. I can learn from everyone on stage. So there's this, you know, really this culture of learning, wanting to connect, wanting to up level, wanting to help each other out, even if you have no gain whatsoever. I loved that. But secondly, you know, I went to my first UPW and you know, I think I paid like 500 bucks for a ticket. And then the very first event that they were like selling was like $30,000. And I remember thinking, man, this was so amazing, like I really want to go to that. But I just had this limiting belief, like, that's a lot of money. Am I a good steward of my money if I do this? I don't know if I can afford it. And I had this like epiphany in the mid. Like I knew I wanted to do it. I knew I had the funds to be able to do it. I knew that even if I didn't, it probably was going to help me create the funds. Like I would get the return.

Right.

Yet I was still having a hard time doing it. And then.

Because ethos has to do with low risk investments too, right?

And so, and I had this thought pop into my head that was, you paid more than this for your college tuition and you don't really use any of that. Like this was just in the middle of me going back and forth and back and forth. And I was like, yeah, why was I so when I was 18, 19, 20, 21, why was I able to make these decisions when I didn't have money? Like I was able to just put myself out there and then figure it out. Like the long term vision was like, this investment is going to be worth it down the road. I don't know how I'm going to pay for it. I don't know how I'm going to come up with it, but I'm going to come up with it. That's how I was in college and I did, I paid for all my college. I graduated debt free from the University of Illinois because I worked hard and I figured it out. And so this was the same thing. I'm like, this is actually cheaper than my education, but it's more valuable, it's more relevant. And so then it was like a heck yes. So I literally got up and I went and I signed up and the rest is history. I signed up for the next one. The next one. I went through the student leadership program, I went through the senior leadership program. And so now I can go to any Tony Robbins event anywhere for free and just run one of the teams.

Really remarkable. And how that impacts your life and the skills that you've developed because of that experience is immeasurable. Justin, I'm so grateful for your time. Thank you. This has been remarkable. Tell people about where they can get more information, how they can get access to your book. And I, by the way, just for everybody knowing everybody in my company, got Justin's book. I've heard people rave about it. And as you've heard from this experience and just this conversation, the impact that he has on people's lives is immeasurable. How can people find out about your book?

Well, thanks for the kind words, Todd. Best way to find out about me is to go to justindonald.com so everything I do is there. You know, I've got a blog, a podcast, I've got online courses, masterclasses, my mastermind. But it's wait list only on the mastermind and a bit of an application process. But for the right person, it's a pretty incredible fit. And then for the book, the Lifestyle Investor, what I'd like to do for your audience is give everyone a chance to be able to get a free copy. They just have to pay for shipping. So if you go to lifestyleinvestorbook.com you'll get a chance to kind of go through and pick up a copy for free. And then all the proceeds, whether you go to Amazon and buy it, you go through that. You obviously can go to my website and pay full price for it. But I'd love for your audience to get a discount. And however you pay for it, all the proceeds go to an organization called Love Justice International and they stop human trafficking in 24 countries around the world and just do an incredible job intercepting children and rescuing them, bringing them back to their family, stopping sex slaving. It's really an incredible and impressive organization. And so I think the world of them. And I want, you know, I want people that buy the book or get the book to experience financial freedom. So the education goes towards that, but I want the proceeds to go towards human, real life, human freedom. And so I'm just really passionate that I could partner with this group.

An incredible gift. Lifestyleinvestorbook.com don't miss this, Justin. I've shared this with you in person, but for those listening, my parents, at the age of 65, adopted two young orphans from Haiti and moved them here to Scottsdale, Arizona. My brother and sister, my brother had his 23rd birthday yesterday and he's the youngest. And my parents made it clear to me that when they went to the orphanage in Haiti, the owner of the hotel confided in my dad how nice it was to see a real family coming to take kids home, because most of the people that come into town to take kids are taking them for trafficking. And that's not something that I ever forgot. And it's why Wendy and I also donate to ending human slavery. And I'm so grateful that you brought that up and that you and your family have committed to that cause also.

Well, thank you. That's incredible that you're part of this journey. I think there's just not enough awareness out there. I think people think that it's all happening outside the borders of their country. But this happens in every country. And for those of you in the US this happens in every state. So you know, it's we can be naive, but if you look at the data, every single state in the US has a human trafficking issue.

Wow. Such a shame and something that's so solvable. LifestyleInvestorBook.com is where you go for access to the free book, but I would encourage you to also make purchases to help Justin in his mission. And Justin, thank you for helping my audience in their mission where they work towards getting to the next stage in their life, accelerating that path and of course getting themselves to the point of financial freedom. He's Justin Donald. He is a best selling author on Amazon, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and a dear friend. Justin, thanks for joining me on the Todcast.

Thanks Todd. This has been awesome. So glad to be here and to hang and to just kind of hear all the cool things you're doing in the world. So thank you.

Yo, that was a powerful episode and from what we just learned, it should be obvious how you can now implement these lessons in your life to get to the next level. Now, before you bounce, I just have three quick thoughts. First, thank you for taking me on your incredible life journey. Second, if you receive some value from me and you want to pay it forward, it would mean the world to me. If you left an honest rating and review at Apple, Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen, I'd be incredibly grateful. And lastly, if you share this episode, whether it be a screenshot or a photo from where you're listening, anything via Instagram stories or LinkedIn, Facebook, or any of the social media sites, just tag me and the guest. I'll repost your content and I'll reply back in the comments because I love mixing it up. In fact, I'd love to share your shoutouts in my feed too. Not only are these shout outs really good for you and for me, but they also help us book more amazing guests because they'll be able to see the reach that you're helping to cultivate. This is a way for you to help contribute to the show. So thank you again for listening and I look forward to earning a regular spot inside that ear of yours. Let's grow. Sam.