114: Creating Passive Income to Live Freely with AJ Osborne

Hi, I'm Natalie Jill, fat loss expert turned high performance coach. When odds are stacked against us, how do we shift and create everything from nothing? How do we level up when we aren't feeling it yet or we've had a big setback? On this podcast, I'll be talking to some of the most inspiring and courageous men and women on this planet who, at their worst, learned how to achieve success greater than they ever dreamed possible. Leveling up and creating everything from nothing. When A.J. osborne was suddenly paralyzed and hospitalized with a rare autoimmune disorder, his family and him, for the first time ever, didn't have to worry financially at all. Why? Because they had money flowing in with little effort on their part because of a smart financial decision that they had been making for years prior to this unforeseen, horrible event. That financial flow also the result of years earlier, when AJ had lost everything he had and. And had to rebuild from nothing. Today, AJ Is living truly in his vision, and he's created a process for all so that they, too can create cash flow for freedom. Join in today and learn exactly how AJ leveled up over and over again and created everything from nothing. Today on Leveling Up, I'm excited to talk to AJ Osborne and dig into his stories, because AJ from. From what I understand, thank you, first of all, for being here. I'm so excited to chat with you today.

Thanks for having me on. I love your podcast. This is exciting.

So we hear about passive income a lot and the need to create passive income, but what I love about your story is that came from. It's not like you set out to create passive income. It came from some major setbacks in business, and then you created passive income, and then you had a massive health setback, and because of the passive income, you were able to focus on your health and recovery. Is that correct?

Yeah, absolutely. It literally saved my financial life.

Yeah. Okay, so take me back. Like, let's go back. Because when I asked you originally, when we. Before we started recording, I said, hey, if someone met you at a party, what would you say that you did? And like many entrepreneurs, you had like, 20 answers. Like, I do. I do lots of things. I have lots of interest. But take me back. Did you set out to be an entrepreneur? Did you start successful, like, where? Talk. Talk to me about, like, how you first got into business.

Well, I actually got into insurance because that was what my father was into, and I liked insurance, and my father was my mentor. And so I thought, oh, this is great. And I grew up in a household that talked about insurance. Apparently we were really boring. But I loved sales and I loved the aspect that I could sell insurance and I could. That would then in return, I had control over my income. So. So there was something that I just loved about that. Even though I never. I didn't start out, that really came after I got married that I started thinking about that I would have been more happy just fly fishing and being a ski bum. But when you get married, have kids, those. Those kinds of things change.

So insurance niche came because your dad was in it. So you knew that and then you had. You learned sales for that and you realized that I can sell and then that makes income, so I'm in control of it.

Exactly, yeah. And that worked for a while. So, yeah, that, you know, I started selling and it was just. There was something just so life changing about being able to control, like sitting down and just saying, how much do I want to make this year? And that was just so intriguing to me. And I loved that I was out of the office. And two, I loved that I was being a solutions provider. Right. I kind of thought, this is. This is it, right? I figured this out. I get this residual income. This is the golden ticket. Right. And that worked well for a while. And as we grew and as we did more sales and I grew my block of business, we started trying to purchase other businesses that had clients. And I thought, well, this. We can just buy a business. They have all these clients, right. And that's way faster than selling clients individually. Well, we did a deal in Florida with a guy who had basically set us up. And we didn't understand this at the time was a multimillion dollar deal, huge deal. And the deal was probably driven more out of ego from me than anything. I really wanted to expand. I really wanted to. You know, I was blind. I was blind by ego.

And this was an insurance deal with this person?

Yeah, this was an insurance brokerage firm. And so it was similar to what we were doing. But I live in Boise, Idaho, so it was clear across the country. Right, okay. And I. I was all excited about this, and there was these huge red flags that I ignored.

And like, what kind of red flags when you say that? Because I want. Because a lot of people don't listen to red flags. They don't really know that they're red flags. Like what. When you say red flags, what were you ignoring?

Really? These were contractual issues that weren't common that he was asking for. And we were. I was looking at this, right? And I'm like, But why don't you want that in there? That's totally normal. And one of the biggest one was we were like, well, your wife needs to be under a non compete. And he was arguing and he's like, that's ridiculous. Why would I ever want to do that? Because my wife has nothing to do with the business. And we just kind of brushed off. And I started brushing little details off because I just wanted to do the deal.

You wanted to make the money.

You were just focused on the payoff being driven by. And two, I just wanted to say that I did the deal. I think that was one of the driving factors, right? It was pride. And so this mixture, I think, of pride and ego and greed got it all mixed in. I just started ignoring things and I just got the deal done immediately. When we got the deal done, I'm talking within like a month, his wife went out and started taking all the biggest clients. And we're talking about, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue. I mean, just immediately.

Whoa. So it was legit, a setup, like a scam. We're.

Not. And he put another provision in the contract that stated if the revenue dropped below a certain amount, that for some reason we default and he. And we have to pay him everything and take the business and he gets the business back. Once again, something I just totally ignored because pride driven me, said, oh, I'll never lose this revenue. And I think I was under the delusion that this income that was coming in from this business was somehow mine because I bought it, right? And this is when I learned a very important lesson. And this lesson that I learned because all of a sudden, we're in a lawsuit. This is millions of dollars that we have to pay. The money's gone, right? All of a sudden I'm sitting around, I just destroyed our life, right? And it's one of those moments where you're like, I just ruined everything in a blink of an eye. Everything. I've spent years growing and everything. My family, work. I mean, just totally devastating, right?

I can't even. You know what's interesting, aj, what you're saying. And this is a really common thing with people that I talk to that have had massive success and failure stories. You mentioned the ego. And what's interesting about that is we do anything to feed our egos, right? And we all have an ego, but we do anything to feed them, and it doesn't end. That's when I think people stop looking at all these red flags because we don't want to do it. And the people that are aware of this and are on the not so up and upside, like scamming, they're very aware of that too. So they'll do anything to feed your ego to get away with things.

Well, perfect example is I didn't even ask to buy the business. I'm at lunch with this guy and he goes, hey, why don't you buy my company? And so, I mean, it was totally set up, and I took a hook, line, and sinker, and it was. It was driven because of the ego, and it was fed because of it. And at the time, I'm sure I would have said, no, this is a business deal. Right. This is just. I was completely blind to my own motives, which. Which too was absolutely eye opening because when I started looking at other aspects of my life, I realized how blind to my individual motives every day I was.

Yeah.

All of a sudden started thinking, like, why am I doing certain. Certain actions?

Yeah.

Why do I do certain deals? Why do I wake up and do the things that I do?

Now, did you know at the time that it was your ego or did this take work?

It took work because it was. First of all, it's denial. Right. But immediately I just defaulted to, oh, it was him. Right. He's right. Exactly. Total blame. And if it wasn't for him, this would have worked out perfect. Right. And it took a while to sit back and say, hold on, you're the idiot that signed the contract.

Yeah.

You got set up. And why did you do that? Because, dude, the hardest thing is about those kind of things. When you do them is. Is I knew better.

Yeah.

It wasn't like I was a sucker. It wasn't like I was an idiot. No, I completely know.

Yeah. And I think we all know. We just ignore that. That piece because we want to fight for that ego. So what would you. Did you. Did you not have attorneys looking at this contract?

No, we did. And they told us, and they're like, you shouldn't. You shouldn't do this. And I'm like, oh, it's. It'll be fine.

Wow. Interesting. It's interesting how that. How that works. Okay, so. So how long does it take you to register that? Like, because I'm assuming if you're like most. Even when it started coming to fruition, that, oh, my gosh, his wife is taking clients. This is not going so well. You almost find excuses for them. Well, it's not as bad as I'm thinking it is. Did you do that or did you.

Go right down the thing that I think people think about. Or when you hear these stories of failure, or when you hear these stories, we say it like it's a moment like, oh, this happened and then it moved on. Right now this is something that drug on for like a year.

Yeah.

So you're talking about lawsuits and you're talking about, you know, financial burdens. And every day you wake up knowing today is gonna suck. And that just goes on and on and on. So this.

And I'm imagining aj, did you have like, your attorney and everyone saying, I told you. I mean, that doesn't help either.

Exactly. It doesn't help that you're sitting here and you have to. Every time you have a conversation, you're like, yeah, I'm the idiot. I did this. Right. Everybody knows. I knew I shouldn't have done it.

So you're in self beat up. How did you get out of that?

Well, it took a long time. I was obviously there's. My ego had been shattered then too. I had all of a sudden put everything financially at risk. And so it got to a point where I'm like, okay, let's just call it what it is. You screwed up. This was stupid. And I have two things that I can do here. I can either just crawl back in a hole, or I can try to figure out all the aspects of this it went wrong and what I could do about it. And two though, I have to have a serious conversation with myself. And when I started to have that, I started to see holes and flaws in my business models. A lot of things that I was doing in life and these holes were gaping that normally when you're doing good. So I made a lot of income because I was a sales, right. And we did B2B sales. We got commissions. The jewel. I'm sitting here on top of the world. Right. We made good money. And when I started to look at it, I realized there's this big, huge difference between being rich and being wealthy. And I was rich. And being rich just means I had a large income. And being wealthy means you don't have to work. And I figured out I was trying to be wealthy, but I was going about it in the entire wrong way. And I had to look at all of a sudden, as myself said, this isn't sustainable. As in, if I'm not working to get my clients or take care of my clients or doing new sales, I don't make money. So I'm on a treadmill. And where I thought that I was better because I was running our own business. And I was in charge of my own future. That's not true at all. I was getting paid for a service just like if I had my own W2 just like anybody else. The only difference was I just got paid a lot of money to do it. And once you start looking at it going, oh man, this shatters everything that I kind of believed. All of a sudden this idea that I'm this great entrepreneur that lives life on my own terms. No, I was a call away from any client. Whatever they did, they demanded and I had to do or else I didn't make money.

Yeah.

And all of a sudden I realized I have a lot of bosses. That's all. I just have a lot of bosses. And I'm on this huge treadmill that every time I lost a client, I am one, you know, I'm just one client away from losing $100,000 a year.

Yeah.

I got to sell more. And when I started this, when this all went down, it opened up all these flaws, right. I'm like, well, these clients all left because they went with his wife and there's nothing I could do about it. And I go, wow. Everything that I'm doing is really not secure. This is really fragile.

Let me ask you this because this is very common story that you had this awakening around a massive setback and failure. Right. And so what do think it is that some. When this happens to people, there's two extremes. There's the one extreme, it's the blame and they suck. And they did this to me and now I need to just check out and I'm going to start drinking and I'm going to start whatever. Like this self medicating blame checkout place and failure. And then there's this like awakening piece, this opposite, which is what you went through. What do you think the difference is? Like what did you. Did you have those thoughts of like, I want to stay in blame and I just want to not deal. Like what made you want to have this to learn from it?

Well, I think it's multiple things. First of all, that is absolutely 100% true. I did not want to face the reality. I wanted to blame. I didn't want to do it. But what happened is reality kicked in and reality doesn't care.

Yeah.

And nobody cared. Right. My businesses didn't care. My, you know, nobody cared.

They don't care about the blame. It doesn't matter if you're right.

And then when I had to face that, when I had to look and say, listen, my what me blaming doesn't change. My financial position, when my blame doesn't help me move forward, and I have these goals and do I just give up on them? Do I just, you know, change what I'm doing? And the answer to that was no. And so I just had to figure out a solution.

So powerful. So I want people listening to, really, if you're in that spot right now where you are in that blame, and we've all been there, to ask yourself that same question. Because that's powerful. Like, does that help? Does the blame help the situation? Because validating a blame feels good in the moment, but doesn't.

Absolutely feels great. It takes all the pressure off.

Yeah. It doesn't fix it. Like you said. You said reality doesn't care, which I love that you just said that, because you're right. Reality doesn't care.

Doesn't. And once again, it's almost a pride thing sitting back in there because I just realized, oh, it's not me. Right. I'm blaming. But to say that nobody cares. Reality doesn't care. And it is me, that introspection, that even though that's hard, that's where real change comes from, and that's where real. You really move forward. I mean, that was the setup to create our business now, which we own over 100 million in assets. And it all happened because of this one change. And it.

Change was your awareness, though, the change.

It was all self awareness. It was all self awareness. And then figuring out, what do I really need to do?

Gosh, I just got chills, A.J. because that's the other thing that happens with blame is I think people look for someone to save them. And had someone saved you, like, let's just say an attorney stepped in. They want you. Like, you wouldn't have learned this lesson?

Oh, no, not at all. And I wouldn't have changed what I was doing. I wouldn't have stayed. I got off the bat. But we had to change our path because we were forced off the path we were on, which it happens to everybody. Right. And the problem is you can sit and keep looking and trying to get back and. Or you can pivot, right, move, take it, learn from it, and grow from it, and then you come back so much stronger because these lessons that you otherwise would have never received. Right?

Yeah.

Never going to receive these lessons any other way.

Totally.

I probably wouldn't have let me receive them. So.

Yeah. Now, if I had met you when you were going through that and I had interrupted you and said that to you, you would have wanted to punch me. So I Want people listening to. Also know that we can't tell people this. They have to figure it out 100%.

It's, yeah, I thought I was right. Right.

Yeah.

And I thought what I was doing was the best way to do things.

And you had to figure it out. So you have this awareness, you decide to pivot, which then your man on a mission. What happens next? How long does it take you to dig you out? Like, what was the next step?

Oh, this is quick. When I talk about this, when I tell our story, when I tell what happens to me, you need to know none of this is quick. None of this is easy. And that's okay. It shouldn't be. When we're in the middle of this and when we're going through this, and it's like, we got to change our business model. Because if our goal is really to have more wealth and have freedom and to live a better life and to be in control of my life, if I want to be in control my actions, I have to own this revenue, and I don't own it. So we started then looking and saying, what are my real skills? Where can I apply these things? And what is the path or avenue to get us to our goal? And when I started to look around and we saw some opportunities in space, but we had to pivot hard, like, we had to go in a totally different direction, which then, too, is also really scary.

And checking your ego, I would imagine, because you're almost starting over.

Oh, man. It was all of a sudden, every time, am I doing the right thing? Because I thought I was last time, and I wasn't doing it. So then what we did, too, is I surrounded myself with a lot of smart. And I really depended on other. Other people's feedback. And that was important to me. People's feedback that had the right intentions.

Let me ask you that. Finding other smart people and relying on feedback requires trust. Had you lost trust in people because of what happened, though? And how did you navigate through that?

Oh, wow, that's a huge box to open up. I'd lost a lot of trust. It was all of a sudden I had been taken advantage of. And anyone that has ever been taken advantage of through a business dealer by a loved one, been that trust has been broken. They understand that there is this jadedness and there's this feeling of vulnerability.

Oh, yeah.

That almost keeps you awake at night. Right. Like, every interaction at that point, you're just like, I don't know if this can be trusted. Totally. So what I had to do Is I had to create basically a system where I looked at the intentions of the people. And two, though I protected myself, which means that I Never depended on 100%. Right. I took the information and I molded it to my situation and I took it from people that I knew were after my best interest and to the people that had told me not to do it. Right. So we took everything from attorneys and accountants and we'd taken the people that were involved in the situation. And I went out and looked for feedback in other industries because what we did is we moved over and I said, listen, we need to own our revenue, we need to own the assets to deliver it. And I don't want anybody to ever be able to take this away from me. And that came in the form of real estate. And real estate was like, okay, this is a big world now and what are we going to do in it? Well, what we were good at, we were good at working with businesses, right? I was good at looking at policies and procedures and operations, making them more profitable, doing marketing, increasing margins. Like that's the stuff that gets me, got me excited. And so when we looked at this self storage, we looked as, that's not a real estate asset, that's a business. And all these people own this and they don't even know that this isn't a passive real estate. This is a functioning business. So I developed this theory that we could go buy these things and we could turn the business around and it would just dramatically increase profitability and increase wealth and then we would be able to redeploy this capital at a known rate of return. Now, this is key because what was happening in the brokerage firm is we're getting this income in, right?

Right.

I want to go out and buy a firm to get the extra income from that purchase. Right. And that purchase makes sense if that income keeps providing it. The problem is that income isn't secure. And so I don't know what my returns next year are going to be. And they could be gone the next year. And I was like, I can't do that. You can't grow that way. I can't utilize compound interest to leverage and get my goal. So with the self storage facilities, we developed a model where we knew if we bought it for X, the revenue could be moved up to a certain point, then I could take that revenue and I could redeploy it back into another business that I owned. The revenue, I owned all of it. And then I could increase it and do it again and again and again.

So you took that control. You really took back control of the whole process.

Exactly. And we liked the asset class, too, because of the contractual nature of it, where it's, you know, you have title companies, everything. It was very clear. And we didn't budge on contracts anymore.

We didn't budge on AJ how did you get in? Maybe there's a time gap here, but, like, how did you even come up with the money to do that, to start in that when you would just come off this huge hit?

So we did it in two ways. First of all, we were now our original business brokerage firm. We're now financing these lawsuits and these losses, right? And once we were breaking even, we thought, listen, we're going to sell this business and we're going to move all into storage. And that was enough to get us started. But it wasn't enough to get us where we wanted to go. Or frankly, too, it wasn't enough to get where we needed to go. Because there's a general rule that if you trade asset classes. So if I have an operating business that is high risk, and I move that into a low risk asset class, your returns plummet. So I got to make a certain amount of income, right? And I got to do this. And so there was this idea that we could do this, but if we don't grow this real estate business, we're never going to be able to replace our incomes. We're never going to be able to get it. So there was a huge risk in selling the business that makes the money and trying to move over.

But so I'm just trying to get in the mindset of where you were, too. Like, you came off this huge failure. You're not trusting people. You have an awakening. You're very aware. But now you've got a bunch of things you got to fight against. You don't have the money to really start this. You. You don't want to lose people's trust if you're enrolling them in your vision, Right? Because now you already lost their trust on something else. How do you fight that in your head?

Okay, that's a great point, because you got to realize, I came to my partners and I said, listen, I've got this idea. Let's drop everything that we've done to be successful, right? And let's go all in in this other direction. This is right after I had the great idea to buy a Florida that went down, right?

So they're thinking you screwed up your last big idea. Like, why are we.

Exactly.

Right.

I was really nervous to even present it to my partners. And I was really nervous to go about this and then fail again. And I knew I was like, if I fail at this, I'm done. Right? It was like, I just shouldn't be doing anything. But what I did, though, is I presented it like, this doesn't have to do with me, me. This is an economic and this is a numbers play. I'm not. This has nothing to do with ego. This is. This just makes sense. And here's all the reasons it does. And it did. And it made a lot of sense. And I am very fortunate to have partners and people that trusted us and it made sense and they decided that we should make that move too.

And I think what they saw in you at that time, even how you just described it, is they saw certainty in you. And I think people, people are driven towards certainty that you were, you have presented a vision, you were very certain about it. It wasn't like, I think I might.

You know, it was, this is how we need to go. And two, it was a solution. And I think that's the. I identified the real problem right through this and I said, I have a solution to this problem. Because we moved all this way. That doesn't mean we have to stop selling insurance.

Yes.

Right. So all of a sudden, I'm zero. We can still do what we do, but we could build up another company, we could sell this with that capital, still sell insurance, and we could then build this company into something great. And it takes care of what we all suffer from, what we're all trying to lose. It creates stability, it creates wealth, it creates passive income, it creates financial freedom. And at the end of the day, that's really what we needed and really what we wanted. We wanted to follow our passions. We wanted to be able to sell insurance if we wanted. We wanted to do other startups, and we needed the freedom and ability to do it, and then all our hard work wouldn't go to waste. So I provided a real solution. Right? And I think that's too what they saw. They said, this isn't once again driven by your ego or anything. This is an actual solution to the problem.

So people maybe have heard the saying, or maybe you've heard this saying that the only way out is through, right? You have to go through this to get out. And I know you said it wasn't quick. How long of a process was this from. From the moment of, oh, my gosh, this deal went bad in the insurance, you know, this is not working. This is. This is falling apart. This firm in Florida, it's not. They're scamming me. How long? From that point to your new business is taking off.

Okay, so once again, this is a long time. I'm in this. We're in this lawsuit, in this ugly battle. This is going on for say, a year.

Okay. And during that time, you're in self beat up. I'm going to imagine.

Absolutely, absolutely. Don't want to wake up in the morning kind of self beat up, like knowing every day your life sucks. And it's because. So now I go through this for a year, then I've got to rebuild. Now this rebuilding phase, this took years because all the income that we were producing and I. And we're working two, three jobs because we've got to build this up. We got to put all our income into it. We got to hire people because we had to create something big. And over the years, we kept adding on assets. We perfected our system. We created more like a franchise model. And we created a model that would work time and time again. Then we had to deploy, deploy, deploy. And. And after about four years, it was funny, the actual quarter that we became, we just shot up in profitability. It's working great. You know, we're on top of the world. We're still doing our insurance firm stuff. And that it was actually the quarter that we became profitable that I got sick. So I finally made it right. We finally got there. I was now running this huge brokerage firm which we had grown and they were. And we're getting paid lots of money. So the insurance stuff was going great. The real estate stuff's going great. I was on top of the world.

And you were. I'm imagining you're feeling like this final sense of peace, like. Like this.

Okay, good. I felt whole again. I felt almost, not like vindictive. Right. But I just felt that, okay, I've made good choices reaping it. And two, I'm doing great on both sides. Couldn't have been happier. And we just had our fourth child, me and my wife.

Okay.

So it was just awesome.

And before you get the next big step back, which is a big one, and I want to dig into that, I want to know you, you had the four kids and this, you're on your fourth kid and your wife. How was your wife through this whole process? Was she with you during that failure and was she with you or was she encouraging?

It was. I mean, it. It's hard to understand how to me how strong she is. And especially after the next one. But it was my wife. You know, she is not ever driven by material things. Like, she's like, listen, we can be in the gutter poor or we can be. So the things that, to me, I think were a lot bigger deal. Weren't that big of a deal for her. She was like, the biggest deal is she knew I was suffering really hard for her, but she was. She was strong when I needed.

So she still believed in you, regardless. I think that's critical because if your wife had sitting there saying, you're a loser, that doesn't help.

So, like, what have you done? What are you doing to our lives? And you're risking everything. And. Yeah, no, it was honey. Like, she's like, you know, you made a mistake. Right. But you know how to fix it. Get out there and fix it.

So I love that.

That never broke. That never broke. It was never too. This is not like a quick thing. This is years. Like, she had to deal with this for years.

Yeah. Yeah. Wow. That's pretty powerful for. Okay, so you're. So things are finally moving in the right direction. Everything's good. Top of the world. And then what happens?

So we're actually down at the PGA Tour in Appa, California, and we were there with some clients, and I was also looking at some real estate deals, and we were just having a great time. We were partying. We had all these exclusives. It was just awesome. And for me, it was kind of like this capstone, right?

Yeah.

We're with people we love and everything. Well, that night, my legs started to hurt, and so I told my wife, I'm like, hey, I'm going to go out on a run because my legs are hurting. So I went out on a run on the golf course, and I just went for a run. It was hard. Like, by the end of the run, it was like, man, my legs are kind of hurt, but didn't think much of it.

Okay.

Home. And we were busy, and my legs were still sore. And that night I was like, something's wrong. Like, something is really, really wrong. And so we went to the hospital, and I'm like. We went to the er, and I'm like, I never come to the er, but I don't know what's going on, but something is happening. And they took all these tests, and they're like, you are perfectly healthy. Go home. So we went home. I went and got in the bathtub, and I was soaking my legs because they hurt so bad. And I was kind of falling asleep in there and laid in there for a long time. And I went to get out, and I couldn't. My legs didn't work. And so my wife. All the kids are asleep. My wife's in the bed. I called my wife. She grabs me, pulls me out, grabs our new baby. And she calls up a neighbor, says, you got to watch the kids, and rushes me to the hospital. I'm in the hospital for what seemed like forever as they argued, trying to figure out what's going on. Why? Because the doctors looked at me and said, here's the problem. We can't. They couldn't even admit me to the hospital. They couldn't admit me to hospital because they're like, you're perfectly healthy. Aside from the fact that your legs don't work, you're perfectly healthy. Whoa.

Okay, so what was going through your head? Like, what were you thinking?

You know, I'm. I try to be the positive guy. I don't want people to be scared around me and everything. So I was just being. You know, it's just weird. It's going to be best. We're going to get this figured out and trying to joke around with the doctors and everything. But the paralysis started to get worse, and I'm in this little dark room. My wife went the next night to tuck the kids. It's just me and my parents. And a doctor walks in and says, we now think we might know what you have. We have to get you to a hospital that can take care of you. And. And he's like, it's this. This thing called Yamba Ray. Never heard of it. My life. Didn't know. And so we're sitting, going. He's like, don't look it up. An ambulance is going to take you down. Of course, the first thing I did was look it up.

Of course.

And I was like, oh, boy, this is going to be bad. And so I. They rushed me down to the hospital, and then within. I don't remember exactly how long it was, but it was a short period of time, I started to be able to lose my ability to breathe. And I had a mask on. They put me under. They put me into a coma, and they hooked me up to tubes. And when I woke up from the coma, I was paralyzed from head to toe. Even my eyes were part.

Oh, my gosh. And what was this disease? And how did you get it?

So it's a thing called Guillain Barre. And all it is is, let's say, if you get, like, a cold, I even know a guy that wants to drink sour Milk your white blood cells kick into a. To attack that for some reason, one out of every 2 million people this happens to. They get confused and they start attacking and they go into overdrive. Your body starts producing mass amounts of white blood cells and they attack the nervous system. Nobody knows why.

Random flu, random thing.

And they attacked my nervous system and they destroyed it. So my brain could no longer talk to my body and there's nothing they can do. And so they hooked me up to ventilators and machines and I lied there paralyzed and I woke up and we obviously there was about a six week period of time where we didn't know if I was going to even survive. And we didn't know if they were going to have to end up pulling the plug on me. I was fully aware, it was obviously I was having a heart attack. So I was in immense amount of pain. Like it can't even be described because my nerves are saying we're shredded. Like we just got blown to bits. It felt as if I'd just been ripped apart by grenades. And I can't move and I can't even speak, so I can't even talk. I can't communicate. Communicating through blinking. And they have me on all these drugs and the drugs didn't even touch the pain. So I didn't sleep.

And you can't even communicate that you're in pain.

No, it was, they, we have little charts they tried to use and I was trying to blank and it was a yes, no system. I couldn't drink, I couldn't eat, nothing. So it was just, oh my gosh.

You'Re like trapped in your own body. Yeah, yeah.

And it was just mass torture. And so they tried to stop the pain as best they could. They couldn't touch it. I didn't sleep for weeks and weeks and weeks. I couldn't sleep because the pain just came. And so we might, we didn't know what to do. My wife, we didn't want to bring the kids in to see their dad hooked to tubes, but after a certain point they realized, well, he may never even get better. This may be it. So my wife came and brought the kids in and they showed, showed what was going on. And you know, that was probably the hardest part in the whole thing was to see my children's face when they came into the room and saw me. And that was, that was probably the lowest point for me.

Yeah.

But it was one of those things too where I'm in my head and I don't know where this is going. I can't talk to anybody.

But you're really in your head because you're forced to be in your head because you're not. There's no other way.

No other way. I didn't even get the relief of sleep. And so it was, you know, finally we got to a point where I started to get a little better. And by a little better, that meant they could change the cuff and I could speak. So that meant my lungs could probably hold some air to change the mode of the ventilator so I could speak. And I still trained to be strong. So one thing. Everybody's like, you just had a newborn baby. I can't even imagine. And actually, that was the best thing that ever happened, because while my children. We couldn't have my children there, and why that was hard, I had no communication with my family. We put the little baby on the pillow next to my head, and I'd move my lips, and the baby would play with my lips, and he would smile and laugh, and that was how I played with my family.

Oh, my gosh.

So my baby was, like, just straight from heaven. It was the greatest thing that ever happened to me every day. That was my. What I looked forward to. I just looked forward to seeing my baby because he didn't care. He didn't know dad. He just saw me. And he was the only one that saw me and was happy and would.

Laugh because he didn't know any different.

It wasn't any different. And so. But after a little bit, and I began to speak kind of a funny story. So I'm trying to be strong. And they told me, like, okay, A.J. you're gonna speak for the first time. And my wife had my baby, and they looked at me, and they. They said, you're gonna sound weird because you haven't used your vocal cords in so long. And so I was like, okay, you know, kind of thinking, I'm ready. And so they opened the cuff so I could speak, and I looked. I looked up at the baby, and I said I was. His name's Theo. And I was like, theo, I am your father. Because I thought I'd sound weird.

So I thought, darth Vader.

Yeah, exactly, right? And then I kind of laughed. I looked over at my wife, and I was like, just kidding. We don't know who the dad is. And they're like, okay, that's done. And they shut off. My wife's like, are you kidding me? That's the first thing you say? So I was trying to be strong, and I was just Trying to be. Be funny. But the truth was, you know, I didn't. You didn't really know what to do. And it was like, okay, sitting here, trying to figure it out. And then slowly I started to come back.

And is that common for that illness that you do slowly recover or is not recover well?

No. Some people pass away, and other people. The next person in my area to have it, this was a year ago, they never, ever recovered at all. They're now in a facility that is designed to help people that will be permanent on tubes. But what happens with the sickness is the vast majority of everyone that gets it, it's mild. They get some numbness in their legs. There's a certain fraction that basically all their nervous system is tapped right? And they get on ventilators and tubes and they get in the bed and that fraction, their recovery is not good. After you're in the bed for. After you're paralyzed on life support for over two months, the odds of you walking, wow, ever again just start plummeting. It's just. And then after three, four months, you know, it, It. It's almost gets down. Like, it's like 10%.

Did you let yourself believe that that was a possibility or did you know you were going to walk again?

It would kind of go. I wish. I wish I could tell you right now. No, I was as strong as could be. And I never said. I just don't believe that. I just don't believe people are like that. As much as I think that was the majority of my thought process. I was like, I'm not gonna let myself believe. Of course it would come in and I'd be like, this is.

So you were scared, but you were open to the possibility and you were attached to the possibility. That's what I think.

So at first, if. I mean, totally honest, I just wanted them to kill me. Because when I was in the situation, I was like, I would wake up and I'd be in hell. Every time that my eyes opened, and I'm like, why won't you people let me die? I'm like, why are you keeping me alive? And. And then after. After I started to get better, I'm like, okay, now let's. I can. There's chance, there's hope, and let's get moving. And I 20. I always just tried to, you know, if I wasn't screaming out of pain, I tried to be completely, you know, strong and happy, and I'd make jokes. Even when they were doing therapy, trying to lift me up in the bikes, they'd strap me up to beds and things because they had to try to move my body around. And every time they did it, it was just mind boggling, excruciating pain. And so I would try to crack jokes and stuff as I'm basically bawling. And I tried to be just 100% positive the whole time. And that, that was one of the reasons too. They said that, they said my recovery, I was their fastest recovering in the hospital.

Incredible.

They're like, between your family support and the community support and they're like, and your attitude. I would ride around it. Once I got it, finally got in a wheelchair, I just ride around and bug all the nurses and all the patients in the hospital. I just keep going back and forth and I go meet everybody and I just, you know, I'm like, it is what it is. I just got it. Let's make this whatever we can. Because the doctors, they can't tell you that you're going to walk again. So when I'd open up my eyes and I could talk and I'd ask them, I'm like, am I going to die? And they'd be like, we don't know. You're not going to die. You're going to be okay now. This was after I could talk and I'm like, am I ever going to walk again? And it was just, we don't know. They're not going to, it was like, they're not going to give you false hope. And so I was, I had to be it for myself. And it was, I have to do this once again. Nobody's going to do it for me. And me being down doesn't change the reality of the situation. So I got to just move on. I got to take what I can too, by the. When I could eat. So when I finally learned and they were trying to teach me how to eat again and they had helped me move my hand stuff when I had that first drink of water. It is not describable how incredible it is how water touch your lips.

Isn't that amazing? Then you have such gratitude for that. And that's something we do every day and take advantage of.

Doctor. Oh, man. Exactly. After I drink, I like, wow, my life is amazing.

Yeah, it's incredible.

I can drink water now. I'm like, I've made it. Everything else is fine. I mean, I may not be able to move, I'm still hooked to tubes, but I can drink water. Water. And then the next time I could eat, then it was like, I can have food now and then, all of a sudden, my hands started to work.

You were, like, forced into gratitude. Yeah.

Oh, it was. It was just like, everything's incredible, right? And I sat there in my bed, and as the holidays would go by and Halloween, my wife would bring the kids in to trick or treat for me, and she'd do everything for me. So she'd take my paralyzed hands and she'd get treats and put them in the kids basket for me so I could participate. She would make sure that I gave the kids hugs, so they'd come in and she'd wrap my arms around them. And so I. You know, every time I could do anything, every time that I could hug my children on the. When I got to go outside, it was. It was a miracle. It was incredible. And so for me, it was like the joys of progress so outweighed the pain. And then it became a whole nother story. Now I'm in a wheelchair, and obviously, I was running this big firm in insurance. And they came there, okay, well, that's over. You're done. We don't know if you're ever even going to get out of this hospital. More or less working. So all of a sudden, I'm in the hospital, and it's Christmas Eve now. I went in when it was hot outside. We were golfing, and it's Christmas Eve. I'm watching the snow fall out of my hospital window. And I was. I could not be more excited because the hospital was going to let me go home in the morning, and they were going to let me go home for five whole hours to be with my kids on Christmas. And I was just stoked. And I'm sitting there looking at the snow, thinking, I wonder what my kids are gonna get. I wonder, you know, how Christmas is gonna be. And I had this realization that I'm excited to go home and to see my kids open up their presents, and I know they're gonna have presents. And I go, I'm not worried about losing my house. I'm not worried about my wife having to leave my children to go work, why her husband's paralyzed. And. And then I just. It just dawned on me on what this change in my life did for me.

Incredible.

It was like that all of a sudden, that huge mistake that had happened in the past, this guy that had fraud us and screwed us, he's now my best friend. I'm like, dude, you're amazing. Because. Because of that devastating. What I thought at the time was, yeah. Which now, looking back on it, it's Almost laughable that I thought that was devastating. But that destroyed, devastating move moved me into a position to where even when I lost my job and the insurance and everything, which was a huge amount of income, it was like 60% of all my income. It didn't matter. I didn't need it. I didn't have to worry about paying the bills. We had passive income coming in. And my assets, yeah, my assets didn't care if I was paralyzed. They just kept producing income. And I realized what, you know, what all of a sudden I'd done and what that meant for me and my family. And that cannot be replaced. I mean, you can't even describe in that situation what it meant to know that I didn't have to worry about losing my home. I didn't have to worry about what my family's going to do in a hospital.

So now you actually teach cash flow to freedom. Correct?

Yes. Yeah. So. And I decided that in the hospital. So I started in the hospital. I started a blog because I'm like, don't know what else to do, right? I'm sitting here in the hospital. And yeah, so I started a blog, and it was Cash Flow to Freedom, where I'm like, I'm just going to purely teach finance principles. I'm going to talk about what we did, our failures. And two, I wanted to do more. I wanted to give, like, an in depth look. So we started the podcast, and I even do, like, these things called 15 Minute Fridays, where I'm like, this is what we're doing today. I wanted it to be real business. Like, I wanted to talk about the principles that make you wealthy and deliver cash flow through what we're doing. Not just, oh, here's what I heard, or here is what I read in the book. I'm like, now here's a bankrupt super Kmart that we bought, and we turned it to a ginormous storage facility. Here's an office building that we bought. We're house hacking, right? Here's all these different things we're doing to create income.

So I'm listening. I'm going to find both of these things. I want to look at the blog and I want to listen to these Friday, 15 minutes. That sounds amazing.

Yeah, it was. And too, it became fun for me because I'm so passionate, obviously, about what this did for me in my life. And then too, when I got out of the hospital and we were at home, so I was still paralyzed. I went home in a bed and my wife took care of me. And after we got In a wheelchair. And I could get around in my wheelchair pretty good. We're like, let's just go. We're out of here. We're going to Hawaii, right?

Yeah.

So we left and went to Hawaii and took the kids. I'm like, the kids need a break. My wife needs a break. So we went and we just went to Hawaii and played. And I'm just like, this is freedom.

That is freedom.

This is freedom. I can just go and my family can enjoy time in our worst time ever. Should be devastating. We're going to go play.

So powerful.

It was. And it was. I mean, life changing isn't the right word for it. And we have that freedom now. I mean, it seems like this summer we've just been traveling around. If I want to go to something with the kids, we just go. Take the kids to Disneyland before I.

Pivot to where people can find you, because I want them to find out more. Just one question that I do ask every guest and I'm curious. Your take. If someone's in their own personal rock bottom right now, whatever that is, it could be the health, it could be the financial crisis you were in before the mess. If they're in their own personal rock bottom, it were to give them a piece of advice on what they can do right now to start leveling up and creating everything. Nothing. What would you tell them?

This is hard because I know from being there that it's easy to say and it's hard to do. I would say first of all, the first step is to be grateful. So look at all the things that you have and realize what you have. Because no matter what situation you're in, you have some something. When I was in my worst situation ever, I had my baby that could lie next to a pillow and touch my face. And so there's always something to be grateful. And you need to realize that. The second step after you find things to be grateful for is to realize that there's two types of actions. One can help you, one cannot. And you need to identify these actions. And one is blame. One is feeling guilty. One is getting down on yourself. One is looking at all this negativity and the self blame concept that doesn't do anything for you. And the other side is take small steps of what you can control and what you can do. Whether that means trying to use your hand fingers for the first time or whether that means leaving your job or start investing or whatever that is. Look at small steps that move you forward. If you can just take one step, your confidence builds. You feel better about it because you feel like you are in control of your life and then just keep taking those steps till you get to your goal.

So good. I love this aj. So powerful. So many great little lessons and stories within all of us. Thanks for sharing with us today. If people want to find more, where do they go?

So Cash Flow to Freedom the number two. So it's Cash Flow to Freedom. You can email me. I have the podcast YouTube channel cash flow to Freedom so you can go listen to all those avenues. Instagram, AJ Osborne so in my Instagram we just talk about daily lives. I put stories up, see my kids and what we're doing in business and everything else. So and you can, you can message me on Instagram or email me on Cashflow to Freedom. It goes directly to my phone.

Amazing. I love it. Thank you so much aj.

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Thanks for leveling up with us today. Please share this episode if you found it helpful so others can join in. And don't forget to hit that subscribe so you don't miss out on future shows. And if you would leave me a five star review. I appreciate those so much. I read all of them and it's how I know that I'm giving you information that you find valuable. And come interact with me over on Instagram @nataliejofit. I read all the direct messages and comments over there. Make it a great day. Creating everything from nothing.