A recorded conversation (YouTube) between host Josh Trent and guest Justin Donald about lifestyle investing and financial freedom. Justin frames a "lifestyle investor" as someone who buys income-producing assets to cover living costs so they can "buy back" time and make higher-quality life choices; he describes his mission as helping people gain autonomy from jobs or businesses that "own" them. The transcript also references Justin's book, Lifestyle Investor, and includes informal banter and experiential remarks (e.g., an intense first-time experience mentioned).
Chapters
To be a lifestyle investor, you're in charge of your life. You're in charge of building an incredible life that can support itself based on income coming in. So instead of working for a paycheck, working for a business, working for your business, why not buy assets that produce income? Those assets cover the cost of life. Well, now your choices become better quality choices. Your problems become better quality problems. You don't have to worry about, can I cover my bills? Can I put food on the table? Can I support my family? Now it's, hey, where do I want to spend my time?
Justin, welcome to the show, dude.
So great to be here.
Thanks for being here at my house. We did some, some hoppes. The first time you've done that.
That's right.
How was that experience? It was really interesting.
Yeah. You know, the, the first few minutes of it are just incredibly intense. Yeah. Especially for someone that hasn't really, you know, done anything with that before. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, today is really special for me because as I've had a son and my audience knows this, we're really focused on wealth, on financial intelligence, which is, let's face it, it's not something that all parents know how to teach, man. So you're the author of the Lifestyle Investor, which is a book that I've read cover to cover. One of my favorite chapters right here is Just Going through the Motions. So we're not going to go through just the motions today. Tell people, if they don't know anything about you, who are you? In a nutshell? I'm sure it's a big ass nutshell, but tell people the small version of if they just met you, what do you stand for in the world and how do you serve?
Sure. Yeah, Great question. Pretty powerful question. I actually love asking people this question because I'm always curious of people's story, who they are, not what do you do, but who are you?
That's the classic party question. What do you do? AKA how do you make your money? It's more like, how do you serve? What do you do in the world to help people.
That's right. So for me, I love people. I'm a relationship guy. So if I can serve in a capacity of just connecting with people, I love that. If I can, you know, offer any wisdom that I've gained, either because I took the hard fall and I learned that way or just because I had good experiences, you know, either way is good. My real goal and mission is to help people buy their time back. So my what, what I've noticed is most people are kind of a slave to something. They're slave to, I don't know, the job they have to the business that they've built. Maybe they wanted autonomy and freedom and they built this business that maybe gave them more of that than when they are, you know, an employee and now all of a sudden the business owns them. And so I just see a lot of entrepreneurs on this treadmill that they can't get off where, you know, maybe they're making more, but they're owned by, you know, in some way, shape or form. They've got golden handcuffs either to the lifestyle that they currently live, the lifestyle that they want to have. Some people are a slave to security and routine and what is known and are scared of the unknown. So my goal is to really help people see that there's a way that they can buy their time back to spend it on the things that matter most.
