192. From UPS Driver to a Successful Entrepreneur with CJ Calio

Are you ready to take control of your life and build your ideal future? Striving for financial independence and a clear plan of action, do you feel you should be doing more with your investments? Look no further. Welcome to my Freedom Foundry with your guide, Paul David Thompson, who helps business owners forge their path to freedom. Strap in and get ready to level up your life.

All right everybody, welcome to the show. I'm joined today by CJ and he's made a transition position recently that I'd like for him to share with us. He's made a big move and I'm not sure exactly when that was. C.J. so tell everybody about your background and this big move that I'm talking about.

Yeah, thanks Paul for having me. We recently relocated. So I, I was born and raised in Hawaii and all this real estate journey stuff started early back there. But we made a transition and a shift to leaving the 50th state and coming up to beautiful Reno, Nevada. Reno, July of last year. Okay, so we newly implanted into Reno, Nevada.

Okay, and so what was the reason to leave paradise and then move to the desert?

Desert where it's 22 degrees right now.

Oh really?

Yeah. That's a lot to do in that the phase and level in business and real estate that I'm in. Right. Nevada is something that or a state that is very friendly, I guess you would say, versus Hawaii. And that shift also comes paired with my why, which is my family. So I have elderly grandparents that are getting up in that age where they're going to need some level of care and assistance. We're simply just priced out of in Hawaii and unless you're rolling in the dough, it's not affordable for most. They're open to Reno, Nevada. It supported their lifestyle, it supported their budget and it allowed us to be able to come alongside with them. So I actually moved almost my entire immediate family to Reno.

So how many people are we talking about?

We're talking about 10 people.

10 people just picked up from Hawaii and moved to Reno, Nevada primarily because of cost considerations.

Cost considerations. And frankly for me it's opportunity. There's so much more that I can do. Explore, network with like minded people up, up in the States where in Hawaii you're on an island, you're on a rock 2,000 miles away from the mainland. It costs a pretty penny just to get to the west coast and from there some of these events and seminars are all the way on the east coast. So it's a day travel at minimum just to get there.

Yeah, I've Never actually been to Hawaii, but I've priced out vacations there before. And I live in the Midwest, basically Southeast Midwest. And it's as easy to get to Europe as it is to get to Hawaii from the middle of the country. And so even if you're going to the west coast, it's what, a six hour flight? Five. Six hour flight.

Five and a half, six hours, give or take. Yeah. Yeah.

So I mean, it's a science project, right? To get back to the States. That makes a lot of sense. Okay, so were you doing real estate in Hawaii prior to that?

Yes and no. So what I mean by no is I wasn't investing in Hawaii's market.

I see.

And yes I was, because that's where it all started. So prior to getting into real estate, my profession was a UPS driver. You know those dudes in the brown truck with the brown shirts that work crazy hours during that one favorite time of year called Christmas? Yeah, that was me.

So walk me through that kind of. There was something that was happening while you were a UPS driver and it wasn't fulfilling you somehow. And walk me through that exercise went through in your mind to say, real estate's my thing and I'm gonna use this to get out of that.

It's funny you asked. I was just telling the story to a friend the other day who was just curious about where I got started. And yes, UPS is a great paying job, high paying profession, very physically taxing long hours and especially during that time of year, Christmas, where you should be spending more time with family. Right. So in one Christmas in particular about eight years ago, it was the heaviest volume wise deliveries we've ever seen in Hawaii. And what I found was I spent four to five months of missing my entire family during that Christmas rush, if you want to call it, which started in October, basically ended in beginning of March. And I would come home, they'd be asleep, I'd wake up, they'd be gone. And it was a pattern that just drove me insane. I was so frustrated with. I get to have this great job that produces a good income, that allows me to live a good lifestyle in a very expensive state. However, I'm trading all this time for money and I'm missing those memories, those moments, those things that matter more than dollar signs. And it clicked. It was just like, this isn't something I'm willing to put up with for much longer. So I posed a question to my wife and she was a mail carrier prior to real estate. And I asked her, said, you know, Jaz, I would like to leave. Would you support me in this? She goes, absolutely. How are you going to replace your income? Caught me off guard. Like I thought I was just, you know, I'll quit and just sit on the couch, watch football and eat potato. No, no. She had bigger plans for me. And she always had this thing about following successful people. And she noticed that most successful people carry some form of real estate in their portfolio. So it's always been intriguing to her. And when I posed that question, that was obviously her go to, let's go into real estate. For me, I have no real estate experience, no knowledge, no understanding that that's even an opportunity. So I reverted to my fear. It's too scary. That's a lot of money. I don't know what you're talking about. It's uncomfortable. I'm going to do that. And instead, I wanted away from her and I chose to go and create startup businesses. And most of you who know anything about startups, a lot of them don't make it, don't even make it a year. And that was my experience is I would start it, it failed, I'd start it, it failed. And I found myself in the same position I was when I was at ups, like, frustrated and confused and how am I going to achieve this goal? I really want to get out. And all these mechanisms aren't working for me. And I kind of laid my pride down and said, you know what? My wife might be onto something. It's scary, it's uncomfortable, and maybe that's where I need to be right now. So I reluctantly joined her, started going to some networking events. I was that husband in the back of the room, crossed arm, defensive. You want to talk to my wife? She's the one interested. I'm just here to support kind of a guy. But being in that environment and hearing the lingo and going from knowing nothing to understanding a little bit to a little bit more getting comfortable and acclimated to investing started to soften my pride and opened up the willingness to learn and be intrigued. And a lot of it was my wife. I wanted to support her. She was very passionate about this. So eventually, through all the networking events, she pinned a strategy that she thought would work extremely well, which was cash flow buying rental properties that produce streams, and we do enough of them, in theory, it should replace our income. Then I can quit. We took our first leap after networking and getting some information, some referrals to markets that make sense for that type of strategy, and we bought our first turnkey property and Being the fear based person I was at that time, I requested let's sit and watch it work. Because I needed this thing called proof of concept. Sure, get it up here, but see it play out that I'm not going to lose money, that I'm not going to get burned, that it's not going to go to hell. It does work. So we sat on it for six to nine months. We've had opportunities of improving certain things, but at the end of the day we were making money. It was performing, the tenant wasn't crashing the place, we weren't dealing with an eviction yet we were able to get that momentum rolling where our confidence built up, where we're like, great, let's do it again. And the following years to come, we went from one to six, then six to 40, then 40 to 80. 90. We ended up around 90 at the point where we both stepped away from our job.

90 single family properties.

90 single family or duplexes of some variation.

Small, multifamily.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, that's impressive because that sounds like you scaled up pretty quickly. How did you manage to buy the first one? Did you finance it or did you buy it for cash or what?

Yeah, so the first deal was our turnkey. We put our typical 25% down and we leveraged investor mortgage on it. And that's how we funded our first, I think five or six deals before that. The thing you don't know until you know, oh, you don't qualify for the next one right now is that light bulb moment, like, hey, so six isn't quite where I need to be. I'm still at a fraction of my paycheck. How can I get to the next level? It really started to stretch us and that's where it got. Strangely enough, as comfortable as it was, it got fun because now I felt like there was no limitation. It's limited to my creativity and if I can think of it, how can I apply it? Let's give it a shot. And we were able to find different ways. And that's where I stumbled into the BRRRR strategy. For those who don't know, the BRRRR is an acronym, stands for Buy, rehab, rent, refinance and repeat. And it allows you to take limited capital and in theory, rinse and repeat it when done properly, when you get really good at it. And it helped us to scale very quickly with limited amount of capital.

So if I understand this correctly, you got your fifth or sixth property and you weren't eligible to go to the next One, because of the debt to income ratio you capped out. And so I hear people talking about you get 10 slots a lot. And I think depending on your income, you can get up to 10 slots, but you have to make a really big income to keep up with that. Right. Because they don't give you much credit for the rents that you get for the properties you already own. And so I think a lot of people stop right there. They say, oh, well, I guess, you know, that's all I qualify for, right? Yeah.

And getting into that curiosity, I believe, is the real opportunity. Because you're going to face obstacles at every level you're at. You're not going to avoid them. There's always something you don't know and you're going to get a chance to face that. And taking that face value and making the most of it really solidifies your ability to see past the obvious. Is that one quote I've heard before, and I think it was from Robert Kiyosaki. It's not the lack of resources, it's the lack of your resourcefulness. They're out there. No matter what the markets are doing, what the economy is doing, there's opportunity if you're able to identify it and act on it. I think for us, that moment in particular was our defining moment, if you want to call it that. Took us from the normal investor to an extraordinary investor.

Sounds like you must have switched from buying turnkey to buying not turnkey if you're doing the VER method. So how did you even learn about that and what kind of properties were you buying and what kind of discounts?

Yeah, that's a good question. Everybody thinks. I read the book from Biggerpockets, David Green. The verb book. No, I YouTubed it. And I'm the kind of guy that's just going to get enough information and I'm going to act on it. And what I took is I understood the concept in theory and I just went and I did. Now I had a lot of opportunities around lessons learned that cost some. Tuition is what I call it, money that I'm not able to recoup back physically at the time. But I've taken those lessons and I've compounded on that investment. And part of that is the team creation aspect. You get to eventually trust somebody enough to pull the trigger and work with them. And only through the results that are created will you be able to make that determination whether or not this team member is a good fit for you or not. And there's so many lessons along the Way of expectations and communication and crucial things being 3,000 miles away in Hawaii while we're investing in the Midwest that we get to work on and establish. So initially, it was challenging to build the team, and the deals were good at that time because the market was still, I guess you would say, recovering from the O situation. So our house prices were. We were looking at, you're buying equivalent to a $100,000 house at like 50% off and throwing 20 grand into it, maybe being all in withholding costs. 75. And that's the epitome of a perfect brrrr. You refinance out 25% equities in there, you pull out the 75 you invested and do it all over again. And that's pretty much the deals that we were doing in the beginning. And the opportunities were team members where, okay, rehab was supposed to be 20. And then they found new things. Change orders came, timeline delays, things that you get accustomed to. The more you do more rehabs, you're not going to catch everything on the inspection or the walkthrough. When you open up the wall, all of a sudden, oh, there's no electrical or there's no plumbing. There's termites everywhere. Learning to pivot and adapt and still get to see the end result, I think was crucial. For me, as much as I wanted to pull out all my money, the reality is not every deal got that result. But I was able to consistently hit a discounted property, which is where I saw value in this strategy, even if I'm five or ten grand under market rate. So if I needed 25 as a down payment, as a turnkey, but I left in, say, 15, I created a 10,000 equity spread that I didn't have to put 10,000 money. And you do enough of those, you got essentially a free property if you keep doing that over and over and over again. And that's where our momentum really built.

Up, having that resolve, the resolve to keep pressing through. And that's the interesting thing about the brrrr method is when everything lines up perfectly, it's great and you get all your cash out. Then everything went to plan. But sometimes you end up leaving a few thousand dollars, you know, 5, 10, $20,000 in the deal. But your point's very well made. You still bought that property for a discount. It just wasn't as much of a discount as you thought when you first bought it, right?

Absolutely.

You still were able to refinance. So on the buy side, were you buying with hard money or cash and then refinancing or how are you doing that?

Yeah. So I looked into hard money and I wasn't happy with the cost of it. And what I learned through the process is easy. Money is expensive. And if I want money that works more in my favor for these obstacles I know I can face through a rehab, I needed a more cost effective price and rate that's allowing me that buffer, that contingency, that cushion. I chose to go and network and work with other people, OPM, other people's money. Find private money lenders, those that have liquid capital of some sort, that are not interested in being as active as I am, however, still would like to make a return far better than a savings account or CD or some of these other things that they're investing in that they're not even keeping up with inflation. And I would just promote opportunity.

Yeah. So you don't give names or anything, but who was and how did you find your first private money lender?

Yeah, I mean, just like what we preach when we network with people or in our space, we suggest starting with family and friends, people who are close to you doing anything new, it's always that learning curve. And with family and friends, what I found in my experience was they're more willing to give me honest and open feedback, even if it was brutally harsh. You came across really pushy, really salesy, really everything versus going through all these reps and being able to adjust and have it become more organic and what's in it for them, being able to paint that picture that this is an opportunity for you. Do I benefit from it? Yes. And without me, this opportunity may not surface. So how I paint that picture for them really shifted my trajectory on being able to raise capital for these deals that I were doing. So family and friends, I believe it was my uncle who gave me my first land. And it was after I talked to my mom and dad. And the story goes with my dad is when I brought this up, he disowned me. He said that you're running a scam, you're going to get burned, you're going to make the family look bad. He put me in this position of feeling inadequate and it really challenged me to dive deeper into my why? Why am I doing this? They didn't understand where I was coming from yet. Fast forward three years later. He was my biggest cheerleader, he was my biggest fan. And through real estate, I was able to help him retire early because he was having medical issues. So he did a 180 from that initial conversation. And I'm So grateful I had the resolve and the resilience to see it through. Regardless of what he said, which I felt was what I needed to be successful at continuing to raise. You get to understand there's a lot of no's out there. However, no is a no for now. Yeah, it's just right now and being honoring yet persistent enough to continue to connect and have those touches with those people. I've converted people that were no 5, 6, 7 years ago to some of my biggest, more consistent lenders today. Right. Allow me to continue to grow and do what I do while supplementing them in some fashion that supports their vision, their goals, their monetary needs.

That's excellent. So you've been talking about your experience with private money and how you raised it, and it sounds like you did that pretty early on. I think that's really astute because my experience is most of the people that I've talked to or ask me questions, they try and find money themselves through their HELOC or their loan against their 401k and they're really reluctant to raise private money. It's like a fear of public speaking and raising private money are kind of like hand in hand. And doesn't sound like you were had any kind of previous sales training if you were, you know, working for ups. Was that a big shift for you?

It was in a sense of accepting rejection. However, I believe part of my UPS profession has insisted in my success of creating those relationships and connections. One thing that I did a lot as a UPS driver, especially when I tapped into real estate, was being more intentional around having startup conversations with people, just getting to know them, asking them questions far more than what did you order? So I was that UPS guy that would spend maybe a little too much time at every stop, but just getting to know my customers. And by the time I retired and I left there, I must have had, I don't know, maybe 100 or so customers in my cell phone that wanted to keep in touch with me that were just that connected. And these are guys that order Amazon or these things off of online that are delivered and they're not consistent. But what I found is I left a lasting impression. And that's what I think a lot of my key to my success was, is just the willingness to be interested in them. What do they want? And I've even had the opportunity of telling people, this isn't for you, even though they want to based on what they are sharing with me. Right. I'd rather them not partner with me because it doesn't support them. Instead, I want to connect them with somebody that better fits their goals, their vision, their why, and not needing to be this scarcity mindset, just knowing that there's a lot out there and I get to find and create those honest, organic, natural relationships where in the end it's going to come back. It always does.

Well, speaking of there's a lot out there, it sounds like after you acquired, what was it, 80, 90 units, you decided to branch out beyond single families, is that right?

Absolutely.

Tell me about that experience. I don't think we've established that your single family portfolio is in Kansas City, is that right?

Yes, that's correct. Yeah.

And then you hit probably enough units where you're in a good place financially, you don't have to work anymore at the UPS driving a truck. Where did you go from there?

Yeah. So I mean, 90 doors, as much as the number is baffling because I still go like, oh, 90. Like we hit 90, it still hits me hard. It was the upkeep of it. So you got 90 properties, you got 90 leases, you got 90 tenants. And yes, we always leverage the team, specialist property manager to handle that. Yet there's always something going on. Right. So my wife started to feel overwhelmed and we were comfortable. We achieved our initial goal of getting financially independent from both of our jobs. We were living a good life. And I just saw this burden on your shoulder, like that's a lot to upkeep if you're doing a lot of maintenance calls, a lot of stabilization of our portfolio. What can we do now to get more return and leverage what we've already created, and we've punned it as a catapult strategy where you take Monopoly while you play that game and apply it in real estate. So basically I took that concept of you buy property, add greenhouses, but eventually you get to trade in for a hotel. And that's what we did. We started to liquidate in 1031 some of our assets to roll it into larger, more stable commercial deals. So we're in traditional commercial, not multifamily commercial, but traditional commercial, where we have five, seven, ten year leases. Right. We have some leases that are structured as a form of triple net, where tenants responsible for everything. And all we got to do is our bill right mortgage. Being able to take those greenhouses and trade it up lowered her pressure and wait because you just have less to worry about. And what we've come to find out in commercial for the last three and a half years we've been in there, you don't get those midnight falls. You don't. You get those quarterly reports. You know, maybe if you really want to be super in the meat of the stabilizing of the asset, you check in monthly, but it's so far and few in between versus every other day. This one, the toilet's flooding. This one's got termites. This one we're evicting this, this, this. Yeah. So it was more about quality of life at that point. How can I make her life easier? And that again, back to creativity and challenging me. What can I do that's different, that's slightly uncomfortable, yet still achieves a similar result? And it was moving into the commercial space.

Is that in Kansas City as well?

Yes.

Okay. Because you know the market already. You've done your research, Right. So you know the area that makes sense. See, I've not gone into is this retail.

Commercial, retail, government, medical office.

Office and retail. Okay. How did you even start that process? Did you get an agent to help you find them?

Yeah. So the beautiful thing about staying in the market that I already know is all I had to do is ask for a connection last for a referral and begin the process of implementing what worked in the residential, but now just changing the vehicle to commercial and finding the right agents and team members that would support the commercial aspect. Because there is honestly a difference between a residential agent and a commercial agent. It's different, right? Very different. So once we got those pieces in play, it was all about reimplementing what we already know works from the residential into commercial and making those slight adjustments and understanding and ultimately just taking that action step to create a result. And when we did, we're like, huh, this isn't as scary or audacious that we originally think it was. It actually is a lot more fun and simple because it's really about math. You just calculate things.

Just do a real quick recap. You've moved from Hawaii, you've bought 90 single family units or 90 units of single family or small multifamily, and then you've gotten into several commercial leases, we'll call it. And what's next for you? Is there another domain you're trying to conquer?

Not necessarily another domain I'm wanting to conquer. I want to become more effective and efficient in the commercial space because I feel like I'm just watching the surface. Yeah, I'm a small fish in a big pond and I'm looking to grow slowly and steadily and be able to absorb and learn as much as I can as I continue this Progression and upward movement. And it's funny because similar to what you have to offer, that's how it came to be where people were just intrigued about what we do, where they wanted to learn more and they wanted to find the right community and fit for them. And that kind of became something that opened our opportunity up for us about four and a half, five years ago where we started to mentor people in that, guide them. And we like to use the personal trainer analogy because you know, there's a lot of variations of getting in shape and being it's New Year, most people are probably set out a New Year's resolution around it. And there's different breeds of commitment and the highest form is that one on one personal training commitment. And we seem to specialize in that where we get the best results. We don't work with masses, we work with few, with a few, with the intention of seeing it through and challenging them and holding them to their commitments because they say they want this. Yet when you get feet to the fire, are you going to do it? And having that person back you was a beautiful opportunity. So our focus this year is more about helping others. If we do what they want to do and have what they want to have, we've opened the doors to sharing with them. So there's like a twofold in that I continue to grow and get more experienced and knowledgeable in what I do and I get to help others come alongside me. My big vision for all this and maybe in a 10 year Spanish to have so many investors that I have relationships with that it's never a matter of how do I get a deal done, it's who do I pull. I want more people up here in this sphere. And it's just so much more fun when you have a good group of investors and like minded people that are moving in the same direction, that are understanding of what opportunity could look like and are hungry to go and do it. And that's what I'm personally looking to have in the next 10 years is in my vision is just to have this, a mass amount of network and good connections where we start doing some huge deals.

And of those deals, do you have an idea of what type of deals those are going to be yet?

No. Sky's the limit. So as I work with others who are getting their green houses, getting ready for the red hotels and some have slowly transitioned to those red hotels, I get an understanding for where they want to be in. I like to think I'm the flexible piece because I'll do a Deal as long as it makes sense, numbers work and it's a win win for everybody. And others may be fixated on, no, I only want to work in multifamily. No, I only want to work in office. No, I only want to work in government. And I'll be able to know when the deal presents itself, who I can turn to to say, hey, this fits in your lane. How about we go and partner on this? I see partnerships in my future on larger scales that help me to tackle down larger deals where we all walk away winners.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense because as you scale, and I'm in a very similar spot. C.J. as you scale, you cast your eyes forward into these bigger deals and you feel like you have the confidence in the wherewithal to pull them down now. But typically you need partners. Typically, these are not transactions. You're just qualifying for a loan by yourself. You're raising all the money by yourself. You're certainly not managing the asset clearly by yourself. You need to take this team analogy and really put the red hotel look onto it. So I'm in a similar spot where I'm trying to branch out into getting to bigger transactions. And the experience of raising money, the experience of managing assets, all port very nicely over to these much bigger transactions that it becomes a team sport real fast.

Exactly. Makes me think of that line. Your network is your net worth. So having that community, man, it's crucial.

All right, well, if people want to learn more about you, get to know you, where can they go and find you?

Yeah, awesome. They can check us out on social media, on Instagram, it's nnproperties. And if any of this information was valuable or insightful to you and you were curious around the BRRRR strategy and how, how this process and system worked for me, I'd like to give you a free gift. You just go out to our website, why not now in realestate.com and download your free PDF.

Excellent. I'll make sure and put that link into the show notes. Is there anything here that I haven't asked you that you'd like to add before we close up our conversation?

Oh, how can I support you, Paul? I mean, it's been a pleasure. I thank you for having me on here. How can I support you?

Well, that's a great question. That sounds like somebody who's been trained in networking that when someone doesn't ask, he reflects it right back at you. And so I will share with you what I'm doing is I'm Getting into hard money lending. And maybe we'll just brainstorm for a second here. And this is exactly how masterminds run. So this will be a mastermind of two. I am in the middle of starting a hard money lending fund. I'm meeting with lawyers and getting all the documents set up. And I am actively in capital raise mode. So I have basically lots of people come to me because of the network, similar to what you have. They come to me and say, hey, I've got this deal, I've got this land project, I've got this multifamily. I need to raise money, can you jump in with me? And I've done that for a while out of my Solo 401 and my IRA. But all that money now is deployed and so I don't have any dry powder to go deploy in meaningful ways. So I'm having to raise capital. If that opportunity was planted in your lap, what great ideas would you have?

What I first thought of when you're mentioning hard money is the need for our space to have more access to something like that. So having the ability to introduce you to our network and see if that's a good fit and how that could look like as you continue to raise capital. Because a lot of our deals are on the smaller side. Most of those that we work with start off with single family homes. So you're looking at 100, 120 all in. And I always advise them to come with some capital. Put skin in the game. True. Now you treat it so different than when it's just somebody else's money. Right. That's the first thing that comes to mind is how can I get you immersed into my network? How can I spread the word of what you have to offer beyond my community in our space and allow you to be connected to all our team members out in all the market. I know it's a need. Everybody's always asking, who do I connect with for good hard money. Yeah. Or any capital. And if that's a resource and a service you can provide, I'd love to connect you with them.

Okay, we definitely will talk about that a little more and we'll stay in touch. Also, I'm going to be doing an event this year and sounds like you're going on the speaking gig tour kind of deal. So it's very I think of like mind similar. This is not one of those like big podiums where there's going to be 10,000 people. It's a small, close knit community type event where we like rent a Mansion in Houston or Nashville or something. And we have a weekend and we just talk shop and mastermind. You might be a good speaker for that.

Wow, I appreciate that. Thank you for that compliment. I'm seriously interested. Why move to the States? Do you have these opportunities to make.

It more practical for you to pull that off? Yeah.

Correct. Correct.

Well, yeah. For those listening, this is exactly the kinds of conversations that we all need to be getting involved in more. And I find that we can connect and talk to people over the Internet in ways that we never could have imagined years ago. But it's even harder to make serious personal connections unless you find your tribe, unless you find the people that you kind of just jive with. And you a lot of times are having to travel to see them a few times. Which is why I think you're building a community. Same reason I'm building a community. It's just I'm looking for friends. I think we all are. Right. Just going down to the neighborhood saloon is just not the way it works anymore. Right. It's not the same.

Right.

Yeah.

Those wells run dry quick.

They do. They do, don't they? Well, cj, thank you so much for coming out here, providing your story and all the amazing transformation that you've made in your life. And you mentioned you have kiddos when we were talking about offline. Tell the folks about your kiddos and what they're into.

Yeah. So I have three kids. My oldest son is going to be 20 this year. Wow. Sophomore. Going to a junior in college. He's still back in Hawaii. Okay. His passion and stuff right now, I believe is cars. And he loves working on his cars. And he's also a tech kid, so he's doing a lot of looking into tech and some top secret stuff he's interested in getting into. We have a 10 year old. She's my daughter. She's my sweetheart, the one and only. She's my princess that has me wrapped around her finger. Yeah, I love her to death and she's all my personality traits really, and I'm excited. She's already interested in real estate. She's already contributing to our marketing, creating videos around the photos that we have for befores and afters and just finding her niche and I'm loving that I'm able to cultivate that. And then my youngest is my littlest son, 5. And he's just a ball of joy. He's just my support, my love. He comes to me and reassures me and just randomly comes and gives me hugs and kisses while I'm working in the office during the day and it just reminds me of how important this time is with them. If it goes by so quick.

That's why we're doing all this, isn't it?

After all, 100%. Yeah.

Your face lit up when I asked you about your kids. Like you've been smiling this entire time, but your inner glow just came through when you mentioned your kids. I could tell how much you love them. All right, everybody, thank you so much for listening in sharing the story with CJ and here's to you leading a life completely by Design. Thanks, C.J.

Thanks Paul.

Thank you for listening to today's show. This episode has ended, but your future is waiting. Get started right now. Head over to www.pauldavidthompson.com to access all links and resources mentioned in today's show, as well as special bonus content Paul all creates exclusively for you, podcast listener. That's www.pauldavidthompson. com. Until the next time, level up your future by investing in yourself today.