BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 307: The 4 Steps to Financial Freedom and Debt-Free Wealth

Episode Date: June 6, 2022

Want to work less and make more? With a forty-hour workweek, it seems hard to imagine a reality where you can do less but still get the same results. How can you fit an entire week’s worth of work into only one day’s working hours? Jason Wojo and Peter Kolat, hosts of The Lifeonaire Show, argue that it’s easier than you think to cut out much of your workday, enjoy your life more, and reach financial freedom faster. Both Jason and Peter grew up in troubling financial environments—raised in households where fighting about money was the norm. As Jason and Peter grew up, took on careers, got married, and had families, they saw themselves falling into the same traps as their parents—taking on debt, overspending, and working far more than they had liked. After hitting “rock bottom”, they decided to take a step in the right direction and change their financial future. With the help of a financially-free “vision”, Jason and Peter now live lives almost unrecognizable to their pasts. They now help others find their passions, chase their dreams, and achieve financial freedom with ease. So, if you’re tired of the grind, the stress, and the financial anxiety, you may want to consider becoming a “Lifeonaire” like Jason and Peter. Links from the Show Why healthy finances are key to keeping a family (and marriage) in-tact  Hitting “rock bottom” and climbing out of credit card and consumer debt  Building a rental property portfolio debt-free and how you can do it too The four core tenants of money philosophy and why everything starts with your “vision” The 80/20 Rule and why working less can help you make more money Calculating the cost of financial freedom and why it’s probably less than you think And So Much More! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Money Facebook Group BiggerPockets Forums Finance Review Guest Onboarding Mindy's Twitter Scott's Instagram Apply to Be a Guest on The Money Show Podcast Talent Search! Subscribe to The “On The Market” YouTube Channel Listen to The “On The Market” Podcast: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, BiggerPockets How to Get Financial Freedom So You Can Do What You’re Meant to Do Lifeonaire Website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast show number 307, where we interview Jason and Peter from the Life in Air podcast and talk about living your best life. And so the first stage of everything, like if you're going to master your money, you need to have your vision. Now that may sound like completely insane because the vision has really not much to do with money at all. But what we found is that without like your vision really gives you your why. Your vision characterizes the exact perfect life you want to have in every area. And so when you have your vision and you know how much that costs, now you have an actual reason to go out and make the money. You know, making money in itself, like, at some point it's another zero in your bank

account. Like, you don't feel any different. Hello, hello, hello. My name is Mindy Jensen. And with me, as always, is my financial artist co-host Scott Trudge. And with me as always is my vision of a co-host, Mindy Jensen. Aw, you're so sweet, Scott and I are here to make financial independence less scary, less just for somebody else to introduce you to every money story

because we truly believe financial freedom is attainable for everyone, no matter when or where you're starting. That's right. Whether you want to retire early and travel the world, going to make big time investments in assets like real estate, start your own business, or achieve your life vision, will help you reach your financial goals and get money out of the way so you can launch yourself towards those dreams. Scott, today we have Peter and Jason from the Life and Air podcast, and it is such a joy to talk to them again today. Yeah, they're a lot of fun and really bring a really fresh perspective on how to live. an intentional life and how money can play into that as a powerful tool. Yeah, I really like your use of the word intention. I think that in so many cases, people just kind of let life drag them along. And life is going to drag you through the gutter if you let life drag you along.

But if you sit down and you make a plan and you have, I mean, it's got to be a loose plan. It can't be, you know, as soon as you make a plan, life's like, nope, that's not going to happen. But you sit down and you make a plan. You have a vision. This is what I want my life to be like. And then you can back yourself into that life. And it's not going to happen overnight. But when you make plans to enjoy your life, instead of to just get dragged along,

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Yeah, I think the most powerful lesson from today, and we'll get into it in much in great detail, is determine what you want and have an artifact. They call it a visual. They call it a visual. document they have a whole process with it I got the same thing but have an artifact it's a living breathing um artifact as they described it it can change and all that kind of stuff and begin moving towards that that is the that if there's if the you know people will have their arguments pros and cons for capitalism you know dates we do you know okay but like one of the benefits we have of living in this country in this time is that this is an option for many people to figure out what they want and begin backing into it intentionally and building a money plan

that can support that. And if you're listening to this, hopefully you believe that that is the case are achievable for you as well. Peter and Jason from Life and Air podcast. Welcome to the Bigger Pockets of Money podcast.

I'm so excited to talk to you guys. It's been a while. Yes, I'm so happy that you guys are here. So great to see you again, Mindy and Scott. This is fantastic. And my colleague, Peter, that I see quite frequently as well. Quite frequently.

I'm surprised that she actually invited you here as well. Well, it was really, I was going to just have Peter, but then Jason's like, I have to tag along too. We're a team. I'm like, fine. But we are going to introduce you.

If our listeners are not familiar, you are the hosts of the Life and Air podcast. And you both have kind of a different money story. So I want to share just a quick overview of where you were coming from before you joined in on this Life and Air program. Polish Peter, please share with us your money story. We'll go with you first. Well, so yeah, I appreciate you. First and foremost, thank you so much for having us on here. My money story starts in Poland, so I was born in Poland in way back in the day.

I'm going to make myself old in the 70s. And for the first, I would say nine years of my life, I lived in a communist country because up until in the late 80s, Poland was communist. We lived in a 12 by 12 room. That was our living room, our kitchenette, our bedroom, our everything. The bathrooms were down the hallway because it was like a community. kind of a big building, so everybody used the same bathroom. So growing up in that environment, we were poor.

We didn't have any money. And one of the things that, if you know anything about the communist country, is that they provide you with a job, they provide you with some living expenses. But the way I look at, they provide you just enough so you can survive, you know. So you don't have to go and, you know, speak up and all the kind of stuff. So my growing up, my dad was an alcoholic. So we had a lot of fights in the household, whether it was about money, mostly was about money, because she wanted to get some money and wanted to go and drink in the bar and all those kinds of things.

So later on, when I was eight years old, they got divorced. I lived in my uncle for a little while. And then when I was 14 and came to the United States here and started learning the language and living here. and as I came in later on in life and started learning about the personal development and money and getting into life on there and having those conversations with coaches and the mastermind, I discovered first time in my mid-30s that my money conversation equals fights and equals problems. So my whole life, I was living like whenever there was money, there was some kind of problems that are going to be happening. Because when I was little, when I was growing up, anytime there was a conversation about money, it was a fight.

That was a problem. So that was my sort of like a disempowering way of living about money. And I could never have enough money because somehow they would magically leave or I would get rid of it or whatever case. Maybe because guess what? Money equals problems. Does that make sense? That makes a lot of sense.

I mean, your experiences as a child with money is that it's this huge thing to fight about. And that's, I mean, what's the number one thing that people fight about? They fight about money. And you don't have enough of it ever. when you're spending it on everything, when you're spending everything and you're not saving and you're not investing and you're not. I mean,

I've never lived in a communist country quite, so I can't say if there's any way to invest? Like, is there any way to invest? Not really. I mean, not the nine of growing up. I mean, you just go and work in a job and then you come home and do the same thing next day, you know? So not the nine of.

Not that different from capitalism, frankly, unless you change the narrative. Yeah. Okay. And Jason, what does your five-minute money story look like? Yeah, so I grew up in a small town in Massachusetts, like 2018,000 people. My parents were middle class, and my dad was the kind of guy who never spent money on anything. And meanwhile, my mom had all these desires to buy stuff.

And so when they got divorced, she went crazy and spent money on everything. And I think I got some of her traits because when I was young, Whenever I had money, I was buying stuff, like, you know, I had motorcycles and jet skis and just a bunch of toys. And I didn't have a lot of debt because I didn't have the capability to get debt because nobody would give me debt. You know, I could have like a $500 credit limit. But what happened was as I got older, and I started making actual money.

I got a job and had lines of credit and access to credit cards. I kind of went a little bit crazy to. I bought a brand new three-story home in a gated community. brick home and had all the trappings of success. But along with that, I also had, you know, combined about $650,000 worth of debt. And this isn't like, this isn't because I have an apartment. Like, this is consumer debt for the most part, along with, oh, by the way, almost $90,000 of credit card debt. And so I quickly found, I dug myself a pretty deep hole that I had to kind of get out of. And the challenge I had was like, when I was younger, I would have these fun things.

I didn't have the debt and I felt like I could enjoy them a whole lot more. But as soon as I took on the debt for me, like all of a sudden I had this huge obligation. Like I had to make money and I had to make a mortgage payment. I had to do all these things. So for me, it kind of robbed the joy and the freedom out of the entire experience. And so I realized like, man, I don't like, is this really what life is supposed to be like? It's just the pursuit of like money only to buy things that I can't even really enjoy because I feel guilty about or because of a payment or because I don't even have time because I'm working all the time. and so like I really did a 180 from that point and it took me a long time to dig out of that hole

and I'll tell you for me I will never go back to having like that kind of debt especially in consumer debt and credit card debt like it's I felt that pain like a lot and I don't want that for anybody because it was extremely painful well can you can you give us a little bit more detail on rock bottom and then how long it took you to get out of debt and what you did yeah so so rock bottom for me was when I had to sell my I got I had I had gotten divorced for my wife one of the main reasons, by the way, not the only reason, was that I was working so much. And so from there, I ended up moving into one of my rehabs because I couldn't afford, I couldn't afford a place to buy or rent. So I moved into one of my rehabs. I'm living on an air mattress. And I was, I wasn't there

like for years, but I was there for a period of just over a month, maybe, maybe two months at the most. And for me, that was rock bottom. Like I'm living, no kitchen, nothing, like just in a rehab. And so for me, what I started doing was, first of all, I looked at, of course, I cut off all the spending. Like there was minimal spending. And then for me, the thing that was really important is really getting my business up and running, because at the same time, when I was making this money, I had the justification like, oh, well, I'm just getting started in real estate. I can afford to spend all this money.

I can afford to do all this stuff because I'm going to make more money. Like, you know, with my real estate deals. not going to, but as soon as the, as soon as the feces hit the rotary blade device, and now I couldn't make those payments and my business crashed. Like now, that's when it really started accumulating. And so it took me, Scott, it took me probably three years, if not longer. Like, I haven't tracked it exactly, but it's at least three years. I went for the credit card debt first.

I ended up selling that house that we were living in, lost 80 grand on that. I had to come to the table with 80 grand on that. And so like this like it was exact, the whole thing imploded. And so for me it was really a matter of like cutting all expenses, keeping it simple and then really trying to focus on our business. And I think there's a limit, there's a limit to how much you can cut realistically before like there's nothing left to cut. And you have to at some point work on the income side of things too.

But that, it was, dude, it was horrible. It was something I don't want anybody to go through. And how long ago was this? This was, so that would been 2000, somewhere, so I, the divorce was finalized in 2011. So this, but we were separated before that. So this would be, I started accumulating that debt probably 2007 and then accumulated it for a few years. And then 2010 is probably when things hit its apex. And I really had all this stuff like under, you know, under roof that I had to deal with now.

So it took a couple years to get into it. It didn't happen overnight. But it also took just as long to dig. out of it. Awesome. And what is your, what is your situation with money today? What did you, what did you build towards once you built, once you paid off the debt? It's, it is completely different. I have no, uh, no consumer debt. Like I don't, I don't have any, any credit card debt. Um, I have a, uh, of a line of credit against my house that I, that I keep there, if I need it, uh, for investing. And so I am looking to now, you know, do things in a debt

free manner. Like, you know, and I'm, and I also, like before, I don't know, there was something about the mentality I had where I'd see a real estate course and I'd buy it for two grand or three grand and I could justify it because I knew that someday it would make me money and to me it was just deferred earnings but I got behind and I couldn't catch up and for me one of the problems was and by the way I'm all for education I think it's incredibly important but at that point in my life like I didn't have any focus I didn't have like any kind of real drive or direction so I'm just buying hey I'm going to get this course on this and this so I have a wholesaling course rehabbing courses notes courses IRA courses like self-storage

apart I mean I Scott I have a very educated bookshelf um and all of it my building courses yeah like all these courses that and listen again I think education is crucial you have to invest in yourself but like I just spent too much money on too many things when I didn't have the money and so now I'm not buying it if I don't have the money for it like if I if I will save for it um and Some people are like, oh, that's foolish. You know, even investments and stuff, like my, anything I'm invested in right now for real estate, it's debt free. So I'm doing joint ventures with other people. If I don't have enough money to pull it down myself, I'm going to do a joint venture with somebody else so that there's no mortgage, no debt.

And so for me, that's just a little safer way that doesn't, that doesn't stress me out. And I don't feel like I have to make a payment. Like if, you know. When did life and error come into your mentality? for your journey. So great question. So I started off in life near as a student towards the end of 2009. So this is like went right when I'm getting all this debt.

And I'm almost to the apex. And I remember my coach was Steve Cook and he's telling me, you know, you got to work on some other stuff here and you got to start doing this. And for that point in my life, I was like, I just need to make more money. Like I need to make more money because of all his debt. And he's like, no, you hold on a second here. And he, one thing that he said to me, I'll never forget, he said, you know, people think I have no debt because I make a lot of money. He's like, I have a lot of money because I have no debt. And so that really hit me upside the head.

And so these days, I don't, and don't get me wrong, we still have a business credit card. I still use it, but we pay it off every month. We've never carried a balance. And life enters a debt-free company. So I'm really trying to maintain that. Now, you're going to get some different people, some people that are saying like, hey, with inflation and stuff, is it wise to take out debt? We could have that discussion as well. Maybe, maybe not for certain people.

But it's just very different. Like, I was really very uncontrolled and had no discretion earlier with now much more intentional when I spend my money and where it goes. Awesome. And could both of you guys give us an overview of what life and error is as a philosophy or worldview or business or however you. you would, however you would articulate it? Yeah. So Life and Air is a, it's a company that's focused around helping people live their best life. And what that means is determining exactly what you want that life to look like, which by the way, many, many people think they know what they want, but they really don't when they actually start to look at it. And then from there, once we've,

once we've really characterized that and clarified it, now let's talk about money. Now let's talk a business. Now let's figure out how to create the income you want in whatever your vision says, 15 hours a week, 20 hours a week, whatever that is for you. But it's all with the, it's all, all, all with the principle of life first. And that's where people get confused and, you know, business, which is supposed to set us free, ends up taking over our life. And we're spending all our time working when the whole time, like, this thing was supposed to be a good thing. And now we're, you know, we're like slaves to our business. And so that's what we try to prevent. So I want to come back to Peter's story because we got a lot more of Jason.

sincere. But first I want to ask a basic question, which is how does life and error help people answer the question, what do I want in life? What do I really want in life, as you phrased it? Yes, I mean, that's a really good question because a lot of people don't even think about it, you know, because if you think about life, one of the things that it shows up is business, right? You want to work in the business or you work for somebody else. That's a pretty clearly defined way of how you go about like business plan. You have a business plan or the company has a business plan. There's your job and you're defined and you know what you want.

And then what do I want in my life? It becomes this way back in the background. So what we do, we actually have this, you know, events. It's like a three-day workshop that we sit down and we help people craft that vision of what is it that you want your life to look like. And we have them go through different exercises and start really looking from the different perspectives.

of what are my needs, what are my wants that I want in my life? What are my relationship? What are what are they supposed to look like? You know, where is my spiritual? Some people have a really strong spiritual needs that they need. So what does that look like? You know, how do I view my relationship with my kids, with my wife, with my significant others, with my bosses, whoever it might be, right? What those relationships supposed to look like? No regrets. You know, where does that look like. So at the end of my life, I don't sit here and have regrets now about what I should have done, could have. So there's all those different parts of that vision that we help people go and craft it and sit down when you try to give it down to a one-page document that is what we call

the living, breathing, life vision document that people live by to be able to go, this is what I want ultimately live life. And here's how I'm going to get to it. Would either of you guys be comfortable sharing highlights from your document? Yeah, well, I don't have a problem with that, Bojo. Yeah, go ahead, man. Yeah. So one of the things that I have on my vision is, I can go into deep details, but at the top of my vision, I have this overarching statement for my entire vision, and it says that

I am a remarkable contribution to everyone I come in contact with. And by doing that, I get remarkable contribution in my life. So when it comes to looking at that, where's the remarkable contribution is? That means that I'm in, they're listening. I'm, you know, helping them. And I am there for them. It's about others. It's not about me.

Right? So when it comes to my relationship with my wife, when it comes to a relationship with my kids, when it comes to business relationships, those are the things that are in back of my mind to, you know, that I think, okay, how do I become a remarkable contribution? to that particular person. And I'll tell you, man, just that one element has changed how I view life, how I live life, and the people and the things that have happened in my life, it's incredible. Awesome.

Now, what are the other elements of this page comprised of? Do they describe things about my personal life, spirituality, relationships, business? What is the structure of the document that life and air would produce here? Yeah, I was just going to say, there's no formal, there's no formal way that we structure it, but the things we encourage people to think about are your relationships, personal, professional, family and friends. We encourage people to think about their spiritual life, whether their hobbies, what do they do for personal gratification, their health, what does their health look like, their spiritual life, what does that look like? You know, Peter mentioned no regrets. That's a category that we have.

and so we look at, you know, finances. We have a business vision as well. And so the, and these are just examples because some of these things are more important than others to certain people. That's fantastic. But what we're looking for is like a really, think of a bucket that has every component of life in it. And everybody has a chance to kind of put it, make their own mix of what they want. But when you put your vision together, like you want those things on there, but there's no like certain way to say it. for instance, Scott, like I have mine pulled my latest vision pulled up right now. I have the headline.

It says, walk in the light that he gives you. My purpose, I live boldly to make a meaningful, permanent, and life change and impact on others by loving them where they are and encourage them to pursue a life of true abundance and prosperity. So that's like my mantra statement that heads the whole thing off. And then under that, I have a list of characteristics of my life. And then for me, I put a gratitude list at the bottom that this helps me focus it. So we've seen tremendous variability in how people do it. But what we found is when we help them focus on all of these different areas, because it's so easy to forget one little part of it, that is what gives them the clay to create that sculpture of their vision in the perfect way that they want to do

it. And by the way, we're super careful not to influence them on this because so many people have been influenced by society or culture or by parents or whatever that they are just kind of like adopting their vision instead of creating their own. And so, So we're just trying to give them raw material to pull it out of them. So you use the words living, breathing, and latest version of my vision to describe this document. So this is not something I'm going to set up once and forget about, not forget about, but it'll just, oh, I got it right, and that will never change. And I'll do that for the rest of my life. It sounds like this is something you come back to on a cadence.

You don't laminate it, that's for sure. Right, right. We actually had students come in and the one of my students came in and laminated the vision, you know, and it's like, oh, I got it. I finished it, right? But here's the thing. We have, you know, we encourage all of our people at the events and our students to, listen, post this vision where you see it every single day and read it.

Because think about it, that's what you're putting into your mind. That's what you're going to be reading and that you're bringing into your life. and when that becomes the focus of your life, this is the life that I'm looking to get through life, all of a sudden you become more intentional in life because you start asking that question, like, am I living my vision? Where am I, you know, now when it comes to,

let's say you put on your vision that I spend quality time with my kids, you know? And now you have to go and take care of a job that's like 8, 9 o'clock in the evening and one of your kids comes in and says, hey, listen, I want to go and play a game before I go to bed or can come read me a story. And it becomes very clear, okay, do I go and do this thing

or I go and live my vision and spend time with my kid? You know, and those kinds of things. So it becomes very clear of who you need to become in order to live that vision, which in turn helps you create the business that you need to be able to support that vision. I love this. I can go on in this.

all day long. I do a very similar process. I have a half page document that has our vision, my wife and I's vision for our lives on it. It's not very complex. It's just a couple of paragraphs. Here's where we live. Here's what our day to day looks like. Here's how we interact with others. Here's what our business looks like. Here's our family looks like. And that's what we want. and all of our goals cascade from that simple little document, and we update it once a quarter. Sometimes every once in a while we'll change something big about it, you know, we're going to live here instead of here, or whatever that is. But it really is stopped, it stopped moving as much for us in recent quarters, and we can cascade all our goals in support of that vision. And this is something we find on the money show all the time where we're having a guest on the show.

And it's like, well, what should I do with my money? Well, what do you want in your life? That is directly related. Do you want to have the largest possible pile in 50 years? Well, we're going to give you one set of financial advice. Do you want to have the most time in five years to do what you want? Well, then we're going to give you a different set of advice because it just depends on what you want. From the best financial advice standpoint.

That's a great thing that you just mentioned because what people tend to do, they tend to make decisions based on their current circumstance. You know, what's happening in their life right now. And what ends up happening, that's why there is the squirrels all over the place, right? They zigzag, and they're never able to get to where they really want to go. I call these squirrels. So when you just mentioned about what do you want your life to look like? That's what the vision is about that we create them. Because now when you start making decisions and choices about your life and your business and what money, you know,

choices you're going to make, you're going to make it based on that vision that you want to get to. And that's a really important aspect. Let me ask you this. I don't know. One thing I do, I feel really strongly about is, because I take this very seriously, because I'm a huge nerd. It sounds like you guys are a complete alignment with that. He is not being. Yeah. But I, I like insist on being in what I call like my peak state. I must, I have to like have my exercise in the morning, you know, a cup of coffee, feel, feel like perfect. Um, that, that morning, usually on a trip or something before updating all of this stuff, because if I'm not in that mindset, I'm going to, like, I'm going to come down or be pessimistic or not be,

you know, not look at it as a clean sheet of paper like it could be on with that. Do you have any tips or tricks for the process of putting this document, this artifact together from a vision from a mindset standpoint? I think one huge point, man, is what Peter said is like getting out of your own way of what's, what your current circumstances are. That's the first thing. And so With that being said, I think when people come to our, like Get a Life Getaway, for instance, our whole purpose is to get them to dream. And for some reason, somehow as adults, that is sucked out of us. Like we are, I think we become afraid to dream because we're afraid of failure and being

disappointed. Like, how many times have you, has someone tried to lose weight and they fail and they just give up and they don't even try again? And so they just, they are, they just go through life kind of complacent with where they are. And so a lot of that is kind of deprogramming and discerning like what really happened to us. What are the adopt, what beliefs did we adopt about ourselves, about what's possible, about what we're capable of, about what we want, you know, and this is for everything. Like so some people, you know, are influenced to become CPAs or engineers because, or a physician. Like, for instance, I wanted to be a physician because of the acknowledgement and my grandfather was

a physician. And so I wanted to kind of be like that. But then I realized this wasn't my dream. This was somebody else's. And so it's really about letting go of, letting go of all of that stuff, all those gnats of life and really dreaming about what you really, really want. And some of the exercises we do with the event, for instance, to get you thinking that way is like, okay, let's say you won the lottery. You have more money than you know what to do with. What, like, and let's get rid of like, yeah, I know you're going to buy your parents a house. and I know you're going to go buy a Lamborghini. Let's get rid of that stuff.

What are you going to do? What are you going to do with your days? I promise you you're not going to retire on a beach somewhere and drink mimoses all day because that'll last you a few weeks, maybe a month if you're a soldier. But like, what are you going to do? And so that's an example. Or, you know, if you had a genie, right?

If Peter was your Polish genie and you could make a wish, what would you want? Unlimited wishes. By the way, I give unlimited wishes, not just one. on. But think about it. When you start thinking that way, it changes your perspective of how you start to go after life. Tax season is one of the only times all year when most people actually look at their full financial picture, including income, spending, savings, investments, the whole thing. And if you're like most folks, it can be a little eye-opening. That's why I like Monarch. It helps you see exactly

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to all customers. Visit northwest registeredagent.com slash money free and start building something amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at Northwest Registered Agent.com slash money free. I once heard, you guys may be familiar with the book. I can't remember, I recall the name of it. It has to do with Pixar and Disney, and they talk about the different roles in the organization. And one of the roles is called the Imagineer. Now, the Imagineer's role in the organizational structure is basically to think of the most outrageous insomnia. sane, fun, amazing thing you can. And then you pass it over later to see if it fits in, you know, if it's even, you know, possible by the laws of physics and if it fits into the

business vision and the mission of the company and it's profitable, blah, blah, blah, let somebody else kill the dream, right? But your job as an Imagineer is to think of the most crazy thing that you really, really want. Now, I'm not, I'm not saying to dream big, just to dream big, because here's something that's a little bit taboo. Like there are people that don't want to make a million dollars a year. And they're totally happy with, 75. And so I'm not here to say you have to dream big only for the purposes of dreaming big, but I don't want you to hold yourself back based on where you are and what you think you're capable of. That's a very big distinction. And what ends up happening when you start dreaming big

and you start putting that stuff on the paper, one of the things that goes back to money, because of this podcast is about money, right? More money, more money, kind of a thing, right? What ends up happening is at the end of it, we start looking at so how much is that going to cost you? Yeah. What is that vision? What is the life going to cost you, like in actual dollars? And you start looking from that perspective, and then you start looking, okay, how many hours do you want to work a week? You know, to live that vision, because that becomes very clear.

If I want to travel over the place, I probably don't want to work 40, 60 hours a week because it's going to be kind of a conflict there, right? And that's when you start to design your life and you design your business in order to support that life. Scott, let me say, this is something that I think. you're going to be really interested, man. So when we have them, when we have them create their vision and then put a financial price to it, eight times out of 10 people are astounded at how little that number is. Like when they really figure out what they want for their life, it's so little. But they're like, well, hold on a second. Why? If this is so attainable, why aren't I doing it? And it's because they've spent a whole lot of money building up a lifestyle that doesn't, that doesn't fuel their vision,

but that takes away from it. And so it's like all the stuff you really don't care about, but you spend money on is now kind of making that a little more difficult for you. So it's kind of a big aha moment for people when they realize whether they're spending their money on vision stuff or non-vision stuff. What are some examples of those visions and surprisingly reasonable price tags for those visions? So a lot of people, at the end of the day, I'll tell you, at the end of the day, people are like, you know, I want to be the best spouse,

or I want to be the best dad. I want to be available for my friends. I want to be known as somebody who helps others. I want to volunteer my time. I want to do things like that. And when you look at the, and most of those things cost like nothing, like nothing. Or maybe they're like, hey, I want to create memories with my family. And sometimes it'll be like, sometimes people will say like, hey, I want this exquisite

safari in Africa. And it's just a huge thing. But more times than not, it's like, hey, we're going to, I just want to spend a weekend with my loved ones and let them know I care about them. And those things, not for everybody, but most people have at least half of their vision is stuff that doesn't cost them anything, or it's very, very little. It's not the Lamborghini, man, I'm telling you. Like, it's not the, it's, yes, that stuff's fun, and it has its place, and that's okay,

there's nothing wrong with it, nothing wrong with it at all, but most people can live a large portion of their vision on almost nothing. I love it, you know, and there's, listen, and once you start really looking at those elements, what you want your life to look like, which you want to go after, you start to discover why do you want that? And you start to really look like, why do I want that? We had one particular person that just popped into my head. He came and he said, you wanted to have jet skis. So he's like, okay, well, why do you want to have jet skis? And he started looking at because I want to be providing fun for my friends. I want to hang out with my friends. I want to go and spend time

with the water with my friends because that was very cool, right? So he started doing, doing the jet ski thing. And he discovered that the jet ski is not really that well because, guess what? Everybody's off somewhere on a jet ski on the lake. He's not really spending quality time together with them. So then he's looking at the boat. He wants to have a boat, right? And he started looking at how much is it going to cost them to have the boat?

And now you have to hold a boat, right? Now you have to buy a bigger car to give a boat and all those kinds of things. And then when he started looking from outside the box, he discovered that he could, in his area, there is a marina where they have a membership and he pays monthly fee. He calls it his boat ferry. Yeah. Both, yeah. And he just goes and calls him up.

On the monthly fee, he calls him up and say, hey, listen, I'm coming to the marina and they get the boat ready for him. He gets in the boat. It's fuel. He goes out, has fun with his family or his friends. And then when he's about to come back, he calls the marina again. He says, I'm coming in, and somebody picks it up, takes the boat, and he's done with it. So he's living his vision.

he's living what he wants to do to spend the quality time and all the kind of stuff. Without all the other stuff that is required, that a lot of people think is required to live that life. That's like Hertz is the rental car ferry. Wonderful. Well, let's go in. You guys have some frameworks to share. Actually, let's quickly hear a recap of Peter's money story. So how did you kind of find your vision and then build wealth and, you, you know,

start living the life and their life? Well, so yeah, I mean, that's a great question because after in 2011, I got divorced. And it was part of the reason why I got divorced was the money conversation. Because I remember, you know, my kids, I had three kids, and at that time they were very little. My oldest one was eight.

And I remember going to the store and they were saying, hey, Tata, can I get this toy? My first reaction was like, what? Can't afford it. Right? So there is that money conversation. And then that conversation came up in the marriage, it came up in the relationships and things like that. So ultimately, that was part of the reason why I ended up divorced.

So about year and a half later, Wendy Patton, I don't know if you guys know who Wendy Patton is, but she was in a group with this guy next to me. I don't want to say his name. But, you know, she goes, you know what, I know somebody else who is similar story to you, give you his number, you guys connect. And me and Vojo have been talking ever since. single day. So through that, you know, relationship, I came into life on there and started getting, you know, the mastermind and getting on the right people and starting to discover what my money

conversation was. And it was very disempowering. It was very like money equals problems. Money equals, you know, fighting and things like that. So I started learning about money, what money actually is. And it's a, you know, money is neutral. Doesn't have any feelings. Doesn't have, you know, it just does what it does, based on how you start to interact with it. And as more I started learning about it and started using it, as opposed to it using me, because that's what I was doing before, I started to manage my money a lot better. And I created my vision. And based on that vision, I started looking, okay, where do I have my money go? So that's how I ended up getting out of that whole, become financially free to be able to go and help others discover what their money come

is and how do I invest my money? What I put my money. And, you know, I'm blessed to be able to do what I do in today's world. And, you know, I'm a coach and I help people discover their money conversation, their visions to help them live that life and use it to the best advantage that it can be. I love it. Well, can we go through the some of the other other items, like the core tenants of maybe life and error's money philosophy? And so the first stage of everything, like if you're going to master your money, you need to have your vision. Now, that may sound like completely insane, because the vision has really not much to do with money at all. But what we found is that without, like your vision really gives you your why. Your vision characterizes the exact perfect life

you want to have in every area. And so when you have your vision and you know how much that costs, now you have an actual reason to go out and make the money. You know, making money in itself, like at some point it's another zero in your bank account. Like you don't feel any different. And if your listeners don't believe me, go ahead and try it yourself. You'll find out eventually it doesn't matter. Like at some point, just more money is just more money. And so your vision is really the first step in this. After you've crafted your vision and put your time into that, the next stage actually gets

into money. And this is where stage two, so stage one is creating your vision. Stage two is breaking even financially. And what that means is you are making enough money to stay afloat. You're not in the red every month. You're making what you need to survive. A lot of people have created golden handcuffs in their lives, and their monthly expenses are really high.

And that makes it very hard for these people that want to quit their job to go out and try real estate, for instance, or run a business because, you know, they need to make $20,000 a month. Stage three is generating excess cash. So there's two ways you can do this. One is by obviously cutting down on your expenses, and two is by increasing your income, which, again, kind of self-evident. But what normally happens is when people start. making more money, what do they do? They spend it, right? And that's why, like, you, this is why,

by the way, real estate investors, some of us are the worst ever. And by the way, I'm pointing a finger at myself here too. Like, when I'd do a flip, I'd make 30, 40 grand. And I'm all of a sudden meeting at Ruth's Chris and like Morton's. And then I'm broke again after I, after I spend all that money. And then it's McDonald's again. Like, and so don't spend everything you make. Like, this takes a lot of discipline. Like, and it, I struggle with this because, like, I did not have that built in and I didn't learn that. So it took me a lot of years to really develop a discipline to save that money. Now, you could do anything you want with you. You could give it away. You can spend it, but ideally what we want you to do is put it aside so that you can get to stage four.

Stage four is finally, and this is an important distinction, stage four is when you're buying assets to pay for your lifestyle. You are putting your money into income generating assets. Ideally, you're doing this debt free. The way that I mean, mentioned before, for instance, joint venture partnering, things like that, so that you're not taking on debt. Because what happens is if you take on debt, you are increasing what you need to make in stage two. And so now what you're doing is kind of going backwards a little bit. And so that's why you've got to be really careful for that. And the other huge distinction here is now in stage four versus stage two are assets are generating our income versus us working for

our money. Like everybody just wants to go out and buy rentals and, you know, they're not even make an ends meet and they're going to go out and buy a rental and that rental is going to like make them rich. It doesn't work that way 99 times out of 100 like you have to make ends meet first because what happens when somebody, you know, when your tenant moves out and they trash the place and you have to market it and you got a mortgage payment to make like you are going to get hosed and you're going to really get hurt. So you got to go through them in order. Now the cool thing that happens, Scott, is like, is whence, let's say I'm going to use some easy math here. You need $4,000 a month to live. That's your stage two needs. You buy your rent. You buy a

rental debt-free and it spits off $1,000 of cash flow. You just replaced 25% of which you need to make on your own back through your own energy and effort. And so what that does is start to give you options. It starts to maybe you're going to, maybe you're going to work a little bit less or maybe you're going to do something different or maybe you can get another job. It just gives you options. And then with this example, I know it's a little bit overly simplistic and I'm skipping some details here. But with this example, you'd need four rental properties to cover your stage two needs. And then you have financial freedom. Like four, you need four grand a month. You're making four grand through your assets. You become work optional, right? And so it's super simple. And there's some,

there's some details with this. But like that's something really strongly that I think is a very, very powerful model to achieve financial freedom. Okay. You have mentioned a couple of times doing this debt free. And that is great once you have gotten to step four with a huge buffer. But the reality is houses in America cost many hundreds of thousands of dollars. And while you're saving up for that purchase, you could be purchasing it with a 25% down payment or even doing some sort of house hacking where you're buying with a much lower down payment, three and a half or 5% as an owner-occupant, living there for a year because we don't promote mortgage fraud, and then moving out, now you have, ideally, a cash-flowing asset with a lower-down payment,

and then you can repeat again. And I get the concept of wanting to be debt-free. Like, coming from your background where you had that giant pile of consumer debt and $90,000 in credit card debt, taking on more debt on. purpose can be like mentally that can be a real weight. And I want I want people listening to hear that, yes, you can use debt in an intelligent manner. I don't agree that you should have 500 houses all leverage to the hilt and really, really hope that everybody pays their rent this month because if they don't, then I can't pay my mortgage payments. That's too much debt. That's too much leverage.

that is an unhealthy way to be investing. But if you're putting 25% down, you've got a healthy reserve fund, which I am always encouraging people to put more in their reserve fund. You have a healthy reserve fund so you can't foot the bill should something happen. I mean, there's this mindset where, you know, get as many rentals as you can. I don't like that idea either because that's just waiting for somebody, you know, waiting for the House of Cards to fall when, say, an unexpected event like a once in a hundred years pandemic pops up and your rent isn't coming in and also you can't remove them because

there's an eviction moratorium and and and all these circumstances outside of your control and what happens to you the homeowner. So that's not what I'm trying to say either. But I'd like to hear your thoughts on buying real estate without like and I've had a partner and I don't want any more partners. I want to do it all by myself because you know I'm not good at picking partners. Right. Real estate partners. I'm great at picking husband. Right. Right. That's not... Qualification there. That's not what we're talking about here. One husband, right? One husband, yes. Yeah, I guess I should... Yeah, totally. Awesome points. So let's talk about it. So, first of all, like, so house hacking, I love the idea. And it fits some people's vision and it doesn't fit others. Like, you know, if you have a family, maybe you don't want to move every two years.

And so, for instance, like, and so I think there's also different versions of house hacking. So, and I, Like for instance, where I'm selling my house now or moving to a new house. And I could turn this into rental and make great cash, but I don't want to because the capital gains exclusion is worth it for me to just sell it and be done with it. However, I'm not mostly talking about personal residence here because that to me is a little bit of exception. What I'm talking about mostly is because even with your personal house, like yes, maybe you're going to maybe you're in a short-term rent. it or you're going to have like you're an Airbnb, be a bedroom, make some income off it, which is a great idea, a fantastic way to make your mortgage. A lot of people do that strategy with like a duplex, for instance. But what I'm most of the really referring to in the four

stages is like, let's say you want to, and it could be with anything. Like I'm involved in a storage facility like this, a couple storage facilities like this. And so it works for anything. I think what I've seen, and the reason I like doing it debt-free, and by the way, we could talk about mortgages too, because I'm, quite frankly, I'm, I'm one. now, like with rates going up, is there some sort of arbitrage play to go on, to get something with a small mortgage on it now? So I'm not completely against debt. I just want to make sure I'm clear on that. But I think for most people, one option that is not considered as as carefully as it should is this idea of going into, not in business with each other, but what we encourage

people to think about and see, again, see if it fits for them, is what about on a, one by one property basis, especially for people that have no money, find people that have money. For instance, there's a lot of business that goes on in life and error. We have a forum specifically for investors. And people always have money to move, and people always need money for deals. And so what we oftentimes see is like an investor will come to the table, maybe we even with 100% of the money. One of these storage deals I'm in right now, the guy who found the deal and who manages it has 50% of the equity in the cash flow. And the investors, you know, myself being one of them, brought the cash to buy this thing. And this guy is getting half of the cash flow every

month from the company, as well as on the back end, he'll get 50% of the sale price, of the profit. And so all I'm saying is this is a great option for people that don't have money. If say you haven't put aside that money and you don't want to wait forever to, because yeah, if you're going to wait to buy cash for something, that's going to take you some time. But what if you could partner with other people that already have it and make the cash flow that then now that cash flow will go towards your stage two needs and accelerate that snowball even further. So the four stage is really about leveraging other people's assets. Other people's cash to help you buy assets that will support your lifestyle.

And those people are oftentimes, I mean, they're not doing it out of the goodness of their heart, they're making a great return too. And so that's just an option, I think, certainly not the only way to do it, but the thing I like about it doing this way, now, yes, there's absolutely some screening that has to be done in advance. Is this person ethical? Do they have the character, the capabilities, the competency to do this? And are they going to stay out of here? You know, there's a lot of, there's some criteria here. But the thing I like about it is like, if the, let's say a rental, if your tenant doesn't pay, there's no mortgage payment to make. And so nobody gets paid. The money partner doesn't make that, doesn't,

doesn't get any money and the person boots in the ground doesn't get any money either. So it's in their best interest to get that thing performing again versus just having a mortgage payment to make. Because what I've seen is that when you have a payment to make on something, it brings out the emotion in us. And I've seen this happen a lot of times with landlords who, you know, money's tight and they don't want to pay a $1,500 mortgage payment. And so they look at Joe Smith, the tenant applicant who, you know, by normal circumstances,

we call them red flags, but because we're under financial duress, we say, ah, you they're orange. You know, maybe I'm being too hard. Maybe I need to relax. You know what? He seems like a good guy. And then four months later, you're evicted him. And you're, and so I just, I want to take the, what we're trying to do is take the emotion out of it and kind of just minimize potential risk from having those payments. But get to your point, there's, there's nothing wrong with the approach you mentioned either. Yeah, I just think there's something freeing. You know, if you look at it analytically and you say, long-term appreciation is going to be this, then you're always going to conclude that your return on equity is going to be greater, on average, using a lot of leverage

and a mortgage in real estate. But the counterpoint to that, I think that the life and error approach brings is your lifestyle that you just said in your vision, you put down your vision, says you need $4,000 a month. The simplest way to get there is with two or three paid off rental properties, and you don't have to worry about all of this other crap. You just buy your property with a mortgage, pay it off as soon as you can, do the next one, do the next one, or get the three with a mortgage and then start paying them off, whatever it is, instead of getting 10, 15 more rentals and using the return on equity thing. I can't help myself. I'm running bigger pockets here, and I'm just continuing to buy rentals, not crazily,

but like one at a time with another mortgage there. And I could have paid off two or three of those rentals and just have a completely chill, safe, predictable situation with that. That was probably going to produce worse ROI for me over the duration of my life, but maybe give me more life LOI, if we can, if that's a term I can invent here on the show, life and air on investing. I don't know. I like it, man. But, but maybe, and I think that's the point that you guys are trying to, to convey here

with this approach. Is that right? That's it, man. There's no right or wrong. It's only what your vision says. Like, you know, that's really it. There's no, it's all about just figuring it out and knowing what you're doing, going into it and realizing, like, this is a strategy I'm going with and this is why. Versus just thinking there's one way to do it. That's really the biggest thing that I think, you know, we're trying to convey. Yeah. And I know more about Scott's personal financial situation than maybe other people do, but I know that he's investing from a position of financial strength and financial intelligence. He's not, he could have a whole lot more rentals if he. It's position three in their, or stage three in the prosperity, excess cash. Yes. Well, but you're also buying assets to pay for

your lifestyle and, but you're not doing it in such a, like, I think there's people who listen to podcast and they think, oh, I need to have 412 rental properties. No, if you're making $30,000 a year, you probably don't even need to have one rental property. You need to generate more income. And then when you want to start investing in real estate, start with one. And I just, I hear all these people like, oh, I need to get more. I need to get more. I need to get more. I want you to have as many rentals as you can comfortably afford and sleep at night with. but you don't need to have 500 rental properties in order to be successful. You don't need to have, you know, this crazy amount of stress.

I mean, I think back to March 2020 when, you know, they first announced the eviction moratorium and people were like, how am I going to pay my mortgage? Well, you should already have that mortgage payment in the bank and several months' worth of mortgage payments. And you should be investing from a position of financial strength. And I think you can use leverage, but you have to use it intelligently. But also, you know, there's the people that, I mean, Jason, you're not the only person who's ever had multiple thousands of dollars in debt. So, you know, those, I hear from a lot of people who say,

I don't want to take out a mortgage because I'm debt free and I can't put myself back into debt. And that's a valid way to invest too. You know, you don't need 500 rentals to be successful. And so this is where, I think, what, how, how do we define success and everyone's different. You know, for me, it used to impress me a lot when someone made a lot of money, but now I want to see if you have a lot of money and you have a great life. Like, it's just a different bar, a different metric that I'm using. But everybody has to determine that for themselves. Like, if you want to be ultra well-being. We defined success earlier with the vision statement. Do you create this artifact and then you achieve it? That's right. That's right.

I love it. So can you tell us, can you guys enlighten us on the how working less can make you more money? I'm very curious about this. Dude, this is, I love this. This is fantastic. So, of course, so the first thing we do is their vision's going to tell you how much you can work and not jeopardize your vision, right? So most people we see that are, that do their vision, on average, again, no right or wrong, are working or have roughly 20 hours per week in their schedule that they can work without compromising some other area. And so I'm always approached with people like, there's, listen, there's no way I can do this. There's no possible way that I can make the money I need in 20 hours a week when, you know,

right now I'm working 50. And so I, there's four points of evidence that I love that I, that I rely on when it comes to this. The first one is a Pareto principle of 80-20. And so I'll say, okay, let's assume a 40-hour work week. What's, what is, and for those of you who aren't familiar with, the Pareto principle, it says that, and for our purposes, 80% of our results are going to come from 20% of our efforts. and so what is 20% of an 8 hour, sorry, of a 40-hour work week is 8 hours.

So what that principle is saying, and I know it's not a hard and fast, exact science, but it's a general law that's true is saying that eight hours a week of our work is producing 80% of our results. And we can, the power to this is in layers and we can go down like another 20% of the 80, you know, and we can start doing that. But even stopping at that eight-hour mark, that's a groundbreaking, revelation to really consider for a moment that, you know, 80% of the results in your business are coming from simply eight hours per week. And so if that, and I, when I'm presenting this,

guys, I feel like I'm almost like a, like a trial attorney here, like presenting evidence. And so the next one is like, okay, here, how about this? 2017, the study was done in the UK. They looked at 1,989 office workers, and they tracked them to see how much actual work they did during the day. And so, After tracking these people, what do you guys think the numbers is, by the way? Any ideas? Five minutes. Eight hours.

We have this fan here. Okay. We have this fan. It was actually two hours and 53 minutes. Two hours and 53 minutes of actual work on an eight-hour work day. And so let's round that. Oh, oh, oh. Eight hours are saying eight hours a week.

So, yeah. Well, yeah. So out of a 40-hour work week, an eight-hour day, the study showed that the average office worker was working two hours and 53 minutes. And so that's, let's say three hours a day. That's only 15 hours a week. And what that says explicitly is that these employees were getting all of the results of a 40-hour work week in 15 hours per week. And so that's piece number two. Piece number three is something called Parkinson's Law, which says that, and this is an economic principle, but basically it has nothing to do with the horrible disease. And it basically says that

how we do something will expand or contract based on availability. And just as a real-life example, like when we're in high school and we had a book report due in a week, it took us a week to get it done. If we had all semester to get it done, it took us a semester to get it done. And so what this says is if you have, you know, 40 hours, 50 hours a week to work because, by the way, you don't have a vision, right? Because otherwise, if you had a vision, you'd know that you don't have 40 or 50 hours a week, most likely. You can get the results. You can get the you want in that smaller time frame. And the last example that I usually use to bring people home is like, okay, who here's ever gone on a vacation Saturday morning? At first thing in the morning,

you're getting on that plane. And that Friday before you leave, you get more done than the previous Monday through Thursday, maybe even the last two weeks and everybody laughs. And they laugh because it's true. Now, how does that make sense? How is that possible? And it's because they had a why. They're leaving on vacation. And this is where I want to really say, like, the vision gives you your why. So imagine having the chance to work in a very restricted timeline manner. So like, like, and this is where I want to also clear up. Some people think that life inners are just like lazy and we're all about like kind of just

living the good life. That's not true. Like life interiors by by and large are some of the hardest working people I know, but they do it within very, very narrowly defined windows so that they don't compromise their vision. And the way they do that is because now that they have a vision, they have a why, like they don't want to give up their time with their family. They're not going to miss their kids dance recital. They're not going to stop their reading time or their exercise or their workout, right?

And so they plow through these activities with their hair on fire a little bit because they have to. And so it allows them to have both. And that's where like it's really important for people to have both. And so what I see is that people end up making more or the same as they were when they work in more hours in a much shorter time frame. Now, yes, there are some things that, that... Do you have an example of a how, like an example of someone who, hey, I'm working a full-time job, and I used this principle, and I was able to make essentially the same amount in way less time?

What are some examples of this? Well, yeah, because I was going to chime in not specifically for the full-time position, but like, for instance, like me, I mean, as you can see, some of us work like their hair is on fire and they do a better job than others, because I still have hair, the other guy, not so much. But here's the thing. When I have it on my vision and I pick up my kids, let's say from school at Treatar, I used to pick them up when they were little from, you know, when they were little at school.

I work like my hair is on fire being very intentional in that particular time to be able to get to do what is on my vision. So that vision guides me of what I need to do in that specific time frame that I have available for, that I put, let's say, for my vision. work hours to be able to go and do this. In today's world, maybe more literally, though, like I think we all understand the concept, but more literally, hey, I'm working a job. How do I transition myself out of the job and make a similar level of income mechanically? Who's going to pay me from my corporate job? Do you have any examples of that? So, yeah. So let me just first say that

when you're, the example you're asking for when somebody leaves their job is even more important because like you're I don't want you working on your business during your job I think that's stealing from your employer um and so you my encouragement is you have to get a few things done during during late night hours and so there's a gentleman I'm thinking of right now that was leaving his job he we he went through a business breakdown we walked him through what are the what are the what are all the roles in his business and what is he doing versus somebody else doing and he had this huge mind map of all of these activities that he was doing and then I said okay so you know you need and I don't remember the number. Let's say it's 40 grand a year to live, 50 grand a year.

I said, okay, let's back calculate how many, and you want to work 20 hours a week once you're out of your job. What is, what exactly are those, what's the dollar, the hourly wage that you can, that you can work on activities over that, over that wage and everything else you have to get rid of. And so he hired two VAs. He had a contractor start to, instead of him managing the properties, he had a contractor do it. So his margins got a little slimmer, but he got a whole lot less, a whole lot less time commitment on his end. So between his VAs, he had also, of course, he had a bookkeeper, two VAs, contractor. The contractor also, he was, he empowered him with a lot of other things that took his presence on the job site off the table, so that wasn't a, wasn't a big deal. But in fact,

this is, this is something that interesting that he found is that when, the reason, the reason he made more money was because he wasn't getting around to doing all these things. And so he was getting, like, so for instance, the VA was responsible for marketing. And so this guy wasn't getting the marketing out because he was so busy managing the job. And so he hires the VA, which I think he paid $4 an hour to handle the marketing. Now it's getting done. Now the marketing's getting done. By the way, that created a new problem for him because now phone calls are coming in. So he had to get rid of that too. He hired that. He hired a person off of, I think it was Craigslist. to take those calls. It was a stay-at-home mom who had access to a phone and who he felt that

he wanted somebody local to him. And so he had a stay-at-home mom answering the calls for commission only, paid her $500 for every deal that he bought. And so that was, that's not any fixed overhead. And so then the other, I don't remember exactly what the other VA was doing. But the other thing was like his projects moved a lot quicker. So he was making less money per project because he had a, he had a project manager, but he was having a hard time going over to the property because he was at work all day. And so things would start taking out longer because like he wouldn't, he'd get there at like 6 o'clock p.m. and the guys were having been there all day. And he didn't know. And so like things were getting dragged out. Materials weren't getting done because if he

started off, he was he was lugging all the materials from Home Depot to the job site. And so like, although he made less per deal, it went through faster. So, you know, over the course of a year, over a period of time, he's doing better. And the deals are coming in and it really did a really good job of equalizing his cash flow, which, like, as you know, like real estate can be up and down, especially as a flipper. So that's one guy who, and by the way, and this is something I really believe is true. If you can't run your business in real estate part time, I think you're doing something wrong. Like you haven't built the systems. Like you should have automated things. You should have outsourced and delegated things and things off your plate. It shouldn't be a one man or one

woman's show. That's a dangerous place to be in because if something happens to you, like, what happens to the business? I think, I think this is really helpful. I think if I'm thinking about this, I mean, I'm an employee, right? My employment agreement says work 40 hours a week. So the only way I'm working less is if I exit that employment agreement and start something else or negotiate a part-time role with the employer. So the advice here is really more specific to either making that transition or if you can begin to own and operate your own business. And that is an accessible thing. The problem with that is if I own a, or not the problem, one of the things you have to contend with if you own a business is that 80-20 rule is going to be all over the place. And what many

people do is if they get good at mastering that, just build a bigger and bigger business, bigger and more and more and more money and all that kind of stuff. And instead, you don't have to optimize for that. You can optimize for life and say, great, I'm backing into $50,000 a year with the least amount of income, not the most hours per year and the largest amount of income, which is what most owners and CEOs are optimizing their businesses for. Is that help? Is that right? Yeah, man. And one thing you said also struck something with me is that you'd be amazed at how many employers are open to the suggestion or the possibility that as long as you produce the results that you're giving people, I've seen people not care as much about the hours. And, you know,

And even with COVID, for instance, we had students in life here that swore their, their boss would never let them work from home. And then all of a sudden, COVID hits. They're working for home. And they're getting the results they want. And now they're like kind of like they can live for, they can work from home like indefinitely now. So, so that, that differs. And that's a one-off situation on your, on your situation with your boss. But like, I've seen intelligent employers have that approach. Because listen, I have, I have employees. And I know I'm not going to get eight hours a day out of them, but I do want certain results out of them. And if you can get it done in an hour, I want to reward you for how good you are. And I think, I think paying on, this is off a topic,

by the way, but I think paying on hourly wages, a lot of times does a disincentive to people to really produce the results they're capable of. Yeah, I think one of the things that I want to add here that's really important is the vision, that's the guiding principle throughout the whole entire process. You've really put on what do I want and why do I want it. And what we tend to do as human beings, we tend to look at, when we don't have that vision, we tend to look at, okay, I need to do this. How do I get this done? How, how, how, how, how, how?

And we start looking at ourselves that I got to do all of this. What this process ends up doing is starts to ask you different questions and you get outside of yourself and you start maybe asking, like, who can come alongside with me to be able to do this, right? What are the things that I need to be focused on? There are the most important things in order for me to get to where I want to go as opposed to doing everything. you know, and that process really streamlines how you get out of that trap and this middle ground to be able to get to that vision that you want to live, especially the transition times.

Awesome. Well, Jason, Peter, we've learned a tremendous amount today. Thank you so much for sharing the vision, your personal money stories for stages of financial prosperity and I guess how to make more money and less time from this, or at least get more life with less time for sure. So this has been a really fun discussion, and we really appreciate you coming on the show today. Thanks for having us, guys. You guys are awesome. Big fan. Thank you. Before we let you go, where can people find out more about you?

Yes. Go to the two best places is to go to LifeHinder.com or you can head over to find our private Facebook page. If you just type in LifeInair, you'll see it pop up in Facebook. That's an awesome community of people that are like-minded or should I say life-minded that are all about kind of like helping each other along that journey. Like that's one cool thing is we really want to help people do that and have a very collaborative environment. Awesome. Thank you so much.

Peter and Jason, this was a lot of fun. It was nice to talk to you guys again. Same here guys. Thank you. Thank you. We'll talk to you soon. Okay, Scott, that was Peter and Jason.

That was so much fun. And, you know, the thing that just keeps resonating after listening to that show is the vision statement. I think so many people skip this step or don't put a lot of thought into this step. And we really didn't. Where they think it's full of cheese? I thought it was like a cheesy, these people's vision thing. But I'm like, no, it's a powerful tool.

You don't have to like spend a ton of money on producing a vision or whatever. Just like go get a book or read a blog post or whatever. But like put together an artifact, you know, a document that has this thing and says what you want and begin updating it on a regular cadence. I like to do it quarterly. And then back your goals based on that. And it's just that simple mechanism will produce a tremendous amount of power in your life over a five-year period. It won't happen overnight, but it won't take you 10 years to realize most of it.

It'll take you three, five, but it won't take you 10, 20 to get a meaningfully better life or closer to what you think you want when you write it down your vision. Yeah. I am super excited for everybody listening to this to say, uh-huh, I know what I need to do. I need to sit down and I need to write out my vision. And it could take, give yourself a week. Give yourself a document on your phone that you're as you're out taking a walk. Oh, I want this in there.

I want that in there. It's not just one sentence. It's not just one idea. It's a living, breathing document. Don't laminate it. It's a living, breathing document, but give yourself some time to sit down and focus on it and see what it is that you want. And look at, like, bookmark this. Put a calendar note in your calendar for a year from today and look back at what you've done over a year.

Do it for six months. Do it for three months. Look at what I have been able to accomplish and see how your life has changed just because you've switched the way that you're thinking about it. Yeah, love it. And again, I'll reiterate what I said earlier, but I like to do this on trips. Every once in a while I'll do it, you know, once every couple quarters, I'll do it for my house or whatever. But I like to do it like, oh, I'm at the beach or I'm in Estes Park, which is a nice town next to Rocky Mountain National Park here in Colorado. Or I'm, you know, I'm at Moab, you know, another area with some nice national parks. I'm in a new location, doing something

active, feeling good, I just find there's a lot more clarity than doing that desk at the office or at your kitchen table because it's kind of hard to pop out and be like, I have this one whole world of things I can do. Can you read this? Scott is a huge nerd. What? I like to do this on vacation. I do. Hey, I mean, you know, I think a little weekend trip, not like my, You know, big vacation. Big vacation. I'd do it then too. But I like to tease, Scott.

But I think that's a really great point. You can't do this in the middle of your everyday life when you're trying to get lunches for your kids and make dinner. And your kids are having 13 different conversations going around and your husband's asking where his socks are. And maybe I'm describing my morning this morning. And your mind is in 50 different places. You're going like this and you can't concentrate.

So I think that is a really great tip. Take a break. Decompress. Go get up in the morning and it's a great day and I've had a great run, which I haven't, but Scott has. And you've had a good morning, take a shower, have a cup of coffee or a nice breakfast and just sit down and think about it. If you're married or in a significant relationship, talk with your partner about it.

It doesn't have to be something, you know, that you're updating every quarter. It doesn't have to be something that you come to right off the bat. And if you're trying to get your partner on board, my tip would be come with a version that is somewhat mapped out loosely and put in the title draft in all caps. So that and invite your partner to come in and change things or rewrite the whole thing or whatever. But come in with something and then make it completely open to changes or whatever with that. And that at least for me was a positive way to introduce this concept.

And made my wife look really much forward to these little sessions every quarter. We should have your wife on the show. Yeah, maybe. Maybe I'll just go behind your back and get your wife on the show. Mindy and Virginia talk about Scott. Ooh, that'd be fun. Okay. Should we get out of here, Scott?

Let's do it. From episode 307 of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast, he is Scott Trench. And I am Mindy Jensen saying chop, chop, lollipop.