BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 245: Creating Wealth that Lasts Generations with Bestselling Author Ryan Holiday

Episode Date: September 21, 2017

Are you in this business to make a quick buck—or are you looking to build generational wealth for you and your family? If the latter is true for you, don’t miss a moment of this powerful show with bestselling author Ryan Holiday. Ryan, best known for his books, such as The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into TriumphA, Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulatorr, Ego Is the Enemye, and Perennial Seller: The Art of Making and Marketing Work that Lasts , is also a part-time real estate investor and lender. In this show, we cover a large variety of topics including hard money lending, vacation rentals, writing books, how the awareness of death can make life better, stoicism, and much, much more. In This Episode We Cover: Ryan’s background The importance of learning from other people His experience as Director of Marketing for American Apparel Tips on looking for a mentor His first real estate adventure His thoughts on Airbnb How he gets leads for loans How to do what you love through passive income The story behind The Obstacle is the Way How to react to economy collapse Advice to investors who only see the obstacle How to control your ego Why you should do the right thing despite not sharing it And SO much more! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Facebook BiggerPockets Books BiggerPockets Webinar Josh’s Instagram Profile Brandon’s Instagram Profile Derek Sivers Books Mentioned in this Show Set for Life by Scott Trench Finding and Funding Great Deals by Anson Young The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday Trust Me, I’m Lying by Ryan Holiday Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday Perennial Seller by Ryan Holiday The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene Cashflow Quadrant by Robert Kiyosaki Rich Dad Poor Dad By Robert Kiyosaki The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J. Stanley Fooled by Randomness by Nicholas Taleb The Black Swan by Nicholas Taleb Antifragile by Nicholas Taleb Billion Dollar Lessons by Paul B. Carroll & Chunka Mui Fire Round Questions Best Way to Invest a Large Lump Sum of Money ($100-$300K)? Tweetable Topics: “Any fool can learn by experience. I prefer to learn by the experience of others.” (Tweet This!) “Every single business is hiring if you can help them make more than you cost.” (Tweet This!) “A mentorship is not a destination, it’s a process that ensues.” (Tweet This!) Connect with Ryan Ryan’s Instagram Profile Ryan’s Website Daily Stoic Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 245. So I think people, people tend to think it's this big thing that they need their huge break. And actually what you need is lots of little breaks and they're much easier to get than you think they are. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio. Simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing without all the height, you're in the right place. Stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online.

What's going on, everybody? This is Josh Dorkin. Host to the Bigger Pockets podcast here with my co-host, Mr. Brandon Turner. What's going on, man? Man, I am fantastic. You know why? I think I know why. Is it because we just had an awesome interview with a guy that you've looked up to for a long time?

That's exactly it. You know what I was like... You don't even need to talk. Let me just do this by myself. Yeah, we have a great interview with Ryan Holiday today, who's one of my favorite authors, and I was super pumped to be able to do this. So if you guys have not read Ryan Holiday's books, you should do it. He's written a bunch of them.

And we talk about them and real estate today and Airbnb and doing private lending and all sorts of stuff. Philosophy. Philosophy. We get deep. Life and how to be a good person, how to run a sustainable business over the course of time. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. Yeah, man. So very, very, very good show.

life is good otherwise. Man, life is great otherwise. I can't see anything because of the fires all over the West Coast that are locking off everything. There's like massive fires. There's smoke everywhere. There's ash all over my car when I go out there. It's crazy. Yeah, we got the ash cloud a couple days ago.

It was pretty bad. By the way, I finally met Rosie. I don't know. I haven't had a chance to share this with the world. Did she live up to expectations? My little girl. Your daughter is really cute. And my daughters, all three of them, are like kind of obsessed with her.

Like they love her. They love her. So she's awesome. And not to mention, she does ridiculously cute things like finding a cup of tea that's been sitting around in a bookshelf for three weeks and taking all the mold and spreading it around your library. And that just brings me joy to hear about these stories. Yeah, yeah.

She found a cup of tea that somehow I shoved behind a book or something. That was gross. Well, it's funny. I was doing a Facebook live video for Bigger Pocket. And the entire time while I'm doing this video, Rosie is behind me just like doing something. And I just, I get like seeing her in the video, you know, like anyway. And I found out later, yeah, she had found some moldy nasty tea and it like made it painting all over the, anyway, it was gross, all over her face and everything.

That's gross. Anyway, check it out on Instagram. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, people, we have a Facebook account and like, like most folks, amazing. Facebook.com slash bigger pockets. It's if you guys want some awesome, awesome videos, we're putting videos out almost, I think every week now at this point. A few a week.

Really, really good. Top end content, educational, trying to help people learn how to become better investors. Follow us on Facebook, biggerpockets.com slash Facebook or Facebook. com slash bigger pockets. And that will get you there and do follow us with that. Was that our quick tip? Quick tip. Was that a quick.

That's kind of a quick tip. Well, today's quick tip, I think, was going to be. be. Second quick tip. Second quick tip was going to be. We made it easier for you guys to find Bigger Pockets books in our navigation on our nav bar and bigger pockets. Just click on the store link and you will see books are now available right there.

And one of the books that you can pick up is our newest release, which is finding and funding great deals. The Hands on Guide to Acquiring Real Estate in Any Market by Anson Young, who we actually talk about in today's show. Great, great book about finding deals. Check it out. Whether you're newer experience, there's lots of great ideas in here to find deal.

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They focus on activity, not outcomes. Mind is different. They obsess over the metrics that actually grow your cash flow. Go to mine.com slash show me to see how mine performs and get a month of management for free. Because if you're going to hire a property manager, hire one that manages your investment like an investment. You've upgraded how to buy properties, but did your insurance get the memo? When investors start scaling, insurance can't be an afterthought. Most policies were designed for a single property, not multiple rentals, LLC ownership, short-term stays, or properties mid-rehab. That's where blind spots can creep in. Enreg works exclusively with real estate investors. They understand portfolios, how risk compounds as you grow, and why insurance

should protect your upside, not just a checkbox. One uncovered claim can undo years of progress. Before your next acquisition, review your insurance. Talk to NREG and get investor-specific coverage from specialists who actually understand real estate at NRE.com slash BPPod. That's N-R-E-I-G-com slash B-P-Pod. All right, man. So today's guest, Ryan Holiday, best-selling author, his best-selling book sold half a million copies so far. I'm amazing. Obstacles away. Yeah, he also where ego is the enemy. Trust me, I'm lying. And then the newest one is called the perennial seller. It's fantastic. I love them all. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Great guy. Lots to talk about. Lots to cover. Let's bring him in. Ryan, welcome to the show, man. It's good to have you here. Yeah, thanks for having me in my own house, I guess.

It should be a lot of fun today. So we're talking both about real estate today and about the books that you've written. So I want to start with the, actually, I want to start with your story. I mean, who are you? Where'd you come from? How did you get into this thing called life? Yeah. Well, I was born from two parents. I guess that's how I came into like. No, I was born. Born in Northern California, outside Sacramento, I went to college in Southern California. I dropped out to be a research assistant for two different writers, somehow ended up as the director of marketing for a big clothing company called American Apparel around my 21st birthday. And then I wrote my first book at 25. So I sort of had these two different paths of marketing on the one hand and then learning, sort of slowly learning the craft of writing.

And then I wrote my first book. And then the books have slowly taken off. My first book was about marketing, it was this sort of controversial, provocative bestseller called Trust Me, I'm Lying. And then my next book was a book about ancient philosophy, which somehow took off in professional sports called The Obstacle is the Way. And now I live in Austin, Texas, and I write, hang out, occasionally invest in real estate, and I live on a cattle ranch.

No way. How many cattle do you have? Right now I have about 15, about 10 breeders, and then depending on the sort of cycle, it can go more or less. Nice. All right. So hold on. Stop talking.

We covered a few things there. Yeah. Yeah. I got to dive more on this cattle ranch thing. That's what I was going to ask. Oh, okay. I'm fascinated by it. My in-laws have horse ranches.

Like, I get how that works. You have a ranch design. Like, these are not cattle that you can go and, like, ride. These are not cattle for you to go. You can't ride any cattle. Correct. Correct. So, like, you mentioned here is to sell these cattle for consumption, correct?

Yes. So the way it works in Texas, the reason a lot of people have cattle, if you buy, if you own a lot of property in Texas and you use it for some agricultural purpose, there is a major tax exemption. So one of the things, this was some really great real estate advice I got. My wife and I had a pet goat that we randomly bought on Craigslist a few years ago. And this is when we were living in the city. And we wanted to get a little bit more land. We sort of liked having chickens and this goat and we have a dog.

So we wanted more land. And I was actually talking to a friend of mine who's in real estate. And I was saying, look, we're looking for about one or two acres. And he said, well, look, in Texas, the property taxes are very high because there's no state income tax. But if you buy between 10 and 15 acres and you have a certain amount of animals on there, you pay actually less taxes on it than you would have. than you would pay on two acres. So the farm that we have out here is about 40 acres, and my taxes are less on it than the house that I have in the city of Austin.

That's crazy. So we have the cows. It's this cool thing. It makes a tiny bit of money, probably not at all efficient hourly, but you have the cows, you breed them, you sell the babies every year, and then it protects your investment in the land because you're a paying the very high Texas property taxes. You're basically only paying the property taxes on the sort of improved land immediately surrounding your house. Got it. Got it. That's awesome. I love that. It's pretty cool. Yes. That's the kind of stuff that you don't just know innately, right? That's the stuff you have to talk to people about. And that's why we encourage people to jump on the forums and connect and like, you know, talk to people who are in real estate. You know,

just the more people you can talk to about tax efficiencies and, you know, how to plan for the future, the more likely are to find yourself in a situation like you are where you're actually planning your portfolio in a manner around taxes so that you can actually save money, right? Yeah. And what I also learned from him is like, you know, I was thinking, I want two acres because that's about all the, like, that's all I'm willing to mow or do work on. And he was like, look, actually, two acres is a lot of work. It's like 40 acres or we bought 17 at first is actually about the same amount of work because you don't take care of the other parts of the land.

It's like if you have a one acre parcel around your house, that's a lot of yard for you to take care of. If you have 17 acres, most of it is trees and grass that you don't mow. And so these were things that I think a lot of people go, oh, I want that. And then they dive into it. And then it's like a rest of development where it's like, I think I've made a huge mistake, right? Yeah. Like the more people you can talk to who have done what you've done and get their advice is going to prevent you from, I have this line in one of my books from Bismarck is saying any fool can learn by experience. I prefer to learn by the experience of others.

Yeah. I love that. That's the idea is like you want to save yourself painful trial in there wherever possible. Well, it's funny is I say that all the time. I do these webinars every week on bigger pockets and I teach like various aspects of real estate. say like, you know, you can learn from your own mistakes if you want to. And that's fine. Like, I learned from a lot of my own. But what I love about things like podcasting like this is like, you just get to learn from all of other people's mistakes. Like, oh, look at that moron. What he did.

I'm not going to do that. You know, like, I would much rather learn that way any day. Well, that's what I think about as a reader too. It's like, okay, for roughly 5,000 years, we've been sort of writing these stories down in one form or another. So that's a lot of people. And I say that's, that's people either way smarter than you or way dumber than you, writing their experiences down, why would you not avail yourself of that knowledge? Why would you just go try? You're not in a single lifetime. You're never going to be able to learn it all by trial and Aaron. So that's why you, yeah, you ask for advice and you try to know as much as you can going into things. Yeah, perfect. So you mentioned, I mean, you were with American Apparel. You were the

director of marketing. First of all, that seems like a ambitious thing for a young guy to be doing. How did, like, how did that happen? It was, it was a bit crazy, but that's sort of how mentorships and relationships work. So I was a research assistant, sort of an apprentice to this author named Robert Green, who's written these brilliant books like The 48 Laws of Power. Oh, yeah. It's awesome. Yeah. And so he happened to be on the board of directors at American Apparel. So the CEO of the company was looking for someone who he could rely on more day to day as sort of an advisor and a sort of a fixer and someone who could do anything. And so Robert said, why don't you work with this kid that I'm working with. So I took a sort of a big chance. I went in there. I not only didn't have a title,

I didn't even have like an ID card. I was like a secret employee to this person. And so I got handed from one person to another. And then I did such a good job that I was slowly given more and more responsibility. I ended up doing some restructuring of their marketing efforts, which had been very chaotic up into that point. And then when it came time to choose who to run it, I was that choice. So it's sort of people want, you know, it wasn't like I applied for this position of director of marketing. The position really didn't even exist. I made that position inside the organization because I was willing to take a chance on a sort of amorphous, ambiguous role at the beginning. I got to tell you, some of the most successful people and smartest people I've met in my life have done the same thing.

I've got a number of friends who, it was the exact same thing. They came in, they had position X, and they saw opportunity, they grasped it, they created things. I mean, Brandon did that with bigger pockets. I mean, I know lots of people outside of bigger pockets that have done the same thing, and they've all excelled because there's something to that, right? There's ambition, there's creativity. And if you demonstrate that and you come up.

up with ideas that can benefit whatever it is, the business that you're kind of working at, the odds of, if they don't promote you, if they don't work with you, then they're fools. Yeah, I mean, I think it can be intimidating when you're on the other side of it. You don't realize that most CEOs, entrepreneurs, executives, whatever, it's not like they're sitting around and they're going like, there's too many great people in this organization and I don't know how to use them all. It's they're actually dying for someone that they can rely on that, that, that, that understands what they're trying to do, that can sort of be a second set of eyes for them.

And look, the strategy isn't for everyone. But if you can fit your way in there, there's really no ceiling on what you can accomplish. But it does mean you have to be willing to sort of eat a certain amount of crap at the beginning. Like to be the guy that nobody knew what my job was and why, you know, who this person was and why I didn't even have an office, you know, that wasn't a fun position. There were other people in the organization that, were sort of like, who is this kid? Why would I listen to him? And I had to sort of eat that for an extended period of time. But I knew the game that I was playing. Yeah. You know, one of the number one piece of advice that gives like usually high schoolers, but anybody who's like, I can't find a job,

I'm looking for a job. I'm always like, every single business out there is hiring, right? Every single business on the planet is hiring right now if you can prove that you're going to make them more than it costs. You know, like, I don't know, people are like, there's no jobs in this town. Of course the jobs. Every single business is hiring. Like, what I tell what I tell people is, is, well, not only that, like find a company. You're not going to do this at a big company, but find a small company that you're passionate about. Look at it, study it, see what they're doing.

Find something from the outside that is deeply wrong or that you can improve, write a plan on how to do that, send it in and say, hey, I'm looking for a job. They'd be crazy not to hire you. That's how I got hired as a research assistant, too. And so, so yeah, it's doing the work. It's, you know, I see the mistake I see people make related to that too often as they go like, oh, hey, I'm a huge fan of the show. I'll work for you guys for free. Yes.

You're like, okay, doing what? Like, it's not, it's actually not free for you to think about how you would utilize this person who you were not interested in hiring, right? But if that, I think Rameet Sethi calls it the briefcase plan. If you go in, you, you open the briefcase and you have the list of what you were. want to do, why you want to do it, why it's going to work. Chances are, nothing in your plan is workable, but it at least gives them some framework to understand where you might fit in the organization and what you might do. So it's like it's starting with a specific project or a specific idea. That's sort of the vetting and then being flexible from there, jumping on the next thing

and then the next thing and the next thing. You know, you're you've wormed your way into their life. Man, I love that because like so many real estate investors, I mean, they, they want a mentor. They want somebody who can help guide them, right? So I get an email every day probably from somebody saying, hey, you know, I can do whatever for you. I can work for free for you. The same thing, right? I'm like, yeah, I have no idea what I would even ask you. But somebody comes to me like, here, this is my plan. I know what you want. I'm looking for a mobile home park right now. I know you want this. Here's my plan to get it. I'm going to go out and get it for you. Cool? I'm like, oh. No, that's exact. That's exactly it. And people think mentorship is

this official thing. I think they do the same thing about employment too, right? So they go, to me, that's the equivalent of like, let's say you wanted a girlfriend. You wouldn't go up to a woman in a bar and go, would you be my girlfriend? That's like you would have a conversation with this person, right? And so, so a mentorship is not a destination. It's a process that ensues. So I get this email all the time to go, I really want a mentor. Can I ask you a few questions? And I go, you just ask me a question. Like just email me and ask a question, right? Like ask a smart question.

And if I have a time, I might answer it. And then already you and I now have a relationship. So people think it's this thing that you're anointed, like you are my protege. Actually, no, what happens is that successful people occasionally interact with other people and those relationships develop. And then they tend to put more energy and resources towards. the things that are working, right? So somebody, somebody hears that you're looking for a mobile home park. They give you some ideas. Maybe one of those ideas is not half terrible. You end up

looking at it. And then you're like, hey, now I need someone to, I can't find the contact information for this person. You might ask that person to do it for you. And now all of a sudden, you're interacting. And so it says, my research assistant now is someone who emailed me for like two or three years and then in a crunch one day I needed someone to find something for me and now we've been working together for on three different books. So that's how that process happens. Yeah. That's great. I love that. I love that. And I have one more thing on there is when you're looking for a mentor, like people who are saying, how I'm looking for someone to help. Like the, the job is on you as the mentee to continually build that relationship. I just read that the other day in a book. Maybe it was

one of yours, maybe not. But it was like, yeah, like when people come to me and they're like, I've built relationships with people. I've gone out to lunch with them. We've talked a few times. And then we just, I don't think about them. And I don't want him sound like mean, right? But like, I'm just, I'm busy. I'm working a lot of things. But there are a few people in my life who consistently, and they're not like annoying about it, but they consistently follow up occasionally and they send the email and they

talk. And I mean, I think that's actually how I became friends with Josh Dorkin. It's like, I just like started hitting him up on Facebook and we became friends that way. It was kind of the same thing. Well, that's exactly how it happened. And that's how the job happened, right? I was looking for somebody to come into the company to be my right hand.

He was writing for me. and we create a relationship, I began to trust him. I didn't know if he could do marketing or not. I didn't know if he could be a pod. I mean, look at the guy. He's a hot mess. But like, you know, little by little, he demonstrated to me, you know, some capacity to actually get one or two things done.

And then suddenly it exploded, you know, because he was under my tutelage, of course. Of course. No, it's awesome. So, and by the way, everything that we're talking about here as far as mentor, you know, we're kind of talking in a general sense for anybody listening, you know, this definitively applies in real estate investing. Yeah. Just reaching out because I get them all the time too.

Reaching out to somebody and saying, hey, I want you to mentor for me, like mentor me. Like, what does that mean? If you have a question, ask the question, like you said, Ryan, you know, I'll try and answer you. Like, if you want to ask somebody for coffee, ask him for coffee under, you know, I'm outwardly saying, hey, I need you to mentor me is kind of like, it's a lot. There's a lot of weight that comes with that. It's intimidating. Yes, it's intimidating for the other side.

That's what I mean, yeah. Yeah. And like what you said before, I found really fascinating, hey, I would love to work for you. And I don't know what I'm going to do, but, you know, I'll do anything for you. Now I'm stuck for the next half hour. I'm sitting, I'm like, oh, well, wow, another opportunity. Okay, somebody could come in. Like, let me rack my brain.

And then all of a sudden, I'm like, you know, I got too many things. I don't know. Forget this. You know, hey man, thanks so much for the interest, you know, moving on with my life. It happens to me. It happens to everybody. It's the same thing. You got to come in with something.

I got an email from a kid and it feels weird to be making fun of these kids. But I think it's, and I'm 30, so why am I calling someone a kid? But I think you can help, you can help people be more effective with their own pitches, which is why I do it. But I got an email from a kid. He's like, look, I desperately want to do what you. you do. I live here. I will fly across the country and meet you for lunch anytime. Just name you. And I was like, look, man, why would you think that I would do that to you? Like, to me, I don't want you to spend $500 buying a plane ticket to come have lunch with me because I don't know if that's

going to be worth your while. And I don't walk around thinking that people should fly across the country to have lunch with me because I'm so smart. You know what I mean? And I was like, look, What you should have done is emailed me and ask me some questions and maybe you and I would hit it off. Or you should have, you know where I live. You should have just told me you were in town and you wanted to have lunch and seen if I was available, right? And so I think people tend to think it's this big thing that they need their huge break. And actually what you need is lots of little breaks and they're much easier to get than you think they are. Yeah, yeah.

Along those lines, the last thing you talked about, somebody did this. me and it was brilliant and we have a relationship now. You know, I, uh, so-and-so wants to have a cup of coffee with you. Cool. I'll have a cup of coffee. You know, I mean, it's just the context made sense. I get, I turned down more coffees than, I turn down a lot of coffee. Yeah. Your big deal. I'm not a big deal. I just don't have time, right? I would do it if I could. Like, I just don't have the time. So I go, we, it was lunch. We go, we have lunch. We sit down, we chat. And I'm like, you know, we're getting up to go. I'm like, yeah, so, you know, what do you got going on the rest of the day. He's like, yeah, I'm catching my plane back home. It's like, plane back home.

It's like, yeah, I flew out to meet you. I was like, wow, wow. Like, I would have said no if he had said, I want to fly out to meet you. There's not a chance in hell. I would have said, yeah, get on a plane so we can sit down for lunch. But by not saying it, he got the lunch. Exactly. Exactly. Because it would have been intimidating and also a little weird and an imposition, really, Because then it's like you would feel like you have to perform. It's like he's doing you a huge favor by flying out. And then you would just rather not have that sort of karmic dead. I feel like you owe him something.

Yeah, exactly. Awesome. Awesome. Well, cool. So let's go back to real estate investing a little bit. You mentioned that you do some of that. What is your real estate? And what do you do?

What was your very first real estate adventure? So yeah, I got into it through my dad. So growing up, my dad had, my dad was a police officer who also had his real estate license. So he was always investing in real estate properties. And then he got into, I don't know when, a number of years ago, he got into sort of hard money lending or trust deed lending. So basically providing money to other real estate investors or people who wouldn't be approved for traditional mortgages in some way, that he was then using his expertise as a real estate investor to know whether that property was undervalued or not. Right. So only loaning money on property to people who,

on properties that he believed would, you know, the math actually made sense that he wouldn't mind owning if they defaulted on the loan essentially. And so I got into that really early on, like maybe right when I got my first job at American Apparel, I started making money. He was like, look, you need to start putting some money aside to do this. You'll start making income. I bought my first house in Austin when I moved here. And then now I split my time between that house and the ranch. and then I just started renting that house out on Airbnb. So that was my first foray into actual real estate investing. And then I bought a property in Austin, a small condo, maybe like a year and a half ago.

Okay. So I'm going to talk about a couple of those things. First of all, the lending, you know, like I was, and I think your dad was right on. Like, lending is kind of the top tier, I feel like of real estate investing. Like people eventually end up there. It's like they start with like crappy little rentals that are fixed up like Ida. you know, like you're out there changing your own, you know, plumbing stuff. But eventually, like, I feel like the best investors eventually just get into lending,

whether it's private lending or hard money lending or you become the bank. Or you become the bank because it's so much less work. So I have one note right now that I'm doing and it's like the best money I make. Like, I mean, not like amount wise, but the how easy it is. And I win either way. If they default, I get the property. It's worth double what I lent on it. Yeah.

Yeah, I love that. So I think your dad was right on there. But then also the Airbnb thing. that seems to be working for a lot of people. I mean, what's been to your experience with that? I've really liked it. Austin is weird about the permits and stuff. So that's a little strange.

Like, it's something that can't be scaled in the city that I live in because you can't own an actual vacation rental in Austin. It has to be your residence. So that house is my actual residence. And then I just spend a lot of time out on this farm. So it's been great. It basically pays, it pays for itself and a little bit more. and then I have a house that I can use whenever I want to use it, is how I think about it.

It's a, I spend a lot of time there anyway. Actually, the weird part, you know, what you bring up about returns, what's been weird for me having started on the lending side is that it actually made the math harder on actually buying a property. So it's like, you know, let's say I'm doing loans and the interest rates are between, you know, sometimes eight and 10 percent. That's guaranteed with no work other than cashing the checks as they come in. then when I bought this condo, it's like, not only is it, because the real estate market in Austin is so,

it's so hot, but the returns are harder to get, but then, you know, the sink breaks. And I have to talk to this. Like, there's a lot of work on it. So I've liked participating in the market over the last few, several years, you know, actually through the crash and then after that way. And then, and then now, okay, now that I have a better sense of how it works and my confidence is higher than I was able to to do the properties but feel it was a little safer because I actually own it and control it. And theoretically, I could live there if everything went to shit. Yeah. So how do you find somebody who has a property that you would lend on?

Do they find you or how is how are you getting your leads for loans? Yeah, I've worked with three different brokers that find the properties. I get the emails almost every day. Hey, here are the ones that we have. This is what the loan would be. This is where I've done most of them in California. because that's where I grew up. So that's where I sort of understand the market.

Sometimes I'll do them with either my father, so I've done some with my sister. So I'm looking at the incoming leads and then I'm vetting them and going, hey, you know, like, for instance, I went to college in Riverside. So I'm on one there that I was right down the street from where I used to live. So I felt really comfortable with that one or this is in the town that I grew up in. So the incoming leads and then looking at the different returns and doing it that way. So do you work with somebody like the Norse group out there who, does, I mean, is it like a third party?

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Got it. Yeah. And the way I've thought about it, what I've liked about the lending is it's like, so I make this money, I make the money from my books with my brain, right? Like I have to write these things and then sell them and market them.

And then I'm trying to think like what is, how can I make money from ways, how can I make money in my sleep that doesn't require my brain is sort of how I think about it. Right. Like I like to have my goal for a long time. I'm not quite there yet has been to make enough money to make and save enough money like as an author and as an entrepreneur that I could then do have a portfolio of real estate related things that would make like a normal person's middle class salary. Yeah. Like I'm trying to make like what my parents made growing up from passive income. You know, as passive as real estate is in passive. income so then I can feel much more emboldened to take creative risks because, hey, I make what a fireman makes, you know, through these other income streams. I love that. And you bring up a good point. I was like when you get that, when you get enough passive income from something, you can then take those risks. Like you can go and do more fun things. Like we talked about earlier, you can go and be a

research assistant for somebody, you know, that might turn into a job someday or take some of weird, obscure your role. Scott Trench, who wrote a book for us called Set for Life. It's all about like basically keeping your expenses as low as possible, maximizing how much money you earn from jobs or whatever. Basically, you can get financial freedom as soon as possible. Oh, there is. I just wrote this down. Okay, good. Yeah, check it out. It's really good. And so like this idea is when you do that, like the entire world opens up to you. Like you can then, again, yeah, you can go take a crappy job that pays nothing, but you think there's potential there with some startup or you can go and invent something. You can go write a book. You can do all these things that are that are. Or

even if there's not potential. Like, you know, if you've got that income stream coming in, say you wanted to be a teacher, but decided not to be a teacher because you wanted to make a little bit more money, go take your dream job of being a teacher. You know, I mean, that's the beauty of having that financial wellness is you can go and do whatever the hell you want to do because you don't have to worry anymore. Well, so on my first book, I got a fairly large advance. It was there this controversial marketing book and I immediately invested it. And so it was making recurring income. And when it came out, so I wrote this marketing book and obviously there's a big market for marketing books. And then, you know, I went to my publisher and I said, you know, for this next book,

I want to write about this obscure school of an ancient philosophy. And they were not excited about that idea really in any way. Understandably so. And they offered me half for my second book, what I got for my first book. But I was able to say, sure, whatever. Like, it wasn't that I was, like, you know, born with a trust fund or that I was in any way really financially independent. But, like, you know, people talk about FU money. I sort of referred as to, you know what? Like, you don't need FU money.

You just need, like, I'd rather not money. Or just like, you know, sort of polite. I don't need to do it that way money. And so because they were able to, I was able to take whatever they were offering and not really sweat about it financially because I had enough to cover the difference from these income streams. And then as it turns out, obstacles away sold several times more is my bestselling book and it's sold several times more than the first book has. So I was only in that position to do to make that create it to to roll the dice creatively because I'd been smart both in saving and investing in the other

part of my life. That's awesome. Yeah. That's awesome. Well, let's shift to the books. let's start with obstacle because you just talked about. First of all, how many copies have you sold to that book? It's knocking on the door of half a million. Wow. That's awesome. That's pretty serious. And what does it mean?

Yeah, what is obstacle? Yeah. So it's based on a quote from Marcus Aurelius, who was the Emperor of Rome. He's the old guy in the movie Gladiator for people who don't know. But he has this line. He says, the impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way. And really what that means, that's sort of the recipe for what I call stoic optimist.

They're saying that we don't control what happens to us, but we control how we respond to what happens to us, and that we can actually see everything as an opportunity to respond well, right? So, you know, the market goes bad. Obviously, you didn't want that to happen, but now what are you going to do now that everything is cheaper or that, you know, it's sort of let you see things more objectively or that it helped you learn that you were perhaps living a bit beyond your means, right? What are you going to do with the information or the events that have just happened? The Stoics are saying that, look, all of these things are just opportunities to respond really, really well. So in other words, those of us who are, you know, it's everyone else's fault or those of us who are the world is out to get me or those of us who are, I don't have a chance because of X. You know, this book is for all of them. And this book will teach them that, look, there's good and bad, but there's, you know, it's, the world is what half empty glass, glass half full. The world is what you make of it. And if you're going to,

if you're going to look at things as everything's negative, your life's going to be shitty and negative, right? If you look at things, whoops, bleep that. If you look at things as, you know, hey, okay, this is negative, but now I have an opportunity to do X or to create some kind of new whatever it is because of that, then you're going to be a whole different person. And those are great people to be around. Yeah. I mean, the line from Shakespeare is nothing neither good nor bad, but thinking makes it so. Rockefeller, one of the richest men who ever lived, was born or sort of cut his teeth as an investor in the panic of, when was it, 1857, one of the worst financial crisis and crises in American history. But he sort of saw it as an educational opportunity to see how the market works,

to see how these sort of irrational forces drive people in really good times and then how it drives them just as much in really bad times. So he would always say that he was lucky to have sort of broken in at this time. And that's how I think about it too. I want to say that everything that's happening, you know, whatever you think politically right now or whatever you think economically or the specific business or company that you're at, it just, it's not good or bad. It just is. And then it's up to you what you're going to decide to do with that. Yeah. I think that's really good. advice. You know, a lot of people back, back in 2008, right, when the economy just collapsed here. A lot of people just said, you know, the sky's falling, stop doing everything. Like, people got

so panicky, but then other people were like, man, look at all these cheap real estate houses everywhere. You know, like, let's buy them up. And so like a lot, a lot of millionaires were created in the 2008, 2009, you know, collapse. And, you know, it's going to happen again. I mean, everyone's predicting is that this year, next year, the year after, like, when's the market and collapse again? Everyone's all freaking out about it. But I like that. It's not, like, a bad thing. Like if we look at the market going down as a bad thing, it makes us feel negative. But instead of we just think of it as part of the cycle, it's just what it is. And now is how we react. As long as you're positioned, though. Yes. Yes. Right. Like a hedge fund, their job is to make money

in up markets and down markets or to make money in both directions. And you want to see yourself the same way. So, so look, yes, it's not like, hey, I'm just going to go around thinking that everything is positive. The Stoics actually weren't wouldn't wouldn't say that. all. It's not about rose-colored glasses. Actually, the Stoics are often thinking about how things can go wrong in advance all the time. Like, you know, we talk about positive visualization. The Stoics would talk about negative visualization. Seneca would say, you know, shipwreck, exile, disaster. These things should be on your mind all the time. You should be thinking about how things can go wrong, not so they would intimidate you, but so you have a plan in case that happens.

and then you're somewhat indifferent, whether it goes exactly this way or exactly that way, you've got a plan A and a plan B, and you're going to benefit from either scenario. So there's a label for me, huh? Yeah. Stoic. Yeah. I love it. I guess so.

So, first of all, I follow you in Instagram, and so I know you've got this coin that you carry on, kind of a morbid coin. What is that? Can you tell us about that? Here, let me see. I think I got one of my pockets. Yeah. Here it is. I don't know if you can see it.

Yeah. But it says, Memento. Mori. This is a sort of an ancient device. The coin is new. I had it minted. But it, where you had a coin minted. Yeah, I found a mint in, uh, in Minneapolis that's been open since like 1880. Uh, I had this design. I wanted it for my own use. And then now I, I've ended up, people really like it. So I've started selling them. But we got to talk about this because I, I think I I get some bigger pockets of coins minted now. You should. That's exactly what you should. How cool is that? Josh, they have to be like this big though. That's been like a, you know, a six inch coin. It's got to have your

face on it, Brandon. It does, of course. So we can all, you know, throw it in our part. No, okay. So the, the, the, the, the, the line on the back, it's a quote from Marcus Aurelius where he says, you could leave life right now, let that determine what you do and say and think. And so, you know, your average person doesn't think about death at all because it's uncomfortable or it's sad or it's scary. And the stoics would say that death is what gives life meaning. It's what puts a cap at the end and then says, okay, I have to make the most of the time that we've been given. And so throughout history, people have been keeping these things called

memento moris as a reminder of their mortality because as the world has gotten safer and better, it's, you know, we're no longer cavemen afraid that we're going to be eaten by a lion. We start to think that, oh, we're going to live forever, that things are going to go exactly our way. And we don't, you know, what's that exercise like? What would you do if you found out you had cancer? And this is supposed to drive you to make changes. Well, the truth is you do. have cancer. I mean, like, you, you have been given a fatal diagnosis by a doctor. Like, a doctor, the doctor who pulled you out of your mother knew for certain that you were going to die, right? Like, he just doesn't know exactly when. And neither do you. And so the idea is to have this sort of

reminder of that with you. So you don't end up wasting your time on a lot of trivial, pointless things. And that you don't get upset or, you know, you don't take for granted the time that you have. have. Yeah. Yeah. So, and that's one of the reasons we do the show, right? Our show is to help people find financial wellness so that they can actually live the life that they're here to live or that they believe they're here to live. And back in, back in high school, one of my closest friends told me this thing that was the most influential thing anyone's ever said in my life, which is, imagine you're in your deathbed. First of all, look at who's around you. You know, it's, it's going to be your closest family, maybe one or two closest friends.

Like that's your pool, right? Those are your anchors right there. Everything outside of that, like they're all important. They all matter. They're kind of spokes in the hub. But like those people are the people that you want to live your life for, right? It's them and yourself. And if you can sit there looking at those people and say, you know what, I lived a life that was true to who I am, to who I wanted to be.

And I did what was right for you and everyone. else, then you had a good life, right? And so be true to you, be true to them, and everything that you do, do it from the lens of looking back from that deathbed and saying, hey, did that really matter? And that's been so helpful for me to look at how I go through my life. I think so. And then also, you know, to tie this into financially is that we can forget how fragile our lives are and how precarious, you know, so it's like, oh, I don't need to save money. I make a lot of money. I have a really good job or, you know, like, that's what's sort of driven me as a writer is like, what if one day I just sit down at the computer and no more words come out? And it would have been really

silly if I had planned, you know, so the last six years I've written a book every single year. I know that's not sustainable. And so part of the reason I try to invest and I try to invest in things that are very much the opposite of what I do for a living is that I want to be protected against, you know, some risk of, hey, what if, you know, I said something dumb in an interview and now my publisher drops me. You know, there's all these things that can interrupt your life, but they can't take away an investment property that you have potentially or whatever, right? They can't, they can't, you want to be insulated from, you don't want to have all your

eggs in your singular career basket, in my opinion, because you never know what's going to happen. Yeah. And you have other people to take care of in your life as well, potentially. Yeah. What I love about real estate is I look at it as kind of like, you know, book writing. Like I wrote a book, you wrote a book, right? It's good. It can be good income, right?

And it's passive income for the most part after it's written. However, like I always look at books. I look at jobs. I look at careers. I look at all these things, even like flipping houses. It's all short-term passive income. Like, there can be good income, but that book isn't going to last forever. What I love about real estate investing is like it really can.

This job shows how long? No, it won't. What I say? What? So, like, I love that rental properties, though, like every year I make a little more from my rental properties because the rent goes up a little bit or whatever. Like the property values going up. Like I just love the security that I get from rental properties because it's going to last 50 years, 100 years, you know, longer, which brings us to the perennial seller, which I want to

talk about as well here. Yeah. Because that book made a big impact on my investing, which I know it wasn't even written necessarily for real estate investors, but made a huge impact. But before we get there, I want to actually hit Iglo's enemy first. But last question on the obstacles away, when somebody's out there like listening to the show right now, who is a real estate investor, struggling. They're like, I just can't get the deal or I hate my tenants, whatever. Just have any like just general advice for those people who are, how do they believe that the obstacle is the way? How do they not just give up? Yeah. Sure. Well, look, sometimes you should give up, right? Like sometimes the situation is toxic or broken and the thing you can take away from

it is that it's gotten so bad that it finally woke you up to the fact that this is an abusive, broken relationship that you need to get out of, right? So that's, that's at least one thing. But I'm always asking, okay, what can I learn from this situation or what can I take forward that's going to benefit me, right? And that's something that can turn every situation big and small into some positive. It's not that you can turn every situation into an overwhelmingly positive one. It's that there's some little bit of positive in every bad situation. So I was going through something with the apartment that I bought recently where like the property management company that I was using was sort of messing it up and it was and it was like okay and I need to have a very

firm conversation with the person who's doing this and that is something I don't like doing and I'm not very good at mostly because I don't have a lot of practice and so this is practice in having one of those kinds of conversations and that's how I convinced myself to do it is that I need to call up this person who's much older than me and I need to be very firm and clear with them and I needed to end going in my direction. And like that's something that doesn't come naturally to be. And now I'm going to learn how to do it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I like that advice too. It's kind of like shifting the way you think about the problem. Right. Shifting the way. Yeah. Like, practice. Like I know I'm horrible at that. I'm really, really bad at talking with people,

confrontation, all that. Like I just want Josh to go be my like hit man when I need to yell at somebody. But it's easy to avoid that stuff. Like I mean, I in the past couple of weeks, Brandon, and I've had to have some like really hard conversations in my life. And like it's extremely intimidating, extremely intimidating having those. That said, if you perseverate about it, which is what we most people do and sit around like, you know, and wonder and wonder. And then never get to it and put up with like this anxiety about it forever. You're always going to be holding on to that. Whereas if you nip it in the bud, you go, you know, say, all right, what's the worst?

the worst that can happen. They'll yell at me, you know, our relationships over, you know, whatever the potential outcomes are in your situation. That's the worst that can happen. You still have your family. You still have your friends. You still have, you know, whatever it is that you have in the case of Brandon, not, you know, good looks, maybe, I don't know, a beard. Dashingly good looks. Yes. But that's what you're left with. So tackle that. Don't sit and let that be a weight on you forever because it feels way worse to hold that than it does to actually And then you get the experience, like you said, to go forth and do it again. Totally.

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All right. Well, let's shift and talk about ego as an enemy. But first of all, I love this book. Like that was, I put this as the, like, it's one of my, like, it's one of my, like, top favorite books of all time. And, uh, I listen to it on an audible. I know, I know, right? Josh thinks I have a big ego.

Talk way too much. Probably, yes. I've listened to many hours of, I mean, Brandon's about to ask you about what an ego is. And that's, that's ironic because I do not have an ego. I have no ego at all. Brandon might happen to have the biggest ego I've ever met in my life, which is funny. No, not true. It's totally.

It's totally true. We all have egos, right? Thinking that you don't have an ego is the most egotistical thing that one can do because it's a belief of some sort of superior enlightenment. But I do think ego there's never, the way I think about it is like, have you ever been in a situation where you're like, I wish there was more ego in this room, right? Like there's never a situation that ego improves the situation. Confidence can be important, but ego is this sort of toxic extra thing. And so the idea then is that if ego adds nothing to positive, we want to suppress it and move it away from what we're doing as much as possible. I would say this is especially true in something like investing that requires risk.

And because it requires risk, it also requires as much objectivity and self-awareness as possible. The last thing you want to do is think that everything you do touches, everything you touch turns to gold. The last thing you want is to believe that you're on some sort of hot streak or that, you know, it's always going to be like this. You want to be approaching everything, almost like it's your first property. Like, hey, what do the fundamentals say? What am I hoping? What are my, what's my conservative estimate of what this can, you know, you want to be looking at it as clearheaded as possible. And ego is kind of this fog that's just making everything harder to see.

Yeah, that's so true. You know the quote, what is it, a rising tide lifts all ships. Right. So like everybody or I think Mark Cuban said everyone's a genius in a bull market. Right. Right now the market has been hot for the past eight years or whatever here in America like nine years. It's just been growing, growing growing. So anybody who bought in 2008 looks like a genius today. Like even if they bought stupid deals that they should have never bought, you know, they feel really good. If they continue doing that, they're going to have some problems. Yes. Right. And it's not to say that ego is never successful.

It's that on a long enough timeline, it eventually becomes a problem. And so I think one of the really dangerous things is the story people tell themselves about their success. So yeah, if you bought a house in 2008 and it's been going up and up and up. And so you've now taken that to mean that you're a brilliant genius investor. What you're not doing is seeing what actually happened. And so I think about this with my own books. You know, why were they successful? Was it because I was this genius?

Or was it because it was the right place and right time? Was it because I took these risks and they paid off? And therefore, I should take those risks again. Or was it that I experimented and I got lucky? You know, it's making sure you're telling yourself the right story about your success. And ideally, not letting the good times plowed your judgment in any real way. Because that's how you head for a fall. Can we dive on this a little deeper?

because I think particularly given where we are in the market cycle, this is so, so important. I, you know, I've been looking for opportunities, you know, I'm looking for deals. I'm looking to potentially lend some money, things like that. And one of the first things that comes to my mind is, all right, so this person's got a deal, you know, this person, the numbers look good. However, this person started in 2008, in 2009. They've never seen the downside. what's their response to that? How have they planned for that?

How are they planning for that going forward? Because, you know, what is the market cycle? Seven to ten years, give or take, seven, eight years. All right. If they've not experienced a full cycle themselves and like, look, that's okay. You know, there's a lot of people just getting started. However, if you're not thinking about that over the long term, then I think you're potentially, your ego is kind of in the way, right?

I mean, you're assuming that things are going to continue. to go well because you've been so successful. Well, I would never give money to somebody who's not thinking about the market cycles, right? I would not trust a house flipper who's not, at least in their back of their mind or in their plan, worried that the market's going to soften in two months, right? I mean, you have to. I mean, well, that's one of the things that I look at when I do the lending. My dad and I talk about it all the time.

Would we be comfortable owning this house? It, you can't, the return is in some ways irrelevant, right? It's like, oh, great, they're paying 20% interest, let's say some absurd number, which they wouldn't. But, you know, it doesn't matter what the interest rate is because in some ways, the interest rate is a reflection of how risky it is, right? They wouldn't be paying the rate if they didn't have to. So would you be comfortable owning that house? And can you afford to own that house? What if, you know, 2008 is really all the banks making a lot of assumptions about risk and then,

never asking themselves what happens if all these risks happen at the same time, right? And so could you could you, could you, what would be your strategy if everything, you know, sort of went sideways? And do you have a history of responding well when things go sideways? Ego, ego was a, it was a weird thing. The book sort of became popular with the Seattle Seahawks and they they brought me out last year and I spent some time with the team and I was talking to the general manager and he was saying, actually one of the things he looks at when he scouts players is have they undergone some kind of adversity or not. And the reason he looks for that is that making it onto that team and playing in the NFL is going to be the hardest thing that that player has ever done. And if they're not prepared to have their

ass kicked in that way and to adjust to a very steep learning curve where it feels like everything is going wrong, that is something the Seahawks are going to have to pay for. Like, they're going to have to pay for this guy's education in how tough the NFL is and how tough life can be. And ideally, he should have already learned that lesson somewhere else in his life. Yeah, that makes sense. And Seahawks, best football team in the NFL. So, all right, next, so this, so two of my friends are huge, huge fans of your work. I got named Nathan Brooks and Anson Young, and I'm good buddies with both of them.

So I asked them before the show, what would you want to ask Ryan? So this is the two questions. Number one. Okay. Nathan asked, how do you get back in the right state of mind when you know your ego, your ego or your mental state just isn't right if you're, you recognize. Yeah, the reset.

Yeah. So one, I think everyone should have some sort of hobby or thing that they do that kicks their ass, right? So I know nothing about owning a ranch and every day something goes wrong here. And then I have to learn how to do this thing that comes very naturally to other people. So fixing fences, repairing things, all this stuff. And then so one of my neighbors will come over and help me. And they'll just be laughing at me at how little I know about this thing.

So having something that humbles you is really important. And then also I think related to that, what sources of, I don't want to say spirituality, because that sounds loaded, where do you go that you feel very small in your life, right? Is that nature? Is that going to church? is that, you know, volunteering in a homeless shelter, what do you do that connects you with something larger than you? Because when we're dealing with our own little empire, we all feel like we're Warren Buffett, right? Like, we feel like whatever we're dealing with is the most important thing in the world and that all these things hang on it. And so going out and, you know, climbing a mountain

or standing on the coast and looking out over the ocean, these are things that can sort of reset us because we're not, uh, all of a sudden, all our everyday, lively concerns feel a bit irrelevant. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. It's great. It's really good. How about Anson's question? Anson Young asked, how do you know if you're doing something for ego or is it actually for your end goal? Is there a way to just quickly check like, hey, is this ego or is it not ego? Yeah. I don't know if there's some, some test, but it's like, would you do it if no one knew you were doing it is a, is a good way to do it. You know, like, uh, the Stoics talk about this lot. It's like, you should do good things and not ask for the third. So someone, they would say,

someone's in trouble. You help them. Don't ask for the third thing, which is gratitude or recognition for doing that good thing. So like, would you do this? Would you put in the work? Would you make this change? You know, would you, would you do this? Would you be investing the way you're doing? If no one knew how much money you were making or how well you were doing it, you need that recognition. That's, that's the ego side of things. That makes sense. How about, you know, would you do it without taking a selfie and posting it on Facebook and Instagram? I mean, that's, I think that would, you know, it's a modern way of thinking about it, right?

Like, do it, do it just to do it. Don't do it because you're going to get to get a selfie with X, Y, Z, right? Yes. Right, right, right, right. Would you rent that car because you want to rent that car because you think it'll look good on social media? And that's a, social media is a trap designed to make you perform and live. beyond your means. Yeah.

That's so true. There you go. So what I find funny is like even, I mean, this is not a new problem at all like ego, right? Like I'm thinking like there's like this story in the Christian Bible, right, about like, I think there are the Pharisees who were like always showing, hey, look how much money I'm giving, right? Look at how much money I'm giving. And they're like, it's not like, can you like not let your left hand know what your

right hand's doing and still feel good about it? Then you should be giving. But if you're just giving to people, if you're volunteering, hey, look what I'm doing. I got this, you know, I'm helping this person or. I donated to this cause. There's ego and everything. When I read Ego's Enemy, one of the reasons I say that's one of my favorite books is because when a book impacts me like where I think about it every day, that means

it was a really good book. And that's why I say that, like, the book Cashflow Quadrant by Robert Kiyosaki, which was like Richard Deport Ed's sequel, basically. That book is like that as well. I think about it almost every day and something I do. But everything I do now, I ask, is this ego? Like, every picture I post to Instagram, I think of, is this ego? Or is this like, is this getting me towards my goal?

but I think about it sure a hundred times a day so you kind of ruin me in that. I mean, I have it tattooed on my arm for that exact reason. You have obstacles away in your other arm, right? Yeah, I have obstacles away on one arm and he goes to the enemy.

I need a perennial seller across the chest. Not as good of a title. That's true. That's true. That's awesome. All right. So I don't know. This is kind of my last question.

So how do you then balance ambition with content? contentness, right? I love that question. Are these guys at odds with each other? I mean, how do you kind of No, no, that that is the question. The way I see it is that ambition is important and that ego actually gets in the way of that ambition, right? So not to make a political point, but like on the one hand, Donald Trump really wanted to be president and he became president, but his ego is making it much harder for him to be president, right? I don't think that's a partisan point. His ego is making an already difficult job much more difficult, right? And so that's how I see

ego. It's that ego is this thing. Steve Jobs had an ego and it got him fired from Apple the first time. That didn't need to happen, right? Kanye West is a brilliant musician who sold many millions of albums, but there's no question his ego has lost him fans, right? And has made his life, there are things that he has to deal with and explain and answer questions with on a constant basis because you couldn't sit down at the Grammys, right? Like, these are things that don't need to happen. I can't stand LeBron. It's not because he's brilliant.

He's a brilliant basketball player. I cannot stand LeBron unless he wants to come on our show. I cannot stand. I just, it's the ego side of it, right? Like, I have respect for him. Like, frankly, I admire the hell out of him because he does so many. things for charity and for kids. But like, you know, when it's on the court, I just, I want to yell and scream at him because like, you know, all the show that they did with the Miami Heat,

all that ego stuff just drove me nuts, right? Yeah. So it can get in the way so easily if you allow it to. You look at Cleveland right now. On the one hand, Kyrie Irving leaving Cleveland is the cost of ego, right? He's leaving to go be the man somewhere and he's going to not be as good anymore. And on the other, the ego of LeBron James, who couldn't see the effect that he was having on this teammate. And so now both of them, just like with Shaq and Kobe, both of them are going to win less because both of their egos were preventing them from realizing the ambition that they both have. Clearly, they've won together. So it's not that you can't have ego and never be successful, but it can prevent you from being as successful as you want to be.

Yep. These are basketball players, Brandon. I know something about a gold unit basket, something. All right. I stopped back with like Stefan Marbury and Kevin Garnett and the Minnesota Timberwells back in like high school. That was my end of my basketball days. It doesn't get like they couldn't get better than that. So I just stopped paying attention. All right.

Well, this is a good transition. I think, I don't know, basketball is not. But the idea of talking about if ego is not in the, if the ego's trying to try and we're trying to suppress that as much as possible to actually do good work. That brings up the next. book was the perennial seller. That's your newest book. Can you tell what does that mean? What is a perennial seller? And what do you mean by that? Well, it's interesting. There's actually some similarities in a lot of the creative industries towards the real estate industry in that, you know,

everyone is chasing the hits and chasing what's popular right now, but the vast majority of income is generated passively through what's called the backlist, right? Or the library. You know, it's the Shawshank Redemption that's filling the coffers of the movie studio that owns it, not the newest Lego movie because the newest Lego movie costs so much to make and it might not and cost so much money to advertise and it might not make its money back, right? The reason that a publisher can have a building in Manhattan is because the Great Gatsby sells 500,000 copies a year. And my own books, you know, got relatively small advances, but they sell thousands of copies every single week without the publisher having to do much work. And so I'm really interested in creative

work that endures. You know, Michael Jackson obviously made a lot of money as a performer, but he made his estate is now worth billions of dollars because of the intellectual property that he purchased. He bought the rights to other songs. And he typically tried to buy songs that were going to last, that were what we call perennial sellers in the creative industries. And so as a writer and just as an investor, I'm fascinated in the kind of work that's not going to be popular for a year, but this is going to be popular for 10 years or 20 years or 100 years. And so I've tried to write sort of a formula both for creating those things and just thinking about it generally.

It's like writing a book is really hard. So if you're going to write one, you should try to make it last as long as humanly possible so you can get a better return out of it. So how can we apply that then to real estate? I get it. Michael Jackson bought the Beatles catalog, right? I mean, in fact, you know, there's a, there's platforms out there today where you can buy music royalties. And I love looking at those all the time.

And I'm like, oh, this is cool, cool. These guys are super popular today. And I'm like, yeah, but if I pay X for it, in five years, my return is going to drop drastically because this thing doesn't have legs. It's not a perennial seller. Now, in real estate investment, I think I could see that applying from a market perspective. Like you're looking for markets that have legs, markets that, you know, not a pre-industrial, the, you know, the Midwest area, pre-kind of industry collapse type of area. You want to look 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, 50 years, is the area I'm going to be in, be in a better position financially, or is it not going to be? Are jobs going to come here?

Are they not going to come here? And then is this property, a property that's going to fall apart in 10 years because it's a piece of junk? or does it have a leg is that is that how you would apply that towards real estate i think so so yeah to go to the the the sort of intellectual property for a second like uh one of those i think it's royalty exchange is one of the places you can buy so the guy who who wrote that song see you again which was in fast and the furious uh he was selling his rights on that platform and so to me the strategy if you're thinking about that would be like is that should you buy the royalties to that song because it's the most viewed song on youtube right now or is that that song popular because they play it at graduations and funerals and farewell parties and things like that. So is it fulfilling some sort of niche in people's lives or is it the next gangham style, right? So is it popular right now or is it part of something that's going to last? So like, maybe a real estate analogy would be like, okay, is everyone buying houses in Arizona because that's, or Vegas because that's the new popular market? Or am I buying this house across the street from a

university because this university isn't going anywhere and students are always going to need a place to live. So when I think about what I'm writing about, for instance, I don't want to write about, hey, this trendy social network or this popular fad. One, I'm writing about ancient philosophy, but then I'm going, hey, people are always having problems. So I'm going to write a book that helps you solve your problems. Ego is always an impediment or a, you know, a problem in organizations and teams in people's lives. So I'm going to write about that. I'm not going to write about, you know,

Google Plus or something like that. Good idea. Yeah. It makes sense. In my own business, like as I read the perennial cell, I just kept thinking over and over about like, am I like the decisions I make,

am I making them for the long haul? Like is my daughter and my grandkids going to inherit these, these properties? So when I fix a place, I think, am I doing this for long? Or am I just trying to make a quick dollar? And we all need to make,

we all need to make money. But, you know, I think perennial seller also comes down to reputation as well. Like, are you doing something just to quickly make some money? Or would you want to build a lasting, you know, thing that everybody in your market knows that you're the guy to go to because you're the whatever? Are you the property management company that everyone goes to the realtor, the agent, the investor, whatever? I just think it's such a good way of looking at that. Yeah, you want to extend the horizon that you're looking at these things because it's going to, it's, if you're looking at it on a larger horizon, the chances of you doing it, right or higher, right? Like, so let's say you're, you're renovating some house. And if you're going to

flip it, you're like, okay, we can just paint over that or we can put in whatever the cheapest materials are. But if you're, if you're like, I'm owning this place for 10 years, then you're going to do it right so you don't have to replace it later. I think this also helps you sleep at night, right? Like, so let's say you think cryptocurrencies are this, you're looking at cryptocurrencies. Do you think cryptocurrencies represent some fundamental change in the economic? in the monetary system, that they're a technological innovation, that it's going to change, that it represents a, you know, a potential avenue for places like China and Russia to sort of remove their wealth around, or do you think this is a bubble and you're just trying to cash in

on the bubble? Like, like, so I have a fair amount of, of bitcoins. I'm pretty bullish on cryptocurrencies. And then today, China, there's a rumor that China is going to ban a lot of the exchanges. So the price is down. To me, I actually think that's a very good sign. So if you're speculating in Bitcoin, you're going to think that's a negative because, okay, here's China banning it. If you're looking at a long-term view, why is China banning it?

It's because it might represent some challenge to a totalitarian regime or a communist system. So I don't actually care what the price did. I actually think it's confirmation of the theory that I have. I could be totally wrong, but I have a long enough view. that I don't sweat what happens on a Tuesday or a Wednesday or a Thursday or even what happens over the month of June because I, you know, I've committed, I think this is a 10-year player, a five-year player, whatever it is. Yeah.

Yeah. I love that. I love when you're investing. Yeah. I think, yeah, again, it comes to every area of what you do when you think long-term. I tell the story a lot, but I bought a property when my daughter was a week old. I bought a fourplex for her. And I put it on a 15-year mortgage so it's paid off when she goes to college.

And then she can have, it's going to be her property. She can take that money to go to college or whatever. And anyway, so every decision I make in that process of this thing, when I was rehabbing it, we spent 120 grand rehab in it. Every decision was this will be Rosie's someday. And is it going to be a good property for her or not? Like, how do I make sure that 20 years from now it is an amazing property still because it's her, it's not mine, you know?

Yeah, you're not handing that time stuff to your daughter. Yeah, exactly. And so like it made in it, yeah, I spent probably 30 grand more than I would have had I not done that. I spent a lot of money, and my cash was going to be a little bit less over the next 15 years. But that property is going to last now, and at least I hope, because of the decisions I made. You know, this is one of the things that, you know, we've been talking about for years on the show here, and I've been talking about for many years above and beyond that on bigger pockets as a platform.

In real estate investing, it's really easy to listen to, you know, watch a TV show and listen to some guru and say, oh, I can become a real estate investor. I just put lipstick on a pig, right? or I can be a wholesaler and do crappy deals or whatever it is. Well, that catches up with you, right? You're not taking that long view. We always, we always, always tell people your rep's going to follow you around. Take the long view.

Think about where you go from here. That kind of applies to this book, right? I mean, it's by thinking about your name, by thinking about your brand. by thinking about who you are and what you represent and protecting that, you're playing that long game. You're creating that perennial seller, right, instead of going for their short-term profits. That's exactly right. And so it's like, to me, I respect books so much. They're so important to me.

I don't want to phone in some crappy book that's maybe going to hit the bestseller list for one week. I want to write a book that people are still talking about in five years or 10 years or 50 years. not only because that's my personal reputation, but it's also a much better investment strategy. It's like, look, I'm going to spend a year of my life working on this project. Why would I want it to, why would I want the investment that I put in to that to have been for naught when, you know, it's like, like you don't want to be spending your time on whatever the next fidget spinner is, right? Like, unless you know that that's what it is.

hey, I know this is a quick play and I'm getting in and getting out. The problem is most of the time people tell themselves, oh, hey, I'm doing this for the long haul. And then they're actually making lots of really short-term decisions. And so if you're doing it for the short-term, make short-term decisions. If you're doing it for the long-term, you're going to have to make, you're going to have to spend that extra money or put in that extra time or say no to this or that to be true to what you're saying you're doing and what kind of results you're expecting.

Yeah. So how, if all this is true, then how is it that companies with bad reputations can endure? Because you do have companies with bad reputations endure. And the reason I ask that, because there's somebody, a lot of somebody sitting and listening, unfortunately, to this podcast saying, I don't give a damn about that. Like, whatever, man, I'm going to just do what I do because I can make this money. Great. So, like, why, why do it right? Which. I believe is the way to do it if you can get away with not. So I'm not a religious person, but I'll take this back to Stoicism. So this is a simplification I understand. But the Christians would say you shouldn't do bad things because if you do bad things, God will judge you and then you'll go to hell, right? The Stoics would say that doing bad things creates a kind of hell on earth for you, that people who have bad reputations are also scrubs.

growing themselves over because that it's not like it's not like this there's this person who's otherwise a totally good person and then they do this crappy thing in their business life it's that's the attitude that they bring to everything that they do and in some way or another that attitude is going to catch up with them those those they're going to take they might be taking a shortcut on this investment property but they're also taking a shortcut in where they're investing their own money or what they're buying or what they're spending or how they're treating people. And eventually, my view is that that catches up to you. So the point is you do the right thing because it's the right thing because it pays off in the

end. And then also, you don't want to give yourself a taste of your own bad medicine is how I would think about it. So you try to do the right thing, not just in the areas where it might affect your reputation. You try to do the right thing everywhere so it becomes a habit. Yeah. I love that. Let me just add one more.

to this and then we'll just we'll kind of move on. As you're talking, my head starts spinning and going to book reviews and going to feedback on podcasts. And like, you know, we've got tons of amazing, amazing review. And then there's one or two or, you know, a small tiny percentage of people who are unhappy. No matter how hard you try, no matter how good a job you do, there's always going to be people who are going to be unhappy, right? So I think. we have to kind of accept that if we're doing the right thing and we know and we trust and we believe that we're doing the right thing, we still may get grief over it. We still may have people who

dislike us because of it or mad or angry. But as long as you kind of stay true and you say, hey, you know, I'm doing this for the long haul. I'm doing the right thing. I'm playing the long game. And I'm going to be a good person or whatever. That's fine. But I think that's easy. it's easy today for me to say that. Sure. However, I remember the first X number of negative reviews. I remember, you know, now Brandon and I are like, oh, we don't even look at them because, you know, it's like, it doesn't bother us at all. We don't care.

I don't need to see angry person who's going to complain that they hate our show. They're going to hate our show. You know, you like it, you hate it, whatever. You know, we know we're doing, we believe, a good show. So how do you think about all that? Yeah. So first, I think I have a chapter in Egos, the enemy about sort of the effort has to be enough. And I'm sure this is very true in investing too.

It's like sometimes you're going to do all the research on a property. You're going to have all the math checks out. And then, hey, it's going to turn out to have been a bad idea for a number of reasons that you couldn't have possibly understood at the time. And you have to know that going in, right? It's like a great batting average means that the vast majority of time you're actually striking. out, right? So you have to know that and be okay with it. And that's sort of the negative visualization we're talking about. And then also, though, like creatively when you're making stuff, you have to know, and I guess maybe this is true for it. Like, let's say you're flipping a

house and you have a very clear idea of who you're flipping it for. Like, let's say you took a house that was sort of a family home and you turned it into like this amazing sort of bachelor pad, let's say. When a family walks into the house and they go, there's no room for a kid in here, that doesn't hurt your feelings because you didn't make it for them. So a lot of times when I look at reviews in my books and like you, it's better not to look at them. Yeah, I don't. But I read, if you are reading criticism or praise, what you have to look at is, does this

person fundamentally understand what you were trying to do? And are they the audience for what you were trying to do? So I wrote this book about stoicism, the obstacles away. It's kind of about stoicism, but I was very deliberately not making it for like, hardcore philosophy nerds. So when I read a book and a hardcore philosophy nerd goes, this is not a book of hardcore philosophy, I go, thank you for confirming that I didn't make a book for you.

You know, like I was making a book for the opposite of you, and I'm actually happy that you don't like it because you were not who I was making it for. And that allows you to know, okay, look, I'm not going to please everyone, but I do hope that I pleased the people that I was setting out to please. Yeah.

Because it would be bad if I didn't. That makes sense. That's awesome. Yeah, I like it. Very cool. All righty. Well, I think I've got like one more question here. Let me pull it up here.

And then we'll head to the fire round. And, uh, all right. So one of my favorite quotes in the book, I even like underlined it and circled it. You said the hard part is not the dream or the idea. It's the doing. And you talk about why ideas are kind of worthless in a way. Like, can you talk about this? What do you mean by that?

Yeah. there was a conversation that my friend Casey Nice that was having and someone's like, hey, I want to tell you about my idea. And he was like, I don't give a crap about your idea. He was like, I want to see what you do with it. Right. Like lots of people have ideas all the time. What matters is what.

So it's not like, hey, I would like to write a book or, hey, I'm writing a book. It's let me see your book, you know. And we can, in the internet, especially with social media, we can talk about the things that we're trying to do so much that we can pretend that we're actually doing them. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Oh, yeah. So, you know, you can take a picture of yourself surrounded by money or on some fancy, you know, on the deck of some fancy house, but there's no, there's no vetting process, no verification that these things are real. So don't get caught up in that. Focke, like, be the person putting your head, like, I admire, you know, I read the millionaire next door when I was a kid. And I, I, I, I just

love this idea of like, oh, these people are really successful, but you wouldn't know it by looking at them. To me, that's much more admirable than the person who looks very successful, but it turns out they're actually just a fraud. Yeah. I always say stories about people who like live in their $80,000 car because they can't afford rent at a apartment, but they got that car and it looks really good at their work. That's why I left L.A. Yeah, I really like, I really like knowing, like pulling up and having like the worst car out of everyone. To me that's like that's a sign that I'm doing something right both financially and just sort of decisions in my personal life that it doesn't, I don't need to have the best one. So these are these are things that keep you humble and I think

keep you focus on what matters. I have a lot of friends who have the Tesla. Sorry Josh. I like you have you have a Tesla. I really want a Tesla. But I, you know what made me not get a Tesla? I read ego's enemy. I was like I saw I was like I want a Tesla. I can afford a Tesla. But the only reason, And I'm not trying to knock everyone who's listening to has a Tesla. But like the only reason I wanted one I knew is because Ben Labovic had a Tesla. And I wanted to have one too, you know, because my buddy Ben has it. No, I want a Mercedes G-Wagon, you know, like the big, the big boxy one. And then I, what I think about is, okay, so I would have that.

And the only benefit would be that I would be driving this car that I think looks cool. But what could I do with $100,000? You know what I mean? And who could I better serve? not i'm not saying i give it to charity but what what systems could i set in place that would insulate me from a market reversal or that would take care of my family if something happened to me you know it and then and then i go it would actually be really selfish and irresponsible for me to have one of these and now it's not attractive to me yeah yeah so i got another philosophical

question then where where's the line between the doing and the the quote pretending to do and let me give you an example. My name is Bill. I'm a brand. Hey, Brandon. I'm, I'm, I'm, it's, it's, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm new to real estate investing. And I know that, if I don't repeat to myself, if I don't constantly remind myself and tell myself that I'm a real estate investor, but I am in my head, right? Right. Right. And so. I'm telling my friends, guys, I'm a real estate investor. I'm a real estate investor. I'm not doing it to lie. I'm not doing it to pretend. I'm doing it because if I don't keep hearing myself say that I'm going to stop.

It's driving me. It's pushing me. It's motivating me. So where's the line between that and the actual? And I think you could only say that if you're taking steps. Like, hey, if you're like, I'm an investor and you're not. reading a book towards getting there or you're not evaluating deals or you're not networking or trying to figure out what you need to do, then maybe then you're a fraud or is it, do you have

to be taking steps? Where's the line? I guess I would push back and ask, why are you telling, are you telling people that you're a real estate investor who you want to do business with, or are you telling the people you went to high school so they'll think you're really cool and important, right? So it's like, like, marketing is very important, right? If you don't believe in what you're doing, if you aren't selling it to people, no one's going to buy it. Right. But you got to make sure you're not marketing to yourself and marketing to random people out of ego that you're marketing because you actually have real evidence that it's driving your business in some way. Do you know what I mean?

I think that's great. And so like for instance, as a writer, you can go, oh, I'm trying to boost my Twitter followers because I can sell more books. Do you actually have evidence that Twitter is selling books for you? or is it that you want 2001,000 followers because some other guy you know has 200,000? So like, for instance, like, I'll hear from authors who go, I'm writing this book and my goal is to sell two million copies. And whenever I hear a number, I'm very suspicious because my goal isn't to sell a specific number of books.

My goal is to sell as many books as my book can sell. And so when I hear a number, I usually think ego or some sort of comparison against someone else and that's dangerous. Yeah. I love that. When I was in the entertainment business living in L.A., everybody was an actor. And you, all right, what have you done anything yet, but I'm an actor. Oh, okay.

Well, so you're aspiring actor. Right. That's cool, which is where I was going to go on the real estate thing. You're not a real estate investor. You're an aspiring real estate investor until you're actually a real estate investor. So, you know, and whatever your reason is, like, is. Is it ego? Well, okay. I admit it. That's okay. We all have egos, like you said, right? But at least be honest, be truthful in who you are and don't misrepresent that because that will come back

and bite you at some point. Yeah, don't buy your own hype, but also know that hype is important. So do the marketing, but don't fall for it. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's good. I read a study recently. I don't remember what book it was in. Again, maybe it wasn't one of yours, but they tell the study of where when people share their goals, like, my goal is this, the chance of achieving the goal is actually less than when you keep your goal a secret. And they say it's because your brain already kind of won when you tell people that you are getting that. You know, like my goal is to sell 100,000 books.

Well, I kind of did it partway so you don't work as hard. Yeah, yeah. And then if you start talking about it, all your friends are like, great job. Yep. They're not like, we'll check back in in six months and we'll see if you did this, right? They're like, great job. We're so happy for you. And it's like, no, actually, you want.

You want that off in the distance motivating you when you feel like, you know, taking shortcuts. Yep. Yeah. But by the way, all that ego stuff, you know, social media and fame and egos, like, that is all fleeting and short term. It's something that I very much learned when I was in the entertainment business. And frankly, I see every day now, like, I think about, like, hey, I love going to Facebook on my birthday. Like, I love it. I have all these people, most of whom I don't give a damn about, and most of whom don't give a damn about me,

saying something really nice to me, right? Right. You know, hey, you just won this, you just posted this picture. All these people are like saying that it's like it's that adrenaline boost, right? And we teach our kids, if we're tying our kids to be part of that social media world, it's the same thing. You allow this fantasy to drive you forward. when in reality like, all right, I've got a handful of really close friends and then I have a smaller, a bigger group of less really close friends. You know, it's nice to hear from all these folks.

But like at the end of the day, like all of its flash, right? You know, if you go back to the deathbed analogy that I talked about, those are the people that matter. If you're looking long term perennially and all that you do towards them, that's really what matters. Completely. Yeah. Yeah, interesting. Cool, man. Well, thank you for the philosophy lesson. This was fun. This is good. I know you're not a real philosopher. You're just a, you know, a pop philosopher, but that's okay. I respect that because that's, you know, that's what I want. All right. I don't want to talk with Socrates. All right.

I like it. So I have one last question before with a fire around just because it just put me. You have an Instagram. I have an Instagram. Josh has Instagram. We've already said that having an Instagram, having a Facebook, all that is definitely part ego. Do you admit that?

I mean, like I don't want to call you up, but like you use Instagram, just like I do, right? Are you saying, yeah, I got an ego or are you doing it because you know that it will sell more books in the future? So one, yeah, I do have some sort of a public profile. So it's important for me to have this because it's how I interact. with fans and and and and I have very real tangible evidence of opportunities that have come from it that has sold lots of books. But if you look at my Instagram, it's mostly pictures of me going for a run like things that I, it's pretty things that I saw outside. So I, I find some level of

creative satisfaction in it. There are very few pictures of me. There's very few, uh, things that I'm promoting. I'm using it because I like it as a creative thing. I know that there are, I know very distinctly there are other things I could do that would grow the account that would get me too sucked into Instagram and I try not to do those things. All right. Good answer. I'm glad you didn't slap Brandon for being offensive. No, because I mean, that's just natural. I know people ask the question. You even address it in Eagle's enemy is like the very fact that you're writing a book and going on, you did a book tour, You go on a podcast. Like is that ego?

Is it, you know, are you just, you know, I think it's important to like, you know, address the, I don't want to call it elephant room. Because maybe people don't think of it. Of course. Of course, nobody, nobody writes a book for themselves. I mean, like the whole point, it's both a business and you have this thing that you want to sell. And so it does have certain obligations.

Just like, you know, being a salesman means you have to take people out to drinks and dinners and, you know, events and stuff. So it's, it's that part of my profession. There you go. I love it. All right. Well, cool. Let's shift over to the world famous fire round.

It's time for the fire round. All right, fire on. These questions come direct out of the bigger pockets forums, which of course our users can go to at biggerpockets.com forward slash forums. Let's say, number one, what do you think the best way is to invest a large sum of money like $100,000 to $300,000? I feel terrible answering that question because I don't think I'm qualified to. How about we shift it?

If right now you had $300,000. just giving to you and they said, go invest it. What would you do? Yeah, I would probably buy, I mean, if I had a really good loan, I would probably do that because it would be one of the things that I think a lot about too is like, what's the amount of time it's going to take for me? So to get a great return on a $100,000 rental property is probably going to require a lot of work because you're not necessarily getting the best property, at least where I live. So I would be looking to do something that would produce a good return, but not require a lot of follow-up time for me.

I like it. That makes sense. That makes sense. All right. Let's see. While saving up for my down payment, where should I park my money I'm saving? Bank, mutual funds. And again, if you feel like you're unqualified, like, you know, when you've got cash so

you're trying to accumulate, where do you stack it? Yeah. So I don't totally feel qualified. But what I would say is it obviously depends on the timeline, right? So if you're saving up this down payment to invest it in two years, don't put it in the general stock market, let's say, or some sort of thing that can go up and down quite easily because you might find that your down payment is now half what it was when you put it in there. Whereas if you had 10 years, it would have been a great idea. So I think a couple of things when I save money, I think out of sight, out of mind is the best way to do money. So I try to have it siphoned out of accounts where I then, like, not in my, the bank account that I actually check or have access to.

So the money's not going to burn a hole in my pocket if I don't know, if I don't see it on a regular basis. So in terms of the saving, I think automation is really great. And I think keeping it in a separate bucket is a way to make yourself save more and more quickly. I can watch it for you. I like it. Yes. Straight under the mattress. All right. Next question. What features attract people to your Airbnb? Like, is there something that people say that they like about yours?

Oh, that's a good question. I would say location, size, and then like sort of personality. You know, people are deliberately staying in an Airbnb because they don't want to stay in a hotel. So don't make your house look like a hotel because it's never going to be as good as a hotel. I like that. That makes sense. Yeah, I really like that. And I tend to find family stay in Airbnb. So like, because they're the ones that would have had to get three hotel rooms. So how can you be accessible? Yes. Yes.

Awesome. All right. Last question. How do you track your real estate income and expenses? I set up an LLC that is only my real estate investments. So it's like, you know, my investment fund, even though I'm the only investor in it. And then I don't, I don't mix it with any of my other. stuff. So I put a certain amount of money in there when I started, the money comes in. And then at the

end of the year, when I'm going to look at how much I've made or whatever, I just, I have all my expenses, all my costs in this thing. You just like a spreadsheet, just like sell or something. Yeah, I can just export the, the transactions from the bank account. And I, and I have it all there. And then I have I have statements emailed to me monthly as the deposits come in. So I'm always, watching and monitoring, hey, hey, this person hasn't paid. Why is that? But I try to keep it very separate from my other stuff, like, as we were saying with the first question or the second question, so I'm never spending that money.

So even though I might be making X, you know, I was saying I want to have that sort of ordinary person's salary every year, that salary isn't going into my checking account where I could spend it like my actual income is. It's being immediately reinvested. Yep. Because that's where you get the compounding returns anyway. Yeah, I call that cash flow recycling where you like recycle the money rather than spend the money in it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

And then I'm willing to take risks with it and I'm more risk averse with it because it's this sort of separate thing and I have it. But I'm not, I'm never counting those chickens, so to speak. Yeah, that makes sense. It's its own bucket, basically. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. All right.

Well, let's shift gears to the last segment of the show before we get out of here. and that is our famous four. All right, these are the final four questions we ask every guest, every week. And we're going to see what you got to say. The first one, you may need to alter this one and you can. Well, the first one is what's your favorite real estate specifically? Do you have a real estate related book or resource that you like the best? Oh, that's a good question.

No, nothing specific. The millionaire next door, I think, definitely helped my sort of overall strategy and way of thinking. and then Nassim Taleb stuff about Fool by Randomness, Black Swans, and sort of being anti-fragile. I would say those sort of four things really shaped how I think about stuff. Okay, cool, cool. Oh, and then actually I get this email every day from this guy named Matt Levine, who writes for Bloomberg.

He has this really great email, like a sort of a stock market financial analysis thing, and I get that every day and I love it. Oh, cool. Awesome. Awesome. There's this great email that goes out three days a week from the side. called Bigger Pockets. I should check it out.

Yeah, yeah, it's fantastic. Yes. I think it's a lot more than three days a week now. I think we're just like, you know, five times a day. Although the newsletter is three days a week. Okay, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, all right.

Next question. Favorite business book, not your own? Got it. That's a really good question. I don't think I have a favorite, but I'll give one that's good here. There was a book I read a few years ago called Billion Dollar Lessons, and it was about some of the biggest business. failures of all time because overwhelmingly we tend to study business successes.

And this was looking at the failures that companies make over and over again, many of which are motivated by ego. But I think it's always good to be looking at the other side of things too. That's great. I love that. All right. So besides writing books and raising cattle and investing in real estate, what do you do for fun, man? This stuff is fun for me.

So that's like what I do. But I run or swim almost every day, and I find that it's sort of got a meditative effect for me. I get good ideas there. It relaxes me. It's a break from the busyness of the day. So I would put those two in that category. Love it. All right.

My final question of the day, what do you believe sets apart successful real estate investors or even just people in general from those who give up, they fail, or they just plain never get started? I think if I was having to find a commonality between all, it would be discipline, right, between those three people. So the people who never get started obviously don't have the discipline. The people who give up don't have the discipline to stick with their idea even amongst adversity. And then the people whose success is maintained rather than, you know, they don't become complacent or they don't undermine that success. I would say discipline is probably the same ingredient there. So it's mental discipline.

It's work ethic. It's all those things. Awesome. It's great. All right. Before we let you go, Ryan, here's your chance. How can people connect with you? How can they, where can they find your books?

Yeah. How can they reach out? So books should be everywhere. Books are sold. Amazon, if you want, they're on my website. You can go to DailyStoe. Or sorry, you can go to Ryan Holiday.net. And then if you're interested in the stoicism side of things,

I can go to dailystoic.com where we've built a sort of a huge community that people really like. So start either of those places. Awesome. Awesome. All right, man. Well, listen, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. Guys, get out there. Check out Ryan's books and check out the websites. And thanks again for coming on. Thanks for having me. Hey, take care. All right, Brandon, so was that everything you wanted in so much more? It was everything I wanted. Yeah, I love getting authors on the show, especially ones who have done some real estate because then we get to talk about real estate, how it applies. They understand the mindset. But also, like, I don't know, that was like a much deeper show than we, than, then.

normally we got really into philosophy and stoicism. We should do a philosophy show. You mean, just like, just like this, the bigger pockets philosophy show. Bigger philosophers. Yes.

I like your, you're going to get a giant coin that you have to have bigger pockets to fit your pocket. This is such a good model. It'll be bigger. And everything I do for the rest of my life. I should trademark bigger. Bigger.

That could be your word. Bigger. Yeah, that's me. Are you compensating for something? Small egos. Bigger egos. There you go.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it was a great show. Ryan, you know, seems like a great, great, great guy. He's got, I mean, so much, so much wisdom to share. And, yeah, I loved talking about this stuff because typically we talk about the concrete. And today we really talk more about the mindset of thinking long term and, you know, came up with some cool ideas. But I just, I love that because there's so many people who get into this business who think so short term that I think it hurts them.

Yeah. I see it all time with, and I don't want to just pick on wholesalers, but you see it all the time with wholesalers who are out there, like selling, how can everyone else's deals and lying about who they are and what they do? And like, yeah,

you just, not all wholesalers do that. No, but there's a lot of them to do it. And so like, if, I mean, are you in this to win it long term?

Are you in this for the next 20, 30 years? Or are you just trying to make some quick money so you can go on to your next, you know, idea. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, because you'll get found out. I mean, if you're running a business that's dishonest or if you're just tweaking the truth, I mean, it will come back and bite you and people won't want to work with you over the long term. That's true. I also, speaking of idea, I like the fact that we talked about how ideas don't really matter much. You know, like, how many times do people come up? Yeah, it's all execution. I mean, like, how many times do people come up to you and they're like, I got this great idea for a business or investing strategy or whatever?

Great. You know, like show, like, do it then. And yeah, Derek Sivers is one of my favorite authors who we, we should get Derek Severus on the show because he's, he's a fantastic speaker. Oh, somebody knows him. Yeah, I don't know. If you guys know Derek Sivers, tell him I want him on the show. But anyway, Derek Sivers is a fantastic guy.

He's done a few TED talks, but one of the things he put out a blog post that said the ideas, it was a little hard to explain this on a podcast, but I'm going to try. So execution is a multiplier. We can do it, but he will. But he basically says execution is a multiplier. So, for example, a. idea is worth like a dollar or a decent idea is worth like a dollar a great idea is worth like a hundred dollars a fantastic idea is worth like a thousand and a incredible idea is worth like 10,000

but then execution is the multiplier so crappy execution's worth one so you just multiply the two right so if you have a genius idea that's 10,000 dollars you but you don't execute it's only worth 10,000 dollars but if you have amazing execution and even you know that might be multiplied times 10,000 so anyway I love the idea that that execution is a multiple. player. And let's get Derek Severus on to talk about that because he'll explain it. Yeah. Well, I think at the end of the day, what you're trying to say here is don't just come up with an idea. Once you have an idea, come up with a plan and start to execute the plan. Once you do that, now you got something that people are going to be interested in. The idea is, you know, everybody,

ideas are like, you know, well, there's a saying I'm not going to go there. But anyway, everybody's got them. Yep. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Cool. All right, man. Well, great show. Awesome. Awesome. and yeah, man, I'm ready for the next one. You realize we are five shows away from 250. Wow, 250, a completely arbitrary number that no one cares about. Totally arbitrary, but kind of a, you know, kind of a landmark metric, I think, for a show. It's cool.

Well, congratulations on having a perennial podcast. We have a perennial podcast, don't we? You have a perennial podcast. Nicely done. Nicely done. All right. Thank you. Let's get out of here.

All right. Let's get out of here. I'm Josh Dorkin, signing up. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing, without all the hype, you're in the right place. Be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from BiggerPockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online. Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast.

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