BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 362: Big Goals? Here’s How to Get Your Spouse or Partner on Board with Jay and Wendy Papasan

Episode Date: December 26, 2019

Today’s show is centered around a big question we get ALL the time... “How do I get my spouse/partner on board with my real estate investing goals?” It’s the perfect time of year to think through exactly how to do that, and we have the perfect guests to offer some advice. Jay and Wendy Papasan run an annual couples’ goal-setting retreat in Austin, Texas. Today, they walk us through the exercises they use to help couples (and business partners) confront uncomfortable questions and get on the same page. Oh, and if you don’t know who Jay is, check out BiggerPockets Podcast 113: Becoming a Millionaire Real Estate Investor Using The ONE Thing with Jay Papasan and BiggerPockets Business Podcast 06: How to Manage Your Time Like a Millionaire with Jay Papasan. Jay's wife, Wendy, is a real estate broker who leads a high-performing team that’s expanded into four cities. In this episode, you’ll learn how to initiate a goal-setting conversation with your partner, what kinds of settings work best for this exercise, what questions to ask, and which timelines to use. Also, stick around through the end to hear Wendy’s tips on using leverage and a “not to-do list” to apply your time and energy more efficiently and be happier. This is a profound episode with two real estate rockstars. If you enjoy it, do us a favor and share it with YOUR spouse or partner… or pass it onto a couple who you think might benefit.  Download this one today, and make sure you’re subscribed to the show, so you won’t miss the next one! In This Episode We Cover: How Wendy and Jay started setting goals together 13 years ago Applying the idea of a “leadership retreat” to your family What settings work best for goal-setting with your spouse or partner Navigating a relationship where one partner is an entrepreneur Their answer to, “How do I get my spouse on board with real estate investing?” Why most failures of leadership are failures of courage (Keith Cunningham) How having tough conversations about goals can head off misunderstandings How Brandon’s navigated balancing business with family Why Gary Keller calls tough conversations “care-frontations” Which time horizons are most useful when setting goals Using the language of business in your marriage Putting your marriage first, even when you have kids Moving at the speed of communication Delegating draining tasks to help you keep more energy for yourself and your family And SO much more! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Youtube Channel BiggerPockets Business Podcast 06: How to Manage Your Time Like a Millionaire With Jay Papasan BiggerPockets Podcast 113: Becoming a Millionaire Real Estate Investor Using The One Thing with Jay Papasan Gary Keller BiggerPockets Podcast 355: From Small-Time Landlord to 1,000+ Units Under Contract with Ryan “The Mercenary” Murdock Paying Off Student Loan Debt with a Median Income and Two Kids in Northern California with Kyle Renke Check the full show notes here: http://biggerpockets.com/show362 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is The Bigger Pockets podcast show 362. So we can kind of walk you through the things that we want to talk about, but I'll just say like the benefit of this is not just getting out of your element and getting a fresh eyes on your marriage or your partnership. It's this idea of bridging the gap. 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. Hey, what's going on, everyone? This is Brandon Turner, host of the Bigger Pockets podcast here with my co-host, Mr. David Green. What's up, David Green? Happy Christmas. Merry Christmas to you. Happy holidays. Does weather ever change where you are?

Is it just always the same for Christmas? So did you guys not get Christmas Street? Do you get like coconut trees or something? I have, I have to admit, I actually have, I have to admit, I need to confess something. This is tough. This is tough to say. This year was the first year in my adult life that I got a fake Christmas tree. And it doesn't smell like Christmas.

And it's been up since before Thanksgiving. I don't know, man. It's been rough. I thought you were a red blooded American. We've got to comment. I was a red blood. All right. The truth is I did have a fake Christmas tree,

but I put it up because we had a baby coming and we knew it was going to come anytime, and so we didn't want to get caught without a tree. You didn't want to ruin that new baby smell you got going on with a Christmas tree smell. Exactly. Oh my gosh. It's so good. Yeah, the new baby's full. Well, awesome.

This is going to be Wilder's first Christmas and what Rosie's third? Yeah, Rosie's third Christmas. And she already is so excited about every present that's not under there. She just knows that they're coming. So every day she asks us if it's Christmas yet. So anyway, when this episode comes out, we're coming out here a couple days after And that also means we're about to get into the new year. Today's show is one of the most important shows you will ever listen to in your entire life.

That's not even a hyperbole. It really is important, especially if you have a relationship, if you have a boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, business partner, or a pet, anybody else in your life who you may have conflicting goals or similar goals or you want to align interest. This is an amazing conversation, kind of a different type of a show than we normally do with two people that are just rock stars. Jay Papazan, who is the author of the one thing, along with the millionaire real estate, investor, millionaire real estate agent. He helped on that one. He's like a co-author on a million and one books. And he's just a super legit guy. And his wife, Wendy,

who is one of the coolest and top real estate agents in America. She's awesome. And she's super legit. So we have them on the show today. Talk about goal setting. This is like learning putting from Tiger Woods. You guys are going to, I mean, they're probably two of the most. you know, at least in this country, most renowned speakers on this specific topic, and they do not disappoint. Yeah. Yeah, they tell you, they actually do like a goal setting retreat every year.

And so we actually kind of walk through like a mini version of a goal set and retreat. They talk about like how do you get the other partner aligned? How do you get your spouse or partner on the same, on the same path? Wendy has this great topic about the not to do list. Make sure you listen for that about a not to do list. And we go into a lot of like, what are goals you should set for your real estate business and how big is too big? and what's the next step and just a ton of good stuff.

So you guys are going to love this. But before we get to that interview, let's get to today's quick tip. Our quick tip today is very simple. It's based on what we talked about today. I want to encourage every person, whether you're listening to this in end of December, early January, or it's July 31st.

I don't care. In the next couple days, go take some time out of your schedule. Go take some time out of your schedule with your partner, spouse, significant other pet, whatever. and work through the stuff you're about to learn. Like actually set aside some time.

Go rent a hotel for a night or two or go to a campground or something and really dig into what do you want out of your life over the next month, two months, six months, year, five years. And just be intentional about that planning time. That is today's. Yeah, anything you want to add to that, David? Just that if you don't do this now, you will look back 10 years later and say,

why is my life where it is when it could be something better? These are things that sound kind of cheesy when we talk about them. But the people who we look up to like the Jay and the Wendy's, if you say, how did you get here? They can trace it back to a moment where they said, we're going to sit down and come up with a plan and set a goal and then try to execute it and didn't do it as good as they want. But like they mentioned, it's building a muscle. And then that muscle gets stronger and stronger. And then 10, 15 years down the road, you've got a bunch of investment properties. You're making a lot of money and you have a really good relationship.

And it all came from that very first initial decision. So I just want to highly encourage people, whatever. it takes to do this, you got to do it. There you go. Do it, do it. For decades, real estate has been a cornerstone of the world's largest portfolios. But it's also historically been sort of complex, time-consuming, and expensive. But imagine if real estate investing was suddenly easy, all the benefits of owning real,

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So without further delay or I do or both, let's get today's interview with Jay and Wendy Papazon. Welcome back to the podcast, Jay, and welcome Wendy to the Bigger Pockets podcast. Good to have you guys here. Happy to be here. This is like one of my favorite shows, so it's always an honor to be here.

Great to be. Well, good. That's awesome. Well, I didn't tell you this earlier, but I'm actually not even knowing that this interview was going to happen this week. Like last week,

I was going through my audio books on Audible and I was like, I need to know the book to read one at the gym. And I pull up the one thing and I actually have been working all the way through it again the last week. And I'm just like, I'm like, this is such a good book.

And then I was like, oh, that's right. We're interviewing Jay on the podcast. I thought it was just like very funny. like coincidence, I guess, or maybe subconscious. I've been prepping, I guess. But we're not talking necessarily. It's just about the one thing today.

We're talking about the, I don't know, the everything, the couple stuff, the goal stuff, going into a new year here, just got out of the holiday season, kind of where to go from there. So before we get all into that business, though, let's hear from you guys on your story. I mean, again, we've heard from Jay a little bit in the past, but I want to know a little bit about, for those who didn't listen to that episode, and that was episode, let me know. You know me else know what episode that was? It was a little while ago. I noticed episode six of the business podcast.

I can't remember the episode number for the real estate. That's all right. We'll find it later. You've been on. Yeah, you've been on before. For those who were not there for that, who are you? How'd you get into this real estate game? How'd you guys meet each other?

I'm curious of that. And kind of what do each of you do in your businesses? Well, you started this time to then the last episode. Tell us how we met and what we do. Sure. Well, we met in a bar in New York. So that's sort of exciting. We actually met the front.

Did he use the pickup line? No, I kind of did. Hey, do you have a band-aid? Did you say like, do you have a Band-Aid? I just skinned my knee when I fell for you? I actually had the pickup line. It was the second year, same birthday party, second year. The first year of the fireworks didn't happen.

The second year, we're walking across the street. And when he goes, let's trade IDs and see if the bouncer notices. It's smooth. And the bouncer did not notice. That was good. Yeah. And the rest is history. I know. Right?

We actually celebrated our 20-year anniversary this year. Congratulations. Yeah. It takes 20 years to make a 20-year marriage. That is very logical. We met in New York City. And then after we got married, we went on a five-month backpacking honeymoon and decided to move to Austin, Texas.

And came down here without jobs. We did freelance. And that was when she kicked me out of the house. for not earning enough money. I was freelancing magazine writing and not doing too well. Well, here's the reality is Jay was supposed to be writing all day, and I would come home every day, and he would be on the computer playing video games.

I'd already pitched all of my hard work, right? And so I was like, your freelancing days are over. You need to get a job. I got to ask what games you were playing, Jay. This is a while back. This is 2000. I think I was playing Diablo 2 or something. Okay.

It wasn't like Oregon Trail. I bet far back But yeah I'd be like I'd be like I've done my work that morning I didn't know what else to do with myself And I'm not terribly social So I just sit in the apartment and not too much productive

So she did me a favor And I applied for a bunch of jobs And ended up working in a very small real estate company called Kelly Williams Back then there were 27 employees And only 6,700,700 agents And within a couple of years Started working with the founder

Gary Keller. That's where the book started. And today, it's like the largest real estate company in the world. Yeah. You guys are massive. And you guys are both like pillars in that organization. Like, everybody knows who you are. I like, oh, yeah, Jay and Wendy, good friends of mine. Everyone's like, oh my gosh. It's a pretty big deal. He does do that too. Every day. Like every time there's an awkward silence, I just know here comes the Papazan Bob. Hey, do you guys know the Papasand? Yeah. weird. Wendy got into the real estate thing 10 years ago, right? About 10 years?

Yeah. So we actually got into real estate when Jay wrote the millionaire real estate investor. I had quit my job in marketing and we had just had our two babies and I was kind of looking for something to do. So Jay wrote the millionaire real estate investor and that's when we started to buy investment properties. And when my son started kindergarten a few years later, I was trying to figure out what I was going to do for myself.

So I thought, well, I'm going to get my real estate license to save money on a property. And so, yeah, so I ended up working part-time and selling 18 houses that first year. And that was 10 years ago. And last year, yeah, last year we sold. That's a lot of houses. Isn't that a lot of houses? For your first year, kind of. Yeah. Yeah. And then last year we sold about 350 houses. So. Wow. Now, the reason I played that out, it's like I went from being Jay to, oh, you're Gary's co-author to now, oh, you're Wendy's husband. That's the first. Yeah. that's awesome. Jay's helped me a lot on the way.

Yeah. Well, the millionaire real estate investor was a fantastic book, Jay. That was one of the ones, early ones that got me started with real estate.

And I know it's one of the most common books mentioned here on the podcast when we asked people, what's your favorite real estate books? So you did something right. In fact, I'm pretty sure, actually,

I'm positive. It's mentioned far more than all my books and David's books combined. So, you know, you did something right. That's really good.

I mean, that and Rich Dad Portad are like the books that everybody labels is like the best real estate. Well, Emerite is great because it's very tactical.

Yes, yes, and very much so. And, of course, I recommend everyone go out and read that. But then later, Jay, you wrote alongside Gary Keller, the one thing, which became just like a massive international hit. How many copies now? Almost two million? Yeah, the copies that just hit our warehouse have two million copies sold over. It's amazing.

I mean, how many books have ever sold that many copies? Not that many. I don't know the answer to that. I know that the number of business books that it's sold more than a million copies. it's like, you know, maybe 20 or 25 in the last 20 years. So every author wants that book, right? We did our best job. I know that every way is to hard work.

And then it just kind of takes off. Well, and I think I said this when you were on the show the first time. I said, like, the one thing is the only book I'd ever, like, to that point, I've ever, like, read all the way through and got to the end and went back and just started immediately after I just read it twice through. And I've since read it like 10 times. And the reason why is because I said at the time, I was like, this, book is my one thing. If I can just get this one concept down, then everything else in my life

becomes easier or no longer necessary. Like that, just that concept. So I just read it over and over. In fact, I'm rereading it right now. Again, like I said earlier, I'm rereading it right now because like if I can just nail that concept of like focus and say no to things, you can never hear enough. Yeah, you can never hear enough. I mean, really good reminders. Can't hear enough. Simple ideas that are hard to live. And so like that's dipping back in. I mean, every time I teach shit, I'm reminded that I got a little bit too. And it stopped sometimes to remember to be focused on the things that matter most. Yeah, so sure.

If you guys want to hear more about that, you can check out Jay on the Bigger Pockets Business podcast with Jay Scott, Jay and Jay. They actually went into this pretty deep. I remember I was actually taking a run in the mountains listening like, oh, this is good. Like, I don't know how we got Jay to open up this much, but he's being vulnerable. He's talking about ways he didn't do this very well. it was a really it was it was things that are difficult to talk about and hard to acknowledge that sometimes saying no is the best thing you can do and it may hurt people's feelings and it may make you

appear to be rude but really it's the right thing to do and and sometimes the other person needs to hear it too. In particular you talked about how you got the same question so many times and so you made a video to answer that question and it takes some courage to send someone that video because you know that people will take that and be offended by it but they don't need to talk to you they need to watch that video. And honestly, if they're not willing to watch the video, they're probably not willing to do whatever it was you were going to tell them to do. There's an analogy that I've spoken before when I was in first grade, we had these little eggs in an incubator. And when they finally start to hatch, every little kid wants to get in there and open the egg. They want to help the baby

chickens that are peeping. And the farmer came into the class and he said, if you do that, they will die. They need the strength that it takes to get out of that egg for their lungs to work. And so by helping them and making it easier, you're actually killing them. And I think about that every time I hear you or Gary or somebody teaching something about this is the right way to do it even though it's difficult, that if you make it too easy on the people who want you to, then they'll fail. So I thought that was a great episode. Did you just say that when you think of me, you think of dead chickens? Well, maybe people are chickens on the way to death, maybe. You're the farmer, though.

I mean, you're the farmer. Okay, good, good. There you go. Yeah, you're the farmer. Wendy, thank you for bailing me out there. I'm so glad you. All right. So the reason, one of the reasons we want to have you guys on today, again, even though you've been on, again, Jay, you've been on twice now. Well, bigger pockets on the BP business show is because, one, because we haven't had the pleasure of talking in depth with Wendy, but also because you guys teach a lot of goal setting and couple goal setting stuff. You have, like, even a goal setting retreat, isn't that right? That's right. Yep.

Yeah. So I want to, like, because I couldn't make it this year or last year and I wanted to go really, really badly, I thought, well, let's just bring them here and do it, whatever. How many days? It's like a two-day event? The two-day event, and it's based on a two-day habit that Wendy's the origin story on this. And we've tried to figure out how many years we've been doing it. Probably about 13, we think. We're going to cram the two days. We're going to have gone two full days of work into the next hour of this show. So that's going to be a, yeah, you guys got to talk really quickly. No, tell us about this thing, this habit you guys do for the last X and one of years.

So it really started probably about 12 years ago. when our kids were little. And I think for me, I wasn't working. I was just doing the investing staff. And I really wanted us to get away and figure out where we were going, what we were doing. And also, we'd had two babies in 15 months. So we were somewhat disconnected as a couple. And so we got a babysitter to watch our kids for a couple of nights, which, of course, when you have little children, it's a huge deal. And we got a little retreat in the hill country outside of Austin. And I created this long list of questions, which I think was terrifying for you. Oh, it scared my pants off. There's stuff like, I think about our love life. And how do you think

do we talk about money enough? It was like a lot of, I thought potentially dangerous questions. Yeah. Jay thought he was in trouble. I did. And so, yeah, so we created this long list of questions. And that became the foundation for a working partnership slash marriage slash parenting partnership that's really carried us through the last 12 years. And if you think about best practices in business, there's a lot of things that we do as business people, and you wonder, like, what we were doing is a leadership retreat. But we were doing a leadership retreat for our family.

And executives do this. You know, they go to some golf resort. They get out of their element, right? And they go to get perspective on their business together. So they get on the same page and they have a better year the next year than less. So they've been doing this. no original idea, but we stumbled on this and then started doing it and treating it like leadership retreat. And I just remember those first few years, it was like some of the first

nights we'd ever spent away from our kids, but that little sense of just having that time for ourselves. And the basic pattern that emerges is the first night, we usually go out to dinner and we treat it like a date. Yep. And we just talk without notes. We might have a phone out or something, talk a little bit about what we want for the next year. We often, because we let the travel, will brainstorm vacations. But not that first night. Sometimes. I can remember actually building a list of all the places we thought we wanted to go in our life over that dinner.

And that's one of the ones that stuck out for me because it was fun. Right. And then the next day, we get our laptops out and we just start breaking it down. We do the work. And we had a bunch of questions. And in the beginning, it was a word doc. And people would ask us for it and we'd share it. And then it was a Google doc that we would share.

And then eventually, like three years ago, we just came up with the idea with the one thing, training company. It's like, why don't we just host a goal setting retreat? We'll use the same formula and we'll host it. So it's kind of organically become a thing. And because we've been doing it, like I'm looking at our goals, our first year that we recorded them together was 2003 that I have a record of. And sometime, maybe 2007, eight or whatever, we started doing a retreat. And every year, we just add a new component. So we can kind of walk you through the things that we want to talk about, but I'll just say like the benefit of this is not just getting out of your element and getting a fresh eyes on your marriage or your partnership. It's this idea of bridging the gap.

We're both entrepreneurs. I have a job that I run businesses when he runs a business. And most couples, there's an entrepreneur and there's the person that's kind of being ragdolled around. The entrepreneur's got the crazy idea and they're all excited and oh my gosh, we're going to buy an investment property or oh my gosh, we're going to do this business thing. And the other person is being, dropped into that, kind of like being dropped into the combat zone. They didn't sign up for that necessarily. And I think that people get the most upset in things that they don't expect happen. They're surprised. And this idea of let's get on the same page for next year takes a lot of those surprises away. So I think the number one benefit, it gave us a framework for talking about why we're

going where we're going, why it's important to us so that when I say I want to buy a ranch, it's not coming out of the blue. It's not just an idea. We've been talking about that for years. Yeah. Yeah. Well, especially on the financial side, because so many disagreements that people have are about money.

And for the entrepreneurs out there, they might have a really clear vision of what that looks like and they might want to, you know, own five rental properties in five years, but perhaps their spouse doesn't really understand that or understand even the why behind it. And so when you can break away and talk about, you know, Why do you want to do that? Okay, well, for me, that's financial security in the future.

And having that really incident discussion, because most of us, we just never take the time to really think about what we want or where we want to go. And we especially don't take the time to talk with our spouse about it. Probably one of the number one questions I get. I mean, the most popular question I get is, do I need an LLC? But probably the second most popular question I get is how do I get my spouse on board with my real estate ambitions? I hear it over and over and over. And everyone's at this like kind of like this complaint of like, I really want to do this, but my spouse or my girlfriend,

boyfriend, whatever, they're not really into it. They don't really understand what I'm doing. So what I love about what you guys are saying is like when I see those couples and I was that way in the very beginning as well, like I had all these ambitions of like, here's where I'm going.

Here's what I'm going to do. I'm all excited about it. The problem was like Heather didn't even know what was going on in my head. All she would hear just little bits and pieces of here's where we're going. and that just scares the crap out of anybody if it's just like, hey, we're doing this thing we've never done before and trust me. And so I love that you're saying, like,

let's be preemptive about this and involve the spouse or the significant other into the conversation. A few years ago, maybe three years ago, Jeff and I were teaching a class on goal setting. And like a thousand people in the room and I said, it's in February. I said, how many of y'all set goals for this year

in every hand in the audience went up? And then I asked him, how many of you involve your significant other in making those plans and all but four hands in the room went down. And the energy, it was just palpable. Everybody went internal. And so I think it's something that it's very common. One person has taken ownership of planning for the partnership. And what they've failed to do is communicate why those plans are where they are and why it's important, not just to them, but to the couple that you do them. And getting on the same page, That's what you're saying, the why.

You know, it's not just because you'll be financially secure, but maybe I really want freedom. And by the way, what we're both going to get, I'm going to get my security, and you're going to get the freedom to make choices. We both benefit. And honestly, that other partner needs to have a chance to ask the tough questions that you may not be able to answer.

You owe it to them. That's one of the things I wanted to comment on is, I don't know why it's so difficult to do this. There's just something about human nature. that resists having a difficult conversation. I noticed this in my real estate agent business first, where particularly with buyers, you would start working with somebody,

you'd get under contract, and they would just go crazy. The stress, the anxiety, the uncertainty, it hits them all at one time. Things go wrong. And every time I started practicing Jocko Willick's concept of extreme ownership. So everything that went wrong, I would look and say, what did I do wrong?

How could I have done it better? And the answer 100% of the time was I should have prepared them. they would experience this. This was a part of the process. These are the emotions they will go through. This is how we're handling it, and I didn't. So I put together a presentation that every buyer who wants to work with us comes into my office and I give them where I tell them, here is everything we're going to do.

This is how appraisals work. This is how inspections work. This is how different offer types work. Here's how we show you homes. And I give them a chance to ask me the questions that they feel like they need to get. And what happens is we get on the same page. There's difficult conversations that come up. They may ask me about commission.

They may ask me about, well, why are you not showing me home somebody else is? It gives me a chance to explain why this is better. And it also gives them a chance to, like, I know what's coming. And I've noticed this the anxiety levels come down so far. And my conversion level skyrocket. When we don't do that, it's just a crapshoot. I'm just hoping this works. And that's a terrible business strategy to be based on hope.

You know, I tell people you can't base your business on smoking opium and just hoping that things work out. And what you're describing is the very same principle at place, but it's for something bigger than just a real estate transaction. You're getting your spouse on the same board. You're telling them, here's what to expect. Here's where the spikes are going to come. Here's where we can do well. And just in general in life, it is so much better when you front load the process and you sit down and have the difficult conversation first, as opposed to, I don't like that icky feeling. Let's just start and we'll deal with it when it comes because it's like trying to fix a flat tire while the car's still moving.

It's very difficult. Yeah. Well, and I think that's why the goal setting retreat is so great is because it's really just a framework for success and it's facilitated. So a lot of people just don't know where to start. And so they can take two days away. First of all, they've got the time that they need to devote to each other and to thinking. You know, most people just run around all the time. We hardly think we just do.

And then we also give them a framework by, you know, giving them questions to answer. answer with each other by introducing speakers. And so I think that's part of, it's exactly what you're saying. It's like, let's give someone a framework for success. I noticed dad, like you made me think, Wendy and I went to a training with Keith Cunningham. I don't know if you all have had him on your show, but if you haven't, you've asked,

he's brilliant, brilliant mind. And he said two things in that training that I carried. And one of them was his, and I think one of them was Lenziani's. And I don't know who's who is, but all failures of leaderships are ultimately failures of courage. and I connected that to the next statement, which is nothing changes until what's unspoken is spoken.

And I thought about in our marriage and my leadership, it's when I didn't set the proper expectations with people. It's when I often had the biggest regrets, and it was almost always a failure of courage because I didn't want to have that, what I thought would be a confrontational conversation. And, you know, my partner, Gary, calls those care confrontations. Because I care so much, we need to talk about this.

and it's just really important, right? So that's a big deal. And I'll tell you the number one fear for people, whether we give them the free stuff, and there's a free resource, you don't have to pay together an event. I want people to do this for their relationships and for themselves.

But the number one fear is that people think, okay, we're going to go together and we're going to plot out our five-year goals and our one-year goals. What happens if we discover that we're moving apart? And that's the number one fear we have to address with couples who are contemplating this. And I'm going to tell you, if you plan on being married for any amount of time at all, you will move apart.

And the key is to communicate why that's happening and understand it. If Wendy needs more space, she's got to go start something, start a new hobby. She's to do this and physically moving away from me. That's great. If I understand why that's important to her, I can support her and not feel like it's a personal affront. But if you don't talk about it, what you'll see is just her moving away. And you'll start filling that gap with maybe not the best motivation. So it's a real gift, this idea of having these conversations.

Some of them are a little uncomfortable, but every year you do it, it gets easier and easier, and the conversations get more powerful. You know, I want to ask you, Brandon, I know for Jay and Wendy, they both work in real estate. They're both getting the same teachings. They're both mentored by similar people. So they're on the same wave, like just naturally because they're in the same ecosystem. But you and Heather is very different. Heather is not involved in the business that you're doing.

She manages some of your rentals, but she's not hearing the same things you're hearing. And I think that's probably indicative of most couples, where you have one, like Jay said, that's on fire, they're an entrepreneur, and you have the other that really doesn't understand any of this. And who knows what they're hearing when you say, I want to buy an investment property? They might be hearing, you want to gamble our entire future on some crazy scheme, right? So can you share, Brandon, how you have navigated those waters with a spouse who definitely trust you? I think that's amazing part of your and Heather's relationship, but isn't necessarily in the same waters that you're swimming in.

Ooh, that's a good question. A couple of things come to mind. First of all, I always preach this anyway, as much as you can get your spouse on at least the same mindset as you, so what I mean by that is like early on, I actually asked Heather to read Rich Dad Poor Dad, for example. She doesn't have to like dive deep into it. I just need her to understand like where I'm coming from. So I, she can at least understand my thought process.

And I remember at the time I had wager, like I said to her, I'll read any book you want me to read. I'm asking you to read this one. And I'll trade you. Like, just any, I don't care. You could give me. She had you read, uh, what's the notebook? No, she had me during Twilight. Okay. All right. I read Twilight. And, uh, it's your story. Uh, but like, she got it. Then she understood it. So like books and media and things, a podcast are a great way to do that. So that's, by the way, I also had her read the one thing. Uh, when, when I read that. I said, can you please read that? I need you to understand like this concept because this is important to me. and we did the same thing.

I don't remember what she made me read that time. But anyway, so that's my first thought. Second thought is we do a goal-setting date. We haven't done the retreat, which now I want to implement that as soon as I no longer have a four-week-old baby in the house. But I want to like, I love that. Like, one of the best things we do for five years now

is every January 1st, we go to the same restaurant. We generally sit in the same spot where the same meal. And we talk for like three hours, right near the ocean on the Washington coast. This actually be the first year we have to do it somewhere else because we're not traveling back to Washington with the baby. but we're going to go somewhere on January 1st,

and we're going to sit down with their goals. And so here's what, where I'm going with that is every year, we do kind of similar things. I actually, I want to dive deep into exactly what you guys talk about, but here's what we do is we got to go through again, what worked really well last year, what didn't work, where are we? Like, how do we feel about our relationship right now? And then I say, like, you know, what would be cool to accomplish this year?

And a couple examples of that. Two years ago, we wrote down, we wanted to own a house in Hawaii within five years that we could have an extra unit to rent to family and friends, or to give the family and friends. And from that moment, we made that on January 1st. On July 12th or whatever, we closed on our home in Hawaii. And we moved there with the extra unit.

In fact, two extra units. So last January 1st, we set a goal. We said a goal, and this sounds like a weird goal. We said a goal is we want to have a baby in this year. And then on November 18th, Wilder was born. And so that we take these very seriously. And the third thing, David, kind of the more directly answer it is, I think people have a tendency to go into,

conversations of like, what do I want? And because I mean, I did. I'm like, I'm like, okay, I want to, I want to buy this many rentals. I want to own, I want to get by another mobile home park this year. I'm going to do this. And then when I got to her, I expected her to be like, okay, I think we should do this financially. And she like, she like, she like, she like, she like, she had no goals financially. Like her goal was like, I want to drink a lot more water. I was like, wait, water? She's like, yeah, that's one of my big goals that drink more water. I was like, no, no, we had to have like a good goal. Like, no, no, we had to have like a good goal. Like that's my time. I'm like, come on. That's one of my goals this year.

Was it? Okay. Yeah. Like, I don't want to drink more water. It's actually, it's really, you need to drink a lot of water. And I need to drink more water. That's one of my goals now this year. But, you know, my point, yeah, it's like I, I naturally just wanted to go to the big, epic real estate goals. But I had to remember and I have to remember, like, that goals like, I want to have a baby or I want to drink more water. Those are what's important to her. And so those are just as important as my goal of buying a $50 million of real estate. So that's just my how we do it. I love to add. One of the things that we struggle with when we were writing the one thing is we have to define success, right? The subtitles, the

simple truth behind extraordinary success. How are we defining that? Is it monetary? Is it, you know, about jobs? And we ended up saying success is getting what you want. And the tough thing is a lot of people don't ask the question and they're not really clear about what they want. So I do think that's a part of what you get to understand of what success looks like for your partner. Yep. And if success for her is I want to feel healthy and have energy and success for you is I want this financial freedom and this sense of acceleration, they're both completely legitimate.

They're just different. And now you get the gift of understanding it. And I would also say that goal setting is a muscle that you develop over time. and I know that I sometimes forget that where I was at a point a long time ago when Jay and I first started setting gold because he worked inside of Keller Williams for 10 years before I did. And so my mindset was pretty far behind him, to be honest with you. And that idea of thinking bigger and wanting more for yourself and having a bigger life, that is not something that came naturally to me. I didn't grow up that way. My parents didn't think that way. And so just a reminder for those of you out there who maybe do have that big mindset, maybe your partner is still at the baby stages of it. And you can look up in 10 years and they could year over year just be thinking bigger and bigger as, you know, the decade goes on.

On that note, can I ask you guys a question? So I had a buddy recently asked me, well, not asked me. He told me he's having problems with his wife in that like they sat down. They wanted to talk goals. He's like, oh, let's talk goals. And he had like, I want to go. I want to travel. well, these many countries, I want to do this, I want to do that.

And he had all these big grant, I want to retire at, you know, 35. And then he asked her what she wanted. And he said the only thing she could come up with was I'd like to only work six days a week instead of seven. And like, he's like, think bigger than that. And she's like, that just sounds like really tough. And like, so in other words, they were on completely different mindsets on what's possible, right? Is that okay? That's the first question I want to view.

Is that okay? And if not, do you think, how do you get somebody's mindset to that? to think bigger and to think higher. It's totally okay. And I think it's probably normal. And what you get, again, the discovery you get is understanding where you both are. So great. Work with that.

And, you know, one thing, like, it's one thing to think that. It's another thing to take action on it. And one of the last things we did at this last goal setting retreat is we encourage people and we're getting ahead of things a little bit now, like at least once a month, come back together and revisit these goals. And don't beat yourself up. Having an ongoing conversation, a relationship with your goals, like the first battle. So you might get there and say, hey, did you get the will done? And you're

going to say no. And I'm going to be like, high five. Because we're still talking about it. Because I can't tell you how many times you look up. And six months later, it actually wasn't important and you're not going to take action. But we're still talking about it. Most people do goals. And they discover them on January 1 the next year when they open the drawer to try to find some paper and write their goals down. And I would say there's a couple things you can do to help yourself think bigger because I do believe it is a muscle that you can grow. And the first thing that you can do is like with our family, we play this game called think bigger, where we sit around the table and one person says something like Jay says, I'm going to the grocery store. And then our son will

say, well, I'm gone to the grocery store and we'll say think bigger. And then I'm gone to the grocery store and on an elephant. Think bigger. I'm gone to the grocery store on a rocket chip. Like you get the idea. And then the other thing that you can do is there's a... I'm going to the grocery store to buy all the ice cream. Right. There we go. Yeah. That sounds good. That's really big. Yeah, on the rocket ship. And then there's something in a class that we have inside of Keller Williams. It's called a financial thermostat where you have to spend a certain amount of money. And it's like a check register where you start out with $100 and then you have to spend it on yourself and then you double it. You have to spend $200. And then you have to spend 400 and then you know you get up into the millions because most people honestly

haven't thought that big because once you get beyond you know a couple hundred thousand dollars all of your all of your needs are taking care of and so you really have to you have to ask yourself why do I want to make why do I want to make a million dollars a year do I want to start a foundation do I want to help kids with AIDS in Africa so I think those two things can be super helpful and just growing your mindset and I'll just do it For a Larry, just, you know, this to be really brief. I'm sorry, it doesn't even have to be about money. You know, I don't think we think big about our health, right?

So if you could live to 80, what would you want to do? If you could live to 90, what would you want to do? If you could live to 100, what would you want to be able to do? And focusing on, like, bigger goals for all of those areas, like, if you don't exercise that muscle, you don't ever, you're not asking those questions. You don't even get a chance to get bad answers in the beginning, right? But you have to just start asking those questions to start finding your answers. that's so good i think when you guys were talking about meeting together taking each of your

goals so brandon mentioned heather's goal was to drink more water his goal was to i don't know buy seven mobile home parks one one of my favorite things to do is you've unpacked these goals into small little pieces and now you get to put this puzzle together where both people's goals get met by the same actions that's what i was thinking when you get it all on the table and you can see it your mind can look for creative ways to marry these goals together so maybe brandon realizes I'm going to have to make 10 lead generating phone calls every day to mobile home park owners. I don't like doing that, but I don't mind it when my mind is high on endorphins from a run that I just made. So they come up with an agreement, probably not with a four-week-old baby,

but you take a run together, you come back, Heather drinks a bunch of water, Brandon sits there while she drinks the water and makes sure she does. Then he makes his phone calls, and each of you have taken, made progress towards your goal based on a small decision because there's synergy with what you're doing. And I guess that's one thing that I've noticed that I really try. When I write out my goals and I see I want to do these four things this year, the next thing my brain does is it says, where's their overlap between these goals that I can make progress on both of them with the same action? And I think successful people sort of do that naturally and people who feel like there's never enough time in the day, you're not thinking that way. You're not realizing your goal

and your spouse's goal can be met through the same action if you unpack them or even two of your own goals can be met if they're similar enough. And when you do these types of workshops or retreats or just practices, your mind is really good at noticing that. It will find the pattern where, hey, if I just do this one thing, one thing, that's funny how that came up, it will encompass five of these and I'll make progress towards every single goal. Do you guys have anything that you want to comment on that you've noticed that working in your own lives? I think it's just true. I mean, we call it lining up your dominoes. And I know you know this probably from selling a lot of real estate. I'm I'll tell you, I mean, it's not like she'll say, I want to live in Hawaii for 12 months,

and I'm going to say I want to live in Alaska for 12 months, right? I mean, which sounds like, oh, we can't make those things happen. What you look for is like someone says, I want a privacy fence. Well, would a house with no neighbors serve your, right? You have, is it privacy or the fence? And so it forces you to have a conversation. It looks like they're oppositional, but is there some common ground. Oh, we both want to live above the 30 second latitude or whatever that is, right?

That's actually what we both want and we can find a place to triangulate where we both went. But if you don't have that on the table, somebody, usually the more assertive partner, is saying, I want to go live here. And the other person is being quietly resentful over time. Well, and I think, you know, Jay mentioned our ranch and one of the things,

so when Jay first mentioned it, I wasn't too excited about it just because it just seems like a big waste of money. like a land yacht. That's what she calls it. And yet five years ago, well, really, it was more than five years. It was about 10 years ago.

It came up at the goal setting retreat, and there it was, you know, I want a house with, you know, I want land, with water on it, you know, just very specific. And so year after year after year, Jay kept bringing out, like, this is something that's important to me.

And I'm like, no, we don't really have money. It's a big waste of money. and then we had an opportunity five years into that where we had the opportunity to purchase a ranch with a partner essentially at half the cost. And I think that if I didn't know that about him and that it had been on his goals for so long, I probably would have just said, I don't think that's going to work. And yet because I knew that about him and there was an opportunity, it made a lot of sense. and so I think that sometimes we've been thinking about things and when we bring them up to our spouse, they come out of left field.

But if you've been discussing them year after year after year, then they really understand how important it is to you. Actually, I've only been on my goals for two years. I remember this very specifically. And then the third year, I found out one of my best friends was willing to go 50-50, and it took a lot of the financial burden and fear out of it. But we'd had two years of conversations around.

I wanted to have outdoor time, with my kids. And she... I was going to ask that. I was going to ask, why did you want a ranch? I had a, I grew up hunting in Tennessee. I started doing that again when I moved to sexist.

And my son asked him to go with me. And at that time, he was like eight years old, nine years old. And I'm like, I have to tell my friends. Can I bring my son to the ranch with me? And like, they said, sure. And then the next time they're like, you know, we're going to drink beer. We're going to play poker.

It's probably not appropriate. And it kind of bugged me because I have these vivid memories of going hunting with my dad. and I'm like, I don't, I'm not going to put on Hunter Orange and go stand in a field and hope I don't get shot. Like I'd like to go on a private property where it can be safe and a great experience for him. And we were being denied that because there's no, there's no public land in Texas really to go do this. There's not those options. So I was like, oh, this is not something, we're going to miss a part of my vision for our childhood together.

And I also like it. So that was the motivation, but it really would have been a huge, financial stretch for us at the time. But if I hadn't had it on my goals, I actually went hunting with my buddy. We said, what are you going to do next year? And I pulled out, and I've got them with me. Because when we do these goals, I carry with me,

here are my five-year goals and here my year goals. What are yours? And we both shared the goal of a ranch property. So you're just hunting and you just have your goals, like tucked under your... It was a fishing trip. I'm getting clarity around that. Well, I had my notebook with me, which I always have. And this guy's a great business person. And when we go hang out, we often talk about.

we often talk about, I mean, I'm sure if you go hang out with Josh or David, y'all talk about investing. You know, and it's just, we love doing it. So it comes up even over beers. So we were just talking about our goals. And he's like, wow, I'd do that. I have to get on a plane no matter what where I live. He lived in Washington State because I have to fly to go hunt.

So why not just flight to Austin? That'd be great. So win-win. So there's huge benefits to kind of thinking far out and having these conversations and getting on the same page. That's really good. For decades, real estate has been a cornerstone of the world's largest portfolios. But it's also historically been sort of complex, time-consuming, and expensive.

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So let's dive into some of the specifics then on what you guys teach you in the goal setting. Like for those people listening to this, maybe with a spouse, maybe I should start with that. Is does this only work if you're talking a spouse or significant other, you know, can a person still listen to the rest of the show if they're single? Does David have to leave right now? Oh, yeah. Have to be married. We have about a third of our audience every year is our single people, our people who just show up their business partners.

And they're going to do a collaborative thing about getting on the same page. And we're actually going to probably rebrand it next year instead of a couple's goal setting retreat to just be a goal setting retreat. Because I want to make sure that we're open. So the same process works for everyone. Fundamentally, it's about can you get out of your environment, right? That's the whole idea of the retreat is very important. Can you get out of your environment?

And there's been years where we just got on price line and got the cheapest hotel downtown. We didn't have to get on a plane. We barely had to pack a bag. And it wasn't expensive. But what I don't want to do is be worried about walking the dog or doing the dishes or vacuuming. I want to be focused on my future.

So get out of your environment. I believe pretty firmly that first night should be fun. Right. So you have an element of fun. And let's talk about the things that bring us joy. Maybe let's revisit this year. Let's talk about our victories, whatever that is. Especially if you have a partner, like an unwilling partner,

maybe someone who's like, I do not know why I'm here. Right. So that lays the groundwork for like, let's just be relaxed. Let's have fun. Let's ease into it. Yep. Because it should be fun on that level. And then the next day, we have kind of for ourselves and we've done it for other people,

like a series of things you want to do. And I think the first thing we teach is go way out. So in our goals, we go at least five years out. And we say, what are our five year goals? And if you remember in the one thing, it's the only page I've memorized, page 114 in the U.S. Art Government Edition, there's the seven circles. So in five years, what do we want our spiritual life to look like? In five years, what about our physical health?

What about our personal relationships and our personal life, right? We kind of walk through that circle. It started for us financially because it was our investor journey. And then we started adding those other elements to it. And you just have to ask the question. You know, what does our spiritual life look like on the key relationships now? we're asking very specific questions. What do we want to have done for Gus, right?

Our son. Our son, our daughter Veronica, your dad, my parents, we have aging parents. So instead of it just being about us and maybe our date nights or whatever that is, it's also the really important relationships around us. And we just kind of go through those categories and say, where do we want to be in five years? And that's kind of fun to dream. Yeah. And I would say that I said it before, that the most important,

thing is really the time and the space for thinking because most people are always doing. And whether you're a couple or you're a mom and dad or you're a single person or you're in a business, most of the time we're just all we're doing is doing and doing and doing and doing. And so just to sit back and give space for thinking is just so important in our busy world. Yep. So we do the five year journey. We get to talk about why. because it's five years out, some things are really scientific. Like we have very specific financial goals,

but we've also been focused on that for a long time. But it started with, we wanted in 10 years to be millionaires. That was the very first big question we asked as a couple. And you do those big goals, and it allows you, so based on where we want to be in five years, what do we have to do in 2020?

So what do we have to do this year to feel like we're on track for those things? And then we go to the same process for our annual goals. and if you did nothing else but kind of get in agreement about what we want to pursue in five years and what we want to pursue in one year

that would be massive, right? That's just huge in itself to have that kind of clarity and not just around your finances but around other things. But like we asked the five-year question this year both of our kids are going to be out of the house and five years.

Wow. Oh, wow. That was like a kick in the gut and it sticks up on you. You know, you're like, whoa. We were like, what shape we're going to be in? We're like, well, it actually sounds pretty good.

I think our marriage will improve. But it snide up on me. Like, oh, now we really have to get serious. Did we save enough for college? You know, are they prepared for that? Are they prepared to go live somewhere else on their own? And we have to ask, like, does Gus know how to cook? Does he know how to drive?

Like, there are things now that are part of our job for him, and we only have a few years left to do that. I love that you're talking about this because what I see, I'm not married, but what I see with married couples, especially those that have older kids, is when the last kid has left the house, it hits them like a shock wave. They were not prepared for this tsunami that was coming. And there's this, why are we together?

Are we even happy? What's the purpose? Because they were together to raise the children. They drifted apart. And that wasn't made clear until the kids were gone. And it hits them all at one time. And what you're talking about is five years before that happens, we are going to emotionally, mentally prepare.

This is coming. What do we need to start doing right now? So when that hits us, it doesn't knock us off our feet. feet, like the big wave coming into the crab fisherman boat. And that's just a principle that I really think a lot of people fail at realizing is life is going to give you both hardship and opportunities. They are going to come whether you are ready for them or not. You don't know when the phone call is going to come that someone you love has passed

or when the phone call is going to come that you have an amazing opportunity to go do this thing. All you can do is do your very best every day to be prepared for when that happens. And I like to tell people, you have to imagine four years from now, you're going to be in the Olympics, that you are going to have the chance of a lifetime to give your very best effort, and you can't start training a week before the Olympics and expect to do well.

You have to be training today. And so I'm always just reminding myself, I don't know what's coming my way. I don't know what opportunity and I don't know what tragedy. I have to be working out right now, and what you're discussing is basically that same principle. Things are going to happen.

We're not promised a perfect life. Things are going to go wrong with our investment properties. Things are going to go wrong with our family. I know Jay, I just realized as I was talking, you had a similar experience to that this year. You guys both from business and personal things got rocked. And I think part of the reason that it knocked you over, but you got back up was this principle you have of, this is the page we're on, this is our goal, this is where we're going. The wave comes, it knocks you down.

You get right back up. You're not swept away by this thing that you didn't expect. I mean, would you agree that that's kind of played a role in how you've weathered these storms? Yeah. Sure. I mean, you can't anticipate everything, but there's stuff that we can't. anticipate and this process allows you to, right? Stuff happened this year that was just unpredictable.

Right. But like things like becoming empty nesters, like, okay, if we didn't plan for that, that's on us. Well, and I think that for us, you know, we've always put our marriage at the middle of everything. So we tell our kids, hey, we love you, but I love your dad more because I picked your dad and you guys are random, you know? And so they understand that. And then we also...

Don't be in therapy someday for it. We'll find out. But then we also treat our marriage a little bit like, not like a business. I don't want to say we treat it like a business, but we use the language of business in that we have metrics that we track and we actually have goals around. So for instance, pretty much since our goal setting retreat, we've had a weekly date night on Wednesday. And so if you think about it over the last 12 years, we've had over 500.

dates, right? Consistent activity over time yields results and your marriage is no different. And so I think also what happens when people get to when their children leave, they haven't done those activities to maintain the relationship. And so it's like what are the things that we can do every year? And if you look at our five-year goals, the number one thing is family. And the number one thing under family is marriage. It says specifically marriage thriving. And I don't know that we, we've changed that language in 10 years. But we have to ask the question, what would it look like for our marriage to be thriving? And that's prioritizing a day.

That's having, usually we take two times a year where we go away. We have a little vacation, just the two of us. It's like we have a personal trainer that comes to our house three times a week and we exercise together. You know, what are those metrics that we can look up after, you know, all those activities and see like, oh, that's how you, that's what success looks like. What I think that I wanted to point out about this is because you focus on your marriage, when the tragedies came, you were what I say, in shape. You could handle the weight that was thrown at you much better than the couple who's just walking along, trusting nothing bad is going to happen.

We just interviewed Jocko on the podcast, and what he said, he gets taught to help businesses make more money, to make them better businesses. And what he says is, I don't even worry about studying business at all. I just study people. He just knows how people work, how human beings. work. And if you understand that and you apply it to business, you'll make a bunch more money. And you guys are saying the same thing, right? You treat our, you said we use business principles in our marriage, but what you're really saying is we use the principles that work in business.

And we know they work because of how people work and we apply them to what matters to us, which is our marriage. If you talk to someone who's like a fitness guru, they'll do the exact same thing you're talking about. They are goal setting. They are planning. They're looking ahead. I'm going to be going here. I have to bring my own food. I know what's coming. These things work no matter what you apply them to. And that's why I love talking to successful business people because you can take what they're doing. Like what's the thing you always say, Jake, success leaves clues, right?

Like you see what's going on and you then apply it to other areas of your life and you'll get the same result. Yeah. I was going to basically say the same thing. I mean, so I, well, my point was going to be, and I'll make it here anyway, to expand on what David said, is like you don't just set these goals

and say, this is what we want. we want a better marriage, but I love that you're breaking down on what would that look, like what does that look like on a week to week basis? So in other words, what we talk about on the show a lot here is you're taking a lag measure, which is the end result, the weight loss, the better relationship, whatever, and you're saying what lead measures do I do to accomplish that? And business people are great about doing that in business. You know, Gary Keller has been teaching that forever, right? Like how many phone calls you got to make, how many clients you need to talk to on a weekly basis. But applying that to your spiritual life or your relational life or your health,

you know, health and fitness, I think that's when those things change. So I love the fact that you're saying like the date nights, the vacations, those are tangible lead measures that you can that you can work toward. It's not just hopium. And in the beginning, it was rougher, but we get better and better just so people don't get it like to intimidate it. I remember the very first thing we focused on was investing. And we broke down our annual goal of buying one house is I just remember our big goal is if we could save $1,500 a month into our investment account, we knew we were on track. And so even though the idea of buying our first investment property was kind of overwhelming, we could, just focus on what do we have to do this month to save 1500 bucks do we have to do freelance work

do we have to have a side gig but that was the battle and $500 was a big deal back then but it was something we together could make happen and just each month you got a little better at acting on that thing and then it adds up and by the time you got to the end of the year and you had your first down payment and this is a while back right I know that would not be a down payment in most people's markets today you look up and you go wow now the next journey is we're you have to find a investment property. But you're just breaking it down. That's all big goals if you break them down and become manageable.

And it allows you to give ownership. So if we're really taking this process to the final stages at a really high level, and we'll share it with you, and y'all can share it in your show notes. We have a free guide for doing this. You have your five-year goals. You have your one-year goals. Kind of the last steps for us are, who's going to take ownership of what? You know, if you're doing this by yourself, it's all on you.

and you have to just prioritize. But if it's two of us, like, what's our journey on this? It doesn't have to be. I mean, you have to think about leverage too and what that looks like in your life. If you have leverage, if you have people on your team. But basically, who's going to be kind of in charge of this? We might jointly, but if you have multiple people responsible for things,

it doesn't always work out. And it might be that I started off in charge of it, was failing, and she decides to take it over. And we do that for each other. We don't judge it. We just own it. And if you do that and you set a rhythm, and for us in the beginning, it was once a month, we get together and ask, how are we doing? And it was back in those days, our big focus was on budget and saving for an investment property.

And our net worth. And our net worth. We would do those little activities, and it was our monthly checkout. I really think if people can just set some goals and then create a rhythm for talking about them and not judging it. Just because you're trying to build a habit of being engaged with your goals. Because if you focus on something, what's that deal? If you're driving down the road, you go wherever your eyes are, right? So if you're staring across the lane, you're going to veer that way.

Stay focused on something. You're going to start gravitating towards it. And I think that's the difference than, you know, so many people set resolutions, and they set it and forget it. And two months later, they're just not, they're not doing anything around it. But if you're revisiting it every month or now we really revisit it every week, we visited every week. One of the things Brandon and I noticed

when we started working together on a deal was that we move forward at the speed at which we communicate. When a month would go by and we wouldn't talk, hardly anything got done. When we would meet every week or for a phone call that was on our calendars, things would just magically start to happen. And I realize this feels a lot like

trying to get from one place to another using the GPS on your phone, but you lose reception unless you're talking. When you meet together, boom, get reception like, oh, wow, we're way off. Let's go back. Or, hey, we're on the right path. Let's, let's keep going. And that's why it's so important that you get two people on the same page communicating because our minds just work that way. When you're meeting together to talk about things, you get back on the path you're going to be on. Wendy, I know something that you're actually,

like you excel at is figuring out how to use systems and leverage to be successful so that you're not compromising things like, I want to be a great mom, I want to be a great wife. I have these other goals that are not related to business. A lot of our listeners are in the beginning stages of trying to become real estate investors, and this is a new concept to them. Can you share for people who are hearing this that it is possible to have it all if you just do it the right way? Sure. Well, I won't say you can have it all, but you can have all of the things that you want. And so I think the first thing is getting clear about what's most important to you. And once you you've got clarity around that, you know, there's lots of things you can do to get leverage in

your life. And for a lot of people, that leverage really starts at home. And I know for me, when I started my real estate career, I just, before that, I was literally a stay-at-home mom making no money. And everything was all buttoned up at home, you know. And honestly, that was a gift to be able to stay home with my children. But it was also a gift to Jay as he was growing in his career at Keller Williams. I mean, I really supported him for five years. And he came home. And he came home and didn't have to worry about very much at all at home. And so then when I started my real estate career, things started to change. And so I really thought about, A, what's on my not to do list? So I tell my coaching clients, hey, put a piece of paper on your desk. And at the very top of it, right, my not

do list. And every time you have that feeling where you're like, I don't want to do that, or maybe you start putting it off, you put it off one time, two times, three times, then that goes on your not to do list. And when you've earned the right to be able to pay someone to do that, then all of those things become the job description for your leverage. And that can be at home and that can be at work. And either way, it's the things that you don't want to do, right? Anybody who's growing a business gets to choose what they want to do and what they don't want to do. And I think sometimes we feel like there are things that we're supposed to do, you know, as business. Well, there's for sure some things as business owners like financials that we always have to deal with. Yet I think we feel

pressured to do certain things. But really, if you like to do them, you can keep those tasks and leverage out everything else. I just remember this journey. She actually taught this for me while she was still at home. I've come home and I thought it was my job to mow the yard and trying to be, you know, nice environmentalists had this stupid electric lawnmower and a giant yard. And it would take me like four hours into Texas heat to mow my yard instead of spending that time with my wife and kids I was already working hard and so just like this is why I'm laughing is because it was actually not an electric it was electric and that it plugged in and so Jay would be like flipping the cord around the yard trying to like mow around it and I ran over it a few times yeah it was not fun and it would

take them forever and then I said why don't we just get someone to come you're taking it over sorry but no but like the thing is I would do it for hours and then I come in and collapse and be asleep for the next two. Right. Right. So it was like pretty much a whole day was lost every weekend. And that was when you just kind of said, you know, we can pay someone to you back. We have a friend that runs a lawn company.

I would rather have you back. And, you know, for like 50 bucks or whatever it was, it was such a great investment. Because now I can recharge on the weekend and be better at work and advance our financials faster. Now, you can leverage yourself right into the poor house if you're not careful, right? oh, I want a personal chef and I want someone to do my hair. Like, yeah, don't be crazy, but there are stuff that you shouldn't feel guilty about. I remember we talked about getting a maid service, and I actually just kind of brought it up at work. And all of my employees had made, same way.

And I was like, what are we doing? We're idiots. We're spending all this time running around doing stuff we hate doing. And we thought we hadn't yet earned the right. And everyone around us is way ahead of us. So let's just commit. Let's get that energy and time back, put it to greater use. either for our personal life or our professional life and start chipping away. And I'm a dude.

So like maybe you have issues about handing off your yard, you know, whatever. There's a, I think it's worse for a lot of women in our lives that might have mom guilt for not being that mom that made the perfect cupcakes. You know, over it. You're living a big life. You can leverage some of the stuff out. We capture that time and energy so that you can achieve those goals. It matter a whole lot more. And mowing the grass. And my children are. very scarred from being left places. But I would say the other thing that that you need to know is to understand what your hourly wage is. And most entrepreneurs don't really know what their time is actually worth. And so you can take all the money that you made last year and divide it by all the

time you worked and you can find your hourly wage. And if your hourly wage is $7 an hour, you pretty much need to work a little harder. But if your hourly wage is $50 an hour, then all those you know, services where you can pay someone for less than $50 an hour, you should really consider, you should really consider doing it. Your time's worth more than that. A good cheat is like really, like people who are hustling, maybe 2,500 hours a year. That's like 50 hours a week, you know, and they're doing it with a couple weeks of vacation. Like that's a good rule. Like divide your income last year by that. That's your dollars per hour. If you can leverage stuff out, it's less than that. Think about it. Like I said, you can leverage yourself right into the forehouse.

by having people do everything for you. You probably don't need a personal driver yet or someone to carry your surfboard, Brandon. But there's stuff that you don't need to be doing. I got Ryan for both those things. One of the things, our mutual friend, Ben Kinney, talks about this a lot. And I want to make sure I'm getting the words right.

But he says there's luxury and there's leverage and correct me if I'm using the words wrong. But leverage is when you pay someone to do something, you get your time back and you become more productive with it. You do a higher dollar per hour activity. And then there's luxury. where you pay someone to do something for you and you go play Minecraft or something, right? Understand which of those you are doing. They're not the same. It's not leverage for the sake of leverage.

It's leveraged so that you can do something better. And I think what you guys identified with Jay cutting the grass is it wasn't just the four hours of grass cutting. It was then the toll that took of being exhausted and not wanting to go work on the business or have a productive relationship, that the price you were paying was more than just the hours. And Brandon and I talked about this a lot, too, that there's like three dimensions of this. It's not just two dimensions where I'm putting this much time into it. Because certain tasks make us hate our life. And we don't want to do anything after that.

Another task is all pumped up. I could spend four hours doing certain things like educating people, teaching about things. And when I leave, I want to go work even more. And it's okay to be aware of that. You know, what Brandon and I talk about is, does this task feel heavy or does this feel light? If it feels like, oh, like for him, it's talking to contractors. Or having to hold somebody's feet to the fire, it's just not Brandon's thing. he does not enjoy doing that. So if you make him spend 20 minutes doing that,

and his next two hours, he's recovering from that, you know, exhausting workout. Or if you sit down with Brandon and say, hey, can you draw me a flow chart for a business idea? I mean, good luck getting him to stop. He's like a Ferrari. He just takes up right, through it, right? So it's okay to leverage off the things also that you know just kill your soul and you hate doing him. My friend Kyle Rinkie, he was talking about how driving his kids to practice and sitting in the traffic, he just, by the time he gets there, he's just in a bad mood. And I thought, I wonder if when I ever have kids,

if I paid someone to take them to the game or to practice and then I showed up to watch the game, how much happier I'd be. And they'd have a dad that was excited for them and I'd enjoy it instead of, this is just some soul-draining task that's killing me. And if you're thinking that way, it's okay to do these things.

You guys have any advice on that? Well, the good news is that kids today, like their parents are putting them in Ubers and lifts. And when they get to a third age, right? and there's a responsible age, but you can do that. And you don't have to be the shuttle driver for 16 practices a week. Which I was like, are you kidding me? I was talking to some of the dads of my neighborhood.

Just like, you let him Uber to practice. Yeah, he's got five practices a week. I'm like, okay, that's enlightening. Thank you. And I would just say that we've earned the right to do all that. You know, when we were just starting out real estate investing, I have painted the insides of some. many places. I have, you know, done all the things. I've done the make readies. I've cleaned up after

tenants. Like, I put my hours in. You know, I got tennis elbow once from painting this duplex that we had. And yet at that time, that was kind of the only thing that I did. And so I didn't really understand that if I could become a real estate agent, I could make a lot more money. So it's really getting a really good understanding of your worth as it. And at some degree also, like when you're just starting out, sometimes like you are only worth $20 an hour. So you have to go paint that unit. Like, and so like some people are like, well, I don't want to do that, you know, like manual labor. I'm like, I don't do manual labor anymore.

Like you'll never see me paint in a hard of ever. Never seen me painting something unless I want to. Yeah. But like when I was starting, I mean, I was making $8 an hour looking at overnight and some crap job. Yeah. All of it. I ain't going to hire somebody. But the beauty is like you just, you, you hustle for a few years to you start and finding ways to earn more

money in your job or from being a real estate agent or whatever. And all of a sudden, then now you're worth 20. Now you can outsource to $10 an hour. And then when you're in 25, you can also close to $15 an hour jobs. And you move those as you go. And you know, one more thought to throw at you guys. I never really thought about this too in depth before, but it's, you know, yes, you have a dollar per hour that you should look at. But for those people of us who run teams of people, our teams have a dollar per hour that they're good. So I mentioned, you know, joking the other day, I have Ryan to carry my surfboard and drive me around. Like in the beginning, when he first moved out here, like, he would literally, like, help me load my surfboard and drive me

around. Like, that's what he did because he didn't really, like, today, though, he's running this, you know, $50 million mobile home park business. Like, I don't even ask Ryan to do anything hardly anymore. And, like, I feel bad if I do because I'm like, his hourly now rate is like thousands of dollars an hour. So then I brought in this guy named Mike. And then now Mike's wage, like, I feel bad asking Mike to do things because Mike is like, he's in my investor relations guy. And so he's dealing with thousands of dollars an hour task. So, and it's, interesting is keep an eye on your own team and make sure you're not giving $50 an hour people $20 an hour tasks.

Or they're going to go crazy. Or letting them do $10 an hour tasks because it's nice sometimes. I mean, I'll tell you, sometimes it's nice to be checking boxes, but you're not in your gift zone. I mean, companies have done this forever. Why do you think some people will get executive assistance and assistance? Because the company realizes when they're in their 20%, they're making so much money for the company, we should pay people to take everything else off their plate.

and we have to think that way for ourselves and our teams. You know, the biggest waste of time for most people in terms of money is the meetings that we hold. You look at the salary. I'm so conscious, I look at these meetings we have, and the salary that's sitting there, if it's a non-productive meeting, I just like we're burning money. Yeah. Did we just have a $25,000 meeting?

No. We should not be doing this anymore. Are you talking about all the time we spent waiting for Brandon to fix us night? Indirectly, that's exactly what we're. And you know, that's funny you say that, Jay, because for the listeners, we started this episode with Brandon sounding like a strangled decepticon trying to get his microphone.

I still never got a fixed. I don't know what's wrong with it. And you know why? Because he took Ryan off of those $50. That's exactly it. That's exactly what happened. It's like Ryan used to set up my microphone. And now Ryan's out there. Like we literally like 20 minutes before this call,

we signed documents on a like a huge like multi-million dollar property to close on it. Like, and that's what Ryan was doing this morning. He was helping me do that. So, like, yeah, that's, that's totally true. I just, I'm like, so. Brandon and I are good enough friends that I can see it on his face. He didn't want to tell you guys.

You know I make an excuse what he was thinking, oh, I really need a new assistant because Ryan's too busy, but I don't have time right now. How do I just make a joke to try to make it like? I could just see him squirming under that. But that, see, this principle is exactly in place and you see it happening. That's funny. That's what it is. Yeah, I actually, I am, so we decided their day.

So we interviewed Michael Hyatt recently. It comes out, I think, next week here on the podcast, I was talking to you guys were interviewing this afterwards, but he comes out next week. But he talked a lot about executive assistants. So since that interview, I actually, we decided, so I mentioned I brought in Ryan, then I brought in Mike. So we're actually hiring an executive, we're hiring an assistant for Mike, who is my assistant. So yeah, we have now, because again, that's how it has to work. And in a way now Ryan's just going off to run my business.

He's like your chief of staff. Yeah, exactly what it is. He's chief of staff now. So sometimes you have to do that because we all have things that we do, you know, our, Dollar per hour. It says a lot about the talent you hire. These people aren't moving on to be executive assistants or assistants for other people. They're moving up in your organization.

So it's really cool when you see that happen. Yeah, that's cool. Let me ask you guys a question then kind of focusing back on the goal thing. For those people who are new to real estate investing, a lot of our audience is brand new, has not done a single thing yet. Where do they start? I mean, like, let's say if you were talking directly to somebody, they're brand new to real estate, let's say they're married, they got maybe a couple small kids at home, not a lot of time.

how big of goals do they set? How big is too big? I mean, I'm going to buy a billion dollars of real estate in the next year. Or I guess where do you even, what do you tell those people right now? I always say, and we always say, think big, act small, right? So it's awesome to have a huge dream. But then you've got to break you down, right? And what am I going to do this week? It's just really hard to say, okay, I'm going to be a millionaire someday. How do I have to behave this week? And that's that whole process. We didn't go into it, but it's called goal setting to the now. Based on your five-year goals, what do you have to do this year? And the next steps are, based on my annual goals, what do we do this month?

Based on my monthly goals, what do we do this week? Based on my weekly goals, what I have to do today? And all you're doing is systematically breaking things down into action items that you can actually do. And now that little hour you have blocked to make your 10 calls, right, for your mobile parks, those are actually, you're acting appropriately for your big goal of being on the Forbes fortune list for mobile homeowners. right? But most people don't do that process. So think big, break it down into something that you believe as best you can as the appropriate action this week, then just go do that thing. I don't ever want to tell people to think small. Can I offer a different perspective? Oh, you're going to offer a

contrary to expect. Go right ahead. And I don't want to tell anyone to think small, but I would just say that I'm thinking big is a learned behavior. And when I started my real estate business, my goal for that year was very small. I wanted to make $15,000, which for us at the time was a big deal because I was a state in home on making no money. And I ended up making $85,000 that year in real estate, which is awesome. And for me, like, I've been lucky enough to, like live with Jay, who I feel like is very much a visionary.

He's able to look out. I haven't always operated that way. You know, I've always been like, let's live in the moment. And I'm a good goal setter now. And yet it's okay if you're not. I'm just like just saying to everyone, it's okay if you're not a huge goal setter. You know, think of what you can, right?

Because some people can't conceive of being a million, being a millionaire or owning a million dollars worth of real estate. So just that's just my contrary in perspective. Progress matters a lot more than perfection. So don't get too caught up in knowing the perfect answer. for real estate investors I know that one of the first things I tell them to do you have to learn on to live on less than you earn

or you'll never save up and buy a house and at some point you have to understand what value looks like and Gary, one of our mutual mentors that could my co-op there, he's really, he gets young people and he'll hold up a shoe and he'll say, do y'all know how much this cost and everybody in the room will know how much that tennis shoe is worth

and it goes the problem is everybody masters the value of things they don't appreciate this is not an asset. This is a liability. To become an investor, you have to master understanding value of things that actually grow in time. And so for real estate investors, like, are you mastering, what is the value of a mobile home? What's the value of a single family property? Like, figure out what you think you want to do and start paying attention to it.

And if you look at that thing every day, like that we did 100 pro forma's before we took action. But then you write it down and you say, what is this house worth? What do we think it would rent for? and you know you do that enough times and suddenly one stands out and go whoa something's wrong here this is different yeah and you know value and i think if you just start with an activity that get you in the game that's one of the ones say learn how to save money and learn how to find value everything else follows those two skills and and work from there yeah and then i would just say our first house was our first investment property which is a very easy way for people to get into investing is just

do maybe a move-up house or even a lateral move with your housing and just keep your first one as a rental because I remember for us the the first tenants we ever had they made more money than us and they pulled up in their BMW and I was like wow my mind yeah we were like well how cool is that and you're buying your next home which is we've actually our first two homes are now rental properties we got to buy those both on you know resident sure terms 5% down. And that down payment's been working hard. Well, what's great about that,

and I talk a lot about this at bigger pockets, about this concept called the stack. It's basically if you start very small, like a single family house, and then you maybe later buy a duplex, then later by a fourplex, and then an apex, I mean, you can, like, conservatively,

like, once you buy the single family, you can handle a duplex. Once you buy the duplex, you can handle a four, five, or six unit. Like, you're scaling up, but, like, the first few deals don't matter all that much. Yeah, people get overwhelmed sometimes. They're like, oh, I got to buy a hundred units to be able to quit my job.

Yeah, maybe you do, but you probably don't need 100, but you're going to need some. But like just start small. Start with the next one. That's the most important thing you need to do is get that one deal. And just to reiterate what you said is like knowing deal analysis and underwriting, like, if you can get really, really good at that, like, you become somebody who's just good at underwriting deals, you may have to underwrite a hundred deal. I may have to look at 100 before you buy one. So build that skill. It costs like no money.

Yeah. And you get really smart. People underestimate, like on the path to being big, you're growing. Every year you make mistakes, you learn from mistakes. The point is, especially early, just don't get knocked out of the game. Don't give up. On the last Bigger Pockets webinar I did, I talked about how experience leads to success, right? The more experience you are, the more things you see, the better you're going to do. Taking action leads to experience.

The thing that prohibits most people from taking action is the lack of confidence in what they're doing. they feel scared, they feel worried, they have some emotion that's negative. It keeps them from taking action. So start your journey on whatever you need to do to feel confident or at least competent at taking some form of action. And as you get good at that, you will take more action. You'll get used to taking action. Experience will come. And then boom, the next thing you know, like you said, Jay, that investment property stands out, oh my gosh, how does that thing only price right there? And that's where you make these moves like we're talking about now where for us it's not that big of a deal. It happens through that.

growth. And I would say your capacity for for hard things will grow as well. And Jay said it the other day, he was like, you know what? Like 10 years ago or 15 years ago, if a water heater went out in one of our properties, we'd be like freaking out the whole weekend. You know, we'd be talking about it all weekend. And now it's like not even on our radar. You know, it's just not even a thing at all. So. Yeah, I know Brandon's smiling too. Because he has those same stories of things that

just completely shook your whole world now happened and you're like, hey, can you fix that for me? Yeah. Yeah. And that's one of the reasons why it's good to just get around other investors who are ahead of you. Because then you're like, when you tell them, they're just like, what? That happens. A plumber. Actually, yes, we have a flip going on right now here in Maui. And we found out there was a collapsed pipe in the concrete below the living room where we just installed flooring. And this is not like, yeah, we had to, so all the new fluoride had to come up, demo the concrete, fix the pipe,

put everything back. And it was one text message I got. And I responded with, okay, and that was about it. Like, it was nothing. Like, imagine like 10 years ago, I would have freaked out. Like, that would have ruined my day. That was our first.

You know, if you should be an investor at all. Was it really? Yeah, that was your first one. We got to Jack Amber Food Foundation to fix the pipe. And I was like, oh, but we survived. I think we made recognized like $3,000 in profit. It was a paid education. We survived and moved on.

Yeah. Because those early deals anyway are really more about education and experience and knowledge and growth and confidence. Probably confidence more than anything than money. I mean, like who cares if you make $3,000 or $20,000 in the first deal? It just long term is going to make a difference. And that's what we were just saying.

You guys took action. So now you got experience. Now you know the next time you look at a house, you get the line scoped. Because, I mean, I just had, I dodged a huge bullet on one in Florida, a $22,000 bid to fix all the plumbing. And I just was like, it might be better just to sell this house than to pay that much.

And so I just pushed and pushed and pushed. And finally, the property manager said, hey, I know a guy. I'll pull him off another team. And that guy went in there and said, oh, no, I just have to go in right through the bathtub, fix this one little part. We don't have to redo it all. But that would have been a huge thing. And now I know every house we buy, part of my checklist is you have a plumber scope,

the entire line with the camera. Because this is a problem like you guys mentioned. It's not just fix the pipe. It's I have to cut through everything that I just did to get to it. really big, you know. Wendy, I want to ask you, because I know we haven't talked a ton about your business, but Wendy runs one of the top real estate teams in the biggest real estate brokerage in the world. She's an extremely successful business person. She's just very humble. So you might not have known that. And I know, yeah, of course. I have a lot of respect for Wendy in the way that

she does business. And a lot of people look up to her. I wanted to get your advice for those that are, because I think the majority of our listeners are male who want to talk to their wives or their girlfriends who are women specifically about why this is interesting to them. Can you share with us any advice for the right way to communicate this to a woman so that she will understand what you're trying to say? Because this is where I get in trouble all the time. I talk to a woman the way that I would talk to a guy or I would want someone to talk to me. And it comes across completely wrong. And Brandon laughs at me because I'm so bad at this.

And so I've learned that the way you phrase something is oftentimes even more. You get rich and pick up chicks. It's awesome. What do I care about that? Yeah, well, don't use the word chicks. That's why. And then I would say it's kind of like we were talking about before. Let's talk about the why behind it, right? Like, why is it important to you?

Where is this going? How are we going to build something together? Because for me, all of our wealth-building journey has definitely been about freedom. But I think for a lot of women, safety is really important and security is very important. and so explaining how this actually will make your life more safe and secure in the future. And I'll just give you an example. Like I tell my real estate team, if you can help 10 families this year purchase one investment property, over the course of a 10-year real estate career,

you will have significantly changed the lives of over 100 families. and that can mean a college education, that can mean caring for an aging parent, that can mean maybe care for, you know, one of the, one of the people, you know, in your relationship. So just explaining that for you might look like freedom, but it is actually safety and security. Having having a lot of money doesn't make you happy, but it does give you more and better choices. One of the things that we've done, Wendy started an investing club for people who work with her. She goes at the Hot Millionaire's Club, and we meet at our house once a month, and we talk about wealth building. And everybody who joins, they have to share their net worth, and that's part of the journey,

but they also have to share why they want to grow their wealth. And that's that vulnerable moment. Most people haven't thought about that. And so I always agree with all the answers into security or freedom, because when you really peel the onion, peel the onion, most people are looking for one or the other. They want both, ultimately, but one of the other is their prime motivator on this journey. Maybe they came from a place where they didn't always have what they needed,

and they want to make sure that their family is provided for. Or maybe they feel like they haven't had the choices that they want in their life, and they want more. But understanding why someone else's motivation is a great place to start in any conversation. So maybe it starts with not what you say, but what you ask. That's good. Yeah, like finding out what they want, asking those questions on what, you know, allows you then to formulate your response in a much better way. You saw how Wendy just connected the dots to selling 10 homes to college educations and health care and all those things.

If you know what they want, then you can help them connect the dots between what they want and what we're doing together. Yeah, that's really good. That's really good. All right, guys, man, I feel like we could talk about this stuff forever. I'm curious, though, maybe kind of last question. I'm wondering, like, can you guys share with us, maybe before moving to the famous four anyway? What are some of your goals? I know you mentioned, like, you know, marriage, you know, thriving marriage.

Anything else do you guys can share that you'd want to, like, what a goal of yours is in the next five years and one year? And kind of what you're doing about it to reach it. I can, the first thing that I came to mind, like, with some health goals, like in Austin, Texas, we have this thing called Cedar Fever. And it's just a really bad allergy that people sometimes get. And it got so bad that I thought about quitting my job. job with a self-made billionaire and leaving town. I was like, this is horrible. It's like, you look up and you have something that's pressing.

And I was like, I want to get my back situation fixed. I want my shoulder fixed. I want to get my allergies. And I didn't know how that was going to happen, but we had to write it down. And generally, over the last 10 years, we've kind of chipped away at those things, where I started getting allergy drops. And now I can go out this time of year and not be sneezing the entire time. And so you just pick something.

And sometimes they go off your list. and sometimes they don't. But if you have it written down, you've got a chance to create a plan to go do something. What came to your mind? That's the first thing I thought it was in health challenges. Well, for me, it was a couple things. One is we have a goal to create millionaires.

And so that's why we started the Hot Millionaire Club. That's always kind of been on our to-do list. And then I said to Jay a couple years ago, I'm like, what are we actually doing here? And so we teach it happen. Yeah, so we teach wealth building all the time. and then we definitely teach it to our team. And then we have really big giving goals.

And what I love about our giving goals is that we've always, we've always had giving goals. And they include money we give, right? So money we just give away, money we raise. And then money we, what's the third one? Time invested. Yeah, time invested. And so having those three metrics for success has been really powerful for us

over the years, because especially when you're young, you can't really always give away money because you're pretty poor. But now we have a massive giving goal. We had a goal this year of giving away $100,000. We have a goal of helping raise $250,000. And then we have, you know, the time in there as well. So, I mean, that's... That's awesome.

I love that. I mean, I let you much better than allergies. Thank you. Let's talk about mucus. Charity. Really, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I love it.

I love it. I love it. I'll just take fun of myself. because I know it's coming. We got that on the record. But like, I love you said it. Before people can write checks and they say, oh, Brandon can do that or David can do that

because they're wealthy investors, you can give your time. And after you give your time, before you still can write checks, you can give your influence to raise money for other people. So you can volunteer and help raise money. Like, you could go into November, right, and say, you know, I'm going to run a marathon

and for every mile I run, whatever that is, you can still have a huge impact on the world. and then later we earned the right to write those jets and make a direct impact. But there's no reason that as we build the lives that we want, that we can't also be planning for giving back. And so great examples, Wendy. But it's very dear to our heart.

We talk about that a lot. Yeah, really good. Well, thank you, guys. That was fantastic, fantastic. But before we get out of here, we got a few more questions that throughout you. It's time for our famous for. All right, this is a part of the show where we asked the same. game four questions to every guest every week. And we're going to fire them at you guys today. But before we do,

I want to hear what's going on this week over on the Bigger Pockets Business podcast with Jay and Carol Scott. Hey there, Brandon and Bigger Pockets real estate podcast listeners. This is Jay Scott, your co-host of the Bigger Pockets business podcast. And this week on our special New Year's episode of the Bigger Pockets business podcast, we have a recap of 2019. That's right. We brought back a lot of our favorite guests from are 2019 shows, and they are providing some of their best actionable tips, advice, and words of encouragement heading into 2020. So, tune in this week on the Bigger Pockets Business Podcast. Now, back to your famous four. All right. And with that, let's get to the famous four. So we've been asking these questions now for what, seven years, I think we've been doing this

podcast now, which is crazy. And I know, Jay, the first time you were on the BP real estate show, we asked them to you, but let's see what each of you. And you could answer the same or you might have different answers. So number one, other than anything you've written, do you have a favorite real estate related book? Well, my favorite real estate book is really set for life, you know, Scott Trench. I think it's one of the hours. And I recommend it all the time. Whenever I speak, I say it's the number one, you know, primer for real estate investing. And then of course I talk about Jay's books, but that's my piece. So you already mentioned rich, dad, poor dad. That's a book that I give out a lot. great mindset change. I love set for life. I agree with that in terms of how to think about

saving money so that you can start investing, it's just a starting place for a lot of people. And I also love cash flow quadrant. That whole, the whole idea, if you work for money, you're self-employed versus being in business, like some of those ideas were just real fundamental to how I think about things. Cool. Awesome. What about your favorite business books? Favorite business books. This is my least favorite. question. So I have a shelf of books that I tend to give away. So I'm looking over there right now. Oh, gosh. Oh, I got a million books over there. I'm trying to think of the book by Scott Presfield about the resistance. Yeah, the art of, Stephen, Stephen Pressville, War of Art. The War of Art.

Thank you. I've probably given more copies of that away than any other book. I mean, as a writer and an entrepreneur, we're always battling the resistance. And I just think it's a really great kind of meditation on making yourself do the things you know you need to do so that you can get the things that you want your life. Yeah, if I could echo that one. I mean, I think every single real estate investor, buddy and investor listening to show needs to buy that book today and go and listen or read it. It's so, because like resistance is what it is when I need to go analyze a deal. I need to go to open house. And instead I'm on my Instagram. That's resistance. That's what the whole book is about is like how to get over that.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's a battle every day. Yeah. Well, mine's the one thing. I didn't write it so I can say that. Nice. Very nice.

Okay. That's usually my answer too. Thank you, Brandon, for kissing up with their guests. Anytime. Love it. Other than overcoming horrific allergies, can you share some of the hobbies that you guys that you like to do? I love to be outdoors.

So I like to hunt. I like to fish. And probably the number one activity I do is read. So when I'm not reading business books, every other book I try to read like a novel. And that's just one of the ways I completely de-stresses me. It's just, that's probably my number one favorite kind of leisure activity. I would say for me, it's really traveling.

You know, we take a lot of trips every year. We just got back from an amazing journey to Tanzania in October. I don't even know where Tanzania is. It's in Africa. I don't even know where Africa. Okay, that's cool. Yeah. Yeah.

I only know America, right? America. America. Who needs other countries out there? All right. Last question for me. What do you believe sets apart successful real estate investors from all those who give up, they fail, or they just never get started?

Well, I think for me, it's really figuring out what you're good at and understanding your 20%. and running towards that and then leveraging out the 80% when you can afford it. I don't know what I said last time, but I'm going to say this time, I think the people that succeed are the ones that are clearest about their motivation. I think when you really understand why you're saying yes to this thing, like what's motivating you, what your big why is, those people that are really clear are kind of unstoppable.

So that shows up for me. I just had that conversation with somebody last night that it's actually a, a skill of being able to understand your own motives a lot of the time that most people go through life doing things based on what they feel, but they don't understand why they feel that way. You know, emotions are like this river that runs through us, and we all know where the river's going, but we don't know where the source of it is. And when you understand it, you can actually change that. You can readjust, and so your emotions can move in a way that makes you get the things you want in life. And that's such good advice

is just start with understanding your own motives for why you want something and then ask yourself, is that the way I want it to stay? Do I not like how that feels? So thank you, Jay, very wise. I was thinking when you were talking that you could really get paid to write fortune cookie quotes. Like you're so good at succinctly delivering wisdom in a very like short. Yeah, like a good author is supposed to be. I'm terrible.

I just run on and on and on and hand it to someone else and say, figure out how to make some sense of that. That's why Katie, the publisher is just like, David, this is too long. You need to cut this in half. You have too many analogies. All right. Well, thank you guys very much for people that want to learn more about you. And I'm sure there's a lot. This has been an amazing conversation.

Can you tell us where they can find out more about you? So sure. I'd send them for me to the One Thing.com with the number one. And specifically for this podcast, if they go to the resources, there's a kick-ass guide to hosting a goal setting a retreat. There's a free download that will walk through a lot of the things that we talk to and it has little worksheets for people. So our hope, and I know it's one of the legacies that we want, we want more people investing some time in themselves so they can have a better future.

And a lot of that's couples too. Yep. Well, anyone can find me at our real estate website, which is papazamproperties.com, or I'm on Instagram at Wendy Papazan. And Wendy Pagetian. And Wendy, which investor network, too. So she definitely has lots of connections. So it's been great. They can definitely help her out.

which areas is your team service for those looking to buy a house or so we're in Houston Dallas Minneapolis and Austin and then like jace said we actually have created I need to talk to you about this a big real estate investor network across the country where we vetted people for their real estate expertise so anyone's looking for a good realtor really anywhere in the country I could I could probably help cool boom that's awesome you guys very very cool well thanks this has been fun it's been awesome actually actually. Yeah, it's been great. More than fun. This has been amazing. And I hope people will take the advice from this and go apply it to their life. Immediately like, you know, this next year,

do something a little bit different. Take your spouse out, take your partner out, take your, you know, your dog out and get some clarity. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Yeah, so true. All right. Thanks, guys. All right. Now was the interview with Jay and Wendy. Awesome, awesome show as I knew it would be because those two are some of my favorite people in the world. And I love that. Yeah, and I feel especially honored that we got that much of their time because Jay is notorious for being like, hey, this is how long I can give you. And he gives a ton of value in that period. So this was a very big privilege of Bigger Pockets fans got to hear this much wisdom from some of the best teachers of this specific topic. Yeah, very much. So if you've not yet

read the one thing, go and do that. It's an awesome book. You'll love it. A millionaire, real estate investor as well. Very, very good stuff. So I guess that's all I got. I'm going to get out of here and go, you know, hang out with the family for a little bit before, uh, before, before, I go do some, I don't know, a gym today maybe. I don't know. I probably won't go to the gym today. I'm feeling lazy. Well, it's a good thing you don't make decisions based on how you feel.

It's a good thing I don't live my life based on feelings. At least that's what you say when you do go to the gym. When you don't go to the gym, you have something else that you'll say, right? Pretty much. All right, dude. Well, I probably will go to the gym today. All right. Well, no, I'm still nursing my shoulder injury.

I can't work out right now. It's like, oh, I didn't realize your legs were connected to your shoulder. Oh, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't, yeah. Did anybody just hear a little bit of a, a little bit of whining out of the David Greene? I said that. You're right. Leg press. I can probably do some curls.

You're right about that. This is why it's so great to have a friend like Brandon Turner who doesn't let you skip out on your goals. I wish everyone in the world could be as lucky as me. I wish everyone could actually got it before I go to check out my rental property. I haven't been there like three weeks, the one that's being worked on here in Maui. Somebody go check that out. Make sure the work's being done correctly.

All right, buddy. Well, thank you very much. He is Bearty Brandon. I am David Green 24. at Instagram. This is David Green for Brandon, the goal-setting machine Turner, signing off. 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

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