BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 516: Are You an Asset or Liability to Those in Your Life? w/ Earn Your Leisure

Episode Date: October 10, 2021

Everyone knows that financial education is one of the most crucial things to teach children at a young age. It doesn't just set them up to be wealthy, but it gives them the tools to be confident, choose delayed gratification, and hopefully, impact another young person’s life one day. This is understood wholeheartedly by Rashad Bilal and Troy Millings, former financial advisor and school teacher. What had started as a small classroom experiment in teaching children financial literacy turned into a media empire. Rashad and Troy shared their class teachings online, which pushed them to create a course for the kids, and later into the Earn Your Leisure podcast, where they talk about everything ranging from high-value financial concepts to sports to entertainment and more. What keeps Rashad and Troy going is knowing that their work is allowing thousands of people to improve their life situations, whether children or adults. The duo not only talks extensively about the difference between financial assets and liabilities but about relationship assets and liabilities. This helps answer the question: who’s helping bring you up and who’s trying to keep you down? In This Episode We Cover: The importance of spurring on financial literacy for young kids  How to teach your children about money and examples you can use The role that playing sports had in Rashad and Troy’s lives Assets over liabilities and why you need to invest in relationship assets as well Stocks, ETFs, multifamily, and cryptocurrency investments Staying committed to your goals and following through And So Much More! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Pro Membership BiggerPockets Youtube Channel BiggerPockets Conference 2021 BiggerPockets Agents Finder BiggerPockets Insights EYL Episode #63 Money Machine by Earn Your Leisure Airbnb Brandon's Instagram David’s Instagram OpenDoor Capital Click here to check the full show notes: https://www.biggerpockets.com/show516 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 516. People think that, you know, based on the things that they see from us, we travel, we throw some pretty decent parties. They see us with beautiful women. It's like, oh, now these guys have it easy. They've had a soul sprued. They don't realize, like, how hard we work. Like, how many days he's locked himself in the room trying to study for the Series 7

and how many days that I'm going to school at night, falling asleep in a kinesiology class. Like, they never saw any of that. So it was like, we've pretty much earned our freedoms. 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. Stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online. What's going on, everyone?

It's Brandon Turner, host of the Bigger Pockets podcast here with my co-host, Mr. David Leisure Green. What's up, man? You've earned it. First time anyone has ever called me that. Okay, David, no leisure green, but you've also earned that. What's up, man? How you doing? I'm doing really good. Good weather in California. Good time in real estate. Really good conversation we just had. I think people are going to really enjoy this episode.

Yeah, yeah, they really will. So today's guests are two gentlemen. It's Troy and Rashad. And they are from the podcast, YouTube, social media empire called Earn Your Leisure. You haven't heard of them. You've probably seen them just on the internet, even if you don't follow them yet. But you should follow them and you will after this interview. You're going to be blown away with these guys.

They have such a solid understanding of just financial literacy and their story about helping kids and having a program for like 14-year-olds. We talk about that today. We talk about some of the things that are investing in, some of the just really just fundamental ideas around what makes somebody successful as an entrepreneur and anything. You're going to love it. So all that and more to come. But first, let's get to today's quick tip. You know, my quick tip today is something we briefly touch on in the show. And that is take time once a week, usually on a Sunday night or Monday morning, but whenever

you can fit it in, take time one hour once a week to write down what your goals are, like your grand vision goals, like, hey, I'm going to do this year or the next couple years. But also write down what your goal for the week is. Just that simple process of writing down what your goal for the week is and then like when and where you're going to work on it. will change your life forever. It's a simple like five-minute process.

Write down your vision, write down your goal, write down what you're going to get done this week, and then when and where you're going to work on that thing. And it just will skyrocket your chance of success. So that's my quick tip. Do you ever notice how every passive investment somehow turns into a very active lifestyle, active spreadsheets, active phone calls, active stress?

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passive investment somehow turns into a very active lifestyle, active spreadsheets, active phone calls, active stress? Here's a better question. What if you could buy brand new construction homes, 10% below market value in the best markets across the country, without making real estate your second job? That's exactly what rent to retirement does. They're a full service, turnkey investment company, handling everything for you. In some cases, investors get 50 to 75, percent of our down payment back at closing. Plus, interest rates as low as 3.75%. They've partnered with Bigger Pockets for over a decade, helping thousands invest smarter.

If you want to do the same, visit BiggerPockets.com slash retirement to learn more. All right. And with that said, I think it's time to get into the show. Anything you want to add, David, before we jump in with Troy and Rashad? You know, what really stood out to me from today's show was how Troy and Rashad came from different backgrounds than you and I, but we're accomplishing the exact same things. And it goes to show that it is the principles, the laws of wealth building that matter, not where you started, where you, what you knew, what you didn't know at the beginning of your journey.

And it's the same for everything, fitness, education, right? The principles are what gets you from the start to the finish. So what I really love about today's show is how well these two communicate the principles that they're teaching to other people that help make them successful, how they evaluate opportunities, what investments they're actually getting into themselves and the entire concept of assets over liabilities going deeper than just what you spend your money on. So this is something I'm proud to be able to bring to everybody

and I hope that all the listeners share this with anyone they can think of who might benefit from hearing these concepts. All right. Well, with that said, time to get in an interview with Troy Millions and Rashad Bilal from Earn Your Leisure. All right, Troy, Rashad, welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast, gentlemen. It's great to have you here.

Pleasure to be here. Thank you for having us. Yeah. So what, you know, you guys are everywhere. I mean, I see all over Instagram, all over YouTube. You've been just dominating in social media, dominating the podcast world in just killing us. So first of all, nice job. You guys are crushing it. But I want to get into what happened. Like, how did you get there? How do you get to this point where you're like the voice of so many people that are out there and they're listening to you? How did you get there? Are you guys always into finance? Yeah. So my background was a financial advisor for 12 years. And Troy was a teacher. So, you know, us growing up being best friends for. pretty much our whole lives. It was just the financial literacy aspect really came organically because we started teaching finance to kids in his classroom. And that developed into a six-week summer program that we did for over 10 years before we started the podcast. So really, you know, when people talk about financial literacy, like that's really us as far as you combine our literacy with him being an educated and the finance with me being a financial advisor. And then we

just kind of merged those worlds together. And then the social media thing came about from really, you know, taping the classroom and putting that footage on Instagram. And then also, you know, going to like different people's public access shows, different radio shows, anything I could actually go to at that point in time and just talking about finance, but talking about it in a different way, combining sports, culture, music, and, you know, adding those elements behind the scenes, financial aspects of it and then just taping that and putting it on Instagram. And a lot of those clips went viral.

and that led to the idea of starting a podcast, which led to where we are now. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's cool. So, Troy, what about you? You were a teacher then. Yeah, so I was an educator, and I was in a, you know, being in a school system,

you learned the things that are not being taught. And so one of the things I overwhelmingly felt was, if I'm not helping the change, then I feel like I was complicit. And so the six-week program that he was talking about was my space to be creative and say, you know what, I'm going to treat this six weeks like the 10 months of school that the kids didn't get. And so based on how they performed in it, and I say perform because part of the program was they had internships.

So they came in and told us what they want to be in the future. We go out in the community and see a business or establishment that was willing to have a kid, like, be an understudy for six weeks. And so based how they performed, they were paid. And being that this is their 14 years old, it's the first time they're ever going to come in contact with real money. So we were paying the kids, each kid, $500. And so we wanted to really have them have a clear understanding of the value of money, what you can do with it other than spending. So one of the first lessons we taught was spend, share, save.

So we broke it down into categories for the kids. And then we taught them about investing. We told them about taxes. And real estate was something we spoke about. And so a lot of them was their first time coming in contact with money, but it also was their first time coming in contact with financial literacy and the value of money. And so that kind of spread from the kids to the adults saying, wow, I can't believe that my son knows this or my daughter knows this.

And now the parents are intrigued. And so when Rashad was doing, you know, the interviews on different people's stations, it was like, all right, there's something going on here. And so my first initiative was like, all right, let's just support him. Let's get his thing off the ground. And so he was like, look, everybody on Instagram has a hashtag. I need a hashtag, sure. And I'm like, all right, I think like a day or two.

I was like, I got one for you. And he was like, all right, let me hear it. I'm like, earn your leisure. And he was like, nah, man, I don't like it. I'm like, no, no, it's perfect. It's perfect because people think that, you know, based on the things that they see from us, we travel, we throw some pretty decent parties. They see us with beautiful women.

It's like, oh, now these guys have it easy. They've had a soul sprued. And they don't realize, like, how hard we work. Like, how many days he's locked himself in the room trying to study for the Series 7 and how many days that I'm going to school at night, falling asleep in a kinesiology class. Like, they never saw any of that. And so it was like, we've pretty much earned our freedoms, right? Like some of the freedoms that we were out loud at that time, we really worked hard for it.

And so I was like, this is it. And so when we had to come up with a name for it, we went back and forth, but earn your leisure was something that we had used and it was like, all right, this is perfect. And now it's kind of like you said, it's like, it's everywhere. And so people see it and they like automatically, you know, tie us to it. Yeah, that's cool, man. I love, I love the phrase because like, you're right. I think too many people see the result.

They see the end of what people have, the flashy, the jet, the cars, the watch. They see all that stuff that's all over social media. They don't realize the climb that it took to get there. Like, they don't realize the grind, you know, that it takes to achieve those things. And so I think that's just in a simple phrase, it tells people, oh, there's more than that. I want to go back real quick to this class that you taught. What were some of the topics in the class that you're teaching these 14-year-old kids? Like, just cases there's people listening going, oh, I want to teach my kid or I want to teach my school.

I'm a teacher. I want to help those around me. Like, what were you teaching? We taught credit, understanding credit from top to bottom, like credit cards, credit score, all of the different things involving credit 101. Stocks, you know, what a stock is, how to research a stock, how to look at the stock ticker, 52 week high, 52 week low. We also taught about student loans, you know, so my student loans figured out, you know, in a couple years they would be in colleges, so they needed to understand that. We talked about real estate. We talked about just general finances as far as, you know, wants and needs and how to balance that out and the importance of budgeting.

Yeah, a lot of different things. Income tax, there was something that, you know, they were shocked. They were like, what is that? Social Security, all these things that we see coming out of checks as adults. Yeah. We were like, listen, this is what the world is going to look like as soon as you start getting paid. And so, yeah, those were the topics we started with. And then we had real estate.

Real estate. Entrepreneurship was something that we were big on. And so I remember one year, we had a project where the kids were like, look, we had an idea like, listen, I have five groups. I want you guys to pitch. It was like kind of a shark tank for the kids. And we're like, look, we're going to, the group that wins, like we're going to create this business. So it was like a babysitting service that we kind of created with the kids. And it started with an idea and it led to like five kids actually creating their own business at the end of the program. Wow. So these kids, how old were most of them? They were 14.

So that was the key. And in our community, like, at most communities, kids kind of age out of the camp experience, right? From, like, kindergarten and eighth grade. And after that eighth grade years, like, what are they supposed to do? Right? Because at 14, you can't, you get working papers, but no one highest 14-year-olds. And so at 15 in our community, you could actually get a job at the community center and be in part of the camp, some of the camp experience.

And so that was a natural progression. When you turn 15, you can work at the camp. But there was this big space for 14-year-olds. And so we needed to fill that void. And so that's kind of what the program did. It prepared them for what was to come. But in the scheme of things, it was like, all right, the natural progression was like, all right, we've taught you about money.

And now you can go out and get a job and we're going to help you do that. So you have, man, 14, 15. That's a tough age. You got a lot of that adolescent comforts that you're not wanting to let go of. You have the desire to be an adult, but none of the ability to handle all the things that come from that. Like, things can explode in any direction. How did you get kids at that age to actually care about what you guys were describing,

which sounds like it was largely education and discipline? Yeah, so I was a middle school teacher. And so I had that advantage. For eight years, I was in New York City teaching middle school kids. And so I was familiar with it. But the thing about the program was that they knew the incentives that at the end, they were going to get paid. And so everybody's focus was like, wait, this is the first time we can get paid.

So it was like, all right, we have to be on point. And we treated it like it was a job for them. And they looked at it like, this is fun. So it was a five-day program. Twice a week they were in the classroom with us. Twice a week they went to their internship. And Friday, we took them on trips or we took them to college campuses. So when they got to college, it wouldn't be like, oh, I've never seen anything like before.

I've never heard these terms. And so it became like a big exposure program. And so they wanted it. They wanted to come. They wanted to show up because it was like, wait, this is. a new way of learning. In fact, at the end of the six weeks, all the kids were like, wait, we need to extend this. Like, how do we keep this thing going? And so that's when we got into the point like, wait, we have to figure out how to make this thing a year-round thing. How can we

educate the masses? And so we were trying to scale that program and then we kind of came upon this. And now not only can we educate those kids and they've been with us. A lot of them are still with us and they get to follow us through the education process now. But now we get to educate the world through the platform. but also to follow up on your question, how to keep the kids engaged. Like we did group activities, which is really big to keep their attention and, you know, have some competitive spirit amongst the kids. Like we'll do like a stock activity and have like a group activity.

Then we also did rewards. So, you know, whatever group won, they got free lunch, things that nature. So little things like that for educators that might be interested in trying to implement different ideas into their classroom. That's something that generally was working for us and probably works for most type of classroom. You know, the competitive spirit, having a lot of. kids work together, having some reward system built in. It was cool things that we did in the class. Yeah. Incentivized education. So my second question to you is going to be about what you just said,

Rashad, and how your guy's athletic background tied into the mindset you've created when it comes to money and combining work with leisure, like the relationship between working hard and then getting a benefit. But before I ask that, I kind of want to get a little bit of advice for the parents who have children and they're trying to explain to their children the value of money and hard work and just really the rhythm that goes into like kind of the principles of how money works. What advice do you have for people that are having a hard time connecting with their kids when it comes to this topic? I think the first thing is to just be transparent and talk to the kids about money.

A lot of parents don't talk to kids about money and they feel like, you know, they tell them staying a child's place and don't worry about the bills and don't things like that. I think it's important to have those open conversations about money and, you know, finances, because if you're not having those conversations with your kid is kind of like having a conversation about having sex, like I look at it like, you know, the kids at one point is going to do it, whether you talk to them about it or not. So you want to talk to them about it so they can be responsible about their decisions. Same thing about money. I think that's a lot of reason why people fall in, especially with credit cards, is that they just wasn't educated on it. So, you know,

you're not educated on something. You can make a lot of mistakes. So the first thing I would say is just to be fully transparent, even if you think the kids aren't really listening, still just, you know, incorporated while you're having dinner, while you're having lunch, whatever, like, you know, go to the bank, take them with you to the bank to show them just, you know, all of the things that you're doing as an adult as far as the finances. And then the second thing is to, once again, I know, especially with stocks, is just to kind of make it cool and have some reward system. So it's like, even for me, for my son, you know, I have a stock account for him. And obviously he sees us talk about stocks all the time. So he's, he's excited about it. And then I tell him, you know, the different companies that he's invested in. So now it's like, you know, like a badge of honor.

Like he tells his friends, like, I'm invested in Tesla. I'm invested in Nike. Like, you know, so we kind of made it cool. That's another thing. A lot of times, you know, finances aren't cool and not sexy. And, you know, kids think it's boring. But when you, you know, talk about how they can make money and how it's growing and how you can do this and you can, you know, make twice as much money if you invest in this as opposed to that. opposed to that, then once they start to see that, then it becomes cool to them. So those are just

some, some tips, but everybody's parenting is going to be different. But I think no matter how you do it, just to have the open dialogue and just to, you know, have the conversations with your child is extremely important. Yeah. And I would add to that, just talk to them at the level that you feel that is appropriate, right? So like, when we talk to our kids about investing in stocks, it's going to be tough for me to explain to them what CrowdStrike is, but they play Roblox every day. There's an opportunity there for me to talk to them. Right. So now when my kids asked me, Daddy, can I get $4.99 to buy Roblox? I'm like, look, you need to have at least $10 to buy that, right? So there's a lesson there. I remember I had a conversation with my son. He was in six, he was six at the time, seven now.

And we were listening to the radio. And it was a tax, like, infomercial. And he was like, Daddy, who's the IRS? And I said, I said, those are the people that. collect money from everyone. And he was like, I want to be the IRS. Oh, nice. You don't hear that very often. I'm like, I'm like, no, man, you want people to like you. Might not be the best thing. But you know what? Like for a first grader, like, that's his way of understanding. So talk to them at a level that they can understand. And, you know, you can never, they're always listening. And so they're always learning. What I, what I noticed in what both of you said was it was basically take something they understand and relate this to that, which is I use a lot

of analogies on this podcast. I get teased about being the analogy guy. But that's what analogy is. It's you get this concept. So let me present this new information within the framework of something you already understand. And that kind of leads us to me wanting to learn a little bit more about your background, which I understand involved athletics, basketball in particular, which was my first love in life. And a lot of how I understand business, money, finance success, it's viewed through that lens of basketball. There's a hard work will get your results component. There's a teamwork component you don't want a team full of Steve Kerr's you're not going to win that way but it's really nice to have a Steve Kerr on your team when you need that thing right can you tell me a little bit about

how you feel that your athletic backgrounds developed the the perspective that you view money from and how it's now influenced the teachings that you guys are providing I mean yeah for me you know I play basketball my whole life so a lot of this stuff that I learn playing sports I still carry over to this day so as far as you know the work ethic is something that you know I learned from sports and just being able to do the same thing every single day for years is something that, you know, most people take for granted, but it's something that you need in business, no matter what business it is. It's very tedious. Most of the time, the business is tedious. It's a lot of, you know, repetition. And you learn a repetition, at least for me, I learned the

repetition playing sports, you know, having to do drills every single day for, you know, 15 years, you know, after a while, that just kind of like just gets drilled into your brain. That kind of habit. It's like military training almost. That I learned working with a team, you know, actually basketball is a team sport. So no matter how good you are, you still have to work with other players on your team and you have to be able to be coachable. So working from a team standpoint is extremely important in business because no business is successful with just one person. Everybody has, you know, employees, if you are blessed enough to scale to that point where you have employees, you have partners, you might have interns, you have people that you have to,

you know, answer to, you have sponsors, things, that nation. So teamwork is extremely important. One thing I learned from sports. Of course, the competitive nature of sports, you know, carries with you. Once you stop playing, you still have that competitive edge. So everybody wants to be the best if you are, you know, competitive in nature. So, you know, sports is definitely something that forces that, you know, competitive spirit. And, you know, business is a competitive situation. So everybody's trying to outdo each other.

So the competitive nature of sports definitely carried over in business. So, yeah, those are just a few. But definitely, like, I feel like, you know, all of the things that. they learn from sports are real valuable life lessons that, you know, just not just in business, just in life in general, but definitely in business, you know, being on time, you know, being, you know, organized, all of these things, you know, stuff that I learned from playing sports. Yeah. I mean, my athletic career ended after 12th grade. I knew very early, I'm like, look, man, I'm not going to be able to make money in sports. I got to figure out something,

which kind of would turn me into being an educator because I loved sports. I was obsessed with sports. And I had a natural gift for working with kids. And so phys ed and health became what I was teaching. But I was growing up, man, I was obsessed with sports, like every sport. And so what I did was like I would study everybody's stats. And so I became like a statistician, man. I would tell you somebody's bat and average.

I know what school they went to. I know how many years they went in school. I know that points per game. I know they assist. And so that just carried on into the business world now where it's like when I study a company, it's the same thing. Like, when I dive into a company, I'm looking for everything. And so that discipline has just carried over me as far as analytics go, whether it's

our YouTube or our listens on audio, it's like these same disciplines that I use when I was studying the statistics and studying people's average that, you know, these type of information that you probably won't ever use again. I've ended up using now when it comes to the stock market, when it comes to crypto, when it comes to businesses. Like, I really studied them. I know their numbers. And so when I make an investment, it's going to be a sound one based on the things that I had did just from being a sports junkie.

Yeah, that's cool, man. Hey, on your shirt, I mean, true, I see it right now and then on your website, it's all over the place and on your on your Instagrams and everywhere. It's assets over liabilities. What does that phrase mean to you? What does it mean to others? And why is that so counterculture today? Yeah, assets over liabilities is something that I came up with as far as I just felt like that was. was a perfect tagline, something short, easy to the point that kind of describes everything that we

have in three words where it's like, you know, everybody, like you said, on social media, it's all about the cars, jewelry, traveling, all that stuff. But obviously a lot of that stuff is liability. Most of it is liability. So it's like, you know, it's a never-ending race to just spend money and put yourself in debt and, you know, never really create any wealth. And our whole platform was built on creating wealth. So it's like, all right, it's cool to have liabilities on a certain level, but let's do it responsibly and let's always make sure that we have assets first and foremost in our brain. So the idea of assets over liabilities is just to say like, you know, you want to prioritize

your assets first and then your liabilities come after that. And that could just be in life in general. Like I look at like, you know, relationships, either somebody's going to be an asset to you or they're going to be a liability. they're going to be, you know, adding to you, they're going to be taken to you. So there's only so many, you know, relationships that you can have where you're on a losing side before you end up losing. So, you know, it's important to always make sure that everybody's an asset and that you have an abundance of assets and you're focused on your assets as opposed to focusing on the liability. So I gave

an example where that we interview DJ Envy, you know, he's real big in real estate. And he says, you know, he has like 20 cars. Like he's real big on all these exotic cars, but he doesn't buy a car like just with his money that he gets from his job. Like he buys a car from the cash flow from his real estate property. So it's like he doesn't buy a liability until he has an asset that can pay for that. And that's how he goes about it. So, you know, he still has quote unquote liabilities, but he's doing it in a responsible manner. And he makes sure that his assets are above that.

And the cash flow from the homes are now paying for those cars. that's something that, you know, we just, we just wanted to just put out there and it just took off like wildfire. People really just really, really like it. They like the slogan. They like the way that shirt is made, the print on it and all of that. So, yeah, just caught on like wildfire. It's become synonymous with us. And so, like, again, when people see that, they automatically think us.

But originally the first time I had seen that, I was just like, oh, okay, assets, something that puts money into your account, liability, something that's been taken out. But even that, like, we've learned. And a lot of people have shown, like, we've shown people where liabilities can be turned into assets. And so when you talked about the cars, right, we talked about, listen, if you use Turo, which is a car renter service, the Airbnb of cars, that liability that we once thought can now be an asset that can actually bring income in. And so it's always about creating a mindset. But the first thing is the slogan, right? It gets you talking.

It's everywhere we go, somebody stops us. If they don't know us, it's a conversation starter. And so, like, that's what it's done. it's changed the conversation for our community for sure and pretty much the world. It's like, all right. Well, number one, I know who you listen to. And number two, let's have this conversation. What are the things that are you involved in? What are you invested in? What are some of your liabilities? How can we change that? Yeah, we preach all the time, you know, the idea of house hacking, right? Where you buy like a duplex and you rent out the other unit or you buy a house and you rent

out the bedrooms. Because it's like your house is a liability for most people. I mean, it's liability we all have to have, right? Generally, we have to live somewhere. But when you can rent out that other unit or other bedroom or you buy a fourplex rent all three of the units all of a sudden now you're making money or your Airbnb in your other unit or your other bedroom. It's like that idea of just because it's a liability technically or historically has been doesn't mean it has to stay there. And I think the more people think of that kind of that concept. I'm even thinking about it from my office right now. I want an office for my real estate company. And I'm like, well, how do I office hack this thing? How do I buy an office like a strip mall put myself in one of those units and

the rest of the units rent out? Now my office is living for, free and building wealth. Yeah. Yeah, that's the name of the game. I think it's it. I think it what I liked about it. Yeah, that's cool. It goes above just what you spend your money on, but what you spend your time or your energy on. You mentioned relationships. That's a great way this principle applies. Yeah. And maybe, especially for someone young, understanding that your asset is you investing in your education, in knowledge, in repetition, in the mastery that you develop over a specific topic, whether it's a sport or it's a concept like finances, whether it's cryptocurrency, or real estate, the asset is your understanding of it and the liability might be how you flex,

what your social media shows that you're doing. As long as those two things are in, there's a healthy relationship between the two, maybe is a better way to say it, then there's nothing wrong with that, right? It's when the liability side starts to become too heavy on that scale and sucks you down and you stop building assets. You sort of become a slave to that lifestyle that it's a problem. So I think what I love about that is it's deeper than just how you spend your money. It's how you spend everything. Yeah, I think the bank account analogy is perfect in terms of even relationships, right? Like we said this to each other. It's just a either people are going to deposit into you or they're going to withdraw from you, right?

And we know, especially if you open in a new account, if you keep making withdrawals, you hit that $3,000. They're going to close the account, right? But we don't close the relationships when that happens. And so again, it's that mindset. Like all these things are related, right? Like, relationships, look, we got to have an even balance here. I got a question for you guys. That's something I struggle with a bit. Is there are, first of all, I love the, I never thought of the idea of assets of reliability in terms of relationships.

I love that concept. And there are just so many people in life that just take, take, take and drain, drain, drain. At the same time, we want to be able to, you know, build relationships with people who can't give back, right? So there's obviously people in your life and in our life who aren't providing us value necessarily, but we want to be with that. How do you balance that?

How do you balance this idea of like, I want, to give to people who maybe can't give back yet in any way. I mean, it's like the kids, right? They're not, they're not like giving back to you in any way. Are they an asset? Are they liability? Like, how do you look at the relationship side of things? Yeah, I mean, I look at it like, you know, it's different, you have different folders for different type of situation. So you have a charity situation. You have mentorship situation. And you allocate, okay, I know that there's, you know, one hour a week or, you know, one day a week or whatever, this is going to be my, I'm dedicated to doing this.

And depending on your schedule, depending on your financial situation, you can allocate more time or depending on your goals. Like, you know, if your goals isn't really to, you know, have a lot of money or create a, you know, a great impact in business, you might be able to allocate more time towards things that's not really going to be profitable to you. So everybody's situation is different. But I think it's all about just having balance. I think balance is extremely important, right? So it's understanding that, okay, we live in a world where we have to make money. we have to provide for our families and we have to, you know, dedicate time towards our business. So we might not be able to, you know, spend as much time as we, as we were like doing things that's

not going to generate revenue, but we also need to do things like that because, I mean, it's just important. And we have to balance it out between just making money and actually creating a social impact as well. So everybody's balanced schedule is going to be different depending on, like I said, your life, how that looks for you. But I think for us, it's just really been a, a situation of balance. Like we just did a back to school giveaway yesterday.

Well, obviously that didn't bring any revenue. We actually spent money. But, you know, we understand that that's important. There's people that, you know, are less fortunate that can't provide for their children in the same way that we might be able to. So, you know, we do things like that all the time. So, yeah, it's a balancing act. And I think that, you know, that's something that every entrepreneur has to figure out for

themselves because it's like, you know, sometimes you might feel bad that you don't have enough time to do everything that you want to do. But you also have to remember that, you know, if your business starts to fall, there's people that depend on you for business. You have employees. You have your family. So on the flip side, if you're just dedicating all of your time to giving things away for free, then the people that depending on you, they're going to suffer. So it's not really fair to them if you're not giving your business 100% of your, you know, your effort. So yeah. I would say that's kind of what we've been built on. Like we've always given back, whether it was our time, whether it was financially. It's just something that principle that

we've kind of just naturally had. He never mentions this, but I mentioned it here. Like when he was doing the summer program with me, he was doing that for free. Like I was just doing that as a favor of it. Like, I'm like, look, man, you're in the finance world. Could you just come? And he was doing it for free for 10 summers. And so he's always giving back his time in that sense. And it was like, we're not looking for the immediate reward. The best reward is like when that kid grows older and he's like, look, I remember when you guys are talking about credit. And now I'm doing finance, right? Like, that's the reward for us.

Like, we didn't gain any financial value from it, but that kid's life was impact. And so that's how we kind of been living our lives, really, like, how impactful can we be? And what are the residual results of being impactful? So that's what we've been on. And hopefully it's inspired and it still is inspiring those kids, but it inspires people to do the same. That's awesome.

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Head to costsegregationguise.com slash BP to get a free proposal and see your potential tax savings. If I hear you guys write what it sounds like you're saying is that some people cannot repay you, but the act of giving to them repays you versus the what you're describing when you talk about a liability is a human being that sucks energy from you. Not only are they not paying you, but that the relationship itself, the time you're spending there is a liability. Is that more or less what you're describing? Yeah, for sure. And, you know, it could be a romantic relationship. It could be a business relationship. It's like some people,

are just liabilities. They're just toxic people by nature and they'll just drain you, not just financially, but emotionally, you know, just all kinds of different things. So that's the type of relationships that can become a liability where it's taking not only time, money, energy, all of that from you, whereas another relationship could be, you know, pouring into you. It doesn't have to be in a form of money. They could be in a form of, you know, inspiration. They can be in a form of joy. It can be in a form of, you know, a lot of different things that, you know, add value to your life outside of money. And those are all assets. So I always say you can, you can be an asset even if you don't have any money or if you have no financial gain. Like people ask about mentorship, like people

ask about mentorship a lot. And I always tell them, you know, the best way to approach a mentor is to see what you can do for them, not really what they can do for you because that's more charity and you can only have so many hours in your day allocated towards charity. where it's like, okay, if I want somebody to be my mentor, I might know somebody else that would be a good person for them to build a relationship with. And maybe I'll approach the situation with that. Like, look, I just want to add value. How can I add value?

And then in the course of that, we can develop a relationship as opposed to saying, you know, you have this platform. Like, I want to take this from you. What can you do for me? Can you give me a stock tip? How can I make money? What house should I buy on the block? Like, you know, put me on your show.

That happens all the time. So it's like, you know, it has to be some level of balance. I love that because what you're telling people is don't be a liability in other people's lives. Because the people that have what you want, like you two are saying, have a radar that is scanning for liabilities. And when they sense it, they put up a wall. And so I, Brandon, I see this all the time. People who want your help and they recognize that getting in that world will be good for them. But they approach you with a big flashing sign that says, I am a liability.

then they get their feelings hurt when it doesn't work. Yeah. We try not to hurt feelings. Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, Brandon tries harder than me. Yeah, I mean, in the end of the day, right, when we're talking about how we're going to be rewarded, and if we're ever awarded, it won't be our decision anyway.

And so we're just going to try to live a purpose of life and continue the impact. So it's just what we do. You can't be selfish. You can't be so. I think a lot of times people are selfish when they only think about themselves. And that's not really the best way to go about it. It's like if you want to build a relationship with somebody, the first thing on your brain

shouldn't be how can this person help me? The first thing is how can I help this person? And then in return, nine times out of ten, they'll end up helping you even more than you probably even expected. But I just feel like that's something that not a lot of people understand. They just go in with a very selfish standpoint. And they feel like you're obligated to help them. And that's not really how life works.

And I feel like that comes back to sports too. Because we all remember being kids and you're like second grade, third grade, fourth grade. and you only pass the ball to your friends. Why do you only pass your friends? Because they're going to pass it back, right? You pass it to that black hole. You never see it again. And you don't want it.

Your team doesn't work well when you have that attitude. And then when you get into the higher levels of sports, you know I like playing with that person. He sets screens. He gets me open. This person gets me the ball right when I want it, right? This other person waits so their double team and throws a panic pass. And I got to get out of position to go get it.

And it's a feeling like you just know I like having that guy. Like you like playing with Chris. Paul. That's the person you want on your team. So what advice can you guys give a, like the common mistakes people make allowing liabilities in their life. You probably see this over and over and over and how we can avoid it. And then B, maybe how do you present yourself to others as the Chris Paul as opposed to an Alan Iverson type who nobody wants to play with? I think the best, well, the answer to the first question is to believe people when they show you who they are, a lot of times, especially in relationships, we, we have like a strong sense of denial where we think,

it's like red flags early on and we look past it or we think that, you know, somebody's going to end up changing nine times out of ten, like how people first present themselves is how they are going to be going forward. So that's something early to like say, okay, this isn't going to work out because this person just wants to use me. That's the first thing. Because the long. you stay in any type of situation, business, romantic, whatever, is harder to get out of it. And that's something that's like a cocoon. After a while, you just kind of like in a web and you can't really break out of it. So that's something that's extremely important is to recognize

red flags early on. And to answer the second question, in my opinion, is how you present yourself early, once again, is very important. So if I'm trying to get somebody's attention, I think I wouldn't approach somebody talking about myself. I feel like if your resume is strong enough, somebody's going to find out about you without you having to tell them who they are. So that's the first thing. I don't want to just approach somebody saying,

hey, look, I have one of the top podcasts in the world. That's not the best way to go about it, in my opinion. I think the best way to go about it is to introduce yourself and ask questions about the other person. People always like to talk about themselves. I'm sure you have, you guys know from having a, a show like you bring people on and they love to talk about themselves and then listening a lot of times people don't actually listen because when you listen then you'll find out what the person needs

so a lot of time people look like okay this is you know x y and z person he's worth millions of dollars how i can't help this person i'm not in a position to help this person that's not necessarily true you may be able to help that person but you just have to understand what kind of help they need so it's like okay well they're doing an event maybe i can be in a sponsor at their event. Or maybe I can introduce them to somebody or maybe I can, you know, help them start up their podcast. They don't have a podcast yet. It's a good idea for them to start a podcast. These are all things that you just start racking your brain on how you can bring value and how you can add value. And then you'll be surprised about how people feel about you once you add value towards them. Like I said,

now it's not even a thing where you really even have to ask for help. Like you just become part of their circle and they're going out of their way to help you because they feel like, you know, you've helped them. So it's only the right thing to do to include you going forward. Yeah, man. I mean, when you said that second question, I was like, that's it right there. Like, how do you become the play? I feel like I become that, Chris Paul, in the sense.

Like, even when we played basketball, we want to say my school team, it was like, I know he's shooting. He's probably going to score 20 points a game. Somebody's got to get his rebounds. I got no problem doing that. So I would say that the first thing is check your ego at the door. And so that's something that I've always been able to do pretty well. And it was like, all right, well, he's probably not the best defensive player.

Let me go give him help. Yep. Right. Every time that, you know, there's a one-on-one matchup. And so like, even now, it was like when he was, like, adamant about being this financial advisor of Instagram, it was like, all right, well, let me support him. How can I help him? Right? He never asked me. I'm like, all right, well, you know, I find this article here. Use that. And so that kind of like evolved into earn your leisure really. Like, when we started, really, like, when we started, really, like, when I told you, I was obsessed with sports. So I became obsessed with finding information in the world of finance because my world was education for my whole life. And so now it was like a new world to me. So I'm like, now I've become obsessed with it. I'm trying to find information. I'm going to just, I try to write like captions myself. And I was like, man, I'm making up at 530 trying to write captions. It looked like it takes shoty like 10 minutes. Like, what am I doing? I'm like, I gave up on

that really quick because I'm like, no, he's, that's his strength. His strength, he may not have the time to go find 15 articles to post. Let me go do that for him. Right? that's going to just help us grow. And so checking your ego at the door, but knowing each other's strengths is key too. And knowing your strengths, right? Like adding that value and knowing that that's something I was good at, I'm like, okay, we can do this.

And so now you turn it to the Chris Poe, and now you lead the league and assist. And who get, like, most people will say, well, I want the credit for that. Like, I want the credit for that. My thing was like, I could kill less for the credit. It's not about me and it's not really about him. It's about the people who are receiving the information.

That's what this is about, right? Like, we've got the information. And what about the people who don't? How can we explain it to them so that they can understand it too? And that's all stuff you learn when you're actually playing the game of a sport the right way, is it doesn't matter who scores. It matters. Does our team win?

Right. And a lot of times, everyone in the world is focusing on how to score because that's what gets attention. And so if you're the one person who's learning how to pass, how to create shots, how to get people open, you end up with maybe the more valuable skill in that market because less people are going for it. and that's born out of the desire for the team to win. And what I hear you two saying is the team wins if other people get what's in our heads into their heads. And they get into it.

The other thing that made me think of is there's this old fable. I think it was like one of Aesop's fable about this lion that was this incredibly powerful creature that would just patrol across the jungle and everyone lived in fear of them. And then one day he got that thorn stuck in his paw. And it didn't matter. He had all the power in the world. But that one little thing ruined his whole life. couldn't think about anything else but that thorn in the paw and he comes across a mouse which in this example was something that has nothing to offer no power but the mouse is the only thing they could take

the thorn out of the lion's paw and when he did then they became best friends that lion wanted that mouse around all the time and i think many times in life we focus on well i don't have what this person has i don't have that platform i don't have that skill and we missed the fact that that person can have a thorn in their business and their life and their relationship that you might be the only one they can see it and help take it out. So you guys seem like you are both very humble in spite of being successful and it allows you to see those angles. So I just, if nobody else has mentioned that to you guys, that's a very, very hard thing to accomplish because it's easy to be humble when you suck. But when you're winning, that's a lot harder. I wanted to shift the course a little

bit and get into what assets you two are buying and what stuff you're into right now. Yeah, for sure. Start the list. Stocks definitely ongoing. We have a stock show actually called Market Mondays. That's devoted just towards stocks. So a lot of the technology stocks and ETFs, like SMH is an ETF that I talk about a lot, which is a semiconductor, like computer chips, ETF, something that I'm very big on.

XLK is a technology ETF, but like all of the top technology companies, QQQ is another one with Microsoft, Apple, Navidia, PayPal, a lot of those. So that's more safe, more of a safer play as opposed to picking individual stocks. So that's something, real estate, something that we definitely have been focused on over the last year. Shout to our partner, MG, the Mortgage Guy. We picked up a few multifamily homes in Cleveland and Connecticut and looking to scale that and to like now getting to the point where we're starting to buy buildings. That's our next phase where we can move out of the multifamily.

process and start buying like, you know, 10 units, 15, 20 unit buildings. So, you know, just getting more educated on that and looking at different opportunities for that. Cryptocurrency, definitely something I've been invested. And we've both been invested in for a while since 2017. So definitely added to that position over the course of the year. So those are a few different things. Yeah, we got a trucking logistics company. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Our truck, our EYL truck is pretty big. It's like, where's Waldo at this point? Or catch the pokiemen. on. Every time somebody sees it on the road, they take a picture and send it to us. And so it becomes a driving billboard for us, but it also becomes another business for us, another stream of income.

Wait, I got to dig into this. So you bought a truck, you put your logo on it. And then what you rented out to truck drivers? Or what do you, like, I've never heard of this. I had this concept ever. This is awesome. Yeah. So, no, we own the truck. Okay. Yep. And it picks up loads. And so depending on what the dispatcher has for us to pick up, we pick it up, we deliver it. And hopefully on the way back, we have something to pick up and drop when the driver comes back. Yeah, so we have a driver that we hired. And he drives. He drives our truck. And we go from coast to coast with different, you know, different low, all kinds of cargo, whatever needs to be moved. And yeah, it's branded. It has like our emojis on it, earn your lease. Yeah. EYL University all over it. So it's like a moving

billboard. So when people see it, you know, they recognize it. Yeah, it just makes me think. Like, why is that, why not know more people doing that? Like, even if you could only break even on this business. It's just free advertising. Why not have a whole fleet of trucks. Now, next week, I'm going to have a truck company. I can hear, I can hear that the bigger pockets. Yeah, exactly. The bigger pockets truck going on the country. I'm just like, I love scalable business models. I'm like, well, what if you just had, again, you don't even need to make money technically. You could break even and just use it for advertising. This, this idea just blows my mind. How did you, how did you even get the idea of buying a truck? We had an episode. We had an episode,

shout to our guy, Alice Good Energy. He broke down the trucking game to us. And once he finished it, I mean, he did it in such detail, though. We were like, look, this is something that we can actually do. And so he's held our hand through the process. And that's the beauty of getting people on the show and creating relationships, right? Sometimes these relationships, I mean, a lot of times pretty much, the relationships are worth more than the money because they have the knowledge.

And so once we develop the relationship, now it's like, wait, you guys have helped my business. Let me help you start yours. And so that's what's happened with our trucking company, man. That's awesome. We'll put a link in the show notes on our show here as well for that episode so people can go listen to your episode. Everyone just go to BiggerPockets.com's show 516 and then we'll link to that one because that's awesome. And we just launched our vending machine company. So we had a venue. Yeah, we went back to our old high school so that there was a need. And we were like, okay, this is an opportunity here. We had an episode where, you know, episode 63, I just wrote it down, where our brother Kashiv was telling us about the vendor machines. and how you can make a couple grand a month doing it. Like, this sounds like passive income that we can actually obtain.

And so once there was an opportunity in our old high school that had none, were like, great. But the most important thing was like, how do we get back? Right? We just don't want to take. And so in order to pass it through the board, we're like, this is our idea. We're going to give 15% of all income every month back to the senior class. And so we wanted to help.

Yeah, I mean, we know that, you know, the country's in the pandemic and everybody's economic situation is different. And so we wanted to alleviate the cost of senior dues. and prom costs and, you know, graduation caps and all those type of things. We're like, look, we can create our own ecosystem inside the school. The kids are going to use the vendor machines and they're actually going to reap the benefits of using it because the money's coming back to them. So they don't have to do any more big sales or fundraisers. The ecosystem is already built.

That's cool. And so when people come in to travel and sports, when kids have games and the away team comes in and kids after practice, they're all putting money into their own ecosystem. And so that was just a creative way that we thought that we can pay back to our team. that's cool. That's amazing. Yeah, a couple things that illustrates, I just want to point out to everyone listening is like there's so many ways to make money, especially in business, right? I mean, investing is a lot of cool things you do, but typically it takes money to make money and there's ways to do no money down, obviously, but in business, like, it doesn't take quite as much. It just takes more hustle. So like, you listen to an episode of your show and or any podcast, but we'll use you

guys. And you're like, oh, trucking. That seems cool. And then you just go out and do it. And then you figure it out and you have problems and you ask questions and you get through it. You talk to people have done it. And before long, you've got a driver and you've got a truck and it's driving around. And anybody can do that, not just the host of a podcast, but every listener of the podcast. I actually met a guy recently out here in Maui who was saying arms dealer. Like legit. Wow. Yeah. And he's like, I was like, how did you become an arms dealer? He goes, well, you know that movie? I think it was like Lord of War or something like that. He's like, you know that movie. I think I watched that movie and I was like, and this guy's young too. He's like my age. Like maybe younger, like maybe young

And he's like, I watched that movie like when it came out. And I called my brother and I was like, dude, we should be arms of dealers. And so we just figured it out and we just made it. And now this guy like, anyway, the guy's like ridiculously wealthy and a little scary. But he just heard something and was like, I'm going to do that. And then went after it and then became successful at it. Now he's like bringing in like ammo or whatever, like just massive amounts of ammo, which is a good business to be in right now apparently.

But anyway, I love that idea of you. Like, it all works. Like, it all works. Like, you can find out with vending machines. Yeah, I'm going to go crush the vending machines or the stock market or real estate or Airbnb or Turro. I mean, you guys have named all these things today. And I can pull an example and you guys can pull examples of people who have made

millions of dollars off of these things. But what it takes is just that commitment, right? They got to stick with it long enough to make it work. What advice do you have on that? I mean, that's probably one of the biggest problems people have is they get excited about an idea. and then it's gone. Like, you know, two months later, it's no longer exciting.

It's no longer the new thing, the shiny object. And so they move on to the next idea. And years go by and they haven't made any impact on any of them. What's your advice for those people? Yeah, I mean, consistency is one of the biggest things that stops people. And that's like my advice for most people that ask, like, you know, what's the two biggest takeaways that I have from our business success has been creativity and consistency, something that people lack, especially these days, creativity.

Nobody wants to be creative. Everybody wants to just copy what everybody else is doing. And consistency. You know, nobody wants to have that level of consistency where it's like, of course, it's easy to post on social media every day if you have 100,000 followers and everybody's liking, everybody's commenting. But if you have 10 followers and you get one like and no comments and you put a lot of time and effort into, you know, crafting a post, it's discouraging.

It's like, what's the point of doing this? So consistency, being able to do that. And once again, that goes back to sports, you know, being able to show. to 1,000 jump shots every single day, like when nobody's watching that allows you to perform in, you know, big moments when everybody's watching. So consistency is something that is extremely, extremely underrated. And no matter what business you're in, I see so many people that have, you know, talent, they have good ideas, but they're just not consistent.

And you're never going to be rewarded if you're not consistent. Yeah. I'm going to take something I actually heard in his financial advising class. And it was setting tangible goals, right? And so somebody says, I want to save $10,000 a month. His first question is, have you ever saved $1,000 a month? And the answer is no. And it's like, well, let's start there, right?

Like, because as soon as you don't make the $10,000, I'm not doing this, right? But if you said something that's very tangible, something that's very reachable, you're more likely to say, okay, well, I did the thousand. Let's change the market now. Let's get it to $2,000. And so that's the first thing. And the second thing I would say is failure. It's part of the process.

But it's the beginning of the journey, right? So it's part of the process, but it's the beginning of the journey. And so a lot of times people will look at our chapter, I guess we're on chapter, how many months were in chapter 26. And they'll say, well, I want to be at where they're at. But they don't see what happened through chapters 1 through 25, right? And so you shouldn't compare somebody else's success to where you're starting. Your journey is going to be your journey. And so be consistent, like you said with that.

But know that it's not easy. It's not easy. There's a lot of hours were put into this, a lot of sacrifices put into this, which is why the title is so perfect, right? Like everything that we've accomplished, we've literally earned. Yeah. I like this example when it comes. I like it to fitness because for some reason people can understand it with fitness where it's hard for them to understand it with finances. Very similar to for some reason when we describe how something works with a house, people are confused.

But when we just change it to describing a car, it clicks and they all of a sudden understand financing of a car. When you see someone with an incredible body and you say, I want to look like that person, that's usually a lie. because you already would look like that person if you want to look like that person. That person gets up early and they work out hard and they tell themselves no about what they eat constantly and they actually have to prioritize their fitness. That's one of the reasons that I never can get fitness and business to work well together because I have to give something up in order to have that and I'm just not willing to give those things up.

So I hear a lot of people say, I wish I look like the rock. I'm like, no, you don't wish you look like the rock. If you worked out with the rock one day, you would never go back again. you'd be throwing up. You don't want that. And you don't want that level of consistency in your life. When he travels to movie sets, he brings his weights with them. He sets up an entire little camp to work out every single morning that he has a level of dedication to just fitness that most people will never have to anything in their life absent, you know, maybe their kids. And I really like what you guys are saying about, well, if you want to save $10,000, have you ever saved $1,000? Have you

ever saved $100? Have you ever saved X percentage of your income? How many things have you said no to? Because that's what consistency is all about. It's about saying no all the time to anything outside of whatever you made that commitment to. Is that similar to what you see when you guys are trying to spread, you know, financial literacy to people that never learned it at home? Yeah, I think that you nailed it, Dave. Yeah, I mean, that's it, man.

And like you said, it's not just in the world of finance, right? Are you committed to your relationship? Right. What things are you able to say no to? Because saying no is very important, too. And that's something that I've had to learn just on a personal level, like saying no is okay. Right? It just means like my time is, I can't allocate my time to this right now.

So it has to be a no. And that's something that I was struggling with because I'm coming from the world. Like you got to make everybody happy, right? Like I got to make my students happy. I want to make my coworkers feel like this is the best place for them to be in. And now I'm in the world of business and especially if it's like, you know what? I don't have the time. I don't.

And not feeling guilty about that. I mean, so it's definitely a process. What would you say, Rashad? Yeah, I think I agree what Troy said. And small task, as Dave said, is extremely, extremely important not to look because it's discouraging. When you set a goal, it's like goal setting. The reason why most people don't reach their goals is because they're not setting

the proper goal. So an example of that is to say, okay, I want to make $100,000 for the year. That's like a common goal, right? And they started off in January 1st and it's like 100,000. And then it's like, all right. Now, let's break that even down to it's like, okay, I need to make $8,000 a month. But that's still not really a goal. That's just like you're just throwing it out there in the universe and just hoping that it comes back to you.

The goal is more of the activity. So it's like, all right, if you have a merch company and, you know, you know your profits and it's like, okay, I know I need to sell, you know, 50 t-shirts a week to in order to read. this goal of 100,000 a year, but that's still not really even because you can't really control how much you sell. The activities is really the goal. So the activity is like, okay, in order to sell from tracking my previous history, I know that, you know, if I go to barbershops twice a week for two hours, if I go to a flea market, if I run ads on social media, if I do all of this for 20 hours a week, that's going to lead to 50 sales a week. So now you really, the goal is really the activity. It's the same thing we're losing weight.

Just to say you're going to lose 20 pounds, that's not really a goal. The goal, even saying you're going to work out every single day is not really a goal. The goal is like to say, okay, I need to run two miles a day. I need to do an hour of hit training. I need now I need to eat this. I can't have this much carbs. So now you really, the goal is really the activity. And as a result of the activity, then you'll actually accomplish the goal as a byproduct.

So I think people will kind of go about it the wrong way. And that's discouraging. And that's the reason why most people, A, don't reach their goals. And B, just kind of give up on their goals because after a couple of weeks, you see it's not working for you, then, you know, you just go back to doing what you was doing before. Yes, this is a great point. We call them the new week resolutions. The new week? Yeah.

Right. Everybody has a new year's resolution. Yep. After a week. New week resolution. Yeah. I'm a big believer in this idea of like once a week, sit down, rewrite out your goal. Like, what are you working toward?

Remind yourself of that. It's like going to church, right? But you're on the church with yourself. You're like, this is what we're doing. This is why we're here. This is what I'm going to do this week to accomplish it. This is my weak goal. And it lines up with my vision.

Mary, you know, like I want to lose 20 pounds. Great. That's your vision where you want to go to. But the real goal is, am I going to go to the gym four times this week? And am I going to eat under 2,500 calories every day? That's the goal. And if I accomplish that, the results will take care of themselves. Like, it's really that simple.

Yet I would guess 99% of the world doesn't operate under that. concept. They just have big ideas. And it's exciting to talk about losing ways. Exciting to look at that picture on the wall of that model and say I'm going to look like that. It's not exciting to say no to ice cream. It's like, that just sucks. But I don't know, sometimes that's the pain required. You guys, it's been amazing. We got one more section we got to get to before we get you out of here. And that is our famous four. The famous four are the same four questions we ask every guest every week. And we're going to throw them with you guys right now. So question number one, is there a how?

habit or trait you're currently each working on in your own lives trying to improve. Anything you're trying to improve in your lives right now? Definitely. Since we're talking about working out, working out is one of the habits that I'm trying to get better at. I have like consistent spurts where I'm like, all right, I'm good for like three, four weeks. And it's like, all right, we're traveling.

We're moving. Wait, I forgot. So definitely that's one. Yeah. Yeah, for me, it's just being more organized. You know, it's a lot on our place right now. So just keeping track on like text message in an email, just, you know, day-to-day life. So that's something that, you know, just trying to balance and just have more of an organized system.

When you hit that next level of success, like it sounds like you guys have, it feels like you just jump from playing with the freshmen to playing with the varsity. Like the game moves so much faster. By the time your brain registers an opportunity, it's already over, right? Like I definitely should relate to that feeling. And then what you said, Troy, I have consistent spurts. That might be the best way of describing my workout life. Because everyone says be consistent. I'm like, yeah, I consistently have that sprint and then done.

I need to read the first. And that's the worst part of working out is it's always the worst in the beginning. You're sore. You have the delayed onset muscle soreness. You're shaky. Your ego gets beat up because you haven't been in there. And so like now, if I went in right now, my warm up weight would be like the max that I could probably do.

And then you finally get over that hump and then something takes you away from it and you lose all that ground. You've got to start up. Yeah. That's exactly right. All right. Next question. What are some of your favorite business books? How to win friends and influence people.

Definitely a good book to read anybody that's interested in business or just life in general. Yeah. Of course, like, you know, the rich dad, poor dad. That was something that was very influential to me early on. I just, I'm reading a book now called Contagious about marketing. That's pretty good. That's a few of them. Money Master the game is a great one that we actually read inside of our book club.

I love Who Move My Cheese. I think it's so simple that everybody can learn something from it. And since we were talking about allocating time, 12 week, yeah, I think it's a great one. Phenomenal book, yeah. Can you briefly break down what the concept is and who moved my cheese? So there's four types of personalities. It's about mice. And it's like a race to get to the cheese.

And there's just four types of personalities. And based on when you read the book, you can figure out which personality you have and kind of like the personalities that are around you. Somebody will have fear and won't see what the vision. And there's going to be somebody who is fearless and is willing to take risk. And, you know, those type of people are the ones who usually get to the cheese. And so it's just like a mindset, but such an easy read, like 87 pages. But I just took so much from it. I'm like, oh, this is so good.

Like, all right. I started recognizing my family. members and I started recognizing my friends and I'm like, all right, yeah, that type of mouse. And the concept would be the cheese used to, like what it took to be successful used to be this and something's changed. Right. That's the idea. Yeah.

Which we recently saw with the pandemic and now like with the fact that everything's kind of moving online. Right. Yeah. People are like, oh, yeah, the pandemic happened. That's the cheese being moved, right? Things were this way and now the cheese has been moved. And now I'm going to sit here and I'm going to complain or I'm going to be fearful.

I'm going to go hide in the corner or I'm going to. adapt and I'm going to shift and yeah I'm glad you brought that book up we don't talk about that book enough here because that's a phenomenal one everybody needs to read it because what what my opinion at least is and brandons I believe too is the way that the government has printed money has changed the rules of how wealth is being built just like the NFL change when they made it more offensive friendly you can't play the same we're going to run the ball and have a good defense and have a conservative mindset and still come out ahead so the cheese is moved and you have to adapt or you're going to be hungry. So thank you for mentioning that. The next question, what are some of your hobbies?

Hobby for me, sheesh, I only have to me having me sports. Obviously, I actually just started playing basketball again for cardio. I haven't played basketball in a long time. I just started playing like recently with a couple of my friends picked that back up. That's good cardio. So that's something that definitely, you know, a pastime hobby of mine. Outside of that, I don't know. I'm not really sure. That's why you asked me that the other day. I'm like, wait, I can't say playing basketball anymore. I don't do that. I love, so I love sneakers.

And so I started out just, like, loving to get you the sneakers that you couldn't get when you grew up, when you were growing up as a kid. And so I don't know. I guess I've kind of accumulated a sneaker collection now. So I love sneakers. And something that has kind of surprised me is that I've enjoyed photography. So it's something that it's become like a hobby. Like, I love taking good pictures. I see pictures. When I'm walking, I'm like, this is going to be a good shot.

Like, oh, we should stop here. Like, let's take this picture. And now if you ever like around us, like, you'll see Shaddy hand me his phone. Like he won't even say anything. It just hand me his phone and it's like cold. That's literally Brandon and me all the time. I just, I hand him the phone to say take a picture because he's so much better at it than me. Yeah, he'll just hand it. So he won't even say anything. I'm like, can you unlock it at least? Yeah. Were you thinking that, Brandon, when he was telling that story that that's the same thing I do.

Yes. That's funny. That's you and I. That's pretty much it. Awesome, man. All right. Well, let's get to the last question from me anyway. If you had to really narrow it down, what separates successful entrepreneurs from those who give up, fail, or just never get started? Is there one or two things you can boil it down to? I think the biggest thing is having failure, it's not an option. You know, that's something that, you know, we talk about a lot. And we talk about burning the ships. And, you know, I think that for me, you know, I never really had a real job. I was always entrepreneur my whole entire life.

So I don't really know how it's like it has to work or it has to work. Like there's really no alternative. When you have an alternative, nine times out of ten, it's not going to work. you look at it like it's optional. So I never really looked at anything that I did is optional. I just looked at it like, this is the only only way. And that's, that's worked for me. Like, even things now to this day, like, I'll just set a date for something and 10 months in the future. And it's like, all right, we got to do it because the date's set. So I think that that's having that sense of urgency and having that conviction to just win by any means, it really separates a lot of people. And I think most people, even if they say it, they don't really have it.

They don't really truly believe it. They don't, like, they start something. But in the back of their mind, they're already thinking about when it doesn't work, I'm going to end up doing this. So, you know, I think that at least for me, that's something that I never really thought about, never thought about like if it doesn't work. What happens? Just thought about like if it doesn't work, we just got to tweak some things and just do the different way. Yeah.

It's like the Michael Jordan quote. Like, I can accept failure. I can't accept not trying. Like, we're literally willing to try anything. Like we don't like I said at the beginning Like failure is just the beginning of the journey Because what's going to happen is you're going to learn from it And you're going to apply what you learn

And you're going to make yourself better And so we never shy away from that That didn't work. We're never going to try it again. All right, this is a lesson that we've learned. We're going to apply it. We're going to take actionable items. We're going to do something a little different.

We're going to tweak it. But I think what he nailed it before. Consistency is what's going to separate you. Yeah. It's the only thing that separates people who are successful when it's not. Like we saw adversity. and we said, all right, let's run through it.

Let's run through it. All right, we saw some setbacks. All right, let's run through it. We never looked like, all right, well, we're going to give up now. I'm just like, nah, the purpose is so much bigger. Our mission is so much bigger. We just got to keep going, no matter what. Like, we're willing to do things that typical people aren't to be successful.

And that's kind of what separates us. That's a great answer. Everybody sees Kobe Bryant's swagger, right? And that's what everybody wants, is they want to be able to say, I'm the best and beat their chest and say I came out on top. But not everybody sees the three in the morning workouts where he was where he was out working his trainers. He couldn't get a person to keep up with them.

Right. Like it makes me think about you go for a run with your dog and your dog gets tired before you do. You got to go get another dog to finish the run. It's not how most human beings work. But what you're describing is exactly that's what's happening that gives somebody the right to be that good and on top of their game. And I guess the equivalent in our world to be living the life.

You want to live, not the life. have been dictated to you from other things. And so I just can't, I love hearing that because that's exactly right. And in my own life, I got to remind myself that all the time because there's always a temptation to replace consistency with intensity. I'll just put a lot of effort real quick and then I'll be done and it doesn't work. Yeah. Yeah.

So true. All right. Well, last question of the day. I think you two are an intriguing pair and you both communicate very well together. So props to you guys for that. Where can people find out more about you? Earn your leisure across all platforms. We're on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter.

So every social media platform and then YouTube and then all podcast outlets. And then our website is earn your leisure.com. So we made it real simple. Yeah. We kept it the same across all platforms. And yeah, we have a podcast network actually. But we have a bunch of other podcasts that's under the umbrella and our flagship show, Earnierleisure. And then we have a bunch of stuff at Eeyweil University.

We have merch. we have a bunch of different things that we have going on. But all of that information is on our website, Earn Your Leisure.com. Perfect. I love it, man. Well, thank you guys for joining us today. It's been phenomenal.

I love what you guys are doing. Keep it up. And let us know if we can never help you out in the future. I appreciate it, man. Thank you. Thank you. All right. That was an interview with the gentleman from Earn Your Leisure, Troy and Rashad.

Awesome dudes. Very smart. And they're doing just really, really good stuff over there, Earnier Leisure. Like their podcast is blowing up. The YouTube's just massive and they're just reaching just millions of people with this message of financial literacy. I love it. It just goes to show.

It doesn't matter where you're coming from, who your audience is. It's all the same stuff. And I'm very happy to see these two kind of hitting that next stage and the amount of influence that they're wielding because their message is incredible. Yeah. They're solid. So well, cool, man. Well, thanks for joining me once again, David Green for another episode of the Bigger Pockets podcast.

Anything in particular that you're working towards right now in life that our audience can help you out? Oh, thank you. Yeah, I started a brokerage and we're getting licensed in all 50 states. So I'm looking to hire a mortgage or a real estate. It does both. So I'm looking for any loan officer, but an experienced real estate agents. We can't take on new agents right now. So if you're a loan officer and you would like a better brokerage to hang your license,

please contact me on bigger pockets or, you know, through social media, however you want to get a hold of me. And if you're looking for a loan, same thing. We're looking to help make, help people understand how to finance real estate and really just the right way, the right way to do it. I'm seeing so many people that have stopped overthinking it and are now having a lot of success with real. So I think, Brandon, that was the key for you with Open Door Capitals. You just quit overthinking it and you put all your energy into one thing like Rashad was saying today and it made a huge impact on your success. Yeah, very cool, man. Well, keep it up. And of course, David's at David Green 24 all over social media. I'm at Beardie Brandon all over social media.

And that's all I got. David, get us out of here. All right. This is David Green for Brandon, the Vision Master 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 height, you're in the right place. Be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from BiggerPockets.com.

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