Blaze Your Own Trail - From Knucklehead to Financial Freedom with Ryan D. Lee

Episode Date: April 20, 2026

In this episode of the Blaze Your Own Trail podcast, host Jordan Mendoza interviews Ryan D. Lee, who shares his journey from a troubled youth to a successful entrepreneur and financial coach. Ryan discusses his philosophy on money, the importance of financial freedom, and how he helps others achieve their goals in a constrained timeframe. He emphasizes the significance of being present in family life and the lessons learned through his experiences in real estate investing. The conversation also touches on the concept of the ownership economy versus the dependency economy, and Ryan's approach to building a passive income machine. He concludes with a powerful message about living life to the fullest and using one's talents to serve others. Takeaways Ryan helps people retire in 10 years or less. He believes money's greatest value is providing options. Ryan's early life was marked by challenges and learning the hard way. He emphasizes the importance of being a present father. The 2008 financial crisis was a turning point for Ryan. He transitioned from a corporate job to real estate investing. Financial freedom is about cash flow, not just net worth. Ryan learned to build a system for financial independence. He advocates for the ownership economy over the dependency economy. Teaching others is a way to reinforce one's own learning. Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Ryan D. Lee 01:18 Ryan's Early Life and Challenges 06:16 The Turning Point: Family and Purpose 12:07 Transitioning from Corporate to Real Estate 17:25 Lessons Learned in Real Estate Investing 23:33 Building a System for Financial Freedom 29:08 The Ownership Economy vs. Dependency Economy 33:43 The Passive Income Machine 39:12 The Book and Its Impact 45:35 Parting Words: Rise Up, Live Free Connect with Ryan: https://ryandlee.com/ Attend Ryann's event: https://joinriseuplive.com/2026 Buy a copy of Ryan's book: https://a.co/d/0gNEgob4   Are you an entrepreneur?Join my FREE Group Coaching Community where we have live calls, Q&A and more! Our Trailblazer Ecosystem also enables you to network with other entrepreneurs and creator hub eliminates multiple subscriptions and logins creating a one stop shop to take action!Use code: FOUNDING100 for 12 months access FREE and Founding pricing for life! (While Supplies Last)Join now! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello everyone and welcome to the Blaze Your Own Trail podcast. My name is Jordan Mendoza. I'm your host. And I've got a very special guest today. His name is Ryan D. Lee. And I'm going to have him tell you a little bit about who he is and what he does today. Jordan, I got to tell you, man, just hearing you introduce me on your podcast is a privilege. It is an honor, my friends.

I'm honored to be here. You know, Jordan, what I do today is I help people take control over their money. And although we put a very defined mission statement on it, my goal is to help people retire in 10 years or less. And I only use that word retirement to meet people where they're at, to get them to understand that we're talking about owning your time. I don't really believe in the idea of retirement. So really what I do is I help people take control of their money

so they can take control of their life. And I believe, Jordan, that money's greatest intrinsic value is to give you more options in your life and more control over your time. So I help people do that in a very constrained window 10 years or less. Love it. Love it. And, you know, my favorite part of the show, as you've had a chance to dive into some episodes, is taking that rewind.

And we want to see what you're made of. We want to see where you came from and get some context on the journey. So where were you born and raised? And, you know, what kind of kid were you? What type of things did you get into in the adolescent years? Man, I tell you what it says. I'm so excited to go here because I don't go here very often, right? But I was born and raised in Utah.

I was born, I actually live in a house right here in Utah. I moved back to Utah about 12 years ago, 14 years ago. And I live in a house where I used to hunt. Like this whole area up on the mountainside, there was nothing here. It was just, you know, shrubs and trees. And we used to hunt here. And when I moved back, they were doing a little development here. And I thought to myself, man, I'm going to go, that area was special to me.

And so I live right here in Utah. But here's the funniest thing about kind of my adolescent years. My dad likes to call me a knucklehead, right? One of the reasons he calls me that is I kind of learn things the hard way. I'm a little bit stubborn, and if someone tells me no, I'm going to do it until I learn the lesson that I need to learn. And as a adolescent, you know, I kind of tested all my boundaries. I ended up dropping out of high school. I didn't love the being told what to do or told how to learn.

And it's not like I dropped out of high school to do anything productive with my life. I kind of messed around and basically lived in the gutter for four or five years. And it was really interesting. That set me off on a path where I realized after a couple of years and some hard knocks and some hard mistakes that I didn't want that. That wasn't what my life was meant to be. And I either let go completely and just slide into the abyss or I start making better decisions with my life. And that's kind of what led me to opening up to a different path, you know, really finding God inside of my life, finding a sense of purpose inside of my life, finding the beautiful woman I'm married to today. She never would have looked at me

if she would have met me back in my high school dropout days, but I found this woman and we got married and I started off down the corporate path. And that's really what opened me up to what I do today because in that corporate path, I'll never forget, Jordan. You know, I found myself in a position where, you know, I just followed the traditional scripts. Like as soon as I decided to get my life back together,

it was go to school, get a job, you know, saving a 401K and one day it's going to work out. And so I started doing that. And, you know, as I was putting money away in my 401k and IRA and brokerage accounts and all that stuff, you know, I started making little tradeoffs with my life. And I didn't realize those tradeoffs in the beginning, but, you know, making a couple hundred thousand or not hundred thousand, $32,000 was my salary at a college. And I thought to myself, I want to make more. So I'd started to climb the corporate ladder, right? And every rung of the corporate ladder I would climb, I got a little promotion, made a little bit more money, got some bonuses.

But I started making tradeoffs. And I kept telling myself, Jordan, you know, one day when I have enough money, when the 401K gets big enough, I'll buy my life back. And in the beginning, honestly, those tradeoffs that were kind of exciting, you know, bigger geography, more travel, more responsibility, more prestige, corner office. But I found myself early on in my career about four years out of college where I was disconnected from my family. Those tradeoffs were starting to catch up to me. I wasn't, you know, I lived in a different state than my family because I traveled so much. I would come home on the weekends. I wasn't a very good father, wasn't a very good husband.

And I just kept thinking in my life, is this it? Right? Do I have to, like, how am I going to get out of this? And I'll never forget, that's really what opened me up to starting to think differently because in 2008, my net worth crested $100,000. I thought to myself, oh my gosh, I'm making it, right? I'm making it. But in 2008, we all know what happens.

Everything dropped like a rock. My $100,000 net worth, you know, it dropped down to $28,000. And the two lessons I learned from that, lesson number one, I had no control. And if I had no control, how could I ever control my financial plan to buy my life back? That was my whole goal. Work hard, save hard, retire early. And I'm grateful that it happened about four years out of college because it was a window into my future.

You know, I was kind of modeling my career, my life, my path after people who were 20, 30 years ahead of me. I wanted to be a vice president one day, right? And I remember looking at those people. These were people who had traded their entire life. Many of them were on their second, third marriage. They were probably overweight, you know, and it's not like they were all bad people, but they had traded their life away. And in 2008, I watched their lives meltdown.

And I thought to myself, that's me, 30 years from now. And I did not. I was unwilling to trade the next 30 years, making the tradeoffs I'd made up to that point with my money and my life. And so that's what opened me up to the doorway of where we're at today and what we'll be talking about today. But I grew up as I had to learn things a hard way. And in my finances, I learned things a hard way.

My dad called me a knucklehead. He still calls me a knucklehead because once I get punched in the face a couple of times, I realize I probably better turn the other cheek and figure out something else. Well, it takes a knucklehead to know a knucklehead, I would say. There we go. But also, everyone's a knucklehead. I have knucklehead sons, daughters. You know, I'm probably the winner of all the knucklehead awards in my household.

But, you know, we have to be able to admit it. And just because it took a little longer doesn't mean we still didn't get there in the end, right? That's kind of the way that I look at it. So I'd love to, let's talk a little bit about, you know, you start to make some shifts and changes and it gets you in a position to meet your wife. So tell the audience that you guys have a family now. What does that look like? And if so, talk a little bit about what it's like being a parent. Yeah, man, you know, I didn't go to college until I was 23.

And, you know, this is after I dropped out of high school, kind of messed around with life. Once I decided to get my life back on track, I went and got a GED. and I thought to myself, well, professional, responsible people, they go to college, right? They get a job, or they go to college so they can get a job. And so I went to college not with the intention of learning anything. In fact, I just wanted, I felt so behind in my life, Jordan. I felt so behind at 23 being a high school dropout. I mean, come on, are you kidding me?

And so I went into college and my goal was to go through it as fast as I could. I ended up getting my four-year degree, my bachelor's degree in two years. I don't know how looking back how they let me do this. You know, my senior year, I took two classes at the same time. And I just rotated what day I went to what class. And as long as I passed, as long as I got that degree, I didn't really care. And I was so focused on running through college so I could get on with my life that I wasn't looking around until I ran into Beth.

And I'll never forget that day, right? I was in the second floor of the library. I was down there studying trying to manage my 24 credits I'm taking. And I look up and the table I'm sitting at, there's a table, you know, directly across from me. And there she is, right? There she is. And, man, I just, like, you know, you have those moments. I just stared.

I couldn't help myself. I'm just staring. And she looks up, she looks up, and we met eye contact, made eye contact. And, like, I'm a shy guy. I was embarrassed. So I hurrying to look down, right? And I couldn't help myself. I look back up, right?

A few minutes later. And again, I'm staring at her. And she looks up and we make eye contact again. I'm like, oh, my gosh, this is so embarrassing. And the third time I did it, you know, I'm staring at her. Should we make eye contact again? and I just shove all my books in my bag and I stumble out of the library

and I go home to my roommate and I tell him, man, I just saw the woman of my dreams but I was too shy, too embarrassed to talk to her. Now, fortunately, she went home to her roommate and said, I saw the guy of my dreams, but he didn't come up and talk to me. He stumbled out of the library like an idiot, right? And we ended up having a class together

that I didn't even know. It's one of those big old classes and as soon as I was in that class, I saw her. And, man, I'm so grateful I went to college and yes, I got my degree, but what I really found is I found my wife Beth. And, you know, what has defined our life, I'll never forget. You know, when we graduate at college, she was so excited to become a mother.

Now, of course, I wanted to be a father, but I thought to myself, that's, you know, later. And so we got married. We had our first baby right out of college, and that first baby, he was born of the heart defect. And I knew about that heart defect. We would monitor him from his, you know, in the womb all the way to when he was born. And I'll never forget when he came out, that roller coaster of a moment. emotion. I was so nervous to be a father, to have responsibility. I felt like I could barely take care of myself. Now I'm taking care of a wife. Here comes this little baby boy. And I felt all

these nerves, all this anxiety, all of this apprehension. And the second the doctor lifted him above that curtain and I saw that boy, my heart, it felt like I was on a roller coaster. My heart went from my stomach to my throat and I was in love. I was in love with that little kid. He's been, and then he's my oldest. I have two more. But being a father has been one of the greatest honors of my life. and kind of going back to this idea of these tradeoffs, you know, early on in my life, in my career, I thought, man, I'm going to work hard, trade my time, and I'll figure out a father when I've got more money. And for those first couple years, you know, we were monitoring my son's heart defect because, you know, we knew about it. And they kept telling us he grow out of it and you might grow out of it.

And I'll never forget the day, this was about three months after I had lost all that money in the stock market in 2008. I got a call for my wife. And again, man, I didn't live in the same state. worked, I covered such a big geography and I had moved my family around so much in our early corporate days that they lived in Texas and I worked in Indianapolis. And I got a call from Bethany and she told me, hey, Ryan, I'm taking Doug in for an emergency open art surgery. I took him to his, you know, orthopedic person and they said fluid blood is leaking out of his heart and it's going into his lungs. They have to close his heart right now. And man, Jordan, at that moment, life slapped me in the face. I realized that tradeoffs.

have a cost to them. And the tradeoffs I had been making were not worth what I might be losing in that moment. And I came back home, Jordan. I sat in the hospital for two weeks with my little son, Doug. He was just four at the time.

And I re-evaluated everything, everything about my life. And I did feel kind of stuck in between a rock and a hard place because as a provider, I wanted to provide. I needed to provide, right? Be able to bring revenue into the house,

forgive my family a life that they wanted. Now I have all these medical bills. but I wasn't willing anymore sitting in that hospital to trade my presence as a present father waiting for one day when I had enough money. And I made some new commitments. My son came out of surgery. He was, they closed up all of the holes in his heart. He's now healthier, he's 20 now. But in that hospital, I made a commitment to be a present father, to figure out the game of money without trading my life and time away doing it.

And I'm so grateful for this. You know, you and I were talking a little bit about God before we got on the air. I think God gives us exactly what we need, not oftentimes what we want, but what we need. And that was what I needed to wake me up. That money does have a meaning and purpose, but it is not something that you trade your life away for. You have to figure out how to master money and build and live a life that matters today, not waiting for one day. And so grateful for those early years. I'm grateful for that early experience.

And man, I'm so grateful. I'm still married to Bethany. We're coming up on 22 years now. It's been a phenomenal ride. I've been married. You know it's He's high. lows, but man, the lows make the highs. Yeah, absolutely. Well, congratulations on the longevity. Yeah, it's definitely, it's not easy, right? It's not easy to maintain and sustain and especially

when we got two knuckleheads trying to get in the way and pride and ego and all the other fun stuff that us humans get all over us, you know. And I'm so grateful to to hear that your son's doing awesome. And, you know, 20 years later, you know, it's, When moments like that happen, they kind of hit us and write in our tracks like you experienced, but it does build a lot of grit and resilience and tenacity and determination and all the things that make a good trailblazer. And so let's talk about what type of fire this really engulfed into you, right? So now you're like, man, like, do I need to be doing this corporate thing?

How much longer did corporate actually last? Was there a side hustle that was birth out of the research? I'd love you to just give context on what did you do next? Yeah, man, you know, it was really fascinating that those two events happened for me in consecutive order, right? I lost all that money in 2008. And, you know, the interesting thing about 2008, I know everyone lost money. Everyone had, you know, their own 2008 moments. But for me, I realized I had traded the latter part of four or five years of my life out of college.

I'd work really hard. And I'm a good saver. I've always been a good saver. And I was really proud of that $100,000 net worth. And I had this arbitrary goal in my mind that I'm going to retire early. That was my whole goal. I was working towards that idea. But in 2008, I realized I have no control and I don't even know what it means.

Like, I don't know why I lost money. I don't know how to prevent it. I don't know, like, how do does someone retire early? And the more I looked into that system. And I'm just going to say that system is kind of the system that we've all been told to follow. Go to school, get a job, put your money in a diversified portfolio. the more I realized that I was completely dependence on things that I could not control. I was planning my life.

I was trading my life for something I had no control over. And that was really difficult for me. I am a control type of person. I like to feel like I have some influence on my life and I can make choices that impact and shape the direction of my life. And I felt helpless in my financial plan. And so I started reading books, right? I started trying to take a little bit more control.

I was doing some option trading and things like that. But no matter what I did, I felt like the second I let money go out of my bank account, it was just kind of cross your fingers and hope that it works out. And at one point I got to the point where I thought, maybe it's just all a lie. Maybe there's no way to do it. Maybe you've got to be lucky or an athlete or whatever,

make millions of dollars. And then I came across a book. And I think everyone has, again, these perspective changing moments. And when your perspective changes, what you see changes, your world changes. And it was rich dad, poor dad. It was Robert Kiyosaki. Now, I'd heard of that book. early on, I thought, that's kind of dumb, a book about dads, it's purple. Why would I read that?

Right? And I'll never forget when I picked that book up at this point of my life, I read savers or losers. I read that the definition of financial freedom isn't net worth, it's cash flow. All of these little things confirmed one thing for me, that the Wall Street system would never allow me to, A, have the control, or B, be able to retire early. That's what he means by savers or losers. You're going to lose the game of money. And at that point, I kind of felt like I was losing. losing the game of life because I was spending so much time chasing money. And so if savers are losers, what do the wealthy actually do? And what I learned is the wealthy aren't doing mutual funds from K's company-sponsored

matches better than everyone else. They're literally doing the exact opposites. And so for me, I kind of define these two worlds today as this. There's the dependency economy. I give my money away. I'm dependent on taxes, markets, interest rates, you know, all these different things. And then there's the ownership economy. And we'll talk a little bit about the ownership economy.

because I didn't fully understand it when I got into it, but Robert Kiyosaki said, buy real estate. So I started buying real estate. And as soon as I read Robert Kiyosaki's book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, another book came across my awareness, right? And the book was called Creating Well. Now, you're in the real estate world. You might have heard of this guy.

His name's Robert Allen. I call him the OG. He's the guy who actually trained Kim Kiyosaki how to invest in real estate. But it wasn't the title of his book that caught my attention. It was the subtitle. The subtitle of Rob,

Robert Allen's book was Follow Allen's Seven Steps or Seven Principles and you can retire in 10 years. And I thought to myself, holy crap, I can do anything. I'm a knucklehead. I can do anything for 10 years, right? And so I read his book and man, it was the simplest strategy that I could actually see myself doing it. He just said, buy two single family homes every year for 10 years and in year 11, you're financially free. And I thought to myself, I could do that, right? I could do that.

So being overly ambitious, I directed all of my focus, my attention to being the best employee I could be. Yes, I did start some side hustles. Yes, I partnered. I did everything I could to get my hands on more money so I could get my 20 single family homes as fast as possible. And I'm going to tell you how I learned a lesson and then I'll tell you where I got when I quit. But the first lesson I learned is financial freedom is a function of cash flow. I bought my first house, Jordan, and I walked around the corporate office with my chest puffed out. I'm a real estate investor.

I thought, I'm so cool. I had no idea what I was doing. About my second house, I had a little bit of anxiety. And by the third house, Jordan, man, I had a full-blown panic attack. Now, given your background, I'm sure you're going to appreciate this to a certain extent. Maybe you'll sympathize with me a little bit. But, you know, I was managing everything. I was finding the properties.

I was rehabbing them myself. I was, you know, finding tenants. I was managing the tenants. I am the worst property manager in the world, the worst. I mean, period, the worst. Like if you call me up with a SOP story, I just cry with you. And then at the end of the month, you're not paying rents. I'm paying the mortgage, right?

And I had a tenant in this third property, and he was willing to give me a bigger down payment to get into the property. But man, there were red flags all over his application. I thought to myself, hey, he's going to give me $5,000. How could I resist? But oh my gosh, he made me pay for that over and over and over again. And after managing that property for about six months, I developed a healthy anxiety to my phone. Every time my phone ring, dude, I would just, my mind.

heart race would start racing. I knew there was an issue. Now, back in my corporate days, I used to sell medical equipment. I'm up at Rapid City, South Dakota, selling a boardroom of hospital administrators, all this medical stuff. And my phone, Jordan, boom, is going off. Call after call after call. Everyone coming in from a different phone number, same area code, and I knew. I knew in the bottom of my heart there was a problem. So I quietly excused myself from the boardroom. I pick up my phone. I start listening to my voicemails. Voicemail number one from the tenant's wife crying saying please don't evict us please we promise she'll never let it happen again voicemail two three four or five from neighbor saying they're going to sue me voice mail remember

five from the husband of this wife saying that cat came on his lawn for the last time he would shoot it again if he had to and find a voicemail from a police officer saying son you better call him and that tenant who i should have evicted months before i never should have put him in the property to begin with i'm a horrible property manager he shot in the middle of a beautiful neighbor a neighbor's cat with a gun, a literal gun, because he was sick of that cat coming on what he perceived to be his law. And Jordan, at that moment,

I felt like I was going to lose it all again. I melted into the corner of the, I mean, luckily I was in a hospital. They didn't have to wheel me into the emergency room. I felt like that's where I belonged at the time, but I thought to myself, I can't do it, man. I can't do it. I can't go any further.

And even though Robert Kiyosaki gave me the perspective that yes, financial freedom is measured in cash flow, I'm so grateful that I took a step back, right? It took me a couple more months, but I learned the lesson that the other side of financial freedom isn't just cash flow, it's time. If you don't own your time, you're not free. I owned a job in real estate, and Jordan, I sucked at that job.

And so everything I did after that was how do I build a system where someone else does the work? They find the property. They rehab the property. They manage the property. Jordan, you know this. There are people out there that do it professionally, And man, I want to pay those people so well.

I want to high-five them. I want to send them Christmas cards and say, I love you so much. I want to own the property. I don't want to manage the property. And so today, well, before I get to today, after that, when I focused on building the system, I went from three properties apprehensive

and just about, you know, going into the insane asylum to scaling to 17 properties and walking away from a six-figure corporate career just four years later. And it was all based on that again, that one situation realizing, oh my gosh, I just have a job. real estate, I need to build a system in real estate.

That's what set me free. Yeah. Yeah, well, I love the fact that, you know, you went through the adversity and you realized that when you're owning something like that, you know, the buck stops with you. Right. You're the janitor. You're the lawyer. You're the negotiator.

You're the salesperson. Yeah. You're the housekeeper. You're the maintenance guy. You're the everything. And that is being somebody that's been in all of those roles, but like working for a company, it's not easy. Like when I had my first property I managed, it was me and one other guy.

And it was about 70 units, but there's two of us. Like, it's a lot, right? So, so you better believe you got to work together. You got to have your ducks in a row. And you realize that, yeah, you just, A, you can't do it anymore, like literally, because you're going to go crazy. But B, it's way, way less costly to pay someone else to take it off your place. that probably actually enjoys it too.

You know what? But those are hard lessons to learn though, you know? I love that you said that. You know, Jordan, here's the thing I've learned about the economy. When the economy is functioning perfectly, and obviously it doesn't function perfectly, so this is an ideal scenario. But when you get glimpses of a perfectly functioning economy,

each person was born with and given very unique talents. And those talents weren't given to the individual for them, just have. They were given to that individual for them to use in the service of other people. people. And Jordan, you are authentically leaning into your talents. I'm authentically leaning into my talents. And when we exchange, we both walk away wealthier because you're doing something that gives you fulfillment. I'm going to pay you for it. I mean, like, when we exchange, it's an easy exchange because you're doing what God gave you the ability to do your talents.

And I'm doing the same. And I love, I love getting with people that, man, my property managers right now, I love them. And I send them Christmas cards. I send them, thank you, like, Chuck Arama gift cards all the time because man those guys they do something that they're good at that I would gladly pay them to do I want them to know I acknowledge them I'm so grateful for them

and because they're leaning into their talents it gives me the freedom to lean it to mine and I love that about an economy yeah that's great yeah I love it so you go from three frustrated and ready to throw in the towel to 17 man doesn't this feel great and it's like a way less of a burden and way less heavy so what was

the, where did you scale to after that? Did you think, hey, let's, let's go bigger. Was it something else? I'd love just to get what actually happened. Yeah, man. So here's how it all came down. Okay, then so another funny story. You know, after 17 properties, you know, I had enough cash flow coming in. Things were moving. I finally had a system down that I'm like, I can just keep adding to this, you know, really without much additional effort in energy. I had a system down to find properties, had a system down to evaluate which one was going to make a good investment. I had several teams of place across the country. And so I could, you know, with capital,

I could just put it into the system, and that system would kick out more capital for me, and it just allowed me to build the system faster. But after 17 properties, I'm still working, right? I'm still working. I had my corporate job. I had said no now to a lot of other things. I'm not traveling the country anymore.

I'm in a consigned geographic area. I'm a more present father. And I'll never forget the day. This is four years after 2008, okay? I walk into my office, and I had a boss, Rob LaMille, Maybe I'll just say Rob. Rob, you know, great guy, but man, you know how it is.

You have a boss, and every time the boss is there, you know there's something going on. And that dude never came to the office, ever. I managed my territory really, really well. And he was in the office, and so I knew there was something wrong. And I remember I walk in, and this is the biggest power play, right? He walks me into my office. He sits in my chair behind my desk, and I sit in the other chair, and he proceeds to tell me, this is four years after 2008. Companies are still kind of tightening their belts.

And he's like, you know what? we let go of the manager in this area. We let go the manager in this area. We let go of the manager in this area. You're lucky to have a job. Now, part of you having this job, you're going to get a little bit of a promotion, and you're going to take over these three areas.

And I'll never forget as he was talking. I had a Charlie Brown moment. Remember back in the day, the Charlie Brown, every time the mom would talk, it sounds like, wah, wah, wah, wah. Like, I zoned out. He was telling me about this. I'm lucky to have a job.

I'm going to take over these territories. And in the back of my head, I was adding up my cash flow. And I was saying, okay, that house pays for my car. That house keeps the light on. That house, you know, that set of houses I can pay my mortgage. And in the back of my mind, I'm just going through this math over and over again.

And I wasn't financially free in the sense that I could travel the world. But I had enough cash flow coming in to survive. And I realized for the first time that little teeny doorway of opportunity that honestly was probably always there. I just didn't give myself the permission to see until this moment. And I'll never forget when Rob kind of snapped me out of this, you know, recycling over and over in my brain, this math. He said, Ryan, are you ready to take this promotion? And I looked at him and I said I quit. And I'll never forget that, Jordan.

Like, I didn't mean to quit that day. In fact, as soon as I said that I wanted to reach out into the air and get those words and pop them back down my throat, I didn't mean to do it. But the second I got over the shock that I just told my boss, I quit, like this wave of relief. It's just like, oh my gosh, I'm free. And I'll never forget. He tried to talk me. He's like, okay, we're going to double how much I'm going to. You tried to talk me into staying, but I'm like, I quit.

I'm done. And so after a few more minutes of negotiating, he realized I was done and I was done and I walked out to the parking lot of my office because I didn't go into the office that day intending to quit. And I get on my phone and I call Beth and my wife. And I'm like, hey, honey, I just quit my job. Now this is how you know you're married to an amazing woman, right? She knew the stress and the pressure and I did not love what I was doing. And she leans into the phone and she says, Ryan, it's about damn time. And I love that, man, because I had no idea what I was quitting to.

I didn't, you know, I didn't intend to do what I'm doing today. But here's how it all started. You know, after about a week of me quitting, I had a few people. Most people thought it was crazy. I mean, most people were like grateful to have a job. But I had a few people in the corporate world. They called me up and they said, hey, Ryan, I heard you quits. How did you do it?

Right? And so I took a few people and I'm like, hey, I did this. Right? I stopped putting money in a 401K. I did this instead. And they would go start doing it. And then when they would get stuck, they'd come back to me and say, okay, I'm stuck here. what did you do here? And I just started kind of coaching people along the way. And before I knew it,

they were quitting or they were getting momentum. They were in control. They felt more empowered with their money. And they would send their friends. And then I would do that with their friends. And before I knew it, I had a group of people that I was helping invest in the way that I invested to walk away from my job. And now, fast forward over a decade later, I've worked with thousands of people. I lead a company called wealth outside Wall Street. Today, I have well over 50 doors. In addition to like some bigger units, well, 50 single family homes, and then some much, much bigger units, golf courses, things like that. But I've just learned how to play the game of money. And going back to that idea of those two economies, you know, I truly understand what it means to be in the

ownership economy today. And I'm going to say this for anyone that's listening, anyone that feels stuck with money today, the reason you're probably stuck with money is you're in an economy, the dependency economy that keeps you dependent. And no matter how well that economy does, that you might have a good market year, you never actually fill in control. And I've worked with so many people that have quote unquote enough money, but because they're nervous about taxes, they're nervous about inflation, they're nervous about market volatility, they're afraid to actually use their money to spend it. Because in the dependency economy, if I start taking money out of a 401k, I run into a very big question, how long am I going to live and how much money do I need to have in that account to make

sure I don't outlive my money. But in the ownership economy, I own assets that I don't have to sell, that generate cash flow, those assets rise because of inflation. I pay no taxes on my cash flow, and it's a whole different system. And I'll tell you what, Jordan, knowing these two economic games, part of me feels extremely frustrated. I feel like a, and I feel a moral obligation to yell as loud as I can to set as many people free as I can, because so many people trade the majority of their life waiting for one day and that one day never comes. I was on that path. And it's a very simple approach. The people that feel stuck, they have to take ownership over their money, their choices, and their results. And that's a version of freedom. And it's a scary version of

freedom. If I take ownership, I have no one else to blame. You're going to learn some hard lessons, but those hard lessons will teach you real, real principles that you can't learn any of the way. And so honestly, that's where I'm at today, Jordan. I help people take control over their money, use the exact same model that I learned in those two early books. I show people how to buy 20 single family homes, do it in 10 years or less, put a system behind it to where they own the asset, but it's passive. I help them build a system where just 20 single family homes can generate six figures of tax-free income for the rest of your life. Yeah, no, I love it. And what I love is the fact that, you know, where you started was it at the idea. The idea turned into three

doors. Three doors almost broke you, but you decided to keep going, which led to 17. 17. 17. is now at 50 with some other asset classes in the mix. And then you're also helping other people and replicating the process. And, you know, when I was in property management, you know, as an on-site manager, one of the things that I always tried to do with my team, whether I had a team of me and one other person or eventually I had a property where I had 24 people on the team between the maintenance team and the office team, I was always looking to duplicate myself.

if I had a leasing professional, I wanted to cross-trained them and teach them how to be an assistant. If I had an assistant, I wanted them to become a manager, right? Because if we can see the people around us actually getting better, then that means that we're doing our job in my eyes. If we can elevate other people, like, I actually would like, hey, go, get a promotion, get better than me. Like, that actually shows me that I know how to teach people well. And in Japan, they say Teaching is learning twice when one person teaches two people learn, right, the teacher and the student. And so the fact that you're continuing to teach other people, it's just making you even better. And it's elevating your game in the process.

I love that. Teaching is learning twice. It's so true, right? And I really believe, you know, one of my early coaches, you know, because I kind of resisted the idea of helping other people with their finances. That was never in my like my bingo card. I never thought to myself, oh, I'm going to help people with money. right but man i've found so much joy in this because my real objective isn't to help people maximize their returns build cash flow yes we do all of that we measure that my real objective is to empower people to live a purpose driven life and i i feel like that's really that's the talent that god gave me god gave me a talent to help people live their best life by removing the constraint of money and so when you do something kind of like what you said teaching is learning twice when you learn something and you live it, I think we're also called to lead it, right? So learning

then leads to living, living then leads to leading. And as you lead, you learn all kinds of new things. Right now I work with people that are older than me, that are younger than me, the economy is completely different when I started versus today. And so I've learned so much. I continue to learn, live, and lead. Learn, live, and lead. And it's a fun, it's a fun cycle to go through in life. Yeah, I love it. And so I'd love just out of curiosity, and I think it would be a value you add to the audience, you know, think about the last decade, because in the past decade, I feel like we've had a hundred years of change in technology. We talk about machine learning. We talk about AI. We talk about social media. Now we have agentic AI. And there's so much, right?

So how has your business changed, if you look at 10 years ago versus today when it comes to systems and processes and being able to actually put a timeline on it, right? like, hey, listen, in 10 years, we can predict based on this model that you're going to get X results. Like, how has the technology increased your ability to deliver on that promise? Man, that's a really good question. I'm going to probably give you the antithesis or the other side of that equation. I mean, here's what we do, okay?

Our system is so boring. And it's so boring. And I want it to be boring. I do not want you to take risk with your money. I want you to take risk with your life, right? Go take risk with your life. When I say risk, like go adventure, go out fun. You don't want to also take risk with your money.

I want you to keep your money. So here's how we do it, man. It's a really simple system. I call it the passive income machine. And I want you to think about three gears all together. And, you know, when the gears interlock, they move each other. And so the first gear is you. Gear number one is you have to become the CEO of your money.

And here's what I believe. Today it's harder. Jordan, you went out of the same age, right? Do you remember back in the day when you would carry a wallet in your back pocket and if you wanted to buy something, you'd take your wallet out. And if there was no cash in your wallet, you didn't buy the thing. Right? We've lost all connection, all touch with our money today.

And people now swipe credit cards. And here's the reality that I've noticed. People have no idea where their money is going. Now, to a certain extent, they know how much they're paying on rent and that kind of stuff. But money comes in someone's life and it goes out someone's life. And they can't even remember what they bought on Amazon yesterday. And so the first gear is you. You have to be the driver.

Money is just a tool. It'll take you wherever you wish, but it will never replace you as the driver. What you do in this first gear? As we get people to really get clear on what do I want and why does it matter. I'm grateful that God gave me that experience with my son because it clarified crystal clear for me exactly what I wanted and why it mattered. Without that, I don't know because I had this very arbitrary idea I was going to retire early.

I didn't know because I just shifted what I wanted to. I'll retire one day. But once I knew what I wanted, every dollar in my life had meaning and purpose. So that's step number one with gear number one. Every dollar that you have is a function of time that you traded. And if you don't honor where that money is going, you're dishonoring the time that you traded to get that dollar

because that dollar is the same tool required to buy your time back. So that's the first gear. I'm going to go to another book. In the book, Richest Man in Babylon, there's this super simple framework to become the richest man in Babylon. It says 10% of all I make is mine to keep. You have to get clear on what you want, why it matters, and save a minimum of 10% of everything you make.

If you can do that, that's gear one. Gear two, gear two is I want to put my money in a place where I can eliminate everything that's making it harder for me to get wealthy. Taxes, market volatility, interest rates, all of those different things. We use overfunded high cash value life insurance. Now, Jordan, when I learn this, I'm like, what the heck? This is, no one talks about this, but I want you to consider this. the banks, this is where the banks store all of their capital.

All the politicians, including our current president, our last president, they keep millions here. Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, you name it, so many people, they use these type of accounts to buy not a death benefit, but to stuff as much cash in these policies as they can. The reason they do it is two things. Number one, it eliminates taxes. Because it's life insurance, all of this extra cash, you never pay tax on it. It grows automatically with a guaranteed return and a dividend. But it opens up a private line of credit.

And so what we do is we make money, we pay taxes once, we shift our 10% or whatever we're capable of saving into an account where we never pay taxes again. We then leverage that line of credit with all the cash we've put in and we buy a simple single family home. Now, people ask me all the time, when do I scale up to apartments? When do I scale up to mobile homes, whatever? Or to syndications. Never, never, never, never, right?

Maybe at some point. But the reason we buy single family homes, think about it this way. It is the one asset. If we just use Maslow's hierarchy of needs, everyone needs a place to live. That's what they want at the core foundation of humanity. And most people want to get out of an apartment or they want to downsize from their McMansion and they want to live in a quiet, nice little three-bedroom two-bath home. So I buy those assets.

I don't try to time the markets. I just hold them, right? Because if I hold them, they go up in value. Why do they go up in value? Because the government's printing more money. It makes those houses more expensive. And so I use life insurance to be a 20% down payment. bank credit to be an 80% down payment.

I hold the asset. I let it go up in value. I strip as much equity, as much cash flow as I can out of that thing. I put it back in this policy, and I just repeat the process. And every time those gears turn, the process moves faster.

It's more effectively. Now, you know, it used to take me years to pay back policy loans when I would leverage a policy loan to buy a house. Now I can do it in months because I have 50 plus properties, generating cash flow, rising in value. And so I just make money.

I keep it. compounds for life. I turn it into cash flow. I put it back in the system where it continues to compound for life. And I just repeat that process. And so has technology helped us? Yeah. But at the same time, you know, we are wealth. Life insurance is the oldest product known to man, right? Single family homes are the oldest product known to man. Are they, can you build better houses today? Yeah, maybe. But man, we buy houses that were built back in the 20s and 30s sometimes and rehab them because they're built better than houses that are built today. So yeah, I mean, things have changed. interest rates have changed, but the basic framework, people ask me all the time that have followed me,

when are we going to do something new? Never. I mean, I'm just going to make money, keep it, turn it into cash flow, and what I'm going to do new is my legacy list, my bucket list. I'm going to go do new adventures, new fun things with my family, new business opportunities. I'm going to take risk over there, and I'm going to make sure my wealth is secured forever. Love it, love it. And I love the framework and the gears. It really puts it into perspective, and it simplifies the process, especially for people that are like, okay,

like put this on a piece of paper for me on a napkin and explain it. And I clearly understood what you're doing. And we're basically just repurposing, right? Essentially, you're putting it in. It's developing and we're taking basically leveraging that. We're putting that back into here and then we're putting it back.

And it's just like a rotating gear. Yeah, it's a cycle. It's just a simple, simple process to take $1. turn it into multiple dollars, never lose. Like, dude, Jordan, and this, I don't, I'm not bragging about it all of this, but like that system, I have never lost money now, never lost money in almost 15 years straight, right?

Because I'm using system, like, I'm not trying to time the market, I'm not doing anything risky, I'm just buying assets, letting those assets generate profits, that tax code now works for me. It's so easy to not pay tax. Well, time is on your side now, right? Because of the amount of assets that you have. You've got the leverage, you've got the compound, you've got it all. But again, it doesn't mean that you're going to get one.

And then the system's going to be fully functioning tomorrow. No, you've got to build it up. And over time, it'll continue and the wheels will get stronger and so on and so forth. So I love it. I love that concept. And I know a lot of people are going to want to check out your book because in your book, you're teaching people how they could do this in a decade. And I'm sure in some instances you've probably had people do it a little bit quicker.

But yeah, go ahead and talk about the book. and let the good folks know where they can find it. Yeah, man, I appreciate that, Jordan. And I'm going to kind of share a little bit of backstory on the book because it was such a fulfilling moment, right? I mean, for me, my two mentors were Robert Kiyosaki and Robert Allen. And I'll never forget about four years ago, you know, I've now been working with clients and we have a whole community

that are people that are doing this. And, you know, we hold events quite often because, man, owning real estate, I mean, you've got to be a special type of crazy to own real estate. And so we get people together and, you know, we share war stories, horror stories. you know, there's property management stories are the best. I always tell people you're always the most interesting guy in the room because you have all the stories, right? So we hold these events and every year when we hold events, we give awards, recognition, who's, you know what, inside of their life and their finances.

And a couple of years ago, I thought to myself, you know what, I've never actually met Robert Allen. I've never actually met Robert Kiyosaki. Why don't I invite these guys to one of my events and just put them up on stage and say, I'm going to give you guys the Lifetime Achievement Award because your expertise, your courage to share what you shared has changed my life. And because it changed my life, I have an opportunity to change these guys' lives.

And so I brought Robert Allen to the stage, and as a 72-year-old guy when he came to the stage, he just sat up there and he bawled. He was so grateful and humbled. You know, sometimes when you put out content like you do, Jordan, you don't know who's getting it, how it's helping them. And so having him in front of all these people in person after person came up and shaked his hand and said,

thank you so much. And so he said, Ryan, I don't know. what this is going to look like, but I want to be part of this. And a couple months later, I had an opportunity to sit down with Kiyosaki and say, Kiyosaki, I'm so grateful for your courage. You were the voice. Everyone thought you were crazy. And you are a little bit crazy, but man, I'm crazy with you, and I'm so grateful for it, right? And so having these two guys, and I showed them what we were doing, they're like, we're all in. Like, I don't know, we're getting older. And so when I wrote the book, I actually co-authored it with Robert Allen. And his book was, you know, follow his seven

principles. And so we just titled the book, Retire in 10 Years or Less. We co-ofering. third it together. And then Robert Kiyosaki is all throughout the book. We quote him. He forwards the book. He's in a lot of our con. We have a whole training platform that comes with the book so you can actually build your own plan to retire in 10 years or less. And Kiyosaki's all over in that training platform. So that honestly was so fulfilling to be able to pay it back to the guys who open a doorway of possibility for me. And then not only pay it back to have those guys come in and say, how can we help you take this message, which was originally our message, how can we help you take forward. And that's been so feeling to work with those guys. I love it. Yeah, I mean, it was the

trailblazers that blazed a trail for you to follow. And then you followed the trail and gave them recognition and now they're paying it forward to help others on the trail. It's just like this evolution of trailblazers helping trailblazers, which is pretty awesome. And we're going to make sure that we link all the information down in the show notes for the book. So folks, make sure you guys go grab a copy of that. And as we're wrapping up here, where is the best place outside of the book, which will get that linked, best place to reach out to you? I know a lot of people are going to get value and they may say, hey, man, I've got a decade to be a knucklehead. Like, let's see what we can do here with this 10 years. And maybe they want to reach out to you for coaching or community or maybe they

hear you how awesome you were on the show and they want you as a guest on their podcast. So where can the folks find you. Yeah man I'd love that. If you want more info and you just want to binge content, here's what I'll tell you. Go to my YouTube channel. It's weld outside wallstreet.com where I go into all kinds of like all the details behind the economy and everything we talk about. But man, if you want to connect with me individually, everything we do inside of my world is taking like knowledge and converting it to wisdom by helping you with a customized, personalized individual game plan. We use the principles that never changed and we just applied those principles to your life, to your time friends and to your resources.

And Jordan, to your point, we've had people retire in 18 months, six months, nine years, everywhere in between because everyone starts at a little bit of a different spot. Maybe we have to get you out of debt first and then start building assets. Maybe you've got assets. We have to rearrange them. So if you want to reach out to me individually, it's super simple. Everything we do is personalized. And so it's Ryan at Wealthoutside wallstreet.com.

That's my email address. Personal email address. I do respond to every single email. I love talking to people. It's my greatest, you know, Jordan, I love what you do, right? You connect people, you tell stories, you help improve people's lives, you meet people where they're at. And I think at the end of the day, that's really what an economy is.

And that's really what money is meant to do. It's meant to be a medium of exchange to allow people who exchange their talents, their services, their solutions to the problems that the world presents in an economic, in an efficient way. And so for me, everything's personal. Your game plan's personal, our community's personal. And then obviously there's lots of people in the community that we do events and do fun things together with. But Ryan at wealth outside wallstreet.com is the best way. Love it.

Perfect. Well, we're going to get all of that in the show notes, folks. Make sure you jump down there, grab the website, grab his email address, grab the copy of the book. Ryan, it's been so amazing having you on the show. As we're wrapping up here, any parting words for the trailblazers out there? Yeah, I'll say one last thing. Okay. And this is what I.

care most about when we branded our company okay i mean the book is called retire in 10 years or less and i love that as a way to measure success but really what money's greatest intrinsic value is is to give you more options in life and more control over your time and the only way this works our mantra it's on the back of every shirt it's on everything we do it's rise up live free you i we all have one shot at this thing called life one shot rise up and claim it claim your shot Your opportunity, claim your life. And living free is a function of you using your God-given talents in the service of other people.

So rise up, live free. That's what I'll leave you as a parting word. Love it. Go out there, folks. Rise up, Live Free, Blaze Trails. Have an amazing day, Ryan. Thanks so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to come talk to the audience.

And it was a pleasure having you on the show. And I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. Thank you, brother. All right.