Epic Real Estate Investing - He Secretly Built A Business Empire, Helping Hundreds of Entrepreneurs | Brian Luebben | 1359

Episode Date: October 4, 2024

In this episode of the Epic Real Estate Investing show, Matt is joined by Brian Luebben, host of the Action Academy podcast, to discuss business and real estate wealth creation. Brian shares his journey from being in a corporate sales role to becoming a successful entrepreneur focused on real estate and business acquisitions. He outlines the strategies and mindsets necessary to transition, such as understanding one's personal strengths and adopting a clear vision to succeed. Matt and Brian delve into topics like choosing the right business investments, leveraging partnerships, and the significance of macroeconomic factors on investment decisions. This episode offers rich insights into scaling businesses and real estate portfolios to achieve financial freedom and personal goals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Terio Media. Hey, strap in. It's time for the Epic Real Estate Investing Show. We'll be your guides as we navigate the housing market, the landscape of creative financing strategies, and everything you need to swap that office chair for a beach chair. If you're looking for some one-on-one help, meet us at rei-aise.com. Let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go.

Let's go. Hey, welcome to the Epic Real Estate Investing Show. And before we get started, I introduce you to my very special guest today. I wanted you to let you know that I'm getting together with a small group of investors this month for a brand new Epic Apprentice program. And I'm going to get them started with some startup capital and create a customized game plan for them, get their leads going and actually give them some leads to start with, and then negotiate their deals for them. And then analyze their deals and close those deals, take them all the way through the whole thing. It's a legitimate, genuine apprentice program for all the details. You can go to epicapprentice.com.

Epicapprentice.com. Go there. There's a little video there. It shows you and breaks down all the details. All righty. So today, my special guest host of the Action Academy podcast, Mr. Brian Lubin. Brian, welcome to the Epic Show. Dude, thanks so much for having me, Matt.

Now I'm fired up about that apprentice program, man. I'm about to go sign up for that thing. Everyone needs to go click that and leave a five-star review, baby. Let's go. There you go. All right. Super. So you kind of do something similar. Like you have this goal to touch one million entrepreneurs. And I want to hear all about that. But you went through the journey yourself and left corporate America to become an entrepreneur. So I guess get a starter right there. Tell us how you did that. Sure, Matt. So I started, of course, as everybody else did with a small loan for my family of $10 million. And through a lot of hard work, I made it turned into $9 million. dollars. So, no, I went to, I graduated college and I went into this thing called sales

because I realized that commission I could control my own destiny. So made it to the top of a Fortune 500 company. I was number eight out of 5,079. And their sales organization was making a quarter million dollars in my mid-20s. Everything was good until it wasn't. Because what happens is you get promoted and promoted and promoted and you climb up this corporate ladder. And so many people are listening to this podcast and they listen to you, Matt, for years and years and years, because they're at that point in their corporate positions and their jobs where they're like, there has to be something more. And for me, I looked at my boss's boss, my VP of sales at the time, and they said, Brian, if you crush it over the next five years, this is going to be you, brother,

you've got this. And I was like, hold on a second. Nothing against him as a man, perfectly lovely man, Bad situation, you know. He was just eating donuts and Red Bull all day. Zoom calls back to back in 15 increments, not seeing his young daughters grow up, constantly being ponied around the country, and I realized that something else was in the cards for me, started doing single family co-living house hacks one a year,

and I realized, wow, this is going to take some time for me to get out of this job. And so I ended up starting up my own company in Action Academy, which was the back-end business on my podcast, was able to replace $20,000 a month in March of 2022, quit that job, went to go travel full-time around the world, and now that's what I do three years later, still traveling, still building businesses, still trying to change lives.

That's awesome. So what was the source of the $20,000 a month? So we did about $4,000, $4.2,000 from co-living properties, and then what I did after that was I started up the podcast, the Action Academy, and I was asking the question of, I was looking at the single family. I was just like, how do I do I do buy businesses, start businesses?

So I started up the podcast to ask millionaires how they were doing it. And because of that, built a really niche following to my show. And so a bunch of people were listening that had disposable income. I would talk about masterminds that I was joining or I would talk about coaches that I had hired. And then we ended up forming an affiliate business off of that. I was able to print $12,000 to $15,000 a month on top of the real estate. So once I had about three to six months to live in expensive, and I had about three months of proving cash flow from that and my real estate was time to make the leap.

And then I moved to Mekanos for a month. Where's that? Yeah, I lived in the Greek islands for a month after that and traveled full time around the world for eight months. So it was a pretty cool time. That's fantastic. So affiliate relationship. That's cool. That's something that the internet has made available to a lot of people and there's so many good things out there for that type of stuff.

Are you still promoting the same stuff or there's some really hot stuff there to your getting a lot of traction with now. Oh, no, I shut that business down at the end of the year. So what I did was I realized, I was like, okay, cool, I use these services, I use these different people, but then I was making, you know, 10%. And you could probably do this on this podcast or anybody. It's just, you know, refer things out to different people. And I was making 10%.

And then I realized it was like, there's 90% on the table. I need to build my own thing. And so that's when we launched our Action Academy community in January 1st of 2023. And then now the goal of that is to teach people, we have a whole roster of coaches and staff. And now we teach people how to do commercial and buy small businesses so that they can do it faster than I was able to. And now I buy businesses and we're looking at boutique hotels. Very nice. So the Action Academy is for someone to learn how to buy businesses.

Buy businesses at commercial real estate. So our nation is mobile home parks, multifamily storage. We have a land flipping division now and then small businesses. but what I tell people is, and you prefer single family because you were just a guest on my show. And I tell everybody to zoom out a little bit for somebody that's listening into this and they're asking the question, what asset class is best for me, which is a million dollar question. And that's where a lot of people get stuck in analysis paralysis. I say actually zoom out and start with your three-year vision.

And then that's how we're able to work backwards. So I started with where I was heading. I call it directional, sequential, and tactical clarity. So what you begin with is where you're going and why. So for me, I realized that it's like, okay, I want to replace this $15,000, $20,000 in three years so I could travel around the world. That was my big exciting life. So that's what I was able to work backwards towards. And that's what my goalpost was.

When you have your goalpost established, then you go down into sequential clarity, which is how fast are you trying to accomplish that goalpost? For me, it was three years. And then that eventually turned into six months when a mindset coach was just like, hey, what? what would you have to do or what business would you have to build in order to pull this off in six months. So that's when we started the affiliate business. And then it goes all the way down to the tactics where when you're very clear about where you're going, what your cash flow numbers are, what your timeline is, then you're able to have information to decide which asset class to pick.

And then that's where you can make your decisions off of if you want to buy a small business, if you want to buy short-term rentals, if you want to buy long-term rentals, mobile home parks, whatever. And so we've done them all, and we did over $100 million acquisition in Action Academy this last year, and it was super cool. So, yeah, you can break down any part of it. $100 million in acquisitions in one year? Yeah, but we have three, we have three hundred and ten members. Okay.

So cumulatively. But still, a hundred million. Nothing to shake. It was really interesting. Yeah, our normal member does about $3.7,000 of added, Dashflow in about 4.2 million of assets under management accumulated within a year. Awesome. So, I mean, I know how to do real estate and I know how to find them off market and I know how to find them on market.

Where do you go shopping for a business that's for sale? So there's a few websites. So you can go to B-I-S-B-E-Y-S-E-L-L-B-I-Z-B-I-S-E-L-L-B-B-S-B-B-S-E-L-B-S-B-B-S-N-O-L-L-B-S-B-B-S-A-L-B-E-L-E-M-B-S-B-E-B-S-B-E-B-S-B-E-B-S-B-E-L-E-B-S-E-E-L-B-E-L-E-B-E-L-E-P-E-P-E-E-L-E-P-E-E-P-E-E-R-E-E-E-B-E-E-R-E-E-B-E-E-P-W-E-E- them and really have a good time negotiating, like, price rate and terms. And so, for instance, I just bought a $900,000 business 10% down. I put about, you know, 80, 90K into it. And now I'm the passive partner, have somebody else operating it. And that thing prints me out $4,000 a month in passive distributions. So for me, I try to buy a business a quarter. That's my goal in 2025, along with commercial real estate to offset the taxes. So, yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I think you'd

said something about picking the right thing for you inside of your academy. Like when you go to look for a business, how do you know what's the right one for you? What are some of the criteria that goes into choosing a business? Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. So for a business, what you want to first look at is you. So we need to have a very large level of introspection and self-reflection. Same thing that you're going to do when you're buying real estate is similar process when you're buying a business. You need to look at yourself when we do what's called a disc profile, D-I-S-C to where you can figure out what your personality strengths are. So are you more of a people person?

Or are you more of a systems, a back-end person? So are you sales and marketing or are you systems and ops? And so when it comes to real estate, you can apply that to, okay, I'm going to be the underwriter on the team and I'm going to handle by increasing the NOI of the commercial properties or you're going to be the capital raiser on the sales and marketing side. Same thing with business. So for us, first thing we do is become very self-aware of what skills, we bring to the table. For me, I'm sales and marketing. So when I'm looking for a business,

I'm looking for a business that is not strong in sales and marketing. Why is that? It's because I need to add value to the business to where when I'm buying it, this is how you buy it at a discount. Because if it's already strong in sales and marketing, what value am I going to add to it? Whereas if it's already succeeding in spite of itself in back-end systems and ops, and they just have word of mouth that are keeping this business afloat and it's making a million bucks a year, I can come in with sales and marketing and turn that into $2 or $3 million a year. For sure.

So it's, and vice versa also applies. If you're very systems and ops oriented, you could take something that has lead flow all day, and then you can improve the back end to increase the value of the customer. And then that's what you take it. So I call it top line or bottom line CEO. So you start there,

and then that's how you're able to define your buy box a little bit more. So is it really just looking for the inefficiencies, I guess in operations or do you have to kind of pick something that you know something about as well? It could be either or if it's trade specific. I would of course partner with somebody first that has the experience in that given trade. I would not go by an HVAC company because I don't have HVAC experience but I can certainly partner with somebody that has HVAC experience and they're going to be the operator of the business where I would go and be the sales and marketing and drive the

front end of the business. Same thing if you're, partnering on any real estate deal. It's the same kind of partnership process, same kind of acquisition process. So it just completely depends on what your strengths are and then what you're also interested in. But then on the flip side of that, you know, I had a few people that bought million dollar businesses that were like staffing that they had no interest in, but they're crushing. One of them bought a vending machine business. We had a guy by an upholstery business, a plant shop business. There's so many boring businesses out there that are a hoot to scoop up. Right. Are they all kind of brick and mortar or are they mix of stuff online?

I prefer brick and mortar. I'm not really the online kind of like, because we already have online stuff. I have online businesses like Action Academy is an online business and you run online businesses too. And so for diversification sake, I would rather not buy an online business. It's like, give me something that's boring, that's been around 10 years, that's not going away with the recession. I just bought a kitchen hood cleaning company. That's the company I bought where it's literally going to be, it's purely seller financed. So all the real estate peeps listen and understand what that means. We didn't even use a loan.

And so we literally go clean like restaurants, hoods where they collect all the grease and everything and it's required by law. And so, yeah, that company's been churning around for seven years. And now we just bought up the profits of that. So it's super, super exciting. And I got somebody else out of their job to run it. Right. Yes, I was going to ask. So now you found that business.

The owner doesn't want to be a part of it anymore. So you're going to pay them a residual, right, until they're paid out. So 15 years is our note. 15 years? Perfect. So then as far as an owner or as far as an operator goes, you like choose an existing employee and just kind of promote them or is the owner stay on? How does that work typically?

I would recommend strongly against keeping the owner on. That is a recipe for disaster. They're all going to say it. None of them are going to live up to the hype. It's going to be like an ex-girlfriend that you broke up with and she's still living with you. You know, it's going to be a bad situation. An employee that you can promote up certainly is an option if you have, especially if you have management experience. But what I recommend doing is starting with the partner first, like finding somebody to partner with where you're like, okay.

I'm going to go find the business, negotiate the business, and I'm going to do this side, you do this side, that were your complementary skill sets. And so that's what I did on this one. One of our group members actually brought the deal to me. He was in the restaurant industry working a job there. I can't say his name because he wants to still keep things private today. But he worked on the, he had a big rolodex. We'll keep Gordon's secret and we won't tell anyone about him.

Yeah. Shout out Gordon. Yeah. So he has a roll. He has a rolodex of people that are in the industry. and the current owner wasn't doing anything. So we're paying the owner right now on the seller note. And then this gentleman is going to quit.

He quit his job to go do this full time. And as he's doing that full time and running this business, he's going to be the operator. He has majority equity. Normally you could split it 50-50, but I felt terrible about that because I'm doing absolutely nothing. And I want him to enjoy more of the upside. It doesn't change my life, but it changes his.

And so he's got a majority equity position, and he's going to run the day to day. So there's so many different ways that you can change it. But 50-50, 60-40 is a normal pretty good rule of phone. And then you bring like what the marketing expertise to the place. Sure. And we have four employees and a manager that are operating and that underneath this guy. So we have employees underneath the operator.

That's very important to say that that passivity that people are looking for, both in real estate and business buying, comes on the other side of profit people and processes. So if you don't have the property manager, you're the one managing the property. If you don't have somebody that's managing the business, you're the one managing the business. So there's inherent risks that comes with all of this. And so it's just knowing which risks to mitigate for and how to mitigate for them. That's the best way that you stay in the game. Got it.

Is geographical location, is that important in your deciding factor? Yes. So for him, it's right in his backyard. So I like local. I'm not going to buy something that I'm not local to or one of our partners isn't local to. Same thing, once again, like, as you can see, I try to tie everything, especially because it's the real estate podcast too. I tie everything to real estate.

If you're not going to be the boots on the ground, like you need to find somebody who is and then partner with that person because you're going to get beat, especially in today's market by the person that does have the boots on the ground, especially with how today's construction, insurance, interest rates are all going. You really need to have that in-person touch. Right, right. How much business experience would someone, would you recommend they have before they go out and buy a business? So that's a difficult question to answer because it's hard to constitute what business experience actually is.

I would say that once again, self-awareness is very important, but a lot of these businesses, like you're not trying to buy a SpaceX. You're not trying to buy a Facebook. that's going to take a big bunch of sophistication. You're looking for a business that is very simple. You can explain it on the back of a napkin. And just like real estate investors, it's like, you don't need to have a PhD to run the thing. Like for us, hoods are dirty. Someone needs to clean them.

Let's clean them better than the other guy. Faster, more reliable, pretty simple business model required by federal law. Another COVID's not going to wipe us out. So keeping the business itself as simple as possible and also borrowing the experience of an operator for something that is more technically proficient. So you can borrow experience. For instance, we're right now in the market for about a $5 to $7 million boutique hotel. I am going to make sure to partner with somebody that has decades worth of experience that's going to be on my GP team to where it's not just Brian buying a hotel for the first time. It's this team buying a hotel together.

and that's why you're either the money, the knowledge, or the hustle. So for this one, I'm going to mostly be the money and the capital of the deal, and I'm going to be helping with the raise, and then he's going to be the knowledge. So partnership, and then also just being aware of your strengths. I would say that a lot of people, like people see these million-dollar businesses and they think that you have freaking Elon Musk running them. Most of the time, it's very much so not the case. Same with real estate.

All my millionaire real estate friends are just walking around and flip-flops, wondering how the hell they pulled it off. Been there. Same. So when you say like somebody, you just purchased a $9 million business, right? That could sound very intimidating to somebody in the beginning. How do you evaluate it's worth $9 million? So mine was $900,000.

$900,000. Okay. Yeah. But no, I mean, let's use that example, right? $9 million. So there's an important distinction that I actually want to make there. So people look at in the very beginning, you can look at real estate and you can look at businesses and you would try to value in them the same way, right? So in the context of,

I see a million dollar property, I see a hundred thousand dollar property. I'm going to go try to take down the hundred thousand dollar property because that represents a good deal, possibly, air quotes. That's where your brain goes. You look at a million dollar business, you look at a hundred thousand dollar business and you say, I'm going to take down the hundred thousand dollar business. I can't afford the million dollar business. It's actually flawed. It's the inverse because the hundred thousand dollar business. doesn't have the profit margin. It's more of a hobby. It doesn't have the profit margin to actually have systems, team, managers, people running it for it to actually be self-sufficient.

You're buying yourself a job. So anything under $500,000, we're not really looking at. Now, a business is valued at a multiple of net profit. So when you think of the NOI of a commercial building, same thing for a business. What is your net? And it's going to be normally at a multiple of three to five times that number. For instance, this business, I think, had a net profit of, I believe, $236,000, and we bought it at about a 5x multiple because it was a very well-packaged franchise business.

They had all their documents, all their marketing, all their paperwork, all their ducks in a row. T's crossed, eyes dotted, right? The more packaged the business is, the more self-sufficient it is, the owner was completely absent, virtual assistant just call center, handling all the inbound calls, doing a million bucks a year. I'll take that business any day of the week.

There are so many businesses out there that exist like that. So you want to make sure that you have something with what's called SDE, seller discretionary earnings. That's that net number that we're looking at. The N-O-I is replaced with S-D-E. That's how much the owner is taking home. You want to look for something that has around probably 200,000 minimum because that gives you enough room for 100,000 yourself into hire a manager or someone like that. And that replaces a six-figure job right there. Now you're the business owner with one acquisition, right? But for us, we're looking more so along the lines of like a $500,000 SDE because then we can have partners and we can go in this together and then we can both have six figures salaries from it along with a bunch of upside

potentials. So buy-box for businesses and only between $1 and $2 million is what we're looking for. and that is a pretty safe, secure business that has been operating for probably seven plus years. They've got profit, they've got track record, they've got team that's been on for multiple years. I'd imagine that the due diligence on a business is more extensive than a piece of real estate, right? Depends on the real estate. Some of the commercial stuff can get pretty dicey. But, I mean, for a single family, if you're doing like a burr, I would say that there's a few more moving parts, but they're like,

I've done burrs before and it's just like you can mess up a bur and go over you know 50,000, 100,000 on construction just as easily as you can kind of jack up a business. I think there needs to be air of caution on everything. You want to make sure like you know what you're walking into

and putting the reps in. But, and there's a few things that you can look at with businesses that's a bit different than real estate. You're dealing with more people. So it's just like you're buying the house with the manager attached to it, right? So big thing that you're looking at is, are you buying a job? There's been multiple companies that have almost closed in our group where we're like, hey, no, like, we just got our paws on it.

This is a job. The owner is actually doing the stuff themselves. If the owners doing stuff themselves, it's a job. You're now replacing a 40-hour-a-week work week with a 90-hour-a-week hellhole. Right. Congratulations. There's so many ways it can go wrong. So let's really be cautious, you know, and be conservative with the underwriting. And then, especially if you're raising capital, which I was part of the capital raised, like I was the capital of this deal. But they had their underwriting so tight,

it was wonderful. But mostly, you're underwriting for the opportunity, the idea of your owner leaving or one of your key employees leaving. So that's called key man risk or key employee risk. So we had a guy buy a business, a boutique, manager quits day one. Nightmare fuel scenario. Right.

He's recovered from it. But me and him did a podcast episode where we're just like, who what a way to get started. What a way to boost morale, you know. Totally. That sounds like a nightmare. A lot of similarities though in real estate. I'm getting it. Definitely, I never do leasebacks to the seller.

So we don't want to be on for sure, right? And the other thing you said, which, because someone recommended to me that I get into what you're doing. Some of my questions are a little bit self-serving. But the one thing I noticed you said right away is like this difference between a million dollar deal and a hundred thousand dollar deal. If I were to go back 18 years ago when I first got started in real estate, I would have told myself, don't be afraid of the zeros. Right. Oh, yeah, absolutely. It's just they get so much more work at those smaller price points.

It's actually more difficult to raise money down there as well. And you find that, hey, that the process is exactly the same regardless of the price point, but the profit is so much bigger. So it sounds like the same thing with business for sure. man, you are just dealing with more and more sophisticated people, especially in multifamily. Because like for us, you know, because you buy single families. Even for us, if we are buying single family, we're going to try to do a portfolio loan. We're going to try to buy like 20 single family that are within the same city or if somebody's selling a package. We just had a guy buy a portfolio loan of 61.

They're all scattered across a few zip codes. But, I mean, it's within a local region. So what we focus on there is like property management's not going to be coming to help you out if you got a six unit or if you have like six doors. But if you have a 60 unit, you know, you have one that's much more appealing to a professional property management company. So what we've done in the past is we've actually partnered up with other local operators to kind of split property management before. So we have a few group members doing that where they're like, okay, I've got a 20, unit, Johnny's got a 30 unit, same market. Hey, like, why don't we just hire this property management company and split them so that we actually have somebody that's for us. Property management's

the hardest thing. And then also, like you said, the sophistication of the lenders, the lawyers, everybody working on it. That's our main thing is our people would normally have a few houses when they join. And we're like, let's go ahead and add commas and zeros and get you up there. I know what the opportunity is in real estate. Like there's life comes along and kicks everybody in the teeth every single day. So there's always a distress seller. There's a new distress seller every single day. Death, death, divorce, and distress.

Correct. There's about seven more Ds we go through as well. But yeah, you get the point. So there's always opportunity. And obviously the economy can impact on the quantity of those. We're looking at a unique economy right now. We have a lot of uncertainty. maybe the most divisive election coming up in this recently,

really like that I can think of. Are any of those being taken into consideration? How is it impacting the business buying market, the business selling market? Are people running for the hills unloading? Is there anything in the current environment that's impacting what you do? Business buying in particular? So I'll answer for business buying and then the macro environment that we're looking at with everything.

And I'll share like what's going slow for us and then what's ripping for us. because we have our pen in a lot of different ink, and we just are working today on our end-of-year report so we can report all of our actual metrics. So for business buying, we have to zoom out and look at the macro situation, right? So the macro situation is we're about to have the largest wealth transfer in human history

is about to happen, the silver tsunami as our parents and grandparents of now they're all holding on to these businesses. Like America is backed by all of these small business owners that over the next 10 to 20 years are going to retire. And their kids do not want to freaking run the plumbing company. They don't want to run the upholstery company. They don't want to run the flower shop. They want to go do TikTok dances.

They want to go, they want to go be a musician. They don't want to run the family business. And so these businesses are either going to shut down to be bought by private equity or it's going to have people like us that are coming in and actually maintain it in the legacy. So from a macro perspective, I think that the business buying opportunity is just getting started. Like we have such a wave to catch. It hasn't even began yet. I think that there's going to be a definite upswing. I think what we'll see if I'm going to call my shot is between 2011 and like 2018, what happened to multifamily, what happened with businesses.

You'll have everybody come in by all the businesses, good operators, bad operators. everyone's going to make money. And then eventually after about 10 years, the tide will come out and then we'll see who's still standing. And whoever did it right, which is what happened in multifamily. So to go down to the real estate side, multifamily's been slow for us. Apartments have been really rough to buy.

Storage has been good. Storage is taking a lot more LOIs to accumulate, but we're still churning with storage. Mobile home parks are ripping for us. Our group is buying a lot of mobile home parks. land, raw land. We've got 50 to 100 people that are crushing six figures in raw land. They are buying dirt, direct a seller, and putting it on the MLS, not grading or doing a thing to it, make it $100,000, making $50,000, make it $20,000. It's ridiculous. We're doing that at scale.

So land flipping and business buying are huge. A huge opportunity that we're looking at right now, personally and myself as well is we're looking at industrial. We're looking at possibly doing like contractor garages. And that's what I'm really interested in right now, where we take an industrial building and we're subdividing it into like even like chain link fence or something like that. And leasing out individual contractor garage. I think that is like a ripping opportunity today. And there's so much of that.

This is like you hear local contractors and handiomen just place to store stuff. Dude, they can't afford it because, dude, it's like my good friend Tyler Cable, who you should have in the pod if you haven't already, he did something called the wash in Nashville, Tennessee. What he did was he took this old car wash and he converted it into this like micro, really hip, micro, I don't know what he calls it. It's like micro eatery where he has these just little bays and then he makes these mini kitchens and you have these little local mini companies, many restaurants popping up. And they're, they're, they're. They're serving over there and it's crushing. I think that's the same opportunity that's available in the industrial space today. So kind of like taking the food trucks and giving them a stationary spot type of thing. Bingo, because they can't afford a full kitchen. The leases are too expensive. The insurance is too expensive because they're just getting started.

But they can afford a little, you know, 200 square foot pay with a friar and a kitchen hood that needs to be cleaned. Right. In a kitchen. I know a guy. That's one of those businesses. I always thought, you know, I want to get a little business like toilet seats because everyone has an ass and everyone. and shits, right? So it's like tombstones. Everyone dies. Yes, tombstones is another good one. But every restaurant has those vents that need to be cleaned, right? That's good.

Correct. Sweet. Yeah. And at the end of the day, it really all just comes down to, you can make a million dollars a million ways. Find your thing and you just focus on that thing. For me, it was building up Action Academy to a few million dollars a year. Now we are able to take that and we can distribute it across these different income by buying businesses, buying all this other stuff. If you want to do storage, if you want to flip houses, find your strategy, commit to your path. Then once you're profitable from that, you can diversify. Okay, that brings me to my next point.

So your goal is to acquire, say, one business, a quarter. Right. But as the passive partner, though. As the passive part. That's important to point. That's a very important point. point for me. Because for other people that are listening, that is not advice for you guys. You can buy one business the right way. You're set. Well, I'm thinking about, because even the passive income

from real estate, it's really, like passive income doesn't mean uninvolved income, right? You've got to be still involved. You still got to watch it. You can't abdicate. Delegating is the key, but you can't, you got to be, still watch it. So what is the process like that? If you have multiple businesses for you to monitor and make sure that your investments are safe. So that is a hypothesis and I will answer again, ask me again in five years. Right. So I can give an answer. Is it the most informed answer in the world? Not necessarily. Who I'm looking to right now are guys like Alex Formosy. I just interviewed his wife Lela on my podcast. Ryan Dice, they own what are called hold coes. So holding companies where they have multiple

companies. For me, what I'm looking for is very strong teams of operators that are coming in. They're the ones that are really the boots on the ground. They're handling the day to day. I am purely the capital. And maybe we'll do one call a month where we're doing for marketing strategy, high delegation, high CEO dashboard. And I'm giving them kind of consulting, almost like a board of advisors for marketing and sales. That's kind of the role that I want to play. And for me and my community, I have this army of people that are going and buying businesses. and maybe they don't have capital. And they're saying, hey, you've got a million dollar business.

It's amazing. I need $100,000. That's where I come in. I'm like, okay, well, let me get a gander on this and let me see if this is something that I can add value to as well. So that's where that comes in from me. It's very important for me to keep my main thing, my main thing. So keep my main focus on Action Academy, which is why I've been slow to buy a hotel right now. But as we progress, really, I would say key emphasis on the managers and the people.

people that you partner with. And having just monthly cadences is where I would begin for what I'm trying to do and then see how it goes. I can only speak from hypothesis. I haven't done it yet. I own three businesses right now. So ask me again at like 15 and I can give you a better answer about me like pulling my hair out. But right now, if I were to give advice to people though, I'd say don't go try to buy two businesses or three businesses. Like I'm going to go buy a laundromat in a flower shop. No, take a year if you need to. Buy the one that replaces your six-figure job. Just one. Yeah, it's so much easier. Wait, got it. I think you've connected all the dots for me. What's in the future right now that's got you the most excited? I already have my

goals for this next year. So it's my 30th birthday, December 1st. We're recording this in October. So I've been doing a lot of reflection. And so next year, My goals are to get up to 5 million top line, 2 million EBITA net in our company Action Academy. My goal is to focus on relationships. So I actually am going to have relationship goals. I want to settle down. I want to find a wife, get married, all that stuff. I'm single right now.

So I'm working on that. That's going to be like a primary intention. And then also my friendships, you know, right now over the last three years, I've built up a really cool business and a really cool kind of community. and really cool networks and connections, but I haven't gone deep with people. So for me, over the next three to five years, I want to be a guy that's a cool cucumber running my companies as much so as I can be. I want to settle down, get married, have kids, see what chaos that brings and that ensues. They completely throw out everything that I know

and then start from the drawing board again when I have kids. Right now, it's just like we're already economically to the point where I can, like, my entire family could be financially free. So I'm ready for that. That's actually my primary focus. And from an investing standpoint, scaling our company, buying other companies, I want to own a top 50 hotel in the world. That's on my bucket list. So boutique hotel investing.

And then we may do some non-sexy industrial investing here upcoming. But it depends, man. We'll see. I'm keeping my buybox open. but my five bucks for my wife is not. So that one is very specific. Awesome. So if a potential wife wanted to get in touch with you,

what would be the best way for them to do that? Yell at me in Spanish. No. So, yeah, Instagram, you can find me at Instagram, Brian Lubin. And then if you are still listening to this, you should leave Matt a five-star rating in a review. I listen to this show as well. I'm honored to be a guest on it.

And again, check out the apprenticeship program that Matt mentioned at the beginning. And you can listen to me through a mic. microphone five days a week at the Action Academy podcast. We interview millionaires and billionaires, which I'm very honored to speak with. And we talk about commercial real estate, we talk about business buying, and Matt was a guest as well. So when you guys listen to this, he'll probably be up on my show as well for you guys to listen to there. Awesome. Thanks, Brian. Yeah, I recommend go to the Action Academy podcast. Good stuff, smart guy, great guests, and great content. So thanks, buddy, let's stay in touch. Let's start the relationship right now. We'll go deep. Done.

All right. Sold. Thanks, man. We'll touch base again. Take care. Thank you very much. You bet. Bye. And that wraps up the epic show. If you found this episode valuable, who else do you know that might too? There's a really good chance you know someone else who would. And when their name comes to mind, please share it with them and ask them to click the subscribe button when they get here and I'll take great care of them. God loves you and so do I. Health, peace, blessings and success to you. At Terrio, living the dream. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow.

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