Living The Red Life - The Best Investments

Episode Date: July 6, 2023

What are the best investments to make – regardless of where you are at in terms of your earning potential? Rudy is sharing the best investments he’s made over the past ten years – financially as well as in terms of time, energy, and effort. And not all of Rudy’s investments are multi-million dollar property deals. Rather, it starts with investing in yourself, investing in your team, and investing in your home and work environment. Our Man in Red is proving once again that with the right mindset and application, you too can make savvy investment decisions.The Red Life is all about providing you with the valuable, hard-earned insights that Rudy has acquired from his years of experience in business. This is an invitation for you to join him in Wonderland and learn about how everything from the mattress you sleep on to the person you share that mattress with needs to be seen as an investment that is aligned with your business vision. Please join us. “One of the best investments I’ve ever made is in myself.” ~ Rudy MawerThe first 1000 to click here and send the promo code from the podcast can claim one of my courses for FREE!  - https://m.me/rudymawerlife In This Episode:What is your environment like? Is it conducive to your ambitions?How are you investing in yourself? What does your real estate portfolio look like?The importance of investing in people and creating the right work cultureCreating the right home environment to support you long-termDoes your primary relationship support your vision and your goals?What to look for in a private dealAppreciating the value of a strong network of mentorsAnd so much more!Connect with Rudy Mawer:LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/rudymawer/Instagram - www.instagram.com/rudymawerlifeFacebook - www.facebook.com/rudymawerlifeTwitter - www.twitter.com/rudymawer

I like to invest in some private deals, stuff I'm passionate about, stuff that has extra perks and benefits, stuff where I trust the entrepreneur and I believe in the entrepreneur, or a great business idea, or a business I always wanted to start myself but I don't have time. My name's Rooney Moore, host of Living the Red Life podcast, and I'm here to change the way you see your life. In your earpiece every single week, if you're ready to start living the red life, ditch the blue pill, take the red pill, join me in Wonderland and change your life. Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of Living the Red Life. Today I'm going to talk about the best investments I've ever made over the course of the last 10 years of my business life, both financially and then in terms of time, energy and effort. And all the things that have worked

so great for me and got me to where I am today. And then I'll probably talk about a few of the mistakes and things that backfired and set me back. I've definitely had some big mistakes and backfires. You know, I'm on my way to that hundred mil mark, probably around halfway there. And I think I would be at the hundred mil mark by now if I hadn't have made a few of these mistakes. I'll talk about those. And look, that's life, right? No one has this like perfect track record. And that's how you get better. But obviously, the point of mentorship, of coaching, of education, like you're doing today by listening to this is you can be aware of those obstacles that come up and probably dodge a few of them along the way. Every single one of you are going

to make a bunch of mistakes still, but you can probably navigate them better and dodge them and have them less severe through mentorship and through education and podcasts like this and masterminds and events and coaches and consultants and a board of directors, right? That's the point of those. So what are some of the best things that I've ever done that you should watch out for?

Well, I'm gonna talk about a mix, like I said, of financial investments, real estate, business, hires, people, initiatives, right? And the first one I want to talk about, which I actually talked about in a recent podcast this last month was my environment. Okay. And if you missed that episode, I won't spend long on it today because I just did an episode on it. But watch that episode. I spend, you know, the whole time talking about building that perfect millionaire's environment or that dream environment for where you want to be in your life. Okay. Building a perfect environment or not perfect by any means yet,

but like it's really good and I'm working on it and I'm trying hard has been one of the best investments I make. And when I say an investment, it's an investment because it's cost me a lot of money, right? To have a great house on the ocean, nice cars, assistance and a big staff to support all of the stuff I need, the ability for my wife not to work, to take care of the house and the dogs and travel and be flexible and whatnot. That's all an investment, right? To fly first class and private. They're all in my eyes investments or investments in my life to make my life better, more comfortable, happier, to achieve my goals faster, to improve

my relationships, right? Or to get new relationships, right? By traveling and such like. They're all investments. So one of the best investments I've actually ever made is in myself, in my life. And the reason I think it's important to hear that is many of you aren't doing that to the level you probably should. And I know that to be true because that was me many years ago. So until about four or five years ago, there was a bit of a turning point. But until then, I didn't invest in myself as much from a terms of financial. I've done financially well for the last sort of, you know, probably 10 years or so compared to at least most of my peers,

right? Even when I was back as a college student and stuff, I was always hustling, working hard, always earning way more than the average person. So but what I didn't do probably quite as good a job of was investing in myself back then in terms of spending a little more money to live in a nicer place, spending more money to protect my time and save my time by hiring people. You know, I remember I was so focused on saving when I was younger that I would, you know, bike to work instead of drive just to save gas money. And I had didn't really have this conceptual idea of how important my time was back then. So I didn't invest in myself or value my time and my environment quite as much. So number one is the environment. Go back, listen to that episode. I think it's one of the hacks, right? The cheat codes to being successful. Next thing is real estate. I've been investing in real estate for about 12 years now.

I was always obsessed with real estate. And I remember as a teenager, I was hustling, doing side hustles, online businesses, selling on eBay. And one of my goals was always to keep selling, earning money, saving, working two jobs, because I wanted to get into real estate. I wanted to buy a house to rent. I didn't know why. I just kind of think I saw that, like, you know, especially 15, 20 years ago, obviously, internet was booming. But back then, the rich people was real estate, right? The billionaires and the tycoons was. And whenever you kind of met your friend, you know, your parents' friend,

the wealthy ones kind of had real estate. Or at least that was my perception. And I'm sure some of yours too. Or they were attorneys, lawyers, or doctors or something, right? So I had this idea that I loved real estate. And I always came even as like a little kid, I love to build, right? Legos and computer games, build stuff. So always passionate about that. So I got into that 12 or so years ago, and it was definitely one of the best investments I made. I have many friends now, you know, a few

of my friends I'm close with have half a billion dollars of real estate and several of my friends over a hundred mil. So my goal as I go towards becoming a billionaire is to have at least a hundred mil of real estate. And I want to do that by 40. I turned 32 two days ago. So eight years, a hundred mil of real estate. I love real estate. I'm passionate about it. I think it's a great investment and it's always going to be a great investment. If you're smart about it, I don't think it will make me a billionaire. I mean, there's better ways to do that. But I mean, it's always a good place to store money and park money. There's tax advantages. There's lifestyle advantages, right? One of the houses I co-own

with a friend, big real estate investor, is what I call the castle. It's an amazing 13,000 square foot house in the forest, in the hills, in North Carolina, in a place called Franklin. I host my retreats there, my events there. It's an awesome escape a few times a year for me, the family and the staff and my friends. I got married there. So's an awesome escape a few times a year for me, the family and the staff and my friends. I got married there. So real estate can also be fun. Like I said, great tax advantages. I mean, it's pretty safe long term if you're smart about it. And it increases over time. Generally, if you look at real estate, it's increased well over time. Obviously, there's better, faster, more aggressive ways to invest your money, but often

with higher risk. So yeah, real estate is a great place. If you, one thing that's important, if you don't do real estate and you're listening to this, you probably go, well, I'm not big enough. I don't earn enough. I don't have enough money to do real estate. One thing I've learned over the last five, six years, hanging out with all my friends that do a hundred million real estate or own a hundred million real estate or 200 mil or 400 mil. And they've all taught me when I've been with them, you know, in private jets or at their house or networking with them is there's many ways to grow a real estate empire without needing millions of dollars. Okay. And I know that either, right? 10 years ago, I would save the money from all my jobs and my business, get 20% and buy a house, right?

And then I would save all that money from the house, rent it out, all my job, my personal training business, side jobs, side businesses, side hustles. And then I would get the next house with 20% more. And that's what I thought I had to do. And that's what most people think. And I'm sure I'll have a couple of my big friends on as guests at some point, which explain how it all works. But real estate is an amazing investment opportunity. I believe, obviously, I'm not an attorney or, you know, a financial guy. It's not investment advice, but I'm passionate about it. I think it's got some good upsides and there's ways to get into it

without having to go the typical bank route as well. Okay. So that's the first two. The next one, okay, which is a little different for all of you, depending on where you're at right now in your life is people, the team, the people around you. So the team, the people you have around you is so important because they're going to be who you spend every day with. OK, and that comes back to number one, the environment. Right. But having the right team, having the right people in your corner to future, you know, further your future vision, to push you, to give you good energy, to support you, to motivate you is super important. And from a building a business standpoint, we invest a lot in our people. Right.

Not just financially but you know trying to help them develop give them an opportunity to grow you know we have a shareholder's opportunity for some of the execs after a while we try and get them good exposure training development a fun environment to work in great culture obviously celebrities So we invest a lot in our people, but I see my people as an investment, right? And that's super important because a lot of business owners, I think it's very transactional. Hey, you're a dollar number assigned to do a job. Whereas I will happily invest in someone for many years, right? To help them grow if they're loyal to me. And I think they're going to be part of my long-term vision. And the people around you in your business are going to make or break it.

They're going to help you scale it. Most people in our entrepreneur internet marketing world don't understand that, right? They don't understand businesses. And that's why most of them never get past 5 million. There's a lot of people that make a couple of million a year, high profit, but they don't know how to build teams and people, right? And invest in their people. Reason I got past 10 million

and I think I'll get to 100 million soon is I'm really good at the people upside and all the bigger stuff that it takes, the risk and mindset and blah, blah, blah, to get to 100 mil. So invest in the people around you, right? Whether that's an assistant for many of you, your right-hand marketer, your right-hand head of ops,

but invest in those people because they'll make your life a lot better. OK, so next one after people is your home. OK, we talked a little about big picture environment, but I've come over time more and more to realize where you live and sleep is so, so important. And again, I'm going to touch on this for 30 seconds because I did a full episode on this. Right. But where you sleep at night, OK, you're going to touch on this for 30 seconds because I did a full episode on this, right? But where you sleep at night, okay, you're going to spend eight hours probably every single day, right? A third of your life, okay? And if you don't sleep much, a quarter of your life in a bed. So invest in a good mattress, right? I spend five grand or so on my mattress. I think I spent $8,000 on my couch

because I realized, right, I don't sit on the couch too much, but probably a couple of hours each night. OK, and I sleep in my mattress for seven hours. So those two combined, I'm spending eight hours, a third of my life. And, you know, it's not about throwing money at it. It's about, you know, having a good night's sleep, right? Making sure it doesn't mess up your spine. So when you're 50, 60 years old, you can't walk. I play a lot of sport. I'm very active. I don't want it to mess up all of that, which is linked to my health, right? And my happiness. So invest in your home, okay? And parts of it, right? Where you sleep, the environment, the colors of the home, how it's designed, how it's decorated, how tidy it is.

If you're on the ocean, you know, it's been proven to lower stress levels, increase creativity and productivity. That's why I live on the ocean. Not for those reasons I love the ocean. It's been proven to lower stress levels, increase creativity and productivity. That's why I live on the ocean. Not for those reasons I love the ocean, but obviously that's part of the reason why I love the ocean is those benefits I get internally. So invest in your home. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a second. Before we go into the rest of this episode, I'm going to interrupt abruptly and just ask you one big favor. I hope you're getting a ton of value, a ton of knowledge. I hope you're getting some breakthroughs from myself and the guests. And I want one thing in return. What I would love is for you to subscribe and leave a review. The reviews and the subscription grows the podcast. It allows me to bring you even better guests. It allows me to invest even more time and money into this podcast to bring you the latest and

greatest, the best entrepreneurs from around the world that are crushing life, crushing their business, and giving you all the tools, the mindset hacks, the knowledge, and the environment you need to be successful. So do me a favor, if you've got any amount of value from today's episode so far, or any previous episode, or any of the content I've done, it would mean the world to me if you hit a five-star review, give us your feedback on the show, the episodes and subscribe and download. Plus, if you do that and send me a screenshot on Instagram at RudyMoreLife, I will send you a bunch of my free training, marketing courses, sales courses worth $499. Yes, $500 worth of

courses for a simple 30 second review. It would mean the world to me. Send me that screenshot. I would love for you to leave that review and I would appreciate it very, very much so we can keep growing this show and make it awesome. So let's get back into the episode. I appreciate you guys and let's dive back in. Next is your relationship, okay? It should sound obvious and we can all do a better job probably of this, right? But obviously your relationship takes work, okay? I've spent a lot of time with relationship gurus. I've spent, you know, a lot of my close friends are much older than me because of the business space I run in and they've had marriages for 10, 20, 30 years and maybe some of them have gone

through divorces too. And, you know, I'm by no means a relationship guru or coach and, you know, it's constant work, right? But you're, you know, and Grant Cardone speaks about this a lot and him and Elena do a great job. And I see that every time I get to spend time with them, they have this yin yang partnership. And I think that's a great thing to strive for in a relationship, right? So invest in your relationship and make sure your relationship serves your goals and your business and everything you want to do and how your perfect life should look. Sadly, in life, way too many people, I think, in relationships fall for someone based on attractiveness or someone they met when they were younger.

And actually, it doesn't serve them and they just stay with it, right? Because most people are afraid of change or afraid to take risk. So they get stuck. And I really encourage you, you know, way beyond my skill set or this episode today. But if you feel stuck and you feel your relationship doesn't serve you, you need to have some hard conversations. And I'm not saying I need a divorce or leave your partner, but you need to get aligned, okay?

And your relationship, I know many a divorce or leave your partner, but you need to get aligned. OK, and your relationship. I know many friends that are successful and people, I wouldn't say many, but a few where you can tell their relationship isn't aligned and me and all the other entrepreneur friends and their networks that you got to get out of it because it becomes toxic, right? Wherever you spend a lot of your time, if that environment doesn't serve you, that relationship, your COO, your CMO, your right hand, your assistant, your brother, your sister, your mom, your dad, if they don't serve you for what you're trying to do to build your perfect life, to build your best business, if they don't support you and serve you, it's never going to happen. It's going to feel rough. It's going to feel tough. Even if you do make it happen, it will be miserable. So make sure you invest in the relationship and the relationship aligns with where you want to go in your life and what you want out of your dream life. Different companies, kind of like mine, companies doing 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 million, right? Kind of like an angel investor.

I invest money into deals where they're very high risk, okay? I've lost half a million dollars on a deal before, right? A business that blew up. I've also invested in deals that are going great where they're probably going to have big exits and you shouldn't probably put a lot of your money here. And again, this isn't, you know, financial investment advice. This is where I like to invest, okay, and how I like to invest my money. Take everything with a grain of salt. But I like to invest in some private deals, stuff I'm passionate

about, stuff that has extra perks and benefits, stuff where I trust the entrepreneur and I believe in the entrepreneur, or a great business idea, or a business I always wanted to start myself, but I don't have time. Where I think there's a great trajectory where it can grow fast, it can have an exit, it can pay dividends, right? Which is distributions on a regular basis. And I think there's lower risk. Technically, these are always classed as high risk, but I'm always looking at private deals. They have the most potential upside. Real estate is probably like that slow and steady, right? Whereas private deals, they're the Hail Mary, right? And they're, hey, you're going to lose a few.

You're going to win a couple, right? And, you know, you should invest money there. Or the way I see it, at least, is I might lose this, right? I hope I don't. But you wouldn't obviously try and do anything where it's going to ruin your life. OK, and I did make that mistake one time where it didn't ruin my life, but I invested a lot of money and it put me in a tough position when it didn't work out. And it took me a year or so, you know, or two to kind of really rebuild from there,

at least within that financial segment. And it sucked, right? And I kind of learned my lesson there, again, as I pass it on to you of know that even the thing that sounds the best, the safest, the greatest, it can implode, right? So money you invest in stuff like that wants to be kind of spare money that's not going to put you in a bad position, okay? So we've talked about a few, okay, some are environmental, some are home, some's a few okay some are environmental some are home some real estate some are different investment opportunities some are your people but the next thing i want to talk about is a little in between it's investing in new initiatives in your business okay and i mean it's one of the best places to invest your money because you're in control it's your own business

and generally you're always going to have the biggest upside if it pays off. Okay. So we spend, I think I tracked it roughly, about a million dollars last year in new initiatives. Okay. And many of them failed. Okay. 20, 30, 40, 50K failures. Right. And several of them worked, okay? And several of them are still in the building phase and they may or may not work. And these new initiatives helped us scale super fast and get the company to where it is today. And that same mindset will probably get me to the 100 mil very fast, right? In my mid 30s, which is typically pretty young to get to that level. And it's a numbers game, just like I said with the private deals, that you'll lose your ass on some of them, right? And

it'll suck. And you'll look back and go, well, that was 50 grand between payroll and ads and time, opportunity costs, and it didn't work. And that happened. I got very aggressive with it last year or the last 12 months. And a few of them were very painful. Okay. Some of them were very on the edge and we nearly cut and I, a couple I really believed in and I pushed and one of them, for example, added a few million dollars into my business and I'm glad I did. So you have to kind of go into these new initiatives, knowing you're going to win some, you're going to lose some. Knowing, you know, and that's what makes a good entrepreneur is knowing the right ones to go into and then the maybe higher risk ones, when to pull the cord on it, what your risk tolerance is. It's kind of like educated gambling and betting, right?

But new initiatives, funding those in your business. Most entrepreneurs don't do this. It's actually one of the most fascinating things about my industry is most entrepreneurs that make a couple of mil a year, they have very few employees. They don't invest in new initiatives and that's why they sit between that two or one and 5 million mark.

And don't get me wrong, if that's you listening and you're happy there and you love it there and that's fulfilling you, that's 100% okay. But if you do have the goal to go to 100 mil or 10 mil or 20 mil, then you've got to put more of your profit into new initiatives. You've got to put more of your money that you're saving and doing whatever with into new initiatives because that's always going to grow the business quicker. That's always going to help you get that business to that next stage. And you have to understand as part get that business to that next stage. And you have to understand as part of that game, some will lose, you'll look back and it'll suck. But without that process, you wouldn't have found the new funnels or new side part of the business

or initiative within the business or new department that's adding hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions, right? And you can't have the best of both worlds. You've got to go through the losses to find the winners. So new initiatives in your business are really important. And the final one to finish is mentorship, coaching, networking. I've spent a million dollars in that department between mentors, board members, advisors, council. Masterminds obviously is a massive one. And

that networking group, I've spent a crazy amount of money building that team, building that network advisory team. And that got me to where I am today. It allowed me to get to where I got today because of all the great people that I could so call the knowledge, all the great people I could ring when I had a problem, all the great people that connected me with more great people like a spider's web. So investing in that network that met those masterminds, those coaching programs, obviously I have my own. We have over 200 members paying 25 to 100K that trust us because of the skills that we

have in marketing and building businesses. And they come to us and many make even more back and they meet life friends, they meet new business partners. And that's my goal because I got the benefit of that for six, seven years before. So, and I will tell you the million dollars I spent on that, I probably made two or $3 million back directly, right? So it's not like you're losing money. It's an investment, hence the name of this episode. It's investing in myself to get a higher return. Sometimes a higher return is money. Sometimes a higher return is progression in life, becoming smarter, more educated, more well-rounded, et cetera, more healthy, et cetera. So invest in yourself, okay? Invest in your network,

invest in partnerships, invest in masterminds, invest in coaches and mentors. I often use the analogy, if you look at a pro athlete, they have a team of about eight people, right? A physical therapist, a nutritionist, a strength coach, a head coach, an assistant coach, a manager. They have all of this team, right, around this athlete. You as an entrepreneur probably have zero people. Your husband or wife don of this team, right, around this athlete. You as an entrepreneur probably have zero people. Your husband or wife don't get it, right? Your parents don't get it.

And your staff are just under you following orders. And if you're not in this community, like I am, all these masterminds and stuff, I don't know how you do it, honestly. It must feel very lonely and scary. And you must feel very strange. And the only way you get rid of that is immersing yourself in these communities, masterminds, live events, networking groups. And like I said, like in my other episode, getting moving, flying, whatever you've got to do to get in them, because the more you're around those people, they'll lift you up, they'll push you, they'll help you, they'll support you, they'll connect you. And that's one of the best million dollars I've ever spent.

It's probably the best million dollars I'll spend for a long time. And I mean, it's a perfect way to end this episode today because most of you need to invest more money into that area of your life, especially professionally. So I hope that was helpful today, right? Obviously, part of entrepreneurship is making a ton of money, right? And then using that money to take you to that next today, right? Obviously, part of entrepreneurship is making a ton of money, right? And then using that money to take you to that next level, right?

And hopefully all the people around you and obviously charity being able to give back, right? And, you know, building a team and supporting their families and their goals too. And that's what makes entrepreneurship so great

and owning a business so great. And that's what The Red Life's all about. Living in wonderland and building that dream life. So I hope this episode was helpful. And I hope like I said, you got some great ideas from my experience, like it's not financial or investment advice. Hopefully, it's a good understanding of where I'm putting my money. So you can kind of look into these things more. And of course, you should always consult attorneys, accountants, qualified financial advisors before

actually doing any investments. But I hope you enjoyed it and I'll see you very soon. Take care.