Liquidity & Liquor - Austin Zelan | How to Buy Passive Income

Welcome to success story the most useful podcasts in the world. I'm your host Scott D. Cleary the success story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network The HubSpot podcast network has other great podcasts like marketing made simple hosted by dr. J. J. Peterson Marketing made simple brings you practical tips to make your marketing easy and more importantly make it work now If any of these topics out interesting to you, you're going to love his show How to write and deliver captivating speeches how to market yourself into a new job how design can help and potentially hurt your Revenue and how to create a social media ad strategy that works if these topics hit home and there are things that you want to learn about Go listen to marketing made simple wherever you get your podcasts Today you're going to hear an episode of my new podcast liquidity and liquor I co-host liquidity and liquor with Josef Martin a serial entrepreneur who sold his last company Boxy charm for over 500 million dollars on liquidity and liquor we have conversations about business money and life with some of the Most interesting people in the world you can download and subscribe to liquidity and liquor on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts All right, so we got Austin Zell in here and We're going to talk all things what passive income how you put your job how you Honestly, you're a you know the word auto-died act like a self-taught individual So this is something that I thought was like very interesting because you've taught yourself so many things But you screwed up a lot over your life in terms of Testing the waters Trying to figure something out lost a lot of money. Obviously now you teach over how to do things the right way Which I think is incredibly valuable. Yes, there's a lot of benefit to being somebody who's self-taught But there's a lot of benefit to not having to go through all the bullshit all the all the downs and all the lows, right? So that's what you do now. So why don't you Give like a quick summary of Where you're at right now and all the different things that you've invested in that you've now sort of taught over to other people But then also like describe your reality when you were back up Microsoft and You want to nothing other than to quit and and find freedom But you didn't really know where to go because that's a reality that lies with a lot of our listeners, right? They're in a nine to five job and they're stressed out and they they like entrepreneurship But they don't really know where to go and what to do next So I want to I want to understand all the stuff you're working on now But I want to also understand your mindset when you're stuck in that and how you thought through Getting out of it and basically escaping the nine to five. Let's let's go So it floors are so what are you working on? Yeah, awesome. So right now The reality is that I realized that I wanted to create my life in such a way where my time is not tied to the amount of money that I make So I have the separation of dollars and hours I do whatever I want with my time and I still get paid whether I work or not now Do I still choose to work absolutely because I love what I do? But it's a different type of work So back then I was working at Microsoft. I was building somebody else's dream now I'm focused on building what I want to build which is an educational platform So I'm teaching people how to create passive income. I'm teaching them financial literacy I'm showing them my journey step-by-step exactly what I did from getting funding to Researching different investments analyzing investments discovering new investments My biggest focus is discovering investments where other people don't even see them yet So at the cutting edge of discovering new investments, and I think what really prompted this was When I was a Microsoft they're at the cutting edge of a lot of technology They've developed a lot of tech which is like groundbreaking like they're developing new things that the world hasn't even seen yet And that inspired me because I'm like hey if I could find new investments that people haven't even heard of I bet we could be really successful with them And so I've kind of treated my life as like Sort of like a test for all these investments and I didn't have anybody to coach me through them But I was able to try them out one by one and I'd say I've had about a 60 to 70 percent success rate So obviously not every investment has been successful Individually speaking, but overall my portfolio has performed over time and the biggest thing that that has taught me is number one risk Management so how to manage my risk correctly That's the only thing that I can control in the market and then secondly how to build a portfolio that produces Truly passive income so sometimes people get a little bit confused With the term passive income and they just create another job for themselves And so they're they're ending up having to manage these investments on their own You know, maybe they start an online store. They're having to keep 100 boxes in their garage and they're trying to ship all of them and label them and all that stuff And that's not really passive like it is another way to make money But it's not as passive as we thought it would be But my main focus right now is continuing to scale my portfolio to be more and more Involved in different industries so externally diversified across different industries and also maintaining that passive income flow So back when I was a Microsoft, I realized that hey, I don't want to spend my entire day behind a desk consulting Building somebody else's dream How old were you when you quit Microsoft? I'd say like twenty one twenty two twenty one twenty two and how long have you been working for Microsoft? About a year and a half which that's actually interesting you were Right nineteen and a half or so when you joined yeah as a consultant for Microsoft a snuck in Yeah, I mean, and I was the first question asked you before we got in here What do you have to teach Microsoft at age of nineteen and a half that they did not already know? Yeah, it was an interesting well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so speaking a little bit to that As a consultant, I find that you don't really teach people things I was using systems and frameworks that the consulting firm that I worked for had created already And I was just walking Microsoft through those frameworks after like hey, I need to solve this problem I'm like great. We have a framework for that Let me show you this four step framework that my company has created and I'll show you exactly how we can apply the information That you gave me organize it look at our current state look at our future state and find the gap and then walk them through that So so when when we spoke and I'm I'm breaking the routine of what you said, but we're gonna get back to it Yeah, I just didn't want to skip that it was an interesting part because I do have I do have a kind of philosophy around agencies Where they're useful, but you also have to be cautious working with agencies and you you mentioned where your job was to sell Microsoft cloud services and you would go to say the Lloyd or other agencies Convince them to buy it with a kick of millions if they decide to convince their portfolio of Companies that hire them to tell them what should they do to improve efficiency? Yep, and if they work with the Microsoft they'll get $10 million which in essence you're saying There was kind of like obviously a Great area, right? You expect them to be completely For you when you paid them, but apparently there is a bigger paycheck above that hanging over their head saying well Convince them to work us instead of say Amazon web service, which is probably better than Microsoft Well, I don't know about that man I know you're still a part of it, but in general you understand why they didn't as a consultant Yeah, yeah, you're not going in as a completely impartial third party. Yeah, yeah, so Deloitte would be the consultant. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely so Don't use Deloitte guys notice that To speak that to that a little bit I wasn't forcing them to do that. Obviously, so like I think the decision and the ethical decisions still lies with that company Yes, right if your Deloitte's client and they decide hey, you know Microsoft will actually incentivize me if I Send more business their way, but for you I believe AWS would be a better fit because you already have AWS involved like here in this part of your business So they could fully make that decision to send them your way. So that's on them Do they care more about sending you to what's the best fit or does the best fit for you actually happen to be Microsoft and they get paid for it So I don't know I think you could be either way. I don't think it's necessarily a straight line of like hey AWS is better, but we'll pay you in general terms for me I think it's it's a point where you set yourself just to understand that just because you pay someone to consult for you Doesn't mean they have your best interest in my you might to be Deprioritized over some other decisions that they make above that if a person comes in and he works, but their manager said any type of Web service cloud use this that's what the company recommend they might not even know they're offering you that and this is the reasons why and I'll probably break it down So by the end of the day the protocol sends Any employee that doesn't really know why he has to recommend that it's probably what happens But I think a lot of people feel that way when they're in a job right they're not necessarily in love with the work that they're doing Because even that like did you feel like you were that effective like you were changing the world when you were a consultant? No, and that's one of the biggest problems that I had with it I was just fulfilling one small role and like I think you mentioned that I was out there Selling this cloud. I wasn't even doing that. I was just helping the team develop the strategy to sell the cloud and in reality There's like 30 of us. So my little piece was like tiny. It's like super unfulfilling Yeah, super unfulfilling for the most part what I was doing in my job It was very automated There are a lot of systems in place and technology that helped me do a lot of it And I was just kind of filling in a role right there was some human involvement obviously But for the most part it was very unfulfilling for me And I felt like I could provide so much more value whether it's to Microsoft or to more of a private client And that's what kind of led me down that transition You continue after that with Forex, right? That was your first breakthrough where you said okay, I'm gonna have financial Independence and I don't have to get your salary. I can be my own boss and you went on Forex and you build an Algobot trading how long was it? You know how long ago was it? Yeah, so I was building a bot throughout that whole time So even while I when I first started at Microsoft, I was already trading Forex. Okay. I'm sorry I'm gonna just explain. I'll go about trading. Yeah is Instead of being a day trader coming in and out you just systemize based on the strategy The trades and you build a bot that knows how to do it better than a human if you stick to a particular strategy Correct me from from wrong But you didn't so he didn't build that day one. So you did as you Were a trader yep, and then you Documented your process. Yeah, and then you took that and you found a developer to build that into a bot So he became a trader first. Yeah, and then build the bot sec how long was it what you was it when you build a bot When the bot was already pressed the button and it starts making you money so it first started when I was 19 So I was already using the bot back then that was five years ago two years ago six years ago Yeah, so I was already using the bot probably closer to like 20 years old But in I was still 19 I was using the bot and that first year I just used it on my own funds So I didn't have any client money being traded just my own funds I was like hey, let's try this out and see what happens, but before that I've been trading since I was 18 So I was trading For the first I don't know nine to 12 months. It was just very unprofitable Right, I was trying to figure out how can I be consistent with this? How can I figure out the bot before the bot? Yeah, how can I figure out how do you even make money with forex? So eventually once I figured that out, I'm like, okay, this is great Let me start trading and I started building up some capital just trading myself now during this time I'm thinking I'm like well, you know, this is kind of creating an additional job for me So what if I just found a way to transition to full-time investor, you know I'm already working on Microsoft. This is great, but it's boring How can I transition out of Microsoft and be a full-time investor? And so for me that was the software right with the software I realized that I could automate my whole investment process if I could just set it into rules I have several rules that happen mathematical calculations and I found a team that can take all my rules and put it into code They write it all into code and now I have this automated system and so I'm using this system to trade my capital I have proven that it's profitable and now I'm like, okay, well, let me take on clients So I started taking on clients and allowing them to subscribe to my software What do you mostly trade on? You mentioned gold. What else you trade on is it we trade five currency pairs for the most part But also gold so the most common ones that we trade is euro to Swiss Euro to US dollar euro to Japanese yen New Zealand dollar to Canadian dollar and US dollar to Japanese yen Okay, so so we don't speak Chinese. We hear to some of our listeners The idea is to buy and sell an arbitrage money where you actually try to gain It's like an entrepreneurial obviously have a very entrepreneurial mindset. I don't know where you're going with that But I have another question before we know I just I just want to make sure that people don't get close cat I want I want them to understand what is Forex. What is for it's a platform my question does Yeah, I don't want people to listen to those who I did not know what it is up until a few months ago myself So it's something that not everybody understands so no, it's a very interesting concept you're trading against foreign currency So foreign currency fluctuates up and down like stocks like any investment and you're taking advantage of those fluctuations in the market But my question to you obviously you're very entrepreneurial why when you're working at Microsoft Did you want to go into Forex in the first place because that seems like a highly risky thing so out of all the millions thing if you think about it six years ago I Actually, we you know we're talking about before about this before I would have thought like as an entrepreneurial passive income Individual you would have done drop shipping or you would have done something that was more mainstream So where was your head at? Why did you want to go into Forex? What how did you see that and recognize that opportunity when you you never came from a background in Investment banking or trading or or finance event. Yeah So there's kind of an interesting story to that and it was one of my buddies He showed me basically how to place a trade and this wasn't even a real like trading account It was a demo account which means you have paper money in there not real money And he just showed me how to place a trade and I remember thinking it was like the coolest thing ever I'm like whoa I'm trading Forex, right? And so after that I like I placed a couple trades on my own Just really tiny trades and I didn't even know what I was doing like lot's size no idea what the heck I'm doing like nothing and I was hanging out with the friend just catching up with the friend that I hadn't seen in a while And I'm like dude like our other friend our mutual friend showed me how to trade this Forex thing You want to see he was like yeah sure? We're like sitting in Starbucks middle of the afternoon and I just place a trade and I was so out of the loop that I totally forgot that I placed a trade And later that evening I was gonna watch like a lesson or something on Forex and I opened my app and I made like $2,000 So I'm like whoa That was that was the motivation. That's the changes. That is the way that that's your moment Imagine if I actually do what I was doing Yeah, yeah, okay and what so that was the moment when I realized I was like oh yeah I'm gonna learn this because it was so fascinating to me that with no skill set I was able to make $2,000 now Imagine if I knew what I was doing and what blew my mind is two things number one There are people out there with the same iPhone that I have Pressing buttons on their phone and making instead of 2,000 they make 200,000 in the same day the same move All that's different is there a lot size is different the size of their trade is just a little bit bigger Yeah, they didn't have to have any bigger skill that I do they just had a bigger account So I was committed that I was gonna learn that skill set and as I started learning Then I realized that the markets are actually very fascinating. They're so Correlated with each other all these different currencies all the reversal points. They're they're correlated right and they move Literally in rhythm like there's you can map out the entire movement of a certain currency based on technical analysis Technical analysis plays right into fundamental analysis. It's so fascinating to me how the markets just line up Perfectly right before a news event happens and when a news event happens We see maybe a reversal or a continuation through a huge resistance point, right? And it's all time to the tea. It's exact and I love that. I love the exactness of the market Yeah, I think when when you I mean after my exit I decided to learn just like you yeah, because I was focused on one thing and and I I noticed that when you look at any kind of Trade platform if it's around crypto or stocks or If it's can be gold whatever it is if it's a commodities It's it's very much around traders, right? So if you're looking at commodities the fluctuation is less because there's just a lot of trade and not around investors Yeah, as soon as you're involved investors around this with crypto. It's much more volatile But ultimately what goes down everything goes down goes down up everything goes up And and you can measure based on the volatility the amount of investors compared to actual trade around the stock the the commodity The currency Yeah, you can say okay if it's just mostly investors Maybe it's a little bit more risky because of whatever in the future might be different right now It's an empty shell for now and and that's how you look at this So when people thought that crypto is going Bitcoin is going to be the savior in an inflation You saw that it was not the case. It was just it was just a disappointment Because it went down just with as the market went down everything crushed together It was not saving inflation or anything like that. I was against everything that they put at least for now Because as soon as you have only investors Trading a big amount of the trade is just around investors It's just a musical game when it goes down you're gonna lose it Yeah, and I think that you know like you said for now That's what we see I think it still has the potential to at least hedge against inflation crypto in general because of certain qualities Does it that it has but yeah, you know, it's very volatile. It's a very volatile market I personally don't trade crypto. It's unpredictable to me Whereas if I'm trading euro versus Japanese yen those currencies of existing You can go five years and track the movements you can exactly What are you gonna be? I know every time it hits this number. It's gonna bounce from it. Yeah, that's how it is Yeah, so that's what I like about it. I like the predictability of it And as you like see more of the market and you understand the psychology behind it That's the biggest thing. I find that trading is very simple, but it's not easy It's not easy because of the psychology and all the the mind games that you go through as a trader and you have to understand Why the market is moving a certain way why your trade didn't play out why it should play out and trusting your system as the biggest thing So if you have a profitable system and your net positive over let's say a hundred trades You just have to trust it even if you're losing trades and And that the other thing that struck me when we had our pre-interview discussion You're talking to me about your other side today where you have 50% in in Coins were in gold that you trade but for xx for xx, but then you have also another 50% in bunch of other things One of them was very fascinating and I was the Oil wells you buy wells. Yeah, just It's like Saudi Arabia, so you go to Texas yep, there is a mining company that drills and Yeah, and one out of 50 you only lose the rest you're gonna start pumping oil and you're gonna make But it's 12% a month on your money after I say seven to 12 is usually what we're seeing on the wells Obviously, that's like past performance But yeah, you know, I don't physically go down to Texas sometimes I do to go check on them like I'm going down there next week Actually funny enough But yeah, I'd say go maybe like once a year just to kind of see how things are going get some content But for the most part these are wells that are like Supplying oil to major refineries. So the key is you want to work with somebody who's been in the industry for a while because The good plots of land where there's lots of oil and there's lots of flow of oil Those are usually only accessible through like generational stuff, right? So this dude's dad or his grandpa owned this land and he passed it on to them because if you're not getting Generational access you're not getting access to the best land Right, so you have to have some sort of relationship there or it's gonna be very expensive to the point where you're not really Profiting them. How did you get to it? Well, I want actually I want to I want everyone to understand your your I guess life thesis and your investment thesis which is like fractional business ownership But fractional to the point where you don't have to have a complete understanding of the actual business mechanics and operations Yeah, so I want it because that actually That permeates every single business he does So he doesn't do a bit like that's a true passive income. That was your point You're saying well you don't have to actually do the drilling you don't have to go with those fine shoes and start Doing the drilling and managing the selling of the oil you just go through a company the dad's her job And they just need that that a million bucks to go in and start drilling and then okay, you bought the land With the other partners you're on a fraction of multiple wells One out of so again to find nothing dirt, but the rest will pay and ultimately Your pumping oil and you're a partner and you don't have to manage anything you just get the chicken a bank Exactly, so I think that the scariest part of investing for people is managing the investment And so what I have found is a group of like professional professional people specialists at what they do So like this oil what for for example, these guys have been doing it for 30 40 years That's the only thing that they do all they do is drill oil all day They know exactly how to do it If I spent the next 30 years how to do it I don't know if I'd be as good as them because they have that in their in their families How does someone goes to you and say here's some money cut me in I want to get some oil Yeah, let me get there in a second So I got there and it's like and so um To create this a truly passive income stream right to create truly passive income We have to find specialists these specialists are really good at what they do when they do one thing I don't want to get that good at drilling well Why oil wells? I don't really care about it that much But if I can purchase a well and give it to them to manage or pay them to drill a well for me And they manage the whole thing you bet they're gonna do as good as they possibly can because number one They're incentivized on performance. So they get a profit split and number two That's their entire livelihood if they don't produce oil. They don't have food or In reputation and reputation and they can't pay their mortgages like that's their entire Investment all their time and energy goes into producing profitable oil wells There is no possible chance that I would ever commit that much time to doing it So for me the best option is to become an investor I invest into an oil well they run it for me and I'll split the profits with them all day long I bet I go to work my kid. How did you get into it? How I met this guy how you how you yeah, so how you end up going into you're from Forex or wind Seattle because you just Sound like yeah, yeah super impressive like cash flowing opportunities It's basically what the end result is but yeah, and that's all relationship Yeah, I've found that these are all people in my network And if I don't know somebody like maybe I want somebody that I don't know has a helicopter company I don't know anybody, but maybe you do maybe you can introduce me, you know what I mean? So it's all relationship and I know that if Joseph trust them I can trust them too. I think he's a solid guy He's obviously business as I am He is I promise So I would trust his opinion, you know if he tells me somebody solid That's a way more Significant thing than me finding some guy on the internet that's like hey invest in my helicopter company I know what you can do with marketing and I understand that a relationship and somebody's word is way more valuable than that So I focus a lot on developing these relationships And I find ways that I can provide value to people and a lot of times they're like hey, you know, I was thinking of This guy that runs a helicopter company and you came to mind. Let me introduce you guys, right? So it's all building a network and whether it works out or not, you know That's a whole different story, but for me it's relationships And so my first passive income investment was actually Bitcoin mining and that was also through a relationship So there was this guy that I knew back in network marketing way back in the day He started like investing into Bitcoin miners and he's like hey man like you know a long time to see it was a chat I think I was like 18 19 back then. Yeah, it was a while back. Yeah, so we started mining Bitcoin back then and we He basically introduced me to this guy the CEO of this company that Mines Bitcoin and so I started buying up miners and I was like oh, this is great I don't do anything and that was my first taste of passive income because for trading I still had to trade for the most part But I started building out this portfolio with miners and then I went to their event I talked to people there. I met other people that have other investments and developing that network allowed me to find all these other people so Oil wells exotic cars Airbnb's like I'm always actively looking for professionals who are the best in their industry the best guy in oil The best guy in real estate the best guy in Airbnb the best guy in Amazon stores, right? So finding the best in their industry connecting with them vetting them Investing myself if it works out then I put it into my program that I teach on So if it fails obviously doesn't make it But my goal is to simplify that process for people to where I do all the due diligence They don't have to go out and lose if they can just copy my winners So it's kind of like trading signals, but in the investment world You know, I'm fascinated because You know, I guess for my end ever and I know it would cut the same thing We're kind of like business operators We run a business we build it then broker back to sell it I mean, and I still have back pains and it's it's it's fascinating when you're young and you have already a whole multiple streams of income from Real passive income It's nothing more. It's not like okay. I'm renting a place, but I have to clean it and manage it No, no, it was organized. It was structured. It was all you have current or you have no jet you have rental and you have multiple streams of income and from Airbnb to Even petroleum just it was it was fascinating to see that you actually made a and I You made a Goal year for yourself to make sure you don't have to get your hands dirty Just looking for the opportunities and buying more and more and putting a dollar to make two and and move on and I was just There's always something else whatever you do. There's always another opportunity out there It's just it's not it's not everything. There's always something else. It can be bigger. It can be different Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, and for me that's that's part of my strategy diversifying So I don't go all in on one investment. I diversified into multiple different things both internally and externally I was told Scott earlier like let's say even exotic cars I'm not buying just one Lambo and that's it. I'm done. No, I'm buying a Lambo. I'm buying a Lambo SUV I'm buying a Rolls-Royce. I'm buying a Ferrari. So internally with the other Extractors on this. Oh, that's not a good car. Shouldn't have done this or you knew in advance before you got in I knew in advance because I talked to the guys that have been operating this for five six years So they know they can show me their data for the past five years. How much this car makes every month? So I'm like, oh, I want that one. I want this one. That's about the car business. How are you making money with that? Yeah, so basically we're buying these exotic cars about 20 to 30 K down Sometimes a little bit more just kind of depending on your credit and how much other stuff you're financing You send the car to them and that's it then they direct deposit you all the profits that you make So they do all the maintenance all the management all the cleaning literally A to Z they handle the car That's their whole business. They're the best at it. They spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on ads every month That I don't have to spend but that's because that's their business So if they have this machine that's already running why would I rebuild it? I'm just going to take a car or 10 cars and place it in their business and let them rent it out for me And they're going to want 50% of the profits Maybe right maybe 60. I'm fine paying that. I don't do anything I just get direct deposits every month and these cars depending on the city Now I've heard some people doing like 50 to 70 thousand dollars a month on these cars. I think that's a very location specific So far what I've seen from our vendors like real numbers 30 to 40 K on the better months So if you're doing 40 K on a Lambo in a month and you do a 50 50 split I put 20 K down and I just made 20 K in one month. That's a really good investment. Yeah That's insane Beyond good. This is where it's a real business in it's not but you know why though because all you're doing so So they have the model in place. So to replicate that yourself you'd need Gears of experience trust with your customers millions of dollars in advertising budget You're just you're just saying like listen you have a hundred cars I'm going to finance the hundred and first car and you just throw it into your machine You already have Yeah, because everyone would think that it all goes to regular traditional real estate rental You make yourself five percent a year 10 percent a year if you're really good at buying the property But you still have to manage that so then you have to and maybe some from the appreciation if you're in a ball market But hey, that's that's a whole different ball game. Oh, yeah And that what that provides me also is predictability. I'm not speculating. How's this car gonna do? I wonder how much I'm gonna make no I could just look at the data what they've done for the past six years And it usually lines up like and you've met and the people that you've met They're honest. They're not screwing you over because like now you're giving up a little bit of control too because you're placing an expensive asset You don't know what's actually happening. So you gotta trust these people exactly Yeah, so both of the vendors that I use I have vetted them thoroughly So I've spent maybe six to 12 months before I've replaced the car there Just doing research on them just getting to know them taking them out to dinner Understanding how their model works. Why it works that way? Understanding the ins and outs of their business and once I had a relationship with them where I trust them I'm like, okay, well, let's place a car here and I did it first myself I put a car there and I'm like, okay, cool now. It's profitable. Let me place a second car Let's see what happens and I just grew it step by step by step and eventually I had built up enough trust and results to where I can send my students their way How many how many cars do you have over there? Um, I currently have five five cars So don't you think that eventually it's get I mean you can have to find more of those dealerships and different cities because no not really um, you know I thought about that however Most of these people were such like my group of investors is such a significant part of their company at this point that they're opening more locations Just because we're sending them so many cars. So like we have let's see New York this guy in New York has multiple locations on his own Right even without us. He has New York Miami LA um And we have Seattle as well. So we have like Locations that we have as core core markets and then we have locations that we can expand to so like right now Tampa is really hot nobody's really doing it in Tampa So we're always finding new markets that we can move to and develop and we're still so early on in this game Of course eventually it's gonna become saturated like Miami personally in my opinion But then you already paid off the cars yeah, yeah, and and that's why I'm also moving into other investments the jet nobody's doing jets yet People are starting to catch on about the cars people are starting to invest in that right We also have semi truck automation. That's another thing nobody's doing that right well There are a couple people in the game, but semi truck automations automation. Yeah, it's just like exotic cars You buy a semi truck you give it to a semi truck company They put an operator in there and they do deliveries And you make about because they couldn't finance that many additional trucks That's the thing it's like they have a limit on how much they can personally finance a personally guarantee based on this performance Yeah, so we're helping them grow their business. They love us. We're doing about I'd say semi trucks 8 to 12k a month I kind of like it a little bit better than exotic cars because exotic cars I'm thinking about kids that made some money and crypto and now they're messing up your car Versus try to deserve. Yeah, that is what I mean, but still I mean depreciation faster If no apparently they appreciate you Well, not I mean not if you crush it Well, no, but then you get an insurance payout then you buy anyone. Well, I like it that it's a physical asset very low risk Yeah, you know, if I if I'm trading Forex, there's nothing guaranteeing it But in the car at least I own the physical asset so if the if the market goes as shit and the business Get kicked off Facebook and the camera ads and anymore at all then you still have a physical asset you can sell You're still on it. Yes. Yeah. Well, well, we would track something they depreciate but at the same time They drive slower. They they're very careful. There's accidents and trucks right so yeah And it's gonna pay so far if it's you say in 12% a month. Do they hear correctly? Not 12% I'd say it's actually higher than 12 No, it says 8 to 12 We're buying with the assets that you have under management right now. Yeah, 8 to 12k per truck. So This is how it works. We're essentially buying these semi trucks around 25 to 50k So somewhere within that range. We're not buying brand new. You don't want to do that. I don't want to take the depreciation hit If you want to do it, you can do that. I'm not doing strategy. No, and that's kind of bad. I don't I don't do that It's kind of loves to depreciate these assets. I mean I don't do that All my three trucks while he depreciates his ones. Yeah. No, so We're buying let's say 30k 40k for a truck right and this truck does 20 to 30,000 dollars a month gross top-line revenue now off of that we're Expensing obviously that what we're paying the driver the fuel The maintenance everything and you're left with usually about after all the profits splits about 8 to 12 thousand dollars net So if I invested 40 thousand dollars and I'm making 12k a month while it's about 25 percent a month Right wow how many trucks do you have I just up to okay? You watch out. He's gonna buy he's gonna buy 3000 trucks I get I gotta finish this We'll talk after this Yeah, when he tracks out there in Florida. It was the largest individual private owner of semi-trucks Yeah, it's just he just changes his Instagram by like the semi-traumation. Yeah Joe trucker. No, Joe the trucker No, there's a lot of opportunity and stuff like that and that's something that most people never think of now And so the way I see my role is like I know all these people like I personally have known this guy running trucking automation for years Like this is a personal friend for me. I trust him right and so I know that he's gonna do an excellent job running this and so It's very easy for me to give him multiple trucks. I'm just thinking my friends have a podcast and here I'm doing a podcast when your friends have those awesome ideas away Why couldn't you do trucks and listen man? I have a podcast so you have an awesome idea I give you the point you're right Yeah, so you know and I'm my job is to develop those relationships further Right, and then I hand them off to my group of investors and I think that's the biggest value You know for most people is like what should I invest in how does it work? Well, do you have you have now between trucks? I'll bring your bring your truck if you doesn't go I'll get you on the lambo and then we go on a jet That's pretty cool and you do Airbnb still yep, I do Airbnb's So I we do a lot of Airbnb arbitrage in my program And that's a really cool model because you don't even have to own any real estate But you don't yeah, you don't get any of the appreciation so arbitrage explain that Yeah, so let's say you have a house in Tampa and in Tampa right now prices are still fairly low I can get a house for rent there on a monthly basis for like two thousand dollars a month And let's say I get a contract for three years or four years and the homeowners happy They're like, oh great. You want to rent the house for four years? I don't have to do anything for four years sit on on that Yeah, and then you agree with them that you're going to sub lease it on Airbnb on a nightly basis I can charge two hundred bucks a night all day long So if I'm paying two thousand dollars a month, I have a management company running it my occupancy is let's say 75% which is I believe like 23 days out of the month right 23 days times two hundred dollars That's what $4,600 a month Minus let's say six hundred in expenses two thousand dollars on my mortgage Or my lease payment. I'm still netting to grand and at worst just to know you just lose your deposit if you have to pull out in case it doesn't work in case they Delicense you from from Airbnb and so on that that that's actually very smart And that's my favorite part. Yeah, they probably don't even notice the contract Where it says that because if you send them the contract They're saying well, I don't want parties. I'll just want to rent it to a traditional person But you see that the thing you don't even have to worry about parties because Airbnb already bans parties So Airbnb has insurance Yeah, so as long as you're not violating terms of service for Airbnb Yeah, then you make sure you're not if the homeowner's okay with it anything they do to the house is covered under Airbnb's insurance Yeah, absolutely and they're responsible for it and they are actually pretty good at enforcing those fees getting paid like let's say they break my wall Like they're gonna pay for it. The guest is gonna pay for it. They're very good about that Airbnb in general But so you had people breaking walls for no, I haven't I'm just saying if that did happen Well, you know the thing with When it comes down to Airbnb, I mean, it's actually interesting because if you rent if you have a house where most people don't know about There been but short-term rental sometimes you can de-license a house from getting short-term rentals It happens in multiple places that we have Someone in our neighborhood that beginning too many complaints and they keep knocking on my doors asking me to Sign because they need two more signatures so they can de-license them and they'll have to move into long-term rentals And the guy had multiple homes and that's what he does he buy a couple of those homes kind of like mine style house and he rent them for high rollers, I guess and And I told him no, I mean, he's mine. I don't hear as in any noise though. Just a couple People that maybe they're positioning from the house to fill the noise or something like that, but all I'm not gonna do But but yes, some of them get the license and at that point you're just losing your deposit I'm pretty sure all of Boka Cannot have Airbnb's a phenomenal sake and see that really yeah, I think it's Boka It's either Boka or deer field one of the two spots the entire Area defined by the the city limits cannot have Airbnb's in it All of the city decision. So you got to make sure that obviously if you do this Yeah, you got to make sure county regulations that you're following them sometimes they say hey We have a minimum of 30 days. So if you get a 30-day Airbnb you can still do that for seven days, right? As long as you've been in Lord your pool of of Yeah, yeah, definitely lowers it, but back to your point that is such a great risk management strategy because guess what if we have a global pandemic And Airbnb shuts down all that's a risk of my deposit But if I'm the homeowner and I own a hundred houses I still have to make my mortgage payments. Yes, and a lot of people lost houses because of that Because they had to make those mortgages Yeah, the bank the bank's gonna come out feel a lot harder than Then I landlord that's for sure exactly and those lease those deposits a lot of times you can negotiate them Let's say they have like hey an early termination fee of 10 grand Well, maybe I can negotiate it down to five or three or maybe the homeowner likes me He's like you know, whatever. Don't even pay it. So it's not even set in stone There is a fee usually assigned to it like an early termination fee. Actually, it's not set in stone It's usually it's usually just find new tenants. That's usually it anyways many times if you find a new tenant They don't give it to it because they don't want somebody you can't pay. Yeah, they don't need that Why would they have that headache going to court? You know, along it is to evict somebody depends on state you're in By that time you would keep doing Airbnb's and you're caching out Well, they're trying to evict you That's probably not the best luck Yeah, so anyways, but one thing that I want to mention about that is that you're missing out on all the appreciation So like my real estate in the Tampa area has appreciated over 30% in the past 12 months I would have missed out on that if I'm doing arbitrage But I can get into each house for less than 5k So you got to look at it. Hey, am I just gonna do volume and do arbitrage and make a ton of money like that Because I'm in 5k, but I'm doing $2,000. You're losing some of the upside on this one. Yeah, I'm losing outside Risk tolerance. Yeah, so you know, it's still a good strategy because at a certain point I feel like if you have enough volume on arbitrage properties You're going to make up for any losses that you would have made for appreciation just by cash flow Because if you're putting in 5k maybe 7k for a property you can even rent furniture by the way. You don't have to buy it And you're heading to grand a month from each house at a certain point. That's going to outpace your appreciation I mean, especially you don't have to finance the worry about mortgages all the stuff that would limit your ability to buy right exactly Yeah, I actually rented furniture when I moved out and it was Is your because any I'm not going to stand at apartment. I wonder what the profit on this? I have to rent a TV for a hundred bucks a month or so on No, but you all cock you so now now when you if you do this as a living You probably have a spreadsheet where you put all the numbers in you figure out the exact profit and you know exactly what you're going to make Absolutely, yeah, and that goes into negotiating these properties So at this point at the very beginning I was negotiating these on my own So if I was doing an arbitrage I would negotiate it on my own at this point We have a vendor that does that for us. They're professionals. They're trained on getting you the best deal possible on Airbnb arbitrage Airbnb arbitrage yeah, and so you basically contract them They go out and they find your property wherever you want they agree with the owners They negotiate with them. They're like hey, we're gonna do Airbnb's here. We're gonna do this We're gonna do that and they they have them sign this agreement for you And so now you're fully protected. You're like you're all set up to run this business All you do is you sign the lease you pick up the keys and that's it and you just make your lease payment every month well to make one more point I guess from listening One thing you can add is Buy buy out options so you can buy the house if it appreciates at a particular rate So you can say I'm liking you out think about it No, if you can throw it into the contract and it's like at least the buy yeah list the buy Yeah, I'll buy it for me if you feel like the those appreciation the buy option. Yeah. Yeah, you know, that's where yeah You see it's come. It's good coming to a podcast. I mean, we're kind of smart people. It's kind of myself See now now now now you don't want those trucker friends. Do you? So you've built all these different passive income opportunities I do like talking about the ones that fail because when when you just walk through all the wins It sounds great, but that's not reality. Yeah, so you you said you kept stuff out of your portfolio So walk through like some of them didn't work out and and why is that and also like red flags for people that are starting to go out on their own Maybe they have a consumed your content. Maybe they're like, you know, I don't care about Austin I'm gonna figure it out on my own first and at least give them some advice so they can Not flounder too much and not screw up too much. So yeah Where should you stay away from when you're trying to build passive income? So some guidelines that I follow and I'll go into an example here in a second But a couple guidelines that I follow is I like to know the owners personally So whoever is operating this investment. I have to know them. I have to like them and most of all Understand their investment philosophy If they have an investment philosophy if they're just like hey, we're just gonna make a lot of money It's usually not gonna work out. They have to have some sort of Good like background to why they're the best person to do this for example my will a well as guy His dad has been doing it for 30 years. I know this is the best guy to do it My exotic car rental guy is one of the best in the entire Pacific Northwest I know he's the best person to that so I understand the way he invests into his business And he has a lot of reinvestment to continue in growing that business So for me, I trust him because of that. I like his philosophy Another thing is that usually if an investment and this is kind of like totally random something that I look for If an investment is less than 10k, you can get in for less than 10k It's usually not legit and I don't know like not to attack anybody personally But for me personally whenever I've invested and there was an option to put in less than 10k It just didn't work out and I don't know if that's just my luck or what But what I found is that if an investment is truly worth it It's usually somewhere higher like 50k 100k 250k That's when you start seeing the better tier investments because they are As opposed like scammy low-level targeting. Yeah, give me 6k and I'm gonna give you Or even give me like a thousand bucks and I'm gonna give you insane returns Yeah, because they're going for people for impulse buys right yeah And I'm not looking for that because if you're offering an investment at a hundred thousand dollars You're gonna get some sophisticated investors who are really doing their due diligence and you can't just sell air You have to have like legitimate results You have to be doing something right in order to ever sell a product like that or get an investment right so Those people are operating at a different level because of the investor caliber that they're targeting and so for me That's usually where the better deals are and so there's a smaller pool first of all I don't have to weed through a bunch of garbage I can just go directly to the good deals and it's pretty easy to spot them at that point Like you can see who's legit who's not legit right but anyways back to the failed investments One of the biggest fails in my career has been in e-commerce and it's not just me personally the whole industry Just kind of like really shriveled up from where it used to be Everybody was selling like Walmart automation and Amazon automation. This is not to attack anybody personally This is more of like hey Amazon really pulled back the reins on how many people can drop ship and that's because that's in violation of their terms of use And so it's a great idea the concept is nice. It works out But this is how it works. Let's say you sell something on amazon.com or Walmart.com as a drop shipper You sell it for 20 bucks. Let's say you sold me this glass for 20 bucks I'm like what a great glass I buy it for 20 bucks now you take that 20 dollars and you turn around and you go to like Target target.com You find this glass on target.com for eight dollars or twelve dollars and you ship it directly to me And you collected the difference. Usually you would have a team operating that so that eight dollar margin You'd split it 50-50 with them. So they make four bucks. You make four bucks. You did nothing. They just used your credit card now The cool thing about that is you don't have to hold any inventory You're only spending money when I've already paid you so it's very convenient very easy to set it up Very easy to have somebody else operate the entire business model for you Now the reason that I got shut down is because I would get a box from target And I'm like what the heck I bought something on amazon.com not target Why am I getting a target box and I probably wouldn't care But there are people who do care and they're going to complain about your store as soon as you get three complaints Amazon is like your dropshipping now. We're shutting you down And if they had money that they were about to pay you out because they pay out Not like every day. It's usually like biweekly or monthly If they're paying you out biweekly Well, guess what all your money is locked up in there, right? And so now maybe you had $200,000 of orders that you fulfilled the last month and you didn't get your payout Well now you're going to have to find ways to pay that back, right? And they're holding it for months and months sometimes sometimes six months Right, so there's all these different things that happen and they really pull back the reins on people in amazon and on walmart.com So my stores just got totally shut down I've had like five or six stores that got shut down and these stores they're usually about 50 grand 40-50,000 dollars just for somebody to set the store up for you So that's been a big fail for me and So the reason that that failed to go into that is because it's against the terms of use So amazon is kind of like this big. I always compare it to a strip mall It's like a mall, right? You go to the mall and you have all these little stores And you're just one of those little units in the stores And if amazon decides that they don't like you they can kick you out at any time You don't really know what to say because we didn't have actually two amazon Sowers of the drop shipping they did FBA exactly. Yeah, they did not the drop shipping The the hack for drop shipping what they're doing now is they'll Intimidiary well, but then the ones that are actually doing it right that don't have any concern of Getting shut down are the ones that actually own the goods. Yeah, they don't drop ship from Ali express or anything like that They own the goods. Yeah, and what they'll do is they'll sell it there. There's just I can sell it through multiple stores Do it better than versus one store and all that volume. So they'll sell it to you and exactly like like Scott mentioned So the the Adorama's on I mean you you went to the wrong company apparently the other ones that think within a year and a half You get your money back, which is it's pretty awesome payout right for FBA But it still is I mean with FBA unless you're paying a management company. That's not passive. Oh, no, no Absolutely, you have to look at how a lot of work. No, no, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So I have it Stories as well massive capital investment. Yeah, yeah, I have FBA stores as well. Those are up and running. Yeah, I'm talking about drop shipping Specifically. Oh hell those drop sheepers health screw those people. No, I was gonna say it's funny Yeah, you're you're your example includes Buying on walmart.com and shipping from target I mean like if people got a target box and not something from like way over seas I think they'd actually be very happy. I mean actually with drop shipping was like I like like Alex press two months from today. Yeah It wasn't even target Even the target thing is like it's not good man, but In a way in a way that what you're doing is you are a marketplace a like Amazon because Amazon is a marketplace Yep, they're not trying to be the market They're trying to be the marketplace. They let everyone fight with each other when they supply them the space and sell Like a flea market or you mentioned a mole. I love that example where at the end the cashier Is is is the flea market person? He's the cashier. He collects the money Danny distributes the money to the store owners Yeah, and that's a very controlled environment this way. They can control everything kind of like if you watch the founder Well, well, you know the land actually you don't worry about flipping burgers. Yeah, and And then in your case you decide I don't want to own the thing because then I owned the operation I just want a little piece of a little bit of everything and I can put the money out there And it's it's what the traditional fund does now you have right now 37 million under management Which is extremely impressive for someone your age Uh, and I can imagine when you're going to be my age. How much you can have under management? Completely different money Yeah, because right now right now I see you doing a lot of Unlike hunting for going to the search for the holy grails. There's like a little opportunity over here But it's it's scalable to a point, but not it's not going to be something that Bane capital is going to go and tell you hey Here's some of our money. Let's move the alternative stuff. Yeah, it's alternative right do you have any thoughts of kind of a massive volume But some may perhaps Affiliate smaller returns, but do you have any thoughts of something a hundred million 500 million plus investments not like nitpicking couple cars here and there something bigger scale Yeah, so something that I'd like to move more into and I've I've kind of talked to my legal team and Trying to get a fund set up because there's two areas that I see massive growth in Number one is obviously the forex, okay, so we already have scaled that we've proven the model that I believe is Scalable way past where we're right now we could do hundreds of millions we could probably do billions in the forex space Right, obviously you'd have to be like partition into different accounts, but very possible now besides that what I see really really picking up is Specifically right now last mile shipping So yeah last mile shipping so when a semi truck comes yeah, yeah when a semi truck comes to Miami The semi truck isn't dropping off the box at your house They bring it to a warehouse, which is the last mile warehouse from there a sprinter takes it to your house Right or a little box truck or something so if I can invest into those last mile facilities That's a great investment right now specifically because we're not going to have a limited space especially in big cities And so that's a great market that's really really growing So real estate I believe overall is like the holy grail right multifamily large commercial properties Right now what when you're saying last mile Usually the last mile process goes to usb s Is that what you refer to so it's usb s has the ddu which is it means the last mile the last destination unit and it And what they're doing is you ship to them to their facilities It's a government facility and in order for you to cut the cost you drop the product from California You form here to call from Miami to California you take a truck this way you you pay a completely different fee If you have a certain volume that they require is that what you're for to It can be something like usps it can be a government thing But it can also be like amazon right amazon a lot of times has their own Contractors that deliver all these things so you go to the amazon warehouse So like an amazon warehouse would be a potential investment you build the facility They buy it from you or they invest in it or they're leasing it whatever right So those are in very high demand right now there's also less like Less volume facilities Where semi trucks come and they unload their loads and it's distributed by smaller vehicles Not like amazon size but Shipping in generals in industry that i'm looking into you would find you'd find one of those contractors and you would augment their fleet is what you're saying Well, I'm talking about the real estate. Oh the real sorry So you own the warehouse. Yeah, so the warehouse itself is a good investment because I've seen them appreciate a lot Specifically in large cities where there's a lot of demand for it as we're moving more to buying stuff online I believe there's a huge shift towards e-commerce and It's just grown and grown and grown and that means that we're going to need more infrastructure for that So that's a big target for me in real estate right at this moment It's not going to be like that forever, but right now it's a hot time But overall I'd say multi-family Hotels commercial real estate. That's something that I believe is sustainable into the billions Yeah, that's uh it is something there's actually a uh Reads that does that calls herries And they started are you in that? Yes, I am okay. Yeah, and it's only on commercial uh Commercial real estate and it's only amazon wall mort fulfillment centers Yeah, and that's and it has been appreciating. It's nothing the same kind of but I think it's a nine billion dollar fund um and you can you can Probably research that it's uh, it's an interesting and they are appreciating by far more than anything else. I mean I have some with Other reeds and it is it's the best investment, but that's not so you're putting your money into a nine billion dollar fund So what you're saying is would you start a read yourself and raise that fund? And sort of act is sort of kind of like exactly what he's put money into Um, I don't know if it would be a real estate specific fund So I think that right now I really like how I balanced my portfolio of course I'm a little That's that's all point you can do it through a different I could scale it So whether I have a fund that's diversified into forks and real estate and all these other things and maybe we own You know 20 y'all right and private jets and all this stuff and it's just a fund of funds Or I have individual funds into each one right so it really just depends on how I'm curious where you what you want it to do I know there's a million different like different ways to do it But like what you actually felt like doing with it. So how does it feel like being single Successful in Seattle which is gray most of the year and no one no one to take for coffee Yeah, I mean you have to drink coffee to stimulate yourself and not be depressed from the gray clouds over there Uh, how does it feel? I mean you you sit down on a date with a girl and you tell her listen and let me tell you about forks But what do you do? That's usually not how I start the conversation Recommend you shouldn't are you my stay single? Yeah, yeah, that's a great way to stay single No, it's um, you know, no Seattle's great. I like Seattle. It's a nice little I kind of consider it my quiet corner of the United States I can go there. It's not hectic. It's not crazy. And if I want crazy, I can just travel Right and I travel a lot about Miami too. You hear that? Yeah, it's not We're leaving for Florida. This is not crazy over here. So for a lot of deals not crazy But I think you know, there's a lot of excitement in Miami But I think there's also value in like a quieter setting Because it allows me to focus on my business and grow that business and that takes up a lot of my time You know, I'm really passionate about coaching people and helping them achieve that aha moment of their investment career Where they're like oh, I can buy a semi truck and make money off of it What I can do oil wells and this is how it works And this is how much you're making to help people make that realization I believe we'll pay them for the rest of their life. So you're charging them for for your school Yeah, so I charge 40k for 12 months Um, and they join weekly calls where I'm coaching them through this entire process And they can literally take my portfolio piece by piece and copy exactly what I'm doing It's pretty impressive and you give them like all the contacts and and whatnot Absolutely Yeah, so I'm kind of like the connector they come to me. I teach them how these investments work Let's say they choose two or three of them. I'm like okay great Well, instead of you going out. I'm going to teach you how to do it on your own But instead of doing it on your own Why don't I just connect you with the guy that's doing it for me? Yeah, he's already successful This is how much money he makes me every single month Here it's worth it for you though to go and teach the secret sauce of what you do Yeah, I mean, it's not really secret sauce. It's just the way I like to do it You know, I think there's multiple ways to do anything and for me I'm passionate about the educational side of it for me. I make my own passive income whether I have students or not Right, and so to be able to share that with the community I'm really passionate about that if I was making I was telling him really if I was making a billion dollars a day in passive income I would still be coaching people because I love walking people through that process Because I believe that as a transformational process that's going to pay them for the rest of their life It's not a one-time thing. It's like oh, I made this guy a hundred thousand dollars No, I taught them a system that's going to produce Six figures over and over and over again. Yeah, I view okay, so what's the percentage of people that Ended up quitting their job and start doing good for themselves So we have basically a guideline where we follow We follow a system that produces six figures in passive income So the minimum per month is about eighty three hundred dollars. We have a one hundred percent success rate So I guarantee that that's going to happen for them within 12 months If not then I work with them one-on-one to make sure it does so that ensures a one hundred percent success pretty good Essentially, I'm okay in passive income with you know, I always compare these two traditional Education where you go to a college so useless complete useless But I'm still in college Yeah, you're in college. Yeah, I'm doing my well Post-grad so I'm doing my PhD right now. Oh, okay, and why Organizational leadership. Why? Just for fun. Okay. So it's the next time I come here. I'll make your parents happy make your parents happy Not to ask the next time I come here You can only make these crazy decisions like doing a PhD in business when you have so much passive income that you don't have to work anymore That's it No, I mean no, it's good to keep learning but but candidly traditional education Even though you are taking you're doing a PhD right now compared to teaching somebody how to make a hundred K without putting in 40 additional hours in their life is I'll tell you I'll tell you why I'll tell you why there's gonna be a pushback for something like yours versus traditional Because traditionally get government money No, no one is the government just pays you to go to school for some odd reason which makes no sense Are the tax dollar payers that just waste their money just it needs to be privatized if if a bank doesn't want to loan you money To go to school then I guess it's not worth it because they know better than the government and if you're telling me You want to be a doctor eventually. We know you're gonna pay out your debt until you run all you run over by one of your trucks But uh a side of that. I mean it makes if you go to business school Like I did it's completely useless my MBA was really not worthwhile What did you learn from this that you can actually use? I mean nothing. I I knew most of this actually I knew Probably 90% of the stuff going into my MBA I learned today more than How to make money with you more than what I've learned throughout the time that I took my budget business Absolutely, what do you learn in a phb of business? Can we get that on a quote? It will be. Yeah, it will be Listen when I went when I was when I was doing my bachelor I had I had my look my first company which was a liquidation company Yeah, and I was paying out of state tuition So I was paying the full thing right the full stick. I had I had a liquidation company But because I did search engine optimization successfully. I had casino sites where I used to send traffic to casino sites and making commission Plus I had Google ads and websites all combined. I was doing about 150,000 years from all those all those little gibberish little websites Not including the liquidation which was organized and I had a warehouse with employees and all that and I still had to go to school because I was International student and I had to stay in school otherwise I lose my status and one time one of the professors It was at the end of the career I was she was asking if anyone had any sort of business and me and a couple other people raise her hands Each one of them talked about her Amazon or what? No, it was Amazon. It was all eBay at the time And then she asked me and I said well, I'll show you my My adsense accounts. I didn't talk about all the other affiliates and all those And I had to go in and I showed her that I made 120 I mean, I showed about 12,000 or 15,000 a month that I was making that was a good month But she looked I logged into my Amazon my Google account and she looked she said well, you made a hundred and 20,000 this year said well on this one I also have the Gum the gambling sites and I have the affiliate sites plus have the liquidity inside with just the big one And she looked at me completely different because this who the hell are you and at that time Making that type of money they're they're teaching you how to make money and they're just Teachers with 10 year They're not going to learn that and you cannot replace them with someone like us Like and teach them that and you leave the class and you say this is such an obsolete Institution yeah, that I I was I was shocking my professor That was trying to teach you something and then business professor trying to teach business And that person doesn't get how you pull in an additional 200 300 thousand dollars a year so easy And this person this professor could be they can be doing they can be doing too like it totally be doing it, right? If they were doing it probably they were Teaching because they enjoy it just like you want to learn because they enjoy it Obviously wasn't no it wasn't the none of them what and like in in one respect I would say would be okay if you ask me if would I send my kids to school to study business I said you know if you're already going to study business make sure it's an Ivy League school for the connections And that you I'll pay a lot of money for you'll pay the money will pay them whatever it is but It's gonna be for connections and you're uncertain people the rest is just not worth it take something like engineering Um be a doctor or something like that where you learn a code You actually have a job after that miserable life probably because who the hell wants a job But I mean that's just my world but uh in my world of life I have to take a job But it's just the way I'm wired and you guys are obviously But it's it's something that Looking at they need to look at their face and there is a big discrimination around the type of education you're providing You can see I've seen um I think it was a CNA a CNN piece where they were talking about all the scammers out there and they were showing Grand Cardone and so on and just putting it out there like they're teaching no no they're doing better than what they're teaching better education than what The traditional universities do for oh yeah 100 years Absolutely no, that's that's very very true because well the one thing that I have gained from school I'd say is discipline in teaching myself so like through my MBA through the PhD one thing that I've learned is just Disciplined critical thinking so to speak so I take a project that can analyze it pretty quickly now One other thing that I think is very very important specifically in like your bachelor's degree I undergrad is learning different modes of thought. So can I solve a problem in a science frame of thought and Maybe you know psychological frame of thought. Well, what do you do about your frame of thought you about your business and business in master MBA business. Okay, so The thing that I liked about is that different subjects allow you to analyze problems in different ways right Mathematical is very logical is very structured then if I'm doing something in science Well, now I have all these variables and it's more of a word problem And so it teaches you to solve problems in different frames and that's I think very valuable Because I think you're pushing it to try and give them some credit. I don't think I This your bit does the lens at which you look at a problem not Is that not coming from your personality type? Because there are going to be more analytical individuals itself problems through data sets is going to be more Creative individuals and there's different personality types and whether or not to a disc profile or Any of the other ones. There's a gram. Yeah, any any of them Like are you saying that you actually try and control the lens at which you look at problems? Because I definitely get that in my MBA for sure, but I mean like I don't know that the PhD level maybe think about it two years But that's but that's what I'm hearing from you. I don't know. I don't think you would have Been less successful if you didn't go to school. I think you would have been just as successful It's not it's just too generous. I think I think I think the problem is it's too general It is if you if you're coming that the reason you're different is because you're giving specific information Going to more. I'll tell you exactly what you're gonna do within a week This is where you're gonna start seeing dollars in your account. It's a specific Application to what someone needs and that is what they don't have in in business school, right? Other different but business schools specifically. Yeah, okay. It is so general that that is not an important information just When you look at the at your chart and you say important and urgent And then you say how urgent and then you it's gonna be a chart of four urgent important less important less urgent more important There's nothing about about that when you come down to the information that you received from a place that they give you books That were printed that were written two years ago and all that information was already passay That's it. It's just nothing that we've seen that have changed Can you say there was value for it of course because you learned But was it important to what you did anything about you did? I don't know. I mean you tell me No, I think that's very true the information had value and that's what I was trying to say but It's not urgent and not important like I didn't specifically apply and when I was doing that I had already you know, I'd already been in business around business I kind of understood how it works and so most of it was just like Oh, there's a theory that explains this or like oh, I've seen this before. Oh, it's actually a theory You know, so it's like connecting the dots a little bit But I wouldn't say it was anything. I'm like oh, let me apply this in my business right now There was nothing that I found that was super applicable and super urgently needed in my business. Yeah, so Yeah, we can keep talking about about universities, but we're not gonna do a nice people and Yeah, I don't know if we're gonna get a university sponsor though So I'm just worried if we just can't talk bad about like we're just talking about business schools. Yeah, so I don't I don't think I don't think Stanford's gonna sponsor this pocket I don't don't don't use that as clips on Instagram. We don't have to go through the hole. Yeah Anyways, no, that's that's amazing. So We went through most of like the the ways that you weren't passive income, right? Yeah, I went through some of the failures I'm trying to think is there anything else that we didn't go into that would be useful for somebody again This this whole talk is tailored towards somebody that in my opinion at least is stuck in a job is is Working nine to five is entrepreneurial. They know they want to build something else But they haven't started yet. They're scared whatever. So what would you say to that person to eliminate that fear to help them like take that first step? Well, I think there's a couple things that are like say number one is that Really the only thing that's keeping you back from achieving everything you ever wanted in life is fear And that's one quote that has really really helped me do a lot of things because I know like hey if I want to get You know that business deal or if I want to buy that house if I want to get that car really the only thing that's stopping me is fear It's not my skill level. It's not my education Like if I just take fear out of the equation I can go out and I can get those things if I need the education I can find somebody who knows what to do if I need money Oh, I can find a way to go make that money if I need access or a network I can go out there and introduce myself So really the only thing that's stopping me is fear. That's my only disadvantage. Okay, so if I take fear out of the equation I can go and get all these things. Okay, now that we've established that number two is People don't realize how much access there is to capital so easily We're literally getting people hundreds of thousands of dollars in investment capital that they can use for these investment Double down on that because money is a big inhibitor to doing a lot of the things that you're talking about absolutely We have people that are joining our program like literally all they have is the 40k to join the program and they're like Austin Is this worth it like is this really going to work and I'm every single time I say yes because I know how easily we can access business capital Whether it's a prop firm giving you money to trade or whether it's an investor funding your deals or private financing or business credit cards at 0% interest or The business loans like there's so many sources that we use to get people capital if you get business Business loan for 0% in today's world very easy. They use projected income and there's a lot of Business credit cards that'll give you 0% introductory APR So I've literally had people get 200 300 thousand dollars on these credit cards obviously not all one card and not one bank This is like maybe seven to ten cards. Yeah, but by the way, you're not you're not buying a 10 million dollar asset either No, you may only need I don't know like maybe you need a hundred K 200 K 300 K You can my house you can realistically make six figures with like 30 40 thousand dollars Because think of it like this if you just got approved for 50k across all the cards that we applied for Using all the senior vice presidents at Bank of America and Chase and US Bank and all these connections and all these projected incomes and everything And all that comes out of it is 50k Well, let's buy you a Lambo and let's send it to New York because those 10 to do 10 to 15 thousand dollars a month Is that six figures? Yes, so we achieved your six-figure goal your profitable That's how I can have a guarantee in my program because I know hey worst-case scenario There's like two or three investments that I know hit every single time And I can just put you in one of those investments and fulfill on my promise to you So if you want to get more creative and you want to start buying like Airbnb arbitrage and like all these other things We can do it and we can build out a whole system But I know that at the end of the day if we need to hit six figures quickly There's a couple go-to strategies that I have so Getting access to capital is one thing and obviously the more capital you have the less you can risk or less you have to risk Because if you're playing with $200,000 you just need a 50% return to make six figures You don't need to target 34 or sorry like 60 70 Hundred 200% returns if you're playing with 50k then yeah, you need a 200% return So we really really emphasize getting access to as much capital as you possibly can And then utilizing that in a smart way that diversifies your risk, but still produces a good return The smart I love very smart. I love it Yet the concept of that would never be talked again an adversity is going to get a credit code That we've not never never they've ramsies listening. He's like they've ran it off third Are you turning in as great? See, remember what I told you before? Dave Ramsey does not speak about investment strategy. He speaks about limiting your spending, paying off debts. Are you Alex Ramsey, right? Dave Ramsey. Dave Ramsey. Dave Ramsey, yeah. I have nothing against Dave Ramsey, but my point is, if you're smart with your money and everybody who you know this, if you're smart with your money, it doesn't make sense to pay off your credit cards. If you can have like a 30 to 50% ROI monthly, or whatever the number is on, yeah. Yeah. And here's what I have to say about that. I bet. And paying your credit cards anymore, so. Debt itself has no meaning. It's not a positive, it's not a negative word. We can assign meaning to it. So if I want debt to be good, I can make it good. If I want to make it bad, I can make it bad. Dave, he's a good guy and he has an audience because a lot of people use debt incorrectly. They get a $10,000 credit card. They go to the Gucci store and buy a new tracksuit. Well, now, first of all, you just paid $10,000 for a tracksuit and you're also paying interest on top of that. But I took that $10,000 and I invested it. And I got myself two Airbnb arbitrage properties and I'm netting $4,000 a month. I don't care what my interest rate is. I'm making way more money. I guess the challenge for people and not for him specifically for people that are very conservative, they would think of Doomsday assuming everything fall apart. Yeah. That car is nobody wants to ever rent cars anymore. It's just not a thing from one day to another. And now you stuck with a car that appreciated automatically and now you stuck with a debt and you don't have the money to pay the debt because you borrow more than you have and all that. So they'll think of a Doomsday without understanding that mathematically, if you put it into numbers, it would be $0.000,000, whatever. For some reason. And then it would never happen. It's easier to get struck by lightning before that happens. And that's the reason for most people where they wouldn't go for that. Exactly. I think it's funny. A society has actually brainwashed people to be okay buying all this bullshit but not be okay taking on risk of actual investment. That's so true. Yeah, that's so true. I mean, even if you buy a car, that is a depreciating asset. And maybe you need that car. But my point is it's okay to buy a car. It's okay to buy an appreciating asset. It's okay to buy luxury goods, but it's not okay to put a $10,000 business investment or $20,000 business investment on a credit card. People already have $20,000 in credit card debt. Why wouldn't that be business? Why would that be? There are many, many one-liners running around, if you can buy it, why don't buy it. It needs to be more specific for your own luxury goods, for something for yourself. It doesn't, because it might confuse some and it needs to be more explicit than just a one-liner. But it's strange because people have no problem going and $20,000 in credit card debt is actually light. People are going $50,000, $100,000 in debt, and they own nothing that makes them money. Exactly. But the statistic I think in 2007 was that if you have $25,000 in credit card debt, the average payment expectancy would be 75 years. $25,000. I'll say it again. 75 years. I'll say yes, 75 years. If you have 25, that was in 2007. So obviously back then, $25,000 was more like, who knows what today? But let's just say 50. So it would take 75 years statistically in average to pay. So some people don't, but that's a small percentage. Majority would take them 75 years, because they're not leveraging that for business. They're leveraging this for anything they don't need. And I think that education part is partly where we have failed in society where we feel like the government has to take away from those who make, because we don't know how to make it. We don't know how to make it ourselves, so just take it for some, instead of modified, and just, instead of giving us some education, how to actually make it. You can't be ignorant either. So you have to say, at least like some people, yes, there's some people that do not have the additional capital. But for the people that do have the additional capital, what you're talking about is cash flowing businesses that you're buying fractional pieces are very smart. As opposed to buying stocks and praying that they go up. That's it, because what do you do when you buy a stock? It's not cash flowing. Some pay dividends for sure, but I mean, we're talking about actually buying businesses with historical data, the cash flow. In my opinion, that's a smarter decision. And again, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, one Buffett arguing with you now about stocks. He's going to go and tell you that he buys businesses that happen to be traded. One Buffett buys cash flowing businesses. They just add as he stocks. Yeah, they just happen to trust. He made, how much? What was it, $800 million in dividends? He buys cash flowing businesses that pay out. Yeah, I mean, not all of them, but he believes that in their future. So now you're just buying a cash flowing business that instead of pays out quarterly or annual dividends, it's cutting you a check. It's a rev share on a product versus a dividend. Yeah. Anyways, well, so you have a drive today, right? You came over and really appreciate that. It was great meeting you. I think that definitely came out smarter from this. I know I did. I know Scott is already very smart, so I don't know. Made any dent in that. But for me, absolutely, I'm glad you came over. Thank you so much. And next time we see over here, we're going to go grab some steaks. We're going to go to Puppy Steak. There's no sponsorship over here. We're going to go again. He's like, Puppy Steak is like biggest fashions. He's the most important, most important. Where do people go to connect with you? Where do people go find out more? All the socials, all the website. Yeah, Instagram is the best place. So it's going to be Austin's Ellen at Austin's Ellen. And also my website is austinzellen.com. So pretty simple. But I basically treat my Instagram as a landing page. So all my investment updates like next week when I'm at the oil wells. I'm going to be posting pictures of the oil wells and stuff. So very excited for that. But I use that as like my main feed of everything that I'm doing. And new investment stuff pop up and updates and stuff like that. Awesome. All right. Thanks, man. I appreciate you. That was great. Thank you so much. Cheers. Thank you. All right, better.