← The Rich Somers Report
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- [00:00]
A
And you know the difference between, in my eyes, at least, the difference between real estate investors and business owners. And somebody went to college and goes and gets a job, which, again, there's nothing wrong with. It's just not for me. The difference is risk. It's risk appetite. It takes risk to start a business. It takes risk to take on debt, to invest in real estate. It doesn't take risk to show up to your job that you fucking hate, to make $65,000 a year and. And have your, you know, boss slap you on the ass. And we'll see you in Vegas. And here's your $10,000 bonus after 10 years. Does that. There's no risk there. So either stay in the pocket and don't play risky or take calculated risks, do the thing, start the business, invest in real estate, and see where it ends up.
- [00:42]
B
Welcome to the Rich Drummers Report, where we talk real estate business, and wealth building, all while keeping it real. No fluff, no bs. I hope that you enjoy the show. All right, guys, welcome to another episode of the Report. Today I got a special guest, and I'm very excited because he drove down from Newport Beach. We got a repeat guest, someone who's making big waves, doing big things in the real estate space at all levels. I got my man Blake Rocha. Blake, welcome back to the show.
- [01:13]
A
How we doing, Rich?
- [01:14]
B
Dude, doing so freaking good, man. It's been a minute since we've caught up, man, and things are good. We're rocking and rolling. This is a year of learning for me. And as we kind of approach the end of the year, I'm doing a lot of reflecting right now and getting clear on what the target is for next year, man. But I see all the moves that you've been making, dude. I see all the success. I'm sure that you got a lot of wins and losses under your belt for this year. And, you know, it's cool to think, like, six months ago, 12 months ago, we all look back. I'm sure. I'm sure you. You know this better than I do. We look back and we see the fucking growth, you know, When I see content from a year ago, I'm like, oh, it makes me cringe. When I see, like, what I was doing a year ago in terms of, like, what my baseline, my standard was, makes me cringe because every two months, I'm resetting the bar, and then I level up, and that's a new baseline. And I'm sure you see that too, 100%.
- [02:01]
A
Yeah. I mean, I try my Best to look at everything like it's a lesson and not a loss or, and when I look at old content or I look at the properties that I started with from an investing standpoint, from a business standpoint, from a content standpoint, I'm like, really was doing it like that. Like, I can't believe that this is how we're moving now. But I wouldn't have known that unless I'd gone through, you know, the mistakes I had seen, the big wins. The good thing about doing the social media stuff is we have metrics to track a lot of, a lot of the times as well as with real estate, to see, like, what am I doing that's working and what am I doing that's not working and be able to in real time take action and, and, but again, you wouldn't know unless you, you.
- [02:38]
B
Unless you did it. This game is about the reps. It's about the at bats. That's how Kobe Bryant became Kobe Bryant. That's how Michael Jor and became Michael Jordan. But one thing I was just thinking about when you mentioned, like, the social media thing, we're both very active on social. One of the things that no one talks about is, like, when we're old, one day we have all those videos to like, go back and like, watch old memories and like, reminisce about what we used to do. Like, I can't imagine not having all those, like, videos and like memories just kind of like stockpiled, you know?
- [03:07]
A
Yeah, 100% agree. So do you remember when you were a kid? Maybe. Maybe it was different for me, but when I was a kid, my parents had these VHS tape recorders where we go back and watch ourselves growing up.
- [03:19]
B
Yes.
- [03:19]
A
So you're 17 years old and it's the first time seeing yourself running around, open up Christmas gifts when you were 4, 5, 6 years old. The best decision that I made this year was starting my YouTube channel. Because the style of po. The style of video that I wanted to do was I was only seeing people in like the fashion industry do it, which was there's a lot of the day in the life stuff out there, but not like a true week in the life or a month in life of capturing real, real heavy moments. So I didn't come into it with a plan of, hey, let me sit down and give you the top 10 reasons why you should invest in Airbnb or hey, here's the top three steps to get rich when you're 18 years old. Spoiler alert. You know, all the BS, clickbait stuff. What I did was I just kept that camera on me. Kept the, kept the camera on me. And there was a moment this year that was a really, really low moment in my life, was extremely like dealing with depression for the first time in my life. Like, I had had spurts of what I thought felt like a depression, but this was like my health was out of whack, my hormones, you know, come to find out, my hormones were just all over the place. My business was not doing as well as I wanted it to, had gone through a breakup, my friends weren't around anymore, and it seemed like my world was closing in. And I kept asking myself, why does it feel like I have everything and nothing at the same time? The one thing that I could have done was on one end of the spectrum, I could have not filmed any of that and just kept going on social media and making it seem like everything was gravy, which is what 99% of people do. And that's fine. Maybe, you know, putting on that facade or that front would have helped, but what I did was I set the camera up and I sat in my car and I teed this camera up and I called my dad and I called him, I said, I'm at the lowest fucking point of my life right now. And I was bawling. And I record an hour long conversation with my dad who gives fantastic advice. And over that month, I just kept filming and filming and filming. And what came together was this video that's maybe 30 minutes long where it's me, you know, going through this struggle and little by little, 1% better. Like every day, going to the gym, finding my consistency again, figuring out how I want to, you know, handle my investments, rebuilding my friendship, my relationships and my friendships. And what came together was this video that, you know, maybe has 12 or 14,000 views. It was the most important video that I've ever made for myself to be able to look back on, to be able to show my kids. And the amount of people that have messaged me about that video that has less views than any Instagram reel or post that I've ever made. That said, hey, thank you for sharing this. It's impacted me in a way that you'll never fucking understand. It means everything to me, especially when we're at, you know, we're bottom. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [06:00]
B
And, and the one thing that resonates with me there, and, and by the way, no one wants to ever go through what you just mentioned, but I'm glad that you're in a Better place.
- [06:08]
A
Yeah.
- [06:08]
B
I'm glad that you use it as motivation to improve, because I think a lot of people, they get into a situation to where they go through some struggles, they go through some challenging times, their wife leaves them, they go through a divorce, they lose their job, they lose all their money. Whatever it is, life happens. And I think a lot of people will continue to allow things to continue to pile up, one bad thing after the other. But what you did was the opposite. You used it as inspiration. You used it as motivation, used it as a driver to get better and to get out of it. And I always say, this life gets overwhelming. Life gets challenging before the level up. It happens to me every single fucking time. And every time I get overwhelmed, every time I get challenged, I have to remind myself, because I. I know this lesson. It's happened to me at every single. Every single level. And I always have to remind myself, hey, lean into it, because the level up is about to happen. You dig, your back is against the wall, and you do things that you never thought were possible, and you figure it out, and then you pop in, a new door gets unlocked, and all of a sudden you're like, holy. This is the new baseline, and you're a better version of yourself. You have more confidence for the next time this happens. But I'm. I love that you. You actually pushed through and you figured it out.
- [07:17]
A
Yeah, there's. And I haven't shared this before, but I think it's something important. So I'm. I'm religious, I'm Christian, and I was dealing with, you know, at the same time that all this stuff was happening, I was dealing with a lot of struggle with my faith and figuring out where I stood with my relationship with Christ and how it fit in with making all this money and how much do I give away and. And why. Why am I not happy and why is this happening to me? And should I even be complaining? You know, my life is so good, you know, in perspective. There's this mantra that I continue to say over and over and over in my head.
- [07:47]
B
What's that?
- [07:48]
A
I would say, and it's a verse from Psalms, and I would do it like this. Be still and know that I am God. Be still and know that I am. Be still and know that I. Be still and know. Be still and be still, be. And I would do it over, over and over again. And it was a meditation. It became a practice, and it became this. This mantra that I could go to was as I was trying to build myself up to remind myself to be present, that I'm making that. To know that I'm making incremental changes and adding consistency to my life every single day, that was going to eventually get me back to a higher level than I'd ever been and leaning on Christ to do so. So hopefully that can help somebody out there if they ever.
- [08:45]
B
Yeah, I think, I think for me, and I didn't learn this until I was, you know, 36, 37 years old, but for me, happiness stems from growth and progress. So the second I stopped growing, the second I stopped progressing, the second that I'm no longer fulfilled. And so I guess I'm curious for you, looking back to the situation earlier this year where you felt stuck, you were no longer happy, you were dealing with some depression that you alluded to, what was the biggest reason that you felt that way?
- [09:12]
A
I think it's a culmination of what a lot of people don't talk about, which is hormones and food. So for me, I have my diet dialed in. But, you know, for the longest time, because I'm, I'm celiac, have a lot of autoimmune diseases, I knew what it felt like to be really sick and to feel mentally like, not right. My testosterone was low. And so a lot of people brush past the physical part of like, why they feel so bad. Because if your hormones are all out of whack and somebody tells you that your dog died, you know, you might cry, you might stay in bed for a week, or if everything's dialed in, you're like, you know what? You know, stuff happens. Let me, let me move forward. Maybe that's not the best example, but point being is, you know, hormonally and like, physically there was issues going on. I was drinking and trying to run away a lot from this noise that was in my head. And a lot of the times the noise is like, as a creative person, you know, I compare content creation at some level because that's what a lot, you know, we do quite a bit. And it takes up a lot of our day to being an artist in like the music industry. And so sometimes these guys put out one hit wonders and then they can't figure out how to put it out again. And so drinks, it's the drugs, it's, can I, can I recreate this? And so for me, there was so much noise all the time happening in my head from work and the more little tasks that would get on my list that I wouldn't do, the more that I would want to on a Thursday, Friday, Saturday night, Get fucked up essentially to run away from that and hopefully deal with it later on. So I think it was a combination of stuff that was happening in my life with, with friends and a chick, you know, drugs and alcohol and then, you know, the physical stuff. But there was no, there was no Band Aid solution. Like I was thinking all this shit that I used to do when I was. I was acting like a kid essentially. Kid that has a lot of money, basically. Because I'm not. I wasn't 21 anymore and I was acting like it. Same bars all the time, same people, same scene, same ways of dealing with problems that weren't actually ways of dealing with problems. I have responsibilities now and I have a commitment to myself and to a lot of other people now that rely on me. And if I fuck up, it's a domino effect. And so I let that domino just keep sliding and sliding and sliding and sliding until you reach a point where you have two roads that are split in front of you. Either I just keep fucking up and, and, and you know, excuse my language, but I just piss all of this away. And you see, and I see it, I see a lot of people do it or take steps day by day by day to try and get back to at least a baseline and then see how far we can push this thing. And then, so I made a, you know, decision that day to stop drinking. You know, no drinks, no drugs. And since then, comparing the removal of
- [11:49]
B
alcohol and drugs, you've been sober for how many days now?
- [11:52]
A
40 something odd days, Something like that,
- [11:54]
B
you know, so which, which today's day hunter for me. That's amazing and congrats to you. It is the, the biggest life hack that nobody talks about. I think 99% of problem, all problems, 99% of daily problems can be solved simply by eliminating drugs and alcohol and waking up at 5:30 in the morning.
- [12:11]
A
That's. I agree. And I, and I.
- [12:13]
B
Nobody talks about it.
- [12:14]
A
I would add to that, get a pilot G2 pen and a moleskin notebook, because that's what I use that all day, every day. You'll never see me without, you know, obviously filming right now. But I always have my pen and paper and I just write. Right, right, right, right.
- [12:27]
B
We can get you a pen and paper right now, dude. All you have to do is ask.
- [12:30]
A
I can draw, draw for you. Imagine inside of my thing, it's just all drawn. Yeah, but yeah, that's, it's changed everything.
- [12:37]
B
But that was deep what you said. You said like as we grow, we take on more responsibilities. There's more people that are relying on you, and where you steer the ship is going to dictate their future. Right? And as we grow this thing, same thing for me, my team is growing. I got more investors. Everything is dependent on where I take this. And so I think if you're looking for some sort of accountability and you're lost and you're stuck, maybe you're looking for that, that thing. There's no better accountability than building something cool. Because the bigger you build it, the more people that are gonna be relying on you to navigate their future. And there's no better motivator. There's no better form of accountability when you wake up every single morning knowing, hey, your decision making, how you decide to spend your time. And oh, by the way, time is that only asset that we have, that we don't know how much is left, right? And how we spend our limited amount of time left on this planet is going to impact a lot of lives out there. And so to me, I think that's the best form of accountability. That's very deep, what you said, but I've been through it before and I'm going to continue to go through it. I can feel it. And sometimes, bro, like, I don't know, I think for me, man, I realized early this year, I was like, I got as far as I could go under these conditions. And those conditions were, hey, I was going out drinking two, three nights a week, socially. And yeah, it's great, it's all fun. But I realized, like, in order to get to the next level, and I look at all these people that are ahead of me and I look at them and I'm like, man, most of those people are like, they're not even drinking. They're. They have families. They're in bed by 9:30 at night, every single night. They're very dialed. They're grinding, they're hustling, they're always dialed. And I just realized, I'm like, dude, I'm not going to get much further than I currently am under these conditions. And so something's got to change. And you got to sacrifice certain things, especially for seasons. And so that's what I did. And then I broke through to a new level.
- [14:28]
A
Amazing.
- [14:28]
B
Yeah.
- [14:29]
A
And beautifully said. Yeah.
- [14:30]
B
So anyways, I want to switch gears here, man. So something that you say, I see you put out videos on your social media about this. It resonates with me. My mom grew up in Taiwan. She's an immigrant. She knew the value of working hard and saving her money and no one works harder than my mom. And so this definitely resonates with me. You talk about how Your mom for 35 years woke up at 3:30 in the morning and did a lot of trading her time for money. She grinded, she hustled, and now you retired your mom and she works full time in the real estate business. But talk about how your mom's transition over to real estate and all that has changed your life.
- [15:07]
A
It was for literally 25 years of my life and 35 years of my mom's life. She woke up every Single morning at 3:30am, went to Costco and worked. And she did it so that she could come home for her lunch break to take us to school. And then by the time she was off work, she could pick us up from school and take us to soccer practice or wherever we needed to go. Her whole life and knowing what I know now about sleep and how important it is, her whole life, she's had no sleep. Her whole life, she had no money. Her whole life she had no support. And so I knew that I owed it to my mom and my dad as well. But I owe it to them to become successful and to be the best version of myself because they sacrificed everything. Everything. They sacrificed everything. And so how can they sacrifice everything and I can't return the favor? And by me, the way that I've returned the favor is my parents, you know, they didn't have a ton of money and they were every, every dollar was like, I remember every single birthday, like a hundred dollar bill would come, you know, check for the table for dinner. And I remember them thinking like, wow, that's so expensive. Are you guys sure? Like, we can only go to Tokyo Gardens one time a year because it's a hundred dollar meal. And not to say that we were poor. I was, you know, very middle class. And they just had goals for us. They wanted to be able to get us through college. They wanted to be able to help out. And so by the time that I knew that I, like by the time I was 8, 9, 10 years old and started making money, I mean, I was always hustling and being an entrepreneur, I knew that my eventual goal was I need to get them in a place where they are not only set up for life, but they're happy and can live a fulfilled life, open up a new chapter for them, because at this rate, they're not going to be able to do it themselves. And it's not a knock to them, it's not a knock to how hard they work. Or the people that they are. When you're in a job, when you have the security, when you have the insurance, when you have all these things lined up, it's hard to leave until. Until I basically forced the situation. I said, mom, now that I have 10 Airbnb properties and I've become a multimillionaire and you let me come back into your house at 20 years, or where was I? I was 23 years old, so. Or 22 or 23 years old, move back in, have nowhere else to go, don't have any money. Start making money, become a millionaire, become a multimillionaire, buy 20 properties. And I'm like, I have saved and invested every dollar that I have, and now I'm in a position where I need a property manager. I'm going to pay you double what you're getting paid at Costco. Come here. I'd love for you to work with me and make my life easier, give you some fulfillment on this side of things. Get paid. And it's changed my life because I've. I get. I talk to my mom every day, no matter what. So now she's helping out. She has purpose through her children. My brother works on my sales team. My dad is. My dad flies out and fixes all of the properties I built a family business with only brought us closer, made my life easier, and made us a ton of money. And it's a fantastic way to. To look at retirement for your parents.
- [18:00]
B
I've. I've heard you say this before, where you say that the goal is not to retire parents, but instead the goal should be to build something cool with your family. What do you mean exactly when you say that?
- [18:14]
A
I always get knocked online when I talk about building a family business or including your parents, it's like, oh, I wish I had it so good. I wish my parents, you know, would want to do that. Look, not everybody's as fortunate to be in a position to where their parents want to be involved in what they do. My parents want to be involved in what I do. So the way that I look at it is this. I told my mom the first day and my dad the first day that I had enough money stashed away where I was like, you guys are never gonna have to work again, ever. Like, there's no I can afford for you guys to live unless you guys live for another hundred years. Like, you're good. And I went to them, and I was thinking, okay, this is the dream. Get you, become retired, Sit on the couch, kick your feet back, man. A week into it, my dad, my mom calls me and she's like, dude, your dad is killing me. He's killing me. So bored. And I'm like, no, of course, of course they're bored. Because when there's no purpose or fulfillment from or, you know, they have the gym, the surf, but then all this free time in the day, you've worked your whole life. And I want to work my whole life. So it's not about retiring and doing nothing but finding and living a purpose driven life. And so their purpose is us, my brother and I, as their children. And they want to be able to help out in the business. So by paying them to step into the business, makes my life easier, gives them purpose and it's a win, win, win, win, win all around. So my hope, my whole idea is like, look, if you have parents that are supportive of you and want to be in your life and they're working a job that they don't like, get into a position where you can build a business with them or for them to step into so that they can have a second chapter of their life where they're working closely with their children. You need to draw your boundaries as a son or as a daughter and say, here's what we're going to do. We're going to talk about this as a business, as business people, and we're going to talk about, and talk like this as, as family. And don't inter. And don't, you know, don't cross those wires. You cross those wires. That's when people are like, you know, money, family, this and that. I trust my family. We've drawn our boundaries and we built an amazing business.
- [20:12]
B
I also think that like, if, if you're building something, I always think like into my 60s, seven, I, I want to steal like Grant Cardone's been on the podcast. Grant's like 66, I want to say. And the dude's like, he got a lot of juice left in the tank. He's just getting warmed up. And you know, you, you talk to Grant and you can, you can see it in his eyes. Like this guy is truly just getting warmed up at 66. Where I've had conversations with other 65 year olds and, and they're, they're ready to die. And the only difference is just the mindset. And so I imagine, you know, with, with your parents, they probably anti age a little bit coming back and building this thing with you. Is that, is that right?
- [20:49]
A
Yeah. Can you talk about that more? Like, what do you mean by the mindset is the difference.
- [20:54]
B
So I'll give you an example, man. Like I, at 33, I'm 39 right now. At 33, I was working a full time air traffic control job, which I did for 11 years. It's a great career. But most people get into that career and they will do it for 25, 30 years, they'll retire. You get a pension when you retire and, and after that that job is done. A lot of folks would, would, would retire and then a year later, two years later, they'd be dead. Because that was their only thing that they knew. Their only friends were in that air traffic control job. And so when they retired they didn't. One, it was a very high stress job. Two, people are not very healthy in that job. They don't work out. There's a lot of, you're sitting down all day, you're eating a lot of food, you're stressed out, the sleep schedule is all fucked up. You're working nights, weekends, holidays. And so you take into combination or consideration that it's the highest stress job in America. You're not healthy while you're working out there and you don't really have a social life because you're working nights and weekends for 30 years. And so people would leave that career and within two years later they would drop dead. Now, on the flip side, so I was 33 right when I was, I felt stuck. I didn't feel like I was growing. And I was like, dude, there's got to be more than life than just doing this. And I was seeing people retire. I'm like, I don't know if that's for me. And now fast forward to now. At 39, I'm six years older. But I feel like when I say like I'm, I'm just getting warmed up right now. I'm just getting started. Like, I truly mean that. Like, I, my body feels very young. Um, I feel like I've anti aged over the last six years. If you look at photos of me from six years ago, I look younger today. And I think a lot of it. And I'm speculating, I'm always willing to be wrong. I'm speculating. I think the only thing that's changed is the mindset because I'm actually building something cool with people that I actually like to be around.
- [22:31]
A
So.
- [22:31]
B
And I'm, I'm moving the ball down the field every single day. I'm working towards a fucking, a goal of mine. Every single day I'm building something cool. And because of the growth and the progress. My mindset truly believes. Like I'm just getting warmed up and so I think it's anti aged me. Has this been the case with your parents?
- [22:51]
A
Well, now that we've got a lot of properties, it's pretty stressful.
- [22:54]
B
Do property management is, is, it's, it's a lot, dude.
- [22:58]
A
I mean, and like most of my properties are like luxury properties. They sleep anywhere between 20 and 50 people. And so, I mean you get families and churches and you get these groups that just destroy houses. But yes, I wholeheartedly believe that, that you're right. I think that you made an amazing, amazing point, a beautiful point about the mindset change and the mindset that shift. The mind mindset that shifts everything. To me, I look like life looks like a book. And a lot of people think that the book looks like what you were talking about. Working 30 years at a job that you don't love, to pay bills, to go home to a wife that you're not in love with still. And you know, watch tv, get drunk on the weekends and then retire. And then you got 10 years to, you know. What? Do what? 10 years to do what? There's that quote. I think it's from Abraham Lincoln or Benjamin Franklin. I can't remember exactly who it was. It says most men die at 25, but we just bury them at 70.
- [23:52]
B
Yeah.
- [23:53]
A
And it's quotes like that and experiences like when I was in my. When I was 20 years old, a doctor told me I had a life threatening liver disease. Said I would be dead by 35 years old. A misdiagnosis. But it was the first time that I had to deal with the idea of mortality, of death, thinking, have I lived a life worth living to enough to and will I continue to if I die at 35 years old? I had to think about it a lot. My dad, right when I started making a little bit of money and the, you know, business is going good, properties going fantastic. I get a call, blake, I need you to come home. I was at my girlfriend's house. He never calls me and tells me to come home. I'm not, you know, unless I was 14 years old. I'm 20, you know, 20 something at the time. I'm like, is everything good? He goes, just please come home. So I'm, I'm feeling sick and I'm thinking cancer or, you know, you know what I mean? You get, you know that feeling. Yeah, maybe the dogs died or like, what's going on here? Maybe his parents died. He sits me and My brother down. He says, blake, I just went to the heart doctor. The. They did an MRI or some sort of, you know that scan that they do when women are pregnant? They rub that, like, gel over and you can see inside. He said, I have what's called a widowmaker.
- [25:04]
B
What's that?
- [25:04]
A
It's. It's a. Something in your aortic valve is, is your. Is plugged or it's. It's essentially, they call it a widowmaker because you. You die in your sleep. And he goes, I need to have open heart surgery within the next three days. My dad's in the. Doesn't drink. He's, you know, 50. Nothing at the time in the best shape of anybody that I know. I mean, like CrossFit. CrossFit, like badass. And he's gotta go in and have open heart surgery now. I didn't even want to Google the percentage of chance that you come out. I was. I was praying and praying and praying that, you know, he comes out safe. And I had this gut feeling like, it's going to be okay. But again, he's having conversations with us about, about wills, about what happens if I don't come back. What. You know, take care of your mother. When you, when you have to think. When you. Most people just move through life and don't think about these things, they're not put in place to scare you. They're put in place to have you realize what's important in life. And the conversation and the person that he is that's came out of this heart surgery has impacted me and a lot of other people in his life in a. In a huge way. Because you see his, like, zest for life now. You can see the things that he might have said no to in the past. That, yes. Now he says yes, sure, I'll go fucking skydiving. I'm gonna surf every day. Yep. I'm working out and I'm pushing myself. I'm flying out to Tennessee to fix these properties. I'm doing it because I don't know if I will have. I don't know when it's going to end. And it took a. An open heart surgery for him to realize that and for me to realize that. And so some of these things that are put in our lives as. As things that, that are. You would think are negative now that he has a cow, you know, a cow valve in his heart are positives. Positives because they change your outlook on life.
- [26:49]
B
Yeah, they do. It's. It's all about perspective and, and like, I said at the top of the show, man, like, like time is the one currency. We don't know how much is left. And I always say months is the best way to measure how much time we have left. Not years, but months is the best way to measure how much time we have left. I'm 39. Average life expectancy for a male in the u. S. Is 77. I have about 450 some months left on this planet. And so when it comes time to making decisions, it makes it a lot easier for me to take action. When I, when I put it in that perspective, like 450 months is going to go by like that. Like think about that, right? It's gonna go by like that. And so to think that like I'm gonna like be scared to make a decision or I'm gonna be scared to take action or I'm gonna be scared to take to start this journey on whatever it is that I want to pursue. I don't care if it's real estate investing or you want to start a business or you wanna start a side hustle or maybe you just wanna like put your kid through college. Like the idea that I'm not gonna take action on something that I want to do because I am concerned about, you know, the thoughts and opinions of other people that are in my life or whatever the fuck when I only have 450 months left is mind boggling. And it makes it a lot easier for me to take action.
- [27:57]
A
You know what I think is, is bullshit.
- [28:00]
B
What?
- [28:01]
A
Legacy. Why do you think I've been thinking about this a lot lately and you go and make you know, half of a billion dollars and you know, you have 10 grandchildren, you got this big house, you got a vacation house and you go put a, they put a statue up of you at the school cuz you donated a hundred million dollars when you died. And then what we're, let's go 50 or 100 years in the future, your name's on a building. People, people don't remember you. You're, you know, you're somebody's great great grandpa. Oh yeah, well my, his great grandpa started a business, they made a lot of money.
- [28:37]
B
And that's a, it's a conversation.
- [28:39]
A
So like I just think it's a weird bullshit talking point that a lot of people use it. Like I want to build a legacy. It's like, motherfucker, be selfish, be selfish and selfless at the same time. If for me, you know, I'm making money for my children, for my parents, for the safety and security that I know that I want my kids to go to private school or be homeschooled. I know that I want to live exactly where I want to live. I have one life on earth, and I want to live it to the fullest and be able to experience things. And that doesn't mean having to go make hundreds of millions of dollars and blow this thing out and fly PJs. But what it does mean is I'm going to go build what I want to build. I'm going to make as much money as I possibly can. I'm going to give it away to the. To the causes that I feel are important to me and move my money around in a way that gives other people energy and gives me energy. But I'm going to live a selfish life. And that doesn't necessarily mean it's all about me. When I have a marriage and when I have kids, I selfishly want to help them. I selfishly want to make a better life for them because it makes me happy. But I don't care about what happens in 200 years or my name being on a building or, you know, being in the history books. I just want to live a good life and build and. And have a good life for all the people that I love and care about.
- [29:52]
B
Will you have kids? And if you do have kids, will you leave them money?
- [29:55]
A
I've got six right now
- [29:58]
B
that you
- [29:59]
A
don't know where they're at. No, I. Yeah, I will have kids. And so I'm 27 years old right now. My mom's kind of hounding me already, like, when are you going to find a girl? Yeah, you know how it is, right?
- [30:12]
B
And you're single.
- [30:13]
A
I'm single.
- [30:14]
B
You're coming to the holiday event tomorrow night. There will definitely be plenty, plenty of high quality single ladies at the event. Or maybe you're a female listening this podcast. My man Blake Rocha is single. Go check him out on Instagram Mr. 4 to 8. And there's no numbers in that handle. Mr. 428 on Instagram. But will you leave money for your kids?
- [30:35]
A
I think I will. I haven't thought about it enough, but I grew up in Visalia, California. It's a huge agriculture capital. Dairies farms.
- [30:43]
B
Near Fresno.
- [30:44]
A
Near Fresno. And the wealthiest family that I knew that owned dairies farms, a lot of land and trees and stuff, their kids would drive to school. They had ever. They always have these big Dutch families, 8, 10, 12 kids. They were so, so wealthy. Like, so wealthy. And their Kids would drive, all of them packed into one 2001 Suburban packed in, and they all had to wake up at 4:35am to work on the dairy before they would go to school. And I'm like, you guys are 100 millionaires. I don't get it. And when I asked the dad one time when I came back into town and I had just started making a little bit of money and I was trying to understand, their kids turned out amazing. You know, they, they have an amazing family dynamic. None of the kids were like strays, you know what I mean? And like, and kind of ran off and did crazy stuff. They just. Great family, got married young, they're all having kids and, but he didn't really give them anything. He would, if, if the one of them wanted to get started in the dairy industry, rather than taking over one of their big, you know, dairies, he would give them a tiny little farm enough to work with and just say, like, you got to do this for five years. I still don't understand it necessarily. And maybe it's just me being young and not thinking about it enough. But he did tell me this one quote or this, you know, this, this idea about money and family and passing it on is like, if you're going to make a lot of money, skip a generation.
- [32:04]
B
What do you mean when you said that?
- [32:05]
A
I still don't know what he meant. I think that he meant like, if you want to keep money in the family, and there's probably a lot of good stories out there as to why this would be true, you don't go give that money to your children, you give it to grandkids. I don't.
- [32:17]
B
Then you're kind of fucking the grandkids.
- [32:18]
A
That's what I'm saying. So I need to. Anybody that's listening to this, maybe do some research or, or leave a comment and try and figure out why.
- [32:24]
B
I've heard, I've heard of that, like living trusts that, like skip generations, inheritance. I've heard of that kind of stuff. I, I don't understand the reason why, but I do know that like, for me, I want to have, I want to have four kids. I will not leave money for my kids, but I will teach them how to make money.
- [32:42]
A
Sure, yeah, I think I'll leave. Yeah, I'll, I'll leave a little bit of money. They can play around, they can have some fun.
- [32:48]
B
A little bit of fun. A little bit fun. If you love real estate investing, passive income and tax benefits, but don't have the time. My company Summers Capital is buying boutique hotels right now. We source the deals, we renovate the properties, and we even handle all the day to day management, making it truly hands off for our investors. If you want to learn more to see if we can help you, visit summerscapital.com invest to book a call with our team again, that summerscapital.com invest. Now back to the show. Yeah, but I mean, okay, there's a stat out there. It says wealthy families lose 70% of their wealth by the second generation and 90% by the third generation.
- [33:22]
A
Maybe that's why they skip a generation.
- [33:24]
B
Yeah. And so, yeah, you got to, you got to teach them how to make the money, too.
- [33:27]
A
Sure.
- [33:27]
B
You know, we bought a hotel in April. It was developed in 1988, 44 rooms up in Sonoma coast, waterfront wine country. This asset had never sold until this year. It stayed in the family since 1988. The father passed away two years ago. It always performed well until the father passed away. The son took it over. It started spiraling out of control. And so I say all this in that I think when you, there's something to be said about teaching your kids how to make money, teaching your kids how to invest in real estate, teaching your kid how to start a business and to be a good custodian of money versus just handing them stuff. Sure. And that, that was, that hotel is a good example of it.
- [34:08]
A
Yep. You know, that's a great example.
- [34:10]
B
So I don't know, but there's going to be set out there. So. All right, man. Next up, you put a lot of good content out on social media and you got a lot of videos that really pop off on social. But one of the things that you mentioned, which I love now that we're talking about hotels, is you recently bought a boutique hotel earlier this year and you put out a video on how you told your grandfather about that. You just bought a boutique hotel. What was that feeling like? Talk about that.
- [34:36]
A
Yeah. I called both of my grandparents and then my grand. My grandma answered and it was the day that the boutique hotel closed. So they're older. My grandma's suffering with dementia right now. And so, you know, they don't really understand the Airbnb thing. They don't have the phone, they don't have that. So. So it's hard to explain, but they understand a hotel and it carries weight. You know what I mean? And I told my grandma, I said, hey, we're gonna, I'm going to put your last name on this hotel. She was a, my grandpa was a Custodian at the high school. My grandma was the lunch lady for, you know, 50 years.
- [35:13]
B
Yeah.
- [35:13]
A
And so she sees me getting better, happier, healthier. She sees the. She hears from my dad about the family business and stuff. But that was me saying, hey, look, look what you've done. You raised an amazing, amazing son, which was my dad. And he's, you know, done a good job hopefully of raising me. And I, I'm excited to, like, just share this with you, that this is, this is your, you know, this is yours too. You're never, she's never going to see it, but I just knew that it was.
- [35:47]
B
You want to take her there?
- [35:48]
A
She, she doesn't fly. You know, they're, they're older and there's just a lot of health issues and stuff.
- [35:51]
B
But, yeah, they'll see videos, though.
- [35:53]
A
Yeah, video, yeah, they've seen videos and they're excited about it. But I just knew that that was something that she could grasp and that meant something to her. And so. And it's cool. Especially because the story behind the hotels. Amazing. Like, it's, it's one of my favorite stories of how it was acquired, how I found it. It was a total, total, like, where is it? So it's in the Catskills in upstate New York.
- [36:15]
B
Okay.
- [36:16]
A
So about an hour and a half outside of, you know, New York City.
- [36:18]
B
So you can get there relatively quick. You just take a non stop flight to JFK and then you're an hour bop out there.
- [36:23]
A
Yeah.
- [36:24]
B
And New York City is a lot of cool stuff there, so I'm sure that would make a hotel visit weekend pretty exciting. So it's in upstate New York. And like, how did you find this deal? How did it come to fruition? Why did the seller sell it?
- [36:36]
A
Yeah, I mean, this is the, the craziest story about buying a hotel ever. And maybe you have a better one, but this is mine. So I had had this dream because I'm doing so much research on Airbnbs and investing at this point. I already had, you know, 14 or 15 Airbnbs. And so. And I have thousands of students that I'm helping. And so I'm trying to figure out, you know, where I want to invest. And I kept hearing about the cat skills. I go to bed one night and I have this dream about the Catskills. I've never even seen it or been there, but I have this dream that I own this, like, farmhouse style property in the Catskills. And I woke up and I was like, man, that was the most vivid dream I've had this year. Like, I remember the word Catskills. I remember exactly what it looks like. Like, this is insane. So I go out and just Twitter. I find a picture of like what I was seeing in my head and I go to like 90,000 or 80,000 followers. Like, I had a dream that I bought a property in the Catskills and I'm going to manifest. This happens in 2023. Within an hour, I get a direct message on Instagram on a different platform. And this guy goes, hey, man, there's a boutique hotel for sale. It's. They haven't like fully brought onto the market yet. They listed at $2 million. You know, I think you could run it kind of like an Airbnb. It's not overly big, you know, six, seven units. And check it out. I open up the brochure and I. It was like, that's what I saw in my dream. I literally saw this in a dream. I'm in a financial position to where I can acquire a $2 million asset pretty much all day long.
- [38:09]
B
You manifested it.
- [38:10]
A
I manifested it. And so I flew out that next day, flew out, called the real estate agent, meet with the owner. I go, why are you selling this thing, man? And. And when I walked in there, the first people I thought of were my grandparents and my dad and camping and growing up and being in the forest. I hadn't been connected with nature like that in a long time since being a kid and I was out in the sticks and I go, this is the most beautiful and amazing place that I've been in, in years. I gotta know what's going on here. It was two dudes that were in New York City that had. They were in the bar and restaurant industry when Covid happened. They wanted to kind of get out of the city. They found this old chicken coop, and that's what it was. Chicken coop on a couple acres. And they turned it into a boutique hotel. Full service restaurant, farm to table bar. They have a pool, golf, like, you name it. It's just this ass. Cozy dogs welcome. Like it's a vibe up there. And I go. And unfortunately, one of the owners died in a drunk driving accident that month before. And he said, I'm not going to sell this to anybody that Heath wouldn't have approved of. And he goes, we sit there and we had a couple glasses to drink and some food got brought out and we're telling stories. And he goes, and he just started crying. He goes, man, if Heath was here, he. I know for a fact he would have just given me the green light and say, this is the guy that's meant to take over this hotel. And at that point, you know, we settled on a little bit less than $2 million, I think, like, 1.75 or $1.8 million on the property, put 20% down and got a hotel up there.
- [39:38]
B
So, dude, congrats, bro.
- [39:39]
A
Thank you.
- [39:40]
B
That's. That's definitely something to be like. You just said this, and it really, like, resonated with me. You said your grandparents, they understand. Hey, hotel. Your hotel owner, now, they're proud of you. They see the growth. They see all the progress that you've been making. And I think often as real estate investors and entrepreneurs, as business owners, we get so used to, like, resetting the bar.
- [40:05]
A
Right.
- [40:05]
B
That, like, every competing with Grant.
- [40:09]
A
Yeah.
- [40:09]
B
Each new level is like, okay, this is the new baseline. Right? And we think it's normal, but in all reality, like, it's not normal. And so I'm guilty of this myself to where I don't. I don't ever do this, and I should do this. I don't ever, like, sit back and just, like, enjoy and be like, wow, like, think how differently my life is today versus a year ago, versus two years ago, versus three years ago. I don't do that enough. And every. Every now and then, I'm reminded, and people tell me all the time, I'll seal the growth, you know? And I'm sure you get this all the time, too, but I don't sit back and actually enjoy it, because we're so addicted to the growth. We're so addicted to the grind, the hustle. And once we achieve one milestone, it's like, okay, what's the next one? You know? And then it's like, what's the next one? And so I say all this and that. I think it's important to step back and reflect as we go into the end of the year. So if you're listening to this right now and you're like, hey, I'm gonna take a couple weeks for the holidays. Yeah. Like, fucking take a couple weeks. Reflect. Think about all the things that you did right, Think about all the things that you did wrong. Think about all the growth that you've, you know, accomplished over the last year. Two years, three years. So congrats on the hotel, dude. That's fucking huge, man.
- [41:14]
A
Thank you.
- [41:15]
B
How is that deal operating thus far? And does it because, like, doing the Airbnb thing, I was doing Airbnb multifamily before, and so getting the hotel game, like, did that change it for you? Change anything for you? In terms of perspective, what did that. What did that feel like for you?
- [41:32]
A
Yeah, I think that from perspective, the things that I noticed were it's more intense of an operation than.
- [41:40]
B
Than. Than a single family.
- [41:42]
A
Well, yeah, then single family. I mean, it's just different because now you have staff. I have a restaurant. We have to update the menus. I have to have an operator that either lives on premises, which he does, or, you know, excuse me, lives close by. It's more expensive for a lot of this stuff, right? The licenses. I mean, a liquor license took a year and provisionals and stuff like that. Insurance is expensive. There's pros and cons. The pros are, I own a fucking hotel. You know what I mean? And there's a lot of cool things that come with that. And I have a. I haven't maximized it yet because it's basically about 15, doing about 15% better now that I've taken over than it was when I purchased it. But it can do so much better. And I know what it needs, needs to be done to do it. The problem is recently, I've just had so much. When you have a lot of things going on and there's a lot of higher leverage, like plays to be made. Me making an extra four to seven thousand dollars a month in, you know, in revenue or even profit on one in this business. And the amount of time that it's gonna take me to put the people in place, set up the SOPs, figure out what our game plan is, wedding venue here, you know, here's our contractors, all that shit to make that money. When there's a play that's over here, that's like, here's six figures a month. I just ha. You know, it's just a time thing. So I don't know. It's put. I've. It's put some things into perspective, but I could definitely see myself acquiring more of them. In fact, it's really started to open my eyes up to experiential hospitality more so than boutique hotels. I think that that's probably the direction that I'll end up in because I didn't get to, like, grow up, you know, going, we stayed at the Holiday Inn all the time. You know what I mean? Or the Motel 6 or the Radisson, or. It didn't matter like that. We just stayed at the cheapest hotels. The two things that have changed when I started making money were not having to worry about eating good food. All the time. Whether it's going to the farmer's market and buying $500 of steaks to put in the freezer or going out to a nice meal whenever I want to. Those are two. That's a luxury that I enjoy now. That even gives my mom and dad anxiety still. But, like, I enjoy that. And the second thing is staying in nice places and experiencing like real nice experiences, true hospitality, because it gives me perspective to like, how do I want to give back in my hospitality business? But more importantly, it is this luxury that most people. People like, don't get to experience. And. And I want to experience it more and show it to other people as well. So there's so many cool things that you can do and build and show people and make a lot of money with it. And I see the market going in that direction, so I'll likely totally do that.
- [44:12]
B
Yeah, it's the, it's the way. It's the direction everything's going. So whether it's a boutique hotel, it's like, it's got to be some sort of experience. It's got to be a unique play. I mean, look at all the restaurants that are trending right now. Whether it's Newport Beach, Huntington, where you live, or it's down here in San Diego, Lydia Italy, which is the neighborhood this podcast studio is located in. All the restaurants, the trendiest ones are going experience. These are not chains, they're not franchises. This is the experience and that's the direction everything's going. Same thing with the boutique hotel. It's got to be something that's eye catching. It's got to be wow factor. It can't be cookie cutter. And so I had Isaac French on, Ben Wolf on, Travis Chambers on. They're doing these fucking unique. Those are the guys Traveler, like, like Travis Chambers doing some fucking off the wall shit. Like Star wars stuff, like Utah, like weird shit. But like working. It's working. Right? And so this is the era that we live in, right? I. I had a demographer on my old podcast. He wrote the book Big Shifts Ahead. Demographer. A demographer is someone that studies generations and he studies demographic shifts.
- [45:18]
A
Whoa.
- [45:18]
B
And so he went and studied like every generation based on the were born. And so he would say, like, if you're born in the 40s, he. He called them the savers because the people born in the 40s grew up watching their parents get rocked by the Great Depression. And so people in the 40s, if you're born in the 40s, all those people know how to save their money and they're terrified to take any risk. And he labeled people that were born in the 80s and the 90s as like the sharers because they value going and experiencing new things and then sharing it with all their friends on social media. That's how they get validation. Right. And so with the people that were born in the 80s and 90s, kind of like moving into the bulk of the bell curve in terms of the economy.
- [45:59]
A
Right.
- [46:00]
B
With disposable income. That's why we're seeing all these chilies, the Applebee's, all these, the scissors, all the outdated chain restaurants completely like going under because no one wants to stay there anymore. They want to go to these new experiences. And so often you'll see these new restaurants here in trendy neighborhoods to where if a restaurant group has some success, and I'm friends with some of these, these good restaurant operators, if they have success with one restaurant, they will open another restaurant down the street, but it will have a completely different branding, a completely different name, a completely different theme and a different ambience.
- [46:31]
A
They know that, that works there.
- [46:32]
B
Yes. And it's a different menu. And so people go into this other restaurant, they have no idea it's the same ownership group.
- [46:38]
A
Right. Who's the group in San Diego that has. And they got like four or five just bad ass spots.
- [46:44]
B
Yeah. Custodian holdings has like a lot of banger spots. Born and raised.
- [46:48]
A
Born and raised. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [46:49]
B
Y. They just did the Lafayette Hotel. They're getting in the hotel space right now, which is pretty cool. But Custodian holdings is one of the groups kick ass. Yeah. And then there's another. I'm, I'm drawing a blank. I had him on the podcast, but he owns Urban Wood down here in Lit Italy, Anime, which is really good. He just opened up another one in La Hoya. He's on Top Chef. Brian Malarkey, he's on Top Chef Food Network. But anyways, Brian crushes it in the restaurant game. And restaurant's hard to make it.
- [47:18]
A
Yeah.
- [47:18]
B
I mean, talk about industry. I, I never want to get into, I mean, margins, you know, you're doing. Yeah, it's, it's very, very low margins. At a good restaurant, it's going to take very low margins. Most of them lose money and, and, and ultimately don't make it. But the ones that figure out how to make it, like, they, they know how to repeat the process. And so he's one of them. But he's been hitting me up. He's like, dude, he's like, let's, let's partner on a hotel deal. He's like, I'll, I'll bring the restaurant portion, you do the hotel portion. Let's do something bigger, like a Pendry type of thing. That's. That's pretty cool.
- [47:48]
A
So.
- [47:48]
B
I don't know. I digress. What, what were you talking about before the, the restaurant stuff? We're making a point. Oh. People want the, the modern travelers, the p. The people in our generation that are spending the money right now, they want the exponential experiential stays. You've seen it with the restaurants, not with the hotels. And so the days of the Chili's, the Applebee's, the scissors, those days are over. Yeah.
- [48:10]
A
Yep.
- [48:11]
B
Okay, I want to switch gears here. You have a bunch of viral videos on your Instagram TikTok that have a ton of views. And so I'm going to go down and rip on some of these topics. I want to, I want to get your understanding of what these things mean. So, number one, moving in. You say moving in with your parents in your 20s is a superpower. What do you mean by that?
- [48:31]
A
Yeah, moving in.
- [48:32]
B
Moving.
- [48:34]
A
Moving in with your parents in your 20s is a superpower. It's a hand up, not a handout. That's what I, that's what I think. It's a step up, not a step down. So when I graduated college, I had my mba. Like, it should have been teed up to go make some good money, find a good job. Covet happened. I, I was in a position where I was embarrassed to, but I had the, you know, I was embarrassed to move back in with my parents. And at the time, I didn't see it as an opportunity. It was like, okay, I gotta move back in with my parents. What am I, a little kid?
- [49:03]
B
Yeah, you're taking a step backwards.
- [49:04]
A
Taking a step backwards. Well, then I started building my businesses, my first business in particular. And I start social media, and it starts blowing up. And now I'm like, okay, my mom is helping out with food. Like, there's a hot meal every day. I know at dinner there's a hot meal. I'm in this room and. And I'm locked. I'm locked down. Like, this is fantastic. And if I needed anything, if I needed a grocery run or if I needed some clothes or whatever it was, they were there to support. And even though I'm in this tiny bedroom, I was like, look at this opportunity that I have to save every single dollar that I have, invest every single dollar after I've saved up enough and nowhere to put it and be able to get not only myself but like everybody out of this race that we are all in together as a family. My parents are not going to have to continue to work at their job. They don't want to. I'm going to be able to basically have enough assets to where I can fall back and not have to work ever again. And so I just looked at it, I looked at it through the wrong lens until I kind of got through that experience and I go man, that was the biggest opportunity ever. And the amount of people that used to on me, friends, everybody, because especially as people on social media because I was already making millions of dollars and I owned 20 investment properties before I decided to move out of my parents house and go rent. And this isn't a big house, it's like a little condo townhouse. So people are like what the fuck? I thought you made all this money. I thought I'm like stop pocket watching and watch and just wait until this move is done. Because the on the other side of that is number one, I don't care your what your opinion is of me and number two, watch what happens now. Both of my parents are retired now. They work in my business now. Even now they're still like why do you rent? My rent is, you know, it's $7,500 a month for a four bedroom. I've got, I had two roommates. So I pay a live exactly where I want to live. My expenses are a couple thousand dollars a month with food and with, you know, where I'm, where I'm living. And again it's just like I'm in my 20s, living expenses, keeping them low and the best opportunity to do that was moving back in with my parents. So I tell people all the time in your 20s, if you have, if you have the opportunity to and you want to build a nest egg and have some money to play with, move back in with your parents if you can, if you can make it work. And if you're in your 30s, get a group of your friends together, get a spot, keep your expenses low and start stacking that paper.
- [51:21]
B
I like that you mentioned rents. What are your thoughts on renting versus owning? Do you, do you feel like it's better to rent where you live or to own where you live?
- [51:32]
A
I debate.
- [51:33]
B
Yeah, I go back, let's hear your.
- [51:34]
A
I mean I now that I've become a real estate investor, I look at everything as opportunity cost. So me going and buying a $6 million house parking one and a half or $2 million into the walls of this property and then having a, you know, whatever it is, $25,000 mortgage. Obviously these are big numbers, but I'm just saying, like, those would be the properties I'd be looking at. I go back and forth on, would rent be better there? Am I ready to go have a big four or five bedroom house? I'm just by myself right now. So at the. I think it depends on the position that you're in in your life and the price of the property and where you'd like to live. What I'd prefer to do is rent a primary for now that's inexpensive in the place that I'd like to live. And then what I'm looking to do is buy something out in like Temecula where it's like one and a half, $2 million. I can get 20 acres, a little farmhouse, build some cool shit that I can go visit, bring my family out to have a little wellness retreat for myself, you know, airbnb it. When I'm not staying there, like, I'm looking at properties like assets, and every single time that I'm thinking about buying a big house, I'm like, I should just keep my expenses low. Like, I can keep. I'm pretty happy right now. I don't need to go have a big mortgage.
- [52:40]
B
Yeah, I put out a. I was on Mikey Taylor's podcast recently and he put out a video yesterday about renting versus owning. And I was just kind of giving my perspective. And my perspective is really like, for the most part, in most markets around the country right now, with the high interest rate environment, it is cheaper to rent than it is to own. Okay, so I gave my example of how I'm renting right now, and I'm, I'm saving about $8,000 a month versus had I had, I had a mortgage. And then in addition to that, I'm saving the $300,000 down payment it would have cost me to get into this place. And that's an opportunity cost that now I can't invest that $300,000 into investment real estate that pays me every single month. And oh, by the way, has tax benefits. And I saw some of the comments. Some of the people are like, oh, like I would never pay $140,000 a year and not own the place. But when I hear those kind of comments, I just realize, I'm like, okay, this person doesn't understand how the game works because it's so much more than just throwing away money. On rent. One, it's cheaper than owning in a lot of cases right now with the hybrid environment. But number two, there's so much leverage that I'm utilizing that a lot of people don't talk about by renting a nice place. So, like I got a top floor high rise apartment here, A penthouse apartment here in downtown San Diego. Yeah. People might say, okay, like 12,300amonth in rent. It sounds like a lot, but utilizing so much fucking leverage with this place. So number one, there's no doubt that I don't get more eyeballs with social media marketing. I make more money because of it. But, okay, well, how about the fact that I'm utilizing a lot of social capital leverage, right. I'm leveraging now an entire new network, right? And so I'm able to connect and collaborate with and network with folks that are also living in these penthouse units that are my neighbors, right? And some of these folks have become investors of mine. A lot of them are business owners. And so that's allowed me to level up my network, right? I'm in fast lane drive, okay? I got an exotic car, got a supercar. Now I. I'm in fast lane drive with hundreds of other business owners, people that are real estate developers, business owners, people that are making a lot more money than I am. And now I'm in this network. And so it's not just, hey, I'm saving $8,000 a month, I'm saving that $300,000 month, a year down payment, but it allows me to network and connect with all these higher level people, all higher status people. And that is the biggest difference. And so when I hear these comments, I'm like, okay, this person doesn't know how the fucking game works.
- [55:02]
A
And most importantly, you want to live there.
- [55:05]
B
I want to live there.
- [55:06]
A
There you go.
- [55:07]
B
I want to live there.
- [55:08]
A
I remove. I'm able to pull that out like everything else. Like, I agree with you on everything else that you said, but I go back to this all the time. You know those people that are like, well, you should just move to like Texas, you know, and save the taxes or move to Puerto Rico and you're not not paying taxes.
- [55:22]
B
It's stinking small.
- [55:23]
A
I just don't want to fucking live there. Yeah, it's as simple as I want to live in Orange County, California, and I like being close to Hawaii where I like to travel, and this is where I want to live and my family's close by, so why would I go make all this money to then go live in A Kansas or Oklahoma City or a Texas or a place that I don't want to live because I can save money. It's not about the fucking money. The money is the tool to get me to be able to live where I want to live, do what I want to do. And I'm not going to make my money and just go try and save it somewhere else. Makes no sense to me.
- [55:53]
B
Live where you want to live. Life is short. And every time that I force myself to raise the bar in terms of like my quality of life, whether it's like getting the penthouse or driving the nice car or getting the boat, for example, a lot of people see that as a liability, as an expense. And yes, it is a liability. However, with the right perspective, you can leverage it to level up. So uh, one, obviously we talked about marketing, we talked about social media, but boat for example. Now I'm leveraging to this whole community of other yacht owners, other wealthy, high net worth individuals. And this game is about being in the right rooms, right? I always say get in rooms where your dreams are. Others realities is the quickest way to improve your life. And so now I'm hanging out with other yacht owners, people that have money, their height, no worth. And so I'm in these rooms of people that are thinking bigger than me and it's going to allow me to make more money. And so it allows me to make more money, it makes me happy, it gets more eyeballs, it makes more money than like is it really liability or is it an investment?
- [56:48]
A
Right.
- [56:49]
B
You know I'm saying, right? And that's the question that a lot of these people are not asking themselves. Next one right here, this one, this one's good. You've eaten the same thing every day for lunch and dinner. How many years have you done this? This is crazy to me. Why are you doing this?
- [57:05]
A
I think I've done this like again, like when I travel it's a little different. It's harder to. But if I'm at home, I've eaten the same thing for lunch and for dinner every single day for years, probably four years now. I have ground beef or ground turkey, one pound of it for lunch with white rice, avocado and a little maldon salt. And for dinner I do a 1 pound grass fed grass finished rib eye with a sweet potato and some butter, avocado if added in. That's it. I eat. That gets me, you know, close to 200 grams or 100 whatever, 80 grams of protein. This is one meal that's, that's the two meals. So lunch, Lunch is going to be like a pound of ground beef or a pound of turkey with white rice. It's like a homemade chipotle bowl, I guess, and I call it the Blake bowl. Arugula dinner, always one pound of steak, and it's a sweet potato. And it started because I these autoimmune diseases, and I had to change my diet. And then I realized how impactful and important it is to have a diet or how much of an impact your diet has on how you feel all day. Not feeling bloated, not having brain fog, having energy. All these things that I was able to play around with because I did an elimination diet and started reintroducing things one by one by one, and I could see how they actually felt. Eggs make me feel like. Milk makes me feel like. Steak feel fine. Meat feel fine. Chicken, you know, feels good. I can, I can do chicken for breakfast. I could do steak for lunch. Like, I am. I'm cool with eating the same boring things every single day because it makes me feel so good. And at the end of the day, food is just energy. It's what works for me. My brain fog is gone. My energy is as high as it's ever been. And I attribute a lot of my health, how healthy I am now compared to where I was to, to my, my food that I eat.
- [58:53]
B
How do you cook the steak?
- [58:55]
A
Medium. And I cook it on a grill or my grill's been shoddy lately, so I've been having to take it to the stove. To the stove. But I need a new grill.
- [59:05]
B
Okay. Yeah, I, I, I'm a medium guy, too. Born and raised. Right here is probably my favorite. But, dude, I can resonate with you, man. When I eat like a, a red meat diet, a lot of steaks, my body just, it metabolizes it very well. I feel like I perform at my best when I'm eating red meat, high protein. I love all that good stuff. Okay, another question for you, man. This is, this is another one that I've seen you put out content. 2 million views on Instagram. A lot more views on TikTok. This is how I make an extra $4,000 a month with a home that I don't even own.
- [59:38]
A
Sure. So, yeah, it's the concept of that I've been teaching for years now. Which is, which is, you know, you can Airbnb a property. You can make money on Airbnb without owning a property. You don't need fantastic personal credit. You don't need a ton of money. To start. And it's a legitimate business model that is fully legal. And this is why I love it so much, is like, I, I have a lot of Airbnb properties that I own. They're, they're amazing and I'm super blessed to be in that position. But most people asking how do I start, right? And co hosting is really, it's hard to go find somebody to close their properties. A lot of relationships. And there are like 300,000 plus properties on the market right now in the United States that are for rent. And so you can approach a landlord, you run the numbers first, but you can approach a landlord and say, hey, would you allow me to sublease your property as a short term or midterm rental? I'll pay a little bit of extra rent. You know, I'm covered by a $3 million insurance policy with Airbnb. And you know, chances are eight times out of 10, nine times out of 10, they're going to say no. One time out of 10 is all that you need for somebody to say yes, the rent of that Property is maybe $3,000, but it can make 6,050, $800 in revenue. You know, you take that arbitrage number, that's why they call it rental arbitrage, that whatever it is, $2,800 in between, it's one property that you don't own that you didn't need to buy. Maybe it costs you 10 to $15,000. You can even leverage business credit to fund the furnishing of that business. There's so many creative ways that you can get started with real estate and actually make a shitload of cash flow. Start stacking these properties up. And it's not a long term play. You're not doing this forever. You sign a two year lease. You know, I, I got to a point where I don't even have any arbitrage properties anymore because it's not worth my time. I'm buying hotels and like big Airbnbs, but all of my followers are always asking, how can I get started? And this is how you get started. And so I've actually got a software that's coming out in 30 days for all of my students. And it's going to be completely internal, it's proprietary, it's only for me, but essentially me and my students, but essentially my students are going to be able to scan every property that's for rent in the United States. It's going to pull the data on it, all the contact information, and tell you exactly how much that property would make as a short term rental. So that if you're a student of mine and you want to know how you can go, you know which properties are going to make money. You can reach out to that property in two seconds, the landlord and pitch them on renting their property.
- [62:00]
B
Yeah, rental arbitrage. Don't even need to own the real estate to make cash flow. All right, next up, this one's really good. You can make more money than a lawyer without a college degree. What do you mean by that?
- [62:13]
A
I mean you can make more money than a lawyer or a doctor without a college degree. And I've now seen it about 10,000 times over. Being in this online space that we're in, I've seen people. There's a guy that sells a course on pianos, like just piano lessons, essentially. He has a YouTube funnel, sells this low ticket, medium ticket course fully fulfilled by him. $2.8 million a month. $2.8 million a Month. And low ticket, low, low to medium ticket. He's got like two programs, I think, and zero fulfillment besides. Here it is, delivery. I'm, he's like, the difference is this. You need, if you can become an expert in something or go prove, go prove that you can do something. Like go do the fucking thing. Go build the app, go get the property first. Do the fucking thing first. That's the missing piece for a lot of people. But it doesn't. You don't have to go to college to do the thing. You could go start a marketing agency, you could go be a copywriter. There's like a million different ways that you can. Doesn't you have to be. Make money? In fact, let me give you another example. Two of them, I've seen a, a chick that helps with postpartum depression that makes $600,000 a month. Okay. I've seen a husband and wife that have, that were both divorced and remarried each other and found love that do $400,000 a month plus talking to divorced divorcees, walking them through the process. And so essentially you have to. Doing the thing doesn't necessarily mean going out and making money. Point being is like in the education online course industry, things like that, everybody assumes that you had to have made money. Look at Dr. Pompa. Dr. Pompa. I mean, they've got a massive, massive nine figure business in the education space. I would say he's got a. Basically took what he learned, you know, from being a doctor and has told these people, hey, look you, your body is inflamed. Let me Help you with this inflammation, remove the mold, remove this, remove that, change your diet. Here's these natural ways to heal yourself. And they built a nine figure business that has nothing to do with making money, only things to do with naturally healing yourself. And you know, did you need to go to school to be a doctor? I'm sure the name helps. But point being, there's a million ways to make quite a bit of money. Now that we're in the online space,
- [64:28]
B
you can learn more listening to a podcast today than you will at a four year university. And everything is going podcast. And the numbers, I mean look at the numbers. University enrollment is going down. Podcast listeners worldwide are, are, are going up. I mean it's essentially doubling every single five years. Five years ago we had about 274 million podcast listeners worldwide. Today we have about 510 million podcast listeners worldwide. It's undervalued attention, but it goes to show what you just said. You can learn more listening to a podcast, watching YouTube videos than, than you would going to a four year university. That's just, that's just the truth of it. And I'll take it a step further when I take the boat out to Catalina and there's all these other yachts in there, there's 300 yachts all moored up in Catalina Avalon in the middle of summer. Every single yacht owner in there, they're all either business owners or they're real estate investors. And so think about that. When you go to a four year university, you go to college, they teach you how to get a job, they teach you how to become an, an employee. But then if you really like, just try to think about your dream life and reconstruct it backwards. It's like if you really like go that route, unless you become like a, a doctor, dentist, attorney, that makes decent money, it's, it's almost impossible to be one of those yacht owners in the, in that harbor at Catalina Island. It's kind of crazy to think about, right? The only way to do it is really to become a business owner or to invest in real estate. I was at the Aguera Coach dealership. My buddy Nolan is one of the guys there. And so I was there on Sunday. He was showing me all their like Rolls Royces, McLarens, Ferraris, Lamborghinis and there was a couple of Bugatti's there actually shot a video that I'm going to put out tonight. And two Bugatti, one was 3.5 million, the other Bugatti was 5 million. And I Was like, hey, Nolan, who are the types of people that buy these cars? And he was like, two people. Business owners and real estate investors.
- [66:14]
A
And you know the difference between. In my eyes, at least, the difference between real estate investors and business owners. And somebody went to college and goes and gets a job, which, again, there's nothing wrong with that. It's just not for me. The difference is risk. It's risk appetite. It takes risk to start a business. It takes risk to take on debt, to invest in real estate. It doesn't take risk to show up to your job that you hate, to make $65,000 a year and. And have your, you know, boss slap you on the ass, and we'll see you in Vegas. And here's your $10,000 bonus after 10 years. Does that. There's no risk there. So either stay in the pocket and don't play risky or take calculated risks. Do the thing, start the business, invest in real estate, and see where it ends up. And you know what? At the end of the day, if. Especially for the younger guys out there that don't have family, they don't have husbands and why. Or. Sorry, the. For the younger guys out there that don't have wives, that don't have kids, I'm like, take the risk now, because it's gonna get way worse when you're in your 40s, you got a wife and kids, and you're stuck at your job. Like, maybe I want to go start that business. Yeah, it's hard.
- [67:17]
B
You said at the top of the show, most men die at 25, but aren't buried till they're 75. Shoot the shot. Take the risk. Ask the girl.
- [67:24]
A
Yep.
- [67:25]
B
The last thing you want to be is 80 years old, staring at the ceiling, kicking yourself because you never tried anything in life. How about that risk?
- [67:32]
A
Yep.
- [67:33]
B
All right. Speaking of nice cars, you got a Rolls Royce calling in. Last time you were down here, a year ago, I had the opportunity to go out, check it out, tour it. It's sick. It's got the orange interior. It pops. I was actually sitting in one on Sunday at the dealership, and my buddy Nolan was showing me all this stuff. He, like, pulled the umbrella out of the side door.
- [67:53]
A
Yeah.
- [67:54]
B
It's got the ceiling. You push a button, and then the whole door is closed up. Like, it's sick. Uh, and then there was another button, like, another feature he was showing me, like, in the. In the. The cockpit area. And then, like, that little badge on the hood, like, kind of goes down the ornament. Pretty sick. So anyways, talk about why you bought this Rolls Royce Cullinan.
- [68:13]
A
Yeah, I had a. I'm not a car person. At least I'm not a new car person. I. I really, really love my Ford Raptor. Best car I've ever owned. Best truck I've ever owned. And I've always liked old Porsches. Old cars. Like, it doesn't have to be expensive to me. I just, I like vintage stuff. The problem was I was very new to making money and I had started investing in real estate when I bought my first car or my first Rolls Royce, my second one. And I didn't even know anything about Rolls Royces, but I knew that I had a massive tax problem at the end of the year. And there was. When you get down to those last 10 or 15 days, you know, again, this is probably not an experience that most people are going to be able to relate to, but, like, I had 10, 15 days to, like, figure out how to spend a fuckload of money that was either going to go to the government or I could spend it on something. And so I just, I bought a Rolls Royce Cullinan and this was in like 2021 or 20, early 2022 maybe. And I was able back then with section 179 bonus depreciation was at 100%. So I was able to deduct essentially $450,000 for my taxable income and, you know, save quite a bit. Basically, I saved my down payment on the car. So I looked at it like, okay, I got a free ish car. Yeah, Like, I know people are always like, oh, here's how you get a free car. It's like, well, fucking still cost me $180,000 out of pocket. But I also made that back probably in two days just with social media. And then I got the second one, did the same thing. And now I probably won't keep buying them. Like, it's just a problem of, like, when you start buying these things, if you go sell them, you got to recapture that tax. And yeah, I just hate playing the tax game. It's the worst.
- [69:45]
B
No, I feel you. And I think that was for you or for anyone that has, you know, the end of the year, you got some taxes, you're going to have a big tax bill. It comes down to, hey, do you want to give the money to the IRS or would you want to, like, put it down on a vehicle or a piece of machinery that weighs over 6,000 pounds that's going to give you depreciation and, oh, by the way it's going to help you get more eyeballs on social media and you make that money back from a marketing perspective, uh, so it makes sense. Same. Same reason why people buy jets, private jets, all that good stuff. Um, but yeah, I mean, this time of year, any of these cars that qualify for code section179, the dealerships know people are looking for tax breaks. And so there's. There's a little bit of markup this time of year. Um, and rightfully so, this year, what, we're at 60%. Next year it's maybe 40%. But. Had Carlton Dennis on the. The hotel called yesterday. You know, he said that he's going to get an IRS tattoo somewhere on his body. An IRS tattoo if 100 bonus depreciation does not come back next year. Kind of crazy, right?
- [70:46]
A
That's hilarious. I. Yeah.
- [70:48]
B
And he'll be at the party tomorrow night. See him tomorrow, though. Yeah, yeah. But anyway, so it's interesting to say the other thing I'll mention is this about getting the nice cars, is it. It kind of like, at least for me, I'm like. It. It changes my perspective in terms of, like, how I approach things. I just feel like I'm a. I don't know, I just. It's a different perspective. You take yourself a little bit more seriously, and then that becomes the new baseline. I don't know what it is interesting. I think maybe part of it is because I'm in fast lane drive, and Joe, it's. It's put me into a different network.
- [71:19]
A
Okay.
- [71:20]
B
I'm not a big car guy either.
- [71:21]
A
Right.
- [71:21]
B
But it's put me into a different network. And I'll give you an example. When I drive the Audi R8, which I would say is like a. I wouldn't even call it a supercar. I would call it like an intro level exotic car. But it's. It's an Audi. Audi mass produce produces it. But I would call it like an intro level exotic car. And when I drive this thing around one circle, maybe like my high school friends, they might be like, holy shit, that's a fucking gnarly car. And get their video cameras out. Like, oh, my God, let me take a photo. But then I go around this other group of like, people that are driving Ferraris, Lamborghinis, McLarens, and Bugatti is in, like, fast lane drive, right? And these guys are at different levels. I feel like in that group, I'm like, driving a Honda Civic.
- [72:03]
A
You're, like, taking the pictures?
- [72:04]
B
Yeah, yeah. But it's perspective.
- [72:06]
A
Right.
- [72:07]
B
And then I'm inspired being around them because I'm like, holy. Like there's a. There's levels to the game and there's always another level.
- [72:14]
A
Absolutely.
- [72:14]
B
You know what I mean? And so I think it's, it's definitely done that for me.
- [72:18]
A
Interesting.
- [72:19]
B
Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. There's always levels of the game.
- [72:21]
A
Yeah.
- [72:21]
B
Yeah. Anyways, dude, I appreciate you coming down, man. I appreciate you coming on the show, bro. I'm a big fan of everything you're doing and excited for this new software to drop. Where can the folks get in touch with you? Where can the folks learn more about the software?
- [72:34]
A
Yeah, sure. So just follow me on Instagram Mr. 428M R F O U R T O E I G H T I try and respond to every DM myself. Try to. But yeah, I'll be. I'm going to be posting about it. We're going to do a whole wait list and a good launch. Then the next, it'll come out in 30ish, 35 days. So the wait list will drop next week. And I'm just excited to bring it to the market and continue to teach people, look, make some money, invest in what you want to do, build your business and live a good, good healthy life.
- [73:03]
B
And I will see you tomorrow night at this holiday event, black tie holiday event. Excited for that. Carlton Dennis will be there. A lot of big players in the space are going to be there. Excited to reconnect and celebrate the end of the year with you. He's Blake Rocha. I'm Rich Summers, listeners. Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you in the next one.
- [73:19]
A
Peace.