Podcasts about Passive

Mark Kohler is a bestselling author, entrepreneur, attorney, CPA, and the founding and senior partner at KKOS Lawyers. Specializing in tax, legal, wealth, estate, and asset protection planning, Mark has helped thousands of small business owners and investors align their tax strategies with their real estate and business goals. He is also the host of The Main Street Business Podcast and Directed IRA Podcast, educating entrepreneurs on practical ways to build wealth and save taxes.    

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If every major decision still runs through you, your board isn't governing. They're spectating.

On this episode of Best Ever CRE, Joe Cornwell interviews David Hrizak, CEO of Streamline Capital Group. David shares how a near-death experience inspired him to “unretire” and co-found a vertically integrated real estate company with a focus on passive investing. He breaks down his firm's strategy of targeting medical and Class B office buildings in Phoenix for their economic resilience and value-add potential. David also dives into his team's latest ground-up development project, a high-end 70,000-square-foot music venue, and explains how investor education, tax advantages like bonus depreciation, and smart pivoting during market cycles have shaped his 29-year career. David Hrizak Current Role: CEO of Streamline Capital Group Based in: Phoenix, Arizona Say hi to them at: djh@thestreamlinecompanies.com or connect on LinkedIn at David J. Hrizak Visit investwithsunrise.com to learn more about investment opportunities.  Join the Best Ever Community  The Best Ever Community is live and growing - and we want serious commercial real estate investors like you inside. It's free to join, but you must apply and meet the criteria.  Connect with top operators, LPs, GPs, and more, get real insights, and be part of a curated network built to help you grow. Apply now at ⁠www.bestevercommunity.com⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, my guest is Dr. Michael Kilgard, PhD, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Texas at Dallas and a leading expert on neuroplasticity and learning across the lifespan. We discuss the need for alertness, effortful focus, post-learning reflection and sleep to induce neuroplasticity, and how dopamine, acetylcholine, serotonin and norepinephrine are each involved. He explains the behavioral steps for neuroplasticity, as well as vagal nerve stimulation (VNS) and other therapies for tinnitus, stroke, depression, PTSD and paralysis. This episode ought to be of use to anyone interested in understanding the modern science of brain rewiring and learning to improve cognitive or motor skills or treat sensory or motor disorders. Read the episode show notes at hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman Eight Sleep: https://eightsleep.com/huberman Wealthfront*: https://wealthfront.com/huberman Carbon: https://joincarbon.com/huberman Function: https://functionhealth.com/huberman *This experience may not be representative of the experience of other clients of Wealthfront, and there is no guarantee that all clients will have similar experiences. Cash Account is offered by Wealthfront Brokerage LLC, Member FINRA/SIPC. The Annual Percentage Yield (“APY”) on cash deposits as of December 27,‬ 2024, is representative, subject to change, and requires no minimum. Funds in the Cash Account are swept to partner banks where they earn the variable‭ APY. Promo terms and FDIC coverage conditions apply. Same-day withdrawal or instant payment transfers may be limited by destination institutions, daily transaction caps, and by participating entities such as Wells Fargo, the RTP® Network, and FedNow® Service. New Cash Account deposits are subject to a 2-4 day holding period before becoming available for transfer. Timestamps (00:00) Michael Kilgard (03:24) Neuroplasticity (05:13) Child vs Adult Plasticity, Childhood Development & Learning (09:37) Sponsors: Eight Sleep & Wealthfront (12:41) Kids, Real vs Artificial Experiences & Balance, Video Games, Natural World (21:13) Social Media & Videos, Kids, Overstimulation & Development (33:42) Early Language Development, Passive vs Real Experiences, Kids & Adults (39:23) Sponsors: AG1 & Carbon (42:44) Learning & Plasticity Requirements; Focus, Friction, Rest & Reflection (52:24) Brain Connections, Complexity, Life Experiences & Plasticity (1:02:51) Learning, Reflection, Visualization, Testing (1:09:45) Experience Diversity & Time, Happiness, Life Appreciation (1:18:05) Sponsor: Function (1:19:53) Learning & Life Meaning (1:23:25) Neuromodulators, Brain Complexity, Synaptic Eligibility Trace & Learning (1:34:28) Synapses, Therapy for PTSD, Rewiring the Brain (1:39:01) Vagus Nerve Stimulation (VNS), Stroke, Spinal Cord Injury, Tinnitus, PTSD (1:47:33) Psychedelics, Neurostimulation, Importance of Timing (1:57:47) Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) & Major Depression (2:01:51) Psychedelics/SSRIs as Plasticity Tools, SSRIs & Bone Strength, Failed Clinical Trials (2:13:18) Can VNS Accelerate Learning? (2:16:01) VNS Surgery, Patient Use & Specificity, Closed-Loop Vagus Nerve Stimulation (2:18:18) Tinnitus Cause, Incidence & Self-Amplification; PTSD & Control (2:28:12) VNS for Tinnitus; Disease Complexity & Treatments, Lazy Eye (2:41:05) Complexity of Disease Treatments & Combination Therapies (2:48:50) Brain-Machine Interfaces, Information & Experiences; Closed-Loop Feedback; Resilience (2:59:09) Evolving Clinical Trials, Combination Treatments & Disease Complexity (3:05:21) Acknowledgements (3:07:04) Zero-Cost Support, YouTube, Spotify & Apple Follow & Reviews, Sponsors, YouTube Feedback, Protocols Book, Social Media, Neural Network Newsletter Disclaimer & Disclosures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Summer productivity got you feeling like you're running on dial-up internet? Same, girl, same.I had this brilliant idea to squeeze in a "CEO check-in week" mid-summer between family trips. Spoiler alert: trying to fire up your work brain in July after weeks of living in your swimsuit is like asking your laptop to function underwater. My brain is straight-up buffering, and honestly, opening my inbox feels like a personal attack.But here's the plot twist—while I'm over here feeling like I can barely string together a coherent email, my business just casually dropped over $74K in revenue this month. No launches, no campaigns, barely a whisper on social media. Just my evergreen systems doing their thing in the background like the absolute queens they are.This episode is part vent session, part pep talk, and all about why building those automated systems early in your business is the smartest thing you'll ever do. I'm pulling back the curtain on three massive behind-the-scenes projects I'm tackling right now (website overhaul, email platform migration, and landing page cleanup), plus sharing why I'm never doing a mid-summer work check-in again.If you're feeling meh about productivity right now, this one's for you. Sometimes the best thing you can do for your business is give yourself permission to rest and let your systems carry the load.What You'll Learn:Why mid-summer productivity breaks might be sabotaging your flow (and what to do instead)The exact revenue my evergreen funnels generated during my low-energy monthThree major behind-the-scenes projects happening in my business right nowHow to build systems that support you when your creativity is playing hide-and-seekThree practical steps to automate your business (that you can tackle when your brain comes back online)Why beating yourself up about summer slumps only makes things worseResources Mentioned in this Episode:Tonic Website Themes: https://tonicsiteshop.com/ Rebel and RISE (Katie's ShowIt services): https://rebelandrise.coKit Email Marketing: https://gemmabonhamcarter.com/kit Your Next Steps:Work with Me: https://www.gemmabonhamcarter.com/programsWhat I Use to Run My 7-Figure Business: https://gemmabonhamcarter.com/toolsConnect on Social: https://www.instagram.com/gemma.bonhamcarter Support the show

In this Dear DSO submission, a man reaches out from the middle of an eight-year sexless marriage. He's passive, anxious, and paralyzed by confusion—and he's not alone. So many men fall into this trap.In this episode, I walk through his message and break down what's really going on here: the anxious attachment, the avoidant wife, the therapy cycles that go nowhere, and the desperation that leads men to stay stuck for years. I also bring up a common thread I see in my community: many of these guys are neurodivergent—autistic, ADHD, or OCD—and they bond fast and deep, which makes walking away feel impossible.If this sounds like your story, you're not crazy—but you do need help. Watch to the end to hear what this man should do next—and what you can do if you're stuck too.

How can focusing on relationships, education, and compliance help real estate investors raise private capital with confidence? In this episode, Alina Trigub, Head of Investor Relations at TF Management Group and founder of SAMO Financial, shares her journey from immigrating to the U.S., working in accounting and IT, to building a career in passive real estate investing. She discusses the turning points that led her to syndications, the tax benefits of real estate, and her step-by-step approach to raising private capital. Listeners will learn why understanding both the investor and operator perspectives is vital, how to build lasting trust with investors, and the importance of staying within regulatory guidelines.   [00:01 - 04:42] From Accounting to Passive Investing How Alina's early career in accounting and IT shaped her financial perspective Why rising taxes pushed her to explore real estate The significance of her first syndication investment and how it led to ongoing opportunities   [04:43 - 07:39] Lessons from Early Deals Why initial naivety can sometimes work in an investor's favor The importance of learning through each investment What the 1031 exchange is and why it matters for tax deferral   [07:40 - 11:03] The Power of Real Estate Over Paper Assets Why tangible assets often provide more stability The need for diversification beyond Wall Street How tax benefits can create a stronger financial position   [11:04 - 15:21] Raising Capital: The Three Big F's Why understanding both the active and passive sides is crucial The three pillars: Focus, Find, Follow How to define and target the ideal investor avatar   [15:22 - 18:30] Practical Steps for Investor Engagement How to maintain trust and transparency with investors Why compliance is non-negotiable in capital raising What long-term success looks like in investor relations   Connect with Alina:   https://www.linkedin.com/in/alinatrigub/   Key Quotes:   “Sometimes there is a blessing in the naivety of not knowing.” - Alina Trigub “Where else can you get the tax advantages, if not in real estate?” - Alina Trigub   Visit sponsorcloud.io/contact today and unlock $2,000 of free services exclusively for REI Rocks community members! Get automated syndication and investor relationship management tools to save time and money. Mention your part of the REI Rocks community for exclusive offers. Help make affordable, low-cost education summits possible. Check out Sponsor Cloud today!

Private equity funds and other Wall Street investors are buying up homes across the US and the West, driving up rent and the cost of living. Economist Michael Hudson explains how these corporate landlords are a result of the system of financialized capitalism, dominated by an unproductive rentier class. He is interviewed by host Ben Norton. VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJd0d7Uda2M Transcript: https://www.geopoliticaleconomy.report/p/corporate-landlords-rent-michael-hudson Part 1 of this interview: https://www.geopoliticaleconomy.report/p/world-us-financial-colonialism-economist-michael-hudson Read Michael's article "How the Global Majority can free itself from US financial colonialism": https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2025/07/17/michael-hudson-global-majority-us-financial-colonialism/ Michael's website: https://michael-hudson.com/ Topics 0:00 Cost of living crisis in West 0:30 Blackstone: largest US landlord 1:07 Blackstone CEO is Trump donor 1:49 Investors buy up US homes 2:36 Wall Street buys single-family homes 3:54 Wall Street buys up neighborhoods 5:31 Homelessness rises in USA 6:06 Blackstone buys up homes in Spain 7:34 Introduction to Michael Hudson 9:12 Highlights 10:43 Interview starts 11:58 Feudalism, capitalism, & rentier class 16:58 Adam Smith, David Ricardo, & Karl Marx 19:10 Difference between value, price, & rent 21:33 Bankers, industrialists, & landlords 27:34 Theory of comparative advantage 28:20 Problems with economics education 30:57 Profits vs rent 32:48 Financialization and GDP 37:21 Adam Smith in Beijing 38:47 Peter Thiel defends monopolies 40:20 China's reform and opening up 43:06 China's public ownership of finance 44:25 Need to tax land rent 50:45 China's industrialization 53:54 Passive income (ie, rent seeking) 56:01 Mainstream "junk economics" 59:07 Outro

Passive income, at least PURE passive income, doesn't exist.  In this episode, I break down  -the myth of passive income -why it's harmful to perpetuate, and  -4 reasons why LEVERAGED income is absolutely necessary in the current economy. You'll also learn about different models of creating leveraged income so that you can create the time freedom that allows you to be present, creative, and connected to yourself.  Download my 3-session money magnetism activation, PROSPER, to increase your financial confidence and cash flow:  https://ishavela.com    Apply to book your free financial strategy session: https://in-service-to-wholeness.mykajabi.com/isha-financial-strategy   Apply to join my team of financial revolutionaries on a mission to empower women with financial education and resources: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScjU5QXtEnJiBA6kNK46JB4C9M5zJGOHhY2RsZJXwK66gYqjQ/viewform   Access free content on my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@isha_vela   Follow me on IG:  https://www.instagram.com/isha_vela

Title: The 1% Closer - Mike Hoffman Summary: In this conversation between Seth Bradley and Mike, Mike shares that what separates him from others in his field is discipline and focus, particularly the ability to say no to things that don't align with his goals. He highlights that successful entrepreneurs are usually highly focused and niche down. Mike attributes much of his own success to concentrating on vending machines after realizing it drew the most interest. For those looking to get started in vending, he advises leveraging personal connections to secure high-foot-traffic locations. Links to Watch and Subscribe: https://youtu.be/w_phQef7MOU Bullet Point Highlights: Mike credits his success to discipline, focus, and the ability to say no Emphasizes the mindset: "It's better to be respected than liked" Believes the top trait of successful entrepreneurs is focus Success came by niching down into vending after testing other passive income streams Advises newcomers to start by leveraging warm connections to place machines in high-foot-traffic locations Examples include urgent care clinics, apartment buildings, gyms, and kids' studios Transcript: Seth Bradley (00:00.162) You're clearly in the top 1 % of what you do, Mike. What is it about you that separates you from the rest of the field?   Ooh, that's a good question, Seth. I think it's just discipline, know, discipline and focus. One of the hardest things is being able to say no with the things that don't align. And when I was growing up, I had a quote that has really stuck with me that's like, it's better to be respected than liked. And I think that really resonates. Like, naturally, as a human, you want to be liked and help people, but the 1 % are really good at saying no.   Yeah, I love that man. That's a great answer. Going to build on that. What do you think the number one attribute is that makes a successful entrepreneur? Yeah. Yeah. Yep. The one thing, right? The one thing. That's why.   Probably focus.   Mike Hoffman (00:47.246) You come back to like the most successful entrepreneurs, they always niche down and they niche down because they just hyper-focus. Like this is kind of why for me, you know, I started this passive, Mr. Passive on social media before I even got into Vendi. Well, now everyone's like, well, how passive is Vendi? Well, it's like, what's really interesting is I was posting all these different, what I thought passive income streams in the time, but everyone, 95 % of the questions I got about Airbnbs are all my different.   investments was about bending. So I just niche down on on bending and I just look back on that and I was like it really forced me to focus.   Awesome, awesome. What's one thing someone could do today to get 1 % closer to success in the vending machine business if they are really interested in learning?   Tap into your connections and find a location that has high foot traffic, whether that's a friend that works at an urgent care, a sister that lives at an apartment. You take your kid to that gymnastics studio that has a ton of foot traffic between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. All those locations are prime locations to put one of these modern smart machines in. so tapping into your connections, a warm intro is better than 10 cold.   Awesome. Alright Mike, I appreciate it brother.   Links from the Show and Guest Info and Links: Seth Bradley's Links: https://x.com/sethbradleyesq https://www.youtube.com/@sethbradleyesq www.facebook.com/sethbradleyesq https://www.threads.com/@sethbradleyesq https://www.instagram.com/sethbradleyesq/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/sethbradleyesq/ https://passiveincomeattorney.com/seth-bradley/ https://www.biggerpockets.com/users/sethbradleyesq https://medium.com/@sethbradleyesq https://www.tiktok.com/@sethbradleyesq?lang=en Mike Hoffman's Links: https://www.instagram.com/mikehoffmannofficial/ https://x.com/mrpassive_?lang=en https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikedhoffmann/ https://www.tiktok.com/@mr.passive https://www.tiktok.com/@sethbradleyesq?lang=en

Send us a textReady to slash your tax bill? Schedule your free consultation and let's strategize your tax savings together! Book now at: https://www.prosperlcpa.com/apply Or, if you still need more time, here are some other ways to begin winning the tax game...  Take our free Tax Planning Checklist & learn about what tax savings may be available for you in our minicourse at https://taxplanningchecklist.com  At the very least, get on our newsletter to gain access to free live events and exclusive insight you won't find anywhere else: https://www.prosperlcpa.com/subscribeWe explore the significant tax savings opportunities and incentives available through passive real estate investing. For high-income earners and busy professionals, understanding these tax advantages can transform wealth-building strategies while legally reducing tax burdens.• Real estate investments create paper losses through depreciation that can exceed your initial investment amount• Cost segregation studies accelerate depreciation, sometimes creating deductions 2-3 times your investment• Real estate professional status combined with material participation allows losses to offset W-2 income• Achieving material participation requires 500+ hours across grouped rental properties annually• Without real estate professional status, losses still offset passive income from rentals and business interests• Cash-out refinances provide tax-free cash distributions to investors• Operational cash flow is often sheltered from taxes by depreciation deductions• Property sales are taxed at favorable capital gains rates (0-20%) rather than ordinary income rates• Continuous reinvestment creates a compounding tax advantage and wealth-building cycle• Passive investing allows access to tax benefits without managing "tenants, toilets, and trash"For a free opportunity report showing how these strategies can apply to your situation, visit prosperalcpa.com/apply. If you're not ready yet, at least check out taxplanningchecklist.com for a simple-to-follow tax planning checklist and mini-course.

EPISODE SUMMARY *Note: At the time of this recording, Simran's business was called Girls That Invest - it has since been renamed to Friends That Invest. What if your money could give you freedom - not just someday, but starting now? In this episode, Natalie sits down with Simran Kaur, founder of Friends That Invest, to talk about building real financial security in an uncertain economy. They cover how to recession-proof your income, avoid common money traps, and start investing with confidence, even if you're starting from zero. Simran shares the simple system behind her early retirement plan, why passive income is often misunderstood, and how to create your own trust fund so your money works for you. If you've been avoiding your finances or feeling unsure where to start, this episode will help you take your power back. TIMESTAMPS 00:00 - Simran shares her journey from optometrist to founder of a global investing platform 02:00 - Why she chose a simple business model with one paid offer, and how it changed everything 04:10 - The truth about shiny object syndrome and how to stay focused on what works 06:20 - A real conversation about what's happening in the economy right now + how to protect yourself 08:30 The two ways to handle your finances during a recession: proactive vs. reactive 11:15 - How to calculate your personal “burn rate” and set up a 6-month emergency fund 13:50 - Avoiding lifestyle creep + how to grow your income without overspending 15:25 - Why the wealthiest people invest more during recessions, and how you can too 18:10 - Simran's personal plan to retire early and how she's creating her own trust fund 21:00 - Passive income vs. real passive investing: what actually counts 23:30 - The 4% drawdown rule explained, and why it's the key to financial independence 25:00 - The mistake 70% of women are making with their money (and how to fix it) 29:50 The easiest way to start investing + Simran's advice for beginners RESOURCES + LINKS Want to start investing or join the next masterclass? Head to https://friendsthatinvest.com/ to sign up for the newsletter, explore resources, and learn more. Reset Your Business Foundations This Summer At Our First-Ever Freedom High Summer School: A Live Challenge Designed To Help You Grow Your Audience, Make More Sales + Use AI Without Losing Your Voice. Save Your Seat Here. Join The Société: Build Your Freedom-Based Business™ With Systems, Templates, Coaching + Community. Just $97/Month. Sign Up For Our Free Weekly Newsletter & Get Insights From Natalie Every Single Week On All Things Strategy, Motherhood, Business Growth + More. Drop Us A Review On The Podcast + Send Us A Screenshot & We'll Send You Natalie's 7-Figure Operating System Completely FREE (value $1,997).

Everywhere you look, someone's saying, “Create a course! Scale your time! Passive income!” But what if that's not your path? In this week's Chill & Prosper, I'm answering the question: Can you be wealthy without creating an online course? Spoiler alert: YES.

So a couple weeks ago inside my ​NEST Group Integration Membership​, I issued a challenge to the group: Take a vacation from your problems. Over the next week, there were so many big breakthroughs, insights, and Aha! moments that came through for multiple Nesties. Why? Because stopping the forward motion allows space. And space allows things to rise into your awareness. Where you can witness it with compassion, and identify your patterns, and even addictive coping mechanisms. Healing is receptive. Passive. It's what happens under the surface and behind the scenes when you are in a calm, regulated state. It's the state of allowing. Of softening. Of putting down the impulse to take on yet another side quest, and focus on doing less. Integration is wholeness. Calmness. Peace. It is what happens in the space between.This week on the show, join me in taking a vacation from your problems. Give yourself unconditional permission to set aside the identity of "spiritual seeker" and try on "present human being" instead. WORK WITH SINCLAIRNEST Group Integration Membership - https://sinclairfleetwood.com/nest1:1 Private Coaching - https://sinclairfleetwood.com/psychedelic-integrationSubscribe to The Visionary Within weekly newsletter - https://mystical-heart-collective.kit.com/5623fed941FREE Ultimate Guide to Healing with Psychedelics: https://mystical-heart-collective.kit.com/ultimate-guideRetreats: https://sinclairfleetwood.com/events

This series is all about allowing space to talk about the unspoken thoughts, worries and concerns that can come with having a dog sometimes. Join me for a no holds barred and taboos allowed look at emotional wellbeing.Important Links from this episode:1. Join my upcoming workshop supporting the parents of environmentally sensitive dogs here: https://www.pawsupdogs.com/triggered/2. Join the free 3 day event "Connect" and learn how to build an even better relationship with your dog. Register here: https://www.pawsupdogs.com/connect-for-dogs-and-their-people/ --------------If you'd like my support on your journey with your dog, please visit www.pawsupdogs.comI offer:- Self-paced online courses and a membership for dog guardians and trainers-  Digital 1:1 Trauma informed dog assessments for dog guardians and business assessments for dog trainers- Higher level mentorship for dog guardians and trainers3. To Join Canine Connection (my training and support membership for BOTH ends of the lead, please click here4. I love answering your listener questions so if you have a question for me, please click here to submit it and I might just answer it on the podcast!------------------------------------------------------------------------Here are some other resources available for you and your dog:1. To register for one of our behavioural workshops (for in depth support on everything from reactivity, recall, separation anxiety, leash walking, car travel, vet visits, puppies and more) please click here2. To join our free facebook group click here3. Are you a dog professional? Check out our podcast for pet pros here** Come and see us at www.pawsupdogs.com** Join our private facebook group. Click here** Follow us on instagram @pawsupdogstraining

Feeling overwhelmed by your to-do list? I share three practical strategies to reduce overwhelm and finally get things done. Learn how to find safety, soften your defensive state, and take small, almost effortless steps forward. This episode is a replay of a free webinar from the Unstucking Academy. Discover actionable tips to improve your daily life and reach your goals without feeling stressed. Tune in and take a step towards living more calmly, confidently, and connected.00:00 3 Strategies to reduce overwhelm and get stuff done (262)01:26 intro, about, and goal01:53 You have things to do03:34 3 options to get stuff done04:19 Feel safety and then get stuff done 05:14 Passive safety cues07:29 Mindfully connect with a passive cue09:08 Safety cues are everywhere10:00 Jenny finds safety first11:30 Soften defense, then get stuff done12:30 Imagine defensive activation ahead of time13:21 Mindfully permit defense14:36 Recovering from overwhelm15:51 Jenny softens defense18:55 Bypass overwhelm to get more stuff done 20:53 Kaizen Steps Should be Very Small22:21 How to make small Kaizen steps22:54 Kaizen Examples25:47 Kaizen example: Tatiana27:15 Kaizen example: James28:40 Kaizen example: Heather31:37 Kaizen ecample: you39:57 Emotional objection to Kaizen43:43 Softening defense of work overwhelm47:40 Amanda overwhelm at grocery storeResources:

Title: How to Stay Compliant While Raising Millions with Bronson Hill Summary: In this episode of the Mailbox Money Show, host Bronson Hill interviews Seth Bradley, an accomplished attorney and entrepreneur known for his efforts in passive and active investing. The discussion revolves around the significant shifts in the real estate market post-COVID-19, including rising interest rates and the challenges passive investors face with underperforming deals. Seth shares his experiences with multifamily investments and the importance of selecting the right financial structures, highlighting how his focus on fixed-rate loans has insulated his deals from the volatility that adjustable-rate loans often endure.   As they explore other investment avenues, Seth discusses their ventures into various businesses, including gyms, e-commerce, and oil and gas projects. Both entrepreneurs illustrate how innovation and technology, particularly artificial intelligence, can significantly improve investment decision-making and operational efficiency. Their combined expertise offers valuable insights into the world of multifamily syndications, risk management, and leveraging technology for investment insights. The episode concludes with Seth's perspectives on effective communication between investors and sponsors and the importance of due diligence documents in passive investing. Links to listen and subscribe: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/seth-bradley-what-can-i-do-if-a-deal-goes-bad/id1580397502?i=1000698697087 https://open.spotify.com/episode/4pogVHik6rHwh0k5yFLs1U Links to watch and subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xrvBhGtS5w&t=396s Bullet Point Highlights: Diverse Entrepreneurial Background: Seth Bradley is not only an attorney but also a successful entrepreneur with experience in gyms and startups, adding depth to the authenticity of his investment strategies. Impact of Rising Interest Rates: The podcast discusses how increasing interest rates have shifted the landscape of real estate investments, influencing cash flow and project viability. Importance of Fixed-Rate Loans: Seth emphasizes the protective benefits of using fixed-rate loans in investments to buffer against economic shifts and rising rates. Shifting Investment Focus: As traditional multifamily deals become tough, both Bronson and Seth explore alternative assets, including oil and gas, debt funds, and smaller multifamily properties. Gym Ventures: Seth shares insights from operating gyms, illustrating how franchise businesses can provide a structured path to entrepreneurship with community support. Navigating Passive Investing Challenges: The episode highlights the key steps passive investors should take when deals aren't performing as expected, including reviewing existing legal agreements. Leveraging Technology and AI: The discussion underscores the growing role of AI in analyzing investments and legal documents, showcasing how technology can enhance investment efficiency and accuracy. Transcript: hey guys this is Ken mroy and you are listening to the mailbox money show with Bronson Hill hello hello and thank you for joining the mailbox money show my name is Bronson Hill I'm very excited for this episode with Seth Bradley you're gonna really like him he's done a lot of things he's like the renaissance man like he has done uh passive investing he's done active investing he owns a couple gyms he's starting another one he's got a couple startups he does he's got all kinds of things speaking   very intelligently to a lot of different topics he also has a show called The passive income attorney actually also an attorney as well and puts together syndication paperwork so he does a lot of different things and so I always love talking to people that are doing many things because first of all inspires me that I'm not doing enough and then secondly um you know they'll speak very intelligently on kind of trends that are happening so he's talks about what what we're going to talk in this interview   about what happened over the last few years he's doing less real estate looking at some other things and just what do you do if a deal does not go well what are the steps you can take as an investor so I think you're really going to enjoy this we also get into Ai and some awesome other topics so let's jump in Seth welcome to the mailbox money show Bronson what's going on buddy good to see you again hey man we're both in Southern California I know we're not that far apart but you're in like the better part especially lately with all   the fires up in La recently uh you're in San Diego man I don't know anybody that says they don't love San Diego yeah man I mean there's no better place in the United States that's for sure I mean I've seen some some beautiful places around the world and I don't know San Diego still might beat it um I get a little bit used to it because I've been here for quite some time now but San Diego is really tough to beat yeah awesome man well I'm excited to have you here today I know you're an attorney you have your podcast called   the passive income attorney podcast and you also work with tri vest which helps investors and you have a lot you to say around uh diligence around deals going bad we've seen deals uh We've we've had a couple deals that have really struggled uh I've been an investor passively in deals some deals that have struggled people don't really talk about this as much and I think it's really important to talk about um but let's let's talk about kind of what's changed the last couple years interest rates have risen um obviously if you're a   multif family investor the deals maybe aren't as juicy as they were the projections are a little lower a a little little far between as far as you know deals that actually cash flow or deals that make as much sense but uh what have you seen the last couple years and how have you kind of shifted a little bit of your business and your investing for sure I mean it's been um it's been an experience right I think a lot of the past investors out there that are listening or if you're an operator or lead sponsor out there the same thing   I mean we've we've gone through a period of time starting I think back when Co hit in 2020 that was kind of the first dip in the market that we've we've seen in this kind of generation right like the jobs act well I I should say the previous dip was in you know 2008 2009 that was one cycle but that was before the jobs Act of 2012 so the jobs Act of 2012 is where some of these private Investments started being opened up to more people and more people like ourselves were able to get involved and start raising capital and and do deals   and you've just seen that market kind of exponentially grow since 2012 um so we haven't seen a downturn until Co hit in 20120 and that one was kind of weird right because it was just kind of a blip it wasn't because of the economy it was because of something that just you know nobody's going to be able to predict um but that's the first uh crack in the armor that we saw and then after that then we saw the interest rates go up in in 2020 towards the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023 and that's what really   started um you know giving us this experience that I'll say that we're we're still kind of going through because the interest rates are still a little bit higher than what we've we've seen over the past years and we're we're seeing more deals go go bad right or or at least you know there maybe a capital call or or two or perhaps um you know some of your distributions if you're a passive investor might be on pause and these are things that we're just not used to seeing because we're just used to seeing over the past you know 10   years up till 2022 all the deals have just gone really really well so it's a surprise to us and it shouldn't be because you know it's it's cyclic but we we'll figure it out and you know you're just seeing these things that we've all been warned about and they're now coming to fruition yeah yeah it's interesting you know I think if you between 2010 and 2020 you know 2021 even if you just owned a multif family apartment you were a genius right because things were just only going up and to the right and and   then sudden like there's that quote by Warren Buffett says you can only tell who's been swimming naked when the tide goes out kind of thing the tide interest Rising the tide goes out it's like oh my gosh this isn't work in the way we planned it um and now you in your portfolio you guys have done very well you've had some some great you haven't done as many deals more recently but um your deals have done well is that because you did kind of fix interest rate or is just the markets you chose or I'd love to hear a little more about   that that's right I mean fixed interest rates to be honest were a huge thing um that that's one thing that we really pushed for in our deals and that's and that saved us a little bit when these interest rates started to r that protected us um you know you saw that those were the deals that got in trouble those those adjustable rates got people in trouble and you know there towards the end like let say 2021 22 it was really hard to make the deals start to like continue to work and get those returns that we promised those passive   investors without taking those adjustable rate loans so you know those folks that got in in 2021 2022 maybe the beginning of 2023 those deals had adjustable rate loans and that's where they got into some trouble yeah yeah it's interesting kind of how things have changed now it's interesting too there was um a time not even that you know just a few years ago that that real estate was Cash flowing pretty well especially multif family real estate and now it's pretty tough because you know you got rates are   higher uh cost you know the price maybe have come down a little bit but you got higher Insurance you got higher other costs other inflation things you know there's not a lot of cash flow so a lot of you know syndicators or multif family investors have kind of just stepped out or maybe they got pitched on a deal here and there so we we've shifted a little bit to do we still do some multif family in in specific situations but um we' switched to go really focus on oil and gas we're doing uh other types of   businesses like I mentioned we're buying this business that's a e-commerce business High cash flow and then there's also debt funds you know debt these days there are debt funds paying like Equity was paying with less risk than it was a few years ago right so if you can get not debt funds are the same there's some that are first position that are low leverage and things like that uh what are are there anything else that you're finding for cashow or that you're finding attractive right now as an   investor yeah I mean I think you got to just look a little bit deeper I mean there's still some decent multif family deals out there too and that's always going to be to me kind of like bread and butter right like that's something that we're always going to need it's always going to be um it's always going to be something that people are interested in um because we've all lived in apartments at some point in our lives and I think it's an easy thing to grasp mentally okay like I'm going to invest in a   multif family or apartment building because I've lived in one I know what it's like I know how they work people pay rent you collect you you know expenses that sort of thing um but it's it's a lot tougher to find those deals um so people have looked at other things so I've seen a lot of um you know debt funds like you said a lot of people pivoting to um you know even smaller multif Family Properties um you know before we were looking at like 100 200 250 unit properties um now I've seen a lot of people kind of Ratchet that down   a little bit and look for some better deals in in some smaller properties maybe in the 25 to 75 unit range range that sort of thing um I've seen people like get into mobile home parks and RV parks after cuz we saw that go quite up quite a bit during CO as well and then came rocketing back down um but now you can kind of see like where where it really sits like now you can see like what the value of that asset is so you can see that the you know what those what they really are without like that big spike for covid and those are   turning out to be some pretty good Investments to get involved in too yeah and I know um you know we talked about this before we started recording um you and your wife you guys also operate a business or you guys have a a gym a couple gyms that you operate tell us about that and it's that um I know you're sounds like you're spanning so it sounds like it's going well I need to pop into a gym I'm probably get my butt kicked if I pop in there and you g through the Seth Bradley workout there right so yeah man we have a we have a   couple of gyms right now we have one open in Oceanside this is in San Diego uh San Diego County one in Oceanside one in Poway getting ready to open up a third one in anas it's under the burn boot camp franchise fly FL so it's a franchise um and I got uh really interested in franchises for that and then I ended up buying into another franchise I ended up buying into a water restoration franchise called Al dry so we've got a few businesses going um but those gyms are great right like once we battled through again I hate to keep   bringing up Co but it keeps coming up um but we battled through Co we opened up right before that hit uh actually one week before it hit so then we had to shut it down and work out outside workout inside we had to do um on online workouts those sorts of things um had our lead trainer in our apartment recording videos and me and my wife were in the background doing the exercises um pretty insane what we had to go through but they're they're doing really well now and luckily my wife has taking over that business and she runs   the whole thing so I don't do anything she doesn't even want me involved anymore so it's fantastic it it's actually turned into passive income for me for you it's passive income right for her it's right it's it's Fitness income right but that's you know really a lot of people like um lifestyle businesses you know where you're like it's just I think it's just a cool thing to say I own a gym or own a restaurant or I own this thing I mean a lot of like really wealthy people be like oh yeah I own a   Vineyard or I own a I own a horse racing thing or something like that but is it is it I mean you don't have to get into specific numbers but is it pretty it's you're opening another one so it's pretty lucrative to do it it sounds like it's working out well the it's a boutique gy that does kind of boot camp type stuff and you have certain classes you go in and those have become super popular all over the us but especially in big metros like Southern California for sure and look I don't want to say   that it's easy because it's it's definitely not you have to have the right mindset you've got to be an entrepreneur you've got to be able to fight through the hard times but you know these these types of businesses they're they're kind of done for you to a certain extent they give you the marketing plan they give you the business plan they give you kind of the proforma that you should be aiming for um especially with a franchise there's there's dozens if not hundreds of other franchisees that are doing the exact   same thing you are so you any qu any question or any problem that you're going through they have already went through it or they're going through it so you can bounce ideas off of you know kind of similar to like a mastermind right something like that where you get involved with a few people and it's like oh how can I get around people that have the same problems as me in a franchise there's that's already built in and it's even more it's even more dialed in because these are very specific like   brand specific industry specific questions and problems that you can balance those ideas and have those questions answered by your your fellow franchisees um but as far as like profitability again it's great because you can you can predict it like the idea behind it you buy one you figure it out then you buy more and then you keep going you stack and stack and stack and that's how you really make a lot of money in franchises you hear people that own dozens or you know hundreds of Papa John and things like that like you need   to be able to stack them um but they're definitely profitable um and they're fun they're it's a fun business like you said it's fun to be able to say that you own a gym it's fun to like walk into your own place if it's a gym or a restaurant or whatever it is and you're the owner it just feels good right it's a little bit more um you know rewarding I should say than some of the other businesses that that we're involved in for me it's you know a law firm and um buying real estate and it's this is just   a little bit more rewarding just like being there just the presence and having a um you know having a a brick and mortar space it's pretty cool yeah know I love that it's really interesting you guys I didn't realize you guys are are really Ser serial entrepreneurs I you guys are really both as a couple um is that like tell me a little bit about that dynamic as a couple that you and your wife do that like how is that something you've more LED is it something she's done is it kind of like you just kind of stay in your lanes and   like because a lot of times one one spouse or partner will be really risk you know averse or one would be much more risk tolerant and so has that been just like a really you guys are both kind of willing to take risk and kind of move forward in that yeah I think we we both have a really good temperament for it as far as risk tolerance and for me personally that's that's interesting because I'm an attorney so typically attorneys are not risk tolerant um but I I am I have that trait and and she does too um we have certain   trust in each other to be able to handle and stay in our lanes um she especially for the gyms you know she's operations right now I handle finance and and Prof formas and those sorts of things and obviously the legal stuff that comes up and I'm the maintenance guy too of course but um but everything else like operations she does that and then when she knows that she needs me for these certain things she'll bring me in um we've explored trying to figure out some other businesses uh that we might be   able to get involved in together and I think you know having that experience in the gyms gives us a good idea of how it would work out with some others yeah as she ever teaching the class like if you're in the dogh house you got to take a boot camp with her and she'll be extra tough on you or something ah she's she's not a trainer luckily I would I would I would avoid those camps for sure I think that'd be pretty funny no I think it's great man I love how you've created that you know for yourself that you guys and of course   you know I think I've noticed this too a lot of uh there's a lot of people they'll have they'll be really excited about real estate they'll be really excited about investing and then you get one that's one spouse is very risk averse what what do you say to someone who guess their spouse is pretty risk averse and you know maybe they're concerned whether they're a passive investor or they're interested in doing business things are like this like how do how do they kind of get that person on board or what have you seen is kind   of work to kind of help them to kind of work forward with that move forward yeah I mean it's tough it's tough right like you have to you have to choose your significant other wisely and it's probably the biggest decision that you'll make in your life not only for personally but also in business because if you have someone that just can't get on board with what you're doing or doesn't understand what you're trying to do um and you don't mesh very well on that side of things it it makes things a lot more a lot more difficult right and   you see that all the time you see couples fighting about business and somebody's working too much and the other person's not working enough or those sorts of Dynamics um but I think a lot of it can be solved with education you know a lot of it is just kind of this other person doesn't know enough about the business or the investment or whatever it might be and they just need some education so they're not the person they're not like us every single day just immersed in this and getting on podcasts and you know   listening to podcasts and reading books and all this stuff about these Assets in these businesses so you have to keep that in mind like they need to they need to understand to a certain extent so they can get comfortable with it I mean that's you know when people are scared to make moves it's usually because they're just not educated enough to be able to to assess the risk and move forward or not now if they are educated enough and they do know enough about the asset and they still say look this is a   bad deal well then maybe maybe you should look at it again and make sure that it's not a not a bad deal but there there's definitely some you know give take there with personality types and how much risk that each person's comfortable with or not comfortable with yeah absolutely I think that's definitely I just I love when I see couples that are like really on the same page and are like yeah we're in this and you're you know you're doing it which is great and be both be active which is awesome um so let's talk a little bit   about um I guess you know kind of circle back to you know investing in deals you know as a passive investor um you know if if someone invests in a deal that doesn't go well um how to you know how should a passive investor respond to that or what are the things that you know someone can do if they're not getting the communication that they need I mean I know there's some legal things you can do but then it starts expensive and like what I guess what are some options as a passive investor let's say   your sponsor is having struggles or they're just not communicating is there some like what are the what are the what what can you do to try to get that to change yeah I mean this is why paperwork is so important like people don't want to deal with that and you know I'm an attorney so I'm on the front end all the time like telling you telling everybody hey like make sure we hash this out now like let's be have a a really transparent conversation let's figure out exactly what each part is getting   into and let's not like hold back at all you know a lot and some of this applies to passive investing some of it doesn't because you you know you have certain things that you can ask for certain things that you can't but be as transparent as possible upfront and with the paperwork and pay attention to what you sign and what you sign up for because at the end of the day when things start to go wrong that's what the fallback is the fallback is okay this person isn't communicating any longer or they're not doing the things that they   said vocally they're going to do what can I do and at that point that's when you have to look at the paperwork so if you have a contract and in this case it would be an operating agreement or a limited partnership agreement that you've signed or subscription agreement to you have to go back to that paperwork and look and sometimes they may have put in that paperwork for instance that they do agree to give you a quarterly report or maybe they agree to give you a an annual financial statement or maybe they   didn't I don't know it depends on what the paperwork says but that's the first step see what your rights are contractually and that's a good place to start because if you do have a contractual right that they have to give you a quarterly report or they have to give you annual financial statements or if you request it they have to give you certain Financial reports then that's the place to start and you say look I know things aren't going as well as they should be going I really want to get this thing back on track let's let's   start communicating but you know pursuing to the operating agreement I I need to see a quarterly report or I need to see this financial report um and put that in writing and writing can be just as simple as an email or text but get it in writing make sure that that communication is documented um not just verbally because if something does go wrong if if there is some sort of and this is unlikely but if there is some sort of fraud or gross negligence or anything like that going on at least you have that uh that written communication   between the parties that down the line you can be like look I asked for this five times I still haven't received it they said they would do this and then you can start saying okay at this point maybe we're not just talking about somebody not doing a great job or maybe we're not talking about the investment not going well as well as anticipated maybe now we're talking about some sort of negligence maybe now we're talking about somebody misrepresenting what they said they were going to do versus what   they do um but you need to have that in writing so that at the end of the day you can put that together um and and show it to whoever it might be your lawyer their lawyer or maybe a court yeah yeah it's interesting you know there's some new tools out there as well a lot of times these documents sometimes are 80 to 200 pages and there's a lot lot of you know legal Le and boilerplate stuff and just a lot of fine print and I found that one and I'd actually love to know your opinion on this but i' I've done this occasionally   where I'll take uh I'll take some some documents or ppms or marketing whatever I'll put them in chat GPT I'll just be like hey you know I'll start asking questions Hey what how does this work how does that work whatever and it'll kind of like go through and pull that out of there which is just kind of like a timesaver I just find for a lot of investors it's like I don't want to spend two hours reading this really you know thick language and I know you're an attorney so that's what you do and um   but I mean is that something that you've uh seen some people do or is it I know obviously things can be missed but it's it can kind of help you get to give you the gist of in this situation this happens or in this situation is that something that you kind of seen a little bit 100% and maybe not all attorneys would agree with this but I I encourage that I think it's perfectly fine like you've got to leverage technology and that technology is unbelievable it's unbelievable and it gets better every   single day like you just see a new iteration every couple of weeks now it's absolutely insane what it can do and you can certainly upload your PPM your operating agreement your subscription agreement into it and ask it questions now if it's something very nuanced it it won't it won't get to it if there's kind of like a lot of times there's like different Provisions that layer on top of each other it doesn't understand that yet it will at some point it'll be there and probably very very soon but a lot of   the questions you ask if they're nuanced um it won't understand it um so what I recommend is do that get a good high level overview you can also ask questions and then I would verify so like once it once it gives you an answer and it's something that's very important like you're like this is the answer that I was looking for ask it be like well what section did you pull this from and then get the section and then look it up yourself that particular section and verify that what it told you is actually   the answer yeah it's amazing the uh the tools we have I mean we really are in an an age where there's so much information everywhere but it's being able to access it quickly and it's like AI and some of these things can help with it and I don't think you know just a side note on AI I don't think it's that AI is going to be robots that's going to take over and kill us all or we're going to lose our jobs just to an AI bot or something but it's people using AI right that are are able to become a super employee or a   super business owner or super investor and really be able to get more information so I think it can be really powerful um what are uh what are some trends that you're kind of watching um I know actually I want you to talk about this too you're involved with a group called tribe vest which helps uh basically syndicators they have a portal and they can kind of have ways to be able to access uh certain deals and and and pass that information but what are what are also some Trends in relation what are some trends that you're seeing   as far as investing uh for Passive investors that are just things that can are good to watch or things that are helpful yeah I mean I think one really good thing is is what you you talked about already it's it's using Ai and and using software to make you a better investor so you can you like before you get this 200 Page PPM and you're like what what in the world do with this and maybe one out of a 100 investors will read that line for line if that and even if they could read it they probably don't understand it unless they they   happen to be a Securities attorney or some sort of transactional attorney they're not even going to get it um fun fact a PPM is actually supposed to be in non-legal ease it's supposed to be in in layman's terms that's the whole point of it is so that you can understand your investment in layman's terms but ppms have turned into you know a legal document so yeah even longer um but yeah I mean I think you can start leveraging Ai and software to just be a better investor and not just from you know   reading legal documents like we had mentioned earlier that's a good example of of you know when you're looking into an investment maybe put that PPM into chat gbt ask questions about the investment ask if there's any inconsistencies between the PPM and the operating agreement things like that um but you can also use it for underwriting and due diligence and things like that um I'm actually an adviser for a startup called brixley and we are working on kind of a due diligence type of process process where we're aggregating all the   due diligence documents we're putting them into a software and then you're able to evaluate the deal so you can evaluate that deal based on your buy box and those sorts of things and it's just it and things like that just change the game quickly right like before it just takes a lot of Manpower um a lot of hours and now it just takes minutes but you still have to have somebody skilled enough to prompt and skilled enough to ask the right questions and skilled enough to make sure that you're not believing the AI and it's not   hallucinating um that sort of thing because you've got to make sure that the information gives you is right because right now it does spit out some things that that don't make a lot of sense so you just gota gota be be very careful but people if you aren't leveraging AI in just your everyday life then you're you're getting left behind yeah yeah know you got a fact check on other stories of attorneys like I guess there was an attorney in New York that like just took his whole thing and put it into AI a chat jbt and it wasn't even   right it was like totally wrong and they got disbarred or something for doing that so it's obviously an investor the the risk is not going to be disbarred typically it's more you might lose your shorts or something so it's makeing sure you're doing it the right way yeah for sure yeah you gotta be careful you got to be careful but like I said it's getting better every single day like I I think in you know two years it's going to be unrecognizable in in five years we're going to have a humanoid robot in every home that we   have like yeah yeah it it really is changing so fast and that's where I think it is really important important to pay attention to technology to try new things if people are not like as a listener if you're if you haven't used chat GPT there's an app you can use for free there's the website get familiar with prompting which is just going in and just being commands I literally use it I'm going to Columbia we're recording this I'm going this week to Columbia and I want here's my nine days I'm going to   be here create an itinerary for me like literally created an itinerary based on my values what I want to do and and I can always like go off of that but it's like it's so helpful right it's amazing yeah it's such a time saer it's insane it's insane yeah it is it is uh well Seth I really appreciate you you being here today I just feel like you add so much value both as an investor a business owner an attorney um just love what you're creating with your content and uh can you just share how people can   follow your show and how they can hear about you and and some of the things that you're doing absolutely man best place to go would be Seth paaul bradley.com and that's where I have kind of all my social media links you'll have a link to raay law my Securities Law Firm as well as try best fun of funds in a box and the podcast as well awesome brother thanks for being here man all right thanks Bronson appreciate it all right I hope you enjoyed this interview with Seth I just I love the stuff at the   end there about AI if you you know you want to go back and Rel listen to that just using chat GPT in your life in your business to look at ppms and even as an attorney said yeah some attorneys don't like that because it will miss things but it's really a timesaver we use it all the time we use it all the time in our business I use it all the time in my personal life and it's just so helpful I literally it's kind of replace my Google search now because it's so much better and instead of we used to go spending   time on Google you spend 30 minutes researching something now it just kind of spit out the answer for you which is really great so I use it for health stuff for travel or business topics all kinds of different ideas just find it really really helpful so hopefully you got something out of this interview you enjoyed it if you have not en joined our investment Club you're not hearing about our amazing deals that we're doing right now and that we're really excited about so um if you want to check that out you   can check out the link in the uh show notes or the link below or you can go to Bronson equity.com and hit the join button we'll start a relationship with you set up a call with you and you can start hearing about our awesome upcoming deals so thank thank you for taking the time to educate yourself seriously it humbles me it excites me it gets me fired up because the best investment you make is in your own education we look forward to seeing you on the next episode you've been listening to the mailbox money podcast for more free   resources articles and videos go to Bronson equity.com there you can download your copy of the Special Report the single best investment strategy during and after a pandemic none of the information shared here is an offer to buy a specific investment and this is for education ational purposes only consult your financial legal and tax professionals and use your own Common Sense before making any investment decisions thanks for joining us and be sure to tune next time for more mailbox money [Music] Links from the Show and Guest Info and Links: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xrvBhGtS5w&t=396s https://www.facebook.com/reel/1762572444669041 https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bronsonhill_when-deals-go-wrong-the-fallback-is-the-activity-7321649659108581377-87lt?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAFY-6nMBbbX5J6KeuEtIMcA9tcRG4F_1ItE Seth Bradley's Links: https://x.com/sethbradleyesq https://www.youtube.com/@sethbradleyesq www.facebook.com/sethbradleyesq https://www.threads.com/@sethbradleyesq https://www.instagram.com/sethbradleyesq/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/sethbradleyesq/ https://passiveincomeattorney.com/seth-bradley/ https://www.biggerpockets.com/users/sethbradleyesq https://medium.com/@sethbradleyesq https://www.tiktok.com/@sethbradleyesq?lang=en Bronson Hill's Links: https://bronsonequity.com/ https://www.instagram.com/bronsondavidhill/ https://www.instagram.com/bronsonequity/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/bronsonhill/ https://www.facebook.com/bronson.hill.37/ https://www.tiktok.com/@bronsonequity2020 https://open.spotify.com/show/7AQcShxvRMoD1U2zclQQVU

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What does it take to scale from a 38-unit syndication to 33,000 units across six states—and still never lose investor capital? Jeff Gleiberman of MG Properties breaks it down. In this episode, Jeff shares the core principles that helped his family-run firm grow into one of the top 50 apartment owners in the U.S. You'll hear how they've weathered multiple market cycles, why they're buying newer assets right now, and how disciplined underwriting, fixed-rate debt, and vertical integration have become their unfair advantages. Whether you're raising capital, comparing asset classes, or trying to read the market—this episode is required listening.Key TakeawaysFrom Family Syndication to Institutional ScaleStarted with a single 38-unit deal and scaled to 33,000 units over 30+ years.Built trust and momentum through word of mouth and disciplined execution.Added institutional capital partners while staying grounded in syndication fundamentals.Grew from a home office to over 1,000 employees with fully integrated operations.How MG Navigates Market CyclesSurvived and thrived through the S&L crisis, dot-com bust, GFC, COVID, and today's rate shock.Adapted strategy for each cycle—moving from value-add to core-plus when needed.Buys below replacement cost today to minimize downside and maximize long-term upside.Maintains focus on fixed-rate, long-term debt and low leverage to protect investor capital.Why Vertical Integration is a Competitive AdvantageIn-house property management, asset management, and construction management from day one.Enables real-time decision-making, tighter expense control, and stronger performance in down markets.Allowed the firm to pivot quickly during COVID and deliver consistent returns.How to Attract Serious Capital (Without Chasing High IRRs)Always invests 10–20% of their own capital into each deal—creating strong alignment.Focuses on risk-adjusted returns, not marketing inflated projections.Educates investors on cycles, deal structure, and realistic expectations to build long-term trust.Current Strategy: Core-Plus Over Value-AddAcquiring newer, well-located properties at 30–40% discounts to replacement cost.Cash flow is lower today—but risk is also lower, and long-term upside is strong.Value-add deals don't pencil right now due to rent compression and renovation risk—but they will again.The Discipline Behind $1.8B in Acquisitions (In a Down Market)Maintains a consistent buy box and underwriting discipline—despite competition and volatility.Relies on lender relationships, low-cost insurance, and scale advantages to stay competitive.Sticks to one asset class—multifamily—and executes at a high level, deal after deal.Connect with Jeffmgproperties.com Connect with MichaelFacebookInstagramYouTubeTikTokResourcesTheFreedomPodcast.com Access the #1 FREE Apartment Investing Course (Apartments 101)

What if I told you that one single Instagram story slide brought in $20K in sales?   In this episode of The Divorce Revolution Podcast, I'm pulling back the curtain on my exact IG story flow and how I consistently use stories—not just posts—to build trust, nurture warm leads, and spark sales conversations that convert. Whether you have a big audience or you're just starting from scratch, this strategy works. I'm also breaking down the difference between direct vs. indirect selling in stories and why “talking to the camera” isn't even required.   If you've ever felt like your stories get views but never bring in clients—this episode is for you.   Resources Mentioned: Episode 399. How to Sell in the DMs Without Feeling Salesy or Awkward: https://ambershaw.com/podcasts/399-how-to-sell-in-the-dms-without-feeling-salesy-or-awkward/ Sign up for ReNewU waitlist to get early access: https://products.ambershaw.com/signature-waitlist Nail Your Niche: https://ambershaw.samcart.com/products/nail-your-niche   What I Discuss: Why your Instagram Stories are your most overlooked sales tool My 3-step IG Story Flow that builds trust and leads to DMs The surprising power of a single well-placed story slide Passive vs. direct story strategies—and when to use each The #1 thing to avoid if you want stories that convert How to start selling daily (without feeling pushy or awkward)   Find more from Amber Shaw: Instagram: @msambershaw Website: ambershaw.com 

Starting a podcast to grow your business? Hold up. Before you default to that classic interview format everyone seems to be doing, let's talk strategy.I recently had a coaching call where this exact topic came up, and it got me fired up because I see so many course creators and coaches launching podcasts without a clear purpose—just copying what they see others doing and wondering why it's not converting into sales.This episode isn't just about podcast formats; it's about getting crystal clear on your actual goals and building a strategy that serves YOUR vision, not someone else's. Whether you're planning your first episode or six months deep wondering why nothing's happening, this one's for you.I'm breaking down the real advantages and pitfalls of interview versus solo episodes, when each format makes sense, and why most course creators should be anchoring their shows in solo content if they want to see serious business growth. Plus, I'm sharing the pattern I see over and over again that's killing conversion potential.What You'll Learn:Why interview episodes might be sabotaging your sales (even if they feel easier)The advantages of solo episodes for building your personal brand and authorityWhen interviews actually make sense for your business goalsHow to strategically mix both formats without losing focusThe core principle you need to apply everywhere in your business, not just podcastingSpecific questions to ask yourself to align your strategy with your actual goalsYour Next Steps:Watch my new AI workshop to learn how I built a custom set of AI Assistants to help me run my business: https://www.gemmabonhamcarter.com/aiworkshopWork with Me: https://www.gemmabonhamcarter.com/programsWhat I Use to Run My 7-Figure Business: https://gemmabonhamcarter.com/toolsConnect on Social: https://www.instagram.com/gemma.bonhamcarter Support the show

Holy two episodes in a row?! Crazy. Lots of Nintendo talk. Shoutout Nintendo, and Shoutout Charlie for the awesome intro as always.1:40- Mafia: The Old Country3:42- Shinobi Art of Vengeance4:09- Weapons7:50- Addis Nintendo Switch 2 Launch Experience8:30- Mario Kart World Tour13:56- Donkey Kong Country and Donkey Kong Country 215:43- Donkey Kong Bananza38:29- The Legend of Zelda: Windwaker45:15- Superman (2025)50:03- Yakuza 0: Director's Cut (The worst rated game on backloggd.com)59:21- Eddington1:05:16- It Follows1:13:38- Mickey 171:23:39- Kingdom Hearts III1:32- Shoutout of the weeks!

Today's poker strategy discussion is about the preflop ranges of passive recreational poker players, also known as “fish.” Brand New! Free content monthly just for signing up as. Free follower. Articles, videos and more. It's 100% free to sign up and follow me here:https://lowlimitcashgames.com Fans of the Pod get ad free, fluff free episode every single Sunday: https://lowlimitcashgames.com Save 10% when you choose the annual option Targeted Low Stakes poker training with hundreds of hours of audio and video teaching exclusively how to crush 1/2 and 1/3 no limit: https://lowlimitcashgames.com Save 10% when you choose the annual option. — Low Stakes Fish Ranges — Mainly passive fish which is most fish Raising range very similar from all spots Slightly tighter early. Not any looser later. Calling ranges same in all seats. 54 suited utg and button Using the advice of pros that play tough competition will kill you. A bad fish raises the cutoff and you have A4 suited sb? Again good players you can 3b some. Vs bad low stakes fish you can't. They have almost the same range they have utg Hate AK? How to Play AK Master Class For only $49 get this 88 minute training video of me showing you exactly how to play AK, particularly when out of position. https://www.patreon.com/lowlim... The best way to ramp your game up and know how to play any hand in any spot by drilling it over and over again. This is the only product I endorses. Make sure to use my code for a 25% discount at checkout: https://advancedpokertraining.... Use code: lowlimit Free episode on variable, run bad, and tilt. Free for anyone who is a free member and high on my Patreon. https://www.patreon.com/posts/... Want more details on everything that is offered with the training package on Patreon? I go into great detail about it all here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/...

TRY N3 Textbook P32, 33 ▼Buy me a coffee and Be a sponsor of one episode ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/KANAKO-Coffee⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠▼BGM ⇒ DOVA-SYNDROME（⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://dova-s.jp/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠)▼Ending BGM ⇒Flower Field【FLASH☆BEAT】

Send us a textReady to slash your tax bill? Schedule your free consultation and let's strategize your tax savings together! Book now at: https://www.prosperlcpa.com/apply Or, if you still need more time, here are some other ways to begin winning the tax game... Take our free Tax Planning Checklist & learn about what tax savings may be available for you in our minicourse at https://taxplanningchecklist.comLearn how real estate investing creates valuable tax losses that can offset income and build long-term wealth, even for passive investors without real estate professional tax status. These tax advantages allow investors to collect cash flow without paying taxes while building suspended losses that can offset future capital gains.• Depreciation offsets rental revenue, allowing tax-free cash collection• Passive losses accumulate on Form 8582 for future use against passive income• Cash-out refinances provide tax-free access to increased property value• Qualified Opportunity Zones offer tax deferral and potential tax-free growth• Real estate losses can offset passive income from business interests• Tax planning should precede real estate investing for maximum benefit• Advanced tax reduction strategies can provide immediate 100% ROI• Using tax savings to invest in real estate creates compounding tax advantages

Karen-Marie Yust talks to us about "Passive Technology" and the band-aid to boredom it can be. We are incredibly grateful for the ideas and concepts she shares, as well as the thought process that perhaps Passive Technology isn't a bad thing sometimes. 

What if index funds weren't as “passive” as you think? In this episode of the Rational Reminder, we are joined by Jim Rowley, Global Head of Investment Implementation Research, and Andy Mack, Head of US Equity Portfolio Management at Vanguard. These two experts offer a rare, behind-the-scenes look into what it really takes to run some of the world's largest index funds—and it's far from “set it and forget it.” From real-time trading decisions to managing $7 trillion globally, Jim and Andy walk us through how Vanguard implements index strategies with a precision that rivals any active manager. They challenge the traditional labels of passive versus active and show how thoughtful implementation, securities lending, FX execution, and IPO participation can add real value for investors—even in low-cost index products. Key Points From This Episode: (0:04) Why Vanguard's team was the ideal follow-up to Marco Sammon's index research (1:55) Why index funds aren't as simple as they seem: rebalancing, risk, and strategy (2:50) “Passive” is a misnomer: why index fund management involves active decisions (4:42) What excites Jim and Andy about index fund implementation (7:16) Risk-managed opportunities: how Vanguard adds value during secondary offerings (8:02) Debunking the active vs. passive label—think in terms of strategy characteristics (9:41) The subjective calls behind index construction and market definitions (12:00) The goal of a market-cap weighted index fund and how Vanguard tracks it (13:28) Why tracking error matters—and when it becomes a business risk (15:48) Indexing's advantage: predictable relative performance for portfolio construction (16:15) The real complexity of daily index fund trading and execution strategy (17:16) Vanguard's unique approach: PMs and traders are the same person in equities (18:52) The scale of VTI: how 24 global PMs manage trillions across time zones (20:48) Why Vanguard's culture treats every trade like it's client money (22:24) Andy's story of building Vanguard's FX desk and the hundreds of millions saved (24:04) Quant vs. human judgment in index implementation—why both matter (26:50) How fixed income index funds balance risk, liquidity, and security selection (27:46) Tools traders use to minimize price impact: algos, limits, and timing strategies (29:09) How index rebalancing impact has decreased thanks to market evolution (31:36) The hidden mechanics behind index inclusion/exclusion and price effects (33:40) Do index funds distort prices? Vanguard's view on elasticity and ownership (35:55) Stock dispersion and the case for continued price discovery (38:09) Why using passive funds doesn't mean being a passive investor (43:15) Jim's research: how “passive” funds are actively deployed by advisors (50:43) How Vanguard handles IPOs, buybacks, and market composition shifts (54:45) Active corporate action management: cash mergers, elections, and strategy (55:27) Responding to Marco Sammon's critiques on market timing and turnover (58:55) What would change if rebalancing were less frequent? (1:00:34) How securities lending and market advocacy add ongoing value (1:04:42) Should Vanguard launch a flexible, non-indexed total market fund? (1:06:26) Andy's biggest concern: system risks and rebalance day challenges (1:07:08) Jim's biggest concern: index funds aren't a free pass—investors still need discipline (1:08:03) Defining success: alignment with investors and living a balanced life Links From Today's Episode: Meet with PWL Capital: https://calendly.com/d/3vm-t2j-h3p Rational Reminder on iTunes — https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-rational-reminder-podcast/id1426530582.  Rational Reminder Website — https://rationalreminder.ca/  Rational Reminder on Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/rationalreminder/ Rational Reminder on X — https://x.com/RationalRemind Rational Reminder on TikTok — www.tiktok.com/@rationalreminder Rational Reminder on YouTube — https://www.youtube.com/channel/ Rational Reminder Email — info@rationalreminder.ca Benjamin Felix — https://pwlcapital.com/our-team/ Benjamin on X — https://x.com/benjaminwfelix Benjamin on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjaminwfelix/ Dan Bortolotti — https://pwlcapital.com/our-team/ Dan Bortolotti on LinkedIn — https://ca.linkedin.com/in/dan-bortolotti-8a482310   Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com).

“Passive income sounds cute. Until you realize it still takes work. Just not a 9-5 kind of work.” Think passive income means sipping mimosas while your bank account fills itself? Jaspreet's here to pop that bubble, then show you how it actually works. From dividend stocks to real estate to buying businesses, this episode breaks down what it really takes to build cash flow that can someday replace your paycheck, and how much effort each one really takes. What You'll Learn: Why “passive” income still requires planning and oversight The 3 types of cash flow and which one fits your lifestyle How much return you can expect from stocks, real estate, and small businesses The truth about buying a business for income (spoiler: you're the CEO) Which dividend ETFs Jaspreet personally invests in and how they work Why consistency beats hype when it comes to long-term investing You don't need to hustle forever. But you do need a plan. This is the episode to build one. Want more financial news? Join Market Briefs, my free daily financial newsletter: https://www.briefs.co/market Below are my recommended tools! Please note: Yes, these are our sponsors & advertisers. However, these are companies that I trust and use (or have used). The compensation doesn't affect my recommendations or advice. That being said, you should always do your own research & never blindly listen to a random guy on YouTube (or a podcast). ---------- ➤ Invest In Stocks Passively 1) M1 Finance - Buy stocks & ETFs automatically: https://theminoritymindset.com/m1 ---------- ➤ Life Insurance 2) Policygenius - Get a free life insurance quote: https://theminoritymindset.com/policygenius ---------- ➤ Real Estate Investing Online 3) Fundrise - Invest in real estate with as little as $10! https://theminoritymindset.com/fundrise ----------

Title: How to Make Millions with Vending Machines with Mike Hoffman Summary: In this conversation, Seth Bradley and Mike Hoffman delve into the world of vending machines as a business opportunity. Mike shares his journey from a Midwest farm boy to a successful entrepreneur in the vending industry, highlighting the evolution of vending technology and the potential for passive income. They discuss the importance of location, understanding demographics, and the scalability of vending routes. Mike emphasizes the need for upfront work and learning before delegating tasks, while also addressing the misconceptions surrounding passive income in the vending business. In this conversation, Seth Bradley and Mike discuss various aspects of entrepreneurship, particularly in the vending machine business. They explore the importance of capital raising, the journey of self-discovery, influences that shape business decisions, and the definition of success. The dialogue emphasizes the significance of flexibility, discipline, and focus in achieving entrepreneurial goals, while also touching on financial milestones and the attributes that distinguish successful entrepreneurs. Links to Watch and Subscribe:   Bullet Point Highlights: Mike's journey from a classic Midwest farm boy to a successful entrepreneur. The evolution of vending machines from traditional to smart technology. Understanding the importance of location in the vending business. The analogy of baseball levels to describe starting in vending. Scaling up from single A to big leagues in vending routes. The significance of demographics in product selection for vending machines. The potential for passive income with proper systems in place. The need for upfront work before achieving passivity in business. Vending is not a get-rich-quick scheme; it requires dedication. The future opportunities in the vending industry are expanding rapidly. Raising capital can dilute ownership but may be necessary for rapid growth. Self-discovery often leads to unexpected career paths. Influences in business can come from personal experiences rather than just mentors. Success is often defined by the ability to prioritize family and flexibility. Entrepreneurs work harder than in traditional jobs but gain flexibility. Discipline is crucial for saying no to distractions. Successful entrepreneurs often focus on niche markets. High foot traffic locations are ideal for vending machines. AI is transforming business operations and efficiency. Networking and connections can lead to valuable opportunities. Transcript: Seth Bradley, Esq. (00:04.898) Mike, what's going on buddy? Doing great brother, doing great. How about you?   Mike (00:06.748) Don't worry,   Mike (00:11.664) Good, I'm a little flustered. I usually have my mic set up over here, but I guess we just moved and it's not here today. I guess, yeah, new office and it's been a whole hot mess.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (00:19.822) New office or what?   Seth Bradley, Esq. (00:27.862) Nice man, nice. I see you got the whiteboard cranking back there. Love to see that.   Mike (00:33.114) Always. I love your background. That's sweet.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (00:38.03) Thanks man, yeah, I'm on camera all the time so I like I need to just build this out instead of using like a green screen so Made the investment made it happen   Mike (00:44.86) Totally.   Yeah, absolutely.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (00:49.442) Have we met in person or not? I don't know if we've met at a Wealth Without Wall Street event or I couldn't tell. Okay. No, I did not go to Nashville last year.   Mike (00:58.478) I don't think so. don't think you're... Were you in Nashville last year?   Mike (01:04.634) No, okay. No, I don't think we've met in person. Yeah.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (01:08.256) Okay, all good, man. All good. Well, cool. I'll just go over the format real quick. We'll do kind of a shorter recording. We're do like 30 minutes, something like in that range. And then we'll just kind of like break. And then I'll, want to record a couple of other quick segments where I call it Million Dollar Monday. I'm kind of asking you about how you made your first, last and next million. And then 1 % closer, which would just be kind of what separates you, what makes you the   top 1 % in your particular vertical. So we'll just kind of record those separately. Those will be real short, like five minutes or so.   Mike (01:44.924) Okay, yeah, I'll follow your lead. All good.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (01:47.15) Cool. Cool. Let's see. I think I already have this auto recording. So we're already recording. So I'll just jump right in.   Mike (01:55.377) Okay.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (01:57.782) Welcome to Raise the Bar Radio, hosted by yours truly Seth Bradley. We today we've got Mr. Passive, Mike Hoffman. Mike, welcome to the show.   Mike (02:08.189) Thank you for having me fired up to be here.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (02:10.855) Absolutely man, really happy to have you on. I know it's been a little bit of a trek here to get our schedules lined up, but really stoked to have you on today, man. I see you said you moved into a new office. You've got the whiteboard cranking, so love to see it.   Mike (02:25.372) yeah, whiteboards are the only place I can get my thoughts down.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (02:29.399) Yeah, man, it makes a difference when you actually write something rather than type it or even on a mirror board where you're doing it online. just there's something about physically writing something down.   Mike (02:41.328) You know, I'm glad you said that because yesterday I flipped to Seattle for a quick work trip and I didn't have wifi and I literally had three pages of just, I, was so like the clarity of some of these kinds of bigger visions I have now from just being able to write for an hour on a flight was, I was like, man, I gotta do this more often.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (03:00.363) Yeah, for sure. The key though is once you write it down, it just doesn't go into the trash or into a black hole somewhere where you never see it again. So that's kind of the disadvantage there. If you have it on your computer and you're taking notes or you have it on a mirror board, at least it's there to reference all the time. If you write it down on paper, sometimes, I've got my Raze Masters book right here for notes, but it's like, it might go into the abyss and I'll never look at it again. So you gotta be careful about that.   Mike (03:27.184) Yeah, yeah, I need to check out the Miro boards. I've heard a lot of good things about them.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (03:31.467) Yeah, yeah. Awesome, Mike. Well, listen, for our audience who doesn't know anything about you, maybe just tell them, you know, tell them a little bit about your background. Tell them about your your main business and we can take it from there.   Mike (03:43.354) Yeah. So I think for those that don't know about me, I'm a classic Midwest farm boy started with a classic, you know, showing cattle at the county fair and all of that and had a lemonade stand growing up. And then my first job was actually at McDonald's, you know, thinking about the whole success of that business model. But when I was coaching and, out of college, I got my first rental and I was like, wow, this is crazy. making money without.   really much time involved. and then with my work in Silicon Valley, know, Seth, was classic Silicon Valley, you know, cutthroat job that, startup life and traveling three weeks out of the month. And I was on, I was in airports all the time. And was like, these vending machines I would run into at airports were just so archaic. And so I went down this path of like unattended retail and kind of the future of, of that. And that's really where I just see a huge opportunity right now.   And so it's kind of what led me into all these different income streams that I'm passionate about.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (04:49.431) That's awesome, man. Well, let's dive into that a little bit deeper. me about these income streams. It centers around vending machines, right? But I'm sure there's a lot more to it. I'm sure there's a lot of different entry points for people. Maybe just kind of give us a general synopsis to start out.   Mike (05:06.78) Yeah, so I think the big thing with, you know, if we're talking vending specifically as an income stream, you know, most people think of vending as the traditional machines where you enter in a code, you put your card on the machine and then a motor spirals down a Snickers bar or a soda and you go into the chute and grab it.   Nowadays, there's these smart machines that literally you just unlock the door, or even if you go into, land in the Vegas airport right at the bottom of the escalator where it says, welcome to Las Vegas, there's a 7-Eleven with gates and AI cameras, and there's no employees in the 7-Eleven. And it just tracks whatever you grab and to exit the gate, you have to pay for it. So like, there's just this huge market now where we just installed it in urgent care.   less than two months ago and we can do over the counter meds in that machine because it doesn't have to fit into a motor. It's just shelf space. You identify with the planogram with the AI cameras like, okay, Dayquil in this slot or Salad in this slot and then whatever they grab, gets charged to the person that pulls it from it.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (06:15.469) That's interesting, man. Yeah, I mean, my initial thought too, was just like the traditional old vending machine where you're getting a candy bar or a cola out of there. But yeah, nowadays, now that you mentioned that, you see this more and more every single day where you've got these scanners, you've got kind of self-checkout, that sort of thing. So that's kind of, that expands that world and really opens it up to the future, right? Like it just really, that's what we're trying to get to, or at least we think we wanna get there, where we're kind of removing humans and...   kind of working with technologies and things like that.   Mike (06:49.488) Yeah, and I think, you know, removing the whole human thing. mean, those machines still got to get stocked and you know, there's not robots running around doing that. But I just come back to, I was a Marriott guy when I was on the road all the time and I'd go to these grab and goes at a Marriott and grab a, the end of the night, I'd grab like a little wine or an ice cream sandwich. And I literally had to go wait in line at the check-in desk behind three people checking in just to tell them, Hey, put these on.   room charge and I was like if I had a checkout kiosk in that grab-and-go I could have just removed all the friction for this customer experience.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (07:27.772) Right, 100%. Yeah, I mean, there's a place and time for it and there's more and more applications for it that just pop up every single day and you can kind of spot that in your life as you're just kind of moving through, whether you're checking into your hotel or whatever you're doing.   Mike (07:41.456) Yeah, yeah. So that's just kind of what excites me today.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (07:45.973) Yeah, yeah, so when a stranger asks you what you do just in the street, what do you tell them? Because I have a hard time answering that question sometimes too, but I'd love to hear what your answer is.   Mike (07:56.804) Yeah, I would just say it depends on the day. You know, what do you do or what's your, you know, it's like at the golf course when you get paired up with a stranger and they're like, tell me about what you do for your career. And I just say, I'm a classic entrepreneur. And then I'm like, well, what do you do? And it's like, well, tell me about the day. You know, what fire are you putting out? Like today we just got the go ahead for five more urgent cares for our local route. But then, you know, we have a community of operators across the country that we help really build.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (07:57.933) haha   Ha ha ha.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (08:09.879) Yeah. Yeah.   Mike (08:25.616) Vending empires and so we had a group call this morning. So literally, there's a lot of just, you know, it's classic entrepreneurial life. You never know what the day's script is gonna be.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (08:36.161) Yeah, for sure. And you focus a lot on not only on your own business, but also teaching others, right? Teaching others how to kind of break into this business.   Mike (08:45.402) Yeah, that's my passion, Seth. When I got into my first investment out of college was a $70,000 rental, you know, putting 20 % down or 14K and using an emergency fund. like my background in going to college was as a coach. like I knew I wanted to kind of take that mindset of like coaching people, you know, teach them how to fish. I don't want to catch all the fish myself. It's just not fulfilling that way. So that's really where my passion is.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (09:15.373) Gotcha, gotcha. tell me about like, tell me about step one. I mean, how does somebody break into this business? Obviously your own personal business is probably very advanced. There's probably a lot more sophisticated investing strategies at this point and you've got different layers to it. But somebody just kind of starting out that said, hey, this sounds pretty interesting. This vending machine business sounds like it can be passive. How do you recommend that they get started?   Mike (09:40.57) Yeah, so I'm always, I view like the whole vending scale as similar to Major League Baseball. You got your single A all the way up to the big leagues. And if you're just starting out, I always recommend like find a location where you can put a machine and just learn the process. Like to me, that's single A analogy. you know, that always starts with, people want to jump right to like, well, what type of machines do you recommend?   products, how do you price products? And the first question I'll always ask Seth is, well, what location is this machine going in? And they're like, well, I don't know yet. I was just going to buy one and put it in my garage to start. And it's like, no, you need to have the location first. So understanding that, is it a pet hospital? Is it an apartment? Is it a gym? Where is the foot traffic? And then you can cater to what's the best machine for that type of location.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (10:36.887) Got it, got it. Now is this a kind of a rent, you rent the space to place the machine with that particular business or wherever you're gonna place it or how does that all come together?   Mike (10:47.644) not typically, some people are kind of more advanced, like apartment complexes are used to the revenue share model. So they're going to ask for a piece of the pie for sure, for you to put the machine in their lobby. but like, you know, when we're talking urgent carers or even pet hospitals are viewing it as an amenity. And so we probably have, I don't even know how many machines now 75 now, and we, you know, less than half of those actually,   Seth Bradley, Esq. (10:50.423) Okay.   Mike (11:15.1) us rent or ask for a revenue share to have them in there. So I never leave lead with that, but we'll do it if we need to get the location.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (11:23.989) Interesting gotcha. So it's really a value add for wherever you're gonna place it and that's how most people or I guess most businesses would look at that and then you're able to capture that that space   Mike (11:27.366) Mm-hmm.   Mike (11:34.236) Yeah, absolutely. So, um, a great case study is we have a 25 employee roughing business here in Oregon. And you might think like, only 25 employees. It's not going to make that much money. Well, we do $1,200 a month. And the cool thing about this, Seth, is the CEO of this roughing company literally did napkin math on how much it costs for his employees to drive to the gas station during their 20 minute break. And then   How much they're paying for an energy drink at the gas station and then how much gas they're using with the roofing like the work trucks to get to and from the gas station So he's like I want to bring a smart machine into our warehouse Set the prices as half off so that four dollar monster only costs his rofers two dollars and then we invoice him the the business owner every month for the other 50 % and so he actually   Calculated as a cost savings not asking for money to rent the space   Seth Bradley, Esq. (12:35.597) Yeah, gotcha, gotcha. That makes sense. That makes sense. I love the baseball analogy with the single A, double A, triple A, even into the big leagues here. know, a lot of the folks that listen to this are already kind of, you know, in the big leagues or maybe think about some capital behind them. Like how would they be able to jump right in, maybe skip single or double A or would they, or do you even suggest that? Do you suggest that they start, you know, small just to learn and then maybe invest some more capital into it to expand or can they jump right to the big leagues?   Mike (12:48.891) Yeah.   Yeah.   Mike (13:03.966) I think they can jump right to the big leagues. this is, I'm glad you brought this up because just listening to some of your episodes from the past, there's no doubt that you have people that could buy a route like a off biz buy sell today. And I think this is a prime opportunity. it's very similar to flipping a house. you, you know, there's a route in Chicago, I think it was for $1.1 million, you know, whatever negotiating terms or seller financing or, or what have you, got a lot of, your, your   audience that is experts in that. But the cool thing about these routes is they have the old school machines that have the motors and that are limited to, this type of machine, you can only fit a 12 ounce cannon. Well, guess what? The minute you buy that route, you swap out that machine with one of these micro markets or smart machines. Now you just went from selling a 12 ounce soda for $1.25 to now a 16 ounce monster for $4.50.   Well, you just bought that location based on its current revenue numbers and by swapping out that machine, you're going to two or three acts your revenue just at that location. And so it's truly just like a value play, a value upgrade, like flipping the house of, okay, there's a lot of deals right now of these routes being sold by baby boomers where it's like, they got the old school Pepsi machine. Doesn't have a credit card reader on it. They can't track inventory remotely via their cell phones. So   They're not keeping it stocked. Like all those types of things can really play in your favor as a buyer that just wants to get to the big leagues right away.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (14:37.651) I love that. When you say buy a route, what are you really buying? Tell me about the contractual agreement behind that. What are you really buying there?   Mike (14:47.184) You're just buying the locations and the equipment associated with it. So like this Chicago route, it's like, we have machines in 75 properties all across the Chicago suburbs. And they could be medical clinics. could be apartments. could be employee break rooms at businesses, but that's when you start diving into those locations. It's like, I have a snack machine and a soda machine here. Well, you swap that out with a micro market that now instead of.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (14:49.279) Okay. Okay.   Mike (15:13.626) that machine that'll only hold a small bag of Doritos that you charge two bucks, well now you get the movie size theater bags that you can really put in there in a micro market. Like naturally just that valuation of that route based on those 75 machines current revenue, I mean you're gonna be able to two or three X your revenue right by just swapping out those machines.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (15:35.959) Wow, yeah, I love that analogy with real estate, right? It's just like a value add. It's like, how can I bring in more income from what already exists? Well, I need to upgrade or I need to put in some capital improvements, whatever you want to call it. Here's the vending machine upgrades or a different kind of system in there. And you get more income. And obviously that business in itself is going to be worth more in a higher multiple.   Mike (15:58.396) Absolutely. mean, a great example of this is we had a machine in an apartment complex and it was your traditional machine with the motors and you have to enter in the code. Well, we could only put in four 12 ounce drinks and then chips. Well, we swapped that out with a micro market. Well, now that micro market, we literally put in bags of Tide Pods for laundry, like these big bags of Tide Pods. We'll sell those like hotcakes for 15 bucks. And our old machine,   Seth Bradley, Esq. (16:25.281) Yeah, let's say those aren't cheap.   Mike (16:27.246) Yeah, our old machine Seth, it would take us to get to 15 bucks, we'd have to sell eight Snickers. That's one transaction.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (16:33.547) Right, right. Yeah, yeah. How do you do an analysis kind of based on like what you think is gonna sell there, right? Like you're replacing, let's say a Dorito machine with Tide Pods, you know? So you have to individually go to each location and figure out what will work, what will sell.   Mike (16:47.738) Yeah.   Mike (16:51.834) It's all about demographic. Absolutely. So, you know, we have, we have, we have a micro market and a manufacturing plant that's, it's a pumpkin farm and there's a ton of Hispanic workers. So we do a lot of like spicy foods, a lot of spicy chips. do, we do a ton of, mean, the sugar or sorry, the glass bottle cokes. They do, they love their pastries.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (16:53.431) Yeah.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (17:06.349) Yeah.   Mike (17:15.868) So we just doubled down on the demographics. So yesterday I was filming at one of our micro markets that's in a gym and they crushed the Fairlife protein shakes, like the more modern protein shakes, but they won't touch muscle milk. So we're literally taking out one row of muscle milk just to add an extra row of Fairlife shakes. So you're constantly just catering to the demographics and what's selling.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (17:40.632) Yeah, yeah, this is awesome. I mean, this is literally just like real estate, right? Like you go and you find a good market. You're talking about demographics, right? Find the market, see what they want, see how much you can upgrade, how you can upgrade. If it's an apartment, it's a unit. If it's here, it's the product that you're selling and the type of machine, or maybe it's a mini market. A lot of things to kind of tie your understanding to here.   Mike (17:45.926) Yeah.   Mike (18:05.904) Yeah, absolutely.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (18:07.615) Yeah, awesome, man. Awesome, Where are you at in your business? Like what, you know, what are the big leagues looking like right now? You know, what are you doing to expand your business, raising the bar in your business?   Mike (18:18.692) Yeah, I'm going after that's a really good question. I'm going after kind of these newer markets and we're kind of past that point of like, okay, let's pilot in this location. For example, that urgent care, we didn't know if it was going to be a good location two months ago when we installed. Well now it's already crushing it. Well, there's six other urgent cares in town and we just got to go ahead on five of those six. So like for me, it's doubling down on our current proof points of where.   okay, we know that manufacturing plant, the pumpkin farm does really well. So let's start getting intros to all their, manufacturers of the products they need to grow pumpkin. know, like we're just doubling down on scaling because now we have the operational blueprint to really just kind of to go after it.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (19:03.917) Gotcha, gotcha. Tell me about how passive this can really be, right? So I used to have, before we switched over to the new brand, Raise the Bar podcast, it was the Passive Income Attorney podcast, right? I was really focused on passive investments, focused on bringing in passive investors into my real estate deals, things like that. And I think that word passive gets thrown around quite a bit, right? And sometimes it's abused because people get into things that are not truly passive.   Mike (19:18.427) Yeah.   Mike (19:28.784) Mm-hmm.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (19:33.517) What's your take on that as it relates to the vending business?   Mike (19:38.49) Yeah, so I think as far as with the vending business, there's clearly upfront leg work that needs to be done, whether that's finding locations or any of those things. So I have a route that is here in Oregon, and then we bought a route last year in Illinois and have scaled that route. I spend 30 minutes a week on each route now. that these urgent cares and stuff, like we have an operator that's running the whole route.   Here's the problem, Seth. It's like people are so scared to build systems to ultimately systemize things or they're too cheap to hire help. And I'm the opposite. like, you know, kind of like Dan Martell's buy back your time. Like I have like a leverage calculator and like I constantly think about is this worth my time? Cause as you know, you're busier than me. Like it's so limited.   for me, my routes, I would consider them passive, like one hour a week is, is nothing in my mind. But as far as like, you know, I'm, I'm also a passive investor on, we're building a, an oil loop station in Florida and I sent my money a year ago to, to my, active investor and I haven't talked to him since. Like that's actually truly probably passive now, you know, I'm not doing anything, but there's, there's different levels to that. And I'm a huge believer like.   don't delegate something until you know what you're delegating. So people that want to start with the vending routes, sure, if you want to buy a route that already has an operator, that's one thing. but these, if you're starting a vending route for your kid or for your stay at home wife or whatever, as a side hustle, like get in the weeds and install that first machine. So when you hire help to take over the route, you know what you're delegating.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (21:09.773) Mm-hmm.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (21:27.021) Yeah, that's key. That's key. And you you described just like any other business, right? I think that's kind of where people get themselves into trouble. That sometimes they get sold the dream that is truly passive. And eventually it can be. I mean, you're talking about an hour a week. To me, that's pretty damn passive, right? But you know, upfront, you you've got to learn the business. You've got to know what you're getting yourself into. Like you said, you've got to learn before you delegate so that you know what you're delegating.   There is going to be some upfront work and then as you're able to kind of delegate and learn Then you can make it more and more passive as you go   Mike (22:00.88) Yeah, I mean, it's no different than what's the same when people tell you that they're busy. I mean, you're just not a priority. Like that's a fact. you're not. People say it's the same thing when people come to me and they're like, I'm so busy. It's like, okay, well let me, let me see your schedule. Where are you spending your time? You know, it's like when people are like, I can't lose weight. Okay, well let me see your food log. What did you eat yesterday? Did you have ice cream? Like this is like the same kind of thing. That's where passive I think has been really abused.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (22:16.097) Yeah. Yep.   Mike (22:29.638) To me, the bigger issue is like, vending is not get rich quick. And so like, if you're expecting to leave your nine to five tomorrow and vending is going to make up for that in one day, like that's not going to   Seth Bradley, Esq. (22:41.089) Right, Makes sense. Speaking of passive, do you raise capital or do you have any kind of a fund or have you put together a fund for something like this?   Mike (22:51.48) We haven't put together a fun, we're definitely buying routes is definitely becoming more and more intriguing. And I know there's some PE players starting to get into the vending game, but it's something we've been definitely considering and on our radar of do we want to.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (22:58.541) Mm-hmm.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (23:10.231) Gotcha. Cool. I mean, you brought in money partners for some of those routes yet, or is that still something you're exploring too?   Mike (23:18.168) No, I think it's just something we're thinking about. mean, what do you recommend?   Seth Bradley, Esq. (23:21.089) Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'd recommend I mean, it depends, right? Like I'm I'm scared to turn you by trade, but I don't like to say you should always raise capital no matter what. Right. Like you've been able to scale your business as you have and grown it to where it is without bringing outside capital. It sounds which is great because you own 100 percent or with whatever business partners you might have. You know, when you start raising capital, you're giving a large chunk of that piece away, not necessarily your whole company. But if you're buying   you know, a set of routes or that sort of thing. You you're gonna give a big piece away to those past investors if you're starting a fund or even if it's up. Even a single asset syndication here for one of these, you know, these routes, you could put it together that way. You know, it's just something to consider. But a lot of times when people are looking to scale fast, right, if they wanna grow exponentially, you've gotta use other people's money to get there or hit the lottery.   Mike (24:08.294) Mm.   Mike (24:15.856) Absolutely, no, agree. That's spot-on and I actually before you know the Silicon Valley company That I was part of we had a we went through probably series a B C D C ground   Let's just say we weren't very fiscally responsible. So I come from the, you know, it's like the ex-girlfriend example. I don't want to just start taking everyone's money.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (24:42.413) Yeah, yeah, that tends to happen with some startups, right? Like before you get funding, you're super frugal because it's your money and every single dollar counts. And you're like, I don't want to pay, you if it's software, you don't want to pay the software engineers. I'm going to out, you know, put it, you know, hire Indian engineers, that sort of thing. And then once you get a few million bucks that you raised in that seed round, then it just goes and you're like, whoa, wait a minute, let's hire 20 people. You know, it's you got to be careful about that.   Mike (25:05.606) Yeah   Yeah, yeah, that's a great, great take on it.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (25:11.245) Yeah, it's, yeah. It's a question I love to ask and I think it's about time for that. So, in a parallel universe, tell me about a different version of you. So a different but likely version, right? Like, for example, for me, I went to med school for a year and a half and then I dropped out and I ended up becoming an attorney. So that was like a big turning point, right? So I could have easily at some point just said screw it and became a doctor and that would have been a totally different route than I'm going down right now.   What's an example of something like that for you?   Mike (25:42.524) Wait, are you being serious about that? I took the MCAT too. I got into med school and then I, yeah, I was pretty mad in school. And then the more I learned about exercise science, I was like, organic chemistry is not fun.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (25:44.321) Yeah, totally.   yeah? There you go.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (25:57.39) It is not fun. I did not love that. I majored in exercise physiology and then I ended up switching to biology because it was just a little bit of an easier route to get my degree and go into med school and I went for a year and a half and then I dropped out because I absolutely hated it. I knew I didn't want to do it. I was just more attracted to business and that sort of thing.   Mike (26:16.346) Yeah, that's crazy. That's awesome. parallel universe. I, that's a really good question. I don't know. I, kinda, I have two kids under three and the other side of me wishes I would have traveled more.   you know, I mean, we'll get there hopefully when they get out of high school and someday. But right now I just think there's so many different cultural things and ways to skin the cat. And it's just fascinating to learn some of those things.   Mike (26:55.352) yourself in those cultures.   go to different cultures and really like understand how they did things for a time, a period of time to really just learn their thinking.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (27:07.777) Yeah, I love that man. I had a similar experience of what you're describing. I didn't travel abroad really other than like, you know, Canada and Mexico until I studied abroad in Barcelona during law school and I got to stay there for a couple of months. So you actually had some time. It wasn't like you're just visiting for a week or a weekend or anything like that. You got to kind of live there right for a couple of months and it just totally changed my, you know, my outlook on life and just the way that you see things like I feel like we're in the US and we just think   Mike (27:19.627) Seth Bradley, Esq. (27:37.76) US is number one and there's only one way to do things the way that we do things that kind of attitude. And then when you go to Western Europe and you see that culture and you drive or get on a train, it's like an hour away and you're in a totally different culture and they're doing it a certain way as well and it's working. You just see that other people are doing things differently and still being successful at it, still having a thriving culture and it's just awesome to see.   Mike (28:03.312) Yeah, absolutely.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (28:06.251) Yeah. Tell me about some major influences in your life. What turned you or got you into that, the vending business? It's not one of those typical things. mean, I know you're in the education business, so you're kind of really spreading the word about this type of business. But I would say when you started, there might not have been a mastermind or educational courses around this. mean, how did you kind of get drawn into that? Were there any particular people or influences that brought you in?   Mike (28:29.308) you   Mike (28:36.188) Yeah. So the, biggest influence for me to get into vending, uh, wasn't actually a person. It was actually, was, um, I had landed, I was coming back from the Pentagon from a trip back to the Bay for the startup we were talking about. And I was in the Denver airport and 11 PM, you know, our flight was delayed. And then they're like, Hey, you have to stay in the airport tonight. The pilot went over their hours for the day, blah, blah, blah. So I went to a vending machine and I remember buying a bottle of water.   I think it costs like at the time three bucks or something. I knew that bottle of water cost 20 cents at Costco. And I was like, there is someone that's at home with their kids right now making money off me and they're not even at this mission. Like the machine is doing the work. So I had like an aha moment of like, what are my true priorities in life? And like, why am I chasing this cutthroat startup from.   Palo Alto and trying to make it when reality was my priorities are freedom to spend more time with my family. So that's really kind of what led me into this path of starting a vending machine side hustle to keep our lifestyle as we had kids. We wanted to have a nanny and we wanted to be able to still go on dates and things like that as a couple with my wife. So that's really kind of my family and just like...   having the freedom to do things. Like that's what I'm really passionate about.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (29:59.084) Yeah. Yeah. I mean, building on that, and you may have already answered that, but what does success look like for you?   Mike (30:01.766) next   Mike (30:06.268) an empty calendar.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (30:08.621) Good luck with that. Good luck with that.   Mike (30:11.516) Oh man, I was gonna say, how do we crack that code? No, yeah. No, but I think success to me is doing things like picking up my daughter at three and even being able to say no to the things that aren't gonna get you to where you need, like the discipline piece of this too.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (30:15.708) man.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (30:33.995) Yeah, yeah, mean, you know, for me, it's kind of similar, right? It's not going to be able to empty that calendar. Not yet, at least maybe here in the future. But for now, it's pretty filled. But it is it's flexible, right? Like us as entrepreneurs, you know, we probably work more than we ever worked when we were in our W-2s. But at the same time, it's you know, we're working in our own business for ourselves, for our families. And we have the   Flexibility, a lot of people will say the freedom, right? But we have the flexibility to move things around. And if you want to pick your kids up at school at three, or you do want to take a weekend off, or something comes up in your schedule, you have the flexibility to do that. Whereas if you're kind of slaving away at the nine to five, you can't really do it.   Mike (31:04.486) Yeah. Yeah.   Mike (31:20.198) Yeah, that's spot on. mean, I just wrote that down, but flexibility is, cause you're right. When you started becoming an entrepreneur, this is what I tell people all the time when they want to get a venting around is like running your own business. You are going to work harder than you do for your boss currently at your W-2. Like you have to do payroll. You have to do, like you gotta like make sure there's money to actually do pay, you know, like all those things that you just don't even think about when you have a W-2. It's like, today's   Seth Bradley, Esq. (31:39.543) Yeah   Mike (31:48.89) You know, this Friday I get paid. Well, when you run a business, mean, that money's got to come from somewhere.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (31:51.905) Yeah   Right, yeah, 100%, man, 100%. All right, Mike, we're gonna wrap it up. Thanks so much for coming on the show. Tell the listeners where they can find out more about you.   Mike (32:05.286) Yeah, so thanks for having me. This has been great. I have free content all over the place. can find me on the classic Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, but I also have vendingpreneurs.com is where we help people that are more interested in actually the vending stuff. But I've been really trying to double down on YouTube lately because there's just a lot of content and you can't get it off a one minute reel.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (32:32.417) Love it, man. All right, Mike, appreciate it. Thanks for coming on the show.   Mike (32:35.91) Thanks for having me.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (32:37.227) Hi brother. Alright man, got a couple more questions for you. We do like a quick, kind of do the full podcast episode and then I'll just do kind of a quick episode that'll follow up on a Monday and then another one on a Friday. Cool.   Mike (32:55.814) See you.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (32:59.693) We out here.   Welcome to Million Dollar Mondays, how to make, keep, and scale a million dollars. Mike is a super successful entrepreneur in the vending machine business and beyond. Tell us, how did you make your first million dollars?   Mike (33:20.922) Yeah, Seth. It was probably actually through real estate and just getting a little bit kind of lucky with timing with COVID and short-term rentals and some of that. But yeah, that's probably how I got the first million.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (33:25.229) Mm.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (33:37.079) Gotcha, cool. Yeah, real estate usually plays a role in the everybody's strategy down the line, whether they're in that primary business or not, whether they start out there or they end up there, real estate usually plays a part. How'd you make your last million?   Mike (33:53.956) Yeah, that's a good question because it's completely different than real estate, but it's actually been vending machines. So that's been kind of fun. just, you you talk about product market fit whenever you're an entrepreneur with a business. And that was just kind of the perfect storm right now of traditional vending really kind of being outdated. And we found a product market fit with it.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (33:57.57) Right. Yeah.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (34:16.215) Gotcha. Cool. that was from, was this maybe mostly attributed to kind of buying those routes, those larger routes?   Mike (34:23.32) Exactly. Yeah. Buying old school routes and really kind of flipping them like a house with modern micro markets charging, with different products and what would fit in a vending machine, like more of the unorthodox, you know, toilet paper and tide pods and things that wouldn't fit in a traditional vending machine. I mean, we'll sell $35 bottles of shampoo in these micro markets. So just kind of, go and add it in a different way.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (34:49.857) Yeah, and then with the aging population, there's gotta be more and more of these things popping up. So there should be more opportunity for people to get involved or for people like yourself to just snag everything, right?   Mike (35:01.102) Yeah, I think there's no chance I could snag everything, not even just in this town alone that I'm currently in. I mean, machines are getting cheaper, the technology is getting way better with AI. And nowadays, it's not what fits in a vending machine motor. It's okay, what's shelf space? if it's a bottle of shampoo or a glass Coke, it doesn't matter because it's not just getting thrown down the chute of a traditional machine.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (35:05.387) Yeah.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (35:27.521) Makes sense, makes sense. Last, how are you planning on making your next million dollars?   Mike (35:34.3) I think probably with AI, we're doing a lot of interesting stuff with helping people scale their, their vending routes. that is applicable to any, small business. And so I'm really intrigued. Just every time I go down a rabbit hole with some new AI tool, I feel like there's another better one that just came right behind it. So I just think it's kind of that time where you can really get ahead by just learning.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (36:06.209) Yeah, totally makes sense. mean people that are not paying attention to AI whether it's simply using chat GPT instead of Google search are getting left behind quickly because it's just advancing so fast. I can't even imagine what this world's gonna look like five years from now the way that things are moving.   Mike (36:23.132) It's crazy. Three years ago when I was working for a tech company selling software into the government, I would have to work with three secretaries to schedule a meeting with the general to sell their software. Now my EA is literally an AI bot and everyone that's scheduling time on my calendar, they don't even know they're talking to a non-human, which is pretty   Seth Bradley, Esq. (36:43.479) Yeah, 100%. We're gonna, I predicted within five years, everybody's gonna have a humanoid robot in their home with AI instilled and they're gonna be doing physical things for us at our homes. Yeah. Yep. Yep. 100%. Awesome, All right, moving on to the next one.   Mike (36:50.181) Yeah!   Mike (36:57.917) I hope so. I hope they can go to Costco get all our groceries do our do our laundry The dishes   Seth Bradley, Esq. (37:11.501) You're clearly in the top 1 % of what you do, Mike. What is it about you that separates you from the rest of the field?   Mike (37:19.056) Ooh, that's a good question, Seth. I think it's just discipline, know, discipline and focus. One of the hardest things is being able to say no with the things that don't align. And when I was growing up, I had a quote that has really stuck with me. That's like, it's better to be respected than liked. And I think that really resonates. Like naturally as a human, you want to be liked and help people, but the 1 % are really good at saying no.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (37:47.649) Yeah, I love that man. That's a great answer. Kind of building on that, what do you think the number one attribute is that makes a successful entrepreneur?   Mike (37:57.468) probably focus. Yeah. Yeah.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (37:59.212) Yeah, focus. Yep. The one thing, right? The one thing.   Mike (38:04.186) Yep. That's why you come back to like the most successful entrepreneurs. They always niche down and they niche down because they just, got hyper-focused. Like this is kind of why for me, you know, I started this passive Mr. Passive on social media before I even got into Vendi. Well, now everyone's like, well, how passive is Vendi? And well, it's like, what's really interesting is I was posting all these different, what I thought passive income streams in the time, but everyone, 95 % of the questions I got about   Airbnbs are all my different investments was about bending. So I just niche down on, on bending and I just looked back on that and I was like, it really forced me to focus.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (38:43.263) Awesome, awesome. What's one thing someone could do today to get 1 % closer to success in the vending machine business if they are really interested in learning more?   Mike (38:53.892) tap into your connections and find a location that has high foot traffic, whether that's a friend that works at an urgent care, a sister that lives at an apartment. You know, you take your kid to that gymnastics studio that has a ton of foot traffic between 4 PM and 8 PM. Like all those locations are prime locations to put one of these modern smart machines in. so, tapping into your connections, well, you know,   Seth Bradley, Esq. (39:24.567) Love that man. Awesome. All right, Mike, I appreciate it, brother. We'll to meet in person sometime,   Mike (39:30.574) I would love to. Where are you based, Seth?   Seth Bradley, Esq. (39:31.789) I'm in San Diego, where you at?   Mike (39:34.78) I am in Eugene. Yeah, Oregon. I'll come down your way though.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (39:37.39) Cool We're planning on doing yeah, we're planning on doing so me and my wife we have a Sprinter van and Last May we did we did going back to the flexibility piece, right? We did 32 days in the van up through Wyoming Montana and then into like Into Canada and they're like Banff and Jasper and all the way up to Jasper and then we circled back on the west coast Through Vancouver and then down back to San Diego Yeah   Mike (40:05.52) What?   Seth Bradley, Esq. (40:06.829) Pretty wild, pretty awesome. And the reason I brought that up is this year we're gonna do shorter trip. We're probably gonna do two, maybe three weeks at the most, but we're gonna do kind of the Pacific Northwest. So Oregon, Washington, and Vancouver and all those parks and stuff up there.   Mike (40:17.254) Yeah.   Mike (40:21.744) Yeah, you definitely have a, have you been to Bend before? Bend is like my, that whole area, Central Oregon is, and even Idaho, like all those kind of, yeah. That's awesome. Please let me know when you're up this way. I mean, I'll come meet you wherever. That'd be amazing. Absolutely. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (40:24.641) Yeah, yeah I have.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (40:38.861) Sure man grab a coffee or beer. I appreciate it. Yeah, let's do it. Yeah all right brother great to meet you and I will send the information on when this is gonna get released and give you you materials and all that stuff so we can collaborate on social media   Mike (40:51.964) Okay. Okay. Yeah. Is a lot of your audience, like passive investors?   Seth Bradley, Esq. (40:58.593) So most of that, so now I'm rebranding. I rebranded because I'm gonna be speaking more towards like active entrepreneurs, Active entrepreneurs, people raising capital, that sort of thing. Whereas before it was based on passive investors and people really focused on attorneys. So I'm an attorney and I was raising capital from attorneys for my real estate deals. Now I'm really more into selling shovels. I'm scaling my law firm. I'm chief legal officer for Tribest, which is, we've got a fund to fund.   Mike (41:20.262) Mm-hmm.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (41:28.085) legal product there as well. So we're really trying to bring in active, active entrepreneurs and people raising capital.   Mike (41:29.777) Yeah.   Mike (41:36.572) Okay, because I got that, I was just thinking through when we talking about that oil development project, that could be a good, the guy that runs that fund could be a good interview for you. Just thinking through your audience, because he's always looking for investors into his fund and like these oil lubs are just crushing it.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (41:49.901) Cool. Yeah.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (41:58.464) Yeah, cool. Who is it? Just, I don't know if I know him or not.   Mike (42:02.183) Um, Robert Durkey, he's out of Florida. has, his problem is he's sitting on a gold mine that has no, like he's old school, doesn't know social media, any of that. So that's why I think he'd be perfect for you. Cause I think you could help him and he could definitely help you with some kickback. Yeah. So cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully we meet soon. Okay. See you Seth. Bye.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (42:05.645) I don't think I know. I don't think I know.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (42:13.889) Yeah. Gotcha.   Seth Bradley, Esq. (42:20.705) Cool, okay, sounds good man. Yeah, I appreciate the introduction.   Yeah, all right brother. Talk soon. See ya. Links from the Show and Guest Info and Links: Seth Bradley's Links: https://x.com/sethbradleyesq https://www.youtube.com/@sethbradleyesq www.facebook.com/sethbradleyesq https://www.threads.com/@sethbradleyesq https://www.instagram.com/sethbradleyesq/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/sethbradleyesq/ https://passiveincomeattorney.com/seth-bradley/ https://www.biggerpockets.com/users/sethbradleyesq https://medium.com/@sethbradleyesq https://www.tiktok.com/@sethbradleyesq?lang=en Mike Hoffman's Links: https://www.instagram.com/mikehoffmannofficial/ https://x.com/mrpassive_?lang=en https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikedhoffmann/ https://www.tiktok.com/@mr.passive

Stephen Predmore is the founder and managing partner of Talbott Investments. A former engineer with over 20 years of experience in the manufacturing industry, Stephen transitioned into real estate after a sudden layoff. Since then, he's grown from single-family investor to general partner in multifamily, specializing in JV structures and educating engineers on passive investing strategies.    

How do you build a strategic alternative asset portfolio? Most investors just jump at the first deals presented to them from their network. But in this episode, Ben lays out a strategic plan when building an alt portfolio, optimizing for long term yield and growth. In this episode, Ben is joined by Ellis Hammond, Aspen Fund's Vice President of Capital to dive into The Wealth Pyramid. Find out more about the podcast at https://www.thebillionairepodcast.com/ and PREORDER the Invest Like a Billionaire book at www.thebillionairebook.org/ And check out Ben & Bob's company and invest along at https://aspenfunds.us/

Could your biggest tax break be hiding inside your real estate investment?This week on Secrets to Abundant Living, we're bringing you the replay of a high-impact webinar that's too valuable not to share. Host Amy Sylvis is joined by CPA and cost segregation expert Ari Lasky to break down the tax strategy every savvy investor should understand: cost segregation, especially now that 100% bonus depreciation is back under the newly passed Big Beautiful Bill.This conversation is packed with expert insights and practical guidance to help you keep more of what you earn. Whether you're investing passively through syndications or actively managing your own real estate, this episode will shift how you think about taxes, timing, and wealth-building. Ari shares real-life scenarios, answers investor questions, and explains how the new tax law opens the door for serious savings in 2025 and beyond.Connect with Ari Lasky, CPA:(216) 202-2622AriLaskyCPA@Madisonspecs.comConnect with Amy Sylvis:https://www.linkedin.com/in/amysylvis/Contact Us:https://www.sylviscapital.comhttps://www.sylviscapital.com/webinar00:00 Introduction00:15 Webinar Announcement and Tax Bill Overview00:40 Importance of Tax Mitigation01:31 Introducing Ari Lasky and Madison Specs01:46 Welcome to the Webinar05:22 Introduction to Cost Segregation06:53 Depreciation Fundamentals10:25 Cost Segregation Case Study14:16 Bonus Depreciation Explained19:09 Impact of the One Big Beautiful Bill22:28 Passive vs Active Income28:33 Understanding Excess Loss and Carry Forwards29:06 When Cost Segregation Doesn't Make Sense29:44 Time Value of Money in Cost Segregation31:46 Mitigating Depreciation Recapture35:41 Q&A: Cost Segregation and Real Estate Strategies48:45 Final Thoughts and Contact Information

First Souls. The only kind of sense. Passive ghosts in slave bodies. There never was a human race.The Eighth Supplemental Frequency from Observable Radio, a found footage podcast from Cameron Suey, Phil van Hest, Purpurina, and Wendy HectorThe EnsembleDavid WooPurpurinaWritten by Cameron SueyProduced by Cameron Suey, Phil van Hest, Purpurina, and Wendy HectorEdited by Cameron SueyArt by Karrin FletcherPsychology Consultant - Elisa Leal, Psy.D (CA PSY28330)Our Theme Music is: The Backrooms by MyuuAdditional Music provided by Tim Kulig, the artists at Epidemic SoundVoigt-Kampff - Martin BaekkevoldFrogs - GuustavvVortex - JobiiInsomniac - Tim KuligThe Calling Card - Martin LandstromMystery Garden - Brendon MoellerDoes It Matter - Say3When You're in the Dark - SmartfaceExpo - South PauseSpring Pickin' - Roy Edwin WilliamsSFX provided by Epidemic Sound and the artists at Freesound.orgAdditional SFX and Music covered under the following licenses:creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Special Thanks to Cathleen, Jon, Tid, Russ, Kalasin, Rick, Brianna, Zach, Jesper and all our patrons and listeners. Thank you for listening, and stay tuned.With the help of our Patrons we've launched the Observable Radio Company Store at observableradio.com/store. There you'll find stickers, enamel pins, t-shirts, on sale and shipping anywhere in the world.Observable Radio is listener supported. If you would like to contribute towards our production costs and payment for our voice actors, as well as get access to behind the scenes information, extra production material, and an ad-free, early release feed of this show, you can do so at: patreon.com/observableradio

Title: Build a Bigger Life, Not a Bigger Lifestyle: The Real Path to Freedom with Adam Caroll Summary: In this episode of Raise the Bar Radio, guest (Adam Carroll) shares his journey from a traveling professional speaker to building sustainable wealth through passive income strategies. After realizing the limitations of trading time for money, Adam developed The Shred Method, a cashflow reorientation system that minimizes debt interest and frees up capital to build liquidity and invest. By leveraging lines of credit and algorithm-driven cash deployment, individuals can rapidly pay down debts and reallocate savings into passive income streams like real estate syndications, intellectual property, and other alternative investments. Adam stresses that most high-income earners don't have an income problem - they have a liquidity problem tied up in low-access retirement plans and excessive spending. Finally, he expands on his philosophy of "building a bigger life, not a bigger lifestyle," urging professionals to align spending and time with their values to achieve fulfillment and financial freedom within 10 years. Links to Watch and Subscribe:   Bullet Point Highlights: Trading time for money is limiting. Adam shifted from paid speaking gigs to building passive income streams for true freedom. The Shred Method minimizes interest expenses. By using cashflow more efficiently through lines of credit and optimized algorithms, debt is paid down faster, freeing liquidity for investing. Passive income is key to wealth. Adam focuses on real estate syndications, ATM tranches, intellectual property, and digital products to generate consistent, diversified passive cash flow. Most people have a liquidity problem, not an income problem. Money is often locked in 401(k)s or spent wastefully — instead, creating accessible liquidity allows for opportunity-based investing. Building a bigger life requires intentionality. Aligning spending and actions with core values (like family, freedom, growth) leads to fulfillment — not just more stuff. The game becomes fun. Once passive income starts flowing, investing becomes strategic, diversified, and compounding — eventually replacing active income and creating financial independence. Anyone can implement this. While you can DIY, Adam recommends coaching to fast-track understanding and execution of the Shred Method. Transcript: (Seth Bradley) (00:02.094) What's up, Builders? This is Raise the Bar Radio, where we talk about building wealth, raising capital, and all in all, raising the bar in your business and your life. This is the No BS podcast for capital raisers, investors, and entrepreneurs who are serious about scaling their business and living life on their own terms. I'm (Seth Bradley), securities attorney, real estate investor, and entrepreneur, bringing you world-class strategies from the best in the game.   If you're ready to raise more capital, close bigger deals, build a better you and create true financial freedom, you're in the right place. Let's go. Adam, what's going on, brother? Welcome to the show.   Hey Seth, thanks for having me, man. I'm excited about our conversation today.   Yeah, dude, super stoked to have you on today. It's going to be an awesome show, man. Let's dive right in. Tell us a little bit about yourself, your background. Take it back as far as you want to. Yeah.   Well, for the last 15 years or so, almost 20 now, guess, I've been making my living, opening my mouth and just speaking on stages all across the country. Had the opportunity to do a couple of international gigs, which was a blast. And in the midst of all that, making my living as a professional speaker, I realized that if I was very similar to your audience, if I wasn't doing the deal, doing the gig, doing the engagement, I wasn't getting paid.   (Adam Carroll) (01:26.184) And so a mentor of mine said, the goal is not to go to work and get paid. The goal is to go to work and get paid, get paid, get paid, get paid, get paid, get paid, get paid. And so I started figuring out that what I really wanted to do with the messaging that I was delivering was turn it into sort of a mediapreneurship where I was a mediapreneur creating content, but then I'd get paid for the content over and over and over again. And that today looks like I've written a bunch of books.   I've got a documentary that I produced that aired on CNBC. And now we're starting to get into more of a SaaS business, which I'm sure we'll talk about. That's the shred method. But I, you what I do when people ask me, I tell them, I love to educate people about new and different ways of building a bigger life, not a bigger lifestyle. And I would say you and I have that in common, because I know you're doing that on the show.   Yeah, absolutely, man. I gotta ask, how do you become a professional speaker? I bet a lot of people are thinking about that.   The origin story is kind of interesting because I was a clothier at the time in Denver, Colorado. And I was literally going out and meeting with high level executives in their offices, selling them custom made suits and shirts and sport coats and pants and whatnot. And it occurred to me in the middle of a meeting at one point, an appointment with one of my clients that I didn't want to measure in seams for the rest of my life. And I'll keep it PG but   This guy was one of my favorite clients. He was irreverent and funny and wasn't afraid to spend money on clothes. But this particular day, he confided in me that he wasn't wearing any underwear. And I was just like, dude, JP, what? You knew I was coming here today. He's like, I know, I just forgot. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. And I walked out and I went, I don't want to do this anymore. I just don't want to do this. And the company that I worked for is a fairly well known clothier. But   (Adam Carroll) (03:22.55) Every day I would drive around in my car listening to motivational messages. You know, they were on CDs at the time. I'm going to date myself, but I would listen to like Mark Victor Hansen and Jack Canfield and Les Brown and Zig Ziglar. I would listen to all these CDs in my car. And Mark Victor Hansen said on one of the CDs that public speaking is one of the most noble professions because you get to travel the world. You get to change people's lives and you make a lot of money doing it. And I remember thinking.   That's what I want to do. All three of those things rolled into one. And so I reached out to a buddy of mine and said, dude, I don't think I'm in the right job. I need to be doing something else. He said, what do you want to do? And I told him, and you know how the universe kind of works in mysterious ways. He goes, well, Anne, who used to work with us, she works for a company that that's all they do is hire speakers. And so I sent in a tape, I auditioned, I got the gig.   And I was a W2 employee of theirs for about two years and then realized that I was being underpaid for the work I was doing, that I was actually probably one of the top 10 % of speakers on the roster. And then I realized that when you can make anywhere from a thousand to $5,000 an hour doing that, it was a pretty good paying gig if you were out on your own. I took the jump and have been doing it ever since.   Interesting man. I didn't realize that you could have a W-2 as a speaker I thought everybody that was speaking was getting the speakers that were getting paid, you know They were kind of doing it on their own. I don't realize there was kind of a there was a way to do it where there's a company that pays W-2 wages to speakers to speak it events. Yeah, it's interesting   It is interesting because there are companies that will hire you as a speaker to go and it may be sell their product or service. Or in this case, I was working for a company that was a division of monster.com, the job search company. And I was, I was speaking to high school and college students all across the country. And I probably presented to like 200,000 people in, two years time. So it was just a great practice run and a great way to cut my teeth on a very difficult audience. Because.   (Adam Carroll) (05:36.814) I don't know if you've ever been around a freshman in high school or a sophomore in high school, but they're like the most apathetic human beings on the face of earth. They don't want to be there. I could have lit myself on fire and they'd been like, cool, what else you got? And then when I realized that there were speakers like me that were out who basically just said, this is my topic. This is my specialty, if you will. And here's the rate. And the more they spoke and the...   we have a theory that the more you speak, the more you speak. So once you get out, you hang your own shingle and say, I'm a speaker in this topic, people begin to know you as that person. And then word gets around and obviously you have to not suck on stage. That's part of it. But if you're great at keeping audiences attention, and I really studied NLP, neuro-linguistic programming to use the right words, I studied comedians to figure out what was funny and what wasn't, and it just worked.   Over time, I had more more bookings and at the peak of my career, I was doing like 70 or 75 gigs a year.   Wow, wow, that's incredible. Definitely didn't realize that was your background. I remember those folks coming to like the office and selling suits and doing that sort of thing. So that's pretty interesting. I'm sure a lot of listeners out there are familiar with that process as well.   Yeah. Yeah, it was, it was a great, it was a great gig. mean, I met all sorts of really phenomenal business people. And I think for me, it was, it was like confirmation that I had this desire to, to impact people. And my boss at one point, he was like, Hey, these people love you. They want you to come around. They love the discussion and the conversation. They need to buy stuff from you. And, and there was a.   (Seth Bradley) (07:01.639) sorry, go ahead.   (Adam Carroll) (07:26.574) It's kind of a realization for me that I didn't necessarily want to have to sell. wanted people to buy. And speaking makes it real easy to do that.   Hmm. Yeah, makes sense. Let's jump right into it, man. Let's talk about the shred method. A lot of folks will find this very interesting. I know that I do. What is it? And let's just start there. What is it? Tell us a little bit about it.   Yeah, the shred method, first of all, thank you for asking. it's, it's, for me, I don't say this lightly, but nothing has built more wealth for me and my family than following this model. And the reason for it is there are two great expenses that everyone has in life. And I'm sure all of your listeners, be they attorneys, doctors, other professionally degreed folks.   If you're in a W-2 job, you know this to be true. The two greatest expenses we have in life are taxes and the interest expense on debt. Those are the two greatest expenses. And a gentleman that I had met years ago who helped me with tax situations, just a brilliant, brilliant strategist, he said, Adam, if you focus on minimizing your tax liability, that will get you halfway there. And it's very easy to do, buy real estate, have depreciable assets.   you know, make personal expenses, business expenses, etc, etc. But he said, if you can focus on minimizing the interest expense on debt, this is like a video game that you can't lose. And so when I learned about the shred method, and this is known by a variety of different terms, some people call it an Australian mortgage, it's called velocity banking, we've taken those concepts and turbocharged them.   (Adam Carroll) (09:09.474) almost like putting nitrous oxide in a gas tank, you know, in terms of making it go faster. But the shred method is a unique tool and a way of reorienting your cash flow through your household so that it is being used to the most efficient use possible. And to kind of qualify that, Seth, if you were to leave your home in the morning to go to the grocery store, as an example, and you came back home, emptied the car out,   knowing you had to go to post office at like 4 p.m., would you leave your car idling in the driveway all day?   (Adam Carroll) (09:46.284) Nope. No, and why wouldn't you?   Wasteful.   Yeah, wasteful, you'd burn gas, it'd be hard on the engine. It's just inefficient, right? And yet what most people do is they get their income, their income gets deposited into a checking account, and it sits there for days, weeks, months, sometimes years on end. And we never really use it to its highest efficiency. Meanwhile, we might have debts, commercial debts, primary mortgages, might have student loans yet. And all of those are accruing amortized interest.   right? And you might say it's compound interest working against you to a certain extent. But at the very least amortized interest means that the majority of the interest you're paying on that debt is upfront, it's in the first one to five years. And so the shred method teaches people how to take that income that is being super inefficient in an account, and instead begin to apply it through a process that allows you to blast away   the highest interest or highest payment debts that you have, freeing up cash flow, building equity, and ultimately, and this is the key, creating liquidity to go buy passive income properties, if you will, or other passive income plays.   (Seth Bradley) (11:02.058) Interesting. Yeah, and we actually haven't had anyone on the show to speak about this method, whatever nomenclature you might use. So let's go in a little bit more detail. mean, what is the vehicle? What is this flow of money that you're talking about?   So, know, logistically, here's how it works. Money typically would just get deposited into checking. You pay everything out of checking your mortgage, your car loan, your credit cards, living expenses. And the gurus would tell you that anything extra should really go towards savings and investments, right? And for most people, it goes to Costco, Target and Dining Out. That's where it goes. You know, it doesn't stay in the account, doesn't go into savings. If it does, it goes there for a small period of time. I think that most people   don't really have a savings account, they have a put and take account, because they put a little bit in, take a little bit out, put a little bit in, take a lot out. So the way this works is the money instead of being deposited straight to a checking account gets deposited into what we call a shred account. And the shred account could either be a line of credit, or it could be just a side account of money that you have sitting there that has not been accessed in some time. And what we tell our users is that   you really want to have either a line of credit or a shred account that is one and a half to two times what your monthly net take home is. So if you're bringing home 10 grand a month net, then ideally you want either a line of credit or a shred account of 15 to 20 grand. And the magic of this is the money is going to flow into that account. But the shred method is powered by a piece of software that is based on an algorithm that's tracking your income.   your expenses, the interest that you're paying on all your debts, and how much discretionary money you have available at any given point in time. And essentially, we're leveraging that in really short bursts of time against your largest debts, which could be, again, student loans, could be your mortgage, could be commercial properties. And in doing that, what we're doing is we're saving copious amounts of interest, like literally tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars.   (Adam Carroll) (13:11.122) And in the process, we're freeing up a ton of equity. So people that are saying, hey, I'm paycheck to paycheck. It's hard for me to figure out how am I going to invest more money? We're telling them the money is going to come from the equity that you're creating in your properties by paying them down rapidly.   I love that because I can see where this is going to potentially free up some extra cash to invest. A lot of folks out there, including myself back in the day, we got caught up in this thing we call the golden handcuffs where we're just spending everything. Like you said, we're spending it on Target, on eating out, on things that we really don't need. mean, there's a time and place for spending money on having a good time and enjoying your life for sure.   But we just we tend to overdo it as our income grows our expenses grow right along with it And a lot of people that I talked to about investing they're like, you know I don't have fifty thousand dollars to invest in this real estate deal or a hundred thousand dollars in this real estate deal and it's like well Well, why don't you you know make three hundred thousand dollars you why don't you have fifty thousand dollars to invest in this awesome deal? Right or to you know, put aside for your emergency fund. Like why don't you have these things set up?   So, you know, we always have to walk them through, you know, the expenses is the issue. Really, it's what are you spending all this money on? we try to find how they can save on those expenses so that they can invest in these assets that are really going to set them financially free.   No doubt. And I think you hit the nail on the head. If somebody's making, and honestly, I tell people if you're making six figures plus $100,000 plus, and you don't have 10, 20, $50,000 ready to go, there's something fundamentally wrong. And here it is, we're sending too much money to our banker, and it just goes up in smoke. Right? We like to refer to it as the interest to income ratio, which is if you take how much income you make,   (Adam Carroll) (15:11.694) and you back out how much of that income is actually going to pay interest expense, it'll probably blow your mind. If someone's got a multi-six figure home or mortgage that they're paying on, and they've got student loans, and maybe they're driving a $50,000 to $100,000 vehicle with a payment attached to it, you're probably burning 50 to 60 grand a year in interest and not really thinking twice about it. So what this does is it starts to claw back some of the money that you're sending to your banker.   Which by the way, they make plenty of money. They don't need your money. That is the most profitable business out there is banking and lending. mean, literally, Seth, if you drive two miles around your property there, how many banks would you be able to stop at, do you think? Ballpark best guess.   Right, half a dozen.   Easily, right? And they're probably $10 million buildings minimum. Out there, they're even more, right? So, so this is the deal. They're profitable business ventures. And what we have to remember sometimes is we are their compound interest vehicle, right? Us making our payment every single month is what makes the banks all the money. And if we can game that system, if even for 12 to 18 months at the very beginning of our debt,   we can strip away a huge chunk of the interest that we would normally be paying them over the course of a decade or more. To your audience, that's how I'd say this is how you find the extra 50 or 100 grand because you do have it and it should be in the equity of your property and easily accessible as a liquidity tool. It just isn't because you haven't challenged the banking system.   (Seth Bradley) (16:57.073) Yeah. Now, is this something you can set up yourself or is this something that you need an expert to kind of walk you through? I'm sure if you could probably do it either way. It's just like anything else. You want to take the shortcut or not. But yeah, I just like to know your thoughts on that.   You're exactly right. I I could build a deck on my house if I wanted to and had three months to learn how to do it. Anybody can learn how to do this. My question to most people when they say, I do this myself? I'll say, yes, why haven't you? And for that, the investment with us is very minimal, mainly what it is is coaching and being able to help people get the logistics right. Because once they get it, it's very simple.   but there requires a little bit of retraining the brain in terms of how to handle your money and where the cash flow goes, because it's so, it's like so ingrained in us to live in the banker's business model, put money in checking, pay your bills, anything leftover goes over here. And if you look at it critically, the two groups that are really making money using the existing platform are bankers,   and any advisors that are accepting your money and then turning around and doing something with it. A friend of mine used to call it the helper class. So when the helper class has your money, they're making a ton of money, probably more than you are. And that's our goal is to begin to start to pull back some of the money from the helper class to keep it for ourselves to build those massive passive permanent streams of income.   Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. We tend to bash a few of those helper class folks. I mean, they're not all created equal, including some financial advisors and folks like that that, you know, they're okay people, but their interests aren't necessarily aligned with yours.   (Adam Carroll) (18:51.576) That's right. I would agree with that. I don't want to villainize them, but I think that personal finance is personal. The challenge that I have with anyone out there who espouses a certain way, mine included, is it has to be for the right kind of audience, the right avatar. From our perspective, the people that we help out are the ones who do want to break free from the W-2. They want to create massive passive permanent streams of income.   Over time, they'd like to build a bigger life, not a bigger lifestyle. So if someone's chronically overspending, got to have the newest of the new every single time, they may not be a perfect fit with our strategy because the goal is to continually increase your income while either keeping your expenses similar or even trending down over time, which is not to say that you can't expand where you're spending. Your income is increasing exponentially relative to your expenses.   we do that through the model that we're teaching people. So, you if you're a new car every six months or 12 months kind of person may not be a perfect fit. But if you're somebody who's like, hey, the debt's kind of oppressive, I want to get rid of it. And I want to build, you know, massive wealth for future generations, then generally speaking, we're a pretty good fit for for those folks.   Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I feel like there's, there's probably, it's probably a math equation, right? Like we can't necessarily do it on this show because it's, everybody's taking it in by audio for the most part. there's gotta be an algorithm and you could probably, you know, set those expense numbers and interest numbers that you're paying on your mortgage and other debts and what you're going to pay on that through the shred method and kind of see the savings and how you can grow that wealth year over year.   You're exactly right. It is super fluid. So if your income changes, your expenses change, we plug all that data in and hit recalculate and the thing automatically adjusts to whatever your expenses are. So one of the things that I would never fault anyone for is taking awesome vacations or buying a new car, whatever your choice is. Again, we're not going to villainize anyone for living their life.   (Adam Carroll) (21:06.67) But what we can do through shred is to say, hey, if you're going to drop 10 grand on a vacation, it's going to change your payoff by a month or two months or six months, depending on your income and discretionary income. And if someone knows that and they're planning on it, at least they're armed with that information as opposed to, gosh, we shouldn't do this, but we did or should we buy this $50,000 card? Does it make sense? Or 80 or 150 or whatever your number is.   We can show you exactly do it, just know this is what it changes in the process.   Yeah, yeah, I like that because you can just show them this is the impact it's going to have on paper before they do it and then you can make a better decision on whether or not you want to do that or not.   Absolutely. And furthermore, and you'll appreciate this, I know you're of this mindset, you'll get to a point where it's like, if you want the new car, then invest the money in a syndication or another property that puts enough money in your pocket, you can go pay for the car. But let your assets pay for your liabilities. And I think that's the main thing that many people, I'm sure your listeners, certainly folks that we engage with.   They don't have a lot of assets. They work hard, they make good money, but that is the sum total of their income, is active income. And our goal is to increase passive income over time where it supersedes your expenses because at that point you're financially free.   (Seth Bradley) (22:36.758) Right, right. What are some of the passive investments that you're involved in or that you recommend to people once they've implemented this system and they're trying to build those passive income streams?   Yeah, there are a number of them and I keep getting introduced to more and more all the time, Seth. I mentioned that, you know, that I was a mediapreneur and that the goal was to work, do the work and then get paid, get paid, get paid, get paid. So I started looking for other passive income streams. I really do love real estate. I've been invested in real estate for a long time. We divested of personally held real estate about four or five years ago. And   You know, I think I was too early to the party, but I thought the market was peaking and I thought I could get the max amount out of my properties. And I think I did at the time. And then we were introduced to syndications and we started really appreciating the fact that you could own a piece of a 350 unit apartment complex in South Carolina or Houston, Texas, or some other growing city and get a couple things, either monthly or quarterly income. You could get bonus depreciation.   And you basically got a K1 at the end of the year, which allows you to claim some of those expenses. And so we love syndications. We try and stack syndications on top of each other. they're coming due. They're selling every three or four or five years. So we'll put an amount of capital in knowing that it's going to turn over in short order. And we'll have another amount of capital to put in. And generally speaking, that capital amount just keeps going up.   So we love syndications. I've been introduced and we haven't pulled the trigger yet, but on ATM tranches where you can buy, have you heard this investment? Yep. So you can buy, you know, an amount of ATM machines where you're basically compensated on whatever the fee revenue on those are. There are many advantages to those. There are some drawbacks to it, but it's again, a passive income stream and one that's fairly consistent.   (Seth Bradley) (24:25.798) yeah, for sure.   (Adam Carroll) (24:44.59) Then I really like intellectual property plays. I will tend to invest in a business that has some IP and it may not cashflow right away, but I know that in two or three years, the IP is probably going to be worth something. It's more of a long-term play for me. I'm not going to put as much in it, but we have a couple of 25 to $50,000 investments in those kinds of deals as well. That, in addition to books and   documentary is still selling and things like that I'll keep doing. For me, the process of creating passive income is kind of a game. And so whatever the next thing is, I'm digging in, I want to learn it. total sidebar, but I'm trying to teach my sons and my daughter, this is the way of the future. It's not about working a nine to five and getting W2 and staying with the company for 30 years, it just doesn't happen anymore. It's about setting up   just perpetual income streams that allow you to live the way you want to live. And that, you know, I think that answers your question, hopefully.   (Seth Bradley) (25:52.174) Pardon the interruption, but we don't do ads. Instead, know that if you're raising capital for real estate, my law firm, RaiseLaw, is here to give you the expert legal guidance you need to raise capital compliantly and structure and close your deal. And if you're looking for a done-for-you fund-to-fund solution, Tribest is the industry's only all-in-one setup and fund administration solution. Visit Raise.Law and Tribest.com to learn more.   Yeah, yeah, that's right. You're preaching to the choir here, man. That's awesome. And you're kind of pretty deep into it. A lot of people will invest in a syndication and it is expensive to get involved, right? I mean, it's 50 grand or so or more to get into one of these things. And they're like, okay, I'm done. But you can't be done. You have to keep saving, keep investing. And you're in it to the point where past investors start really start accumulating wealth because they start stacking.   They start coming due every two, three, four, five years. You put it back in another one and they just compound on each other. And you're really accumulating this tax free if you stack them correctly. So it is an incredible vehicle once you get going. And it does turn into a game. I mean, you can look at your bank account or look at your personal P &L and just see how it's growing over five, 10 years. It's incredible. And you're not doing any work. You're vetting the sponsor, the market and the deal and really just the sponsor once you get really good at it.   and you keep reinvesting with the same sponsors that you like and there's no work involved, no tenants, toilets and trash, none of that.   Yes. Yes. And I think you hit the nail on the head when you find a sponsor you really like and you jive with, it's easy to roll the money over to them because they're constantly looking for the next deal. their reputation, their personality, everything is based on their success. they have a very, very vested interest to make you money. And so I don't think I fully realized when I was younger   (Adam Carroll) (27:50.35) the power of having the ability to write a 50 or $100,000 check. And once you get there and you can do 50 or 100 or get to a point where you can write a $500,000 or a million dollar check, things change drastically because there are syndicators out there that will take a million bucks. They'll pay you $90,000 a year guaranteed on the investment. You'll get bonus depreciation and write-offs and all of that. And you'll have like a...   200 % return on it within four or five years, three, four or five years. That's where you can buy a new car every year or two or three, because you need like a $75,000 or $80,000 write-off to your business. So you need a truck or you need a heavy vehicle,   Yeah, yeah, that's right. I mean, that's a good point. mean, people that have $500,000, a million dollars or more liquid, I mean, you can just look at a simple math and you get an 8 to 10 % return on that in cash flow, just in cash flow. You know, if you're living reasonably, you can live off of that. So, yeah, so you can be, you you don't need $10 million, $20 million to retire off of this if you invest in the right deals.   Totally. Totally.   (Seth Bradley) (29:03.926) and kind of spread it across, diversify in different deals, different sponsors, different geographies, different asset types. You can be retired if you want to. It's closer than people think.   I would agree. We have a theory that nearly everyone and certainly your audience could be free, done, done completely in 10 years or less. Absolutely. We call it a 10-year freedom plan. the challenge, think, Seth, and I would be curious your take on this, but I think the challenge for most people is not necessarily an income problem. It's a liquidity problem. So you make good income, right? And we talked about it. It's the expenses that factors in.   But where the majority of your investments go are probably in qualified funds. They're sitting in 401ks and Roth IRAs. Unless it's self-directed, you can't really access it till you're 59 and a half. And even then it's 59 and a half to 70 and a half, you have free rein access. Otherwise the government's regulating how much you take out without fees or penalties. That's a liquidity problem. And so the shred method takes that into account and starts to build   pockets or buckets of liquidity that you can draw from. The first is your home equity, or it could be equity in a commercial property. And then the next would be building a bank of money that you're borrowing from at some point in time, just another bucket. And the more buckets of money that we create, the more liquidity you have and the more investments you can get into, thereby increasing your passive income. So to your point, you do this well, it's like a video game you can't lose over time.   Yeah, yeah, that's right. And we've been programmed to think if we have a high paying job, we just put as much as we can into a 401k and we're doing the right thing and we're doing everything that we need to do and we're not and then everything that doesn't go into that 401k we're spending. So we're not saving anything else. We're not keeping anything else liquid. And we're just assuming that we're going to be okay because we put this money in the 401k. Well, like you said, you can't access it until you're 60 years old. That's right. Unless you take it out with a major penalty. So   (Seth Bradley) (31:10.062) You know, one way to do that obviously is to roll it over in an SDIRA or self-directed, I'm sorry, 401k, the self-directed, something that you have some control over. And then it does become liquid in the sense that you can at least invest it in things that you want to invest in rather than a financial advisor or just stocks, bonds and mutual funds. And then as you said, there's different ways that you can free up liquidity, a HELOC.   something like that borrow against a life insurance policy we've talked about infinite banking policies things like that there's there's creative ways to do it you just need to be aware of it most people just aren't aware of how to how to do that   Yeah, I think that's what's so valuable about your show too, man, is that we only know what we know. And there's an enormous amount that we don't know we don't know. So when I got introduced to syndications, and I got introduced to the ATM tranches, and I'm looking at these going, you know, there is risk, there's risk in everything. But the risk is so mitigated. And you don't realize that if you're writing $100,000 check, and they're saying, yeah, we're going to pay you 9 % guaranteed.   And these are some syndicators will promise an interest rate based on what class of investor you are, A, B, C, D, whatever it may be. But when I looked at that and I go, if I'm striving to get eight to 10 % in the S &P 500, and I have zero control over that, where would I rather be placing my money? That was something I didn't know I didn't know. And it's always fascinating to me to begin sharing this with people because   When I share the shred method, a lot of folks go, not too good to be true. If it's so good, why isn't everybody doing it? And what I'll tell them is because of human behavior and because the bank's lobbies and their marketing engine is so powerful. But it's not magic, it's math. We're taking mathematical principles, risk-based principles and applying it to real estate or finance and figuring out how to make an amount of money that will supersede what you're.   (Adam Carroll) (33:13.782) your W2 job is pretty simple. That's right. Yeah.   Yeah, pretty simple. It's math. Just got to get it down on paper, right? Yeah. All right. Let's switch gears a little bit. I want to quickly get into, you know, this concept that you preach about building a bigger life at work because I think that's, you know, inspiring and that sort of thing and really life in general, right? Tell us about that concept and kind of dive in a little bit.   Yeah.   (Adam Carroll) (33:37.964) Yeah, you know, this started, it would actually started from a conversation I had with a recent college graduate, and they had gotten an advanced degree, they were going into a high paying job. And I think they'd been at it for maybe nine months or so. And we were having coffee and this person said to me, I'm just not satisfied. And I said, Well, what what is it you're not satisfied with? And they said, Well, the issue is that I thought at this point in time after graduating, he'd be traveling the globe.   You know, that was what he had always romanticized was just tons of travel and do whatever he wanted to do. And I said, well, what's keeping you from that? And he goes, well, you know, I just got into this long-term lease apartment. go, okay. And he said, and I bought a bunch of furniture that I financed. And, and then it's like, okay. He goes, I have a couple of gym memberships, not one, two gym memberships, you know, each probably 80 to 120 bucks a piece a month had a car payment because he needed a fancy car. And I said,   Dude, it sounds to me like you're building a bigger lifestyle, not a bigger life. And what you're asking for is a bigger life. And that became almost a deep dive search for me on what would building a bigger life mean for me and my family. And what I did, Seth, was I started digging into what are my core values? How can I live according to those core values, not according to my neighbor's core values, you who may be drastically different than mine? And...   I ended up writing a book called The Build a Bigger Life Manifesto, which breaks down how do you do this step by step. And there are 10 core tenets. And the first one is you got to build on a strong values foundation, like understanding what is it truly you value in life. And if you're doing more of that, then your life should be fulfilling. And mine are family, freedom, love, growth, and connection. And if I'm fulfilling those five buckets on a weekly basis, generally speaking, I'm really fulfilled.   And so the second is have a bigger vision and a bigger vision for your life might mean I'm not going to stay in this job for the next 20 years and hopefully make partner. then hopefully, because we all know that as you get promoted in a W-2 job, it doesn't mean you work less. It means you work more. And so my bigger vision was I want to make my vocation, my vacation. I'm going to speak, but I'm going to speak in cool places that I can take my family to. People are going to pay me really well to do it.   (Adam Carroll) (36:03.368) and I'm going to do it X number of times a year. And then I started asking, and this is the third step, asking bigger questions. And bigger questions look like, okay, so if I wanted to do that, how would I get better at speaking? How would I get so good that people will pay me 10 or 15 or 20 grand to go do what I do for an hour? What would that look like? I started asking not how would I pay my house off early? How would I pay my house off by the end of this year?   And when I asked that question, answers started coming and we were able to do it. So this is kind of the layout of how we walk people through this process. And for me, a bigger life today is just that, you know, I live for my family. I want to travel with them. I want to have tons of fun with them while they're still in the house. I have two teenagers and one in college. And soon, you know, eventually they'll be gone and it'll be my wife and I going and living the life that we most want.   Our lifestyle right now is pretty locked in. We have a beautiful home, we drive nice cars, but everything's paid for. And at this point, the goal is just to continually create massive passive permanent streams of income that afford us the ability to be generous, to live the life we want. And ultimately for me to be able to go share that message with other people.   And something so simple that you did there, it's just, you know, ask yourself what's important. A lot of us don't take the time to think about why we're upset, why are we not happy. And a lot of it comes down to not filling those buckets that are important to us on a regular basis. to be able to figure that out, you've got to take a few moments to think deeply about what it is that's important to you.   100%. And I'll give you a great example, Seth. One guy that we worked with, he realized that one of his core values that was not being fulfilled was adventure. So he loved his job and he goes, I don't know what it is, I'm just dissatisfied. And we went through the values assessment and adventure was on there. I go, well, where are you getting adventure? And he said, you know, that's the problem. I'm not, I haven't had an adventure in two years. I said, so maybe in building your life,   (Adam Carroll) (38:21.538) we need to figure out where are you carving out adventure for yourself or your family to make sure that you're doing it. For him, community was a big part of it. And he was getting some of that in his day-to-day client interactions. But what he really wanted was to build a community of friends that would go do stuff together. And I said, that's on you, man. If you really want that as part of your life, you got to build whatever that looks like.   And what if you combine that and adventure? So you get a whole group of adventure seekers that get together three times a year to go skiing in Aspen or, you know, go skydiving on a weekend or whatever it is. What would that look like to do that? And he lit up and you know, I could do this right now. So to your point, I think we're all very, very close to having a fulfilled life and building a bigger life. But you do have to take time to figure out what does that look like for you.   For sure, for sure. And a lot of the folks listening are attorneys and doctors and they tend to have high suicide rates, all these crazy things, substance abuse. people from the outside looking in think, why? Because you're making all this money. You have this high profession that everybody looks up to and you're not unhappy. And that's why, because those folks...   folks like us, we're just really focused on just that occupation. And that's it. And we don't focus on some of the other things that would fulfill us and make us happy. tons of attorneys I talk to try to get, they're like, how do I start investing as quickly as possible? Make as much money as quickly as possible so I can get out of this job because I hate being an attorney or I hate being a dentist or whatever it is. But really, that might not be the issue. The issue is that you're not filling up those buckets outside of your   career. And if you were to start filling those buckets, start paying more attention to those things, you might not be as unhappy in your career. And you might actually find that you enjoy what you're doing because you're good at it. You worked really hard to get there and you're making a good bit of money doing it.   (Adam Carroll) (40:22.06) No doubt, no doubt. I would add to that, that I think the majority of professions that you just listed, dentists, doctors, lawyers, et cetera, what they really want is they want to maintain professional status, do what they do, they've gone to school, they've learned how to do it. But over time, they want to work less and less, not more and more. And if you're doing what you recommend on the show, and if you're leveraging something like the shred method to create it, you can get to a point where   half or more of your income, ideally all of it, is replaced by passive income. But it requires that you get really focused on working for the right reasons and not filling in the lack of fulfillment or unhappiness with a new car or the next do-dad or spending a fortune on something. Instead, decide, I'm going to go get into an investment this year that will begin the process of creating passive income for me to start building the life that I truly want.   And it is, it's pretty transformational once you figure out how to do it and what the next steps are.   Yeah, it's like the matrix. mean, you start kind of, as soon as you start, it becomes a game, how you said it earlier in the show, and you just start seeing things that you didn't see before. You start being presented with new types of investments and businesses that you can invest in that you never saw before, but they were right under your nose. It does turn into a fun game, a money game.   Yeah, no question. I was at a conference not too long ago and they were calling me Morpheus because I made a reference to the red pill or the blue pill. And they were like, dude, you're Morpheus. I just took the red pill. Now I'm going down the rabbit hole. So beware. Are you ready to take the red pill?   (Seth Bradley) (42:08.374) Love that, love that. All right Adam, before we jump into the freedom four, what's one last golden nugget for our listeners?   A golden nugget for your listeners is that money today is abstract. It's not a concrete thing. Several decades ago, you would be given cash or you'd pay for things in cash. And today, virtually everything is a cashless transaction. And when we're not using cash, it doesn't feel real. If we're using Apple Pay or we're swiping our card or tapping our card,   It doesn't feel real. In fact, there's no pain sensor that triggers when you do that. The opposite is true on Amazon. When you hit one click ship for $47, a pleasure sensor actually is activated because you're in anticipation of that thing coming to you. So we also have to realize that the more money you make, it feels like, well, the more you have to spend. But because money doesn't feel real, you're spending way more than you think you are.   because of the abstract nature of it. So some of that is like reigning back in and understanding these are real dollars that you're putting on a card or swiping on your phone or whatever it may be and deciding is this the best intentional use of this money or could I be using it to build the life that I truly want? And I will add to that Seth that it's very short. There's a short amount of time that it requires you to function just a little bit differently.   order to get there where all the passive income covers your wants. So just like intentionality for the next 12 to 24 months will make a massive difference in your life.   (Seth Bradley) (43:48.502) Yeah, that's all it takes. All right, let's jump into the freedom four. What's the best thing you do to keep your mind and body healthy?   I am part of an exercise group called F3 and it stands for fitness fellowship and faith. There's like 75,000 guys all over the world that do this every morning. And we get up, you know, rain, sun, sleet or hail. I mean, we were working out in like eight degree Fahrenheit weather this winter outside. It's always outside. And I love it. I do it four or five, sometimes six mornings a week. But for me, just getting up the first hour of my day will   will dictate what the rest of my day does. And so my F3 brothers and I, that's the right way for me to get started.   awesome. With all your success what is one limiting belief that you've crushed along the way and how did you get past it?   you know, this is, this is going to sound a bit like an oxymoron statement, but a limiting belief is that, man, there's so much opportunity. And for me, I'm a bright, shiny object guy. for years, my wife was like, just pick one opportunity, please just pick one. And so for me, it's, you know, it's the fact that there is so much I can do limits me because you can really get very, very good at one thing.   (Adam Carroll) (45:08.078) But I'm a big fan of James Clear and the book Atomic Habits. And he'll say that it's hard to get traction when your focus is divided. And so I've been really intentional about zeroing in on my focus and knowing that this is what I'm setting out to do. And it may be for 12 months or 24 months or five years. And I'll reevaluate along the way. But I've got one thing and I'm really focused on that. So that's been a limiting belief I've had to get over.   Awesome. Awesome. What's one actionable step our listeners can do right now to start creating more freedom?   Well, go to the shredmethod.com not to do a self plug, it is. Go watch the masterclass, see what we do and how we do it. If you are already intrigued by this and are wondering like, what should I do with a HELOC or should I have a HELOC? My answer to everyone is everyone should have a HELOC, everyone. If you have equity in your home, why do you not have a line of credit? If for nothing else to have that is an emergency.   of some kind. So point blank, the first thing you ought to do is go access a line of credit, be it a home equity line, a personal line of credit, a P lock, or a B lock, a business line of credit. can also do a cash value line of credit. But I think you got to have one of those because when you understand this method, this process, that's a linchpin to making this work.   Great. How is passive income made your life better?   (Adam Carroll) (46:42.698) you know, I like to call it mailbox money and, man, love mailbox money. When it shows up, I celebrate and I've, I've had a mantra for years that I'm a money magnet, that money comes easily and frequently, that I get more checks in the mail than I do bills. And I just repeat those mantras over and over again. So every time I set up another form of passive income, man, it's just like a win.   that you feel deep down inside. And it doesn't matter, Seth, if it's 50 bucks or 15 bucks or five bucks or 5,000, right? Total sidebar, real quick story, but I was sitting with a buddy of mine at a conference and he kept showing me his phone and he was clearly showing off. But every time he'd pop up his phone, was like another sale was made. And it'd be like $27, $170, $300. And I go...   Dude, how are you doing this?" And he said, I set up these funnels and it's just a little digital product I created and we're doing ads and we're putting all the people towards these ads. And I said, so how many of those do get a month? He goes, I don't somewhere between $9,000 and $10,000 a month is coming in. And I remember feeling giddy for him and giddy about the idea that this could be possible, that you could just do whatever you want to do every day. Go fishing, go surfing, be on a sailboat somewhere and pull up your phone and be like, well, this is cool. just made...   $800. So for me, we have started to build that into what we're doing. I now get alerts on my Apple Watch. It's a Slackbot. So every time a sale is made, it pops up. we went to Mexico over spring break and the vendors on the Mexican beaches, they bless themselves every time they make a sale. And so now when a sale pops up on my Slackbot,   I'm like, all right, I made a sale. This is awesome. So how has it changed my life? I'm more grateful. I sleep well at night. I have peace of mind. And I know that, you know, future generations are going to be taken care of by the wealth that my wife and I are creating.   (Seth Bradley) (48:45.29) I love it, All right, Adam, this has been incredible. We're going to let listeners find out more about you.   Well, you can find out more about me personally at adamcarroll.info. It's two R's, two L's, adamcarroll.info. And again, if you want to check out the Shred Method, we have lots of free resources. So you can go and do a ton of research. We have a savings analysis there that you can plug in your numbers and see how much you could save and how quickly you could be out of debt. All of that is available at theshredmethod.com.   All right, brother. Appreciate your time. Thanks again for coming on the show and we'll to have you on again soon.   Love it, Seth. Keep doing what you do, man. This is super important stuff.   Alright brother, talk soon.   (Seth Bradley) (49:28.578) Thanks for tuning in to Raise the Bar Radio. If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs to hear it. Keep pushing, keep building, and keep raising the bar. Until next time, enjoy the journey. Links from the Show and Guest Info and Links: Seth Bradley's Links: https://x.com/sethbradleyesq https://www.youtube.com/@sethbradleyesq www.facebook.com/sethbradleyesq https://www.threads.com/@sethbradleyesq https://www.instagram.com/sethbradleyesq/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/sethbradleyesq/ https://passiveincomeattorney.com/seth-bradley/ https://www.biggerpockets.com/users/sethbradleyesq https://medium.com/@sethbradleyesq https://www.tiktok.com/@sethbradleyesq?lang=en Adam Carroll's Links: https://www.threads.com/@adam.carroll/ https://www.instagram.com/adam.carroll/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamcarrollspeaks/ https://www.facebook.com/AdamSpeaks/ https://x.com/adamcarroll https://open.spotify.com/show/1fPEUnWdnbcOcbYdksY1Yi https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJREGkPP6UwMucJMPvDS8xg

Check out The Basketball IQ Masterclass: https://www.visiondrivenbball.com/opt-in-801f8775-ceda-402f-9618-c6f4013d0f5bBeing passive is the fastest way to get overlooked. In this video, I break down why playing passive is the worst thing you can do as a basketball player—and how to flip the switch into an aggressive, confident mindset that gets you noticed. Whether you're tired of being invisible on the court or just want to start dominating with purpose, this is for you. Check out Basketball IQ Academy (The Elite Scorer Blueprint): https://www.visiondrivenbball.com/basketball-iq-academy

We're talking about the best AI tools to grow your YouTube channel and generate high-quality leads in 2025. In this video, Levi Lascsak and Krissy Owens break down the best YouTube AI tools that are transforming how real estate professionals and content creators build authority, rank in search, and automate their content strategy. Whether you're a beginner looking for YouTube SEO help or a seasoned creator aiming to streamline your workflow, this in-depth conversation will show you what works now.Learn why Channel Studio is outperforming TubeBuddy for early-stage YouTube channels, especially in hyperlocal niches. Levi and Krissy explain how this new AI-driven platform offers more accurate keyword data, real-time analytics, and built-in AI tools like script generators, keyword suggestions, and title optimizers—all designed to increase video visibility and engagement.They also introduce subscriber.ai, a powerful scripting and research platform perfect for advanced YouTubers. You'll see how AI can save time, improve video structure, and help you generate compelling scripts across multiple video formats like vlogs, listicles, and educational content.This video is essential for anyone building a YouTube channel with AI tools, especially real estate agents who want to stop cold-calling and start attracting leads online. Hosted by Levi Lascsak and Krissy Owens, this episode of Passive Prospecting is your roadmap to success with YouTube AI in 2025.If you're interested in learning more about YouTube for real estate, we'd love to show you how to build a Passive Prospecting lead-generating machine using YouTube for real estate! The best way to start is to grab a free copy of the book as my gift to you.

In this episode of Enrich Your Future, Andrew and Larry Swedroe discuss Larry's new book, Enrich Your Future: The Keys to Successful Investing. In this series, they discuss Chapter 40: The Big Rocks.LEARNING: Passive investing will give you the freedom you need. “Indexing and passive investing have the ‘disadvantage' of being boring. I admit it. However, if anyone needs to get their excitement in life from investing, I'd suggest they might want to consider getting another life.”Larry Swedroe In this episode of Enrich Your Future, Andrew and Larry Swedroe discuss Larry's new book, Enrich Your Future: The Keys to Successful Investing. The book is a collection of stories that Larry has developed over 30 years as the head of financial and economic research at Buckingham Wealth Partners to help investors. You can learn more about Larry's Worst Investment Ever story on Ep645: Beware of Idiosyncratic Risks.Larry deeply understands the world of academic research and investing, especially risk. Today, Andrew and Larry discuss Chapter 40: The Big Rocks.Chapter 40: The Big RocksIn Chapter 40, Larry explains why passive (systematic) investing is the winning strategy in life as well as investing.Like all the other chapters in the book, this one begins with a story used as an analogy to help understand a financial issue. In this one, a time-management expert fills a mason jar with large rocks. “Full?” she asks. The class agrees. She adds gravel, sand, and water – each filling the spaces between. When a student suggests the lesson is about fitting more into busy schedules, she corrects them:“If you don't put the big rocks in first, they'll never fit at all.”The investor's jarLarry explains the metaphor's profound implication for wealth:Big rocks = Family, health, growth, legacyGravel = Stock charts, earnings analysisSand = Financial news, market commentaryWater = Trading forums, portfolio tinkeringLarry explains that active investors start with gravel and sand, leaving insufficient time for the big rocks. They spend much of their precious leisure time watching the latest business news, studying the latest charts, scanning and posting on Internet investment discussion boards, reading financial trade publications and newsletters, and so on. Their jars fill with noise, leaving no room for life's essentials.Passive investors, on the other hand, ignore the ”noise” (the sand, the gravel, and the water) and place big rocks first. Their strategy operates quietly, driven by low-cost index funds and disciplined rebalancing. The result? Their jars hold what truly enriches life, giving them a sense of freedom and independence.Two stories, one lesson1. The physician's regretDuring the 1990s bull market, a doctor would spend nights analyzing stocks after 12-hour shifts. He turned $10,000 into $100,000 – but his marriage was on the verge of collapse. His wife no longer had a husband; his child lost a parent to the glow of stock charts. When the tech bubble burst, the money vanished.The wake-up call was brutal: He had traded first steps and bedtime stories for digits on a screen. After reading Larry's book, he switched to passive investing, which...

What if I told you that my biggest revenue day ever happened from a random guest bedroom in France with terrible lighting and zero Instagram-worthy vibes?Today I'm spilling the tea on how I went from being a complete webinar disaster to hosting my most successful one ever—and it had nothing to do with better tech or a prettier backdrop. It was all about getting my shit together before I even logged on.If you've ever felt like you're about to throw up before a big presentation, or maybe you've even sabotaged yourself by spiraling into self-doubt right before something important, this episode is going to give you the exact playbook I used to flip the script on those feelings. Because spoiler alert: I've had those feelings too.I'm taking you full behind-the-scenes on my journey from my very first webinar disaster in a Florida rental closet (yes, really) to hosting 2,000 people and having our biggest dollar day in business history. The secret wasn't perfect conditions—it was showing up as my best self regardless of the chaos around me.What You'll Learn:The 7-step confidence toolkit I use before any big business momentHow to prep your mindset days in advance (not just your slides)Why I stay the hell off social media on webinar dayThe power of "writing from the future" to program your brain for successHow movement and fresh air literally change your brain chemistryWhy dressing like you're closing a million-dollar deal matters (even if only your top half is on camera)The 15-minute dance party ritual that gets me into peak performance modeHow to visualize success in specific, measurable detailHow to adapt these strategies for podcast interviews, sales calls, going live, and moreResources Mentioned:AI Workshop: https://gemmabonhamcarter.com/aiworkshopGamma (slide creation tool): https://gamma.appYour Next Steps: Work with Me: https://www.gemmabonhamcarter.com/programs What I Use to Run My 7-Figure Business: https://gemmabonhamcarter.com Support the show

In this episode of Veteran On the Move, Joe chats with Marine Veteran Wayne Courreges. Wayne shares his journey from Marine Corps Corporal to successful real estate investor, now managing over $60 million in assets. Discover how Wayne got started in real estate during his service and eventually transitioned to full-time investing. Don't miss his advice on achieving entrepreneurial success and building lasting wealth! Episode Resources: PASSIVE INVESTOR COACHING  CREI Partners   About Our Guest Wayne Courreges is the Founder and Lead Sponsor of CREI Partners, a real estate investment firm with over $60 million in assets under management across Texas, Louisiana, and Alabama. He helps busy professionals build generational wealth through passive investments in apartment communities and RV/boat and business storage developments. A former Marine Corps Corporal, Wayne began his real estate journey during his service and went on to spend 16 years with a Fortune 125 commercial real estate firm before transitioning full-time to real estate investing. Based in Central Texas, he is committed to protecting investor capital, delivering strong returns, and making a positive impact in the communities he serves.   About Our Sponsors Navy Federal Credit Union   Whether you're looking to buy a new or used car or maybe you want to refinance your current car loan, Navy Federal Credit Union has great rates on auto loans and discounts for Active Duty servicemembers and Veterans. You can apply via their mobile app or online and, in most cases, get a decision in seconds. For those of you looking to refinance your current auto loan, you could get $200 cash back when you refi your loan from another lender. Find out more at navyfederal.org/auto.  At Navy Federal, our members are the mission.    Join the conversation on Facebook! Check out Veteran on the Move on Facebook to connect with our guests and other listeners. A place where you can network with other like-minded veterans who are transitioning to entrepreneurship and get updates on people, programs and resources to help you in YOUR transition to entrepreneurship.   Want to be our next guest? Send us an email at interview@veteranonthemove.com.  Did you love this episode? Leave us a 5-star rating and review!  Download Joe Crane's Top 7 Paths to Freedom or get it on your mobile device. Text VETERAN to 38470. Veteran On the Move podcast has published 500 episodes. Our listeners have the opportunity to hear in-depth interviews conducted by host Joe Crane. The podcast features people, programs, and resources to assist veterans in their transition to entrepreneurship.  As a result, Veteran On the Move has over 7,000,000 verified downloads through Stitcher Radio, SoundCloud, iTunes and RSS Feed Syndication making it one of the most popular Military Entrepreneur Shows on the Internet Today.

In this episode of the HVAC School podcast, Bryan Orr sits down with Adam and Matt to tackle one of the most misunderstood aspects of HVAC system design: return air systems. The conversation dives deep into the common myths surrounding returns, particularly the widespread belief that adding returns to rooms will automatically improve comfort and air mixing. The hosts explore why returns are often seen as mysterious - sometimes helping when added to a room, sometimes making things worse - and work to clarify the actual science behind how returns function versus how many technicians think they work. The discussion reveals a fundamental misunderstanding in the industry about the difference between supply and return air behavior. While supply air creates significant mixing effects through entrainment and the Coanda effect, returns have a much more limited impact on room air patterns. According to Manual T, laboratory tests show that return air intake influence is limited to just a few feet around the grille, even at high velocities. This leads to the key insight that returns serve primarily as pressure relief mechanisms rather than air mixing devices, which explains why their placement and sizing strategies differ significantly from supply air design principles. The hosts examine real-world scenarios, including Matt's experience with a two-story home where the homeowner requested an additional return on the second floor despite having adequate return pathways. They discuss the Manual D recommendation for returns on each floor while sharing field experiences where single central returns have successfully maintained temperature differentials within two degrees across multiple floors. The conversation emphasizes that proper system design, including accurate load calculations and right-sized equipment, often eliminates the need for complex return strategies. A significant portion of the discussion focuses on the practical considerations of passive versus active returns. The hosts lean toward passive return strategies (transfer grilles, jumper ducts, and door undercuts) for their simplicity, cost-effectiveness, and reduced ductwork requirements. However, they acknowledge the challenges of proper sizing - passive returns must be significantly larger than their active counterparts since they rely on minimal pressure differentials rather than mechanical assistance. The conversation also addresses privacy concerns with transfer grilles and the benefits of oversized jumper ducts for noise attenuation. Key Topics Covered Common Return Myths Debunked The belief that adding returns automatically improves room comfort Misconceptions about returns mixing air effectively The difference between supply air entrainment and return air influence Pressure Relief vs. Air Mixing Returns function primarily for pressure balancing, not air circulation How to measure pressure problems using flow hoods and micromanometers The impact of door closure on supply air delivery Manual D Guidelines and Field Reality Manual D recommendations for returns on each floor Real-world examples of successful single central return systems When to follow guidelines versus when field conditions allow flexibility Passive Return Strategies Transfer grilles, jumper ducts, and door undercuts as alternatives to active returns Proper sizing considerations for low-resistance return pathways Privacy and noise concerns with different passive return methods System Design Fundamentals The importance of accurate load calculations in reducing return requirements How right-sizing equipment reduces airflow and pressure management challenges The relationship between static pressure and airflow changes Zoning Considerations Whether to add dampers to returns in zoned systems Potential depressurization issues when zones are closed Passive solutions for zoned system return air management Practical Installation Tips Avoiding short-cycling by maintaining proper supply-to-return distances The risks of undersized return pathways Balancing damper selection and sealing strategies Advanced Concepts Destratification strategies using ceiling fans versus high returns The impact of conditioned versus unconditioned return air pathways Energy efficiency considerations in return system design   Have a question that you want us to answer on the podcast? Submit your questions at https://www.speakpipe.com/hvacschool. Purchase your tickets or learn more about the 7th Annual HVACR Training Symposium at https://hvacrschool.com/symposium. Subscribe to our podcast on your iPhone or Android. Subscribe to our YouTube channel. Check out our handy calculators here or on the HVAC School Mobile App for Apple and Android

Bobby shared a scenario where he texted someone and didn’t get a response for 24 hours. What he did next he wanted to know if it was passive aggressive or an appropriate follow up? Amy and Lunchbox face off to see who can pronounce the words most commonly said incorrectly. In the Anonymous Inbox, Bobby helps a listener who wants to tell her boyfriend it's time to give up his dream of being a musician. There is some drama with Zach Bryan after he clapped back at a 14-year old who called him out for not meeting fans after a show. This sparked other country artists to get in on the drama to defend the teen.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Gaurav Sharma is the Founder & CEO of Hook, an AI-powered music platform that empowers fans to create authorized remixes while ensuring artists and rights holders are fairly compensated. A visionary in music tech, Sharma previously served as COO of JioSaavn, where he helped grow India's largest music streaming service to over 200 million monthly users. With a deep understanding of the intersection between innovation and the music industry, Sharma is pioneering the future of fan engagement and co-creation through ethical, artist-first technology.In this episode, Michael Walker chats with Gaurav Sharma about how AI and remix culture are transforming fan engagement, the rise of co-creation, and lessons from scaling JioSaavn that independent artists can use to grow their careers.Key Takeaways:How Hook is using AI to revolutionize fan engagement and empower artist-approved remixes.Why the future of music is co-creation and how artists can build deeper connections through collaborative content.Lessons from scaling JioSaavn to 200M users — and what independent artists can learn from it.---→ Discover more about Gaurav and Hook at www.hookmusic.com.Book an Artist Breakthrough Session with the Modern Musician team: https://apply.modernmusician.me/podcast

Want passive income? We mean truly passive—no tenant phone calls, no toilets, no evictions—just checks sent to your account. This is the dream of every real estate investor, and today's guest, Chris Lopez, actually achieved it. He did what we preach on every single episode—bought single-family rentals and small multifamily buildings and ran them right—but at some point, he realized the cash flow was too low, and the headaches were too high. So he switched, finding a type of real estate that is truly passive. At one point, Chris's rental property portfolio was only making him a meager $20 per hour. Doesn't sound like financial freedom, does it? He dipped his toe into passive investing, invested a little more, then a little more. Now, he's heavily on the passive side.  Chris is on today to show you how to do the same. Got a lot of equity but low cash flow? Turn that rental into bigger, better, and more passive income. Tired of dealing with tenants but still want financial freedom? You can exchange your rentals for a passive income stream. We're talking about debt funds, value-add syndications, and other passive investments that enable investors to earn more while doing less. Join Chris's 5-week cohort to learn how to transition from active landlord to passive investor (while multiplying your cash flow). In This Episode We Cover Real estate investments that make double-digit returns (without the work) The one (easy) calculation every investor must perform annually  How to vet a passive investment (and the person running it) before you invest Significant economic risks to be aware of before you start passive investing  Keep, refinance, or sell? How to know your rental is past its useful period  And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1150 Interested in learning more about today's sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠advertise@biggerpockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices