Justin Martinez - Real Estate, Fitness & Finances
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE ON:
"Do today what your future self will thank you for." This is a motto that Justin Martinez lives by. Justin is a former Sergeant in the US Army, Ranger qualified. After his time in the Army, he attended Arizona State University, where he received a BS in Business Entrepreneurship and a Masters in Real Estate Development. While in college he also started a healthy vending machine company and ran a door to door sales team. He took his saved income and began a journey in Airbnb by buying and renovating cabins in the Great Smoky Mountains in Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. He sold them off for over 7 figures and is now making cash purchases and home renovations for buy & hold properties. In addition, he just opened up a brick and mortar location for one on one fitness coaching, having completed the "75 Hard" program 4 times in the past year, as well as 6 Triathlons, a half marathon, a full marathon, 2 half Ironman's.
In this episode, you will be able to:
- Learn how to achieve financial freedom through real estate investing by leveraging passive income strategies, like Justin did.
- Learn how to start out in real estate investing and build a sustainable portfolio for long-term wealth to live life more on your terms.
- Discover effective passive income strategies in real estate to create a consistent stream of cash flow through short-term rentals, flipping, and other options.
- Explore the process of building a diverse rental property portfolio to maximize passive income potential.
The key moments in this episode are:
00:00:00 - The Freedom of Real Estate
00:02:13 - Military to Entrepreneurship
00:05:36 - Short-Term Rental Business
00:10:51 - Key to Success in Short-Term Rentals
00:12:11 - Transitioning from Short Term Rentals to Fix and Flips
00:14:38 - The Power of Cash in Real Estate
00:21:03 - Compound Effect Coaching
00:23:23 - Importance of Self-Discipline
00:24:32 - 75 Hard Challenge
Follow Justin 👇
https://www.facebook.com/justin.jones.3152
https://www.instagram.com/compoundeffectcoaching
https://www.youtube.com/@CompoundEffectCoaching
SUBSCRIBE IF YOU'RE LOOKING TO BUILD WEALTH THROUGH OPPORTUNITIES IN THE REAL ESTATE INDUSTRY
✅ http://relfreedom.tv
GET STARTED INVESTING TODAY AND ACCESS OUR DEAL LIST!
📈 http://investwithelite.com
PARTNER WITH US ON BIG DEALS!
💵 https://eliteadvantagepropertieshq.com
BUILD YOUR REAL ESTATE AGENT CAREER WORKING WITH INVESTORS
👨👩👧👦 http://eliteadvantageagent.com
LEARN ABOUT REL FREEDOM & HEAR MORE REAL LIFE STORIES
🎙️ http://www.relfreedom.com
FREEBIES: DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE FREEDOM FOUNDATION BLUEPRINT
💵 https://www.relfreedom.com/blueprint
LOOKING FOR A REAL ESTATE AGENT ANYWHERE IN THE US? FIND A TOP AGENT IN YOUR COMMUNITY
🏠 http://www.eliteagentreferral.com
JOIN OUR FACEBOOK COMMUNITY
👨👩👧👦 https://www.facebook.com/groups/relfreedom
SUBSCRIBE TO THE REL FREEDOM PODCAST
🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rel-freedom-podcast/id1535281574
🎧 Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5idXp6c3Byb3V0LmNvbS8xNDA3NjIyLnJzcw==
🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5nXA5hLHbDzRwxypc2wLur
LET'S CONNECT
👉 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mswenson13
👉 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/getrelfreedom/
👉 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@relfreedom
🏠 Minnesota Real Estate: https://www.eliteadvantageteam.com
Jim Manning
The best partnerships in real estate aren't when you have like, two people doing the work that don't have money, and then they have to figure it out. It's like one person that has money, call that a money partner just for simplicity sake, and one person that has time, and you can call that like a hustle partner. When you, when you have that structure, that's a great way to generate passive income for the money partner. It's a great way for the hustle partner to be able to grow and scale their business.
Mike Swenson
Welcome to the REL Freedom show, where we inspire you to pursue your passion to gain time and financial freedom through opportunities and real estate. I'm your host, Mike Swenson. Let's get some REL Freedom together. Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of REL Freedom, where we talk about building time and financial freedom through different opportunities in real estate. I'm your host, Mike Swenson. If you want to get started on your real estate investing journey, check out our website, freedomthroughrealestate.com. We've got some videos, articles, tools to help you be able to get started in your journey. Now, moving along to today's episode, excited to share with you. We've got Jim Manning here, and I really love the story that you have. And this is where most of us are at, right? We're trying to consider, do I kind of go the traditional path of retirement, of what I was supposed to learn, maybe what our parents taught us, or investing in your 401k, whatever that might look like? Or do I invest in assets that produce income that can build and grow through retirement? And so Jim, his backstory worked with a self made billionaire and inspired to set out and find a way to become financially free without sacrificing his personal life, which is another thing we see a lot of people in real estate sometimes sacrifice that personal life. And so you are the host of the passive wealth show, designed to educate high income earners on the transformative potential of real estate investments. So, Jim, we're so excited to have you on the show and would love to have you share your wisdom with us today.
Jim Manning
Thanks, Mike. And kudos to you. And I just use the word kudos. I don't know why, I don't normally use that, but thanks for having me on and the mission that you have on your podcast, you can't have a better mission than that, in my opinion, to help people with not only treasure and financial prosperity, to help help you with time, too, at the same time, right? I can't think of a better gift to give your audience and to help people with than that. So I'm bought in, guys. I'm one of you. I love it. I love real estate investing. And yeah, I've just been doing it for a while. We started out, I started studying in 2006. 2008 was really the first year I got in full time. And fast forward to today. We have three real estate companies. The team's done over 3500 deals, have a couple of real estate funds with over 130 partners in them. But if you're just starting out, what I would encourage you to do is not hear all those numbers and be discouraged by them, because it's easy to play the comparison game, if anything, get excited about what's possible. Because when I started out, I almost didn't, uh, launch. Uh, I almost was a failed investor before I even did my first deal. Uh, it took me 18 months before I did my first deal. It takes a little while to get started for some of us, for, for me. For me, anyway, so don't get discouraged about it. And if you hear guys like me up here talking that have been doing this a while, you know, it was one deal, my 1st 18 months, it wasn't. Don't hear the 3500 deals that, you know, we. One year we did over 500 deals. Don't hear that. Don't compare yourself to that. Compare yourself, uh, if you have to compare yourself, which you really shouldn't anyway, but compare yourself to when I just started out, you know, as a 23 year old, when I was doing that. And you know, what's interesting is what held me back then was I had to be the guy. I didn't want to admit that I didn't know. I didn't know anything. Uh, what I learned from school is like, oh, well, you need to study really hard and be able to pass the test. And I had a lot of ego wrapped up in, like, being the guy that had some of the answers and I didn't want to admit to other people, hey, I'm a newbie, I really don't know what I'm doing. And because of that, I was in a perpetual loop of learning. I would take a course, pay for it, learn it, and then I would find another course, take it, and I would first get what I learned from the course before because I was now learning the new course and I was just in this learning, and, and you really don't. That's the same thing, guys, as, uh, reading a book on free throw shooting and never going to a basketball court and actually shooting a free throw uh, so there's one thing to be able to read the book. It's another whole thing to, like, get into action mode and start doing, and start trying to shoot that free throw, right? So that was, you know, like, it was so like the failure launch really became, became the insecurity of not knowing and then fear gripping me and creating the excuse of, oh, well, I need to learn more. When it was really just a fear holding me back from like, failure of mistake, failure of being looked upon, like down upon by other people. And once I got over that, once I started reaching out to other people and asking questions and asking for help, we exploded. We started doing a lot of deals. And this is kind of my way, the passive wealth shows really kind of getting in front of audiences like yours, Mike, is just my way to pay it back because I'm here because of a lot of people before me kind of lent a hand and helped pull me up. And real estate's been such a blessing for my family and people I care about. I want it to be the same for you guys, too.
Mike Swenson
I wanted to touch on why is this journey worth it? And I'd love to be able to share the story that's actually on your website. Jim passivewealthshow.com, because as I was doing my research on guests and learning what I can, I ran across this and I was like, this is exactly the reason why people need to invest in real estate. And so if you're listening to this and you're like, I've got a 401k. I'm doing what I think I'm supposed to, what maybe traditional folks might say is the way to retire. I think your experience here really is the reason why people need to be open to real estate. And like you said, it took 18 months for you to get your first deal, but it's worth it in the end because you're going on a path that has a much more, hopefully predictable future than one that doesn't. So I'm going to just quick read this story and then I'll let you kind of chime in and recap. But it's straight off your website. So it says, I might run out of money before I die. A conversation you had with a friend, it says, talking with a friend who is a self made millionaire, had done everything he was taught by the financial industry his whole life. He worked hard, saved his money, maxed out his 401k. Now, in his seventies, the economy shifted, causing his net worth to go down by 20%. And so since he's forced to take out money. Every year his savings are being depleted and inflation is going crazy, putting him a place where he's not sure if he had saved enough. And so after you heard that, you reflected on it and said, if you reposition, you can essentially doesn't matter how long you live, you're not going to, you're not going to outlive your earnings. And especially now, I'm going off story here, but especially as healthcare continues to improve, people continue to live longer, the fear of outliving your retirement is, is going to get more and more real. And so now you've spent your time building a real estate rental portfolio, which is going to build and grow over time, versus a 401k that might just kind of putter out and run on fumes and hope eventually you might have enough till you die. It's a totally different shift of a mindset. And so even if it takes you a year and a half to go get your first deal, eventually it's going to start to come together and you want to be the person that has your retirement savings growing through your retirement time versus worrying about am I going to outlive it? And what if the economy changes, what if other things change? And so it's really put well on your website. But that's kind of why I got into real estate and why I decided to invest in real estate. It's like I wanted to make sure that my future was more solid than just relying on a 401K.
Jim Manning
Yeah. And you know what's interesting is the financial industry won't tell you that you can take Ira money and invest it into real estate. You think that you have to do all these mutual funds and everything like that. But there's ways to do it if you know what Mike knows and what I know, and you have the right relationships. Right. Just so funny growing up, so my parents were baby boomers, and what they were really taught by the financial industry was, well, you just have to save enough money. Like my nest egg needs to be a couple million, and then that, that will cover the inflation and all that, and you'll be okay. And if you think about it, why do we work? We work for income to cover our living expenses. And if we're healthy and we're working, are we really that worried about retirement for today's needs? Absolutely not. Because we know we have a, especially for employed, we know we have a paycheck coming in. Right? So retirement, rather than being a nest egg problem, is really a cash flow problem. And if you have your income replaced from assets that produce income. Well then, boom, it doesn't matter how long you live, you don't have to worry about running out of money because you have your, because the assets are covering your income. And in real estate's case, what's so special about it is not only if you have enough investments in your retirement account to give you passive income to cover all your living expenses, the asset base isn't depleting. Real estate appreciates over time so you can create an environment where your investments will not be diminished at all and continue to grow. So there's something left for the next generation. Its a really powerful thing and its just a different way of thinking about it. One of the things that I find so interesting about it too, in fairness to the financial industry, is there really wasnt a whole lot of mechanisms to make real estate passive. Mike, I know you guys do a lot of turnkey deals. Turnkey investments are a fantastic opportunity. Uh, they don't quite make it 100% passive. If you, if you use a team to find the deal and, and just, they place a tenant and everything like that, but they, they take off at least 90% of it. Right. And then there's also other mechanisms like real estate funds. I did some, you know, just from being around, I tried to do some research on, on chat, GPT and on the Internet. Uh, what's this percentage of success rate of investors? And there's literally no information out there on real estate investors. Real real estate agents have an 87% failure rate in the first five years, so we know that. So real estate, and that's harder. That's a higher percentage of failure rate than a typical business starting up a business is in the 60%, 64 or something like that. If you want to know the exact number, just google it and there'll be stuff that comes up. But, so real estate investors, like, I really only know from my experience and people I've interacted with for the last decade and a half. I would say out of 100 people, 90 people that say they want to invest in real estate don't end up doing their first deal. So if you're listening to this and you've done your first deal, congratulations, you're in the top 10%. Then out of the 10% that end up investing, I think only 1% ends up actually owning enough to truly become financially free. And the other 9% might buy five, six, seven, and are doing financially well, but at some point they end up burning out or they get to like, hey, im at six, I have another full, I have a full time job. I have six rentals. This is really all I got. I just dont want to do anything else. And so its only 1% get financially free exclusively from real estate investing. I think thats such an interesting thing because then I look at, so we have 130 partners, right? And, I mean, we have people that are in the 1% that literally they invested into these passive income, these real estate funds, and these passive mechanisms, and they just happened to have enough money to be able to become financially free right away because they were able to invest enough money into it, and they did it literally in two weeks. So the power behind it, uh, becomes like, first I recommend, you know, like, know who you are. If you're like a doctor and you've already figured out income or a small business, or you've already figured out income, well, that is a very valuable thing. Uh, and you can bring money to a transaction, uh, if you don't have money. Like, I didn't have money when I started out, but I did have time and I had hustle, and I, and I, as a 22 year old, was surprisingly resourceful. I, it's a God given thing, but, um, and I was resourceful, too. So, uh, the best partnerships in real estate aren't when you have, like, two people doing the work that don't have money, and then they have to figure it out. It's like, one person that has money, call that a money partner just for simplicity sake. And one person that's, uh, has time, and you can call that like a hustle partner. When you, when you have that structure, that's a great way to generate passive income for the money partner. It's a great way for the hustle partner to be able to grow and scale their business. And in our case, we did 250 flips in 2017 from a guy that started out not having money a decade before. It was because we just brought in a lot of money partners that allowed us to scale, and we were able to do more and more flips because we were using money partners to do that. So know where you're at, don't skip that stuff, know where you're at in the spectrum and realize, like, oh, man, I have treasure, I have some money coming in. Well, there is mechanisms to make this a passive investment. Like, and how do I do that? And that's really like the passive wealth show. We kind of go into that quite a bit. How do you hone your skills and, and become a really good quality passive investor?
Mike Swenson
You know, I hear from a lot of people, you mentioned money partner. And I think a lot of people think when they get into real estate, like, oh, I just got to go find a money partner. And they might not even refer to them as a money partner. It might just be, you know, I need to go get some capital, right? And what I think, and maybe this is just my opinion, but being in the space now for a while, it's about the relationship with the person. You know, I think sometimes because they think, oh, in my, my residential home, I just get a loan from a bank. Like, if I want a money partner to really grow and scale something more creative with me, like an investment, investment business, I probably want a person, not an institution. But it depends if you find the right person. But it, it takes time. Like, you want to build relationships with people that want to continue to work with you, and when you continue to do a good job for them, they want to work with you even more. And so that's where I think those partnerships, it takes a little time to find those people. But once you do, it really can be beneficial for both sides.
Jim Manning
And what Mike says there is so valuable guys, the other component of it is be real with yourself. 22 year old Jim with no professional skills right out of college, how investable was I really at that point for someone to, like, put in, invest with me and trust me. And now 232-4525 year old Jimmy. Three years in, I've done a lot of wholesale deals, done some short sale deals, got my feet, you know, completed my first couple flips. Now I'm starting to have a track record and a story. You kind of need to also, like, be self aware of how am I going to be viewed by investors? And, like, would a smart investor want to risk their money with me if I'm, if I'm brand new? Well, no. Well, and that's like, wholesaling is a great strategy to kind of start and you can say, well, hey, I've, I bought these five properties at a discount. I was able to sell them to another investor for a profit because I bought these properties so well. Well, I need a money partner now. Rather than sell it to this investor, let's do a deal together. Because I know how to buy a property at a discount. Now, that's a story that you can tell the money partner. And on the money partner side of things, there's not a higher dollar per hour and return on your investment than to, to find a team or find an individual you can trust and, and have them execute properly on the real estate, for example, we can get I don't know if we have time or not, but I can get into, like, my favorite investment strategy right now in today's market. But using our favorite strategy, we're generating higher returns for our partners that aren't doing any of the work. They're literally sitting on their couch collecting higher returns than what? Um, uh, than what I did for myself in my first five years full time, doing it while I was figuring it out. There's really a lot of advantages with that and being able to say, well, no, my money's worth something, my time's worth even more. And not trying to go down and figure it out all on your own. So it's so fun. I could talk about this all day, guys. It's such an amazing, amazing thing.
Mike Swenson
Well, and just as an example, so we're getting ready to finish up a syndication here in the next couple of days. And so we're working with, I think in this particular deal, it's like 20 investors. And so these are just normal people working their w two jobs because they know us. This is a 506 b for those people that understand a syndication. So these are non accredited investors that we have a relationship with. And so I'm just going through the process of, you know, doing the transfers with them, signing them up, getting everything finished up. And what I hear from people is, when's the next one? You know, what, what do you have next? Because I want to be able to do this more. And so I think, too, there's value there. There's a lot of people out there. So if I'm wanting to do real estate more full time, or really get into it and turn it into a big thing, there's a lot of people out there that have some money that they want to put with the right person. But to your point, you've also got to demonstrate you're the right person. Now, for me, it's, I've been in real estate for a long time. I've worked with investors, I've helped them, and so it's taken time to get there. But when you get there, people are willing to trust you if you continue to show that you can be trusted. And so that future is there. And I think I always tell people, you just gotta scrap and claw and find your way to get started. And to your point, yeah, the, the 22 year old Jim, you just gotta find a way to get in and get some experience, and then you'll be able to build off of that, because what 22 year old Jim did isn't the same as what 32 year old Jim did, you were continuing to be able to grow off of that.
Jim Manning
And I tell you what, like, Mike, I love your points here. So think about the story of just Jim. I'm the same person, right. 22 year old Jim, no experience, not much of a story for someone to invest with, right? 32 year old Jim, we've done 400 flips at that point, something like that, quite a bit. 100% success rate of paying our, our money partners at that point, think about how much better of a story that is. And then 40 year old Jim, you know, we just started bringing on equity partners 18 months ago. We had never, we had only been to our own equity partners. Uh, but, you know, 130 partners, 120 properties, and, and the current fund we're working on, that's about to close out, um, 100% success rate on $250 million lent. With our, our team. The story gets better. So you say, okay, well, how do I start? Well, when I was 22, what I did was I found the right mentor, I found the right who, and I didn't say, hey, let me be a partner. And just, what can you give? I didn't say, what can you give me? I said, what can I give him? And so I found my now business partner, and I said, hey, here's the deal. You've been doing deals already. You know what you're doing. Keep doing your deals on your own. I don't want a penny of them. I'm going to lead, generate, and I'm going to get us some opportunities. And when I do, will you partner with me on these deals and we'll split it 50 50. And I'm going to make you money. I'm going to make a lot less, but I'm going to provide value to you. I'm going to give you something of value, and then I'm going to learn the business with this experienced person. So, so that's what I did. Uh, and then, and then now, but then when I got to the five deals, now I have a story to then kind of, kind of keep it rolling. And then as the story gets better, you get more investable and more good things can, can happen. And that's, you know, like, don't judge yourself based on one year of thing. You know, like, if you're going to really, truly do this, put a decade in, and if you're trying to figure out, like, if you're a high income earner already, like, should I do this investing thing? Uh, there's a couple. It's, it's kind of a complex question, because it depends. So, like, let's say you're a doctor and you love what you do, and you've been training and working in a medical field for over ten years. If you say Jim, if you ask the question, Jim, what's my path to my highest net worth over the course of my lifetime? My 100% of the time answer is work. You know, just create a surplus. Invest that surplus into passive mechanisms like syndication deals with Mike real estate. I have real estate funds, like real estate funds with, with me, or other structures like that allow real estate and experts, real estate professionals, to do the real estate end. And if you want to get there faster, well, use what you're professionally trained for and work some overtime. You know, a doctor that's an oral surgeon, crack a couple extra sets of teeth, you know, make a couple a little bit extra, and then pour that into the actually passive mechanism. Because real estate, it. Passive income and real estate is true, and it's a lie at the same time. Okay? The lie of it is if you buy the property yourself, and then, oh, I get a property manager and I get it all set up. If you own that property yourself, it's a. You're starting a new business, for one. Don't be in denial about that. I promise you this. You are starting a new business as a landlord, even if you're buying one property, and then all the problems will come to you. Like if the second, if a property manager stops underperforming, guess who's going to have to fire the property manager. Guess who's going to have to hire a new one. Like, like the problems all fall back to you. So that's building a recurring revenue model, which, by the way, is a great model. You can make a lot of money building recurring revenue models. Right? So that's the lie part of passive income. Okay, it's really recurring revenue. But the truth of it is, is just because there's work involved to do it well, doesn't mean it has to be you doing the work. If you have Mike and his team doing it, or Jim and my team or somebody else's team doing it, they make it passive for you. So 100% of the time, if a doctor loves what the doctor is doing, still do it. But you say, okay, well, I'm a doctor. I train for it. I love real estate. I want to actively do it. I have a passion for this thing. At some point, I want to stop being a doctor. Okay, that's different. Okay. Absolutely. Like, start doing your own deals and everything like that. But just so you know, that's not a you playing the net worth and trying to make the highest net worth. That's you trying to switch professions and be a different profession because you don't like the one you're currently in. Uh, that's not you trying to maximize your long term net worth because, uh, it's awfully hard, uh, to start out as an investor and, and, and remotely get close to, uh, if you have a ten year career, ten years of experience in something else, it's going to take you ten extra years, uh, to kind of get to that level in the new industry. Right. And we only have so many decades, guys. There's not many of them.
Jim Manning
Yeah. So, so what's interesting is because I didn't have money, I was an active investor. We had our money partners, and that's allowed us to scale up. And now that I have my team doing, three of the businesses I've founded are running without me. The team does it. I check in like once a week, but my team's really doing it all on my end. Some of my, I have more than one business partner. They're, they're handling all of it. My companies I own are actively doing deals, but those are actually now passive income for me. It only took 16 years of working 60, 50 plus hours a week and, like, really hustling to do it. But the thing that's important to realize guys on this is. So I internship. My first job out of college was internshiping for a self made billionaire. And the internship was, I was labeling wine, and this guy had so much wealth that it took three guys two weeks to label this guy's private wine collection. At one point, I had $250,000 in my hands. So millions and millions of dollars of wine, right? And this was a while ago. This was 2006, so I don't know what the heck it'd be worth today. It's worth a heck of a lot more today. But anyway, at first, as a 22 year old, I was idolizing the guy. Like, man, I'm flying on this guy's private jet. I meet his supermodel girlfriend, like, in her late twenties. He's in his sixties. He's wider than he is tall. And I'm like, oh, my gosh. This guy. This is what it means. He was a self made guy. He started a business. I'm shaking this guy's hand. He's a guy just like I am. America's effing awesome. Like, this is what was going on in my head. Like, you know, if he can do it, why can't I do something like this? This is great. And then, so I learned all the upsides of being an entrepreneur and all the upsides of what America can, can do for us from a wealth perspective. But then, at the same time, as the second week rolled around and the onion peeled back, I realized, whoa, this guy's depressed. This guy's miserable. This guy is 100% unhappy. And I'm from a middle class family. Uh, parents are phenomenal. I'm so fortunate. Uh, and my, uh, I'm like, this guy's not nearly as happy as my parents are. And so, like, I really have a. That a belief in my. In my DNA now, and it's been a guiding principle of my life, is that I want to measure my success by what I gave up to get it. And if you're only. If you're working your tail off making that surplus and you want this financial freedom, because if I get this financial freedom, then my life will be perfect. I got news for you. When you get into that 1% of investors that become financially free, you still have problems. That doesn't change. I guess I just think about it different because of that experience. And I would rather, let's say we waved a magic wand and you said, hey, I could, in five years I could work my full time job. I could do all these deals and be perfect on all the investment, even though I have no experience, I'm going to be like a 20 year veteran. I'm going to know exactly how to do all sorts of profits on these deals. I'm going to maximize them and I'm going to be financially free in five years. But I'm going to have to say bye to my family. I'm going to have to work 100 hours a week to do it. But it's going to be worth it because five years from now, then I won't have to work another day of my life and everything will be perfect. Have you said that? Versus, hey, you're going to work a reasonable set of time. You know, you're going to work 40 hours a week, put in 5 hours of overtime, get extra money, take that surplus invested into passive structures like Mike's, like Mike's syndication deal. And 15 years later, not five, but 15 years later, then you'll be financially free and you won't have to work again. Ten out of ten times I take the 15 year play because then one, well, one, the five year thing is kind of like waving a magic wand and it's a little bit, it's assuming you're going to do everything correctly, which as a brand new investor. Others deals where youre probably going to break even on real estate investing is pretty safe. Theres a lot of people that have never lost money on deals. So im not saying youre going to like lose your shirt on it if you take the time to study it. But in the 15 year play, theres not the opportunity cost of losing everything. Like, oh, youre still a present dad, a present husband, present boyfriend or girlfriend or whatever, right? And theres that balance there. And I mean, dont get me wrong, I think it would be hypocritical, guys, if, if I told you, hey, I worked 40 hours a week to do what we've done. There's been seasons in my life where I've worked really hard and I've worked 50, 60 hours a week to do, to get up and to do what we did. And I guess what I've learned now is right now, this year, I'm working a little bit harder than, I'm working more hours than I did last year. But I sat down my wife and I said, hey, here's the deal. I'm going to, I'm going to do a little bit more at night than I normally do I'm not going to miss one of my kids supporting things. We're going to, we're going to do all of that. I need you, I'm going to need you to pick up the slack a little bit more. But, and here's why. Because of this, because of what's going on with us and, and where we're at. And she's cool with it. She's excited about it. She's like, like we're just on this wild ride on, on where the business is at and it's super fun. And I'm going to be home for dinner. I'm going to put my kids to bed the majority of the time. And, and, you know, I'm going to find a way to, to do both and not lose everything so that one day I can say that I was a billionaire, too.
Mike Swenson
It's just about building something sustainable where you don't leave a path of collateral damage along the way. You know, I always hear people talk about some things in life are rubber balls, where if you bounce them, they bounce back. And some things are glass balls, where if you drop them, they shatter. And so being able to take your career path and do what you want to do and hit your financial goals while still keeping those glass balls intact is really important for, for me as well.
Jim Manning
So, yeah, and I have a, I have a friend, we had coffee a couple of weeks ago, and one of his friends is, uh, and this guy's ultra successful, but his friends, even bigger, more successful than he is. And, and he said, yeah, my friends worth, I think he said 150 million, it doesn't really matter. I mean, 100 million, 150 million doesn't really matter. But, you know, he's worth over $100 million. And he said, we were at lunch, he was tearing up when he told me that because of the problems that his kids and, like, the issues he's dealing with, his core family, he would write a check for 100% of his net worth to have the problems that he's dealing with now go away.
Mike Swenson
Wow.
Jim Manning
Like, not kidding. You know, it's just, I guess it's about just keeping the main things, the main things, you know, that's so easy to get busy, it's so easy to chase these things that, you know, it sounds amazing to be financially free and it is amazing, but it's not worth everything. It's not worth losing your family over.
Mike Swenson
And at the same time, so kind of summing up here, being able to go through life and hopefully dictate a little bit more of doing it on your terms by investing in real estate seems to be a, for me, at least a more predictable path than working a job and doing it on other people's terms. And even if you have a job, there's nothing wrong with w two jobs. Can you find a way, like you said, to put those little extra slivers of time or money to be able to then put some things that are more within your control? And that's why real estate's so great, is, yeah, you can passively invest. That's why there's great passive opportunities. So you can still work those jobs that you love if you want to do that, if you don't ever want to be an entrepreneur and, and quit your job and do it all on your own, because that's hard, too. I'm, I, I go through that.
Jim Manning
Right?
Mike Swenson
Like, that's a challenge. But you can find a way to kind of marry those two together and, and build something that can last through your retirement. So.
Jim Manning
That's right. And, and, you know, and if you're in the boat that, like, I was in, where it's like, well, man, I need to work a full time job and you start doing, investing, you know, just, just take the time to think through, like, the seasons, tas will expand for the amount of time you have and give yourself like a deadline. Like, okay, I'm going to do this sprint for twelve months. Uh, I need my girlfriend or my wife or whomever it is, you know, I need to talk to them, say, hey, I'm, I'm willing to sacrifice this short, this short term. I have to do it by 426 to 25. Are you in on this? Can you help me with this? You know, it's like, I'm not, I mean, effort and work is really important. So, like, I don't want to like, discount that. I don't want to like, be a guy up here saying, oh, it's so easy. And what I went through to get to where I am was just a cakewalk. No, it was really hard, guys, I'm not going to sugarcoat that, but there's still ways to, there's ways to do it without losing everything. And, man, I feel like this shouldn't be a Debbie downer because we're in America. Financial freedom is possible. There's a lot of people that are financially free. I mean, if I can go down the path as a 22 year old, I knew nothing professionally. You guys can too. There's no reason why you can't just, just, I guess I'm just trying to say think about it a little bit and keep it in perspective. Don't just, don't just be like an animal. That's like, you know, like the difference between us and animals, if you think about it, is that we can pause between a stimulus and a response. If a loud noise happens and, you know, a bird's going to like, hear the loud noise and fly away. Like, we as humans have the ability to have a stimulus and then think about it and pause and reflect and should I do that or not? You know, and if you just get into like action mode and you're not thinking about what all the downside is and like, and like sifting through it, you know, like you can create problems that you, that you don't want to, that you don't want to create. So I hope, guys, it's been valuable for you. I do my best to provide value every, every time I get a chance to be on a great podcast like yours.
Mike Swenson
So this has been good. It's all the stuff that hopefully is rattling around in people's heads that they're thinking about. And hopefully hearing your take on this will get folks to take some action on some things that they haven't take action on and maybe ramp up things a little bit more. Jim, for people that want to kind of reach out to you, learn more about what you're doing. How can they do that?
Jim Manning
Evan? So I mentioned that it took one deal in my 1st 18 months and one of the biggest hurdles with that was I was too scared to talk to anyone. Okay. And so now what I do when I have a problem that I face is I don't ask myself how I can do it. I don't first try and find a course or study it. I try and ask myself who knows the answer to it. So the best gift I can give anyone listening is the opportunity to talk to myself and my team. So if you go to Jim Manning, we can help you if you want to just talk to us. I can give you insight on passive investing. We have a lease purchase strategy that has generated over 10 million and uh, that and a debt strategy of generated over $10 million in passive income over the last couple of years. You know, we can kind of help you with that. Think through. Hey, should I actively invest? Should I passively invest? If you want to make more money on a rental property, we can help you turn into a lease purchase deal is what it's called. So anyway, if you want to talk to our, talk to one of our team members. Happy to do that. And then I have a, I do have a free course that's worth $5,000 on the passive strategies that we've done and honing your skills on passive investing, all that's for you guys. I just want to help. This whole thing, like with you mentioned the story about my friend being afraid of running out of money. This is like a legacy thing for me, guys. This is trying to help people with time and treasure. And we don't have to. We're good. I don't have to do another real estate deal. I want to because it's fun and I like building passive wealth. But I really want to help you guys listen out. And if I can speed you along and help you get out of that 90% that never do, it failed to launch and all that, I want to do that while we have the, while we can. So go to Jim Manning. Remember my name. Jim Manning. And you know, if you sign up for a call, we'll give you the $5000 course for free. And that's what we're doing right now, you know, trying to help so.
Mike Swenson
Well, thank you so much, Jim, for coming on and sharing your story. We really appreciate it and best of luck as you continue to help others in the future.
