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And again, keep that in mind like what does it profit a man to gain the whole world? But to lose his soul? Like what does it profit you to gain all that but to lose your family, lose your wife lose your life? You know, I've talked to so many people that they just they don't they're not even enjoying life anymore. And yeah, they've got tons of money, but they're hopeless, right. And so I think keeping that in line is true wealth. Welcome to the action Academy podcast staring back while I celebrate freedom, the show where we help you achieve financial independence with a mindset methods and actionable steps from guests who've already earned their freedom, the freedom to choose to do what you want, what you want, with who you want, who you want, when you want when you want with another episode today. Now, here's your host, Brian Luebben. Hello, for the first time are welcome back to another episode of the action Academy podcast. I'm your host, Brian Luebben bring you in the mindset, the methods, and the actionable steps for you to achieve freedom in your life today. This week has a very, very special guest who's accomplished a lot in business. And he actually started at a young age. So today's guest is Mike Ayala. He's one of my good friends. And he actually started his first company around the age of 21. He got married at age 20, and had his first child at 21. So while he was building his business, he was also doing this at the age that a lot of us are in college. And by 24, he had 100 employees in his construction company. And he was doing a billion dollars in deals through this construction company. So imagine being 24, having a wife having multiple children, and 100 employees at the same time while you're still trying to figure this thing called life out. And somehow Mike was able to do that. And he was able to do it well, to where he kept all of his relationships intact. He kept all of his life balance. And then he was still able to be a massive, massive success in business, while he was also a massive success as a father, as a husband and as a friend. So I think this is something that's very important to teach, because this helps one person do business and build their business the right way and avoids having someone have a regret to where they're looking back on their journey. And then they're like, oh, man, I wish I would have spent more time doing this or doing that. If we can save one person from that what today's episode, that is a success. As always, if you're enjoying the show, please, please help us grow. It's all with you guys. It's all word of mouth. So if you could please leave us a rating and review on Apple podcast, share this on Instagram, follow us at action Academy podcast on Instagram, or just send this to a friend, it would be greatly appreciated, and it helps us grow and helps us get this message out. So that's all I've got. I hope you have a great freakin day if you're in the car this morning for work and hope this inspires you. And let's get to it. Mike Ayala, our Brian Luebben I'm great brother, how are you? I am doing fantastic. Because right now things are going decently well, in my business. And I know, that's not always the case, which I know that we want to keep some of the details of your story that you just shared off camera with me private. But I think that'd be funny to share as just an example about how wacky businesses can become. Yeah. So you had a lawyer that you were in the middle of doing all this different stuff with and then all of a sudden, what happens to the lawyer. He decides he wants to go on a sabbatical for two years and become a Tibetan monk. A Tibetan monk? Yeah. So, Mike, I'm curious to know at what, what business book, what seminar did you go to that prepared you for that? None? None. Like I Yeah, right. It's, you know, that old phrase, life is happening for me and not to me, that that's the only that's the only thing that exists when there's a situation like this, you just have to, you just have to realize that some things are out of your control, and you know what, it's gonna be fine. Everything's gonna be fine. I think that's an excellent, excellent point to start on is kind of the unpredictability of business and how it's not in if something's gonna go wrong, but it's a when is something gonna go wrong? And I really like to take you down that rabbit hole really quickly because I just loved the Tony Robbins event. And he said that it was like, Hey, I'm up here on stage in front of all of you. This is a significant time commitment for me to be Here, I have a 10,000 employees, what do you think is the chance that one of them is effing something up? Astronomically badly right now, he's like 100%. So he's like, if I were to deal with all of that, and have that occupy my mental space, I wouldn't be able to get anything done. And I feel like that's a lot of solopreneurs. And people that are beginning their businesses that are in the idea stage, and maybe early into the we do stage when they get punched by business as a default, they don't really know how to pivot and get back up. So can you maybe share some actionable advice or stories about how, whenever you're at trial lawyer becomes a monk, or something that happens, like how do you kind of get up and just roll with the punches, because that's how you keep longevity as a business and as a business owner? Well, so before I jump into that, and really talk about the how I want to maybe just give a little perspective, as I'm hearing that, because one of the things that I think is inherent to human nature, is to think that nobody will ever do it as good as us or, you know, our ego gets in the way, there's an entire book on this, I think Ryan Holiday wrote it called Ego is the Enemy. But at the end of the day, we think that we're doing it so much better. And when one of our employees makes a mistake, or they do things, you know, maybe not the way that we would do it. That though, the chances of us making that same mistake, are pretty high, especially when it comes to, you know, something that was unintentional, or isn't around the lack of training, because we make mistakes all the time. But the thing about it is, is easier to point out somebody else's downfall than it is our own. And so as entrepreneurs, you know, when we really, if we really look backwards, and we look at, you know, the mistakes that we made early on in our business early on, in our investing careers, we hold other people to a higher standard, then sometimes we may ourselves, because at the end of the day, when I make mistakes, I see it, I acknowledge it, I didn't I fix it, when somebody else makes a mistake, I see it, I acknowledge it, I jump in and fix it. So that's the real challenge with entrepreneurship is it's always our responsibility to fix the problem. And at the end of the day, if you don't like fixing other people's mistakes or stepping in for other people, then you should just remain a solo entrepreneur, and I have this conversation with so many people, you know, nobody will ever do it as good as us. Nobody will ever do it the way that I want. Well, that's true. And I remember even my first business partner, the reason we were actually great partners, but the reason why he ended up buying me out was because I knew we were never going to scale to the point that we needed to in order for me to live the life that I wanted, because I remember actually working with him in the field at one point in time, and I remember telling him, you know, everybody's dumber than me, that's that was like his kind of that was the way that he kind of like portrayed himself and what he what, so he was much more experienced in the field than I was, he had, like 20 years more experience than I did. And we tend to forget, and this is a lesson on both sides, we tend to forget how much we've actually learned. And we think that what's second nature to us should just be easy and obvious for everybody else. And that's just not true. And so we hold other people to a standard, you know, if somebody's been doing something for a year or two years or five years, and you've been doing it for 25, they're gonna make mistakes, they're, they're not going to be as good at their craft as you are. And I'll say one last thing, and then I'll button it up. Um, there was an old phrase that I remember somebody telling my ex business partner, and he's like, Well, you know, we put all this time and money and energy into training our employees, and then they just leave. And the the coach that we were working with said, and I've heard this a couple times since then, in different ways. The coach said, he said, Well, what if you didn't train your employees and they stay? That's like a worse outcome, right? Because around it is like, really, and even when it comes back to employees making mistakes, or you know, Tony Robbins, talking about the 10? Yeah, the odds are pretty good if you have even 100 employees that somebody is going to screw up this week, and things are going to go wrong. And it's just that's where the emotional intelligence comes in. And really, I think, you know, kind of going out to like, Is this really going to affect me a week from now a month from now a year from now? Is it something that's really going to drastically affect my life or change my life? Probably not. Exactly. And to two points I want to draw out from what you just said, that stood out to me, and I think will be applicable for people that are listening to this is first you said that your partner had all of this experience and all this infield experience. And they kind of operated and move through rooms in an attitude and an atmosphere of I know it all, and everyone else needs to get up to my level. And I feel like that's a dangerous place to play from. Because the moment that you think that you know it all and you stop taking other people's feedback and opinions into account. That's the point where you start slipping backwards. And then another point that you set out that really stood out to me, was that when you do You have that it's almost like you have, like unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, then conscious competence and then unconscious competence to where you're so good at something that it's really difficult for you to articulate. I feel like from your story from a lot of people that speak with that the articulation of systems and processes is almost as valuable as the information itself. Would you agree with that? I would agree with that. And you'll find, I mean, at least I haven't done studies on this, obviously. But I think, I think the more intuitive, the more natural, somebody is at their craft, whatever that is leadership management, whatever it is, the harder it is for them to break down that process as well and recreate that right. And especially as busy entrepreneurs, the last thing that we want to do is stop and create a training manual or, you know, dissect how I do what I do, I don't know, I've just been doing it for this long. It's really challenging. It's challenging. Absolutely. So as we go, as we go into that, I wanted to start the show kind of at this level, so that we can go ahead and jump into the wild waters of entrepreneurship and business ownership. Because there's Matty a, Matt Hsn. For those listening, he's got another podcast, it's called The Millionaire Mind cast, he's a friend with of Mike in mind. And he he has this phrase where he says wealth is created in the crock pot is like, you don't want to have microwave money, you don't want to have that. You don't want to have that wealth that you just throw into the microwave. And it's just a quick pop, you know, maybe you get lucky on Bitcoin, maybe you have that stock pic that just takes you up into the six, seven figures is that you want that wealth, that is slow, it takes time to materialize, and it's simmering, and it's baking. And then that's what's gonna last two generations. And the one of the main reasons I wanted to have you on the show is I feel like, not only have you gone about this from a young age, where you materialized well, from the very beginning, and kind of personified these concepts, but then you also are able to really, really articulate that to people to that point. So I'd really like to go into your story about how when you were young, and you had a family, like you and Cara were even Karen were married. And you're like 2021 Yeah, I was 20. She was 19. And you had kids like right out the gate, right? Yeah, one year later, almost to the day, Dylan shows up. Oh, my God. So yeah, so for you, you were almost crafted out of necessity, to put bumpers on your life to make sure that you could be a father to make sure that you can be a husband, while you're being a business owner. So I really want to let you loose here and talk about the concept of wealth in kind of your entire life, and then how to go best about materializing it in the correct way. And if you could go back, if there's any way that you would have done that a little bit differently, that you can share with people today that are in the beginning or medium part of their journey. I remember reading a scripture. When Ken and I were younger, we we went to church a lot. And I remember hearing or reading the scripture that says what does it profit a man to gain the whole world but to lose his soul? And it really, you know, it anchored something in me at that point in time that, you know, Karen, I've often said this like, and I think I've shared this with you before, but obviously not your audience. I grew up with an absent father. He was in and out of my life. He was a drug addict, he was abusive. Most of my memories are like him being gone, which as a little kid, you don't I mean, maybe he's working, I don't know. But then every time he'd come home, like it was just weird. I could tell that, you know, basically, he was on and off and who knows what he was doing. But those negative things in life also give us a mirror of what we don't want. So then you fast forward, Karen, I made a conscious decision. And, you know, we said that we wanted to make memories over Possessions. We were going to be intentional about travel and being with our children, and making sure that you know, we're there for him and we had dinners together. And I can honestly say that, you know, short of games and you know, bass basketball games, football games, whatever the kids were playing motorcross I mean, short of any of that kind of stuff. Like we had dinner together almost every single night. And it's just this fabric of tight knit relationships. That's what I think is missing. And so the question was around wealth and I kind of, you know, derailed and detoured a little bit but what does it profit a man to gain the whole world but to lose his soul? And so Karen, I had a little different we we've often said this, like we wanted to make memories over possessions, but what we realized quickly that you can have both. So you can have a life of business, you can have a great business, you can have great employees, you can have a great investments, and have your family. And if there was one thing that I'm super proud of, you know, my oldest is 21, my middle son's 19, my daughter is going to be 18 Actually Saturday. And I can honestly say that, like, I'm super proud of, you know, the humans that we've grown and cultivated, and did I spend enough time with them? No, you're never gonna spend enough time with them. But you know, we have had successful businesses, multiple ways, many businesses, and we have had a great investment. And my kids have seen the world. I remember when my kids were little. We were traveling around Greece and Turkey, and, you know, seeing all the ruins and we went to where the first Olympics were, and all this stuff. And this is what the kids would say, do we have to go look at more rocks today? You know, that's have kids. And so, you know, I think the mindset of button this up with this? What does it profit a man to gain the whole world but to lose his soul? And so I would just challenge your audience to really think about, you know, what does life by design look like to be intentional about that, because there's always more money, there's always another business to start, there's always another investment to have, there's always another car to buy, there's always more money to make. And you and I were talking about this yesterday, there's never been a year where I made less than I did the year before, you're always gonna make more money if you just keep life aligned. And again, keep that in mind. Like, what does it profit a man to gain the whole world? But to lose his soul? Like, what does it profit you to gain all that but to lose your family, lose your wife lose your life, you know, I've talked to so many people that they just they don't, they're not even enjoying life anymore. And yeah, they've got tons of money, but they're hopeless, right. And so I think keeping that in line is true wealth. And as long as you are living the life by design that you want, the number is somewhat irrelevant, as long as it's providing the lifestyle that you want. Yeah. And then, in the book, the one thing, they speak about the juggling act with all the different balls, and they said that some of your balls, some of the balls are made of rubber, and some of them are glass. And as you're juggling, and you're doing this juggling act of life, you have your balls flying through the air of family, faith, values, relationships, principles, business and money. And some of these, if you drop them, most of these balls are made of glass. So like your family, your values, your relationships, if you drop those balls in that juggling act, they're gonna shatter on the floor, you're not going to be able to like best case scenario, they get fractured, and there's always going to be a little bit of a fracture there. But money and business are rubber balls, and they'll bounce back. And I always really liked that analogy to be able to kind of put a visual to it. Something that you said there to kind of go into the business realm because I wanted to hit on that because I think it's important in all of these episodes to kind of help people go from I feel like there's kind of like this character arc by entrepreneurs in general, where it's you go, you work your ass off, you get everything that you ever wanted. And then at the end of it, you go back and you're like, oh, man, that last 20 years, I just worked my ass off. And I wish I would have spent more time doing other stuff and other areas of my life. I'm like, if we can spend the first half of these conversations like this one today. And people are listening to this. And they're like, oh, okay, let me be intentional about this lifestyle design while I'm building my empire, that maybe they won't have those regrets. And if we can prevent one or two regrets, then that's a huge win for this entire show. And for everything that we're doing. So a question I have for you are, what are some bumpers that you had in place growing up, and throughout this journey? If you can think of maybe three to five bumpers off the top of your head that you had, that were levers that you could pull when things were getting to off kilter? Where maybe you're maybe one of those balls was starting to drop your family, your faith, your values, maybe your health was failing? What are some bumpers entrepreneurs can use to keep them online, in alignment with everything because I know that we're gonna go off kilter from time to time? Sure. Again, I think the first thing is getting and I know this sounds really simple, but the number one thing is, and you quoted the one thing but keep the one thing the one thing like tighten your your largest bumper is like, you know, what's the outcome? What's the intended outcome here and for me, and it's interesting, because we're closing a chapter I said this already, but my daughter being, you know, 18 this weekend, Karen, I knew that we had like a 20 year commitment, and I'm working harder and more right now than I have. Honestly in 20 years. Kara was just saying this because that was like my one bumpers keeping that always first and I'll tell you a quick story. If you don't create these bumpers, and keep things in line that like you're talking about, so really the bumpers are just values, their boundaries are things that you say I'm not going to cross, right. And there's, there's really two times where I let my business take a form of control over me. And the first time was probably 2005, maybe 2006. The business was growing. We probably had 3540 employees by this time, three years in. And we had so much work, Brian, that our guys were working seven days a week, I was working a lot. And it was Kara it was my wife's grandparents 50th wedding anniversary in Wyoming, we lived in Nevada. And she's like, Hey, you know, we got to go to the the anniversary. And so, I, I'm like, Kay, I'm taking time off. I told my partner I'm leaving. He's like, You can't leave we have too much work going on. And this was like we had a bank going on. We had a Home Depot construction job going on, we had all kinds of service work. And these are jobs where like, if you don't meet deadlines, like they're charging you$10,000 A day like, you know, all all these. So I'm like, I'm going like, I'm gonna go to the 50th wedding anniversary. It's only five days, I'll be gone Wednesday through Sunday. I'll be back. I leave. Long story short, go go to the her parents ranch they have like no service. So I'd go into town and check my voicemails. And there's like 42 messages. Oh, yeah, it just like nonstop craziness. And so I decided that Saturday morning after So Friday night was the anniversary party Saturday morning, my wife was gonna drive me over to Rapid City and I took a plane and I went back home and I left my family in Wyoming. And, you know, two days later Sunday night, they're coming home. And they're like an hour and a half from home. And Kara's sisters driving the car. And something happens, they look they lose control the car, go off the road roll like three times going 85 miles an hour. You know, and I'm not saying that. Life does any of that to us. But here's the thing that I know for sure, I can guarantee you that had I stayed with my family and drove home, that accident wouldn't have happened. Because I would have been driving I always drove and it just wouldn't have happened. And so that was one of those times where you know, you talk about bumpers, if you don't create the bumpers in life, and, and there was only a couple times that I got out of balance on that. But life will happen if you don't keep track of that. So you know, one of the bumpers was always like keep family first, even above the business. Communicate, I think this is another important bumper. So you are everybody is going to go through seasons of time where you're busier than others. And you're going to have weekends where you have to work and you're going to have, you know, two or three weeks where you got a big project do or whatever communicate. Make sure that the kids understand make sure that your partner understands make sure that your husband wife understands that, hey, look, the next three weeks are going to be really busy for me. And I just want you to know young kids or partner that I want you to know ahead of time because I don't want you to feel like you know, I'm abandoning you, but I need you to know that I'm in a really stressful busy time. If you communicate that upfront, it's not going to be an issue. So other bumpers. You know, I try to and I know we all do this, but you know, really just trying to keep people first, I've often said this, on the other side of everything you need in life as a human, there is nothing that we actually truly need in life that doesn't involve a human I mean, other than like water and food and sustenance, right, but but even that, like the majority of our food nowadays, well, even water, like we don't have water without a human. So every I think we have to be more intentional about our relationships with humans, because and how we interact and how we, you know, treat people, I'll be honest, when it comes to customer service, I'm a customer service Nazi in my businesses. So when when I see you know, when I'm at Nordstrom or whatever, and I'm getting poor customer service, I used to just flip out man, like, because I was just so inherently business, but you know, on the other side of that is a human and so I've as I've gotten older, I've calmed down a lot. So, you know, I just think keeping the values first and, and again, I started with this, but I think the simple thing is like, what do you really want out of life? What are your real core values, and those are your bumpers and keep everything else, wealth will come success will come? I've said this so many times. Like I mean, honestly, this is the truth. I don't think I probably told you this. But until I joined go abundance, every time I would do a credit application. Every time I'd have to sign on a loan guarantee or whatever I'd have to call care and be like, Hey, how much money did I make last year? I'm not money driven. I'm results driven. And if you do the right things in life and you're a good human, then the money, the wealth, all of that is just a byproduct of good living. And I think that's funny because in the beginning when you first kind of get introduced to all of you guys, you'd be like, Oh yeah, must be easy for you to Say like you're killing it, you know. But then now that I'm in your world, see that to be true, more and more to where, as we're talking about value. And in the back half of this, that we can kind of go into the actual like, nuts and bolts, and we can get some some decimal points here in the backend. But to tie all this up with a bow that we're speaking on, it's as, as we're continuing these conversations, and I have the privilege to be able to have your friendship and others like you. Time, when we speak about value, it's like you have money, and then you have time above that. And as I'm going on, and in this journey, I'm starting to think that there may be something that's above time. And for me, it's to what you just said, it's relationships, because that's why I want my time is to be able to pursue the relationships, and be able to do what I want with those people. Because if I'm, I don't know about you, but if I'm galavanting, around the world, and I'm flying first class and a private jet, and I'm going to Egypt, and Turkey, and Mykonos, and all these different places, and I'm doing it by myself, I don't feel that that's going to be that rewarding, you know, because it's all about your family. It's all about your friends and your relationships. So I think that's a great place to tie that up with a bow when we're talking about that. So greatly appreciate you sharing some practical advice on that. That was that was very much appreciated. Yeah, man, happy to do it. So to go into this back back into the interview, we talked about some bumpers that you can place, we talked about the values and the ideas and concepts about how to have whole life wealth. And now I feel like we would be remiss in not talking about the actual business end of it. And I want to kick this off with your quote that you told us when we were in Steamboat golfing, and can you please share that quote with everyone about businesses, liquidity and assets? Yeah, so businesses. And by the way, this could apply to Hi, or this could apply to your W two job, too. I think a lot of times we're on this race, you know, even to escape our W two job. And I think sometimes people eject too soon. So businesses, wt, whatever the goal is liquidity. So I often say businesses create liquidity, or cash, cash flow, money. Businesses create liquidity, we take that liquidity and we invest it into assets, real estate, other businesses, anything that's an asset. And then assets create wealth. And the way the reason why I started saying that, when I look backwards, Brian, I, I started a business at the age of 24. I left my w two job with a partner started a business. And then two years later, I was coaching with a consulting company, because I didn't know what the hell I was doing. 24 years old, have probably 25 employees doing probably $2 million a year, maybe three at that point. I hired a consulting company, and it was we did this. We did two, three days of business planning and the entire first day was all around, like your personal goals. What do you want out of life? What is life by design look like, which again, was probably one of my, you know, bumpers, I've been very intentional about life by design. But then I can see these, you know, milestones where people were also pushing me further through it. So the company was called BDR. And my head coach was doing a presentation from stage on the first day and he made this comment. He said, If your business isn't helping you achieve your personal goals, you really just own a job, you bought yourself a job. And that stuck me between the eyes because I own a business now. And yeah, I'm making good money. But the reality is like I'm on this kind of treadmill, right in my mind. And so Karen, I set a goal of two income producing properties a year for 10 years. That was like our stretch goal. And I was probably 25 or 26, at this point in time. And my thinking was, Brian, if I bought two income producing properties a year for 10 years, then I'd be at 20 units, you know, 10 years down the road. And then 35 years later, I'd have the last one paid off, or 30 years later, 40 years from when I started because I was thinking, you know, just having a traditional right at, huh? Yeah, really, it's accelerated a lot. So that's where the mindset comes in. And so if you think about that, the first year, I got to two deals done. And then the second, the second year of 72, space mobile home park, fell in my lap, and I got that deal done. But I say all that to say that, like if it hadn't been for my business, I'm not saying you can't do it. But if it hadn't been for my business, creating all of that liquidity that we could then take and invest in assets. And by the way, my business also was a plumbing and HVAC company, and then we had a construction division. And then we ended up buying a cabinet shop and so not only did my business create liquidity for me I could invest in real estate, I also had resources within the business that when the guys were slow, you know, we could go work on our homes and all that kind of stuff. And so this is where the principal came in businesses create liquidity, you take the liquidity and put it into assets. And then assets create wealth. And here's where the problem is. And I don't know, maybe some of your audience falls into this. What happens is that most people start thinking about real estate investing as passive income, which is true, that's what I did originally. But then they quit their jobs. And now all of a sudden, it's no longer passive. It's just another business. Real estate investing is either passive, or it's a business. And a lot of times people think that they're moving towards something passive, they start eating, I love the richest man in Babylon. And there's a, I listened to it on audio over and over, I probably listened to it at least 120 times, there's a line in there where our CAD says, You fool, you do eat the children or the fruit of the labor. And that's what happens. A lot of times when people move too quickly from their W two, or from their business into passive real estate, is now you're eating your wealth. And so there's a big difference between we call it and go abundance, vertical income versus horizontal income. I want a lot of horizontal income, but I also want a shit ton of vertical income. And so I think we'll just have to be really careful around that because wealth, wealth is built in assets. And that's what Maddie is talking about slow money, right? That those assets are slow money, the faster money and I know, this isn't what he was saying. But making money on your W two earning more money, making more commissions or figuring out how to boost your business and your business is an asset too. But you can easily if you if you hunker down, Karen, I run a couple's mastermind, and we asked the couples when we were in Mexico a couple months ago, I asked the guys were sitting around the pool, having margaritas after day efficient. And I asked the guys I said, Hey, if I won't challenge you guys with something, if you needed to make an extra $500,000 in the next six months, how would you do it? And it was a great exercise because it had nothing to do with slow money. But it had everything to do with challenging them to create more vertical income. Right. And so anyway, that was a long winded answer to businesses create liquidity, liquidity we taken invest in assets, and then assets create wealth. What were some of the answers to the 500? I think I'm curious. You know, a lot of so just for a little bit of context. I mean, these guys are, you know, the couple's mastermind is a basically a $45,000 price point. So yeah, guys are high performing. They're successful. And a lot of them though. They didn't talk, none of them talked about, you know, boosting their business a little bit more, they talked about, you know, creating a course or it was those kinds of conversations around. You know, I think a lot of times we and this goes back to what we were talking about early on being, you know, 20 years into something, you don't realize how valuable what you have in your head is. And so, you know, starting a podcast, creating an affiliate model, creating courses, those were the kind of conversations that these guys were having one of them's a really successful home flipper and a real estate agent. And he's like, I would do a course and teach people how to flip houses, right. And when you start doing the math backwards, it's pretty easy. Yeah, and it's, it's funny, because it's like, even even I had the limiting belief that I wouldn't be able to produce this. But I have any kind of value to offer. But we both thought that that's not the case. And now this is taking off. And it's super fun. And I'd see that in my future as well. And so it's, it's, it's very interesting. It's very interesting to see how things kind of materialize. And then also, it's like, I was as soon as you said, I was thinking, like, Okay, how would I do that? How would I try to produce 500,000 In six months, and the first thought that popped into my head was get into the room with people that know how to do that. Yeah, that was instantly the first thought so it all circles back to relationships. Yeah, as always, everything comes back to yeah, there's a there's a human on the other side of that transaction. Right. Exactly. Um, so I think that you spoke about this before, or may have been somebody else but it was all reference a reference my coach Jason Drees just for just to put a name to a bath, but like me, and you had this conversation before as well, where he was talking about how getting to 100,000 200,000 as an employee is very, very difficult. Your first 100,001st 200,000 is the most difficult part to get to. And then after, after you hit about 250, you kind of float to five and then from five to a million plus is all about scale and leverage. And he said that's the sticking point where people can't really get to that get to that point and figure out the scale to it in their business and then they end up just working their business instead of on their business? Is that something? Can we go down this rabbit hole real quick and then maybe give some advice about people that are in that kind of area? Because I think it was also Daniel Ramsey, I did an episode with him. And he was talking about how it's like 96% of small businesses are less than a million dollars in revenue. And I think it's because of the same thing. So can you maybe talk about building out systems, processes and team and how to hire right to be able to make that scale jump to be able to get to that million? Because as soon as you get there, I feel like it kind of just ballooned from there. Am I completely off base? Feel free to correct me? No, no, I don't think you're off base at all. In fact, before you ask the question, I was thinking we were talking and you know, the, how would you make an extra 500,000 In six months, like people don't think about stuff like that. And the thought that popped in my head, as we were, you know, transitioning, when you think about an employee that's making $25 an hour. And you think about the kind of questions that they're asking each other. And so environment. Number one, I think is the most important thing, like what kind of conversations are we having, because we are created, we are designed to create, we're creators at our core. I mean, Morgan Housel, said this, he wrote the psychology of money, he spoke at the event, and then I ended up buying a 90 minute call with him. And Karen, I had a call with Morgan. And he said, you know, things that have never happened before happen all the time. And it's true in the sense, you know, from different perspectives, too. But people create things all the time, too, that nobody had ever created before. And so I think the big difference, so back to the employee with somebody who's making $25 an hour, and you ask them the question, hey, how would you make an extra$500,000? In six months, they're gonna go till, because they're not even making 100 grand a year, like they can't. It's, it's becoming another version of you. And so how do you become another version of you, you get around people that are inspiring, that are challenging you, you just watch it? Like, oh, my god, he just did that. And then there's a, there's a level of confidence that's built number one. But number two, it expands your mind and your thinking around it. And so bringing it back to the question, it isn't about, you know, getting through 100,000 is challenging. And the reason why is because we're in this period of time, where we're trading our time for money, right? Anybody who's making $100,000 is probably directly trading their time for money. And what we're thinking about is, if I want to go from 100,000 to 200,000, what do I have to do? I either have to work twice as many hours. Or I have to figure out how to make twice as much money for the hours that I'm working, right. It's simple math. And most people go till they're because life is actually really simple. I've said this so many times, like, if, if I if you asked me like what my superpower is, I can make competent, complex things simple. Like, I'll be sitting in meetings with my team looking around. And they're like, they're like debating and arguing and trying to figure out these problems. And like, 15 minutes later, I'm like, Guys, what, like, what's the real core issue here. And when you come down, like, when you really come down to it, there's just one or two things that need to happen to that person that's trying to go from 100,000 to 200,000. They're thinking about trading their time for money, we have to make the shift to creation, once we get into creation mode. So we either have to create more time, how do we create more time we hire somebody else that can give us it's multiplication. It's leverage, right? I've heard this. So many times recently, I've been pondering this for the last year, as real estate investors. And you know, I don't know maybe some of your audiences, you know, aspiring to be real estate investors. It's really easy. Alright, let's say you want to make let's say you have $100,000. And you're going to invest $100,000 into a piece of property, what's a good return that you'd be happy getting on that? Well, for me, it'd be like a 12% cash on cash would be. So you want to make $12,000 a year ish? On that money? I think you can do so much better than that with $100,000 in cash. I think you can too. But just for you know, he just Yeah. Because I think you can too, but not everybody can. And so let's just say you know, it's $12,000 I think that's a good return. And then you know, with leverage, maybe it's even better, but cash on cash. 12%. Here's the problem in business, or even life in general, when you start talking to most business owners about bringing on $100,000 employee, okay, I'm gonna bring on $100,000 house. And all I need is it for it to bring me $12,000 a year. And that's a great return over 10 years that $100,000 invested doesn't bring me 120 grand, you know, that's a great, that's a good return. But when we start talking about leveraging people and talent, if you talk to the same business owner, most business owners are really going to struggle, same guy. They're going to struggle paying an employee 100,000 That clears them 12,000 To the bottom line. So it's a different shift around leverage when it comes to people. And I think that's where you're either going to have to leverage people or you're going to have to leverage product to really scale outside of, you know, it's true. trading your time for money and its creation mode. And I think I might have said this to you yesterday. But I've often thought about, you know, people call it making money. We're not making money. When you go trade your time for money, you're not making money, you're not creating money, you're just earning income. That's why it's earned income. If you really want to make or create wealth, you have to figure out your printing press. What is your printing press, and it's either a product, or it's printing more hours by hiring people and leveraging and outsourcing. And it's crazy as we as we go down this rabbit hole, it's like you almost have like this tick tock is tick tock environment now where it's like everyone can make money on just about everything. And that's been proven now. That's been proven. And I think that it all stems back to a fear of being a producer rather than a consumer. Because that's also the fear from this podcast. I said, Who am I to speak on these topics when there are other people that are speaking on these topics? yourself included? No, that's ridiculous. And so it's like you have these people like this use your son for this. Your son is a perfect case study of this, like Dylan's doing the white boarding school, can you share a little bit about that? Because it may He is a professional wakeboarder. And that's something that he's interested in. And it's like, you can make money as a professional wakeboarder. But then you can also Tenex that and take it into the frickin stratosphere. You share a little bit about the model that y'all had, because it was exactly what you were just talking about. Yeah, so Dylan at the age when we move to Arizona, we had a boat before that. But when we moved Arizona, we got a new boat, he got super interested in Wake surfing. It's similar, but just a little different. And they're surfing. Yeah. And so he started competing that first year, we got him some coaching lessons from a professional wake surfer and, and her name was Angie, and Angie was like Dylan, you need to do this competition that's coming up in two weeks. So he joined his first competition, like, maybe with two coaching lessons. And he took second place. So there's so his first year at the age of 16. He was in man's amateur he took first, first in the country, second in the world. And then the next year, he went to men's semi pro, and he took first in the world in semi pro. And then the next year join Pro and he ended up ranking fifth in the world, in a Pro Division. But this is this is what gets super interesting. You know, he started getting demand, like the coaching schools in Asia were flying him in and they were paying him $1,000 A day to come over and coach plus airfare plus food. And then you know, he started doing coaching at $250 an hour on his boat. And then he traveled around the US. And basically again, his going rate was $1,000 a day to go coach. But it got to the point man where, you know, he started getting burned out. And because he trading time, trading time for money. And you know, if you want to make more than you know, if you're making 50 grand a year and you want to make 100 There's no more time, like there's only so much time. And so then he started like looking at other ways, you know, how do you get sponsorships and he started leveraging YouTube and started making money on YouTube. And then he ended up with a sponsorship deal. He's got a and this is a passive income thing. He's he's on year three now of his pro model board with jet pilot. And you know, his his job is designing and testing once a year and, and they get the board perfected. And then jet pilot rolls out these boards. And he makes a royalty on every board that gets sold. He gets to buy the boards and sell them at wholesale. But then this is where it gets really cool this last year, we've been talking to him for a while about building an online course. And he launched an online course this year. Where are we just went out and filmed. It's basically from beginner to 360 That's the course. And so if you're any phase between beginning wakesurfing and doing a 360 he's selling this online course it's$197. And he opened it. I think it was in September for like a week. And he made 35 grand in a week selling this online video course and and that's all organic, no, no ads, no boosting, no nothing. And so, you know, when people start thinking about again, he could keep coaching, but he's trading his time for money. And not only that, even though he's charging$250 An hour his boats costing him 100 $150 an hour. So how much money are you really making by the time you drive and get set up and then pay? You're either earning money or you're creating money. And so when he took his craft and created a course that took him, you know, maybe let's say it took him 10 hours, that thing's gonna make money. perpetually. And so yeah, getting in that zone of creation and you said something? Producers versus consumers. And I've been saying this for a while. The people even on social media, there's so many people in our circle even in abundance, they're like, oh, yeah, I don't get on social media. I don't I don't do Facebook. Well, the reason why is because they're thinking about it from a standpoint of consuming. I don't get on there and consume much either. I'm intentional about making relationships number one, but number two, the people that are making really good money in life are the creators Not just on social media, not just in business, online everywhere you said it, their producers, their creators, we got to get over into that realm. And as time goes on, and as, as the years go on, it's gonna lean more and more into that creator economy. Because if you're a consumer because everything is designed to consume, everything is designed to consume. But I like to reference like Jake and Logan Paul, like the Paul brothers on YouTube. I don't even know if you know who they are. But like, they just make freakin YouTube videos, and they were idiots for the longest time. And now they're actually like, they're probably worth nine figures and figures at this point. Like, it's ridiculous. And then you've got Logan, Paul box and Floyd Mayweather. Where did this all come from? Because they made they made videos, they produce content, and it's just insane. Another example of that is I have a friend who graduated from college with a biology degree. And then he went to work for the CDC. And as he's working for the CDC, you know, you're like, okay, cool, you made it. That's the dream job like gratulations. But he had a bunch of student loan debt. And so he was into video games, and he started filming on YouTube. He wasn't even doing the video games. But he was going in, like taking the monsters from these fictitious monsters from these fictitious video games, and going over the biology of them and like the origin story of the monsters, and he's like, Oh, this was creative, or the mana nuclide bacteria virus, and that's how it affected the DNA. He's got, like, half a million subscribers on YouTube. make six figures a year from YouTube? Yeah. While working at the CBC. Yeah. So he doesn't even stream video games. Like there's a niche for just about everything. And I would say to anyone listening to this to take the plunge, because every single person has a Zona genius is just figuring out what that is for you. And then going all in on it. And I think that that's important. And Dylan's a perfect example of that. Yeah, and I've actually, in the last couple of years, I've gotten pretty close to a lot of online marketers, and content creators and that kind of stuff. And I'll say the same thing. Unless you create a passive course like Dylan did. You're still Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I've talked to so many people, it's still just your core business. And so at the end of the day, it's a business that creates liquidity. And still, I've had this conversation with so many marketers, online creators, there's some really successful people out there that are interested in passive investing in real estate, etc. Because they're making a shit ton of money, and they don't know what to do with it. And so still, at the end of the day, we have to be careful when we are the asset. Mm hmm. That was powerful. Powerful, my God all was powerful. I guess you don't have to be careful. We just have to be cognizant, yes, cognizant? Well, I've absolutely love this man. And as we wrap this up to that point, I think that it would be good to kind of hit on where you're at, what are you investing in? What is your portfolio look like, as we finish this up here in the last five minutes, that way we can give because I just realized we haven't actually talked numbers about anything. But that is obviously the nature of every conversation that you and I have. So I think it'd be cool to talk about kind of what your portfolio looks like right now, what investments that you're getting into. So then at that point, within like a five minute window, we could be able to bring it all in and let people know where to find you and reach out to you if they're interested in getting into that with you. Yeah, so when I sold my company in 2014, I had a real estate portfolio of 45 single families, five mobile home parks, and in a commercial three commercial buildings actually. And you know, Karen, I have sold some of that off just repositioning the last 10 years have been a great time to buy, reposition, etc. And then so I'm down to probably 20 doors now that I own personally, and I have one mobile home park that I own Now personally, I've sold everything else off and then I have one commercial building left. But then we've gone on and syndicated up to one point we were up to 35 mobile home parks. We've sold a lot of those off, we're repositioning a bunch of others right now. I'm actually moving. I'm still bullish on real estate. We're just kind of in a consolidation mode. Right now. We're just tightening up and getting some of that done. So I think real estate is going to perform well long term. But I'm kind of shifting back to business I get I'm in the process right now of launching a fund to go buy HVAC community or communities. I'm talking real estate, again, HVAC companies. We want to do five of those in 2022. So I don't think we're going to be acquiring real estate in the next year or two. But we're just you know, we still got in these communities that we own the mobile home park communities we still have seven 100 homes to set. So we're not quite done getting all those stabilized and all that. But yeah, just kind of transitioning where we got to fund coming from a track companies, I've teamed up with a guy, we're going to do like five or six luxury vacation rentals. I'm kind of at this point, Brian, where I want to focus more on building the business side of things, even if it is within real estate, I think that's where we've done well, you know, in the past is building the teams around that. So that's kind of gonna be my focus, probably the next 1015 years, just build out some astounding business teams. Perfect. And talk a little bit about the different courses that you're offering, and the different masterminds different stuff like that. And then please plug where people can reach out if interested. Karen, I have a couples mastermind, which is honestly one of the My Favorite Things that I've ever done. This last year was our first year doing that. It's for between five and 10 couples, we spend the year together, January, there's kind of a transformational goal setting weekend. And then we have monthly calls. The guys have a monthly call with Cara are with Me and the girls with Kara. And then as far as courses go, I have a we call it a real estate accelerator. It's $197 price point course. And then we're doing a business course too. So backing up a little bit, I'm doing the same thing that Dylan did, I'm just going to build a course. So that because I get asked all the time, like, hey, how do you get started in real estate? What should I do? I think you and I were talking about this yesterday. But anytime you get the same question like 10 or 15 times, you should probably turn it into a podcast or a course. But one time, and I don't know when this is going to air but in January, I'm doing a one time group coaching with real estate and then in probably March we'll do a one time group coaching with business and we're going to take that and just turn it into an online course. So okay, and then what date is that? January 17, is when the real estate accelerator starts. And then the business course will probably start sometime in March. Okay, and it's the third 14th today. Yeah, well, I'm gonna try to get that this out before that point, you know, edit this part out. I'll try to get this episode out before that point. So people can hear that and be able to act on that. I'm looking at my giant wall calendar over here. Write everything out that I do for my entire year. So I can see all my different vacations and stuff that I have. So whenever I start bitching about my year, I can be like, Okay, this wasn't that bad of a year. Right. All right. Perfect. And then where can people find you, Mike? So I have a podcast called Investing for freedom. And if you want to find me on Instagram, it's the mike Ayala only because Mike Ayala was taken in trying to get it. Hey, and that's business. Maybe at the end of the day, we can all just stop doing all this and just buy and sell Instagram handles. But I saw Facebook just took there was somebody that had the handle metaverse. And everyone was like, Oh, you're either gonna be a millionaire or they're just gonna take it from you. And they just took it from her. So yeah, I guess their product. That's the other thing. You know, people have to be careful realizing that they don't own their list. And that's the problem with Instagram, Facebook, all these things like, those are not your clients there. There's no and that's that's another whole other topic. I mean, you probably just need to do a whole other show sometime about just online marketing online courses and then the importance of an email list but I'm building up to because then that's where you truly actually own your own audience at that point. But um, anyways, Mike, I greatly appreciate you my friend. And thank you so much for your time. Thank you for your friendship. And this has been excellent conversation and it's gone all over the place to where we can provide massive value from all fronts and sincerely appreciate you my friend. Yeah, thank you man. Thanks for having me and keep providing value to the world it's good. Trying to and again that is investing for freedom with Mike at Ayala and that's the mic a Allah on Instagram and then on Facebook, you can miss the the part. Alright, this is Brian Luebben and Mike Ayala signing off. You've been listening to the action Academy podcast helping you to choose what you want with who you want. When you want. You've been given the gift of freedom. Don't turn your back on that. We hope you've enjoyed the show. And we hope you've gotten some practical and useful information make sure to like rate and review the show. We'll be back soon. But in the meantime, hook up with us on social media. Remember financial independence is freedom. Red flag the freedom fly