From Service to Success: A Veteran's Guide to Conquering Real Estate and Fatherhood

When life throws a curveball, it's not about the setback; it's about the comeback. Air Force veteran Adam LaBar knows this all too well, transforming a career-halting injury into a triumphant dive into real estate and entrepreneurship. His stirring journey, lined with the wisdom of financial savvy instilled by his wife, unfolds in our latest episode. Adam's transition from military dreams to business success epitomizes the resilience and adaptability that life's unexpected twists demand. As we unravel his story, we see a man who didn't just find a new path but blazed a trail for others to follow.

Embracing fatherhood while steering the ship of entrepreneurship can be likened to juggling on a high wire, but it's a balancing act that can yield the richest of rewards. In the heart of this episode, I bare the soul of my 'biz dad' transformation, from the epiphany that reshaped my perspective to the decision to homeschool, offering a fresh take on what it means to be present for my family. And when it comes to the often-tempestuous world of real estate partnerships, I don't just share the war stories—we dissect the victories, including the triumphant sale of an 82-unit apartment in Indiana that demonstrated the finesse of riding the waves of market forces. This episode is more than just a narrative; it's an exploration of perseverance and the art of thriving in both the personal and professional realms.

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Tony Johnson is a Commercial General Contractor.  Timeless Properties Construction Co. has been in business since 2007.  He does all things commercial.  Developing, Building, Upfits, and Renovations for Retail, Office, Industrial, and Multi-family.  Timeless Properties is licensed in North and South Carolina.  Contact them today for your construction needs.  www.timelesspropertiescc.com
info@timelesspropertiescc.com

Discovering his passion for construction when entering the industry over 20 years ago, Tony obtained his general contractor license and created Timeless Properties Construction Co in 2007. The company has performed an Proving that grit and passion can overcome any challenge, Timeless Properties Construction Co navigated the worst real estate collapse in our lifetimes under his leadership. Coming out of the recession Tony made sure he kept a strong focus on building relationships, quality work, honesty, and integrity.  With over 160 million on construction volume to date Timeless Properties Construction Co has grown to an area leader of Commercial Construction in eastern North Carolina.

Tony aims to help fellow investors take part in profitable projects that they otherwise would not feel comfortable undertaking.  By leveraging his construction and development knowledge Tony offers his partners a leg up against less experienced investors.  Offering the ability to self-perform Construction, Construction Management, Entitlement and Other functions of projects creates tremendous value for any project.

To learn more about Tony Johnson and Timeless visit us at:
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https://timelesspropertiescc.com/

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Transcript

Tony Johnson: 0:01

Welcome to another episode of Carolina Commercial Real Estate Connection. Today we have Adam LaBar with us. Adam, how are you doing, sir?

Adam La Barr: 0:08

Fantastic. Thank you so much for having me on Tony Appreciate it.

Tony Johnson: 0:11

Super excited to have you, sir. So Adam is an Air Force vet, so we appreciate his service and I kind of want to dive into that and how you got into owning your first business in real estate investing. So could you kind of walk us through what drew you to the Air Force? When did you enlist? How long were you in?

Adam La Barr: 0:33

Sure, yeah. So, boy, both of my parents my mom and my dad were Air Force. My dad was a crew chief, my mom was fuel systems. That's how they ended up meeting. So it was just kind of in my blood to join the military. I didn't really know there was another option. That's what we did.

Adam La Barr: 0:50

So when I turned 16, I got my learner's permits and signed up for the Air Force almost within a week of each other. So I knew that's what I was going to do. It's what I wanted to do, so I jumped right into it. So I left right after I graduated high school. I was in for a while as an enlisted guy, got out, got married, I was in college, went back as an officer to go be a pilot. I busted my neck and lost that, so I did a couple other jobs instead. But all in all I was in for about 15 and a half years active duty and I had a couple years of reserves in the middle of my enlisted and officer time. So about 18 years total before I jumped ship to come and do real estate and business full time.

Tony Johnson: 1:36

Yeah, that's quite a long time there. 18 years.

Adam La Barr: 1:38

It's not a short time, yeah.

Tony Johnson: 1:41

So could you tell me you kind of briefly, just touched on there for a second what happened to your neck and how did that happen and what were the long-term ramifications of it?

Adam La Barr: 1:52

Oh yeah, so long-term I'm still dealing with it. But so I was doing combatives, which is kind of like MMA and the military side of the house, so I'm moderately experienced in that world. But I was up against somebody who was not at all experienced in it and we were trying to learn just a little bit of basic combatives I'd already done a bunch but he had no idea what he was doing and he kind of just fell on top of my head and neck and I ended up with a bulging and a herniated disc. One of them we had to do it surgically replaced. So I put in a titanium disc in my neck, um, so I had to cut my throat open here and, uh, take out the damaged disc that was hitting on my spinal cord and put in a, uh, um, a titanium one, um, so, yeah, the day before pilot training.

Adam La Barr: 2:37

So I was fighting through it the entire time and you know they stopped me from doing any combatives and everything. They were like, hey, hey, we want to keep you ready for, you know, pilot training. So, um, the air force had a very low, low, uh, ability to keep their, their pilots in, so they were really not wanting to lose another pilot. Um day before pilot training, uh, I go through some medical flight screening up in dayton, ohio, and uh, the guy says hey, dude, sorry you, you can't pull g's. Like he did something to my neck and I, about you know, flew through the ceiling and he was dude, like there's no way you could pull cheese, you're done.

Tony Johnson: 3:05

Um, so there went that, um, uh and so yeah, I mean I was stating was that for you, my goodness?

Adam La Barr: 3:12

Um, at the time it was very devastating, right Cause you, you have this idea Like I. I'd always, I'd always wanted to fly. My parents had always told me I should be an officer, but they never taught me how to go become an officer. I didn't know anything different, so I just joined the military. But then, once I realized this was an option and I applied for it, I was like boy, I've always wanted to do this, so this is going to be great.

Adam La Barr: 3:35

I was super stoked about it the entire time, all through officer training and everything, all the pilot training students were all talking together trying to figure it all out. And then that happened and it was like boy, there there goes that dream. But I ended up flying small planes anyway. So I'm a pilot still, just not, uh, you know, turning a burden in a. You know in an F-15 or a, you know anything like that. So, uh, but yeah, it was pretty devastating. And I, but you know, the more, the longer I dealt with the fact that I wasn't a pilot, the happier I was, because it changed my life dramatically on what I was, where my trajectory went after that.

Tony Johnson: 4:09

Awesome, Absolutely. Yeah, Normally those biggest challenges in life, you know, arise something within people that they actually have it, and you know that's where you kind of first you always look back to the one thing, the challenge, how you overcame it. So kind of walk us through, because I know when you were still enlisted, that's when you started up your first business. So could you walk us through was this about the time frame when that started after that injury, or what drew you to start into your other career? What is that career? And kind of walk us through what drew you in and how you started.

Adam La Barr: 4:47

Yeah, so typically what I tell people is I didn't even know what a savings account was until I married my wife, right, so I got married and then she had that magical thing called a savings account and like it baffled my mind because, like her, so we all have to do in the military and the government service. You all have to. You can't get a paper check, which most people don't anymore anyways but so it all has to be direct deposited, hers direct deposited into her savings account and she only pulled a little bit out that she needed to live on and I was like that doesn't make any sense to me. So mine went, of course, into the checking and the savings had like that $15 that's required to keep it open. And that was it. You know, like like it never made sense to me because none of my enlisted friends saved money. I think I never saw my parents do that. I never like it. Just it never occurred to me that you should save money and invest. So when I got married I'm that's the one thing that we never talked about before we got married was money, and I'm really glad we didn't, because she might not have married me if she knew how I was. But she really opened the new world to me and I was like, wow, this is crazy.

Adam La Barr: 5:48

So I started researching as much as I could, ended up going back into the military. My wife had said, hey, we should buy real estate. And I was like, oh well, sure, whatever. And then I went and lost money in the stock market instead. And then I went back to her with my tail between my legs and said, what was that again about real estate? So that's when I really started to look at.

Adam La Barr: 6:07

It was right about the time I was going back active duty as an officer and then I, you know, I just started going going to town and then, like after the busted neck, I it gave me a little bit more time to do more research and I took about four years of pretty hard research to understand what I wanted to do before I decided to get into apartment buildings. Never had we bought an investment property before I decided that we were going to buy an apartment building. So that's kind of how it got started. We ended up moving to Japan and I bought my first apartment building while living in Japan. It was a 62 unit apartment. So that's kind of my soiree into into the real estate world.

Tony Johnson: 6:47

That's impressive. So typically you know the story is starting small, starting small and people work up. So starting with a 62 unit apartment, it's a little bit different. So you said you did four years of kind of research and that's awesome that your, your wife, kind of triggered a lot of this and you are in business with your wife, which is awesome and not everyone you know can do that, but I think if you can, it's fantastic. You know if you and your wife get along good enough to do that. So walk me through how you put together a 62 unit purchase. What timeline, how long ago was this? How you put that together. Did you actually have the savings? Did you get something creative to get that one done?

Adam La Barr: 7:34

So towards the end of that four years, you know, it was for me in that, in that education frame it was. It was more analysis, paralysis than like actual needed time, um, time of learning, Cause I had already learned a bunch of stuff and the only thing I was left to learn is go and do it. You know, Um. But I was like, oh no, I need one more podcast to listen to, I need to go to one more conference, I need to do one more, whatever, Um. So I finally went to a conference in LA and I was sitting down and and, uh, they were up there talking and everybody around me had all these questions and I was answering all of them, whether it was about underwriting, whether it was about asset management, whether it was about whatever. And I was like, holy crap, man, you know this stuff, Adam. What is wrong with you? And that's when it really clicked in my brain. So I joined a group, a mastermind group, which is why I've been such a passionate promoter of mastermind groups since then. Is it got me around like-minded people who were thinking the same way, who were desiring for the same things, and then, once I was in there, I started answering a bunch of questions in there reaching out to people, and then somebody reached out to me and said hey, I've got this deal under contract. It seems like you might be a good fit for it. Let's chat. So I came in with some of the underwriting talents, a little bit of cash and, you know, some of the business side of the house, and I'll take it down. That was what 2017, I think, 2016, 2017, somewhere around there.

Adam La Barr: 8:55

And yeah, I mean, again, I was living in Japan, so I clearly was not the boots on the ground. You know, the property was in Tennessee and I was in Japan, but we had two guys who were boots on the ground. It was a joint venture. We all put in capital to make it happen and, yeah, the rest, as they say, is history.

Adam La Barr: 9:10

I mean, it took a while for that deal to go through. It was an unbelievably dreadful experience that I wish upon anybody who really wants to do real estate so that they can get the education that I got out of that deal. But you know, in the grand scheme of things, the market really helped us out. We were able to sell it and not lose our shirt like it looked like we were going to do, but but yeah, that was, it was tough, but it was. It was a good first deal to have. Because it was one of those. I tell people that you either are ready to put your shoulder down and take on anything in real estate after that, or you run away as fast as humanly possible from real estate, and you know tell me the experience with you know you're saying you had two partners right With that deal.

Tony Johnson: 9:53

How did that experience play out? A lot of times you know these can go really south or can build something that you then build momentum and do future deals. How did that one look for you?

Adam La Barr: 10:06

So I'd love to say it was only two partners, but it wasn't. There were multiple. There were two that were boots on the ground, but we had, I think, five of us on the deal and I would not recommend folks do that. It did not work out extremely well. So we had one partner that we ended up having to ask to leave the partnership for various reasons, and that was difficult.

Adam La Barr: 10:31

There was just a lack of ability to communicate back and forth between each other because there were so many cooks in the kitchen that it made it tough when it came to decision-making time, when it came to making sure that everybody was on the same page, that contractors were doing what they were supposed to do, because one person would think the other person was covering and the other person like and it just there were not clear lines in the sand.

Adam La Barr: 10:50

That was one of those things that I definitely learned that when you have a partnership, when you have teams, you need to make sure there's clear lines in the sand so everybody knows who's responsible for what, and that you can. You can point to the person and say, hey, this is your thing, where is it at, and it's not a? Oh well, I thought that was Johnny's thing and I thought that was Susie's thing, and all the back and forth. So I'd say that it was not handled well. But once it came crunch time, we all kind of were like all right, what the heck do we need to do? And we really started to hone in what we needed to do. It took us until we were neck deep in crap before we all stepped up to do what we needed to do.

Tony Johnson: 11:31

Yeah, it's very difficult going in partnerships with people that you haven't known long term. I mean, you have the common interest of real estate, but this happens a lot with real estate transactions, people getting in these partnerships and exactly what you say. If you don't have some type of it's basically still, you're setting up a business structure with these people to say, here, create an accountability chart, who's accountable for what? One person specifically accountable for each thing, like any other business, in order for it to properly operate and make sure that everyone's carrying equal weight. That's the difficulty, and with five people, that's extremely difficult. And so, yeah, you said one dropped out. You guys got them out, the other four of you, so you and the three others did that work out better. Have you maintained relations with them? I know you said you sold out of that property. Have you guys done anything additional together?

Adam La Barr: 12:28

with any of these people.

Adam La Barr: 12:30

Relationship-wise, we're all still peachy keen. Everything is great between us. We had all started other deals while this deal was going along, but not together. There's nothing that would say that we wanted to do it. But other things started coming up in life. I'd already had a couple more deals by the time we sold that and started with ADPI and doing stuff over there. My life changed a lot eye and doing stuff over there. So you know, my, my life kind of changed a lot. So, um, uh, but, but no those the. The relationship with the rest of the guys was was still great. No issues after that. But uh, um, they're all still doing real estate. They're all still, you know, pushing through. I think every one of us learned a ridiculous amount from that deal, um, including how to make sure our partners are are taking care of each other and doing the right thing.

Adam La Barr: 13:12

So um and in the end it was good.

Tony Johnson: 13:19

Yeah, I think that's really all it is the first deal, first deal or two. It's really just a learning process. You know you're going to figure out a bunch of things and as long as you don't lose your shirt and you stay motivated for doing real estate, then it's upward and onward, typically, um, with as long as the market doesn't fall out Right. But even if it does, the market falling out is part of it.

Tony Johnson: 13:39

Yeah, that's it. So within this time, you and your wife now have RAL Capital Group, so you now have significantly more properties. So what's your property assets now, and could you kind of walk us through one great deal within your property portfolio?

Adam La Barr: 14:03

Boy. Yeah, so we actually over the last, I guess a little over a year ago we sold our last multifamily property. Over a year ago we sold our last multifamily property. So we've sold all of them. We exited.

Adam La Barr: 14:20

So we had a couple syndications partnerships. So we had a mobile home park partnership. That one was great. It was a good flip. That worked out really well.

Adam La Barr: 14:28

But I'd say that we had an 82-unit apartment up in Indiana. That was a syndication that I would have loved to have held on to. Apartment up in Indiana, that was a syndication that I would have loved to have held on to. But the massive amounts of fake money getting thrown into the economy really helped inflate the price of that, which made it a great time to sell for our investors. I would have much rather refinanced, but we were looking to refinance. We bought that one Boy, I'm hoping I'm remembering the numbers right.

Adam La Barr: 14:54

We bought it for, if I remember correctly, $3.2 million and then, I don't know, maybe two years later it was either going to refinance at $4.6 or we were going to refinance at $4.4 or sell it at $5.6. At 4.4 or sell it at 5.6. So we sold it at 5.6 because that makes a lot more sense for our investors who wanted to get their money back and go through. So I would have much rather personally refinanced that and kept it going, pulled a bunch of cash out and kept it going, but that was a crusher of a deal. I think we were at like 42% IRR or something like that for our investors, which was phenomenal. But again, you know I give a lot of that credit to the presidency, throwing a bunch of money into the economy and giving us a break.

Tony Johnson: 15:44

Right, yeah, I mean that's. Yeah, the inflation made everybody look like wizards and geniuses those past few years and I mean it's still. We've got inflation kind of going up and out of control. So it's hard to really, you know, understand. There's a million different talking heads on how this is going to play out. So you have you lowered your assets right now and are you holding more dry powder? Is that your plan at the moment?

Adam La Barr: 16:13

Yeah, so we lowered our assets for sure. I mean I still have a? Uh, a 44 bed um assisted living facility up in Atlanta, um, which I jumped in with a partner of mine, um last year, last year, year before Um, I don't remember, which now um sometime in the last year, year and a half, um, and that's pretty much the only one I have right now Um the it. I invested in various other passive investments after that, after we sold, so looking forward to seeing how all those turn out. For sure, still looking at apartment buildings, I'm probably going to go fly up to Georgia and take a look at two of them that I'm looking at right now here. In the near future I still want to buy apartments, still love to do it. But yeah, for the most part I've just kind of been refocusing. So I'm going to rewind a second.

Adam La Barr: 17:00

When I left the military, my whole intention was to A actually be a present father, which I was not able to do as much when I was in the military I was traveling a lot but also to focus solely on real estate and the education company that we started and ended up having to take over as the COO of the education company, which completely changed the amount of time I had for real estate. So you know, it kind of made some adjustments in that, which is why I just started throwing money at passive investments, because I was more focused on the education company. So but yeah, that's where I'm at now is doing that mostly, um, and then real estate is almost a side gig at this point.

Tony Johnson: 17:40

Well, that's a good thing about real estate, right? I mean, you, you can do it passively or actively, and so that's kind of the deal. If somebody is full-time working and you don't have the time to invest in underwriting tons of deals every month and building up that, then you can, you know, build up a network and passively invest. And you know to your point early on that you spoke of, you know jumping in the stock market. You can go in and you don't really have a tangible asset to look at and understand and you know, basically you can attribute value to buying in a stock. You have no control over what's going to happen with that company and you, like myself, I typically have lost in the stock market what you spoke of. So you created or are a part owner and created, with a group of guys, active duty, passive income, which you just spoke to, which you're now COO of, and so that's where you're doing your daily work and operations for that company. So could you tell us a bit about that company, what its purpose is?

Adam La Barr: 18:47

Yeah, so it's called Active Duty Passive Income. We teach military members and veterans and their families how to invest in real estate. So, just like there are a ton of military members and veterans out there just like I was that have no idea how to invest, that didn't know that this is a possibility, didn't even really understand their VA loan. So my business partner, markion he's the CEO he created the company with Eric, another guy and Mike and just kind of set the whole thing up. I jumped in as the multifamily guy to kind of start building and teaching multifamily stuff as I was kind of going through all of my processes. So the company started in 2017, late 2017. I came on in early 2018.

Adam La Barr: 19:31

And then we brought Tim Kelly in as well to help out with the multifamily stuff. He'd been doing mobile home parks and such. So Eric actually heard him on the BiggerPockets podcast, gave him a call and said, hey, you need to join this team. We're awesome, and so that was back when we started. When I came in, I think we had less than 1,000 people in our group. We've got now 78,000 people. I think it is inside of our group now. We've got multifamily education, single family education, short-term rental education and a bunch of just free resources, and a majority of what we have is just a free community to engage and make sure that we're all helping each other out and building our financial freedom.

Tony Johnson: 20:11

That's awesome. Such a great thing. You know there are. Just leave that house, turn into a rental, get another one with this VA loan structure. I mean, you know you can build up a lot while you're in the service with good structure. That you know. So that's a big bonus of being in the military if you can take advantage of it. So, yeah, and you, yeah, and you're in an area where you've got people coming and going, so they're always very real areas, so great places to invest. So that's awesome that you guys are doing that. 78,000, that is a huge group of people that you're helping out. That's amazing. So if someone listening here is actively in the military, what's the best way to reach out and become part of active duty? Passive investment.

Adam La Barr: 21:21

Yeah, you can go to active duty passive incomecom Just kind of check us out. You can find us on the Facebook group. It's active duty passive income on the Facebook as well, and you know it's. You will have to answer every one of the questions. Our, our team will review and make sure it's answered and probably even look at your uh, um, facebook to make sure that you're actually a military. We're very adamant that it's. It's a community for us by us type of thing. Um so uh. But yeah, that's all you gotta do. Reach out and go in there. We've got again a community outside of Facebook now that we created as well it's on Circle, a different community platform. It allows us to get rid of the noise of Facebook. Facebook tends to control what people see, even if it's your group, because it's not really your group, it's Facebook's group that you manage. That's why we went off Facebook as well. So if you want to get a little bit more ingrained and indoctrinated into the real estate world, then our circle is a lot better place to go.

Tony Johnson: 22:26

Yeah, yeah, facebook is turning into a monster.

Adam La Barr: 22:30

Yeah, very much so.

Tony Johnson: 22:31

How big is your company structure over there at Active Duty Passive Investing um?

Adam La Barr: 22:38

that go about, whether I mean we've got some coaches. We've got, uh, you know, folks in charge of the um, uh, multifamily education, folks in charge of single family education. We've got a sales and marketing team, of course Um, you know, we've. We're constantly pushing out videos and content and all sorts of places and um, and trying to really grow uh grow the community as much as possible. Our 10-year goal is to impact 3 million military families. So it's going to take a lot of work to impact 3 million military families, but I think that it is by far a possible endeavor if we keep people just kind of realizing what the opportunities are out there.

Tony Johnson: 23:24

That's amazing. That's a beautiful goal to have, and I wish you guys all success in the world on that. That is awesome, so congrats to you guys for doing that. Next thing that we have that you are also doing is a podcast of your own, and it's called Biz Dads Podcast. So could you tell us what's the theme of that, how, how that's going, why you started that?

Adam La Barr: 23:52

Um, so I'll start with the why behind it. Uh, so, while I was in the military there was a lot of so I've wanted to be a dad since I was like 13 years old. So, um, I like as long as I can remember I've wanted to be a dad. Um, yeah, so when I finally, you know, I joined the military, I see a bunch of dads, uh, that were never around their kids, a lot of divorces. It was really not a great situation. Um, so, you know, there were even friends of mine who were dads and I never even knew they were dads because they, you never saw their kids, they never were around their exes, like they never talked about their kids, like I just didn't even know that they were dads. And it was like that broke my heart because I was thinking to myself man, I can't wait to be a dad, and that's terrible. So, long story short, I get out of the military because I want to be a dad, I want to be more present.

Adam La Barr: 24:40

There was one time I was leaving we're living in Japan Again I'd already started my real estate endeavors. I'd had a couple properties. I'd come back from one of my many trips that I had there and my son. I was taking the trash out. My oldest son, who was probably three at the time, came running up to me crying, pulling on my pants daddy, daddy, daddy, don't leave again. And I was literally just taking the trash out. So that was the beginning of me having to leave so fast forward.

Adam La Barr: 25:05

I'm now in entrepreneur world and I'm looking at all the entrepreneurs and I'm talking to a bunch of people and they're like oh yeah, I'm doing all this for my family, and they're at work 16, 17 hours a day and it's like are you actually doing this for your family?

Adam La Barr: 25:15

You know, like it doesn't, it doesn't make sense. Um, and I could catch myself doing the same thing. So it's like I want to talk to dads who are crushing it as fathers, who are doing well as dads and entrepreneurs. Hence, business dads, biz dads, right. So if I could talk to a biz dad who is really doing well and I can steal all of their good ideas by having a two-hour long conversation with them, then great, that's what I need to do. So that's kind of why I started it was just to talk to as many awesome dads who are crushing it in business and fatherhood so that I can learn as much as I can. Hopefully somebody who listens to it gets something out of it as well, but really it's just a selfish endeavor for me to steal everybody's good ideas.

Tony Johnson: 25:55

Well, that's okay. Well, I mean, it is amazing because and I understand, yes, military, but in just the general business world as well it's astonishing to see how many people yeah, it's always that you're working for the family, working for something out there at some point, by the time that you're going to actually enjoy it with the family, I mean, you can buy all these things for your family, but when are you spending that quality time? So it's always about giving the family, giving the family, providing for the family, but you're probably not then giving the wife enough attention, not giving these kids the attention or the time. So doing that, how you've structured your life, is phenomenal. One other thing that you're doing your family.

Tony Johnson: 26:41

You homeschool your children, which we kind of talked about here in the very beginning, before we even started recording, and you kind of went through how that's evolved over the years and I love the fact of homeschooling now. So you guys, we've gone over a couple of things that you've done, which is great. So you've created the one company and now you saw that that was kind of taking away from your family. So then you went more passive on the real estate and you had the COO position, but you're at home every time, being able to spend time with your kids on a daily basis, which is awesome. So kind of lay out what's important with your children on a daily basis and how you set priorities with the kids.

Adam La Barr: 27:27

Yeah. So I started when I was still in the military and doing, uh, real estate, uh, I was already building my transition out. But my kid, uh, my oldest, my youngest or my, my now middle um, was just, you know, in daycare but my oldest was in a private Christian school, um, and then we moved down to Florida about a year and a half ago, um, and then we moved down to Florida about a year and a half ago and put him into third grade and we put our youngest at the time again into a private Christian school for preschool and it was like a I don't know the first private school we were in down here I was not a big fan of. We moved him to a different private school after we moved into our house we're in now. That was a little bit closer and I liked better, uh, but he was still doing like 45 hours a week of school stuff. You know, it was like you're in school for you know eight, you know seven hours to eight hours a day, and then you come home and you've got on top of that, you've got your school work, uh, your homework that you have to do, and it was like I, I can't, I can't do this Like I'm working from home and I've been hearing about the homeschool side of the house and I was like I need to figure something out.

Adam La Barr: 28:33

So my wife and I were praying about it, trying to figure out what we needed to do, having a lot of conversations. I was interviewing people. I was talking to other co-abundance guys who are homeschooling. I was in all of the education that I could to learn what it actually would take, and the more I learned, the more I was like I'm pretty sure I could do this right. I could knock out a few hours in the morning and get a majority of the stuff out that I need to. So you know, I talked to all my business partners over at NEPI. I said, hey, this is what I need to do for my family. I want to be able to bring them with me.

Adam La Barr: 29:16

That was another thing that was very enticing about the homeschool stuff was I traveled a lot for the military and never got to bring the kids for obvious reasons that you know. Africa is not exactly the best place to drag my kids when you're in a war-torn country. But you know I wanted to bring them everywhere I went. Now I did not want to miss all of those times anymore. So I said, okay, well, now if they're in homeschool, I can bring them everywhere I go. Now I did not want to miss all of those times anymore, so I said, okay, well, now if they're in homeschool, I can bring them everywhere I go. So I've taken them to San Antonio, up to Philly, up to New Jersey, I've taken them to Mexico, I've taken them out to Vermont. I've taken all over the place in this school year they've gone.

Adam La Barr: 29:41

So, from seven to 10, I block out my calendar, that's their time. Specifically, I've got an au pair at the house, which, if it wasn't for having an au pair, there's no way I would be able to do this, because my wife is still Air Force, so she's going to be retiring next year. But having the au pair here is a game changer, for sure. The au pair is out right now at a homeschool field trip, so there's a bunch of other kids getting together and they're all hanging out and having a great time. So that's awesome. But uh, but yeah, from seven to ten I do straight education with uh, with the boys. Um, you know whether it's math, whether it's writing, whether it's. You know reading, whatever it is. And then there's some independent work that they do after that.

Adam La Barr: 30:18

Like adam this week was super excited.

Adam La Barr: 30:20

Um, he finished all of his school work for the week in the first three days. So monday, tuesday, wednesday he was like, hey, dad, I'm gonna work on on tomorrow's stuff today because I want to have a three day weekend. And then it was, hey, I'm going to, I'm going to do a Thursday stuff today because I want it like and it was just, he finished everything and I was like, well done, like go ahead, you got the time off. So, rather than having to do more work, I said, okay, I, you wanted to earn that four day weekend. It was just a different world. So that time that I get to have with them the education I get to have, he's harassing me that we haven't started this business together that I said we're going to do and that's something I really want to do while homeschooling and start a little business with the boys to teach them kind of how my world works, because I think that's much more valuable than learning how to sit still in a classroom. So that's kind of where the important parts of my life are now.

Tony Johnson: 31:11

Yeah, I absolutely love that and it just speaks to how much wasted time it's. You know, basically an indoctrination space and elongated daycare that we have in the school system these days. You know there's so much wasted time that you know to speak. You know to your sons getting through a week's worth of curriculum if you push yourself in three days, right, and even if not, you're still spending less than half the time of a normal school day and probably getting more curriculum in and he's probably actually absorbing the curriculum as opposed to just doing quick memorization and then forgetting it and going on to the next thing memorize, forget, memorize, forget, right. So the school system is kind of a mess, but that's awesome, yeah.

Tony Johnson: 32:02

So I mean you've really put together a great life. Someone you know to look forward to something like this. This is great way to structure and set up life and you've really taken and put in what's important first. So I commend you for that. So if someone wanted to get in touch with you to either, let's say, talk to you and get on BizDad if they're a business owner and would be a great guest for you, or just reach out to you guys if you're trying to get into investing and learn more about it than you wanted to reach out to you. Guys. If you're on trying to get into investing and learn more about it than you wanted to help out, what's the best way to reach out to you?

Adam La Barr: 32:34

Yes. So if you're a military military affiliated, the best way to be Adam at ActiveDutyPassiveIncomecom. If you're not and want to reach out, especially if you're a business owner, want to jump on the BizDad podcast, you can email me at adam at ralcapitalgroupcom. Either myself or my assistant, Mary will reach out to you and set some time up to be able to get on a call. Obviously, you can listen to the podcast anywhere podcasts are at and on YouTube anywhere you want to jump in there. Then you can see my terrible face if you go to the YouTube side. So that's fun. But you also might get to see my kids' faces, because I don't edit those at all. So if the kids come in and they're all excited, then guess what you get to see my kids jump into my office all excited and probably dragging the dog or the au pair with them. So that's where you can find me.

Tony Johnson: 33:21

Yeah, awesome, yeah, and we'll put that in the show notes as well. And I can speak with experience. I've seen Adam with his family and I can speak with experience. I've seen Adam with his family. He's a great family man, so good guy to reach out to for family and business. So, adam, thank you so much for taking the time to join us today. We really appreciate it. Hopefully we can get you on again sometime soon.

Adam La Barr: 33:39

Absolutely. I'm happy to Thank you so very much for the opportunity, looking forward to the next time.

Tony Johnson: 33:43

Yes, sir, have a great day, man.

Adam La Barr: 33:45

You too.