The Most Dwanderful Real Estate Podcast Ever!

Cultivating Wealth through Land Flipping and Unconventional Assets with Russ Morgan - Fan Fav

• Dwan Bent-Twyford • Season 4 • Episode 351

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Ever dreamt of breaking free from the grip of Wall Street and stepping into a world where your income works for you? Russ Morgan of Wealth Without Wall Street joins me and offers an electrifying roadmap to financial independence. We peel back the layers of Russ's transformation from a certified financial planner to a guru in passive income, dishing out priceless wisdom on alternative investments and the groundbreaking concept of infinite banking. Get ready to have your perspectives on money and investing radically shifted, as Russ shares the secrets to backing your passions with your income and invites you to become part of a community on the quest for true financial freedom.

Hold onto your hats as we venture into the dynamic realm of land flipping with masters of the trade who are reaping significant monthly incomes. They're crafting their success story one plot of raw land at a time, proving that you can indeed sell land on agreeable terms and create a solid income stream. The conversation gets even juicier as we reveal how to leverage online marketplaces, neighborly networks, and yes, even Bitcoin, to seal the deal on real estate transactions. This isn't just a chat about investments; it's a brainstorm of innovative and adaptable strategies that are making waves in the real estate world.

As we close this episode, we take a personal turn, navigating through tales of work ethics and the entrepreneurial flame that burns within us. From my own shift from employee to real estate maven to Russ's childhood experiences that shaped his financial savvy, we lay bare the influential moments that set us on our respective paths. Reflecting on how we're imparting these values to the next generation, we delve into the rewarding journey of nurturing financially responsible, entrepreneurship-driven offspring. Tune in for an episode that's as much about the soul as it is about the strategy – where personal anecdotes, investment acumen, and a relentless pursuit of financial liberty converge.

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Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Hey everybody, it's Dwan Bent - Twyford, America's the most sought after real estate investor. I'm so excited to bring you another episode of the most Dwanderful real estate podcast ever. So today I'm interviewing one of my wicked smart gentlemen. So we're going to find out a little bit about Russ here in a few minutes, but first I just want to tell you a little bit about Dwan. Our motto at Dwanderful is people before profits, so that resonates with you. You're at the right place and this is the right time and I do these awesome interviews to expose you to more people, maybe outside of your network, and for you to listen and learn and hear what they're doing, and maybe they can say or do something that we're oh hey, there's that light bulb I've been missing. So we you know, we ask crazy questions and we dig deep, and you can also go to Dwanderful. com and opt in and I'll send you four free ebooks. So my guest today, my wicked smart gentlemen today, is Russ Morgan. How are you today, Russ?

Russ Morgan:

I am wonderful, I don't wonderful if I will.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Wonderful. That's how I got Dwanderful. I took wonderful and Dwan and made Dwanderful.

Russ Morgan:

There you go.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

That's how I got it, and then I have Dwandtastic it's like fantastic but Dwandtastic. So I kind of just use my name and played around and made up a whole vocabulary for myself.

Russ Morgan:

Amazing, I know it's fun.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

So, anyway, we'd like to start off having drinks with Dwan, and you're having a lot of coffee.

Russ Morgan:

It's a cashew milk latte. So one of my favorite places to go here in town is a place called clean juice. It's a franchise that's owned the one of my friends is a franchisee of it and it's real near our gym, and so on the way home I'll stop by and either get one of the fresh pressed juices or this is one of the fresh pressed milk. So cheers, Cheers.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Everybody. Take a deep breath and stretch, take like and just kind of let it out and free up your mind. It's proven fact. If you take a couple deep breaths, you'll get anxiety and your stress and your worries will go down and just do that and hang out with us and let's find out more about Mr Russ. So what we like to do right out of the gate is I want you to tell us who you are and what you do and how we reach you, and then I'm going to go back and ask you a bunch of questions. So like the short version of what you do, so we can ask questions to find out how you got here.

Russ Morgan:

Okay, yeah, I won't give you the version. Of my mom will tell her friends how about that.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Okay.

Russ Morgan:

So I own a company called what's Lot Wall Street. We got started a long time ago from a financial planning background. I was a certified financial planner for many, many years. The 08 Market Crash sent me in a direction of seeking out new ideas, ways to create wealth for myself and for my clients, and it led me away from Wall Street, hence the reason the name Wealth Without Wall Street.

Russ Morgan:

I partnered up with one of my clients who took a liking to what we were teaching, the things that we were doing. It changed his life and it really created the passion in which we seek to try to help other people stop trading time for money. So that's really what we do, is we help people who are looking to become financially free. We define financially free as being where your passive income exceeds your monthly expenses and that allows you to do whatever you want to. That allows what we say passion income to be supported by our passive income, and that is something that I love to do. I love to teach. We run masterminds, we run courses, we teach people a concept called infinite banking, and also I'm a professional investor. So my passion is finding business opportunities that I can get invested in and we actually, every month we report on our passive income to the world on our own podcast to show what we're doing, the lessons we're learning, the successes that we're having.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Nice, nice, nice. And how does everyone get in touch with you?

Russ Morgan:

So you can go to wealthwithoutwallstreet. com. What that will do is it will enter you into our community. So we built a community that's offline. It's all Facebook, all TikTok, all the social media channels. It's focused on building financial freedom and inside of there you can DM me and that's where I spend all my time. If you go to the social channels, I'm on there but not really Like. I really don't post that. I'm really not that active. But inside of our group we have a little over 5,500 members and that's where I spend my time. That's where I'm looking at stuff daily.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Nice, I love it so wealthwithoutwallstreetcom. com/ passport.

Russ Morgan:

Correct.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I love it. I love it, I love it. Okay, so let me ask you how old are you?

Russ Morgan:

I'm 45.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

45. Okay, you guys are also such pops. I never want to talk to us like I'm the oldest one, all right. So I really like the wealthwithoutwallstreet. So I guess what I want to know is you say that you guys do investing, so give me some ideas of like what. Give me like three ideas of something else that you would invest in, since you're not on Wall Street. So because you say you guys invest, but what are you investing in?

Russ Morgan:

Yeah. So one of the things that I will preface that question, if you will, I'll put a pin there and I'll come in I'll answer it, but I want to make sure I preface it because I get that question a lot right what is it that I should be investing in? Robert Kiyosaki has a saying there's no good about investors. There's no good about investments. There are only good about investors.

Russ Morgan:

And so what we have found is that we've all, at some point in time, chased an investment. Right, we've chased something that someone else told us that was working for them, and we thought, oh, immediately, I should do that, and it doesn't matter if it's mobile home investing to Bitcoin, right, we've all done one of those things. So one of the things that we figured out is that people have their own investment DNA. They need to know who they are as an investor, and so we have everybody that we work with go through an assessment to identify who they are as an investor, and then we show them that there's a world of investments and if we look at what the pros, cons, key takeaways, key factors of those specific investments are, we can align those with who we are and have greater success working within our own area of genius.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

So for me, I love that you find there and invest. Yeah, that's really a good point, because so I do real estate. I teach people how to become real estate investors. But then people will go oh, I heard about wholesaling, I want to do that. And I heard about something, too, I want to do that. Oh, I heard about this, I want to do that. And they just chase like the next shiny object, instead of saying, hey, I would like to be a well rounded investor and my path to freedom is this, this, this, this, this. So I find that people are very much like shiny object.

Russ Morgan:

Well, I mean, if you think about it, for those who had ever worked in, you know, the the W2 world where your company gave you a 401k how did we decide on which was the right investment in our 401k? We just asked our buddy in the cubicle next to us and they said, well, here's the one that had the highest return last year. And we're like, sounds good to me, right. And I think that that's why most people do investing, is they ask the person next to them who's having success, hopefully, and they choose that specific thing because it was working for them. But it may not line up with who we are as investors. And then we don't have the same results and we get upset.

Russ Morgan:

Like the first true investment outside of Wall Street that I did, I bought a single family property, a condominium and a college town. It already had a renter in it. I was super excited, like to finally be an investor. Well, it's 2000, the end of 2006. And it was amazing, Like it was great, and I was looking at it and I started. You know I was getting $150 a month cash flow. I was thinking I'm winning. Well, what? What ended up happening in those college town ended up adding like a thousand units that they forced all the freshmen to come into. So now the supply was completely changed so I had to reduce my rents. I had a unit set empty for six months. The next person got in it. I got flooded from the unit above the next. The next person got in. It had an issue with the unit beside it. I ended up spending way more money right, and the market crashed during that whole time frame. So what I bought it at it was worth, you know, 25% less than what I paid for it, and so I was like this is the worst. Well, it wasn't the worst. It was just as an investor is.

Russ Morgan:

I didn't know this whole concept of understanding who we are as investors, aligning our personality styles. I was trying to invest in something that was a completely hands off thing, but I'm not a hands off person, so it really wouldn't have mattered if it would have never had any of those issues. The problem was that I wasn't aligned with it. I want to get involved, I want to add value and add marketing, and I was trying to.

Russ Morgan:

By the way, I was trying to market it to friends and family Like, hey, you got a kid going down to Auburn that was the university that the department was at and they were like nope, nope, I couldn't market, I couldn't get involved, there was no way for me to add value to it, and so I was not really aligned to what it was. And that's kind of what we go through. We show people that when they get their investor DNA, as we call it, and we show them different options and then they can go oh well, yes, I am more connected to business type things or I am more analytical, I like more hands off type things. With that. It allows them to see here's the options that fit really well into that space, and then they can go deeper.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Nice, so give me like two options.

Russ Morgan:

So, for me, things that I really love, there's two things that we're doing and I really enjoy them. The first is short term rentals. I we got into the short term rental market in 2020. And we had interviewed five or six people that were having amazing success and I thought this is something we should really check out. We had a long term rental in our portfolio and we decided to, at the end of the lease, to not renew the lease with the tenant.

Russ Morgan:

We we renovated it, we furnished it, we hired an operator to run the business because, again, we don't want to trade our own time for money and we, the very first month we did that, we brought in almost $3,500 a month in revenue, where for the previous 12 years, we've been written it out for $950 a month.

Russ Morgan:

And it was like wow, like this, this concept that we have been watching and learning about, actually works. And within within 12 months, we had scaled up to 18 units. Now we have 26 and we operate in Birmingham, alabama, which is obviously not a travel destination. We're not the Gulf Coast or the mountains. We we service people who come in town for travel baseball travel, soccer, volleyball, coming down for hospitals, people who are coming to town for business travel and just normal things with some people. Or their house isn't ready or their house was just, you know, demolished by tornado, whatever and we use a concept called the rental arbitrage model, where we'd actually don't own but two of the properties, the rest of them, where we lease them and then put them out on Airbnb, vrbo, and then we have our own channel called Wake Up in Birmingham.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Nice, I love that. I love that. That's a really great. So that's one of the avenues. What's another avenue that you guys have?

Russ Morgan:

Yeah, another one I really love is a land flipping model, which I think you had Mark Podolsky on your podcast a handful of times, episodes before we got introduced to him, probably in 2018. And and we're you know, a year goes by. We were like man people are telling us about, they've been implementing this thing that he talked about of buying raw land and now selling it on terms, and so we've created a business through that model and I love it because it's a business right, it's a. That's what I enjoy about it and we average somewhere between 15 to 16,000 a month and note income from from that model and it continues to grow. It's the thing that every month when we report on, it is the one that goes up every single month, where those others tend to have fluctuation, but that one is the one that is as steady as it can be and it's to me, it's one of my favorite because of that. Yeah.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I love that. So when you guys do like land flipping, you're finding vacant land and then you're selling it to whoever, are you building anything on the thing that you're wholesaling? No, yeah, we don't wholesale.

Russ Morgan:

We sell to end purchasers on terms. And I was just explaining this to a buddy of mine. A buddy of mine is a wholesaler and real estate investor and he said, hey, I bought this property. It's broken up in these different ways. I sold off this but I still have four like half acre lots in this development. And I was wondering I know you guys do this land flipping thing Like how does that really work? And he was trying to, in his mind, figure out who his buyer was and I said, well, do you know the value of what you want to get out of it? He said 10,000, a lot's good. I was like well, here's the thing. Is this going to open up a lot more doors for you? First, go to the neighbors, go to all the landowners around you and promote it to there, because everybody who owns property it wants to own the property next to them. They may not be able to afford it, but they want the ability to do it.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

So I said go there.

Russ Morgan:

And then the next thing is go on Facebook, go on Facebook Marketplace, go on Craigslist and promote this into the major cities that are around you and show people how they can buy it, like a car, where they put a little money down and they make a car note over the next 48 to 72. It must depend on how you want to do it and make it affordable to people who would have never even considered it. And I said, to be honest, the most of the people that were going to buy your property from you are going to be people going to ask you can I part my RV on it? They literally want to live on a lot in an RV. We get that all the time and as long as they don't have HOAs or municipality rules that would prevent that and you need to know what all those things are there's your people and, by the way, if you were willing to sell it for 10,000, and cash. People don't care about how much of the cost, they care about what the monthly payment is.

Russ Morgan:

I said you probably can sell this thing on terms for 20,000 over the next six to seven years and that person would be tickle pink with it.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I tell people that all the time, every time I do a webinar or a class and people are like, oh, I want to flip or rehab, or that I'm like OK, so you got to just remember, if you're going to like fix up a house or you want a subject to or you want to do whatever you want to do with it, people, they don't care about the price, they care about the payment.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Totally so we do a lot of subject to. So we have homeowners, either houses to us, and then we offer it back out subject to to somebody else and they're like, if it's a 200,000, our house, I say house luxury for 220, and your payment that you can afford is 1700, that's your new payment. They're like, okay, fine, they don't care, they only care about the payment. And that's really hard, I think, to get through to people's heads. It's not the value of the house, it's the payment by our cars. We buy everything based on the payments.

Russ Morgan:

Well, here's about to, so I'll share this. When you mentioned, the subject to this is this will be my favorite investment that I will tell Everyone about, assuming the deal goes through. We bought a Property. It was a luxury home as we paid 1.25 and some change for it, subject to and we were going to turn it into a corporate retreat short-term rental that we were going to house businesses and corporation Like wedding parties and things like that at. It was on a like a 20-acre little pond, had like 10 acres around it, perfect.

Russ Morgan:

Unfortunately, the dumb neighbors Revolved it around it. There was a little community like 10 to 15 homes. They are vaulted. They went to the mayor, the the city changed their bylaws and rules to govern how short-term rentals could happen, and so there we are, like, oh so now we have to sell this. Probably now we have to flip it. Thankfully, we bought it subject to, so we we were able to get it at a discount and and we're flipping it. Well, the our purchaser right now we're under contract to close here in 15 days. Our purchaser is buying it in Bitcoin.

Russ Morgan:

Oh nice, so we're scheduled to do the very first Bitcoin real estate transaction in the state of Alabama. I was done.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Yeah, I keep telling people. Listen, if you want to buy one of my program right training I'll take Bitcoin.

Russ Morgan:

I'm loving it, so I'm excited about that, and bitcoins price is just dumping right now, so it's like I can't be any more excited. I'm just hoping our buyer they're doing their inspection this weekend. That's the only Contingency, obviously is the inspection.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I'm hoping they don't use this to try to get out of the deal because of how much Look at my little portfolio every day it's like, oh, my numbers is Okay, but that's time to buy more because it's gonna go back up. So I think I think, with like the Bitcoin or any of that, as long as you know that that's like kind of a long haul, you can't I mean you can get in and out of it, obviously, as long as you're in it like okay, if it goes down, it's okay, because it's gonna go back up.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

When it goes down to me I'm like it's on sale, buy more.

Russ Morgan:

Well, we've been mining Cryptocurrency for the last five years. We actually bought a bunch of miners that are mining Ethereum and started that in 2017 and continue to add computers. So we've got I don't know 50 computers or something like that mining Ethereum and we've been, you know, converting that Currency over to Bitcoin from time to time. We one of our good friends speaks, you know, with the Bitcoin conversation that we're actually doing an event in Austin, texas, next week. He's gonna be speaking at it. He just got back from El Salvador. He was actually one of the key people in helping El Salvador change their currency to Bitcoin. I'm excited to spend some time with him. Just because, yeah, I don't quite understand All the different working parts to it, I realized that there's this network that's being built out there that the world is being put on and we're never going back. It's like the internet.

Russ Morgan:

Whenever going back, yeah, but there is a lot of speculation, there's a lot of stuff out there that is unknown, and the more that we Understand it, I think the more we'll start to adopt it and I think it will become something that we see as currency Instead of as an investment. I think everybody right now beside the truest, see it as an investment.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I know, the very first time, I don't know seven, eight years ago, someone's like hey, listen, let me get you signed up on this site. You got to buy Bitcoin and they're good. I mean, they didn't really know enough to explain like I don't know, I don't know what it is. I didn't do it and I think like, oh, if I had just like been a little more of a minded that yeah, I'm gonna buy a little bit of that and I'm like, oh, my god, but I got into it a couple years later. So it's like so now I'm excited, so I am waiting to do my first deal on Bitcoin. I haven't so excited someone to buy one of my houses like that, I offer it up. All the time I might wasn't anything. You want? You want to do it with Bitcoin, I'll do it. I.

Russ Morgan:

Love it.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I'll be excited. You have to follow up and text me how your deal goes. That sounds exciting. We'll do alright, so, so you're 45. So when you were like 1314, 15, like what was that Russ? Where were you living? What were you doing?

Russ Morgan:

Hmm, so I was living with my mother and my sister would have just graduated high school at. My sister was six years older than me. My parents divorced when I was first grade. My mom, single mom, hard worker she was a teacher. My dad was blue collar Construction guy, general contractor. He was around. I've spent a lot of time with him, working with him on job sites. I played sports as a kid. I was a baseball player. You know you would ask the 13 year old Russ what? What are you gonna do when you grow up? It's gonna be a major league baseball pitcher and you know, like every other little kid, probably nothing unique there. I Didn't know. I had no other vision. There was nobody out there that was teaching me how Businesses work or any money works. I was just enjoying life as sinful as I probably could be.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Yeah, that's fun. So you were like long yards and doing like that. You were just hanging out being a kid doing sports, having a good oh, I always.

Russ Morgan:

I always had jobs, yet because it was not any money. So if any money that I was going to spend, I was gonna make it. So I yeah, I worked with my dad's on the weekends. I'd go help him. He was either remodeling houses or building houses, or so I was digging ditches, carrying shingles up ladders you name it painting. All those things I was learning how to do, which, by the way, my wife always Tells me now you should know how to do those things, why don't you do those things? It's like I make money so I don't have to do those things I can.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

So you know, one of the things I find interesting is all the people that I interview when they were just young like that, Everybody was doing something to earn money already.

Russ Morgan:

Yeah.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I mean I just, I mean you know my kids too. I had my guys like, listen, you know we're not giving you money for anything, so if you want money, you're gonna have to earn it. These are some things you can do. You know round, you know we live up in the mountains, so you can do this and this and this and this and how you earn money. But don't come up and they had you money for something, because the answer is no. So they were 11 years old. They had to be like doing something to earn money, because I don't want them to just grow up. You know, like those spoiled kids like, oh, here's your money, here's your allowance, whatever you want. And then there are, you know 18, and they don't know how to make money.

Russ Morgan:

Right and there's a lot of wisdom in that right there's. There's obviously all different schools of thought. I'm with you that we have never given an allowance to our kids. I think that that sent a message that we didn't want to send.

Russ Morgan:

Now my kids do get, as my oldest, to get a salary and and that is something that we we built in from a tax perspective and that salary is actually pays for the things that they do.

Russ Morgan:

So they they're soccer, their swim. When we go, you know, every once, while they travel, and when we go as a family to travel with them, we're using their money for the hotel, we're using their money for the restaurant, using their money for their coaches, gifts, all of those items that are there. But they do marketing for our company, we, and we're constantly doing different projects with them. One of my oldest daughters has gotten into the short-term rental space, so we were using her, her infinite banking system to fund her first short-term rental, then using that money to buy her first car, and so we're doing videos on that, we've interviewed them and doing cash flow for kids. You know, going through the rich dad, poor dad book for teens, and all of those are opportunities for them to be learning and then sharing with our audience of how that works and as that, we've been able to hand them a salary. Now they, they, they have very little access to those but those dollars with those accounts or building on the brad.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Yeah, we had our kids at one time. So they they've all see the oldest one, 37 and my youngest is 30. So 15 years ago we were doing a lot of seminars and a lot of stuff and I had them in the office like calling, confirming people, making products, doing all of our shipping, like all my kids were always like doing all that. But they learn like to talk to people. They learned how to have good conversations, they learned scripts. They learned all these things and they learn like hey, you know and and like if they made a product or did something and made it wrong, I'm going to screw it up. I thought it's coming out of your check. You weren't paying attention. So we taught them a lot of responsibility when they were young. And they're all into rentals. They all have buildings, commercial buildings, rentals. They're all doing things like that and it's just way nice to see. You know that they're not all working nine to five, and nothing against people that do nine to five.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

This is my kids, just kind of straight out of the gate or like well, we want to be entrepreneurs too, because they all decided for a while we're going to get away from the parents and we're going to go get a job and all of them within like a year, like we hate working for other people, we want to work for ourselves.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

So we time there teens and they skipped out for a couple years and came back like, oh my god, we never want to do that again. It's like, okay, little entrepreneurs and now my got my little grandkids and we have a lot of buildings, so we, for Christmas presents, we give them little candy, machines and things like that, so they have their first investment. So when they turn five they get their first investment and they now they have to take the quarters out. We have teaching how to count the money and you got to buy good candy, but good candy. Back in you have to have your inventory and they've got little money bags and they're just so thank you. It's like, oh my, my six year olds like maybe next time you go to Iowa Will you please check my investments for me. I love that.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

My kids are like you can't do that. I'm like, hey, this six year old has two candy machines and she bought the second one by herself. She understands, she doesn't have to count, she gets, she gets the gist of it. So then I just raise little entrepreneurs all down through our entire because Bill and I, both of them super blue collar families, and nobody in our Family ever became millionaires except the two of us. So we're like, okay, we are gonna break that curse right there. No one else in our family history is not gonna be Wealthy, or at least off-employed I am. They don't want to be multi-millionaires, that's okay, but just, you know, working for themselves. So I like that. So now, when you're a little bit older, you're like 25, what are you doing now?

Russ Morgan:

So at 25 I was. Let's see, that was right toward the end of my first job out of college. I took a job with a company called enterprise, rent a car and For so I initially wanted to be in the financial space. Thankfully for me, nobody would hire me because, again in our in the financial world, most people know this, probably from interacting with people. But really financial companies hire people who are in successful Circles and I didn't. You know, I wasn't in the fraternity in college. My parents were to member any country club and as they're talking to me, they're like, yeah, you're gonna fill miserably if we hire you and I would have you know. I see way too many people.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

And hit like a rock.

Russ Morgan:

So I I took a job with enterprise, rent a car, went through their management trainee program. I accelerated pretty quickly. I moved around a lot. I was in three different states, eight different cities within a four year period of time. I married my wife and she finished dental, finished college and got accepted into dental school in Birmingham, alabama. And when, when that happened, I realized my Moving around and my ability to promote within that company was going to be limited because now I was then stuck to one city.

Russ Morgan:

Yeah and so I that. That was roughly about 25 years old. I was, I guess I graduated college 22, so I was probably at the end of that stretch before I left that company and so when did you do that?

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

How old are you? You did that very first thing with family home.

Russ Morgan:

You like who I'm in real estate now so that was 2006, so I was Like 29 years old.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Okay, so that's good. So like around 29, you were sort of like okay, I'm gonna step out and Do something for myself and figure out a way to become self-employed, and you start on that path.

Russ Morgan:

Well, yeah, I mean I was. You know, I was a financial advisor I was actually a certified financial planner at the time and I was self-employed where I was Meeting people helping them build retirement accounts and yada, yada yada with that. So I was in that kind of self-employed world. But yes, I had not considered other ways to build income. Yeah, outside of just working and helping people do what I did.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I didn't start real estate and messing till I was like 32. I just worked. Well, I worked a whole bunch and I got fired from Denny's. I've worked a bunch of jobs. I have fired from everything and people always like you're so mouthy, you tell everybody what they can do to make their business better. But yeah, I can see from now. So, looking in, and you would just change these things, you'd be a such a better company.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

But apparently the other one appreciate that coming from like the telemarketer, yeah, I got fired a lot. I was like you know what, screw it, I'm gonna start my own thing, don't ever fire me again. And then I rehab my first house and my 22 grand and I was like that's it. I'm never working for another person as long as I live, but I really I got fired from a shocking amount of jobs. Then for back talking, mostly in subordination they use the word in subordination it's like I'm the best employee, I'm the one that works extra shifts, I'm gonna call. Then I stay late Like I am that person never late for anything, but had a way of telling everyone what they could do better.

Russ Morgan:

Well, we have a tool that we use within our passive income mastermind. It's called culture index. Are you familiar with that? No, it helps you kind of assess your, your job. I'm characteristics the traits, the things that you do well in a work environment. And there's four traits. It's measuring autonomy Kind of your ability to to work and be filled up by being with others, the patience or pace that you work with. And then your level of conformity. And there's people that take that, and my guess is based upon what you're telling me if you took that, that, you would fall in the the part that we would say this person is unemployable.

Russ Morgan:

So we see People that are really high autonomous that they're. They're people that that they have very little patience and little conformity. We're saying this person needs to be an entrepreneur because they do not work well with.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

This one job and this was I don't even know how I took it it was a telemarketing job and it was some company that was selling like vitamins and they'd run this TV commercial and there's like rows like 300 telemarketers and so if you're in the first seat, that means you're the top seller, you're the top closer. And then it rolls. The phone calls roll over, you know, and they just keep rolling down and as you do better and better, you get moved each week. So after like just two weeks I was in like the first seat. I was like wow, I'm in the first seat, look at me, I'm the best closer in the whole place, like I own the place.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

He had like bodyguards and drove a limo and he thought he was like all that and I see how they're treating people. So I see him in the break room one day and we're not allowed back there. I go back and like, listen, dude, let me tell you something. If you would do this and this and this and this, your people would be so much happy. You're mean and you're a bully, and you do this and you do that. And he just looks at me. He's like who are you? I'm you tell him marketer in the first seat. You're not allowed to talk to me. Let me see that attitude right there. That's why no one in the whole company likes you. You're a terrible person to work.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

But I'm going off on this guy. He listens to the whole thing. He's like honey, you are fired, just you need to leave right now. Like well, you need to listen to what I'm telling you is. Nobody likes you. Yeah, security, escort me out the building. I Was like maybe I really do need to work for myself. Ah, so let's skip topics for a minute. Tell me what is your favorite band of all time?

Russ Morgan:

My favorite band of all time.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I'm gonna take one.

Russ Morgan:

Led Zeppelin.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I love Led Zeppelin. Yeah, you can tell a lot about people by the kind of music they listen to. I love Led Zeppelin. They're just like such good music that is like that's like that just die-hard kind of music. I love them too. You ever seen them in?

Russ Morgan:

concert. No, I never get to see them in concert. I've gotten to see some. You know, in our area there's a group called Blackjack Symphony and they covered them. So I've seen covers but I've never got to see them live.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I love the good. I still love. I love the concerts ever since the first day I could drive and go to a concert by myself. I still try to go to like every concert I can. They're all I just love like music.

Russ Morgan:

Yeah, that's awesome.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

What is your favorite food?

Russ Morgan:

My favorite food Good Chicken salad.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Oh, I like chicken salad. That's you're the first person that ever said chicken salad.

Russ Morgan:

I literally could eat it every day. There's a little chain restaurant, chicken salad chick, and I go in there and I'm totally secure in my manhood telling them I won't. Fruity friend and fancy Nancy or whatever the little brands, I love it. I mean, that's just my jam.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I'm like that. I have a little sushi place by my house that has like this salmon poke bowl thing and I swear to you, every day I'm like I'm going to go get a poke ball and I like every single thought to your day. It's the same thing every day. It's like, oh, I wake up and it's the first thing I think about. All right, so I have this, but my daughter and I.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

So I ended up being a single mom when I my daughter was eight months old, my family's from Ohio and we used to. I lived in Florida, so way back then she's 33 now. So back then I really didn't have the money to like fly back and forth to Ohio all the time, but I was always that person that goes for every single holiday. So we used to play all these car games that we made up, and so we made up this car game called which would you rather. Now, apparently recently, I saw that it's actually a game. So what we would do is always pick like two really awful choices and then say which would you rather? And you have to pick a choice. So today, you and I are going to play which would you rather? So which would you rather? Which would you rather be dropped into a giant of that of spiders, or giant bat of snakes?

Russ Morgan:

Spiders.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Ooh Spiders. Now why is that?

Russ Morgan:

In the, in Alabama spiders I mean outside of black widows, brown recluses, and you don't come across them very frequently, so I'm not really that you know I'll pick up granddaddy along legs or your normal everyday garden variety spider and I'll sling it, get it out of the house or whatever. I see a snake, it doesn't matter what version it is, I am not touching it. I'll get a shovel or gets you know something, but I am not touching it with my hands. I don't even like it If I have to kill one after the fact. So that is so funny to me.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I feel the same way about spiders and as you do about snakes. So I would like to ask that question because, you know, I feel like a lot of times in life we're faced with choices and sometimes neither option is really good, but there's always one option that is actually better than the other one, and so what people do is they go oh, I don't really like you these options, so they choose to make no decision. But when you get in the habit of making no decision somewhere in your life, you're like, wow, I never make decisions about anything. And then you're kind of stuck in this place forever. And so I'm like listen, if you have two choices and you don't like either, one, one is always better than the other one.

Russ Morgan:

I feel like we've been that with our political, like our presidential, races for the last 10 years. I remember I heard a little kid ask a guy it is a Dennis friend of mine he said I had this little 10 year old that came in. This was whenever Trump was running against Hillary and asked the doctors said do you know what happens? Who wins if Hillary and Donald Trump are both dropped off on a deserted island? And he's like you know he's thinking like if they're in a like a battle room, he's like I don't know, he goes America. So it definitely Cool glasses, man.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

That's true, that's so funny. I'm thinking I don't know if I'm hanging over bad spiders and sanks. I'm like, can I choose death? Can I choose that option? But no, but I just like it's just a fun question. I enjoy asking people because it's just funny the way people. But you're right, we just have to. We just have to learn to make decisions all the time, and sometimes our two decisions aren't like the best. But if you just don't make decisions and keep moving forward, I feel like you never really get anywhere.

Russ Morgan:

There you go.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

So I like which would you rather? That's pretty quick too. I was like, oh, I don't know, I didn't think about that. So at the end of the show I like to have our guests give us a life equity. So I have the five equities of life, which is financial, spiritual, physical, mental, family, and I feel like kind of everything in our life falls under a category, like families, friends and you know, financial is what you make, what you get, like everything kind of falls. So when I'm doing my shows, where I'm just teaching myself, I always assign a life equity and a quick assignment. So, like our guests always honor us and do the same thing. So what life equity would you be giving us today, russ, and what will you be asking us to do?

Russ Morgan:

All right. So one of the things that I have really been focusing on for the last probably nine months really strongly is, from a physical standpoint, getting you know and better health. Right, I mean the concept of being in a financial world. They say that if you don't have your health, you can't enjoy it. If you don't have financial can enjoy it. So we need to be successful in both. So one of the things that I do every single day some will call you into doing this very thing it's the three, two, one rule.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Oh, okay, the three, two one.

Russ Morgan:

The four one rule Very, very easy to remember, Very. It takes a lot of discipline to follow it, but if you do it will, it will lead you to great sleep. Our health is actually defined by how much sleep we have. There's so many things that are attached to that, both from our our brains and the toxins that are in our brain given our time for that to happen, as well as the how our respiratory rate and everything else operates. So sleep is super important.

Russ Morgan:

Most people don't track the sleep and one of the things that prevents it is that they don't follow this three, two, one rule. So if you'll do this over the next five days, make it a habit, I bet you'll start seeing yourself having better sleep, waking up more rested, ultimately being a higher performer and everything walk of life. So the three is eat a meal three hours before you go to sleep. So no, no food after three hours. That means no midnight snacks. No, no, no last cookie right before you go to bed, those kinds of things. The two is no work. So, whatever your work is, stop doing any form of work two hours before bed. And the one is no blue light. So stop looking at your cell phones, stop looking at TVs, reduce your blue light exposure one hour before to bed. So three, two, one, follow that and you'll start going to sleep. You know you'll start that sleep cycle quicker and go into deeper sleep, higher REM sleep the things that your body really needs to reset over the night.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

You know. I thank you for that. That is a really excellent life equity and I have actually spent the last couple of years like you know. Why do I not sleep good anymore? What is up with me sleeping? Because I used to sleep like a brick and I started. The first thing I started doing was not eating after seven, because I would like always be there for them to eat this and go to bed. But then I'll sleep good on my stomach and I have dreams are too vivid and I was like, ah, I feel sluggish and then I started then not working.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

But when I'm working on right this very week is actually I said it this morning like I am taking my phone and I'm putting it down at eight o'clock at night and that's it. I have to stop with watching videos before I go to bed. I am like literally on TikTok every night. Laughing my ass off at all these videos is like it's not good for me because I'm not sleeping. Like all of a sudden I'm not sleeping good anymore. I love that. So nothing. Three hours to eat for three hours before bed, which is I can attest that that makes. I can't believe the difference it makes when I stop doing now like I can't believe it. No work, two hours before bed, in a blue light, one hour before bed that is really excellent, Okay, so I took a bunch of notes, so I'm going to go to bed.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I took a bunch of notes, so so the session is called inside the minds of today's millionaires and you are my wicked, smart gentlemen of the week. So I'd like to kind of do a little bit of a review and see if we were able to figure out, like just this, much of what is inside the mind of Russ Morgan so your wealth without Wall Streetcom forward slash passport, People can get in and start figuring out what you're doing. You're 45. Um, I really like is you're the first person I've heard talk about this that you had people figure out their investment DNA. I've never had anybody talk about that before. And that is so true Because people just chase the shiny object and that's not, maybe not good for, it's not, doesn't suit what they do, and I go, oh, this doesn't work, and then they quit but they're doing the wrong thing. So I really, really love that you guys have come up with this. Like I almost want to steal that idea. That's a good idea.

Russ Morgan:

There's no new ideas. They're all so yeah.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

To me the way you have a phrase it's really, it's really, it's a great idea. Um, let's see, when you were young 13, 14, 15, you were playing sports, working with your dad, doing a little bit of a fix and houses, rehab and Karen Schengel's painting all good things to be doing. Got older, went to college, you wanted to be in business. You ended up working for Enterprise car and they said you're going to drop like a rock, it's not going to work for you. So you kind of switched over a little bit. At 29, you took your actual first real step into buying was that when you bought your first single family home in a college town which was also a great idea and it ended up, uh, not making you a lot of money.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Then you guys, you like to get into short term rentals, which I love too. Short term rentals are people that are just coming in a town for business work, like that's what we're doing right now. We're staying in a short term rental because we have a health thing going on with my husband, so we'll be here for nine months and then we're going back home. Um, and let me see here and let's see hold on, hold on, and um, you, oh, I took some notes. I wrote so fast I can't read my notes. Um, you did a luxury I like the story about doing the luxury home subject too and all the neighbors were like no, so you had to figure out how to do that.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

You do land, which I really love, land flipping I've learned a lot about land flipping in the last few years because that was not part of, like, my standard portfolio. And you offer those out on uh subject. Twos, payments, leases, whatever you go for the, the price and the terms, which is what you should be doing. And you like let's zipline. You like chicken salad, if you had to choose, you jump into some spiders. And our assignment this week is physical to three. Two one no eating three hours before bed, no work two hours before bed. No blue light one hour before bed.

Russ Morgan:

There you go.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Is that like a little bit of what Russ Morgan is about?

Russ Morgan:

Man, only thing you didn't know is that I like to go ballroom dancing with my, my wife, twice a month.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I love ballroom dancing, so most people don't know this. But way back when I was you know cause I'm 63. So back when I was in my twenties, the um Arthur Murray was huge so I wanted to get a job at Arthur Murray and teach ballroom dancing. So I did not get a job at Arthur Murray, but I got a place. I got a job at a place like it and I was a ballroom dance teacher for like two years.

Russ Morgan:

Oh wonderful, I love that I loved the swing.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I had this guy, bobby, that I worked with and we had to come in and practice before work every day and I'm telling you, hi, we would just do that Like I was love that dance, I love ballroom dancing. That's so fun that you do that, yeah.

Russ Morgan:

If you, if you go um swing dancing any of that casual. So we love swing, we love the hustle rumba. That's some of the best exercise you can get. It's amazing and what an amazing date night with your, with your significant other.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

You dance for a couple of hours. Not only are you having fun with your spouse, but you are sweating man. You're working up thousands of calories. You do like two, three hours of dancing and you've got to exercise for sure.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I love that. I you know, ross, you are just so much fun. I'm really happy I got to know you a little bit today and and meet you and, uh, I just think that you are just a wonderful person and I guys, I want you to go to wealth without wall streetcom forward, slash passport and find out, get your investment DNA and get involved. And yeah, you don't all have to be doing real estate and flipping houses and things like that. There's all kinds of other things that we could be doing. And, uh, if you enjoyed the podcast today uh, remember, it's the most wonderful real estate podcast ever and if you laughed or learned I had any fun today at all I want you to do me a favor.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I want you to leave me a five star review and I want you to write something, because on the days where I teach you guys alone, I read off five star reviews. So if you'd like a chance to have your review read, you have to leave one and go to do wonderfulcom. I've got four for you. So get involved with Russ and follow him as well, because all of us are really you're doing the same thing. We're here to educate and help teach other people the things that we've learned and it cuts their learning curve.

Russ Morgan:

Yeah, a hundred percent mentor in mind, that always said, either you can borrow information from someone who's already been there and done that, or you can pay retail by trying to pay your own path. So finding mentors, finding other experienced people on this page that you can learn from so much less than so much wisdom in that so much, so much, all right.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

So last thing, of the day is I want you to leave us with a parting word of wisdom, and it has to actually just be one word.

Russ Morgan:

Impact. Oh, I like it All, right guys.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

So your word of the week is impact, your assignment is the three to one, which I love that, and your other assignment is to get in touch with Russ. So, all right, guys, thank you for being on today. It's been super fun to get to know you, russ. And after I hang up, just hang on for a minute so I can loop back and talk to you for a minute, and we'll be back next week Same bad time, same bad channel. And remember that the truth is in the red letters. All right, guys, I'll talk to you next week. Ciao.