Mailbox Money, Made Real

We explore how to make work optional by building cash flow that covers living costs, then scale it with tax-advantaged investments. We compare passive-sounding side hustles with truly passive structures and map a path from education to execution.

• why “mailbox money” is direct deposit cash flow that does not need your daily labor
• calculating a monthly freedom number and replacing expenses in stages
• the power of owning assets in an AI-driven economy
• vetting sponsors, markets and deal structures for syndications and debt funds
• oil and gas cash flow plus long-standing tax incentives
• how ultra-wealthy allocate to private equity and commercial real estate
• passive versus active paths depending on capital and time
• using AI to spot trends and create new ventures
• our shared belief that time is the most valuable asset

Leave us a five-star review and write a comment about how amazing and dwonderful this interview was here today. If you learned one thing, had fun, heard something new, just anything at all, then follow, like, subscribe, comment, follow me on YouTube, Dwanderful Real Estate Investing. Text the word inflation to the number 33777 to get the free guide.

Chapters

• 1:56 Welcome To The Dwonderful Universe
• 4:19 Meet Bronson Hill And His Mission
• 11:18 Freedom From Jobs And The Vision Gap
• 16:52 AI Disruption And Why Assets Matter
• 19:44 Defining Real Mailbox Money
• 24:21 Hitting Your Cash Flow Number
• 29:03 Education First, Then Alternative Deals
• 31:43 Syndications, Funds, And Retirements
• 35:19 Oil And Gas Cash Flow And Tax Benefits
• 43:24 What The Ultra-Wealthy Actually Own

Transcript

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 0:59

Hey everybody, welcome to the most Dwanderful real estate podcast ever. I'm your host, Dwan , America's most sought after real estate investor. You can find me at dwanderful.com. As you know, I took my name Dwan and Wonderful and I made a new word. So this is the Dwanderful universe, and you are now a part of it. I'm super excited about the guest I have today. First of all, he's so handsome. Let me just say that. So good looking. So I'm interviewing uh Bronson Hill today, and his is the mailbox money show. So I remember when your team reached out to me, I was like, oh, I like the word mailbox money because I have mailbox money, and I would like to hear how you get mailbox money. And you're the first person I've interviewed that has like the the word like mailbox money like in their their description. So I was like, I definitely want to try to get you on the board. So thank you so much, uh, Mr. Bronson for being make sure I say that right. Bronson, thank you so much for being on the show today. We're super excited and we have a lot of fun questions.

Bronson Hill: 2:03

I'm excited to chat. I get into the dwanderful world, and I can be since my name's Bronson, I could be Bronderful, right?

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 2:10

Yes, Bronderful. I always get into Dwanderful, Dwantastic. Like there's just um and I call my students my dwandanaires, like millionaires. So we have a lot of fun over here, but you know, we're also very serious investors. And and I'd love to be so yes, so I whoever on your team reached out to me. You know, because you know, I'm sure you get like 20 emails a day from people, and most of them I just go, eh, eh, you know, like some things just and I was like, oh wait, hold on, mailbox money. I like that. I like that. I teach about mailbox money. Let me see what that means. Let's interview this guy.

Bronson Hill: 2:46

Awesome. I'm excited to talk about it. I mean, mailbox money, we should really call it direct deposit because most, you know, most people don't receive checks as much anymore. It's a lot of like direct deposit in your account, but it's very but I love the imagery, right? That just like in your mailbox, you go.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 2:59

You gotta keep a mailbox money. That's that's a great term. Okay, so the way we start is I just have you. I'm just gonna throw you right into the wolves. We want to know what's your deal. So just like two or three sentences, name, how to find you, socials, and then I'm just gonna ask questions and we're gonna talk, we're gonna get to know each other.

Bronson Hill: 3:21

Awesome. Yeah. So um my name is Bronson Hill. Um, I run a company called Bronson Equity. Um, we basically help people to get cash flow appreciation or tax benefits through investing in things like real estate, oil and gas, private businesses. And uh, we have an educational, like you mentioned, my podcast. I'm from the best-selling author of this book behind me here, fire yourself, uh, replace your working income with passive income in three years or less. And I just love helping people to uh, you know, make money outside of Wall Street and in the main street and being able to fire themselves to be able to do what they're here on this earth to do. So that's my passion.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 3:54

Yep, I love it. Yep, I love it. I'm gonna say my I have uh some t-shirts I wear sometimes when I teach to say unemployable. Yeah. The best thing I can do for you is make you unemployable, to where you can't, you wouldn't even be able to imagine having to go to work nine to five. It's like, why would I ever do that?

Bronson Hill: 4:12

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Cause I was thinking about the other day. I was like, man, I just love that I can have my own schedule. I can really when you work on your own or you're able to have income come in, you're able to create what you want to create with your life. And you don't have to deal with traffic or grinding, or I've got these sales goals, or your boss saying, You need to great job this quarter, you need to do more next quarter. And it's like, I don't want to be that. I want to be living my own life where I can live and develop in my own purpose. And I think that's what most people miss. You know, 70% of people don't like their jobs, like they're stuck in a job they don't want to do. It's to me, it's the one of the biggest tragedies is that we're not free to do what we're here and our purpose is here to do. And so it's one of my favorite proverbs is without vision, people perish. And so if you don't keep creating this greater vision in front of you, you're gonna in a way be dying inside.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 4:58

Now I am with it. Can I ask you how old you are?

Bronson Hill: 5:00

45.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 5:01

45. That's what I think. It's about in 45. I think you spit out a proverb too. Um, I also feel the same way. My dad, um I'm from Ohio and we live in the country. So I graduate, so I'm 66. So I graduated high school in the 70s. And in the 70s, it wasn't like um go to college. It was like go get a job at General Motors, build cars, work 40 years for the man, get married, have kids. So that's all I heard my entire life. So I did get a job in a factory, like the first week out of high school. And after I remember after like two weeks just crying, because I've never been in a factory and it's just hot and concrete, and just it's just hot, hot, hot, hot, hot. It was June in the Midwest. And I was like, why would anybody want this for me? Why would my family want why would they want me to do this? I'm like, I can't do this until I'm 60 years old. I won't make it. And luckily, six weeks later, uh, the boss came walking through and he had all these papers in his hands. I'm like, the whole factory, the factory floor like froze. And I'm like, what's going on? Oh my god, he's got pink slips. He's got all these papers. Like, what is a ping slip? And they go, that means they're gonna lay people off. And I'm really naive. This is like my first job. I'm like, what does that mean? Because that means a bunch of people are gonna go home today and not work. I was like, oh Lord, please, please, please, please let me, please let him give me a pink slip. I'm just like, please let me get a pink slip. And so I did. Like, thank you. And it's funny because at the time I'm 18, I grew up in the country. I I'm really I was raised very naively. And I had a woman that worked like in the booth next to me, and she was just bawling, just like, oh my god, I've got kids. And I'm like, girl, you're free. Go, you're free. Because I wasn't mature enough to understand at 40, she had a mortgage and kids, and like she was not excited. I was just like, Woohoo! All the way out the door, and I went to a bar that night. Like, I'm free. And so back then I knew I needed to work for myself because it doesn't work for me.

Bronson Hill: 7:07

So yeah, yeah. It yeah, it's it's funny. We were taught to be um, you know, go get the job, the safe, you know, go get it, go get a great education with and my family are all teachers, you know. So my dad's a college professor, my mom's a teacher, my grandmother, sister, my uh and uncle, everybody's teachers. And so the idea of doing something different is is is outside the box. But I think that, you know, we're taught to be job seekers rather than job creators, right? And so we have more job seekers that are seek than are seeking than are jobs that are actually been created, especially with AI now. I mean, if you follow what's happening, uh, I was at a Tony Robbins event recently. He said in the next five years, he believes there's gonna be more change to human life because of uh robotics and AI than there have been in the previous thousands of of years of human history. And I think that could be that could be happening. Whole, you know, whole sections of like, oh, we just don't need it, don't need accountants anymore, right? We found a way to automate all that, right? And it's like, oh wow, that's all kind of gone. We gotta figure something else out. It's gonna be very, very disruptive.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 8:03

I went into this, like not comparatively, but I went into a Taco Bell the other day, and there's these things you have to order, and I walked up and said, I want to make an order. He says, No, you gotta make them over there. I said, Well, can I just make the order with you? He says, No, you have to use the machines. So at first I was kind of like, you know, I don't want to do that. I don't want to take Johnson people, but then I was like, Oh, I can put like triple sour cream and extra sauce, and like really micro just put this order down. I thought, okay, I don't mind this so much. But there were only two people in the whole place, and all they do is make food. I was like, wow, okay, because that wasn't that was my first job in high school. I was like, wow, okay, we are needing people less and less and less. So that brings us to mailbox money. Because how are people going to? I know people hate their jobs. Every place I teach, I I raise, I say by show of hands, how many of you think you're worth more than you make or you don't like your job? And almost every hand goes up. Oh man, people are stuck in. So let's talk about this in the mailbox unboxing money. Give us like an actionable tip or something. Kind of explain what it is a little bit more. And how are you? Yeah, so people I want to make sure we get like two or three really good, like if you do this, this, this, this, you can get in the right direction.

Bronson Hill: 9:47

Yeah, well, it's interesting. Um, a lot of us, you know, there there's this buzzword called passive income, right? Passive income, and it's people say, Oh, if I own a rental house, then I've got passive income, or if I do an online business or I trade options and stocks online, but none of those things are actually passive. And really, my journey, I was a well-paid medical sales professional, was making over 200,000 per year, but I didn't have control over my time. I worked for physicians that would work 80 hours a week and they couldn't take vacations, or making millions of dollars, making a lot of money, but they couldn't take time off. And so they didn't have that time freedom we talked about, right? So I think the idea of passive income or cat mailbox money is that you're not doing the work. Warren Buffett has this quote, and he says, unless you learn how to make money while you sleep, you'll work until you die. And so it may be that you like what you do and you like your job, and maybe you maybe not maybe at a factory wherever you're working, but um you know what happens if you can't work? What happens if if, you know, God forbid something happens to one of your family members and you need to take care of them? So the idea of having income that comes in now is is very valuable. Now, I think that a lot of people would say, um, you know, I want passive income, but there's nothing that's really fully passive because um, you know, being fully passive, just you can't delegate your finances to someone else because they're not you. And they don't, no one cares about your money the way you do. So, but there are investments, in my opinion, that are more passive. So this is really ideal for someone who makes a lot of money in their job or has a net worth of at least 500,000 to a million who's like, hey, I I have a money problem. Not that I I don't have enough money, but I have money and I don't know what to do with it where I can get that mailbox money. So, what that means is, you know, there are investments, you do the work on the front end where you vet the team, you vet the deal, and these could be real estate projects. Uh, we have things we do in real estate debt funds, we become the lender for different projects. And then every month investors get a direct deposit, right? Every month people get uh paid, or maybe they're longer-term projects that people get paid over time. But I think the goal is uh for most people, if I figure out how much I need to live on, it's not necessarily when I was making 200 plus thousand per year, I didn't need to replace that. What I really needed was about uh six thousand a month, which was more than enough at the time for me to be able to leave my job because that was my living expenses. I lived pretty simply, it was kind of enough for me. And so once I had that number coming in with cash flow, I was free. And so that's that mailbox kind of rat race number. And so, you know, it you can't maybe go from zero to six thousand, but can you go from zero to five hundred or can you go to a thousand? Can you find ways to grow that? And then over time, work becomes optional because you say, Okay, well, I've covered my living expenses. Do I want to keep doing this? And even if you don't choose not to quit your job, you have the freedom to if you want to, which is a really empowering thought for most people.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 12:22

Now, I think so too, because you know, nowadays, I mean, you know how it is. Companies, there's no loyalty in companies like there used to be. Like, I guess, like in my parents, I guess I'm a boomer. So the the silent generation are the maybe the older boomers. I still feel like everyone back then just depended on, you know, working for the man and the company and the company take care of you, and you could work for 40 years. And now it's like there's a new thing, a new term, there's a new something. It feels like weekly and there's some, you know, new real estate slang or term or something, some, some, some, some. And everyone's just trying to, I think, kind of bounce around a lot, trying to figure out what they want to do. Because it like you said, like AI is taking away a lot of things. Well, then there's always new things coming. I feel like it's really hard for people unless you have like a dedicated career that you really like. It's like it's really kind of hard to even just like find a job where people will care enough about you to not just go, oh, you're 10 minutes late, get the F out of here, you're fired.

Bronson Hill: 13:23

Yeah, yeah, it is. It's really and it's I don't know if it's just our culture, but I think that on one hand, it's great that we have you know jobs available and stuff out there we can do. But I was just reading, uh, there's a guy named Peter Diamantes, who does the Moonshots podcast. He does this award prize for people that do space ventures and things like this. And one of the things he was just saying, like this that we've kind of reached a point now where stock prices and investing capital can go up without necessarily needing more uh workers. And that's kind of a scary thought. Usually those were kind of hand in hand. Now it's kind of like there's not always a relationship there. So I think that the things I look for in that, um, because that can be both discouraging as a as a worker or somebody who's in there, but you also say, but this also is bringing incredible opportunity. So, what are the opportunities? Uh, one of them is you know, there's no technology in place where people do not need a roof over their head and a bed to you know to sleep in, right? There's nothing on the horizon. So if you own assets, if you own real estates, if you own a business, if you own uh things that produce, um, those things are gonna continue to be worth something. And I think probably even more. Even the more digital things become, the more real assets such as real estate are gonna become more and more valuable. So um it I think we're in a time of massive change. I think everybody can kind of see it's coming and it's here, and we don't really know where it's going. But I think where you can and and that's kind of a little scary, but it's also like, well, you know, I think in general, technology has made our lives better. It's it's it's introduced some challenges, but um, you know, if if you kind of just get left behind, you're gonna, you are gonna get left behind. And I think in a very quick way. So I think it'll be really interesting to see what the next five to 10 years look like.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 14:56

So if someone comes to you and they say, Mr. Bronson, I heard you on Dwanderful's podcast. I would like you to help me make mailbox money. What are you gonna help them do? What are you gonna expose them to?

Bronson Hill: 15:08

Yeah, so typically what we do is we um I've had up to over 2,500 calls with high network investors kind of one-on-one, where I just you know ask questions and say, What really are your goals? What are you trying to achieve? For some people, you know, if somebody has five million dollars in the bank and they're a physician and they're looking to retire, like that's one conversation. If somebody's like, hey, I'm paycheck to paycheck, that's another conversation. So it's just trying to figure out what really your goals are. Uh, for the person who has you know 500k to a million, maybe there's the ability to invest outside of Wall Street, which I used to be an investment advisor. I know I call myself a recovering investment advisor in RAs. I'm not registered, but recovering. And so, but I'm I'm big on getting money out of Wall Street and into Main Street. So, how can we do that? How can we get money? Because the returns are way better. You look at the ultra-wealthy, um, I can give multiple examples, but there's ways, you know, just the returns are way better. And Wall Street always finds a way to get paid even when you don't. So I think the big the first part starts with education and it's getting around um, you know, podcasts and books and uh, you know, conferences and things, just getting around people that are doing because everything sounds a little weird until you talk to somebody who's just like you, who's also in your profession, and they've been doing this type of investing for 10 years and they're willing to share notes and say, here's how I've done really well, here's how I've had some setbacks. And and that feels like a very authentic conversation because the problem in finance is everybody is trying to sell you something, right? If you're somebody who has money, everybody's trying to sell you something. But if you get to in a peer group that no one's trying to sell you anything, they'll share very openly and it kind of makes it much more real. So we provide a lot of investor education, a lot of resources. We do deals, we have different projects and you know, real estate, oil and gas, debt funds, different types of things we're doing. There's a lot of groups out there like us, but I think the first thing starts with education and being willing to put yourself in rooms where you wouldn't normally go to around people that are talking about these ideas and it comes to when it comes to investing in real estate.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 16:50

So, do you guys offer like syndications and things like that?

Bronson Hill: 16:54

Yeah, we do syndications, fund of funds. We've raised uh over $50 million the last five, six years just from individual investors. This is you know, $50,000, $100,000 here and there, and people decide to join. They say, Hey, I've got money in retirement, my retirement account, which people don't realize they can use retirement funds to invest into alternative assets such as real estate, and they can get cash flow from that or at least grow their retirement more. So um, so yes, we provide opportunities, and like I said, there are others that do, and um, without giving me a specific thing that we're doing, but people want to reach out, we can share those. But I think I think the biggest thing is just the education side of seeing that, oh, I don't have to just, you know, if I'm 45 years old or somebody listening is 50 years old, you don't have to be doing this for the next 10 to 20 years, right? You can actually make a shift, take some different behaviors, and hopefully in three to five years, work can potentially become optional for you, depending on your situation. We and we've seen many people do that, where they've been able to get some cash flow, they've been able to retire their wife, or they were able to retire themselves, or they were able to switch careers to do something that they were much more passionate about. And so those are the things that really create change for people in their lives when it comes to finances.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 17:57

So I like so you were talking about real estate. You said something about gas and oil.

Bronson Hill: 18:01

Yeah.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 18:02

So tell me about that because I love that.

Bronson Hill: 18:05

Yeah, yeah. So it's funny, a lot of people don't really know much about uh oil and gas. And it there, there's a there's a couple things about it that I love. One is uh cash flow. You know, uh a lot of real estate these days, it's harder to find deals that cash flow, whether it's a single family, a multifamily, it's hard to find things that actually put money in your pocket. So oil and gas does that. Some of these cash flow very quickly. A lot of times the payback period is one and a half to two and a half years, um, maybe a little more, a little less, but generally they pay back pretty quickly. And then one of the most advantageous things about it, and it's been in the tax code for over a hundred years, is that for money that someone makes of any source, this could be business income, somebody could be a high earner, they can use almost a one-for-one and it reduces their actual taxable income. So, for example, if I make $200,000 a year and I put $100,000 into an oil and gas deal, it's very common they get about an 85% reduction of that tax of the amount they put in, the taxable income. So there it shows their income now is only $115,000 for the year. So in year one, before they've made anything, just simply by investing, they get this huge tax break. So that could save them, depending on their tax rate, could save them $15,000 to $30,000 just even before they actually even get any funds from it. So there's things like that where people don't realize it. It almost sounds too good to be true. And I work with people, I live in California. The highest tax rate, the high earners, especially physicians that work for a hospital or something, are paying over 60% in taxes, right? Over 60%.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 19:24

Seriously.

Bronson Hill: 19:25

Yeah, seriously.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 19:26

Because you look at you, that sounds like it'll run like Europe and stuff, you know.

Bronson Hill: 19:29

No, you it's actually it's actually 62% because you look at it, or maybe it's maybe 67%. You look at it, it's so let's let's do the math here. 39% federal tax rate is the highest tax rate, right? So if you're making over a million dollars, it's 39% federal. Then California, the great state of California, 13% state tax rate. So you're at 52%, then you have a 15.3% self-employment tax. So if you are self-employed, if you're a self-employed physician, that puts you over 67% taxes for those that you're making over a million dollars. So it's absolutely insane. But there are people that will not be that bad.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 19:59

Gosh, all the poor people. No wonder they're all like leaving in droves.

Bronson Hill: 20:03

Yeah, because it's like they they're they want their pound of flesh. But there are these uh we we call them incentives, and we don't necessarily call them loopholes. We call them these are things the government has actually incentivized in the tax code. And then with oil and gas, it's been over a hundred years of ways you can legally pay less in taxes. So there's there's tax evasion, which is illegal, which you go to jail for. And then there's tax avoidance, which is which is legal. And I think it's actually uh, you know, the government doesn't want to provide housing or energy because what do they do when they provide housing? It becomes the projects in the hood, right? That we think of government housing. What do we think of? Versus when you or I do real estate, we provide great places for people. I can tell you have a great fashion sense there, Dwan. So you provide a great you know setting there, I'm sure, for people. And so it's the same with oil and gas. They want clean energy uh or you know, energy for people. And so anyway, those are some some some of the reasons that um I think people need to learn about the different types of investments to reduce taxes and increase cash flow.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 20:54

Thank you. I think that people, I mean, I don't know, just since I teach I've just stayed in the I'm not even in like a real estate, like as an agent, I'm only in the distress property foreclosures. It's got to be like a foreclosure, you know, a bankruptcy, a divorce, uh, you know, something the bank will give me for you know five cents on the dollar. Something that's distress. If it's distress, I'm in. If it's like, oh, look at this beautiful house over here, it's like no. So I've never had a real estate license. I'm like, listen, I do not have the personality to slot people around looking at houses, it's like I'd be like, listen, I chose you showed you three houses, just pick one. We don't have all day here. I'm not an outfit. So I'm on the investing side of it. But only even on the just with the real estate part, even that's a big step for people because they're like, do I want to wholesale houses? Do I want to have rentals? If you know nothing about having rentals, you know, collecting the the a lot of them don't cash flow very much. If someone's like, oh, I'm gonna I watched a podcast, I'm gonna buy a you know, a hundred unit apartment building. It's like, mmm, but do you really know anything about that? And there's just so many like options and some are very risky, but it like you said, if you have the education, the training, someone that's guiding you, I think that's I feel like that's the whole purpose. Like for me, it's like I just want to guide people to do the right thing that where they're not gonna lose everything on the first deal because you know how easy it is to lose.

Bronson Hill: 22:21

Yeah, 100%. Yeah, I think uh a lot of people um, you know, they don't really, we don't we don't get training on this stuff when we're going through school, right? Nobody teaches us how to be an investor, what it is we need to do, what what does a great deal look like? Um, and and the funny thing is if you look at people that are net worth of a million or less, most people own a lot of stocks and bonds, and they're you know not invested in a lot of other things. And then you look at people that are worth over 20 million, there's a group called Tiger 21 who you have to be a net worth of over 20 million to join, and they'll show that uh they have over 50% in a combination of private equity and real estate. And private equity is just being a private owner of a business that's not publicly traded, right? So finding private deals like the syndications of the things, funds that people do, and so and also commercial real estate. So it's if you watch what the ultra wealthy do, and then you look at the returns of private equity and commercial real estate, um, it's it's about 2x what the SP does without the volatility. So it's like you have a way better asset uh with less volatility. So a lot of people just don't know. And it's it's interesting how Wall Street has made a lot of investing um, you know, in their stuff. They can advertise it, they can have all these ways to do it, all these uh, and there are some great opportunities out there, but there's a lot of fees, a lot of hidden fees that are there. And when it comes to private deals, you have to kind of be in the no, you've got to actually be in groups. We actually have a mastermind group called the Wealth Forum, where if people that are net worth of a million or two million or more, some are very high worth, you know, net worth over 40 million, and they pay to join this group because they want to have access to deals and they want to have access to other people that are in the same place of life as them. And it's not all money, it's also like, how do I teach my kids about wealth in a way that they're not spoiled, right? How do I generational wealth? Generational wealth. And also, we have a guy who's uh about 60, he's done everything in his business and is investing, I mean, tens of millions of dollars, and he's incredible. And yet he's trying to say, Well, what's next for me now? What do I create now in my life? And so being around people that are in that same place of life can be incredibly valuable.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 24:15

It can be. So if someone's just a regular nine to five kind of person, they're listening to you and they're like, Hey, I'd really like to learn more, or other is there any way for people that that don't have that kind of money to be like, hey, Bronson, I followed your thing and listened to your podcast, the mailbox money. Is there some way for me to take a step?

Bronson Hill: 24:38

Yeah, so I guess there's two ways. One, you if you have money, you can be a passive investor. Uh, if you don't have any, and when I started out, even though I was making a good income, I didn't have a lot of money. So I actually chose to be an active investor, right? It's just somebody who has uh who puts more time and more sweat equity in and helps other people. So to me, I mean I mentioned those people that have a money problem or they don't have no it's not they have no money, they have money and they don't know what to do with it. So if I could be someone in that space, or maybe you can be someone in that space that can help educate, uh find deals, you can help people get into those projects, uh, there's huge opportunities. I mean, there's really huge opportunities everywhere if you're willing to do the work. So um, you know, there's there's a saying, Robert Kiyosaki, who wrote Rich Dad, Poor Dad, the best-selling personal finance book of all time. Um, he said basically it's selfish to only use your own money. And he's like really emphatic when he says it. He's like, it's selfish to do this. So the idea is uh, you know, if if you can know what I've done is just try to help give opportunities to other people to be able to invest alongside when we when we we go about moving forward. So um, so if somebody doesn't have money, that that definitely will not stop you. It just means you have to be willing to get in rooms with people that have money and try to listen and ask questions and figure out what they're looking for and then help them get it.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 25:44

Yeah, it's funny because a lot of people don't realize, like you know, my my aunts and uncles are all like late 80s, 80s into the 90s, and my one aunt's 99. And these people have worked the whole like the whole whatever 40 years of and they're just sitting on like a kid jillion dollars because they never spent anything, you know, they worked, you know, they were like kids in the war, so they had war rations, and as they grew up, they're very frugal. And I have so many people in my family, I'm like, hey, so you know you know, when you what are you doing when you're like doing with your money? Everyone invests, like, oh, I don't know, I've got a lot of money. So my dad, a few years back, he's finally like, Listen, I've got this amount of money and it's not going fast enough. I think I want to invest some money in real estate. Can you help me?

Speaker 2: 26:35

Yeah.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 26:35

And this is the same guy that for like 20 years is like, you need to get a real job and have insurance and have benefits, you're raising a child, you're a single mother, you can't do that. And then all of a sudden he's like, Okay, listen, I got money I need to invest. What do I do with this with this money?

Bronson Hill: 26:52

Yeah, it it's a big mind shift, right? A lot of people, um, you know, with the things we're taught, it's funny, my dad as well, who, you know, is a PhD in kinesiology and he's been a college professor for years and always stressed education and hard work, he's coming around to like, hey, actually, I should be figuring out how to do this. Um, there's so much uh information out there that if people are actually paying attention, uh, you know, Tony Robbins had this book that came out, I was followed Tony Robbins, but he had this book called Money Master the Game. And he said that most people will say, like, if you have an employer retirement plan, which most people do, uh, it'll say, oh, the the the fees are 1.2 to 1.5% per year. But when you look, there's all these hidden fees, things like administrative fee and marketing fee and cash drag fee and exchange fee. What are these BS fees? But they're fees. So it adds about another 2% to the actual cost of the fund. So you're at 3.2%. And then if you have a money person, let's say you have a money manager, you have a Morgan Stanley or one of these big Wall Street managers, that's another 2% on top of everything. And so it's typically around 5.2% per year, are your actual fees. And the returns of the stock market are only 6% to 9% per year. And that's kind of when you average the up and down here. So it's taking most of your money. So what the and this really makes me upset in a way, Don Juan, because the problem is we think we're making money when really it's a glorified savings account and Wall Street is making a ton of money on our money.

unknown: 28:09

Really?

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 28:10

I mean, that it really is so true. It's so true. It is so true. I tell you, and you know, people are afraid of the stock market. People are just yeah, they're afraid of trying new things. And I'm just like, listen, the way the world is going, you need to get out there and try some new things because it's like nobody's safe. You just gotta get out there, you know, figure out all the big companies. It's like everything's getting bought up by everybody else, and it's like you just gotta get out there and do your own thing, I feel like.

Bronson Hill: 28:36

Yeah, I I think it's I think we're coming in a time where we're gonna start to have a more entrepreneurial way of living because um we've had that in finance for a while where you've had to kind of manage your own financials, but um I I just I don't know what it's going to look like in the future. And I think there's a lot of risk of in the next five, 10 years, if there's major, major unemployment, uh, thinking about having, you know, where are you storing your wealth and how are you gonna do this? Because when people go through a lot of pain, you know, if if I don't have any assets and I'm doing a job thinking it will never go away, well, look at just the drive, just look at driving alone. I think there's eight million drivers in the US that drive a truck, drive an Uber, drive cars. Like they're within the next five, 10 years, probably almost all of those jobs are gonna be gone, right? There we can kind of see it, it's right there. What are those people gonna do? Well, there'd be other things that they can do, but people have to be willing to get retrained. They have to be willing to try new things. And so it's a time it's interesting. People compare it to like like when horses we were driving horse and buggies, then we went to cars. Like people weren't like angry. I mean, there were people that are angry, like the horse people were like, oh my gosh, these cars are taking away all the business, and I'm a shoesmith for you know, doing horseshoes and whatever. But but you know, there were incredible jobs that opened up, and even look at Henry Ford was paying about three times, three to five times the normal rate, five dollars a day at the time to go work in the factory with so it will open up new opportunities, but people have to be flexible. And I think it's um it's gonna be hard for a lot of people. Um, a lot of us, you know, as we get older, just in life, it's hard. Change can be hard. But I think every sort of challenge brings new opportunities.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 30:01

I think I'm not correct. And I saw this on like uh I watch I like to watch all the history about uh, I don't know, some channel on the thing that has like eight series, and they'll be about a person. And I I could swear with something forward is like if you ask people what they want, they'll say they need a they want a faster horse.

Bronson Hill: 30:20

That's it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is that it, right?

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 30:22

But you give them a car, and they're gonna be like, oh I wouldn't want a faster car down the road.

Bronson Hill: 30:28

Yeah, and that's the main thing about investing is that you know investment interests change, investment needs change. So obviously there's some trends right now. Anything related to senior care or health care, because people you know generally have an aging population, there are gonna be more and more care. People don't want to go into some big assisted living, they want to stay at home. So, what are things that are around that eventually there could be robots at home taking care of us, you know, in our old age is one of the trends. You're like, no, no way. Well, you could put one with pink hair on, or you could have one that would be.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 30:55

Yeah, it's funny. I talked to someone the other day that uh it does is senior housing. I said, Listen, people that are going into senior housing, they're probably some of them, I'm sure they're my age, 66. But so if you get like people that are 70 and above, they were like teenagers in the 60s. You need to make like rock and roll senior housing, like where they're playing the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin, and they're like how they were in their teens. Like, give them here's some mushrooms, here's some weed, we're having a Joint rolling glass because that's what they did. I said, take them back to where they were. And you'll have waiting lines for years.

Bronson Hill: 31:30

Yeah. Yeah. No, I think things definitely change. So I think that um I think the biggest thing people can do in this season is to learn about AI, spend time with Chat GPT, ask questions about your life. Hey, I'm doing this as a job. What are things that could change? What should I be educated on? Um, I've used it now. Like something we've done recently, Duan, is we've found, you know, I live in Southern California, right next to where the fires happened earlier this year. And so we have all these homes in burnt, over 6,000 homes in burn right at like a mile away from my house, a couple miles from my house. And so I basically started using Chat GPD. What can I do to help in this area? And they said, well, based on your experience, why don't you become a modular and prefabricated home dealer where they build homes off site in seven days? They put them on trucks. And these are not like double wise, they look like these cool looking you know things. And so I found like I can do that. They build them in seven days, they can bring them in. So I'm gonna be doing that to help people to rebuild, and then we're gonna do a fund where we're gonna raise money and we're gonna bring investors in and go help rebuild the town, right? So I think that in any area of your life, you can do it health. You can do it with, you know, how do I work with my kids? Whatever. It's like there's so many options now, and it's like it's not gonna be perfect, but you're gonna get all these ideas of ways that you can actually benefit from it. So if anybody's overwhelmed, if you haven't used Chat GPT, if you haven't started looking into some of these, um just start asking questions. Hey, what this is where I'm at. What what should I be looking into? What are some things that could be coming? What are some other options? And maybe I work as an accountant. Well, maybe there's this other thing that you could do to get trained that's kind of a lateral thing to that that actually has is a growth opportunity, right? There's other things that are there. So the the challenge, the biggest challenge is when you get blindsided, you don't see something coming, it's hard to shift. But if you can prepare for it, you can make changes, you can make plans, you're ready for what's to come, especially when it comes to AI and some of the innovation that's taking place.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 33:11

That's right. I love chat GPD because I don't have to write letters anymore.

unknown: 33:15

Yeah.

Bronson Hill: 33:16

Right.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 33:17

Ah, this is so great.

Bronson Hill: 33:20

Okay.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 33:20

So I want to I want to switch. I want to ask you some questions. What's your favorite band of all time?

Bronson Hill: 33:25

Favorite band of all time. I really like uh I just saw Coldplay a little while ago, maybe about a year ago, in um in Dallas. And they I'm a songwriter as well. So I've written over a hundred songs over the years, and so I have just different songs I've written, just you know, some kind of gospel Christian songs I've written. Also, I went through a divorce eight years ago, so some love and heartbreak songs, a lot of material there. Um, but uh yeah, Coldplay, I got to see them live. They actually wrote a song. We were in Dallas, they wrote a song, and it was fun to hear them like write it on the spot. It was pretty neat. So that's neat.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 33:54

So you need to do something with that songwriting gift that you've got there.

Bronson Hill: 33:58

Yeah, yeah, and I am. I I you know, I bring it out at different seasons, and it's a way that it's it's it's therapy for me when I go through something challenging. I can take something difficult and transform it into something great, and then I can share it with somebody, and I don't feel like I slime them. I feel like I give them something like, Oh, I can hear the emotion or I can hear what's going on. Even ChatGPT can help with the writing now because I can say I need something that rhymes with I don't know, some fun, you know, accordion or something, and it'll find something you put in there.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 34:23

So ah I love that though. Coldplay, they're fun. Oh my god, when that big jumbotron thing happened, I think the poor guy, Chris Martin, was just like, I don't know what to do. Like, what have I done right now? Because, like, oh no, uh, you know that guy went home thinking, what did I do?

Bronson Hill: 34:43

That was that was it that was a life changer for the okay.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 34:45

Yeah, that was what's your favorite food?

Bronson Hill: 34:48

Favorite food. Um, I I you know it's funny, people ask me this. I just like good food. Like, you just give me like the like really good Thai food, really good, a really good steak, really good. I've traveled to 48 countries, so I love traveling. Um, I mean, I I I kind of like a variety, I really like a lot of different things, but um, just what comes to mind, yeah. I love a good steak, I love um Thai food, love some good Mexican. I mean, I can eat a lot of things, yeah.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 35:13

Me too, yeah, me too. I just had Thai food like two days ago. It's like, oh I love Thai food.

Bronson Hill: 35:18

So good.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 35:19

I don't have it because we live in the mountains. So up in the mountains, we just have like a Chinese restaurant, a diner, uh Mexican restaurant. Like we just a couple things. So we have to go to Denver. So when I'm in Denver, I'm like, hey, listen, we're gonna go get some sushi, some Thai, we're gonna do something. Because up in the mountains, we have like three choices up here because we live like in the boondocks.

Bronson Hill: 35:40

You need Uber Uber chopper or something where they can bring you like Uber Eats, but they don't, yeah, they don't, yeah.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 35:45

They just like three years ago started doing Instacart from the grocery store.

Speaker 2: 35:50

Oh, no.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 35:50

It's like three years ago. So, like, like where my house is, uh we're at like 8,000 feet. So you like drive down and then like it takes 30 minutes to get to the grocery store. So they just started Instacart, and I was like, Oh, I can just have stuff delivered because I've got 25 stairs from where you park to because up in the mountains, your living room, everything's upstairs.

Speaker 2: 36:11

Yeah, yeah.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 36:12

Look over the mountains and like bedrooms and stuff are downstairs. So I call I call Instacart because I know they'll carry it up all those stairs for me. So I check all the time to see if we have any DoorDash and we still don't have anything like that. But I I check about every six months. It's like, please. Um, what's your favorite time of day?

Bronson Hill: 36:31

Favorite time of day. Um, I I love afternoons. I feel like afternoons, I get a lot of my work done in the morning. Afternoons, I have time. I'm a big workout guy, so I'll get to get a workout in the afternoon. It just feels like there's a little space to kind of work out and think and go for a hike or do whatever. Um, but yeah, I like the afternoons.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 36:47

I do too. I'm an afternoon kind of girl. I like afternoons in like early evening. That's like when I'm like, oh, it feels like everything's kind of nice with the world. So tell us again, how do people find you on social media?

Bronson Hill: 36:58

Um, yeah. So if you search Bronson Hill, I'm on all the different medias. I've got a gift uh for your audience if you like. It's a guide. Yeah, it's a free guide for uh about inflation. And uh people say inflation is only 3% or 4%. I think it's probably more like 68%. And so we're seeing it. We're seeing prices, you know, go up 50 to 100% of where they were five years ago. And so, how do you get on the other side of that equation, right? How do you become an owner of assets? How do you become somebody who's using debt or other assets to your advantage? So the guide's called How to Use Inflation to Your Advantage, real estate using debt funds, using, you know, precious metals, and just a lot of strategies people have heard of. But if you text the word inflation to the number 33777, so text the word inflation to the number 33777. It'll ask your name and your email. It'll send you a guide, and then you can hear about kind of uh the different things we're working on as well.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 37:46

Oh, I'm gonna do that after we hang up today. I want to get a free guide too. Okay, yeah. Um, I love everything about you. You're wonderful. So at the oh, and also uh folks that are listening, if you're new to Dwanderful, I want you to leave us a five-star review and write a comment about how amazing and dwonderful this interview was here today. Obviously, I want to like you to subscribe, follow me on Facebook, TikTok, all everywhere at Dwanderful. Pretty simple. But we can't grow our podcast without help from you. So I always ask you to do me a favor. If you learned one thing, had fun, heard something new, just anything at all, then uh follow, like, subscribe, comment, follow me on YouTube, Dwanderful Real Estate Investing. I've got hundreds and hundreds of training videos up there. So you can't help us out because we're we're both here to help you all learn, and we can't grow without your help. Okay, so my last question of the day is I want you to uh give me a word of wisdom, but I want you to give me just one word.

Bronson Hill: 38:54

Uh word of wisdom, one word. Um I would say learn.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 38:59

Okay, now so what we do in the Dwanderful World is I tell everybody to like get a little sticky and write the word learn and stick it up on your man, you're brushing your teeth, you're like, oh, there's my word learn. And so we have so you're the word of the week is learn. So what does that mean to you?

Bronson Hill: 39:20

So uh there's really two ways people transform their lives, in my opinion. There's a quote that says, You'll be the same five years from now, except for the books you read and the people that you meet. And so, what is that? That's really networking, being like we talked about getting around people that are doing amazing things. The second one is education, reading books. And so I make a you know ridiculous goal each year to how many books I want to read. And so I think I'm at 97 books for 2025. I listen to them and those count as well. But um, I try to learn because you know, if again, if you truly are the same person in five years, except for the books you read and the people you meet, do you want to be different? And you know, by reading a historical book, by reading a book, you know, this personal development or some sort of uh fonts-related book, you're you're gonna grow and you're gonna learn so much from that. You're gonna become a more interesting person that's also gonna allow you to connect with more people. And so I just can't underestimate the value of it. It really should be your part-time job to learn more. And Brian Tracy, who's a motivational speaker, he says, if you want to earn more, you have to learn more. Yep.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 40:19

So learn I love Brian Tracy too.

Bronson Hill: 40:21

Yeah.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 40:22

I love Tony Robbins too. I've been going to Tony Robbins seminar since I was in my 20s.

Bronson Hill: 40:26

Amazing.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 40:27

And I would go and they'd be on the rah-rah, and I thought someday I'm gonna be on that stage.

Speaker 2: 40:32

Yeah.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 40:33

So back a few years ago, probably a decade ago, there was a company in New York called the Learning Annex. And they had these big giant, they would rent out like this giant stadium and have these like five-day events. And I spoke at them for probably for the two and a half, three years that they were in the actual business. And so I did actually speak up on the stage with Tony Robbins.

Bronson Hill: 40:56

I was like, Oh, amazing. You did it. You manifested it.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 41:00

I did. I was like, okay. So learn, and so that is a great week, uh a great word. You said there's a two-part to it, so it was the other.

Bronson Hill: 41:09

I didn't hear, you know, you cut out for a little bit. Can you repeat the second part?

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 41:12

You said you kind of learn mean it's like a two-part thing for you.

Bronson Hill: 41:15

Oh, so well, learning is it's it's the net education and the networking, right? So it's basically they go hand in hand. So I think if you focus on learning this week and you make a commitment to do it, it will impact every or every area of your life and it just will increase your openness to to continue to grow.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 41:30

I have a great book that they should read.

Bronson Hill: 41:33

Okay.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 41:33

It's called Fire Yourself.

Bronson Hill: 41:36

Yeah, it's a great book.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 41:38

I myself am going to be ordering that book, and I'm gonna read that book as well. It looks great. I mean, I'm always like, uh, anything you can do to just get away from the rat race and be your own thing. Um, I'm all for all of that all the time. So, first I'd like to thank you so much for sharing your time with me today. Um, you know, you're 44 at 66, or you're 45, at 66, you realize that time becomes more valuable. I think when we're in our 20s and 30s, we're like, uh, 10 foot tall, bulletproof partying, like we don't care. But then you get older, you're like, hmm, okay, I have less time on that end than I had on this end. And your time and the things that you do with your time become more valuable. So I appreciate people that spend time with me because I feel like time is our most valuable asset.

Bronson Hill: 42:25

Yeah, 100%. Yeah, it's it's it's you you invest your time first, and uh, you know, you can always make more money, but you can't make more time.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 42:32

That's it. Amen. You cannot. So I always like to thank people for spending their time and for all of you listening. I appreciate you spending your time too, because you know, same thing, time is important. All right, everyone, we'll be back uh next week. Same bat time, same bat channel. And remember that the truth is in the red letter. All right, everybody, good night. Ciao. Thank you, Bronson.

Bronson Hill: 42:53

Thank you.