Are we chasing vision—or just running from boredom?

In this episode, we wrestle with a tension every entrepreneur, investor, and freedom-seeker faces: Is this a bold pivot or just another shiny object? The difference isn’t always obvious—especially when everything looks like opportunity and we’re wearing five hats at once.

We unpack our own experiences shifting from real estate to small business, trading short-term hustle for long-term legacy, and figuring out what actually deserves our time. If you're feeling stretched thin, juggling too many ventures, or asking whether you're building something meaningful or just moving fast… this one’s for you.

We also ask the hard questions most people avoid:

Why are we really pivoting?
When does ambition become distraction?
What does it cost to be present in one thing vs. good at many?
This isn’t about theory—it’s about clarity. About aligning how we spend our time with who we say we want to become.

📌 Key Topics:
✅ The real difference between pivoting and chasing shiny objects
✅ How to measure opportunity cost when time is your biggest asset
✅ The four hats of wealth-building: employee, self-employed, business owner, investor
✅ Why cash flow and legacy require different playbooks
✅ The identity shift from doing everything to doing what matters

Freedom isn’t found in the next opportunity—it’s built by owning the ones that truly align with our purpose.

🎬 Chapters:
00:00 The Journey to Business Acquisition
11:44 Investing in Education: The Cody Sanchez Course
17:39 Understanding Due Diligence in Business
20:36 Navigating the Negotiation Process
29:17 The Importance of BATNA in Negotiations
39:43 Strategies for Increasing Business Value

Transcript

Real estate is where you park your wealth when you have it and small business is where you create your wealth. And that's been kind of ringing in my ears. And I, I feel indifferent about it because I agree. think that getting into small businesses is better for cashflow. when the real estate deals do dry up, like I called this when the interest rates first spiked in 2022, I think when they went from four to 4 % to like six and a half percent. And I said that there is 3000

real estate agents in our metropolitan area. Two years from now, there's going to be half as many. And obviously we have a lot of churn. There's a lot of new people coming in, but the 80-20 rule says that the 20 % of the agents are doing 80 % of the work, which means that 80%, if there's half as many properties closing, they're not making enough money to live off of. And that's just on the real estate agent side, not counting wholesale and flipping all that stuff. But if everyone around the board,

is doing 50 % of the business they were doing a couple of years prior and they got used to this lifestyle, it's very difficult to put in four times as much effort to make the same amount of money where you were doing a couple of years ago.

Well, Ryan, it's been a few weeks, so I want to hear a little bit about the updates. I know you're just in the process closing a business and, you know, transferring ownership to or management of your real estate. So what else has been in the works? Yeah, daughter graduated high school. ⁓ Getting busy summer, getting started here soon. ⁓ Still going to school. He said.

just recently closed on the plumbing company. I've talked about a couple times on here.

trying to get rid of some things on my plate so that I can focus more on what's more important, I guess, or what's maybe not more important, but what's important at this time. ⁓ I'm just trying to, trying to figure out life, I guess. Well, and we'll go more in depth next week on the details of the plumbing company and how you bought it, the due diligence process, stuff like that.

at a high level, has there been a significant shift in how you're handling your calendar or your time management? Not quite yet, I would say. ⁓ Still trying to figure things out what the future looks like. I don't know.

I feel like I too many plates up in the air right now. So it's which place do I want to focus on? And, ⁓ like you mentioned, I trying to get rid of. I started off and, ⁓ when I first started in real estate, I had short term rentals. I got too busy and Airbnb was kind of changing. So it went more to midterm rentals, but that still takes more time than long-term rentals. I'm shifting all that off to long-term rentals and just having property manager manage everything for me.

And, ⁓ while it's less profitable, it's also a lot less headache. And I mean, we've talked about it number of times, like Airbnb pays more because it's more time consuming midterm rentals pay more because it's more time consuming. So it's, it's all comes down to the dollars at the end of the day or dollars per hour at the end of the day. soon you'll be graduating into commercial properties and be truly hands off. did buy one. Yeah, that's right.

Um, so when you talk about deciding which, which plate to chase or which direction to go, I mean, that's going to be the topic of today's podcast. And, uh, while I'm underwriting a few business opportunities, I've got an LOI out on one, um, getting ready to write an LOI probably tomorrow and another one. Um, I wanted, I wanted to go over the conversation about chasing two rabbits. You know, the, the probably not called proverb, but man who chases two rabbits catches none.

and the shiny object syndrome of having too many things going on that you can't truly excel in any one thing versus knowing when the right time to pivot is. And I think that this applies both to the employee workforce, to entrepreneurship, to business buying and investing. And so I want to get your thoughts on, you you started as a real estate investor, obviously, you know, starting in the military, you know, retiring from the military.

going into the workforce and then buying real estate, when did that significant shift come where you felt like business had more opportunity for you than the real estate investments, than just honing in on one type of investing? Well, I kind of...

think it's twofold there. think business, depending on how big you build it, is more for cash flow. Obviously you can build a super big business, sell it, get a 20, 50, 100 million dollar payday for it.

that can create generational wealth for you. So I don't want to say that it can't, but my viewpoint is businesses is for cashflow, everyday cashflow, real estate's more for generational wealth. ⁓ So that's kind of why I went that route. ⁓ I guess the easiest way is I was in real estate. I was trying to do flips.

I'm W2, so I'm like trying to balance everything. Going by base, you know, working on things, going to check up on properties on my way home. It just got really time consuming. I was driving all over town. ⁓ You know, I'm looking at a property on the way home, go and look at a flip property on the way back home. ⁓ I work inside a secure area that I don't have a cell phone. So if I need to run outside and need to grab a cell phone to call somebody or schedule something. it was it was just coming this pain.

And I see all these people that do flips, do wholesales, and it's a business and they're putting systems and processes like you go listen to anybody on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram that does that. Like they're running a business. For me, it was a issue of. I'm gonna spend all this time building a business. I want the opportunity to be able to sell it on the backside. You, I don't know anybody that's ever sold a flip business.

I don't know anybody that's ever sold a wholesale business. They all ended up selling some kind of course, mastermind education, something like that, but they don't have anything to sell outside of an education thing. So I was like, it's not worth it for me. Plus the market had shifted enough last year that it was hard to find flips unless you were doing acquisition portion. And ⁓ I am, I talked to a guy a couple of weeks ago. ⁓ He's doing over a hundred.

deals a month or a year. And I wish I had the numbers, but he said last year he ended up doing somewhere around 60. I think it'll be around 45 is what he's projected for this year, just because the market changed so much.

That's just not what I want to be on, I guess. And so I still want it to do the real estate thing and kind of go into, ⁓ the business side of it more. So Cody Sanchez always says, you, ⁓ look at your PNL and where do you spend the most money? Can you own that business? That's kind of what I started looking at. So started looking at service based businesses around that. And so

I wouldn't say my focus ever changed from real estate. It just kind of migrated into how can I better service my real estate? Yeah. And I think I'm along the same thought path. And you mentioned Cody Sanchez. I've been talking with her team about onboarding, obviously, you know, because of your raving reviews of their course. And she talks a lot about.

Real estate is where you park your wealth when you have it and small business is where you create your wealth. And that's been kind of ringing in my ears. And I, I feel indifferent about it because I agree. think that getting into small businesses is better for cashflow. when the real estate deals do dry up, like I called this when the interest rates first spiked in 2022, I think when they went from four to 4 % to like six and a half percent. And I said that there is 3000

real estate agents in our metropolitan area. Two years from now, there's going to be half as many. And obviously we have a lot of churn. There's a lot of new people coming in, but the 80-20 rule says that the 20 % of the agents are doing 80 % of the work, which means that 80%, if there's half as many properties closing, they're not making enough money to live off of. And that's just on the real estate agent side, not counting wholesale and flipping all that stuff. But if everyone around the board,

is doing 50 % of the business they were doing a couple of years prior and they got used to this lifestyle, it's very difficult to put in four times as much effort to make the same amount of money where you were doing a couple of years ago.

And so we started seeing that shift and there are people that are going to be in the 20 % and continue earning. I'm not saying that it's a bad industry. I just came to the realization that I don't want to be one of those 20 people. They're 20%. I don't want to go show 15 houses a week. You know, I want.

to spend time with my family. And so for me, I felt like my skillset was better utilized in small business than it is in real estate at this time. And so I kind of, made that shift too, but it's all real estate adjacent. Like all of my intent is to pour more money into my investments and own more of my own pie rather than taking on, I mean, I still take on investors, but the first few years when the wind's at your back, I took on a lot of investment capital. Now my goal is to.

build up more of my own stockpile so I can invest in my own deals in a larger amount. in Cody Sanchez, ⁓ one of the things that she said was that there's no piece of real estate that you can buy for a million dollars and a couple of years later sell it for $10 million. But there's lots of small businesses. Now I don't think she emphasized enough how difficult it is to get a million dollar business to a $10 million business. It takes a lot of marketing, a lot of

system implementation, all those things. So what is it, I mean, in your business buying, you know, especially through the course and all that stuff, what kind of lessons did you learn where you felt that the big trade off of when we're determining when it's time to shift or stay, stay the course is opportunity costs, right? So where did you see that the opportunity costs going into small business was a better use of your time than scaling your real estate portfolio?

I could, see business as being 10, $20 million. Like I see that being a possible exit. ⁓ I don't necessarily see it.

I'd have to so many real estate deals to get to that same number. Um, I think your time, if you go into business with the look of scaling it, the upside is way more than the upside of real estate. Um, I mean, you can only do so much that value to real estate. You can buy a good deal. can, you know,

buy a hundred thousand dollar house, put $20,000 into it and sell it for $200,000. Like, but how many of those deals do you have to do in order to get a big exit? You know, it's, it's, you're, you're doing a ton and your risk every time you go into a deal is, is higher or not higher, but you know, it's, you do a hundred deals sooner or later, you're to get hosed. Right. So that's kind of my point there. Um, but

Yeah, I don't know. It's I just see the upside is a lot more valuable. ⁓ Well, I think the ROI too on business is when I'm underwriting business deals after debt service, the returns that I can get on my initial capital is significantly higher than any real estate deal that I've seen. the risk is significantly higher. And so I want to throw that out there. Like if I buy a hundred thousand dollar house,

put $20,000 into it. My downside risk is very small. Yeah. Could I lose $20,000 or some market fall? Yes. But you buy a business, that business can go to zero. The house isn't going to go to zero. You have the insurance on the house. So it's pretty safe. Can you lose money? Absolutely. You have a hundred deals out at one time. You can lose a lot of money based on just having a hundred deals, but the risk is

a lot less in real estate. And so that's why the returns are a lot more. Absolutely. So I think that's important to talk about, especially, you know, through your MBA program stuff. I've done a lot of this for my undergrad degree, but looking at, like we said, opportunity costs. And when people are weighing investment options side by side, what they, what they need to be looking at is the risk free return rate, right? Which is typically used by the 10 year treasury, which is around

4 % right now, four and a half maybe. So, or five, might be five. Yeah. It's four, three, I think. Yeah. So if four and a half is roughly the risk free premium rate, meaning that if I have a hundred thousand dollars and I go put it into T bonds, then I can earn that relatively, you know, secure risk. I mean, aside from a major catastrophe, it's, it's the safest investment you can get.

So if I'm going to buy a piece of real estate that earns a 3 % return, then my opportunity cost is negative 1 % per year. And so if I'm buying a piece of real estate for taking on that risk, because there is downside risk of losing your initial investment, it needs to be something above that risk-free rate, which is called the premium, right? So I get all that and I agree with you, but at what point are you really

buying a property and that's the argument that people make for why not to get into real estate. But I think when they look at those percentages, they're looking at it just from ⁓ a cash on cash return standpoint. You're not doing equity, ⁓ buy down, you're not doing appreciation. they're not taking the tax benefits into it. So that's kinda like, I think if you just looked at my real estate portfolio,

percentage wise, like cash on cash, it's probably fairly low. Six pikes on board. I got a second mortgage, $500. I would be cashflow had I put down a larger down payment instead of doing a second. So my cash on cash is $500 less every month, but I didn't have to put as much down. like it's it all, there's so many levers. Yeah. And that's, and that's part of where I'm going with this is that

the cause I have an underwriting tool for all my real estate deals where we factor in the tax benefits, the appreciation, the debt pay down, all of that to a total return. So while the cash on cash might be 6%, the total return is like 18, 20. And taking all that, that is a whatever 15 % premium rate on top of the, um, the risk free premium. Now with

A lot of deals not cash flowing. And that's why I say it's long-term wealth generation and not short-term cash. Right. Because you don't realize those gains until you sell. And so right now the problem that I'm seeing is weathering that storm of holding costs, especially like a flip property. Like if you're underwriting your holding costs into the flip, like I mean, we just got done with a flip that should have been a three to six month flip and it took us nine, maybe 10 months to finish. those extra holding costs.

Degrade our return significantly. And if you look at it as a risk premium, to me, it's not worth the risk. Like flipping is great for people that are, they have it dialed down and they have systems in place. I don't have systems. So for me, there's more risk for me to get into that than to get into another business. Like right now I'm pursuing trucking companies because like Alex Ramosi says, focus on your highest earning potential. And right now I feel like my highest earning potential is I can go make 10, 15,000 a month.

trucking, hire, you know, hire on drivers, scale that business. Maybe it turns into three or 4,000 a month passive. But once I have the systems in place, that's a better investment of my time because just looking at that cash on cash return or the 20%, you know, over a course of five years is not factoring in my time. And like you said, the short-term rentals and midterm, all that stuff takes a lot of time. Even long-term rentals take a lot of time. And so I can spend my time in a place where

Maybe the upside isn't as guaranteed as that real estate, you know, cause I know if I put this much money into real estate, I expect to get this much out. But when, when factoring in those two things, because like you said, there are a lot of levers and so you can't just look at any one thing. And that's, that was my problem with, you know, the bigger pockets calculators is they only look at a few criteria. But when you factor in everything else,

There's that's how I'm weighing when it's time to pivot and when it's time to hunker down. And right now the pivot made more sense from the risk premium and the return on my time. So I feel like you use a very similar type of scenario knowing if you're making 150,000 a year, know, 20, 2000 hours a year, right? Or 20 80, whatever it is.

So that puts your hourly rate at $42 an hour, something like that, quick math. So if you are going after a real estate deal, that's gonna take you five years to really see any fruits of it, then that's, take all that time and divide it by the maybe $20,000 that you're gonna make, and that's like $4 an hour. So yeah, it's a great ROI on paper. It looks like 25%.

But if you take that same five years and you put it into a business, you can create three, 400,000 in income. And so I think weighing that more, it's taking all of the factors and putting them in like terms so you can compare them better. Yeah, I mean, the larger your company, like, so say someone's, you can work for $100 an hour, okay?

But what if I can hire two people at $50 an hour and not work at all? So now I'm making the same amount of money without working and then say, ⁓ I hired a third person. Now you start making a little bit more money. it's, it's the, the rate of return, like what you get might be smaller on in a business hour for hour, but the more you scale it, the more upside you have long run. So that's kind of what I look at is how can I provide value to the people?

they can provide value to the customers and everybody win. So in, mean, obviously I think in numbers and so to me I'd have to weigh out, you know, the real estate deals. If I was to do 50 % of the volume I was doing in sales and 50 % of the volume I was doing in my own investments, compare that with the time it takes for me to go into a business. That's how it makes sense to me, but there's a lot more of a subjective conversation to it about

when to pivot and when to stay, stay strong. Well, I guess I would push back against you and say, how is yours not a shiny object or use the word pivot, but if you to go from like, for me, I went from real estate to service businesses within real estate. So I don't feel like it was as far of a pivot, but you're talking about going from real estate as a broker to truck driver or truck.

trucking business. To me, that's way more of a pivot, shiny object, whatever. What's your pushback to me saying that you're shiny object? The businesses that I'm looking at have real estate. so that's, I mean, one of the two businesses has real estate. And so I still see it as synergistic to the real estate because my end goal is to own more real estate. And if I can generate the cash that I need to live off of from this industry that is not,

For me, brokerage and investing and property management and everything, it all follows the same cycle. And so when one of those areas crashes, my entire income stream crashes. And that's what I've experienced over the last couple of years is when a shift happens, it affects everything that I'm doing. And so building something that does not follow this, I mean, it has its own challenges. It follows its own cycle. I mean, the shipping rates, the insurance costs, the employment, all that stuff is still

you know, on its own cycle, but having something that has nothing to do with real estate was my goal. And so I looked at the skills that I had and what I'd done over my time in the military and realized that driving was something that's easy for me. So I went last year, got my CDL, went and worked for a guy for six months, just, you know, still doing brokerage deals. But I realized, especially moving to commercial real estate, my deals take 60 to 90 days to close sometimes.

So in that 90 day period, we're done with our due diligence. We're sitting waiting for appraisals. Like I could sit there twiddling my thumbs or go back dialing the phone and doing stuff that I don't enjoy doing. Or I could also double my income by doing something else. So I went, saw areas of the business that I feel like I could improve on. And instead of giving my unsolicited advice, the guy I was working for, I just decided to go out and do it myself. And so building an income stream that does not depend on the real estate market was my goal with the intention of buying more real estate.

So one of the businesses I'm looking at owns industrial property in town and those are opportunities like that industrial property. I would not get through brokerage because that person's not just going to go sell me their property. But if I buy the business that has the real estate, I could wind down that business, sell the real estate and turn a profit. Like that's not shiny object though. Cause I mean it's total pivot. Yeah. I, I mean, I see it as,

I guess in a sense it can be shiny object, but I think that I've gotten my real estate to a point where it's, it's manageable and it doesn't require a ton of my day to day effort. Like I can schedule out phone calls. I can schedule out everything. It's not, I'm not overwhelmed by my real estate business and moving and focusing 80 % of my attention onto this new thing and going all in on this is to build up my cash.

So I guess I'll use me as an example. I've always said, I don't feel overwhelmed. Like, I mean, I got wife and three kids. got a W-2 job. I got working on an MBA, have real estate investments, and then I started looking at business. While I might not feel overwhelmed, what am I doing good in any of those areas? I've got five different things I'm all focused on. So I'm never truly present in any one thing. And that's why I said like I'm.

trying to give up as much as I can. ⁓

I don't know what that looks like in the near future, but I also have my real estate license. didn't say that one, but what can I do that gives me the most growth long-term? Why can't focus the most on the business? And I think if you have your real estate license and you're focusing on that and like, I got a two hour meeting here. Now you're not focused on the business.

Um, then we schedule on a podcast. Now you got to focus on the podcast. You, your brain is focused on all kinds of things. You're never truly present at any one thing. And I think that's where shiny object truly is. Well, I feel like I can focus on it. Like if I really want to sit down and ask myself, like, what am I at work? Am I truly present at work? Or I'm thinking about kind of real estate deal or when I'm at home with my kids, am I thinking about work?

You know, like, and I think when you have too much on your plate or too many things, you're never truly present in anyone. And I think that's what shiny object is. So if you have, if you're saying, well, I'm have this business, but then I can still do this. And then I can still focus on my kids whenever this, I just, I think that's where you may feel that way that you're doing good, but are you really? Hmm. Yeah. I think that's.

an internal conversation that I definitely have all the time. we, know, there's, there's several shifts that you can make in the real estate sector on its own. Like you've mentioned going from single family to mid or from short-term rental to midterm to long-term to, know, we talk about commercial, there's many different sectors and commercials. there's so many different areas to focus in on and become specialized. And I definitely see the people who have a niche.

when they dial in on that, they probably will make more money in that in one small niche than I will make doing broader things. And I think it's for me, like I've, I've found a pocket of multifamily that I enjoy and I found flex properties that I enjoy, but I also realized that I need a significant amount of cash to be able to do those things. And in the, and granted, while we have quadrupled our net worth over the last few years,

that doesn't pay the bills in the meantime. I agree. And I think there's a difference. I guess what I'm talking about is difference between being an investor and a business owner and being an investor or broker in a business owner. That's kind of what see. I see where going with that. And so if we're, if we're talking about the cashflow quadrant, right, there's the employee, the self-employed, the business owner and the investor and going from being in the army as an employee,

to self-employed as a broker, which I know people think that it's a business owner, it's not, you're self-employed. And I would say that flippers, wholesalers, all that is self-employed to business owner buying these trucking companies. And my goal is to be more business and investor. And so the broker chat is something that I'm not passionate, like I'm good at it, I've got the t-shirt.

But it's not something that I see if I put together, and this is one thing that I have been talking to my wife a lot about, is putting together your life plan. Like, you know, we talk about doing a business plan. Well, what your life plan looks like 10, 20 years from now, I don't see myself being a broker. I hold a license, so I can, and I have, you know, a specific set of clients, but I have it dialed down to 10 or 15 clients that I help find properties for, and I'm not sitting there cold outreach trying to

get more business because it's just not where I see my career going. So brokerage is becoming less and less of my focus and I want to do more of the investing in business ownership, which then means being, when you shift from self-employed to a business owner, it's a lot more looking at the return on your time and the return on your equity than it is just what's your, know, how I could go out and work 60, 80 hours a week as a broker, make three, 400,000 and never see my kids, never see my wife.

my priorities are more in the family, which I believe business ownership and investing provides that lifestyle, even if I only make 150, 200,000, because that's the lifestyle that means more to me than the dollar amount. And I obviously, I still look at the upside. I'm still, not taking opportunities that I'm just going to break even, but shifting and wearing that hat. And I would say the pivot is going from being self-employed to a business owner more than the sector that I'm in.

So while the end goal is investing and I would love to just be an angel investor sending my money into different opportunities, I realized that it takes legwork to get there. And my focus over the next three to five years needs to be making as much cash as I can. And sometimes that means buying a job. And because I believe that my earning potential is higher in the trucking industry right now than it is in real estate.

So yeah, I guess I'll depend on how you analyze it, I guess, because that's what was going to be my question is you buy a business that you have to drive the truck. What's the difference between that and being a broker? And I would argue it's the same thing. But to your point, you say you think if I'm driving the truck, yeah, absolutely. And that's for me, it's short term, short term thinking is I can drive, I can hire on people and then

step into more of the business owner role. So the, and obviously the bigger companies that I'm looking to buy, the more I have to just be in that business owner role and not be driving. Now is a big thing for me is buying a service based company where you need a license. I'm not a plumber. I can't go out there and I mean, I can go out there and tell them, dig a ditch or something like that. But outside of that, like I can't legally plum, I can't do any of that. And so I had no people in other trades and they're like, yeah, I'm out there.

training and I'm out there doing this. Like for me, it's just focused on the business. So working in or working on versus working in. Absolutely. And so that was my biggest thing. Cause I wanted, I didn't want to use your cashflow quadrant. I want it to be a business owner, not own my own self employed. Yeah. my own business. I think that the big difference there is where I'm not truly ready to be a solely business owner or investor is my personal financial position. Obviously you have a paid off house. You have,

you retirement, you still have really good income job. My sole income was coming from my self-employment as a broker. And so when that income gets cut in half and I'm not willing to put four times the effort in, and that's the reality of it is it's not that I'm not capable of it, it's that I'm not willing to. And coming to terms with the fact that it's not a bad sector, it's just that I'm not willing to put the work in anymore. And so when I came to terms with that, if we put our financial picture side by side,

Business ownership was the smart step for you. If I was to jump straight into buying a big business, that would be too much risk for my family. And I think that when making these decisions, you have to come from your values, right? And my values is doing what's best for my family. And if that means that I have to let my license lapse and go into another sector altogether, then that's what I have to be willing to do because my goal is to provide best for my family.

Yeah. So what is shiny object to you to find it? I think I feel like we have different definitions kind of sort of. Yeah. Yeah. I think so. ⁓ I think the, when I think of shiny object syndrome, I think of it more as, the, people that are most impressionable by the, by the flashy advertisements, like the, the next sell this, this weight loss.

you know, thing, here's this Amway thing and you know, the new MLM, yeah, the new MLM thing, which, you know, can be good, but if you're, if you're always looking at the grass is greener, then every opportunity is going to sound better than the one that you're in right now. And I think that's the difference from my perspective is that I'm not just chasing what I think would be the next thing. Cause if, if that was the case, then I would, I would keep trying every different sector, but I'm.

The difference is I'm looking at my skill set and where I can, I believe I can provide the most value to the marketplace and the skills that I've developed from being in real estate and being in the military versus some of the problems that I see in the trucking industry. I feel like my skill set is best utilized here and I'm dialing in in that area. And granted, there's many different income streams in the trucking industry. You can do, you know, local routes, you can do over the road, you all kinds of different trailers, all that stuff. There's a lot to it.

so I can specialize in those specific areas, but I'm not starting a gym and I'm not starting this and I'm not starting that. I'm not chasing every single rabbit in the passive business, even the smart home installation stuff. My role in that business is the same as my role will be in the trucking company. And it's oversight, it's the marketing, it's the accounting on the backend, all that stuff. So to me, I don't see it as I'm trying to go, you know.

sell roofs and I'm trying to go sell solar and then I'm trying to go do this and try to, know, I'm, sticking to a specific skillset and finding different areas to diversify my application. And because that's the way that my, my impact can be the highest. So to answer your question, think shiny object is just chasing the grasses greener mentality. Yeah. And for me, I, I,

I do suffer from shiny object and in some sense, cause using your cashflow quadrant thing, like I still have a W two. I am a real estate license. I own a plumbing company now and I got real estate investments. So got every single one of the quadrants when in reality I should be focusing more, not on the right hand side of it. I should be focusing more on the right hand side of things. Cause ultimately that will bring me more ⁓ value, I believe.

Now for the real estate side, can argue that there's tax benefits there and helps me out with the right side. So maybe not as much there, but yeah. So we're in real estate and on that topic, which activities do you believe real estate falls in investing versus business owning versus self-employed versus being an employee? Say that again.

So you can own real estate, but I believe more that the activities that you're doing in real estate categorize whether it's employment, self-employment, business ownership or investing. yeah, I guess you could be an owner working for a real estate company, but yeah. Yeah. For me, it's,

So you work for a flipper and you're doing acquisitions for them. Like that's a job. That's a plethora. Right. Then. Okay. So you have your real estate license. That's self-employed. I would even say flipping and wholesaling is self-employed. I was just giving an example. That would be self-employed. Owning would be, I guess, if you own a brokerage, uh, and you have other people out doing it for you and then investing is just buying single family home, multifamily, whatever.

whatever asset class that you're, that would be the difference there. How would you? Yeah. And I mean, I, the other thing I would add to that is I think that when you're to go from self-employed to business ownership, the litmus test there is, I go on vacation for 30 days and my business is doing better than when I was there and using that in any sector, I think is how you differentiate. And if you're running a flipping business,

where you have an acquisitions guy, have a dispositions guy, you have, you know, a construction crew, have, you know, real estate agents, all that stuff that you don't necessarily need to be there all the time. You don't, I mean, you don't have to walk every single property. You have a full team running it. That's business ownership. And that's where you say you haven't seen someone sell it. I've heard of them. I've never talked to them personally, but when you have a full operation where you are not the key person,

and your involvement does not dictate the success of the business, that's where you're truly a business owner. Being an investor, I think of it more of just an investment of capital, whereas like you said, some of real estate holdings, you have property managers that handle most of it. That's more on the investor side. I think it's still toe in the line. But if you're self-managing, that's self-employed. And so I think it's important because each of those sectors has a different dollar per hour tied to it.

My ability is limited based on which sector I'm in. And in the employment, you're limited to 40 hours a week or whatever your employer will pay you. In self-employed, I can work all the hours of the week, but my earning potential is capped, which then means the more hours I'm putting into a specific task, the lower my dollar per hour is. Business ownership, I think there's a lot more upside potential, but it takes a much different skill set to be a business owner than to be self-employed. And then investor.

it's limited to the amount of capital that you have invested in the workplace. So if I want to truly retire as an investor, I know for the income that I need to generate, I need to have five to 10 million invested into the marketplace, whether it's in businesses as a lender, as you know, real estate ownership, whatever that is, it's just the hats that you wear change depending on which area of the quadrant you're on. And I'm very much so still on the left side of self-employed. So, ⁓

I think, but so for what you consider to be shiny object syndrome, I realize what you're saying is because I'm, I'm pursuing two different sectors. You see that as shiny object. So if, if like you said, you, you're in many different areas of that quadrant, is that a form of shiny object syndrome? I think so. I feel like you have one hat in each. do. Yeah. And I would say that that's.

⁓ holding me back. I would agree there. So, that's one of my biggest focus.

going forward is how do I, not only do I have a hat in each one, but also going from NBA. Luckily that one's almost done, but it does prevent you from moving forward. I think so. And so when you're, we talked about opportunity costs and weighing two investments side by side. When you're looking at those four hats, how are you deciding the opportunity costs of when's the right time to walk away from the W2 or when's the time to sell the real estate and just pursue the business?

How are you factoring that opportunity cost? Well, for me, I look at service based businesses and real estate. I look at them very synergistically from the standpoint of I can go to a real estate meetup and meet a property owner that has a hundred units. I'm like, Hey, I got a plumbing company or say we had HVAC or electrical like, Hey, I offer all these trades. Now I was there for real estate.

However, now I'm talking about plumbing, whatever, HVAC, whatever. So now I got someone that has a hundred units that I can start servicing. So I kind of look at them as all moving together because every time I meet a property manager, not only can I vet them for my own property management, but I can also offer service to them. So it's, it's synergistic because it follows your plan. Correct. And that's, think what I'm getting to is,

When you have your life plan built out and you know the direction, I feel the same way, is that my wife is licensed as well. We're both brokers. And so when I was on the road, I would have the client contact, my wife would go do the tours, and then we'd write the offers together. We very much have that business to a point where we can share the responsibilities.

So if I go and focus on this company building this trucking company, there are opportunities that are coming to me through trucking in real estate that I wouldn't have gotten if I was just sitting there cold calling and stuff that people who are sitting there cold calling will never get the opportunity to. I've talked to many farmers with tons of acreage and, know, sitting on cash and, you know, inheritance, you know, all that stuff. in farming, the money stays within the family for generations.

And then someone comes along and says, I don't want to farm anymore. And that's opportunity that other people don't have. And so those are just the cherry on top. I'm not doing it for that, but it's the other intrinsic value that I'm getting from it where I can still say, yeah, I am licensed and I can help you sell this thing, you know? And so that to me in my life plan, it's still benefits my real estate business by giving me opportunities that I wouldn't have otherwise. So.

And if I go, if I go ⁓ focus on this trucking business for a year and I just hone in on that and spend 90 % of my time on this 10 % on real estate, I can get it to a point where it's manageable with a little bit of my time in year two and three. And in that first year I can stabilize my income stream. If I do one deal,

from that trucking company, it'll more than pay for the cost of the trucking company. If I get one opportunity to help, like when I was driving side dumps, I met with a lot of different companies that, you know, working directly for construction companies, that gave me a foot in the door for a guy that owns probably nine figures of real estate in town. And I got his cell phone number just to tell him, hey, I got a deal.

I wouldn't have gotten that foot in the door if I wasn't driving truck for one of his companies. And so that one opportunity, I close, let's say I close a $5 million deal with him and I make 120,000, that more than covers my down payment for these bigger companies. So I see that as another intrinsic benefit because again, those are opportunities that I wouldn't have had if I was just sitting here doing the.

the phone dialing, you know, in commercial real estate, it's very corporate style. They want you to sit there in cubicles and, and pick up the phones. And there are people that do very well at that. It's just not me. I can't just sit there and dial a phone all day. So I have to be out there doing things. And by talking to people, I'm getting more opportunity. So to me building my life plan. And if there's a time where real estate crashes and it doesn't make sense, I'm not just going to sit there with my thumb, you know, going, ⁓

I don't know what to do now. guess we're going bankrupt. I'm going to find another way. And so for me, I see this as a recession resistant industry that yes, adds a different type of risk, but in my life plan, it lowers my overall risk and allows me to continue doing more real estate deals. Cause when you have one real estate deal go south, it puts you back two or three years. And believe me, it's, it's tough coming back from those. So while

I can, if my income is stable and I'm making 10 to $15,000 a month in this industry, I can afford to take more risks in real estate and wait for deals to pay off in three or five years.

I think that's whatever, whatever you need to yourself. Well, then at the end of the day, it's, it's, I don't, I don't think there's any right or wrong answer. And the thing is, like, I don't want to make shiny object syndrome sound like a bad thing. Like, if you feel something isn't working for you and pivot, you know, you don't have to sit.

and keep doing the same thing time and time again and get nowhere. Do you see a better opportunity? I think where it becomes an issue is where you're doing it. But if you've been doing something for five years and you feel you're at the end of the road for it and you have a better opportunity, it comes your way, then take it. But reflect if you're doing that every six months. Correct. Right.

but know that you're starting off at square one again and a whole new industry and chances of while you've learned skills, you're not starting off five years into the new territory. And I think that applies to the workforce as well. If you're an employee and you're in a position for five years and you haven't, I mean, you've gotten 3 % annual raises evaluate if that's time to shift into a different business or a different

sector that can benefit from your skill set. Like if you're an accountant and you're an accountant for a real estate firm, if there's a law firm that can offer you better pay for the same skill set, I see that as a lateral shift. That's a pivot. Granted, it is in a completely different sector, but it's still using your same skill set and finding a way to maximize your earning potential. And so I think that the people that stick to one job for 20, 30 years are capping their earning potential.

And one thing Alex Ramosi says is that he has never regretted a failure. He's only regretted the opportunities that he didn't take. And so when I see a business opportunity come my way, I mean, I'm at the point where I'm going to try it. And I'm going to at least, if it's something where I can be realistic with the time commitment that I need to put into it. And the only thing I have at risk is capital. I'm thinking more like an investor.

And I'm valuing my time a lot more than my capital. So I would rather go invest money into something and get an operator in place and see if it works. Then try a new startup business. And I think that's the big thing is if you're in startups and you just every other month starting a new startup, like that's shiny object. Yeah. And when we talk about the real estate or about the plumbing business, I like to dive into more of that. Why I bought a business versus

Cause I think that's what you just said there. It's pretty big on that. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I don't have anything else to add to this. I think that, you know, the, best advice that I can leave with is put together your life plan, decide what direction you see it going, and then be willing to move with the tides because you know, there, there is a point to sticking to something long enough to see it come to fruition.

But also if it's a sinking ship, you gotta know when to jump off. So it is, mean.

I think you have to ask yourself the tough question, why am I looking to get out of this? Why am I moving? Why am I pivoting? ⁓

ask yourself five times, ask yourself why five times and then come up with the true answer. Cause it's easy to give a surface level answer at first. So, and we went to a few meetups recently. You know, I've been going to the meetups in a while and I just remember I was talking to my wife about it. I miss the, the conviction that I had when someone asked me, what do you do? And I'd say, Oh, I'm I'm a broker or Oh, I'm an investor. And now it's like, yeah, I wear a lot more hats.

But what is my self-proclaimed identity now? It's like, well, I want to be a provider. Like I, an opportunist and you whatever that definition is, I have not found a good word for it. But it's like being a broker is a thing that I do. Being an investor is a, you know, identity that I hold, but I don't think those two things go hand in hand. Like I will not be a broker for the rest of my life, but I will be an investor for the rest of my life.

So anyways, we can go more into the identity on another episode comes every other episode anyways. So you bring it up a lot. Cool. Well, I think that's enough about shiny object. We'll pivot onto the next thing.