From Firefighter to Financial Freedom

What if the secret to wealth isn’t just about money—but about who you’re building it for? In this raw conversation, we sit down with a former firefighter who turned real estate into a tool to reclaim breakfasts with his son, pivot through market crashes, and craft a life where family always comes first.

📌 Key Topics:
✅ The $1.4M lesson: Why we sold Maui properties before the crash ✅
✅ How to use a reverse 1031 exchange to upgrade your portfolio ✅
✅ Why "alignment" beats hustle (and how to find yours) ✅
✅ The truth about syndications: Vet people, not just deals ✅
✅ Our counterintuitive rule: Only buy properties you’d live in ✅

Most investors chase deals. We chased time—and discovered freedom looks like a nine-year-old’s laughter, not just a bank statement.

Listen now, then ask yourself: What’s your "why" worth sacrificing for?

(Optimized for platforms: Uses "you" language, avoids jargon, and ends with a reflective question to drive engagement.)

Why this works:

1. Hook leads with emotional stakes (fatherhood + freedom).
2. Bullets highlight tactical takeaways (reverse 1031, vetting syndications).
3. Closing line ties to the episode’s heart (alignment > profit).
4. Tone balances warmth ("breakfasts with his son") with authority ("counterintuitive rule").

Need a version tweaked for YouTube’s algorithm? Swap the title to:
"We Sold $1.4M in Maui Real Estate Before the Crash—Here’s Why" and emphasize "reverse 1031" in the first 3 lines.

Chapters:

00:00 The Journey to Fatherhood and Financial Freedom

02:55 From Firefighter to Real Estate Investor

05:51 Diversifying Investments in Real Estate

08:47 Navigating Short-Term Rental Regulations

12:08 The Impact of Maui Fires on Real Estate

14:57 Aligning Family Values with Business Goals

17:48 Building a Supportive Community for Entrepreneurs

33:09 Navigating Real Estate Value Fluctuations

36:21 The Importance of Cash Flow in Real Estate

39:36 Balancing Financial Freedom and Personal Values

44:22 Defining Personal Alignment in Investing

48:38 The Spectrum of Real Estate Investment Strategies

50:12 Choosing the Right Syndication Partners

54:05 Long-Term Strategies for Transitioning from W2 Jobs

Transcript

Ryan Miller (00:00.366)

Mike, first of all, I want to welcome you and thank you for joining me today all the way from sunny Arizona. Um, I kind of want to start it off. So I hear you've won father year nine years in a row. So for us mere mortals, I would like to know how you accomplish such a task and how I can be more on your level. Well, sure. Um, so the only voting party was my son. So that's kind of how that worked. And he's nine years old now. So, um, yeah.

Nine years in a row, hopefully 10, hopefully 10 this year. Reigning champion though. That's right. So when she turned 10, not until March. Okay. So you got a little while to work at it. I a little while. I got to work on my game. Yeah. So, um, before I kind of ask some questions before we got started or prior to recording, but you said Nico was your greatest. Why your son was your greatest. Why, um, kind of unpack that, guess. And, uh, how does that affect your investing?

and everything that you do. Sure. Yeah. I mean, you you think about why we do the things that we do, right? And there's, there's always a reason. Well, I want more time to travel. I want more time with my family. I want to, you know, paint pictures, whatever it may be, whatever your why is. And, you know, mine has been all of those things and then some, but you know, nine years ago when my son was born, everything changed and I didn't realize how

much my life was going to change until that moment. And since then, everything that I've done has been to spend more time with my son. And now that he's nine, I have maybe nine more years until he leaves the house, right? So 50 % of my time with him and probably the most time that I'll ever spend with him is already behind me. So for me,

capturing as much of that time as I can while he's still around me and I can help guide him and teach him and, and share with him the failures that I've had so that he doesn't have to go through those. And maybe some of the victories that I've had too, so that he can go through that. I think that's the most important thing to me. And that's why we've, we've chased financial freedom in order to spend more time with Nico. Yeah. It was very, actually my

Ryan Miller (02:25.742)

I have an 18 year old just left for college a couple of days ago. So, uh, she's, she's off and her first, first full or first week in the, in the dorms and doing that. So, uh, I read a statistic recently that from the time they move out, you on average only have about a thousand more touches with them, a thousand more days that you see them. So that's heavy, right? So you see them for 18 years. And then after that, you only see them for roughly three years.

Yeah, that's crazy. So to your point, it's definitely a life-changing event. So I keep mentioning that to my wife. She doesn't appreciate it as much. So talk about financial freedom. guess kind of give a little bit of background. You were a firefighter, found financial freedom in Hawaii of all places. Yeah. So we live in Maui, Hawaii and lived there most of my life.

And, I was a firefighter there for 10 years and about maybe a few years in, I got stationed, in Kihei on Maui and, my senior firefighter happened to be a real estate investor. And I had written a few books on photography. That was kind of my background is, is I was kind of in the arts world, and tasted a little bit of passive income from that, but it wasn't until I had that senior firefighter who

was doing real estate investing that I saw like the potential for serious income. Right. And on Maui that, you know, the, the big game is short-term rentals. And so we decided to go all in and, you know, learn everything that we can. And we consumed as much content as possible. And this senior firefighter became a mentor to me. He shared all his data, everything that he had. And so when we really started,

connecting the dots, it was very clear to us that, that we have a wide open ceiling there as opposed to with the fire department where it was a pretty low ceiling, to be honest. And, you know, no matter how well I did and how far I moved up in the corporate ladder, if you will, there was only so much money I could ever make. But with real estate investing, that was as wide open as how hard I wanted to work. And so we decided to chase

Ryan Miller (04:51.584)

freedom as quickly as we could to get to the point where we were at a stage where we could step away from the department. And so I think I probably started actually investing maybe four or five years into firefighting. And I'd say within two and a half years, I kind of hit that number where, okay, we're side by side now, right? Like my income from investments is about the same as I'm making in the

And so then it was at, it was at that point where it's like, you know, now it's seven and a half years in or something. If I make it to 10 years, I get vested, meaning that I get a pension and all that kind of stuff. So I felt, okay, let's, let's, let's move to 10 years and then we'll take all that money, pull it out of the pension and we'll put it into solo 401k. We'll invest it in syndications and whatever else. Right. And so that's what we did. We made it to 10 years, put everything into,

you know, passive investments and with the rest of our rentals, we kind of were able to make a living off of that. And, you know, at that time, when I left the fire department, my wife was a stay at home mom. And so we decided one of us needed to get our real estate license just so we had more access to deals. And, you know, we definitely had that real estate professional status too, and no one could argue that. So

My wife became a realtor and because she became a realtor and because she's probably one of the, well, she is one of very few realtors on Maui. That's also an investor. gives her a unique perspective. And because of that, she was able to land some pretty good sized clients right away. And so now we've, we've never been, or we've never had to pull any cash from our rental properties.

Right? So that still becomes an investment and now we can live off of a salary from her real estate, right? As an agent. So do you just kind of take any extras and we, still invest in other properties or real estate asset classes. Gotcha. What's your portfolio look like? where do you invest? You know, what do you invest in this kind of sure. Yeah. So we're at this stage, we're pretty well diversified. So I left the fire department in

Ryan Miller (07:17.454)

2021. And, we started with mostly short-term rentals all on Maui. And since then we've kind of, you know, we've, we've sold some and diversified into long-term rentals, midterm rentals. we still have some short-term rentals. We have one on Maui. In fact, the house that I'm sitting in right now is a short-term rental in Phoenix, Gilbert, Arizona, actually. And, we have some development projects that we're working on. we have some land.

And we invest in syndications as well. So notes, funds, mobile home parks, a multifamily lending funds, you name it. We're pretty well diversified at this point, but all centered around real estate. I mean, we still have, you know, stocks too, that we invest in. I'm very bullish on AI. So we have some of those tech stocks, that do really well for us, but for the most part, yeah, we focus on, on real estate. Any specific reason for that or just kind of.

Well, over time, know, real estate has done really, really well, but you know, our investing strategy has, has always been like, let's buy properties that we would want to move into in areas that we would want to live in. Right. So like this house, like if you're watching on, or if you're, if your people are watching on video, you'll see like, it's a pretty nice looking house. Well, it's also what you can't see. It sits on a lake in Arizona. It's got this amazing pool and cabana area out back. It's.

It's incredible. If we had this house in Maui, it would be worth probably five times what it is here. but it's a very desirable house and it is definitely something that I would like to live in. My house on Maui is not nearly this nice. but these are the kinds of assets that we like to have. So instead of having, you know, a 50 unit apartment building in Toledo, we decided to buy a really nice single family home in an A-class location and

when they're vacant, like this one is right now, we can come and stay here for a few weeks and really kind of enjoy that. And not only that, but you know, real estate has so many tax advantages as well. So I can come out here for two weeks and basically right off the whole trip. So yeah, that was my kind of thing. And no offense to Toledo. I've never been there, but that's not as desirable to me as, as a place that kind of feels like a resort. Yeah.

Ryan Miller (09:44.492)

None of my places look as nice as where you are. So we'll just go there. so I assume you didn't start off with a class properties, or did you? mean, I guess let me go there. not really. I mean, we started off with, I started off with condos on Maui and the condos that we were in were, developing condos, guess, developing areas. And, and, you know, it was,

I think we bought our first one in 2005. And so, you know, the market hit, took a, took a hit in 2008 and we were well underwater on this property and we ended up finding the house that we live in now was foreclosed upon and we knew the builder and the builder had, had foreclosed upon it. And, he took it back. They rehabbed this house that was just trashed and we ended up

because we were so far underwater on the condo that we were in, we ended up short sailing that condo and buying that house. So we leveled up at a time when the market was already down and now we took that house and we built an ADU onto it or we call them Ohana's in Hawaii. So we built an Ohana off of that and we refinanced that and then the property is in a B class area. And so

We refinanced that house after we built the Ohana and we pulled out enough cash to buy a hotel zoned short-term rental condo on Maui. And that would be definitely B plus A minus condo. And so we've kept maintaining those B plus A minus locations for everything that we've had. And a lot of times they're the roughest units or the roughest houses.

in those locations. So we're putting a ton of money into the renovations of it, but we're adding value every time. Right. So our portfolio is not big, but the properties are impressive. Very nice. So are you basically able to pull all your cash out fairly early on? And then as long as your cash flowing and you get the tax write-offs and all that stuff. So it's, it's a whole larger play if you will. Correct. Yep. Gotcha.

Ryan Miller (12:08.504)

So talk about small, short-term rentals in Hawaii. Were you kind of grandfathered in? Cause if I'm mistaken, the laws have changed quite a bit in recent years. Yeah. So the laws have changed a lot. And so that's where, you know, having that local knowledge really comes into effect. Right. For us, we bought hotel zoned short-term rental condos. We knew that they were going to be fine no matter what happened.

And so recently they have what's called bill nine, just was approved and bill nine basically says anything that is, apartment zoned, which most of our condos on Maui are apartment zone. And some of them are being used as short-term rentals. They've kind of been grandfathered in until now. Now what they're saying is we're going to remove all these apartments owned short-term rentals. can no longer short-term rent these a minimum.

Anything that's less than 180 days is considered short-term rental. So they all have to be long-term rentals. And so we knew that that was a possibility at some point. And so we always bought hotel zoned properties. So the properties that we have are hotel zoned. but it is very, very difficult on Maui to get any kind of single family home or anything like that, to have the permits to short-term rent. There's a few that are kind of zoned for that.

But most of them if you want to do it you have to own the property for five years before you apply for the permit and the County of Maui is is basically said we're not giving out any more permits so very very difficult the only way to really Do it is to have a hotel zoned condo Okay, is any of that have to do with the Maui fires or is that I mean housing they lost quite a few so

Yeah, for sure. the fires definitely were a catalyst. before the fires, there was talk of removing apartment zone condos off the list. Once the fires happened, there was a lot of chatter that we don't want tourism anymore. And, you know, that was a small subsection of the population, but it was a very loud subsection. And so unfortunately,

Ryan Miller (14:30.53)

That made it all the way to the County Council and the mayor and the mayor put out a bill saying, let's end these apartments owned condos and, and let's make them long-term rentals. The problem with that is after the fires, there was a spotlight that was put onto the Island of Maui with insurance and with HOAs and with all this stuff. And so what we've seen is we have seen,

so many of these condo complexes, so many of these homes that were just way under insured. So insurances have doubled, property taxes have doubled, HOAs have about doubled. And so what you're seeing is you're seeing this huge compression. so condos on Maui, even if their apartments zoned and you can't rent them long-term after, I think it's about five years from now, three to five years, depending on where the...

condos are as to when that, uh, statue of limitations runs out and you can no longer short-term rent. So for the next few years, you'll be able to, but after that point, these become residential again. And the hard thing is you've got residential condos that are costing a million dollars, but the HOAs are, you know, $2,000 a month sometimes. And it's just, it's not really.

very feasible that local families are going to be able to afford those. Even if the prices come down on the condos to $500,000 or $300,000, when you're talking about a $2,000 a month HOA and you're talking about property taxes that are, you know, seven, eight, nine, $10,000 on a one bedroom condo, local people can't really afford that. And it doesn't, it doesn't solve our housing problem. Um,

We have a lot of issues on Maui that need to be addressed and I don't have a good answer for it. But when you cut off tourism and that's your main source of income for the county, you got to have something to subsidize that with and we don't. And so that's where I, you know, I see this as, all right, time to pivot. And so we've been selling off our Maui properties for that reason.

Ryan Miller (16:51.466)

Okay. And so when you sell them off, they, are you selling to other investors or selling back to the community if you will? Yeah. mean, whoever's willing to buy right now, it's, it's a complete buyer's market. And I'll tell you that we have not had one offer from a local family for any of our properties. So, you know, it's, all investors that have, you know, much deeper pockets than we do.

and are willing to ride out a storm that could be three to five years long. So what are you reinvesting in or are you, you're, just, I assume you're not taking the tax hit. Yeah. So that's a great question. So the properties that we have with partners, we have a partner with one of our properties right now who wants to sell. Um, but he doesn't want to 10 31. So he wants to take the tax hit cause he has a lot of write-offs. I don't like that idea. Um,

I don't like selling properties in general, especially not when I know I'm going to get a tax hit on that. So, for us, we've been 10 31ing into different properties, more long-term rentals. this, this one here we bought about a year ago. It was a gut job. we dropped, I think we did a 10 31. We did a reverse 10 31 exchange on this house actually. And so what that means, cause I know a lot of people haven't heard of that.

But a reverse 1031 exchange is essentially we bought this property in cash and then we used. So actually let me back up. So we sold the condo for $1.4 million. We bought this house for right around a million dollars. We gutted it. We dropped another $400,000 into that and used all that from the 1031.

Right. So, but we were able to do use the renovations and all that stuff through the 10 31 and then close on it essentially after we completed renovations as a reverse 10 31. And the only way we were able to do that is because we owned that first property in cash. Does that make sense? Yep. Very, uh, it's complicated. Yeah. How do you, I mean, it's just a G whiz question for me more than anything, but how do you.

Ryan Miller (19:08.428)

I guess, trust the process enough to buy a million dollar property, an island away or a large, large distance away, you know, over an ocean and then do a $400,000 remodel to it. Well, so the thing is like for us, because we owned that first property in cash, we knew that we're going to have to spend that money anyway, otherwise be taxed on it. And so

any rent that we got from a place that we own in cash is positive cashflow, right? Like it may not be the best return on equity, but it's going to be positive cashflow. So when we look in Arizona and you know, when we bought our first place in Arizona, it was, you know, we had never been to Phoenix before and we just kind of like saw that, yeah, I had this massive spreadsheet and it had, you know,

any city with more than 50,000 people close to a hospital and Costco's and Trader Joe's and all those kinds of things that we wanted. And we just looked at all the demographics. looked at what were ingress markets, where the jobs were growing, where the crime levels were low, all those kinds of things. And we were looking anything west of the Rocky Mountains because we wanted to make it one flight to Maui, essentially.

And so when we bought in Phoenix, like I said, I had never been here, but I knew like, okay, the numbers work really, really well. And when we dove into Phoenix, we're like, okay, well, help me understand Phoenix. And so I called some property management companies and they basically said, look, if you drew a line down the middle of Phoenix, right, you would have the East Valley and the West Valley. And the way that they described it was

For the most part, your East Valley is more of your white collar jobs, things like that. And the West Valley would be more of your blue collar jobs. So, okay. Well, I would want to be in the white collar area, right? Okay. That's your Scottsdale Chandler Mesa, Gilbert, you know, whatever. There's more of that on that side. Okay. Cool. Well, again, I know nothing about Phoenix. I just know it's hot and it's a desert. So do they have water there? So I go in.

Ryan Miller (21:28.546)

to Google maps and I zoom in and I find like there's a little river that runs through Phoenix. Okay, cool. but then there's all these little communities that have these little manmade lakes. Well, that's cool. I would want to be on the water. What does a waterfront house in the desert cost? That's gotta be a fortune. And I zoom in and then like, huh, Manzillo, right. And, these properties are not much more money than the properties across the street. I was like, well,

That's weird. How could a waterfront property in a desert not be more desirable than one that's not on the water? So it's like, okay, well, let's look at waterfront properties in Phoenix. And it's like, well, what else would I want? Well, I would want a safe community. So maybe gated communities. Are there any gated communities? And so everything kept pointing us to Gilbert, Arizona. I'm like, okay, never been there, but there are two gated communities that have these manmade lakes.

in Gilbert, Arizona. I like, all right. So I knew I could, I could look at into these two communities. Now I have a very tight circle of what I wanted and there's only a couple hundred houses probably, that are waterfront in these gated communities. So I kept my eye open and I found one. This is in the first one was in 2020 and we ended up buying it sight unseen. And this thing has been

killer for us. We came out after we got it under contract. I couldn't leave because I was in the fire department and they were not allowing us to travel at that time. So I sent my wife out here and she walked this house and she's like, this house is great. The pictures were terrible, but you know, we thought these were all yellow walls and old carpet to like, everything is great in here. mean, small rehab necessary, but nothing major. So great. And so we got that one up and running and, and it started producing really well for us.

And so we're like, well, I don't know if this is lightning in a bottle or not, but we kept our eyes looking for properties like this. And so I was actually out here after a conference about a year ago, a little less, a little over a year ago now. And, I had been looking and looking and looking and couldn't find any more homes on the water for sale. And the day that I was flying out, this house that I'm sitting in now came on the market and they had an open house that same day. So I was like, great.

Ryan Miller (23:52.872)

rush over to it. Cause I know there's only two communities, right? So I rushed over and this community is a little bit nicer than the other one that, that we're in. And so I rush over, I walked the open house and I see this house and I'm like, my gosh. Like it was a mess. And, I was like, okay, I think we're going to pass on that. Cause they wanted a million dollars for it. I was like, man, this, this house is going to just take a fortune.

And got back home and I started thinking about it. Cause my goal was like, what if we got two really nice houses for this $1.4 million, 10 31. And I wanted one here and I wanted one in St. George, Utah. And so I had a couple in St. George. I couldn't get under contract with, and I had one to hear that I was under contract with, but neither of them were on the water. So when this one,

I looked at them both again and they were both nice houses, but this one I was like, man, what if we did a reverse 10 31 exchange? We bought this house and we did a major reno to it. And I thought about it for a long time. I talked to my wife about it and, and to our accountant and basically we're like, you know what, let's pull the trigger on it. And we did, and it was a very long process.

but it turned out incredible. This house is really, really a special property for us. So it doesn't cashflow as well as I would like it to, but because we own it in cash, it's still producing pretty darn well. Yeah. I can imagine, you know, I mean, I assume this time of year it's a little slower because of the heat and that's why you're there. Exactly. It's slower because of the heat, but

You know, it's funny because we were out here, we got here maybe two or three weeks ago and it's 110 degrees outside and we walk into the pool because we have a pool and a hot tub that we put here and it's, they're all both heated if we need them to be. Obviously this time of year we don't need it to be, but we walk into the pool and the pool's like 89 degrees, right? The water. And we're just like, this is amazing. So it's 110 degrees outside, but the pool's in the shade after about three o'clock in the afternoon.

Ryan Miller (26:06.444)

We must've been in that pool for eight hours the first day and just like, just enjoying it. And like I had a fishing pole. could just fish into the lake right behind the Yes, right in the backyard. So we have these properties or they're, they're on lakes and gated communities in Arizona. And you know, one's doing really, really well. The other one is doing okay. but now we have data too. So

whether we hold these things forever or not, I don't know. Um, this one that we're in, I would like to refinance when rates come down and use that capital to, buy different properties. But, um, but yeah, it does, it does well enough that it wasn't a bad move and getting the money out of Maui was, was actually a good move because we own an identical unit to the one that we sold for this house. And it's probably dropped about $400,000 in equity this year.

Wow. Yeah. Very interesting. So, yeah. Yeah. You know, I wouldn't think prices dropping in Maui, but I guess. Well, all of that political and, you know, the, the bill nine and everything else is, you know, doing a lot of damage and, it's just transitioning things, I suppose. Yeah. So we'll see where, where that lands when the dust settles, but

Right now there's a lot of lawsuits and there's a lot of confusion and there's a lot of, a lot of, a lot of things and we don't know where it's going to land. So for us, it's like, let's pull our cards off the table. Let's move them to other locations and, see what we can do. Gotcha. transition a little bit before, guest started, you mentioned something about alignment and how you try to focus on alignment. What does that mean to you and how do you keep from drifting off from alignment?

when opportunities come your way or just seasons change. Yeah, totally. I think, you know, what we were talking about before, it's really understanding what that why is and making sure that that why is the most important thing. Because when you start making money in real estate, it does become addictive and it's very easy to play keeping up with the Joneses. We have a lot of people in our circle who are a lot more successful than we are and we love hanging out with them.

Ryan Miller (28:26.886)

because we learn from them and they help us to be better people. However, they love hanging out with us, even though we don't add a lot of value to them as far as the real estate goes, because of our stress free lifestyle, because we have kept the goalpost where it always was. Right. And so we're growing closer as a family. And that's inspiring to people who are growing more.

in the business realm. So we're all trying to, you know, create this perfect circle where we're aligned with, you know, our businesses and our family and our community and all these things, right? But we have a lot of work to do in a lot of different facets of our circle. And so, but the most important thing for us is making sure our family is in alignment. And so, you know, one of the reasons we're out here is we just did this, this big family camp in New Mexico and it was

phenomenal. It was a phenomenal way for us to connect with other entrepreneurial couples and, and people with the same kind of mindset. What? Well, I mean, can you go into that? What was it? What is it a group or is it just people that you're friends with or, know, kind of packed that a little bit? Yeah, they're almost all real estate investors. So, you know, if you know, AJ and Tessa Osborne, they're really, really close friends of ours.

And Tessa started this with Nate Robbins. And if you're in real estate investing, then you may know Nate, he emcees a lot of conferences. but they put this together and it's, they keep it pretty limited to maybe 15, 20 families. And it's like a three day event where, you know, you bring your whole family there and it's, it's almost like a team building exercise over the course of three days for families.

And so the kids go off, the young kids go off and they learn about, you know, cashflow and entrepreneurialism and things like that. And then the older kids learn, you know, a little bit further advanced stuff. And then the adults learn how to be, how to be good stewards of money and how to be good family figures. And so we had Scott Donald this weekend.

Ryan Miller (30:47.246)

hosting it and Scott is phenomenal. He's, you know, the founder of Apex and he had a company called Gravy Stack for a while. I mean, he's just a very family oriented guy. And, um, and so he did a lot of the training for the adults and then AJ Osborne did a lot of the training for the older kids. And then Tessa Osborne did a lot of the training for the younger kids. And, um, so was mostly all real estate families, entrepreneurial families. And we knew a lot of the couples.

We didn't know a lot of the kids. So the cool thing was the kids were encouraged to network with each other as well. And so after three or four days, these kids have made these lifelong friends, but not just any friends. These are entrepreneurial families with entrepreneurial kids. And so they're learning entrepreneurialism in, a pretty awesome environment. Yeah.

I'm glad you said entrepreneur that many times in one sentence, what I'm messing with all that. No, no, that sounds like an awesome thing. Yeah, I guess I want to unpack a little bit going back a few years with you and your wife. Did you both have the desire for this? How did you? You see a lot of couples not. I'll use me and my wife as an example. Like she's like supports me, go do your own thing type thing, but she eats in the same

same token. Totally get it. And that's, that's definitely been a narrative that we've tried to help, you know, people get on the same page with. And my wife and I had to get on the same page too. So, you know, what's worked for a lot of couples, including mine and my wife's is, is I had her read rich dad, poor dad, right? I mean, it sounds so cliche, but it's such a good book to help you kind of shift your mindset. And so when my wife,

read that she did get on board and I was the investor person and she was just kind of more on the sidelines. Like I'll do what I want to do until she got her real estate license. Then it became, okay, now I'm going to tackle this from an agent side and I see what's happening on the investor side. So let me help my clients find great properties and something that'll cashflow or help them understand why it won't cashflow.

Ryan Miller (33:09.496)

Right? Cause that's just as important as, as buying right is not buying wrong. Yeah. It's, my wife always comes like you mentioned, you know, your property dropped $4,000 in Maui in value. She's like, well, what happens if that happens? I'm like, it's still, if it's cash flowing, it's still going to stay cash flowing. Like you just, you either sell and just take the loss or you just write it out.

Her, she just sees what's in the news. Like, you know, property values and Miley dropped $400,000 and that's scary, makes, know. Yeah. If I lost $400,000, I wouldn't be happy, but it's just, you said it perfect. You know, it comes back to your mindset and just kind of realigning your mindset and everything. So, Well, you're right though, Ryan. mean, it's like our property lost $400,000. So should we sell it now? Is it going to lose more money or will it rebound? Right. And.

I think, you know, over time, real estate tends to rebound and do very well unless you're buying in a small town that's got a paper mill and the paper mill goes out, right? Or whatever it may be, but this is Maui. This property looks out at the beach and those beaches are the best in the world. And I have to imagine that over time, the property will be fine. But also to your point, it's not just a matter of losing $400,000. It's a matter of that cashflow.

Right? So that property at its peak was producing, you know, $12,000 a month in gross revenue. And so we were probably netting, you know, $5,000, $6,000 a month. Positive cashflow. Now that property costs me about $4,000 a month, every month. Plus it's lost $400,000. So can, can I wait this out or should I sell and move on right now? And that's a tough question because I'm a

long-term investor. I look at long-term horizons. I also have a partner that wants out. So I could buy him out and I can hold on to it. I could buy him out and I could 1031 exchange it, or I can sell it as quickly as possible, take my hits and move on. And there's no real wrong answer. It's just what's going to align because at the end of the day, if the property, if I sell it for a million dollars and I paid 600,000 for it, it's still a win.

Ryan Miller (35:37.132)

Right? Yeah. Yeah. It's a, and that brings up another point, like, yes, you're down 400,000 from the peak, but you can still be positive on the grand total of, of the investment. So it's

People get very myopic and looking at something and just seeing the news headlines. But when you zoom out and look at everything in the totality of investing, it's a lot more, a lot more levers to pull if you will. So for sure. Yeah. Talk about, so Maui has a lot, surprisingly a lot of investors there. obviously you're kind of in that network as a Maui investor.

How much does that help your mindset about just being around larger investors, if you will, and how has that helped you grow as a person and as an investor? Yeah, it helps me get inspired by seeing the things that a lot of the larger investors are doing. and, know, we're really close friends with Brandon and Heather Turner and, cam and Lexi Cathcart and people like that. And, and Brandon,

You know, he's got a lot of influence in the investor community and he knows a lot of amazing people. And so a lot of people come out to hang out with Brandon. And so we've gotten to meet a lot of these investors and, just kind of learn from them on a one-on-one level. And it's always great to see what other people are doing, but it also helps us to learn what we don't want to do.

And I see a lot of these investors that are really, really stressed out. And, you know, I'm not saying Brandon or cam, but I'm saying some of the other people that we run into because they're so ultra leveraged on things. And when the interest rates climb to where they are, it's hard to make cashflow and cashflow is what you need to run a business, any business. Right. And so for us, cashflow has rarely been a problem.

Ryan Miller (37:46.67)

until the last few years because we tend to keep a lot of equity in our properties. So like I mentioned to you, this one that I'm sitting in, we own in cash. So anything is going to cashflow anything we get coming in. I don't want to rent it out for a hundred dollars a month, but you know, a property like this should pull in 7,500 a month. Now we can use that money to go further faster if we refinance, but

then we have a lot more debt and the debt scares us. And so for us, our risk factor is a little bit, I don't know. I guess we're, a little bit more conservative than most investors, but because we're conservative like that, we sleep well at night and we can focus on the why and not the, you know, the grow, grow, grow, grow, Nope. We're biding our time. It's not a good market to buy in. So we take our chips off the table.

And when the market is right again, then we put the chips back on. But until then we are, putting our money into something that is cash flowing and that is liquid. Yeah. I guess that kind of all goes back to your, your alignment. Like you, you have a Y you have a, a lot of times I call it the North star, you know, some, to align to. then if it doesn't meet that criteria, has an investment in a family.

investment if you will, know, with family time and stuff, then you, I assume, just say no to it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we're always looking for opportunities. but if they don't align or if they are going to be more work or more stress or more debt than we feel comfortable with, then we do pass on them. Yeah.

So talk, I guess, some about the tensions between pursuing financial freedom and staying true to your calling. Cause sometimes I mean, I assume it's got to be hard that you see this great deal or you see Brandon just close this 350 unit in Texas or whatever. just making it I don't know what he's done lately, but you know, like it's gotta be hard. Yeah, it is. You want a piece of every deal, right? As investors, we want to be in on every deal.

Ryan Miller (40:07.49)

But in reality, we also like, we have to think about does, is this, does this make sense for us? Is this a property that if worst case scenario happened, we would want to move into? That's a question I ask myself all the time. So when we're looking at real estate, there's a couple of markets that I follow pretty closely and there's two markets I've been trying to get into for a long time. And I know exactly where I want to be in those markets.

And by having that discipline to just wait until it comes up at the right price, I mean, that has saved us a lot because we could have bought years ago in both of these markets and probably been over our heads with the debt that we would be incurring on these things. But we're waiting. We know where we want.

We know what we want. have a very specific, very clear goals on that. And so when those properties come available, then we will take, take them on. so what is, guess your, your long time goal is do you have a financial number or is it more of alignment with your family? Yep. Yep. It's not a financial number. So like you can talk to a lot of investors and they'll be like, look, I want to hit.

six figures a month in cashflow. That's great. That's amazing. That also sounds like a ton of work to me and a ton of headaches and a ton of stress. And for me, I'm not about that. I want to be able to travel with my family. want to be able, look, when I got out of the fire department, it was because I wanted to make sure that I had every breakfast and every dinner together with my son and my wife. Right. That's more important to me. So

Do we want to grow financially? Of course we do. Of course, but I'm not sacrificing one dinner with my son for another asset. It's just not going to happen. And so we are certainly poised to grow, but we're going to grow slower than a lot of other investors. We're going to have less risk than other investors, but we're going to be in the game a lot longer too, because we are very disciplined with what we're looking for and what makes sense to us. So

Ryan Miller (42:28.942)

Right now we're looking at things that, you know, most deals don't make sense unless you're putting down 30, 40, 50%. Right? So that's what we're looking to do. And we don't, you know, the assets that we're looking for, we have a piece of land that we want to build on. It doesn't make sense to build on it right now, but we have the land. And when it does make sense for us to build that property that we build is going to be incredible because it is in a

A plus location.

You remind me during this interview, uh, don't know if you know him, Grant Frankie here. Yeah. He was actually at that family camp that we were just, was he there? Yeah. Okay. I mean his family, but I just met him. Yeah. So it's, uh, y'all have a very similar philosophy. Yeah. Uh, yeah, he's great. He and his family were all great and I had just met them. I didn't know any of them. Um, our boys aligned really well and,

Yeah. He's, he's someone I'm hoping to get to know a little bit better. Yeah. He's a good guy. He, uh, invest a couple hours down the road from here. So I actually interviewed him as well. So he was, uh, one previous, but yeah, it's, just hearing your, your speaking and the slow methodical, um, taking less risks, but. Taken, you know, it's showing a more long-term vision. Just kind of reminded me a lot as you were speaking about that.

When you got into vesting, how did you...

Ryan Miller (44:07.564)

Was it strictly family that got you there, I guess? What is alignment to you, guess, to put it another way? If someone is getting into it, how do they?

come up with their alignment picture, their freedom number, their freedom goal, however you want to word that, and start marching to their own drum. I think that's something that is different for each individual, right? And for us, we were a family first, right? It was myself and my wife, and we had to figure out what was important to us. And so, you know, I had read Cameron Herald's Vivid Vision years ago, and

I really liked that. I liked getting very, very clear on what we wanted. And so I sat down and I wrote a personal vivid vision of what I wanted in my life. And then I asked my wife to do the same thing. And we, we brought those two visions together and we saw where they overlapped. And then we wrote a family vision of what we wanted. What are the things that are important to us? We don't care about money. That doesn't matter. Okay. The, the money.

is a tool to get us to where we need to go. Right. And so there were so many things that aligned with us, right? Like we love travel. We love family time. We loved adventures and creating memories and those kinds of things were very important to us. So, looking at that and looking at what we were giving up at the time, you know, my wife was a stay at home mom so that she could be with our son, but I was a firefighter and I was on 24 hour shifts at a time.

And so I was missing those dinners. was missing birthdays. I was missing, you know, a lot of events because of the nine day rotating schedule that I was on. And so that became a burden and we knew we had to get out of that. And so that became the first piece of the puzzle for us to tackle. And so we did. And we did that through, you know, what is the quickest way we can get to financial freedom?

Ryan Miller (46:18.018)

And that quickly we realized that that was going to be through real estate. And then, so with real estate, I look at it like there's a scale of passivity. And I talk about this a lot, but like at one end of the spectrum, you've got, you know, syndications and you've got, you know, your mailbox money kind of stuff. The stuff that like doesn't, doesn't take a whole lot of activity, but also usually produces kind of smaller returns. And that the other end of the spectrum you've got like.

Wholesaling and development and things that, you know, flipping and things like that where it's a very, very active, but the income can be very, very high too. Now the problem to me with that very, very active side was that most of those wholesaling, the flipping, even the development, most of them, you don't hold the asset. And I am a very long-term buy and hold type of person. Like we buy stocks.

And we just buy it and we forget about it. I don't know. Do we have this? How much is it worth? I don't know. I don't care. We don't need it right now. Right. So we do the same thing with real estate. Our intention is to buy for the longterm. And so when we looked at that scale of passivity and we put all those different asset classes along it, we saw short-term rentals were on the high return side, high active side, but you own the asset. And typically those assets are in.

you know, highly desirable areas, very touristy areas, things like that, which also means that they tend to appreciate a lot faster than assets that are in, you know, more cash flowing markets, like long-term cash flowing markets, I mean. And so we knew that we were going to go after that. But once we got to that number that we needed to subsidize our, you know, fire department job, then we were going to move into more passive investments.

And so that's what we did. We got to financial freedom, technically left the fire department, started putting all of our, extra income into syndications or into long-term rentals or into development with partners and, things where we were kind of more hands off. Yeah. You, you mentioned about the.

Ryan Miller (48:38.552)

how flipping whole selling all that stuff is, it's time intensive. It's capital. can't, you can't make a lot of money, but I actually tried to do a few flips and.

It didn't work out as well as I would like, but anyhow, that's why kind of one of the reasons that led me down the owning businesses is like, I'm a flip, I'm going to build all these systems, processes, build this team, build all this stuff. Why wouldn't I do that in a business that I can eventually sell? Cause I've never seen anybody that sold a flipping business. Yeah. So I've never seen somebody sell a wholesaling business. So, and to me,

You're building the same amount or you're spending the same amount of time and energy. So I'd rather build something that I could sell. that's kind of my philosophy. Yep. you mentioned a couple of times about syndication. mentioned Brandon, you mentioned AJ. I'm going to go out on a limb that you invest with them. Uh,

How is, if someone's like syndication sounds interesting, how would you go about vetting somebody to invest in their syndications? Cause not all syndications are created equal. A hundred percent. What a great question, man. Um, yes, I invest with both Brandon and I've invested with AJ as well. And, and a number of other syndicators for me, I know that even though I am a full time real estate investor,

that I am not the smartest guy in any room. I also know that I've been in the room with AJ on a number of occasions. And I know that he usually is the smartest guy. But I've heard that a few times about AJ that he is the smartest guy in the room. He's the smartest guy in just about every room. And so for me, I'm, I'm leveraging the jockey and not the horse, meaning the asset. Cool. You're going to know more about that than I am.

Ryan Miller (50:40.898)

but I'm going to know AJ and I know AJ as an individual and I'm fortunate enough to have have had many, conversations with him personally. And I know that his, you know, his compass faces the right direction, the same as ours. And so it's that moral amplitude for us that I will follow before I will follow an actual syndication. And the only times that we've gotten hurt in syndications is when we

I don't want to say got greedy, but we weren't, we didn't know the individuals that were running the syndication as well as we probably should have. And I don't think that there was any ill intent there. It's just, they were more focused on the bottom line than focused on the individuals investing with them. And I don't think that that's the case with Brandon or with AJ or with some of the other syndicators that we have invested with it's because that they are.

genuine individuals and they really truly care about each other and their investors. And they are trying like the conversations that I've had with Brandon, this is a terrible market, right? For, especially for syndicators, they're getting crushed left and right. And Brandon is so focused on how he can save some of the deals that may not have been his, his home runs, right? And how he can do that for his investors. He's putting his own money into stuff.

all the time to try and save assets that are struggling. And for me, like that is the characteristic of somebody who I would want to invest with. Right. Because look, everybody's getting hurt right now. Lots of syndicators are getting hurt. The guys that are really trying to make it happen and doing everything they can to avoid capital calls or whatnot. Those are the guys that I'm willing to put money in with.

And if we lose money, at least I know we lost it. Not because of who they were and their character. We lost it because of the market and that's a risk that we're willing to take. That's what they call it. Investing. think it's not, it's not called winning. Yeah. So, but, yeah, I think that's a great point. Late teens, early twenties, you know, everybody was getting into syndications like

Ryan Miller (53:06.422)

You just bought bought something that doubled in price overnight and you won and you look like a rock star. So, it's, this market isn't that, so it's not, see, I see people losing money left and right. I quit following it some, but, yeah, more focused on the business side nowadays than a lot of the real estate numbers. But, sure. still hear enough grumblings of, of it to know that it's.

Not the greatest. Yep. So if someone's listening to us and they're in a W2 job and they're like, this isn't for me. I want to get out. I'm working crazy shifts, you 24 hour shifts, you know, all that stuff. Maybe they're in a call a high living, high cost of living area like you, but they want to make that change. What's one piece of advice that you would recommend to them? You know, is it pick up?

Bridget dad, poor dad. it some other book? it education mastermind? What would you recommend to them? Yeah, that's a good question too. I think you gotta be willing to have a long term viewpoint, right? Because nothing's going, you're not going to get out of your W two overnight investing takes a long time, especially in the market that we're in right now. I would say start with education and that means

reading the books, reading the rich dad, poor dads and the ABCs of real estate investing and all of those books, right? Read as much as you can get on forums, get on like, like you can, there's a lot of people that say social media is, you know, going to rot your brain and all this. I'm, I'm of a completely different approach. use social media as, education. So I follow the people who are posting things that I want to learn about.

So whether it's real estate, I'm following the AJ Osborne's and the, and the Brandon Turner's and, know, lot of those guys. but I'm also following, you know, AI stuff and how that can help my business. Right. I'm listening to the podcasts. I'm going on the forums. I'm going to the events. go to, I go to a lot of conferences and I network because networking has brought me a ton of deals. And so, and not just deals, but it helps you get around the right people.

Ryan Miller (55:30.358)

So masterminds networking conferences, all that kind of stuff, get in the room, real estate meetups. Like we host a meetup every month when we're back in Maui. and a lot of times it's brand new investors, people trying to learn, but you know, to subsidize your W two job through real estate or through, through really anything, it's going to take a longterm approach and you have to be willing to sacrifice in order to get there. So putting.

put in five or six hard years, if you're willing to do that, then you can come out the other side where you are bereft of your W-2 job and you are living on your own terms. How do you find someone good on social media to follow? Because I feel like I've unfollowed as many people as I've followed. I think that's part of it, to be honest. There's a lot of people that are posting stuff out there, I'm crushing it on this deal. I just crushed it on this.

We're making all this money. Look at my Lambos. Look at the, you know, that is not real. Okay. Especially not right now. That may have been true to some degree a few years ago when interest rates were at 3%, people were crushing it and people were, were going all in, meaning they would leverage everything to the Hill to get as big of a portfolio as possible. And if they timed the market, right, maybe they did crush it. Me. That was never my approach, you know? And so.

for us, I think, you know, looking at who's creating the content that you align with most. Look, my content is not going to align with a lot of people because I'm slow and methodical. I'm not the smartest guy there, but I like to talk to the smartest people. So I'll follow, you know, rich and Kathy Fetke. I'll follow Amanda Han. You know, I follow these people who are inspirational, who are in my industry and who give me advice.

That I feel is, is true and aligned with the vision that we have for the future. Yeah. It's, it can be hard sometimes though. Find finding those people. it's, yeah, totally. So, but if your social media feed is small, guess what? It's just more quality. That's all. Yeah. The other thing I've unfollowed people going to

Ryan Miller (57:55.244)

networking events to like, won't drop the person's name, but I thought they were, you know, pretty good. Seemed like a good person, this side and the other, then kind of, we'll talk to anybody. But I'm thinking back to one of Brandon's events, the one that was in Denver a year ago, and we'd talk to anybody. But as soon as Brandon David Green walked in the room, like ran, ran over right to him, you know, like, I'm just like,

Yep. At first I thought it was just me. And I was like, kind of like looking at it. And somebody else mentioned it to him. I was like, that's funny. But thank you.

people can be one way on social media. Anybody can sit here on an hour podcast or, you know, a 62nd Instagram reel or something like that and, and fake it. But, when you see them in real person or real life as a person and you're sitting there having a conversation with them, it's, yeah, it can be different. Then you can kind of see and you know who you want to follow or unfollow, right?

I've unfollowed people from networking events. So, yes, it's very interesting. So, yeah. But yeah, I mean, I connected with you on Instagram. That's how I never know how I found you. Yeah. Yeah. That's how we, we've never actually met, but. Or have we? may have. I mean, we may have, but. I was at that event in Denver. were you? Yeah. So maybe I talked to you there at some point, but you know, that's the funny thing is like,

sometimes it takes a few touches before you actually remember someone like you mentioned grants before and he and I are friends on Instagram. I don't know if I've met him before this weekend. I might have. He said he was out in Maui. I may have hung out with him before. I don't remember. I don't remember everyone because we tend to see so many people. but over time, you know, you have a few more touches and they, they come into your feet a little bit more and

Ryan Miller (01:00:00.556)

you start learning from them or, or, you know, helping them with different things. And it's like, you never know where, this networking is going to go. Right? Like before I ever invested with AJ, I was just friends with him. And when he started his first syndication, I was like, this is a guy I would back for sure. And we got on our first phone call and you know, I had known his story from being on podcasts, you know, but,

It wasn't until that phone call when I realized exactly what he was made up of that we became friends. And it wasn't because I invested with his company that we became friends. was because we were aligned morally. And so, you know, we've vacationed with them. We've spent Christmases with them, you know, and Brandon at the same place. We all rented a house together one year up in Northern Idaho. And so like people like that we do life with now because we're aligned.

And it's not a matter of like, this guy is worth this much money and this guy's worth this much money. It's more of what we are doing as individuals that make us aligned. Yeah. Well, we're talking about social media and all that. You have a podcast as well that you do with your wife. don't think we've mentioned that, but, what, if someone wants to see you on your podcast or wants to connect with you, what's the best way for them to get a hold of you?

Yeah, I mean, we talked about Instagram. That's probably our best bet. We're, at our family invests and, we do, like you mentioned, we, we do have a podcast and it is, it's just us, my wife and myself, and we interview other people who we find inspiring and entrepreneurial couples who were kind of more focused on family over profits. No, and, we didn't, or you mentioned it briefly, but you did photography before.

Did that help you with your podcast? Cause you have to go back and look at like my first one or two, right? I knew nothing about video, nothing about, mean, I still don't know much, but I've gotten better. yeah, that's helping. I think it did. I mean, I went to art school. went to, graduated from the art Institute of Colorado. And so I had a graphic design branding and identity background and did photography. In fact, you can see that, that photo right there behind me. That's one of mine.

Ryan Miller (01:02:22.182)

So I have an eye for design. so that helps like the cover art looks nice. It doesn't help with the interviewing. So that's become something that I'm trying to get better at, but you know, like you like, don't go back and listen to the first episode or even the 15th episode. Like there's, it's a process. It's a journey. We're getting better every time we do it. And you know, hopefully

A year from now we will be a whole lot more fluid and have better stories and, better, lessons that we can, we can teach and learn from. Yeah. I mean, that was our philosophy. Like Tanner, who's normally here with me, we talked about it when like, should we, just throw these in the can and not use them. I'm like, let's put them out. Like we all start somewhere. That's right. It's part of the journey. Yeah. You listen to the older, bigger pockets.

You know, when, Brandon was with Josh and, you know, some of them are kind of hard to listen to. then over the years he got so much better. And now he's probably one of the best interviewers on the planet. Yeah. I mean, I can tell the differences. I struggled with the very few, with the very beginning. It's like just listening. I would have a headache by the end of it, you know, cause I'm like, you have to actively listen and that's, I don't think people realize that you don't listen as much as you think you do.

until you have to pull a question out of what someone just said. Dude, you know what I tell my son all the time? I have two ears, one mouth, listen more than you talk. And it still hasn't sunk in, but he's trying. Hey, that's all we can ever do. Well, Mike, was a pleasure. I'll let you get on your way. Get back to Hawaii tomorrow and see your family. So I'll get back with your family. So I appreciate you jumping on and look forward to connecting at another meeting.

Yeah, thanks Ryan. Really appreciate you having me on man. Thank you.