Wealth Independence Podcast

v1.0 - Goal Setting for Freedom-First Investors

• Dustin Bailey & Adam Penn • Season 1

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In release v1.0, Dustin and Adam break down their market outlook for 2025 and share proven goal-setting frameworks that passive real estate investors can implement immediately.

Learn why stability in lending markets may create more attractive buying opportunities this year, especially in multifamily properties. The hosts discuss why 2025-2026 could present a prime window for acquisitions before the projected housing supply crunch hits.

Beyond market insights, discover practical goal-setting systems, frameworks, and techniques that successful investors use.

Whether you're building a real estate portfolio or diversifying into passive investments, this episode provides actionable strategies for aligning your 2025 goals with long-term wealth creation.

Episode Release Notes & Resources:


Watch episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qN8Uqcs5pQ


See all Wealth Independence episodes at https://www.wealthindependencepod.com



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This show is for informational purposes only and is not financial, investment, legal, or tax advice, and does not constitute an offer to buy or sell securities. All investments carry risk, and investors should always conduct thorough due diligence and consult with qualified professionals before investing.

Announcer:

Freedom isn't the result of wealth - it's the foundation. Welcome to Wealth Independence, where freedom leads and real wealth follows. Through battle-tested strategies, hard-won lessons and real-world experience, you'll discover how to accelerate your path to true financial independence. And now your hosts, Dustin Bailey and Adam Penn.

Dustin Bailey:

All right, welcome to the Wealth Independence Podcast, where freedom leads and real wealth follows. I'm Dustin Bailey here with Adam Penn. Adam, happy New Year.

Adam Penn:

Happy New Year. I can't believe 2024 passed so quickly.

Dustin Bailey:

As you get older, the years become a smaller percentage of your overall existence, so they go faster. That theory definitely seems to hold true. 2024 just went away in the blink of an eye.

Adam Penn:

I've heard that. Today we want to talk about goal setting and our outlook for the year. We'll discuss some of the key events we're attending, the ones we find valuable, and maybe a few others we're not repeating. With that being said, are there any market trends you're interested to see in this coming new year?

Dustin Bailey:

I was on a webcast recently with Marcus & Millichap, and they were talking about the apartment forecast for 2025. From a real estate standpoint, we're definitely excited. I think we're going to see more deals this year as the market has stabilized, particularly the lending environment. Even if rates aren't as low as people had hoped.

Adam Penn:

Yeah, sellers are going to have to adjust.

Dustin Bailey:

The stability matters more than what the rates actually are - once things are stable, people can conduct business. I'm hopeful, like others, that we're going to see the Fed continue to cut rates and we'll see rates continue to slowly drop this year. I don't think it's going to be massive, but the overall stability in the lending environment will start to open up more deals. Some sellers who have been sitting on properties will finally realize it's time to sell. They're not going to get that massive drop in cap rates they've been hoping for, and we're not going back to the 2021 era pricing, at least this year. From an investing standpoint, that's probably the biggest thing I'm excited about. We're looking in several markets, and I think we're going to start to see more deals in 2025 than we have in the last couple years.

Adam Penn:

We're just a few days away from inauguration. What does this administration look like for regulation in the investing environment? We saw a hefty run-up in the stock market right after the election. What do you think about the Department of Government Efficiency? Other than Dogecoin going through the roof, what might this administration look like?

Dustin Bailey:

That was exactly what came to mind. I'm excited about the possibility. I've seen a lot online from folks who may not have necessarily voted for Trump, but they're still excited about the possibility of red tape reduction and the ability to move faster and build things. There's a palpable sense that we're going to be able to get things done. From the appointments for different agencies, including the SEC which is relevant for what we do, it's definitely going to be a less regulatory stance. Anytime you stand up a new deal, there's regulatory overhead that honestly adds no value to anybody - it's just hoops to jump through. Not saying there's no value in investor protection, but a lot of it ends up being needless hoop-jumping. So I'm excited about the possibility of seeing some of that go away and everybody being able to move faster.

Adam Penn:

That might also lead to more deals being done this year because there's a more stable environment. We don't have an administration change like people were expecting back in 2024.

Dustin Bailey:

For sure. It goes back to removing uncertainty - once people know the rules to play by, they can actually start playing. I think we're really going to start seeing a lot of that this year. Going back to apartments, I think it's going to be a great year to buy. The consensus still seems to be we're going to see the remaining supply of new construction continue to flush out. It's going to come to market starting next year, 2026 and into 2027, then the supply crunch is going to hit. To tie this to the new administration, there's a question about what happens with immigration. There's a significant population that has come here illegally in the last few years, and depending on how this administration decides to handle removing them, that could negatively impact rental real estate. I'm curious to see how that trend plays against the housing shortage. But overall I'm bullish. Even when you look at those numbers and what's being talked about regarding immigration impact, we're still short on housing. That's going to become apparent again starting next year. So now's the time to buy - time to start locking in prices before rents start going up and especially in the commercial space, we start seeing values really accelerating again.

Adam Penn:

That's a shameless plug right there - it's a good reason to be on our private investor list so you can get access to those types of deals as we pull them up and start buying them.

Dustin Bailey:

Absolutely.

Adam Penn:

Let's talk about the conferences coming up this year. I know you've got a Q1 mastermind meetup with the Collective, and right after that is the goals workshop with Robert Helms. That's a fun two-and-a-half-day event where you really go deep into goal setting and talking about what you really want out of life. He'll ask you that question probably ten thousand times - "okay, that's what you want, but what do you really want?" It's an opportunity with your phone off for two days to essentially journal and figure out what you're doing. We'll talk more about goal setting as we go through the rest of this episode. Let's talk about some of the other events you're excited to attend this year or ones that we saw value in last year.

Dustin Bailey:

Yeah, excited about that Mastermind. I've done a lot of traveling to events the last few years, and I'm trying to pull back a little bit for the first half of the year to focus more on execution and actually moving things forward in the business. But there are still a few things on the radar. I think George Gammon's Rebel Roster Live is scheduled for May, so I'll be going to that. I know we'll have a Collective mastermind around that as well. Then I'm signed up for the Real Estate Guys Summit at Sea in June, so excited about that.

Adam Penn:

That's a fun one because you get to spend seven days with some fairly influential people. Kiyosaki has come before. Ken McElroy has been there several times, and you get a lot of valuable connections. You don't get your average real estate investor who can take seven days off, go on an expensive cruise, and wants to talk about real estate for half or more of every day, seven days in a row. So you want to talk just a little bit more about that?

Dustin Bailey:

I went for the first time a couple years ago, and it's a fairly incredible event. It's not cheap, but that acts as a filtering mechanism - you end up with some very high-quality people there. It's neat because you spend that first day and a half or so at the hotel, but once you're on the ship, you have a lot of time around all the other summiteers. You end up in conversations at dinner, at the pool, at the coffee shop, or at one of the random bars somewhere on the ship. There's all this unstructured time for conversation with folks that you might not otherwise normally have access to, and certainly not for that much time. It's one of the benefits of being there - everybody's dedicated to that once you're on the cruise. We know lots of people who run businesses much larger than ours using it, and they swear by it - we do too. I feel we can always improve how we run it, but it's definitely good for getting everyone aligned onto the same page. Especially this time of year.

Adam Penn:

That's really where you start to drive the ROI. I'm sure we'll talk about more events as we continue through the year. But those are some of the high-level ones that one or both of us will be attending. Obviously if you're going to any of those, reach out to us - we'd love to chat while we're there.

Dustin Bailey:

What about you? Anything on your radar?

Adam Penn:

Well, last year I really liked Limitless. I'm not sure if I'll make it again this year since it's later in the year. But Limitless was a really good event. The Collective Mastermind meetups were good and the events around them. You get high-quality people. Summit was good. There are some IMN events around short-term rentals that I think I'll go to this year just because they're more specific to the short-term rental side of things for our management company.

Dustin Bailey:

It's funny you mentioned that. I actually came across something today - there are some very industry-specific events I've been looking at. There's one that applies more to us as fund managers and syndication sponsors. There's a big push in the RIA and formal investment advisor world right now to deploy more capital into our space, the alternative asset space. There are conferences dedicated to that, and I'm excited about it because obviously that's a funding source for our deals. I'm excited to tap into it because it's getting a pool of people who might not otherwise know about or be investing in this space to get exposure to a space that we love and definitely want more investors in. Got turned on to a couple of events there. Not sure if I'll end up at them, but there are definitely some of those more industry or niche-specific events that are on my radar as well.

Adam Penn:

With that, let's dive into the theme of this episode - starting 2025 with intention and strategy, and why strategic planning matters in building from both a personal side of things. I do quarterly goal setting, and we'll talk about that here. But that quarterly goal setting isn't just about buying one more building or doing 10 pushups. It's growth in all aspects. I normally break it up into different areas - it's both professional and personal that really helps move the entire ship forward, starting with intention in mind and starting with that vision. To kick this off, let's talk about different types of goals methodologies. SMART goals should be smart in the traditional sense, but it's also an acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. It's not just saying "I want to be rich" - it's better to say "I want a million dollars" or "I want a million dollars by July 1st." The more specific you get and measurable, the better. "A million dollars" is easier to measure than "being rich." And is it achievable? If you're starting with zero dollars today, no citizenship, no assets, and no job, that's not very achievable. But if you have $950,000 and your goal is a million, it's probably achievable. Then relevant - does it actually relate to your life? Is it something you want to pursue? That goes into tying that with your long-term goals - does it really tie together with where you want to be in the long term? There are other ways to measure goals. You don't have to do SMART goals. There are OKRs, which I think you might be more familiar with from your time in the tech world, Dustin.

Dustin Bailey:

OKRs - Objectives and Key Results. I've certainly fallen victim to overthinking the goal-setting process. Wondering which framework to use - should I use SMART goals, should I use OKRs? I know people who even set goals via KPIs or key performance indicators for the year to achieve certain things. This is honestly me speaking more to myself than anything - just pick one and go. There's no perfect way. You can iterate on it. If you do something for a quarter and find it's not working, just change and go to something else. There are all sorts of journals out there. I'm really curious to hear from you, Adam. I know you've been fairly diligent about a journal and a goal-setting framework that I think the type of journal you use provides. So again, no one right way. But I think you've found something that works really well for you.

Adam Penn:

Let's talk about that. Some of the tools that have worked well for me - I use a goal planner called the Phoenix Journal. It's laid out well - it's a 12-week planner, so you use four of them a year and you have one week of goal setting between each one. It starts in phases - it has you write a four-year vision. Where are you going to be in four years? Where are you going to be in one year? Where do you not want to be? You write that future that you fear. And then where are you going to be in 12 weeks? From that 12 weeks, I take that and build out four goals. It's kind of a back and forth, but essentially you build four goals you're going to move towards. Last quarter was increasing cash flow, saving more money, improving my health, and reading three books. Those are very specific. Then it goes down and has you break out each one of those into individual items, action steps, ways you measure it, ways that will improve your life. Then it has a 12-week calendar and you go through and create checklist items that you need to do every week to try to achieve that goal. Dustin may or may not know it but there are items that I follow up with him more frequently on during weeks. I'm saying "hey, we need to get this done" because at the beginning of the 12 weeks, I had planned that out to be done that week. That's the system. Then you go into each week and look back at your vision and your goals and plan that week - what are the things you need to do that are going to push you farther forward? Then each day you look at the week and plan what your week is going to be. My regular evening or morning routine is to look at the vision that I have. I alternate between them, but let's just say the one-year vision and then you look at the goals and you look at the calendar and then you look at the week. If you're planning the week, you plan the week and then you look at the week and that's how you plan the day. You start to chip away at those little things. That's high level the system I use. But really, at the end of the day, the reason that I do the quarterly goal setting is it allows me to stick with a plan. Create four goals and if I burn 12 weeks on it, even if it's not something I really ended up needing at the end of it, my life doesn't change much in those 12 weeks and it's probably going to push me forward. More importantly, it's fast enough to create urgency and short enough that you didn't spend 10 years working on a goal you didn't want. You build more intention into every day.

Dustin Bailey:

It's super important. You mentioned working on a goal that you didn't want. That's why a lot of folks struggle to even do quarterly goal planning. But what's really more important is that long-term vision - that's what really allows you to know the goals. If it's coming back to the quarter, then to the week, and then to the day, all of that is in alignment with where you want to be in the future. I always hate the analogy but it applies here as well - if you spend your entire career climbing the corporate ladder only to get to the top and realize it wasn't somewhere you wanted to be or that your ladder was up against the wrong building. You can have goals, but if you haven't really thought through where you want to be and then the goals are aligned to that, you have the risk there of doing a whole bunch of work that might otherwise be good, but it doesn't get you where you want to go. In addition to doing the quarterly stuff - and a lot of folks struggle with this, I struggle with this - to sit down and do this stuff and think out the future. I used to think a lot of it was just hokey and I thought "this is a bunch of hand-wavy garbage, this doesn't matter," but it's super powerful. But if you don't sit down and do it, you really have to start with that long-term vision and then work backwards. That's why so many of these frameworks do that - it's about that consistent alignment.

Adam Penn:

A lot of that starts with these journals. At the goal-setting seminars we've been to, it's all about what you want. The exercise that Robert does at the goals retreat - if you have a million dollars and you have to spend all of it today and you can't invest it and you can't save it, what are you going to buy? You've got to spend all of it and just create a list - 10 things, 20 things, whatever it is your brain will come up with. Maybe those are things you want in your long-term vision. So you just start to list out some of those things and then drill down on them repeatedly, and that's how you start to build those. I stick with the four-year and one-year vision for a year at a time and then I rewrite the 12 weeks every 12 weeks.

Dustin Bailey:

You may have touched on this briefly, but does the Phoenix Journal have an end-of-week review sort of thing where you kind of look back?

Adam Penn:

At the beginning of every week, there's a bit of an end-of-week review. There are checkboxes so I can see if I've done it. At the end of every week, there are questions - "What victories from the past week are you proud of? What do I most need to improve on? What am I most grateful for?" It takes those three questions or just a little bit of reflection on the week before.

Dustin Bailey:

That's really good. So you've got that built-in accountability, where you know you're going to have to answer that at the end of the week.

Adam Penn:

And paired with that, I also have an accountability partner that I work with. He's not involved in any of the businesses, but it's valuable. I met him at a conference years ago, and we've been doing this for about two years now. Every Friday we have a call to see how it's going and if we got our stuff done for the week. I ended up at his wedding. We were doing goal setting during his wedding, and I texted him on his wedding day saying "a wedding's no excuse to not set your goals, buddy." He didn't get them done, but he had a valid excuse.

Dustin Bailey:

That's important - I don't want to gloss over that. It seems like it was more accidental than intentional. But do you feel like having that accountability partner has really been a positive influence?

Adam Penn:

In the beginning, I wanted someone just to talk through some of the stuff with - especially someone who shouldn't be your business partner, shouldn't be your spouse, shouldn't be someone you're actively involved with. But you can say "this is where I'm at." They can ask you questions about what's meaningful. More so than anything else, if you both set goals and at the end of it, you think "I didn't do anything, I just got half of them done," you feel like a failure. But then you look at your partner doing the same thing, and they got half of them done too. Life gets in the way, and you start to figure out which ones work more. You make them more specific. Looking at some of the goals we set when we first started this two years ago, they were broader, less SMART. Now we have almost dialed in that we have two big goals and two small goals. The three books last quarter was a small goal. Getting myself down to 15% body fat was my larger health goal. Then I have one large business goal and one small business goal. They all tie together, but you start to see what you can set and what you can't set. The accountability partner more than anything else makes it consistent enough that I kept doing it to the point where now it's just an ingrained habit, because you felt bad showing up on Friday if you didn't have that journal filled out.

Dustin Bailey:

Sure, yeah.

Adam Penn:

With that being said, let's talk about goal setting inside companies. This might not apply to as many of our listeners, so we'll touch on it briefly. Even at their companies, they might work inside of a system for quarterly goal setting - company rocks. We work inside of a system called EOS - Entrepreneurial Operating System - in all of our companies.

Dustin Bailey:

Operating System.

Adam Penn:

I always get them backwards - Entrepreneurial Operating System. At its core, it's a goal-setting system. It's a system of processes where you outline your business and then talk about how you set goals and track goals and get your team to track the goals. That creates accountability even inside the business. So I have both the personal goals and then business goals inside my journal, but then the company itself and all the employees have their own rocks, which are really their quarterly goals. As a team, we'll review those and check on each other inside the companies on all of our L10 stuff. We're essentially all each other's accountability partners because at the beginning of the week, you've got your goal and it's either on track or off track. If they say off track, we get to talk about why.

Dustin Bailey:

The to-dos that are forced in EOS - your name's associated with all that stuff. When you know you're going to have to answer for something, it goes back to accountability. Human psychology means you're much more likely to get that done. EOS is definitely good for team alignment. Not to pitch EOS, but we know lots of people who run businesses much larger than ours on it and they swear by it - we do too. I feel we can always improve how we run it, but it's definitely good for getting everyone aligned onto the same page, especially this time of year. Depending on goal-setting cadences, some folks are one month offset. But we're right here at the beginning of the year, start of Q1. A lot of folks are going to be going through that business goal-setting process to set those rocks in EOS. It's a great tool for getting everybody aligned.

Adam Penn:

One thing I want to touch on briefly before we close this out - how do you deal with things that have changed? When halfway through the quarter your goals aren't aligned anymore or you don't want to pursue that anymore?

Dustin Bailey:

I don't really know what you're talking about. I achieve all of my goals right on time, every single quarter.

Adam Penn:

I'm sure that's why you're always late. We talked about this earlier - having that 12 weeks really is short enough that you shouldn't have to change much. But also something I've heard at the goal-setting seminar with Robert or things I've learned - you can't have goals for other people. I can't set a goal for Dustin because I can't make him do something. You can't will someone else to do something.

Dustin Bailey:

Yes, much to your chagrin.

Adam Penn:

I spend a lot of time making sure that all my goals are self-goals. Even if there are things that maybe I want to get done with family or friends or trips, at the end of the day, the goals I've noticed some failures on were the ones that required input from other people, whereas they weren't just something that could better myself or better my employees or create more business opportunities. Even some of my goals have things I delegate to team members, but at the end of the day they are self-aligned goals that I have control over.

Dustin Bailey:

For sure. And a big other piece to this is that no goal-setting framework is designed to be rigid. If you go into it thinking that you're not going to have to make adjustments or that there's not going to be unexpected things that crop up throughout the quarter or even each week, you should not be surprised by that. Your goal setting and your mindset towards it really should be prepared for the unexpected. You can set a goal and situations will evolve. Halfway through the quarter, you might realize that was probably a bad goal, we shouldn't have set that, or the circumstances have changed and we don't need that anymore, or that wasn't important. And now this other thing that we should have prioritized is important. I'm talking here in the context of the business, but it all comes together.

Adam Penn:

It all comes back to intention. As long as you had good intention to begin with, and you continue to have that intention, you are setting goals - there is an evolution to it, but it's all about that intention of accomplishing what you set out to do. I've got one quick story on that. A quarter ago now, I was reviewing Q3, and at the end of every one of my goals, one of the things the Phoenix Journal has you do is create a reward at the bottom of every goal. Some of them are simple - my health goal was tailored shirts. So if you start seeing me in nicer shirts, it's because I ordered some tailored shirts. Two quarters ago, if I raised $1 million, which kind of just happened - I thought we were way off and I started doing the math and realized we did raise a million dollars - my reward was a Rolex. The dealer is supposed to be shipping it out in the next month or so. It's just one of those fun things that you get on the tail end - it pushes you. It's a thing you really want. Even without being specific in my goals, I went through my habits and my actions every week. But it was one of those goals that I really thought I hadn't achieved. Then I remember sitting at the coffee table and looking up at a friend that was there saying "I got a Rolex." This is a thing that I've told myself I get. I spent my whole acquisition fee. Maybe that wasn't the best business decision, but it was this thing I'd already pre-decided that if I accomplish this, I got it. And that helps push me through to the next thing. It's something I've wanted since the Rolex Batman models were $5,000. So whoops.

Dustin Bailey:

It's an incentive. That's going to be different for everybody. Some folks react to that reward at the end. I think back to someone like Michael Jordan, who would create these storylines in his mind about somebody that had wronged him. The smallest slight would become this thing that he was going to use as motivation to crush this person that night. Even though it was a tiny thing and it might not have even happened - he might have made it up completely in his head. But the point is, he was very well aligned with what was going to motivate him to achieve his goals. Beyond the frameworks for writing them down and keeping track of them and accountability, I think that's an important part that a lot of goal-setting things don't talk about - what's the incentive for accomplishing this? For most people, it needs to be something more than just feeling good about marking that one off or checking it off. There needs to be something more tangible or maybe intangible like revenge at the end of it. But that's definitely not a piece that should be overlooked.

Adam Penn:

Very important. Well, if anyone wants to talk about goal setting, always reach out to us. We'll put a link to the Phoenix Journal that I use in the release notes under the show here. With that being said, remember where freedom leads, real wealth follows. Join us on our next episode.

Dustin Bailey:

All right, thanks Adam. We'll see everyone next time.

Announcer:

Thanks for joining us on Wealth Independence. This show is for informational purposes only and is not financial, investment, legal or tax advice and does not constitute an offer to buy or sell securities. All investments carry risk and investors should always conduct thorough due diligence and consult with qualified professionals before investing. Until next time, remember - freedom leads and real wealth follows.

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Adam Penn

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Dustin Bailey

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