CWC EP40 | Andy Cagnetta Sits w/ Brandon Schlichter, Creator of "Investment Joy" YouTube channel

Is "passive income" actually a myth? Most people want the rewards of business ownership without the grit of digging up a sewer line.

In this episode of Coffee with Cagnetta, Andy Cagnetta (CEO of Transworld Business Advisors) interviews Brandon Schlichter, the creator behind the massive "Investment Joy" YouTube channel. Brandon explains why he chose "unsexy" businesses like car washes, laundromats, and vending machines to build his empire, and the incredible story of how he turned a physical portfolio into a digital audience of over 5 million people.

We dive into the reality of business acquisition, why most entrepreneurs fail by over-complicating their models, and Brandon's "no magic pills" philosophy for long-term success.

📌 Visit TWorld.com for more information about M&A, Leadership, and Business.

In this video, you’ll learn:

Why "Boring Businesses" are the best-kept secret in M&A.
The truth about passive income: Why it's 90% hard work and grit.
How to scale a physical business portfolio into a global media brand.
Advice for the "Prototypical Entrepreneur": Stop looking for the magic pill.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Hey, welcome back, everybody, to a very special Coffee with Cagnetta. I have Brandon Schlichter here from Investment Joy. There you go. And you know, so number one, thanks for being here. Really appreciate it. I'm honored that you're here because you're exactly the type of person we're talking about on Coffee with Cagnetta. You are the prototypical entrepreneur out there in the world that we love to talk to. Because, you know, that's sort of the message we're getting across to everybody is like, listen, you can make your own life by owning businesses, by selling businesses, and and you're doing that. So why don't you just start at the beginning, Brandon? Like, how'd you get into this?

SPEAKER_01 0:52

Sure. Um, so my claim to fame is like I've been working essentially nonstop since I was 18 years old. Um, you know, I I had a major life event at 18. My dad had a heart attack. He uh my brother and I grew up real poor uh from rural central southern Ohio, a little town that nobody's probably really ever heard of. Um so my dad was a truck driver growing up, never made any money at it. My mom sold door-to-door cosmetics.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 1:16

I I've been told I can't say Avon because if your subscriber list or the people that watch you are over like 40, they know what Avon is. But for any of the millennials, the younger millennials of Gen Z, they have no clue what I'm talking about. Of course, no way. Door-to-door cosmetics, what I've been told I've had to have to say more. Um, so my family had never made money growing up. So when I was 18, my dad had a heart attack, and my brother and I had to go get jobs immediately after that happened because there was just no way to support our family. Uh, our dad was essentially the primary primary income. My mom went to go cleaning office buildings, kind of like the one we're in overnight. Um, I went to work at a uh warehouse up in uh Groveport, Ohio. My brother went to pick up trash for the city of Circleville, Ohio. Wow. So trash picker, um, sanitation worker, I guess I should say. Yeah. Um, I worked at a warehouse and then my mom cleaned offices to try to just keep the company, the, the, the household afloat. Uh, we ended up being evicted at that point, just wasn't able to get it past the goalpost and have a stable life for a while. Um, was in the warehouse job for three years, and I thought, you know, I have no college education, no formal education, anything. I I'd like to have a family someday. You know, I'd like to do the traditional thing, you know, uh as hard as mom and dad work growing up, at least we had our our family. That was the one thing that we had. Um so I thought, you know, I have to get into a career that I can make money without a college education. So I looked around, you know, in a town of 13,000 people, what can you do to make money? And I realized that all of the real estate agents in town, they drive a Cadillac and they wear nice clothes. So that's the thing that I've got to get into. So $1,300 on a credit card, and I was a real estate agent. Um, and I did that for a while. And um that was, you know, I in the, you know, the illustrious career was 2006. I got my real estate license.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

Great timing.

SPEAKER_01 3:05

Yeah, great timing to get real estate. But what I found was I had a really uh big affinity. I really enjoyed dealing with foreclosures. So I got into foreclosures hard and heavy um in 2007 or so. Uh went out doing bank appraisals, bank assessments, inspections, all those type of things for banks. So, you know, was selling real estate actively, um, but was dealing heavily with foreclosures. Um really honestly wasn't good at selling real estate. Um, I have a I'm not great at telling people just how it is. And hey, you know, if you don't want to list your house, go with somebody else. I'm not good at that uh that kind of line in the sand, list with me or not. Um, you know, I want to try and get a deal done. That doesn't work. That really didn't work in 2007 when prices are dropping, everybody thinks they have extra equity in their home. Uh got into foreclosures and uh started working with investors um and found out really quick that I, in my first two or three years of dealing with real estate as an agent, I never ran into a broke investor. Every landlord that I ran into had money. Every property flipper that was good at what they did, they had money. Um, ran into some several people that were investors full-time effectively, that had no formal education, no formal training. But, you know, I ran into a guy, his name was Joe. He's a truck driver just like my dad, and he flipped houses on the side. Wow. And I thought, how did you come and make all this money when my dad drove a truck just like you? When we were, we were poor, as poor, you know, as poor can be. And, you know, started having these conversations, ran into a uh gentleman he worked at the hospital, was a janitor, but he also bought houses on the side and he was flipping homes near the hospitals. And I thought, man, this is what I've got to do, not sales. Um, you know, I'm having I'm living and dying on uh whether somebody will list their house with me or not. I should get into investments. Um because these guys, they you know, they didn't have any formal training. I didn't feel like they no offense to them, of course. I didn't feel like they were super smart or had some secret thing that they had had figured out. They just went and got it done and were making great money in real estate as an investor. So um worked on uh sales pitches, uh trying to get financing, this whole long story that we don't have time for. Uh, but just really put my my head down to the ground and tried to figure out how to get into uh owning property for myself over a few years. And then in 2013, I finally figured out how to write really decent business plans and business proposals, went out and just started shopping business plans around with investors and individuals I knew that had capital. So let's let's start an investment company. We're in uh right outside Columbus, Ohio. We've got all of the real estate you could imagine, decent neighborhoods for you know $25,000, $35, $45,000 for a decent house. So put together a little investment fund. Um, ended up from 2013 to 2019 buying over you know 140, 150 rentals, uh, mostly single family detached, uh, a few small multifamilies, but nothing that I had ever bought was over maybe uh, I think the largest I bought is a five plex over that time period. Um did that for for quite a few years, did have done very well, very blessed in the capacity of me owning rental properties. Um, enjoyed it immensely because with a rental property, I don't have to sell anything really to people. I put a listing on the internet and I get a hundred rental applications overnight, it feels like. Uh, very different position. Enjoyed that, did it real well, and then got into um opportunities of acquiring businesses with real estate. Um, started running into uh properties. The first one I ran into is the one that I'm known for, is my laundromat in Chillicothe, Ohio. Um, had a uh wholesaler call me about it years ago, many, probably almost 10 years ago at this point. Right. Said, Do you want to buy a commercial property? It has some apartments, has a garage with it, and it has a laundromat, but the laundromat doesn't even work. So I thought, well, I could do this. Um ended up talking to the elderly lady that owned the laundromat. And um, we were looking at the real estate, and I'm looking, okay, so there's a two-bedroom apartment here. Um, we got to redo the staircase. You know, I'm itemizing all the expenses here in the uh the apartment to figure out, okay, so I could, here's my acquisition price, here's how much rent I can get out of it. There, I don't care about the laundromat. It's just gonna sit down there, we'll rent it out, we'll figure out the commercial real estate when the time comes. But I'm I'm knee deep in the rental property. And I talked to her, I said, Where are those five-gallon buckets over in the corner? And she said, Oh, those are my quarters. Your quarters? Yeah, from the laundromat. We end up with a lot of quarters at the end of the month, and I have to go take them down to the bank, roll them and take them down to the bank. And I said, You have three five-gallon buckets in the quarter, in the in the quarter over here. And she said, Well, yeah, those are about uh about a month, month, month and a half worth of income from the laundromat. I'm sitting there, I've got my phone, I Google, you know, how many quarters fit in a five-gallon bucket? It ends up, there's like over $8,000 sitting in the corner in quarters. I thought she's got $24,000 sitting in the corner. I'm like, oh my goodness, like lady, you're I'm trying to buy the real estate here, and you've got a laundromat that's making, you know, six to eight thousand dollars a month. Like, really? And she's like, Oh, I hate, I hate dealing with it. It's too heavy, all this different stuff. I thought, well, for $8,000, I'll carry a five-gallon book of quarters down to the bank. You know, who cares? It's good money. And I'm sitting there thinking, why am I in real estate and not considering buying a business? Um, so this whole story evolves in a much longer version, but the Reader's Digest version is um I end up acquiring that launder mat later. He she sells it to another investor in town. He buys the building for his wife and kid to have a fun little side job. Um, they don't do particularly well at running the laundromat. They there's a lot of um problems that you have to deal with if you have a 24-7 laundromat, you know, vagrancy and issues that are overnight. Um, not that they can't be mitigated, but there's just a whole process that you've got to deal with. Um I ended up buying it off of that gentleman for $85,000. Uh, start doing YouTube videos about it. Um I had been doing YouTube videos for a few years, but at that point, no one really cared about the rental videos that I was producing. Like I had this great plan. I bought an old train station to turn into apartments. No one cared about it. Like 500 people watched the whole series. Wow. It was terrible. And then I go and do a video on my first day of opening the launder mat, and I have four million people watch me collect a hundred, collect $147 worth of quarters in a week worth of time. Absolutely miserable amount of money that came out of the laundromat on the first week, but you know, I had millions of people watch the video. Um, so so over the course of time, you know, I I started off with the laundromat. It's gone on to do decently well. We're probably doing 100-125k a year gross, um, which is less than average, but I'm also in a less than average location, small little location. I still own the real estate. The real estate's appreciated like crazy. So I'm happy on the appreciation side. And then just um went into buying other kinds of businesses, got into vending machines, uh, bought some car washes. The car washes have done extremely well. Much, much more profitable than the Lauder Matt, just because I have a business partner with it. Right. He's a nuclear engineer um up where I live in Ohio, and he's very mechanical, um, very operations-oriented. Um, decided that that wasn't enough. You know, I'm I'm not saying I'm a particularly smart guy. Um, but you know, bought the car washes and then said, I want to get something bigger. I've done these podcasts with big business people, and they've said, you know, why don't you get something bigger, Brandon? You know, you have these car washes and they're about a million-dollar business, so why don't you get something that's bigger? And I thought, well, okay, well, I'm gonna go on a national hunt. We looked at uh, we started with a pile of a couple hundred businesses, and then we um drilled it down to a list of the top 10 businesses that we found in the U.S. or at least in my market segments that I was willing to look at in 2023, narrowed it down to two, essentially the roofing company up in northern Illinois, and then we had um a industrial electrical firm around Tallahassee that we were looking at. That was my my my number one pick, but it required a little bit more um technical licenses than I felt like I had the ability to get at that time. So um roofing was easier to get into license-wise. Um so we ended up closing on this uh roofing company in northern Illinois, and here I am kind of knee deep in the commercial roofing business, dealing with government contracts and a little bit of everything over there, it seems like.

SPEAKER_00 11:48

So what a journey. I mean, obviously you have a family.

SPEAKER_01 11:52

Yes. I'm married with uh five kids. So I got uh four daughters and one little boy, so wow.

SPEAKER_00 11:59

So y it it must be fulfilling to have a way different life for your family than than you grew up in.

SPEAKER_01 12:08

Yeah, I think so. Um my family dynamics definitely different than it was growing up. And I often say though to myself, like, man, I wish you guys could just we could pack up and we could go see, go visit my life back then. Right. Like it's negative three in Ohio right now. It's super, super cold. And I remember, you know, when we were growing up, we lived in a little tenant house in the middle of a cornfield. So it was, you know, a little house in the middle of 500 acres worth of corn and it got so cold. And I know on weeks like this, it was my brother and I's job to go out and cut wood because if we didn't cut wood, we'd freeze to death. Right. And I'm like, yeah, you guys would really I wish you guys could go and live that experience because we had to cut effectively about three cords worth of wood every summer and fall so that we had enough for the winter for heat. It's like, you know, you guys, you know, you're you're playing on your Nintendo Switch and you're all comfy cozy in the house, and you guys don't have to go out and cut wood at all.

SPEAKER_00 13:04

Yeah, you know, there's something to that, and I I've talked to a lot of entrepreneurs on this on this podcast, and you know, I often think I've asked them, what do you think? Why why do you why are entrepreneurs successful? Why do you think you've been successful? And a lot of times the answer is that they're they're able to grind and they're able to be uncomfortable. Like like literally be uncomfortable in a situation and trying to solve an issue. I can only imagine owning a laundromat, everybody thinks it's an arch uh it's an absentee business. I don't think it is. You know, yeah, it's not it's not car wash, absolutely not an absentee business. You know, and it and you made the point, which I tell everybody who wants to buy a car wash or or a laundromat, you have to be somewhat mechanical. Otherwise, the repair guys are gonna chew you.

SPEAKER_01 14:03

Yeah, yes. Um, and that's why we're doing a um a maintenance spin-off right now um for my company, as well. We're starting our own repair crew because in Ohio, in rural Ohio, well, no one cares whether you're in rural Ohio or you're in Columbus or Cincinnati. It's $150 an hour for any maintenance on your machines plus $150 to show up. Right. And for us, we just can't pay it. I mean, right, we can pay it, but that's all of our margin that we we hope to make off of the car wash. It's out the door the next time something breaks. And, you know, they called me yesterday and said, hey, our boilers down, um, which keeps the the bays running and everything warm. And it's like, okay, so we're gonna have to call an HVAC guy on this, but almost everything else we're fixing ourselves. Yeah. And I mean, the first time you buy a sensor and they install it and it's like $1,500. It's either you you stop making money or you spend $1,500. And um in one of those things where I, you know, I like my laundromat, I like my car washes. Um those kind of businesses um can be more hands-off than say my roofing company. Yeah, sure. But but it's also for me, it's also building the process and systems to get it to work that way. Right. That's kind of the harsh reality that we found out when we bought the roofing company was we thought that there was a decent um process and system behind the scenes set up to help the company running when the owner wasn't away. And we found out that's not really true. We've we've had to go in and set the process up and the systems up. But we're finding out, just like with the laundromat, just like with the car washes, just like with my rental operation, uh, as we set up the processes and and systems, then it can become not hands-off, but it can become a little bit less involved. And all those things come at a price.

SPEAKER_00 15:48

Yeah. And it and it sounds like, you know, you mentioned earlier, even before we started the podcast, that you have a uh you put somebody in charge of your roofing company, you're high and you're hiring a CEO on top of that. Yes. And then you have someone who's mechanical in charge of, you know, who's sounds like they're really smart in charge of your of your uh car washes. So it sounds like you've figured out that not only do you need to work hard, which you obviously are a grinder, cutting wood for your whole family all this winter long. Uh, you know, I'm sure when these things go wrong in the in the business, you're not panicking much. Much. Okay. I think that's a relative to it. Right, right. But it sounds like, you know, you one of the things you figured out, hey, I gotta work hard and I gotta get good people involved. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 16:36

And and that's like the one of the the biggest things that I've uh been seeing here in the past couple years, because it it's really weird because I've been told in un no uncertain terms by the president of the Coin Laundry Association that I'm the reason that car washes or sorry, laundromats are so expensive. Um he said, yo, between you and Cody Sanchez, you've yeah, you two have raised the price of a laundromat by no less than 25%, at least if not more 35 to 50%. Wow. Really? And he's like, Yeah, you every every week I get 15 to 20 calls where they mention you or Cody Sanchez asking me how do I get a laundromat because they want to just buy a business where there's nothing else beyond going in and collecting money. And in, you know, in in my world, I I also run a little consulting business on the side where it is. I know this sounds awful, but like, you know, here I do these YouTube videos and I talk about my my business operations, and now people are calling me to get help with doing consulting. And I'm like, why do you think that this thing is so hands-off? Why watched your video? Like, which one? The one where the machine explodes and there's soap all over the floor, or the one where someone literally rammed an SUV through my car wash, like literally just drove through the whole machine, did $100,000 in damage? Well, never watched those. Like, which one did you watch? Why watch the one where you went and got quarters? Okay, well, there's a lot of those, but did you watch any of the ones where everything's broken, broken, and I'm having to figure out how to deal with uh a compacted sewer line to where they want to dig up a whole entire parking lot for 800 feet and for me to get a permit with the city to shut down the the thoroughfare for a day while we take an excavator? You watch that one? Because that was a $70,000 problem that I had I had uh two weeks to figure out. Right. I never watched those. Okay. Well, this is because it's this whole spectrum. You know, there's times that yes, I am making more money than I could have ever dreamed possible. Like there's I've had a couple weeks in the past six months because we're in salt season in Ohio. It's great. Right. Large, and I of course, you know, I have just made the decision not to film those parts, like big, you know, lots of money. But then there's other times where it's the $70,000 um compacted sewer line, it's the $100,000 someone driving through, it's the um the bearings gone out on uh $10,000 washer. How are we going to deal with that? Um, with the you know, with the roofing company, it's it's you know, if it's a hundred thousand dollar problem, I'm thrilled. You know, we've had several problems come up that are more like a half million to six hundred thousand dollar problem of okay, we've got this really awful thing. How are we going to to address it? How are we going to deal with it? How are we going to get past it? And then it's the process of setting up systems and processes and figuring out what are you going to do to not just address it now, but in the future. And that's one of the really harsh things that we've had to discover with the roofing company and why I've hired a COO is we've got one end of the business development, business process, sales, and everything, but the back end with operations are struggling. So we're finding somebody to just do nothing but set up systems and processes. And it's like my buddy Aaron that I own the car washes with, he works at a nuclear facility and everything's just SOP process driven. And I I've sat down with him and I've said, I can't believe how much you micromanage and everything is spelled out for you. And he said, We're on a $35 billion department of energy project, Brand. And he's like, Everything has to be. It all falls apart overnight if we have not planned. And you know, he sits in a trailer, um, a job site trailer with six other guys uh with with six guys in his department, all they do is just plan. They plan a week out, they plan a month out, they plan two to three years for this DOE project. And I've looked at him, I said, Man, this is just incredible that you have six full-time planners setting up the processes and systems. And it works on the big scale to $35 billion project, and it works at the small scale for you know $125k a year launder, man.

SPEAKER_00 20:54

So how much of it is uh coming up with processes? Number one, where'd you learn that? And you know, number two, how much is it coming up with processes? Or how much number three is it you just on top of all that, you gotta be entrepreneurial.

SPEAKER_01 21:10

I think it's it's all that and above. You know, every everything that I that I tell people, it comes at a loss of money for me. It's like we've had to address human resource issues. I didn't realize how much money human resource issues have costed me in my companies, especially my real estate company over the past um 13 years. Um, once I put somebody in um the human resources, not just operations, but human resources specifically, dealing with uh people just stealing money from me. Right. Like just over COVID, it was a near million dollar loss for my real estate. And you know, when I do these podcasts or I do a YouTube video, they say, Oh, that's great, Brian. You at least you had a million dollars to spend. Like, not really. Like, I don't have a million dollars sitting around at the bank. Like, the things I have to do to come up with a million dollars to deal with a problem, like that's all. Awful.

unknown 22:00

Right.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

And you know, praise God, I've got through it at this point. But man, it was harsh dealing with people that I trusted to go do work for me. You end up with this whole thing to detangle of so-and-so made this poor decision. It snowballed into this other problem. And now we have an X amount of dollar. You know, we have a $50,000 loss on this property, $35K on this property. We've got a $75,000 loss on this property, you know, $250,000 loss on this property. And unwinding all those things to our, I've, I'm the unfortunate recipient of a lot of, a lot of lessons from the school of hard knocks. Right. But as I look at it, I'm I I come up with a more operational mindset of okay, figuring out how, how could this thing go wrong? How can we re-preempt it from going wrong? And how do we make sure that if that on the front end this doesn't become a problem in the future? And as we go through all my businesses, lawn rat, car wash, uh roofing, real estate, um, YouTube, because the YouTube channel is its own business and of itself. Um, I also own self-storage, um, all these different businesses that I'm in, it's it becomes one of those things of how do we make sure on the front end that it we preempt it, but it doesn't happen again. You know, it's like they say, you know, um, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. You know, I'm a I don't know what fool you 10 times over again, but I'm I've been there on certain certain aspects of my different companies of man, I'm I'm not very smart at all. This thing become continually becomes a problem, it can continually leeches money from me. But as we go and we tune things up and we fix them, my profitability goes from low to incredible very quickly as we tighten them up.

SPEAKER_00 23:41

So let's talk about today. I mean, let's talk about some of your, you know, YouTube um channels and things like you know, your consulting businesses. Is that where you see yourself going? You love expanding that? What do you love doing the most?

SPEAKER_01 23:56

Ultimately, that's what I want to do. Um, we're still, I'm still doing a lot of work in the roofing company. Not so much in the car wash and laundromat. Car wash and laundromat stuff is fun. I enjoy it legitimately. It's nice because it's just it's almost um mindless entertainment at this point where I just go and count money. We go and we fix some plumbing issues or whatever it is, I call it a day and go home. Um, that's enjoyable to me. Um, because this is it's almost um, I don't know, uh it feels good to fix things. Yeah, it feels good to have a problem, mechanically fix it at the end of the day. Oh, we repaired the machine. Great. Um, but where I really want to go long long term is kind of like with the coaching, but mostly the social media, because I run into so many people that are the version of me at 18, you know, your dad's had a heart attack. And I get emails and messages almost every single day. Dad, my or Brandon, my dad just had a heart attack. Brandon, I just lost my job. Brandon, XYZ is going on my life. I'm dealing with all these things and you figured it out. How did you figure it out? And ultimately, at the end of the day, I just want to be, you know, a blessing to other people because I've been so I've been blessed on so many, so many different things. Like, man, I look, you know, I got into real estate. Um, and the guy two offices down from me was the former CEO of an oil company. And growing up, poor, the richest guy I knew worked at a TV plant. And he was just the guy that worked at the RCA TV plant town and made, you know, $40,000 a year. And now we're talking the 90s. So $40,000. I figured up one day, and I need I I used to adjust it for inflation every year. When I tell the story, it's like I think he made probably the equivalent of $70,000 a year today, um, compared to when he was working at the TV plant. I was like the richest guy I knew. And um when I got my real estate license, I sat, you know, was in this office suite uh at the brokerage, and a couple doors down was a uh CEO from a former CEO from an oil company. And his view on life was just completely different than mine. But he was also kind-hearted, religious, kind of the guy that I after I saw him, I'm like, I'm gonna be this kind of guy. He gives away so much money, helps so many people out there, just kind-hearted, takes care of people, but he does it at a scale that I've never thought possible. Right. Like when, you know, my my family has money to give somebody, like, we can give them 50 bucks. He goes out and he's given away $100,000 in um private school sponsorships, right? Providing scholarships to multiple, multiple needy kids in our community who just they have no future at this point. Their families abandon them and they would just go in and he would go in and just take care of them. That's what I want to do. I want to help people at scale. So I'm trying to figure out ultimately with the YouTube stuff and social media how to help people at scale, right? But also do it in substantial, substance, substantive ways that actually make a difference. Um, you know, I've got people that I've done coaching and helping and training with, and they've gone on and aspired and they've done like super, super incredible things. I got one individual and he's now on a seventh or eighth car wash that I've been coaching. Nice. And I'm like, man, you're but you make more money off your car washes than I do. And he, you know, talking to him and just trying to talk to those people that I've helped, but then also get the data sets and the information off of them of why did this work out? Because I've got other people that I've gone in and done training with and coaching with, they failed. Like they are miserable failures at this point. And I'm like, the advice I've given these two different people were the same thing. How do I make sure that the outcomes are better? What was the difference between my guy in Memphis versus the guy in, you know, South Carolina? I thought they were in the similar life stance points, and we went in and did coaching, and one's gone on to just absolute greatness and the other one hasn't. And there's, you know, and there's all this whole spectrum of different successes and failures that I've I've done coaching with and tried to help people. And at the end of the day, I just want to be able to figure out, you know, for those people that were like me when they're, you know, 18 and they've got to go get a job. What if they're 21, you know, what would be a good career path and help coach and train them and figure out just how do I help those people? Because I had Norm, the CEO, two office suites down, but that was me growing up. That's not the case for everybody.

unknown 28:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:17

Oh. You sound like you have a very busy life these days. Five kids. Yeah. So what do you do for fun? How do you unwind? Or is it oh, you know, like I it's I don't know if there's such a thing as balance. I think it's there's not.

SPEAKER_01 28:29

And like I I it's there's no balance. Um, I'm trying to just get myself into a point where I spend, you know, my relaxed time is going is going and spending time with the kids. Sure. The only thing that I've enjoyed over the past two months more than anything, and this just sounds stupid, is cutting wood. Because we've I've reset up my fireplace. I always tell my kids, like, this is the fun, this is the worst thing that I had to do as a kid was go and cut firewood all the time. And now I'm like, I got a really nice axe and I'm going out, listening to podcasts, and just cutting wood. I thought, this this is actually this is so like it's cathartic, right? Yeah, there's there's no point. I can cut anybody can cut a piece of wood with a sharp axe. So that's all I'm doing at this point. I thought, man, my life has got to this point.

SPEAKER_00 29:11

Well, that sounds like a a great thing to do. And so, you know, if you had some advice for folks, you know, you know, young people thinking about getting into business, you know, I I I know you're you're out there all the time. What's what's kind of like the big Go do it. Just go do it. Just go do it.

SPEAKER_01 29:29

And and and that and I'm trying to figure, I'm trying to get to the point that I've got a really good sales pitch for people that say, Oh, just go do it. Oh, that sounds so easy. What do you want to do? Like, you know, I've I've you know, obviously a lot of people I talk to want to get into car wash or launderments, and they say, Well, I want to car wash. Okay, go down to the local car wash in your town, ask the guy, volunteer. Say, what do you need done? I'll do it for free. Go spend 10, 10 hours a week volunteering in that industry that you want to do, you want to be in and see what happens. Well, I can't do that. Yeah, you can.

SPEAKER_00 29:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:00

Just go do it. And it's like, well, then I'm gonna have to learn to talk to them. Like everybody's in sales, right? Whether you realize it or not, you're either you've either you've either completed a really poor sales pitch to your employer at Walmart or McDonald's, or you are selling yourself and you've sold yourself to acquire a company, you've sold yourself to a bank to go out and get the financing, you've sold yourself to a business broker in the way of what kind of um lead you're looking for, what kind of opportunity you're looking for. Just go out and do it. I know for me, it's easy to just go out and do it because I know how to talk to people. I know to how to do those things. But I know for a lot of the younger kids, younger people I talk to, they say, Well, I can't do that. You know, yeah, the only way you can do anything is just try. And you'll probably fail, and that's okay.

SPEAKER_00 30:44

Yeah, no, I always talk about failing. I mean, I think kids need to learn how to fail more. Yeah. It's it's a very important skill to be able to fail. Yes. So what's the best way to watch your YouTube videos? What's where where where are they going?

SPEAKER_01 31:00

What everything's at investment joy, all one word, but if you just type investment joy, it'll come up with my TikTok and YouTube and all my social media presence.

SPEAKER_00 31:08

It's um it's it's it's great to hear stories like yours, Brendan. And and I love it. Uh I I I I think more people need to understand that it's a lot of grit, it's a lot of work, there's no magic pills out there. That's what I like about your content. It's real, and you're showing people that you know, sometimes you have to dig up the street and and deal with the sewer line, and sometimes people are gonna, you know, you're gonna have to deal with uh people stealing from you, you're gonna have to deal with but but there is a reward, and and if you surround yourself with good people, processes uh go out there, you can do it.

SPEAKER_01 31:49

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 31:50

So thanks for being here. I really appreciate it. That's what I'm here for. Thanks, everybody.

SPEAKER_01 31:56

Awesome.

SPEAKER_00 31:56

All right, another great episode of Coffee with Cagneta. That was one of the best ever. Thanks, Brandon, for being here. Investment joy, everybody. Check it out.