Episode 86: I Finally Understand Why Most People Stay Comfortable

I skipped recording an episode last week.

Part of it was uncertainty.
Part of it was being sick.
But honestly… I think part of it was mental exhaustion.

In this episode, I open up about:

• feeling stalled after a successful flip
• the pressure of trying to recreate momentum
• why uncertainty becomes emotionally exhausting
• questioning the direction of the podcast
• why most people choose comfort over bigger goals
• and realizing this show was never really just about real estate

I’m almost 90 episodes into this journey, and for the first time, I feel like the podcast itself is evolving.

Real estate may have started the journey…
but the transformation happening through it has become much bigger than properties, renovations, or cash flow.

This is one of the most honest conversations I’ve had on the show so far.

🎥 Watch the full video episode on YouTube:
 youtube.com/@therickyricardoshow

📲 Instagram:
 @rickyricardoshow

About the show:
The Ricky Ricardo Show documents the real journey of building financial freedom through leverage, better decision-making, and real-world lessons — in real time.
Real estate is the current vehicle, but the principles apply far beyond it.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I skipped recording an episode last week and part of it was uncertainty. Part of it was being sick. But honestly, I think part of it was mental exhaustion. And I'm starting to realize something. I finally understand why most people stay comfortable. Because building something bigger sounds exciting until it actually starts demanding more from you mentally. I'm back with another show. You guys know who it is. We're just going to get real. We're going to talk. Let's have a conversation about, you know, what this is about. What am I doing here? What's the goal? What's changing? You know, is there anything I want to do different? I mean, we're going to go into all of that now. And first, I just want to go back and talk about the show, right? I told you guys in the beginning that I started the show for accountability. Didn't know where I was going to go. I had no idea I was going to be here almost 90 episodes in. It's almost two years of episodes. But it was just to document me buying rentals. It was actually to force me to buy real estate investment properties. That's the whole purpose of the show because I wasn't having conversations with people on the regular, and this was a way for me to continue talking about real estate. And it and putting it in front of you guys forced me to take action. I I strongly believe that. And again, that's why I did it. I've done everything that I've researched and listened to in podcasts and books prior to the show starting. I've shared with you the strategies. I've done a full flip, uh, which is scary, but I did it and made some money on that. I'm not in the freedom stage yet. You know, the cool thing about that is I take that back. I not fully. I'm not full because I've been awarded, I've been able to take some freedoms because of the monies I made from the flip, which is nice. The problem with that though is I didn't back it up with another flip. I didn't have a third flip, fourth flip, fifth flip on the horizon to keep those freedoms constantly coming at me. And that's okay. I'm learning. The reality in that is I didn't have deal flow, I didn't have pipeline. I tried to get other deals, and something in the market changed. Something switched, and they weren't even entertaining my offers. And I've had some low ball offers, but I have some really competitive offers, and you know what? They're still saying no. Even on the properties that have been sitting for a long time. So that's a battle in itself. I felt like there was a ton of momentum. I made decent money. I was gonna take all that flip money and move it into the next project, and the next one, and the next one. We're gonna be on this show, and I was gonna tell you how I had three, four, five properties and X amount of money that was gonna come from them, and the freedoms were really gonna start. I'm telling you this because once you get one big deal, that's easy and hard. I don't know how to say that, but the reason being is because I want to duplicate it, and I haven't been able to. And this this was back end of last year. So we're now halfway through the year, and I haven't duplicated the same amount of money or even the potential to get that. Now I do have a property right now that I'm renovating that you guys are well aware of, and it should bring decent or crazy amounts of cash flow by the month. We'll see how it works out once we actually get that up and running, but nowhere near what I made in that flip. So when I look at this and I look at the future, I'm trying to figure out what is it that I'm trying to do and how can I get there? But for me, my vision is much bigger than that, much greater than that. I want to be in charge, I want to have control, and I want to be in a position to be in those positions to make freedom type of money. Now, I say that and I don't share dollar amounts because we all have certain amounts that we're okay with. I make a certain amount of income now, so my freedoms would have to be something similar, maybe a little less, hopefully a lot more, to continue the lifestyle that I have now. That's what I was hoping was going to take place by now, and we're not there. So my future is how am I gonna get there? And I say this because there's a lot of people that I talk to, a lot of people that I follow, and people that I look up to, everyone's pivoting. Everyone's pivoting in some some form. They're not just doing real estate, they're not. I'm trying, I tried it, you know. I'm I'm a couple years in, and this isn't gonna give me the freedoms that that I'm striving to get. It's not. But it opened up the door to say there's something out there. With all that, comes stress, comes uncertainty, comes very slow progress. Not just slow progress, it's very slow in what I've been doing. So you make a little bit of money, and now the mental pressure that you put on yourself, that I put on myself, is super high. Not to the point that it's destroying my everyday life or anything like that, but it's high because, hey, I was just there. I was just at the top of the mountain, I made some good money. Why can't I do it again? Like, what's going on here? The whole purpose of this is to get there, and I'm not there. There's responsibility in this because I have the extra money, and I need to put that back into the pipeline to get more deals, but you know, who doesn't want to take some of that money and go on a vacation and do certain things and start your spending habits get a little bit, you know, like it's okay. It's not that much money. I have it. Why not? Just buy it. We all know about that. So there's some fatigue, there's some emotional fatigue in that though, because because where can I go from this? How do I get back there? The one thing that to be completely honest is the flip almost went bad. It could have hurt. So I think that's hanging around the back that you know, even though I can understand things better, uh, I can put different systems in place to not get there, or I would like to think not get there, even some of the biggest flippers out there are having issues. I've talked to other flippers and they're dealing with the same problems. So do you not flip anymore? I don't know. Or do we just stay comfortable? Do I just stay comfortable? Do I stop the show? Do I do I move on? Do I just collect the paycheck and and say I tried it and that's it? It's easy. That's easy to do. It's so easy, most people don't start. I've talked with a few investor friends, and if this was easy, every would everyone would be doing it. And not everyone's doing it. And I and I talked to you guys about where my journey came from. And so I had a lot of conversations with friends and family, not to put anybody on blast. It's it's normal. You probably talk to people about certain things, being business owners and and these great ideas, and never take action. It's completely normal for us to do it because in the back of our heads, we all want a little bit more. We all want to do better, and we think we can, and there's an avenue for us if we want to. Most of us stay comfortable, get out on that ledge and see what I can do and take a leap of faith. It's a predictable paycheck. We get paid every two weeks or monthly, however you get paid. It's routine, it's low risk. Don't put money into any investments, and I'll be fine. It's comfort, it's complacency. We're just chilling, we're hanging out. That's what stops people from chasing bigger things. And like I've told you guys before, instead of just sitting here and giving you updates on the new bathroom tile that I chose and the new flooring and the paint colors, like, yeah, that's part of this whole thing, and I I'll repeat that again. That's part of the journey, but that's not what I'm here to do. Because I want to talk to you guys and be completely real and show you guys, like, I'm being vulnerable because this is this is the real mindset that I'm going through. I've had a little bit of success. Um, I'm hoping to have more success, but there's this stall, there's some lag time happening right now, and it's completely real. And it's not just me, there's others as well that have shared with me it's a weird time right now. There's wars, there's all kinds of stuff. There's a market. I mean, who knows what the cause is? There's there's a lot of causes out there. There's a lot of reasons why things aren't what they used to be. It's called change. And I'm just wanting to adapt, I'm wanting to learn and evolve and pivot to ride the wave of that change and and see where it can go. I don't think most people stay comfortable because they are lazy. I think they stay comfortable because uncertainty is exhausting. It's scary. What if I lose all my savings? Well, don't use all your savings. It's easy to say, but that's how we look. That's how we think of it. If I have 50 grand in the bank and I buy a house for 30 grand, well, I'm still left with 20 grand. We don't look at it that way. We look at it as well, I'm not gonna do that because I like the 50 grand sitting there and it looks pretty and it's nice and it feels safe and comfortable. So if I tackle any of that, then life's over. And it's not. But that's the way I feel the pressures of society has us thinking to continue to be an employee. That's it. And I've said there's nothing wrong with being the employee, there's nothing wrong with chasing greatness and striving for more, but not everybody does it. I think more of us want to, but we don't. And there could be reasons for that. We may not have the job that gives us extra money, we may not have the means to do so, we may have certain things in life that took place that allow us or afford us the same opportunities as everybody else. That's why you got to get creative. You gotta be comfortable, you gotta be confident, you gotta trust in the process, as cliche as that is, and you have to build a pressure tolerance. This is tough. If you want to keep going, it's easy to stop the show, it's easy to stop talking to you guys and say, guess what? I'm gonna just see what happens. But there's strength that comes from this grit, and you're gonna make better decisions in life as a whole. Your decision-making skills are gonna be that much better if you're someone that just keeps going. You're gonna handle situations way better if you strive a little bit harder than being comfortable. Like I said, I went into this deal completely different from my previous properties, and I'm like, I have the money, and I have the monies, I have a better scope of work, and that's because these expenses and these purchases I need to do, it's not scary anymore when I know where the money is coming from. And the money's not coming from my bank account, it's coming from the loan that I signed up for. There's products that help us. Most people don't understand that. I did not understand that. I always thought people that were investing in these deals or investors in general had deep pockets, they did it by themselves with their own money out of their wallet. Like that's not the case at all. I'm noticing that the things that used to scare me and emotionally wreck me don't affect me anymore. Doesn't hit the same anymore. Doesn't scare me to to try because now I have some experience behind it to say, well, you'll be fine. You'll be alright. But I'm almost 90 episodes in. Um, I've sat back and questioned the direction of the show. What am I really doing? Who am I talking to? I haven't made it. You know, I just got to YouTube. I don't have the largest following. You know, I have some subscribers. There's a lot of you that have stuck around on my podcast on Spotify and Apple, and I really, really appreciate you guys tuning in every week. Um, I can see the numbers, and and if you guys want to help out more, jump over to YouTube and click subscribe. But, you know, all that to say is I don't know where I'm going. I don't know where the show's going. And I think I realized that my show is evolving. This show is evolving. Because in the beginning it was just real estate. It's all I had. It's all I was doing at the time, but my thought process is different. My mindset's different now because in order to get freedoms, things need to change, and I'm willing to change. I'm starting to realize the show was never about real estate at all. Like I said, it was just the vehicle that I was using. Real estate started the environment in which the transformation is taking place. That's it. I'm okay saying that. And to be honest, I still don't fully know where this is going. My projects, the show, the bigger vision. But I do know this. I know the version of me when I first started probably would have stopped already. Even when I was in the deep parts of the flip. And the fact that I'm still here tells me something is changing. And I hope you guys stay and stick around because this is the time to say this is going to evolve and let's build. Hope you guys enjoyed it. And reach out to me, talk to me. What do you guys want to see? How do you see the show evolving and changing? And where can I take this next? Real estate's the current vehicle. Obviously, I have a property still under some renovation. So we're getting closer to that. I'll share more details uh once that concludes. Hopefully, top contracts now, because part of this is I want to show you guys the money, and I know you guys want to see what's taking place on that side of the house. So take care, have a great week, and I will see you guys in the next episode. Bye bye.