The Lie Keeping You in a 9–5 (Even If You’re Smart)

Most people think financial freedom is about working harder.

It’s not.

It’s about timing… and most people are already late.

In this episode of The Catch Window Podcast, Omega sits down with Mustafa Ladha to break down why high earners still feel stuck, why most people never build real wealth, and how small decisions compound into massive outcomes over time.

If you’ve ever felt like you’re doing “everything right” but still not getting ahead… this will change how you think.

🎯 In this episode:

• Why “having time” is the most dangerous belief you have
• The hidden reason people making $200K+ still live paycheck to paycheck
• The real difference between income and wealth
• Why most people never take action even when they know what to do
• How to actually start building financial freedom without quitting your job
• The connection between discipline, identity, and long-term success

This is not about hype.
This is about understanding the game you’re already playing.

📲 Connect with Mustafa
LinkedIn: Mustafa Ladha

📲 Connect with Omega
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/omegastallworth
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/omegastallworth
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheFitnessEmancipator

If this hit, drop a comment with what stood out most.

And if you’re serious about expanding your “catch window” in life, subscribe and stay locked in.

 #financialfreedom, #wealthbuilding, #personalfinance, #entrepreneurmindset, #highincome, #passiveincome, #investing101, #realestateinvesting, #mindsetshift, #successhabits, #financialliteracy, #moneymindset, #businessgrowth, #selfimprovement, #wealthmindset, #entrepreneurlife, #incomevswealth, #financialindependence, #makemoremoney, #buildwealth, #wealthstrategy, #timingiseverything, #successprinciples, #richmindset, #moneyhabits, #ceomindset, #scaleyourincome, #investingtips, #highperformance, #omegastallworth 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

All right, y'all. Welcome to the Catch Window podcast. Excited for another episode. We have Mustafa here. Now, most people think financial freedom is all about working harder or finding the perfect investment, but very few talk about timing and when to move, when to commit, you know, when to take risk and being physically and mentally prepared for that window of opportunity. We call this show the catch window because it's all about when that moment comes where preparation meets opportunity. Mustafa, we're happy to have you. If you don't mind sharing a little bit about you and kind of your past and what you do.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Yeah, Omega, thank you so much for the opportunity. Thanks for joining for inviting me to the podcast. You know, when I got the invitation, I was wondering that same question, why catch window? What is this guy talking about? And then as I looked into it, I really tried to zero in and understand, okay, this is from the sports, you know, perspective of, hey, somebody's throwing you a pass. You need to understand, you know, maybe your running lanes, maybe when's the right time to actually position yourself correctly so that you're able to make that catch. And I loved how you introduced podcast, the explanation, and the opportunity for me to introduce myself because ultimately it's indicative of life in business, right? Sometimes you only have one opportunity to make that catch, you only have one opportunity to close that transaction. And this is in school. No one is slowing down to tell you that you have a test, that it's, you know, a 30-minute, one hour test, and these are the rules. Um, that's not really how life works, unfortunately. So a lot of us are, you know, unprepared for life. And I think that's really my story is, you know, I went to college just like most of us. I was privileged enough to go to college. I went to my local state university. I, you know, got a degree in genetics. I went to medical school. Um, and then I'm like, wait, is this actually what I want to do? Is this actually how I want to help people? Uh, and the answer was, you know, no, it isn't. I want to help people, but I don't necessarily want to be a doctor. So I need to figure out what, you know, my catch window looks like. What is going to be my right opportunity? And unfortunately, there's no school teacher that can answer that for you. There's no coach, there's no advisor, no one can really give you that answer other than to simply say that you need to kind of slow down, you know, understand yourself, get a bit more clarity, granularity, and then go out and execute. Um, so that's more or less what I did, Omega. I got a traditional job in the pharmaceutical industry. I knew that wasn't going to be, you know, my end goal, but it was just using the skills that I had, using that science background and aggressively investing in self-development. Uh, you know, I started, you know, different businesses that I eventually exited, and my real estate business was the most scalable. It grew to a point where I was making more there than I was making my day job. But my day job was maybe what I was spending, you know, eight hours a day on. Um, so then I I got to the uncomfortable position where I had to really define, you know, my catch window. When does it make sense to kind of quit that day job and just be financially free, you know, quote unquote retire or aggressively scale that business? And and that's what I went about doing Omega, because for me it was really about the goal was to help as many people as possible. And I realized early on that people don't really understand financial literacy, they don't understand personal finance. And not that many people are out there to teach them in like an altruistic way. Usually it's just to, you know, push a product. Um, so that's really the gap that I look to address Omega every day. And it's it's very simply like that Robin Hood model, except instead of like stealing from the rich to give to the poor, it's you build products and services and solutions for people who can afford them, which is like, you know, passive real estate investing. And then you use the revenue you generate from that to build out products like a podcast, for example, where you're just educating people on financial literacy because those are the gaps in the market, in my opinion, if that makes sense, Omega. Yeah, no, definitely.

SPEAKER_01 3:42

That is that is amazing, myself. That's so much passion behind you know you speaking, and I can see so much of the shift you have from where you started to to where you're at now. Man, I mean, you you obviously went from a nine to five to building passive income at scale, you know, with the real estate business. What what was kind of that first real moment where things kind of started to really shift to you?

SPEAKER_00 4:05

It's a good question because you when you I feel like those are it's one question, but I really have to break it down to two if that's okay. I think the first moment, Omega, was when I had a friend of mine who was, you know, a dentist, very successful by, you know, traditional metrics, kind of come to me to say, hey, Mustafa, I don't know how to invest. And this guy's maybe, you know, let's say five, six years older than me. I'm, let's say, you know, in my maybe I'm 24 or so at the time. And this is, let's say, a 30-year-old who's established, who's doing well financially, et cetera. Well financially can mean like, you know, 150K, 200K plus type income. What we would today call like Henry, maybe like high income, not rich yet, right? Which is a lot of people. But I think when you're very good at what you do, and you are somebody who's very good at what you do as a as an athlete, right? It's very hard to realize that you can be very good at one thing and not very good at everything. But the more you talk to people about that, the more you realize, hey, just because this guy's really good at one thing doesn't mean he's really good at everything. And I think for me at that age of like 24 or so, when I started to realize this, it was like, hey, people have a money problem more than they have a health problem. Let me actually address this because, you know, when you're unhealthy, and I guess you also, you know, have probably a lot of experience in the training realm. So you can speak to this more than I. But sometimes when you're unhealthy, you realize and you have time to take corrective action. Usually when you're not financially literate and you're not saving enough and you're not investing enough, you start to realize maybe around 65 and you don't have the time to really make it back. Um, and and you really set yourself up for failure or a really challenging life, even though your early years, your high income years, you might have been doing really well. So for me, that was the first glimpse of hey, like this person needs help or wants help or wants to have a conversation. Sure, let's unpack that. And then it became like, how do you create a platform to do that at scale? For me, WhatsApp was that platform. You know, some people might network at a bar, some people might network at a coffee shop, uh, some people might network at, you know, live events. Or, you know, today it could be like Instagram, it could be like, you know, Facebook, LinkedIn, et cetera. For me, my initial experience networking and really trying to understand who I can help was on WhatsApp. To date, I've raised over, well over 60 million on WhatsApp. Basically connecting with people who are looking to invest, understanding what their goals are, and really building out investment strategies for them, right? So I've helped over 290 people. I've helped them make over 20.2 million at this point, Omega. So it's one of those things that those early initial reps really helped me iron out my form, iron out how I'm gonna actually position myself strategically and then aggressively scale. But I think when you're starting out or when you're in the thick of it, it's hard to kind of realize what things can snowball into, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 6:56

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, and that's kind of that was gonna be my kind of my next point. You know, I'm thinking about there, there's so much, you know, you learn in some of these experiences you had and going through some of these things. And even, you know, you kind of mentioned like uh this doctor, for example, where sometimes people can get to this point where, you know, they they look back and a lot of time and a lot of years, I don't want to say waste it, but for the lack of a better word, waste it. For for someone who's who's trying to break out of that nine to five, who's trying to get into this position that you're talking about, what what does that window look like? Is it a small window? I guess where do they need to act before they miss this opportunity?

SPEAKER_00 7:32

I think Omega, it's a it's a hard question to answer because the honest answer creates a problem. Right? From my perspective, the honest answer is you have a lot of time, right? No one knows if they're gonna drop dead tomorrow. But the assumption is, hey, I'm gonna live to 65 plus. That's like the subconscious assumption in the US, because retirement age is 65, you work till 65, you work in one job, you know, you buy your house with a white capit fans, that's all the American dream that maybe people our age were sold. And then you have COVID and you have, you know, remote work, and it changes what the American dream looks like. But fundamentally, Omega, if you tell somebody that they have time to act, right? If you tell somebody, hey, you don't need to take action today, then it starts to create bad habits. If you and I go into the gym and you say, Mustafa, and I say, I want to get jacked, I want to have a six-pack, I want to have core strength, and you're like, no problem, Mustafa, you're 30, you know, you're 32, you have time. And I know I have time. If you tell me I have time, I'm not gonna show up to the gym and I'm not gonna do any work and nothing will happen. So the reality and the honest answer is people have time to build financial freedom. But if they don't start taking action today, they will most likely never build financial freedom. And taking action can be passively listening to this podcast on, you know, Spotify podcasts, YouTube, et cetera. It can just be like learning and growing to then implement what you learn and grow. Just like I might not go to the gym, but I might start with my diet. I might not work on passing drills, but I might watch game film. There's so many different parallels to taking action. But I think it's important to kind of learn how to take action, if that makes sense. And there it's about like, you know, putting yourself in situations that are just a little bit uncomfortable rather than like for me, if you put me in a football game with you, I'm gonna get destroyed. So let me first like learn how to catch a football. Let me first learn how to run. Let me first learn, you know, what the catching window actually means. Let me learn the basics of football, like what will cause like a flag on the play, et cetera. Then I can kind of upskill myself, not to your level, but to like a mediocre level where I can play maybe flag football. And then you kind of transition. And I think personal finance, financial literacy, real estate investing, all the things that we talk about and that I specialize in, it's very easy for me to throw like product vomit of like this syndication, you know, this opportunity zone, this is how we're doing ground up construction. Just like it would probably be very easy for you to confuse somebody else on like the dynamics of how you analyze a game. Does that kind of make sense, Omega?

SPEAKER_01 10:01

Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think that's great. And I and I think a lot of what you're saying that, you know, I hear about is is I think perception is so powerful, right? That that illusion, you know, I'll call it an illusion that we have a lot of time, like a lot of time to start investing. Like I'll get into that when I'm in my 30s or 40s, or, you know, likewise what, you know, my world when I think about health and fitness and performance and and and you know, that side of it of like, you know, I I just love your point. I think understanding that you you don't have the time that you think and that it's just all about finding the right path to start moving forward, um, even if it's something that's parallel to the the ultimate thing. But I think finding some some path to be consistent to start moving forward so you can start growing um and getting better results financially, um, you know, physically, same thing. I think that's that's such a powerful thing. And and I think a lot of that too is, you know, I think people, unfortunately, you know, so social media, we live in this this instant gratification world. I think people are oftentimes unwilling to sit in something uncomfortable to get to what they ultimately want. And you know, they feel like it should be easy or or quick. Um and when it's not, they think it must be wrong and they kind of bounce. You know, what was was there a moment, I guess, for you, for the people listening, where you had to make a decision that felt risky or even illogical at the time, but ended up changing everything for you.

SPEAKER_00 11:18

Yeah, I think it's a great question, Omega. And I'll do my best to answer it the way you asked it. I think fundamentally, the decision to quit my traditional W-2 job working in the pharmaceutical industry was a risky decision. It was a decision that felt uncomfortable to the people around me. It's like, why are you doing this? And also to the people around me, it's like, I'm not asking you for permission, I'm updating you. There's there's a difference, right? Um, it was a situation where I probably left the pharmaceutical industry in 2022. I had spent like maybe a year or so saying, like, oh, hey, I'm gonna do this. And my wife at the time is like, oh, don't do this, you know, we have all this stability, X, Y, Z. And for me, it's like, all right, fine, I hear your concerns, I don't agree at all, I'll wait a year arbitrarily to just kind of help you feel more comfortable with what will happen. Um, and then a lot of that is born from like people's mentality. A lot of the times when you have a job where you work for somebody, where you're getting a stable paycheck every two weeks, it creates a lot of sense of um consistency and reliability. Where when you're when you run your own business, there isn't necessarily that consistent cash flow. Sometimes, depending on how your business is set up, you might make a lot of money one month and maybe no money for the next quarter. It just depends. And real estate is one of those businesses depending on your strategy, where you can see a lot of income coming in, and then you can have periods of loss, especially if you're doing like multifamily syndications or you're doing ground-up construction where there isn't that monthly rental cash flow coming in. So it really depends on how you structure your life and your personal finances, Omega. For me, it was one of those situations where I knew if I wanted to accomplish, you know, aggressive goals, I need to take aggressive swings, but I needed to also build out the right platform to mitigate risk. And a lot of that was building net worth, allocating it to investments, seeing how those investments perform, and waiting for like tough markets to see how do my investments perform in suboptimal conditions. And that will give me more data and more reinforcement to say, hey, this is the right play. Like imagine in that sports example, right? Your team is winning all their matches, but you're playing teams that you should beat very comfortably. This is not an accurate representation of how good your team is, but you still need to win those games. You can only beat the person in front of you. Now, when you come up against a team that's better than you or on your level, that's when you really see like how did your preparation actually position you to succeed or position you to win that game, et cetera. And I think for me, Omega, that's kind of how it was how I structured my life to say, like, I want to build this type of life or I want to do these types of things. I want to help people at scale. I'm not gonna be able to help people at scale the way I envision by developing safer drugs, even though that's amazing. The drugs that I worked on are now, you know, available in the market, saving lives. That's awesome. I'm very proud of that. But it's not necessarily how I was looking to impact people as I scaled and as I grew. I wanted something more intimate where people can say, hey, listen, I spoke to Mustafa and now I can understand my personal finances. Whether or not like I decide to invest, that's kind of secondary. And I think money is one of those things that's very intimate across all cultures. People have a lot of money sensitivity and we don't realize that a lot of times we feel very uncomfortable talking about money. But if you look at it from like a science or more analytical perspective, it's like if you can't measure it, you can't manage it. If you don't know what money's coming in and you don't know what money's coming out, how do you know what you're saving? And I would hate for anybody to be in a position where they're no longer capable of generating revenue, generated, making money, but they have all these expenses. And I think over the last four, you know, five years or so with COVID, inflation, all these different things, people feel like life is expensive. So it's like, hey, have we grown enough? Have we invested in ourselves enough to be in a position to have more skills, to be able to generate more revenue? Like today, everyone's concerned AI is gonna steal your their job. If you're always learning and growing, you will be better than AI and you will be able to generate revenue. You'll be able to use AI as a tool, just like people use calculators and cars as tools. And like the sky won't fall. If if that makes sense, Omega.

SPEAKER_01 15:22

Yeah, yeah. No, I think that's a that's amazing, man. I think uh there's a lot of growth that happens in in a period like that where you're going from, I mean, such a you had a secure, you know, well-paying job to, you know, to your point, going into a world where there's not as much you know certainty, especially early on, there's a lot of volatility in the entrepreneurial world. Um, you know, doing something different is uncomfortable, you know, and it's hard sometimes to stick that out and to and to see that through, knowing that it's different, knowing that it's uncomfortable, not knowing exactly where it'll go. Like I guess when you were in that transitional period of going from your job to to what you're at now or what you were striving for at that moment, what was kind of happening internally? You know, what what you know, confidence, doubt, you know, when you're thinking about giving up to security for for greater freedom, how did you kind of navigate that?

SPEAKER_00 16:15

I think for me it was uh it was um a realization of the situation that I was in, Omega. Like I was thinking to myself, if not now, then when? If I don't pull the trigger now, I will never do it. It's like um one of those situations, imagine like you we would talk about this catching window, right? Where like somebody's thrown a ball, you realize it's out of your reach, or you realize that you have to jump, or you have to like, you know, lunge your body. You might be concerned about getting tackled or injured or whatever, but it's like you have a split second to decide. I think a lot of times in business, it's the exact opposite where you actually have to slow down to really position yourself correctly to make the right decision rather than just rushing into the decision that feels like the right decision, because usually that's like the path of least resistance, and it's usually the wrong decision, in my humble opinion. Right. So for me, Omega, it was a period of, you know, investing, scaling businesses, exiting those businesses. I was doing all of that while I was working in the pharmaceutical industry. So for like seven years, I was building up like a nest egg, and I was also learning the strategies, learning what I'm good at, learning what I'm good at that I can monetize on, learning what I'm good at that I can monetize on, that I can make more money than my day job. Right? If I'm making more money than my day job in my business and I'm spending less time on my business, then the assumption is if I quit my day job and spend more time on my business, my business will grow more. Is that assumption valid or invalid? I won't know until I actually do it. So I need to take this next step to see how I scale. Now, in the first month, I made more than I would have made in the whole year in the pharmaceutical industry by virtue of having more time to invest in the business. Most people are not going to experience that respectfully, Omega. And the reason why is because a lot of times the narrative you hear is follow your passion. Right? Your passion may not be what the market values. Your passion may not be an area where you can create a lot of value and generate a lot of revenue, but it's your passion that makes you happy. Like my passion is helping people. Right. So, like, if that's my passion, I need to figure out how am I going to help people in a way that creates so much value for them that can then create value for me. Right. I can help people just by smiling.

unknown 18:30

Right.

SPEAKER_00 18:30

Like, how often do you get paid for smiling? You don't. Like you're smiling right now, you're laughing, you're loving it, right? But simply, like when you go to the coffee shop and somebody smiles at you and you have a nice five-second interaction, that's worth more than like the dopamine hit that you get from the coffee. It's like, hey, this person was nice and that's awesome. And I'm gonna go to this coffee shop more often. That's what's happening subconsciously. And I think that's the thing sometimes that we lose in life and in business is like that, that those manners, those simple, you know, kindergarten ethics to say just be nice to people. And for me, that's really the reason why I wanted to be a doctor. The reason why, you know, I built the platform that I built was because I wanted to help people in a way that's authentically relevant to them. Initially, it was their health. But as I looked at it, I kind of concluded what's more intimate than your health, it's your personal finances. Right. Like no one likes going to their CPA. Right now it's tax season, no one likes going to the CPA. No one likes looking at their bank account and saying it low. No one likes thinking about, you know, cash flow statements, budgeting, all of these different things, they're very uncomfortable. So it's like, how do you build a path for people where they don't have to think about budgeting? It's by being very intentional early on, just like for that athlete to go to the gym and work out. It's almost muscle memory. It almost feels comfortable, it almost feels normal because that's what they've been doing for years. And I think from an investment perspective or from an entrepreneur's perspective or from a mentality perspective, it's not zero to 100. You don't have to quit your job to follow your passion. You can stay in your job, build out that side hustle because you have so much time in the day, in theory, and then build out how you're going to generate revenue. If that's your passion, awesome. If it's not your passion, that doesn't mean you have to change your passion. But first generate revenue and then allocate revenue towards your hobby, towards your passion, which can be something else, right? And that's what I do, right? Like I'm in a position where I've generated enough revenue to be very comfortable. Now I allocate a lot of time to my passions, which is like financial literacy. If those avenues don't generate revenue, that's okay. Because the goal wasn't to generate revenue. The goal was to create meaningful impact. And then over time you could quantify that impact. You can read more books, you can learn more strategies, and you can figure out a way to monetize because ultimately monetizing means that the market values the value you're creating. So it's like a measure of like you're doing a good job, right? Like in sports, you know you do a good job by getting more points and by winning the game. In business, you know you're doing a good job typically by generating revenue. Ideally, profit. Like especially in real estate, we don't really talk about revenue, we talk about profit. Um, but that's how you know you're you're winning at the game of of business or the game of life, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 21:12

Yeah, no, that's um that's amazing. And I and I love the analogy. I think it's it's so powerful. And I think you said something that I thought was was really important for people who are wanting to pursue business. Passion matters, but that that passion needs to be able to generate revenue, right? I think that's a huge part of business that we miss out on, right? We it sounds good to say follow our hearts and our passions, right? And we ignore the the real tangible side of business and understanding that how do I package this, how do I package this in a way where I provide so much value to people that they are willing to exchange their money for the value that I give. So I think that's a s such a powerful thing to say. And I think it's very even similar, you know, my world when I think about the performative world world of increasing your physical, your mental capacity, you know, through health and fitness, I think so much about Why people struggle to stay consistent is kind of like what you're saying. I think having the wrong lens about how you should go about looking at it. If all I think about is how I want to have six pack of apps and walk on the beach with my shirt off, like I may get started for a little bit. I may start going hard for a little bit, but I think that consistency comes from something that's a little bit more intrinsic, something that comes a little bit deeper and more internal of wanting to be a better version of yourself for the people around you, maybe for your wife or for your kids or for, you know, your employees. Um, the better version of you that can show up in ways that you couldn't before with a better edge. I think it's so similar to what you're saying. And I think a big part of something that I've and I could tell by how you talk and obviously what you've done in the success you had is that there's there's a lot of do behind what you say, right? You collect the information, you collect the data, and then you do, you act on it, and you learn from it and you grow from it. And you've helped obviously hundreds of people build passive income doing this. Why why I guess what would you say? Why do most people just not take the leap, even when they have the information, they've gathered the information the way that you have?

SPEAKER_00 23:01

I think it's hard for me to answer that accurately, because I don't think I fall on that camp. But if I was to, if I was to assume or guess, I would just say it's hard. Right? Like for me, I might know that it's important to go to the gym, but until I experience maybe enough pain, I'm not gonna take action. And that pain can be me waking up at 30 in pain, like, oh hey, like my back hurts, or I'm picking up my kids and it hurts. Let me go to the gym or let me start investing in my, you know, personal health so that way I can be more present for them. Now, for people, a lot of times, you know, when they're learning, that's already a different group of people. There's the people who don't even know what they don't know. Then there's the people who know what they don't know and they don't take action, which is your question, right? I think for that group, it's just that the action feels so daunting, right? Like if you said, hey, Mustafa, let's go. Um, I have a pickup, you know, football game with my ex-college college buddies, all D1 athletes. I might come just for the vibe. I might come just for the networking. I might come just to experience something that I would have never experienced otherwise because it's such a unique opportunity, right? But for me, I'm not like a football player. So I know I'm gonna get wrecked. Right now, if you say, hey, Mustafa, I'm going to play like pickleball with my D1 athletes, et cetera. Like I play pickleball. I don't play to that degree, but at least I feel more comfortable. Now, for a lot of people, I think the bar is too high. When you read about these books, about these theories rather, in different books, sometimes it feels so abstract. So maybe you're reading the wrong book. Maybe you need a book at a lower level with respect. Or maybe you just don't believe in yourself and it's like a self-confidence issue, challenge, however, we want to package it. That's fine. Right? You start with like a book that talks to you about like habit formation, maybe a book like atomic habits that'll say, hey, don't go to the gym and work out. Just go to the gym and feel comfortable going to the gym. What that book is telling you is like, hey, you have anxiety. Maybe you don't know the term, but you feel uncomfortable. It's probably anxiety. Put in the reps of just showing up, and then the rest will take care of itself over time. Then maybe you go to the gym and you just show up and you're like, hey, I'm already here, I already drove 30 minutes, let me just work out. Hey, I'm already here, I drove 30 minutes, I still feel uncomfortable, let me just sit here for an extra five minutes. Whatever it is. At some point you'll say, Hey, I'm sitting here for an hour and not working out, I'm wasting an hour and a half. Let me just work out. Right. There's a process, I think. And I think for a lot of people, Omega, it comes down to what I said about business. Our life is so busy that we don't afford ourselves the possibility and the ability to slow down to see what opportunities are in front of us. If you're taking the time to read a book and you learn something and it sticks with you and you're not applying it, it's a bit negligent, it's a bit lazy. And that's not intended to say a person is lazy. It's the action is a bit lazy. Just take it that step further to say, hey, listen, like I'm here, I learned this concept. How do I apply it? I don't know how to apply it. Let me talk to 10 of my friends about this strategy, this thought that I had from a book I read to see what they think. Right. There has to be a way to lower the barrier to enter. And I think we live in an era where the barrier to enter is crazy low. You don't even have to talk to your friends. You can just put it into Chat GPT. Hey, chat, assume the role of a high performance coach working with whatever your profession is, whatever your like your perception of your challenges are. Like, hey, I'm a real estate professional. I have professionally managed money. I don't go to the gym regularly. I tell myself it's because I'm busy with my kids. I don't have a good diet. I don't have a bad diet. I weigh this. Give it as much information as possible. And then have that conversation to start to understand yourself from a different person's perspective, so to speak. And this is just using AI because it'll be easier for people to like confide in AI than confide in people in a lot of situations. And AI, you know, then in that Chat GPT example, it's also free and it's also quicker. So, but the point is to really expand on the example that I'm giving to understand the thought process. And the thought process is to really get, you know, feedback about yourself so that you can take action, but you're not looking for massive action. You're looking for that 1% improvements each day type mentality so that you can 37x each year. What does that look like over seven years? For me, that looked like financial freedom. That looked like I didn't have to work for anybody. Most people never hit that point. Some people hit that point at 65, right? So that's, you know, the theory and how you apply it in your life to actually see the results. And most of the time, people just like clickbait you about the result and they make you think that it's easy work, but it's not. If it was easy, everyone would do it.

SPEAKER_01 27:49

Heck yeah, man. So totally true. So true. And and and I love that point you make. I I I say this all the time, you know, when I'm talking with people or when I'm when I'm when I'm working with people. I think it's so much about the first step of getting results, because the results won't come immediately. But I you you said something there with like, you know, consulting with Chetacina Asking. I I think the first step to any success, any growth in any area is it's actually humility. Like it's it's being able to finally say, okay, in some way, shape, or form, I don't have this thing figured out. I need to start asking questions. Uh, because how are you ever going to get the right answers if you're not asking the right questions? And I and so much about how I think we arrive at success in any area is just asking the right questions and being able, like you said, to sit with yourself and really dig a little bit deeper so you can start asking the right questions to get the right answers and start to get the right solutions so you can start getting results, you know, in in any area. And I think a lot of, you know, what you said also, I think there's a lot of fear and anxiety tied to around that, and not just, you know, in the in the health and fitness realm, but just in general. I mean, for example, I mean, I feel like most people are playing financial defense, right? It's save, save, save. It's budget, budget, budget. Try not to lose. At what point does someone need to shift, you know, into offense to actually build wealth?

SPEAKER_00 29:07

To be honest with you, Omega, I think the answer is always right. Like we could have the same s same question about health. At what point do you need to diet? Honestly, you always need to diet. It's just like, at what point is the pain so much that you need to take action? And I think the reason why I say that is because if you save, and if you save everything, it's not possible for your living budget to go down to zero. It's not it's not possible. Maybe you have like your parents or your spouse who can pay for everything and you can feel like you're living on nothing, like you're not spending any money. Great. Are all of those people gonna be around forever? Probably not. So eventually you need to make money. Now, as you make money, a lot of people fall into like lifestyle creep. What that it means is like you get a 4% raise, inflation is less than 4% hypothetically, you go out and buy a nicer watch, nicer car, whatever. Like life gets more expensive over time, which I don't think people actually budget for, right? Most people are not getting 4% raises, they're getting maybe 2% to 3% raises. Inflation typically in the last five years has been above that, right? So life has gotten more expensive at a faster rate than you made more money. Let's say hypothetically, it's like that 2022 type time. Inflation is maybe, you know, let's say hypothetically 4%. And I got uh feedback from my boss, Musva, you're doing an amazing job. Thank you. I appreciate it. Here's a 3% raise. So that means I made more money this year than last year, but everything around me got more expensive. So my effective net is that I lost money. No one is gonna sit down and tell you that unless you're watching this episode, right? No one is gonna tell you, hey, you worked hard, you did great, you made your company a lot of money, and they're paying you more, but life is getting more expensive faster than how much your salary rose. Now I realized that day one when I got hired at Pfizer, a pharmaceutical company. Um, so if I realize that in my first job, that means I need to change jobs every couple of years, or I need to have aggressive growth. My salary probably, let's say, I don't know, maybe 2.5x in about a seven-year period. Yeah, maybe 2.5x in about a seven-year period. Right. So I had about a 250% increase in my salary from like when I first started to when I quit. Most people don't experience that. I went through like three companies, I worked, you know, I got promoted a couple times, etc. Most people don't see that growth, but people in my circles saw even higher growth. That was in their job working for somebody else. For me, my entrepreneurial income was much higher. And I grew that aggressively. But no one is gonna kind of sit you down and slow you down to tell you that. So you kind of need to unpack the layers to say, hey, like, look, the goal isn't money. Money should never be the goal, in my humble opinion. But money enables you to do things if you want to give charity, if you want to help people, if you want to provide for your family, all of these different things cost money. So you need to be able to make money to then be able to do the things you want to do. And I think from from my perspective, Omega, it's really just about being hyper clear to really understand what you're looking for and how to optimize that.

SPEAKER_01 32:24

Heck yeah. And that's awesome. Wow. I I think you put stuff in such a good, clear way. And I don't know if that's because you're on the younger side or you're just experienced, but I think it's it's very it's just easier to digest and understand. And I think that's a a huge part of people being able to grow. Like, like you mentioned, right? Like even there's certain things someone may read and they're realizing they're not able to fully grasp or understand. And it's probably on a level that they they they're just not ready for yet. And and I think that's I think that's a good thing. I think that's people should understand that that's a part of what makes growing so dynamic and ever-changing. You're always in a place where you can learn, grow, and expand, and you're always looking to get to the next level. I mean, I I've seen learn I heard it so much in business where like treating business kind of like a game where there's there's this next level and there's this next level, right? And you can always kind of grow and and move up from where you're at. And and I think a huge part, at least in in my world, that I've I've always emphasized and tried to help people see, and that's kind of like what you're saying in in a in a way here of like, it's so much more than just wanting to get a bunch of money to wanting to do a bunch of different things. I think so much of what I look at and I see in terms of, okay, how do I, how do I get to that next level? How do I, how do I get this next level of success? And I I always go back to the identity change. And it's not like you're becoming, you're you're not like, you know, schizophrenic, you're becoming a completely different person, you know, every day, but every, every day, every week, every month, every year, like how can I be better at something to where I level up completely. I'm not just doing something differently, but I'm becoming something different. So I can become the person who can do this and then who can eventually have this, you know, all the things that I'm looking for. Do you think part of building wealth is similar like that, right? Where it's it's actually becoming a different version of yourself, not just, you know, learning new strategies.

SPEAKER_00 34:11

I think it's a great question, Omega. And I think it really comes down to the individual and how they see their life, maybe how they see their connection with God, if they think God exists, et cetera. There's so many different layers. For me, fundamentally, I think it got a little uncomfortable. This question, this reflection, this realization. Because I think for me early on, I realized that I have like imposter syndrome. Right. So I'm like a very private, very shy person who doesn't really believe in like being on a podcast, launching a podcast, having a public facing, having a per public persona, having a public image. I'm a all of these things I don't believe in. And still today I still don't believe in it. But it's like an opportunity cost of, hey, listen, if I want to help people, then I need to talk to people, then I need to be in a position where I can talk to people. The best way to be in a position where I can talk to people is if people know like and trust me. That means that I need to kind of be a bit transparent about my life. So if that means I'm like talking about my life, why am I talking about my life? I don't want it to be positioned from a place of arrogance because I'm not an arrogant person. So how do I position it in a in a from a place of like authenticity with the intention of being humble and being simple because that's who I am? While also saying, hey, listen, like if you're talking to Mustafa, Mustafa needs to be credible to be worth your time, right? Like you'd go to JP Morgan, you go to TD Bank, you go to Bank of America, you'd go to Wells Fargo because of that brand, right? For your personal banking. If you're going to Mustafa to talk about money, he needs to have established some sort of brand where Mustafa is the person to talk to about money. So that means Mustafa needs to be talking about money. But it's not intended to be in a flashy way to say, hey, I made this much money. So I won't tell you necessarily how much I made. I'll tell you how much I made people. I'll tell you how many much, like how many people I work with. I won't tell you how many doors I own, because to me that's irrelevant, right? Like the door you own could be negatively cash flowing. So why am I going to give you data points to establish how good I am that could be manipulative? I'd rather go to the heart of things and say, hey, listen, like imagine I told you my BMI. You'd say, hey, that's great. But then if you were talking to me about BMI, I'd say, hey, listen, BMI is based on like Caucasian people's data. So if I'm not Caucasian, that data is like not 100% valid or accurate. So what is the right metric? I don't know. I'm not like a health fanatic, but I just know that there's inaccuracy there. And I'll leave it at that. And so because I am like a real estate fanatic, because I'm into personal finance, I can, and even earlier in our conversation, right? I made a distinction between revenue and profit. All that matters is profit, not revenue. But you'll see all like the e-commerce gurus talking about revenue. Great. I had six-figure profit in my you know, Amazon store. That doesn't mean anything per se, because it's like, how scalable is that? And a lot of these things don't come into play. Like imagine in that sports example, right? You won your last game. I don't know what a reasonable score is. Let's say 52 to 7. I don't even know if you can score 52 points in a football in a football game, right? Let's just say 49-7, right? You won 49-7. Great. Maybe the other team sucked. The next game, maybe you win 49 or 40, you know, four, yeah, 49, 42. Maybe that team was supposed to beat you by 40 points or whatever the analogy is to say fundamentally your second results, you won by less points, but it was a harder opponent. Now, only somebody in football who understands the seeds and understands the ranking can appreciate that. Somebody like me doesn't even know how to tell you the right score, right? I just like watch one game a year. So the point that I'm trying to mention, Omega, is sometimes like your positioning is so important, but the market can't understand your positioning or how you're trying to build your brand. They can only understand that when they talk to you. They'll only talk to you if they know, like, and trust you. A lot of that requires growth. But growth sounds like a nice word, but it's a very uncomfortable experience until you get comfortable being uncomfortable, which is like the master stroke, right? Like if life is too simple for me, then I do something that's uncomfortable that I don't really want to do. Right. Like getting on a podcast today is fine. Like I can speak to people, et cetera. I don't mind it. But fundamentally, the idea of having a public-facing persona is still uncomfortable, even though I run my own podcast, I talk to people, I post on LinkedIn regularly, I do all these different things. But if you talk to me, I will tell you I'm a private person. So there's a disconnect. And that disconnect is kind of apparent when you reflect on it, when I sit with it. And you, I can say, hey, I'm shedding my skin and I'm growing and I'm becoming somebody who's comfortable doing all of these different things. Or I can say, you know, I don't know what I'm gonna look like in the future. I don't worry about it too much. I just focus on the present and putting in the reps. If tomorrow I have a six-pack, great. It's because I put in the reps. We'll worry about tomorrow later and maintenance of that tomorrow image later. Right now I'm just gonna show up the best I can for people. And that means creating as much value as possible, which means that I will build an omnipresent channel approach. I will be on all platforms, just not today, but eventually, over time, in a way that feels authentic to me, just like that person who's trying to get to D1 or who's trying to get to the NFL. You know, you can look at your 10-year plan, but if you don't take action today, you're not gonna get there 10 years from now. So for a lot of people, I think the challenge is that they focus on that 10-year vision of financial freedom or getting out of their job or whatever it is. But I think they need to focus on what they can do today. That might mean something annoying like looking at your budget. Or it might be saying, hey, I'm gonna forget the budget every month. I spend 15K, I'm just gonna take that as a given. I'm not gonna worry about where it is, I'm gonna take it as I spend 15K every month, I need to make 15K every month. Okay, I'm at break-even. Now I need to make 16K, I need to make 17K. What does that look like? I need to make 30K. How am I gonna make an extra 15K a month? And I'm using like 15K, maybe that's too big of a number. So you scale down to say, hey, maybe you're making 10K a year, 120K, sorry, 10K a month, 120K a year. What does it look like to create that gap? It's a lot of times you have like two big camps where you have to cut your expenses and live like a hermit and like house hack and all these different things. Great, no problem with that, if that works for you. That didn't work for me and my lifestyle and my family and my you know different commitments. So it's like, hey, I need to make an obscene amount of money to be able to do what I want to do, to be able to help people, to be able to get a random text message to say, hey, Mustafa, I need you to donate to this charity. No problem. Now I don't need to, you know, ask about it, etc. And like just to put this in context, Omega, just yesterday I was out with my brother. It's it's Ramadan, so we're fasting, we don't eat in the daytime. Um, and randomly somebody comes up to me asking me to buy them lunch or give them food. Sorry, it's dinner, buy them dinner, give them food. And since 2026, I don't walk around with cash. So I'm like, I have no cash. It's very like default response. I have no cash. And she's like, Oh, can you like go to the store and buy me food or something? So I said, Yeah, sure, no problem. And I'm looking at like subconsciously, I'm like happy to help this person, but I'm looking at like, you know, I only have so much time, my brother wants to go do something else. Like, this needs to be a bit efficient use of my time, but I'm down to help her. So how do I do both? Then it ends up being a situation where it's like piling on. Like she's asking for more things, and I'm like, sure. In the end, I end up paying for like $300 worth of things of food for her, right? And it's a very like random situation. We have a holiday coming up tomorrow, Eid. That's like our version of Christmas, let's say. Um, maybe not the best analogy, but like it's very happy time in the year. And I'm like, you know, life, I know life is difficult. I know people struggle, et cetera. And I get happy when these situations happen because like I'm blessed to be in a position to help people to the best of my ability. But also from the other perspective, later on, I see her like, because she has, you know, different like beads and things that she's selling to try to make five, 10 bucks a year. And she's going to people and people are giving her a cold shoulder. And it's kind of unfortunate because at a very basic level, Omega, we're not really there to help people, unfortunately. So there's like a huge gap in like how I would want life to be or society to be, the idea of charity, the idea of like lifting people up and giving each other opportunities and helping people grow, and then what you see in reality. And I say that not from a place of judgment. I say that more of from a place of like confusion. Because like you don't need to give a shoulder. There must be a nice way to say, hey, I'm sorry, I don't have any money. Or hey, I'm sorry, I don't have any money, but maybe talk to this person. Hey, I'm sorry I don't have any money, but maybe don't sell beads in like a coffee shop. Maybe sell something else. And here's an idea of what to sell. Right. There must be a way to actually efficiently help people at scale, which is like my passion, right? So that's what I do. Like when I have free time and I have extra money, I'm like, hey, instead of like donating to this random person in, you know, Tanzania, India, Pakistan, wherever, um, those are the different areas that like I'm from. Um, let me let me hire somebody, let me figure out a way to create like a microfinance structure to really scale that because that's my passion project. And if I can do that in a way that generates revenue for my business, then I can put that revenue back in, not profit, revenue. Then I can put that revenue back into hiring more people to do the same thing. Because I don't need to make profit off of people's time. I just need to make revenue. That way I can help more people and I can create more jobs. And I think Omega for me, like when I look at it, that's the same thing that I wanted to do when I was studying medicine. But it didn't, the path wasn't clear to me. It was like, hey, I'll become a doctor, I'll run my practice, and I'll own my own practice. But to own the hospital would be out of reach, most likely, financially, just because of the numbers. And I knew that, you know, in my early 20s. So it's like, hey, this is not gonna work out, it's not scalable enough. How do I own the hospital? It was if that was the original goal. Now for me, it's like, hey, like, we're scaling, we're doing well. How do we get to a position where we can hire people with maybe not the right skill set, et cetera, and invest time in upskilling them? What does that look like? And that's like at the microfinance level. Meanwhile, you have other strategies and approaches for people who have different problems, like people who are very wealthy. They have a tax problem. They have a growth problem. They have an allocation problem. Those are different challenges. Just like a D1 athlete would have different challenges that the regular person who's not getting off the sofa wouldn't even know about, right? Like that person probably has like maybe a diabetes challenge or a diet challenge. The athlete has to think about like muscle recovery. Right. Like if I'm not using my muscles, how would I need to like worry about them recovering? So everyone's challenges are different. I appreciate that you're laughing at my jokes, oh my God. Everyone's challenges are different. And I think for us, part of the game is understanding each other's challenges and understanding how to create genuine value for each other. And then eventually you get so good at the game that you're able to monetize. Right. And you see that everywhere, right? There's so there are people who are probably so good at Rubik's Cubes that they can make money off of it. There are people that are so good at chess that can make money off of it. There's people who are so good at like FIFA and games that they have whole esports tournaments around that, right? There are people who are so good at driving that they race for F1. Right. So I think fundamentally, you know, if you approach like these problems and these solutions as like a maze or an obstacle or an opportunity or a game, then it becomes, hey, I have a my taxes are due. Let me find a CPA that can file my taxes versus, hey, I have I'm paying too much in taxes. Let me find a tax strategist. Those are two completely different people. In that football example, right? Your offensive coach and your defensive coach, both of them are coaches for football. They do completely different things. But most people would not be able to recognize that to know who they need to talk to. And I think Omega, all of this circles back to what I said earlier about slowing down to say, hey, let me really understand the root problem. That way I can find somebody who's really good at this problem, and all they do is solve that problem. That way I can partner with them, I can work with them, I can hire them, however you want to phrase it. And then this problem can be resolved and I can continue to aggressively scale while optimizing for growth, right? It's really like invest in yourself, help yourself grow to a point where you're then able to give back to others.

SPEAKER_01 46:03

That's amazing. Wow. When you talk about your past self and when you first realize what you wanted to actually do and how you want to tell people to where you're at now. I mean, there's just so much in how you speak, the things that you've learned and the things that you've applied that have ultimately elevated you and and your value and what you you are able to do now in your life. Man, when you when you think about that version of you that that that created this level of success, how different was he? How different is he from the version that was still working the nine to five?

SPEAKER_00 46:39

That's a great question. So so Omega, I'm also dyslexic. I'm dyslexic, I have flat feet, I have exercise induced asthma. I don't know what other challenges I have right now that I feel comfortable mentioning. If they come up, I'll I'll mention them to you. So for me, like I was the kid that people would go to and say, hey, Mustafa, I'm struggling in physics. Can you help me? And I'm playing FIFA and I'm like, yeah, sure, fine. Right? I'll help you with the physics exam. I'd help them, they'd get an A, I'd get maybe like an A minus because I misread two or three questions. And I'd be like, whatever, like cost of doing business, that's life, it is what it is. Um, I should have read slower, I should have like been more careful. Or in chemistry, I'd be like, no, they're wrong. This is a typo on the question. And it was actually that I misread the question. So imagine like the degree of like self-confidence in that thing because you know that one topic. At the same time, like I wouldn't tell anybody out that they're wrong. I would just say, hey, I think this is a typo, is how I would word it, right? Or hey, like this question didn't make sense. And then I could realize, like, hey, I'm dyslexic. Cause also like you don't always know the challenges that you have. It's not like everyone comes with like an ingredients list, right? So then you I conclude, hey, I'm dyslexic. I have reading comprehension challenges, et cetera. But none of these things are insurmountable. You just work hard and you power through, was kind of, you know, my mentality in my, let's say, late teens when I'm in college, et cetera. Then I get to med school and it's more of the same. Like, hey, everything is possible. I can do this. Is this the most efficient use of time? Does this help me get to my goal the most efficient way? Like imagine in that football example, the fastest way to the other, you know, to the end zone is running straight. But most of the time you're not running straight because then the defender can read your run. So it's like you have to kind of outsmart people. You have to think of the strategy, you have to understand where the pockets are, et cetera. Sometimes going back to go forward is most strategic. And that's true of life as well. Like everyone has unique advantages, but no one is in a position to tell you what your unique advantages are unless they spend their time doing like what I do, which is just actively listening. Right. So I can go into most conversations, listen to a person, and understand, hey, this is what you should do to make money. And then they may or may not do it. And in that, it's like a disclaimer hey, this is what you should do if you want to, this is how you do it, et cetera, to create value and then to monetize off of that value. But fundamentally, I think, you know, the question of like a before and after, what does that transformation look like? It's very similar to like a house, right? Like I didn't give you many real estate analogies, but I'll give you one now, right? Imagine like uh Omega, where are you based, if you don't mind me asking? I'm based in Fort Worth, Texas. You're based in Texas, born and raised? No, I'm actually from Florida. Okay. How long you've been in Texas? Uh if you don't mind me asking. No, no, no, no, definitely.

SPEAKER_01 49:13

I've been about a it's been about a decade since I've been here.

SPEAKER_00 49:16

So 10 years ago, Texas was a completely different place, especially the Dallas-Fort Worth area, which has seen a lot of development over the last, let's say, seven years, right? And now three or four years ago, like before interest rates went up, it was probably the mentality that no matter what you do in Dallas Fort Worth, Texas area, you will make money in real estate. Just buy land and you'll be fine. Now it's like you bought land, you own this land, but the developer that you used to sell to is not going to buy it because maybe the cost of development is too expensive, et cetera. There's different challenges, right? Um, no one is really talking about the like the water challenges where maybe like the population is growing too much, there won't be water to support the population, et cetera. That issue they'll talk about more, like probably five years from now, in my opinion. Right. Um, so now to know that issue means you need to be looking at maybe deeper data to actually know, like, hey, this problem will occur. Just like in that sports example, right? We were talking about like conditioning, we were talking about recovering your muscles. You need to be at a certain level athletically to worry about like rest days and things of this nature, right? From a personal finance perspective, right, you might be doing well, you might be doing everything your financial advisor is telling you to do, et cetera. But if your financial advisor makes less than you, how do they know what you need? They don't have the same money problems as you. If they make less than you, they're relying on, and they're telling you strategies, they're relying on somebody else to outline those strategies. If that other person outlined those strategies but doesn't have your goals in mind, they don't know that you're sending so much money abroad to help your family overseas, or they don't know that you want to fund your aunt's college education, your niece's college education 20 years from now, because you didn't know to kind of clarify, hey, this is how I want to use my money, this is what I want to grow it to. You just have an arbitrary, hey, you need a million. Most people in America, in New Jersey, New York, Dallas-Fort Worth area, California, your retirement number is like three to five million for most people listening to this type of podcast with this type of mentality, but your financial advisor is not going to tell you that number because a million sounds comfortable. Now, when you factor in inflation, when you factor in like the cost of living, when you factor in all of these different things, a million, you know, 30 years from now will not get you as much as a million does today and will not get you as much as a million used to 30 years ago. So the point, I think, Omega, is to say that part of comparing your before and after yourself at like 20 versus 30 versus 40 is that in theory, you want to see a lot of growth. You want to be a different person because everything around you is changing, right? Like in that football analogy, the football strategies that made teams successful in the past will probably not make them successful in the future because it's done and dusted. People have the game tape, people can read the strategy, they can understand, they can learn and grow and they can adapt. And I think as people, we're highly adaptable, which is why I touched on that AI example to say, like a lot of times we as people buy things based on emotions. So people sell to us based on fear, because that's how we're more likely to convert, more likely to buy. And we live in a capitalistic society. So if we detached our emotion for a second and we just said, hey, listen, everyone here is a customer. What am I selling? Then you would start to understand why people interact with each other in a certain way. Why do newspapers sell fear? Because they need somebody to buy their newspaper. Now, today it would be like instead of buying a newspaper, you would click an ad, you'd click the link, etc. And it's very like emotion-driven rather than knowledge education driven, because that's the way that people make decisions. We buy emotionally and we think logically and we rationalize our decision logically. Now, knowing that is different than understanding that. Knowing that is different than like applying that in your life to say, hey, I make emotional decisions. Let me just have a framework, let me have an automation that manages my investments for me. I'm gonna buy every day. And I'm not gonna buy a stock every day, I'm gonna buy an ETF every day. Now, this is not stock trading advice or anything like that, all the disclaimers, et cetera. Um, this is just like for a person who wants to build financial freedom, this is one avenue that is easily accessible where you don't really need anyone's help. It's you just buy a VOO or any ETF and you'd buy every day and you'd set a number that's comfortable. $1, $100, whatever number works for you, where you're looking at it like, hey, if I don't have this money in my account, I won't lose it. Now and I won't miss it. Now the same can be said of real estate, but with real estate, typically it's not as accessible as the stock market. So it's really about working with somebody you know, like, and trust, understanding their strategy, understanding how they can add value for you, just like that. You know, what position did you used to play in football? I was a running back. Running back. So you would go to like an offensive coach versus a defensive coach. Now, with an offensive coach, if their strategy is all about like how to break, I guess, the the linebackers, how to break that line versus how to catch, as a running back, you're probably catching more than you're running. I don't know. Maybe it depends on the strategy. So again, maybe my analogy is off. But the point is that there would be there would have been coaches that resonate with you, either based on their strategy or based on how they communicate, and there would be coaches that don't resonate with you. That's true in life. We all have teachers that you know we just clicked with and teachers that we didn't. We all have investment strategies that work and investment strategies that don't work. Fundamentally, the reason the strategy didn't work is you and I, right? If my strategy is predicated on options where I need to watch it every day or I need to watch it more accura actively, then I'm not gonna do it because I'm busy with my real estate transactions. That's where I make alpha, that's where I make money. If I'm also gonna make money in the stock market, then I want it to be a more passive buy and hold strategy. And so for an individual, most individuals don't think about their portfolio from an asset allocation perspective. So they don't know to ask these questions and they don't know how to prompt engineer how to ask ChatGPT to kind of get the answers the right way to actually like learn and grow. And that's the value of that human interaction. That's the value of talking to people to say, hey, listen, I'm weak here. But if you're making 200K a year, are you really gonna go to somebody and say you have no money? I had a call yesterday. Client's making 350K a year, and the client's wife is like, we have no money. I'm like, all right, cool, let's break it down. They have two properties that are rental properties that are like cash flow negative. They should sell them. And I'm very comfortable saying you should sell these, but they're not going to. And I know they're not going to. And I'm telling them you're not going to. The reason why they're not going to is because it requires action and there's a lot of friction and there's time, etc. And they bought it and maybe they won't, you know, realize as much profit as they want. There's so many different reasons. So for me, it's important to know those reasons and outline those reasons. That way people have data and they can still decide not to do it. And that's fine with me because it's their money, it's their life. And the point is to show up for those people in an authentic way so that you can create as much value as possible. The way I create value is by a given, a given take to understand, hey, they're not going to execute on this. That bar was too high. Let's lower the bar. And let's say, okay, hey, how can we make this person an extra 500 bucks a month? Now, mind you, these people are doing very well financially. They have investments, etc., but they're still tight. And that's not abnormal, Omega. You know, 33% of people making more than 200K a year live paycheck to paycheck. But that statistically doesn't feel like it makes sense because it feels like making 200k a year is a lot of money. But our feelings don't really like they matter, but they don't really matter at the same time. Right. What matters is what people actually experience. And I think that's the thing for me. Like I work with so many different clients with so many different backgrounds that it's very easy to look at it from a high level and to zoom out to say, hey, this is what somebody probably needs to do. But let me talk to them based on their risk profile. I can outline a path that they're actually going to execute on. Just like imagine I came to you saying my, you know, five-year-old, six-year-old daughter wants to play football. You would be able to outline what she would need to do. You'd probably know what women's football looks like much more than I do. I don't even know if women's football exists. That's how uneducated I am, right? So I need to know myself, to know my gaps, to be able to say, like you phrased it very nicely to say like humble, right? Like you need to have that humility to say that, right? And I think that's where it starts to really have that, you know, introspection to know where you stand and know where you want to go and have build the right team to get there.

SPEAKER_01 57:35

Yeah, yes. Wow. That is that is so good. And I love that. And and I think, you know, like hearing a little bit about your, you know, what you kind of do in your clients and some of their struggles. And I think it's so similar in in my world a lot of times. I think there's so many constraints, mental, uh, financial, physical, that, you know, come into play. Because to your point, that is shocking. And I think most people hearing this will say the same thing. That is shocking. Like you make, you know, pretty good six-figure, you know, income per year. And in mostly paycheck to paycheck, you wouldn't you wouldn't think that. But to your point, right, experiences matter and what people go through matter. Do you feel like there's some constraints that you know people just wouldn't be aware of that kind of impact people and and make it harder to build passive income right now?

SPEAKER_00 58:22

Yeah, all the time. There's always constraints. I have them, I'm sure you have them. I think everyone has constraints. And it's very simply like you don't know what you don't know. I mentioned that example of you and your buddies, XD1 players, going to play football. I mentioned that, like, I wouldn't want to do that. But because you guys are doing it and I invited myself or I got the invitation, I'm down to experience what I haven't experienced before to then know if I like it. And that's rooted in the mentality that you don't know what you don't know. So with personal finance, like there's always, you know, everyone on social media has different extremes, which is a problem. Um, people be like, hey, you need to budget every single penny. Other people will say, and you need to cut down your expenses so that you're like, you know, next to zero. Other people like, don't worry about your expenses, only focus on your income. And I think life isn't black and white. You need to have a robust range of conversations. You need to have a like a variety of maybe key opinion leaders, a variety of friends. You you want feedback from different people from different backgrounds to then have a more robust view of life. And I guess the easiest way to look at it is there's a word that I've come across recently called like echo chamber. Right? If you only hear what you want to hear, then you'll only think the way you want to think. And that can be very problematic because then you're not aware of blind spots. And the way that manifests in the business world is that you're not agile enough, you can't adapt to disruption, to changes in the market. So today, for example, AI is what everyone talks about. In the last year, there was like an antitrust lawsuit against Google, where Google won and the judge said you won because of AI. Because of platforms like ChatGPT, which will fundamentally threaten your monopoly, I'm not breaking up your company. Now that's awesome for Google. They get to keep their company. But also, it's like a judge with a legal background looking at it to say, hey, this technology is so disruptive that if it wasn't so disruptive that it threatened a multi-billion dollar business, then I would have ruled against you and we would have broken this business up. Now, the reason I mentioned that is because 10 years ago, the raw fundamentals of LLMs and of large language models and of AI existed. But people like me would not have known it existed. Now, my background is genetics. So I know that in the lab, it takes 10 years for the development in lab to hit the mainstream person, the average person like us. Now, that's from like a science per perspective, right? So when people were talking about CRISPR or genetic modification, all these different things, I was looking at it like that's been around forever because I worked in genetics, because I studied genetics, because I have that background. So now when the same thing happens in um in computer science, when it happens in AI, I'm looking at it like, wow, this is hitting us today. Imagine what they're working on in the labs. It must be beyond our comprehension. Just like, for example, if you're working out, if you're a D1 athlete, maybe you have access to better supplements or better gym equipment or better technology, because that's where like the money is made. You guys are at the top of the top. So you get access to it before the mainstream people who are just like working out at home, right? Or not working out at all. And I think for a lot of people, we're not always aware of our knowledge gaps. So we approach life as like, hey, this is how it's always been, this is how it will always be. But maybe people in our generation, right, you can see how your parents live life and how your kids are living life is completely different. And you're in the middle, like, what is going on? I think as long as you kind of keep that, I liked how you worded it as humility. I I think as long as you keep that open mind, you can be a bit flexible and you can understand the gaps in the market and ideally how you're gonna address those gaps to to continue to provide value and and and grow.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:13

Heck yeah. Amen. I love that, man. I I think I think humility is a huge key to everything. Like I said, you know, in the in the my background in the sports world and in the coaching consulting world, you know, I think a lot of it has to do with that. I mean, to your point, right? I mean, like, how do you know what direction to go in if you're not asking the right questions, if you're not thinking about the right places to look at? I think you can't you can't find what you're not looking for, you know. So I think it's all about switching your perspective to, you know, if you know there's a there's a certain desire that you have or a certain objective that you're wanting to accomplish, how do you align yourself with that as as best as possible? And I think I think a lot of it is mental. I think a lot of it is is is physical and I and of course, you know, financial. I mean, if people realize how much those three, you know, impacted you impacted each other, I guess how how much do you think people should pay attention to? How how much should they focus on the the interplay between those three, your mind, your body, and then your financial health?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:12

I think a lot. I think fundamentally, right, it's one of those situations where sometimes people hear these these stories, like you have no money, you have time, so you spend all your time to make money. Now you have money, but you have no health because you lost all your time. I think the mentality is that sometimes life ends up being zero to a hundred. You end up dropping everything to focus on one thing, and you lose everything, but you get that one thing. And especially growing up in America, America is a capitalistic society. So the first thing is recognizing that, owning that, and seeing like, okay, hey, that means in theory the world revolves around money from our perspective. Is that good, bad, ugly? That's an individual's choice to say, hey, this is how I feel about that. I'm not here to kind of tell anyone how to think. Um, but if it is a capitalistic society, if money is what we judge each other on, what is that money actually worth? Is a dollar worth a dollar? Is a dollar worth me having, you know, a heart attack at 40 over? Is a hundred dollars, is a thousand dollars, is a million, is a billion, what's your number? If you're gonna drop dead at 40, what's your number? Hypothetically. And are you willing to sacrifice everything for that? And I think for most people, the answer ends up being no, I'm not willing to sacrifice a billion dollars for my health. Like I'm not willing to sacrifice my health rather for a billion dollars because what good is that money? That money is a tool, and if I'm not around to use it, then it has no value. Okay, maybe it has value because I set up my kids, but my kids will never know me. Like you have to kind of game that out. And a lot of this requires slowing down to say, hey, what do I want life to look like? Because maybe your your your arbitrary death date is not 40, maybe it's 65. What does that look like? Right. Um and for me, Omega, it's one of those things that I didn't really grow up with like a high value or high priority on like physical health. It's not something that I grew up around people that prioritize or I prioritize myself, etc. But then it's like, hey, if you want to show up at work and if you want to have the energy to be able to perform efficiently, then at some point you need to watch what you eat. At some point, maybe you need to exercise. If exercising for an hour gives you two hours worth of energy that you can focus on work, then it's better to take that one hour break, go work out, come back and go do two hours worth of work, you know, efficiently. So I think it's one of those situations where I circle back to you, you don't know what you don't know. You don't know how you're gonna improve your efficiency. But for a lot of entrepreneurs, it's just how do I create more value? How do I get more efficient? How do I learn more systems? How do I, you know, use other people's money, use other people's time, how do I scale is fundamentally how people think about it. And part of scaling is implementing different like S curves. Like you're you're in Texas, I'm in New Jersey, I do investments in you know in other markets as well. And and one of the things that you see in like the tech start. Startup world in like your Silicon Valley type area is the idea that people live like a more like bougie woke type lifestyle where they're like walking on the beach or they're taking in more vitamin D or they're like getting you know facials done more regularly, all of these different things like self-care. Now, to a person like me, it's like, why are you wasting your money? Because that's how I think, right? And I'll talk to maybe a developer friend of mine who was previously in Chicago, who's very good at what he does. And he's like, Mustafa, very good in what I do in Chicago. I came to LA or I came to Silicon Valley, and you know, I'm not doing that well. Then I realized it's because of all of these things, the things that I just mentioned. The fact that maybe his coworkers will take a break to kind of reconnect themselves with nature and things of this nature, and that will improve their efficiency at work. So then he's like, So now I do those things. I go walking and everything, and I'm like, you know, cracking jokes, but I also recognize the value of these things, right? So it's one of those things that you're not always gonna know where you're gonna find value. If you just keep an open mind, then you'll be more likely to experience different things that'll position you to optimize for the outcome that you're looking for. Because you might not be looking to optimize for peak performance. Maybe that's just what you and I are looking for. Maybe the listener is looking for something else, right? But it's one of those things that if you don't keep an open mind, if you don't experience different things, you're not going to know if there's something better out there. And you won't experience that, which is fine. You'll be happy and content with what you're doing. But if in the context of work, in the context of what we're talking about, I think it's that healthy curiosity, that ability to kind of keep an open mind, that then has a very strong interplay between your work life, how much you're able to monetize, and your health. Because usually people are sacrificing one or two things to see benefit in the third. And we didn't even mention family, which is like another, you know, pillar as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:48

100%. And Mr. File, I love the way you put it, man. I think I think the examples are the examples really bring it to life, especially with with everything I'm kind of saying. I think you mentioned an important part, that variable of what are you looking for, Taz? What does that success look like for you? And I think that's huge part. I mean, like, yeah, to your point, you know, maybe, maybe peak performance isn't what someone's looking for in this current season. And that was kind of what I was gonna bring up too, is uh I, you know, from just living life, but also just working with all you know all kinds of people. I mean, there are there are things that come in seasons, right? There may be a season where right now, you know, I'm someone's really, you know, digging in deep and they're focusing on business or scaling or acquisition. There may be a time where like, hey, uh, you know, I I want to prioritize my health a bit more, my fitness a bit more, you know, I want to be around for my kids, I want to be around for my family, I want to be a better version of myself. So I think taking into account what are you looking for, because to your point, I think it's so easy to forget that and just focus on this generic version of what success or what business should look like. And oftentimes I think people never stop to ask themselves those those questions of what what do I want from this? What should it look like for my life? Um, because ultimately, I mean, you're never really gonna find success in anything without doing that first, without taking those steps first to game plan and figure out what you're wanting from this, what you're wanting to accomplish, and then doing the actions that align with that so you can eventually get there. Um, Ms. Fo, man, love this. This is this is really good. I love, I appreciate the word you have, man. There's clearly so much I think you've learned and and value being able to give people. And I think anyone that lives in this can clearly see why. If if if any of the listeners wanted to learn more about what you're doing or connect with you, where can they reach you?

SPEAKER_00 1:09:34

Yeah, I think the best way would be LinkedIn. It's uh Mustafa Ladda. I'm sure we can add the link to the show notes. Um, that's honestly the best way to connect with me. I post there, you know, every every day, Monday through Friday. And the goal is to really focus on mindset on the LinkedIn content and things like that because it's really important. It's not about like double digit returns or consistent income or guaranteeing profit or anything like that. It's fundamentally about getting like the basics right and that working out example, like the form is so important. And then you worry about adding more weight. But a lot of times when you hit the gym, everyone is looking at your weight and they're not looking at the form. And I think that's the message that people, you know, often forget. You put it very nicely. It's really about understanding that clarity, having that introspection, really slowing down, answering those hard questions. And then, you know, for somebody like me, somebody like Omega, we're able to just add more value for you because you already know what you want to get out of life.

unknown 1:10:27

Amen.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:28

I love that, brother. Appreciate you. Thank you so much. Appreciate your time.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:31

Well, thank you, man. We'll talk soon. Have a good one.