And I remember I was always just like, Man, that looks so freaking cool to do. And so I was, uh, social across the bar scene. Well, we’ll call it like that as a lot of us are in our college years. And so they offered me, they said, Hey, you wanna learn to be a bartender or do you wanna learn to be a dj? And I used the power of nicheing down before I knew that that was a thing.

And I said, Well, I know a lot of bartenders. I only know one dj, so I’m gonna do that. And so terrible at it as, uh, with everything else in life, terrible at it for solid 30, 60 days. Started getting better, practiced, got good, uh, was the main DJ at the bar, resident dj, and that was the main bar in town. Ended up scaling that to having four other people working for me.

And at my college, I was everything. It was like every fraternity party, every sorority event, formals, uh, they were like bidding to be able to get me like six months in advance, which is when I realized I needed to start hiring. And so I had some other fraternity brothers that were doing it as well. So basically if you were at University of West Georgia, I was DJing for you for four years.

And uh, so then we expanded some other colleges in Georgia, went around Atlanta and that’s what I did, man. It’s college and not spending much money. So I had some coming in and. Tacked away at the student loans. And also I had a Hope scholarship in Georgia, which is if you have over 3.0, you get portion of good chunk of your, uh, schooling paid for. So that’s how I did it.

[00:04:50] Robert Leonard: That’s a pretty creative way to be able to pay for school. So for me, I was a loan officer at a local bank for my years of school. I wasn’t able to pay off all of my school while I was there, so I didn’t graduate completely debt free, but I, I definitely was able to take off a chunk of it.

[00:05:04] Brian Luebben: It was a cheap school too. It was a D two school. I purposely picked it because I got accepted into the large schools, but I was just like, Hey, there’s no way that I’m gonna pay that and take on that much. So it wasn’t that much, the student loans.

[00:05:18] Robert Leonard: I’m reading a book right now and it’s called How to Get Rich by Felix Dennis.

It was recommended on the My First Million Podcast by Sam Par a bunch of times. You probably have heard it. He said it was one of his favorite books of all time, so I figured that I should probably give it a read. In the book, the author talks about how important it is to choose the right mountain. And I know you spent a while in sales in the corporate world only to realize that when you got to the top that you were on the wrong mountain.

I saw those two parallels, and I wanted to ask you about it. How did you realize it was the wrong mountain, and what was your four step framework to leave your corporate job once you

[00:05:53] Brian Luebben: realized it was the wrong mountain? So first off, I know about that book. I, I was actually about to read that from Sam Par because he put that on the, My First Million and he was like, this is the stupidest title ever, but it works.

And I was just like, I love the honesty, man. Like I’m gonna get it. So I actually have that, uh, being shipped to me. There’s also another book called The Second Mountain. Which is by David something, and it talks about when you’ve already achieved like a financial material status and success in your life, Like what’s the next mountain of fulfillment.

So my journey was I graduated college, went into sales. I was one of the few people crazy enough to actually choose to go into sales instead of falling into it. Uh, did that. Came obsessed with it. That was my identity. I put every waking hour into learning about the profession and wanting to be the best at the company, and that was what I wanted to do.

So the hack that I found behind that was listening to podcasts, ironically. So I was like, if I listen to a podcast to my hour commute to work and from work, it’s two hours a day. That’s five days a week, 10 hours a week, 40 hours a month. So while everyone else was working four 40 hours, four 40 hour weeks, I was tacking on an entire extra 40 hours of education without taking any extra time.

So I made it to the top. I was number eight outta 5,079. Won all the awards, sales rep of the year, all that stuff. Uh, they told me they were gonna pay me. Uh, this massive sign, like bonus, $70,000 cash bonus for hitting at the top, and I was making over 200. And so I was just like, Oh my God. Like this is the gravy train.

This is everything I’ve ever wanted. This is exactly what I wanted to hit. And, uh, two years of visualization, affirmations, and work. And then, uh, Covid hit and they emailed, We’re supposed to go on this huge trip and everything, and they emailed the night before that canceled the trip and they said, Hey man, so great job by the way.

That’s 70k that we were gonna pay you. We’re not gonna pay you that now. Uh, sorry. Like that was essentially the conversation. I was just like, Oh. It’s that easy. And looking back, I understand the process, like it wasn’t personal. I get that truly it was covid. They couldn’t justify paying one employee a massive cash bonus while firing like 20% of the workforce.

I get it. But when that happened, it woke me up and I was like, If I’m gonna work this hard, I might as well work for myself if I have this work ethic already. So that’s when the kind of light bulb moment was. And I started diving in and switching those sales podcasts through real estate podcasts and buying my first rental properties, so forth and so on.

So that kind of tees into the four step framework. Um, so I’ve kind of taken a look back at what I’ve done to try to framework it, name it, label it to make it as easy to digest as humanly possible, because we talk about a lot of stuff. And one of the big things I talk about is going from passive income to passionate income.

That’s huge. To get the passionate income. You can’t just quit your job Yolo and say, Hey, I’m gonna be a podcaster full-time, or I’m gonna be a, a butter churner in Colorado, or something like that. You can’t just do that as a process. So step one, uh, vivid vision, which I know you and I will probably talk about that a bit more, but, uh, creating a really detailed and, uh, vision about what you want your life to look like in three years.

You gotta write it in present. Gonna write what your health looks like, relationships, family, location, what your work looks like, how much money you’re making, what does the day of work look like, and be really hyper detailed and crisp on this vision because that gives you a target to aim for. So step one is that step two is.

Building your financial foundation. So I call the freedom, I call it a freedom tower. So to build a skyscraper, you need to have a strong foundation. Financial foundation’s gonna be the unsexy stuff. It’s gonna be your dividend stocks, cash flowing businesses like car washes or laundromats, your Airbnbs, your short term rentals, your flips, wholesaling, whatever have you, whatever you need to do to cover your fixed expenses each month.

So it’s not normally that $10,000 number that everyone thinks about and puts in front of mind, it’s normally closer to like five or six. And for me it was like 32, 3300 covered everything. So I was like, Okay, cool.

So the stronger you build your financial foundation, the faster and higher that you can grow that skyscraper on top. So that’s step two. Step three is building your. So your frame is when you have your foundation done, you’re gonna start putting all your energy and effort into going to mastermind events, groups, different communities, doing different courses, and putting all your resources into finding the people that are on the journey as you, Same journey as you, or the people that are where you want to be and trying to get in their world.

So peers and mentors. So for your frame, you’re gonna build your side businesses and side hustles with the peers and mentors. And that’s what leads to the final step, which is your freedom tower. So now you have your unsexy stuff, which earns you the right to build the sexy stuff with people that you know, like and trust that have already done it.

So thanks for having me guys. No, that’s it. That’s the four steps.

[00:10:43] Robert Leonard: So what do your streams of income look like today?

[00:10:45] Brian Luebben: So I have, uh, four units, so that’s my unsexy income. I have four units in, uh, Touro that I’m running. So with the Touro that prints out, like in the units, that prints out about 3700, 3800, uh, because I do co-living for the units for my houses, so that that gives me a little bit higher cash flow.

And so between that, that allows me the fixed expenses to be covered. So that’s the unsexy stuff. Then on top of that, I started my own podcast Action Academy, which is what I do full time while I’m travel. And I made it without the intention of monetizing it or making it a business or a revenue stream, but just because I genuinely loved it, which is probably why y’all did this.

And what ended up happening was people were, uh, reaching out to me and saying, Hey man, like a lot of people are joining in my coaching services from your podcast, or a lot of people are joining our mastermind from your podcast. Like, do you wanna have an affiliate relationship here? And so that led me down the podcast advertising Rabbit Hole, which, uh, started with what everyone thinks of advertising.

They think of cp. Just cost per mill, and it’s like $25 to $50 per thousand downloads. But if you’re a small show, you can’t make a chunk of change like that. So what I do is CPA cost per acquisition. So essentially they don’t pay me unless I provide, you know, a client paying client of theirs. And so that became a lucrative source.

So any given month, it’s variable. Keep that in mind, but with the fixed income and then with that on top. Then it’s printing out anywhere between like eight to like 15,000 a month from all of that combined. And I was like, Holy crap, how much real estate would I need to buy to produce this type of income?

So that’s why I tell people to spend your energy and effort. Yes, do the unsexy stuff, but also go and try to do whatever you’re passionate about and build a business, a revenue stream.

[00:12:36] Robert Leonard: We’re gonna get to the real estate portion cuz when you started mentioning that $3,800 ish kind of dollar figure, that, my first question was how are you making so much cash flow from your rentals with only four units?

I know roughly what Touro can do. I’ve, you know, you probably know I have an RV rental, so I, I’ve looked into Touro, like I know generally what that can make. So I’m like, okay, if I back that out to the 3,800, that means your rental units are doing really, really well. So, yeah, I definitely wanna talk about that and we’ll talk about that in a.

And I actually just had the founder of a co-living company on the podcast, and I think it might, you know, given that you’re in Georgia, I think it might be the same company and they’re based in Georgia. So I definitely wanna talk to that in a minute. But before we do, I wanna go back to Vivid vision. You mentioned you’re a big fan.

It’s a book that’s been recommended a lot by Brandon Turner. I haven’t read it myself. I need to, I really want to. I. I have a million books that I wanna read and it just hasn’t made it to the top of my list yet. Take us through what exactly Vivid Vision is and why you think it’s so powerful.

[00:13:34] Brian Luebben: So it’s the most important thing that you can do as an investor.

So we get so lost in the dollars and cents that we don’t actually take time to think what the heck do we want out of life? So if you go walk up on the street to a random person and you say, Hey, random citizen number seven, you know, what do you want? If you had all the money in the world, what would.

They’d be like, Bro, I have no idea. I’ve never even put any thought into that. Right? So if you go into investors as well, you go to a financial conference and you even ask people that are making, you know, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars in passive income per month, and you say, Well, what do you want?

Like, you know, well, like if you could wave a magic wand and live your dream life, what would that look like? They can’t answer it. So what it serves as is a freaking magnet. Cuz I tell people, I talk to a lot of people that are trying to exit that W two job, exit that corporate. I say, you don’t wanna run away from something, you don’t wanna run away from a bad situation because that puts you in a place of scarcity.

You wanna run towards something, you need something that’s attracting you like a magnet, and then that’s gonna be a stronger pull as opposed to you running away from something. So it’s the same thing as Simon Sinek. Start with Why. So this is a pretty strong way to create an artificial why? Because for people that have families like yourself, and a lot of people listening to this, like your why is obviously your family, but if you don’t have a family, it gets a little difficult when you’re already making a good amount of money to give that up for the possibility of something better.

So I had a vision where I was gonna quit my job, travel around the world, do what I want when I wanted, with who I. And podcasting wasn’t even on that vision, but that was my three year vision and I accomplished it in 1.2 years. So I’m currently filming this and recording this from Lisbon, Portugal, as I’m on country like number nine or 10 since July.

So long story short, I quit that corporate job in March and July 6th I hopped on a one-way flight. Now I’m traveling around the world full time, so I accomplished my vivid vision. So I know it’s powerful and I’m proof of concept. So now I’m working on my second one. So that’s even more exciting.

[00:15:33] Robert Leonard: Is Vivid vision, is it really the exact same as, uh, the books start with why?

[00:15:38] Brian Luebben: No, it’s just, it’s, it fits inside of it. So start with why just talks about having like a powerful driver, like a vivid vision can be an example of a why or part of a why. And for me, like my vision has all different parts. So I have like written out like what I want my income to be, what I want my business to be, what size, what revenue streams I want.

I also have like what my dream house looks like with my girlfriend. I have what my relationship looks like with. My family, my friends, like, where are we living? Have all of that written down. And then also what I do is I go on Canva and I literally make it like the lock screen on my phone. So I see it every day.

And that’s particular activation system because it’s top of mind, present every single day. You’re constantly thinking about it, whether it’s conscious or subconscious.

[00:16:26] Robert Leonard: Awesome. I’m gonna have to give that book a read. I have Start with Why on my bookshelf. It’s been there for a while. Haven’t read it yet, but I don’t own Vivid Vision.

I think I’m gonna go buy that after this podcast. And I know Brandon Turner did it the first time on an airplane because he didn’t have any internet, didn’t have anything else, so he just read it, did the whole exercise on an airplane. I got a flight coming up, so maybe, maybe I’ll do it on the flight. Is your girlfriend on your country hopping trip with.

[00:16:47] Brian Luebben: Yeah, she has been, um, she recently just went home because she has to, she’s got her own company, so she’s a baby entrepreneur just like I am, and she’s got her own company where she’s doing events in person. So from the beginning we planned for her to go home a little bit early to do some of these big events that she was advertising.

So she’s got those for the next couple of weeks. Essentially, she’s like traveling around America doing those events. So I’m like, Well, I’m not gonna be there anyway. So I might as well just finish out this month and a half, you know, continuing to do the travel and then just meet back up. So that’s what we’re doing right now, but uh, yeah, you know, the vision is bit woo woo.

So whenever I talk about Woow stuff, I kind of try to bring it back down to earth with like practical examples. And my practical example would be if you were in the car, I’m from Atlanta, Georgia. If you’re in the car and you’re driving from Atlanta to California, like you have a general idea of how to get there.

But if you’re going to a specific destination, you put it in Google Map. That gives you a roadmap to get there, and you have a specific destination with a path to get there. If you’re just not having a destination of mind, you’re just blindly driving, it’s gonna take you like. 10 times to a hundred times longer cuz you’re gonna get lost.

You’re gonna take wrong directions. So how you gonna get there? Unless you have a GPS that set in your destination. That’s what a vivid vision is.

[00:18:04] Robert Leonard: You often also talk about this idea of there being three levels of freedom. And I’ve heard of fire and many other concepts like it, fat, fire, lean, fire. But what do you mean by there being three levels of freedom?

[00:18:13] Brian Luebben: Oh my God, man, the acronyms kill me sometimes. It’s insane because people spend so much of their time with the actual acronyms and there’s like 30 of them now. It’s insane. But, uh, the three different levels of freedom. So I’m in a mastermind group called Go Abundance and a lot of the guys in there and a lot of the guys on my show are way past me where they’re like 8, 9, 10 figure guys.

And so I’ve been able to have a lot of perspective. By interviewing them and talking with them for hours and hours and hours. So three levels of freedom. First is financial. So when you have your financial freedom, you are no longer tied. Uh, your time is no longer tied to a paycheck, so you do not have a dollar sign that is allotted with your time anymore, and you do not have the stresses that 99% of people are dealing with every single day.

Most people like the biggest cause of divorce and the biggest causes of stress are money. So if you remove the money problems, then all of a sudden you have a lot of mental bandwidth open to think about other. So the second level of freedom’s called personal freedom. Personal freedom is now you have the income coming in, but now you have freedom of schedule.

This takes some work and some scale and some nuance to it to be able to create and design a life like that. So that’s where the work comes in. And a lot of entrepreneurs, when they start, they’ll leave their W2 and start making a bunch of money in real estate, but then they end up buying themselves an even worse.

Than they had before. Ironically, now you’re going from 40 hours to a hundred hours a week of work, and you’re seeing your family even less. So, personal freedom is being able to say, Okay, this is my schedule. I have full control and autonomy of this. Like I’ve got this, I, I’m gonna do what I want, when I want with who I want.

Third level is philosophical freedom. So philosophical freedom is when you have control of your schedule, you have control of your time, you have control of your finances. So you start asking the bigger questions like, what kind of impact am I trying to provide to the world? Like, how do I help other people at scale?

Uh, what does this all mean? Like, what am I, what kind of legacy am I gonna leave? Like, how can I have the maximum amount of fulfillment alongside my achievement financially? And then that’s where you start crafting like this beautiful. That it’s like super fulfilling and full of success. And then that’s where I think you get to the, the mountain top that you’re supposed to be at, where it’s part of the journey that is complete.

It’s a complete wealth as opposed to just financial. So if we can get everyone to that third level as quickly as possible, I think that’s the secret to true happiness in life.

[00:20:40] Robert Leonard: You mentioned GoBundance. I’m familiar with it, but I don’t know a ton about it. What are other requirements to join GoBundance?

[00:20:46] Brian Luebben: Need to be a credit investor, which is 200,000 back to back years. Or you need to have a minimum net worth of a million dollars excluding your personal residence. So I originally hit it with, uh, 200,000 in the beginning, so I’m on year two now of being over in GoBundance, and it’s been amazing. Is that the only requirement to join?

You have to go with interviews to be able to be in. What does it cost? 10,000 a. Is Brandon still part of it? Yeah, Brandon’s a huge part of it. Brandon, Josh Derkin, David Green, all those guys. But the, uh, the kicker now is, now that Brandon’s away from bigger pockets, they used to talk about that a lot on bigger pockets.

So we had a bunch of real estate guys in the beginning and now we’re starting to diversify a little bit more, which is kind of cool to watch because now it’s like we have people that are in real estate, but now we also have like doctors coming in. We have tech guys coming. So you’re kind of mixing the pot a little bit and you’re having some different perspectives and personality types.

So that’s been very fun to kind of witness that. There’s like 770 guys now, so that’s been wild. My first event there was like 150.

[00:21:50] Robert Leonard: Wow. So seven 70 times 10,000. That abundance is a pretty, uh, interesting little business on its own.

[00:21:55] Brian Luebben: Oh yeah, they’re, they’re probably raking it in, man, but hey, it’s all about value exchange.

So I’m, I’m loving it. I love being a member. So, hey, you know, for me it’s, how I view it from the consumer aspect is literally just buying your time back. Because you get to a certain point where it’s just like, you can invest in the stock market, you can invest in real estate, but the most precious asset that you own is time.

So I’m like, Okay, cool. If this is gonna take me five years, 10 years to do solo, and I can pay. To have access to mentors, partners, and peers that will accelerate that process to maybe one year. Then I’m buying four to nine years of my life back. You know, what’s the price tag on that? So then the way, when I view it like that, it’s an easy decision.

And that applies to things outside of GoBundance as well. I spent like $36,000 the other year on uh, Masterminds, courses, coaching, stuff like that. Had a mindset coach, had a podcast coach. Ironic. So I try to find like the best people that I can and pour all my energy and resources into either providing value to them and serving them so I have a free relationship with them or I pay them.

So pay to play or seek to serve for mentorship.

[00:23:08] Robert Leonard: Let’s dive into that a little bit because, and, and this isn’t financial advice for the people listening, but I’m curious how you think about allocating your capital now and also when you were approaching financial independence, if you had, if you were making some money and you wanted to use.

You wanted to put that to you so that you could reach financial independence. Where do you think about putting that money? What was the order you allocate that money to? Stocks, real estate cars for Touro, mentorship masterminds, courses. Like how do you allocate that capital best to reach financial independence?

[00:23:38] Brian Luebben: So I went through different seasons of my life. So the first season, it took me a full year to save up that first 25,000. Saving up your first money is the hardest always to do as a down payment to my first property. And then the second time I saved up 25,000 for the second property. It took me six months, and then it just gets easier and easier.

The third time I saved in a month. I haven’t been able to do it in a week, but the month was super cool and it accelerates. So in the beginning, I was just very hardcore budgeted. You know, I think that you may have to do that in the beginning, just tucking away, like getting your savings rate 50% or above, and really being super focused and diligent and proactive about that every single paycheck.

So that’s why I did in the very beginning. And then I dipped my toe into the water of like mastermind mentorship, peer groups, and I went to a GoBundance event for free. And it was just like seeing, it was like waking up for the matrix and I was. All these guys are operating like eight to nine finger businesses, and it was just so different how they viewed things and their philosophies on things, and it just gave me such a different perspective that I was like, Oh my God.

Like I wanna shift my capital towards this as much as humanly possible. If your guys are listening to this, I’m assuming that you guys have probably heard Alex Hormo speak and that guy’s on fire and he’s worth north of a hundred million dollars at 31 years old, and he said if he had $10,000 to invest, he would invest in the EST end of me 500, which is cheesy.

It’s corny, but if I were to go back and give advice to someone, like I would say, Investing in skill sets, mentorships, and partnerships would be better, a better use of $10,000. So I’m like allocating everything towards that right now. And also for real estate, I’m just kind of horizontal. I’m neutral on it right now.

Right now I’m in the process of building a media company, so all of my energy and resources are going towards that and paying for coaches and mentorship. So I’m a little bit skewed now, but general advice is I would start with the investments, build up that foundation, and then once the foundation is built, then you start pouring into mentorships, partnerships, all that.

[00:25:44] Robert Leonard: I’ve heard Alex talk about that SME concept quite a bit, and I personally like it. I don’t know necessarily, you know, I think investing in the s p 500 is really great, so I think, you know, I understand the point he’s trying to make. I don’t know if I a hundred percent agree all the time. I think there’s, you know, you gotta do a little bit of both.

But the point aside, I, I think generally it’s a good concept. And what I also really like that he talks about is kind of in the same vein as with these courses, is you. Take one course and expect it to make you rich. He said That’s why a lot of people either don’t complete courses or they only do one, and then they’re done because they’ll sign up for one course and because the seller of the course is promising that they’re gonna get rich, they expect to get rich just from that one course.

And then he says, Well, you gotta think about this, like college. How many college courses did you take just to get your degree? Right? It’s the same thing with online courses. You gotta think of this as just one of the online courses you have to take. To build your skill set so that you can eventually have all the skills and reach being rich at some point.

[00:26:36] Brian Luebben: Exactly. And I would echo that and first and foremost, I have index funds too. That’s part of your financial foundation. That’s the unsexy stuff. But that’s why in when it comes to courses, like I’m in the process of like looking into all of that and like the business and everything behind like that in communities and stuff.

But for me, I’ve never really completed a course that I’ve taken. I spent like two grand on courses last year and I’m so a d d that it’s just difficult for me to sit. And just pay attention. So the statistic is only 20% of people even complete the course, which is wild. But I would not rely on courses. So if you’re gonna listen and takes away something I just said I wouldn’t throw, if you had all that money right now, I wouldn’t throw it at a $10,000 course.

What I would do is I would start with free, right? So I would start with finding out who specifically you wanna be mentored by and finding, like interacting with their stuff online, engaging with their stuff online, and finding a very specific problem that they have and then providing a very specific solution to that specific problem.

And leading with value to get it for free is what I would start with. But when guys get to a certain level, like Brandon Turner for instance, like you can’t really just slide in his dms unless you have a mobile home park. Um, and be. Hey man, like can, what can I help you with? He’s not gonna answer. But now it’s like if you have some type of in or if you pay, like you’ve got him and he, he was on my show, so I did, I didn’t pay him or anything, but you know, for the most part, the higher level you get, the more they’re just like, Hey, you have to pay for this.

So I would say lead with that, but I would more so invest. In communities and mentorship as opposed to courses, stuff that’s ongoing. Don’t trust anything that says, Okay, do this and you’re gonna get rich. It’s never the case.

[00:28:17] Robert Leonard: What’s interesting is that with podcasting, YouTube, et cetera, there’s so many free resources too, and I’m not saying paid courses don’t have their value.

I’ve taken some that are amazing and I, I, yeah, there definitely are some. You know, you just gotta look out for the ones that are not promising. Like, don’t take the ones that are necessarily gonna promise you gonna get rich quick or overnight. Those are not necessarily look at the ones that promise to teach you a skill or something along those lines and, and an outcome rather than like, you’re gonna get rich or overnight success, things like that.

Cause that’s, that’s how I feel about courses. And, but there are so many free resources, podcasts, YouTube, et cetera, that are free, that you can learn from as well. So I wanna dive into your real estate a. Tell me more about that. What was your first deal? And then I wanna get into kind of some of the co-living.

[00:29:01] Brian Luebben: Cool. So the different levels of co-living, like so pad split, guys do it a bit differently than me. Them, my friend, uh, Sam Wegert and my other friend, like Todd Bald, I think his name was Todd Baldwin. They are like very intense co-living to the point where they will go in and like break down walls, create walls, create different bathrooms, two kitchens upstairs, community guidelines and stuff.

That’s how you maximize the cash flow. That’s not what I do. I kind of do a hybrid between house hacks and co-living. So I bought both of my properties as house hacks. So for people that are unfamiliar house hack, you can buy 3% down and then 5% down for your second one conventional, if that’s still a product.

But I did that and uh, put 3% down and then I had a 3 75 for my first interest rate in like 2019, and I had a two five for the 2020. So that was wild back then. But, uh, what happens is you have such a low payment. I mean, yeah, you have pmi, but you can remove that. So I was paying like, it’s like 1300, 1400 for my mortgage and then my upstairs tenants.

So how I have my houses is I look for five bed, four bathrooms, split level properties that are built in the 1970s and 1990s because they have in-law suites. And so that’s not really a thing. What I look for is two kitchens, full kitchens, because if you build a kitchen, it’s gonna be like $20,000 and that completely kills the deal.

There’s no point. So I look for properties for two full kitchens, uh, separate entrances, basically. It’s essentially a duplex, how it’s designed. And, uh, so what I do is I just go live in one part. I rent the top unit out. It’s called my HGTV unit, and that’s my three two. And I rent that out of market rent for my uh, top.

And then the downstairs I rent by the room. So I’ll usually have two people living downstairs and then a family or someone living upstairs as the primary tenant. And so I was already. My cash flow was already kind of covered from the top. It was like 1300 for my mortgage, but then the upstairs was giving me like 1900.

So when you take the 20% off, I was just like, they’re paying utilities. So I’m like, Okay, well, you know, kind of breaking even here. But then when I moved out and I had two people move downstairs and it’s like 900 or room, then all of a sudden you’re like, Whoa, this is some freaking cash flow. And then it only increases as your property increases in value and you’re able to refinance, knock out the pmi, and then your rents go up so it gets better and better.

And then the downside risk is mitigated. So I rinsed and repeat that strategy. That’s what I do. Are you using pad split or are you doing it yourself? Do it myself. Like they, So I don’t do any construction. They will come in and do construction on your house and do all that. Like I don’t do that. So I just have like two bedrooms downstairs in a kitchen, in a living room because it was already built like that for the in-laws suite.

And then upstairs is just three bed, two bath, pretty traditional setup. And so how are you managing,

[00:31:55] Robert Leonard: You know, now you’re managing, so you have the two upstairs units, and then you have two tenants downstairs, you have three per properties today you have six tenants. How are you managing that? Do you have a property manager? Are you managing it yourself?

[00:32:06] Brian Luebben: Yeah, so two different levels, but kind of three different levels. So I’m. More active than some of the bigger guys. Like, they’re like, Oh, they don’t do anything. Like for me, my property manager, I do have a property manager that handles both properties at like a high level, but also I have tenants that have been with me for a long time.

So those tenants are essentially like, kind of like the deputy property manager. And sometimes I’ll give them like a discount or I’ll be like, Look like you don’t have to pay utilities. Like I’ll cover your utilities essentially. So it’s like 150, you know, 200 bucks each. Like I’ll cover you utilities if you are kind of making sure, like upkeep, maintenance, all that stuff.

So I found that strategy’s been freaking awesome for me. I don’t know if I would boiler plate recommend that to everyone, but my tenants are rock stars, like. Awesome people. I do B class properties, like I wanna provide affordable housing for good red blooded like working Americans. And, uh, they’re appreciative of that.

And so they wanna take care of it. They have pride in the homes and I love them being there. So while I, while I could move them out and move someone else in for higher rent, it’s not worth it for me because of the time and like the stress that it would cause me. More mental energy and bandwidth, it’s not worth it. So you have to take that into account whenever you’re looking at cash flow.

[00:33:21] Robert Leonard: How did you find those tenants in the first?

[00:33:24] Brian Luebben: Traditional. I just put it online. I think it was like, what service did I use? Like maybe Turbo Tenant. I like put it out for everyone. And then Facebook Marketplace is where I’ve ironically gotten all of my tenants and they’re like, Yo, I love your property.

Like I love this idea I’m in. And then I just say, Okay, cool. Like go submit an application. And then they pay the $50 fee. They do a background check, credit check, income verification. I called one or two of their landlords’ references and right off into the. Basically just what bigger pockets recommends. Pretty simple.

[00:33:55] Robert Leonard: Do you have any problems with the people co-living together? Do you ever have to kind of mediate that situation?

[00:33:59] Brian Luebben: No. Cause for the most part, it’s people that kind of know each other and I offer like a referral bonus to people that bring in other people. So I tell them I’ll pay ’em like $300 if there’s a, a vacancy that’s about to come up.

I’ve only had like one or two vacancies, but I had one come up. And then by the time that person moved out that next month, one of the other tenant’s friends had moved. I don’t just like be like, Oh, what’s up? What’s up John, this is Fred. What’s up Fred? Like, hope y’all are boys , you know, that’d be kind of messed up, but because there’s such close proximity, whereas Pat Split does do that, like they’re just like, hey, you know, each different place is like almost like a dorm, but like for me, I’m just like, I’ve got enough people down there that it’s in such high demand because the price is so low that everyone’s like, Oh my God, this is a steal. Of course I’m gonna do it.

[00:34:47] Robert Leonard: So what is your plan with real estate from here? I know you said you’re focusing on your media company for the most part, but what, what are your plans with real estate outside of the media company? And then also what is your plan for kind of your own personal living once you get back to the states?

Cuz it sounds like you rent it out your place, so not where do you go back.

[00:35:06] Brian Luebben: Yeah, so I’ve got a tenant in there right now for six months. So I coordinated that lease to be up like when I come. So I’ll go back like right when they’re getting out and I’ll resume that for the time being because now that I’ve left my w2, I’m not as bankable for a bit like I could have found a way to maneuver around it, like get an off market property, do like a bur or something like that to be able to get a property.

That’s too much bandwidth for me right now, so I’m gonna just probably move back into that house hack just. Like, yeah, my cash flow was cut a bit, but I’m also living for free again, so that’s like a 50%, a hundred percent ROI right there. So I just double that. Um, when it comes to real estate, I was putting a lot of energy and effort into becoming a really good real estate investor.

And it was, it was good. It was fun. But there’s a book called So Good That Can’t Ignore You, I think is the book I’m referring to. Oh, it’s like cow new. Where it talks about like the 10,000 hour rule where you have to put your 10,000 hours in to be like a subject matter expert at something. And so I was putting my 10,000 hours into real estate and then at about the 5,000 hour mark, I was just like, This isn’t really like firing me up anymore.

So I kind of made the pivot to podcasting and I was like, I wanna put my 10,000 hours into business. And media now. So through the show I’ve become really good friends and through the masterminds and all the investments I make in community and relationships, I’m like really good friends with like the top people in any given asset class.

So if I wanna do Airbnb, I’ve got the top people that do Airbnb. If I wanna do a bur, like I’ve got people that have massive Burr c. And so what I do now is I focus on relationships, build my company. This is my one thing, my one lane right now. And then I want to become an income generating machine and then be an lp or be a partner, like a silent capital partner in somebody else’s big stuff.

So I’d probably wanna move into commercial real estate next, like triple net lease investing. Uh, partner up with somebody that’s a massive operator in the space and just be like, Hey, look, I’ll fund the. Because in real estate, you need like, there’s three sides to the triangle. You have your capital, you have your knowledge or your hustle.

So I just wanna be at the capital. If I’m the capital, then somebody else can be at the knowledge and then they’ll probably rely on somebody for the hustle that works on their team. So match made in heaven, you just gotta figure out what role you wanna play.

[00:37:24] Robert Leonard: What are you doing for your living situation while you’re traveling kind of country.

[00:37:28] Brian Luebben: Like, what am I doing for like Airbnb or hotel?

[00:37:31] Robert Leonard: Yeah. Are you Airbnb? Are you hotel? What? What is your situation there? I know there’s some people that are probably interested in kind of doing some country travel, maybe extending travel. So I’m curious kind of what you do for lodging there.

[00:37:41] Brian Luebben: Yeah, so I do a mixture. Mine’s probably like, not the boiler plate that I’d recommend to someone starting out, like, because it’s a bit more expensive. But I do, uh, I like earn my expensive, it’s kind of what I mentally call it. So I’ll do an Airbnb, uh, like two weeks out of the month, and then the other two weeks I’ll do like a.

More affordable, like host or something. So right now I’m in a hostel in Portugal, and then I’ve got, I’m doing this for a week, and then I’ve got my own private Airbnb. Then I’m going to Madera, Portugal. Um, I’ve got an Airbnb over there, so that’s kind of like the more higher end part of it. So I’m splitting it up, but right now, like lodging’s a lot to do this.

It could be easier if you were doing it one month at a. And being like what’s called a slow madd, that’d be way easier and you can have something very affordable. And it depends where you’re traveling as well. Like Latin America and Southeast Asia are very affordable. Europe is not so much, but uh, Yeah, so I travel.

I’m moving somewhere new every 10 days, give or take. So I’m like three or four places a month. So it’s fast for me and it makes it more expensive. But like right now I’m spending anywhere between like seven to 9,000 a month, which is the most I’ve ever spent when I’m living back home. Like my expenses are like, I don’t know, like 1500, two grand.

So it’s a lot more, but I also had like a six month emergency fund when I quit my job as well. So that was already there to like provide that security blanket in case the income all just randomly decided to jump ship. But, uh, it’s been good so far.

[00:39:10] Robert Leonard: Yeah, I figured it was gonna be a pretty expensive endeavor.

I wanna talk a bit about you being a podcast host. I know you’re one like myself, and you’ve done over a hundred interviews. So you’ve talked to a lot of people. You’ve talked to a lot of successful people also through abundance. What has been the most important thing you’ve learned from your podcast guests?

[00:39:24] Brian Luebben: So to hit back on the mountain analogy and the mountain books, you’re never going to arrive. Like you’re never gonna make it. There’s never gonna be a singular time in your life where you’re like, Oh, I did it. I’m here. Like there is no here. That’s the main takeaway. The million dollar guys. Wanna be $10 million guys.

The $10 million guys wanna be a hundred million dollar guys. The a hundred million dollar guys wanna be billion dollar guys. The billion dollar guys wanna be, I don’t know, Gandhi. They wanna give everything away and go live in a mountain. So there’s always an ideal that you’re chasing. The irony of finance and entrepreneurship is you are climbing a mountain range and as soon as you get to the mountain top, you realize you’re as smallest mountain in the range.

So the key behind all of this is to learn how to enjoy the climb, because it’s a game you’re always gonna be. There’s always gonna be someone better than you, doing something bigger than you. So if you’re in content in the process and the journey, and you’re really enjoying the growth and the actions that are yielding the results, and you find success and joy in measuring those as wins, as opposed to end destinations, that’s the secret to life.

Like you will be infinitely more happy and successful and fulfilled than the other guys that are like, Oh, I’m gonna go until $10,000 a month. I won’t be happy. Guess what happens when you hit 10,000? I want a hundred thousand a month. So it’s just like that, man. I talk to ’em every single day of the week and they will all, If you’re listening to this right now, you’re nodding your head and you’re just like, Preach brother seriously.

[00:40:53] Robert Leonard: So, being a podcast host, you should be pretty good at this next question or next part, but at the end of my episodes, I often like to turn the tables and let the guest ask me a question. So Brian. What question do you have for me?

[00:41:04] Brian Luebben: What has been the biggest singular change that you’ve noticed in yourself from Robert starting the podcast to you today?

[00:41:14] Robert Leonard: I’m a lot more conversational, a lot better communicator than I was back then before I started the podcast. My background was in accounting and finance. I mean, that’s still my background, but I had never spoken really much like I, I, I was decent at communicating, but it was just, you know, it was mostly just sat in a cubicle in an office and just did spreadsheets all day.

Like I didn’t really have to talk to people. I wasn’t in sales. I wasn’t an extrovert. I was pretty introvert. And so for me, the podcast was a big change, and so I think that’s made me a much better speaker, communicator, et cetera.

[00:41:48] Brian Luebben: Well, it’s working, huh?

[00:41:49] Robert Leonard: Yeah. Appreciate it. Appreciate it. Brian. As we wrap up the show, I wanna give you a chance to tell the audience where they can go to connect with you.

[00:41:57] Brian Luebben: Yeah, so the easiest place to go. Um, I’ll give you a resource and a website if you feel like going there, but the, the easiest place is Action Academy podcast. That’s literally like my wife’s passion is doing that show. It’s five episodes a week. Of entrepreneurs seven to 10 figure. I’ve had a couple billionaires, like Jeff Hoffman is the founder of Price Line, had Brandon Turner.

I just had, uh, John Lee Douma on today. So I asked people about the finances, but also about the fulfillment side. So if you guys enjoyed and meshed and jived with the kind of philosophical. Stuff that we talked about today. I asked them all those questions where I’m like, Okay, what parts did you like really get fulfilled by? Which parts did you hate? But um, yeah, so I’d say just go check out the podcast. You can find everything else through the show.

[00:42:43] Robert Leonard: Brian, thanks so much for joining me. I’ll put links to your show, everything else you have going on, Twitter, Instagram, any other resources you have in the show, notes below for anybody that’s interested in checking ’em out. Brian, thanks so much for joining me.

[00:42:52] Brian Luebben: Appreciate it man. Thanks for having me.

[00:42:58] Robert Leonard: All right, guys. That’s all I had for this week’s episode of Real Estate Investing. I’ll see you again next week.

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