Are You an Asset or Liability to Those in Your Life? w/ Earn Your Leisure

Brandon:
This is the Bigger Pockets Podcast show, 516.

Troy:
People think that based on the things that they see from us, we travel, with though some pretty decent parties, they see us with beautiful women, and it’s like, “These guys have it easy, they’ve had a silver spoon.”

Troy:
They don’t realize how hard we work, how many days he’s locked himself in a room, trying to study for the series seven, and how many days that I’m going to school that night falling asleep in a kinesiology class, they never saw any of that, so we’ve pretty much earned our freedoms.

Intro:
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Brandon:
What’s going on everyone, it’s Brandon Turner, host of the Bigger Pockets Podcast, here with my co host Mr. David Leisure Green. What’s up man, you’ve earned it?

David:
First time anyone has ever called me that.

Brandon:
Okay, David, no leisure Green, but you’ve also earned that. What’s up man, how are you doing?

David:
I’m doing really good, good weather in California, good time in real estate, really good conversation we just had, I think people are going to really enjoy this episode.

Brandon:
Yeah, yeah, they really will. So today’s guests are two gentlemen, it’s Troy and Rashad. And they are from the podcast, YouTube, social media empire called Earn Your Leisure, if you haven’t heard of them, you’ve probably seen them, just on the internet if you don’t follow them yet, but you should follow them, and you will after this interview, you’re going to be blown away by these guys.

Brandon:
They have such a solid understanding of just financial literacy, and their story of helping kids, and having a program for 14 year olds, we’ll talk about that today, we talk about some of the things that are investing in, really just fundamental ideas around what makes somebody successful as an entrepreneur in anything, you’re going to love it. So all that and more to come, but first let’s get to today’s quick tip.

Brandon:
My quick tip today is something we briefly touched on in the show, and that is take time once a week, usually on a Sunday night, or Monday morning but whenever you can fit it in, take time one hour, once a week, to write down what your goals are, your grand vision goals, like, “Hey I want [inaudible 00:02:18] this year, or the next couple years.”

Brandon:
But also write down what your goal for the week is, just that simple process of writing down what your goal for the week is, and then when and where you’re going to work on it, will change your life forever. It’s a simple five minute process, write down your vision, write down your goal, write down what you’re going to get done this week, and then when and where you’re going to work on that thing.

Brandon:
And it will skyrocket your chance of success, so that’s my quick tip. All right, with that said I think it’s time to get in the show, anything you want to add David before we jump in with Troy and Rashad?

David:
What really stood out to me from today’s show was how, Troy and Rashad came from different backgrounds than you and I, but we’re accomplishing the exact same things. And it goes to show that it is the principles, the laws of wealth building that matter, not where you started, what you knew, what you didn’t know at the beginning of your journey.

David:
And it’s the same for everything, fitness, education, the principles are what gets you from the start to the finish. What I really love about today’s show, is how well these two communicate the principles that they’re teaching to other people, that helped make them successful, how they evaluate opportunities, what investments they’re actually getting into themselves, and the entire concept of assets over liabilities, going deeper than just what you spend your money on.

David:
So this is something I’m proud to be able to bring to everybody, and I hope that all the listeners share this with anyone they can think of who might benefit from hearing these concepts.

Brandon:
All right, well with that said, time to get in an interview with Troy Millions, and Rashad Bilaal from Earn Your Leisure. All right, Troy, Rashad, welcome to the Bigger Pockets Podcast, gentlemen, it’s great to have you here.

Troy:
Pleasure to be here, thank you-

Rashad:
Thank you for having us.

Brandon:
Yeah, so you guys are everywhere man, I see you all over Instagram, all over YouTube, you’ve been just dominating social media, dominating the podcast world and just killing us.

Brandon:
So first of all, nice job, you guys are crushing it, but I want to get into what happened, how did you get there? How do you get to this point where you’re like, the voice of so many people that are out there, and they’re listening to you, you guys are always in the finance?

Rashad:
Yeah, so my background, I was a financial adviser for 12 years, and Troy was a teacher, so us growing up being best friends for pretty much our whole lives, the financial literacy aspect really came organically, because we started teaching finance to kids in his classroom, and that developed into a six week summer program that we did over 10 years, before we started the podcast.

Rashad:
So really, when people talk about financial literacy, that’s really us, as far as you combine our literacy with him being educator, and the finance with me being a financial adviser, and then we just merged those worlds together.

Rashad:
And then a social media thing came about from really taping the classroom, and putting that footage on Instagram, and then also going to different people’s public access shows, different radio shows, anything I could actually go to at that point in time.

Rashad:
And just talking about finance, but talking about it in a different way, combining sports, culture, music, and adding those elements behind the scenes, financial aspects of it, and then just taping that, and putting it on Instagram. And a lot of those clips went viral, and that led to the idea of starting a podcast, which led to where we are now.

Troy:
Yeah, yeah.

David:
Yeah, that’s cool. So Troy, what about you, you were a teacher then?

Troy:
Yeah, so I was educator, and being in a school system, you learn the things that are not being taught. And so one of the things I overwhelmingly felt was if I’m not helping the change, and I feel like I was complicit. And so the six week program that he was talking about, was my space to be creative, and say, “You know what? I’m going to treat this six weeks, like the 10 months of school that the kids didn’t get.”

Troy:
And so based on how they performed, and I say, perform, because part of the program was they had internships. So they came in and told us what they want to be in the future, we go out in the community, and see a business, or establishment that was willing to have a kid be an understudy for six weeks. So based on how they performed, they were paid.

Troy:
And being that they’re 14 years old, it’s the first time they ever going to come in contact with real money, and so we’re paying each kid $500. And so we wanted to really have them have a clear understanding of the value of money, what you can do with it, other than spending. So one of the first lessons we taught was spend, share, save.

Troy:
We broke it down into categories for the kids, and then we taught them about investing, and we taught them about taxes, and real estate was something we spoke about. And so a lot of them was the first time coming in contact with money, but it also was their first time coming in contact with financial literacy, and the value of money. And so that spread from the kids to the adults, saying, “Wow, I can’t believe that my son knows this, and my daughter knows this.”

Troy:
And now the parents are intrigued. And so when Rashad was doing the interviews on different people’s stations, it was like, all right, there’s something going on here. So my first initiative was, all right, let’s just support him, let’s get his thing off the ground. And so he was like, “Look, everybody on Instagram has a hashtag, I need a hashtag Troy.” And I’m like, “All right.”

Troy:
I think a day or two, I was like, “I got one for you.” And he was, “I’m here.” I’m like, “On your leisure.” And he was like, “No, man, I don’t like it.” I’m like, “No, no, it’s perfect.” Because people think that based on the things that they see from us, we travel, we throw some pretty decent parties, they see us with beautiful women. And it’s like, “These guys have it easy, they’ve had a silver spoon.”

Troy:
They don’t realize, how hard we work, how many days he’s locked himself in a room, trying to study for the series seven, and how many days that I’m going to school at night, falling asleep in a kinesiology class, they never saw any of that. So it was like, we’ve pretty much earned our freedoms, right? Some of the freedoms that we were allowed it at that time, we really worked hard for it.

Troy:
And so I was like, “This is it.” And so when we had to come up with a name for it, we went back and forth, but Earn Your Leisure was something that we had used, and it was like, “All right, this is perfect.” And now, it’s like you said, it’s everywhere. And so people see it, and they automatically, tie us to it.

Brandon:
Yeah, that’s cool, man. I love the phrase because you’re right, I think too many people see the result, they see the end of what people have, the flashy, the jet, the cars, the watch, they see all that stuff that’s all over social media, they don’t realize the climb that it took to get there, they don’t realize the grind, that it takes to achieve those things. And so I think just in a simple phrase, it tells people, there’s more than that.

Brandon:
I want to go back real quick to this class that you taught. What are some of the topics in the class that you’re teaching these 14 year old kids, just in case there are people listening, going, “Oh, I want to teach my kid.” Or, “I want to teach my school, I’m a teacher, I want to help those around me.” What were you teaching?

Rashad:
We taught credit, understanding credit, from top to bottom, credit cards, credit score, all of those different things, revolving credit 101. Stocks, what a stock is? How to research a stock, how to look at a stock ticker, 52 week high, 52 week low. We also taught about student loans, so my student loans [inaudible 00:09:13] in a couple years it will be in college, and so they needed to understand that.

Rashad:
We talked about real estate, we talked about just general finances as far as, wants and needs, and how to balance that out, and the importance of budgeting. Yeah, a lot different things.

Troy:
Income tax, it was something that, they were shocked. They were like, “What is that?” Social security, all these things that we see coming out of [inaudible 00:09:36] as adults, we were like, “Listen, this is what the world is going to look like, as soon as you start getting paid.” And so yeah, those were the topics we started with. And then we-

Rashad:
Real estate.

Troy:
Real estate, entrepreneurism too, entrepreneurship was something that we were big on. And so I remember one year we had a project, we have an idea, “Listen, I have five groups, I want you guys to pitch.” It was like a shark tank for the kids, and we’re like, “Look, the what the group that wins, we’re going to create this business.”

Troy:
So it was like a babysitting service that we created with the kids. It started with an idea, and it led to five kids actually creating their own business, at the end of the program.

Brandon:
Wow. So these kids, how old were most of them?

Troy:
They were 14, so that was the key. And in our community, most communities, kids age out of the camp experience, from kindergarten to eighth grade, and then after that eighth grade is what are they supposed to do, right? Because at 14, you [inaudible 00:10:31] working papers, but no one has 14 year olds. And so at 15 in our community, you could actually get a job at the community center, and be in part of the camp, some of Camp experience.

Troy:
And so that was a natural progression, when you turn 15, you can work at the camp, but there was a big space for 14 year olds, and so we needed to fill that void, and so that’s what the program did. It prepared them for what was to come, but in the scheme of things, the natural progression was like, “All right, we’ve taught you about money, and now you can go out and get a job, and we’re going to help you do that.”

Brandon:
So you have… 14, 15, that’s a tough age, you got a lot of that adolescent comforts that you’re not wanting to let go of, you have the desire to be an adult, but none of the ability to handle all the things that come from that. Things can explode in any direction, how did you get kids at that age to actually care, about what you guys were describing, which sounds like it was largely education, and discipline?

Troy:
Yeah, so I was a middle school teacher, and so I had that advantage. For eight years, I was in New York City teaching middle school kids, and so I was familiar with it. But the thing about the program was that they knew the incentives that at the end, they were going to get paid. And so everybody’s focused was like, “Wait, this is the first time we can get paid.”

Troy:
So it was like, “All right, we have to be on point.” And we treated it like it was a job for them, and they looked at it like, “This is fun.” So it was a five day program, twice a week, they were in the classroom with us, twice a week, they went to the internship, and Friday, we took them on trips, or we took them to college campuses, so when they got to college, it wouldn’t be, “Oh, I’ve never seen anything like this before, I’ve never heard these terms.” And so it became a big exposure program.

Troy:
And so they wanted it, they wanted to come, they wanted to show up, because it was like, “Wait, this is a new way of learning.” In fact, at the end of the six weeks, all the kids were like, “Wait, we need to extend this, how do we keep this thing going?” And so that’s when we got into the point of where we have to figure out how to make this thing a year round thing, how can we educate the masses?

Troy:
And so we were trying to scale that program, and then we came upon this, and now not only can we educate those kids, and they’ve been with us, a lot of them are still with us. And they get to follow us through the education process now, but now we get to educate the world through the platform.

Rashad:
But also to follow up on your question how to keep the kids engaged, we did on group activities, which is really big, to keep their attention, and have some competitive spirit amongst the kids, we’ll do a stock activity, and have a group activity, then we also do rewards, so whatever group won, they got free lunch, things of that nature. So little things like that for educators, that might be interested in trying to implement different ideas into the classroom.

Rashad:
That’s something that generally was working for us, and probably works for most type of classroom, not a competitive spirit, having the kids work together, having some reward system built in, [inaudible 00:13:16] thing that we did in the class.

Troy:
Incentivize that education.

David:
So my second question to you is going to be about what you just said, Rashad, and how your guy’s athletic background tied into the mindset you’ve created. When it comes to money, and combining work with leisure, the relationship between working hard, and then getting a benefit.

David:
But before I asked that, I want to get a little bit of advice for the parents who have children, and they’re trying to explain to their children the value of money, and hard work, and just really the rhythm that goes into the principles of how money works. What advice do you have for people that are having a hard time connecting with their kids when it comes to this topic?

Rashad:
I think the first thing is to just be transparent, and talk to the kids about money, a lot of parents don’t talk to kids about money, and they tell them, “Stay in the child’s place, and don’t worry about the bills.” And things like that, I think it’s important to have those open conversations about money, and finances, because if you’re not having those conversations with your kid, it’s like having a conversation about having sex.

Rashad:
I look at it, the kid’s at one point he’s going to do it, whether you talk to him about it or not, so you want to talk to him about it, so they can be responsible about the decisions. Same thing about money, I think that’s a lot of reason why people [inaudible 00:14:30], especially with credit cards is that they just wasn’t educated on it. So you’re not educated on something, you can make a lot of mistakes.

Rashad:
So the first thing I would say is just to be fully transparent, even if you think the kids aren’t really listening, still incorporate it while you’re having dinner, and while you’re having lunch, whatever. Go to the bank, take them with you to the bank, show them just all of the things that you’re doing as an adult, as far as the finances.

Rashad:
And then the second thing is, once again, I know especially with stocks is just to make it cool, and have some reward system, so even For me, for my son, I have a stock account for him. And obviously, he sees us talk about stocks all the time, so he’s excited about it. And then I tell him, the different companies that he’s invested in. So now it’s like a badge of honor.

Rashad:
He tells his friends, “I’m invested in Tesla, I’m invested in Nike.” So we made it cool. That’s another thing, a lot of times finances aren’t cool, and aren’t sexy, and kids think it’s boring, but when you talk about how they can make money, and how it’s growing, and you can do this, and you can make twice as much money, if you invest in this as opposed to that, then once they start to see that, then it becomes cool to them.

Rashad:
So those are just some tips, but everybody’s parenting is going to be different, but I think no matter how you do it, just to have open dialogue, and just have the conversations with your child is extremely important.

Troy:
Yeah. And I would add to that, just talk to them at the level that you feel that is appropriate. So when we talk to our kids about investing in stocks, it’s going to be tough for me to explain to them what CrowdStrike is, but they play Roblox every day, there’s an opportunity there for me to talk to them. So now when my kids asked me, “Daddy, can I get $499 to buy Roblox?” I’m like, “Look, you need to have at least $10 to buy that.” So there’s a lesson there.

Troy:
I remember I had a conversation with my son, he was six at the time, seven now. And we were listening to the radio, and it was a text infomercial, and he was like, “Daddy, who’s the IRS?” And I said, “Those are the people that collect money from everyone.” And he was like, “I want-” I’m like, “No man, you want people to like you.”

Troy:
It might not be the best thing, but for a first grader that’s his way of understanding, so talk to them at a level that they can understand, and they’re always listening and so they’re always learning.

David:
What I noticed about what both of you said was it was basically, take something they understand, and relate this to that, which is, I use a lot of analogies on this podcast, I get teased about being the analogy guy, but that’s what analogy is it’s you get this concept, so let me present this new information within the framework of something you already understand.

David:
That leads us to me wanting to learn a little bit more about your background, which I understand involved athletics, basketball in particular, which was my first love in life, and a lot of how I understand business money finance success, it’s viewed through that lens of basketball, there’s a hard work will get your results component, there’s a teamwork component, you don’t want a team full of Steve Kerr’s, you’re not going to win that way, but it’s really nice to have a Steve Kerr on your team when you need that thing, right?

David:
Can you tell me a little bit about how you feel that your athletic backgrounds, developed the perspective that you view money from, and how it’s now influenced the teachings that you guys are providing?

Rashad:
Yeah, for me I played basketball my whole life, so a lot of the stuff that I learned playing sports I still carry over to this day, so as far as the work ethic is something that I learned from sports, and just being able to do the same thing every single day for years, is something that most people take for granted, but it’s something that you need in business, no matter what business it is, it’s very tedious most of the time, business is tedious, it’s a lot of repetition.

Rashad:
And you learn the repetition, at least for me I learned the repetition playing sports, having to do drills every single day for 15 years, after a while that just gets drilled into your brain, it’s military training almost, that I learned working with a team, especially basketball is a team sport, so no matter how good you are, you still have to work with other players on your team, and you have to be able to be coachable.

Rashad:
So working from a team standpoint is extremely important in business, because no business is successful with just one person, everybody has employees, if you are blessed enough to scale to that point we have employees, you have partners, you might have interns, you have people that you have to answer to, you have sponsors things of that nature.

Rashad:
So, teamwork is extremely important, one thing I learned from sports, of course, the competitive nature of sports carries with you, once you stop playing, you still have that competitive edge. So everybody wants to be the best, if you are competitive in nature. So, sports is definitely something that forces that competitive spirit, and businesses is a competitive situation, so everybody’s trying to outdo each other.

Rashad:
So, the competitive nature of sports definitely carried over in business. So, those are just a few, but definitely, I feel all of the things I learned from sports are real valuable life lessons, not just in business just in life in general, but definitely in business. Being on time, being organized all of these things, stuff that I learned from playing sports.

Troy:
Yeah, my athletic career ended after 12th grade, I knew very early on like, “Look, man, I’m not going to be able to make money in sports, I got to figure out something.” Which is what turned me into being an educator, because I loved sports, I was obsessed with sports. And I had a natural gift for working with kids, and so phys ed and health became what I was teaching. But growing up man, I was obsessed with sports, every sport.

Troy:
And so what I did was, I would study everybody stats, so that I became a statistician, I would tell you somebody’s batting average, I know what school they went to, I know how many years they were in school, I know their points per game, I know their assist. And so that just carried on into the business world, now where when I started a company, it’s the same thing.

Troy:
When I dive into a company, I’m looking for everything, and so that discipline has just carried over me as far as analytics go, whether it’s on YouTube, or listens on audio, these same disciplines that I used when I was studying the statistics, and studying people’s average, that these type of information that you probably won’t ever use again, I’ve ended up using now when it comes to the stock market, when it comes to crypto, when it comes to businesses.

Troy:
I really studied them, I know their numbers, and so when I make an investment, it’s going to be a sound one, based on the things that I had did, just from being a sports junkie.

Brandon:
Yeah, that’s cool man. Hey, on your shirt, Troy I see it right now, and then on your website it’s all over the place, and on your Instagram and everywhere, it’s assets over liabilities. What does that phrase mean to you? What does it mean to others, and why is that so counter culture today?

Rashad:
Yeah, assets over abilities is something that I came up with, as far as I just felt that was the perfect tagline, something short, easy, to the point, that describes everything that we have in three words, where it’s like, everybody like you said on social media it’s all about the cars, jewelry, traveling, all that stuff, but obviously a lot of that stuff is liability, most of it is liability, so it’s a never ending race to just spend money, and put yourself in debt, and never really create any wealth, and our whole platform was built on creating wealth.

Rashad:
So it’s cool to have liabilities on a certain level, but let’s do it responsibly, and let’s always make sure that we have assets first and foremost in our brain. So the idea of assets over liabilities is just to say, you want to prioritize your assets first, and then your liabilities come after that.

Rashad:
And just be in just in life in general, I look at relationships, either somebody is going to be an asset to you, or they’re going to be a liability, they’re going to be adding to you or they’re going to be taken to you, so there’s only so many relationships that you can have, where you’re on the losing side before you end up losing.

Rashad:
So it’s important to always make sure that everybody’s an asset, and that you have an abundance of assets, and you’re focused on your assets, as opposed to focusing on the liabilities. So I’ll give you an example when we interviewed DJ Envy, he’s real big in real estate. And he says, he has 20 cars, he’s really big on all these exotic cars, but he doesn’t buy a car just with his money that he gets from his job, he buys a car from the cash flow from his real estate property.

Rashad:
So it’s like, he doesn’t buy a liability, and so he has an asset that can pay for that, and that’s how he goes about it, so he still has ‘liabilities’, but he’s doing it in a responsible manner, and he makes sure that his assets are above that, and the cash flow from the homes are now paying for those cars.

Rashad:
So that’s something that we just wanted to just put out there, and it just took off like wildfire, people just really, really like it. They like the slogan, they like the way that shirt is made, the print on it and all that, so yeah just [inaudible 00:23:42] like wildfire.

Troy:
And it’s become synonymous with us, and so again, when people see that they automatically think us, but originally the first time I’ve seen that, I was just like, oh, okay, assets something that puts money into your account, liability is something that’s been taken out, but even that, we’ve learned and a lot of people have shown, we’ve shown people where liabilities can be turned into assets.

Troy:
And so when you talked about the cars, we talked about listen, if you use Taro, which is a car rental service, the Airbnb of cars, that liability that we once thought can now be an asset, that can actually bring income in. And so it’s always about creating the mindset, but the first thing is the slogan, right?

Troy:
It gets you talking, everywhere we go somebody stops us, if they don’t know us, it’s a conversation starter, and so that’s what it’s done, it’s changed the conversation for our community for sure, and pretty much the world, it’s like, all right, well number one I know who you listen to, and number two, let’s have this conversation. What are the things that you involved in? What are you invested in? What are some of your liabilities? How can we change that?

Brandon:
Yeah, we preach all the time, the idea of house hacking, where you buy a duplex, and you rent out the other unit, or you buy a house, you rent out the bedrooms, because your house is a liability for most people, I mean it’s a liability we all have to have generally, we have live somewhere. But when you can rent out that other unit, or other bedroom, or you buy a fourplex, rent out three of the units, all of a sudden now you’re making money.

Brandon:
Or your Airbnb in your other unit, or your other bedroom, it’s like that idea of just because it’s a liability technically, or historically has been, doesn’t mean it has to stay there. And I think the more people think of that concept, [inaudible 00:25:13] from my office right now, I want an office for my real estate company.

Brandon:
And I’m like, “Well, how do I office hack this thing? How do I buy an office, like a strip mall, put myself in one of those units, and the rest of the units rent out, and now my office is living for free and building wealth?”

Rashad:
Yeah, that’s the name of the game, thinking outside the box.

David:
I thought what I liked about it, is it goes above just what you spend your money on, but what you spend your time or your energy on, you mentioned relationships, that’s a great way this principle applies.

David:
And maybe, especially for someone young, understanding that your asset is you, investing in your education in knowledge in repetition, in the mastery that you develop over a specific topic, whether it’s a sport, or it’s a concept, finances, whether it’s cryptocurrency or real estate, the asset is your understanding of it, and the liability might be how you flex, what your social media shows that you’re doing.

David:
As long as those two things, there’s a healthy relationship between the two, maybe it’s better way to say it, then there’s nothing wrong with that, right? It’s when the liability side starts to become too heavy on that scale and sucks you down, and you stop building assets, you become a slave to that lifestyle, that it’s a problem. So I think what I love about that is it’s deeper than just how you spend your money, it’s how you spend everything.

Troy:
I think the bank account analogy is perfect, in terms of even relationships, we’ve said this to each other, either people going to deposit into you, or they’re going to withdraw from you.

Troy:
And we know, especially if you opening a new account, if you keep making withdrawals, you hit that $3,000 mark, they’re going to close the account, but we don’t close the relationships when that happens. And so again, it’s that mindset, all these things are related, relationships… Look, we got to have an even balance here.

Brandon:
I had a question for you guys, that’s something I struggle with a bit is, first of all, I never thought of the idea of assets over liabilities in terms of relationships, I love that concept. And there are just so many people in life who just take, take, take and drain, drain, drain.

Brandon:
At the same time, we want to be able to build relationships with people who can’t give back, so there’s obviously people in your life and on our life who aren’t providing us value necessarily but we want to build do that. How do you balance that? How do you balance this idea of I want to give to people, who maybe can’t give back yet in any way?

Brandon:
It’s like the kids, they’re not giving back to you in any way, are they an asset, are they a liability, how do you look at the relationship side of things?

Rashad:
Yeah, I look at it, you have different folders for different types of situation. So you have a charity situation, you have mentorship situation, and you allocate, “Okay, I know that this one hour week, or one day a week, or whatever, I’m dedicated to doing this.” And depending on your schedule, depending on your financial situation, you can allocate more time, or depending on your goals.

Rashad:
If your goals isn’t really to have a lot of money, or create a great impact in business, you might be able to allocate more time towards things that’s not really going to be profitable to you. So everybody’s situation is different, but I think it’s all about just having balance, I think balance is extremely important, right? So it’s understanding that, okay, we live in a world where we have to make money, we have to provide for our families, and we have to dedicate time towards our business.

Rashad:
So we might not be able to spend as much time as we as you would like doing things, that’s not going to generate revenue, but we also need to do things like that, because it’s just important, and we have to balance it out, between just making money and actually creating a social impact as well. So everybody’s balanced schedule is going to be different, depending on like I said, your life, how that looks for you.

Rashad:
But I think for us, this has really been a situation of balance, we just did a back to school giveaway yesterday, where obviously, that didn’t bring any revenue, we actually spent money. But we understand that that’s important as people that are less fortunate that can provide for their children, in the same way that we might be able to. So we do things like that all the time.

Rashad:
So, yeah, it’s a balancing act, and I think that that’s something that every entrepreneur has to figure out for themselves, because sometimes you might feel bad that you don’t have enough time to do everything that you want to do, but you also have to remember that, if your business starts to fall, there’s people that depend on you for business, you have employees, you have your family.

Rashad:
So on the flip side, if you’re just dedicating all of your time to giving things away for free, then the people that depending on you, they’re going to suffer. So it’s not really fair to them, if you’re not giving your business 100% of your effort. So yeah.

Troy:
I would say that’s what we’ve been built on, we’ve always given back, whether it was a time, whether it was financially, its just a principle that we just naturally had. He never mentioned this, but I mentioned it here. When he was doing a summer program with me, he was doing that for free. He was just doing as a favor, I’m like, “Look, man, you’re in the finance world, could you just come?”

Troy:
And he was doing it for free for 10 summers. And so he’s always giving back to his time in that sense, and it was like, we’re not looking for the immediate reward, the best reward is when that kid grows older, and he’s like, “Look, I remember when you got to talk about credit, and now I’m doing finance.” That’s the reward for us, we didn’t gain any financial value from it, but that kid’s life was impact.

Troy:
And so that’s how we been living our lives really, how impactful can we being, and what are the residual results of being impactful? So that’s what we’ve been on, and hopefully, it’s inspired, and it still is inspiring those kids, but it inspires people to do the same.

David:
If I hear you guys right, what it sounds like you’re saying is that some people cannot repay, but the act of giving to them repays you, versus what you’re describing, when you talk about liability is a human being that sucks energy from you, not only are they not paying you, but that relationship itself, the time you’re spending there is a liability, is that more or less what you’re describing?

Rashad:
Yeah, for sure. It could be a romantic relationship, it could be a business relationship, some people are just liabilities, they’re just toxic people by nature, and they’ll just drain you, not just financially, but emotionally, just all kinds of different things. So that’s type of relationships that can become a liability, where it’s taking not only time, money, energy, all of that from you.

Rashad:
Whereas another relationship could be pouring into you, it doesn’t have to be in the form of money, it could be in the form of inspiration, it can be in the form of joy, it can be in the form of a lot of different things that add value to your life, outside of money, and those are all assets. So I always say, you can be an asset, even if you don’t have any money, or you have no financial gain, people ask about mentorship.

Rashad:
People ask about mentorship a lot, and I always tell them, the best way to approach a mentor is to see what you can do for them, not really what they can do for you, because that’s more charity, and you can only have so many hours in a day allocated towards charity, where it’s like, okay, if I want somebody to be my mentor, I might know somebody else that would be a good person for them to build a relationship with.

Rashad:
And maybe I’ll approach the situation with that, look, I just want to add value, how can I add value? And of course, with that, we can develop a relationship, as opposed to saying, “You have this platform, I want to take this from you, what can you do for me, can you give me a stock tip, how can I make money? How should I buy on the block? That happens all the time. So there has to be some level of balance.

David:
I love that. Because what you’re selling people is don’t be a liability in other people’s lives, because the people that have what you want, you two are saying, have a radar that is scanning for liabilities, and when they sense it, they put up a wall.

David:
And so Brandon and I see this all the time, people who want your help, and they recognize getting in that world will be good for them, but they approach you with a big flashing sign that says, “I am a liability.” Then they get their feelings hurt when it doesn’t work.

Troy:
Yeah, we try not to-

David:
Yeah, that’s exactly right, Brandon tries harder than me if we’re being honest about that.

Troy:
And the end of the day, what we’re talking about how we’re going to be rewarded, and if we’re ever rewarded, it won’t be our decision anyway. And so we’re just going to try to live a purposeful life, and continue to impact, so it’s just what we do.

Rashad:
You can’t be selfish to me, I think a lot of times people are selfish, when they only think about themselves, and that’s not really the best way to go about it. If you want to build a relationship with somebody, the first thing on your brain shouldn’t be, how can this person help me?

Rashad:
The first thing is how can I help this person, and then in return nine times out of 10, they’ll end up helping you, even more than you probably even expected, but I just feel that’s something that not a lot of people understand, they just go in with a very selfish standpoint, and they feel you’re obligated to help them, and that’s not really how life works.

David:
And I feel like that comes back to sports too, because we all remember being kids, and you’re like second grade, third grade, fourth grade, and you only pass the ball to your friends, why they only pass your friends? Because they’re going to pass it back, you pass it to that black hole, you never see it again, and your team doesn’t work well when you have that attitude, and then when you get into the higher levels of sports, you know I like playing with that person, he [inaudible 00:34:28], he gets me open.

David:
This person gets me the ball right when I want it, this other person wait so they’re double team and throws a panic pass, and I got to get out of position to go get it, and it’s a feeling, like you just know, “I like having that guy.” You like playing with Chris Paul, that’s the person you want on your team. So what advice can you guys give, A, the common mistakes people make allowing liabilities in their life?

David:
You probably see this over and over and over, and how we can avoid it, and then B, maybe how do you present yourself to others, as the Chris Paul, as opposed to an Allen Iverson type who nobody wants to play with?

Rashad:
Well, to answer the first question is to believe people, when they show you who they are, a lot of times, especially in relationships, we have a strong sense of denial, where we think, it’s like red flags early on, and we look past it, or we think that somebody is going to end up changing, nine times out of 10, how people first present themselves, is how they are going to be going forward.

Rashad:
So that’s something early to say, “Okay, this isn’t going to work out, because this person just wants to use me.” That the first thing, because the longer you stay in any type of situation, business, romantic, whatever, is hard to get out of it. And that’s something that’s like a cocoon, after a while you just in a web, and you can’t really break out of it.

Rashad:
So that’s something that’s extremely important, is to recognize red flags early on. And to answer the second question, in my opinion, is how you present yourself early, once again, is very important. So if I’m trying to get somebody’s attention, I think I wouldn’t approach somebody talking about myself, I feel if your resume is strong enough, somebody is going to find out about you, without you having to tell them who they are.

Rashad:
So that’s the first thing, I don’t want to just approach somebody saying, “Hey, look, I have one of the top podcasts in the world.” That’s not the best way to go about it in my opinion, I think the best way to go about it is to introduce yourself, and ask questions about the other person, people always like to talk about themselves, I’m sure you guys know from having a show, you bring people on, and they love to talk about themselves.

Rashad:
And then listening, a lot of times people don’t actually listen, because when you listen, then you’ll find out what the person needs. And so a lot of times people look like, “Okay, this is X, Y and Z person, he’s worth millions of dollars, I can’t help this person, I’m not in a position to help this person.” That’s not necessarily true. You may be able to help that person, but you just have to understand what kind of help they need.

Rashad:
So it’s like, okay, well, they’re doing an event, maybe I can be in a sponsor at their event, well, maybe I can introduce them to somebody, or maybe I can help them start up their podcast, they don’t have a podcast yet, it’s a good idea for them to start a podcast. These are all things that you just start racking your brain on how you can bring value, and how you can add value.

Rashad:
And then you’ll be surprised about how people feel about you, once you add value towards them. Like I said, now it’s not even a thing where you will either have to ask for help, you just become part of their circle, and they’re going out of their way to help you, because they feel like you’ve helped them, so it’s only the right thing to do to include you going forward.

Troy:
Yeah, man. When you said that second question, I was like, that’s it right there, how do you become… I feel like I become that [inaudible 00:37:51] in a sense. Even when we played basketball, we want to same high school team, it was like, I know he shooting, he’s probably going to score 20 points a game, somebody’s got to get his readouts. I got no problem doing that, so I will say that the first thing is check your ego at the door.

Troy:
And so that’s something that I’ve always been able to do pretty well. And it was like, “All right, well, he’s probably not the best defensive player, let me go give him help.” Every time that there’s a one on one matchup, and so even now, when he was adamant about being this financial advisor of Instagram, it was like, “All right, well, let me support him. How can I help him?” He never asked me, I’m like, “Hi, I found this article here, use that.”

Troy:
And so that evolved into Earn Your Leisure, when we started. The second point, I was saying, check your ego, but number two is know your strengths. Know your strengths, when we started it was like, all right. When I told you, I was obsessed with sports, so I became obsessed with finding information in the world of finance, because my world was education for my whole life.

Troy:
And so now it’s a new world for me, so now I’ve become obsessed with it, I’m trying to find information. I tried to write captions myself, and I was like, “Man, I’m waking up at 5:30, trying to write captions. It look like it takes [inaudible 00:38:58] 10 minutes, what am I doing?” I gave up on that really quick, because I’m like, nah, that’s his strength, he may not have the time to go find 15 articles to post, let me go do that for him, that’s going to just help us grow.

Troy:
And so checking your ego at the door, and knowing each other’s strengths is key too, and knowing your strengths. Adding that value, and knowing that that’s something I was good at, I’m like, “Okay, we can do this.” And so now you turn into the [inaudible 00:39:24], and now, you lead the [inaudible 00:39:25] in assists.

Troy:
And most people will say, “Well, I want the credit for that, I want the credit for that.” My thing was like, “I could care less for the credit, it’s not about me, and it’s not really about him, it’s about the people who are receiving the information.” That’s what this is about, right? We’ve got the information, what about the people who don’t, how can we explain it to them, so that they can understand it too.

Brandon:
And that’s all stuff you learn, when you’re actually playing the game of a sport the right way, is it doesn’t matter who scores, it matters, did our team win? And a lot of times, everyone in the world is focusing on how to score, because that’s what gets attention, and so if you’re the one person who’s learning how to pass, how to create shots, how to get people open, you end up with maybe the more valuable skill in that market, because less people are going for it, and that’s born out of the desire for the team to win.

Brandon:
And what I hear you too saying is the team wins, if other people get what’s in our heads into their heads, and they get into it. The other thing that made me think of is there’s this old fable, I think it’s was one of Aesop’s fable about this lion, that was this incredibly powerful creature that would just patrol across the jungle, and everyone lived in fear of them.

Brandon:
And then one day, he got that thorn stuck in his paw, and it didn’t matter he had all the power in the world, but that one little thing ruined his whole life, couldn’t think about anything else, but that thorn in the paw, and he comes across a mouse, which in this example is something that has nothing to offer, no power, but the mouse is the only thing that could take the thorn out of the lions paw.

Brandon:
And when he did, then they became best friends, that lion wanted that mouse around all the time. And I think many times in life, we focus on well I don’t have what this person has, I don’t have that platform, I don’t have that skill, and we miss the fact that that person can have a thorn in their business, in their life, in their relationship, that you might be the only one that can see it, and help take it out.

Brandon:
So you guys seem like you are both very humble, in spite of being successful, and it allows you to see those angles, so if nobody else has mentioned that to you guys, that’s a very, very hard thing to accomplish. Because it’s easy to be humble when you suck, but when you’re winning that’s a lot harder. I wanted to shift the course a little bit, and get into what assets you two are buying, and what stuff you’re into right now?

Rashad:
Yeah, for sure. Stocks definitely ongoing, we have a stock show actually called Market Mondays that’s devoted just towards stock, so a lot of technology stocks, ETFs, SMH, is a ETF that I talk about a lot, which is semiconductor, computer chips, ETF, something I’m very big on.

Rashad:
[inaudible 00:41:56] is a technology ETF for all the top technology companies, QQQ is another one with Microsoft, Apple, and Nevidia, PayPal, a lot of those, that’s more of a safer play as opposed to picking individual stocks.

Rashad:
So real estate something that we definitely have been focused on over the last year, [inaudible 00:42:17] the mortgage guy, we picked up a few multifamily homes in Cleveland, and Connecticut, and looking to scale that into now getting to the point, where we started to buy buildings, that’s our next phase, where we can move out of the multifamily process, and start buying 10 units, 15, 20 unit buildings.

Rashad:
So just getting more educated on that, and looking at different opportunities for that. Cryptocurrency, definitely something I’ve been invested in, we’ve both been invested in for a while since 2017. So definitely added to that position over the course of the year. So there’s a few different things.

Troy:
Yeah, we got a trucking logistics company.

Brandon:
Really?

Troy:
Yeah, our truck, our [inaudible 00:42:58] truck is pretty big, it’s like, where’s Waldo at this point, or the catch the Pokemon, every time somebody sees it on a road, they take a picture and send it to us, and so it becomes a driving billboard for us, but it also becomes another business for us, another stream of income.

Brandon:
Wait, I got to dig into this, so you bought a truck, you put your logo on it, and then what, you rented out to truck drivers, or? I’ve never heard of this concept ever, this is awesome.

Troy:
Yeah. So, we own the truck, and it picks up loads, and so depending on what the dispatcher has for us to pick up, we pick it up, we deliver it, and hopefully on the way back, we have something to pick up and drop, when the driver comes back.

Rashad:
Yeah, so we have a driver that we hire, and he drives, he drives our truck and we go from coast to coast with different, all kinds of cargo, whatever needs to be moved. And yeah, it’s branded, it has our emojis on it, [inaudible 00:43:53] University all over it, so it’s like a moving Billboard, so when people see it, they recognize it.

Brandon:
Yeah, it just makes me think, why are not no more people doing that, even if you could only break even on this business, it’s just free advertising, where I have a whole fleet of trucks, now next week, I’m going to have a truck company.

Troy:
I can hear the Bigger Pockets [crosstalk 00:44:13].

Brandon:
Yeah, exactly, The Bigger Pockets truck around the country, I love scalable business models, you don’t even need to make money technically, you could break even, and just use it for advertising, this idea just blows my mind. How did you even get the idea of buying a truck?

Troy:
We had an episode, shout out to our guy [inaudible 00:44:34], he brought down the trucking game to us. He did it in such detail though, that we were like, “Look, this is something that we can actually do.” And so he’s held our hand through the process, and that’s the beauty of getting people on the show, and creating relationships, right? Sometimes, a lot of times pretty much, the relationships are worth more than the money, because they have the knowledge.

Troy:
And so once we develop the relationship now, it’s like, “Wait, you guys have helped my business, let me help you start yours.” And so that’s what’s happening with our trucking company, man.

Brandon:
That’s awesome. We’ll put a link in the show notes on our show here as well for that episode, so people go listen to your episode. Everyone just go to BiggerPockets.com.show516, and then we’ll link to that one, because that’s awesome.

Troy:
And we just launched our vending machine company-

Brandon:
Awesome.

Troy:
Yeah, we went back to our old high school, saw that there was a need. And we were like, “Okay, this is opportunity here.” We had an episode where, Episode 63, I just wrote it down, where our brother [inaudible 00:45:29] was telling us about the vending machines, and how you can make a couple grand a month doing it, we’re like, this just sounds like passive income that we can actually attain.

Troy:
And so once there was an opportunity in our old high school that had none, we’re like, great, but the most important thing was how do we get back, right? We just don’t want to take, and so in order to pass it to the board, we’re like, “This is our idea, we’re going to give 15% of all income every month back to the senior class.” And so we wanted to help…

Troy:
Yeah, we know that the country’s in a pandemic, and everybody’s economic situation is different. And so we wanted to alleviate the cost of senior dues, and prom costs, and graduation caps, and all those type of things. We’re like, “Look, we can create our own ecosystem inside the school, the kids are going to use the vending machines, and they actually going to reap the benefits of using it, because the money’s coming back to them.”

Troy:
So they don’t have to do any more big sales or fundraisers, the ecosystem is already built. And so when people come in to travel on sports, when kids have games, and the away team comes in, and kids after practice, they’re all putting money into their own ecosystem. And so that was just a creative way, that we thought that we can pay back to our community and our school.

Brandon:
That’s amazing. Yeah. A couple things that illustrates, I just want to point out to everyone listening is there’s so many ways to make money, especially in business, investing, there’s a lot of cool things you do, but typically it takes money to make money. And there’s ways to do no money down, obviously. But in business it doesn’t take quite as much, it just takes more hustle.

Brandon:
So you listen to an episode of your show, or any podcast, but we’ll use you guys, and you’re like, “Oh, trucking, that seems cool.” And they just go out and do it, and then you figure it out. And you have problems and you ask questions and you get through it, you talk to people who have done it, and before long, you’ve got a driver, and you’ve got a truck and it’s driving around.

Brandon:
And anybody can do that, not just the host of a podcast, but every listener of the podcast. I actually met a guy recently out here in Maui, who’s an arms dealer, legit. Yeah. And I was like, “How did you become an arms dealer?” He goes, “Well, you know that movie.” I think it was Lord of War or something like that, I think you know that movie. And then I watched that movie, and this guy’s young, he’s my age, maybe younger, maybe young 30s.

Brandon:
And he’s like, I watched that movie when it came out, and I called my brother and I was like, “Dude, we should be arms dealers.” And so we just figured it out, and we just made it, and now this guy like… Anyway, the guy’s ridiculously wealthy, and a little scary. But he just heard something and was like, “I’m going to do that.” And then went after it, and then became successful at it.

Brandon:
Now, he’s bringing in ammo, or whatever, just massive amounts of ammo, which is a good business to be in right now, apparently, but anyway, I love that idea of you it all works. So you can find out vending machines. Yeah, I’m going to go and crush the vending machines, or the stock market, or real estate or Airbnb or Turo, you guys have named all these things today.

Brandon:
And I can pull an example, and you guys pull examples of people who have made millions of dollars off of these things. But what it takes is just that commitment, they got to stick with it long enough to make it work. What advice do you have on that? That’s probably one of the biggest problems people have, is they get excited about an idea, and then it’s gone.

Brandon:
Two months later, it’s no longer exciting, it’s no longer the new thing, the shiny object, and so they move on to the next idea, and years go by, and they haven’t made any impact on any of them. What’s your advice for those people?

Rashad:
Yeah, consistency is one of the biggest things that stops people, and that’s my advice for most people that ask, the two biggest takeaways that I have from our business success has been creativity, and consistency, something that people lack, especially these days creativity, nobody wants to be creative, everybody wants to just copy what everybody else is doing.

Rashad:
And consistency, nobody wants to have that level of consistency, where of course, it’s easy to post on social media every day, if you have 100,000 followers, and everybody’s liking, everybody’s commenting, but if you have 10 followers, and you get one like, and no comments, and you put a lot of time and effort into crafting a post, it’s discouraging. It’s like, “What’s the point of doing this?”

Rashad:
So, consistency, being able to do that, and once again, that goes back to sports, being able to shoot 1000 jump shots every single day, when nobody’s watching, that allows you to perform, and big moments when everybody’s watching. So consistency is something that is extremely underrated. And no matter what business you’re in, I see so many people that have talent, they have good ideas, but they’re just not consistent, and you’re never going to be rewarded if you’re not consistent.

Troy:
Yeah, I’m going to take some that I actually heard it in his financial advising class, and it was setting tangible goals, and so somebody says I want to save $10,000 a month, his first question is, have you ever saved $1,000 a month? And the answer is no.

Troy:
Well, let’s start there, because as soon as you don’t make the 10,000, I’m not doing this, but if you set something that’s very tangible, something that’s very reachable, you’re more likely to say, “Okay, well, I did 1000, let’s change the market now, let’s get it to 2000.”

Troy:
And so that’s the first thing. And then second thing I would say is failure is part of the process, but it’s the beginning of the journey, right? So it’s part of the process, but it’s the beginning of the journey. And so a lot of times people will look at our chapter, I guess we’re on chapter, how many months we in? Chapter 26.

Troy:
And they’ll say, “Well, I want to be where they’re at.” But they don’t see what happened through chapters one, through 25? And so you shouldn’t compare somebody else’s success, to where you’re starting, your journey is going to be your journey. And so be consistent like you said with that, but know that it’s not easy, it’s not easy.

Troy:
A lot of hours were put into this, a lot of sacrifices put into this, which is why the title is so perfect, right? Everything that we’ve accomplished, we’ve literally earned.

David:
I like this example, when it comes… I like it to fit in this, because for some reason people can understand it with fitness, where it’s hard for them to understand it, with finances very similar to for some reason, when we describe how something works with a house, people are confused. But when we just change it to describing a car, it clicks, and they all of a sudden understand financing of a car.

David:
When you see someone with an incredible body, and you say, “I want to look like that person.” That’s usually a lie. Because you already would look like that person, if you want to look like that person. That person gets up early, and they work out hard, and they tell themselves no about what they eat, constantly, and they actually have to prioritize their fitness.

David:
That’s one of the reasons I never could get fitness, and business to work well together, because I have to give something up in order to have that, and I’m just not willing to give those things up.

David:
So I hear a lot of people say, “I wish I looked like The Rock.” I’m like, “No, you don’t wish you looked like The Rock. If you weren’t out with The Rock one day, you would never go back again, you’d be throwing up, you don’t want that.” And you don’t want that level of consistency in your life.

David:
When he travels to movie sets, he brings his weights with him, he sets up an entire little camp to work out every single morning, he has a level of dedication to just fitness, that most people will never have to anything in their life, maybe their kids.

David:
And I really like what you guys are saying about, “Well, if you want to save $10,000, have you ever saved $1,000? Have you ever saved $100? Have you ever saved X percentage of your income? How many things have you said no to?”

David:
Because that’s what consistency is all about, it’s about saying no all the time, to anything outside of whatever you made that commitment to. Is that similar to what you see when you guys are trying to spread financial literacy to people that never learned it at home?

Troy:
Yeah, I think that you’ve nailed it David. That’s it, man. And like you said, it’s not just in the world of finance, are you committed to your relationship, what things are you able to say no to? Because saying no is very important too, and that’s something that I’ve had to learn just on a personal level, saying no is okay. It just means that I can’t allocate my time to this right now.

Troy:
So it has to be a no, and that’s something that I was struggling with. Because I’m coming from the world, you got to make everybody happy, right? I got to make my students happy, I want to make my coworkers feel like this is the best place for them to be in, and now I’m in the world of business, and especially it’s like, “You know what? I don’t have the time, I don’t.” And not feeling guilty about that. So there’s definitely a process.

David:
What would you say Rashad?

Rashad:
Yeah, I think I agree with what Troy, and small task, as Dave said is extremely, extremely important, because it’s discouraging, when you set a goal, it’s like goal setting. The reason why most people don’t reach their goals, is because they’re not setting the proper goal. So an example of that is to say okay, I want to make $100,000 for the year, that’s a common goal, right?

Rashad:
And they start off in January 1st, and it’s like 100,000, and then it’s like, all right, now let’s break that even down to where its like, “Okay, I need to make $8,000 a month.” But that’s still not really a goal, that’s just like you’re just throwing it out there in the universe, and just hoping that it comes back to you.

Rashad:
The goal is more the activity, so it’s like, all right, if you have a merch company, and you know your profits, and it’s like, “Okay, I know I need to sell 50 T shirts a week, in order to reach this goal of 100,000 year.” But that’s still not really even, because you can’t really control how much you sell.

Rashad:
The activities is really the goal, so the activity is, okay, in order to sell from tracting my previous history, I know that if I go to barber shops twice a week for two hours, if I go to a flea market, if I run ads on social media, if I do all of this for 20 hours a week, that’s going to lead to 50 sales a week.

Rashad:
So now the goal is really to activities, the same thing with losing weight, just to say you’re going to lose 20 pounds, that’s not really a goal, even say you’re going to work out every single day is not really a goal. A goal is to say, “Okay, I need to run two miles a day. I need to do our heat training.” I need to eat this, I can’t have this much carbs, so now really the goal is really to activity.

Rashad:
And as a result of the activity, then you’ll actually accomplish the goal as a byproduct. So I think people go about it the wrong way. And that’s discouraging, and that’s the reason why most people A, don’t reach their goals, and B, just give up on their goals. Because after a couple of weeks, you see it’s not working for you, then you just go back to doing what you was doing before.

David:
Yes, that’s a great point.

Troy:
We call them the new week resolutions.

David:
The new week?

Troy:
Yeah, everybody has a new year’s resolution, and after a while, it’s like, new week resolution.

Brandon:
Yeah, I’m a big believer in this idea of once a week, sit down, rewrite out your goal, what are you working toward? Remind yourself of that, it’s like going to church, but you’re going to church with yourself, you’re like, “This is what we’re doing. This is why we’re here. This is what I’m going to do this week to accomplish it. This is my week goal. And it lines up with my vision very well.”

Brandon:
“I want to lose 20 pounds.” Great. That’s your vision where you want to go to, but the real goal is, am I going to go to the gym four times this week, am I going to eat under 2500 calories every day? That’s the goal. And if I accomplish that, the results will take care of themselves, it’s really that simple. Yet, I would guess 99% of the world doesn’t operate under that concept, they just have big ideas.

Brandon:
And it’s exciting to talk about losing weight, exciting to look at that picture on the wall of that model, and say, “I’m going to look like that.” It’s not exciting to say no to ice cream, that I just sucks. But I don’t know, sometimes that’s the pain required. You guys has been amazing, we got one more section we got to get to before we get out of here. And that is our [inaudible 00:56:41].

Brandon:
The famous for the same four questions we ask every guest every week, and we’re going to throw at you guys right now. So question number one, is there a habit or trait you’re currently each working on in your own lives trying to improve, anything you’re trying to improve in your lives right now?

Troy:
Definitely, since we’re talking about working out, working out is one of the habits that I’m trying to get better at. I have consistent spurts, where I’m like, three, four weeks, and it’s like, all right, we’re traveling, we’re moving, wait, I forgot. So definitely that’s one.

Rashad:
Yeah, for me, it’s just being more organized, it’s a lot on our plate right now. So just keeping track on text messaging and email, just day to day life. So that’s something that just trying to balance and just have more of an organized system.

David:
When you hit that next level of success, like it sounds like you guys have, it feels like you just jumped from playing with the freshmen, to playing with the varsity, the game moves so much faster. By the time your brain registers an opportunity, it’s already over, right? I definitely could relate to that feeling.

David:
And then what you said, Troy, I have consistent spurts, that might be the best way of describing my workout. Because everyone says, “Be consistent.” And I’m like, “Yeah, I consistently have that sprint, and then done.”

Rashad:
I need a breather.

David:
And that’s the worst part of working out is it’s always the worst in the beginning, you’re sore, you have that delayed onset muscle soreness, you’re shaky, your ego gets beat up because you have been in there, and so if I went in right now, my warm up weight would be the max that I could probably do.

David:
And then you finally get over that hump, and then something takes you away from it, and you lose all that ground, you got to start up so.

Troy:
Yeah.

David:
All right. Next question, what are some of your favorite business books?

Rashad:
How to Win Friends and Influence People, definitely a good book to read, anybody that’s interested in business, or just life in general. Of course, Rich Dad Poor Dad, that was something that was very influential to me early on. I just I’m reading a book now called Contagious about marketing, that’s pretty good, just a few of them.

Troy:
Yeah, Money Master The game [inaudible 00:58:53] that we actually read inside of our book club. I love Who Moved My Cheese, I think it’s so simple, that everybody can learn something from it. And since we were talking about allocating time, 12 week-

David:
Can you briefly break down what the concept is in Who Moved My Cheese?

Troy:
So there’s four types of personalities is about mice, and it’s a race to get to the cheese, and there’s this four types of personalities. And based on when you read the book, you can figure out which personality you have, and the personalities that are around you.

Troy:
Somebody will have fear, and won’t see what the vision, and there’s going to be somebody who is fearless, and is willing to take risks, and those type of people are the ones who usually get to the cheese.

Troy:
And so it’s just like a mindset, but it’s such an easy read, like 87 pages, but I just took so much from it. I’m like, “Oh, this is so good.” I started recognizing my family members, and I started recognizing my friends, and I’m like, “All right, yeah, [inaudible 00:59:51].”

David:
And the concept would be, what it took to be successful used to be this and something’s changed. Right? That’s the idea.

Troy:
Yeah.

David:
Which we recently saw with the pandemic, and now with the fact that everything’s moving online.

Brandon:
Yeah, people are like, “Yeah, the pandemic happened, that’s the cheese being moved.” Things were this way, and now the cheese has been moved, and now I’m going to sit here, and I’m going to complain, or I’m going to be fearful, I’m going to go hide in the corner, or I’m going to adapt, and I’m going to shift, and yeah, I’m glad you brought that book up, we don’t talk about that book enough here, it’s a phenomenal one.

David:
Yeah, everybody needs to read it, because what my opinion at least is, and Brandon’s I believe too is the way that the government has printed money, has changed the rules of how wealth is being built.

David:
Just like the NFL changed, when they made it more offensive friendly, you can’t play the same, we’re going to run the ball, and have a good defense, and have a conservative mindset, and still come out ahead. So the cheese is moved, and you have to adapt, or you’re going to be hungry. So thank you for mentioning that. The next question, what are some of your hobbies?

Rashad:
Hobby for me, sheesh, [inaudible 01:00:57] sports obviously, I actually just started playing basketball again, for cardio, I haven’t played basketball in a long time, so I just started playing recently, a couple my friends picked that back up, and that’s good cardio. So that’s something that’s definitely pastime hobby of mine. Outside of that, I don’t know, I’m not really sure.

Troy:
Somebody asked me that the other day, I’m like, “Wait, I can’t say playing basketball anymore, I don’t do that.” I love sneakers, and so I started out just loving to get the sneakers that you couldn’t get when you grew up, where you were growing up as a kid. And so I guess I’ve accumulated a sneaker collection now, so I love sneakers.

Troy:
And something that has surprised me is that I’ve enjoyed photography, so it’s become a hobby. I love taking good pictures, I see pictures when I’m walking, I’m like, “This is going to be a good shot, we should stop here, let’s take this picture.”

Troy:
Now if you’re ever around us, you’ll see [inaudible 01:01:53] hand me his phone, he won’t even say anything, he’ll just hand me his phone, and it’s like [crosstalk 01:01:56].

David:
That’s Brandon and me all the time, I hand him the phone, and say, take a picture, because he’s so much better at it than me.

Troy:
Yeah, he’ll just hand it to me, he won’t even say anything. I’m like, “Can you unlock it at least?”

David:
Were you thinking that Brandon, when he was a story, that’s the same thing?

Brandon:
Yes, that’s you and I, that’s pretty much it. Awesome, man. Well, let’s get to the last question, for me anyway, if you were to really narrow down, what separates successful entrepreneurs from those who give up, fail, or just never get started, is there one or two things you can boil it down to?

Rashad:
I think the biggest thing is failure is not an option, that’s something that we talk about a lot. And we talk about burning the ships, and I think that for me, I never really had a real job, I was always entrepreneur my whole entire life. So I don’t really know how, it has to work or it has to work, there’s really no alternative. When you have an alternative, nine times out of 10, it’s not going to work.

Rashad:
Because you look at it like it’s optional, so I never really looked at anything that I did is optional, I just looked at it like, this is the only way, and that’s worked for me. Even now to this day, I’ll just set a date for something, 10 months in the future. And it’s like, all right, we got to do it because the date set. So I think that having that sense of urgency, and having that conviction to just win by any means, it really separates a lot of people.

Rashad:
And I think most people even if they say, they don’t really have it, they don’t really truly believe, they start something but in the back of their mind, they’re already thinking about when it doesn’t work, I’m going to end up doing this. So I think that at least for me, that’s something I never really thought about. Never thought about if it doesn’t work, what happens, just thought about, if it doesn’t work, we just got to tweak some things, and just do it a different way.

Troy:
Yeah, it’s like the Michael Jordan quote, “I can accept failure, I can’t say I’m not trying.” We’re literally willing to try anything. Like I said at the beginning, failure is just the beginning of the journey, because what’s going to happen is you’re going to learn from it, and you’re going to apply what you learn, and you got to make yourself better. And so [inaudible 01:04:15] away from that.

Troy:
Yeah, so we never look at it as like, “All right, that didn’t work, we’re never going to try it again. All right, this is a lesson that we’ve learned, we’re going to apply it, we’re going to take actionable items, we’re going to do something a little different, we’re going to tweak it. But I think he nailed it before, consistency is what’s going to separate you.

Troy:
And it’s the only thing that separates people who are successful [inaudible 01:04:34], we saw adversity, and we said, “All right, let’s run through it. Let’s run through it. We saw some setbacks, all right, let’s run through it.” We never looked like, “Well, we’re going to give up now.” We’re just like, no, the purpose is so much bigger, our mission is so much bigger, we just got to keep going, no matter what, we’re willing to do things that typical people want to be successful, and that’s what separates us.

David:
Everybody sees Kobe Bryant’s swagger, and that’s what everybody wants is they want to be able to say, I’m the best, and beat their chest, and say, “I came out on top.” But not everybody sees the three in the morning workouts, where he was out working his trainers, he couldn’t get a person to keep up with him, right?

David:
Makes me think about you go for a run with your dog, and your dog gets tired before you do, you got to go get another dog to finish the run, it’s not how most human beings work.

David:
But what you’re describing, that’s what’s happening to give somebody the right to be that good, and on top of their game, and I guess equivalent in our world to be living the life you want to live, not the life that’s been dictated to you from other things. So I love hearing that, because that’s exactly right.

David:
And in my own life, I get to remind myself that all the time, because there’s always a temptation to replace consistency with intensity. I just put a lot of effort real quick, and then I’ll be done, and it doesn’t work.

David:
All right, well, last question of the day, I think you two are intriguing pair, and you both communicate very well together. So [inaudible 01:05:57], where can people find out more about you?

Rashad:
Earn Your Leisure, across all platforms, we are on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, so every social media platform and then YouTube, and then all podcast outlets. And then our website is earnyourleisure.com So we made it real simple. We kept it the same across all platforms, and yeah, we have a podcast network, actually, but we have a bunch of other podcasts that’s under the umbrella, and our flagship show, Earn Your Leisure.

Rashad:
And then we have a bunch of stuff [inaudible 01:06:29] University, we have merch, we have a bunch of different things that we have going on, but all of that information is on our website, earnyourleisure.com

David:
Perfect. Well, thank you guys for joining us today, it’s been phenomenal, I love what you guys are doing, keep it up, and let us know if we can ever help you out in the future.

Troy:
I appreciate it, thank you for having us.

Rashad:
Thank you.

Brandon:
Thank you. All right, that was an interview with the gentleman from Earn Your Leisure, Troy and Rashad. Awesome dudes, very smart, and they’re doing just really, really good stuff over there Earn Your Leisure, their podcast is blowing up, their YouTubes just massive, and they’re just reaching just millions of people with this message of financial literacy. I love it.

David:
It just goes to show it doesn’t matter where you’re coming from, who your audience is, it’s all the same stuff, and I’m very happy to see these two hitting that next stage, and the amount of influence that they’re wielding because their message is incredible.

Brandon:
Yeah, they’re solid some. Well cool, man. Well, thanks for joining me once again, David green for another episode of The BiggerPockets Podcast, anything in particular that you’re working towards right now in life that [inaudible 01:07:28] can help you out?

David:
Oh, thank you. Yeah, I started a brokerage, and we’re getting licensed in all 50 states, so I’m looking-

Brandon:
Mortgage or real estate?

David:
It does both. So I’m looking for any loan officer, but an experienced real estate agent, we can’t take on new agents right now. So if you’re a loan officer, and you would like a better brokerage to hang your license, please contact me on Bigger Pockets, or through social media, however you want to get ahold of me.

David:
And if you’re looking for a loan, same thing, we’re looking to help people understand how to finance real estate, and really just the right way to do it. I’m seeing so many people that have stopped overthinking it, and are now having a lot of success with real estate.

David:
I think Brandon, that was the key for you with Open Door Capitals, you just quit overthinking it, and you put all your energy into one thing, like Rashad was saying today, and it made a huge impact on your success.

Brandon:
Yeah, very cool, man. Well, keep it up, and of course, David’s @davidgreen24 all over social media, I’m @beardybrandon all over social media, and that’s all I got. David gets out here.

David:
All right, this is David Green for Brandon the vision master turner, signing off.

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