Latest / Beyond Fulfillment Podcast / Why Net Worth Means Nothing: Ryan D. Lee Breaks Down The Real Meaning Behind Retirement

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Why Net Worth Means Nothing: Ryan D. Lee Breaks Down The Real Meaning Behind Retirement · Beyond Fulfillment Podcast

0:00
I'll never forget that, Dave. Because I,
0:01
quite literally, to be honest,
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I had traded the last four years of being a father,
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being a husband, being present with this idea that if I make enough,
0:08
save enough, I'll buy my life back and I'll fix it then.
0:10
And here I am facing a stark reality that I might lose everything
0:14
I really care about.
1:04
All right, Ryan D. Lee. Welcome to Beyond Fulfillment.
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I tell you what, I am beyond fulfilled to be here,
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Dave. This is awesome. Let's go.
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~
1:13
Yes,
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let's go. All right, Ryan. So you've been an entrepreneur for quite some time now,
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and you are the creator of the passive income machine.
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But you had quite a harrowing start to your entrepreneurial journey?
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And you faced some incredible difficulty early on,
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which really became the catalyst for this amazing company that you've built.
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~ so if you could just to set the stage for our listeners,
1:35
talk about your backstory and and how you became an entrepreneur.
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Yeah, I tell you what, man, I I think I've always had the entrepreneur blood inside
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of me, you know. I mean, I've got all of those kid entrepreneur stories selling
1:47
stuff on their on the streets and making money and hustling and doing
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all that stuff. But I'll never forget,
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I dropped out of high school. I didn't really love school.
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And I got my life kind of back together ~ around the age of 23.
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And it was really fascinating for me as I look back on my life and back
2:02
on my journey. You know, all of the social conditioning for me when I was like,
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I'm gonna be a responsible.
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person instead of just you know a a a crappy high school dropout.
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~ it all that social conditioning kicked in.
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And I remember I went and I got my GED
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~ and I'm like, the only reason I got a GED is so I could go
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to college because that's what productive human beings do,
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apparently. And I remember I got into college and I'm like,
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This sucks. I don't wanna be here.
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But ~ I I knew I needed a a degree and so I ran through four years
2:31
of college in two. And again, the goal was just to give me the piece of paper
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so I can get on with my life. And I remember when I graduated college,
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I I was now married, and that was the reason I went to college.
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I found my wife in college, been married now for twenty two years.
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And I remember when I got that degree
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~ I got my first professional job.
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We had to move from my home state of Utah,
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which I love Utah, I love the mountains,
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I'm an outdoors guy. We had to move to Tucson,
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Arizona. And I remember ~ I got my first paycheck,
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okay? And this was back in the day when they gave you a paycheck.
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And I I saved it. I didn't I didn't open it immediately.
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I saved the paycheck, put it in my back pocket,
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and it was gonna be kind of like this sim symbolism:
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high school dropout, turn college grad,
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professional job, moves to a new state,
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you know, all the things. And I remember I went to the Bank of America,
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I rip open the check, I pull the check out.
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And I was confused. I mean, after taxes,
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insurance, you know, moving expenses,
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I was making less money as a college grad than I was as a side hustler to
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pay my way through college. And I remember,
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you know, I had this voice in the back of my head.
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It started to whisper at me and it said,
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You should just quit now. But now here I am married,
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I've got a kid on the way, and ~
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You I'm thinking to myself, I can't do that,
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right? I can't just quit. I still had this idea that being
3:50
an entrepreneur was risky, right?
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And so I thought, okay, look, I'm gonna take all of
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my entrepreneurial tendencies and I'm gonna be an intrapreneur.
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I'm gonna create the most value,
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solve the most problems, do whatever I gotta do,
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and I'm gonna take this teeny crappy little paycheck and I'm gonna blow it up,
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right? And so I started climbing the corporate ladder.
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And you know, in the beginning,
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yeah, it was cool, it was exciting,
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you know, bigger salary, more bonuses,
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bigger geography, more territory.
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~ but every looking back, every every promotion that I took,
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it came with a a trade-off, right?
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And I started making those trade-offs without even analyzing the cost.
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More time away from my family.
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~ more stress, more nights and weekends.
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You know, I found myself living in a different state than my family
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a couple of times in my corporate career because I was just on the road so much.
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And I developed a new goal. Okay.
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As I'm climbing the corporate ladder,
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I've got a wife, I've got, two kids now.
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And I remember thinking to myself,
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I'm just gonna make a bunch of money,
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I'm gonna save a bunch of money,
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and I'm gonna retire early. I'm gonna buy my life back.
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And I thought I could do that by my 50s.
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That was kind of my goal back in the day.
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And so I just started c playing that game,
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right?
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I'll never forget in 2007, my net worth,
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I didn't know any other way to measure it back then,
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but my net worth crested $100,000.
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Now, that doesn't seem like much when we talk about it today,
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especially with today's numbers.
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But for me, it kind of felt like maybe this thing's working.
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Maybe one day I will retire early and I'll be,
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you know, made major. I can buy my life back.
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And I remember that was 2007. And then in 2008,
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everything turned upside down,
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right? And in 2008, all of the net worth that I had built,
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because now I have a 401k, I have our brokerage.
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account, I'm trading some options and trying to,
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you know, accelerate my financial plan a little bit.
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~ in 2008, everything, and I mean everything,
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fell like a rock.
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Right. And my net worth went from over 100 down to 28.
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And I remember, Dave, that was interesting for me because when that happened,
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at first I thought I did something wrong.
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And I was a little bit ashamed about it.
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But as I started opening up my eyes and looking around me,
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I realized everybody lost money.
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And the two awakenings I had in 2008 was as follows.
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Number one, I was modeling my life after people in my corporate career.
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And ~ I was losing every piece of my life that I cared about along the
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Way. And I remember I look I was looking at these people 20,
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30 years ahead of me. And these were people that were on their second,
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third, you know, fourth marriage,
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divorced, whatever. Most of them overweight weight,
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unhealthy. You know, they just weren't living the life I wanted.
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Yeah, they were making good money.
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~ but I watched their dreams of retirement melt in front of their face.
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And I thought to myself, holy crap,
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I'm doing the same thing they're doing,
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except I was expecting a different outcome.
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Then number two, what what really woke me up was ~ when I
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I
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say I almost lost my family, my my oldest son.
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he was born with a heart defect and I knew about it and I'm an optimist
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and the doctors told us that he might grow out of that.
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And ~ I remember, you know, we would take him to checkups and I
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was hyper involved in those checkups in the beginning,
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but over time I thought he's just getting better.
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And I remember shortly after two thousand eight I got a call from my wife.
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Now I lived in Indianapolis at the time and my family lived back in Texas.
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Again, geography, territories moving it just was the life I was living at that time.
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And my wife she told me, she's like,
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hey
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I'm taking Doug in for an emergency open heart surgery.
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The holes in his heart had expanded.
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He was now pumping blood out of his heart into his lungs and
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he was basically drowning. And ~
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Man, I'll never forget that, Dave.
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Because I, quite literally, to be honest,
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I had traded the last four years of being a father,
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being a husband, being present with this idea that if I make enough,
7:24
save enough, I'll buy my life back and I'll fix it then.
7:26
And here I am facing a stark reality that I might lose everything
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I really care about. And I remember I came back home and I sat in
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the hospital ~ with my son over those next couple of weeks.
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~ and number one, I was grateful that I was given a second chance to be his father.
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and number two, I committed that I had to
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Figure out the game of money. I was done trading my life,
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hoping for one day. And I'm grateful for that hospital experience for
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me because it gave me an opportunity to reset my priorities
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and really understand that money is a tool.
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And I had been lazy with that tool.
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I had been hoping that things that I didn't control could give me the life that
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I wanted. And every other area of my life I had success,
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I was winning, I was taking control in.
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but I was letting money control.
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me. And so that changed everything for me.
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And that's kind of where my entrepreneurial journey began,
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because it began with my decision to take over my money.
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Okay. Wow. So appreciate all that context.
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just to key in on a few things.
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So you clearly were ambitious,
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right? And just the fact that you didn't like school.
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So you drop out of high school,
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and then somehow you you realize,
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you need to go to college. ~ that that was your mindset.
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So you get your degree within two years.
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You get a four year degree after dropping out in two years.
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Like what what motivated you? Did you just take like like double
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the classes and just breeze
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Dude.
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through it all? Like
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It's so
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f I don't know how they let me do it,
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man. I I had ~ in my senior year,
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I took two classes at the exact same time.
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And they were both on, you know,
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Tuesdays and Thursdays at the exact same time.
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And I would just rotate which class I went to which day.
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And again, I didn't care about any of it.
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I was just trying to pass, to check the box,
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to get the degree, to say, yeah,
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I did it, right? Now, now what?
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Right.
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my objective just was I wanted to win in life.
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And I wasn't winning. You know,
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I I wish I could say I dropped out of ~ high school to be like Steve Jobs,
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right? And I was in my garage building the next evolutionary technology.
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I was being a bum, right? I was just being a bum,
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I don't like school, so be a bum,
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right? And I I decided to.
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get my life back on course at twenty three and that's it just all kicked
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in to say you go to school if you want to have a be a good citizen.
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I think you realize all the really important lessons,
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right? You're not gonna learn in in the classroom.
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It's gonna be out there doing
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Totally.
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and all this all the stuff you have to deal with,
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whether in business or whatever type of business you're in.
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so you get that degree, you get the corporate job,
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and then you had another epiphany when you open your first paycheck,
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right? And you see
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Ha ha.
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You see the taxes, the the 401k and everything else.
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And like you said, that voice starts whispering.
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And again, right, you're trying to win in life.
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You're so motivated. You're going above and beyond,
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but yet you've got this social conditioning where you're kind of like
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on this path where they steer everyone towards.
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where you had that that realization where you almost lost your son.
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Right. And in the retirement how how long were you in that corporate career before
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all that happened
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Four years. Yeah, I graduated in two thousand four.
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And I was in it for four years when all of that kinda culminated
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in two thousand eight for me.
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Okay. All right. So the the financial crash happens.
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even at that time you're making progress,
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right? And obviously the you know,
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the market was going up and you're doing all the things you're supposed to do,
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your net worth gets almost completely wiped out,
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and you have this epiphany like you need to control money and not
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let money control you.
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That's exactly right. ~ I I'll never forget,
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man, I I was sitting in the hospital
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And I felt like as I as I kind of did an analysis of what I had traded
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my previous four years for, because I was not a present father to my son.
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And I kept telling myself, I'll just be better when?
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When I have enough money. And that's such a dangerous game.
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And everyone plays, especially entrepreneurs,
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right? Entrepreneurs play that game probably worse than anyone.
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And I remember sitting there facing the possibility that I was about to lose
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the son that I was trading my life for,
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to say one day I'll buy that that that time back.
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I might not have the time to buy back anymore.
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And I remember I had the first realization that money is time.
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That's really all it is. Every dollar that you have,
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every dollar that I have, every number in our our brokerage accounts
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or wherever you're storing your capital,
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it represents time that you've traded.
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And your objective, my objective when it comes to investing is to take
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the dollars that we have and buy our time back.
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That's all it is. And that opened up my mind because in 2008,
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when everything crashed to the ground,
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I felt like I had just wasted or lost four years of my life.
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And I w I committed and vowed that would never happen again.
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And that that's a exciting commitment,
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but it's also a it's also kind of a a a scary commitment because I had
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no idea what to do about that.
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I mean
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The way we've been taught about money is to be dependents,
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right? We make money, but then we're told we're not smart enough,
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we're not capable enough. Go hire financial advisors and CPAs and let
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all of those people handle your money for you.
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And you just hope that they do a good job for you and one day you have enough money
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to buy your life back. And for the first time ever,
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sitting in that hospital room with zero financial education,
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I I made a commitment ~ to take control over my money so I could take control over
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my life.
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Okay. So you have this ~ this epiphany that moment happens,
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you make that decision. What what happens next?
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How do you start?
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Yeah, man. So this is how I've always started.
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behind me I've got a bookshelf and it's just so chuckful.
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And I've got an Audible account now because I'm I'm I listen more than
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I I physically read, unfortunately,
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today. ~ but I started looking,
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right? And I think here's the crazy part about life,
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and this doesn't just revolve around money,
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~ but our perspective, our beliefs really,
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it defines the world that we see.
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And up to that point, I believed I wasn't good with money.
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I believed that you give your money to Wall Street,
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you max fund a four hundred one K and you wait.
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I had the evidence that that wasn't working for other people and that
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was the path that I was on. So I started changing my perspective.
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And I started asking, well, how do the wealthy do it?
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And when your perspective changes,
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the world that you see changes.
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And I'll never forget ~ I read this book in the hospital,
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right? Because I was there for two weeks with my son while he
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was recovering from this surgery.
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And I read Rich Dad Poor Dad.
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And that is the gateway drug for a lot of people that get into alternative finance.
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And in that book, it confirmed these suspicions that I had that maybe everything
14:16
that I know about money isn't not just right,
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it's actually wrong. And if it's wrong,
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then the opposite might actually be true.
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And so it opened me up so much to say,
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holy crap, I'm measuring my success based on my net worth.
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Who cares? How much income do my assets deliver?
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I'm thinking that I have to work harder to get ahead.
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And yes, I I'm
14:35
I'm not afraid of hard work and I like working hard,
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but I have to work smarter. And so all of these different ideas started coming in,
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but I didn't know how to apply it.
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And so after the hospital, I'm back up in Indianapolis.
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You know, this is where I live,
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this is where I work. I'm trying to figure out how to like rectify my life now.
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And I came across another book.
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And it this book was written by Robert Allen.
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Many people don't know Robert Allen,
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but he's kind of the OG in the real estate space.
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and
15:00
He had a book and it was called Creating Wealth.
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And I came across his book and it wasn't the title of his book that that caught
15:07
my attention. It was the subtitle.
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And the subtitle of Robert Allen's book was Follow Allen's Seven Principles
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and You Could Retire in Ten Years.
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And I thought to myself, I can do anything for 10 years.
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Like literally, and that's what the heck?
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What are his seven principles?
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And I remember I picked up his book,
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and in chapter four, he got to the point of how you do it.
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And it was so simple, it was so easy that I thought,
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A, it must be a joke, or B, if it's this simple,
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I know I can do it. And his goal was just buy two single-family homes a year
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for 10 years, and in year 11, you have enough assets,
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enough cash flow, enough value to
15:44
Replace your income. And being the overachiever that I am,
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~ over the next four years, I bought 17 homes in four years.
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And ~ I'll never forget the day I walked,
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I used to sell medical devices,
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medical equipments. Over those next four years,
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I stopped traveling. I I've I moved to Denver and I took over just
16:02
the jet the Denver tier territory.
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I was not gonna go on the road,
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I was not gonna trade my life.
16:06
I excelled as much as I could in my sales career to make as much money as I could.
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I started understanding the tax game,
16:13
so I paid.
16:13
less in taxes. And then I started taking all of that money and putting
16:17
it into cash-flowing, appreciating,
16:19
leverage-based assets, single family homes.
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And four years after that, I had 17 properties.
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And I remember one day my boss my boss Rob walked in.
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And Rob, he's the type of dude,
16:28
he never shows up unless there's a problem.
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So I knew A, I'm getting fired,
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or B, you know, there's a problem.
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What is it, you know? ~ and, you know,
16:35
companies, they were still kind of tightening their belts four years after 2008.
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And I remember Rob walked in, he sat me down.
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And he proceeded to tell me that I'm getting a promotion.
16:45
And the promotion, and I knew exactly what it was because I had heard kind
16:48
of the scuttle, but ~ they had fired three other managers,
16:52
and I'm now back on the road. He wanted me to take over four more states,
16:55
you know, travel again, do all of these things.
16:57
And I remember as he was talking,
16:59
I had my I had a Charlie Brown moment.
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Remember back in Charlie Brown when the mom would talk,
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it sounded like wah, wah, wah.
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Like Rob's voice kind of faded out,
17:07
and it was just wah, wah, wah in the background because in my mind I
17:10
was adding up my cash flow over and over.
17:12
over and over and over again. And I the first property,
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I'm like, okay, that property,
17:16
you know, that could pay for my car.
17:18
Those three properties, that could pay for my mortgage.
17:20
Those four properties, that puts food on my table.
17:22
And I remember as I was adding this up,
17:24
I realized I could cover my basic living expenses.
17:27
Now, I'm not financially free in the sense that I could travel to Europe
17:29
and drive Lamborghinis and all of those things,
17:32
but my basic living expenses were covered.
17:34
And I remember after a few minutes,
17:36
Rob's like, are you ready to take this promotion?
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And I remember I looked up at him.
17:41
And I said I quit.
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And I'll never forget that, man,
17:44
because as soon as that as soon as that came out of my mouth,
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I wanted to reach out and grab that statement and like shove it back.
17:51
I didn't mean to quit that day.
17:52
But the second after I got over the shock of I just quit,
17:56
like this sense of relief and freedom overwhelmed me.
18:00
It came over me. And I was like,
18:01
my gosh, I am free. And I remember he tried to talk me back in and say
18:04
he would pay me more money, and I'm I quit,
18:06
I quit, I quit, I'm done. And I remember I had to walk out of that office
18:10
and I had to call my wife, right?
18:11
And my
18:11
My wife is home raising our son who just you know recovers from from heart surgery
18:15
and all of this. And ~ you know,
18:18
I called her up and I was like,
18:19
~ honey, I just quit. And there's this little awkward silence on the other end,
18:25
and I thought she's gonna be pissed.
18:26
And she's like, Ryan, it's about damn time.
18:31
And that started everything for me.
18:34
I walked away from that career because I was in pain.
18:37
I didn't walk away to say I want to help other people,
18:39
but I knew I didn't want to do that anymore.
18:42
And over the next couple of months,
18:44
~ I had people contacting me. In fact,
18:46
one of the doctors that used to sell medical equipment to me called me up
18:49
and he was in his fifties. He's like,
18:50
Dude, I heard you just quit. How did you do it?
18:53
And can you show me too? And
18:56
I that just started this snowball.
18:58
I started helping person after person after person take control over their money.
19:03
measure their success based on cash flow,
19:05
not net worth, optimize the tax code and get extraordinary results in a
19:09
in a short period of time. And that's now what I do today professionally.
19:12
I've been doing it now for over 14 years.
19:14
I've been working with clients for years.
19:16
We have thousands of case studies.
19:19
And it's the most fulfilling work I've ever done because I feel like
19:22
I'm helping people use money as a tool to build and live a life that matters.
19:27
Not one day, not until they're 65,
19:29
but right now. And that that's the game I play.
20:09
Okay, wow. So you have this realization you're gonna take control of your money,
20:14
not let it control you. Rich dad,
20:16
poor dad kind of gets you thinking differently.
20:18
And then you come across the Robert Allen book.
20:21
And like you said, the subtitle hooked you.
20:23
And when you got to that system,
20:25
it was so simple. You followed it and you you overachieved and
20:29
you you accelerated it
20:31
so
20:32
You bought 17 homes in four years,
20:34
which is like double, double the pace that he sets.
20:37
And then as you're in this corporate job,
20:41
~ not fulfilled, but doing it for the money and continuing to save
20:45
and acquire these homes, they try to give you a promotion,
20:49
which is really just ~ not the life you want.
20:52
And you have that epiphany moment and you quit and you're in a position where
20:56
you can quit, right? Because you have these cash-flowing assets.
21:00
And then from there, that I guess unintentionally,
21:03
you become an entrepreneur because as word gets out,
21:07
people are so impressed with what you did.
21:10
They ask you to help them do the same thing.
21:14
And that in essence starts your company where you you teach other people this system
21:18
in terms of developing cash flowing assets,
21:21
maximizing the tax code, and accelerating their ability to retire ~ just
21:27
by doing things differently.
21:28
Is that right?
21:28
Dude, that's
21:29
100% it, man. 100% it. And there's so many little heroes' journeys,
21:33
epiphanies, you know, learning,
21:35
losses, you know, all the things that entrepreneurs go through to go from that
21:39
to where I am today. But that's essentially the story,
21:41
man. And ~ I'm I'm so grateful for it.
21:44
I'm grateful for my mentors. I'm grateful for the people who wrote books,
21:47
who helped me see it. I've hired a lot of coaches over the years.
21:51
And yeah, the the objective for me today in our business is to retire in
21:56
10 years or less. Obviously, it's the same hook that.
21:58
Got me. That's that's our that's how we measure success.
22:01
We work with driven individuals,
22:03
whether you're an entrepreneur or a high-earning professional,
22:06
you have to be driven. You know,
22:07
if you're comfortable being dependents on your job,
22:10
on taxes, on markets, on inflation,
22:13
that we we're not for you. If you want to be independent,
22:17
and in many areas of your life you are independent,
22:19
but not with your money, man, we will empower you in a way where you have real life
22:24
principles applied directly to money and you build a system that.
22:28
That will generate cash flow in excess of your expenses in a passive way.
22:33
'Cause I don't I'm even though I say retire in ten years or less,
22:35
I only do that to to to get people's attention 'cause they understand that word.
22:39
I don't believe in the idea of retirement.
22:40
I believe money is a tool, and once you can cross over this threshold where you're
22:46
not making ~ the majority of your decisions based on money,
22:48
then you can step into the opportunity of true fulfillment,
22:52
which is using your unique, God given talents,
22:55
oftentimes in the service of other people.
22:58
And sometimes there's money associated associated with that,
23:00
sometimes there's not. But you're making decisions because you're
23:03
You're driven to maximize the quality of your life by using your God-given
23:08
abilities.
23:09
And that's a whole other conversation,
23:11
but let's just touch on that as well about retirement.
23:15
because actually I had I had someone on here where her whole ~
23:18
her whole business now is debunking the the myth of retirement.
23:22
And she's saying it look, it's a social construct.
23:23
Yeah. Totally.
23:25
and
23:26
right, like you see it too where s people are in such a ~ a hurry
23:30
to retire because they're not doing work that they enjoy.
23:35
that fulfills them. They're not really they don't really have a mission
23:38
and a purpose with their work that's that's bringing them true fulfillment.
23:42
So and entrepreneurs offer often are very different than that,
23:45
where they they love to work, they love what they do,
23:48
their their business or the it means a lot to them.
23:51
Your passive income covers your living expenses to not so now you
23:54
can basically work 'cause you want to,
23:56
not because you have to. I guess that that would be your business's definition
23:59
of retirement.
24:00
Absolutely. You can pick up meaningful projects.
24:02
You can take on endeavors in your business that don't immediately drive
24:05
tr profit immediately. So you can build long-term enterprise value.
24:09
I mean, there's things that I'm doing in my business right now where
24:12
I couldn't do if I was financially free.
24:14
Like I couldn't do if I had to generate a paycheck to pay pay for my life today.
24:18
And I'm doing it to drive enterprise value long term in a business that
24:23
I really care about. And so I believe money's greatest intrinsic value.
24:26
If you just think of the concept of money.
24:29
If money is something that we trade our life for,
24:32
then the first purpose of money is to buy your life back.
24:35
Once you've bought it back, what the heck?
24:37
What do you want your life to mean?
24:39
So money's greatest intrinsic value is to give you more options in your life
24:43
and more control over your time.
24:44
And once you understand that, the entire game of investing changes.
25:37
Okay. All right. So let's talk about your company,
25:40
which is the the passive income machine,
25:42
right? So this started because people were reaching out to you and saying,
25:46
Can you help me do the same thing you did?
25:49
So how like talk about the process of actually turning that actually into
25:54
a real tangible company that's helped so many people over these last fourteen years.
25:59
Yeah, man, you know, this is my favorite part about this.
26:02
we we build everything we do, we build inside of a customized individual game plan
26:06
to where we sit down with you,
26:08
we understand, we've for the first time defined what financial freedom means,
26:12
how much income you actually need to generate to create the life that
26:15
you have today and the life that you ultimately want.
26:18
We get clear on the assets that you have today,
26:20
your income, your savings, your tax liability,
26:22
where your money's going, and then we show you two worlds.
26:25
It's really that simple, right?
26:27
If you stay on the Wall Street path,
26:28
if you
26:29
You stay on the what I call the dependency path,
26:31
where you, as a business owner,
26:32
you control your income to a certain extent by the business and the amount
26:36
of money that you make, but then you hand your money over to everyone else
26:40
and hope that one day they can free you from your business.
26:42
Not maybe necessarily because you want it,
26:44
but you absolutely need it. You're a better business owner when you're free versus
26:48
trapped by your business. So in the dependency economy,
26:51
you just kind of cross your fingers and hope that all the things out
26:53
of your control work somehow in your favor.
26:55
And almost anyone that operates in that in that
26:59
Realm where you know they're storing money in Bitcoin or you know they've
27:03
got money in the market or they've got a bunch of different assets but no real plan,
27:07
they feel dependent and they they kind of shrink back into their business because
27:11
it's the only thing that they have some semblance of control over.
27:15
So my goal, my goal is really specific.
27:18
It's ownership. There is such a thing called the ownership economy.
27:21
And we take ownership over our money,
27:23
we take ownership over our investments,
27:26
and we take ownership over our results.
27:28
And in the ownership economy, the real the real caveat,
27:31
the real change that we make is I don't care what your net worth is,
27:35
and you shouldn't either. It's just a public opinion.
27:37
What I care about and what you should care about is how much income
27:41
do your assets deliver month over month,
27:44
year over year. How effective is that income ~ with inflation?
27:48
Does it rise with inflation? What's your tax rate on that income?
27:51
Is it taxable, tax deferred, or tax-free?
27:54
And how much control or predictability do you have over it?
27:57
Once we can play a game around that,
27:59
the range of opportunities, the range of investments,
28:02
it narrows down to such a small spectrum that it becomes so easy to build
28:06
a system to make money, to keep it,
28:08
to turn it into cash flow and repeat the process.
28:52
And Ryan, like just looking back on this whole journey,
28:55
right? Where, you know, you've got these entrepreneurial tendencies early on.
28:59
You go off course. You you dropped out of school,
29:01
then you came back and you graduate college in two years.
29:05
You went through all that corporate drama and ~ lost almost everything
29:10
in the financial crash, scares with your family,
29:13
and then you get on this path with the alternate investments.
29:17
You retire early, you build a company unintentionally that's helped
29:21
so many people and now you're just ultra fulfilled doing work that you love
29:25
and and impacting so many lives.
29:27
Like looking back at the whole journey,
29:28
what's been the best part of it for you?
29:31
~ that's such a good question.
29:34
my gosh, that's such a good question.
29:37
You know, I think the best part about it,
29:39
I'll never forget I'll never forget the very first person I worked with,
29:43
his name is Dr. Wes Brown. And ~ when I sat down with Dr.
29:46
Wes Brown, ~ I asked him the things that probably no financial advisor asks you.
29:52
Right. And it was it was the things that,
29:54
you know, I was coming off of an emotional experience with my family,
29:57
and so I had a very warped view around money.
30:01
And so I asked him two questions.
30:02
because he he he came and he sat down with me at my kitchen table and ~
30:06
he thought I was gonna give him the secret investment or the secret formula
30:09
or the best rate of return. And all of those things are important,
30:13
but they're not nearly as important as this.
30:15
And I asked him this first question.
30:18
I said, Wes, what do you want?
30:21
And ~ you think that's an easy question to a answer,
30:24
and you might have a very surface level answer.
30:27
But until you really know what you want,
30:30
like I want more control, I want to work less hours,
30:33
I want to be less stressed. Well,
30:34
why do you want that? Why, why,
30:36
why? Until you get down to the core of what you want.
30:39
Once you know what you want mentally,
30:42
and you have a very clear mental image of that thing,
30:45
and then you know the second answer to the second question,
30:48
well, why do you want that? Because we're marketed to from
30:51
the world to want a lot of things that don't necessarily provide fulfillment,
30:54
the very essence of your show.
30:56
It's it's a way to satiate you and feel like you're enjoying the journey
31:00
of being trapped by money and time.
31:02
~ But when you really get clear on what you want and why you want it,
31:06
the heart and the mind are connected.
31:07
Now you understand what money is for.
31:10
And most people never talk about that.
31:12
It's this idea of an elusive one day when I have enough money,
31:16
I'll figure my life out. This is what society hands us.
31:18
And most people get to the end of their life,
31:21
and I guarantee you they regret working the extra hours,
31:24
not spending the time with their kids.
31:25
They regret all of the things that they traded for more or less money.
31:29
And it's the thing that they can never get back.
31:31
And so our objective inside of our community is I believe financial freedom,
31:35
it's not a destination like one day or an age.
31:38
It's a lifestyle. And when you understand that,
31:40
money's greatest ability is to A,
31:43
buy you more time and options,
31:44
and then align your money with your unique core values,
31:48
with your unique goals and desires,
31:51
with your unique ambitions. And that now gives money purpose.
31:55
And so for me, the greatest high for me over these years has been watching
32:00
the people that I've been able to work with transcend the quality of their life
32:05
out of what they were handed by society.
32:07
And build the life that they want to live.
32:08
I've seen many of them write books,
32:09
I've seen many of them quit jobs,
32:11
I've seen many of them sell their businesses,
32:12
I've seen many of them go on missions,
32:14
I've seen so much transformation in people.
32:17
Not because we gave them better investments,
32:20
even though we did, but because we helped them get clear on what those investments
32:24
are really for. They're meant to help you build and live a life that matters.
32:28
can find you online?
32:29
Well, Dave, I appreciate you, my man.
32:31
I'll kind of bring this whole story full circle.
32:33
~ about three years ago, ~ I I invited my two mentors to an event.
32:38
Now I had never met these two individuals,
32:40
but we had now built a community,
32:42
we had all these people, all these results.
32:44
And this was during COVID, and I was a little bit scared to do it,
32:47
but I reached out and I found a way to get a hold of Robert Kiyosaki,
32:50
and I reached out and I found a way to get a hold of Robert Allen.
32:53
And I invited both of these two people to one of my events,
32:56
and I stood them up on stage and I gave
32:58
Both of them a lifetime achievement award.
33:00
And it was really just meant to acknowledge them for the work that they had done,
33:05
~ the impact it had made on my life,
33:07
and through them, the impact I was able to make on so many other people's lives.
33:12
And I remember ~ they both stood on stage and ~ Robert Allen specifically
33:17
was weeping. He was weeping, and he took the microphone and he said,
33:22
You know what? I've written several books,
33:24
New York Times bestseller over and over and over again.
33:26
But it's
33:27
It's a very isolated place. I sit behind a computer screen and I type words,
33:31
and I have no idea who's receiving them.
33:33
I have no idea what impact these words are making.
33:35
And to stand here and to see all of you people in the audience,
33:39
~ it is so fulfilling for me to see this,
33:41
and I'm so grateful for the opportunity to stand in front of you.
33:44
And it was so awesome. And then after that,
33:47
we we struck up a friendship. And these both of these men are at the tail
33:51
end of their lives right now. They're both in their 80s.
33:53
And anyway, a couple of years ago,
33:55
we decided to write a book together to codify.
33:57
Everything that I had built inside of this system,
34:00
you know, learning primarily some of the principles that they taught me,
34:03
and I added a lot of elements to this system after having worked with
34:05
so many people. And we released the book last year.
34:08
It's called Retire in Ten Years or Less.
34:10
And that's the best way to find out everything we do.
34:13
We give away a free audio copy,
34:15
we give away a free ~ digital course with Kiasaki and Robert Allen in it.
34:19
~ so go to Retire in 10, the number 10,
34:22
retirein10years.com.
34:25
And that's the best way to get a hold of me.
34:56
If you want to take any control over your money,
34:57
that's the game.
34:59
Okay. And we'll link that in the show notes for everyone.
35:01
well, Ryan, thank you so much for taking the time to be here and sharing
35:04
all this incredible wisdom from your journey with our listeners.
35:07
We greatly appreciate it.
35:09
Dave, it's an honor.