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Financial Freedom Formula with Joey Mure · Brick by Brick - Wealth Building Conversations

• Loren Wernette: Welcome to another episode of Brick by Brick. Today, I'm joined with Joey Muray. He is the co-founder of Well Without Wall Street and co-host of Well Without Wall Street podcast. After beginning his career as traditional finance service world, Joey realized that the conventional retirement path was not compelling roadmap for entrepreneurs. Today, he teaches business owners, real estate investors and high income earners how to systematically convert active income into passive income. through alternative strategies. Joey, thanks for joining us today. Joey Mure: man, glad to be in the room with you. Loren Wernette: Yeah, so we've had conversations before this and I think a lot of our kind of philosophies around passive income and cash flow kind of really line up. And so I'm really excited about this conversation. before we get too far, can you give us just a little bit of backstory of like, okay, you're in the financial sector as a wealth advisor, and then you have this epiphany or this decision that ⁓ you're doing isn't lining up with the people you want to serve, which are entrepreneurs, know, high income earners. Joey Mure: I actually correct you on one thing. I was not an advisor. I was in the mortgage business I was just like everybody else that's in this high income earning phase. if you haven't already woken up to this, you will that a high active income doesn't produce freedom. You know, here I was in my late twenties, making over $300,000 a year. My wife was home with our children. have five daughters and I found myself, this is the wake up call for me. We're at the beach I'm telling my daughters and my wife, Hey, you guys go down to the beach. I'll be down there. have one more phone call to me. And you know where I'm going with this, Lauren, because you're, know, exactly the situation four or five hours later, I'm walking down the boardwalk behind the condo and there they are walking back the opposite way. They're already done for the day and there's dad ⁓ they're just frustrated. Like dad, you're here. You're physically in the same location, but you are like mentally miles away. And I didn't know the answer at that time, but I knew that I wasn't okay with that feeling that man, I'm not present for my family. I'm not here because I'm the only asset at work for my family. And I had to get my money to work is what I learned is I had to start taking that active income and making it into passive income. And it was a long journey to get there, but fast forward from that moment until into 2014, I started teaching people some basic things I was learning. And by 2020, we started reporting our passive income to the world. And it wasn't very much. It was like $2,500 a month between me and my business partner. And then within about 20 months thereafter, we were at 50,000 a month in passive income reporting from all different income streams. So it's very possible to do and I had to learn it the hard way so that you can learn it in a short time and we can kind of compress that time. Loren Wernette: Yeah. Yeah, I love that. And the story about the beach kind of really hits home because I don't know anybody that's become successful that hasn't at one point thought like, I'm doing this for them, right? They should be happy. Like I'm killing myself for my family. And some of that may be true. And some of that may be not. But you also have to think, are we working smarter? Am I working harder? Right. And I think I think that the realization you had probably came a lot earlier than it comes for a lot of us. Joey Mure: Right. Loren Wernette: and that we shouldn't be trying to kill ourselves and giving up that precious family time, but figuring out other ways to enrich our families, both and in other ways, without working 100 hours a week. Joey Mure: Well, I if you if you're really honest with yourself Lauren What you're after is not just this big number on a page that comes into your bank account. You're after options like we're really being honest, you don't want to be beholden to somebody a business or someone that you work for that requires ⁓ to be somewhere you don't want to be when you don't want to be there right and if you have passive income that exceeds your monthly expenses. That's how we define financial freedom. And it's not our idea. This is a common idea. Then you have options. You know, you can continue to be the high level surgeon and love what you do, or you can continue to be that attorney or that, you know, tax provider, whoever you are. But now you don't have to be there. Like there's a big difference in that, like from a mental capacity and from just day to day, like if you don't have to be there, it's a game changer. Loren Wernette: Yeah, I love that. And I think it hits on, you know, people's idea of retirement, right? And that there's an age that 65 or 70 or whatever, I'm going to retire. And then the question is, what does that look like? And people always ask me like, ⁓ when are you going to retire? I'm like, define retirement, right? I mean, my idea of retirement is that I do what I want, when I want. And sometimes that's going to be work because I like to work, but I don't have to do anything. Right. Joey Mure: Right. Yeah. And now you're hitting the nail on the head, Lauren. I'm going to say philosophically, what I have learned both as a Christian, but also as a business owner that retirement is really a lie. And me tell you what I mean by that. Retirement tells you that you need to defer life and you need to defer freedom until you're in your sixties or seventies, because then you can be quote unquote, taken out of service. But I know that there are certain things that God has gifted me with that I need to get out to this world. And we only have a short amount of time here to do it. So why would I ever want to be taken out of service? I wouldn't. In fact, retirement is actually a word that is built out of the industrial revolution where they thought so scarcely that they were like, you know what, we need to take people. out of service because we have to make room for other people to get into work. Like it was this scarce idea. Well, we live in a time, Lauren, I think is one of the most exciting times in history where there is an abundance ⁓ opportunity and technology is getting to a point where it's going to get easier and easier for people to start businesses and provide services to the world. And there's never going to be a time that you're supposed to stop that. So, but what it is really cool is when you don't have to do it, you have options, you can take off for three or four weeks and go and spend time with the people you love the most, but you always have something of value to give to the world that really important. So I don't know, I'm anti-retirement from the traditional way of thinking for reasons. Loren Wernette: Yeah, I mean, the thought of golfing and frozen yogurt and walking them all, ⁓ just ⁓ like hell on earth to me. Joey Mure: 100%. Loren Wernette: So let's maybe take a step back. So you kind of brushed on your formula for financial freedom. And when I saw this earlier when I was reviewing materials for this, thought it's so perfect, like the formula. Can you tell us what the formula is for financial freedom? You said it once, but kind of really explicitly call it out. And then let's talk through just a few brief steps of you're making a good amount of money. How should we be thinking about allocating our resources to get to that number, to hit that formula? Joey Mure: Yeah. Well, you hit the nail on the head there that the outcome that we've been talking about is that you get to be where you want with whom you want when you want to be there. And that really takes me. If I think about those things, I think about my calendar app on my phone. ⁓ now, this is a great just analysis that you can do if you pull up that color coded calendar on your phone. and you look at those boxes, the real question is how many of those boxes did you get to dictate where they went? And if you're not the one that's in control of those, like 70 to 80 % of them is what most people do not have control over, then what our outcome is. We want to be the one to take that over. The only way I know that that becomes possible is when your passive income, That means money that you do not go to work actively today to create exceeding your monthly expenses. That means all of your lifestyle. That means all of your utilities, all of your debt payments, all of those things ⁓ part of your monthly expenses. And so I would say, number one, if you get really excited about the, ⁓ the vision of that, then you can start taking steps. And you, you made a good point like, Hey, I'm a high income earner. I want to start making steps towards this. The first thing I would tell you you got to know those numbers, right? How close am I to financial freedom today? And traditional financial system wants to confuse you. They want to tell you, Hey, Lauren, you know what? Retirement is the answer and you need to start stacking up cash in your retirement accounts. And there's this really ambiguous number that may based on a bunch of variables that you don't control. You can potentially get there when you're getting to your sixties and seventies and they've built models and they've tried to make you, know, confuse you to death. What I'm saying is so simple. So Lauren, right now you're listening to this. You do the math. You have a thousand bucks coming in from two rental properties some royalties. don't know. Whatever your source of passive income is that you don't go to work for. You got a thousand bucks a month. And now you're, you look at it and you've done the math. Your expenses are 10,000 a month. You divide those two things into each other and now you have a 10 % of the way to financial freedom is where you're at. So just like a GPS, I know where I'm starting from right now. I'm 10 % of the way to my goal. So now I can activate that part of my brain that says, huh, how do I get the other 90 %? And I got to start rearranging what I do with money to get me to that last little 90%. Right. And so that would be step one, know your numbers know where you're starting from. How far am I right now? Step two ⁓ you start redirecting your cash into the right locations. And I can dive into like as many of those as you want. don't want to like totally are we walk people through this very process individually, but You know, I can, again, I can go as deep as you want on this, but you have to start doing things differently with money because your mindset has changed. You're no longer thinking I'm going to accumulate towards this retirement number. I'm going to start solving for passive income today. And that means what I do with money has to support that new goal. And I don't think people really stop and think about that because they've always done the same thing with money. And now they can't expect a different outcome if they don't change. essentially the input. Loren Wernette: Yeah. So two things. First, think part of that probably is your relationship to money. And as you get more of it, how your spending habits change, right? Because lifestyle creep is a real thing. But additionally, I want to touch on like, what are the places that you should be looking if you got that cash? Because you used even in your example, rental properties. And I think a lot of people go, you I'm going to get rental properties to get passive income. Joey Mure: Yeah. Loren Wernette: can tell you from personal experience, rental properties, if you're doing any kind of management of them, is not passive. And cashflow from rental properties is a lie. But, you know, each strategy is not going to be the right strategy for each individual person. And so I know you guys talk about like your investor identity and investment identity. And so like, what are some of the investment identities that you have? Joey Mure: Right. Right. Loren Wernette: identified that people, buckets that people fall into and what are some characteristics of each of those so that people can kind of place themselves into it as they're thinking, is this a good strategy or not for me? Joey Mure: Yeah, well first and foremost, I want to dive into each one of those here just a second, but let me just clarify this one thing before you get to this stage. You have to start doing things differently with your cash and what I mean by that is most people have done a ⁓ good job of doing certain things with their money that they were told to do early on in light of retirement, but what they've effectively done is they've locked up money. from their own access, meaning 401ks, IRAs, 529 plans, you name it, all the alphabet soup that our government and Wall Street has tried to dupe you into, you now have no access to capital. You may have done a good job of putting money away, but you don't have access. So now when I start talking about these investments, you're gonna be like, yes, I wanna take advantage of that. And you're gonna look up and you're gonna be like, well crap. All that money, I I made is just somebody else's account right now. So you have to start thinking differently, putting money into your control, into your access. And we have trainings on this. I'm happy to share in later on how they can get access to free training on where to put that money and how to operate it. But I to be clear on that because if you don't start with this, you, you jump straight to the investment. you miss some very key points of like preparation and optimization. Okay. So that was just one point I want to make, but Loren Wernette: So is that sorry is that using ⁓ and Roth IRAs to ⁓ investment vehicles from tax purposes like we're totally stepping outside of that Joey Mure: 100 % away from those things and the reason like we we identify those things as money traps Lauren and let me tell you the reason why a money trap is anything that when you put money in it does not produce a passive income today or reduce a monthly expense today and And let me just be clear on that That's our framework Right? So everything should be in light of that. And that's why we use that as our gauge. It's not just like, Joey's trying to, you know, convince you of something. This is your own goal. And so that has to be the new scoreboard. Right? So every time somebody puts money in their 401k at their company, what does it produce a passive income for them today? No. Right. Does it reduce the monthly expense today? No. So what is it effectively done? It's actually keeping you further from financial freedom. Then if those dollars were in your control and in your access, now all of a sudden you could invest in one of the things we're going to talk about and produce a passive income today, or you could go and pay off a debt that would reduce a monthly expense. now your, your percentage of the way there got better because you just played some defense and paid off a debt, if that makes sense. So. those other vehicles no longer meet the requirements. Loren Wernette: does, but how do you respond to like for myself, ⁓ said it between state and federal at like 39 % taxed on my ⁓ income, right? And so by putting a dollar ⁓ IRA, if I have extra, it's saving me a significant amount of money, which then is going to compound over time and that dollar is going to become much more valuable in say five years. And so is it that you have to fully forego that? and just focus on my focus now is on passive income today versus long-term wealth generation through these tax advantage vehicles. Joey Mure: Well, let me ask you a couple of follow-up questions. Is your dollar worth more today than it is in the future? Loren Wernette: It's worth more today than it is in the future, yes. For sure. Joey Mure: Inflation for sure and then and then secondly when we're talking about tax Benefits, we're actually not actually saving taxes We're actually deferring taxes Correct. And so here's the question that you should ask anybody that tells you man You're saving taxes because your accountants probably telling you that this is a good idea and other advisors Here's the question. I would ask them you did the math Loren Wernette: Correct. Joey Mure: on what my taxes will be when I start taking this money out. was the tax rate you used? And they'll say, we don't know, we don't have the tax rate because it hasn't been presented yet. It will be presented in the year that you start taking those distributions from those accounts. So then I would, this is the, how I think about it. When I was in the mortgage business, Lauren, you and I would be sitting across from each other at the closing table and I'd pass you the documents and you start signing, you know, it's like a crazy signing process, but you get to the note and it says, You know, you're going to pay X amount of money over 30 years and it's at interest rate. The there on the document says to be determined. What's the likelihood that you're going to actually sign that mortgage? Loren Wernette: Me today, not very likely. Me 10 years ago. Maybe I would have signed. Joey Mure: Well, but mean, anybody that has the variable of what the actual percentage rate would be, they would be like, I actually need to know that in order to qualify if this makes sense for me. Well, what we've been... Loren Wernette: Right. Yeah. I mean, idea of an IRA, right, is that you're hedging that I'm going to make less money when I'm retired than I am today, right? That's the whole point, reason around a 401k or an IRA. I believed that until I became an entrepreneur. And then I was like, shit, I'm probably going to make more money when I retire. But now I've got myself in a spot where I've got all this IRA money and I can't convert it to a Roth. because I make too much money and I have to pay the taxes now. ⁓ not arguing ⁓ you so much about that. I'm just, there is definitely ⁓ to be said about not paying the taxes now, ⁓ ⁓ you're... Joey Mure: Exactly. Well, and what I would what I would tell you in that case is that's where you need a tax strategist who can help you like actually reduce and mitigate the taxes, not just defer it because deferral is a time bomb. to your point, if you're banking on making less money later on, first of all, use the word retirement. That's a that's a no, no word, right? We're not going to retire. You're going to just get like more and more successful, the older you get, the more you're doing deals and everything else. Like, so this doesn't become a fit for me anymore. If I'm on this journey of financial freedom, I'm not going to retire. I'm not going to defer taxes because those things do not actually benefit me. again, nobody else can make that decision for you. They can't even make it make sense because the IRS will literally tell you in that year. Loren Wernette: Yeah. Joey Mure: What the tax rate is on that account. And here's another thing this, you didn't ask for this, but I'll give it to you anyway. Everybody thinks they have all the security in the fact, ⁓ it's a Roth IRA. That means I won't have to pay tax on it. Guess what? It's a government created account and the government has been literally documented in making conversation around the idea of what limits and what, how they could change those levers at any time. to begin taxing those accounts. So the wrapper that we think is security is really an illusion. we have to start putting money in places that give us full autonomy, full access, and actually benefit us in many, other ways, which we could dive into those things. But I just want to make sure people are thinking about it from the standpoint of what's going to get me to my end goal with the least amount of variables. Loren Wernette: Yep, makes sense. I think, you know, as an entrepreneur, if you're really leveraging IRAs and those things, you're probably betting against yourself, betting against your future self, which is just something to kind of consider you're thinking about it. So ⁓ shift a little bit. Talk to me. ⁓ so we're going to set taxes off to the side, right? This is not supposed to be a tax conversation, but I found that the more people get successful, the more they spend talking about taxes. So Let's talk about investment style, right? Investment identification, right? And so when I started out in real estate, I thought I was gonna be hold rental properties and I was gonna have a hundred plus units and blah, blah. Hated that life, change shifted, moved into doing loans, love that a lot more. My life will change more in 10 years. I have no idea what that'll look like, right? But tell me about the different identities you guys kind of talk through and what some of the characteristics of each one are. Joey Mure: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'll tell you the, again, most people say, man, what should I invest in? And I always kind of come back to them, Lauren, and I say, well, first of all, it depends what kind of investor are you? And people are kind of like, what? What are you talking about? And so we have the investor DNA profile is based off of the disc personality profile. If you've heard of that, the D I S C and I'll just tell you, everybody falls into one of these categories. There's some overlap, but in the case, one of these is kind of like your, your bigger draw. D is going to be a driver. This is a high, intense person. They want to be kind of a of the ship. They want, have great leadership potential and they to be involved. So ⁓ I'll give that as like the first kind of person. The I is the influencer type. This is somebody who, again, is very much wants to be involved. They want to actually be kind of the center of attention a little bit. They're very good at hospitality and they're very driven by people. But they also get bored easily and they kind of lose, they want to kind of keep moving, right? And ⁓ personality is more like the steady personality. This is somebody who's loyal. They like boring. They like things to be kind of just set it and forget it. they don't really have to be involved in everyday things, right? The C personality ⁓ somebody who's very calculated. And is somebody who is going to do due diligence. They want to get into the nitty gritty, the weeds. A lot of times they do want to have their hands on something. But in some cases they can just be hands off because as long as they understand the numbers, they understand the business plan, they tend to go towards syndications and like turnkey rentals and things like that. So those are the four kind of primary types. And then I'll give you the example. So Lauren, would of those four would you be? Loren Wernette: I'm a high I, high D. ⁓ Joey Mure: Okay. I was going to say when you start talking about doing long-term rentals and you're an I or a D, you're ready to take a nap because you're like, this is just not that interesting. Like it was interesting at first cause it was like the first thing you did and you're like, ⁓ man, I could buy this. And maybe how you obtain the rental was super interesting, you know, creative finance or, know, getting in there and negotiating the deal. That part is fun for an I or a D. But whenever you start saying, hey man, I make 300 bucks a month on this deal, whether I like it or not, and I can't really change the outcome because the renter pays an amount, I have amount of debt service and this is what's left over. You're ready to just be like, this is boring, right? Which is no question why you said, hey, there's gotta be something else and you started and you found it. but you take the same person, the same investment type. long-term rentals and you apply it to an S or a C and they're like, actually, I'm really like this a lot. I know I can do like a C for instance, they're going to do the math. They do the due diligence. They know they can get a management company to do the actual day to day type stuff. And they're like, man, I can bank on this $300 a month. I'm really good with it. And so it's so interesting to me. You get into one of those two categories and you're either all in and you want to do more of it if you're a C or if you're an I or D, you're like, eh, I don't want to do it anymore. In fact, my business partner is a high. His first deal was supposed to be a big flip project. It turned into a longterm rental and he was like, man, this stinks. I am so bored. He didn't want to invest in anything else because he was like, well, this This, if this is all it is, I'm, I'm out. Like this is no fun. but he is great at short-term rentals. He loves the, hospitality side of things. He loves the fact that you can make seasonal income that is dramatically higher than some seasons and then in others and the volatility and the, you know, the variables. So, you we can dive into more investments that go along with it, but just so you understand that's. That's what I'm getting at is your personality really will help you be more or less successful in your investing career. Loren Wernette: when you find the investment strategy that fits your personality, ⁓ you're going to be able to, would you say that you keep with that and grow it much faster? Joey Mure: Absolutely. I think it know, think about when you're aligned with something and when you're not You're to find every way out of it if you're not but if you're in it You start living and breathing and seeing it everywhere, right? And you start it's kind of like the What's that part of your brain that like you go to buy a new car and you start seeing it everywhere? When you're really hitting it out of park in one of these investment ⁓ types, you're consuming like content around it, you're following certain things. For instance, let's say somebody said, man, I really love the consistency ⁓ a debt fund and ASRA C loves it because they don't have to think about it. They know the operator is doing their job. They're getting consistent paychecks every single month or quarter, however often it is. And don't, they're not worried about the fact that it's not like hitting home runs all the time. This is just, want consistency. They want steady income. They want to look at that passive income greater than monthly expenses and see that they're making progress every single time that they invest without having to take a back, you know, take a step down. when doing that, you're really dialed in, you're focused on it. And one of the last steps in our process that we're helping people is they've, learned Now they've built and now the last step is stack. You do it one good time, two times, you start seeing those results. You can stack now to get your passive income to exceed your monthly expenses in that one vertical potentially. And that's what I'm saying. If it lines up with you, you're going to do it much faster. Loren Wernette: How do you keep high eyes like myself focused on one thing? Joey Mure: I'll let you know when I figure that out. ⁓ I told you my business partner and I have a passive income report we do every single month. We've as many as 21 or 22 income streams because of my business partner ⁓ being like, we should try this. Let's try that. And part of it is, you know, we interview a lot of people with their own individual passive income streams and we get interested. And then we're like, Loren Wernette: Hahaha Joey Mure: Well, we want to report back to the world and tell people how this actually worked out because it's one thing for people that sell a product or a service to talk about how great it is. But for us to be objective and be like, Hey, we did this and we got this success, or we did this and we lost a ton of money. You know, kind of do that for ⁓ purposes, but he, he loves to change. loves to look at new things and find new ways. But we are starting to learn to go deeper in a few of the key places that we've invested that have been the best for us. Loren Wernette: a muscle you have to have to work on. mean, I started out a lot of people know my story that had a bunch of rentals and then I started a flipping company and then I had a wholesale company and then I started a lending company and they all just were kind of meh until I just threw three of them away and just put all my focus into the lending company and then that exploded, right? ⁓ And so it just just comes down to discipline and knowing yourself and I still catch myself like bring it Joey Mure: Yeah. Loren Wernette: Bring it back, you know. Joey Mure: Absolutely. Loren Wernette: So, and I'm sure the other types have their own struggles as well. So can you just humor me here for ⁓ drivers, the influencers, the controllers in the study? Give me ⁓ or two, like if you're a driver, like look at this sector. And if you're an influencer, look at this sector of kind of passive income type investment ⁓ Joey Mure: Yeah. So I'll say if you're a driver, of the things that you're going to want to do is be somewhat, even if it's just an advisory role in something, you like business ownership. You like to be in some way, or form able to influence the outcome. And so one of the things that I've found that some of our high D people like to get into is they'll get into stuff like ⁓ a land flipping business. where they are actually operating it and they could eventually hire teammates to run certain aspects of the business. That's kind of a really good fit. Another thing would be they like to be in a negotiator position. So a lot of times they'll be involved in doing deals, either creative finance, real estate. Um, sometimes short-term rentals and things like that to find really good opportunities off market, especially. Um, I think a high I, I've mentioned short-term rentals is really good for them because they like to, to know that they could put in an amenity at a location and all of a sudden they get more bookings. Uh, or they get, they can focus on getting the reviews that help them get more bookings. Like there are things that they can kind of see. as a business, it's really running a business, but being able to see ways that they can pull this lever or that lever to, get that kind of outcome. And S I would say S's that's, that's like my type actually. Lending is really good. And that might because my background was in mortgage, but I just see deals when you have the collateral that gives you security. that gives you the ability to see that man, it's consistent income. And if they don't pay, there's always something to fall back on. so private lending is good. I'd say like, ⁓ different types of just real estate ownership that you don't have to be involved in, whether it's a midterm rental, short-term rental, long-term rental, but you've got a really good operating partner. those are really good. And then like from a, AC personality this is like that that really calculated person Well, I find that they do quite a bit either in that in that same land flipping type of space Where they buy raw land and flip it for owner held notes? I've also seen a lot of them are to things like turnkey rentals where they can buy a rental property. It's already been renovated. It's already been rented And they're just taken over and just buying it an existing operator. Those things are really good. there's some unique things that we do, Amazon businesses and e-commerce. I think a lot of the C personalities really like those too, because they don't have to sell. Like Amazon does the selling for them. And I think C personalities are less likely to want to get into a sales position or process. ⁓ So that's another one that we've seen people do. Loren Wernette: I think most of what you mentioned was kind of real estate focused and then the Amazon business at the end is a lot of what you and your clients work on is real estate focused. And ⁓ not, then what are some non real estate things that you see as really good opportunities for generating passive? Joey Mure: Yeah. A couple of things. Like I said, any sort of business ownership that you can walk into that potentially has the ability to be passive, like maybe a partner behind the scenes a lending partner or something like that. That's one option. Like instance, started a business where I have a full-time operator that he recycles pallets. He goes and picks them up. free a lot of times from some businesses that want to get rid of them and he goes and sells them to businesses that need them at a discount Because they're you know, slightly used well doesn't take a lot of upfront capital do as long as you have a good operating partner You can make a fairly good ⁓ Return on that. That's one option Turo is another one that we've seen so people have success with now I'm not saying and when I say to her most people know that that's a rental platform for cars, but some people have a car that they could just put on the platform themselves immediately. And then others like myself, I've bought cars like Facebook marketplace for seven to $10,000 that are used, they have still lots of miles on them or that they can ⁓ on them. And I've put them with an operating partner here locally. So he has four cars for me right now. And he operates those. day in and day out with these different rental scenarios. He has the, any sort of maintenance required. I've even had some that have been wrecked that he's gotten body shops worked on. it's hands, hands free for me. But it has netted on average six to $800 per car per month. And that's a really good return. Not to mention I've been able to depreciate those vehicles at the beginning. from a tax perspective. And then secondly, I can resell it once it kind of has met its requirement mileage wise and it start, it's time to take it off the platform. And so that's another cool thing. And then the last I would say is like different types of media type stuff. So websites that either affiliate revenue, media revenue, like ad revenue from getting people to visit the website. Faceless YouTube pages, I own two of those that are creating, you know, $17 to $1800 a month in revenue from YouTube and Google media type stuff. There's all sorts of different ways people are making passive income from that. And it's actually going to get bigger and better, I think, with the amount of AI that's being put out right now. It's just getting super easy to run stuff like that. Loren Wernette: So I guess talk to me about that because generally as things get easier to do, the margins get compressed. And I mean, there's a whole another stream we can go down here with this, but I guess what is your philosophy on that? And as the margins get compressed, how are you identifying like, okay, I need to move out of this and move into something else. And how do I identify what that something else is? Joey Mure: Yeah, good, good point. I'll say, first of all, I think in light of just what I just mentioned with the website stuff, AI is actually to be able to replace ⁓ most of overhead that you've had in running any of these kinds of media outlet type businesses. So for instance, right now we have three V virtual assistants that help us create all the content, do the research, do the uploads. everything on these faceless YouTube pages and web pages that we own. Well, even that we pay virtual assistants, you know, between four and $6 an hour, typically, even at those low rates, it's still probably the largest expense that we have on running these websites and these YouTube pages. Well, with the advent of what we're seeing now with AI, the The vast majority of what they do will be replaceable with just the click of buttons. we'll still need help with some overheads type stuff, but we won't need as much. And so I think we'll have bigger margins to begin with. We'll end up having ⁓ margins once everything becomes AI content, because will be like, I mean, it's ⁓ gonna an unfair advantage that everybody's gonna be producing so much more. it, you know, there's probably going have to be a pivot somewhere along the way in that regard. When it comes to, you know, just look at where the puck is going, which is, think, mostly what your question is talking about. I think the things that, ⁓ that don't go away are all the physical on type of businesses that have to have, infrastructure, have to have people, they have to have You know, they're going to have to get as efficient and as lean as they can be. But things like lending are going to be around forever. Right. how they're done and to what scale and all that will change. But lending has always been and always will be. And so I think that that's a place where the puck is always been. The thing I'm thinking is like when you're talking about real estate, there's only so much. that can't be done with a hand, with human hands, right? it comes to renovations and creating spaces for people to live, it's always going to be a need. And always going to be the need to have people involved in the process. And so getting behind good projects, getting behind good operators in the real estate space ⁓ are, to again, I think a place where we're going to continue to put money in. people owning real assets, like our land flipping business produces, think it's at 38,000 a month right now ⁓ owner held notes. And so ⁓ been able to buy those properties at a discount, ⁓ them at retail numbers and then owner finance them. And that's the outcome is that much per month. I think people are always gonna wanna buy land. Like they wanna have something that's real, physical, tangible. And so I want to be on the side of that, of that coin, those things for them. Loren Wernette: Yeah, that's interesting. I have a whole slew of thoughts around lending and AI and how that's going to change the lending space. But I 100 % agree there will always be need for lenders and they're not making any more land. So I think that's that's a good place to be. I personally think that we are just so so on the front edge of the AI thing that the real concern about you know, reducing margins and all that is 12 years. 15 years away. I think that the next five to seven years are going to be insane the amount of changes we see. And the people that are using it on a daily basis for institutional commercial type things will see it first, and then it will filter down to the day to day users as they... Joey Mure: Mm. Loren Wernette: adjust how they just find answers to things versus manage workflows and handle things. They'll probably feel it first in that I don't need you as an employee anymore, which will be a whole nother reckoning that we'll have to deal with as a society. But ⁓ again, a job that needs ⁓ tactical and be safe. ⁓ Joey Mure: Well, and I'll tell you, you didn't probably ask my opinion here, but I just confirmed this with a guy yesterday who is just a genius with AI stuff. He has made something very clear that I had been thinking. We took a massive leapfrog in the last 30 to 60 days in AI. we've gone from, hey, AI is a platform where I can go get answers or I can make my emails look prettier. you know, write blogs or whatever the case is, copywriting to actually doing work on your behalf. Like the, the utility of AI just took a massive leap. And I think I will challenge you to say, I don't think it's a five year timeframe that people will feel the impact of this. think it's way faster than that because business owners and their margins are already slim. They're going to find ways to implement this very quickly when they recognize, wow, I am paying way much ⁓ for sort of overhead when I could just have these workflows installed and done. All the monotonous work that I was paying somebody to do is gone. The gap the cost of the AI and the cost of their employees and overhead so wide. It's just, think it's gonna catch on a lot faster. Loren Wernette: I now that you say that I redact my statements on five years because ⁓ mean, ⁓ so ⁓ a previous life, I was a project owner for Agile shop. We did Salesforce stuff ⁓ and had a ⁓ 23 developers India. The entire ⁓ ecosystem, entire economy in that city was based off of those big companies creating developers at a low price for first world countries to utilize. the night to refactor code and build code out. And now like one person can monitor that while Claude generates four times or 10 times as much code in the same amount of time for pennies. So. ⁓ Joey Mure: Yep. When I, when I'm messing around with Claude and I'm not a technical person at all, I am the world's worst, but I can literally use something like Claude and create a wireframe app in 20 minutes for my business. There is, you know that there's a problem. Like, mean a good problem, ⁓ we're way further along. Loren Wernette: Right. Joey Mure: then we probably give ourselves credit. Loren Wernette: Yeah, I think you're right. And I think that the people that don't latch on to that and are going to miss the boat and the people that do are going to have a huge head start. Joey Mure: I would love to hear your thoughts on how AI is going to change lending because you have a unique perspective from your seat that I don't have, but I'm just I'm interested. Loren Wernette: Yeah. So if we break lending down into what it really is, ⁓ the quantification of risk based on data points that you have followed by a decision point and then a crap load of paperwork that has to happen, right? And so if we look at quantification of risk, that's the first piece. Historically, it's been, I collect all of these documents. Joey Mure: Yep. Loren Wernette: And then I review said documents and make a decision based on the data I see and the experience I have to say, is this a good loan or is this a bad loan? The vast majority of that can be sped up through workflows and AI collection. You have more access to more data through AI just spread across the web. And then you have a better ability to take all of that data and suss out patterns that you never would have been able to see before. Joey Mure: Right. Loren Wernette: with a team of even five people, right? So now you are making better decisions with more data at a faster pace. Then you have the decision point. Now you have less people that need to make it. The AI can feed you the information that you need and give you a probability number on success or failure. You set policy goals on what those should be. And you can now approve or deny a vast majority of loans within seconds versus minutes or hours. So now you've compress those two things down. We take it step back, I'm gonna take a sec. First is loan intake. Marketing can be done by AI, you have AI that can talk to leads on the phone. Basically a lot of the loan officer job, at least upfront, can be streamlined so you're vetting customers and so you can take instead of 100 calls in a day or in a week or whatever the timeframe is, not a thousands, right? And so now you have a bigger top end to your funnel, have more compression in the middle. Joey Mure: Yeah. Loren Wernette: And then the paperwork, AI is already fantastic at paperwork, generating paperwork, reviewing paperwork. The biggest piece of the whole thing that is the pinch point and will be the pinch point is the governmental process of recording and dealing with those. And so if and when the governments get their things in line and become fully online and maybe... maybe we get to the end of the 20th century at some point, as opposed to the beginning of the 21st, gonna open it up. ⁓ ⁓ lending, which is the space I operate in, tends to be full of 55 to 75 year old white men who are relatively agnostic towards technology. And so the people that can integrate those AI pieces into their system, from the beginning all the way to as far as they can get with the recording process, they're gonna do better loans, they're gonna do more loans, they're gonna be able to operate at better margins, which is gonna give them a better price that they can offer to their competitor or their customers. And it's gonna allow for a lot of consolidation of the market or cannibalization. Joey Mure: Hmm, makes total sense. Yeah, absolutely. Loren Wernette: That's my thoughts. Whether it'll happen like that, we're trying. mean, I know right now in my business, we did eight some million dollars of loans last year with just one full-time employee, me. And the only reason we were able to do that is because we have a lot of workflows. There's a lot of automation built in. And I started the business while I was working as a W2 employee, had no choice but to do that. And we just kind of continued that on and it's helped us keep our overhead very low and our profitability very, very high. Joey Mure: Yeah, I love that. Loren Wernette: So, all right, enough about me. I'm not the guest here. So going back to the investors piece, right? So we've got a high net worth individual. They kind of have an idea maybe of whether they're a D and I, C or an S, maybe what strategies they want. But they maybe haven't started investing yet. When was starting to invest, I know that I was thinking about investing and thinking about things in the wrong way based on what I know now. So what are some of the biggest misconceptions that you see investors making when they're starting out? ⁓ ⁓ your advice on kind of seeing the world as it is versus how you see it from the outside? Joey Mure: Yeah. A couple of things. First of all, I want to give people a real tangible thing that they could do. If they don't feel confident as an investor, one of the best things you could do is sign up for our passive income lab where we literally take 12 weeks and we pour into you in a group cohort, teach you the same things we're talking about. The investor DNA, building a buy box, what operators, what questions you can ask an operator. How do you identify and do due diligence? How do you go deep and look for red flags so that you can make less mistakes early on? Because here's one of the, I'm telling you all that because these are the things that we figured out and that's why we built it. So number one, they don't know their investor DNA. Number two, they don't start with a buy box. If you go out to the world right now and you start looking at deals and you haven't defined what success looks like, meaning Hey, I want to have cashflow come to me within six months of doing this deal. I want it to be consistent. I don't want to be all these variables. I want it to be tax efficient. I want it to be, know, have an equity upside. want it to have, but like you can start identifying the characteristics that you want your investments to do. If you don't start with that and you go look at deals, everything looks good. There is no pitch deck that looks bad. By the way, they just don't do they don't exist. And so you tell you tell the box what it is and then you lay the investments over the box. Our in our case, we actually build a ⁓ custom GPT that you literally can upload these things to and it tells you green, yellow or red for these reasons, because you told me you wanted this, this and this, and this doesn't have one or two of those, but it's good on this aspect. And so this is how you should pursue it. If you don't have that, you're missing out. The second thing I'd say from a mental perspective what are you comparing this to? Anything you're going to invest in, in the alternative investing space. And I hate that they even say it's alternative because wall street is newer than what we're talking about with all these other things. But you know, I digress. The point is, you can't expect what you don't have anywhere else. Loren Wernette: You Joey Mure: If you have Wall Street investments, you are already assuming a level of risk. And what is that level of risk? Man, it could go to zero tomorrow. Like literally, the Wall Street portfolio is not You're actually very, actually comfortable with some risk. Otherwise you wouldn't be putting money there. But when we look at alternative investments, we expect it to be a hundred percent certain. It's just not the same. Like it's still an investment. And so you have to be able to mitigate what those things are and you have to look for ways to say, well, how could I lose all my money in this situation? Which is one of my favorite questions to ask operators by the way. but if you don't go into it with the right thought process, you're gonna, you're not going to take action. And that to me is the number one issue is you get a lot of people that are consuming information about alternative investing. But for whatever reason, they've got a lock up in their brain that says, oops, I might could lose money on this. So I'm not going to take any action. I would tell you that's part of the process you got to do some of these things I mentioned ahead of time, but then you got to act. And some of those things are going to pay out really well. And some of those are not going to pay out very well at all. And you're going to learn lessons, which are going to make you a better investor along the way. So again, those are kind of my, my quick and dirty answers, but Our lab actually goes into ridiculous detail on this and helps equip people so that they can take action very quickly. And people that come into that, they've never invested outside of the wall street and they come in and they're like, I had no idea. I was very uncomfortable. I wasn't confident. And they leave and they say, I reviewed 10 deals. I invested in two and I've got two more in the hopper that I'm looking at right now. And they feel like. I know exactly when it makes sense and when it doesn't. That's what I really hope for people, and that's what the results have been. Loren Wernette: Yeah, mean, great. Again, you're trying to get options, right? You don't want to rush in anything. And I think the mentality of, you know, there is always an option that you could lose money and understanding that and being okay with that needs to be there. it's all relative to because one of my earlier podcast, I had a venture capitalist on from Boston and they invested like early stage Boston focused tech And he's like, yeah, you know, we, lose money on like 60 % of the companies that we put money into. And then the other ones we do great. And that makes up for it. And like, as a real estate investor, like, God, if I lost money on 60 % of the houses that I dealt with, I gotta be a bad day, right? But it's just different. Everything's so relative to what you're doing, right? And his, his numbers were fantastic compared to other VCs. So. Joey Mure: Yeah. Yeah. I actually was in a lunch and learn one time and a guy said the same thing. He's like, we always invest in 10 companies we know we're going to lose money on. And I ⁓ the numbers, but it was somewhere between five and six and two going to be breakeven and two are going to make everything worth it. You know, it's like, okay. ⁓ I'm not okay with that level of a, you know, risk and uncertainty, but they obviously work. Loren Wernette: Yeah, to each his own, different investment DNAs, right? So, perfect. Okay, ⁓ as kind of wrap up here, is there anything you want to leave the audience with that we didn't touch on that's just critical to who you are or what you do? And then can our audience find you if they want to reach out and learn? Joey Mure: Yeah. Yeah, I want to, you we can talk about all the different investment vehicles, your investor DNA, where you park cash, those things are important. But I want to I want to remind you that the real cost of not going down this path is what is it keeping you from? Right. ⁓ a father, mother. ⁓ business owner, whoever you are, there's something that makes you interested in this process of getting to financial freedom that you're just not okay with. And it might be that you don't own those calendar, those box on your calendar it's just killing you or your health is deteriorating because you're not able to take care of yourself because your time is not your own. Or you've got loved ones who are I mean, I'm, I'm 45 and man, I'm learning more and more people that are older, 65, 70 that are dying every day. And I'm like, there's such a short time. Why would I continue to just put up with life and not take action to get to buy my time back? And so I want to encourage you, this is worth it. Is this, is it hard? Yes. But I'll tell you the opposite is you have to choose your heart because the opposite of this heart is the one where you regret. The one where you wake up and you're like, man, my kids are all out of the house and I really wasn't there for them. I didn't have, didn't, wasn't the man that I was supposed to be. That's the part that I want to really encourage you to count the cost. Loren Wernette: Mm-hmm. Joey Mure: We have some free giveaways, some things that you can take action on. If you go to wealthwithoutwallstree.com/brickbybrick - again, wealthwithoutwallstreet.com/brickbybrick You got there's a webinar, there's a quiz, there's an ebook there's all my contact info. So I'd for you to tell me, Hey, heard you on the brick by brick podcast. And I always love to connect with people. Loren Wernette: Awesome. Well, Joey, I really appreciate the time today. Had a great conversation with you, even though you got me up on my soapbox about AI and lending. Doing one of my cardinal sins of not letting my guests speak, but had a great time with you today. You gave a lot of great information. I will make sure that ⁓ link is in the show notes as well as all the other contact information you gave me for your socials and whatnot. And I really appreciate your time today. Joey Mure: You ⁓ Hey, likewise, I love being in the room with people who are thinking like me and so glad to be here. Loren Wernette: Yep. And for all the audience members out there, I think that will be a guest on your podcast here in the coming weeks as well. So will have more time to pontificate about ⁓ all lending and Lauren in a that I'm more comfortable doing. ⁓ So awesome. all ⁓ right. Thank everybody. And we will see you all next time on Brick by Brick. Joey Mure: Ha Absolutely looking forward to it.