WS1421: The Building Wealth Mindset | #Highlights

EPISODE 1421

[INTRODUCTION]

Whitney Sewell (WS): This is your Daily Real Estate Syndication Show and I’m your host, Whitney Sewell. Today we packed a number of shows together to give you some highlights. I know you’re gonna enjoy this show. Thank you for being with us today!

[INTERVIEW 1]

WS: Our guest is Caleb Guillams. Thanks for being on the show, Caleb.

CG: Hey, thank you so much and you nailed my last name, so thank you for that.

WS: I don’t always get them right but I try hard at that. I appreciate that, a little about Caleb, in case you have not heard of him before. I’m looking forward to this conversation just because you know, I love seeing guys and gals wo are just hitting it hard, you know? And understanding a lot of these stuff at a young age and making things happen, you know, that’s not what I saw growing up, you know, my friends were not doing the things that Caleb is doing.

I wish I had known then what I know now, you know? What he’s doing but you know, after taking over the investment department of a bank, by the age of 19, Caleb has become somewhat of a financial prodigy being named, ‘America’s New Face of Finance’ by Fox News, speaking to thousands around the country and building a company that has risen to the top 1% in the industry. He helps people take back control of their financial life by showing them how to both increase cashflow and spending ability in the present while increasing savings and spending ability in the future, all without taking on market risk or uncertainty and one’s financial plan.

Looking forward to hearing about that, Caleb. How you are doing that? This plan and I know the listeners and myself need to be probably thinking about this, you know, in this method that you have, but give us a little more about your background, who you are, and let’s dive into this method, this plan that we need to better understand.

CG: First of all, I just want to thank you so much for having me on your show. I love what you’re all about and it’s just an honor to be here. One of the first things that people usually notice, if you’re watching this is, “Man, you look like you’re 15 years old. How in the world can you even drive the car, let alone, have any knowledge as it relates to money?” And I’ve been really blessed because I grew up at home, I was the oldest of six kids, grew up in central Wisconsin and number one did not enjoy the cold weather but my parents instilled in me to be proactive, work hard but they weren’t entrepreneurs.

One of my first jobs when I was 15 years old is I work at a chicken farm and I started making some money, processing chickens. Let’s just say for your listeners, I appreciate the chicken sandwich a lot more than the average person and I started making money and I was like, “Man, our money can start working for us.” And I started dabbling in many different investments, getting a job at a bank at 17. I work there in every department, worked in our investment department as the investment assistant at the age of 18.

And then, as you mentioned before, 19-year-old Caleb, one day, the guy that was running our investment department took another job and I took over a massive responsibility and that was really the foundation that has given me like the platform but then also the freedom to start learning some of this stuff.

What I did on a local level is I connected with people, I realized, that if I talked to people like you and treated you to lunch, you would actually pay and you’d also give me all your secrets. I’m like, “This is pretty cool, I wonder if this could work out on a national level?” And I think you could summarize my story by, a lot of people I think felt bad for me and they just share with me all their secrets and I had this beading mission to help people live to that higher potential and I knew that money, if you figured out your money thing, that you could totally get there.

Learned all that stuff, and came out with a book at 21, called The AND Asset, which we can dive into because your audience, needs to understand the strategy as it relates to investing and syndicate deals and as it relates to just investing in general. And then, also, just gain a bigger understanding about how we can use our number one asset which is ourselves, our ability to create value in the world, and how most people in America if you look around are devaluing their number one asset.

At 21 years old, I left the bank, started better BetterWealth, and now we work with people around the country we’ve been growing because I think people are starving for a more empowering message related to their money.

WS: Nice, I’m looking forward to getting into that book and in just that method. I want to back up just a little bit though and I want to say, you know, give us a couple key things that you know, your parents taught you or that you did growing up that were just like to help you to have this kind of mindset and focus. I don’t know how often you get that question but you know, as I am – we’re raising three kids and hopefully more, you know, I’m just doing tons of studying right now, about just training and you know, just training and disciplining, discipleship and you know, things like that, you know?

So important at such a young age for them and I’ve seen that modeled in some other families recently and I’m like, “Okay, I’ve got to figure this out,” you know? Give us a couple of things, I know there are a lot of people listening that are parents too that are trying to get into the real estate business, trying to figure the financial stuff out, but also, have kids at home that they want to know these things as well. Give us a couple of things that maybe your parents did or just that you’ve seen that have really helped you to have this mindset at such a young age.

CG: Thank you for asking this, I don’t get asked this enough and I love talking about my upbringing. My dad is a scientist, and I didn’t get any of his genes. I can’t even spell biology, okay? My mom stayed home and home-schooled us. So first of all, I was fostered from a young age in a faith-based home school environment and so I’ll tell you three quick stories.

My dad has a Ph.D. in molecular biology but he did not care about grades, he cared about the heart of what we’re learning. When I was in high school, I took a college class, I got an A on the test, I was super excited, I told them, he’s like, “Caleb, did you learn anything?”

I’m like, “Dad, of course, I learned something, I got an A.” And he said, “A lot of people will get As in life, that don’t actually have the heart of learning.” And I’ve just seen a theme as I met a lot of people that a lot of people want to get around, cut corners, and just want to pass a test or they don’t have the heart of learning.

Another thing that my dad taught me is lean in to be proactive. I could never work with him and just stand around. He would actually get upset with me. He’s like Caleb, “Always be looking for things.” The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, talks about being proactive and I was fostered in a proactive home. Another thing is I’m dyslexic, I was especially short when I was growing up and I had this moment where I totally blanked on stage, I end up sounding out my two lines, word for word felt super embarrassed.

My mom would tell me, “Caleb, the things that you can’t control like your height, don’t worry about, learn to laugh about it, you can’t do anything about how tall you are. But the things that you can control like your reading, go all in because you have the moral obligation to take control of the things that you can control.”

They taught me never to be a victim, I mean, we get punished for even pouting because they did not want to raise kids that just would like to feel bad for me. And then finally, missions’ trip, I’ve had the ability to go serve people around the country, around the world and there’s something that happens to you when you go and see other kids, I’m getting emotional just thinking about this, see other kids that have nothing and they’re happier than you. It just puts perspective to be like our company, in general, is like built on the foundation where we want to make a lot of money and help a lot of people so that we can go and give the people that are like need the money to live. And so, it just gives perspective.

I grew up in an amazing house and I hope to raise my future kids in the way that my parents raised me.

WS: I appreciate you sharing that. I know we could go so far into that and I would love to hear more about that sometime. Just speaks volumes to just even what we’re trying to learn right now. It wasn’t the way I was raised unfortunately but you know, our eyes have been opened to just needing to do more research and studying about that.

You know, let’s jump into your book and The AND Asset you know, just get us started and maybe give us kind of a high level, what is this and let’s dive in a little deeper and try to figure out, you know, for the listener and myself, you know, what is this and how does this help us, is this something that you know, we should be thinking about applying today?

CG: Yup. When I first started at the bank, my goal was one thing:  It was to become a hedge fund manager and trade options and grow wealth. I had this idea of growth and everything else was awful. And so, I had a terrible view of life insurance. Ironically, the company that I run now, specializes in a strategy that helps people overfund or put as much money into a special type of life insurance contract.

Obviously, there’s my journey of like 180 in my life and so one of the things that I did when I took over the bank is, I saw what was going on and I just knew that something wasn’t right, I went to the university to study finance and we were taught in our classes to do future value calculations but we weren’t really taught how to think about money.

And so, as I went on this journey to find out, “What are banks doing? What are the wealthy doing, what are people like – how to do corporations that are really winning, how do they think about the money?” I realized that they thought the exact opposite of what we’ve been taught.

Really, there’s a value in controlling capital. And I realize that most people are going through their life freely giving up control of their money and hoping for something in return. And then I also realized that most people were not putting a value on the value creation that they could create through themselves. I just started learning this.

And in summary, I realized that life insurance was not the end result. And that’s why I love being on the show is like, a lot of people that talk about life insurance, and by the way, 99% of it is not good, don’t put your money in it because, if set up unproperly, it’s a really terrible place to put your money because the alternative places like real estate, like investing in yourself, like putting your money in your business would way outperform.

But my epiphany was really this. We could create a system and a platform and a structure that you could put a dollar in a place that could not only work for you the rest of your life but could give you the ability to control capital to now, invest in what I call the asset base activity,  invest in things that will give you the best results that you want.

Instead of just taking one dollar and doing one thing with it, you can now take that one dollar and say, instead of looking at it one dimensional, we can look at it with multidimensional and say that $1 can be used in multiple different areas. And so, I had to take a step back and say this is – my book is called The AND Asset because so many things are or, you can put your money in here or you can do this or you can do this.

There’s an opportunity cost of one or the other. I realize the big opportunity cost is not giving your dollars multiple jobs. My book is all about the efficiency of saving and using your money because your greatest financial need is using and investing your money and yet, most people are not taught how to save it and use it throughout their life, I would say, if you can’t do more than one thing with your dollar, you need to find a better way.

WS: You mentioned – obviously, just the value and controlling our capital and you talked about how people, you know, they don’t put value in controlling their capital. Could you give us an example of that just to help us really think about what you’re saying there?

CG: Yeah, the best example I can give you is one of our clients who is very successful entrepreneur. And he’s like killing it and yet, in like most companies and investors, they’re always looking for more capital. this guy is in maxing out his 401(k) and SEP IRA and his business is like doubling. And he’s taking money, hard earned money that he’s created and putting it in an account that hey, it might do well, I mean, I could get down the rabbit hole, what our taxes going to be, fees.

But he’s literally transferring money to companies, mutual funds, whatever, that he doesn’t really know what’s going on to hopefully it will grow to an unknown future date with an unknown future tax system. All the while, he needs capital, he’s going out and looking, he’s going out to banks, he’s trying to raise other money because he has this cash cow. And it’s just like, “Why are you doing this?” And again, a lot of people turn their brain off once they make their money. A lot of people, they create wealth and that’s great or they went to school because they understand that getting an education is like this really good thing to do because they’ll increase their ability to make money. And then, once they start making their money, they don’t think about their dollars working for them.

I think the big epiphany is like, our money is a tool. A lot of people have an unhealthy relationship of money but money is a tool and it will just amplify whether good habits or bad habits that you have. And I also just want to say this, when I think about or talk to these people about money, it’s not just about the strategy, the reason I’m diving in is I know that your audience is like, wants the nuts and bolts. We talk about clarity and getting clear on what you want.

Wall Street and the industry will tell you, ROR matters, rate of return, we talk about ROR being return on results, this is super interesting,  I know you’re nodding your head because results are so important and so many people are not even thinking about their money in a way that this is really just a tool to help me get what I want quicker.

Number one, you got to get super clear on where you want to go. And number two, you have to be super-efficient at what you’re currently doing. You have to optimize your cash flow, you have to optimize your assets and you have to look at your debt and if you have any bad debt, you have to – have the self-awareness to eliminate that so that you can again, get closer to your results.

The third principle is all about consistency and that’s where we start incorporating The AND Asset strategy and then the fourth principle is all about use and that’s where you come in. Because then, we show people, now that you’re saving your money, where can you put your money in a place that can create appreciation, cash flow, maybe some depreciation in this case where you can get maximum results.

What I love about being on the show is like, yeah, real estate is really powerful. But if all we’re talking about real estate and we don’t have clarity in what we want and you’re not being efficient with where you want to go and you’re not being consistent with your money and your habits, man, you have so many holes in your bucket.

Yeah, you could have a real estate portfolio but like, why are you even doing this to begin with? I get fired up about this and especially being young because I realize, so many people are getting half-truths and they don’t actually know why they want to do what they want to do. And when you get to see people like when the lights come on, my goodness, it just fires me up because then we’re really empowering people to make a difference.

[INTERVIEW 2]

WS: Our guests are Russ Morgan and Joey Mure. Thanks for being on the show guys.

RM: Thanks.

JM: Glad to be here. Thank you for having us.

WS: Russ Morgan, together with his partner Joey Mure are cofounders of Wealth Without Wall Street. They believe the secret to freedom is having your money work for you, not someone else when wealth is building. They believe that taking control of your finances will lead to greater prosperity and a more stress-free way of life.

They’ve created an online community to learn and grow as they work to coach people on their path to financial freedom.

Guys, thank you again for your time, give us a little more and the listener about what Wealth Without Wall Street is and let’s just jump in there and how you’re helping so many people create wealth.

JM: Yeah, Whitney, thank you for the opportunity, you’ve mentioned in there, that one of our creeds is to live a stress-free way of life and I think stress-free doesn’t mean conflict free, right? I mean, there’s nothing worth chasing that doesn’t endure some level of obstacle or conflict. But at the end of the day, stress is a big malady as it relates to medical issues. And we think financial is a big stressor and what we’re trying to do is help people live freer from that.

Ultimately, live the life that the really want to and part of our mission is trying to help people get clarity behind what they really want in life. And we have this discussion a lot of times when we’re meeting with people and they were saying, “You know, if money was not an obstacle, what would you be doing?” That usually stops people in their tracks because they haven’t really even though about that one thing would be, right? Because they’ve always thought, “I’m going to always have to go to work, I’m always going to have to work till I’m 70 because that’s where my grandparents did or that’s what my parents did or maybe that’s what I am on the path to doing.”

And, our objective is to show people there is another way, there is a path and through syndications like your own and other passive income streams, financial freedom is really when you have more passive income than you have monthly expenses.

When you get to that objective, that eliminates stress. At least from a financial perspective and maybe you have the stress about what are you really going to do with all your extra time, you know? Sometimes that’s stresses people out and they don’t know what to do.

RM: I’ll just add to that, Whitney, I think one of the pieces about the clarity that we found is that especially when we ask people that question, what would you be doing? It’s almost like, I’ll give you an analogy or a picture that we kind of point to as being in like a tunnel, right? If you’ve ever been in a tunnel at one end and you’re going towards the other, but you maybe been in one, literally, you cannot see any light on the other end, right? It’s just dark, it’s black. And as we relate that to where people kind of enter in with our brand with Wealth Without Wall Street sometimes, there’s a lot of fear and trepidation that comes because they don’t know what to do, right?

They’re like, okay, I know I’m not where I want to be but what is it that I should be doing. I hear a lot of noise that causes confusion, anxiety comes from not knowing and not being clear. It sometimes just entering in and figuring out what does success look like, it’s kind of like now, bang, I finally see that little glimmer of light at the other end of the tunnel and now I just need a guide to help me get to it and so, that would be our first step when we work with anybody, our coaches are helping people to see just that first glimmer of light and then start taking the next steps towards how to get there.

WS: When you’re in fear, you’re just kind of overwhelmed aren’t you? Just halts you, like you’re in the beginning of the tunnel, like you’re talking about, you’re afraid to even go in.

RM: it’s paralyzing and a lot of people put their head in the sand because of that. They say, “Well, I guess I’m just going to have to give in and I’m going to work 40 years and I’m going to wake up at that point and hope that it was enough, whatever I’ve been putting away in these things like 401(k)s and IRA’s and just maybe then it will give me some freedom.” We’re like, “Wait a minute, wake up. Don’t give up.”

WS: That seems scary.

RM: All these months and years and weeks that are ahead, don’t give up that freedom that you should be enjoying today because you’re confused or don’t know where to start.

WS: Wow, that seems a lot more scary to me, right there.

RM: No doubt.

WS: You know, maybe you can get us started or give us an example or somebody that you’ve helped coach a little bit or typical scenario because I know there’s many listeners that are in the same shoes, you know, they’re standing at the end of the tunnel like you’re talking about and it is dark, we’re afraid to step in, right?

I was there at one time as well and maybe you can just walk us through a little bit on some steps that you help people to take to get to that financial freedom but even just the mindset change, right? Just changing the mindset and how you all help people do that.

RM: We have a four-step process and the first step we just kind of covered was clarity and part of clarity is just going through and not a whole bunch of woo-woo stuff, right? Joey and I are not real woo-woo type guys but we do want to get into what do you want and why does that matter? Because if you don’t have a goal, I mean, no great achievement has ever been accomplished without the goal of setting it out first, right?

Having a goal and making that goal worthy of pursuing. Right? There’s some things that maybe I’d want to do in life but I’m not really going to do the hard things and go through the tough challenges to accomplish it, anybody who has ever started a business knows what I’m talking about. We’ve all – went through struggle in order to get there but it was what we wanted , it was our passion project, it was the thing that we were going to make happen regardless.

And that’s what when people find what that goal is, whether that’s to be able to pick up their kid every day from school so that they’re not traveling, you know, as a pharmaceutical sales rep. If it’s to be able to have their spouse to be able to stay at home after the newest kid is born because they have enough income to replace that. I mean, I’ve personally experienced that with my wife being a dentist. And last year, we sold our practice and said, we’re going to home school from this point forward because it was more important for us to have her with them than it was to not.

But then it goes into taking control. I mean, our step two is really, we feel that most people are out of control as it relates to finances and not meaning like in a bad way like they’re over spending, even though a lot of people do. It’s more in so that when money comes in, it quickly goes out. And it may be going out to things that they think are good, like Joey said a 401(k) earlier, that’s a savings, that’s an investment, right?

You would think, that’s a good thing, maybe their money is paying down lots of debts that they acquired and all that are good things but the problem is as it relates to how much of their money is flowing to them and how much is pulling away. They’re probably out of control because they really don’t have the ability to access money and we see this right now.

On the back end of the corona epidemic, right? Where people have run in to cash crunches and they’ve been trying to figure out how am I going to navigate this next phase that we’re going through, and then they want to figure out what’s the path out because when you identify that you’re in a tunnel and it’s a tunnel that you want to get out of and you figure out what that light at the end of the tunnel looks like and you want to run toward it as fast as possible. You need a pathway.

Our job is to curate content to connect people, to expose people to ideas of making money that they’ll never even knew existed before and that we introduce them to people like yourself, Whitney, that are showing ways to be a part of apartment complexes and other syndications that the average person just didn’t think it was possible. But now they’ve got monthly income coming in that starts growing and they can see how close they’re getting. They can see that corporate attorney who was making 15,000 a month, who thought they were going to work that job until they were 75 and all of a sudden, they do one deal, five deals, 15 deals, 25 deals, 75 deals and now they’re at a point where to bring it in 20,000 a month from real estate and they no longer have to go to work and to hang up – they hand over the keys to the office and they go home and they take their kids to school and they pick them up and they do the jobs that they feel like their most benefitted in so that they’re enjoying that four step of the life that they wanted to create.

WS: Go through those one more time, it’s clarity, gaining control of your finances and third and fourth, what was that?

JM: The third one is picking a course, charting a course and that’s where you’re really determining both by what kind of capacity you have for passive income, it may be like something that you’re doing is truly passive, right? It’s literally, I don’t have to be involved in the syndication, you’re really doing that for me to the people that we work with that really create a business from scratch, whether it’s in land flipping or an Amazon business or any other sort of thing that’s more active, that’s that third piece, you determining both from a personality standpoint and capacity, what can I do to create passive income.

And then the last one is just creating a life that’s worth living. Really enjoying the fruits of those labors, the first three steps took you through.

WS: Nice. You know, maybe you can give us some examples or what are some things that you’re working with different people that are really struggling with this or some common things that is going to help the listener get past that fear or they’re going to help them get in clarity, maybe walk us through some of those steps?

RM: I would say, probably the hardest step in this is the second step of gaining control and part of it is, because we don’t know that it’s even a challenge to begin with or number two, we don’t know where to start and so, what we’ve created in that second step is a number of different courses that people can go through at their own pace, they can work with one of our coaches to help where they run in to like let’s say a question that’s not really clear in the course land they say “wait a minute, what about this? What should I do, how do I pay down this debt?”

We have a course called Pay Down Debt Like A Boss. You have to say it like that whenever you enter into it because it just, you know, get you fired up but it helps you one specific thing in there, it helps you create a priority so there’s a priority payoff guide that it walks you through. Okay, let’s take my mortgage payment for instance and my mortgage balance and let’s see, what is the relationship between the two and it tells you, is this something that is like an urgent thing I need to pay off or is this something that can kind of wait because it helps get me to my goal faster if I don’t focus on paying it off fast.

The debt course, we have a tax course that gives you different hacks on ways that you can save on taxes today. All the way up to really high-end tag scores for people that are making half a million dollars or more that can save a hundred thousand on taxes a year, we have those types of things. And then the third piece I would say is we really help people build a warehouse for their savings, once they figured out their cash flow, they can then build a true system for their cash and super high cash value life insurance policies, we call that infinite banking, it’s something we learned over 10 years ago and become experts in.

We’re really helping people to maximize that before they step into building their passive income streams and making sure that’s maximized.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[OUTRO]

Whitney Sewell: Thank you for being a loyal listener of The Real Estate Syndication Show. Please subscribe and like the show. Share with your friends so we can help them as well. Don’t forget to go to LifeBridgeCapital.com where you can sign up and start investing in real estate today. Have a blessed day!

[END]