Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:04 Welcome back to the Blessed Business Podcast. I'm your host, hunter Haley. And today I have a very special guest. Uh, his name is Joey. And say your last name for us.
Speaker 2 00:00:15 It's Doherty.
Speaker 1 00:00:17 Do. Dardy? Yes. Okay. I I got it. I've had to practice this. It's Irish,
Speaker 2 00:00:21 Right? Yes, correct.
Speaker 1 00:00:22 It's so cool. So, yes, we were talking, uh, before we started the show about how he, uh, wants to go to Scotland and Ireland and, uh, Wales and
Speaker 2 00:00:30 All this, those places. It's on the books. Hopefully visit some family ancestral homes and all that good stuff. That'd
Speaker 1 00:00:36 Be cool. Well, we're not here to talk about international travel, although we recommend that. And, uh, that's cool. We almost, me and my wife almost made it to, to Scotland, Edinburgh. We were in London last year, and, um, we were on the train there and it flooded, uh, the road. The train tracks literally flooded, so we had to turn around and come back. But someday maybe we, maybe we'll get there. Be there at the same time. You never know. Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:00:56 We need to make it happen.
Speaker 1 00:00:57 Make a, make a fun trip of it. But that's not what we're here to talk about today. We're here to talk about how to get inside his brain and unpack some of this, uh, and, and figure out how we can apply it. So today we're gonna be talking about, uh, ways to create passive income. And I've been very impressed talking with him. We actually had dinner a little while ago. Uh, I said, we've got to have you on the podcast, uh, because, uh, just the ideas that he, we were talking about and some of his experience and everything, I think that our listeners could, uh, greatly benefit from. So tell us a little bit about what, uh, about some of the things that you've done, uh, some of the things we talked about earlier, just different ways you've, in your journey of pursuing passive income. Because a lot of people, they don't, they want a second income, they don't want a second job. And, um, so they, they want another way to make money, but they don't wanna necessarily take on, you know, 2, 3, 4, 5 different jobs, <laugh>. And so, uh, I thought it was interesting how you had leveraged technology, uh, to achieve some of that. And it may be dif, there're different ways for different people to do it, but, uh, share some of your experience with it.
Speaker 2 00:02:03 Yeah. So every time I ask, get asked the question, well, what do you do for a living? I'm always gonna, like, I work, you know, with companies, but I have like three or four businesses that I'm running. And everybody's like, you must be so crazy with your time. You have no time to do anything. I was like, well, actually no, I still got a lot of time to do stuff. And that's kind of, dude, my mindset is automate everything. And so I've taken that approach in, in software because, um, I can kind of give a, either give off my work to another person or give technology my work and let it kind of carry the load for me. Where if I was trying to do everything manually, data processing, whatever, and it might take me 10 hours, I can automate that write software now, it does it automatically for me seven days a week, and I don't have to do anything.
Speaker 2 00:02:56 And so, um, I've kind of ran this approach from starting at my roots, which is in graphic design and web development mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, I spent a lot of time eight years doing that, working with Mark Grizzley at Appol Graphics. Sure. And I started taking the approach of where can I either outsource, where can I automate and started in, in web development on how can I more quickly and more efficiently get out websites? How can I, how can I automate this process, make it a lot quicker? And, um, really just in, in somewhere in the process of realizing that I just spent 10 hours doing something that either technologists did in a few minutes, or I just paid somebody to do and they did it cheaper than I could have done it and probably just as good. And they, they did it and I didn't have to, maybe they didn't do it quicker, but I didn't have to do it, so I was doing other stuff. Sure. And so,
Speaker 1 00:03:53 So how, all right. So deep dive, a little bit more of that, not too far, but just a little bit. So the process is, okay, I'm building websites and gra and doing graphics design and stuff like that. And so you have multiple things. You have actually multiple jobs. You have the job of selling, selling the cl, finding the client, right, right. Your own sales and marketing. And then you have to sell them on the project. Then you have to, you know, create, okay, this is what they need, the ideation phase, and then you have to go actually build it. You have to build the website, you have to design the graphics, you have to do all that. So what you, what you're saying, kind of what got you on this journey of looking for more passive ways of making income is you started outsourcing Correct. Is what I'm understanding. Okay.
Speaker 2 00:04:30 Yes. I, I would take jobs where I'm like, this is something that I can do kind of in my sleep. It's easy to do, but it takes me time to do it. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, but it's not a difficult job to do it. I can, I can go somewhere like up pork, I can go on fiber, I can vet through 50 different people and find somebody who's like, I can do that and I'll do it for $50. Where if I look at my own time, that's gonna cost me $600 of my time. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I can pay this guy $50 to do it. I spend, you know, another 50, a hundred dollars of my time to get him up to speed on how I want it done. And now I've spent $150 to do something that would've cost me, you know, $600 of my time.
Speaker 1 00:05:14 So what you're talking about is you're, you're leveraging, so that's LE Outsourcing is starting to, to leverage the, the digital economy where people anywhere in the world can do a lot of the, a lot of these tasks, right? Yes. And so, but, but that, so you're leveraging the digital economy, but you're also leveraging other people's labor, but then you've kind of layered in deeper. So kind of the next phase you were talk, or one of the next phases was you, um, told me about this new software, well, not new, but, um, it's chat. G P t I believe it's, yes. Correct. And it's, so it's this, uh, artificial intelligence bot that, that you've used. And you can literally go to it and say, write me, you know, scrape this website, generate content based on this. And it will literally write your website's content for you if you know how to use it. Right. Now, there's the caveat. It's like we were trying it out earlier and like, you know, you were getting Joey's getting answers that are like, just pristine, well put together. And I'm like, garbling it all through here. It's, it's spinning it out, but I don't know how to talk AI yet, but, uh, but it's, it's extremely powerful, but you've found ways to leverage that. So tell me a little bit about your experience with, with this chat
Speaker 2 00:06:23 Bot. Yeah. So Open AI kind of took the world by storm just several months ago with coming out with chat G P T three. Um, they've quickly introduced chat, G P T 3.5. Now the next one is chat, G p T four. And they're constantly improving. And I've found ways to leverage this in all of my businesses. Everything I'm working in, I'm using chat G P T for, whether it be website copy, like I, I don't need to try to come up with, well put together copy on, um, this metal roofing company when I can go to chat GB t and say, Hey, write me 75 words that are SEO proof to this keyword phrase. And it spits it out for me in seconds. I don't have to think about it, it just writes it for me. I need to scrape websites. You mentioned website scraping script.
Speaker 2 00:07:12 I, I needed to write code. It's Python rather than mech, starting to, you know, pull up, write code, go to Stack Overflow, try to find stuff I just asked chat G B T, Hey, I need this website scraped. Can you go and scrape this, scrape this blog, scrape this article. And it just writes a code for me to now scrape it. And the cool thing is, now I have a code that will scrape that website. I can run it on a timer now every week it's scraping a new blog post, a new article something. And so, but it's writing custom software. It's coming up with intelligent articles. It's website copy, it's podcast scripts. This one is not scripted. Not yet.
Speaker 1 00:07:50 Yeah. This one's not scripted, but, uh, we were actually playing around with it, uh, where we could, uh, have chat. G d uh, G p D or I, I'm still learning this name. I'm new to this AI world, but, uh, you know, it, you know, I wanna write, I want a podcast script on such and such topic. And it like, is spitting out all these things. Obviously, you know, we like to wing it. So we're, we're humans still <laugh>. So we, we don't have a script for this particular one, but it was interesting to see how we can start to leverage things. But then we talked about a couple other business, uh, ventures that you, that you did. So as part of this, and this is a little bit more complicated than the, the average person, it may take 'em a little while to figure this out, but you'd figured out how to, to take, um, books that weren't copyrighted in other countries and, and basically scrape them and then use like a software like this to then regenerate them and then start at a subscription service where you've got, uh, thousands, tens of thousands of users hitting a website trying to, and they're accessing this content.
Speaker 1 00:08:51 Some of it's paid, or you're getting ads. And so basically you're leveraging the power of technology to bring all this together and, and translate the, the, the books and everything. And just, it's just amazing to me.
Speaker 2 00:09:01 Yeah. Yeah. And it, it's taking some of my expertise in software development and website building and marketing and kind of smashing it into automation to bring something that I, I couldn't have done with, without automation. It would've just been, like I said, I, I'm not trying to have another full-time job. It would become a full-time job if it, there were not automations like chat G b T that's behind me. That's rather than me having to, you know, figure out, let's translate this from Indonesian to English, and then when we get this garbled mess that Google translate comes up with, now let's retranslate that to modern English, and now let's swap out different things. It it just does it intelligently, flawlessly, usually. Well, not always, not usually, like 90% of the time it's a flawless translation for me. Well,
Speaker 1 00:09:56 I think that's the, the huge difference. And people are like, okay, an AI bot, it's gonna come out, it's gonna be like du de this book, you know, blah, blah, blah. No, that is not what's happening. It, it's like conversational, uh, it's, it's like intelligent. Like I've, I, I've been doing some searches and, and doing some things and it, it is absolutely phenomenal, uh, what it's able to do. It's, it's literally scary how mind blowing it is. Um, and so it's, it's this, this level of technology is I think, gonna usher in a whole new wave of automation, passive income opportunities, like we were talking about earlier. Uh, not that we're gonna do this on the Blessed Business Podcast and anytime soon, maybe if we can figure it out. But we were talking about how you can have it, uh, basically you can submit like blog articles, podcast, things that, like, say for instance, I've done Create It, it will analyze all that and then give it a topic that you wanted to generate a podcast script for.
Speaker 1 00:10:52 Go through it, tweak it a little bit. And then there's other software that I can, you know, upload a voice to. And basically we could have it regenerate our voice and read the scripts. And so it could be a completely AI generated podcast, even our voice, which is very scary. Uh, I, I, I think the listeners will always know it's me, uh, when it's really me, but <laugh>. But at the same time, uh, I don't know if I'm ready to go that far yet. But at the same time, it's intriguing to think about these are ways that you can leverage in the future, but in the, in the more practical sense, let's get back into the, the real world. Uh, uh, well this, that is the real world. Um, that's a brave new world that we're entering into. And so someone in the technology space that you yourself can, can take advantage of that.
Speaker 1 00:11:35 But really it's tools are simple enough that anyone who really wanted to could figure it out. But let's talk about some other ways. Um, I've got one other thing I wanted to talk about that you were telling me about, like with some drop shipping that you're doing. And then let's transition into some ways that other people, some just more general Yeah. Ways for people to generate passive income. Cuz from what we were talking about this is these are just stepping stones to what you're really wanting to create. Uh, and what I really am passionate about is, um, is passive income. I have taken more of the real estate route. Uh, I do, uh, roll in development looking at commercial properties. We've got some under contract right now buying, you know, warehouses and different things like that. And so, uh, there's many different approaches to that.
Speaker 1 00:12:16 But that used to be the only way to do passive income. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. But with all these tools and technology and, uh, whole world of opportunities, that's really broaden it. So before we dump, jump into all of those, tell us a little bit about your drop shipping experience. Cause we all see that YouTube ads and like, you can start a drop chipping business, the real money made on Amazon as well. You know, it's like, I could read the scripts for you. They probably had a, an ad a bot <laugh> create all their ads for 'em. But tell us a little bit about your experience with that and, uh, what your thoughts are on it.
Speaker 2 00:12:45 Yeah, so I, I find it pretty fascinating sitting across the table. Your, your passive income ideas are towards real estate, whereas mine are really all tech driven right now. It's all in the, the software space, or technology and online. And as of recent, I've gotten into, um, doing e-commerce, doing, doing job shipping. And some of you might be familiar with things such as FBA on Amazon, you might be familiar with Walmart, with Shopify. And there's probably a lot of you that you're, you either know somebody or you know, somebody who knows somebody that has struck it rich on e-commerce. I,
Speaker 1 00:13:25 But it still seems a little mystical and too good to be true. So he's here to dis dismiss some of these myths. Yeah, it
Speaker 2 00:13:31 Does. So I mean, I've always heard the stories that people going out and they're like, I made, I made $600,000 in one month on Shopify, and I've done crazy numbers on e-commerce. And I mean, I had that, I knew a friend of a friend who lives in my town and they live right here, small town Ocala, and they're doing, you know, $3 million a year Wow. In, in e-commerce. And the crazy thing about this guy has no tech experience. He is in his forties, fifties, has absolutely no experience within technology e-commerce. And he can do that, which shows anybody can. And so kind of sparked the idea and I delve into it and I figure out that the process is not a hard process. Um, s i I would submit that anybody could do it. Literally anybody with just enough of a capacity to learn. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> can, can get into the industry and get into the business and make some serious profits. I mean, when we, we look at opening a store and beginning to, to sell products and there, there's a lot to it. And I don't want to get into the weeds of Sure, sure. Of the process, but when you can get in and three months in, you're churning 70% ROI on a good month. That's crazy. A minimum. I mean, I've seen the lowest floor of like 32% and that's not the norm. It.
Speaker 1 00:14:57 And so just a little bit for people who aren't familiar with the drop shipping, uh, model, basically you go on Amazon or walmart.com Yes. Or somewhere like that. You set up as a basically a merchant account.
Speaker 2 00:15:08 Yes. We're setting up as sellers with Walmart. Okay. Yes. Uh, merchant account, seller account with like Walmart, with like Amazon. We're creating a Shopify store. And, um, through, through these spots, you're able to conveniently find ways for, for drop shipping products to, with, to, to your sellers. So people who purchase from you, you then turn around and purchase products and send it to them. And so there's a, there's a big market in that because the idea is that you don't need to have the capital of $150,000 to buy a ton of products and ship 'em to Amazon to their FBA warehouses. It doesn't require that. And it's a lot more where anybody can get involved with it. And the return rate is just higher.
Speaker 1 00:15:54 Well, and true to, to have significant scale, you're gonna have to have some level of capital, but you can start with a very minimal amount. So, you know, it's basically like a, and, and correct me if I'm wrong, but a, a simple example could be like, you know, someone goes out and they place a Walmart order and they've got their groceries on there and they've got all these different things. And then they say, and then they place an order for laundry detergent, but it says, you know, all the rest of your items are shipping tomorrow, but the next one ships in two days. And you're like, ah, no big deal. But that one happened to be you. And when you got that order in, then you went, turned right around and bought it on. Yeah, I
Speaker 2 00:16:30 Fulfill it. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:16:31 You bought it on Amazon or somewhere else because you just had enough profit margin. Were you able to buy it and then turn around and ship it to them? Or have it shipped from, you know, the other fulfillment center, right? Yeah. And um, and then it goes straight to them and then, and so that sounds good. But then I could see that, where that could be a manual process. So how do you, how do you get it to where it's more passive? How do you, I mean, that's, that's a one way where it's not super active. You're not actually having to go out and package these up and send them out all the time, cuz you're just using basically the drop shipping where it ships 'em to 'em. But how do you automate the order flow and stuff like that?
Speaker 2 00:17:06 Right. So this is where you can get into the weeds of it is it's a full-time job. Um mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you're, you're on call 24 7 to do it fulfilling if do it yourself. And so this is where the idea of automate everything does not necessarily mean robots. Right. Automate everything is not just, you know, building a software for, for this process. The smartest way is outsourcing. So finding outsourced teams, whether you have, you've seen the ads on Facebook, there are teams on, on Facebook who are like, we're gonna do an A to Z job shipping business for you. You've got teams like that who work. You've got teams outsourced in, in different countries. Pakistan, um, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, a lot of different spots out there who have teams full of experts, offices full of experts who are managing dozens of other stores who know the ins and outs of it.
Speaker 2 00:17:57 So you don't have to know the ins and outs of it. They have 50 people managing it where you are only one person. And it, they make it a simple process. It's let's share profits, we'll manage it all for you, you supply the money. So in that method, it's now completely automated. You take your hands off of it and you've got a couple hours into it, but you still collect, I mean, a large chunk of revenue, whether it's whether you're taking in 50%, 60%, 70. I mean, if you're taking 30, it comes down to the point, it's it, you didn't have to work for that. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:18:30 Well see this. And that's where I think, uh, it, it's important to, to be a big thinker, be and stretch your mind to realize what's possible now. But with, with outsourcing, with technology, uh, with people, we are a convenience driven society. Right. And very consumer. Yeah. So that creates opportunity. So you used to use, when, when you showed up at Target or Walmart and you're looking at the shelf, it's very competitive cuz people are looking at the same shelf saying, that's what I'm willing to buy. But when people are buying online and it's, there's a convenience factor, there's a built in value to it just being automated for them. It's just, they just click a button, it comes them, that's their version of outsourcing is they didn't have to go track down where that item was available. Okay. It's sold out at, on the Walmart shelf, but they found, they ordered it online and you went and found where to get it from and then you had it delivered to them.
Speaker 1 00:19:23 And so that's their version of outsourcing. So it just creates this layered effect. Um, I I think that's just absolutely genius. And like you said, it's not just all outsourcing and it's not just technology, but the more of these things you can find to layer in, uh, the better. In our business, in the land business, we've, we've been working on a new software, uh, that me and a partner have been, uh, building over the last few years. And it's a, uh, it has revolutionized our property manage. It's basically a PropTech, a property management software that also does payments, collections, and, you know, things like that automates so much, it's in and out, uh, text and email reminders, Hey, your bill's late, click here to pay. And so, and there's a cost factor that, but the convenience and the increasing collections percentage is so huge. And it basically keeps me from ha I'm literally, I, I used a bookkeeping firm that was a collections company and they were charging me hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars a month to do this.
Speaker 1 00:20:17 And now for 50 bucks a month, you know, plus some convenience fees, charges and stuff like that, I'm able to replace all that and automate it. And our collections presented has gone up by like 10%. It, it's just been, it's, it's just huge. And on a, on a rental, you know, uh, rental, well ours is at rental. We're actually owner financing land, but it's similar to like a rental property business. The more you can increase your collections percentage of not just what they owe you, but what they've actually paid each month. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And the more you can level that out, uh, that's huge. And so finding ways, and it makes it far more passive for me. So instead of spending, you know, 10 or 20 hours a month, you know, well 20 to 40 hours a month, calling people, collecting, going to the post office, sending out letters, all these things, it just does it.
Speaker 1 00:21:03 And I spend two hours a month, you know, now managing that process and, you know, following up if someone had an issue or something like that. So these are ways that you can really, uh, create, make your income more passive. It may not be a hundred percent passive, but it's more passive because it took you time to set that up. Right. I mean, you had to invest the time. There's, that's why I say there's, there's the myth of like a hundred percent passive income overnight, make millions, and you don't have to do anything. Well that it's just, that's just not true. You have to have the knowledge, like you took the knowledge that you had gained in the technology space and in the graphics design and the web design space, and you took the, you branched out and, and, and was able to network with people in that space that you could trust to outsource it to. So you had to put those together. But you all the efforts you were doing was, instead of spending more hours, building more websites or do spending more hours fulfilling orders, you found ways you spent this, you know, hours focusing on automating the system and, and outsourcing it and streamlining it. So now, yes, you put in the time, but now it's passive or more passive. Right?
Speaker 2 00:22:06 Right. And that's the thing for like startups and small businesses, you've got, you've got startups who are like single operators out there who are trying to wear 17 different hats and passive income can come through your startup. You don't have to go and do another startup to start generating passive income. But it requires trying to supplement what you're doing another way. And whether I, I mean I personally found it from either software or from outsourcing. Like you mentioned this software 50 bucks a month and it can, it's now taking away multiple hats that you were wearing. Yes. And so that's ultimately time in your pocket, which means money in your pocket. Um, now that comes at the cost of I had to go figure out that software. I had to go learn how to set that up. I had to go do this, put these checks and balances in place.
Speaker 2 00:22:57 Um, on the inverse, you might not be somebody who has that ability. And that's where it really comes to what value do we place on trying to automate stuff Is if I'm paying somebody, if I'm paying somebody eight, eight hours a day and I can spend $10,000 right now to have somebody come in and replace that person with an automated system in the long term, is that gonna be more efficient and more effecti? That's true. That's true. And so, um, it, it comes to the quandary of what makes the plane fly. It's money, money makes the plane fly. And there's some things that sometimes it requires a little bit of investment you throw a little bit of money at to find somebody who knows a little bit more than you do to just do it for you. But in the long term, it's gonna turn around and be massively more efficient for your business. Um, and, and that's gonna in, in turn get you one step closer to passive income, turning your business into an automated machine rather than it's pushed by a mule. And you are that mule <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:23:57 I've been that mule for many
Speaker 2 00:23:59 Times. Yeah. I've, I've been there. I I mean for me it's creating these processes and like I've been in the grind 16 hour days Yes. Just to get these processes, but then all of a sudden process is there and I'm like, I don't have to do anything now. Yeah. It just does it. And so
Speaker 1 00:24:17 That's awesome.
Speaker 2 00:24:18 I I do have the leg up. I feel, cuz I mean, I've learned the outsourcing world pretty extensively and I've also, I'm also a software engineer and so I'm in the software field extensively in, in automation specifically. And so, um, I feel like I do have a leg up as to where most people are. But also from my experience, I, I would say it's not too difficult for people to really get into and learn it and, you know, take 40, 50 hours and kind of figure out, okay, here's how I can outsource and start to do stuff and here's how I can leverage chat g p t to, to work for me and replace a lot of the stuff that I'm doing. So I, I think it's, some of these tools of the trade are things anybody can pick
Speaker 1 00:25:06 Up. Well that's the thing is like, it used to be like, uh, programmers and like mad scientists and
Speaker 2 00:25:13 Like
Speaker 1 00:25:14 Complete nerds. Like that's the people that could like, take advantage of this. But like literally chat G P T or whatever it, uh, the open I ai this chat bot literally, it's like googling, like you just type in there, Hey, please do this. It's like almost like texting your assistant. Right. You know, <laugh>. I mean that's, yes. I mean it's literally, it looks like you're just like in a chat conversation back and forth with it. And it will generate all these things. And the more you do it, the smarter you get at it. It's crazy. But, and again, not that everyone has to use that, but it's just a phenomenal example of just how far technology has come to where you need to start thinking, okay, what are ways I can outsource? What are ways I can out, uh, automate what, what are ways I can automate and then outsource the parts that aren't automated.
Speaker 1 00:25:55 So it's a hundred percent passive or mostly passive. But speaking of, we, uh, we asked chat, uh, this chat bot, uh, a couple of things about, uh, creating passive income. So I wanna kind of transition the conversation a little bit now to, um, to how, what are some different ways and what are some of the different steps to do this? So these are, in a lot of this, we actually generated, uh, some answers from this. We're cobbled together all these ideas from the internet, uh, which obviously, I mean, we're kind of picking and choosing, but I thought it was interesting. It, it gave several different ideas. It said, obviously rental properties, uh, was, was its number one pick. And I, and I'm, I'm all about some real estate options, uh, opportunities, uh, dividend stocks, uh, which for people who don't know what dividend stocks are, basically, um, you can buy stocks in Robinhood or in your Charles Schwab account if people aren't listening to this ever Schwab account, use that.
Speaker 1 00:26:51 That's right. <laugh>. I mean, maybe there's a few out there. Right. But, uh, you know, or your Edwards Jones account or whatever, you can, you can direct that to different stocks that pay a dividend. It's like you're a, you're, when you buy that stock, you own a slice of that company. A very small slice probably, but they pay a dividend. And so it's like getting an ownership share in the company. And so that's a passive way to create income. But there's there's more than that. There's a lot more. There's, you can create online courses. I've done that before. It's worked for me. I've made money doing that. Uh, e-commerce was right at the top of the list for this, which is what you talked about. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And I always thought that was a little bit of a scam, but I've talked to some people that's been successful with it and talking to you about it. It's like, I, I just, I I'm, I'm opening my mind.
Speaker 2 00:27:34 E-commerce is the future. I mean, it's a, it's a multi-trillion dollar, um, market. And 800 billion is the, the, what we're looking at, I think by 2025 in the us, um, 800 billion is a big market. Jesus. And that's the largest market in the world. That's the United States market. That's where we live. Hmm. And so we have the largest share of the pie of the largest industry. So, and it's driven by like, you know, people like us who open stores, sell products on Amazons, on Walmart, on Shopify. There's so much to be had out there in e-commerce. And I mean, I, I gotta come back to say, like you say, well, I don't know how to start a Shopify store. I, I don't know what to do about this or that. Like, I'm going, I mean, ask Chad g p t it'll literally like give you step-by-step instructions on how to do it. If you wanna learn this one
Speaker 1 00:28:30 Big ad for this, this new
Speaker 2 00:28:32 Software <laugh>, I'm not sponsored
Speaker 1 00:28:34 By that yet. I wish, I wish they had a, an affiliate link cuz I'd be giving it to you guys. I signed up for the $20. It's free. A lot of it's free, but there's like a $20 a month plan. And I signed up immediately once I saw the power of this. Uh, so I, you know, if y'all are listening, we need a, an api, I mean a, uh, affiliate link. No, I'm, I'm teasing. But, um, but yeah, I mean it's, it's amazing how, there's no excuse for being ignorant anymore because there's these tools and these software will literally tell you how to do it, give you step by step instructions. But about the e-commerce. See that's the powerful thing is there's so many ways to start generating income from that. And, and talk about how, and you talked about this earlier when we were at dinner, where all these different ideas that you've had have varying levels of success, whatever.
Speaker 1 00:29:16 Yeah. But they're stepping stones to bigger things. Like for me, when I think of e-commerce, I think of where is this leading? Well, I don't know if you saw Mark Rober, uh, he's on YouTube. Yeah. He, he released a video just the other day about robots and, uh, a slingshot. And there's like, and we didn't, I didn't know this, but for a while now in Africa, they've been delivering lifesaving vials of blood and medicine to these rural hospitals with like these basically giant drones. Um, that, uh, they literally slingshot 'em out. They're like little airplane drone things. They will load up a vi of blood, slingshot it out there, and in five or 10 minutes what would've taken hours and hours and hours to get to through curvy roads and, you know, crossing rivers and jungles and stuff, in 15 minutes it shows up and the doctor is able to save that life.
Speaker 1 00:30:05 Um, it, it was very interesting. But he talked about how that same company is now working on drones that will be delivering these e-commerce products, uh, in the future where, and they're already starting to roll it out some where basically they fly a big drone and then it drops like this little bitty drone that's silent, it's all electric. It's like silent little drone that comes down and it can like, maneuver itself and land, I think they say within an inch or two or, or something like maybe the size of a dinner plate. It's as accurate as the size of a dinner plate from four, 500 feet up in the air. And so literally it just lowers it on a cable, drops it down, releases your package, and then, and it goes up and it doesn't have big blades and stuff cuz the big drone's up in the air.
Speaker 1 00:30:45 Right. And so it just zips back up off to the next one. And so, you know, we thought, you know, same day delivery was just amazing from Amazon. We live in, I live in Memphis, Tennessee and there's a lot of Amazon distribution right here. So a lot of times we'll get stuff the same day or next day. It's, it's amazing. Well imagine if in like 15 minutes, so you're like, oh man, I'm on my way to somewhere. I order it in 15 minutes. It literally drops it in front of your house. I mean that's just, that's the way the future's going. So again, so then the co uh, so, and this is how my brain works. So with that is in the industrial and warehousing space in the, cuz I'm going back to real estate here, is there's gonna be a huge demand for small, for big warehouses, but also smaller neighborhood warehouses, which are basically these micro delivery stations where you have, you know, a, a truck or a drone or something set up there where you've got these small community based micro warehouses, you know, uh, and, and I've been researching this and this is like a wave of the future to where they'll convert older buildings and stuff into these micro warehouses and then use this technology.
Speaker 1 00:31:51 So I look at that as a real estate investor who has, you know, I, I have no skillset in the technology space of drones, although I, I do fly one. I've got a couple, I've crashed a few. Uh, you don't want me delivering your packages via drone, trust me. But at the same time, I see that as an opportunity for passive income on the commercial real estate space. So these aren't competing, these are just, they're creating more opportunities. So if you're not super techy, well don't ignore the trend because the e-commerce is creating, uh, real world tangible opportunities in the real estate space too.
Speaker 2 00:32:27 Yeah, absolutely. Um, and and for me, my, my thoughts towards, like, to kind of circle back to where you started on that is like my whole idea is like getting into e-commerce is like a stepping stone of like of of that passive income to start generating, to be able to spend more in other areas. Cuz I, I see the trends going of the, the real estate that is required to keep up with mm-hmm. <affirmative> the demand. And so if I can, you know, sell some products online so that I can buy the warehouse that holds the products that I sell. Yes.
Speaker 1 00:33:07 It's, and outsource it to a drone company and
Speaker 2 00:33:09 Outsource it to a drone company, <laugh>. And now I'm the drone delivery company. Yeah. So for me it's, it's stepping stones to get where I need to go, um, and, and diversify and not just be stuck to one, one platform, to one area of, of investing. I don't just want to be the e-commerce guy. Yeah. I don't, I don't just wanna be the website guy. I don't wanna be the the Photoshop guy. Um, I want to diversify what I'm doing and step into every area that I possibly can in the trends that are growing. Mm. And and those trends right now is ai, that's e-commerce. It's, I mean, real estate's always.
Speaker 1 00:33:49 Well I, and I like that what you were saying is ta you were, you're planning on taking advantage of your skillsets and the booming industry, but you're not banking on that forever because you're, you're wanting to use that to diversify into other opportunities. Uh, and I think that's, that's brilliant because what's here today may be gone tomorrow. Right.
Speaker 2 00:34:08 If I'm, if I'm turning $50,000 a month in profit by December on an e-commerce store, it's not my golden goose. Right. It's, it's, you know, just an egg from the golden goose and like the real golden goose is, you know,
Speaker 1 00:34:23 Leveraging that, reinvesting that Yes. Into the next step.
Speaker 2 00:34:27 Yeah. E Exactly. Exactly. And it, the golden goose is strategy at that point. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And so what, what I can earn now to leverage, you know, 10 xing that that profit that I made now in 10 years, I mean that's, that's the goal. And for me, e-commerce is a big deal. I'm, I'm big into it. Um, but I don't just wanna stay there. But I, I encourage anybody who's looking, I wanna start up something. E-commerce is, is a big spot to be where it's at. You don't know about it. Cuz YouTube videos, tons of stuff out there. Look up stuff on it. Look up how to, how to start a Walmart a a Shopify, an Amazon drop shipping company. Um, you might be sitting on just several thousand dollars of cash that you just don't know what to do with. Don't let it sit in your bank. You're gonna earn 0.001% interest
Speaker 1 00:35:17 <laugh>. Well now with fed interest rates up a little bit, it is a little bit more in that,
Speaker 2 00:35:20 But I mean, you can get 2.5. That's
Speaker 1 00:35:22 Something <laugh> Yeah. It's like, all right. It is not that, that great.
Speaker 2 00:35:25 Yeah. But don't just let it sit there, find somewhere to invest it, um, and, and turn it into something. Um,
Speaker 1 00:35:35 But well, and on that note, so I, I think it's interesting, part three of my, uh, <laugh> Auto, uh, AI generated content here. It says, it talks about choosing the right passive income stream. And so one thing it says is, uh, know your skillsets and interests. And I, and I think this is so key, is you have to find the right idea, uh, that fits you. I, I talked about this a lot in different, um, sessions I've taught and different things. Entrepreneurs I've talked to want to be entrepreneurs and people's wanting to start things like that. Side hustles. You have to be realistic about your skillsets. Um, again, you know, the techie route may be great for you and there's lots of opportunity. There's no excuse for ignorance now. But at the same time, you may not like that, that may not be in your interest.
Speaker 1 00:36:20 You may even have a skill set in it. You may be great at it, but it may not be what you like. Um, and as one person said, you know, uh, if you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life. But at the same time, you have to make sure it pays the bills too. Because doing what we love has to be profitable, has to deliver value in the marketplace. Right. You may love walking dogs, but unless you can invent the robot that walks them, you know, you're, you can only walk so many dogs, right? <laugh> or
Speaker 2 00:36:44 Outsource. Lemme lemme jump in there like that. I, I love that you mentioned walking dogs. Um, I've got an aunt that does that and she makes absolute bank walking dogs. Really? Like, I can't
Speaker 1 00:36:53 18, I can't hate on that industry anyway. Like
Speaker 2 00:36:55 How much? Eight, 10 grand a month. Whoa. Walking dogs. That's it. And she loves dogs. She walks dogs and makes an absolute bank.
Speaker 1 00:37:01 Good month. I stand corrected. You can make good money walking dogs. I have to use, find another analogy.
Speaker 2 00:37:06 But sometimes what you love actually can make money <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:37:10 So I stand corrected. That's awesome.
Speaker 2 00:37:12 I love that. Shout out to like the WA app, Rover app, stuff like that.
Speaker 1 00:37:15 That's right. I didn't even think about it. That's crazy. All right, so, and then number two it says is look at the investment requirements. Again, I'm looking at purchasing a 45,000 square foot warehouse. That's a, you know, we're talking hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars, right? So that's, that may not be where you're at. Right? And I sure certainly didn't start there, right? Yeah. Uh, and, and I actually had started in the web design technology space and I was getting, my first taste of recurring revenue was the, the monthly, um, you know, uh, maintenance feeds, you know, or whatever, 50 to $75 a month. And I saw the power of that, but I was like, I want something that'll scale. So I got into real estate again, that could have scaled that if I'd have known about these tools that you were, that you're using an outsourcing and all that.
Speaker 1 00:38:00 But you have to understand the investment requirements to start my web design business. I invested time and I got a laptop and I downloaded some software and I spent a little money on some WordPress themes and stuff like that, but it was fairly minimal. Whereas what I'm doing now is, you know, pretty cost prohibitive for some people just starting out. So you have to be realistic about what the investment requirements are. Again, like you said, so the drop shipping, you can start with a couple thousand dollars, maybe something like that to really get going. If you can put, you know, 20, $30,000 in, you can go faster. So it, the, the opportunity may scale based on your investment, right? Yes. So even though you can start small, they don't mean you're gonna make a hundred thousand dollars a year starting with 500 bucks in that account.
Speaker 1 00:38:42 But at the same time, just start, try something, figure it out. If it doesn't work, try something different. Um, but you can level up and start with things that have a low investment barrier and then work your way up to stuff that maybe has better returns or more passive. But now you're, I like what you said earlier. You're reinvesting that money into it. And then number three, and me and you talked about this is very important in both of us. We, we are very active in our church and in the kingdom of God, but number three is time commitment. Um, so it takes time to, it doesn't take any time to sell that online course or, or for someone to go through your online course, right? Right. But it took me hours to develop my online. You know, I have a course about how to do, uh, raw land, basically what I'm doing with the land business, right?
Speaker 1 00:39:26 Yep. Buy it subdivided owner financing, et cetera. Um, but it took me hours and hours and hours to develop that. And so there was a time commitment to do it, but now that it's there, it's very minimal time commitment. And if someone buys it and that revenue rolls in and stuff like that, and then that generates even other opportunities for revenue of, you know, consulting and stuff. And now I'm hire, I, I've trained other people who do the consulting for me. And so, you know, it, it creates other streams. But if I hadn't and done the initial time investment, it would've happened. And then number four is market demand is you have to, to, to figure out where the demand is. And this, and you mentioned this in the e-commerce space, it's huge. The commercial real estate space is huge, right? So finding our, uh, a, a market that has lots of opportunity. And I usually would say here, you know, the dog walking opportunity, uh, market is not huge, but <laugh> now it may be they, you know, with these, the, the, what apps did you mention? Wagon Rover. Wagon Rover, man, it like dog walk in, it's like Uber for dog walking, man. I mean, like, you're
Speaker 2 00:40:28 Looking 40, 50, $60 an hour on dog walk-in,
Speaker 1 00:40:30 Man, I love that. So, but choose, choose a market that has upward pot potential, upward mobility, has lots of opportunity. Um, and so, uh, and then it goes on to saying, set up your passive income, develop a plan, uh, and educate yourself. So tell me a little bit about you. You kind of alluded this like 16 hour days, but if you had to guess on just one of the ventures that you've got going, like how much time did you spend just educating yourself on how to do these things? And I know some of 'em may be less and some may be more because you have a compounding knowledge now.
Speaker 2 00:41:04 Well, yeah, that's, that's a very loaded question because some of that compounds to back when I was 18 and starting out, um, and knowledge that I gained that I did not know I was gonna use, um, skillsets that were built that I, I didn't realize lent to another skillset. Sure. So, so that's a pretty low question. But I mean, with with, with at least one of, one or two of my, my ventures, I mean, I would put late nights into it and I, I, I mean, to get it off the ground, get it running, to be generating passive income where I can kind of be hands off, put one or two hours a week into it and, and it just rolls. I mean, 200 hours is a very
Speaker 1 00:41:53 Easy conservative
Speaker 2 00:41:54 Like, like conservative estimate on same. Yeah. Just getting it to a, like a stable place where I'm not having to put in late nights and then continuing on, like now I'm putting in two, three hours a day on it instead. And now I'm putting in an hour a day. Now I'm putting in like four hours a week and now, and, and it begins to, to decline as the more work I put into it. But, um, I, I also find stuff like that is always requires maintenance. So
Speaker 1 00:42:25 Yes. You can't just sit it and forget it forever. Correct. Correct. There it is not a hundred percent passive forever.
Speaker 2 00:42:30 It, it's not, you're never gonna find anything that's just forever
Speaker 1 00:42:33 Past it. You have to weed the garden.
Speaker 2 00:42:35 Yes. Correct. And so, um, especially in the tech space, you want to, you want to throw something out in tech, like it's a subscription service that you're, you're putting out, um, you're putting out something like using go high level and selling it as a white label software service, um, tons of money in that. Um, but you gotta spend the time. You might get your software built out, you might get it all set up, but then you gotta spend the time as stuff updates that you update with it. And so you spend a hundred hours and build it out, but three months later you got an update that requires you to spend another 50 hours and you've got something else that comes up. Text changed. So now I, I've gotta spend another a hundred hours and I've gotta put more time into it. And
Speaker 1 00:43:15 So there's or change that business model, it may have eroded away. Yeah. And now you gotta go figure out something different.
Speaker 2 00:43:20 Yeah. And that's, that's always the potential of, especially in tech space of your business model just disappearing. Um, usually
Speaker 1 00:43:29 Because innovation creates opportunity, but it also, uh, is cannibalistic.
Speaker 2 00:43:34 Yes. Yeah. And, and I see that a lot with stuff like open AI and their, their AI that's coming out, that it's gonna kill a lot of industries, uh, but it's gonna enable people to create other industries from it. Um, and it's gonna enable the people who were paying for services before to be able to now get those same services free through AI or marginally cheap through ai.
Speaker 1 00:43:59 Sure. Well, I'll give you an example. When, uh, I had a, um, a company, uh, I actually hired a lady out of, uh, great Britain, I think she lived, uh, not in London, but in, in England somewhere. Um, and I hired her to write blog posts for, uh, for a company here in the US a flight training school that was a, I developed their website and everything. So I had outsourced that, that was great. And she was writing these, but now you can go to again, this, uh, this AI and say, write this blog article and something that we would pay 50 to $150 for a 500 word article. It spits it out in like 3.8 seconds. Yeah. And so then it's like, well, I can take that, it's actually really good and I can tweak a few things and spend five minutes generating that.
Speaker 1 00:44:45 Well now I'm less likely to outsource that cuz now I just made 50 or a hundred save 50 or 150 bucks in two, you know, 2, 3, 5 minutes and I can just spit these out. But then, so that looks like it took an, an opportunity away from her. Right. But at the same time, if she takes this technology and she could then say, Hey look, we're gonna reduce our price per blog post, but now we're gonna do it at scale. We charge $25 a a piece, but now she's doing 10 times as much in the same amount of time. It helps everybody. Right. You know? Right. But you have to adapt and change instead of just, oh, I'll work remotely. I I'm a content writer, whatever. If you don't adapt to this change, you, I feel like you're gonna get left behind. Absolutely.
Speaker 2 00:45:26 Don't be the person who's complaining that robots are flipping your hamburgers. Be the person who decides I'm gonna start coding the robots that flip my hamburgers.
Speaker 1 00:45:34 That's right. <laugh>, I'm gonna, you know, I'm going, you know, create the Master Cheff robot app. Yeah. <laugh>. It's like you can customize those things. Yeah. That's awesome.
Speaker 2 00:45:43 Innovation requires upkeep. It is, as, as many jobs as innovation will take away, it'll create even more. It just requires a little bit more education behind it.
Speaker 1 00:45:54 Yeah. Well, and, and again, going back to my content here, uh, it says step one, develop a plan. Step two, educate yourself. We talked about that. Step three, take action. Once you have a plan in knowledge, it's time to take action. Uh, whether it's investing in rental properties, creating an online course or starting an e-commerce business, take the necessary steps to get the passive income stream started. You have to start with wherever you're at. And again, it may not be where you want to end up, you may want to end up like me in commercial real estate, but you may, you may start with drop shipping or e-commerce or writing blog posts. Yes. Using g uh, this chat app. Right. You know, uh, to, for businesses or, or developing websites or selling 'em, whatever. Start with where it's at, where you're at. And then kind of use that to migrate.
Speaker 1 00:46:39 And it says automate where possible. Look for ways to automate your passive income stream. I think we talked about that extensively. It says, uh, and then track five, monitor your progress. Uh, keep track of your earnings and expensive passive income streams. Uh, this will help you identify areas for improvement and make necessary adjustments to maximize your earnings. Again, you can't just set it and forget it. You've gotta tweak it. You've gotta change it. And again, you have to stay on top of innovating cuz there may be new opportunities that come out. Cuz again, when this came out, if I'd have known about it back then when I had that, that business model, man, I could have ramped this up and leveraged that to go to the next level. Um, and then, so speaking of going to the next level, part five here of our <laugh> of our AI conversation said, growing and scaling your passive income stream.
Speaker 1 00:47:27 Um, and so it gave me five points on that, and maybe you can elaborate on some of these, your thoughts on these. But I love how you've, you've really hit on this a lot, uh, tonight, but, uh, uh, in this session. But, uh, number one it says is diversify your portfolio. Uh, cuz there's, there's lots of risk out there, right. You know, it could, it could evaporate overnight, uh, in commercial real estate, you know, if you have one rental house and it burns, this happened to my grandparents. They've got rental, like, you know, actual rental properties, um, and, uh, they rent out houses and they had like two or three burn just randomly in like a, in a one year period of time out of a portfolio of like seven to 10 rental properties. Wow. And so it's like, well, how are you gonna replace that income? And how, what is your plan to do this? Well, if they only had one and that was their sole source of income, you know, I mean that would've, that would've been bad. And you can have insurance to mitigate that and things like that, but it's very important to diversify.
Speaker 2 00:48:22 Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And that's where I, we were talking at dinner is, I mean, I'm diversified in the tech space, but I don't want to just be stuck in the tech space. I wanna, you know, dive, diversify into the finance industry, diversifying into real estate. Um, but I mean, pulling out e-commerce as, as one, cause we've talked extensively on that is what if Walmart and Amazon decide we're shutting everything down. No more sellers, we're closing your account. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, all of a sudden you're
Speaker 1 00:48:55 50,000 and you're depending on that as your sole source of income. Huh?
Speaker 2 00:48:57 Yeah. You make 10,000 a month on that and that's just all you do for a living. All of a sudden that's gone. What are you gonna do? Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:49:03 That's scary. Yeah. But at the same time, it's not just an obstacle, it's an opportunity. Because if you can master this, this new, you know, innovative, you know, oppor these new innovative opportunities, it's, it's easier than ever to create multiple ways of, of passive income. Uh, and then so number one, it says diversify your portfolio. Number two says continuously improve, and this is optimizing, uh, this your e-commerce website or improving your rental property, updating your online con uh, course content you have to continuously improve to increase your earnings. I, I think that's totally valid. Uh, but number three, and I'd really like, cuz you, you talked about this, uh, when we talked earlier, but number three is reinvest your earnings. Uh, so you, you have to reinvest that You can't, you can't eat the profits. What was it, you mentioned the book earlier, um, the richest men in Babylon and I think he talked about that.
Speaker 1 00:49:59 He's like, you know, he's, I think he was talking about the money lender and he's like, these, you know, you lend them out and they bring back children, you know, but you can't eat the children. Yes. You know, your money's children because like, they can't multiply and grow. And it's, it's kind of a, an interesting analogy, but at the same time, you know, if you get, if you upgrade your lifestyle really fast, cuz you hit it big in e-commerce one month and then you're like, oh, I went out and bought this house and this Ferrari, I, I was watching a a, a story about a guy today. He has I a huge, I mean I think his portfolio is hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate. But because he had made a couple bad moves and didn't lock in his interest rates and blah, blah, blah, all these other things, he's having to sell his $500,000 Rolls Royce. He's having, he's living at a 13 million, uh, home. And he's like, he said, I was looking up the price of eggs and I told my wife that you're gotta go buy 'em at Walmart now instead of his, I mean the, the guy's like trying to cut. He said, I'm fighting a financial war. Right. So if you, if you don't reinvest your earnings and you don't pay down debt and you don't and you aren't constantly improving, you can, you can get so caught up in, in your success that your success sets you up for failure.
Speaker 2 00:51:04 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I, I can't look at a, a a, a profit let's, I, I can't sit here and say I, I made $10,000 this month in profits. That's what I'm put in my pocket and just go out and spend that. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I mean I could, um, but I think I would find myself at the end of like a year, at the end of two years kind of no further than I was just kind of maintaining, like I might have a little bit better, little bit nicer suit, nicer car, whatnot. But at, at the end of a year, at the end of two years, at the end of three years, if I'm eating the children, I'm really gonna be no different than, than what I was when I started say for a few possessions. And when, when it comes to the future, um, we don't know where we can rely on that. Sure. And so we've got, we you have to be, if you're, if you're any mind of business and you have any wisdom at all, you've gotta you've gotta be taking that. And I, I'm in, in my position right now, I'm reinvesting 100% everything.
Speaker 1 00:52:16 Well I was gonna mention that. So you said you still work two jobs, work for two different companies. You've got multiple side companies that are doing pretty well and growing. And so, and I asked you, I was like, so when are you gonna quit those and go to your full-time? Cause I mean you could do that probably here pretty soon, if not already. Yeah. You're like, well I don't need to cuz they're passive, so I'm gonna grow those and reinvest those. And, and so many people they they, they jump ship too fast. So I think that's brilliant. Yes. And I commend you for that. Is that you're, you're not sacrificing your income by quitting your job. You found ways to create passive side hustles that really have grown done well. Um, and but you're able to reinvest a larger percentage because you still have your job and you've kept your lifestyle manageable and stuff like that. Correct. And so I think, I think that's, that's a tidbit of wisdom that a lot of people could use that nugget.
Speaker 2 00:53:06 Yeah. And it reminds me of, I believe it was Jim Ron talks about, um, building your wealth as opposed to, um, building your income. You, you earn your income, but on the side you're building your wealth. Yeah. And until your wealth overcomes your income, you can't just scratch out your income. You can't say, well, I'm just gonna quit my job because I'm, you know, I make 5,000 a month at my job and now my side hustle's making 5,000 a month. I can just quit my job. Um, you've gotta, you've gotta, there's at some point you've gotta have a number where it's like, okay, I'm making 20,000, 25,000 a month
Speaker 1 00:53:45 Now
Speaker 2 00:53:46 Maybe now I can quit my job because if, if you, you replaced your side hustle immediately at that point you're, you're putting yourself in the same boat that you were. Yes. With a new you have a new task. Master <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:54:01 That's right. Yeah. Well, and I think that's, it's so brilliant is that you can, you can reinvest so much better and you can make less emotionally driven decisions Yes. For your business when your income isn't dependent on it. When it's like, ah, sales are down 50% this month cuz we're trying to revamp a few things and next month it's gonna be up four times. Well, you wouldn't do that if you had to pay your grocery bill based on that. Right, exactly. So it gives you a lot of freedom to experiment with your passive income. So when you're generating passive income, I think it's critical to, especially if it's a side hustle, if it's not your main thing to reinvest that, to grow that, to develop that, and don't just jump into it a hundred percent and leave your day job or your other business or whatever you're doing Yeah. Until it grows substantially to where it's got, it's, it's gained mo it's self-perpetuating momentum as much as possible. Yeah. Um, and so I I think that's, that's key.
Speaker 2 00:54:54 That's awesome. Especially when you're, when your hustles are relying on using and leveraging debt. Um,
Speaker 1 00:55:00 Yes, for
Speaker 2 00:55:00 Sure. Because you can get yourself into a hole where you're like, well, it's not consumer debt. I'm not, you know, spending it on, you know, like buying a new boat or whatever. Well, no, but if you make the wrong switch at the wrong time and now you can't pay off the debt that your business built up, that's ultimately coming back to you. And so you need to set yourself up enough that that debt works for you and not against you is it can be a powerful tool to use to, to build your business and to make moves faster. But you do you one wrong move and it crushes you for the next 20 years.
Speaker 1 00:55:37 Well, and that's like the guy that was looking, he's got a, a phenomenal portfolio of commercial properties. Yeah. And, and, and he thought he had arrived. You know, he is like, I, I was basically looking at retirement and then it in one year it just completely just shattered because he got, I don't wanna, I don't wanna criticize him, say he got sloppy, but he got a little over aggressive, got overextended, you know, different things and he just got a little too casual with it. And, um, and, and that could happen to anybody. So you have to, you have to, you know, maintain, you have to continuously improve, reinvest your earnings. And as coming to kind of wrapping up here is, uh, number four it says is network with others. I think it's so important to have a mentor Yes. Uh, in this business. And you talked about different people in your life, life, not just in the sp those specific, uh, areas of business, but in other areas that have mentored you that have y'all tried things Yeah. They fail. You learn from it. Absolutely. You absolutely developed something different. Absolutely. You know, um, yeah. And so I think that that's, that's key. So tell me a little bit about how you feel about networking and having a mentor. Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:56:40 So I'm a huge proponent of, of mentorship having somebody there. I mean, I would not be where I was without Mark Risley, who was my, my mentor. I mean, he called me
Speaker 1 00:56:51 Who, he's a, he is a certified genius. Okay. Which he, he is like, and a serial entrepreneur,
Speaker 2 00:56:55 <laugh>. They, they sent him an award for being a genius and all like
Speaker 1 00:56:58 <laugh>,
Speaker 2 00:56:59 He's, he's top of the line. So, but he's, he has a unique ability of um, hi, not only is he creative, but he can like pass that creativity on somehow. And I'm not sure how he does it, but, um, he pulled me out of like working nine to five job, which it was like much worse. It was one to 10 at Publix. And all of a sudden I'm coming to work for him with no skillset in the work that he's doing. And then, I mean, here we are, eight, nine years, nine years later and I, I'm still working with him. We still do great projects and, and my whole way of thinking, well my skillset started when it was just somebody who was like, I'm gonna invest into you and teach you what I know and teach you how, how I think and see what happens with it.
Speaker 2 00:57:49 And, and so I'm a huge proponent of finding a mentor, finding somebody who is smarter than yourself. Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you because if you're always the smartest person in the room, <laugh>, you're never going to get smarter. Um, I, I would say you're actually going to fall to the level of everyone in, in the room. And so surrounding yourself with people who are smarter than you and surrounding yourself with people who are different than you. I don't want to be the electrician who only knows electricians. So when I go to build my house, I don't know a plumber, I don't know a framer, I don't, that's good. I want to know people who are in different areas than I am who have different skillsets or I want to know people who know people. And so, well
Speaker 1 00:58:35 I, that's like me tonight. I mean, you, you, you were coming into town, you say, Hey, you wanna grab dinner? I'm like, absolutely. We get to dinner and I'm like trying to harvest all the information and knowledge and wisdom I can out of you and, uh, and you're younger than I am by a number of years, uh, four or five, six years. And uh, and uh, so just because you're older, you've been in business longer or something, don't think that you can't learn something from somebody else. I like Dave Ramsey in that he focuses, he focuses very hard on hiring young talent. Yes. That's very smart. And he says, because all them, they know this technology stuff. He's like, I don't know technology, but they know all this stuff. They know how to do this. They know how to do that. And I think that that's very smart as a business owner instead of like trying to look like the stoic, you know, financial advisor type, you know, he, he has totally built his culture around bringing in, um, you know, young minds that are are learning but also that has experience, you know? Yeah. And so I think if you have a men, you need a mentor, but you also need people who are up and coming who are a lot smarter on this than you are. I mean, like go ask some 14 year olds how to set up your e-commerce store if you need help. Right. <laugh>, I mean that's a, they
Speaker 2 00:59:47 Can probably tell you, they
Speaker 1 00:59:48 Can probably tell you cuz I saw a TikTok video about it or whatever. Right. Yeah. But, uh, wrapping up here, I I've wanted to say that lastly is, um, you know, passive income is not, you don't have to be lucky. It's not the luck of the Irish Right. <laugh>, even though you are Right. And it sounds like you've been very lucky now. Uh, but it's, we believe, you know, coming from a Christian perspective that it's the blessings of God. Absolutely. But the blessings of God come in seed form. So God put Adam and Eve in the garden and said, dress it and till it and keep the garden. Because the thing is, if, if, if you have everything at your fingertips, you still have to work. God's plan from the very beginning was to work. So don't think passive income is, is is like gonna be the easy route out is going to, you know, you're gonna go lay up on a beach somewhere.
Speaker 1 01:00:38 Right. But I, I like to, I, I'm, I've started using the saying, I want to retire early from earning a living, right? Not because I wanna quit earning money, but I wanna stop earning for a living. I wanna start earning forgiving. Yes. That's, I wanna start leaving a legacy. So I want to get the taking care of my life out of the way with passive income as quickly as possible. So my bills are paid every month, but then I wanna start generat investing in others. I wanna start developing, you know, things that are gonna advance the kingdom of God. And, uh, so it's not about luck, it's about hard work diligence, taking those seeds and op of opportunity that God gives you the knowledge, the the people that you bump into the p the, the, the, the YouTube videos you watch. Yes. The podcast you listen to, taking all that in seed form, planting it, but then letting God work with you to bring the harvest.
Speaker 1 01:01:31 And so I, I want to encourage you that in everything that you do, try to build, uh, income and to, and make it as passive as possible. That's good. But never lose focus on the fact that ultimately that your wealth needs to be connected to purpose. Your passive income needs to be connected, uh, to the mission of God furthering your, you know, your, your family and uh, your community. And I think if you keep that in, in focus, it'll be a great motivating factor. So Joey, thank you so much for, for joining us today. Any final words for our audience?
Speaker 2 01:02:03 Absolutely. I'm super glad to be here. Um, I did want to tag onto the end of what you said, I wanna give a challenge to, to those business owners listening. Maybe you've just started a business, maybe you've been running for a little while, but you're wanting to see growth. Um, hunter had given a challenge out a little while back and, and I think it's in one of his podcasts, is figure out what you want to give that's beyond your means right now. And write the check. Go ahead and write your check out. Go ahead and sign it. I want to give $5,000 to the church. I don't know where it's gonna go towards. I don't know what it's gonna be for. I can't give it right now, but I'm gonna write the check cuz this is what I want to give. Find, find some time.
Speaker 2 01:02:41 Go find yourself a pen and a checkbook. Um, if you don't have a checkbook, get one just so you can do this <laugh> and, and write that check cuz that, put it on your fridge, put it, put it somewhere where you can see it, where you're saying, this is a goal. This is not what I'm trying to earn, this is what I'm trying to give. Yes. And so, um, I've done that. It's, it's phenomenal. It works. And so it works. It absolutely does. Absolutely works. So I wanna end with that challenge. Um, go do that.
Speaker 1 01:03:05 I think that's awesome. Again, that's a way to connect your money to mission. Yes. And when you do that, uh, it, it's, God gets behind what you're doing and he has a vested interest in your personal prosperity at that point. So. Well thank you again so much for, uh, this impromptu podcast <laugh> and I hope that, uh, all of our listeners will find this valuable cuz I've learned a lot. And if you see more blog posts on the Blessed Business podcast, <laugh> don't, they may or may not have some AI components to them, but I've vetted 'em all. It's good. So don't worry about
Speaker 2 01:03:34 It. All right. I want you guys to comment and tell us what you think is AI and what it's not. All right. Exactly.
Speaker 1 01:03:38 Yeah. Get on there and say, was this ar or was this really? So thank you so much and join us again, uh, for more content and have a blessed, blessed day.
