Timothy: What’s up, guys? Welcome back to another episode of the Living the Dream podcast. Today on the show we have Michael Dominguez, who is the author of Armchair Real Estate Millionaire. If you’re sitting there anyway, you might as well build your wealth. That’s the tagline. He is also a realtor and investor. Michael, how are you doing?
Michael: I’m doing really well. I’m looking forward to having this chat.
Timothy: Let’s do it. And we like to jump right in, so if you can start with telling us a little bit more about yourself, what you like to do for fun, that’d be great.
Michael: Yeah. I’m now in my late 50s. I’ve been a realtor and investor for my second life. I started around 42, 43. I reached a point in my life where I really wasn’t moving forward. I was doing the nine to five, doing what everyone told you you’re supposed to do. I get promoted a couple of times, wasn’t getting ahead. And so I decided to become selfemployed, became a real estate agent and quickly started focusing on working with investors. Went and started buying properties myself and I realised the incredible opportunities that came as a result of that. And I made a quest and I accomplished. I bought a property a year for ten straight years. And over the course of a decade, I was able to essentially change my life and start to build that financial independence.
For the last couple of years, I’ve now reached that financial freedom goal. No longer as active as a realtor, no longer as active on a day to day basis as an investor. And I’m just trying to live my best life. I shared with you beforehand. Last year I drove across the country from Chicago to Santa Monica and did a Route 66 drive in my Corvette convertible.
I’ve now been to every major league baseball stadium and so my goal is to have as many once in a lifetime experiences as I can have.
Timothy: There we go. There we go. I love it. Why don’t you tell us which markets you invested in and what properties you focused on to kind of get that one property a year. That cash flows for you.
Michael: Yeah, I live in the Toronto, Canada area. This model can work pretty much anywhere where there’s the potential of adding secondary suites, and that’s really what my focus was. I quickly learned and I realised, Tim, that you’re focused more on buying the bigger buildings and there’s nothing wrong with that, but that just wasn’t my goal. I found that the tenant profile and the amount of labour I was doing on some of my multi units were just simply more than I wanted to take on. So I started focusing on single family homes and then was able to add secondary suites into those units. And in some cases tertiary suites as well. And that’s really the name of the game. It just kept getting these single family homes with secondary suites just outside of the Toronto area in the suburbs. Honestly, the growth that we had in the Toronto area is pretty much unprecedented in North America. We saw some incredible growth and that led to some property value increases. Honestly, the only comparable market I can give you is Austin, Texas. Actually, that had similar type of growth. And so imagine being in the suburbs of Austin, Texas, owning a bunch of homes there as they’ve gone up in value, with each of them having secondary suites and cash flowing.
Timothy: That would be fantastic to own that many properties in the Austin area. Just a quick question for you. Adding secondary and sometimes tertiary suites, are you just buying a really big house and then splitting it up? What’s the process behind that?
Michael: It depends on where you are in North America. If you live in the Midwest, Southwest or the actual west, there’s a good chance that your properties don’t have basements or don’t have quite at the same ability to add secondary suites. Like in California, for example, there just isn’t any basements there. But if you’re in the Chicago area, which I guess is Midwest, most of their 1000 square foot bungalows have 10 square foot basements, and in most cases they’re underutilised apartments or underutilised homes. So instead of renting out the whole house to one person, we were able to divide it literally at level and get a separate entrance into the right, directly into the basement. And that’s how we moved forward. We just simply started getting an upstairs tenant, a downstairs tenant, and got that one cash flow positive for some appreciation in many cases, refinance those properties, and then did it again. And then did it again, and did it again. And that’s pretty much how it grow from there.
Timothy: I love it. Well, let’s jump into your motivation. What really gets you up and keeps you going every day?
Michael: I’ve given that a lot of thought and over the years, and honestly, I was driven by a fear of failure. And I’m not saying it’s right or wrong, but that’s just the way I lived my early life. And I had no business graduating from university. I was a steady CDF students and barely scraped by. But I was just afraid to fail. And I started getting the jobs, the promotions. I met the girl, getting married, doing everything you’re supposed to do. And again, I was really not getting ahead. But when I finally got into real estate, I used my fear of failure to drive me. And I was singularly focused on using 1015 years of time to set myself up. And using the Dave Ramsey quote, if you live like no one else, then one day you’ll be able to live like no one else. And that’s kind of what I did. I was really focused on building my net worth of my cash flow, and then, honestly, I reached a point where I said, Holy crap, I’ve reached my goal. So it was like winning a race in a marathon and then forgetting that there was a finish line.
Timothy: I think a lot of people initially are driven by that fear of failure, and then as they get to the point where my success is kind of safe, they’ll turn around and start to do some more impact focus stuff like the book. So tell us about that.
Michael: Yeah, I certainly have zero intention of making wealth as a result of this book. It’s certainly not a passive income source like so many other things I’ve got in my life. I shouldn’t say that every time anyone buys a book, either an e book, an audio book, or the actual physical book, I make a whopping six to $8. So it’s not like I don’t make anything. But really, the purpose of the book was I had some incredible, incredible mentors in my early days, more than I probably had any right to have. And I had some people that had already reached the rungs of success that I was hoping to achieve, and so they took me under their wing way more than I thought I deserved to have. And I always had this fear when I was younger that the wealthy people were this exclusive club and they would sort of kick you back down if you were trying to move up. And I found that to be exactly the opposite. I had some very successful people giving me some sound, sound advice, and I always promised them and promised myself that I reached a level of financial freedom, that I would pass that on to the next generation.
Timothy: It is a really refreshing thing when you start getting into the success world, studying success literature, whatever it may be, and you start networking with people, and they turn around and they actually want to help you more than your peers, and they have more wisdom to give you than your peers, because birds of a feather are flocked together. So if you’re broke, your peers are probably broke. But I think that’s an amazing thing. So tell us about the content of the book. Is it really just outlining your strategy? Does it go through mindset stuff? Does it go through leveraging debt? Tell us about it.
Michael: All of the above. And I wrote the book not necessarily for the person to buy their 10th or 50th or hundredth property. Although I’m sure that through your podcast or other podcasts that some of these listeners might be listening to on a semi-regular basis, they hear these success stories and applaud the people that now have 1000 units and stuff like that. And it’s a cool success story, but it’s not very repeatable very often. Very few people reach that level of success or even want to hit that level of owning real estate because it really does take up a lot of your time when you’re owning multi-unit buildings. So I wrote the book so that someone could buy their 1st, second and third investment properties. And I quickly found, and I’ll use I’ll go back to that Austin, Texas example. If you’ve got this, I’m going to give you an avatar of a person who’s listening to this podcast. Maybe they own their own home somewhere and let’s use Austin area as an example. They’ve got a little bit of equity in their property and if they’re being honest with themselves, I bet you that their net worth, if they added up all of their net worth, 50% to 75% of their net worth came from the home that they purchased.
So if we’re focusing on that type of person and they say, you know what, here I’m trying to save in my four hundred and one K or RRSP in Canada and they’re really not getting ahead yet. Meanwhile, half to two-thirds of my wealth came from real estate. Maybe I should do more of that stuff. But how do I get started? And that’s really what I wrote the book for, is how to get started in buying quality properties in quality neighbourhoods, attracting quality tenants, and then long term making quality profits. And so I go through a step by step and I explain how to determine what the right type of market is, to find the right type of properties that your tenants that you want to attract, are looking for, and then going into how to leverage your money as best as possible. And I even have an entire chapter talking about millennials and I guess Gen Z by definition and how they can perhaps move forward and move ahead and start to build wealth and using real estate to do so.
Timothy: There we go. I love it. Sounds like the book covers all the bases.
Michael: If somebody is looking to buy that 80 unit apartment building, this isn’t the book necessarily for you. If you’re looking to attract all sorts of joint venture money and looking for millions of dollars, this is to buy that first single family home that can rent out, can see a little bit of cash flow, get moving towards your net worth goals. Obviously, I’m a big believer in properties that have the ability of adding secondary suites and I mentioned the basement. But there’s also people who build lofts above garages. They could build a loft above your current single family home. You can build an extension at the back end of your home and have that. There’s tiny houses you can put in your backyard. There’s a bunch of different choices to get that secondary suite. So it doesn’t necessarily have to be a home with a basement. And we sort of talk about that as well.
Timothy: Here in Austin, they have accessory dwelling units, which is basically a tiny home. It’s a little bit bigger than a tiny home, but in your backyard they do.
Michael: I’ve done research on that and that would be a perfect example, and many of them are like one bedroom apartments and stuff like that. But again, if the single family home plus a onebedroom apartment, if you add up together and not only is it very predictable because you likely have some really good quality tenants and you know that rents coming in, but if the rent exceeds your mortgage, your taxes, your insurance and your incidental costs, then guess what? You’ve got a cash flow property, cash flow generating property with mortgage pay down happening at the same time, you can hold on to that property for ten years and it’s going to make a significant impact on your net worth.
Timothy: I think the best part about real estate is the fact that it’s a game where you buy and you wait and you get wealthy. It’s like there’s not much that has to be done, especially if you set it up with good tenants, set it up with property management. If you don’t even want to be the property management, that will cut into your cash flow, but just run the numbers. I love it. I love the game.
Michael: You’re bang on. This is where you have to or not just you, but the listeners need to make a life decision. The multi units are very exciting and there’s nothing better than taking a picture of the building that you recently purchased and posting it on social media and say, hey, I bought that. And people are, wow, that’s unbelievable. But I can tell you that historically, the tenant profile on these big, huge units, it’s a lot more work. The credit score on some of these tenants is usually a lot less. The income sources on these tenants are typically a lot worse. I would rather own a really good quality property and know darn well on the first of the month I’m going to get paid, like, even during the pandemic myself and virtually all of my clients who bought similar type of properties to what I had. At first, we were sort of measuring to see how many tenants weren’t paying rents, because that was the big controversy that was going on at the beginning of COVID we had none. Like, everybody was still working, everybody was still paying their rents. It was just it was business as normal.
And I could tell you a lot of people that own those multi units had a very different experience. So I weathered that storm and if anything, my property values have surged, my cash flow has surged. Other than the fact that I had to live borrowed in a single family home and didn’t travel as much as I’d like, honestly, the pandemic was pretty uneventful for me.
Timothy: Well, now we’re going to jump into your dreams and goals, and it sounds like you’ve accomplished a good chunk of them, but tell us about your vision for your life and moving forward.
Michael: Yeah, I’m hitting a new chapter in my life, which, again, I’m sure a lot of listeners may be in a very different place to where I am, but maybe this is their aspiration as well. My goal was to have a level of financial freedom by the time I was 55. I had that goal pretty much for 20 some odd years. I don’t know if anyone remembers the TV commercials. There was a commercial years ago with Freedom 55 and that was my quest. It was to be financially free by the time I was 55. And again, it’s one thing to set goals like that, but it’s another thing to go through the day to day effort to sort of accomplish that and to start buying assets that were actually appreciating in value versus versus buying liabilities that were going down in value. I absolutely recommend anybody read a book like Rich Dad, Poor dad to start understanding the concepts of what an asset is. So really what I’m looking to try to do now is I am living a lot of my best life. I have a list of bucket list goals that I want to accomplish and a lot of them are travel related.
My goals are to pass on as much of the knowledge I can to future generations, which and when I say generally, I’m not talking thousands of years or even hundreds of years, but even over the next 1020 years, if I can impact as many young investors as possible and teach them some strategies to move forward. And again, a success story doesn’t have to be someone who owns 100 properties. You can own as little as two or three properties and you’ve set yourself up for retirement in a way that few others can do. I talk about this one couple that have a young child, and at first they were freaking out over the fact that they had all these university bills in 17 years and how are they going to afford this, how are they going to afford that? And then he just realised, oh, I can just refinance one of the properties I own and I can basically pay for my child’s education. Yes, you can. And so it’s just teaching people to live a more financially free life is really what I’d like to accomplish and at the same time, finding ways to enhance my cash flow on a regular basis.
Timothy: I love it. And what are some ways you’re looking at to enhance cash flow?
Michael: Well, I’m doing private mortgages and I took again, in Canada it’s called an RSP. In the States it’s called the could self direct it. And I think a Roth 401K is what they call it in the States. Well, anyway, I was able to selfdirect and so I took my money out of equities, which was honestly a bit of a lottery. Like here I could buy Apple stock and I can go up 30, $40,000 in a day, but then they can also lose 40,000 in a day. And I didn’t like that level of volatility. So I do private lending. Obviously my real estate, I’m getting ongoing cash flow from that. My primary business, Doors to wealth, which is my real estate team. I’ve now sold most of that business and I’m getting residuals from there. And actually just this morning I took a meeting with somebody. I’m potentially getting involved in owning a small percentage of a gym and I’m looking at getting into venture capitalism for the first time. So maybe you’re talking to a future Kevin O’Leary from the Dragons then. Who the hell knows?
Timothy: I was going to ask if you had thought about buying businesses.
Michael: Yeah, it’s actually my personal trainer who’s forming the gym and so I’m going to be a financial assistant, assuming that the deal goes through the financial assistance as well as a mentor for some of these guys as they’re growing their business. And because again, a lot of these people that are starting businesses out, they don’t know what they don’t know. And if I can give them a little bit of guidance along the way. Just in our hour and a half breakfast meeting, I gave them probably a page and a half of tips and that’s kind of cool. I like the idea of being able to help out others and get them reaching their goals.
Timothy: If there were one or two people that you can meet right now and this could be a specific person or a type of person, and they’d really help you take the next step towards these dreams and goals, who would they be and how would they help you?
Michael: To reach my goals? I love it when you give me these tough questions, but then I have to think about them though. I’m a huge follower. These are more recent people that are still alive today. There are a number of people that I follow as mentors that are no longer with us. So if we’re going to say people that have recently died when I say recently, I’m talking 50 years. There’s a philosopher by the name of Jim Rohn, and I so much respect if you’ve never listened to Jim Rohn speak, stop listening to podcasts. Sorry. Stop listening to podcasts and listen to a Jim Roan book. He is so much he is so good, and it’s so motivational, inspirational. So that’s somebody who I would like to meet for sure, and he would certainly help me get in the right path, I would think. Zig Ziggler is another gentleman who has a lot of really good things to say of people who are live today. I’ve actually been to Omaha, Nebraska, and attended a Berkshire Hathaway event. But to be actually having a one on one conversation with Warren Buffett, and that would be an incredible experience as well, because he is such a philosophical genius that he sees things that others just haven’t seen.
Michael: He’s got the big picture approach that I’ll never have, and that’s somebody I really respect the heck out of as well for a couple of names.
Timothy: What’s the most important one or two things that everyday people can do to help you accomplish your dreams and goals? So you meet Sally at the grocery store. And Sally is like, Michael, how can I help you out? What would you tell her?
Michael: Can you help me out? Versus how can I help her out? Or what were the tips for, Sally? Okay, well, honestly, this sounds really cocky, but I don’t know if there’s necessarily much that Sally could do at this point. Years ago, there were a lot of things that she could have done. But Sally, I reached that financial goal number now, and I don’t necessarily need her to reach her goal. I guess, in hindsight, if she was being honest with herself. And honestly, I’d love to be able to sit down and have a chat with Sally. I want her to buy my book and understand the concepts of the book. But, yeah, I would love to have a conversation with her and help her out. And by definition, or by extension, that’s one of my goals is to help out as many people as possible. A lot of sallies out there that were like, I got to the point. Let’s go back to the Austin, Texas example. Austin is a beautiful city. It’s a big city. But I would not be an investor in Austin proper. That’s not where I’d be investing. I’d be investing in some of the suburbs, and maybe within the suburbs, I might even find one or two pockets where it’s got the right tenant profile potential.
It’s got the right amount of employment. It’s a growing employment area, this little suburb. It’s got lots of shopping. It’s just a nice community, good parks. And you say, Boy, would I like to own three or five properties in that area, because that’s where I want to invest. And so I had a few sallies out there that were going walking their dog on a regular basis and all of a sudden they’d see things. Like, all of a sudden one property is having a major cleanup. They’ve got their dump in, ready to go and they’re throwing all kinds of crap out. Well, Sally would sometimes give me a lead and tell me about a property that was going through a major renovation. I actually would sometimes knock on the door, not necessarily as a realtor, but as an investor, and sometimes Grandma and Grandpa. They’ve recently passed away. The family is now cleaning up and if I can offer them at or near market value and say, you know what, I’ll take the rest of this crap, you don’t have to throw this out, I’ll just buy it from you as is, and then I’ll do the renovation.
It’s a win win for myself and the family. I’ve had some Sallie’s in the past that have given me some incredible leads. I’ve paid her a nice fee for finding that property for me if I can close on a deal, and it’s got me a lot closer to my financial goals.
Timothy: Now we’re going to jump to our thriving three. First question is, what is your favourite book, movie or podcast? Pick one.
Michael: Yes. Well, the book I’m going to I sort of alluded to it already, but Rich Dad, Poor dad was the single book that really impacted my life. It’s not like maybe nothing too revolutionary, but just putting it in perspective that I could really understand. Robert Kiyosaki is not an author, and he’s often admitted this, that he’s not an author, he’s just a business guy that wrote a book like me. And so if you critique me and say, oh, that wasn’t really well written, that’s not my specialty, although I think it was pretty well written. But it is an impactful book and that has just understanding the concept of what an asset is and what a liability, that was the most impactful book that started getting me on my journey.
Timothy: Absolutely. It’s a foundational book for a lot of entrepreneurs, specifically real estate investors. What is one way you like to take care of yourself?
Michael: Actually a real challenge that I’ve been faced with, especially during COVID. I was really in pretty good physical health at that time and I think we all sort of gained COVID 20, COVID £25. And so I’ve been really trying to focus on actually, I had my personal trainer coming to my house now on a regular basis, I believe that not a point in my life where I want to have as much I’m going to use the term insurance as possible. So I’m going and having physicals done on an annual basis, because we’ve seen so many really successful, wealthy people, all of a sudden end up with stage four cancers and die. And what happened to stages one, two, and three? I’d like to know what’s going on with my body and honestly so I could live my best life. And in my mindset, I’ve reached a level of financial freedom. I want to extend my years of active years as long as possible. I’m treating it as if I’ve got five years of active living life, and I’d like those five years to extend as long as possible.
I don’t want to be saying, one day in 25 years, I’m going to go on a trip to Budapest. No, I want to make that happen sooner rather than later. I just want to live my best life, and I need to be physically fit and physically healthy in order to be able to do that.
Timothy: I love it. I love it. And what is one action step you can take right now or continue to take if you’re already doing it, too? Get that one on one conversation with Warren Buffett.
Michael: Well, I guess I can continue buying Berkshire halfway stocks. That would be one thing I can do if all of a sudden I become a primary shareholder. But no, in a more logical way, it’s funny. That has been my goal for a long time, is to have a conversation with him. And honestly, it’s no longer as much of a goal as it used to be. I’ve read so much of his material and listened to so many of his speeches that I feel like I’ve already had conversation with him in the past. He can be a mentor of yours without ever having met him. You just read all of his stuff. And the same is true with Jim Rohn. So do I need to necessarily meet him? No, I don’t. If I had the opportunity, I would love to do it. And what would I be having to do? I don’t know. Honestly. Buy one of his lunches and make another couple of hundred thousand so I can buy a lunch. I guess that would be one of the only ways I’d be able to meet him, but it’s not a great use of my dollars.
If I were to raise a couple of hundred thousand, I’d rather buy a bungalow and have a conversation with them. So I guess in hindsight, I don’t need to accomplish that goal. I’ve got a lot of other goals I want to accomplish.
Timothy: What is one limiting belief that continues to pop up in your life?
Michael: Limiting belief continues to pop up. Let me think about that. So. I would say that, you know what? I’ve always had an imposter mentality in my life and that I really don’t deserve to have what I’ve got right now. I became a successful realtor, but if they only knew that I didn’t know what I was talking about, that they would call me out and find me on a fraud. I’m a fake. And then sometimes you have to sort of get beyond that and realise that you have what it takes. And if whether that’s seeking out joint venture money or trying to grow your business, you have a sense of knowledge and success that few people have. And it took me years to realise that I’m a realtor and I could see things when I go into a property and ways of enhancing the profitability of that property and I can do it often within minutes. And I kind of assumed that everyone else had that same knowledge. And so, again, I was an impostor. But as I grew in my success and grew in my confidence, I realised that, no, I had some unique skill sets and people wanted to connect with me and wanted to partner with me and move forward.
So it has been a limiting belief that I’m an imposter, but you have to fight through it. And honestly, some of the most expensive or the heaviest equipment you ever have is off on your cell phone. You don’t want to pick that sucker up because I don’t want to call this person, I don’t want to reach out to this person because they’re going to think I’m an idiot, they’re going to think I’m this and that. But once you actually call them and talk to them, they’re going to want to hear from you because they have the same goals that you likely have. They’re trying to build financial freedom themselves and if you can find ways of helping them out, then you’ll be able to get everything you want as well.
Timothy: So we talked a little bit about the imposter mentality. A lot of people have it. Where do you think it comes from for you?
Michael: Jesus. Now we’re diving into psychological backgrounds and stuff like that. Honestly, you don’t have the answer.
Timothy: We can move on.
Michael: I don’t know. Honestly, a lot of this stuff happens from when you’re a kid and you’re a little overweight and you have pimples and you’re afraid to reach out to girls and you get told that you’re not good enough. You hear this when you’re a kid. And whether it’s teachers or parents, I was that steady CD student of people. Teachers were always telling me that maybe you should get into a trade or something like that, because I don’t think you have what it takes and maybe they didn’t say it quite like that. They thought they were being helpful, maybe. But honestly, you get all this negative influence in your life, it’s inevitable. And I can’t speak for what your background is. I grew up in a suburban neighbourhood that was middle class and I know people that have come from really crappy backgrounds and had incredible success. But you have to be able to look beyond, not listen to the noise and move forward, because you know that you’re in a better place. And don’t let those distractors or detractors start to distract you and get you off of your goals, because, again, at the end of the day, you could be living an incredible life.
We have a high school reunion coming up. It actually got postponed because of COVID it’s coming back up next year. I am so looking forward to beating all these these losers. I was 17 years of age and, you know, now they’re probably on their third divorce and in their 27th job and I’ll show up in my Corvette convertible and maybe there’s a little bit of that, but honestly, that’s where it sort of arrived for me. I can’t speak for everyone else.
Timothy: Last question about limiting beliefs. What actions do you think you still have that reinforced that belief? And what emotions do you think you still have that reinforce it?
Michael: I really do my best to look beyond that. Even as recently as today, when I was having that conversation about the gym, my first gut feeling was, why do you want to partner with me? Because I’ve never run a gym. I’m overweight, I’ve run businesses, but I’ve never run a gym. Why would they want to partner with me? And then I said, let’s get beyond that. I’m successful. Damn. So you have to just sort of push through it. And one thing I do, and I don’t have it here with me, unfortunately, but not only, I write my goals down on a regular basis and I’ve got them actually on my phone and I look down at them on a regular basis, because sometimes that’s really important, is to sort of reinforce what your goals are. And I also put down on a daily and weekly basis what my objectives are, because sometimes so many times on a day to day basis, you can get so distracted and all of a sudden you’re watching what was it you said in your podcast? You’re watching on Netflix, you’re watching what was the show with Meghan Markle or whatever you were watching?
Suits. Yeah. You start getting into season two, 3427 of Suits, and you’re thinking, what the hell am I doing here? And so by writing down your goals before you go to bed, you write your goals out for the next day, the next week. And I’m a physical writer down. I used to put it on my phone and it’s so easy to dismiss it when it’s on your phone. But if you’re physically writing it out every day, that works for me. Maybe I’m a little older and I would cross it out when I accomplished it. I didn’t do it. I’d rewrite it the next day and rewrite it after that until I finally said, oh, shit, I just don’t want to rewrite it again. Let me just do it. And before you know it, you’ve accomplished a lot of goals and break them down step by step, and you can really do a lot.
Timothy: We have to ask about the abundant version of that belief. So what things do you tell yourself? You’ve kind of alluded to it already. Like, you write down your goals on a daily and weekly basis, but what are the things that you say to yourself in your head or out loud when those limiting beliefs hit and you want to reorient yourself?
Michael: Yeah, I had a goal of financial freedom, and when I hit that goal, I needed to convince myself over and over. And I still to this day, have to convince myself on a regular basis that I’m doing okay. And so how I do that, and this is something I recommend for anyone anyway, is doing a net worth analysis of where you’re at right now, a timestamp of where you’re at today. And again, no one else is going to look at this. You might be embarrassed by putting down every asset you own, every liability you’ve got, your credit card balance as of today, what’s in your bank account today, when you create that network, whether it’s a dollar 100,000, negative 100,000, it doesn’t matter. It could be a million dollars. The goal is to do the list today and then do it again in six months or three months or a year. And as long as that number is progressing in the right direction, then you’re moving forward. You’re making some real difference by me writing down my net worth. And then the second goal I was doing was how much ongoing cash flow am I getting?
Because those were my two goals, was net worth and cash flow. And when I started to hit each of those financial numbers and I made it, I felt really good about that. But being able to convince yourself and your spouse that you’ve reached those financial goals when meanwhile, the last 50 some odd years of our life, we were trying to amass wealth. Now it’s just a matter of finding ways of just maintaining your wealth and living your best life. So how I have to get around that is instead of seeking out that next deal, seeking out that next lead, that can lead to another sale of property, now I’m just simply reminding myself, I’ve hit my goals, I’ve hit my numbers. And so anything I do beyond that is a bonus. And honestly, if you had a thing to do, then you might think like, you think, well, what do you care about? You already reached it. But you just need to if you’ve been a driven person for so many years to all of a sudden slowdown is really tough.
Timothy: Oh, yeah, no, I feel that. Well, awesome. We got one last question for you. So there’s a common saying that you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make a drink. I actually found out from Dr. Alan, like, who is a guest on the show, that you can make a drink, you just have to salt its oats.
Now, I want you to think of a person who has a very fixed mindset. They’re not willing to accept help and they’re not willing to accept change. How can we, you and I, create an environment to salt their oats and help them change their life?
Michael: Wow. There’s a number of people that fit that profile. And the first thing that I want to state is, which is, again, it’s different than what your question was. But I say this myself a lot because I can’t want your success more than you want it for yourself. And so there’s a lot of horses out there, and if there are some horses that you lead to water and then they don’t drink, there’s a lot more horses out there in the past year. Let’s continue with that analogy and find another horse. Like, you know, whether that’s seeking out someone to be a joint. You can show them the best possible scenario that will change their life. And if they say no, then guess what? That was not a worth. That was not a worthless exercise for you. You’ve now put together this package that next person is going to want it or maybe the person after that. So look for more horses. But if you’ve got someone in your life and there are people in my life that friends and my son, for example, where he’s just not moving forward to the level that I think he should, that he’s capable of doing, and all you can do is present him with the options.
And if he wants to have a level of success or your friends want to have that level of success, you can show them everything they want. But if they are still afraid to take action, afraid to move forward, afraid to fail, by definition, they’ve already failed. And you actually alluded to this at the very beginning, you were saying a lot of the circle that you’re hanging around with, or that many people are hanging around with are in the same financial position as you are. I’m not saying dump your friends. I’m saying expand your circle of people and start hanging around with people that you don’t have to force to walk to. You have to salt their oats. You can simply show them what they have and they’re going to be going off to those Oats like crazy, so going up that water like crazy. That’s my belief, anyway.
Timothy: Yeah, for sure. Or dump your friends if they’re losers.
Michael: Yeah. Well, I don’t want to ever say dump your friends, but I can tell you I hang around with a lot of different people today that I never hung around with before, a different circle of people. But at the same time, I still like, bringing my worlds together and introducing different people to different because they’re still important people in my life. I just don’t necessarily talk finances with them and they realise that I’m not a very different they’re still working their nine to five job and living a good life, but I’m living a very different lifestyle than they are. I’m travelling the world and they’re seeing what I’m doing on Facebook, and meanwhile, in many cases, they’re having financial challenges. So I haven’t ended my friendship with them, but it’s just gone into a different direction.
Timothy: Yeah, absolutely. Well, there we go, Michael. That’s all we got for you.
Michael: Yeah. And so I’m going to leave off with one thing, if I could, is that I wrote the book. Not necessarily to make any money or anything like that, but I really feel positive over the fact that it’s a well written book. In my mind. I hired an incredible voice actor who’s actually on IMDb. He’s got some success from that standpoint, and it’s a wellwritten or it’s a well done audiobook. So even if you’re the podcast kind of person, you haven’t picked up an actual written book in six years, then the audiobook could be for you. And I really think it will have some impact. So if you can help me reach one of my goals, and that’s to get 100 reviews on Amazon on my book, I don’t know why I picked that number. It’s a nice round number. So if you like what you read, by all means, pick up the book on Amazon, it’s right there and tell me what you think.
Timothy: There we go. Well, if you guys are listening to this and you love what Michael had to say, make sure to go cheque out his book, review it and then buy a copy for a friend, as we always ask. Go ahead and shoot this podcast over to one to three people you know need to hear this message. All the ways to contact Michael will be down the show notes. And on that note, we’re out.
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