Wall Street's Secret that Keeps You Poor

So today we have Ryan d Lee on our show. Yeah. Yeah, Well he partnered with an old, g old school guy, you know, Robert Allen. A lot of people like in my age, you know, we're reading Robin Allen books, Robert Allen books, so you know, for years and years and years. But he's in the Kiyosaki era, you know. And so he partnered with this guy and retire in ten years or less. So it's a very interesting. He's kind of a young guy and quite a corporate job and was able to do that by just buying seventeen houses. But he also explained, you know, why he chose to take his money out of Wall Street and put it onto Main Street. And so I thought that was really interesting and he gives some good first steps in order to learn about this and do it. Yeah, and it's it was great you were able to talk about some of your stories too, because you kind of went through a similar path. Yeah, we did. We went through you know, we both kind of accidentally fell into real estate. It was neither of our decisions really, Yeah, but. Then now you're crushing it. So anyway, it's a great interview. I'm glad that we had them on. Ryan thanks for being on the show today. You're on the show coming off of the big announcement Trump just made about implementing the tariffs on China. I just kind of wanted to get your thoughts on that or how you're feeling about that. Yeah, you know what, I love that, And Danielle, I'm grateful to be here with you guys today. You know, here's my here's my thought process. There are so many things going on in our world today, so much chaos all around us, and I think for me, I've always tried to find the simplest path to achieve my financial objectives. Right, if my financial objectives are always based on who's in the Oval Office, what tariffs, what tax strategies, what you know, what's going on, then my my, I'm constantly reactive. I'm constantly on the defense rather than the offense. And so although tariff, you know, Trump's gonna increase tariffs on China, that might you know, have some filter and cost us although we haven't really seen it yet. Right, all of these economic advisors were saying our cost of living was gonna double and triple. I think money printing is the real cost of right, you know, living going up? But for me, more than anything, I've just tried to simplify finances down to how do I own assets that are always in always in demand, that are always going up in value, and no matter who's in the Oval office, I just get wealthy because I understand thet the rules of the game of money. So Alvo, Trump's doing what he's doing, and he'll continue to do what he's doing. I think it's going to impact people that are in a volatile, you know, volatile financial plans, but those who own assets kind of like you guys talk about all the time, real assets that are always in demand. It's just steady Eddy, right. I mean there's hiccups along the way, but over the long run, you're always getting wealthy. Yeah, hey, Ryan, good to see you again. I also Ken, I'd love to note, like, you just launched this great book, you know, how to retire in ten years or less? Uh, you know, let's let's talk about that the success. You know why you wrote it because I think it's it's right in line with the way Danil and I think, you know, buy assets that that somebody else pays off and use the tax benefits. Essentially, I don't want to minimize what you have in the book. But let's talk a little bit about that. Yeah, that's honestly exactly what's in the book. I mean, it's the simplest thing. Ever, it's the most boring path to achieving financial freedom, Danil, I think it's kind of how you got into the game of real estate, you know. But for me, I just I had a very traditional mindset around money. And you know when I got my first when I graduated college. I'll never forget that day. Ken. I know you kind of talked back and forth sometimes about being the old guy when you're on the podcast. I got a paycheck in an envelope back on my first paycheck out of college, and I remember I put that thing in my back pocket. It was kind of like this symbol of success for me that I had arrived at a college degree at a professional job. I actually had to move down to Tucson to take the job. And I remember when I opened the check at the end of the day, I had to flip that check over a couple times because I thought there had to be a mistake, right, There was way less money in there than I thought should be in there. And I remember this little voice just kind of going off in the back of my head that I should just quit now. I didn't want to live in Tucson. I didn't want to work for my boss named Rob. I didn't want to be in the career I was in. It was just kind of the way that everything fell into place for me, and I thought to myself, you know what, I'm just gonna climb the corporate ladder. I'm gonna work as hard as I can, save as much as I can. And my arbitrary, vague goal at the time was retire early. That was what I wanted to do. I just wanted to retire early, and all the social conditioning for me kicking in that moment, right, I decided to max fund my four one K. Once I did that, I got my company sponsored match. Once I did that, I open up a separate brokerage account. I was doing all the things that I was told to do, and I'll be honest with you, Ken, in the beginning, I thought it was working, right, I thought it was working. And then you know, two thousand and five, two thousand and six, two thousand and seven, I was making money. And I remember when my networth crested about one hundred K. I thought, man, I'm rich. I didn't know what that meant. But I had one hundred thousand dollars in net Worth and all of those various accounts, and then you guys know how the game went Right In two thousand and eight, everything dropped like a rock, And for me, at first, I thought I had done something wrong. Right. I mean, as I watched my accounts go down and down and down, and I didn't know why, and there were no answers, I thought it was me. I just picked the wrong fund, right, But I had I had the opportunity. I was only four years out of college when two thousand and eight happened, and I was looking into a window in future, to my future because all my coworkers, right, all the people I was kind of modeling my life after my career after I remember their views, their ideas, their hope for retirement. I watched it all fade away in front of their eyes, and for the first time, I learned a couple of really powerful lessons. Number One, I had no control, zero control. And if I had no control, how could I ever plan on retiring early? I'm a control guy, right, I want to control my money, so I can control my outcomes within a range of expectations. But number two, I realized I was playing the same game all of those guys were playing, but I was expecting a different result. That is the definition of insanity. And that was my wake up call that maybe maybe there was something difference. And you know, just as you did, I read. I picked up, you know, a book that previous to this moment in time, sounded crazy to me. I picked up that little purple book, Rich Dadpoor Dad. And you know, the first time I picked it up, this was back when I was first out of college, and he said savers are losers and that, honestly, I'm like that, this this is crazy. I'm gonna save, I'm gonna work hard, save hard, I'm gonna retire early. But now I was open, and you know, in two thousand and eight, when I picked up his book, I understood what he meant when he said savers and losers because I was quite literally losing the game of finance. And I had to figure out why. That's a really really great story. I think it's funny, but I don't want to gloss over this because I think what happens is we all kind of come out of college with this illusion, right, and we're not really taught about money. I know, Danil, you had an extremely similar situation. Maybe you should talk about that because you had a similar epiphany. Different industry, but very similar. Yeah. So, you know, I bartended all through college, and you know, I was making I mean back then, like four or five six hundred dollars cash a week. Plus you got some indie discriminatory little paycheck too on top of that, right, But I was only working like twenty hours, you know, and it was a fun job. But I was excited because I was going to be a school teacher and I was going to make thirty thousand dollars a year. So to me, I'm like, that's plenty of money. You know, I didn't really other than just very minor budgeting, I didn't really understand money and I definitely didn't understand text. So when I got my first paycheck, kind of the same thing happened, where I'm like, wait a minute, this check is actually less than you know it was when I was bartending, you know, I mean, it really wasn't that that different. And I'm working forty hours a week and I have way. More bills than I had in college, and so I was broke, and you know, and then I had to go get a second job, and then I had to get a third job, you know, and three jobs to just get by, you know, for a you know, a not great paying career. So I was a little opposite of you where I didn't have any money to stock away because I was making thirty thousand dollars. But at the same time, I was left disappointed because because I thought I was just going to be a teacher, get summers off. Knew I wasn't going to be rich, but I would be comfortable in my mind. And here I am sharing a not great apartment in a not great area with another girl in working three jobs just to make it happen. I remember that you tell me the story though you were you went to a meeting with I think it was a principal, and you were a bunch of the teachers, and the principal said something like, you know, like if you guys do the right thing, you know, ten years from now, you you could be making over forty. Yeah, he was taking like forty seven and he's like, you know, you just got to get tenure or then you have to get your masters, and in my head, I'm like, I looked in the Mattress program. It was like I think at the time, fifty grand, and I'm like, oh my god, I don't know if that seems worth it. At least I had the financial sense to know that, you know, like another fifty grand to make another you know, fifteen thousand dollars a year. Arizona pays teachers and principals a couple but right before tax and so anyways, you know, I just went in my mind, I was like, I can't afford another student loan payment, you know, on top of the one that I was already paying. So it was one of those things where it is that epiphany because you think you're done, Like you think, Okay, I finished college, I have my career, and here we go. It's going to be nice and easy, you know, from here on out. And then you know, we were shocked for different things, but it was still shocking totally. I agree one hundred percent on that. I mean, and you know side don't number one. Man, It's no wonder we're so dependent as a society today. I mean, we pay our teachers nothing and then we expect them to turn around and train our kids, educate our kids. So we could take that whole conversation in a whole different rabble hole, for sure. Well, for I'll tell you to your point, daniel I asked her, I don't know how many people did you have going through your education program at Kent State? They had like twenty years. Oh yeah, my cohort, there was yeah, twenty five of us. So five, So I asked her, I go, how many? By the way, I mean, I would if Danil could teach, she would be incredible, right, But she left because of the pay And so I said, you know how many of those people are still teachers? Remember what you said? I mean, I think it's like two or three. Out of twenty five. So so that you know that should tell you something. And so a lot of times I think people probably hear this and they'll say, well, they need to pay teachers more. That is the most common response. And while I cannot disagree with that, I think it's the trap we're trying to talk about here, the trap that we all fall into when we like you, when you open your paycheck or Danielle opened her paycheck and she's like, there's no possible way I could live on this and then all of a sudden, you know, it's a little depressing, right like you you kind of mentioned that, you said, I don't want to be in Tucson. This is not where, this is not what I thought I was going to be in the middle. Of right one hundred percent. And you know that that was my first wake up call in two thousand and eights. And I'm so grateful for it because it taught me the one thing that I never had up to this point. I had zero financial education. I had no idea why the market dropped, and I had no idea what to do to correct it. And the more I learned, you know, as I started picking up books like Rich Dad, Poor Dad, you know, it taught me that the number one thing that Americans that people need is money is just a tool. It'll take us wherever we want to be, you know, wherever we want to go, but it will never replace me, you as the driver. And so I went on a veracious, just a voracious reading seminars podcast. I just had to figure out this game of money because what I knew at the moment, I couldn't put my finger on it. But now that I know, in hindsight, money is really code for time, right, I'm trading my time to get money. I'm trying to save up enough money to buy my time back. And if that goes on long enough, Right, if I follow that path for ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty forty years and it didn't work, I've traded my life for a game that I had no really no ability to win. And so that like set me on a path. And you know, when I read Robert Kiyosaki's book, it gave me a new paradigm, a new perspective, but I don't know what to do with it. And so a couple of months later, I picked up the book that was really my roadmap to start implementing the mindsets that rich Dad Pordad gave me. It was Creating Wealth by Robert Allen. And he's probably, just like you can, one of the I call him the og, right, he's one of the originals back in the real estate game. And his little book, Creating Wealth, it gave a playbook. He gave a playbook that was so simple that me, with my lack of financial education, I could see myself implementing. And he said it was the subtitle of his book that caught my attention and said you could retire in ten years. Right here, I am trying to figure out how to retire early. That wasn't working. Robert ki Yosaki gave me a new paradigm, and Robert Allen gave me a playbook to say, hey, if you bought two single family homes per year, that's it, just too you could retire within ten years. And now it seemed doable enough to me that I started on the path. Now I learned a ton of lessons that have come out in this updated book, but I realized that real estate was a wealth amplifier. It was something that I had far more control over, and it gave me access, you know, to really the most powerful financial tool of all. It's leverage, right, and without leverage, without real estate, without assets that provide leverage, you're in a forty year game. With leverage, you can shrink your timelines and do something that takes most other people forty years with their fingers crossed, you could do it in ten years or less. And so that's how I got into real estate, and within four years about seventeen single family homes. I still own some of them right down in your neck of the woods. I own properties in Phoenix, Arizona. I bought after the dip out there. They've been phenomenal assets. But with seventeen properties, four years later, I quit my six figure job. And you know, we can talk more about how I did that and what that felt like and all of that, but that was the framework for me. It was single family homes, simple boring, buy and hold single family homes. And I think the other thing Ryan is before we jump off of this, there's an allusion of control when you're an employee, right and and that a lot of people they believe that they're in control. And and in other words, because of that paycheck, you know, and we all have that beat into our head. You know, work hard, you know, uh, you know, get work hard, get a paycheck, you know, and and buy stuff essentially. But but at the end of the day, what you did was you jumped out of the illusion of control and you actually took control of your money. Because the one thing we all know is, no matter who you're working for, no matter how good you are. Obviously, if you're good, you're probably gonna stay there. But if the employer has a hiccup, you could be in trouble totally. So, so the control is in my opinion and illusion because when you jump out and you start getting in, you know, I always call it you go from from the bay into the ocean. You know, when you have a job, you're in the bay. When when you go outside of that into you know what Kiyosaki would call the fast track, let's say, then you're now actually taking control and you actually, in my opinion, have the most control because right now, like you, Danil, me, you know, we're doing this to help educate and we're having fun. We're you know, obviously we're entrepreneurial. We're buying more stuff, we're writing books, we're just having a blast. But there Danil has no real financial stress because it's covered with her passive income totally, right, like just like you, like just like me, right you know, so there there's there's something that's magical when you have a lot of passive income coming in to cover all of your bills or your entire family. Uh, it's just it's just goes away. I do I do have a question, you know, I know people were listening and you know you had said buying two homes a year, and you bought seventeen homes. I know the pushback is going. To be you bought those very inexpensively, and things are very different now with the prices of homes being so high, So how would you push back on that? Yeah, it's a great it's a great question. Here's what I'll tell you. I had no money. I mean how that's the best part of leverage within real estate is there's all kinds of ways to do real estate. So two ways, here's how I did it. All my money was trapped still in my four one K like I couldn't take that money out. Now, I did take money out of my brokerage account of stop contributing to that, and that allowed me to buy a couple of homes. But I wasn't making big bucks. I was only a couple of years out of college, right, And so the way I got going really are two ways. Number One, I wanted financial freedom. I had a desire that and I think Kiyosaki talks about this, but any entrepreneur has to solve this problem. It's not how like it's it's if you can't do it, it's how can I actually do it? It's not I don't have enough money. So therefore I have to wait. It's getting more creative, getting more resourceful. And so for me, two things Happenednumber One, I went into partnership. Right, I studied voraciously. I found out all of the ways I could gain access to dills. And I went into a partnership with my brother. He had money, I had hustle, and so we bought all of the properties that we bought in Arizona. I bought using his money, my credit, my hustle. The second thing that I started doing is again a form of leverage, and I did this in two different ways. I got into real estate actively. I flipped three properties, and I'll be honest with through. The first property I flipped, I'll just give it straight up, it was dumb luck. I mean, you know, I made some money and I walked around with my chest all puffed out. I'm a real estate investor. Right. The second house, I broke even. On the third house, I lost money. And so I realized, Man, I don't really want to wake up and flip houses. I'm not really that good. I can't tell you know the difference between a white wall and a you know, a blue wall. I mean, for me, that's like it just makes no difference to me. And so, you know, I stopped flipping houses after that. But the second thing I did is I actually started a side hustle once I knew how to make money and my whole goal, and then, even though I didn't have words to define it, I wanted to convert my fake dollars that I didn't really have control over. You know, just like you said, Ken, they were laying people off left and right after two thousand and eight, companies were tightening their belts and I'm looking around me and now all my coworkers are losing their job and I'm picking up their responsibility. So I wanted to convert those dollars I didn't have control over into assets that I did, And so I started a couple side hustles and I found ways to make more money. Kind of like you de Niel, you know, I was willing to sacrifice, I was willing to grind, I was willing to work a couple jobs. I just wanted to turn dollars into assets. And the cool part about it is, once I started seeing that cash flow stacking up, it started to make sense to me, like if one house can pay a car payment, then five more houses can pay a mortgage. And if five more houses pay a mortgage, then I need three more on top of that to cover my food. And I just started measuring every decision I was making with how do I buy assets that generate cash flow to cover the expenses that right now are being covered by my active employment. That was how I started playing the game. And you know, I'll never forget when I actually quit my job. I didn't actually intend to quit. I've been buying houses for four years, had seventeen properties, and now I'm living in a different states, you know. I mean, my corporate job kept me moving all over the place and my boss, Rob showed up. Now I knew that was a problem because Rob only showed up when one of two things were going on, like I was in trouble or he was going to have me take on more responsibility. And so I'll never forget that day I walk out of my office, there was Rob. Rob walks me back into my own office and he sits in my chair at my desk, and I'm sitting across from my desk because Rob's telling me about this quasi promotion that he's gonna give me. But they just closed two more territory. They just fired two managers, and I'm going to take over two more territories I owned Denver. That's the where I'm living now. Now I have to travel to Wyoming. I have to travel to South Dakota. And without going into some backstory, I had made a commitment to my family a couple of years back. I'm done traveling. I had some family issues that, you know, put me in a precarious spot, and so here Rob is telling me, in order to keep my job, I got to go back out on the road. And I'll never forget that moment because it did feel like kind of that Charlie Brown moment. He was talking, you know, but it sounded like wah wah wah in the background, and I was just adding up my cash flow over and over and over again. I'd never actually stopped to do it at that point, and without meaning to, without intending to, I told Rob I quit right and I'll never forget when those words came out of my mouth, I wanted to pull them out of the air and pop them back in my mind. I didn't mean to quit that day, but as soon as I did it, as soon as I got over the shock that I just told Rob I quit, A weight fell off my shoulders. Now, when I quit, I couldn't replace my lifestyle. I couldn't travel around the world. But I had enough cashal coming in that I knew I could keep the lights on. I know I could keep food on the table. And it opened up a doorway of possibility for me that it was probably always there, I just couldn't see it. But with enough cashal coming in to cover my basic needs, like, I quit that job and it started everything for me. And that really solidified the points of when I own assets that generate monthly income, I have more options. And I really believe that's the greatest intrinsic value that money can provide, is just more control over your time and more options with what you do with that time. What was Rob's next move? It was so funny. He was taking so off guard. He tried to offer me more money. But I should tell you whose real nets move was super funny. He tried to offer me more money. But as soon as I said I quit, man, it felt like I was free. I'd never felt that, not since before college. I'd never felt as free as I did in that moment. But I still had one important thing I had to do. I went into the office that day with the intention of going to work and earning my paycheck, and here I am now unemployed. I had to go out in the parking lot and call my wife, right, and I call it my wife. And this is how you know you're married to someone. Amazing. I called her up and I said, hey, hey, Beth, I just quit. There's a little bit of silence on the other end of the phone, and then she respun back with the best line ever. Man. I laugh every time I say. She said, Ryan, it's about damn time. And that started our entire adventure of what we're doing today. But that opened up a really massive possibility for me. I'm glad you told that story because I think a lot of people are in various stages of what we just explained, right, And it appears risky, right, But to your point, when you when you follow the system and then you got to that seventeen houses, you actually had the leverage, right. So it's almost like getting out of a of a of a relationship that you're trapped in, right, And you were able to do that, And congratulations, that's a great story. Back to the sweat equity piece, because I think, you know, even myself, it took me a long time to wrap my head around this because Ken always says, you know, you don't need any money to buy real estate, and I remember for a long time hearing that and not fully believing it. But it is true, because there's people that have a lot of money and they don't have time or they don't want to invest their time into, you know, real estate. And then there's people that will dive into real estate and have all the time in the world, but they don't have any money. And when the two of those people meet, that can be amazing. And you had your brother to help do it, and it was a win win situation. So I always like to harp on that because I know a lot of people don't believe that. Yeah, you know, I really think there's four keys to a deal, right, And I talk about this all the time. In order for a transaction to happen, you know, you need the actual transaction. Somebody's got to go find the deal right, and you generally you don't find those on the MLS. Right. You have to kind of have a little bit of financial iQue, some connections that you developed over time to gain access to these deals. Then there's the expertise to make the deal jump off a spreadsheet and actually work in reality. So there's the deal in the expertise, then there's the capital in the credits. And if I try to do real estate by myself, at some point, I'm going to run out of one of or all four of those things. And this is why real estate's such a great leverage. Can I told you this when we did our last video for for my sum at a couple of weeks ago. You know, you've been paying me for years. You've been paying me for years because I invested in one of your syndications, Tucson eight, and you had the deal, you had the expertise. I had the capital at that time, and I didn't have the deals with the expertise, and I gave you the money and you paid me. We both want in that equation. And so I think, if you can really get your head around this, and this is what I think. You know, Ken, you talked about risk. I think the biggest risk is not using your time, using your intention today to buy back your time. You know, Ken, you probably talked to just as many people as I do that have followed the path right for twenty thirty forty years. In some cases, they didn't get what they thought they were going to get. They've already traded forty years of their life, and they're wondering, how am I going to do the future right. They're settling, they're readjusting what they thought retirement was. They're becoming dependent. And I think the biggest risk is assuming things that you have no control over are actually going to give you an outcome that you want without you taking ownership over that outcome. And when you get clear on what you want and why you want it, the only thing that's standing in your way is you have to raise your financial IQ Today. Like retirement used to be easy, remember back in the pension days, I mean it used to be easy, you didn't need financial education. But today it's I would say, it's almost, if not completely, impossible, to retire ever with confidence, unless you've risen your financial education to understand what you're in, how it works, and that you control to some degree the streams of income and the taxation of that income. It's interesting, it took me a long time to recognize the you know, let's call it Wall Street, right, the financial services sector. That really when I'm even when I was forty fifty years old, I'm turning my money over to college graduates that just got out that are really just salespeople for products you know, that just got out of school, you know, a few years ago. Right. And I'm not saying that there's not some incredible wealth managers and financial planners out there, because I believe that there are, I know several of them. But really, the whole system a setup. It's a sales it's a sales funnel, that's all it is. And and you know, once you kind of realize that you know well, and they don't often even know what products are putting you in because they're actually directing you to the ones that give them the best commissions. So the whole the whole system is is a bit of a mess. And you know, I don't want to generalize and say the whole industry is that way, but but it is that way, and and and so you know, so in order to take back control of your own money, by the way, you know, I I Daniel those is like my brother and I are super close. He's older than I am. He went straight into the corporate world. He was the a student in our house, you know, and and I was not, let's just put it that way. But the. He retired recently and and I'm like, hey, man, congratulations. I flew up there. I'm from Seattle and and we hung out and and I'm like, well, you know, you know, what do you invested in? Because I have never really had that conversation with him before. He's like, I have no idea, Like you know, my my, I talked to our guy. He says, we're good, and you know, and by the way, I don't want to minimize it. They did go down the rabbit hole and they started to take a look at everything. But I'm like, oh my gosh, Like I would never have wanted to be in a position where I really don't know how my money is actually making money. And that that's really what he said. He doesn't know, he knows whether it goes up or down right, and and knows how much they've got. But I'm like, man, to me, that's those are some handcuffs, you know, not knowing right totally. I think this brings me back to Danil's question that she asked to start this h this presentation off. I mean, if you don't know what you're invested in and you don't know how it works. Then you're constantly aware of and nervous of who's in the oval office, what decisions are they making, Like how's it going to work? Because all of that has a direct impact on you, But you don't really know how to connect the dots. You don't know how to correlate. Trump is raising tariffs, How's that going to affect my retirement plan? But if you do raise your financial education and you understand, I really believe there's two parallel economies going on simultaneously in our world. There's the dependency economy and then the dependency economy. Like I said, it's full of really good people with good intentions. They're probably doing the same thing they're recommending you, but they're dependent on a system that they have no control over. When I turn my money over to a financial advisor who's selling me a set of mutual funds, it's not like that person can predict the market any better than I can. That person doesn't have any insider knowledge on NA video or you know, Tesla or whatever. Right, they're just kind of picking and choosing an hope and it works. But they make money whether I win or lose, right, And that's that's frustrating. That's frustrating to me. But on the other side of the dependency economy, there's the ownership economy. And this isn't for everyone because owning assets and achieving financial freedom it requires us to pick up both sides of the ownership stick. Right, I have to pick up the fact that, look, if I want to result after do the work, I have to raise my financial education. And when I don't get a result that I thought I wanted, the risk that I was taking was a lack of my financial education. I've lost a lot of money. I'm sure you know you guys as you have as well. But every time I've lost money in real estate and I took ownership over why I had the loss, it makes me a better investor next time I do it right. I've refined my decision making process. I've refined my expectations of what's reasonable and possible with real estate, and it gets easier to make more money the next time, and the next time and the next time. And so the ownership of the economy and the dependency economy they exist in parallel. If I'm in the dependency economy. My fingers crossed. I gotta wait till I'm sixty five, and I just hope it works out. If I'm in the ownership economy. It's exactly as you know Bob Allen said in his book, you can retire in ten years or less. I mean, you can use real estate and all of its many profits centers and other tax strategies to generate six figures or more of tax re income. And you can do it in a constrained timeline with the right understanding of how money works. Yes, so no, I was just gonna say, I love that. I love how you break that out. I often say something similar where I call it a you're either on the consumer side or you're on the producer side, and so and the interesting thing is, just to take a one more step, is the government actually rewards the ownership and the producer side. So that's why they give you tax breaks to provide housing or whatever it is. You provide jobs, and you know there are things that that that there's incentives to do that side of it. When you're on the uh, you know, I call it the consumer side, you're at a massive disadvantage. You you know, you you don't really have the tax breaks and some of the things. So I call it just low hanging fruit. I tell everybody just go go form yourself on an LLC and go do something, because like you're going to have tax benefits because you're now in the game. Yes you're the starting line still, but you've now just created a way to offset some of your ordinary income legally by you know, using the tools that the government gives you. And that that was the arial epiphany. You know, I know what we talk about in real estate a lot here and you know, going out and buying and passive income, but is it like one of the most significant benefits of being able to offset that income legally. It is fascinating. I mean, ken, the more I've learned about money and how money works. I mean, this is an oversimplification of it, but basically, the tax code is about three thousand pages long, and then several thousand pages beyond that with adendem z and additional you know information in there. But basically, the very first sentence, the first line, the first section of the tax code says everything you make is taxable. Right. If that's in there, then why do we need the other three thousand pages right and after that, after that statement, that's what the other three thousand pages are for. And I don't know, like I've never actually read all three thousand pages front to back, but according to Chadby GTP, it said that thirty eight percent of that tax code is applicable to one form or another people who are putting their money in real estate. So the majority of the tax and centatives the IRS is using real estate because they need to drive economic behavior, they need to drive economic outcomes in real estate's a major GDP driver. So they give people like you, like me who raise our financial IQ incentives to say, hey, go do more of that's provide housing, provide resources, provide a great service to the economy, both local and federal, and you get to keep more of your money. And that right there, it made it so much easier for me. Right when I quit my job. You know, I had cashual coming in independent of taxes. I was making one hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year, but that's not what I was keeping. After you take out taxes and money going to savings, I only needed about sixty seven hundred dollars of monthly tax free income to replace my bare bones basic living expenses. So if I can understand the tax game, it becomes so much easier, so much easier to create financial freedom in a very short period of time. Yeah, and I think a lot. It's funny you don't actually first your start off, just like you said, trying to create that financial freedom. But then the like the icing on the cake is the are the tax because that's that's the piece that I didn't even understand until I started getting in the game. And actually in the early days, I had bookkeeper CPAs that didn't either like they were I was doing my books and records. And then I fired one of them and I moved to somebody else and they said, well, you haven't been taking depreciation and all these other things that you could. I go, what are you talking about now? And then all of a sudden, that just like opened that new chapter that was that was a long time ago. But from there now, you know, I'm in the position now where we have so many investors. You know, we've had investors over twenty plus years. Now that's all they care about is you. They they how do I offset this, you know, my tax? And so I mean I got calls all week last week, like I'm pulling this cash out, you know, how do you have anything that will defer my taxes? Because we're now in a year end situation and so I'm getting that question. A lot people are emailing me, texting me, you know, is there anything you have that I can write off my income? And so so that's another piece that a lot of people don't get. Now. It takes obviously, you have to have money, you have to be around people with money to actually understand that. But there does become a piece where you've want you pass that financial freedom and you move into the you know call it preserving wealth, where you you know, that becomes almost as important as the passive income. Peace totally does. I mean taxes, in one way or the other. They're the greatest destroyer of wealth. I mean because if we really think about it, every dollar that we have, it's taxed multiple times, directly and indirectly from things that you know, actual taxes, payroll taxes, employment taxes, sells tax but also the the kind of the hidden tax, the hidden tax of inflation. And this is why I think today Danielle, I know, off air, we were talking a little bit about how do people win today, right with inflation what it is, Here's the way I think about it. Taxes, inflation, interest rates, opportunity costs. Those are four economic forces. We can all say, Hey, they all exist for every single person, for Ken, for me, for anyone watching this video or listening to this podcast, those four economic forces they exist. But the question you have to ask yourself is are those economic forces of working for you or they're working against you? Right, if we go back to the beginning, if I just put my money in a four to one K, taxes are working against me, Inflation is massively working against me. Opportunity costs because now I've locked up my money is working against me. And then for most people, I mean, you know, consumer debt has skyrocketed because my money's locked up. I go take credit card interest rate you know, with high interest rates and interest rates are working against me. So for every step forward of me working hard, saving, all of these economic forces are working against me, making it harder, if not impossible, to ever achieve financial freedom. But if I just flip where my money's at, right, and we'll use real estate because that's really the focus of this conversation today, I can put my money in an asset where inflation makes me wealthy. I can put my money in an asset where taxes make me wealthy, where interest rates make me wealthy. I can borrow money to fixed interest rate from a bank and triple that interest rate in an actual piece of real estate with leverage, opportunity, costs. Is working for me rather than against me. All of those economic forces. The big question that someone has to ask and answer for themselves is am I putting my money in a position where those economic forces are making it easier or harder for me to achieve an outcome? And if you can just get clear on that, the game of money becomes so much easier. Yep. Yeah, So do you think that these main street investments are going to do better than the Wall Street investments in the next let's call it ten years. I love that question, And you know, who knows? Who knows what what we're going to predict down the road. But here's the one thing I'll say, then, what do you think? Like? What what is like? If someone were to say, Hey, the average return I'm going to get in the stock market is whatever, what do you think that number is? Oh? I don't know anything about the stock I think I'd be happy with five to seven percent. Yeah, five to seven eight percent. Here's the crazy part. And I'm just gonna use single family homes because that's that's what I specialize in. The compound annual growth rate of a boring, three bedroom, two bath home Middle America that everyone wants, everyone needs to live in. Most under you know, over demand undersupplied, the compound annual growth rate is five percent. So if that is, if we just stop on the surface and the stock market makes seven eight percent and the compound annual growth rate of appreciation is five percent, you would look at that on the surface and say market's better than the real estates. But here's the crazy part. If we go back to those economic forces, I can put a twenty percent down payment. I can go borrow eighty percent of the purchase price from the bank to then buy that asset, and I control and on the asset. And if all I had to do is put a twenty percent down payment and I'm still getting a five percent annualized compound annual growth rates, my actual rate of return on my twenty percent down payment is twenty five percent. It's because of leverage, right, So leverage is the multiplier. That's really what it is. And leverage will cut both ways. That's why you have to raise your financial IQ. But if I can just buy a boring assets and that time, inflation, taxes, all of those things make me wealthy, then one hundred percent, I believe that anything on Main Street will outperform Wall Street. And there's just look at Warren Buffet. Warren Buffett is sitting on massive amounts of cash because he knows the market is over hyped and over value. But if we just look at it on its core, the market only makes money in one way. It appreciates. I don't control appreciation, right, that's public opinion. So I don't control it in real estate, but I don't control it in the market either. But if I can buy real estate, I get appreciation, I get amortization, I get tax advantages, and I get leverage. I get multiple profit centers working for me to where it increases my return, decreases my risk, and it makes it easier to achieve financial freedom. Yeah. I think that's really well. So the other piece that you get is you get the tax right off piece, but you also get the kennet pays it off for you, like that's the piece that a lot of people forget, Like you're buying assets that somebody else is paying off In its simplest form, if you invest, shouldn't you buy things that somebody else pays off? Like just that simple, right, Like that's what I want. I want to buy stuff that other people want their payoff for me. And then you know, real estate has a guaranteed return then built in although someone else is gonna give me a guaranteed return by making the payments for me. Yeah, So that's how I see it as in a simplest form, And so why wouldn't I buy something that somebody else is gonna pay off? And then you know, great if the market runs, great if the if the rents go up, great, But even if they don't, if a cash falls on day one, you know, I'm good, Like, you know, because somebody's paying me, and that's the passive income I think in as simplest form. But then beyond that you get all those other things as well. Totally. I couldn't agree with you more can And that's really you know, for me, I'm really grateful for the path that real estate open up for me. You know what I learned early on and Danell, I think you and I kind of learned some of the same lessons. I didn't want to actually do real estates. I mean, when I had my first properties and I was managing tenants and I was trying to flip realiest it, I'm like, oh my gosh, this isn't what I want, right, And so what I've built with my real estate PORTFOLI over the years is a passive system, right. I want to do real estate in a way where I can own the assets and have most of the work of that asset outsourced to property managers to really good you know, portfolio managers, to people who will flip my properties on my behalf, and I want them to make a lot of money. I want them to make really good money. But I want to own the assets. And if I can own the assets and I can understand, you know, what a good asset is and a good neighborhood and just let time make me wealthy, then I really believe that the key for financial freedom that I missed in the beginning. I'm so grateful for Kiyosaki because he's like, hey, real estate, right, and I got into it. But I realized if I'm not careful. That's just a second job, right, It's another job. And so I had to build a system where I own the assets and I measure my financial success with cashl greater than expenses. But the way I experience financial freedom is with time, right, And so the key to everything I think I've built over the years is showing people how to build what I call a passive income machine that will allow you to convert dollars from your active income into real app sets that make you wealthy, take the profits of those assets and roll them right back into the system to compound and accelerate your wealth, and achieve financial freedom in ten years or less by using the economy, using the system that's already set up to your advantage, rather than parking your money in a place like a four to one K where you're just kind of sitting back like your brother with his fingers crossed. And I'm sure he worked really hard. I'm sure he followed the game. I'm sure he played the system, But no doubt he had to trade forty years, right. He had to trade forty years for it to work out. And I don't think most people have forty years. Most people are struggling to get by today, and even if you have forty years, why trade it? I mean, we get one shot at this thing called live. Why trade it? Why not take ownership of your money, then take ownership of your decisions, then take ownership of your results, and build a system that rewards you rather than kind of crossing your fingers and hoping it works out. So, if our listeners were going to make one change today, because I'm sure they're feeling just a little overwhelmed, especially if this is the first time they've heard about this, what would you recommend they do? Well, if I could say anything, I would I would say, we live in a world where you're inundated with information, right, I mean, I'm sure your listeners. I'm a listener. You know. I got your podcast on auto every time you get a new episode. I'm listening to your episodes every every week. But what what converts the knowledge in our head or in you know, on a podcast into wisdom is by doing something, by taking action, right, And I think too many people confuse listening to taking action. They could they confuse that. And so I did not actually really start learning financial lessons until I put down the book Rich that poort ad and I went and bought my first property, and you know, I was naive, right, I was naive. I didn't know what the outcome was. And I thought I was really successful until I had my first make ready, until I had to deal with my first tenant, and all of those things they taught me lessons. So if I if I were to say anything, I would say number one, do something with the knowledge. Number two. What accelerated my learning more than anything, you know, I kind of grew up in a world where you know, if something's broke, you fixes right. If you know, you just work harder and things will work out. And I had to learn a different form of leverage. I had to learn again a Robert Kiyosaki lesson that you know, the rich, they have to get themselves around people who can, who've done what they want to do, and then ask questions learn from them. You know, as soon as I start to put myself in the rooms where people were buying real estate, I started to take what I thought was overwhelming and it started to become really simple. Can you and I know Scott Saunders really well. You know, if I get in a room with Scott, that dude looks like just an average, normal, everyday person. But then you start talking to him and he's bought hundreds of single family homes. And if I can ask, you know, Scott, how we did it, then I can realize a normal guy like Scott did it. If he can do it, maybe I can too, right, And so those two things though, that's that's number one. Do something, take action, meaningful action in the real world, and get yourself around people who've already achieved what you're trying to achieve. It. It just accelerates your path forward so much faster. And it really is true that you are who you hang out with. You know, you've that since you were a kid. But it really reflects on if you want to be successful, you need to be hanging around successful people. Yeah. I like to say environment is stronger than will, because it is true. You don't have to abort you know, your family and friends that you know. Because as you start to call it a send and learn more and do different things, you are going to get pulled for people that say that's risky you should be doing that. That's part of the process. You just need to understand that there's there's forces working against you too. But when you get into that circle that you change your environment, then you actually it can you can accelerate it forward as well. Total, you know, but that first, that first step of breaking out of you know, it really is true Jim Rown's you know quote right, you are the five people you hang out with, It is true, you know, I know, BEFO. Before we wrap up here, Ryan, thank you, this has been fascinating. I know we should talk about your book also. You have a little bit of an offer here, so maybe you can discuss that well. Ken, I want you to know how much you've inspired me over the years. You know, I just see you and Daniel constantly giving back, constantly giving back. And you know, I've been now in this industry helping people in their personal financial plans for the better part of thirteen years now, and it's been such a rewarding thirteen years because the mission of our book is to help people achieve financial freedom in ten years or less. And you know, in the beginning, I didn't know what I knew. I didn't know what I didn't know. I guess is a better way to say it, right, It wasn't until I did it myself and helped several people do it over a ten year time span that I've seen so many different angles. I've seen, you know, someone who's in their fifties, I've seen someone who's in their twenties. I've seen people in the middle. I've seen people starting in depth, people starting with assets. And so, really, what we did for your audience ken the book that we wrote, it's retire in ten years or less, unlock your passive income machine and secure tax free income for life. And that's really the I mean the title and subtitle say what it is. But for your audience, I wanted to make it as easy as possible. If you go to retire in ten years, dot com forward slash can, I'll give them a free copy of the book, free the PDF. Now, they can buy it on Amazon if they want. It's you know, not too much on Amazon, but I'll give them a free copy of the book. And what I wanted to do with this book, I'm a very visual person. I mean, it's one thing to read it, it's another thing to see it. And some of the concepts that I talk about in here, they're abstract enough in the sense that you know, we've never heard money talked about the way Robert Kiyosaki talks about the way you talk about it, really how do we turn debt into income? And so we we included ten hours of a companion course on there, has calculators, has video trainings, has PDFs, everything you need to actually see your financial situation. Inside of this system, you can plug in numbers and it'll tell you how far away from traditional retirement you are. It'll also tell you how close you could be if you just switch the way you do money. So retire in tenures dot Com forward Slash can free copy of the book, free companion course that comes with it. And I just want to help everyone today. I really believe, like I said earlier, our life is defined by our time, and too many people trade too much of the life for money, and they don't ever get the dreams that they want. They have this bucket list that just kind of fades away over time. My objective isn't to retire and stop. It's to really have more options with your life, to live a purpose driven life, because money is your tool to create. Man, if I woke up tomorrow and my time was mine, what would I do to give me fulfillment? And that's that's the funnest journey of life is when you can be driven by your intrinsic desires, not by money as the forefront of why you do what you do with your time. Right, Yeah, well said, well said. And appreciate the offer you guys. Free is good. So okay, you know I appreciate it. Ryan, congrats on your success us and uh I can't wait to have you back on and see you know where you've taken all of this and appreciate it. Appreciate you can. Appreciate you and Neil, thank you so much for your time today. Thanks Bryon,