How to Quit Your Job and Travel The World with Brian Luebben

Transcript:

On this episode of the personal finance podcast, we're going to talk about how to travel the world and quit your job with Brian

Lubin. What's up everybody. And welcome to the personal finance podcast. I'm your host, Andrew founder of master money. co and today on the personal finance. We're going to have on Brian Lubin to talk about how he quit his job and traveled the world. If you guys have any questions, make sure to hit us up on Instagram, Tik TOK, Twitter at master money co and follow us on Spotify, Apple podcast, or whatever podcast player you love listening to this podcast on.

And if you want to help out the show, consider leaving a five star rating and. On your favorite podcast player. Can I thank you guys enough for leaving those five star ratings and reviews. Now, today we're going to be talking to Brian who has a really, really cool story about how he quit his job and then he decided to travel the world.

And we're going to dive into what led him to that decision to want to quit his job, how he put a plan into place to actually quit his job, some of the philosophies that he thought through before he actually left his job, then in addition, we're going to talk about how entrepreneurship. Especially at the beginning, isn't so glamorous and some of the panic attacks that he had when he first left his job, we're talking about how much cash he had on hand, some of the personal finance stuff that he did.

And in addition, he also was investing in real estate. So we're gonna talk about real estate investing in how he did that. Then he started to build businesses and started to increase his cashflow over time. We're gonna talk about exactly the step by step guide on exactly how he did that. And we're going to walk through a bunch of different tips that he has for setting goals and success and all these different things.

So really excited about this episode. So without further ado, let's welcome Brian to the personal finance podcast. So Brian, welcome to the personal finance podcast, man. Thank you so much for having me, Andrea. I'm so excited. I've been a long time listener myself, and you just had a couple of my buddies on here as well.

You just had Chad Carson, you had Nick Huber. So man, I'm in good company here. I don't know why y'all decided to pick me too. Exactly honored we are we're really excited to have you because you have a really cool unique story and kind of what I want to highlight for listeners who are listening before we dive into this is what Brian has done and I want to kind of highlight the fact that financial independence can kind of be something that you craft it could be anything you crafted into and you kind of did a business lifestyle that is a really really cool story about how much you've traveled to a ton of different countries 30 plus countries and we'll talk about all of that in a here to second but I kind of want to talk through your entire story so the big beginning here You Is that you started as a really high performer and in the sales world.

And when you were in the sales world, um, it looks like, you know, you were doing really well. You had a ton of different sales folks there. You were in the top 10 within those sales folks. Can you talk about like having that initial job and what that was like? Yeah, a hundred percent. So I graduated with a four year marketing degree, which a lot of people on here probably did the same thing where we did this wonderful thing called, uh.

Pick what I'm going to do for the rest of my life as an 18 year old, right? So, you know, it's kind of funny when you think about listening to traditional advice, because think about how bananas that is. Say, okay, cool, you're 18 years old, you're leaving the house for the first time. What do you want to be for the rest of your life?

No wonder everyone is anxious and irritated and awful all the time. Nobody has ever taken time in their life to like pick their head up. And breathe and say, what am I doing now? What do we normally call that? Like midlife crisis, right? That's when that happens is 20 years down the road. So I graduated and I realized this thing called salary.

I learned about salary and I was like, okay, cool. So you do this thing, you get paid money, but wait a second. You're telling me that if I perform better, I still make the same salary. Oh, I don't like that. I was like, so this whole marketing thing isn't really my jam. And I learned about sales and I said, okay, I get better.

I make more money. Cool. I can understand that. So I hopped into sales and that's what I did for the next, uh, four and a half years, man, I made it to the top of the company. Uh, number eight out of 5, 079, I won sales rep of the year, rookie of the year. Got all the awards, all the trophies, and naturally after that, they start to promote you.

So you go to sales manager, then you go to vice president of sales in the region, and then up to SVP, senior vice president. And so the first piece of advice that I give to everyone, and guys, you're going to be hanging out with me and Andrew for the next 60 minutes. So every time I get philosophical, I bring it down and I give you something actionable.

that you can implement in your life and your business today. So, first thing I recommend everyone that's listening to this do, is look at your boss's boss. Because some of you may like your job right now. That is sick. Congratulations, you're in the minority. I would assume that you probably don't since you're listening to this podcast though.

And so, if you look at your boss, Then that's you in one to two years, if you really kick tail your boss's boss is you in five to ten years, if you really kick tail, so if you don't like your boss's boss, you look at them, you say, what kind of life are they living? What's their work life look like? What's their home life look like?

A lot of the times you'll make the realization that that person. When you look at it on an hourly rate perspective is making less per hour than you are in your current role. And so I looked at my boss's boss, my VP, and I said, dude, you are scheduled in 15 minute increments on your calendar. So if I do really great.

You're telling me that I have less freedom five years from now. Oh, so I made it to the mountaintop, realized I was climbing the wrong mountain, and then that's where my financial freedom journey began. And I absolutely love that concept of how you did that because I did the same exact thing. I went and looked at the people above me at my levels when I was in the corporate world.

And I said, Hey. Do they have a lifestyle that I want? And I realized these people were here till eight, nine o'clock every single night, they were working really, really long hours, 80 hours per week. And they had zero flexibility whatsoever. A lot of them didn't even see their kids during the week because they were spending so much time at work.

And so this is the best exercise for everybody. Listening is look at the people above you. Are you on the path that you actually want to be on? And when you climb that mountain top, the money's not going to be worth it when you get to that point in time, maybe you're going to make it. Being a little bit more at that point in time, but if you're losing all of your freedom, it's truly not going to be worth it.

So I love that exercise and I love that action tip that you gave right there. Now, what was the moment that you realized, Hey, I don't want to do this anymore because you've got all these accolades going on. You're climbing that mountaintop, as you said. So what was kind of the moment you realize, Hey, I don't actually want to do this anymore.

Oh man, it was Tuesday. Just a, just a terrible Tuesday. So what happened? It was a multitude of things. Um, so there's this phrase that is, you know, how do you cook a frog? Like you boil it slow, right? So if you throw a frog in the water and it's boiling hot, it's just going to jump out. But if you just slowly raise the temperature over time, then the frog will eventually cook to death.

So that is most of corporate America. Um, so by the time people get to 65 and it's time to retire, hopefully, you know, their frog is about cooked. So, uh, man, my pot was boiling and I was starting to feel it. And so I came to the realization that I was like, I got to get out of here. Um, just from looking at my boss's boss, doing that exercise.

And then also that was what got me generally into the financial freedom, financial dependence, real estate investing world. And what really did it was it was COVID 2020 and I was top rep. That's when I won all the awards. And then they did this thing where they said, Hey. Great job, everyone that killed it.

We just laid off 10 percent of the company. We can't justify paying these bonuses for the top performers while we are firing people. So we're not paying you that 82, 000 bonus that you were promised. I said, Oh, and this was in COVID in the middle of lockdown when all of us were just like. In the house, I couldn't go to the gym.

I couldn't have any outlet and I just had to sit with that. And at the moment, it was the worst moment of my life, which is a very privileged thing to say, right? Uh, but think about you making it to the top of this mountain, climbing this mountain for four and a half years, blood, sweat, tears, 60 to 80 hours a week, and then you make it to the mountaintop, and you're like, This view was awful, you know, and so that was a great example of life happening for us, not to us, because in the moment it sucked.

Imagine lighting 82, 000 on fire in front of you that you were, I was about to use that to buy a rental property. I was ready to go. I had plans for the money that was double my salary in one paycheck and I'd done everything right. And so after that happened, I said, no more, this happens to all people all the time.

And there's never going to be a time in my life ever again, where I make my income and somebody else tells me I can't have it. I'm taking control back into my own hands. And then, so that was the real moment. That is a great moment to kind of think about because you are one person's decision away from not having an income anymore just based on working in the corporate world or working for somebody else.

So you decided to take action that you wanted to go out and start these businesses and have more freedom with your time. So when you made that decision, when that point in time happened, what was kind of the action plan that you started to put into place in order to find more fulfilling work? Or how would you kind of think about that?

How did you develop that plan um, to start to maybe break free from that job? So I'm glad that you brought up the F word on this podcast, fulfillment, right? So the question that nobody seems to think about, and it's a word that's earned. I don't believe that everyone can just leap into fulfillment. And a lot of the time growing up, you hear the phrase, follow your passions, chase your passions.

Who are the people that are telling you this? People that are not doing that and that are working the job they hate because they want something better for you because they haven't figured out the plan, right? So there's a framework that I use that everyone can really use and, um, hopefully get, you know, value from on this podcast, which is, you know, kind of my different levels of income.

So there's captive income, passive income, passionate income. Which leads to massive impact. So my goal right now, and the reason I do all these podcasts, and I do a podcast every day for the last 479 days across 33 countries, is because I want to help a million people get to passionate income and massive impact.

So captive income is when you're working your job. You put in time, you get paid by the man. Passive income, real estate. Finance, you know, stock dividends, stocks, buying businesses, investing and starting your own companies, stuff like that. And then that's what leads to passionate income. So, fulfillment is found on top of the financial foundation.

So, Naval Ravikant, who's a great investor, um, and he, he's the founder, multi time founder of all these different companies. He's probably worth... Hundreds of millions of dollars. He's got this quote that says, let's get everyone rich so that they can realize that it was never the answer. Right. But let's get everyone rich first.

So same thing when it comes to your finances, the people that have money are the ones that don't think about money. The ones that don't have money are the ones that think about money 24 seven. That's all I can think about. So let's get you your financial foundation set first. And then so that's what I set out to do.

So there's three levels of cash flow. And people get really intimidated when they think about replacing their income and hitting five. Uh, because especially my high income earners, I was making 247, 000 a year, so I was about 20, 000 a month, very difficult to passive income your way to a quarter million dollars, you know, and some people may hear that and think that it's an advantage, but my high income earners also know that it sometimes will make it harder because that's a different game to play than replacing 40, 000 income, right?

So. There's three levels of cash flow. First level is survive. The second level is arrive. And the third level is thrive. Your survive cash flow is enough to cover your fixed expenses. This is the lead domino that we focus on first. A lot of you guys that are listening right now want 10, 000 a month so you can quit your job, travel the world and build your own business.

I know that, Andrew knows that, you know that. Right? That's the number. Uh, but first, a lot of you would be kind of relieved to realize when you actually put it onto a piece of paper that when you look at your fixed expenses, your rent, your mortgage, how much food on the table, like the actual stuff that's coming in that's required for you to pay.

It'll probably be about 3, 000, you know, or 4, 000, which is much more manageable. We start there at Survive. Arrive is when you have that plus some discretionary. So now we can start going out to eat. We can do a little bit more fun stuff. We can buy the Amazon packages on the doorstep again. That's Arrive, where now you have enough income to cover your mortgage and some fun stuff.

Thrive is everything is replaced. So I did the first, uh, Survive for me was 4, Arrive with 6, 500 a month and thrive was 20, 000 a month. So my survive, I knocked out through cashflow and real estate. So I bought a property a year, very boring, very non sexy that anybody can do, which will really irritate people to know.

That I didn't do some crazy, fancy strategy. I didn't make my money on the internet. I made my money through buying a house a year, living in one room, renting out the other rooms while living there. 5 percent down. It's called the house hack strategy or a co living. So that's what I did. Uh, took two houses and I was cashflow in about 3, 600 from that net on top of CAPEX, uh, PTI.

Vacancies repairs, you need to have about 20 percent on top of your mortgage and debt service to actually get your true cash flow numbers. And so I did that, rented out my car on Turo left that job, by the way, plot to us guys left that job in March of 2022, traveled full time around the world for 8 months.

So I went to, like, 20 countries during that, and I just got back from 2 weeks in Norway and Iceland a year and a half. Later, so I'm still not bankrupt. So it worked a lot of information there. I'll pause. No, that's perfect. I think that that is a great starting point. Cause I think you had this plan put into place.

You decided, were you buying those properties when you were still working at that time? So you were kind of investing in those properties while you're working. And so you're buying one per year, which I love that goal. I think the, like we just had Chad on, like you mentioned, Chad Carson, small, but mighty.

Small and mighty approach, I think is one of my favorite approaches because I think it's a safer way to kind of scale your your portfolio, especially the beginning, and you did it with one of our favorite strategies, which is house hacking and longtime listeners. No, we talk about house hacking a ton on this podcast.

I think it's one of the best ways to buy your first house. And if you are interested in real estate, you could really find some amazing benefits to it, including, you know, getting great loans, different types of things, and you're reducing your housing expenses. Which is one of the largest expenses that you can have.

So I love that you did that and you kind of created this plan as you went forward with that. Now, you started to kind of replace your income with cash flow. How much cash did you have on hand when you decided to leave your job? Like for, say for example, did you have six months saved up of expenses or did you not have any cash on hand?

You were just relying on cash flow. Here's the fun part of the episode, guys. So I'm actually very contrarian to traditional financial independence. So when it comes to FI, you hear a lot of the time of the concept called lean FI, right? Where it's, you know, reduce your expenses as much as possible and then live on beans and rice.

And then you're good for me. I'm the very much opposite. I want to spend all the money in the world. I love it. I love traveling. I love hotels. I love food. Going, eating where I want, staying where I want, having the coolest hotel. That is what fires me up the most in life. And Ramit Safety has a great concept called money dials.

And that's what I use. So I spend lavishly in the couple of buckets that really fill my cup. And I cut ruthlessly away from everything else. So when it comes to clothes, I will buy from The Gap. I don't care about my clothes. When it comes to a car, I don't need a fancy car. My apartment, I do love. Uh, but everything else when it comes to travel and food, that's where I put all my money.

So for me to replace the 20, 000, if people are doing the math right now, 000, there's a delta there. Right? Where do I magically pull that 15, 000 out? It's not OnlyFans. Right? Exactly. So there's a delta here. So what I always recommend for people is you start with the non sexy stuff. To earn the right to swing for the freaking fences.

That's what I think. Because building your own business, buying businesses, doing larger real estate transactions and more risky strategy, like that's what it's going to require. You can't just buy a house a year to replace six figures of income. And so I actually had hired a mindset coach. That was helping me through this.

And I originally thought I was going to do it through investing in multifamily. I was like, okay, in five years, I'm going to replace this 20, 000 a month through multifamily investing. And he goes, great idea. But how do we do it in six months instead? I said, dude, are you high? What are you talking about, man?

I was like, I can't do that. He goes, well, have other people done it? I'm like, I'm sure he's like, have other people done 200, 000 a month in six months? I said, uh, okay, cool. Probably. And he goes, okay, well, then You're acknowledging that it's possible. You just don't think it's possible for you. I was like, Oh, got it.

Right. And so it was a little mind, mind magic that he worked on me. And so the new goal became how do I replace this in six months? So on top of the real estate, once you build your financial foundation, now you can start to do more aggressive strategies. So I always say, start with the, you know, buying the house hacks by the single family.

Invest in the dividend stocks, do whatever you have to do to get your foundation and your security and build that base of the pyramid. And then you can build your skyscraper on top of that, your freedom tower. So I started up a podcast, the Action Academy podcast, and I had no intention of making it a business whatsoever.

I just did it for free. Um, and I was starting to do it daily and I was getting a bunch of listeners and it was going well. And then one day I get my mindset coach that I just told you about. He called me and he said, Hey man, a couple of people joined my coaching from your podcast. So let me give you some money.

I said, why would you do that? And he goes as an affiliate. So what's an affiliate? He goes, I'll give you 15 percent dude. I was like, wait, that's a $12,000 a year thing. He's like, yeah. And so I, the math wasn't math for me, and all of a sudden I made a couple thousand dollars and I was like, wait a second.

And then, so that's what my podcast business became in 2022. I made $167,000 to 400 and some change. From being a podcast affiliate, so no ads, I just talked about organically my the coach that I had hired in the mastermind group that I was a member of and people would go and join and sign up and add a little, you know, affiliate link that they would go through.

And it was super cool. And I did that while traveling. So that was printing out anywhere from 12 to 19, 000 a month on top of the real estate. And that my friends is what I call passionate income. So passive income gets you the ability to start. Slowing down, chilling out, and saying what do I actually enjoy doing?

The Japanese call it your ikigai. What is the intersection of what the world wants, uh, what the market needs, what you can get paid for, and what you love to do. In the middle is your ikigai, which is translated as meaning of life. And that's my passionate income was podcasting. I was like, this is the coolest thing ever.

And so that's what I recommend people to do. And I just wrote a book on this called from passive to passionate. And it's how to quit your job, grow your wealth and turn your passions into profits. When I left that job, it was January, February and March of 2022 to land the plane. Uh, January, I made 87, 000 because I had made a bunch of money from my W2 on top of the real estate on top of the podcast.

February hits, I do it again. I hit like 80 and so I'm saving money hand over fist because guys, I'm doing my side hustle and my investing on top of my w two. My entire brand is how to quit your W 2. W 2 to world travel, replace corporate with cash flow. All those fun little phrases. You can do it while you're still working.

You don't need to leave your job first, right? So by March, when I quit, I had three months of proven revenue from my new business. I had two years of proven revenue from my cash flowing rental properties. And I had a six month cash cushion when I left that job. Now, Andrew, ask me what happened next. What happened next?

Didn't matter about any of that stuff. I still almost went to the hospital. I still almost went to the hospital. Why did I almost go to the hospital? Because as soon as I quit that job, I had a couple month gap before I was supposed to hop on a plane and go to Greece for a month and live in the Greek Islands and go to Barcelona and go Italy and all these different places.

And I was doing the calculations and I go, Greece is expensive. All these, this is expensive. And guys, I did everything right. I had the cash flow. I had a bunch of capital coming in, and I had six months of an emergency fund, and I still had a panic attack. And for anybody that's ever had a panic attack, I was averaging about a one a week, and it feels like a heart attack.

Like, your entire body locks up on you, and your arms go numb, you break out into a cold sweat, and you almost lose consciousness. You're like, I need to call the hospital right now. I need to call 9 1 1 and so multiple like one a week. And eventually it came to the point where I told my girlfriend at the time I said, Hey, this is it.

I got to go to the hospital. Like I can't do this anymore. And she called one of my mentors who had left his job like 20 years ago. This guy's probably worth 50 million. And we're on the phone together and he goes, Hey, man, it's scary, isn't it? I go, yeah, he goes, everything worth having in life is on the other side of fear.

And I was like, got it. And he said, you will be a year from now going on the podcast and preaching that this is the best thing you've ever done. And I'm going to stop talking here, guys, but I want to leave you guys with a quote that really helped me. And this was the quote that really changed my life. He said, best case scenario.

You make millions and millions of dollars doing what you love while traveling around the world and impacting millions of lives, best case. It's like worst case scenario, you fail and you run out of money. It goes, cool, well then what would happen? You would go get another job. So your worst case scenario is your present day reality.

Got it. I was like, ah, this is the amazing part about your story. This is what I love that you actually are open about this part of it because a lot of people out there who go into thinking they're going to quit their job and everything's going to be easy and they're going to go through this whole process.

Maybe they have all the things right. You had literally everything right and you still had a cash cushion. You had cashflow, you were making way more money on your side hustle than you were even in your day job and still you left and the mental side comes into play and all of a sudden you have a panic attack.

And I think this is so real for a lot of people, because I've experienced stuff like this, where when we went to full time entrepreneurship, all of a sudden, the stress levels, the anxiety levels just skyrocket, uh, especially initially when you're not used to this stuff and it really just changes your entire perspective on entrepreneurship and business and all these different things.

So that's why I love that you're so open about this, because I think this is one thing that a lot of people need to talk more about. And one thing to consider is that for entrepreneurs and people who want to go out there and start a business. And you want to leave your job to start that business. You have to make sure that you are honestly ready.

It's not for every single person out there. Um, and you figured out how to make this work. You had coaches in play that are going to help you through this. You had mentors in play that are also helping you through this. And it is a very, very tough thing that happens. So if someone is going through this process and they maybe are going to leave their job, for example, What tips do you have for them?

You know, maybe to avoid the anxiety, the anxiety attacks or the panic attacks. How do you kind of think about that now? And do you think you could have done anything differently? Or do you think you have to suffer through it in order to get to that point? There's nothing I would have done differently. I did everything right.

I did everything right. So here's the thing, guys. You will never escape problems. You will never escape hard. This will exist for the rest of your life. Always. You cannot out earn problems. You cannot out earn hard, right? Different levels, different devils. Problems don't ever go away. They just look different.

The only thing that changes in your financial independence journey. Is how well you handle the problems, how well you handle the issues. 'cause I can guarantee you when you go into entrepreneurship, I don't believe entrepreneurs are created, I believe entrepreneurs are unlocked. Right? So I just came up with this realization while I was traveling in, uh, Norway and there was this really cool plane where it was like a low flying propeller planet.

It was taking me over the mountains in northern Norway. I went to go see the Northern Lights, uh, literally a week ago. Amazing. I went to do that. And as I was doing it, like this quote came to me, I said, what do we do? What do we do in Action Academy? What is our business? I said, we unlock entrepreneurs because for people, like you said, 99 percent of people should not be an entrepreneur.

But the 1 percent have known it in the back of their heads since they were young. They've been a square peg trying to fit in a round hole. And they've tried to justify themselves into living this normal life over and over again until eventually. You know, they are able to unlock and then financial freedom is what unlocks the entrepreneur community is what unlocks the entrepreneur.

So there's nothing that I would have done differently if I were to give advice to someone to reframe it a little bit differently to reframe the question here. The advice that I would give is cash flow gets you out of your job community keeps you out and that's not a plug for my community, even though that's what I built it for.

It is just fact how awful would this be to do on your own? Right? You need people to run with and to run towards. So, there's two types of motivation. There's push motivation and there's pull motivation. Push motivation is like, um, you didn't file your expense report, you know, you get this consequence. Like, you didn't meet projections, you get fired.

It's a negative consequence to an action. Pull motivation is when you work, run towards something instead of running away from something. So, what I always recommend is creating a three year vivid vision. Clarity is the answer to anxiety. Because anxiety just exists because you are looking up at this mountain and you see 20 different ways to climb the mountain, and you can't figure out which one to take.

So you just don't climb at all. But when you're clear, then that's when you can start climbing. And the mentors and the coaches exist because they've been climbing that mountain for 20 years. And now they're just able to come down and say, Hey, I've tried all these different paths. This one over on the left has the best freaking view.

Hope you enjoy it. That's what you're paying for. When you invest in people, all you're doing is you're just buying your time back. That's it. Because all the information, the how exists on the internet for free. If you want to buy a hundred unit multifamily, if you want to start your own business, if you want to buy businesses, it's all on YouTube, promise you.

So how is not the answer. And how is the question that's holding all of you up from doing anything you've ever wanted to do in life? The questions that you need to change to are where and who. So where are you going and who has done that thing and been there that you can connect with that's going to help you up the mountain, right?

So once you get those two in the corner, my advice is get your where and your who down. The how will figure itself out because if you would have told me two years ago that I'd be. Traveling around the world now living in Austin, Texas. I'm about to go travel to Maui to do Brandon Turner's podcast. And it's like doing all this stuff, man.

If you would have told me I would have done that with a MacBook and a mic, I would have told you you're crazy. I love that. And I think that mindset that you have is what kind of brought you up to kind of get through that process of having those panic attacks. But in addition, you know, what you've created here is really, really cool for entrepreneurs.

And like you said, There's a huge mindset factor here. And then figuring out, you know, the tactical things is going to be really, really important. Now, when you quit, you started to travel the world and I kind of want to touch on this because I think a lot of people are interested in doing this type of thing.

So when you started to make that decision, can you talk about the decision and then kind of how you actually put this into practice or how you decided, Hey, where do I want to travel? How am I going to travel? Those types of things. Yeah, so everyone listening to this wants 10, 000 a month of passive income so they can quit their jobs, travel the world, and build their own business.

And I know that because I, like, you are who I talk to 24 7 for two years. And when I launched my community, I was literally interviewed 600 people for free. I did coaching for free for 600 people and I came to the realization after all those conversations, I took notes and I was writing it all down and everyone said the same thing.

That's what allowed me to write the book. Um, so I will preface my answer with this. Traveling the world is sexy and that is my big exciting life. If you gave me 100 million a day, I would do what I'm doing today. For some people listening, that may not be your big, exciting life. For you, it may be you just want to pick your kids up from school and drop them off in the morning.

Maybe you just want a cabin in Vermont where you and your wife, you and your husband can go and drink coffee in the morning, listen to the bird's chirp, and you can paint and you don't have to worry about a 8 a. m. conference call. I want you to define winning for you, right? Because once you define winning.

Then that's how you know that you are a winner because most people are stressed out and anxious along their entire financial journey to the million to 10 million to a hundred million, because they never define what winning looks like. So they never feel like they're winning. So never took the time. Yep.

Right. So when it came time for me to. I plan my trip travel was my jam, right? And so I had this vision in 2020. I wrote it in my corporate cubicle of me walking out to my balcony in Mykonos. I still have the vision today. I have it written out. It's still here. And I can walk out. I can feel the hot cobblestones on my feet and I can look out and see the sunrise over the ocean.

And I know that I don't have any calls in the morning, just in the afternoon with people back in America. And I can make money anywhere in the world with a Mac and a mic. And like, this is my existence now, and I help other people. And so, for me, that became the strategy. So, strategy isn't what to do, it's what to say no to.

Strategy is a set of self imposed constraints on decision making. So, Because I knew that I wanted to travel around the world, I knew what to say no to investment wise. Right? So I knew I didn't want to be operating a multifamily property. Like, I didn't want to buy a 60 unit multifamily in Atlanta, Georgia, where I was going to have to be hands on, boots on the ground, the operating partner.

It's like, that doesn't work. I need to do something that I can do remotely. And when I was talking to the coach from before, you know, he said, well, man, when you quit, he goes, You're probably just not going to want to stop working. It's like, you're going to want to still work. He goes, so why don't you just figure out what you could do while you travel?

And so I spent, you know, that six month period where I pulled it off. That's all I was thinking about. And life happens when you start asking the right questions to the right people consistently. And that was the question that I was asking. So that's what allowed me to travel, man. So I did. I lived in the Greek islands for a month.

That was super cool. Um, I did the whole thing. I ended in Singapore. I could tell you all the different countries, but, um, I would never do it again. Super fun. Glad I did it for eight months, eight months is too long. So now I do, you know, I did a month and some change in July. I did Italy. Croatia. Um, I did yacht week.

I did, um, Barcelona. I did Spain and all around there. And then I just did Norway and Iceland and everything, um, for two weeks. So I think that's much better. But that's what's super exciting for me. And I crafted my business and crafted my calendar to where, you know, I'm accounting for time zone differences.

Uh, I just lost all my luggage in the plane. So I always make sure to carry my Mac, which I'm recording this with and my mic. In my backpack, you know, things like this. So are there any specifics that you would like me to cover for people that wanted to travel, um, anything in particular that you can think of?

For sure. So if somebody wants to do this, cause I know we have a lot of listeners who are very interested in long term travel and slow travel specifically, if somebody wants to do this for sure, you know, how should they think about budgeting for this? A, did you use travel hacking and juice points or anything like that?

B, and then just kind of how you thought through this process as you did it, or did you kind of choose? Go to one country and then choose the next country at once, once you got to that point in time. Gotcha. So I kind of winged it. Um, so know what's important to you and focus on what's important to you, right?

So if food isn't the most important thing or lodging, you know, it's kind of 50 50 for me. I wanted the nicest hotel, the coolest suite, coolest Airbnb with the best view. You know, so that was a big portion of my budget. That was like 40, 50 percent of my budget. And then for food, I came to the realization pretty quickly that lunch doesn't matter wherever you travel.

Um, I was like, Oh, wait a second. Like I could just eat at home or super cheap from lunch because no restaurant really prides themselves on their lunch. They pride themselves on their breakfast and their dinner. So I was like, okay, well, I'll just eat at home for lunch, you know, but for the most part. You know, I was going out and spending money.

If you were to ask how much I spent, um, July would make people blush. So that may not be as much relatable because I was, my mentors, I did it the opposite. So what most people do is they'll like, backload the luxury to the end of the trip. I did it at the front because my mentors told me to celebrate the accomplishment.

So in July in Greece, I spent between me and my girlfriend at the time, I spent about 22, 000. That's not normal. Um, I spent, I averaged about 7, 000, 7, 500 between me and my girlfriend at the time while we were traveling together, um, which is probably much less than most people would anticipate. And that was trying to spend money.

So when it came to budgeting, you know, I was just more focused on increasing my income. So I was like, okay, cool. Well, what else can we build? What else can we do? And by the end of 2022, I was back home and everything and I came up with the entire new business plan. So I don't even have podcast affiliates anymore.

I started up my own business and I started up my own thing and we can go into that if you want because I think that's pretty interesting how, and it's helpful for people whenever I talk about how I went about it. Um, so balls in your court on that one, whatever direction you want to go ahead and tell us more about that.

Cause I think that's interesting. Cool. So this is my favorite thing to talk about. I like real estate. I love this because anybody can do this and it's a place that a lot of people get wrong. So buying businesses and starting businesses are what I'm most passionate about in life. And that's what I really enjoy helping people do because a lot of people do it the wrong way.

And I was fortunate enough. Because I have a podcast and a platform to be able to get personal mentorship from like the top dogs in the space. And then so I was able to use their information and now give it to you guys 100 percent for free. Fun, right? Five star rating and review for Andrew. So what we do, uh, so what most people do is they get this idea or maybe they talk to a friend and they say, Oh my God, this is the best business idea ever.

Don't tell anybody about this. Let's like put our heads down, get to work. Six months goes by, years goes by and you release your thing. It's like, we're starting a YouTube agency, or we're doing a travel blog, or we're solving this problem, blah, blah, blah. We've seen it all over again, all the time. We see those Facebook posts go up.

Then, crickets. Uh oh. Why? Why does nobody care about this? Because you spent six and seven months to a year solving the wrong problem that nobody was asking you to solve. Period. And some of you guys may have podcasts like that. And you're wondering why the podcast isn't succeeding. Because you're solving the wrong problem.

So how do you figure out the correct problem to solve? Here's how you do it. Step by step. Uh, you guys, if you're driving, don't write this down. I don't want you to crash, but if you aren't driving, write all this stuff down and listen to the episode again. Um, so the first thing you want to do is post content, content, content, content, post everything you're doing, everything you're interested about.

Um, so as you post content. You start to take notes about what people react to, about what parts of your journey, what interests people like, Oh, this is interesting to me. And you guys would be surprised. There is a girl on TikTok that talks about lakes, and that's what she does. She goes, Ooh, hello, welcome back to lakes or whatever.

And I follow her and she's like making money from that because she loves like lakes and bodies of water and stuff and the science behind it. So post about whatever you're interested in. And then. Sit, wait, and watch. And then this is how you create your content strategy. Because you see what people engage with.

And so I said, Hey! You know, I'm traveling, I'm trying to quit my job and travel around the world and this is what I'm doing. This is how I'm doing it. You know, stay tuned and then people will be like, Oh, that's interesting. And then as I was doing it and I was traveling in Barcelona and I was living in Italy, I was living in.

Brazil, all of the places people started reaching out and they would be like, how did you do this? I want to do this. And then that's step two. You pay attention to who starts asking for advice and what are they asking you for help with for some of you? And they may be like, Hey, can you help me with my taxes?

Can you help me with bookkeeping? They can help me with budgeting. Can you help me with podcasting? Can you help me with weight loss? So many different things. And then you start paying attention to what people are asking you for help with. And then once you find out that, then that's organic demand. So now here's what you do next.

Do you create your offer and then ask them for their credit card? No. Stop. Wait. There's more. What you do next is you create a lead magnet. A free thing. And you say, here is free thing. How do you like this? And then they'll answer by downloading the free thing. You start collecting emails. Your social media followers don't matter.

Your emails do. That's all that matters. Period. A lot of you guys are realizing that the Instagram algorithm is super down right now. And it sucks. For a lot of us on Instagram. Uh, overnight. That happens all the time. With Facebook ads, Google ads. Algorithm change can completely wipe you out. Email will never go away.

You have the email. You control that. So, then you create these free things. And this could be, my friend makes 70, 000 a month helping people design Etsy shops. Right? Um, Cody Berman, I think he was on this podcast. Did you have Cody on here? No, he's on the list to get on though, because I know who he is. Get Cody on.

You would love Cody. For sure. I'll make an intro if you want. But yes, Cody does like 70, 000 a month from Etsy shops. So he made like a freebie for Etsy and then was able to sell through the, his email and his newsletter. So now you start to build up, you know, people here and you're leading with value.

That's what's important. The longer that you can delay your ask, the bigger your ask can be. There's a guy named Alex Ramosi that said that in a hundred million dollar offers, which is a great book. And so. The bigger your price point, if you want to do a 1, 000 thing, you need to lead with more value longer than if you want to do a 100 thing, right?

I hope that makes sense for everyone listening. So now you have the thing and you lead with value. So what I did to show you guys an example is I said, I'm good. I don't need any more money. But I feel unfulfilled back to that F word that you talked about before, fulfillment and fulfillment is what drives life.

That's what only thing that matters is fulfillment. And I said, I need to go from me to we, I need to help other people do what I did because that's what's going to fire me up. And so that's what I started doing. So what I said on the podcast was, Hey, guys, I want to build a business. I don't know what business I want to build.

But what I'm going to do is I'm going to do freedom calls. So for 15 minutes, I'll coach you for free, book a call through the link. It's my personal calendar. It's me. And let's talk. I'll help you with whatever. Let's just, let's jive. Uh, like I said, that's when hundreds and hundreds of people booked for these freedom calls because they wanted to learn how to do it.

And so I would go on these calls and I did market research, which is where I asked the customer what they wanted. And this is the part nobody does. But this is literally what's the make or break of your business, is asking the customer, what do they want? And this is every side hustle, every major business, anything.

So I asked them, what do you want? And I was like, what do you need help with? What are your roadblocks that you're running into? And everyone started telling me over and over again. I don't have the confidence to do this. I don't have the community to do this. I don't have accountability. I'm a lone wolf in my friend group.

I feel like a sprinter that's around joggers and walkers. Nobody gets it like I get it. I don't have capital partners. How do you find those? I don't have operating partners. How do you find those? How do people do these large real estate deals? I don't get it. You know, I just have this roadblock, this roadblock, this roadblock.

Cool. I take notes on every single one of these calls. Then after a hundred of these calls, uh, which, well, I did the math. I think it was like 42 hours of coaching that I did for free. Didn't ask anything. Just got their email. Said, okay, cool, thank you. Here's, here's value. Hope that's helpful for you. I just helped for free.

Then, I was like, I'm going to make a course just like everyone else. Right? Everyone's got a course. So I'm going to make a course. So I made this course. Um, I spent a month in Brazil, make it the course, and it was 52 hours. So for morning to night, um, for a month, I made this course and I released this course, uh, to the email list of the hundred people that I coached.

And I sent the email out. I said, Hey, I'm almost finished with this course thing. 1500 bucks. Is that good? Like it's not even done yet, but this will help you. It's based off of what we talked about before. I made 100, 000 in 48 hours. Amazing. Through Venmo and Cash App. Wow. So I didn't have a bank account. I didn't have a landing page.

I didn't have a website. I didn't have anything. You know, and that's called product market fit. So this is all these sexy Silicon Valley terms like for you guys to digest and actually use today to make money. This is the best way to make money. The rental properties would give you three to five hundred dollars a month.

This is how you get like 3, 000 to 10, 000 a month. Exactly. And I love that you have this step by step actionable thing that people can do here because what's really happening is a lot of people just have no idea where to start. And so you gave kind of the roadmap. This roadmap absolutely works. We've done it in our business as well where we kind of make sure, hey, what is it actually that you need?

What are the problems that we can solve for you? And what are you really really struggling with? And you did this exactly right. I mean, you went through that entire process to kind of figure out, hey, If you can solve other people's problems, you can make so much money in this world. And it is absolutely life changing what you can do for other people.

If you learn how to do these exact steps as well. So I love that you did that. And this is kind of how you thought through this process. So you've talked a lot about hard work is. Does not actually lead to success. And I love when you kind of talk about this process, cause you talk about, you know, instead of working, you know, your butt off and just working hard and that's all you have to do, you also have to learn to work efficiently.

And you obviously had to do that if you're traveling the world and you're all over the place and you are working hard. I mean, you are working every single day. You've had a podcast every single day for 430 plus days. Um, so you're doing a lot of stuff there, but how can you learn to work more efficiently in your business instead of, you know, just only thinking you have to, you know, be a bull in a China shop and work hard every single day.

Perfect. So you can't hustle and grind your way to a million dollars, right? A year, right? You need leverage. And so what happens next after I did that course actually completely answers your question, because the most important part was the course launch was successful. And then we threw everyone into a free Facebook community on top of the course, which is what people do, right?

We realized we were in the wrong business. So this is the most important part, guys, of the entire story. Is asking for feedback. And so people are like, we like the course, but man, me meeting John, me meeting Eric in the group, like we're partnering up together to do deals. I was like, uh oh, we're in the wrong business.

I don't want to do a course. I don't want to be a course creator. I don't want to be that guy. I want to do community. Because more information is not the answer. People are the answer. So I was like, how do we build this community up to where we can do it together as a team and I could assemble the best team in the world, like an Avengers squad, that's going to build this community, that's going to support people through all the stuff we talked about in this podcast, right?

Because I was like, I didn't have those mentors in the beginning, I didn't have these capital partners, these operating partners, I didn't know this stuff. Let's solve these problems with people. Because you need your hand held through all of this stuff. It's really difficult. You need the accountability, weekly.

And you need mentors that are like, Hey, here's how this deal is about to completely screw you. So leverage is the answer that you're asking. Um, so in order to realize that you need to stop working hard, working hard is what will get you out of your job. Leverage is what keeps you out of your job. Just like we said, community.

Same kind of thing. It's people. People are your answer. So there's a framework that I really like that I got from one of my mentors. It's worth 100 million plus. His name is David Osborne. And it's called I do, we do, they do. And that's the best business framework. So I do it by myself. We do it together.

They do it without me. And so I'm in the we do to they do section. Now I'm starting to get into the they do because now we have S. O. P. S. We have processes and I've got a really kick butt team that runs the community and they are ahead of like they run culture. They run engagement, onboarding and everything and it's just like, I'm free to go make content.

And I'd be the lighthouse calling the ships into harbor and saying, like, we have your safe space. Right? So leverage is the most difficult part and kind of closing. I know we're coming up on time here in this podcast, but I would say that financial freedom, which is the point of this podcast is like. The first level of freedom.

So nobody talks about what happens afterwards, right? So after you hit financial freedom, there's time freedom, which is the second level of freedom. And then the third level of freedom is mental freedom. So you get your time, freedom, and your mental freedom by using, uh, leverage that's hiring team systems and automation.

So it's automation and delegation because you can't do. All this stuff by yourself, like it's going to be a nightmare and you're going to burn yourself out completely. So you need to find out what you do best and delegate the rest. That's a quote that I freaking love. I love that as well, because I think that is the best way to get that leverage and to get that, like you said, that time, freedom and all the other pieces that we need, I think is one of the most powerful things that you can absolutely do.

Now you are very. goal oriented. And that's one big thing that you have talked about early on. So do you have any tips for people who are trying to set financial goals or trying to do goals like this, where they want to leave their W2? Do you have any tips for them to kind of set those goals up and think through that process?

Nope. Yep. Yep. That's all I think about, man. I love goals. Uh, goals are my favorite thing. So everyone does it completely wrong. And that's okay, because we're going to tell you how to do it the correct way here on this podcast. So people track the wrong stuff. That's it, plain and simple. Their goals are fluffy, they're not quantifiable, they have no end date, and they're tracking the wrong measures.

Easiest way I can say this is by weight loss. So, say your goal is to lose 50 pounds, right? You say, I'm going to lose 50 pounds. Cool. So, the first goal most people will have is, I want to lose weight. That's an awful goal. Quantify it. Let's make it better. I want to lose 50 pounds. Let's make it even better.

I want to lose 50 pounds in the next three months. That's a goal. Cool. Now we're cooking. So, once we have this established, and we have a time frame, and we have a quantifiable, trackable number, now we break down the actions. That will yield the goal and that's what actually becomes the goal are the actions.

So instead of looking at the weight loss on the scale, that's called a lag measure. What we pursue are lead measures, which are the actions that produce the result, right? So for weight loss, that may look like. 4 30 minute gym sessions a week, 6 days on a diet per week, 2 hours of cardio per week. So as each week progresses, you track those actions and you say, okay, I did this, this, this and this and you tick it off.

And at the end of the week, you could say, I won this week and then you go to the next week and you go to the next week. So say you get to the end of the month and you lost 47 pounds. You didn't hit your goal. Does that mean you're a failure? No. If you did 80 percent of your actions each week because you're human, you can't do 100 percent because you're not perfect.

If you did 80 percent of your actions every single week and you lost 47 pounds, good on you. You did the right thing. You became the type of person that has the habits and the systems and the structure. To now lose an extra 20 pounds easily because you're already doing the thing. Same thing comes with finances.

Same thing comes with any other part of life. Um, so I have like my goals on the lock screen on my phone that I set in Singapore last year, and I don't think I'm going to hit a single one of them. Um, so I've got 500 Action Academy members, 25, 000 daily podcast listeners, and a million dollars of personal income generated.

Um, I'm not going to hit any of those. Does that mean I'm a failure? Right now. So see how that goes. So what we'll end up with is I think we're at 206. I think we'll end probably around 300 Action Academy members will end. I get about 2700 people that listen to each episode of the podcast. So I think we'll end probably at 5000 listeners per the podcast per episode.

And then for the income generated personally, I don't like that the business may take a million dollars, the top line, but I'm not going to personally take a million dollars, maybe 200. It's not that much because that's what everyone lies to you guys about is when it comes to business. They tell you that the top number, not the actual take home.

Exactly. And so I love that because I think that's kind of how we teach how to talk about goals as well. You have to have those actionable steps that you're actually going to take. You can have the goal in place, but you got to have exactly what you're going to be doing in order to achieve that goal and start working towards that goal.

And we even dial it down to, Hey, what do you need to do daily? What do you need to do weekly? What do you need to do monthly? And kind of go through that process. So I love that you have those goals in place now. Really quick. I know we're running out of time here, but I want to shift gears to some of these things that we can ask.

them a rapid fire if you want, but we love asking these questions to a lot of our guests. Uh, and the first one is what part of your work or life makes you come alive? All of it, all of it now, man. Um, so a better question would be what parts of it do I hate? Uh, I don't like the repetitive stuff. As much I didn't like, you know, fielding the questions and handling a lot of Q and a and a lot of the, you know, day to day stuff.

I really hated doing that stuff. But whenever I'm doing stuff like this, being on a podcast and talking high level and making content and being like the marketing and being the machine of this. I freaking love that because I get to help people at scale. What I don't like anymore is doing one on one stuff, um, because it's just, it feels draining to me.

But when I do scale stuff like this, it's so much fun. And I, I'm on fire every single day because I'm living my passions. If you gave me all the money in the world, I'll do what I'm doing today. So, vast majority. And now I hire people that love to do the things that I hate. That's where magic is. That's the key for sure.

What is your biggest fear when it comes to money? Biggest fear when it comes to money? I don't think I'm afraid of ever losing money because the way that I view wealth is whatever I want, I'm just going to continue working until I get it, you know? So when it comes to money, fear of, I have a fear of dying too soon and not being able to Impact everyone like the way I want, because I don't really, I'm kind of emotionally numb to money because I'm around so much of it now, especially in Austin.

That's why I moved here. Um, so I don't really care about it as much anymore. I think about it, but which ironically makes it easier, but I would say, I would say that it's more of like a impact thing. You know, I'm just like, I've got this fear. I'm like, man, if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, I'm not gonna be able to help people.

So that's kind of what I'm most afraid of. And like, the money is just kind of a byproduct at this point. Makes sense. If you could tell your younger self one thing about money, what would it be? One thing about money, I tell them money isn't real. I'd say, I'd say stop focusing on money, focus on value and all the money with them.

Because value is, you know, When you focus and you change everything and stop, stop thinking about how to get money, you start thinking of how do I provide as much value to other people at scale, then money becomes infinite to you. So Zig Ziglar has a great quote. The best way to get anything you want in life is to help enough other people get what they want.

Exactly. And so it's just the best. It's the best thing, man. It's value. Exactly. I love that. The last one is my favorite one. You've answered it pretty much throughout this entire podcast, but so I think I know what your answer is going to be, but what does wealth mean to you? Wealth means being able to have, I have a surface level answer to that.

Let me think on this so I can give you something more to chew on. Sure. Because, yeah, we've answered that a couple of times in here. Wealth, for me, I think relationships are the ultimate wealth. So, I think financial freedom, time freedom is awesome. But I've had time freedom for a year and a half now. So, I can do anything I want, whenever I want.

But relationships, man, are the coolest thing. Because when you're traveling, and I was living in Brazil for a couple of months, and I'd been gone for eight months. And I came back last November, and I was able to do Friendsgiving with some of my friends. And that was the coolest thing, man, just to be able to be with friends.

And I've been by myself because me and my girlfriend had broken up on the trip. And so I've been by myself for like four months and I was working. It wasn't like glamorous. I was really working on the course and the new company. And so being able to be back with them, I was just like, Oh my gosh, so cool.

I miss this so much. Like I'd give anything just to have a friend to go get a beer with on a Friday. And so relationships, I think, are the ultimate store of wealth. So now I just love meeting interesting people that are on fire about whatever they're doing and then becoming friends with them and being in their world.

They're in mine. That's the ultimate wealth for me. I love that answer. And Brian, this has been absolutely amazing. There's so many actual things that people can definitely take off of this. If people want to learn more about you, your podcast, everything else that you're doing, where can they find you? You can check out the Action Academy podcast.

If you like hearing my voice, you'll hear it every single day. I talk about it on the podcast 24 seven, um, at Brian Lubin on Instagram. And then if you guys are wanting, like when this airs, my frickin book will be out. So I created a book, um, it's called From Passive to Passionate. How to Quit Your Job, Grow Your Wealth, and Turn Your Passions into Profits.

So it goes over in depth everything we talked about. You'll learn how to buy businesses, how to buy real estate, how to build your org chart, hire people, set your vision, hit these goals that we talked about here. Every single part of the story and journey, you'll learn that in the book. You can find that on Amazon or you can go to, I believe it's passive to passionate.

com. And then you can find all the information about the book there. So I spent 1137 hours this year writing that book. So I'm pumped about it. Absolutely. That's amazing. We will link all of that down in the show notes below. We'll link your book as well. And we'll, we'll send it out on our newsletter as well.

So thank you, Brian, so much for coming on. We truly appreciate it. Thank you, man. This has been a fricking blast. Hopefully I came through. Okay. And hopefully you guys enjoyed. Absolutely. For sure. Thank you so much again.