Episode 157: How to Filter Through New Ideas and Opportunities

Announcer (00:07):

This is the South Storage Podcast where we share the knowledge and skills from the industry’s leading investors, developers, and operators to help you launch and grow your South storage business. Your host, Scott Myers, over the past 18 years has acquired, developed, converted and syndicated nearly 5 million square feet of south storage nationwide with the help of his incredible team@southstorageinvesting.com, who has helped thousands of people achieve greatness in South Storage.

Doug Downs (00:44):

Hi, I’m Doug Scott’s podcast producer Scott is recalibrating after last week’s self storage academy in Mesa, Arizona. He’ll have lots of great stories to tell when he is back with a fresh new episode on the 22nd. Meantime, this week what we thought we would do is bring you one of our most downloaded episodes. It’s episode 61, which published back in November of 2021. It’s about filtering through new ideas and opportunities with Joey Mure and Russ Morgan.

Scott Meyers (01:15):

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Self Storage Podcast. I’m your host Scott Meyers, and this week’s guests are my good friends, Russ Morgan and Joey Mure from Wealth Without Wall Street. Joey Mure started in the mortgage business in 2003 and quickly became one of the nation’s top mortgage lenders. But despite earning an impressive income, he still wondered how anyone can save aggressively for retirement and simultaneously pay for automobiles, college tuition for their kids weddings and vacations. Then in 2010, Joey met his future business partner Russ, who shared the infinite banking concept and suddenly everything changed. Infinite banking allowed Joey to get completely out of debt and besides paying off his mortgage, he started saving four times the amount he had previously been saving and finally had a clear plan of how to save for all of life’s expenses. Without giving up retirement savings, Joey decided to join Russ and they co-founded a company called A Wealth Without Wall Street, where they teach people to stop trading time for money to achieve financial freedom by following the five pillars of wealth without Wall Street, Russ Morgan, AKA, the idea guy started his career in the financial industry with four years of planning under his belt.

(02:12):

Russ was stunned in September of 2008 to see the Dow Jones plummet 800 points. He had no idea that the market could react in such a volatile manner and knew this was something he could never have control over. Russ began a journey that day to passionately understand more about how to take back and gain control over his money as well as that of his clients. And he now enlightens business owners and investors with the knowledge that the best path to financial freedom is one that frees you to make decisions that allow your money to grow, allow you to have access to this money and to protect this money from market swings and tax regulations. So without further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Russ Morgan and Joey Muir with Wealth Without Wall Street. Joey Russ, welcome to the show.

Joey Mure (02:49):

Scott. Thanks for having us, man. We’re delighted.

Russ Morgan (02:52):

Yeah, it’s a pleasure. Scott, thank you for bringing us on.

Scott Meyers (02:56):

Well, we’ve been looking to make this happen for a while now. I ran across you on another podcast and I’ve been following you for a while looking at the site, pulling down some of the information you have, the great resources that you have on your website as well, but then also following with an eye towards some of the unique things that you’re doing to raise capital and how you’re really pouring into your tribe, the people that come to you, the community that you’ve built. So I want to touch on that in a moment, but if you would tell us a little bit about what you’re up to and maybe fill in the gaps from what I may have left out during the bio.

Joey Mure (03:29):

Well, so Scott, I would say that wealth without Wall Street is ultimately a story of two morons, like these guys here, Russ and I, trying to figure out how to get to financial freedom and we like to say just in our faith that we’re like two beggars just trying to tell the other beggars where the bread is, and that really just directs all that we do. So I was that guy that was in the mortgage business in the corporate world, and I was working as hard as I could because I had put in my mind that financial success, I wouldn’t have even said it was financial freedom at the time, equaled a higher income like, oh man, you’re making six figures or you’re making 300,000. That is what financial success looks like. And unfortunately once I got there, I looked around and I was lonely.

(04:26):

My wife, my kids were the last people that I got to spend time with. And even when we were on vacation, I was that guy that had the phone just connected literally to my hip. And Russ always busts me about that, but I had this holster for my phone. I’d be like, Hey, you guys, go on down to the beach. I’ll be down there in just a minute. I just got to take this one phone call. I don’t know if you can resonate with that or anybody that’s listening, but man, my life was consumed with a job with having to go to work. And I remember specifically reading a book that Russ shared with me back in 2009 that totally changed my whole view on what financial success looks like. And it was much more about taking back control and buying back my time. And once I started implementing those things, about four years later I looked up and it was a dramatic transformation for our family.

(05:30):

So much so that I was sitting at a conference and I felt this nudge that man, more people need to know about this. Why are there not more people talking about financial freedom and how to get to the point where you’re at? And I really literally felt like God said, why don’t you do it? And I was sitting there making over $300,000 a year. My wife was pregnant with our fourth daughter at the time and told her, I said, Hey, I feel like this is what God’s telling me to do, go full time into this. And she said, I think you should do it. And I was blown away. I was like, okay, there must be something to this. I talked to Russ and shortly thereafter we joined forces and started to get the word out that this is possible. Financial freedom is within reach and you don’t have to put it off until you have very little life left and hope that you have enough money to retire on. You can start living freely today. So that’s kind of in a nutshell what we’re all about.

Russ Morgan (06:34):

So Scott, outside of my nine-year-old son, I only have one other person who looks to me as a hero. And obviously you just heard from the other, that’s basically what he said there.

Scott Meyers (06:46):

I get it. That’s exactly what I read into it as well, Russ. So good job. You set the bar high.

Russ Morgan (06:53):

Well, here’s the part of it is just like you and every one of us, we’re always learning. We’re learning each and every day. I think over the last couple of years our focus has gotten really pointed toward what areas will create streams of income that require less and less of our help. How do we maximize the people around us? And a pivotal moment for me, and many of us are, we’re probably at this position at some point if you’re not already past. It is making great money doing what we’re doing and we’re loving it, but yet we’re still challenged with how do I take less time to do that thing? Right? So for Joey, in that example, he was working in a JOB and he was trying to figure out how to get out of that. Well, the next step is that then you start building these passive income streams.

(07:42):

You start building these businesses that you’re operating in. And while you love that and you’re what we would say a hundred percent in control of what’s going on, the time is still happening. You’re still spending the same amount of time. I remember one time a politician was on a local radio station and he was saying, if you hire me, I’m going to change the way things are being done up in Washington. I was like, go up there and do nothing because the dollar comes out of my pocket the same exact way regardless of the effort. Well, I think the same thing could be said about our time is that we can spend time working for someone else so we can spend time working for us now. We enjoy us better than others, but it’s still time away. And I think that was a real pivotal moment, several years for us back where we had to get really clear of how are we going to not try to increase necessarily income exponentially where it requires us working exponentially, but how do we get other people working for us in all these roles and work as little as Joey does now, which is really now he’s become my hero.

Scott Meyers (08:48):

Well, I’m sure everybody, they may have missed a few of those things that you just now mentioned, Russ, because all they can think about now is what was the book, what was the book that you gave Joey to change his perspective and his outlook?

Russ Morgan (09:02):

So the book was Becoming Your Own Banker by a guy named Nelson Nash. He has since passed, but he was, when I read the book for the first time was January, 2009. He was in his early seventies and the concept was basically how to control the flow of cashflow through your hands. And many of your audiences probably already read that book. It’s become widely popular over the last 10 years, not because we talk about it, but just because that’s, I think it’s very evident in today’s marketplace that the biggest obstacle for us to become financially free is lack of access to money. And everything we’ve been taught up to this point is to give away our access to money. And that book was just a tool of how to stop investing in the 4 0 1 Ks and paying down every extra dollar we have free on our mortgages and all this stuff that then limited our abilities to take advantage of opportunities and deals that come around us or not even see the deals because we don’t have any money.

(10:01):

So we don’t even know to even think about what it would take to do the deal. And I shared that with Joey really several months after I read it because I had been that typical financial planner. I was actually a certified financial planner at one point. I’ve since given up that designation because I don’t really believe in what it stands for. But what I learned through that process is that teaching my clients to think for themselves created an amazing uproar and push to force me to even go faster than they did. So I had to be one step in front of Joey, I refer to him as the stallion on our podcast. I had to be one step in front of him, and so I had to start doing things. And I love that accountability and ultimately that accountability has led us to now publishing our own personal passive income report live every single month for people to see. And again, the reason to do it is more so to be one step in front of everybody else and to be forced to keep going faster.

Scott Meyers (11:01):

Well, truth be told, Russ, it’s probably the real reason why you gave up your designation because I don’t think any certified financial planner would ever divulge what their personal financial plan is, let alone share it with everybody and do it for free. So let’s be honest here, but everything, and I know a little bit about your guys’ background, obviously not all of it, so I appreciate that. But I think yes, that does resonate with me, Joey. As you mentioned, we become entrepreneurs and we chase real estate or investing passively to have that freedom to be able to not only have time for your family and to be able to pick your schedule, pick your vacations, and do whatever we want to do, but either some folks never get to that place, but even in the beginning it is a grind and then all of a sudden you poke your head up after several years later to recognize that you’re still grinding and you missed out on some of those golden years.

(11:53):

And I learned that. Well, I think we could all say the lesson was too late and I spent too much time doing that, but fortunately recognized that early on my intervention was by way of Dan Sullivan and Strategic Coach who helps entrepreneurs to break that pattern because 24 7 365 can obviously that’s when we own our own business. We could be doing emails Christmas morning before the kids get up because that’s what business owners can do unless we step in and recognize and take a look back and say, Hey, this isn’t what I got into this for, and there is a better way and we don’t have to do it the way that everybody else has told us to do it. As you mentioned, Russ. So Russ, you’re a good friend, and Joey, you’re a quick learner and that’s why you guys are here. So yeah, tell us about then the genesis of wealth with Without Wall Street, because that clearly is, and I appreciate you sharing your faith as well because we are servants at the end of the day and our businesses need to serve people. And so it looks everything front to back from what I see that you guys are doing is truly meant to serve passive investors that have that same passion to have the life that you guys have created and are creating. Is that fair to say?

Russ Morgan (13:01):

Yeah, totally. Obviously the most common saying is to live a life on purpose, right? With a plan, be designed in what you’re doing and not let it just happen. I think that Joey and I have built our business and our families, our business around our family. So we have a lot of kids. He has five, I have four. It’s the only thing I think he’s ever beat me in other than foosball. But we homeschool our families, we travel a lot with them, so our businesses needed to support that. So really again, the genesis behind Wealth Without Wall Street was he and I thinking through a process that where we could teach people across the world, if you will, the things that we were doing. So I came out of a typical financial planner office where I would meet people at the typical places, the networking functions, the churches, the medical and dental schools, and we decided that wasn’t a really good way to communicate with people and to be able to get a message that we believe was really important, important enough to let Joey leave a job that he had been really successful in.

(14:09):

And so we got online and started teaching back in 2015, 2016, which we’re not smart enough to realize that our podcast was going to be what it ultimately became. But we had a young guy in our office at the time that was listening to podcasts. He showed Joey and I how to open it on our flip phones and listen to our own. And then we started teaching the people that we had been working with for up to that point, just, okay, we’ll have a weekly conversation with them. And that weekly conversation ultimately grew to two conversations a week and ultimately grew to where now our podcasts and the people listening to it are all over the place. And we’ve built an audience and a community out of that, Scott, which is really probably our most prized possession that we have, is that we decided a long time ago to get off the social media channels, to take the political rhetoric, take the cat memes and stuff out of the feed and only focus on things that were focused toward getting us closer to financial freedom.

(15:10):

And I know your audience knows this, but sometimes that word is too often thrown around but not necessarily defined. And we say that financial freedom, the formula to achieve it is easy, but the work to accomplish it is hard. And the formula is simply passive income greater than monthly expenses and wealth. Wild Wall Street had always kind of served people, helping them think through financially where their dollars were going better places. The book Becoming Your Own Banker has been a staple in our business, but then teaching them how do we create those streams of income showing them, and even more importantly, has then evolved to saying, okay, yes, Scott is great at self storage, Joey. Well, we still haven’t figured out what Joey’s good at, but there’s some things that he does with Rust that it ends up working out whether it’s short-term rental or land flipping or this crypto mining thing.

(16:02):

All of that stuff that was Rust is idea that he was able to take advantage of, okay, those things are great ideas, but is that really for me? And so we actually decided, hey, instead of leading people down a pathway that could be to failure, if they’re not gifted toward those things, then maybe we should help them create what we call an investor, DNA, to assess themselves, to determine what would be those pros and cons that they would really resonate with and match them more specifically to the things that they’re doing, not from a risk tolerance standpoint like the Wall Street world works with, but more in just commonality to the natural giftings that they’ve had since they were five or six years old. And that’s kind of where the story arc, if you will, of wealth Wall Street has gone is where we’re now showing people not only what we’re doing, but ultimately helping them find out how they can become a better investor, increasing their knowledge as an investor, so then ultimately they can have exponential growth on those investments.

Scott Meyers (17:05):

And one of the things that we had touched on prior to getting on the air live here was some of those areas in which you’re expanding into and other areas that you’re looking into as you’re exploring your own DNA as well as those of others. And we have a mastermind. We are looking for different venues and other places where we can hold events. And for many folks that if you have any sort of small or large seminar, conference mastermind, you had a tough time in 2020 being able to gather anywhere. We had a live event that we hold on a regular basis and to go to a hotel, they said, well, you’re going to have to rent out a stadium to be able to get social distancing for six feet for that many people and it’s going to cost you X amount of dollars. And we decided that, well, we’re going to go a different route and we’re going to try a short-term rental or an executive type rental where we can get 40 people in a room and not have to beholden to those rules and laws be able to do what we’ve always been able to do.

(18:10):

And so it sounds like you found that need as well for some of the folks in your group, and that may even turn into another side gig or another main gig in addition to everything else that you’re doing. Is that correct?

Joey Mure (18:22):

Yeah, so the most recent thing that we’ve been working on, to your point is that we have had a lot of success in the short-term rental business, just taking for the most part a rental arbitrage model where we went out a unit, whether it be an apartment or a condo or something along those lines from an existing landlord on a long-term lease. And then we short-term, put those on Airbnb, booking.com, VRBO, things like that and just make the difference, the difference between what we’re paying out in a lease and what we can gain on a nightly or weekly rental. And so we’ve built that model up to 25, 26 units now in the last 18 months and subsequently recently we had our passive income mastermind in one of those Airbnb larger homes in Franklin, Tennessee. And we said, man, we got to do this in Birmingham. And so we’ve just identified a property and we are in the process now of getting it under contract and going through the due diligence to make sure that we can then implement this in Birmingham and see where that leads. So that’s an exciting kind of on the front edge or cusp of what we’re looking at expanding into 2022.

Russ Morgan (19:42):

What I love about what you said too, Scott, is that this creates flexibility for people who do want to have events and provides comfort in the future that if the maid of your venues or even some of the smaller venues that they want to do stuff at don’t allow for it, that these sort of things are popping up, right? We’re living in a shared economy already. Most of us have already staying in an Airbnb or VRB when we travel at this point. Some of us are even starting to use Turo, right? We all probably have used Uber several times in the cities that we travel. Well. Now the thought of being able to use these as a place for small weddings, for receptions, for weddings, for the corporate retreat like you just talked about, or the mastermind that Joey mentioned, all of that now is becoming a newer thing, but it’s becoming that area where my wife, who’s a dentist by trade tells me, Russ, there’s 25% of the population are never going to go back into hotels because they already were germaphobes before covid and now it’s just been accentuated.

(20:46):

They’ve just said, okay, never again. And that’s why our operator for our units tell us that three out of four, three out of five inquiries is asking about is there shared hallways? What is our cleaning protocol? They’re asking the questions. They’re reaffirming the fact that the reason they’re coming to us is because they don’t want to be in an environment where they’re having to maybe be in an elevator with four other people. They just have gotten that cautious, if you will, and that’s just created already booming business. Airbnb is crazy how it continues to grow in itself, and it’s become that marketing engine for the business that we have now just tapped into and seeing it just meteorically rise.

Scott Meyers (21:33):

So Russ, I think you’ve clearly laid out that in EOS traction terms, which most of our tribe follows, Gino Wickman, that you are the visionary and Joey is the integrator. So that being said, for both of you, just kidding, Joey, for both of you tell us about, I think most entrepreneurs, if there isn’t something available in the marketplace that we need or want, then we create it. I mean, that’s how so many businesses are born. And so as you kind of look across the landscape, fair to say you’re both opportunistic because you’re entrepreneurs and you’re investors, but tell us what goes into the process of really pulling the thread on an idea that comes into your mind or something that, a vision that God gave you to go pursue this course or that course. Is that a whiteboard session with the two of you? How does some land on the desk and others fall into the wastebasket? Tell us a little bit about how you explore the different opportunities out there and then what it looks like when you decide to go full bore and straight ahead. A hundred miles an hour.

Joey Mure (22:38):

Yeah, I would say that it usually is a whiteboard session with Russ and I. Russ is completely, he cannot do anything without seeing it drawn out. It’s like I have to get out crayons. It’s the whole thing. But the point that I’ll make to the way others can apply this as well is what we’ve learned over the time of working together is one, if the idea or opportunity requires more time for us, no, it doesn’t matter how big the opportunity is. If it’s going to require us to give up what we’ve worked so hard to gain, which is hours that are precious to our family and to serving others, we’re just not going to do it. So we got really clear on what our quote buy box is. If it’s something we can put an operator in place fairly easily and we can grow a business, then we’re going to very much look at that.

(23:40):

It has to be super passive and then it has to line up with investor DNA, as Russ was saying, and I’m applying this to our process. So when people engage with us, they go through a GPS process. The first is goal. If they get clear on their goal, then they can apply the investment to that. If you do it the opposite way, you very frequently screw things up because you get caught up in interest rates or rated returns and all these sort of things and you miss the idea that man, it could not be lined up with who I am. And that’s where you start making mistakes. So get clear on your goal, then you have the plan, and that’s where you apply your investor ENA, that’s where you apply, where’s the cash going to come from, and then you get the support in the last step. But for our process, we get clear on what we want it to do, if it’s going to take less time, and then we apply it to how is this going to continue to grow that passive income side for us and can we then scale it from there? I mean, that’s kind of a really quick overview, but that’s what I would say we focus

Russ Morgan (24:53):

On. Well, you know how this process goes. I love that you referenced Wigman. I love the book Rocket Fuel. And I wouldn’t say that Joey is the implementer integrator. That’s not perfectly his style, but he’s closer to that than I am. And we both provide that visionary gas pedal to our businesses. But I think what we have done to help us is that we have paid a lot of money to have consultants and people in our life that will help speak into those situations and mentors and private consultants that you can go and bring a deal to and talk about the scenario. And like Joey said, ultimately a lot of times it comes back to is it going to require more of your time? And they remind us of those things and we go, oh, okay, well just like this short-term rental space, when we first heard about this 30 months ago or whatever it was, it got super excited, started going down the route, and we got to somebody and we’re writing ’em a $20,000 check to be able to start learning it and apply it.

(26:00):

And they said, you guys aren’t going to do this. I don’t want to take your money. I’m like, what do you mean we’re not going to do it. We’re absolutely going to do this. I said, I was going to do it, I’m going to do it. And he’s like, you don’t have time to do this. You guys have no time in order to make this happen. I know everything about your businesses and you don’t have time. There’s no way. And we go, oh, how much time does it take? And he started telling like, oh yeah, we don’t have time. Alright, give me one second. And then within two weeks we had already hired an operator for the business, created a vision for the operator of how he was going to be running this business. It was going to be at least 15 units. That was our original goal was we hit 25 in that timeframe, but here’s how we’re going to scale it.

(26:38):

Here’s how you’re going to manage it, here’s how you’re going to be able to start your own as a process. And we created the vision and went back to the guy and said, Hey, alright, we’re going to buy the course. I told you I didn’t want to take your money. He said, no, we got somebody else who’s going to do it for us. And then they were taking notes from us like, well, how did you do that? They hadn’t even considered that. That’s where Joey and I, we do spend time thinking through those ideas. If we have any gifts, which is few, it’s coming up with something completely different than what everybody else has created because we definitely want to spend less time in the business itself. And thankfully so because our main business, Wout Wall Street, what we do to help people, it requires only two or 3% of our effort. Thankfully, our team has built out a process that really executes way better than he and I did when we were just individuals meeting with people. One-on-one, they’re

Joey Mure (27:29):

Much stronger implementers. To your point, Scott, everybody that we hire has a really high, high follow through and we’re always amazed at that.

Russ Morgan (27:38):

And the tool, I would say this is a little tool that you probably know about, but if you’re not, this is a great one. It’s called Culture Index. You familiar with that, Scott?

Scott Meyers (27:47):

Correct, yes.

Russ Morgan (27:48):

That tool has been great for us. It’s amazing how almost every role that we hire for as an architect or tech expert because they have vision, but they also have amazing follow through and they love to go fast. And that profile and personality fit very well with us because we can give them an idea that they already know that they can improve upon and they’ll want to do it as fast as we want ’em to, but then they will actually implement, they’ll actually follow through where Joey and I would forgot about it and move on to the next one.

Scott Meyers (28:17):

And that’s the toughest part. Jim Hoffman once said that ideas are welcome, but execution is worshiped around our organization. And there’s so much truth to that because from reading four dx, four disciplines of execution and everything else, there’s a lot of ideas that get thrown around by the visionary and folks in our organization, but if we don’t execute it, then we all know what happens. It means nothing happens. And so it is difficult to find those individuals. I don’t want to turn this into a hiring piece, but that is one of the, I guess the major challenges until we got to the place where we were hiring based upon Culture index. I mean we looked at everything else from Myers-Briggs to looking at Enneagrams and going through traction, recognizing that we need to hire on our core values first of all. So there has to be an alignment there.

(29:09):

And so then predictive index, which then lead led us to culture index and I think we’re finally hitting our stride now. So each one of those hires has to, they don’t necessarily have to generate ideas, they just need to get it, have the capacity to do it, but high capacity execution is what we’re looking for in those folks. And that’s a rare breed as you mentioned, the architects and with the engineering type Ben, but then also can go out and get it done. So kudos to you for finding out those folks because rare, one of the other pieces that I wanted to touch on is you’ve built a tribe that may be a little bit different than others. I would say, dare I say, if it’s even a traditional model in our organization, we started out investing in self storage years ago and then started teaching people about it.

(29:58):

As people started to look at what our organization was doing and what I was doing, I was the head of some real estate investment groups and then getting asked to speak and write articles. And so our education business was born out of our investment business. And then as you mentioned, your growth is only limited to the amount of cash that you have, and we didn’t want to lose any deals that came across our desk, so we had to get really good at bringing along partners that also shared our enthusiasm for self-storage and recognize that as a vehicle to achieve financial freedom, however you would define it. And so there’s how our tribe of equity partners and people that come alongside of us and invest in our projects with us, that was the genesis of how it was born on our end. So yours seems to be a little bit different in that there’s maybe a little more of a qualifier to have them take a step back and say, okay, well you might like what we’re doing right now, but we want to find out just exactly what it is that you’re interested in. And so you’re testing them on the front end or at least setting up a profile so that you can guide them a little bit better. Tell us a little bit about how that came about. Was that from the beginning or was that from trial and error where you realized that you needed to or wanted to build something different? How did you get started taking that approach, which seems to be some vastly different than other folks?

Joey Mure (31:14):

It definitely is just like everything else that we do, Russ and I, is trial and error emphasis on the error first. But if you listen to our passive income report, you’ll know that I have bought into a drop shipping business called a hundred unicorns.com. That was a massive failure. And the reason was because I didn’t consider who I am as an investment. I got caught up in the actual investment being, oh man, this is the kind of space that everything’s going. And oh, by the way, it’s something I could teach my daughters because they’ll be all fired up about unicorns and this would be great. And I get in and one, it’s super technical in setting up the website and making sure that all the things are connected on the back end from suppliers and so on. And it was a nightmare. It just totally failed. Things like that. We have multiple stories of realizing that, man, the investment is not nearly as important as the investor.

(32:24):

Giving people exposure is a blessing and a curse is what we found. Our podcast is going to give you ridiculous amount of ideas, but then if you don’t get clear on who you are and what your goal is, it doesn’t matter. You’re going to get overwhelmed or you’re going to go down the path that’s really not meant to serve your ultimate goal. And so I guess that’s a long way of saying we had to figure out, okay, who are you as an investor to help guide people down a path that would get them to financial freedom as fast as possible? We want people’s stories to continue to be perpetuated in our community where, man, 18 months ago I had no idea what I was doing and now my wife can stay home from being a nurse to raise our three kids because we’ve created 15,000 a month in land Flipping like, whoa. That’s when somebody got really clear and started putting some effort towards the right direction and bang, they see the result. Or a school teacher that’s now free of her job that she wasn’t enjoying, didn’t wanted to move on, but didn’t have a way out getting clear on that and literally in 24 months being able to say, I’m not coming back in the fall. Those are the kind of stories we want to continue to perpetuate. And the process was necessary to build to get people those results.

Russ Morgan (33:52):

I heard your question, and I apologize if I’m mistakenly heard it, but you were talking about our audience as us syndicating deals. And so I do want to clarify that we do have some private groups that we work in that we do in essence pull together the deals, but we go into partnerships with them in those specific deals as a whole. Our group is we’re teaching them, we’re trying to help them become better investors. People don’t necessarily come into our sphere and then try to invest in the deals. At least that’s not the way that we put it together. Now we do have a passive income mastermind. We call it the 200% club where people are trying to get 200% of their monthly expenses through passive income. And there’s deals being done together into those groups, but they’re all individual LLCs and partnerships. We are putting together a deal right now with some of those guys with this property that we’re buying, and those are specific things that we have intimate relationships already prearranged agreements, and we keep it small like that on purpose one because we’re not smart enough to figure out how to do it on a bigger way like you are.

(35:06):

And we would love to simplify our life within that without complicating it. Now, that’s not to be said that at some point in time we don’t end up doing that because we get that bug or itch to try to prove it to ourselves that we can. But as a whole, our group is we’re just teaching and equipping them to go out and do it on their own. And then ultimately there are situations on an individual basis where we end up doing some deals with some of the people in the group.

Scott Meyers (35:32):

We are pretty much cut from the same mold in that I don’t want to do anything that creates more another job within my business for myself. And so we try to keep it as simple as well, and that was never the goal was to raise a group of people so that we can go out and do more deals together. Right now, as a matter of fact, we’re looking to scale back on the amount of transactions and we’ve started a fund, but we’re doing larger deals, so portfolios or larger developments. So we’re actually doing fewer deals. It takes roughly the same amount of work as it does to do one big deal as it does to do three or four that are the same size in terms of dollar amount for that. So that was never our goal, but what we’ve realized along the way is that the more people that are following what we’re doing that we’re teaching and helping and empowering for them to get across the finish line on their own deals, then that provides some opportunities for us to do business in the future on those bigger deals when they now have a little bit of wind at their back and in their sail and they’re finding bigger deals and more projects that we can share with the community or that we can invest in on a selective basis that just continues to perpetuate itself.

(36:38):

And there is strength in numbers and economies of scale that is gained by having folks that we’re teaching, that are investing the ways that we do. And first of all that share again, our moral compass and our values. Those are the folks that are really closest to us in our mastermind, but even at the other levels within our organization and our tribe, if you will, I think it’s a pretty darn good group of people that we’d like to do business with. So I guess the other direction that I’d like to take this in is at a point, Richie, there was another question that I was going to ask you guys, and I can’t remember exactly what that was. Not off the top of my head. I had a few written down. It

Joey Mure (37:19):

Was, Russ doesn’t use any specific sort of hair product if that was what you’re going to ask,

Scott Meyers (37:23):

Right? That was it. Okay, ready? Richie, here we go. Three, two. Gosh darn. It was something you touched on. I am trying not to turn this into a commercial as to how we’re so much alike, but we do a lot of mission work as well. We just got back from the mission field and we’re trying to do the same things to empower our folks to create a life that makes room and time for that. But I don’t want to sound like a broken record. Yeah, there was a question around it and I can’t remember what it was now. So dog on it. Sorry, professional interviewer here. Right? Okay.

Joey Mure (38:01):

We’ve never had that sort of brain fog. No worries.

Scott Meyers (38:04):

Oh my gosh. Well, you’ve taken me in a different direction than we normally do, which is, I dunno, I guess usual businesses. So okay, here we go, Richie, 3, 2, 1. Well, Joey and Russ, as we are coming to the end of our time here, one of the reasons why we created our tribe to begin with, we had an education business. We have an investing business and both of ’em are 60 hour a week businesses. So the last thing that we wanted to do is again, create more, putting things more on our plate. But what we were passionate about in the beginning when my wife and I started this business was that we wanted to be able to not only share in the experiences and some of the bonehead moves that this knucklehead made in his investing career, but also we have a passion for, we also homeschool our kids and we wanted to raise them and take them different places and that was onto the mission field and to be able to have time to be able to do so.

(38:55):

And that’s why we get into real estate and self storage is to have that time and that freedom and to have the cashflow to be able to do so. With that in mind, share a little bit about maybe some of your own personal stories or some of the other stories when those folks that you have helped have gotten to the place they’re in the 200 club as you mentioned it, where their expenses are taken care of, maybe one or both wage earners are at home and now they’re doing greater things for themselves, for others, for the kingdom, whatever that might look like. Any stories that stick out that you’ve been able to experience or had a hand in that you’d like to share?

Joey Mure (39:29):

So I’m going to keep it a little bit more general in nature to say, one of the things that drives Russ and I every day is that one of the major things standing in the way of people being used in the capacity that God created them like to their maximum use if you will, their ability to serve is to get them out of financial prison. There are people, in fact, I was talking to my daughters this morning about how the world will tell us that we all need to keep working and just we need to give our money away to access it and all that sort of thing. And we just have to keep on this hamster wheel of living just below our means and just kind of survive. But when you create a margin in both the amount of money that you make and that you spend, and then you gain this passive income, it opens up worlds that would’ve never been available to you before.

(40:34):

And what I mean by that is it kind of goes along with our investor DNA to say, God created you to be a very specific person with very specific strengths and very specific weaknesses. And when you can really operate in those, it’s super fulfilling to yourself, but also to the ultimate mission that God has put us on this earth to give him glory. And so anyways, all that being said, I think that’s the overarching theme that drives us to say people are typically in financial prison and they either don’t know it or they realize it and they don’t know a way out. So how can we create that? How can we give people a means to get to that end and then see the results that come from it? And I think for Russ and I have a really heavy burden right now just to disciple and to grow my daughters into the young women that they need to become to then be a part of that overall mission. And it is very time consuming when you have five daughters who homeschool, I’m constantly helping ’em with math or reading or piano. One of my daughter takes piano. Anyway, those are the extracurricular activities that I focus on currently. But Russ, what would you add to that?

Russ Morgan (42:02):

Well, I would say just more specific to the questions, Joey doesn’t listen questions very well. I apologize Scott for him always derailing. But the question that you asked was a specific story or specific stories that people deal with. Well, I think that they fall into two categories. First one, when people reach a point where their passive income equals or exceeds their monthly expenses, it is either providing them a level of financial security that they have been seeking, that their job or business or whatever they’re in didn’t provide, right? We’re always until that point, sometimes even us as entrepreneurs wondering when will the other thing happen? Are we about to see the next crash? And how is that going to ultimately trickle down to my area of expertise and what I’m in? So it provides either financial security or the second thing, which I do think when Joey was answering, I just love to bust his chops is providing time.

(43:06):

So there’s one of our guys that’s in our mastermind is an amazing musician, is somebody who’s been uber successful, you’ve heard his stuff and he had these royalties coming in and was provided an opportunity to sell them for a lump sum. But he came to us and said, but what would I do with this? This does provide some level of security, but the problem is I don’t know how long people will keep buying my music and using my music in TV shows and movies and stuff like that so it could go away. So what would I do? And so we talked about the numerous different things that he could start replacing that royalty income with. And when he did that, it was that final security place. He ultimately came to us and said, I now have the ability to create more music. I want to do it again.

(43:58):

He’s like, but I’m so excited now that I’ve got three or four different streams of income. He created a big rental portfolio, he created some syndication funds and ATMs and multifamily and so forth and so on. And he was like, now I feel freed up because I don’t have to worry about that burden. And what I love about that is that that then gives him the ability to do cool stuff that we can all participate in and enjoy. Because that’s what those sort of gifted people do on the other side is the person who’s looking for that time freedom that they literally can walk away from their job and go pursue new ventures. And that may be to create new businesses. And I think of that, that’s the way I’m get built, is I think of how can I create something new? And then ultimately, how many new jobs can be built out of that?

(44:49):

That’s the way to give back, or how many more people can we put in the mission field? How many more missionaries can we support? How many more things can we do? Joey shared this with me the other day, is just thinking through the amount of money that we’re able to give now and the multiples that it is from where our first job was, how much money we made in our first job. We’ve out of college, we’re now giving multiples of that away in the mission field. And we hear those kinds of stories, people creating foundations and supporting organizations and institutions like that, trying to be kingdom-minded, but also then building legacies that will way outlast their future. We have one of our guys in our group, he was sharing with us his a hundred year plan, which I just think is amazing. That’s just stuff that creates ripple effects from years and years, way past when we’re here.

Scott Meyers (45:44):

And in case somebody isn’t tracking there, what Russ said, when a person sits down to create a hundred year plan, it isn’t because they feel like they’re going to live to 120 or 130. It means that they’re building a legacy and they want to make sure that their family is taken care of and it’s something that lasts beyond them. So that’s awesome. That’s good stuff. Well, guys, before my last question, there’s a whole lot of folks that I’m sure want to be able to catch a little bit of fire that you guys have. So what is the best way for them to be able to follow you, to learn a little bit more about what you’re doing? Where should they go?

Russ Morgan (46:18):

Yeah. The best entry into our world is go to wealth wild wall street.com/passport, and that gives you a free entry into that community we were just talking about. That’s where Joey and I spend all of our time and effort. When you get in there, you have the ability to dmm us just like other social medias, if you will, and just let us know that you heard us on this podcast. We’d love to be able to interact with you in there. But also, it also is the place, the passport is that first step in our process, the goal, the G that Joey referred to a second ago. So you could go to courses once you’re in there and it’s a free course and it will give you, at the end of it, a real crystal clear vision of what you want your life to look like, and it’s not generically put together for you to follow through. And we’d love for you to do that. And then just share yours. Once you’ve got your passport, share it with us inside the group.

Scott Meyers (47:17):

Awesome. Well, SIA, you had mentioned, I think, or perhaps it was Joey, you talk about the folks that they get to that place where they really don’t know that they have hope, they’re stuck in this financial jail, that they just don’t know that there’s anything else. They’re lost in the grind, they don’t know they’re in financial bondage, and then they don’t know how to get out of it. What type of advice do you give or how do you speak into the lives of those people that want that hope, they want to be able to get out? I think it starts with self-awareness. How do you approach them and what is it that you can spur in them to be able to go down that path of self-awareness and giving them that hope and then beginning those steps and even the courage to take that first step to get out of the bondage that they’re in.

Russ Morgan (48:05):

If it’s okay, I want to use just an example from somebody that was in our community the other day. It’s somebody that, it’s amazing. If you give me three seconds, I’ll pull up her little bio, but she’s super open to share this inside of our community on a regular basis. But here’s her introduction. It says, hi, my life fell apart in 2019 and 2020. Ugly story. Moving on through guys, Providence, very thin threads. I found my way into IBC and West Wall Street, really excited. I’m sorry she adjusted it recently, but she talked about this and her whole motto is Climbing up from Zero, aiming for the stars, but I thought it was still there. She must’ve went back and tweaked it a little bit. But she talked about how she had really hit zero and had no motivation to move forward. And somebody pointed her into our community and now she has this new lease on life is basically the, I’m paraphrasing the way she said it, and it’s because she went through that passport thing.

(49:13):

I just talked about it. I think that it’s cliche to say we should have a vision board or a goal for our life or vision for our life, but it’s another thing to actually do it. I think very few people do follow through and actually do that. And so we built this specifically for people to go through and figure out what do they want, what do they want to do, who should they become? Who do they need to become and what will it look like when they get there? And we challenge ’em through this process. And that was one of the things this lady had done, and she actually went back and started broadcasting it in our community. And I’m picking on her because she’s just been that just most recent light blinking in there, just reminding people that no matter how bad the scenario, and I think her husband had passed unexpectedly and just everything had fallen to shambles after that. But then going back and doing that self-awareness, going back and creating a vision and then having some practical process and steps to follow to get out of it. Just to know that where you are is where you’re supposed to be.

(50:26):

The Bible refers to that. Our sufferings produces endurance. Endurance produces character, and character produces hope. And we are in this area for a specific reason. It is not chance. And as we work through it, we can come out on the other side in a reformed shape, if you will.

Scott Meyers (50:51):

Certainly don’t believe in chance or coincidence. And the challenges that we all go through are just, they’re shaping us and molding us and forcing us to look in different directions. So appreciate that guys. Well, Joey, since you are an avid reader of the books that Russ sends over to you, our last question is either perhaps your most favorite book, if you will, if you could nail it down to just one, or what is the book that you give away the most or recommend the most to folks?

Joey Mure (51:20):

So I think as a foundational kind of duo, if you will, is it’s because I think to your point, people don’t even realize that they’re in financial bondage or that there’s something different than what they have currently. They just kind of accepted it. The two books back to Back are always going to be Rich Dad, poor Dad, and Become Your Own Banker by Nelson Nash. When you combine those two, it’s like peanut butter and jelly. They ultimately feed each other and they ultimately show people a way that didn’t exist before. And they do it much better than I could do. So I just pass that over to ’em typically, and I try to read them myself once a year each. So it definitely is powerful.

Scott Meyers (52:11):

Yep, I would agree. And the best way then as a follow-up to provide that hope for folks is to keep doing what you guys are doing. Because people can read a book, they can hear about it, but when they can look to the success and the lives that you guys have created and how you’re helping others, when they see those testimonials, if you will, case studies the proof, then that is what gets people on board when they can see that somebody else has done it. The social proof. That is what finally gets people motivated to recognize that they can do it. So I applaud you both for stepping up and recognizing that and then doubling down and building the tribe that you’ve done and giving back in such a great way. So thankful to have you guys as friends, thankful to have you on the podcast, and I look forward to the time. We can chat again. We will definitely have you back for number two.

Russ Morgan (52:57):

Alright, thank you Scott for having us on and we’ve got to have you on our show soon.

Scott Meyers (53:01):

All right, thanks guys. Have a great day. Alright,

Russ Morgan (53:03):

You too.

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