Brett Tanner and Katelyn Mitchell map out the seven mountains people climb instead of the one that actually leads to the life they want, from a degree chosen for the wrong reason to a 130-rental portfolio earning just 4.2%. Brett shares the New York Fed's finding that 42% of recent college grads are underemployed, and the Cornell study showing only 23% of people actually notice what you think everyone is watching.
Brett TannerHost, founder of Be Wealthy
Katelyn MitchellCo-host, runs operations for BrettBrett tells his son's friends to figure out where they are going in life before picking a university, instead of only picking which school to attend. He points to the New York Fed's measure of underemployment for college grads age 22 to 27 with a bachelor's degree, working a job that does not require one. As of the second quarter of 2026, that number sits at 42%. Brett treats education as a trail map that only makes sense once you have already picked the mountain.
Jump to 10:24Brett argues that hours are the entry fee, and strategy is what produces the real results. He names two books that shaped how he coaches clients to pick the right numbers: The 4 Disciplines of Execution and Measure What Matters by John Doerr. In a sales business, the one number Brett tracks every day is contacts made.
Jump to 33:28A Boston Medical Center study watched 55 caregivers eat with their young kids at fast food restaurants. Researchers saw 40 of the 55 pull out a phone, and the most absorbed parents were also the ones who snapped at kids for trying to get their attention. Brett says the fix is picking a few real moments instead of counting total hours together, like the week he spent fishing in Alaska with his son Jagger, where there was no phone service for days.
Jump to 41:49Psychologists Gilovich, Medvec, and Savitsky had college students wear an embarrassing Barry Manilow t-shirt into a room at Cornell. The students guessed that 46% of people in the room would notice the shirt; the real number, measured afterward, was 23%. Brett applies the same math to social media and spending: most of what people buy or post for an imagined audience goes unnoticed.
Jump to 51:15A Federal Reserve survey on the economic well-being of U.S. households, released in May 2026, found that only 35% of people who are not retired believe their retirement savings are on track. Brett argues that most you-only-live-once spending comes from people who have never actually run their own numbers. His advice is to build the life you want first and slow down after, once the math backs it up.
Jump to 1:07:01Brett describes almost leaving real estate in 2008, then closing 670 houses three years later after a coach cut him off and told him it's your ship. When returns in Phoenix got too thin for him, he started flying to Huntsville, Alabama and Clarksville, Georgia to underwrite deals in other markets instead. He says most people who claim a market does not work have never actually underwritten a single deal there.
Jump to 1:16:25Brett grew his single-family rental count to 130 properties, buying 50 of them in a single year, aiming to retire on the passive income. When he ran return on equity, net income divided by the equity sitting in each house, his portfolio averaged 4.2%, close to what a treasury bill pays without any tenants or repairs to manage. Over the last three years he has sold about 110 of those houses and moved the money into commercial deals that need less day-to-day management.
Jump to 1:23:46You're climbing for an audience that's not even watching what you're doing. You're posting 20 stories for people who are posting their own 20 stories. You bought the car for people who are looking at their car.Brett Tanner · at 53:20
Brett grouped the seven mountains into five categories on the episode: one you were handed, two that look virtuous, one built for an audience, two that hide, and one that fools even winners.
| Mountain | What it looks like | The number that gives it away |
|---|---|---|
| The one you were handed (education) | Going into debt on a degree because it is what you were told to do | 42% of college grads age 22 to 27 are underemployed as of the second quarter of 2026 (NY Fed) |
| Hard worker | Logging more hours without changing strategy | Hours are the entry fee; the metric Brett tracks instead is contacts per day |
| Kids | Counting hours together instead of being present | 40 of 55 parents were on their phones at the table in a Boston Medical Center study |
| Keeping up with the Joneses | Buying or posting for an audience that is not watching | People guessed 46% would notice a strange shirt; only 23% actually did (Cornell study) |
| YOLO | Spending now because you only live once | Just 35% of non-retired people say their retirement savings are on track (Fed survey) |
| Doesn't work in my market | Blaming the market instead of underwriting a deal | Brett went from almost quitting in 2008 to 670 houses three years later |
| The one that fools winners (wrong investment) | A full portfolio that still is not working | 130 rentals averaging 4.2% return on equity, close to what a treasury bill pays |
Tap any chapter and the video starts right there.
“I got to 130 of these and realized, Katelyn, that I do not like this mountain. I am not at the summit of it.”
Brett Tanner at 1:20:38This episode is built around the mountains exercise: figure out which of the seven you are climbing and whether you picked it yourself.
Brett says to check if you chose the goal yourself or if it was handed to you by family, school, or your neighborhood. He has people write down where they are today, income, return on equity, management units, and where they actually want to be in 10 to 30 years, using a goal they picked for themselves.
Brett says it depends on whether the degree lines up with the life you actually want, rather than whether you finish it at all. He points to the New York Fed's finding that 42% of college grads age 22 to 27 with a bachelor's degree are working jobs that do not need one. He tells people to pick the destination first, then pick the school that gets them there.
Not on its own, Brett says. He argues hours are the entry fee and strategy produces the real results. He recommends tracking a small number of real metrics, like contacts per day, instead of hours worked, and names Measure What Matters by John Doerr as a guide.
Brett describes it as making decisions based on what you think others will think of you, from the car you buy to what you post online. He cites a Cornell study where people guessed 46% of a room would notice an embarrassing shirt, when only 23% actually did, to show most of the audience people perform for is not paying attention.
Brett says to check the return on equity first, net income divided by the equity sitting in the property. His own portfolio of 130 rentals averaged 4.2%, close to what a treasury bill pays, which is why he has sold about 110 of them and moved the money into commercial deals.
0:00You're climbing for an audience that's not even watching what you're doing. You're posting 20 stories for people who are posting their own 20 stories. You bought the car for people who are looking at their car. They don't even see your car. I see seven mountains that people are climbing and it's the same seven over and over again. I've got two on the list that we'll cover that I Was incorrectly climbing. welcome back to the be wealthy Podcast. I am joined by the one and only Kate Mitchell today. Katelyn, welcome back.
Glad to be back, Brett. I like how you welcome me back on each episode now.
Well, I have to welcome you because you're always welcome. It's one of those places when you're on the Be Welcome podcast. Katelyn, when you're here,
you're actually family.
You're family.
And so, Kate, before we started today, you were doing a warm-up routine that I think it's critical we get into with our viewers and listeners throughout the globe. And you were doing this thing with your jaw. It was like this. It was like I was like unhinging my jaw much like a snake just
and I wanted to bring that much like a snake. I I'd never heard of that. And so
1:03I was reminded and I told you the story of we've all seen the Wolf of Wall Street scene with MCA where he comes in and he has the hope. Oh, we've all seen that scene that McConnA does that actually Katelyn on every like movie right before like the first scene because he gets everyone's attention. Well, Leonardo DiCaprio watched that and was like, "Hold on a second. I got to go over to I think it's Marcus Sports, the director, and say, "Hey bud, just one second because that was insane." Goes to the director, comes back, he's like, "Hey, dude, could you just do that again?" McConna doesn't even know it. That's the scene in the movie. Is that like the craziest story ever? That like a madeup he's like making fun of his buddy and it's the greatest scene that instantly you knew it. And that's what we're doing for you. This is your MCA moment. That was your MCA moment.
My unhinging my jaw just stretching it out, making sure I'm ready for all my words. And you said that's something I got to embarrass you about. Perfect.
I love
2:05
Thank you, Brett.
Katelyn, as always, the pleasure's on this side of the table. Katelyn, as you very well know. So, Katelyn, today we're gonna talk about mountains. Okay, we're talk about mountains and not in the way that you think because I just came back from Alaska. So, that could be a great question. Brett, are you talking about the mountains in Alaska? No, Katelyn, I'm not. I'm talking about the mountains people climb. And so, for me, right, I really think about mountains are these are things that we aspire to at some point in our life. There are things that we were climbing uh maybe because we wanted to, maybe because it was outside forces and we'll get into that. But as human beings, sometimes we're climbing the right mountain, the things that we actually wanted, the summit, Katelyn, being what you actually wanted out of your life and will the mountains you're climbing get you there? And I want to jump to kind of how I figured this out because I was young, a young hustler, Katelyn, and and you were you were going to know more about the
3:09story I'm about to tell than anybody. You and I didn't work together back then. I don't know if this was before your era with KW, so we'll get into that. But Katelyn, the best moment of my career in terms of my work product and the worst moment of my career actually happened 90 seconds apart from each other. Greatest moment of my entire career, worst moment of my entire career, 90 seconds later. So, I want to go back to and tell you the story. I joined KW in Keller Williams, the brokerage we're with today, in about 2008. And I went to a family reunion event in Katelyn, they used to have that big awards ceremony. They don't do it anymore, but back in the day, they awarded the a, you know, the number one agent, the top five agents, the top five teams, and the top five groups, those people that had more than two people. And I wanted to be in the group, like the the best of the best. And I saw that I was like, "Oh my gosh, I just joined Keller. I'm literally nowhere." Um, and I was like, "I got to get on that stage." like what does it take to be the top five at the biggest real estate
4:12company in the country? And so by fast forward in 2011, we did it. We were nine in the country, three with KW. Frustrated we weren't one with KW, but story for another day. Uh the award ceremony, Katelyn, February 2012, fan reunion. I don't know. Would you have been with them back then?
Would you have been? Okay.
It was just just before it was just before me. I started literally months later. So you go up there number three right night in the country three with Keller Brett Sanderson right walk up there I mean it is like name in the lights you're on the stage blood sweat tears strategy pain all of it to this one moment boom right did it walk off the stage gave a hug to to Mo and sat down and that's when the worst moment was and it was the first time I realized that like what a shallow
5:15victory, right? Greatest triumph. I was like, "AH, WE DID IT."
And then I was like, "Is that it?" And the
when you sat your seat and reflected and said,
I I looked at it like
what was that feeling?
I Well, I thought I wanted it for me, right? Because I wanted to this level of achievement. But the truth is, Katelyn, I was doing it for other to impress other people. It had nothing to do with me. I thought, "Oh my gosh, when you get on that stage, I didn't know this, but subconsciously I was going living my life based on what I believed other people would think about me if I achieved that thing." And so when I did it and people clapped for about 30 seconds and I went, "Wow, that was completely not worth it. I won the climb, but I was standing on a mountain that I didn't pick. Other society had picked that for me. my beliefs are. And so, um, I looked at that and went, well, there's got to be more to success, right? Success only for success's sake or only to be perceived as successful by
6:17other people won't actually lead you to what you want. And so, it led me to go, all right, well, what? So, it led me to the question, what do I actually want? What do I want? Not what my friends or family or society or other people, what do they want? And so, everyone's got a mountain to climb. And that's the whole idea of this episode, Caleb. It's we're driving towards something. We've got a summit, but is it the summit that we actually want? Did we pick it right? Or did someone pick it for you? Right? So, would it be get picked for you? C. It could be your environment could have picked your mountain, right? The way you grew up, your community, your church, your your friends, your neighborhood. It could have come from anywhere. And it's something, Katelyn is I've spent, we added it up recently. I've spent over 10,000 hours one- on-one coaching agents, investors, lenders, brokers, people in the real estate industry and other business owners, too. Uh, I spent over 10,000 hours one-on-one coaching them. And from doing that, from that share, Katelyn, that perspective, um, I see seven mountains that people are
7:18climbing. And it's the same seven over and over again. I've got two on the list that we'll cover that I was incorrectly climbing uh and didn't know why. And so I want to go through it. Right? So here's where we're going to go. The first part of this, Katelyn, we're going to go to the mountain that you were handed. Okay? The one that just got handed to you. Then we're going to go to ones that look like you're being that are virtuous, right? Like the mountains of like I'm such a great person because I'm climbing this mountain. Uh then we're going to talk about, you know, the mountain built for an audience. We're going to talk about the two mountains that are really hiding, right? What's hiding from you? And then we're going to talk about one mountain, Katelyn, that fools most folks, and that's the one that tricked me. Uh, and then we'll give you an exercise at the very end to figure out what mountain you are and to climb it as quick as possible. And so, the key to this, Katelyn, for the first one, right, is I I think the best thing we could all do in life is figure out the life that we want to live, our ideal life, not today, at some point in the future. And you, as you know, Katelyn, we like to talk in 30 in decades. 30-year increments. A decade's long
8:20enough. 30 years is way more than enough. And so what do you want then? Then we can work backwards to the mountains we're going to climb today to get us to what we wanted. And that's just not the way we're wired as people, Caleb. We're wired to start running and we'll think like we're going to assemble the airplane as we're going. It doesn't work like that, right? We got to assemble the airplane on the ground before it it flies up. And so the first one, Katelyn, I want to talk about is the education mountain. I think you're going to be very passionate about this. Um because you know I've got a Cooper now. I've got a I've got a my son turns 18 here in a few weeks. Uh he's a senior and we're talking a lot about education today, right? And it's I talk to a lot of seniors more than probably most because I'm talking to his buddies and hey, where are you going and why? And you know what I ask when I ask them Katelyn, where are you going? Like where are you actually going? What do you think they say? You mean where are you going in life versus where are you going to a university? Right. Very specific.
First of all, great question. Great
9:22question. Many of them don't even know where they're going to university, which is something that I believe they should have already figured out, right? We got a list of 10 schools or whatever we're aiming at. Many are totally checked out on that. Um, but you asked them like, well, but before that, where are you going in your life? Because by the way, that school might not be like it might not be Southern Iowa Baptist University, which I'm sure is majestic, might not be the best place if you want to go into business, right? They might not have the best business school in the country. I'm not saying you can't go get a great education there. I'm saying though, if I knew what I wanted and I knew that a certain school catered to that type, that niche in business, could be really valuable to go to that school and get that degree to do that thing to climb that education. Does that make sense? And what I hear when I ask them,
"Where are you going?" They go, "Well, I'm going to figure it out when I get there." Oh, really? What if the college doesn't offer the program? And I'm going to tell you at art history degree, it's not going to pay a huge dividends out in
10:24the business arena. Uh, even Joe, my partner in the investment company, Kay, we joke frequently, he has a marketing degree that comes up in every meeting, which you're aware of. Guys, let's let Joe tackle the marketing. He's got a marketing degree, Arizona. um and didn't know anything about marketing from he learned a lot in business. He didn't know anything about it from NA. I don't know they had the best marketing program. And so I think the point I'm making Kaylee is Katelyn is do we have a plan on the education mount or are we just going into debt hoping that we'll figure it out hoping on hope. And so the New York the Federal Reserve Bank of New York tracks something they call undermployment for recent college graduates. people 22 to 27 years old with a bachelor degree working a job that typically doesn't require one. Okay. As of the second quarter, Katelyn, of 2026, that number is 42%. 42% of college students 22 to 27 not unemployed, not unemployed. Ko, they got jobs. They got jobs they could have got without the degree. They're
11:27undermployed. They did the climb. They've got the diploma. They did the tassel. They graduated. They threw the They threw the uh what's the hat called?
What's the graduation cap called?
I think it's just a graduation cap. And then you like move the tassel.
You take your graduation cap, you fling it in the air, Katelyn, is so exciting. And more than four out of 10 are working a job that they wouldn't even have to get a degree for and they got hundreds of thousands of dollars of student debt.
Why do you think this happens? So, I I do believe that, you know, I I'll be happy to share my story in a second, but I do believe that there's this track that we're told from an education standpoint um that is completely different specifically in our generation. You know, I I hate to brag, Brett, but we're both one of us is in our early 40s, one of us is in our mid4s. We won't say who.
For those that don't know, guys, I mean, to take the cat out of the back, Kate's a millennial.
So ridiculous. Absolutely so ridiculous. And
one day, guys, Katelyn actually came to me and said, "Brett, I think I'm a
12:29millennial." I said, "I Katelyn, we're the same age."
WELL, Now i have to tell the story. now I have to tell the story.
We're the same age.
I LITERALLY WENT TO a business meeting and Brett and I are not the same age. Brett is three years older than me. Two and a half years older than me.
Two and a half.
I think we're in high school. We would have been at the same campus. Like it wouldn't have been that Katelyn was in a fifth grader when I was a senior. Like it would have been like I was maybe a junior just to be super clear on.
Yeah, that's 100%
before we think that millennials are
That's 100% true. I went to a business meeting and I came back and Brett said what were the highlights from the business meeting and I shared with him how weird is it that this gal Penny that worked there she which she'll tell you she was not a millennial but her name was Penny and she said Katelyn I think you're a millennial and I said I don't agree with you. She googled it and I said, "Brett, how weird is that? She thinks I'm a millennial." And to this day, it has been over a decade, guys. To this day, Brett, much like Joe's marketing degree, likes to say, "Have you met my friend Katelyn?"
13:31She's a millennial.
Super helpful. I
We need something.
Quick disclosure.
Quick disclosure. There is nothing wrong with being a millennial. We support them. We're excited about them. We welcome them here in the Be Welling community.
I'm super jacked about all of them. I just know that you're not one of them. That's the only point I'm trying to make here is that you're not a millennial. You're not ONE OF THEM.
MILLENNIAL. All right. all right. millennial or not millennial? i grew up in a household where I was told and all of my friends and in our communities were told that education was everything. If you didn't have a college degree, you were going to likely achieve less out in the world. And so then you always heard the conversations like, "Well, Bill Gates didn't graduate." My parents would be like, "You're not a Bill Gates. You must get a fantastic education. like there's no question about it. So, they paid to put us in the best private schools and get the best opportunities that were out there and said, "You must go get the best possible education." Uh, my dad's side of the the of my family, they literally are education addicted
14:36slash also they're on faculties. They, you know, my my great uncle found Brandeis University, was the founding president. Like I come from the education mecca and my two siblings went and just absolutely used their enormous brains and got incredible educations. You know, my brother has I think it's a dual masters and a law degree. My sister has her M. It is they collect education like I collect handbags, right? That's a joke, Brett. That was for you. Everyone knows I don't collect handbags, but you like to talk about
big shopper. Big shopper.
Not a big shopper, but yes, it's a good bit. Much like us millennials, we're all big shoppers. Um, I went a different route. I didn't know what I wanted when I was 18. I didn't know where my life was going. And rather than picking the right education or the right pieces, I did what you talked about with Cooper's friends. They just picked, you know, Southern Wisconsin Baptist University because it was something fun. Maybe they could play a little basketball in school
15:38and we'll figure it out when we get there. I made the same mistake. I thought I love golf. So, I went to school for golf and got to the end of that story, Brett, and I went and started applying for jobs and realized the job descriptions, the career path, and the income were never going to let me achieve my actual goals. I would not be playing any golf, which if you know me, I want to play golf all the time, right? When you work at a golf course, you don't get to play a ton. You're working 24/7 at the course. And typically you want to leave when you're done, right? You've been there all day. In addition to that, the career path to get there included certain pieces that I wasn't willing to do. And then thirdly, the income I was going to be able to achieve was not going to help me to live the life that I wanted to. And so here I was in my last semester of school. I had gone through this entire process and not done what my brother and sister had done. My brother and sister both said, "What do I specifically want?" Right? My
16:41sister wanted to be a speech pathologist for children with disabilities, particularly around hearing. So, she went to the best science school specifically around that, right? No one chooses University of Dallas or University of Texas in Dallas because, you know, they want to be a comet. They choose it because it's one of the best technical schools for her specialty. So, that's where she went to get her masters. My brother chose the best law schools to go to, right? The best law school to go to in order to get his best possible career path. But here I was sitting in Phoenix going to golf school and I didn't want to be in the industry at all. I had spent years and money in order to not achieve what I wanted to. And I went to my one of my teachers and said, "I don't know what my plan's going to be." Like I have an education that doesn't transfer anywhere. It's like your art history example. I don't know if you you know you know this but like it doesn't a school in church management doesn't really apply anywhere else, right? What am I going to do here? And
17:43so he was the one who encouraged me to go through and think what kind of life do I want to live? What does that look like? And it turned out going into the real estate industry. But I climbed this mountain. I got to the top in debt and a waste of time with nothing to show for it except really a great understanding for swing planes, you know, with my wedges. I really I mean, if you want to talk a two plane or one plane uh swing path, I'm your girl, but I had no education. So,
but Katelyn, now full circle.
Well, here's the funny player on the field. We buy a golf course.
PABOOM. WELL, Guess who can talk about turf management? See what I mean? Me. So,
guess well,
guess we took a long road on that one. What I'm going to say, not a mistake, just long way around. Long way around.
Here's what I I think this this is important to say on this call, guys. Back in May, we had the opportunity to close on Apple Mountain. And as you guys you may have heard and watched some of
18:45the episodes, it was a uh one side we're converting over to long-term housing and it came with a golf course. Um and I said to Brett, I have to tell you, I want to thank you and the company so much. It has taken me 20 years to understand why I wasted several years of my life getting an education. And I have to tell you, you made this investment for the company just to make me feel better about my crappy decision back in 2002. And I just want to say thank you, Brett, for bringing that full circle. But the whole point is not everybody's going to have a business partner who goes and buys a multi-million dollar parcel, a multi-million dollar uh business in order to make them feel better about their education. We have to make the right education decisions first. Is that
Yeah, it's really hard to do it backwards, but you can you can make it right. But the point is, I think that like if you wanted to go into the golf industry, right, before you did all the education, that what I would tell young people today, let's go get you working at the golf course. Let's go get you working alongside the role you wanted. Right? If you want to be a GM of
19:48golf course, start by going, hey, let's get some job that works with the GM. See the day-to-day. Let's see his life, what kind of life he lives off the golf course, and determine if that's what you want. And so where this happened for me, Katelyn, was, you know, my parents said, "Hey, you should go to college, right?" Like, so I went to ASU. Only to find out coming from Dove Creek, Colorado, I was a That was the only thing I learned in college is that I was a And I hated it. I hated every minute of it. So I was like, "How quickly can I get out of here? If I take, you know, if I take classes at the community college, can those transfer in?" So I got in and out of college in three years. And by in-out, I mean I'm six credits away from a degree, but I got to walk, do the graduation. I never went back. Um, but I did not Katelyn when I went to educ I was going to be an attorney and my journey was I was going to go on to law school but I thank God my senior year whatever you know the third year of college I interned with an attorney who did criminal defense work. It was the most fascinating work. I was obsessed with being I wanted to be a litigator. I
20:50wanted to be in the room. I wanted to be arguing and defending people. And I went and one day our we were going to court and I was like, "Hey, can I pick you up?" They said, "Sure." What I wanted to do is I wanted to see his life. I want to see where he lived, what kind of car he had, what the garage. I want to see my future because he was a he was a very successful attorney at the time. Okay? Not like the most successful, not like, "Hey, Rafy where it's every billboard, you know, Rafy Rafy." Not like that kind of cool, but he was very specific. That was very If you're in Phoenix, Arizona, you know about Hay Rafy. It's every billboard. So, I went there and I realized, oh my gosh, after 30 years of slogging it out 80 hours a week, this is what you get. And I immediately said, I'm not going to law school. I'm not going to be attorney. Now, that was maybe the wrong answer because I didn't know that there were, but I'm like, that's definitely not what I want. So, I like you pivoted said, I think I got to get something where it's not based on education and how smart we are. It's
21:52based on maybe strategy and hard work. And so I got in the real estate business too. And my education though pivoted. Knowing Katelyn, I had to figure out what do I want? I sat down and we we filmed an episode where I sat down with Russell Shaw, my first year in the business, sent him a check for $500, the whole thing. We covered another episode, but I sat down with the number one agent in my market 30 years ahead of me, right? And saw like he had built a massive life for himself. And
so I'm like, I need to go. I paid the $500. He it was it to the charity of his choice. He gave the money back to me to this day. We're friends. He's still my mentor. And unbelievable, kid. That education, right, on purpose, aligned on the target where I want to go to the top of my industry made a lot of sense. And it and it cost $500. And it didn't even cost 500. I had to get a little cute because he wouldn't take the money. But so our are people listening and watching this Katelyn, if they define the ideal life first and you work backwards to where you are now, you'll make better decisions. So
22:56education isn't the mountain, it's a trail map. Okay? You you can't pick the trail map until you pick the mountain.
Now, I think there's something important to say. You know, we started with Cooper, your son, and talking about his friends. We started with my choices at 18 and your choices at 18 and how those kind of shaped or didn't shape the mountain. I want to take a step second to step back because yes, those decisions that are made at 18 are really important, but my decisions here at 42 on my education mountain are equally important. So you and I have a friend who was we were putting our education calendar together for the upcoming year and they were like you know what we should do Harvard does these two-day workshops and we could go and study this and you know go through this education and it was all kind of an egobbased to say you've done it education path. It was all ego-based. It was this education false mountain that we're talking about.
24:00And you looked at me and said, you know, hey baller, let's talk offline. We came and sat down and you said, what is that if we go and do that? Cuz I got myself all excited. It sounded like a blast. You said, "What will we leave there that we can implement into our business tomorrow? How is this directly going to tie to what we're trying to accomplish?" And what you've taught me over the past decade plus is my education map every year. My education mountain that we're creating must directly tie into what we're looking to accomplish and fill the hole in the education that I need in order to do so. So like we've got the golf course, right? So now the education map around the golf courses, how do we go to the right, call it conventions or the right education seminars and read the right books and do the right things to directly apply to what we're doing today. So my lesson on the education mountain is don't be dumbass and I mean that literally Katelyn at 18 years old just going to education that sounds fun.
25:05Let's pick our education today so we don't have the false education mountain. Let's pick the right ones so we can implement it to get the life that we want. I think that's really important for people listening. I don't have a time machine. I can't go back, but I can make the right choices going forward.
And I would tell you, you mentioned Cooper, right? Every discussion he and I have is literally around that. He's like, "Dad, well, what about this school?" I'm like, "Well, hold on. What kind of life do you want to live? Do you if you want to live the one that you grew up in, like our home, and do the things that we did, we are going to need to get you in business, son, you're going to have to have some sort of a business that you run so you can make this kind of money to do what we did. Period. End of story.
Now, Katelyn, if that's the thing, we want to live this life. Got it, Cooper. I'm very familiar with how I did it. Let's go. We're going to go to the business schools, the best. Let's research the top 10 business schools in the country. not for like, you know, a specific like the type of business that he'll likely be doing. Let's go. There is a college
26:08that we're going to go tour called Babson. Katelyn, they literally the kids, the school funds a business the kids start. So, you and your four buddies now have a business you run and you're going to the accounting class not to learn accounting to do the accounting for your business.
You talk about so many
it's it's it's unbelievable. And so, that's the education mountain. Now, Katelyn, I want to say one last thing before we move off the education now is education comes in many forms, right? We we just talked about the traditional trap, right, of hey, go go go to $300,000 in debt at Southern Iowa Baptist, get an art history degree, and then what do you do? Right? But education comes be a mastermind, right? To me, that's an education.
Like a book, right? When people I get this question probably more than anything else, which is, "Hey, bro, what book should I read?"
And my answer is always,
"What are you working on? What's the challenge or opportunity in your life that you want to solve?
Yeah.
Don't go read some book because ask your neighbor what are you reading right now? I mean, if you're reading for fun and you want to read like fiction, who who
27:09care, whatever. But if you want to read for purpose, change your life, odds are your neighbor may not have the same problem as you. So, like the way I read is I go, "All right, if I unlocked what skill would make me an extra insert figure, $100,000 a year, $500,000 a year." You know, like we've covered an episode on how to actually learn stuff. But the education mountain, right? Climb it if it gets you to your ideal life, not because it's the mountain everyone in your zip code was go was told to climb, right? The education. We got to make sure. If you need help in your business right now, you've got a challenge or an opportunity that you really want to hone in and capitalize on it and make a gamechanging breakthrough in your business, come out to our one-day workshop. This is something we've never done before. We're now doing them at the resorts we've bought. So, they could be at Apple Mountain, Georgia. They could be in Northern Arizona. Um, they might even be in Bise in the future. But, you get to come to a one day where there I'm not going to present slides. It's literally you and your business and you're going to leave with an action plan you can implement in your business. Go to bewealthypodcast.com
28:12and you can click on our upcoming events and see where we'll be and book to come. We have the room is limited. We have no more than 15 people in the room. Go to bew wealthyodcast.com and you can book our one-day workshop coming up. All right, Katelyn, we're moving on to the mountains that look like virtues.
Okay.
And this is the first one that I was this is uh it's the hard worker. The hard worker mountain. It's the one that I'm there before everyone. I leave late latest latest. And don't get me wrong, hard work is a huge part of success. I'd be the one to tell you you got to bust your ass, right? However, putting in a lot I see a lot of people today putting in hours, but they're not measuring results. Hours is not the thing we should measure, Katelyn. Hours are the entry fee. But if you can get 10 times the results in half the time, that's what we should be obsessed with. Not putting in more hours for more hours. And you know, I hear all I haven't taken a day off in six months.
Is that is that am I supposed to be impressed? I'm not impressed. I think
29:14that's super super crappy to be honest, right? Like I would rather you told me I am 5xing the market right now. Market's up 10%. I'm up 50%. Okay, you're outperforming the market. Like that's really interesting. But hard work's the entry fee, Katelyn. Strategy. Strategy is what makes massive results possible. Hard work gets you into the building. It's just not going to take the elevator to the top floor, Katelyn. It's not going to happen. Um, and it it it's this plateau. And where I see our coaching clients struggle, Katelyn, is they reach a plateau and they get super comfortable. In other words, they get to the place that hard work took them to here. Right? Now, they're like, "All the hard work, they're here." and they're running along, but they're never changing anything else, right? We're just leaving the one output, which is high horsepower, run hard, run fast. Never going, "Hold on. Is there a better way to do it? How could I get more leverage? How could I scale this thing and get 10x instead of 2x?" Right? They're not looking at it that
30:17way. And you know, I I had a client, Katelyn, and a lot of my private clients, they start they did it because they're hard workers. But the first thing we talk about is hustle doesn't scale. So where are you hustling? Okay, cool. Because that does not scale. And what we've got to do is we've got to have a better strategy, right? What are the compounding things that we can put in place in your business to get you outsized results? And those could be people, right? As you grow your leadership skills and you can go get 80% of the result that you were getting through someone else. The moment you master that, your life changes because you're like, "Oh my god, I can I could go get 10 people getting 80% of the results I was getting. I I could scale my world as big as I want." But you got to learn people. And people aren't done through hard work. You can't just say, "Taitlyn, work hard." Well, there's a whole other thing to it, right? That sounds easy, right? But you can't you can't coach effort. You can't coach strategy. And I think people got to change what they measure. I know you see this with your clients, too, Caleb. when you see the hard worker that's exhausted
31:20but not super achieving, you know, what goes through your head?
Um, people usually don't enter our world as a coaching client if they're not a hard worker, right? They all have reached success because they're hard workers. And that's kind of the coolest thing. So, they all enter into our world with success because of their elbow grease, right? Because of how hard they have worked. And the cool part that you and I get to do, which which this is what you taught me, is to take and harness that same amount of hard work and now let's apply leverage to it. And we apply leverage through technology, strategy, people, and then leverage in their money, right? And so when you look at it that way and we're able to scientifically overlay leverage into their world, their whole life changes. And so now they might still do that same amount of output or same amount of uh effort metric, but now the results are exponentially different
32:25because of those leverage pieces. And I think that's really the the the cool part. You can take someone to to your point, it's it's hard to coach someone's effort. either they're going to work or they're not, right? But the cool part is, you know, you and I don't have coaching clients that we say like, "Hey, just want to see, did you wake up this morning and make your calls, right?" Like, that's not the kind of coaching client that we typically work with. The coaching client we work with is like, "Dude, I'm out here busting my ass. I need to move faster and I need strategy to help me to do it." And that's what you and I have the luxury of. When I look at this hard worker mountain, working hard and putting in extra hours without those right leverage pieces is going to get you to a mountain that isn't going to do anything, right? I worked in an office, I told you about it all the time where, you know, there were people from all different businesses in that office and there was a gal who used to get there at 6:00 in the morning and she didn't leave until 6:00 at night and anyone who didn't work that same amount of hours, she thought wasn't working hard enough. Except during the day, I
33:28would hear her on personal calls. I would see her doing all of these things that didn't have anything to do with her business. She implemented no technology, couldn't lead any humans, and didn't have any leverage when it came to money or any of those pieces overlay. So, she was on this hard worker mountain going freaking nowhere, right? So, you have to make sure if you are doing the hard work, which most of the people listening to this are doing the hard work, right? They're listening to the podcast, they're working on the education to get themselves better. Let's make sure you're using the right strategies to power your hard work to go faster and to get you the better results to achieve what you're trying to do. So, I don't think the hard work is the problem. It's the hard work when you're circling the mountain with no real strategy whatsoever. Let's superpower it.
And the way to do that, Kevin, to all together is we've got to determine what we're going to measure. Not hard work.
What are the results that we're going to measure? One of my there's two there's two books on on figuring out what to measure. The first one is the four disciplines of execution by Covey.
34:31
The second book it's a little more um it's a harder read. I think it's done better. It's a harder read. Uh it's measure what matters by door John Doerr. I believe a measure what matters. And I think that's the part people are missing Katelyn is are we measuring in our business what actually matters? And that and in any business I think that's no more than five numbers. We're going to measure a lot more than that. But on a daily basis the question you should be measuring is not did I do hard work today. It's did I win or lose the day based on the effort metrics. Again it's not just hours is not the one. Contacts appointments set appointments held. Right? Did I hit the effort metrics which the one I look at in any sales business is contacts. Contacts per day.
Yep. We have got to talk to humans at the end of the day to sell stuff. And it's getting maybe in the future that'll change, but we're going to have to talk to humans. And so we got to make sure we're measuring the right thing. So instead of the hard worker mountain, let's get on the measuring what matters
35:32mountain to make sure that we actually know that we're going to get where we want to go because we don't want to end up like the lady you referenced, right? Who literally is just running to run and 30 years from now is going to wake up tired and exhausted and realize that she's nowhere.
Yeah.
Right. And it's sad because but but you could know that right and I think the biggest thing I want our listeners and viewers to get today is that you could be anywhere you want to be in five years and in a decade I mean it's your dreams are possible they are not going to be possible unless you change your strategy and start measuring things differently today.
All right the next mountain the next ver go ahead go ahead before we move on.
Oh I was going to say this you know it's so funny um I'll give people a little insight. Brett, people people on the streets have the impression that you work harder, you're harder on your people to make them work harder than anyone else, right? And I would say that most people out there think that working with or for you would be an incredible grind, if that makes sense. Take that with a grain
36:34of salt, okay? Where it's like, oh my gosh, I'd never be able to meet his expectations. However, I look at our team, you know, I just sent you our new org chart last uh yesterday. I look at our team and what makes our business so um have the ability to achieve the results is all around the strategy to the hard work. That's where the difference is like I will come to you and I will say I need help. I need coaching. Can we go on a walk? and we went on one of these walks back uh in the spring and you I was sharing with you that I was very frustrated that we weren't achieving specific results that we wanted to and that I couldn't possibly work any harder. I don't know what to do and I'm wildly frustrated and you said this phrase to me and I think it's important because I hear you say it to your clients too. Baller, I don't need you to work any harder. I just need you to work on the right things in order for you to be able to achieve what you want to. and you explained how to look through
37:36establishing what those right things were and giving me a strategy around that to help fine-tune what I needed to achieve. So, I would say this, it's for those who are listening that are saying like, "Oh my gosh, I work so hard or I'm trying so much to do things." It's it isn't that you need to work harder to achieve it. And I know we we've talked about this and kind of beat a dead horse. Say it one more time. it it is far less exhausting to work hard when you're achieving your results. It's actually invigorating. So if you can change the strategy but continue to have the disciplines of the work now you will be empowered because you see the achievement of what you're looking for. So that's it. I know we were beating a dead horse. I'm off set.
No, I I No, it's so good. It's um it's it people need to understand that you there's the work actually it's not any harder Katelyn to 10x your results than it is to grow them by 5%. It's all hard. Okay, let's just get the count of the business is hard but it's no harder like
38:40I to grow at 10% or to grow at 100% I would argue is the same level of hard. We're all going to work hard. So that's an everyone's doing that. the strategy is what's going to do the 10x or the 100x, right? Or I mean it just it like I I always am like what is the priority though? We could do everything.
What are the top five priorities? Let's get those in order. The second virtuous thing, Katelyn, so the next mountain and I hear this one a lot. It's the kids mountain. And this is going to be controversial. Uh people are going to say all kinds of things. And I want to be trying to be a little delicate, but Katelyn's probably not going to be that delicate. Um, I've got three kids, okay? I've got three kids that are now 13, 15, 17. And what I the the story I hear from clients that have little kids is I can't do what you're doing right now, Brett, because I have little kids and I wouldn't get to see them. And so I can't achieve right now because my kids are little. I mean, I hear that. I hear like, you know, it's like, you know,
39:44they're and they look So that's part one. Part two is because of their lack of success, they say, "Well, yeah, they're only able to get it with little kids because they don't see their kids, right? They're trading. They don't even see their kids. That's how they're doing it." And I'm going to tell you, that's life's greatest lie because in co, and you'll remember this firsthand, uh, co the world kind of got super weird, right? And I made a decision. Look, my kids are like doing online school in the Chandler school district, which might as well be they're doing nothing. And I was like, we're out of here. So I I was so frustrated with the way schools were operating. And you remember this, that I said, I could do it better. I I think the online thing stupid. I watched one of them my kids were doing like it's just chaos. There's nothing happening. And I started the Tanner Academy. If you remember, I hired my own teacher. I built my own curriculum. And I said, "We're gonna be out of the country two weeks every month, and we're going to be in the country at home, and we're going to do all the education in like 45
40:47minutes a day per kid individual, one-on-one, teacher, kid." And the idea was two things. One, could I double the education output in a year that I would get from the the public school system? And the second thing is, could I So, could I increase their education? Could I double the profits of my companies while I was out of the country two weeks of every month? Could I do it all? Right? That was the the question. And you got watching me do it. And I there was times I was taking off on a CLA, Katelyn. I had my laptop out for a second. So, I had to send more and more email and and to get it done. But you can make it happen. And so, I just want people to realize that kids are the greatest gift ever. If if you're ready and you want to have them and you want to do that thing, that's awesome. And what I would caution people on is making excuses and we could use kids or we could use something else. Making excuses on why you can't do it. Because the minute you say that, well, Katelyn, I can't do it because I have kids. Well, now that's your reality, right? I went the other way. I'm going to make more money because I have kids. Partially because you need to because kids are
41:49really expensive. Um but like Katelyn, you can you can make it happen. And so there's a study I want to go to that um the Boston Medical Center and the researchers sat down in fast food restaurants and they watched 55 caregivers eat with their young kids. So they don't know that these people are their parents because you know like they didn't go interview them but like Katelyn me odds are these are their parents. Okay they quote caregivers in the study and they just watched and took notes. Are you ready for this? How many people, what percentage, Katelyn, of people pull out their phones
during the dinner at fast food, mind you, which doesn't take forever,
how many
I would guess 20%, 15%.
40 out of 55. And the ones the researchers called highly absorbed primary engagement with the device instead of the kid. Here's the crazy part. It's the they observe more parents on the devices than the kids.
42:54
And so the highly
saying they say the highly absorbed the highly absorbed they were the ones who often responded harshly when the kid acted up trying to get their attention. parents on the phone. The research parents on the phone, the kid's like going crazy in the restaurant because he's just sitting there by himself staring at the wall and the parents like, "Quiet, Jimmy. I'm busy doom scrolling on Instagram." And you see it all the time. I want everyone that's listening or watching this, the next time you're in a restaurant, whether you like today, I want you to go in the restaurant, sit down and get your food, and just pan your eyes around the room and you see how many people are sitting there, four people at a table that came together to enjoy each other's company only to sit there mouth breathing and doom scrolling on their devices. And I think that's the irony of this mountain, Katelyn, is that people say, "Oh, I hear the argument. You don't understand. I love my kids." I'm like, "Well, I've talked to your kids. Your kids doesn't
43:55even know you are. Go spend some time individually with your kid. Go do something with them." I mean, it's totally different.
How do you design that though?
Yeah. So, how do you design that? So, like what we hear is, "I can't do that or I can't work that hard because I don't want to miss out on things with my kid." Right? So, there'll be certain things that they want to do. They're like, "I got to pick up my kid every day at school at 3, so my workday ends at 3." Or, "I don't want to be the dad that missed basketball practice." Or, "Hey, I want to get my kids up in the morning and get them ready for school and do the laundry, pack their lunches, and get them out the door." How how could you design it to have it all? How is it actually done?
So, first of all, we got to go back to the same thing we talked about the hard worker mount. It it's realizing that not everything matters equally. First thing I would say to their kids, not all time's equal. So, you know, one of the jokes about kids, how do you determine um how to determine love? And it's spelled T I M E, right? Time equals love. That's what they tell you. That's all What? Because driving your
44:58taking your kids to school every day while admirable is not the same time as sitting down and playing a board game one-on-one with your kid.
Okay. same hour driving to school where they're kind of in the back and they're just grabbing the lunch or screaming. You forgot the water bottle and the thing as opposed to sitting down enjoying each other's company talking about their day while we're playing a game off our devices and engaging and really being present. And the difference right Katelyn is being are you present or are you just there and so I see my private clients like I got to drop my kid off at 9:30 and then I got to pick him up at 3. Well dude that's a tough one right? So I what I do and how we did in our marriage, we decided who was going to do that and who wasn't and the person who wasn't doing the pickups and drop offs was kind of more responsible on the financial side of the equation. Just a thought, right? Like and again it's no judgment if there's two working parent but like there's ways to figure out every system.
One way or the other there's certain days there's certain you can zigzag with two working spouses. You can zigzag.
46:02
You could figure it all out. And I want to tell you that Katelyn, I want everyone to know that that everyone listening or watching can build their dream life with their kid. Now, I'm I just got back Sunday from a week-long trip in Alaska with my youngest. Jagger loves to fish. I love to fish. Two dudes roll out. We stayed at a lodge that was one of those flyyou lodges. Katelyn, we're literally getting in a sea plane every day. Flying out.
So cool.
To the middle of nowhere. Two dudes in the octagon fishing every day, right? Just in it. 12 hours a day. Now, I don't know the last time, the listeners and viewers, when you spent 12 hours a day and the cell phones don't work out there oneon-one with your kid for six or seven days, but it's something magical happens. Now, Katelyn, this is astronomically expensive. But you know what's not expensive? Going camping. You could take your same kid on a three-day camping trip. You could take them camping in your backyard. You could make up all kind. And I've done all of these things, right?
You could walk around your neighborhood every day. You can just say like, "Dude, at 5 we go on a walk together, you and
47:05I, and I want to hear about your day
every day for 20 minutes on a walk."
So, the education mountain is about, it's about priority, right? So, I'm going to tell you this. I've never missed anything that mattered. Have I missed practices? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I miss like almost all of them. I don't go to practices. I'm gonna say at a game, you seen me in the front row, right? Break those performances. You and I were in Vegas. I walked off stage. TRA walked off stage. I said, "Katelyn, have a car ready." We jumped in a car, shot down, took our entire team, walked off. My daughter did her competition. We saw it, gave her a big hug, watched it again. Boom. Back and went back. And then I spoke again. But you can figure I told last time I saw her, I've seen her perform in more states than anyone else outside of her family.
Yeah. You're just part of it. You said, "I'm not going to miss it. You're coming with me. we can talk about business on the way. We can get stuff done on the way. But for the 15 minutes she's on stage, I'm her dad and I'm going to be right there.
48:07
And so what I
But you didn't stand around for the two days waiting for the 15 minutes.
Well, like now my wife had to do like that that you know that's that's our partnership, right? Is like she's got to go there and do that part. I'm doing this other part. And so I just want people to realize pick the epic moments and be there, but don't use your kids as a crush to not achieve your life's goals. And that's what it is.
I love it.
All right. Look, if you're out there and you're a real estate agent and you're having success, but yet you don't feel like you're successful, you're making $500,000, $700,000 a year, and you're asking yourself, "Where does the money go? I don't have the time. I've got I'm trying to be at home. I'm trying to be with my kids. I'm trying to have a big career." And you just feel like there's you're missing something. I think it's because you are. And if you come to our one-day workshop, you can see the testimonials on our website. Go to beealthpodcast.com. Come spend a day and let's show you a different way to play the real estate game that helps you hit your goals. Go to bwalthypodcast.com. Katelyn, next one. Those were the virtual ones. Now we're talking about the stuff built for an audience. The
49:09things that we do for others.
So the way you want to think about this mountain, Katelyn, would you still climb it if no one knew you were climbing it? You can't post about it. You can't tell other people. Would you still climb it? And so you go I go back to where we opened this episode. Mine was I was climbing a success mountain but not for my own success that led me to your life. I was climbing the success mountain to be viewed as successful by others. I was making decisions in my life. What I read, what I wore, car I drove was based on an external perception. And it's crazy, right? Like you know when I went back that night um after I won that award and I like the word that came up in my mind to describe it Katelyn was shallow. How shallow is this victory? Like it meant nothing after I did it. And it meant everything. If you'd have told me right before I got that award, what did it mean? Everything from a career standpoint. Everything to me. 90 seconds later, I was like, "Oh my gosh, I hate it. I hate everything about
50:11it." Right? I went back to like a Courtyard Marriott in the, you know, in the I I don't even know where we were. I think it were in LA at the time, like at the LA Convention Center. And I'm sitting there going, "Oh my gosh." Like, I'm one of the most accomplished real estate agents in the country, right? In every measurable category. And I'm literally doing it just to to the Jo the Joneses. And what I realized, Katelyn, and this was the thing I want everyone to get out of this one section, nobody's watching, and nobody cares.
Nobody cares. They're watching themselves.
They It's not that they don't care about you. A negative like, "I don't care about Katelyn." It's everybody is so absorbed in their own life, their own social condition, their friends, their family, their own story. We believe that everyone's watching us all the time. The reality is, Katelyn, they're not watching us. They're not watching. They're not. And so, if we take a step back, right, and think about that, there's a study that backs us up. three psychologists and I'm
51:15going to get the names wrong but Gilovich Medvec and Savitsky in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in the year 2000 ran an experiment at Cornell. So this isn't like kind of like three dudes in a basement somewhere like you know great institution.
How many subscribers do you think they had to that though? The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology I think that's a heavy curriculum. I think that's industry specific. I think that's a tight It's a tight niche. Very They even use the word It's not even niche on this one. They use the word niche. That's how good it is. Um
All right. So, what did they find out at Cornell?
Well, they made students walk into a room wearing a Barry Manalo t-shirt. Okay. You got a Barry Manalo t-shirt. Okay. And a shirt that students said they would be embarrassed to wear. So, they got them walking in wearing something. They're kind of like looking out of place, not looking cool. And then they ask the shirt wearer, "What percentage of people in the room notice the shirt?" You're wearing
52:19something weird. You walk into a room, right? What's your public perception, Katelyn? Everyone's looking.
Everyone's staring me. Everyone's staring at you.
What is your guess? So, every ready for this? Their guess on how many people? They only said 46%. Okay. Half. Half the people in the room are looking at it. Okay. You ready for the real number? I would tell you think it's everyone. Okay. 23%. So our perception is we're already twice as many people or depending on if you think it's 100% four times as many people think they're looking at you right and that's just Caleb that's just glanced not that they cared you were wearing a Berry Man shirt just saw that you had it. I they didn't do this part. The people that actually cared what you wear, I know that number is zero.
Zero.
I don't need this. Maybe that one out of maybe that one out of four people are actually Barry Manalo fans. They didn't ask that either. Maybe they fans and that's the only reason they noticed. That's the only reason is they loved it.
So this mountain, we're calling it the
53:20Keeping Up with the Joneses mountain. Katelyn, you're climbing for an audience that's not even watching what you're doing. You're posting 20 stories for people who are posting their own 20 stories. You bought the car for people who are looking at their car. They don't even see your car. And I've done it. Can I have done this game and played it? Uh the number was real. My audience was completely imaginary. They weren't there. And so now, Katelyn, this is our viewers and listeners could say, "Brett, but I saw you post I saw you posted some stuff from Alaska." Yeah, I do it because I have a business around this. And Katelyn, you know this. We post stuff to promote our companies and products and services, right? Social media is a relevant thing that we need to do today. The minute that that ceases to be a truth, we're out of this game, right? I love doing everything you and I do, but it has nothing to do with your and my ego. We are doing a 100% of this to help human beings, many of which will never
54:21become our customers. Literally my life's mission is to help other people. And so the reason I'm doing it, I'm not on the Joneses mount. I don't care if you hate Alaska or Love House. And I think I turn off more people with the things I post that probably turn on with it. And that's okay. And that's okay because I would still do everything in my life, Katelyn, if no one could see it. I don't do a single thing for anyone else's approval or pleasure. I do it for myself because I want to enjoy. And I think that if you can get to that place in this mountain, right, this Jones's mountain where you're doing it for you, totally different.
Totally different.
Right. I got a homework assignment. I think you've seen it, but for our listeners who may not have, there is a movie that helps to depict this in the best possible way called The Joneses with David Duchovny and uh Demi Moore.
It's absolutely fantastic. Okay, so it's fantastic. Uh guys, pause this for a few minutes if you you know I'm going to do a spoiler alert, but basically it's this
55:24family. They move to the suburbs into this beautiful home and they buy all the new furniture from like Ethan Allen. They join the country club, have the best possible golf clubs. The kids go to school. They've got all the coolest gadgets and clothes and they're just the it family in the neighborhood. And fast forward to the and and throughout the movie, you see their neighbors being like, "Damn it, we need to buy new furniture. That's crazy. They have all the best stuff. Our house looks like crap compared to theirs. Let's go to Ethan Allen and get it." Right? And then you see the kids, right? They want all the new phones, all the new gadgets. They're going to their parents. And you see the people in the neighborhood start to crumble. They're going and buying these things, making poor financial choices in order to keep up with this family that's literally called the Joneses. Fast forward to the end of the movie. The Joneses aren't even a real family. There are four actors that are hired to go into this target-rich environment and they literally are micro influencers in that neighborhood to sell as much stuff as possible. And they move from neighborhood to neighborhood doing
56:26this to get people to try to keep up with them. And so when you say, "Am I doing this every purchase you're making?" You gave me this tool. every purchase you're making or everything you're posting, if no one saw this, would I still do it? Right? Is this important to me? And there's times where it's like, "Yeah, I love this thing and I'm buying it just for me." Or, "I love wearing this outfit and I'm doing it just for me." Or, "I love going to Alaska and spending time with my kid. If no one knew about it and I didn't post about it, would I still take that exact same trip?" And your answer was yes. It was a perfect tool you gave me. But that's homework assignment. I think it's on Netflix, guys. It's also not like the most cinematic experience ever, but it's a great fun little movie to watch. I um I definitely want to go check it out. And it it's crazy how easily as people we can be manipulated, right? Like that. I mean, marketing and advertisers, what are they trying to do to get you to see if you just did this, you would be cool? And so there was a there was a a care
57:30nurse in Australia named Bronnie Ware and her job, Katelyn, was spending time with people at the end of their lives. People that had 3 to 12 weeks left to live. Um, and she wrote down what they said they regretted. So it's not a study, it's just a nurse's notebook of asking people that are dying, "What do you regret?" Okay? and her number one regret word for word from the journal. I'm going to read it. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. That's number one. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. How many of us are living a life that others expect? family, your parents, your mom, your dad, your brother, your sister, your community, your best friend. How many of us went and lived that life, right? And getting free of that, right? It it's so the number one regret.
58:34The second regret, I wish I hadn't worked so hard. Number two, and that's the Jones Mountain described from the summit at the very end. If you play for others approval, the end of your life, you're going to be left with the regret saying, "I wish I'd been free to live a life of myself, not what other people want."
Wow.
And it because the people you're performing for aren't actually watching you. It would be like we went to Breck's chair thing, right? She thinks there's an audience out there and she's just tumbling on a stage by herself. That's beautiful if she loves to tumble. It's literally a living hell if she's only doing it for an audience that doesn't exist.
Yeah.
So, Katelyn, if I I want to go to the next mountain here, but before I do, I want people to stop for a minute. Do us a favor. Stop. Put down the squat rack for a second and leave us a review on your favorite listing platform. Your reviews are the fuel for our fire. Please do it. We appreciate each and
59:35everyone. And we do read everyone. Katelyn, I am a crazy person as people know and I love reading your incredible reviews. All right, Katelyn, next mountain. One of my favorites, the YOLO mountain. And for those people that are not millennials and as hip as Katelyn, uh that stands for you only live once.
Okay. Uh my advice for people on the yolo mountain, get to your ideal life. Sprint there as quick as you can and then you can do the yolo. You just got to do the work and get to the what you wanted first. And so, uh you haven't heard this story, Katelyn, but when I was fly fishing in Alaska this past week, I asked one of the guides. So most of the guides, Katelyn, these are young men ages 20 to 25 that grew up somewhere mostly rural but fishing every day and they're like the best in the world at what they do. And this particular lodge hires people that have incredible personalities, right? So they're in addition to their fishing expertise, like they're fun, right? They're big
1:00:39personalities. Like if you're an introvert, you're not working at this lodge.
To be fair, they're selling fun. They're selling an experience. What if the fish don't hit today? All I'm going to be left with is the guide. Great energy going, you know. Hey, I got a funny.
Guys, if you're listening To this, you should definitely go on and watch this on YouTube. We both just did some phenomenal dance moves. You guys would have loved it.
We both know I'm a phenomenal dancer. And so the point So I asked the guy, I said, "Hey, dude, what's the long-term plan here as a guy?" Wide angle. you know me, I do this all the time with people. What's the long-term plan? And he said, and this was my favorite guy of the trip, by the way. He goes, I'm just living, man. I just want to live. And my son's right there, Jagger. And
his life plan is don't die.
His life plan is, I'm just living, dude. Like, when this season's over, I'm going to go to like a thing and figure it out. And And I get it. Like, he's on a river in Alaska in September, right? That's
1:01:43there's nothing wrong with that. Like that's something to aspire to do. Here's the problem I have with it. If we future casted, right, and we went out 30 years or 40 for him because he was like in his early 20s, you don't see any 60-year-old guides, fishing guides, Katelyn. Pretty rare. You might have the retiree that's doing it for
You're not You call them You call them crusty. That's a That's a crusty old guide.
I now owning a lodge. you're a retiree and you do it for fun. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about there's no 60-y old guy that's doing it for a living. And so, you know, I look at that and I go, gosh, does he know the future cost of his current decisions.
No one broke that uh that math down that, you know, Wesley Snipes learned backwards, which is the best math you could learn to do is to calculate the future costs of your current decisions. Now, we don't know if he did that before he or after he went to prison for tax fraud, but I think it was I think it was after he was that reflective. But does
1:02:47our guy does my does my young guide know the future cost of his current decisions? I don't think he does.
You know, Brett, I'm going to I think we ask I think we should ask Cole to put this in the show notes. Um, you put a awesome visual up at one of our masterminds a few sessions ago that showed that today's easy decisions can lead to a more difficult life versus today's difficult decisions can compound to be a very easy life. And that visual image is absolutely fantastic. I'll try to describe it. You have two stick figures and one of them is making easy decisions today. So, it's like he's kind of going sliding down a little hill, right? And it's easy. Here I go. Right. He gets to the bottom of that hill and then he's going to have to climb on the back half of his life with really difficult uh work ahead of him, right? Because he took the easy route today. It didn't set him up for success in the future. And
1:03:52then you have the other stick figure that made the harder decisions today. and you see that stick figure and he's just going up a little bit at a time and it's just kind of a gradual incline. It's hard work. It's the right things going in the right direction over time and then he leaves a really easy life later on. And so the whole point that you put this out was the decisions you make today, the yolo, who cares, no accountability around it or just screw it, you know, we'll just not worry about it for this year. I'm only, you know, x amount of years old or, you know, I only get this chance once in a lifetime, so I'm going to blow off my responsibilities. That has a huge compounding impact over time, right? I think that that image is really powerful. So, we'll put it in the show notes for y'all.
Yeah. I don't think um and so figuring out your ideal life is a huge part of it, right? We got to work backwards so that we're not y and you can yolo once you've got the resources to yolo. The other thing I don't think people realize
1:04:53um Katelyn and it's happened to me in the last boy in the last three years louder than ever which is money is good for the good that it can do. Um you know I've been blessed that I'm I'm very successful but recently I mean you know this that our our dog basically was going to die and so we had to do this surgery and this dog is like the heart. So we got a teacup Pomeranian. We'll put a picture in the show notes. It's literally dipped. Looks like she's a rainbow. She's got pink ears and a
She looks like cotton candy.
She looks like cotton candy. It's a great way to describe. And this dog is like 9 years old, the heart and soul. And there's a problem where she's having a hard time breathing. Like her little
whatever her breathing tubes are closed together. She's basically got to have the surgery. The problem is being only three pounds. When they cut her open, they're like, "There's a there's a there's a chance she's going to die. But if you don't do the surgery, she's sure goners." We do the surgery, Katelyn, and it goes awful. and I get a call from my wife and it's a crazy amount of money to do another surgery with a 20% chance of
1:05:57success and you have to write a huge check and they're like so basically the this is the veterary the number one place said they'd like just put her down and I get the call I was in during I said absolutely not 20% chance I will shoot that shot every day for an unlimited amount of money do it next day I get the same call odds get worse Katelyn doesn't get better it gets worse which is super awesome So worse odds, more money day two. And I was like, I will take those odds all day long. Bottom line is that little dog is alive and well today for the good that money can do. But if you if I was not able to write a crazy like more than a car check, like what about it? Like what would that look like, right? And so the point is maybe your yolo moment is bigger than you, right? Maybe you going out and achieving could do other things. Now, some people could look at that and say, "Oh, what a what a total waste of money. You're being emotional." Whatever. I looked at it like, "There's no way. There's no check I wouldn't write." That's what my wife said. How much would you spend? I said, "All of it." Like, there I will spend everything to to make that dog whole.
1:07:01So, here's what I think this yellow thing. So, I want to go to the Federal Reserve. They run a survey every year. Okay. On the EP economic,
that's a sharp that transition.
It's a sharp turn. It's a sharp it's a short term. the dogs went all speaking of guys. Speaking of which, let's transition to the Federal Reserve.
I mean, it's a hard
It's a hard It's a hard reserve. It's a hard It's a hard pivot. So, the Federal Reserve, okay, they ran this survey on the economic well-being of US households. The 2025 report came out in May of 26. So, we got last year's stuff just now. And it's among people who aren't retired. 35% said their retirement savings are on track. Hold. I don't know if you got that, Katelyn. Only 35% of people said they were on track. So, two out of three humans out there running around are not on track by their own bank account, their own admission. And I would argue of the 35 that think they're on track actually haven't done
1:08:02the math and know that they're off track. That's the yellow mounted scale, right? that it's every it's not one guide in a boat. It's the majority overwhelming majority of our country are just living to live not realizing the pain they're going to endure in the future. And the reason why the yolo mountain um doesn't make sense and this was beaten in my head at 16 years old by my dad. So my dad's thing was Brent, if you want more than other people, you've got to do more than other people. Okay, that's pretty pretty basic, right? And he the way you do that and this my dad's a very simple guy, very successful, but like like a few principles that harness all of his success. Brett, all you have to figure out is what's tomorrow's work that's most important and then do it today.
That's how you get ahead. And I was like, wow. So, we would be in the bean factory working and he would be like, hey, tomorrow we've got to do these four things. We're just going to do them today.
1:09:03And every day he was doing two days worth of work in a day. And then he how do we get the weeks pulling it forward? So how do you get ahead? Well, most people are doing a day. He's doing two days every day. Well, shocker, Katelyn, over decades, he crushed it. Okay, with that strategy,
but he also picked the right four things, right?
You got to know the right priorities you're doing tomorrow. And so,
sure,
it the key the problem is that it takes forever. You should I tell every young person and anybody, sprint to get to the life that you want. Run as hard as fast. Measure what matters. And if you're going to trade something, trade it early because you get to spend more time living your ideal life.
Agreed.
And I'm going to tell you, it's better than the yolo fishing guide at 24 who's going to wake up at 65 who's not going to be fishing in Alaska if he doesn't change. I would rather go the other way. Run like hell to 45. I'm not a millennial, but I get to go there as a guest and go do it.
So, you're saying I just want to make
1:10:07sure I got this. So, you're saying the mountain of hard work, the one that we talked about earlier. You're saying make sure your mountain of hard work is the right mountain, that you're doing the right activities and the right things. Do it early. Don't get distracted by the trail over to the mountain of yolo. keep yourself streamlined on the mountain of hard work to achieve what you're looking to accomplish. But the underlying tone to all of this, Brett, all of it, from education to hard work to yolo to Joneses, is you have to figure out what do you actually want first so that you're sure when you are climbing the mountain, you're climbing the right ones in the right way. That's what I hear you saying. Does that sound right?
That is I mean it all starts with what do you want? Define it in a granular way. the way you want your life to look like and then run as fast as you possibly can and build a strategy, get in the room, get the education to get there as fast as you possibly can. You can do Katelyn 30 years of work in 10. You can if you know the
1:11:11priorities and line it up and use the thing, well, how do I do tomorrow's thing today? You could do that. You could do it. Most of us make massive investments in our business and some of those investments don't pay off. So, you could come spend a day with me for $997. You come into one of our resorts, you're going to spend a day, bring your challenge, bring your opportunities, and let's work through it in a one-on-one coaching session. You're going to be in a room of your peers. No more than 15 people are going to be there. And I'm going to coach you personally to tackle your challenge and your opportunity. Go to bewealthypodcast.com to see the next dates for our event. So to do that, then we got to the next mountain, Katelyn, is why is one of the reasons I think it's probably the biggest reason people don't live their ideal life. the next mountain which is the that does not work in my market mountain.
This is the number one reason you think people do not achieve what they want to.
I think this is the number one reason. Uh they say things like this that doesn't work in my market. You don't understand my situation, Brad. You don't understand what I'm going through. You don't understand my health situation. You don't understand my family dynamic.
1:12:14You don't know. It's easy for you to say that because you've got Brett insert, kickass wife, great kids, crush it in business, shave the beard off. Just got to throw that one in there. Um, no, but K, they'll say, "You've got it all." I like, "Well, how do you think?" I I started out dead broke and nowhere. So,
I started with none of it.
Started with none of it. And I wasn't smart. So, I had kind of
No, no kids, no business. You started with nothing
and no brains. No brains, no headaches. And so, but yeah, it like but so you could do it from anywhere, right? You could do it from anywhere. The problem is, ready, these climbers on the that doesn't work in my market, you know what business they're in, Katelyn? They're in the excuses business.
They love the excuses. And so rather than take ownership and say, "How do I achieve in spite of this particular situation that I am? How do I achieve in spite of the fact that I'm a single mom
1:13:16with two kids? Great question. If we ask that question, right, there is a way to do it. If we say that doesn't work because I'm a single mom with two kids, well, you've already defined your outcome and you're not going to make it, right? And so rather than take ownership and go get the skills, they explain fluently, full detail why the results were never possible for someone in their situation. Katelyn, they are so good at telling the story. And one of my first coaches that coached me to get to where we were number nine in the country and this is a book by the way he took it from and it's called it's your ship and it's kind of one of those books can I tell you about you don't really need to read the book you can just read the title it's Katelyn it's your ship your situation it's your ship you get to decide which direction it goes and you get to decide how long it takes you to get there ship's got more than one speed and it can go in all the different But if you don't know where the hell you're going, it's going to be really hard to get there. And so I I literally know this more than anyone, Katelyn. It I
1:14:19literally almost left the real estate business in 2008. I was like I joined Keller Williams. I was like, "Hey, hang my license here for a second while I go sling plumbing parts or something. I'm going to do something different because I don't know this real estate thing is for me." Three years later, we're nine in the country. All because I decided that and you know what I would have said in 2008, Katelyn, you know what my language said? It's not working right now in my market. Katelyn, the real estate market got hard.
I uh
Go ahead.
I had a men I had a mentor once who said this phrase to me a lot.
Uh and then I just heard it recently. Whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're 100% right. That's it. So, if it's not going to work in your market, you know what? Not for you. You're 100% right. If you think that it can work or there's a way to make it work, you're going to be determined to figure it out. So, whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're 100% right.
I I don't want to be, you know, blaster
1:15:22mentor, but that wasn't their quote. That was actually Henry Ford. Uh Henry Ford said that first. Uh oh,
was that right?
Yeah. You look it up. Henry Ford is the whether you believe you can or you can't, you're right. That's a Henry Ford thing. And so it it goes the same thing. It's it's your ship. And so what what I would say to him was I said, "I don't think you understand, Bill. Um it doesn't work in my market." He literally cut me off. He's like, "It's your ship." And the next thing out of his mouth, "Make the market. Oh, the market sucks. Make your own." Or, "Oh, you're dictated by external forces that are out of your control. And so you're just whatever the mark I have to just take whatever I'm giving." He's like, "Gh, it's your ship. He literally cut me off on a co. It's a paid coach. This wasn't like a friend or a buddy. He was like, "Dude, it's your ship. It's you. You're the problem, Brett. Aim your ship in a different direction." And that's the cure for the whole thing. You want to get off this. I mean, you you just got to go do it. That doesn't work in your market. Go do it. Went from nowhere to like 670 houses three years
1:16:25later, right? All because I realized he is right. There is an opportunity right now. I got to take my the short sale and REO market. I didn't want to do either one of those things to be honest with you.
But that was a couple at Mega Camp a couple weeks ago, they were going through the, you know, the all the economics, how they start off each thing at at KW. And Gary was going over transaction count. and he looked up at it and he said, "Well, the good news is there's enough transactions in this country for every person in this building to reach all of their financial goals several times over. So, if you think there's not enough transactions or the market's down or this guys, you can go take the market by storm. There's plenty of transactions, plenty of activity. You can achieve it. Go figure it out." And then obviously you spent the next several days teaching us how to think about that and how to go through it. But that really stuck with me. He was like, "Look at this. There's plenty of transactions, so don't tell me the market's too slow. It's just you're not getting enough of them."
1:17:28You know, Katelyn, one of the excuses I get from investors is they go, "Ah, Brett, you don't understand. The investing doesn't work in my market because the cap rates are too low. Cap rates are too low." Okay. Right. I live in Arizona. But what did I do? The cap rates became like because Arizona became less affordable. Katelyn, that was a true statement. the cap rates were lower in Arizona, but I'm not my my body is not chained to my home in Phoenix, Arizona. Like I I can't move. And so I got on a This is a crazy concept, Katelyn. It's very hard for people to travel, especially for work. I got on an airplane for work and flew to what I like to think is the Paris of the South, Huntsville, Alabama, and went out there and drove around to look at the homes I was thinking about buying. Okay. I wasn't buying them. I was driving out. I flew across country. Okay, by the way, you don't go direct from Phoenix to Huntsville. I wish you did. You don't. So, you you know, you bounce through a couple places. Get there to drive around to home to think about analyzing them so I could own.
1:18:32
By the way, most of my real estate today, Katelyn, does not in Arizona. You know why? Because some of the stuff doesn't work in my market. I just made my market different markets or a bigger market, right? I didn't pick Huntsville or Canton, Georgia or Clarksville, Georgia, which literally is the Paris of the South. I said it was Huntsville. It's really Clarksville. It's one of my favorite places on the planet. But you know what your market is, Katelyn? As an investor, it's wherever you're willing to underwrite deals and do the work. Get your ass on a plane to where you need to go and start underwriting deals in that market. And if they don't work there, cool. Go to a different one. But that doesn't work in my market. Has never underwritten a deal in any market. There's more people that die from the investing business that never even underwrote a deal than actually did deals because they underwrote. It's so funny, right? Like you're like they're like, "Ah, Brett, I would I'd love to own a Starbucks." I'm like, "Sick. How many of you underwrote? Zero." Well, you have a 0% chance of owning whatever if you don't underwrite one. I underwrote all of them for two years.
1:19:35And you know how hard it is, Katelyn, to underwrite stuff that you're not buying for years. It's exhausting. then go to auctions as you know bid on them and lose not once multiple times after we you and I flew our entire company to markets you in the last 45 days have done three tours not properties three tours to look at stuff we're looking at a storage unit thing and we're looking at other golf course we're looking at two other golf courses we're looking to buy more units we're doing it right now and spoiler alert you would love for it to be in Dallas so would I love for it to be in Phoenix. I People are like, "Well, Brett, why don't you just buy a golf course in Arizona?" Cuz the thing we bought at Apple Mountain like like I didn't consider that idea like, "Oh, wow. Holy cow, Tom, that's insightful." No, we can't because it would be $150 million to buy what we bought at Apple Mountain, right? And the opportunity isn't there. So, stop saying the opportunity isn't in your market. The opportunity is where you create it. When we say market that you don't understand
1:20:38my health situation, my this, my that, my market, you can define it. You can win with it and you can change it.
Your last one.
Whatever your limiting factor is, insert it there.
So, this is one that got me, Katelyn. This is another one that I did wrong. I was on
I believed in my soul. I was on the right mountain. Uh, I believe, Katelyn, that passive income and single family rentals was my path. Okay, I defined it. I knew the life I wanted. I picked the strategy. Single family rentals. I'm gonna get a thousand of these and then I'm going to ride off into the sunset, take the passive income, and I'm going to go live on the islands. Right? That's, you know, that is my end destination. And I got to 130 uh of these and realized, Katelyn, that I do not like this mountain. I am not at the summit of it. Like I am I am still at base camp climbing it and I look up Katelyn and go I am on the wrong mountain. I need to get back to base camp and the mountain's
1:21:42over there. It's not the one I'm on.
To be fair you were 13% to goal.
I was 13% to goal and I was ramping. Right. My last year we looked it up. I pulled it up. I bought 50 houses. Not like sold 50, not flipped. Bought 50 single family rentals in one year.
Acquired. acquired in my portfolio in a year. Okay, I did it. I did the thing and I didn't do it to quote like doors. I don't do that because like I don't understand why you're again it's an external number, right? That's that
sales volume.
They say Brett 130. I I say that's 130 addresses. So if I've got a forplex on there, I call it one. I know people would count it as four. I just don't need it to be that cool. We got a a seven tenant building. Katelyn, I call it one. Okay. It's just a one unit. Roundhouse got 63 units. I call it one. Okay. I don't do this door business. But it was a trap, right? Every single house is one management unit, every one of them. Anything they can call you is a
1:22:45management unit. A tenant, an insurance renewal, a tax appeal, the property manager, they they they feel the call, but they're like, "Hey, Katelyn, do you want to replace just the air compressor or you want to replace the whole AC unit?" You know, who doesn't love that one? And so I realized that what I was doing didn't scale. It didn't scale. This is the in I'm on the wrong investment mountain. And we did a a short episode came out a while back. You can go watch that. But really the concept that hit me here was two things. Return on equity. Okay. What's the the idle cash? Not cash on cash returns. Every investor knows how to do that. Return on equity is how much equity you take value of the home minus your mortgage. How much equity you have there. Okay. divided by the net income is what that equity is actually earning me. Well, I looked at my whole portfolio and I was averaging 4.2%. Not terrible, but far from great. But I'm dealing with roofs and tenants, as my dad would say, toilets and trash. Um, I'm dealing with all that for 4.2%. Katelyn, you could almost get that in a
1:23:46treasury bill. You don't have to manage anything. So, instead, right, I just realized I'm on the wrong mountain. My return on equity, my management units sucks. And so I've over the last three years taken 130 rentals. I'm down to I think like my last I'm going to call it 19. I'll get the real number. But I've sold like 110 of these, moved them into triple net commercial, the golf course, these other assets that perform radically better, have less management units, have more passive income or struggle or structured triple net, which means the AC goes out, I could care less because someone else is paying for it, right? and everything changed. But that happened, Katelyn, from realizing. I was beating the single family drum. And I would still buy single family rentals today. I still buy them. I'm just not going to hold them for 30 years. I'm going to at some point take four, five, six together, wrap them up,
and put them into something that makes more sense. And so I know forever and
1:24:48the clients you coach that it's
they're just I've always done it this way. I've invested my money this way. This is what my dad said I should invest my money, right? Which may be awesome advice and maybe horrific. Um, you should invest it in the way that allows you to get to your goals and live your ideal life again, not someone else's. And the investment mountain, we get trapped again. Well, my neighbor does this, right? It happens all the time. Anything you want to add to that, Katelyn, before we wrap up the wrong investment mountain?
No, I think you're you're 100% right. Um, it's it's funny. I just I had a call with a a gentleman who's going back into our mastermind group. He taken a little time away. He's coming back and he was telling me about 13 single family residentials he has in Memphis. He was like, I just don't know this this makes sense when I really run the economics. I listened to Brett's, you know, do do your single family residentials make
1:25:50sense in 2026 podcast and he said, "I don't know that these make sense, Katelyn. How should I be thinking about this differently? I also don't want to sell them because of the my equity loads and, you know, they've gone up so much in value." And he told this whole story that he was going to have to hang on to them forever in his brain. Super smart dude. And very easily we connected him with uh Michael Velasco over at 1031. Now he realized he can do a reverse 1031 exchange and move it from a midterm which is a single family residential investment, a midterm investment to a lifetime or a forever investment. And I think it's so funny and a couple uh years ago when you first started talking about this, our group went absolutely apeshit in the room. They lost their minds yelling at you, which our masterminds get kind of lively at times. We debate, right? They lost it when you said, "I'm not sure that this mountain I've been on is my forever mountain. I've got to make sure I continue to move it." It's not the wrong mountain. It's
1:26:52just I need to move to a different one. And so you had been teaching for years short-term investments in order to get until I call it like the kitty, right? It's like let's keep the money rolling and compounding with some short-term investments until we have enough to go and buy a midterm investment. So you could think of that as like you're doing hard money loans, right? You're turning that cash as quickly as possible to generate the income that then when the right opportunity comes along, boom, we can get a midterm, right? So you start buying the properties in Huntsville or Memphis or those single family residential properties that we've talked about. Then you're sitting there 10 years later and maybe you bought one a year and you got 10 properties and you said into the room, guys, maybe it's time, just hear me out, for you to take those properties and move that equity into a forever. And it was you telling the room into a forever asset like a triple net commercial, a Denny's, a Starbucks, something different, a multif family that's going to be super passive. You said, "I've got to move it down that
1:27:56line and make sure I'm getting the right rates of return for my forever choices, and then I'm going to go right back to the beginning and do my shortterm, my midterm, and then roll it into my longterm." Brett, people lost their minds. They said, "Brett's so far removed. He doesn't understand what it's like to be us anymore. He's so far past us." And then there was the majority of the room, about 80% of them said, "Well, holy crap. I think he's right." And that's shocking. and they made the decision cuz they saw the mountain they were on and made the decision to move it, right? And then to start over again. And some people decided to stay on their mountain, right? And now they're coming to you and saying, "What do I do now? What does it look like?" So, I just I think it's really interesting because you read a black and purple book and decided, "I've got to do the rich dad poor dad, buy 200 houses, and then that's my retirement plan." Conceptually works. but the practical application doesn't. And so don't think that you have to stay on that mountain if you're there today. Think about
1:28:58strategically making your money work harder and putting in the right assets. So I agree with you. It's been fun to watch the journey.
What's so cool is like now we've got and you don't know. We got like a secret society now. There's four of us that own Starbucks in there. Um and we're like it's like it's the joke is like welcome to the Starbucks club, right? like well it it's it's so cool to see that we've got people RV parks and mobile home parks I mean massive multif family resorts I mean we got people doing cra I mean from triple net medical office to car wash to you name it like in our room and crazy things are happening and Katelyn so I want to land this episode for any listeners and viewers there there's seven mountains that we talked about and you need to leave this podcast with some homework and so we're going to give you a one pager it'll be in the show notes But I want you to think about those seven mountains and make sure you understand which one you're on. There's one you were handed, two that look like they're virtuous, one you're just building it for other people, two that are hiding, and the one that actually fools the winners. That was the last one
1:29:59for me. I climbed personally climbed two of these all the way up. I did the the hard worker mountain and I did the uh and then I did or I'm sorry, I did the audience mountain and the investment mountain and I've done a little bit of the hard worker mountain. Um it just I realized Katelyn there's a better way to do it. Um the key right for everyone on there define the life first. Work backwards to what you want. So here's the homework. Number one, everyone should write this down. Where are you? Your income, your balance sheet, your return on equity, your management units, numbers, not stories. Where are you? Where are you? Second question, where do you want to go? Think at go at least go out at least 10 years. You can go to 30 if you want. I recommend 30, but figure it out. Not the door count, not the external measurement. That's crap. What do you actually want? Like, where do you want to go? Third thing, what's the fastest way to increase your income right now? What's the fastest way? But start asking that question. What else can I do? What other income? How could I go faster? How could I scale this? What
1:31:01if I had more people? What if I had a better strategy? And then you got to go. Now, I want you to go back and look at that list, Katelyn. Look at the mountains you're climbing and did you pick it or did somebody else pick it for you,
right? The best thing you could do, figure out what mountain you want to climb and climb it as fast as you possibly can so you can live the life that you want. Katelyn, if we've got any climbers out there that feel that this resonates with them, I would love for you to book a call with Katelyn, myself, or a member of our team. We do these breakthrough calls to understand where you are and to see if you are a fit for one of our programs. You could book that call in the show notes and do that. Regardless, make sure you're climbing the mountain that you want to climb that leads you to where you want to be. That's Katelyn Mitchell. I'm Brett Tanner. This is another episode of the Be Wealthy Podcast. We'll see you back here very, very
One day in the room with Brett on your real numbers. You leave with a 5-year plan.
