There’s a reason why the majority of people in this world are poor. It is because they are not taught to be rich. They don’t know the principles that the rich already know and implement in their lives. If you knew the principles of the rich, you could change your life and be rich as well. Copy what already works; it’s that simple. The principles of the rich apply to everybody. They apply now, tomorrow, and far into the future. They’re timeless and no matter when you learn these principles, they will help you to become wealthy. Dustin Heiner is a real estate investor who went from working the grind to living the dream. Join me and Dustin as we talk about the eight principles to be rich, wealthy, and live the dream life.
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Every single week, I get reviews from my incredible audience out there about how much they love the show and what they’re learning. I’m very humbled and I want to thank each and every one of you for the great reviews and the five-star ratings. I read them all. Thank you. There’s one I want to read. In fact, I might just randomly grab one here and there and read them on each episode. This review I wanted to read because I thought it was great. I don’t have the person’s alias. I’m not sure that would mean all that much if you don’t know who the person is. This person for this particular review says, “I’ve been listening to your podcast for a couple of months now and I have learned more in that time than I have listening and reading for the past six months. It’s the total package of info that enhances my motivation and the appetite for more exposure to your knowledge. Thanks for all you do!” That is a great review because it motivates me, it’s touching and it inspires me to do more for you. I’m glad you’re learning. I’m glad that this has been useful for you. Thank you so much. I will try to keep putting out some good content.
The segue from there is a quote from someone, his name is William A. Ward. He says, “Before you speak, listen. Before you write, think. Before you spend, earn. Before you invest, investigate. Before you criticize, wait. Before you pray, forgive. Before you quit, try. Before you retire, save. Before you die, give.” There’s a reason why the majority of people in this world are poor. It is because they are not taught to be rich. They don’t know the principles that the rich already know and implement in their lives. If you knew the principles of the rich, you could change your life and be rich as well. It’s that simple, you copy what already works. I want you to be rich and wealthy. The principles of the rich apply to everybody. They apply now, they apply tomorrow and far into the future. Principals or principles, they’re timeless. They don’t change. No matter when you learn these principles, they will help you to become wealthy. Join me and my guest as we talk about the eight principles to be rich, wealthy and live the dream of your life.
If you missed our last episode, be sure to listen to Straight Talk with Robert Kiyosaki (Rich Dad Poor Dad).
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Eight Principles To Be Rich, Wealthy, And Live The Dream Life with Dustin Heiner
It’s my pleasure to welcome Dustin Heiner to the show. Dustin is a real estate investor who went from working the grind to living the dream. He’s a husband and a father of four children who supports them with the passive income from his business and his rental properties. I only met Dustin recently, but in conversation with him, I’ve come to find out that we are aligned in so many different ways when it comes to real estate and personal development and building a solid financial future to create the time freedom that we always want. I invited him on the show because I thought there was a lot that you could learn from Dustin. I know he has a lot to say because I’ve checked out a lot of his material, which is great. Dustin, welcome to the show.
Marco, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
I forgot how I came across you. I think it was my assistant who reached out to you and asked if you’d be interested in having me on your show. Then as I got to learn more about you, I thought, “This is an interesting guy. He’s actually walked the talk. He’s created financial freedom for himself. He’s created passive income. He’s done it primarily through income-producing real estate, which is fantastic.” Then as I got to know you a little bit in the recent past, I thought, “He would be a great guest.” Let’s start off by you telling our audience about yourself and how you got involved in real estate investing.
My name is Dustin Heiner. When I first started investing, I was 25 years old. Like everybody or most people when they start thinking about investing and getting passive income, you start to think, “I’m tired of working a job. A JOB, Just Over Broke job.” I hated that. I also hated having my time taken up and have somebody else telling me what to do. I’ve always been entrepreneurial, so real estate’s not the only business I’ve ever started. I’ve had a skateboard manufacturing business. I had a website design. I had a software company. I also own a retail establishment and built it up from scratch and sold it. All the different businesses that I started, I even had a paper route when I was thirteen years old.
I was always entrepreneurial and trying to figure out a way so that I didn’t have to work a job, and I could be independent and work on my own. It turns out the easiest one was actually the best one, and it was real estate rental properties. I buy properties. It takes me maybe three to four hours to buy one property, then I release my property managers, my contractors, plumbers, inspectors. I release everybody on my team to do the work to make sure the property is rentable and gets rented. Then I make money every single month. When I was 27 years old, I realized, “I need to do something.” I told myself, “In ten years, you’re going to quit your job no matter what. You’re going to work your tail off to be able to quit your job. If you don’t have it, you’re still going to quit.” I had that goal in my mind. It took me six years of investing in real estate. I was able to sell a couple of businesses. I was able to move into real estate because that was where I was making my money.
Within six years, I was able to replace the income from my job with the income from my rental properties. It took me about another two and a half years before I actually had the guts to quit. Leaving that W2 job is rather hard to do. As soon as I realized, “I’m just wasting my life here, I’m wasting time, I’m losing money. Even though I was making $75,000, I’m losing money working here when I could be working for myself and make even more money.” Now, that’s what I do. I invest in single-family properties. I love doing that and I love talking about it and hopefully, it comes across. I really enjoy it.
I can definitely hear the passion and your love for the subject, and the fact that you’ve been able to actually achieve that. The reality is that you and I both know that whether you’re rich or poor, the people who become wealthy follow certain principles. A lot of times they stand on the shoulders of giants because that’s how they basically see into the future and realize, “These are the things I need to do in order to become successful.” We tend to model people who are successful. A lot of times the things that we do and we learn from other people can be broken down into principles. That’s what I want to talk about, what you’ve listed out as principles for being rich, wealthy and living the lifestyle that you want.
Pay Yourself First
Clearly, rich people or wealthy people, I’m not talking about necessarily uber wealthy or uber rich people, but the people who are financially set tend to teach these to their kids, these principles. Let’s talk about that maybe not at a thousand-foot level because that gets really granular. Literally, we can take all these principles and make entire episodes out of each and every one. Let’s talk about all these principles that you’ve defined and break it down for our audience so they can digest these concepts and then take it beyond that however they want. I’m going to debate you a little bit on a couple of these, maybe not disagree, but just push back a little bit because maybe I’m not clear on what you’re talking about. I want to make sure that you and I are hammering these things out. Let’s start with the first one. This is something that people hear time and time again. That’s basically paying yourself first. How often have we heard the concept, “Pay yourself first?” Let’s start off by you telling us what does that mean and how do you do that? A lot of people are thinking, “How do I do that?”
The first part for me was learning, number one, I needed to pay myself first. Number two, what it actually meant. I always thought, “I get a paycheck. That paycheck’s mine. I’m paying myself first.” In fact, no. When you get your paycheck, there’s already money going out to your mortgage or your rent or the car payment or your utility bills, your internet, your cell phone. All of that money is already spent. It’s already going somewhere else. You are getting it in and then it’s going out. You’re basically living paycheck to paycheck. When you’re paying yourself first, you’re saying, “I’m going to pay myself.” Here’s my opinion. Work your way up to 10%. Even if it’s 1% of your income, 2%, 5%, work your way up to where you’re making saving 10%. That’s saving, putting it in your pocket or in a savings account where you are saving. It’s something that you’re able to make money, grow that enough so you’re paying yourself first. You have investment money, not just stock away, which is an emergency fund. I absolutely would say to do that. On top of the emergency fund, paying yourself first then you can go out and buy investments.
I have a lot of people ask me, “How do I invest with low and no money down? I don’t have any money.” I tell them it’s really hard work to invest with no money. You have to put your effort in to do that.” This is what I’m teaching my kids. I have four kids. I’m literally teaching them how to save their money. Whenever they make any money or birthday presents or whatever, I have them save 50% into savings, literally half of it goes into savings. Another 20% goes to mommy to pay for because they need to know that we have bills and expenses. That goes to mommy to help them know that there’s responsibility. Then 10% goes to God and then another 20% they get to do whatever they want. I’m teaching them this principle of paying yourself first.
Here’s what’s a huge blessing. My kids all know that I invest in real estate rental properties. My daughter, she’s ten and she’s been saying, “I want to save more money and save more money so eventually, I could buy this, or I could buy that toy.” I say, “Eventually your savings is going to go to buy something big like a car.” It was about a few months ago, my daughter said, “Daddy, I don’t want to buy a car with this money. I want to buy a house and then that house can make me money. I could buy a car with that house money.” I’m like, “That’s my girl. You’re absolutely right on.” Paying yourself first so you have money saved up to then buy investments that then they make you money every single month.
It sounds like you have some really smart kids. How old is your daughter that said that?
Ten.
I was talking to Robert Kiyosaki and I’ve heard him say this multiple times. He likes his fast cars. He’s got Ferraris and other types of fast vehicles. He basically says, “I can afford to buy the car, but I don’t buy the car just because I can afford it or because I like it. If I’m going to buy a car and it’s got a $1,500 monthly payment, I’m going to go out and buy assets that generate passive income and take that passive income to be able to afford that car.” He’s focused not on the vehicle that depreciates, but on the asset that can appreciate and create passive income. Take the passive income and buy the things you want, whether it’s a vacation or a car or whatever it may be. That’s what you reminded me of with your daughter. That’s a brilliant thing is buy the asset first and then have that pay for what he called doodads.
Increase Your Income
I have nothing to add to that because it’s self-explanatory. Your second principle is increasing your income. I’m a big fan of this because a lot of people think that they can become financially set by reducing their expenses, which I know is another principle of yours. I’ve said for a long time that you can’t save yourself to wealth or financial freedom. You can’t cut your expenses enough, I shouldn’t say not to make a difference, you can make a difference. What I’m going to say is you can’t cut your expenses and save yourself to wealth. I believe that it all falls on increasing your income. I’m a big advocate of businesses and creating income from other types of assets. Talk about increasing your income and how you do that and why that’s important?
Along with paying yourself first, it’s all about having money that you can then buy investments not doodads as Robert Kiyosaki says. Instead of using that money to buy a car, use that money to buy a house and that house pays for the car. It’s so much easier to buy a property when you have money saved up. It’s so much easier to buy faster when you are making more money. If you’re thinking about ways to increase your income, there are so many ways. The beauty of technology is getting so much better. I literally will never work a job again. Even if all my properties literally blew up and I had no income coming in, I would not get a job. I would do so many other things like driving for Uber or getting a job at McDonald’s. I would do something that would not get me locked down to a career, but I would just get some money so I can start investing more. Then I would work a couple of extra jobs.
Even driving for Uber is one. If you want to be a freelancer where you’re actually going on like Fiverr.com or Freelancer.com and you’re making money there, you want to be able to increase the amount of money that you can put in your pocket. Then you can invest that money. I have a lot of students who ask me, “How do I get my next property faster?” I said, “You need more money coming in, but you can also use leverage. You can also cut your expenses.” There are many different options. Increasing your income is one of the best ones because the more money you have, the more money you can spend on buying another property or the next property.
It doesn’t need to be a brick and mortar store or anything of that scale where it takes hundreds of thousands of dollars to start a business or even buy a franchise. We’re not in the industrial age anymore. We’re in the information age. It is incredibly easy to start a business now with the internet. There are so many people who have created their own Amazon stores and are doing incredibly well. It’s completely a part-time business. In fact, a lot of times they don’t even have a product. They have the product dropshipped and all they are is just the sales conduit between the product being dropshipped and the sales that they’re generating. It’s almost like you can’t have an excuse nowadays not to have some other business. Even if you are not incredibly successful in generating an income, the fact is you can create some tax benefits for yourself from the write-offs, which can help lower your taxable income and increase the money you have at the end of the day to save, to put towards these investments. I really think everybody should have a business or multiple businesses on the side.
It’s super easy to do. I had a job for my whole life. I’ve always had a job and I also started businesses at the same time. Investing in real estate, you can do that part-time. With Amazon, I have a friend of mine, we were at a mastermind group together and he dropships from Amazon. He basically has it from China. It gets shipped directly to Amazon and then people order to Amazon and they ship it. He doesn’t do anything. He makes sure the inventory’s there and he makes money. The day and age we have right now, there are so many opportunities to literally never have to work a job again. You just have to hustle to try to get that passive income built up. Once it’s running, money keeps coming in.
Control Your Expenses
The third principle, control your expenses. I think a lot of people have the ability to do this. In fact, most people have the ability to do this. Talk about this because a lot of people are afraid to cut their expenses. They don’t want to give up on their cable or some of the frills that they have in their life. There are other ways to go about doing that. Talk about cutting expenses.
There’s a key difference between cutting expenses and controlling. Let’s say somebody loves to get coffee every single morning. They love to go to Starbucks. Cutting that out might not be the number one thing that you need to do. You may need to figure out a way to make more money. I know Robert Kiyosaki says, “Don’t do that thing where you cut out something that you want. Try to make more money so that you can pay for that,” which I completely or wholeheartedly agree with. Here’s the reason I say control your expenses. There are things that you might not even know you’re paying on an expense that comes out.
Think of whatever luxury item you have. I’ll give you an example. I moved from California to Phoenix to be closer to my in-laws. We had a 2,500-square foot house. We have four kids, this beautiful house, it was huge and everything. I had a private rental property in Phoenix and it was right next to my in-laws. I said, “We want to move there. I’m going to go ahead and move into the rental property that I currently already have. It’s 1,200 square feet and we have four kids. We’re scaling down.” We’ve learned to make it work. It’s obviously a little tight, but at the same time, I don’t have a mortgage payment. I have much more money in my pocket so I can then use it to buy more property.
When you’re looking at controlling your expenses, look at the things that you maybe don’t need. If you have cable, cable is really expensive or maybe your cell phone bill. Look at your expenses to lower the amount of money coming out so then you can save more money. For me, for six years, I only had one vacation that I ever took. This is the time when I started buying properties to what I had enough money coming in to replace my income. For six years, I literally sacrificed every bit of everything. My in-laws said, “We’re going to go to Disney. Do you want to come?” I made my wife say no because that’s $2,000 that I could go toward putting another house or buy another house.
For six years, I sacrificed so hard so that now I can literally do whatever we want. In 2018, I went to Europe for six weeks with all my kids and my wife. We went through eleven different countries. I sacrificed and now I can live the life I want. In 2017, I went to Japan for six weeks with my four kids, my wife and my dad. Because I was able to sacrifice to build up that investment money so I can buy more properties, now I can live however I want. It was the means to an end of having more money to buy more properties.
I love that distinction, by the way. Most people don’t talk about that. A lot of people are thinking, “I can’t control or cut enough expenses to make a difference at the end of every month because I don’t have a lot of expenses and/or I don’t make enough to make a difference.” The bottom line is, “I can’t cut enough to make a difference.” I might be saving $200, $300 a month if that. I might be exaggerating here a little bit. It would be nice to be able to cut enough or control enough where you are ahead of $1,000 a month. That’s $12,000 a year. In a year and a half, you have enough of a down payment to purchase $100,000 home or an $80,000 home that will generate $300-plus a month in income. What do you say to those people that feel that they don’t have enough to cut? Is the answer, “Increase your income?” That’s where I always go to. I always go to increasing your income.
I’m right on with you. Increasing your income is absolutely something that everybody must do. Figure out any way to increase your income wholeheartedly. On top of that, what I would also suggest is that investing in real estate, it’s not a sprint. It’s going to take over time. It’s going to take time for you to get your first property. Even if it takes twelve months or eighteen months, however long it’s going to take, it’s going to be that much closer to you buying the first property. When you have that first property, and I suggest with all my students, “Buy a property that you make $250 a month or more in passive income coming in. When you do that, you can cover all the expenses, any surprise things that come up.” Anyways, once you get that first property that’s bringing in $250 a month, then you can save that money on top of what you’re currently saving and then use the next one to buy another one.
It’s like a snowball. You start with $250 a month income coming in from one property. The next property is going to come faster and the next property is going to come faster. I bought one property one year. Next year I bought another property. The year after that, I bought two properties and I bought three and four. It kept being a bigger and bigger snowball. Increasing your income and I understand if you can’t cut, that’s why we have eight principles that we’re going to go through as opposed to just one, controlling your expenses.
Buy The Home You Live In
Your fourth principle, buy the home you live in. The national average is somewhere around 36%-ish, depending on what figures you look at of people that actually rent versus buy. Not everybody owns their home or has a mortgage. They’re renting. Your principle is to buy the home you live in, don’t rent because you say you’re essentially throwing money out the window. Explain this to us, please.
We know that when you’re renting something or like leasing a car, you literally don’t own the car. You’ve got to give the car back. It’s the same thing when you’re renting a house; you don’t own the house, you’ve got to give it back. If you own it and live in it, it’s not making money. Robert Kiyosaki would not call it an asset, which I agree it’s not an asset, but it can be an asset. This is a big reason why I would say own your home. You’re currently owning the home, paying down the mortgage, obviously paying interest, but you’re paying down your mortgage. Let’s say you buy a $200,000 house to live in, you pay down the principal and then eventually the market’s going to go up. Your value’s going to go up.
Then you can use the equity in your home to buy more properties, which I’ve done many times. I bought many properties with the equity in the homes that I lived in because as I paid it down, there was more equity. As the market went up, I had more equity and so I used that money to buy properties on. That’s all on top of if you’re renting, then you’re literally giving the money away and somebody else is making money in your pocket. My opinion is there are so many different avenues from a home equity line of credit, cash out refinance. There are so many different things that you can do. When you have your own home, it’s allowing in the future to be able to utilize everything to the best of your ability.
What would you say to someone who lives in an expensive market like some of the coastal markets in the US, where housing is $700,000, $800,000, $1 million, $2 million?
I moved from California because California is horrible. It’s so expensive there. It’s taxed so much. It’s horrible. I moved to Phoenix and I have so much more money. Not saying that everyone’s going to be able to do that. I made my mind that I wanted to do that. That’s something I had to do. It’s like I had a 20% increase in income, not for my properties from moving from California to Arizona. I know places in the Midwest are even expensive. I’m not saying everybody can do that. That’s an option but for somebody like that, these are principles that if you can get there then it’s better to own your home, if it’s cheaper to rent and I completely understand.
If somebody said, “I’m going to pay $3,000 for a mortgage or I’m going to pay $2,000 for rent.” I’m going to say rent. I tell this to students rent because those extra thousand dollars put that in your pocket to buy more properties. Buy more properties not in your area. I lived in California and I invested in Ohio, one of my very first property. I didn’t know what I was doing but I bought a property in Ohio and started buying there and I had money coming in. There are different options but yes, if you’ll be able to save money by renting, that’s a really good option.
We might be on the same page with that because someone living in Southern California, New York or wherever if it’s more expensive to own than it is to rent, I would advise that they rent. Take that difference that they would be paying with the mortgage, owning a home and put that towards real estate investment. Build your portfolio. At the end of the day, all else being equal I would agree to buy instead of rent because you have the benefits of the mortgage depreciation. You have the benefits of the depreciation and equity growth over time that you could ultimately strip and put towards more investments. It does make more sense to own than it does to rent but that’s not always the best thing to do.
Ensure A Future Income
The other thing I would say to those people is if you’ve got $100,000 to put towards a down payment, instead of putting a down payment and owning, where it may not make financial sense, take that $100,000 and get yourself a small portfolio of four or five, maybe six homes rental properties that are generating $200, $300 a month each maybe more. You have some passive income in the range of a $1,000 to $1,500 a month. That’s a great start and keep adding to it. Maybe we’re talking about the same thing here because it depends on where you live and what the cost of living is of where you live. Principle five, ensure a future income, what do you mean by that?
A future income would be something if you’d stop working. If you literally said, “I don’t want to work anymore, I want to go fishing, I want to play video games or whatever I want to do.” You can still make money. When I went to six weeks in Japan, six weeks in Europe, I want to go to Alaska for fishing or whenever I do anything, my business runs itself and I still make money. I’m ensuring the ability to make money. What I always try to tell everybody is, if you don’t work then you don’t make money. You want to make sure that you ensure the ability to have that. What I’m saying with my business like with every business and also with your own home, you want to have actual insurance.
This is another way to insure all of the properties that you have. Number one, get insurance on those, landlord insurance not just homeowner’s insurance on those properties. Number two, get umbrella insurance on top of that over everything. You’re covering everything. It’s so many more things to talk about there. What I’m saying is you want to make sure that you have future income. When you’re incapacitated, if God forbid something happens like that but when you need money and you can’t work, you need to have money coming in. With rental properties, it’s a beautiful thing you always have money coming in.
You’re talking about putting insurance in place at all levels, at the property level, your personal insurance, maybe health insurance, your umbrella policy to backstop everything. You’re saying ensure any area of your life that’s a potential liability or potential cause of issue where you may have a financial loss.
I would definitely be saying that.
I almost want to say that’s common sense but it needs to be stated.
Not just getting insurance when you’re paying another company but it’s getting the passive income because you want to get out of having a job. When you have a job it’s practical getting actual insurance but also philosophical in a different way of making money. With a job, you earn money. You work for an hour and you earn dollars. With passive income business, it’s a philosophical change to where you’re making passive income. You’re actually making money as opposed to earning money. It’s both, it’s practical and philosophical in a way. When I first I read Rich Dad Poor Dad, I was like, “Passive income, I’ve got to figure out how to get this.” That’s how I dove into it. It’s both practical as well as still philosophical.
Make Your Money Work For You
The sixth principle is to make your money work for you. This is intuitive with the whole idea of creating passive income because you’re investing in assets that generate income, whether it’d be passive or portfolio. Explain this principle.
As we said before, when you work an hour you get paid a dollar. When you don’t work, you don’t get paid. You want to have your money work for you. I’ll obviously go off of what Robert Kiyosaki says, “The home that you live in is not an asset where the bank tells you it’s asset, you put an asset column but it’s not, it’s not making you money. An asset puts money in your pocket as opposed to a liability that takes money out of your pocket.” The home that I live in is not making me money. It’s taking money out of my pockets. You want to make sure that you have a property or properties, you want to have your money working for you. I think of every single dollar that I put into a property, it’s like a little employee working for me. I put that money to work and there are so many great things about investing. I’m sure you go through all this with all your audience but when I have that money working for me every single minute of every single day, even when I’m sleeping, I’m still making money. I want my money to work as opposed to me working for money.
Guard Yourself Against Losing Money
I can’t really add anything to that. That’s the whole reason why we’re investing. Robert Kiyosaki’s very first concept or principle that he talks about in Rich Dad Poor Dad is the rich don’t work for money. That’s flat out what he says. The whole idea is you take that earned income and you convert that into passive income. That’s the secret to wealth, it’s that one sentence right there. Your seventh principle is to guard yourself against losing money. On the surface, this almost sounds like insuring but it’s not.
Insurance is definitely guarding yourself against having an asset being taken from you but guard yourself against losing money. There are plenty of ways, you mentioned that there are bad investors not necessarily bad investments like a property. It might be a great property for one person but horrible for another, as long as you know how to actually apply it. When you’re looking at the thought of guarding yourself against losing money, I’ve had some people buy a rental property and think, “As long as I make $50 a month on that property, I’m going to be fine.” It’s $50 in my pocket every single month. Everything’s fantastic and you never have any evictions, vacancies, the roof needs repair or anything like that.
It’s always possible to lose money but you’re doing your best to mitigate the chances of having that happen. What I say is number one, as strictly speaking of rental properties I always tell everybody and I follow this, where at minimum is $250 coming in my pocket every single month. I have properties in Ohio and I had two furnaces go out at the same time. That’s a lot of money but praise the Lord I have so many properties that the expenses are fine. Even with a furnace going out, I make enough money every single year from the $250 or more in that property that with that furnace going out, I still am making $1,500 on both of those properties after the expenses of the furnaces being fixed.
What you want to do is when you’re starting your business, you have real estate or another business could be another way to making sure that you guard yourself against losing money. You want to do the business right. When I first bought my first property, I did it wrong. I did not run it like a business. I did not make sure that I evicted people when I needed to or collect rent on time and letting people slide. I wasn’t doing the right things to run it like a business. If you sum it up to anything in this one line, it would be run your business like a business. Make sure it’s running well, that’s what it comes down to. You’re guarding yourself from losing money.
This is more of a process of maintaining control and operating things as if they were a business. That’s essentially how you’re defining the guarding of yourself from losing money.
The easiest thing is to buy a rental property and that’s the easiest thing to do. If you have enough money and you go and buy a property, you can absolutely do that but if you buy it too high or it’s too much money, you’re not getting enough rents out of it, if you pay too much for it, there are so many different ways. If you don’t have property managers, if you don’t know how to manage it right, if you don’t know how to get tenants and there are so many different things that you could do wrong. If you don’t do it right, you’re going to be losing money. You need to know how to do it right as opposed to, “Let me go buy a property and throw a person in it as best I can,” you’re not going to do it right. Run the business well.
Be Better At Giving Than Receiving
Part of that is having the right systems in place. Having a system or copying other people’s success through the systems that they use. Second, tied in with that is having the right team around you, the right people to work with, agents, brokers, property managers, inspectors, title companies, real estate agents, turnkey providers, whoever it may be. Having the right people around you ideally that are smarter than you because you’re going to learn from them and avoid making mistakes that other people made in the past. The last principle, this is the last of the eight but not the last of all the principles that we could possibly come up with. It’s better at giving than receiving. I don’t know how you define this and maybe this is a little philosophical, maybe there’s some religious bent to this. People are going to have different opinions about that but it’s the whole concept of giving and then receiving. Not for the sake of receiving but being able to give, let me have you explain it.
The principle would be it’s better to give than receive. In my opinion, the more that I get from my experience, the more that I give and the more I help other people. Not literally giving money, that’s a part of the principle but it’s also giving your time, giving your experience, giving your knowledge or even helping other people out. It’s better to give that out. The more I give, the more I help other people, the more blessed or more benefited I am. I give my time away to people, I serve the poor, I serve at my church or I literally give money. I found that the more I give of myself, money, time, all that sort of stuff, the more I am able. I feel like I’ve received more in myself as opposed to the person that’s receiving it. I feel better because I’m helping humanity or people in general but I’m also serving my God. I’m also trying to do my best to make everybody’s lives better. I found in doing that, people look at me and say, “You care.” They gravitate towards me helping and caring. It’s better to give everything than to receive.
It doesn’t have to be financial either. Some people are not in a position where they can give financially but they can give off their time. They can give off their own creation and whatever else. My wife and I actually feel good always giving gifts to people. We enjoy seeing them open a gift and the appreciation, we feel the appreciation. Even at Christmas time, we get gifts and we give gifts but we always like to see other people’s reactions when they get a gift, they open it, they appreciate it, they enjoy it, they use it and all that kind of stuff. You made a comment in one of your articles that money belongs to God. God can be anything to anybody whatever your religion is. We just refer to the higher power as God. Can you talk about that? The concept of all money belongs to God and we’re stewards of that.
I love reading the Bible. As I read the Bible, I see that everything is created by God. Other people might have different opinions about God. What I see is literally everything is created and not just created but sustained by God. My life is literally sustained by God. It could be taken away. It’s a proven fact. 100% of people die. At any given time I could die, which God forbid if that did happen. My belief is that it’s all created and sustained by God. In that sustaining, I am blessed by God to have the things that I have. Because I have these things, I realized that they’re not mine. All the things that I have, everything from my car to the money, to the properties. If I have that perspective that it’s not mine, then I don’t have a tight hold on it, “You can’t take it from me.” I’m like, “It’s not mine anyway.” I need to be a steward of it. It’s a great word that you used was being a steward, is somebody that manages well somebody else’s things. If I hold loosely or put it on the palm of my hand and that gets taken away, I don’t get affected that much. A property burned down, one of them had a fire in it. It’s a bummer but at the same time, I’m holding it loosely. Even if everything was absolutely taken away, it’s not affecting me as a person, I could still bless, benefit, help and serve other people.
I also like to think of you and I being stewards of knowledge and information. We consume a lot of that information, that content but we also like to share it and provide it through articles, podcasts, books and guides whatever it may be. You pass it along to help educate other people on what we’re learning, what we’re doing, what we’re putting into practice. It doesn’t have to necessarily be monetary. It could be useful information, help other people, educate them and teach them financial education. It’s a broader topic but it’s a great one. Anything else you want to add or share with our audience?
These are principles that I follow. I didn’t put them on there to have but I literally follow these. l have my 2007 Honda Odyssey. I have plenty of money to go buy a brand-new car but I still have that car because it gets me from point A to point B and it runs fine. I love traveling. That’s why we spend a lot of our time traveling but these are principles. I found as I’ve applied these principles to my life, my life has gotten better. I’ve been able to focus more and everything about these principles helped me. They’re principles; they’re not hard steadfast rules. If one is hard for you to move past or look at differently, totally fine. These are principles that I found and as I help other people, they help everybody else that I talked to as well.
Thank you. Tell our audience how they can find you, learn a little bit more about you or get more information about what you work on and what you share.
My website is MasterPassiveIncome.com and I also have a podcast, Master Passive Income Podcast, where I talk all about rental properties. I’m not a flipper, that’s a lot of work. I don’t do that. I’ll do wholesaling, I don’t do any of that stuff. I love rental properties. I buy one property and it does it for me over and over again. If you want to find anything more about me, MasterPassiveIncome.com or my Master Passive Income Podcast as well.
Thank you for your time, Dustin. It’s been great.
Thank you for having me.
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I hope this episode was helpful to you. These principles don’t change. They’ve been around for a long time and it’s just a matter of implementing them. Stop and ask yourself how much you know from reading, from listening to audiobooks and listening to podcasts, and how much of that knowledge do you put into practice? Do you actually pull the trigger on and make a reality, turn it into something tangible and material? I would venture to say that most of us don’t put a lot of the great knowledge that we have and have accumulated into action. It’s really that simple. Take that knowledge and put it into action and don’t let fear or uncertainty hold you back. Have some courage, build that courage and momentum and move forward. Babies fall when they’re learning to walk, but they don’t stay on the ground. We help them up and they try again. They keep doing that until ultimately they start walking. We need to do the same thing. Keep working at it and you keep trying until you get there.
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