Chapter IV: "Finding the Silver Lining in Loss" with Chris Larsen

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On this episode of the from Adversity to From Adversity to Abundance Podcast podcast, I interviewed Chris Larsen of next level Income. Chris is friend of a friend kind of thing. I've become friends with Matt four, who was on episode four, and Matt is pretty close with Chris Larsen. And so that's how we got connected. But Chris has.

00:00:27
He really gets vulnerable, and I really appreciate that. On this episode, we talk about the death of his father, the death of his mother, and the death of his best friend. And when I say best friend, it sounds like they were extremely close. The kind of friendship almost like just brothers, where you just can't even replicate that with someone else. And so we spend a good bit of time focusing on that adversity, and then we kind of pivot to how he got to where he is today, which is he's a real estate investor, he's an educator.

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He runs with business partners. He runs multiple funds. They focus on multifamily, I believe it's multiple different funds, but they purchase multifamily assets, self storage, car washes, and they operate at a very high level, no pun intended, with the next level income. He also does use a version of infinite banking. We didn't talk too much about that, but he's a very successful guy financially, and we get to his why for that ton of really inspirational material is touched on here, and we cover a lot of ground.

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The human element is front and center with this one.

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And again, it really boils down to he just appreciates the value of time and the limited amount of time that we have on this earth. And the more resources that one can have access to, the greater the impact that person can have. And so, just very know. Chris didn't come from a ton of money, and he's just been a hustler his whole life. You can tell.

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And was in the medical field before, and now has been in real estate, I think, for the last 15 years, something like that. So I really enjoyed this episode. And again, Chris, he's got his own podcast. He's got a big following. So I do appreciate him taking the time out to chat with us, especially since we're just getting this thing launched.

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But he's the ideal guest. Went through a ton of adversity, used that adversity to get to a point of an From Adversity to Abundance Podcast mentality, and he's definitely living an abundant life now. So I know you're going to like this one.

00:03:13
Inspiring stories of real people overcoming incredible odds to live life to the fullest. We are all guaranteed to face hardships. How will we handle the adversity. Join us to be moved by everyday people who have turned poverty into prosperity and weakness into wealth. Be inspired as these relatable heroes get vulnerable.

00:03:34
And former counterintelligence investigator Jamie Bateman puts his interviewing skills to the test. Restore your faith in humanity as you experience true Cinderella stories of average people turning surreal struggle and deep despair into booming businesses and financial fortunes. Take ownership of the life you are destined to live and turn your adversity into From Adversity to Abundance Podcast.

00:04:02
Welcome, everybody, to another episode of from adversity to From Adversity to Abundance Podcast podcast. I am your host, Jamie Bateman, and I'm super excited today as I'm joined by Chris Larsen of next level income. Chris, how are you doing today? Jamie I'm doing great. Awesome.

00:04:18
So I know we're somewhat familiar with each other. I know you have your own podcast and you have a bunch know investments. You have several funds I think that you run and you have a lot going on. I know you're a busy guy. So again, I really do appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule to chat with us.

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For those listeners who are not familiar with you, why don't you give us kind of a high level overview of who you are today and what you have going on? Yeah, thank you for that. Look, I love this podcast because one of the big things that I talk about is the From Adversity to Abundance Podcast mindset, and it's so important. It's the number one thing I tell people that they can do is surround themselves with people with the From Adversity to Abundance Podcast mindset versus scarcity. You have to eliminate those people from your life, and you really have to be ruthless, unfortunately, when it comes to that of spending time around the right people.

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And also, if you're listening today, you can grab a copy of my book. I'll send you a free copy nextlevelincome.com. Just click on the book link and it talks a lot about the things that we're going to talk about today. Jamie. But yeah, today we have next level income.

00:05:19
We focus on two things. Number one is education, helping people become financially independent and giving them the resources to do it. And then, yeah, we also have investment opportunities for investors, and we work mostly with accredited investors. And what we do is we search for institutional quality assets. We're looking for actually more like two to 300 unit apartment complexes at this point, hotels, self storage units, mobile home parks.

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We started buying car washes this year after building out a team for car washes, actually just in Nashville, right around the corner from our friend Matt, who I believe is on episode four. Matt four. Yeah, Matt four, episode four. Can't have a little shout out to you there, budy, and fascinating industry that's very straightforward, but really has a lot of opportunities going forward. So, yeah, we got a lot of different things that we've done and we're doing today, and I'm excited to talk about all that as well as kind of what brought me here.

00:06:18
Yeah, that's awesome. I saw a couple of things in the headlines today as far as the stock market, I don't know. I'm not happy about it. But I'm in real estate and notes, mortgage notes, and I think if nothing else, people are going to be looking for something else that may be a little more stable and recession resistant. So I would guess that you're in some pretty good asset classes there and looking pretty good going forward.

00:06:50
As far as your backstory. Let's get into that a little bit. I've heard you on a couple of other podcasts, and again, I know you have a good following with your own show as well, but refresh my memory, and for the listeners unfamiliar with you, if you don't mind, dive into some of the adversity you've been through. And again, for the listeners out there, we're not trying to pry or get into topics that the guest is uncomfortable with. I'm not a therapist, but the reality.

00:07:23
I thought that's what we were doing today. That's after this, I'll just take some training online real fast and send you a bill. But no. Yeah. The fact is we all have adversity.

00:07:37
We go through it just takes on different forms. And we talked a little bit about this last week. I think it was, and everybody's story is different. Everyone's born into a different situation, different circumstances. So why don't you tell the listeners kind of some of the hardships that you've faced in your life?

00:07:58
Yeah, look, I just finished up lunch with a friend, investor, and they were looking at my book and they said, man, I'm sorry you lost both your parents. And I said, we all have challenges that we've been through in our own lives and it's different for all of us. But I have kind of a different take on this, Jamie. And I think, look, if you're listening to a show like this, maybe you already know it yourself, but I think the earlier in life that you face a challenge, the stronger you are in the latter part of your life. I think that's true.

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And there's actually some research out there that shows children that have lost parents end up being more successful later on in life, and it's an uncomfortable reality. It's not one you would, but I lost my father when I was five years old. He was only 41. I'm not too far from that. Past that just here a couple of years ago.

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My mother passed away ten years ago. But the biggest impact in between those two is my best friend died when we were in college, and he was like a brother to me. He was my training partner. He was my roommate. He's the kind of person that you just look at and you know what they're thinking and you laugh at the same things, but you're the only two people in the room laughing because nothing's been said, but you just know.

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Yeah. And, I mean, we spent a lot of time together on the bike, training, traveling to races. Yeah. It was very impactful. And I put my head down, and my therapy at that time was racing my bike.

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I raced bicycles. I did that for about 20 years, and I raced for another year, and I came out the other side and I just thought, what am I doing? I'm meant for more than this. And that's really the start of my journey into the financial space because I said, well, I need to live life to the fullest, and I need to honor the life that my friend Chris, his name was Chris as well, didn't have the chance to live. And to do that, Jamie, you need financial resources in this.

00:10:02
Not, I'm open. Like I said, I'm an open book here. I've been to therapy. I've explored these issues, how it affects my current relationships, and I think one thing that's interesting, and this might not be what we're talking about here today, but look, we hire coaches like we hire real estate coaches. We have trainers.

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Know Michael Jordan had a trainer in addition to his coaches. We do this in every area of our life. Yet when it comes to things like relationships, so many people shy away from it. Yeah, no, and the reason I'm chuckling is my wife and I were literally talking about this last night, this exact topic, and I do want to get back to that. And again, not trying to drill down too far into painful topics, but bring it on either with your parents or with your best friend Chris.

00:10:54
Speak a little more about that as far as just kind of what were the causes of death or what was kind of the surrounding situation at the time and your mindset at the. So, my father was a pilot. He actually died in a plane crash. He had a single engine plane, and he was from Wisconsin. And I was actually supposed to be with him on that plane, and he was flying up to Wisconsin to meet my mother, my sister, and myself in Green Bay, which is where the airport is there.

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And he was coming in around dusk, and his engine failed about 10 miles out from shore. And if anybody's been to Michigan or flown over it, you know, it's like the mean, it's miles know, super deep, hundreds of feet deep. And, yeah, they weren't able to find him, not in a reasonable amount of time. So that was really tough on my mom. My mom, she passed away from cancer, fallopian tube cancer, which is very insidious because most times it's not found until it's stage four, which is when they found it with her.

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So we were fortunate we had some time to spend with her. And she got to meet my oldest son, who's now twelve. But my friend Chris died very abruptly. He had a brain hemorrhage, basically aneurysm in the back of his brain. And I was there.

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I was there that day. I went to the hospital. I was the one that identified him in the hospital. And it's really hard when somebody's ripped from you like that, and it's painful to watch their family go through it and do that. So what were your thoughts at the time?

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What was going. I mean, I know you've had time to reflect, obviously, now, so you may look at it a little bit differently now than you did at the time. What was it like at the time? Yeah, I'm going to kind of go in reverse order here of kind of the levels of pain that I experienced with each one. And my father, I was too young to really understand.

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My great aunt would tell me, she's like, oh, yeah. When I see my dad again, and I was raised going to church, we go to church three times a week for choir and youth service. And I talked about my father being with Jesus, and that was very comforting for me. My mother, we had some unresolved issues when she passed away, but having a couple of years to spend with her and have some conversations with her, it's a lot different when you have that kind of a knowledge that someone might not be with you. Sure, you have a warning or some time to prepare, I guess.

00:13:31
Yeah. But it's hard when somebody like that, that you have a family relationship with a very strong emotional relationship with the things that weren't resolved, weren't resolved, not by my choice, they were, because she wasn't able to deal with those in her situation. And that's unfortunate to have somebody that goes through that. But for me, having your friend, I don't think I'll ever fully recover from that. I think it definitely inexorably changed me because you never want to feel that pain again when somebody's pulled away from you.

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So it's hard to really develop deep relationships after you've been hurt so deeply. And, look, if you're listening people, whether you're in a relationship where you break up with somebody or you're divorced or somebody dies, we want to protect ourselves. Right.

00:14:29
I think I'm pretty good at having relationships and doing that, but at the same time, it's painful. And it's also hard when you experience that depth of a relationship with somebody, and it's really not possible to experience that again. What I mean is, we were friends through high school and during very formative parts of our lives, and I won't ever be able to have that bond with somebody again. But the flip side is, I'm very grateful for the time I got to spend with all those people in my life. Now, I appreciate you getting vulnerable there.

00:15:04
I mean, it's not easy to talk about and relive with your friend Chris. It's like, not only did he pass, but like you said, you're not going to be able to replicate or duplicate that. And so there's almost like. AII don't know, it's a double hardship there. So that's really tough.

00:15:29
And again, we're glossing over this like it's no big deal, but I appreciate that. So then you started to get into it a little bit. How did you change your mindset, or how did you approach kind of your future from there? Yeah. So this is where you look at kind of the, there's two way, and I'm going to say the first way I'm going to say it.

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It might sound callous, but then I'll explain. So this is where the silver lining comes in. And what I mean is, if you ever lost somebody, I'm sure the last thing that person wants is for you to go through the rest of your life and really put the brakes on anything or live less of a life because you're burdened by that, or not having that person in your life, anybody that loves you, wants you to go and experience life to the fullest. And a lot of my friends say I'm lucky, and I don't have to go into details, but I've had some good fortune in my life. Just things that have happened, things that are kind of unusual.

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And I say that's because I have a lot of people watching out for me because they're looking down. They want me to be successful. And I believe that. I feel like I have a positive energy, but at the same time, I feel like it's my duty to do all these things. It's my duty to live like this.

00:16:45
I said, silver lining. But when you lose somebody and you realize that life is finite, especially as a young person. So, Jamie, I crossed 41 years old, and I achieved all these things in my life. And I realized my father was 41 when he died. And I know that in the back of my head, I had this feeling of fatality, that there was things I had to get done.

00:17:13
So when you know that the time value of money has. I'm sorry, the value of time has time on the bottom of the equation. So I'm an engineer by training. Think of it that way. When you're young, you think you're going to live forever.

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You're going to live forever. And that number on the bottom is infinity. The value is zero. Right? Right.

00:17:37
As soon as you put a value, or. Yes, as soon as you put an actual value on that time, whether you're going to live ten days or 10,000 days or 50,000 days, whatever that number is, the value of your time goes up exponentially. Sure. And that's what I think happens subconsciously in my mind. And as soon as really when I was an adult and Chris passed away, I thought, hang on a second.

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I got stuff to do. I got stuff to do. I'm a serious person. I'm going to get things done. And some people are like, why do you work so hard?

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My neighbor was like, if you don't have to work anymore, why do you still work? One, I enjoy it and it energizes me. And two, it's my duty. I have an impact that I'm here to make on this planet. Right.

00:18:27
It's not all about you to collect as many cool toys as you can or whatever, and nothing wrong with cool toys. I'm not saying that. But it's bigger than yourself, is what it sounds. Absolutely. And look, also, again, being on earth and being successful and having that From Adversity to Abundance Podcast mindset means you get to enjoy the things that you experience.

00:18:51
So I flew to Mexico for a meeting. I bought a first class ticket. I really enjoyed it. And you know what? I really enjoyed the conversation with the gentleman that I sat next to on the plane.

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And it's fun to do things like that. Or people buy nice cars, whatever you're into. But it's about the experiences and enjoying that. Not feeling guilty because of your success, necessarily. Yeah.

00:19:15
So then talk about kind of your business a little bit. Do you come from money, or how has your financial picture changed over the years? Yeah. So it's funny, I was in college, and I was dating this girl, and I had a used car. It was a Honda Accord.

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It was nice, but it wasn't like anything amazing. It was a stick shift. It had, like, I think, 40,000 miles on it when I bought it. Again, it's a nice car, but it wasn't super expensive or anything. And I paid for it with my own money.

00:19:42
I actually took a loan out from my grandfather, and I paid him back monthly. So it was a car loan, just happened to be from my grandfather because I didn't have credit at the time. So this girl sits in my car, and she's like, oh, it must be nice to have parents that buy you such a nice car. And I didn't kick her out of the car, but that was the last time we went on a date, because having somebody make that assumption. I had a loft business.

00:20:09
I bought loft beds.

00:20:13
I sold herbalife. I raced my bike, and made money. When I raced my bike, I had all these things I opened at a gym. So I'd opened the gym at 445 in the morning. So it's like, okay, I don't need you to make this assumption about me.

00:20:25
And look, I was raised very middle class. After my father passed away, my grandmother made my clothes. We ate vegetables out of cans. We hardly ever went on vacation. I never left the country until I met my wife, who's from Canada.

00:20:45
I had a very comfortable, yet very modest upbringing. So just to kind of translate that into where we are today, I bought my first property in Blacksburg, Virginia, where I went to college with $3,000. And my mother did co sign on the loan for me. So, not that my parents never gave me anything or didn't help me on the journey, but a $90,000 townhouse and having your mom co sign on the loan, that was a nice kickstart. Now, the flip side is, I had to hitchhike.

00:21:19
Basically have the hitch rides from my friends when I was racing my bicycle. Because my parents didn't really support me. I bought my first bike with my own money from my paper route that I had. They would help me if I requested it, but they wouldn't give it. I flew to the national championships.

00:21:36
They didn't come with me. And I slept on the floor of a friend's hotel room, and I got them to drive me to the race. So the flip side of all that, which, that's light adversity, like in the stuff that we've been talking about. But what it taught me was, you've got to go out, Chris, and make your own luck. You've got to decide what you want in your life for yourself, figure out how to get it.

00:22:00
I was out getting sponsors for our cycling team to pay for our clothing and our races and all these things at 15 years old. So you think that experience of talking to people to, quote, unquote, invest in our cycling team didn't help me. Today, when I talk to investors about investing in our deals, that was amazing. But at the time, I sure was jealous of those kids that were showing up in their brand new Volkswagens with their $5,000 bikes on the car, sometimes two or three bikes with carbon wheels. And it took me three years to buy that stuff from saving up money and shoveling driveways and snow and all that.

00:22:37
Could you have grown up in more poverty than you did? Yes. It sounds like you had a relatively comfortable life, like you said. But did you learn and appreciate the value of a dollar? Absolutely.

00:22:52
And it sounds like you've been kind of a hustler for quite some. Yeah, that's. That's really. It was for me, it was kind of a sweet spot, Jamie, because I had enough so that I had the ability to have. The opportunities were there.

00:23:10
I wasn't prevented from opportunities. Right. But I also wasn't given a lot. That makes sense. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.

00:23:17
I don't know if I believe that anyone is truly self made. Sure, you can argue that all day long. So, did you have certain advantages? Of course. We all do.

00:23:35
And that's where, if I may, I think this probably is the most important point I'd like to make today. Okay. So a lot of people like that girl I dated in college, right. You look at somebody and you make an assumption about somebody, you don't know what brought them to that place. If you knew that losing a parent increased your chances of success in your life, would you wish that on somebody?

00:24:03
So whenever you look at somebody, if they're successful, if you're out there, and the politicians, unfortunately, play this game where they say, oh, you don't have the same advantages as this person, or, we need to help these people out, you have to be very careful. You have to be very careful because it's like the wild animal that you find and you say, well, I'm going to help this wild animal and you help it out. And sometimes that animal won't ever be accepted in its native environment anymore. Yeah. So we have to be careful with the assumptions we make.

00:24:40
We have to always question the assumptions and we have to make sure, in my opinion, that we provide as many opportunities as possible, but be careful not to blunt the motivation and the full potential of individuals by doing something or taking something from one group or giving it to another group. We got to be very careful about these things. Yeah. And I think it's also just a good reminder, like you said, that you don't want to make assumptions about people's lives. Like my wife, they grew up with some money and she won't want me to go into too much detail.

00:25:17
So there were people kind of like back in school and things that would make assumptions. Oh, must be nice. Must be nice to have all this money. Well, and this is where I'm not going to go into detail, but they had a lot of adversity growing up as well, from a family perspective. And so would she have traded the money that they had growing up for not having to experience what she had to?

00:25:43
Absolutely, in a heartbeat. But from the outside. Oh, must be nice. I just think that's where it gets to look. I can't control how you were born or what your circumstances.

00:25:57
We all just have to do the best we can with what we were given. Absolutely. Look, I was blessed with a lot of talent in different areas. I was not blessed in other areas. But we all have an opportunity, and I think I've said it earlier, but it is my duty in my mind to get the most out of the life that I've been given.

00:26:21
You said impact, too. So let's be honest. The more money you can make, the more resources you have at your fingertips, the more of a positive impact you can make in the world. So I think that's important as well. Before we get into some kind of rapid fire questions.

00:26:39
How did you get into real estate and self storage and car washes? You talked a little bit about it, but how did you make that transition into where you are today? Yeah, so I talk in my book a lot about why and how I went from just buying single family rentals and doing those starting at 21 to in my thirty s. And I say, hey, read my book. Go to our website.

00:27:03
Don't spend 15 years like I did making mistakes. Like take the shortcut right. You can learn in 15 minutes or maybe in 15 months. What it took me 15 years to do, but we transitioned to commercial real estate. Jamie, because it's scalable, the returns were better, and it's a lot less hassle.

00:27:21
Multifamily, I call it the holy Grail in my book. Now, multifamily had the best year ever in history last year, in 2021. Amazing year. There's a lot of other great areas in commercial real estate out there. We've moved from older seventy s and eighty s, built value add properties to newer class B plus and a value add properties.

00:27:45
Like, we're buying a deal right now in Savannah, Georgia, which was built in 2016. We're putting about $12,000 a door into that property. It's a value add property, but it's a very nice value add property. Self storage has always been on my radar. We actually looked at some self storage and mobile homes before we bought our first multifamily deal.

00:28:01
So it's always been in my mind to add those back into the portfolio, which we've done. They're complementary, they're different. There's some similarities. But really, my whole strategy and our group strategy is around the value add model, which I call the Warren Buffett strategy. So we're looking for businesses or real estate that has the opportunity to improve the value, improve the net operating income in a controllable fashion, so we can increase the value of that property.

00:28:26
But I also like cash flow properties. So you take cash flow plus value add plus some of our other rules, like low loan to value, you add all those together, and all of these areas make good sense because cap rates and what's happened, we've expanded our net a little bit and considered other things that are a little bit more work, like car washes. We had to build out a team to buy those, but there's more opportunity because there's a lot more inefficiencies out there. That makes sense. Yeah.

00:28:57
We've expanded our buy box, if you will, in the last few years ourselves, just because deals are harder to find. And there's a lot of money out there chasing yield and chasing returns. That's right. Makes a lot of sense. And you have, what, a couple of other partners you work with?

00:29:15
Is that right? Yeah, I have three main partners that I work with. Okay. Gotcha. In most of those spaces.

00:29:19
Yeah. And look, I do some smaller projects. I got a development I'm doing here just outside of Asheville. Yeah, my wife's an architect. We're working together on that.

00:29:28
So there's some other little things I do to scratch my creative itch, if you will, in the real estate space. Cool. All right, well, I'm going to fire off some questions and we'll see where it goes. Bring it on. What do people misunderstand about you?

00:29:43
Well, I already told the story about the car and being given.

00:29:51
Aside from that, I think this isn't as deep as some of the conversations we've had, but a lot of people say to me, hey, Chris, when did you start investing in real estate? This is people that know me in the medical device space. And what I tell them is, I've actually always been an investor. When I bought my property at 21, I wanted to be an investor. I ran out of money though, Jamie, because like I said, I didn't have a bunch of family money, so I had to go make money in the space.

00:30:16
So a lot of people assume that I became a real estate investor after I was a professional, after I was a sales professional. The truth is, I did that out of necessity to be an investor. Interesting. That's a good one. So you weren't an overnight success?

00:30:32
I say real estate is get rich slow. Absolutely. Overnight success. Built 116 day at a time and one on call night in the hospital at a time. So let's see, what was one of your biggest failures or however you want to frame that.

00:30:47
Something that you wish you could go back and change. A decision you made or an action you took or something that maybe you wish you could redo. Yeah, I mean, it's easy to say, hey, everything's worked out great, here's the plan. But the fact of the matter is, it took me way too long. If I knew what I knew today, it wouldn't have taken me 15 years.

00:31:09
It would have taken me maybe five years to get where I was. So I made a lot of mistakes. I didn't sell properties as fast as I would have. Leading up to 2008, I actually started to list properties for sale, but I didn't quite time the market just right. So I think we're getting to a similar point in the market cycle where we have to be careful.

00:31:29
And I think that what I would do going forward, or what I am doing going forward, is lock profits in. Stay conservative. If you can make money every day and you can get a little richer every day and don't take steps back, that's what the ultra rich do. That's what family offices do. Avoid those setbacks.

00:31:50
Sure. Yeah. I read most of your book. I think it's really good. I got to finish it up, but I think you talk about infinite banking.

00:32:00
And I do some of that as well. Absolutely. Yeah. I would have started doing that in a much bigger way. It took me years.

00:32:07
I was actually very upset with my agent when I found out that he knew what I was doing and didn't advise me on it. So that's why we put together our educational materials, and that's on our banking link on our website that people can check out. Yeah, that's one thing I would definitely do myself. Start our policies a lot earlier. Amen.

00:32:26
Amen to that. Let's see, if you could have coffee with any historical figure, who would it be and why? If you drink coffee. I do drink coffee. Let's see, historical figure.

00:32:42
I would pick one of the founding fathers, and I won't limit it, but I would pick one of the founding fathers. And the reason is there's a lot of debate. You know, we're, there's some supreme court stuff, and it doesn't really matter which side you fall on, but I would be very curious to see what their perspective was on the future, because you have a lot of people that are like, oh, the constitution needs to be changed. These old guys had figured this out 300 years ago. Didn't really.

00:33:10
Are they still relevant? Right? Is it still relevant? I think it'd be really interesting to get the perspective where they were at that time because I believe that America is the greatest country on the planet, and we're just very fortunate to be where we are. We're starting to take a lot of things for granted, I think.

00:33:31
Yeah, that question is kind of like Matt Forrest ICE cream.

00:33:37
And so let's see if you were given. Actually, let's go to this one. If you had to write another book, what would it be about? Well, we just came out with a book on infinite banking, so it's actually, let me see if anybody's watching here. And if you email me, I'll send a copy to you for free since it's not officially launched yet.

00:33:58
But it's called money insights for sales professionals. And what it is, it is a summary, and this is a very short book. So my book is about 100 pages. This is less than 50, and it's written by myself, and my partners crafted the first version. But it's about the specific strategy that I've been using to use life insurance as a funnel to invest in cash flow producing properties.

00:34:28
So that's a little bit cheating there, Jamie. I had that in my back pocket, so I teed you up for that one. You absolutely did. So let's see what's a challenge that you're facing in your business right now. Business or life, however you want to run with it.

00:34:43
Yeah. Well, do we want to talk about the issues I'm facing as a parent dealing with my children? No, let's not talk about that. We'll do it at the second episode. That's the therapy session.

00:34:51
There you go. No, look, having kids, if you're listening, you know, it's the most amazing thing. And also, some days I'm just like, I don't know if this child is going to make it through the rest of the day in my hands. Yes, we have two kids, and it is super challenging. Yeah, but listen, it's a learning experiment or a learning experience, I should say.

00:35:14
And it's somewhat of an experiment. An experiment, yeah, indeed. But you have to be a better person. Right. Children force you to analyze your assumptions and your actions and become more rational and better.

00:35:28
But when it comes to my business scaling, so how do you scale? And, I mean, just, I was talking to my coach the past two weeks here, and we're going through my schedule and everything. He's like, you're doing everything right. Basically, you're just stretched. So bringing on the right people in the right places.

00:35:45
We've done a terrific job with the team, with acquisitions and all that, but there's a couple of other areas that I need to scale in and need to really make sure that we're bringing in the right people. What does your team look like as far as, do you use virtual assistants? How many employees do you have? What does your business look like? Yeah, so our operating company that I work with, there's 30 employees, and that's everybody from asset management to acquisitions to investor relations.

00:36:16
When it comes to next level income and putting all the education stuff together, I have a team that does all my podcasts for me. I have a booking agent to help get me in front of the right people. I have virtual assistant who helps with a lot of my day to day communications. If you put your information in there, put your address in to get a free copy of my book, she will send you a copy of my book today when you put that in there. So she keeps the wheels turning, even if I'm on the road.

00:36:45
So sorry. I might not sign the copy, but if you request it, I might. And then I have a social media team. I have a team for my website. So some are employees, some are not.

00:36:56
And then probably one of the key components of my team is we have a nanny now, and she helps out in the afternoons with our kids, shuttling them, with them around, picking up groceries. It was hard to come to grips with hiring somebody that's going to spend time with our children. But what I found, Jamie, is it's really helped us have more quality time as a family and not just crappy time where, know, running around in a car, and half the time not even with. That's. That's good.

00:37:24
You mentioned a coach, a business coach, I presume. Are you a part of any masterminds or anything like that? Yeah. So one of the big masterminds that I was founding member of is called the passive income mastermind. I'm happy to share information with that, with anybody that's interested.

00:37:40
So our goal as a mastermind is looking at different opportunities, different strategies, different education, like even the life insurance strategy we're talking about. That's part of the puzzle that we use to increase our passive income to 200% or more of our expenses. So that's kind of the goal of that mastermind. And I have some other masterminds that I participate in. I have a mastermind with my coaching clients.

00:38:04
So we do two monthly calls. So we have our monthly mastermind call and an expert call where we bring in people. Like, this past month was, oh, yeah, for tax day, we had an accountant come in, talk about specific strategies for w two employees that are looking for ways to optimize their tax situation, for example. Got it. Sounds like you're very active in the mastermind space.

00:38:32
Hey, listen, I coach people, but I spend more on coaching than I made the first year I was out working for Pfizer on an annual basis. So, yeah, I'm a big believer, and I think you have to constant development, putting people around you that are a higher level, and having that accountability is so key to achieve ultimate success. Yeah, that's been a theme with these episodes we've done so far, especially, honestly, the more successful people tend to, at least this is anecdotal. It's not double blind placebo testing or anything, but, yeah, the guys and girls who are making a lot of money tend to be plugged into. They're constantly being challenged.

00:39:16
Know somebody at the next level. So that's really, I think it's less common to find somebody that I talk to that's kind of at this level, Jamie, that does not have a talk. I very rarely find people that don't have a coach or some sort of accountability at this level. Yeah, makes a lot of sense. All right, how about a movie you'd recommend for our audience?

00:39:46
Do you watch movies? I love movies. And when I was racing bicycles, I would watch a movie every evening. So I would ride. I would come home and I'd just, like, lay on the couch and watch a movie.

00:39:58
There's a great. It's got to be 30 years old now, maybe 20 plus years old. Gattica. It's got Ethan Hawke and what is his name? Doesn't really matter, but it's Gattaca.

00:40:12
And there's this scene in the movie, and I urge you to go watch it. So there's these two brothers, and this basically brings together every. And this was not a set up. This is everything we talked about today. But this just popped into my head because this is how important this is to me.

00:40:29
One of the brothers was born naturally. Like, he just, his parents had a baby. The other one is this designer baby where they optimized him genetically. The younger brother and, sorry, I'm ruining the movie. But the younger brother, Ethan Hawke, he ends up becoming an astronaut, which is like, you have to be one of these designer kids.

00:40:50
But he busts the system. He runs into his brother, who is the inspector, or, like, the police officer that's investigating this situation, and catches him. Well, when they were younger, they would swim out into the ocean and they would see who could swim the furthest before getting scared and turning back. And the older brother won every single time. Except one day, I'm getting chills thinking about it.

00:41:13
Younger brother. So Ethan Hawke swims out in the ocean and his older brother begins to drown. And he pulls him back to shore. So they meet, never talked about it for the rest of their lives. They actually didn't see each other after that until that day.

00:41:25
And he said, they end up at the ocean again because they're like, let's go to the ocean. Like, this is this whole thing. And he looks at him, he's like, how did you beat me? They're swimming out in the ocean and he's yelling at him, stop. And he goes, stop.

00:41:37
I can't see the shore. And he's like, we need to turn back. And he's like, we're close to the other side at this point. And he goes, I don't understand. He's like, how did you do it?

00:41:45
And he's like, how did I do it? He's like, you caught me. You figured it out. He goes, no, how did you beat me that night swimming? And he said, I never saved anything for the trip back.

00:41:57
The point is, in this life, you've got to take what you've been given and you give 100% and you can't keep looking over your shoulder. You can't worry about what other people think. You can't have a scarcity mindset. You have to know and believe you're going to be successful with every cell in your body and use everything you've been given to be successful. That's awesome.

00:42:19
Yeah, I mean, I'd like to take credit for setting that all up with that question.

00:42:26
I'm kidding. That was really good because you really brought it all home. I mean, that's fantastic. I'll have to watch that. Is there anything else you want to add as we wrap up here?

00:42:38
Any other kind of parting? You've. This has been really good. Anything come to mind? Thank you.

00:42:46
Listen, I think again that just again, I'm so grateful for the opportunity to be here, Jamie, grateful for everything I've been given. And that's what I would say if you're having a tough day, if you're having a tough time, begin your day with a gratitude practice and just think about what you're grateful for. Because no matter, and I learned this from being in the or a lot of days. A lot of times I'd be like, man, I'm having a crappy day. And I'd be upset, I'd be tired, I hadn't slept this and that, but I always remembered there's somebody on the table that I was there for to help get the best outcome for them on that day.

00:43:19
And I would say, you know what? No matter how bad the day is, I'm not laying there on the table having surgery today. So again, no matter what you're going through today in your life this year, remember, there's always somebody out there that's in a worse position. Focus on what you have to be grateful for and use that as fuel to move forward. That's fantastic.

00:43:40
You've dropped a lot of inspirational ideas, and not just ideas, but truths. And I really do appreciate you spending time and talking about some difficult topics and some genuinely challenging circumstances that you've been through. For sure. And I know that our audience is going to take a lot of value from this. As we wrap up here, remind our audience where they can reach out to you.

00:44:09
Yeah, real easy. Nextlevel income is the company. Nextlevelincome.com is the website, and next level income is the book that you can get for free if you click on the book link. And if there's anything that we talked about today you want to learn more about or that I can help you out with in your life. Reach out to me at Chris@nextlevelincome.com awesome.

00:44:27
Thank you so much Chris. It's been awesome. I really appreciate you spending your time. Like I said, I know you are busy so thanks a lot. This has been the highlight of my day so far.

00:44:37
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00:45:00
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