Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Robert Leonard: Millennial Investing and House Hacking | E133

Episode Date: September 27, 2021

This week on YAP, we are chatting with Robert Leonard, entrepreneur, investor, and previous motocross athlete. Robert is also the host of the popular podcast, Millennial Investing which he started to reach millennials thirsty for financial knowledge. Millennial Investing guides millennial investors getting into long-term stock market investing, options trading, and more with guests such as Matt Higgins, Tom Bilyeu, Lewis Howes, and Kevin O’Leary.   In this episode, we talk about Robert’s beginnings in motocross and the life lessons he learned from it, Robert’s experience in college, and how he got started in investing. We’ll also discuss how you can get started in real estate, how you can invest with a couple thousand in the bank, and Robert’s best financial learnings and advice for those looking to get started. If you’ve been looking to get into real estate investments, this episode with Robert’s step-by-step process is for you!  Sponsored by -  Gusto. Get three months free when you run your first payroll at gusto.com/YAP The Jordan Harbinger Show. Listen to the show here jordanharbinger.com/start Social Media:  Follow YAP on IG: www.instagram.com/youngandprofiting Reach out to Hala directly at [e-mail] Follow Hala on Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Follow Hala on Instagram: www.instagram.com/yapwithhala Follow Hala on Clubhouse: @halataha Check out our website to meet the team, view show notes and transcripts: www.youngandprofiting.com Timestamps: 01:10 - Robert’s Background As a Motorcross Racer 04:49 - What Motorcross Instilled in Robert  09:17 - Robert’s Experience in College 11:38 - How to Look at Stocks 16:54 - Biggest Lessons From Warren Buffett 19:32 - Robert’s Start in Investing 23:24 - How to Get Started in Real Estate 27:25 - Pros and Cons to Renting 30:21 - What to Do with 20K in the Bank  34:59 - Good vs. Bad Real Estate Investment 38:45 - Robert’s Thoughts on Index Funds 42:30 - Advice on How To Evaluate Speculative Investments  45:02 - Robert’s Biggest Learnings From Michael Michawitz 48:12 - Robert’s Secret to Profiting in Life Mentioned In The Episode: Robert’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rwleonard Robert’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/therobertleonard/?hl=en Millennial Investing Podcast: https://www.theinvestorspodcast.com/millennial-investing/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode of YAP is sponsored in part by Shopify. Shopify simplifies selling online and in-person so you can focus on successfully growing your business. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com slash profiting. You're listening to YAP, Young and Profiting Podcast, a place where you can listen, learn, and profit. Welcome to the show. I'm your host, Halla Taha,

and on Young and Profiting Podcast, we investigate a new topic each week and interview some of the brightest minds in the world. My goal is to turn their wisdom into actionable advice that you can use in your everyday life, no matter your age, profession, or industry. There's no fluff on this podcast, And that's on purpose. I'm here to uncover value from my guests by doing the proper research and asking the right questions.

If you're new to the show, we've chatted with the likes of XFBI agents, real estate moguls, self-made billionaires, CEOs, and bestselling authors. Our subject matter ranges from enhancing productivity, had to gain influence, the art of entrepreneurship, and more. If you're smart and like to continually improve yourself, hit the subscribe button, because you'll love it here at Young & Profiting Podcast. This week on YAP, we're chatting with Robert Leonard, entrepreneur, investor, and former motor cross athlete. Robert is also the host of the popular podcast,

Millennial Investing, which covers investing basics and financial advice for investors up to their late 30s. Robert is an accounting and finance professional with an immense passion for stock and really state investing, business and entrepreneurship. He started Millennial Investing to reach Millennial's thirsty for financial knowledge.

In this episode, we talk about Robert's beginnings in Motorcross and the life lessons he learned from it. And we'll also discuss how he got started in investing and the most cost effective way to invest in real estate with House Hacking. If you're trying to build your wealth, this episode with Robert should be right up your alley. Hey Robert, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.

So glad to have you here. Thank you so much for having me, Halla. Excited to be here. Yeah, me too. I mean, I think that your topic is so relevant. You host the podcast called Millennial Investing, and you talk all about investments and real estate investments. I know that my audience really likes this kind of stuff. I feel like you're going to provide lots of value.

You also, in your mid-20s, you are the definition of young and profiting. And I want to get into all of your different pieces of advice and going to really dig deep in terms of stock advice, real estate advice, all that good stuff. But first I want to take it back. We like to always take it back and understand the journey to where you got to where you are today. And I did some digging and I saw that you were a motor cross racer growing up. We started at four years old and you competed competitively for 10 years.

And by the time you were 14, you were like the second best in the world at that, which is crazy. And then everything kind of changed very quickly once 2008 hit and everything crashed. So talk to us about that. Talk to us about what you were like as a kid, and then how you ended up pivoting into becoming an investment expert.

Yeah, so it's interesting because when I go on podcasts as guests, a lot of times the host and sometimes the audience is surprised that when I get asked about my background that I go back to when I was four years old, because most people don't go back that far. But like you mentioned, I was a motor cross race here. Not a lot of people in finance or podcast or investing are in a motor cross. So it helps me stand out.

And that's why I always start my story there. And you're right, for 10 years, motor cross was my entire life. By the time I ended up hanging up the boots, you could say, I was ranked number two in the world in my age group. And to put this into perspective for people who aren't familiar with motocross, it was kind of like being a prospect to go to a major league for any other sport, whether it be baseball, football, basketball. But

basically I was expected to be part of the up-and-coming class for the next level of professionals in about a year and a half or two years when you turn 16. But like you said, the 2008 economy crashed. And so that was a piece of it, but it wasn't necessarily the biggest thing. There was really three things that caused me to stop racing. And basically, we had a couple people very close to us pass away from racing, a couple got paralyzed from crashes, and some of them were close to my age. I was only 14 at the time. So it really hit my dad hard to see that happen. And then also, again, like you said, the economy crashed, so money was tight, racing is very expensive. And then

third, I was racing ATV motorcross. And there's two different types of motorcross. There's ATVs and dirt bikes. And I won't go into the new degree. But basically the ATV industry as a whole was declining. And my dad could see that the future of ATV motorcross wasn't very strong. And so he said, I'm future of ATV motorcross wasn't very strong. And so he said, I'm not going to risk your life and spend all this money on this if the future isn't super bright. And so their bikes had a little bit longer

kind of roadmap ahead. And so we decided that's enough is enough. And at 14, I was done racing. My entire future was gone because all I planned on doing was becoming a professional athlete by racing motorcross, no backup plan, nothing like that. Nobody in my family's ever gone to college. So I had no intentions of going to school or anything. Then I'm 14. I'm a freshman in high school. I had to figure out what I was going to do. And I did a little

bit of self-reflection as much as any 14-year-old can do. And I realized that I was pretty good at math and I really liked money. So I said, why don't I combine these two things and get into investing and finance and accounting things along those lines. And so one day I stumbled upon a guy who had a day trading stock course on Facebook as a Facebook ad. And I started to check it out. I mean, he was promising overnight riches to everybody. And basically as a 14 year old kid, of course, that drew me in.

And thankfully, whether it was my own intelligence or a stroke of luck, I realized that what he was pitching probably wasn't the most realistic thing. But what it did do is it led me to Warren Buffett. And so ultimately, I ended up studying Warren Buffett starting when I was 14 until today. So little over a decade, ended up going out to Omaha for the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meeting. And that has led to my passion of stock investing today.

That's amazing. I love the fact that you pivoted and a lot of people who are really successful that have come on my show have experienced something really traumatic along these lines. I remember I just interviewed Maya Shankor and something very similar. She was a violinist. She was gonna be the biggest violinist in the world when she was around 15. She had a finger injury. She couldn't play the violin again

and she had to totally pivot. But she ended up becoming super successful and I think there's something to that. What do you think Motorcross taught you or instilled in you that made you a 14 year old who was willing to do stuff outside of school and study somebody like Warren Buffett on your free time because most 14 year old kids are playing video games in their free time. So how do you think that shaped you and your maturity?

At the time, I had no idea. I don't, you know, I wasn't something I thought of. I was like, yeah, you know, motorcross taught me this, so I'm gonna do this. But now 10 years later, looking back, it has shaped so many different things. I think probably the biggest thing is hard work and dedication because to be at that level

of a sport, any sport, any activity, no matter what it is, business, athletics, music, anything, you need to put in a lot of work and time and effort. And even though I was a young kid, I was still putting in a lot of time. And so I think just from one four to 14, you had 10 years of hard work and it just becomes a Nate in you. And so for me, I've just always been extremely, extremely hard working. Now on top of that, I think it also taught me to take risks because motorcross is a very

risky sport. And every single time you get on the bike, you essentially risk your life. And as we record this podcast, I literally have a broken leg from racing. So I'm actually kind of spoiler, I'm back on a bike again. Oh my God.

And I'm racing and I just broke my leg like last weekend racing. And so it's a dangerous sport, but it's taught me to take risks. And I think that helps me be an entrepreneur, it helps me and be an investor, etc. Because when you've taken risks to risk your life, you know, risking a little bit of money here and there is, you know, it seems relatively trivial at that point, you know, when you're talking about life and money.

And then the third thing is it's really taught me at a very young age on how to work with mentorship. And what I mean by that is my dad was my mentor when I was racing motorcross. He built all my bikes. He was the one that helped me get to the races and all that. My dad was a single dad with just me and my brother. And at the time, I had more of the talent than my brother did. So my brother wasn't racing, but he came with us. And so me and my dad and my brother were growing all these races. And a lot of times, what separated me from a lot of the other kids my age,

where I was hitting all these big jumps that most people wouldn't hit my age. And that came down to talking to my dad. We'd walk the track together and I'd say, Hey, dad, will my bike make this jump? And he had a good idea because he built it. So he kind of knew what it was capable of. And basically if he told me I could do it, I would do it. So that has led to business because he was my mentor and I had to put a lot of trust in him. He guided me and he

told me what I could and couldn't do and how to do certain things. And so when it came time to find a mentor in business or investing or anything I've done, I already had a ton of experience with a mentor and kind of learned how it worked with my dad. And so that's been super impactful in business, investing, and everything else I've done. Oh my gosh, I love hearing this because I think people fail to realize that your experiences are meaningful whether they pan out to something wonderful or not. You know, just you having that experience of being a pro, mortar cross racer at such a young age, has given you skills that you can now apply in totally different industries and totally different ways,

but it's all stuff that you carry with you and makes you who you are. And I really, really believe that everybody tuning in right now, get as many experiences as you can, especially if you're on the younger side, even if they won't pan out to anything in the end, because you carry those little skills with you everywhere, and then you can apply them in different ways. There's a saying, and I'm going to kind of paraphrase it because I don't remember it specifically, but there's something along the lines that says you can't connect the dots looking forward,

you can only do it looking backwards. And that's exactly the case. When I was racing motorcrossed and I was done racing, I was absolutely devastated. Like, I love that more than anything, hence why I'm back on a bike today, but at the time, I was absolutely devastated. Like I love that more than anything, hence why I'm back on a bike today. But at the time, I was just absolutely devastated. I had no idea what my future was gonna look like. But now 10 years later, I can look back and I can connect the dots on how all these things connected and how it's really helped me today.

And you don't necessarily need to know how it's gonna help you in the future. Just have faith and understanding that if you put in the work, it's gonna help in the future some way. 100% 100%. 100%. So let's talk about your college experience.

I'm going to start with a story that I remember and correct me if I'm wrong, but something along the lines, if you were in biology class and instead of paying attention, you are studying 10Ks and figuring out what your next investments were going to be. So let's move into stock investments and what we should be looking for. When you were in class, not paying attention, what were you looking for in those 10Ks? Yeah, I love that story. And I haven't told that story for a while,

but it is one of my favorites because when I went into college, like I said, nobody in my family had ever gone, I'm the first one to go to school in my family. So I didn't really have much help or guidance to how to pick schools or how to pick a major or anything like that. And it's not because they didn't want to help.

They just didn't have the experience. And so I kind of was there to figure out things on my own and end up picking a pretty good program. But as part of the program, what I really didn't like and what I didn't focus on enough was the curriculum. And as part of that curriculum, you had to take three science classes. And so I'm a finance major or an accounting major, and I'm being forced to study chemistry and

biology and physics and all these classes, and it just made no sense to me. I was a good student, but they give you these dollars to print things in your lab at school. I'd use all those dollars to print these huge 10Ks. I'd just sit in the back of the biology class in this big auditorium and I would read my 10Ks. And I've been caught a few times and because I maybe I'd be reading it and I couldn't put it away and my teacher would come by

and the number of times I've been thrown away, I can't even count. And so I was just really busy studying what I was passionate about what I felt was gonna help me in my future. And in terms of what I'm looking for on the 10Ks, back then I didn't really know what I was passionate about, what I felt was gonna help me in my future. And in terms of what I'm looking for on the 10Ks, back then, I didn't really know what I was doing. I was just getting started. I really just, everybody said you need to read 10Ks to be a successful investor.

So I was just kind of reading them as I could. Now today, it's a little bit different understanding as to what we're looking for in 10Ks. And for people who don't know a 10K, it's just an annual report. Basically, that company's put out and are required to file with the SEC. In those reports, the document, the things that I'm looking for the most is kind of the little hidden nuggets of information that you can't get from just financial statements because a lot of times people look at 10K's for financial information for their financial statements.

And that is valuable. But there's so many other ways you can just log on to Morningstar or we have a tool called TIP Finance. You can get all the financial statements that way. What I'm really looking for is the footnotes or these little stories or details in this report that talk about how the business is doing that the numbers don't show. That's really the biggest thing that I'm looking for. That's super interesting. And so what else do you look for in a stock? Like how do you know when a

stock is a good investment? And then the other thing I want to ask is I know that in the beginning you were looking at quantitative metrics only and then you realized that the key was really looking at the qualitative metrics. And I personally did very well with stocks a couple of years ago. I pulled out all my money, but I had 50% gains. And I almost never looked at the numbers. It was always qualitative stuff. So I'd love for you to talk to us about that and then talk to us first, though, how do you pick a stock? Like what are the things you look for? So there are a million different things you could look for when you're looking at a stock and trying to find out whether it's something

you want to purchase or not. But really for me, the biggest thing is whether you can understand it or not. And I think that's overlooked. I mean, we could do a whole hour long podcast about analyzing financial statements, analyzing key ratios, analyzing whether the business has a mo, the management team, the valuation, I mean, a million different really nitty gritty things.

But I think at a high level, the biggest thing is just really understanding what you're buying. And that's typically the biggest advice that I give is, I don't really care what you buy. You know, I don't care if you buy crypto or stocks or real estate or sports cards or, you know, whatever it is. I don't really care as long as you understand. What I don't like seeing people do is just buy something because other people are buying it.

I think that's a, you're not investing in that case. And so that's the biggest thing to find a company you like. There's an author named Peter Lynch, very successful money manager at Fidelity. He managed a fund called the Magellan Fund. And at the time, it was one of the best performing mutual funds in history. And he wrote this book called the Magellan Fund. And at the time, it was one of the best performing mutual funds in history. And he wrote this book called One Up on Wall Street.

And in that book, basically, the premise is that he's telling you that individual investors are able to beat money managers and professional hedge funds and things of that nature. And they actually have a One Up on Wall Street because they can see these products on an everyday basis using what you already know to buy companies. And so in that example, right, if you were an early iPhone user,

and maybe you knew that iPhone's product was great, and you could maybe invest in the stock because you knew that they had great products and services. So these are the types of things that I'm looking for. Now, you mentioned the quantitative and qualitative piece. That's been a big change in my investing style because as I mentioned, I was really into studying Warren Buffett. When you start studying him, you know he's a value investor and a lot of value investing

comes down to the numbers, especially back when his mentor Benjamin Graham was kind of bringing value investing and deep value investing to the forefront of the investing community. And so I had this misconception that if you ran a financial model and the financial model said that the company was stock that you could just excuse me that it was cheap, then you could just buy it and it would be a great investment. And that's not how it works out because there's a lot of different inputs that go into that financial model. And if your inputs are wrong, then your evaluation is going to be wrong.

And just because you have certain inputs doesn't mean that the market is going to agree with you. And so that's what I was doing is I was being too optimistic with my inputs. And so all my financial models were saying that these stocks were undervalued on a quantitative basis. What I didn't realize was that they had no future business prospects. They ran family industries, they had horrible products and services. Customers didn't like it. All these different things that led to no future

for the business. And so there are ways that you could potentially make money there. But basically, I was making decisions based only on the numbers. And what I realized is that there's a lot more to a business and arguably even more value in a business from things that you can't quantify,

like the management team, the CEO, how good are the products and services? How is the culture? How happy are the employees? What does the industry in the future look like? Take blockbuster and Netflix for an example. I don't know this to be a fact, but let's just say the blockbuster

numbers were really good. You might be enticed to invest in them based on a quantitative approach, but if you looked out into the future, qualitatively, you could say, well, Netflix might completely disrupt them and they have no future. And in that case, it might not be something you want to invest in. So for me, a big transition was, you still need the quantitative approach, you still need to do evaluations and you still need to look at the financials. You can't necessarily buy a company just because they have good products, but that is a massive piece of it and understanding how those two come together to really develop a financial and investment thesis. I think that's brilliant. I think that's something that we haven't heard before on this podcast. I feel like we've always kind of told to look at the numbers, look at the profitability,

all that kind of stuff, and the past growth. I think it's really, really great that you're saying you got to like the product yourself, know what you're buying, and think about other external factors that might not be in a 10k or might not be, you know, on Morningstar there for you to just see blanely. So I think those are really great points. Let's talk about Warren Buffett. So I know you studied him for many years. He's one of your idols, but it turns out you're not going to just take any old advice from Warren and go pour your money into his stock picks. So talk to us about how to take advice and also some of your biggest lessons from Warren Buffett? One of the biggest things people get wrong, and actually a podcast episode that went out

this week for me is why you shouldn't just copy money managers and Buffett is technically a money manager. And so one of the biggest things that people get wrong about Buffett or any professional money manager, and this is something that I did, so I'm speaking from experience, is trying to look for them for stock pick ideas. So just trying to find out what they're holding and they're required to file it quarterly through a 13F. And so you can see exactly what they're holding. And so a lot of people just look for what they're holding and try and copy them or buy that. And I think that's really, you know,

some people have done okay that way. There are a couple guys like this guy named Modisha Pabrai and another guy named Kai Spear. They've done really well following this type of strategy, but for most people that's not going to work for various different reasons. Rather, the right way to think about it in my opinion is not to copy them, but rather to learn from their principles and think how they think, learn how they think, and apply that to your life. So let's take for example Warren Buffett, one of his biggest principles is that in order for him to invest in something, it must be within his circle of competence. And so how can you copy Warren Buffett as an investor if he has a different circle of competence than you? Right? If you're going to follow this principle, Hala, you have a different circle of competence than I do,

I have a different circle of competence than Buffett. None of our circles are better than one another, but we just understand things differently. And so maybe if you're a software guy, you can probably invest in tech companies because you understand it. Whereas Buffett, for a very long time, avoided all tech because he didn't understand it.

And so to just blindly copy somebody, this goes back to what I mentioned before, is you really have to understand what you're buying. And so for me, that's just an example of how you need to take his principles and apply them to your life rather than just copying what he's doing. I don't understand biotech, I don't understand energy, these types of things. So I've never made any investments in those industries or sectors. There's a lot of people that make a lot of money by investing in those areas, but for me, I just know it's a hard rule for me

if I don't understand it, I don't invest in it. And so I just avoid it. And I think those are some of the biggest things that I've learned from following Buffett. Young and profitors, do you have a brilliant business idea but you don't know how to move forward with it? Going into debt for a four year degree isn't the only path to success. Instead, learn everything you need to know about running a business

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for my understanding that you didn't like that idea, you thought, well, if I'm going to pay something, I want to own my own place. I don't want to pay you rent. So talk to us about how you first started in real estate. That is exactly right. So when I was in 18, I was going into college. My dad sat me down, he said, Hey, you're going to study finance. You're going to come out. I know your hard work or you're probably going to get a pretty good career. You're probably going to have a decent salary. So it's not, I don't really like the idea of you making a good salary and living under my roof for free.

That just doesn't really make sense to me. And so this is what my dad was saying to me. And you know, as an 18 year old kid, I was like, yeah, you know, I get it, you know, I don't like it, but I get it, you know, I understand. And so I said to him, and I said to my friends and some other family members, I said, you know what? I'm gonna buy a house as soon as I graduate, so that I can move into there and then I don't have to pay any rent. I can just pay my own mortgage and I can own it. And my dad and my family is very encouraging of me, of course, but they thought I was crazy and they said that that wasn't gonna be possible.

My friends also said the same thing because none of them have ever owned houses or made any investments. My dad didn't buy his first house until he was in his late 30s, early 40s. And so it just didn't seem possible to them. Sure enough, if you tell me I can't do something, that's gonna light a fire under me even more.

And so I worked really, really hard throughout college to get jobs, save as much money as I could, understand the process, et cetera, everything that goes into buying a house. And I bought my first house when I was a senior in college. So before I walked at my college graduation, I bought my first house. And I bought my first house when I was a senior in college. So before I walked at my college graduation, I bought my first house. And I didn't do it as a real estate investment. It was I wasn't trying to be an investor or anything. I was just doing

it simply because I needed a place to live and I didn't want to pay my dad rent. Now I did eventually want to become a real estate investor, but that was not the goal with this property. My plan was I felt like I was a good stock investor. I felt like I understood it well. So I said, I'm going to make all my money. I'm going to build my wealth through the stock market. And then once I'm done with that, and I've built my wealth, then I'll put it into real estate because I assumed you needed to be a multi-millionaire to buy real estate. And so I got into this house and it was a two-bedroom house, and I lived there for a month or one to three months and I realized that I never even opened the door for the second bedroom that was there was just sitting empty.

I said well, I mean I could probably do something about this and so I ended up renting out that bedroom. And so I essentially just had a roommate and my total mortgage was like $1,100 and And this person was paying me between $750 a month. So now I'm living for $300 to $500 a month, somewhere in that range. And I said, wow, this is pretty cool. And I said, there's no way that I'm the first person that's ever thought of this. And so I got on the internet and I found out

that that's actually an investing strategy called house hacking. And it led me to this resource called Bigger Pockets. And on Bigger Pockets, there's thousands and thousands and thousands of other people that were just like me who were investing in real estate. They didn't have any special skills. They weren't wealthy yet, but they were making it happen.

And so when I just devoured everything I could and I realized that these people were no different than me, that brought down every limiting belief I had about real estate. Realized I was actually already a real estate investor. And then from there, I just have had a massive interest in real estate and have continued to scale. That's so cool. It's really, really unique to hear that you were 18

when you bought your first house and then you started renting it out and you kind of started to live for free. I had somebody on my podcast early on. I think it was like episode number 11, her name was Dan Dan Zoo, and she also did this. She would buy a house and then live on the couch and rent out all the rooms. And she told me that she believes that if you live in the house that you own and you're the only one who lives in it, that it's not an investment.

Would you agree or disagree? I would agree. I think if we're going to get down to technical definition, if you're the only one who lives in it that it's not an investment. Would you agree or disagree? I would agree. I think if we're going to get down to technical definitions, if you are the only one that lives in the house and it's not producing any cash flow for you, I would say it's not an investment. So interesting. So talk to us about real estate. What is the best way for somebody to get started and how much money do you actually need to get started? And how much money do you actually need to get started? So most of my listeners are probably 25 to 35, let's say.

Maybe there's a lot of people in their 40s and 50s. So I love all of my listeners, but let's talk about the majority, 25 to 35 year olds who are tuning in right now. Is there a certain amount of money or a certain amount of ratio of money that you should have? Like should you have like saving saves, like when do you think we're ready to buy something?

Because a lot of us I think are renting right now, even though we're sitting on a cash. I think hands down the best strategy is house hacking, which is what we just talked about, I think for almost anybody, but especially people in that age group that you just mentioned, that is number one, the first place I would start

is house hacking. Now, when you should do that is kind of different for everybody and how much money you need. We can talk about those numbers. It's gonna depend where you live in the country. I mean, there's a lot of different variables. But with house hacking, I house sack my first property. I only did $10,000.

We can get creative. You can use things called seller credits, which reduce the amount of cash that you need to buy a property. So there are a bunch of different ways that you can get into. You can use things called seller credits, which reduce the amount of cash that you need to buy a property So there are a bunch of different ways that you can get into a house hack but it's hands down the Best way that people should get started and it can have a massive massive impact on the rest of your life if you start house hacking when you're young Yeah, I think if you're single and you don't have a family house hacking is definitely the way to go Could you explain what seller credits are

and something I've never heard of before? Yeah, absolutely. So a seller credit is basically, in the simplest term, is when the seller, when you buy a house, the seller gives you cash back at closing. So essentially, let's just say somebody makes a $100,000 profit on selling the house.

If you have negotiated a seller credit with them, they'd take money out of that $100,000 and give it to you at closing, and it reduces their profit, let's just say to $90,000 or something along those lines. And now you have that money that you can apply towards your closing costs or down payment, et cetera. And so it's a creative way for you to be able to reduce

how much money you need to close because now you're getting some money from them to actually pay down what you're required to bring to the table to close. Now somebody's listening and hearing this for the first time, they're like, well, why would somebody give you some of their profits that you can buy their house, right? That doesn't make any sense. So in a very competitive market like today, if you have somebody that offers, I'm just

going to use around numbers here, but let's just say you're somebody selling a house for $100,000. If you offer $100,000 and somebody else also offers $100,000, but you want a $10,000 seller credit, they're going to net $90,000 from you, but they're going to get $100,000 from the other person. So clearly, it makes more sense to go with the other person. However, what you can do is you could technically offer $110,000 with a $10,000 seller credit. Now their net gain is still 100 from both people, but you still get $10,000 towards your closing costs and now it reduces the amount of cash that you need to close. So that's what I've always done is I've always offered a little bit more than asking so

that I can get some cash back. In that case, you're essentially just financing the closing cost, but when you don't have a lot of money, I personally believe that's okay. And I think it's a great way to reduce the amount of cash you need to get into a deal. It's a little bit creative. It's not that difficult though if you start to understand it. And I've used it on every single real estate deal I've had,

my house hacks, and my other traditional rentals. This episode of YAP is brought to you by Gusto. If you're a small business owner, you gotta listen up. Running a business is super hard. We all know that. There's endless to-do lists, employees to take care of, and your ever-present bottom line. So first of all, give yourself a pat on the back

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Search for the Jordan Harbinger Show that's HRB as as a boy. I end as a Nancy GER on Apple Podcasts Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Oh my gosh, that's super smart. So we're in a sharing economy, right? And millennials tend to like to rent things. They don't want to own their car. They want to take Uber. And it's part of our culture to be in this rent mode. And I feel like that's why there's a lot of 30 year olds right now who don't own their own house. They're still renting, even though they have got cash in the bank that's sitting there, and they could definitely be owning a house. I'm one of those people. I could own a house right now.

I'm renting. And it's because I'm scared to like be locked down somewhere and it's just to your point. I don't feel like it's an investment if I'm living in there. So I just don't see the point. So can you talk just about your personal opinion when it comes to the pros and cons of renting versus buying? And if you think there aren't a pros to renting. Yeah, I mean, there are pros and cons to both. And I think if you really just look at the numbers,

there's a point in which up to like, it's roughly around like five to seven years, somewhere in that ballpark, that renting financially makes more sense if you invest all the money. So let's just say you had $20,000 to put down on a down payment for a house. Instead of putting that down payment on a house,

you rented and you put that $20,000 into the market. Technically, from a financial perspective, I believe the models show anywhere from five to seven years is how long renting is better, but then anything past that usually owning is better. If you've stayed at the property for that amount of time, now that's purely quantitative. And we learned from stock investing, business and finance and investing is not just quantitative. There's an entire field called behavioral economics. And so behavior for humans and psychology is massive when it comes to these things. And so you can't just look at it from a numbers perspective.

You have to look at it psychologically. The reality, in my opinion, is that most people, if they don't buy a house and they have that $20,000, they're not going to invest it. Or maybe they're not going to invest all of it. And if they don't invest all of it, those numbers drastically change. Maybe it only makes sense to rent for three years instead of five to seven years. So I think that the psychological piece is very hard

to get those people to actually invest all of that money that they would have put into a down payment. So that skews, which is better and which is worse. Now, also, there's a lot more headaches with owning a house. You have to handle all the repairs, maintenance, taxes, getting a mortgage, et cetera. I mean, there's a lot of things that go into it. Whereas with a renter, you're in out pretty much

whenever you want. You don't have to worry about fixing things, et cetera. You're pretty free. Now, you can exit, I mean, I've never rented. I've only ever owned homes, but I've been able to get out of all the properties I wanted. Now, that's not a guarantee, right?

If you try to get out of a property in 2007, 2008, 2009, you're probably gonna be stuck with it. But for the last decade, 12 years, you've pretty much been able to get out of a house that you own just as easy as you could a rental. And so, it really depends. Also, like, if you're gonna be moving a lot, it depends if you, if that's gonna be moving a lot, it depends if you,

if that's gonna be the case, then you probably don't wanna own because you're just gonna up and leave, you know for sure in a year. And so you kind of really just have to think about your lifestyle. And if you're gonna live in a city, it probably doesn't make sense to own, you're probably better off just renting, but if you're more in the suburbs, maybe you consider owning, depends if you have, you know, you need a yard for a dog and all these different things. So there's a lot of things that are psychological or just, you know, real human life that you need to consider that are not just numbers.

I think that what you're saying is super smart. And I think I'm doing the worst thing, sitting on a whole bunch of cash in the bank and not investing in anything. So I'm going to toss you this question. If somebody, I'm going to give a number that a lot of people listening is more realistic for them. So let's say somebody has $20,000 in the bank. What would you tell them to do with it? House hack. Without a doubt, without a hesitation, I would house hack. Now, one of the biggest pros for renting that people have, and I'm guessing you probably have a similar Experiences to why you like renting is just the flexibility right being able to go wherever you want now with house hacking

You only have to live there for a year Typically your lease is going to be a year anyway So you only have to live in the house hack for a year and then you're not gonna sell the property because you want it to be an investment But you could go live somewhere else. you could go rent at that point, you can buy something else if you have some money, et cetera. So when you house hack, you're not locked into that property for five, 10, 20 years. Like, you don't have to live there that long.

You can own it for that long, but you don't have to live there. And so you said $20,000, and I'll walk through my most recent house hack as an example. So this is my third house hack. It was a $400,000 and I'll walk through my most recent House Act as an example. So this is my third House Act. It was a $400,000 House and I needed about $23,000 to close on the property. However, I negotiated a $10,000 seller credit. So now to close on a $400,000 asset, I only needed $12,000, $13,000.

Okay, so now if you had $20,000, you put $13 into it, you saved the other $7 for reserve so that you're not fully depleting your cash. Now you have $7,000 in case you need to fix anything, whatever the case is. Okay, and so my mortgage is $2,000 a month for round numbers. And I rent out, it's a duplex, so there's two units. I live in one of the units.

It's very nice. I mean, it's not super fancy, but it's nice. Two bedrooms. It has a basement. It's three stories. I mean, it's pretty nice. And I don't feel like I'm living in like an apartment or anything. I feel like I have my own space. And the unit next to me pays about $1,400 a month and rent. So now my portion of this is only $600 a month to live here. And that's cheaper than you could rent anything in this area. Oh my gosh, this is a genius. Especially how nice my place is. And if you think about it, right, the tenant is living in the same property I am, same type

of unit, and they're paying $1,400 and they don't own it. I'm paying $600 and I do own it. Now, it gets even better. So I could live here as long as I want, I own the property, I could stay for as long as I want. But if I want to leave after a year, no problem. I move out after a year. So because of the way the financing works, you have to be there at least a year.

But after a year, you can leave, go wherever you want. So let's say I leave after a year, I rent out my unit. I think market rents, honestly right now, for this unit is probably closer to 1600. So let's just say I get both units to 1600. Now we're at $3,200 a month in income from this property. Remember that I said my mortgage is only 2,000. So now I'm profiting $1,200 a month. All I had to do was live there for a year. And now I have cash flow every single month coming in for $1,200. Now either I go and I house hack again. If I do it a second time, now when I'm done that in a year, I have $2,400 in cash flow coming in.

Or if I'm done house hacking, I could go rent. Let's just say my rent is $1400. Now you take the $1,200 in cash flow from your first house hack, and now you apply it towards your rent, and now your rent's really only like $200, and you can live wherever you want. And the caveat here is that first year, $1,200 times 12, roughly $14,000. I had to put, remember I said, $12,000 to $13,000 into the property. So in one year, I'm entirely getting my entire down payment back, just in profit. And I still own a $400,000 asset for however long I own it, and that's going to appreciate. And then when I sell it, I have all the equity that I gained in

the property as well. So for me, house hacking is an absolute cheat code to building wealth, especially for somebody if you can do it, young. Oh my gosh, I might call this episode house hacking. That was so genius. I feel so motivated. I have the idea of buying a family home where the bottom level is my studio

and I have in-person interviews. One apartment I rent out and I have like in-person interviews. One apartment I rent out and I live on the top apartment. That is like my dream and now you've like validated that I should probably go figure that out. Yeah, my only recommendation is I'd probably go side to side rather than up and down if you can. I mean, you live in, I think you said you live in an apartment. So you're probably kind of used to the up and down type thing.

I personally like side to side better just because you don't have anybody above you or below you like making noise and things like that. But yeah, totally that would be that would be absolutely awesome. And you could do it in so many different ways. Oh my gosh. It's genius. So let's dig into real estate a little bit more. I want to know what is a good real estate investment versus a bad one. Like when you're on Zillow and you're searching around like like what should be a red flag? What are your red flags?

Let's go there. So red flags are, I mean, it's the first thing I do is I look at the one, it depends on your strategy, right? If you're, I can't say broadly, because if you're a flipper, your criteria is gonna be different. If you're buying a rental, it's gonna be something different. If you're buying a house hack, it's something different.

So for me, I don't flip. I personally buy long-term rentals and I house hack. So for a house hack, basically what I do is you calculate what your mortgage payment is going to be, calculate what that property could bring in for rent for any of the extra space that you're going to rent out, and you find out what your portion is going to be. Now, if that's acceptable to you, then great. You can move forward. If it's not, then you're probably not going to be interested in it. Now, when we get into a more traditional rental, you could say like a regular rental property that you would think of when you hear of rentals, there's really two things that I focus on. And that is the monthly cash flow per door. So how much profit per

door per month is this property making? And the second thing is the cash on cash return. So that is based on the amount of money that I put on the property, how much cash am I generating per year on that? And so the reason that those two metrics are important is because you can have a property that cash flows $500 a month. That's great, right? On the surface, my threshold is roughly $250 a month per door. So if you have something that's making $500 a month per door, that might sound great. But what if you put in a million dollars to get $500 per month? That's probably not great. Whereas you have something that makes $250 a month, but you only

put 10 grand into it. That, you know, those, so on the surface, 500 seems better than the 250, but when you look at cash on cash, the cash on cash for $250 a month is much better. And so you can get as detailed or as nitty gritty on these return metrics as you want. There are some people that have super complex financial models to do this, but for me, I boil it down to those two numbers because if you hit both of those metrics, whatever you set your benchmarks to be, mine personally is $250 a month and I like 15% or more cash on cash per year. And as long as you hit those two benchmarks, what I've found is everything else takes care

of itself. And so I simplify it, focus on those two things. And to quickly get to that point, this is not a hard and fast rule. It varies depending on where you live in the country, and there's some caveats to it. But for the most part, how you can do this analysis really quick is what we call the 1% rule. And what the 1% rule is is you take the monthly rent that the property will bring in and you divide that by the purchase price. If it's more than 1%, you probably have a good deal. If it's more than 1%, you probably

have a good deal. If it's less than 1%, you might not have a good deal. If it's close, maybe if it's way below 1%, you probably don't have a deal. So when you're looking at 50 different properties to analyze, rather doing an analysis on all of them, quickly do a 1% rule, knock out the ones that aren't even close, finalize the ones that are close, do a full analysis, and then you can decide from there. That is extremely brilliant. So, let's go back to investing a bit, because actually your advice is to, from my understanding, to really evaluate, know what you're buying, everything like that.

A lot of investors that come on this show, when I ask them for stock advice, they're quick to say, well, just throw your money in an S&P 500 index fund. And that's your best bet. Don't even, if you're not in finance, don't even worry about studying stocks and picking your own stocks. Just trust the market. Do the S&P 500 index. So what are your thoughts on index funds? Do you have one that you like the best?

Do you feel like you're better off picking the stocks that you know and love and trust like we were talking about before? A great question. And it is something that's very commonly talked about. And I think most people are right. That's say that I do think the S&P 500 is great. I think most people should do that. And if you really want to have the best returns, you will 95% to random number, but somewhere between 90 and 100% of people will probably do better by just buying the S&P 500 fund and never buying individual stocks. Now, the problem with that is psychology.

People are psychological animals, and we're going to hear other people that are making money from buying these individual stocks or make it sound like they're making money from these individual stocks and they're going to want to get involved. And so whether you should have 100% of your portfolio in S&P 500 or individual stocks is really up to you. But I have this framework that I've created that helps people deal with FOMO, which is what I just mentioned. It's just fear of missing out. And so it's kind of funny, but I relate it to an itch, right? Let's just say your arm is itchy.

If you know your arm is itchy and you don't do anything about it, it just continues to get itchier and itchier and itchier and itchier, right? And then eventually it gets so itchy that you have to scratch it and you just have no choice. You have to scratch it. And FOMO works the exact same way. You might be able to, you hear about Tesla and you hear how all these people are making a ton of money.

And so you have that itch, right? You want to invest, but you tell yourself, you know you shouldn't, okay? Then Bitcoin comes around. You missed it the first time in 2017. So that itch passes by, the itch keeps getting worse and worse, right? 2020 comes around, you miss Bitcoin again

okay now three itches or three opportunities have passed now you're really really itchy now this next opportunity comes around say it's dogecoin or or something else now you really have a lot of pent up fear of missing out because you didn't participate in all these other opportunities and so you go pretty much all in on it. You put way more money in than you should because you're like, I need to make up for all these opportunities that I missed. And then you lose a ton of money, typically. Almost everybody loses money on those types of situations.

My framework is different, and I recommend to people that you actually do participate in all of these events. So that first time that you have a little itch, scratch it, put a little bit of money into it. You don't go all in, just put a little bit of money. And so what happens is you participate in all these events, you probably lose a little bit of money, but at least in total, losing a little bit of money along the way should add up to less than if

you just wait and pile in with all your money. And two, eventually once you've done this two, three, four times, you realize you're like, yeah, this just doesn't work out. Like, I'm not gonna keep doing this. Clearly, it doesn't work. You learn from firsthand experience, and then you never deal with FOMO again, and it essentially cures you of dealing with FOMO. So in terms of individual stocks, S&P 500,

that's how I approach it. I think most people should be in the S&P 500, but if you have a little bit of FOMO from individual stocks, put a little bit of money into it, don't put your life savings and go from there, follow that framework that I just went through. I think that is excellent advice. And speaking of FOMO, I keep hearing about NFTs and I keep wondering like, oh my gosh, am I not moving quick enough? I really don't have the time to understand it to your point. I don't want to invest in something I don't understand. And then I hear about sports cards investing.

And I hear about starting my own coin. You don't know how many people have come up to me. I don't even remember what it's called, but they're like, Holly, you need your influence or coin or whatever it's called. Like you have to do one. And it's just so overwhelming. So I want to know, are you personally investing in some of these speculative things like cryptocurrency

NFTs? Are you personally investing in them? And do you have any advice in terms of how we can evaluate those types of things? So for NFTs, sports cards, things along that line, I am not involved in them at all. I'm not saying I never would be, but right now I'm not. I do have a small position in Bitcoin, so you could classify that as, you know, in that category, but I've held Bitcoin for a long time

and I don't necessarily see it as speculative. I don't have a huge position. I just have a little bit of money there. And because of that FOMO framework that we just worked towards, that's why I put a little bit of money into Bitcoin. But to solve this issue of whether you should be involved in sports cards or NFTs and all these other things, you could again go through that FOMO framework

and say, am I gonna just put a little bit of money into it? If you want, right? If you feel like you're gonna regret not being involved, put a little bit of money into each one and just kind of see what happens. Don't go all in on them. Maybe just put a little bit of money that you're okay losing. Understand, you're probably going to lose it and go from there. And so one of the things I often do is I sit down and I ask myself,

would I be more upset that I didn't put money into this and I missed out on the upside? Or would I be more upset that I lost this money? And from there, you can pretty much decide what to do. If you're not gonna be upset about losing $500, then put the $500 in and you'll know what, like yeah, I'm happy I participated in the upside, great, if I didn't, I'm less mad about that, that I lost it.

And so that's kinda how I think about it. Now, I actually just had Tom Billu on my podcast, founder of Question Nutrition, he's huge in the NFT space. And we talked a lot about NFTs. I kind of get it, but I kind of don't. And it's certainly not within my circle of competency. So I just avoid it at pretty much all costs. I have cured myself of FOMO, so I don't have FOMO of NFTs and sports cars and things of

that nature. And so I just, I personally don't participate. I have no interest in it. I don't understand it. And it may be great in the future, but it's not for me right now. Yeah, bam. If you're ready to take your business to new heights,

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have settled a bit, and I'm really focused on revamping and improving our company culture. I have 16 employees, so it's a lot of people to try to rally and motivate, and I recently had best-selling author Kim Scott on the show. And after previewing her content in our conversation, I just knew I had to take her class on master class, tackle the hard conversations with radical candor to really absorb all she has to offer. And now I'm using her radical candor method every day with my team to give in solicit feedback,

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With over 180 classes from a range of world class instructors, that thing you've always wanted to do better is just a few clicks away. On masterclass, you'll find courses from many app-a-all star guests like Chris Voss and Daniel Pink. I've been taking their sales and negotiation classes and I've been feeling like a real shark lately. I've totally leveled up my sales skills. How much would it cost you to take a one-on-one class from the world's best? A lot. But with masterclass annual memberships, it just cost you $10 a month. I have to say the most surprising thing about masterclass

since I started this incredible journey on the platform is the value for the quality of classes instructors. The platform itself is beautiful. The videos are super high quality. You can't beat it. Gain new skills and as little as 10 minutes on your phone, your computer, tablet, smart TV, and my personal favorite way to learn is their audio mode to listen on the go. That way I can multitask while I learn. Get unlimited access to every class and right now as the app listener you can get 15% off when you go to masterclass.com slash profiting. That's masterclass.com slash profiting for 15% off an annual

membership. Masterclass.com slash profiting. I think your FOMO framework is really good advice and I hope everybody takes heat because I think that's a great way to kind of get experience, see if you like it, see if it's doing anything for you in terms of the returns. And then if you lose that little bit of money who cares, you know, you can make money in other ways that we just talked about. So as we wind down this interview, I know we both interviewed Michael McTallowitz. And he is the author of Profit First, which happens to be one of your favorite books. So talk

to us about some of your biggest lessons that you learned from Michael. Yeah, so my brother actually just started a landscaping company and I bought him Profit First and gave it to him as a business, you know, his first little business, business owner. I think Michael has taught so many great things. He has a lot of different books. He has the pumpkin plan, the toilet paper entrepreneur. He has a bunch of great books. And there's so many different things that you can learn from him. But for me, profit first is one of my favorites.

I'm an accounting guy, finance guy, background. So I just love that he has this really defined framework for entrepreneurs to Build out their financial models or financial plan within their business to any Business owner side hustlers whatever it may be have no idea whether money's going. They don't know if they're profitable things like that And so I think it's really important He teaches just to really know your numbers and really understand what's going on within your business. No where all your money is going et cetera. And probably my favorite thing is that he focuses on profit.

In that book, he talks about how there's these people who brag about how much revenue they make, but really what matters is the profit. Why does it matter if you make $10 million in revenue, but if you only take home $10,000, what if somebody made $20,000 in revenue but made $15,000 in profit? They took home more money than you, right? So why does the revenue matter? It's because it's one of those things

that people can easily brag about, and it's this bragging or this notion that you're doing well. And so he has this idea where you really need to focus on profits, and for me, I think that's really important, especially in today's day and age, being a stock investor, being a real estate investor too, but specifically in the stock market, we see a lot of companies that are not profitable, getting massive, massive valuations, some of them with questionable business models to ever get the profitability.

And so just this idea that's really grounded in really business is meant to make a profit. And so just this idea that's really grounded in really business is meant to make a profit. And if it's not making a profit, do you really have a business? And so that's the biggest thing that I really like from his book. I totally agree. Even me running a business right now, when I tell people like, oh, my first year, I made two million dollars in revenue. Everyone thinks I'm so rich. And I'm like, no, that's not the profit.

So to your point, profit profitability is a big deal. And sometimes I think about how much money I was making in my corporate job. And I'm making the same, I'm making more money now as an entrepreneur, but I think about it. And I'm like, wow, I have all this headache. I have all this overhead of all these employees to pay for, all these processes to make.

And I'm pretty much making the same as I was working for somebody else with a lot less time over time. It will be worth it, but it's so true. It's not just about revenue. It's about the profit at the end of the day. Exactly. Exactly. It's so important.

And I think it's lost in today's world with unicorn valuations and things like that. I personally believe we need to focus on profits in all avenues of business. And so I just, I really like that takeaway from the book. Yeah. Okay. So last question I ask all my guests and this is something you could drop your last piece of wisdom. It's, what is your secret to profiting in life?

And I know we've been talking about stocks and investing and money, but it doesn't have to be about money. It can be about profiting in life in any way. I think that I could crop out of this answer and I could say house acting. That is the way. But I'm not going to do that. I think, because we've talked so much about that, I think it's easy to understand how house acting could be that answer. I think my answer is fitness. And I personally am a very active guy. This probably comes from being an athlete and racing motorcross, et cetera. But I personally believe, no matter who you are,

I think you need to have a component of fitness in your life. And now a lot of times people get me confused and think that they have to go out and be an Olympic bodybuilder or do crazy things like that. And that's not what I mean. I just mean get out and sweat every single day. Whatever that means for you,

maybe it's going on a walk, maybe it's lifting weights, maybe it's running, maybe it's riding a bike, whatever that is, get out, sweat a little bit every day. You'll have a massive impact on your life, it'll have a massive impact on your career, your relationships, your business, whatever it is you wanna do, I think it is so overlooked and I think it can have a massive impact

on whatever you're doing. I could not agree more. Honestly, when people ask me these types of questions, like, what is your number thing for self-care? I'm like, working out, breaking a sweat, getting that heart rate up. When you work out, you're smarter, you think faster, you're more creative, you're more relaxed, you're more confident, like Like it just elevates your whole life. And anybody that I know who doesn't work out is usually has a very limited mindset.

I've just noticed that that people who don't work out tend to have a very limited mindset. They tend to be more negative. They tend to be less confident. Like it just really helps improve your life. I couldn't agree more. I think that's a great one. And most people don't say that.

So thanks for sharing that. So Robert, tell us about your podcast. Where can people go find you? What's the best way to reach out to you? Yeah, the best way to reach me. A couple of different ways I give. So whatever people like the best. But I host the podcast.

We have two different segments on the show. One is called Millennial Investing. That is tailored towards millennials. We help teach stock investing in personal finance to millennials. Then we also have another segment on the show. The millennial investing one comes out on Wednesdays, Real Estate 101 comes out on Mondays. And so we walk through all different types about Real Estate. To connect with me personally, you can find me on Instagram or Twitter, username is D-Rawret

Leonard on both. And something I'm super excited about is I just launched a free community where people can learn, it's called investorshadow.com and people can shadow me on my real estate journey and learn every single thing I'm doing in my real estate business for free. So I'd share all these details like all the nitty gritty down to how do you get your lawn mode for a long distance rental, how do you handle tenants that you potentially live with through a house hack, all these different things that people can't read from books I share by getting them, allowing them to shadow me.

So those are the different ways you can connect with me. And if anybody has any questions, I'm happy to help. Oh my gosh, so cool, so exciting. Robert, this was such a great interview. I had so much fun. Thank you so much. Thanks so much for having me. Thanks for listening to Young and Profiting podcast.

If you enjoyed this episode with Robert, be sure to subscribe to this podcast so you never miss an episode. I think this conversation was jam-packed with actionable advice that can help you get started and invest in, and I hope everybody feels motivated to go out there and build their wealth. Robert says that when he looks at stocks, we need to determine whether we understand them or not. While he looks at quantitative factors, he also emphasizes the importance of qualitative factors. He says that we need to know or buying like the product ourselves and check out other external factors that just aren't about the numbers.

Some advice Robert holds on to is from Warren Buffett. Whatever he invests in must be within his circle of competence. I think that's brilliant. Invest in your expertise because you'll naturally have a better pulse on why that company will do well in the future. I loved learning about Robert's pivot from being a motor cross-racer to a stock investor. He raced for 10 years and when he was 14 years old, he was number 2 in the world in his age group. But when the 2008 stock market crashed, racing became very expensive. He couldn't afford it anymore, and a lot of people he cared about were getting hurt by the sport. Instead of having a defeatist attitude, he made a positive pivot in

life. He knew who was good at math, he liked money, so he decided to go into finance. And now he's an incredibly successful investor. What I want you to take away from Robert's story is that sometimes our life doesn't go as planned. We try so hard to be in control, but when life throws us curveballs, we have to remember that we have options. And there's just not one path to success. If you enjoyed this episode and you want to learn more about making your best money moves,

go check out my app live, take control of your financial future. I always think of learning these things like eating a pizza. Everybody loves pizza and I love pizza. It's one of my favorite things in the entire world. And you can't eat the whole thing at once. You have to eat it piece by piece. And that's the only way that you can get through the whole pizza.

And so I think learning to invest or learning the stock market is the same idea. You have to start with the first piece and you have to eat that and then work around the pizza before you can understand it. And also remember this, that knowledge is like anything else. You're going to compound on it. And if you keep working at it, you're going to start to understand things. It's kind of like water dripping on a stone. Eventually it's going to make an impression.

And if you keep working at it, you can figure it out. Trust me, I'm not the smartest guy in the world. I'm out. Trust me, I'm not the smartest guy in the world. I'm smart in spots, but I'm not the smartest guy in the world. So I've been able to figure some of this out. And it's just by doing some work and really paying attention. And I really encourage people to do this. And if I can do it, everybody can do it. Again, if you like this episode and want to check out a similar one,

go check out my YAHB live, take control of your financial future. Now as always I want to end this episode by giving a shout out to one of our recent Apple Podcast reviewers. Dropping us an Apple Podcast review is the number one way to thank us here at Young and Profiting Podcast. I read all of our reviews and I love to get your feedback. Our latest review is from Carrie Heehee all the way out from Australia. She says, amazing host and content. I absolutely love this podcast. It's an incredible host and content.

The content is much needed and I've learned so much from Hala and her amazing guests. For anyone that hasn't checked out the episodes yet, please do so. And Hala, I just wanted to say that I listen to your podcast every day while drinking my coffee and getting ready for work in the morning It's one of the best parts of my day. Thank you so much and please keep sharing your life Wow all the way from Australia somebody is listening to my podcast every single morning I am so grateful that you've made us a part of your morning routine And I think that anybody who listens to YAP every single day is gonna really seriously level up their life fast If you guys are out there tuning in and you love young and profiting podcasts to gap every single day is going to really seriously level up their life fast.

If you guys are out there tuning in and you love young and profiting podcasts, go ahead write us a five star review. It is the best way to thank us. I read all of our reviews and it is so special to me when I hear your feedback and it makes everything worth it. You know, we don't charge, we don't do Patreon, we don't do anything like that. We just ask you guys for your support. Drop us an Apple Podcast review.

It helps with social proof, it helps with rankings, and it's super important for us. The other thing I'd love for you guys to do, if you listen to the end of the show, you have bragging rights. Take a screenshot of this app right now. Upload it to your Instagram story, tag me at yappwithhala, I will reshare it,

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upload it to your Instagram story, and tag me at Yap with Hala, and I'm gonna repost it and reshare it. You guys can also find find me on LinkedIn just search for my name, it's Holla Taha. Big thanks to the Yaptime as always, this is Holla signing off. Are you looking for ways to be happier, healthier, more productive and more creative? I'm Gretchen Rubin, the number one best-selling author of the Happiness Project. Are you looking for ways to be happier, healthier, more productive and more creative? I'm Gretchen Ruben, the number one best-selling author of the Happiness Project. And every week we share ideas and practical solutions on the Happier with Gretchen Ruben Podcast.

My co-host and Happiness Guinea Pig is my sister Elizabeth Kraft. That's me, Elizabeth Kraft, a TV writer and producer in Hollywood. Join us as we explore fresh insights from cutting-edge science, ancient wisdom, pop culture, and our own experiences about cultivating happiness and good habits. Every week we offer a try this at home tip you can use to boost your happiness

without spending a lot of time energy or money. Suggestions such as follow the one-minute rule. Choose a one-word theme for the year or design your summer. We also feature segments like Know Yourself better where we discuss questions like, are you an over buyer or an under buyer? Morning person or night person, abundance lever or simplicity lever? And every episode includes a happiness hack, a quick, easy shortcut to more happiness. Listen and follow the podcast, Happier with Gretchen Rubin. Get on up with Darken Bold from Community Coffee. Follow the podcast Happier with Gretchen Ruben.