Who Wants to Be a Billionaire (Not Me!) – With Michael Zuber

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I said, you know what? I don’t want to be a billionaire. In fact, it’s not even it’s not even on my radar. It’s not a goal. I want to I want to have enough money. And you can have a lot of success financially. Do everything you want to do in your life. I’m not willing to do the cost that it would take to scale and grow bigger.

 

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Welcome to the Podcast Real Estate Investing with Coach Carson. I’m your host, Chad Carson. You can also call me Coach. And this is a show to help you get out of the financial grind so you can do more of what matters. Can you believe it? It’s early December. It’s that time of year when it starts getting colder. The days are getting shorter, at least where I am in South Carolina. And for me, it’s one of my favorite times of year, because it’s a time when it’s more natural to reflect, to kind of go inward and say, all right, 2023 is almost done. 2024 is around the corner. What are my goals? What do I want to accomplish? How have I done this year? What do I want to be in 2024 and beyond? And this episode is sort of in that theme, and the title is Who Wants to be a Billionaire? And I want to share with you why I don’t personally want to be a billionaire, but it’s really about aspirations and what our goals actually are and redefining success. If not a billionaire, what is your goal? What is your aspiration? Perhaps there’s something even better than piling up the most money so that when you look back at the end of your life, you’re happy and fulfilled with the way things went.

 

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So in this episode, I share some of my own reflections on what my big picture aspirations are, what’s more important to me than becoming a billionaire? And it’s actually a conversation with Michael Zuber from one rental at a time. We originally published this episode on his podcast, his YouTube channel, and he was kind enough to let me republish it and share it with you. If you have your own comments or reflections from this episode, I’d always love to hear from you. Send me an email at [email protected]. And as you’re reflecting on 2023 and looking forward to 2024, if one of your reflections is that you’d like some help with your rental investing journey and your journey towards financial freedom, I want to remind you that I have a program called Rental Property Mastery where I’m coaching people on a weekly basis, helping people with their strategy. Helping people with the tactics. Day to day, week to week. And you can check that out in the link in the podcast description.

 

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Now, let’s get to today’s episode, folks.

 

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I don’t know if you follow this young man on Twitter or X, but you have to coach Carson Chad, but he put out a post, a tweet of whatever you call these X things the other day that basically highlighted he’s a total loser. He doesn’t want to be a billionaire, folks. Kind of loser doesn’t want to be a billionaire. And before you overreact, I am, of course, kidding. I have no interest in being a billionaire either, but it is quite the statement on Twitter. Or tell us tell us why you said that.

 

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Yeah, I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, Michael. Twitter is fun. You can scroll through, and there’s lots of interesting people. Right? But one of the common themes I’ve noticed, even some people I admire out there is like, the pinnacle of success in the business world, is becoming a billionaire. If you’re not Elon Musk, at least you can be, like, a one billionaire. And whether you’re a real estate investor, whether you’re a business owner, people, I follow that’s kind of the aspiration I pushed back on that, I said, you know what? I don’t want to be a billionaire. In fact, it’s not even on my radar. It’s not a goal. I don’t even want to be 150 millionaire. I want to have enough money. And you can have a lot of success financially. Do everything you want to do in your life. I’m not willing to do the cost that it would take to scale and grow big. And I’ve been through my business sprint, like a lot of people listening to this. You’re in the middle of your grind, your sprint. You’re doing the work that Michael talks about. That’s fun. I enjoy the grind, but at the point I’m at, and I think where you’re at too, Michael, we’ve paid our dues.

 

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We’ve kind of gotten to some certain plateaus on the financial ladder climbing up that mountain. And for me, I don’t plan on leaving the game. I like to be in business. I like to be engaged, but doing what it takes to become, to scale, scale, scale, grow, build these big systems. Not everybody wants to do that. That’s not for everybody.

 

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You’re absolutely right. When I look at my grind was 15 years daily discipline, busting my ass during the day for my day job, doing everything else in the evenings and weekends, and I had zero interest. Right. I always tell people I envision the financial freedom as a mountain, and I’ve personally chosen to sit my ass down on a great vista. Yeah, there’s a lot more vistas above me, and there’s lots more places to go, and I reserve the right to stand up and go higher. But, dude, I’m having a good old time right now. I have more than I deserve. I’ve got everything I’ve ever wanted. I just don’t get it. There are some people that wrap up their ego in a hundred million or a billion, and I’ve met some of them. I don’t think they’re particularly happy if you break down their life. They’re not taking a year off to go live in Spain like somebody I know on this show, and it’s not me. Right? There’s just so much more to life, and I am proud to say I’m sitting my ass down. I’ll do one or two deals a year, and I’m okay with that.

 

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Absolutely. Yeah. I think that the bigger picture for me. And actually, the reason I wrote the book I wrote, I had this itch in my head was about redefining success. Yes, that money is great. You and I both admire people who are going and grinding to get more money. Wealth building is amazing. The economy is amazing. Capitalism is amazing. This is not about that. This is about adding more measurement tools to the success, the way we measure success. And for me, money is one of those things. You call it a currency. But if you really think about what you need to be successful in relationships with your family, with your friends, when you really think about what success, when you’re on your deathbed and you’re like, let me think about my life. How did it go? What was good? What was bad? Are you going to really say, oh, I piled up $100 million more or $10 million more?

 

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No.

 

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You’re going to think about the time you spent with the people that were important to you. You’re going to think about the people you contributed to. You’re going to think about the legacy you left, the relationships you have. So I think those are harder to measure. Money is easier to measure. Business is easier to measure. So I think we a type. People which I put myself in that category are susceptible to just continuing to move those goalposts and say, more money, more money, more money, and make that like, the most important thing. When really the more difficult challenges for me in my life have been to slow down a little bit and to focus on my family or focus on some other area of growth that I need because I’m not healthy. I need to go work on this part of my health or I need to work on this education that I’m not really that good at. So there’s a lot of I just I want to expand what we think about as being successful beyond just that money measurement.

 

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I kind of had a pivot, right? My epiphany. Here goes. Type a grind. Best at what I did. Moments notice. Quit out of nowhere. Don’t have a plan. I ran from something versus to something. Folks don’t do that. It sucks. And then you get depressed. And it was one thought that saved me. I don’t know where it came from. I’m glad it did. But this was the thought I had, is what can you do to outlive your kind of physical body? Because I think everybody dies twice. Just my belief. Your physical body dies once, and then when the last person says nice things or thinks about you, that’s the second time and my goal is to outlive my physical body by 50 years. That’s a crazy goal. That’s a goal I work on every day. And that’s how I’ve replaced with this scoreboard money number. Now it’s like, who are we impacting? Who’s going to say nice things about me in 50 years or 100 years? Because I help them have a better life. Dude, it’s a lot more fun. It involves a lot more people. It’s pretty cool.

 

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Absolutely. Yeah. I had similar my own versions of those recollections when I was trying to got enough money. What’s going on here? And for me, exactly where you are to me. I looked at some of my teachers and coaches in my life as some of my role models and I started thinking about, you know what, my own success is pretty cool. But any of us who’ve been a teacher, a coach, a parent, if you happen to be a parent, when you look at the people you’re coaching or teaching, their success makes you 100 times happier than your own success. At least that’s been the case for me. I think it has been for you, too. There’s just something in our DNA, there’s something ingrained in us to bring other people along on this journey we’re on. And it’s amazing. I feel like pinch myself every day, help other people be successful, buy properties, make cash flow, become a better. That’s that’s just a pretty cool job. So I’m loving life.

 

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Yeah. And again, I want to be clear. Could Chad and I grind and double what we have? Absolutely. But just like everybody else, we only have 24 hours in the day. If I was going to be aggressive and try to double my portfolio in the next three to five years, I could not have this YouTube channel, I could not have written my books. I would be maniacally focused on finding deals, networking, seeing properties, talking to sellers. And in my world, at least where I’m at today, I see that as selfish. I don’t need anymore. Yeah, I’ll get one or two a year just to stay in the game, but I don’t need AII. Think I can. The reward is to your point is seeing the next person get their first one versus my 200th. It’s just a different equation. Thank you. Yeah.

 

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And I want to go back to something you also said earlier, which I think is kind of the main point for all of us. Wherever you are in your journey, if you’re brand new to this, if you’re in the middle of your journey, michael mentioned something about not going to something like when you’re trying to retire or you’re trying to get financial freedom, just getting there is important. But if you don’t have something in your life that you’re going towards, what is the point? What is this ladder propped against? And I call that your why. My motto at Coach Carson is do what matters. That just reminds me that we’re doing this real estate thing because there’s something that matters to people even more than the real estate and everybody’s got their own thing. That’s such a critical piece of it. For one, it motivates you along the way. When it’s really difficult and you’re in that 15 year grind, you got to have something that just drives you. It might be a person you want to care for. It might be a mission you have outside of real estate. It might just be you want to be the best person you can and that really motivates you.

 

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But there’s got to be something. And the cool thing about that is it can motivate you while you’re climbing and then once you get there, if you start dabbling in it like for you it’s been a teacher. For me, it’s a teacher as well. I started blogging and writing this thing just because I love it and because I would pay people to go do this kind of stuff I’m doing. And it’s a passion. And so before you get to there like well, before it 510 years before it start thinking about how would you spend your day on an ideal day, what kind of activities would you do? Would you spend four to 6 hours reading? Would you start another business? Would you start a nonprofit? Would you spend more time with your family? Those are the kind of questions that once you have the space, if you are successful with your finances, then you’ll have a plan to fill that space and not just have it be a vacuum. Because that’s the tough part, that if you just figure you’re going to be happy once you have the money, it doesn’t work that way.

 

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No, I will second that. Again. My plan was to retire at 50. I had a moment come up at 45. It was over and I came home and I had a great couple of days and then I got depressed because I didn’t have that thing. And before anybody, my experience is you can’t just play golf, sit on a beach, do nothing all day. That gets really old. And it’s also very solitary because most people work. So to your point, Chad, find something that you want to run to and work on it early. Right. I should have been doing this YouTube channel or writing a book or whatever it was years before. I probably should have done it when I was 40 or 35. It would have been a totally different journey. So yeah, definitely get that going. So at the end of the day, Chad, you are not a loser because you don’t want to be a billionaire. You are amazing. I think it’s the right answer for most people. I am right there with you.

 

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I’m trying to be a billionaire in free time and a meaningful life so.

 

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That’S it a billionaire in time in helping others. I like that. You are a billionaire, Chad. Thank you very much.

 

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Thanks, Michael.

 

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Hey, team, thanks for listening to this episode. If you enjoyed it, the biggest compliment and the favor you can do for me is to leave a review on Apple podcast. It only takes a minute, but it would mean the world to me because it helps other people find the show. I also want to remind you that I have a free weekly newsletter where I share stories, case studies and lessons that will help you on your journey to financial freedom as a rental investor. So check out a link below in the podcast description for my newsletter. You’ll also get some free goodies tools and spreadsheets that will help you to become a better rental investor. You’ve been listening to the podcast Real Estate Investing with Coach Carson. Of course, I’m your host, Chad Carson. You can also call me Coach. And this is a show to help you get out of the financial grind so you can do more of what matters. See you next time.