Ep481 Shaping Your Child's Financial Future Through Asset Ownership with Chris Bystriansky

Are the golden handcuffs of your nine-to-five weighing you down? Imagine breaking free and constructing a life of freedom, wealth, and a lasting legacy. This week on the Conscious Investor Podcast, join me, Julie Holly, as I sit down with Chris Bystriansky, whose journey from corporate servitude to real estate tycoon will inspire you to make your own leap towards financial liberation. Chris's tale is a vivid illustration of the shift from chasing paychecks to cultivating passive income, a cornerstone of our holistic approach to investing.

Your child's piggy bank might be their current financial frontier, but what if it could be the seed of their future empire? Discover how Chris transformed his daughter's perception of money by transitioning her from earning an allowance to owning assets and understanding cash flow. Through the highs and lows of her emotional journey, she learned the importance of investing—a powerful lesson in shaping a young investor's mindset. This episode is a treasure trove of strategies for parents eager to instill financial literacy in their kids through engaging, hands-on experiences.

Finally, dive into the world of apartment syndication, a topic that often feels like an intricate puzzle for aspiring investors. Fret not, as Chris guides you through the essentials, breaking down the complexity into digestible pieces. With my easy-to-follow resource, 'Syndication Made Simple,' and an open invitation to one-on-one discussions, you'll find yourself one step closer to reaching those investment goals. Tune in and unlock the door to not just living big, but also loving bigger, and chasing the extraordinary in the vast realm of real estate investing.

Your feedback is invaluable to me and the show! Leave an honest rating and review at The Conscious Investor on Apple Podcasts

Visit ThreeKeysInvestments.com to download “Why Invest in Apartments” and "Syndication Made Simple"

Visit IAmAConsciousInvestor.com to download "Beyond Financial Freedom: A Conscious Investors Guide to Personal Freedom".

Apply to the investor club or schedule a call HERE

Learn about coaching with Julie HERE.

If you’re looking for an affordable healthcare solution, check out Christian Healthcare Ministries by visiting https://bit.ly/3JTRm1I

Episodes referenced in the introduction:

• Repurposing Your Past
• 3 Things to Understand About Syndication
• ...

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Hello Conscious Investor and welcome back. I'm your host, julie Hawley. For over four years, I've paired my background in real estate, investing, education and coaching to create powerful content for you each week. This podcast is where we take a holistic approach to investing by focusing on three ingredients to a life of personal freedom health, mindset and wealth. We'll talk about everything from passive investing through syndication and how to use your retirement accounts to boost your investing, to mineral balancing and gut brain health, and into topics that cultivate your inner strength and resilience so you can thrive regardless of any of life's current events. And yes, those are all episodes currently available and linked in the show notes below. Join me each Monday for a mindset episode and later in the week for an interview with expert investors and health professionals, so that you can experience your greatest health, strongest mindset and build the wisest wealth. Chris, I am so excited to have you here on the Conscious Investor Podcast. Welcome to the show and we all want to know what do you do and how did you get started?

Speaker 2: 1:10

Thank you very much for having me, julie. Yeah, so that's quite an interesting story in that I grew up in a relatively poor situation and it was always ingrained in me that I had to go to school, get a great education and get that corporate job and buy the house and a 401k and everyone's heard this story. But I nailed that strategy. I went and got two advanced degrees, I had jobs at Fortune 25 companies for about 15 years of my life and I thought I was living the American dream. But I really felt empty. And it dawned on me one day, julie, that no matter how high I climbed the corporate ladder, there was nothing that I could leave to my kids or my family. If I left them a lot of money, it would simply be gone in a matter of time. So I wanted to be able to create a legacy. So in 2017, 2018, I started really focusing on how to create other streams of income and I had in my mind that I was going to go and buy single family houses you know, maybe two in 2017, and just build up one or two every year. And I was doing my due diligence and I talked to some folks who I thought were in real estate and they all said the same thing. Like five different people basically said the same thing Before you go, buy a single family house, learn more about multifamily, some bigger stuff. So I bit the bullet and I went to a real estate meetup. And, julie, that was like the first time that I really had a gut check and a humility pill, because here I was an attorney with a high powered MBA and I had a great job at a big company and I was going to walk into a place that I'm not really sure I needed, but something was drawing me to it. I went into as a restaurant after work and I sat in my car for about 15 minutes just arguing with myself Am I going? Am I not going? Am I going? Am I not going? What are these people possibly going to teach me? Maybe I'll just go back to my job and just do that.

Speaker 2: 3:29

I finally decided to go in and it changed my life. I heard story after story you know a quick presentation, the standard format, educational and then story after story of people who were getting into real estate. They didn't think it was possible for them. They had these jobs, they were able to retire themselves and their spouse after three, four, five years and they really seemed to have the lifestyle that I was wanting. So I'm looking at these folks and I've got this great education, this great job, nice house. I, I had it all. And then I'm like you know what? Maybe they're doing it better than I am. So I, I, I went to get more education on multifamily, went to several more meetups, several, several big educational conferences and joined a mentor group and I went all in and I started investing by 2018 and 2019 2018.

Speaker 2: 4:25

And 2019, I left my corporate job to do this full time, to focus on real estate full time. I've built up my portfolio to about 15 multifamily properties and also have an investment in land in Austin, in Texas, florida and Georgia, and some have sold over time and the transactions happen. But that's what I'm doing now. I went from corporate employee the thing I thought I was supposed to be doing, living a corporate dream to investing, and I met a lot of great people. It completely changed my lifestyle and I want to pass it on to my kids and we'll get into it a little bit later, because it's so important to me to pass on the legacy. Remember that it dawned on me that I couldn't pass anything on to my kids. Well, this is something I can pass on to my kids, but the first thing I wanted to pass on was very specific knowledge about how to make money. You know, I used to look at it like, oh, paycheck, big paycheck is even better.

Speaker 1: 5:30

And now it's more of a passive income or multiple streams of different income. This is one of the elements that connected you and I when we met at an event last fall is just the book that you wrote, renting from your Six-Year-Old, and one of the tenets that you may or may not be aware of of the conscious investors. Under the wealth pillar there's health mindset wealth. Under wealth we have tangible yeah, the paper asset, the things we could actually see, touch, taste, feel. We have intangible I can't see them, but experiences and the feelings. And then we have transferable, and that's really what you're talking about is I want to transfer everything from myself to my kids so that they can be successful even when I'm gone, and I absolutely love that um, that premise. I actually think, chris, that this goes, this um transcends legacy wealth.

Speaker 1: 6:22

When I hear people talk about legacy wealth, legacy wealth seems very limited to in the way people talk about it in general. It seems very limited to. This is how I'm passing on the family estate, the tangible wealth that we've created, and that's why after three generations it's generally vaporized because they didn't transfer the knowledge side of it. So there's so many questions I have Before we go down that path. I'd love to know because I try to hear conscious investor. I've got you. I hear the question when you left your corporate America job. I mean we've already established like you were a high powered attorney, you were probably very well compensated. Um, where was there a lifestyle change when you were transitioning from corporate into full-time real estate? Did you and your wife have a discussion about this? What was that like? And did you have all of those? It was like kind, I made this much and now we filled the gap and so I can leave.

Speaker 2: 7:28

Well, you did mention that it was pretty highly paid. Yes, although I was not working in the legal group at the time, it was still a nice corporate role. We have not replaced it. Well, real estate's weird in that one year you knock it out of the park and in another year it's kind of dry, just like last year. I mean my, my distributions were really low, last year only one or two sales, but the year before it crushed it. So it's kind of. You know, it's up and down based on where interest rates are in the market as an activity.

Speaker 2: 7:57

But no, my wife was all on board. Um, because she she's, she's smart, she's, she has the brains in the family, but she was on board and what we were able to do is really take advantage of the taxes. So, despite those nice big paychecks and my wife also worked in the corporate world despite all that gross income, the tax man was taking a big bite out of that. And we were able to eliminate most of that because of my full-time real estate status and all my activity. So you kind of look at that and all of a sudden, wow, I don't need to make exactly the same because I'm keeping more than I was keeping before, and that's a huge thing. So we went all in in 2018 and paid a lot of money for tax strategy advice and finding the right firm to help us with all that.

Speaker 2: 8:52

And it's funny because I did practice tax law but I was more on the corporate side and it never really dawned on me that I should start doing that for myself. It was something always for the future that I should start doing that for myself. It was something always for the future. Well, it kind of lit a fire under me having kids and wanting to pass on wealth and knowledge. So we really went all in on tax strategy and I kind of add something every year. You know, when you get involved with taxes, it is a very big learning curve and even if you're getting good advice, there's still a lot to learn and then a lot to implement. Right, it just takes time, and over the years, we've just been implementing one strategy at a time or two strategies at a time, and now we're really focused on getting our kids involved in the business, which is absolutely wonderful, and all the tax benefits that come with that.

Speaker 1: 9:44

Oh, yes, yes, Substantial tax benefits with having your kids involved in your business. I really value that you're talking about. Hey, we're going to implement these strategies in a way that we can successfully do that. So sometimes people will just dive into the deep end and say, like I'm going to tackle all this. So sometimes people will just dive into the deep end and say, like I'm going to tackle all this and then they end up drowning and not making any forward progress.

Speaker 1: 10:10

By the way, conscious Investor, check out Brian Moran's book the 12-Week Year, if you're looking for a strategy on how to tackle larger goals. Or you could check out John Acuff's book All it Takes is a Goal. Both of those are written for very different people, but strategies on, you know, implementing something for a lasting change. So I'd love that you, you're actually a role model and like, hey, we're going to just do this consistently over time and we're going to reap the rewards of that. We want to ask you also about land. You threw land into the portfolio. So I love and I love the humility of going to a meetup and being inspired and in learning, you have the humility to actually listen to somebody and say, okay, before I invest in single family. I'm going to explore my options and obviously through that process you also discovered, you know, purchasing land. How is that beneficial for your portfolio and what are you enjoying about that asset class?

Speaker 2: 11:13

So the land was just to diversify a little bit. It's I'm a limited partner in that deal. It's it's land outside of Austin, pretty close to a Tesla factory, and the goal with that is to eventually build multifamily. Now that was just for diversification, you know, and maybe the multiple on that is two or three or what have you, but I got all excited about it. But the downside of that is that there's no cash flow for a long time. So you know, I I had put money into that and I failed to put more money into cash flowing assets. So but it's a good learning experience. I'm getting a little bit exposure to the development process, which is something I'd eventually like to get into. So that's more of a, that's more of an educational part of the portfolio in that I'm learning a little bit, getting a little bit exposure to, you know that the land acquisition and then, um, developing, you know, going through the, the process of getting a land ready and approved and everything it's a getting having a land I've done I.

Speaker 1: 12:14

I'm in a development project right and going through the, the rezoning and the planning committees and everything and you know, getting the entitlement, everything set up and structured correctly. The engineering, engineering yeah it's a, it's an entire process and I commend you on, you know, going down that path because it's it's fun. It's it's pretty intense but it's a lot of fun.

Speaker 2: 12:37

It is. It's good to see see it happening. I wish it would happen faster because you know there's no. There's no returns or anything, and we'll get the opportunity to roll our investments into the multifamily property once that's built, which is nice, but it's just a long time. It's eventually going to pay off and I think there'll be a couple of multiples in there, but that might be a small part of my portfolio. So most of my stuff is multifamily. I have the land and I also interesting I invested in a biotech company. It's not a startup, it's about 10 years old, but they had a couple of rounds of financing so I invested heavily in that. So we'll see, we'll see. I like the prospects of that one, but anyway, the bulk is the bulk is in multifamily. But I did diversify a little bit.

Speaker 1: 13:32

Yeah, that's. I really appreciate that and I think diversification is really important, even within real estate and asset classes within real estate, public assets and private assets like just good to have an investment portfolio that is truly diversified. All right, I want to circle back because I know that once we start this conversation because you and I had this conversation I'm like, oh, it's going to be hard to go back into the investing side of things once we start talking about renting from your six-year-old and I think it's your daughter that you were renting from.

Speaker 2: 14:07

Yeah, I had. At the time I had a six year old daughter.

Speaker 1: 14:10

She's not six anymore.

Speaker 2: 14:12

She's not six anymore, so there's more after this story and there's there's probably another book in the works at some point about her growth after, after this particular book. But I have a background in psychology, in teaching kids, so I wanted to take all the experience that I had from my psychology background, my legal background, my investing background and my corporate background and I wanted to teach my daughter, give her a crash course in being an employee and then making a transition to an investor, because I wanted her to see the upside and the downside of being an employee and then same thing with being an investor. But you know, I don't know if you've ever tried to teach a six-year-old anything, but it's damn near impossible, ok, especially something as complex as investing or cash or anything like that. Now, I could have explained things to her for 20 years and it would not have done any good. I've had these conversations with adults and you basically cannot explain it to some of them. So what's the best way to teach somebody something? Is it to talk about it or is it to do it? And I think there's a little bit of talking but more doing. So I came up with this. Yeah, action, absolutely. So I came up with this process for my daughter to really deeply understand the benefits of investing in hard assets and generating cash flow. So what I did? I set her up to be an employee. Okay, this is the same thing that almost all people go through, you know, all adults go through.

Speaker 2: 16:00

I gave her a job around the house and I paid her. I gave her a job around the house and I paid her, and her simple one job was to turn the lights on at night in the back of the house and in the back and in front of the house and turn them off during the day. So on at night, off during the day, and for that every day. She would do that every day. She got paid $1 a week. And then the second week I added another job. It was to straighten out the rugs in the house, all right, and she earned another dollar. And then in the third week I gave her another job. So she had. Well, after three weeks she was. She had three jobs and she's making three3 a week. So her job, three jobs, and then her wages of $3 a week.

Speaker 2: 16:48

After several months of doing this she built up 25, 30 bucks and I gave her the opportunity. Now here's where I transitioned her or I wanted her to transition into being an investor. I gave her this offer and let me know if you think this sounds familiar or is parallel in any way to the real world. I offered her the opportunity to buy the toaster that was sitting in our kitchen for $25. And in exchange for that, I would pay her $1 of rent per week so that the family could use the toaster. So she would become the owner of the toaster and then she would collect rent from the family. Okay, she's buying an asset you and I would buy an apartment or assisted living facility, but she's buying something around the house that she can feel that she can touch. So for $25, here's the deal $25 in exchange for one $1 week in cash flow.

Speaker 2: 17:49

Now, I don't want to do it. Ok, and this went on for several weeks. Now I don't want to do it. I don't understand. I don't want to do it. Ok, that's fine. I didn't push her. The whole point was not to push her. I needed her to come to the table by herself, Because if I pushed her, she might be making that decision for the wrong reason. Okay, so finally, she says okay, I drew up a little agreement.

Speaker 2: 18:19

It had about five sentences on it and I sat down to read it with her and I basically basically said you know, daughter agrees to buy the toaster for mommy and daddy for $25. And mommy and daddy agree to pay rent of $1 per week on Saturdays, or Saturdays or Sundays. She looked at it. She said are you taking my money? I said well, yeah, but you're going to get toaster. She started crying and she ran up to her stairs screaming I don't want you to take my money. And she slammed the door to her room. Well, that didn't go like I thought it was going to go. But you know what? That's what basically happens in the real world. When you offer somebody or talk to somebody about hey, I've got this real estate investment or this is what I'm doing, are they accepting right away or are they? That's not going to work. I don't want to do that. I'm invested here, I'm fine. Every excuse in the book. They basically do exactly what my six-year-old did A couple of weeks later.

Speaker 2: 19:16

I didn't bring it up anymore to her. I don't want to offend her. I needed her to take time to really process what was going on. One day, a couple weeks after this catastrophe. She looks at I'm in the kitchen. She's in the living room playing on the floor. She looks up. That means she says, fine, I'll buy the damn toaster Like whoa. I didn't say anything about that. I it was as if she was having an argument in her mind about this very issue and she finally decided yeah, I was going to do it, she was going to do it. So I went and got the agreement. We walked through it gently. She signed it, me and my wife signed it and it was done. So I take $25 out of her, out of her bank, which was just a bag of like a uh a Zipl.

Speaker 2: 20:06

Yeah, it was a bank. Okay, she takes it out, but it was a weekend. So what happened was she got paid for her jobs and then she got one dollar of rent for the following week. So you know, I almost drained her account and then she got money back into it right away. And then this goes on for months.

Speaker 2: 20:31

I added another job, she got another, I added another asset, she the second asset she didn't really want to buy like a month later, and then after that she started wanting to buy stuff. As she got more money. She's like, yeah, I'll buy that, I'll buy that, okay, I'll do that. So it was hard at first for her. But then you know, within a couple she's like, yeah, I'll buy that, I'll buy that, okay, I'll do that. So it was hard at first for her. But then you know, within a couple months, she's like yeah, give me, I want to buy everything. I like this concept of free money.

Speaker 2: 20:56

I pulled her aside one day and I said sweetie, I'm, you know those jobs that you do, you know the, the lights and the rugs and and that other thing. And she's like yeah, I said we can't pay you for those anymore. You're, you're too expensive and we're going to let your younger sister do those and we're going to pay her less. And she, she got a little upset and she said but are you still going to pay me for the things I bought? I said, oh yeah, those are your assets, we have to pay you rent for those. And she's like but I'm not going to get paid for the jobs. I said, no, we're not going to pay you anymore. She's like, oh OK, and she takes off and goes back to play. So if she did not buy those assets, I would have taken away her income streams, her jobs. But because she had those assets and she was generating passive income on those, she didn't care about her jobs. Does that sound parallel to anything that could possibly happen in the real world?

Speaker 1: 22:01

It is the story. I laid her off. It is the story.

Speaker 2: 22:08

I laid her off. So she went from being an employee a happy employee getting a little bit of money every week to being very scared about doing these investments. She didn't know they were investments. We never talked about investments. We never talked about passive income. I just made an offer to her. We didn't talk about any of the complex issues or any of the simple issues either, because she would not have understood them. But since she actually did them, she felt what it was like to use some of her money to buy something and then get paid for it. That's the critical piece, because she understood then what this was all about. I no longer needed to explain what I do on a daily basis. I no longer need to explain investments. And when she lost her jobs, couldn't care less Great Thanks. Now I don't have to do those jobs. I'm perfect. Great. She eventually was making $20 a week on her assets, on her investments, compared to $3 a week in her jobs. She couldn't care less.

Speaker 1: 23:13

I know there's some timing, so I would love to ask the question to say how has this impacted her life as she's matured in life?

Speaker 2: 23:21

She doesn't spend money. She doesn't spend money. Before we started this whole process with her, we would go into a toy store just for giggles. It was just someplace to hang out. There's a really nice toy store close to our house when we lived in Katy, texas, and we would just go in there and look at stuff and she's like I want to buy that, I want to buy that, I want to buy that I want to buy that.

Speaker 2: 23:42

I want to buy that. I'm like no, no, no, no, no, no, no. But let me show you how to make money and then maybe you can come back and buy whatever you want later. But now she's got all this money and like not really interested. So she understands what things cost and the value of things and she's not. She's not really that interested in toys anymore. She'll get plenty of stuff for her birthday from relatives and friends and Christmas and stuff like that. So she doesn't spend her money anymore on toys. She used to a little bit, but now it's like nah, she saved her money and she bought a computer.

Speaker 2: 24:21

When she was nine she bought a computer and the purpose of the computer. She likes art and she wants to learn graphic design. I said that's wonderful, because I need logos and different things for websites and this and that. And then, if you start doing that, I can start paying you for real and then we can have some fun with Roth IRAs and then real investments. How long is that going to take? Another year, so you know she'll be 11, 12 when all that stuff happens. That's the plan. But all this started with a little idea of getting her into assets around the house and not pushing her into it, letting her come to the conclusion that she was going to do it. She's going to give it a shot and see what happens. She made the big mindset transformation that anybody would have to go through of using wages to buy an asset. And she didn't even know she was doing it, so go ahead.

Speaker 1: 25:25

So go ahead. It's so powerful because even before I went on the active side of you know, commercial real estate investing, my husband and I went on the passive side and we did that intentionally. I said I know I want to be active, I know I want to support, you know, investors in placing their capital and private investments. However, I want to walk the path because I know that there's a lot of the psychology behind it. There are a lot of feelings involved and I want to be very in tune with those feelings. So what she experienced is all of those feelings.

Speaker 1: 26:02

At such an early age it's just amazing to be able to collapse all of that and say, oh, all of that's going to be very natural. You know, kind of like my kids, when they go, you know, if we go look at a property, you know they'll they'll maybe reluctantly be like, oh well, how much you're going to have to replace x, y and z and that's going to be about. You know it's like, okay, you're getting it just by osmosis, but I love the intentionality that you had in, you know, guiding your daughter. How about daughter number two? Did she get hired for lesser and was she resentful?

Speaker 2: 26:35

Absolutely, absolutely. She gets paid peanuts and she has a different job. Now she's. She keeps asking for more jobs. She turned six pretty soon, so she'll run through the same process, but she's going to pick it up a lot faster just by seeing what's going on. And you know, I pay my older daughter sometimes when my younger daughter's around and the younger daughter's like hey, what about me? Like well, you're going to have to do what she did, and the younger ones on board. So you know she'll have an easier path of it. The second time is always easier. Second time, after you've seen something, whether you know you're witnessing someone else, it gets easier.

Speaker 1: 27:14

Yeah, definitely. It's exciting to see you know what can happen Now. Conscious Investor, I mean, like this is a book head over to Amazon. You can pick up a book and you can implement this If you have a friend. Most of us know people that are having kids or grandkids or of the like. Chris, if you're watching, it's holding up the front cover, so if you're on YouTube you can actually see the cover. So you want to make sure you go pick up Renting from a Six-Year-Old, from my Six-Year-Old, and you can gift that book, buy a copy for yourself and buy a copy to gift somebody else so they can have that. You know, front knowledge on the upside.

Speaker 2: 27:56

Yeah, I appreciate that, julie, and it's, you know, it's not only for people with kids. It's really helped get over your mindset and if you're having difficulty with somebody else as an investor or getting a spouse on board, share that book with them. There's a lot of simple, yet profound and deep lessons through the eyes of a six-year-old that are applicable no matter what age you are.

Speaker 1: 28:20

Yeah, it's so true. Now you have another book as well, new steel, and I appreciate that. Um, I think you and I were talking off air. You know just how, uh, you know sports. We both like cycling and the struggles that we can face as we are training for something, uh and and actually actually going through an event. They, they push us right, and that psychology behind that applies to all parts of life. So I'd love to hear about New Steel and the lessons that people can gain when they pick that book up.

Speaker 2: 28:58

Yeah, so New Steel Chronicles an interesting issue that I had previously in my life and that I've had both of my hips replaced, and the first one was when I was in my 30s. Well, I didn't know, you know, what kind of activity level I'd be able to get back to, but I had my first hip replaced right before my first daughter was born and I could barely walk 10 feet without severe pain and I was very concerned about the kind of father or husband I'd be able to be if I wasn't that mobile. So I decided to have one of my hips replaced. After a lot of alternative treatments it was the last resort, but I had to do it and I didn't know how I'd be able to come back from that. I did a lot of physical therapy. 18 months later I had to have my other hip replaced and I wanted to get rid of my limp, because I was so embarrassed about having that done and I wanted to remove any evidence in the form of a limp. So I did a lot of physical therapy, a lot of stretching, and you know it worked. I mean, no one can tell. If I didn't tell you, there's no way you would be able to tell and I got a little sick and tired of people at my corporate job not making fun of me, necessarily, but making accommodations that I didn't really think needed to be made. So, for example, I'd go into a meeting and a pregnant woman you know, eight months pregnant would try to get up and give me a chair. I said no, no, no, no, I'm fine, please don't, please don't. So I really wanted to do something to show myself and really put any negative thoughts out of my head that I was back and I wanted to just be active like I was before. So I set a goal to do an Ironman triathlon, and one wasn't good enough, so I signed up for two and I was able to do both of those in 2021.

Speaker 2: 31:12

Um, new steel is about facing a challenge of the hips and then having a mindset of overcoming such challenges and completing an Ironman or whatever challenge you may have in your life. So it's helpful to athletes. It's helpful to people facing other challenges, whether business, relationship, health. So that's the concept of New Steel helping people, chronicling what I did and helping other people face and overcome their challenges. So that was a very rewarding book to write. I end up talking about that a lot. I do presentations at running stores and I get contacted somewhat frequently about people. Hey, I'm going through this too. Thanks for writing a book. And what did you do here? How did you do that? So it's been very rewarding.

Speaker 1: 31:54

That's amazing. Why were you embarrassed? Was it an age thing? Was it the? I shouldn't need a hip replacement because I'm in my 30s, not in my 60s or 70s.

Speaker 2: 32:05

Yeah, there's some of that. I was really young. I felt for some reason defective in that. How could this be happening to me?

Speaker 2: 32:15

People were so here's the thing. I would tell people I'm going to be out, but I'm going to have my hip replaced. Or I had my hip replaced and they say here's a common response. I'm going to have my hip replaced. Or I had my hip replaced and they say here's the common response. I'm so sorry to hear that. How unfortunate. What are you going to do now? That's the response I was getting from people when they found out, because I'm limping around the office, you know, using crutches or what have you, or you know office gossip, and people just come up to me oh, I heard, I'm sorry about that, and that really bothered me. You know, it kind of pushed a lot of I don't know, not sorrow, but negative or not demeaning. It's hard to explain, but I just didn't feel like I started to believe it, Like I wasn't as good as I used to be or I wasn't as good as someone else. Well, it turns out I went from the guy who had his hips replaced to the guy who did two Ironmans, and that's a great feeling.

Speaker 1: 33:13

That's a really powerful feeling. What's interesting and I think you and I, since we both love mindset and psychology and such just that concept of this really is such a good representation about the people that we surround ourselves with, willingly or unwillingly, knowingly or unknowingly, it's like at some point, the outside influences start to influence us and so it's so critical, uh, to be aware of that, and that's really amazing. It also speaks volumes that they were, um, you know, not empathetic but sympathetic in a sense and like, oh, I'm so sorry for you. When it's, that's so rad, I'm so excited that you got to do that. You're going to be back and probably feeling better than ever. It's really interesting what that speaks of, of someone's perspective on life and the gifts that we have with modern medicine.

Speaker 2: 34:09

Yeah it's. You know, mindset's definitely a big part of it. Like, oh, I couldn't do that, I don't want to do that, that's too hard, it takes too much time and none of that stuff is true. You know, I never would have thought about doing an Ironman before my hip surgeries, but then after I started breaking it down, I'm like you know, that doesn't sound that hard. You start looking at the math and how much time you have and how much effort it would take and it's like you know what. That's totally possible. Let's do it.

Speaker 2: 34:35

And there's so many other things in life. You know, whether it's starting a business, whether it's a local 5k charity run or a bike ride or whatever it's like, these things are not that hard, but we build them up to be so incredibly difficult that we stop ourselves, we talk ourselves out of it or we let somebody else talk ourselves out of it. So you know you mentioned other people. Who we surround ourselves with is very important, and that's absolutely true. And whether or not you surround yourself with the right people, the wrong people or no people, all of that's critical. And I would say surrounding yourself with no people may be almost as bad as surrounding yourself with the wrong people, because things get challenging and without someone pushing and driving people or me, I slack, I get a little, I slack off a little bit and I don't want to. I know if I go ride a bike or I go for a run I will be a lot faster if there's someone with me.

Speaker 1: 35:41

I went to a spinning class last nightvertently. I was just going to go and train by myself and I walk into the room and I'm training in a different way Normally. Contest investor, you know I'm in this transition. Normally I used to spend the last few years early in the morning and now my kids want to work out and we're figuring that out what works best for everybody doing this together. And so I open the door and there's a spin class taking place. I'm like, okay, but you're right, when you're around other people there's a different energy that takes place. And for our Enneagram type three achievers and for other people it's like, oh, I better step up, I better make sure I'm doing it. Meanwhile the lights are out in this room, except for the fluorescent lights, so nobody can see, nobody cares. It's all in our head.

Speaker 2: 36:29

Yeah, I commend you for doing spinning classes. I've done spinning classes and I've done Ironmans and I gotta tell you I'm not doing any more spinning classes, Not doing it.

Speaker 1: 36:41

Normally I put on my own spinning class. You know I'm like. Normally I just go in and turn on my music and do my thing, so it's definitely interesting Also like just going into. Sometimes I'll work out of a co-work space just for the energy of other people. There's a great little spot here in my town and it's nice to be around that energy. If it's uplifting, it's really powerful.

Speaker 2: 37:19

Yeah, you know it's going to be interesting over the next few years. I think so many people have transitioned to working from home. I'm just wondering, you know, what happens to their goals? You know, are they as driven as they were of the time? But 40% of the time I've got to be out getting energy, and my wife will actually kick me out of the house in the afternoon if I don't get outside and do something, because I'm not as effective, I'm not as cheerful, I don't have as much energy, but if I'm around people it's very helpful and this is, you know, talking to you. This is fantastic. It's so much so that this I felt so secluded in my office that I put up pictures of very successful people in my office to basically be my board.

Speaker 2: 38:01

So if I'm not being productive or I'm not doing what I'm supposed to be doing, they're looking over my shoulder. So they're on the wall right there. Okay, there's. There's Tony Robbins, darren Hardy, oprah Winfrey I'm on the wall too. I'm included in that. So it's like my best self looking at me. Am I being my best self? Sylvester Stallone, sarah Blakely, brendan Burchard, grant Cardone. So this is basically my board. So they motivate me by just staring at me. It's a little freaky, but it helps to keep me on task and really reaching for maybe just a little bit more than I would reach being in here by myself. That didn't come out right because I know they're not really here, but you get the point right. I mean there's. They have an influence on me simply by having a picture of them in here.

Speaker 1: 39:02

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I'm going to see Brennan Burchard next week at his growth day event, my second one and, yeah, even like he's a fantastic person to have on your wall because true to the core inside and out. I want to ask you about your when you transitioned after your hip surgery. How many years was it? What was the timeline? Because I'm curious to think, uh, um, making a transition and saying, okay, I had this, the hip replacement, and people in the office respond different way, saying, okay, I have this the hip replacement, and people in the office respond different way. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that must have been alarms like, wow, I have such a different mindset than these people. Did that help expedite the process of I need to transition out of this space?

Speaker 2: 39:49

Oh yeah, absolutely, Absolutely it's. You know, these are great company, good, a lot of great people, but they're they're just in a different space. You know, a lot of folks are very happy to have that job and that's it. You know they're taking a very passive approach to their lives and maybe it's the, it's the golden handcuffs of financial success. That wasn't good enough for me Because, again, going back to, I wanted more for my family and I wanted to be able to leave something for my kids knowledge and legacy.

Speaker 2: 40:23

So, yeah, I really wanted to be out of there eventually and I'm glad I did it when I did. So, yeah, having having folks around you that were just not not where I wanted to be is is something I really wanted to get out of, you know, and starting going to those meetups, you know these people didn't have corporate jobs anymore. They left, they retired and they were doing all these great things. They were traveling, they were spending time, more time with their kids, they were having fun.

Speaker 2: 40:53

And I'm going working for, you know, cleaning up nonsense, and it doesn't make any sense. I don't feel like I have a purpose. Am I really going to do this for another 20 years? The money's great, but am I going to sell my soul for this now? So surrounding myself with other people who are doing something else, you know, in real estate and then and then more on the health side was fantastic. It's as if it's as if I bottomed out when I had my hips replaced and then I was motivated to do a lot of physical therapy to overcome a limp, and the physical therapists were fantastic. So I was just on this upward trajectory and I just kept going. That's what it was like.

Speaker 1: 41:37

I love that and I just I like the progression and surrounding yourself by people at meetups, finding that community. It's so important. So, full circle here. Conscious Investor, think about this. You know, I believe attending events is critical for for all of life. And attending a variety of events. You know, conscious investor, I'd like to go see speaker authors give presentation so I loved seeing Ryan Holiday and Robert Green. That was phenomenal.

Speaker 1: 42:08

And going to see Brennan Burchard, who's a motivational, you know, speaker. And going to real estate events. Like you don't have to just isolate and go to one single type of event. You can go to lots of different events to nurture yourself in a lot of different ways. But I love that you and I met at an event and the catalyst in your real estate journey was curiosity, finding a solution and going to a RIA and having that aha, and then that that supports the mindset, mindset shift that you're making and allows you that confidence, even, even supports that confidence to say I do need to transition out of where I'm at. Conscious investor, you might be happy where you're working. There are so many people in staying at your job. If that's the gift that you and you love it like, that's great, if you're feeling that urge to leave, you can borrow some of these elements that Chris has put into his life that supported him in making that transition.

Speaker 2: 43:09

Yeah, absolutely, I love that. I love that and you're right, there's a lot of people who absolutely love what they do and they're providing a lot of value for the people around them or clients or customers or what have you and by all means keep doing it. But if you have the opportunity to supplement that income or add something somewhere else to your life, feel free to do that. And I got to tell you over the years, it's not been, it's not been all roses, chocolates and roses. I mean. There's been a lot, of, a lot of scary times where I can't believe I'm doing this, or are we really thinking? Are we really? What are we doing? Here's one my wife and I we bought a house in Katy, texas, and we put a lot of money into it because we thought we were going to live there for the rest of our life. It was absolutely beautiful and we were there for six years and we decided that we don't want to be here anymore, and it was. We sold the house and we got ready to move, we got ready to relocate. We live in Florida now and we sold this beautiful house. It was where my daughter was born. Both my daughters were born.

Speaker 2: 44:27

So many memories in that house and we got rid of it because we were going to move. So we sold that house and we moved into a rental because we could not find a place in Florida at the time and we couldn't get them into the schools that we wanted to in Florida. So we moved into a rental for two different rentals over three years Before we finally got them into the school school. We wanted to get them into Florida and the reason we sold that house was to be able to pull the trigger when we wanted to and just be able to walk away. So when every time our lease came up on the rental, we're like is it, can we get him into school, do we have a? Do we have a place to go to in Florida? And as soon as we did, we just left.

Speaker 2: 45:12

And it was so strange to sell that house and I cried when we moved out. I cried Because there were so many great memories in the house. I thought we put so much money and we did. You know, we basically took it down to the studs and made it the way we wanted to make have it and we just got rid of it because it was not. It was not what we wanted anymore long term because, having spent time with other high achievers, we realized we could do a lot better and let's just go get the lifestyle and the location that we wanted. So we did that and that was a big. That was a big, scary, sad decision, but we absolutely love it.

Speaker 1: 45:52

I will commend you on that and I will say it is absolutely worth living in a destination place or a place that you love geographically. So, having been someone that's moved around and I currently live in what I consider for me and the things that my husband and family love, like this is our slice of heaven. It just seems like our Garden of Eden and we are grateful every day that I can mountain bike in the mountain bike season 10 minutes away, like wow, what a gift.

Speaker 2: 46:23

Yeah, life is so short. I mean that's such a cliche, but it's so true in that you never know how much time you have and you know why. Spend any time being somewhere you don't really want to be. Make it happen. I think a lot of times we suffer from inertia and that it's difficult to break the gravity of where we currently are. But if we did, we would be a lot happier.

Speaker 1: 46:48

You and I have lived that in Conscious Investor. I want to take that, take that to heart and challenge yourself. Look for areas where you feel complacent or you feel that that movement internally, that that I need to do something here, and don't don't stuff that away. That's there to serve you and support you in, you know, creating a beautiful life. Chris, we have to wrap up. I knew that you and I would be able to just have this great conversation just by nature of our conversation at the event we met at. How can the Conscious Investor connect up with you? I know you've got some really cool freebies that people can download that will support them. Give us a whole kit and caboodle.

Speaker 2: 47:32

Yeah, so thank you, julie. Anyone can reach out to me. My website is chrisbystranskycom, but I have a much easier way just with simple texts. So I have 12 action steps to financial freedom, and to get that you just type the word action to 66866. So action to 66, send it to 66866. And then I also have an endurance success blueprint. If anyone wants to be more active and would like to do some type of event where it's a 5K or a marathon or half marathon or what have you, and you have a lot of concerns, I can solve all your concerns. Just text success to that same number, 66866. Those are the best ways.

Speaker 1: 48:24

Awesome, conscious Investor. I know Chris has resonated with you and, just like I always say, don't be a stranger with me, don't be a stranger with Chris and remember, adventure belongs on the trail, not in your investing and not in your personal life. So if you need any level of support in taking that first or next step towards investing or you're thinking Gally, I need to clear out some of the mental space between my ears Make sure you head down to the show notes, click the link to schedule a call with me so that we can, we can talk. It's fun. People are always like oh, you're the same as on the podcast. Yeah, go figure. You know I value authenticity and so you're gonna. It's gonna just be a real conversation. It'll feel like a podcast really.

Speaker 1: 49:07

So head on down to the show notes, schedule time. Let's have a chat and until next time, live big love bigger and do great things, overwhelmed by apartment syndication, but want to learn more? Let me help you. Press the easy button, head over to 3keysinvestmentscom and download Syndication Made Simple. I explain simply how the process works, who's involved and how you can get started today. You're smart and with this simple guide, you'll be able to understand the process. Head over to 3keysinvestmentscom and download. Syndication Made Simple.