The Unsexy Truth About Creating Real Wealth (and an announcement!)

Message from Tom and Nick

OK, we got caught up in the Canadian Olympic hockey journey.

That’s some of us in the Rock Star training room watching the men’s semi finals.

And yes, both the men’s and women’s teams fell a little short but it was a fun ride nonetheless.

I feel for these teams.

Nothing short of gold is satisfying.

That’s a high bar. And seeing Conor McDavid’s recent interviews back with the Oilers is painful. He’s clearly carrying some hurt.

Onwards and upwards!! We’ll get ‘em next time!

Thinking of the amount of hours and level of dedication it takes to make a Canadian Olympic hockey team sparked something for us.

Watching the Olympics reveals the two things we’ve noticed in people around us who are really living life on their terms.

And these things are rarely discussed.

So much time is spent chasing the next shiny investment strategy that very few people stop to analyze what has worked for those who are living the life they want to live.

Here’s what we’ve observed, over and over again.

Canadians who achieve financial freedom share some variation of this path:

1. Experiment with various things to develop skills and gain experience. This phase can take anywhere from 1 to 5 years.
2. Choose one thing to focus on exclusively.
3. Commit to that one thing for years, often over a decade.

This inevitably creates serious results.

But what most people seem to do is chase.

They hear “real estate” is hot so they buy a couple condos “quick” without much thought.

They learn about “option trading” as a way to create steady income and try it for six months and then abandon it before getting consistently great at it.

They read something about “equities in one sector” being undervalued and throw some money at a bunch of companies without researching them at all.

The list is endless…short term rentals, vacation properties, crypto, gold and silver, insurance products, smith maneuvers, junk bonds, private lending…it goes on and on and on.

Here’s the truth…

You can likely create financial freedom with almost ANY of the things mentioned above.

But you have to stay with it for YEARS. You have to go through the inevitable path of:

1. Choose something you believe in that has proven to be a viable strategy by someone else (new ideas are not for your first wealth building journey).
2. Making the mistakes that are bound to happen.
3. Working your way through those mistakes and learning from them.
4. Correcting course, stick with your “thing” for the next five years at least. Ideally ten.

The difficult part in all of this is choosing.

You must decide which “thing” you’re going to focus on.

Take your time with that. It took Nick and myself about 3 years to decide to go “all in” on real estate.

We had been buying rental properties for about five years or so and then in 2006 we decided to drop everything else…the affiliate marketing, the options trading, the sales consulting, the wholesaling of audio/video product…and focus exclusively on real estate.

For the next three years we barely made any money.

At the five year mark we started to pay ourselves a decent salary from the business.

And then the compounding kicks in and the last 15 years have been beautiful.

But it’s not necessarily the industry we chose that rewarded us. (Although we absolutely benefitted from low interest rates for a long time).

What worked was the compounding of effort over years. All focused on one thing.

It’s exactly how a hockey player becomes an Olympian. Years of focus on one thing.

And that’s exactly how real estate investors often profit so well. Years of a portfolio just working and compounding and paying off its debt.

Compounding effort is magical.

But to have it work for you, you eventually must choose one thing and focus on it intensely.

Then once you have made some money you can “diversify” and protect your net worth.

But far too many people are trying to “diversity” their efforts much too early in their wealth building journey.

You want to put the magic of compounding to work and for that you need to put your stake in the ground and focus on one thing, for years.

That’s what we have experienced and what we have observed in those truly living life on their terms.

To assist with this we’re having a special version of our “Investor Advantage Series” Classes.

Nick is going to break down how you can take a real estate portfolio and rework it to maximize the compounding affect.

Sometimes real estate investors, after several years, need to tweak their portfolio to maximize the power of compounding.

This can mean trimming off properties that aren’t performing well and doubling down on those that are.

Or it can mean changing the financing up to allow for more growth.

Or it may involve using the changes in municipal zoning to increase the value of your property without changing much at all.

Nick is going to break all of this down on Tuesday, March 3rd.

You can learn more about what he’s going to share here.

It’s rare to have Nick pull back the curtain of some of the things we’re currently doing with our own portfolio but that’s what he’s going to share.

You won’t want to miss this.

If you’re a Rock Star Inner Circle Member you’ll be able to join by visiting the member site and registering there.

If you’re not, you can learn more about this special Investor Advantage Series class and grab a spot here.

That’s it for this week!!

Remember, chase your own gold medal by using the power of focus and compounding.

Tom & Nick

p.s. And yes the Leafs will one day win the Stanley Cup. Granted it isn’t looking like it’s going to be this year but next year the Cup is ours.