Robert Leonard  01:27

You have a very interesting and inspiring story that I’m super excited to dive into throughout this episode. Let’s start from the beginning though. Who are you? How did you get to where you are today?

Brad Dantonio  01:38

I’m Brad Dantonio. My online moniker is Man Overseas. I got here by investing in real estate, and by here, I mean in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. I am part of the FIRE crowd, Financially Independent Retired Early. So I retired, “retired” about four years ago in 2015, and I have since been traveling the world.

Robert Leonard  01:59

When you say, “retired” what does that mean?

Brad Dantonio  02:03

Well, I say, quote-unquote, because you have to do things to occupy your time, and you’re not fully retired, I guess until you stop earning money. And as a byproduct of doing things that you want to do, following your curiosities, you’re going to continue making money. It happens, so that’s why I say, quote, unquote.

Initially, I didn’t intend to retire. I had planned to take a year off and travel the world, and then go back to the grind, and things changed, man. I had a different perception of the workplace and valued my time at a rate at which it was tough to compensate me enough to go back.

Robert Leonard  02:39

Let’s talk about real estate. Oftentimes, real estate investors are on a journey to acquire a lot of units to achieve financial freedom from just cash flow. How were you able to achieve financial freedom in your 30s by owning just five properties?

Brad Dantonio  02:53

Well, I started at age 22. I bought an $80,000 house, and I got a roommate. He was paying half the mortgage. I had that property paid off by my 26th birthday, and I didn’t buy another one until I could afford to pay cash for it. I started accumulating houses that were in the range of $70,000-90,000. That’s how I was able to acquire five of them, but it took me 12 or 13 years to get that many that were paid for.

I just knew that it would be easier to manage less properties. It’s easier to care for the tenant. It’s easier in terms of getting deals closed. There aren’t as many, so there’s not as much turnover with the properties when you take care of them. You can screen tenants thoroughly. So I wanted to keep managing the properties myself, and I just found it to be easier if you had less of them.

Robert Leonard  03:47

And because you’re paying cash, or at least paying those down quickly, that cash flow is much higher than it would be if you continue to have a loan on them, which helps you essentially, to retire quicker?

Brad Dantonio  03:57

That’s correct. Yeah. I did have big dreams of owning 10 and 15 properties. But once your passive income exceeds your expenses, you are effectively retired. You’re effectively retired if you want to be. At age 34, I had the passive income to support world travel, so I was just going to give it a shot. That money was just compounding on the side, being reinvested and growing, and I was trying to live on a small percentage of my salary. I had two jobs.

I’m sure we’ll get into that, but I had a salary position in software, and then a commission-only real estate job that I was helping my friends to buy and sell real estate sort of on the side, and so every commission dollar that I ever earned was saved and invested. But yeah, I had bigger dreams, and then once I realized, you know what, this money that I’m making is enough to cover my expenses. Like I said, I put a higher dollar value on my time, and I didn’t see the worth of going back. I just valued my time too much.

Robert Leonard  05:00

I know you mentioned you’re in Mexico. So, how are you still managing those properties today?

Brad Dantonio  05:06

That’s one of the advantages of the technological age, I would say. You have the ability to text a general contractor, and tell him what it is that you need, and get him out to the property. Arranging that with a tenant to where you don’t even have to pick up a phone. You don’t even have to talk to anyone. The fact that you can collect rents via bank transfer is an amazing thing, right? We live in a world, where you can screen tenants via Skype. You don’t have to meet them.

You can get a good sense of them just by interviewing them over the web. All of these things can be done remotely. I always thought that I would turn my properties over to someone, but it just doesn’t require a whole lot of time per month for me to give up, let’s say, 10% of the rent. So I do it myself.

Robert Leonard  05:52

Yeah, it’s the same for me. We talked about this before the show. I live in Boston, and I invest a lot in Texas. I manage all my properties myself, and people always look at me almost like I have 10 heads. They wonder, “How are you doing that from 2000 miles away?” And I’d say technology.

It makes it so much easier, and I just don’t want to give that 10% or 11% away to a property manager for nothing, essentially, when it takes me less than an hour a month, in general, to manage those properties.

Brad Dantonio  06:17

That’s absolutely right.

Robert Leonard  06:18

So what did your properties consist of? Were they small multi-family housing like duplexes or fourplexes? Were they single-family homes?

Brad Dantonio  06:26

They were all single-families; 3-bedroom, 2-bath homes that were between 1200 and 1500 square feet.

Robert Leonard  06:34

That sounds very specific. Was there a reason as to why that is?

Brad Dantonio  06:39

There are a lot of reasons. For example, a lot of my tenants are single moms, and they don’t want to have to bring laundry up and downstairs. We live in the south in Texas, so you have high electricity bills due to the need for an air conditioner in June, July, August. They don’t want to have to condition big spaces. I just found a niche that was easy to monitor.

As soon as something came on the market within those parameters that I was looking for, I went after it. I had already so thoroughly studied the market. I didn’t need variety. I knew how long it would take a one-story house to rent. I knew how much it would cost to paint, and how much it would cost to replace the floors. Niching down enabled me to master just a specific sort of home. I even have two homes that are of the same floor plan. It was just all sort of built into my plan; that didn’t require a lot of money. That came from just getting up early on Saturday mornings and studying different trends and different data.

I knew that it would take two-story homes X amount of days longer in these particular neighborhoods to lease. See what I’m saying? After I gathered all this data, then I developed a plan, and then all of it became automated to where I would only have access to the specific properties that I was targeting. If a property came on the market that deviated from my specific criteria, even a little bit, I mean, if it was 1600 and 50 square feet, I wasn’t even aware of it. I think of that as trimming the fat from the process, right? It’s very, very targeted, and it requires very little of my time.

I was very busy…I mentioned earlier, I had two jobs. So investing was sort of like a side hustle of a side hustle. I was just focused on getting my earned income up, while my passive income was something I thought that I would fool with later. Now, I focus more on my investments than I ever did, and it’s because I need to now preserve whatever wealth I’ve accumulated. But back then, I was worried about making more and more money, making more and more sales, and closing deals in my actual job, where I had a boss and all that. So yeah, this was just a side gig of a side gig.

Robert Leonard  09:03

Given how targeted you are with the properties, I’m assuming you’re probably focused on one specific town for all these properties, and maybe even a specific neighborhood?

Brad Dantonio  09:12

I had narrowed it down to about seven neighborhoods in the Greater Houston area. And yeah, you say one town, but Houston is a huge, sprawling concrete city. You can have rain and snow in northeast Houston, and it’ll be like 60 degrees in southwest Houston. I mean it is so big. It can take at least an hour to drive across Houston, just to give you an idea. So it’s sort of like little towns within a big city. There are so many suburbs that are nice and have good school districts. So yeah, I just became an expert on several different areas that had the sort of properties that I was looking for.

Robert Leonard  09:49

Were you local to that market? Were you living in that area or was that a market you decided to invest in long-distance?

Brad Dantonio  09:56

I lived right in the middle of it, so it would take me maybe 30 to 40 minutes to get to any of my properties in any which direction.

Robert Leonard  10:04

Are you still scaling your portfolio at all today? Or are you just kind of letting it stay as it is, and fund your lifestyle?

Brad Dantonio  10:10

I still pay attention to what’s going on in the market. Because after I did a few media appearances, I was inundated with mentorship requests. Probably half of them were in Houston. And so, I started a coaching business so that I could help people. I had to put a premium on my time because you can’t help everybody. That’s where that business started.

We get notified by email when properties that match certain criteria we’re looking for, which is very comparable to what I was looking for five and six years ago. When those properties come on the market, we’re notified. We’ll discuss them on the phone, and we’d analyze the deals together. So, I’m not scaling, but if they pass on a property, it’s something that I would strongly consider.

Robert Leonard  10:49

Do you think that’s partially because of where we are in the market cycle, it might be a little more difficult to find deals, and so when we come down the back end of this, there might be some more opportunities,  you might start to scale again then?

Brad Dantonio  11:01

No, I’m not smart enough for that, man. I don’t speculate. I just take what the market gives me. I would buy for cash flow and tax benefits, and not concern myself with appreciation so much, because I just don’t know where we are in the market cycle. I think that people have projected a recession coming for the last several years. I think it’s fully possible.

It could happen in a couple of months, but it could also not happen for another 13 years. I just don’t know. Yeah, I don’t try to time it at all. Never have. So yes, to answer your question, I would buy now. If I was buying, I would pull the trigger. Even though, when I was buying the bulk of my properties for let’s say $80,000 and the rents on those properties were $1200. Right now, for those same properties, you’d have to pay about $150,000 and they wouldn’t rent for much more than $1200. So the returns aren’t that good, but I don’t get into timing. I’d have to settle for what the market gives me.

I told you about this coaching business that I have. We went over our planning and goal-setting these past few weeks, and they wanted to know whether or not they should be putting money into their Vanguard accounts or whether they should be putting money into real estate. And I’m like, “Do both. I don’t know. I don’t have an answer for you.”

And then, I would share something like a tweet that Charlie Bilello tweeted about the different decades and what the returns were for the S&P 500. It looks like 280% over the last 10 years, but then the previous 10 years, it was something like a negative 9%. Don’t quote me on that, but it’s very close to that. It’s just unpredictable. We don’t know. I mean, we just killed a guy in Iran that made the markets drop a little bit. Anything like that can happen at any time, so I just try not to speculate, man. I really don’t.

Robert Leonard  12:48

Yeah, I first started getting investments in the stock market probably 10 years ago. I thought I could try and time things with recessions or just events that would happen. I thought I could get in then, but when it comes to real estate, I’ve gotten much better at that. I’ve gotten over the hump, but I tend not to do that.  I guess I was coming at it from an inventory perspective. Right now, there might not be enough inventory in Houston to purchase, but maybe when things come down, people will be forced to sell. You might be able to buy some better deals or just even more deals, and then start to scale that way.

Brad Dantonio  13:18

I see what you’re saying. Even when I was buying properties, I didn’t view it that way, in terms of where we were in the market cycle. I knew that those properties that sold for like $120,000 or $130,000, and now they were asking like $70,000 and $80,000. At that time, you won’t know if it’s going to drop an additional 20-30% or stay stagnant for the next 15 years. I mean, you just don’t know.

In terms of inventory, that’s a great question, but within Houston, that sort of question varies so much by zip code. We have so many damn zip codes in Houston. It’s nuts. Real estate is so local, like the weather. I was saying about snow in different parts of Houston. There are so many variables to answer questions about inventories and things like that.

Your market in Boston is going to be so different from Houston. Even within Houston, we probably have like 25 different markets. So anyway, I hope that answers your question. It’s a complicated question for me to answer because I don’t pay that much attention to when to do things. We just take action. We do them. 

Robert Leonard  14:28

Back when you were in your corporate job, how are you able to increase your income every year, for 13 years in a row?

Brad Dantonio  14:36

That was very deliberate. That’s the flip side of the coin. Every year on the 31st of December, I will shut everything out for 90 minutes and just focus on going over the past year, seeing what went well; what didn’t go well. Who did I meet? How did that person impact me? I’m just studying my successes and my failures and going over my goals and seeing what I can harness from the previous year that will serve me in the year that’s to come. It enables me to self-assess because I’m more concerned with comparing myself to myself than anyone else.

And so, one of my goals is to make more and more money every year. So I have income goals, and I have net worth goals. All of those are written out, then I track them quarterly. But when you’re deliberate about goals, you want to improve. When I played baseball, I wanted my batting average to go up every year. When I was in business, I wanted my income to go up every year.

So it’s just through living intentionally, journaling, and tracking. When you start to examine your life that way, everything comes into focus, and it just becomes clearer.  This is something that I did when I was in my 20s. I used to write down every expense. When you’re writing down every expense, that enables you to keep your expenses low.

When you write down every piece of income that you get, you magically find as a function of being a good steward of your money, the universe sees to it that you get more of what it is that you were a good steward of. And I’m a big believer in that. And I noticed it worked for me for 13 years.

Robert Leonard  16:10

What I found really interesting and surprising about your story is not only 13 years of straight income growth, which is amazing in and of itself, but you were also able to save upwards of 80% of your income. How were you able to do that? I know you just mentioned tracking those expenses and just writing them down. But was there anything else you were doing that really helped you save; have that high of a savings rate?

Brad Dantonio  16:31

Young people ask me about what they should do for a side hustle quite a bit. One of the things that I would tell them is to try to find something where you get paid in big chunks because it’s easier to save and invest those big chunks. When I transitioned into software full time, my side hustle became real estate. Just as a byproduct of my friends making more money as we got older, if they were buying, let’s say a $300,000 house, I was getting a commission check that was almost $10,000.

Since I’m living deliberately and tracking my expenses, my lifestyle becomes my decision. I know exactly how much money I’m spending every month, so if I want to give myself a raise, my lifestyle is not dependent on my income. It’s totally up to me. So let’s say I was spending $4,000. Let’s say I made $10,000 in a month. My lifestyle is such that I’m spending $4,000 a month.

If I want to give myself a 10% raise, that is completely divorced from my income. I’m giving myself $4,400 the next month, right? I give myself a 10% raise. So when I get a big check like a real estate check for another $10,000. A nice little bonus. All of that is being used to save and invest to pay down real estate. It’s not factoring into my budget at all.

Robert Leonard  17:52

So when you get asked what you recommending for side hustles, do you recommend people become real estate agents, and do that on the side? Or what other types of real estate-related or not real estate-related side hustles do you recommend?

Brad Dantonio  18:05

I think sales in some capacity is a wonderful side hustle. You learn so many things by being a salesperson. You learn to be a better communicator. You learn to take rejection well. You learn to be organized and resilient, and a better presenter, and more articulate. There are just so many benefits besides the checks. The turnover in sales is so high because most people can’t take the beat down that you get a lot of times, just the pressure, and not only self-inflicted.

If you have quotas to meet, it can be pretty harsh. But real estate is a business, where you usually don’t have quotas. You can make as much money as you want as long as you’re willing to give up your nights and weekends. So, I would highly recommend it, because it’s hard to find a side hustle, where you have the potential to get life-changing checks. And big checks in real estate become life-changing when you’re able to see save and invest them by living deliberately.

Robert Leonard  19:03

When you say a side hustle in real estate, do you mean buying the properties? Or do you mean being an agent?

Brad Dantonio  19:09

Well, it’s a great question. When I got out of college, I took a commission-only job, which was real estate sales. I was working so much that I didn’t know what day of the week it was. After I was doing that for about four years, I transitioned into a job in software, and the reason I did that was that I went in and interviewed for this job because something about sales, people think the grass is always greener.

So people in real estate think that insurance people are making all this money, and software and pharmaceutical sales. Everybody thinks that the other one is making all this money, but one thing I did know about software was that you only work Monday through Friday. So this would give me the ability to maintain my real estate license, while just working nine to five, earning a salary.

I couldn’t believe they paid these people a salary. So I would go in and just live on a fraction of my salary, and devote X amount of time. I had all these goals for how much time I was going to devote to my “nine-to-five job,” my salary position.

Then outside of that, I could sell real estate. And so, I’m so glad that I retained my real estate license because not only did I gain all the knowledge by doing it full time, but like I said earlier, all my friends started to make more money. They not only were selling their first home to buy their next home, which was usually much more expensive, but they could see that I was starting to acquire properties for myself. They were interested in doing that, too.

So I would after work be showing my…the engineers or colleagues that I worked with at the software company, I’d go show them houses. And yeah, it was just a beautiful thing, because when the recession occurred, a lot of my software colleagues started losing their jobs.  Well, I had two jobs, when some people had none. And so, that played a big role in why my income was going up every year.

It was because even though we hit this recession, I had my goal to make more money. I was scratching the claw to do everything I could. A lot of people, a lot of companies during the recession and software were on budget freezes. Well, people don’t have frozen budgets with their personal finances. They’re still going to buy houses, so I was able to sell real estate when I was lacking on the software side to ensure that my combined income kept going up into the right.

When it really became easy was when I started to acquire these assets that were paid off. I was earning like $4,000 to $5,000 a month from these properties. That was part of my income. So that helped to make sure that my income went up every year because I’ve just added another $50,000 a year from these properties that are paid off.

Robert Leonard  21:42

It’s really interesting that you talk about this as a side hustle because I do something similar, not quite to the same extent that you do, or did, but for me, I have my real estate license, as well. I don’t practice, so I’m not actually helping people buy or sell any houses. But what I do is I earn commission for referring people.

I anytime somebody I know wants to buy a house, I refer them to an agent that I know very well and that I trust. I refer them to him, and I earn 25-30% of the commission that he earns. I don’t have to do a single thing. I just provide the introduction, that’s super passive for me. And so for somebody, who might be too busy and can’t actually be a practicing agent, they could potentially do something like that.

Brad Dantonio  22:21

That’s great. And I do that too. I am able to add referral income as another revenue stream for my wife and me as we travel the world. I’ve had to put together a small team of people, who help my clients; my coaching clients, so it’s a really incredible thing. But yeah, I do the exact same thing.

Robert Leonard  22:43

You’re still able to do those referrals and still collect that income while you’re in Mexico or just traveling the world?

Brad Dantonio  22:49

Yeah, you just need to make sure that you maintain your real estate license. Pay the fees. You have to be a member of the Houston Association of Realtors for example; the Texas Association of Realtors.

Robert Leonard  23:00

Have you found it worthwhile to keep your license active even though you’re traveling the world and working on all kinds of other different things?

Brad Dantonio  23:08

I have the argument with myself every year. Okay, do I want to renew this? Do I want to do the continuing education? But it’s always turned out to be worth it. Yeah. One of the reasons, since I have my own properties, if someone…if a tenant were to move out, I can market it remotely, so that would be a reason.

I mean that would save me a whole month’s rent because, typically in Texas, you will pay the listing agent, a one month’s fee, the equivalent of one month’s rent. They will offer half of that to the tenant’s agent, who procures the tenant for them. I would save a month’s rent by just retaining my real estate license, and then marketing it online myself; screening the tenants remotely using Skype or Zoom.

Robert Leonard  23:50

Yeah, for me, I have that same argument. I don’t keep it necessarily for the referral fees. I’m in a different stage than you necessarily are, and I’m trying to acquire a lot of properties. So for me, I’m able to collect that referral fee on my own purchases, so that helps bring down the cost basis on acquiring the properties and just makes my investing easier from doing anything locally. Do you still operate any other side hustles today that you might have had outside of just being an agent?

Brad Dantonio  24:16

I think everything I do is a side hustle, so I don’t have a main hustle anymore. There’s the coaching that I do. I have a travel services business, where I tour people through different parts of Europe. I write for my blog. I’m active in that community. It was really cool to discover that community after I “retired” because I didn’t know it existed. They’re a tight-knit community.

I don’t know if you’re familiar, but the Playing with FIRE: The Documentary came out recently. They have a conference every year called FinCon. That was in D.C. in September, so we attended that. And it was really cool to meet a lot of the people that I follow online; get to meet them face-to-face. They’re really supportive of each other. If you need a guest for a podcast or a guest post for your blog, we all kind of support each other, so that’s a really cool community.

Robert Leonard  25:07

Yeah, I haven’t made it to FinCon yet, but I definitely am going to try my best to make it this coming year. It seems like it’s a great event. I really want to make it out there. So we’ve talked about journaling, and I know it made a big impact on your life. How is that?

Brad Dantonio  25:21

Oh, in terms of if I had to attribute one thing to whatever successes that I’ve had, it would be journaling. And the reason is because I believe in the quote, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” I believe that. And the best way that I know to examine your life and to become a student of your own life is to write about it because writing is thinking. I think it’s become an even more powerful tool now because it enables you to separate yourself. I mentioned earlier, you only want to compare yourself to yourself. Your journal is your best tool for doing that.

So yeah, I’ve been doing it for 15 to almost 20 years now. And it’s so cool to be able to look back and see my growth. When I was 24, some of the stuff that I wrote in my journal is cringe-worthy. But without all of those mistakes and without examining them closely, there’s no way that I would be where I am today. If I give a talk, there are three things that I recommend. Number one is to keep a journal, number two is to read more books, and number three is to become a goal setter. That’s old fashioned advice, and it sounds basic and fundamental.

Those things are easy to do but easy not to do. People are not doing them. As we become immersed in all the technology that we have, people are so easily distracted. What journaling enables you to do is to shut the world out, to focus, and to think. And all of that will improve if you have a regular journaling practice.

Robert Leonard  26:49

In that journaling practice, are you writing specific things? Are you just writing what’s on your mind? Or do you maybe do goal setting, to-do lists? What does that look like?

Brad Dantonio  26:58

It looks like all of the above. One of the most important things that I’ve done is written down the names of who I’ve met. I always underline their names, because Dale Carnegie said in the book How to Win Friends and Influence People that a person’s name is the sweetest sound in the English language. At least to them, right?

So, relationships are everything. And relationships, the value of the compound over time. And if you want to build relationships, not only write their name in your journal but write a note to them. You can always find a reason to thank someone.  Part of my December 31st goals every year was to send out X amount of thank you notes. And the reason that I did that is it breeds happiness, for one.

Just expressing gratitude, it builds relationships. It helps with discipline. People don’t throw away personal notes. Just about everybody I know opens their mail over the garbage can. When you see a handwritten note, that is not one that you throw in the garbage can. It always gets read. And it’s more powerful than it’s ever been because electronic mail is so easy, right?

It’s an email that is such an easy thing to do. And so, if 99% of people are sending thank you notes via email, I want to be the one to do it the old-fashioned way. If 99% of people who are going to the gym aren’t doing legs, they’re skipping leg day every other week, I’m going to be the one to do leg day. So it’s figuring out a way to do things that other people aren’t willing to do, not because you’re competing with them, but because you’re competing with yourself. You got to figure out a way to get better than the old version of you.

Robert Leonard  28:35

Yeah, I recently started, probably about six months ago, journaling. It takes a similar form to what you said. I talk about to-do lists. Every single day, I write down my three goals, then I write down my to-do list for the day. Then, at the end of the day, I write about things I learned; the physical activity I did; things I struggled with; and then also just an open area, where I can write a little bit.

I take five to 10 minutes to write down just my random thoughts throughout the day. And for me, that’s made a really big impact. It’s only been for six months, but it’s made a huge impact already. I like going back and being able to look at those, and seeing the growth, and seeing how my goals have changed, and just reading how things have changed throughout just that six months.

Brad Dantonio  29:11

That’s awesome. A lot of the benefits from journaling, you may not discover for 17 years from now. I had no idea why I was compiling these quotes. I might be able to use them to someone else’s benefit someday. In the back of my head, I thought, “Well, I’ll pass this down to my heirs, so my kids and my grandkids will benefit from some of the quotes and stuff that I’ve written in here.”

But never in my wildest dream did I ever think that I would be writing online and be able to share quotes that some people have said this has really positively impacted my life. Thank you for sharing. So it’s…journaling is amazing, man. I could go on and on.

Robert Leonard  29:47

You said you always…one of the three things you always recommend is reading more books. And so, one of my 2020 resolutions was to not read any new books. The reason I said that was because I’ve read about 70 or 80 books over the last two years. It’s about 35 to 40 books on average per year. I feel that I’m not taking as much as I can from those books.

I think I could and should be taking more action on everything I’m learning. And so for me, I don’t think that the 81st or 82nd book that I’m going to read is going to change my life in the way that something I might have missed, did, or could have. So I want to go back, and I really want to read through some of those best books that I read, and really take more notes. And really think about it after, and say, “I’m going to put this into action and really focus on that; rather than just plowing through another 30 or 40 bucks.”

Brad Dantonio  30:36

I love that idea, and I do that, too. I’m deliberate about going back and rereading books. Although sometimes I cheat, because I do read with a highlighter, when I’m reading nonfiction, so I don’t go back and read the entire book. But yeah, if you just read 100 books in your entire life, I think that you would probably be better than reading 200 average books. There are certain books that are so integral to the good life that I would recommend reading them four and five times before you pick a book that was written six months ago and made the best-seller list.

I mentioned Nassim Taleb earlier, and he is a big proponent of all things Lindy. Lindy is the idea that something that’s been around for X amount of time, let’s say 50 years, is likely to be around another 50 years. And so that would also apply to the short term, too. Something that has been around six months, in all likelihood, it’s only going to be around for another six months. But books that have withstood the test of time are what people need to be reading, right? They stood the test of time for a reason, so I love what you said there, and I think the same way. 

Another problem I have with book reading is, when you start counting, it sometimes becomes a vanity metric. I’ve noticed that podcast hosts when I guest on a podcast, they want to know specifically how many books I’m reading. Maybe we should be asking more questions about the depth of reading, and what did you learn? Because people start competing, and you can read really fast without comprehending anything, so the number really doesn’t mean anything.

But I understand that people want it, and so I do share it that I read X amount of books per year, and I have goals for how much to read per year. But what if you read five books and 3,700 articles that were written by the likes of Howard Marks and Charlie Munger? I mean, that’s just as valuable as anything. And shoot, now that we’re talking about it, this is sort of a way to be looking up and not around.

You’re not comparing yourself to other people. So unless you get asked and somebody’s adamant about getting the number of books that you read, just maybe you just keep it to yourself because, in the grand scheme of things, it really doesn’t matter. All that matters is what you’re getting out of it intrinsically.

Robert Leonard  32:55

I think you hit the nail on the head there. It became a vanity metric for me. I wasn’t retaining all this knowledge. I was comprehending it at the time, but when the audiobook was over, specifically I read audiobooks, I would just flip on to the next audiobook. I would just keep going and going and going and going. I didn’t take any time to reflect.

I think, to your point, rather than asking: How many books are you reading, or what are you reading, even? I’d prefer to know, what did you read that you took massive action on that made a huge impact on your life? That’s what I want to know. That’s what I want to read, rather than just plowing through all of these books.

Brad Dantonio  33:26

Yeah, and when you ask that question of people, a lot of times you’ll get the same answer. So if I asked you, what has been the most impactful book for you? What would you say?

Robert Leonard  33:36

I would say that I’ve rushed through 80 books over the last two years, and I don’t have a good answer for that. And that’s why I need to go back and do this again.

Brad Dantonio  33:44

Okay, good answer. Yeah. I was thinking since you mentioned Kiyosaki, I thought you might say, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. That book has had as much of an impact as any. I do feel like I probably don’t need to read it again. It’s been three or four times. Books like that and The Richest Man in Babylon, those are foundational books that I think that everybody should read when they’re in their early 20s because it’ll set you on the right trajectory. And then maybe revisit it every 5 or 10 years, instead of picking up the latest bestseller.

Robert Leonard  34:13

I did like Rich Dad, Poor Dad. I wasn’t a huge fan of it, but I did like it, and I’ve read it every year for the last three or four years just as a New Year’s thing. I’d reread it again. I see how a lot of people got value from it, but I just recently read The Richest Man in Babylon last month or two months ago. And that book…it’s all concepts that I knew, but for some reason, the way it was written, the book that had the most impact on me this year was probably that book.

That little book, and written back in the 40s or 50s, or maybe even earlier. And that’s probably a book that I’m going to reread over and over and over again. Another one, I’d say is The Intelligent Investor from Benjamin Graham. Being a stock guy myself, that’s a book that I reread every year. But yeah, to your point, I think there’s so much value in rereading those books, taking action on them than just plowing through them.

Brad Dantonio  35:02

That’s awesome. Yeah, I’m a huge fan of The Richest Man in Babylon. And the thing about rereading books is that you’re a different person when you read a book again, and so you will take things differently than you did last time, in addition to catching things that you didn’t catch the first time. So you and I should start a trend where we ask how many books have you reread?

Robert Leonard  35:21

I absolutely love that. And again, like you said, we can have this conversation forever. But there was a book I read back in my early days of college. I think I was a freshman. It was an investing book, and it hit me one way. I really loved the book, but I didn’t reread it for a while. Then I was having the author as a guest on the show when I started the podcast, so I went back and I reread his book, and I was kind of mind blown.

I was just so shocked at how different that book hit me, just because of how much my life had changed. I saw that book completely differently. It was the same story, but I saw it entirely differently. I still have goals of books that I want to read. I still want to read books this year. They just need to be reread books and rather than having a goal of 40 in a year, maybe I have a goal of 5 or 10 that I really take a lot of action on.

Brad Dantonio  36:06

I like that. Sometimes, nowadays, I’m buying the audible version and the physical book. Some books, I am really stuck on. I’m reading The Lessons of History, probably for the eighth time. I am that obsessed. It’s small, so it doesn’t take a long time. But it’s tough to digest. One of the things I recommend people to do is stretching yourself a little bit. You can’t just read the easy stuff, because you won’t grow if you don’t challenge yourself.

Read somebody like Nassim Taleb. You really have to focus a little more than you would for Rich Dad, Poor Dad. There are certain pages you’re going to have to reread. I’ve found The Lessons of History to be somewhat challenging in that way, but I get something from that. I want the growth that comes from stretching myself and growing my vocabulary and building my focus. All about it.

Robert Leonard  36:56

I’m such a big fan of audiobooks because I really am. I have about an hour’s worth of commute to work every day, so it’s a great time to be in a mobile classroom and read audiobooks. I feel like I focus a lot more, and I get a lot more out of it when I take time to read physical books, even though, I liked the audiobooks. And again, I didn’t really want to read as much of those physical books because it took so much time. There’s no way I could read 40 physical books in a year, but I could read 40 audiobooks. So, it’s a combination of really focusing on what matters and less on that vanity metric.

Brad Dantonio  37:25

That’s interesting because I have trouble digesting audiobooks unless I’m also reading it. But for podcasts, I can comprehend everything backward. It’s a really weird thing for me. And something that I also recommend to people is, whoever it is that inspires you or teaches you well, I always suggest to people to revisit that person’s content. We’re all interested in different things and learn in different ways.

And so, somebody might be listening to you and me right now, and be completely turned off by just our way of being, right? So they probably wouldn’t check out my podcast after this. But if they did say, “Oh, that sounds like a cool guy,” or “This resonated with me. I like him. He had a similar experience to me,” well, then I’m somebody that that person should follow. And the same with you. So, don’t just follow who everybody else follows because there’s a reason that you’re attracted to a certain person’s content.

And so, follow them because you’re going to learn more because you like them. Keep searching. You will find somebody that you like, whose content resonates with you; who teaches in a way that you can easily comprehend. So, I’m all about revisiting people that you connect with.

Robert Leonard  38:36

I completely agree. I have a couple of questions I want to wrap up the show with here. The first one is: I’ve heard you mentioned a few times that you think you’re wealthier than a billionaire because of a concept called “time wealth”. Of course, that first line, you know, really caught my attention. I’m sure it will with the listeners. So first, what is time wealth? What do you mean by that? And how does it make you wealthier than a billionaire?

Brad Dantonio  38:57

Well, billionaires have obligations to things that I don’t. And so, I’m in Playa Del Carmen for the next couple of months. I don’t have to do anything that I don’t want to do. And maybe they don’t have to do anything that they don’t want to do, but the likelihood that they’re willing to take two months off is not high. Many people are chasing materialism and attached to the prestigious status symbols, whether that be fancy cars or mansions, and things like that. But Russell Simmons and I worked out at the same gym in Bali, and from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. He and I were doing exactly the same thing. He’s in his 60s now, so he wants to stay fit, and stay active, and eat well, and build relationships with people.

And what that illustrated to me was that it doesn’t matter if you have hundreds of millions of dollars, or if you have just a little money that I have. What’s important is universal.  And it just…of course, it takes a lot of money to get to Bali, but once you’re there…what we’re after or what it seems to me that we should be after is time because there wasn’t a happier person in Bali, from my vantage point, than me and him.

So yeah, I just think that most billionaires don’t have it that way. You own a bunch of things, and then those things end up owning you. So I am trying to disencumber myself from things as much as possible so that I can focus on that which brings me the most joy. And those are the things that I just mentioned: staying fit and active, and building relationships, and seeing the world, and those sorts of things.

Robert Leonard  40:38

Yeah, it’s such an interesting idea. I don’t think it’s one that people think about in that way very often. That’s why I like the idea so much. When you take time and listen to you talk about that, it just makes so much sense, right? People are doing all these things so that they could get to what you’re getting at, but then they don’t realize what they’re building actually is taking away more of their time. And so, I think people need to be more proactive about building the type of life they want and giving them that time freedom, and exactly what you talked about.

Brad Dantonio  41:04

Well, something else I like to talk about is the different perspective of America that I have from being outside of it. If you’re having coffee in La Paz, Bolivia, one of the things you notice is that most people don’t have cars. And the cars that you do see are nothing like the cars that you see driving around Houston, which are fancy Lexuses, and cars that were built within the last couple of years that are so nice.

These people that are driving them around probably pay somewhere between $500 and $1500 a month for these cars, but it doesn’t add one bit of happiness to their life. I would guarantee you that those people, who are driving these fancy cars, have more nights at 11 p.m., when they’re stressed out, worried about an email from their boss or their subordinates that the people in Bolivia don’t have.

And so, I think that a lot of times, much of these self-inflicted stress that we experience in America is all so that we can raise the standard of living of everyone, so that we can all drive a little bit fancier of a car. The average square footage of a house was about 1200 to 1400 square feet 25, or let’s say, when I was born, maybe 35 years ago. Nowadays, it’s doubled. Do you think happiness has doubled? Not even close, right? But fancy cars, big houses, no increase in happiness level. But in Bolivia, those people smile more than my multimillionaire friends in the States.

It’s just amazing to see. I’ve been to places in this world, where people live on less than $2 a day. They eat a staple food called, Nshima, which is like porridge. They eat that twice a day. I’m talking about sub-Saharan Africa, and those people smile just as much as my friends in America. How is that possible? So I think that we’re stressed out. We’re anxious. And if we stopped and thought about it, we could mitigate a lot of that stress and anxiety; if we were just more deliberate in how we go about our lives; and alluding to what we talked about earlier in being deliberate.

If you track your expenses, you would realize that you’re spending money that you don’t have to spend. And so, you could have time wealth, too, if you were just a little more deliberate about your lifestyle. Because I promise you, if you make more than $34,000, you’re in the top 1% of income earners in the entire world. And I would bet that more than 99% of people listening are making double that if not much more.

You are part of the richest humans that have ever walked the face of the earth. The best thing that money can do is buy time because when you get to the end of this life, it’s not more money that you’re going to wish that you had. It’s not more time in the office that you’re going to wish that you had. So these are things that we have to grapple with now.

This is why you set aside time at the end of the year on December 31st and think about what it is that you want the next year to look like. You think about what it is that you want the rest of your life to look like, and then you start making plans to make that happen. And all I can say is that it’s worth it.

Robert Leonard  44:07

I think here in the States, it’s probably an expectation thing. Keeping up with the Joneses, and just really what other people think of you. I don’t think in the other parts of the world that you’ve mentioned, I don’t think it really matters as much; whereas here, with social media, and just everything that’s available to us, other people’s opinions count more than what we think about ourselves, and that leads to making decisions.

And again, I’m going to butcher the quote, but it’s something along the lines of: “We buy things we can’t afford to impress people that we don’t even like,” or something along those lines. And I think America, and maybe parts of Europe, but mostly America is…only part of the world that do those types of things.

Brad Dantonio  44:46

That’s very true. There’s a way to combat it, though. It’s what we’ve been talking about with journaling. When you journal and you focus on becoming the best version of yourself, you become genuinely content with your life. And when you become genuinely content with your life, you could not care less what other people think about you.

Robert Leonard  44:53

So, for someone who’s hearing this conversation and wants to build some sort of passive income like you’ve done; live the type of life that we’re talking about; live the type of life that you’re living, should they just double down on their corporate career, put in a few years, save, save, save as much as they can, save up a huge nest egg, and then try and live off of the investment income that way? Should they maybe get into real estate? Should they start a side hustle instead of real estate? How should somebody go about that?

Brad Dantonio  45:31

It depends on your situation. I would need to know somebody’s total financial picture like how much income do they have? What your goals are? Because one of the things that I talked to someone the other day, who’s going to be coming under coaching here pretty soon. They inherited $200,000, and they’re extremely conservative.

And one of the things that I told him though was that “Part of life is living. And so, if I were you, I would force yourself to spend 10% to 20% of that.” It doesn’t have to be a new car that you go and buy, but since you’re going to be living deliberately since he’s going to be taking my advice, what he can plan to do is increase his lifestyle by 10% over the next 20 years. That’s doing quick math. I don’t know if the math comes out exactly, but you get what I’m saying. If he’s living off of $3,000 a month; if he inherits $200,000, and he’s ultra-conservative, and he doesn’t want to buy a new car or anything like that, well, then he can increase his lifestyle to $3300 a month. He can give himself a 10% raise. 

And it should…when you’re living deliberately that way, and you give yourself $300 more a month, that should increase your happiness. Because what are you going to do with $300? You’re probably going to treat your friends to dinner, or you’re probably going to surprise your girlfriend or your wife with flowers. Things like that. When you have money left over at the end of the month, those are the sort of things that you can do without guilt because you’re living deliberately.

Robert Leonard  46:53

What has been the number one thing that you’ve learned throughout your journey to and in financial freedom so far?

Brad Dantonio  47:01

The value of time. We don’t know when our time is up, and when you have the whole day in front of you to use in whatever way you want to use it. You can’t put a price on it, but it just reinforces that I made the right choices years ago. And it made everything worth it.

So you asked the question earlier, should you get a side hustle? Should you double down on your job and all that? And I said it depends on your income, and your goals, and all of that, but I go back to the point: part of life is living. So, while you’re chasing those things, you have to create balance. And that balance is created by living deliberately.

So, when you’re goal-setting and planning for the year, one of the things that the exercise that we do is a self-assessment that includes different categories of life, which I consider important; which are business, family, spiritual, personal. And all of the workout goals, and the reading goals, and the net worth goals. They all fall under those areas. Yeah, just the value of time.

And that you can improve in all those areas, and be able to follow your curiosities, and to live the life that you want to live. The number one thing that I learned is that it’s worth the struggle to get to where I am.  That’s the best way that I can answer that.

Robert Leonard  48:14

Brad, I know you’re a very busy guy. You’re out traveling the world. So I really appreciate you making time to chat with me today. I’ve really enjoyed our conversation. Where can the audience go to connect with you and learn more about you?

Brad Dantonio  48:26

Yeah, so I have a blog and a podcast called, Man Overseas. The blog is manoverseas.com. If you’d like to follow my adventures on Instagram and Twitter, I am @man_overseas.

Robert Leonard  48:38

I’ll be sure to put links to all of Brad’s resources, social media, his website, everything in the show notes, so you guys can go connect with him there. Brad, thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate it.

Brad Dantonio  48:50

Thank you for having me. I enjoyed it.

Robert Leonard  48:51

All right, guys. That’s all I had for this week’s episode of Real Estate Investing. I’ll see you again next week.

Outro  48:58

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