Getting to Financial Freedom Without Sacrificing Your Family Relationships

0:02yeah that was a really interesting day many years ago I was the only one who went to assist a friend and everyone else that was there at the end of this program it was parents in this room for you know kind of the final send off and kind of regrouping and every single person there had a child who had an addiction and every single person was a successful entrepreneur because they started talking about their businesses and it hit me like a a a a cold crowbar to the back you know it it was wow there is something to this and what I found is none of these people were bad people none of them seemed to be having really bad habits

0:51With the exception of they weren't around there was lots of money or a good amount of money that the children had access to at a young age and they had with good intention given without accountability and the lack of quality time was so apparent you know it's something that I've never forgotten to this day and so I've always seen the Simplicity and the power of quality time as you showed making the priority to actually spend quality time to be around as the best offense and defense in family life and and so so well it's worked so far it's worked pretty well for me yeah that's amazing and you mentioned in the book and you just you just mentioned it

1:40Kind of right now too the difference between time and Quality Time or or you said time with purpose or focused attention is how you described it in the book you kind of describe the difference between those yeah there's huge difference and and there is there's passing time and there's quality time and there is look passing time is small deposits that's great but you know passing time is when you're on the phone listening to a podcast and your kids in the back seat and you're not paying any attention to them driving from to and fro that's not what I consider quality time it has to be more intentional it has to be more focused and that's what our book is about you know how do we really give those deeper deposits of connection it's with quality time that passing time of of watching a

2:28Show together yeah it's good but it's not on the deeper level and if you'll start to make these deposits of true quality time this deeper level of communication and and focus and intentionality your marriage will improve the relationship with your children will improve you'll feel more relaxed you'll feel more on purpose but a lot of people just don't know how to do it yeah yeah and I think that's that's the problem I see today is that we have more time because of Technology because of you know all the Innovations we have more time but it's almost like we're spending less of it intentional you know and and there's so many people that just let the hours pass by and and don't even account for it or have any intentionality around that and I think that's that that's probably the

3:17The biggest issue so can you describe I guess what the family board meeting is it sounds very corporate esque isn't that funny too it's it's way too short to be a corporate and it's way too personal and and unscripted as you know we we get into our story pretty deeply and pretty vulnerably there just about starting a family life as a as a blended family and overcoming challenges running two real estate businesses and the family board meeting is just a simple Rhythm that we put into our life and this Rhythm change relationship I now have with my five children you know starting out with two and now have five improve the quality of my marriage because although this

4:05Is a we actually just released a third edition this past week that's gone to to number six on Barnes & Nobles which we're pretty excited about we added a little bit of Rhythm on marriage so the family board meeting is just a simple strategy you can use to stay with you connected while you're doing your career building your real estate portfolio because again I'm not a psychologist I'm not a family therapist I was just an entrepreneur a real estate entrepreneur in the trenches struggling and I said how can I figure out a way to keep like that chart showed Kirby how do I keep them in the priority and this is a simple Rhythm anyone can practice and now we estimated about 300,000 families worldwide are using it which is pretty exciting wow C can you give a a little bit of overview of just like the how to implement like what what does it mean yeah well and again

4:53Like you said the corporate of a board meeting well I'm a serer so there's a lot of play on words with you know know my snowboarding friends and my surfing friends with you know a board meeting means you're going out in the ocean so it's some time of fun you know but in in my company you know we have a quarterly board meeting with our our leadership team and we we reunite the team and look ahead to the next 90 days that's what a you know a traditional Business board means about that's what I do with each one of my children so this could go on the back of a paper napkin I still want you to buy the book because there's more stories and support but here it is every 90 days I have a quote unquote family board meeting with each one of my children each one of them four hours at least uninterrupted and there's only three guiding principles to make this a success and I can tell you what you are if you want to dive deeper way

5:42In but this is the peanut butter and jelly of what's really created connection for so many families s for so many hardworking entrepreneurs Real Estate Investors building that portfolio not losing their family along the way so all we do is we make it the onetoone principle intermittent Tech fasting and fun activities with focused reflection those are the three principles The Guiding principles of our of this Rhythm that's helped my own family and now thousands of others that's awesome yeah I can see how that would lead to Stronger connections I think one thing that that a question I guess that came up for me and I think others might have too is so this is every 90 days and it's individual oneon-one with each child then in between those 90

6:30Days what are there some practices that you do how do you I guess recommend someone balance the day-to-day between you know the amount of time someone devotes to their W2 job their Investments their family you know their physical and mental and spiritual health all the things that are competing for your attention I think this practice alone is going to make a massive difference in your family life but then beyond that between those 90-day increments what are what are some things that that you do yeah great question so this is people go every 90 days you only do it every 90 days you know the hard charging entrepreneur says you should be doing this once a week or every month look there there is time and space to make this more special you know when you have that

7:19Anticipation still looking ahead and reflection on the last one 90 days has some real psychological elements to it so when I do this every 90 days with my children and think about this you know a lot of people out there they've probably never spent sad enough a one-on-one day with their father just one-on-one with no distractions no phone doing something a whole day in that they chose for their whole life you mean I mean for that whole day that the parent goes all in it very rarely happens you know and that's why the onetoone principle is is a cheat you know you have three kids now look big family gatherings are great but you got to separate the parts to strengthen the whole so that 90day increment what I found is my wife always calls it the reset and the relationship with each of my kids it makes the time in between

8:07Those 90 days more enjoyable more connective less distant and and that's really important to to help kind of fertilize the ground in between those 90 days and one of the simple ways you can fertilize the ground in between these 90 days first off with my wife if if you're married to your husband or your wife like we have date night religiously every Wednesday night 5:30 to 8:30 every Wednesday night and we've done big events for some pretty high influential entrepreneur groups and we'll say how many of you have a regular date night and less than 10% of the rooms hand goes up you know my wife and I want to keep dating we we we want to have that connection and the stronger we are the better we feel like we can do for our children so

8:56Actually to be strong with your children I think you have to be strong with spouse so we are religious on date night and we're also you know pretty big on dinner time you know in the pandemic we set up something called the dinnertime challenge we were all getting stuck at home sucked onto electronics and the news and oh man it was just a complete overwhelm so we were challenging families and thousands of families were doing this to turn off all Electronics you know we call intermittent Tech fasting so intermittent Tech fasting for me Kirby if I'm on a date with my wife my phone is not invited anymore I made that mistake years ago you know taking a silly phone call or text thread or or or Facebook post who I mean you got to be completely and totally unavailable sometimes for those priority relationships

9:44And this is really important for for all levels and and so that can be a daily deposit in your family even if everyone in your house for the dinner time challenge turns off their phone for one hour one hour every day no one's phone's on because we all know how the relationship or the conversation can change if one person is dug into their phone they're a little out of it you know we're the worst we say oh our teens no we usually try to pretend like we hear them and do that half answer but if you do the dinner time challenge you know one hour a day the phone's off you know and the reason we based it on this there was this study 60 years ago the average dinner time was just over 90 minutes which seems crazy long now like what the hell are they talking about that just seems awkward my 5-year-old eats 90 minutes every meal

10:34There you go right so we got to be more like more like your fiveyear world but today the average dinner time Kirby is only 12 minutes 12 minutes from 90 minutes and we're wondering why family connection and communication seems off what I've seen and this isn't an exact science but my observation with you know many many people we've worked with we're all rushing off to something and that's usually a social media post text of email so we're rushing back to these Electronics so I'm saying look if you we just take those things off the shelf for an hour a day not telling you got to give up Electronics but just like you know intermittent fasting you know you're a physically fit guy you've heard of intermittent fasting you're not giving up eating but you're just choosing not to eat very deliberately between this time and this time

11:22And so what I found is if you're taking normal dates with your wife you're sitting down to dinner five nights a week if you can if you don't travel and turning off all electronic distractions for that one hour what normally happens is the conversation gets deeper you start to maybe live out your core values more like one of our core values is Adventure and Outdoors we're getting outside more we're walking across to the beach and and again these are small deposits but man do they add up man is that one sometimes that unexpected conversation will be able to come out so that's really important yeah so good and and what it it keeps bringing my mind back to is just intentionality you know it's it's not you don't have to go like you said and live in a hole somewhere and give up All Electronics but

12:11Just be intentional don't let life control you control your life so that's that's that's awesome I I highly recommend everybody read the book listen to the book I listen to it on audio it's a easy listen now there's a third edition so I'll check that out as well but shifting gears a little bit now from from what we're talking about with the the family board meeting to the investing side of things so you've you have a ton of experience in real estate investing as well and you've kind of intermarried these to you know you're investing with being intentional about you know keeping the relationship with your family can you can you kind of describe a little bit about how you've grown your own real estate company over

12:59The years and and how it's set up now yeah absolutely and to be clear I had a goal to impact my own family and other families and that's what 18 Summers was about that's why my wife and I wrote the family board meeting to share our story and this simple Rhythm and other rhythms we use in our family life all of that every bit of it the initial funding for that came from my real estate investing and I think that's really important real estate investing has been an incredible door opener for me in so many facets of my life from some of my best health mentors to creating our own impact business with 18 Summers that's what real estate has done for me and it started small you know it always starts with one one property in Northern Santa Barbara County in California 432 North

13:48M Street 24 years ago you know and remember standing in the kitchen hyperventilating because my agent Tammy Atkins called and said your offer's been accepted you know three family house 152,000 2,000 back in closing costs congratulations you know 152,000 in California California three family house I sold it years later for a lot more than that but but again but it was a huge deal I mean I mean wow this you know the year before my first marketing job out of college $224,000 a year working 60 hours a week so probably like a lot of your people I wanted to have something else and I kept going back to real estate and it started that small and then went into I got really big into niches I remember a mentor saying if I can say in one sentence

14:37What I'm doing that means I'm focused and I'm able to probably scale you're if you're saying oh I kind of do these and these you're always going to kind of be the Newbie or the freshman and I want to get on the inside Circle so you know I started to buy fix and resell HUD foreclosures the first-time home buyers that was my Niche for years then I started to buy fix and resell and rent HUD foreclosures you know and and then moved to Florida and just started to buy foreclosures and renovate them and either for for resale work but all with investors I worked with investors and then kept properties for myself and then about 2015 my now building partner and I you know we were investors together him

15:25And his father had a large management company that managed my personal portfolio we said what if we could build our own properties cuz the foreclosures weren't making sense anymore you know people were bidding them up and we did an experiment of building a few properties and all of a sudden you know nine years later that's our only focus you know we built about $3 million worth of new construction homes that year you know last year we did 182 million in sales so our Niche now again in one sentence is I build new construction properties in high growth areas in Florida that's it and some we keep we work with a lot of investors building their own portfolios simple stuff single family duplex and quads you know all residential real estate you know but we have over 850 active

16:14Investors you know done over 2,000 units you know we we have about 700 million under Asset Management now and and again this is all with smaller investors we'd work with some institutions as well but that's our at this point new construction interesting it sounds like you you've had some some turning points or some lessons learned along the way that have contributed to making these pivots and so what is I guess can you share any any Lessons Learned or maybe instances that happened to you that has contributed to the way that your business is is set up today yeah I a big thing you always always want to be looking you're look if you're going into real estate you are going to have to

17:02Work you are going to be the new guy there are lessons the one duplex is not going to retire you unless you are just the exception not the norm so it there are constant deposits but I always want to look really clear about the how and when I talk about the how it's not oh rehabbing foreclosures or building new construction it's the how am I if if if I have to never have light at the end of the tunnel and I'm just working more and more than ever because I bought rentals and they're always in trouble and and and all that time promised to my family's going to the rentals and then some you know I want to be able to be in Costa Rica a few few months out of the year I want to be able to

17:51Be at any event for my kids that I choose to I want to be able to take the vacations when I choose and and what I found is there was sometimes I was spinning my wheel with real estate I wanted to be more interested in owning a ton instead of actually being profitable and so for me what I've gotten clear on Kirby is it's what I call the brother-in-law rule like if my brother-in-law came to me and I like my brother-in-law people are like what if I don't like my brother-in-law I really like my brother-in-law and he was just getting into real estate and he said you know Jim what should I do I would say if I had to go back from yeah it's really cool in the Bios to say done over a thousand rehabs and and all this I would own less of better quality and better areas with less leverage that's it that's it because

18:40what I found is when I would try to say I remember it was the 100 House Club once I got to 100 rentals oh I'd be set for life right well the problem was I I was just more interested in getting the number of rentals than the actual performance of those rentals you know I didn't look at real maintenance and repairs the areas that I was buying you know and so when you look at that I own probably from back in my Heyday of of several huge portfolio I own probably 30% of the real estate I used to but I have way more equity and way more cash flow than ever so I think that's an important lesson that I've learned is it's not about mounting up as many rentals as you can it's about mounting up effective

19:29rental if that makes sense oh makes so much sense I talk about this this so much and it's so great to talk to somebody with with so much experience because that's where this comes from I as you I think are in business longer and longer you start to look around and you see that so many people talk about vanity metrics all day long including like you said like 100 Properties or I have a seven figure business or all these things that who cares if you have a seven fig Revenue business if it costs you seven and a half figures to operate that business that that sounds terrible to me you know I'd much rather have a $100,000 business that has extremely low expense ratio and it's all profit so so that's exactly what you're you're speaking to

20:17Here you're actually identified what are the true metrics that are going to move the needle and support your lifestyle which a lot of Real Estate Investors don't talk about they just talk how much can I accumulate for some reason and the whole reason you're accumulating it is to support your lifestyle and and support the life that you have designed so I love hearing that that advice and if if you didn't catch that part of it go back and relisten to that because that is it's so valuable ah