Five Hour School Weeks, Saunas, & Second Chances | Aaron Amuchastegui

I'm like a new business guy I'm making I'm flipping houses flipping foreclosures, we found a niche. Nobody was in a business nobody was in, we found we made huge money really fast. And I didn't have any mentors. Nobody taught me how to do anything. And so when I was making that money, I was new money. And so we were stupid with it. We wasted it, we didn't invest it, we thought that it was gonna last forever. But 2012 2013 We lost it all. And we went from and my marriage is in shambles. Our family was in shambles. And there were so many things in that moment, where we were like, man, we blew a big opportunity. We had made millions of dollars and had nothing to show for it. And we said, Man, if we ever got a chance to do it again, we would do it way different. I got my second chance to redo my business. And we went really big on on honoring that. Welcome to the action Academy podcast staring back while I celebrate freedom, the show where we help you achieve financial independence with the mindset methods and actionable steps from guests who've already earned their freedom, the freedom fly. Choose to do what you want, what you want, with who you want, with who you want, when you want when you want with another episode today. Now, here's your host, Brian Luebben. what's up what's up? Hello for the first timer. Welcome back to another episode of the action Academy podcast, bringing you the mindsets, methods and actionable steps from guests who have already earned their freedoms so that you can earn freedom in your life in business today. And now I know it's still January. So I know a lot of people are cold out there and they needed some warmth. So just just had to bring another episode of absolute heat today with my buddy Aaron Amuchastegui. Aaron is actually on a lot of real estate podcast for his courthouse step method of acquiring home see, essentially would wait for them to go into foreclosure and then buy them at a discount over and over and over again buying hundreds of homes this way. And so he's really big in the real estate investing community. But today, I really wanted to go deep into his different interests outside of just real estate. So yes, in today's episode, you can learn how to make hundreds of 1000s of dollars per month in income through the methods that he literally use, you can copy and paste them he has a book on this. But we're also going to go into in this episode is how he is able to travel around the world with his wife and kids and take them out of school. It's called the five hour school week that him and his wife created and said, that's a really cool, interesting subject. We also talked about how he's a biohacker, a life hacker and an Iron Man athlete. And he goes into all these different tips, tricks and strategies that he uses to be able to reduce his biological age. Yeah, I said it, reduce it. So he's literally Aging Backwards. What the hell, right? And so along with all of this, you get all of this information. And then also Aaron's story about how he made it to the mountaintop, made millions of dollars lost. It all almost lost his family in the process, and then figured out how to pull it all back together and then go 10 times further than he had before. So this episode is raw. This episode is powerful. And as always, if you get any value from this show, can you please leave us a rating and a review on Apple podcasts and share this with a friend or family member? Now let's get to it. Amuchastegui? Aaron Amuchastegui 4k on the screen. What is up my brother? What's up, man? You nailed my last name. The I look at yours and I'm like so is it? Luebben is 11am I gonna? Am I gonna screw this up or not? It is that's actually going to be one of my jokes out the gate is I was like, I have a doozy of a last name. But we have a Mr. Amuchastegui come in and it's just it just rolls off the tongue. You've been you had to practice that is what a fun way to come chat. Dude, the when you reached out to get on here and talk. We talked a bit online we got to play some volleyball together out in Colorado. Yeah, good times this summer and so fun. What are we gonna chat about Dude, what are you? What do you what do you got going on weekend? I've actually got a got a list here that we can rock and roll on. But uh, it's funny for people listening. It's I actually use you as an example of how weird my brain works with podcasts that I listen to that I'm interested in. And I hope for you listening. This is one of the podcasts for you. But you were on a podcast before I couldn't tell you what episode it was or what show it was. And you mentioned something about Kalina in the five hour workweek. And I remembered it. And because I was so interested by it when I heard it. And then so when I met you, I don't even know if you remember any of this. So it's like I meet you. We're going to play volleyball at the steamboat go bonus event. I'm like, Hey, how's that five hour school week thing going with Kalina? And you're like, you're probably like, Who the hell is this? guy, he, I tell you what, man, that stuff never gets old and it's super fun. I went to the chiropractor yesterday and guy hadn't been to before. And afterward, he finished his getting me all set up. And he said, Hey, I want and I and it was a place I'd normally go, but now a guy usually see and I'm like, Oh, you've probably sent me before it's fine. And afterward he goes, No, I haven't. But here's how I know I've read your book. I've read you in your wife's book. I love what you guys are doing. And like, You guys are awesome. And he's I know all about you. So I was like, Oh, I'm sure you've probably been my chiropractor before. And he was like, No, I know that I haven't been so the I love it when people reach out. I love it when people say hey, I've read the book. Hey, because yes, we've talked about it on the podcast, it was a big part of how we became who we are. And fun stuff. So no, you just by you knowing that dude, you are instantly like an extra level of friendship, right? There's like, instant friends, man. It's perfect. Yeah, no, we just crush volleyball. We had some Top Gun music playing in the background, we had dog tags flying around. I felt like we needed if we ever did a volleyball tournament. Dog Tags would be like one of the one like one of the things everybody would have to wear, like you got to wear dog tags and do an absolute necessity. So to begin the show, we'll go into your backstory, we'll go into your story and we'll take it take it there. But it's actually funny because your Instagram bio interests me so much that I think that this is like just a fun way to be able to begin the show and introduce all this audience to you. So if you go on air to mute your stake, he's, I'm gonna keep saying his name over and over again. No, I'm proud of myself for being able to pronounce it correctly. You go on his Instagram. Here's his bio. I'm gonna take the emojis out of it. Because there he's got emojis in there like crazy. But he's got traveled for newer Iron Man, wife hacker flipped 1000 own for 50 Best Selling Author, husband, homeschool dad, super wide five hour school week. CEO. Let's go brother. He's the reason you need all those emojis are so people like you flipped 1000 You got your little houses in there. You got all your stuff have the life of an entrepreneur the Yeah, the trying to figure out like, that's one challenge or one thing that's funny with like online stuff like, you're like, do your elevator pitch, you got 30 seconds to tell me all about your life. You're like if anyone's lived a big life like 30 seconds isn't enough time for an elevator pitch or a company or a business or anything. So you got to be ready with your elevator pitch your 30 seconds of who you are. And the I think it's so tough to narrow that down into 30 days. But I put I took some of my favorite stuff about me list and tried to cram it in there. I feel that traveled for newer. I want to start there because you put it first and I feel like that it was either intentional or it was the subconscious or subconsciously intentional. Talk to me on this travel printer. How have you set your life up to be able to travel? And what does this look like for you? The travel printer. So, man, part of our story 22,009 2012 I'm like a new business guy I'm making I'm flipping houses flipping foreclosures, we found a niche. Nobody was in a business nobody was in we found like huge, made huge money really fast. And I didn't have any mentors. Nobody taught me how to do anything. And so when I was making that money, I was new money. And so we were stupid with it, we wasted it, we didn't invest it, we thought that we were like so such miracles, it was gonna last forever. But 2012 2013 We lost it all. And we went from and my marriage is in shambles. Our family was in shambles. And there were so many things in that moment, where we were like, man, we blew a big opportunity we had made millions of dollars and had nothing to show for it at that time, we realized the only things that like we didn't lose, and that were some of the memories of some of the stuff we did. We said I wish would have gone on more trips. Because now that we've lost it all the stuff that we bought is worthless. The other things that we spent money on is worthless. The the the gifts we gave people, there's so much stuff that we wasted money on but we knew the stuff we didn't waste money on was the experiences. And we said Man, if we ever got a chance to do it again, we would do it way different. And we'd focus on experiences over things. And we had about a we had a year or two of just straight struggles going from like how do you go from making hundreds of $1,000 a month to like applying for a job to be a building inspector and an Uber driver? That was a rough little time? Yeah, Grace of God 2015 had a new opportunity, come up with real estate, and essentially got that second chance. So I was buying foreclosures in 2009 in California when I started that nobody was there. So that was why my opportunities big we were the first into this industry that nobody discovered yet. In 2015 I get out to Texas, a small town in Texas. I show up in an auction, nobody's there and I'm like oh my gosh, this is like California 2009. I got my second chance to redo my business. And we went really big on honoring that. If we had another chance. That's when we started the five hour school week. We pulled our kids out of school. And we started doing this thing called like world schooling and traveling Where we started trying to go all over and going to sometimes it's really fun places like London and Iceland and like sleeping in the igloos, looking at the northern lights and stuff. Other times it was like Haiti and Cuba and sleeping in these really kind of sketchy places. So your kids would see both sides of it. The way, the way I make my money there is real estate, right? The way that we the way that we set up a lot of it is rentals and long term real estate type stuff that creates what we call horizontal income. And in our Go abundance mastermind, I made a lot of fast money, but So your question was, how can I actually go travel? So my long answer either, but 2009 to 2012, I was a house flipper, I was making lots of money. But the day I stopped buying houses, I stopped making money. 2015 I was like, Man, I sure screwed that up if I just kept 100 of those houses out and set for life. So in 2015, I started buying houses out and I would fly out to Texas every month for three days, I would drive house, I go to auction, I buy like 10 houses a month, we would turn them into rentals. And they were very boring. I was like, You know what, I'm not going to make big flipping money anymore. But I'll turn it into a rental, I'll put a loan I'll make $100 a month per house. It's very boring. And the next month I said prices will never go up in Texas next month, I did it again, I bought 10 more houses the next month, I didn't buy 10 more houses. I kept putting loans on and cycling that through and did that since 2015. And the to that longer horizontal income is how we can actually travel and run businesses and buy some of the other businesses that we like to run now and then with COVID like anybody that invested heavy in real estate, or having real estate in Texas 2015 2016 2017 2020 and 2021. I feel like we hit the lottery, we got really lucky on some of those bets. And and yeah, I we don't get to travel enough right now, Brian, like the pre COVID. We were gone two, three weeks a month. We used to spend two months a year in Hawaii. And we haven't been back to Hawaii since COVID Hit we just now started to like get to go experience some stuff again. But the but it's been a it's been a rough shift from going places two to three weeks every month to to not go in hardly. And no, we're not going anywhere exotic right now. It's hard to get anywhere. You never know what's gonna happen. It's, it's been the toughest part about COVID. Really? Yeah. It's definitely been a wild ride. But I'm hopeful after watching this on the cron variant for people listening, this is like early January 2022. On the cron seems like a bad code for most people's. But yeah, the reason I asked you this, and for people listening, I didn't tell air in the show format. So we're just going off the RIP. But for the show format, Aaron is we kind of like to start the first half of the show. And what it's evolved into is talking about why we do everything. In the back half of the show will talk about business, maybe more of the metrics, the analytical part. So we'll talk about the courthouse steps and your methodologies behind doing that and how you crushed it there. Because that's a really unique niche to your point. I want to talk to you a little bit more about the the five hour books that you and your wife are doing. And talk a little bit more about this and like your lifestyle design before we get into the business part because the money is awesome. But like you said, like you went through it, you made fast money, you lost it. But what stayed weren't the memories. And I know that now you have the kids and everything that you're growing, and that you're raising. And so that's a huge part of your life. So he talked to us a little bit about the five hour school week and some of the stuff that you in Killeen are doing with that. And that why is the big part. Look at my son is second Brax you say hi, you're live on my brother. Yeah, buddy. Hey, hey, say hi to my buddy. That's Brian. Say Hi, Brian. There during podcast, you can't be shy guy say hi. Everybody loves meeting you. Areas. Hi, everybody come this way. Say hi, everybody in the mic. Hi, everybody. Yelling I? Hi. See you buddy. All right, yeah, now you can see the dude, that's why. Yeah, right there. What an awesome timing for my son to come join us. So the why behind why we do what we do. So much of it is here we grow up thinking life is going to be something certain, right? Like, you're supposed to go to school and go to college and get a job and have the kids and like every year to retire later. And there was a few big things that impacted us. So one was about five years ago, we had done really well. And then we had lost it part of when we were doing really well though. We were my wife and I weren't getting along really well. We had gotten pretty cocky. She was my broker. I was running the business we were a lot of the times it was like, This is my money. I can do what I want. This is your money when it started when we were struggling and we couldn't pay our rent and she was a waitress at the casino. And I was working two jobs like we were in the foxhole together. And we were like we were a team And then when we got really successful, we stopped being a team and we started getting this like this, this ego part of who we are. So when we ended up losing all the business, we didn't just all of a sudden go from a lot of income to none. Our marriage was also like in shambles. We've had nannies raising our kids for the prior couple years, because we were so busy working. We just thought that was the way we're supposed to do it. Yeah, both spouses work nannies raised kids. And we went into that, and we were like, Whoa, like, we were wrecked. And we had a lot of time to think about what went wrong, what went right, where our regrets are, and again, and how we would do it different. And there's so much of that was like, Man, I wish we would have spent essentially, when we had all those opportunities, I wish we spent more time with our kids. I wish we did more things with our kids. And so that was a big part of the first part of the why was when you almost lose it when you're picturing like, your family splitting up and you're gonna be doing Christmas apart and things like that. It makes you really, for me, it really made me so grateful. Like every time I get to sit with them at Christmas, like half my gratitude is like, there were times I was picturing, I wasn't gonna be able to be with you on Christmas morning. And now I get to be here. And it's right around that same time to rediscovered the market. My dad died and he died of pancreatic cancer. He died 64 years old, really early, really young for what he was supposed to and out of nowhere. And he hadn't retired yet. He's about to retire. That was the year he was supposed to go spend a few months in Hawaii. And so he died with money in the bank while he was still working. And he could have retired years earlier and so many years earlier, and he had all the he got to go live a lot of life. And he did go on some vacations and things. But really all of his biggest vacations he was planning to do. They were supposed to happen that year, another day, another day, a year or two after he died. And so I found myself to going man, I don't want that to be me. So tomorrow isn't promised, right? So tomorrow isn't promised. The you have to live for today, you have to put stuff on the calendar today. Because you never know what's gonna happen. I might go to business tomorrow, I might lose everything tomorrow, we might lose a family member tomorrow. So when we have these like bucket list items that we put on our vision boards, it's more about putting it on the calendar to try to do it now. So that's what started this, like, adventure type stuff. And so we started doing that adventure stuff. Because we had these kind of things that shocked us to the core, we had a lot of regrets and said, Let's not have regrets. Let's go do create as many memories we can, especially with our kids while they're young, while they still like us while they won't see no anymore. Like they can't tell us No, like in a couple of I mean, they tell us no, but like we could go on a trip, they can't really stop themselves. And a couple years, they'll get to decide whether or not they want to hang out with us anymore. So we're like, we're gonna force them to do a bunch of fun stuff with us. During that time, we were actually some of our first events was like going to some fan buttons events as a branch ago been. And so it was early starting us and a couple other families were starting this idea of what if we taught these mastermind quantity ideas to our kids, one of the guys that spoke at the one of the events that guy named Jim shields, and he had a book called The Family board meeting. And that family board meeting book, what he talked about, like his education matrix, and in a nutshell, one of the things he talked about was everything you need to learn in life, you can't learn in school, the most important lessons he would tell you to ask yourself, like, biggest thing you've ever had to get through as your toughest moment. And what did you What skill set? Did you learn? Did you have to use to get through that moment? And was it a skill set you learned? And everybody's like, No, it wasn't, I didn't solve that toughest moment with math. And so he has a bunch of things in there like healthy risk taking and how to develop relationships. So that was our first question. You know, wait, maybe the school system could be a little bit different. And as we were doing more and more adventure, we were pulling our kids out of school more and more, we were starting to see some of the pressures on the stuff that they were going through, like our seven year old, like crying, like doing a couple hours of homework every night. And at the time, we thought there was no better way. So we just did it. And so we'd be like tough stuff like life is tough. You just do the hard stuff. And then in some of those moments of us re questioning like maybe we should do stuff a little different. Now we start to say maybe we don't have to do the hard stuff. Or maybe we don't have to do it that way. Just because we always have there's so many things I think we do in life because people always have. So we don't question it. We say we can go ahead and like why are we going to do it this way? Because people have always done it that way. Mm hmm. Like technology disruptors are the ones that say, maybe we don't have to do it. Maybe we don't have to get a cab. Maybe we can do a different way. Maybe we can have somebody else come pick me up in their car like Uber gets created because people are trying to be disruptors. And there was probably like, there's a couple pivotal moments. So on one of our phones, we were taking our kids out of school and traveling coming back, we were starting to have more of these experiences, but it was always a bit of a drag to go back. Also because like when we would go to Florida, we go spend time in aquariums and doing all these like things where they're learning about ecosystems and all sorts of stuff in the world. And, and then we're going hey, they're learning about life. They're learning about entrepreneurship and learn about the stuff that's important to us. We did a trip to Yosemite, which is just a two hour drive from Sacramento where we lived at the time and when we got there we were planning on I was planning to work and my dad Find your homework. It was like I booked it like a year earlier for like a really good discounts. Like, we're just going to go do it. But we got there and we didn't have any internet or phone access just the way that it was the place where we were staying, there's no internet, no phone access, and my daughter had forgot to bring her homework. So all of us were a little stressed out like those first few hours, what are we going to do? And then we got to the point we said, You know what, there's nothing we can do about it. Let's just enjoy Yosemite. And it was like the most amazing week, the most really the most amazing thing is the most amazing week, hiking and seeing waterfalls like going on all these Ranger talks learning about artists like learning from like mountain climbers about stuff, learning about glaciation from lodge stuff, so much learning about life, so many family experiences and memories that we just love. So many like pictures and like tough hikes where at the end, the kids are like, wow, I'm glad we did that got to the waterfall. So an amazing time for that week. So glad we're not at school. So glad I didn't work. But then we're driving home at the end of the week, and my daughter is starting to get stressed out because she's maybe we did something because she'd missed two weeks of school, essentially of homework at the time. She started to get stressed out. We're like, what are we going to do? As we go do this and we start to get and we get to the house. You know what, prior to get on stage to talk about the four hour workweek to my two favorite books, The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod, The Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss, it talks about how to get more done with less. So I sat down my daughter and said, Look, I bet if we just focus for the next couple hours, let's see how much your homework we can get done. And so we just sat down and we kept doing page after page and she's doing the work. And I'm there whenever she needs me to give her a hint on something or some help. And she keeps going. And a few hours later, we finish all of her homework. And the and so she's feeling very excited. I'm feeling very excited. I dropped her off for school the next day and never being stressed. She's like, it's fine. I missed the last couple weeks, no big deal. I went to pick her up at the end of that day. And it was like the coolest quote ever. Because Maddie I said, Hey, how was your day, and she was Dad, you'll never believe it. I'm the only one that got everything done. I'm the only one that knows long division. So part of that stuff we had to do was learning long division for the first time was one of those lessons they were supposed to be working on. But she got more. But they essentially with class, they didn't get through all the lessons they gave her. So she was so excited she was ahead. And that's what really sprouted the five hour school week, the idea that we think that we could actually get what a normal kid gets done in eight hours during the day our kids can get it done with an hour of focus time, they can learn as much as their friends at school. And the rest of the day we could spend our traveling, going to museums going to aquarium just having fun playing soccer, whatever. And so that's where the five hour school week came that you can get your full week of school, done five hours a week, and the rest of the time, you can do all that extra stuff that trips to Yosemite, the learning about glaciation going and seeing crocodiles, all the other fun stuff that we really liked learning. And so it's and it's turned into a lot more the we have a book about it. There's, there's so many people that have made it their own thing. The whole idea of the book was while we were doing some of that people kept reaching out to my wife on social media, what are you doing? Like, how are you traveling so much? What are you really doing with all of this concept? And so I finally totally you have to put in a book, you got to write it down. Like all the questions you keep answering for people. And if and the whole goal was to help inspire others to know there could be another way. Because for us for the longest way our kids were unhappy, we were unhappy. And it's just life is tough. You do it the way that you're supposed to. I went to school, you went to school, it was normal, it was hard, we did homework. And then we just want people to know like they have options. Five hours, Squeaks really let people know they have options. And they can create their own education, even if it's the 15 hour school week, or the 30 hour school week or the one hour squeak, however they decide to do it. It's just letting people know like, you don't just have to do it the way they told us we did here on edited gasoline, right here. Aaron, I'm here to stay. I'm sorry, man. But I'm gonna have to burden you with my friendship for the rest of our life. I'm so sorry. Because now it's, I've already I found my groove. I found my person. She's my girlfriend now. But I know that she's going to be the mother of my children. So we're a couple years out, then again, everyone that says that you know what happens? So I'm just winging it. So we'll see when the kids come, but when the kids come, that's gonna be exactly my philosophy that I'm thinking. And that's why it's so interesting to me for someone that doesn't have kids yet. And for people that are listening that don't have kids yet, like what a cool mess that is so that we can be able to go in and we have options now. Because that's what's cool about our generation coming up right now is and I kind of the millennials and Gen Xers like we all started to poke holes and things. Were like, hey, it's almost like a running joke where we're like, man, almost everything we learned was completely useless. Like, why didn't we learn how to balance a checkbook? Why didn't we learn how to what, how to take out loans. Nobody teaches about student loans. Nobody teaches about credit card house. It's insane. Yeah, it's ridiculous. And so now it's cool to be able to see that there's A different way, before we get into the business side, I'm not even gonna lie to you, we talked so much that I'm completely off track with time. So feel free to bring me in whenever you want. Because normally I have a really good track of time here. I want to talk about the second part of yours, which is life hacker that is infinitely interesting to me. And I know that you are boys with David Osborne and I had a long conversation with him. We talked a lot about longevity, and health and fitness. And so I really like to let you loose there before we get into the nuts and bolts of the business. Yeah, the David and I get to share a lot of fun ideas. And part of it started with my, again, when I first like all of a sudden went broke and was like, how do I help fix my family, I was working a couple different jobs. And the way that I was doing that was like combining the four hour workweek, like doing work for a couple hours in the day, before Lille before 6am, then taking my kids to school and then go doing other jobs like to be able to get it all done. So that miracle morning for our work, I became pretty obsessed with the Tim Ferriss and stuff that he did. And part of his concept was the idea. First time I'd seen anything that was like a life hacker that was like, hey, if I take this medicine, I function better if I eat this way I function better. And so now the world is just an example. So my normal day, right? So like I get up early. I ride like 3030 minutes on my, like bike simulators. I didn't when I was training for Ironman, I'll ride down for 30 minutes, I'll hit some golf balls. The I'll go sit in my infrared sauna for 1520 minutes. The year really simple stuff. A vegan 90% of the time. I've got a I've got a cryotherapy machine in my house. So like a cryo therapy like you go like the nitrogen got delivered today I was on a zoom call and the guy is like show knocking on my door to deliver nitrogen to people as long as you're getting nitrogen delivered right now what is that? Like? No, I have a cryotherapy booth that like three minutes a day, you go in this thing and it's negative 280 degrees. Now it burns 500 calories when you're in there. It's a very like quick process. And it also I'm a big fan of cryotherapy. So I got into it. When I broke my ribs. I broke my ribs playing volleyball out in Austin, Texas, one of the mornings when we were doing it super painful experience, you go get an A cryotherapy thing for three minutes, you don't feel anything for a few hours. The concept with Cryotherapy is your body thinks you're dying. So for three minutes, your body thinks you're dying. So it starts releasing all these endorphins because you want to feel better if you're dying. It releases all this adrenaline because if you're dying, your body wants to be ready to battle to try to do better things to be okay. And then as soon as your body realizes you're not dying, then it starts healing itself. So they're sending out all the receptors to go say we gotta get ready for battle again. So I do that every I do. Yeah, there's a lot of pills and vitamins that all of us take. Like the end even we've been learning more about it lately from David Sinclair, I've got a stack of them here next to me. But I've got reservatrol, I've got Nmm, I've got this thing called Maido pure, which are mitochondrial revitalises. And then all your regular vitamins you take, I inject na d plus every day. And I inject B 12. And there's a couple other kinds of injections that are in there. And I'm I'm 40 I'm 41 years old, I get testosterone injections once a week. But I have more energy today than I had when I was like 25 or 30. I'm healthier today I eat, I used to only McDonald's every day and things like that. So I've got lots of energy with that we also go to this oxygen, there's a hyperbaric oxygen chamber about a mile from my house. And the that's one of the things that David and I go do. And it's like, boring, you sit in this thing for a couple hours. And it really turns up the pressure and you breathe out of an oxygen mask. And you can do work in there on your laptop. But it's one of the only things that they've seen that can measure your telomere length to go in the right direction as if you're reversing aging, so many little things like that. Part of being a part of like trying to be a life hacker is trying to find things that light you up and how you can be more accomplished at doing them. That can be like meal prep that can be like learning to also like find things that maybe you didn't think you were going to be skilled at and be like, I want to be skilled at that too. But so much of life hacking for me, it's like how can I get energy as I feel older, I want to feel younger next year than I feel today. Because I really liked living. And again, like tomorrow isn't promised. And we spent plenty of time in our all of our lives not doing enough. So we want to be able to do as much as we can there. No, that's fantastic. And that's like a huge focus for me now is whenever I started to view it in that perspective, like there's one whole at this whole one whole thing where you're like, oh, yeah, I want to dye it to look good. And it's a miserable process. You feel like crap. Yeah, you end up getting lean like I was I competed in a bodybuilding show when I was just so ungodly lean, that it was just miserable for me. But there was a quote, in a story from I think it was Zig Ziglar that said it and he was like If you have a million dollar $100 million racehorse, and this race horse was the best race horse that money could buy, and you had that thing going out and it was making all of your money, and it was helping you live in this race horse was killing it. He's what would you feed the racehorse? He goes, he would feed it all the best foods that money could buy. You had to give it the best vitamins the best exercise everything. Because would you feed the racehorse junk? Would you feed it beer? No. Okay, then. Cool. So you're talking about a fictitious racehorse that What are you putting in your body? Is your the best racehorse you're ever going to have? You can make well over $100 million for yourself. He's so what are you doing for your body? And as soon as I started thinking about that, from optimization, and a impact standpoint, and a significant standpoint, that's when the switch flipped. So that's why that's so interesting to me. So for people listening, Aaron's talking about all this cool all these cool things he does, because he's got some money now and he's able to do it. That's one of the reasons why we get wealth. And we chase some wealth for these reasons, because you can get an infrared sauna and a cryo chamber like that's stuff that I want to get for people before we get into the business here. To wrap this up with a bow for this last part, if you could have maybe three to five resources for somebody listening to this that they could go do today, or this week, maybe a book to get or a website or a blog post to read about all this stuff that you're talking about with biohacking. David Sinclair, what would you recommend some resources, maybe some diets, something like that? Yeah. And one of the things you hit on was the none of it is to look like a byproduct, right? That's the Bible. It's all to feel better. It was funny i So after I got the cryo machine, I was like three or four months in a row of just a very simple 30 minute a day exercise. Plus the sauna plus the cryotherapy. My wife saw me walking in one day and she's like, What the heck has been going on? You've lost so much weight, like your muscle, my body that's down 10 or 11%. And it's like you haven't been doing anything. I'm like, I haven't it was just it consistency compounds, but it was cool when she noticed and was like, Man, I gotta start getting in the cryotherapy machine with you. If you're if this stuff's all working, we got to do that. There's just a lot. So one of my favorite resources to listen to is Dave Asprey. A very simple thing that you can try to do and achieve right away is like the whole bulletproof coffee morning routine, right? It's like mixing a little bit of butter with protein in your coffees. So I forget. So Dave Asprey has a book about long life, I forget the name of it, but he's got a podcast about it, too. He started bulletproof coffee. So that's something that anybody could it's like a $10 book origin. He's a big collagen guy, isn't he? Yeah. So it's butter and then collagen protein that you're taking makes your joints feel better. The he essentially was hiking Everest and it was super sore. He saw these guys were eating pure butter and after he ate the pure butter is joint start feeling better. If my neck starts feeling funky, or my knees are under the money, I'm like, oh, yeah, I need more butter in my coffee. And it works. So Dave Asprey, he's got a his books, maybe 10 or 20 bucks and you could start a bulletproof coffee kind of regimen, something like that. starting your day with the protein that collagen to do fabric helps you burn fat away during the day. By starting your day with protein and collagen and not carbs. It'll help you burn fat and get energy you could do that you can add that for like an extra $3 a day to your life so very inexpensive thing to go get started with. I'd say for breakfast most of the time the I don't have I don't have set times for like intermittent fasting. They just depends on where how I feel on it. But yeah, so fasting. I know a lot of people that do really well with fasting not one of the things I do on mine. But I know David Sinclair told us that if we're eating breakfast, we're like killing ourselves that we should. He said, You should always skip your first meal of the day. The so get that resource, get the Miracle Morning book. You know how Elrod great dude, the great friend of ours and it really talks about getting up a little bit early. If you wake up a couple hours before you do right now. Whatever time you work out, start waking up two hours earlier, that may seem ludicrous or crazy if you've never thought about that. But during that two hours you can do all the things you don't have time to do to focus on the hell to get the extra exercise in to read to meditate. And when I first started signing up for Ironman stuff, like that was the secret to waking up early and doing the things when everyone else is asleep, then there's no excuse to not have the time to do it. And then the newer stuff that the nm and na d the injections. That's all I've been doing that for five months, that's fairly new. And David Sinclair has a book. It's like why we age and why we don't have to. And so the it's still pretty new stuff, but his studies on it, I like it in there. There's a page that says here's the vitamins to take. Those are like a couple $100 a month for most of those supplements to start Adding and the the sooner you do the better. But Dave Asprey, his book and David Sinclair both talk about here's your first talks about how you can slow aging and then how you can reverse aging. And for me, it's not even really the aging idea. But I did get a bunch of us got blood tests taken recently, where they take your stats to say that what your inner age is compared to your outer age. And I did it with a lot of a lot of the Go buttons, guys, like 15 of us all got the test, and they do your blood testing, and they measure all these things and say, Alright, you're actually 41. So mine came back, you're actually you're 41. But your body says you're 30 to everybody else, two or three years difference, and some of them were in the reverse order. And the I had the I had by far the biggest Delta in that and it was pretty cool. But really, I don't drink alcohol too. So that's a bummer. For a lot of you guys. It's like, that'd be a really boring thing to say, I don't want to live longer if I can't drink. But that's I think one of the things that made my stats, a lot different, but really inexpensive resource. To start with Dave Asprey, start with David Sinclair, start with vitamins do vitamins every day, wake up early and get into a small routine, those small routines you do everyday add up really quick. Awesome. Yeah, that's great to know, unfortunately, I do drink. And it's, and it sucks. Now granted, yeah, now I'm pushing away from it a little bit. So it's like I say that as I just left Brazil, or the entire culture is drinking every single meal. So I'm still feeling the stuff on the effects of that. But yeah, definitely post called, I was able to make those shifts relatively quickly. And I'm going to go to the gym immediately after this. So that's something that's baked in. Yeah, appreciate all that advice. That's all stuff that we could actually take today, I'm gonna put everything that he said in the show notes for you listening so that we could be able to focus on that. So I want to be able to wrap this up talking about go actually go into the courthouse steps and what you did there and maybe do a super segment on this to where we could talk about the principles behind it, and resources behind it for someone that hears it. And they're like, Oh, cool. I want to apply that. Now. How can I do that? So can you talk a little bit about your story about buying at auction at the courthouse steps, and then go into the finances here a little bit? Yeah. So when I started doing, I didn't have any money, I had to find investors to do it. So what happens if someone doesn't, if someone buys a house, most of them get a loan to do it. And then if they stop making their payment, that goes into this kind of system, where they get a notice that says, hey, you haven't made your payment. And the way the law works in a lot of non judicial states, so that's California, Texas, Arizona, Colorado, there's a bunch of them, where it says, If you don't make your payment, we're going to take you to a public auction, we're going to start like the Note amount. So if you owe 300,000 on your house, it goes for 300,000. If nobody buys it, then the bank gets the house back and then becomes a bank owned reo. But also, like a little known secret. And really in the 80s and 90s Nobody bid on those auctions, they all went back to the bank for Oreos, like a little known secret that they actually took them to market in 2005 2006. Sitting owners getting foreclosed on because the market was huge. In 2007, foreclosure started to happen like crazy, like 2007 2008 2009. But nobody knew how the system actually worked. All these guys that have been doing foreclosures for the last 10 years, there's only a few people in the business that were doing it that realize you could buy at that point, very first auction I went to there was three other guys there. And 50 houses sold that day. So between the three guys, we could choose which houses we wanted to how many we wanted to get on, like you bid against each other on the good ones, but people would run out of money and get to go through that process. Sometimes when you're buying a foreclosure, it's a really nice house, you knock on the door that people were living in it, they were keeping it nice and clean. And you say I buy the house and they go okay, I'll move out. Sorry, I didn't know when this is gonna happen. Some people are gonna be mad, and they're gonna yell at you. And they're gonna pour concrete down their toilets, they're gonna break stuff. And sometimes they're gonna be vacant and super nice, and they're gonna be vacant and trashed. So, in order to buy a house like this at foreclosure, you're trying to make a whole bunch of guesses to see, how much can I sell it for? What will it cost me to fix it up? And so how much profit do I want? So how much can I bid, I've got a book I wrote called bidding to buy, like I published my bigger pockets. Again, another cheap book, it's like 10 bucks, I'll get paid like 50 cents every time you buy one. So it's not a pitch for that. It is a quick three hour read, though, where you can learn all sorts of ways to analyze, like, How to Buy Foreclosures, how to go through the business, there's less foreclosures right now. But it's the same concepts out there for if you're trying to get make money in real estate, make quick money in real estate, you're trying to buy a house for less than it's worth, and fix it and sell it or fix it and rent it. And so now a lot of what we're doing so at that time, I had no money. I went to other people and I started like saying what would auction be like I did test runs, I could have bought this house for this. I could have fixed it for this. This is what it sold for. And then I went to investors and said my first investor was my dad and I said, Hey, I won't charge you any money. Let me see if this works. And he made money on the first house. He made money on the second house and I started saying hey, can I get 25% of the profit now? Eventually I sit with people I start getting 50% of the profit that eventually I started having lenders do it with a converting it to rentals. And the only reason I'm trying to jump through that really quick, Brian is I know we've been talking for a while already. And there's some other resources out there. But courthouse steps stuff is, it's awesome, awesome stuff. And the more but it really It sounds complicated. It's all about systems. It's scary because you're like, I need to drive by the house, I need to check title, I need to see what it's worth, I need to do all these steps. But if you just follow this the steps of the checklist, it's a very easy, it's a very simple process. It's not easy, you have to do all the steps. But it's very simple. And if you follow this, if you follow the simple steps and you're willing to work hard, you can make a lot of money in it. The other idea of if you're buying a house for $80,000, that's worth $100,000, then those become really good rentals, because then what can happen in theory is you buy it, you put a renter in it, and six months later, when you go get a loan, it's going to appraise even if you get no appreciation today, we're getting crazy appreciation. If you have no appreciation in six months after you've had a renter in it for a while you'll get a loan, you get an $80,000 loan on it. That means you pull back your money or you pay your investor back their money. And now you own the house and you make 100 bucks a month forever on. And that's all I started doing in 2015. I tried to get with as many as I could, that with hundreds and hundreds of houses were like 800 houses or something now, and the end it'll end up paying off in the long run. So the I love real estate for that reason real estate over the past couple years has gotten even crazier. My favorite like hack for somebody right now they're thinking about getting into foreclosures and buying direct from Owners. You can door knock vacant houses, you can see who stopped mowing their lawn. You can go to the city and see who hasn't paying who isn't paying their water bill and CLAS lien notices. Those are people that haven't stopped making their mortgages yet, but they're in trouble, right so you can use those techniques to buy from them. My favorite thing right now is actually buying new construction. Because you can buy new construction for it while it's under construction. You can go I had a bunch of them this last year, but it's very simple example $170,000 townhome for sale. We go we get an under contract on it, we give them a $3,000 deposit on this condo, it takes seven months to finish every month. They're like, Hey, we're getting delays from breakers and things like that. We closed on it in September for 170. And that's I get a hard money loan on it. 100% financing 12% interest $179,000 house the same day. I tell the realtor that was the listing agent on it to go ahead and relist it, and she relist it for 219. All right, so the so because it's because we've had this crazy year. So if at the day I closed on it, if it lost value or soccer, I couldn't get a loan, I would have been out that two or $3,000 deposit. But the day I bought it, she goes in listed for 219. I don't remember I got to 10 or 215 or something like that. But then I was able to sell that one, I owned it for 30 days. With that very like, I know it sounds get rich quick real estate right now is very opportunistic. It does feel like we've got another year of this crazy appreciation. I don't think people should go buy cash today hoping for appreciation later. But there's a lot of these ways to almost buy options on real estate where you can put down deposits with long escrows. And see if you actually get some appreciation in three to six months before you actually close on it. It gets even easier if you're going to close on it for 179 Tomorrow, and now it's appraising at 215 to 20. You don't even it'll be way easier to get a lender or a friend to say Hey, can you loan me the money look it appraised for 219. I just didn't close at 179 We'll sell it tomorrow. And I'll pay you 5000 bucks interest or something like that. So I love real estate as a way to do some really boring stuff like nice singles. I the last the last five years I've been hitting singles, no high risk stuff, buying a house, it's going to cash flow. It's a rental buying house is going to Oh writing offers on this new construction. But by the time I close that takes six to nine months, we're seeing these huge appreciation, we're buying it we already have the built in equity. It's a very, I think we've got another year of the market being like this, I think there's a lot of ways to do really boring singles. And then every once a while, like we saw in 2020 2021 are boring houses that were never supposed to gain in value have done really well. So it's a real estate can make. I would say I'm not really great business person. I'm not really great at running teams or having a bunch of employees. I own some companies too, that are more traditional. Those aren't as successful as our real estate ones. But real estate you don't have to be very smart. And you can do really well at it. If you just learn the principles and the simple tactics to stay safe. Yeah, and then just rinse repeat. Follow what your mentors did stay in your lane, stop trying to zigzag stick to your thing rock and roll. Dude, everything Brian just said like the I've done these other deals I've done. I recently bought a new construction apartment complex that's exciting for me that's that's probably the difference. The biggest change of not staying in my lane. Because the single family rentals are like the ones where when I focus on those, I know them I know them inside and out and I know if I keep doing them all succeeded then when I try to get into this other stuff like I put on the goal is I want to buy a commercial I want to buy industrial know anything about that stuff. And the reason I want to do that is maybe boredom or maybe jealousy that People are growing faster. If you just stay in your lane, with a very simple thing, real estate can be really lucrative right now. And I'm sure there's lots of other businesses like that, or even crypto and things like that you know what you're doing, you stay in your lane, stay focused and learn from people. So as we finished up this last year, two, I agree with you to, obviously, I think they're going to start raising rates and hiking rates, that's going to be the obvious move by the Fed here soon. But as we are moving into this next market cycle, I actually just talked to Cushman this this last week, and he was talking about market cycles. And yeah, we're teetering at of one right now. But his argument is, you can also make the argument that it's actually forced a new cycle, and that we're going into it now just because of what the federal government did with the stimulus. But what is your next? What do you see on the horizon? Is this something that you're going to still continue doing? Is the courthouse steps buying at auction? Is it something that you're going to keep doing moving forward making these plays on this, like appreciation plays and making bets on this? Or what do you start doing once the tide starts turning, and we start going a different direction you have gameplan, then are we just going to adjust and pivot? When the time comes. And you're Cushman is a brilliant guy, the I really liked him. We just we published 150, podcasts in 2021. And of all our top we just really started Top 10. And the interview I did with him where we just talked about stats, and we where we tried to predict the future was in our top 10 most downloaded podcasts. So the I would say anybody that's listening, that hasn't listened to. Did you interview Kretzschmar on the show? Oh, I interviewed him on the show. Oh, yeah. So go back and listen to that one. If you're listening, go back. Again, because I and I'm gonna go listen to that one. Because I think so every year, I try to say, what does it look like 12 months from now, always. And I think that 12 months from now, based on the statistics of demand and supply, very simple econ stuff, maybe some of the only stuff I learned in high school and college that really applies today is econ supply demand curve stuff. The I think prices are going to be worth more a year from now, period. I think a lot of that is probably this new cycle that was created, I think we're just getting started. I would also like, I'm not gonna bet that five years from now, prices are worth way more. But I think that prices will be worth I think we're just getting started in this new cycle. The way that I will bet, though, is based on what I think 12 months from now, because I could be wrong about two years from now three years from now, but I'm but I, but by looking at the stats, I think the next 12 months, we're gonna have some increase. So I'm gonna go as big as I can, while I can. One of things I've learned in the last 10 years is you've got cycles of opportunities and cycles of not I've had three times since 2005, where I had really huge opportunities, the first two, I wish I would have gone bigger in 2009, I wish I'd found more lenders bought more houses done more things. In 2012, I wish I did the same thing. In 2020. I told my wife at the time I like. So we've got these other chances where we looked back and said, this is this is one of those new cycles, one of those new times I don't know how long this is gonna last. But now we have an infinite amount of people that want to invest in us an infinite amount of lenders were no as absolutely big as we can for as long as this cycle goes. So we'll have to look back. Now that so for me, that means like, I'm gonna push, really, I bought more houses last year, then then I had any of the years prior in 2020 and 2021. I'll do the same thing this year, because I believe that's going to happen. As soon as that slows down, man, I hope that I can just now have the reserve and the calmness to go. Alright, cool. Now we're going to go back to five, our school week model for the next few years and just travel again, because 2017 like 22,019, I didn't work very much. I didn't have much I didn't have anything to go big on it was like we were buying each month it was nice and boring. The last year or two has been like go as big as we can, as many as we can. So I think it's cyclical. I think we've got a big opportunity right now to go for it. And I'm hoping that yeah, if the opportunity starts to dry up, I hope I'm smart enough to say alright, let's just go travel the world, go to Africa, go do something else instead of trying to fit it. When I've tried to fit like that square peg in a round hole. I've tried to make myself successful to time when the opportunity is huge. I really beat my head against the wall. I spent time doing things I shouldn't and losing money. The times I've done the best was like, it's just obvious when opportunities knock, they knock. Like they'll and it's and when that happens, you should just go really big no matter what we'll have another two or three times in our lifetime where huge opportunities will happen. So I'll hopefully be patient till the next one. Yeah, go go an inch wide and a mile deep. Yeah, yep. I love it. Man. This has been it's been awesome show because man, you're you've got so many different angles and so many different areas of like zones of genius. That's just, I listen to you on podcasts. And I'm like, this is cool. But if I just talked to you about real estate today, that would be boring to me. Like you've got so much more to offer. That's why I like doing these shows. And now everyone can leave this and it's like my overall goal for the show. It's you don't want to eat don't want to be a jack of all trades master of none. But the goal for the show is every single episode, I want to be able to give people the tools, the financial tools to be able to be 1% Better listen into this episode financially than they were before they have one more tool to use. And then also, they have one more idea that they can take about how to tweak their life. So that while they're building their journey, and while they're building their business and going on this path, they can do it the right way, instead of just hustling their ass off and saving all of their money. And all of a sudden, you look up and you're 50 and you've got all this money, and you've got all these savings, but you didn't do it the right way. And now your kids hate you. You're divorced four times. So what did you accomplish? So if we're gonna accomplish those two things, that's a freaking win. And I think this episode was a winner that buddy killed it. I want to just I want to do one final thought for it. I think and I think what you're doing here is I think what you're doing here is awesome. I think if there was one message I could give anybody out of there is the it's the know your why. So people say I want to be rich, right? Simply I wanted to build a business I want to make as much money as I could. But why did I want to do that? If I had known my why in 2005 2009 that sort of stuff. Then in 2000 I didn't even go into fact I went to prison you know when I was 20 Also for a couple years and so I had all these things that like jump started but the if I didn't so to say if I didn't know why I want to get rich then when the money would have started coming in I would have been smarter with it I would have been more careful with it would have been smart I just didn't I wasn't even didn't even think about what would happen if it really turned out and then now in life focusing on that why helps us stay like I want to spend a lot of time with my family like people go I want to be rich cuz I wanna spend a lot of time with my family and then sometimes the opportunity happens where you stopped spending time with your family so no your why if you want to be rich, why do you want to be rich and try to see how much of that stuff you can do now and just keep your eye on that the whole time your Why should always be front and center when you're super successful when you're not successful when you're trying to grow and if you always know this is why I want to do great then then then you'll make better decisions along the way so this is super fun Brian in the economics will go even further the wealth comes even faster whatever you're having fun with it. I've literally this this last year on paper like my vertical income like what took a hit because I quit jobs went to other jobs quit those jobs, but still love the route along the way. And I accidentally tripled my net worth whoops. Come on by assets. Do it dude, come on everyone listening. Just listen to what Aaron says. So listen to me. We're super lucky guys, Brian, but these for your listeners. Thanks for listening. The hope you guys found it interesting. Yes. And then Aaron, where can people find you? And let's share the resources and the podcast. Yeah, so the best way to talk to me is on Instagram I got a unique name Aaron Moochie Steggy so at Aaron in which you Steggy the end just go find me on there asked me if I have a podcast called The Real Estate rockstars podcast. It has its own Instagram it's high. But if you like Google real estate rockstars podcast I think you'll find it the largest podcast in the US for real estate agents. And we I released eight to 10 a month of those right interview people we talk about real estate news. I've got several software companies on how people can find assets. I've got Foreclosure Listings in Texas and things like that. My bidding to buy book is a great one you can find that on bigger pockets, the five hour school we're finding my wife on Instagram or go buy that book again. It's a quick read and it's pretty encouraging. But anything that's important to me and find me on social media we'll talk about it more and if I forgot to list one of those resources you messaged me I'll find it for you. Boom and I'm gonna put all this in the show notes and you could be able to just scroll on down after you leave is that five star rating and review and you go leave real estate rockstars to five star review you can scroll down and go buy the books man. Buy the books, roll with it buy the books give the reviews elicit a real give the that's more important than listening sometimes give the reviews people want the sun to shine want the sun to shine brighter on you want the birds to sing in the morning. Gotta leave us a review. Anyways, brother, I appreciate you. Thank you for coming on. And this is Brian Luebben and Aaron images saggy, signing off. You've been listening to the action Academy podcast helping you to choose what you want with who you want. When you want. You've been given the gift of freedom. Don't turn your back on that. We hope you've enjoyed the show. And we hope you've gotten some practical and useful information make sure to like rate and review the show. We'll be back soon but in the meantime, hook up with us on social media. Remember financial independence is freedom to freedom fly