Get ready for a motivating discussion with Zach Oehlman about the power of real estate in creating opportunities for time and financial freedom. Join us as we go over his investment journey to discover not only the keys to success but also the path to purposeful and joyful living. So keep listening until the end of this episode!

Key takeaways to listen for

• [10:58] Importance of a good sales and marketing team in business success
• [14:06] Real estate classes to invest in to maximize benefits and returns
• [21:42] The mindset you need to be highly successful and happy
• [28:56] Benefits and essential aspects of making money online
• [32:29] Why following the gold standard might be a terrible idea

Resources mentioned in this episode

• [01:18] One Up On Wall Street by Peter Lynch | Kindle and Paperback
• [07:02] Genius in 21 Days
• [16:19] Nomad Capital
• [16:30] Airbnb
• [35:53] Bitcoin

About Zach Oehlman

Zach is the founder of Learn and Grow Rich, a dynamic platform empowering individuals to attain holistic wealth and prosperity. Zach’s background is rooted in a small farming community in Northwest Indiana, where he learned the values of hard work and perseverance. After earning a double degree in Finance and Business from Indiana University, he went on to work as a commodities broker at the Chicago Board of Trade. He eventually became a high-end financial consultant. 

After his corporate job, Zach became an entrepreneur and now runs multiple companies with over 45 people in 11 countries. His focus is on starting, scaling, and selling businesses. He and his wife have been traveling the world full-time for the last 3.5 years.

Connect with Zach

• Website: Learn and Grow Rich
• Blog: Blog - Indiana Oehlman

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YouTube: Truly Passive Income

TikTok: @trulypassiveincome

Instagram: @truly_passive_income

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Download Our FREE Passive Investor Toolkit

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Mentioned in this episode:

Sponsored by Nomad Capital

Looking to invest in self-storage? Nomad Capital converts vacant big-box retail spaces across the Southeast into climate-controlled storage, with a target of 20% annual returns. Our fund combines low leverage and high depreciation for strong growth and valuable tax benefits. By buying properties at deep discounts, we often achieve break-even at just 40% occupancy. Join a proven model in a resilient asset class that continues to deliver, even in today’s market. Learn more at nomadcapital.us/tpi. Accredited investors only.

Zach Oehlman: 00:00:43

You can be happy right now.

You can have that state of mind of joy and happiness right now, and you can go work your tail off and get some money and live a great life and be happy then, too. But the happiness doesn't come after the money.

Neil Henderson: 00:00:54

Welcome to Truly Passive Income. I'm Neil Henderson.

Clint Harris: 00:00:56

And I'm Clint Harris.

Neil Henderson: 00:00:57

Well, Zach Oehlman. Welcome, sir. It's good to see you.

Zach Oehlman: 00:01:00

Yeah, thanks for having me on, Neil and Clint. I'm excited to have the conversation today.

Neil Henderson: 00:01:03

All right, so our first question for you, of course, based on your blog, is where in the world is Zach Ullman?

Zach Oehlman: 00:01:09

I'm coming live from Medellin, Colombia, today. We've been here for about four months, and we're taking a break from the traveling and just settling down down here.

Neil Henderson: 00:01:16

Well, if anybody, you owe it to yourself to go visit Zach's blog, and we'll put that in the show notes and see. I love your bucket list of items of all the places you've been.

But before we get into that, why don't you give us a quick overview of who Zach Ullman is and what your background is.

Zach Oehlman: 00:01:31

Yeah. So I say I'm a farm kid, you know, grew up in Coutts, Indiana, small town, 3,500 people. Everybody knew everybody.

And, you know, my dad passed away when I was 12, so I took over the farm, and that was sort of my vision for the rest of my life. I love working. I love the manual labor aspect of it. And then I graduated high school, and I was like, this is not what I want.

I want to travel the world, help people, and make money. And I started looking into what does that take?

I remember my first book, Peter lynch, and I started understanding what is investing, what is stocks, what is hedge funds, what is mutual funds, what is all this stuff? And got really fascinated with finance and making money because we worked hard for the money that we did had, and we didn't have a whole lot of it.

I wanted that to be a component. And so I asked around, and people said, you know, go to college. And so I went to college, took that very serious.

d with a degree in Finance in: 2008

I worked. Then I worked down at the Chicago Board of Trade, realized that wasn't what I wanted to do. And then I came into this world of valuation consulting.

I didn't even know what it was, but they offered me a job and I took it. And I learned so much inside of that and how to value.

I valued pretty much everything you can think of from private companies, public companies, but I really specialize in illiquid, non marketable assets, you know, private businesses and some really random stuff. And then, you know, I was in there, became a published author and I wanted something more.

Cause I reached the pinnacle of my career making the money working for the, one of the best companies in the world. I just wasn't satisfied because I didn't have that travel, I wanted to travel, I wanted to do all that. So I jumped in the proverbial deep end.

Started with real estate and then eventually moved into buying and selling my own businesses. And that's what we do today.

We specialize in starting, scaling and selling businesses and then reinvesting that money back into real estate for tax mitigation purposes and building actual wealth. That's what we do today. Spend most of our time.

Clint Harris: 00:03:29

All right, there is a lot to unpack there, to back up a little bit. A lot of people never get to the level that you're at, obviously, or even a couple rungs below there.

A lot of people start out working in a business and I know a lot of people and talk to a lot of people that struggle making the leap to working on the business and not in the business.

And then above that is instead of working on the business, is valuing the business or looking at it compared to other businesses around there, looking at the different assets they have, how they could come together and kind of that 10,000 altitude view looking down on things. And that's kind of where you started, right? Looking at the valuation of the businesses overall.

So most people are working their way up from working in a business, hopefully eventually getting to the top of that business, then working on the business and then potentially selling and having an exit.

And you're in a position where you're looking at all these different businesses, you know how to value them and you know how to get the most out of them. So as you're looking at things now, like what's your typical path? Are you starting businesses, building them up, selling them off?

Are you buying businesses, looking for value add? Do you have a management team in place or just principles that you believe in that apply to all of them?

Zach Oehlman: 00:04:31

I grew into where I'm at today, right. Sort of valuing a business and buying a business is two different things. And so I've learned a lot over the years.

So what I do is I have a team of People, I have a team of sales and marketing people, I have a team of operators, I have an automation team, I have a finance team and they're all in house because what I started off with subcontracting, you know, these third party businesses and the challenge I had was everyone was saying, oh, it's their fault, it's their fault we're not getting the result. And so I just. Personal responsibility, I said, well, if I'm the one writing the check, I'm going to understand all this.

And I've bought training courses, I bought programs, I've hired coaches. And so today I have an in house team that's on my payroll for everything. And we have a very specific framework.

I like service based business, specifically in the financial real estate world because it's sort of ancillary to what I'm already doing. And so we use the same set of principles all throughout all the businesses.

We use the same software, we use the same methodologies, the same sales processes. So when we bring on a new business or we start a new business, it's the same.

I don't have to teach people on process, I don't have to teach people on software. It's just a little bit different conversation and whatever it is that we're offering.

Neil Henderson: 00:05:38

So what kinds of businesses we talk? You said something to do with real estate, but I'm not quite following you. What kinds of businesses are we talking here?

Zach Oehlman: 00:05:44

Yeah, so I started off, you know, when I first took the jump off the corporate bandwagon into business, I didn't have a whole lot of money. I didn't really understand money the way that I do today. And so I couldn't get money for a business. And so I got into real estate.

And so I used that because it's much easier to get capital for because it's a hard asset. And then I built a community of real estate investors. And then what I saw was I was referring all of these people to different services.

You know, you got the 401k people, you got the tax and bookkeeping people, you have the realtors. And what was happening is I was referring these people to colleagues of mine. And I have a lot of referrals and they just couldn't keep up with them.

And then they were coming back to me and they're like, Zach, your guy dropped the ball. And I'm like, well, if I'm going to be hr, I'm going to get paid, right?

And so I went and I found great people and I built a system and process around Them and so then I could refer them to my business. And so right now we have a financial services business where I do like fractional CFO work. We do bookkeeping.

Uh, one of my clients were buying a business, other ones were selling businesses.

Some people are high functioning W2 workers make a quarter of a million dollars a year and they need my help for tax and reinvestments right back into real estate.

So that whole arena of bookkeeping, taxes, wealth building, be it through, you know, infinite banking, velocity banking, all of that, I'm very well versed in it.

What I do is I talk to the person and I get an understanding of where they're at, where they want to go, and then I just find a solution to help them do that.

And then if I don't have something I can refer them to, I'll refer them to one of my colleagues that I make sure that I have some oversight on it so they can get what they want.

Neil Henderson: 00:07:23

So you mentioned fractional cfo. You know our Nomad capital, we use a fractional cfo.

And are there other types of fractional C suite jobs out there or disciplines that you're hiring for or build businesses around?

Zach Oehlman: 00:07:37

Here's my ultimate goal, and this has really worked well for us is I find great companies. We have a business that we work with a genius in 21 days. I was a student of theirs and it's, I've never heard of it until I took the class.

It's how learn how to learn, right? How to remember things forever, how to be way more efficient in your time. So I took their class. And the guy, I loved him, he was the owner.

Over in Europe they have 60,000 five star reviews. But over here in America they couldn't get the traction. And so I said, hey, I'll bring in my team for percentage of the ownership.

I'll do the operations, I'll do the sales and marketing, I'll do the financial aspect. And so that's what I really like to do. And so I like to, you know, start off with entry level, typically finance.

I get the finances in order and then I get the operations in order. Then I get the sales systems in order and then finally my last process is marketing.

And so when I start off with the finance aspect of these businesses, I really get to see the business at its core. And if it's a good thing to invest in and if it's something I like, I'll pitch the owner. I'll say, hey, I would love to partner with you equity.

I'll bring in all of the four components that I break down a business into for this amount of ownership, you know, it changes depending on the business.

But that consulting, that fractional CFO is more of a consulting is my foot in the door to find the businesses that I really like, I believe in and I can get my team behind. And so that's my core focus. And that's why I do some of that front end consulting to find the businesses I really want to invest in.

Clint Harris: 00:09:06

So a lot of what you're doing is you are buying the business, but it's not raising capital from a group of investors.

It may be, but a lot of times what you're doing is you're bringing your skill set and you're helping them recognize the goal of where they're trying to go with the business. You can underwrite the back end, get it organized, establish evaluation by cleaning up the financials.

Zach Oehlman: 00:09:24

Yeah.

Clint Harris: 00:09:25

And then you look forward from there and be like, okay, now let's tighten up the operations in house. Now it's to a position where it's ready to scale. It's got the firm foundation. Let me help you scale it. And I don't want to buy the business from you.

I don't want you to pay me. The way you can pay me is with give me a percentage of equity.

And this is the growth goal that we have together and this is how we're going to get there.

Zach Oehlman: 00:09:46

Absolutely.

Because I've been doing this for 20 years and specifically, you know, in real estate, I've seen home run real estate deals get trash because the experience of the person running it, they didn't know. And so you get somebody, you know, 2, 3, $400,000 for a business or a piece of real estate, they're not an operator.

They don't have that experience, that wisdom, that relationship capital. They can go south real quick.

And so for me, rather than give them money, I'd rather give them me and my team and my experience, but give them a little bit of wisdom and guidance rather than just writing a check. Because I've seen a lot of people get checks and they don't know what to do with it.

Clint Harris: 00:10:22

And if they say no, well, they still see the growth vision that you have for where they could be and they still need your services to get there. So what's the harm in the pitch?

Zach Oehlman: 00:10:30

Right, right. And so that way I'm not spending a lot of time not getting compensated for my due diligence processes.

Clint Harris: 00:10:37

Yeah. And you can really cherry pick of all the businesses that bring you in for consulting, you get to look at their books.

There might be some that look good from the outside, and then you get on the inside and you're like, not so much. Then there's other ones where you identify potential and you're like, okay, this could be beautiful. We should do it together. I like that. Yeah.

You become your own lead source, right? You're your own deal funnel.

Zach Oehlman: 00:10:55

Absolutely. My goal is we're really branching out into the bookkeeping tax avenue. There's people shutting down a lot of my CPAs. They can't handle the workload.

And so I'm starting that. If I can see somebody's financials, I'm pretty good at, you know, saying, hey, you got something great here. If you tweak this, this, or this.

And again, it's a lead source, as opposed to cold calling or many of these other ways to acquire businesses. I want to see their books, I want to see their finances. So if they're paying me to do their books and their taxes, I get paid to do due diligence.

And that's sort of my angle with being remote.

Clint Harris: 00:11:27

Like you are in Colombia at the moment, although I know you've been in like 20 countries in the last four years.

How are you continue to get leads and to move forward and to have those people attracted to you and come in and put you in a position where you can have that conversation every.

Zach Oehlman: 00:11:39

Marketing, sales and marketing. I have a really robust sales and marketing team. And that's one of the lessons I've learned over the years.

Coming in as somebody not knowing anything about business or making money, I thought finance was all I needed to know, right? I was like, okay, I'm an expert at finance. I accomplished this and that, but I wasn't making the money I wanted.

And my mentors are like, zach, you gotta learn how to sell. You gotta learn how to get that front end conversation and then obviously deliver on it as well.

And so I've just become a student of sales and marketing. And it's one of my favorite things right now, because without that, you don't have a business. That's a component a lot of people are afraid of.

They may be really wise in their craft, but no one knows them. No one knows what they can do for you or for anybody.

And so I've just become really, really great, you know, courses, masterminds, coaching on sales and marketing. And then what I've done is I'll go and buy a really top program. I'll go hire a virtual assistant.

And I say, hey, Go take this class, become an expert at it. I'll give you a percentage of whatever we make off of that. And so I use a lot of international people. We have 45 people in 11 countries.

They're very skilled in what they do. But then I'll buy some very, very top notch programs. And I just said, become the expert at it.

And so that's how I build out my team so I can focus on doing fun stuff like this, talking to you guys.

Neil Henderson: 00:12:58

Interesting. So how are you going about selecting those?

You know, obviously you don't want to just go out and hire Joe Schmo off the corner in the Philippines and say, hey, you know, here's this course on selling. Go take that and let's go. How are you selecting those people?

Zach Oehlman: 00:13:12

So it's funny, I met these two ladies, they were from the Philippines and they actually ran a VA recruiting business. They started it and I ran across them and they were just amazing individuals. They had a lot of experience.

The reason they left the other firm is because he wasn't paying them. And so they had this incredible skillset. They literally built his business from the ground up.

And I said, well, I am constantly evolving, constantly growing. One of my biggest challenges is finding talent. You guys want to be my talent? Help me find talent.

And so I brought in these two ladies and that's all they did, was help find talent. And then we would outsource any incremental capacity that they had to help other people find talent and turned it into that.

But, you know, I would say, okay, hey, this is who I'm looking for. This is, you know, what I'm willing to pay. And when I use people outside of the US I can pay them more than most people will pay them.

And so one thing I'm really proud of is I've never had anybody quit, right? I've had to fire people, but I've never had anybody quit because I train them, I help them with their goals.

I help them, you know, have a great life outside of my business. We pay for personal development coaching for them to help them become better. Then I pay them more than anybody else will.

And so having talent recruiters is a big piece of what I do.

Clint Harris: 00:14:24

So let me ask you something you mentioned earlier. Obviously, you're looking at things a lot of times through the lens of a CPA in accounting and with a financial background.

One of the things that you mentioned is that you're looking at things with tax strategies. And one of the things that you focus on is buying businesses.

And obviously at Some point selling businesses, taking the capital and reinvesting it into real estate. Tell us a little bit about what that looks like for you, what type of real estate you invest in and what the strategy is there.

Zach Oehlman: 00:14:47

Yeah, and so when I first got into real estate, you know, I was like, I want to make money, I want to make money, I want to make money. And it's hard to make money in real estate when you compare it to a business, a business you can scale up so much quicker.

And so what we do is we focus on making the active income in business and then we reinvest that money back into cash flowing long term real estate. When I first got started in this, I was really big into fix and flips.

And if you've ever ran a fix and flip or wholesaling again, it's very time consuming. There's tons of competition out there right now. And so I got away from that making my active money in real estate.

Now we still do wholesaling, but just as a means to find the cash flowing properties. You know, we wholesale what we don't want.

And so my primary objective is to make the big checks, the active income in a business and then reinvest that money back into. I like single family rentals. It's what I know we do multifamily as well. We have Airbnbs, different things like that.

So those are sort of the worlds I sick into.

And the reason I do that is there's huge tax advantages of investing in long term rental real estate, be it multifamily or commercial or even, you know, the residential. And it's something called cost segregation.

For the finance people out there, there's this thing called depreciation and it's get to lower your taxable income.

And so what we do is do cost segregation studies on these long term rental real estate and it gets the offset that income that I make inside of my active business. So it's a beautiful tax strategy.

And then also obviously we have the three other quadrants that most people, they don't think about when buying real estate. So we, the first one is obviously cash flow, you know, debt service, things like that.

But we also have the appreciation, we have the depreciation and then we have someone else paying down our mortgage. And so there's four different quadrants inside of that real estate. And I've yet to see on a cash on cash return.

I've yet to see very few things that can touch that. As opposed to some of these other asset classes.

Clint Harris: 00:16:44

Yeah, for sure. Honestly, for single Families multifamily or even larger. My wife and I, we have 14 Airbnb properties that are multifamily.

And we did cost Sega accelerated appreciation.

And then looking for something more passive, Neil and I partnered together with Nomad Capital and we buy old Kmarts and grocery stores and convert them to self storage facilities. Then it's six or 700 units. It's one facility, one mortgage.

It's significantly less maintenance than having an Airbnb property that constantly has guests in and out and cleaners and everything else. But the cost segregation on that stuff is just amazing.

You can take the cost segregation depreciation on an old Kmart building, It's say it's 97,000 square feet. You can depreciate the building, the fixtures. Most of the stuff in the property is depreciable at five years.

A lot of the stuff in the parking lot is 15 years. And then that loss can carry forward for years and years and years. It's a very, very powerful weapon.

And the same lessons that you learn about taking active income and converting it into passive income and real estate, honestly it's the same thing with a single family or a small apartment building or, you know, six, 700 unit self storage facility.

You maybe add a couple zeros here, you take a couple zeros off there, but at the base level and what it's doing for you as an extra vehicle to save your taxes, help you harvest the depreciation earlier or create hopefully passive cash flow moving forward. It's the same lesson, right?

Zach Oehlman: 00:18:07

The principles are the same. Like you said, just add a zero. Right?

Neil Henderson: 00:18:11

Such a great point. And Clint and I deal with investors like this every day, people who are own businesses.

And you talk to them and you tell them the kind of returns that you may be talking about with a real estate syndication, investing in multifamily or self storage or whatever. And some of them will kind of turn their nose up at it. And they're like, Clint, Neil, I can make 45% ROI getting out of bed in the morning.

But then you also need to point out to them that most of that is dependent on them, them doing that job. And eventually, as Clint often says, he's a broken record on this, is that eventually your time becomes worth more than the money.

And eventually you have to find a way to take that capital, that huge ROI that you're making, and put it to work with somebody else.

And yeah, it does mean that you're probably going to get a lower return than what you would get if you were actively working in your business, but you can't clone yourself. And this is the closest thing you can do to cloning yourself.

Zach Oehlman: 00:19:10

You nail it. And I love the way you articulate it because I see people like, I'm the business.

Sometimes my 20 years of experience in my financial, like, I only have so many hours and so I have to find other ways to replicate myself to build that because I can't reinvest everything I make there. It's just I'm not going to get the same return on it. And so that's what I started doing is looking at the passive aspect.

What can I put in my portfolio on my balance sheet to continue that wealth beyond? So when I go on my month long motorcycle trip, money's still coming in and Zach's not the business.

Clint Harris: 00:19:42

Yeah, I could see that being a challenge. Like, you're all over the place. This podcast is called Truly Passive Income. When I mean all over the place. I mean, you're all over the world, right?

You're traveling and you're doing a lot of big things. And I see that as a challenge. With you, with your background, with your acumen, is that Zach Oldman is the business. Right.

And so you can put as many support people around you as you want, but at the end of the day, yeah, they're going to keep the ship, you know, keep it running for a month or two while you're on a motorcycle, taking an amazing trip that I'm extremely jealous of. But at the same time, you are the business. Right?

So as you keep that moving forward, I'm sure that's a challenge that you're constantly faced against. Like, how do I keep this rolling?

And like, as you're traveling different countries and you're doing a lot of different things at the same time, what, what's that balance like? Like, how do you understand that? I guess you can train people to try to do what you do, but nobody can be who you are and do what you're doing.

So what's that balance feel like?

Zach Oehlman: 00:20:34

It's the reason I started investing in other businesses because there's a lot of great talent out there that can deliver on whatever it is they deliver. They just don't know how to scale. And so what I've come in is, is I built a, a process on how to scale, and then I've really trained my team on it.

The thing that I've learned is my team is a function of me. I was just thinking about this morning when I was younger, you know, you can retire and do whatever you want, yada, yada, yada.

And I think there's this misconception in entrepreneurship business that, you know, doing nothing is great. I'm just like, I've done nothing and it's boring. It's like not fulfilling.

You know, even on my motorcycle rides, there's a moment where it's like, okay, this is cool. I'm ready to get back in the office and produce. I'm ready to go make a difference. I'm ready to do that.

And so I really talked about that with my team. I was like, you know, I, I realize, you know, you're, you're coming to me for the answers, but I want you to think about it.

And I empower my team to make those decisions.

And, you know, at the end of the day, even like the passive stuff that I have, I have to know if it's operating at its highest and best use, you know, because I use property managers for everything. Because I, I want to be buy an asset, get it under management, short term rental, be it long term rental, whatever it is.

And then I need to have the wisdom and the foresight to understand if that person is operating that asset at the highest and best use and being efficient.

And if they're not, I have to understand why I don't see myself ever removing myself from this thing called portfolio manager or whatever it is, because I even have to manage my managers because I get to fulfill another part of my life called adventure and travel. And so, you know, then I get bored. I'm like, okay, let's go back to the office.

And then, you know, it's like every quarter I need something to just remind me of why I'm working so hard.

Neil Henderson: 00:22:19

Can you talk to us a little bit about what exactly that looks like?

Zach Oehlman: 00:22:23

I grew up on a farm, and so I was working since I could walk, and I loved it. I loved it more than school. I loved it. And so culture, I was born. It was like, your value is determined on how much you produce.

I mean, I still work a lot. My life is sort of my work now. I didn't have the enjoyment. And so what happened? I run into these burnout moments. I'm like, what's the point, right?

I'm making this money, I'm having these accolades, whatever goal I, you know, accomplished. But that was one part of my life, and that was the only part of my life that I knew.

And then I started getting into this world of personal development, you know, coaching. And all of my coaches said, zach, you need to actually take a moment for Yourself, you need to take some time off.

What else in life is there that fulfills you? And I was like, well, I don't know. This is all I know. I just want to make money.

So I started, you know, back When I was 16, 17 years old, I had this vision, traveling the world, making money and helping people. And so I said, all right, I'm going to travel. And I just bought a ticket. I was like, oh, that was fun.

And then I'd come back to work, and I was more productive, right? Because there was, like, benefit to working hard, not just working hard.

And so how I use it today is, you know, it's sort of the proverbial carrot that I dangle in front of myself. Like, I want to go on this trip. Okay? I got to get my businesses to a point where I can go on this trip. Work, work, work, work. Enjoy. Right?

I use the fun to keep myself inspired, to want to come in the office and give it my best every day. And I do the same thing with my team. I encourage them to travel.

I mean, I have a bunch of people, and a lot of them never done stuff like that before. They work with me, and so I sit down with them and I say, okay, what do you want out of life? Like, I know beyond the paycheck.

And they're traveling, they're having amazing lives. And so when they come into work, they're much more inspired. They see my business and as a way of them accomplishing what they want.

And so they work harder, they're more inspired, we produce more. And so it's that proverbial carrot that we hang up for ourselves.

Clint Harris: 00:24:12

The importance of culture. Right?

Culture for, like, what you want to accomplish and help people recognize their own vision and genuinely putting them first ahead of you, making an extra dollar and helping them accomplish that. I love that. So of everything that you do, what are you most passionate about?

What's your favorite part of all the different things that you've dipped your toe into?

Zach Oehlman: 00:24:31

Oh, travel wise or business wise?

Clint Harris: 00:24:33

All of it. Because you clearly have a passion for travel, right? You clearly have a passion for business, and you clearly have a passion for people.

And I think that none of those are mutually exclusive. You can do all of those. In fact, you do them all at the same time.

You do it really well when you're traveling and you're gone and you're ready to get back to it.

Like, what are the things that you're excited about that you've done in the past, and what are the things you're really excited about doing in the future.

Zach Oehlman: 00:24:54

I think the overarching concept that I get really passionate about is it's like a socioeconomic aspect. And so it like, brings all three of those together. And, you know, as we travel, we have foundations here in Colombia, we got something over in Kenya.

And I get to see poor people in the United States. I don't think ever have really seen poor. I haven't seen it in the United States the way that I've seen it outside of the United States.

And so it's like, how can I solve the poverty challenge? How can we feed the hungry? Just the basic necessities like clean water. So I have this idea is like, if we can teach people business and.

And teach them how to make a dollar, they don't need me. And I'm like, that's how we can really make a difference. And there's also, you know, there's this world of charity.

And I don't think when in the concept of charity, obviously, you know, people need food, water, and shelter, but there's also something missing. I've seen it's pride. Like, I feel pride when I accomplish something hard and I go and set a goal.

And so as we work with people all over the world, like, helping them help themselves, just to see them light up like, oh, I get it, Zach. I made a dollar. I don't need your charity. I can feed my own family now.

And so that's what really inspires me, is to teach people how to make money to solve their own problems. And the idea is, you know, in these communities, if I can teach one person right, they can teach the next one.

And you can create a community business, and they can pay for their education, they can learn, they can solve their own problems. I think business is really a solution to solve a lot of the problems that the world had.

And that's what really inspires me above and beyond the money. But I also understand without money, none of this happens.

And that's the thing traditional charity is, you know, I'd rather spend time making money than asking somebody for money.

And so I've been really good at learning how to bootstrap businesses and bootstrap ideas so that I don't have to circum to somebody else's parameters around their money. This is my money. I earned it. I get to do what I want with it. We've really made a difference in my life.

And so I love sharing that with other people and, you know, just helping them understand what they want on a life. It. Because you Know, I asked these people, I do a lot of consulting. I was like, you're 10,000, you're 20,000, your whatever number a month is.

I'm like, why? And most people are challenged with that. I'm like, what are you going to spend that on? Right? And they're like, I don't know.

I just want 20 grand, okay? They don't connect the money to the lifestyle. They don't connect the money to the freedom. It's just money. I was there once too.

It was like, I just want $10,000 a month. And I didn't really budget out anything. I just wanted the $10,000. That was some arbitrary number that I thought would make me happy.

And so being able to teach people like happiness is now, like Neil, you were talking about in the green room, be do have, right? Versus be do have. I always confuse the two. But you can be happy right now, right?

You can have that state of mind of joy and happiness right now, and you can go work your tail off and get some money and live a great life and be happy then too. But the happiness doesn't come after the money.

Neil Henderson: 00:27:43

It's have. Be do is that most people. That's the position most people are in.

When I have $10,000 a month in passive income, I will be this or I'll do this and I'll be happy. Whereas what you really need to do is reverse that and you need to be happy, then that will allow you to have this.

Zach Oehlman: 00:28:04

It absolutely knew what you're talking about.

Clint Harris: 00:28:06

I think the idea of happiness as the destination of the journey that we're on is a misconception. And the reality is we're only on this earth for so long, right? A hundred years from now, we're all dead.

A hundred years from now, people may have said our names for the last time. So at the end of the day, it's the journey, right, that, you know, we're on it right now. This is the important part that we're doing.

But like you said, you have to have money to make it all happen. But it's certainly not the end goal. And that shouldn't be the focus.

It should just be, you know, know, part of what helps us do things to better ourselves, better our community.

And, you know, what's the point of dying with a stack of pile of stuff or pile of money versus dying with a pile of pictures of places you went with beautiful people that you love and beautiful things that you did, Right?

Zach Oehlman: 00:28:48

Right.

Clint Harris: 00:28:48

So it's a mind frame shift, small segue.

One of the things that came up is that a lot of the people that you hire are all over the world and you're paying them a strong wage, probably a really strong wage for where they live.

At the same time, most of your businesses, it sounds like, are in the US you're involved all over, but most of your businesses are in the US and you're living in Colombia.

It brings up the concept that we've talked about, Neil and I have talked about in the past of geohacking of you're earning an income in one country, but you're living on the cost basis of another country. It seems like you've kind of got that dialed in. It seems like your employees probably have that dialed in. Talk to me a little bit about that.

You're one of the few people that's actually actively involved in business in the US but you're living in Colombia, you're traveling. I mean, I'm sure cost of living is expensive for where you are, but it's probably less than where your businesses are.

Zach Oehlman: 00:29:37

Right. Just to give you a sense of of costs, like, I'm in Medellin, Colombia. Envigado. It's one of the nicest pieces of medellin.

I'm in a 3 flat with a rooftop. I mean, you guys can see this, my backyard, right? Fully furnished, Internet everything, 2,200 bucks a month.

And it's like we have two offices in here, my wife and I, and it's so affordable. You know, you can have meal for like two or three bucks. You know, when we were in Thailand, I was eating Michelin star food for three bucks. Right?

They have great infrastructure, great Internet. And so the key is learning how to make money right online. You know, it's a skill set. I'm still learning on it at the same time. Trust, right?

There's this trust component.

And so as we use a lot of international people, if that's not an industry standard in the United States is really, when I first started this, it was sort of new, right? And so today it's pretty common to have, you know, virtual assistants, people outside of the country.

But how we help propel that into our businesses is like my tax and legal team, we're from the United States, my very specific laws, very specific tax code. Now, do we have some back end people that are international? Absolutely.

As I think about, all of my sales team is from Venezuela and they're just some of the most amazing people. One still lives in Venezuela, one lives in Chile, one lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina, another one in Peru.

And so what I love about their culture is they came from such a bad government. How to articulate that without offending anybody? But, like, you know, Venezuela. And so they left there, and so they have this drive to be successful.

And so I love it because I just point and I say, I need to be down the road, the proverbial road, and I need you to be there in a week. And they're like, understood. And then they just go figure it out. And I was just reading a beautiful article about being able to choose what you want.

The name will come to me. Agency Free agency. Right.

And they were talking about, some of the best people for your business are people that had to endure struggles when they were young. And they said, if you look at their lives and specifically.

So I was reading the article, looking at my team, and all of my best performers had adversity when they were young, and they had to figure it out. And so they have that mindset of, I don't know, but I'm willing to figure it out. And so that's something I really look for in staff.

And that helps build that culture. Because running an online business, I mean, we have all different types of things. We have Internet issues.

I've been in countries where there's riots, and, you know, it's like, oh, my gosh, we were going to Peru, and they overturned four presidents in a matter of a couple of weeks. So there's this chaos in the background. And so you just got to be like, okay, I understand, and I'm going to figure it out.

And so building that culture really helps me be able to run these online businesses because we have plenty of problems every day.

Neil Henderson: 00:32:24

I want to do kind of a deep cut here. Zach, you talked about the gold standard on a reset YouTube. You went off on the gold standard. And there's such an interesting.

When you get into the real estate world and you get into sort of the financial bro world, you know, you've got people who are investing in stocks, you got people who are investing in real estate. You've got the crypto Bros. And then I call them the doomlings, which are always talking about, I'm buying gold, I'm buying gold.

America should return to the gold standard. I think it's tattooed on Kiyosaki's chest somewhere. But I want to talk to you just a little bit.

We don't need to get into a deep level about it, but why shouldn't I be stacking gold? Why is crypto not going to take over the financial industry in your Opinion.

Zach Oehlman: 00:33:09

The funny story, I was in Bali and I met this beautiful guy. He was economics guy, right? So this is the stuff we talked about over lunch. If you saw that video, I drew that up just to prove my point. That's.

I love talking about that. And so here's what I learned in valuation. When I first got in the valuation industry, I wanted to know the price. What's the price of this business?

What's the price of this asset? And what I've learned is, I don't know. No one knows. It's like, what is somebody willing to pay for it versus right. Clint.

We could all value the same business. And Clint could have it be worth a million. Neil, you could have it be worth 2.5, and I could have it be worth half a million.

And so assets have different values for different people. And so in the context of that gold standard, the only reason anything has a value is because the community that we operate in agrees on that value.

So the only reason gold has a value outside of the tangible, you know, electronic value is because people believe that has a value. And so if you do any. Any history about the concept of money, money used to not exist. Then it was like, store of value.

Well, I got some milk, you got some deer skins. The term a buck comes from the concept of, I have a deer skin, a buck, right? And I'll trade that.

They transformed, you know, cocoa leaves and corn or cacao seeds and corn and all these commodities that didn't have a lot of shelf life over the years into coins and paper dollars and things like that. And so in order to understand the value of assets, you have to understand money. And so it's just a store of value that economy agrees on.

And so the reason I don't invest in gold, I don't invest in crypto, I don't do any of that, is because I personally don't see a functional use for it. Like a toothbrush, you can brush your teeth. Right. A comb, you can comb your hair.

What are you going to do with gold outside of, you know, the tangible value of electronics and stuff like that? And so I don't see value in that now, is there? Yeah, obviously, because the world believes in it, too.

But when it comes to crypto, it's like, what's the functional value other than somebody. Right. I'm going to think the prices go up and, you know, everyone gets into it. It's more speculative. I want to buy things that have a tangible value.

You know, brushing your teeth, combing your hair, a house to Live in things like that where, you know, if something goes astray, it's like, oh, you still need homes, you know, you still need your CPA regardless of what industry you're in. I understand those a lot more than, you know, the.

Clint Harris: 00:35:33

I totally understand your thinking there.

Now, gold has had value for thousands and thousands of years across cultures that are, you know, the world over, you know, and there's this human belief of the value there versus how relatively young crypto is.

I mean, the ease of crypto is the ease of transactions and anonymity that comes along with it, both good and bad in terms of the long term store of value.

It is a human belief, right, because the functionality is, it's what you can do with it, with electronics or the jewelry that you can make out of it that's flashy. But besides that, it's a human belief now. It's a human belief that's been around for a long, long time.

And I would think that the belief is there more than it is in the US Dollar because the US dollar is based upon fiscal policy that you may or may not agree with. And that's what increases the value of the gold, is because typically the value of the dollar has gone down.

Zach Oehlman: 00:36:19

It's such a fun conversation to think about.

The only reason, like without the dollar, I was challenging this guy I was talking with, I was like, the value of gold is based on the dollar and so without the dollar you just have gold.

And so that was my argument for, you know, let's say just use Bitcoin as that's a predominant forex or you know, the currency is okay, one bitcoin is worth X dollars without dollars, one Bitcoin is worth one Bitcoin. What are you going to do? Right, there's a limited supply and so what are you going to do? What's my chocolate milk worth? How many bitcoins?

It's a perplexing conversation. And so you need these alternative currencies to value bitcoin, to value gold, to value anything.

And so I think it's a much more complex conversation than most people really think.

Clint Harris: 00:37:06

Well, to come full circle, we talk about it is a lot of different value, a lot of different ways to make money. Obviously the podcast is called Truly Passive Income, specifically focusing on, you know, what is and what isn't passive.

And a lot of what you do, I would say, is not. But it's what you enjoy doing and it's what you're very good at.

It still has put you in a position where you have the location independence and in some ways the time independence to go on a month long motorcycle trip from Alaska to Argentina, like, that's amazing.

But at the end of the day, if you are going to park your capital or your time or whatever, you have to invest into something that's going to generate income for you. That's one of the reasons that Neil and I like real estate so much, is that one way or another, some more so than others, it's inflation resistant.

Piece of dirt's not going to cash flow for you. Gold is going to hold value, but it's not going to cash flow for you. Real estate.

And you're in single families and multi family rentals and I've got Airbnb properties and Neil's had those in the past and we both have single family rentals and then on top of that, we're in self storage.

Any real estate that you have that meets a need, whether it's for somebody to store something, for somebody to live there, we all have to have roofs over our heads. There's obviously a housing shortage one way or another, over time, it's inflation resistant.

If it's a commercial lease and people are locked in for a 10 year triple net lease, it may take you eight more years before you could resign the lease. Whereas self storage may be month to month or a hotel may be one day to the next.

And you know, housing could be month to month or year to year or two year lease.

But one way or another, over time, it is inflation resistant and it gives you the ability to have the property take the depreciation that you talked about earlier, have the appreciation of the asset, the cash flow of the asset that is inflation resistant over time as well. And you're building equity because somebody's paying it down. So I certainly understand the value of storing your life energy.

Zach Oehlman: 00:38:51

Like, that's a great way to put it. Life energy. Right. That's. I've never heard that those are Neil's.

Clint Harris: 00:38:55

Words, but it's something that he said in the past, it's always rubbed off on me. Is like the money that you have to invest is a representation of your life energy.

It's time that you spend away from your family, doing things that you didn't want to do. Sometimes in places where you didn't want to be, that's your store of life energy. Right.

So you can put that into a bar of gold, you can put it into a chunk of dirt.

I would much rather put it instead of a bunch of paper in a shoebox buried in the backyard, put it into something that's going to cash flow, that's going to give you those different advantages that you talked about. And one way or the other, take active income and put it into something that does produce some level of passive income for you.

That doesn't mean you stop doing what you're doing actively. If you love it, you certainly do.

But I think we all understand the value, just like you do of taking your active investments into business and transitioning that value into something passive that's a better store of your life energy that over time is inflation resistant as well.

Zach Oehlman: 00:39:49

I love that. I love life energy that brings everything right to the point.

Neil Henderson: 00:39:53

Well, listen, Zach, thank you so much for sharing with our audience today. If any of them want to reach out to you and find out more of what you're all about, what would be the best way for them to do that?

Zach Oehlman: 00:40:03

I have a blog, Indiana Ullman. So the idea is, you know, Indiana Jones. I was like, I'm from Indiana. I love adventure.

I just started calling myself Indiana Ullman one day and then my wife's like, you need to start a blog. So I did that.

And so you guys can check out my blog, IndianaOlman O E H L M A N dot com that's probably the easiest way to get to me because we have a bunch of different websites based on our businesses. I would love to, you know, anything I can do to help you guys.

Neil Henderson: 00:40:26

I encourage you to check out his blog as well, especially the bucket list section. It's a cool one.

Zach Oehlman: 00:40:30

Thanks Clinton.

Neil Henderson: 00:40:31

Neil, thank you so much for listening and watching the Truly Passive Income podcast.

If you liked the show, if you think it would be useful for someone else, the greatest compliment that you could give us would be to share the episode. Leave a comment down below or leave us an honest review. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to let us know down below.

And remember, with truly passive income comes freedom of time, place, and the freedom to pursue your higher purpose.

Zach Oehlman: 00:41:00

Sam.