🎧 Tune in to this eye-opening episode where we dive deep into the journey of Alex Felice, a successful real estate entrepreneur who discovered that financial independence is just the beginning. Learn how Alex's experiences led him to seek greater meaning and purpose, both through his pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago and his current life in Maui. Get ready to be inspired and challenged as we discuss the importance of digital detox, connecting with nature, and embracing adventure. Join us for this must-listen episode that will leave you questioning the true definition of success and what really matters in life. Hit play now and start your own journey towards personal fulfillment! 🌟

Time Stamps:

[00:00] Intro

[03:25] Alex Felice's real estate journey and achieving financial freedom

[06:48] The realization that success isn't just about money

[12:03] Alex's transition to photography and finding fulfillment

[20:52] The importance of pursuing passions and purpose

[28:15] How location independence can change your life

[37:08] Insights on finding happiness beyond financial independence

[44:20] The concept of "Success, but what else?"

[56:35] Clint Harris congratulates Alex and plans a visit

[57:14] Alex Felice on success and finding your "what else"

Key Takeaways

• Financial independence is just the beginning: While achieving financial independence through passive real estate investing can provide a sense of security, it's essential to recognize that it's not the end goal. True happiness and fulfillment come from discovering your purpose and pursuing what matters most to you in life.
• Success is subjective: Alex Felice's story teaches us that success looks different for everyone, and it's important to define it on your own terms. For some, it may mean continuing to invest in real estate, while for others, it could mean embarking on a completely new journey.
• Growth through challenges: Embracing and overcoming challenges, like Alex's experience with the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage, can lead to significant personal growth and a deeper understanding of one's purpose.
• The power of self-reflection: Taking the time to reflect on your life, values, and what truly brings you happiness is crucial for maintaining a sense of balance and well-being, especially after achieving financial freedom.
• Cultivating a sense of adventure: Exploring new opportunities, experiences, and passions can lead to a more fulfilling life beyond the realm of financial success. Alex's transition from real estate entrepreneur to world traveler and visual storyteller is a prime example of this.
• The importance of community and connections: Building meaningful relationships and engaging with like-minded individuals can help enrich your life and provide a strong support system as you pursue your passions and purpose.
• Balance and sustainability: As you work toward financial freedom and explore your passions, it's important to maintain a balance between your personal, professional, and financial life to ensure long-term happiness and success.
• Embracing change: Alex's story highlights the importance of being open to change and adapting to new circumstances as you pursue your passions and purpose in life.
• Learning from others' experiences: Listening to stories and insights from people like Alex Felice can inspire and guide you on your own journey toward finding purpose and happiness beyond financial freedom.
• The journey never ends: Achieving financial freedom and discovering your true purpose is an ongoing process that requires continuous growth, self-reflection, and adaptation. Embrace the journey, and you'll find a richer, more fulfilling life beyond passive income.

📚 Resources & Social Media:

Alex Felice's Instagram: @alexscottfelice

Alex's Photography Website: lifeandlens.media

Broke is a Choice: www.brokeisachoice.com

Truly Passive Income website: www.trulypassiveincome.com

Truly Passive Income Twitter: @trulypassive

David Foster Wallace Commencement Address: This is Water

Mentioned in this episode:

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​ Neil Henderson: Are you chasing financial

more to it than just financial freedom and the time independence that comes with it?

What you do with that time is probably far more important

than financial independence.

Alex Felice, a somewhat reluctant real estate entrepreneur who's wrestled that

very question joins us in today's episode.

Alex talks about his amazing journey of self discovery.

From his pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago to his decision to move to

Maui and pursue his creative passion.

Get ready for an inspiring conversation that will leave you reflecting

on your own definition of success and the pathway to happiness.

Stay tuned.

You don't want to miss this life-changing episode.

Today our guest is my good friend Alex Felice.

Alex is a guy I've known for probably five years now from

when I used to live in Las Vegas.

Alex went through basic training for the Army in August of 2001.

I'll let you imagine how that story went from there.

He spent some time down range in Afghanistan in the early

two thousands as a paratrooper.

He got out of the army after four years and spent some time as a car salesman.

He got a degree in finance and went to work at a bank.

Ended up as an SBA loan underwriter in Las Vegas where he and I met.

he realized that he was not gonna be able to save his way to retirement with a W-2

job and he started exploring real estate.

He started buying single family rentals in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

He started buying one or two a year using what's called the BRRRR method.

He got bored of that.

He started targeting bigger properties.

He bought a 24 unit apartment with some partners and investors.

He bought a 52 unit apartment with investors, and full disclosure, I'm

one of those investors and that's where we find him, where we want to

hear the rest of his story today.

Alex, did I get any of that wrong?

Did I cut out any juicy bits that you wanna share?

That's a great bio.

Where'd you get that?

I just know you.

Yeah.

I went to, basic training in September of 2001 after, right after

September 11th, just so you know.

Yeah.

Big difference.

You had, or had you already joined the

Army or did you join the Army?

No,

because of September 11th,

I was flirting with them as every, I think 18 year old does.

You go and hey, every 18 year old with, a bad attitude and no options.

oh, maybe this thing will fix all my problems.

Newsflash, it doesn't fix all your problems, but, it does fix some.

But I was flirting with them and then September 11th happened

then I'm like, they gonna need bodies now, so I'll go now.

now I have some negotiating leverage.

How'd that negotiation work out with the Army?

Oh, bad.

Yeah, I was 18 with no skills.

they just needed bullet sponges.

but I did what I needed to do.

I was just wanted to make that minor correction.

We don't have to talk about Army talk, But, yeah, the overall synopsis is right.

floundered in my twenties.

lot of drugs and alcohol fucked up a lot of time.

And, got my stuff together on my thirties and I figured, ah,

I gotta get this money problem.

I'm sick of being broke all the time and stressed out, this

is no way to go through life.

And so I was like, I'll go learn finance because, and go work at a

bank because they have all the money.

And if I figured, if I learned finance, then I'd understand

money and then I'd have money.

And that sort of was a good, that sort of works, right?

you want money, go learn how it works.

The, it's just rules for a game.

it's not that complicated.

You can go complicated on it, but it's not that complicated.

So what actually was really funny is I found out that all the people

that work in banking are broke too.

they're just W2 employees, working jobs, not saving money.

I was like, okay, Um, yeah, real estate, 2014 markets collapsed.

I was just learning, investing.

I was looking for a place to put cash.

Everything was depressed.

All the prices were down.

I was like, this seems like it'll work.

So I just spent a couple years obsessing with that.

and yeah, 24 unit, then 52 unit got bored.

I still have the 52 unit I still pay I pay out.

I don't know what I pay out to be honest.

30 grand, a quarter, something like that.

in passive investments to investors, that's the best feeling.

That's the best feeling I have.

I'd like to do more, to be honest.

I'd like to go buy more.

I have that skillset.

But, because, this is why I like this, the name of the show, truly Passive Income.

Truly passive income, not, A rental property that you manage

Yep.

And have to be near, and then you call it passive

income to lie to yourself.

and then, like a lot of people do, truly passive income is buying deep

discounted deals and letting somebody better than you run them from a

distance and then paying your investors.

And so over the last two years, I don't think that prices

have been deeply discounted.

I think they've been overpriced.

there's, that's a complicated phrase and we can get into that if you want to.

But, I don't wanna pay premiums on deals and pay investors skinny checks.

and I don't wanna worry about margins.

So I've been living my life, and letting the good deals ride themselves.

So I spend, I don't know, I might spend two hours a month on my investments maybe.

And probably less than that.

It's a lot of it's texting, just Hey, how are the 60 something units that I have?

How are they running?

They're running, good checks are coming in.

let's stop thinking about this then keep it moving.

the thing about passive income and something that Clint had

alluded to earlier about, people want freedom and this and that.

The biggest thing that I found about people that, they chase financial

freedom it is like a really weird phenomenon is they hate their jobs.

They wanna go get financial freedom, but along the way they

get obsessed with some new thing.

They get obsessed with buying houses or finding deals.

And what they do is they give themselves golden handcuffs.

Now maybe the job that they create for themselves about around real

estate is a more fulfilling job.

it's their project or their company.

So that's definitely got an incentive than working for somebody else.

But, I actually know and talk to, I'm a power networker in real estate.

I talk to a lot of people that make a lot more money than me

and have a lot more, tangible measurable absolute success than me.

Financial success, business success than me.

And they are bored?

No, they're not bored.

They're stressed out about the thing that.

they wanted freedom.

They have plenty of money to have freedom, and they don't know how

to spend their time meaningfully.

So they just spend their time making more money, not knowing what to do

with it and stressing out about it.

And I am the poster child for doing the opposite.

I don't make that much, but I am the happiest

that's actually why we invited you to be on the podcast.

you've made a big splash, in the real estate community, obviously it's a

pretty small network, but just because you are, you're a master networker, you

know a lot of the right people and you put yourself out there sharing things

in a meaningful way, but successes and failures, which I commend you for.

One thing that you're bringing up is that originally a lot of people have the

discussion about, oh, I'm gonna get into real estate or some type of investing,

discover truly passive income for myself.

Whether that's, people have all different ideas of what that means.

Most of them are wrong.

But the idea is chasing financial freedom.

And that in and of itself, I've mentioned this many times before, is that I

think it's shallow because financial freedom by itself, that doesn't come

with time and location independence.

You've just created a separate job for yourself.

And if financial freedom was the destination that you were aiming for a

lot of people that find success along the pathway, the journey becomes the

destination, the constant grind and building up the assets or buying it,

or whether it's multifamily or flipping houses or wholesaling or whatever it

may be, to hit that level of financial freedom, the journey becomes the

destination for them, and they never really learn how to turn it off.

The idea is to create financial freedom in a way that also comes

with location and time independence.

And those three things together can create independence of purpose, where

you can go pursue what you wanna pursue.

And that's what we thought of when your name came up, is I don't think people

on this podcast know where you're doing this interview from or what

you're doing with your life right now.

and I think that you have mastered the art of turning it off and

turning it on depending on the what's prioritized in your life at the moment.

And it usually seems to be that your happiness and success, the way that you

wanna spend your time, takes precedent.

And I think a lot of people miss that.

So talk about that a little bit.

People.

want financial freedom.

Cause they're motivated by the wrong, they're motivated

by the right thing, right?

They hate their job.

They hate feeling stuck.

this is not that controversial of a phrase, but it sounds controversial.

the entire middle and lower class United States, probably 60,

70% of America are wage slaves.

They are tied to jobs they don't really want or are meaningless.

Right?

What's that job?

book bullshit, jobs, middle management, just stuff that's gonna get replaced by AI

Anyways, they're making mediocre salaries.

They're in, they're working for bosses that are basically, they're not leaders.

They're just somebody that was there a little bit longer than you.

And it's a whole thing is just, it's completely meaningless and unfulfilling

and they're just working for the weekend.

And so they're like, I want something bigger than this.

I wanna get out.

Okay.

That's a good motivator.

The problem is, and this makes me sound like an asshole, every single time that

I say this, finding financial freedom is a moderately hard problem to fix, right?

What do you need?

Do you need $10,000 a month in passive income?

you can do this in, depending on how aggressive what you are, you

can do this in five to 10 years.

Five years if you're aggressive, 10 years, almost guaranteed if you focus on it.

Okay?

the problem that people have is that they don't actually know what they

wanna do when they get freedom and they haven't spent any time thinking about it.

And it's, this is why I sound like an asshole.

That is a harder problem to solve than making money.

Cuz everybody thinks money is their problem.

But then you get there and you're like, okay, what if you

had $10,000 a month in income?

You're like, I need 20,000.

And it's for what?

What do you need 20,000 for instead of 10?

Because here's what's gonna happen.

You don't really need more than $10,000 a month in passive, in income.

You really don't.

I can argue with people.

unless you have a hobby that you are passionate about,

that costs more than that.

But the problem is most people don't have any hobbies.

and they have no passion projects and they have nothing

on their bucket list that's big.

They say things like, I wanna travel.

do you know how cheap it is to travel?

Bro, I travel all the time.

went outta country five times last year.

it, it don't cost that much money.

You can do it on much less than, you can do it on 50 grand a year.

You can travel a couple times outta country.

Now, I'm not saying you can stay in luxury hotels, luxury

hotels are not a purposeful, a meaningful driven sort of existence.

that's just consumerism.

Consumerism is the real trap.

You're trading this job.

You're like, I want freedom.

And then you give yourself, you pledge yourself to the false God of consumerism.

You're like, want freedom, but I also want a nice car and a big house and travel.

It's dude, that's just.

That's just a, it's just a captor of a different look.

And so I figured this out very early actually in financial freedom.

I started buying houses.

I had one, two, maybe I had my third house.

And I was like, here's what's gonna happen.

I'm gonna buy these rentals.

I don't want to get, I don't wanna be a big mogul.

I don't want have a bunch of employees.

I don't want a bunch of golden handcuffs.

I don't wanna be tied to this thing in a way that like, you can quit a

job at any day, walk in and quit.

You have investors.

It's dude, I can't quit Neil.

0% chance happened.

I gotta write my, I gotta make sure this thing is running.

I gotta check up on, I have got to the responsibility level is different.

So I wanted to make sure that I limited, those sort of requirements

and that I had actual freedom.

but then I said, what am I gonna do with all this free time?

It's a hard problem.

What are we gonna do with it?

You can travel, but travel messes up your schedule.

Cause then you're like, you're not in the gym.

you're not building relationship.

Most people don't wanna be nomadic.

Most people wanna travel, sporadically and then come back home.

What are you gonna do with all your time?

Say you do make your $20,000 a month.

It's what are you gonna do with it?

are you gonna volunteer?

Are you gonna write books?

Are you gonna create content?

How are you gonna help other people, get the gift that you've been given or learned

the things that you've already learned?

Are you gonna do a creative endeavor?

Are you gonna challenge yourself health and fitness?

Are you gonna invest in your relationship?

what, there's a million things to do and people have no hobbies.

what are you gonna do?

I picked up a camera.

I was like, whatever.

Cameras are gonna die because everybody's got cell phones now,

but I'll just do it anyways.

I don't care.

And it's, as you both know, intimately it shaped my life.

you've never seen me without a camera probably very few times.

and that just was a fluke.

And I can go into like how that happened.

but.

Yeah, people, Clint, you said it right?

Like they get fall in love with the process, you, you solve one

problem and you create another.

People have to be a little more introspective.

I maybe it comes more naturally to me, maybe it doesn't.

maybe it's a byproduct of, mushrooms gotta do mushrooms.

I think truly passive income is putting something that you

want to do on your bucket list higher than money is the vehicle.

And money is, it's an easy trap to get into because, it feels good.

I made a $30,000 check.

I made this big thing.

It feels good, but it's fleeting just like your paycheck is.

and I know plenty of people that make $400,000 a year that

are stressed out about money.

And I know plenty of people that m ake $50,000 a year that are

just as stressed out about money.

rarely have I ever made six figures but because I pour myself into

things like travel, books, cameras, community building, like these

very fulfilling intangible, right?

they're not easy to brag about on the internet, but they're very fulfilling.

so yeah, I, I figured out, I don't know if I figured it out.

I just didn't fall into the same trap as a lot of other people.

And I, yeah, that's what I wanna express.

Don't fall into the trap of money's not gonna, money only solves money problems.

So I think that's not a groundbreaking statement here, but

I think what we're getting at is that time is real wealth to actually, and

I'll even go a step further time and purpose because, You can have lots

of money, but no time and no purpose.

And, do you really have much of a life and you can have lots of time, and no purpose.

there's only so many video games you can play.

There's only so many books you can read as, as fulfilling as I, I think books are.

but ultimately you gotta find something more than that.

we're such a consumerist society and for me, reading, most books is just

consuming, most television watching.

You're just consuming most video games.

it's ultimately, it's consuming.

You've gotta get to the point where it's, you've got the time to participate in

the world and with some sort of purpose.

And it doesn't need to be some big grand purpose, but it's gotta be something

beyond just consuming and existing.

Is that kind of what you're getting at?

Yeah, so there's a few things there.

One of my big bugaboos about American culture, the biggest, I

think, enemy that we face is what I call the false god of consumerism.

And it is everywhere.

It is not just the trinkets.

You buy a target, it is the food, it is the cars, it is the house, it

is, a lot of it is, relationships.

you are going out drinking with friends.

It's is that really I love going out drinking with friends, but

is it relationship building or is it escapism travel?

I'm going on, last year I did it, and I'll do it again this year,

I'll go on a pilgrimage from, to in Spain called the Camino de Santiago.

it's 150 miles with no cell phone walking nine, nine, ten miles a day.

Wow.

it's the opposite of consumerism.

okay.

And so that brings me to the next point.

It's what do you do?

How do you know if it's consumerism?

Consumerism is always easy.

So the, so if you wanna know, if you're doing something that's not

consumerist, do something hard.

Are books consumerism?

maybe if you're reading.

Dan Brown or some, game of Thrones.

Just little poke that bear.

Go read David Foster Wallace.

Go read David.

Go read Dostoevsky, go read something hard.

It's very fulfilling.

Tolstoy, change my opinion about, and, and my approach towards relationships forever.

But it's 900 pages and brutal.

and so it's the same thing with the gym.

It's you can go get plastic surgery, it's consumerism, or you can go to the

gym and put yourself through some pain.

But we, but consumerism and complacency and comfort are all very easy things.

it's hard to tell people go volunteer for the hard thing.

But it really is those are really your two choices.

it's, you can do the consumerist meaningless thing or you can do

the difficult, fulfilling thing.

And it's the really insane thing, the really insane like fact about our culture

is that consumerism is very expensive and it stresses you out and puts you in a box.

Doing things that are difficult and meaningful are almost

always cheap and available.

books, gym memberships, sunshine, travel friends.

These are all very cheap, very cheap things, but they're difficult.

and so people will, almost always opt for the easy, empty thing that

puts you in a financial and then stress bind, like puts you in a box.

It's such a weird phenomenon.

It's so funny to have this conversation with the three

of you, the three people that are sitting here right now because.

Everything we're talking about is the independence of purpose.

And when you hit this point of you've got the financial freedom, the location

of independence, the time independence, and you get this freedom of purpose

you get decide what's important to you, how you wanna live your life.

And that's when you start to ask yourself the questions, am I gonna do

the easy things or the hard things?

And you have opportunity like you didn't have before.

And for some people it's hard to learn how to manage that.

You have to relearn.

All of a sudden the world is wide open and you can make a lot of

choices and you can go a lot of different directions with that.

And that can be good and that can be bad.

And it's really funny to be having this conversation right now because

it's easy to talk about this, but it's something different when people

that we all know have hit that certain level where all of a sudden it becomes

a reality and it goes from being a conversation that you're having in a

transactional way with somebody else to all of a sudden it's your situation

and it's real and it's happening.

The moment that happened to me was a very special moment.

And it happened in Denver last year at the Best Ever Real Estate Conference.

And Alex, you were walking by with your camera in hand, like you always are, and

you captured a picture of that moment and it's something that photo is hanging

in my office and it's something that for me, it went from, at that time,

literally at that point in time, I was looking out the window over the mountains.

It went from a conversation and I've heard other people have a lot over the years.

To all of a sudden I was standing there 16 years into a career of selling and

implanting pacemakers and defibrillators, thinking that I love what I did and

did, honestly did love what I did and loved the way that I helped people.

But I had a moment of realization of at its basis form, no matter what,

I'm still trading time for money.

I know what the ceiling of that is and based upon what I now know

and the people that I've been surrounded with for the last week.

I've gotta find a way out of this career.

I've gotta quit my job.

I can get the same satisfaction of giving back and helping people in other ways,

but for my sake, my family's sake, my marriage's sake, my children's sake, the

sake of being a good father and a leader, there's a lot more opportunity out there.

And I was standing there, having that realization of this conversation is now a

decision that I have to make in my life.

And I was standing there and I said, I've gotta quit my job.

And you walked by and you took a picture right then.

That'll always be very special to me because of that moment.

So it's one thing for us to sit here and have this conversation and for people that

are listening to this podcast and oh, I wonder what that's like maybe one day.

it's very real.

And that transition of making the jump from, working for somebody else, trading

your time for money and things like that, when you're in that situation differently

and it's you're all of a sudden you cut all ties loose and you're adrift.

That's when it's really important to have put some thought into the kind

of person you want to be, the kind of husband, friend, father, whatever

your role in life is, you need to have thought about that ahead of time

before you get put into that position because all of a sudden you're gonna

have a lot of different things that you could do and that you can do out there.

And that's when, making those difficult choices, is something that you should

have prepared yourself for ahead of time.

You gotta put thought into that ahead of time, I think in my

position to all of a sudden be in that position in life and know what

your second act needs to look like.

Yeah.

I do think that we live in this culture where we sort of have this

thing where, it's healthy, right?

Everybody has to be successful or like on their way very early.

And so you're like, Hey, you should be making money at 30 and

then if you get to 30 and you're broke still, it's oh, I missed it.

And then we do the same thing with 40.

cuz you start seeing people that are 40 that have been really like,

got their shit together for, 10, 15 years now they seem very daunting and

you're like, oh, I really missed it.

And so what it does is it's it puts people in this mindset of they're

acquiescing to complacency cuz they're like, they will look at you and they

go, I can't do what he did at that age.

So I'm just gonna resort to what I have and that's not for me.

and grind it through.

And bro, I'm gonna live to a 120.

So we'll get that, we'll start right.

120 right now.

I was 30 right before I pulled my head outta my ass.

And what I really mean that, right?

I had no degree.

I had no houses.

I had no savings, right?

I had just allegedly gotten a DUI allegedly.

I was a fuck up, right?

I hadn't read any books yet.

I'd never picked up a camera.

I had no money.

I had no plan.

I had alcoholic friends.

Cause that's how you become an alcoholic.

And that's another lesson actually.

the people you surround yourself with are the people you become.

And at 30, I was like, okay, whatever.

I don't care about the whole world.

I don't care about being a mogul, but I am changing my life.

and basically over the next two years, it became two things.

It's I'm gonna have financial freedom and I'm gonna do something creative.

And, again, it takes time to reflect and be honest with oneself about, I'm gonna

live for the next, so that's thirty.

So I'm gonna live for another.

Oh, don't make me math.

90 years.

90 years.

Do you wanna be just say, I'm gonna sell pacemakers for 90 years

because I don't wanna take any risk.

this seems crazy when you say it out loud.

Yeah.

But that's how people go through life because they don't, and

that's a dude, that's a whole other lesson is say things out loud.

nobody says that.

that's one that, that one everybody should do.

You should have a group of friends, around everybody needs a friend like

me that'll call you in your bullshit.

And and so Clint, when you say, Hey, I'm just gonna not, I'm gonna,

I'm not gonna go for financial freedom because this seems easier.

And then I can tell you, you're gonna do this for the next 90 years because

you're scared that it might not work out.

you can always get that job back, right?

You need somebody that will say these things out loud so you can

hear how effing crazy they sound.

But now here you are a year later and you're like, oh my God.

Smartest decision of all time now look, you make and made

a lot more money than me.

Right?

When I started, I made 45.

In three years, I ended up getting 55,000 a year in Las Vegas.

That was at the end of 2019.

This is not that long ago.

So if you're making $55,000 a year, you can do what I did.

And now I make more than that because my investments and because

my skill sets have gone up.

But I'm not a rich fellow.

Also, Maui's expensive.

So most of this goes to rent I agree with you though.

Like you have to, people have to think about they're gonna live

for another 80, 90 years, right?

Even if you're 50, it's if you're gonna live to a, you're

probably gonna live to 120.

that's just, that's what medicine's gonna do.

You're gonna live to 120, right?

You're gonna feel great for 110.

I'm just kidding.

I'm now just bullshitting.

I don't know.

But if you're 60, right?

If you're 60 and you live to a hundred, it's like you got 40 years left.

And lemme tell you something.

The first 20 years of your life is Generally a blur.

Most people are not putting anything like really foundational.

At least I wasn't right.

Very little foundational came outta the first 30 years of my life.

So I'm 39.

So basically I tell people, I'm like, look, I'm nine years old.

Everything I learned I learned in the last nine years, I'm nine and I'm live to 120.

Like I'm just now getting started.

So this idea that I'm not gonna take any risks because would you tell a nine

year old that like I, whatever you're doing now is what you're set with.

You can't take no, you can't take any risks.

You can't change your mind now you gotta stuck.

So part of this, so Clint, and I wanna make this clear, is Another thing

that American culture has forgotten because of consumerism is sacrifice.

They can't quit their job because they have a monster car payment.

Yeah.

And they're not willing to sell their car and live and drive a beater.

they live in a monster house.

they're house poor and they're not willing to make any sacrifices.

They got cell phones, they got kids got cell phones, they got Netflix,

Hulu, they got Amazon, they spend, they're just, money is just going

out and they got credit card debt.

And so you have got to learn how to, live light.

And that gives you, that's freedom in and of itself.

Just getting rid of the false God of Consumerism.

It's an addiction that, the culture wants you to have.

It's, I don't say that like with some conspiracy as much as.

Chase wants you to have debt, bro.

That's how they make money.

So they're sad that you're miserable about it and unhappy, but that's what they want.

That's how they make their money, is you get a bunch of debt.

So I'm not anti mortgages, but you gotta live light.

You gotta reflect on what you wanna do and you gotta make some sacrifice.

You gotta make what looks like risky decisions that are generally not.

And then the last thing, I'll go off my rant cause I'm all over the place.

The last thing that you said that's really important is you brainwash

yourself with who's around.

That is whether you choose to or not.

That is what happens.

Every single individual on this planet, you brainwash yourself

with who you keep around.

God forbid you keep nobody around and then you become an isolated recluse.

This is the worst.

You're not gonna motivate yourself to do shit.

You become who you surround yourself with.

So when you hang out with people that are at work that are just going through the

motions, you're gonna think that's okay.

When you hang out with people that are driving, you're making six, six, $60,000

a year or a hundred thousand dollars a year, and every year you drive BMWs and

you think, oh, they're driving BMWs.

So we work at the same job so I can drive a BMW, not knowing that they

go home and lose sleep and fight with their wife or husband because

they're stressed out about money.

Now you're copying them cuz it looks normal.

You brainwash yourself to become the people that you're around.

So when you start going to Best Ever Conference and you look, see Alex,

you're like, wait, Alex is happier than me making a fifth of what I

make because he chose to live on his terms rather than live by the job.

dude, you become it.

And so now, yeah, so those things sacrifice, reflection,

risk, and brainwashing yourself with the people you're around.

These sort of like very core, simple.

they're not easy to enact, but they're simple ideas.

they're tried and true.

they're true throughout all history.

They're universal.

They work.

But again, it's just easier to buy stuff and make all

that thought and pain go away.

Alex, when you're talking about risk, one of the things that I

think is so important people to realize is that there's a risk of inaction.

People have this thought in their head of, I can't quit this job

because then what am I gonna do?

like you said, you're gonna do this for another 90 years.

are you gonna bet those 90 years that your life is gonna be better during

that 90 year period than it would be is if you took a little harder route?

Took a, what looks like a, maybe a bigger risk right now, short term, but in the

long term leads to a much happier life.

People confuse the difference between fear and risk.

Fear and risk are two different things.

risk is not to be feared.

Risk is to be managed and measured.

And so this is simple math.

You say, Hey, look, my bills are $2,000 a month.

Then I make $5,000 a month.

And so I can swing it now if I go work for myself, I can't make

the nut, so I can't quit my job.

And it's okay, first get your bills cheaper, right?

Sacrifice, then save some money.

Sacrifice, right?

Build up a little nest egg.

Then go get a plan.

How are you gonna make some money?

I'm gonna, Hey, I wanna get into real estate.

It's you know what?

If you have no money, if you can't do anything else, go be an agent on the side.

At least go get your toes in.

Go link up with guys like, Clint or Neil and say, Hey, how can I add value?

it's not.

People, they just go, it's too much.

I don't wanna learn it.

It seems scary.

And so oh, it's a big risk.

Incorrect language, right?

Incorrect language.

You're afraid.

And being afraid is like normal and that's fine, but it's a

bad decision maker, right?

Our bodies are biologically programmed to avoid risks because

most real risks through history are like something terrifying coming

outta the bush and taking you out.

And so you're like hardwired for this thing, but like financial

risk and and economic risk is not to be treated the same way.

what's most interesting to me is how many people have stressed

about money their whole life, and it always works out, right?

Yep.

some people go bankrupt, but even bankruptcy, it's like, I know

people that have gone bankrupt and come back and they're fine.

Like, all this stress is our biological mismatch with current modernity,

like our current economic situation.

and that's not, It's hard to fix that.

It's so funny.

Like I actually stress about money more now that I'm, into a million dollar net

worth than when I had zero net worth and didn't even had a negative net worth.

I actually stressed a little bit more about money now

because, for different reasons.

But I also know that's that's just the biology working.

and some of that can't go away.

But it's important not to confuse risk with fear.

If you're fearful, it's okay, say it out loud, address it, but to have no plan

and no process and no understanding of where you are and where you want to go,

and like none of the data, none of the information, and then say, oh, it's risky.

It's like you don't know what the risk is.

You have no idea what the risk is.

So it's just fear and those are very different.

I'm gonna take that a step further.

I think if for anyone out there in a current working situation

that's been in it for any amount of period of time, long enough that

you can see where the ceiling is.

If you're in, whatever that role is, if you can get an idea of in your industry

what the ceiling is and you look at that ceiling and that ceiling is not enough to

meet the satisfaction needs that you're looking for as an in, as a person, then

the real risk is not doing anything like that decision gets taken away from you.

if what you're doing right now and the goal that you're on career wise, if the

ceiling is here and that ceiling is not gonna be enough for you to meet the needs

that you need for yourself and your family in terms of time or travel or whatever it

may be to hit what you think your version of satisfaction or happiness is gonna be.

If it's not there.

Then the only risk is if you don't take action because

you know what the ceiling is.

You don't know what the ceiling is.

If you're willing to try other things or do other things.

And there's a difference in risk and calculated risk, but for me, if I go in,

spend the rest of my career selling an implanting pacemakers and defibrillators,

I know what the ceiling is.

It's a fairly high ceiling when it comes to financial compensation,

but it's a pretty low ceiling when it comes to time, right?

Because I'm on call, I work nights, I work weekends, I'm on call because heart

surgery is not from nine to five, right?

So if I know where the ceiling is, the only risk that I take is

if I decide that's enough for me for the rest of my life, right?

and if it's not, then you have to make decisions beyond that.

And again, the podcast is called Truly Passive Income.

But at the end of the day, the income part is not the end all be all.

Like we all have to have some level of financial freedom to make these

decisions and take these risks.

But at the end of the day, once you decide that ceiling is not enough

for you, you have an obligation to put yourself out there and try

to do something more than that.

And a lot of times, like there's an unlimited amount of you locked in

your genetic code and the way that you react to different situations.

So when you put yourself out there, different situational

strains are gonna cause different reactions to come outta you.

And those changes are what create change in you as a person and unlock

different abilities that you didn't know was there, which is incredible

because you have an unlimited amount of ability inside of you to deal with

different situational stresses and you just aren't gonna find out about it.

Until you put yourself in that situation.

And that's gonna come from, who you are right now is who you're gonna be

10 years from now, with the exception of the books you read, the places

you go, the content you consume, and the people you associated with.

So that's the idea.

Truly passive income is just, that's just a hook to get

people to listen to the podcast.

But at the end of the day, that by itself is shallow.

You're giving our secrets away

listen, man, life is about so much more than that.

But if you hit that stepping stone, it puts you on the pathway

to independence of purpose.

And that's what this conversation is talking about.

And it's so much bigger than just finances.

Yeah.

So Neil, you said earlier time is the most valuable resource.

I hear this a lot.

I actually very much disagree with that because, no, you said

that's not okay.

no.

Don't come on my podcast and disagree.

All right.

That's not why I invited.

We're done here.

I invited you on here to agree with me to back up the things I'm saying, Alex.

something you allude, you got close to Clint is, People should.

The most, the thing that people should invest into most, in my opinion,

is their level of self-confidence.

And what I mean by that is what you believe you can accomplish.

And what happens is we get in this little world where, I don't wanna

rail about American culture too bad, but we have, nothing to conquer

and we have no rights of passage.

And so people grow up and they're just like, I'm an employee now and that's

what I'm born and destined to do.

And people are very cynical now about their ability to rise

above mediocrity or average.

So they don't try.

and I have met extremely few people in this life that I look at and

go, in the right circumstances, you would be wildly successful.

Very few people, like almost every single, the vast wild majority, 99%,

I could probably name less than 10 people in this whole world that this

doesn't apply to under the right circumstances, every single person

can be radically, wildly successful.

what that is at and in those circumstances is a game of trying a lot of things

and finding out what you're good at.

I played guitar for 10 years and I was garbage from day

one, and I ended at garbage.

I should have abandoned it really quickly.

But there's things that I'm really good at that are natural.

And it's once you find out what the things you're good at and understand

why the themes about what your personality is and, and the themes that,

like what you should stay away from.

Hey, you want me to build systems?

Like we're all gonna fail.

I'm just terrible at it.

So if you ever need a systems guy, call everyone else.

Don't call me.

I destroy systems.

I'm the opposites of a systems, but there's somebody else in this

world that's really good at systems.

And as soon as we pair up.

We're gonna be unstoppable.

so, but there's somebody who's really good in sales and they're

stuck in a packaging plant.

And it's dude, you're not, you should be in sales.

You just never tried it.

Maybe it's scary and you don't know it.

I was good at sales.

I never thought I'd be good at sales.

stumbled my way into it.

I was good at sales.

I wanted to be in banking.

I thought, I was like, I wanna learn money and do underwriting.

I am not good, stuck in a cubicle with one other person doing spreadsheets.

It's just, it's not the best use of my skillsets.

I can get paid, I can do that, but I'm never gonna thrive.

And so people, yeah, they get stuck into, they sort they turn

25, they turn 30, they turn 35.

they have a career that they fell into.

They didn't plan it.

And then they're doing mediocre.

And they're like, guess I'm just mediocre.

And it's no, dude, you are, you have divinity within you.

You just gotta try a couple of extra things and be around it.

And this is again, comes back to, it, it took me a long time to learn this

lesson, but I'm gonna spend over the next three years, I'm basically gonna spend.

All of my money investing in masterminds and coaches because there's people

in this world that will see things in you that you don't see, and then they

know where to put you and they say, oh, Clint's good at pacemaker sales.

And it's no.

Clint's good at sales, so let's get him in the right place

with the mega high ceiling.

But it took a little bit of self-belief.

Like you said, you had to hang out with some people.

You had to see them doing the thing that you were afraid to do.

and you look at other people that are successful.

Everybody knows this.

You hang out with somebody successful that seems like they're untouchable.

It seems like they're made outta something else.

You hang out with 'em a little while, you're like, that person

is as regular as they get.

Yep.

They just got in the right place, the right time.

It hit their personality.

I'm out here, building a new podcast for my friend Brandon Turner.

Shaped so many lives with so many unbelievable amount of lives.

my life.

Neil, I think yours, I don't know your story, Clint, but bigger pockets.

Yeah, for sure.

A hundred percent

shaped the world, right?

Lemme tell you something, lemme tell you how

Poor Josh Dorkin, poor Josh Dorkin never gets any credit.

I hung out with, I went surfing with Josh Dorkin

and Brandon Turner last week.

Lemme tell you something, they are as regular as it gets.

They're regular as this conversation.

they're tremendous individuals.

I'm not taking anything away from their hard work, but they got the right

personalities, the right process, the right time, all these things lined up.

And that is one of the, guideposts of life, one of the strategies of

life is find out what you're good at and then keep plugging away.

And then wait till the wave of success comes to you.

I thought cameras are going outta business.

Turns out now every single entrepreneur in the country wants a creative director

to make 'em look good on the internet.

A thing that I thought was just gonna be a crappy, like a little

side hobby hustle that I or I wasn't gonna make any money on.

It was just a little hobby.

Now people are like, Can we pay you a lot of money to do the thing that you

wanna do and we'll stay outta your way?

What an incredible blessing.

What an incredible blessing.

And it wasn't something I planned, it was just putting myself right in

places where I could use my skill, sets my talents to the maximum and

then just the trend came along.

And so this is why it's so important to hang out with people that are

going at least where you think you want to go and spend time

and get in their social circles.

Cuz they'll look at you and say, you're not right for this.

You are right for this.

This is where you could be good.

And then you'll believe them.

Because people generally, anybody who's your real friend

will not sycophant suck up.

They will not.

Yes.

You just to make you feel good.

They'll tell you at least, I don't know, maybe you need a friend like Neil at

least, who will tell you all the time, no, you're effing up, you're wrong.

Do this over here instead.

This is not gonna fit for you.

Whatever.

But you need somebody who will.

tell you what's, what they think is best from you objectively.

And those are not hard to find.

Those are everywhere.

I'm sure Neil and Clint, I'm sure you guys do that for each other.

The other two guys, Levi and yeah, Erik, that, you guys are all old

enough that you're not just BSing each other trying to, nobody needs

friends in that group, right?

You guys are all, got established families and lives and so it's no,

we wanna work together, which means we have to tell each other the truth.

That is why people need to brainwash themselves by the groups that they

surround themselves in, and then be okay to change those groups.

I got into the fire community first and I was like, you guys are silly.

Save 70% of your income and then you'll get, a million and half

dollars in an equity account in 30 years and then you'll retire.

This is a terrible plan, friends.

terrible plan.

So I had to leave and I went to real estate and then I found out, guess what?

They only do one thing.

Buy real estate.

Buy real estate.

Buy real estate.

Lemme tell you how good I am at real estate.

I wanted to talk about something else.

How come we're not talking about philosophy and cameras and travel?

That's what I wanna talk about.

So I moved to other groups.

Now this is my journey, but the point is, I hang out with camera people and

that's how I get good at cameras, I learned cameras, I hang out, travel.

It's like you go to country a bunch of times.

I am so ranty, I'm so sorry.

no, you have to, I love

it.

I love it, rant, Alex,

you have to hang out with people that want the best from you.

Expect and demand the best outta you.

And we'll hold and we'll keep you accountable.

And then what exactly what happened with Clint is he'll go, this is not

only possible, but I have to do this.

This is crazy that I'm not doing this.

And because you could just have easily gone back to your friends and they

would've been like, how was your weekend?

Oh, I can't wait till Friday.

And it's dude, you just get in this glut, you get in this glut of the

samesy, samesy for your whole life.

And and then the problem is you have all, you have a whole

lifetime to do that thing.

and if you.

if you have all the time in the world, but no confidence,

you can't get anything done.

You have to have confidence.

And that's gonna come from hard, difficult, doing difficult tasks, putting

yourself in uncomfortable positions and being around people that will

hold you up to a very high standard.

So I wanna pull two nuggets out of your

diatribe there, which I love.

Yes.

Sorry,

not criticizing your diatribe.

one is that people should lean into things that they're good at.

So often people are like, you should look for ways that you can improve.

look at the things that you're bad at in life and make them better reality.

No, you should be leaning in to the things that you're good at.

you discovered, you, you suck at guitar.

Terrible.

and there's things that I know I'm not good at and I've tried to get better at.

I, I suck at deal.

I just suck at deal finding as a real estate, but I do know that I can talk

to people about a deal and I can get them excited in that common goal.

and so lean into that.

the other thing that I think is that people overestimate what they can get

done in a year and they underestimate what they can get done in five years.

And I think that is a trap that so many people fall into that

allows them to not take action.

they see, oh God, it's, I can't, I could never get to where Alex is.

it would take me 20 years to get there.

No, you're not gonna get, you're not gonna get there in one.

But yeah, you can probably get there.

In five,

2017, I was working as a, I wasn't even an underwriting yet.

I was working retail in a bank, in a brand.

Like when you walk into the bank and you're like, can I talk to somebody?

It's that's what I was doing, making.

46,000, $44,000 a year and since then, right?

I have bought eight single family homes, a 24 unit, a 52 unit raised

1.4 million basically on my own right.

1.25 on my own.

I picked up and learned everything about cameras, right?

I moved and lived in Las Vegas for three years.

Left there, moved to Charlotte, moved to Maui, right?

I've been to seven or eight foreign countries.

I don't know how many conferences, right?

I'm a conference junkie, I go to 3, 4, 5 a year.

and that all changed, right?

the community surrounded myself was bigger pockets and that all

happened in five, five years ago.

I had no clue that any of this was possible.

I would've said the same thing you did.

It's oh my God.

One day I'll have 10 units.

One day, one day, one day, and I had a 10 year plan to get 10

units, and it took me three.

And then I was like, What else can I do that I'm sandbagging on?

Yep.

And, and along the way I found a lot of things I'm good at.

I'm not really, I'm okay at deal finding, but I'm like you.

I just, it bores me.

I don't wanna do it.

want passive income, right?

I want passive income.

If I had more cash, if I had a high income job, I would literally just,

I'd be an LP, I'd give it to you guys.

I give it to, I, I'd give it to, I don't know.

I don't want to go deal hunt and I don't mind managing and talking to

people, but, it's not, somebody else is better at it than me and they like it.

Here you go.

I'd rather just be an LP.

It's almost the same amount of money with no responsibilities.

Yes.

Heck yes, I'll do that.

now finding good LPs is not a and finding, make sure you get the right deals with

those LPs is not a super easy task.

But that's a whole other conversation.

you may have just answered the question.

A couple things that y'all both pointed out that I think is really important.

You both said lean into what you're good at.

And I would also add in, try things, try new things because you're gonna

find things that you didn't know you were good at, Alex, you just, you spent

five years doing that, essentially.

I didn't know that I'd never raised capital before in my

life until about 18 months ago.

And I know that you did that for the first time on your own as well.

So I would say lean into what you're good at, but outside of that, try new things

because you're gonna be in a position where you find things that you are good

at and just as powerful, you're gonna find things that you're not good at,

and you're gonna be able to identify the right people to partner with.

Two things.

one thing that I recommend to people that nobody does, it's so easy.

Nobody does it.

It's so useful.

It's a little bit foo, it sounds a little bit crazy, but go online,

take those personality tests.

They, they work bro, I like the, Myers Briggs, the MBTI.

Yep.

I really like the big five personality tests.

really like that one because and whatever the other one,

there's take, but take three.

DISC or, Colby, I really the Colby test, but you gotta pay for it.

50 bucks worth it.

but these things will tell you, based on your answers, like here's the, stereotype

of what you're probably good at.

I'm really good at, what's called quickstart for Colby.

I'm really good at getting things from my brain into market.

As soon as you need me to create a system out of that, we are, we fail,

but I can get, I can take risk.

So this is good to know about oneself because you might be the opposite.

You might be like, yo, I can, I'm a systems builder,

or I'm a systems optimizer.

And that's why I cannot, that's why you find a hard time being entrepreneurial

because you can't take from complete idea and put it into market.

Or maybe you'll find out, I'm a hyper extrovert.

Do you guys know that?

I'm the, did you guys know that I'm currently the record holder?

That's, this is a fact, by the way.

I'm the record holder for the number one most extroverted person on earth.

Did you know this?

On Earth?

On Earth?

I'm 99th percentile extrovert.

You're the guy, you're the one dude.

yeah.

I'm the number one.

Yeah, I'm the number one.

that's a fact.

I'm just, that's not me.

That's just, that's a fact.

but it's important to know this because if you are an extrovert, you're

gonna find success around people.

Being alone is never, gonna work for you.

And if you're an introvert, right?

okay, first off, you're gonna have to figure out how to deal with people.

But then you're gonna have to figure out how to do appeal in doses, right?

Hey, go get coffee and go home for a little while.

Go to a conference.

do an hour or two go hang on the hotel room for a few hours, go

back to the party for 45 minutes or an hour tonight and then go home.

But these sort of things of understanding oneself allow you to use those strengths,

to succeed in ways that work for you.

If you are a hyper introvert, dude you can't go to do a conference

like me, you cannot do it.

It is never gonna happen.

There's no training You are not gonna be able to beat your biology.

I can go to a conference for four days.

I can wake up at 7:00 AM I can go to bed at 1:00 AM and I can take pictures and

mingle and talk to people the entire time.

And I can do that four or five days in a row and I leave going.

I wish there was more.

Yeah, a hyper introvert person.

there's no way you can beat that outta, you can't do that.

So that doesn't mean you can't be good at networking.

You just have to find out what it works for you.

And so the same thing with systems building or, not systems building,

chaos building or what about, like neuroticism, that's a big five.

Personality trait.

How neurotic are you?

Neil?

Very neurotic.

Very neurotic, right?

Stresses about everything.

Stresses about everything, right?

I'm a little bit above average.

I know some people, I know three people in this world They

rate less than 10% neurotic.

They do not stress, right?

Their world could be crumbling.

They do not stress about it.

It just does not affect them.

It's like a superpower, right?

also when things are crumbling, they don't worry about it.

So they don't have that oh, I have got to go tackle this.

and, and so this is why it's so important to, I'm not saying these,

fix all your problems, but they help you with the reflection process of

understanding like, what is it that I'm good at as a biological human, that I

can then employ to be useful to a team or a group effort, or a project or a

company so that I can be most useful?

I'm gonna rant a little bit longer.

The book, Ray Dalio Principles was really good about this.

That's what they used.

They're like, look, get the right person to the right job.

Don't put a big picture person, right?

I'm an abstract thinker.

I can't do details.

Don't put me into details.

Job, right?

And don't put a details accountant type into, vision boarding.

It's not gonna work, right?

Get the right person.

I trade in the right job.

And so to understand what your right job is, you have to understand

one's self a little bit better.

The other thing is about, Clint you said trying new things.

the piece of advice that shaped my life the most over the last 10 years was

this, you need three hobbies in life.

One that makes you money, one that keeps you in shape.

One that keeps you creative.

Boom.

Most people don't have all three.

Most people don't even have two, right?

You need a fitness hobby.

You have to have one.

I don't care if you do Pilates, yoga, run, right?

I deadlift.

I don't care what you do.

CrossFit, Ironman.

I don't care what you do, but you gotta do something, right?

Health is wealth, That's foundational.

It's also spiritual.

It's also mental, like the whole thing.

Physiological, you have to have a health hobby.

So if you don't have one now you know where to start.

You gotta go.

You get a gym membership, you gotta go running or whatever it is, there's

something you like in fitness.

You gotta do it.

And that will get you outta your comfort zone.

and fitness will give you confidence cuz you'll fucking feel better.

And then when you feel good, you're like, I can take on the world two money hobby.

I always, I say it specifically as a money hobby because not

everybody wants to be a mogul or an entrepreneur or build a business.

Some people's dude, you just need a hobby that makes money.

You just need something.

I buy real estate once in a while.

Nowadays it's dude, my kind of plan right now, my plan is just buy one

house a year for the rest of my life.

I will be radically wealthy if I just do that one house a year thing.

And I don't even have to get great deals, just mediocre deals.

That will work.

That's a hobby.

Third one is creative.

If you are not creating something, if nothing's coming out of you that's

helping the world or giving your gift out to somebody, you're missing

something about the process of humanity.

And so whether it's blogging, podcasting, I do cameras, actually

I do a lot, I do cameras, I write, like you have to create something.

Doesn't have to be art.

I was terrible at guitar, right?

You don't wanna hear me sing.

I dunno what it is.

But you have to create something.

So the process of taking, the world in information, the things you learn,

the experiences you have, and then telling it to somebody else your way,

putting it through the Alex filter, the Clint or the Neil filter, and

creating something that's unique.

It doesn't have to be like, you don't have to be the first one,

but it has to be your version.

Those three things.

If you don't know where to start personality tests and your three hobbies,

dude, you'll be miles ahead of the rest of the world and you'll be very

fulfilled in a short amount of time.

And those are two, like very pragmatic, easy things to do that you can

just, you'll go stratospheric with just those two pieces of advice.

All right.

So we're way over time at this point.

No we're not, we're just getting started,

which I knew we were, we normally,

there was no doubt.

I'm trying to get these under 30 minutes.

So are you still, are you good on time, Alex all

hang,

we're talking about me.

I,

like we can keep talking about this, but I wanna find out what it

is that you're doing with a better life and what a better life is all about.

And then, I'd like to talk about the pilgrimage that you went on last year and

the one that you're gonna go on this year.

So first, let's talk.

Better life.

And you can tell the story about how you got involved in

it and what it's all about.

Yeah.

Better life is a community focused growth, membership.

That's what it is.

So the guy who started, or the guy who was on the Bigger Pockets podcast

guy named Brandon Turner, prolific podcaster, he left Bigger Pockets.

He wanted to start a new podcast.

So we're gonna call it a Better Life.

And then part of what we're gonna do is something that I've been hesitant

to do for years and as I started has been tremendously valuable

to me, is paid mastermind groups.

So you pay a hundred, couple hundred bucks a month.

ours is little bit, a little bit more than a hundred bucks a month.

but you're gonna pay, you're gonna pay for us.

You're gonna pay 300 bucks a month.

And you go, oh my God, that's a lot of money.

Why don't you get it?

what you're gonna get for it right outta the gate is you're gonna get

other people who are willing to invest in themselves and you're gonna get

that community that I talked about that's gonna hold you accountable.

And because you pay money, one, the value of what we were

able to provide goes up two.

the people are taking it very seriously and that makes it really work.

And then three, the interesting thing about Better Life is although

it is a for-profit company, we are donating 100% of profits to charity.

So we make nothing very cool.

the only company that, I'm the only asshole in the world who'd join a company

with Brandon Turner and get no equity.

but no, it's a tremendous, it's a tremendous project.

And yeah, so it's it's weekly mentor calls with industry experts.

It's, it is accountability pods once a week, so you get matched up with six

other people that are in your life's like life, like similarities and want to grow.

And we host events.

We just released the podcast.

We're gonna start the whole shebang.

It's gonna be a lot, it's new now, but it's growing pretty quickly.

Enrollment Will is closed.

We only open four times a year.

It'll open up again in April.

But it is, I'm very thankful to be part of it.

It's, and it'll be very tremendously valuable for those who are looking

for a place to people are apprehensive to pay for masterminds cuz they're

like, oh, I'm just paying for, they call it paying for friends.

And I used to think the same thing and now I'm like, of course you pay for friends.

if you want.

It's not that you pay for friends.

What it is everybody puts skin in a game.

It's like betting.

It's here, I'll put my cards on the table that I'm taking this seriously

and I wanna be around people that are also willing to put their cards

on the table and take it seriously.

And then the way we rounded it out, it's okay, we'll give you all this

value and then we'll just give the money away so that you're not thinking

that we're making money on you guys.

pay to play.

It's not just access.

I mean it is access to these other people, but it's also, it's

like I'm not making anything.

I'm making a moderate salary and I'm doing a way more than moderate work.

so we're giving the money away for charity, but.

this year all the money will go to human trafficking.

I think we're going to give away probably two or 3 million year one.

and, we're gonna fight human trafficking.

So yeah, it's a tremendous for those interested, it's a tremendous

opportunity, for growth and certainly not for everybody, but it's also,

it's for most people I'll say.

And your role is as a creative director?

I am the creative director.

I'm also in charge of the community aspect of it, which is harder to explain,

but we're a startup, so I'm a, I'm in, I'm the, I'm, me and Matt, me and a guy

named Matt Buck are doing everything.

we wanted to get 200 members in the first quarter.

We ended up with 1100.

Wow.

So it has been quite difficult to manage.

we're whole.

Yeah.

Brandon wanted to start a podcast, similar to you guys.

I have some really good insight on how to, make podcasts go stratospheric in 2023.

And I'm sorry to say the first one is, In-person.

Video group podcasts.

it's nice work.

Nice work.

If you can do it,

I'll fly to maui.

It's a let's do another one.

Yeah.

Welcome.

so what Brandon wanted is he wanted to be on video.

He wanted to be high quality.

And since I am, it's interesting, everybody's got a video camera

now and video's all the rage.

But the reality is, on a, it took me a while to, I just only realized this in

the last year or so on a film set, right?

You don't call the main guy.

The cinematographer deals with the art, right?

But the principle, the director of photography deals with

composition and lighting.

Like what the set, like what the frames are gonna be.

And so that's what I do really is I'm a photographer first because

all, I mostly care about Neil.

You've seen my work.

and you're a photographer yourself.

So you understand my composition and lighting.

I know all the rules.

I of not good at breaking the rules with composition, but I'm very good at

building great compositions.

And so that's what we did with the set.

We, we made a mobile, video set with a bunch of, we bought, I bought three

Cannon C 70 s, which are cinema cameras.

They are a lot of cameras.

And we move these around and we're gonna tell, interesting stories about

interesting people, about how to have a better life and more than just

real estate, more than just health.

But basically what it's on is like health, wealth, spirituality, and relationships.

And, and yeah, so we filmed our first few episodes, actually we released our podcast

yesterday and we come out to, yesterday it was number 49 on Apple of all podcasts.

Wow.

Fantastic.

So good launch.

Can't wait to listen.

Good launch.

Yeah.

yeah.

has, is the video been released yet, or just the audio?

no, because, uploading 4K 2160 footage on, on YouTube

is about a six hour upload.

And, yes, that's a painful, it's been a painful process.

So I'm working on some of that on how to.

Compress and streamline and move that stuff around.

And, that's what I'm working on this week.

Yeah.

We, offline, let's chat.

I've got, I, I may have a little bit of a solution for you and maybe

you've got some solutions for me.

So before I let you go, I want to give you a chance to talk about, you, I've

known you for a while and you've always struck me as a spiritual person, but

not necessarily a religious person.

Would you say that's accurate?

I would not say that.

it, let's talk about a difference of language.

I would not use the word spiritual personally.

I, I am a student of religion.

Okay, let's, that's what I would say.

I get ya.

So talk to me about the pilgrimage that you did last summer in Spain and the one

that you're gonna do in, this summer.

The myth goes that, Body of James, one of the 12 apostles of

Christ is buried at a cathedral in Santiago de Compostela in Spain about

North Northwest Center of Spain.

And this has been, this has been going on, I think something like 1200

years where people have been going from all over Spain to the center of

the country and making a pilgrimage.

It's called the Camino de Santiago.

the way is what Camino means.

And it's a very

No, that's from the Mandalorian.

yeah.

I po I when every, I hate that now.

Cause you can't say, it's a very old phrase.

This is the way,

this is the way, it's a very old phrase, but yeah.

Star Wars basically took it.

Now people think that I'm a and the Mandalorian was a good series, but,

yeah.

I I hate, I hate how that's been commandeered because

it does do dis disservice to

Gotcha.

Sorry, I interrupt, I interrupted your great story.

No, it's fine.

It's fine.

it's fine.

I always like a chance to complain mid story, so it's okay.

it, there's something about American culture, hustle, culture, hustle

porn that develops, as I said, in the very early show, develops a

film of stress upon us that we get.

if you get some time, there's a video on YouTube called, this is Water by

David Foster Wallace commencement speech that is, just incredible about

how the day-to-day stress of life gets we, we lose sight of it because it's

the fish are all like, how's the water?

And the one fish goes, what's water?

And that's how stress is.

It's how's your day?

And you're like, oh, it's fine.

It's no, it's not fine.

you're stressed beyond belief, but you don't notice it cause

you do with it every day.

And it's the, I have to get the kids to the thing and I have to do

this thing for the job and I have to go do the, these responsibilities.

And it's just always this constant pressure.

And when you get away from those sort of things and you really get

away, you go to a foreign country and you put your cell phone up and

you live out of a backpack, right?

And you sleep in group hostels for $8 a day in bunk beds,

and you, you really live.

on your, and you walk all day and you really live without

any of that day-to-day stress.

You realize that's all made up and it's, and the world is the

trees are moving and the ants are fighting and the world is moving.

It's fine.

It you're, and you're fine.

There's enough food, like all the stress that you have is, it feels very

real, but it is really made up and

sounds like what Andy told you.

Yep, yep.

Absolutely.

We were, I got back from, met a friend on his boat down in, he

was coming back from the Keys.

I flew down and helped him sail his boat back.

And on the way back after eight or nine days on the way back up, we started

pulling into harbor at Carolina Beach.

And, I said, all right, back to the real world.

And he stopped me and dead and called me out on a heart.

He's no, he's.

That back there, that's the real world.

The last nine days.

That's the real world.

He goes, all the rest of this is made up.

This is all just manufactured.

And he was exactly right.

And it was exactly what I needed to hear at that moment.

Yeah.

And it is not a vacation.

I wanna make sure I'm very clear about this.

I do not go on vacations.

I do not go on vacations ever.

I go on adventures, right?

I go on journeys.

Big difference, mental difference.

You go out and you, you go to a vacation and you sit around your, in your room,

or you sit on the beach and you're checking your phone and it's dude,

you're not actually, you're not away.

you're far away from the problems, but they're still with you.

you plug that, you take that phone out and you go walk in the middle

of the, like nowhere, right?

And you, and you sleep in a bunk and you live outta your bag.

it goes away.

It, you don't bring any of that stuff with you.

And so it's, so this year we'll do, last year I did, last year

I did six days and 80 miles.

It turned out to be about 12 or 13 miles a day.

This year we're going with the family, so we'll do it.

It'll be a little more luxurious, which I am not happy about.

but we will do, we'll do 17 days, nine miles a day.

Wow.

Nine, 10 miles a day.

And it'll just be, it'll be walking.

I encourage people all the time, and I struggle with

this myself, to find opportunities to absolutely digitally disconnect.

Like I, because what happens, like what you just said about going on

vacation, you go on vacation, but you still have your phone with you.

You're still checking your email and you're still checking social media.

And, the closest I've ever come was being on a cruise and I didn't

wanna pay for the internet and.

It was magical.

aside from cruises being consumerist, maximalist, kind of thing.

But at the very least, like it was a digital detox.

Yeah.

The other one is nature, going on a boat, you're by the ocean.

Yeah.

So we live, Vegas is the worst about it, because Vegas is like all,

it's all concrete and all lights.

There's no very hard to digitally detox.

Now you have Mount Charleston and Red Rock, which I went to

quite a bit, and that's healthy.

But yeah, we live in a culture where, again, it's like you, you got this

phone by you and then you're not out.

You're not by the, you're not by nature, which has an incredibly calming, look, I'm

not trying to tell everybody on peaceful.

I'm not a peaceful guy.

I like chaos.

I do not, I'm not looking for peace.

That's why I don't, again, that's why I don't go on vacation.

So I'm not sitting here oh, you gotta calm down and be peaceful with nature.

And no.

But there is a biological effect that, we are evolved with nature.

the, they're solar powered.

We're solar powered.

and, there's something.

Peaceful and calming about it, that doesn't feel like,

you don't have to force it.

Like meditation, I have to force, I hate it, right?

But go walk through the woods and it's something like really walk, not

a 10, 15 minute thing where you drive there and come with me in Spain.

Do 10 days.

also, by the way, I wanna add for anybody who wants to do the Camino de Santiago, a

lot of American pilgrims go and do this.

It is cheap.

Don't tell me you can't do it.

900 bucks you can get to Spain.

It costs you probably less than 300 bucks to do the whole, to do the whole trip.

Cuz especially if you stay in the hostels, they're $7 a night, they're nothing.

And the food, you live on cappuccinos and, bocadillos

little snacks, little sandwiches.

So it's cheap.

Cool.

All right, my friend Alex, if anybody wants to get ahold of you

and, and bask in the warm glow, that is Alex Felice, what would be the

best way for them to contact you?

these days it's just Instagram.

Just

what's your Instagram handle?

Oh my God.

Who knows.

I'm not a, I'm not a solicitor of anything, so @alexscottfelice.

Yeah.

I hate this question.

They're always like, how do you find you?

And I'm like, why would you wanna find me?

Yeah.

I don't have anything to sell you to look at.

Look at your pictures.

Yeah.

If you wanna see cool pictures and and and hear interesting stories, you can

go to @alexscottfelice and I've been working, I abandoned my last website.

If you wanna know my real estate story and how I did all my real estate

deals, it's on Brokeisachoice.com.

But abandoned that because I don't talk about real estate anymore.

So now I'm doing everything on lifeandlens.media.

And now see, this is why I don't like this too much.

Nobody's gonna do all that.

Just go to Instagram.

Gotcha.

All right, my friend, always great talking to you.

I.

I forgive you for moving away as soon as I moved to North Carolina

and moved away to some desolate place like Maui just to get away from me.

But I forgive you and, I'll come visit you.

You guys should, move here.

It's it is the trendy thing.

Brandon's getting a lot of real estate guys to move here,

Oh, I'm sure.

I'm just letting you know if you wanna be part of the trend.

It is happening here on Maui

next exit.

I'm coming to visit for a month.

Yep.

Next deal.

We, I, we're on the way.

my rent is $3,000 a month.

My place is 600 square feet.

So sacrifice,

need a roommate.

Yeah.

I'm tied up for the next little bit.

We're, I've got another baby on the way in two days, but gimme a

little time to navigate that and then, we'll come visit when we can.

Congrats.

Thanks man.

great interview as always, man.

I knew that all we had to do was kinda let you loose and, be yourself.

There's a lot of content we're gonna have to go through and figure

out where we're gonna use it.

We might have to, this might be a three parter, Neil, I'm not sure.

I hope I was, I hope I was valuable.

Not just, I like entertaining people, but I hope I was valuable,

no, very, you know, we interview real estate entrepreneurs all

the time, one of the things I love about where your story is right now, and I'm

not saying it's the be all, end all of your story, is that you've been a real

estate entrepreneur and gone It's not really ultimately what it's all about.

And it's something we preach a lot of is that financial independence

by itself is not enough.

Yep.

Yeah.

I call it success, but what else?

Success, but what else?

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of

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