What Does Financial Freedom Mean to You?

[00:00:02] This is short term rental management, the show that is all about short term rental property management with your host, yours truly, Luke Carl. [00:00:15] Welcome to short term rental management. I am so grateful that you are here. I love you. [00:00:20] Luke Karl, the Viking of Vacation Rentals, CEO of short term shop plus, which I would love for you to join. Stsplus.com and I have been in this business a long time, world's greatest landlord, and I'm glad you're here. I'm so grateful that you are here. Today we're going to talk about financial freedom. What does that even mean? What does it mean to be financially free? How do I get there? [00:00:49] And we're probably going to do a little bit of chatting about quitting the old job as well on today's episode of short term rental Management. [00:01:00] This episode is brought to you by short term rental listing advice. [00:01:05] Join this Facebook group and post your listing to get advice from other hosts, including myself, on how you can improve your listing or just post your property so you can show off. [00:01:18] Join [email protected] that's strl listingadvice.com. [00:01:27] first thing you gotta figure out is on the, on this topic of financial freedom. What is financial freedom? What does it mean to you? And it could mean any number of different things for any particular person. Could be seven different levels, ten different levels of financial freedom for each individual. [00:01:46] And quite frankly, it's possible you're already there and don't even know it. Maybe you've already gotten to a point where you could be free if you haven't leveled up so many times. Leveling up is a big part of it. [00:02:01] What's in your driveway? [00:02:06] Are there four cars in your driveway that have loans on them? Because then you're not free. [00:02:11] All right, now, are there two cars in your driveway that have loans because you're trying to deploy as much cash as possible into real estate or other income producing assets? Okay. That's another thing to consider. [00:02:28] Can't hold that against you. [00:02:31] You know, it's, it's a lot of money to go pay off a brand new suburban. These white and black suv's that all the housewives are talking about, which I drive. I drive a white suv and I'm drinking out of my Stanley cup right now. [00:02:47] They're expensive. [00:02:50] They are expensive. Even just to get the Chevy. I've got a shiv. I just got a Chevy suburban. [00:02:56] I got the fancy one. But still, you know, you're talking over, I think they're over 100 grand at this point. [00:03:03] That's a whole lot of donuts. [00:03:07] So, best part of it, how much keeping up the Joneses are we doing? [00:03:14] How much leveling up have we done? How expensive is your life? How expensive is your spouse? I hate to say it. [00:03:24] How expensive is your primary home? How expensive is your vacation habit? Okay? And I'm not saying that any of these are wrong. They're not. They're absolutely not wrong, because you do need to live your life and enjoy yourself and have fun out there. [00:03:40] It's a very fine line between living the life you want to live now and making sacrifices now to live the life you want to live later. Because, hey, man, what happens if later never comes, you know? Now, I am a firm believer in live your life like no one else now so that you can live your life like no one else later. In other words, bust your rear end so that you can have it made in the shade later on. But you got to be careful with that, too, because if you're just busting your ass constantly right now, you're going to get into the habit of busting your ass, and you're never even going to know how to stop doing that. You're not going to know what it's going to take to live a normal, happy life at the end of that rainbow. So then next thing you know, you're 75 years old or 85 years old and you're running for president. [00:04:28] I got to tell you, there is nothing I would want to do less than be president in my seventies or eighties. [00:04:36] Can you imagine having that much responsibility? And I'm not here to get political. I'm talking about working. I'm talking about jobs. [00:04:45] But that is, you know, it's in the news right now. So it's top of my brain. But I'm sitting here thinking, man, when by the time I'm that age, I want to be able to enjoy my life. [00:04:56] Yes. I still probably want to do work in some capacity. Absolutely. But I want to be traveling in a motorhome and spending all my time with those grandkids, if there are any. I'm gonna have to live pretty long to get grandkids the way I am these days with. At my age, with how young my kids are. But that's another story. [00:05:17] So financial freedom is a whole lot different. [00:05:23] If you're living in a $4,000 RV and working from your laptop and have no kids and a dog and no wife or husband, that's a whole lot of different financial freedom than somebody who has a McMansion and a Escalade, three kids in private school. [00:05:49] What does financial freedom look like to that person? [00:05:52] That's a big financial freedom there, you know what I mean? How much have you leveled up? [00:06:00] And so where I come from, I hate to bring this up again, but, man, I, you know, I come from humble beginnings. My dad was a mailman, Vietnam vet, awesome, dude. Mailman. But there was no money. We had great christmases, and that was about it. Grew up in a house that cost $22,000. And even at a very young age, all I wanted to do was be somebody. That's it. All I wanted to do was be somebody. And what I mean by be somebody, again, we're going on tangents here. What does it mean to be somebody? Well, to me, it means being able to go to a restaurant and being able to afford to get whatever I want and tip like crazy, take my kids to Disney and not, you know, have to worry about it. Now, listen, Disney is a whole nother level. There's not a wealthy person on the planet that's not going to feel a little bit of Disney action. You know, that's expensive, but there's ways to do it, especially if you live, I live in Florida, and if you go all the time, you can get the pass and, you know, go stay in a vacation rental, stay off property, that kind of thing. [00:07:05] Are you capable of doing those things or do you have to stay at the Polynesian every time? [00:07:11] Because if you're staying at Polynesian every time, that's a different level of financial freedom. [00:07:15] And there's nothing wrong with that. There is nothing wrong with that. [00:07:21] So you've got to just determine first and foremost, what does financial freedom mean to you? [00:07:28] Do I want to live in the RV or do I want to stay at the Polynesian every three months? Big difference. [00:07:36] Okay, then we got to talk about once we've reached financial freedom, how do you know you're going to be happy there? Like, let's say you're living in that $4,000 rv and you get to the point where you don't have to work anymore because you've got six or seven houses, whatever that number is. They're bringing in a decent amount of cash flow. Maybe you're doing a little day trading on the stock market or something and you're just happy. Okay, but then what happens if you get married? [00:08:00] They don't want to work. What happens if you get married and they do want to work and they want you to work harder? These things change and evolve over time. It's never going to stay the same. [00:08:09] It's going to change. [00:08:12] And then it comes time to decide, when am I going to quit my job? Well, again, are you making 30 grand a year? [00:08:22] And you're reading some TikTok where somebody bought four vacation rentals and quit their job? [00:08:27] Well, how much were they making? 30 grand a year. [00:08:31] Because if you're making $400,000 a year, three kids, a husband, etcetera, that's going to take a whole lot of rental real estate to replace. I'm talking hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of units. [00:08:50] But at that point, it becomes this big, giant machine, you know, and let's. We don't even have. I'm not even talking about having to have enough real estate to replace this stuff. I'm just talking about freedom in general, financial freedom in general. Maybe you've got your hands and a lot of irons and a lot of different fires, you know? [00:09:11] So then we start to talk about entrepreneurism. [00:09:14] Bring entrepreneurial. [00:09:17] Are you even capable of being entrepreneurial? [00:09:21] Are you looking for financial freedom so that you can stop working for the man? I guess, is the question. And that is the thing that I get most often multiple times a day. I get in my inbox and my text and facebook, etcetera. [00:09:34] Luke, I'd like to ask you about how I quit my job. [00:09:40] So I got to give you a little backstory there. I've never had a job. [00:09:45] I've been entrepreneurial since day one. [00:09:48] Day one, when I was 14 years old, I was making cassette tapes for my rock and roll band, and I was taking them to the mall and selling them in the food court and walking around and saying, hey, will you buy this? My band's cassette tape for $3. [00:10:06] And I found the producer. I was 14. For real. I found the producer. I might have been 18, I don't know, 16 something in my teens, middle teens. [00:10:17] I found the purdue. I put the band together. I found the producer. We wrote the songs, we recorded the record. I paid for that out of my paper route money. I was working in a factory in my. In my high school days. I don't know where I was working at the time, but I've always just been that kind of guy, always since day one. Now, I'm not saying that that is something that you just are born with, necessarily. I know I was. [00:10:44] I was born with it so much that I'm not. I'm not even employable. I can't get a job. Nobody would hire me. I have no resume and a terrible amount of education. [00:10:56] Now, that's not true. I do have a great resume when it comes to the business world and things like that, but it's a whole different vibe than somebody who went through college and started at the bottom and worked their way up. I never did that. [00:11:09] And I'm not capable of answering to the man. I'm not. But most people, it's the other way around. I mean, it's a very, it's like 3% of the american population that can even understand working for themselves and having some success with it. Now, small business, that's a whole nother thing. You can run a small business, and again, you are, you're causing anxiety with that. You're causing stress with your family. You're bringing your work home with you. There is no turning it off with a day job. You get to go home. [00:11:37] And yes, they're going to ask you for stuff when you're at home, especially if you're at a super high level. Yes, you're going to be working on stuff at home. You might be working all the way up until you go to bed, but you get to go home. [00:11:51] You can say, hey, I'm with my family this weekend. Leave me alone. That does not happen. When you're an entrepreneur, can you do your best to make strides, to have a schedule in such a way that on a Wednesday you can take off and take your kids fishing? Yes, but you never know when it's going to go south. When you're an entrepreneur, you have no idea. You know, there's some days where, and I'm very, I'm very strict about this. I want to know what's going on with my day. That's, by the way, that's part of it. You, if you want to be successful at the financial freedom thing and the entrepreneur thing, you have got to be, be organized and committed. [00:12:35] You've got to have a good calendar and a good schedule. [00:12:41] And sometimes you could have the most bulletproof schedule on the planet. [00:12:46] And by 11:00 in the morning that day, everything's completely gone to hell and it's a whole different day than what you thought it was going to be. [00:12:55] And, yeah, that can happen. I'm sure that can happen at a day job. I'm sure they got plenty of people sitting there saying, Luke, you're preaching to the choir here, man. This happens at my day job all the time. [00:13:05] But it's going to be more, it's going to be elevated, it's going to be exponential. When you are working for yourself, nobody is going to hold you accountable to get to work when you're self employed, when you're an entrepreneur, just you. [00:13:24] If you don't show up, nobody's going to know but you. [00:13:30] And quite frankly, it probably wouldn't be that big of a deal if you didn't show up one day, but multiple days in a row or multiple times, and then things just start going downhill. [00:13:40] You got to be throttled all the time to keep that meter, keep that the red line going up, keep that miles per hour. The tachometer needs to be on 100 all the time. [00:13:53] Go, go, go. And if you take your foot off the brake, somebody else is going to step right in. [00:13:58] If you like what you're hearing, if you're picking up what I'm putting down, you can join me on a live weekly call to talk about your next short term rental or ask questions about the one you already have. I am live once per week on Zoom. I would love to have you come and say hello. It's strquestions.com. [00:14:19] that's strquestions.com. come and join us. [00:14:24] So, financial freedom, dare I say, is going to be more work than anything you've ever dealt with in your life, especially if you got a day job. You're trying to side hustle this thing to get to the point where your day job is not as big a deal as it used to be. [00:14:41] Good luck. The side hustle will be more work than the day job, and you're going to end up doing them both simultaneously if you've leveled up in any capacity, to the point where you've got kids and a wife and a car payment. [00:14:56] Now, I am lucky in that I got started early at this. [00:15:01] In many ways, I'm lucky. [00:15:04] I was in my thirties when I bought my first rental house. [00:15:09] My goal originally was ten houses. By the time I was 40 years old, I ended up with over 100. [00:15:17] Good old ten x. [00:15:18] I didn't do that on purpose. It just happened. I set a goal. Ten properties by 40. By the time I was at the end of my 40th year, I had over 100 somewhere in there. I don't remember the exact details, but you get my point. [00:15:40] It goes back to the lemonade stand. When you were a kid. [00:15:45] Did you ever run a lemonade stand when you were a kid? Did you have parents that were keen to such a thing? Did you put the lemonade stand out in front of your house and did anybody show up? [00:15:59] Did you advertise? [00:16:02] Were you any good at marketing? Did you get out there and say, these are the best damn lemonades that you've ever had. And you need to come over here to my street. [00:16:10] Did you have competition? [00:16:13] Because I'm going to tell you right now, you want to be an entrepreneur? [00:16:17] You want to be financially free and quit your job. Competition is around every step, single corner, everywhere you go. Competition. People say short term rentals are saturated. That's somebody who's a wimp. If you can't handle competition, you are never going to make it outside of a w two. [00:16:41] Saturated, saturated. Shame on you for saying such a thing. You're damn right it's saturated. Everything in the world is saturated. Yeah, I mean, toothbrushes are available for sale at Walmart, but somebody out there saying, I'm going to get the best damn toothbrush and I'm going to make the best damn commercials, and I'm going to put the best damn instagram ads out there and I'm going to sell more toothbrushes than anybody. [00:17:07] And the second you stop trying, they're going to come in and take it away from you. [00:17:12] Are you willing to do that? Are you willing to put up with that? Or are you better off at your day job? [00:17:20] There is an element of here, the grass is not always greener. This is not cut and dry like weight loss. It's not like I want to lose ten pounds and I can't figure out how to do it. [00:17:33] It's maybe I work my ass off to get where I am at this day job and I should be proud of myself. [00:17:39] You are not special. [00:17:42] The whole world hates their job, okay? [00:17:48] Have you ever seen the movie office space? [00:17:51] And Jennifer Aniston says, everybody hates their job. You're not special. Everybody hates their job. So maybe you should be considering taking strides at how to not hate your job anymore. Because maybe you are blessed. Maybe you're lucky. Maybe you worked your ass off to get to where you are. And you should be grateful if you didn't want to work for the man, what are you doing working for the man? You want to know the secret to this entire podcast? I can sum up this whole thing in one sentence. If you want to quit your job, quit your job. What are you waiting for? [00:18:26] What are you waiting for? [00:18:30] Just quit. Because I'm going to tell you right now, if you are trying to find other situations in your life outside of the one you've got, you're going to have a real hard time making that work while you're still stuck in the one that you don't want to be in. [00:18:46] Get out. [00:18:50] Get out. The hardest part is deciding what you don't want to do and what you do want to do. Sometimes knowing what you don't want to do is just as important as knowing what you do want to do. And you know that you cannot take another day at that day job. Quit. [00:19:05] You owe it to yourself and you owe it to your boss. Your boss does not want somebody in that role that doesn't want to be there. [00:19:13] Now, again, are you the $500,000 a year guy or are you the $75,000 a year guy? Either way, there's a PE, there's a line of people a mile long that want your job. [00:19:27] And not only that, the boss can tell you don't want to be there. [00:19:31] So you got to be real careful with this shit and decide what you really want. Because if you don't want to be there and you don't have the balls to pull the trigger and get out, they're going to get you out. [00:19:49] So maybe you had that lemonade stand and nobody showed up and you're not ready for the self employed world, for the entrepreneurial world, for the financially free world, which again, there's not a direct correlation there because financially free might mean that you're never working again, or it might mean that you finally got yourself into a situation where you don't have to work that day job anymore and you can go out and pursue other avenues that make you happy. [00:20:16] That's what it really should mean. Can I get myself in a situation where I don't have to have this day job if I don't want it? And can this financial freedom situation put me in an air in a situation where I am now finally happy with my day job because there's less pressure. [00:20:34] And don't even get me started on health insurance. [00:20:38] Oh, man, the health insurance. You come to my side of the world, self employed. [00:20:46] Self employed or business owner if you're doing the cash flow quadrant thing, health insurance stinks. [00:20:54] This is a flawed system. It is a major flaw. [00:21:01] You're better off staying at that corporate gig and taking care of those kids in a lot of cases with that corporate insurance because. And why does that, why is it like that? Because America wants you to go to work. [00:21:15] And guess what? 97% of the people on the planet need to go to work. [00:21:23] If you wake up one day and you're 50 years old and you decide you want to quit your job, where the hell were you when you were young enough to do it? [00:21:32] You know, maybe you didn't sell any lemonade because you're not an entrepreneur, and maybe you're better off going to work for the guy that grows the lemons and getting a job, and there is not a damn thing wrong with that. Now, other side of the coin, you're young. [00:21:55] You're working a job that you don't like because that's what the government told you to do, and that's what your parents told you to do, and that's what college told you to do. [00:22:05] And you're saying, man, my gut is telling me this is not for me. [00:22:09] This type of person has usually moved many times in their young, younger years. [00:22:14] Moved away from home at a young age, moved to the big city at a young age. If you fit that bill, quit, get out. Go do something great, because the world needs you. The world needs you to go do something great. [00:22:29] You've been chosen to be a leader. [00:22:34] Get out there and lead people. [00:22:37] Lead people, inspire people. Do what you got to do, and great things will come. [00:22:45] Your grass is not always greener. Sometimes you got to look within to find happiness. [00:22:50] Read more books. That conversation with a guy yesterday, very high level gentleman, and I said he wanted to quit his job. And I said, I got a couple of books I'd like to offer you to read, and I think they would steer you in the right direction. He said, luke, I've already read all the books. All they do is give me analysis, paralysis. It took me forever to buy my first rental property because of all these books. And I said, man, time to read a different kind of book. There's a book out there for everything. [00:23:21] And then some. And some of them are really great. And that's how I've gotten to where I'm able to live a fulfilling life and function, you know, and be somebody. And that's hard. Being somebody's hard, man. You know, it's difficult with the family. The family's gonna be like, man, that Luke, that man, that kid, he thinks he's too good. And, you know, it's gonna be. You're gonna go through a lot of trials and tribulations and a lot of bullshit. Freedom ain't free. The grass is not always greener. All right, I hope you got something out of today's lecture. [00:24:02] That's why they call me the reverend of real estate. Just preaching it. Preaching it. Financial freedom. Let's talk more about it someday. What do you say? We're going to do more of this more financial freedom chats here on short term rental management. Didn't do a whole lot of talking about vacation rental management today. But that's okay. There's always next week. I love you, Luke. At the shortterm shop.com stsplus.com, we find you a quote. Today's quote is from a book I want you to read called the hard things about hard things by Ben Horowitz. Fantastic book. You got to go read this book right now. The hard things about hard things. And the quote is from Luke Carl, short term rental management. [00:24:50] We drove off the cliff and we left no skid marks. [00:24:56] Go all in, man. [00:24:58] Don't take any shit. [00:25:01] Make it happen. When we drove off the cliff, we left no skid marks. I love that. Don't overthink it.