we're going to add as much value as we possibly can to every post. So we just started doing that. Started doing it, started doing it. And it just, Just rocketed to the moon. Like we have 13, 000 members now and I started it 13 months ago. Welcome back to the art of connecting podcast. This is your host here, Haydynn Fike, back with another episode for you. And if I sound a little different, it's because I'm in a very different location from where I usually record my podcast. I usually have a fancy studio and a fancy office and all this fun stuff and you can't see it, but I'm currently under a bunk bed right now in my friend, Nathan's hostel, who I had on the podcast before. If I sound a little different, that's what's going on. I'm here in a hostel, but you know, where's his real life here. We don't cherry code anything. And I'm excited to get to do this podcast today with Charlie. So how's it going, Charlie? Great Haydynn dude. So stoked to be here. Thanks for having me. Dude stoked. I love it. That's like the Hawaiian, like downstairs, we have a sign that says stay stoked. So I'm glad that we can have you today. So Charlie, I wanted to go ahead and tell people how we met. Cause they usually go into kind of like The web of how I ended up meeting with people. So our mutual friend and your business partner, Alex, I met Alex through the action Academy. And it's so funny how like the web of people just kind of grows the longer you do this thing. But. I met with Alex and he was like, dude, you need to talk to Charlie. Like I said, I talked to him about my fun and what I was doing. And just ended up having a great conversation and with you and your other business partner and what you guys are doing. So excited that we got to meet up together and come together on the podcast. Well, first Alex is the best. I hope to be like him someday. Second, I met him through bigger pockets of all places years and years ago. And then we met our third business partner through the wardrobe mastermind. I'm sure we'll break all that down at some point, but yeah, it's just, it's just amazing to see where you create your friendships and where they go, you know, over time. Well, it's really cool too, is I've had Dave on the podcast as well. Oh, nice. Yeah, talk about the war room. We've had we've had Dave on the show. Freaking good guy. So Charlie, why don't you go ahead and just introduce yourself? Tell the guests who you are and what you've got going on right now. Yeah. So first I'm a dad, I'm a husband, I'm an air force veteran. I spent 11 years active duty and I thought I was going to do all 20, but real estate had another plan for me. I, I actually didn't think I'd be able to leave the military. Prior to 20 years, but just through some hustle and grind and connections and, and investing and whatnot, was able to do that nine years earlier than I thought. So now I'm just a reservist full time real estate slash entrepreneur and got started in multifamily evolves all the way to residential assisted living now. Got my real estate license along the way, learned a lot from that as well. So it's, it's been a wild ride currently living in in Northern Virginia. So that's a little bit of a background. Awesome. So your main focus now, are you, are you like focusing on residential assisted living alone? Are you still an agent doing agent things? What does it look like now? So I still have a production team that I kind of left behind in the, in the panhandle of Florida. They're still closing deals. So that's, that's, Kind of almost passive for me at this point. Kind of awesome from that respect. So that's still churning a bit. I'm letting it just kind of fizzle out as I focus fully on residential assisted living now. Still have a few long term rentals, still have a few Airbnbs, but really just pivoting all of the focus. Into what we believe is kind of the smartest asset class to be looking at as well as a, a highly fulfilling one for the next couple of decades. So why don't you go ahead and talk to me about like some of the connections that led you into residential assisted living. So like, what did it look like before? It sounds like you're focused on production and your real estate team and Airbnb is like, did you happen to meet someone that put you on a residential assisted living? Let's go for it. Let's back all the way up. So while I was in the military, right, I learned about investing, my dad got me into Roth IRA when I was 15. Right. So okay, I knew that I needed to put money away and invest in stuff. Cool. So I was really big into index funds and things early on in my military career post college. I was doing everything. I'm like, man, this is still going to take forever. And I can't touch it without tax penalties until I turned 60. So maybe the first impact was me and a buddy in a bar, you know, another air force buddy in a bar was like, Hey man, have you thought about real estate? I was like, no, dude, that's dumb. I'm not going to fix toilets. Are you out of your mind? And he sent me this article and it was about the for profit centers of real estate. And I read it and immediately I was floored. It's like, Oh, Oh, wait a minute. In the stock market, I'm just hoping for appreciation to maybe get, you know, 9 percent before taxes in real estate. I can get all, a whole bunch of benefits all at once. I was totally blown away. Like, wait a minute. I'm this might be the way I can accelerate. being able to stop working before 60, right? Like the American dream of working forever which by the way is how everything is designed, including taxes and mortgages and all that kind of stuff. It's designed to keep us as good W2 paying employees, taxpayers, till we're 60. So the government is not incentivized to let you do anything else really. But But I realized, oh man, if I want to like retire after the military, after 20 years, my 40s, I got to do something different. So I pivoted into real estate. I went down the bigger pockets rabbit hole for eight months, finally emerged and bought two fourplexes as investment number one. Did a lot of the, made all the mistakes, did a lot of the do it yourself stuff. I was the project manager, the property manager. I was the, you know, the handyman doing all the things, but I realized really quickly what the power was going to be. You know, I raised rents. I, I sold it for double and went, wow, this is, legit. And so started doing a little bit more. That's when I found Veterans REI Live and then ran into Dave. That's where I met Dave Perret. Dave set me on a whole other trajectory. I joined the war mastermind early, early, early on. Like one of the first few members and chat with him a lot. And he was like, Hey man, you need to, you know, appreciation's good, but maybe you should focus on cashflow. I was like, Oh, okay. So then I went all in on short term rentals. I did like 24 apartments and I went all in on short term rentals, made that full pivot. full tilt into short term rentals. That's when I met Alex through bigger pockets. As a real estate agent at the time. And we were there locally stationed at the same base. He's an Air Force physician and we started talking like, Hey, let's buy some short term. He's like, I want to do short term rentals. I'm like, cool, let's, let's do some. So we bought a couple of short term rentals together. We still have a one in Colorado together. We sold another one. But Then he was in a squad in the war room mastermind with our third partner, Luke, who one day brought up in their, in their squad call. Hey, have you heard about assisted living? I think I'm going to buy a home and lease it out for that purpose. And all the guys in the car were like, what the hell are you talking about, dude? And like a month later he did it. And he was cashflow and you know, four grand a month and we were all like, whoa, whoa, stop, go back up. What are you doing? And so I was somehow Alex and him did another deal and then I was somehow able to weasel my way into that partnership. I think mostly just my bid was I had more time than them cause I had just left the military. That's where I brought my value. But but yeah, it's been fun. We bought a handful more. properties that we call lease to operator. We leased them out on commercial leases. And now we're going all in on operating assisted living homes as well. So was that a good enough? That's great. Yeah. So I've asked Bill Allen the same questions I had Bill on the podcast. I'm not sure if you're familiar with Bill. Yep. Yep. How did you manage, and actually I'll backtrack before I say this. So A lot of the excuses that I get from people when I talk to people about, you know, I get messages all the time of, Oh, I want to get into real estate investing. I want to do this. I would do that, but it's like, I don't have time. So how did you balance having short term rentals, rental properties, being a real estate agent and having a full time job? How did you make that happen? None of that was easy. I I'll, I, but I'll give you my favorite quote of all time, Ryan Blair. If it's important, you'll find a way. If not, you'll find an excuse. It's important to me that I don't have to work till I'm 60 something. It's important to me that neither does my wife. It's important to me that I build something really cool that my family can hopefully one day inherit, right? That takes extra work, you know? I'm not sitting on the couch watching TV every night, you know? It's, but, you know, what, what you find along the journey is that you start to really enjoy the journey and you start to enjoy the challenges and that becomes fun. It's fun. So it doesn't, you know, at some point it doesn't feel like work so much as play. And when, when that flip happens, Oh man, it, you're like unstoppable, but you know, there's all sorts of tips and tricks and hints and things we could talk about, you know, I'm a big fan of the one thing I'm a big fan of who not how you know, there's always a way forming partnerships. We get a lot of folks in our mastermind that are like, I don't, I don't know if I want to have a partner. And we're like, do you need a partner? You know, if you're not sure, you're like, I don't know. That probably means you need one. Right. And you can go so much further in partnerships than you can alone in this business is what we've found. That it's, it's almost always worthwhile. So I don't know all the people who are out there that are like thinking they have to do things alone. You certainly don't have to. You could find others like minded folks to work with. Yeah. And also I think to a point that I like to make is bring in, bring in others that have strengths where you're weak, you know, bring in, bring in people, do the personality tests, you know, ask people what they like to do. I was just on a team call with my, with the fund management, you know, for a key capital of the fund that I started. And Dan, our CEO, he's talking about like, these are the, you know, he shared his Culture index. And he's like, this is where I'm great. And this is where I suck, you know? And it's like, he was talking about how he was like, at first I was going to like underwrite every loan and do all of that. And then he was like, I looking at my culture and next, we need to have a panel and go over every loan and like make decisions together because I'm the person that, you know, based on my personality type, I'm going to make the box fit. I'm not going to like go buy the box. And so we were like, yep, that's a great idea. Thank you for bringing this up. We're going to, you know, go over loans together rather than just have one decision maker. And so like having that reality of maybe I'm not the best at everything. That's to me, what has like opened the doors, opened up all of the opportunity is like, when you, when you look at you internally and say, Hey, I'm great at this, like, for me, it's like, I'm great at connecting people, right. I can go in and look at a problem and think through the people that are needed to go in and solve that problem. But I'm not the detail guy. I'm not going to be the person that's like, you know, going through every single detail, all the spreadsheets, all that kind of stuff, that stuff makes my skin crawl, like I would rather literally, I would rather like trudge through a 30 mile hike than do spreadsheets. And so like, I know that, and I, I express that in any partnership that I go into is like, I'm not good at that. And so you, through connections, you can fill the holes that you're not good at with the people who are excited to do that. There are people out there that are excited to go into spreadsheets and like, you're nuts, but Hey, I'll hire you. Yeah. That's me. I'm that guy. Yeah. Yeah. That's up. You know, in our partnership, for example, in our, our you know, a lot of our mastermind work, we, we have a Facebook group. It's the biggest residential assisted living Facebook group. Dude, that stuff overwhelms. The crap out of me, like just having more than, you know, once my Facebook says nine plus notifications, I, I, I physically cannot open it for days at a time because it's terrifying that there's that many notifications. Alex crushes that he's all over the Facebook group. He's responding to everybody. He's all over the notifications and handling that. And I think he likes it. I can't stand it. On the flip side, I'm the spreadsheet guy. I built the calc, I built all the calculators. I analyze all the deals. I do all the numbers and, and Alex and Luke are like, please, God, no, just tell us what the answer is. Right. And so it, it is that's just one example. There's many more, but yeah, it's so good to have. dudes that you could have fun with or, or gals that you can have fun with, but have, have different skill sets, different skill sets to, to enhance one another. So how, how did you see mentioned you found your partners, one through bigger pockets and then one through the war room, correct? So I went, I, I dive into this in several episodes because it seems to be a common theme of people that end up having success in entrepreneurship. They find a tribe, you know, they find a community and you mentioned you were early on in the mastermind that you're in. I was early on in the action Academy. I was one of like the first 20 people or whatever. And. That community has changed my life. Like if you listen to the, I think this is going to be episode 56. If you go back and listen to many of my episodes, you'll find a really common theme that like probably half or more of my guests come through that community. So tell me a little bit about the mastermind and how important that's been, especially being early on in it. Like, tell me about some of your experience in that. Yeah, I have been a huge fan of the worm from day one. I mean, it, it, what's particularly different about it is it's, it's military veterans, right? And so there's a level of trust there that you can have instantaneously that you wouldn't necessarily normally have with just another random person. Right. Once you serve, you kind of get that feeling. And so, you know, what we did, like we started, we hit, we all put into little smaller accountability squads. And our squad went formed an entity and invested in a deal within like the first two months. And we all got into just the syndication. Cause we're like, why not? You know, the opportunity arose and we did it. And, you know, at that time, wiring 25 grand to a dude I just met was a big deal for me. Right. And we're talking five years ago and But we did it, we were successful. We doubled our money and just in like two years, we got our money back. And, and so, you know, those kinds of experiences early on, like, Oh, wow. Okay. This is some, we can do this. This is something we can do. And then listening to each other, do all our own investments, listen to problems, listen to solutions, and then helping each other solve the problems along the way. It's huge, right? Because you're not alone in this. And just because. They're not necessarily your business partner. It doesn't mean they can't help you solve a problem and vice versa. And so I show up to that squad call as, as many weeks as I possibly can because it's just so valuable. And what has it been like to watch the war room grow? Like, has it gotten better as you go on? Yeah, it's insane. I mean, the growth has been insane. Dave's crushing it. He's just keeps providing more and more value, most of which I don't have time to take advantage of. I wish I did. But really, I'm there for the network. I came for the network, I stayed for the network. And I can always count on those those guys and gals in there, which is insane, right? Like just anytime I need to, I have a question about real estate or business, the first place I go is there. To ask that question. And I usually get a bunch of great responses. So yeah, it's a, it's a super cool network. Have you joined any other masterminds or has that like been the only one? No, if, if I was to join another one, it would be the Action Academy because I absolutely love Brian's podcast. I love, I love his mindset a hundred percent. I just don't have the, the bandwidth for one more because we started our own as well on Assisted Living. So that's been awesome. A blast because now, you know, instead of kind of jumping into a network of folks, we're building the network that, that we want to be around, which is just been crazy. It's been super fun. Just seeing all those folks and how quickly they're succeeding and getting stuff done and just very similar, you know, proactive value add mindsets. It's just been awesome. So, Oh, Aaron, I mean, I think is, is action Academy, right? Yeah. Yep. Yeah. He's, he was one of our first members, very active in in our mastermind as well, so that's been fun. Yeah, Aaron's been on the show as well. He's Aaron's building his own network. Like it's crazy to see what he's doing in Houston. He's building you know, just building such a cool network. And then also just all around the country, he has a group of people that come together and invest from all across the country. Just so cool to watch that. I remember meeting Aaron when Aaron had like two or three houses, you know, and he was like, yeah, just kind of like Ashlo from, from afar. And like, I don't really know what I want to do. And still in his W2. And so it's so awesome to watch how, like in this whole community of not just like specific communities, like the war room and action Academy and seven figure flipping, but how connected all of us are. Like, it's so nuts. The longer you're in it too, just the more and more connected you get. Like if you get into creative finance, just Pete Fortunato and Bill Cook and all these people, and I've hung out at McDonald's with Pete Fortunato in Florida, and then, you know, with Bill, you know, some people, people were like, oh my gosh, Bill Allen. And I'm like, yeah, I flew in a plane the first night we met. And like, it's so freaking awesome to like plug into this community. And those big names that you see hopefully I'll get to meet Brandon Turner on Sunday. I'm headed over to his church while I'm here in Maui with one of his friends, Joe. And so it's like, As you get into this community, there's no name that's like too big for you to meet, right? Like there's yeah Everyone is just a person you can hang out with like david old's for example He's got we had him on the show 180 000 followers You just text him and show up to his office and hang out, you know, as long as you're not wasting his time He's like nicest guy. So like it's so cool to see it is This world just opens up to you if you're willing to invest into it. Yeah, alex, went on brandon's Podcast not too long ago. Brandon turns podcast. Oh, sick. Yeah. And just a connection through Amanda Hahn. Right. And so it's like, you just never know what's going to happen. It's absolutely wild. Yeah. That's a, definitely a dream of mine. His show is my favorite, honestly, better life. I love, love, love listening to better life. It's one of my favorite shows. But yeah, it's just really cool for anyone listening to this, like, If your dream is to meet whoever, you know, whatever big name in the real estate space, DM that person. That's like, what I preach all the time is like, if you want to meet someone, you would be shocked at how many people still check their DMs. I literally, I DM Brandon and he DM me back, you know, and was like, yeah, we'll be over there, you know, come catch me at church. Like, so, It's cool. It doesn't really matter how big of a following someone has. Like if you have a decent reason for them to meet up with you, suit the DM, like what's the worst thing that happens is they don't see it or they do see it and they ignore you. Like that's the worst that happens. And then maybe they weren't the person you need to meet anyways. I'll tell you what Alex did. Brandon's team was interested in assisted living. So Amanda made the connection. Alex offered up, Hey, here's an hour of my time. I'm just going to tell you everything you want to know. To his team and then they brought him on the podcast. And so what a great way to do it, right? Like if you can add value to, to someone's world that you, you think is out of reach. I guarantee you, they're going to be in reach real quick. Right. If you're helping them, well, givers gain, you know, like, and A lot of people think that these big dogs and some people that you think are big dogs aren't the biggest dogs, right? Sometimes they put on a persona that well, we all know the big dogs. Yeah. But in reality, they have the same problems that we have, right? Like struggle to figure out how to finance stuff. Right. So I've built a massive portfolio of relationships to people that help with financing in different areas. You know, so now I get random calls all the time. Okay. I need a hundred grand for this. Like I'm sourcing 500, 000 right now for the hostile group that I'm sitting in, you know, and so when you, Start asking people that are the big dogs. Like, what are your problems right now? How can I help it? Well, and just providing value, man, it's been immense the effect that it's had in my Life because it it provides you opportunities that you would never believe like I've stayed in mansions and on yachts for, for close to free, just because I try to bring value. Like it, it's more valuable for them to pay for me to be on the yacht than it costs them for me to be there. So that's kind of like what you can do if you just provide value. Cause like I constantly, and I'm 24 years old. So in my life, I constantly find myself like trying to figure out like, where can I bring value? Because it's not in cash. Like I just, I'm building a long term cash flow and like investing heavily into that. And so like, I have to find out other ways to bring value and that's where everyone starts in the beginning. Right? Like when you're in the military making probably what, 50, 60 grand a year, maybe made more. I don't know what your rank was, but like you got to find a way to bring value other than cash. Cause it's not going to be the cash most likely. Yeah, when I, when I closed that first deal and made more than I would make in a year active duty, I was like, Oh, wait a minute. You know, the giant light bulb goes off like, Oh, okay, got it. I need to be doing something else. In that case, I was physically adding value, but, but you're totally right. Like the more value you can add, it doesn't have to be cash in hand, right? It can be, it could be labor. It could be, you're the one that has more time and you're the one that has the connections. You're the one that's willing to do the work. Those are perfect partnerships. You pretty much are embodying, embodying the go giver mentality. Have you read that? You're a go giver fan. Okay, good. Good. Yeah. My friend Hannah, she gave me like the second version of the book for Christmas is I hadn't read the second one yet. So, Oh yeah. Big, big go giver fan. Yeah. There's a second one. I don't know if I have the right version. I'm gonna have to go look. Yeah, same here. I'm a huge fan. I think it should be mandatory reading for all humans. Yeah, and the crazy part about it is I read it and it's funny because it didn't really like shake me to the core because I was already doing all of it. So I was like, I read it and I was like, yeah, I just kind of do this. It's my natural instinct. But for those that it's not necessarily your natural instinct, I think that everyone could embody that. And man, if we all embodied, imagine what the world would look like if we thought of others before ourselves. Like, yeah, I just can't even imagine like how amazing this world would be. If, if that was the first thought that went through someone's head is how is this going to help someone else? Besides me. Yeah. It's weird. I still run into people that are just like kind of miserly in their, in their thought process. Right. And they're quick to either put others down or to turn away like, Ooh, no, I don't want to talk about this opportunity is my opportunity. Or, you know, a little bit backstabby and it was just like, man, there's just. There's too much, there's too much opportunity to go around to be like that. You're going to be served so much better by helping somebody, whether you think it benefits you not or not in that moment, in the long run, it's going to benefit you. You know, you gotta put that effort in and put that value out there and see how it just returns to you. So tell me about building your community. How did that come to be and how's it going? Yeah, it was kind of wild. We started a Facebook community purely for the reason to find more tenants, essentially more assisted living business operators that wanted to lease. Homes that were designed for assisted living. So that's what we had been doing at the time. It was kind of like the best cash flowing opportunity we could come up with from for a long term rental. Worked pretty well, but the hard part was finding good operators to lease from you because you know, if their business fails, then you're out a tenant and you got to find a new one, right? 12 month lease. They're moving in. They're moving out. We're talking three to five year. commercial leases, two to three X the rent. So we, we need to be sure that they're going to succeed. Not always the easiest thing to do. So we kind of wanted to expand beyond the Phoenix market. So we started this Facebook group to find more operators. That was the only goal. And from the get go, we said, okay, we're going to approve every post. We're going to respond to every post and we're going to add as much value as we possibly can to every post. So we just started doing that. Started doing it, started doing it. And it just, Just rocketed to the moon. Like we have 13, 000 members now and I started it 13 months ago. So unbelievable growth just providing value, providing value. So we're like, ah, okay, let's well, maybe we should collect emails for some reason. I don't know. Let's just collect emails. Let's make a 10 step guy. Okay. We made a 10 step guy. We started collecting emails. We have 5, 000 emails now. And you know, as we explored more and more about the residential assisted living kind of market space and the education space, there's really only one like name in education and it's, it was an outdated course, two, three grand and a 50, 000 upsell. We're like, that doesn't feel right. And then there were just randos on the internet that are saying, Hey, yeah, I'll mentor you for 20 or 30 grand. And it was hard to, You like vet these people. So we're like, there's no mastermind in this space. There's no war room for assisted living. This, this absolutely makes sense because every single state has different rules and regulations. There's different size homes. There's different ways you can go about it. You can build new, you can renovate, you can buy existing, you can lease. There's all these different ways to go about it. And, and there's these big gaps that people don't know. How to raise money, how to get financing, things that we already know sort of like, wait a minute. So we've got some education we can bring to the table. We know a lot of experts in the space we can bring in to help educate folks. There's no real mastermind community for people doing this to connect with each other. And there's a massive need for this nationwide. Really, really nice homes for assisted living. So we're like, okay, let's try this. So we decided in the spring, Hey, by the end of the summer, we want to try and launch a mastermind. And we did that and we got, I think we had 20 members at our launch, which. We were stoked about absolutely floored. We of course consulted Dave cause he had a community and our friend Rachel Richards money, honey, Rachel, she had a pretty good community. So we basically kind of got a lot of advice from them. And yeah, we we did our best. We launched it. Now we're up to about 50 members, which has been crazy and it's. an absolute blast. So we meet six times a month, live calls. We're bringing experts in as well as we bring like shark tanks and things. So we'll have folks that are like, all right, here's my opportunity. I built a pitch deck. They're practicing for on us for investors. Or they'll bring a deal. We'll analyze it. Sorry. I know I'm going down the rabbit hole, but it's, it's, we're having an absolute blast. We're learning a ton too. Like the coolest thing about the mastermind is we don't have to be experts in anything. We, we right off the front say, look, we're not, we're not gurus. We're not experts at everything. Yes. We're good at a few things that we're going to help you with. We're good at organizing stuff. We're good at getting experts in front of you, but Hey, we're weak at this, that, this, like I'm not an SBA lender, but I'm going to bring you a couple of really good SBA lenders, put them in front of you, make the connection. And now you've got the information, you've got the recording and you've got the connections you need to go out there and be successful. So we're learning along the way too, which is super awesome. So and yeah, the friends and connections we're making in there as well, just from the membership, like, like Aaron has been incredible. And also the partnerships that can be created. I've watched like Countless deals be done in the Action Academy of, I think they did a statistic on it. It was like 30 million in acquisitions last year between Action Academy members that was invested. So it's pretty nuts. Like, you know, you look at the numbers and when you have a community of like minded people put together, you can create some really cool stuff. Yeah, yeah, we can tell your passion for it. I can see just how passionate you are about it and excited. It's so fun. And Alex, Luke, and I, we spent three, four hours over the Christmas break doing just goal setting for the year. Kind of like the, the VTO method, right? The EOS. And we put on there, hey, we want the, the Raul room to open 100 homes. By in the next three years. So that's our, that's our goal and timeframe. We want our membership to open that many homes and we're, we're hopeful that we'll be able to accomplish that. I'm sure you will. I mean, it's, it happens quicker than you think you're saying is you can, you can do less in a year than you think you can, but exponentially more in three. So it's in three years, we were downstairs. And Zach's like the, the Eric, like the general area manager. So he manages like both hostels. He's kind of like kind of acts as like the CEO within Nathan and Mike's hospitality company. And he was like, yeah, just excited to like manage a few more hostels. And I was like, dude, in three years, you're not going to recognize this thing because they have a three year vision of acquiring 400 million in real estate. I was like, Oh, three years, you're going to be wearing, and you're going to be wearing a suit. And you're going to be walking into, you know, the resort and, you know, you're going to be the big boss. He was like, Oh yeah, yeah, I could actually like, like that could happen. He's like, so it's so true. I've watched it happen over and over. Like you talk about three years ago, you were still in the military, right? Like you were working every day at a few Airbnbs, right? Yeah. Look at where you are now and what three years can do. And now the skill that you've taken is going to compound for the next three years. It's just going to be nuts. It gets me really fired up when I think about like where I'm at now and everyone who's doing it, like listening right now, you can just think about like where I'm at now. Imagine in three years, just because the fact you're listening to this and bettering yourself, where you're going to be, if you just take action on it, it's going to be nuts. It'll be crazy. Yeah. Be further than you could ever imagine. Like if, yeah, three years ago, if you told me even a year ago, we had no plans to start a fund. We had no plans to start a mastermind. Right. Had no idea. This is where I'd be right now. And that, okay. I'd be pivoting full tilt into assisted living. We're, you know, acquisitions and development. So, I mean, it's, it's insane. And yeah, dude, I'm stoked. I can't wait to see what three years brings. And for all of us. It's gonna be amazing. I, I just I reflect on the fact that Action Academy has been around for two years and like, when I first started, we had a Facebook group and a Zoom call like once a week. That was it. Now there's like, onboarding, there's assistants, there's like, You know, all these exercises that new members go through, you've got 30, 60, 90, you've got a whole layout and a roadmap and all this stuff. And I'm like, we didn't have any of this. Cause when I tell people the prices I paid for lifetime membership, they're like, what, like, I wish I would've had that. And I was like, you don't understand. I sent that three payments over Venmo to a random guy on the internet that I'd never met before and had no idea if it was like legit or not. So I, you know, things change so much over time as it develops. And it's really incredible to watch growth. It's such an amazing. Amazing thing. So it's exciting. Yeah. What are you, what are, what are you looking forward to most in the next three years? That's hard to say. I'm looking forward to seeing just how much we're able to accomplish in terms of building our own assist living portfolio and and our mastermind. I think, I think we're going to take it pretty far. So. Well, I'm, I'm stoked to see where that goes and just how much we develop. I mean, we've been, I had all sorts of opportunities like converting charter schools into assisted living, building from the ground up. We've got some existing that we want to purchase. So we're going to see how it goes. I'm hoping to keep delivering for this mastermind just to keep adding value. Like you said, just keep evolving it and seeing where it goes. Hoping to get to live events. Pretty soon as well. So yeah it's, it's gonna be a wild ride, but it's gonna be fun. I'm also super stoked that both my business partners are getting out of the military so that we can all just hard charge and, and take this thing to the moon. That's going to be crazy for you guys. My friend, Caitlin, who is like the community director in AC her husband, she her husband's full time in the military. And you got some exciting news for her that his contract is actually going to be ending sooner than they thought. And so I'm so excited for her and like the military. I, I've never been in the military, so I can't say anything. I know it's great for like building structure, building relationships, building trust with people, but sometimes it can become a shackle for people, right? It seems like where you're locked into this contract. And you, you can't get out unless you get hurt, right? Like it's, it's pretty bonding. But there are ways around it, as you mentioned of like working while you're in to be the best prepared you can for when you are out. It's still in my mind is still one of the best opportunities for most individuals. Especially if you don't have a college degree, but I, I, what struck me as odd was. You know, I was just pinned on major, you know, I was an Oh, Oh, four, 10 years in I'm making just barely over six figures and I'm sitting there in my cubicle and I'm overhearing a couple of guys sit standing, you know, right, right in the hallway, both retired military, like retired, had a retirement, right? That's one of the big, you know advantages, the military is you get that pension after 20 years. You get like 40 to 50 percent of your base pay for the rest of your life or so. And they're both staying there like, yeah, man, I only got three more years till I can retire to turn when I turned 67. I'm like, you were prior service and now he's a civilian, like a civil servant. I'm like, okay, so if work in the 20 years and then you got to work another 25 years. In order to quote unquote retire when your body is basically broken. Right. And you, you really can't enjoy retirement the way that all of us envision it. That just like blew me away. Like, Oh man. Okay. I'm going to work harder on the outside here to try and just take a shot at something, some other trajectory. Right. And I, so I flipped the switch. I ended up, Hey, now I'm part time military, full time entrepreneur, but I just had this feeling deep down inside, like I'm going to regret not giving this a shot. If I don't try, right. I can always fall back on the plan, right? Can always jump back, whatever. I'll go work for some defense contractor. That's fine. Or I can go back and work for the government. That's fine. But man, if I don't give us a shot, I'm going to regret it. My favorite thing that one of my favorite things that Brian says is your present day reality is your worst case scenario. So when you think about that and when you dive into that, so where you are now today, like, and I I'm looking at some new opportunities of like in within my career and what I'm doing. And I'm like thinking about taking a position in a company that I've been consulting for. And I was like, I've been struggling with it because. I never, like, when I, when I got let go from my W2, I made a commitment to myself that I wouldn't take a job again. And now I'm actually considering like taking a position. It's more of like an entrepreneurial role within a company, within a startup, but still it is a W2 role. Right. And then I was like, you know what, where I'm at right now, my present day reality as an entrepreneur and having the businesses that I have and the connections I have at current. It's my worst case scenario. If I go in and I take this job and it ends up being something that I don't like, and it's something that I, you know, felt, I feel controlled and I feel like I'm not in a good position. My worst case scenario is I convert back to where I am right now. I was like, I love where I'm at right now. Like, like every day is exciting. I love what I do, you know, freedom, flexibility. I'm in Hawaii for three weeks. And, you know, That doesn't sound so bad. Like that's my worst case. And then I was like, all right, yeah, I'm going to go for this because that gives you the confidence when you think about it that way, that like, whatever you're doing right now, it's bad as it can get. That's pretty crazy. Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is. That's wild. Yeah. Yeah, that was like my favorite reflection. I love, I love sharing that with people too, is they're trying to build whatever they're trying to build, right, and, and do the things they're trying to do is to remember, like, do you hate your day every day right now? Yes, or some people say yes, some people say no. I'm like, okay, well, that's the worst it's gonna get. You're gonna go back to hating your day every day. So why not try and then it's like a switch just flips magically so yeah, I love that. I love, I love all the, the comments on the, the, the road to get there is different for everyone. Right. And there's all these different ways that everyone can get there. You just got to enjoy the journey. Yeah. If you don't enjoy the journey, you got a problem because when you get there, then what happens? Right. Right. You gotta enjoy the journey along the way. And like, I talked to my buddy, Alex, of course, all the time about this. We're both like, Hey, whatever. If we made, you know, a thousand dollars a day, if we made a million dollars a month, like that, I, that wouldn't stop me. It would just shift my focus. Oh, I'm making a million dollars a month. How can I best, you know, charitably contribute with that? What kind of impact can I have? Like there's no way I'm ever going to sit still because I need to feel like I'm somehow doing something. I'm growing in some way, right. Providing some value. I think once you get there, you're, you're kind of golden because you can always find more ways to grow and provide value and do something new as opposed to folks who are like, okay, I made it. It's like, oh, you, you missed the point, right? The point is the journey is the, it's the growth. It's the people, it's the, you know, the continuous change. Well, and a great exercise too, that I've heard is think about where your boss's boss's boss is, what does their day look like? And would you want your day to look like that? So like, for your example, like, maybe think about, like, what does a general stay look like, or a commander, or whatever, I don't know what the hierarchy ranking is, but like, say they work 80 hours a week, and they're on a plane all the time, and they never see their family, it's like, do you want your life to look like that? And if the answer is no, Maybe it's time to evaluate like what you're doing. Are you in the right place? Because you've got to think about that is what do I want my life to look like? And if you're striving for promotions and raises and all this stuff, but the life that your boss doesn't live, the life that you want to live, I always like to think about, I want to take advice from people who are where I want to be. I'm not going to take advice on health from 400 pounds and can't walk. Right. Yeah. Yeah. No, yeah, 100 percent agree. 100 percent agree. And that's certainly factored into my life decisions as well, right? Just seeing what people are going through and how, how difficult things were as they go higher up and how much effort they put in. My dad was a, was a GO general officer. I saw how much, how much he had to sacrifice. For us and our family. That's not something I, you know, and, and, and what's funny is he kind of advised me in that direction. Hey, don't do the career field. I did don't, you know, because he, he knew the same thing. Like, Hey, it's, it's not always fun at the top. Right. So, you know, my, my decisions have been slightly different. You know, I left the military. Right when my daughter started kindergarten, I could walk her to school each day. I don't think I'm going to regret that. You know, I'm going to look back and be totally cool with that. With that decision. And yeah, so, I mean, we all got to make our own life choices, but you've got to, you're right, look ahead, see what's coming and make a decision. The worst case is what you have right now. Well, I absolutely love our conversations. We've gotten how in this episode, we're coming up on our time here. So I wanted to go ahead and ask you our closing question. And that is what is the connection to a person or group of people that change the trajectory of your life or business? Yeah. It's hard to pick just one. You know meeting Alex on bigger pockets changed my life meeting Dave and joining the war room changed my life. And if you ask me three years from now, it'll probably be starting my own mastermind, the RAL room, Cicely mastermind. So we'll see, let's come back in three years and we'll, we'll, we'll re engage that question. Let's do it, man. Who knows? Maybe in the, in three years, this podcast will be getting a hundred thousand listens a month and all that kind of fun stuff. And we'll we'll do a little update. Hell yeah. That's awesome, man. Haydynn, thanks for having me today, dude. It's been great. My pleasure, Charlie. It's been so much fun. Guys, if you're still listening to the episode here, I just want to tell you, thank you. First off second off, if you Can do me a favor and leave a five star review. If you're on Spotify, it's up at the top, click on the five star review. If you're on Apple podcasts, scroll down to the bottom and click on five stars and share this episode with a friend, because the best way for a podcast to grow is to share with others. With all that being said, I want to thank you for listening to the Art of Connecting podcast. This has been your host Haydynn Fike, and we'll see you guys on the next episode.