Welcome back to another exciting episode of the Raising Private Money Podcast!
In today’s episode, let us look back to when Jay Conner, The Private Money Authority, is joined by the incredible David Phelps, a nationally recognized speaker on creating freedom and investing in real estate.
Jay and David dive deep into the world of real estate investing, specifically focusing on the path to owning your freedom. They address the common struggles faced by new real estate investors in finding funding for their first deal, wholesalers who want to stay in deals but lack funding, and seasoned investors who want more funding at low-interest rates.
David shares his journey of finding financial freedom through real estate, which allowed him to prioritize spending precious time with his daughter, Jenna, who successfully battled leukemia. Together, they discuss David’s renowned mastermind community, Freedom Founders, and delve into the principles outlined in his latest book, “Own Your Freedom,” co-written with the esteemed Dan Kennedy.
With the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the traditional employment model, Jay and David challenge societal norms and highlight the importance of taking control of our freedom. They emphasize the power of real estate as an investment opportunity, particularly focusing on the financing aspect, and provide valuable insights on building wealth through alternative investments.
So, whether you’re a seasoned real estate investor looking for new strategies or someone just starting in the industry, this episode is packed with actionable advice and inspiring stories to guide you on your path to owning your freedom.
Tune in and get ready to embark on a journey of financial independence and personal fulfillment in the world of real estate investing!
0:01 – Get Ready To Be Plugged Into The Money
1:20 – Jay’s New Book: “Where To Get The Money Now”- https://www.JayConner.com/Book
2:22 – Today’s guest: David Phelps
5:30 – David Phelps’ humble beginnings in the real estate industry.
9:41– How did David Phelps build his real estate portfolio?
12:41 – David Phelps’ early struggles and how he overcomes them.
14:35 – David Phelps’ new book: https://www.OwnYourFreedomBook.com
17:19 – What does it mean to “Own Your Freedom”?
20:33 – My book is not just theoretical. – David Phelps
25:00 – David Phelps’ moment of truth.
30:45 – During these pandemic times, what do you see is going to happen to our society, the government, and the economy?
34:38 – Connect with David Phelps – https://www.FreedomFounders.com
Connect With Jay Conner:
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https://www.jayconner.com/MoneyReport
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https://www.JayConner.com/trial/
Have you read Jay’s new book: Where to Get The Money Now?
It is available FREE (all you pay is the shipping and handling) at https://www.JayConner.com/Book
What is Private Money? Real Estate Investing with Jay Conner
http://www.JayConner.com/MoneyPodcast
Jay Conner is a proven real estate investment leader. Without using his own money or credit, Jay maximizes creative methods to buy and sell properties with profits averaging $67,000 per deal.
#RealEstate #PrivateMoney #FlipYourHouse #RealEstateInvestor
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The Private Money Revolution: How to Fund Your Real Estate Dreams with Jay Conner and David Phelps
Jay Conner (00:01):
Are you a new real estate investor and you’re still struggling to get your first deal because you just don’t have the money to fund your deal? Or are you a wholesaler? You’ve gotten some assignment fees, but there are some deals you want to stay in, but you can’t because you don’t have the funding. Or are you a seasoned real estate investor and you just want more funding to do deals with really super cheap interest rates? If you answered yes to any of those questions, don’t go anywhere because I’m getting ready to plug you into the money.
Jay Conner (00:39):
Well, welcome to another episode of the Private Money Academy Podcast. I’m your host, Jay Conner also known as the Private Money Authority. And as I said, I’m getting ready to plug you into the money and funding for your deals, regardless of where you are in your real estate investing career. Also, if you’ve been tuning into the show, you know that for quite a while, I’ve been having just some amazing guests, and experts come on and join me here on the podcast. Well, today is no exception. I’ve got a very, very dear friend of mine. We’re also a fellow mastermind member and he is gonna be pulling the curtain back and talking about how you can enjoy your freedom. But before I introduce my guest, I’ve got a gift for you just for being here on the show. And that is, I just recently released my new book, which is titled “Where To Get The Money Now”, How and Where to Get Money for Your Real Estate Deals Without Relying on Hard Money or Traditional Lenders.”
Jay Conner (01:35):
This book will share with you exactly how I got over $2 million in less than 90 days. When I lost my lines of credit with the banks, all the way back to 2009. It’ll show you step by step, how to get funding, how to make the rules for your loans, and how not to rely on any traditional lenders. And I’m not talking hard money. I’m talking about easy access to more money than you can use to fund your deals. I’d love to autograph a copy of it and ship it right out to you just cover shipping and you can get it at www.JayConner.com/Book. That’s www.JayConner.com/Book and will rush that right out to you. Well, my good friend and guest today years ago, who owned and managed a private practice dental office had that for over 20, 21 years or so.
Jay Conner (02:33):
Well while he was still in dental school before opening up his practice, he began his real estate investing career by creatively joint venturing with his father on their very first rental property. Now, this goes back to 1980. So after they did that first property three years later, and in just a few short three years, my guest and friend sold the property and he took his $25,000 capital gain share from the joint venture with his father. He leveraged it into 31 properties that ended up producing a $15,000 monthly net cash flow, not bad to be printing money and getting positive cash. Right? Well, everything was going along well. Life was fantastic. The sky was the limit until something happened. There was a dark day when David’s daughter Jenna was diagnosed, unfortunately with leukemia amid the cancer treatments, and epilepsy, and ultimately Jenna ended up getting a liver transplant.
Jay Conner (03:41):
David made the very critical and crucial decision to leave his clinical practice so that he could spend every moment that he had with his daughter. Now David’s backup plan or his plan B’s a rental portfolio of cash flow. I just talked about it. It gave him the freedom to focus 100% on really what mattered the most to him. And that’s his daughter, Jenna. Well, the good news is Jenna won the battle with the disease, and David to this day still enjoys the freedom to cherish every moment with her that he can. Today, my good friend is a nationally recognized speaker on creating freedom, building real businesses, and investing in real estate. He also helps other logical rational professionals become dreamers and then helps them strategically manifest those dreams into freedom. So under my friend’s leadership, he runs what’s called the Freedom Founders Mastermind community and his members grow exponentially year by year, providing the pathway to freedom for many professional practice owners. He’s got a brand new book out that we’re gonna be talking about titled “Own Your Freedom”. And with that, I wanna welcome you to the show. My dear friend and fellow mastermind member, Mr. David, or Dr. David Phelps, should I say? Welcome, David!
David Phelps (05:06):
Well, Jay, it’s such a pleasure and honor to be with you today. Thanks for hosting me on your podcast.
Jay Conner (05:11):
Absolutely. I’ve been trying to get you on, but between your schedule and my schedule, it’s taken us a little bit of time to get you on, I’m just so glad to have you on. We talk about your new book. We wanna talk about your mastermind, and we wanna talk about that monthly cash flow and all that kind of stuff. But before we get into it, take us back to that first deal that you and your father did. And how is it that the two of you got into real estate?
David Phelps (05:38):
Great start Jay. Well, I was going through college, right? To get into dental school, I handled the prerequisites, but I always had a curiosity about how could I be a good steward of money. Now, the money I didn’t have, cause I was in college. I’m waiting tables actually to try to keep the debt load down right. Going through school. But I was thinking about, you know, how can I be a good steward of money I’ll have someday? And I realized I was gonna be in dental school for four more years in the same place. And so, I told my dad, I said, dad, you know, I can rent a place, rent an apartment like I’ve been doing. Or I said, we, in the key element, there was, we could own property together.
David Phelps (06:19):
We could invest in a property, a rental property. And so he agreed now, neither one of us knew anything about real estate. Other than some books I’d read going back to books that we didn’t have the internet back then, Jay, we didn’t have meetup groups or Facebook groups or forums like we have today. So everything you had to learn today and back then was either, you know, live, in a seminar, which they had those, or through books. And when I compared to contrasted books about investing on Wall Street, traditional mutual funds, index funds, and things like that. And comparing that with real estate just made a whole lot more sense to me. Number one is a tangible asset, which is one of the reasons we like it so much. You’re backed by something of a tangible value that never goes to zero.
David Phelps (07:02):
It’s always gonna be there producing as long as it’s well managed. So I told my dad to go in and on the steel, we had to find it had to find a property. So that was some time in itself, but we found it through a realtor and then did some upgrades on it. I should say I did the upgrades. My part of the deal Jay was being the joint venture partner in the management capacity. My dad was just the funder, right? You talk about private capital that’s your authority. And my dad was my private capital lender. I didn’t go to a bank. I didn’t have credit to go to a bank. I didn’t have my own money or my credit. So my dad was the funder. I was the managing partner.
David Phelps (07:37):
And we owned that property together for just about four years and sold it. As you mentioned in the intro when I graduated from school because I was moving on. But here’s, the epiphany, Jay is all through school. So I mentioned I was waiting tables at pretty nice restaurants. And back in the day, as you said, back in the eighties, ’70s, late seventies, and eighties, you could make some pretty good money on a flexible schedule. And so I like waiting tables. It was good. It was fun. I enjoyed the camaraderie, but what I realized was over the years, I waited tables and made probably 15 to $20 per hour in tips, the amount of capital gain profit. And I’m talking about profit now, not the cash, but the profit from this property, my half was 25 thousand. The time value that I put into acquiring fixing up and then managing that property was about 10% of the time I spent waiting tables and I made more profit at the end of the day, actually, capital gain profit, which is taxed to lower rates as we both know.
David Phelps (08:35):
And so that was my epiphany, that owning assets is going to be the goal for me going forward. Now I went on to into dentistry as you know, and, and practiced in dentistry for 20 some years. However, I used the income from dentistry to add to the leveraging into the portfolio of real estate. And over time, that’s what set me free.
Jay Conner (08:56):
That’s amazing. You know, your story is the same start I had I found my first deal back in 2003 back in the day when they had Homes magazine, the realtors published Homes magazines, and, you know, I hadn’t been to any seminars. I just read some books just like you. And you know, you talk about them, a little bit of time that you had invested in compared to the amount of time you were, you know, waiting tables. My real estate attorney way back in 2003, said, “The great thing about real estate is you’re not trading hours for dollars”. Right? You know, Even, I mean, I guess I don’t know anything about the dentistry practice, but I guess to some degree you’re trading hours for dollars even in that. So well said, now you started, I mean, you, you grew very fast to have this portfolio of 31 properties. What length of time did it take you to go from one to 31?
David Phelps (09:53):
Well, it wasn’t smooth to up you know, I started, I thinking my first year after I graduated from dental school and had my, profit, I think back to the exact properties I bought, I think, three properties that next year one was a fourplex, one was a duplex and one was a single-family house. All right. So I just kind of covered the bases there. So I guess started there and, you know, then I’d buy a house here or there. And then one day I was looking at, a house, a sign out in front of a house that was vacant. And that’s how we found him back in the day. You know, there was no SEO I wasn’t using direct mail back then didn’t have the money for that.
David Phelps (10:31):
So it was, you know, farming neighborhoods, right? So you’d drive around, you’d look for a vacant house. You can still do that today, by the way. It’s not a bad way to go and look for properties that you know. You knew the owner had some level of distress because well, vacant properties are never good. Right. I mean, that’s just never good. So, I called this one house and found out as I have done a little deeper, actually this couple owned 11 properties in this particular area. And they were from out of town. So long story short I picked up 11 properties and one chunk, 30. So what I’m saying is, you know, mostly it was one at a time, but I did take down a portfolio at one point and every deal I did, Jay, I had to use creative financing, part of what you talk about.
David Phelps (11:19):
I did not go to the banks. I had to either get the seller to agree to finance. Some or most of their equity. I would take overload subject two, which you talk about a lot. I lease option some houses, another technique it works well. And then I started also to bring in some private capital. The other thing you talk about. So I used all these elements and found that real estate is a great vehicle, but the real key in real estate, in my opinion, is not being transactional in terms of flipping houses or even selling. There’s nothing wrong with that. But I think the real gold is in the financing. That’s what you figured out years and years ago, that you use real estate as a vehicle, but learn how to build out, and create the financing.
David Phelps (12:07):
And don’t be locked into going to the banks. Even though today, we know that we are at a very historic low point in the interest rate market. I mean, we’re at the low of the lows, so I’m not against people using long-term financing if they want to do a takeout and refi a portfolio. But, I believe, as you’ve mentioned that if you get locked into institutional financing, that can be taken away from you, as we know, just like that. And then where are you? Where are you then? So I think you’ve gotta at least be building out both if you’re using one or the other.
Jay Conner (12:39):
Yeah. I couldn’t agree more. So when you started in those first you know, those first years you were investing and growing your portfolio, what were some of your early struggles and lessons learned at the beginning?
David Phelps (12:54):
Buying the wrong properties attracts the wrong tenants, but, you know, that’s where you start, you start with something easier to acquire, to negotiate because no one else wants it.
Jay Conner (13:09):
I looked at one this morning, it’s been vacant for over a year. It’s got like 1400 square feet. It’s a 70,000 rehab.
David Phelps (13:18):
So you start with the stuff that you can get ahold of, right? And again, I’m using all kinds of, you know, creative financing, but I still had financed. I still had to make payments of some sort on these properties. So I learned that that buying the wrong properties, either the wrong layout of property or the wrong location or combination thereof is gonna attract the wrong tenants. And as we know, you know, an asset is great to have, and a business is great to have a real estate investment property. It’s a great thing to have it. Geez. Someone has to manage it to produce the income. It doesn’t just show up magically. So I realize we’re it quickly that I need, to upgrade my acquisition. But you know, lessons learned, right?
David Phelps (14:00):
I mean, I’ll never forget. So I relatively quickly upgraded to better properties. I decided this was just for me because I didn’t enjoy many of the downside factors of owning a fourplex or a duplex. I like single family for reasons we don’t have to go into right now, but that was just me. So, that first couple I had, I never went back and bought more of those cuz they were just more of a headache to me. I loved single family because I just felt like I had more control of having the right tenants, which was the key to showing up and wanting to live in that home, that particular home.
Jay Conner (14:35):
Excellent. David, just in case we’ve got some listeners that have to jump off before the end of the show. I want you to go ahead and talk about your new book and how people can get it.
David Phelps (14:47):
Well, thanks, Jay. The most recent book published is, is “Own Your Freedom” For those who are watching I’ll hold it up, this is cover. I’ve got one behind me on the bookshelf, “Own Your Freedom”. I co-wrote it with one of my good mentors over the years, Mr. Dan Kennedy. Dan is known in the world of business and marketing as a great copywriter, but just also has a great mind about money, finance, about the business of money. So it was during this not a little bit over a year ago, kind of in the middle of the summer of COVID of 2020 when, the country was going through so many iterations of how to get through the gap, right? And all the stimulus money was coming out.
David Phelps (15:28):
And I realized that so many people were feeling for the first time or probably for the first time feeling very vulnerable about their income stream. For most people, it is you go to work in a business or a job or something, you go to work and you trade time for dollars. That’s kind of how society’s built us up. Right? That’s what the education system tells the majority of people. And people are fighting for the first time. Well, I’m very vulnerable because the government has shut down the economy. They’re saying you can’t go to work. You can’t have businesses open. Now they are spoon-feeding all this money out there. So maybe I’ll get through this, but that vulnerability, I think, showed a lot of people that they need to be building out multiple streams of income. So the book is, built on principles, Jay. You can get the book on Amazon or the website www.OwnYourFreedomBook.com, where I’ve got some additional bonuses for some interviews I did with Dan, about Dan Kennedy, about the book.
David Phelps (16:23):
But the key thing that I think I want people to realize is, there are principles about freedom. And one of those which we’re talking about today to a great extent is financial freedom. You know, how do you build financial freedom? Because then that builds out the other freedoms. People don’t want to feel like they are dependent on a third party whether that’s social security or unemployment. I mean, most people, Jay don’t want to feel like someone else has to provide for them. We all want to feel like, that we can provide for ourselves and our families. But how do you do that? You don’t have just one line in the water. You’ve got to have multiple streams. And I just found, as you found in many of your students, that real estate is a great provider of those multiple streams of income, where, you can have an asset that produces without you having to show up and go to work for that asset every day. Now there’s work on the front end and there’s, someone’s gotta manage it, but overall, it can be a relatively passive wealth builder and passive cash flow generator.
Jay Conner (17:19):
What does it mean David, to “Own Your Freedom”?
David Phelps (17:22):
Owning your freedom is taking care of yourself first. I compare it with the analogy of when you’re on a plane and the instructions we get from the flight attendants is, you know, in the event of the cabin pressure dropping you know, the mask will drop from the ceiling departments and the instructions are you put yours on first? Well, why? Because if you don’t, this sounds selfish, but realize if you don’t take care of yourself first, how can you help other people? So owning your freedom? You know, I’m not gonna get political here on the show today. That’s not the point, but the point is, you know, the government today I think wants more and more to have us as the citizens dependent on the government. That’s kind of where we’re going. So I’ll leave it there. My point is if that’s not where you want to be, and you don’t want your kids to be there, or the people you care about, then we have the responsibility for ourselves to learn, to own our freedom. Then we can help other people that wanna be helped, or we can help. If we don’t take care of ourselves first, then we’re not gonna be valuable to help other people.
Jay Conner (18:24):
Is owning your freedom, sort of like putting yourself in the driver’s seat and not being, how to put yourself in the driver’s seat and not being dependent on government or being dependent on the day job that doesn’t, you know, require you to get a vaccine or whatever.
David Phelps (18:40):
There’s a chapter in the book about who’s going to drive your car. So I’m gonna just pick up on that. Very brilliant, Jay. Brilliant, you picked right up on that, Sir. Who’s gonna drive your car, you know, so much in life? I think we listen to well-meaning people teachers or people in the community. They mean well, but I think there are many times an abdication of responsibility for ourselves or our families. And so instead of stepping up to the plate and saying, I don’t need to know everything, cause I can’t know everything about everything, right, Jay, I can’t know everything, but what I can do is I can be the orchestrator of what I believe I want my life to look like in all respects in all respects what I do with whom I do it with when I do it.
David Phelps (19:25):
And then also what, you know, how do I wanna also have an impact, you know, on the people I care about? I mean, that’s something that people often talk about legacy at the end of life. Well, I think at the end of life, that’s, that’s kind of too late. You should be talking about legacy now. Well, how can you do that? How can you think about other people and legacy and leaving breadcrumbs for other people? If you’re so embroiled in trying to just get through the day-to-day. I mean, we all start that way in life. We all start as like with waiting tables and just, you know, just paying the basic bills. Well, that’s where you start, but owning your freedom means you get to a point in life where you are solving problems for other people, whether you’re a great employee for a great company, or you have your own business solving problems, but solving those problems you get to own your freedom and I never wanted to depend upon a third party to look to provide for my basic subsistence.
David Phelps (20:17):
I didn’t wanna be part, of something where I’m getting compensated in different ways for the value I bring, or I want to have that business that is solving those problems where again, the compensation and other ancillary benefits to my freedom accrue.
Jay Conner (20:32):
So David, in your new book own your freedom. Does the book give the reader specifically, actionable strategies and ideas that they can implement that will move them towards really being in control of their freedom? In other words, your book is just not theoretical, right?
David Phelps (20:47):
No, not at all theoretical. I will tell you that you alluded to a little bit of my story. I’ve got other real stories of other people that I have worked with. I know their stories that have gone through similar iterations. You know, a great deal of this book is principled on real estate as a great asset. But I didn’t make it. We, Dan, and I did not make it particularly tactical, principles, concepts, or strategies. It’s really, I think a book that applies, it’s a book that applies to all generations and all backgrounds because it’s about really how we think about our autonomy. What we attempted to do is kinda reverse a lot of the indoctrination, a lot of the brainwashing that I think the government education system produces today, trying to produce a lot of worker bees.
David Phelps (21:49):
We’ve tried to take that and reverse that because I think that the problem we have in this country today is, that too many people I think are going to school and coming outta school with the wrong degrees, too much debt. And then they feel trapped. And I think that’s an awful place to be. It’s an awful feeling to have. And we’re just trying to change the dynamic, say there’s nothing wrong with education, but the right education for the right purpose and not this just blind going to school and racking up huge amounts of student loan debt because that’s the way you’re supposed to do it. I think as long as people are following the majority, the pathway that society says, well, this is the way you do it. Right. I think that’s wrong. I think people have to be discerning about how they think about starting with money, but how money can lead to, to the freedom principles in the book and how that can lead to, you know, a more abundant life.
David Phelps (22:40):
That’s that to me is really what it’s about. So not a lot of tactics in the book, but the principles are there, Jay so that they can take the principles and then, you know, bring them down into where the tactical approach can be taken based on where each person is. Cause I, it’s hard to write a book about, you know, too much on tactics when you’re trying to reach a wide audience, cuz everybody’s gonna have different opportunities, different places in life. I want something that would speak to everybody, but let them determine with filters of principles, filtering, everything that so based on this principle, is what I’m thinking about doing or working over here or even in a particular investment, is that the right investment based on the goals. And I want people to be able to reverse engineer, where do you wanna be?
David Phelps (23:19):
So how do I get there, right? Where do I wanna be? What does freedom mean to me at different stages in life? And then reverse that back and say, okay, starting with what I’ve got right now, where I am, what I have, how can I start making the move towards that? And having specific metrics. Specifically to me, Jay is one of the key things in life. If we’re not specific about the dreams and the visions we have, and we just think, well, someday, you know, “I’d like to be able to retire” and that’s not, no, that’s not, “someday and retire”. See, that’s just very general, but people think that way I go to work. And when I’m 65, I’ll get on Medicare and I’ll be retired. It’s like, no. Don’t. Stop thinking like that. You know, you’ve gotta be specific about where you wanna be in milestones.
David Phelps (24:02):
Starting with young people, Jay, right? Young people can start building their freedom early. Doesn’t mean you’ve, you’ve financially got it all covered when you’re 35 or 40 years old. I’m not saying that but I’m saying with specificity on milestones that you be making, it can take the pressure off. So you can enjoy some life as you’re going along and not this thing. Well, I do, I have enough, do I have enough? Do I have enough? Cuz you know what? People will never have enough that’s my experience.
Jay Conner (24:31):
That’s, amazing David. So one more time. And we’re not finished with the interview, but for anyone, that may need to jump off. I want everybody to make sure they’ve got this website where they can get your new book, “Own Your Freedom”. That website is www.OwnYourFreedomBook.com. And David’s also got some bonuses over there for you that you can’t get anywhere else. I wanna go back to what some people call your moment of truth. One of my big moments of truth was in January 2009, but I wanna talk about yours and, you know, I touched on it in the intro about your daughter, Jenna, but just in your own words, caused you to decide to step away from your successful dental clinical practice and you know, go out in this direction that you have now.
David Phelps (25:28):
This was 2004 and Jenna was recovering in the hospital in Houston from her very delicate, very complex liver transplant. I mean any organ transplant is complex. And so there was a period. There were weeks when she was going through the recovery period. It’s not, you don’t go in and get out two or three days later and go home. She had to stay in Houston for about three months because the recovery period in her case was kind of long and arduous. It was during this time that I had a lot of time to think, Jay because you know, like a lot of people are probably listening today. We feel, you know, we need to be doing something always doing, you know, we don’t feel good if we’re not doing something, not making something happen or not making investments or building our business or whatever it is.
David Phelps (26:17):
We feel like we’re not, not doing the right thing. And, yet I have my daughter there, you know, this is not the first time she’d been facing a life-threatening situation. She had gone through high-risk leukemia when she was young. And she had a period of years where she had epileptic seizures. So this was like not an old hat, but it was kind of like wake-up calls. You said my moment of truth when I decide, what am I, what am I trading here now? Yes, I was “a successful dentist” and I, fortunately, had been building up real estate on the side, but had I been devoting the time, the time, that’s what I call time freedom, you know, to what was really, really should have been most important. And I was not, I’d been kind of taking things for granted.
David Phelps (26:58):
We’ll get through this crisis, we’ll get through this crisis, but I gotta keep doing it because I’m supposed to be the provider. Provide security for my family. And that is important. But what I wasn’t paying attention to was the fact that my family wanted more of my presence, more of my dedicated presence. So that moment of truth was when I decided Jay to leave dentistry, to sell that practice. I made that decision while I was in that hospital, watching my daughter, you know, on life support, you know, that she was after the transplant. And I just decided, you know what, I can’t keep doing what I’m doing. Right. Even though society says, you know, you need to, you know, be responsible and, I was responsible. I don’t think I was being responsible in the right way.
David Phelps (27:39):
So I made that decision. I said I’m gonna let this thing go. It was easier for two reasons. One, I had a real reason why my daughter, no one can fault anybody for doing something for their family member. Okay. So I didn’t have to have that guilt. Like David, what are you doing? You know, but the second part is I was also blessed to have gone down the road of investing in real estate. And that provides me with a benchmark. Not that I had wealth up to here, no way, but I had a benchmark. I had enough to get through and provide for my family, but most importantly to have the time. Now from there, I’ll just tell the listeners today that was life-changing.
David Phelps (28:22):
In many ways, my daughter did make it through that. And she’s 29 years old, now that was back when she was 12 years old. So, God’s grace showed down and gave the wisdom and the expertise to the doctors to get her through everything she had to get through. And I’m forever thankful for that. I’m forever thankful for the family who donated the organs of their 16-year-old daughter who died in an accident and they allowed her organs to be harvested, to give life to other people that was a blessing. The other blessing was that I got to refocus. What was most important to me and having this change in my life opened up new doors. It certainly gave me what I wanted the time with my daughter that was number one. Number one focus, everything else was secondary.
David Phelps (29:05):
Hadn’t even been thinking about what else I was gonna do, Jay, not even thinking about it. I mean, I had my real estate and blah, blah, blah, but I didn’t know what I was gonna do. Well, this opened up a new opportunity for me to figure out, well, who else am I besides a dentist? Who else am I, you know, when you go through school, you get titles or degrees. It’s like, well, that’s who you are. Well, is that really who you are? And do you have to stay that person or that identity for your life? And part of the book is no, you don’t unless you are just a seed to that. I mean, but no, you don’t. So it opened up new doors and, you know, that’s how freedom founders, the community that you alluded to earlier came about. I had no focus on that. I didn’t say I’m gonna build out some community and we’re gonna have a mastermind about real estate and building wealth. And, you know, it’s just like it had to evolve, but it would never have evolved. Had I not taken the break from this career path that I was, you know, driving away on because that’s what you’re supposed to do?
Jay Conner (29:59):
It’s like, you know, do you wanna find the opportunity and the difficulty, or do you wanna find the difficulty? You know, it’s like, so, I mean, it’s like COVID right? I mean, COVID is as horrible as it is. I mean, one of my and Carol Joy’s best friends, Daddy just passed away. This past Friday. I mean, COVID is horrible. At the same time, this horrible challenge and difficulty have opened up brand new opportunities to serve people in ways that we haven’t served people before. So speaking of COVID, you know, things are different on this side, since it started, you know, March of 2020, look in your crystal ball and tell us what you see happening in, you know, the public, society, government, and what kind of impact do you think that’s gonna have on our economy coming around the corner?
David Phelps (30:57):
Well, that’s a deep hole to try to traverse here, but I’ll try to do it with some kind of grace here. So, I think COVID was a big wake-up call across the board for everybody. And as you said, unfortunately, for some the ultimate was they lost, loved ones. That’s, you know, and you’re right. That is a tragedy, no question about it. People will lose their lives in different ways every day. We know that unfortunately cancers and just tragic illnesses and accidents. It’s part of life and it’s never easy to accept. But it happens. But I think that, so a lot of people started like I had that epiphany when I was in the hospital with Jen here’s life racing by, racing by, racing by, you know, and all of a sudden we had this shutdown, so people are forced to like to stay home and reconnect with family members.
David Phelps (31:54):
I know that a lot of adult kids came home from school and parents were saying, oh, I got a second chance with Billy and Jane, you know, they were here for, you know, several months. And that was just, that was very cool to have the family back together spending time with, with kids, just kind of getting back to like roots of quality of life instead of this drive. So that part changed. And we know that for a fact, because we have a lot of people that are not going back to the same old, same old they’re not going back to the same job, the great resignation as it’s been called. A lot of people have left the workforce and older people have retired and said, you know what, I’m kind of done with all that.
David Phelps (32:29):
And so maybe they’re financially okay. And they can do that. Other people decided I was not like the book talks about “Own Your Freedom” and decided, you know what, I’m not gonna keep going back to that job. But I had to commute, you know, 45 minutes, 60 minutes a day I’m not gonna do that anymore. I’ve realized this wake-up call told me I’m not gonna live my life. It’s like I had to decide, you know, what’s the trade-off, I mean, is, the benefits and whatever money I was making, is that worth what I was missing over here? And a lot of people saying, no, it’s not, I’m gonna figure out another way to provide for the family, but I’m gonna be there for my family. I’m not gonna miss this opportunity. So I think that was a societal wake-up call.
David Phelps (33:05):
You ask about the government. So government I just have to say the government uses the crisis as an opportunity to gain more control of its citizens. I could probably just stop there, Jay and that’d be enough. But I think what we’re seeing is the government wants to take over more and more of the private sector consolidation, and rollups. They, the government want to tell us what to eat, where to live, what to wear, where to go to work, and what to get paid. The government would love to do that. So that’s a movement that people have to be aware of. That’s again, what I think you need to own your freedom. Don’t get sucked into that. Where’s the economy going? That I think that’s what everybody’s like to know Jay and if I could give that to you here and make it succinct and make it dead-on, would this be valuable to your listeners?
Jay Conner (33:54):
Absolutely.
David Phelps (33:55):
Well, I’m not gonna do it.
Jay Conner (33:59):
You have the same crystal ball that I do.
David Phelps (34:01):
Listen, I think what we have to realize is that there are so many variables in the marketplace in the economy today, that there is no guru, no pundit. I don’t care who you wanna go back to that, that we would all say, Hey, that’s an experienced economist, or nobody can say for sure. I think all we can say, Jay, for sure is, we’re gonna see a lot more volatility.
Jay Conner (34:23):
Absolutely.
David Phelps (34:24):
And so back to why you need to have some principles on which you are building your life and your finances because volatility is gonna be there. Sorry, I interrupted you.
Jay Conner (34:33):
No, you’re fine. As we wrap up, David tells everybody about your mastermind group and who makes a good member of your mastermind group, which is www.FreedomFounders.com.
David Phelps (34:46):
So the mastermind group is a group where busy professionals. And mostly because I speak from my own industry experience in dentistry, but I have dentists and other affiliated professional practice owners, other MDs, and people like that only because that’s who I speak to now, what we do, Jay could fit for anybody who’s in a business capacity. And they want to learn how to build wealth through alternative investments, which is what we love, real estate. So, our community connects busy professionals who have investment opportunities, and then maybe they’ve got 401ks and maybe they’ve got under-deployed equity in other assets, but they would like to learn how to get that equity working for them. And that’s the whole key to financial freedom you want other assets working for you. It’s what we love about real estate. So, probably the person who best describes what we do is somebody who is relatively far down the pathway in their career.
David Phelps (35:46):
Not that they’re debt-free but they’ve got consumption debt under control, and they have a relative amount of capital. They want to reallocate into real estate. We’re not a big group we’re about 80 members and I’m not trying to scale something big because I find I can’t maintain the quality of the relationships that I love so much. And also the quality of the connections to what I think are the most, best, and highest curated real estate opportunities. It’s a big deal for me to provide some safety net. No guarantees of course, but safety nets. And I can’t do that if I’m trying to scale. So people can, I put a lot of content and people can know to www.FreedomFounders.com. That’s the basic website for the community. But I have a podcast which is the Dentist Freedom Blueprint Podcast, which I’m gonna host you on because what we do on that podcast, Jay, is we don’t talk about clinical dentistry. So we talk out what we’re talking about here today, freedom, financial assets. That’s why I’m gonna have you on the podcast because we’re gonna talk about the stuff that we both love.
Jay Conner (36:45):
That’s awesome. David, thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate your time. And you have given just a ton of valuable information from your experience. And I just appreciate you so much. I know being around you and the other mastermind group that we’re in you are a true go-giver. You got a servant’s heart, and you’re just out there to make an impact. And I just appreciate you so much, David. Thank you.
David Phelps (37:10):
Jay. It’s always a pleasure. Thank you so much. You’re the same way. You’re, you’re one of those people out there. That’s changing the world in many ways, and I appreciate the opportunity to be here with you day.
Jay Conner (37:19):
There you have it, folks. Another episode of the Private Money Academy Podcast. I’m Jay Conner, The Private Money Authority, and I wish you all the best. Here’s to taking your real estate investing business to the next level. We appreciate your subscribing, rating, and reviewing. If you’re watching us on YouTube, be sure to subscribe and ring that bell or tap that bell, so you don’t miss out on any of the future shows. So we’ll see you right here on the next Private Money Academy podcast.