Life Beyond the Briefs
At Life Beyond the Briefs we help lawyers like you become less busy, make more money, and spend more time doing what they want instead of what they have to. Brian brings you guests from all walks of life are living a life of their own design and are ready to share actionable tips for how you can begin to live your own dream life.
Life Beyond the Briefs
Creating YOUR Legacy: How to Balance Work and Family | Adam La Barr
Feeling like you're constantly choosing between crushing it in the courtroom and being there for bedtime stories? 🤯 Strap in, because this episode of Life Beyond the Briefs is about to flip the script on what it means to be a successful professional.
We're rolling out the red carpet for Adam La Barr, the COO of Active Duty Passive Income and a true master of the work-life juggling act. This guy climbed Mount Fuji with a toddler on his back - so you know he's got the secret sauce to building a thriving career and a vibrant family life.
In this value-packed episode, you'll discover:
🔑 The "secret weapon" for aligning your family's vision with your law firm's direction (hint: it involves a lot of difficult, sucky conversations)
🤩 How to prioritize quality time with your spouse and kids, even when you're buried in briefs (spoiler alert: it's all about creating a rhythm)
💰 Real estate investing opportunities in the current market - and the tools Adam used to pivot from military service to real estate mogul
Plus, Adam shares the inspiring story of how he's intentionally breaking the "busy dad" mold to create a legacy that truly matters.
Ready to ditch the burnout and write your own definition of success? Hit play and let this modern-day superhero be your guide.
Want to connect with Adam? Check out the links below:
- Website: activedutypassiveincome.com
- Podcast: The BizDad Podcast
- Email: Adam La Barr <adam@ralcapitalgroup.com>
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Brian Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury lawyer in Fairfax, Virginia. He is passionate about living a life of his own design and looking for answers to solutions outside of the legal field. This podcast is his effort to share that passion with others.
Want to connect with Brian?
Follow Brian on Instagram: @thebrianglass
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If you're looking at your law firm, the partners could, if they want, to get stuck in the minutia of doing the job, but they still have to run the actual firm. Where are we going? The names on the wall. You still have to decide where the law firm is going, what direction they're taking and what strategic moves we need to be making. The husband and wife are the two names on the wall, hopefully sharing the same last name, but they're the names on the wall. You have to have those conversations Like your family needs to move in the same way as your business, as your law firm. Like if you're not unified up at the top, then it's going to fall apart down below. So have those meetings, have those quarterly board meetings, which is just you and the wife you know and make those decisions and conversations. They're going to be difficult, they're going to suck.
Speaker 2:My friends, welcome back to Life Beyond the Briefs, the number one podcast for lawyers choosing to live a life of their own design. Listen up. Do you feel like you are constantly choosing between crushing it in the courtroom and getting home from bedtime stories? Well, strap in, because today, on Life Beyond the Briefs, we are about to shatter the myth that you cannot have both. I'm diving deep with my friend, adam LaVar, the COO of Active Duty, passive Income and a master of work-life juggling. This guy climbed Mount Fuji with a two-year-old on his back, so, trust me, adam knows a thing or two about balance. Now get ready for a no-holds-barred chat about creating a kick-ass career without sacrificing time with your family. We're talking real strategies to co-create your family vision. Sneak in quality time even when you're swamped, and maybe even score some real estate wins along the way. So if you are ready to stop choosing between case files and family photos, hit play now, because it's time to rewrite your life's brief and create a future that works for you and your loved one. What's up everybody. Welcome back into the show.
Speaker 2:Today's guest is not a lawyer. He is not a coach of lawyers. He doesn't provide tech services or SEO or accounting for lawyers. My friend Adam Labar is the COO of Active Duty Passive Income, a group that helps military men and women invest in real estate. He's the host of the Biz Dad podcast. He's the author of Military House Hacking and, most importantly, father of three children. Adam, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1:Thank you so very much, brian. I appreciate it and, yes, most importantly, dad of three awesome children.
Speaker 2:And that's what I wanted to have you come on and talk about today is you know, so many lawyers chase the next achievement or the next financial milestone, or the promotion or the partnership or whatever it is, and we sacrifice hours and hours and hours at the expense of hanging out with our kids.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And then the kids get to 18 and we find the old partners and now we can't spend time with them or it's more difficult to spend time. And it strikes me, Adam, that you know the military experience is, if not similar or if not exactly the same, is similar, right, Because you have deployments and you have duty stations that you had during your military career and also building alternative streams of income through real estate that would support your ability to live the life that you want to live on your terms. So, with that introduction, why don't you tell us a little bit about your background and how you got to where you are?
Speaker 1:Boy man. There's a lot that I have to unpack in all of that. This is something I passionately think about rather often. It's something that we talk about on my podcast all the time. The background on me.
Speaker 1:So I was a military brat. My dad was in the Air Force, my mom was in the Air Force. So to me I didn't know there was another option other than to join the Air Force. So I went in the military. I did that for a while as an enlisted guy. I got out, I got married. I was very paycheck to paycheck the entire time. I was an enlisted guy. I didn't know any different. That's what I saw my parents do. That's what I saw all of my enlisted buddies do. I ended up getting married.
Speaker 1:See my wife she has this magical thing called a savings account that I had never heard of before and I was like, like it doesn't compute to me because she's also military, she's in the Air Force. And I was like this doesn't make sense. Like you get paid over two weeks. I don't understand why you do that. So I didn't have an understanding. I didn't have a mindset. So the way I usually talk to people about this is like we all have a wireframe in our brain of how of stuck doing the same thing sometimes the book, sometimes it's a person, sometimes it's a podcast that you're listening to. That will kind of start to break down that wireframe.
Speaker 1:And for me it was my wife. And seeing this, this, this idea of saving um, her mom was born and raised in cuba, her dad born and raised in spain, so she's first generation american. So she saw her parents hoard the money because, like, especially from the Cuban side of the house, you never know when the government's going to come in and take that crap, so you hoard it Right. And it was like this is you know? So she was doing what she saw without really thinking about it. I was doing what I saw without really thinking about it. And then, but with our powers combined, right where I learned like, wow, savings and investing I just started looking down the road of investing, Went back in the military to go be a pilot as an officer after college, busted my neck and lost that, but I still wanted this investing side of the house. So I'm learning more about investing, trying to understand what it is that my wife was interested about this right, and she said that we should do real estate so fast forward a bunch. I took four years, which is way too long, to educate myself all by myself on how to do all of this stuff, Ended up buying an apartment building after getting into a mastermind group. That was all about that.
Speaker 1:So that's another thing I always recommend is get yourself around like-minded people. So if you're listening to this podcast, get yourself around lawyers who are interested in growing beyond where they're at in their financial future and what their growth is and being a part of something bigger than just a firm. When you're in the military, you're thinking okay, when can I be if you're an enlisted guy? When can I be an E9? If you're an officer, when can I be general or colonel? So there's always that thing in your world. It's when can I be partner? What do I have to do to become partner? What do I have to do to become a colonel or a general?
Speaker 1:So getting myself around people who are thinking differently than that, like what can I do to be a better, more present dad? What can I do to be a better, more present husband? That's building a future that I'm with them on, not a future that I've grown away from them on. So that was kind of the impetus of jumping inside of these groups and that was where I started executing and buying apartment buildings, which has been my main focus. So I don't know how much more you want me to go down or where that went, because I said a lot in there. So I'll pause for a moment.
Speaker 2:You know what I love that you said there is. You spent four years educating yourself by yourself right, yeah.
Speaker 2:Either books or podcasts, right, and probably looking at spreadsheet after spreadsheet after spreadsheet and listening and pro formas and all of this stuff. But it was four years before you finally built up enough self-confidence in your knowledge base to do your first deal. And now you're running the active duty passive income community as you see military service members come into that community. What is your goal for somebody who wants to do this thing? What is the timeline that you would like to see them on?
Speaker 1:Boy. So everybody's going to be a little bit different, right, but we want to like fast track that, that ability, right? Because, again, like, we've got a bunch of people that are military right or military affiliated. So we come in and we're like, okay, well, part of what you do, like let's focus on multifamily, because that's what my expertise is. Part of what you do in the military is you learn how to do team maneuvers, team tactics. Everything's about the team. You can't do all of this by yourself. So we kind of translate that as well into the real estate side of the house.
Speaker 1:How can you build your team? You may want to stay in the military and still want to do all of these things, and that's great. I don't want to take that away from somebody if they want to retire after 20, 30 years, but if they want to build this empire, if you will, or even just buy a couple apartment buildings, then get yourself around like-minded people, get yourself around the team. So we want to be able to put you through a program, put you on a path to build your team together, grow together and then go execute within six, eight months. If we can get you to execute within six, eight months, then you're on the right track, you're doing something. So within the first year I would love to see you buy a property, or at least putting offers in. I don't want to see you buy a property because you just know that you want to buy a property.
Speaker 1:It's got to be one that makes sense for your business plan, what you want to do. We don't ever advise folks and I don't think anybody listening should ever just buy a property because they say they want to buy a property. That's on my goal sheet. I got to buy it. No, like it's got to make sense right Right now. It's difficult, so not impossible, just difficult. So our goal is to have that done within that you know, six, six months to a year of their putting in offers on properties that come into our community. They see what we're all about, they see that this is possible. They can surround themselves with the right people that build a team and they're executing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that surrounding yourself with the right people and having goals, but also not chasing somebody else's timeline that isn't right for your life, I think is critically important. You mentioned that it's getting more difficult now, or it is more difficult now In the multifamily space. I saw this statistic today that 10% or 12% delinquency in the multifamily area. Delinquency in the multifamily area. Do you have in your crystal ball a prediction for whether there's a crash coming or whether there's opportunity coming, depending on which you know which side of the ownership you are? I guess what is your crystal ball showing?
Speaker 1:I shipped it out last week for repairs. But when it comes back in I'll let you know when the crystal ball comes back in, but no, my thought process on it is I do think there is going to be a rate drop at the end of this year, but I don't think that's going to have the effect that people want it to have on the market. I think that especially you know it almost always happens in these election years Something is going to happen like crazy. Maybe it's because it happens every year. It just feels like we hit it harder at election year because everything is already so heightened during an election year. But I do think there's going to be a rate drop. I do think there's loads of opportunity on the way.
Speaker 1:I think that we're kind of at a spot right now where you know you had those people that had those you know three to five year loans coming due that they were not expecting them to be ratcheted up the way they were when the interest rates kept going up. But they kept ratcheting up and now they're finding themselves underwater and they're having a hard time. That delinquency rate, like you said, they're struggling. Some people say that this is bad to say, but there's an opportunity there to buy. It's not bad to say it's. The person who is now underwater needs somebody else to come in and help them. So it's an opportunity for the person who's able to execute and it's a life preserver for the person who doesn't want to go under right. So it is an opportunity for the buyer and I think we're going to be and we already are seeing more and more of those.
Speaker 1:At the beginning of this year we saw quite a few news releases on some of the larger folks who were going under. They were losing their properties. I mean, I think we're going to see more and more of that as we continue, because there was just this huge like at the teens and then early 20s, the very early 20s, right at the beginning of COVID, like these massive pushes from all of these syndicators about oh, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye do all these things like people quitting their jobs and doing all this stuff, and then now I think the debt's coming due and they're like wait a minute, I can't.
Speaker 1:I can't do anything with this. There was always projections of refinancing after five years and now I can't do that. I can't refinance now you know. So this is our opportunity to come in. And I'm saying all that, saying I keep putting offers in that are like 30% lower than what people are wanting, because people are still the folks who aren't underwater still think it's 2020. And they want to get that price for it. The people who are underwater are still trying to bail out the ship. So I think that even when that rate drop happens, my thought process is the folks who are hurting already, right now, it's not going to matter. That rate drop's not going to help them. The people who are trying to sell it's going to help them if they're not underwater, because they're going to say see, now you can pay more because the rate dropped.
Speaker 2:So if you're looking for those opportunities, I One or two or maybe three of those syndicated partnerships where the syndicator didn't exactly budget for rate increases or rate increases of this size, so those are not fun to be in.
Speaker 1:When people buy those fluctuating rates.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I'm sure we're looking for an opportunist to come and take those all to our hands. But I want to pivot and talk about fatherhood Right, because, again, that's why I want to pivot and talk about fatherhood right, because, again, that's why I want to have you on this show. So you've been hosting the biz dad podcast, where you talk with other successful father entrepreneurs about the mix and the interplay between running a business and raising kids.
Speaker 2:So I think you've been doing that for just maybe just over a one year anniversary or so, at this point, what are some of the critical similarities that you've noticed with your guests, boy?
Speaker 1:so I'm going to rewind. I will answer that question, but let me set the stage a little bit first. When I was in the military you had already mentioned there's similarities between what you're talking about with trying to get a partner and doing all that extra and what I was doing. I thank God every day that I did not have kids and was not married at my high deployment tempo time because I was volunteering and I wanted to go, like I wanted.
Speaker 1:Like I went to Iraq, I went to Afghanistan, I went to Africa Africa, I did have my first kid. He turned one while I was in Africa. But like I wanted these things because that's what you train for, that's what you're there for Like you were wanting to do these things. You know similarly, so I won't do the similarly part. Yet I saw a bunch of folks that did have kids that ended up in a divorce. All these dads that never saw their kids. They go home, their wife is with somebody else because they're. They were gone for 15 months. You know they, they, uh, they couldn't like they. There wasn't the relationship there that they had before they left, so there that wasn't strong enough to handle the time being away. People that never got to see their kids.
Speaker 1:I really wanted to be a dad. I wanted to be a dad since I was 13 years old. So to see all these dads just ignore the fact that they're dads and never see their kids, it baffled my mind. I get out and I start having kids and I'm like, hey, I'm gone all the time. I was gone a lot, even when I had kids like I've got a going away gift that said Adam, always TDY, which is temporary duty, meaning you're somewhere else. Always, tdy LaBar, because I was gone constantly. My kids got to see me leave a lot and I did a lot of FaceTime and I was like I can't do this anymore. I'm not going to be one of those dads who's affecting their kids from the other side of the world. I'm not going to be one of those dads who's affecting their kid from outside of the home. I'm going to do it from within the home.
Speaker 1:So that's when I started building my plan of getting out. I'd already started real estate investing by this point. So I built my plan on okay, how do I get enough doors to support? I leave. And I joined the entrepreneur space and I see the same thing. And you're talking about the lawyer space, right, where I saw the same thing with all these business owners. Oh yeah, I'm building these big companies, I'm building this stuff so that I can, you know for my family, for my family, for my family, when they're working 17 hours a day and they never see their family.
Speaker 1:Like that's not that you're doing it for yourself at the guise of your family, right? So like you're growing this because you want it, and I don't blame people for wanting it. But it can't be like. Your legacy with your kids is going to last much longer than your legacy on the side of a building, than your legacy on the whatever right, your business, your kids are going to be what carries your legacy on. Like you can look at the massive wealth that was made in the industrial revolution here and there's like one, maybe two families that still have that wealth. The rest of them have all squandered it because they were more focused on growing the business than they were growing their family.
Speaker 1:I think it's the Rockefeller way is one of the books that I really like a lot and it talks about kind of that family stuff which is immensely important to me. So the common theme that I'm seeing amongst the guys that I'm talking to because I'm talking to guys who are all trying to think the same way is the constant communication with their kids, constant communication with their spouses. To me, the number one relationship you could possibly have in your life, aside from your relationship with Christ, is your relationship with your spouse. If you can keep that on fire in one way, shape or form, it is going to continue to grow the rest of your relationships with your kids and outside the house as well. So having core values as a family, growing together, having vision together as a family, not you creating your vision for the family.
Speaker 1:It's you guys getting together and creating vision together on where this family goes and what this family wants. And that, to me, has been one of the trends that I'm seeing across the board. Because, even if that does relate to, because, think about it, if you guys that does relate to, because, think about it, if you guys are both on board, you and your spouse are both on board, but you bring your kids in on it a little bit. If they're capable of it, they're at that age or whatnot right? My kids came into our core values and helped kind of develop our core values, adventurous being one of them, right, because they love going on adventures and doing all this stuff, right? So this is one of our core values as a family. They helped build all of that. And now we get to say, okay, is this in line with what our vision for the family is? Is this in line with our core values?
Speaker 1:And if that means that you need to work a little while on those 17-hour days, then people are on board with it, like your family's on board with it because you've had the communication to say, hey, being partner is actually one of the things we want to do, so we're striving towards it, let's drive towards it, and we know that the sacrifice is being done. As a family, we're doing it together. Instead of me doing it because I want to be partner and my family, I just drag them along. Similarly, the drag along clauses that you have in law right, like if I'm dragging somebody along, they're stuck. They don't have a choice. Your family's getting dragged along. How about you do tag along? How about you bring them with you? You're all on the same page and moving forward. So hopefully that actually answered the question.
Speaker 2:I think that's amazing. So, number one, I do red car hit a blue car law, so I don't know anything about drag along laws.
Speaker 1:I think those are probably bad things.
Speaker 2:But what comes to mind for me, adam, is this discussion about co-creating a vision for your life with your spouse, and I think that and I'm curious about how you did that, because so many male entrepreneurs are like this is the vision, this is where we're going, and it's not so much that you don't ask your wife.
Speaker 2:It tends to be more that, if you ask her, my wife so kind of bogged down in the kids' activities and the lists and the running checklist of all the things that need to be done, right, that my wife had a hard time elevating to the broader. Where do we want to be in three or five years? And I don't know if you had that similar experience and if you did how you navigated around it. But that's a challenge that I think a lot of male entrepreneurs have, is if we have delegated for many, many years all of the doing of all of the things to our wives, right, who now have such a cluttered task list that they're like I don't have time to think about core values and what I want to do in three years. So give me your thoughts on that and how you navigated that, or even if you had to.
Speaker 1:So we definitely did have to and I think it's still a constant navigation on that right. So, for example, my wife, like I said, she's actually still in the military. She retires next year but there was a super good chance of making 06, which is a very big deal on the officer side of the house in the military is making Colonel. So if she would have made Colonel, that would mean four more years of staying in. So we had to have a lot of very in-depth, purposeful conversations about what direction we want to take with the family. Is that something you want to do? Is that something you don't want to do? Is that something that makes sense for the family? Do we want to move two more times? Do we want to chase these things to make it worthwhile? It's one of those things that, regardless, there has to be intentionality behind it.
Speaker 1:It's easy to say on both sides on my side, to just say, hey, I'm building it, this is what we're doing, um.
Speaker 1:And it's easy for the spouse to say I don't have time to think about that, I'm too busy doing x, y or z, but in the grand scheme of things it's in my, in my unprofessional, personal opinion that also makes it easy to say all right, fine, we're going different directions.
Speaker 1:This is just kind of the way things are going. Why don't we just separate and be done like? That seems to be the fail safe in society today, which is where I think we have a problem, like if if we're going separate directions, that means we're not communicating well enough inside the house, so otherwise we wouldn't be going separate directions. So that's why I constantly encourage that communication like you got to force it sometimes, like have the the overnight trip somewhere that says, hey, this is just what we're going to talk about. Have the have the like at bare minimum monthly date with your spouse that you're doing nothing but connecting with them, not talking about future, not talking about the growth, just connecting, so that when you can talk about the future and the growth, there's already the connection there, there's already the balance there of we know that we have our best in in mind for each other we're not trying to undermine each other.
Speaker 1:We're not trying to undermine each other.
Speaker 1:We're not trying to outgrow each other. We're not trying to outdo each other. Like have the respect for what both sides are doing, but have the relationship built well enough. Like, if you don't have the good foundation, it is going to be hard to just build on that. But have that trust built in to just kind of say, hey, we, we, we want to look out for each other, we want to grow together. This is going to be a slow process, but let's make it happen. I think one of the luxuries that you and I have is we're in that group called GoBundance right, where we're around a bunch of like-minded men who are trying to grow, and we have what's called Fambundance inside of there, where the families get together, and we've done, I think, four Fambundance events at this point, three or four Fambundance events, and inside of those events, they're already creating the environment for you to do that type of thing, where we're separating ourselves, saying, hey, we're going on vacation, but we're also going to grow together and make this happen because we think it's important that we remain a unified front and we remain a family. So let's make this a priority.
Speaker 1:If you're looking at your law firm, the partners could, if they want, to get stuck in the minutiae of doing the job, but they still have to run the actual firm. Where are we going? The names on the wall. You still have to decide where the law firm is going, what direction they're taking and what strategic moves we need to be making. The husband and wife are the two names on the wall right, hopefully sharing the same last name? Right, but they're the names on the wall. You have to have those conversations. Your family needs to move in the same way as your business, as your law firm. Like, if you're not unified up at the top, then it's going to fall apart down below. So have those meetings, have those quarterly board meetings, which is just you and the wife you know, and make those decisions and conversations. They're going to be difficult, they're going to suck.
Speaker 2:What is your rhythm for that? Because on the one hand, I'm like you you want to have deep connection, hard to plan within the space of having three kids. I'm running around the sports things all the time and then it feels like it almost feels a little bit hollow to schedule it, as though we're business meeting right, but then if you don't schedule it, it doesn't happen right because somebody's in a bad mood or you had a hard day with the kids, you got our&A at work. So what's the rhythm that works for you?
Speaker 1:So the rhythm that works for us is every Friday. Now it's on the calendar. It doesn't happen every Friday because sometimes there's other events that happen on Fridays, but the intention is every Friday my wife and I sit down for lunch. I drive out to the base, we sit down for lunch, we have a good conversation, I finish my workday from a coffee shop on base and I move on Right. So that's the start of just that portion of it. We also now as a family, sit down at lunch, or I mean at dinner, and we talk about what's your highs, what's your lows, and then we also talk about our core values. That was a more recent addition to the core value side of the house. So that way everybody's getting that connection. We understand what each other went through during that day. Like yesterday we had to go get a cast put on my son right Because he broke a bone in his foot. But that wasn't his low. That wasn't as much of a low. Like his lows tend to be around hurting something on his brother or doing something against his brother or something like that. He didn't care about getting the cast put on his foot. We've already built the foundation that we're a family, we're a unit. So when we hurt each other, that's a low right. So the each other, that's a low right. So the rhythm is completely so.
Speaker 1:Jorda peterson talks about um uh, trying to rebuild your marriage and different things. Like um, when he was talking about uh doing some, some counseling with with couples, and he was like you guys are like you guys haven't dated in a long time, so guess you're gonna really suck at dating each other. You're gonna be terrible at it, but you just do it. You know it's uncomfortable, you know it's like you don't like you want to. You're going to be sitting across from each other. How are you feeling today? It's uncomfortable, you don't really know how to do it, but you got to do it, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:When you were going through law school and you had never written a brief before and you're trying to figure out this Iraq method and you're like what are we doing here? You'd never done it before but you learned how to do it and you got better at it because you forced yourself to go do it and you had to go and do it more and more. So the same thing with trying to figure this out with your spouse. You may have never done it before and you're like you know what. We have to suck it up.
Speaker 1:I've got to take my wife on a date. I've got to figure out how to do this. So the rhythm for me is every Friday we do that. Every dinner that we're together, we go over highs and then, on a quarterly basis, like, my goals this year were to have two overnights with my wife so that we could just just the two of us one of them is happening later on this month. It's just the two of us to be able to just go and spend time together, enjoy each other's company, have an overnight away from the kids, just to dedicate to each other.
Speaker 1:Now we may or may not discuss anything to do with business. It might not happen, but at the beginning of the year we did. We sat down and we set goals for ourselves. We set goals for the family, we set goals for all the stuff, what we want to do, how many interactions we wanted to have with the family, and that is not going to be what you're able to do on the first go round. So it's going to take time. You're going to have to practice dating again. You're going to have to go through that effort again and slowly get where you're setting quarterly meetings with your wife similarly that you would with the partners, and so you're sorry. I want to hit one more thing while it's on my brain. You had mentioned like the calendar side of the house, like it feels hollow to put, and I used to say the same exact thing.
Speaker 1:Like my calendar is not a spot for me to fit my kids in. It's kind of like my thought process. And then somebody slapped me across the face. It was like you're preserving that time.
Speaker 2:So nobody else can touch it, that's right.
Speaker 1:Like I've got and they went out so I'm missing it right now. They were going out to lunch today, so it was no big deal, but I've got on my calendar every Tuesday, wednesday and Thursday 30 minutes in the middle of the day because my son told me this was important to him to see me in the middle of the day and spend time with them. So I have 30 minutes blocked on my calendar that nobody can book. It's preserved just for them that I go out and I spend time with them playing. Sometimes it's running around the backyard, sometimes it's playing a video game, sometimes it's swinging the golf club in our simulator, whatever it's. Whatever the kids want to do for a half an hour. They have me in the middle of the day and then we have board games on Sundays. I put them in the calendar because I want to preserve that time so nobody else can touch it.
Speaker 2:That's cool man. So I think the hack that you figured out is the lunch thing right. So for a long time we were doing right. We're going to talk Tuesday night after the kids go to bed.
Speaker 2:But if you wait, until, like, your batteries are so low from work and from kids, maybe we had a hard time putting one down to bed. Then the last thing you want to do is have an intentional, serious talk at a conference, usually at night, and so when my wife came and started working for me, one of the things that we started doing is regular lunch meetings to do exactly that. There's no script, there's no you know, there's no checklist, but your emotional availability to have those conversations is so much greater at lunch than it is at the end of the day, so I think that's awesome.
Speaker 2:How old are your kids?
Speaker 1:Uh, nine five and one, nine five and one Wow.
Speaker 2:So your kids are, um, I have 11, nine and six and I'm you know, I was imagining years were older, so talk to me about he's done, I think, a really good job of establishing core values, telling your kids what they are, uh, or what core values are not necessarily what the families are, um, and letting your kids contribute to that. And then the high low thing, like I've tried that with mine, and then and maybe it's because we're not modeling it very well, but it tends to be the same thing, or I don't know, or I forget, or so how did, how did you get past that block?
Speaker 1:boy. Honestly we thankfully we didn't have a huge issue with it on ours like now like we'll sit down and like the first thing my five-year-old says rourke. Rourke is his name. The first thing he'll say is that highs and lows, and he just gets so excited about it because he just wants to talk about it. So you know, now it's been fun for them to just kind of add that.
Speaker 1:So the way we kind of broke it down in the beginning because they didn't really know how to do this right and I didn't know because it was new to me but I would like I just talked about their home. I'm in my home office, my kids are right outside that door, so I could. I know mostly what they're doing that day so I can kind of just chat with them, be like hey, like let's talk about what your high, like your most exciting thing, was in the day, and what your low, what you're least like, what you hated the most. And then I gave them examples of their day at the beginning. Like, hey, you know, tell me what your worst part of your day was. And you know, maybe they would say I really hated the whatever. And I'm like, oh, I would have thought you'd have thought about this Like I saw you do. I saw that, you know you. You fell down and hurt yourself on the thing and you know your brother laughed at you. I thought that might have been your low, and you know so. Then then we're pulling out other ideas and other things for them to think about and then us again modeling that ourselves.
Speaker 1:This was my high today. This was my low today and, being completely honest, like my low today was, I had a really hard time in my business trying to figure out this one problem and it's been, it's been on my brain a lot and it's really made it. It made it hard for me. So they can see me modeling that, not saying that that by by any means I again I mean my oldest being nine from a very young age, that the communication with each other is extremely important and we talk about our days all the time.
Speaker 1:So this was just a little bit more structured to the talking about it. Uh, so maybe I'm just blessed in that in that way I didn't have as much of a fight. Um, but I also wouldn't let them get up without saying something, right, I said, like there are days where they're like I didn't have any lows. I'm like you had to have a low Like, even if it was your lowest high. You still had to have a low Like, even if it wasn't angry. But but yeah, no dessert without a high and a low. So that's awesome.
Speaker 2:Let's talk about adventure. You told me you did. You climb Mount Fuji with a two-year-old on your back. Is that the story that I?
Speaker 1:heard, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:What's on your calendar?
Speaker 1:next. So, boy, we've done a couple of long road trips this year that were a lot of fun. We drove up from Florida all the way up to Vermont for the trip up in January, which is great, went snowboarding and brought the kids out on adventures out there. We've done some zip lining stuff. We did some forest tree bridge things recently and that was a lot of fun. But the rest of this year I don't have a ton planned out other than our conference out in Denver. So I'll be bringing them out to Denver with me. I don't know what we'll do yet. Maybe, if we can get there early enough, maybe I'll drag the kids up a 14 or something like that, which will be interesting, put the one-year-old in the backpack and force the nine and five-year-old to probably not all the way up to 14. Or maybe maybe we'll do a an 11 or a 10, but, uh, something fun for the kids to get out mountain biking again.
Speaker 1:I'm into hiking again, so yeah, we don't have anything specifically planned though the rest of the year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so tell me about mount fuji boy.
Speaker 1:Mount fuji was like it was one of those things I told people like that was stupid, but I'm really glad I did it right. The we're stationed in japan. We were living there. We lived there for three years. Our second kid was born in Tokyo. Um and uh, um, you know we. We said, hey, we're going to climb Mount Fuji.
Speaker 1:And I told my wife, I said I'm like, I'm not we. She was like, well, let's get a babysitter. So there's no way, I'm not, I'm not for the kid, I think it's only like 13 and a half thousand feet or something like that. But, um, go to the doctor, uh, chat with them and they're like, yeah, we don't necessarily recommend it unless the kid can tell you that they're getting a headache or not feeling well. And adam was very verbal and had no problem being able to tell us that. So we said, all right, let's, let's jump on it Like it's.
Speaker 1:It's never stopped us, Um, having the kids has never stopped us from adventuring, Um, even when, you know again, Rorik was born in Tokyo and we dropped it Like we got to America. Rorik was seven months old and the U? S was his sixth country. We had drug him around all over Asia and a couple of countries in Europe before we ever came back to America. Um, so it's never stopped us having the adventure. The kids don't stop us from that.
Speaker 1:So I just put the kid in the backpack, started climbing and said, well, let's see what we should do. Made it all the way to the top. He had so many high fives from the Japanese people. They were so shocked to see this two-year-old on the top of Mount Fuji giving him high fives. But the way that I saw it, I was like these adventures are part of being a dad. These as a family I don't want like sure, I want individual adventures. I have individual adventures as well, where adventures are me and my wife. But it was so important to me to have these as a family and make sure that my family is included. We don't stop adventuring because we have kids. We just alter the adventure a little bit and this was a little bit slower of a hike, but it was well worth it.
Speaker 2:One of the things that sticks out to me is that you just seem to have a different sense of what's normal than most people that's because I'm a bit abnormal, right?
Speaker 1:so yeah, uh, yeah, and I think that that normal is is, in the eyes of the beholder, right, like what's normal to one is not to the other, right.
Speaker 1:So you see in society that, like, people are afraid to even have more than two kids, like right now. Like, people see me with three kids and they're like thinking I'm absolutely insane and I would have have seven if I could. But it, you know, God only gave us one every four years and you know we tend to get older and not younger. So we stopped at three, you know. But I would have seven if I could, Because why not Like that's a blessing that goes on for generations. Like, if I can. You know, the Bible says that a man whose quiver is full is blessed. I is full is blessed. I forgot the exact word, but the quivers being, you know, the arrows being my kids in my quiver. And if I can have a majority, like just a bunch of them and send them out into the world to be amazing men and women that are awesome producers in society and taking care of like, why not? Like it's awesome and to show the world to them, to me, is so much more important than anything else.
Speaker 2:I'm curious about your relationship with your parents growing up, whether you had a similar one. So I know you mouse around the country with dad, but was he taking you out and doing this adventurous stuff, or is this something that came to you later in life?
Speaker 1:Not at all. I had zero of that Right. So, um, my dad grew up very, uh, had a very rough upbringing, um and, uh, I didn't know much of it Right. So his dad died. His real dad died when my dad was like two years old, so he never really got to know his dad at all and then ended up with a stepdad who was abusive and a terrible human being. I was probably, you know, nine or 10 years old and I used to always pat him on his head when he left and say see you later, grandpa. And one time I did that and he said if you ever touch my head again, I'll break your arm.
Speaker 1:And that was a glimpse into what it was like for my dad growing up right, Just a small glimpse and from that point on my dad never that was the last I'd ever really spoke to him was at that time. And so I'm saying all that to say that my dad didn't really have an understanding of what it was to have an emotional connection with the kids, because he never had that from his dad. But what he did was provide a stable house for me to grow up in. I always felt like I was lacking certain things, and it wasn't until I got a lot older and realized I was probably in my you know, probably in my thirties before I really realized what my dad provided to me. Like I was an ignorant idiot the rest of that time, thinking to myself that he, you know, he was missing all these things, he should have done all these things. So I mean, I there's part of me is I'm doing some of these things because I wish that I would have seen them. So I'm like, hey, I think that pouring into my kids in this way and pouring into my family this way is going to provide a much better future. And don't don't read that as Adam just gives everything these kids want. That is not at all the case, right? I pour into them in a way that I think is best for their growth long-term and best for where I want their outcomes to be, not because that's what I saw, but because that's what I learned from what I saw right. So now it's time for me to pass that on.
Speaker 1:Hopefully, my kids will continue to grow. So my dad set a stage for me to—he did not abuse me the way he was abused, um, he did not, uh, um, put me out the way that he was put out, um. And he set the stage for me to be able to do what I am now to grow and become a better dad than he was. And, um and I don't mean that despairingly at all Um, you know cause? I want my kids to be better men than me. That's that's what I always told my boys. Now I've got a daughter. I have to change that up a little bit because I want her to marry a better man than me. So if I can represent what at least it means to be me in a good, solid way, then hopefully I'm teaching them to do the same thing.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, Is this intentionality? Is this your natural state, or is this the product of a lot of self-work?
Speaker 1:I'd say it's a product of a lot of self-work. Some of it is natural, some of it I've've just I like, I've always been inquisitive and engaging and trying to figure things out, and so this was just the next thing to try to engage and figure out Now that there's a. This isn't a math calculation, there's no right answer to this right, it's not, you know but but it's something for me to try to figure out how to do better. So I guess part of it is natural, in so much that I want to always learn and grow, and the other part of it is well, because I always want to learn and grow, I'm growing myself, which is helping me show up better and be more present and be a better father.
Speaker 2:Let's talk a little bit about active duty, passive income. So it's your community for military men and women, and you have a big conference coming up in Denver in October. Who should be showing up for that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so honestly, any military member, veteran spouse, family member that is at all interested in looking at real estate as an option for them to grow should be looking at that conference. I mean the feedback we get is phenomenal. People love it. It's a lot of fun. We had one in San Antonio last year. The year before that was in Louisiana. I can't remember what's the big Bourbon Street area, new Orleans, new Orleans, thank you the heck New.
Speaker 1:Orleans, new Orleans, thank you. So we had New Orleans. That was our very first one, and then we went to San Antonio and now we're going to be in Denver and you're surrounding yourself again with like-minded people who are military members, veterans or their family members, who are all trying to do something to grow and become better in one way, shape or form. Obviously, in this case it's it's growing on in their financial uh uh acumen and being able to grow and learn about real estate. So anybody that's in that realm should be definitely looking at it, um, or people who are trying to impact that community should be looking at it, for, like, sponsorships or growth or you know that type of thing.
Speaker 2:Do you guys have a big name speaker in the show?
Speaker 1:So Brandon Turner is going to be speaking there, so that's going to be a lot of fun. In the military space. We've got another guy that's going to be there. He's a big military influencer. He goes by Mandatory Fun Day and he's got some hilarious reels and various different things. So in the military, there's a thing called Mandatory Fun, where you're like, hey, whether you like to or not, everybody's getting together and you're going to go play fight football or whatever the case may be, and is getting together and you're going to go play flag football or whatever the case may be, and it's oh, there's your mandatory fund, right? So he has this. Uh, that's his, his tags mandatory fun day. But, um, but yeah, austin is awesome, looking forward to him being there. Um, last year we had, uh, uh, rod Khalif there and a couple other you know big time real estate folks Uh, so it was a lot of fun to kind of get, get those, get those guys together, awesome.
Speaker 2:So, adam, listen, I want to thank you for coming on today. It is a departure from a lot of the content that we've been putting out lately, which has been a lot of lawyers, a lot of vendors to lawyers, but I think it's an important departure for the focus on what actually matters. And so if people want to find out more about you, more about Active Duty, passive Income, where can they go?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so ActiveDutyPassiveIncomecom you can duty passive income, where can they go? Yeah, so active duty passive incomecom. You can go there If you want to reach out to me, if you're a military member, veteran, that type of thing, adam at active duty passive incomecom. Um, if you're not, you just want to learn more about the biz dad podcast, you can go search through his ad podcast or you can reach out to me at Adam at R a L capital groupcom. So, um, that's my separation of church and state there.
Speaker 2:And we'll link to all of that in the show description, as well as my episode with you on the Biz Dad podcast, in case anybody wants to hear the microphone slip the other way. So thank you so much for coming on today, and we'll have people check all that out.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Brian. It was an absolute pleasure Appreciate it.
