From Passive to Passionate Income: Leveraging Real Estate For Financial Freedom w/ Brian Luebben

Mike DeHaan: [0:00] Real quick, guys. If you want to take your real estate investing business from 6 to 7 figures in the next twelve months, and you wanna do without being a slave to your business, then you have to check out our scale community. You can get the full details at collectingkeys.com/scale. But very basically, it is a community of like minded investors who are working to become the absolute top tier investors in their market. Along with three coaching calls per week led by Dan and myself, we also have a whole bunch of videos and materials that go into all the different SOPs that we use to run our business on a daily basis. This includes how we manage our sales team, how we hire, how we do our marketing systems, how we get the best assignment fees possible, how we do renovations, how we do all the different kinds of creative financing. And if you are serious about taking your real estate business to the next level, it is absolutely something that you should check out. So go to collectingkeys.com/scale, see all the details and see if you're a good fit.

Brian Luebben: [0:58] I sold all my single family real estate, I'm sitting on cash right now. I've got enough cash today to not work for probably four years

Mike DeHaan: [1:06] Uh-huh.

Brian Luebben: [1:06] And live the lifestyle that I'm living and travel and do all the stuff.

Mike DeHaan: [1:15] What is going on guys? On today's episode of the collecting keys real estate investing podcast, we are doing a slight shift from real estate. We have Brian Lubin on the show who has a podcast and brand called the Action Academy. And what we dive into on this show is all around learning how to build a vision for your business, how to find the right place for yourself and your own company, and honestly, just like a whole bunch of different business and hiring talk. So it's not like real estate specific, but it is fully in line with anybody who's trying to build a real estate business, because a lot of the stuff that he says in this show is something that you should probably be doing and you might not even know that you're not doing it.

Dan Austin: [1:51] Yeah. He has a lot of wisdom beyond his years. It's one of the comments I made after the show with him. He has done a fantastic job like going out and he's a great networker, networked with the right people and he's gathered all of that information and he shared a lot of it on the podcast, I love his vision, he talks about his mind map towards the end of the episode. I mean it's, I give him a lot of credit for somebody I really enjoy when I see people

Mike DeHaan: [2:13] that can paint a vision that that

Dan Austin: [2:15] is that grand, and then stick with it and understand the process it takes to get to the end goal there.

Mike DeHaan: [2:21] Totally. And something that's so interesting as well is so much of the stuff that he has done to get to a success. So in like just a couple of years Okay. He left his w two, he has built a 7 figure business, he has multiple other businesses that he is building in tangent to that one that are going to be just as successful if not more. Yeah. And he's done it in just a couple of years time, and it's really just by taking like a lot of the knowledge that you hear in different books, or from different speakers, different and actually doing what they say to do. Like fundamentally, if you look at what he's created, there's very little that's like completely original. Is just taking the best parts of all of like the thought leaders, and putting them into action, and really just taking his whole brand of the Action Academy intentionally. Right? Like very literally.

Dan Austin: [3:07] Taking action on the Action Academy.

Mike DeHaan: [3:09] Really interesting episode here guys. Go and give Brian Lubin a follow at his various places he posted on his show. He's really solid on Instagram, he has a very very good show, especially if you like interview style shows with high performing people. And don't be afraid to reach out to him as well. He's a super nice guy. I've known him for a long time, and he is one of the more impressive run up stories that I have seen over the last little bit. Perfect. Thanks for listening everybody, and enjoy the show today with Brian Lubin.

Dan Austin: [3:34] Enjoy.

Mike DeHaan: [3:35] Alright. Brian Lubin, my man, excited to have you on the show today. You are quite the rage in the Instagram world with your Action Academy podcast, your Action Academy group. You are traveling, you're living life, you're creating a cool little community for yourself. And I'm really excited to have you on the show man, because you are one of the people that I would say right now is like a true professional podcaster. And we don't honestly have a lot of true professional podcasters on the show. So excited to dive into all you're doing, all you're about, how a lot of that relates to real estate business, and everything in between. So I appreciate you coming on man. Dude,

Brian Luebben: [4:10] thanks so much for having me man, it's been a long time coming, and I'm excited, I've already had you on our show, the Action Academy podcast, and we're gonna do another one here coming up in person here in Austin, Texas here in a couple weeks. That's And gonna be an absolute man, yeah, it's been a fun, fun ride, and I have built up the muscle of saying no to a lot of things. And if we wanna start anywhere, we can start with my intro here in a second, but if there's a tactic or a strategy that we wanna lead out the gate with, it'd be you know, saying yes takes you to the million, saying no takes you to 10 plus.

Mike DeHaan: [4:48] Mhmm, for sure.

Brian Luebben: [4:49] So that's what I'm saying no to right now. I'm saying no to multi family syndications left and right, I'm saying no to land flips, I'm saying no to wholesales, I'm saying no to business opportunities, I'm keeping my one thing my one thing, and sometimes it's much easier said than done. True. And that's what we're doing right now. So I'll pause right there, can start wherever you wanna start the story. I love it.

Mike DeHaan: [5:10] Yeah, I definitely wanna dive into that because I've known you for a couple of years Action was relatively early on, which pretty wild. Uh-huh. And that is something that you've done very well, which I think is super applicable to people that are trying to grow real estate businesses, right? Especially being involved in GoBundance, having your own group, you are exposed to tons of different opportunities all the time. And you've been very good at saying no and choosing which things are actually gonna get you the highest ROI. So I know that's been two years in the making for you, I definitely wanted some time on that. But first off, let's give us a little bit run out of your background, kinda why you were doing what you're currently doing.

Brian Luebben: [5:47] Cool, yeah. So we'll do it over the next twenty seven minutes guys, and then we'll knock it out of the two minutes guys. We're all podcasters over here, so ladies and if you're listening right now, what we're gonna do is really go over systems, processes, automations, delegations, how you guys could be willing and dealing in your own real estate businesses today. So hopefully we'll earn the next thirty to sixty minutes with you, and you'll leave Mike and Dan a five star rating and a review that they very much so deserve. My name is Brian Lubin. In the beginning, I graduated college, went into a fortune 500 sales organization, corporate America. Got the golden handcuffs to a degree where I was making a $250,000 a year in my early 20s, things were great, life was good, until it was no longer. I looked at my boss's boss, which I recommend as a first step for anybody that's listening to this show that is unsure if you want to stay in that job or if you want to leave. I saw who that person was and although great guy, nicest guy, did not want his lifestyle. Unhealthy, face full of donuts, Zoom calls every fifteen minutes. I said, if I work my ass off for the five years, you're telling me that I am going to have less freedom and work more hours. Not fun for me. And I was asking the questions along the lines of how do I make 500,000? How do I make a million? How do I make 5,000,000?

Brian Luebben: [7:05] How do I make 10,000,000 a year? And those options were not available to me in that current position. So I began to plan my escape, and what ended up ensuing is I would be buying real estate over the next couple of years, very unsexy, the least sexy way to get started. I just bought a house a year, lived in one room, rented it out, did that for a couple of years, made a couple thousand bucks a month off of that, started up a podcast because I said, well, shit, dollars 4,000 a month to $20,000 a month, there's a difference here. Me just go ask all these financially free millionaires how they got financially free, and maybe some of it will rub off on me by luck and chance. Right? And so I started up the Action Academy podcast, started interviewing over now five seventy nine multi multi millionaires and a couple of billionaires, and it did in fact rub off. I started up a podcast business accidentally that ended up replacing that $20,000 a month income, quit my job in March 2022, and then did the next logical best thing, which is leave to go travel full time around the world for eight months, which is now what I currently do, is half the time I'm in Austin, Texas, half the time I'm traveling as we build our new company from 0 to $10,000,000 a year in top line revenue.

Mike DeHaan: [8:17] Perfect, I love it. It's a lot

Dan Austin: [8:18] in three minutes.

Mike DeHaan: [8:19] That is,

Brian Luebben: [8:20] We gotta narrow that's it down man. I like to just keep it short and sweet whenever we take it woo woo, we bring it down to the tactics man. We got it rehearsed.

Dan Austin: [8:28] One thing I wanna highlight though because I resonated a lot with when you were talking about looking at your boss's boss, If you spent any time in corporate America, one thing you do realize is it's almost counterintuitive. The higher up you go, the more they own your soul, right? That your boss is in more meetings, your boss's boss is in more meetings. If you're a VP of a company, they expect you to be like living and breathing that business because you know, you are an essential person to that business, but in entrepreneurship, the higher up you go, the more successful you get, the less you have to be in your business, the less you have to give away your soul.

Mike DeHaan: [9:01] Mhmm. Yeah.

Brian Luebben: [9:02] Yeah. And if we wanna start somewhere, a cool place to start is what me and Mike were just talking about with like the perfect week exercise. Yeah. Because there's so many different strategies that you guys talk about on the show, which I resonate, and I'm a long time listener of the show myself, so I know what you guys talk about, and we share so many different strategies. But one thing that's important across all of them is most entrepreneurs, especially the ones that even me and you know, Mike, they don't, if you ask them, what's a perfect week look like for you in your business, or in your personal life, they couldn't answer. And this is something that I just went through, and what happens is, if you guys get and accomplish everything that you want, and maybe you built the wholesaling business, or you buy cash flowing businesses, or start a land flipping company, or something like that, and then you get your freedom, if you don't establish that, what we're about to talk about, then you'll replace a forty hour a week, hour a week work week with a hundred hour a week hellhole. And then you just wonder what happened. It's insane.

Mike DeHaan: [9:58] Yeah. I mean and funny thing is is I remember when you started exploring this, I don't know maybe about a month ago, and you called me and you asked me what my perfect week was, and you're right, I didn't have an answer for you. Like I had no idea at all. And I mean to be fair, I do, somebody that likes working. Am somebody that gets a lot of fulfillment, especially because we are building and I can see the exponential upside for the business, which I know you're experiencing right now as well. But after a while it does start to burn out. And I think where it gets really tricky is when people are in that solopreneur phase, where they're not necessarily having asymmetrical upside for the work that they put in. And that is where people are in that mindset, they're not doing anything intentional to build out that perfect week. And so I guess from your perspective as someone who has now done this, what is the best way to start with that? Are you looking at staff right away, is it systematizing everything, is it internal reflection, what are your strategies for figuring that out?

Brian Luebben: [10:52] So first I would start in the macro and kinda chisel your way down. So what I did, and like you just said, I called a couple people that were kinda in the trenches with me, around the same revenue marks because you guys are a couple steps ahead, and I'm like, okay, you're kind of right in the hunt with me. You know, you're not doing $20,000,000 a year where you have probably a manager and another level of management on top of that, So we're pretty in the trenches. So first things first is I'm like, what am I optimizing for? And that's a very, very important question everybody on here needs to ask. And a lot of you guys are optimizing for cash, short term cash inflections, otherwise, you know, you'd be doing a multi family business, that's why you're flipping wholesaler, you want that cash, cash flow. So that's what we're going for. So for me, I wanna optimize for heavy cash flow. The game of equity and the game of cash flow are two completely separate games. I'm not playing the equity game right now, I'm 100% unapologetically playing the game of cash flow. So I'm like how do I generate as much as humanly possible? So that's number one, how do I generate cash flow as much as possible? Question number two is, how do I generate cash flow anywhere that I can operate a Mac and a mic? Anywhere with a WiFi connection? Travel is insanely important to me, and when I do settle down, get married, have kids, gonna continue to be an important facet of our life is travel.

Brian Luebben: [12:12] So I am intentional today about building the systems and the processes that allow me to live that dream life later. So then what happens is now you have the vision of what you want it to be, so you can say yes and you can say no to different business opportunities and strategies. And then I begin to build the org chart that supports that. That's the difficult part that everyone skips across. They just talk about hiring a master operator, pisses me off, I'm gonna get you a rockstar. Right? Yeah. I want a rockstar, I'm just saying, We'll just put a rockstar up, or I'll buy this business, I'll just put a rockstar in there. Yeah, I'll start this wholesaling company, we'll just get a rockstar in there. All So then I'm building out the org chart, and then it goes all the way down to the really, really difficult part, which is the reason that I called Mike, and it's a problem slash puzzle that everyone on here is going to want to run into at some point in your business, which is delegate, delegate, delegate, automate, automate, automate, I'm doing this stuff, I did the thing, I built the systems, the team is running without me, what the hell do I do in my business? And so that is where I find myself, to where a friend of mine that had an exit from his company at 31 years old, he's sitting on $27,000,000 in cash, and he gave a phrase to me that really shook me and he goes, oh dude, he's like, you're in optimize, you need to move to maximize. And I go, holy shit, what does that mean? And he goes, in the beginning, you build your systems, automations and delegations to build the machine in your business that produces the result that you're looking for, and that you maximize the thing that you specifically are great at, the value that you specifically bring to the business. If that's making it rain, that's gonna be sales for you if it's marketing. So for me, that thing is podcasting.

Brian Luebben: [13:59] We did the numbers, and we dissected every single revenue stream and every single marketing channel of our business, and we realized that when I statistically get on a podcast, then there is a 17% spike in intro calls the following week, every single time. And we compared that to every marketing channel. So how you guys can apply, and I'll get off my soapbox here listening, is in your wholesaling business, in your real estate business, dissect every single one of your lead generation channels, figure out which one is producing upsized returns, and quadruple down on that thing. And then watch how easy your life becomes. Same thing with your customers, fire your worst ones, and then your best ones, your best leads, your best people, go 10 times on that type of customer.

Mike DeHaan: [14:42] Yeah. Yeah. That's super huge, Ray. And that's, it's impressive how much you know your numbers, especially with the way that you are doing your marketing and your brand, because it's so outward facing. Like when you're doing wholesale marketing, right, it's very targeted. You're sending mail, you have like the outputs that you're sending, and then you can measure them coming back. So I guess, are you looking at booked calls, are you looking at audience growth, kind of all the above?

Brian Luebben: [15:09] So at the macro we're looking at audience growth, which we call like top of funnel, and the same thing can apply to your real estate business. Anybody that's, let's call a spade a spade, an online presence helps you no matter what you're doing. With you guys too, as a funnel into the podcast, into the funnel of the ecosystem. The game in short is how do I use short form to get eyeballs to my long form which is podcasts and YouTube to actually build a relationship form business partnerships at scale with my people. So that is what we do. We're not big on YouTube but we're big on the podcast and so all of the eyeballs that I generate are just to bring to my long form and actually provide value. And then at that point we're looking at a couple of key metrics, we're looking at calls on calendar, we're looking at percent qualified calls, So we're looking at, okay, so we got a lead, what percent of these leads are qualified, and then what percent of qualified leads, and general, and gross leads close? So I'll tell you in my numbers, 37.2% of gross leads close, and 61.4% of qualified leads close. So a qualified lead constitutes as somebody that comes into our business, we submit an offer to them, we say hey, you are a fit for what we do, here's an invitation to join the group. And then so 61.4% of those people say yes.

Brian Luebben: [16:28] Nice. You just back the numbers,

Mike DeHaan: [16:30] and

Brian Luebben: [16:31] then it goes all into cost of acquisition, and cost of CAC, like cost to acquire a customer, which we can get into as well. It's the same thing with lead flow for your wholesale business.

Mike DeHaan: [16:40] I mean, it's literally the same model, right? Same thing. We have our cost per lead, cost per acquisition, our average deal size will vary a little bit, because you're just fixed, know, because you have your community. But, no, that's really interesting. So when it comes to figuring it out I guess about yourself, you obviously came from a sales background.

Brian Luebben: [16:57] Mhmm.

Mike DeHaan: [16:58] You went through kind of the phase of building it out. What would you recommend for somebody that is in kinda like that balance of where they're still probably wearing a lot of hats? You know, and there's probably things that they can't necessarily measure quite like that, right? So like they're managing flips, they're managing their own rentals, they're doing their own acquisitions, they're setting up their own marketing and data, everybody have like a VA that helps, or like a lead manager that helps set up some of those things. But do you think that they should be focusing on like their preference as well, or is it purely just like the, they need to figure out how to do the numbers, and that's kind of on them, and that's part of being an entrepreneur?

Brian Luebben: [17:35] I don't think you can escape the numbers. I think that you need to know your numbers, show me a business owner that doesn't know his numbers, and I'll show you a business owner that's gonna fail.

Mike DeHaan: [17:44] Right, yeah, totally sure.

Brian Luebben: [17:46] The numbers aren't something that you can delegate. There's three things, there's a wonderful book. Oh, I have it with me. A CEO Only Does Three Things by Trey Taylor. Mhmm. And this is like an executive book. It was recommended to me by the CEO of Keller Williams, Mark Willis, and their entire C suite reads this, but you can use this in your real estate business as well. So the three things a CEO does are set the vision, hire, attract and retain top talent, and make sure that there's enough cash in the bank. Yeah. That's the only job of the CEO. So when you go back to your hiring models, like this is, and I'm saying this not as someone, please guys don't use me as an example of hiring mastery, use me as an example of a guy that's going through the trenches right now, and I'm two steps ahead of y'all. Like I just am like really, really deep into this stuff right now, and it's really dollar cost productive in my business. So for us, it starts with the vision for the company. So where are we taking this company? And then that is what attracts the talent in the beginning. And Gary Keller, like Keller Williams, I'm not related with Keller Williams whatsoever, I've never been an agent, I'm never gonna be an agent, but I like how Gary Keller's brain works. And so he used a lot of, his big philosophy in his business was reducing salary as much as possible and keeping as much compensation variable as he could, because they bootstrapped the company. So that's what I do, and so for my first couple of hires, I needed to make sure that the vision of the company supported their vision and I could fit their vision within mine, and you guys can do that from square one with your companies. You can say, okay, I'm gonna wholesale two houses, you know, a year. Not many people are gonna get on board.

Brian Luebben: [19:34] Two houses a month maybe. Okay, I wanna do like 20 houses a month. You need to build a team for that, and you need to have an entire operation, and you need to figure out what that is yielding to the partner that you're gonna be partnering with. And so we start with that, and then we build out the org chart next, and this is kind of the EOS traction model. I believe you guys run traction, like EOS, right?

Mike DeHaan: [19:54] Mhmm.

Brian Luebben: [19:54] Yeah. So then EOS, then you build out your org chart, and you say, okay, here's what I want my org chart to look like at the end of this year, here's what I want it to look like at the end of three years, here's what I want it to look like at the end of five years. And you put all those positions out and you say, here's how much that position should probably cost, and then you just back in the revenue that you need to produce to be able to afford those positions one by one, and then you wear all the hats in the beginning, and then at one by one you delegate out the hats that you're not best at wearing first. So the first hat you probably delegate as admin, back at back of the house kind of stuff, and then it can start going into like lead generation and revenue generation positions. I'll pause there, that's just what we did that worked for us.

Dan Austin: [20:38] That's a lot. Mike and I have gone through that process, so I know when you're saying it, I'm like, that's a lot of effort and work, and you have to do it Mhmm. Because it is critical.

Brian Luebben: [20:46] Nobody talks about it. I know, it's not

Dan Austin: [20:48] sexy, Org charts, yeah, you know, we all leave corporate America to get away from org charts, but in reality, you still need them. The question I have for you, because Mike and I have struggled with this in the past, I know others that are, especially when they're going from solopreneur to like entrepreneur, you had made a good point about variable compensation, which Mike and I are a 100% on board with, especially like sales staff, you have to do that. Mhmm. But you also mentioned hiring admin staff out first. How have you and do you have any advice for people on, can you do variable compensation for people that are not in a sales role or a revenue generating role? And is that a successful way to hire people or pay people?

Brian Luebben: [21:24] Yeah, so admin, you're gonna mess up 90 times,

Mike DeHaan: [21:27] so And hire

Brian Luebben: [21:29] I'm not saying this as knock on virtual staff, I have virtual staff that have been with me for a couple years now that are rock stars now, but we had to like groom them into that, and you get really good at building systems and processes. I can say these things from the perspective of, in the beginning I would view this as boring, but now, like, when I was in the position of a lot of the people listening to this podcast, this was the podcast I was begging for.

Mike DeHaan: [21:54] And I

Brian Luebben: [21:55] couldn't freaking find it anywhere, and I had to read so many books, and talk to so many people to figure this shit out. And I'm like, wait a second, why am I working one hundred and twenty hours a week now? Who knows? Like this makes no sense to me. I thought this entrepreneurship thing was supposed to be financial freedom. Like what's happening here? Yeah, yep. And so the admin, you could hire them for 4 to $6 an hour, you could really have them for like $200 a week, and that's where I would begin and flesh out your systems, and then eventually you'll graduate to the point where you need more like in person or domestic talent, and then you can make the adjustments as necessary. But we do bonus incentives for any salary positions, and those are off of three KPIs. Every single position in our company only has three KPIs, the ROCs that they call in EOS.

Dan Austin: [22:41] Yeah, That's awesome. I love that too, Mike and I have implemented a lot of that in our business. The KPIs I have seen, it makes the management of people a lot easier because quite frankly, lot of people don't wanna be a leader. Just wanna run the company and they don't wanna have to deal with the people problems. Well, you have to have KPIs and expectations for your staff, and that's how they get better. I have a question for you on, when it comes to the KPIs, it comes to staff, you said you hired virtual to figure it out. And I think the point you're making is, they're amazing staff, they're just lower costs, so your mistakes are less costly.

Brian Luebben: [23:13] Is that kinda what your point there is? Correct, yeah. I went through six, and I'll play devil's advocate here, I went through six executive assistants virtually, until I landed on the one that I have right now that's been with me for about thirty days, and she crushes it. Nice. I pay her like a salary salary, she's making about 50,000 a year, Where's she She's she's from Peru, but she also like lived in Japan for six years, she's trilingual, she has her masters.

Mike DeHaan: [23:40] Yeah.

Brian Luebben: [23:41] She's like living in Europe, and I'm like, okay, no, you're like talent talent, I need to find a spot for you. Perfect. Yeah. And so, and now Nice.

Mike DeHaan: [23:49] Yeah, and that's something that we've kinda learned the hard way, I think a lot of people do as well is that you have to cycle through people like that. It's funny, I should recheck these numbers. It was a while back where Dan and I did a show and we were talking about hiring. And we looked and over the four years that we've been working together, we've had over 50 people come to our business that no longer work for us. Yeah. Right? In four years. So that's the churn rate that we've had. And I don't know if you've seen this same pattern, something that I find with real entrepreneurs, like Erin Butch Stege, who I know you're good friends with down there in Austin, there's several other people that are like this. The weird transition almost looks, it's hard for people that are in employee mindset to understand, but you realize that employees are an expendable resource. You know, as like a business owner, you don't wanna view human beings that way, it's kind of against our nature.

Brian Luebben: [24:36] But

Mike DeHaan: [24:36] realistically, almost every single person in a business can be replaced if they need to, and if they are not doing what you need them to do, it's honestly not even that hard to find good people right now, if you have a good value proposition for them.

Brian Luebben: [24:49] Right.

Mike DeHaan: [24:50] You know, and that's the key though, is you have to have a good value proposition, because you also get so many people that are saying, like you said before, they want that rock star, like I want a rock star that's gonna work for no money, and only upside in a business that I have no experience growing, and no track record of doing successful. Right? And it's just a funny mindset shift he likes to go through.

Brian Luebben: [25:09] This is another book that's super awesome, is Buy Back Your Time by Dan And I just interviewed Dan on the podcast, and he has a quotient that people can go through, and I forget the actual name of it, but it was to the point where you're writing out like things that, oh I kinda remember the gist of it. So where it's like things that bring you energy and things that make you money. So on the right side of the quadrant there's four sections, and on the left side of the quadrant it's okay, no energy, and on the right side it's a bunch of energy, and then on the top is a lot of money, bottom is no money. So bottom left corner is the admin corner. So that's gonna be all your stuff that's no energy, not revenue producing. In the top is, this is revenue producing, but zaps my energy. So for me that's like booking podcasts, scheduling, making the marketing material, making content, stuff like that. Bottom right is, this brings me a bunch of energy but no money, and then that's gonna be your hobbies, recreation, wakesurfing, golfing, going to seminars, Top stuff like right is your zone of genius, that's what makes you a bunch of money and brings you a bunch of energy. So it's like, as a business owner, and guys, even if you're doing like one or two properties a frickin' month right now, like you guys can do this stuff. Do the test, take the time to say, what am I really wonderful at in my business?

Brian Luebben: [26:28] What am I naturally great at, and how can I be exceptional at it? And what do I really struggle with. Because knowing that will help you influence your your team that you build, and the automations.

Mike DeHaan: [26:39] Yeah. How regularly do you go back and redo these kind of exercises? Because obviously as you grow, things will change on a regular basis. So like looking at your ideal schedule, looking at your org chart, looking at you know your projections, things like that. You say one year, three year timeline. I know you've been through this, you probably had a one year timeline and you've blown that out of the water. And that's a very, very common thing that happens with people when they start going full time into business. Hey, we really appreciate being a listener of the collecting keys podcast. Did you know that we also are on social media and on YouTube? You should go and shoot us a follow on those as well. You can find both Dan and I on Instagram. I am at Mike underscore invests. Dan is at investor man Dan. You can also find short clips from the show at collecting keys podcast on Instagram. And if you wanna see our faces talking while you're listening to this show or you wanna check out some of our crazy animated adventures we've been putting together into some funny little web cartoons that sort of show the crazy stories that guests tell on the show, then you should go over to YouTube and check out the collecting keys channel.

Mike DeHaan: [27:43] Shoot us a subscribe over there. It really helps continue to grow our audience. We really, really appreciate it. Well, anyways, enjoy the rest of show you guys. We appreciate you all. How regularly are you redoing the org chart and planning out your ideal day, you know, looking at kinda like the bigger picture like you've been talking about, looking at what zaps your energy versus what needs to be done? Because it's gotta change as your business grows, as your team grows, as you personally wanna do something different maybe?

Brian Luebben: [28:08] I think at least, at minimum, once a year. Like I don't think this is something that, I think this is just really sucky operational work that you have to get done to like move to the next thing. And so that's how I viewed it. And then when it comes to like all the rest of this stuff, we do our quarterly sprints, like our thirty, sixty, ninety's, that's what we're really focusing on. So we're ratcheting down every single quarter, we operate like again in EOS, and also twelve Week Year by Brian Moran, it's a wonderful book. That's what we run. So we're running a 12 year, and then we're taking that thirteenth week of the quarter, and we're using that to get goals and goalposts set for the next quarter. We're looking at our company goals quarterly, we're reviewing them weekly, and then for these exercises it's more template formation. So it's kinda what everything, just like the org chart and this type of stuff, maybe once a year, twice a year. Don't think it needs that much attention. What do you guys do?

Mike DeHaan: [29:08] Yeah, so well yes, with us we've changed a lot over the past couple of years, and the reason I asked this question too is, I feel like a lot of people when they first get into entrepreneurship, they do it like once, and they don't really do it again.

Brian Luebben: [29:20] And they forget about it?

Mike DeHaan: [29:21] Yeah. They forget about And it forever, so what we kinda just honestly on like a quarterly basis, where Dan and I, not even business wise, we decide what we wanna do. Know, and we kinda have that dictate everything else. Whereas a lot of people they tend to go what does the business look like? And that's almost to me more like W2 mindset. Looking at their five year goal like it's a fixed track, understanding that you could 10x or 50x next year if you do things a certain way if And you really want so I'm always just curious to see, especially in early phase, how much people are pivoting and changing because it varies a lot.

Dan Austin: [29:55] And I would add to that Mike, so like as an entrepreneur you mature, and I know Mike and I have made a lot of maturing. Mhmm. I know we didn't come into business together five years ago to do what we're doing now. We didn't have the vision, we didn't even have the capacity for this vision. We were like, let's get passive income, we're real estate guys, you know what I mean? And then we kinda just like, we're kinda good at this, and we had to kinda figure out what we're good at, and where our value add is. And honestly our value add at this point, I think we would both agree is how to scale businesses. Mhmm. You know, we've taken what, in an industry where most people can't get through the glass ceiling, and we've like blown it apart and kinda done several things, and realized that buying real estate isn't necessarily our superpower, which we maybe thought it was, it was actually the business around that. Mhmm. And so as you mature, things change, and then Mike and I, and I'll add to this and I'll make the point, is like even this year, we do this, like we have the plan, and then by the end of January we're like, holy shit, just blew that out the water. What do we do now? And so the challenge becomes is, do you rigidly stick to it because you said that's what you're gonna do, or if you blow it out of the water, do you move the goalposts again?

Brian Luebben: [30:56] Yeah, so I mean, it's like, we'll just call a spade a spade, like this is just the game that we're all gonna play for the rest of our lives. That's right, that's right. You know, and that's why I wrote my frickin' book, I wrote From Passive to Passionate, because passive income is the cool stuff, right? It gets you financially free to now focus on like what's the best bang for my buck I can do with these years that I have on this floating spinning rock through this infinite universe? So it's just like now, it's like, when the games that you play and the games that you choose to play are the most, that's the most important question that you're ever gonna ask. So like, the game of marriage, who am I marrying, you know, the game of health, what am I gonna do with my body for the rest of my life, and the game of business is you can't win any of these games. You can't win marriage, you can't win health, you can't win business. So it's like, how do I change the rules of the game because you control the rules? How do I twist the rules of the game so that I can enjoy playing this for the rest of my life? That's what I do with mine, is I'm just like, dude, I'm gonna do this forever. So what I do is I just try to make the goal as huge as I can on a three year to five year time horizon and be very, very flexible on my approach. So I'm the side of the fence post that's, you know, hey, let's set this possible goal and tackle it in 30 different languages, you know, as opposed to, okay, let's this this is 10%, 15% above what we did last quarter. Like, let's try that. So like right now, like, Mike, you may have seen the vision that I just recently posted with the Walt Disney mind map, which we can get into in a second, but like now that I'm like, okay, here's how we do 50,000,000 a year. And we just hit our first million, so I'm like, here's how we do 50.

Brian Luebben: [32:40] And it's like written out, like step by step, I'm like, okay, we're gonna do this vertical, this vertical, this vertical one at a time. And that's just fun for me. Like, it's really interesting. And what I'm alluding to is Walt Disney created all of his companies on this giant mind map where he has all of them circled and he has all these lines intersecting between each other on this page that he did in 1957, and now that's become the empire that it has today after his death. Yeah. So it's really interesting.

Mike DeHaan: [33:08] Yeah, and I really like that passionate income, you know, that you've coined. I don't know if you came up with that or you got that from somebody, I but actually did. Did you? That's all it.

Brian Luebben: [33:17] Sounds me, that's why I wrote it on the book and copyrighted it.

Mike DeHaan: [33:20] That you know, there you go. Yeah because that's really valid term right? It's something that I don't think people can understand when they're feeling trapped in their w two and they don't feel like they're in control of their own time. Is that people look at entrepreneurs and they think like, well that person's a workaholic. But you're really not because it kinda becomes your identity, know? Even when I'm traveling at different places, one of the coolest things I've ever done for me personally was when I was on a cruise on the Nile in Egypt, and I signed closing docs on a flip we made like $47 on.

Brian Luebben: [33:54] That's sick.

Mike DeHaan: [33:55] Right? I was like, that's pretty rad. I don't care how you feel about working, that's a cool experience, and the fact that that was completely sort of self created is so unbelievably fulfilling, is the definition of like passionate income at that point, right? Yeah. And so I guess getting to that phase, I don't know if it's like a generational thing that we have all being like a little bit younger, I feel like it's a new thing, but it's starting to catch on, and that's really what you've been able to show and grow with the Action Academy stuff you've been doing, which is awesome. Yeah. So with like the mind map stuff you're talking about, let's dive into that a little bit, because I know that's something that you're you're super intentional about, you know, promoting and planning out, and you're very open about it, and I think it's an interesting concept.

Brian Luebben: [34:34] Yeah, so it just, and what you're talking about with passionate income is really interesting, because the first belief that you need to slay the first dragon you need to slay, is that financial freedom is the end of the journey, when the reality is financial freedom's the beginning. Yeah. So like life begins at financial freedom. So when you change your thought to that, then you'll say, oh of course I'm gonna just become financially free in two to three years. I think anybody starting from zero, if they're around the right people, taking the right actions, doing the right stuff, could be financially free within two to three years. From zero. And we see that happen thousands of times. It's documented, So you don't need to be emotional about it or wish upon a star. You can literally just look to the thousands of people on freaking YouTube that have documented their journey.

Mike DeHaan: [35:17] That was a good Disney pun, by the way. I just gotta say that.

Brian Luebben: [35:19] That's adorable.

Mike DeHaan: [35:21] Wish upon a star.

Brian Luebben: [35:22] Yeah. Wish upon a star. That was unintentional. Shout out Walt. Yeah, Don't sue us. But nah, so it's like that's the first thing, and then once you realize you're only two years away from financial freedom, then you're like, okay, well what the hell's next? Because you think, oh, I'm gonna go sit on the beach now, and I'm gonna relax and sip my Thais. Dude, no you won't. Yeah. Like I did it. I have already lived everyone's dream. So when I left that job, went and lived in Mykonos and I lived in the Greek Islands for a month, and I was 27 when I did that, so I went and I was in Greece, did Mykonos, Santorini, and Crete for a month, and then I went for the next seven months and traveled around Europe. Then when Schengen rule hits, which is ninety days, then I went to Brazil, and I moved in Brazil for a couple of months, and did Latin America. So I've already done the thing that people wanna do, and I'm here to tell you a soft answer. So the answer is, what could you get paid to do? What work can you get paid to do? What game can you play, to Dan's point, where you would already happily do it for free, and as the Japanese call it, your Ikigai, it's the intersection of what the market wants, what the world needs, what you love to do, and what you can get paid for. So when you combine all of those, it's your Ikigai, which is your meaning of life in Japanese. And so that's passionate income. So like for me, that's podcasting and that's doing what we do in Action Academy.

Brian Luebben: [36:40] Our entire business model's very ass backwards, it's just give all the stuff away for free and sell the implementation. That's just what we do. I'm like, okay, the best information, like, here you go, here's how to do it, but you You're not going to. But we'll kick your ass in here if you come. Yeah, yeah. So you asked about the mind map. So how I have it positioned is, I have like different corners of the map are different businesses, and I have seven, eight and six circled around them, and I can send y'all a copy of it too to send to people if they wanna see it, or I can post it. But it starts with the community, so we start with the podcast, and the podcast, if I wanted to, could be a 6 figure, 7 figure business. It's already been that. I made $167,424 from affiliates in 2022 from the podcast. So it's already been a 6 figure business. So then that leads to the community, which is already a 7 figure business, recurring. So then that is the direct business from there. And then we created an events business for international events called Sex of the World, and we I've done 400,000 in that with one event launch. Wow. So I'm like, okay, we just need to do one more event, we're a 7 figure company there. So now granted that one's not recurring, but it's still gonna be a multi million dollar company. So then from the events business, we said, well wouldn't it just make sense for us to take this profit and reinvest it into the properties that we're staying at? So then that takes us down to the international real estate fund, which we're like, okay, cool. So in Sexton World, we're also just gonna start buying boutique hotels and these luxury properties that we're staying at.

Brian Luebben: [38:19] That will be an 8 figure business, then we'll be able to run those as boutique hotels, event centers, destinations, masterminds, and then also rent them back to ourselves. So then that's the real estate play, and then you go over to the other left hand corner, which is the business and real estate fund, that we can almost just about fully subscribe internally just from our community members, and then you go up to the top left, which is the YouTube and media. So YouTube, I think we can grow that to a 7 figure company through advertisements and sponsorships. Publishing is attached to that, which is another 6 figure business that we're already running from the book that I have today, and then you also have like the email, the newsletter, and then they all funnel into each other, which takes you all the way back down to the bottom where we're gonna start vertically integrating smaller service companies into Action Academy. So it'll look like bookkeeping companies, legal companies, social media marketing companies, virtual assistant companies, buying those and absorbing them into our ecosystem. So each one of those, the intention is to buy 6 to 7 figures of SDE on each one of those businesses. Yeah. And so when you combine them all, they all feed into each other. Then I'll have the operators to choose from, for my ecosystem within the community, and then I can place those people where they need to be, so it's for Action Academy by Action Academy.

Mike DeHaan: [39:43] Mhmm. Wow. Yeah, to me it's like a mind mapper, but it's like vertically integrating the And core being the travel. And travel, yeah, right.

Dan Austin: [39:54] So that's passions, right? And so what I'm seeing this, I'm seeing, and Mike is saying vertically integrated, what I'm seeing is like this pillar, which is like your passion, and then all of these arms coming off that pillar are the things that are working towards that, they all feed into each other, they all can grow together, scale together. Yeah, exponentially. Yeah,

Brian Luebben: [40:11] and so that started with the events business, which became an accidental company where we just spent $102,000 on the weekend for our Cabo event, and while we were there, we stayed in this $12,700,000 and $8,400,000 property next door to each other, and I was just like, well holy crap, why don't we just figure out how to buy these frickin' things? Yeah, that's true. You know? I'm like, wouldn't this be frickin' cool to own this real estate? And I was like, this is what I wanna do. This is really fun for me, and I get to travel and fly first class out there for free, and be in those houses. A blast, dude.

Dan Austin: [40:46] That is awesome. We like our own little Keys Con events we've done. Mike and I Yeah. Have definitely Nothing on scale that you're doing, and they're awesome, but I wanna make a point of clarification here, because you said a lot of stuff. It sounds like a lot

Mike DeHaan: [40:57] of work, and a lot

Dan Austin: [40:58] of passion, and you talked about financial freedom right before we dove into the mind map. Mhmm. I think for a lot of people, financial freedom, at least especially our listeners, and just people that have come to the real estate industry in general, they think financial freedom means you have enough passive income to pay your bills and now you're free. Not work. It's like, passive income though is so hard, to, truly passive income is so hard. Even Mike and I, we don't have enough real estate to pay our bills, but we have a lot of other sources of income. So could you tell me what financial freedom means to you and what you're talking in the Action Academy?

Brian Luebben: [41:33] Yeah, so there's three levels of financial freedom. So there's three levels of cash flow to clarify I talk about, is survive, arrive and thrive. Another framework that I created in the book. So survive is how much do you need for your baseline expenses? And again, this is a living, breathing monster, right? It changes with kids, when you get married and upgrade the house. So in the beginning you have survive, how much do I need to pay the bills, make sure that the mortgage is taken care of and there's food on the table? The baseline. So arrive is, okay, now I've got some discretionary. We can go out to eat with the family, we can still go on the trip every once in a while, and now this is more normalcy, right? Thrive is, holy shit, just replaced my, you know, 6 figure income, I've got that 10 to $20,000 a month coming in, where I can not only live off of what I'm bringing in, but I can save on it, right? So that is my three levels of cash flow that we do because our business is we help 6 figure employees become 7 figure entrepreneurs. Through commercial real estate and business acquisition, Mike's actually very active in the group. He comes in and helps a lot and there's a lot of interlap between our communities where a lot of our guys come and are members of y'alls as well and they say really, really great things, Which is why Mike's one of the only people that we partner with, and he's witnessed me kicking other people out. Well because I'm very stringent on it.

Brian Luebben: [42:51] So financial freedom for me is having the ability to work on what you want, when you want, where you want with who you want. And so for me, when I was traveling, I was just lost floating in this nothingness, blob of nothingness, you know. And here's what happens that nobody talks about, but you guys will understand. So when you're a winner, you enjoy winning. And when you are no longer winning, you are no longer a winner. So when I was traveling, my identity was completely decimated, because I'm not doing anything. Like when you're the type of person that goes to the gym, you're that person, you're a healthy person. You know? And when you're not going to the gym, you're like, who am I now? And so that was what I would do. I was like, dude, like, I'm supposed to do something, I just don't know what it is. And what happened for me organically was just getting 30 to 50 messages a week on my Instagram that had maybe 4,000 followers at the time. Are you doing How are you traveling? How are you pulling this off? So I said, okay, cool, I'll make an online course. I'll be one of those guys. Spent a month on it, made sure it was a good product. Coached a 100 people for free, and I was like, let me ask you guys what you need, like what do you need help with? And everybody said the same thing, they're like, we'd like the confidence, the clarity, the community, and the capital to scale, you know? So we don't know what we don't know, so we've not taken action.

Brian Luebben: [44:12] We don't have METORs capital partners around us, we don't know who to operate with, don't have clarity on what that looks like or where we're heading, and we don't have people around us. So, and like in capital to pull the deals off. So I like okay, me solve each one of those. Made an online course, made $100,000 in forty eight hours from an email that I sent in Floridopolis, Brazil. Then what we did is, like a month later, I asked everyone what their favorite part of the course was, and they said, the people. So I said, oh, shit, we're the wrong business model. So we scrapped the course and we transitioned it into a community. So those original people got lifetime access to the community, and we made it a recurring mastermind and focused on the people. And that was in 2023, and now we do 1,200,000 top line for that business. And so, that was where it began, and now we have people quitting their jobs left and right, and now they're hitting financial freedom, and it's the coolest, most fulfilling thing I've ever done in my life. Wow. It makes you emotional, like we had a woman that's nine months freaking pregnant join, because she was like, I've got eight Airbnbs, and I'll be damned if I'm having somebody raise my kid, like I need to scale and do these things faster, and I'm looking for that community to get this stuff done, and same thing with you guys and your community.

Mike DeHaan: [45:24] Mhmm. It's funny, people on the internet they always kinda like to joke about like if you're so successful, why do you coach people, why do you have this community?

Brian Luebben: [45:32] Why do you sell it? Exactly.

Mike DeHaan: [45:34] It's the fulfillment honestly, right? Right. Like our business is established enough that I don't get excited about doing deals, Right? We have 23 closings scheduled for the month of March, it'll be our biggest month ever, I feel nothing about it.

Dan Austin: [45:45] It's expected that we do that.

Mike DeHaan: [45:46] It's expected, right? Needs to But be when we have like that new person that comes in the group, or that guy who's been struggling for three or four months and like gets his first like Their first deal? $20.30, $40,000 check, and like their world perspective has just changed. Even just thinking about it, get like an endorphin rush. Yep. We have that happen every single month. There's like a couple new people that cross that threshold.

Brian Luebben: [46:09] Totally.

Mike DeHaan: [46:09] And that's honestly like the most fulfilling thing that you can do. Mhmm. Right? Like more so than growing your own business, guess, unless you're like a real narcissist and you just like to see your

Dan Austin: [46:17] own numbers going up more

Mike DeHaan: [46:18] so than anything else, but hey, it's each their own.

Dan Austin: [46:21] Well, the other thing too, and Brian, I think you can agree to this, is like when you create a community, like, we like our community, like, we want those people, because sometimes you can't have that in your immediate area, so that community, for you selfishly too is probably, it's fun. You like being around those people because you're bringing in people that are like you or wanna be like you or in that circle of influence and it just is enjoyable.

Brian Luebben: [46:41] Yeah, and for us, we kick people out all the time. So when you pay, you're not like guaranteeing in the spot. We'll give you your money back and kick you out if you're not doing anything. You gotta earn it. And so like that's what's super fun in ours is like, by design, like the whole thing doesn't work anymore as soon as you introduce person A to person B and they don't know if they wanna take that call. So like that's when it stops working. So you need to make sure every single person that is in there is on the money, and that's why we have the policies in place that we do, where it's like if you're not doing anything and you go through a two call application process and if you're not doing anything in sixty days you get kicked out.

Dan Austin: [47:20] Yeah, you guys live up to the name, Action Academy. Yeah.

Brian Luebben: [47:23] Yeah, and dude, I tell everybody on the pitch, I'm like, dude, don't need your freaking money, and that's the whole other thing is, I sold all my single family real estate, I'm sitting on cash right now. I've got enough cash today to not work for probably four years, and live the lifestyle that I'm living, and travel and do all the stuff, but like for me that just serves, I got it in a high yield savings account, I have it sitting there because I can keep my one thing by one thing, and it'd be very foolish of me to, I can say that mind map that I just talked about with a certain degree of maturity, because I just know so many people that have done that, and I understand that that's a ten year vision and that's not something I can do, like I can't do that all together, I have to do it one at a time. So the framework that I do is plant trees, manage orchards, so every single property, every single business, every single transaction is like a seed that you plant, and you have to protect it as it grows into a sapling, and then eventually it becomes a fruit bearing tree, and then at that point, it's a David Osborne ism, Mike would know from GoBundance. At that point when it's a fruit bearing tree, you're able to leave and plant the next seeds and grow the next trees and then hire somebody to manage the orchard when they're all full grown. So like for me, I do nothing right now besides the core business Action Academy until what, three to five million by the end of the year. At that point, I hire a CEO most likely, and I have somebody else that's running the ship while I pivot and transition my attention and energy into growing the international real estate portfolio. And then that's where all of a sudden we pull out a raise out of thin air and then we pop up to $20,000,000 of assets again in a year. So that's what

Mike DeHaan: [48:58] we do. Love it. I love it. Well, awesome man. Brian, I really appreciate you coming on the show dude. We are on time. You have a awesome vision. You know, you're obviously very very good at building out that community, that vision. The growth that you've had in two years is really awesome, man. And you have a ton of great tips in this episode for how to actually go about that and sort of like get your team excited. Because that's another thing too I'll definitely give you credit for, like a lot of credit for is you have built an internal unit of the people that are around you, that are 100% bought into your vision, man. You can see that with Caitlin and some of the other people that have really been involved in your community over there. And that's a skill. Like I don't know if you realize how much of a skill that is, but we talk to a lot of different entrepreneurs and business owners that don't have a single person that is that into the business, and you have like a whole flock of them. So really, really nice job with that.

Brian Luebben: [49:49] Oh, and they'll make millions of dollars too. Yeah, they'll be perfectly fine, and they know it. Like, Caitlin's eating fine. I talk about it on every single podcast now. She wants to take her kid, she has four kids, she wants to take them to world school all around, so now I'm like, how much does that cost? $85,000 cool. Let's give you a raise and figure out how we can make that happen next year.

Mike DeHaan: [50:10] Down. Love it, very cool. Awesome. Well, cool. Well Brian, really appreciate you coming on the show man. For people that want to check out all your stuff, I know we talked on a few different things on the show, but what are the best ways for people to get in contact with you and to hear what you have going on?

Brian Luebben: [50:23] Sweet, yeah, Action Academy podcast, that's where I ask more questions than shut up, I don't talk as much there, ironically. So five episodes a week, we've done it across 37 countries, seven time zones, five eighty nine millionaires, a couple billionaires. Mike has been on the show multiple times, and it's wonderful program. We help you replace corporate with cash flow, and we talk about business acquisition and commercial real estate. So check that out. All podcast platforms, The Action Academy podcast. We also wrote a book, From Passive to Passionate, How to Quit Your Job, Grow Your Wealth, Turn Your Passions into Profits. Everything we talk about on this podcast is documented step by step in the book, from the mental models, to the vision, to the org chart, to the hiring, and even to profit systems, and wholesaling and seller finance. It's all in the book, you can buy that on Amazon, and for the back end business, I don't even pitch that. If you listen to the content first, you like my free stuff, you'll like my paid stuff, so do my free stuff. That's it.

Mike DeHaan: [51:17] There you go. Easy enough. Go check out Action Academy guys, really really good show over there, and he has some very heavy hitters, he's not exaggerating at all. So really awesome content there, and then also shoot Brian a follow on Instagram brian lubin. You have a ton of great content you do there too. Wanna give you credit because you are one of the more prolific Instagrammers I've seen out there.

Brian Luebben: [51:36] Thanks, buddy.

Mike DeHaan: [51:36] So reach out to him, Check out his stuff. And Brian, thanks again for coming on the show. Thanks, Brian.

Brian Luebben: [51:42] Thanks again for having

Dan Austin: [51:42] me.

Mike DeHaan: [51:43] Thanks for listening everybody. We'll talk to you next week. See you.