Building And Balance: How to Thrive as a Hybrid Real Estate Professional with Aaron Ameen

Josh: Welcome to the wealth and yourself podcast, where we help people to design their ideal life and take control of their time and money. I’m your host, Josh St. Laurent. Today we’re joined by Aaron Ameen. Aaron is a hybrid real estate professional, seamlessly blending multiple professional roles to thrive as a real estate investor.

Alongside managing a full time position at a consulting firm, he and his wife acquired eight rental properties across three states in just six years, podcast.

Offering insights from his expansive portfolio. Aaron is also a business coach working with professionals looking to build rental real estate portfolios. Now based in Houston, Texas and expecting twins, Aaron continues to balance family work and real estate with finesse. Aaron, so glad you’re here.

Aaron: Thanks for having me, man. I really appreciate it.

Josh: Definitely. So for anyone listening who isn’t familiar with you and your work, can you tell us a little bit about you and your background and how you got to where you are today?

Aaron: Well, that intro summed it up pretty well, but yes, I’ll run through it a bit. By day, I work as a business manager at a management consulting firm based out of the Seattle area. I live in Houston, Texas though, so my position is fully remote. My wife and I have bought eight rental properties over the last six years.

Those are spread out across Washington, Nevada, and Iowa. We have a young daughter. She’s about to turn two. And then we have twins on the way, so I got a busy, busy life at home. And I also spend a lot of time writing about my experience building the real estate portfolio and balancing it with the career and family.

And I just recently launched a podcast on that same topic. I also work with a few clients. as a business coach helping people that are looking to kind of get their start in real estate. Specifically, my, kind of perfect client is someone who is working full time. They have, other things going on in life other than dropping everything and becoming real estate investors.

They want to learn how to do it, build systems that allow them to continue to thrive in their career. and balance their time such that they don’t sacrifice time with their family. it’s a little bit niche, but at the same time, it’s essentially trying to help enable people who are in a position similar to where I was five, six years ago and help them, you know, maybe take a shorter path and avoid some of the mistakes that I made.

So that’s me in a nutshell. And I’m happy to dive into whatever direction you want to go.

Josh: I want to get into the systems, you know, and the time management, especially because you have so much going on. And I I’m a big believer in building out systems that make your life easier, but I want to start from the top. And I’m curious, spurred you getting into real estate? Like what was the decision or the conversation like with your wife, for that very first property?

Aaron: it’s a combination of factors and I’ve always tried to pinpoint like what was the moment that made us switch from, just making our standard 401k contributions out of our paycheck to trying to take a more active kind of control of, where we’re investing our money. don’t have a singular moment, but what I will say is there’s a few different things at play.

One, my parents are real estate investors. They’ve invested. Since the early 2000s. So when I was growing up in the household, it was around me. I wouldn’t say I paid a ton of attention to it, but I was exposed to it. I saw them kind of ride the ups and downs. they own property in Southern California in the early 2000s, rode that all the way up.

And actually our whole family moved to Tennessee in 2007. And so they cashed out their California properties. It was Three properties in California turned into 11 in Knoxville, Tennessee but then of course, that’s where they were caught holding the bag when the recession hit and so I did watch them go through this and Come all the way back around they ended up, you know making it through that they waited it out We’re able to wait until the their portfolio value stabilized and they sold everything not at a gain but not at a loss And then they actually rebuilt a portfolio in the last seven or eight years in Washington State, which is where they live now and where I lived up until about a month ago.

So that was one factor. I watched, you know, their journey and took some inspiration from it. They were both very busy full time professionals as well, balancing a family. So that is certainly where I drew the inspiration that it was possible to do these things in tandem. You know, real estate is this very kind of it can be daunting if you look from the outside and think like, oh, there’s so much that goes into it, buying a house, lots of paperwork, lots of money flying around lots of headaches and hassle managing.

so yeah, watching them go through that was, helpful to see that it was possible. Now how did we actually end up wanting to do it? So I worked the first 10 years of my professional career in the concerts industry, learned so much. I had probably more fun than I should have had at a lot of times, but it was grueling.

It was really exhausting and the entertainment industry is very competitive and as such. It doesn’t pay very well, you know, for every junior level position, there’s about 200 people that are willing to take that job if you step aside. So the kind of way that industry works from a career pathing standpoint is you work as hard as you possibly can and grind it out and pray that some spot ahead of you opens up at some point.

And know, I wouldn’t say I played my career perfectly there, but I did work very hard and I put a lot into my job and ultimately I was, going to shows three or four nights a week and working my normal Monday through Friday office hours. And it was just, it was grueling. It took attacks.

I had a pretty slow and steady decline with my mental health of like I was starting to burn out and I adopted some pretty unhealthy habits. I hit a bit of bottom in 2019 and I actually did I’m, I’ve been more open about this recently, but I did a short, like inpatient rehab program for alcohol abuse.

And that was kind of like where I, I hit my low moment where motivation was at the lowest. I felt like I was in a dead end career. We were living in Vegas at the time, so that might explain the alcohol thing a little better. we weren’t sure what was next. My wife and I had just recently been married.

Our relationship was very strong. We knew we wanted to build a family together, but it was hard. She worked in nonprofit and I was working this not particularly lucrative entertainment job. And so our financial futures felt very uncertain. So with that said, I recaptured quite a lot of energy coming out of that.

That bottom and all that energy that I was previously misdirecting towards my, vices and towards resentment, really I turned it and I, I applied a new focus and that focus for me ended up being laying the final financial foundation for my family’s future. So I took great pride in trying to.

Chart out a path for us. We knew we wanted to have kids soon. I had gotten sober. That was a big step I was determined that if I stayed in entertainment, I was going to find a way to make it work and have a better balance with mental health. But I wasn’t going to bank on that. So we essentially decided we were going to build something for ourselves and for our family.

And that’s when the idea of real estate crept in. I started asking my parents. I About their path. Why did they choose to get into that? They were so busy, you know, they worked in high tech they worked at Microsoft and a few other tech companies, but they were always really busy.

And so I started asking a lot of those questions like, what made you think this was worth it? how did you go about it? And ultimately we decided we had bought a primary house in 2017 and we decided to buy a rental house down the street from us in the same neighborhood. As a rental, we had no, we weren’t reading books or going on forums, didn’t know any other investors other than my parents.

 you know, we learned by doing, we bought a house that was in great condition. So there was no rehab or anything like that. We bought it off the MLS just about as straight ahead of the transactions you possibly could. And then we use some of the templates that my parents had used to create leases.

And then we marketed it on Zillow Rental Manager, got our first tenants. And then once we did that, you know, I, I kind of fell in love with the process of starting that business. once that first rent check hit, it’s not like we made thousands of dollars off of it, but just even seeing the, Hey, you know, there’s a few hundred bucks a month that are going to be coming in on top of the mortgage payment.

It was just a really unique feeling and I, and it started giving that sense of fulfillment that we were building something for our family So that’s really kind of how we got started.

Josh: That’s an incredible story. There’s so much goodness to pull from in there. I want to ask sort of a two part question. I’m curious on one hand, you know, what were some of the major lessons maybe you pulled from your parents that you’re still using and applying and then, you and your wife have your own work backgrounds and skill sets.

Can you talk also about, you know, maybe some of the skills that you learned along the way that help you now as a real estate investor?

Aaron: Absolutely. So I’ll tackle those in order. And the whole skill set thing is kind of my my writing niche too. So I love, I love that topic. But so one thing in particular that my parents taught me is that they self managed their entire portfolio. In Tennessee, and that was 11 houses. They had, you know, vendors and, and contractors that they knew, but they really were at the helm there.

And the majority of their rentals that they’ve owned, I think they’ve probably owned about 20, maybe 22 in total between all the different phases of their careers, but they self managed those. And so that was another one of those things where. By seeing someone else do it, you know, it’s possible from the outside.

If I was just coming in without that perspective, I would just immediately assume I need to hire a property manager. So by watching them and the systems that they set up and, yeah, there was some, anytime you self manage something, you’re going to have to deal with some of the hassle. So like I saw some of those phone calls that they would take.

 at dinner talking to a plumber or whatever, or like some of the conversations that would happen, but it didn’t bother me. And that was another sign where like, I enjoyed learning how they ran this business that they had started. Right. So observing that and getting the perspective of like really just this do it yourself mentality on the management side.

mom and my stepdad are both very willing to be hands on with their properties like they’re okay with fixing stuff and they’ve built the skill of doing a lot of those basic repairs and very much not how I am. generally outsource a lot of the repairs and stuff. It’s just not my forte.

Maybe it could be, but it’s just one of those things where I’ve learned that my skills are probably better. better served elsewhere. So that’s not necessarily something I got from them. But once again, I, did see economically that by doing all their own repairs and all that, and by self managing, they saved themselves a lot of money.

So that’s one thing, the whole story of them waiting through the recession and waiting until the values normalized instead of cutting bait and, losing a bunch of money, that was a good lesson in patience. And I would say, it reinforced the longterm thinking that is required to succeed in building generational level wealth.

And seeing that first hand, it’s a little different than watching a stock portfolio go up and down. I mean, they both have the same root emotions, but I would say just the discipline. Of waiting that out definitely taught me something too. I was having a long conversation. My mom and I drove from Washington to Houston when I moved back in August and I was having a long conversation with her about their whole real estate journey.

And I was like, why didn’t you give up? after you sold all the Tennessee houses, you made it out on relatively unscathed. You obviously put a lot of time and energy into it, but you didn’t lose money. Why did you start all over again in Washington? Same question I asked in the beginning, like what made that worth it to you?

they both just retired this past year well before retirement age. And that ultimately was their retirement plan, right? they planned it very very intentionally. They accelerated some of the loans. They put some on 15 year notes. And so they optimized it such that this rental portfolio they bought in Washington would be paid off in time to completely fund their retirement.

that’s an amazing skill, not only in financial forecasting, but it’s also just, it takes all the skills they built over 20 years of, buying, managing and operating a rental portfolio. And it just puts it all into practice. So obviously I drew a lot of inspiration just from watching that entire journey.

As far as the skills that my wife and I both have that we leverage, you know, in our real estate journey. you would think there’s not too many parallels between the concerts industry and real estate. But there are probably more than you would think. So I worked in the booking office. So my official position, I started it as a booking assistant, basically I did all the contracting and paperwork for the booking office.

And then I worked my way into an actual talent buyer position, which is basically a glorified way of saying booker. So the bookers are the ones that they call up the artist agent and they, created the offer. They negotiate the deal. The agent says, Hey, Red Hot Chili Peppers, you know, are going on tour next year.

We’re taking offers in each market. Here’s approximately what they want to make. Here’s approximately what they want to price their tickets at. What can you do? We have to build out a map of every seat in the arena and scale it based on the prices that they wanted to have and work backwards into the money that they wanted to make.

And come up with an offer. So we essentially had to plot out every single seat in the arena and make sure that the math added up that they could make what they want and we could net the amount of profit for the company that we needed to. And behind that, we had to estimate how much bar revenue, how much merch revenue, what are all these ancillary revenue streams.

That are going to come in on top of the ticket revenue that will ultimately comprise the majority of the company’s profit. So even at straight out of college, it was a pretty complex puzzle to solve. And so even when I was an assistant, I was mapping out all these arena level offer sheets and building out these maps.

And it was just a really detail oriented job that taught you to live in and understand the numbers. And we were doing a couple hundred shows a year. So it’s one of those volume games where you do enough of those that you just, you become comfortable in the numbers and doing quick analysis. And I use the word offer over and over again because I want to say that’s a big parallel in real estate, right?

Usually it’s a volume game. You got to put in a lot of offers. You got to know how to negotiate. And those skills were very present in my concerts career. And because I had learned that when COVID hit in 2020, the concerts industry pretty much shut down and it forced me to find a new job. I had two choices.

I could sit around and wait and see if my job came back, or I could switch industries. And in Vegas, unemployment during COVID topped out at 26%. So it was almost double the national average. my wife and I decided That’s how I ended up in the consulting industry. So I went to school in the Seattle area and most of my professional network was up there.

once I put some feelers out and started trying to understand what type of jobs would be available to me, that’s how I ended up in the consulting industry. Now my wife, on the other hand, she worked in non profit and she was a national program manager. So she worked for the non profit that was affiliated with the concert company I worked for.

So they ran professional development programs for teenagers, so high school age kids looking to get into the music industry. So one thing that’s cool about that, right, is there was some synergy between our, jobs. And at one point we actually sat at the desks right next to each other. Completely unplanned, but that was the, way it worked as we both climbed our respective career ladders there.

But so she is very… good at kind of seeing programs through from top to bottom. they used to do career fairs. They would run all these workshops. So like there were a couple where we would bring in these celebrity artists like Santana was a resident at the House of Blues in Las Vegas.

So he would come and do workshops or make appearances. she got this cool experience kind of. putting together programs you know, working particularly with those kind of school age kids and all that. know, general program manager skills, she was a good project manager as well.

 so we have partnered throughout our time, booting up our rental business. I would say I probably am the more like in the driver’s seat, but we do have a really great partnership overall. Like we always. have a great dialogue. never make any big decisions without consulting each other and really talking and thinking it through.

And because we’ve implemented these kind of programs and systems in our careers, I think that helped us kind of understand how to look at roadmaps and plans and make one for our family. So that was a long answer, but I hope I hit both your questions.

Josh: You did definitely. I see this recurring pattern and people have been talking to of the project and program management and how important that is across the spectrum, you know, but especially things like real estate investing. Has that played a role in you? I’ll say investing remotely, right?

Because your properties are spread out geographically. What’s that been like, you know, sort of a different path than your parents. I think it’s cool that you took them as inspiration and said, Hey, this is possible, but I don’t need to do it exactly the same way that you did. you know, how have those project program management type skills played a part in managing properties across the nation?

Aaron: Absolutely. So several ways I would say. adhering to deadlines, being able to scope things out and understand that in order to buy this property in this location and complete whatever minor touch ups or if there’s any rehab needed, you need X amount of money, you need X amount of time, you need X amount of people and to kind of managing towards deadlines with a lot of moving pieces. It’s a skill anyone can learn. But of course, if you already have that background from your career, you’re going to be a lot better at executing those plans. So I would say a lot of people are great at that kind of visionary role. They know they can pick a strategy, they can commit to it. They’re not afraid to kind of have that move fast and break things mentality, which is great.

If you’re trying to grow, that’s a good way to scale. But I have very much like the operator’s mind and I’m more of that integrator personality where I am more comfortable when I can map things out and have a plan. And so it’s interesting because I don’t think my wife nor I are visionary personalities.

I definitely have my moments of, you know, dreaming and looking ahead and obviously we wouldn’t have been able to get. You know, invest across three states and do all this stuff we didn’t have at least a little bit of courage to take those steps. we are like operators at heart. And so thinking kind of along those project manager mindsets definitely allowed us to get things done.

I would say just like working towards a deadline, right? And holding yourself accountable, creating work back plans and knowing that if I want to get here in 45 days, like this is what I need to be doing today. Having that awareness. Sometimes people can wing it. That’s great. Sometimes I wing it, but not very often.

Usually I’m able to plot things out and kind of know what I’m going to be doing and focusing on you know, on a daily or at a minimum, on a weekly basis,

Josh: Yeah. Is there a bigger goal or vision that you guys are striving toward?

Aaron: there always is. Right. And I definitely am very cautious about using something like number of units I really don’t like that. There’s a book that came out recently that I love and that I think everyone should read called the small and mighty real estate investor. It’s by a gentleman named Chad Carson.

It’s on bigger pockets publishing, but his whole philosophy is that you don’t need to hyperscale. You don’t need to go from zero to a thousand units. You don’t need a hundred thousand dollars a month in cashflow to be happy. And, feel wealthy, I believe the way he said it was aim for the fewest amount of units possible to achieve your financial goals.

So he has even some philosophies of paying houses down even early, which is some real estate investors feel like that’s blasphemous. a lot of real estate investors believe that you should kind of have as many. You should leverage as much as you possibly can of other people’s money and banks money and scale Kind of as far and wide as you can but there is something to be said for Keeping it simpler like we self manage the majority of our eight property Portfolio, but if we had 80, I don’t think I could wrap my head around self managing Most of that right like at some point you run into scaling issues So to answer your question like we’re still looking to grow So I at this point have gathered quite a bit of skill around how to operate. I know I’ve proven to myself the same things that my parents proved to themselves, which is that you can self manage it’s possible. There’s more technology and automations and things like that these days than they had in the early two thousands.

 putting those to use, I think I can bring that type of operational value into a partnership. And I also know, generally speaking, how to look at deals and understand them. So if somebody has money that they want to bring into the table and they maybe want to learn, like I said, I’m also a business coach, right?

So if somebody wanted to partner together on a deal and get that that’s an avenue that I’m more than happy to explore. And beyond that, I mean, the coaching, the nice thing about coaching is I can have some cashflow from that just by working with other investors and helping them get started.

And if you think about it, your average rental property, the cashflow is going to be a couple hundred bucks a month, probably for the first few years. It’s not going to be anything huge unless you hold it for decades, which for us is the plan. But right now we’re still in our first, you know, six to 10 years of our.

timeline, but with the, coaching, I can get a couple clients a month and produce even more cashflow than those rentals would. So I have those two levers that I’m pursuing. I would love to continue finding new real estate. I love the journey of it. I have fun with it. I like looking for real estate.

I like doing deals. It’s just something I enjoy. Not everyone enjoys it. And so that’s the other thing is some partners might be like. I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to deal with that, but I want to return all my money. And so if I can find those people, I’m sure we can, create some scenarios.

So I’m pretty open minded. I don’t necessarily have a benchmark of like, Hey, I want to get here. I do know that we want to continue to create a comfortable amount of cashflow that continues to alleviate the pressure on us, especially as we have two more kiddos on the way and we want to Keep ourselves from having to rely too heavily on either of our W 2s.

Josh: Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense. And I really like the messaging around, you don’t need to be the next, you know, Grant Cardone. Cause I think that that gets in a lot of people’s way. You know, I’ve talked to a lot of people who are stuck, they want to get started in real estate but they think they need a thousand properties.

You know, I was having this conversation with a client last week and she bought three properties and now that’s her retirement plan. She lives in the South, that’s all she really needed it changed her whole life. And so I love that message. Talk to us about what you do in your, coaching business, the systems that you teach.

Don’t give away all the secret sauce, of course, but like, you know, what could people expect when working with you? A

Aaron: Well, first of all, I do give away most of the information for free. I do write a newsletter. It goes out three times a week. And I have a lot of how to’s and I share a lot about the software that I use. You know, I use the word automations and it sounds super flashy, right? You can’t obviously automate your entire business, but you can automate things like rent collection.

you know, when you’re marketing a unit, you can post to one site and have it syndicate out to several others. There’s some software that allows you to even handle things like coordinating repairs. So there are a lot of systems you can put in place to remove the friction you would normally have if it was just you and your cell phone and your tenant and their cell phone.

So the idea is to kind of put a few buffers in between you and the tenant when you’re, when you’re self managing. the coaching program in general, it’s meant to be able to connect with someone who has no foundation in real estate whatsoever. You do ultimately need to have time that you can commit to it, but not that much time.

I would say if somebody were to work with me, I have a, an offer out there right now that is a 12 weeks. And I put a guarantee on it that if you work with me one on one for 12 weeks and you commit to the work that is part of that program, five hours or less per week, that I guarantee you’ll have your next property under contract by the end of that 12 weeks, or I’ll continue to work with you until you do.

And so in that 12 weeks, we’ll run through everything from why is real estate good? why is it good for you as a working professional? How can you balance it in and make sure that it fits with the rest of your goals, both financially and lifestyle wise. So first of all, just really grounding on that and making sure it’s something you want to do.

The road mapping. So if forecasting out and showing, you know, if I buy one property this year, here’s what it could potentially lead to maybe trying to understand someone’s personal goals of, do you want a hundred houses or do you just want a handful that can set you up well for retirement? So doing that kind of calibration.

And individualizing the plan and helping people figure out like, where do you want to go? And then from there doing that whole project manager thing, where we create a work back and say, okay, to get from here to there, it starts with the first one. So the first thing we’re going to do is get that first property under contract.

And then we’re going to put some systems in place based on how you want to scale. So if you only have one property and that’s your only goal is to get one property. probably don’t need to hire a team of VAs and set up a bunch of automations might not be necessary. But if you know that you’re going to want to get to 10 units in five years, then I think it’s good to build in and establish some of those systems in the first place.

So all that is to say, you know, it’s the same outcome regardless of what your longer term ambitions are, which is to get your first property under contract. But there are a number of ways to individualize that based on people’s long term goals. And beyond that 12 week program, I also do work on shorter term engagements.

So if somebody just has a problem or a scenario they want to work through, I’m happy to meet with them and kind of coach them through that. I’ve even coached some people on how to, leverage social media and work through online communities to build a network. You know, that’s something that I’ve been very fortunate to do a lot of over the years.

And so that’s another way to open doors and, if, if you’re not gonna have enough for a down payment for yourself and you wanna get connected to potential partnership opportunities, I can kind of help guide people on, the approaches to do that. So a lot of options there.

Josh: lot of options. Oh, that’s amazing though. And I just want to clarify for someone listening who’s like, wow, this sounds really good. Your specialty or your experience really has been single family, small, multifamilies. if someone’s listening to buy my first RV park, your kind of space is single family, small multifamily.

Is that fair to say?

Aaron: That’s correct. And thank you for calling that out. I’m in a couple of masterminds and I am exposed to every sector of real estate, but I would not in good conscious take on a client who wants to buy mobile home parks and get their first mobile home park under contract in 12 weeks.

So that’s a good, call out. You know, single family longterm rentals is where I built my foundation. I do know and I’m familiar with how to set up things like midterm rentals, which for those who don’t know what that is, it’s not an Airbnb, it’s a lease usually between 30 days and six months.

that’s another lucrative strategy to get a little bit higher rents than you would on a longterm rental. I can coach people through that too, but I try to stay in the lane of what I know and make sure I’m not trying to advise people on something I don’t know about.

Josh: pretty incredible how many different spaces there are just within real estate. And how many different specialties, know, similar to financial planning. I have people who come to me with a very niche need and I’ll refer them to someone else in my network. You know, do I have the expertise?

Sure. Does someone have more? Absolutely. Cause I’m sure there’s lots of crossovers from single family or small multifamily investing to something like a mobile home park. so that’s interesting. I’m glad we went there. I want to transition a little bit to, time management. So you’ve got twins on the way, you’ve got a daughter, you’ve been building a family, you’ve moved a few times, right?

How do you manage all the different things that you have going on? What does that time management strategy look like?

Aaron: I heard a phrase recently that I really liked when it comes to balance and it’s just, it’s very seasonal. there’s different ups and downs and there’s periods of time where real estate is taking a ton of my time and there’s periods of time where it’s taking almost none of my time.

And so there’s definitely no one size fits all time management strategy. But what I would say is I’m very diligent about carving out and time blocking the non negotiable parts of my life. So for example, no matter what, you know, from 6 to 8 p. m., if not hopefully 5 to 8 p. m., like I’m eating dinner with my family, I’m spending time with my daughter, and I’m putting her to bed every night.

That’s something that I’ve done short of a few trips we’ve taken. I put her down to bed every night for her whole life, which is almost two years now. And that’s something that I will protect at all costs. So even if I’m having the busiest, craziest day at work and emergencies at the rentals, whatever it is I still fight to protect that time because there’s usually nothing that can’t wait two hours.

And I also get up with her and I have just a few of those like protected family blocks because I feel like if I can’t protect those then I’m not living up to the values that I have said are important to me. And so once I establish those family blocks and I know and I can trust myself to protect them, then I know that the other time that I have available is either for working on whatever I need to be working on.

Or, of course, taking care of myself too, right? you gotta rest and recuperate and fitness and all that jazz. Which is also seasonal, right? There are times where I’ve been really good about carving out, you know, an hour a day to go to the gym and, being really diligent about that. And there are times where I’ve let that slip and spent that time working.

But I think it all starts with those non negotiable time blocks. I really truly believe that, anytime I catch myself saying, I don’t have time for, I really do try and correct myself and say, I am not making time for, there are only 24 hours in a day. So at some point, yeah, there isn’t enough time for everything, but you do have a choice of what you prioritize.

So I’ll stop preaching now and I’ll just say that I think once you understand that. And you can set your own priorities and work again, work backwards, then you start to find time for everything. And so I’ve had a few different because I’ve moved a few times and, you know, we just moved time zones that actually threw me off quite a bit.

I had a pretty solid schedule when we were in Washington on Pacific time where I had a lot of focus time and I was really dialed in and it helped with my writing and creative work. And it helped if I needed to do any focus work around the real estate and that got uprooted and pulled out when we moved to central time.

So to be honest, I’m still trying to find my rhythm here. But the first thing I did was install those non negotiable time blocks for the family and the rest will fill in around that. Hopefully that makes sense. I mean, there’s definitely some exercises that I do with people that I coach about how they can, you know, construct their time.

You want it to be structured, but you don’t want it to be so structured that you feel like you don’t have room to be human. So there, there is a nuance there that every individual is going to just kind of have to work out for themselves.

Josh: Yeah, I resonate with that a lot. I think the two main points that you said, like start with what’s most important is huge, you know, and it gets skipped so easily, you know, because you’re trying to prioritize this big list of things and it’s easy to forget, well, if I don’t block this out, that time is going to fly by without me even realizing it.

And then just time blocking in general, you know, whether it’s a planner, an agenda, whatever it is, I think that that made a massive difference in my own life. So I can definitely resonate with what you’re saying. And I think it’s the perfect segue into what does living a wealthy life look like for you?

Obviously family is a component of that. What else?

Aaron: I love the question. I think that wealth goes far beyond money and it even goes far beyond time. Those are both very important components. Of what I consider to be, you know, holistic wealth, but I will also believe the quality of your relationships with the people you love most are probably the highest currency of wealth.

And, in order to enrich those relationships, you don’t even necessarily need money. You don’t even necessarily need time. Of course, those two. Tools typically enable richer relationships. So I think those are kind of the three components that I would focus on. But of course I am also, I am very driven by money.

I am very driven by trying to free up my time. There’s a little bit of irony there in that you end up spending a ton of time to try and free up your time. Haven’t quite cracked that one yet. But, it all for me feels like it’s moving towards a greater purpose. Of providing, you know, a comfortable life for my family so that we can enjoy the time we have together.

I’m very keenly aware now that I have an almost two year old and two more on the way that these next 18 years are going to fly by faster than I’m going to be comfortable with. And so I really am trying to do everything I can now to remove that pressure that we have to have to have to work a W 2.

So that if we decide that, our quality of life and our relationships with our kids isn’t where we want it to be, that we have the option to maybe take some time off or, pivot, or maybe I can lean into the coaching or we can, string together enough real estate that we can pull that pressure off.

So we don’t miss that golden window of opportunity while they’re young because of the, my worst fear would be. That I work really, really hard for the next 10 years. And then, you know how kids are when they’re 10. They don’t even want to see their parents anymore. They’ve moved on to their friends and all the other things that are going on in their life.

And, that is one of my missing that window. So my current definition of wealth would be making sure I have the opportunity to choose and invest in those relationships. While I have the opportunity

Josh: Yeah, I love that answer. it goes back to what you said before about putting like your family and what’s most important to you first. Right. And you described time and money as tools. and that was such a huge shift for me, like when learning that it was like, Oh, duh, but until you realize that, and, you know, the fact that money is infinite, right.

But time is finite. And so, you know, prioritizing what’s most important, I think is huge. So I love that answer. If you could give one message to someone working to gain financial freedom who isn’t there yet, what would that message be?

Aaron: Yeah, I believe that patience is an incredibly important part of the journey and Even real estate which is ordinarily people consider that when you think of real estate investors you think is super wealthy People who don’t have to worry about anything I mean even if you buy a rental property and you had enough money to put a down payment on it It’s not instant wealth You know, you’re churning out, maybe if you’re good at underwriting deals and you don’t dig yourself into a hole, you’re, you’re still only maybe producing a couple hundred bucks a month in cashflow and nobody’s retiring off that.

It takes a long time for these type of plans to play out. And even, you know, we’re six years in, we’ve owned the majority of our rentals for at a minimum three years and we’re getting a good amount of cashflow, but not enough to live off of. And. We’re paying down our loans though, the houses are going up in value and we do get some cash flow and over time, time will do its thing, right?

The rents will naturally increase with inflation, the loan balances will go down and eventually they’ll be paid off. So even though it’s it’s been a great move and it’s, helped us out some in the short term, the real benefits are going to come 20, 30 years from now. The same could be true even if you don’t invest in real estate, even the stock market, right?

Like if you do a 20 roundup every week, from your paycheck, even if you’re only making 40 grand a year, that still makes a huge difference. If you start doing that when you’re 22 years old. You’re going to be much further ahead than the person who waits until they’re 35 to even start saving anything. With that said, it’s never too late to start. So you know, I think there’s always a path and people like you, Josh, are there to help people chart that path, right? No matter where they are in their journey. I would say, you know, patience is a big part. And even if you’re ultra ambitious, you know, I consider myself to be ambitious and generally by nature, I am not patient.

 I’ve had to teach myself to be patient when pursuing this particular path I’m on.

Josh: I think it’s so important for people to hear because there’s so much of the opposite message out there that, you know, the get rich quick schemes out there that so many people, you know, fall victim to I love the message of stay patient, you know, because it’s the tried and true method too.

There’s so many examples of it out there of you know, I slowly bought these properties over time. I set aside that 20 a paycheck. And look at where I am now versus the get rich, quick schemes. And we always hear about those stories and how they end up. I’m curious. So knowing what you know now, right?

Having all this experience and knowledge having gone down the path that you’ve gone down, if you had to start over, right, you only had a thousand dollars, you’re starting over, what would be the first thing you do with that money?

Aaron: So there’s so many ways I could take this, but I think what I would do, cause a thousand dollars is a lot in some ways, but not a lot in others. I would invest in some sort of income producing marketable skillset. And so what can you do for a thousand bucks? Well, there are a lot of online courses that are very tailored to specific niche skills.

So I’ll just share. They’re going to get a free plug here. one program I took that’s under 1, 000 is called Ship 30 for 30. And it’s a writing program that I took. And the whole idea was that you write 30 pieces of content for 30 days. So one per day. And you take one idea and you write 250 words. You do that for 30 days. You build the muscle of writing. It has all sorts of benefits for retaining information. has secondary benefit of building an audience. It clarifies kind of your focus. So not only is it a skill that can make you more marketable, but it’s also really helping you process and understand your own goals and your own thoughts.

And so that writing habit that I started in March of 2022, even though it was after I started my real estate investing, that parlayed into starting my newsletter, which parlayed into starting my coaching, which parlayed into starting my podcast, and it has this compounding effect where even if I didn’t have any rentals and I didn’t have any money, the attention and the networking, the social capital that you’re able to build, Just by participating in kind of the online world and bringing a point of view forward, that to me is another form of kind of legacy building wealth just by participating in the, online conversation.

So I would have to say if I had nothing other than 1, 000 and clear schedule to try and, you know, get back on a similar track of building wealth, I would say that’s probably the course. That I would spend it on.

Josh: I love that answer and it’s something that can be continuously built upon, right? Just like real estate. So I think that makes a lot of sense. So for someone listening who wants to know where to track you down online, where can they find you?

Aaron: am on just about every single social media platform, but my name is Aaron Ameen. You can find me at AaronAmeen. com. My newsletter and podcasts are both called The Hybrid Real Estate Professional. I am on Twitter as Aaron Ameen. And LinkedIn, Aaron and me, and you should be able to find me just about any site you log into.

I do write my newsletter three times a week. There’s a lot of good info in there. And if you go there, whether or not you subscribe, you can look through the archives and see I have a ton of how to’s about the software I use and the systems I built and some of the stories from my journey. So, even if you just want to take a look, it’s all there for you for free.

Josh: Awesome. And we’ll put some links in the show notes, make it easy for everybody. Anything that you wished I asked you that I did not, anything that you’re just dying to talk about that where we didn’t go today.

Aaron: Well, it’s funny. We didn’t talk about the fact that I still have a financial advisor and I view him as a valuable part of my team. I’ll say one note on that, right? That because I have spent so much of my mental energy on real estate investing and continuing to progress in my career, I made a very conscious decision in 2022 that I didn’t have the bandwidth and the energy to. Manage my stock part of my portfolio myself. I just knew that placing it in someone else’s hands who has that knowledge base and is actively living in that world day by day was going to be a better decision for me. I made that decision and I’m, having looked back. I really appreciate the role my advisor plays in my life.

You know, Josh, you and I offline had a great conversation a while back about the service that you have and you’re putting together. And I really believe in the power of having a great team and people who can help you see your blind spots and, make a plan, gut check you, for me, I’m very excitable.

So sometimes I’ll like bring up a real estate deal that feels great to me, but it’s ignoring another part of my plan that I just hadn’t thought through. I really do believe in the power of, having a financial advisor. 

Josh: Yeah. 

Yeah. I mean, I agree that the power of the team to me was eye opening reading, you know, books like who, not how for me anyway, when I first got into advising real estate investing you know, I had this vision of like, I was going to do it all myself and, boy, does life, you know, teach you that lesson really quickly.

Like you can’t do it yourself. There’s always someone who’s going to know more and be able to do it faster and help you along your journey. So I think that’s a great plug. Yeah.

Aaron: Yeah, definitely.

Josh: All right. This has been the wealth and yourself podcast where we help people to design their ideal life and take control of their time and money.

Our guest today was Aaron Amin, real estate investor, dad, and business coach. Thanks for listening. Thanks for being here.

Aaron: Thank you.