Mindy Jensen: Welcome to the BiggerPockets Money Podcast, show number 307, where we interview Jason and Peter from the Lifeonaire Podcast and talk about living your best life.
Jason Wojo: And so the first stage of everything, like if you’re gonna master your money, you need to have your vision. Now that may sound like completely insane, because a vision has really not much to do with money at all. But what we found is that your vision really gives you your why. Your vision characterizes the exact perfect life you want to have in every area. And so when you have your vision and you know how much that costs, now you have an actual reason to go out and make the money. Making money in and of itself, at some point it’s just another zero in your bank account. You don’t feel any different.
Mindy Jensen: Hello.
Peter Kolat: Hello. Hello.
Mindy Jensen: My name is Mindy Jensen. And with me as always is my financial artist co-host, Scott Trench.
Scott Trench: And with me as always is my vision of a co-host, Mindy Jensen.
Mindy Jensen: Aw, you’re so sweet, Scott. Scott and I are here to make financial independence less scary, less just for somebody else, to introduce you to every money story, because we truly believe financial freedom is attainable for everyone, no matter when or where you’re starting.
Scott Trench: That’s right. Whether you want to retire early and travel the world, go on to make big-time investments in assets like real estate, start your own business, or achieve your life vision, we’ll help you reach your financial goals and get money out of the way so you can launch yourself towards those dreams.
Mindy Jensen: Scott, today we have Peter and Jason from the Lifeonaire Podcast, and it is such a joy to talk to them again today.
Scott Trench: Yeah, they’re a lot of fun and really bring a fresh perspective on how to live an intentional life and how money can play into that as a powerful tool.
Mindy Jensen: Yeah, I really like your use of the word intention. I think that in so many cases, people just kind of let life drag them along, and life is going to drag you through the gutter if you let life drag you along. But if you sit down and you make a plan—and you have, I mean, it’s gotta be a loose plan. It can’t be, you know, as soon as you make a plan, life’s like, “Nope, that’s not gonna happen.” But you sit down and you make a plan. You have a vision. This is what I want my life to be like. And then you can back yourself into that life. And it’s not gonna happen overnight. But when you make plans to enjoy your life instead of just get dragged along, your life is gonna be so much better. Your enjoyment of your experience on this earth is gonna be so much greater.
Scott Trench: Yeah, I think the most powerful lesson from today, and we’ll get into it in great detail, is determine what you want and have an artifact. They call it a vision document. They have a whole process with it. I got the same thing, but have an artifact. It’s a living, breathing artifact, as they described it. It can change and all that kind of stuff, and begin moving towards that. If people will have their arguments, pros and cons, for capitalism in the United States—okay—one of the benefits we have of living in this country in this time is that this is an option for many people to figure out what they want and begin backing into it intentionally and building a money plan that can support that. And if you’re listening to this, hopefully you believe that is the case or achievable for you as well.
Mindy Jensen: Peter and Jason, from the Lifeonaire Podcast, welcome to the BiggerPockets Money Podcast. I’m so excited to talk to you guys. It’s been a while.
Jason Wojo: Yes, I’m so happy that you guys are here. So great to see you again, Mindy and Scott. This is fantastic. And my colleague Peter, who I see quite frequently as well.
Peter Kolat: Quite frequently. I’m surprised that she actually invited you here as well.
Mindy Jensen: Well, it was really… I was gonna just have Peter, but then Jason’s like, “I have to tag along too. We’re a team.” I’m like, “Fine.” But we are going to introduce you. If our listeners are not familiar, you are the hosts of the Lifeonaire Podcast. And you both have kind of a different money story. So I want to share just a quick overview of where you were coming from before you joined in on this Lifeonaire program. Polish Peter, please share with us your money story. We’ll go with you first.
Peter Kolat: Well, so yeah, I appreciate you first and foremost. Thank you so much for having us on here. My money story starts in Poland. So I was born in Poland, way back in the day—I’m gonna make myself old—in the ’70s. And for the first, I would say, 9 years of my life, I lived in a communist country, because up until, you know, the late ’80s, Poland was communist. We lived in a 12 by 12 room. That was our living room, our kitchenette, our bedroom, our everything. The bathrooms were down the hallway because it was like a community kind of a big building, so everybody used the same bathroom. So growing up in that environment, we were poor. We didn’t have any money. And one of the things, if you know anything about a communist country, is that they provide you with a job, they provide you with some living expenses. But the way I look at it, they provide you just enough so you can survive, so you don’t have to go and speak up and all that kind of stuff. So growing up, you know, my dad was an alcoholic, so we had a lot of fights in the household, whether it was about money—mostly it was about money—because he wanted to get some money and wanted to go and drink in the bar and all those kinds of things. So later on, when I was 8 years old, they got divorced. I lived with my aunt and my uncle for a little while, and then when I was 14, I came to the United States and started learning the language and living here. And as I came in later on in life and started learning about personal development and money and getting into Lifeonaire, having these kinds of conversations with coaches and the mastermind, I discovered for the first time, in my mid-30s, that my money conversation equals fights and equals problems. So my whole life I was living like whenever there was money, there were some kind of problems that were gonna be happening. Because when I was little, when I was growing up, anytime there was a conversation about money, it was a fight. It was a problem. So that was my sort of disempowering way of thinking about money. And I could never have enough money because somehow it would magically leave, or I would get rid of it, or whatever the case. Maybe because, guess what, money equals problems. Does that make sense?
Mindy Jensen: That makes a lot of sense. I mean, your experience as a child with money is that it’s this huge thing to fight about. And what’s the number one thing that people fight about? They fight about money. And you don’t have enough of it ever when you’re spending it on everything, when you’re spending everything and you’re not saving and you’re not investing. I mean, I’ve never lived in a communist country, so I can’t say—is there any way to invest?
Peter Kolat: Not really. I mean, not that I know of growing up. You just go and work in a job and then you come home, and you do the same thing the next day, you know? So not that I know of.
Mindy Jensen: Not that different from capitalism, frankly, unless you change the narrative.
Peter Kolat: Yeah.
Mindy Jensen: Okay. And Jason, what does your 5-minute money story look like?
Jason Wojo: Yeah. So I grew up in a small town in Massachusetts of like 18,000 to 20,000 people. My parents were middle class, and my dad was the kind of guy who never spent money on anything. And meanwhile, my mom had all these desires to buy stuff. And so when they got divorced, she went crazy and spent money on everything. And I think I got some of her traits, because when I was younger, whenever I had money, I was buying stuff—like, you know, I had motorcycles and jet skis and just a bunch of toys. And I didn’t have a lot of debt because I didn’t have the capability to get debt, because nobody would give me debt. I could have like a $500 credit limit. But what happened was, as I got older, I started making actual money. I got a job and was able to have lines of credit and access to credit cards, and I kind of went a little bit crazy too. I bought a brand-new, 3-story home in a gated community—it was a brick home—and had all the trappings of success. But along with that, I also had a combined about $650,000 worth of debt. And this isn’t because I have an apartment—this is consumer debt for the most part—along with, oh by the way, almost $90,000 of credit card debt. And so I quickly found I dug myself a pretty deep hole that I had to kind of get out of. And the challenge I had was, when I was younger, I would have these fun things and I didn’t have the debt, and I felt like I could enjoy them a whole lot more. But as soon as I took on the debt, for me, all of a sudden I had this huge obligation—I had to make money and I had to make a mortgage payment. I had to do all these things. So for me, it kind of robbed the joy and the freedom out of the entire experience. And so I realized, like, man, I don’t like—is this really what life is supposed to be like? Just the pursuit of money, only to buy things that I can’t even really enjoy because I feel guilty about it, or because of a payment, or because I don’t even have time, because I’m working all the time. So I really did a 180 from that point, and it took me a long time to dig out of that hole. And I’ll tell you, for me, I will never go back to having that kind of debt, especially consumer debt and credit card debt. I felt that pain a lot, and I don’t want that for anybody, because it was extremely painful.
Scott Trench: Well, can you give us a little bit more detail on rock bottom, and then how long it took you to get out of debt and what you did?
Jason Wojo: Yeah. So rock bottom for me was when I had to sell my house. I had gotten divorced from my wife—one of the main reasons, by the way, not the only reason, was that I was working so much. And so from there, I ended up moving into one of my rehabs, because I couldn’t afford a place to buy or rent. So I moved into one of my rehabs. I’m living on an air mattress. And I wasn’t there for years, but I was there for a period of just over a month, maybe 2 months at the most. And for me, that was rock bottom. I’m living—no kitchen, nothing—just in a rehab. And so for me, what I started doing was, first of all, I cut off all the spending. There was minimal spending. And then for me, the thing that was really important was really getting my business up and running, because at the same time, when I was making this money, I had the justification like, oh well, I’m just getting started in real estate, I can afford to spend all this money, I can afford to do all this stuff, because I’m going to make more money with my real estate deals. But as soon as the feces hit the rotary blade device, and now I couldn’t make those payments and my business crashed, that’s when it really started accumulating. And so it took me, Scott—it took me probably 3 years, if not longer. I haven’t tracked it exactly, but it’s at least 3 years. I went for the credit card debt first. I ended up selling that house that we were living in, lost $80 grand on that. I had to come to the table with $80 grand on that. And so the whole thing imploded. And so for me, it was really a matter of cutting all expenses, keeping it simple, and then really trying to focus on my business. And I think there’s a limit—there’s a limit to how much you can cut realistically before there’s nothing left to cut, and you have to at some point work on the income side of things too. But it was, dude, it was horrible. It was something I don’t want anybody to go through.
Scott Trench: And how long ago was this?
Jason Wojo: This was—so that would have been, somewhere between—so the divorce was finalized in 2011.
Peter Kolat: So this—
Jason Wojo: But we were separated before that. So this would be—I started accumulating that debt probably 2007, and then it accumulated for a few years. And then 2010 is probably when things hit their apex, and I really had all this stuff under roof that I had to deal with now. So it took a couple of years to get into it. It didn’t happen overnight, but it also took just as long to dig out of it.
Scott Trench: Awesome. And what is your situation with money today? What did you build towards once you paid off the debt?
Jason Wojo: It is completely different. I have no consumer debt. I don’t have any credit card debt. I have a line of credit against my house that I keep there if I need it for investing. And so I am looking now to do things in a debt-free manner. And I also—before, I don’t know, there was something about the mentality I had where I’d see a real estate course and I’d buy it for $2,000 or $3,000, and I could justify it because I knew that someday it would make me money. And to me it was just deferred earnings, but I got behind and I couldn’t catch up. And for me, one of the problems was—and by the way, I’m all for education, I think it’s incredibly important—but at that point in my life, I didn’t have any focus. I didn’t have any kind of real drive or direction. So I’m just buying, hey, I’m gonna get this course on this and this. So I have a wholesaling course, rehabbing courses, notes courses, IRA courses, self-storage courses. I mean, Scott, I have a very educated bookshelf, and all of it—
Peter Kolat: Bodybuilding courses. Yeah.
Jason Wojo: All of these courses—and listen, again, I think education is crucial, you have to invest in yourself, but I just spent too much money on too many things when I didn’t have the money. And so now I’m not buying it if I don’t have the money for it. I will save for it, and some people are like, “Oh, that’s foolish.” But even investments and stuff—anything I’m invested in right now for real estate, it’s debt-free. So I’m doing joint ventures with other people. If I don’t have enough money to pull it down myself, I’m gonna do a joint venture with somebody else so that there’s no mortgages, no debt. And so for me, that’s just a little safer way that doesn’t stress me out, and I don’t feel like I have to make a payment.
Scott Trench: When did Lifeonaire come into your mentality for your journey?
Jason Wojo: So great question. So I started off in Lifeonaire as a student towards the end of 2009. So this is right when I’m getting all this debt and I’m almost to the apex. And I remember my coach was Steve Cook, and he’s telling me, you know, you gotta work on some other stuff here and you gotta start doing this. And at that point in my life, I was like, I just need to make more money, because of all this debt. And he’s like, no, hold on a second here. And one thing that he said to me, I’ll never forget—he said, you know, people think I have no debt because I make a lot of money. He’s like, I have a lot of money because I have no debt. And so that really hit me upside the head. And so these days, now don’t get me wrong, we still have a business credit card, I still use it, but we pay it off every month. We’ve never carried a balance, and Lifeonaire is a debt-free company. And so I’m really trying to maintain that. Now, you’re gonna get some different people—some people are saying, hey, with inflation and stuff, is it wise to take out debt? We could have that discussion as well. Maybe, maybe not, for certain people. But it’s just very different. I was really very uncontrolled and had no discretion earlier, but now I’m much more intentional about when I spend my money and where it goes.
Scott Trench: Awesome. And could both of you guys give us an overview of what Lifeonaire is, as a philosophy or worldview or business, or however you would articulate it?
Jason Wojo: Yeah. So Lifeonaire is a company that’s focused around helping people live their best life. And what that means is determining exactly what you want that life to look like, which, by the way, many people think they know what they want, but they really don’t when they actually start to look at it. And then from there, once we’ve really characterized that and clarified it, now let’s talk about money. Now let’s talk about business. Now let’s figure out how to create the income you want, whatever your vision says—15 hours a week, 20 hours a week, whatever that is for you. But it’s all with the principle of life first. And that’s where people get confused—business, which is supposed to set us free, ends up taking over our life, and we’re spending all our time working. When the whole time, this thing was supposed to be a good thing, and now we’re slaves to our business. And so that’s what we try to prevent.
Scott Trench: So I want to come back to Peter’s story, because we got a lot more of Jason’s here. But first, I want to ask a basic question, which is: how does Lifeonaire help people answer the question, what do I want in life? What do I really want in life, as you phrased it?
Peter Kolat: Yes, I mean, that’s a really good question because a lot of people don’t even think about it, you know, because if you think about life, one of the things that shows up is business, right? You want to work in the business or you work for somebody else. That’s a pretty clearly defined way of how you go about a business plan. You have a business plan, or the company has a business plan. There’s your job, and you just define—you know what you want. And then, “What do I want in my life?” becomes this—it’s way back in the background. So what we do, we actually have this event. It’s like a 3-day workshop that we sit down and we help people craft that vision of what is it that you want your life to look like. And we have them go through different exercises, start really looking from the different perspectives of what are my needs, what are my wants that I want in my life, what are my relationships, what are they supposed to look like, where is my spiritual—some people have really strong spiritual needs that they need, so what does that look like? How do I view my relationship with my kids, with my wife, with my significant other, with my bosses, whoever it might be? What are those relationships supposed to look like? No regrets—what does that look like? So at the end of my life, I don’t sit here and have regrets now about what I should have done, could have. So there’s all those different parts of that vision that we help people go and craft it, and sit down and try to get it down to a one-page document. That is what we call the living, breathing life vision document that people live by to be able to go, this is what I want ultimately in life, and here’s how I’m going to get to it.
Scott Trench: Would either of you guys be comfortable sharing highlights from your document?
Peter Kolat: Yeah, I don’t have a problem with that.
Jason Wojo: Yeah, go ahead, man.
Peter Kolat: Yeah, so one of the things that I have on my vision is—I can go into deep details, but at the top of my vision, I have this overarching statement for my entire vision, and it says that I am a remarkable contribution to everyone I come in contact with. And by doing that, I get remarkable contribution in my life. So when it comes to looking at that, where’s the remarkable contribution? That means that I’m listening, I’m helping them, and I am there for them. It’s about others. It’s not about me, right? So when it comes to my relationship with my wife, when it comes to relationship with my kids, when it comes to business relationships, those are the things that are in the back of my mind, that I think, okay, how do I become a remarkable contribution to that particular person? And I’ll tell you, man, just that one element has changed how I view life, how I live life, and the people and the things that happen in my life. It’s incredible.
Scott Trench: Awesome. Now, what are the other elements of this page comprised of? Do they describe things about my personal life, spirituality, relationships, business? What is the structure of the document that Lifeonaire would produce here?
Jason Wojo: Yeah, I was just going to say there’s no formal way that we structure it, but the things we encourage people to think about are your relationships—personal, professional, family, and friends. We encourage people to think about their spiritual life, their hobbies—what do they do for personal gratification? Their health—what does their health look like? Their spiritual life—what does that look like? Peter mentioned no regrets—that’s a category that we have. And so we look at finances. We have a business vision as well. And these are just examples, because some of these things are more important than others to certain people. That’s fantastic. But what we’re looking for is—think of a bucket that has every component of life in it, and everybody has a chance to kind of put, make their own mix of what they want. But when you put your vision together, you want those things on there, but there’s no certain way to say it. So, for instance, Scott, I have my latest vision pulled up right now. I have the headline, it says, “Walk in the light that he gives you. My purpose: I live boldly to make a meaningful, permanent, and life-changing impact on others by loving them where they are and encouraging them to pursue a life of true abundance and prosperity.” So that’s like my mantra statement that heads the whole thing off. And then under that, I have a list of characteristics of my life. And then for me, I put a gratitude list at the bottom that helps me focus it. So we’ve seen tremendous variability in how people do it. But what we found is when we help them focus on all of these different areas—because it’s so easy to forget one little part of it—that is what gives them the clay to create that sculpture of their vision in the perfect way that they want to do it. And by the way, we’re super careful not to influence them on this, because so many people have been influenced by society or culture or by parents or whatever, that they’re just kind of adopting their vision instead of creating their own. And so we’re just trying to give them raw material to pull it out of them.
Scott Trench: So you used the words living, breathing, and latest version of my vision to describe this document. So this is not something I’m going to set up once and forget about—not forget about, but it’ll just, oh, I got it right, and that will never change, and I’ll do that for the rest of my life. It sounds like this is something you come back to on a cadence.
Peter Kolat: You don’t laminate it, that’s for sure.
Jason Wojo: Right.
Peter Kolat: We actually had a student come in and laminated the vision, and it’s like, oh, I got it, I finished it, right? But here’s the thing—we encourage all of our people at the events and our students to listen, post this vision where you see it every single day and read it. Because think about it, that’s what you’re putting into your mind, that’s what you’re going to be reading, and that’s what you’re bringing into your life. And when that becomes the focus of your life—this is the life that I’m looking to get through life—all of a sudden you become more intentional in life because you start asking that question like, am I living my vision? Now, when it comes to, let’s say you put on your vision that I spend quality time with my kids, and now you have to go and take care of a job that’s like eight, nine o’clock in the evening, and one of your kids comes in and says, “Hey, listen, I want to go and play a game before I go to bed,” or “Can you come read me a story?” And it becomes very clear, okay, do I go and do this thing, or do I go and live my vision and spend time with my kid? And those kinds of things—it becomes very clear of who you need to become in order to live that vision, which in turn helps you create the business that you need to be able to support that vision.
Scott Trench: I love this. I can go on about this subject all day long. I do a very similar process. I have a half-page document that has our vision—my wife’s and my vision for our lives—on it. It’s not very complex. It’s just a couple of paragraphs. Here’s where we live. Here’s what our day-to-day looks like. Here’s how we interact with others. Here’s what our business looks like. Here’s what our family looks like. And that’s what we want. And all of our goals cascade from that simple little document. And we update it once a quarter. Sometimes every once in a while, we’ll change something big about it—you know, we’re going to live here instead of here, or whatever that is. But it really has stopped moving as much for us in recent quarters, and we can cascade all our goals in support of that vision. And this is something we find on the Money Show all the time, where we’re having a guest on the show and it’s like, well, what should I do with my money? Well, what do you want in your life? That is directly related. Do you want to have the largest possible pile in 50 years? Well, we’re going to give you one set of financial advice. Do you want to have the most time in 5 years to do what you want? Well, then we’re going to give you a different set of advice, because it just depends on what you want. From a best-financial-advice standpoint.
Peter Kolat: That’s a great thing that you just mentioned, because what people tend to do, they tend to make decisions based on their current circumstance—what’s happening in their life right now. And what ends up happening, that’s why they’re squirrels all over the place, right? They zigzag and they’re never really able to get to where they really want to go. I call these squirrels. So when you just mentioned about what do you want your life to look like, that’s what this vision is about that we create. Because now, when you start making decisions and choices about your life and your business and what money choices you’re going to make, you’re going to make it based on that vision that you want to get to. And that’s a really important aspect.
Scott Trench: Let me ask you this. One thing I do, or I feel really strongly about, is—and I take this very seriously because I’m a huge nerd—it sounds like you guys are in complete alignment with that.
Peter Kolat: He is not me. Yeah.
Scott Trench: But I like to insist on being in what I call my peak state. I have to have my exercise in the morning, a cup of coffee, feel perfect that morning, usually on a trip or something before updating all of this stuff. Because if I’m not in that mindset, I’m going to come down or be pessimistic or not look at it as a clean sheet of paper like it could be. Do you have any tips or tricks for the process of putting this document, this artifact, together from a mindset standpoint?
Jason Wojo: I think one huge point, man, is what Peter said: it’s getting out of your own way of what your current circumstances are. That’s the first thing. And so, with that being said, I think when people come to our GET A LIFE Getaway, for instance, where our whole purpose is to get them to dream—and for some reason, somehow as adults, that is sucked out of us. I think we become afraid to dream because we’re afraid of failure and being disappointed. Like, how many times has someone tried to lose weight and they fail, and they just give up and they don’t even try again? And so they just go through life kind of complacent with where they are. And so a lot of that is kind of deprogramming and discerning what really happened to us. What beliefs did we adopt about ourselves, about what’s possible, about what we’re capable of, about what we want? And this is for everything. Like, so some people are influenced to become CPAs or engineers or a physician. For instance, I wanted to be a physician because of the acknowledgement, and my grandfather was a physician, and so I wanted to kind of be like that. But then I realized this wasn’t my dream—this was somebody else’s. And so it’s really about letting go of all of that stuff, all those gnats of life, and really dreaming about what you really, really want. And some of the exercises we do at the event, for instance, to get you thinking that way is, okay, let’s say you won the lottery—you have more money than you know what to do with. Let’s get rid of like, yeah, I know you’re going to buy your parents a house, and I know you’re going to go buy a Lamborghini. Let’s get rid of that stuff. What are you going to do with your days? Because I promise you, you’re not going to retire on a beach somewhere and drink mimosas all day, because that’ll last you a few weeks, maybe a month if you’re a soldier. But what are you going to do? And so that’s an example. Or, if you had a genie, right? If Peter was your Polish genie and you could make a wish, what would you want?
Peter Kolat: Unlimited wishes. By the way, I give unlimited wishes, not just one. But think about it—when you start thinking that way, it changes your perspective of how you start to go after life.
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Jason Wojo: I once heard—you guys may be familiar with the book, I can’t recall the name of it—it has to do with Pixar and Disney, and they talk about the different roles in the organization. And one of the roles is called the Imagineer. Now, the Imagineer’s role in the organizational structure is basically to think of the most outrageous, insane, fun, amazing thing you can, and then you pass it over later to see if it fits in—you know, if it’s even possible by the laws of physics, and if it fits into the business vision and the mission of the company, and it’s profitable, blah, blah, blah. Let somebody else kill the dream, right? But your job as an Imagineer is to think of the most crazy thing that you really, really want. Now, I’m not saying to dream big just to dream big, because here’s something that’s a little bit taboo: there are people that don’t want to make $1 million a year, and they’re totally happy with 75. And so I’m not here to say you have to dream big only for the purposes of dreaming big, but I don’t want you to hold yourself back based on where you are and what you think you’re capable of. That’s a very big distinction.
Peter Kolat: And what ends up happening when you start dreaming big and you start putting that stuff on paper—one of the things that goes back to money, because this podcast is about money, right? More money, more money, kind of a thing—what ends up happening is at the end of it, we start looking like, so how much is that going to cost you?
Jason Wojo: Yeah.
Peter Kolat: What is that vision? What is that life going to cost you, like in actual dollars? And you start looking from that perspective, and then you start looking, okay, how many hours do you want to work a week to live that vision, because that becomes very clear. If I want to travel all over the place, I probably don’t want to work 40, 60 hours a week, because it’s going to be kind of a conflict there, right? And that’s when you start to design your life and you design your business in order to support that life, Scott.
Jason Wojo: Let me say—this is something that I think you’re going to be really interested in, man. So when we have them create their vision and then put a financial price to it, eight times out of ten, people are astounded at how little that number is. Like, when they really figure out what they want for their life, it’s so little. But then they’re like, “Well, hold on a second, why, if this is so attainable, why aren’t I doing it?” And it’s because they’ve spent a whole lot of money building up a lifestyle that doesn’t fuel their vision, but that takes away from it. And so it’s like all the stuff you really don’t care about, but you spend money on, is now kind of making that a little more difficult for you. So it’s kind of a big aha moment for people when they realize whether they’re spending their money on vision stuff or non-vision stuff.
Scott Trench: What are some examples of those visions and surprisingly reasonable price tags for those visions?
Jason Wojo: So a lot of people, at the end of the day, I’ll tell you—at the end of the day, people are like, you know, I want to be the best spouse, or I want to be the best dad. I want to be available for my friends. I want to be known as somebody who helps others. I want to volunteer my time. I want to do things like that. And when you look at it, most of those things cost like nothing, like nothing. Or maybe they’re like, hey, I want to create memories with my family. And sometimes people will say, hey, I want this exquisite safari in Africa, and it’s just this huge thing. But more times than not, it’s like, hey, I just want to spend a weekend with my loved ones and let them know I care about them. And those things—not for everybody—but most people have at least half of their vision is stuff that doesn’t cost them anything, or it’s very, very little. It’s not the Lamborghini, man, I’m telling you—it’s not the—it’s yes, that stuff’s fun, and it has its place, and that’s okay, there’s nothing wrong with it, nothing wrong with it at all. But most people can live a large portion of their vision on almost nothing.
Peter Kolat: I love it. You know, and there’s, listen, and once you start really looking at those elements and what you want your life to look like, what you want to go after, you start to discover why do we want that? And you start to really look like, why do I want that? We had one particular person that just popped into my head. He came and he said he wanted to have jet skis. So he’s like, okay, well, why do you want to have jet skis? And he started looking at the other, because I want to be providing fun for my friends. I want to hang out with my friends. I want to go and spend time on the water with my friends because that was very cool, right? So he started doing the jet ski thing and he discovered that the jet ski is not really that well, because guess what? Everybody’s off somewhere on the jet ski on the lake. He’s not really spending quality time together with them. So then he’s looking at the boat. He wants to have a boat, right? And he started looking at how much is it going to cost him to have the boat. And now you have to hold a boat, right? Now you have to buy a bigger car to get a boat and all those kinds of things. And then when he started looking from outside the box, he discovered that he could, in his area, there is a marina where they have a membership and he pays a monthly fee. He calls it his boat fairy. Yeah. Right. Boat. Yeah. And he just goes and calls them up when the monthly fee—he calls them up and says, hey, listen, I’m coming to the marina. And they get the boat ready for him. He gets in the boat, it’s fueled. He goes out, has fun with his family or his friends. And then when he’s about to come back, he calls the marina again, says, I’m coming in. Then somebody picks it up, takes the boat, and he’s done with it. So he’s living his vision. He’s living what he wants to do, to spend the quality time and all that kind of stuff, without all the other stuff that is required that a lot of people think is required to live that life.
Scott Trench: That’s like Hertz is the rental car fairy. Wonderful. Well, let’s go in. You guys have some frameworks to share. Actually, let’s quickly hear a recap of Peter’s money story. So how did you find your vision and then build wealth and start living the Lifeonaire life?
Peter Kolat: Well, so yeah, I mean, that’s a great question because in 2011 I got divorced. And part of the reason why I got divorced was the money conversation. Because I remember, you know, my kids—I had 3 kids, and at that time they were very little. My oldest one was 8. And I remember going to the store and they were saying, hey, Tata, can I get this toy? My first reaction was like, what? Can’t afford it, right? So there is that money conversation. And then that conversation came up in the marriage, it came up in the relationships and things like that. So ultimately, that was part of the reason why I ended up divorced. So about a year and a half later, Wendy Patton—I don’t know if you guys know who Wendy Patton is, but she was in a group with this guy next to me, I don’t want to say his name, but, you know, she goes, you know, I know somebody else who has a similar story to you. I’ll give you his number. You guys connect. And me and Wojo have been talking ever since, every single day. So through that relationship I came into Lifeonaire and started getting into the mastermind and getting around the right people and starting to discover what my money conversation was. And it was very disempowering. It was very like money equals problems, money equals, you know, fighting and things like that. So I started learning about money, what money actually is. And it’s, you know, money is neutral, doesn’t have any feelings, doesn’t have—it just does what it does based on how you start to interact with it. And as I started learning more about it and started using it as opposed to it using me, because that’s what I was doing before, I started to manage my money a lot better, and I created my vision. And based on that vision, I started looking, okay, where do I have my money go? So that’s how I ended up getting out of that hole, becoming financially free, to be able to go and help others discover what their money conversation is, and how do I invest my money, where do I put my money. And, you know, I’m blessed to be able to do what I do in today’s world. I’m a coach, and I help people discover their money conversation, their vision, to help them live that life and use it to the best advantage that it can be.
Scott Trench: Love it. Well, can we go through some of the other items, like the core tenets of Lifeonaire’s money philosophy?
Jason Wojo: So the first stage of everything—like, if you’re going to master your money, you need to have your vision. Now, that may sound completely insane, because the vision really has not much to do with money at all. But what we found is that your vision really gives you your why. Your vision characterizes the exact perfect life you want to have in every area. And so when you have your vision and you know how much that costs, now you have an actual reason to go out and make the money. Making money in and of itself—at some point it’s just another zero in your bank account. You don’t feel any different. And if your listeners don’t believe me, go ahead and try it yourself. You’ll find out eventually it doesn’t matter. At some point, more money is just more money. And so your vision is really the first step in this. After you’ve crafted your vision and put your time into that, the next stage actually gets into money. This is stage 2. So stage 1 is creating your vision. Stage 2 is breaking even financially. And what that means is you are making enough money to stay afloat. You’re not in the red every month. You’re making what you need to survive. A lot of people have created golden handcuffs in their lives, and their monthly expenses are really high. And that makes it very hard for these people that want to quit their job to go out and try real estate, for instance, or run a business, because they need to make $20,000 a month. Stage 3 is generating excess cash. So there are 2 ways you can do this. One is by obviously cutting down on your expenses, and 2 is by increasing your income, which again is kind of self-evident. But what normally happens is when people start making more money, what do they do? They spend it, right? And that’s why, by the way, real estate investors—some of us are the worst ever. And by the way, I’m pointing a finger at myself here too. When I do a flip, I’d make 30, 40 grand, and I’m all of a sudden eating at Ruth’s Chris and Morton’s, and then I’m broke again after I spend all that money, and then it’s McDonald’s again. So, don’t spend everything you make. This takes a lot of discipline. I struggle with this because I did not have that built in and I didn’t learn that. So it took me a lot of years to really develop the discipline to save that money. Now you could do anything you want with it—you could give it away, you could spend it—but ideally what we want you to do is put it aside so that you can get to stage 4. Stage 4, finally—and this is an important distinction—stage 4 is when you’re buying assets to pay for your lifestyle. You are putting your money into income-generating assets. Ideally you’re doing this debt-free, the way that I mentioned before—for instance, joint venture partnering, things like that—so that you’re not taking on debt. Because what happens is, if you take on debt, you are increasing what you need to make in stage 2. And so now what you’re doing is kind of going backwards a little bit. And so that’s why you got to be really careful with that. And the other huge distinction here is, now in stage 4 versus stage 2, our assets are generating our income versus us working for our money. Everybody just wants to go out and buy rentals and, you know, they’re not even making ends meet, and they’re going to go out and buy a rental, and that rental is going to make them rich. It doesn’t work that way 99 times out of 100. You have to make ends meet first, because what happens when, you know, your tenant moves out and they trash the place, and you have to market it, and you got a mortgage payment to make? You are going to get hosed and you’re going to really get hurt. So you got to go through them in order. Now, the cool thing that happens, Scott, is—let’s say I’m going to use some easy math here. You need $4,000 a month to live. That’s your stage 2 needs. You buy a rental debt-free and it spits off $1,000 of cash flow. You just replaced 25% of what you need to make on your own, back through your own energy and effort. And so what that does is start to give you options. Maybe you’re going to work a little bit less, or maybe you’re going to do something different, or maybe you can get another job. It just gives you options. And with this example—I know it’s a little bit overly simplistic and I’m skipping some details here—but with this example, you’d need 4 rental properties to cover your stage 2 needs. And then you have financial freedom. You need 4 grand a month, you’re making 4 grand through your assets, you become work optional, right? And so it’s super simple. There are some details with this, but I think that’s a very, very powerful model to achieve financial freedom.
Mindy Jensen: Okay, you have mentioned a couple of times doing this debt-free. And that is great once you have gotten to step 4 with a huge buffer. But the reality is, houses in America cost many hundreds of thousands of dollars. And while you’re saving up for that purchase, you could be purchasing it with a 25% down payment.
Jason Wojo: Yeah.
Mindy Jensen: Or even doing some sort of house hacking where you’re buying with a much lower down payment, 3.5% or 5%, as an owner occupant, living there for a year—because we don’t promote mortgage fraud—and then moving out. Now you have, ideally, a cash-flowing asset with a lower down payment, and then you can repeat again. And I get the concept of wanting to be debt-free. Coming from your background, where you had that giant pile of consumer debt and $90,000 in credit card debt, taking on more debt on purpose can be, mentally, a real weight. And—
Jason Wojo: Yep.
Mindy Jensen: I want people listening to hear that, yes, you can use debt in an intelligent manner. I don’t agree that you should have 500 houses all leveraged to the hilt, really, really hoping that everybody pays their rent this month, because if they don’t, then I can’t pay my mortgage payments. That’s too much debt. That’s too much leverage. That is an unhealthy way to be investing. But if you’re putting 25% down, you’ve got a healthy reserve fund—which I am always encouraging people to put more in their reserve fund—you have a healthy reserve fund so you can foot the bill should something happen. I mean, there’s this mindset where, you know, get as many rentals as you can. I don’t like that idea either, because that’s just waiting for the house of cards to fall when, say, an unexpected event like a once-in-100-years pandemic pops up and your rent isn’t coming in, and also you can’t remove them because there’s an eviction moratorium, and all these circumstances outside of your control—what happens to you, the homeowner? So that’s not what I’m trying to say either, but I’d like to hear your thoughts on buying real estate without, like—I’ve had a partner and I don’t want any more partners. I want to do it all by myself, because, you know, I’m not good at picking partners.
Jason Wojo: Right.
Mindy Jensen: Real estate partners. I’m great at picking husbands.
Jason Wojo: Right. Qualification there.
Mindy Jensen: That’s not what we’re talking about here.
Peter Kolat: One husband, right?
Mindy Jensen: One husband. Yes. One husband. Yeah, I guess I should.
Jason Wojo: Yeah, totally. Awesome points, Mindy. So let’s talk about it. First of all, house hacking—I love the idea, and it fits some people’s vision and it doesn’t fit others. If you have a family, maybe you don’t want to move every 2 years. And so I think there’s also different versions of house hacking. For instance, where I’m selling my house now, we’re moving to a new house, and I could turn this into a rental, make great cash, but I don’t want to, because of the capital gain—the capital gains exclusion is worth it for me to just sell it and be done with it. However, I’m not mostly talking about personal residence here, because that to me is a little bit of an exception. What I’m talking about mostly is—because even with your personal house, yes, maybe you’re going to short-term rental it, or you’re going to have, like, an Airbnb bedroom, make some income off it, which is a great idea, fantastic way to make your mortgage. A lot of people do that strategy with, like, a duplex, for instance. But what I’m really referring to in the four stages is, let’s say you want to—and it could be with anything. Like, I’m involved in a storage facility, a couple of storage facilities like this, and so it works for anything. I think what I’ve seen, and the reason I like doing it debt-free—and by the way, we could talk about mortgages too, because, quite frankly, I’m wondering now, with rates going up, is there some sort of arbitrage play to go get something with a small mortgage on it now? So I’m not completely against debt, I just want to make sure I’m clear on that. But I think for most people, one option that is not considered as carefully as it should be is this idea of going into—not in business with each other, but what we encourage people to think about, and see again if it fits for them, is what about on a one-by-one property basis? Especially for people that have no money—find people that have money. There’s a lot of business that goes on within Lifeonaire. We have a forum specifically for investors, and people always have money to move, and people always need money for deals. So what we oftentimes see is an investor will come to the table, maybe even with 100% of the money. One of these storage deals I’m in right now, the guy who found the deal and who manages it has 50% of the equity and the cash flow. And the investors, myself being one of them, brought the cash to buy this thing. And this guy is getting half of the cash flow every month from the company, as well as, on the back end, he’ll get 50% of the sale price, of the profit. So all I’m saying is, this is a great option for people that don’t have money. If, say, you haven’t put aside that money and you don’t want to wait forever—because yeah, if you’re going to wait to buy cash for something, that’s going to take you some time. But what if you could partner with other people that already have it, and make the cash flow that then now will go towards your stage 2 needs and accelerate that snowball even further? So the fourth stage is really about leveraging other people’s assets, or mainly other people’s cash, to help you buy assets that will support your lifestyle. And those people, oftentimes, they’re not doing it out of the goodness of their heart—they’re making a great return too. So that’s just an option. I think certainly not the only way to do it, but the thing I like about doing it this way—now, yes, there’s absolutely some screening that has to be done in advance. Is this person ethical? Do they have the character, the capabilities, the competency to do this? And are they going to stay out of here? There’s a lot of criteria here, but the thing I like about it is, if, let’s say, a rental—if your tenant doesn’t pay, there’s no mortgage payment to make, and so nobody gets paid. The money partner doesn’t get any money, and the person boots on the ground doesn’t get any money either. So it’s in their best interest to get that thing performing again, versus just having a mortgage payment to make. Because what I’ve seen is that when you have a payment to make on something, it brings out the emotion in us. And I’ve seen this happen a lot of times with landlords who, you know, money’s tight and they don’t want to pay a $1,500 mortgage payment. And so they look at Joe Smith, the tenant applicant, who, by normal circumstances, we’d call a red flag, but because we’re under financial duress, we say, ah, they’re orange—maybe I’m being too hard, maybe I need to relax, you know what, he seems like a good guy. And then 4 months later you’re evicting them. So I just—what we’re trying to do is take the emotion out of it and kind of just minimize potential risk from having those payments. But to your point, there’s nothing wrong with the approach you mentioned either.
Scott Trench: Yeah, I just think there’s something freeing. You know, if you look at it analytically and you say long-term appreciation is going to be this, then you’re always going to conclude that your return on equity is going to be greater on average using a lot of leverage and a mortgage in real estate. But the counterpoint to that, I think, that the Lifeonaire approach brings is your lifestyle that you just said in your vision, you put down your vision, says you need $4,000 a month. The simplest way to get there is with 2 or 3 paid-off rental properties. And you don’t have to worry about all of this other crap. You just buy your property with a mortgage, pay it off as soon as you can, do the next one, do the next one, or get the 3 with a mortgage and then start paying them off, whatever it is, instead of getting 10, 15 more rentals and using the return on equity thing. I can’t help myself, I’m running BiggerPockets here. And I’m just continuing to buy rentals, not crazily, but like one at a time with another mortgage there. And I could have paid off 2 or 3 of those rentals and just have a completely chill, safe, predictable situation with that. That was probably going to produce worse ROI for me over the duration of my life, but maybe give me more LOI, if we can, if that’s a term I can invent here on the show — Lifeonaire-on-investing. I don’t know.
Jason Wojo: I like it, man.
Scott Trench: But maybe, and I think that’s the point that you guys are trying to convey here with this approach. Is that right?
Jason Wojo: That’s it, man. There’s no right or wrong. It’s only what your vision says. That’s really it. There’s no, it’s all about just figuring it out and knowing what you’re doing going into it and realizing this, like, this is a strategy I’m going with and this is why. That’s versus just thinking there’s one way to do it. That’s really the biggest thing that I think we’re trying to convey.
Mindy Jensen: Yeah. And I know more about Scott’s personal financial situation than maybe other people do, but I know that he’s investing from a position of financial strength and financial intelligence. He’s not — he could have a whole lot more rentals if he—
Scott Trench: It’s position 3 in there, or stage 3 of the prosperity, excess cash. Yes.
Mindy Jensen: Well, but you’re also buying assets to pay for your lifestyle. And you’re not doing it in such a — I think there’s people who listen to podcasts and they think, “Oh, I need to have 412 rental properties.” No, if you’re making $30,000 a year, you probably don’t even need to have one rental property. You need to generate more income. And then when you want to start investing in real estate, start with one. I just hear all these people saying, “Oh, I need to get more, I need to get more, I need to get more.” I want you to have as many rentals as you can comfortably afford and sleep at night with, but you don’t need to have 500 rental properties in order to be successful. You don’t need to have this crazy amount of stress. I mean, I think back to March 2020 when they first announced the eviction moratorium and people were like, “How am I going to pay my mortgage?” Well, you should already have that mortgage payment in the bank and several months’ worth of mortgage payments, and you should be investing from a position of financial strength. And I think you can use leverage, but you have to use it intelligently. But also, there’s the people that — I mean, Jason, you’re not the only person who’s ever had multiple thousands of dollars in debt. So I hear from a lot of people who say, “I don’t want to take out a mortgage because I’m debt-free and I can’t put myself back into debt.” And that’s a valid way to invest too.
Jason Wojo: You don’t need 500 rentals to be successful. And so this is where I think — how do we define success? And everyone’s different. For me, it used to impress me a lot when someone made a lot of money, but now I want to see if you have a lot of money and you have a great life. It’s just a different bar, a different metric that I’m using. But everybody has to determine that for themselves. Like if you want to be ultra wealthy—
Scott Trench: We defined success earlier with the vision statement.
Jason Wojo: You create this archetype and then you achieve it. That’s right, that’s right.
Scott Trench: I love it. So can you tell us — can you guys enlighten us on how working less can make you more money? I’m very curious about this.
Jason Wojo: Oh dude, this is, I love this, this is fantastic. So of course, the first thing we do is their vision’s going to tell you how much you can work and not jeopardize your vision, right? So most people we see that do their vision, on average — again, no right or wrong — are working, or have roughly 20 hours per week in their schedule that they can work without compromising some other area. And so I’m always approached with people like, “Listen, there’s no way I can do this. There’s no possible way that I can make the money I need in 20 hours a week when right now I’m working 50.” And so there are 4 points of evidence that I love that I rely on when it comes to this. The first one is the Pareto principle, the 80/20. So I’ll say, okay, let’s assume a 40-hour workweek. What is — and for those of you who aren’t familiar with the Pareto principle, it says that, for our purposes, 80% of our results are going to come from 20% of our efforts. So what is 20% of a 40-hour workweek? It’s 8 hours. So what that principle is saying — and I know it’s not a hard and fast exact science, but it’s a general law that’s true — is saying that 8 hours a week of our work is producing 80% of our results. And the power of this is in layers, and we can go down another 20% of the 80, and we can start doing that. But even stopping at that 8-hour mark, that’s a groundbreaking revelation to really consider for a moment, that 80% of the results in your business are coming from simply 8 hours per week. And so, when I’m presenting this, guys, I feel like I’m almost like a trial attorney, presenting evidence. So the next one is like, okay, here, how about this? In 2017, a study was done in the UK. They looked at 1,989 office workers and they tracked them to see how much actual work they did during the day. And so after tracking these people, what do you guys think the number is, by the way?
Peter Kolat: 8.
Jason Wojo: Any ideas? 8 hours.
Mindy Jensen: Spoken like a true New Yorker.
Jason Wojo: We have this fan here. Okay, we have this fan. It was actually 2 hours and 53 minutes — 2 hours and 53 minutes of actual work in an 8-hour workday. So let’s round that to 3.
Scott Trench: Oh, oh, oh, oh, I was saying 8 hours a week. So, yeah.
Jason Wojo: Oh yeah. Well, yeah, yeah. So out of a 40-hour workweek, an 8-hour day, the study showed that the average office worker was working 2 hours and 53 minutes. So that’s, let’s say, 3 hours a day. That’s only 15 hours a week. And what that says explicitly is that these employees were getting all of the results of a 40-hour workweek in 15 hours per week. So that’s piece number 2. Piece number 3 is something called Parkinson’s Law, which — this is an economic principle, but basically it has nothing to do with the horrible disease — and it basically says that how we do something will expand or contract based on availability. And just as a real-life example, like when we were in high school and we had a book report due in a week, it took us a week to get it done. If we had all semester to get it done, it took us a semester to get it done. So what this says is if you have 40 hours, 50 hours a week to work — because, by the way, you don’t have a vision, right? Because otherwise, if you had a vision, you’d know that you don’t have 40, 50 hours a week most likely. You can get the results you want in that smaller timeframe. And the last example that I usually use to bring people home is, okay, who here has ever gone on a vacation — Saturday morning, first thing in the morning, you’re getting on that plane, and that Friday before you leave, you get more done than the previous Monday through Thursday, maybe even the last 2 weeks. And everybody laughs. And they laugh because it’s true. Now, how does that make sense? How is that possible? And it’s because they had a why. They’re leaving on vacation. And this is where I want to really say, the vision gives you your why. So imagine having the chance to work in a very restricted timeline manner. And this is where I want to also clear up — some people think that Lifeonaires are just lazy and we’re all about just living the good life. That’s not true. Lifeonaires by and large are some of the hardest working people I know, but they do it within very narrowly defined windows so that they don’t compromise their vision. And the way they do that is because now that they have a vision, they have a why — they don’t want to give up their time with their family. They’re not going to miss their kids’ dance recital. They’re not going to stop their reading time or their exercise or their workout, right? And so they plow through these activities with their hair on fire a little bit because they have to. And so it allows them to have both. And that’s where it’s really important for people to have both. And so what I see is that people end up making more, or the same, as they were when they were working more hours, in a much shorter timeframe. Now, yes, there are some things that—
Scott Trench: Do you have an example of how — like an example of someone who says, “Hey, I’m working a full-time job and I used this principle and I was able to make essentially the same amount in way less time”? What are some examples of this?
Peter Kolat: Well, yeah, because I was going to chime in — not specifically for the full-time position, but, for instance, like me. I mean, as you can see, some of us work like their hair is on fire and they do a better job than others because I still have hair. The other guy, not so much. But here’s the thing. When I have it on my vision and I pick up my kids, let’s say from school at 3:30 — I used to pick them up when they were little from school — I work like my hair is on fire, being very intentional in that particular time, to be able to do what is on my vision. So that vision guides me on what I need to do in that specific timeframe that I have available, that I put, let’s say, for my work hours, to be able to go and do this. In today’s world—
Scott Trench: Maybe more literally though — like, I think we all understand the concept, but more literally — hey, I’m working a job, how do I transition myself out of the job and make a similar level of income mechanically? Who’s going to pay me instead of my corporate job? Do you have any examples of that?
Jason Wojo: So yeah, let me just first say that the example you’re asking for, when somebody leaves their job, is even more important, because I don’t want you working on your business during your job. I think that’s stealing from your employer. And so my encouragement is you have to get a few things done during late night hours. So there’s a gentleman I’m thinking of right now that was leaving his job. He went through a business breakdown. We walked him through what are all the roles in his business and what is he doing versus somebody else doing. And he had this huge mind map of all of these activities that he was doing. And then I said, okay, so — I don’t remember the number, let’s say it’s $40,000 a year to live, $50,000 a year — I said, okay, let’s back-calculate. And you want to work 20 hours a week once you’re out of your job. What exactly are those? What’s the hourly wage that you can work on activities over, and everything else you have to get rid of? And so he hired two VAs. He had a contractor start — instead of him managing the properties, he had a contractor do it. So his margins got a little slimmer, but he got a whole lot less time commitment on his end. So between his VAs — he also had, of course, a bookkeeper, two VAs, a contractor. The contractor, he also empowered with a lot of other things that took his presence on the job site off the table. So that wasn’t a big deal. But in fact, this is something that’s interesting that he found — the reason he made more money was because he wasn’t getting around to doing all these things before. So, for instance, the VA was responsible for marketing. And this guy wasn’t getting the marketing out because he was so busy managing the job. So he hires the VA, who I think he paid $4 an hour, to handle the marketing. Now it’s getting done. Now the marketing is getting done. That, by the way, created a new problem for him, because now phone calls are coming in. So he had to get rid of that too. He hired a person off of, I think it was Craigslist, to take those calls. It was a stay-at-home mom who had access to a phone, and he felt that he wanted somebody local to him. So he had a stay-at-home mom answering the calls for commission only — paid her $500 for every deal that he bought. So that’s not any fixed overhead. And then the other — I don’t remember exactly what the other VA was doing — but the other thing was his projects moved a lot quicker. So he was making less money per project because he had a project manager, but he was having a hard time going over the property because he was at work all day. And so things would start taking longer, because he’d get there at like 6:00 PM and the guys hadn’t been there all day, and he didn’t know. So things were getting dragged out, materials weren’t getting delivered because he started off lugging all the materials from Home Depot to the job site himself. So although he made less per deal, it went through faster. So over the course of a year, over a period of time, he’s doing better and the deals are coming in, and it really did a good job of equalizing his cash flow, which, as you know, in real estate, can be up and down, especially as a flipper. So that’s one guy. And by the way, this is something I really believe is true — if you can’t run your business in real estate part-time, I think you’re doing something wrong. You haven’t built the systems. You should have automated things, you should have outsourced and delegated things off your plate. It shouldn’t be a one-man or one-woman show. That’s a dangerous place to be in, because if something happens to you, what happens to the business?
Scott Trench: I think this is really helpful. If I’m thinking about this — I mean, I’m an employee, right? My employment agreement says work 40 hours a week. So the only way I’m working less is if I exit that employment agreement and start something else, or negotiate a part-time role with the employer. So the advice here is really more specific to either making that transition, or, if you can, beginning to own and operate your own business. And that is an accessible thing. The problem with that — not the problem — one of the things you have to contend with, if you own a business, is that 80/20 rule is going to be all over the place. And what many people do, if they get good at mastering that, is just build a bigger and bigger business — more and more money and all that kind of stuff. And instead, you don’t have to optimize for that. You can optimize for life and say, “Great, I’m backing into $50,000 a year with the least amount of hours,” not the most hours per year and the largest amount of income, which is what most owners and CEOs are optimizing their businesses for. Does that help? Is that right?
Jason Wojo: Yeah, man. And one thing you said also struck something with me — you’d be amazed at how many employers are open to the suggestion, or the possibility, that as long as you produce the results, that I’ve seen people not care as much about the hours. And even with COVID, for instance, we had students in Lifeonaire that swore their boss would never let them work from home, and then all of a sudden COVID hits, they’re working from home, and they’re getting the results they want. And now they can work from home like indefinitely. So that differs, and that’s a one-off situation based on your situation with your boss. But I’ve seen intelligent employers have that approach, because, listen, I have employees, and I know I’m not going to get eight hours a day out of them, but I do want certain results out of them. And if you can get it done in an hour, I want to reward you for how good you are. And I think — this is off topic, by the way — but I think paying on hourly wages a lot of times disincentivizes people from really producing the results they’re capable of.
Peter Kolat: Yeah, I think one of the things that I want to add here that’s really important is the vision. That’s the guiding principle throughout the whole entire process. You’ve really got to put on what do I want and why do I want it. And what we tend to do as human beings, we tend to look at—when we don’t have that vision, we tend to look at, okay, I need to do this, how do I get this done? How, how, how, how, how? And we start looking at ourselves like I’ve got to do all of this. What this process ends up doing is it starts to ask you different questions, and you get outside of yourself and you start maybe asking, like, who can come alongside with me to be able to do this? Right? What are the things that I need to be focused on that are the most important things in order for me to get to where I want to go, as opposed to doing everything? You know, and that process really streamlines how you get out of that trap and this middle ground to be able to get to that vision that you want to live, especially the transition times.
Scott Trench: Awesome. Well, Jason, Peter, we’ve learned a tremendous amount today. Thank you so much for sharing the vision, your personal money stories, the four stages of financial prosperity, and I guess how to make more money in less time, or at least get more life with less time for sure. So this has been a really fun discussion, and we really appreciate you coming on the show today.
Jason Wojo: Thanks for having us, guys. You guys are awesome. Big fan.
Peter Kolat: Thank you.
Mindy Jensen: Before we let you go, where can people find out more about you?
Jason Wojo: Yes, go to the two best places: go to Lifeonaire.com, or you can head over to find our private Facebook page. If you just type in Lifeonaire, you’ll see it pop up on Facebook. That’s an awesome community for people that are like-minded—or I should say life-minded—that are all about kind of like helping each other along that journey. That’s one cool thing, is we really want to help people do that and have a very collaborative environment.
Mindy Jensen: Awesome. Thank you so much, Peter and Jason. This was a lot of fun. It was nice to talk to you guys again.
Jason Wojo: Same here, guys. Thank you.
Mindy Jensen: Thank you. We’ll talk to you soon. Okay, Scott, that was Peter and Jason. That was so much fun. And you know, the thing that just keeps resonating after listening to that show is the vision statement. I think so many people skip this step or don’t put a lot of thought into this step, and we really didn’t—
Scott Trench: Or they think it’s full of cheese. I thought it was like a cheesy, these-people-with-vision thing, but I’m like, no, it’s a powerful tool. You don’t have to spend a ton of money on producing a vision or whatever, just go get a book or read a blog post or whatever, but put together an artifact, a document that has this thing and that says what you want, and begin updating it on a regular cadence. I like to do it quarterly. And then back your goals based on that. And just that simple mechanism will produce a tremendous amount of power in your life over a five-year period. It won’t happen overnight, but it won’t take you 10 years to realize most of it. It’ll take you three, five, but it won’t take you 10, 20 to get meaningfully—a meaningfully better life or closer to what you think you want—when you write it down, your vision.
Mindy Jensen: Yeah, I am super excited for everybody listening to this to say, aha, I know what I need to do. I need to sit down and I need to write out my vision. And it could take—give yourself a week. Give yourself a document on your phone that, as you’re out taking a walk, ooh, I want this in there, I want that in there. It’s not just one sentence, it’s not just one idea. It’s a living, breathing document. Don’t laminate it. It’s a living, breathing document. But give yourself some time to sit down and focus on it and see what it is that you want. And bookmark this, put a calendar note in your calendar for a year from today, and look back at what you’ve done over a year. Do it for six months, do it for three months. Look at what I have been able to accomplish and see how your life has changed just because you’ve switched the way that you’re thinking about it.
Scott Trench: Yeah, love it. And again, I’ll reiterate what I said earlier, but I like to do this on trips. Every once in a while I’ll do it—once every couple quarters I’ll do it for my house or whatever—but I like to do it like, oh, at the beach, or I’m in Estes Park, which is a nice town next to Rocky Mountain National Park here in Colorado, or I’m at Moab, another area with some nice national parks. I’m in a new location doing something active, feeling good. I just find there’s a lot more clarity than doing that at your desk at the office or at your kitchen table, because it’s kind of hard to pop out and be like, I have this whole world of things I can do.
Mindy Jensen: Can you read this?
Scott Trench: Scott is a huge nerd. What?
Mindy Jensen: I like to do this on vacation.
Scott Trench: I do. Hey, I mean, you know, I think I—a little weekend trip, not like my, you know, big vacation.
Mindy Jensen: Big vacation.
Peter Kolat: I would do it then too.
Scott Trench: But—
Mindy Jensen: I like to tease Scott, but I think that’s a really great point. You can’t do this in the middle of your everyday life when you’re trying to get lunches for your kids and make dinner and your kids are having 13 different conversations going around and your husband’s asking where his socks are. And maybe I’m describing my morning this morning, and your mind is in 50 different places. You’re going like this and you can’t concentrate. So I think that is a really great tip. Take a break.
Peter Kolat: Whew.
Mindy Jensen: Decompress. Get up in the morning and it’s a great day and I’ve had a great run—which I haven’t, but Scott has—and you’ve had a good morning. Take a shower, have a cup of coffee or a nice breakfast, and just sit down and think about it. If you’re married or in a significant relationship, talk with your partner about it. It doesn’t have to be something that you’re updating every quarter. It doesn’t have to be something that you come to right off the bat.
Scott Trench: And if you’re trying to get your partner on board, my tip would be come with a version that is somewhat mapped out loosely and put in the title DRAFT in all caps, so that—and invite your partner to come in and change things or rewrite the whole thing or whatever, but come in with something, and then make it completely open to changes or whatever with that. And that, at least for me, was a positive way to introduce this concept. And my wife and I look really much forward to these little sessions every quarter.
Mindy Jensen: We should have your wife on the show.
Scott Trench: Yeah, maybe.
Mindy Jensen: Maybe I’ll just go behind your back and get your wife on the show. Mindy and Virginia talk about Scott. Ooh, that’d be fun. Okay, should we get out of here, Scott?
Scott Trench: Let’s do it.
Mindy Jensen: And start using free resources to build something amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at northwestregisteredagent.com/moneyfree. From episode 307 of the BiggerPockets Money Podcast, he is Scott Trench and I am Mindy Jensen saying, chop chop, lollipop.
