Welcome to Episode Two of Season 15 of the growing empire Show. Today I am back with my special guest Paul David Thompson, the creator of leading life by design, so make sure you stay tuned.

Welcome to Growing empires hosted by real estate entrepreneur and trusted Investment Advisor Jennifer day, hey Soos growing empires provides insight to building wealth through passive income producing real estate investments for those who want to build and manage a more profitable real estate portfolio.

So you talked about your know your land development and you’re building obviously residential homes because you referenced that as well. Do you? Do you dabble in any other type of commercial real estate now? Or is it strictly just developingmultifamily? So it’s it’s residential, but it’s still single family duplexes or townhomes or multifamily, so I’m not doing like retail, commercial or industrial commercial.

Okay. And what made you pick Texas? Well, why was that the next place that you went?

1:07  

Well, I live nearby so I can get I can catch a flight on Southwest. It’s an hour long from Little Rock to love field. And it’s pretty lightweight to get there. And Texas is a huge growing market. My business partner that I met, he lives in the area. So he’s a realtor, he knows the market really well. And I grew up in Texas, and so like the big city for us was going to Dallas. So I knew enough about it to be dangerous. And you look at the growing population in Texas, it’s just people are moving. They’re constantly like there’s just people pouring in from California in the Northeast, and all over to Texas and Florida. So Texas was just a natural place for me to go. It’s a very business friendly state. And I didn’t know this originally, Dallas is actually now the fourth largest metro in the country. And they keep adding population. And in fact, the county that we work in inside of Dallas, the Dallas area is Collin County, it’s the second fastest growing county in the country. So fundamentally, when you’re in business, you want a client base and you want a growing client base that has money. And that tends to be a perfect category for Collin County. 

2:20  

Okay, fair enough. Do you guys now raise money as well? Do you syndicate any of these deals?

2:27  

Yes. So I’ve actually started a fund where I am raising capital to help developers take down deals and then when we have our own deal, then we will either raise private capital or do a syndication. We haven’t yet done the syndication we’ve been able to do it with bank loans and private money so far. But we would absolutely do a syndication if we’re in a big enough deal where we needed to to raise the money where we didn’t have enough. Like we didn’t have a big enough whale to take it to just have one lender, then we would pool funds and do a syndication. Absolutely. Okay.

3:03  

So tell me about the about the timeline here. So you started with your single families, you started kind of by yourself, then you had some partners, and then you transitioned into real estate development. And now you’re raising money starting a fund? What’s, what came after that? Or maybe I don’t have the timeline quite right. But you know what, what came next?

3:22  

Okay, so I’ll just do a quick summary. 2015 is when I started looking at properties about my first rental 2017, I was laid off. And then through 2019, I was a single family guy, and then going into 2020, I was still doing wholesaling. And when COVID happened, we actually did really well with wholesaling. And then towards the end of 2020, I did my first commercial deal. And then since then I’ve really focused on commercial. And because I just I find it more interesting, like, I’m just not that interested to buy a single family house. It just doesn’t, it doesn’t get me excited anymore. Not that I’m too good for it or anything. It just it’s it’s I’ve done it a lot, right. So at this point, it’s it’s daunting for me to buy a multifamily project. Still, it’s daunting for me to build projects. So I started doing that in early or late 2020, early 2021. And then since then, I’ve been spending my time raising capital, helping other people raise capital for their projects. And I started a little small, hard money lending fund as a proof of concept. And that worked out the way I wanted to learn a couple of lessons. And so now I’m taking those principles and applying it to my larger $10 million fund that is set up to help other because I saw the problems the capital raisers had. I saw the problem that investors head and having access to a pool of money that can come in and be your whale is a real opportunity to marketplace that I’m that I’m creating. I’m kind of targeting my fund software. 

4:57 

Okay, interesting. And when did the podcast and the bulk in the coaching, the coaching strategies, where did that come into play?

5:07  

Good question. So, something I learned about myself from a long time ago, like I, when I learned something, I have to teach it. I don’t know why. But even when I was in high school, when they would give me a homework assignment, or there would be a test, I would always felt like I really knew the material when I could tell my other classmates. So I just had this like running, like lecture going on in my head about something I’ve learned about. And so that’s just my way of like, helping me process the information to think. And also for whatever reason, I have a teacher’s heart. And so I like to see the light bulb go off above people’s head. And so that’s where very early on, when I started, kind of, I kind of saw how the matrix was working a little bit as like, Okay, I would find somebody else to kind of bring under my wing and just say, Okay, this is what I’ve learned, try and try this. And I’ve just always done that. So I started a mastermind around that I have a book that helps people escape the rat race. And I’m working on a new book, in fact. So details to be available for that in the near future. And so I’m just come collecting big ideas. So I like I like to share big ideas. And it helps me to collect and codify them into like a philosophy, and then I could put them on paper and share with somebody.

6:25  

Very nice. So how do you keep educating yourself? Because you keep do you keep dabbling in things that are outside of your comfort zone, right? And that’s one of the main reasons why I feel like people don’t even actually get over the hump of investing in their first deal, because they’re so afraid about the unknown. So how do you keep doing it so successfully, that you are able to do all these different things inside of the real estate segment? When knowing that you didn’t actually start with that knowledge, you’re getting it from somewhere? So how do you keep finding the people or finding the resources to continuously educate yourself?

7:02  

Yes, so it’s curiosity. Fundamentally, it’s I have this kind of unending curiosity. And I’ve developed in myself a growth mindset that I always want to be learning something new. And I like to go into scenarios where I’m not the smartest person in the room that I’m like, the the newbie, like, what are you like a fund? Like, what are you talking about? There’s a super confusing, I like to overcome that feeling of not knowing something to knowing something. And the way I do that is I, I read a lot, I listen to podcasts constantly, I do my own podcasts. So when I learn something, I share it on a podcast, I interview other people on my podcast that know something that I don’t know about. So I’ve discovered and found that the often the quality of your life is in direct proportion to the quality of your questions. So I like to gather and collect questions. And I like to ask questions of people. And they don’t always give you profound answers. But sometimes they do. And they really surprise you. And that’s just kind of this idea of this Wake Up Call is that we think we know we know. And then we get some new information. And we realize, oh, like I’ve been looking at this all wrong. And I love that feeling. I love seeing past the next layer of information, and understanding, oh, I’ve been living my entire life as a wage slave. Well, that was dumb. I wish I had learned about that a lot earlier. So a lot of this, what I’m doing is I’m making up for last time, I had kind of an entrepreneurial spirit, in interest. But for 15 years, I hoped, wished and dreamed and did nothing about it. I just kept going to work because I didn’t know about the alternative. And when I discovered an alternative, I latched on to it and learned as much about it as I could. And I often think oh man, I wish I had started this when I was 23. What was I doing? Like you know, but you can’t, you can’t really make it for last time. So the best thing you can do is make the most of the day that you have. And I find learning is like the way to do that.

9:05  

I completely agree. I definitely agree with that. So let’s talk a little bit more about creating long term generational wealth with, you know, real estate investing. How does one actually do that? Get to that point where they’re creating this generational wealth.

9:21  

So great question. The fundamental lesson if you hear nothing else, from me at all this during this conversation is I want you to hear this that you must buy equity, like equity and wealth are almost synonymous terms. So we spend most of our time exchanging our time for a paycheck that’s cash flow. And cash flow is important when you buy real estate and you want to be able to pay for your pay for your groceries cover your mortgage, your basic expenses are covered through cash flow, but once you get your basic cash flow needs taken care of spend your time and energy towards acquiring equity. Because equity compounds on itself, whereas cash flow does cash flow just becomes something you spend, you spend that $1 One time and it’s gone, you never get any other benefits from that. If you take $1, and put it into something of equity, where you own a piece of property, you own a share of a stock, or you own a business, then you create a business, then you are creating something that has the potential to create a continued cash flow, or equity appreciation over time. And that’s a fundamental lesson that I wish people were taught like, as a ninth grader, from, you know, 15 years old and like, but that would, if I don’t know what would happen, if we all turned into, like, we wouldn’t work anymore, we all only became equity owners, like somebody has to do the work, right. So I guess that’s the reason these things aren’t taught is because we need to train the next generation of workers. And so a lot of people will be that, if you listen to his podcast, you’re now smart enough to realize that you can become successfully unemployed, you can become the kind of the master of your own domain, so to speak. And you don’t have to continually do the exchange for time or money anymore, if you don’t want to, because you own equity. That’s how wealth is created. And wealth gives you options was fundamentally we don’t want money, we want money to buy us.

11:14  

Okay. Very good. And exactly how are you buying equity? So is there any other ways besides the obvious you you know, buy real estate, you get your equity and your land, you get your equity and your appreciation? You’ve got you know, there’s equity everywhere?

11:28  

Yeah, you can buy real estate, there’s there’s a lot of furloughs a lot different ways. But it’s very important to understand that question, because I’m glad you asked it. Because you can create equity by starting a company. And then that company like this shares in that company that you own, is the equity I’m talking about. So that’s a form of equity as well, you can buy a piece of property, or you can buy, you can be in a passive investor and be a limited partner in a syndication. And that’s buying equity as well. But then somebody else is doing the work. So there’s a lot of different ways to go about controlling equity, you don’t have to be the only player in these big businesses or partner syndication, you can be a small piece of it, and apply your 50 or 100, grand or whatever you have access to into the small deals, that double potentially every five or seven years, you do that four or five times you have a million $2 million in you’re starting off with maybe just 50 or 100 US dollars. Completely understand.

12:25  

So you had mentioned something that I also think was really key is that, you know, there’s a difference between investing in real estate and having passive income. Okay, very, very different. And you had mentioned that you originally started out doing it yourself. So you were you were using your time, and it was for your equity. Right, that’s building. But then you transitioned. And you specifically commented that as you were exchanging to be more passive, you were also bringing in partners and not employees. So let’s talk a little bit more about transitioning real estate, because I think everybody starts out having to have their hands in it. That’s one of the ways that you learn how to be a great investors to get your hands all over it. So I think everybody starts there, but so few people can transition to truly passive. Tell me why is that? Is that the people you’re surrounding yourselves with? Is it your mentality about how involved you have to be in something that pertains to your money? What what do you think is the key factor that keeps people from making that transition from being a real estate investor to being a passive investor,

13:39  

We’ve all been trained to be employees, like, we’re all like a Tomatometer towards this idea that I must do it myself. No one else will do it too well enough, except for me, which, depending on were talking about, could be true. But it could also be completely false. There are people who do things much better than you that you’d rather pay for sure, right? Like, I don’t do my own dentist work, I hire my dentist for that, right? And I pay my dentist a pretty pretty good premium for that. But I want nice, clean teeth, you know, like, I want to keep these in my head, right? So it’s this this this problem that I think so many of us fall trap a trap to is that we we are constantly coming back toward I am the thing that needs to happen. And and we ask the question, How can I do this? And we need to be asking, Who can I attract to help me do it? So it’s the who not how concept from a book if you’ve heard of it. If you haven’t read it, I would highly recommend it because it makes you think differently. And Warren Buffett also has a famous saying of like you’ll never retire unless you learn how to make money while you sleep. And So said another way is you have to be able to own equity in something that makes money while you’re not involved. Like you are the biggest limiting factor. If you look at all the things you need to make an asset happen. You need time you need the network you need need knowledge, you need money and you need some access to a deal or some sort of project to work. If you don’t have time, then none of the other things happen. So sometimes needs to be put into it until you understand that you that you can gain the capital, so that you can gain the network that people to work with, you can gain the knowledge on how to work with these people. But once you acquire those things, you should be eliminating your use of time because that’s the most limiting resource that we have. And the richest people in the world are not trying to figure out how to get more hours in the day, they’re trying to limit how much they’re doing per day. It’s a very different way of thinking about the world.

15:41  

The episode will continue in just a moment.

15:44  

As an investor, we know it’s important to stay on top of market trends and real estate opportunities that add value to your portfolio. We also know that having a trusted source of reliable information to help you stay a step ahead of other investors is critical to your success. If you’re interested in having these types of resources, as well as access to me and my team, I invite you to join the Empire Investment Club, a free service that gives you an easier way to make sense of today’s and tomorrow’s real estate opportunities. As a member of the Empire Investment Club, you’ll get access to relevant resources and investment focused experiences such as live interactive webinars, market trend presentations, and investor socials designed to equip you with what you need to succeed. So whether you’re an active investor, passive investor, a combination of both, or just starting out the club is where you’ll get what you need to build a portfolio you love to join, just head over to Jennifer to haystack comm sign up. And we’ll see you in the club, where everyone’s on a journey to becoming a better investor. So tell me a little bit more about so your book, let’s talk about your book for a second, what is the name of the book?

It’s ‘Escape Your Money Mindset to Freedom.’ And I talk a lot about this idea of, of me having this moment where I was like, oh, like I needed to bridge like I need to figure out a way to not have to exchange time for money anymore. And I talk about the different disciplines, different Yeah, you can go, you can be a stock investor, you can own real estate, you can be a business owner. And I’m very big about not being dogmatic about those things. Because it depends on your personality, there isn’t like thing to do. But there isn’t one path to take. But you must set that mission, you set your sail to get to a place where you don’t need to exchange your time for money anymore.

17:30  

Okay. And let’s talk about your podcast, your podcast. So what’s the name of your podcast?

17:35  

Yes, my podcast as of this recording is called my freedom foundry, but I am actually rebranding that to the wake up call, because I’m kind of going down this path of helping people create their financial freedom, called my freedom boundary. So I’m gonna change that to my community of my freedom boundary. But the wake up call will be where I interview people who have these aha moments, and realize, Oh, I saw my I’m sure you’ve had one too, you’ve had probably more than one to like, you realize something in your life, you’re like, Oh, I was looking at it the wrong way. And now I do it this way, my life is gonna be the same again. I’m trying to capture those moments and document them.

18:11  

Very, very cool. Okay. So that that’s your new podcast, your podcasts or the your new your new version of your podcasts? Well, what is your original podcast about? What do you what do you spend most your time talking about?

18:24  

So my freedom foundry when I was going through that, I was interviewing other people. And obviously, about two thirds of them were interviewing people. And about 1/3 of it was me doing a monologue or something I’ve learned. And I will still probably keep the similar format with the wake up call. So depending on when you listen to this, when I’ve rebranded it to who knows, what do we call it, right? So it’s little confusing when you rebrand. But the whole and fundamental point of this was for me to take in interesting ideas, capture ones that I thought really can make a difference to people’s lives and then share it with other people. And that’s fundamentally what I’m about is sharing big ideas to help transform people’s lives. Okay.

19:08  

So let’s talk a little bit about your coaching. So your coaching, and your seminars and all the things that you’re doing? Are they mostly to help new people get started investing? Is it about helping seasoned investors scale? Is it a little bit of both? What is that? What is the foundation for the coaching that you provide?

19:29  

Yeah, there’s a couple different levels. One is I’m new and I need to figure things out. And that’s more of a self paced course. And that’s something that I can do record once and help a lot of people. But then what really gets me excited is having people starting to run their business, and now they’re trying to figure out what it’s like to be a real estate entrepreneur. So that’s what I focus on now in my mastermind is I help other real estate entrepreneurs kind of scale their business while actually keeping a reasonable same schedule, and actually not burn themselves out in the process. Like, we don’t want to be so successful and then have some sort of health issue or have your relationship with your spouse, or your kids fall apart. And that’s that, that defeats the purpose. We want to have this kind of balanced approach of, okay, this is how I run a business. This is how I delegate, this is how I scale this is how I go home on the weekends.

20:24  

Right? How does somebody get in contact with you if they want to learn more about your your coaching opportunities,

0:32  

All my stuff, if you want to find me on the interwebs, you have the best place to find me is my website, Paul, David thompson.com. There’s a link there for my podcast link there for my mastermind link there for any kind of live events that I have going on. I’m not sure when this will be released. But about a month from now, this is May 11, two months from now, I will be hosting an event a live event actually in Houston, we’re having a retreat workshops.

20:57  

Okay, fantastic. I also noticed on your website, you also have some free resources, as well, some blogs and some podcasts, you know, things there. So definitely something for our listeners to check out. I thought it was very informative, and a great, great resource for people. Well, thank you. So let’s talk quickly about anything else you want to mention about your purpose driven entrepreneurship, right? You are extremely passionate about creating all these different revenue streams. And, you know, I like to refer to them as like a revenue octopus. But you were also very passionate about spending less of your time, creating more wealth while you sleep. And then helping people while you do all that. So let’s talk a little bit more, just tell me a little bit more about if or if there’s anything you haven’t said more about your purpose driven entrepreneurship and kind of like what’s next on the horizon for you?

21:50  

You bet. So I’m very big on this idea of leading life by design and not by default. So it’s why I’m not prescriptive, and what kind of vehicle you need to use to create financial freedom. You need to find a discipline and an interest that applies to your skill set to your curiosities to something that interests you, right? So I’m very big about this idea of taking stock of what you actually want to live, like, what’s the desired outcome, like, what what is a good day for you and to design your life so that you can leave that day, every day, or at least most days. And so I spend a lot of time now thinking about how I can maintain my energy, and still do interesting things in the world. But also spend time with my family. Also travel when I want to? Part of the reason why don’t have traditional employees. So, but that’s my thing, and having employees isn’t bad, right? It’s a useful thing to think to have. But lead your life and lead your ideal life based on the design that makes sense for you and not what society not what’s your family, not what well intentioned teachers tell you take stock of yourself, what do I want?

23:07  

Okay, great. So, I always end my podcasts with usually kind of like the, you know, the the one trick pony, if you will, you know, if you had, if you could only give a new investor, one piece of advice. One, just one, what would it be?

23:30  

I would put this on a billboard everywhere, if I could always invest in yourself. Because if you only invest in yourself, then everything that we’ve talked about will come afterwards. But if you you are your your best asset. And if you don’t work on your own mindset, if you don’t have your own wake up call moments, if you don’t have your own Aha, where you’re reading a book, you know, like, oh, that’s what I needed to do was that nugget, then, you know, you’re just you’ll, you’ll follow along with life. And you’ll just be directed by all the inputs from society, who don’t have your best interests at heart that you go into. I heard someone would recently say, when you go into the grocery store these days, it’s absolute violence. I was like, talking about and the more he talked, I realized, oh, okay, he’s right. Because we have all this marketing that comes out as to eat all these sugary fatty foods. But you know, there’s very rarely somebody advertising for broccoli. Right? But that’s what we know. We should be eating broccoli and Cheerios, or Froot Loops are something right. So think about that, like, okay, design your life the way you want to, and be aware of investing in yourself in eating the fruit loops or watching Netflix every single night is not investing yourself that’s giving into the inputs of our society.

24:50  

Fair enough. So what questions did I not ask you that I should have?

24:55  

You know, I, I asked this question of my people as well. It’s like So what did I miss here, and you’re actually a very good interviewer. So I don’t feel like you’ve left anything uncovered. The last thing that I’ll leave everybody with is we don’t do what we think we should be doing. Or there’s like this is like, there’s this inner drive inside of all of us that wants to do something a little bit different, a little bit created a little bit interesting. And we have all this like negative talk, like our inner self, holds us back. And one of the best books to read is the big leap. And we’re self sabotaging herself constantly, from protective behaviors that we’ve developed from our childhoods that we’re not even conscious of. And so I’ll share with you a scenario that I had, I had a very loving mother, she passed away a couple years ago from COVID. Thank you for for your condolences. She was a genuine loving person. When I was younger, she was overweight, and she had trouble she had some some mental health issues, we’ll call it. And she was in a bad place. And, like, so many people happen sometimes. And it just became convenient for her to ask me to do things for her, I was getting older, I was able to wash the dishes, I was able to do the laundry. And that’s what she needed. She needed some help. But that pattern happened a lot. And it got to a point to where I got worn out of it. And I was like, Can you not help here do a little bit yourself here, mom. And what I discovered just a couple of years ago, that as a result of that I did not want to be a burden to anybody else. Because I did not like her making me or her being a burden to me, basically. And that’s a little protective behavior that I’ve carried with me, the rest of my life is not putting other people out. I’m the nice guy, I thought I was saying, but in fact, I was saying I don’t want to be, I don’t want to have that feeling that my mother made me feel when she was going through that problem. So but I carried that with me my entire life. I mean, I loved her dearly. This is not that she was a bad mother at all this was we all have trauma of some type in our life. And that’s the thing that unlock these behaviors that are holding you back. So I am unlikely to put you out and say, Hey, can you help me with this? Or can I can I ask you to raise money for this deal? Like that was so contrary to my personality? Or contrary to my training? Are my own protective? inner thoughts? I guess so you might say. So delve into those things for yourself, like that’s going on in every single one of our lives. And that often is what’s keeping you from being the person you want to be.

27:48  

Well, and I also believe that if you can tap into that, it’s also what’s going to propel you forward.

27:52  

Absolutely. Because you’re unlocked. They’re like, Oh, that’s the aha moment. It’s like, oh, man, I’ve been like, I was like, that’s so obvious when I realized it was so obvious. Because I know, I know the situation. I know myself. And once I realized that I catch myself still someone, I’ll be at someone’s house and they’ll say, Hey, do you want a second helpings? Oh, no, I’m fine. I’m fine. It’s like, wait a sec. No, no, I’m actually this was delicious. And I would like a second helping Thank you. Because I didn’t wanna put them out. I didn’t want to be that person being the burden, but they actually genuinely wanted me to have seconds.

28:26  

That’s great. Well, Paul, I can’t thank you enough. I think you are just a very interesting person. I think you have such a kind heart about yourself in the way that you want to always help people learn, you know, your learnings, right? You’re just like you’re trying to help people propel themselves forward as quickly as they can get there by sharing some of your you know, you know, aha moments or your expertise that you’ve gained. So I think that’s such a very unique thing. And just, it’s really incredible. You’re You’re just a really kind heart and a great spirit. And, you know, I know that your resources and the information that you brought today is going to be incredibly helpful for our listeners, I hope they take the initiative to go check you out and see the things that you have there for them and just take some of your advice about, you know, networking, getting out there educating yourself. And, you know, really just taking that leap of faith and believing in yourself that you can do this so that you can be successful and create that generational wealth for yourself, for your family, and most importantly for your sanity. Right. Thanks. Right,

29:31  

Jim? Thanks for having me.

29:32  

That was great. It was fantastic. I really appreciate your time. Thank you for listening to this two part episode with Paul David Thompson. I’m sure you got to understand why I had him on my show. I just think he’s such an incredible role model for people that are really trying to figure out a new path in life and his passion for leading life by design, and building generational wealth, financial free read them and taking back your personal time is what I found to be so intriguing. So I knew I couldn’t wait to have him on my show. I hope you enjoyed those two episodes as much as I did. And until next time, take care.

30:15  

For more information about how Jennifer can help you plan, develop and manage a strong real estate investment portfolio, visit growingempires.com.