Bruce Breedlove: Financial Coach Helping Real Estate Agents

Tracy Hayes  1:25  
today's guest is a very diversified gentleman. He is a real estate investor and co founder with his wife of align Money Mastery. Today we will specifically digging deep and how he's helped real estate agents become better stewards of their money, build wealth and change their family tree. He became a millionaire by the age of 32 let's welcome the millionaire, Millionaire Real Estate Investor Bruce Breedlove

Unknown Speaker  1:49  
to the show. Yeah, great to be here. What an intro.

Tracy Hayes  1:52  
I have to ask you the that last name that I mean, did you

bruce breedlove  1:56  
it's real. There's not too many breed loves. I actually there's a shocking amount of breed loves in Florida, and I'm from Ohio. Had no idea I'd meet more down here, but, yeah, that's real. I get asked that all the time, you change that? Did you make that up? No, that's real.

Tracy Hayes  2:11  
Well, you know, there's just those names. And you think about, you know, when we're kids, you know, he's got teas, right? Being Tracy. I mean, I mean, I don't, you know how many times I've walked in. I always remember sixth grade walking in first day teachers going through roll call, and it's, you know. And of course, all my classmates, I've grown up with them for last whatever amount of years, and the teacher didn't know me though she goes Tracy, where is she, you know. And I still get male Miss Tracy Hayes, you know, because they don't know. Yeah, people,

Tracy Hayes  2:36  
I get that all the time, especially these that you never know, you never know.

Tracy Hayes  2:39  
So Bruce, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna, I want to really spend a lot of time in listening to your other shows and content. There's a lot of information out there. If the listeners haven't heard it on, you know, you on other shows. But obviously the financial market, it's, it's inconsistent turmoil. So new information everyone's waiting for when, when's the you know the rate's gonna drop, or, you know, when something going to change, and hopefully a positive direction. So I want to dig into that. But I think it's very important for everyone to know, you know, you've gotten a passion in the in the financing, you're now consulting, coaching people on their finances and so forth. Where did that come from?

bruce breedlove  3:15  
Yeah, really, to fully explain this, I have to go way back. Unfortunately, I grew up in a family that unfortunately struggled with drug and alcohol addiction issues. Alcohol addiction issues, grew up really fast, moved out on my own. When I was 17, I had $600 in my bank account. I lived in an apartment for free that I borrowed from my ex girlfriend's sister because it was promised to me even though we were no longer dating. And you know, I specifically remember very vividly the first night I laid in that apartment just thinking like, this is a crossroads in my life, a major crossroads. So I can How old are we talking about right now, I'm 17, and 17, I'm still in high school, and I'm living in this apartment, and I remember this, this is a fork in the road, right? I can either be successful and do everything I need to do to become successful. And I knew maybe it was divine consciousness or whatever. But I knew it revolved around money, right, or I could be unsuccessful and just fail, right? And that night, I made the decision. I had no idea what was going to go into that to be successful, right? And I would do everything I possibly could to be successful in my life, right? And I knew that it was going to take learning how money worked, how it flowed, how to how to make it, how to make more of it, and then how to make it work for me, right? So I just there's a lot of free information out there, and YouTube existed at this time, so I just learned as much as I possibly could. I was still in high school at this time, so I couldn't even open a Roth IRA or a brokerage account myself, and I didn't make that much money. I opened my first Roth IRA at 18. I was working at Dairy Queen, making 800 bucks a month, and I only had enough money to put in 50 bucks to my Roth IRA every month, which is almost no money, right? But the point is, I started, and then I learned, and then I you know, I started. I went to nursing school in 2007 I graduated as a nurse in 2011 worked only, made eight, 900 bucks a month. That whole time, put myself through college. Luckily, I was good enough academically that I got a full ride scholarship to the University of Akron in Ohio. I didn't have to pay for college. I graduated with the debt free degree as a nurse. I remember, I got out and I started my first paycheck was 1200 bucks. And I'm like, holy crap, this is so much money. I've never seen this much money at once. And I'm just like, I made it right, right, like, and I sort of felt like the first layer of that scarcity, that, like, white knuckle mentality I had to have my whole childhood and then my whole young adulthood melt away, right? So by this time, I was making 65 grand a year as a nurse, and I was 21 started, you know, I enrolled in my 401, K, I started investing that. Starting seeing I was making money every day in the market, right? That I wasn't working for. And I started that snowball early, because it happens fast. Once you invest money, it really sort of takes on a life of its own over over time, right? So then, then what happened was I was looking around, and I started having conversations late at night with nurses I was working with who had been a nurse for 510, 1520, years, and they couldn't, they couldn't even spell for 1k let alone tell me what it was invested in, or how much they contribute, or what it means, right? And then I started realizing, like, Wow, no one uses a budget. No one really tells their money what to do. So I just started, like, because I care about people. I started just like, like, hey, let's pull up your 401 K, and make sure that, you know, it's not 60% in cash, because it's not ever going to grow, right? So I started just doing that, sort of like anecdotally, when, when I could, when I had time, when people would be willing to

Tracy Hayes  6:25  
step back a little bit and go back to that moment you're sitting there in the apartment, what? That's not a typical thought process for a 17 and a half year old. Were you already, you know, seeing things, or was it, you know, going online and and seeing me talking about money, and you're like, What do you mean? I can, you know, do this or do that, and what caused that? Thought it had to something. Something had to bring it to you that there was another

bruce breedlove  6:52  
path. I was pushed up into a corner. I was if I didn't make a decision to be successful right now, the rest of my life would be predetermined for me. I was in such a precarious situation, pushed up against the wall by reality, that I knew that if I didn't sort of wake up and do what needed to be done to be successful, I wasn't ever going to be successful, right? And I, like I said, I don't know where that came from, how I decided that, nor if it was divine consciousness, whatever that I just knew that I had to figure out how money worked. I mean, you can't go down the street without having $1 bill to put in your gas tank. So our world, the way it's built, before you and I were both here, revolves around money, and for us to ignore that reality, people

Tracy Hayes  7:34  
laughed at me because of my senior yearbook I put the my quote was, Money makes the world go around. It does. That was my quote, and they laughed at me for that.

bruce breedlove  7:46  
Yeah, we're also raised to not talk about money and not have open conversations about money, and mom and dad don't tell the kids, like, hey, we can't do this, and here's why, right? Or like, Hey, mom lost her job. It's going to be a little tough, but because there's so much that goes into that goes into that there's so much emotion, there's so much pride. Is taboo in our culture to talk about it, and so these two things coexist at once, right? It's both taboo and unpopular and unsexy to talk about money, but we all need it, and we all go to work every day to get it. Those things don't mix, and that's that's the cause of our lack of financial literacy and financial wellness in our society. So, so I don't to answer your question that you pulled us back to, I really can't tell you what brought that to my mind. I was just lucky enough or aware enough that I knew that I had to get my arms around this.

Tracy Hayes  8:34  
I mean, I mean, I got a 14 year old and in in one thing I really am proud to say is he goes, you know, all these kids are growing up on YouTube, yeah, YouTube. And he will go on, and he actually is interested in being in front of his classmates going on, looking up YouTube videos about the subject matter that whatever they're studying. He uses that as as a library on which is on steroids, because they're just taking it in, in their bedroom, on their phone, you know, or TV, or whatever computer, they're just taking this all in. How You Can we start directing some of these kids at that age to start watching some of these things, you know? You know, we were talking about, talking about content creation, you know, finances for kids, which I imagine if we went on there in YouTube right now, somebody hopefully has got that, but it's not exploited because, because I had one of my teammates here, here at the bank, she deals with credit. If we have people with credit issues, we send it her, and she spends her time on figuring the puzzle out. And one of the questions I had for her when I had her on the show was, should we be teaching this stuff in our high schools, at least some basic level, hopefully create the interest or thought that you had at 17 and a half.

bruce breedlove  9:46  
Yeah, and again, I was just lucky enough to have that. However, that's it's, you know, my wife found a study that showed that we form our relationship with money by the age of six. And so that is, I bet that's way sooner than. Thought, right? Yeah, so. So how you talk about money in your house? The attitude with which you react to your child when they ask for something shapes them and their relationship with money when they're older, right? And if our parents didn't have our their arms around it, and their grandparents didn't have what makes you think that you're going to so you need to start that education, high school, 100% and again, you know, back to your original question. I don't know how I realized that I just was self aware enough and aware enough of the world at 17 to make that decision. In my mid 20s, I was just casually coaching people when they were willing, right? Because I cared so much about just helping them succeed, because I was seeing the benefits of it that, you know, we would pull up their 401 K's, we'd take a look at their stuff, and we'd, we'd just make some adjustments, right? And then I some people that I coached, who I worked with, started coming back to me and saying, like, Wow, you really helped me three years ago, or when we did this, that changed my life. And, you know, there was this, this one woman, I'll never forget her. She came to me and her husband was sick, and she went to her financial advisor, and she thought she had all this money. And so life was happening, right? She was in crisis mode. Unfortunately, her husband, who handled the finances, passed away, and she came to me and she said, like, I need help. So we changed some things with her financial life, and she started saving more in her retirement. We invested it correctly, right? And she was able to retire just a couple years later. And she lives in Argentina now, and is living her her best life, unfortunately, with her dear husband, but, but, and so that was the first time I'm like, Man, I really have something here. Like, people need this. I can help people. Like, I have the heart of a teacher I'm so passionate about when I know something, I just I'm like, I want to tell everyone like, this thing that I learned through my experience and my through my research. Like I want you to have this too. It's like something that gives me the greatest joy and it keeps me going, right? And so then fast forward, you know, I started making some content, messing around with stuff. I wasn't very good at it. If you see some my old, old videos,

Tracy Hayes  11:54  
those start somewhere, bro.

bruce breedlove  11:57  
I filmed a selfie in my car one time, and I started it thinking. I started saying this, ah, I was riding around today thinking about debt like everyone has turned off. So anyway, back to the Your Money Matters days. Shout out to the followers from then, yeah, but, but in it. So then I sort of went through a difficult time, personally, went through a divorce, re re imagine myself, and that was my entry into real estate. Okay, we can talk about that. But then fast forward to about 12 months ago, a mutual friend reached out and said, Hey, I see what you guys are doing. This is awesome. Would love to learn from you. And I was like, yeah, we'd love to teach you. And I had decided, like, I'm not going to give this away for free anymore, because I had given my time away for eight plus years coaching people by that point. And then so I was like, You know what? Here's what I can teach you. I just typed it up in an email real quick, send it to him, and I said, 750 bucks. 150 bucks. And he's like, boom, done. Then would be the money. And that's it. And I'm like, wow, we actually have a business now. Transition from I just really care about people and want to help them. I've had success with money to like, hey, align Money Mastery is now a thing, right? And that was 1213, months ago. We've helped people pay off I just calculated the number $334,000 of debt, save over $45,000 of interest, invest over $200,000 etc, etc, etc, and we've had 36 families in our program in just over a year. Wow. And that's, I mean, blast, and

Tracy Hayes  13:18  
a lot of it, I assume, is a word of mouth, right? It's not like you're on a billboard out

bruce breedlove  13:22  
there. No, I don't do any paid advertising. I'm live on Tiktok now have a great community over there. My personal Facebook, I just sort of post economic stuff, and then we have open conversations, and I try to, I try to bring up things that that people need to know in ways that they understand, because I realize that that rarely do people fluently speak money language. Okay? So then, so I I know that because I've been coaching people for so long. So I take it and I explain it like, like, you know you've heard explain, like, I'm five. Basically, that's what I do, right? But, but then we have conversations about it, and then people slowly started seeing me as like, Hey, this guy knows what he's talking about. He's had some success in this personal world, you know, and it's taken on a life of its own between all of that and but no, I don't, I don't pay to advertise. It's my time. It's my effort. It's my relationships that are working for me. At this point,

Tracy Hayes  14:14  
I'm going to pause on because we're going to pick up that part of the coaching and stuff in just a minute again. But I want to go back, you know, you like said you got involved in real estate. Obviously, you know, every millionaire billionaire out there has some portfolio and real estate in one way, shape or form, at least, that's what we're told, right? Which, you know, it's factual. Data has been been told to us. When do you start seeing that as an avenue, and how do you what? You know, what? When did you just get involved?

bruce breedlove  14:42  
Yeah, so I mentioned my my entry into making content for my financial stuff. Right now, it was really bad. Someone who was a friend at the time reached out and said, Hey, see what you're doing. Love it, but you're not going to be successful. In quotations, this person said you're going to be making, you're trying to make money from broke people. And so unfortunately, I listened to that advice. And so I put the financial content, the financial coaching, on hold, and that led me to start the real estate brokerage in Jacksonville called Momentum Realty and, and this is an in the throes of covid, right? Started at a kitchen table with three people, and the idea was brought up to build a brokerage that was for top producers, right? So the reason I was brought in is because I was, I had, I have the, this intangible skill to take a product and help solve people's problems with that product. That's sales. 101, right? Tracy is hungry. I have a hamburger. Boom. Soldier, hamburger that, and that is, that is, it's very infancy how to sell. Okay? So I was brought into to both market, to both design the brand, to both all of this right, but then also that, that morphed into me becoming the main recruiter of real estate agents to the brand. So I was sort of the one that was going out and getting the relationships and marketing right momentum. And that led me to get into real estate, learn real estate agents, learn their psyche. Met a lot of them, and then, and then I started investing in real estate myself, right? So I did what's called House hacking, right? I was single at the time, so I was taking 20 grand, and I was buying a three bedroom, two bath with 5% down in good neighborhoods, living there for six months and then repeating. So I did that for a few years, met my now wife, and now we have five rental properties that that are cash flowing, plus a sixth home that is our primary, right? So that's our current portfolio, but we haven't bought since 2021 because it no longer makes mathematical

Tracy Hayes  16:33  
sense, yeah, now you're, I mean, just ask that question, because you brought that up. But would you agree or disagree? Because rates are higher, your cash flow isn't necessarily there. Would you still buy a home if you buy an investment property? If you could right now, even if the you were net, you weren't losing money, you were in net zero cash flow.

bruce breedlove  16:54  
So in order to make money in this and let me qualify my my

Tracy Hayes  16:58  
viewpoint by because it's more of a long term play. But go ahead and well, let

bruce breedlove  17:03  
me qualify my viewpoint by saying I know the North Florida, Northeast Florida, real estate market. I know like we have five homes that are in all the different neighborhoods of Jacksonville, right? San Marco, St Augustine, the beaches, South Side River, I'm sorry, Mandarin, so that's a pretty good representation of Jacksonville. Okay, and we've lost in the last few months between 60 and $80,000 of equity in our homes. So home prices are going down in spite of what anyone says in North Florida, okay? Because I'm seeing it in my

Tracy Hayes  17:32  
portfolio. Okay. Well, actually, how are you seeing it in your portfolio you own the house? Uh huh, that equity isn't more squat unless you take it out, sure, sure. How are you actually, yeah, well,

bruce breedlove  17:43  
so on paper, right? Not, not really. And I checked because I'm getting around to answering so on paper, I track what they're worth month to month, right, right? And so I'm in this allows me to have a trend of of the market at large, right? And again, when I, when I say the market at large, I mean, our insulated Northeast Florida market, in the neighborhoods that I represent, which are diverse enough that I feel it's a, it's a, it's a good slice, yeah, it's a super majority of Jacksonville, we'll call it. So no. So to answer your question, if you think about return on investment per dollar, right? If you have to put more money into the deal to make it cash flow, your return on every dollar is actually lower. So, yeah, your cash flowing, but your return on every dollar is way lower than you can get just by buying real estate investment trusts or other dividend producing assets that you can just take $1 put it in there, and it pays you every month like clockwork with, I don't want to say no risk, because there's, there's always risk with investing, however, far less risk than managing a physical asset, having a tenant, etc. It makes no sense. You know, there are real estate investment trusts right now that are beaten down by inflation, I'm sorry, by interest rates that are paying 15, 16% yearly, paid monthly. And when I say that, people are like, There's no way. There is I buy them every week. So I track return on investment of every dollar in the portfolio, both traditional investment portfolio and our real estate investment portfolio. And the math doesn't math. If you gave me a house and said, hey, I'll give you this, this discount, whatever, I'm sure it's going to cash flow, I would still not invest in real estate anymore. It just doesn't make

Tracy Hayes  19:14  
sense, not, not at this moment in time with the current

bruce breedlove  19:17  
I mean, personally, we don't need to anymore, but, but when the math starts making sense, I'll let you know.

Tracy Hayes  19:24  
Well, well, like you said, when you You're right now today. I mean, back in 19 and 20 and going into 21 it was, I mean,

bruce breedlove  19:31  
yeah, and that, this was between 2019, and 2021, I bought all these homes during that time, and it 100%

Tracy Hayes  19:37  
make sense, because I don't, I don't see, like you said, we were talking, you know, kind of little bit of a pre show buyers and sellers and, you know, yeah, the price might go up, but you do have a lot of sellers who do want to move. And when the things are right, you know, what are the values going to do? You know, they're going to stagnate. You know, I can't see them going any higher, because I think affordability is becoming a huge problem right now. It's the

bruce breedlove  19:57  
most expensive time to buy a house since 1984 Yeah. Realtor.com did a study in the largest 50 metro areas in the country. In 49 of them, it was more expensive to rent. I'm sorry, it was more expensive to buy than it was to rent. Okay? So if you're a primary, if you're someone who's trying to buy a home to live in, right, and own it long term, buy the freaking house, right? If you've been saving up and the numbers make sense, and your wife really wants to buy the house. You've got kids and you're running out of room, buy the freaking house, but as an investment, it doesn't make sense to do so. Now there are other ways. Again, my perspective is, I'm a house hacker. I bought the homes of the with a conventional mortgage. I moved into them, live there for six months, etc, right? There's sub two financing, there's, there's, there's tax lien. You know, investing, there's other ways to invest in real estate that might make sense. But from my point of view and on my experience of the type of real estate investing I do, it does not make sense anymore.

Tracy Hayes  20:49  
You're investing in real estate. Things happen. You're in your life you had there's some changes there. Now we're going back to align Money Mastery here 12 months ago. I want to dig in because, obviously, who referred you Gigi, who was on here not too long ago, not that I hadn't see, I saw you on Tanya and stuff. I just didn't dig into your stuff. Yeah. I mean, she thinks you walk on water. I love you, yeah. So I want to dig a little bit into from the from the standpoint of, you know, we don't have to talk about Gigi specifically, and you can mix stories here. But how do you break down when you knew a new, new person you've never worked with before? Don't even, you know, know or, I mean, what are some of the things that you're doing initially? Because obviously you're going to like a doctor, you're going to diagnose, and then, before you get the prescription,

bruce breedlove  21:38  
yeah, don't, don't forget, I'm a nurse, too. So the nursing process, the first step is always assess, right? And this is no different, right? So we take people through what we call, affectionately, a financial audit, okay? And I didn't create that term, but it really encapsulates what what we do, right? We and we do this is on zoom with our customers. Last night, we just did four hours straight of them, half an hour blocks. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, random people from across the country that want to get their arms around their finances know how we can help. Okay, so it starts with the financial audit, and that is, we have a on our website. We have what's called the 2024, wealth building guide, and part of that is how to go through a financial audit. It's literally writing down how much is in your checking, how much is in your savings, how much how much how much assets you have for one case, IRAs, you know, all the where you have money, and then where you owe money, so all your liabilities, mortgage, HELOC, credit card, student loans, car loans, all that bad debt and just to get and then we look at how much you make in a month, and then we look at how much you spend in a month, and look at your numbers. It's like a profit and loss for your personal family, right? And so then, and by the way, that might sound simple to you, or maybe someone that's listening like, Oh, of course you would do that, but it's not common for people to have any comprehension of what's going on in their financial world, and that's from my experience. So just taking a flashlight and shining that light on their finances booms open their mind, and so, so it's amazing the clarity that people get just from that 30 minute meeting with us, and then immediately I find opportunities to improve their financial situation, like quickly, right. Here's, here's a for instance, some people have credit cards that they haven't dumped out for a while. And you know, there's 220 bucks over here in cash, back rewards, dump that out, pay it on this debt, right? Or I, you know, a lot of people have Robin Hood accounts now and have been trying to do investing, you know, buying crypto and all that. Don't buy crypto, by the way, but, you know, and so I'm like, Okay, no, you know you're not out making in your speculative investments what you're paying on credit card debt over here. But people don't look at their financial world has a comprehensive picture. They look at it in siloed things, and like, Oh, I'm trying to invest over here, oh, and I'm trying to pay off debt over here. It's, you can't. You know what happens when you try to keep 10 plates spinning, five of them end up falling off, and, you know, you can barely keep the other five spinning, right? So that's, that's what people tried to do and and I feel for them, because it's, it's like, we're not taught, and that's just our natural inclination to try to do everything, but you accomplish nothing. So back to your original question, how do we, you know? How do we meet with people? How do we help with people? It starts with that financial audit, okay? And once we sort of mutually agree on some immediate steps, we bring people into our program and then execute on those steps. Okay? So hopefully that answered your

Tracy Hayes  24:17  
question. So go on, I want to just go back to the the debt, yeah. And we can just keep it as simple as credit cards. For this situation. You listen to one of your other shows there with Tanya and you, I think you were, you know, credit card average, credit card interest is nearly 30 30%

bruce breedlove  24:33  
it's 24 now, 24 now as of April. Okay, so

Tracy Hayes  24:37  
24 you would coach them. First of all, we need to get control of those credit cards. We need to get them down to, I mean, do you like you? Hey, we need to really get them down to, ideally, we're paying them off monthly, yeah, staying within our means.

bruce breedlove  24:50  
But it could be, I mean, it's so hard to say. I mean, yeah, the idea, the thing about debt is it steals your income. Debt requires minimum payments, which takes your income from you. Okay? Right? And when you no longer have minimum payments, you have money. And that is, again, I didn't make that up. That's straight from Dave Ramsey. When you, when you have don't have minimum payments, you have money. And then when you have money, you can build wealth and you can live the life that you really want to live. Unfortunately, people out live their means and end up racking up debt, and especially when in easy money times we can get back to real estate. But in easy money times like 2019, 2020 when the house a listing would sell like that for over asking price, you can sort of out earn those bad decisions for a while, but eventually those bad decisions will come to roost. And that's exactly what happened in quarter three of 2023 when the 10 year treasury hit 5% and interest rates were 8% and real estate agents were looking around like, holy crap, I don't have anything in my checking account, right? And so that's where, you know, with the shows that you mentioned, I was on with Tanya and and where we were already doing what we were doing at a line, but that's when a lot of real estate agents entered our world, and that's your Gigi reference. That's when we sort of met and then started working

Tracy Hayes  26:03  
with her. Well, what happens in the real estate for real estate agent is every small business in that because that's they are small to each individual. And I think a lot of our consumers, and it's not just small business people, although getting a small business person in line, you know, in control could be whether or not their business is going to be successful or not. I think there's a knowing having been in the mortgage world. And when I started in 2005 at Quicken Loans, we were refined. We didn't even really do purchase. We did them if someone wanted to do it. But refinance three, not, you know, cash out. I mean, we were pulling 50, $60,000 out of a home. And, you know, paying off a lot of times, cars paying off a high, you know, debt, credit cards to get people in control and go, Hey, look, we can refinance. And I know you have opinion this. Hey, we could, you know, you got all this equity in this home, we could pull it out. Your payments only going to go up a couple 100 bucks, but you're going to save $1,500 a month and all your minimum payments that we're going to consolidate now into into the home. And I think the risk for a w2 employee is they think their job is going to be there forever. And I think they go thinking, there's the tree is always going to have money for me to pull off of, and therefore don't go out. Let me go buy that boat and not realize this. I'm going to choose boats because I'm a freedom Boat Club member. I grew up on boats. There are holes in the water you pour money into. There is a reason why that is the phrase for them. Do not buy your own boat. But just don't do it. Have a friend with a boat, yeah, and unless you, unless you get that exorbitant amount of money, which you have no problem losing or taking on water, basically, in your financial world. But if you're just a weekend voter, one day a week, which I think for someone who owns trailers, a boat, one day a week, 50 weeks of the year is a lot of use of their boat. Those boats sit there, RVs. They say that the average person doesn't even use them, you know, 30 days of the year. But you're paying for the storage of them, because our HOAs don't allow you to park them there. And then you're obviously paying the note on it, the insurance and all those other things. Just go and rent and pay a little bit more when you use it, when you want to go, until you become that, you know you want to go, but you know, these type of little things, obviously, we got to enjoy the pleasures of life. We don't work. You got a type of thing, I know you're, you're on air, signing. Thoughts are going through your head, excited. I'm excited to jump into this. Okay, so I, but I, I know, and we know, nationally, the credit card debt is at its highest. It's 1.3 trillion. Yeah, yeah. And continue growing. Because the lot of these people think those w2 jobs are going to last forever, you've got to get your house in order as well. What are you spending every week? On Friday night or going out to dinner? We're just going. And then they find out, Oh my god, I got all this credit card now I need this. Now we're into the house sell, which I know you and Tanya, which I wanted to dig into. We have sellers on the sideline. Or you we mentioned pre show a little bit, you're starting to see some Distress sales, because people have gotten themselves in some bad

bruce breedlove  29:09  
spots. Yeah, a lot to dig in there. So let's, let's go back to I want to talk about, first of all, in our in our program, and the way I coach. We don't coach from a scarcity mindset. We don't coach from a scarcity perspective. I want Tracy to buy every boat that he wants and every RV that he want. I want to put you in a situation to where you can do that with confidence, right, and it won't make you make difficult decisions down. That's how we coach, right? And we are not like, I am not like, Oh, nope, nope. How dare you spend that money? No, no, we are. Let's you're an adult. I'm an adult. Let's make a plan together, and I will walk you through how to hit your goals financially and align, hence the name, align your dollars with every goal that we've discussed and mutually agreed upon. But everything that you're talking about is the smoke, right? The smoke is high credit card debt. Oh my gosh. I have to remortgage my house to pay off my credit card debt. I have a boat and a car. R and an RV, but I can't pay my credit cards off. That is the smoke. The fire is the disordered relationship with money clip that, right? So the smoke is all of the symptoms, right? The fire is the lack of control and understanding and discipline with managing money, and a lot of it is a knowledge deficit, right? It's a lot harder. It's a lot easier of a sell to say, Man, you're really going to have a good time on that boat than it is to say, hey, let's do the math around that boat, right? That is that is a whole lot less sexy than the selfies you take on your boat in the summertime. So the smoke and having too much of your financial world tied up in assets that go down in value, we call financial gravity, okay, so when you make $100,000 a year and you have $40,000 invested in things that go down in value, that creates financial gravity, and the pull is on your net worth, okay, so when you have a car, RV and a boat, right, all things that go down in value, and you've spent 40% of your yearly salary on those things that 40% of your salary turns into 30 and 20 and 10, really quick. And that's financial gravity, right? There's this thing called the time equals money equation that I talk about all the time. Okay, you and me, we both still get up every day and work our jobs, right? I'm a salaried employee at my pharmaceutical sales job. You, you work on commissions, correct? So, but what we share is that we both have to spend a certain amount of time to get a certain amount of money. Now you have an advantage over me, even though I have commissions too. But let's just use a w2, versus a 1099, example, right? You have an advantage because the bigger problem that you sell the more money you make, right? So your your money is less tied than to time than mine is. However, it you still have to get up, come into the office, talk to clients, et cetera, right? So you spend a certain amount of time to get a certain amount of money. I spend a certain amount of time to get a certain amount of money every two weeks of my salary, right? So we naturally have a cap on what we can make, because there's only 24 hours in the day, right? So we have these natural limitations on what we can make because of the amount of time we have now, as you get better and meet more customers and higher net worth customers, you'll make more money, right? But, but, but the time equals money. Equation says you can only make as much money as you have time. Now, the idea is to break that and to have investments that make passive income for you to pay your bills. However, most people never, sort of escape that, that the time equals money equation. So if we understand that time equals money, and you're taking your money and you're putting in things that go down in value, what you're actually doing is devaluing your time. So you're making how much you made on that client, and I'm making how much I made on my salary actually worth less over time when we have too much of our money tied up in depreciating assets, I'm not saying don't ever buy them. I'm saying that be aware of and it free time you put $1 here and it goes down in value, it's actually taking your time away, not your you know. And people think like, oh, I can out make this. I make enough money. I deserve this. But the math is unforgiving. The math doesn't care how you feel. So when you have too much of your world tied up in depreciating assets, that's, that's what causes this difficulty with money in the boats and the RVs and everything like, that's, that's a that's a physical representation of what's really happening in those people that have too much of their world wrapped up in things that go down in value, right? What we're talking about?

Tracy Hayes  33:11  
Well, it goes to some of the things I wanted you know you were rattling off with Tony some statistical data. Yeah, yo. We were just talking about a few things, obviously, the credit card debt and so forth you mentioned on the show, which you were saying earlier, that you people kind of look at you sideways. But we do have this we're talking about. I'll step back a little bit to kind of give some background to this question. In the mortgage world right now, we are talking about. You know, refinances are just, I mean little to none, because the rates are so high. Oh yeah, when the rates go, when the rates go down, we're going to be in a refinance. Let's say boom. I think it'll be boom, compared to what the last 24 months of it, maybe. And we'll go over that because, because of the situations that are that we're talking about, they're racking up the debt, but, but the statement you made is there's a lot of sellers, not only for financial situations, but there's also, you know, we talked about, there's what was going on here for the probably the last decade, was people were moving from neighborhood to neighborhood because the rates were so low. They're like, well, I can go live by my friend over there, or I don't like this neighborhood anymore. It's gotten older. I want to live in. I want to live in it. I want to get a new home. And, you know, I want to move the nakati, because it's got the splash, you know, splash park, or whatever it was, they were making those moves. They're not so many. There's some, but there's those moves are not happening right now as fluently as they've been in the last decade. Because, you know, obviously where the interest rates are at. But you were saying there's some pent up sellers right now.

bruce breedlove  34:42  
Yeah, and I've been catching crap for this for since mid 2021, that I've been saying this, but, but, I mean, just economically, think about it, right? And this is these numbers I'm about to quarter from last summer, so that it could be slightly different, but, but 90% of mortgages were financed below 6% 60% of them were below 4% so when the 10 Year. Treasury hit 5% and interest rates were eight, right? Why on earth, unless I have real life circumstances, a job relocation, I need another bedroom because I had another kid, right? Why on earth would someone be selling their home to assume a mortgage that's possibly twice what they currently have now? And by the way, home prices have gone up, so that compounds the effect of high interest rates on a monthly payment, right? So what I've been saying ever since the interest rates have have started increasing at the fastest rate in history, by the way, in the highest since 2000 making affordability the worst since 1984 is that more and more less and less people are qualified or willing to buy, right? So then, so then that tips our demand down right for purchasing homes, and at the same time, it's compounded by people selling less often, right? And so that's what we saw between 2021 and 20 late. 2023 is like seller a buyer. Demand was decreasing, seller, less. People were selling, selling, selling, right? So our inventory was at this crunch. But what's happened since then? But, and so let's, let's, let's also shift our eyes to economic circumstances. Listen to this. I just heard this on the way here, 401 K, hardship withdrawals have doubled since 2022 let me say that again. 401 K, hardship withdrawals have doubled since 2022 credit card debt is at this highest rate in history. I'm sorry, highest amount in history at $1.3 trillion okay, the savings rate is the lowest it's been since mid 2000s meaning, if I make $1,000 a month, how much of that do I actually keep in my world? So the consumer, the middle class individual, the normal person, is crunched. By the way, we didn't even mention inflation, which has been a cumulative effect of about 21% over the last three years, the government won't tell you that, right? So the consumer is crunched. So what happened in the in the third quarter of 2023 is that something shifted, right? These hardships got great enough that people started needing to sell financially. Now everyone says, Well, if they sell, where are they going to move? And that doesn't make any sense. But yes, it doesn't make sense. However, the math, again, is unforgiving, and it does not lie. So if I'm getting a piece of mail in my mailbox every three days that says, oh, refinance your house. I'll give you $50,000 to pay off high interest debt. You think I'm going to do that because, yeah, it's going to make me feel like I did something. And by the way, I have a lender telling me, and I don't mean to point at you, telling me I have a lender over there, telling me that, well, your interest rate and your credit card is just one. Credit cards is 27% and the HELOC is 10 right now, which isn't untrue. However, I want to play this game with you. You probably heard me do this. What happens when you don't pay your credit cards? What happens?

Tracy Hayes  37:32  
Oh, you mean, you're gonna suffer on your financial so your credit, your credit score, is gonna

bruce breedlove  37:36  
go down. You're gonna have some sweaty guy calling you saying, if you don't pay, I'm gonna whatever, blah, blah, blah, your to your

Tracy Hayes  37:41  
mom. A lot of other things start costing more 100%

bruce breedlove  37:43  
insurance and all which all that's horrible, right? We don't want that. But what happens when you don't pay your

Tracy Hayes  37:48  
HELOC? Oh, you're gonna foreclose. They take your

bruce breedlove  37:51  
freaking house. Yeah. So if you think from a risk perspective, why would I finance high interest debt on my house when I need it to live in and it keeps my kids dry and warm and cool in the summer. Why on earth would I do that? Especially because when people refinance high interest debt on HELOCs, they think I did something. You didn't do anything. You're playing a shell game with debt, and that causes their intentionality, or, I'm sorry, their intensity of wanting to get out of their situation the correct way to go from 10 to three, and the behavior doesn't change. That's what we see, and that's the later downstream effect of these refinance he locks that cash out refis, or he locks that pay off high interest debt, but then the behavior doesn't change. Well,

Tracy Hayes  38:33  
it was your analogy of the smoke and the fire. That's the smoke the fires. You have a spending problem,

bruce breedlove  38:38  
exactly. And that's not the sexy thing to talk about. It's not easy to talk about it, and our class turns into marriage, marriage counseling and and therapy real quick. But, but it's because we care, and we pull back the doors and bust open the books on the on the numbers, and we show you what's really going on and support it with math. So that's quarter 320, 23 the consumers crunched. And by the way, real estate didn't start making money, so they're feeling the burn because all that stuff that I mentioned applies to them, plus they're making less money in their business, so they got hit twice, right? With these difficult economic situations. So real estate agents are really feeling the burn in quarter three of 2023 right? And so that again, we had a lot of them enter our program for that reason. They're like, Oh my gosh, I can't pay my bills. But then what happened is sellers starting started like listing their homes. They started in spite of what the interest rates were. We saw active listings in the United States at the highest point in quarter four of 2023, so, and I know we highest point compared to it nationally previous year. I think it was since 20 I could find that number. It's either 2019,

Tracy Hayes  39:39  
or right. It's not ever was just over over that period of

bruce breedlove  39:43  
time, but, but what we saw is the amount of active listings in the United States. I'm not talking about Jacksonville, in the US, hit its all time high in quarter four of 2023 and what that's telling me is people are selling their homes and for economic reasons. What other reason would that be? And then also, people aren't buying them at the same rate because of inventory. Rates increasing, that means supply is outpacing demand. Correct?

Tracy Hayes  40:03  
Well, just in again, we're seeing migration because of the higher cost states, whether it's taxes, just general cost of living, states of higher fuel taxes, all these things added up, and these people are migrating. You know, some of them, obviously, are fortunate. Maybe work remote or they're, they are able to get a job in another state, whatever it may be, and they're able to make that move. But it's like I said, I agree with good, I think a good part of that migration, you know, some of its pleasure, like, hey, we wanted to move to another state, but I would say three quarters of it is when they looked at their their finances, say, you know, we can't, just can't afford to live here

bruce breedlove  40:39  
anymore. Well, and why would you when you're paying close to 30% of your overall income in a state like California? Yeah, I mean, and what you're what you're bringing up, it makes it builds the case for hype, for real estate being hyper local. Obviously, we have net inflow migration to Jacksonville and Florida in general. So that helps the supply demand stay in a more healthy right way, where home prices aren't really going down a ton, even though my my theory is that they are right now, not theory. It's supported by my map that I'm saying that they are on your show. And, yeah, and that. Again, that changes then, area to area places like, you know, Southern California, where people are leaving in droves, right? I would be more hard pressed to sell than than someone would necessarily hear. So that changes the dynamic, you know, locality to locality of the event. But the trend across the country is the same. As far as active listings are increasing, average sales prices either stagnating or slightly dipping. Home staying on the market longer, exactly, exactly now. Now, here's a great example, Crystal Lake, Illinois, random place, right? My in laws live there. They listed their house on what, Thursday, and they had a an offer the next night. But in that hyper locality, people are moving out of Chicago City, and they're moving to the suburbs of Chicago, which is Crystal Lake. So again, we all know this. Everyone who's watching this knows the real estate hyper local, but that's a case study, and why, right? So, so and so their average days on markets like 10 and whereas ours is, what, close to

Tracy Hayes  42:01  
30, I think it's some in the 40s. So it's not pushing. I don't as an agent. I'm not an agent, so I don't study it,

Speaker 1  42:08  
but, but it's increasing over time. All right, let's, I want to, you know,

Tracy Hayes  42:12  
do a little infomercial on your service. Now, dealt with, you know, you said you dealt with 36 families. A number of them were real estate agents. Since we're on the real estate excellence podcast, let's talk in general terms about some of the issues maybe you've dealt with, but you saw that what they were doing and corrected them. And some of them, you know other people are maybe doing, maybe the individuals you weren't doing, but how they're running their real estate business as a real estate agent, and some of these broad things that you can help you know that you're seeing that you can help them get it back on track.

Speaker 1  42:43  
Yeah. So my messaging since the beginning of the year has been how to win with money in 2024 and beyond that. That's the beyond is in quote as in parentheses, specifically for real estate agents. Okay, so what, what we see is the average real estate agent, obviously, is a, normally, a sole proprietor. They are, if they have a team, great, but I'm talking about that solo agent that is buying and selling homes right at a regular brokerage. Okay, so you are a 1099, employee. The number one thing I see is people are not running their business as a business. As far as this, they don't have an LLC and file as S Corp in their when they file taxes. That's and so what? What what does that mean? Right? An LLC is a legal protection, right? Your your business, becomes an entity that is not yourself and provides you some legal protection, but also tax benefits. Right? Now, it's nearly irrelevant if you don't file your your LLC as an S Corporation, which allows you to save on self employment taxes. In order to be eligible to be an S corporation, you have to pay yourself in a certain way. The IRS wants to see that your LLC is a pass through entity and allows you to pay yourself as a employee of the LLC. Okay? And that saves you that self employment tax just as 15 point something percent, right? So that's the number one thing I see people aren't running their business as in managing their revenue and their expenses properly. Okay, so if you're, if you're listening to this, and you're a real estate agent, and you don't have an LLC, and you don't file as an S corp, you need to change that immediately. There's a lot of misconception out there of, oh, well, you have to make this much. No, no, there's no rule that you have to make a certain amount to be eligible for an LLC S Corp. Okay, so let's, let's break down that and why that's what I'm seeing. So you get a closing check of the table, right? Let's say it's $30,000 right? If you're doing this correctly, your broker is paying your LLC the check, right? He's not paying it to you. Your name should not be on the check. It should be your, your LLC, DBA, whatever,

Tracy Hayes  44:39  
which might be Sally Smith LLC, but it's still LLC, exactly

bruce breedlove  44:43  
Sally Smith LLC. It make got a $30,000 check. Here's what you need to do. You need to take that money, put it in your business checking account. Okay, now then you should also have a business credit card that you use for all business expenses. And I said all business expense is not personal, and yes, I'm talking to you, because what we see is do. Someone's Netflix is going on, their their business, credit card, someone's their their their gym is like, the finances are all intermingled. And that's called,

Tracy Hayes  45:09  
which technically breaks the corporate veil. I was

Speaker 1  45:11  
just gonna say piercing the corporate veil. And if you ever get audited, don't call me. But no, but really, this is serious. So here's what we see. So you get that $30,000 closing right? You immediately deduct how much you owe on your business credit card. Okay, that's your business expenses for the month. And we built a spreadsheet in conjunction with a an accountant that literally walks you through step by step how

Tracy Hayes  45:33  
to do this. Some of these credit cards are set up precisely for that, if you're running your business through to helps you, you know, I know American Express, to categorize, make the pick work a little easier. Yeah, I mean, there's not selling them or nothing, but yeah, there's

Speaker 1  45:46  
better platforms. But yes, you're correct. There's, there's stuff out there that you can leverage to make it easier. But I'll clear the deck and make it the easiest possible here in a minute. So you get that $30,000 pay I want you to immediately pay off your business credit card. Let's say you have three listings and do their seven grand on your credit card, pay it off. Okay, so you've got $23,000 left over now. You're, you're, you're, you're not taxed on that $7,000 you just paid off on your credit card, because that cost is expensive, exactly. So you have $23,000 of not profit, but revenue after expenses, right? So that's 23k immediately. I want you to take that, and I want you to split it in a couple ways, right? You have to be paying yourself a salary, and the IRS to be eligible for an S corp says you have to pay yourself a reasonable salary. Now your next question will logically be, well, what's a reasonable salary? Right? The IRS doesn't tell you, so that's another gotcha by our great Internal Revenue Service. But what? Well, they don't

Tracy Hayes  46:40  
want they don't want to because they themselves are doing it themselves,

Speaker 1  46:43  
right? So, so what we normally start people at is pay yourself a $250 salary twice a month. Now, why this is relevant is because, again, to be eligible,

Tracy Hayes  46:51  
I had in my mind just w2 yourself $1,000 a month, because you technically yes.

Speaker 1  46:57  
However, what we find, and why we start at 250 is most people have a lot less money in their business than they want, right? And there's not that much money to pay themselves a salary until we build up something. I'm gonna I'm gonna refer to you've paid off your expenses. You, you have a after expenses of $23,000 and we've decided that you're gonna pay yourself 250 every two weeks as a salary. Again, to be eligible as an S corp, you have to pay yourself a salary with a with a time schedule that is the same every two weeks. We just pick that. So we have people set a reminder on the eighth and the 23rd pay yourself $250 okay? Now, once you've done that, you have, you have sort of profit after expenses, after salary, okay, then what we decide is okay, and by the way, that salary you pay yourself, you have to pay, you have to save payroll tax inside your business when you do that, right? And people's heads are spinning right now,

Tracy Hayes  47:47  
they're like, how much, such a minor amount of money, not really something,

Speaker 1  47:51  
yeah, but to be surprised, that payroll taxes are due on January 15 of the next year, there's no excuse for that, because it's the same for every LLCs Corporation, right? And again, we built a spreadsheet that literally does all this for you, but, but then you have, so 30,000 minus seven minus your salary you have, let's call it 21,000 left over. Okay, then you have to decide, okay, how much money am I going to keep inside my business? And then how much money am I going to pay myself as a monthly dividend? Okay? And that's where people really make the big mistake. Okay, you have to pay yourself a salary and a dividend from your business when you close your books at the end of the month. Okay? But there's also this thing that large corporations use called retained earnings. Okay, if you look up in the tax code how much an S corporation can keep inside their business, it says up to $250,000 and by the way, if you don't take that money out of your business, you don't pay taxes on it. So if I leave up to $250,000 inside my business entity, inside that corporate veil, you don't have to pay taxes on it until you take it out. So what we teach people,

Tracy Hayes  48:53  
so if you don't need

bruce breedlove  48:54  
it, well, exactly, and this is us. This is also save it

Tracy Hayes  48:58  
personally versus the business. This is also a

bruce breedlove  49:01  
saving for the next quarter, three of 2024, so you can keep paying yourself out of your business. So your business can keep funding your life in times where there's no business, right? So we coach people to have six months of business expenses saved in a taxable brokerage account that is in the name of your LLC. Okay, let me run, let me run that back, six months of expenses inside your business kept in a taxable brokerage account in the name of your LLC. At Vanguard. Vanguard is a brokerage you can go to vanguard.com you can open up a taxable brokerage account in the name of your business, okay? And I want you to keep six months of expenses inside your business. So if you spend seven grand to run your business, I want you to save $42,000 inside your business. Okay? In this brokerage this brokerage account, by the way, that's gonna make you money while it's just sitting there waiting for you to use it. So this money isn't doing nothing, right? Also, that in that same account, we're escrowing Your payroll taxes for you, so that January 15 of 2025, rolls around, you're not surprised. Oh, my God, I have to pay taxes. No, it's already been escrowed. By the way, it's been making money in that account while it's been waiting to be put on your taxes. Okay? Now, once we, let's say in this, it's in this situation, we we do $4,000 of retained earnings this month, right? So we did 30,000 down to 23 after expenses, down to 21 after salary. Now we're saving 4k in retained earnings that's going to stay inside the business. We're down to 17k you get to pay yourself $17,000 dividend after the month ends. This is how to run a real estate business, okay? And who's doing this? Nearly no one. And I can say that because I'm not an agent or a broker, and it's also because I've seen it, yeah. And so if you're hearing any of this, and you're like, Oh my God, I've never heard this, I'm not surprised, right, right? It flabbergasts me why brokerages are not teaching this. This is so valuable, and what a great recruiting tool to help our agents run their business better, so they stay longer, so they stay in the business longer, so they can feed their family and build their big life by just teaching them this basic stuff, right, right? And by the way, that money that you pay yourself as a dividend, you save on self employment tax you don't pay, so you're saving 15% on everything that you pay yourself as a monthly dividend. And over years, oh, my God, that's a lot of money. How many closings is that in a year, just by doing the diligence to structure it correctly and to use the use the restraint to say, okay, just because I got a $30,000 check doesn't mean I get to go buy that new car, that boat or whatever, because there's a lot of zeros on this check. And I'm, like, so excited, right? Unfortunately. And I say this with utmost love because a lot of my close friends are real estate agents, people that you're not managing your money correctly, and this boom and bust cycle that you find yourself in, like, oh my gosh, I don't have money. I got to go hustle. Oh my god. I hustled so hard. I made a lot of money. I need to rest. Oh my God, I don't have any closings. I need to hustle. I see this, right? There's a way out of that rat race cycle. Okay? And we haven't even gotten to saving for retirement or investing. We've just gotten to how to run your business to fund your life, so you're not running at break neck speed for the next 30 years. So feel free to unpack any

Tracy Hayes  52:02  
Well, I'm just what was going through my head is, you know, some of the, you know, we the standard expenses the agent might have, whether they're, you know, they're paying for staging or their their signage, you know, if they're whatever advertising, they're doing, print or whatever. But I think one of the biggest expenses they have is the vehicle, because the miles they put on it. How do they should they be treating their vehicle in this

bruce breedlove  52:24  
as a depreciating asset? You No one's buying a house for me because you have a BMW or a Mercedes or whatever, or a Tesla. No one's buying a house for me for that. Should you have a beat up car that they can hear coming down the street? No, but it's not. It's not, you know, you can choose a middle road, right. Look at, look at your car as, again, we talked about financial gravity earlier, something that's going to take money from you to put two or three or four closings into a car. Makes those three or four closings worth one in a year and a half from now, I want you to think. I want you to avoid depreciating assets like it's the plague. So you also should, again, run your business like a business and keep track of how many miles you drive, because those are as depreciable against your against your business, right? Those are expenses that you incur. So like, you know, to again, something I see lovingly. I'm saying this a lot of my real estate friends fall into is they immediately upgrade in lifestyle as soon as they start seeing some business. And what happens when you upgrade in lifestyles? You're increasing your monthly liability, which then makes you have to work harder or gain more market share to pay your life just to remain at zero, right? And this, these are, these are abstract conversations and concepts for people who don't speak financial language fluently, which not many people do, and that's it. That's okay, because this is an established problem in our society. But I'm here to tell you that doesn't have to be that

Tracy Hayes  53:48  
way. Well, it's, it's, it's like losing weight, right? You could start today. I mean, you know, yeah, it helps. I should actually, you know, it's great if you did it back when you were 25 I mean, to see some of the agents that I've had on that are sub 30 years old, that are really doing well. I mean, it's like, whoa, you know. And then they're, you know, had Holly Reeves Griggs on. I mean, she had another career and so forth. And, you know, in just six, seven years, she started in 1617, something like that. I mean, the volumes that she's doing, you know, you know, in a different time, different place in her life, and but you could start doing this today to rectify the ship. It's not like, Oh, I've already, so far, I've been a real estate agent for 10 years now, and I haven't been doing it, but you're still not healthy. You can turn that health around today and move forward. But from the from a car standpoint, should they be? Is there anything buying it in the LLC? I mean, is there any, if it doesn't really matter, that doesn't matter, yeah, because, as the IRS saying, Well, how much are you using it for pleasure versus,

bruce breedlove  54:50  
yeah, you're logging business miles, and that's miles that which a lot

Tracy Hayes  54:54  
of people don't actually do. They Yeah, make it up. Yeah.

Speaker 1  54:59  
But, but? The goal would be, I just want you to avoid as much as possible having your money, and this is inside or outside your business, because the math is the same, having too much money and depreciating assets, period. Yeah, and this, this is a larger conversation about real estate and falling into vanity and making it the making it look like you have the appearance of success. But what is really success? You are a sole proprietor of a business. You're an entrepreneur. To have a business with unlimited earning potential to fund your life forever, right? So if you're finding yourself getting further and further away from financial independence, you got to change something. And if you're if you're more and more stressed about paying your bills or running your business, you're doing something incorrectly. It doesn't have to be that way.

Tracy Hayes  55:46  
And you probably imagine you by you believe, because I've heard a lot of these listening to whether it's podcast or me. You know the different reels these guys say, Hey, if you want to go drive that $120,000 Tesla, it cost you 1000, $1,500 a month, or whatever it is. Then, you know, you need to go find a cash flowing investment to offset that day. But you're right. I do see, you know, yeah, there's agents going out there buying, you know, whether it's a Tesla or they, you know, and we know Mercedes is the thing, or the BMW, which is, like, you, is that really getting you more? What is that actually getting you because after about a year, I mean, all of us are ready, like, we'd love to have a new car every year, but we but we stick in. And the great thing about Florida is cars will last 510, years. If you buy the right

bruce breedlove  56:36  
one, it's giving you the feeling that, hey, I'm doing well, right, because I'm buying things that, you know make me feel good, but they're taking they're actually stealing from you, like we've talked about financial gravity most, multiple times. My question to that person who went out and said, Oh, I needed to go. I had a large tax bill, so my accountant said, go buy a Tesla and it'll Okay. Well, did your accountant also tell you you can open up a SEP IRA and save $69,000 and take that as a tax cut? No, but because that's not as sexy, it doesn't sell, right? But if I can tell you that that $69,000 will create you $690 a month of passive income inside your SEP IRA, and that's about 12% a year, and then by the time you're this age, it'll be this much that that vision of the future, and that vision like, oh my gosh, I don't have to get up and hustle every day. And by the way, what I'm doing every single day gets me closer to that. That's sexy. Yeah, that I have goosebumps just saying that because everyone listening to this can accomplish that we're focused on the wrong things. And it's not unique to real estate. This is a real estate podcast. Let's stay on this. But this is everyone who's listening to this. Like, it doesn't have to be this way? I was just talking to someone last night. We doing a financial audit. 50 years old, has zero money in her bank account. She makes $3,000 a month. She goes she lays her head on her pillow at night and worries about money every night. Do you know how much that hurts me inside. I It doesn't have to be that way, like we like there's a reason. There's there's a there's a cliche that's like spending like Congress. Don't do that. Don't fall into the trap of getting the newest thing. Don't fall into shiny object trap. And unfortunately, real estate agents are so guilty of this, and I, I want to just shake y'all sometimes lovingly again, because there's a way out of this hustle putting in Open House signs when it's 99 degrees at 8am like it doesn't have to be that way. I want you to hustle. I want you to grind. That's why I wore this shirt, because you can make such a difference in your life, because you have unlimited earning potential. And I don't want you to get kneecapped by focusing on

Tracy Hayes  58:34  
the wrong thing. You said you had us, you know, you were talking about earlier. You had a spreadsheet to do some of these things. How simplified Have you made it? You know, for some of these agents to because you understand the business you've been involved in, the business you've you've now coached, counseled several of them on what's going on. How simple Have you made this? I mean, is it really a lot of extra time or a couple of hours of getting your LLC squared away, getting your EIN or whatever. I mean, how simple Have you

bruce breedlove  59:02  
made it? So the setup, obviously, like many other things, will be the majority, right? However, the spread is so getting your LLC, getting there's a, there's a lawyer in town that's offering to do this for free. And if anyone wants to know, just DM me. I'll, I'll get you in contact with them for that setup. You know, it doesn't cost anymore. Maybe it costs a couple $100 more to file as a S Corp. But the real management, the month to month management, is using our spreadsheet, and it's we created. It looks like a monthly ticket. You put in how much you made, you put in your business expenses, you put in the salary you paid yourself. It automatically calculates your payroll tax for the for the month, and then it tells you where to send it. Then it takes your net earnings after those things. And literally, it's, it's, if you can put a listing into the MLS, you can do this. Like, it's not any, trust me, it's like, color code, and it's nice font, and, like, it's very easy, if, I mean, you people can find it by going to our website and looking at our products. And it's, I think it's $23 to download. Anyone can do it. It's, I mean, I don't think it's difficult. And when we coach customers in our. Coaching platform. We give that to them for free, and then we help them manage their money in their business using that

Tracy Hayes  1:00:05  
spreadsheet. How long is generally someone you know is the process three or four months? Six months you've got them. I mean, what's generally the time period that you're

bruce breedlove  1:00:15  
Yeah, so let's talk. I mean, this is a perfect segue into like, what we do and how we do it. So align Money Mastery. Again, align money mastery.com. Is our company. It's we call it personal finance coaching. It is like you hire a personal trainer to get you physically fit, you hire us to get you financially fit. It's literally no different. So we have three access points to our program, our flagship program, and I mentioned, gosh, almost an hour ago, that that email that I sent to my friend said, I'll do this. This, this for you. I'll teach you all this. It costs 750 we formalized that into a class that we've now run 20 plus people through. It's three months long. It's called our three month mastery class, or, I'm sorry, three month Money Mastery class, and it's full for the summer. We can't accept any more people. We're accepting people for fall, which would be late August, and so it's three months long. There's six classes, okay? And a normal month looks like this. Week one is a group class of one of those six. Week two is a one on one budget meeting. Week three is another group class. And then Week Four is a, what we call an optional accountability meeting, where you can come on, you have an hour with us. You can speak about anything you want, clarify some topics in the class, talk about something that came up in your life, whatever, right? So it's five hours a month of commitment for a student to come in, and it's three months long. And the reason why people here three months and like, Oh my God, that's a long time. No no for us to teach you everything that we teach in this in a Saturday afternoon seminar, it would not have the impact that it does when we're walking with you step by step for three months and managing your money with you as life happens as it does. People enter with a lack of financial understanding about their personal world, and they leave with what we call Money Mastery, which is how to manage money with whatever life throws at you. And by the way, when you join this, you're on our platform forever. You're in our Facebook group. You can reach out to us at any point. You can come back to the classes as many times as you want in the future period. And the real benefit there is yes. It's the knowledge. It's Yes, how to invest, it's yes, how to budget, it's yes, how to pay off debt, but it's the accountability of walking hand in hand with you, managing your money, with you, with your specific situation. I don't know if something that exists like that. There's plenty of people that are teaching how to budget based on these random, 5020, 20 rules or whatever, but we customize it to you and walk with you, hand in hand through your finances for three months. That's number one that costs $750 right now. Again, it's full for the summer. Can't accept anyone else. Our second access point is what we call online monthly coaching. Okay? And this is where we've seen the biggest growth over the past month, specifically because we're out of Money Mastery summer class spots, but, but, but, and this is where people, they pay us $100 a month. You get all the classes that we teach in the full three month class, but they're pre recorded, and they're available on the in the portal on our website. So today, if Tracy wanted to sign up, you go to our website, you sign in, you register. It is 100 bucks a month. Subscription is just like Netflix. You can stop at any time, which, by the way, we've only had one person leave because they just stopped showing up and doing you probably

Tracy Hayes  1:03:05  
just didn't space the time to watch. Oh man, I'm not even watching these videos.

bruce breedlove  1:03:10  
They just didn't want to do it gets hard. Sometimes when we have had people drop out, because it gets real. Yeah. So anyway, $100 a month, you get one hour with us a month, and you can either split that 60 minutes one time or 30 minutes twice. And all these meetings you schedule, we have our availability on Calendly. You go on and you schedule when you want to schedule. That's $100 and you get all the classes, and you get one hour with us a month, and that's where we've seen the most growth again. And a lot of our people who leave the three month class end up going to that monthly to stay with us and keep us working with them. Someone calling you? Well, no, it's tick tock. It's having me, like, verify that I'm real every so often. And again, you get all the class content from the full class. And definitely you can stay with us as long as you want, and you can leave at any point. The goal is to get you to a point where you're like, I got it. I've learned everything. I need to learn and leave. We don't want you to stay with us forever. We want you to learn everything. Trust me, we would welcome you too. But like the all of our are designed to teach you what you need so you can go out and teach your family and do it on your own. Our third access point is what we call align elite, which is passive income investing. We have built a portfolio that pays us over $4,200 a month in passive income, apart from our real estate portfolio every single month. And it's just simple investing. It's not crypto, it's not index, universal life insurance. It's not any of this speculative, crazy, shiny stuff. It is good old fashioned investing in dividend producing securities that pay you every single month. We are averaging in our portfolio. And I I freely published my portfolio on on online anyone can see how we're investing, 13.15% I just calculated on Sunday, yearly, paid monthly. And anyone can do it, literally, anyone can do it. And what happens when you start doing this is you start building a monthly paycheck that then you reinvest and it grows and it grows and it grows and it grows, and before you know it, you have a realistic path to early retirement. And what I mean early is before 59 and a half, when you can. Use your four, one, K's, IRAs, etc, and what people pay for that is 10% of the passive income you make per month. So if we coach you, and you make 1000 bucks, I'll invoice you for $100 and again, what you're getting is my education and insights on what to buy, when to buy it, because I'm doing it too. How are you tracking what they're Yeah, so so we have, we just put a quick 15 minute calendar invite, and we, we, when you sign the agreement, you put what account we're helping you manage, and in the agreement, it says it's called the 10% passive income payment policy. It's just that as long as you're in the program, your subscription to stay in the program is 10% of whatever you made the previous month. So if you make nothing, you pay nothing. And again, that's what sets us apart from other people. When you

Tracy Hayes  1:05:39  
use no can I put? So I got my little e trade. I got my little play IRA in there. I call it. I haven't done with it, actually, over, probably since last two or three years. But obviously I've got Facebook in there, which dropped. It went to like, I mean, we bought, we were in on the IPO with Facebook as well as dream finders. Use was jet we I bought some additional through that little IRA, but some other stuff I would have played with. So is that like an account, I can go in there, take your and I sell some of that and buy some of

bruce breedlove  1:06:10  
that 100% Yeah, in the what this is different than traditional investing, which is what you're discussing with you when you buy a company and hold it and hope it goes up in value. In order to use that as income, you have to sell portions of your position right to fund your life. That's not how we do it. Dividend investing allows you to plant a tree that has that creates you fruit that you just pick off. You're not You're not cutting, cutting branches off the tree. You're taking the fruit that it provides you in the tree is left intact. Yeah. And what happens is, it's really crazy. This is how we will retire at 40. I'm 35 now, through doing this. I mean, we have, if you look at our content, just in October, I think we had like, 20 or 2000 bucks a month of passive income. We know this month, we're, like, on track for 4500 this month. And just because we're investing every extra dollar we have in it, plus reinvesting

Tracy Hayes  1:06:55  
the dividend growth dividend in these investments that produced a dividend, that's, that's where a lot of people don't know. Well, I mean, even myself, where these are at right? These companies that pay dividends

bruce breedlove  1:07:07  
so easy. It's literally it's so easy. It would make you like people online, especially online personalities, online gurus, which I guess I am one now, say that they try to make it sound complicated, but it's like, so easy, it would just make your head spin, like, it's not that hard. And, you know, and very often, on Tiktok, and on my content, I say, our portfolio, and again, I just, I'll show it to you. It's it. We are netting 13.15% okay, yearly, paid monthly, okay? And that's over 1% a month if it were just reinvesting. It's not hard to do. And I don't pay someone to do it, like, I will teach you how to do it. And that's again, back to a line elite. That's the value we're bringing for people who are we don't accept everyone into that. You've got to have your debt paid off. Like, I'm not going to teach you how to dividend invest if you're messing with debt. We're not going to do that. Yeah, and by debt, I mean not like, good debt, like on rentals or on mortgage. I mean, like, credit card, HELOC, student loan, that, etc. And what we find is people join the three month class. They either transition to the online monthly coaching if they want to stay with us, if not, because they learn what they need to learn, they move to the passive income investing piece, where we can help them then, because they've already paid off their debt after our three month class, and then invest for financial independence. So that's that's what we do. And again, it's 10% of what you make, but you can leave at any point. If you're like, you know what? Yo, I got it. You taught me everything I need to leave. We don't want you to stay with us forever. That's not how we design it. Right?

Tracy Hayes  1:08:28  
Let's take these last just a few minutes. Yeah, we were just discussing before the show our personal opinions on the greater market. Yeah, I really, I'm really saddened by I think a lot of it has to do with everyone trying to be politically correct. They don't want to say this guy did it or that guy did it. We kind of want, you know, and then we want to stay positive. We're in the real estate industry. We want to say positive things are going to get better. Things are going to get better. I think there's forces out there that have deliberately I think supply chain is one. We didn't mention that in the pre show, but we might. I think supply chain has a lot of the we talked about inflationary Well, what caused inflation? Well, the government spent, printed all this money. Well, yes, that was one part, but I think they've doubled down on it in some other areas. And supply chain, having been with a large builder, the lender for barge builder, for three years of previously, you know, we were getting the situation where the house was built and had to go back to guy and say, well, we need an extra 40,000 because that's, you know, you know, they were unable to predict what that cost of building that house was, and it wasn't because we're lacking trees, but the regulations the government's put on there forcing, you know, the cost of a lot of things to go up, that's my personal opinion. Is the administration's attitude has caused, not, well, attitude in multiple areas, obviously, printing money, like you said, spending like a drunk sailor. They're spending like a, you know, Congress, yeah. And and then also doubling down with regulations, is driving these inflationary costs, crunching the middle person, driving the affordability up. Now they finally raise interest rates, which they should have done years ago, at least incrementally to all sudden, just boom over, practically overnight, you know, and all sudden, boom, there's nothing affordable anymore. That's kind of my angle on it, a little bit. And when these people were talking about all the interest rates are gonna go to below six last summer, I don't know what they were smoking, but they, and these are people that get paid money to give their opinion. My opinion is free, but go ahead, tell me what your angle.

bruce breedlove  1:10:36  
Yeah. In order to really fully and comprehensively discuss this, we have to go back to, like, to 2000 10s when quantitative easing started, right? And so when people say, Oh, the government's printing money, that's really what it is, they're introducing new money into the into the circulation by issuing government bonds, right, to, specifically companies and banks and everything, so they can borrow money cheaply and then issue it as loans to stimulate economy, right? Let that's the explain. Like I'm five version of quantitative easing. Okay? So what that, what happens, though, is, is the what, what determines what money is worth, is the money supply, right? So when you, when you increase the amount of supply, which I've heard has 4x in the last few years, or something, or the last whatever, we've been increasing monetary supply. Just by increasing the supply of dollars, we'll devalue every dollar which causes inflation. Now let's, I want to carry something through here. I, as a avid real estate investor, also investor in the stock market. Okay, most of my world is tied up into assets. Okay, so we're gonna, we're gonna tell the tale of two people here, number one, me, or someone like me, who invest the majority of their income into things that are assets, right? And I'm going to talk about the normal middle class person who has money in a car, in a boat, in an RV, and student loans and credit cards. We're going to talk about the effects of inflation on those two people, because they're widely different. Okay, so the easy money policy of quantitative easing caused the stock market over the last 20 years to explode, right? It's money has been cheap to get companies have grown because it's cheap for them to grow their businesses by borrowing money. Earnings Per Share look great, etc, right? So let's fast forward to covid, which actually our national debt had started ticking down right before covid. Okay? Now covid obviously caused mass unemployment and for people to not, you know, starve to death and how the housing

Tracy Hayes  1:12:27  
was going to starve. But panic,

bruce breedlove  1:12:31  
people lost their income. Yeah, you know, unemployment rate shot up to, like, 15% 20% something like that. So the government had to issue money into circulation by giving, you know, the Trump era, stimulus checks, whatever during covid, to keep people in their homes and eating, right? But what happens when you introduce money into circulation? It floats to the top right? It ends up going to it ends up going to companies, right? People didn't, yes, people paid off their credit cards during that time. But what people did was they paid off their credit card and then went and bought a Louis Vuitton purse. So that money, that stimulus money, doesn't stay in the middle class, it floats to the top always. So if you introduce a trillion new dollars, 80% of that money, look it up, goes to the top. And okay, let's talk about those two people again. Who does that help?

Tracy Hayes  1:13:15  
I love that analogy. You are. You know, when you hear the whether it's Reagan's trickle down or, you know, Biden's his thing is trickle Yes, that's exactly what's happening. You influx. They go out and buy a new TV, they go out and do Best Buy and Costco, those guys, you know, there's those investors, are actually the ones who get the money in the long run.

bruce breedlove  1:13:36  
And because I have a million dollars in investable assets, all the companies that I purchase, right, go up in value, which makes me money, right? That's that is what has been happening, right? So the tale of the two people number one, I love inflation, not me, but this person, right, who has a lot of assets. The more inflation goes up, the more money I make. This person here, the more inflation goes up, the less my money is worth. Because I'm spending my time to make a certain amount of money, my time is now worth more, and then I feel like I can't get out of this cycle. That's what's happening right now. Okay, so then fast forward to covid. Obviously, we had, we printed a bunch of money because we had to. Okay, then let's go post covid. When then supply chains confounded this whole issue, right? So then goods cost more because we, you know, we have less ships coming out of China, and there's a backlog of ships that in LA and blah, blah, blah, because of policy. Okay, so that compounded the effect of easy money inflation happening right then, and we had an explosion in housing. Because what did they do during covid The Federal Reserve raised interest or lowered interest rates to zero, which to zero, which caused mortgages to be two and a half to three and a half percent. So what happens in inflationary times, right? Easy money times, assets go up in value. So that's why we've seen a 40% appreciation of homes in the last three to four years, which we won't see again, by the way, even when interest rates come down. All of you that think that way. Okay, so we've not only had inflation in the market, with the stock market, with all. With companies making a ton of money from easy money. We've had inflation in the housing market, and now homes are really crazy high, which, again, this person who invests loves that, but this person who doesn't gets crushed by that. Okay, then what we saw is this. So in order to fix all this, right? And then we had, we had the supply chain issue. So there's really three things at play here. So then inflation hit 9% in June of 2022 okay, and that is a between 2021 and 2022 it's 9% increase year over year. So then the Federal Reserve said, Holy crap, we got to fix this. And because we've printed so much money, really, the only two levers we had to fix this were increase interest rates and do the opposite of quantitative easing, which is quantitative tightening, and that's when the Federal Reserve takes money out of circulation slowly, to decrease the money supply, to increase the value of the dollar. And if you have seen the dollar has actually gotten stronger against the euro over the past few years, and that's because of that quantitative tightening. Okay, but, but again, what? And that has caused the markets to be a little unsure of what's happening. Earnings Per Share took a hit for companies, but what did they do to fix it? Layoffs there's been I just posted this on my Facebook the other day. We've lost a million full time jobs in the last 12 months, but I'm sorry. We've lost 677,000 full time jobs in last 12 months, but we added a million part time jobs. So it makes the unemployment number look okay, and that's including government jobs, okay?

Tracy Hayes  1:16:25  
And that confuses the market as well exactly, because they're going, well, what's the unemployment rate? As if they're using, oh, it's great. It's only they're using numbers, like they use back in 2018 or something. And no, they're, they're fudging that so they can sell it to the consumer that are, you know, the people, hey, you know unemployment is good, but it's like you said, it's part

bruce breedlove  1:16:41  
time jobs, yep. So then interest rates increase. We do quantitative tightening, and that started, you know, as when interest rates started coming up in late 2021 right? And then we've had this process going for now two plus years, and we've seen inflation come down from 9% down to it was like two eight at one point. Okay. But what does you think? Really? Well, yeah, I actually do think really. I do think really. But what people fail to understand, and what is reported, people are saying, oh, inflation's get going down. That doesn't mean the price of things are decreasing. It means they're getting worse, slower. Okay, if I said, Man, it was really pouring outside and I'm soaked, and then I said, Well, oh, now it's sort of trickling. You're still getting wet slower, and so it's so, like I said earlier, the cumulative effect of inflation over the last three years is over 20% that means $100 that you had in 2020 in January is now worth 80. Okay, so again, for me, who has all my money in assets, that's a 20% boom in my the price of my assets, but someone who doesn't invest their money is worth 20% less. Okay, that's the tale of two, the Wall Street and the main street. What's being reported is the Wall Street stuff. What's not being reported, and what I am sounding the alarm about is the main street stuff,

Tracy Hayes  1:17:53  
which we're all feeling, yes, we go to the grocery store, we're feeling that, and

bruce breedlove  1:17:56  
we're confused, because we watch the news and we say, I don't understand, because the government and MSNBC and everything is saying, Oh, the economy is great, which, for me, it's wonderful, because all my money is in assets, right? And dividend producing assets, it's great, right? However, the for the normal person who doesn't speak fluent money language, and we're going all the way back to the beginning of this episode, you're getting crushed, and that's who we're helping. So my forecast, and I was on a podcast, I think in January. I'm losing track at this point. They asked me, What do you think interest rates will be at the end of 2024 and this is when everyone was high on the six rate cuts in 2024 every real estate agent that follows you and probably on social media, was saying rates are going to come down. Now is the great time to buy before their big rush. I'm here saying, Okay, no, no. First of all, no. Second of all, rates will end at 6.9 to 7.25 that's what I said in

Tracy Hayes  1:18:47  
January, and roughly higher than that right now, slightly. Yeah.

bruce breedlove  1:18:52  
So between December and January, the 10 year treasury went down like a point and a half, and it's all the way back up to almost what it was in the fall, and we're back up to seven plus mortgage rates if you have good credit, and people are feeling the crunch and the real estate market slowing down, my portfolio is losing money, and it would be irresponsible for the Federal Reserve. They should. I just posted this again on my Facebook the other day. The Federal Reserve should not decrease interest rates in 2024 It is irresponsible to do so, as much as it would be great for lenders, as much as it would be great for real estate agents, as much as if they lowered rates. It would be amazing for me, because my assets would explode in value. It's not healthy for this person over here, this main street person, it will kill

Tracy Hayes  1:19:30  
them. I think there was a portion of those people were thinking politically. They were going to do some big game being in an election year. They thought politically, that's, I think, what they were a lot of people were riding on, not logically, like you're talking about, what's actually happening physically out there in our money world. They just thought, well, they'll just do something because of its election year. Well, also,

bruce breedlove  1:19:55  
that shows a lack of understanding of how the government works, because the Federal Reserve is an apolitical. Goal separate, and like to think so than it is. But I have to say, as much as much crap as Jerome Powell has gotten, I actually believe he's doing the hard thing right now. It would the best thing, and the best thing for him, personally and politically, would be to lower interest rates. He'd be a hero. I mean, my portfolio would would look great, however it would kill. I mean, kill and crush like a bug the average consumer, and he's doing the responsible thing in resisting this. I'm not saying that the federal branch, the executive branch, can't lobby the Federal Reserve. I'm not saying that. Well, we know that they're responsible to be apolitical, and they've done a good job. So what

Tracy Hayes  1:20:35  
walk? Let's finish up walk through that part. Because, like a lot of people say, Oh, if the rates just drop, things are just because we're in our real estate world, right? So they came in and did something and actually got the rate down. You know, as it

bruce breedlove  1:20:48  
people, three point inflation is 3.8 the last month.

Tracy Hayes  1:20:51  
If the 30 year fix was 5.875 we then my lights are on, we're 3.5 point 875, we'd probably have a little bit of Rush, because there's a psychological thing with that, you know, sick, but immediately, yeah, tell explain to you why that would crush, yeah, because

bruce breedlove  1:21:06  
inflation would immediately spike. So just like we had easy money policy when in when, when interest rates were zero, that caused the inflation that we had right as soon as we lower inflation, the markets will go, Oh, it's over. Money will flood into the stock market, and it will cause assets to increase. And inflation, again, it will increase so people won't be crushed by their house payment being a little bit lower if they buy homes. That's not what will crush them. What will crush them is we will go right back and into inflationary spiral. Up. There will be a market crash up, which, for me, again, will cause me to make a ton of money, but not the average consumer. So that will that while, while prices, price increases have decreased over the last couple years from nine to five to three approximately, that's because of these, these, these, these tightening money policies that have caused it to go down as soon as they loosen, that there will be a gap up in inflation. Again, it's already happening, and we're keeping rates the same. Yeah. So my I think it is responsible for the Federal Reserve to not decrease rates the whole year, although some of my investments will get harmed if they do so. It's just a responsible for the thing for them to do. And I believe the 10 year treasury will end somewhere around four, two to four, six. The mortgage rates will be six, nine to seven to five. I still say that in December 31 of 2024

Tracy Hayes  1:22:23  
No, I agree with you. Totally agree with you. All of Bruce's contact information will be in the show notes. I would, you know, anytime you want to come, even if it's just to go on live for, you know, 15 minutes, just to produce some good content, and even if it's remotely from your computer at home. Say, Hey, we got, you know, here's the market. Matter of fact, we might set something up regularly just to come on. As I was talking about my my real estate channel we're developing to come on, because I think people need, they need a gut check. And unfortunately, I don't know if these people, they thought they're going to get more subscribers if they give positive news or something, but after a year of like, not even being close, you would think they would lose subscribers.

bruce breedlove  1:23:04  
So there's a reason why I wasn't getting much traction during the easy money times. And then as soon as economic hardship hit, our company exploded. I mean, exploded is has grown. I laugh, and it's wonderful, because we're helping people, but, but it's real. Is

Tracy Hayes  1:23:23  
there going to be a time you're going to stick with Eli Lilly for at least till you're this 40 goal?

bruce breedlove  1:23:29  
So yeah, the goal is we'll be financially independent by age 40, and that at that point we can decide to stay in pharma or not. Okay? Now, the month after month that is getting closer and closer, and closer, because our company is growing, and it's to the point where I either have to bring on more coaches or find a better way to leverage myself to grow it more. But like we have 10 monthly online coaching subscribers. We have seven people that run our spring class that we're helping. We have six people in the summer that we've helped, starting already. Helped start them already. So we're actively coaching 23 people right now, plus the people who are doing the passive income investing, which is another few people. My my calendar is book solid, right?

Tracy Hayes  1:24:08  
And I think the testament is a lot. This is word of mouth. These are other people saying, Oh my god. Bruce and Jacqueline know what they're talking about. You need to tune into them. And you're in you're growing which, which is just a total a testament to, obviously, the great advice you're giving. I appreciate you coming on. Yeah,

bruce breedlove  1:24:24  
man, I loved it. This is a great two hours. Thanks, Chris.

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