Coming at you from ViRGE headquarters in Indianapolis. I’m Matt Hunckler, with Powderkeg. Today, we’re talking with a young investor, who made his first million dollars at age 21.

Ambition without intelligence is like a bird without wings. And I think that there’s so many young entrepreneurs and there’s so many self help gurus, you know, the business coaches these days, that just try and pump people up, they artificially inflate enthusiasm, they artificially inflate motivation. And what they’re trying to sell is that if you’re really enthusiastic, and you’re really motivated, and you’re really inspired, then you’ll succeed. Well, that’s not really the case. Because unless you have the practical application of it, you can have all the enthusiasm in the world and that you know, you can be bouncing out of your skin on a moment by moment basis, so excited to go do something. But unless you have the level of sophistication, and the knowledge and the understanding to go execute it in an intelligent way, you’re just spinning your energy.

That’s Jordan weirs from this interview, and he’s the CEO of savant Investment Partners, where he spearheaded more than $100 million dollars of real estate investments since 2012. Now I met with Jordan in his office in Las Vegas, just to learn a little bit more about what makes him tick, I wanted to understand his investment habits and leadership style. But what I got was even better than I expected. In this interview, Jordan, of course, is going to share his personal startup story, starting with his first commission check at age 15. So in that you’re going to hear some productivity hacks, how he approaches his work, as well as some of his leadership best practices. But you’ll also hear about the risks of living an expensive lifestyle, which Jordan learned firsthand. And then my favorite part of the conversation dealing with failure, and how Jordan and his company survived, just barely survived the financial crisis of 2007 2008, and a little bit into 2009. So we got all that here for you today, and more on powder keg. So I know you’re looking for even more ways to get more powder keg into your ear holes. So here’s a couple of ideas, how you might listen to powder keg on your commute at the gym. And anytime you need a quick hit of inspiration, I’ve got three words for you subscribe on iTunes, find us by searching for powder keg, that’s all one word, powder keg, or you can just go to powder keg.co/itunes, you can download or stream any of our conversations with people like Christian Anderson, who’s a Partner at high alpha, he has launched eight funded startups in its first year of operation, and has an amazing story to share with you. But you’ve also got awesome interviews like the one we did with Cole Hatter, who is a master connector. He’s also an author, investor, speaker and founder who really pursued entrepreneurship out of desperation. And his story is just incredible. So I hope you listen to that episode. That’s episode three. This episode of powderkeg is brought to you by our good friends at developer town. And what’s developer town, you say? Well, let’s let one of the partners from developer town who also happens to be a senior designer, Darren Shapoorji tell you a little bit about it.

Developer Town is a software studio that helps business leaders turn great ideas into digital products that have traction. And that’s key as well that have traction, right? We’re not just making products and throwing them out there and hope they win, right? The way we do that with large companies is that we take our knowledge of working with hundreds and hundreds of entrepreneurs over the past four or five years here at developer town and then the knowledge that our managing partners have over their 2030 years of experience. We take that knowledge. And we work with these large companies to sometimes basically restructured and rework the way they build products internally, and give them better tool sets and ideology on how they should build a product. So sometimes we’re not actually even the ones doing it. We’re just advising them. Sometimes we are and we have those capabilities, how to create almost an internal team within their company that moves and acts like a startup in today’s 21st century does on its own. So almost like a small bubbled company within a company as well.

I know it sounds almost too good to be true. But developer town is serious about providing the tools that companies and entrepreneurs need in order to build their digital products. They’re going to do everything from validation in the product strategy through customer research. But they’re also going to do things like rapid prototyping, testing, and developing quickly and getting that product out into the customers hands so that you’re going to get real feedback. And you aren’t going to be just chasing some idea, but you’re going to be chasing real revenue and real traction. So check out developer town.com/powderkeg And that’s developer town.com/powderkeg. For more info Automation, developer town, start something. As I mentioned before, I’m joined today by Jordan weirs, CEO of savant Investment Partners, where he’s managed more than $100 million of real estate investments. Now, weirs is a nationally recognized real estate expert who’s been recognized by members of the US Senate, US Congress, the Nevada State Government, and has even been featured on numerous television networks like CNBC, NBC and Fox News. He’s been a real estate investor and investment manager in many areas across the United States. And that includes commercial and residential assets, development and Office projects and even industrial properties. weirs was awarded the prestigious Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award by the Small Business Administration in 2007. He’s also an accomplished author, because why not if you’re doing all this other stuff, you may as well write some books too. He wrote the book Maverick millionaire and become incredible, both of which are available on Amazon, and everywhere that books are sold. But today, we’re gonna go a little bit off script and go deep on business philosophy. But without further ado, here’s serial entrepreneur and investor Jordan weirs. Jordan, it’s really awesome to be with you here in Las Vegas. Obviously, this is one of the top cities for commercial real estate, if not, maybe the top city for commercial real estate. And your experience as an entrepreneur has taken you all over the world. It has helped you ramp up businesses, you’ve also experienced the heartache of the crash in 2007. But you made your first million before age 21. So I’d love to start the conversation with your first entrepreneurial venture, which I believe was at age 10. Is that right? That’s right.

06:50
That’s right. What

was that first venture?

Well, it started with, with my passion for aviation, as you can see on my wall up up here, I’m a former airshow pilot and a commercially rated pilot. And so I’ve always had a passion for aviation. And when I was a kid, I really wanted a remote controlled airplane. And I saved up my money, and you know, doing lawns and taking care of neighbors and whatnot, saved up my money and bought a about $125 glider remote control glider. And I got this thing home, and I realized how fragile it was. Those are the days where it was balsa wood, and you know that that really covering no drones at that point, no drones, yeah, in difficult to fly. And you know, 10 years old, I was thinking, Gosh, I’m gonna, you know, waste 125 bucks, which was all the world all the money in the world to me at the time. So what I did was, I decided, okay, instead of trying to fly this thing and crashing it, I’m gonna put it up for sale. And so I put it up on the internet, and was asking same 125 bucks, it was on a local free classified ad. And a guy emailed me and said, Listen, I don’t have 125 bucks, but I have a remote control airplane, well, you know, light bulbs go off in my head. And I say, Well, I know that’s worth more than the glider. So I trade it up. And I put that up for sale for a couple 100 bucks. And before I know, a guy called me up, said, Listen, I don’t have 200 bucks, but I have remote control helicopter. And again, another light bulb, right. And so I built this thing up from you know, about 10 going on 11 years old, into the point where 12 and 13 I had boats and jet skis and motorcycles and you know, all kinds of stuff that I was just trading and buying and selling and, and that kind of stuff just off the recycler free classified ads in Southern California.

08:28
That’s incredible. So the the decision to do something like that at age 10, usually there has to be some sort of impetus or something that drives someone to take that sort of action. Because there’s a lot of other things, a lot of different kinds of candy, you could have spent that on potential girlfriends that you could have bought jewelry for. Not that that would have been necessarily a bad use of your money at the time. But fast forward now to your now in your 30s. Clearly, investing in yourself early on has been very helpful for where you are now and the lifestyle you’ve been able to, to create for yourself and others that have worked with you. So talk to me a little bit about what what was your home life at that time? What? What drove you to take that action in a very focused way? And then what drove you to continue to level up?

Well, I’ll start by answering the question in two parts. One is, you know, what, what drove me and what made aviation or toys or whatever it was important to me at that, at that age is, you know, passion. You know, I grew up watching Top Gun thinking that was the coolest movie in the world. And, you know, I knew that my taste for toys was really really expensive in life. You know, I always had a passion for airplanes and motorcycles and cars and you know, things like that. And I knew from a very early age that you don’t get those things unless you have money right. But I think you know, if we back up from from 10 years old, to when I was about six or seven You know, I didn’t have any unique challenges different than what many kids do today. But it certainly wasn’t the ideal childhood. And my mother left me at home alone a lot. And, you know, even at six and seven years old, eight years old. So what I ended up doing was, you know, I spent much of my day at home because I was at home study. Yeah. And so I watched, you know, television most of the time and just was bored out of my mind. You know, my mom worked 12 hour shifts at the hospital. Yeah. And she owned a small business on the side as well. So that pretty much took up all of her time. Sure. Well, I’m sure she was up late one night and watched one of the infomercials that Tony Robbins had, and picked up personal power, the audio set? Sure. The original one, the original one, probably on cassette, I was on cassette, actually. So, you know, I was tired of watching TV, and I Love Lucy and Andy Griffith Show reruns, you know. So what I did was one day, I saw this box that had come to the house, and it sat on the kitchen counter for about two months, and decided, Okay, I’m gonna open this thing up, and I opened it up, and it’s Tony Robbins tapes. Well, I, we had a little cassette recorder. And I just took one out and put it in and just started listening to it. And I didn’t have you know, I had a dad in my life, but but he wasn’t a full time, you know, type thing. So, you know, I listen to Tony Robbins, and he has that deep voice, that very masculine persona. And, you know, I didn’t really understand everything that he was saying, obviously, you can’t, it’s 678 years old, right? But right. But I understood just enough, and I became enamored with his voice and his persona. And he kind of, you know, filled that masculine role in my life for a couple of months, as I just repeatedly, you know, listen to these audio sets over and over and over again. How old were you at this time? I’m gonna say I was probably somewhere around seven. Okay, well, somewhere around seven,

that’s a great time to find. I didn’t find that particular audio program until I was probably 19 or 20. Yeah. But I had a very similar experience to you.

And you know, I gotta tell you, like I said, it’s not like it’s seven, I comprehended all this information. And I knew exactly what the deal was right? But, but it did. Plant a seed in me, right. And you can only listen to things so often without actually resonating into who you are. Yeah. Which is pretty amazing.

Yeah, that’s incredible. What was the one takeaway that you remember from that program? That that maybe did sink in? Or that has been kind of an underlying?

No. But I can tell you that I’ve been a fan of Tony Robbins, since I was a young kid. Yeah. Very, very young kid. And I began reading his books, you know, Awaken the Giant Within when it came out? And sure, and, you know, him as young as I could have been at the at the time. I was picking up as much as I could. Yeah. And it fed me It fed me spiritually fed me intellectually. And I do credit a lot of that for you know, and home study as well for making me mature earlier in life. Right. It gave me a, an adult view of the world, not a, you know, typical kid, you know, view of the world.

13:05
Yeah, absolutely. So, so you’re trading up motorcycles, jet skis, and probably enjoying every moment of that process? Right? You bet. You’re leveling up at every chance? Absolutely. I’m guessing that you got a little bit addicted to that sort of growth mindset. While you’re doing that, was there a particular breakthrough moment for you was there a moment when you went from, you know, you yourself being the one calling into these classified ads, or placing the classified ads to buy and sell these pieces of equipment to where it really turned into more of a business that had a life of an energy of its own?

It did, you know, within within four or five, six months of starting this whole process from the remote control glider to the airplane to the helicopter? It did take on that that role in my life as a business, it was no longer you know, what I wanted to play with? Right? It was well, can I make money doing this? Yeah. And that evolution happened very, very, very quickly. Probably the, the turning point in my life. The lessons that I learned very early on, was when I was 14, I was on the internet, and I was looking around for just information on helicopters and airplanes, obviously, my passion. So I stumbled across a rotorcraft News Group helicopter News Group. And I saw a classified ad from a guy who said, Do you want to buy my home built helicopter? And here’s the specifications and whatnot. And it really intrigued me. I mean, the idea of a home built helicopter, right? I mean, sure. Every 14 year old has this in his imagination. I’m going to keep it in my garage. I’m gonna fly it around the canyon around my house, and it’s just as awesome dream that every kid ought to have. So what happened was, I called them up, and I said, you know, hey, listen, can you tell me more about the helicopter and you know, I quizzed him on it for a few minutes and we got down to price and said, Well, what are you asking for it? He said, Well, I’m asking 55,000 bucks. And I said, well, thanks for your time. I’m 14 years old. I don’t have 55,000 to spend yet. Yeah. So he was, he was nice enough. He was he was impressed. He said, Wow, I’m really impressed with the questions that you answered and your, you know, your level of intelligence. And he said, Listen, I really need to sell this thing. So if you would find me a buyer for it, I’ll be happy to pay you 2500 bucks. Well, again, 2500 bucks being all the money in the world to a 14 year old kid. And you know, at that time, I could double my net worth, right. Yeah, absolutely. So I took them up on it. And whatever possessed this guy to create a contract that my mom had to sign because I wasn’t 18. And he put, you know, printed out flyers with my phone number on it. And

did you know to create a contract at age 14 Hadn’t didn’t have a clue. Yeah, didn’t have a clue. So this guy almost took on a mentor role for you.

In many ways he did. That’s great. Anyways, he did. And, you know, I went and posted that helicopter for sale on every free classified website that I could find, had my mom take me around to all the local airports in Southern California, we put put up the fliers on the little pin boards. And I ended up selling the helicopter probably three or four months after that. I was just turning 15 years old. And I got my first big paycheck at 2500 bucks.

That’s awesome. How did that feel? Do you remember? felt

great? Yeah. felt great. So the the evolution was that, you know, I didn’t want to buy toys, right? I want to do invest it I wanted to be wealthy. Yeah. And I ended up investing it in unleaded gas options in the commodities markets. And within within months, I had lost all but about $6.28 of it.

That’s some expensive tuition at that age.

Yep. It was, it was pretty interesting. Or six, I think it was $6.32 was the jacket got back.

Let’s talk to me about how you were feeling at that moment. What was the self talk going through your head?

You know, it was interesting, because at 1415 years old, when you think about investing, right? You’re so optimistic, you’re overly optimistic and fast, most young people are unrealistically optimistic with investments. And I really did think that I was going to take this 2500 bucks and turn it into 50,000, which would turn into 500,000, which would turn into a million, you know, over time, and I didn’t really have a good understanding of the risk. And, you know, losing that money was a kick in the gut. But at the same time, it was very important for me to learn early on in life, especially taking on the role as an investor and an investment manager in years to come. That investments aren’t sure things that you know, there are a lot of risks. And even though it was a kick in the gut, they got me steered back into I said, Well, okay, maybe this commodity trading thing is not my deal. I’m going to go into back in aircraft sales, if I did it once. I can do it again. Right? Yeah, that’s when I opened up my company, extreme aviation.

17:53
Okay, and at what age was that at? 15? Is it 15? Okay, so you are able to take the psychological hit of losing that $2,500. And somehow parlay that into going out again, and going right back out there onto the field, you know, many people might go onto the field and get hit, and they might get knocked down and sidelined. For years, or maybe even forever, right? When someone doesn’t fully understand the risk, and they get punched in the gut or hit from the side or whatever metaphor you want to use. What do you think it is that drove you to get back out there on the field and get back in the game?

Passion? Okay, passion, it was, you know, at that point, you know, it’s kind of like, having your first candy bar. Yeah. Right, where you kind of go, oh, man, this tastes so great. Like, I want to this, I could eat these all day long. Right. And in that taste of of that, that money now, you know, it was like I said, a kick in the gut. It was, you know, depressing to say the least, to to lose your life savings, or a good portion of your life savings at that age. That was that was, you know, terrible. Yeah, but the, the idea that if I did it once, I could do it again. Sure. And I love airplanes, and I love helicopters. And I thought, well, you know, I’ll go do something I really, really enjoy. Like I said, I was home study the majority of that time. And so it gave me the time during the day to be able to focus on that as well. What I think is really important for every entrepreneur and every business person to understand is that life is going to be full of those times, right? There’s gonna be periods of time in your life where everything goes, goes great and goes well and there’s gonna be periods of time when you get kicked in the gut. financially, emotionally. There’s a whole host of life experiences that people go through. And so there’s never this steady climb to the top. Right the I think on Facebook, I saw a drawing someone didn’t it circulated itself around the internet pretty fast. And it’s you know, what people think is the line to success which is straight line, and then what it really looks like, yeah. And it’s just a bunch of scribble. Right. And I’ve seen that one. And that’s really what life is about is you get kicked in the gut, and you do get pushed back. And perseverance as a principle is used way too often, in a cliche way, you get people who have no idea what the term means, or what it means to live it. But they’re using it every day, and they’re preaching it to young entrepreneurs. Perseverance is the ability to understand that you are going to get kicked in the gut and push down and fall down on a very regular basis. And, and perseverance is the ability to get back up and say, I knew that was gonna happen. It’s fine. I’m moving on. I’m gonna keep going. Yeah. And, and that has paid huge dividends to me in life.

Well, and you know, obviously, sitting here now in your office, you’ve done a billion dollars in transactions, over 400 properties now with your current company savant. But obviously, there was a huge down point in the market after you made your first million at age 21. Was that hit that sort of kick in the gut? Did that? How did that feel different? Then the kick in the gut when you lost that 2500? Investment?

Way worse? Yeah, way worse, I bet. The amount of money that I lost was astronomically more, yeah, you know, percentage wise of my net worth was probably, you know, a lot more. But, you know, I was, I was blessed, because I really fought my way through the, through the downturn. Now, the other side of it is, you know, I was responsible for managing a real estate portfolio at the time, that was about $150 million. And I had a lot of investors, a lot of mom and pops, and I took that responsibility very, very seriously. And when I was watching the world crumble around me, it wasn’t, you know, that, that I no longer could afford the Lamborghini and the Bentley and the private jet and all that kind of stuff. It was the the heavy burden of having other investors money invested in deals that you did. And, you know, in the real estate market, there’s no sell button, you can’t get out. There’s no liquidity when there’s no buyers, you’re

going down with the ship of the ships going, yeah. And that was difficult to

watch. That was very, very difficult to watch. And, you know, God bless your souls, I still have a lot of those original investors that still invest with me today. But it was it was difficult being at the helm. And that’s, you know, imagine waking up every day to a whole new set of problems. And knowing that you’re not going to see a good day, where you’re resolving those problems for months or potentially years. Yeah. And in that was very, very, very difficult for me.

I would imagine what what kept you getting out of bed in the morning? What? What drove you to drive to the office and continue working was responsibility? Yeah, responsibility, you know, I had a responsibility to those investors. And to myself, I was very, very fortunate every one of my competitors, I shouldn’t say everyone, that large majority of them have been sued by investors like crazy, I was never sued. A large majority of those competitors have filed bankruptcy. I didn’t file bankruptcy. And it was a fight. It was an absolute fight. Yeah. And, you know, to keep yourself above above water and do your best job for your investors. And it was it was a time that that really cut my teeth, if that makes sense. Yeah, in this world, and it was the the maker break moment. And it still to this day, I help a lot of those investors, you know, still deal with a lot of the issues that that happened back in the in the crash, and it was something unlike anything I’ve ever seen. I have always made it a habit to surround myself with incredibly bright people. I had ex CFOs of multiple public companies, you know, name brand companies on my board. And I had x CEOs of publicly held companies on my board, I had private equity venture capitalists on my board. And, you know, we all sat around the boardroom table, and we’re trying to depict what was going to happen in 2008, early 2009, when things really started to fall off the rails. And we all looked at each other around the boardroom table and said, Well, okay, you know, it looks like maybe we might be in for a 20 or 30%, you know, correction here, you know, and we never imagined that it would be a 70% as in seven zero. Yeah. And, you know, Case Shiller and those guys have their own statistics of how bad it was. But, you know, there was homes that were selling for 300,000 at the top that traded at 100,000 at the bottom. Yeah, and, and there’s pieces of land that sold for million dollars at the top that traded for, you know, 200,000 at the bottom. It was extreme, it was unlike anything that we had ever seen before. And so it was it was a good life lesson and now being an investor and an investment manager further into the future. You know, I look back and now I realize that there are signs when markets are topping, and they’re signs when markets are bottoming. And when things are good. You just want to believe that they’re going to continue to be good. And you want to believe how smart you are, and how well positioned you are, and that it’s all your fault. And you know, your abilities and talents that have created this a massive amount of successful, you have to realize that markets, you know, fluctuate, go up and down. And the real wisdom now is learning what makes them top and what makes them bottom.

Sure. Well, and through that process. I imagine that there was ups and downs, or did you have kind of unwavering, unwavering confidence and optimism throughout that that hey, we’re definitely going to get through this.

Oh, absolutely not. Yeah, I mean, it was. Listen, I’m far from perfect, right? I think it would take take someone far, far greater than me to have that optimism and competence and those extremely dark days. You know, those were the days when, you know, Bernie Madoff was out there stealing billions from people. Yeah. And you had Wall Street, you know, brokers and investment advisors committing suicide. And, you know, it was it was an extremely dark time, especially in our industry, for the economy in general for certain, but especially in our industry. I mean, we were in the real estate business, the epicenter of that financial decline. So no, I was not the the eternal optimist that got up every day saying, I’m gonna go crush this, you know, I’m going to be bigger and better than the recession. I got up every day out of duty and responsibility and integrity. And I worked my way through one problem at a time and that was where perseverance paid off.

That it’s amazing. It says a lot about character that you were able to get through that without filing bankruptcy. Obviously, you had already earned millions upon millions. You driving Bentley’s driving Ferraris, you mentioned the private jet. Obviously, you like to fly. Do you think that earning that money at an early age created more risk for you? Or less risk going into that? That downturn?

Oh, more risk, for sure. More risk? You know, it’s, it’s funny, because a lot of the self proclaimed entrepreneur gurus or business gurus, you know, they, they show you the picture of their Rolls Royce, or Bentley, and they show you the picture of their high rise, and they post pictures on Facebook of all their vacations. And you know, that the high flying life that that they lead, right, and I really at a young age, I thought that’s what success was. Right? I really did. And so the better I did, I increased my lifestyle in order to prove to myself and prove to the rest of the world that that’s what financial success was. Yeah. And and I really, consciously I understood that that wasn’t really accurate, accurate, right? But, but deep down, I wasn’t convicted of it. And so I followed along in suit, right, I would, I’d have a half a million dollar month, and I’d go buy a Bentley. And when I was able, you know, I bought a $1.75 million airplane and I lived in a million and a half dollar home. And you know, I just constantly upgraded my lifestyle along with my success. And it was a terrible mistake. And so having gone through that now, the first time now I understand the real goal. And I’ve been in the you know, in the investment business for the last 13 going on 14 years. And the last half of it, which has been postcrash has been all about balance sheet, right. And it’s about understanding the reality that these people who drive the Bentley’s and Lamborghinis and the Ferraris and have the Jets, the large majority of them simply don’t have the net worth to support that kind of lifestyle. And they’re counting on the income and if their income stream stopped tomorrow, they might be a matter of weeks or months, perhaps a few quarters away from bankruptcy themselves. Yeah. And so you know, now there’s a tremendous amount of freedom is I’ve learned through the difficult times and learned from our investors that that it’s all about building your balance sheet. That’s how you know these guys, I’ve got a lot of ordinary investors guys that walk in and bleed blue jeans and T shirts and Dr. Ford pickup trucks, you know, pretty much exactly who I am today. Yeah, that they’re all multi multi multimillionaire, some of them were 1020 $30 million. And they’re not ostentatious. They’re, you know, they’re not bougie they’re, you know, they’re not drinking Cristalle and their multimillion dollar mansion. Yeah. It’s, it’s not about the physical items. It’s about the freedom that wealth creates. And it’s about growing and it almost becomes a game of Monopoly, right. And it’s, it’s, it’s about them being able to spend the time doing what they want to do and wake up every day knowing that they’re not beholden to, to anything or anybody.

Well, I definitely want to get back to that because I think that’s an entirely different level up sort of mindset. I think that you know, one of the things that you mentioned here, it just makes me think back to something that another entrepreneur said to me that a lot of entrepreneurs have their ego tied up in all of those external factors, right? The Bentley, the Ferrari, the whatever, car, house or vacation home. And you clearly have learned throughout your entrepreneurial journey, to tie your ego to other things. And obviously, the the balance sheet isn’t the only thing. I know that you’re a person that is passionate about making a difference, building a life that matters, building a life of freedom. But I think that that first mindset of shifting from acquiring things in in terms of things and experiences, versus acquiring assets on a balance sheet, that are actually going to help develop more wealth, talk to me, or maybe even talk to the listeners here, because we have a lot of young entrepreneurs, or first time entrepreneurs, who are just now hitting that $100,000 Or six figure, maybe even mid to high six figure income, or maybe they’re even making less than six figures, but they’ve taken on millions and investment. And they’re in it, you know, for the long haul and growing value in their business. What is something that an entrepreneur can start doing today? Or what is one way they can start thinking today? That’s going to build them for a sound financial future? And an s sound? Really base of life?

Yeah, well, let me say this, the first thing that they have to understand is that you have to become an investor in principle, right. And when I say that you have to be an investor. In principle, it doesn’t mean that you have to have a million dollars to go invest today, it means that you understand that a big part of your income ought to be held back. And what most people do is, as their income increases, so does their lifestyle. Right. And I’ve made that same mistake. So it’s about not increasing your lifestyle when your income increases. And putting a little bit of that money away. And let me tell you, the progression that that happens, is, first and foremost, you start with saving 100 bucks a month, or 200 bucks a month, which I started doing it 1718 years old. And then all of a sudden, you’re able to save $1,000 a month, and it’s like holy cow, you got 10 grand in the bank, you know, after 789 10 months, and you just think I’m a genius, like this is awesome, I feel so secure. And you know, that’ll turn into 20 and 30. And then 30 turns into 60 and 70. And then 70 turns into 150. And you’re like, Wow, I’m doing really well. And then 150 turns into 250 and 250 into 500. And, you know, it keeps going and as time goes, your number gets bigger, and it’s exponential. Most people just don’t care to save 100 bucks or 200 bucks or 1000 bucks, because they don’t think it matters in their life. It’s too small, it’s too insignificant in their view, to make them a millionaire. Well, I can tell you that. Not without exception, there might be a couple of exceptions, but the majority of investors that I’ve dealt with for the last 14 years, my life started there. You know, there is the the young entrepreneurs that seek to be the Richard Branson’s or the Donald Trump’s or that you know, and they want the big hits, they want the big dollars, I’m not working on what’s going to make me 100 grand, I’m working on what’s gonna make me a million or 10 million or 100 million or a billion. And they have these very grandiose ideas, but you have to realize is that the the the statistics say that that’s a very rare thing to happen. Yep. Right, the Mark Zuckerberg birds of the wheel of the world, the Donald Trump’s of the world, those guys are one in hundreds of millions. And so what it comes down to is, you can either choose the path that’s extremely risky, right and chase the elephants which have a statistic probability of not working. Or you can do what you do really, really well and put one brick on top of the other every single day for many years at a time and end up worth 20 $30 million. By the time you’re 50 and 60. And ready to retire and the rest of your life is done. Yeah, right. And you don’t need the private jet. And you don’t need the $20 million house on the you know, on the hillside and in Laguna Beach, you need security. And that’s that’s what that offers you. So, to the young entrepreneurs and the young, you know, the I’ll call them the wealth generation, the people who want to create wealth. It’s not just about income, income is not wealth. It’s about your balance sheet. It’s about your net worth. And that is where the rest of your life and your future and your stability and your freedom comes from.

Well, that I think that’s really great perspective because it kind of gets back to this thing that I’ve, I’ve learned is very consistent, not only in your life, but in most successful entrepreneurs lives and that is discipline. being disciplined to do the work every day day in and day out. If you’re younger, maybe you’re taking on more risk in some areas, but you’re balancing that out with low risk things that are again, it’s a discipline of building that net worth and that portfolio so that you’re accumulating assets that generate wealth. And so in terms of discipline, and your discipline now, having gone through the entire journey, right, the journey of investing in material things early on, and I’m sure you were still investing in things that were long term investments as well, but but now kind of having had to go through the course correction of the market, right, that could have just as easily gone up. And now you would be, you know, maybe 200 300x, where you are in terms of net worth. But that’s why when you talk to any entrepreneur, it’s they always say it’s a lot of discipline, hard work, focus, and a ton of luck. Right? So you want to set yourself up to be there when like luck strikes, but also be prepared, when it doesn’t talk to me about your discipline? What’s what is your what have been some of the habits on a day to day basis, that have built this discipline for you and helps you maintain the discipline?

Well, I think I think first and foremost, you make a really good point that you have to be there when lightning strikes, right? I make it a practice to be in the office five days a week, if not more, that I’m responsive, that I engage with, with people, my peers, my mentors, my underlings, everyone I give I give everyone a certain amount of time, right? Because I know that that buried somewhere in every relationship is an opportunity.

What is responsive mean to you? What is what is your personal standard?

My standard is, if I have an email in my inbox, it needs to get out the same day. Okay, right. I believe that so many more people could be so much more successful, if they interacted quickly and respectfully and promptly to their customers, their clients, their their partners,

that hits home for me, 100%, because I feel so busy and overwhelmed by my inbox sometimes. And I realized that my inbox is no more full than if not probably magnitudes less full than the most successful people in the world, and they’re still able to get responses. within the same day, I think part of that, for me is probably toning down the amount that I communicate, because I like to communicate with a lot of thought and emotion. And I spend a lot of time in responses. But I’ve been trying to discipline myself to get quick as opposed to thorough,

you know, a lot of people make, and I’m not going to call it a mistake, I’m gonna say it’s a style preference, right? Yeah, I make it a point that even if my response is, you know, hey, that works, or this doesn’t work, let’s touch base tomorrow than an email goes out. And especially in my industry, where I’ve got investors that are investing hundreds of 1000s or millions of dollars at a time, you know, they don’t ever want to think that they can’t get a hold of you if they need to. And that’s why I make it a policy that every investor has my cell phone, every investor, you know, will email me and get a response within 24 hours or less. That’s really important not not just for my industry, but but for everyone. Yep. And whether you’re thorough or you’re cursory or it doesn’t matter how you do respond, be active, engaged with your clients, your customers, your partners, the people that are important to your business, and that in of itself will carry a good amount of momentum into the future.

Yeah, that’s great. What are some of the other habits that you’ve stacked on top of that?

I think organization which is very tough for me, I found that entrepreneurs desk looks pretty neat to me. Well, I cleaned it off a little before you came in today. Sure, but, but at the end of the day, it’s difficult for me just like it is for most entrepreneurs because we are creative minded, right? And it’s difficult for us to be organized to get things done. And so I’ve created this really simple way of myself keeping on top of things in fact, if you look I got eight screens in front of me Yeah,

and on one of my screens have enough Do you need me to get you a couple more?

You know, that might be good, yeah. But but on a computer screens I keep track of everything that I need and it makes me very, very efficient. One of these things is is my action items, which is the things that I have going on here here in life so you know if you look down I’ve got you know, various properties and projects and construction going on and something that I need to do or the next phase for each and everything so that in my breaks in my lows during the day I can I can look at this and say okay, what do I need to be doing now? Yeah, and so it’s finding a way to always be productive and I’m not perfect I check Facebook during the day and stuff like that, right? It’s everybody’s a little bit different that way and I could probably be more disciplined but I found my groove. And I found a way for disorganized guy like me to be organized. Yeah. The

and I noticed too, that you’re not using some fancy piece of software. where you’re not using the newest, latest, mobile optimized, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, it is an Excel spreadsheet. That’s right. And so I think that that’s important to call out. Because I think a lot of times, people get caught up in the tools and trying a free trial of this out and then switch into this thing. And all now I’m using Basecamp. So everything’s going to change. Yep. It’s not really about the practice, right? It

is about the practice. It’s not about the technology. It’s not about the the idea, it’s about action, simple action. And every, like I said, Everybody’s different. I’m not going to critique somebody for using Basecamp. If, if that works for you, then use it. But what I think happens to a lot of entrepreneurs is that, and business people in general is that they try and systemize their, their creativity, and how they’re creative and how they do really well at what they do. I’m a deal guy. Yeah, I can I can underwrite a $10 million deal in about 10 minutes. And I can know whether it’s something I want to pursue, or I don’t want to pursue. And there’s no amount of organization or checklists or software that I can, you know, spend gobs of time hours, you know, inputting stuff to just come up with the same result. I know that I can do it very, very quickly. And so I don’t overcomplicate my life by trying to over system systemize my life and my business, I do what’s necessary for my team and myself to be productive and know more,

that that is a huge, huge nugget that I think I know, I will be implementing more and more. But an insight just in the last two, three years that from my own self and our own business at verge has made huge, huge strides in our productivity, and in terms of serving our members and serving our sponsors, has made a huge difference. Just focusing on systematizing every piece of the process. You know, you talk about taking action. And I know that you believe in taking action, but you also believe in taking strategic action, intelligent action? Yeah, absolutely. Can you talk to me about some of the discipline or habits around the intelligence that you develop?

I’ll talk about the philosophy. Yeah. Okay. And here’s, you know, I’m going to knock on a few of these, you know, young up and coming, Jim Roans are young up and coming Tony Robbins, and the guys on Facebook and Twitter. And you know, it’s all the motivational all the rah rah. And yeah, there’s, do you think all of that is helpful or hurtful to young entrepreneurs?

It has its place, but I think it’s become more hurtful than it has helpful. I agree. And the reason why is I think that most people, especially young entrepreneurs, who don’t have a lot of, you know, they don’t have years or decades and experience, you know, I’ve been an entrepreneur since I was 10. So, I’ve got now 22, going on 23 years, behind me as an entrepreneur. And I’ve learned a lot. And I’ve taken a lot of lessons during that period of time. And, and I’ve translated those lessons into experience into wisdom and into knowledge. And I use that every day. And I try and translate it into sophistication. Yeah, is, I think, the most simple word to use. And I think it was Jim Rohn, I may be wrong, said that. Ambition, without intelligence is like a bird without wings. And I think that there’s so many young entrepreneurs, and there’s so many self help gurus, you know, the, the business coaches these days, that just try and pump people up, they artificially inflate enthusiasm, they artificially inflate motivation. And what they’re trying to sell is that if you’re really enthusiastic, and you’re really motivated, and you’re really inspired, then you’ll succeed. Well, that’s not really the case. Because unless you have the practical application of it, you can have all the enthusiasm in the world and that you know, you can be bouncing out of your skin on a moment by moment basis, so excited to go do something. But unless you have the level of sophistication, and the knowledge and the understanding to go execute it in an intelligent way, you’re just spinning your energy. Yep. And so I see a lot of young entrepreneurs get really, really hyped up and not making practical steps forward in their business and their life and their career and their finances and their balance sheet and their net worth. Because they’re tied up with the enthusiasm. They think that the next moment or within the next day or the next week, or the next month, they’re going to get a grain of wisdom that is going to turn them into a millionaire. And that’s just not how it works. It’s wisdom. It’s knowledge, and that takes time and experience and it takes falling down and getting back up. And, you know, unless you’re waiting for lightning to strike and win the lottery. The practical application to success in business takes both ambition and dedication and focus but it also takes knowledge and wisdom and that’s built over time.

So I love that I love that you say it takes knowledge and wisdom. And I know that you’re a big believer that a lot of the most valuable insights can be found in books There are a lot of people that think that reading a lot of books is the important thing. Is that something that that you believe success is almost correlated to the number of books you read? Or do you think it’s more important to find the right books? No,

it’s important to find the right books. And it’s important to find the quality, why is it and again, my philosophy varies from other people. So what’s right for me is not right for everybody, I find that it’s more important to grab gems to always be learning to always be growing, to always be getting educated and building your knowledge and building your wisdom base. And I think there’s a lot of great books that do it. John Maxwell, and you know, he’s got some great leadership books and lots of good material out there, my own books included, yeah, but sit sitting down and reading a book is not going to make you wealthy. sitting down and reading a book is not going to make you a million dollars, what’s what’s gonna make you a millionaire is taking action, based on the information that you have, and continuing to grow your practical experience and knowledge. And what it’s, I think hard for a lot of people to understand is that the only thing that that comes out of books, right? Is, is superficial knowledge that you have the opportunity to make practical knowledge that you can, you know, you can put into practice. But if you don’t have any, if you don’t have a practice to put it into, if you don’t have a business, or a system or a set of clients, or a set of, you know, investors in my case, or set of deals, in my case, if you don’t have the practical application for what you’re learning, you lose that very, very quickly. And so there’s people that say, Well, I want to read a, you know, a book a day for the rest of my life where I want to read a book a week or book a month, listen, I think that’s great, whatever is right for you. But don’t spend all of your creative time or your downtime, or your free time reading a book to try and apply. Don’t spend all your working time reading books, so that you can try and apply it one day, spend your time taking action and working and growing your experience base, and then take the nuggets out of what you read and what’s important and and apply it practically.

That’s that’s so very, very important. And a key differentiator that I think, probably more first time or early entrepreneurs need to hear, which is you know, maybe it’s time to put the book down if you’re going to have downtime, use that for thought time use that for thought experiments. Use that for thinking strategically about how could you be approaching your work differently? Or how could you be approaching a particular deal in a more creative way? Or who could you bring into the deal to, you know, 10x, the results for everyone involved? Are there any disciplines that you have in terms of that downtime, not, not when you’re reading, not when you’re doing specific things for particular deals, but just space to think, and allow yourself to be free of thought

I do. You know, one of those things that I’ve got a cabin that we use his business retreat up in Utah, in the mountains. And, you know, I’m up there quite often. And I think here’s the other thing that’s really important is you need to schedule your business thinking time, you need to schedule your time and block out your time, to think strategically or to plan or to, you know, to be creative and come up with new ideas and thoughts and processes and procedures and, and ways to move your business forward. But it shouldn’t occupy every waking moment of your life. And for me like a lot of entrepreneurs. That’s a struggle. Yeah. Because we’re so passionate about it. And so much of our identity is in the passion of doing what we love, that it’s hard not to think about it all the time. Yeah. So you know, one of the things that I do is I’ll go start a fire in the fire pit and I’ll sit there for hours and just poke at this fire and put on more logs. And, and it’s therapeutic for me and I don’t have to be thinking about business or anything else. Think taking time to unwind and not put the pressure on you to be thinking moment by moment, about your business and what you can be doing. I think that actually wears you down. I think it burns you out and I think you need that downtime, to let your body and your mind recover. One of the things that I like to do and it goes against a lot of you know, common practical principles is I love watching TV at night with those mindless programs not you know, Keeping Up With The Kardashians and that kind of garbage but, but I do watch enough TV for half an hour an hour to let my mind unwind and detached from the goings on in the day.

What shows are your guilty pleasures right now?

Family Guy,

Family Guy Family Guy? Yeah,

49:55
it’s good to laugh stupid humor, right and it’s it’s not overly complicated. Your mind doesn’t have to think about it. And it just winds me down. And I think that’s okay. Again, it’s different for everybody. There’s some people who have the discipline to say absolutely no TV whatsoever. It’s a waste of time, to his and her own, you know, and God bless them, whatever works for them. But for me, I know that I have to have some time for my mind to unwind. And if I don’t do that, I begin getting burnt out very, very quickly.

Yeah, well, and you said that word burnout. In terms of energy. You also talked about the campfire, of course. But that that term burnout, a lot of times the word I hear entrepreneurs or investors say is hit the wall, I finally hit the wall, and they almost have to do a reset. Have you ever had a moment where you’ve hit the wall or come close to hitting the wall? Absolutely. Well, what did that feel like when you were close to that? Was that early in the career?

Well, it happens periodically. Yeah. I mean, you know, even just a day, yeah, even to this day, it just happens. There are weeks where on Thursday afternoon, I am just done put a fork in me, it’s, you know, the mental energy. And the stress of what I’ve had to deal with that week was just, you know, frankly, too much. And, and, you know, you persevere, and you work through it. And you work through the time because of your obligations and your promises to people and you keep your integrity and stay, you know, in that mode of perseverance. But there’s also times when you say, look, it’s Thursday afternoon, this is why I do what I do. So that I can take off Thursday afternoon and show back up on Monday. Yeah, and in take some time for your body and your mind and your emotions and your your your, your whole system to just recharge a little bit. And get out of a familiar environment. One of the things that that’s difficult for me is, even though I’ve got a beautiful office is I am not creative here. Yeah, it’s claustrophobic for me, and this is my life. This is where I live, right? I’ve got a phone a computer, I get text messages and emails, and you know, this is my life in this office, I don’t get to go work outside and enjoy the beautiful weather here in Las Vegas. So it’s important for me to get out of my familiar zone as well, to recharge, yeah, because you can get stuck in that familiar environment and it becomes monotonous. And that’s important that you know, whenever something becomes monotonous, your creativity is done, you’re just going through the motions. And so, you know, once a quarter I take, I take our staff, and we go off site, and we do our little retreats and strategic planning and talking and thinking, and we always do it off site. And the reason why we do that is we don’t want it to be familiar. We don’t want the phone to ring and have us to answer the phone or we don’t want to have emails and computers and Printers and Faxes and all that kind of stuff within easy reach. You know, it’s a time for us to recharge and get out of the familiar. So it’s not monotonous.

Yeah, that’s great. And what it sounds like, even though it is creative, going back to what you said earlier, it’s scheduled creativity, to make sure that you’re making time for it, saving time for it. But then also, you know, I’ve experienced this myself, and still do to this day, that it’s very easy to find yourself, you know, spending time with family, but in the back of your brain, you’re thinking about some business opportunity or some particular issue that you’re you’re working your way through. And I think that that’s so important, and probably helps balance some of that out by having the scheduled time to think about problems or think about new opportunities, or as you said, to just not think

53:33
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, we, even though we say this is my downtime, and this is my away time, and this is my, you know, relaxing time, there’s nothing, there’s no switch that you can turn off, you’re always going to be thinking about business and pondering business and thinking about ideas and clients and good things and bad things and problems and challenges and goals, and there’s no switch to turn off. And so keeping that in mind, it is still important to do your best to distract yourself from not having to focus on those things. You know, I’ve been professionally coached or in a coaching program myself, since I was in my early 20s. And I’ve always had, you know, an external coach that I talked to, even if it’s not a hired coach, it’s someone that you know, an accountability buddy, for lack of a better term. Yeah. And so one of the things that we do is we try and hold each other accountable to leaving our phones at home or turning our phones off. So it’s there if we need it. But having some time to detach from technology, to not feeling like every moment has to be productive, and we need to be on the computer at every second. And you know, when we get to the airport before a flight, we need to be working and when we’re in the air we need to be working and when we land we need to go straight to our meeting and we deal with that stuff so much on a day to day basis anyway, we have to have some time to detach herself from the technology that we’ve become so beholden to Yeah, And I think that principle in of itself can, it’ll feel awkward at first for most people, but turn your phone off. Yeah, it take a free day where you’re not tied to it. And you don’t have to be thinking about what’s going on or not going on and answering your emails and getting that phone call that upsets you, or whatever the situation may be. Well, I

think that’s good homework for every everyone listening to this interview to do is to just schedule one disconnected day, I have a friend who just recently took a month away from the office and away from technology. Of course, he still had his phone and everything but deleted the Facebook app, blocked it from his computer, made sure that he wasn’t getting on Twitter wasn’t blogging anymore during that month. And it’s amazing, just the level of conversation we’ve had, since he took that I you don’t have to take an entire month, like you said, I think just taking one day would be some great homework for any listener to take. And I think another great piece of homework, if you are someone that reads books, and hopefully if you’re listening to this, you are Jordan, you have so much knowledge and you’ve written a couple of books, you know, Maverick millionaire, becoming incredible. Can you talk a little bit about what makes those books different from other business books?

Absolutely. Well, the book Maverick Millionaire was my first book that I published in 2007. The title wasn’t mine, that was my publisher. But, you know, it really talks about the practical, not the not the, the specifics of my industry. But it talks about how I became successful and how I became wealthy at an early age, finding the right mentors hanging around the right people, dressing for success, all the little nuances that most people don’t really think about. And it just addresses the little things, all the little principles that I’ve used up until that point, in order to build my wealth and build my at that time, my empire. And so out of that, you know, that’s a great book for young up and coming entrepreneurs out of that I came up with become incredible, which I published in 2010. And become incredible is about people with stories in their life. And it’s about having that story of defeat, having that story of I can’t, and what it takes to get yourself through that. And I was really writing that book, not only as a successful guy, it you know, at an early age in life, but I was also going through it myself, yeah. Where, you know, there’s this entire world crashing around me, and trying to not be attached to the economy or the real estate market, or the difficulties and the challenges in life. And don’t let yourself buy into that story that you did it once. But you can never do it again. And, and that was really, really important for me to write that book as well. And it, it’s actually a workbook, believe it or not, it’s kind of funny how I create together. But you actually have to write out your story in the book. And you have to face the realities of what your own limitations are in your mind. And it’s a great exercise. I think it’s a great exercise for anybody.

Well, I love that you not only talk about taking action, but have written your book to encourage people to take action. If you want to take action and look you up online, how can they find you? Are you on Twitter? And yeah,

yeah, I’m on website you want to point them to I’m on Twitter, I’m on Facebook, I encourage everybody, especially the young up and coming that want to build a balance sheet and want to build wealth, to check out my company at savant investments.com. And we’ve got the Savant report.com, which people can sign up to on the Savant report website, which is savant report.com. Awesome. And you can sign up and we talked about everything that’s happening in the investment world for the young, the old, the rich and the poor. And it’s just about about the world.

That’s great. Well, we’ll definitely link it up in the show notes. Make sure we point people in the right direction. Jordan, I want to just say thank you so much for taking the time. And so welcome and taken really the energy to connect on a real level and share not just the glossy, Instagram filtered version of your life, but but really the truth of what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur, whether you’re in Silicon Valley or elsewhere, like Las Vegas.

Well, I’m happy to do it. And I appreciate you taking the time as well. I’ve got a passion for helping people succeed in life. It’s it’s a place that I get joy from each and every day. And it’s never, you know, an easy job for anybody to go from start to, to wealth and start to happiness. But if I can make an impact, I’m thrilled to do it.

Well, you’re really good at it, man. And hopefully we can reconnect, whether it’s here in Las Vegas or on one of your trips in the future. I look forward

to it, Matt, thanks for having me. Thanks, Jordan.

Well, so much goodness in that interview, and I’ve already begun to implement it into my day to day routine here at the office. Now I hope that you enjoyed this interview as much as I did. I would love it. If you would give Jordan a shout on Twitter just hit him up at Jordan weirs that’s at Jordan w IRSZ on Twitter. You can find him on his personal website, Jordan wears.com. And then of course, his business website savant investments.com. Want to give a huge shout out one more time to our sponsors at developer town. And then of course, you can find all of the show notes at powderkeg dot c o even the transcripts that you can download their their PDFs so you can take them with you and read them later. And then of course, you can find our other episodes with great business leaders and investors all over the country all over the world. If you have feedback for me, hit me up on Twitter, I’m just at Hunckler that’s H UNCK L E R. And until then, I will see you in the next episode.