Simple Way to Create Wealth: Why Most People Fail and How You Can Win

Michael Zuber (0:00)

Who wants to get wealthy?

Yeah, I knew I was in the right room. Who understands that getting wealthy is going to take some sacrifice?

All right, so far so good, I'm in the right room.

Who thinks it might take some time to get wealthy?

All right, we're definitely in the right room. So what we're going to go through today is I'm going to give you a very simple three-step process to get wealthy.

Whether you want to do it the way I did, or Olivia and I, my wife, who's sitting in the corner over there, did, via buy and hold rentals, whether you want to do it running a business, flipping cars, I don't care what it is, it's your thing. I'm here to tell you that if you do it for a decade, and you're consistent and focused and disciplined, that the chances of you getting wealthy are extremely good. I believe everybody in this room is, because you are here, what I call an everyday wealth builder. We are not thinking about replacing our income tomorrow. Of a lot of the people that are on the circuit that go out and try to help people, they're here selling you a dream of, you hate your job, and let's replace your income, and do this and do that. I am here today with a simple message. Focus and discipline, consistency sets you free. So with that message, we will get into the conversation. So since a lot of the folks in the room don't know me, I am married, happily married, lovely woman over there named Olivia. We have a daughter, Theresa. Thank you. Yes, she is definitely the smart one in the relationship. I actually got involved in real estate investing in 2001 Who has owned a property longer than 2001? Anybody in the room? Awesome, you are my people. So again, we started that after I suffered an 80 percent loss in the.com crash. So I was one of those guys that turned 7 grand, seven, into almost $200,000.

Sounds impressive. However, I was gambling, and I lost 80 percent in Worldcom and Enron, were the two that got me the most. So I came to real estate as a depressed man. Somebody who thought they had figured out this game, and was going to take care of their family, only to lose nearly everything. I get it, we all come from somewhere. It's not always sunshine, unicorns, and rainbows. We all have tough days, we all have losses, and that was a big one. Again, we started investing before the crash. We had eight single-family homes when I went to an event like this. And we saw a young man at the time named Bruce Norris. And Bruce Norris told the room that California was going to crash. And as somebody who had already suffered an 80% loss, who had then built his stack to a million bucks, I could not suffer another loss. So I sat in the room, I paid to be in the room, I got educated, and I took action. What Olivia and I did next is we 1031 exchanged out of houses into apartment buildings. And guess what happened next? Housing crashed, Bruce Norris was right. Because I paid to be in rooms like this, and took action, took action. You guys seen a connection? We saved ourselves, and we set up the rest from there. So again, you are learning a lot. You have to take action. The action is on you. You're going to see lots of great speakers with lots of great stories. Find the thing that you are going to take action with. That was something that was important to us. Then during the crash, we borrowed a bunch of money from private investors, millions of dollars. We retired 18 Here's a fun fact. Whoever thought retiring financially free, and then the next day, you're going to be depressed.

It happened. I swear to God. I had three days where I smiled so hard, my face hurt. Have you ever smiled so much that your face hurt? Yeah, like, that's a weird feeling, right? Like, I didn't know I had these muscles. But then I got increasingly depressed. Olivia, again, being the smartest one in our relationship, said, Michael, you got to get out of your head. Let's go to Taiwan. That's where my wife is from. So, we took our daughter, her, I guess, boyfriend, yeah, boyfriend at the time, to Taiwan. We had a great event. But, while I was in the back of a family van, doing some trips somewhere, they were speaking Chinese, and I don't speak Chinese. Am I doing something wrong? No, I'm okay. Okay. She's looking at me like I did something wrong.