The “Johnny Appleseed" Strategy That Took Me from $60K/Year to Millionaire

**Dave Meyer** (0:00)
A history professor making $60,000 a year is now a real estate millionaire thanks to a few American history lessons. And he did it with fewer rentals than you might think. Joseph Moore survived the 2008 crash, but during that time, he saw his friends lose their jobs and their houses even though they did everything right. As a historian, he thought, what lessons are in the history of money that could stop me from getting wiped out in a similar way? The answer was real estate.
Using a tactic Joseph calls the Johnny Appleseed strategy, he built a seven-figure net worth without ever earning six figures as a professor. The strategy is pretty simple. Buy where the demographics are pointing to. But what came next, no one would have expected. We got FBI raids at rental properties, underground crime rings, and some serious lessons learned from a first-time landlord. But now, even after all that madness, Joseph has a seven-figure real estate portfolio with enough cash flow to fund his comfortable middle-class lifestyle. All from following five financial lessons from history he's going to share with us on the show today. These lessons have made Americans wealthy for hundreds of years. It's just that 99% of people aren't listening.
Hey, everyone, I'm Dave Meyer, Chief Investment Officer at Bigger Pockets. Today on the show, we have Joseph Moore. Joseph is a history professor and a real estate investor, and he's here to share his own investing experiences and what he's learned from writing a new book about the history of personal finance. Let's bring on Joseph.
Joseph, welcome to the Bigger Pockets Podcast. How you doing?

**Joseph Moore** (1:51)
I'm doing great, Dave. How are you?

**Dave Meyer** (1:53)
Well, thank you so much for being here. I'm excited to hear a little bit about your story. So maybe just tell us a little bit about your background in real estate.

**Joseph Moore** (2:01)
Yeah. So I have no business being in real estate business or any such thing.
I'm an academic. I'm a historian. And I was getting a PhD in history on very non-financial topics in 2005 And everybody said when we were graduate students, that the lesson of history was very clear. Renting was throwing your money away. I don't know if you've ever heard that, but people used to say that a lot. Oh, I've heard it.
So I nodded my head and we got in no income, no verification, mortgage, all the things from all the TV shows and movies. And it's three years go along and a friend at church offered a financial class. I think it was like a Dave Ramsey class or something. And we were like, I told him, I was like, I don't need to go. I'm pretty smart. I know what I'm doing. He said, would you come just as a favor? I'm scared that like it'll be an empty room. It'll be awkward. We go. They make us do a budget. We go home. My wife falls asleep. I did not sleep at all. Like I just paced the house. I was like, who gave us a mortgage? And like, what idiot signed that mortgage?

**Dave Meyer** (2:59)
Oh, right.

**Joseph Moore** (2:59)
I'm the idiot that signed that mortgage. And so I get frantic about it. And I, my wife and I put our house in the market.

**Dave Meyer** (3:07)
That was it for you. You did this session. You're like, we're selling.

**Joseph Moore** (3:09)
I was like, we're selling. I have no business owning a home. We have no money. We were graduate students, right? Like by definition, we're not staying, right? Like you're going to go somewhere else.

**Dave Meyer** (3:19)
Oh, that's a good point. Yeah.

**Joseph Moore** (3:20)
And so it was like, what are we doing here? And so all this to say, we put our house in the market. It sells in a bidding war on a Saturday.
The following Saturday, my neighbor put her house on the market. It was too late, like 2008

**Dave Meyer** (3:34)
Whoa. Was it actually 2008?

**Joseph Moore** (3:37)
2008 So this is like we are the last two people off the Titanic.

**Dave Meyer** (3:41)
Oh, wow.

**Joseph Moore** (3:42)
And I'm looking at the economy like sink into the ocean. I'm watching friends lose their jobs. I'm watching foreclosures and all these. And I'm like, I just got saved by sheer luck, right? Like I wasn't so smart. I would love to say it was because I was brilliant.

**Dave Meyer** (3:58)
No, no, no.

**Joseph Moore** (3:58)
I had no idea what I was doing. And so I just became fascinated by what Americans have been told to do with their money and why we believe it. And so I started, like the historian in me came out and I started researching the history of financial advice and trying to like, as best I could, learn from those lessons and then apply those lessons in the present. And I basically decided anything I found people in the past doing within reason, I would do and within reason was set by my wife saying, under no circumstances, are we doing that?