Discovering Your Purpose When You Have Lots Of Interests

Mastering the process of discovering your purpose when you have lots of different interests.

In this video coaching newsletter I discuss an email from a viewer who has been following my work for almost 2 years. He’s read 3% Man, 9 times and is going through mastering yourself for the 1^st time. He is struggling with his purpose and has multiple interests and career paths that he is passionate about. However, he is not sure which one to pursue because the ones he really likes don’t pay well and he has plans to own land and become an entrepreneur. My comments are in bold italics like this below in the body of his email.

Hi, I’m Coach Corey Wayne and this is my Video Coaching Newsletter. And the topic of today’s Members Only Newsletter is, “Discovering Your Purpose When You Have Lots Of Interests.”

So this particular email is from a viewer. He’s been following me for almost two years. He’s read 3% Man nine times. And he’s going through Mastering Yourself for the first time, which will really help him. He hasn’t gotten all the way through it yet, but in Mastering Yourself, I really lay out my career path or I should say career paths that I’ve been on. And for those of you that have been through Mastering Yourself and if you haven’t read it, it’s available to read for free in the Members Area of the Website. Even if you’re just a free member on the Website, you can still have access to the eBooks.

But if you’re trying to discover your purpose because it is a process, you’ve got to read Mastering Yourself. There’s also a playlist on YouTube called, “Discovering Your Purpose.” There’s probably a dozen or so videos that I took people through the exercises on, especially if you’re struggling with figuring out what you want. And like this particular viewer, he’s got a bunch of things that he really likes to do, he’s really into. So he’s got multiple interests. He’s had multiple career paths. However, he’s not really sure which one to pursue because he really loves firefighting. He became a Pilot when he was like 17.

And so he loves to fly. He loves music, he loves working as a firefighter. I guess he likes, what do they call the smoke jumper? The guys that jump out of the planes, when there’s, I think there’s a TV show on where there’s like a forest fire or something like that. He really loves those things and working for the city, but it doesn’t pay well. And right now, I guess he’s currently working at an airport, making really good money, really loves his job, but ultimately he wants to be able to buy a bunch of land. He wants to be an entrepreneur, so he’s got a ton of things. He’s got a bunch of irons in the fire, and he’s trying to figure out, “How do I zero in and pick which one?”

Again, Mastering Yourself will really show how my personal process was. Because it is a process. And as you go through life and as you go through the decades, especially as you try things that at one time you’re like, “wow, this seems really fascinating. I’d love to do this.” And then you go get a job, or you work in the industry and you learn a little bit more about it, you might change your mind and decide you don’t really like the day to day activities so much. And so, like most things in life, you really got to try. You got to try it before you buy it, if you will.

Viewer Email:

Hello Coach,

Hope all is amazing! I’ll keep it short as possible, but want to extend my gratitude for the wisdom you teach. I’ve been following your work for almost two years now, have read “3% Man” 9 times (and still going) and am currently going through “Mastering Yourself” for the first time now. While I’m not where I want to be on both of those subjects yet, I am much closer than where I was when I started.

Thank you. Now to my conundrum. Growing up, I’ve always had multiple interests that I gave a lot of attention to. For instance, I’ve had a passion for aviation since I was a toddler, even getting my private pilot’s license at 17 years old, before I ever drove a car by myself.

So when somebody learns to be a Pilot before they learn to drive a car at 17, that’s something that’s innate. That’s something that when he was a kid, it lit him up on the inside. So much to fly that he learned to do it when he was still 17 years old. That’s impressive. And so that is something that’s innate. And that’s what happens.

We most of us, we all kind of deep down know what we want to do, but what really gets in the way is our fears, and our personal story about why we can’t have what we want. People in general who don’t have the things they want in life, it’s because the story they tell themselves. And so, at least when it comes to being a Pilot, his personal story not only did not get in the way, but it actually helped him achieve it.

I was a diver from 5th grade through high school going so far as to finish in the top half of a national event. I was a firefighter while I was in college in Oklahoma have battled numerous wildfires.

I think it smoke jumper, I think is what the technical term is for it. I know there’s a TV show. I can’t remember the networks. Whenever I watch football or whatever, I always see the commercials for it. It’s so overly dramatic.

I’ve also done, and still do music, having thousands of listeners and even getting radio play in a few major cities. Now, I am a 22 year old.

Ah. I’m such an old man. You’re expecting me to go? Yeah, I’m like 35 now. It’s a lot of stuff to do in a short period of time.

Now, I am a 22 year old who just graduated from that college in Oklahoma, now working for an airport somewhere else. I absolutely love the job I’m working, I love the people I work with, and am getting paid very well for a college graduate with little experience. However, I miss Oklahoma and all of the things I used to do there, such as firefighting and emergency management/public safety stuff. I want to move back. The problem is, those jobs don’t pay very well at all, as they are government jobs. As a high achiever who is looking to own a lot of land and build a decent house someday (hopefully soon), those jobs, as much as I love them, wouldn’t help me alone.

Well, one thing I want to say before I go further is and I discussed this in Mastering Yourself, and we talk a lot about it in the Mastering Yourself Study Group Podcast, because there’s a lot of stuff in there in the banking and financial system. And one of the things that I didn’t do when I was younger, because I didn’t really understand it like I do now, is that you got to pay yourself first. No matter what you make, you got to put 20% away into Stocks or Investments or your Retirement Account, whatever it happens to be.

Me personally, I like buying and investing in Stocks that I believe in, the company I believe in, the CEO, I believe in their value proposition and what the company does. But if you’re not good at picking Stocks, then, as Granddaddy Buffett says, then what you should do is buy some kind of an index fund tied to the S&P 500 and take your 20%. Because again, I’m dealing with people all over the world. So whether it’s a SEP IRA or your 401K or I don’t know what they are in Europe or New Zealand or Australia, but they have similar things there to where you’re able to put your money in and not pay taxes on the money until you start taking it out when you retire.

So if you’re not good at picking Stocks and at the very least 20% of whatever you make. So if you make five grand a month before you pay any bills, $1,000, you pay yourself first. And that $1,000 goes towards your retirement through the beauty of compounding. You know, especially when you look at I mean, there’s you can go online and look at the S&P 500. I’m sure somebody’s got a calculator where you can put in like X amount of dollars contributed over ten years or 20 years or whatever. What it’s worth in ten, 15, 20 years from now. So you can see the magic of compounding and how well the index does.

Basically your SPY funds. But again, depending on your country, you should probably talk to an investment advisor and figure out what kind of legal structure you should put that money in. But again, no matter what, you make ten grand a month, two grand comes off the top and then whatever is left, they grand. I assume that’s what you net and take home.

The eight grand is what you have to pay your mortgage, your rent, your car payment, your fun money, whatever. But you pay yourself first before anything happens. So it doesn’t matter if you’re working for the city or you’re working. Like in this case, he’s working a really good job at an airport. No matter what, 20% has got to come off the top and you got to put it away. You can’t touch it because that’s your principal, that’s your capital that you’re going to live off of when you don’t want to work anymore.

I’ve been thinking about starting an aviation-related business in Oklahoma as well, but that’s extremely unrealistic as I’m trying to finish up getting my flight hours so I can go into the airlines as a pilot. If I do that, though, I fear I will miss the opportunity to explore my interest in being a shot-caller in public safety, as well as start my business.

Well when I was in Real Estate flipping foreclosure properties, we had a lot of guys that were Airline Pilots that invested in Real Estate on the side. So just because you become a Pilot doesn’t mean you can’t start a business on the side. And maybe it’s not investing in Real Estate, maybe because the other thing you can do is that you can put whatever money you have in your fund. Maybe someday your fund gets so big enough because what a lot of people do is they don’t touch their principal. And say, you got $1 million in your retirement account or your Stock trading account.

If you trade your own Stocks, you can do what’s called a margin loan on that, which is what most people with money do. They don’t want to sell or take away from their capital principal, so they borrow against it. And since you’re borrowing a loan, you get to write off the interest because it’s an expense. You’re not actually taking out income. When you sell the Stocks, then you got to pay interest or you got to pay taxes on whatever your capital gains are. So a way to avoid paying capital gains is take a loan out. And so you could take a loan against the equity in your stocks or your retirement and use that money to buy land or whatever. But no matter what job you work, the 20% has got to get put away and it’ll come a point in time.

And ideally, another thing we’ve been talking a lot about in the Mastering Yourself Study Group podcast is the economic boom cycle, because right now we’re in an economic bust cycle. And so for those of you that are real familiar with Real Estate, it’s extremely slow right now. So in most areas, the rent, especially the area I live, the rents are dropping and the Real Estate prices are dropping, and they got artificially inflated 30 to 40% over and above what they were in 2018, 2019, before the pandemic and all those shenanigans. And so it’s kind of like a repeat of what happened in 2006, 2007, and 2008 when Lehman Brothers blew up in September 2008.

And so the boom bust cycle is about a 12 to 15 year cycle. And so the best time to buy Real Estate after Lehman Brothers blew up, you got to remember the interest rate increases started. I think it was September 2004. Lehman brothers blew up four years later in September 2008. And starting in 2009 through early 2013, that’s when nobody wanted to buy Real Estate. That’s when the values had plummeted, and most people stayed out of it because so many people were bankrupted and because of the economic bust cycle. And so property values dropped back down to what they legitimately really were. So you had a lot of debt destruction. You had a lot of bankruptcies. You had commercial debt destruction.

You had people with their mortgages that got foreclosed. They did a lot of short sales. And so we’re seeing that now all over Florida. There’s places where people bought houses a couple of years ago, and now they’re selling those houses at a loss because the investors and the people are no longer moving here. They’re no longer working remotely like they were. A lot of the people have moved back to the blue states. Now that things have opened back up, because quite frankly, they don’t like the weather in Florida. You got to like the heat and and the swamp. And so with that in mind is that the interest rate increases started in early 2022. So we’re really about two and a half years into it. So we’re kind of like late 2006. If you want to kind of equate what happened the last time there was a bubble.

So we’re heading into 2007. And again, remember, it took four years for Lehman Brothers to blow up. And every month that goes by, we’re seeing the real estate in most areas start to go back the other way. And it starts to accelerate, because when most people look and they go, “wow, this property I’m looking at was 400 grand six months ago, and now they’re selling it for 350. Why should I buy today?” Because that house might only be worth 300,000 in another 6 to 8 months. And so when people see that when things are going down, then most of the buyers, even though the interest because in 2007 the fed started lowering the interest rates again and they lowered them significantly.

And that didn’t help the economy. The real estate market kept going down. And so like in this case, this guy wants to buy land. And so right now would be a terrible time to buy land. I know some areas in Oklahoma you’re still seeing appreciation, but there are some areas that the values are starting to go down. So if you’re going to buy land, everything goes down. So you’ve got probably about three years before the beginning of the best time to buy is going to be. So this is why taking 20% of whatever you earn now and putting it away and building that in something that you can later take a margin loan against that to buy land or use it as a down payment or whatever it happens to be is something that you should look at. Because I’ll give you an example.

My dad bought his condo in 2004. It was like summer of 2004, and it was in a 55 and up community, and I warned him not to buy that property, but he didn’t listen to me. And so he bought it anyways. And within six months, eight months, a year after he bought it, it started going down in value. And I think he paid something like 380, 400,000 for it, if I remember right. And I remember in 2009, 2010. Yeah, it was 2009. My aunt and uncle bought the unit right next door to his, and it hadn’t been renovated, but I think they only paid like 170 for it. And it has had a new floor. They had renovated, you know, one of the bathrooms, but other than that it was the same property.

And so they got it for half of what my dad ended up paying for his, and my dad was not able to sell that until 2022. So if you think from summer of 2004 to 2022, that’s like 17, 18 years, he had to wait because he bought it. The idea is to buy low and sell high. And what my dad did was he bought high and then it dropped in value. So he was underwater in his mortgage, but he kept it because he was living there for a lot of years. And then he eventually rented it out. But because his mortgage payment was so high and what he could get for rent, because again, it was a 55 and up community.

So he’s limited to the number of renters that would want to come and rent that. So he was always kind of breaking even losing a little bit of money every month on it. And it wasn’t until 2022 where he was able to sell it for about 30, 40 grand above what he paid for it. So when you look at all of his expenses, he probably kind of broke even on that property over 17, 18 year investment. Because he bought high, and then he had to wait till the height of the next boom to sell it again. That was 17 or 18 years. So if you buy when it’s high and then the values drop, then, like I said, the reason I’m going through this long diatribe is this is very super important, especially for what this guy wants to do.

So buying land should be something that you’re not even going to consider for at least three years until the real estate market kind of hits the bottom and stabilizes across the country. So every market is different, but there are some markets, like I know some markets in California are still going up in value, but a lot of places, especially in Florida, are really starting to decline and properties are sitting there. Every Realtor I talked to in Florida, all my friends that are in the Real Estate business are like, “man, it’s slow as hell.” So this is a time when you want to acquire capital, and that’s important for what comes next here in this guy’s email.

I’ve been thinking about starting an aviation-related business in Oklahoma as well, but that’s extremely unrealistic as I’m trying to finish up getting my flight hours so I can go into the airlines as a pilot. If I do that, though, I fear I will miss the opportunity to explore my interest in being a shot-caller in public safety, as well as start my business.

What if I go the public safety/own business route? Then I’m worried I won’t ever make enough money to own land, start my business, live comfortably, and fly for the airlines like I’ve wanted since I was a kid.

Well, again, in about three years, it’s going to be the beginning of the bottom of the bust cycle, and that will start the period, you’ll get about maybe three, four years where there’s going to be a lot of deals available. So from that perspective, right now, your main goal should be to pay yourself first, always put your 20% away and then 3 to 5 years from now, then you can think about maybe you’ll find a foreclosure. Maybe it’ll be a piece of land that’ll be foreclosure that you can buy. Again, the idea is you want to buy in the bottom, and you keep that property, and then you sell at the top of the next boom cycle, which is going to happen. So you’re, you know, 12, 15 years on average between the bottom and the top of the boom and bust cycle. So if you time it right that’s where you really set yourself up. And this guy is so young. You got plenty of time. Don’t be in a rush.

I’m still moving forward with music among all of this too. That’s probably the interest I’m spending the most money on right now as well.

Could keep doing it if it brings you joy and you love it. Keep doing it because you’re going to work harder at things you love and enjoy. And when it comes to stocks and investing in Real Estate, for the most part that is a timing issue.

I don’t have enough money to spend on all of these interests, but I want to explore them and be the best I can be at all of them. I’m stuck, Coach. Do you have any tips or strategies I should consider? What would you suggest?

Best regards,

Bob

Well, first things first. 20%. Pay yourself first. Comes off the top. And the rest you can spend on all of your interests, your rent or whatever. Live like a broke college student. You know you don’t have to spend everything you make living extravagantly, especially you being as young as you are. And so if you really want to live in Oklahoma, but you also want to become a Commercial Airline Pilot, I mean, Pilots make good money. And on top of that, Pilots also get paid retirement money as well. And on top of that, you can still save an additional 20%. Maybe you put that into an index fund that you buy that’s connected to the S&P 500.

And, you know, 3 to 5 years from now, you use that capital, you take a loan against that to use as your down payment money to get a piece of land. Again, you want to buy the land when it’s cheap. You don’t want to buy it at the top of a boom cycle, because then you’d be like, my dad stuck in a property for 18 years. That’s not smart. But there were other properties that my dad bought earlier when it was cheaper, and he made out like a bandit on. So it really when it comes to Real Estate, it really is timing. It’s the Boom Bust Cycle. When you’re young, you don’t know because it takes so long to go through that. You know, the top of the last boom cycle was 2004, 2005, and the top of this one was 2022. So 15, 16, 17 years. I mean, that’s a long time.

That’s almost two full decades. And, you know, a decade’s a long time. And we don’t have a shit ton of decades the average person. So you’re going to get maybe 3 or 4 of these boom bust cycles in your lifetime. So you want to take advantage of them. And the idea again is buy low, sell high. And as far as your music, keep doing that. As far as becoming a Pilot, you love your job, you love where you’re at, you’re making good money and you’re in the capital acquisition phase. And so maybe the better thing to do is to make as much money as you can. Now you love your job, you’re becoming a Pilot. You’re on the path to that. The Pilot job is going to pay you a lot of money. And so moving back to Oklahoma should maybe be a 3 to 5 year goal.

You shouldn’t be thinking about moving back there right now. I would wait and put that off further in the future. But other than that, as far as your mission and purpose, dude, it’s innate. You know what it is and you’re doing it already. And so if I were you, I would keep doing what you’re doing. But the difference is you got to take 20% and you got to pay yourself first. And I would stay put where you’re at. I would only move back to Oklahoma when you’re ready to go back there with your capital, because by then you’ll be an airline Pilot, and you should be able to get hubs that you can fly from and work from that’ll keep you in Oklahoma, and you’ll be able to find a good deal on some land. And plus you’ll be making really good money so you qualify for a better mortgage.

And again, you’ll have investments. Real Estate, I should say investments in your retirement because you’ll have you’ll get a retirement account being an Airline Pilot. And if you take 20% off the top of that and say, put it into like a S&P 500 index fund and just let it sit and just keep doesn’t matter where it goes up, goes down, you let them do the trading. You just keep as you accumulate capital every month. You just buy more shares. You just keep buying shares. Whether it’s up, whether it’s down, it doesn’t matter. It’s going to keep going like this and going up. I mean, you can there’s plenty of graphs online that you can look at. Every stock trading platform has a different indexes.

So you can see what it did over the years over the decades. I know this guy is in the States so I would talk to somebody that’s an advisor on those things, and they can advise you on what the laws may be, maybe a good CPA can help you out with that as well. How you want to structure that tax structure wise. Because again, somebody in Australia might be watching this as well. And so laws are a little different there. Or another person might be in Europe or in Saudi Arabia. So you got to understand the laws and comply with it. But if your ultimate goal is buying land in Oklahoma right now ain’t the time to buy. And about three years and then you’ll have about a 3 to 4 year window.

That’ll be a good time. So that means you got at least six years from today till still you’ll be in the trough of the bust cycle, where that’s when you’re going to get the best deals. That’s when you’re going to be able to buy land for as cheap as it’s going to be before the fed blows up the next bubble in real estate and land and everything else. So other than that, man, I think you’re already in the right path. I would keep doing what you’re doing, I wouldn’t move. You love your job. It’s making great money. You’re on a path to become a Pilot. That’s going to make you even more money. That’s going to give you more choices and more options, because you can always go back as a Pilot. Maybe you limit your hours. Maybe you do the public safety thing for fun as a part time thing there. I mean, dude, you’ve got so many options and I think you’ve done great. So good job.

So, if you’ve got a question or a challenge and you’d like to get my help, go to UnderstandingRelationships.com, click the Products tab at the top of your screen on any page, and book a coaching session with yours truly. Until next time, I will talk to you soon.