Speaker 1: 0:30

My name's Omni Casey. I have a few businesses. My real estate holding company's real estate on the investing side is Newly Free Developers. I also have a real estate investing coaching company where we coach mostly real estate agents on how to help them become investors themselves. And I have a public community called Cashflow Breakfast Club. That's where we give free information about real estate investing around the world US. We're working on our first international location, hopefully around the world soon.

Speaker 2: 1:01

Congratulations. It's been exciting. Take me back to the beginning. What got you started on this whole career path?

Speaker 1: 1:07

Yeah, I've always been the weird black sheep in my family. Like I just felt like out of place with the normal path. I have amazing parents hardworking. Like I just felt like out of place with the normal path. I have amazing parents hardworking, everyone you know. You work hard, you go to school, you get a good job, you work your way up and that just didn't feel right for me. So I knew as an entrepreneur. I worked on multiple businesses as a kid, but the reality is it wasn't until I found real estate and multiple facets within real estate that I really like. Something came alive in me, and so I was still in Hawaii, where I'm from. I was literally working at a surf shop. I sold surfboards and I went from that to buying and selling real estate as an investor and eventually got into the business on the retail side as an agent broker, became a trainer. So my entrepreneurial kind of interest took me to say I need business, and real estate just became the business that I fell in love with.

Speaker 2: 2:00

That's beautiful. You've transitioned, obviously, from broker to financial freedom coach, dream advocate, legacy strategist. What values kind of guide that whole shift?

Speaker 1: 2:09

Yeah, I like throughout my life, my priorities have changed. So when I talk to people I usually try to figure out like what's driving them. But I really understand, is that what's driving them right now? So when I was in my twenties I was obsessed with financial freedom. I didn't actually know what that meant, I just knew it like it was me on the beach somewhere, probably, and just like free, not having to work, but didn't really know. But I came up with a path of financial freedom through passive income of how many rental properties I needed to own, and it became a math equation. I reverse engineered it, worked my way and said how fast can I get there? And I was able to get there at an early age, before 30. So I had financial freedom through cashflow at an early age.

Speaker 1: 2:50

And then the worst thing happened. I didn't know what to do with my life and it turns out like I literally almost went into depression for that period of time and kind of to figure out how to reinvent myself. That's when we actually moved from Hawaii to Northern Virginia and got into coaching, got into brokerage and a lot of other things that I ended up loving for another 10 plus years or so, retired from that same thing happened. Just like realize I'm not meant to be retired, I'm meant to always be building, and where I love working, I do I just. But society, my wife, family tells me I shouldn't have to work because we don't have to work. But I think I'm meant to like figure out what my next purpose is, and so I'm always trying to find that next thing on the ladder.

Speaker 1: 3:32

I like to talk about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. We learned about that in school. I didn't pay attention much in school, but over the last couple of years I've looked at that and really had a better understanding of okay, the first rung is like if I don't have air, I don't care much about anything else. I don't care about relationships, I don't care about shelter because I don't have air at the moment.

Speaker 1: 3:53

But once I have air then I'm worried about what is my food, what is my shelter, and as we get certain securities in life, we start to care about different things and I don't know if God put that in there for us or if that's just the universe to just say here we want people to elevate up to the next level, and every time I get to a certain level I just start caring about something different or something new. So right now, I'm obsessed with legacy. I did not care about legacy when I was 20 or even 30. I'm obsessed with legacy, obsessed with what I'm leaving behind. I want to build tremendous communities, and communities that just matter, that make an impact, and that's new for me. So I'm figuring that out, you know, as we're building the businesses and machines, as we go.

Speaker 2: 4:36

So let's take it back, because you're past this point, but a lot of people that you probably help are at this point of financial freedom. What does that really mean to you, and how do you define it for your team and clients?

Speaker 1: 4:48

Yeah, financial freedom. So I say baseline financial freedom because baseline financial freedom is what does it cost to be you today, like it's $5,000, $10,000, $20,000 a month. Everyone has a different number and can you passively get that much money coming in without you actually working? It's not about your active income, so can you passively. So that's the final end result of the equation. How you get there is actively, go earn a lot of money, do whatever you can and get really good at that. Don't spend all your money and buy things that bring you in passive income. So for me, it's real estate. There's other things out there, but real estate and passive income rental properties is the path that I chose and I believe it's the best path out there, but there's many people that find it through other paths.

Speaker 2: 5:31

That's amazing. As a leader of a large real estate team, how do you build a culture that empowers every member to pursue either baseline financial freedom or just financial freedom?

Speaker 1: 5:41

Yeah, it's interesting because in real estate, like when I started out as an agent, I was already an investor and I decided to become an agent after, and I just assume everyone was the same right? I don't dig into personal stories a lot, I'm like a very business focused and agents that I was working with. I would not talk to them about their personal investments and we talked about business a lot. But it wasn't until really a couple of years in that I realized most real estate agents did not own real estate, they did not invest in real estate, and that was just just so bizarre to me because I came from the investing world and became an agent and so from that point forward it's like all right, I need to be at least people that are important to me that I'm personally coaching and mentoring. I need to make sure I plant a bug. You know, I realized that I'm pretty weird. I'm obsessed with real estate. Not everyone's obsessed with real estate, but it started somewhere and if I can be the one that plants that seed of obsession in someone, hopefully it turns into something meaningful for them. So we talk about it a lot, we coach a lot. So when I'm coaching someone, I used to do coaching for real estate agents as well, to help them sell real estate. I don't do that anymore, but it was your motivation.

Speaker 1: 6:55

Why do you need to make two X this year? Right, you made 200,000. Why do you need to make 400,000? The answer is most people don't need that. You don't need that. We all make, in my opinion, exactly the amount of money that we're motivated to make. If I had a different motivation tomorrow to make twice as much money, I would. We all probably would figure out something right If the conditions were as such that we needed it. And so financial freedom in a short period of time is such an extraordinary thing to achieve. Most people don't even think that's possible. And if you realize, that's three years, five years, seven years away for yourself, with sacrifice and hard work, now you have a new motivation that you didn't have before. Now you have a chance of going from 200,000 to 400,000 because you have a different motivation. Trying to get to a different level with the same level of motivation doesn't actually work.

Speaker 2: 7:46

That's brilliant. Sounds like that's one of your leadership lessons. But what's another lesson from about nearly 20 years of real estate do you apply daily with your team?

Speaker 1: 7:57

yeah, and my lessons evolve over time. So it used to be like very there's a great debate, right it's. Is it the the destination or is it the journey? For me it was clearly destination. Financial freedom was a destination and it was like forget everything else until I'm financially free, put my head down, a lot of sacrifices, and I was very destination driven. Then I got to destination, I realized probably not what I wanted, and so I started to focus on the journey and I, all right, do I need to enjoy this journey more? Start my next business, right Am I? And I did. I enjoyed the journey more and then, but the destination is still important. So we're getting to the destination and journey and realize I'm still feeling empty. And I'm at a point where I'm realizing it's not the destination or the journey, it's really the company. So it's like who's on that journey with you? And I've become obsessed with.

Speaker 1: 8:53

Everything I do now is relationships and community. Can I build community and can I attract the world-class, most amazing people in my life that are obsessed with the same types of things that I am like? Entrepreneurship, business, giving back to the communities? There's a lot of people out there, but they're scattered. And can I, you know, put a big enough beacon out in the world to get those people to show up to have conversations with me and and um, we meet and talk about real estate. We meet and talk about business.

Speaker 1: 9:23

We started doing like international trips where we take 20, 30, 40 of us. We went to Greece just a couple of months ago for like a week and stayed in the most amazing villa, and a week turns a borderline relationship to a lifelong friendship, if you're like staying in that same place and every day you're having guided conversations, that we do these masterminds several times a year now. And it's all about how can I hack the system and have my, even my, my time to build more meaningful relationships in the same amount of time that everyone else has. And it really is through these intentional dialogues and intentional, curated experiences. That's what I'm obsessed with. I'm still trying to get to destinations. I'm still trying to enjoy the journey, but I'm like I need to do it with really cool people at the same time.

Speaker 2: 10:09

Talk about building a strong community.

Speaker 1: 10:11

That's one way to do it, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 10:13

That's awesome. So how do you encourage collaboration between agents, investors and clients so that everyone wins together?

Speaker 1: 10:26

Yeah, from the agent standpoint it really comes down to, can I help agents understand they should be the investor first? That's it. So being an agent is a job like anything else and jobs are great. You can make money, but being an investor is that's your life, that's your financial future, right? So I say you be the investor, investor first and all. Good investors need team members. All good investors need partners. All good investors need to joint venture with people along the way.

Speaker 1: 10:46

So rather than saying hey, you investor, come to me and I'll serve you with whatever you need, it's more along the lines of I want them to be the investor and by them doing two, three, four, five deals themselves a year, they will need other people in their life, and their friends, their family, their clients might go along the ride with them. The reality is people think all right, is there a conflict if an agent's an investor themselves? Are they going to buy all the deals? Well, I hope they do. In reality, we can't. So at some point you're limited on your time, your resources, your capital. I would love to buy every single deal that comes to me, but I even I have limits, right, and so you're going to buy the deals that make sense and when you don't have the resources at the moment, as those deals come to you, then you're going to be bringing your clients along and helping them through that path. So I really encourage my agents to be investors first. That will open up way more opportunities for their clients if they do that.

Speaker 2: 11:36

Wow, so you learn by doing.

Speaker 1: 11:38

Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 11:40

What's one of the most common mistakes that new investors make, and how do you help them avoid it?

Speaker 1: 12:01

no-transcript. However, you can take some action and it might be in the wrong direction of where you eventually want to go right. So if you want financial freedom, as an example, if you want passive income and that's your goal and you start fixing and flipping, there's nothing wrong with fixing and flipping, but it will give you zero passive income and zero financial freedom. And people just think real estate investing, they put it into one bucket and it's all the same. But it's like within the real estate industry, there's real estate agents, there's residential, there's commercial, there's property management. Those are three different things and people think just a real estate professional is the same thing, so same thing within real estate investing. They should know the path they want to go.

Speaker 1: 12:43

So I usually sit down and say let's start with the end goal. What is your end goal? Your end goal should be, at a minimum, financial freedom. If you're not doing it for that, I don't know why we're doing it. It can be fun, but there's a lot of pain, there's a lot of stress involved. Why go through that if it doesn't give you that financial freedom?

Speaker 1: 12:59

So start with the angle. And is your angle $100,000 a year passively, $200,000, $300,000, whatever it is, and is it in one year, five year, 10 year? What does that look like? And then we reverse engineer that and based on that, it gives us a math equation of here's what you need. And now we start to look at what are the types of investing strategies that will help meet that math equation.

Speaker 1: 13:20

Does that mean you need to do long-term rentals? Does that mean you need to do some fix and flips or short-term rentals or co-living strategies, or do you need to get into multifamily? So there's so many ways that you can go and it's almost like sitting at a intersection with so many options and like which way should it go, and it's like I don't know, just turn, you'll go somewhere, but you actually might go in the wrong direction. So we should probably pull out a map and say what's your destination first. So that's really it. Not knowing your destination is by far the biggest mistake, then not taking action is definitely bad as well it's almost like you've done this for a little bit, speaking of active versus passive.

Speaker 2: 13:58

how do you differentiate between the two, and why is this distinction so powerful for wealth building?

Speaker 1: 14:03

Yeah, if I can get one tattoo. I asked my wife. My wife said no, but it would be a phrase I put in my book. I wrote a book called the Cashflow Breakfast Club and in there we talk about the different games that we play right and life survival. Active income is a form of a game. I have three young kids and so I try to. All the lessons are through filters that they would understand and they're gamers so. So these are the lessons of how I kind of taught them initially, and so active income is a game.

Speaker 1: 14:30

You get really good at that game, then you make more money, you get to the next level, you beat the boss, you go, go on from there and that's a game Until you realize you might be playing the wrong game altogether. You put in a different game. It's a completely different set of rules, different game, different reward system, and that's what passive income is. And most of us spend all our life getting really good at active income, which is important, but we never take time to focus on the passive income side. So take time to focus on the passive income side. So within the active income side, where you got a job, you can be a real estate agent professional. You can be a property manager. You can be a fix and flipper. That's active income. You can be a wholesaler. You can be a podcast host you can. You could have a photo studio you can work at at Starbucks. Those are all active income and it doesn't matter get really good at something, make money. None of those lead to financial freedom in terms of passive income.

Speaker 1: 15:20

Then it's figuring out can I get good at something, make money? Don't spend it all and put aside a little bit every single year to buy real estate. So I made one commitment before I bought my first property ever. I was 21. And I was just understanding real estate for the first time, didn't know much about it. No one in my family was an investor, no one in my family was a real estate agent. But I realized that this was the business and the path that I wanted to go down to achieve my financial freedom. So I made the commitment to myself that I would buy real estate every year of my life. I would never go a year without buying at least one property.

Speaker 2: 15:53

How old are?

Speaker 1: 15:54

you? No, in my forties. And so the math for me was how old are you? No, in my forties. And so the math for me was all right, I could do this for the next. You know 10 years, and that's 10 properties. And who needs more than 10 properties? Right? I didn't know much beyond that, but I'm like all right, 10 years, do this. I don't know how I'm going to do it.

Speaker 1: 16:09

I didn't own a home at that point. I didn't own a home, literally started buying my rental properties before I actually owned a home. That one property turned into two properties per year, to three properties, to five properties. So at some point we started buying one property every single week. 52 properties in 52 weeks. We closed on over 90 properties last year. We buy a lot of real estate. Now, if I started out saying I need to buy 90 properties a year or 50 properties a year, I would have no idea how to do that. But I can make the leap from zero to one. And so I made that leap from zero to one, although I didn't have all the steps in place. I just said I'm going to commit to doing it and then I figured out how to do it. Too many people try to figure out how to do it first no-transcript.

Speaker 2: 17:19

Actionable for everyday people, people that are committed to wanting to do it. How do you simplify it?

Speaker 1: 17:25

I distill a lot with math because math doesn't lie. Math is math and it just like turns. You say, okay, I want to have a rental property with five doors, and you know this type of strategy. There's a lot of moving parts in that, but if we break it down to what is the math? What is the operation expense If I hired someone to do that? What's the reserves that are needed? What's the worst case scenario rental? What's the best case scenario? Rental. What's the expectation of increased rents over time? Increases expenses.

Speaker 1: 17:53

So there's a lot of math equations but you could create really good calculators to make the right estimates, right estimates, and you figure out what's your worst case scenario and what's your likely scenario and you do a math model based on that. So, no matter the complication of the situation, it's how do I break it down to? How much is it costing me every month? How much am I making every single month and am I happy with that? Does that align with my goal? I'm investing X amount of dollars and I'm getting X amount in return, and does that line up with my original plan for financial freedom or passive income that I set? Because you can make an investment that has a positive return, but maybe it doesn't quite meet the minimum standard of the plan that you created to get there in five years and if that's the case, you got to find a better deal or a better strategy so that you get a better return, to stick with that plan.

Speaker 1: 18:43

So it really comes down to can you distill it down to math and if the math makes sense, then you learn about the moving parts of who do I need to hire, what strategies do I need to employ, what skills do I need to learn to make sure that I don't mess this up and go through it? But there's almost never a scenario where you buy a property and you know everything that will happen in the life cycle of that property and be prepared for it. A lot of it is learning on the job. Something happened. How do I figure this out? Or who do I talk to to figure this out?

Speaker 2: 19:13

Wow, I know earlier we touched a little bit on legacy and you said that that's the most important thing to you right now. What does legacy mean to you personally, and how do you help others think generationally about well?

Speaker 1: 19:25

Yeah, one of my favorite podcasters. Is he a podcaster? He has a podcast. He's a business owner, ed Milet, amazing business person. He's not a real estate guy, but amazing business. Mind Blessed to be in one of his small private masterminds and have been learning from him, consider him a mentor. And in his book he has a quote.

Speaker 1: 19:45

I referenced this in our real estate communities Castro breakfast clubs quite often Um, something along the lines I'm going to butcher it, but it's something along the lines of every time you see a happy and successful family, just know that they were, were not always like that. At some point, someone in their family, there was one person in their family that made a decision, that took a risk, that completely changed their family tree forever, and so that's really what it is. So it's like every time I'm talking, I'm like think back to your family lineage. There's someone that made a move, came to America, made a decision, started a business, took a risk, and your family is where they are, for better or for worse, because of that. And think through two, three generations from now. What will they be saying about you? Were you the one that changed everything for them? And the families that sit back and are in a much better place and they had the one. It usually was tied to real estate and business. Someone took a risk in both real estate and business and their family is better for it. So I try to inspire people to say get beyond just what this one property will do for you. That one property is going to bring you in 200 bucks a month or 500 bucks a month or whatever it is, and that's not really going to change your life. But if you commit to that over and over and over again, at some point that will change your life and at some point that will change generations. You know for you and there's not many things you can do that you can say that I can get really good at my job and I can make more money every single month and next month I can make more money and more money, but once I stopped working, that goes away. I don't. That doesn't affect the generations to come.

Speaker 1: 21:17

So legacy is teaching people the idea of what they can do to impact, you know, generations to come and hopefully we have a big enough community of people that think like-mindedly, that are all trying to do that, and every time I teach something, I tell people I don't want it to end here. I'm giving you this. I want you to go give it away for free as well. Like every single person that I teach, I give them the expectation that your friends, your family, your community, your kids all need to learn about this from you. I'm not going to be able to teach everyone, so put it out there.

Speaker 1: 21:49

Hopefully I distill it in lessons that are simple enough for kids to learn, because the first people I try to teach are my kids. Then I teach my community and then I expect them to teach their kids in the next generation as well. That's a beautiful mindset too. You're not trying to hoard your yeah, no, it's not my knowledge, it's experience, and there's just knowledge out there. So I just try to distill it in a way that's entertaining, that's meaningful and people can take action steps on it. But really, if you think, huh, this isn't about just me and this one property, I might actually affect future generations. That puts more pressure on yourself, but maybe more inspiration to work a little bit harder, maybe sacrifice a little bit more in the short term for the long-term game of you and your family. So it works if you really embody it and kind of take that to heart.

Speaker 2: 22:32

Why do you have this whole mindset? Where did it all come from?

Speaker 1: 22:39

Yeah, I think probably the way we were all brought up affects who we are, right Amazing parents. I grew up in Hawaii. My mom, my dad, were both entrepreneurs, had businesses throughout that were successful and failed Like. We saw the highs and the lows and I probably remember more of the lows and how they pushed through those hard times regardless.

Speaker 1: 22:58

At a big family there's eight of us kids and you know from where we have a nice house to where we don't have a house anymore, right? So we've had both sides of that spectrum and I just remember my parents being so strong and being able to, no matter the scenario, guide us through being leaders, and they were leaders in my life, in our community. I just realized if I feel the calling to lead people and to take them down a path, I feel blessed that I have this fire and this knowledge. I don't know if that's going to go away at some point. I might not care tomorrow, I don't know, but right now I care and I feel like I'm obligated to put it out there and build this community.

Speaker 2: 23:33

That's Amazing, especially that you've seen both sides of that coin. When people think of you and your team, what's the one thing you hope they always associate with your work and with your brand and mission?

Speaker 1: 23:45

And we try to be good landlords. We try to do that, so we work with our tenants, but that's it. There's nothing really inspiring about what we do. We just do it at a scale where it makes us wealthy and it provides freedom for me, my family and for the people that work with me. Right, so I'm proud about that. What I'm really excited about is, like the communities that we're building, the travel masterminds that we run, the cashflow Breakfast Club, or when I come in and coach a brokerage about real estate investing, because I know every single person I talk to might start their own journey similar to mine. I hope every single person I talk to has something, has way more success than I have. Like, they just got to start today. I started at some point. They start today and it took me 20 plus years to get to where I am. Maybe it's going to take them 10, right, because they are gonna benefit from my successes and the failures that I share. Don't make these mistakes, go down this path and everyone's gonna have their fair share of successes and failures, but it really is trying to inspire people to really go out.

Speaker 1: 24:50

I believe in entrepreneurship. I believe in there's so many issues in society, like we all have bleeding hearts. We wanna fix a lot of those things. I believe a lot of that can be done within the public sector, of people taking control of their future and having the freedom to make decisions and not rely on the government or anything else like that, and then those many of those people are going to have the heart to help the people around them. So I think it does come from a place of I don't do want to give back, but rather than giving charity to a person, I'd rather teach them how to go make some money and hopefully that changes everything.

Speaker 2: 25:24

For them, and maybe even their family, moving forward, tell me, is there anything that you would like to share with the audience that we haven't touched on?

Speaker 1: 25:31

before we wrap it up, yeah, I think it's okay to change who you are over time. I've struggled with this because I was so certain who I was in my twenties and it turns out that's not who I was. And then I became a different person in my thirties and I felt weird about changing who I was, caused conflicts with relationships, because people say you change. I'm like, oh, is that a bad thing? And no, it turns out it wasn't a bad thing. I think we're meant to evolve to the point of I'm aggressively always trying to change who I am for the better, hopefully become a better version of who I am, shed things that don't no longer serve me, and so I've evolved.

Speaker 1: 26:11

About every decade I feel like I've become a completely different person and the only thing I wish I did was do it quicker. Don't take 10 years. Take three to five years or so. Evolve, become a different person. Maybe you're in the same industry, maybe you're evolving and getting beyond that as well. But be okay with that, because me not understanding that and the struggle of the change of who I was becoming is what caused some dark moments in my life, and I think if you embrace that and just be excited about who I'm going to be and who my family is going to be and what my business is going to look like, and it's going to be something better than this, different than this, maybe the same thing, but different and better. I think that could give some peace, especially for the people out there that are weird, like me, that obsessive entrepreneurs. That's just how we're built.

Speaker 2: 26:55

Yeah, it's nice to get into a community of other people that get you too, isn't it? Thank you so much for being on this podcast. It was so wonderful learning from you, and as soon as I hit this off button, I've got so many more questions.

Speaker 1: 27:05

Absolutely, it was a pleasure, thank you.