The Pursuit of Balance: An Honest Conversation w/ BiggerPockets Founder Josh Dorkin on Fame, Fulfillment, and Personal Growth

The reason I had stepped away was something happened to my daughter surgery and she ended up having complications from it and ultimately stepped away to be by her side. And as things got deeper and more complex, what was initially going to be like a day or two became a week, became weeks, became a phone call where I called up Scott, who was my right hand at that point in time, and Brandon the two of them And I just literally bowled to them for an hour.

Welcome to the Action Academy podcast. Stand back while I celebrate freedom, The show where we help you achieve financial independence with the mindsets, methods and actionable steps from guests who've already earned their freedom. The flags of freedom fly. Choose to do what you want. what you want with who you want, with who you want, when you want, when you want, with another episode today. Now, here's your host, Brian Lubin.

What's up guys? Welcome back to another episode of the Action Academy podcast, the show that helps you get rich, happy, successful and free with a capital F in your life in business. Please remember that, since we have no ads, the show is technically free on paper, but not free in practice. Please remember to pay the fee, which is to share this episode or this podcast with one person that you think would get value from it. If you have been enjoying the show, today's episode is most likely not what you think it's going to be with Mr Josh Dorkin, who barely needs an introduction, but I'll give him one anyways. Josh is the founder of the ever popular Bigger Pockets platform, the Bigger Pockets podcast, the Bigger Pockets publishing company, the whole freaking umbrella. I'd go as far as to say that Josh has single-handedly caused financial independence, most likely for 10 million plus people, and he's someone that I look up to in my pursuit of helping one million people leave their corporate jobs. So this interview was very special for me. Now I will say this we do not discuss real estate nearly at all in the podcast. We don't discuss finances nearly at all in the podcast. We don't really talk about dollars or data at all. The conversation that I had with Josh Dorkin today was more so, one of life, one of balance, one of journey how he was able to transition all the way through the hard years of building Bigger Pockets to creating it to what it became and eventually building his business to the point where he had to step away when his daughter had a massive, massive health scare And he had to put his family and his life and his health and his well-being above Bigger Pockets and above his company. So today is a conversation of introspection, a lot of looking back and life lessons from Josh. He's a very deep dude and we discussed some heavy concepts today. So my hope for you listening to this episode is that you'll be able to learn from someone that's not only been through the journey but made it to the other side and had to figure out who the heck he was outside of his business. So he's done a lot of unpacking and a lot of soul searching and interwork, so he offers some really cool perspective for all of us that are in the building process or in the middle of running our businesses. So if you aren't subscribed to our podcast yet, smash the subscribe button on Spotify, apple Podcast or wherever you're listening to this And, without any further ado, mr Joshua Dorkin, joshua Dorkin, it's finally time. Brother, man, how are you? What's going on, man? It's been a minute. Well, the last time me and you were scheduled up was in Q4 of last year. We were ready to rock and I got sidetracked in Brazil. I got stranded in an airport because they had the biggest election in 20 years and they shut down the entire interstate and highway system of Brazil protesters. So I slept in the airport for 48 hours and was unfortunately unable to do this interview today, and I have found over time, whenever you reschedule an interview, it's always better than it would have been the first time.

That's a bullshit excuse, by the way.

Yeah, i'm sorry, i just wasn't catching your vibe.

Come on, man. While you're sleeping in the airport, you couldn't have popped out a mic and called me. With people protesting all over the place, come on.

I've got another tire on fire for Dorkin over here.

Yeah.

Nah, man, i'm so excited. I wanted to wait until we were recording, but you essentially laid the Groundwork Foundation for me to build my business and for me to build the life that I have today, which is I help people leave corporate America through real estate and business acquisitions through my company, and I would have been able to do that if it wasn't directly for what you've built with bigger pockets and listen into your story in its totality, in the macro, it's been so impactful for me and for millions of people. So I want to say, first off, thank you as a real estate investor Sticks and bricks, you made it sexy. Congrats, you did the impossible. As an entrepreneur, thank you even more so. And as a man, thank you for sharing the emotional side of it in the emotional journey of entrepreneurship, because that's what really resonated with a lot of people And that was the first time I heard that about your transition out of bigger pockets, and that's where I really want to begin this entire journey. But first we'll just let you introduce yourself in your words, because I'm interested in how you introduce yourself today.

Oh, i'm Josh. What's up? Aloha, we're interested in how I introduce myself. That seems like you're looking for something, but I'm just a guy, 47, living in Maui, raising three amazing kids. I've had quite a journey. Most people know me through bigger pockets. That's certainly helped me grow a lot of visibility and become well known. The platform for those who don't know is designed to democratize real estate investing for anyone and everyone. We try to flip the script and transform the industry from get rich quick, upsell, upsell, late night TV infomercial gurus who ran and dominated the space to anyone anywhere can learn how to build wealth through real estate. And I slogged through it. I slogged through it for a bunch of years. I started it while I was teaching special ed in LA. I did that for two years, quit my job. For the next six I worked solo, as a lot of people like to say, in my box Damn. So eight years in hired my first employee and in year 14, i had an exit. But prior to that I was in the entertainment business for a minute. I taught my top special ed. I was a real estate agent briefly and bounced around, did a lot of stuff And since exiting I've reinvented myself again And really I like to see myself as a thinker, a dad, somebody who's trying to better the world and somebody who's trying to bring people together, living in a crazy time with so much animus and frustration and stress and angst And people are just mad at each other And we got to get past that if we're going to get anywhere. I don't know How was that for an intro? It was terrible, you want to start again, sure.

No, that was fantastic man. You strike me as a person, but I listen to a lot of your interviews. I've read a bunch of stuff about you And now, knowing you adjacent through Brandon and David and guys like that, you don't seem like the type of person that wants the spotlight. You don't want the accolade. It's funny if you go on your blog, It's what is Josh Storkin's net worth And you talk about all of your assets, which is bad ass skier, great dad, awesome husband. So building this platform I'm assuming that wasn't the intention ever at all. So how has been your experience in dealing with the limelight in the spotlight? no-transcript.

No, i never had any intent to build a build a name or quote fame, niche fame where I could hike up a mountain completely covered up and have a conversation with somebody at 14,000 feet and have somebody behind me hear my voice and go crazy saying, oh my god, it's Josh. Like that's a trip. I'm getting stopped in airports, at restaurants. It's wild. No, Look, i was in the entertainment business. I like helping people, i like making people smile, i like I think helping people is really, as I've looked back on my life, the things that make me happy. The happiest have always been those things where I help people. So I don't know how do I deal with it? I would say I don't think anyone deals with quote fame in a normal way. It's hard to explain. Just imagine walking down the street and having like strangers walk up to you and say nice things to you. It's weird And they don't know me. You don't know me, i'm not nice, no, it's like you basically have to put up some walls to protect yourself because you don't know why people want to engage you. You don't know why they want to talk to you. You don't know why they want to be around you. Some build on to Raj's, some people do whatever it is, i don't know. I didn't get into anything so that I can become famous. I like being around my family. I like my privacy. I like to keep my head down and do the things that I like to do, but I know people a hell of a lot more famous than I am.

And the miserable.

Yeah, the life that you live when you have cameras and people wanting to disrupt your life, not because they're trying to be bad, but because, like we live in this society where everybody strives for fame. Right, it's today, particularly given social media. It's like we're looking for fame, we're looking for fortune, we're looking for people to know who we are, and that's going to be some path towards happiness and satisfaction and personal gratification. But I'm assuming you were going here, but ultimately, what ends up happening is you want more and it becomes this treadmill, whether it's lifestyle. You build lifestyle bloat and you need more. You want more. You see everyone else around you who's doing well and they've got more, and so it's this FOMO train that's self propagating fame. It's a fame train self propagating and people will do anything, say anything, and when their time starts to wane and their brand, so to speak, starts to come down, look, you'll see folks do the craziest stuff. I think we're we built these tools to help us communicate And what's happened is they've become these platforms of ego, and I think we all have to step back and remember that that never leads to personal fulfillment. You've got to find who you are and forgot what it is that's going to make you happy, because somebody's always going to have more money than you Somebody's. Unless you're the number one guy, somebody's always going to have more power than you. Somebody's always going to have more fame than you. Someone's always going to have a bigger house than you And I don't know. I like to. I've spoken at a bunch of events and I like to shape the crowd up a bit because you get these entrepreneurs in particular who are like I'm going to build this billion amazing startup, yeah, let's go. We're going to build this huge startup, we're going to change the world Okay, i'm going to build this billion dollar business and all the things that come with it. And, by the way, as I was building bigger pockets, we thought about that. That went through our head. Oh, yeah, let's do it, let's go. I'm going to go ahead with a dose of reality when someone in my family got really sick and I'm like what am I doing? Yeah, but ultimately, the interesting thing is this if you have somebody who builds like a small business let's say a barbershop or I don't know, a restaurant or whatever it is and you can make the business is generating a successful small business a couple million bucks a year, you can live a really good life off of that. But we are again, thanks to all the FOMO and all the amplification of everybody on social and everybody everywhere, it's like that's not enough And I'm not good enough. I'm not successful. At that point It's yeah, you are Go travel. Do what you did, man. What'd you do? You traveled to Brazil for nine months. You disappeared and rummed about.

Dude, i'll tell you the craziest part about all of that. speaking of validation, right? So you're talking about external validation, living your life from the outside in, which is what a lot of people fall victim to. And I was traveling around man, and it was sexy, right. Like I quit my corporate job, i hit financial freedom at an early age. Me and my ex-girlfriend at the time were going and traveling in mykonos and grease and going all around. It was so cool and sexy And all of a sudden I find myself in the back half of the trip suffering crippling anxiety, saying this hamster wheel is rolling. How can I get off of this? How can I go back to being a guy that lives in Atlanta, Georgia again, even at the bottom of a house hack? instead of here I am in Barcelona, here I am in Christ the Redeemer, in Brazil. I was like people aren't going to want to pay attention to what I have to say anymore. The irony, which is a cool frame of reference to speak from now, was when I came back from that experience, when I got my ass kicked emotionally and I went through the roller coaster in the ringer and I came back and started just filming videos in my car talking about my experience. Those are all the ones that started going mega viral and blowing the podcast up and everything. So the irony of that isn't lost on me and I think it's serendipitous that it happened that way. So I completely get what you're saying.

You know, what's interesting is a lot of people don't know how to talk to me anymore, like people from the old world. I'm shaking, oh shut, no, but it's they. I'm shaking. Oh shut, no, but it's they. I'm shaking, i'm shaking, i'm shaking, i'm shaking, i'm shaking, i'm shaking, i'm shaking, i'm shaking, i'm shaking, i'm shaking, because what are you doing? You're not building, you're not grinding, you're not, you're being, you're just being. Like, how do I talk to somebody who's just being for me? So that that kind of weird for people. So I like to talk about hey, how do we stop poverty? How do we clean the ocean pollution that's choking up the planet? How do we get our kids to school without being afraid? I think Versus, look. I still think about business. I still think about how do you continue to build wealth, how to do it. But it's not The end, all be all. It is not all that I see and think about, which I think a lot of people in You and I have similar friends and we roll with the same persona, so to speak, or sure, and I Find that within that realm of People who are ambitious, which, like I'm not saying don't be ambitious man. I love ambition. It's amazing. I'm ambitious as hell, but what I am saying is there's got to be something else. There's got to be another thing, right, 100%, and I gave a lot of that up over In in the crux. There's an eight-year period where I worked a hundred hour weeks and grinded and I lost who I was. I'd forgotten Who are my friends. What do I like to do? What makes me happy? What's it like to sit down and read some sci-fi for a half, whatever it is, play some games, because it's grind, grind, hustle, grind. Now, that is a different persona than the nine-to-five or right who Is trying to build wealth or trying to just get by with their family. And, yeah, i think both are valid ways to go about living your life. But for me, the key is, whatever path that you take real estate, entrepreneurship or just working for someone else You better make sure you're doing it in a way that's personally gratifying.

That's a sustainable and sustainable because you don't want to be the 80-20 rule.

You don't want to be the person who just hates what they're doing, and there's so many people out there That fall victim to that. Yeah, how do we change that?

You're a cool personification of these. I talked about three separate levels of freedom. So everyone gets their rocks off about financial freedom, which, candidly, is part of this podcast. But finance freedom I feel like it's ready player one. That's like where life begins, is like financial freedom because, since you get financial freedom, you're not worried and, like your mind, space isn't taken up by like how am I gonna afford to pay the bills, the groceries, get college, my family, and then, once you stop thinking about that, you kind of moved in the next level, which is like personal freedom. So personal freedom is where a lot of people get stuck, which is control your schedule. So, like you just said, maybe you leave that 40 hour a week job to start your own thing, but now you're working 100 hours a week. Congratulations, you won. Yeah. So now you have less control of your time and your freedom because you're 24, seven working. And then the next level on top of that, once you have control your finances and your schedule, then it goes up to philosophical freedom, to where you're starting to ask bigger questions because you have freaking time And you're like, what is happiness? like what is my purpose? What is? what am I here to do? Who am I here to impact? at what level? that's kind of where I feel you're at.

Yeah, yeah, for sure I'm sitting here. My calendar is up on the screen next to Next to me. It's a joint calendar. It's my wife stuff slash my stuff and You are the only Non-family, non-social appointment of my. Wow.

You're okay, josh? All right, i'll book a flight. I'll come visit Appreciate it, buddy It's about.

And I tell people like I'm like, with most things I'm like it. They're like, hey, yeah, let's jump on the phone and and talk like oh. Oh, i'm down to talk shop, but you got to work within my constraints, and my constraints are I'm gonna get up, i'm gonna take care of my fam. I'm gonna do my thing. I've got personal stuff that I got to knock out. Certainly I sit around and I do work and manage my investments I'm for new opportunities and things like that but Beyond that, it's this is my time. I'm gonna dominate it, i'm gonna control it and take it back because I'm so used. I'm still inverse. Oh yeah, every five-minute block was scheduled for so long and What I've started to tell people. This came from a friend of mine in Denver. They're very well off person. I was. I remember I was just. I was working those hundred hour weeks and We went out to lunch one day and he's hey, let's go skiing now on Wednesday and I'm like What. Yeah, wednesday I have, i Have work, i've got people, i've got things, i've got meetings and he's yeah, but if you don't stop and think and You don't give yourself a break I know you work the weekends- Then you're gonna make things happen. Yeah, you're not gonna have an opportunity to do the ten thousand foot view which you're doing more of. Hey, you got to just breathe right. And I could not Conceptualize it. And he and I, over a few conversations, went through it and what I started doing was, at first I would start taking like a two-hour block on Wednesday, and I had an assistant at this time and I was like, hey, like Do not bother me, i'm just gonna disappear, and I didn't even know what to do with that. I would just like walk around the city in Rome and they're like well, I'm wasting my time. I'm wasting my time, i should be working.

What do I do you feel guilty?

Oh, it's so much guilt, so much guilt, crippling. But I struggled through it and over time that started to go away and Suddenly it went from a two-hour block to my entire afternoon, wednesday. By the way, the reason I picked Wednesday was Fridays everybody at the end of Friday, everybody's the day's over, we're gonna hang out. So for me it was like I wanted a day where, eventually, maybe I can go do cool stuff, that was were where I wasn't facing crowds or other people, right. And then finally, one day he hit me up. He's, let's go skiing. It's Wednesday. I'm like I've been taken half day off, i don't know, he's just do it. I Was like so let my, let my assistant know that I was gone all day. No calls, handle my email, don't bother me unless you know. The world is collapsing. And I went nice ski tonight, an amazing day, went out with a bunch of cool guys, other entrepreneurs, we talked, just we talked entrepreneurship. But I wasn't thinking about, like, my day-to-day tasks, right, i was thinking about big picture, building a business lifestyle, things like that. And it was amazing. And so, from there on, my Wednesdays were, those were my days. The weekend was family, kids and work. Monday, tuesday, thursday, friday was work, of course. Family mornings, family when I got back from work because for me, dinner with the family, there's Nothing barring Some really key meeting I was always gonna be home for dinner with my family and I was always gonna stay and have breakfast with them. But having that day and having that time to think really opened my eyes to it's possible, you can. You can still build something amazing and also have the freedom to enjoy yourself a little bit.

That's why I have to Take a step back at times, a lot of times. So almost daily I'm getting even better at it and really be appreciative for like your journey and for the guys and go abundance. Because I'm 28 years old right now and I get to essentially start at the 40 yard one, like starting from the 40 yard line, because I have seen like in the future and I can take Your story and I can take the story of hundreds and hundreds of others on this podcast and go abundance through our communities, through our friendships, and I can bake that into my journey at the beginning stages. And So it's been very cool to implement that because when I was trying to make the pivot from six figures to seven figures, my business coach I was telling him I was like obviously I need to work more, i need to do more. If I'm not on calls like that's a waste of time and I'm like a guilty piece of shit because I'm not working towards my business, like I'm gonna look back on this and say I Didn't go as hard as I could and he goes. You can't hustle and grind your way to a million bucks a year, man. He's. You need the margin, you need to work through others. You need to scale and systems and leverage, and so in my mornings my morning I don't do any calls. In the mornings, my mornings are all just creative work, and then I do all of my stuff in the afternoons. So I'm able to do that because you guys like laid the groundwork. So do you have any advice to people, especially maybe that our early-stage entrepreneur That's working in the maybe seven figures of revenue, and they are listening to this and they go Damn, i hear what you guys are saying. Help me, i don't know who I am anymore. I'm getting lost in this business. What's some advice you can give to them?

So I'll Some people may look and say, oh, who is this guy? He doesn't know, he doesn't, yeah, okay.

I don't think I go say that.

But whatever, like, i started my business While teaching a full-time. So I was a full-time teacher and working with special ed kids, knights, weekends and free periods was when I was working at my class. So I worked a 40-hour week full-time job and then 40 hour week plus Side hustle. After two years when I left, i wasn't making enough money to live off of. There was. The only reason I was able to quit my full-time job as a teacher was because at that point I had just gotten married to somebody who had a full-time job and She supported me. She had my back. She was one of the very few people on earth who didn't say I was a moron and I'm crazy for what I'm doing, and She supported me. So that gave me the freedom to take a chance to take a risk on myself and actually step away from the job. But I love teaching. It's amazing. But I was like special ed is really hard, super high burnout. I don't. I think most people don't make it four years. I made it four years and I had something else that I was excited about, right, so I stepped away, went full-time into building bigger pockets. I was making maybe five or ten grand in that year three of the business, i was not making a lot of money.

What was your first dollar through bigger pockets?

My first dollar was like I think I had a check for change. It was literally a Google Adsense check for change and I remember I Was so excited to have whatever it was twenty seven cents or thirty six and literally a check for thirty six cents I was like oh my god.

Yeah, I've done it. I've done it. You were just hosting it for twenty bucks a month, right? That was basically your op-ed.

Yeah, my, my expenses were my time, that was it hosting, and that was it. And then I plowed everything in my heart my soul, my time and every penny I plowed back in. And so we, we lived frugally for years and years and when I hired my first employee, i had to. I was not living a fancy lifestyle. We had one car, small house, and We really had to because at that point my wife had stepped away from work and my job was supporting us at the company. We really had to cut back and we weren't living fed off the hog at that point. But we were like we were not. We couldn't take trips, we couldn't travel. It was a struggle, long story short, to get to a. I've been there. I understand it. The early stages are hard. There are points where you will have to work long hours, like there's no doubt that in order the buck stops with you right, and no employee is ever going to have the Connection to the business that that you have. So you have to slog through it and I love to tell the story of we threw a huge party in Denver in our office, and it Was awesome and I had all kinds of people. I had local politicians, i had entrepreneurs, i had friends. It was a blast, it was super cool. And I went into the bathroom to use the restroom and Walk into the urinal and somebody had tossed a piece of gum in the urinal. So I reached into the urinal with some paper and I took the gum and I tossed it in the trash, started muttering and pissed off and it was like what the hell is wrong with people. But I was the janitor right. There was no janitor at the party. Who else was I gonna turn to do that? I had to do that. That was me right. And so when you're building a business, there's no position, there's no job that is, or should be, too low for you at your company. You have to know all these positions, you have to understand the jobs and you have to do it. You know your question on how do you, how do you get through it? I would say you know, just know, that other people are doing the same thing. Other people are also struggling and hustling and working their butts off. But you have to step away because what happens is you get caught in the minutiae. It's guaranteed to happen, happens to people whether they're in a startup restaurant or running a huge company. It's really easy to do. So you have to do whatever it is that you do for yourself That reminds you. Hey, i need to look from the ten thousand foot view. So, yeah, the question is, what? what is that for you? Maybe it's a post it on your laptop, maybe it's an alarm, maybe it's scheduling block time on your calendar Every Friday or Monday or Sunday or whenever it is, or having your partner, a spouse or whatever, give you reminders. Whatever it is, you have to commit a certain piece of time for yourself to focus on the ten thousand foot view and on top of that, you also want not just the ten thousand foot view of the business, but you also want to whether it's in that time, or Monthly, or bi-weekly, or every three months, every quarter, every six, whatever it is Like. You have to go and evaluate how you're doing both on your business But also in your personal life, because if you're not paying attention to your personal stuff, it's gonna get lost. It's guaranteed to happen, yeah.

Yeah, that's where I was wanting to go next, but first I kept thinking of a joke where, when you and you were picking up the gum out of the urinal, you're basically getting pissed off and pissed on at the same time. Yeah, i wanted to be deep, and we're about to get deep. That's a good one.

Yeah, that's great. That's a good one.

Okay, and your first employee being Brandon Turner. Dear God, man Whoo, you went through the gauntlet from the get-go of basically getting a six foot five Chihuahua with a beard. Huh, he's a big boy, yeah, but I want to hit on that about the personal relationships and about the family, because That's a very important part of your story. Take away the personal panic attacks and stuff like that. As you're going through your business, you're burning out, you're stressed out. There is this story of you taking a step back, so you build up bigger pockets to this massive thing and you're on top of the world. The company's taken off. The podcast is the biggest Podcasts and real estate podcast in the world and you take a step back from the business and you walk away from the business. Walk us through what happened there. That was what 2017.

November 2017. So, yeah, by the way, yeah, couldn't be more grateful to have found Brandon. He was unbelievable and I'd say, in the 14 years, some really the best times that I had In the business, where there's first couple years where, after he came on board, first hundred podcast episodes roasting him. But yeah, we really sharing, being able to have somebody who had that entrepreneurial mind was really fun, so that was awesome. But to to your, your question, when I, when I, stepped back, i'd say, first off, i was in a place of privilege. I built the business to the point where it was doing well. I had, let's say, systematized it to the point where I had staff, i had employees, i had a team And I had people who I could rely on to take over for me. And I hadn't had that for the longest period of time. And the reason I had stepped away was something happened to my daughter surgery and she ended up having complications from it and ultimately I stepped away to be by her side. And as things got deeper and more complex, what was initially going to be like a day or two became a week, became weeks, became a phone call where I called up Scott, who was my right hand at that point in time, and Brandon the two of them And I just literally bowled to them for an hour. I probably got 10, 15 words in an hour and was like I need you guys to run this And because and I wasn't bawling because I had to step away, i was bawling because of what my family was going through and how scary it was and terrifying. And as scary as it was, what I, my wife and I had talked about prior to that conversation was none of it matters Like seeing your kid sick and in need. none of it matters. Business is bullshit. Fame is bullshit. Fortune is bullshit. People patent you on the shoulder and tell them you did great and you changed their life is bullshit. Now, i'm not. I don't regard that. regard it. when people say those things to me. It hits me very deep every time, right? Nothing else matters. We are born and we die, and when we do, we are, most of us, forgotten forever, right? Maybe we have a little bit of a legacy. Our kids and grandkids know who we are. if we've got them, and within a generation, that's it right.

And I'm going to Queen of England died a couple months ago.

Yeah, nobody got it.

We're the most important figureheads in the world for the last decades and decades and decades, and now we're not talking about it anymore.

No, we don't talk about it Set out Queen of England rest in peace.

Keep her memory alive.

But yeah, like we, we are forgotten, right, all this stuff that we do to think and we're like so self-centered that what we do makes a bloody difference to anyone. Sure, it does, it does Absolutely. I'm not denying that. But in the grand scheme of things, be it the earth or the solar or the universe, we are like but a speck right And our time is here and gone. And what are you going to do? Are you going to the old paradigm of work until you die into and then, or work until the shift to work until Social Security pays you? Those have changed and times have changed and we can't. I'm not counting on Social Security. You're you could be my kid. As I mentioned, odds of you collecting are even worse It's going to.

it's going to implode. It's going to be that or the defaulting on the debt. That's going to be the only two options that we pick in the next five to 10 years.

Whatever happens, right One has to go. Regardless, we are going to end up in a position where we need to start being responsible for ourselves when we're 60, when we're 80, when we're 100. And by the time you're older, i think people are going to be living to 110, 120. So are we living, going to be living miserable lives doing jobs that we hate, or are we going to actually figure out that, like the old paradigm of our parents generation, the 50s, the 60s, 70s, like it has got to go? We have everybody talked about Ferris and four hour work week. right, Yeah, that book took me a long time to get through it for a lot of reasons, but when I got through it, the one thing that hit most people was not the one thing that hit me. The thing that hit me was like life is a series. Life has got to be a series of jobs with many vacations. Right, we have to like that. I'm misquoting it. Ultimately it was life is too short. You got to live it today. Why wait till you're 65, 75 to start enjoying your money? You got to do it now. Like I'm at the point where, like I'm starting to enjoy tennis and stuff and my knees hurt And I'm like shit, i wish I was playing tennis in my 20s and 30s, you know, i wish I had spent my time doing that, some free time doing that. I still love it, but boy, i've lost a lot of that time. So, anyway, i could go on and on.

No. So my big takeaway and what I like talking about, because, once again, man, a very great form, very blessed to be in the position I am today, and it's because all of you guys and because of running this podcast and interviewing people and learning and implementing what I learned. But my whole thing was we've been talking and you specifically are like one of the big financial freedom, like starters of the movement, right? So Ferris did the book like 20 years ago, we have bigger pockets, we have financial freedom, movement starts and that's the wind, that kind of your sale got caught that wind. And then you're like, okay, cool, we're going to spearhead this, the real estate investing, that was your niche. And now here we are, 20 years later, and there's a shit ton of people that are financially free. Now, quote, unquote, air quotes. Now what? Right? So we've all accomplished. We've all submitted this mountain. That's the one I love talking about. We've all submitted this mountain. And whether that be on the top, yeah, the $10,000 a month passive income. I don't know how many millions of times you've heard that. I've heard it thousands. That's what they want. I want $10,000, a passive income so I can go travel around the world and focus on real estate full time? Okay, cool, that's what everyone wants. And then you do it, and then this okay, now what? So I did the thing, like I went and traveled full time. I was like living in Greece, i had nothing to do, and I was like this isn't the answer. Wait, were you enjoying that? I want to keep working on something. I want to keep doing hard things. I want to keep accomplishing and working towards goals. I want to set big goals and I want to work towards them forever. That's what I want to do with my life. So that's where I coined my term like passionate income. I think that's like what I want everyone to go towards, instead of just passive income. What fires you up? Do you want to just start like a taco stand in Mali? Hell yeah, let's get you out of your job so you can go start a taco stand If you want to play tennis. But I think people are misguided in thinking that the answer is laying on a beach for the rest of their days, if they're even able to get to that point. Because I did it and I'm like, okay, cool, now what? I don't know Where are your thoughts on that?

I would say first on the movement part where you were talking about earlier Yeah, I didn't get caught up in the movement. I didn't know there was a movement. If I knew there was a movement, I might have just followed everyone else instead of playing a little track I had to blaze my own trail, Yeah yeah, guys, we're right over there.

This is why he's here.

Hell yeah, i didn't know it existed, so that would have been real nice. but I would say It depends on who you are and it depends on what you're looking for, right? There are people who I still ask retired people this question, particularly younger retired people hey, do you ever get bored? And a lot of them do right. A lot of them are like yeah, i get bored, what? some will go and volunteer. they use that to fill the gap of the boredom, will start other businesses or do little side hustles. But in terms of what? Philosophical pickle I put door down I would say look, i don't get. I'm definitely not working even remotely close to a full-time job.

Just.

I have. I am not bored. My kids are 9, 12 and 14 and I'm deep in the mix of it And I love being home when they leave. I like picking them up from school or being home when I like taking them to the tech, to activities and spending that time with them. And I think when they are out of the house, we will likely do what you did. We will likely enjoy it very much. We will possibly be bored, i think, at some point. you can't travel forever. It's pricey?

No, it's terrible. The short vacations are way better.

Yeah, but when I think at some point then, when I have all the time in the world, i'll probably go back and start something, and I don't know that it'll be. What did you say? an ice cream stand? Yeah, i've always had a dream of a bookstore, opening a bookstore, and It technically did. Yeah, no, i'm publishing a store. I guess there was a bookstore, but like a physical bookstore with coffee shop, i don't know Something about that is appealing to me. Being able to sit down with a book and help share good books with other people would be appealing. I'm enjoying the time I have with the family to the point where I know I'm a thousand percent or nothing. If I were to do something, it would be hard for me to not commit eat up every second of the day. That's just my persona, maybe, besides a Wednesday, right? Yeah, yeah, it's hard. I talk to a lot of entrepreneurs. I talk to a lot of post-exit folks. I'm part of a big old post-exit founder group. It's fascinating the conversations that we have A good chunk of our doing something again, starting the next thing, i'd say there's a reasonable chunk of people who are actually just finding themselves and enjoying themselves. Look, not working doesn't mean not thinking, not putting your brain towards something, whether it's doing puzzles or Wordle or some kind of game to keep your mind in check. Cross-through puzzles, reading books, thinking, communicating, writing Those are all ways to keep your mind from going insane and turning into mush, right. But obviously there is within a lot of us a desire to build. I keep a notebook of ideas. If I had a right-hand person, i might even execute on some of them, under constraints that hey, listen, i'm going to cap my time on this at 20 hours a week.

Another six years from now. you hire one, You got six year gaps.

That's the thing I have the privilege of today, not wanting to have to go through that again because that's sucked. Yeah, but you earned it. That sucked, yeah. There's so many different ways we can go. There's so many paths. I like how you think about it. That that's this passion. Find something that gets your passion. I think we should all look back on when we were kids. What was it when you were 12, 8, 6, that got you excited? Does that still get you excited? Take away what everyone else in the room, what all your friends and family and all the strangers that you know I guess they'd be friends, it depends. Anyway, take all their opinions away. Start not giving a shit about what anyone thinks and say, hey, what if I actually was a fireman? What if I went out and went to be a policeman? What if I was going to become a vet or a coach, soccer or whatever it is right, work for the Yankees, whatever it is that you wanted to do when you were a kid, you can do that. You can do something near to it, around it, whatever it is. Maybe use real estate as a means to build wealth on the side for the next couple of years and then go back and go do that thing that you always wanted to do. But what I think? what stops everybody? and I know so. I have so many friends that it kills me like they're afraid. It is fear. It is fear of the unknown. And guess what The unknown is? you're still living the unknown. You may not have that job tomorrow. Your company may lay off 5,000 people tomorrow. You don't know what's going to happen. So why not take a chance on yourself, Take a risk on yourself and do that which you've always wanted to do? Now, obviously, it's easier set than done. It's also easier if you're single, don't have kids, don't have a spouse, but sometimes it's actually easier when you do have a spouse, because they can support you and take care of you. But at the end of the day, stop doing stuff that keeps you up at night. Stop doing stuff that keeps you stressed out and unhappy. The example I like to give these days is the example of somebody who goes into medicine. They go into medicine because they want to change people's lives, and so they become a doctor and they're changing people's lives and helping people out, helping them feel good, and they do a great job. So they get promoted within. They work for a hospital and they get promoted, and that's great And they're doing even better. And now they're getting promoted again And now they become this manager and they still do a little bit of doctoring on the side. Now they're overseeing other doctors and they promote some more And ultimately they're making a lot more money. They have a lot more responsibility air quotes, right But they're not doing the thing that they got into it to do. Right Now maybe they're at the point in their life where that doesn't matter anymore, but I tell you, i know a bunch of those people and they do not like what they're doing as much as they liked doing the thing they originally set off to do.

And so they're forth-wifing their points.

Yeah, we become addicted to the promotions. We become addicted to the raises. Some people are meant to be managers Like. Some people are really good at it, some people love it, they excel at it. A lot of people do not. It's a very different skill set to do that And I don't know. I think we need to again. We need to kind of transition how we think about this because after having been through it, i tell you what I don't love management. I can manage. I'm definitely not the best at it And I definitely don't like it. Lots of people. I don't mind a small team, but as it gets bigger, it gets more complex, it becomes more bureaucratic, so to speak, and that's just and it has to be right In order to maintain some semblance of order and structure. And I like free flow right For me as a kind of entrepreneur. I like when it's dirty and messy and I like people making mistakes and taking risks and taking chances. That, to me, is fun, like trying different things, being experimental in chaos, building.

Yeah, chaos is fun Way more fun.

I'm not like an agent of chaos, but basically figuring out amidst the chaos how to do things. I think that for me is fun, right? It's less fun when everything's in order and the systems are all done and it's oh okay, i can be replaced by pretty much anybody. That is less exciting.

Exactly, Yeah, And at the end of the day, it's just like I want everyone to just I wake up every day and I feel like freaking Steve Irwin, Like, just like on fire 24 seven and I love it so much And I want everyone to feel like that about whatever thing fires them up. And if anybody was to take anything away from this episode, that's still listening to this and sticking with me and Josh through all this philosophical talk. I'm so sorry that we did not teach you guys how to build the next bigger pockets. I think you've figured it out by now. But at this point it's like if you're going to take one thing away, like we're on one spinning rock going through an infinite universe and you're going to die and everyone's going to forget about you. So everything that we're doing, let's just have freaking fun with it. Let's have a blast. If you're not having fun, stop, Because that's what it's all about. Like I want everyone to have fun doing hard things. Like fall in love with the process, fall in love with the fun parts of this, because like it can be fun and doesn't need to all be miserable and terrible and awful and maybe just have that last 20 years of your life. That's not even guaranteed and maybe that's where we're going to have fun, Like. You're not even going to get there necessarily, So we hopefully will. But that's my takeaway from all of this man. What would you add in closing?

I would say boy, you sure made it sound sad. No, I'm just yeah, we're all screwed. Yeah, we're all screwed. I think it's important to look at things from reverse, essentially like reverse engineer. Hey, you're going to die. Okay, Start from your death bed. Look back upon yourself and say what kind of life do I actually want to live? Do I want to live? Am I living that life? Did my parents live that life? Do the people around me live that life? If the people you're surrounded by are not living the kind of life you want to live, you need to find a new group of people to be around. Start there, Yeah, And start talking to those people and figure out like, hey, what is it that brings joy to those people? What is it that brings freedom to those people? What are they doing differently? Listening to podcasts. The reason the Bigger Pockets podcast became so successful was because we interviewed people just like you and I. We interviewed the guy next door, the lady working at McDonald's, or the person working at the library, or the auto mechanic, or the white color worker, whatever. It is right. Everybody, nobody starts at the finish line. We all start at the starting line and we all make mistakes, And hopefully we can help one another to avoid those mistakes. But making mistakes is okay And we have to. I hate when I go to communities and forums and things like that, where in social, where you see people giving people shit because they're asking quote stupid questions. There's no such thing as stupid questions Like you asked stupid questions back in the day. You didn't know what you were doing back in the day. You weren't born the genius that you think you are today. I'm not talking about you, Brian. I know you don't think yourself the genius today, but like that, that's. That's the thing, right. There's all these people who talk to other people, talk down to other people Like that. Like those people ignore those people, disregard those people, Like we all screw up, you're not doing anything. Yeah, you have to embrace it, right. Embrace that you're going to make mistakes and get through it and have fun and learn from it and go do the next thing. The key is not to be that person who's sitting there feeling sorry for yourself, saying, hey, i used to do X and this industry is dying And so screw everybody. It's everyone else's fault because I was a coal miner or I was a a I don't know a closed cat, i worked in closed captioning and now it's AI taking over. Or I was a horse and buggy driver back in the twenties. Technology We all need to progress with it. We have to open our hearts to like challenging yourself and making mistakes and trying new things and saying nobody's going to do anything for me. I got to take charge myself and I can do this. I can be successful. You have to have that belief. I believe in you. I don't think there's a person out there that cannot find the thing that brings them joy in work. I do not think there is a single person out there. I think it is all about the approach and it's all about mindset. I just I love watching videos And Janet, or at a school who's just bringing joy to the kids every day and who's happy and helpful. You know, whatever it is, whatever job it is, you can bring joy to. You just have to figure out what it is that's going to work for you. So that's one big takeaway, and enjoy yourself. Life is too short. Life is too short. Get out there and have some fun.

Love it brother. Where can people find Josh Dorkin, if they even can?

I'm an enigma, i would say, find this website. What can?

people find the idea of Josh Dorkin.

There you go, There you go.

I mean the entrepreneur, or formerly known as Josh Dorkin.

Oh yeah, now JoshRodorkincom is my hub. I'm on all kinds of social media, just it's usually I'm just like man, i'm there, except TikTok. I don't. I've opened a TikTok yet because there's so much FOMO. Yeah, there's FOMO, you're just fine.

You're fine without it, But man.

I appreciate it.

I appreciate it so much, man, thank you. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story. It inspires people to wins, inspire people a lot, and the failures inspire people even more. So you've placed a trail ahead of you for a lot of people to follow a lot more easily. So thank you so much for that.

Thank you, i appreciate it, brian. Thanks for having me on.

All right, what that has been. Brian and Josh Dorkin with the Action Academy podcast signing off, hey, real quick. If you're still listening into today's episode, i'm assuming you got value from it, so I need your help. Specifically, my two-year vision with this show is to help over one million people do what they want when they want, with who they want, and I can only do that with your help. There are two main ways that a podcast grows. One is through ratings and reviews, and the other is word of mouth. If you could, please leave me a five-star rating and a review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, as well as send this to one or two friends that you think would get value from it, we can reach the people that we're looking to reach. Thanks in advance. See you tomorrow.