013: The Power of Focus: How Maurice Philogene Achieved Financial Freedom Through Real Estate Investing

Maurice Philogene [00:00:00]:

I do understand for some people, burning the boats and going all in, it makes sense for them because that's their version of success. My version was I wanted the skill set, work with the Forest Service, fly to Finland to work with the Finnish Police Department. I wanted to run a field office for the Air Force, an office with Special Investigations, and run a joint task force in East Africa for a year and run a field office in western Turkey where I was a diplomat to the Turkish National Police. Career is tough and some careers suck. But if you can get the right balance and really understand the outcome that you want from it, you can choose the right place to be. Don't chase the money, chase the experience.

Christopher Nelson [00:00:40]:

Hello and welcome to Tech Careers and money talk. I am your host, Christopher Nelson. I've been in the tech industry for 20 plus years, and after climbing my way to the C suite, working for three companies that have been through IPO and investing my way to financial independence, august of 2022, I'm here to share with you everything that I've learned and introduce you to people that have done the same thing. And in today's episode, I'm excited to introduce you to Maurice Village. Maurice Village, 20 year technology executive with Accenture. He also worked as a police officer and a military officer as well. He completely punched out financially independent in 2021. Today we're going to spend the first half of the episode walking through how he positioned his career and how he was focused on financial independence while working his W two. And then in the second half of the show, we are going to deep dive into his strategies and tactics that led him to where he is today and how he's continuing to grow and as he says, try life on. I'm so excited for you to meet Maurice. Let's dig into this right now. All right, thanks so much, everyone. I'm excited to introduce you today here on Tech Cruise and Money Talk to Maurice Philogene. Maurice Philogene is a 20 year technology executive like myself. He spent all of his career in technology at Accenture. He was also a police officer, also a military officer as well. So we're really excited to share his career story with you. And then also, he's somebody that punched out of the workforce in 2021, financially independent. He's somebody that I respect, his mindset, his strategies, the way that he's approached it. And the beautiful thing about it is that now he's leaning back into professionals like yourselves, encouraging them to try life on. And I really, again, love and appreciate the strategies of how he's traveled. Know I'm not going to quote the number because I know you will, but a lot of countries and in you, you really develop meaningful relationships. You get to know the culture, and it's really a beautiful thing. So everybody Maurice Philogene.

Maurice Philogene [00:02:54]:

Well, Chris, it's my pleasure to be here, man, and, like, minds. And I'm so glad you started the podcast to help people out, and we're going to have a lot to offer them, so it's my pleasure, dude.

Christopher Nelson [00:03:04]:

We really are. And I think I really want to start back at the career story because I know, like many of us, you came out, you got out of school, and you're like I mean, I myself saw Accenture. I started Accenture in 2001. When did you start with them?

Maurice Philogene [00:03:19]:

97. Right out of college.

Christopher Nelson [00:03:21]:

Right out of college. I did, too, and I'm like, great opportunity, build skills. Walk us through how Accenture and your career started unfolding.

Maurice Philogene [00:03:29]:

Yeah, man, just as an endpoint. I'm 47 now, and as you said, I'm out of the W two world. And even though I'm very entrepreneurially minded and I'm a real estate guy and all that type of stuff, I'm grateful for my career, I should say. So I ended up at University of Virginia doing mechanical engineering on an ROTC scholarship. So my military career came from that. I was actually Navy first, but the Air Force was offering full scholarships to minorities and engineers. I'm like, I'm double on that. So they gave me a full 100% ride. I got commissioned as a second lieutenant into the Air National Guard right after college. Four years later, the Guard wasn't a place for me because it was very static. It's just in one location in Baltimore. But I got recruited into something called the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. I was a military police officer, got recruited to them and became a federal agent and finished my career as a federal agent through what's called OSI, which is a sister agency to the yeah, yeah. Wonderful experience. I ran field offices all over the world turkey, Las Vegas, DC, a task force in East Africa, et cetera. So that's the military side, but the Accenture side or what was Anderson Consulting in 97? And I got rebranded in 2001, dude, because I started traveling when I was 15. Consulting was very appealing to me because I had two offers coming out of college. On the civilian side, I had Procter Gamble running a production line in Hunt Valley, Maryland. Same place every day, same factory. I couldn't do that. And then Anderson gave me an offer. Accenture gave me an offer. And when I went on a visit with a consultant, he was telling me about his lifestyle, the fact that, look, he worked on a project for six months, and if he didn't like that project, don't sweat it, because you could be on a different one. He also told me because my money head was going, he was like, if you work out of state, you get per diem. All of it made sense. So I got hired with them, took the gig primarily with the federal government, but I started to use Accenture for my own personal needs. Like, I wanted to be international, so I got an international role, et cetera. And I stayed 25 years. I didn't have to leave, but the writing was kind of on the wall, and it was a beautiful journey, man, I'm so grateful. And then, as you know, I leveraged those two paychecks for years and I built a real estate portfolio. Yeah, so that was the Accenture journey. 25 years of MC work.

Christopher Nelson [00:06:09]:

You did 25 years at Accenture. If somebody is going to talk to somebody who's been there, the first question that they're going to ask is, well, you were there 25 years, why weren't you a partner? Right?

Maurice Philogene [00:06:25]:

Yeah. That was intentional. That was intentional. I started 97 in 2013. I got promoted to senior manager, which is the level right under my partner. And that was even a little bit delayed because I deployed so many times with the military. My boss, Elaine, who I'm such a fan of hers, several times asked me to enter the partner track. She's like, you have the skills, you've created a lot of revenue for us, and you should be a partner. And I'm like, Nah, I'm good. And my justification for it was for the relative salary that I was getting 170, maybe 200 grand towards the end. I was working solid 40 hours, weeks, sometimes over, but generally I could control my schedule. I didn't like the thought process of being a partner, having more management scrutiny on me. And then if you're a partner, you have visibility to upward management, you have sales targets. There's just kind of a hand for the relative, I don't know, 50 grand, 60 grand more money. I just didn't see it as appropriate. For me, what I cared more was Elaine was the best at this. Elaine, tell me what you want for your account. Maurice, I need $25 million in sales. I got you. Let me go work on this. I'll be back in three weeks. She would trust me, and because she trusted me so much, I got outcomes for her. But the outcome I wanted for myself was eccentric. Give me awesome paychecks. Don't worry about me making a partner. I'm not worried about that. I'll take those paychecks and I'll go invest them in real estate systematically. So it just didn't make sense for me to be a partner. I wasn't interested. If I did it, Chris, I would have been chasing somebody else's version of success. That was not my version of success.

Christopher Nelson [00:08:08]:

Well, and that's where I want to get into at some point, because Accenture is a very upper out culture, right. And we find that culture permeates a lot of corporate culture, a lot of technology companies where, well, wait, what's next? Okay, you're the manager, okay, are you going to get the senior manager? You're going to get the director, the senior director. When are you going to make VP? But at some point, you were looking left and right and said, wait a second, is that money worth my time. And I think many of us don't really look at where actually the asset is, our time is this very precious, highly valued asset. Where do I want to spend that? But how did you start number one? Where did you discover that? And then how did you coexist with this upper out culture?

Maurice Philogene [00:08:58]:

I felt it in 2013. So 15 years in, and I've made this post on LinkedIn, and I've reposted it several times. I was analyst, a consultant. I'm a consultant now. I want to be manager. I'm a manager now. I want to be senior manager. I'm a senior manager now. I was like, Wait a minute. The goalpost just keeps moving, and I'm not getting more freedom by getting these higher titles. I'm getting more responsibility and more things that I have to take care of that are crunching into my personal time that I'm using to open restaurants and build real estate and travel to 100 countries. And I didn't want that. The way that I competed with the culture was I didn't I didn't compete. I didn't right. What you do is you found the right boss to sit under Elaine in the last seven years. And then my boss before her was this lady named Gail Nix. Gail was the one who I went to her in 2008. Actually, let me backup. This is important. I went to Gail in 2006, and I said, Gail, you run this global thing, and I have interest in being virtual and supporting global projects. I don't want to just work for the federal government. And I showed her how her hiring me would generate revenue for her. So I created a solution for her to support, not a problem for her to solve, like, oh, I want to be virtual. Can you help? No. I worked seven years for this amazing human virtual, and, like, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Korea. I was all over the place because I was using Accenture to get those experiences. That's what I wanted was experiences and relationships and all that. In 2008, when I got the Jones to be a police officer, I went to Gail and I said, Gail, I think I'm about to quit. And she said, Why are you going to quit? I said, man, because when I was on active duty for OSI, I was helping people. Like, I was finding missing children, and it was a wonderful experience. And I said, I just want to be a street cop in my neighborhood. And she's like, you're going to give up 80% of your salary? Yeah. So being the beautiful human that she was, she was like, no, we're not going to do that. We're going to find a way for you to do both. I went to the day academy for the police department, and at 03:00, when I was done with the academy, I would log on. And Gail was like, Just work as long as you can, and if you can only work 4 hours because you're tired, then take 4 hours of leave that day. Gail was the one who gave me that. All right? So, long story short, I wasn't competing with anyone at Accenture. I was using Accenture to create my own experiences, my own journey, my own relationships with the head of the Portuguese FBI, who I briefed for Accenture many, many times, who's still a good friend of mine, right. While other people were chasing titles. And I'm not saying that that's wrong, but what I'm saying is that was not my version of success. My version of success was relationships traveling around the world, building skills, and then on the outside, building a massive portfolio that would take care of me for the rest of my life.

Christopher Nelson [00:12:08]:

And so you talk about this too. This is one of your writings on LinkedIn that I think is so powerful. You're working with a purpose that's focused on your own greater purpose, right?

Maurice Philogene [00:12:23]:

Yeah.

Christopher Nelson [00:12:24]:

That's the mindset shift, right?

Maurice Philogene [00:12:27]:

It should be. And the way that I articulate lifestyle design now on social media, I didn't have this all designed in my head when I was in my twenty s and thirty s. I'm saying it all in reflection, right, of course. But, man, it just all made sense to me. It made sense to leverage the W two. And what I say about purpose and purposeful a career is a purpose. Your God given talent to be alive, right? That's the purpose. Like my best friend in high school, Allie, she graduated Yale Law. She could be at a law firm making $2 million a year, but she's an immigrant rights attorney in California, probably making less than 100 grand because her daddy worked with Hugo Chavez back in the 70s, God rest his soul. And she wanted to be part of that lineage.

Christopher Nelson [00:13:21]:

Right.

Maurice Philogene [00:13:22]:

That's her purpose. She has won. She is doing the thing that makes her alive. And she gets up every day. That was being a police officer for me. I didn't have a problem working 8 hours a day for Accenture and then going to be on the street at night for 10 hours. Never had a problem with it because it was my God given reason for those 15 years to exist. Chris, when I tell you I loved it, I love being able to give back to people in that way. So that's the purpose. And at Accenture, I enjoyed it, but it was not my purpose. It was purposeful. It was purposeful. I wanted those paychecks. I wanted the skills, and I used them and I leverage them the way that, you know, that I have. So I like to draw that distinction.

Christopher Nelson [00:14:02]:

Well in that, in being purposeful. The thing is, what I heard from you and I hear from you all the time, is you were delivering value, you were making business cases. For you to be able to have this lifestyle where you created a partnership that said, I want to be purposeful and intentional in the way that I'm approaching Accenture so that I can fulfill my purpose over here.

Maurice Philogene [00:14:26]:

Yes, but you nailed it. But I will say one thing. I was very quiet intentionally. There were very few people at Accenture who knew that I was a police officer, and there were very few people at the police department who knew I was a management consultant. I never wanted, like, if I wasn't at the office, for someone to be like, well, he must have worked patrol last night. He's tired somewhere, or something like that. For 1520 years, I kept it all quiet, never told anybody.

Christopher Nelson [00:14:57]:

Well, and I think that sometimes and I think this is part of your story, too, as we're going to start getting into some of the conversations around investing we've talked about, this is when you start bucking the status quo, when you start saying, I don't want that promotion. I think I'm fine. People are like, Are you okay? Do I need to check in with you? No, I've actually got this whole other plan. Well, what is that? Well, it involves commercial real estate. Oh, we better bring in the counselors now. Right? When you start forging your own path in this standard quo world, it can be really lonely, dude.

Maurice Philogene [00:15:42]:

Chris, not only was it lonely, let me just paint you a picture of a day in the life of that when I was at the height of it, when I was full time. Full time, plus real estate work all day, accenture client calls, whatever. Get on the metro from DC. Get back to the house at 06:00 P.m.. Cook dinner, be with my oldest. My youngest came a little bit later, do homework with him, lie down at 07:00 P.m., wake up at 08:15 P.m.. Put on my uniform, get in my patrol car, get to roll call, hit roll call, go have dinner with the fellas and the ladies and stuff, break. And then for like 11:00 p.m.. To 03:00 A.m., I was humping. Like, I was a very proactive police officer once. 03:00 A.m. Came. Assuming there's no calls, I would go to the back lot, lean my chair back, and just wait for calls. It was me trying to get a little bit of sleep. Like, I'm just like this. And then you develop what's called radio ear. You hear your call sign or your boy calls for help, and you're like, I'm on my way. Right? Okay. 06:00 a.m comes. I go back to the house. I lie down for an hour. 07:00 A.m., my son wakes up. I start getting him ready for school. I put on my Accenture clothes. I go to court. On the way to Accenture, I stop in. I check in with the state's attorneys. My cases are usually solid, so they don't need me the whole time. I get my overtime. I jump on the train. I go back to Accenture, and I press repeat. That was four days a week I did that. And then on the weekends, I would do real estate. Man, I look back on it now, and I'm like, how the F did I do all that? But I loved it so much, and I was building all this other stuff on the outside. And back to your point of it being lonely. It was lonely. It was very lonely because I couldn't tell people. And I had what I pen as entrepreneurial depression. I couldn't find you. There was no LinkedIn for me to find, Chris. All I had was aisle six of the Fairfax County Library to go get information we weren't sharing with each other, like who was doing what I was doing, plus traveling to all these countries, plus being in the military. There are people who do unique things like that. But what I'm suggesting is, at the time, I couldn't find anybody, and it was a very lonely process.

Christopher Nelson [00:17:57]:

Well, and I think something else I think that's really interesting about the journey too, right, is just for people in general. Many people have this perception, and I see this a lot now, and this is why I have a lot of respect for you advocating for the W Two, where you learned skills, you built relationships, and it enabled you to become an entrepreneur because now you're working a lot less. But many people believe that the transition to get to entrepreneur or stepping into an entrepreneur, like, let me go eject the W Two because this life is easier because they see the result that you have now. But the transition, I know for myself and my wife, as we were working corporate jobs and we wanted to learn real estate, it put the kids down in the evening, and we're on the couch studying real estate, like, trying to figure all that stuff out.

Maurice Philogene [00:18:54]:

It's hard. I'm not a proponent of burning boats. I think W two is wonderful. I briefed the head of the Portuguese FBI. I helped Accenture get into the US. Forest Service. My old boss called me. I've been gone for two years. She called me and she said, hey, Maurice, I want you to know that we just won $150,000,000 BPA at the Forest Service. Your legacy continues. Because I was the first person to get us in there. So she's like she's still keeping me a part of it. For some people. However I understand. I do understand for some people, burning the boats and going all in and all that makes sense, but it makes sense for them because that's their version of success. My version was I wanted the skill set. I wanted to work with the Forest Service. I wanted to fly to Finland to work with the Finnish Police Department. The national Finnish Police Department on behalf of accenture. I wanted to run a field office for the Air Force Office of Special Investigations and run a joint task force in East Africa for a year and run a field office in western Turkey, where I was a diplomat to the Turkish national Police. I can't do that. As an entrepreneur, I needed those experiences, man. So when I'm, I joke about this, but now I actually take it very seriously. I think I've lived five lifetimes at age 47 already, and I'm so grateful. So I want people like, careers are tough and some careers suck, but if you can get the right balance and really understand the outcome that you want from it, you can choose the right place to be. Right. Don't chase the money. Chase the experience.

Christopher Nelson [00:20:27]:

Chase the experience. And I think this is something that you really talk about in your triliphon program, where it's like, you help people understand that in the W Two, you can seek freedom. Yes, you can seek freedom in your W Two. And so is it the five Freedoms that you talk about?

Maurice Philogene [00:20:46]:

Yeah, it's the five freedoms. So my coaching is the goal of coaching that I do is to help people build lifestyle they don't need a vacation from when you see me in Lebanon or wherever the heck I go nowadays or doing business for Quattro and okay, next week I'm going to be in Cyprus. I don't take vacations anymore. This is just how I live. I want people to build a framework by which they can live their life and they feel they don't need a vacation. But that's all focused around understanding what your perfect day is. I don't know. I want to be in Barcelona. I want to feel the breeze off the Mediterranean. 07:00. A.m coffee is going. I have a nanny. I have enough money to get a nanny. I work from a coffee shop. I have three calls with investors. I do my entrepreneurial stuff. Then I go hang out with Chris. We break wine. We have a glass of wine together. Effort. We have a bottle of wine together because we're such good friends. I go home like, whatever your perfect day is, you take the Five Freedoms, time freedom, financial freedom, geographic freedom, freedom to execute your purpose, police officer, freedom to build meaningful relationships. Only reason I'm a developer in Cyprus is because I built a relationship with a guy who was already doing it right. If I just talk to accenture people, I'm not a developer in Cyprus, you need to build relationships with people who are doing things you want to do. We build goals in those five buckets. Inevitably, those goals have blocked things that are stopping you from making it happen. We co create the actions to get over the blockers at the end of the process. It's not that you're going to live your perfect day every day. That's impossible. But it's that you have the framework to live it whenever you want to, which is like, I'm in DC right now, brother, but on tuesday, I'm back on a plane to the Mediterranean because I can. Right.

Christopher Nelson [00:22:29]:

And that's where you want to live. And I think it's so important for people to have this mindset, because the reality is, in this program, you're not going through the five freedoms and saying, okay, now go put in your resignation papers. That's not it at all. You're saying no just to make sure that people understand, because I think people get this twisted real easy. They're like, oh, to get the freedoms, I got to go eject that. No, you do that in partnership with it.

Maurice Philogene [00:22:56]:

Yes, in my case. So let's use my example. I wanted geographic freedom. I wanted to be able to work from anywhere in the world with Accenture. I wanted to support clients internationally. So I created that role that I presented to my ex boss, Gail. It's not that I quit Accenture to go do that. It's that I presented a solution. I found a way within the construct of the W Two that I already had to get the outcome that I wanted on my blueprint, if you will. It would have said geographically, I want to support everything all over the world. I want to immerse myself in culture. I want to feel good. I want to learn new languages. I want to eat new food, and I want to be in a business context where people respect me in a foreign place. Okay, so I didn't quit. What you do is get a virtual gig, and if you can't get it within your company, then maybe it does make sense to go externally. The thing about real estate and assets here's the thing. Everybody can make good money in their career. I got that. But you want to buy assets along the way, because at some point in the future, you want to be able to continue your lifestyle. The W Two, that stream of income is going to stop. You either don't want to do that job physically, or you physically can't do that job, or your company is going to tell you, man, you've been here too long.

Christopher Nelson [00:24:14]:

Right, right. And I want to get into that in a second. But I also want to share. So one of the things and again, this is so important for everybody to understand is that if you have a vision for your life and you go into a job, you can make this work. Now, my example is, when I started with Accenture, I wanted geographic freedom. Like, I came out of school, and I wanted to travel. I wanted to see the world. And so, again, looking for those opportunities. And Accenture was a great company that provided it. In 2001, right after 911, when I started, there wasn't a lot of travel. Oh, you're in this. They had operations centers. So I was in one in San Ramon in Northern California, but I kept looking for different opportunities. There came this opportunity. Well, we're actually starting. We have this new SMB technology that we want to take to the enterprise. It's called salesforce.com. You could take this. So I started taking the salesforce.com training. The next thing you know, they're flying me all over the place because nobody had this training. I looked for that scarcity and I looked for this growing opportunity. The next thing you know, not only am I being flown all over the United States, the projects are very short. They're maybe four, five months in between. I'm taking breaks. I'm going down to Argentina and I'm learning Spanish. I actually got to the point where I would travel on site for a week on a week off. The week off, I would actually be in Argentina. And this was like early two thousand s. I had this crazy way that my BlackBerry was forwarding to Skype that would then forward to my mobile phone in Argentina where I'm taking calls on the street. But the thing is, and this is what I want to share with everyone, is that when you have the vision and you're able to add value to the companies and to your point, who knew about that? Nobody knew about it. I kept that to myself. I kept that under wraps. Because the thing is, sometimes when you are trying to do something that is not the norm, you have to be respectful of the fact that people aren't going to understand that.

Maurice Philogene [00:26:27]:

Yeah, and sometimes you tell the wrong people, the crabs in a barrel thing starts to happen. I don't know, it's just something you got to. I prefer to think that people are good. I inherently like people. You just have to be very careful about your dreams. Like, if you're putting your dreams out there, all of a sudden shit starts hitting your dream, or people start downplaying or saying it's not possible. I don't like it. I like to make extraordinary ordinary things. I like to go to the Finnish Arctic five times in five months. I like to work for the Portuguese FBI or the national Spanish police, whatever that thing is. You can do it inside the construct of your company or find the company that is doing that thing and get hired by them and use the W two I talk about all the time. Leverage the W two more than it leverages. You use it for the experience that you want. I'm glad I was a police officer. I would have done that for free. But man, I got myself into a position where I had a take home car. As a part time officer, I had a take home car. I would volunteer for stuff. I would do task force stuff all over the county because at night I was generally dealing with bad people. But during the day when I would volunteer, I got to shut down intersections for kids walking to school. You know how good that made me feel? That I could just get out of there. Car as a police officer in my uniform and be like, just stop and let the kiddos come across. And I would talk to them while they're coming across and be like, I'm not even on duty in these cases, right? I'm just in my marked car. The fact that I could do that gave me so much joy, and I was just leveraging that job for the joy that I wanted out of it. Man, I think people should think about it more holistically than just, I'm just going to get a paycheck.

Christopher Nelson [00:28:14]:

Yeah, they definitely have to take a quick break right here and then we come back. Second half is all going to be on financial independence, breaking down what it is and the strategies to get there. So we'll be right back. All right. And we are back with Maurice Philogene’s career at Accenture and now financially independent. I'd love for you. I think that you are again posting on LinkedIn where you have a lot of great social content. You really break down the steps to get to financial independence. Can you walk people through that quickly?

Maurice Philogene [00:28:46]:

Yeah, I will post about it. I wish I had it with me. But what I talk about is, first you have to have a reason. My why was very clear in the beginning. I wanted some level of freedom. And that came from when I started traveling when I was 15. I traveled to France. It really hit me as an inner city kid that life could be different. And then when I was 21, I found personal finance for Dummies. Then I realized if I could generate passive income, then I would have the space and time to go have those feelings that I had when I was 15. That's it. That was why the whole time I just wanted to do what I want, when I want, how I want, period. Okay. You got to have a why, then you got to have paychecks. You take those amazing two paychecks and you pay yourself first. Step three is pay yourself first. You are your number one bill. Why is it that the cable company has more priority than future Chris or Maurice? It doesn't. You pay yourself first. You store money away. Not save money. You store money. So meaning if you get net five grand a month in your paychecks and you have $2,500 worth of bills, then you have the ability to store $2,500. You're storing it. You're putting it somewhere systematically. And once you have enough in that storage to buy an asset, you go buy the asset. So for me, the asset was real estate. As soon as I had enough money in storage to go buy a piece of real estate or sometimes stock, I would do a couple of things here and there. I did it. Now, here's the key. Once you buy that asset, and if and when that asset creates some kind of cash flow or equity or whatever, you take that equity and cash, you don't spend that. You couple that with your paycheck and then you do it again and you store again until you get to the point where you have enough to buy an asset again. Now you're buying asset number two, number three. And what happens is, over time, the time compresses to get the asset. So I found myself the 2000s are a little bit funny because you could get no Doc loans and you didn't have to do down payments. That was a little bit of a funny time. But in general, I was buying an asset like once every eleven months or something. And then by the time time compounds when I hit age 41, something crazy happened. My wealth just hit this inflection point because the time for me to buy assets was down to a month. I was buying one asset a month. I didn't even realize it until it was happening because I was so systematic about my process over the years that it started to compound on itself. And that's how I got myself to financial freedom. So it was single family homes. 2002 to 2015. Got up to 35 single family homes. A bunch of them had equity in them. I sold the ones that had equity, I paid off the other ones. And I found myself with 18 paid off homes generating 160 grand. And that was 2014, and I think I was like 38 years old. But as we were saying before, careers are purposeful. I didn't want to quit. I stayed working for another eight years. When you have enough money to cover your basic needs, you start to realize that money was never the goal in the first place.

Christopher Nelson [00:32:00]:

Right?

Maurice Philogene [00:32:01]:

You realize it. And I went through that.

Christopher Nelson [00:32:04]:

Well, the thing is, it's funny is, as I started building up my passive income and I was working, if you're playing a little bit more loose. You're not playing tight and you're in there. And I just remember that before, I was so thinking all the time, my performance, where am I at? Versus I know the last role that I had at GitLab when I came in, and I was very purposeful. I'm coming to this company, we're going to take it through an IPO, take some more gold coins off the table. But I already had really solid passive income coming in. I was more, how are you doing, Maurice? Let's connect. And I was much more to your point about the connections. And then the work just came easy. The work just flowed. And it's so interesting the way that it happens.

Maurice Philogene [00:32:55]:

It does. And now you have the backdrop of why when I was asked to enter the partner track, it didn't matter. It didn't matter because I already had the system for creating wealth on the outside by systematically storing my money and buying assets. If I would have got another 60 grand and then added 40 hours of work time to my week, then I'm taking away from my ability to build my portfolio and have all these experiences around the world, right? So that's what was so confusing and maddening to people. People are like, you've been here 20 years, and why are you not a partner? And I would just kind of shrug it off and just be like, no, I want to be a partner. It's the same thing. And I know we're talking about the investing side, but I do want to say one thing back on the career side. It's the same thing in the police department. Because I was a federal agent, and because I hit the title of lieutenant colonel, I have the qualifications to run a mid sized police department as a chief of police. So when I got there, people were like, damn, you've done task forces and murders and espionage and all that. Why are you not a detective? I don't want to be a detective. I came to be a police officer at age 33 so I could be in the huddle. I missed football. I just wanted to go to roll call and just go out on the street and be one of the guys and the girls and could just go do good work. Why is everybody so focused on, I got to get to lieutenant or captain or chief of police. That was not my purpose, but the reason I had the ability to say that's not my purpose is because I built this portfolio on the outside. I didn't need the money. I was there for the experience. So that's how it all ties together. Real estate and investing is very purposeful. It is not about money. It is about the ability to live life the way you want to live it. And that's what that money gave me.

Christopher Nelson [00:34:38]:

Well, and I think when you have a purpose, right? I mean, my purpose was and is the fact that I want to be able, as my boys are now nine and ten, respectively, I want to be able to walk with them into manhood, and I want to be able to be present. I want to be able to prioritize that journey and go on some adventures with them and walk with them in that. And I think when you have that purpose, I mean, this is something that you and I talk a lot about, which is this whole concept that is counterintuitive, not just to w two, but also counterintuitive to investing, which is deleverage when you have an investor and you're like, oh, yeah, I'm sitting on these ten paid off homes, or I've got five paid off homes, and they're just sending me these checks as my baseline. Oh, you need to exit out of those, and you need to get leverage and lever up. No, I don't. I'm actually good. But this is where purpose when you apply purpose across w two and investing and your focus is really, where am I spending my time? Where am I lining up against my freedom goals? Your whole perception or your whole definition of success changes.

Maurice Philogene [00:36:01]:

It does, brother. And when I got to that level of investing in 2014, where I had the 160 grand, I got really bored because I was still pressing repeat on the same methodology that I had been using since 2002. That's how I got the push into multifamily, because I wanted to do something different and I wanted to learn. Right. So I did eight multifamily deals on my own by myself. I had one or two partners, but it wasn't systematic. It was just me learning. Two of them were mobile home parks, which is interesting. And then in 2020 started Quattro Capital with four other partners. And you know that story? We've done 220,000,000 of real estate in the last three years. That's not me trying to be the biggest dude or have the most assets under management. No, that was me trying to help people on their financial freedom journey get it faster than I did because mine was really slow. But where I am now on a personal level and you and I talked about this, I'm actually deleveraging a bit. Meaning I still have some loans on some single family stuff that I got later in life, maybe in 2018 19, I got like a 220 grand payday out of this other multifamily project. I didn't go get another multifamily. I paid off one of the single family loans that I had. So now that place is $1,600 of cash flow added to my pocket for the rest of life. You want to get yourself in a position where you are stable. And then the other thing is now I don't think about money at all. I'm not thinking about growing my business. I'm not thinking about being the biggest guy. I'm thinking about having the most experiences and relationships that I possibly can for the rest of my life. So I just bought a house. I'm trying to buy a house. I'll probably close next week. And I intentionally bought that house with cash because I don't want the leverage, but I bought it because it's an entertaining house. Like, I'm going to be able to have friends and family come over. Everybody hangs out in the gourmet kitchen and stuff like that. Man, I want to live. I am true to form Bill Perkins book. Die with zero. I am no longer optimizing for money. I am optimizing for life fulfillment at age 47. But I put in 25 years of a ton of work. And now I'm young. I lost all this weight. I'm working out like a bandit. I'm spending time with friends. I'm spending time with my kids way more. I'm plugged into life and the planet as I should be, man. And I hope people use their career to invest so you can get to the point where this is what you're focused on, the good aspects of why we're alive on this planet.

Christopher Nelson [00:38:41]:

And I want to rewind it a little bit, because when we're all trying to figure out this financial independence, financial freedom is when you make that first investment. Because I'm sure when you bought your first home and you realized, okay, I'm getting, what, $500 a month off this.

Maurice Philogene [00:39:03]:

Thing, it was like $200, I think, is my there you go.

Christopher Nelson [00:39:06]:

There you go. So you're getting $200 a month. You start scratching your head, and you're saying, wait, how does this work? How does this all work? And then you realize, okay, you have to, again, have this long view, and you're like, well, okay, that takes out a couple of my bills. And honestly, what you're doing if you're investing it, you're not using it, but that's in your mind. You're saying, okay, I have cash flow that if I don't have a job, I can pay a few of my bills. Then you stack the next one, and you get a few more. You get living expenses. But there is a point where you understand how this works. And I told you my story where we sold our house in the Bay Area, now, again, became it was this prized possession, like, oh, you're in the Bay Area. You got to get a home there. So we had to work for equity to get the home. Then we sold this home for a couple million dollars, bought our primary residence, five single family homes that, again, all of a sudden, started covering all these expenses, and we learned right away, oh, right. So now we traded one home for six homes, and it covered the mortgage. It covered electricity and the home insurance and the taxes and stuff. But that was the lights on. But for you, as you were climbing up, how did you start seeing, okay, this is how it works, and having faith in the process.

Maurice Philogene [00:40:38]:

When I coach students now, we create a financial blueprint where they can actually see how that all works. Plotted out. I wasn't that prescriptive when I started going to the library in 2002, 2003, because I bought a place to live. It appreciated 30 grand in three months. And it was confusing. I was like, what just happened? My father explained equity to me. So I went back to the library, and I just started reading books. I just had faith in what I was reading, because sometimes when I would buy condos back then, they didn't cash flow positive. Sometimes they were slightly negative. Sometimes they break even. But something dawned on me, and I feel like it was this broker who told me this, but I can't remember. But it dawned on me that if I can just hold on to them for a long time, the rent will eventually go up. A lot of people don't have patience. The one thing I was very good at was systematic patience, because if you have something that's zero cash flow now, like, man, I'm subsidizing housing. I'm paying a little bit into it every month. That's okay. That's okay. What I cared about was, like, I wasn't worried about the average annual return or the cash on cash return. I was worried about what this thing would actually do for my life. So ten years later, I started to feel it. Like, the thing that used to cash flow me $200 was now cash flowing me $600, $700. And I have twelve of these. Let me get a few more of these on the plate. Even though I would now get them in, like, 2013, 1415, I'm like, I'm not worried because in 2023, these things will be how my mind thinks. I don't think about what the asset is going to do for me right now. I think about what the asset is going to do for me later. And I'm willing to wait. And you can probably tell I'm a buy and hold guy. I don't really sell much. It's what it does for my life. I don't care about rates, not in the Quattro world, not when I have investors, but for myself. What I care about is, what does it do? Does it pay my bills? Does it give me money when I'm overseas? Chris I'm so proud of myself for this. I have to say, I'm proud of my 23 year old me for this. The 47 year old me is so proud of the 23 year old me, because the 47 year old me is still living off the 14 of the paid off places that the 23 year old me started to buy. So even though I have 30 apartment complexes and this and that, I'm still living off the condos that my 20 year old self bought.

Christopher Nelson [00:43:19]:

Man, that was courage, right? That was courage. Because I think for most of us, and it sounds like you got a lot of your education, I think this is really important. On the journey to financial independence, we have to seek teaching. And so 23 year old you, I know you were spending a lot of time at the library. And it's funny, I'll tell you, a little side note, because my wife, who's Haitian as well, loves the libraries. And so after talking to you one day, I was just talking to Maurice about the love of libraries. Is this a Haitian thing?

Maurice Philogene [00:43:53]:

Oh, is it a Haitian thing? It was free.

Christopher Nelson [00:43:58]:

It was free. So then from the library, where did you start getting some of your education? Because you probably realized, okay, I need to know more. I need to get advanced tactics. Yeah.

Maurice Philogene [00:44:10]:

So the library was my main source of knowledge, along with brokers and stuff like that. But the library was my main source of knowledge from 2002 to 2015. If you think about it, yahoo and Google and those things, they just came around. Google was in its infancy in 2004 when I was starting?

Christopher Nelson [00:44:27]:

Yes.

Maurice Philogene [00:44:28]:

In 2015, when I got the idea to do multifamily because Facebook was listening to me and put an ad in my phone, I went to a multifamily seminar. I walked out of the seminar in seven minutes. It was one of those introductory ones. I'm like, yes, this is the thing that I'm doing. And eventually, I paid 50 grand for a one-on-one mentor. Now, here's the thing. I had 50. I think I sold a condo or something, because I started to realize, why am I going to reinvent the wheel when this person has already done what I want to do, right? It took me two years to do my first multifamily deal. And you know what got me over the hump? That Mentor getting on a plane from Providence, Rhode Island. I love this story. This brother gets on this older white gentleman gets on a plane from Providence, Rhode Island, to come see my younger black self, okay? And I'm saying the colors for a reason, so bear with me. And he's like, Clear your schedule for 48 hours. All right? So Craig comes down. We start talking. This man never really gave me tactical stuff to do to go buy the real estate. What he was doing was messing with my mindset about it. And he said to me, what makes you think that you, Maurice, young black dude are not as good as me? Craig, older white dude, why do you think I'm better than you? Why do you think I can close deals and you can't? It's like you're not better than me. He said exactly. Go get a deal. I had a mobile home park under contract three weeks later. Wow. Just because that mentor went out of his way to get on a plane to come challenge me, because every time I ran into a problem in a multifamily, the status quo would pull me back to single family, I'm like, I'm good with the single family. I'll just go back there. This is what mentors do for you. So on an average annual basis now, I probably spend 100 to 150 grand yearly on education conferences, traveling to see people mentors. I spend a ton because they are where I want to be.

Christopher Nelson [00:46:31]:

Right. And I know that it's so interesting that we will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on an education where we have a lot of very gifted professors that understand the theory of a lot of things. But people are hesitant to spend tens of thousands of dollars with people that have been there, done that experience, and really want to walk alongside you like Craig did, to see you be successful and arguably, sometimes kick you in the butt when you need it.

Maurice Philogene [00:47:03]:

Yeah, he kicked me in the butt, and I say that all the time. And we'll pay 100 grand for a paper degree as an outcome, but we won't pay 20 grand to someone who's done exactly what you want to do and can get you there in a three month time frame. It doesn't make sense. But I don't blame people, because 20 to 30 years of formal education and our family upbringing has told us that this is the path you are supposed to go down.

Christopher Nelson [00:47:26]:

That's right.

Maurice Philogene [00:47:27]:

Now, both of my children know the rules already. They have two things to do in life. One, be happy. Two, learn how to make money grow. That's it. If you want to go to college, Dad's not paying for it because I don't know. You have to be happy, and you have to learn how to make money grow. If you want to go to college as a rite of passage, or you want to go play football, I'm okay with that. But the thing that drives most of our ability in life is creating revenue such that we can, and not a lot. Some people just need five grand of passive income to live the way that they want to live. Some people need ten. Some people need more than that. Some people just need two. Whatever the number is, learn how to apply your money to that, get your basic needs covered, and then you are free to build from there. And then life changes. We don't necessarily need a paper degree, but I will not bash college either, because we need doctors, we need lawyers. But I love technical schools. There are plumbers who make 130 grand a year. There are HVAC specialists who make 190 grand a year, but only pay ten grand to go to the school. Why are we going into this big system where we're paying 100 grand to get a music degree? No, I'm not hating music. But why?

Christopher Nelson [00:48:39]:

Right.

Maurice Philogene [00:48:40]:

Because it's a system. Don't get it twisted. Colleges are a business. They are a business. Right? We have to do self education to free ourselves from all this stuff. And that's what I was very good at doing.

Christopher Nelson [00:48:51]:

And then what did you learn? I know that you understand how the ultra wealthy think, and it's different from what we think. And in fact, this came to me the other day, let me know what you think. We're going live with this right now. This is live. But I said the ultra wealthy. Well so middle class thinking is, I am going to do my own budgeting and bookkeeping, and I'm going to outsource my wealth management, where ultra wealth is. I'm actually going to outsource my bookkeeping and budgeting, and I'm going to do my own wealth management.

Maurice Philogene [00:49:25]:

Yeah, right. What I learned from wealthy people I say it all the time, like, debt is a wealth tool. Self education is a wealth tool. Hiring experts is a wealth tool. There's one particular person on LinkedIn, I was so fond of his information, I paid him two grand just to meet with him for an hour. Wealthy seek information and will pay for it will pay for someone's time, because that shows to that person you value their time. They won't waste your time. They will give you exactly what you need. Now, I joke, but I'm serious. For all the relative success that I've had, I think I know 7% of the rules of the rich. Chris, there's so much out there, like even having the conversation with you, learning about posturing for equity as a play, right? I learned something new. I learned about cost segregation studies and grander multifamily. One of the reasons I just bought this house cash is because I did take a distribution from a retirement account I had. I'm not going to pay any penalty because I have so much depreciation available to offset the taxes. I did the calculation. I'm like, no, I'm not going to pay any tax on that at all. The wealthy as their number one tool, they minimize their taxes. They don't react to taxes. They plan for taxes, and then they take that money that they never paid into the tax system legally, and then they reinvest it over and over and over again. These rules are not exclusive to anyone. You have to go out and seek them and put them to use in your own life. I have done it to an extent I can get better, like, with whole life policies and things of that nature. But again, I'm not optimizing for money anymore. I'm optimizing for life fulfillment. So for everything I've done at this point, like, no, I'm actually really in a good position. I want to go live well, but I do pay attention, and I want to plug one book. I do pay attention, and one of the best books I've ever read, relative to what we're talking about, is Money Master the Game by Tony Robbins. And some people like Tony, some people don't. It's not a Tony book. Tony interviews 20 to 30 of the greatest financial minds you've ever. Jack Bogle. Mary irdos from fidelity. Sir John Templeton. Sir John Templeton, who ran Templeton funds in the learned something from him. When there's blood in the streets, that's when you get in there and you go buy stuff at a discount. I love well, stuff, man. I'm so fascinated by it. But people have to seek the information themselves and apply it to their life.

Christopher Nelson [00:52:17]:

They do. And you're right. There's so many different levels to uncover. And I think on this journey, and the greatest thing that I've learned is when you get on this journey, and I think especially now, things have opened up with the Internet and a lot of these conversations about financial independence is you can meet other people and share ideas on the journey. There's so many more people now talking about this, doing this, and encouraging each other.

Maurice Philogene [00:52:42]:

Exactly. And I'm a real estate guy, but the last conference I went to was Dealmaker Live, meaning I went to a conference specifically for fundraising to create a fund. Excuse me, a non specific fund. Instead of, I'm going to raise money for real estate. No, I'm just going to raise money in a fund and we'll figure it out. Now, I don't know if I'm going to do it, but after what I heard there, I'm like, what? How does this work? And I was just flabbergasted. They are skirting the whole financial system. They're making their own economy, and they're working with private people who want their money to grow in certain ways, who want nothing to do with Wall Street. So a friend of mine has 100 million dollar fund, another friend has a 500 million dollar fund. And here I'm like, maybe I'll do a $5 million fund and learn because I want to do something right. It's fascinating. Man but you have to go out and seek the information. There's me investing $5,000 to go to this conference and then three days of my time. It's one of the best investments I ever made, if not for just the friendships and connections. Right?

Christopher Nelson [00:53:48]:

And I mean, I think that's the big thing you take away from it, too.

Maurice Philogene [00:53:51]:

Yeah, man.

Christopher Nelson [00:53:52]:

Well, I want to say thank you so much for your time, man. I always get so much value at the end of every session. We do have a little fire round. I'm going to hit you with five questions right now, and we're going to get the thoughts, the details right now. What is the way that you keep learning?

Maurice Philogene [00:54:14]:

It's just what I told you. I seek conferences and people who are doing things in areas I know nothing about. It does not mean that I want to build a fund. It does not mean that I want to build some business. What it means is I want to seek information so I can make an educated decision for me later. That's one thing. And then the other way that I'm in constant learning is my travel. Man maurice, you've been to 98 countries over 350 times. You want to see the whole world? No, I want to be in a state of constant learning. When I go to Lebanon, for example, I've been to Lebanon 40 times. I'm starting to understand the country much more, the intricacies of how I get around and people are starting to know me. I have a lot of friends there and what have you. I wanted to learn and immerse in something radically different than what I know. I just happened to choose that country to focus on, and it's been awesome. So between seeking knowledge for business and then just seeking relationships and immersing in culture, that's how I keep learning.

Christopher Nelson [00:55:19]:

What soft skill helped your career the most?

Maurice Philogene [00:55:25]:

Soft skill? Relationships. My ability to connect with people and build meaningful relationships. And that's one of the pillars in my coaching. And I mentioned it to you. Like, if you and I were just making. Friends with accenture people, then we weren't building relationships in this other area of our life that was really important. Chris there's no less than 30 countries that I could land in today where I wouldn't have a close friend come pick me up. Wow, I'm so proud of that fact. When people travel, some of the mistakes I think they make is they travel as a tourist. They don't travel with the intent to plug into what that community is. So here's a great hack, an example. The next time you go to someplace that you don't know, you can order an Uber, that's fine. But when you order the Uber, get the guy or the girl's phone number and say, look, I'm going to call you directly. Come be my driver for the week. You know what happens with that? You build a friendship because you go into talking with the person. You are giving the person a lot more money than they would typically make. They are introducing you to their friends, family, and suggesting little nooks and crannies of the city that you never would have even known about. So now you've created this relationship with this person. And if you reinvest this is what I do with people. I reinvest in them all the time. Remember when I said 98 countries over 350 times? Because I go back to the same places over and over and over, and I reinvest in those relationships. I keep showing up. That's the soft skill that has radically expanded my life, expanded my love for humanity, given me empathy towards all types of people. The Swami people of Northern the Swami People of Finland They're like the Native Americans of the US. They were persecuted, too. I knew nothing about them. But I got, like, three Swami friends because I kept going back to learn about how they were hurt in history. People. Man building meaningful relationships with people will help you so much on a personal and a business level. It's uncanny.

Christopher Nelson [00:57:25]:

All right, so this one is the converse. What is the worst investing advice you ever received?

Maurice Philogene [00:57:33]:

I want to scale. I hate that. There's nothing wrong with scale or you should scale or something, right? There's nothing wrong with scaling when you are scaling as a consequence of wanting to help more people. I think it's a beautiful thing when you are scaling in the context of, I want to make more money. I don't buy it, because when you chase money, it runs. But when you make money out of a consequence of helping people, it's awesome. So we have scaled Quattro. So Quattro Capital is the syndication firm I have, and we've scaled we've moved into new systems. We have about maybe 1500 investors now. I think I've invested about 90 million of people's money. We had to scale our systems to support our investors. But that's me trying to provide a service to my investors. I have to do that right on the coaching side. On the coaching side that I do, I refuse to scale. I personally do not want to do group coaching so I can have 1000 customers. I don't want to create a digital product. I don't what I want. The goal for me in coaching, yes, I want to get paid. I do. My time is valuable, but selfishly, I want to build really deep connections and relationships with these amazing humans who are wanting to redesign their lifestyle into something they don't need a vacation from. So by the time we're done coaching, after a three month period, we're friends. I have these amazing human friends all over the world. Right. But I can only handle ten people at a time, just time wise. But it's immersion. It's beautiful, man. So, no, I don't want to scale my coaching business. I want to keep it right where it is so I can connect with people in a meaningful way. So this default of you got to scale, says who? What is your goal for the whole thing? I don't like when people just automatically go to everybody has to scale when.

Christopher Nelson [00:59:23]:

They default to that. Yeah, it's too much.

Maurice Philogene [00:59:25]:

Yeah.

Christopher Nelson [00:59:26]:

What do you do to recharge your batteries?

Maurice Philogene [00:59:31]:

I'm a gym rat again. Thank God. My oldest son, who I helped design his life, he is now an aspiring professional bodybuilder because he didn't want to be in the office environment. So we reverse engineered his lifestyle and how he's going to support it. But on August 3 of last year, which is my birthday, he looked at me and he pretty much said, dad, you look like shit. Where's the football, dad I used to know who took care of himself, and he just woke me up. Chris wow. And I was 252 pounds, where normally I should be roaming around 225. I was still going to the gym. But you cannot out gym a bad diet. So I gave up beer. I started getting a certain amount of protein every day. I have not missed taking a set of supplemental vitamins in almost a year. I started a push up challenge in May. I have not missed one to 200 push ups a day in almost over 60 days, 65 days now. Wow. I'm deadlifting 500 pounds again. My ABS are back, man. That's what I do to recharge. I'm at the gym every morning at 04:00 a.m., assuming I'm in town. But I'm doing something around 04:00 a.m. Physically, because that's what keeps me going.

Christopher Nelson [01:00:47]:

And what would be the advice that you would give your younger self from what you know now?

Maurice Philogene [01:01:00]:

Man, I'm proud of him. I would tell him I just got emotional a little bit. But that journey, man, when I talk about it on LinkedIn now, it comes out as this seamless thing that happened. No, not even close. Right? What I would tell him is, go find like minded people as soon as you can. I did way too much of it on my own. And as I think about it today, just the amount of lonely nights between like accenture during the day, street cuff shit at night, real estate on the weekend, the fellows are going out, but I need to do tenants termites and toilet bowls and stuff. And I really never sought out support while I was doing it. I made a mistake. And it's such a visceral journey when you are trying to get your freedom. And I had this drive behind me, man, I would have dared someone to step in front of me for what I was trying to achieve. Yes, there are certain things I want to achieve today. I don't think it's wise for someone to say that I can't you probably don't want to get in front of me, but I did it a lot alone. But now I have folks like you, and now I have my business partners, and now I have people all over the world who understand me and the LinkedIn community who appreciates the content I put out. Because I did go on that journey and stuff, but that was a little bit too much for one person to handle what I did. So it's tough to, when I think about it's, a very hard thing for me.

Christopher Nelson [01:02:54]:

No, it is. And this is where I want to thank you for sharing that here. Because the reality is that this podcast is here because other people are on this journey and they may not be talking about it, they may not be talking about money, they may not be talking about career. But ultimately, to put a bow on this whole thing, right, is you figured out the career and how the career could give you the life that you wanted. And then you started doing extra time to say, well, wait, I need the career to then fuel this money thing so I can get to this point where I own my time. But I'm blessed that the majority of this journey I had my wife, you know what I mean? But there was many years when I was trying to figure out the career thing where I was on the road alone and I had a tour of duty where I was in Asia and it was an amazing experience, made a lot of relationships, but there was also long nights, feeling alone, doing a lot of solo traveling. That is good. And I think what we want everyone to know listening is like we're know Maurice is online on LinkedIn. He also is@trilifeon.com, is that right?

Maurice Philogene [01:04:09]:

You got it, Trilifeon.com? Yeah, Maurice@trilifeon.com.

Christopher Nelson [01:04:13]:

Yeah, we're here. We're here on a now I've now started a monthly meetup so that we can just gather and have small intimate sessions where people can have like minded people talking about career and money and everything that goes in between. I mean, last night we were talking with somebody who is now they're really focused like us, like minded, doing some real estate stuff they've just had. Now their first kid, and mom wants to take some time off of work. So now all of a sudden, okay, income is going to be decreasing. They're managing a lot of things going on. And some of us in this journey, we have to what I call thread the needle. It's like, okay, we're going to compress. We're going to do this for the family. It's good for the health. It's good for the time, but it's hard. And having people on the journey is so important.

Maurice Philogene [01:05:01]:

It's hard. And I appreciate you saying that. And anyone who's listening to this, send me a DM on LinkedIn or send me an email Maurice@trilifeon.com, or go through the Quattro Capital website, track me down. People who are entrepreneurially mind, there's nothing wrong with W two, as I keep saying. But people who are entrepreneurially minded sometimes feel isolated and ostracized because it's not like they can just go back to work and be like, yo, I'm opening a coffee shop tomorrow. When at work, you're supposed to be writing a strategic plan for that client. So you're trying to do right by your company, for sure, but you're also on this other thing, and when you don't have people to talk about it, who understand it and have been there, it can be very isolating. So I encourage go find someone. And if you cannot, then track me down and I will be your support system in some kind of way.

Christopher Nelson [01:05:52]:

That's beautiful. Well, I want to thank you so much for being on the podcast and for everybody listening. We are a new podcast, so please listen on Apple, Google, Spotify. Please leave us a review. Let us know what you're taking away from this podcast, and tell somebody else, right? Tell somebody else, because this journey of career and money can be incredibly confusing. But we're here with you on the journey. Thank you.