today I’m going to air an interview I did on Joel Ferrell’s strive for25

podcast Joel is a lender who and a good friend of mine who interviewed me and he

I love the topic of his show strive for 2 is all about how you can increase your income and work towards a 25% savings

rate which you can then use to seed your Investments and he interviewed me about the things that I did in my career

different chapters of my career so starting in entertainment and moving into Consulting and then of course starting my own rental business and

coaching business so we talked about all the different income streams and the skills that I feel have allowed me to

have any level of success so far in those areas so this is a really fun unique interview and I’m excited to

share it with you here we go welcome back to another episode The

strive for 25 podcast again our miniseries 100 stories of increasing income and I’ve got amazing guest on

today Aaron Amin and we’re going to be talking a little bit about the business

Consulting world and some of the skills and experiences that he’s leveraged to

be able to increase his income and I’ll let you describe the the actual numbers and percentages what not but Aaron first

off thanks for making time looking forward to it thanks so much for having me I love this topic and excited to jump

in I I want to just take this quick second to outline kind of a high level

of what you had going on you’re a rosate investor you’re working in the business Consulting world you also have real

estate Academy that you’re helping other aspiring investors to learn taking that knowledge you’ve gained over the number

of years and helping people with these road maps so a little bit of background so more people find you online first off

sure yeah so I’m all over the place online I I post quite a bit X is my most

active Channel post there several times a day sharing content about my journey largely like you said operating at the

intersection of all those things I’m a Management Consultant by day I run a real estate Academy and then I’m also a

real estate investor so I’m on xaron amine just my full name you can find

more info about me also at Aaron am.com I write about all those different areas

but would it help to just give a quick high level of what I’ve got going on do it sure so yeah I’m based in Houston

Texas my wife and three kids under the age of three I have eight-month-old identical twin boys and a two and a

half-year-old daughter that keep me quite busy I know Joel also has twins so he knows the game yeah work full-time uh

remotely but as a Management Consultant for a midsize consulting company and I

am currently billing out at a large tech company as a project manager previously

I worked for 10 years in the entertainment industry so I’ll talk about how some of my experience in live

entertainment and all the various personality and soft skills and and political intelligence equipped me to

grow in the Consulting industry but when Co hit live entertainment took a

immediate nose dive all events canceled overnight and it was very unclear what the future of my career was going to be

that’s when I decided to Pivot over into the Consulting industry so I actually took a lateral step switching Industries

was very scary I wasn’t sure how it was going to work if my skills were transferable if my knowledge was

transferable and and how I was going to make it work but I’m happy to say that in the four years this last weekend I

celebrated four years at this consulting company I’ve been promoting five times and more than doubled my income and I

there’s a lot of different things I would attribute to being able to navigate through this new career path

the way I did and I’m happy to unpack any of those okay so when you’re were

going through covid that job in in the I guess you call the concerts world or venue world what were you doing at that

point that was what a quick summary of what you were doing yeah so the entertainment industry is concerts in particular notoriously

difficult to get into and even harder to advance through the career ladder there’s a stat out there that I’m sure

is probably even worse now where every entrylevel unpaid internship in the concerts industry has something like 200

applicants so even just getting into uh a career path there was a challenge in

the first place I spent a lot of time I’m a drummer and I love music I was always out playing shows and meeting

people at the venues I would play at I was in a band for a few years that I self-managed we booked our own tours so

I did all the booking for our band which meant I learned how to interface with agents and negotiate contract terms

albeit ours were much smaller deals than the ones I ended up working on in my job

but anyway those skills led me to meet the right people and end up in the right rooms to get a shot to work a desk an

admin job in the concerts industry so for a long time I worked in the booking

office for the largest uh concerts company in the world and I directly supported the the

president and so I was screening and answering all the calls from all the big shot agents processing all the contracts

for the arena and Stadium tours and really getting to know the nuts and bolts of the industry so for about 7even

years I worked I worked my way from the front desk into a a junior buyer

position so where I was actually booking some of my own shows so instead of my boss signing the contracts under his

name I started to be able to book my own show and of course you know it wasn’t that I was taking the the Financial Risk

on myself but I was being graded on the profitability of the deals that I was

able to make and so when I to answer your question during covid I had Advanced to a buyer Talent buyer

position so I was responsible for booking shows at the club level which is about a 2,000 capacity room so think

like your House of Blues or your philm style venues if if anyone’s familiar

with those and then supporting all the arena and stadium shows so it was one of those things where I was working in the

office Monday through Friday normal office hours and then I would be at shows three or four nights a week

meeting and mingling with the artist teams and doing what we call a show settlement so I would go there and sit

down with all the ticket Audits and the expenses and the and the contract and

sit down with the artist rep and say okay based on everything we made and everything we spent and the deal we cut

with you here’s what we owe you and I would even be the one to write those checks on behalf of the company so a ton

of different skill sets it was really probably a 60 70 hour a week minimum

type job and career path but that’s just a taste of some of the stuff I was doing throughout my career in in

concerts so what would you say was the hardest part of that job nuts and bols

not so much the lifestyle of the hours or family just like the actual job was it the contract side the numbers the

relationships or the would you been Point yeah so I have had to

sign you know million doll plus checks in which I was the one who did the math

to arrive at the number right so that you had to be very detail oriented really understand the p&l behind a

concert so think of a 20,000 person arena with tickets priced at all different levels ticketing fees and

service charges you really had to be able to dive into AE spreadsheet and not

only calculate numbers accurately but reconcile it against the contract and

then have kind of a live negotiation with the artist side who’s of course they’re going to advocate for their

artists as much as possible that hey this expense shouldn’t be included that should be on you guys so there’s the the

financial piece and then the managing the personalities to do a almost live negotiation sometimes in the middle of

the night when nobody else is reachable so that’s not one specific skill but that’s just an example of a challenging

moment that is a a learned skill and not something that comes naturally until you get some

repetition okay okay so taking all that subset of

work H how did you arrive into the field you’re in now how did you get to that

lateral opportunity or even aware of that opportunity in first place yes so it’s a great question and I did a lot of

soul searching during Co keep in mind obviously Co was a massively disrupting emotional event for a lot of people for

a lot of reasons not just their jobs and so watching this career that I had put so much time in energy into building

evaporate overnight I had two choices one was to sit around they basically said hey we’ll hire you back once shows

come back but we don’t know when that’s going to be or I could pivot and and look at other things I lived in Las

Vegas at the time the national unemployment during covid peaked at 14.7% Las Vegas was over 25% so it there

was a very there was a shortage of opportunities of things you could do outside of entertainment Hospitality or

gaming all of which were shut down and so just the job pool there was so limited that it forced me to look

outside of that City and outside of my industry so I had to do a lot of soul searching about what are these

transferable skills like I know how to like I just said I know how to negotiate with these egotistical artist managers

at midnight on a Saturday about concert ticket prices but how does that help me

in any other industry so I did a lot of exercises like where I just I wrote down

everything I did like the way you’re asking me questions now so what did you do what was challenging what are the

things that you had to learn that you could learn easily and what are the things that you had to develop through

experience and and I started doing that kind of mapping to understand okay there’s a lot of political intelligence

that goes into how I had to navigate my time in the industry there was a lot of supporting Executives that had very high

intensity very high expectations and building enough trust with them that they kept giving me opportunities to be

in these rooms where big decisions are made and so I tried to separate okay what are the actual just tactical skills

and then what are my skills as an adviser or a trusted party and I think that’s where the idea of Consulting came

in because I I had learned to solve problems in real time under high pressure and intensity in the concerts

world some of that live being at the event the stuff I described helped but

also just being in the office during the during the day I learned to operate quickly I learned to take some heat so

how to operate under uh high pressure and be responsive and and be able to

turn around High make quick decisions with high impact and I know some of that

is it sounds a little vague right but the entire Consulting industry is a little bit vague but I at least challenged myself that hey uh I believe

in my ability to solve problems and if what I need to do in the Consulting industry is just is find the right fit

for my skills I believe I can do that and so I took I took a role as a

coordinator level position which was essentially lateral SL potentially even

a step back from what I was doing but I showed up and I was doing processing contracts and working on kind of

internal operations for the consulting company before I ever even put myself in a position

to be Billing at clients I’ll pause there because that kind of starts the lineage of my current career

path okay so that job the soul searching

that you mentioned and the collection of what the skills that you’ve done the was it a relationship was it a

conversation with somebody was it an on an online inquiry like how did you connect the dots to get to that

world in the Consulting industry specifically so I looked again keep pict

sure that it’s June 2020 so a lot of a lot of people out of work uh a lot of

uncertainty across every realm in the world and so I I had to look in my

network I’m I’m from the Seattle area originally and I went to school there so my college connections were there my had

some family there Professional Network and I just put it out there that hey I’m I explained what happened the company

told me that they can only hire me back once concerts come back I have no idea when that’s going to be and we can’t

afford to gamble and wait it out until that happens so I need to make a change here’s some of the stuff I’m good at I

had at that point built a resume and I had started to quantify some of the impact I’d had I did a lot of that I’m

very lucky that my parents have had a lot of success in the corporate Tech world and so they I had some

conversations with them and worked through like how can I take these skills that to me don’t feel transferable and

articulate them in a way where the impact would speak to somebody in a different industry and so a lot of that

translation happened and I started to gain confidence that okay I helped drive profitability up by X percentage at this

company through the shows that I booked over two years I started to to find those connection points where it’s okay

I took something and made it better as a result of specific work I was doing and to answer your actual question I

was talking to different people in my network and I got some referrals into a few different companies I got some

interviews both directly at tech companies and then for consulting firms

and ultimately the company that I work at now was the one that felt the most

compatible based on what they were offering me the flexibility the work from home and just the opportunity and

upside okay so work from home was part of it but then you just said you are in

Houston now as well so maybe part Journey later okay so you’re in Vegas

you have this shutdown we all told the shutdown you got an opportunity for a new job working remotely it’s a lateral

position so what was that first year like of getting into a whole different industry and learn the ropes and

accelerating that process of just growth yes so some of the best advice I ever got was from my boss at the very

end when I told him I was leaving the concert company I wasn’t going to wait around for the jobs to come back I got it got an offer I’m I’m switching

Industries and I’m moving to Seattle he had he and I had a great relationship and so he gave me a piece of advice

that’s always stuck with me he said the first thing I do at any company under any context is find out who’s in charge

and find out who gets stuff done and nine times out of 10 it’s not the same

person uh and make sure you build a good relationship with both U but understand that Dynamic from day one and no matter

how much other context you’re missing uh if you can identify and respect and

acknowledge those roles it will help you figure out the landscape right so I I

loved that advice and that was really the first thing I tried to chart out because I joined a company where I

didn’t know a single person I had I had a warm referral to a recruiter who then

hired me but I went from this very comfortable albeit challenging career

chapter in the entertainment industry where relationships are everything and I knew everyone really well and they knew

me to a place where I didn’t know anybody I didn’t know their strengths or weaknesses or anything like that because

in a way I would say some elements of that job I was very overqualified for

but I also recognized and tried to you know maintain a lot of humility about the fact that it was a new landscape it

was a new industry so there were certain parts of my job that came very easy to me and then I spent a lot of time and

energy just trying to understand the political dynamics of the company I was at so whole who is in charge who are

who’s making the decisions and then who are the executors and I realize that I I

quickly realized that I had a lane to become one of the people that gets stuff done and just the follow through act

being responsive acting with urgency detail orientation no matter what

context you’re in even if you’re are still learning some of the skill the vocabulary and specific context of an

industry those skills SKS map anywhere I don’t know anybody who hires anyone that

wouldn’t want somebody who is responsive attentive to detail thorough cares about

relationships Etc and so those I tried to just lean into the strengths of of what I had built in the entertainment

industry bring that over and then become a sponge for learning about the company

that and the industry that I was entering was there a point in that early

on Journey or a story an example or you said okay I got this I try to be careful about ever

feeling that way right but I would say like I mentioned earlier there were some components of the job that came very

natural so like one of the one of the key administrative functions of the role was processing contracts and calculating

bill rates and contract amounts and I wasn’t actually involved in the

negotiations like I had been in the concerts industry but I understood some of that back and forth Dynamic and how

those conversations go and so I was able to be very detail oriented and produce

those contracts on quick turnaround and then also even offer some perspective and insight to the business development

team that I was supporting where it got their attention of okay this guy can do more than just process contracts like he

can contribute at a different level and that’s one of the things that allowed me to Advance pretty quickly like I said

I’m on my fifth job Each of which has been a promotion and ele a in only four

years of the company and so I think I try never to put myself above any

opportunity that I’ve had whether it’s an unpaid internship or any job so I try

and show up with that hungry attitude like I’m gonna I’m always learning but also have you know confidence and

demonstrate competence and and try and let that let that guide me wherever it’ll take me okay I’m going to take a

little bit of a lane here and get into a little bit of the Weeds on a few of these steps but then also respect being

General with some of the content in description so this initial job you’re processing contracts any other

responsibilities major responsibilities involved yeah so I had to map out the

onboarding so I was working internally at the consulting company I wasn’t billing out at clients this company

works with 20 plus large Enterprise level accounts and then a bunch of

smaller accounts too and so part of my job was to try and help Define and map

out the onboarding experience the Contracting Rules of Engagement build relationships with the procurement teams

try and find ways to accelerate that process so it we drilled down it’s a

very data driven company so we know that if we get a verbal agreement from somebody to hire one of our consultants

and they’re ready to start but the Contracting takes a month that’s a month that we’re not making revenue and that’s

a month that person is either not getting paid or potentially costing the company money so there’s a real cost to

that and part of what I paid attention to was how to reduce the time to value of getting people on boarded and yeah

just strengthen those those ties and relationships and then support the business development team too right so I

it was those are B to be sales roles and so there was a lot of scraping Intel

looking at or charts trying to see like where do we currently have a presence where should we be targeting stuff like

that and not necessarily driving that strategy myself but supporting it and so I just got an incredible look behind the

curtain of the whole industry from where I sat and and I I I supported a lot of

different areas because it was it’s a smaller company so it’s not one of those things where you have one super narrow role you could lean in to different

areas as needed to support okay so then at what point in time did you get the

the call up to single a from Rookie ball yeah so one of the things that I

was told when I joined this company which I appreciate and actually was one of the distinguishing factors that made me want to work there was they For

Better or For Worse there’s no linear career path built for the internal

position so you show up you do good work you do the core elements of the job but

it is encouraged to proactively express what you’re interested in and try and lean in and

and find Opportunities to contribute in that area so for me internal operations process Improvement financial

analysis everything in that lane resonated with me because those were the skills that I brought over from

entertainment improving finding ways to make the company more efficient especially when you’re not in a revenue

generating position when you’re not in sales you if you want to protect your job this a separate topic but if you

want to stay insulated and make sure you’re still valuable if you’re not making money for the company then

finding a way to save money for the company is the next kind of safest that and so anyway I I leaned in and I

started networking within the internal operations team which there were only four people at the time and I carved out

a lan for myself and I made it very clear I advocated for myself and I found

ways to add value to their team before ever even having a conversation about

switching and it just organically evolved that they wanted to bring me on that team and and that came with a

promotion and two additional promotions came while I was supporting that team

just because I once again I was very careful never to you don’t want to show

up and you get hired for one role and then try and pretend like you have a role that’s two levels above that that’s

not what they hired you for that’s not the arrangement that your employer has with you so you have to do the job you

were hired for before you can advance so I’ve always very careful about that but

anytime I’m in a role I do try and think what would the person want step ahead of

me be doing and how can I get some exposure to at least either observe that and learn from it or potentially start

contributing at that level in addition to what I’m doing now so I followed that mindset up two more ranks within that

internal operations role and then from there those skills and that advancement

trust I built within the organization the relationships that led me towards what is now my my role billing

externally with actual out client at these Enterprise accounts because you mentioned looking

ahead right two steps ahead so to speak um adding value in some way but it’s

also I’m sure a delegate balance too because you don’t want to overstep your bounds and you know someone else’s

Authority so to speak or making the Assumption so I guess can you give an example of something that that you were

able to do to help but then also not offend anybody so to speak yeah no let

me think of a specific example but say this in the entertainment industry one of the things I learned how to do very

well was support somebody who had a very giant ego not just one person a lot of

people who had very big Egos and loves to take credit for things and I knew

that to grow in my career being able to tee things up or or provide an Insight

that would allow them to look good would also continue to help them be motivated

to Mentor me and F and you know Foster so I think I I learned I don’t know if that’s a soft

skill or not but I learned how to hang back and be a support enabler if you will without this extreme desire to take

credit for things now you could argue that I probably sat a little too far

back on some of that stuff but anyway when I got to the Consulting industry I think I was already okay with the idea

of contributing an idea and not just immediately trying to take credit or

stamp my name on it so a couple examples are contributing to project proposals I

would always be the person to raise my hand to make the deck I would always be the person to go try and find a piece of

information about the company we’re presenting to or the people we’re presenting to and pull that in something

that requires some marginal effort not just like looking at what’s right in front of you and I would try and bring

those in as a teammate not as an individual and I’m not trying to make myself sound like oh I I’m always 100%

selfless and I don’t speak up or advocate for myself because I I do think there’s a time and a place for that and

I and that’s something I’ve tried to improve over time but I believe that the

more you pour into to the relationships and the your employers and your external

Pursuits your relationships whatever it is the more generous you can be with the the energy and the skills you have that

will come back to you and I try and think you know the things I didn’t like

about the entertainment industry were that people were pretty ruthless and had no problem undercutting each other if it

really boiled down to it people were only out for themselves and so I I took a little bit of what I learned about

what I didn’t like from that and I brought it into Consulting and just said hey I’m going to operate from a a position of of confidence um but I’m not

going to try and take credit for everything and I’m okay with teeing up a win for someone else if it means that

it’s going to strengthen not only my relationship with them but um you know strengthen the company so I don’t know

if that fully answered your question but that that’s how I thought of it oh thank you thank you I definely helps paint the

picture so you get the promotion on more of the op side of things you’re getting

internally promoted within that sector so what’s the one thing that you think stood out with your group or Department

that got you to the next level what was the things that they were seeing yeah one of the things that

happened in the last few years have been a roller coaster right so I started my career at

this consulting company at the beginning of covid and then in

2022 when interest rates started going up tech companies started having these layoffs there was a lot of tumultuous

stuff going on which had a great impact on the company I worked for and the Consulting industry at large right when

people get laid off companies either cut their spend or potentially even hire more Consultants there’s so many moving

parts at all these companies which were core to this business and there were some big

org changes and some business Transformations even that the company

went through that required a lot of retooling of the operations and and even

the strategy of the company and so I was very lucky that by that time that all

that was happening I had a seat at the table where I wasn’t making the decisions but I was able to contribute a

lot of data and intell and Intel about what’s going on at the company to the senior leaders to inform their decisions

and operating at that level where they trusted I could go proactively gather some insights or I could they could

trust me with a project or I would survey the entire company and you know

bring them enough data to make a decision about something as big as a reorg and so just being in those rooms

and Reporting directly up to the SE level I earn their trust right because I think there’s not that many people

senior leaders usually aren’t on keeping people around that they don’t feel like they can depend on and so I think I I

had a couple opportunities to prove myself I was able to earn their trust and as a result they had no problem

vouching for me when it came time to put me in front of a client you always want to when you’re running a company you

always want to think would this person reflect on our company the way we want them to if I put them in front of a

client and started charging that client a lot of money and I think thankfully I just I had a closer opportunity than most

people to prove myself to them so that they could be confident in me and with

that came the opportunity to advance my salary quite a bit I was able to directly negotiate and just share my

income goals with the president of our company and and get him bought in on where I was trying to go and what I was

trying to do and I’m eternally grateful that I had that opportunity I I

sometimes wonder how I went from a coordinator role to working directly for the president such a short period of

time and yeah I’m grateful for that but I also recognize that there were some

tactical steps and some ways that I operated that afforded me that opportunity and so I try and have that balance of the humility but also

celebrating the the success of being able to navigate that you mentioned

reorganization as just an example of a decision what are some of the working with these businesses and you leaders

some of the decisions or obstacles or or things that are being processed to

decide on uh what what other types of of examples could there be yeah trying to think of the best ones

I can share without going too deep into the business models but when you are a company that is essentially Downstream

from like your Revenue comes from other companies Revenue when a big tech

company is making enough money to afford to invest in research and development and Shoring up their teams and making

them stronger that that directly impacts the Consulting industry in a positive way the inverse of that is what happened

in 2022 where all the tech companies their stock guarded started going down interest rates started going up and they

were laying people off and it was the opposite it was how can we cut as much

expense as possible while still producing the same quality of product and so I think every consulting company

had to figure out how to continue to stay competitive with the prices that they were trying to charge which then

affect how much you can pay Consultants which then affected the quality of talent you could hire and so there all

these Downstream impacts starting from things that are completely out of your control and working their way your focus

of what you can control and so I think it was um just trying to locate the

levers you can pull trying to there’s some really difficult decisions right layoffs and and any downsizing or things

like that nobody takes that stuff lightly and so I think there was a there was a lot of very concerted effort to

avoid anything like that at all cost and it was problem solving right it was like how can we if we’re not making as much

revenue or if we’re not able to drive as much as many bill rates where can we either cut costs internally or where can

we how can we rethink the way that we staff people can we put multiple people

one person on multiple projects to make sure they get the margin we need from them just like ideas after idea of how

to make the business model work when you have all those extra headwinds that’s

about as detailed as I can get without divulging anything that I shouldn’t what about the trying to grow a company

against all kinds of head wins and potentially acquiring another company that may be in distress or offloading

something that could be just make sense are those some of the decisions that you’ve seen or been a part of the

decision- making process yeah not I have not been part of any acquisition discussions so the the company I worked

for started as very much a startup and now is a midsize company and the midsize

being right around that 400 to a th000 range and so it’s not like a big huge

corporate entity when you’re used to operating like a startup you run things a certain way that doesn’t necessarily

work when you get to a midsize and you have several hundred people across several different markets I definitely

was part of and contribut to the idea of what do we really need and during Co

first of all when you’re when you’re a company that your entire business is based on delivering for clients you ask

yourself questions like do I even need an office do I need how can we continue to be in close proximity to the clients

that we serve without spending unnecessary money so we start to question like what is the return on the

investment in physical offices and events and things like that and by applying that level of scrutiny okay

we’re not just going to spend money just for the sake of spending money we’re going to really question the return on

everything we’re investing in whether that’s physical assets events and entertainment or Talent right that that

was one of the things that definitely had some exposure to of watching them analyze these decisions of with a

limited amount of capital to invest in growing this company where do we deploy

it right going backwards just just for a second so in terms of the climbing the ladder you

mentioned contracts is one part of it managing relationships upstream and

downstream and coming with your background reviewing contracts and dealing with people ego you came in with

a certain set of skills and natural talents that allowed you to be able to navigate these Waters if you were going

to outline some tools or resources or ideas for someone that hey I don’t this

person I don’t know you were to find resources or where to find a way to get better at this thing maybe contracts

relation like what types of tools and resources could someone lean into to be able to get better at one of these aspects being in the Consulting

world that’s a great question so I as you mentioned at the top of the show I’m a real estate investor as well I even

run a separate online business as it’s an online Academy teaching Real Estate Investors real estate is another thing

where those skills mapped over perfectly there’s contracts you’re sending offers you’re negotiating you’re doing a lot of

these things that would apply in any industry and so I think I’m going to answer your question but I also want to say this

first that I think the people discount the skills that they already have and

tend to chase new skills and I think it’s always good to build new skills but

that whole chapter of soul searching where I said hey I’m working in this industry that’s very specific and Niche

it’s concerts like how the heck could that apply to anything else that was a very self-defeating limiting belief that

I think probably people subconsciously think more than they realize so first

thing I would say before you go trying to chase new skills is try and really capture the the skills that you already

have and find a way to articulate them because you probably have a lot more value in your existing skill base than

you think as far as actually building new skills we all have contracts and

negotiations in our day-to-day life we probably just don’t think of it that way right we all bills we all have leases we

all maybe potentially own homes or there’s just there’s nobody there’s no Modern Life that doesn’t have exposure

to those kind of agreements they just trying to even think along the lines of what type of agreements contractually do

I have do I understand them I know it sounds like ridiculous but even just

reading through your your the agreements you have for your various utilities and your service contracts at your house and

starting to question them right like it’s scary when you start reading the fine print of some of the stuff you’ve signed but I’ll tell you spending those

10 years in the concerts Industries and reading the fine print of contracts you start to realize that on both sides of

the contract each party is just trying to hedge their bets as much as possible

and give themselves as many outs as possible so not to fixate too much on the contract stuff but again it’s a lot

of stuff that’s already right in front of our eyes and without having to go necessarily get a new job or go to school with that said I’ve definitely

invested a lot in personal development and skills development and I think from the Consulting perspective I had to

contextualize a lot of this knowledge and these skills in the new industry I was working in so my knowledge of ticket

prices and per cap merch sales at Arenas

did me very little good when I was trying to go build at a large tech company so just trying to understand new

Industries I got a like executive certificate digital transformation I studied Cloud infrastructure stuff that

I had never had any exposure to and even though I wasn’t becoming a software engineer it just helped to build some

level of literacy and vocabulary around those Industries so that I could apply

those parallel skills in the new context that my career required is there one piece of your

industry and contracts that stands out of is it that comes up the most in terms of

negotiations or discussion is it cost is it time frame is it something

else attention to detail is what it boils down to right you knowing how to

be quick on your feet with math but not make mistakes right and if you do make

mistakes own up to it so I got very comfortable building out a p&l so anything where you have a base like

Baseline accounting knowledge is really helpful so just understanding okay what is revenue revenue could be multiple

streams what are those streams and where do they come from and how do I calculate them What expenses do I need to account

for and how do I understand what those are what goes into them and how can I

quickly calculate my bottom line because obviously at the end of the day boilerplate language and legal language

aside that’s what a negotiation is typically driving towards is the bottom line so just understanding in your

business how the B how you arrive at the bottom line and then being able to wrap

that into the context of whatever contract you’re working on I will say that was not required of me in this

original coordinator role that that I moved into but that’s how I thought of it I thought I want to understand this

business I want to understand what drives Revenue I want to understand how how these negotiations work and how you

position things there’s little nuances in Contracting sometimes you want to be the first one if you’re having a verbal

conversation about hey this bill rate or I have this budget you can present things creatively sometimes that say

okay I understand your budget but what if we did what if we spread out the billing this way and just trying to

learn how people think on the other side of the table and then being able to translate that quickly into a contract

so it’s not one specific hardill it’s not he go read this book but it’s just like putting yourself in in the heads of

the people you’re supporting and then the people that are on the other side of the table from them would you say that perspective that

you mentioned of going it wasn’t required in the job so going above and beyond to think forward and backward in

in the context of the job that your people around you saw it and that was

what separated you from the rest and helped Propel your acceleration up the ladder I think that was certainly part

of it and then also making it known what was interested in and where

I it’s people say the term advocating for yourself all the time and I think that

in and of itself is an extremely difficult soft skill that you have to

develop right because there’s a fine line between advocating for yourself and just

being arrogant and I saw plenty of arrogance in my previous chapter of my career and admittedly like when you’re

around people that behave like that you start to to behave like it too and so I definitely coming into this it was a

huge adaptation of how I had to operate because when previously I was working

with people who would undercut each other to get ahead if they had to but I knew pretty quickly when I got into a

different industry that’s not how it works and yeah like I I would say thinking on trying to un understand at a

higher level how the things that I’m working on how they really work and and drive the business was definitely

something that made me stand out but all Al just vocalizing outwardly okay I’m interested in this stuff you’d be

surprised or maybe you wouldn’t but some people would be surprised how just being

interested is a distinguishing Factor if you express interest not only what somebody else is saying but just how

things work that’s a differentiator and you can ride that pretty darn far you do

have to learn how to do stuff you can’t end up in a senior position and not have any idea how to actually execute

but just being curious and trying to understand how things work I I I attribute that to most of My Success

yeah like in in a certain field someone asks certain questions as that show yeah

they care or they’re interested or like certain people ask questions that like shouldn’t be asking that question that’s

not normal for your job or your role and not to going in a different direction but like when I’m talking to an aspiring

home buyer and they only know what they know thing and we start going down a rabit hole of

like real estate investing and rents and expenses and all the whole language of real estate investing and they haven’t

even bought their first house yet and I there’s one question I always ask clients and hey let’s say you fast

forward clock how many years two four five and life changes and you have to move and you have to decide what to do with that property and your decision is

either to sell it or rent it what are your thoughts about that open-ended so people will say sell it I don’t ever

want to be a landlord and someone may say absolutely I want to run it out or I’m not sure tell me more and that that

question just opens up a cannabis of how someone thinks about risk and and real estate and what they may or may not know

and when someone answers that question and gets excited about the landlord part that’s what gets me lit up okay I love

this stuff because I want to talk about that I love that stuff so I can relate to what you’re talking about with being interested in things it’s going to

change the gravity around you with how people look at you for sure I’ll add one thing too so like I some of the stuff

we’re talking about right now these are like sales skills but I was not in a sales role so

it was interesting and this is something I’ve reflected on over the years I don’t really like sales when I think about it

as a concept I don’t like the idea that you’re trying to you know navigate a certain way you’re in your head driving

towards a certain outcome that the person may or may not get there so I have a weird relationship with with

sales in general it’s something I’ve worked on a lot because obviously like I said I’ve had to advocate for myself I

have a business that I’m building on the side I have my real estate so it’s a necessary skill but the reason I bring

that up is because that works on internal positions that works within

corporations as well and it’s not sales it’s not like you’re trying to manipulate someone but just being

interested being able to listen being able to understand and being able to explore the end to end what drives

things that is in itself a bit of a sales motion is like probe get the

information confirm the information and then drive towards the outcome so that’s just a realization I had somewhat

recently where in my head I’m like oh man I don’t like sales I don’t like sales but then I realized I was doing it

subconsciously and just thinking about it a different way so that I don’t know just the interesting realization I had

yeah how some you have an outcome we’re trying to achieve and sales just inherently becomes part of it a couple

things I want to be able to tap in to this is all about increasing income saving more money and investing and we

haven’t had a chance to dig into this part of it yet you’re a real estate investor as you’re income has gone up

what have been some of the decisions that you made along the way to use some of the the funds what have you done yes

I’ll give a little more context on that question right because as I’m I’m very grateful and lucky that my salary is

more than doubled in the last four years we’ve also had three children in the last two and a half years and previously

my wife was working fulltime she took some time off now she works part-time so our household financial

situation has been like a Six Flags roller coaster we’ve moved across the country a couple times so there’s a lot

of Dynamics in play there but what I will say is we started investing in real estate right when I was still in the

entertainment industry so we bought three rental houses in the six months leading up to co while we were still

living in Las Vegas and we owned a primary rental we were ble to do that largely because we were too we were what

do you call it dink dual income no kids at the time and so we were able to

aggressively save we for what’s what’s the right way to say it we passed over a

conventional expensive wedding and use the money that we were going to would have had to spend 30 $40,000 we used

that to buy our first rental property instead because we felt that would you know be in better service to our goals

with our future family that was before we had kids so we planted a lot of seeds in real estate before we had kids and

that’s when we did the majority of our growth but the idea was I I became pretty disillusioned during my

entertainment career years because I was working as hard as I explained earlier

60 70 80 hours a week taking a lot of crap from my co-workers and colleagues

and but I wasn’t getting paid particularly well even though I was producing a lot of results and I I just

didn’t like that idea because I felt like I was pouring so much into something and I wasn’t getting reciprocal value so so investing and

real estate which is something I had exposure to from my parents they were Real Estate Investors too I started to

see the reciprocal value when I invest and I put my we put our hard-earned money into do a rental that was

something that we could build and operate have accountability for For Better or For Worse and own the upside

that was something I didn’t have before I didn’t have a merit-based bonus in my previous career path and so the idea

that if I operate this well and I can get control over expenses and have a nice cash flowing property and benefit

from the appreciation that was the most exciting idea in the world to me and once I saw the potential of that then I

just wanted to do more and more so that’s why we bought three rental properties in six months uh covid was

both a blessing and a curse it was Dirt Cheap borrowing cost as you well know

but also a ton of volatility I switched careers and we moved and all that so to

to make a long story short right we we fell in love with investing because it was something we were building for

ourselves in which we own the upside and so for us it was easy for us to be motivated to put our income into real

estate and continue to grow that we scaled up we have eight single family rentals across three states we’ve moved

a few times we now live in Texas the closest rental we have is a thousand miles away but similarly as I did that

reflection earlier when I was switching careers that gave me a lot of confidence in my skill set to manage a business

like that and a good part of what we focus on now is how to do the Academy I started is all built around this idea

that you can build and you scale and operate a portfolio from anywhere in the

country in 20 minutes a day or less just by setting up good systems that are compatible with your career and your

families roundabout way of answering but yeah that we fell in love with it and that’s been growing in tandem with my

career it’s allowed my wife to take some time off with a little less pressure and

it’s been an essential piece of our family’s Financial

strategy putting all that time and energy into a job and the venue industry

and also now because all the things we’re talking about working hard thinking ahead all you’re spending a ton

of energy to do that plus kids three kids with twins that’s a lot to to

absorb mentally um um so what would life be like from a mental standpoint and

just satisfaction standpoint in the job and putting all that in there without having real estate as a part of it wor

that wasn’t part of it it’s a great question I probably have

more free time but this is a different topic entirely but I because out of

necessity time management is a pretty important part of making this all work and the way I like to think about it is

I I protect my non-negotiables first so my non-negotiables are on on an average

weekday I spend four hours with my family which is quite a bit when you’re working all day so I spend that two

hours in the morning two hours in the evening and that’s on my busiest days and then of course on the weekends like

I I typically don’t take calls or or work too much on my side business but if I do it’s for just a few hours here and

there and most of my time is with my family and so when I work backwards and

I say okay those four hours they belong to my family that CH on the weekend it

belongs to my family so if I protect that time and I if I really am honest

and I protect that time then when I’m working on other stuff I don’t have to feel guilty about it because I know that

I’ve already protected the thing that’s most important to me so that was kind of a reframe I had to do as as I got busier

and busier and that’s why I talking about this 20 minutes a day because

that’s about all the time that I have for it without something else suffering and I’m not willing for my family time

to suffer obviously I can’t continue to grow in my career the way I have if I don’t pay attention to that so it’s just

working with the constraints you have and making sure that you keep those in line with the values that you have and

and for me family is first and it’s and I try and not have that just be something I say but something that’s

reflected in the way I spend my time okay so I’m want to dig a little bit deeper on that I guess part of the

reason I asked the question also is having this Lane over here with real

estate growing at least for me gave me this extra set of confidence of knowing

that at some point in time I’m gonna be able to take the P off gas sooner than

if I’m just on a career path of work to 65 and 401k and

retire yeah no 100% especially with kids I believe in the endgame and I believe

in the wealth building potential not just cash flow but appreciate I believe in all the reason

all the compelling reasons to invest in real estate I’m 100% bought into those and we’re Buy and Hold long-term

investors we’re not trying to make a bunch of quick cash or do anything too flashy we believe in the methods that

you talk about all the time like the stair step we’ve done that buying a house living in it then moving out and

turning it into a rental we’ve done that three times and so I love that kind of

strategy of let’s look at the pieces that we have in our life and it’s like a

game of chess at this point with eight each one has its own place you can look at how well the the properties are

performing based on what you need you can rearrange some pieces we’ve sold a couple houses and we’ve used that money

to buy different houses or invest in a different way so I I’m very much I like

the game I like the the ability to build something for ourselves that’s what it

boils down to so to answer your question your earlier question about what would it look like without that I don’t know

it almost doesn’t even feel like an option based on how much we’ve come to love it and how much it’s become part of

our identity so I definitely want to come

back to this at a later time because having that exposure to real estate from family I’m sure had an impact of you

getting into the game and doing what you’ve done in some capacity and for so many they may not have that type of

exposure and I think it definitely affects people’s ability to get in the game and also confidence to get in the game and that’s the one thing I talk

about a lot is that the next deal or a deal that you get into it’s yes it’s

numbers it’s having the money it’s having income and having experience but it’s confidence to get into the game and

if you can shift some things to have more confidence and control some other control bus to have more confidence get

the game then you can play the game more and more often and so many people that I’ve seen personally just analysis by

paralysis and just don’t call a trigger even they we could have so next time I definitely want to dig into

some of that and the philosophies and strategies that you are preaching and talking about in the community but to

finish things off if you’re if you were gonna just boil some of the skills and

awarenesses to be successful in Consulting in general how would you just P pointed down sure yeah some high level

themes that I think have served me well that can apply to anybody no matter where you’re coming from in your career

or where you’re trying to go be curious don’t be afraid to ask questions and ask

good questions right that skill set alone can take you a long way that

advice that I got from my boss on the way out of the entertainment industry figure out in any situation you enter

into figure out who’s in charge and who gets stuff done be very aware of those

Dynamics and figure out your place within that environment don’t try and

take credit for everything but also advocate for yourself try and learn the

skill of finding that balance and lean in and and you want to be able to think like the person that’s one or

two steps ahead of you while doing your current job I think some people get in trouble when they try and jump too far

ahead but that doesn’t mean you can’t start to think like that and you think the person you are trying to become and

that will likely actualize over time if you’re good at what you do so those are some key themes that I think apply

across the board last one has to be just attention to detail right don’t be lazy that doesn’t grind 16 hours a day but

don’t be sloppy right pay attention a little bit more put a little more care

into things than your average person and that alone can differentiate you so those are some buckets that come to mind

of of things that have served me well that I believe would serve anyone it’s Stu measure twice or three

times then cut once mindset yes and take accountability for your mistakes too

that’s something that is not always easy to do especially if you’re you know earlier or even mid-stage of your your

career and you’re really ambitious nobody wants to be wrong nobody wants to make mistakes but we all are wrong at

times and we all do make mistakes and I think that’s a very quick way to earn respect is to be accountable and not

deflect so that’s another one okay okay so last thing in that role in your

lane what becomes the next Vision or or step in the

future yes you’re specifically in my job M yeah so I believe that Consulting is

has an incredible amount of upside as a career path at first it starts with tactical execution and just proving

competency with specific skills but the true consultant the when you think of

someone that’s really adding value they’re a trusted advisor they are able to flex into and

out of situations and quickly contribute not just show up and execute but

contribute and so I want to continue to learn in a

way that allows me to move into new situations more and more new situations

and be an immediate contributor and I think with that I will it will be an

inevitability that I will continue to grow my income the more I can prove that I’m capable of being that kind of

chameleon that can show up and and add instant value and and build

trust it love it okay a lot to unpack there we got to do this again for sure

but I love what you’re doing over in your platforms as well and thanks again and talk soon appreciate it all right

thanks Aaron bye