0 (3s):
Shake the roof, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs On Fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network with great shows like being boss today, we'll be focusing on how a United States air force veteran went from $27,000 a year to multi seven figure companies in just three years to drop these value bombs. I have rot Tyler Austin into EOFire studios. Tyler is a husband, dad, SaaS founder, real estate investor, and air force veteran. He went from a $27,000 a year job to multi-million dollar companies in a three-year window, and he loves cigars whisky the outdoors and being with family. And today foundation, we'll talk about finding our true self motivation.

0 (45s):
We'll talk about how real estate can actually be a breakthrough tool when used correctly. We'll talk about turning work into passion projects as well as scaling the right way culture brands, and so much more. When we get back from thanking our sponsors, have you gotten serious about scaling up your business, looking for tips and strategies that some of the fastest growing companies are using. Join Trainual, the software for documenting and delegating for a free virtual event on September 30th, you'll hear directly from Gary Vaynerchuk, the founders of Bombas Healthy Kombucha, Coco kines, and more register for free at playbook2021.com. Ready to dig deeper on the creative side of business than the podcast being boss has you covered discover new tools to unravel the complexities of starting your own creative business with episodes on topics like building systems for freelancers and brand strategies.

0 (1m 36s):
Listen, learn, and grow with being boss on the HubSpot Podcast Network at hubspot.com/podcastnetwork. Tyler say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with.

1 (1m 54s):
John, thank you from you on what's going on Fire Nation. And man, I, it took me a while to think about this question. And what I came up with is essentially that a lot of people determine success as a dollar value, or I determined to say success as a mental state mental

0 (2m 13s):
State. And I really do believe by our nation that we can thinking about success and happiness and just everything that you're doing in this world. Think about it as how are you feeling in this moment? And when you're waking up every morning, looking in the mirror, asking yourself, like, am I doing what I feel like my purpose is? Am I doing what I feel like I'm meant to be doing every single day? And you're saying yes, more often than not. It's not having to be every day because there's going to be off days. Then you're winning the game. So Tyler, as I teased to Fire Nation, before we jumped on here, I am looking forward to chatting with a fellow veteran year from the air force. I want to talk about how you went from $27,000 a year to multi seven figure companies and just three years.

0 (2m 58s):
So I love the story and I want to hear about motivation because we do hear that word a lot, brother. So I want you to break it down for us. How can we Fire Nation find our true self motivation?

1 (3m 10s):
Sadly, something has to happen in your life where you get into a state where you have to kind of dig in deep and find it. But I, hopefully I can give a couple ways that you can shortcut, you know, the path to it. And the very first thing, see, see what happened to me is I was getting out and then, you know, I turned out today. I had a baby on the way, and I ended up no longer being the breadwinner in my family. And so mentally and physically, like I started going down in a really bad place in 2015. And so I ended up having this moment where I, I had, I got on the phone with my dad and I ended up essentially having the first moment that my dad ever seen me cry or heard me cry.

1 (3m 50s):
And I just broke down on the phone. And later that night I was sitting there and I was like, dude, like, what am I going to do? Like what, what is it that I'm even meant to do? I was like, the only thing I know how to do is build bombs for a living. That's not really useful outside of the military. And so what I realized is that I was trying to live life based off the lenses, through someone else's eyes. And so I sat down and I did a self-reflection on myself. I did a self-reflection of the reason why I wanted success. And I realized that the only reason I wanted it was for me. And up until that point, I was saying that I wanted it because I, I needed it for my family. I wanted, I needed it because I need my family to have the, the byproducts of my success.

1 (4m 35s):
And in all reality, that's not true because if really I cared about my family, I would have been spending more time with them. Right. I would have been, I would have been focusing on more of the things that would have made them, you know, have me more. And so when I became honest, when I sat down with my wife and I had said, you know, listen, I think that I've realized that this whole success thing, this whole me trying to do this path, me leaving the military, me, you know, needing you to basically pay our bills. Like all of that is really just me being really greedy because if I don't achieve the things that I feel like I'm capable of, then I'm never going to be able to be fully present with you or Tessa or any of our future children. And so once that happened, and then I looked at it from that lens through, you know, what the true purpose of why I was trying to do these things was it enabled me to like fully accept it.

1 (5m 24s):
And, and when I was working, I was able to focus on like what it is I should be focusing on and not, you know, feeling guilty, essentially the phrase

0 (5m 33s):
Fire Nation that Tyler used at the beginning of this, which was, he was trying to live a life based off the lenses of somebody else's eyes. I mean, just think about that phrase. And you've heard me talk about this before. If you've listened to some past episodes, the five biggest regrets of the dying, and this is essentially one of them they're literally laying on their death bed. They're like, why did I spend my entire life living my life through the lenses of somebody else's eyes, somebody else's somebody else's like expectations of me and think, goodness, Tyler, you found this out at a relatively very young age, because again, most people have this realization on their death bed, which is devastatingly sad, but you need to be thinking about this Fire Nation because you don't want to be having one of those regrets in the last days of your life.

0 (6m 17s):
So let's talk about real estate because it has a very low barrier, very low barrier. I mean, a lot of people ignore it because anybody can quote unquote, just say, oh yeah, I'm going to be a real estate agent or I'm going to get into real estate or this or that. And you know, they take a quick test and yada yada, so let's be real. How can real estate actually be a breakthrough tool for entrepreneurs?

1 (6m 39s):
It's such an amazing thing because it, like you said, any, the barrier to entry is really, really low in the same thing as in, in a lot of other industries. But I think it's extremely powerful in the real estate industry because of the fact that not only is it a breakout tool, meaning that you can make large sums of money in one transaction, but it's also the major storage of wealth. You know, once you start earning a lot of active income, it's where you end up going back to, to try to take that active income from, you know, that your savings account and put it into an asset. So if you, it's kind of like a double-edged sword or it's like in a good way where you, you truly get to learn a skill set that is going to be not only that thing, that puts money into your life, but also allows you to then store that, that money in the future.

1 (7m 27s):
For me, the reason why I chose real estate as I was getting out is because while, you know, I had already bought a house, right. I knew how to do that at least. And most people understand the concepts of you, okay, we're going to buy a house. And then this, that, and the other, but where people don't think about is, is, is like the fact that you don't need money to do it right? You, you don't need like thousands and tens of thousands or even a dime to do a real estate transaction, because there's a lot of different ways that you can assist in that transaction to reap the benefits of the, of the financials on that HUD statement. So for me, real estate really, truly a thousand percent was the ability to get myself out of the hole I was in through efforts.

1 (8m 12s):
It's like one of the only industries that you can work your butt off and, you know, get a few deals under your belt. And those deals can have some to be, in my case, in my first quarter was 250 grand. And, and I mean, that was huge for me, right? I mean, I paid off the $60,000 in debt. I had, I, I put money in my savings account. I mean, it really jump-started my ability to be able to focus on the business. And, and from there, you could just take that skillset that you've learned and you can just continue to improve upon it and, and, and make active income from, from real estate. And then now start doing some other business ventures

0 (8m 48s):
In Fire Nation. That is the one very interesting thing about real estate is because it is a low barrier of entry. It can be something that you can test without having go to like graduate school for four years and get hundreds of thousands of dollars in debts, you know, before you like, oh, I actually hate this career too. Like, you can figure it out pretty quickly that, Hey, do I have a passion for this? Do I actually enjoy this? Is this something that I'm really into? Or is this something that is just not for me? And of course, for Tyler, he found out that it is for him and allowed him to do a lot of really cool things. So Tyler, you believe that working for passion and working for money are two different things. Expound upon that.

1 (9m 24s):
It's a really controversial topic when people say like, you got to do what you love to do. If you, as long as you're always doing what you love to do, you're going to be successful. You're going to end up enjoying your life and yada yada, yada yada. And I have a different belief on that. I believe that if you do whatever is going to put you forward the most, whether it's something you enjoy doing or not, whatever's going to make you the most money. That's what you focus on as your, as a way to build that catalyst. And then you take, and you focus on what your passions are as a way to direct the by-product of, of the business ventures that you're doing. So, you know, you might not enjoy, you know, cybersecurity, but you might be good at it, or you might be able to make money doing it.

1 (10m 11s):
So therefore let's, let's do it and let's make money doing it. And then let's take the money. And now let's, let's do the things that we really truly enjoy because even in business, if, if it's something that you love to do, quote unquote, over time because of the byproducts of business, you're going to start to not enjoy that thing. And, and so I don't ever recommend people actually doing the things that they love as a thing that they're making as their main breadwinner, because you want to be able to do that as passion projects so that when you are doing it, you're solely doing it to be in it and not as a by-product of what could come from it.

1 (10m 51s):
So that's just something that I've, I've used as a CA as, as a way to focus on, you know, my energy and the things that give me the most back mentally and physically, so that when I am, you know, working and spending time with my family, I'm able to actually fully focus on it.

0 (11m 6s):
There's a lot of takeaways here, Fire Nation. I mean, sometimes there does have to be a season of making hay when the sun is shining. That means there's an opportunity to make money, and you may not love this particular thing, but you may be actually great at this particular thing, or it may just be the right place, right time for you at that situation where you can get in there, generate some revenue, get a little bank. So you have a little leeway. You have a little runway. For instance, that was kind of the first 10 years of my life post college was when I was in the army. Then when I was in other jobs that didn't necessarily like, but we're paying the bills or allowing me to stack the Benjamins so that I was then able to, in the next season of my life at 32, go all in on what turned out to be a passion project, which was podcasting and talking to entrepreneurs and building an online business.

0 (11m 54s):
But I didn't just wake up at 15 years old and say, I'm going to do this thing. It was me being able to put myself in the situation by generating revenue, doing things I didn't necessarily love doing. Like, I was proud of my military service, but I didn't necessarily love the day-to-day of it. And then I was able to do what I want. And I think there's a lot to be said with what Tyler shared as well, as, you know, Hey, once you start doing the thing that you love for money, sometimes you lose the love of that thing. And that can be really sad because passions are important because hobbies are important and there can be a lot that goes into it. Like somebody that loves to go out and play golf on the weekends, they may end up hating if they become a pro golfer, because now they're traveling the world.

0 (12m 34s):
They're always away from family. Every swing is like so stressful. Am I going to hit it? Right. I may hit it raw. And this how I feed my family. And now all of a sudden they're like, wait, I actually hate golf. And again, that's just a random example that could be applied to a lot of different areas. So food for thought Fire Nation. But when you're in a situation to stack those Benjamins to make hay while the sun is shining, do it. And we're going to talk about so much more awesome stuff around this topic. When we get back from thanking our sponsors, if you're looking for a virtual event that will help you grow your network and learn from global industry leaders across business marketing sales and customer success, then you're in luck. Inbound 2021 hosted with love by HubSpot takes place online, October 12th to 14th.

0 (13m 16s):
And the lineup is amazing. Oprah Winfrey, David Chang, spike Lee and other grades will be dropping value and inspiration on a custom digital platform, giving you an online event experience like you've never seen before. This is the one event you don't want to miss. This year. Sessions will include topics like breaking into unchartered territory, social responsibility at scale, and more, grab a free starter pass to access all spotlight conversations or upgrade to a powerhouse pass for full access to breakout sessions, curated meetups in on-demand content inbound 2021, hosted with love by HubSpot takes place. Online October 12th to 14th, find inspiration, explore the custom digital platform, grow your network and learn from global industry leaders across business marketing sales and customer success.

0 (14m 0s):
Learn more about the inbound 2021 lineup and register now for free at inbound.com. If you're in the midst of scaling your business and I mean really scaling your business, then listen up, train you all the software for documenting and delegating is hosting a free virtual event on September 30th, aimed at helping your business grow PlayBook2021 is a completely free virtual event for entrepreneurs, just like you. When you sign up today at playbook2021.com. You're saving a seat for live Q and A's with Gary Vaynerchuk plus sessions that will unpack the scaling stories with the founders of Bombas Health Aid, Kombucha, and cocoa kinds, O and talks with the leaders of some of the fastest growing startups around.

0 (14m 42s):
You'll get that to get ready, to walk away with a playbook for building repeatable, predictable, scalable operations that will change the pace of your company's growth, whether you need to scale big or marketing ideas that resonate with your ideal customers, playbook 2021. Has you covered register for free today at playbook2021.com. Once again, that's playbook and the numbers 2 0 2 1. Playbook2021.com. So tell her we're back. And I want you to talk next about turning work into passion projects, which is kind of interesting because now we're talking about work that you're doing is actually making money, but how do you actually take those and make them something that you can become passionate about?

0 (15m 25s):
And of course, one of you focusing on net profits the whole way through is otherwise, what are we really doing?

1 (15m 32s):
Everything that I've looked into on scaling myself has always led back to okay, growing businesses and philanthropy, right? And one of the really cool ways that you can actually take those passions, right. Instead of, instead of taking a passion and putting it into work, but, but being able to do a passion that also still fuels you and in, and allows you to, you know, keep more net profits in your life is, you know, obviously figuring out ways to handle the tax man, number one, but how does he play a part in this whole equation? And that would be like nonprofits, right? So as you start growing and as you start connecting with other people of, of money and of business, what happens is, is you end up fund and other individuals who are also working towards the same goals that you are.

1 (16m 19s):
So for me, in that case, it is in, in, in essentially online trafficking of, of, of people, kids, whatever it is. And so last year I had started a nonprofit focused on the, the topic of trying to combat and create softwares in order to help prevent and detect, you know, online trafficking. And what's beautiful about it is because of the fact that not only is it something that I'm super, super passionate about, but it enables me then to be able to fuel into that organization revenue, right. And that revenue essentially becomes, you know, right back to me. And of course, obviously I'm not a tax consultant or nothing like that.

1 (17m 1s):
However, it does enable me to keep more net profits from my primary business entities because of the fact that I have this passion project that I do. And I'm, you know, it enables me to really focus on it in a way that's different than if I were to suggest, you know, I don't know, just, you know, give another project a check if you will. So that's, that's a way that I've done it. And I thought it would be an interesting way to share in case some people have never heard about it. They can reach out to somebody to, to look into their lives.

0 (17m 28s):
And it is important for our nation to have this kind of knowledge in your bank to have these kinds of arrows in your quiver. So you do know that there are more than just one way to go at a project, to go at a passion, to go at life. And that's kinda, what I want to talk about next is, you know, on the show, I'll be honest. Like we focus a lot about scaling your business, which is important on a lot of levels, but you're actually about a life. What do you mean by that?

1 (17m 52s):
We all look at our key performance indicators, right? Our KPIs and our businesses, as we look at our KPIs and you know, our fitness and I don't think very many people actually truly focus on like the, the overarching, like the holistic KPIs. So they don't like create like a life KPI on like how many times a day am I telling my wife that I love her? How many times am I hanging out with my kids? How many vacations am I going on? And I think Jesse Itzler does this really well with the build your life resume kind of stuff that he does. And, and so I took kind of a, basically those adoptions and I looked at my life and I was okay, what am I truly doing? As in, in, in these four pillars of my life, improve health, increase, wealth, freedom, and focus.

1 (18m 36s):
So it was kinda like the four pillars. I break myself down as, and so I've created KPIs essentially down to each of those, those pillars and, and, and I'd basically track those to scale my life. So part of that is business, right? But it's, it's only one piece of it. And so it's not really something I wanted to dig too deep into, but more or less to be able to let people know that as you continue to grow and scale, you know, creating family core values, creating disciplines that you believe in that you live by, that you can pass on to your children is one of the most important things that you can possibly do more so than anything you can pass on through business is, is knowledge. And so those guiding principles of how to carry yourself and how to look at your life as a whole is something that I think is really important.

0 (19m 24s):
Health, wealth, freedom, focus. What are your focus words? What are your important things that you're going to stand by Fire Nation in every way, shape and form so that you can scale your life. And of course, scaling your life. Isn't an includes killing your business, but scaling your health, your wealth, your feeding, your focus, your family, your relationships, whatever that might be, what is it that you're doing to scale your overall life? What I want to move into next, Tyler is all about culture is all about brands. I mean, those are buzzwords in today's world. Everybody says those words. I don't know how much they really mean those words, but what are those words, culture and brands mean to you?

1 (20m 3s):
Obviously it's something that you do really well with Fire Nation. And it's something that I took for granted really early on. And that's the power of belief and not only belief in, in what you're doing, but the ability for people to believe in you and that belief system, when people are, are believing, you, you know, plays a part in a lot of different things, but more so let's focus on the customer facing side of the house. You know, if you had, you know, a thousand loyal, you know, individuals that are willing to give you $10,000 a year, then it's going to be better than if you were to have, you'd essentially need 10,000 giving you a dollar to have an equivalent result.

1 (20m 45s):
Right. And so, as I kind of started to grow my businesses, I kind of learned that. But going back to the finding true self motivation, I was, I was trying to build a brand that was based off of how I kind of thought I wanted people to see me. And I kind of like ended up stopping that. I think it would shoot truly through like, just laziness, where I ended up just being a thousand percent authentic to who I am and how I carry myself and in life business and everything, whether it's a customer messaging and our support chat, or it's like just a random person messaged me on Facebook, they have all bit of the authentic Tyler and what's happened is, is this has created like a culture around me and the people that I ended up, you know, involving themselves in my life and in.

1 (21m 38s):
And so they slowly adopt the same thing where they're, they're not like having a conversation and everybody, before they start speaking is thinking like, well, what am I going to say in order to make sure that that person is okay and we do the same thing on our first dates or second dates or whatever, you know, you always dress based off of what you think that that person is going to like to see you in. You know? And, and so if you just get rid of that and you focus on building culture and brand, that's truly authentic to yourself, what ends up happening is you can truly scale your companies and your business is a 10 X, which you could any other way. The cost of marketing goes down. Like in my businesses, I have, well, my real estate company had some, but in my, in my software company, I have zero customer acquisition costs.

1 (22m 24s):
And it's solely because of brand it's because of me being authentic to how I am. And that brings in word of mouth and inauthenticity that people don't get in other locations. So if there's one thing that I can, I can give advice on when it comes to the business side and also in your personal life, that's be a thousand percent authentic to yourself. And, and then, you know, focus some sort of, you know, primary brand around that authenticity, stamp it with something. And you're going to start building a culture and a brand that creates the ability for others to foster that same thing. And they're going to scale in life, which ultimately makes you scale in life.

0 (23m 3s):
And I love how you started this whole thing off with the word belief, because Fire Nation, if you're transparent, if you're honest, if you're genuine, your audience will believe in you. Now, the question is, do you believe in you? That is step one, and that's going to emanate well out with everything that you do. And let me tell you Fire Nation, you should believe in you because what's the alternative like absolutely believe in you now, Tyler, we've dropped a lot of value bombs over this episode, give us the one value bomb. You really want to make sure Fire Nation gets from everything that we've talked about here today. Any call to action you have and how we can connect with you, learn more about you have going on, and then we'll up.

1 (23m 48s):
It revolves around prosperity, right? Prosperity has a lot of different faces on it. It means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. As long as you understand, kind of what that scaling life looks like, what your four things are minor, improve health, increase, wealth, freedom, and focus. As long as you have that for yourself and continue working towards those, you're going to find prosperity and whatever it does mean to you, hopefully, you know, in some form or fashion, I can help you in that journey. On the real estate side, we actually created a challenge, which I think would be really benefit beneficial for anybody looking to get into real estate or improve the real estate businesses. And we created a nice little discount code of 10% for, for the Fire Nation.

1 (24m 29s):
If you head over to reisift.io/fire, it'll take you to that challenge. We'll teach you from start to finish on getting started in marketing in real estate to, to bring in some deals. So, and then the coupon code is fire. And

0 (24m 41s):
One more time, just go ahead and spell out that URL.

1 (24m 43s):
Yep. It's reisift.io/fire coupon code FIRE,

0 (24m 54s):
Fire Nation. You're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And you've been hanging out with TA and JLD today. So keep up the heat head over to EOFire.com type Tyler in the search bar. The show notes page will pop up with everything we've talked about here today, links to everything, but your direct call to action. reisift.io/fire, and then use promo code FIRE for 10% off what they have going on over there to get rocking in Tyler's world. And thank you, Tyler, for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today, for that we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thank you. Hey, Fire Nation today's value bomb content was brought to you by Tyler and Fire Nation, successful entrepreneurs accomplish big goals, which is why I created the freedom journal to guide you in accomplishing your number one goal in a hundred days.

0 (25m 46s):
And we're talking step-by-step. So visit the freedom journal.com use promo code podcast, free $15 discounts. And thank you for listening to my podcast and I'll catch you there, or I'll catch you on the flip side. Have you gotten serious about scaling up your business, looking for tips and strategies that some of the fastest growing companies are using. Join Trainual the software for documenting and delegating for a free virtual event on September 30th, you'll hear directly from Gary Vaynerchuk, the founders of Bombas healthy kombucha, Coco kines, and more register for free at playbook2021.com. Ready to dig deeper on the creative side of business than the podcast being boss has you covered discover new tools to unravel the complexities of starting your own creative business with episodes on topics like building systems for freelancers and brand strategies, listen, learn, and grow with being Boston on the HubSpot Podcast Network at hubspot.com/podcastnetwork.