The Beaten Path to All the Passive Income You Could Ever Want
The following is adapted from Active Life, Passive Income by Nate Lambert, PhD.
“You’re not a fit for our department,” my new boss informed me during our second conversation. He had voted against me, but enough of the other faculty had voted yes that I got what I thought was my dream job as a professor of family psychology. Now it felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me. My new department chair was dead set on making sure that I wouldn’t be staying there for long now that he had the power. My job was in jeopardy.
I was never good at having a boss, but from day one, this guy seemed to have decided that sabotaging my career was his top priority. We butted heads constantly, and no matter how well I taught or how many journal articles I published, it was never about that. It was about him winning. It had all culminated in this moment.
It had been a tough journey to become a professor. I had spent nine years of my life getting my PhD, and during that time, my family lived on a $14,000 a year salary, far below the poverty level. We even had to get food stamps. Once I got my dream job, I spent countless hours researching, writing, and publishing journal articles. In just my third year as a professor, I had published seventy-two peer-reviewed journal articles, which is almost unheard of and which was more than most of the professors in my department who had been around for thirty-plus years. But my family was still struggling financially. My wife was a full-time mom, and I was supporting our young family of five boys with a small salary and only one car.
Now I was at a crossroads. Would I put it all on the line to fight for my career as a professor? Or would I risk it all to recreate myself, going in a completely different direction to pursue my newfound passion in real estate? Did I have the courage to put my loved ones at risk to cut off the golden handcuffs? It would require that I walk into the darkness into a 100 percent commission-based career with no past evidence of success.
It was terrifying, but I took those first steps into the darkness. Five years later, my life had completely transformed. No longer is my family struggling to get by. We have a second car now — my dream car, a Tesla Model S — as well as our dream home, a nine-thousand-square-foot mansion in the foothills of the mountains. In 2019, I spent three months of the year on vacation, building priceless memories with my family, and I still made more money than ever before!
Looking back now, I’m grateful for that boss who hated me. He made my life hell, but he also gave me the final push I needed to cut off the golden handcuffs and begin enjoying true freedom.
The Power of Dissatisfaction
Every journey on the road to success begins with dissatisfaction. If you’re completely satisfied with everything in your life, you won’t be motivated to push for greater heights of achievement. Are you 100 percent satisfied with your career right now?
I was a good professor. In addition to my numerous publications, I received invitations from around the world to places like Israel, England, and Australia to present my research. I had an international reputation! I had published five books, including one, titled Publish and Prosper, showing other professors how to write and publish more than they thought possible. Just three years in, I was already set for my entire career. Beyond my publications, I worked hard to be an extraordinary mentor. I love to teach, and I helped dozens of students learn the publishing process. I worked collaboratively with them so that they could get experience in researching and earn authorship on my publications. In this way, I was able to delegate and build a massive body of publications while simultaneously helping to launch the careers of many students.
Most people in this kind of position would be very satisfied, yet I was not. I was bored and tired of the stress of living paycheck to paycheck. I didn’t like being someone else’s servant, and I didn’t feel like I was making much of an impact on the world. In short, I was suffering from the same four sources of dissatisfaction that so many of us struggle with: no fun, no money, no freedom, no impact.
What kind of real-world impact do you want to make? Does your job empower you to do it?
Faced with all this dissatisfaction, I finally decided I wanted out. I wanted freedom — not just financial independence but also the freedom to do work I enjoyed, to make my own decisions, and to have the impact I wanted. I read a book, much like this one, that explained how passive income through real estate investing could lead to financial independence, and I was hooked. I knew I had to start taking action if I wanted to change the direction of my life, and I was ready to do anything to become a real estate investor. This new journey captured my attention because it presented a solution to the woes I was experiencing as a professor.
Why Real Estate as the Path to Freedom?
You may ask, why is real estate the path to freedom? Of all the reasons, these three are the most important:
#1: It’s Easier to Travel the Beaten Path
Could you make a lot of money by starting a successful business and selling it? Yes, but 95 percent of new businesses fail in the first five years. The amount of work you put in for something that will likely not take off can be enormous. The path to wealth in real estate is well traveled, and success leaves clues. Like any reputable profession, you must get educated and have a mentor to guide you, but real estate isn’t rocket science. Almost anybody can learn and succeed at it.
#2: You Can Use Other People’s Money to Build Wealth
You have probably heard “It takes money to make money.” This is absolutely true! With most investments, like stocks, you need to have a ton of money up front to make serious cash. You need money in real estate as well, but it doesn’t need to be your money. In fact, I rarely use my own money for my many fix and flips. Recently, I had fourteen flips going on, which required $4.5 million to buy and rehab. I didn’t use a dime of my own cash, and I made crazy-high returns! With this ability to use other people’s money, the barrier to entry is open to anyone who is willing to learn how to find good deals. The money will flow to the deal as you build relationships with key people.
#3: You Can Use Other People’s Time
This one is most important for true freedom. Many people who get into real estate investing trade one job for another. They’re swinging the hammer in a flip, finding the tenants, fixing the toilet at midnight, and cursing everyone who told them real estate is a dream. Do not fall into that trap! A business that sets you free is one that allows you the time to have a blast in Europe with your family for a month while your business keeps working for you while you’re gone! To have an active life, you need passive income — income that comes in each month with minimal effort from you and allows you to live your life the way you want.
I suck with construction and never swing any hammers, even though I’m a major house flipper. My lack of skill has been a blessing to me, as it has kept me focused on my true job, which is simply to coordinate everything. There is enough profit available in real estate that there’s no reason not to hire a professional to do all the work for you. They will do a much better job than you could ever do yourself, as they bring expertise to the table. At this point, there are only three things I really do: (1) find deals, (2) arrange money, and (3) manage construction crews — other people do almost everything else for me! In fact, I rarely even find deals myself anymore.
The chance to travel a beaten path, to make a fortune with other people’s money, and to delegate almost all tasks makes real estate the best possible path for financial independence. It allows you to be able to do what you want, when you want, where you want, with whom you want, and for how long you want.
To learn more about how to make passive income through real estate investing, Active Life, Passive Income is available on Amazon.
Nate Lambert is a real estate investor, a world traveler of forty-five countries and counting, a psychology PhD, the father of five boys, a philanthropist, and an international speaker.
He flips roughly twenty houses annually and has owned over fifty rental properties — numbers that continue to grow every year. He has helped thousands of people in forty-seven states find profitable real estate deals. His goal is to achieve over $100,000 per month in passive income and to help tens of thousands of people become real estate millionaires — including you.
