Jeff Says Never Forget Your Purpose When the Days Get Hard

0:00This episode is brought to you by Indeed. Stop waiting around for the perfect candidate. Instead, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs to find the right people with the right skills fast. It's a simple way to make sure your listing is the first candidate seat. According to Indeed Data, sponsor jobs have four times more applicants than non-sponsored jobs. So go build your dream team today with Indeed. Get a $75 sponsor job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast, Terms and Conditions Apply. Howdy. Hello. Welcome back to One Rental at a Time. I am here at the Center for the Blind, the 2026 One Rental at a Time event. I am here with Jeff. Jeff, attending this event, I have some questions for you. First one is going to be where do you live and where do you invest? We live and invest in New York, Pennsylvania. My father was a real estate investor and at a local market. And so that's the only model that I really know. Buy and hold multi-family real estate in my local market.

1:01Okay. Before you found One Rental at a Time, what did your investing look like? What was your focus? We were interested in purchasing small multi-family properties. We had purchased a quadplex and then shortly a year after that we purchased portfolio of 12 units from another real estate investor that had predominantly single houses, but he had these duplexes, triplexes, and quadplexes that he was ready to move. And we had purchased that and so that was about the time and the journey when I found like super. Okay. And since finding One Rental at a Time, is there something that you do different than you did before? Absolutely. I think I have more systems involved now. I do better with managing my employees than I, not my employees, my tenants, which are much like employees some days. But I think I do much better managing my tenants than I did because what I've learned from might and his team of people like yourself and Matt that are around.

2:05I appreciate that. Those systems are a life changer. If investing creates more work, we're less likely to continue to invest. Absolutely. But the more easy, it's never going to be easy, but the more easy we make it, the more likely we will add to it. Improves resilience. It makes it easier to be resilient. It does. And is there on One Rental at a Time or the Delivert Checkland Lord William I or my channel? Is there some lesson or video that really hits and you think about it every now and then? That's also good. I try and, you know, I watch so many of them. Although the ones that are really starting to speak to me here recently are the ones related to physical fitness and some of the outer fringes, you know, the things that don't really relate as much to specifically my real estate investment as it does to my whole life and becoming a

3:06fuller, more rounded individual. So I think those are speaking to me more here recently. How you do anything is how you do everything. And Michael Zuber spent the last year on health journey. So a lot of the people that we're watching hopefully made some life changes on calorie intake and exercise, actually getting on doing something. Because what is the point of financial freedom? If we get here and then we don't take care of our bodies and we can't enjoy it. Correct. So I think that's a great way to look at it. What does the future of investing look like for you? I am rapidly approaching the harvester state, I believe. I'm 63. I love my job. I love the people that I work with. I love what I'm doing work-wise. But if I got laid off today, it'd be okay. Let's go live off of my investments and my 401k and I'll be fine.

4:07So I want people watching to understand the breadth that you just took. If they can go back like 10 seconds, your whole body shifted. Because how many 63-year-olds do you think we know who are absolutely terrified that they can get fired tomorrow because of their age? I don't have options. So security is not enough. That brings a lot of peace. It does. It's awesome. I've been, you know, the last 20 years of my life, I assume that I would never be able to retire. And now, in the last seven years, we've reached that point where, you know, I have the flexibility to do what I want. What do I want? And if I want to retire tomorrow, I think I should. I love it. Life is better when you have options. Absolutely. The last question I'll wrap up with is, let's say you and Michael Zuba were in the room together, and nobody could hear you. If he asked you a question, like, do you have any feedback on it when it's on- community, the books, the podcasts, events like this?

5:07What would you tell him? Keep doing what you're doing. Keep reaching out to people and spreading the message. I think it's, you know, though the one thing that I don't think might quite touch is that is important that I recognize as being important. And he, don't get me wrong, he does talk about it a little bit. But what is your purpose? Why are you doing this? What is the real reason that gets you up every morning and every day to continue? Because when the water heater breaks and the tenant calls complaining about no heat, you know, you're not just the money's not enough to make you get out there and go take care of those things. You have to have a greater purpose and a bigger purpose. And part of that relates to my wife and I have a mission to help people that are on the margin and on the fringe. And so we've helped people that are coming out of prison. We've helped a lot of single-mare parents, moms and dads.

6:08And we've helped people that are coming out of homelessness. And so it's really important to have a mission and a purpose behind what you're doing. I love it. That's a great place to add this because that's great advice. Thank you. Thank you so much for hanging out with me. Ciao.