Do this six days a week until you die, and you’re guaranteed to be rich! Nathan shares what he started doing when he was 5 years old and hasn’t quit doing since. Don’t delay! Start today!
Relevant Links:
Related Episodes:
- Ep. 38 | Just Move! (and more steps to better health)
- Ep. 39 | Demystifying Starting a Small Business (Easy Practical Steps)
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Welcome back to the life on target podcast. I’m your host, Nathan spearing recording. This episode live from my barn because we had a heck of a week. And construction real estate and the weather has been just fighting us. So I’m here. But as you can see above me, we got some more insulation installed and actually has some pretty studio quality sound up in here, even though it’s just the onboard organic microphone on my laptop.
[00:00:31] I listened to a great podcast between Eric Conn and Michael Foster discussing. The state. Of masculinity, the church and men not being there to where they should be not having Sage pastors and things that are pointing out. How to walk the road. And Michael Foster around the 41 minute mark I’ll link the show.
[00:00:58] In the show notes here [00:01:00] mentioned that. Boys are looking for men that teach them how to have physical ability. How to make money. Buy things, have assets start businesses. Run productive households. They want to be respectable. They want to have gravitas. And they also want to be told. The truth. They want people to shoot them straight.
[00:01:20] And why a lot of. Even jellyfish, pastor’s just really. Can’t. Do any of that for young men? And why. Some of the secular men. Are doing so much better job discipling our youth because they’re willing to speak. Straight up bold, trues to men. They’re teaching them practical things, how to Excel in life.
[00:01:42] So I thought. I’d take a little stab at. It myself here, specifically talking about how to make money. And I want to give a quick once over my. Entire history. Money-making history, where I started, how I [00:02:00] learned my work ethic. And hopefully give you some conversation pointers to discuss with your son. Also, if you’re a young man trying to figure out what to do.
[00:02:12] Want to be respectable. If you make money. And you start businesses and you run a yourself. You’re having dominion over yourself. Your physical ability, your spiritual, mental, emotional state. You’re going to be respectable. And we’re going to get a woman to. God’s going to bring her around. And so anyway, let’s start with making money. So I started working when I was five years old.
[00:02:35] I would cut the middle part of our grass because I couldn’t really do around the trees around the edges because I had a really hard time pulling. The self-propelled mower back at age five, but I think I got about four bucks. Since front cut the front yard. When I was six or seven years old, I started cutting the neighbor across the Street’s yard at dark cutting the backyards.
[00:02:54] W worked up to about 15 bucks a week. At age six or seven years old. When I [00:03:00] was 13, we moved to a house. That had three bedrooms. Mom was pregnant with the seventh child, dad and I added 1700 square feet. I got a dollar 50 an hour on Saturdays. Eventually got a $2 raise to $2 an hour. Also got a work permit, started at 14 where I could ride with my dad to work, start working for my dad’s software company. I was allowed to do up to four hours a day. And then in the summers I could go full time.
[00:03:23] So I’d start working. I’m pretty sure when I was during the summer, when I was 15, I was riding with my dad to work. I was working all day. When I was 15, I bought a car and got my license at 16, started swimming. And I’ll bring that up just to talk about how athletics and working hat. One of them had to go.
[00:03:42] And why. So we’ll talk about that in a little bit. So through my sophomore and junior year, I would go to 5:00 AM practices. Every day of the week set for Wednesdays. I drive over to my dad’s office. I do my school till about lunch, not to work three or four hours in the [00:04:00] afternoon. And I remember barely making enough to pay gas and insurance and stuff at that time, because I covered it all myself and and my dad sitting me down and saying, son, You’re 16 years old. And one of your primary things you need to be doing right now as a 16 year old is make money. And you’re allowed to work 20 hours a week.
[00:04:23] Why aren’t you maxing those hours out? Why aren’t you getting it done? And essentially I got on the gas and I think, for rest of my junior year, probably sophomore year, I got 18 to 20 hours a week of paid work. I started out at 4 25. I think that was the minimum wage. Maybe it was four 10.
[00:04:41] And then eventually I worked up to seven 50 an hour, I believe. And and continue doing that. Until graduating high school,
[00:04:51] My junior year. My dad sat me down and. Basically said, son, you’re [00:05:00] swimming. 40 hours a week. And I know that you’re improving and you, I love watching you swim. I love watching you win, but. The reality is we don’t know you’re going to get a full ride scholarship. And even if you do, it’s probably going to be worth less money than a full time job and require more time.
[00:05:22] So I think you should quit. And we had a discussion with my coach and my junior year of high school. I stopped swimming. And that’s probably one of the. Most painful unknowns. To not have realized to have stopped swimming and not know how fast I actually could have gotten. I had a top three in the Southeastern United States, a hundred freestyle time. I was almost that senior national time qualifying.
[00:05:50] But honestly, all, I probably wouldn’t have been an Olympian. I probably wouldn’t have been a. NCAA. Champion. And I am really [00:06:00] happy with where I ended up in life and thankful that my dad sat me down and had me make a principle decision. To forego athletics, even though they’re it’s glorious, et cetera.
[00:06:13] Now listed in the army and got. 13.
[00:06:19] Hundred 1356 90, I think was my paycheck when I first enlisted. And I really wish. That I would have known. That I could buy houses. When I was in the military younger, even though I wasn’t getting allowance for housing, I probably could have afforded a house payment. Even as a private living in the barracks, because you get to eat at the chow hall, you don’t have any bills. And I wish I would have bought real estate earlier, but unfortunately I didn’t buy my first house style was 26.
[00:06:52] I bought it for 165,000 barely qualified for the loan because my wife and I were like 30 days late on [00:07:00] making a $10 payment on a credit card that had $500 balance on it. So my credit score was all jacked up, but because I worked for the military the bank still lended to us. So we put 20% down on.
[00:07:13] And that $165,000 house. And over two and a half three-year period, I added a hundred grand a value to that house. We sold it. We bought a duplex. We I think tripled the value of that in three years, cash that out, bought the mansion. Made the mansion worth four times what it was. We bought it for three times what we bought it for in another three years. And the whole time I was working in the military.
[00:07:39] Or starting a construction business when we bought the mantra as I got out. And now we’re doing six figures in real estate. We’re doing almost a million in construction. At a good profit margin and I’m just getting warmed up. I’m just getting focused. I’m just getting things figured out.
[00:07:55] So once over our full thing, but one of the [00:08:00] things that I think was say is starting. At about 13 years old. Until now. I understand that there’s six days you shall labor. And one day is a Sabbath and a solemn rest unto the Lord. Not. If you work five days, pretty hard, but not really that hard.
[00:08:18] Then you’re entitled to just lay around on a Saturday and do I have. Added value to real estate. Every single Saturday. I, every single Saturday, my wife may listen to this podcast has been a couple of Saturdays set up a slashed slouched off on that. But. Almost every single Saturday for. 13 years, January 20. 2010 was our first house. And now, even look at this barn we’re, putting installation in plumbing. Commercial sink over there. Sometimes I wonder why I’m doing it. So much when I got plumbers and electricians, but so being the technician, being the guy that’s hands on, it’s hard sometimes to let that habit die and just hire people and keep yourself focused on high [00:09:00] value, add activities. So that’s something I’m working on. SWAT. I got a coach.
[00:09:03] Just while I’m growing there. But anyway, if you can cultivate a work ethic and you can work six days a week and you can log 10 hours a day plus, or minus not this week. Seven hours, 53 minutes that the majority of Americans do, but work 10 hours. You know why I’m right now, I’m waking up. At five, I’m getting the office at six and getting back home at five,
[00:09:29] Where we’re, I’m working 10, 11 hours a day. Not all of it on the same thing. That’s the other thing I’m doing high value. Add. Tasks in the morning there’s meetings, there’s, long lead kind of stuff. There’s podcast generation stuff. There’s a bunch of stuff going in there. That’s, it’s new and fresh. And so it’s not just, mindlessly slaving away at one particular task. I’m trying to grow. I’m reading books.
[00:09:52] I’m trying to expand my knowledge and do that. That comes later. When you’re young. When you’re a young boy, you need to be all, suck it up. [00:10:00] And, do hard things. And that is one example of how we’re doing. That is one of my sons is digging a 280. Foot trench from our well down to our barn. So we can bury the plumbing line and.
[00:10:13] He’s not happy about it. Honestly, sometimes it gets a little bit whiny about it and that’s why I had to sit him down. And I look him in the eye and say, son, This is literally. Training you to be a man. The dirt is hard. It hurts. You have to work. It looks like you’re never going to get done because it’s 280 something feet and you make a line on the ground and you do 20 feet.
[00:10:37] And he’s doing 20 feet every Saturday. And he’s digging 18 inches out and I’m paying them a dollar, a foot. And he’s going to make almost 300 bucks. And he’s not happy about it, but I’m telling him this is literally his lesson today is to suck it up and dig this ditch. And. If you got sons and you’re not making them work now, I think it’s also very [00:11:00] helpful to teach them how to leverage time and make more money, how to hire people, how to charge a margin on top of them, how to.
[00:11:09] Solve complex problems that only certain people can solve. And charge a premium for that, how to subcontract out people that can solve that problem. That’s why I like general contracting on piecing together. 50 different skills. And merging them all together and charge and markup on every bit of it. And a lot of it happens during the day while I’m doing other things while I’m selling the next job while I’m figuring out how to.
[00:11:33] I get more people in our Airbnbs, all the different things that I’m able to focus on while there are 15, 20 people all over town working for me. And that’s the entrepreneur side, that’s the business owner side that that’s, coincidentally, the next point, Michael Foster talks about, maybe we’ll have a, another episode on that, even though we’ve talked about it.
[00:11:52] But anyway, work ethic, get the skills. Pushed through six days a week. Until you die. [00:12:00] And you will be successful. You will be respectable. Hopefully, this was at least a little bit informative. We didn’t know, it was last minute coming to you from a barn. As always, if you’ve got some value from this, share it with someone, pick a young man.
[00:12:15] And maybe. He is out there struggling. Maybe he’s got a crappy haircut and no sense of style and thinks that he’s just going to have a bad attitude and his way to get in a hot date and having her want to marry him. How about you tell him. Check out life on target podcast episode, how to make money and learn how to actually become respectable.
[00:12:33] And get a girl and bring her into the mission because you’re getting after it and you’re working hard and invite her into that and see what happens. So share with a friend. Sit down and listen with your son.
[00:12:46] As always. Have a good one.
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