Episode 1587: Interview with Brian Tibbs About His Book The HACKER Method and The Unexpected Investor Community

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Scott Maderer: [00:00:00] Thanks for joining us on episode 1,587 of the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

Brian Tibbs: I'm Brian Tibbs, and I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, talent, and your treasure to live out your calling. Having the ability to change your relationships with money is key, and one way to be inspired to do this is to listen to this The Inspired Stewardship Podcast with my friend Scott Maderer.

If I were to say I've got a briefcase stuffed with 2 million bucks and I'm gonna plant it on the other side of town, I live in Phoenix, a big town, and I'm gonna give you a map, and there's gonna be some sections that are empty and there's gonna be some wrong turns. Eh, but there's clues along the way and you're gonna have to make some adjustments.

But you, you can find this briefcase full of 2 million bucks. Would you accept my challenge? Oh yeah. Sign me up.

Scott Maderer: Welcome [00:01:00] and thank you for joining us on the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time. Your talent and your treasures for your true calling.

In the Inspired Stewardship podcast, you will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others, and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

In today's podcast episode, I interview Brian Tips. I asked Brian about how he helps people build wealth and become generous. Brian also shares how to focus on mindset first to build real wealth, and I also asked Brian to share with you how his time spent overseas as a missionary helped form his viewpoints on money.

I have a great book that's been out for a while now called Inspired Living. Assemble the Puzzle of your Calling by Mastering your [00:02:00] Time, your Talent, and your Treasures. You can find out more about that book over@inspiredlivingbook.com. It'll take you to a page where there's information and you can sign up to get some mailings about it, as well as purchase a copy there.

I'd love to see you. Get a copy and share with me how it impacted your world. Brian TBS is passionate about helping others build wealth and achieve financial freedom. At 19, he purchased his first duplex and by 26 he had 10 units. However, feeling a desire to make a greater impact, Brian transitioned into the faith-based nonprofit sector earning a modest income.

Despite this, he and his wife successfully built a multimillion dollar net worth using the principles that would later take the form of Tibs first book, the Hacker Method. Now through the unexpected investor community, Brian is guiding others into successful, wealthy, and generous lives, proving that wealth can be built on any income.[00:03:00]

Brian Tibbs: Welcome to the show, Brian. Hi. It's so good to be here. Thank you for the invitation.

Scott Maderer: Absolutely. So I shared a little bit in the intro about some of the work you've done and some of the the journey that you've been on, and yet I always think of intros and that sort of thing as like the Instagram photos of our life.

They never show the real whole picture. Sure. So talk a little bit for folks about your journey and what has brought you to the point where this is the work you're doing. This is the message that you're putting out in the world.

Brian Tibbs: Yeah it's it's an interesting story even for me, and I've heard it a bunch and told it a bunch, but I you even

Scott Maderer: lived it.

Brian Tibbs: Yeah. Lived it grew up in a family where my dad was a small business owner and his dad was a small business owner, so we weren't strangers to the business world per se. Money was discussed at the dinner table. I know I've met a lot of people where money was like [00:04:00] a really bad thing.

Like it was always scarce and it was caused fights with the parents and the kids didn't get what they wanted. That wasn't the case with us. It's not that we always had massive abundance or anything like that, but we just. We discussed it a lot, and so I understood the concept of money growing up.

And in college I decided to study business. And there's a fun story too, about me learning the power of real estate. And so I decided after I moved outta my dorm that I was gonna, I didn't wanna pay rent, I didn't wanna pay a mortgage all by myself. So I bought my first rental property.

It was a duplex, rented out one side, lived in the other, and my goal was to build a portfolio. I started to do that, but at age 28 I decided there's gotta be more to life. And I felt a calling to give up everything and go serve overseas as a missionary. So my new wife and I, we just had gotten married.

We'd been married for [00:05:00] a year and we packed up four suitcases and jumped on an airplane and moved to Guatemala sight unseen. And we looked at each other and we said, are we crazy? And we said we could do anything for a year. That was our commitment. One year volunteer service. I.

And so we, we did that. I ended up turning into 16 years. I started my own nonprofit co-founded it and was the CEO of the nonprofit for 16 years. And we did church planting throughout South America, planted 96 churches. But all the while I still had the background and it kinda had the, the desire to, to build my res real estate portfolio. So just like with a little bit of one eye focused on that, we did continue to build our portfolio and at the age of 44 we had decided for lots of reasons that our work overseas was done and our portfolio was producing enough to. To pay the family's expenses and continue to expand.

So we moved back to the United States, settled in Phoenix, Arizona. [00:06:00] That was in 2021. And and now I'm here. So that gets us up to speed.

Scott Maderer: A couple of questions. When you said you decided to study business why was business where you decided to go? Was it just was it a no brainer or was that something you had to.

To really think about.

Brian Tibbs: Yeah, good question. When you're a little kid, everybody asks you what do you wanna be when you grow up? And my answer was always, I wanna work with my hands. I wanna do something. Crafty with my hands. And I still do to do that as a hobby, but everybody frowned a little bit.

Like what? That doesn't make any sense. 'cause we know your personality and when you know your family history and I, when I was 17, I remember I was in the car with my dad and I just. Brought it up. I said hey, dad I think I'm gonna major in business. And he goes, yeah, nobody's, everybody knows that.

It was just assumed, and to me, that, that was news to me. I was like, oh, I'd never said anything out loud, but [00:07:00] it's just always been my inclination. And like I said, growing up in a family of small business owners. If you grow up in a family of plumbers, the chance of you being a plumber is pretty high.

And so I think that I was just carrying on the family business, so to speak, and had the inclination for it. And then conversely you said you felt the call to the mission field and took that quite a bit of a leap from Yeah. Business and work and all of those things into the mission field.

Scott Maderer: How. Tell us more about that. How did you know that was a call to do that? How did you experience it? How did that show up?

Brian Tibbs: Yeah. Good question. I had a restlessness, I guess would be the right word. Really from the age of maybe 24, 25. I was in business. I was working with my dad in his business.

I was building my real estate portfolio. I had a couple of other small kind of side businesses that I was [00:08:00] running. But I just had a restlessness. Like I don't wanna just spend my entire life accumulating stacks of green paper was kinda the way I like to say it. I wanted there to be more, more meaning and it just came to a head.

It came to a point to where I couldn't keep pushing it out and. I knew I was a, I was young, but I was on this path and the path was going in one direction, and if I didn't correct it, pretty soon I'm gonna have kids and mortgages and all this stuff that's gonna weigh me down. And if I'm gonna do something, I need to do it now.

And so I did finally come to just the conviction that, yeah I wanna serve, I wanna do something bigger than myself. And so I surrendered to that and I felt like God opened opportunities for me to go and serve. And we if there was a door that was closed, we just pushed it open a few times.

And yeah, and ended up spending 16 years very rewarding time. Now's a rewarding time too in a different way. [00:09:00] But yeah, just getting up every day knowing exactly what your purpose is and knowing it's for the benefit of others was very fulfilling.

Scott Maderer: That kind of brings me to the question of your faith journey.

One of the things that I like to highlight on the show is that sort of intersection between our life journey and our faith journey. And I think that's a clear. Juxtaposition. You were talking about doing business and making the stacks of dollars and that kind of feeling and then wanting to serve others, and yet now you're quote back in business, so does that mean the faith has gone away and all of that?

Brian Tibbs: How has that played out for you? That's an excellent question. I was talking to a good friend of mine and he asked me that he's a very wealthy, successful guy, and he asked me, so how do you square? Being wealthy and focusing on building wealth and being driven by your faith as well.

And I was like that's funny. You should ask. I was gonna ask you the same question. It's a tricky, it's a tricky [00:10:00] question to an or question to answer. I point to and I talk about this. Quality of wealth is the last section of my book that Matthew 25, Matthew chapter 25 is the Parable of the Talents.

And Jesus is telling the story and he talks about this master that has these three servants, and he gives them all bags of gold. They're called talents, which when I hear, when I read the word talent, I think, oh, like they can juggle. Or you, it's not it's literally bags of gold.

Scott Maderer: It's a very large amount of gold.

Yeah. It would actually be more thans, it would be comparable to a couple of years income. It's it's something like somebody has handed you more money than you're gonna see in the next couple of years.

Brian Tibbs: Exactly. Like it's the top guy got measured in millions of dollars, right? And so then the master says, okay, go multiply this. I'm leaving, I'll come back. When he comes back, he. For an accounting of what happened. And you know the story, and I know the story, but the amazing thing [00:11:00] is the two people that doubled the money, the master said, enter into the joy of the master and to the one that just dug a hole, didn't lose the money, which is interesting.

He just hid it and he was too afraid to invest it. He said, outta here, you wicked servant. Where there's we, there's weeping and gnashing of teeth. So these two. Opposite destinations for these people, the people who are willing to take a risk and multiply gold, we can't, sometimes people, oh no, this is the spirit, or it's friendships.

No, it's gold. So we are instructed to take the resources that we have and multiply it and he's speaking to people who are filled with faith. And so I, I think that's a good lesson for us. Now there's other lessons too. Chasing after wealth is like chasing after the wind from Ecclesiastes, right?

And so I think it's really great for us human beings to have those conflicts of, okay, I'm supposed to multiply my resources. I'm also not supposed to love money for the sake of money. I'm supposed to elevate [00:12:00] relationships above everything else, including money and all that stuff is. Itself and it's perfecting us as individuals.

So I think our job is to, yes, multiply our resources and yes, elevate relationships above anything else. And yes, not just dedicate your life to building wealth.

Scott Maderer: I think that tension that we feel sometimes in, in terms of money and our approach I is important for you in your life how has that tension shown up? How has it played out? Did you feel like when you were on the mission field, it's okay, now I'm earning my time so that later I don't have to, how did that actually play out in the way you felt at the time?

Brian Tibbs: Yeah. As I've matured. I think I've come to the conclusion when I was younger, in my twenties, I had this A or B mindset. If I'm in business, I'm in business and that's not really serving. If I miss [00:13:00] emissions, that's serving and I, and honestly, I, I.

There's only so many people that could be pastors and missionaries and whatever else might be a considered service. And then the other 99% of us are in the world. And that's where we need to be. And I've come kind of full circle to this point to where maybe it was a little bit naive to think that the only way for me to really give back and serve and be faithful would be to do something full-time in ministry.

I'm not regretting anything that I did, and I have. Amazing memories from that time and amazing relationships that we've built from that time. But for. Our third investment fund, and it's focused on buying real estate that's gonna become sober living houses. And that does the same for my soul. It's an investment and we're gonna make profit from it, and we're gonna be a refuge for people who are trying to make a significant change, positive change in their life.

And that does the same thing for my soul as anything that I did in the [00:14:00] church planning work. And it's it's that marriage of business and service that I think is the most important thing for us to really seek out.

Scott Maderer: So that brings me to an obvious question as well, which is that time you spent overseas as a missionary doing that kind of work. How do you think that has prepared you or changed you or what lessons did you take away from that, that you now think have helped you in the part of the life now where you're not doing that, so to speak, and you're back in the business world?

Brian Tibbs: Yeah. Yeah. That's a great question. I, there's way too many. Ways to list them all. But I think the big ones we're we learned Spanish and Portuguese, so we're trilingual, we are family. And that helps in a lot of ways. One, I can see the world from a Hispanic mindset. So I, I can [00:15:00] understand different kind of.

Politics and different stuff in a way that, that people who aren't exposed to that would, wouldn't maybe necessarily think in that way. Plus I live in Arizona and so I use SPAN daily. And I think that really helps me in the world of real estate. It helps me break down barriers.

Construction contractors, landscapers, vendors, all sorts of people who are first language Spanish or maybe only language Spanish in ways that other folks can't, so there's an advantage there. I would say the biggest thing however, is John Maxwell was an author that I read in college, and one of his ideas that he planted that I latched onto is he said, if you wanna see the a real.

Good leader go look for an effective pastor. And his concept was, is the pastor has to recruit and he's working with largely volunteers. He's not paying the salaries of the lay people that serve in the [00:16:00] church. And so if you see a pastor, and I just translated that to mission work as well, because we dealt with volunteers all the time.

That is effective with recruiting volunteers and they stick around and they do the work, and they do a good job and they have the passion, then you're gonna see the mark of a true leader. And I think that has really influenced my leadership and my management style. We had over a hundred people on staff at the peak in the nonprofit.

Lots of moving parts, building churches all over the place, planting churches all over the place, short-term volunteers coming down. So it was very dynamic. And now coming back into business I for sure use those. The skills that I learned to motivate volunteers, I use that now even if I have people that are on payroll.

So I now, maybe you ask my staff, they wouldn't agree, but I, it, it has absolutely affected the way that I lead. And rather than. Holding a big stick. I probably use carrots more than sticks in trying to motivate staff. 'cause I always go back to the, maybe [00:17:00] the PTSD of trying to get a volunteer to do something, and John, of course was a minister. Yeah. A pastor of a very successful church before he pivoted and went into the leadership development world as well. But I think too, I I think it's even more than just working for volunteer or working with volunteers.

Scott Maderer: It's also I. A pa a pastor is there to create vision and to sell ideas and to communicate and there there's a ton of skills that they involve. And it sounds like you were developing those skills in the mission field. As well. I think for me, a lot of my leadership philosophy came out of the time I was a school teacher.

Similar idea. I've got 150 people that are sitting there in the, and they don't really wanna be there. It's like, how do I get them engaged and active and Yeah. And working the way that, that they need to be. [00:18:00] So I think it is interesting. So that's.

Part. I guess the reason I wanted what wanted to say that is, I think it sounds like it, it's not even necessarily just quote the mission field or the overseas, it's the fact that you took lessons from it. You made a deliberate effort to take lessons from that and go, Hey, I can apply these in other ways.

Brian Tibbs: Absolutely. And that actually kind sparks another thought too, going backwards. I brought. Business concepts or administrative concepts from the business world or from a profit mindset into the nonprofit world. And I was exposed to people who had spent their entire lives. They went to high school, then they went to seminary, and then they went to ministry and never were exposed to those kinds of things.

And I remember one time I had a Venezuelan guy. That was talking to another one of my leaders who later came back and told me the conversation. He said, Brian, he expects results. And it was eyeopening to me. I didn't feel like I was being. [00:19:00] Overly challenging on all these kinds of things.

But I think just in that world, that's not typical. Where, let's chart a path. Let's set a vision and let's accomplish something big. And so I think I brought that into the mission field as well, that got refined maybe down to being a little bit less piles of green paper kind of a focus and now coming back full circle.

Scott Maderer: Perhaps. Yeah. And I think that's important too, 'cause it sounds like in the business. Field now. It back to that both thoughts at the same time. It's not about having money, but it's also not about having money. Yes. Exactly. It's the why behind it rather than just the result.

Yes. Very well said. How do you think that why shows up for you now?

Brian Tibbs: That's a good question. And actually that was when we decided to come back. There was a difficult period of a year or two of [00:20:00] realigning or real accepting a, an identity. And that was a tough period. When you're overseas and you're the gringo and you're bringing the resources and the leadership, there's a lot of folks that are patting your ego a little bit and then when you come back here and you look like everybody else and you talk like everybody else and you're not special anymore.

And so that does, it does take some adjustment. But I think back to what I was saying before is you don't have to be a minister to minister, and you don't have to be a scrooge. To be a businessman. And so I think that having lived kind of both of those worlds, I'm hoping that I'm walking each and every day purpose-filled I mentioned earlier the Sober Living Fund that really, for me, it feels just like what we did in Ministry, still focused on profit in fact.

I always used to tell people in the nonprofit world, the only difference between a for-profit organization and a [00:21:00] nonprofit organization is nonprofits don't distribute their profits to shareholders. Because a nonprofit that doesn't have profit is out of business. And so we still focused on having surpluses.

And that was a foreign concept to a lot of folks. No, that's evil. And I'm like if you want to continue the cause. So in that sense, it's really similar, so long as I feel like that I am. Seeking out things to be purpose, well beyond just the accumulation of wealth, then I feel like I'm doing what I'm supposed to do.

Scott Maderer: Yeah. I used to work for Educational Testing Service, which is a nonprofit, and it's one of the biggest educational testing companies in the world. It's a, makes many millions of dollars every year, and people are like. But it's a nonprofit. It's yeah, that's not what nonprofit means.

Yeah. Nonprofit does not mean, doesn't make money. Yes. It's how it doesn't use that money. That's what and ETS puts it back into research and [00:22:00] development and other things like that. So it's not. It's not being distributed to shareholders. Exactly. It's

Brian Tibbs: not making other people wealthy.

It can be wealthy, but it's not making other people wealthy, other

Scott Maderer: people. It's using that wealth to do whatever mission it has been set up to do.

Brian Tibbs: That's exactly right.

Scott Maderer: Yeah. So let's expand that out to somebody who's listening today. A lot of the folks listening or entrepreneurial minded, they get that idea of starting a business or starting a portfolio or investing or growing their wealth.

But at the same time in the moment that they're living today. Maybe they're stuck a little bit. They're in that. Whether it's living paycheck to paycheck, whether it's just doesn't feel like there's ever enough. Somebody told me the other day we've got two toddlers at home.

I don't care how much I make, it's not enough. But it's yeah, that's, I get that I understand that feeling. How, talk to them for a minute. What are some of the ways, the reframes or the mindsets, or how do you take that approach for [00:23:00] folks that are at the beginning part of that journey?

Kind of wanna go down that road.

Brian Tibbs: Yeah. And that I mentioned my book earlier, it's called The Hacker Method. The Hacker Method is how we so while we were in the nonprofit, the first couple years, I treated it like a business. I didn't take any pay. And then once it got established, then we slowly started to take a very meager salary.

And then towards the end it was a healthy salary. But if you took all of our. Paychecks from the nonprofit divided by the hours that we spent in the work. We made $9 and 20 cents an hour. We, being, me and my wife, made $9 and 20 cents an hour, which is less than minimum wage in Arizona where I live now.

And in spite of that, we still were able to build a multimillion dollar net worth that is, is now generating enough cash to where I don't have to work again. I choose to work. And that was because we decided to not say things. I'm not disagreeing with the [00:24:00] toddler. Understand that the demands of a family are intense, but rather than just accepting that nothing I can do, we decided to refuse to live this the consumer life and we were going to live an investor's life.

And so even while we were making very little income, we took a significant portion of that tiny amount of money and we just, but through discipline, we invested it every single month. Investing over long periods of time is how you build wealth. And you can't take a decade off if you decide to go save the world, right?

You have to keep plugging away at it. Now, how do we refuse to do the consumer? In my book, I have the first section is Hack your Lifestyle. And it's six different ways. That you can get out of the majority of your expenses that are expected of Americans. And the number one of those is house hacking.

Refuse to pay a mortgage or a rent payment ever again. And I can already hear everybody saying, ah, it's [00:25:00] ridiculous. I wanna tell you a story. I bought a house in the height of COVID ev. Everybody was afraid the world was over and I found a deal. It was a house with a cottage on the same properties on a corner lot, so you didn't even know they were on the same property.

'cause their front doors went out to different streets. We moved into the house kind of shelter in place, trying to live out the pandemic, and we cut the cottage into two units and we rented it out as a short term rental. The income that comes from those two units pays for all the expenses, the mortgage taxes, insurance repairs, water, power, sewer, garbage, pays, all the expenses for the entire property if we are living in the front house.

That's a house hack. It's 2,400 square feet. It was built in 1938. Beautifully remodeled. It's in the best neighborhood in Boise. And so we were able to do that. Anybody who ha who changes their mindset from that of a consumer, I deserve a 2,500 square foot house. I'm gonna have the biggest mortgage I can possibly afford.

I [00:26:00] don't want anybody to walk on my property. I'm gonna park my car and go. If you can change that mindset to where I'm gonna figure out. A way to cut 30% of my income that goes to housing, cut that out, have somebody else pay my mortgage. That is how you can begin to chip away at the consumer, how your paycheck gets consumed by all this stuff that we think that we have to have in order to be happy or comfortable or those kinds of things.

So that's the key thing that I talk about with people who are trapped in that paycheck to paycheck thing, is just instead of looking at your paycheck and grumbling and saying, okay, paycheck, what are you gonna allow me to do this month? Flip that around. Look at your paycheck and say, okay, paycheck, this is what you are gonna do.

This month, 40% of you is gonna be invested for the future. 50% is gonna be spent on my living expenses and 10% is gonna be given away to make the world a better place. That's my formula for breaking out of the the paycheck to paycheck trap. And it's absolutely possible for anybody who puts their mind to, I am no longer gonna live this consumer lifestyle.

I'm [00:27:00] gonna, I'm gonna beat the game.

Scott Maderer: And I think that idea of focusing on the mindset is important too. Yes. And again, not necessarily everyone's going to take the same exact route. And that's not what you're saying. Just, I just wanna call that out for folks gonna, 'cause immediately I heard someone going, yeah, but I can't find a property that as a cottage rent.

It's yeah. That's not the point you're making. Yeah. Yeah. The point is step back and go, wait, I gotta look at this a different way. I'm not just gonna accept the status quo. I'm going maybe it's somewhere else that you give up or it's a it's another way that you hack the situation.

But, yeah sometimes it's as simple as buying a house that's actually smaller than the house that you can than the mortgage company tells you can afford. 'cause they'll Exactly they'll tell you, you can afford a lot more than you really can. I'll tell you that right now.

Brian Tibbs: They're gonna max you out and they're gonna make you. Lose sleep at night because they get paid. The [00:28:00] more you spend and the more you strap onto your financial back, the more they make know that going into every cars, credit cards, houses, anything that you find,

Scott Maderer: how do they get, how do they get paid is a really good question to ask.

Exactly.

Brian Tibbs: Exactly

Scott Maderer: what? Yeah. I'll tell you a quick story 'cause you'll appreciate it. So I had a client. Couple, many years ago that I used to call Kid and Barbie. And just lovingly because I don't wanna refer to 'em by their real names 'cause somebody out there may know 'em. But they lived in the nicest house on the block.

Yeah. They had brand new Lexus, brand new Mercedes in the driveway. Both very good income very high paying jobs all of the trappings of success that people would see and they never entertained in their house. And it was always weird. And what I discovered as I started working with them is that's because they had no furniture.

Wow. They had two lawn chairs in the living room. Wow. With [00:29:00] the TV on a old piece of like couple of cinder blocks, like the college student would live they had a, an air mattress that they slept on. Wow. And so they had all of these from the outside appearance. And it was because they were overt, strapped to do it and yeah.

And as we worked through, they started making different decisions. Yeah. And they did change some behaviors and change everything else. And now they live in a very nice house and entertained and are doing quite well. But that's awesome. It takes it, it was the mind shift of they were living for one goal and then realize, wait a minute, that's not really the goal that we want.

We wanna do this in a different way. Yeah. And change our family tree, not just. Have a nice car in the driveway. Yeah. Because I would say cars is the sec houses are the biggest, and cars are probably the second biggest that people get bitten by.

Brian Tibbs: Yeah. Whenever people say, so I always prescribe 50% for spending 40% for investing, and 10% of your paycheck to make the world a better [00:30:00] place.

And I always get the kickback. How in the world am I gonna get 40% of my paycheck to invest? The three areas you could do it in three. Hacks. The house hack. I talked about the logic. I have a formula, it's L-O-G-I-C. Each letter is a different word. Logic, vehicle ownership, and then credit card hacks. So those three things, usually for most Americans comprises 40% of their paycheck.

So if you can hack those three things, you take that 40% and you invest it year after year. Returns and you'll become a multimillionaire just a matter of time.

Scott Maderer: And that's the other piece that I wanted to bring out. You mentioned investing over time.

Brian Tibbs: Yeah.

Scott Maderer: You know what's the best way to get rich quick?

Brian Tibbs: If as long as quick as a decade, you're set, right? The people selling you the get rich quick idea. The only people getting rich is the guy selling you the idea. There are [00:31:00] some exceptions of course. Like somebody who figured out Bitcoin way early or somebody who won the lottery, the one outta 300 million tickets sold, won the lottery.

Okay, yeah. He got rich quick. But that's not a formula that everybody can replicate. It's not a formula I can replicate and I feel like I'm pretty good at this. The get rich quick is getting a six pack quick. I'm sorry. It's gonna take some time and devotion and dedication, and that's just the laws of building wealth unless you come into some anomaly that most of us don't have access to.

Scott Maderer: Yeah. So go ahead.

Brian Tibbs: I wanna give it a little analogy. So if I were to say I've got a briefcase stuffed with 2 million bucks. And I'm gonna plant it on the other side of town. I live in Phoenix, big town. Very big town. And I'm gonna give you a map and there's gonna be some sections that are empty and there's gonna be some wrong turns, but there's clues along the way and you're gonna have to make some adjustments.

But [00:32:00] you can find this briefcase full of 2 million bucks. Would you accept my challenge? Oh yeah. Sign me up. Okay. Now what if instead of that briefcase is across town, it's across a decade, are you still willing to take the challenge? Because anybody and everybody listening to this right now, if they're willing to dedicate that amount of time, it's a roadmap.

There's some chunks missing tours, there's some mistakes that you're gonna backpedal, lose a little bit of money, but if you follow the course, you can get there. You can become a multimillionaire. It's just gonna take some time.

Scott Maderer: And I think that's an important. Mindset again, is, the other thing I would say is for some people statistically right, they look at lottery winners.

Brian Tibbs: Yeah. Something

Scott Maderer: like 60% go bankrupt after winning the lottery. You look at other kinds of things where people come into sudden wealth, maybe an athlete with a huge signing, bows and. They get injured and now they're bankrupt, and it's yeah, inherit how are you inherit [00:33:00] bankrupt?

Somebody handed you $40 million. What happened? Yeah. And yeah, inheritance is another one that I've seen squandered away. And a lot of times it's because they haven't built up the mindsets and the disciplines and the habits, and so they just continue behaving the same way, but they have more zeroes

Brian Tibbs: And it's the same as with kids. If you just. Give 'em cash. Every time they ask for cash, they're gonna treat that cash as if it's unlimited and it's flowing and I don't have to do anything. But if they earn it through doing chores, they look at that dollar like, I don't know if I wanna spend this. This was hard to comp to achieve, and so that same thing happens to us as adults.

If it takes a little bit of effort and focus and concentration, maybe we're a little more careful with it than if it just falls in our laps.

Scott Maderer: So I've got a few questions that I like to ask all of my guests, but before I ask you those, is there anything else about your work or your book, the Hacker Method that you would like to share with the listener?

Brian Tibbs: Yeah I really, I wrote the book. For the person that is maybe losing [00:34:00] sleep at night and worried about how am I gonna make all my credit card payments? How am I gonna make my car payment? How am I gonna make my house payment? How am I gonna keep my wife happy? How am I going to. Take care of my kids, the two toddlers.

That guy, I wrote the book for that guy. I was put into a situation of very limited income, but still, and part of the issue is I knew that the church wasn't gonna provide us with any retirement. And so I was just really taking the retirement responsibility on my own shoulders seriously. And it just worked out even better than I had.

I guess imagined because we were just so disciplined. And so I wrote the book partially because when I started telling our, my ministry partners. We were leaving, they would ask me, what are you gonna do next? I was like nothing. And I and that was hard to explain. And I had one guy really drilling into me and he goes, do you think you could show me how you did this?

Because I am in the same boat. I don't have a retirement on the other end, and I wanna do the same thing. And I was like, I don't really know how to. Tell you, 'cause I've never said it out loud. I just, we just did [00:35:00] it. And so that forced me to sit down. I was trying to help this guy. I was gonna write him like a two page white paper or something, and it turned into a 200 page book.

So I decided, okay if this guy needs that help, maybe there's other guys out there. And I've met so many people that are in that paycheck to paycheck trap, losing sleep, worried about their family. I that's, and that's another way for me to serve as well. And I get no better satisfaction than helping somebody climb outta that paycheck to paycheck trap.

Scott Maderer: Absolutely. So my brand has inspired stewardship. And I run things through that lens of stewardship, and yet over the years, I've also discovered that's one of those words that can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people.

Brian Tibbs: Yeah.

Scott Maderer: So when you hear the word stewardship, what does that word mean to you?

Brian Tibbs: Interesting. And this is where my Spanish kicks in. The translation is Omo. Which is basically Butler. And when you think about oh, I'm supposed to be a butler, what does a butler do? A butler does everything that the homeowner, the house [00:36:00] owner, the master asks for. It's a servant role. Wow.

Interesting. So if I am entrusted if you can take that mindset of whatever income you have, whatever wealth you have. Have been entrusted with that wealth and you're just the butler. You're just the guy that is supposed to take care of it and anticipate the needs of the master and serve at the master's request and make sure that the stuff that master owns is better off than when you found it.

So that's what I see as stewardship is it's really servanthood with resources that have been given to you that don't belong to you. So that's what I think of as stewardship.

Scott Maderer: So this is my favorite question that I like to ask everybody. Imagine for a minute that I could invent this magic machine.

And with this machine, I was able to take you from where you are today and transport you into the future. Maybe 150, maybe 250 years. And through the power of this machine, you were able to [00:37:00] look back and see your entire life. See all of the connections. See all of the ripples. See all of the impacts you've left.

What impact do you hope you've left in the world?

Brian Tibbs: I hope that I have inspired people to do something that they never thought was possible. That I, if at my funeral, if somebody will utter that I will consider my service to others to have been a success. That without his influence, I wouldn't have been able to realize this thing in me, or I wouldn't have been able to stretch further.

I wouldn't have been able to turn off Netflix and go try something hard. That to me is what I want my life to be.

Scott Maderer: So what's coming next? What's on the roadmap as you continue on your journey?

Brian Tibbs: Yeah, so I, when we came back in 2021, I didn't really have a lot to do. I was writing the book and so I looked around and I thought maybe I should grow my [00:38:00] portfolio.

So I gave myself two years to double my portfolio real estate. And we did that in about 18 months. And so then when we got that done, I was like, okay, maybe now I should triple it. So now I'm about halfway through my process of tripling the. My doubled portfolio, and I've already set the next goal for the longer, the 10 year trajectory to once I get to the triple, then I'm gonna quadruple that.

So I, I wanna build out a, an extensive network of real estate portfolio throughout the United States. And there's sober living. I do short term rentals we do some other stuff as well and just scratch that itch and build a team. I want to have a team of people that are just.

High powered professionals I that I would love to work with. So I'm slowly building that, that team up to have fun through this process and just be able to take my family anywhere in the country you want to go, we'll, we got a house there, we'll go stay and we'll will experience the area.

And so that's what we're working on.

Scott Maderer: Awesome. So you can find out more about Brian [00:39:00] Tibs and his book over@theunexpectedinvestor.com. Of course, I'll have a link to that over in the show notes as well. Ryan, is there anything else you'd like to share with the listener?

Brian Tibbs: Yeah, so after we wrote the book and published it we decided to start a community.

And so for 97 bucks a month anybody can join. It's that guy that's can't sleep at night, that, that is worried about paying his mortgage and his car payments and his credit card bills, and taking care of the family and making steps forward rather than climbing the sandhill. Of just I got a raise.

I've already spent the raise and there's no money left. So just really coaching with those folks. So in the community we do group coaching, we do one-on-one coaching. We do there's tools, there's small group accountability. So it's really designed around how to help people climb outta that paycheck to paycheck trap.

So that's at the unexpected investor.com as well if you're interested.

Scott Maderer: Awesome. Thanks so much for that.

Brian Tibbs: Yeah, thank you. Appreciate it.[00:40:00]

Scott Maderer: Thanks so much for listening to the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoyed this episode. Please. Please do us a favor. Go over to inspired stewardship.com/itunes.

Rate all one word iTunes rate. It'll take you through how to leave a rating and review, and how to make sure you're subscribed to the podcast so that you can get every episode as it comes out in your feed. Until next time, invest your time. Your talent and your treasures. Develop your influence and impact the [00:41:00] world.