121: Money Freedom is Not Simply More Money with Flint Jamison | Engineer to Investor | Founder of Vestus Capital

[00:00:21] Zach White: Yeah. Well, we’re gonna talk about like two of my favorite things, engineering and money. And, uh, you know, most of us are in, in our careers to make money, but today we’re gonna come at it from a different angle and I’m really pumped for this.

[00:00:33] Um, so appreciate you and your background, but before we start talking about money, we gotta, we gotta start with engineering. So, I’m gonna ask you a really odd question that I have always wanted to know from an aerospace engineer, which is your actual degree aero engineering. Is 

[00:00:48] Flint Jamison: that right? No. So I’m mechanical engineer, but I spent 20 years 

[00:00:51] in 

[00:00:52] Zach White: aerospace.

[00:00:52] Okay. Okay. So here this is even more important question. That’s perfect. I’ve always wanted to know which is harder to be a mechanical engineer. And be successful in aerospace or to be an aerospace engineer and be successful in say, automotive or some non-a career path. So you’ve done one side of that.

[00:01:12] What do you think, what’s your wager on which is harder? 

[00:01:16] Flint Jamison: Uh, gosh, I don’t think I have an answer for that, to be honest. I mean, it was, it was kind of crazy where I was, I was designing wing structure at Boeing, um, and it’s a lot of just. Um, not only CAD design, but analysis as well, you know, um, static dynamics.

[00:01:36] Um, we had arrow engineers doing both roles. We had civil engineers in there because they understood the basics of, you know, math and modeling. Oh, and then nice. We had mechanical engineers, so we had a full gamut. You get the refined aerospace engineers doing aerospace specific stuff like Aerofoil design.

[00:01:57] They sit in a department and loads, loads development. That is largely aero specific people, but when you get into more things, there’s obviously electrical engineers, there’s software engineers. You get the whole gamut in aerospace. So, 

[00:02:10] Zach White: Yeah, that’s pretty hard to say. So really that a, that’s a kind answer.

[00:02:13] The reason I always get curious about this, we had aero engineers at Whirlpool who worked alongside me, and they did a great job designing appliances and doing what I would consider very traditional. Mechanical design kinds of roles. And I always joked with them like, man, it must be tough to not wanna make that oven door look like a wing, or Yeah, you, you must really be sad that we, it’s not exactly like, like, like did they teach you how to make refrigerators fly in school?

[00:02:40] Does that Anyway, so I’m kidding. Gosh. I love a engineers. I love a engineers, but No, go ahead. 

[00:02:46] Flint Jamison: This is funny. I, I applied for a job. I was, I lived in New Zealand for a year. Total side note. But I originally went down there to hopefully to get a job designing sailboats in New Zealand. Oh, okay. This is gonna be awesome.

[00:03:01] It didn’t end up panning out. ’cause I’m from Colorado and I’ve never sailed a day in my life. So oddly enough they didn’t hire me, but I ended up trying to just find other engineering jobs and one of them was Fisher and Pike and an appliance company. It was one of the hardest inter interviews I’ve ever had.

[00:03:17] There was five people in a tiny little room and me. Wow. Wow. Five to one. Yeah, I was like, what is this? This is weird. Um, the, the hardest question was their last question. They said, why do you wanna work at Fisher and pe? And in my mind I’m like, I just wanna live in New Zealand. Uh, so I didn’t, I didn’t have a good answer ’cause I mean, uh, it didn’t excite me.

[00:03:40] So, and I think they saw that and they didn’t end up hiring me, which was the best thing that ever happened. And I just, wow. And actually from there, I, uh, After basically taking a year off, I moved back and got a job at Boeing, so it was, it paid to be a slacker, I guess. 

[00:03:57] Zach White: Wow. What a story. Okay. Flint. I know we’re off in the weeds, but we gotta stay here for a moment because, Yeah, for for one.

[00:04:03] Now I understand why you noticed my hat in the background. Shout out Matt Pollard, who gave me an amazing hat with the A basin and Colorado state flag logos combined with like a mountain range. So you’re from Colorado. That, that makes sense now. But here’s my funny version of your story. When I was at Purdue studying mechanical engineering, it was my junior year.

[00:04:24] And everyone knows between your junior and senior year that internship is a key, key component of your success. Yes. You wanna land that, that company brand name, big internship, that’s huge. Right? So I. I had done interviewing in the fall at what they call the Industrial Roundtable and the internship that I had hoped to land didn’t come through and I dragged my feet a little bit on other offers and they had already filled them with other people.

[00:04:55] I waited too long and I was super frustrated about that. So, and, and, but no big deal. And the guidance counselor even said, don’t worry, like most of the internships are actually filled in the spring, at the spring job fair. It’s all good. Go to the spring job fair. You’re, you’re gonna be fine. Okay, cool. I’m not sure if they were just being nice to me or if that’s actually true, but, uh, so I go to the Spring Job Fair and Whirlpool Corporation had a booth and Flint.

[00:05:19] I, I don’t think I’ve ever said this on the podcast before. I actually thought I. When I saw the word Whirlpool, the first picture that popped into my mind was a freaking hot tub. I had a hot tub in my mind. I walked up to the booth and I saw these pictures of appliances and I was like, oh, that Whirlpool, like, yeah, I was, and so I’m, I’m literally having this internal.

[00:05:44] Moment of surprise that this is not a hot tub company. They were not on my list of companies to look at. Yeah. And an amazing guy who was on this podcast named Sam Tam, walked up to me and introduced himself and asked me if I was. Looking, you know, for an internship, and I gave him my last copy of my resume.

[00:06:05] I was not planning on stopping at that booth. I was literally leaving the job fair. And he looked at it. He immediately said, Hey, let’s, let’s jump behind the booth really quick. I just wanna talk to you. We had a 20 minute conversation and he called me that night and offered me an internship, and it was the best offer.

[00:06:21] I got for that summer and you know, the rest is history. That’s where I spent most of my engineering career. But it’s just funny, you know, you, you go to Fisher and Pike Cow and you’re not ready for the interview. I, I literally didn’t even know Whirlpool was the appliance company at the moment. I stepped up to the booth and it wasn’t on my list, so.

[00:06:36] Alright. That’s funny enough. Random storytelling. Let’s, let’s talk really quick about you at Boeing. So you have this engineering. Background. You’re in the career, you’re doing the thing. Tell us a little bit about that experience, because I know you’ve gone through a lot of the same challenges and, and the, the grind that can happen in these career paths.

[00:06:58] But tell us what the experience was like and when did it start to get to that point where you felt like, this is shifting, this is changing. I’m getting, you know, kinda disenchanted or burned out here. What was going on? Um, 

[00:07:11] Flint Jamison: I got hired on, on the 7, 8 7 program doing wing design, wing leading edge, so the, the bolt of fixed and movable everything in front of the spar.

[00:07:19] Um, and I spent the large part of my entire Boeing career there. Uh, Yeah, we, we started out on dash eight. It hadn’t even flown yet. It was four years behind. It was a major grind. We were working stupid hours. I mean, four years behind Japan was our launch customer. They’re getting mad. All the other customers behind them are getting mad.

[00:07:39] Um, lots of issues and challenges. It was, it took what was a job that I thought was super sexy. I’m, I’m a airplane geek through and through, so it was kind of a dream job, but it. It breaks it down into you’re just grinding away. And, uh, to paint a bigger picture, Boeing struggled to keep engineers beyond five years because an engineer would get thrown in this corner desk and told to do analysis on access panels one through 42 for the next four years.

[00:08:14] You can imagine how boring that gets and you’re just a, like a tiny little cog in a giant machine. You’re getting worked hard. Luckily I was young, no kids. I had my, my girlfriend, now wife at the time. I mean, it was, it was easy to work, long hours. Um, but eventually that’s not where I wanted to be. I ended up, so to take that story even further, uh, I finally got done with the dash eight design.

[00:08:42] Then we did the dash nine derivative. Uh, and then after that I went off to product development where we were, I was like, oh, this is, this is the dreamland. We’re gonna develop the new future aircraft. And it takes about 10 to 15, maybe 20 years to develop a new aircraft. Um, and, and to this day, I left in 2014 and to this day, that aircraft we were potentially working on still hasn’t even seen a.

[00:09:07] Um, defined solution to this is what we’re gonna make into our next aircraft. And when they define that solution, it’s 10 years away before it flies. And I could see the writing on the wall. I was like, I am busting my butt doing things. And the needle keeps moving. Boeing keeps making leadership. Upper leadership was, was not putting money towards new product.

[00:09:30] They’re putting money towards how can we make the existing products cheaper to build? I get it. Air, a whole bunch of competitors, but it’s just like, I, I gotta get out, I gotta do something new. So I went and got an M B A, I’m gonna go do a startup or something. Got my M B A, um, got a call from a former colleague.

[00:09:51] The, the, the before times before New Zealand. I was actually for two years, right out of college, I was doing tele robotic manipulators for the nuclear waste industry. Okay. It’s a mouthful. Uh, My former lead engineering lead there called me up and said Flint, I own the, the company now. But he owned the, the composites, uh, division composites manufacturing division of that.

[00:10:16] And he just took it over and became a composite shop, said, Flint, you want to come help me grow the business? I build parts for aircraft. I built prosthetic feet and we do some industrial stuff at Filament winder. We had auto plates, ovens, the whole bit. And I was like, dude, perfect. Let’s go. So I became the c o O.

[00:10:32] Okay. Uh, 10 person company and then, uh, yeah, that, that wasn’t going anywhere fast. ’cause that the owner unfortunately didn’t want to grow. I was like, what am I doing? And then I serendipitously found a job working for Sierra Nevada Corp where we were modifying aircraft. For the Air Force. So, uh, yeah, full circle back into air aircraft, but modifying biz jets or commercial jets, putting cool things on ’em.

[00:11:02] And at that point I became a program manager and uh, yeah, it was a good time. Wow. But once again, working for the government, government contracts, you can imagine. Yes. It gets 

[00:11:14] Zach White: taken. Yes. So if we go back, it could be any one of the roles. Maybe it at Boeing, maybe it was at the startup. Tell us what hindsight shows you around the, the things that you feel stole, the joy, the passion, the enthusiasm for wanting to do engineering.

[00:11:37] What was that like for you? Where did you sense, you know, I think 

[00:11:41] Flint Jamison: for me personally, I couldn’t be a CAD jockey for too much longer. It’s just, well, Aircraft. When you’re working wing structure, it’s like I, at a certain point, all wing ribs are roughly the same. If you start working the fuselage, it’s frames and stringers, it’s, there’s only so much unique things you can really expand on, but it, the part of the day, you’re still a cat jockey.

[00:12:11] And I could become a stress engineer and worked on 150, 200 page stress reports, which really didn’t excite me. So I needed to find something that was mm-hmm. Exciting for me. 

[00:12:24] Zach White: So Flint, it’s interesting. I look at the experiences I’ve had, the hundreds, if not thousands now, of engineers I’ve spoken to about their careers and.

[00:12:36] This sense of feeling trapped, feeling stuck because of maybe to use a poker term, being pot committed, it’s like I got my degree in this. I’ve been at the company for X number of years. I have this subject matter expertise. I. I earn a great salary as an engineer and there’s not anything I can think of that I would be able to jump to and earn this same amount of money and to just change companies.

[00:13:02] You know, here’s Flint telling me his story. Like he, it wasn’t any better when he became a C O O. It still wasn’t better. Like, so what chance do I have? I might as well as well cut to B C O O. Yeah. Even more fun, right? Yeah. So like you get to that mindset like, well, what’s the point? You know? I might as well just.

[00:13:16] Grind it out, put in my time, get to retirement and be done. And that’s one of the saddest things to me to hear somebody say is like, well, it’s not that fun. I don’t really enjoy it, but it’s the best I can do until I get to the finish line. It’s like, ah, 

[00:13:31] Flint Jamison: wow. I, I have a great analogy from one of my design leads, senior leads at Boeing.

[00:13:38] He once said, Flint, A lot of people end up in a lukewarm bathtub. You’re sitting in this tub, the water’s getting a little cold. It’s getting kind of dirty, but if you get out, it’s cold out there. And if you use that as a metaphor to where you’re sitting in your job, too many people are afraid to take that leap because it’s scary.

[00:13:58] You’ve got a paycheck, but the culture’s not good. You’re kind of at the, the, the end of where you think you can grow at the company, but you’re afraid to leave. And that has stuck in my mind for the last probably 15 years. I. And you can use that analogy in so many different places in life and And that’s at the point where I was like, you know what?

[00:14:19] You’re right. You just have to, you have to embrace getting cold. Hmm. If you want to design your life differently, 

[00:14:26] Zach White: man, we could spend the whole rest of this conversation pulling on that metaphor, because that’s the whole reason my coaching company is called the Oasis of Courage. ’cause it absolutely takes.

[00:14:38] Some chutzpah to get out of the tub. Yeah. And face the cold air and towel off and go do something new. Without a guarantee, nobody’s gonna come. Sign, seal, deliver a guarantee for you that it will be better on the other side. Yes. You know, it’s only you can create that guarantee for yourself by never stopping the forward progress.

[00:14:57] So tell me then, where in the journey did you have this epiphany awareness of, Hey, um, I’ve diversified my investments, but never my income. And suddenly you end up doing, you know, what you’re doing now, and I wanna connect the dots here, but where did that whole world of finance and investing and multiple streams of income actually enter your 

[00:15:21] Flint Jamison: sphere?

[00:15:22] So it was actually after a long time, after I purchased Real Estate For one, I was just like, you know what? I’m gonna try. To invest better in the stock market because that’s where, you know, majority of us, that’s the societal norm. Let’s invest in the stock market. But at a certain point, I realized someone sneezes in the stock market moves Elon Tweets in the stock market moves.

[00:15:45] It is highly volatile. Why am I even playing in this realm? When you always hear these grand stories of people, uncle Joe, who owns a bunch of real estate and, and doesn’t have to work a day on his life. And I was like, let’s, let’s try that. So I went and bought a duplex. Uh, that’s a long story. We won’t go, go there.

[00:16:01] But after I bought a duplex, I realized I’m only making $600 a month. I mean, that sounds really good. $600 a month of, of quote unquote passive income. But if you expand that into, I need to, I. At least make a hundred thousand dollars before I decide to, to leave my day job. I have to do that 50 more times.

[00:16:22] I have to buy 50 more units, whether it’s a fourplex, duplex, single houses. And I was like, oh man, that was, it was so hard pulling off the duplex. Okay, what’s next? And then I ended up down the world of commercial real estate partnering with teams of people to buy apartment buildings. I mean, the, the classic thing is to fix and flip apartment buildings.

[00:16:43] People are doing self storage, industrial retail. Sure. Yeah. Um, and this is where my mind just started expanding with the world of finance, like, uh, I’ve never seen it before. Societal norms never teach us these things that, for one, real estate offers you not only potential passive income, but it offers you tax benefits, that there’s appreciation, there’s you, you make money in more ways than just one.

[00:17:13] And so the wealthy make, uh, on average have seven streams of income. So why don’t more people. Have more streams of income. 

[00:17:25] Zach White: I love that. That’s an average too, which means some people have way more than that. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. This is Okay. Societal norms, I think, you know, that’s an interesting phrase. Why do you think this is something that’s hidden from view from the majority of the population?

[00:17:44] Especially we talk about engineers. I mean, they have the money to make these kinds of investments and most of them won’t. They won’t ever do. It won’t take the risk or won’t take the punch. I’m curious what your perspective is now being an advocate and a voice for this. Where’s the block? Like how come we don’t know this stuff?

[00:18:02] I think it started so 

[00:18:03] Flint Jamison: long ago when it was, you start out, you go get a job, and for the rest of your life you work for that one company and collect a pension. That started dwindling away. Then the 4 0 1 k came along. Then eventually in the early two thousands, maybe late nineties, people started saying, well, you know, I don’t have to be at this company for life and on a pension, I can move on.

[00:18:25] And then the, the younger and younger generations were like, heck no. I’m moving on every three to five years because that’s how I get. So those original societal norms are, are being challenged and being changed. But I think that the standard of go get a steady job and collect a stable paycheck and then invest all your money into, uh, a retirement account where you hide it from yourself for the next 30 to 40 years, that that still remains.

[00:18:49] And I think a lot of that has to do with the financial institutions, fidelity, Charles Schwab, they have billions of dollars to pump into marketing to say, put your money with us. They’ve, they’ve changed the societal viewpoint where if you look at the wealthy, they do something so much different. They don’t follow those, those standard norms.

[00:19:08] So common actions do not equal uncommon results. And this is where you gotta start thinking, I need to start making uncommon results. I mean, you start going against the grain or doing something different if I want something to be different. 

[00:19:22] Zach White: Yeah. So let’s, let’s make a case for this really quick and, and, I really agree with the trend of how we got here and where it’s going.

[00:19:32] If you look at the, the average engineering household, you know, whether it’s one or both of the, uh, you know, parents or the couple are eng engineering, just ’cause I like engineering, we’re gonna use that. But the typical situation is you have a W two income from your work and you’re investing into IRAs and 4 0 1 ks.

[00:19:52] Which are stocks and maybe bonds, maybe. Yeah, it’s all Wall Street. Maybe there’s a real estate investment trust, a reit. There’s a reit maybe, but we won’t, we don’t have time to unpack all the, the details there. But essentially their entire net worth is tied up in a single income stream that if they walk out the door, the company tomorrow is gone.

[00:20:11] It shuts off. And a portfolio that is quote diversified, but it’s actually still entirely in one asset class. That to your point, is. Not infallible in terms of things that can happen there, and big draw downs do happen, and anybody who experienced that at the wrong time near retirement can testify. That’s, that’s not a great place.

[00:20:32] So let’s just make the case for why that’s not a great place to be. If you’re coaching me and you’re like, Zach, listen, here’s why that’s a problem. What are the main reasons I need to wake up to the fact that this is not gonna lead to the lifestyle and the happiness that I want for my future? What would you 

[00:20:48] Flint Jamison: say?

[00:20:48] Yeah, so, so the biggest thing. If you start viewing your finances as a business, and business is down to cashflow, do you have positive cashflow or negative cashflow, and you have a single W two job, single salary, you have positive cashflow, but you have one product. It’s essentially one product making money.

[00:21:07] If that product doesn’t start making, if it stops making money, you start losing. So now take this to, you have one, one single source of income, and you’re pumping all of your extra money into this retirement account that eventually you’ll be able to pull from. You’ve created a nest egg that is of questionable size, whether it’s not big, whether it’s big enough or not.

[00:21:29] And when you get into retirement, you stop that W two. Your cashflow goes negative and you’re dwindling away at your nest egg and you are a hundred percent negative cashflow and that nest egg you’re hoping for it to last till the end of time. Based on a lot of assumptions, the tax rates at that given time, your personal tax rate, the uh, inflation, your lifespan there.

[00:21:49] From an engineering perspective, there are so many assumptions that financial advisors love to throw at this thing. You’re gonna be great. I, you, you don’t know. I mean, we just had what, 12% inflation last year. It’s stupid. So this is where I’m, I started saying yes, the wealth, you have seven streams of income and when you go into retirement, those largely can be passive and your positive cash flow.

[00:22:10] Who cares about how big your nest egg is? If you have one, it’s a bonus. But if you have positive cash flow, keep that going. You can be retired. You can live a great life with positive cash flow versus negatives. 

[00:22:21] Zach White: Yeah, that’s really good. The only other. Thing that stands out to me. I’d love to hear your perspective on this, but when I look at the trend of how 4 0 1 ks or, or stock bond portfolios are structured, you know, the, the whole concept of your target retirement year and balancing risk within that portfolio, and, and by the way, you know, full disclaimer, everybody knows this is not investment advice.

[00:22:43] Zach is not your financial advisor. Talk to a professional, talk to Flint, blah, blah, blah. Well, here’s the thing. In order to get a return big enough to beat inflation at the rates we’re at right now, you have to start taking bigger and bigger and bigger risks in the portfolio, which creates more and more volatility or potential drawdowns when you do that.

[00:23:02] And if you do take a safe. Risk-free level of in invest. What is the risk-free rate right now? Flint. Do you know what the, what’s the 10 year treasury? Do you a ballpark? 

[00:23:11] Flint Jamison: Uh, 10 year. Yeah. It’s like four, four or 

[00:23:14] Zach White: 5%. Okay. Yeah. So, so even if you went with the most conservative portfolio you can great. You’re now losing money at six, seven, 8% a year of real terms because of inflation.

[00:23:25] So, so your, your nest egg is actually shrinking, not growing with that. Approach. And so anyway, for me, there’s a lot of reasons here to say, whoa, let’s question the assumptions. Big time in an environment like we’re in. Yeah. And on top 

[00:23:38] Flint Jamison: of that, the thing, the thing I hate is, the other thing that financial institutions have taught us is high risk, high reward, low risk, low reward.

[00:23:48] That doesn’t have to be, you can find lower risk, high reward. You just have to look beyond the stock market. They labeled those things because if, if you choose to invest in a high risk, High reward and you lose money. It’s basically you blame yourself. Yes, it is your fault, you invested in it, but the financial institution doesn’t take any, any flack from that.

[00:24:08] They’re just like, well, you did it. And on top of that, they take fees no matter whether you gain or lose. Yeah. 

[00:24:17] Zach White: Keep that. Alright. So yeah, you’re just getting me, you’re getting me agitated now. I’m ready. We’re ready to go. Okay. So I think in ca case, clear, like it’s okay, so, so Flint, you’re an engineer, you’re a smart guy, you buy a duplex, you know, and, and you like, this is a heavy lift.

[00:24:31] I can’t imagine doing it 50 more times. And you open this awareness to like, Hey, there are even more advanced strategies and ways that I can diversify sources of income. If anybody’s having that thought right now, like, I don’t have time for this. I don’t know how to do this. Like, it sounds interesting, but I’m shutting the podcast off now.

[00:24:51] ’cause you know, good luck. I, I got, I got, got work to do. I gotta go do another stress analysis on a, a, a door hatch. So what, what’s your experience for your own journey or how do you help others now to recognize, look, it’s not a, a mountain that’s as high as you might think. 

[00:25:07] Flint Jamison: Yeah. So the reason I went this way is because, I, I realized the amount of gains and the investments can potentially be lower risk, high reward.

[00:25:18] We do not offer a, like I said, we, we do, at the basics of what we do is fix and flip apartment buildings. They cost a lot of money. They take a team of people, so the team of people are the general partners, and we bring investors alongside with us to help with the down payment. We buy it, we flip it, we sell it.

[00:25:39] We don’t go into a deal. If it shows less than 15%, 15 to 20% average annual returns, that’s normal. In the last few years when things were hot, people were normally getting 35% returns like that, that blows people’s minds and they think, oh, that’s obviously a scam, but it’s not. It’s just a different asset class.

[00:25:58] We’re, we’re dealing with tangible assets. We’re dealing with things that are, are this people live in. I mean, it’s, it’s the basic human need of shelter. It’s not, you know, I’m investing in Tesla. People don’t need Tesla. So, 

[00:26:15] Zach White: yeah. What, what was your gateway into learning about this? Like, I’m, I’m curious that moment where you went from the residential into commercial and like that learning curve and how that became part of your world.

[00:26:27] Flint Jamison: Yeah, so it started out with podcasts. There’s, there’s thousands of podcasts out there. And here’s the thing, and I do want to point this, the, the two, two different paths out. There’s being a limited partner, which is the passive investor, where you don’t have enough time, you love your job, but you wanna get your money out of the stock market and invested in a tangible asset.

[00:26:45] You can be a limited partner. You can go learn from podcasts, you can learn from me, my website, wherever you want to go. There are books you can learn so you can invest without having to worry about tenants, termites, and toilets. If you want to take the path I took where I’m like, no way, man. I wanna be a general partner and make this my full-time job.

[00:27:07] There’s, you gotta go get yourself educated, you gotta start networking. There’s, there’s a totally different path. 

[00:27:12] Zach White: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. No, I appreciate the clarity there. And just in terms of, Hey, am I qualified If, if somebody you know, Hey, Zach, Zach White wants to be a limited partner, I’d love to diversify, have different streams of income in my life, what does that take?

[00:27:28] Is it, you know, just a minimum buy-in? Do I need to be an accredited investor? Do I need to know what the heck’s going on here? Yes. What are the 

[00:27:36] Flint Jamison: criteria? That’s a great question. So yeah, sometimes we do have offerings that are credited. Investor only. That means you have to have a million dollar net worth, not including your house or a $200,000 of income.

[00:27:47] 300 if you’re married. Now, there’s another type of, it’s called a 5 0 6 B, where we can bring in sophisticated investors, and this is where most engineers would qualify. You get on a conversation with me, uh, normally I don’t accept anyone who has a hundred thousand dollars, less than a hundred thousand dollars salary.

[00:28:05] You gotta have some sort of savings and you gotta be smart. You gotta understand what you’re getting into. So that’s part of the educational process I bring people through. From that you can get in. You don’t have to have that million dollar net worth. Um, the minimum investment here is $50,000. Typically, it’s $50,000.

[00:28:22] Some, some deals are higher than that, but, uh, you, you compare that with the people that want to go buy a single family home and run it on their own, you, you’re gonna need more than $50,000. So this is a great way to just say, Hey, I’m getting in on a, on a large asset, like economies of scale and a professional team, and just let it ride.

[00:28:43] Zach White: Yeah, I love that. So it’s fun. ’cause I mean, I’ve got like two more hours of questions. We don’t have that kind of time today, but really in the spirit of just kind of opening our eyes to what’s possible here, I. Is there, you know, someone who might fit. Let’s just pretend I’m, you know, Zach White before I left my engineering career.

[00:29:01] So, you know, I’m making, um, high six figures in terms of my income. I got annual bonuses that I need to decide what I want to throw it at. I’ve never done this before. Um, and I decide to start doing this. Mm-hmm. What would the success story. Look like over, you know, a decade, let’s say, if I started making the decision now to put some percentage of my net worth into these kinds of assets, is there anybody you’ve worked with or just in your own experience, what that can look like for someone?

[00:29:30] Flint Jamison: Yeah, I, I think the easiest part is if you invest in a given deal, we shoot for doubling your money in five to seven years, if not three. Um, It all depends on the economy. We’re driven by the economy and we make smart decisions based on when the right time to sell is. But on average, every five years, you will double your money.

[00:29:51] So if you can put $50,000 in, you get, uh, $50,000 back throughout that, that life, you’ll get your original investment back tax free. ’cause that’s not a taxable event. We’re just giving your money back. The proceeds of both cashflow and at the profits.

[00:30:13] Just, you can do the math on your own if you wanna invest more. Now, where things get really fun is if we do cash out refis midway through, like, we’ll give you 75% of your money back and then we’re gonna write the deal out until the right time to sell. You can reinvest that money, so, so it’s basically like starting a financial freedom snowball at first $50,000.

[00:30:32] You get the snowball going, and if you can split it with a cash out refi, and then you get two snowballs going and then you reinvest and all of a sudden things blow up pretty quick. Yeah. 

[00:30:41] Zach White: So before we wrap, let’s, let’s get outta the specifics again and, and just kind of take this general principle. And I know like your heart and your passion, of course, your specific work that you do now is incredibly exciting.

[00:30:54] But it’s also just to help people recognize kind of the, the trap that they may be in and to think differently, to take uncommon action if they want to get uncommon results. So what are, what are the main. The principles or the takeaways that you just want everybody to know, like, look in your financial freedom and future, these are really important things, and if you’re not doing them, it’s time to start asking some new questions.

[00:31:17] What would you say are the key things everybody needs to pay attention to? Um, 

[00:31:23] Flint Jamison: for one, know that there’s a whole world of things out there that the wealthier doing that you can do. You don’t have to be this ultra millionaire in order to gain access to what the wealthy you’re doing. So study what the wealthy you’re doing.

[00:31:35] I think that’s one of the, the best. Um, and then the second thing I like doing a little controversial, ’cause it took me a while to get my head through this, but start thinking about is your 4 0 1 k worth it? ’cause if you start actually looking out there, and I have a lot of good arguments, but I, we don’t need to go down this rabbit hole.

[00:31:56] Your 4 0 1 K may not be worth it. 

[00:32:00] Zach White: Woo. Hold on. We got, yeah, I know we’ve have time for the whole rabbit hole, but yeah, I’m gonna plant that 

[00:32:04] Flint Jamison: seed, but I, I just want people to start questioning because that is yet again, another societal norm that’s been driven by financial institutions. If you look at the father of the 4 0 1 k, he regrets creating the 4 0 1 K.

[00:32:17] So if that doesn’t tell you enough. 

[00:32:19] Zach White: Hmm. Interesting. Okay. So Flint, if somebody is immediately triggered by that question and wants to start their rabbit hole investigation, where would they begin? I 

[00:32:30] Flint Jamison: think, to be honest, I’m gonna call out a, there’s a guy, he, he calls himself the anti financial advisor now.

[00:32:36] His name is Chris Miles. He’s got a great YouTube channel. If you just type Chris Miles 4 0 1 k, you’ll find some really great videos for that specific thing. He’s got a lot of great content just to challenge what, how we’re normally investing. The other thing is a book. Killing Sacred Cows by Derek Gunderson.

[00:32:54] Zach White: Ooh, love that book. Love that book. Okay, so, alright, good places. Cool. Thank you for that. So, so notice and study that the wealthy behave differently than everyone else. Go pay attention to that. Ask yourself the question is the 4 0 1 k worth it? Do your homework on that. Anything else? Just things everybody needs to know or be considering when it comes to your financial freedom and financial future.

[00:33:18] No, I think, 

[00:33:19] Flint Jamison: uh, I. The one thing, this is more of a mindset thing to me, is we as engineers love to, to be skeptical about everything, which in aerospace is, is super healthy. Uh, but then we suffer with analysis paralysis and I have learned I am probably four years behind where I could be because I didn’t take action soon enough, you start learning about something, you’re never gonna be an expert at everything, so don’t try to be.

[00:33:48] Let’s just start taking action. 

[00:33:53] Zach White: Flint, you’re speaking my language, man. I love that. And I’ll just add on to that, the skepticism, the analysis paralysis this, it’s in the same category, but the The fear of the unknown. The craving of certainty. Looking for that 100% answer the right answer before we do anything.

[00:34:16] I’ve had so many. The leaders that I’ve spoken to where the answer is mathematically obvious on a decision, but because there’s a shred of doubt, yes. They don’t move. You know, the classic example of this, I, you know, had a conversation with someone the other day who was unfortunately laid off from Amazon.

[00:34:39] They were making a huge salary there, you know, multiple six figure base, multiple six figures of bonuses. They’d been like, uh, let off. It’s been probably four or five months ago now. I forget exactly how long. So they’ve already lost all of that income in those four or five months writing out their severance.

[00:34:54] You know, now they’re running out of money, which is hard to believe when they make that much money. Right? Yeah. They’re still like in this month to month lifestyle. Crazy. Okay, well I’m looking at, hey, here’s what we can do to help you. To get through these interviews and actually land a role and you know, here’s the investment to work with us and dah, dah, dah, and it’s like Flint.

[00:35:13] It really came down to if I could help this person get a job one week faster than them doing it on their own, which they already had five months of evidence that doing it on their own wasn’t working. And I have a hundred or 200 or 300 clients that I could point to that it does work for. And it’s like, I’ll need to help you one week and you get a hundred percent r o i two weeks and I double your money three weeks.

[00:35:36] I like is, but there was this fear. Well, but what if I invest with you now that I’m running outta money and it doesn’t work? Right? And it’s like, oh my goodness. Like wow. And that’s the kind of mindset. So for engineers, just hearing what Flint said and paying attention, it’s like, Don’t let those patterns that make you good at your job hold you back from what you want in your life.

[00:36:00] I think that’s super important. Flint. Where can someone get to know you and your work? If this is an area they know they wanna focus, they’re curious to learn more, especially around your genius in commercial real estate, but just investing outside the 4 0 1 K in general, where can people connect with what you’re up to?

[00:36:17] Yeah. 

[00:36:17] Flint Jamison: I think it’s easiest if people just want to go to LinkedIn. And I’m slash Flint Jameson, and I, I do a ton of content there. You can learn, you can interact, you can engage with me, and if you wanna take things to the next step, I, I’m right there to, to 

[00:36:32] Zach White: talk to. Awesome. Well, For the same reason a lot of engineers come to Zach White for career coaching.

[00:36:40] Because I am an engineer, I really do encourage every happy engineer out there listening, if getting into these spaces interests you, absolutely go connect with Flint, follow his work, check out what he’s doing because he’s been there. He is done that 20 years in the field. He knows exactly the way we think, the way we act, and he can answer those, you know, questions that maybe only an engineer would ask.

[00:37:01] So, so definitely encourage everyone. To go check that out. And, um, again, take action. Go learn. Don’t, don’t, uh, don’t let the old way or those paradigms get in the way. Flint, I appreciate your time so much. I’m curious where you’ll take us here because you know, from being an engineering leader yourself now as an investor coaching, all these things have in common questions, lead the answers follow.

[00:37:28] And if we want better financial answers, if we want better career answers, if we want better life answers. We need to start asking better questions. So what would be the question you would lead the happy engineer with today? 

[00:37:42] Flint Jamison: I think you need to do a little soul searching on how you want to live your life.

[00:37:48] So think about how do I want to design my life? Live your life by design. You can work your butt off when you’re young. Tons of overtime. That’s not sustainable. You get a family, you wanna start traveling. You don’t wanna live the grind your whole life. We as humans, are not meant to be living the grind. So figure out why and what you wanna do with your life and that might help you steer yourself in a different direction.

[00:38:20] Hmm. 

[00:38:21] Zach White: How do you want to design your life? Awesome Flint. Thanks for your generosity today. So good to have you here and, uh, look forward to seeing your success continue and I’ll be putting my 50 grand away to come talk to you about, chop it into a commercial real. It sounds like fun, man. Right 

[00:38:41] Flint Jamison: on. Thanks, Zach.

[00:38:42] It’s been fun. 

[00:38:46] Zach White: Cool. Groovy man. Lemme hit stop here. I, I loved this so much fun.