How do you define your self-worth? What does having an “extraordinary life” mean to you? In this episode, Hoan Thai shares his personal journey of escaping the 9-to-5 and getting into real estate to be able to live the extraordinary life he wants. Hoan discusses the reality of the working class, the intentions of people in the real estate business, the definition of an extraordinary life, and more! Tune in to our conversation with Hoan now and learn how you, too, can realize your self-worth and live the extraordinary life you want!

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Hoan Thai: Escape Your 9-To-5 And Live An Extraordinary Life With Real Estate

We are here with Hoan Thai. What is going on?

What’s up, Chris? How’s it going?

It’s going well. Thanks so much for taking the time and jumping on the show. Hoan is a Philadelphia-based real estate investor. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering and a Master’s Degree in Financial Engineering. He’s invested in real estate for many years. In his business, he focuses on buying cashflowing properties, issuing hard money loans, providing real estate coaching, and creating infinite banking life insurance policies. Break it down. What don’t you do? Should I have started there?

I don’t have a job.

That’s interesting and that’s what we’re going to talk about, a little bit about what you do. When I say all those things and your first response is, “I don’t have a job,” that’s counterintuitive to almost what anyone would think when you lay out all of those things like investing in real estate, hard money loans, and coaching. Tell me about that.

Many years ago, I became a real estate investor because  I was trying to figure out what to do with my life and I hated my job. I had degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Financial Engineering and the career that I had at Corporate America sucked because it didn’t align with what I liked. It didn’t align with my personality.

I’ve been telling people for years now that I’ve been able to escape my 9:00 to 5:00. It’s okay if you hate your job. It’s okay if you got your degrees in whatever you got and now you’re not going to be using it because so many people are like, “I’m going to waste my degree.” It’s like, “So what? Would you rather waste a degree or waste your life?” I try to give people permission. Not that I’m the one to give people permission or I’m in any realm of authority to give people permission but I try to set the example that it’s okay.

When enough people do it, then other people will do it. It only takes that one loan nut to start the movement. I wanted to be that person for other people because I didn’t have an example for myself. Now I’m free. I’m doing whatever it is I want. I want it to become free because I hated my job. In order to be free, I was like, “Instead of getting another job,” which is me jumping out of the pan into the fire, I needed to figure out how to build a business but every time I build a business, it sucked. I didn’t have a good roadmap. I didn’t have a blueprint. It didn’t work out.

It wasn’t until I read the book Rich Dad Poor Dad that it taught me about passive income. It taught me about buying assets and using other people’s money. I was like, “That’s what I missed out on.” I didn’t have that roadmap but a clear exit strategy of how I’m going to be profitable year after year. Now I was like, “I’m going to be a real estate investor. That’s how I’m going to escape my 9:00 to 5:00.”

It took me two years to figure out how to become a real estate investor. Now, I’m a “full-time” real estate investor. I use full-time in quotes because I’m not spending a lot of time doing it. You buy a property and you let the property do its thing. I buy the property, I rent it out, the property manager manages it, and that’s it. If I need to interject, it’s only for a couple of minutes, every once in a while. It’s nowhere near a full-time job.

Not a 9:00 to 5:00.

Not at all. It’s not even close. What’s cool is that if you do the right deal, you can make your whole salary in one deal in terms of equity, or if you’re selling the property, in terms of profit. The cashflow with enough properties can replace your job completely without you having to trade your time for it. It was the perfect thing. When I started doing real estate myself, other people would ask me, “Hoan, how do you do this? How do you invest in real estate?” That’s how I got into the coaching thing because it was organic.

It wasn’t like I set out to be a coach. People came to me looking for a how-to guide and so I started teaching people how to become real estate investors. When people learned how to become real estate investors and learned how to use other people’s money, they needed the money. They would come to me and say, “Hoan, time for a loan.” I was like, “Here you go,” and then I started issuing hard money loans. I learned about infinite banking using whole life policies. I was like, “This is another way for people, once they start making money, to hide a whole bunch of money in a whole life policy to protect their money, protect their family, and still be able to access their money to do real estate investing.”

I was like, “Let me tack that on.” Now I have this vertically integrated business where I’m still not working a lot, to be honest. People come for certain things. Either somebody’s bringing me a deal, looking for a loan, looking to learn from me, or somebody has a whole bunch of money and they want to get a whole life policy. I put it all together and deliver this value and service to them and voila. That’s how I make my money and my living. It doesn’t require that much time.

I love that it all has that vertical stack together. It’s very aligned and allows you to leverage the time that you invest because it’s all within that same vertical. That’s key. One of the things I want to talk about is what you do. When we get into the show, we unpack a lot of the business aspect. Before we go too far down that road, it’s important to say that if somebody’s reading this because that’s a scary thing.

You’re like, “I’m at my job. My job sucks. I’m miserable. It’s draining.” Maybe you went to four years of school and you got your degree. Maybe you went more than four years of school, you’ve got an advanced degree, and you’re like, “I’m going to waste that.” You and I have had some offline conversations prior to this about being able to make decisions, our mindset, and how we’re wired.

We had a little joke about your name and how to pronounce it a certain way. You told me how to pronounce it with a product that I do every day, which is a loan for mortgages. Yet I had in my head this preconceived notion of how I expected your name to go. I couldn’t even get my brain to make that connection, which was funny right before the show. For anyone that’s reading, how did you have the courage or what did it take for you to make that mindset shift that, “I’m either going to ‘waste a degree or waste my life?’” Did you have to take it that deep to say, “It’s one or the other, or was it a process?

Let’s talk about that joke real quick or what happened before we got on the call. A lot of people pronounce my name in all different ways. I’ll get like Ho-an, Han, and Hon and everything but Hoan. My name for those reading is spelled HOAN. I said to Chris, “Remove the H and replace that H with an L. What do you get?” He said, “Lon.” I said, “Lon? That’s what you get, LOAN is Lon?” It’s because initially, he thought my name was Hon and I said, “Check that out. You’re so anchored to the fact that you thought my name was Hon, that you can’t even pronounce loan correctly, even though that’s what you do for business.”

You still said Lon. It’s crazy and our brains get stuck that way. When we have an idea, we believe it’s true because our brains came up with it. It’s as simple as that. Just because we thought it, we think it’s true then we continue that thought throughout our life. If people have this idea that escaping a 9:00 to 5:00 is dangerous, then they’re going to have confirmation bias.

 

Their brain is going to find all of these reasons why it is dangerous and why they should never escape their 9:00 to 5:00. They’re going to lose their money, go bankrupt, get a divorce, be lonely, go homeless, and live under a bridge. The worst-case scenario has always crossed their brain because again, confirmation bias. They’re looking for arguments that support their initial idea that escaping their 9:00 to 5:00 is risky.

For me, what I thought was risky was staying at a job that I hated and wasting my whole entire life there. It’s like, “You wasted two degrees, Hoan.” No, I didn’t. I got them and they served their purpose. Is the only reason to have a degree to have a job? Is that true? If so, then maybe you believe that you wasted it. If you don’t believe that there are more purposes for a degree, then did you waste your life? No. I made a bunch of great connections. I learned how to interact with people. I networked a lot. I learned about different software and whatnot.

I learned how to write reports professionally and I still carry those skills now. I maybe don’t use Trigonometry, Calculus II, Differential Equations, or Fluid Dynamics that I learned in college in my day-to-day but I still have all of the other things that I gained. It wasn’t necessarily a waste. If people are stuck on that, in several years, they’re going to have a rude awakening when they realize, “I can’t believe I let the degree dictate my life. Who’s in control here?”

You got to make sure that when you’re thinking about your life, you have to be very proactive. You have to not argue with yourself. I’ll tell people, “You can be a real estate investor.” They’ll say, “I can’t.” I can bring up 57 different examples of people in worse situations than them and they’ll still argue with me that they can’t do it.

What are they arguing for? Are they arguing to be right or do they want to argue for a better life? They’re arguing to be right, even though it hurts them. If I tell you, “You can do it,” and you’re telling yourself you can’t and you’re telling me you can’t, do you want to win that argument? We fight for that and it’s because our brains created this story and this identity. We will fight tooth and nail to make it true because it’s worse to be wrong about something. I would rather be wrong.

When our brains create this story and identity, we will fight tooth and nail to make it true because it's worse to be wrong about something. Click To Tweet

That’s a distinction. I had the same realization in various aspects of things that I do. It is okay to be wrong and it’s so freeing to say, “You don’t always have to be right and life doesn’t always have to be certain.” It’s draining to look for certainty and the outcome in everything that you do. As you said, the brains are wired.

If you take it back to like caveman, cavewoman time, we’re wired for survival. The brain’s wired to protect us. If we feel like this is a scary thing, our brain’s going to run the story and collect all the information to tell you, “This is scary. Don’t do it. I’m here to protect you.” It’s like your brain is almost running a game on you. It’s trying to protect you but it’s doing you a disservice when it comes to fear and those things because of the way that it’s wired.

The problem is there are multiple facets to your brain and there are different mechanisms that process your thoughts. The one that says, “This thing is scary. Don’t do it,” goes against your prefrontal cortex, which realizes that things may be scary but not necessarily dangerous. Your caveman brain or something like that was worried about the saber-tooth tiger. That one only has scary equals dangerous.

 

It doesn’t have that more advanced technology that can differentiate between scary and dangerous. Talk to somebody who is paycheck to paycheck, who’s working at a job, that barely makes ends meet, and that have no savings. If an emergency came up, they couldn’t afford $400 for an emergency. There was a study that said 80% of Americans don’t have $400 in case of an emergency. Talk to that person and tell them what they’re doing is dangerous. You’re depending 100% on this job that barely makes ends meet.

They will argue with you, “What you’re doing, Hoan, where you’re making millions of dollars in real estate, is dangerous.” It’s like, “One of us can pay for a $400 mistake and one of us can’t.” Which one’s the most dangerous one? People don’t want to be wrong and try not to make people wrong. People don’t want to go against the identity that they created. For a lot of people, the job that they work is their identity. Even if it’s hurting them, they’ll still fight for it. Even if it doesn’t serve them anymore, they still fight for it.

You do that study. 80% of people can’t afford a $400 emergency yet we all stay there. It’s because of the mindset and the mentality that what you’re doing is the safe and right thing to do. the reality is that it is putting you in that dangerous position. I love that. Early on, as you were going through your journey, going through college and engineering, and all of those things, did you have an interest in real estate? How did this come about?

No. I did not want to invest in real estate whatsoever. Back in 2008, a buddy of mine was like, “You got to invest in real estate. It’s the best thing since sliced bread.” I’m like, “It’s so boring. It’s so stupid. It’s not exciting. Who cares? Why would anybody want to do that?” It wasn’t until 2009 when I read the book Rich Dad Poor Dad, which showed me all the benefits of investing in real estate and put it in such a way that allowed it to reframe in my brain. That’s when I got interested. To this day, I still tell people, “I don’t like real estate.” If you’re reading this and you don’t have a passion for real estate, fantastic. Welcome to the Club because I don’t either. I still don’t.

I have zero interest in it. As I was getting my Engineering degree, I still had zero interest in it. I only invest in real estate for the money. There’s no passion in it whatsoever. I don’t like it at all. I do it because the system works. There are processes and procedures that make it work. If you go to the bank and you say, “I got this business that I want to start up. I want to sell little cameras,” they’re going to say, “Give me a large business plan. Show me that it works. Show me proof that it works,” and all that stuff.

They may or may not give me the money. It’s a maybe that they’re going to give me the money. If I go to the bank for a real estate project, I’m like, “I got this rental property. Here’s the NOI. Here’s my ability to cover your debt service. Here’s all this stuff,” they’re like, “Here you go. Here’s the money.” It’s so much easier. Why would I choose to have this uphill battle when I can simply pick real estate? I pick real estate and keep buying properties over and over using other people’s money. That business plan works all day long for me.

 

Again, I’m not doing real estate for the passion. I’m doing it for the money. Real estate has a business plan, which allows me to make the money without trading a lot of time for it. That’s the most important thing there. If I created this store that sold cameras and did it real small mom-and-pop style, then I would be at that store either working the cash register, stocking the shelves, or whatever. If it wasn’t a mom-and-pop anymore but at the biggest level, let’s say I took it public and all that stuff, there were many levels of management in between, I now have to manage all of these people. That still sucks.

I don’t want to deal with that either because I have friends in different businesses that have lots of employees. They’re telling me how their managers quit. One is afraid that if their COO quits, they’re going to have to go back to doing whatever the COO did. At this point, they may not know what the COO does or only know 50% of it. That can scramble a business. In real estate, there are property managers that can handle things. There are contractors galore that can handle things.

For the properties that I do self-manage, I do it over a text message. A tenant might say, “My kitchen sink is leaking.” I go, “Send me a picture.” They send a picture and I send that picture to my plumber. I give the plumber the phone number to the tenant. The plumber schedules with the tenant a time to come by, brings the tools, fixes the thing, and then I send him payment through Venmo.

I can do that while in bed. I can do that while on the beach. I can do that while on an airplane, on the runway, or whatever. I can handle that from anywhere. That’s what’s cool. That’s why I do real estate. It’s not because I love it. It’s because the business plan aligns with the lifestyle that I want to live. That’s the more important thing. I had a conversation with another friend of mine. I was telling him that adults and especially business people become deteriorated children as adults. We forget to play because if you think about it, people don’t typically start investing in real estate or do business for the sake of doing the business or the real estate.

It’s not that they want to be a real estate investor. They want to have the money to have the freedom to go do what they want. Let’s say, for example, I wanted to snowboard. I would say something like, “I want to get rich so that I can go snowboarding around the world.” As we grow in our business and start making the money, we sometimes put aside the snowboarding part. Eventually, our words begin to change and instead of going, “I want to be rich to go snowboarding around the world,” it goes, “I want to be rich.”

We forget the fill in the blank part. All we can focus on is making more money on top of more money and for what? It’s because we recondition our brain to want to be rich to make the money for money’s sake. That is the wrong thing. I’ve tuned in to a bunch of your shows, Chris. I don’t align with a lot of your other guests. I know them, too. I know them personally and I don’t align with them because all they talk about is, “You got to hustle, grind, work so hard, and this and that.”

I look at their lives and I’m like, “I don’t like your life at all. I don’t like your life.” I love you as a person, as a friend but I don’t like your life because you forgotten why you are in business and why you’re working so hard. It’s not, “I’m going to get rich to go snowboarding around the world.” It’s, “I’m going to get rich.” They forget that the money was a tool to live the life that they wanted.

Now they’re in a loop of getting more money. It doesn’t serve them. That ties into one of the things that you put your buyer that you sent over and I love this. One of your core values is that your self-worth is not tied to your net worth. I love that. Let’s unpack that a little because a couple of minutes ago, we’re saying, “I don’t even like real estate. I’m in it for the money.” Truly, you’ve shared this information with me and says, “I’m in it for the money but my self-worth is not tied to my net worth.”

There are many layers to the things that I say typically. It’s like, “I do it for the money,” but then I didn’t elaborate what’s the money for. The money is to pay the bills and buy the things that I want, go on vacations, and spend time with the people that I love. I realized that people aren’t going to be around forever and they’re not going to be at their stage forever. I’m not even going to be at my stage of life forever because there are three real stages of your life.

There are your go-go years, your slow-go years, and your no-go years. I’m in my go-go years and I’m going to be in my go-go years for another 10 years or 20 years or something like that but then eventually, I’m going to get to my slow-go years. I won’t be able to do the things that I love to do now no matter how much money I have in the future. I don’t want to mess that up. I’m all about living the life that I want now while I still have the ability to enjoy it. If I only focus on making more money because of how other people might see me, then I might work too hard and avoid doing the things that I wanted to do in the first place and the things that I wanted to do.

If I forget, if I go too far down the rabbit hole of entrepreneurship and making money and investing in all of that stuff, then all I look at is, “I want to be rich,” not, “I want to be rich so that I can go snowboard around the world,” or whatever. If I only look at that, then now I’m going, “My whole purpose in life is to make more money to be more rich.” It’s like that’s my purpose, is that my self-worth?

Is my value tied to how much money I’ve made, versus I want to be rich so that I don’t have to be tied to a desk at a 9:00 to 5:00 job and give away all of my good years to this company? I want to be rich so that I can have the free time to go hang out with whomever I want when I want. As long as I still remember why I did it in the first place, then I don’t tie my value to my net worth. My self-worth is not related to my net worth and that allows me to become a real human being again.

Your self-worth is not related to your net worth. That allows us to become a real human being again. Click To Tweet

Sometimes, I find that entrepreneurs walk around with their chest out and shoulders back and like, “I’m the man,” simply because they have a lot of money, not because they have a lot of interesting characteristics. They’ve almost forgotten to be a human being and now they’re all about making a ton of money. I like making a ton of money. Don’t get me wrong. I do enjoy that still but I don’t ever want to forget why because money is not the end goal.

It’s a byproduct. It’s a necessary means to get to the end.

The end is the end. The money is the tool. It’s the bridge to afford the end. That’s the thing.

I love that and that’s part of why I started this show. It’s is the acronym that I shared with you in the emails, Foundations Under Extraordinary Lives. Many times in life, that gets lost. Who you are and what makes up the person gets thrown out the window to Hoan the Real Estate Investor, Chris the Mortgage Guy, or Sally the Realtor. Is it really? That’s it? Your whole entire identity is tied to what you do?

For me, I love meeting people. That’s why I started the show. I love hearing these stories because that’s where I get my energy. What fuels me is to hear people’s journey and the experiences. I find it such a shame that as a society, we get lost into holding the real estate investor, Chris the Mortgage Guy, and the bigger you get a lot of times, the bigger that label is. You’re then the only the mortgage person because you are the most successful mortgage person, realtor, or banker. It gets lost even more. I love your analogy. You forget all the experiences in life and the relationships that you’re supposed to have.

As you said, the time that we have in the go-years is very limited when you think about that, and we don’t even know how limited. We could think and say, “I got twenty years of my go-years left.” It could be tomorrow. I love that you focus on living life and journey along the way. What has that done for you in your life, making that change to having the freedom? Tell me a day in the life of Hoan. What do you do?

One of the things I’m most proud of, interestingly enough, is to have created a life where I don’t have to wake up with an alarm. You don’t understand how beautiful that is. For those reading, if you don’t currently do it, you’re like, “What’s the big deal?” Imagine being in control of your life that you’re like, “This is my day. Whatever I want to do, I get to do and nobody gets to tell me otherwise.”

It’s those simple things. It doesn’t have to be a big thing because if I said something like, “Chris, every morning, I wake up and I go on my private jet. I fly around the world.” Eventually, even that gets old. These big grandiose things are not what makes life good. It’s appreciating the small things because that’s what you do most of your life. Even the richest person is just the regular person who puts his PJs on at night and watches Netflix.

These big, grandiose things are not really what makes life good’ it's actually appreciating the really small things because that's what you do most of your life. Click To Tweet

At the end of the day, they are still human and we got to remember that. We are still humans underneath all of it with all the money and everything. It’s just me appreciating the little things of not having to wake up with an alarm clock, not having to go to bed at any particular time, being able to be with my wife day in and day out, and not having to do anything. That’s the cool thing and I get to do that. Now, do I do work from time to time? Sure, because I do coaching.

I coach my students because people want to become real estate investors. They want to learn how to escape their 9:00 to 5:00. I spend a lot of time with people. In terms of real estate deals, people send me things. I have to analyze them, then I got to go raise the money. I go buy the thing and get my contractors to fix the thing up. They give it to the property manager so that she can go lease it up, collect the money, and make sure things are going well.

I still have things that I have to do from time to time but I’m in control of my life most of the time. Here’s the other cool thing, I took my dad to go to New Hampshire. For those reading, I’m in Philadelphia. We flew to New Hampshire so that I could have his knees injected with stem cells, which is pretty cool because he has bad knees. I was able to book a trip like one week. It wasn’t a long-planned out thing. It was like, “We’re going to go do this stem cell thing for your knee next week.” He’s like, “Okay.”

To be able to have booked the trip, paid for the trip, and spent the time with my dad to go have him get the stem cell stuff for his knees so that he doesn’t have to get knee surgery, that’s a beautiful thing. Anytime anybody needs me within my family, “What are you doing? Can you come out for this? Can you come out for that? Can you help me with this? Can you help me with that?” it’s being able to say yes. Now some of you guys might hear that and say like, “I don’t want to do that.”

If you don’t want to do that, what if they were gone? What if they were killed? Would you then want to do it? Would you then want to spend all your time with them? It’s being able to say yes to those things. Even if I don’t feel like it, I’m going to do it anyway, because those are the things. They seem like nothing now until you can’t have them anymore. That is why this was so important to figure out how to be free and all that stuff because you realize that the little things were the big things.

The little phone calls, “Hoan, can you help me with this?” from your parents or something. You may be exhausted and drained. You’re like, “No.” As you said, the day you don’t have the privilege and the opportunity to get that call anymore because your parents aren’t here, then you look back and you say, “I wish I would’ve got my ass up that day. I was tired and didn’t feel like doing that.”

Your thing with the Foundation Underlying Extraordinary Lives, that, to me, is the extraordinary life. It’s not this like crazy life where you’re skydiving every single week. It’s fun and I’m an adrenaline junkie, so like I will skydive. I will ride my mountain bike through steep downhill courses and do all the crazy things. That’s just adrenaline. That’s the real-life. It’s an extraordinary life. Chris, let me ask you a question. In terms of loans, doing 100 loans a year, is that a lot or a little? I don’t know your business. Is that a lot?

I’d say in the middle.

500 loans a year.

It would be a lot.

If you did 500 loans in a year, you’d be pretty stoked. You’d be like, “I did 500 loans. It’s crazy.” The question would be, “Was that an extraordinary life?” I would argue no. Imagine tombstone, Chris dies 2023 in 500 loans. It’s not an extraordinary life. What I was saying about tuning in to your show and learning from other people talking about business, grind and hustle, and build the biggest, baddest business. Here’s the thing. It’s aligning with their identity where maybe that identity is equal to their self-worth.

 

Now you got to read to more episodes. There’s no way you read that many episodes.

I’ve read that many.

This is the opposite. You might have read the wrong episode. This is the opposite. What you’ve described is what FUEL is. Extraordinary life is not this jumping out of airplanes, I’ve got the biggest, baddest house or car. This extraordinary life is what you described is being able to live life on your terms. That’s by all means. Life with me is not doing 500 loans. How do I not do 500 loans but get the money that I did 500 loans and spend time with my family? The most important thing to me is the experiences and the time I have with my wife and two daughters. Somehow, I blinked and my oldest is a senior. She’s looking at college.

We’re looking at colleges. She’s got a couple of college acceptance letters. I walk around my house and all I can think about now is the experience that’s not going to exist next time. We’re doing this at this time. My daughter’s not going to be here. She’s going to be in college. This room in our home is going to be empty. Every minute I’m like, “How do I maximize on this?”

This is within the next year. It’s going to be a different experience. I’m going to have a room that she comes to Christmas break and spring break and that’s it. Even then, she’s going to be like, “Dad, I’m home for spring break. I want to go see this friend and that friend.” She’s not like, “I’m home for spring break. What are we doing all week, Dad? Let’s hang out.” It’s about the experiences and living life.

I have to warn people that when you guys create a business, make sure that business serves you and not you serve it because too many people create a business where they are the servant. They serve the business to the detriment of the rest of their life, to the relationships that they have, to their health, to everything, and including the fun that we are talking about and the play that people forget to have.

When you create a business, make sure that the business serves you and not you serving it. Click To Tweet

Everything else takes a backseat to that business that does not serve them. They serve it. Create that business that serves you, allows you, and empowers you to do all of the things that lead to a good life, which is hanging out with your daughter, waking up, doing whatever you want, spending time with your parents, going on vacations, and snowboarding around the world if you want.

That’s the key. It’s creating the business that serves you. If somebody is interested, they’re reading this, and maybe they’re right where you were when you were making that decision to jump into real estate, saying, “I’m at this 9:00 to 5:00 and thinking about making a change. I need somebody to talk to or to connect with,” would you be okay with having somebody reach out to you? I know you do the coaching. How could somebody connect with you if they’re looking to make a change or maybe they’re invested in real estate but it’s not serving them the way they think it should be?

There are a lot of ways that people can follow me. They can check out all of my socials. Hoan Zone is all of the handles for everything or they can email me at Hoan@HoanZone.com. They can check my website, HoanZone.com. There are a lot of different ways and I put out a lot of content on my social media platforms talking about all kinds of things, not just investing but the mindset and the philosophy of life.

Remember folks, we are not doing this for the money. We are doing it for the money so that we can afford the things we want to do. Getting rich is not the goal. Getting rich so that we can enjoy life is the goal. People forget about that second part of enjoying life because they think about the money that they’re going to make.

Reach out if you have questions about this and think about it. Sometimes I follow people on social media, and the information you’re putting out that people can consume is enough to turn that light bulb on.

I try to be an example. I try to post a lot about my lifestyle on Facebook. I share a lot of things that I’m going through day to day and giving people different perspectives of things. It’s funny that rich, powerful people say they read my stuff and they’re like, “That resonates with me.” Sometimes, it’s easy to forget that these rich, powerful people will network and everything. They’re just regular people at the end of the day. They have regular human problems like the rest of us.

When you can put something in perspective and you can have them see that life is better than what they have it as, then it sings to them. They go, “There’s a glimmer of hope. There’s even better than what I already have.” Again, when you chase all of the money at the cost of everything else, you’re probably going to have a pretty terrible life. When they focus back on having a great life, then their perspective of life changes. They, all of a sudden, are hopeful now that they can create that life that they always wanted. Even though they already have all of the money that they could ever want or need, there are other aspects that they need to work on.

I’m sure both of us can attest to meeting people with all the money they could possibly want that are the most miserable or the most unfulfilled people you’ve ever met.

There are a lot of them.

Thanks so much for taking the time and sharing your story and all these insights. Hopefully, we’ve inspired some people to explore where they are and what’s serving them in their life and make sure that they’re living life to the fullest and they’re maximizing it. For people that are reading, what’s one book that you’ve read that somebody could pick up that would make an impact after they finish on their life?

Die With Zero by Bill Perkins. It changed how I looked at money and everything else. It was incredible. That book took what I always felt and knew and put it into words. It profoundly impacted me. This is something else because it’s a book for people who aren’t looking to make more money or necessarily need to make more money. It’s not about people who are struggling with money. This is a book about for people who already have money and to die with zero.

I’ll give you guys a little bit of the premise but in society now, we’re always told to save for a rainy day or save for tomorrow. When is that tomorrow? When do you ever spend it? You save it. In order to save it, you need to make it. In order to make it, you need to trade your time and energy for it. You’re trading your time and energy to make money to then save it but money’s made to be spent. When do you spend it? If society’s constantly telling you to save for a rainy day, when do you spend it?

This is a message more for people again, who already make money, who have money, and who are pretty responsible with money but also, forget to enjoy that money. There are plenty of broke people who spend all kinds of money. That’s not who this book is intended for. Also, I’m going to assume that the person reading this episode is not that person either. The person reading his episode is the person who probably already has money, looking to make more money. This book will hit them right between the eyes. It’s going to be like, “Oh my gosh.”

Die was zero. Pick it up and check it out. I have not heard of that one, so I’m going to check it out.

Everybody says, Rich Dad Poor Dad.

That one’s been around for a bit. Think and Grow Rich and that one. It’s a great book. Thanks again so much for jumping on the show. For anybody reading, if you got something out of this, share this on iTunes. Give us a five-star rating, share it with a friend, and if you want to connect, connect with Hoan. If you have questions in real estate, hard money, or any of the stuff that we talked about, make sure you connect with him. He’s a wealth of knowledge. Follow him on social media and on that note, Hoan, we’re out. Thanks for joining us.

I’m Hoan Thai, let’s multiply.

 

Important Links

• Hoan Thai – LinkedIn
• Rich Dad Poor Dad
• Hoan@hoanzone.com
• HoanZone.com
• Die With Zero
• https://www.YouTube.com/HoanZone
• iTunes

 

About Hoan Thai

Hoan is a Philadelphia-based real estate investor with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and a master’s degree in financial engineering. He’s invested in real estate for the last 11 years. In his business he focuses on buying cash-flowing properties, issuing hard money loans, providing real estate investing coaching, and creating infinite banking life insurance policies.

Despite the real estate success Hoan has accomplished the thing Hoan is proudest of is realizing his self worth is not tied to his net worth.

 

Tags: 9 To 5, business, Identity, Real Estate, Self-worth, The Extraordinary Life