We also have a Syndication School series about the “How To’s” of apartment syndications and be sure to download your FREE document by visiting SyndicationSchool.com. Thank you for listening and I will talk to you tomorrow.
Click Comprehensive Real Estate Data for more info on PropStream
TRANSCRIPTION
Theo Hicks: Hello Best Ever listeners and welcome to the best real estate investing advice ever show. I’m Theo Hicks and today, I’m back with Travis Watts for the Actively Passive Show. We got the show titled down, and it’s the Actively Passive Investing show. So Travis, how you doing?
Travis Watts: I’m doing great. You messed up the title on the first episode.
Theo Hicks: What did I say?
Travis Watts: I don’t know. Actively Passive – that’s hard to say, but I think it’s a great title. So excited to finally have a name and a theme to this, even though going away from the theme today on our topic, I think.
Theo Hicks: A little bit, but we’ll connect it back.
Travis Watts: Yeah, alright.
Theo Hicks: We’re gonna start off by discussing the article that Travis wrote about celery juice. I really like how it starts out because he says, “What’s a celery juice have to do with real estate?” Well Travis, what’s the celery juice have to do with real estate? Let us know.
Travis Watts: And then the next line says, “Well, really nothing”. [laughter] So I guess we could take it from there. So let’s back up a second. So the reason that I wrote this particular blog is – for those who read my blogs and content, I’m a big advocate for going out there in the world, finding the experts, and finding a multitude of them, whatever we’re talking about, whether this is multifamily or active or passive investing or whatever, and what I’m trying to do is jump inside the brains of these folks, and then find the commonalities, and then extract those commonalities, and then form an opinion or a philosophy around something. So when it comes to health, I’m obviously no medical professional, no doctor here, but really, this is my wife’s research topic for the most part. I’m the finance guy and she’s the health advocate, but what we’ve done over the years is find all these health gurus, so to speak, and find the commonalities and what they say folks can do to health hack, if you will, find a shortcut into health, in a sense.
So over the years, we’ve done juicing, we’ve done water fasts, we’ve done smoothies, we’ve been on raw vegan diets, we’ve done all of this crazy stuff, and exercise routines is a whole other story… But one thing that’s really stood out lately is finding out, what I would call, the proper way to digest, if you will, celery juice straight. So I’ve found a lot of health benefits to that, not just on paper and by research studies in science, but just in my own body, in our own lives. So I just want to take the quickest, easiest, simplest thing that folks can do to find that health hack. So I put a quote in there to answer your question, Theo; I think is at the end. “If we don’t have our health, then what use is our wealth?” I mean, obviously, we can do some things with wealth, but as far as being self-centered, not a whole lot.
So that was my purpose of writing it, is at the end of the day, what’s really more important? We talk all the time about investing and passive income and active stuff, but really, if you don’t have your health, what use is any of that anyhow?
Theo Hicks: Yeah, that’s true. Thanks for sharing that. So do you think that it’s a step further in that? Because when I hear that quote, I say, “Well, first you need to be healthy, and then you can become wealthy,” they’re not necessarily — is it required to be healthy? It’s more like, “Hey if you’re unhealthy, what’s the point?” Do you think that being healthy is actually beneficial towards being wealthy, or you think it’s just the prerequisite just because of this quote – If you’re sick, then you’re not going to be able to enjoy the wealth. Does that make sense?
Travis Watts: Yeah, exactly. So you think about the process of building wealth or aka becoming wealthy… Let’s assume that the person we’re talking about is not just going to inherit their wealth; this is somebody starting from scratch and building up. It takes a lot of work, we all know that. You’re gonna have to network and find mentors, you’re gonna have to read books, you’re gonna have to study… Well, all of this stuff takes your time and energy, so what you’re looking to do is maximize those resources to give you the energy to push forward and make that happen. So yes, I would argue– well, not argue; I would agree that health comes first, and as you feel good and you’ve got the energy and the capacity, you can go out there and much more efficiently, build wealth and do fix and flips and do whatever you’re going to do out there to do your thing. So, absolutely.
Theo Hicks: One thing I was thinking about when I knew we were gonna do this topic is — I used to be in amazing shape. I became obsessive over working out, and I did this for about a year and a half; it was through CrossFit. And one thing I noticed is that it is possible to take your health too seriously. Let me give an example. A lot of people that I worked out with, working out was their centerpiece, their entire existence. So they’d work out and that’d be the highlight and the main thing that they did all the time, as opposed to using working out– using being healthy as a springboard to something else. So I have a note here of it. It does give you, as you mentioned, discipline, I can be very disciplined to work out, but it is possible to take it too far, like I did, where I was spending four hours every single day in the gym. I went to work, I worked out, and then that’s how I did it for a year and a half. So it is possible to overkill, which is why I really like this simple idea. It sure is possible to overkill a diet too, but this is just one really fast, simple way to right away improve your health.
Travis Watts: Absolutely, and for those who read these guru health hackers out there, Tim Ferrisses or even the Tony Robbins, they’re so into trying to take the four hour gym time down to a 30-minute segment, and maybe do that three times a week and get the same results. Sometimes that’s possible, sometimes it’s not; it depends on what we’re talking about. But the idea is who really wants to go spend the rest of their life in a gym just for the sake of staying healthy?
So we’ve got two sides of the coin and you brought it up beautifully there that you’ve got the physical side in the gym and the weightlifting and the exercise, and then there’s the diet. So we focused most of our attention on the diet piece, and I’ll tell you an example of going overboard. Please, nobody do this that’s listening. We started with just a simple smoothie, one that tasted great, which is called Sugar. So like fruit smoothies. And then we migrated our way into 100% vegetable smoothies, which tastes pretty awful in general. And from there, we thought, “Hey, if this already tastes like crap, let’s start researching the best possible things that we could put in a smoothie,” and we got carried away with this. We were putting four or five garlic cloves and papaya seeds and all these weird supplement things, and it’ll gag you; it’ll make you throw up.
Anyway, we were in the middle of that, and I went to pick my dad up from the airport, and I was about two weeks into doing these smoothies, and I get in the car and we’re driving, he’s like, “You smell garlic?” I said, “What?” He said, “I smell garlic,” and my body was just radiating garlic, but I was so immune to it, I didn’t even notice… Anyway, we took it too far. So yeah, do a smoothie or some juice, but come on.
Theo Hicks: That’s funny. So one secret for the garlic – because I used to garlic smoothies too, and surprisingly, the one fruit that I’ve came across that mask the taste of garlic when you’re eating it – because it is really gross – is pears. So if you want to make a smoothie with garlic and get the benefits of the garlic, if you do a pear and garlic smoothie, it’ll take– it just feels like nothing, which is surprising. They sort of cancel each other out; at least it did for me. But something else I think you talked about last week maybe — or I know I was interviewing someone else last week on the podcast who mentioned it, so maybe it was her. But I was asking her questions about morning routines and various different ways to improve your mindset, which you consider being part of your health as well… And she mentioned that when you’re first starting something or when you’re trying to figure out what’s the best morning routine, what’s the best workout routine, when you’re doing it, don’t tell yourself, “I’m going to do this for a year. I’m gonna do this forever,” but tell yourself, “I’m gonna test this out for a week, two weeks a month.”
So reading your blog post, all the various things you talked about, you mentioned that “I tried it for a little bit, I experimented it, and then I analyze the results, and sometimes it didn’t work. Sometimes, it did work, but it sucked. It was horrible, I didn’t like it, so I’m not doing it anymore.” I think that’s something important, too. You don’t want to start, for example, doing the celery juice – don’t tell yourself that you’re going to do it every single day for the rest of your life, because you’re probably not going to start if it’s too overwhelming of a task.
Travis Watts: Health is tricky, too. Everybody’s body is different. There’s some folks who could just, say, eat fruit all day and they would thrive, and there’s others who would feel sick and weak. So you should never just say, “I’m gonna do 12 months of eating fruit all day,” and then three days in, you’re on your deathbed. I mean, you gotta– we’re usually doing experiments, anything from three days probably being the minimum, to maybe, three months being the maximum, and depending on what we’re talking about… Because we can all persevere. We’ve got a little self-discipline, a little willpower, we can push through, but you want to be safe, too. Obviously, you wouldn’t want to do a three-month water fast. That might be catastrophic for you.
So to your point, it’s just any goal setting. Isn’t this just like goal setting 101, to go from scratch and say, “I’m gonna be a billionaire.” How about you shoot for a millionaire first, and then you can step up from there? But it’s a little overwhelming to try to go 0 to 100. So yeah, I love that; great point.
Theo Hicks: Yeah, especially when it comes to health, you’ve got the standard, traditional New Year’s resolution curse, where every single person on the planet is in the gym in January, and then they’re gone by February, because they set that goal of “I’m going to lose 200 pounds in 2020” or whatever.
Something else we got out here is that we’ve got all of your examples, all of your adventures, you say… And one of them, it says, “Lots of exercise routines in various programs, and this is still a work in progress.” So obviously, one side of health is the eating aspect of it. The other side is the physical moving aspect of it. So do want to let us know?
Travis Watts: Yeah. I mean, just through and through with the physical side, I’ve really got nothing to share that I feel like the masses would benefit from on that side. We’ve done way more experimenting with diets and food than we have with the exercise. So what I meant by that was, we’ve done all these little online programs or these 30-day things, the orange theories of the world, all those stuff. And some are great and some are terrible, and I don’t know, I haven’t mastered that side of it. So like I said, back to the philosophy here is just picking the brains of so many people, finding the commonalities and then making it simple and efficient and effective… So I’m trying to find almost the minimum viable product for the most bang for your buck, if you will, and to me, that’s what the celery juice has been. But I really don’t have an example on the physical side. You might possibly have something to share on that, but yeah, I don’t.
Theo Hicks: Yeah, I’ve got some notes here. So obviously, as Travis mentioned, there’s one thing people need to realize. I think it’s very personal, and what works for one person is not gonna work for someone else, especially where you’re starting at. If you haven’t even worked out in 20 years, it’s gonna be a lot different than someone who hasn’t worked out in a year or hasn’t worked out in a month.
One starting point thing, a little quick hack that– I’m not necessarily sure how much this will help you long-term health-wise, but a quick way to get a boost of energy that’s also, in some sort, beneficial to your health – and this is something I know Joe does and he got it from Tony Robbins, and it’s that mini trampoline. Have you ever seen that?
Theo Hicks: Yeah. We haven’t tried it. I know exactly what you’re talking about, but no haven’t yet.
Theo Hicks: I have one in my closet. I haven’t used it in a while, but essentially, if you buy this mini trampoline– I think Tony Robbins has one on his website, but it’s really expensive. You can go to Amazon and get one for $10 maybe, and literally whenever you’re feeling tired, around 1:0 or [2:00]… You guys get coffee, which I don’t see a problem with that, but a quick way to get a very fast, natural energy boost is to bounce on the trampoline for a minute. You’re not really going to be tired afterwards, but something about it, I’m not sure what the science is behind it, but it gives you a quick energy boost. That was one thing I wanted to mention.
Travis Watts: Yeah. And speaking of Tony Robbins, he’s a huge advocate of physiology. So just something you can do if you don’t have one of those trampolines too, that I do sometimes just to get my blood going again maybe after lunch, are just jumping jacks. You can do that anywhere. So simple. Do 60 seconds and all of a sudden, your heart rate’s up. It’s like the equivalent of going on a quick jog. Things like that can be effective. Obviously, that’s not the one thing you do to become healthy, but it gets your body back in check.
One more thing that just came to mind as you said that is I remember reading in — I think it was Men’s Health or something, years ago. Kenny Chesney, the country singer, when he goes on tour — he’s touring half the year in stadiums on a bus, and then half the year, he spends on his boat in the Virgin Islands. So he goes one extreme to the other. He goes from not drinking alcohol and exercising all the time and touring and just crazy amounts of energy, to sitting on a boat, eating whatever he wants to eat and just drinking all day, that kind of stuff. So pretty big swings. But something he does that was cool is this push up routine. So it’s real simple; I’ve been doing it since COVID because gyms were all closed, but it’s ten push-ups, and then ten seconds off as a break, nine push-ups, nine seconds off as a break, then 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and that’s 55 push-ups in a short amount of time, and that’s another thing that just gets your body going real quick. Again, you’re not going to become a bodybuilder, but it’s free, it’s cheap, and it’s easy. So stuff like that is what I’m all about are these little hacks here and there that you can implement, that are easy to do and effective.
Theo Hicks: Yeah, actually another one I had on my list was another really easy way to get a full-body workout in every single day, similar to what Travis just said, but you add in other movements as well. So using Travis’s example, what you would do– because again, the whole purpose of this is to do it quickly. So let’s say in the morning, right when you wake up, you do push-ups, you do 10, 9, 8, 7, down to 1, and then maybe before you eat lunch, you do the same thing, but for sit-ups, or some variation of an ab workout, and then before you have dinner, you do air squats. So you got abs, you got legs, upper body. It’ll take you, I don’t know, ten minutes total all day to do that, and do that every single day for a month and you’re going to see a difference in tone.
Now, one of the biggest things if your goal is to actually lose weight– so we’re talking about energy, and if you want to lose weight, the best way to lose weight I found is just running. I haven’t ran in a long time. I hit a 5k a month ago and I couldn’t walk for a week; so that’s depending on where you’re at right now. You don’t want to just go out and run 5k like I did, like a crazy man. You can start with walking. You can start with going on a 15-minute walk. It’s a lot easier to do that right now, especially since everyone’s working from home. So if you have a 15-minute call, just go and walk for your call. And then eventually, the next step from there would be to do some interval training. So let’s say you’ve got your 15-minute block of walking. Next time, you’re gonna walk for a minute, and you’re gonna jog for a minute; a very slow jog. So you alternate that. So 15 minutes at 7 to 8 times, and then eventually you can increase the speed of your jogging interval, until ultimately you’re sprinting. It might take a while, but ultimately, you’re sprinting, if you can.
There’s one investor, I think, his name is Jason Yarusi. I’m not sure if you follow him on Facebook, but he, at least a few months ago, was running hundreds of miles a week. So you can do that obviously and you will lose a ton of weight that way, but a faster way to do that is to do the intervals and just sprint, just like me. I don’t like running at all; I despise running, but sprinting, running for one minute, I know it’s only gonna be over in a minute, for a maximum of 15 minutes. So if you want to lose weight, that’s a really good way to start.
Travis Watts: Yeah exactly, and that’s setting up what we talked about earlier, setting small steps. I’m going to run for 60 seconds. I’m not going to run for 60 minutes, because it’s so much easier to give up on obviously, and not see the light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak. So yeah, absolutely. So you couple that stuff and all these topics with some diet hacks, and then all in all, I think most people will see some pretty rapid results surprisingly.
Theo Hicks: And then let’s see. I’ve got a couple of other things here as well I wanted to mention. So from there, something else you can do — because for me, after I got done doing my whole obsessive CrossFit thing and working out for three to four hours every single day, I was completely burnt out and I did not do a single workout for a long, long time like multiple years. And it was really, really hard to get back into it. So the people who are listening to this saying, “I’ve tried multiple times to get back into working out and I just can’t do it”, and this might not work for everyone, so I’m just gonna go to the top first and work my way down. So I have a personal trainer now, and the purpose of the personal trainer, besides them making the workout routine for me, is the accountability aspect of it. So every week, I have to send him my results. So if I send him half the results or I miss a few days, he definitely lets me know. So the whole purpose there is the accountability. So maybe you don’t have the money or don’t know a personal trainer or are not ready for a personal trainer, so the idea is to get someone to hold you accountable. This can be a friend, or a significant other, maybe you can start doing a workout together. Something we mentioned today – maybe you can just start doing the celery juice hack together and have them be your accountability partner. So you text them at the end of the day or end of the week and say, “Hey, here’s what I did this week. What did you do this week?” If they didn’t what they’re supposed to do, you can make fun of them. They can make fun of you. So use that as motivation to get started.
Honestly, there’s lesser personal trainers that you can do, some app on your phone or a P90X type of video thing, which definitely helps, but if you don’t have the accountability factors, you need to add in a level of accountability.
Travis Watts: Yeah, that’s true. And I can attest to that, that P90X; that was one of our experiences. This stuff dates back as far as Tae Bo, VHS tapes. We’ve tried it obviously, that was before we were married. It was a long time ago, I was a kid, but I’ve always been into those ideas. I was the kid who bought the ab belt. I was the kid that got the ab roller.
Theo Hicks: The one that electrocutes you? Is it that one?
Travis Watts: Yeah, it electrocutes you. Spoiler alert.
Theo Hicks: Was that in the ’80s that thing where it was like — it’d rub their backs, you seem to be talking about…?
Travis Watts: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. It’s a big conveyor belt making you shimmy. So goofy.
Theo Hicks: That pretty funny. We’ve trying to hack our health for a while. It seems like we’re making progress, right?
Travis Watts: Well, that’s the point of this episode, what I was trying to entail is that my wife and I’ve gone through a lot of these trial and error things, but there’s a few that have a lot more benefit to them than a lot of the others. So if you don’t want to go waste your next decade, getting ab belts, then we can share some tidbits that actually are effective and in a lot of cases they’re free to or cheap.
Theo Hicks: Yeah. And then the last tip that I had on here was actually diet, and this is– not only is it free, but it actually makes you money. You’ll make money by doing this and it’s really fast, and that’s not eating out. I’m talking to myself here as well. Not only does it cost money to continuously– especially now work from home, doing UberEats or DoorDash constantly, but I feel horrible afterwards. I feel absolutely horrible after eating out. So again, two benefits there, and it’s really fast. Just in the morning, instead of ordering Starbucks, just have coffee at home and make two eggs and put them on a piece of toast instead.
Travis Watts: Yeah, the way I look at that, too– this is the way I frame that, in my mind, which is true to me, is… You can have the short-term satisfaction of, say, the fast food or the alcohol or whatever it is, something bad for you, and it feels great in the moment, but then you’re suffering so much longer than that with the repercussions of that choice, and if you’re talking about doing something healthy, like “Yeah, I don’t want to do the push-ups. I don’t want to drink the celery juice” – okay, well, a short-term trade-off for an all day effect is a lot more worthwhile. So if you can just zoom out to a 24-hour period, you start to see that a lot of this health stuff is actually a lot easier and makes a lot of sense. So that’s how I try to look at that.
Theo Hicks: For me, mine’s a little bit different. So what I’ll do is I’ll try my best to do well all week, and then Friday night is when I get to do my gorging, my UberEats, whatever I got from UberEats… And then next morning I feel horrible, and then I start it over again. That helps me. I’m not saying to do that, but it helps me.
Travis Watts: You’ve got the dinner table laid out like the Talladega Nights with the Kentucky Fried Chicken and the Pizza Hut… [laughs]
Theo Hicks: Yeah, well, I think it’s The Rock who also does that, where he’s got that famous picture of him with a bunch of pancakes decked up, and a pizza, and a big pop, and he’ll do cheat meals every once in a while. I don’t think he does it every week, but that’s the gist. I don’t think it’s 100% necessary to be perfect all the time. You just need to do it in moderation. I can’t be doing Uber Eats every single day and then not working out every single day, but at the same time, I don’t want to measure out all my food for every single meal and then go from there to the gym for five hours.
Travis Watts: Yeah, I love that philosophy too, and there’s different ratios, but I hear that 80-20. What matters is what you’re doing 80% of the time, but that 20% is flexible, and even Tony Robbins talks about it. He never deprives him permanently of anything like, “I’m never eating chocolate again. I’ll never have ice cream.” It’s like, he’ll have it, but in small limited portions here and there, not every single day after dinner, all that kind of stuff. So yeah, it certainly makes sense.
Theo Hicks: Alright Travis, is there anything else you want to say before we wrap up?
Travis Watts: Let me just explain this celery juice; we didn’t get too much into it. So we’re talking about juicing, number one. If you have only a blender, you can do it, but you’ll need one of those nut milk bags, like a strainer for the juice… And we’re talking about literally just straight celery juice. A stock of salary, ideally organic; if it’s not organic, make sure you wash it thoroughly… But just putting that through to have 16 ounces of great celery juice. No ice, no dilution, no water; don’t mix it with cucumber juice or any other fruits or veggies, and you drink that in the morning separated from food. So ideally, about an hour apart from other foods and breakfast. That gives it a chance to circulate through your body, cleanse your liver. It can reduce brain fog and acne, eczema, acid reflux, headaches, migraines, inflammation… I mean, the list goes on and on and on. In my blog, I put four links at the bottom to four completely unrelated sources where they go into the science behind it, the case studies, the true advocates behind all this stuff… And again, I’m no doctor or health expert, but check out those links, and it’s really that simple. Buy some celery stocks, 16 ounces, once per day minimum. We try to do two per day if possible, my wife and I, but it’s just crazy. And you’re talking about eating and weight loss for those looking to do that, a little bit of jogging, running cardio plus this equals a lot better results than what a lot of people try to do for weight loss… But that’s really it.
I wanted to share that because that one thing has had the biggest impact on energy and health and the things I just listed, and the list goes on and on and on. You’ll have to look it up yourself. But that’s just what I wanted to share with folks out of all these crazy adventures, as I call them. That’s one that I think everybody can do that everybody can benefit from, that’s cheap and easy and simple.
Theo Hicks: Great, Travis. Well thanks for telling us about this, thanks for joining me again today on our first ever – I’m gonna get it right – Actively Passive–
Travis Watts: Show. Podcast. I don’t know. Episode.
Theo Hicks: Actively Investing something. We’ll figure that last part out, but the Actively Passive is [unintelligible [00:27:17].09].
Travis Watts: Today was the actively portion. Next time, it’ll be the passively portion.
Theo Hicks: Exactly. So again, Travis, appreciate it. Best Ever listeners, as always, thank you for listening. Have a best ever day. Make sure you try out some of these tips and we will talk to you tomorrow.
Website disclaimer
This website, including the podcasts and other content herein, are made available by Joesta PF LLC solely for informational purposes. The information, statements, comments, views and opinions expressed in this website do not constitute and should not be construed as an offer to buy or sell any securities or to make or consider any investment or course of action. Neither Joe Fairless nor Joesta PF LLC are providing or undertaking to provide any financial, economic, legal, accounting, tax or other advice in or by virtue of this website. The information, statements, comments, views and opinions provided in this website are general in nature, and such information, statements, comments, views and opinions are not intended to be and should not be construed as the provision of investment advice by Joe Fairless or Joesta PF LLC to that listener or generally, and do not result in any listener being considered a client or customer of Joe Fairless or Joesta PF LLC.
The information, statements, comments, views, and opinions expressed or provided in this website (including by speakers who are not officers, employees, or agents of Joe Fairless or Joesta PF LLC) are not necessarily those of Joe Fairless or Joesta PF LLC, and may not be current. Neither Joe Fairless nor Joesta PF LLC make any representation or warranty as to the accuracy or completeness of any of the information, statements, comments, views or opinions contained in this website, and any liability therefor (including in respect of direct, indirect or consequential loss or damage of any kind whatsoever) is expressly disclaimed. Neither Joe Fairless nor Joesta PF LLC undertake any obligation whatsoever to provide any form of update, amendment, change or correction to any of the information, statements, comments, views or opinions set forth in this podcast.
No part of this podcast may, without Joesta PF LLC’s prior written consent, be reproduced, redistributed, published, copied or duplicated in any form, by any means.
Joe Fairless serves as director of investor relations with Ashcroft Capital, a real estate investment firm. Ashcroft Capital is not affiliated with Joesta PF LLC or this website, and is not responsible for any of the content herein.
Oral Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are provided for informational purposes only, and should not be construed as an offer to buy or sell any securities or to make or consider any investment or course of action. For more information, go to bestever show
