Chasing Financial Freedom
Chasing Financial Freedom
Ep 308 | 3 Powerful Strategies to Skyrocket Your Real Estate Success and Live an Adventurous Life
Zach Oehlman's journey from an Indiana farm to a global real estate powerhouse is inspiring. Having lived in 24 countries over the last four years, Zach now calls Medellin, Colombia, his home. This episode dives into his adventurous spirit and how his worldwide experiences have shaped his unique approach to real estate investing. Learn how Zach's passion for diverse cultures and landscapes has played a crucial role in his entrepreneurial success, and discover why he believes remote business operations are key to thriving in today's interconnected world.
We tackle the essential topic of developing crucial skill sets while staying securely employed. Drawing from a recent study, Zach shares insights on how holding onto a job can significantly enhance your chances of achieving your dreams. He generously shares his transition from a high-paying finance job to becoming a successful entrepreneur. We discuss the "cashflow quadrant" framework and emphasize the importance of purpose and inspiration in work and life. If you want to transform your career path without jumping in blindly, this is the conversation you need to hear.
As Thanksgiving approaches, Zach's adventurous spirit retakes center stage with a thrilling 13-hour motorcycle ride from Medellin to Barranquilla for a wedding. While his wife opts for a quick flight, Zach embraces the open road, embodying the same passion and determination that fuels his professional journey. We wish him a safe trip and reflect on how his love for adventure mirrors his pursuit of a fulfilling life. This episode is a compelling mix of ambition, continuous learning, and the courage to embrace the known and the unknown.
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Thanks for Listening! Follow us on Tik Tok Facebook and Instagram
Hey guys, Ryan DeMint from Chasing Financial Freedom Podcast. Hope you guys are having a great day. Today on the podcast we have Zach Ullman. His header from Podmatch, where we met, is learn and grow rich. But I wanna give just a little bit more background on Zach. So he was raised in Indiana on a farm with big dreams and an entrepreneurial spirit. Zach is a master of transformation, a seasoned valuation consultant and a visionary in real estate investing. So we've got a lot to talk about there. So, Zach, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me, Ryan.
Speaker 1:You're more than welcome. I know it's a little bit of a wait, so thank you for coming on and I know we briefly spoke before we started recording. You are in South America right now.
Speaker 2:I am in the beautiful country of Columbia, Medellin, Columbia.
Speaker 1:Nice and have you lived? Have you been? I'm assuming you've been there before, but how is it compared to living anywhere else in the world? Is it in your top five, top 10? It is my top one Wow. Okay, we're heading home run.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, so I. When COVID started, this was our first country because it was about four years ago. It was the only country that was open, so we came down here. We heard a lot of people's opinions of it and we came down here. It was nothing like I had in my mind, and so we lived here for about four months and then we traveled the world. We kept moving to place, so I've lived in about 24 countries over the last four years and we checked off my bucket list in Bali and Thailand and I was over in Bali. We were there for six months and I just got smoked by the time change because we were still running our business out of the US and I looked at my wife and I said I can't do this anymore. We need to go back to that side of the world. And she goes where do we want to go? And our favorite place was Medellin, colombia. So I've been here for a year.
Speaker 1:Are you guys? Are you permanently going to stay?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're going to buy a house here and then we're going to start a farm, so I want a farm.
Speaker 1:Nice.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:No intentions coming back to the States again.
Speaker 2:Not for living, I don't see it. No intentions coming back to the States again. Not for living, I don't see it. My wife's from Puerto Rico. So we have a house in Arizona, we have a house, a private residence, in Puerto Rico and we're going to buy some houses here and then we have some investment properties. So definitely buying investment properties in the United States. I just I love the adventure of South America. You got the Amazon, you got all of these small little villages everywhere and I love motorcycle adventure riding, and so it's perfect for down here.
Speaker 1:Nice, and I don't remember if we spoke about it. Do you have kids?
Speaker 2:We don't, so we don't have kids, and we don't have a plan to have kids either.
Speaker 1:That's an interesting way to start this podcast. That's pretty cool. So we'll have to talk a little bit more about that. But we brought you on because of your entrepreneurial background in real estate.
Speaker 2:So can you tell listeners about a little bit about yourself and we'll get into what you're doing. Yeah, so I started life on a farm in Indiana and had no intentions of doing anything other than that. And then reality set in when I graduated high school. And what am I going to do with my life? And money was always an issue. So I said you know what I'm going to master money.
Speaker 2:So I went to school for finance and business, graduated at the top of my class from IU, and that right in 2008. If you guys remember 2008, that was a perfect timing. Perfect timing. So I was competing against Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers and all these beautiful, brilliant people that had years of experience, and I just was a fresh college grad. Thought I graduated at the top of my class. But looking back, that doesn. Brilliant people that had years of experience and I just was a fresh college grad, thought I graduated at the top of my class. But looking back, that doesn't mean much when you don't have experience.
Speaker 2:And so I worked for two years for free for a real estate broker and for a down at Chicago Board of Trade. And then I got a job working for a valuation consultant, which I had no idea even what that was, and so I learned how to value illiquid, non-marketable private assets, which is a very tough industry to understand, but it has really helped me today. And then I got a job, worked for one of the best companies in the world, became a published author in the world of M&A valuation, things like that, and then I quit and started doing real estate and grew a real estate community to over a thousand people weekly calls, daily calls and became sat on a board for a real estate investing education company of 30,000 people and I spent about 15 years doing that and over the last couple of years we have transitioned to starting scaling, selling businesses and then reinvesting that money back into real estate and teaching people how to do the same.
Speaker 1:That's cool. You've gone the gamut. You've gone from I'm going to do a traditional route to all the way to something that is really non-traditional. You're outside the box, which is I like that. So there's a lot of questions to be asked. So the first question I have to ask we talked about it earlier is when you're in a foreign country, how difficult is it to do business back in the States?
Speaker 2:If you're set up, it's easy. And so the question is what the setup looked like, and so all of my staff is remote, and so I went from running. So my business model was masterminds. So we would have 200 to 300 people every Wednesday night and 50 to 120 people every Saturday. So we do a mastermind and I'd run on a big office space every Wednesday. We would have all the different I call them strategies. We'd have cash flow, the fix and flippers and the wholesalers we did. I had a distressed notes and short-term rentals, and so we would mastermind on Wednesday night and then every Saturday we'd go out to a live investment property tour and that just got totally.
Speaker 2:One week we were doing it. The next week we weren't, during COVID, and so I moved everything online via Zoom. And I was just sitting in my apartment one day in Phoenix Arizona and I looked over at my wife and I was like honey, we don't have to be here, we should travel. And that was the start of it and my coach I have a high performance coach and she really helped me do the thinking through it and we went to Hawaii for four months and that was beautiful. The challenge was it was Hawaii and I had to wake up at 4 am to do my calls, and once we got that part figured out, the biggest thing is high speed internet, making sure it's reliable internet, reliable power. Outside of that, it's just like being on Zoom from anywhere in the world.
Speaker 1:So it sounds like we're going to have a good conversation around systems and also having the right people in place. From where you're at today, it sounds like you've got a pretty solid internet connection, so that's good. So the other piece of it is you said all your people are remote. Are they like virtual assistants?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we call them virtual team members. And so I have operations managers, I have CPAs, so I've them virtual team members, and so I have operations managers, I have CPAs. So I've created a business model. It's called FOSM Finance, operation, sales and Marketing and that's how we scale businesses. And so what I do now is I used to sell a $20,000 mastermind for real estate that helped people either get into real estate or advance their real estate career, and what I saw in that was it's challenging, right, it's super challenging to start a business, super challenging to do anything new.
Speaker 2:And so what I do today is I give it all away. So I give all my education away for free, forever. We give our software away, for our finance software. We give our masterminds away. We have about three masterminds we give away. And then what I do today is I just do it for people, and so I cause.
Speaker 2:It was really stressful for me for 15 years to teach people how to do it for themselves and I just didn't want that anxiety, I didn't want that obligation, and so I just give it away now and I help people. We have entry-level masterminds from $97. So there's not like this huge $20,000 change and now this huge obligation on me to help them get somewhere. And then what I do is I work with people that can afford me and I just do it for them. And so I'm doing there. We do fractional CFO, we do bookkeeping, we do tax strategies, we do tax filings, we help them buy and sell businesses, we help them buy and sell real estate, and then we have a full service operation, sales and marketing business model that we implement using the EOS model, and so we can come in to any business service-based business and put our model and really get everything in order.
Speaker 1:Nice. So I got to ask Johnny Obvious, how do you do that remotely?
Speaker 2:the vision. So my team, like I, have everything planned out. We have a 10 year vision, we have a five year plan. We have we have everything. If you guys have ever heard of EOS Entrepreneur Operating System, we use that framework, and so what's great about this is everything we do is the same, and so I wanted the idea, like if you go to McDonald's in Thailand versus McDonald's in New York and you order a Big Mac, you're getting a Big Mac. You know what you're getting and everyone that comes through us as a client. We take them through the first phase. It's called finance. Are your books in order? What's your tax structure look like? Are you ready to actually go to the next stage? Are you making money? How are you making money? And then we take them through operations. It's very systematic. I've boiled it down to a very systematic approach process and so, as we're doing this, we just hop on Zoom. We understand people's business, we interview them, we create a strategic plan, a budget and a plan, and then we just execute on the plan.
Speaker 1:So your clients don't feel like a need that they need to be in person to be able to have that communication and connection.
Speaker 2:No, in this day and age it's a lot of the companies that I. So I do a lot of service-based companies and I have companies doing about $2 million. They're virtual assistants Another company that we have. They do virtual team members for tech companies. So all these they're all outsourced already, so it's just another day in the office for them.
Speaker 2:And the other thing is the value that I bring. So I'm you guys ever heard of a McKinsey and company, deloitte? That's the level of consulting I used to do and so I do that for service-based companies 10 million and below and so I can bring that level of planning and execution at a rate that competes with most people just doing books and taxes. And so the geographical location that most people, if they have to go in there, they're not going to have talent like I have talent. I have some beautiful talent from all over the world and because of that I can deliver at extremely, a very discounted price compared to your typical consultants that come in there. And so what I lack in physical location, I more than make up in value.
Speaker 1:I like it. It's a different approach, but also, the same time is, your value is broad. It's just. I'm going to back up and ask a loaded question, but I want to be able to have a deeper discussion. So some of our listeners are entrepreneurs, small business owners and people that are working full-time jobs. What about if they're wanting to start a business remotely? What would be three nuggets you could share with them to be able to get everything off the ground and moving forward.
Speaker 2:So this is what I've seen over the years and I fell into it myself Don't quit your job. I actually just read a study or a study yesterday said you have a 33% higher probability of succeeding if you don't quit your job and you do it on the side. Because I quit my job, I was making six figures, 27 years old, dream company had everything going for me, and I got in this mindset of, oh, a job is bad, and the reality is it wasn't. It was incredibly helpful to me. I just didn't know how to use it to get to where I wanted.
Speaker 2:And so what I tell people today is, I say develop a skillset in your job. And so mine was finance. Mine was mergers and acquisitions, doing 300-page reports and financial modeling, and I understand finance at a level that most people can't even comprehend because I used to have to build the financial models, and so I took that skill set, and so that's the cashflow quadrant. Are you familiar with that? No, so it talks about there's four different ways to make money W-2, self-employed, business owner and investor.
Speaker 2:And a lot of people want to be business owners, investors, but they don't understand what that means, and so I've broken it out into a framework, and a job is where you develop your skill set. Self-employed is where you sell the skill set that you developed yourself in. Business owner is the systematization of the selling of the skill set, and what I see right. And then investor is investing the money that you've made in either one of those, and so you, you can become an those, and so you can become an investor from job. You can become an investor from self-employed. You can become an investor from business owner.
Speaker 2:But what I see is people develop themselves in a skill set let's say finance and accounting for me, right and then we go and we jump over to real estate business and we don't know the skill set and we don't know how to sell and we don't know how to systematize, and then we're confronted with reality. And so what I would say is develop yourself in a skill set, learn to sell that skill set and then learn to systematize it, and that is the easiest way. And I would say you need to be inspired by what you do. I'm inspired every day by what I do.
Speaker 2:There's some things I don't like, guess what. You still got to do it. But if you want to live an inspired life, you got to be inspired by it. And it's as simple as context, and so you can wrap on empowering context around anything. It's like mindset, all of that. That's one of the biggest things I see that people they develop, they spend 15, 20, 30 years in developing a skillset and then they go start a quote, unquote business and they don't know how to sell and they pick some random skillset that they've not developed themselves in and that's why they fail.
Speaker 1:How do we over overcoming that one but two? Like you said, there's you, I think you. Actually I'm not'm not going to use your word, but did you say? Purpose is what you really want to have?
Speaker 2:That's a great way. Purpose, purpose, yeah, and so I have. My purpose is to empower people to live an amazing life in all aspects of their life, and in order to do that, I need to know where they're at, where they're going, what their finances are, and that's how I fulfill on that. I help them create a plan and then I help them get there. Most people, ryan, don't know what they want.
Speaker 2:They want, they want, they want 10 grand and time and I'm like okay, what are you going to spend that 10 grand on? And they just look at me in a blank stare. They're I've never had. And so I've had people outright cry Ryan, when I go, what do you want? They're like I don't know. I've never been asked that question 40, 50 year old people. They've never been asked what do you want? And that's another one of the challenges is I cannot build a map or build a plan to nowhere, like I need to know what you want. And everything we do is plans and budgets. Everything we do is a plan and a budget. And so I was like how can I create a plan and a budget when you don't even know where you want to go? And so that's a real confronting conversation for people.
Speaker 1:And it's tough because when I left corporate America after 25 years, corporate America never taught me how to be I call myself a fisherman. Never taught me how to go out and get the food, bring it in and eat. I got a paycheck every other week, got a bonus at the end of the year, got stock options and so forth. It never taught me to be a true fisherman. To where if? In the affordable housing space of all places, I sucked and I struggled and there was times where I thought I was going to lose everything. But once you got vision, purpose, passion also in there. And the other thing that I learned was corporate America never taught me how to be strong and not give up. American never taught me how to be strong and not give up. I learned how to be strong, get knocked down, get back up, and there was. It was okay to have that pity party for a moment to say, okay, I screwed up or something happened, but you get up and you learn from it and then you apply those learnings to your next, whatever you're working on. And that just allowed me to start being consistent and persistent, and those two words that I use daily is if I'm not consistently doing something and I'm not being persistent about it, I'm not going to accomplish what I'm setting myself out to do. But also, how am I going to run a business if I'm not doing the things that are needed to move it to the next level or whatever the case we're working on?
Speaker 1:And I think in this day and age and I'm going to be quiet after this is we use social and technology as crutches, for tools. They're great, but at the same time, you have to put the time and effort into them to make sure you know what you're doing, Like these viral posts, these kids that want to post something out that I'll talk to on social media, and they're like look at your channels. Let me tell you, it's been eight years that I've been doing this on social media and I'm just now starting to get traction on both my podcasts on my YouTube channels. Eight years. If you're not willing to put that time in, maybe I'm doing something wrong. Maybe it could have been shorter, but that's my learning span. That's what I've done.
Speaker 2:And people ask me it was like how long did it take you? I'm like I'm 39 years old, so it's taken me 39 years Like it. It isn't like we started one day. It's a combination of our life experiences and so, growing up on a farm that was getting developed for something that was getting developed in hard work, doing what I said integrity, learning, determination and grit.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:And then when I went to school I got developed in the actual numbers of it. When I worked at the Chicago Board of Trade and I cold called for a year straight with no sales, a year straight with no sales with no sales, a year straight with no sales, and I was probably the most socially awkward person you could ever. Ever see. I would sweat when I talked to people, I'd break out, my mind would go blank and I just I wasn't a people person and I was like, okay, I got to get developed in that Go buy another course, go buy another program, invest in myself, grow. And it's taken me from the moment I said I wanted this life travel the world, help people and make money. Those were the three mantras I've been saying since I was about 16 years old. It took me about 16 years to accomplish it, 16 years and I really didn't start seeing the quote unquote financial fruits of my labor until about five years ago.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that's when we started making really great money. And today I make enough money to do whatever I want, and that's another thing that I really stress to people. I say what is your number? And I call it your dream life number. So it's a combination of I take my clients through what's your dream day look like and how much does it cost. What's your adventure list look like and how much does it cost? And what's your just regular monthly budget? What is it and what does it cost? And then now I have a number so you know when to stop, because most people don't know when they stop and they just keep working for the sake of working and not enjoying life. I enjoy life today and I still work because I love work and I'm going motorcycle rides, I go hang out with tribes, I travel. You know I really get to enjoy that, but it's an act of creation and it's absolutely intentional.
Speaker 1:You've got to be intentional. I love that what you're saying is being intentional about what you're doing. But the hard work is where it really pays off, and I know that's an old adage I'm a little bit older than you, but you've got to put your time and effort in Doesn't mean you have to beat your head up against the wall. I like what you said about you're calling for a year with no sales, but you continue to progress yourself by taking courses or reading or whatever the case is. You put the time and effort in to to actually win. It just took longer than you thought or you felt or whatever the case is, and most people don't see it that way. If you don't, how are you supposed to be good at anything? If you don't actually learn, put the time and effort in, educate yourself. Whatever the case is, you just expect to roll up and you're going to have a $150,000 job. I don't know how many places you can get that.
Speaker 2:I had that like misconception when I first started because I didn't know what right. I didn't know because I was like, okay, hey, I understand finance. I graduated at the top of my class, I'm a hard worker and I was offering to work for free and people weren't taking me. I was like why? Today I totally get it, I totally get the liability of a new person and and it's just so. What I try to do is just give people realistic expectations and I tell people I say, if you follow me and my frameworks, there's no reason you can't live the life of your dreams in five years or less and spend the first two years developing yourself in a skill set. Still make nothing for the first two years. The first year develop yourself in the skill set. The second year develop yourself into online marketing. The third year start selling a $97 a month course. Sell two of them. I've done the numbers, two of them a month and by the end of five years you're making $10,000 a month.
Speaker 2:It's so simple when you just but. The problem is they won't stay in the game long enough.
Speaker 1:Correct. It's too painful. And that's where purpose and passion comes into play, because initially they were in the game for money, right, if it's not a purpose or passion, it's tough In the affordable housing space, workforce housing, whatever you want to call it. It sucks at times, but it's a passion because I get to help people that I truly want to help Veterans, first-time homebuyers, people that have been on section eight rental rent all their life and never thought they could buy a house.
Speaker 1:Those are all motivational factors for me that I stay in the game, which keeps me going but also keeps me wanting to do more and learn more, to push myself to the next level, because the next thing we're doing and we've been doing it for a while, but is private notes. Somebody can't buy one of our properties. We develop, we have the ability to do a private note, get it funded just like a traditional mortgage does through an underwriter, and then we can fund it in the secondary market. But then it gives these home buyers an option to be able to buy a home when they really didn't think they could, and it's somewhat game-changing for them, but also, at the same time, it's also game-changing for us, because I get to learn a whole, nother aspect of the business.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so I agree with that. I started I did it for the money when I first got it and I just I'm just like this is I'm done. This is not worth it. And I've been through so many challenges, money stolen from me I've had, I've been locked out of my entire businesses. I had a business partner that ran all the tech and I just came into one day and he goes Zach, I'm taking it all. I'm like what. I'm taking it all. I'm like what? Because he owed me a bunch of money and he held it hostage and it was just like you deal with the reality of the world and the reality of humans and the reality of lacks of integrities. A little lack of integrity could just take you down if you don't deal with it.
Speaker 2:And so what I've learned over the years I was this soft, very mild guy that let everyone walk all over him, and today I'm still learning, and I've learned to have a backbone. I've learned to stand up for myself, and I've also learned to hand over everything. I have an operations chief, a COO, that just runs everything today, and so what I've done is I've created the plan and she implements the plan, and obviously I'm still here as CEO, but she has a backbone and she doesn't let anyone walk over. She's Columbia and she's actually. She lives 15 minutes from me and she runs a tighter ship than I can ever do, and but I know that about myself, right, and so I put the right people in the right place.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you've got to do that. We're getting to the bottom of the hour here to get everything wrapped up. Couple of questions. I know you said you're giving away all of your courses and so forth, but are you working with new clients?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we take done for you clients, absolutely so. We again that's in the we start with finance, we do bookkeeping, strategic planning. What I do is I come in, I create a five-year plan because I can't and this is what I've seen, because I've hired a lot of third-party marketing and sales and all I've hired third-party everything and no one ever operates against a plan. All they try to do is, okay, let's get your ad, facebook ads going. I'm like, okay, go cool, or let's do this or let's do that. And so what I come in is I say, okay, what's your vision? And then we create a five-year plan.
Speaker 2:Right, we create a 10-year vision, a five-year plan, and then we actually break it down to three years and then one year, and then Q4, q3, q2, q1. These are the things we use, the EOS framework, these are the things you need to do. And then, if they need help with operation, sales or marketing, we have a full service business development team that do all of those. But finance and that strategic plan is everything. It tells us what we need to do and where we need to go. So if you're operating without that, you will burn out, I promise you.
Speaker 1:Best place for somebody to reach out to you if they want to connect and and work with you.
Speaker 2:Just go into my free school community, learnandgrowrichnet. I give everything away there you can schedule a free call with my team and if they, if you're ready for me, they'll put you on a call with me Absolutely free. And if they.
Speaker 1:If you're ready for me, they'll put you on a call with me, absolutely free, cool, I will put that in the show notes. So thank you, sir, for coming on. I love what you're doing. Really cool that you're all over the country, or all over the country all over the world, and you're still building a business on a daily basis and you've got passion, purpose and you're happy.
Speaker 2:Passion, purpose and profits and peace of mind. I had another T in there right. Peace of mind and peace of mind.
Speaker 1:So thank you for coming on. I hope you have a good Thanksgiving, do you? Will you celebrate Thanksgiving where you're from, where you're at today, or no?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'm actually. It's funny, we have a wedding this Saturday, so I'm going to be riding a motorcycle from Medellin, Columbia, to Barranquilla, virginia, columbia, to Barranquilla the coast. It's a 13 hour motorcycle ride. That's what I'm doing on Thanksgiving, so it's my wife is flying, it's an hour flight and so I want to ride my motorcycle, so that's a great day to ride a motorcycle.
Speaker 1:That's cool. That's awesome. I hope you have a great trip and stay safe.
Speaker 2:Thank.
