Walter O'Brien & Brian Goldstein's Best Strategies for Success & Smart Investing 💡 E56

Brandon Turner’s The Book on Rental Property Investing is an educational guide to effectively locating, buying, and managing real estate properties. Turner identifies the major pitfalls new investors encounter, and he suggests how to profitably overcome these challenges by working smarter, not harder.

Turner is a real estate investor with hundreds of income-earning properties. He’s also a bestselling author and a former host of Bigger Pockets, a real estate investment podcast. In this guide, we’ll cover Turner’s detailed approach to each stage of the rental property investment process, as well as explore overarching strategies to help new investors think professionally about their portfolios. In our commentary, we’ll provide further advice on various elements of the rental property investment process, such as handling paperwork and securing a good agent.

Your Money or Your Life guides you through 9 steps to reach financial independence—not having to work for money. Unlike other personal finance books, this book is about more than budgeting. Rather, it’s about changing your entire relationship with money and, consequently, living a more meaningful life. You’ll learn to think of money as “life energy”—the time and energy you dedicate to paid work—and use this new mindset to align your spending habits with your values, purpose, and dreams.

You don’t have to choose between saving money and enjoying your life. Transforming how you think about money is the key to having both the life you want and the money to achieve and maintain it. In the 9-step program, you’ll learn to pay down your debt, generate passive income, simplify your life, and retire early.

From moguls like Donald Trump to HGTV house-flippers, countless people have invested in real estate to build their wealth and pursue financial freedom. In Buy, Rehab, Rent, Refinance, Repeat, real estate investor David M. Greene explains how to use the buy, rehab, rent, refinance, repeat (BRRRR) method to develop a portfolio of investment rental properties that produce consistent, passive income. The keys to this approach are finding a property below market value, paying full price for the purchase and home improvements up front, and recouping your investment by refinancing after renovating.

In this guide, we’ll describe Greene’s tips for executing each step of the BRRRR method and compare his strategies to other methods. We’ll also provide additional information and key context for using Greene’s advice effectively.

Jack Canfield struck gold as a co-author of the best-selling Chicken Soup for the Soul book series, but it took years for him to achieve success. In The Success Principles, he details 67 principles to help anyone achieve their goals and dreams, based on his study and interviews with hundreds of successful people. The basic formula for success is to identify what you want, know that you deserve to have it, and use the book’s principles to get you there.

The book's Principles include taking responsibility for your life, setting goals and visualizing success, facing your fears, forgiving others so you can move forward, asking for and graciously receiving feedback, and appreciating your successes.

If you’re looking to break away from your current work arrangement and start doing something that you’re passionate about, consider starting your own microbusiness, a business run by one person. Where you once needed to have a fair amount of funding to get started, Chris Guillebeau suggests you can now do so for as little as $100.

In The $100 Startup, Guillebeau breaks down the process of starting your own business. He covers everything from finding your target audience to creating a development plan, explaining how you can find success without loaning a cent from the bank.

Austin Kleon has risen to fame with his trilogy of books about creativity in our digital culture: Steal Like an Artist, Show Your Work!, and Keep Going, which address how you can succeed at your creative endeavors and how you can promote yourself effectively.

In Show Your Work!, Kleon argues that the best way to promote what you do is to publicly share it throughout your whole process, from the earliest phases to the finished product. This allows you to focus on honing your skills while making yourself available to be discovered.

In this guide, we’ve organized Kleon’s ideas into five themes:

1. Why you should share your work all the way through your process
2. How to share your creative process
3. How to deal with online attention
4. How to make money off your creative work
5. How to persevere

Along the way we’ll consider other views of these topics, including perspectives on how you can overcome perfectionism and how you can handle criticism.

You have powerful beliefs that affect what you want in life and whether you get it. In Mindset, psychologist and researcher Carol S. Dweck argues that the way you think determines the course of your life, starting as early as your preschool years.

You learn one of two mindsets from your parents, teachers, and coaches: that personal qualities such as intelligence and ability are innate and unchangeable (the fixed mindset) or that you and others can change and grow (the growth mindset). Understanding and adjusting your mindset can change your career, relationships, the way you raise your children, and your overall life satisfaction.

In this guide, we explore Dweck’s mindset theory, most notably the nature vs. nurture debate. We connect her ideas with other self-help books to further explore the damage a fixed mindset causes and the benefits of a growth mindset. Finally, we link to practical tools and techniques to help you learn how to overcome a fixed mindset and embrace taking chances and making mistakes.

In The Art of Learning, chess prodigy and tai chi World Champion Josh Waitzkin argues that a passionate commitment to growth leads to both competitive success and a fulfilling life. He explains what he learned in becoming the U.S. Junior Chess Champion as well as World Champion in Tai Chi Chuan Push Hands, arguing that excellence comes from unwavering focus, tenacious training, and creative self-actualization.

Waitzkin builds from basic to advanced strategies for both the psychological and technical sides of skill-building, showing that your growth as a competitor parallels your growth as an individual. In our guide, we’ll explain how to build any skill from the bottom up, from mastering the basic elements to developing high-level competitive tactics. We’ll also clarify and expand Waitzkin’s ideas with other perspectives on learning, from The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle, Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed, and others.

Though it takes time and tenacity to excel, Waitzkin’s lessons will improve your approach to learning and help you find fulfillment in mastery.

Dive into a compelling exploration of human potential with "Huberman Lab," where renowned psychologist Dr. Adam Grant joins host Andrew Huberman to uncover the intricate dance between procrastination, creativity, and motivation. From combating the negative emotions that lead to procrastination to synchronizing peak productivity with your circadian rhythm, this episode is a masterclass in enhancing personal effectiveness. Grant's distinguished perspective, coupled with Huberman's expertise in neuroscience, offers unconventional wisdom and practical strategies for balancing professional growth, personal happiness, and cognitive mastery.

Listeners will be treated to a multifaceted dialogue that bridges the gap between neuroscience and psychology, providing insights into fostering resilience, embracing imperfections, and surpassing biases and distractions that hinder progress. As Grant and Huberman delve into decision-making, effective communication, and the role of language in science, they emerge with poignant lessons on navigating social media’s impact on professional success and maintaining self-worth. This episode goes beyond the discussion, emphasizing the role of "Huberman Lab" in building a connected community around education and well-being, making it an enlightening resource for anyone looking to unlock their potential and discover their unique abilities.

Minimalism offers a formula for how to live a meaningful life by first getting rid of clutter (like excess stuff and debt) and then focusing on five key areas: your health, relationships, passions, growth, and contributing to others.

The authors Millburn and Nicodemus achieved the American dream of corporate success and conspicuous consumption, but it left them unhappy, exhausted, and deeply in debt. They quit their jobs, re-examined their lives, and started the popular website TheMinimalists.com. In this book, they explain how anyone can follow their path of self-examination and how to make small daily changes to achieve a clutter-free, debt-free, and fulfilling life.

Immerse yourself in the 204th episode of "2 Bears, 1 Cave," where acclaimed comedians Tom Segura and Bert Kreischer navigate through an eclectic array of topics. From fascinating anecdotes of their encounters with notable figures in the music industry to humorous conjectures about pop icons such as Taylor Swift, they journey through the convoluted landscape of pop culture with rib-ticking dialogues and expansive debates about creative and commercial aspects within the entertainment sector.

In the second part of the podcast, Segura and Kreischer explore more personal narratives, such as their sporting and culinary experiences, and delve into discussions around gambling ventures. As they keep the humor flowing with their unique product endorsements and imagined dialogues, the duo balances the fun with socially-conscious dialogues, including a profound debate about the merits and complexities of philanthropy and personal instances of generosity and regret. Engaging and thought-provoking in equal measure, this podcast episode promises a rollercoaster ride of emotions.