From Captive Income to Passionate Income With Brian Luebben

Adam Hill (00:04.850)
Hey everyone, welcome to flow over fear. Thanks for being here. I’m really, really glad you’re here. And I’m excited about my guest today because I know that a lot of people are gonna be able to relate to this one. He has made it to the top level of a fortune 500 company in their sales organization, he became a top producer in that position. And by all outside appearances, he had everything he had arrived. And but what he discovered upon arriving was that corporate America was just not all that it was cracked up to be. So he left, and he spent the next half year traveling the world.

And within a year, he would find financial freedom, financial and lifestyle freedom, and build a top 1% global podcast, which is an amazing podcast, by the way. Brian Lubin is an entrepreneur, a real estate investor, and host of the wildly popular The Action Academy podcast, easy for me to say, where he talks with seven, eight, and nine figure entrepreneurs about how they earn freedom in life and in business.

Adam Hill (01:04.850)
a life of abundance and adventure. Brian is on a mission to help 1 million people or more do the same thing through the Action Academy. Brian, dude, thanks for being here, man.

Brian Luebben (01:14.995)
Dude, I’m rewriting my, my bio to what you just said. That sounds way better than what I put. That was awesome. Can I just have you, can I just have you read it out? Whenever I’m making a intro, somebody will ask for an intro for me on any other podcast and I’ll just put your voice in that recording. Nah, man.

Adam Hill (01:18.710)
Yeah, I’ll send it to you. I’ll send it to you.

Adam Hill (01:28.850)
Yeah, dude, that’s that’s my next gig on fiber. I’ll just do that for a living. Yeah. Right. People’s bias. Yeah, man.

Brian Luebben (01:32.835)
Yeah, but thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me, guys. Thank you for listening. Thank you for tuning in. Adam and I are going to pour into you for the next 30 to 60 minutes, and we promise that we’re not going to waste a single one of them.

Adam Hill (01:46.070)
Yeah, oh, absolutely. And I’ve heard your podcast, which is amazing. Please, please check it out. Because you deliver so much value. I mean, just I, and this is the amazing thing. I mean, you started that doing that podcast, what, like a year ago, you’re a little over a year ago, year and a half, a year and a half ago, before you left your job, having this vision of what you wanted to become. And, and, and you just learned over that period of time to deliver so much value in that,

Brian Luebben (02:01.156)
Year and a half.

Adam Hill (02:15.950)
kind of dig into this story, because I want to get into your story, but I want to get into this passive to passionate income idea that you have. So we’re all striving for passive income, right? I mean, that income that just keeps coming in mailbox money. What is the difference between that and your passionate income?

Brian Luebben (02:22.100)
Mm-hmm.

Brian Luebben (02:29.715)
Sure. So to preface it, what is on the other side of getting everything you’ve ever wanted, right? So a lot of us think 10 steps ahead and we think that we’ve arrived, right? Over and over again, we’re like, oh man. So first you begin in this kind of corporate setting, which is what I call captive income. Captive income is this process where you are trading your time for money. So 90% of the population, right? I work hard, I make money. I work harder over time.

Adam Hill (02:36.014)
Mm-hmm.

Brian Luebben (03:00.015)
or and or you are doing a sales based profession where you have commission bonuses whatever have you that’s performance based So I work harder I get more money Then you move into passive income passive income is where you are no longer having your time Time attached to your money money’s coming in where you can be laying on the couch. You could be at the beach doing whatever This is where we’ve been for the last 20 years. Okay We how many podcasts have financial freedom in their name by hundreds

Adam Hill (03:28.770)
Right. Yeah.

Brian Luebben (03:29.695)
How many articles, how many YouTube videos can we find? How many TikTok videos? Tim Ferriss wrote the Four Hour Workweek, fantastic book for anybody that hasn’t read it, that came out in 2004. So we’re on 19 years of talking about financial freedom, traveling around the world. Here’s the kicker, people are doing it. I did it at 27 years old. So that’s the benefit, right, of having information and taking action on it, which Adam and I can get into in this episode. But here’s the kicker, you have more people than ever.

Adam Hill (03:48.714)
Yeah.

Brian Luebben (03:59.855)
as a society, as a world than we are today. We see a lot of fear mongering in the media. We see a lot of pain, uncertainty, regret, and fear. The reality is we have never been wealthier than we are today. We have assets. We have never had more information. We have more information in our pocket than the President of the United States had in the 1990s. Okay, so we all have all the tools that we need to be successful. And a lot of us have achieved quote unquote financial freedom,

Adam Hill (04:21.921)
Mm-hmm.

Brian Luebben (04:29.955)
you have enough money coming in through investments to where you no longer have to work. Your expenses are covered from your investments. So everyone’s goal in life is to go lay on a beach in Mykonos, lay on a beach in Hawaii, and just say, kick back, put their hands behind their head and say, I made it. This is it, baby, this is living. Here’s the kicker, what happens next? You’ve got a lot of life to live, buddy. Okay, you did it, congratulations, now what?

Adam Hill (04:49.613)
Right.

Adam Hill (04:55.914)
Yeah.

Brian Luebben (04:59.695)
three weeks on that beach, you’re gonna be hungover and sunburnt my friend, and you’re gonna start asking yourself, who the hell am I, who have I become, and what’s next? So that’s where I come in, because I did the thing that a lot of you guys are looking to do, and I’m 28 years old right now, and a lot of you may be 48, 58, and you’re trying to do this thing still, and a lot of people have a heck of a lot more money than I do, and I’ve got a bunch of buddies that make a hundred thousand dollars a month passively, a million dollars a month

Adam Hill (05:17.350)
Mm-hmm.

Brian Luebben (05:29.875)
I did it off of 20,000, okay, and I pulled it off. But passionate income, to wrap all this up and to punctuate it, is where you figure out how to build a business around your life, not your life around your business. What can you do where you wake up in the morning on freaking fire and do make money in revenue from that thing? Because at the end of the day, winners win. And when a winner stops winning, what happens?

Adam Hill (05:31.695)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Hill (05:43.994)
Right.

Adam Hill (05:51.750)
Mm-hmm.

Brian Luebben (06:00.275)
complete loss of ego, depression, anxiety, in a midlife crisis that can happen at any given point. That’s all that is. It’s just seeing your own mortality and having no idea of what the heck’s next. So that’s what passionate income is. And I’m on a mad dash, a mad mission. My passionate income is helping everyone else find theirs. So I’ve gone through my process over the last year and a half of trying this, trying that,

Adam Hill (06:11.413)
Yeah.

Adam Hill (06:13.875)
Yeah.

Brian Luebben (06:29.755)
my thing that fires me up in the morning. So now I enjoy this so much and it has me on fire 24 seven that I wanna help other people feel that. And another perfect real world example that I can use of this is think of Steve Irwin. Like every single person in the world when Steve Irwin died, we looked at that guy and we’re like, holy shit, I wanted his life. To wake up like that every single day to work at a zoo and work with animals. That’s what I think everyone has a passion

Adam Hill (06:43.771)
Yeah.

Adam Hill (06:50.591)
Mm-hmm.

Brian Luebben (07:00.176)
for something and an expertise and a knowledge and a love for something to that degree and I’m here to help people find it and make money from it.

Adam Hill (07:07.330)
I love that distinction because that’s so important. And that’s why I wanted to start with it was because the way you put that there, it’s like, everybody has that finish line in mind, right? That like end goal, the sitting on a beach in Mykonos, which you did. And, but thinking beyond that is usually not just, that’s not where our mind goes. It’s like, I’ll be happy when I’m sitting on a beach in Mykonos and just like bringing in all this cash. But you’re getting, so you get to that next part, which is what about that part

Brian Luebben (07:17.017)
Correct.

Brian Luebben (07:21.180)
Mm-hmm.

Brian Luebben (07:29.879)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Hill (07:37.390)
saying to ourselves, oh shit, what’s next? What am I doing? Now this has become normalized. How do I, where do I go next? I’d love to step back and look at how that materialized in your own life and look at your transformation because you started out in the corporate world. You started working for a company. Can we just walk through that first transformation that you made and see how that popped up?

Brian Luebben (07:55.495)
Mm-hmm.

Brian Luebben (08:04.015)
Absolutely. So all I did in the secret of success is to stand in the mirror in your underwear and shout affirmations for four hours a day and you’ll make it. Yeah. Yeah. So there you go, ladies and gentlemen, and then do it. Throw a cold plunge in there every Tuesday and you will, you’re off to the races bucko. Um, no, man. So there’s the, there’s a process to it, right? Um, follow your passion. I think is terrible advice. It’s the, that advice and the advice that I give in my podcast, in my messaging,

Adam Hill (08:12.170)
Okay, good. All right, we’re done, thanks. Good.

Adam Hill (08:20.272)
Excellent. Good.

Adam Hill (08:25.576)
Right.

Brian Luebben (08:34.155)
to the same end destination but in different trajectories and different paths. I believe that passion is earned, not deserved. All right? I think that there’s a process to where you need to do the appropriate measures to earn the right to live this life. It’s not a life that is going to be accessible to anyone for any reason. And if it was a life that was accessible to anyone for

Adam Hill (08:42.421)
Yeah.

Adam Hill (09:03.892)
Sure.

Brian Luebben (09:04.035)
So we wanna walk the path. It’s like, who was it? Robert Frost said, a road diverged in the woods and I took the path, you know, less taken. Like that’s what you wanna do because it’s worth it. So my long story is short and we can get into the framework is I graduated college, hopped into corporate America, did my 10,000 hours. You know, it’s like that Rocky cut scene where he’s doing the training montage and it’s like, you can’t avoid that as an entrepreneur. You can’t avoid that to get good at something. There is no cheat code. There’s no hack. There’s no shortcut.

Adam Hill (09:11.034)
Right.

Brian Luebben (09:33.995)
You need to make the cold calls. You need to do the door knocks. You need to be in front of people. So that’s what I did with the sales profession. Made it to the top of a Fortune 500. I was number eight out of 5,079 in my position. Had a trophy case full of awards. Rep of the year, rookie of the year. Quarter million dollars at 23, 24, 25. I’m on top of the world. Climbed the mountain, realized it was the wrong mountain. And I was like, uh-oh, what now? So my long story short is I started investing

Adam Hill (09:54.971)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Hill (09:58.090)
Yeah, yeah. Right.

Brian Luebben (10:04.055)
estate, we can dive into all this and dissect this, but I started investing in real estate, got a couple of properties, single family homes in Atlanta, Georgia, north in the suburbs. And that laid my foundation for me to build the rest of my life on top of you start with the unsexy stuff. And the unsexy stuff earns you the ability to start having fun. Right?

Adam Hill (10:25.470)
Good man, so glad you said that about the unsexy stuff. And sorry if I cut you off, but that is so huge because we’re just, we’re immersed with stuff like David Goggins, like running stuff and say, stay hard, you know, do all this kind of stuff. And he’s cool, man. I love David Goggins, right? I love, you know, I love that. And I mean, but really like growth achievement for 99% of us is totally unsexy. It’s just unsexy. It’s constantly, you know, going through the failure after failure to grow into that success. So I’m so glad you said that.

Brian Luebben (10:28.255)
Yeah, absolutely, no, it’s all good.

Brian Luebben (10:37.095)
They don’t know me, son!

Brian Luebben (10:48.317)
Hmm.

Brian Luebben (10:51.837)
Correct.

Adam Hill (10:54.990)
So you did the affirmations in your underwear. You jumped in the cold plunge. You bought two homes in Atlanta, Georgia, and you were done financially free. Beach of Mykonos. Ha ha ha.

Brian Luebben (10:57.395)
and I’ll see you next time.

Brian Luebben (11:04.535)
No, not at all, not at all. So here’s advice that I always give. So it’s a four-step framework, and it’s advice that I give to help people accelerate because what people tend to do is they try to passive income their way to freedom, right? And in GoBundance, we call this horizontal income because you can make money while you’re laying on the couch or laying on bed, and then you become what’s called a 100%er, where 100% of your expenses are covered by your passive income.

Adam Hill (11:24.950)
Thanks for watching!

Brian Luebben (11:33.095)
People that have a lot of money and they’re making good money, this is a very intimidating task to take on. It’s a mountain that’s very intimidating to climb. How do I replace a quarter million dollars in passive income, right? Especially in any discernible short term to mid term timeframe. And so my salary was about 70,000, 65,000, 70,000, all the rest was in commission of bonuses.

Brian Luebben (12:03.515)
first before we get in the car, before we start driving down the highway, the financial freedom, you know, interstate. What we want to do is we need to figure out where the hell we’re trying to go and nobody does that. Nobody talks about that. We talk about the vehicles, right? So we talk about Airbnb, multifamily, mobile home parks, laundromats, cash flow businesses, syndications, all these different strategies, but we don’t actually have an end destination.

So a lot of us are just kind of passive incoming our way to more passive income, to more passive income for no reason. We don’t actually know where we’re heading. So it’s the equivalent of being in a highway and you’re sitting in the car and you’re mashing the gas and you’re going 100 miles an hour until your engine starts to give out nonstop. What does your engine giving out look like? It looks like divorce. It looks like cancer. It looks like sickness. It looks like depression. It looks like anxiety. How many times are we seeing this? More often than not. I think you show me as somebody,

somebody that is healthy, without anxiety, without depression, like that person is the minority today, greatly. That’s a person that knows where the hell they’re going. Or they know like they’ve got their path. And so when they get in their vehicle and they buckle up their seatbelt and they’re like starting to mash the gas, they’ve got their GPS set, right? So that’s the first thing we’re going to do. Step one, set your GPS. What do you want your life to look like in three years? We’re going to write this out in present tense, and we’re going to say this is what a day looks like.

Adam Hill (13:09.213)
100%. Yes.

Adam Hill (13:22.914)
Right.

Brian Luebben (13:33.215)
perfect world if you had a hundred million dollars wired to your bank account. Here’s what I would do. Here’s where I would live. Here’s who I would be with. This is what my schedule looks like. This is where we’re living. For me, I was in my cubicle in corporate America and I was riding out. Man, I wake up in the morning and I look out and I see freaking the sun rising over Mykonos in the distance. I can walk out and I can feel the hot cobblestones on my feet. I had this suite, this specific suite that was $2,000 a night. I had this

Adam Hill (13:43.235)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Hill (13:53.113)
Mm-hmm.

Brian Luebben (14:03.335)
on my vision board in my office. You can get printed out at CVS or Walgreens, high quality. I had it on the lock screen of my phone for a year and a half. I said, this is where I’m gonna be. And I’m gonna wake up in the morning, I’m not gonna have shit to do. And in the afternoon, I’m gonna do my calls for whatever business I’m doing that’s remote. And that’s gonna be my life. And I’m gonna be traveling around the world full time. And mind you, this is without any real estate, without any passive income, without a remote position. I’m working in corporate America,

Adam Hill (14:12.850)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Hill (14:19.950)
Right?

Adam Hill (14:23.850)
Yeah.

Brian Luebben (14:33.375)
one hour from work and multiple hours in between appointments across the state of Georgia each and every day. Not a… that was 2019, 2018, 2018. Yeah, so five years ago. And so now I created this vision and now I’m like, all right, what do I do with this? Right? So first things first is you get to work. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. So we don’t need to think about how do we replace

Adam Hill (14:38.210)
Yeah, and so that was what timeframe is like 2019. Okay, gotcha. Okay.

Brian Luebben (15:03.095)
you just think about how do I get my first deal? So those are my first couple of deals. My first $4,000 of passive income were two podunk little properties in Atlanta, Georgia that I house hacked. I did 3%, 5% down, traditional conventional mortgages. And so no load of no money down. And I lived in one part of the houses and I rented the other rooms out, co-living.

Adam Hill (15:05.072)
Right.

Adam Hill (15:25.370)
And so that just for those who might not know what house hacking is, that’s so the house hacking is where you’re living in one side of the house, you’re renting it out or you’re doing something like that. Yeah, got it.

Brian Luebben (15:30.917)
Yep.

Brian Luebben (15:33.275)
Yep, yep. So I did that. The rents went over the mortgage and the debt service. That’s what’s called cash flow. And then you take 20 percent off the top for, you know, CAPEX, PITI, just reserves, padding your operations account. And I’m looking at sixteen hundred dollars net per property. I was like, OK, cool. That’s dang near like there’s a little bit more than that. It was about four thousand dollars. And I looked up one day and I was like, huh, this was in twenty twenty one now.

Adam Hill (15:40.350)
Thanks for watching!

Adam Hill (15:50.978)
Yeah.

Brian Luebben (16:03.195)
looked up and I was like, wow, okay, so I’ve got enough to where I’m living for free, so I don’t have to pay rent or mortgage, and now I’ve got $4,000 a month coming in. You know, push comes to shove, it’s like I’m making way more than this, but I could live, right? So that’s baseline financial independence. So this is phase two. You’re going to build your financial foundation. This is where you are going to have all of your fixed expenses covered, that’s all that matters.

Adam Hill (16:17.355)
Yeah.

Brian Luebben (16:33.495)
you want to be able to eat, so roof over your head and you can eat and you can do your normal stuff. Fix expenses covered, sweet, heck yeah. Now we’re cooking, now we can start swinging for the fences. So once that happens, then you go into phase three, which now you’re gonna pour all of your, the rest of your income, dispensable income, disposable income, on masterminds, coaches, building and producing high quality networks, communities, and income producing skills.

Adam Hill (17:02.690)
So all of your discretionary income, everything, yeah.

Brian Luebben (17:04.515)
All of it, all of it, man. So now I’m like, okay, now I could save money even easier, right? So I start pouring money into everything that I can find. Mindset coaches, masterminds, go Bundance, $10,000 a year at the time. I’m like, holy crap, how do I afford this? How do I get in this room? So now I did the math, like I remember my taxes I spent $37,000 that year on personal development. Going to the Tony Robbins seminars,

Adam Hill (17:10.614)
Right.

Adam Hill (17:20.134)
Yeah.

Brian Luebben (17:33.195)
these different groups, hiring the coaches. Man, it’s intimidating. And that was my worst performing sales year as well because then I left my job and I transferred to another job, another company that I thought would help me make even more money so I could leave even faster and buy my real estate. So I basically spent every dollar I had on personal development and coaching. But, go on.

Adam Hill (17:36.992)
Yeah.

Adam Hill (17:49.935)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Hill (17:53.850)
Yeah.

Adam Hill (17:56.210)
Now let me ask, can I, I just wanted to ask there, because when you said you mentioned, you had this vision that you created, that was step one, to getting to where you want to, but what was the drive that you wanted to get out or was the drive that you were moving towards something? Because I’ve heard both that like, there’s, yeah.

Brian Luebben (18:13.235)
That’s very important. That’s an important distinction. So you tend to get what you focus on the most, right? So most people, what they do wrong is they focus on, I hate my job, I hate my boss, I hate my life, I hate my body, I hate every day that I wake up, and I hate traffic, you know? I hate my relationship. And they think of everything that’s wrong, and then what happens is you have this thing in your brain called your reticular activating system, and it starts firing off, and you start noticing those things more and more.

Adam Hill (18:19.593)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Adam Hill (18:32.372)
Yeah.

Adam Hill (18:41.554)
Mm-hmm.

Brian Luebben (18:43.235)
on, like what you think becomes reality. So it’s very important to not escape your nine to five. You want to run towards a grander vision of where you’re heading to, right? So that’s all my mind was on, was thinking about this trip. How is it going to feel when I’m on the plane? How does it feel when I’m walking out every morning? I was making fun of the affirmations, but I visualized it every morning for a bit. It wasn’t anything sexy, five, 10 minutes. I’m just like in my head, I’m like, whoa. Like, how cool would that be?

Adam Hill (18:53.292)
Yeah.

Adam Hill (19:06.513)
Yeah.

Adam Hill (19:13.090)
Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Luebben (19:13.195)
that gonna feel, right? And so that’s a very important distinction. You don’t want to run away from something with a lot of animosity and F you in your system. You want to run towards something with a lot of grace, humility, and love in your heart. Because if we’re gonna have the universe work for us in any given way, man, you gotta you gotta be in flow by like that 50% of the name of the podcast, right? Yeah, peak state as Tony Robbins would call it. Yeah, so

Adam Hill (19:24.694)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Hill (19:32.650)
Heck yeah. Right.

Brian Luebben (19:43.475)
2021 and it’s November and I’m now coming out of a state of fear for the last six months. Now, I remember I still got this vision, but I still have no idea how I’m actually going to pull it off. And I’ve got a mindset coach and I’m talking to him about it and I’m like, man, like this is the lowest I’ve ever been. This is rock bottom for me. I was like, dude, like, I can’t figure it out. Like I’d crawled back defeated to my previous position in my previous company. And I was just like, man.

Adam Hill (19:52.938)
Hmm.

Brian Luebben (20:13.215)
chewed me up and spit me out. Now I’m back doing what I was doing before. And now I’m kind of like the prodigal, the return of the prodigal son. I was like, but now what? My ego was in pieces and I was like, so how many multifamily units do I need to get to build $15,000 of passive income so I can go do this trip around the world in five years? Right? That was the goal. My coach asked me a question that changed my life. The question is this. That’s a great goal, Brian. How would we do that in six months?

Adam Hill (20:20.535)
Yeah.

Adam Hill (20:31.990)
Mm-hmm, right.

Adam Hill (20:43.512)
Mm-hmm.

Brian Luebben (20:45.235)
I said, what? Say, well, you know, let’s play a game. If we could pull it off for six months, how would we do it? I was like, that’s impossible. Well, we can’t do that in six months. What are you talking about, dude? That’s good. I don’t even know how the hell to do that in five years. And he goes, but if you had to guess gun to your head. And I was just like, dude, you can’t make that passively. He’s like, okay, we’ll keep going. Then what? And I was like, well, I guess you could generate it, but not

Adam Hill (20:54.313)
Yeah.

Adam Hill (21:03.371)
Yeah.

Adam Hill (21:09.814)
Right.

Brian Luebben (21:15.135)
passively. And he goes, is passive income the answer?

Adam Hill (21:16.335)
Yeah.

Adam Hill (21:19.881)
Mm.

Brian Luebben (21:21.095)
I was like, holy shit. I guess not. I was like, dude, honestly, if I could just figure out how to make $15,000 extra a month while traveling, that would do it. And my coach was like, bingo, that’s our new goal. We’re asking the wrong question. Let’s stop asking, how do we create this passive income? Let’s start asking, how can we build remote, scalable income working for and with people you know, like, and trust?

Adam Hill (21:33.911)
Yeah, yeah.

Adam Hill (21:49.214)
Yeah.

Brian Luebben (21:51.215)
while you travel. And this was the beginnings of passionate income for me. And did I know how, yeah, go on.

Adam Hill (21:54.470)
That’s so fascinating. Yeah. So can you, yeah, I was gonna say, can you kind of dive into that idea a little bit more about the active continuous income that you’re kind of generating there? Because there’s some importance there that’s distinguishing it from passive income. Yeah, that might speed up the process.

Brian Luebben (22:05.537)
Yeah.

Brian Luebben (22:10.495)
Correct, because passive income is like, okay, I need to buy, you know, how many millions of dollars of real estate do you need to provide you with that much passive income? A lot, probably 20, 30 million dollars of real estate to give you that. So I was just like, what the heck, man? I’m in over my gourd here, like I can’t figure this out. So then we changed the goal, and the goal is, how do I build 15,000 in remote income? Now granted reminder to the people listening, I was not a remote position.

Adam Hill (22:19.471)
Yeah.

Adam Hill (22:27.150)
Bye.

Brian Luebben (22:40.495)
money online. I was not an influencer. I had no social media following. I was like, I don’t know, dude. But I did go to this, um, go button, it’s conference, which is mastermind group. And one of the guys there said, dude, you should start a podcast. And I was like, that sounds fun. I’m going to start a podcast. Mind you. I was not thinking about the income part. I just wanted to do it for free. So I started up the action Academy podcast and

Adam Hill (23:02.534)
Right.

Brian Luebben (23:10.535)
job and had done the thing that I’m trying to do. And I took the role of the enthusiastic beginner. So in content positioning, there’s two roles that you can play the enthusiastic beginner or the grizzled veteran. So I played the role of the enthusiastic beginner. I don’t know what I don’t know. And I’m gonna bring in smart people that do. And so that’s what I did each and every week. And it started taking off. So a couple of months deep into the podcast, we get to, I believe it was December, so like four or five months into the podcast,

Adam Hill (23:16.650)
Mm-hmm.

Brian Luebben (23:40.495)
past four months and all of a sudden I started getting these phone calls from the mastermind group that I’m in and from my mindset coach. They said, Hey man, there’s a lot of people signing up from your podcast for our thing. Uh, I was like, Oh, that’s cool. Heck yeah. I’m talking about it a lot. I was like, sweet. They’re like, do you want to be an affiliate? And I was like, huh, what’s an affiliate? And they’re like, well, you know, when somebody joins, like you get like a percentage, we’ll pay you a percentage to like advertise the thing. And I was like,

Adam Hill (23:51.055)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Hill (23:54.792)
Yeah.

Adam Hill (24:01.651)
Yeah.

Brian Luebben (24:11.055)
And so I was making 10, 15% off of like $10,000 tickets, right? And then fast forward to January. And now mind you, I need people to realize the gravity of believing in yourself. 2021, I made like the worst income I’ve ever made in my life, which for some people listening, like they may be like, okay, shut up asshole. But I made $72,000 in 2021. And I went from making a quarter. Yeah.

Adam Hill (24:14.914)
Yeah.

Adam Hill (24:29.213)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Hill (24:35.690)
Right, right. And that was after you left your job or before?

Brian Luebben (24:40.535)
I went from making a quarter million dollars a year to being on top of the world at that company. And then in 2021, a software company approached me and poached me. So they approached and poached and they said, hey, quarter million is chump change. Here, you’ll make a million. Come up to the majors. You’re already killing it. You’re knocking home runs in the minors. Come to the majors. I lasted four months of that company before quitting on a Wednesday. I was like, this is miserable. I hate this. And then I ended up crawling back to the old company halfway through the year in 2021.

Adam Hill (24:43.714)
Yeah.

Adam Hill (24:49.850)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Hill (25:00.272)
Yeah.

Adam Hill (25:03.750)
Yeah.

Brian Luebben (25:10.495)
And then I had to rebuild my pipeline. So I had no money. So when I say all my disposable income, every dollar, I wasn’t saving any money. All my money went into personal development coaching. I still kept it up. I still paid for the masterminds. I put them on credit cards if I had to because I knew it was going to freaking work. 2022 January rolls around and I start doing this affiliate thing. $22,000 from affiliates. All right. $4,000 for my real estate.

Adam Hill (25:12.850)
Yeah.

Adam Hill (25:17.992)
Right.

Adam Hill (25:27.591)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Luebben (25:40.855)
from my company because now I’m back to Wheeling and doing what I know best, right? I’m like, dude, this is like 60, $70,000 I just made. I just made as much money in the month of January the following year that I did previously that entire year. I’m like, show time, let’s rock. And I mashed the gas, baby. And so then the next month I made 70 and then the next month I made 60. And I saved up every dollar

Adam Hill (25:45.591)
Mm-hmm, right.

Adam Hill (25:54.550)
That’s incredible. That’s incredible. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Brian Luebben (26:10.675)
and I made sure that this was gonna last. And I said, you know what, eff it, I’ve got six months of runway, I’m quitting in March. And so March 17th, 2022, I put in my notice and I said, I’m outta here. And then July 6th, I hopped on my one-way flight and I traveled around the world for seven months.

Adam Hill (26:23.250)
Nice.

Adam Hill (26:27.290)
That’s incredible. And by the way, happy anniversary, because at least at the time it’s filming, we’re only a few days later. Yeah, that’s awesome, man. And so a little over a year since leaving your job, you’ve now lost all that passive income. You’ve lost everything. Everything’s going terrible, right? Is that? No way, man. I’ve seen how hard you work. Yeah.

Brian Luebben (26:30.215)
Thank you. Yeah, it’s a little over a year. Yeah.

Brian Luebben (26:42.435)
Dude, the fact that I’m not bankrupt right now is impressive. I tried my, I tried my heart. I tried my hardest, man. I really did. Uh, when I say I traveled, like people need to know, like I was not backpacking. Like it was not like, I’m not a frugal guy. Okay. Like I was like, okay, I’m spending the month in Mykonos, like spend a month in the Greek islands with my girlfriend that I was paying for at the time. Um, yeah. So two people, Mykonos Santorini. Then we went and lived in Barcelona. We lived in Europe for three months.

Adam Hill (26:54.035)
Yeah.

Adam Hill (26:56.552)
Yeah, yeah.

Adam Hill (27:04.250)
Yeah.

Brian Luebben (27:13.235)
I lived in Brazil because me and my girlfriend broke up. It became cheaper after that, science and math. Yeah, yeah. So then in Brazil, Latin America for a couple of months, then I went to Singapore, which was once again expensive. So I ended up spending to the tune of, you know, $64,000 for all the travel at the end of it. So about $8,000 a month. So I pulled it off, man. And that’s when my new business was born. And we can go into that process too, of figuring out, of like kind of going through

Adam Hill (27:17.134)
Surprise!

Adam Hill (27:29.251)
Yeah. Yeah.

Adam Hill (27:37.592)
Yeah.

Brian Luebben (27:42.415)
the stages where you don’t know what’s next. Yeah, but I’ll pause there.

Adam Hill (27:44.671)
Yeah.

Adam Hill (27:47.150)
Well, I appreciate you putting that together because that’s really, really important. And by the way, $8,000, I mean, a lot of people are listening to this, probably might be making that in a month anyway. So that’s like, really just, you can travel the world spending your income if you can live remotely and if you can be resourceful. And I love that you’re resourceful and you redefined the relationship with trying to get passive income while you’re in captive income, and replacing that theory. So that’s really good.

Brian Luebben (28:00.595)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Hill (28:17.690)
that there’s this transition point where you were, you’d said that you kind of left, you left your job, you went back because you weren’t happy in this other job and you’re rebuilding this pipeline, but there had to be the elements of fear of leaving that. Did you have any of that fear? And how did you cope with that? How did you get past that and get beyond it?

Brian Luebben (28:34.080)
Yeah.

Brian Luebben (28:40.375)
No, man, it was a pretty easy transition. I don’t really have fear. No, yeah. No, the three, yeah, no, the three certainties of life are pain uncertainty and the constant need for work. That’s from a documentary called Stuts on Netflix, and I really like that. It’s true. So pain uncertainty, uncertainty can also be synonymous with fear, right? I just did a newsletter. If people wanna go check out my newsletter, you can check out w2tworldtravel.com. I do a newsletter every Thursday.

Adam Hill (28:42.230)
Yeah. Yeah, OK, good. So in the psychopath category then, yeah. Ha, ha, ha, ha.

Adam Hill (28:52.176)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Hill (28:55.870)
Great documentary, yeah.

Brian Luebben (29:10.315)
entire article on what makes a fulfilling life, like what makes a full life. And we, they interviewed all these people on their deathbed and they said, you know, what are your top five regrets? And of these people, it was kind of the same things over and over again. Things started getting brought up over again. And it was, you know, I wish I would have expressed myself more, been true to me. I wish I wouldn’t have lived for other people, you know, and done what they want to do, done what my parents wanted me to do, what my spouse wanted me to do. I was never did things for me.

Brian Luebben (29:41.375)
I wish I would have traveled more. I wish I would have spoke my mind. So it was all these regrets that were, you know, of omission rather than things that I did that I shouldn’t have done, right? It was more so, here’s all the stuff I didn’t do that I wish I would have. And so I wrote this entire article that said, okay, if we can look at this in the inverse, we can basically create a formula to a full life. And that formula looks like speaking your mind, living your truth.

Adam Hill (29:56.134)
Yeah.

Brian Luebben (30:10.295)
living your passion, doing things that you want to do, following your God-given abilities and your passions and your loves. And so, at the end of it, I talk about this one ingredient that nobody really talks about. And in the three things that we’re never gonna get rid of, pain uncertainty and the constant need for work, fear is one of them. So I’m like, if we’re never gonna get rid of fear, which is half of this podcast,

Brian Luebben (30:40.335)
that a key to a full life? And so that was my punchline is I all of a sudden through my journey here, leaving my job was the scariest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I had fear to the point where I was almost hospitalized three times with panic attacks over and over and over again to where I don’t know if you guys have had one but it’s where you literally have the symptoms of a heart attack. Like your body goes numb, yeah you have tingles and all this stuff and

Adam Hill (30:43.194)
Yes.

Adam Hill (31:05.598)
Yeah, it’s scary, yeah.

Brian Luebben (31:10.635)
And so I was able to pull through, but it was because of my coaches, it was because of my community, it was because of my relationships. And that’s why phase three of that four step framework is community driven. Because here’s the thing, when your life is going to shit, your house hacks and your Airbnbs are not going to save you. They’re not gonna reach out and say, hey, bud, how you doing?

Adam Hill (31:38.770)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Luebben (31:40.975)
Your mastermind will, your peers will, your partners will, your friends will, your mentors will, your coaches will. You know? And so that’s what happened is they had such a support system and had so many bodies of evidence that had done the thing and they had made it out on the other side and I knew it was going to be okay. Same thing when I went through my breakup. You know, I was wanting to marry the girl and I had so many people, you know, going through a breakup like that after three years and you’re like, whoa, this didn’t work. I thought I had,

Adam Hill (31:46.670)
Yep.

Adam Hill (32:02.150)
Mm-hmm.

Brian Luebben (32:10.475)
the next year and it’s gone. But you know, like that, especially in Mykonos, you’re like, what the hell? And once again, I had an overwhelming group and body of evidence of, hey, I was with, you know, the love of my life for 20 years, we were married, two kids, divorced. Now I’ve been with this one for 30. Like there’s light at the end of the tunnel. So community is very important. And when it all wraps up too, fear is the most important part of life, I think.

Adam Hill (32:11.313)
Right.

Adam Hill (32:15.857)
Yeah.

Adam Hill (32:29.792)
Yeah.

Brian Luebben (32:40.335)
we take the ability to use the ability to use fear instead of letting fear use you. So what this means is fear is actually fantastic if you channel it in the correct ways. So how I channel fear is I am terrified of not living up to my full potential. I’m terrified of dying tomorrow and saying yesterday was a waste.

Adam Hill (32:47.256)
Mm-hmm.

Brian Luebben (33:10.675)
I’m terrified of being a bad father, terrified of being a bad friend, being a bad son, terrified of my mom dies tomorrow and she’ll be like, me and Brian weren’t too close. Those are good things to be afraid of because what they do is they spurn action. Fear is the greatest driver of action throughout any emotion. That’s why you have dictators throughout history. They’re a lot more efficient than nice guys, promise you. And so I’m like, if we’re never going to get rid of fear completely, we might as well learn how to channel the hell out of it.

And so that’s what I did is going through this process was so scary. And I imagined everything going wrong in a tactical way to approach fear for people that are listening that maybe are anxious just listening to this. Write it out on paper. You know, Tim Ferriss has this excellent exercise called fear setting. And it’s this process where you write all your fears on paper and you make three columns and you write out everything that could possibly go wrong. So it’s the opposite of what most people preach where you’re like, oh, everything’s sunshine and rainbows.

in the world, I can visualize it, I can feel the sun on my skin, but what if it doesn’t? What if it rains? So I wrote, okay, I’m going to go broke. I’m going to lose all my money. And through writing this, I realized that my greatest fear was not going broke. My greatest fear was the appearance of being broke. It was my greatest fear. I didn’t care.

Adam Hill (34:15.292)
Yeah.

Adam Hill (34:32.590)
Hmm. So, what did that look like? What did that look like? Like, how did that show up? So, how did that show up?

Brian Luebben (34:40.355)
part because when I was writing it out and on paper, I realized that that thought was so laughable because I’ve put my 10,000 hours into sales. I was like, okay, I lose all my money. I was like, but that’s impossible because like worst case scenario, I would just simply get another job. So my worst case scenario is my present day reality, which is the same as most people that are listening to this that are paralyzed by fear. What’s gonna, what’s the worst is gonna happen? You’re gonna get another job. So today is what you’re most

Adam Hill (34:40.913)
Yeah.

Adam Hill (34:43.292)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Hill (34:55.834)
Yeah.

Brian Luebben (35:10.295)
No surprise. Life changer, five star rating and review for Adam. So the second thing that I wrote was the fear of failure. That one was it. I’m like, I don’t really care about being broke. I’ll never be broke. I care about looking broke. I care about having all of my friends say, oh, look at him, that was adorable. He thought he could hit financial freedom and do this world travel. Ah, guess he came home with his tail between his legs.

Adam Hill (35:12.091)
Yes.

Adam Hill (35:23.750)
Mm-hmm.

Brian Luebben (35:40.355)
I’m told him it wasn’t possible, you know knew he didn’t have it in him. He’s just a fraud. He’s just a soul He’s just posted on Instagram. He’s full of shit, right? Oh my god to this day I still have anxiety of posting on LinkedIn about what I’m doing because I’m like, what if one day, you know I have to go back. That’s my greatest fear and and I don’t know if it ever goes away, man I’ve talked to a lot of people. I don’t know if it ever goes away and It’s ridiculous because I’ve kind of burned the ships if you Google Brian Lubin

Adam Hill (35:40.791)
Yeah.

Adam Hill (35:48.331)
Yeah. Yeah.

Adam Hill (35:58.310)
It’s so true. Yeah.

Adam Hill (36:02.914)
Yeah.

Brian Luebben (36:10.335)
If you’re looking to try to hire me, I don’t think I’m gonna get ever hired again, buddy. Unless you’re hiring me as a coach. It’s here’s how I quit my job and traveled around the world a hundred different ways in a hundred different languages. Not the best for a hiring manager. So the ships are burned. But to finish the exercise, you’re gonna write out all your fears. I was like, I’m gonna get robbed, I’m gonna get stabbed, I’m gonna get hospitalized. I was pretty convinced I was gonna get cancer and die throughout the process. My kidney started hurting and I was like,

Adam Hill (36:14.696)
Hehehehehehe

Adam Hill (36:22.435)
Yeah.

Brian Luebben (36:40.795)
I’ve got cancer. I’m gonna die because that makes sense and then you write out the likelihood of all of these things happening in the Next column and it’s like zero percent. Maybe one percent you get robbed in Brazil, you know, Columbia Wherever have you and then in the third column we’re gonna write out. What are you gonna do when that thing happens? So if that thing were to happen, what would you do? I was like if I had to lose all my money I would literally just come home I put the flight on a credit card I would come home if I lost my houses and my house is erupted in flames while I was traveling

Adam Hill (36:43.761)
Yeah.

Brian Luebben (37:10.335)
go back to my mom’s basement and figure it out. And then all these other things, you just start writing out, what would you do? So now you’re looking at this piece of paper and it’s got all your worst fears, the likelihood of them happening, and then what you’re gonna do if they were to happen, and you’re like, oh, I’ve got this. And then that’s what helped me get through. And then that’s how we pushed through and got on the plane. And my girlfriend at the time was in nervous tears on the freaking plane. It wasn’t a very sexy and sweet experience, right?

Adam Hill (37:12.470)
Yeah, right.

Adam Hill (37:25.150)
Yeah.

Adam Hill (37:38.472)
Mm-hmm, right.

Brian Luebben (37:40.915)
Hey, who are we to do this? And I’ll tell you man, there’s two moments in my life that have been moments where you think back on good times in your life and you’re like, man, I wish I was fully present for that. I wish I knew I was in the good old days before they were gone. Two moments only in my life that that’s ever happened and that’s when I was in that Mykonos and I stared out at the same thing that I’d been visualizing for the last three years.

Adam Hill (37:41.491)
Right?

Brian Luebben (38:10.335)
I was there, I did it. Like, that gives me goosebumps even today, like to think about that. And then when I was in Singapore, I had this bucket list of staying at the Marina Bay Sands, which is the famous hotel in Singapore. So I literally like took this notebook for people that are watching the video. I’ve got the notebook from Marina Bay, and then I wrote out my goals for 2023. And I got them all written out, and it was New Year’s, and I wrote little fireworks in the back.

Adam Hill (38:10.557)
Yep.

Adam Hill (38:15.376)
Yeah.

Adam Hill (38:37.355)
Love it.

Brian Luebben (38:40.455)
goals. I said, call in my 2023 shots 500 members of the Action Academy community, 25,000 daily podcast listeners and $1 million ARR business income generated. I said written December 28. And so in Singapore, when I was sitting in that pool, and I was looking over 57 stories of all these skyscrapers and massive levels of wealth, I said, dude, how ridiculous is it for us to be fretting over a couple hundred thousand when the each one of

Adam Hill (38:51.878)
Yeah.

Brian Luebben (39:10.315)
of dollars of wealth. I can see thousands of them. And we’re fretting over $100,000. I was like, there’s so much wealth and abundance out there in the world. Like, each one of us definitely has the ability and God-given right to go take it.

Adam Hill (39:13.650)
Mm-hmm, yeah.

Adam Hill (39:17.450)
Right.

Adam Hill (39:24.870)
Yeah, that’s so good and so much there. And just for clarification, the ARR that you’re talking about, that’s annual recurring revenue, right? Yeah, OK. Yeah, and then the fear part, that’s so huge because one of the recurring things that comes up, and I hope everybody listening caught the C-word, which is community, because that consistently comes up every single interview with these high achievers that have achieved something, that have left a situation that

them happy, that was achieving something greater, that was starting a new thing, that was rising above fear, that was embracing fear and moving beyond it. They had a community. They found the mentors, they found the coaches, they found the people that supported them and had what they wanted so that they could pursue it. And yeah, Brian’s no different here, proof of that. And that fear exists regardless. Fear does not go away. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Luebben (40:18.215)
Ever it just looks different same as problems. So when you get like when you’re a millionaire like I hit millionaire status You know, there was no confetti. What the hell? um I was sold a i’ve sold a different plate against the rest. I thought I didn’t get the confetti. Did you know you’re Yeah, let me yeah call your guy man Um, I don’t know where the confetti was in my in my car when I was driving home from Fulton industrial boulevard in atlanta, georgia Um, but it wasn’t there

Adam Hill (40:25.334)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Hill (40:31.491)
Oh, you didn’t get the confetti fan? Oh, well, yeah, they gotta get you the, I’ll make a call for it, yeah. Yeah.

Adam Hill (40:44.170)
Yeah.

Brian Luebben (40:48.176)
goes away just looks different.

Adam Hill (40:49.650)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So they and so how and so a lot of those goals, you know, you’re you’re starting to from outside appearances. And I’ve been I’ve been kind of a fly on the wall of your success over the last year, just watching from the sidelines, which has been incredible. I’ve loved it because it’s just like, alright, this, this guy’s doing the deal. He’s he’s he’s doing the work. He’s he’s he’s walking the walk of what everybody’s saying, whatever he’s talking about, and he’s in it now. And I’ve seen your success just by doing exactly what you say you’re going to

Adam Hill (41:20.631)
But has it all been throughout the course of this last year, what kind of setbacks have you run into and what have you learned that have made you stronger?

Brian Luebben (41:33.035)
Yeah, setback number one, business books. It’s adorable to read business books before you own a business. It’s so cute. Like, I wanna go back and pinch my little cheeks and say, oh, look at you. You’re reading Profit First and Traction before you own a business, aw. You know, and that’s not a slight to anybody. It kinda is, it kinda is, guys. But no, we all think that information’s the answer, and we’re all like, I’m gonna read a book a week. Like, I’m so well-read. It doesn’t mean anything until you have

Adam Hill (41:40.528)
Yeah.

Adam Hill (41:43.511)
Yeah.

Adam Hill (41:47.155)
Right.

Adam Hill (41:57.850)
Mm-hmm.

Brian Luebben (42:02.435)
it to. So this first quarter of this year, the operating my new business, like running a team, hiring, firing, inspiring. Oh my God, dude, a whole new skill set that I have to learn. It’s been a wild ride. So my business, to kind of like back up a bit, I was traveling and I was like, I did it. Yay. Congratulations. Success. Now what? Right? What we talked about

Adam Hill (42:03.342)
Mm.

Adam Hill (42:12.951)
Yeah, yes.

Adam Hill (42:25.455)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Hill (42:28.892)
Right.

Brian Luebben (42:32.415)
I entered unwillingly into a period of life that is natural, that nobody talks about, which is navigation. So there’s two seasons of life that we’re gonna pivot between throughout our entire lives. It’s navigation and acceleration. And we freak out whenever one of these seasons comes, but the reality is just like night, day, sunshine, rain, like navigation and acceleration are gonna happen. And so navigation is the period of time where you have to slow down, and you have to take time for rest.

Adam Hill (42:45.214)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Hill (42:55.035)
Right.

Brian Luebben (43:02.455)
And you have to take time to let the next thing materialize. So this is after, you know, maybe after you hit your first million, after you hit your promotion, you know, this is where a lot of people’s like midlife crisis comes in, right? So it’s like, the kids are kind of grown, they’re exiting the house. Like me and my wife are on our own. Like now what? And now you’re like trying to like recalculate and recalibrate. Like what’s our vision? Like, what are we doing here? And so that’s navigation.

Adam Hill (43:16.250)
Yeah.

Brian Luebben (43:32.375)
to slow down. Like this is when I was traveling for four months. I had no idea what was next. And that was so stress inducing for me, ironically, because I’m like, dude, I’m not done. Like this is my prime earning years. Like this is where I have to throttle it, but I don’t know what my business is. And it kept like going like that until I finally just surrendered. Man, that’s my word of the year. Last year was surrender, this year scale. And I surrendered and I just said, you know what? It’s going to happen when it’s going to happen. And I’m

Adam Hill (43:41.021)
Yeah.

Adam Hill (43:56.350)
Mm-hmm.

Brian Luebben (44:02.295)
And I know, and there’s nothing I can do to rush the process. And I was in Brazil. And finally, on month four of my navigation and my surrender experiment, which is a fantastic book by Michael Singer, it came to me. And I was just like, you know, I did this thing and this thing is cool. I was like, but I’m good. Like I’m financially independent, like heck yeah. But that’s not enough for me anymore. I don’t have a family yet.

Adam Hill (44:03.113)
Yeah.

Brian Luebben (44:32.555)
but I don’t now. And I was like, I need to do something that’s bigger than me for me to keep pushing and keep growing. So then I was like, I’m gonna help a million other people leave corporate America, like I did, and go do their thing. It doesn’t need to be traveling around the world, but if somebody wants to leave and start an Airbnb business and they love hospitality, I want them to do that. If somebody wants to go start a brewery and move out to Colorado, I want them to do that. If somebody wants to be a full-time musician, let’s get you a couple of Airbnbs

Adam Hill (44:33.750)
Yeah.

Adam Hill (44:44.250)
Mm-hmm.

Brian Luebben (45:02.295)
and get out of your CPA job and be a musician full-time, just give it a shot, you know? So that’s my mission now, is I’m gonna help a million people do it. And so I was like, I’m gonna make an online course to teach people how to do this. And that was the original idea. And so here’s a very important lesson in business and entrepreneurship for people that are listening, as we kind of close this out. Do not sit and think of an idea forever, and iterate and iterate and iterate in your own head,

Adam Hill (45:05.971)
Yeah.

Adam Hill (45:16.072)
Mm-hmm.

Brian Luebben (45:32.295)
Hot bubbles in your own echo chamber. You know, there’s this book called The Mom Test, where if you go to your mom, hey, I’ve got this business idea. Oh, it’s the best business idea in the world, honey. Right? So what you do is you start with a problem. You don’t start with a solution. You start with a problem, you build the solution. So the problem was that there is no resource helping people transition smoothly from corporate America to entrepreneurship. You have like real estate, you have coaching, you have all these different

Adam Hill (45:41.985)
Right.

Brian Luebben (46:02.315)
resources, but none of them consolidated together, where it’s like, hey, here’s the passive income strategies, but here’s also how you create your vision. Here, let me hold your hand as you’re leaving. You’re about to have a panic attack. I got you. Here’s how we prevent that. Here’s how we replace your identity with this new person that’s an entrepreneur, and here’s how you manage your schedule now that somebody’s not telling you what to do. All these soft skills baked into the hard cash flow. And I was like, I’m going to do that. And so I released the first version,

Adam Hill (46:09.471)
Yeah.

Adam Hill (46:15.931)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Luebben (46:32.295)
course and then I quickly realized okay this isn’t a course like this is a community I was like I’m building the community that I wanted that I needed before so then I create I started iterating again version 2 version 3 version 4 and all the while I’m collecting revenue that’s important just charge like something and then up the price as you go so I started with 1500 bucks I messaged like 40 people that asked me for coaching I was like hey 1500 bucks here’s this idea here’s this thing are you in yes cool it’s like got

Adam Hill (46:37.770)
Yes.

Brian Luebben (47:02.355)
Heck yeah. And then you just keep going and you iterate and you approve and you get feedback and then you improve. Now here we are seven months later, 130 members in the Action Academy community, where it’s like our job is to replace corporate with cashflow. And that’s my full-time job now. And it’s been awesome.

Adam Hill (47:02.591)
Mm-hmm, yeah.

Adam Hill (47:14.050)
Oh, yeah, and you’re only three months or four months in to that 500 person goal. So I mean, it’s like you’re on your way to that. I mean, geez, that’s incredible. Yeah.

Brian Luebben (47:24.195)
Yeah, ARR is at 162,000 right now. Yeah, so a bit behind, quarter million was Q1 goal. So a bit behind because lead flow is more difficult. I need to talk to like 80 people because 50% of them are not gonna be a good fit. So that’s another thing that we determined is now six months in, we’re not the group that helps people buy their first rental property. We learned that.

Adam Hill (47:29.850)
Nice. That’s incredible.

Adam Hill (47:35.350)
Yeah.

Adam Hill (47:45.050)
Yeah.

Adam Hill (47:51.750)
Yeah, right.

Brian Luebben (47:54.135)
Trial and error and that included people joining the community trying to buy their first rental property and they’re like, what is this? We can’t we can’t do this and it happened to refund them. That’s a good business lesson We do intermediate to high-level strategy. We help people that are between 1 and 20 properties scale faster So if you’ve already done the thing you bought the Airbnb, you’re already house hacking You’ve already got a rental or two and you’re like, how are people taking down a hundred unit multifamily? How are people taking down self storage?

Adam Hill (48:02.710)
Yeah. Yes.

Brian Luebben (48:24.996)
We give you the fast strategies to get you out of your job in 12 months. That’s our focus and that’s who we thrive in helping. And now I finally learned that after much trial and error. So that’s, it’s awesome.

Adam Hill (48:31.157)
Yeah.

Adam Hill (48:35.050)
That is incredible and it’s so important to note. And I think that was such wisdom was dropped there with regard to, don’t try and just build this thing that you think is going to, don’t wait for the idea to come that like is gonna magically change things because you’re not immediate, yeah, you’re not immediately gonna think to yourself like, oh yeah, I’m gonna help a million people to get out of corporate America by helping them to scale this

Brian Luebben (48:53.215)
Don’t build in the next Facebook. Yeah.

Adam Hill (49:05.070)
You’re not gonna just think of that without the trial and error. The trial and error is the important part in learning that. Yeah, absolutely. And no.

Brian Luebben (49:09.035)
That is business.

Brian Luebben (49:12.135)
And nobody talks about that stuff, man. Peter Thiel has an excellent book on the zero to one. It’s called the MVP, the minimum viable product. And so you just keep releasing these products. But the thing is, when somebody tells you that you’re doing something wrong, you have to listen. Like, that’s the hard part. Because your ego flares up, and you have to take a 10 minute pause whenever you get a negative comment. And you’re like, okay, this is what you asked for? Okay, don’t take it personally.

Adam Hill (49:17.771)
Yeah.

Adam Hill (49:30.850)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Hill (49:37.892)
Yeah.

Brian Luebben (49:42.195)
They already paid you money. That’s not personal. They’re telling you a problem with your business. And then you have to address it and then iterate and fix it. So, you know, through the process, like the newer people are like, hey, we need more, like, we don’t know what you’re talking about here. We just wanna know how do you buy your first house hack? And I was just like, it felt so heavy to me to teach that, but there’s so many people that love teaching that stuff.

Adam Hill (49:43.834)
Yeah.

Adam Hill (50:00.050)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Hill (50:10.876)
Yeah.

Brian Luebben (50:12.455)
So now I funnel them to another course, another community that specializes in them, and I’ve got my avatar to where my person that I love helping is who I lovingly categorize as gunpowder, that’s who I wanna help. I wanna help gunpowder, man, because gunpowder is just sitting ready for a spark, and as soon as you give it that spark, gunpowder explodes, and that spark is like that one relationship, that one connection, that one webinar, that one idea, that one call that they heard on Airbnb

Adam Hill (50:26.433)
Love it.

Adam Hill (50:34.435)
Yeah.

Brian Luebben (50:42.095)
and they’re like, oh my God, this is the best thing ever. Like, I’m gonna go do everything I can to go get an Airbnb this week. Like, that’s who I want in the group. That’s who thrives, and that’s who we have.

Adam Hill (50:48.834)
Yeah.

Adam Hill (50:51.850)
That’s it. I love that. I love that avatar persona that you have there because like I’ve always learned, you know, yeah, find your avatar and name him. You know, it’s like, yeah, yeah. I think Rory Vadin says you’re perfectly positioned to help the person you once were. And so latching onto that. But I love the name that you’ll actually title and gunpowder, title it gunpowder, because that’s more powerful than Steve, you know? Cause that’s like, it’s like, yeah. Yeah.

Brian Luebben (50:58.895)
Mm-hmm. Me three years ago.

Brian Luebben (51:06.717)
Yeah.

Brian Luebben (51:13.037)
Yeah.

Brian Luebben (51:15.755)
Yeah, no gunpowder man. There’s this girl, there’s this woman named Caitlin who joined, stay at home mom, husband’s in the military. They’ve got a house. So far she, within being in the group, she’s taken out a quad. So she brought down a fourplex that she’s gonna do MTR strategy, which should cashflow $3,000 net per month in one deal. Now mind you, it’s 3,000 a year to be in Action Academy. She just built $3,000 cashflow in one deal in the first couple of months, and now she’s under contract

Adam Hill (51:24.576)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Hill (51:36.714)
Yeah.

Brian Luebben (51:45.815)
$3 million self storage. I’m like gunpowder.

Adam Hill (51:47.450)
That’s incredible. That’s, yeah. That’s fantastic. Well, it’s, and I know we’re running short on time here. I mean, I could probably do it. We’ll definitely do a phase two on this, but I wanna ask about the podcast and ask how that’s going, because I mean, you’ve just rocketed on that thing. And I mean, you’re, the guests you have, you’ve got such high quality guests on their seven, eight, nine figure entrepreneurs that are really, you know,

Brian Luebben (52:05.837)
Sure.

Adam Hill (52:17.490)
from that and are you are you started and how have you built I mean are you just I mean you mentioned you’ve done this organically so are you are you just just kind of feeding the machine with passion or what’s what’s going on there how you doing it

Brian Luebben (52:34.375)
So the best way to accomplish a goal is to be the type of person that accomplishes goals. So instead of like, I’m going to work out 700 times over the next two years, you’re like, you just become the person that works out. So I’ve done a daily podcast since traveling. So when I left, and that’s why I get so upset with people that are like, I don’t have time to podcast. I’m like, my brother in Christ, I was traveling around six different time zones that were seven hours ahead, eight hours, twelve hours,

Adam Hill (52:40.755)
Yeah.

Brian Luebben (53:04.775)
I was always bouncing between time zones and every single day I made a podcast. So I do five a week and starting from last June when I started traveling and so Now it’s just it’s part of my identity. Like I’ve got so many in a row I’m not gonna miss now There’s been moment there’s been mornings where I’ve been drunk and I had to wake up at 1 a.m. And a cold sweat and run to my computer because I was like, oh almost forgot today’s not the day

Adam Hill (53:04.872)
Yeah.

Adam Hill (53:08.350)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Hill (53:22.814)
Yeah.

Adam Hill (53:34.068)
Right.

Brian Luebben (53:34.295)
I’m like, I’m at like episode 210 in a row or something. Like I’m not gonna miss that trend. So right now, yeah, it’s organic. We’re growing, we’re about 45, 50,000 downloads a month, growing that fast. So one of my huge KPIs is being on other podcasts. So hopefully you guys enjoyed, if you’re still listening, I’m assuming you enjoyed and would enjoy my podcast. So this is the big thing I do. I’m on three guest podcasts a week.

Adam Hill (53:39.971)
Yeah.

Brian Luebben (54:04.295)
man, it’s my entire life’s passion. And now it’s just become something that’s so ingrained with what I do every day that I forget how much value I’m bringing to people through the show because it’s just something I do. Like I wake up, I go talk to my community, I build my community in a podcast, that’s what I do. And you just see numbers on the screen and you forget until you see somebody in there like, dude, that one episode completely changed my business. I completely changed my life. I had a girl that joined the community

Adam Hill (54:12.450)
and I’ll see you next time. Bye.

Adam Hill (54:21.950)
Yeah.

Brian Luebben (54:34.335)
she said, I was submitting offers for my first rental property. And I had submitted like 10 offers and I got beat out by an all cash buyer from California. And I was so defeated. And I listened to one of your podcasts like seven months ago. And it was like the first perfect thing I needed to hear at the time to convince me to keep going and to submit more offers. And I told my realtor to submit five more offers. And one of those offers was the one that got accepted for my first rental. And it’s like, you don’t hear about that stuff. I heard about it seven months after the fact, when she joined my community. So.

Adam Hill (54:57.272)
home.

Brian Luebben (55:04.295)
creating content are silently like you’re depositing value into them without them even without you even knowing. So the cool thing is that the thing that I’m starting to get a bit better at is asking you know for help in return. So what that looks like is me like saying hey guys listen to this podcast like check out my podcast like share Adam’s show share my show. There’s plenty of room and rotation for your podcast like if you’re interested in the community book a free call.

Adam Hill (55:17.155)
Mm-hmm.

Brian Luebben (55:34.756)
Like asking for help. I’m getting better at it, but it took a while

Adam Hill (55:36.790)
Yeah. Yeah. It does. I mean, there’s this ego there that’s like, I don’t want to bug people or I don’t want to, but really, it’s like it’s inflicting you. I mean, like, I found I don’t know if you found this, but it’s just like when you’re when you’re starting to ask for help and like, say that you’re also inclined to give more value. Like you’re just like, you’re inclined to like, say, hey, how can I help you? Or how can I do what can we do to make this and it’s just like so many more connections have been made since that since that transition. So that’s great.

Brian Luebben (55:44.157)
Right?

Brian Luebben (55:54.337)
Correct.

Brian Luebben (56:04.375)
Also, another important point to that is a lot of people will have this motivation for starting a podcast, and they’ll say, I’m trying to raise money for my multifamily, I’m trying to do this for my business, I’m trying to do that, I’m trying to build money or sell this online course. I did my podcast for a year without any intention of profit. Now, I ended up making some side profit from it, from the affiliates, but I never advertise anything traditionally on the show.

Adam Hill (56:13.371)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Hill (56:26.171)
Mm-hmm.

Brian Luebben (56:34.435)
I just did it to help people. So the rule of content is the longer that you can build a runway of depositing value without making an ask, the larger the ask can be. So if you think that you could start a podcast tomorrow and sell a $3,000 mastermind program that people will like jump hand over fist to be a part of, you are wrong. You’re mistaken. You haven’t deposited enough value. You haven’t done your reps, but like I did. I built.

Adam Hill (56:36.550)
Yeah.

Adam Hill (56:58.150)
Right.

Brian Luebben (57:04.395)
I did an entire year my entire business model that I think more people should follow I don’t get why they don’t is I give all the information away for free like it’s on the podcast like I’ve got over 300 hours for free I Just you pay for the execution So it’s like I give you the information for free you pay for to be in the group where somebody is like staring you in The eyeballs and they’re like hey like I’m in your pod like you said that you were gonna call 50 brokers this week Why didn’t you like do you not care about your goal?

Adam Hill (57:16.276)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Hill (57:20.014)
Yeah.

Adam Hill (57:31.834)
Yeah.

Adam Hill (57:34.110)
Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, this has been awesome. And I wanted to touch on, too. You’re offering, so 15-minute coaching calls. Can you just kind of touch on what you’re doing there?

Brian Luebben (57:34.496)
That’s where the rubber meets the road, is that.

Brian Luebben (57:45.923)
Yeah.

Brian Luebben (57:48.315)
Yeah, so like I said again, what our avatar is, is if you got like a rental, or if you’re in your first house hack, your first rental property, you’re trying to scale up, leave your job within 12 months, that’s our jam. That’s our sweet spot. Happy to do a call. I’ll give Adam my Calendly. You can just book directly there with me and I will coach you. If it’s not a fit, I’ll tell you it’s not a fit. If there’s a different program, like some people are coming in, they’re like, hey, I just wanna do Airbnb. Like, I don’t wanna do all the rest of this stuff. Cool, I got plenty of Airbnb girls

for you, I’ll direct you to them, because it doesn’t really matter to me. So yeah, feel free to book a 15 minute call with me. If you want something to read, w2doworldtravel.com, that’s a 30 page free guide walking you guys through the step-by-step, the four step framework that we talked about today. Besides that, check out Action Academy podcast. I’m on there every single day and I’m not going anywhere.

Adam Hill (58:20.072)
Yeah.

Adam Hill (58:40.350)
Awesome, right, dude. This was this was awesome. Yeah, please do check out Brian. Check out the Action Academy podcast. Check out everything he’s doing. This guy drops so so much value on social media on his podcast. And I’m a frequent listener. I’m a stalker on Instagram. Keep doing it, dude. Thanks for thanks for staying with me today and sharing some of your wisdom.

Brian Luebben (58:57.236)
Yeah

Brian Luebben (59:03.335)
Thanks for having me buddy. This is awesome what you’re doing man. And it’s a great show when this airs. I’ll put it on my show too to promote this out man. This is a great concept. You’re helping a lot of people. Thanks for having me.

Adam Hill (59:13.450)
Thanks, man. Appreciate that. And to all you out there listening, thank you so much for joining us and we will see you next time.

Brian Luebben (59:20.557)
Boom.