In episode 56 of Wake Up to Wealth, Brandon Brittingham interviews Austine Cheviron, who brings over 21 years of experience in the real estate industry. Austine shares his journey from a young investor to a top-producing agent and team leader, and eventually into coaching and training.
Tune in for valuable insights on managing money and enhancing your financial literacy.
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Austine Cheviron: https://www.austincheviron.com/
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This is Wake Up to Wealth, a podcast dedicated to helping you change the way you think about wealth. And now, here's your host, Brandon Brinningham.
Hey, this next segment is brought to you by my good friends at rocketly.ai. That is rocketly.ai. If you're in the real estate business, especially the investment side, and you need a platform that can run your real estate business and talk to leads through AI when you're not able to talk to them and can qualify and get to all the leads you can't get to, plus it has an amazing piece of technology with it called Lead Detector that helps get all the people that come to your site and not opt in to opt in to turn into a lead. These are my good friends at rocketlead.ai. I'm part of this company as well. I use it to run my real estate business, my real estate investment business. Go check them out. Again, rocketlead.ai, and thank you guys for sponsoring this segment. Hey, what's up everybody? We are back with another episode of Wake Up to Wealth. And guys and gals, man, thank y'all so much. As of today, we are 3 million downloads. Our last episode hit 115,000 downloads. We have been trending crazy as one of the top shows in the United States. And this is not possible without you guys as the audience supporting us. So thank you so much. And again, as every episode, my goal is to bring you people on here who are going to talk about money, talk about things that we've never been taught about correctly. That's why we call this week Up to Wealth. So today I've got one of my EXP brethren here, Austin Chevron. And what's cool about him is he wrote a book, which we'll talk about, That has to do with stewardship of money and wealth, which you guys know, as listeners of the show, I'm a huge believer in. And trainer, investor, agent, team leader, just a lot of similarities. So I appreciate you coming on the show today. Thank you.
Thank you, man. Thank you. It'll be fun to see where today goes.
So if you wouldn't mind, I just always ask everybody, give us your two or three minute elevator pitch of who you are so that just the audience knows about you.
It's funny, I was just working on this yesterday. It's like, well, who am I today and who am I gonna be tomorrow is different than who I was last week and last month. So starting off, I've been around real estate since I was six. My dad's been a real estate agent manager of, he was manager of the largest Coldwell banker office in the nation when I was growing up. Only thing I know is real estate agents, everything, houses, financials, everything in the real estate industry is my background. Licensed when I was 20, so I'm 41, so 21 years licensed, it's the only job I think I've ever had. And I started buying, I bought my first house when I was 18 in high school, which puts me in a little different position. So bought the first house in high school, bought six rentals from 19 to 22, and then got out of it. Started selling real estate at 28. I did so well, I put myself on welfare, which is, it's like real estate let me sit there for six years before it kicked me right in the face and the teeth. I picked up pick myself up within four years. After that, I was one of the top agents in the state of Indiana. Then stopped doing that to build a team built one of the top teams in the country, and then shut that down. And today, I'm just all in on training and helping and coaching. I started building my portfolio back five years ago again, and went from zero to about 50 homes in three years, just had just straight gas to just And so now we sit in the investor world, the coach, trainer, author, now speaker. It's kind of, you know, at 41, that's where we're at. So, and I've quit essentially everything else. I don't sell real estate anymore. I shut down the team last year. I'm just helping people now and then managing my own money, which is the ultimate job, I think, is just managing your own wealth and then helping people.
Yeah, so interesting enough, there's a couple of things I want to get into with you today, but so I just, I'm just always fascinated by entrepreneur stories. So you said, I built one of the top teams and I shut that down last year. There's a lot to unpack there. Well, I mean, I get it. Right. But I want to hear from you because, you know, again, there's there's no wrong or right. It's what's right for you. And but I do want to mention something. If you're running a real estate team, you're listening to this. There's a lot of people that I'm talking to right now, and I'm sure you are too. They built a version of a real estate team that they thought they wanted, and they've ended up figuring out that they don't. And a lot of it was based on, I sat in a room or I heard somebody speak on stage, and I copied what they were doing, which wasn't necessarily for that specific person. And it's just interesting that you said that, and I'd love for you to touch on that.
Yeah, I think, so the core of everything we're going to talk about around this has to do with vision. And without a vision, people perish. Yeah. So with vision, everything becomes clear. Options that you didn't think existed start to exist once you get the vision. And so when I, I think it was Robbins who taught me, Tony, who taught me to think about, is this thing gonna be in your life in time? And it might've been Maxwell influenced too with his book, Failing Forward. And it's like, so if I go to, if I go to anybody here, anybody listening, if you think about your life, what you currently have in it, do you see having it forever? Like I could be having my real estate forever and giving it to my kids where it's in a trust, it's doing its thing, you know? And, but I don't see having my real estate team when I'm 90. So what that means is that thing in my vision is going to come to an end. Let's just get there. It's going to come to an end at one point. So then the question is, is why not now?
Yeah.
Why not next year? Why not five years? So what is this purpose of this thing in my life? And Robbins was the one that taught me about seasons. And I've just come, being in Northern Indiana, we get all four seasons, I've come to the realization, like, everything's a season, dude. And some people stick around in the winter way too fucking long. It's like, let the winter go, man. Put your bathing suit on. You don't need the shovel. Drop the shovel, it's nice out. And so it's a season, so just what I got to is I got to the realization, and it was tough, dude, because we crushed it. I mean, 25 agents, we're top five teams at EXP, we never bought a lead. Only thing I did was just poured into these 25 agents. Essentially, they were my coaching platform. And I poured my ass off into them, teaching them how to live a better life, fight personally, how to handle their business like a business and then how to treat their financials. And it just, it just grew, dude. And it grew not in terms of people, but in terms of production. And then I'm like, we recorded a, um, I put in I flew 80 of my friends from across the country, I put $2.2 billion of sales in one room for two days, we recorded everything I knew about my team. And now I had it to share with the world. And I'm like, I don't need the team anymore. And so we shut the team down, I took the extra time and energy. And now we invested to people all over the world. And it's a better use of my time and my skills and my abilities. No differently than when I sold real estate and then I ran a team, my impact went up.
It's interesting. Number one, you had the guts and the foresight to do it, but I think it's interesting of your analogy and correlation is, is this going to be in my life forever? That's a powerful statement. I think, yeah, I think more people need to do that more often, right?
Yeah, I mean, we live on the front end, like you can, you can probably attest to anybody who has a team or wants to start a team. It's like, well, tell me the vision of why I want to start a team. Oh, why?
How is that? I know I'm just saying, it's like, sounds cool.
I want to be the guy now.
Yeah.
Right. Like I want to make the money. I want to be the guy. I want to be on the billboard. Right. But the same is true that once again, without a vision, people perish without the vision to start. That's one half. But then what's the vision to stop? Sure. And no one ever asked that question. No one. I mean, I remember when Leo calls me up, I'm like, Hey, I'm a shut down team. He's like, dude, you don't even do anything. It just, you just do nothing. And you guys do well. Like, what are you quitting? I'm like, I can't have the one more thing on my brain. Yeah.
Yeah. You know, that's very, you know, it's so, you know, coaching people a lot of times too. I'm actually glad you brought that up because the most people where they make a mistake is where you didn't, but it's like, Yeah, but it doesn't really take a bunch of my time. It doesn't. And what they don't realize or understand is the brain space that actually does take, right? It's taken up space in your brain. Even if you don't, if it's not on the peripheral, it's in your subconscious. It's eating, it's eating up time in your brain. Um, and it's eating up space. And that's the one thing when I coach people a lot of times and they're like, well, and I'm like, you need to get, you need to get out of that and get rid of that. Yeah, but it doesn't really take me a lot of time. And I'm like, bullshit, it's taking you more time than you think. And it's taking more brain space than you think.
Well, I'll say this, I think I had a blessing, but it didn't look like a blessing. And three years ago, I say I was struck in the head with a lightning bolt, not an actual lightning bolt, but I thought I had a stroke. And so I admitted my, I was walking slow, I was talking slow, everything was slow. And I'm like, I'm normally, my therapist says I run a Ferrari and I redline it all the time. So like, I go fast. And I was slow and I'm like, shit, I'm normal now. This ain't cool. And so I went into the ER. And I'm like, something's wrong, I thought I had a stroke. And I remember sitting in the bed crying, thinking like, that was a good run you had, dude. You ran faster and further than 99.9% of the people, but at 38 years old, that's it, like, shit, that's it, that's all you got. I spent eight hours in the ER, took every test possible, because I'm like, I hit my deductible, so I'm like, if you got something I can do while I'm here, just do it, whatever you got. And after eight hours in there, the nurse comes to me, she says, you're ready to leave. And I'm like, what's wrong with me? She's like, nothing. I'm like, bullshit. Like something's wrong. And she goes, okay, you want to know what it is? I'm like, yeah. She goes, you have too much stress in your life. I'm like, stress? Fuck you, Tom. Stress? She goes, okay. She goes, how many houses you own? I'm like, 50. She's like, see? I'm like, but I've never seen any of them. She goes, okay, whatever. She goes, well, how many companies you own? I go nine. She goes, see, I go back, don't do anything. I don't do much. And it took me like two days to let that sink in. And Brandon, what I realized is there's a difference. I always thought stress was what I got from selling real estate. Hey, this is a problem. This is on fire. You know, the toilet's leaking. It's not my toilet.
Somebody took a shit at my open house.
Yeah, like there's no, like, that's not, and so I was used to dealing with that type of stress and I got rid of all that. Right. And what I realized, this is like learning lessons the hard way, what I realized is there's good stress too. And the stress that I was dealing with was the stress of opportunity. I had all these companies, I had all this growth, I had all this stuff, and essentially it's just like, God said, hey, you can do it better than most, but you're not going to, so. You're done. And you can either do the talents, do what I gave you, or you're going to do nothing. And so I just made a choice to say, you know what? I just, I just got to do this. Now I'm going to manage my money. God gave me talents around money and stewardship. And I'm just, you give me a dollar. I can turn it into three in my sleep. but doesn't mean I should run all these other companies and do all this other stuff. So I just really honed it in and it's like, this is what I do now. And yes, it's, you know, the money was nice with all the other companies. It was nice to, you know, do thousands of whatever, but this is my path now, man. I'm okay with it.
I think it's very interesting. You just mentioned this and you sent me a message yesterday and I'd love for you to touch on it. You own 50 houses that you've never seen. And I'd love to hear, I just would love to have you explain that.
I'm gonna, everybody listening here, hone in on this. This is 35 years of watching real estate agents and this is what I learned. So I told you when I was 19, I started buying my investment properties, 19 to 22. I was the landlord, the property manager. I put the carpet in. I would go to the tenant's house on day one and say, I got a payment, you gotta pay me. If you don't pay me, I'm gonna take your door off. That's not legal, by the way, but I didn't know, I was 19. Trying to make my point, you know? And so I sold all the houses. My dad needed the debt off of his credit so he could do some other things. So we ended up selling all the houses. And then I remember I was probably 34 years old. I'm in San Diego for a Brian Buffini conference, which Buffini was my main mentor growing up. And Buffini said this, I'll never forget. He said, if you wanna buy appreciation real estate, he goes, you go buy at Coronado Island, right out there, they're not making any more. And he goes, if you wanna buy cashflow, you buy Fort Wayne, Indiana. I'm like, I'm in Fort Wayne. I'm like, why don't I have any of that? So I just like, screw it, I gotta stop being stupid. So I made a deal with myself. I started studying cashflow real estate again, and I made a deal with myself. And here's why I had the deal. I went back through all the people I served and I'd ask them these questions, like my wealthy, my millionaire clients, and I would ask them this, hey, do you own rental real estate? And they would say, no. And then I would say, well, did you own it in time? And they would say, yes. And then I would say, well, why did you, why don't you have it anymore? And they all said the same answer. What do you think it was?
Fucking headache.
It was a headache.
Yeah.
I mean, I took a doctor and I made him a janitor. I took a surgeon. I took, I took these top people in the world that worked their ass off to get up here and I made them the janitor of the house. They got to clean the toilet. They got to do this. And so they all got out of it. Then I asked them one last question and that was, did you manage it yourself? And the answer every time was yes. Brandon, every time and these guys were the best of the best that I had. And so I made a deal with myself. I said, I'm going to invest in real estate, but I'm not going to be an investment of my time. It's going to only be an investment of my money. That was my deal. And so I called the best person I know, my property manager, and I said, hey, I need help. I do not wanna get involved. I'm gonna tell you how much money I have. You're gonna tell me what to buy, and I'm gonna buy it. And I'm a licensed real estate agent. So imagine this. For anybody that's in this, I'm a licensed real estate agent. I'm good at what I do. I bought 50 houses all within 25 minutes of my personal house that I live in, and I never saw one of them. That's wild. Fucking crazy, isn't it? Yeah, that's wild. And let me say this, it was the best decision I ever made. Yeah, no doubt.
Best.
Stay out of the way, get a vision for your money. You be the CFO and the CEO, do not be the COO. Let Brandon do it, let someone else who doesn't do it.
You know, it's funny, I can't say that I haven't, you know, I can't say that I don't see the stuff I buy, cause I do, but I don't manage it. And what's crazy is I have a policy with my property management in general of like, I don't even care. Like, it's not that I don't care, but it's like, you guys have the autonomy to make the decision, right? You only call me if it's like the damn house caught on fire or something. Outside of that, I don't want to hear about it. You guys can make the decision and run it.
So I bought over three years, I ended up buying 50. I own all single family homes. I don't own any duplexes or anything like that, all single family. And the reason I bought single family was insurance for me. If I needed 50 grand, I could sell one. I could sell them if I had to.
Yeah, and I wanna make a point on that. Again, there's so many asset classes in real estate that can do well. To this day, I own just about every single asset class under the sun, and I still love single family. You know, you can move it quick. The cool thing I also like about single family is it could either be to an investor or it could be retail. And like commercial, which is great because you're selling it on a cap rate, but you're only selling commercial property to another investor. And again, there's pros and cons to both of them, but I personally, to this day, still like single family. I mean, I, there's also something to be said that the largest institutions in the United States, BlackRock, Blackstone, you know, a bunch of these hedge funds buy single family home assets. I know this shit came out with Trump saying he's going to prevent their ability to do it, but up until this, that point, you know, they, they bought a substantial amount of single family assets. There's something to be said for that.
And Brandon, I think everybody's got their own mix of what they do. I'm in my studio right now. I own a 6,000 square foot commercial building. So I'm diversified, but my vision was, is I need to grow. You said it, you say it well. You're what you make is never probably going to make you wealthy. It's what you buy. Yeah. And for me, every time I took a leap to do something, it was always my assets that allowed me to have confidence to take that leap. If I'm like, God, I got to go make the same amount of money running a team that I did sell in real estate. It's not going to happen. It's going to take years. And so it was always my assets that allowed me to take that leap. My assets make me more money than I make and I do well. And so I'll give you a great example. Going into the coaching and training world, what I realized is I wanted to document my successes for my kids. Like, I'm not supposed to be here, man. I'll go see some people tonight that I went to school with, and they'll be like, I never would have thought you'd have done anything. I missed 76 days of school my senior year of high school because I had my own house. I never went. It took me five and a half years to get a two-year college degree. And so I'm like, I got to document this. So I took two months off of work to write everything I knew about money. Two months. Most human beings can't do that. And what I realized is I was going back through the parable of talents, and I was going back and asking myself, like, I own 50 houses, and I've never seen any of them. Good badge of honor, right? I think it is. Yeah. Sure. How irresponsible is that, though, too? It's not like these houses are in Japan. They're down the street.
I mean, an argument could be had on either side of that. I actually don't necessarily sit here and say that you're wrong.
here's what I realize is it can go either way. And I've done a good job staying out of them, but to not know your assets and what it is and anything about them, like there's still a level of responsibility that needs to be there. So I made a deal, I called my property manager up and I said, hey, I need to go see these principle-wise at one time. And they said, you told me never to let you do this. I go, I know this is a one-time thing though. I'm trying to be a better steward of my real estate. Just let me see what I got. Right. And so we went and looked at 15 houses a day for three days. And I was I was the insurance guy.
Yeah.
And I looked at them all. And let me tell you, nothing changed other than I felt like I was a better steward or what I had.
Sure.
And so, you know, fast forward, I go to actually I go to this is a great example. I go to put it all in the book form. And this book cost me about 50 grand to write is what I'm in it for. And I'm like, well, shit, I don't want to go work. I don't want to go find another client or two to go pay for the book. And so I took one property, one asset, and I turned it and I swapped it over to the other asset. I was able to just sell one house, strip it away, give me 50 grand and buy the book. And I'm still diversified now, but what that allowed me to do is without having to go work more to earn more money, I was able to just strip it from something easily. Make one call, money's in my account in three weeks, house is sold. And so that's for me what the passive income, what the residential has done. It's been really nice to allow me to be able to give and to do without the fear of like, God, you got to go make more money. You need to work every day and every night. And that's part of it, Brandon. Like we didn't get to where we're at because we were lazy. But then again, I tell people, if you have to work today to earn money and to pay your bills, it's a warning sign that you might always have to work to earn money to pay your bills. Go get yourself some assets.
Yeah, that's a very good point. And obviously, I'm a huge believer in that. So you decided to write a book. So tell us about that. What did you put in the book? What's the thesis? What's behind that?
So 60 days I took to write everything I knew about money. And then on day 30, I called my cousin who was my business partner at the time. And I said, hey, I think we got a problem. He's like, what's that? I go, I didn't write anything about making money. He's like, what do you mean? I said, I wrote everything I knew, but I didn't write anything about making it. He goes, what's the problem with that? I go, I don't think the world's going to want to hear that story. That's the story they actually need to hear. Think of that for a second. And he goes, well, is it true? And I'm like, it's exactly true. And he goes, well, then just keep writing. So I went 30 more days, got it all out. And the closest I got, Brandon, to talking about making money is my chapter on income. But I don't teach you how to make money. I teach you how to think about making money. And so, which is really interesting. Like, if you don't even know how to think how to make money, then good luck making it.
Yeah. I think, you know, what's interesting about that. And I say this a lot and talk about this a lot is especially us. We're in an industry where, you know, you've been in very similar rooms that I have where you walk into the room and there's, look, there's nothing wrong with any of this. I'm just saying it, you know, you walk into the room and it's how to recruit another agent, how to sell another house, how to get another shiny object. I can't remember until I created it, right? Or until I got into an investor room, right? In our industry, anyone ever talking about stewardship of money or the other half of the equation, which I think is the most important, what do you do when you get it? How do you keep it? How do you not lose it? How do you not pay it all into, how do you not give 30 plus percent to the IRS? It's just, it's so interesting. We are so infatuated, especially in real estate, you know, on the active income agent team leader side, we're so infatuated with income. Then also the crazy thing about that is we don't talk about profit and we talk about income. We don't talk about profit. And it's like, I tend to not want to be an asshole, but sometimes like I see people put things on social media and I'm like, put your profit and loss statement next to that. and see how that stands up to the shit you're spewing. Because I think it's disingenuous for people to see. And look, I'm not calling anybody out. There's a lot of great operators out there, but there's people that will go, we sold this amount of, we did this, we did this, we did that. And then on the back end, I know. I know, like I know you weren't profitable because you've called me for advice. Right. And I think it's I just think it's we don't talk enough about. there's a side of the equation of number one, you're in business to be profitable and top line is vanity, right? And that's exactly right. Uh, enough people don't talk about it. So I'm glad that you're talking about it. You wrote a book on it because, and a lot of us are not educated on it since we're kids. It's not educated in the school system on what to do when you get money and how to keep it. So I'm glad you touched on that because I think it's so overlooked. And I believe we need to normalize in our industry talking about this more because we don't. And the crazy thing is, just because I'm fascinated with human psychology, Right? I could do a webinar, you know, I'm going to show you how to sell 50 more houses this year. And 800 people would show up. I can do a webinar that says, let me show you how to keep 30% of your income and not pay taxes on it. And a hundred people would show up. Is it crazy? And that shit doesn't make any sense to me.
That's that's my world. So and here's why here's why it's my world. And I told you my father, I grew up in real estate, and not just normal real estate. My dad was the manager of the largest Coldwell banker office in the nation, which means I was surrounded by the best of the best. And let me tell you that all the time. they're fucking broke when they're 70s. And I go up to them and they're great people, Brandon. And I say, Hey, why do you still sell real estate? You know what they tell me? Oh, I love the people. I love it. And I go, really? I said, and I say this to him, if I put $10 million in your bank account tomorrow, would you still sell real estate? And they say this every time? Absolutely not. And so what it is, and I got a front row seat, it doesn't matter what you make, I can promise you, 98% of the people are chasing more money. And sure, go chase the rabbit for a while, but just understand, there's a day that you got to chase the rabbit on how do I save it? How do I be a good steward of it? Where is it going and why is it going there? Because I, just like you, I work with people who make millions of dollars a year and they have more stress and more problems than people making a hundred grand who are doing better, giving more with their money, spending less. It's in alignment with who they are. Their kids are happy. And so, you know. I didn't want my kids, I knew what the problem was. My kids are gonna get a lot of money when I pass one day, hopefully. We're on the trajectory, and I didn't want them to screw it up. So I'm like, I gotta write down what I figured out, because I made the money, but I also kept the money. That's why I don't sell anymore. I stopped selling when I was 38 years old. I successfully stopped selling real estate. Who else do you know that's done that? It's not like I got a job. Like I'm still here, I just do it in a different way. Now I get to help and teach and it's because of the 30 years of my life that I've watched it. I just fast forward, I've been through the drama. And so what I realized teaching people about money is that I call it the black hole. Their problem is their personal life consumes all of their financials. It consumes all their investments, it consumes their giving, it consumes all the protection they need for the first time the storm comes. their personal life. It just consumes it. And a lot of times they don't know. And in the book I start with vision first and then I go to awareness. The number one feedback I get on the book is you help me become aware. I'm aware how when I grew up, my dad, you know, my dad won a thousand dollar lottery ticket once. He bought a TV and two stereos. He spent $1,100 a day after he won the thousand. And my dad's the best guy in the world, but still selling, he's 65, he's still selling 19 homes a year. You know why? It's because he still needs that still going, because he like, you learned, Aus, but I'm still in this. I did what everybody else did. And I'm like, if I could show them another way and say, hey, we can help you sell 50 homes, but if I don't help you keep 30%, what am I doing?
What difference does that make? Yeah.
100%.
What am I doing? You're so right on that. I mean, you're so right on that. And obviously, you know, I'm a big proponent of this. It blows, it blows me away that you got a front row seat to do this. Most agents and team leaders don't invest in real estate. And, uh, I'll tell you what made me really like kind of very like lock in on this is I got my license in 2008 and you know, which was fucking stupid.
I was there, I was in 2004, I was there with LA, I know what happened.
I mean, it ended up being a blessing, but I saw to your point, you saw all these top producers in our market going out of business, filing bankruptcy, and shit going south, and they had no assets. And I was just like, you watch some of these people that were on a 20 year run of being a top producer, And they lost it in one year. And I said, man, I that just doesn't make any sense. It traumatized me.
It's the first storm wiped them out. Yeah. The first storm, not even the second or the third. Yeah.
Yeah.
And first.
And so the. You know, to to kind of compound what you're saying. Go sit in that room to learn to sell another house and recruit another agent. I'm not telling you not to, but also go sit in a room and listen to guys like Austin, listen to guys like me, that's gonna tell you what to do with that money when you get it. And also how to keep it, because if not, you'll be on the hamster wheel for the rest of your life. You'll be 65 still selling a house and fuck that. And again, if that's your race, that's your race, it's just not mine.
Well, I don't mind working, like, I hope I have good quality work to do when I'm 65, but I hope I can do it for free. I hope I can just do it for free, you know what I mean? Just because it's like, fuck it, I can, I want to, let me go help the world now for free, where today I still charge.
Yeah, and I mean, again, I think, you know, later in life, it is, I'm doing something because I choose to, not because I have to.
I think it becomes more fulfilling. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, so it's like, how do we get to the point, like whoever's listening right now, put yourself to the point where you don't need the money. So when I tell Brandon, when I tell people I spent two months writing everything I knew about money, when I speak on this in my keynote, I'd say, put yourself there right now. You spend two months, you don't work, what goes through your mind? What's the first thing? And everybody says, I need money. First thing, I need money. The first thing that happened to me when I did this wasn't I need money, it was my wife saying, when the hell are you getting out of here? You've been here. This is my house. You go to work all the time. I'm like, oh, that's different. I got to deal with that. But because I don't have many cool shirts, but some of my clients tell me, I think, you know what, looking at your shirt, I might do this one day.
You need to get a cool shirt.
I need to get a cool shirt that says, What did they, what was the phrase? I say some stuff and then they quote me like, oh, I got my money right. That's what, I got my money right.
That'd be good on a shirt.
Yeah, like he's got his money right. And because I got my money right, I'm good. Like, I'm just good, like, you can't throw me off. I'm not only good on this side, I'm good over here. I got insurance, I got protection. The book, he asked about the thesis of the book. When I was sitting down, I figured, Brandon, there was three main pillars in which I look at my money. The first one's the foundation is my personal money. And I go through everything personal. The first 10 chapters are all about personal. After that, I go into the business side, and I created what was called my wealth machine, which was every dollar that comes into my business, here's where it goes, and here's why it goes there. Taxes, insurance, giving, business budget, personal budget, and deposit account. And then the last part was really, it went back to like Jon Wooden's pyramid of success that I studied back in the day, which was the outer core. Like how do you keep it all together when 2008 hits? How do you keep it all together when your family members got cancer? How do you keep it together when COVID hits? Because the greats go away. We see it. And so the last part of the book is how to keep it all together with your assets and passive income and insurance and inheritance and givings the last two chapters. So like, are you teaching the people that's going to inherit what you have? Are you teaching them how to inherit it? Or is Brandon gonna give me his nephew, let's say, all these golden coins that I don't even know if they're worth $100 million or $100. I get a pile of Brandon's coins and I go to the pawn shop.
Yeah.
Like, are you teaching me what to do with this? And, um, and so then the last chapter is all about giving and how do you get the mindset to say, I have enough to give and it's not a scarcity mindset and building your character and your finances and your habits to be able to say, I can always give 1% brand and what I have always, of course, always. So yeah, that's kind of the thesis of, of where those all that time took me. It was a pretty cool journey. And so now we're talking about it and it's nothing sexy, by the way.
It never is. And I think that's the thing that that that why more people don't learn about it. Right. Is. You know, I was I was I helped a good friend of mine launch. Shout out to Rob Chavez. He has a community called Grid and a good friend of mine launched the Chicago chapter last night. And, uh, one of kind of my imparting things that I closed with is, you know, the wind is consistency and, and people just, it's not sexy. Right. So that, that's the, that's where everybody fucks up is because you're just not willing to be consistent day in and day out. Cause it's not fun. And it's just not the, it's not the sexy thing. I want to end this with, uh, I'm gonna ask you two questions. One, we always ask every guest at the end, and I want to ask one before that. So you unpacked a lot of things and you have a book. By the way, I don't think we named the book and tell them where they can get it. The Money Puzzle. And they can buy anywhere? Amazon, Target, Barnes and Noble. Okay. So check that out, everybody. Secondly, or first question, just one, and you have tons, but give one piece of money advice for people listening. Whoa. Yeah, I know.
Just one, just one. The most impactful thing I can tell you, I'm going to do two. I'm going to put it in, I'm going to put an and in. Okay. Is one, without a vision, people perish. So the point of your money is to accomplish something in your life. Understand that, use it as the right tool, get it in the right places, have it do the right thing. And then the and to that is the big black hole of your finances and why you're not where you want to be and have what you want to have is because of your personal bank account and what you spend it. That's out of the thousands and thousands of people I've talked to, that's the common trend.
Awesome, this kind of correlates with, we named the show Wake Up to Wealth, the entire thesis and idea behind this show was to have people on like you, because we just were not taught about money. Most of us were not taught correctly about money. And our money habits were passed down generationally from our family, which typically weren't good in a lot of cases, right? And so the whole thing is to educate people on money better. That's why we call it Wake Up to Wealth. So my last question I would ask you is two things. One, what is Waking Up to Wealth mean to you? And two, how can they find you if they want to get more information from you beyond the show?
Love it. Websites, the easy answer, austinchevron.com is the easiest way to find me. And the wake up to wealth, chapter two of my book helps people establish their vision. And I truly ask them this, I ask them this question, what does wealth mean to you? And what we find, Brandon, is it means something different to everybody else. And so I challenge the audience here to answer the question, how can you wake up to wealth? When you get out of your bed, what does wealth mean to you? Is it a mindset? Is it a health piece? Is it somebody laying next to you? Is it something to give? Is it something to do? That's, to me, wake up to wealth means getting out of my bed being wealthy. What does that mean to somebody else? That's the question.
That's the ultimate question, isn't it? Absolutely. Yeah. Well, dude, I thank you so much for coming on here today. Wealth of knowledge dropped all kinds of gems for the audience. I'm glad we and I'm glad you stayed on me to get on here. And I appreciate you coming on with us. And it's why our show is blowing up because of guests like you, because you educate the audience on things they don't know. You guys all check his book out, give him a follow, look him up. Brother, thank you so much for coming and pouring into my audience. Thank you, Brandon. Hey everybody, this next segment is brought to you by my good friends at Acruity. Now, if you run a business, most business owners neglect their back office and they don't even know where to go or who to trust when it comes to their financials or CPA or taxes. That's where Acruity comes in. You can trust them, they can give you advice, and they understand the back office. Listen, you're not running a business correctly if you don't have a hold of this, and it's really hard to trust people that are out there. And most CPAs, frankly, work for the IRS and don't work for you. That's not the case with accruity. Check my good friends out at accruity for any needs that you have when it comes to helping with your back office, getting your book straight, getting your taxes correct, and they guide you and give you advice, which most firms don't. So check out my guys at accruity. Tell them I sent you.
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