Advice for Building Early Age Success, Being in the Right Rooms, Real Estate Investing and Learning How Money Works with Zach Sasser 25:57

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 Brittingham. All right, everybody. We're here today. I'm super excited. I got Zach Sasser with me here to the Wake Up To Wealth show. What's up, brother? What's up, big dog? How are you? How you doing, man? Good. So, you know, I wanted to bring you on for a number of reasons, but...

A lot of people that don't know who you are, tell us who you are.

- Yeah, man. So my name is Zach Sasser. I'm a 23 year old entrepreneur. How I met you was through Ryan Stumann. So I'm the top sales producer over at Ryan Stumann's Apex Mastermind. Got a couple of different businesses, starting to get into real estate thanks to you. And yeah, man, huge family guy. - Published author. - Published author, "Young Closer." That's my book out there. That's my nickname. So Ryan's nickname is the Hardcore Closer. He nicknamed me the Young Closer.

Huge family man small town, Texas boy, and you know just chasing greatness really so you know I think There's so many kind of misconceptions or myths or you know shit like that when it comes to business, right? Which I think you've you've done a lot of really cool things at a young age you publish a book right you're starting to invest your money and

So many people are scared to invest their money and we've been taught about investing our money wrong, right? And you've done it at an early age and you're starting to buy real estate, you're starting to do all these things.

Like take us into that mindset. At your age, because at 23, most people are still going out partying, acting up. For sure. Like how have you been able to figure that out and have that focus to have that discipline to start doing those things? Yes, man, it's really from my upbringing. So I grew up in an entrepreneurship family. My dad owned a roofing company. So I grew up seeing that. And we had great years and we had some pretty tough years, you know, free and reduced lunch type stuff.

So it was cool because I kind of got to see both sides of the coin. I saw what happens whenever you work your tail end off and stack money, invest it, and see that part, see the benefits of having money. But I also saw the downsides to not having money. And I really learned the value of a dollar.

So seeing both sides like that, it really showed me, hey, I want this side of it, but I know how to avoid this side of it because I know the value of a dollar. So that's huge, you know, really my upbringing. But then on top of that, I'm just, I don't know, man, like I have this feeling that like I could lose everything at any moment. Like it's like maybe it's imposter syndrome or something like that, but it's like,

Hey, what was it luck? Like was was and now I'm getting to the point where it's like, okay, it's it's consistent. But like for the first part was was it luck? You know, did it just by chance happen? So that makes me want to keep this money invested into other places so that it keeps paying me. So even if it was luck,

now I'm taken care of because I took advantage of a situation. But I'm getting to that point where I don't think it's luck. I'm starting to see the keys to success. Just working your tail end off. And whenever you do that, one thing I've noticed is being in the rooms that I'm in, people like you, other super successful people,

It's the same, man. They all just work their tail end off and it all comes to them. So it's like there's no shortcut to success, but there's a right and a wrong path. And I think being in the right rooms has really taught me those right paths. So we've sat in some of the same rooms together. You've been exposed to a lot of really successful entrepreneurs at a high level. Give me two things that

Because you've seen it from all kinds of spectrums, right? Different masterminds, different rooms. Give me two things that you really took away from sitting in rooms like that that have kind of really helped you. That's tough, man. I know it's a lot. That's why I put my book out. My book was basically the top ten lessons that I've learned since being in those type of rooms. So boiling those down to two, I think one would be

One would be get surrounded by the right people. Like if I'm trying to sum up success into two different things,

I'm going to tell you to get in front of the right people because once you get surrounded by the right people, you'll learn all the correct things. You know, you'll learn everything that you need to know. Like I can give you like, oh, work hard or, you know, invest your money, stuff like that. But if you just simply get surrounded by the right people, you'll learn the right things. You'll meet the right people. You'll have the right epiphanies, right opportunities. Everything will happen correctly. So being very intentional with the people that you surround yourself with, I think that would be one. And the second one, probably that success truly is pretty simple.

It's not easy. It's funny. Before you got here, I shot an episode with Chris Izzo, and we talked about that for about 10 minutes about how people overcomplicate success, and it's really simple. Man, so he does fitness. He's actually sitting right here. He does fitness, and that's a perfect example. Fitness is simple. Get your macros dialed in, work hard in the gym, and stick to the right workout, but it's not easy. Workout time comes, and it's like, man, I don't know.

I don't know if I want to go or you're not hungry at 9 p.m., but you need to get that last meal in in order to see those gains because you need to cross that threshold of your macros and your calories. So I think that would probably be the second one. So get surrounded by the right people because once you get surrounded by the right people, you'll learn everything else. And then the second one is success is simple. It's not easy. So that's where the discipline and the hard work comes in is actually making it more easy for yourself and stacking the odds in your favor. Yeah. So switching gears for a second.

One of the things that is fucking awesome to me is you've asked me a lot of questions about real estate and you've actually gone out and done the work. You've gone out and started buying stuff. You've invested passively with us. I mean, I personally, obviously, real estate has changed my life. It's made me a multi-multi-millionaire.

And a lot of people that I know, it's helped them too. Like, why do you like real estate? And why did you choose that as a path to start investing in? - So, yeah, a couple reasons. I think it's the best investment you can make besides in yourself. Because investing in yourself, for me, it was sweat equity to get surrounded by the right people, get surrounded by you, meet you and stuff like that. But for a lot of people, they have to pay to be in that room. And whether it's time and sweat equity or actual money, get in the right rooms.

But besides yourself, besides investing in yourself, I think in real estate is the best investment you can make. And the reason for that is because I've invested into a couple of different things and some of them don't play out. You know, some of them just kind of disappear overnight and it's just like, whoa, you know, where's my money? Like I worked hard for that sort of stuff. Real estate's not going anywhere. It's tangible unless you're investing into some like, uh,

house that you've never seen or anything like that, even then, you could probably fact check it and you can usually figure it out. So it's there. Not only that, the numbers wise, when you factor in leverage, you don't need 100% to buy a house. If it's a $400,000 house, you don't need 400K. Leverage, appreciation, which is tax free because it's debt, cashflow, rent's always going up,

principal pay down, once you factor in all the depreciation on your taxes, once you factor in all of those, people don't realize that. They think it's just the cash flow game. Oh, I'm $500 per month and how much do I need to put down? 80K? Yeah, I don't know if it's worth it. But when you factor in appreciation, which is probably going to double 10, 20 years. If not sooner. Exactly.

And man, the last five years, really. Depreciation on your taxes, cash flow, rents going up, principal pay. Once you factor in everything, I really don't think there's a better investment.

yeah appreciation alone five to ten percent you probably only need 20 25 down so that so now what is that it's a five percent appreciation of the entire hundred percent of the house but of your actual money that you put down of of the money you put down it's a 20 cash on cash yep so yeah absolutely so you know another thing is

We can talk about investing all day, right? And one of the biggest things when it comes to like fucking real estate, investing passively or actively, whatever, right? I'll talk from personal experience with you. So you and I had a conversation about one of our passive investments.

You know, you asked me the right questions, then you pulled the trigger, you sent me a wire, like, and then I had something else come up, I reached out to you, it made sense, you invested in it very fast. One of the direct correlations I've seen in really high performers across the board is their ability to disseminate information and make a decision really, really fast, right?

Where I see people fuck up in real estate, business in general, but in real estate, it's analysis by paralysis. And I always say time in the market is way better than timing the market. Like you're young to have that mindset of, all right, pull the trigger, right? So like just because I want one of the things that I want people to understand about listening to this is like you got to stop being in fear of making an investment, right? Right.

So like go through the mindset of, you know, yeah, dude, I'm going to invest my money because I see the upside and I'm not going to fuck around. I'm just going to do it. Yeah. So so investing your money, I definitely see the upside. But I think one thing that helps is seeing the downside to what's the worst thing that could happen?

With you, the worst thing that could happen is I know my money's safe, in all honesty. I've always been taught investing in jockeys, don't invest in deals. And I trust you, dude. My money's good with you. But in other deals, what's the worst that could happen? It go to zero? Yeah, you buy a house, a rental, whatever the case is, and something goes south. What's the worst that could happen?

Man, you lose your money. Yeah. You lose your money. But I think the reason why I'm more trigger happy with that sort of stuff is I view money differently. I've seen the upsides. I've seen the downsides. And I see that it's not too hard to get that money back. Right. So time in the market, like perfect example, I bought a couple houses. The market's been pretty stagnant the last year or so, which is when I bought those two houses. It hasn't appreciated 10%, 20%, whatever it's been the last couple years.

but I'm still cash flowing. I'm sitting on them. And I have no doubt that in the next five years, there's going to be a year where I get 20% appreciation. No doubt. Yeah, no doubt. Yeah. So, you know, worst case scenario, you put 25% down, you put 60, 80K down on a house. It goes south. It would really have to go super south for you to lose your hold down payment, right? Because over time, if you hold real estate, it's going to go up.

And you mentioned a lot of things earlier of the benefits. But another thing, too, is what I always try to tell people is the property will always rent for a certain number. Do you know what I mean? And let's just say rents go down a little bit. It's probably not going to go down so drastic that you're going to be in the hole from a debt service coverage. Especially with 20% down. Exactly. Exactly.

Exactly. But there's so many people who have this fear or the other side of it is there is the fear of like, well, man, real estate is complicated. It's, you know, it's tough to get into. I mean, this is shit I hear from people all the time. You know, I don't know how to do it. I don't, you know, I can tell you, see, here's the thing. Like people get like, like, well, I got to buy this many houses. You could buy a small portfolio of five to 10 houses, hold it for 20 years and

and you end up with a $3 million to $5 million asset paid off, depending on where you live in the country, it's cash flow in six figures a year. And anyone can figure that out. You can have a nine to five to figure that out, right? And a lot of people think that that's not possible, and it is. You know what I mean? And you've started it. You've started your journey already.

Yeah, I think everything's complicated in the beginning. Like when you're a baby, English is pretty complicated. You can't speak English. Getting a six-pack abs, that's pretty complicated. Everything's complicated when you think about it in the beginning. But whenever you commit to learning something, and I think real estate is definitely one of those things that you need to commit to learning. When you commit to learning something, you'll figure it out. I guarantee you will. You figured out English and real estate is not harder than English. Yeah. Another thing, I don't want to skip on this.

You have active income that you've taken to invest to give you passive income. So you've obviously been very successful at your active income to get there. And it's an anomaly, frankly, at your age to make the income that you make, to be able to take it and invest in shit to passive, right? What do you think, because a lot of people that are going to listen to this are entrepreneurs, they're business people, right?

What do you think, and I know this is hard to sum this into a couple of things, but what do you think that you do day in, day out that has made you successful to be? I mean, you've done what, north of 10 million in sales? Just under. Under? 9.2, yeah. But close. And we're not talking 10 million of sales in real estate, where it's like you sold, you

you know, 20 houses and you got there. We're talking $3,000 programs, $60,000 programs, and anything in between. That's a fuck ton of sales. That's racking up a ton of fucking receipts. Like, what do you think has made you successful? What do you think got you there? I know that may be hard to summon a couple of things, but if someone's listening to this and they say, man, how did this...

kid, right? Quote unquote at 23, become a top producer of a huge mastermind organization. How do you think you did it? Man, I've thought about this a lot and I tried to sum it up in my book too. I, I,

Would say get surrounded by the right people but there's been a lot of people that have been in my position a lot of people a lot older than me with a lot more experience I was a 20 20 year old fraternity boy whenever I started with Ryan. Yeah, there was grown men with sales experience That was my first sales job. Well, I sold roofs before that but like very rarely There was a lot of people that got that same situation So I always thought Oh gets around about the right people But there's been a lot of people that have shit even since then have come and gone and not been able to do it. I

There's this book out there and it talks about what potential is. And it says it's three things. It's skills, inner motivation, and emotions. And the skills, man, really I had the inner motivation to go learn the skills. So I had those first two things. The third one's emotions, which obviously when you're surrounded by the right people, you have the right emotions. So, man, I'm just obsessed. And sometimes it's unhealthy sometimes.

I don't think it's unhealthy, but that's just my opinion. Man, sometimes it can be unhealthy. And, dude, I'm just obsessed. Like, I...

I believe that it's my responsibility to show what's possible. And I believe it's my responsibility to break generational curses and to set my mama up and buy her house. I believe it's my responsibility. I believe it's my responsibility to help my brother grow his roofing company. I believe it's my responsibility to really do all that sort of stuff. And that's what drives me. You know, I...

I started when I was young. Me and my dad, I was 15 and my dad started buying like marketing courses. So I like from a young age, I wanted to like succeed. I was doing SEO, building websites. Those websites still make me money every single month. But

I remember going to a seminar and they were talking about your why. And I was sitting there and I was like, man, I don't have a why. Like, what is my why? Like, he's getting deep about it. Like, he's talking about all this why stuff. And I was like, man, I don't have it. And come to, you know, a couple years later, I ended up finding my why. And that's what it is, is to be that.

I wanted my family to show other people what's possible. And I just got, I had to get some wins under my belt at a lower level in order to prove myself that I could do it at a high level. And then once I did it at a high level, now it's time to show everybody that, hey, I'm no different than you. I just needed to be that middle bridge. I needed somebody to show me, hey, this is possible. Now let's go to the next level.

Because I feel like that was one thing that a lot of people can get out of my story is they got to watch the journey, especially if you've been watching me the last three to five years. You've gotten to watch the journey. Ryan, already successful. You see him, man, there's no way I could do that. You, already successful. Man, there's no way I could do that. They didn't see you while you were building. They didn't see Ryan while he was building. They get to see me while I'm building because I'm telling you, I'll be successful. I will be. But I'm not...

I'm not there yet. So you get to see kind of behind the scenes as I'm building it. Does that make sense? It does. Another thing, just an observation that I've seen in successful people, which I've also seen in you, is I feel like, and I'm the same way, I feel like you're a student. I feel like you're always a student. I know for me, you've always asked me questions and always probed and asked questions and

I feel like if you're doing it with me, you're doing it with a lot of people. Do you think, you know, kind of having that student mentality, I like to call it white belt mentality, right? It's like no matter where I'm at, maybe I'm a black belt in certain levels in my businesses, but I always want to have the white belt mentality that I don't know shit. I feel like I can consistently learn. Do you?

I've seen that in you. Do you think that that's helped you? 100%. I think that's one of the keys to, that's one of my core values is stay a student of the game. No matter what level I get to, I always want to learn. I always want to take things to the next level. So yeah, I 100% think so. Even whenever I was an intern and I just got hired with Ryan and it was like, hey, I'm getting paid. And if they don't see an ROI on that money, I'm probably out in the next couple months.

How can I make sure that I get that ROI? I was asking questions. Hey, Danny, what do you think I should do? Ryan, what do you think I should do? Drew B., what do you think I should do? I was asking to figure out how to take things to the next level so 100%. Yeah. One thing I always ask people to do, you know, the show is called Wake Up to Wealth. Give somebody a piece of advice, and it doesn't necessarily mean money. It means whatever it is to you. What's a piece of advice you could give somebody to say, okay,

If you do this one day, you'll wake up to wealth. I could talk about getting surrounded by the right people. I mentioned that already. I think a good key is, is, um, learn how money works and learn that if, if you're not saving and investing early on, when maybe you're not making six figures, seven figures, you're getting up there in income, you probably won't be saving or investing once you get to that level too. Um,

Not much is going to change it. It's really the mindset. That's gold. Learn how money works because we have been taught about money the wrong way and so many people do not fucking understand this. They do not understand this concept, right? If you learn how money works, you will eventually become wealthy. For sure. Because what...

You can be a high performer and make a shit ton of money. And I know a ton of people like this, and I'm sure you do too, that their finances, they can always go out and make the money, but their finances are fucked up. And they're in this endless perpetuating circle because they don't understand how money works, right?

And when you understand how money works, that's what wealthy people do. It's like you always hear people bitching about there's two tax systems in our world, whatever the case it is. It's for the wealthy and it's the unwealthy. And I say it's for the educated and uneducated. For sure. And one thing that I've seen a direct correlation is in wealthy people, they now understand how money works.

I had somebody comment on my post the other day. I was talking about investments and I was like, okay, whenever I get a dollar, what's the first thing I think of? How can I minimize taxes as much as possible? And this dude starts commenting, like talking trash, like, oh, why don't you want to build infrastructure and schools and stuff like that? Why do you not care about kids?

And come to find out he was from England, so that explained a lot. I was like, oh, you know, that's why America exists. But secondly, I was saying, hey, I pay my fair share, but also the tax code exists in order to stimulate growth and the economy in the United States. Entrepreneurs go out and take risks, buy houses, stuff like that.

So I do my fair share, but also I think it would be idiotic to not learn how that works and use it to your advantage because taxes are usually the number one expense that anybody has. 100%. Especially when you start getting into higher incomes, start reaching 30%, 40% taxable income. What else are you going to spend money on? That's more than your house, your cars, and all that sort of stuff. And that's usually what people think is their biggest expense. So learn how money works. I use the...

analogy you ever driven with the truck with a mattress so you try to tie a mattress down into your car and you got to tie it down tight because if you don't a little wind gets in there and it starts peeling it back feeling it back feeling it back and that's how if you uh finances too um that's all you need you need a little bit you need a little bit of investments you need a little bit living below your means and that's just going to start growing it's going to start growing it's going to start growing independent maybe you're a w-2 maybe you're a teacher or something like low lower income

maybe it's slower. Maybe it's going to be slower for you, but if you keep doing that, I guarantee you eventually that wind's going to keep going, keep going, keep going. And it could be as simple as buying a house or something like that. Yeah, you know, I had a friend of mine, he was a physician assistant, a client, but he became a friend. He was a physician's assistant and he was going to get his doctoral to become a doctor and he wanted to open his own practice. Physician's assistants by no means do they not make

decent money, he made decent money, but he didn't make the amount of money he needed to make to obviously go out and spend millions of dollars to open up a practice. So about seven or eight years ago, he reached out to me and I said, "Look, let's buy a couple of rental properties and hold them." He didn't buy that many. He bought a total of five. And about a year and a half ago, I called him. I said, "Hey, do you still think you want to open that practice?" And he said, "Yeah, absolutely." And I said, "Let's sell your rental properties."

and he netted almost a million dollars, right? Like from the time he bought them,

to when I told him to sell him almost a million bucks off of five properties. That's how much his properties had appreciated, right? And it changed him from, I'm going to have to stay a physician's assistant to now I can go live my dream. You know what I mean? He was to the point where he was through medical school, the whole thing, and it gave him enough money for him to be able to go just off of five properties. And that's the shit I think that people don't get or understand.

Now, as a physician's assistant, he wasn't, when he started buying properties, he wasn't even making six figures. So it wasn't like he was, you know, he wasn't making 40, but he wasn't making 100. So it wasn't even like he started with a bunch of money. Like, you know, he scraped together on every property for me to help him buy it.

And that's the beauty of compounded investment. We bought it at the right time. I got him the right deals. It compounded over time and completely changed his life. That's the shit that people don't understand. I love stories like that. I love that I hear more stories of people coming from zero and becoming successful, becoming wealthy.

And I hear more stories of people that are successful and maybe they got like trust funds or something like that and they end up losing it. I think being born without money and without and learning the value of a dollar is one of the biggest assets that someone can have. Life's best lessons come from being broke.

I believe that. I think so too. Being backed into a corner. I think it's one of the biggest assets that you can have. 100%. Absolutely. I love hearing stories like that. Yeah. So, well, hey man, I just want to say thank you. Great knowledge. You dropped a bunch of good nuggets today. How can people find you?

Yeah, so the best way to find me is I'm most active on Facebook and Instagram. So my Facebook is facebook.com forward slash realzacksasser. And then my Instagram is at sasser21. And then also I have a book on Amazon too. So it's $7 basically online.

you asked me those questions, what are the two most best advice you can give? That book has the top 10 lessons that I've learned from mentors and being in the right rooms, flying on private jets with Ryan across the country. So I packaged like the top 10 lessons into that book. So that's on Amazon at Young Closer. Awesome. Thank you, brother. Yes, sir. Appreciate you.

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