Growing up, Scott Smith had dreams of becoming a professional cage match fighter. Today, after heeding the advice of a mentor, and consistently adding to his toolbox outside the ring— he’s become a sought after legal expert for real estate investors.
In today’s episode, Scott drops in to share his insights on life, business, legal planning and pushing forward in spite of panic. He shares his background, the vision and mission behind his firm, Royal Legal Solutions and how he’s responding to the COVID-19 fallout.
Hear what and who has made the largest impact on his life. Also, get advice from a professional on navigating the business loan process. He offers his take on what might lie ahead and how to find support if you find COVID-19 related litigation headed your way.
“What I know that’s true for me in my life is it’s not actually the big wins that I’ve made or about when I’ve timed things correctly and hit like a big home run. It’s actually being able to reduce the deltas between the highs and the lows because that’s where I actually experienced the most pain.”-Scott Smith
“When I combine and take all that fear, and then channel it into action steps, pretty soon, the fear doesn’t exist anymore, because I’m actually doing… But to do that, what you have to realize is that there’s certain things you can control and certain things you can’t control.” -Scott Smith
HIGHLIGHTS:
- [00:00] Episode Overview
- [01:08] Intro
- [01:42] Meet Scott Smith
- [03:11] Avoiding fear and inaction with COVID-19
- [05:06] Your reticular activator and getting clear about what you want
- [07:38] Who has had the greatest impact on his life
- [09:14] The one thing that’s had the greatest impact on his success
- [09:54] Resources for developing introspectively
- [11:26] Finding others to serve as a checkpoint in your life
- [13:01] His greatest setback
- [14:19] The piece of advice he finds himself sharing the most
- [16:28] Why being clear as a leading is easier now than ever
- [21:33] The 3 ways he and his business is reacting to the changes
- [28:17] Avoiding regression and staying out of our ruts post COVID-19
- [32:40] What’s lying ahead
- [36:39] When’s the right time to start an LLC
- [39:48] Asset protection and resources from Royal Legal Solutions
- [42:57] Support for navigating the PPP and EIDL loan process
- [44:59] Closing thoughts
- [32:38] The journey, regrets and locking in his voyage
- [36:04] How you can get started with your own plan
- [39:07] Outro
MENTIONED:
FIND | SCOTT SMITH
At Scott@royallegalsolutions.com
At royallegalsolutions.com
On Facebook
On Youtube
FULL TRANSCRIPTION:
Mike Ayala 00:00
Hey guys, on today’s show, we’re interviewing Scott Smith and I’ve actually decided to push this show up. This show probably wouldn’t have aired for probably another four to six weeks, just the way that the queue is worked out in the order of interviews and stuff. But we get into some stuff with Scott today that is just so relevant and timely right now with everything that’s going on with COVID-19. And, you know, just the state of our country in the world. You know, small businesses are really struggling. A lot of large businesses are struggling restaurants are shutting down, left and right. And Scott really gets into some perspective about not only our mental health and state, but also our business, health and state and the legal ramifications of everything that’s going on right now. So, like I said, I really wanted to push this episode up, because I think there’s some timely information in here. Scott’s just a great guy. And I think you guys are gonna really appreciate the show. I don’t know if we really get into it, but he’s also got a podcast called The Real Estate Nerds. And if you have a chance, go check that podcast out because there’s a lot of good guests on there. A lot of great information. But anyway, I hope you guys really get a lot of value out of this show today. Make sure you go check out his asset protection video. on his website at Royal legal solutions calm, I really think that you guys are gonna get a lot of value out of this. So without delaying any longer, I’ll just let you get to the show.
Mike Ayala 01:08
Are you looking for freedom? Freedom from the daily grind and hustle? Or just finding a way to live the life you always wanted? Then join us on the investing for freedom podcast, our host, Mike Ayala will help you discover new ways to find freedom with tips, insights and interviews. You’ll learn the exact systems he’s used to travel the world and live his best life. True success and happiness are all about freedom. And here’s your roadmap on how to find freedom on your own terms. Welcome to the investing for freedom podcast. Here’s your host, Mike Ayala.
Mike Ayala 01:42
Okay everybody, I’ve got Scott Smith on with me today. Scott is a friend of mine and I actually met him through a group that I talked about quite a bit, Gobundance. Just just an amazing group of people and I’m really excited to bring Scott to you today, especially during this time. Scott owns a legal firm called Royal Legal Solutions. And I’ve been leaning on him lately for a lot of inspiration and wisdom in our whole tribe has because he’s just kind of on the forefront of a lot of this. And so we’re excited to have him excited to bring the information today. Let’s dig into it. Scott, thanks for being on the show.
Scott Smith 02:13
Hey, Mike, great to be here. And I’m really excited to be able to kind of be an open book and just a voice of, you know, just straight talk of here’s what’s going on what I typically find what works really well. And these types of scenarios, which is really different than what I see in, like from the news media and from a lot of other outlets is, it’s just, you know, talking about like, what are the fear points, let’s just label the fears that we have here. And then say, Great, now that we know exactly what the fear is, we got that thing labeled, how can we take that fear and turn it into action to be able to accomplish things that previously we weren’t able to do because they were too difficult, or we had the emotional blocks around it. And right now is actually the greatest opportunity that I’ve seen for myself inside my own life in my own company. I mean, I just end up you know, coming out here to Southwest Utah, which I’ve been wanting to do for five years now. And Now I got my own whole new setup of what I wanted to do. And it’s all because of COVID. So I’d love to just share with you more about that. And, you know, anything that we can talk about, I think would be helpful.
Mike Ayala 03:11
You know, I love that you actually went there. And we’ll get into our normal questions here in a second. But you actually put a video up the other day that I thought was awesome. And you were talking about during this time, you were just sitting back saying, Okay, what can I control? Because there’s so many things that are going on right now that we have no control over? Can you just kind of address that and kind of share that with what you were, what your thought process was and what you were thinking there?
Scott Smith 03:31
Yeah, so what it got me thinking, I say, hey, where does this panic come from? Why is panic a real thing? Right? And what was the nature of panic? And as I was contemplating that I was like, well, panic seems to be something that has two parts to it. It seems to have like a fear component to it, but also equipped with inaction. And we were really afraid and we have nothing to do. All we do is sit there and just stew in the worry right? Now you can look at this in like a different way where you you talk about like what happens when you have like fear with tons of action, then a ton of stuff gets done. And when I’ve done that, for my life, when I combine and take all that fear, and then channel it into action steps, pretty soon, the fear doesn’t exist anymore, because I’m actually doing stuff. And once the… just the process of doing stuff makes the fear go away, right. And it’s not that anything’s actually really changed at all right. And this is like, the really cool part is that nothing actually has to change in your life at all, besides just the fact that you take action and then all of a sudden, the fear goes away. But to do that, what you have to realize that there’s certain things you can control and certain things you can’t control. And so everything that you can’t control, and everything I can’t control, I barely pay attention to it. I figured most things that I can’t control, if it’s really something that maybe is important, probably somebody’s gonna tell me about it. This is like just walking around, because it’s gonna be that big of a deal that everybody’s going to be talking about, right? So the only thing I really need to put my attention on are things that I can control. And then those are the things that I can’t control turn to the action steps and then I’m actually getting stuff done. And because I’m getting stuff done, now I’m in a better position where I was. Anytime… putting attention on things you can’t control, I mean, has to just be a waste of time, because you can’t do anything about it. So why even worry about it?
Mike Ayala 05:06
That’s such a good point. And you said something else in that video, too. You’re really focusing on what do you want? You’re coming back to that, that. Just that core concept? What do I really want? Can you just touch on that a little bit?
Scott Smith 05:16
Yeah. So for me, like getting really, really clear, like as precise as I possibly can be about what I want, is probably the most important thing. Once I can actually define clearly what it is I want, I can kind of just leave it, kick it into the back of my mind. And then my mind just subconsciously starts to find out how to get me that thing. Right. So there’s like some science behind this right with what’s called like your reticular activator. And if you ever gone shopping for a car, and then all of a sudden you’re like, Hey, I’m shopping for like a silver Honda Civic. And then you just see silver Honda Civics everywhere. That’s because you’ve told your mind, hey, I’m looking for this thing. And it’s really particular and so all of a sudden, your mind starts to pick it up, starts to pick up awareness around it. Same thing happens for us around anything that we want, right? So but the more clear and precise you are with it, the more your mind is able to just start searching for in the background. And what’s cool about this is that you actually get to your mind works for you while you’re not having to work, right? It’s doing all of the heavy lifting while you’re focused on other things. And then pretty soon you’ll have that experience where it’s like, oh, it just came to me, or this thing just happened. It’s like magic, right? Well, well, it wasn’t really magic, right? It was because actually, there was a part of your brain that you weren’t conscious of that was actually chugging the whole time to be able to get you there.
Scott Smith 06:28
And that’s where like, I think the magic comes in and like knowing really precisely like what is you want spend a lot of time, thinking about what it is I want. And having done that, actually, for the last five years, this COVID thing actually gave me an amazing opportunity. Because inside of the Panic of inside of everything that was like, the skies are falling, right? I could act on everything that I wanted, all at one time and everybody was okay with it. Because we’re in a panic. So anything you do inside of a panic every anybody gets a pass or like, Okay, cool. Well, that’s just whatever you’re doing. I have no idea why that’s true. I have some theories about it. But it’s like the most amazing time if you know what it is you want, like, now is the time to go seize it.
Mike Ayala 07:11
That was gold right there. I feel like if people just get a hold of what you just said, I mean, we could we could end the show there. We’re not going to but we could
Scott Smith 07:20
Thats a wrap I’m calling it a day Mike.
Mike Ayala 07:23
That was so good.
Mike Ayala 07:25
Yeah, it is such a you know, it’s such a an amazing point. I mean, we could totally reinvent ourselves if we don’t like, just roll up into a ball and freak out right now. So, you know, that’s what I’ve been trying to stay focused on. So. Okay, let’s get into some questions.
Mike Ayala 07:38
So who has had the greatest impact on your life?
Scott Smith 07:42
Yeah, I would probably say it’s, it’s probably my godfather. You know, I got further from the time I was a kid I was always taught he was he’s a wealthy entrepreneur and I grew up in a family was pretty poor. Right. My father passed away when I was three and my mom is a schoolteacher. I always looked up to people that had money and had success because I knew that was important, but I didn’t Know how or why, or how would anybody actually do that? I just knew that they had some type of like special magic power, you know, and he was one of those guys that had that with a company, and then he had built and sold. And so he actually guided me through a lot of my life like really indirectly, right? It was like, Hey, you should go to law school, you know, like, go get that professional certifications with that, because even if you decide you want to sell ice cream cones, you know, and have a business selling ice cream cones, you’re a lawyer deciding to sell ice cream cones, you know, you’re not just out there trying to Hawk ice cream cones, you know, he’s like, that’ll be important for you. And it was like these really types of like, subtle guidance of things that I would just happen to do, because I didn’t know honestly, I didn’t know what else to do. Life to me was, as always been pretty confusing up until maybe in the last eight years or so. And so that’s really kind of one of things. I just like kind of leaned on him said, hey, what should I be doing? Right now? Like, what’s another thing that just add in to the toolbox? I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what I want in my life I don’t know what I want to be doing. And so he was just keep encouraging me to say like, well just go add another tool to your toolbox because while you don’t know what to do, it’s a great time just add another tool because just kick the can down the road and that tool come to serve you at some point in the future. And he was 100% right.
Mike Ayala 09:14
That’s awesome. If you could narrow down to one thing that’s had the greatest impact on your success what would you say that is
Scott Smith 09:21
Definitely my spiritual growth like then by spiritual I don’t mean like the woowoo like, putting crystals all over my body, type. I mean, like the, the type of like having like really deep knowledge of self like introspective and reflective knowledge, like really blunt honesty with myself, but like, who I am, what am I going after? Why am I going after that? You know, though that type of internal feedback has all of the other downstream benefits to my life. So if there’s like one thing that I have to focus on first that I know everything else in my life is going to get better because of it’s that it’s that peace and that practice.
Mike Ayala 09:54
That’s awesome. detour and a little add on question here. Do you have like a favorite resource around that getting introspective a certain book or something that you could recommend?
Scott Smith 10:03
Yeah, I think there’s actually two different groups that I’ve worked with that I thought were really good in this in this field, at least getting people to jump started. One is called it’s like insightseminars.org. I think it’s like Insider International, they work out of Santa Monica, California, and they do like these weekend seminar pieces to it. What’s really cool about that is it’s all experience based learning that actually don’t tell you much. They just put you in scenarios and then ask you to reflect on it. So it’s like they make you flex the tool set of like awareness and self introspection, and whatever level you’re at, you’ll get something different. Everybody will have a different insight because everybody’s at a different level through that experience. There’s another group that’s an awesome I think it’s called like the Atlas Group. But it’s in the same type of vein, right? It’s all experience based learning high levels of like awareness training, low like teaching and talking at you tons of actual like activity and then programming you like how do you actually do the work of like, how do you actually become honest with yourself, how do you actually become introspective yourself? How do you actually like, see the nasty parts of yourself and say, okay, that’s just part of me, you know, that’s part of my shadow that’s part of that dark side of like who I am. And that’s okay too, because that’s just part of me. And I just need to be aware of where that’s going to come up in the world. As you can imagine being like a litigator coming out of law school. And with that, and suing insurance companies and stuff like that, that was probably a vein that I had going pretty strong about how to fight.
Mike Ayala 11:25
Yeah, totally. A little side note, I’ve got several attorneys in my life. And typically, whenever we’re talking to our attorneys, it’s either being proactive about a deal or whatever, or else, we have a challenge and I’ve yet to have ever been sued other than a couple of, you know, small employee issues and but I’ve found during this time that like, talking with attorneys has actually been really good for me, because you guys kind of look at things from like, kind of like a balanced level. I mean, things that we think are just the end of the world, always seen that before and here’s how we can deal with it. Deal with it. So I appreciate your guys’s like level headedness. I don’t know if it correlates over into your personal lives. But that’s been a source of strength for me lately, just like it’s gonna be okay. We’ve got good documentation. So it’s it’s been calming lately.
Scott Smith 12:15
You know, man, I think that I think that’s what really good professionals should always be doing right is really good professional should be the ones that are on the check for other people, right? I actually have my own attorneys, right that I talk to that provide me the same piece because I can do that for you, Mike, but when I have to try to do it for myself, I can’t right? I’m like okay, I need somebody else that does it for me to give me that kind of like, here’s what’s going on. And I have my own business coaches that do the same pieces to me with like looking at our reports, and what are the kinds of things that we need to look at. Because when it’s in your own head, it’s really tough to do and so I’d recommend like everybody you need like another you need some type of trusted advisor in your life, whatever that’s gonna be it can be free. It could be anybody, right? But somebody else that you trust to serve as that checkpoint, because it’s too hard to do the stuff fall inside your own head. Yep.
Mike Ayala 13:01
Makes a lot of sense. Okay, what was your greatest setback? And would you learn from it?
Scott Smith 13:07
My greatest setback was probably when like, I got my, my rear end kicked around the ring. And when I was 22, I was I graduated out of college with a liberal arts degree in Spanish and an economics. And I didn’t take a single business class. So I really was like unemployable at that time. So I started to do, but I like, a ton of knowledge, right? So I said, like, well, I’ll just start like tutoring the rich kids out in Houston, you know, with like, the rich private school kids and charging like 85 or 100 bucks an hour or whatever was because I could teach him anything. Physics, calculus, Spanish, like whatever it was right? And at the same time, I was like, fighting professionally. And I thought I was gonna be a professional fighter, like cage fighting. So I did that for a period of time. And then the biggest setback for me was realizing that I was like, I’m not very good at this. Like and, and you get taught that lesson in a very brutal way, you know, and it was at that moment that I was like, you know, taking the outset and go to law school sounds pretty good. I’m gonna listen to my godfather because he said that was a good idea. And this is sounding a lot better now.
Mike Ayala 14:08
Yeah. Scott’s got live videos of that happening. We’ll link it in the show notes.
Scott Smith 14:13
Yeah. Getting embarrassing. Just Just getting pummeled. Yeah, that’s great.
Mike Ayala 14:19
What is the piece of advice you find yourself sharing the most?
Scott Smith 14:25
Just to slow down and be still with people? Yeah, I find that like most most of the time for myself, and I share that advice, actually, myself more than anybody to tell you the trick is just to slow down, slow down, be still then make a decision about whatever you’re going to do next, or then have that conversation. There’s actually like nothing to be gained in moving faster. And most of the time, all the action that we’re doing is actually not, it’s either not necessary or it’s not helpful, but like we feel good acting fast as entrepreneurs. And I think that that’s a that’s a piece I share with myself but I share with other people in my company too.
Mike Ayala 15:03
Wow, that’s good.
Mike Ayala 15:04
I was actually talking with Rock Thomas the other day, who’s a mutual friend of ours. And he said a phrase that he, I don’t know if he came up with it or what but it’s called stimulus, pause, response, kind of along the same vein, just when something stimulates you pause, and then respond, just take a little bit of time, think through it. And whether it’s an outside thing, just, you know, kind of slowing down. And, you know, sometimes we just move through decisions in life and everything in general. So fast. That makes a lot of sense.
Scott Smith 15:35
Yeah, yeah. And there’s probably a lot of really good reasons to do that, too. Right? Like, just the fact of like, if you actually just slow down a little bit more, you actually might remember what you did that day. You know, that might there might be value in that of like, wondering, like, not waking up and being like, where’d that last month go?
Mike Ayala 15:50
Wow.
Scott Smith 15:51
Yeah?
Mike Ayala 15:51
Yeah.
Scott Smith 15:52
Like that might be valuable, right? I mean, if the treasure trove of life is actually like what you have, right, like, what do you really have like you really only have like your memories, right? So if you’re actually losing months or years of like no memories being created, that time is just gone, you’ve actually not poured into the asset value of your life. You’ve just wasted it. And from that perspective, right, maybe you didn’t maybe you did a bunch of stuff right? from life, like what makes a rich life. I don’t know any other way of measuring it besides like the memories and the experiences I have. And then my ability to reflect on those and put those into like my essence of like who I am.
Mike Ayala 16:28
That’s so good. bringing that back to what you were saying earlier, and in your video. We’ve got all this stuff going on right now. It’s 2020. We’re in the middle of April, and we’ve got all this COVID-19 stuff going on. I think this is an opportunity. You can come you can take this time and go any way you want. But really we should. I don’t know about you guys, but it’s been pretty quiet. I mean, we’ve got a lot going on and I’m busier than I’ve probably ever been just because of certain aspects of our business but are you finding yourself really being able to slow down And go more interest after…
Scott Smith 17:02
Yeah so much more. And I don’t know really why to tell you the truth. I actually can’t put my finger on the pulse of why this is happening this way. I suspect is that in times like these, a lot of other people in my life or my frame of reference, you know, are like my circle of influence, right?
Scott Smith 17:30
The everybody in these types of time periods, they want to be led, like even more than they did before, right? So it’s actually easier to lead. It’s actually easier to get stuff done, because everybody else is much more willing to just go with whatever it is that you’re saying and whatever ways that you’re showing up because you’re projecting strength, you’re projecting security, you’re projecting, you know, these things that they want, and that people there’s just no resistance into it. They’re just like, how can I how can I play possibly do what it is that you want me to do with that. Whereas in times of where it’s like before, people had a lot of their own stuff. And that would confront against my stuff. And then I’d have to try to persuade them over to my side. And now there is only my side. Because if they’re not on my team, and they’re not on board with me, then good luck on your own. And so it’s a really harsh reality, like, right that I think we all implicitly understand as tribes that people when there’s panic, or when there’s war, right, it’s either you’re on the team, you’re not and if you’re not on the team, good luck in the wilderness on your own, right. So there’s like these inherent types of I think, just like tribal mechanisms at play, that make it easier as a leader and a business owner now than it’s ever been for me.
Mike Ayala 18:43
I was having a conversation yesterday in a in another group that I’m in and I think also, I don’t know if you agree with this, but I’m finding it easy to lead right now or easier to lead right now, even though we’re going through some challenging times. Because I feel like I can be 100% honest with my entire team. Not only can I be 100% honest with myself, we’re all in the same place together. And I think sometimes, again, I don’t know if you agree with this or what your thoughts are on it. But I feel like sometimes we’ve never been able to not, not never. But most of the time, we’re not able to be completely honest about what’s going on in the business where we’re actually heading. Right now everybody’s on the same page. This is what’s happening. It’s black and white, if you can’t get on board with it, move on. And that’s actually made made it pretty easy. Like, this is where we’re at, and we’re all in it together. And
Scott Smith 19:32
we have done this always, you know, like, could we have shown up like this all the time, and then had been like, okay, and I want to say that, that it’s probably true that we could have, but what we tell ourselves is that we’re afraid that if we show up like that, that the other people might not like it, and if they leave, it’s going to hurt me. Right and so then I need to soften it right? But I wonder Mike and I was wondering like from your perspective, when you look at like the really great like leaders, right like guys that really move the dial in their industries. It seems like they’re incredibly unreasonable with like, everybody, this is how it is.You know? And that’s just gonna be this way. You’re either on board or you’re out, you’re in or you’re out. And I just don’t have time. I don’t care how good you are. If you’re not 100% in and you’re not like in it on the way I’m in it. That’s it. I’m cool. I’ll go work with somebody else. You know, like Steve Jobs is one of those guys right into it. And but I was like, Man, that that sounds rough. That sounds scary to try to lead that way. Now I’m doing and I’m like, wow, this has never been easier. But it’s because like, what I feel safe, right? Because I’m like, you don’t have an alternative besides just to do what it is that I’m saying, like, this is what we’re going to do. And you’re really excited by the fact that you’re like, I got a job, but I’m not one of the 6.5 million people that are unemployed right now.
Mike Ayala 20:38
Yeah. You know, what’s interesting On that note, too, I mean, you do have some extremes, like you said, like with Steve Jobs, but most most of the time people that were with somebody like that long term, don’t have a lot of negative to say about it once you’re okay with what’s actually happening there and you buy into the vision and most of the time people are like, yeah, this was a this was a weird part of it, but actually outside of Like, they got they got in line. And they actually appreciated him for it. It’s kind of Yeah,
Scott Smith 21:06
like, as long as they’re consistent and clear, like most people just want like consistency and the clarity of like, what my expectations are, right? That at least that’s what I’m like realizing now, like in this moment, that’s what seems true for me. And to it that I’m saying, Man, I didn’t ever have to compromise and like, what a blessing to learn that now as being 35 years old, of saying, like, wow, I don’t have to compromise nearly as much as I think I have to. I cool, that means I can have more of what I want. I can be more peace about it. That’s like, Man, that’s a neat place to be. That’s awesome.
Mike Ayala 21:33
That’s cool. Okay, we could go a million directions here. But I think based on the current issues that we’ve got going on and and with your legal background, and your business background, all of your experience, I think we really probably should get into some practical advice on you know, what you’re doing right now currently and what other people can do so can you just kind of give us an overview of you know, what you’ve been doing in your personal life, your business life? How are you handling all this?
Scott Smith 21:59
Yeah, so there’s just like, couple of key points that I focus on. Because there’s obviously like a million things I could be doing, right? But I’m always focused on like, what are things that I think are really accomplishable that I can do and that are actually going to move the dial, right? Things that are inside of my control. So in that respect, I started prioritizing, having a lot more fun. And that’s probably a weird thing to say, during a pandemic, right. But that’s one of the reasons that I like I’ve got this you know, I’m at my house that’s here in southwest Utah right now is because I was like, Man, you know, of everything else that’s going on, I can try to work my ass off probably won’t make that much of a difference right now into it. Or what I could do is actually be like, man, how can I work and get what I need done and also have just a ton more fun while I’m doing it and be like, hey, this could be the best time of my life right now. And how could that be true? And then it’s like, oh, cool. I could be out here I can add like the dirt biking, the boating and the hiking in the National Park and all the great stuff that’s like out here like Oh, that sounds really cool. So like my spirits maintain like really high there and it hasn’t Like downstream benefits to all my staff because they see me like full of energy and full of like excitement and like, rejuvenated. And they’re like, Wow, this is awesome that our leader is like coming in and he’s always got like, stuff to be able to pour into us, you know, energy to pour into us to help us, like raise our awareness or raise our mentality into what we’re doing. And so I just get tons of really positive feedback from all my staff. I’m like, Holy smokes, like how important was it for me to have fun this whole time? And I thought was really important was working hard. Yeah, it’s not, you know, like, that wasn’t what got my people to move, you know? So like, on a personal level, I’m doing that. On a business level, we’ve had to pivot a little bit really just about like, how do the things that we do actually just address what are the concerns that people are having right now, which are typically around like three major areas? It’s like how do I get money from a loan programs always like okay, Attorney staff, we got free time now let’s go become experts in the loans and help people coach through how to get the loan. So we charge 2,500 bucks and we give you your money back if we don’t get any money, any money for you, right? So it’s like a yearly thing. To get 10 grand at a minimum, from the EIDL warrior, we don’t we just give you all your money back, right? So we’re like, Okay, cool. It’s a zero risk way for people to get free money, right sweet.
Scott Smith 24:09
And then we’re like, Okay, well what else people need? Well, we know that lawsuits are gonna go rise as unemployment increases, because when people don’t have enough they come and take from you. And they use frivolous litigation attorneys to do it. So asset protection is top of mind and estate planning, you might die, you might end up in hospital. So cool. This is where you’re gonna need estate planning to come and help you. So we’re like, okay, let’s reposition those things that we know really well. Well, inside of our skill set, let’s address the current needs. And we’re pivoting into that. And that’s been able to help our, our business. We took like a huge dip, like in that first week, like 80% of our revenue dropped off, and now we’re slowly climbing back. You know? Thats what we need, so businesses coming back strong with doing that. And, I mean, those are the I mean to two really big moves and that vein,
Scott Smith 24:59
And then the last Really big moves that I prioritize as my community, like, Who am I actually seeing? Who am I actually spending all my time with. And that’s actually been one of the biggest movers unexpectedly for me. Because I knew that I was going to have that, but I didn’t know the impact of it. And I got, I gotta tell you, man, it’s something really weird about human being a human being. And for my last like, three, four years, all I was doing was just working like a ton as an office working and I had like my staff and I was like my staff or like my people, and I was like, I didn’t really have a lot of people that I would see that are outside of things that are trying to create, you know, I’m really about creating my vision. Like, to me, that’s the most fun thing I could be doing. And I didn’t realize that there was actually a piece of me that was thirsty for like, family and community and those types of pieces that now that I’ve had to slow down so much. I’m out here in Utah where I have lots of like friends and other family and stuff that lives out here. being plugged in a community is just so like nourishing it’s like food. For the soul and has again, they’re not like, direct dollar into out kinds of things. But it like makes me show up differently each day and like, What am I thinking about? Like my thinking is like, changed from Panic of like, how are we going to get through the next week or two months? You know where it was when I was in Austin, four weeks ago, like where a lot of stuff is hitting the fan right into it. Now I’m like, Okay, what is life gonna be like a year, two years, three years, four years, five years. And I’m noticing that the more that I pour into these other areas of my life and focus on those things, that the longer my thinking can get even inside of a panic. And to me, that means I was like, Ah, I’m actually escaping the prison, because the prison is in the reactive immediacy of the state of mind. And if I’m actually starting to naturally thinking longer term of timescales, that means I’m on the right track of actually being okay, I’m actually out of the prison.
Scott Smith 26:54
Does that make sense?
Mike Ayala 26:54
Yeah, it makes total sense. It’s so good. Again, back to Gobundance. One of the main things that I’ve Taking away from that community is the authentic relationship pillar. And I’ve been so thankful for that group. And for that reason, it’s taught me a lot about authentic relationships. But coming into a time like this, you’ve said several things that are just amazing. Number one slowing down. I was talking with a guy the other day. And it’s interesting because as we have slowed down, and we’re focused more on relationships and community, which I’ve been in, you know, I think Scott’s dropping a lot of wisdom here. And if you’re not focusing on relationships, and community, and slowing down, dig in on that, but one thing I’ve found lately, I’ve had people crossing my mind every single day, like, Scott’s name will flutter through my brain and I’ll be like, you know what, I’m just going to take a minute and I’m going to reach out to Scott, instead of like, I used to tell myself anytime i’d think of someone or my subconscious, you know, you’re talking about that inner inner perspective, would bring somebody up that you hadn’t thought about for eight months or whatever. I’d be like, Oh, I need to call that person and I kind of file it away. But lately I’ve been every time my subconscious brings somebody up or I just randomly think about someone. I’ve been reaching out. To them, and every single time it’s like, I’m so glad you called I’m dealing with this. Thank you can we get on it? And I’m just like, if we weren’t focused on the community in the authentic relation ship piece and slowing down, would I even? I mean, would I just go back to blowing over that thought process and not connecting to humans?
Mike Ayala 28:17
And so I guess the question that I wanted to ask you, how do we I know this is not a black and white question, but how do we remember where we’re at right now is like journaling. How do we get on the other side of this and make sure that we as individuals, and people just don’t go right back into our rut?
Scott Smith 28:34
Well, you’ll have every reason to go back into the rut. Right? Because we should always reach back to the life and try and pick back up exactly as before. So the one of the things that you get into is like when we talked about it, in the very beginning of this talk, you’re like, what are the things that you did, right? That like helped you like develop that inner sense of knowing and, you know, self awareness, like those types of pieces, right, like the knowledge self knowledge, right? I mean, That concept doesn’t mine. Right? That goes back to like Socrates, right? Like the man know thyself, like all that stuff, right? Like people have been trying to struggle with this knowing it was the biggest mover for a few thousand years, right? So it’s probably probably pretty right into it. Now, the thing is that when you go to any of these, like seminars or any things, right, you have like this amazing experience while you’re there, right? And then you go home. And then at last, like that piece, like, it’s, you got it hundred percent on the first day, and it’s like, 80, 90, 60, 40. And then bring you back, you’re just exactly where you were before and people are like hey, it didn’t work. It didn’t work. It didn’t fix me. Yeah, right into it. And if you think about it, what an insane thing to say. Because you’ve had 30 years of a pattern of living a certain way. And to think that a brief stint in your time on the planet is going to radically change who you are, how you show up in the world, what’s important to you, is going to just stick and last. Without other reinforcement is insane. Of course, it’s not going to happen. Right. So the question is, is like, what do we do, like knowing that that’s going to be the case. So I think the things that I found I’ve been like most impactful for me is, one is creating like an intentional practice that has to do with some type of physical writing, right. So whether it’s gonna be like goal tracking, by like tallying marks, like on goals, or there’s gonna be a journal writing or whatever the case could be. And that seems to be really important, and really helpful. And there’s a lot of good brain research of why that is really powerful. And I’ve just can speak to it from my own personal piece of that’s really important.
Scott Smith 30:32
The next piece is actually to surround myself with people that have what it is I want and actually physically go spend time with them. And usually, it’s always best if I try to do things that are fun, because when I actually want to go spend time with it doesn’t feel like a chore, like I’m doing this, like whatever chore that makes my life better. Like no, no they’re just awesome. They naturally are that way or they naturally have that thing that I like that I want for myself. And so if I just go find ways to go have fun with them, then I’m going to want to go to do that. We’re gonna want to go hang out together, and then that’s just going to rub off on me because they’re naturally away. And I’m going to start showing up that way and be in that state of mind or that state of being for hours at a time, because I’m thirsty for it right and picking up from them. So it sounds just like 10 minutes on a journal, it’s being hours. And like that state of being, that seems to be really huge, too. So I don’t think that there’s anything like exceptionally insightful into that I think those are things that probably people have heard of time before, right, which is like who you’re surrounding yourself with, probably surround yourself with people that have what you want, right? Or who you like with the state of being that you want. And then do some type of physical reflective activity, right with either journaling, goal tracking, whatever the case would be. The journaling and stuff like that. You also can serve as like a meditative piece. But for me, meditation has always been just like a way to combat anxiety, or to rejuvenate like in my mind’s too foggy, or like I’m feeling really anxious about something. I’ll just use meditation as a tool for that. But it hasn’t like taken me to like transcendental levels where I’m just like flying off in outer space or something like that. So I
Mike Ayala 32:03
actually, I think it actually is very insightful and impactful because you said something. I mean, if we just always do what we’ve always done, we’re going to just stay there. And so when we hear people reinforce the same concepts over and over and over, there’s certain themes that you know, anybody like you that not anybody, but most people like you that I talked to. There’s just these little things that they do to really change who they are. And from that interest, introspective position. I think it’s important. So I, I do think it’s very insightful, and I appreciate it.
Scott Smith 32:33
Thanks, Mike.
Mike Ayala 32:33
So are we near the bottom of this problem, or I know you’ve got a crystal ball. So what do you see?
Scott Smith 32:40
Yeah, so this is what I tell people when it comes to this, right. And I’m actually releasing like a 40 page ebook that has like all the strategies I’m using for all the different like loan programs as Krishna estate planning, hunting through like, how do you maximize cash so that we can actually use opportunities in the future? All the different tapping retirement accounts away so you don’t have to pay penalties? creative strategies, we’re coming up with that. And actually the first two chapters of this, this book, or it’s like an ebook, you know, kind of thing that I’m running right now that we’re using for like our principal barking material is about that this this question, right? I act in the part of the things that I talk about in there, as I say, well, it’s a question we all want to ask. But how useful is it? Right? Because what will the answer tell us into it? So maybe there’s a better question that we should be asking ourselves, which is, what do we do in the face of uncertainty? Right? And what do you do? How do you make decisions in uncertainty? Right? And so like, if I ask that question about how do I make decision and certainly then I start to think a little bit differently through the How do I think through the problem? And so when I think through like this decisions of uncertainty, what I’m always looking for is not actually any bright line rules I’m looking for, like, what are my downside risks that come from whatever decisions that I’m making and I must to judge the amount of risk it is by how easily I can reverse from the decision. Right? So if I can easily reverse from the decision, I’ll just go ahead and make the decision because it’s so not risky at all right? If it’s something that’s really hard for me to reverse on, if I like guessed wrong on it. Now, that’s when I’m gonna be ultra conservative on really gonna think through it and really make sure that I’m probably too conservative. I want to be on too conservative, conservative mindset of it. So one way to think about this is like, how do we think about like, what our cash position should be at a time like this, right? We know cash is going to be king, especially when we have in the future economy in the next couple of years, the amount of cash you have will be the amount of opportunities you’re going to be able to scoop up, right. Anybody that’s in the know of serious investing will tell you the exact same thing, but like this is what’s gonna happen liquidity markets are going to dry up, we’re already starting to see those beside of banks. So it’s going to end up being cash, you’re going to have fluctuations inside of any other asset. So you might as well pull those cash and hold on to it. And why is it so important now?
Scott Smith 34:57
It’s so important because it doesn’t matter if you’re right or wrong, right? The point is, is that you sit on cash, because if things get worse, and they’re worse than you think you’re going to need cash to survive it. Right? If things are better, and there’s a bounce back, well, Holy smokes, look, you got cash or take advantage of the opportunity. So the end of the decision is you sit on cash. So it doesn’t matter to me whether this is the bottom or the not on looking for saying I’m sitting on cash, and I’m waiting, and I wait and wait, no, wait, no, wait, wait until it becomes painfully obvious you have the decision that I should have to make that I’m almost forced to make the decision because every other decision seems ridiculous. And that’s how conservative I’m treating like what’s going on. Because what I know that’s true for me in my life is not actually the big wins that I’ve made about like when I’ve timed things correctly and hit like a big home run. It’s actually being able to reduce the deltas between the highs and the lows because that’s where I actually experienced the most pain. My life is actually pretty okay, as long as it’s keeping going up into the right in a steady fashion. where it gets really painful is when I have these huge spikes of like highs And lows off of that mean, and I’m about living a great life more than I am about trying to maximize money. I’ve tried to maximize the opportunity, because that’s what’s important. It’s all about having fun. It’s about being connected to other people. It’s about living a great life for like, who I am as a person when I show up every day. And so that’s the way I kind of think of that problem. I know, that’s not probably directly responsive to your answer, but that was
Mike Ayala 36:20
I wasn’t going to I actually, that little that last five minutes right there. That was like the third time we could just stop recording and be good. That that’s, there was a ton of wisdom in that. And I think that I think that people need to go back and digest that I’m gonna cut that down into a clip itself, because it’s pretty amazing.
Mike Ayala 36:39
So let’s get into a little bit of tactical, tactical advice because I owe it to our listeners. And we got a brilliant legal mind on here. So just some practical questions. I get asked a lot, when’s the right time to start an LLC?
Scott Smith 36:52
Yeah, so especially during the timeframe that we’re going on right now you have to understand that like, as the economy will get worse, which we have a reason to blame It will write with spikes, huge spikes and unemployment. The government’s pretty seemingly not very coordinated and how actually they’re addressing the financial issues that are coming up. All you have to do is look at what’s happening with the current loan programs. So they can generate all the stimulus money, but they actually can’t get it dispersed and they can’t manage the disbursement very well, how are they even going to tracking that stuff? The smartest minds that I can find, can’t figure out this stuff. And so I was like, well, that’s us. Well, how is everybody else doing? Yeah, right. So, so I was like, Okay, great. So what does it actually mean? So what does that mean, in terms of like, action steps for us would mean, okay, we should probably expect things to not be so great economically for a while. And we know that when things turn bad economically, people don’t have a lot. And so what they do is they turn to usually the frivolous litigation attorneys to file lawsuits. So they get paid, they get paid from the people that aren’t protected. So people that don’t ask us in a personal name are great target for this right because they have everything at risk for those frivolous litigation attorneys to target and you have to think about it from the perspective of us. These aren’t necessarily even bad people, they’re desperate people. Both people are desperate, the person that doesn’t have enough that goes to seek out that attorney and that attorney that has his own family and staff to support, you just happen to be the victim of too desperate people, because you didn’t take the steps to be protected. And all you had to do was to be able to form your LLC to move the assets out of your personal name to put some basic anonymity structures in place to make it where you’re just not the target. Let them go after somebody else. Right. Where this actually comes up, is. I’ve seen it happen a lot before even in good economic times where there’s lawsuits will happen in this vein, the lawsuits that are gonna happen in this vein of what the frivolous litigation that’s going to pop up, where they’re going to extort you for money from it will skyrocket off of it. I’m actually already seeing it from a lot of my my clients, a lot of them are even Gobros. I can’t tell any specifics about it. But we’re starting to see major losses and it’s exactly what you would expect. It’s lawsuits that are alleging around 80 to $100,000 in damages. They’re trying to work out $30,000 settlements, and they’re just trying to crank those through because That’s how they keep getting people paid $10,000. You know, they keep $10,000 for, for doing some basic work the $20,000 per client. I mean, that’s a whole business. And it’s just a business that’s built on. How do you take advantage of people that are protected whenever people get desperate. And if you just want to do some basic research on this, I actually presented I actually have a, an email that I sent out to my base that actually has all of the data of what happened between 2008 and 2009. And how we’re actually in a worse position now where we were then and what happened in litigation then and what we expect litigation to happen now. If you sign up, anybody signs up for our newsletter on royal legal solutions, happy to send that data over you guys. So when you’re saying, hey, should I form an LLC or not, it’s a no brainer. You always from the LLC, you because the cost of not being protected, is inviting somebody else to come after you.
Mike Ayala 39:48
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And so taking it a little further and maybe there’s maybe you have some resource already that we can point people to but there’s the concept of the LLC, but then we get into a little bit more common Complex which I don’t want to get too far into the weeds on this, but asset protection in general, do you have some kind of resource or something that people can go to understand asset protection even further or work? Where can they find something like that? Or is it just hire you?
Scott Smith 40:14
Yeah, no, no. So don’t hire me just because you feel like you need to go to an attorney, you know, and to get something like put in place, right? That’s not the way I like to do business. And that’s not who I like to do business with, right. What I like to do is actually share all the information about everything we do all upfront as if you are going to be a client into it, right. So what I actually did is I took about, I don’t know, it’s probably about 1000 console’s that I’ve done with real estate investors. And I built like a 97 slide slide deck that answers every question from every angle as we go through it. It builds systematically from what should you look for when you’re vetting professionals, you know, what is actually a good like attorney service and all service actually look like? So you can know like, Hey, is it Royal Legal, or is it somebody else? Yeah, but here’s the way you should analyze So, here’s what asset protection actually effective asset protection looks like, both using like asset holding companies, operating companies, then we walk through, like, how do you actually do all of the estate planning? How does that integrate in with your company structure? How should we be looking at different tax strategies and at different levels of income? And we like laying off for you that I mean, this would be like at least like thousands of dollars in consultations to be able to say like, here’s the game plan. And the reason why I can give that away for free is because for me at this point, this is just rote information. This is like the playbook of all of the best practices from the people that I’ve worked with over the years about how do you go, what does that what does that gameplan look like for people that are between zero and 5 million in net worth? They can see like, here’s what I need to put in place now. And here’s where I’m going to grow this in the future. And what are the pieces that you put in place in that? So what I’ve done with that is if you go to the RoyalLegalSolutions.com website and click on the banner at the top, which is like to take a quiz or whatever that banner is at the top of the website. It actually takes you to another page. And on that page. I have an hour and 45 five minute video, where I walk you through in a single take is an hour, 45 minutes single tech video where I walk you through the 97 slides slide deck, where I explain to everybody in the absolute excruciating detail how everything works, why you do it this way? What’s the thinking and the mentality behind it? How does it actually work for the banking, the accounting, the insurance, everything, it’s all laid out there. After you watch that video. This is where you have the opportunity to say like, Great, well, let’s take a quiz that gives us our basic information about you. And then we start that conversation. I’m like, okay, that’s the basic information that gives you that the baselines of everything. Now let’s talk about how we can customize something for you for your particular needs. If like, where are you at in there? Like what actually makes sense for you to put together right now. And you’re going to know that because I just showed you the whole playbook, right? Of what you’re going to need jiving now, but all the way in the future. And you’re like, I think I’m actually here, but like, yeah, that’s probably right. This is really simple. Now my job is super easy, because you actually already know what it is you need, whether it’s from me or from another provider. That’s awesome.
Mike Ayala 42:57
And so you had mentioned earlier A program that you have going right now where you’re going to help people sign up for the loans and stuff that’s going on right now. Do they find that at the same place? Or where can they find it from? Yeah,
Scott Smith 43:08
you can you can email me about I just got a royal legal solutions calm or just get a hold of us and from any other ways through the website. And we’ll get into connecting up with our attorney stuff into that to talk through like, how do we do that? So like right now what we’re doing is we’re we’re offering it for 2500 bucks, we submit your loan applications for you help coach you through how to submit those, it’s actually some nuances about what things you need to claim that you’re going to use the loan money for, on on the different, you know, the PPP versus the EIDL to make sure you can maximize those amounts, which I’m recommending everybody do get the maximum amount of money you can possibly get. Why? Because you don’t know when you’re going to get more money. So there’s something called cash insurance, which is the interest you pay, you pay interest on it because that’s your cash insurance. That’s right. So you maximize these babies out. And that’s what what our attorney staff is doing right now is we’re walking people through we just sent out an email to our base the other day and we had over 130 people reach out So, like, if you want help with this stuff a lot of people are wanting help with it Don’t feel bad, it’s really confusing about it. And the great news is, is that we charge you a little bit of money to help, you know, help you walk through all that. But we also guarantee that you’re going to get money out of the loan programs, at least $10,000 is a grant. So you’re gonna get free money, essentially, from the government, for having gone through it, that helps, you know, pay our fees for it and helps you know that you don’t have to worry about it, and that don’t have to figure it out on your own. And if we don’t get you any money, we give you all your money back.
Mike Ayala 44:31
You know, that’s such a valuable tool at this point in time because I don’t know, you being on the legal side. You don’t experience this, but I’ve been getting frustrated because every call I’m on every conversation, there’s like 15 different experts that are like, Oh, I talked to Jimmy and Jimmy said this and I talked to John, I’m tired of hearing what everybody thinks I want. I want somebody that understands the law and can work through that. So if you find yourself in that boat reach reach out to Scott valuable resource. I appreciate everything you’ve done, you’re such a giving person and and just can’t say enough about you.
Mike Ayala 44:59
So Any any last words that you just want to say to the audience of crazy times? What? How do you want to leave em?
Scott Smith 45:07
Yeah, so I would just say is like a couple of quick things, which is just to like members slow down, you know, as you’re going through everything, remember to connect with other people, right? This is really important stuff to do. And then the next piece is just to make sure that you’re surrounding yourself with the people that can help guide you to get what you want. So you first get really high clarity about what it is you want. And if you if one of those things that you want revolve around, hey, how do I plan for my asset protection? How do I plan for to protect myself from the lawsuits are going to be springing up, because I own assets, my personal name, and I, I know that that’s a risk and I just haven’t done it before. Now, if it’s your estate planning what happens to you if you’re in the hospital or something happens to you, making sure your family is going to be protected? Otherwise, the government just makes all the decisions your behalf where you need help with the loan programs for anything in between, right, like right now I got staff and we’re looking to help people, you know, and we’re not charging anybody right now to help them. We’re saying just go Get in here. Let’s get into meeting I’ll give you 15 minutes. Let’s figure out what’s going on with you. It’s something we can help you with. Great if it’s not, let me show you if we have somebody in our network that can, because right now, this is not the time where anybody’s business hard people, this is the time where it’s just like, No, no, we start having conversations when you start helping each other and figuring out ways to help each other because it’s the deep, deep help, where it’s like the true, truly helping people or as what I think is actually going to make businesses survive. And that’s what I keep communicating my staff every day is like we’re not in the law business right now. We’re not in the asset protection business right now. We’re in the helping people business. And we need conversations to figure out what you’re struggling with. So I know how to help people best. So if you can help us by contacting us and tell us what problems you’re dealing with. That helps us be able to figure out how we can help you and help other people like you more. So please reach out to us.
Mike Ayala 46:47
That’s amazing. Really appreciate your time, Scott. That was huge value. I look forward to sharing this episode with our listeners.
Mike Ayala 46:54
If you found value in this episode, and you know someone who’s wanting to start or move further along in their journey toward investing for freedom, I would be forever grateful if you would share this show with them and help me get this message out to more listeners. Also, if you enjoy what you’ve heard, I would appreciate it if you take 30 seconds and leave me a five star review and share this with your friends. And Until the next episode. Cheers to moving further along in your journey of investing for freedom.
Growing up, Scott Smith had dreams of becoming a professional cage match fighter. Today, after heeding the advice of a mentor, and consistently adding to his toolbox outside the ring— he’s become a sought after legal expert for real estate investors.
In today’s episode, Scott drops in to share his insights on life, business, legal planning and pushing forward in spite of panic. He shares his background, the vision and mission behind his firm, Royal Legal Solutions and how he’s responding to the COVID-19 fallout.
Hear what and who has made the largest impact on his life. Also, get advice from a professional on navigating the business loan process. He offers his take on what might lie ahead and how to find support if you find COVID-19 related litigation headed your way.
“What I know that’s true for me in my life is it’s not actually the big wins that I’ve made or about when I’ve timed things correctly and hit like a big home run. It’s actually being able to reduce the deltas between the highs and the lows because that’s where I actually experienced the most pain.”
Growing up, Scott Smith had dreams of becoming a professional cage match fighter. Today, after heeding the advice of a mentor, and consistently adding to his toolbox outside the ring— he’s become a sought after legal expert for real estate investors.
In today’s episode, Scott drops in to share his insights on life, business, legal planning and pushing forward in spite of panic. He shares his background, the vision and mission behind his firm, Royal Legal Solutions and how he’s responding to the COVID-19 fallout.
Hear what and who has made the largest impact on his life. Also, get advice from a professional on navigating the business loan process. He offers his take on what might lie ahead and how to find support if you find COVID-19 related litigation headed your way.
“What I know that’s true for me in my life is it’s not actually the big wins that I’ve made or about when I’ve timed things correctly and hit like a big home run. It’s actually being able to reduce the deltas between the highs and the lows because that’s where I actually experienced the most pain.”
-Scott Smith
“When I combine and take all that fear, and then channel it into action steps, pretty soon, the fear doesn’t exist anymore, because I’m actually doing… But to do that, what you have to realize is that there’s certain things you can control and certain things you can’t control.” -Scott Smith
HIGHLIGHTS:
- [00:00] Episode Overview
- [01:08] Intro
- [01:42] Meet Scott Smith
- [03:11] Avoiding fear and inaction with COVID-19
- [05:06] Your reticular activator and getting clear about what you want
- [07:38] Who has had the greatest impact on his life
- [09:14] The one thing that’s had the greatest impact on his success
- [09:54] Resources for developing introspectively
- [11:26] Finding others to serve as a checkpoint in your life
- [13:01] His greatest setback
- [14:19] The piece of advice he finds himself sharing the most
- [16:28] Why being clear as a leading is easier now than ever
- [21:33] The 3 ways he and his business is reacting to the changes
- [28:17] Avoiding regression and staying out of our ruts post COVID-19
- [32:40] What’s lying ahead
- [36:39] When’s the right time to start an LLC
- [39:48] Asset protection and resources from Royal Legal Solutions
- [42:57] Support for navigating the PPP and EIDL loan process
- [44:59] Closing thoughts
- [32:38] The journey, regrets and locking in his voyage
- [36:04] How you can get started with your own plan
- [39:07] Outro
MENTIONED:
FIND | SCOTT SMITH
At Scott@royallegalsolutions.com
On Facebook
On Youtube
FULL TRANSCRIPTION:
Mike Ayala 00:00
Hey guys, on today’s show, we’re interviewing Scott Smith and I’ve actually decided to push this show up. This show probably wouldn’t have aired for probably another four to six weeks, just the way that the queue is worked out in the order of interviews and stuff. But we get into some stuff with Scott today that is just so relevant and timely right now with everything that’s going on with COVID-19. And, you know, just the state of our country in the world. You know, small businesses are really struggling. A lot of large businesses are struggling restaurants are shutting down, left and right. And Scott really gets into some perspective about not only our mental health and state, but also our business, health and state and the legal ramifications of everything that’s going on right now. So, like I said, I really wanted to push this episode up, because I think there’s some timely information in here. Scott’s just a great guy. And I think you guys are gonna really appreciate the show. I don’t know if we really get into it, but he’s also got a podcast called The Real Estate Nerds. And if you have a chance, go check that podcast out because there’s a lot of good guests on there. A lot of great information. But anyway, I hope you guys really get a lot of value out of this show today. Make sure you go check out his asset protection video. on his website at Royal legal solutions calm, I really think that you guys are gonna get a lot of value out of this. So without delaying any longer, I’ll just let you get to the show.
Mike Ayala 01:08
Are you looking for freedom? Freedom from the daily grind and hustle? Or just finding a way to live the life you always wanted? Then join us on the investing for freedom podcast, our host, Mike Ayala will help you discover new ways to find freedom with tips, insights and interviews. You’ll learn the exact systems he’s used to travel the world and live his best life. True success and happiness are all about freedom. And here’s your roadmap on how to find freedom on your own terms. Welcome to the investing for freedom podcast. Here’s your host, Mike Ayala.
Mike Ayala 01:42
Okay everybody, I’ve got Scott Smith on with me today. Scott is a friend of mine and I actually met him through a group that I talked about quite a bit, Gobundance. Just just an amazing group of people and I’m really excited to bring Scott to you today, especially during this time. Scott owns a legal firm called Royal Legal Solutions. And I’ve been leaning on him lately for a lot of inspiration and wisdom in our whole tribe has because he’s just kind of on the forefront of a lot of this. And so we’re excited to have him excited to bring the information today. Let’s dig into it. Scott, thanks for being on the show.
Scott Smith 02:13
Hey, Mike, great to be here. And I’m really excited to be able to kind of be an open book and just a voice of, you know, just straight talk of here’s what’s going on what I typically find what works really well. And these types of scenarios, which is really different than what I see in, like from the news media and from a lot of other outlets is, it’s just, you know, talking about like, what are the fear points, let’s just label the fears that we have here. And then say, Great, now that we know exactly what the fear is, we got that thing labeled, how can we take that fear and turn it into action to be able to accomplish things that previously we weren’t able to do because they were too difficult, or we had the emotional blocks around it. And right now is actually the greatest opportunity that I’ve seen for myself inside my own life in my own company. I mean, I just end up you know, coming out here to Southwest Utah, which I’ve been wanting to do for five years now. And Now I got my own whole new setup of what I wanted to do. And it’s all because of COVID. So I’d love to just share with you more about that. And, you know, anything that we can talk about, I think would be helpful.
Mike Ayala 03:11
You know, I love that you actually went there. And we’ll get into our normal questions here in a second. But you actually put a video up the other day that I thought was awesome. And you were talking about during this time, you were just sitting back saying, Okay, what can I control? Because there’s so many things that are going on right now that we have no control over? Can you just kind of address that and kind of share that with what you were, what your thought process was and what you were thinking there?
Scott Smith 03:31
Yeah, so what it got me thinking, I say, hey, where does this panic come from? Why is panic a real thing? Right? And what was the nature of panic? And as I was contemplating that I was like, well, panic seems to be something that has two parts to it. It seems to have like a fear component to it, but also equipped with inaction. And we were really afraid and we have nothing to do. All we do is sit there and just stew in the worry right? Now you can look at this in like a different way where you you talk about like what happens when you have like fear with tons of action, then a ton of stuff gets done. And when I’ve done that, for my life, when I combine and take all that fear, and then channel it into action steps, pretty soon, the fear doesn’t exist anymore, because I’m actually doing stuff. And once the… just the process of doing stuff makes the fear go away, right. And it’s not that anything’s actually really changed at all right. And this is like, the really cool part is that nothing actually has to change in your life at all, besides just the fact that you take action and then all of a sudden, the fear goes away. But to do that, what you have to realize that there’s certain things you can control and certain things you can’t control. And so everything that you can’t control, and everything I can’t control, I barely pay attention to it. I figured most things that I can’t control, if it’s really something that maybe is important, probably somebody’s gonna tell me about it. This is like just walking around, because it’s gonna be that big of a deal that everybody’s going to be talking about, right? So the only thing I really need to put my attention on are things that I can control. And then those are the things that I can’t control turn to the action steps and then I’m actually getting stuff done. And because I’m getting stuff done, now I’m in a better position where I was. Anytime… putting attention on things you can’t control, I mean, has to just be a waste of time, because you can’t do anything about it. So why even worry about it?
Mike Ayala 05:06
That’s such a good point. And you said something else in that video, too. You’re really focusing on what do you want? You’re coming back to that, that. Just that core concept? What do I really want? Can you just touch on that a little bit?
Scott Smith 05:16
Yeah. So for me, like getting really, really clear, like as precise as I possibly can be about what I want, is probably the most important thing. Once I can actually define clearly what it is I want, I can kind of just leave it, kick it into the back of my mind. And then my mind just subconsciously starts to find out how to get me that thing. Right. So there’s like some science behind this right with what’s called like your reticular activator. And if you ever gone shopping for a car, and then all of a sudden you’re like, Hey, I’m shopping for like a silver Honda Civic. And then you just see silver Honda Civics everywhere. That’s because you’ve told your mind, hey, I’m looking for this thing. And it’s really particular and so all of a sudden, your mind starts to pick it up, starts to pick up awareness around it. Same thing happens for us around anything that we want, right? So but the more clear and precise you are with it, the more your mind is able to just start searching for in the background. And what’s cool about this is that you actually get to your mind works for you while you’re not having to work, right? It’s doing all of the heavy lifting while you’re focused on other things. And then pretty soon you’ll have that experience where it’s like, oh, it just came to me, or this thing just happened. It’s like magic, right? Well, well, it wasn’t really magic, right? It was because actually, there was a part of your brain that you weren’t conscious of that was actually chugging the whole time to be able to get you there.
Scott Smith 06:28
And that’s where like, I think the magic comes in and like knowing really precisely like what is you want spend a lot of time, thinking about what it is I want. And having done that, actually, for the last five years, this COVID thing actually gave me an amazing opportunity. Because inside of the Panic of inside of everything that was like, the skies are falling, right? I could act on everything that I wanted, all at one time and everybody was okay with it. Because we’re in a panic. So anything you do inside of a panic every anybody gets a pass or like, Okay, cool. Well, that’s just whatever you’re doing. I have no idea why that’s true. I have some theories about it. But it’s like the most amazing time if you know what it is you want, like, now is the time to go seize it.
Mike Ayala 07:11
That was gold right there. I feel like if people just get a hold of what you just said, I mean, we could we could end the show there. We’re not going to but we could
Scott Smith 07:20
Thats a wrap I’m calling it a day Mike.
Mike Ayala 07:23
That was so good.
Mike Ayala 07:25
Yeah, it is such a you know, it’s such a an amazing point. I mean, we could totally reinvent ourselves if we don’t like, just roll up into a ball and freak out right now. So, you know, that’s what I’ve been trying to stay focused on. So. Okay, let’s get into some questions.
Mike Ayala 07:38
So who has had the greatest impact on your life?
Scott Smith 07:42
Yeah, I would probably say it’s, it’s probably my godfather. You know, I got further from the time I was a kid I was always taught he was he’s a wealthy entrepreneur and I grew up in a family was pretty poor. Right. My father passed away when I was three and my mom is a schoolteacher. I always looked up to people that had money and had success because I knew that was important, but I didn’t Know how or why, or how would anybody actually do that? I just knew that they had some type of like special magic power, you know, and he was one of those guys that had that with a company, and then he had built and sold. And so he actually guided me through a lot of my life like really indirectly, right? It was like, Hey, you should go to law school, you know, like, go get that professional certifications with that, because even if you decide you want to sell ice cream cones, you know, and have a business selling ice cream cones, you’re a lawyer deciding to sell ice cream cones, you know, you’re not just out there trying to Hawk ice cream cones, you know, he’s like, that’ll be important for you. And it was like these really types of like, subtle guidance of things that I would just happen to do, because I didn’t know honestly, I didn’t know what else to do. Life to me was, as always been pretty confusing up until maybe in the last eight years or so. And so that’s really kind of one of things. I just like kind of leaned on him said, hey, what should I be doing? Right now? Like, what’s another thing that just add in to the toolbox? I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what I want in my life I don’t know what I want to be doing. And so he was just keep encouraging me to say like, well just go add another tool to your toolbox because while you don’t know what to do, it’s a great time just add another tool because just kick the can down the road and that tool come to serve you at some point in the future. And he was 100% right.
Mike Ayala 09:14
That’s awesome. If you could narrow down to one thing that’s had the greatest impact on your success what would you say that is
Scott Smith 09:21
Definitely my spiritual growth like then by spiritual I don’t mean like the woowoo like, putting crystals all over my body, type. I mean, like the, the type of like having like really deep knowledge of self like introspective and reflective knowledge, like really blunt honesty with myself, but like, who I am, what am I going after? Why am I going after that? You know, though that type of internal feedback has all of the other downstream benefits to my life. So if there’s like one thing that I have to focus on first that I know everything else in my life is going to get better because of it’s that it’s that peace and that practice.
Mike Ayala 09:54
That’s awesome. detour and a little add on question here. Do you have like a favorite resource around that getting introspective a certain book or something that you could recommend?
Scott Smith 10:03
Yeah, I think there’s actually two different groups that I’ve worked with that I thought were really good in this in this field, at least getting people to jump started. One is called it’s like insightseminars.org. I think it’s like Insider International, they work out of Santa Monica, California, and they do like these weekend seminar pieces to it. What’s really cool about that is it’s all experience based learning that actually don’t tell you much. They just put you in scenarios and then ask you to reflect on it. So it’s like they make you flex the tool set of like awareness and self introspection, and whatever level you’re at, you’ll get something different. Everybody will have a different insight because everybody’s at a different level through that experience. There’s another group that’s an awesome I think it’s called like the Atlas Group. But it’s in the same type of vein, right? It’s all experience based learning high levels of like awareness training, low like teaching and talking at you tons of actual like activity and then programming you like how do you actually do the work of like, how do you actually become honest with yourself, how do you actually become introspective yourself? How do you actually like, see the nasty parts of yourself and say, okay, that’s just part of me, you know, that’s part of my shadow that’s part of that dark side of like who I am. And that’s okay too, because that’s just part of me. And I just need to be aware of where that’s going to come up in the world. As you can imagine being like a litigator coming out of law school. And with that, and suing insurance companies and stuff like that, that was probably a vein that I had going pretty strong about how to fight.
Mike Ayala 11:25
Yeah, totally. A little side note, I’ve got several attorneys in my life. And typically, whenever we’re talking to our attorneys, it’s either being proactive about a deal or whatever, or else, we have a challenge and I’ve yet to have ever been sued other than a couple of, you know, small employee issues and but I’ve found during this time that like, talking with attorneys has actually been really good for me, because you guys kind of look at things from like, kind of like a balanced level. I mean, things that we think are just the end of the world, always seen that before and here’s how we can deal with it. Deal with it. So I appreciate your guys’s like level headedness. I don’t know if it correlates over into your personal lives. But that’s been a source of strength for me lately, just like it’s gonna be okay. We’ve got good documentation. So it’s it’s been calming lately.
Scott Smith 12:15
You know, man, I think that I think that’s what really good professionals should always be doing right is really good professional should be the ones that are on the check for other people, right? I actually have my own attorneys, right that I talk to that provide me the same piece because I can do that for you, Mike, but when I have to try to do it for myself, I can’t right? I’m like okay, I need somebody else that does it for me to give me that kind of like, here’s what’s going on. And I have my own business coaches that do the same pieces to me with like looking at our reports, and what are the kinds of things that we need to look at. Because when it’s in your own head, it’s really tough to do and so I’d recommend like everybody you need like another you need some type of trusted advisor in your life, whatever that’s gonna be it can be free. It could be anybody, right? But somebody else that you trust to serve as that checkpoint, because it’s too hard to do the stuff fall inside your own head. Yep.
Mike Ayala 13:01
Makes a lot of sense. Okay, what was your greatest setback? And would you learn from it?
Scott Smith 13:07
My greatest setback was probably when like, I got my, my rear end kicked around the ring. And when I was 22, I was I graduated out of college with a liberal arts degree in Spanish and an economics. And I didn’t take a single business class. So I really was like unemployable at that time. So I started to do, but I like, a ton of knowledge, right? So I said, like, well, I’ll just start like tutoring the rich kids out in Houston, you know, with like, the rich private school kids and charging like 85 or 100 bucks an hour or whatever was because I could teach him anything. Physics, calculus, Spanish, like whatever it was right? And at the same time, I was like, fighting professionally. And I thought I was gonna be a professional fighter, like cage fighting. So I did that for a period of time. And then the biggest setback for me was realizing that I was like, I’m not very good at this. Like and, and you get taught that lesson in a very brutal way, you know, and it was at that moment that I was like, you know, taking the outset and go to law school sounds pretty good. I’m gonna listen to my godfather because he said that was a good idea. And this is sounding a lot better now.
Mike Ayala 14:08
Yeah. Scott’s got live videos of that happening. We’ll link it in the show notes.
Scott Smith 14:13
Yeah. Getting embarrassing. Just Just getting pummeled. Yeah, that’s great.
Mike Ayala 14:19
What is the piece of advice you find yourself sharing the most?
Scott Smith 14:25
Just to slow down and be still with people? Yeah, I find that like most most of the time for myself, and I share that advice, actually, myself more than anybody to tell you the trick is just to slow down, slow down, be still then make a decision about whatever you’re going to do next, or then have that conversation. There’s actually like nothing to be gained in moving faster. And most of the time, all the action that we’re doing is actually not, it’s either not necessary or it’s not helpful, but like we feel good acting fast as entrepreneurs. And I think that that’s a that’s a piece I share with myself but I share with other people in my company too.
Mike Ayala 15:03
Wow, that’s good.
Mike Ayala 15:04
I was actually talking with Rock Thomas the other day, who’s a mutual friend of ours. And he said a phrase that he, I don’t know if he came up with it or what but it’s called stimulus, pause, response, kind of along the same vein, just when something stimulates you pause, and then respond, just take a little bit of time, think through it. And whether it’s an outside thing, just, you know, kind of slowing down. And, you know, sometimes we just move through decisions in life and everything in general. So fast. That makes a lot of sense.
Scott Smith 15:35
Yeah, yeah. And there’s probably a lot of really good reasons to do that, too. Right? Like, just the fact of like, if you actually just slow down a little bit more, you actually might remember what you did that day. You know, that might there might be value in that of like, wondering, like, not waking up and being like, where’d that last month go?
Mike Ayala 15:50
Wow.
Scott Smith 15:51
Yeah?
Mike Ayala 15:51
Yeah.
Scott Smith 15:52
Like that might be valuable, right? I mean, if the treasure trove of life is actually like what you have, right, like, what do you really have like you really only have like your memories, right? So if you’re actually losing months or years of like no memories being created, that time is just gone, you’ve actually not poured into the asset value of your life. You’ve just wasted it. And from that perspective, right, maybe you didn’t maybe you did a bunch of stuff right? from life, like what makes a rich life. I don’t know any other way of measuring it besides like the memories and the experiences I have. And then my ability to reflect on those and put those into like my essence of like who I am.
Mike Ayala 16:28
That’s so good. bringing that back to what you were saying earlier, and in your video. We’ve got all this stuff going on right now. It’s 2020. We’re in the middle of April, and we’ve got all this COVID-19 stuff going on. I think this is an opportunity. You can come you can take this time and go any way you want. But really we should. I don’t know about you guys, but it’s been pretty quiet. I mean, we’ve got a lot going on and I’m busier than I’ve probably ever been just because of certain aspects of our business but are you finding yourself really being able to slow down And go more interest after…
Scott Smith 17:02
Yeah so much more. And I don’t know really why to tell you the truth. I actually can’t put my finger on the pulse of why this is happening this way. I suspect is that in times like these, a lot of other people in my life or my frame of reference, you know, are like my circle of influence, right?
Scott Smith 17:30
The everybody in these types of time periods, they want to be led, like even more than they did before, right? So it’s actually easier to lead. It’s actually easier to get stuff done, because everybody else is much more willing to just go with whatever it is that you’re saying and whatever ways that you’re showing up because you’re projecting strength, you’re projecting security, you’re projecting, you know, these things that they want, and that people there’s just no resistance into it. They’re just like, how can I how can I play possibly do what it is that you want me to do with that. Whereas in times of where it’s like before, people had a lot of their own stuff. And that would confront against my stuff. And then I’d have to try to persuade them over to my side. And now there is only my side. Because if they’re not on my team, and they’re not on board with me, then good luck on your own. And so it’s a really harsh reality, like, right that I think we all implicitly understand as tribes that people when there’s panic, or when there’s war, right, it’s either you’re on the team, you’re not and if you’re not on the team, good luck in the wilderness on your own, right. So there’s like these inherent types of I think, just like tribal mechanisms at play, that make it easier as a leader and a business owner now than it’s ever been for me.
Mike Ayala 18:43
I was having a conversation yesterday in a in another group that I’m in and I think also, I don’t know if you agree with this, but I’m finding it easy to lead right now or easier to lead right now, even though we’re going through some challenging times. Because I feel like I can be 100% honest with my entire team. Not only can I be 100% honest with myself, we’re all in the same place together. And I think sometimes, again, I don’t know if you agree with this or what your thoughts are on it. But I feel like sometimes we’ve never been able to not, not never. But most of the time, we’re not able to be completely honest about what’s going on in the business where we’re actually heading. Right now everybody’s on the same page. This is what’s happening. It’s black and white, if you can’t get on board with it, move on. And that’s actually made made it pretty easy. Like, this is where we’re at, and we’re all in it together. And
Scott Smith 19:32
we have done this always, you know, like, could we have shown up like this all the time, and then had been like, okay, and I want to say that, that it’s probably true that we could have, but what we tell ourselves is that we’re afraid that if we show up like that, that the other people might not like it, and if they leave, it’s going to hurt me. Right and so then I need to soften it right? But I wonder Mike and I was wondering like from your perspective, when you look at like the really great like leaders, right like guys that really move the dial in their industries. It seems like they’re incredibly unreasonable with like, everybody, this is how it is.You know? And that’s just gonna be this way. You’re either on board or you’re out, you’re in or you’re out. And I just don’t have time. I don’t care how good you are. If you’re not 100% in and you’re not like in it on the way I’m in it. That’s it. I’m cool. I’ll go work with somebody else. You know, like Steve Jobs is one of those guys right into it. And but I was like, Man, that that sounds rough. That sounds scary to try to lead that way. Now I’m doing and I’m like, wow, this has never been easier. But it’s because like, what I feel safe, right? Because I’m like, you don’t have an alternative besides just to do what it is that I’m saying, like, this is what we’re going to do. And you’re really excited by the fact that you’re like, I got a job, but I’m not one of the 6.5 million people that are unemployed right now.
Mike Ayala 20:38
Yeah. You know, what’s interesting On that note, too, I mean, you do have some extremes, like you said, like with Steve Jobs, but most most of the time people that were with somebody like that long term, don’t have a lot of negative to say about it once you’re okay with what’s actually happening there and you buy into the vision and most of the time people are like, yeah, this was a this was a weird part of it, but actually outside of Like, they got they got in line. And they actually appreciated him for it. It’s kind of Yeah,
Scott Smith 21:06
like, as long as they’re consistent and clear, like most people just want like consistency and the clarity of like, what my expectations are, right? That at least that’s what I’m like realizing now, like in this moment, that’s what seems true for me. And to it that I’m saying, Man, I didn’t ever have to compromise and like, what a blessing to learn that now as being 35 years old, of saying, like, wow, I don’t have to compromise nearly as much as I think I have to. I cool, that means I can have more of what I want. I can be more peace about it. That’s like, Man, that’s a neat place to be. That’s awesome.
Mike Ayala 21:33
That’s cool. Okay, we could go a million directions here. But I think based on the current issues that we’ve got going on and and with your legal background, and your business background, all of your experience, I think we really probably should get into some practical advice on you know, what you’re doing right now currently and what other people can do so can you just kind of give us an overview of you know, what you’ve been doing in your personal life, your business life? How are you handling all this?
Scott Smith 21:59
Yeah, so there’s just like, couple of key points that I focus on. Because there’s obviously like a million things I could be doing, right? But I’m always focused on like, what are things that I think are really accomplishable that I can do and that are actually going to move the dial, right? Things that are inside of my control. So in that respect, I started prioritizing, having a lot more fun. And that’s probably a weird thing to say, during a pandemic, right. But that’s one of the reasons that I like I’ve got this you know, I’m at my house that’s here in southwest Utah right now is because I was like, Man, you know, of everything else that’s going on, I can try to work my ass off probably won’t make that much of a difference right now into it. Or what I could do is actually be like, man, how can I work and get what I need done and also have just a ton more fun while I’m doing it and be like, hey, this could be the best time of my life right now. And how could that be true? And then it’s like, oh, cool. I could be out here I can add like the dirt biking, the boating and the hiking in the National Park and all the great stuff that’s like out here like Oh, that sounds really cool. So like my spirits maintain like really high there and it hasn’t Like downstream benefits to all my staff because they see me like full of energy and full of like excitement and like, rejuvenated. And they’re like, Wow, this is awesome that our leader is like coming in and he’s always got like, stuff to be able to pour into us, you know, energy to pour into us to help us, like raise our awareness or raise our mentality into what we’re doing. And so I just get tons of really positive feedback from all my staff. I’m like, Holy smokes, like how important was it for me to have fun this whole time? And I thought was really important was working hard. Yeah, it’s not, you know, like, that wasn’t what got my people to move, you know? So like, on a personal level, I’m doing that. On a business level, we’ve had to pivot a little bit really just about like, how do the things that we do actually just address what are the concerns that people are having right now, which are typically around like three major areas? It’s like how do I get money from a loan programs always like okay, Attorney staff, we got free time now let’s go become experts in the loans and help people coach through how to get the loan. So we charge 2,500 bucks and we give you your money back if we don’t get any money, any money for you, right? So it’s like a yearly thing. To get 10 grand at a minimum, from the EIDL warrior, we don’t we just give you all your money back, right? So we’re like, Okay, cool. It’s a zero risk way for people to get free money, right sweet.
Scott Smith 24:09
And then we’re like, Okay, well what else people need? Well, we know that lawsuits are gonna go rise as unemployment increases, because when people don’t have enough they come and take from you. And they use frivolous litigation attorneys to do it. So asset protection is top of mind and estate planning, you might die, you might end up in hospital. So cool. This is where you’re gonna need estate planning to come and help you. So we’re like, okay, let’s reposition those things that we know really well. Well, inside of our skill set, let’s address the current needs. And we’re pivoting into that. And that’s been able to help our, our business. We took like a huge dip, like in that first week, like 80% of our revenue dropped off, and now we’re slowly climbing back. You know? Thats what we need, so businesses coming back strong with doing that. And, I mean, those are the I mean to two really big moves and that vein,
Scott Smith 24:59
And then the last Really big moves that I prioritize as my community, like, Who am I actually seeing? Who am I actually spending all my time with. And that’s actually been one of the biggest movers unexpectedly for me. Because I knew that I was going to have that, but I didn’t know the impact of it. And I got, I gotta tell you, man, it’s something really weird about human being a human being. And for my last like, three, four years, all I was doing was just working like a ton as an office working and I had like my staff and I was like my staff or like my people, and I was like, I didn’t really have a lot of people that I would see that are outside of things that are trying to create, you know, I’m really about creating my vision. Like, to me, that’s the most fun thing I could be doing. And I didn’t realize that there was actually a piece of me that was thirsty for like, family and community and those types of pieces that now that I’ve had to slow down so much. I’m out here in Utah where I have lots of like friends and other family and stuff that lives out here. being plugged in a community is just so like nourishing it’s like food. For the soul and has again, they’re not like, direct dollar into out kinds of things. But it like makes me show up differently each day and like, What am I thinking about? Like my thinking is like, changed from Panic of like, how are we going to get through the next week or two months? You know where it was when I was in Austin, four weeks ago, like where a lot of stuff is hitting the fan right into it. Now I’m like, Okay, what is life gonna be like a year, two years, three years, four years, five years. And I’m noticing that the more that I pour into these other areas of my life and focus on those things, that the longer my thinking can get even inside of a panic. And to me, that means I was like, Ah, I’m actually escaping the prison, because the prison is in the reactive immediacy of the state of mind. And if I’m actually starting to naturally thinking longer term of timescales, that means I’m on the right track of actually being okay, I’m actually out of the prison.
Scott Smith 26:54
Does that make sense?
Mike Ayala 26:54
Yeah, it makes total sense. It’s so good. Again, back to Gobundance. One of the main things that I’ve Taking away from that community is the authentic relationship pillar. And I’ve been so thankful for that group. And for that reason, it’s taught me a lot about authentic relationships. But coming into a time like this, you’ve said several things that are just amazing. Number one slowing down. I was talking with a guy the other day. And it’s interesting because as we have slowed down, and we’re focused more on relationships and community, which I’ve been in, you know, I think Scott’s dropping a lot of wisdom here. And if you’re not focusing on relationships, and community, and slowing down, dig in on that, but one thing I’ve found lately, I’ve had people crossing my mind every single day, like, Scott’s name will flutter through my brain and I’ll be like, you know what, I’m just going to take a minute and I’m going to reach out to Scott, instead of like, I used to tell myself anytime i’d think of someone or my subconscious, you know, you’re talking about that inner inner perspective, would bring somebody up that you hadn’t thought about for eight months or whatever. I’d be like, Oh, I need to call that person and I kind of file it away. But lately I’ve been every time my subconscious brings somebody up or I just randomly think about someone. I’ve been reaching out. To them, and every single time it’s like, I’m so glad you called I’m dealing with this. Thank you can we get on it? And I’m just like, if we weren’t focused on the community in the authentic relation ship piece and slowing down, would I even? I mean, would I just go back to blowing over that thought process and not connecting to humans?
Mike Ayala 28:17
And so I guess the question that I wanted to ask you, how do we I know this is not a black and white question, but how do we remember where we’re at right now is like journaling. How do we get on the other side of this and make sure that we as individuals, and people just don’t go right back into our rut?
Scott Smith 28:34
Well, you’ll have every reason to go back into the rut. Right? Because we should always reach back to the life and try and pick back up exactly as before. So the one of the things that you get into is like when we talked about it, in the very beginning of this talk, you’re like, what are the things that you did, right? That like helped you like develop that inner sense of knowing and, you know, self awareness, like those types of pieces, right, like the knowledge self knowledge, right? I mean, That concept doesn’t mine. Right? That goes back to like Socrates, right? Like the man know thyself, like all that stuff, right? Like people have been trying to struggle with this knowing it was the biggest mover for a few thousand years, right? So it’s probably probably pretty right into it. Now, the thing is that when you go to any of these, like seminars or any things, right, you have like this amazing experience while you’re there, right? And then you go home. And then at last, like that piece, like, it’s, you got it hundred percent on the first day, and it’s like, 80, 90, 60, 40. And then bring you back, you’re just exactly where you were before and people are like hey, it didn’t work. It didn’t work. It didn’t fix me. Yeah, right into it. And if you think about it, what an insane thing to say. Because you’ve had 30 years of a pattern of living a certain way. And to think that a brief stint in your time on the planet is going to radically change who you are, how you show up in the world, what’s important to you, is going to just stick and last. Without other reinforcement is insane. Of course, it’s not going to happen. Right. So the question is, is like, what do we do, like knowing that that’s going to be the case. So I think the things that I found I’ve been like most impactful for me is, one is creating like an intentional practice that has to do with some type of physical writing, right. So whether it’s gonna be like goal tracking, by like tallying marks, like on goals, or there’s gonna be a journal writing or whatever the case could be. And that seems to be really important, and really helpful. And there’s a lot of good brain research of why that is really powerful. And I’ve just can speak to it from my own personal piece of that’s really important.
Scott Smith 30:32
The next piece is actually to surround myself with people that have what it is I want and actually physically go spend time with them. And usually, it’s always best if I try to do things that are fun, because when I actually want to go spend time with it doesn’t feel like a chore, like I’m doing this, like whatever chore that makes my life better. Like no, no they’re just awesome. They naturally are that way or they naturally have that thing that I like that I want for myself. And so if I just go find ways to go have fun with them, then I’m going to want to go to do that. We’re gonna want to go hang out together, and then that’s just going to rub off on me because they’re naturally away. And I’m going to start showing up that way and be in that state of mind or that state of being for hours at a time, because I’m thirsty for it right and picking up from them. So it sounds just like 10 minutes on a journal, it’s being hours. And like that state of being, that seems to be really huge, too. So I don’t think that there’s anything like exceptionally insightful into that I think those are things that probably people have heard of time before, right, which is like who you’re surrounding yourself with, probably surround yourself with people that have what you want, right? Or who you like with the state of being that you want. And then do some type of physical reflective activity, right with either journaling, goal tracking, whatever the case would be. The journaling and stuff like that. You also can serve as like a meditative piece. But for me, meditation has always been just like a way to combat anxiety, or to rejuvenate like in my mind’s too foggy, or like I’m feeling really anxious about something. I’ll just use meditation as a tool for that. But it hasn’t like taken me to like transcendental levels where I’m just like flying off in outer space or something like that. So I
Mike Ayala 32:03
actually, I think it actually is very insightful and impactful because you said something. I mean, if we just always do what we’ve always done, we’re going to just stay there. And so when we hear people reinforce the same concepts over and over and over, there’s certain themes that you know, anybody like you that not anybody, but most people like you that I talked to. There’s just these little things that they do to really change who they are. And from that interest, introspective position. I think it’s important. So I, I do think it’s very insightful, and I appreciate it.
Scott Smith 32:33
Thanks, Mike.
Mike Ayala 32:33
So are we near the bottom of this problem, or I know you’ve got a crystal ball. So what do you see?
Scott Smith 32:40
Yeah, so this is what I tell people when it comes to this, right. And I’m actually releasing like a 40 page ebook that has like all the strategies I’m using for all the different like loan programs as Krishna estate planning, hunting through like, how do you maximize cash so that we can actually use opportunities in the future? All the different tapping retirement accounts away so you don’t have to pay penalties? creative strategies, we’re coming up with that. And actually the first two chapters of this, this book, or it’s like an ebook, you know, kind of thing that I’m running right now that we’re using for like our principal barking material is about that this this question, right? I act in the part of the things that I talk about in there, as I say, well, it’s a question we all want to ask. But how useful is it? Right? Because what will the answer tell us into it? So maybe there’s a better question that we should be asking ourselves, which is, what do we do in the face of uncertainty? Right? And what do you do? How do you make decisions in uncertainty? Right? And so like, if I ask that question about how do I make decision and certainly then I start to think a little bit differently through the How do I think through the problem? And so when I think through like this decisions of uncertainty, what I’m always looking for is not actually any bright line rules I’m looking for, like, what are my downside risks that come from whatever decisions that I’m making and I must to judge the amount of risk it is by how easily I can reverse from the decision. Right? So if I can easily reverse from the decision, I’ll just go ahead and make the decision because it’s so not risky at all right? If it’s something that’s really hard for me to reverse on, if I like guessed wrong on it. Now, that’s when I’m gonna be ultra conservative on really gonna think through it and really make sure that I’m probably too conservative. I want to be on too conservative, conservative mindset of it. So one way to think about this is like, how do we think about like, what our cash position should be at a time like this, right? We know cash is going to be king, especially when we have in the future economy in the next couple of years, the amount of cash you have will be the amount of opportunities you’re going to be able to scoop up, right. Anybody that’s in the know of serious investing will tell you the exact same thing, but like this is what’s gonna happen liquidity markets are going to dry up, we’re already starting to see those beside of banks. So it’s going to end up being cash, you’re going to have fluctuations inside of any other asset. So you might as well pull those cash and hold on to it. And why is it so important now?
Scott Smith 34:57
It’s so important because it doesn’t matter if you’re right or wrong, right? The point is, is that you sit on cash, because if things get worse, and they’re worse than you think you’re going to need cash to survive it. Right? If things are better, and there’s a bounce back, well, Holy smokes, look, you got cash or take advantage of the opportunity. So the end of the decision is you sit on cash. So it doesn’t matter to me whether this is the bottom or the not on looking for saying I’m sitting on cash, and I’m waiting, and I wait and wait, no, wait, no, wait, wait until it becomes painfully obvious you have the decision that I should have to make that I’m almost forced to make the decision because every other decision seems ridiculous. And that’s how conservative I’m treating like what’s going on. Because what I know that’s true for me in my life is not actually the big wins that I’ve made about like when I’ve timed things correctly and hit like a big home run. It’s actually being able to reduce the deltas between the highs and the lows because that’s where I actually experienced the most pain. My life is actually pretty okay, as long as it’s keeping going up into the right in a steady fashion. where it gets really painful is when I have these huge spikes of like highs And lows off of that mean, and I’m about living a great life more than I am about trying to maximize money. I’ve tried to maximize the opportunity, because that’s what’s important. It’s all about having fun. It’s about being connected to other people. It’s about living a great life for like, who I am as a person when I show up every day. And so that’s the way I kind of think of that problem. I know, that’s not probably directly responsive to your answer, but that was
Mike Ayala 36:20
I wasn’t going to I actually, that little that last five minutes right there. That was like the third time we could just stop recording and be good. That that’s, there was a ton of wisdom in that. And I think that I think that people need to go back and digest that I’m gonna cut that down into a clip itself, because it’s pretty amazing.
Mike Ayala 36:39
So let’s get into a little bit of tactical, tactical advice because I owe it to our listeners. And we got a brilliant legal mind on here. So just some practical questions. I get asked a lot, when’s the right time to start an LLC?
Scott Smith 36:52
Yeah, so especially during the timeframe that we’re going on right now you have to understand that like, as the economy will get worse, which we have a reason to blame It will write with spikes, huge spikes and unemployment. The government’s pretty seemingly not very coordinated and how actually they’re addressing the financial issues that are coming up. All you have to do is look at what’s happening with the current loan programs. So they can generate all the stimulus money, but they actually can’t get it dispersed and they can’t manage the disbursement very well, how are they even going to tracking that stuff? The smartest minds that I can find, can’t figure out this stuff. And so I was like, well, that’s us. Well, how is everybody else doing? Yeah, right. So, so I was like, Okay, great. So what does it actually mean? So what does that mean, in terms of like, action steps for us would mean, okay, we should probably expect things to not be so great economically for a while. And we know that when things turn bad economically, people don’t have a lot. And so what they do is they turn to usually the frivolous litigation attorneys to file lawsuits. So they get paid, they get paid from the people that aren’t protected. So people that don’t ask us in a personal name are great target for this right because they have everything at risk for those frivolous litigation attorneys to target and you have to think about it from the perspective of us. These aren’t necessarily even bad people, they’re desperate people. Both people are desperate, the person that doesn’t have enough that goes to seek out that attorney and that attorney that has his own family and staff to support, you just happen to be the victim of too desperate people, because you didn’t take the steps to be protected. And all you had to do was to be able to form your LLC to move the assets out of your personal name to put some basic anonymity structures in place to make it where you’re just not the target. Let them go after somebody else. Right. Where this actually comes up, is. I’ve seen it happen a lot before even in good economic times where there’s lawsuits will happen in this vein, the lawsuits that are gonna happen in this vein of what the frivolous litigation that’s going to pop up, where they’re going to extort you for money from it will skyrocket off of it. I’m actually already seeing it from a lot of my my clients, a lot of them are even Gobros. I can’t tell any specifics about it. But we’re starting to see major losses and it’s exactly what you would expect. It’s lawsuits that are alleging around 80 to $100,000 in damages. They’re trying to work out $30,000 settlements, and they’re just trying to crank those through because That’s how they keep getting people paid $10,000. You know, they keep $10,000 for, for doing some basic work the $20,000 per client. I mean, that’s a whole business. And it’s just a business that’s built on. How do you take advantage of people that are protected whenever people get desperate. And if you just want to do some basic research on this, I actually presented I actually have a, an email that I sent out to my base that actually has all of the data of what happened between 2008 and 2009. And how we’re actually in a worse position now where we were then and what happened in litigation then and what we expect litigation to happen now. If you sign up, anybody signs up for our newsletter on royal legal solutions, happy to send that data over you guys. So when you’re saying, hey, should I form an LLC or not, it’s a no brainer. You always from the LLC, you because the cost of not being protected, is inviting somebody else to come after you.
Mike Ayala 39:48
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And so taking it a little further and maybe there’s maybe you have some resource already that we can point people to but there’s the concept of the LLC, but then we get into a little bit more common Complex which I don’t want to get too far into the weeds on this, but asset protection in general, do you have some kind of resource or something that people can go to understand asset protection even further or work? Where can they find something like that? Or is it just hire you?
Scott Smith 40:14
Yeah, no, no. So don’t hire me just because you feel like you need to go to an attorney, you know, and to get something like put in place, right? That’s not the way I like to do business. And that’s not who I like to do business with, right. What I like to do is actually share all the information about everything we do all upfront as if you are going to be a client into it, right. So what I actually did is I took about, I don’t know, it’s probably about 1000 console’s that I’ve done with real estate investors. And I built like a 97 slide slide deck that answers every question from every angle as we go through it. It builds systematically from what should you look for when you’re vetting professionals, you know, what is actually a good like attorney service and all service actually look like? So you can know like, Hey, is it Royal Legal, or is it somebody else? Yeah, but here’s the way you should analyze So, here’s what asset protection actually effective asset protection looks like, both using like asset holding companies, operating companies, then we walk through, like, how do you actually do all of the estate planning? How does that integrate in with your company structure? How should we be looking at different tax strategies and at different levels of income? And we like laying off for you that I mean, this would be like at least like thousands of dollars in consultations to be able to say like, here’s the game plan. And the reason why I can give that away for free is because for me at this point, this is just rote information. This is like the playbook of all of the best practices from the people that I’ve worked with over the years about how do you go, what does that what does that gameplan look like for people that are between zero and 5 million in net worth? They can see like, here’s what I need to put in place now. And here’s where I’m going to grow this in the future. And what are the pieces that you put in place in that? So what I’ve done with that is if you go to the RoyalLegalSolutions.com website and click on the banner at the top, which is like to take a quiz or whatever that banner is at the top of the website. It actually takes you to another page. And on that page. I have an hour and 45 five minute video, where I walk you through in a single take is an hour, 45 minutes single tech video where I walk you through the 97 slides slide deck, where I explain to everybody in the absolute excruciating detail how everything works, why you do it this way? What’s the thinking and the mentality behind it? How does it actually work for the banking, the accounting, the insurance, everything, it’s all laid out there. After you watch that video. This is where you have the opportunity to say like, Great, well, let’s take a quiz that gives us our basic information about you. And then we start that conversation. I’m like, okay, that’s the basic information that gives you that the baselines of everything. Now let’s talk about how we can customize something for you for your particular needs. If like, where are you at in there? Like what actually makes sense for you to put together right now. And you’re going to know that because I just showed you the whole playbook, right? Of what you’re going to need jiving now, but all the way in the future. And you’re like, I think I’m actually here, but like, yeah, that’s probably right. This is really simple. Now my job is super easy, because you actually already know what it is you need, whether it’s from me or from another provider. That’s awesome.
Mike Ayala 42:57
And so you had mentioned earlier A program that you have going right now where you’re going to help people sign up for the loans and stuff that’s going on right now. Do they find that at the same place? Or where can they find it from? Yeah,
Scott Smith 43:08
you can you can email me about I just got a royal legal solutions calm or just get a hold of us and from any other ways through the website. And we’ll get into connecting up with our attorney stuff into that to talk through like, how do we do that? So like right now what we’re doing is we’re we’re offering it for 2500 bucks, we submit your loan applications for you help coach you through how to submit those, it’s actually some nuances about what things you need to claim that you’re going to use the loan money for, on on the different, you know, the PPP versus the EIDL to make sure you can maximize those amounts, which I’m recommending everybody do get the maximum amount of money you can possibly get. Why? Because you don’t know when you’re going to get more money. So there’s something called cash insurance, which is the interest you pay, you pay interest on it because that’s your cash insurance. That’s right. So you maximize these babies out. And that’s what what our attorney staff is doing right now is we’re walking people through we just sent out an email to our base the other day and we had over 130 people reach out So, like, if you want help with this stuff a lot of people are wanting help with it Don’t feel bad, it’s really confusing about it. And the great news is, is that we charge you a little bit of money to help, you know, help you walk through all that. But we also guarantee that you’re going to get money out of the loan programs, at least $10,000 is a grant. So you’re gonna get free money, essentially, from the government, for having gone through it, that helps, you know, pay our fees for it and helps you know that you don’t have to worry about it, and that don’t have to figure it out on your own. And if we don’t get you any money, we give you all your money back.
Mike Ayala 44:31
You know, that’s such a valuable tool at this point in time because I don’t know, you being on the legal side. You don’t experience this, but I’ve been getting frustrated because every call I’m on every conversation, there’s like 15 different experts that are like, Oh, I talked to Jimmy and Jimmy said this and I talked to John, I’m tired of hearing what everybody thinks I want. I want somebody that understands the law and can work through that. So if you find yourself in that boat reach reach out to Scott valuable resource. I appreciate everything you’ve done, you’re such a giving person and and just can’t say enough about you.
Mike Ayala 44:59
So Any any last words that you just want to say to the audience of crazy times? What? How do you want to leave em?
Scott Smith 45:07
Yeah, so I would just say is like a couple of quick things, which is just to like members slow down, you know, as you’re going through everything, remember to connect with other people, right? This is really important stuff to do. And then the next piece is just to make sure that you’re surrounding yourself with the people that can help guide you to get what you want. So you first get really high clarity about what it is you want. And if you if one of those things that you want revolve around, hey, how do I plan for my asset protection? How do I plan for to protect myself from the lawsuits are going to be springing up, because I own assets, my personal name, and I, I know that that’s a risk and I just haven’t done it before. Now, if it’s your estate planning what happens to you if you’re in the hospital or something happens to you, making sure your family is going to be protected? Otherwise, the government just makes all the decisions your behalf where you need help with the loan programs for anything in between, right, like right now I got staff and we’re looking to help people, you know, and we’re not charging anybody right now to help them. We’re saying just go Get in here. Let’s get into meeting I’ll give you 15 minutes. Let’s figure out what’s going on with you. It’s something we can help you with. Great if it’s not, let me show you if we have somebody in our network that can, because right now, this is not the time where anybody’s business hard people, this is the time where it’s just like, No, no, we start having conversations when you start helping each other and figuring out ways to help each other because it’s the deep, deep help, where it’s like the true, truly helping people or as what I think is actually going to make businesses survive. And that’s what I keep communicating my staff every day is like we’re not in the law business right now. We’re not in the asset protection business right now. We’re in the helping people business. And we need conversations to figure out what you’re struggling with. So I know how to help people best. So if you can help us by contacting us and tell us what problems you’re dealing with. That helps us be able to figure out how we can help you and help other people like you more. So please reach out to us.
Mike Ayala 46:47
That’s amazing. Really appreciate your time, Scott. That was huge value. I look forward to sharing this episode with our listeners.
Mike Ayala 46:54
If you found value in this episode, and you know someone who’s wanting to start or move further along in their journey toward investing for freedom, I would be forever grateful if you would share this show with them and help me get this message out to more listeners. Also, if you enjoy what you’ve heard, I would appreciate it if you take 30 seconds and leave me a five star review and share this with your friends. And Until the next episode. Cheers to moving further along in your journey of investing for freedom.
-Scott Smith
“When I combine and take all that fear, and then channel it into action steps, pretty soon, the fear doesn’t exist anymore, because I’m actually doing… But to do that, what you have to realize is that there’s certain things you can control and certain things you can’t control.” -Scott Smith
HIGHLIGHTS:
- [00:00] Episode Overview
- [01:08] Intro
- [01:42] Meet Scott Smith
- [03:11] Avoiding fear and inaction with COVID-19
- [05:06] Your reticular activator and getting clear about what you want
- [07:38] Who has had the greatest impact on his life
- [09:14] The one thing that’s had the greatest impact on his success
- [09:54] Resources for developing introspectively
- [11:26] Finding others to serve as a checkpoint in your life
- [13:01] His greatest setback
- [14:19] The piece of advice he finds himself sharing the most
- [16:28] Why being clear as a leading is easier now than ever
- [21:33] The 3 ways he and his business is reacting to the changes
- [28:17] Avoiding regression and staying out of our ruts post COVID-19
- [32:40] What’s lying ahead
- [36:39] When’s the right time to start an LLC
- [39:48] Asset protection and resources from Royal Legal Solutions
- [42:57] Support for navigating the PPP and EIDL loan process
- [44:59] Closing thoughts
- [32:38] The journey, regrets and locking in his voyage
- [36:04] How you can get started with your own plan
- [39:07] Outro
MENTIONED:
FIND | SCOTT SMITH
At Scott@royallegalsolutions.com
On Facebook
On Youtube
FULL TRANSCRIPTION:
Mike Ayala 00:00
Hey guys, on today’s show, we’re interviewing Scott Smith and I’ve actually decided to push this show up. This show probably wouldn’t have aired for probably another four to six weeks, just the way that the queue is worked out in the order of interviews and stuff. But we get into some stuff with Scott today that is just so relevant and timely right now with everything that’s going on with COVID-19. And, you know, just the state of our country in the world. You know, small businesses are really struggling. A lot of large businesses are struggling restaurants are shutting down, left and right. And Scott really gets into some perspective about not only our mental health and state, but also our business, health and state and the legal ramifications of everything that’s going on right now. So, like I said, I really wanted to push this episode up, because I think there’s some timely information in here. Scott’s just a great guy. And I think you guys are gonna really appreciate the show. I don’t know if we really get into it, but he’s also got a podcast called The Real Estate Nerds. And if you have a chance, go check that podcast out because there’s a lot of good guests on there. A lot of great information. But anyway, I hope you guys really get a lot of value out of this show today. Make sure you go check out his asset protection video. on his website at Royal legal solutions calm, I really think that you guys are gonna get a lot of value out of this. So without delaying any longer, I’ll just let you get to the show.
Mike Ayala 01:08
Are you looking for freedom? Freedom from the daily grind and hustle? Or just finding a way to live the life you always wanted? Then join us on the investing for freedom podcast, our host, Mike Ayala will help you discover new ways to find freedom with tips, insights and interviews. You’ll learn the exact systems he’s used to travel the world and live his best life. True success and happiness are all about freedom. And here’s your roadmap on how to find freedom on your own terms. Welcome to the investing for freedom podcast. Here’s your host, Mike Ayala.
Mike Ayala 01:42
Okay everybody, I’ve got Scott Smith on with me today. Scott is a friend of mine and I actually met him through a group that I talked about quite a bit, Gobundance. Just just an amazing group of people and I’m really excited to bring Scott to you today, especially during this time. Scott owns a legal firm called Royal Legal Solutions. And I’ve been leaning on him lately for a lot of inspiration and wisdom in our whole tribe has because he’s just kind of on the forefront of a lot of this. And so we’re excited to have him excited to bring the information today. Let’s dig into it. Scott, thanks for being on the show.
Scott Smith 02:13
Hey, Mike, great to be here. And I’m really excited to be able to kind of be an open book and just a voice of, you know, just straight talk of here’s what’s going on what I typically find what works really well. And these types of scenarios, which is really different than what I see in, like from the news media and from a lot of other outlets is, it’s just, you know, talking about like, what are the fear points, let’s just label the fears that we have here. And then say, Great, now that we know exactly what the fear is, we got that thing labeled, how can we take that fear and turn it into action to be able to accomplish things that previously we weren’t able to do because they were too difficult, or we had the emotional blocks around it. And right now is actually the greatest opportunity that I’ve seen for myself inside my own life in my own company. I mean, I just end up you know, coming out here to Southwest Utah, which I’ve been wanting to do for five years now. And Now I got my own whole new setup of what I wanted to do. And it’s all because of COVID. So I’d love to just share with you more about that. And, you know, anything that we can talk about, I think would be helpful.
Mike Ayala 03:11
You know, I love that you actually went there. And we’ll get into our normal questions here in a second. But you actually put a video up the other day that I thought was awesome. And you were talking about during this time, you were just sitting back saying, Okay, what can I control? Because there’s so many things that are going on right now that we have no control over? Can you just kind of address that and kind of share that with what you were, what your thought process was and what you were thinking there?
Scott Smith 03:31
Yeah, so what it got me thinking, I say, hey, where does this panic come from? Why is panic a real thing? Right? And what was the nature of panic? And as I was contemplating that I was like, well, panic seems to be something that has two parts to it. It seems to have like a fear component to it, but also equipped with inaction. And we were really afraid and we have nothing to do. All we do is sit there and just stew in the worry right? Now you can look at this in like a different way where you you talk about like what happens when you have like fear with tons of action, then a ton of stuff gets done. And when I’ve done that, for my life, when I combine and take all that fear, and then channel it into action steps, pretty soon, the fear doesn’t exist anymore, because I’m actually doing stuff. And once the… just the process of doing stuff makes the fear go away, right. And it’s not that anything’s actually really changed at all right. And this is like, the really cool part is that nothing actually has to change in your life at all, besides just the fact that you take action and then all of a sudden, the fear goes away. But to do that, what you have to realize that there’s certain things you can control and certain things you can’t control. And so everything that you can’t control, and everything I can’t control, I barely pay attention to it. I figured most things that I can’t control, if it’s really something that maybe is important, probably somebody’s gonna tell me about it. This is like just walking around, because it’s gonna be that big of a deal that everybody’s going to be talking about, right? So the only thing I really need to put my attention on are things that I can control. And then those are the things that I can’t control turn to the action steps and then I’m actually getting stuff done. And because I’m getting stuff done, now I’m in a better position where I was. Anytime… putting attention on things you can’t control, I mean, has to just be a waste of time, because you can’t do anything about it. So why even worry about it?
Mike Ayala 05:06
That’s such a good point. And you said something else in that video, too. You’re really focusing on what do you want? You’re coming back to that, that. Just that core concept? What do I really want? Can you just touch on that a little bit?
Scott Smith 05:16
Yeah. So for me, like getting really, really clear, like as precise as I possibly can be about what I want, is probably the most important thing. Once I can actually define clearly what it is I want, I can kind of just leave it, kick it into the back of my mind. And then my mind just subconsciously starts to find out how to get me that thing. Right. So there’s like some science behind this right with what’s called like your reticular activator. And if you ever gone shopping for a car, and then all of a sudden you’re like, Hey, I’m shopping for like a silver Honda Civic. And then you just see silver Honda Civics everywhere. That’s because you’ve told your mind, hey, I’m looking for this thing. And it’s really particular and so all of a sudden, your mind starts to pick it up, starts to pick up awareness around it. Same thing happens for us around anything that we want, right? So but the more clear and precise you are with it, the more your mind is able to just start searching for in the background. And what’s cool about this is that you actually get to your mind works for you while you’re not having to work, right? It’s doing all of the heavy lifting while you’re focused on other things. And then pretty soon you’ll have that experience where it’s like, oh, it just came to me, or this thing just happened. It’s like magic, right? Well, well, it wasn’t really magic, right? It was because actually, there was a part of your brain that you weren’t conscious of that was actually chugging the whole time to be able to get you there.
Scott Smith 06:28
And that’s where like, I think the magic comes in and like knowing really precisely like what is you want spend a lot of time, thinking about what it is I want. And having done that, actually, for the last five years, this COVID thing actually gave me an amazing opportunity. Because inside of the Panic of inside of everything that was like, the skies are falling, right? I could act on everything that I wanted, all at one time and everybody was okay with it. Because we’re in a panic. So anything you do inside of a panic every anybody gets a pass or like, Okay, cool. Well, that’s just whatever you’re doing. I have no idea why that’s true. I have some theories about it. But it’s like the most amazing time if you know what it is you want, like, now is the time to go seize it.
Mike Ayala 07:11
That was gold right there. I feel like if people just get a hold of what you just said, I mean, we could we could end the show there. We’re not going to but we could
Scott Smith 07:20
Thats a wrap I’m calling it a day Mike.
Mike Ayala 07:23
That was so good.
Mike Ayala 07:25
Yeah, it is such a you know, it’s such a an amazing point. I mean, we could totally reinvent ourselves if we don’t like, just roll up into a ball and freak out right now. So, you know, that’s what I’ve been trying to stay focused on. So. Okay, let’s get into some questions.
Mike Ayala 07:38
So who has had the greatest impact on your life?
Scott Smith 07:42
Yeah, I would probably say it’s, it’s probably my godfather. You know, I got further from the time I was a kid I was always taught he was he’s a wealthy entrepreneur and I grew up in a family was pretty poor. Right. My father passed away when I was three and my mom is a schoolteacher. I always looked up to people that had money and had success because I knew that was important, but I didn’t Know how or why, or how would anybody actually do that? I just knew that they had some type of like special magic power, you know, and he was one of those guys that had that with a company, and then he had built and sold. And so he actually guided me through a lot of my life like really indirectly, right? It was like, Hey, you should go to law school, you know, like, go get that professional certifications with that, because even if you decide you want to sell ice cream cones, you know, and have a business selling ice cream cones, you’re a lawyer deciding to sell ice cream cones, you know, you’re not just out there trying to Hawk ice cream cones, you know, he’s like, that’ll be important for you. And it was like these really types of like, subtle guidance of things that I would just happen to do, because I didn’t know honestly, I didn’t know what else to do. Life to me was, as always been pretty confusing up until maybe in the last eight years or so. And so that’s really kind of one of things. I just like kind of leaned on him said, hey, what should I be doing? Right now? Like, what’s another thing that just add in to the toolbox? I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what I want in my life I don’t know what I want to be doing. And so he was just keep encouraging me to say like, well just go add another tool to your toolbox because while you don’t know what to do, it’s a great time just add another tool because just kick the can down the road and that tool come to serve you at some point in the future. And he was 100% right.
Mike Ayala 09:14
That’s awesome. If you could narrow down to one thing that’s had the greatest impact on your success what would you say that is
Scott Smith 09:21
Definitely my spiritual growth like then by spiritual I don’t mean like the woowoo like, putting crystals all over my body, type. I mean, like the, the type of like having like really deep knowledge of self like introspective and reflective knowledge, like really blunt honesty with myself, but like, who I am, what am I going after? Why am I going after that? You know, though that type of internal feedback has all of the other downstream benefits to my life. So if there’s like one thing that I have to focus on first that I know everything else in my life is going to get better because of it’s that it’s that peace and that practice.
Mike Ayala 09:54
That’s awesome. detour and a little add on question here. Do you have like a favorite resource around that getting introspective a certain book or something that you could recommend?
Scott Smith 10:03
Yeah, I think there’s actually two different groups that I’ve worked with that I thought were really good in this in this field, at least getting people to jump started. One is called it’s like insightseminars.org. I think it’s like Insider International, they work out of Santa Monica, California, and they do like these weekend seminar pieces to it. What’s really cool about that is it’s all experience based learning that actually don’t tell you much. They just put you in scenarios and then ask you to reflect on it. So it’s like they make you flex the tool set of like awareness and self introspection, and whatever level you’re at, you’ll get something different. Everybody will have a different insight because everybody’s at a different level through that experience. There’s another group that’s an awesome I think it’s called like the Atlas Group. But it’s in the same type of vein, right? It’s all experience based learning high levels of like awareness training, low like teaching and talking at you tons of actual like activity and then programming you like how do you actually do the work of like, how do you actually become honest with yourself, how do you actually become introspective yourself? How do you actually like, see the nasty parts of yourself and say, okay, that’s just part of me, you know, that’s part of my shadow that’s part of that dark side of like who I am. And that’s okay too, because that’s just part of me. And I just need to be aware of where that’s going to come up in the world. As you can imagine being like a litigator coming out of law school. And with that, and suing insurance companies and stuff like that, that was probably a vein that I had going pretty strong about how to fight.
Mike Ayala 11:25
Yeah, totally. A little side note, I’ve got several attorneys in my life. And typically, whenever we’re talking to our attorneys, it’s either being proactive about a deal or whatever, or else, we have a challenge and I’ve yet to have ever been sued other than a couple of, you know, small employee issues and but I’ve found during this time that like, talking with attorneys has actually been really good for me, because you guys kind of look at things from like, kind of like a balanced level. I mean, things that we think are just the end of the world, always seen that before and here’s how we can deal with it. Deal with it. So I appreciate your guys’s like level headedness. I don’t know if it correlates over into your personal lives. But that’s been a source of strength for me lately, just like it’s gonna be okay. We’ve got good documentation. So it’s it’s been calming lately.
Scott Smith 12:15
You know, man, I think that I think that’s what really good professionals should always be doing right is really good professional should be the ones that are on the check for other people, right? I actually have my own attorneys, right that I talk to that provide me the same piece because I can do that for you, Mike, but when I have to try to do it for myself, I can’t right? I’m like okay, I need somebody else that does it for me to give me that kind of like, here’s what’s going on. And I have my own business coaches that do the same pieces to me with like looking at our reports, and what are the kinds of things that we need to look at. Because when it’s in your own head, it’s really tough to do and so I’d recommend like everybody you need like another you need some type of trusted advisor in your life, whatever that’s gonna be it can be free. It could be anybody, right? But somebody else that you trust to serve as that checkpoint, because it’s too hard to do the stuff fall inside your own head. Yep.
Mike Ayala 13:01
Makes a lot of sense. Okay, what was your greatest setback? And would you learn from it?
Scott Smith 13:07
My greatest setback was probably when like, I got my, my rear end kicked around the ring. And when I was 22, I was I graduated out of college with a liberal arts degree in Spanish and an economics. And I didn’t take a single business class. So I really was like unemployable at that time. So I started to do, but I like, a ton of knowledge, right? So I said, like, well, I’ll just start like tutoring the rich kids out in Houston, you know, with like, the rich private school kids and charging like 85 or 100 bucks an hour or whatever was because I could teach him anything. Physics, calculus, Spanish, like whatever it was right? And at the same time, I was like, fighting professionally. And I thought I was gonna be a professional fighter, like cage fighting. So I did that for a period of time. And then the biggest setback for me was realizing that I was like, I’m not very good at this. Like and, and you get taught that lesson in a very brutal way, you know, and it was at that moment that I was like, you know, taking the outset and go to law school sounds pretty good. I’m gonna listen to my godfather because he said that was a good idea. And this is sounding a lot better now.
Mike Ayala 14:08
Yeah. Scott’s got live videos of that happening. We’ll link it in the show notes.
Scott Smith 14:13
Yeah. Getting embarrassing. Just Just getting pummeled. Yeah, that’s great.
Mike Ayala 14:19
What is the piece of advice you find yourself sharing the most?
Scott Smith 14:25
Just to slow down and be still with people? Yeah, I find that like most most of the time for myself, and I share that advice, actually, myself more than anybody to tell you the trick is just to slow down, slow down, be still then make a decision about whatever you’re going to do next, or then have that conversation. There’s actually like nothing to be gained in moving faster. And most of the time, all the action that we’re doing is actually not, it’s either not necessary or it’s not helpful, but like we feel good acting fast as entrepreneurs. And I think that that’s a that’s a piece I share with myself but I share with other people in my company too.
Mike Ayala 15:03
Wow, that’s good.
Mike Ayala 15:04
I was actually talking with Rock Thomas the other day, who’s a mutual friend of ours. And he said a phrase that he, I don’t know if he came up with it or what but it’s called stimulus, pause, response, kind of along the same vein, just when something stimulates you pause, and then respond, just take a little bit of time, think through it. And whether it’s an outside thing, just, you know, kind of slowing down. And, you know, sometimes we just move through decisions in life and everything in general. So fast. That makes a lot of sense.
Scott Smith 15:35
Yeah, yeah. And there’s probably a lot of really good reasons to do that, too. Right? Like, just the fact of like, if you actually just slow down a little bit more, you actually might remember what you did that day. You know, that might there might be value in that of like, wondering, like, not waking up and being like, where’d that last month go?
Mike Ayala 15:50
Wow.
Scott Smith 15:51
Yeah?
Mike Ayala 15:51
Yeah.
Scott Smith 15:52
Like that might be valuable, right? I mean, if the treasure trove of life is actually like what you have, right, like, what do you really have like you really only have like your memories, right? So if you’re actually losing months or years of like no memories being created, that time is just gone, you’ve actually not poured into the asset value of your life. You’ve just wasted it. And from that perspective, right, maybe you didn’t maybe you did a bunch of stuff right? from life, like what makes a rich life. I don’t know any other way of measuring it besides like the memories and the experiences I have. And then my ability to reflect on those and put those into like my essence of like who I am.
Mike Ayala 16:28
That’s so good. bringing that back to what you were saying earlier, and in your video. We’ve got all this stuff going on right now. It’s 2020. We’re in the middle of April, and we’ve got all this COVID-19 stuff going on. I think this is an opportunity. You can come you can take this time and go any way you want. But really we should. I don’t know about you guys, but it’s been pretty quiet. I mean, we’ve got a lot going on and I’m busier than I’ve probably ever been just because of certain aspects of our business but are you finding yourself really being able to slow down And go more interest after…
Scott Smith 17:02
Yeah so much more. And I don’t know really why to tell you the truth. I actually can’t put my finger on the pulse of why this is happening this way. I suspect is that in times like these, a lot of other people in my life or my frame of reference, you know, are like my circle of influence, right?
Scott Smith 17:30
The everybody in these types of time periods, they want to be led, like even more than they did before, right? So it’s actually easier to lead. It’s actually easier to get stuff done, because everybody else is much more willing to just go with whatever it is that you’re saying and whatever ways that you’re showing up because you’re projecting strength, you’re projecting security, you’re projecting, you know, these things that they want, and that people there’s just no resistance into it. They’re just like, how can I how can I play possibly do what it is that you want me to do with that. Whereas in times of where it’s like before, people had a lot of their own stuff. And that would confront against my stuff. And then I’d have to try to persuade them over to my side. And now there is only my side. Because if they’re not on my team, and they’re not on board with me, then good luck on your own. And so it’s a really harsh reality, like, right that I think we all implicitly understand as tribes that people when there’s panic, or when there’s war, right, it’s either you’re on the team, you’re not and if you’re not on the team, good luck in the wilderness on your own, right. So there’s like these inherent types of I think, just like tribal mechanisms at play, that make it easier as a leader and a business owner now than it’s ever been for me.
Mike Ayala 18:43
I was having a conversation yesterday in a in another group that I’m in and I think also, I don’t know if you agree with this, but I’m finding it easy to lead right now or easier to lead right now, even though we’re going through some challenging times. Because I feel like I can be 100% honest with my entire team. Not only can I be 100% honest with myself, we’re all in the same place together. And I think sometimes, again, I don’t know if you agree with this or what your thoughts are on it. But I feel like sometimes we’ve never been able to not, not never. But most of the time, we’re not able to be completely honest about what’s going on in the business where we’re actually heading. Right now everybody’s on the same page. This is what’s happening. It’s black and white, if you can’t get on board with it, move on. And that’s actually made made it pretty easy. Like, this is where we’re at, and we’re all in it together. And
Scott Smith 19:32
we have done this always, you know, like, could we have shown up like this all the time, and then had been like, okay, and I want to say that, that it’s probably true that we could have, but what we tell ourselves is that we’re afraid that if we show up like that, that the other people might not like it, and if they leave, it’s going to hurt me. Right and so then I need to soften it right? But I wonder Mike and I was wondering like from your perspective, when you look at like the really great like leaders, right like guys that really move the dial in their industries. It seems like they’re incredibly unreasonable with like, everybody, this is how it is.You know? And that’s just gonna be this way. You’re either on board or you’re out, you’re in or you’re out. And I just don’t have time. I don’t care how good you are. If you’re not 100% in and you’re not like in it on the way I’m in it. That’s it. I’m cool. I’ll go work with somebody else. You know, like Steve Jobs is one of those guys right into it. And but I was like, Man, that that sounds rough. That sounds scary to try to lead that way. Now I’m doing and I’m like, wow, this has never been easier. But it’s because like, what I feel safe, right? Because I’m like, you don’t have an alternative besides just to do what it is that I’m saying, like, this is what we’re going to do. And you’re really excited by the fact that you’re like, I got a job, but I’m not one of the 6.5 million people that are unemployed right now.
Mike Ayala 20:38
Yeah. You know, what’s interesting On that note, too, I mean, you do have some extremes, like you said, like with Steve Jobs, but most most of the time people that were with somebody like that long term, don’t have a lot of negative to say about it once you’re okay with what’s actually happening there and you buy into the vision and most of the time people are like, yeah, this was a this was a weird part of it, but actually outside of Like, they got they got in line. And they actually appreciated him for it. It’s kind of Yeah,
Scott Smith 21:06
like, as long as they’re consistent and clear, like most people just want like consistency and the clarity of like, what my expectations are, right? That at least that’s what I’m like realizing now, like in this moment, that’s what seems true for me. And to it that I’m saying, Man, I didn’t ever have to compromise and like, what a blessing to learn that now as being 35 years old, of saying, like, wow, I don’t have to compromise nearly as much as I think I have to. I cool, that means I can have more of what I want. I can be more peace about it. That’s like, Man, that’s a neat place to be. That’s awesome.
Mike Ayala 21:33
That’s cool. Okay, we could go a million directions here. But I think based on the current issues that we’ve got going on and and with your legal background, and your business background, all of your experience, I think we really probably should get into some practical advice on you know, what you’re doing right now currently and what other people can do so can you just kind of give us an overview of you know, what you’ve been doing in your personal life, your business life? How are you handling all this?
Scott Smith 21:59
Yeah, so there’s just like, couple of key points that I focus on. Because there’s obviously like a million things I could be doing, right? But I’m always focused on like, what are things that I think are really accomplishable that I can do and that are actually going to move the dial, right? Things that are inside of my control. So in that respect, I started prioritizing, having a lot more fun. And that’s probably a weird thing to say, during a pandemic, right. But that’s one of the reasons that I like I’ve got this you know, I’m at my house that’s here in southwest Utah right now is because I was like, Man, you know, of everything else that’s going on, I can try to work my ass off probably won’t make that much of a difference right now into it. Or what I could do is actually be like, man, how can I work and get what I need done and also have just a ton more fun while I’m doing it and be like, hey, this could be the best time of my life right now. And how could that be true? And then it’s like, oh, cool. I could be out here I can add like the dirt biking, the boating and the hiking in the National Park and all the great stuff that’s like out here like Oh, that sounds really cool. So like my spirits maintain like really high there and it hasn’t Like downstream benefits to all my staff because they see me like full of energy and full of like excitement and like, rejuvenated. And they’re like, Wow, this is awesome that our leader is like coming in and he’s always got like, stuff to be able to pour into us, you know, energy to pour into us to help us, like raise our awareness or raise our mentality into what we’re doing. And so I just get tons of really positive feedback from all my staff. I’m like, Holy smokes, like how important was it for me to have fun this whole time? And I thought was really important was working hard. Yeah, it’s not, you know, like, that wasn’t what got my people to move, you know? So like, on a personal level, I’m doing that. On a business level, we’ve had to pivot a little bit really just about like, how do the things that we do actually just address what are the concerns that people are having right now, which are typically around like three major areas? It’s like how do I get money from a loan programs always like okay, Attorney staff, we got free time now let’s go become experts in the loans and help people coach through how to get the loan. So we charge 2,500 bucks and we give you your money back if we don’t get any money, any money for you, right? So it’s like a yearly thing. To get 10 grand at a minimum, from the EIDL warrior, we don’t we just give you all your money back, right? So we’re like, Okay, cool. It’s a zero risk way for people to get free money, right sweet.
Scott Smith 24:09
And then we’re like, Okay, well what else people need? Well, we know that lawsuits are gonna go rise as unemployment increases, because when people don’t have enough they come and take from you. And they use frivolous litigation attorneys to do it. So asset protection is top of mind and estate planning, you might die, you might end up in hospital. So cool. This is where you’re gonna need estate planning to come and help you. So we’re like, okay, let’s reposition those things that we know really well. Well, inside of our skill set, let’s address the current needs. And we’re pivoting into that. And that’s been able to help our, our business. We took like a huge dip, like in that first week, like 80% of our revenue dropped off, and now we’re slowly climbing back. You know? Thats what we need, so businesses coming back strong with doing that. And, I mean, those are the I mean to two really big moves and that vein,
Scott Smith 24:59
And then the last Really big moves that I prioritize as my community, like, Who am I actually seeing? Who am I actually spending all my time with. And that’s actually been one of the biggest movers unexpectedly for me. Because I knew that I was going to have that, but I didn’t know the impact of it. And I got, I gotta tell you, man, it’s something really weird about human being a human being. And for my last like, three, four years, all I was doing was just working like a ton as an office working and I had like my staff and I was like my staff or like my people, and I was like, I didn’t really have a lot of people that I would see that are outside of things that are trying to create, you know, I’m really about creating my vision. Like, to me, that’s the most fun thing I could be doing. And I didn’t realize that there was actually a piece of me that was thirsty for like, family and community and those types of pieces that now that I’ve had to slow down so much. I’m out here in Utah where I have lots of like friends and other family and stuff that lives out here. being plugged in a community is just so like nourishing it’s like food. For the soul and has again, they’re not like, direct dollar into out kinds of things. But it like makes me show up differently each day and like, What am I thinking about? Like my thinking is like, changed from Panic of like, how are we going to get through the next week or two months? You know where it was when I was in Austin, four weeks ago, like where a lot of stuff is hitting the fan right into it. Now I’m like, Okay, what is life gonna be like a year, two years, three years, four years, five years. And I’m noticing that the more that I pour into these other areas of my life and focus on those things, that the longer my thinking can get even inside of a panic. And to me, that means I was like, Ah, I’m actually escaping the prison, because the prison is in the reactive immediacy of the state of mind. And if I’m actually starting to naturally thinking longer term of timescales, that means I’m on the right track of actually being okay, I’m actually out of the prison.
Scott Smith 26:54
Does that make sense?
Mike Ayala 26:54
Yeah, it makes total sense. It’s so good. Again, back to Gobundance. One of the main things that I’ve Taking away from that community is the authentic relationship pillar. And I’ve been so thankful for that group. And for that reason, it’s taught me a lot about authentic relationships. But coming into a time like this, you’ve said several things that are just amazing. Number one slowing down. I was talking with a guy the other day. And it’s interesting because as we have slowed down, and we’re focused more on relationships and community, which I’ve been in, you know, I think Scott’s dropping a lot of wisdom here. And if you’re not focusing on relationships, and community, and slowing down, dig in on that, but one thing I’ve found lately, I’ve had people crossing my mind every single day, like, Scott’s name will flutter through my brain and I’ll be like, you know what, I’m just going to take a minute and I’m going to reach out to Scott, instead of like, I used to tell myself anytime i’d think of someone or my subconscious, you know, you’re talking about that inner inner perspective, would bring somebody up that you hadn’t thought about for eight months or whatever. I’d be like, Oh, I need to call that person and I kind of file it away. But lately I’ve been every time my subconscious brings somebody up or I just randomly think about someone. I’ve been reaching out. To them, and every single time it’s like, I’m so glad you called I’m dealing with this. Thank you can we get on it? And I’m just like, if we weren’t focused on the community in the authentic relation ship piece and slowing down, would I even? I mean, would I just go back to blowing over that thought process and not connecting to humans?
Mike Ayala 28:17
And so I guess the question that I wanted to ask you, how do we I know this is not a black and white question, but how do we remember where we’re at right now is like journaling. How do we get on the other side of this and make sure that we as individuals, and people just don’t go right back into our rut?
Scott Smith 28:34
Well, you’ll have every reason to go back into the rut. Right? Because we should always reach back to the life and try and pick back up exactly as before. So the one of the things that you get into is like when we talked about it, in the very beginning of this talk, you’re like, what are the things that you did, right? That like helped you like develop that inner sense of knowing and, you know, self awareness, like those types of pieces, right, like the knowledge self knowledge, right? I mean, That concept doesn’t mine. Right? That goes back to like Socrates, right? Like the man know thyself, like all that stuff, right? Like people have been trying to struggle with this knowing it was the biggest mover for a few thousand years, right? So it’s probably probably pretty right into it. Now, the thing is that when you go to any of these, like seminars or any things, right, you have like this amazing experience while you’re there, right? And then you go home. And then at last, like that piece, like, it’s, you got it hundred percent on the first day, and it’s like, 80, 90, 60, 40. And then bring you back, you’re just exactly where you were before and people are like hey, it didn’t work. It didn’t work. It didn’t fix me. Yeah, right into it. And if you think about it, what an insane thing to say. Because you’ve had 30 years of a pattern of living a certain way. And to think that a brief stint in your time on the planet is going to radically change who you are, how you show up in the world, what’s important to you, is going to just stick and last. Without other reinforcement is insane. Of course, it’s not going to happen. Right. So the question is, is like, what do we do, like knowing that that’s going to be the case. So I think the things that I found I’ve been like most impactful for me is, one is creating like an intentional practice that has to do with some type of physical writing, right. So whether it’s gonna be like goal tracking, by like tallying marks, like on goals, or there’s gonna be a journal writing or whatever the case could be. And that seems to be really important, and really helpful. And there’s a lot of good brain research of why that is really powerful. And I’ve just can speak to it from my own personal piece of that’s really important.
Scott Smith 30:32
The next piece is actually to surround myself with people that have what it is I want and actually physically go spend time with them. And usually, it’s always best if I try to do things that are fun, because when I actually want to go spend time with it doesn’t feel like a chore, like I’m doing this, like whatever chore that makes my life better. Like no, no they’re just awesome. They naturally are that way or they naturally have that thing that I like that I want for myself. And so if I just go find ways to go have fun with them, then I’m going to want to go to do that. We’re gonna want to go hang out together, and then that’s just going to rub off on me because they’re naturally away. And I’m going to start showing up that way and be in that state of mind or that state of being for hours at a time, because I’m thirsty for it right and picking up from them. So it sounds just like 10 minutes on a journal, it’s being hours. And like that state of being, that seems to be really huge, too. So I don’t think that there’s anything like exceptionally insightful into that I think those are things that probably people have heard of time before, right, which is like who you’re surrounding yourself with, probably surround yourself with people that have what you want, right? Or who you like with the state of being that you want. And then do some type of physical reflective activity, right with either journaling, goal tracking, whatever the case would be. The journaling and stuff like that. You also can serve as like a meditative piece. But for me, meditation has always been just like a way to combat anxiety, or to rejuvenate like in my mind’s too foggy, or like I’m feeling really anxious about something. I’ll just use meditation as a tool for that. But it hasn’t like taken me to like transcendental levels where I’m just like flying off in outer space or something like that. So I
Mike Ayala 32:03
actually, I think it actually is very insightful and impactful because you said something. I mean, if we just always do what we’ve always done, we’re going to just stay there. And so when we hear people reinforce the same concepts over and over and over, there’s certain themes that you know, anybody like you that not anybody, but most people like you that I talked to. There’s just these little things that they do to really change who they are. And from that interest, introspective position. I think it’s important. So I, I do think it’s very insightful, and I appreciate it.
Scott Smith 32:33
Thanks, Mike.
Mike Ayala 32:33
So are we near the bottom of this problem, or I know you’ve got a crystal ball. So what do you see?
Scott Smith 32:40
Yeah, so this is what I tell people when it comes to this, right. And I’m actually releasing like a 40 page ebook that has like all the strategies I’m using for all the different like loan programs as Krishna estate planning, hunting through like, how do you maximize cash so that we can actually use opportunities in the future? All the different tapping retirement accounts away so you don’t have to pay penalties? creative strategies, we’re coming up with that. And actually the first two chapters of this, this book, or it’s like an ebook, you know, kind of thing that I’m running right now that we’re using for like our principal barking material is about that this this question, right? I act in the part of the things that I talk about in there, as I say, well, it’s a question we all want to ask. But how useful is it? Right? Because what will the answer tell us into it? So maybe there’s a better question that we should be asking ourselves, which is, what do we do in the face of uncertainty? Right? And what do you do? How do you make decisions in uncertainty? Right? And so like, if I ask that question about how do I make decision and certainly then I start to think a little bit differently through the How do I think through the problem? And so when I think through like this decisions of uncertainty, what I’m always looking for is not actually any bright line rules I’m looking for, like, what are my downside risks that come from whatever decisions that I’m making and I must to judge the amount of risk it is by how easily I can reverse from the decision. Right? So if I can easily reverse from the decision, I’ll just go ahead and make the decision because it’s so not risky at all right? If it’s something that’s really hard for me to reverse on, if I like guessed wrong on it. Now, that’s when I’m gonna be ultra conservative on really gonna think through it and really make sure that I’m probably too conservative. I want to be on too conservative, conservative mindset of it. So one way to think about this is like, how do we think about like, what our cash position should be at a time like this, right? We know cash is going to be king, especially when we have in the future economy in the next couple of years, the amount of cash you have will be the amount of opportunities you’re going to be able to scoop up, right. Anybody that’s in the know of serious investing will tell you the exact same thing, but like this is what’s gonna happen liquidity markets are going to dry up, we’re already starting to see those beside of banks. So it’s going to end up being cash, you’re going to have fluctuations inside of any other asset. So you might as well pull those cash and hold on to it. And why is it so important now?
Scott Smith 34:57
It’s so important because it doesn’t matter if you’re right or wrong, right? The point is, is that you sit on cash, because if things get worse, and they’re worse than you think you’re going to need cash to survive it. Right? If things are better, and there’s a bounce back, well, Holy smokes, look, you got cash or take advantage of the opportunity. So the end of the decision is you sit on cash. So it doesn’t matter to me whether this is the bottom or the not on looking for saying I’m sitting on cash, and I’m waiting, and I wait and wait, no, wait, no, wait, wait until it becomes painfully obvious you have the decision that I should have to make that I’m almost forced to make the decision because every other decision seems ridiculous. And that’s how conservative I’m treating like what’s going on. Because what I know that’s true for me in my life is not actually the big wins that I’ve made about like when I’ve timed things correctly and hit like a big home run. It’s actually being able to reduce the deltas between the highs and the lows because that’s where I actually experienced the most pain. My life is actually pretty okay, as long as it’s keeping going up into the right in a steady fashion. where it gets really painful is when I have these huge spikes of like highs And lows off of that mean, and I’m about living a great life more than I am about trying to maximize money. I’ve tried to maximize the opportunity, because that’s what’s important. It’s all about having fun. It’s about being connected to other people. It’s about living a great life for like, who I am as a person when I show up every day. And so that’s the way I kind of think of that problem. I know, that’s not probably directly responsive to your answer, but that was
Mike Ayala 36:20
I wasn’t going to I actually, that little that last five minutes right there. That was like the third time we could just stop recording and be good. That that’s, there was a ton of wisdom in that. And I think that I think that people need to go back and digest that I’m gonna cut that down into a clip itself, because it’s pretty amazing.
Mike Ayala 36:39
So let’s get into a little bit of tactical, tactical advice because I owe it to our listeners. And we got a brilliant legal mind on here. So just some practical questions. I get asked a lot, when’s the right time to start an LLC?
Scott Smith 36:52
Yeah, so especially during the timeframe that we’re going on right now you have to understand that like, as the economy will get worse, which we have a reason to blame It will write with spikes, huge spikes and unemployment. The government’s pretty seemingly not very coordinated and how actually they’re addressing the financial issues that are coming up. All you have to do is look at what’s happening with the current loan programs. So they can generate all the stimulus money, but they actually can’t get it dispersed and they can’t manage the disbursement very well, how are they even going to tracking that stuff? The smartest minds that I can find, can’t figure out this stuff. And so I was like, well, that’s us. Well, how is everybody else doing? Yeah, right. So, so I was like, Okay, great. So what does it actually mean? So what does that mean, in terms of like, action steps for us would mean, okay, we should probably expect things to not be so great economically for a while. And we know that when things turn bad economically, people don’t have a lot. And so what they do is they turn to usually the frivolous litigation attorneys to file lawsuits. So they get paid, they get paid from the people that aren’t protected. So people that don’t ask us in a personal name are great target for this right because they have everything at risk for those frivolous litigation attorneys to target and you have to think about it from the perspective of us. These aren’t necessarily even bad people, they’re desperate people. Both people are desperate, the person that doesn’t have enough that goes to seek out that attorney and that attorney that has his own family and staff to support, you just happen to be the victim of too desperate people, because you didn’t take the steps to be protected. And all you had to do was to be able to form your LLC to move the assets out of your personal name to put some basic anonymity structures in place to make it where you’re just not the target. Let them go after somebody else. Right. Where this actually comes up, is. I’ve seen it happen a lot before even in good economic times where there’s lawsuits will happen in this vein, the lawsuits that are gonna happen in this vein of what the frivolous litigation that’s going to pop up, where they’re going to extort you for money from it will skyrocket off of it. I’m actually already seeing it from a lot of my my clients, a lot of them are even Gobros. I can’t tell any specifics about it. But we’re starting to see major losses and it’s exactly what you would expect. It’s lawsuits that are alleging around 80 to $100,000 in damages. They’re trying to work out $30,000 settlements, and they’re just trying to crank those through because That’s how they keep getting people paid $10,000. You know, they keep $10,000 for, for doing some basic work the $20,000 per client. I mean, that’s a whole business. And it’s just a business that’s built on. How do you take advantage of people that are protected whenever people get desperate. And if you just want to do some basic research on this, I actually presented I actually have a, an email that I sent out to my base that actually has all of the data of what happened between 2008 and 2009. And how we’re actually in a worse position now where we were then and what happened in litigation then and what we expect litigation to happen now. If you sign up, anybody signs up for our newsletter on royal legal solutions, happy to send that data over you guys. So when you’re saying, hey, should I form an LLC or not, it’s a no brainer. You always from the LLC, you because the cost of not being protected, is inviting somebody else to come after you.
Mike Ayala 39:48
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And so taking it a little further and maybe there’s maybe you have some resource already that we can point people to but there’s the concept of the LLC, but then we get into a little bit more common Complex which I don’t want to get too far into the weeds on this, but asset protection in general, do you have some kind of resource or something that people can go to understand asset protection even further or work? Where can they find something like that? Or is it just hire you?
Scott Smith 40:14
Yeah, no, no. So don’t hire me just because you feel like you need to go to an attorney, you know, and to get something like put in place, right? That’s not the way I like to do business. And that’s not who I like to do business with, right. What I like to do is actually share all the information about everything we do all upfront as if you are going to be a client into it, right. So what I actually did is I took about, I don’t know, it’s probably about 1000 console’s that I’ve done with real estate investors. And I built like a 97 slide slide deck that answers every question from every angle as we go through it. It builds systematically from what should you look for when you’re vetting professionals, you know, what is actually a good like attorney service and all service actually look like? So you can know like, Hey, is it Royal Legal, or is it somebody else? Yeah, but here’s the way you should analyze So, here’s what asset protection actually effective asset protection looks like, both using like asset holding companies, operating companies, then we walk through, like, how do you actually do all of the estate planning? How does that integrate in with your company structure? How should we be looking at different tax strategies and at different levels of income? And we like laying off for you that I mean, this would be like at least like thousands of dollars in consultations to be able to say like, here’s the game plan. And the reason why I can give that away for free is because for me at this point, this is just rote information. This is like the playbook of all of the best practices from the people that I’ve worked with over the years about how do you go, what does that what does that gameplan look like for people that are between zero and 5 million in net worth? They can see like, here’s what I need to put in place now. And here’s where I’m going to grow this in the future. And what are the pieces that you put in place in that? So what I’ve done with that is if you go to the RoyalLegalSolutions.com website and click on the banner at the top, which is like to take a quiz or whatever that banner is at the top of the website. It actually takes you to another page. And on that page. I have an hour and 45 five minute video, where I walk you through in a single take is an hour, 45 minutes single tech video where I walk you through the 97 slides slide deck, where I explain to everybody in the absolute excruciating detail how everything works, why you do it this way? What’s the thinking and the mentality behind it? How does it actually work for the banking, the accounting, the insurance, everything, it’s all laid out there. After you watch that video. This is where you have the opportunity to say like, Great, well, let’s take a quiz that gives us our basic information about you. And then we start that conversation. I’m like, okay, that’s the basic information that gives you that the baselines of everything. Now let’s talk about how we can customize something for you for your particular needs. If like, where are you at in there? Like what actually makes sense for you to put together right now. And you’re going to know that because I just showed you the whole playbook, right? Of what you’re going to need jiving now, but all the way in the future. And you’re like, I think I’m actually here, but like, yeah, that’s probably right. This is really simple. Now my job is super easy, because you actually already know what it is you need, whether it’s from me or from another provider. That’s awesome.
Mike Ayala 42:57
And so you had mentioned earlier A program that you have going right now where you’re going to help people sign up for the loans and stuff that’s going on right now. Do they find that at the same place? Or where can they find it from? Yeah,
Scott Smith 43:08
you can you can email me about I just got a royal legal solutions calm or just get a hold of us and from any other ways through the website. And we’ll get into connecting up with our attorney stuff into that to talk through like, how do we do that? So like right now what we’re doing is we’re we’re offering it for 2500 bucks, we submit your loan applications for you help coach you through how to submit those, it’s actually some nuances about what things you need to claim that you’re going to use the loan money for, on on the different, you know, the PPP versus the EIDL to make sure you can maximize those amounts, which I’m recommending everybody do get the maximum amount of money you can possibly get. Why? Because you don’t know when you’re going to get more money. So there’s something called cash insurance, which is the interest you pay, you pay interest on it because that’s your cash insurance. That’s right. So you maximize these babies out. And that’s what what our attorney staff is doing right now is we’re walking people through we just sent out an email to our base the other day and we had over 130 people reach out So, like, if you want help with this stuff a lot of people are wanting help with it Don’t feel bad, it’s really confusing about it. And the great news is, is that we charge you a little bit of money to help, you know, help you walk through all that. But we also guarantee that you’re going to get money out of the loan programs, at least $10,000 is a grant. So you’re gonna get free money, essentially, from the government, for having gone through it, that helps, you know, pay our fees for it and helps you know that you don’t have to worry about it, and that don’t have to figure it out on your own. And if we don’t get you any money, we give you all your money back.
Mike Ayala 44:31
You know, that’s such a valuable tool at this point in time because I don’t know, you being on the legal side. You don’t experience this, but I’ve been getting frustrated because every call I’m on every conversation, there’s like 15 different experts that are like, Oh, I talked to Jimmy and Jimmy said this and I talked to John, I’m tired of hearing what everybody thinks I want. I want somebody that understands the law and can work through that. So if you find yourself in that boat reach reach out to Scott valuable resource. I appreciate everything you’ve done, you’re such a giving person and and just can’t say enough about you.
Mike Ayala 44:59
So Any any last words that you just want to say to the audience of crazy times? What? How do you want to leave em?
Scott Smith 45:07
Yeah, so I would just say is like a couple of quick things, which is just to like members slow down, you know, as you’re going through everything, remember to connect with other people, right? This is really important stuff to do. And then the next piece is just to make sure that you’re surrounding yourself with the people that can help guide you to get what you want. So you first get really high clarity about what it is you want. And if you if one of those things that you want revolve around, hey, how do I plan for my asset protection? How do I plan for to protect myself from the lawsuits are going to be springing up, because I own assets, my personal name, and I, I know that that’s a risk and I just haven’t done it before. Now, if it’s your estate planning what happens to you if you’re in the hospital or something happens to you, making sure your family is going to be protected? Otherwise, the government just makes all the decisions your behalf where you need help with the loan programs for anything in between, right, like right now I got staff and we’re looking to help people, you know, and we’re not charging anybody right now to help them. We’re saying just go Get in here. Let’s get into meeting I’ll give you 15 minutes. Let’s figure out what’s going on with you. It’s something we can help you with. Great if it’s not, let me show you if we have somebody in our network that can, because right now, this is not the time where anybody’s business hard people, this is the time where it’s just like, No, no, we start having conversations when you start helping each other and figuring out ways to help each other because it’s the deep, deep help, where it’s like the true, truly helping people or as what I think is actually going to make businesses survive. And that’s what I keep communicating my staff every day is like we’re not in the law business right now. We’re not in the asset protection business right now. We’re in the helping people business. And we need conversations to figure out what you’re struggling with. So I know how to help people best. So if you can help us by contacting us and tell us what problems you’re dealing with. That helps us be able to figure out how we can help you and help other people like you more. So please reach out to us.
Mike Ayala 46:47
That’s amazing. Really appreciate your time, Scott. That was huge value. I look forward to sharing this episode with our listeners.
Mike Ayala 46:54
If you found value in this episode, and you know someone who’s wanting to start or move further along in their journey toward investing for freedom, I would be forever grateful if you would share this show with them and help me get this message out to more listeners. Also, if you enjoy what you’ve heard, I would appreciate it if you take 30 seconds and leave me a five star review and share this with your friends. And Until the next episode. Cheers to moving further along in your journey of investing for freedom.
