Thursday Jul 24, 2025
RTBL 03 | Why the W-2 Grind Will Never Make You Wealthy with Jamie Bateman
Title: Why the W-2 Grind Will Never Make You Wealthy with Jamie Bateman
Summary
In this engaging podcast episode, Jamie shares his journey from being a competitive athlete and military officer to becoming a successful entrepreneur in the field of real estate and mortgage note investing. He emphasizes the importance of discipline, teamwork, and taking ownership of one’s financial situation in achieving success. Jamie discusses his transition from a W2 job to entrepreneurship, highlighting how he leveraged his experiences and strengths to build multiple streams of income. He shares insights about his current business model centered around mortgage note investing, explaining the differences between performing and non-performing notes, and elucidates the challenges and opportunities present in this field. The discussion also emphasizes the importance of long-term planning and learning continuously, making the case that discipline ultimately leads to freedom and flexibility in life.
Links to Listen and Subscribe:
Links to Watch and Subscribe:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6nU0TtMAFc
Bullet Point Highlights:
- Athlete to Entrepreneur: Jamie shares how his background in competitive sports instilled a sense of discipline and teamwork.
- Financial Ownership: Jamie discusses the importance of taking ownership of your financial situation and actively seeking improvement.
- W2 Quitter: The transition from a stable government job to entrepreneurship reflects Jamie’s journey of self-discovery and ambition.
- Mortgage Note Investing: Jamie provides insights into both performing and non-performing notes, illustrating how to generate passive income through debt investing.
- Value of Networking: He emphasizes the necessity of building a strong network for finding investment opportunities in mortgage notes.
- Continuous Learning: Jamie advocates for lifelong learning, suggesting that successful people always seek new knowledge and skills.
- Long-Term Vision: He stresses the importance of setting long-term goals and reverse planning to maintain focus on achieving one’s aspirations.
Transcript:
Jamie what's going on brother welcome to the show thanks Seth this is this is awesome um I'm excited to be here and I'm hoping to add some value absolutely man third time's a charm we've been trying to get this scheduled after I was on your show which was fantastic had a really good time uh on that show and I think it turned out pretty good so I know we're gonna absolutely we're gonna deliver on this one as well yeah we're GNA try to try to I'll try to do as good a job as you did so yeah that was that
was uh yeah no I that was a very very good episode from adversity to abundance I would highly recommend your your listeners check that one out to your episode on that show so thanks for thanks for doing that absolutely man you're an incredible interviewer I've I've that's the only uh I've been on dozens of podcasts and you know you pulled out a lot of things for me that I've I've never talked about on the air so it's pretty pretty awesome pretty awesome show man appreciate that cool man well let's just jump right into your
background man what's your story um take it back as far as you'd like to brother yeah um man uh I'd like to think that life has phases so I've had a few different phases in in my life um you I come from a a large uh family I'm I'm the oldest of seven kids and we always had a competitive uh background as far as team sports and things like that so um I played lacrosse in college that was always a foundational piece of of uh my life and just kind of I think from there learned how to be a part of something
bigger than myself and how to work toward a common goal with a with a team so that's been something that's been a a kind of a thread through my life and then um got married and uh joined the military and um actually joined the military technically before I got married but seemed like I got married and then ran off and and uh ran away from my wife but it's not exactly what happened but uh joined the military was an officer in the in the US Army did I did miss my first three wedding anniversaries through deployment and
things like that um and again it was a matter of trying to be plugged into something you know to serve and be a part of something bigger than myself and trying to trying to add value like I think we all we all want to do um I've obviously glossed over a lot of lot of details but those were uh a couple of inflection points I guess if you will um like you like to talk about I know um and so my military career transitioned into uh a a career with the Department of Defense as a civilian and um did 14
years as a civilian with DOD at Fort me and the first half so the first seven for all you math whizzes out there uh was full-time and then the second half the second seven years was part-time and that seven years is when I was really building my businesses which are largely um real estate investing and mortgage node investing Focus so we can get into the details there and then in 2022 I ended up quitting my job and and um now I have a few different small businesses that I run and like you Seth I've got a got a
lot of different things that I'm juggling and uh you know so but yeah I love talking about taking ownership of of your financial situation and taking ownership of your your life really and um I know that you and I have that comment so yeah that's a that's a high level overview of my background awesome man I appreciate that that there's a lot to unpack there you know going back to you know playing sports all the way up to the Collegiate level that's incredible I always like to to think even playing like poporn or football
back in the day you need a way to instill discipline in yourself and I I that's kind of the the oldest memory I can think of where it was hard right like it was like you've got a coach screaming at you like back in the day it's like you know they wouldn't give you water unless you like you know for like an hour which I don't think they do that anymore now but you know you had to earn that drink of water and and all those sorts of things but you you really learned what it's like to to work hard and you really learned what discipline
was all about and I would say that and you can you can expand on this but yeah I would say that you know being in the military yourself that takes it to a whole new level right it's like you you you got that from Sports you got that from the military yeah definitely I mean obviously they're very different in a lot of ways but that is certainly a common theme is is being disciplined and um and people people shy away from that word um because it just sounds like work or or no fun and no flexibility but I found that having
discipline in your life ends up adding more freedom in a sense um because you kind of have your foundational pieces set in stone you don't have to think about those and so um yeah regarding team sports it's it's really a matter of um you know everyone doing their part right and so there's a level of individual discipline and um and then just and then also just kind of putting the putting the group ahead of yourself um obviously the you know you want individual there's nothing wrong with individual accolades and I I was
certainly uh chasing you know those individual accolades it's not something I shied away from I was you know I definitely was wrapped up in trying to be an All-American and um that kind of thing and and did get that a couple of times you know but it at the end of the day nobody really cares about that and um the way I viewed it was if I was doing my part and I got those you know if I was scoring goals in Lacrosse as an example that means I'm contributing to you know to the team right and so there's obviously a fine
line there but of going too far either way um but yeah that discipline is critical you know even C I played at a high level in college and and there was year round you're training you're you're uh you're into it it was a division three school but it but the reality was we worked just as hard as any any D1 program and um yeah it's it's a these are skills that have paid off and are absolutely transferable to the rest of of life for sure yeah I think you've got to get those those intangible things you've got to develop
them somewhere along the way whatever whatever that is if that's Sports the military or you know from your parents I mean you can get it from different places but you definitely need it I mean you know we're in different stages of our life at this point we're talking about a lot we like talk about freedom and flexibility and fun um to try to get away from kind of the W2 uh mindset but in order to achieve Freedom flexibility and fun in a successful way you had you have to be disciplined to be able to get
there you you had to have done something successfully to be able to get there or maybe what separates you from you know the guy living in a van down by the river right like that guy that guy has Freedom flexibility um I don't know about fun maybe fun but yeah but you know it's it's a different obviously it's a it's a different outcome yeah and I I I still I think I still need you know I still use a lot of discipline today it's still still required but it's I guess I guess it's self-imposed and um you know I just love
love having that flexibility and that freedom um that comes along with being an entrepreneur so yeah it's been a central piece to my success for sure um but I I I still I don't think it ever you know goes away I just get to pick and choose what you know what discipline I want to kind of enforce on myself I guess um so yeah absolutely and and and as you said I the military was a huge part of that for me as well I mean that's a different kind of different kind of discipline and different kind of teamwork and different you know if you
lose a lacrosse game okay you lost the lacrosse game but military the stakes are a little higher um so maybe certain things are more important attention to detail are crit is critical and um but at the end of the day it's yeah it's that the same principles apply across both I I guess sectors if you will for sure for sure so let's dive into that that transition you started working kind of part-time there for seven years so that seems like a transitional period how are you able to progress from you
know that W2 and what what I've heard you say is call yourself a W2 quitter and I love that um you know how were you able to progress from a W2 person to a W2 quitter what enabled you to do that and what that transition looked like I mean you know I do remember in 2015 probably a little bit maybe maybe say 2014 but I just you get you know I had a wife and two kids and I had the commute the long commute that I I know a lot of people can identify with so um it it just was Groundhog Day it was the same
thing over and over and over and that's not me sitting here complaining about my family or having a having the opportunity to work um but after a while it gets old let's just be real right so it's like you're sitting in traffic and I just you start looking at you know I was I worked for the government and you look around you say who okay who's sort of ahead of me on this like you like I I think you probably mentioned on our on your your show on my my show your episode um you look around to the people
who are more kind of Al further along the path than you you say do you want to be that person is that the life you want and man I did not want that and um it just just having that just super long-term just you know the pot at the end of the rainbow I guess uh nothing driving me in the in the interum man it was it was just it was brutal so I probably did a little woes me for a little bit there a little victim mentality for a bit but then you start to realize like okay if you don't take ownership of your own life no one's
going to right so no one's going to come in and do this for you so I'm not sure what truly you know created the change in my mindset but my mindset absolutely started to change and I just made a shift and I and I stopped watching cable news I stopped uh just you know stopped paying attention to all the things that I can't control and I couldn't control back then and and started saying no what do I have what are my strengths who is in my who's back to the team thing who's on my team who's you know who's in my
network that I can add value to and who can add value to me so I started looking around and um you know my father was a realtor for many years my brother was a loan officer I we had uh one rental property at the time and so and IID worked at a I didn't mention I worked at a title company and I worked for a mortgage broker before as well briefly so I had this experience that a lot of people don't have and that's you know that that doesn't mean I'm better than anyone it just means these are my strengths so let's point to that and
let's use that so I started really being intentional about focusing on my strengths and my assets that I had in my life right and then another asset that I used to see as a liability was the time in the car so I started listening to podcasts oh you know and and then it turned into wait I don't even want to go into work yet because this this podcast episode is amazing and I'm learning so much you know Bigger Pockets and all the other real estate podcasts and different investing podcasts and um started using
that mental bandwidth instead of focusing on National media stories that I have zero influence over uh here's something that I can actually take action on and so um in mid 2015 uh I I I went part-time and and just so happens that at uh DOD it's one of the few agencies in the in the federal government where you can go part-time and still keep your benefits so I still had health insurance for my family you know most people don't have that option necessarily but oh oh well I did so that's what I did and and um you
know that's uh again decided decided to start building my my other streams of income outside of my W2 um had my circumstances been different if I was single I probably would have just quit the whole thing right but I was able to have that kind of laded approach I guess or tiered approach to kind of ripping off the Band-Aid yeah yeah no that that that's awesome I love just the idea of of taking ownership of your your life right like everybody has those moments where they're feeling sorry fors um but but the successful people they
don't sit there and stay in that that mindset they they move on they you're going to be there sometimes but you've got to get out of and you got to say okay what what can I control what can I change and you don't say you don't give other people the power to control you and your mindset and how you feel about your life right like that's that's that's the thing like if if you if you're constantly blaming someone else or saying this happened to me rather what can I do to get myself out of it then you're going to be stuck there
forever you're you're going to be you're going to be spinning your wheels forever um and a lot of that I think helps because you said you don't listen you don't watch the news I don't either it's a waste of time what control what does that do for us it's if I do watch it I literally do it for entertainment and you look at it as an entertain I look at it like I'm watching sports almost absolutely I I look at it like this is funny like I can you know what I mean you kind of analyze like this is funny
this guyy saying this in a debate this guy's saying that it's not taking it as fact and news and this is how I should live my life because of what they're saying absolutely and it's not to say that none of these topics are you know important right I mean right Glo Global you know war or I mean politics poverty global warming whatever that's all very important but I have zero control over it almost zero right and then um you know the other thing is fear sells and that's that's what they're selling and so doesn't mean that every
story is invented and it's all fake fake news but it it just doesn't serve me and so I'd rather focus on you know go ground up and kind of uh you just I see it in people maybe older people in my own life now who maybe are retired and and they watch the news all day and it's like they won't travel because they saw a news story that the airports are packed or something and you know it's I'm sure that story was was accurate right but it but the but the news can filter out and and you end up only focusing on the negative really and
it just didn't serve me so yeah um during that La the second seven years I was able to build out my wife and I were doing single family real estate investing and doing a lot of the Burr method that maybe some of your your audience is familiar with uh um and so kind of putting that Capital back into the the rental property um machine and expanding our portfolio um and then eventually last year Well in in 2018 I made the pivot I kept the rental properties but made a pivot to also add on mortgage not
investing and that's been my primary focus as of late um and uh if you want I can tell the story quickly about how I actually quit my job in 2022 I I think it's kind of kind of a funny one absolutely let's do it all right so um I uh so two years ago uh I was playing bad mitton and um I'd been doing now mind you I used to be like tough you know athlete and like I did you know did Jiu-Jitsu for three years right up before this and you know used to lift Waits a lot and still do it here and there but you know I think I'm tough
right and uh ruptured my achilles playing bad mitton so that's an ego blow uh to add on to the physical pain that you know especially with the recovery so I ruptured my achilles a little over two years ago today and um I was out of work it was my right right foot and the reason I bring this up is not for sympathy but um to say you know I couldn't drive for three months so I actually yeah and I had tons of leave from from work and by this time I was tired really tired of my I was pretty much checked out like I think you you
might have been at your uh your big law uh job but um that's right I was I was checked out I mean I I wasn't the best employee at this point and so I took as much leave as I as I could you know reasonably right and so but couldn't drive and so I was out for three months and I come back so come back into work and I'd had discussions with my wife about about leaving it was just a matter of of when not if um I can tell you truthfully had no idea that I was going to quit this day but I came back in from
having been out for three months mind you no one gave me a call no one from work no one from my management gave me a call the entire three months I was out other than to say to ask me are you vaccinated because you have to be vaccinated to be to get inside the building now I don't want this to turn into some controversial vaccine discussion or get your your podcast banned from something but um yes I'd been vaccinated to to answer the question but no one asked me how's your how's your recovery going like how what
do you you know how's your life you know what's it's just are you vaccinated you need to get that shot before you come in okay great thanks I really feel welcome here so I'm already just you know you know what screw this place right um come back in and just go to my desk and this is this is an office space kind of thing where I go to my desk and there's some there's an a force kid at my desk and long story short they' kind of move me somewhere else without telling me I can't find my desk I finally find it
it's got a box with my name on it with you know monitors sideways and all and clearly not a functioning uh desk and um you know office space so I literally quit that day and I just say that it's just like I knew 100% I was done I my wife didn't know I was I quit but I I quit that day still worked for another month or two but I I was there was no question zero question in my mind I'm done with this place so uh that was March of 2022 and ever since then I've just focused on building out my businesses and having
looked back that's awesome sometimes you just know right like sometimes it's time you just knew I I love that story man for me it was a little bit you already know the story but you know for me it was a little bit more of someone else's decision I got fired I mean and men that you know you you weren't the best employee at that point correct you know I knew the same thing and it's great to have awareness and perspective and kind of looking back now you're like I would have done the same thing like this guy
doesn't want to be here his output isn't what it should be like nope he's got he's got to go I mean he's not he's not the best employee and and as a you know as a business owner now I can you know I have really good perspective of that and and seeing that and they did they were doing me a favor by being like hey like your heart's not in it is it and I'm like no it's not it's not yeah yeah the reality is for me it's really hard to work you know when once you go part-time I mean I knew I was casting a vote
against my career progression there so as soon as I went part-time in 2015 I wasn't saying I'm in this for the Long Haul guys this is this is my focus you know it's the writing's somewhat on the wall looking back it's almost surprising I lasted as long as I did um but so yeah uh haven't looked back and just love love the entrepreneurial you know day-to-day and freedom that you alluded to and and just the multiple streams of income and certainly has its challenges I I probably work harder now than ever
than I ever have um but it's by choice right so I love it exactly same here man I mean it's you know my my days are long I mean I I get up way before I used to get up when I when I had a 95 I worked past when I would have worked a 9 to-5 and it definitely more hours but when you're doing it for yourself and you're doing it because you're working towards something that you believe in yeah it doesn't feel like it's you're putting that much time in definitely I I wake up early a lot of days it's not not on
purpose it's because I'm just excited to get Kracken so yeah yeah absolutely yeah well let's let's kind of get into your current business I know you you had mentioned that you focused on your strengths and your assets um and you know I think it's important I'll just I'll just say it's important to take an inventory of what your strengths are when you're kind of considering going into something else um because a lot of our listeners are attorneys they're doctors folks like that they kind of feel like maybe they're they're pigeon
hold right like well if I'm not an attorney what the hell else can I do right like I don't know anything about real estate investing or node investing or starting a business or anything like that but if you really take a step back you you probably have a lot of skills that you've learned and honed in your career that you can use for something else moving forward and that was that's what you were able to do definitely and one thing I'd say is that um you know one thing that's always comforting for
me is nobody knows everything right so you can always find somebody who knows more than you in a certain area um you know there's one quote about every man is my Superior in in in something right so um basically it gets me a lot of comfort to know like just because an attorney listening to your show knows way more than I do about a particular topic and probably many many other topics that doesn't mean I'm less of a person or you know I don't know more than that attorney does in another area so it's
okay I'm never going to know everything there are other people who've already figured it out so um you know that's that's always comforting to me is and when I say look to your strength it's also looking to the people in your network who know and can help you get to where you want to go um so yeah I mean so many things we take for granted that we do know and um you know example when I started working at a title company fresh out of college because it was my first real job and it paid you know a a
salary um I realized quickly how little I knew about title insurance settlements you know just just basic stuff now looking back pretty basic stuff but you don't know that unless you work for a title company or you're heavily involved in this you don't you're not trained in that in school typically right so you know you forget and so your your listener out there the the attorney the doctor I guarantee they have a lot of life experience not just from their professional world but just life experience that that they shouldn't take
for granted and the fact that you can go through law school and then be you know Be an Effective attorney or go through medical school and Be an Effective doctor that that means you you can learn things right and so again I go back to life has Seasons I mean you've shown that in your own story Seth like you know um it's uh it doesn't mean just because I started a certain business doesn't mean that's going to be what I'm going to be doing for the next 20 years or just because I'm an attorney now
doesn't mean that's what I have to do for the rest of my life so we always have options I mean you might look back and wish you'd done something differently or something but you only have one chance at this and so you know you just make the most of it and and just keep I think keep learning constantly um is critical I I just hired a business coach we've had one call um but one of his motos is um you know one of his sayings is that he's always he's in permanent beta so he's always changing always improving he's always
growing so I'm trying to trying to implement that as well yeah I love that permanent beta I haven't heard that before but I like that I like that phrase like that phrase um so tell me about your current business tell me about mortgage node investing start with the basics um sure what is it yeah so and and I'll try to keep it uh there's so much to it but again none of it is difficult it's just a lot of moving parts and you've got to you know it takes time to learn um we buy debt so we buy a mortgage note
and that could be performing or non-performing the the real highlevel version is is um a performing note is kind of like a a long-term Buy and Hold rental property but you're buying the debt and becoming the lender becoming the bank if you will um and so you're buying that performing note for cash flow so I buy a performing note the barer now pays me through a loan servicer and I get monthly payments so that's a great way to go the the problem with that is you can't really add value to that asset very well you're kind of
it is what it is and in fact with mortgage notes the value actually goes down over time generally speaking because the principal balance goes down so it's just it's worth less than you know than uh you know than it would than it was when you bought it then on the other side the non-performing side of things we buy those uh as well and those are more like a Fix and Flip property so um although we're still buying the debt we're not buying the property but there's a chance to add value There's an opportunity to buy distressed asset and
add value to that asset and then sell that that non-performing note either well I should say sell that asset whether that's as a rep performing note or as uh through the the real estate itself there there are a few different ways you can exit a non-performing uh note deal and but but back to your kind of one of the the themes um thus far one of the reasons I got into specifically that space was that I understood the real estate space so I understood the single family residential real estate space so it wasn't a huge
leap for me to go from owning the property to now owning the debt on that property whereas it would have been a lot bigger leap for me to say oh I want to start buying distressed you know multif family debt um which I know you could probably help me understand better but that you know it's like incremental progress and and and change isn't that scary so I kind of expanded my um you know toolbox if you will and got into the mortgage note space so we have a couple of note funds one is open um currently and they're they're they're
all for accredited investors um and uh the the income fund that's open pays a monthly uh aims to pay a a monthly uh per referred return I know you and a lot of your listeners are attorneys so I got to hold the line here and uh so the fund is structured to pay uh to aim to pay a a monthly return uh of 8% it's not a there's no growth in that fund it's literally a cash flow play and um diversification play you're putting your your capital in we buy assets across the country we we've bought notes in in probably 25 States at this point
um and so the investment is Diversified across Geographic areas across borrower types and um you know we buy for a certain yield we take a small management fee and then we um ideally uh pay a pay the preferred return that we're aiming for to our to our investors yeah nice 506c you're able to talk about it it's uh ACC credit investors only just want to throw that out there um so yeah I mean so just going back to the basics a little bit and we'll get back into the fund like how do you how do you even
find these things I mean how do you get started how do you find these things so I mean that is an ongoing challenge I'm not going to lie to you that's one of the the things that truthfully a a passive investor who doesn't have time to to develop the network to go find these assets they're just not going to have success um you know they might here and there but it takes time it's a it's a word of mouth industry just like real estate itself is and um so we've built out a network of of Sellers and you know that could
be quite honestly I I've never had luck buying directly from Banks it's really either a larger uh mortgage note fund that's closing so it might be a three-year fund and then they've got to they've got to liquidate they've got to figure out how to sell off what to do with these assets um and so that's a great opportunity to buy is just a fund that's closing or somebody a note investor who's getting out of note investing or they've had a life change or something um you know where they just uh there's an opportunity to buy from
them as well um and so there there are other you know I guess we buy from hedge funds note investors other note funds um those are there are also note Brokers as well out there um there are also some online exchanges like paper stack and a couple of others that you can go and I've bought and sold on on paper stack and other exchanges as well um and you know you can you can find assets there um but at the end of the day we have our list that we list of people that we work with regularly and I would say one thing
is that doing due diligence on a note seller is just as important as uh due diligence on the assets that they're selling and so it's it's taken some work and it's it's a work in progress always um but it is the million-dollar question is where do you where do you find these assets yeah so that's that's the hard part right that finding these assets is the hard part um have you ever had to foreclose on on any of these notes and actually acquire the property and I guess a followup question is do you ever
look at a non-performing note like hey I actually want to own that property great questions yeah great questions um to be clear we're not trying to kick people you know Grandma out on onto the street or anything like that um you know that's not our our goal typically well that's never our goal but we're never trying to kick someone out of their home um but the reality is some people honestly need a little bit of a kick in the pants and often times that's not really the best them staying in the house is not often
The best scenario for them I know that might sound sound harsh but at the end of the day if someone can't afford to live somewhere sometimes these people are living in squal and they really need a change of of environment um to answer your question about do we target the property yes sometimes we do in fact we just closed on two they're called uh heckum loans or reverse mortgages where the borrowers are deceased the property is underwater meaning you know the the loan amount is high greater than the
property value and it should be a quick exit through the property so HUD will sell off these uh big pool of of reverse mortgages and we were able to purchase two of them very recently it's a vacant property you're not doing an eviction borrower is deceased you've got to work through the airs or or foreclosure um and get and exit the property that way um if your listener wants to go to my website I've got a really good um it's a Jacksonville blog post I've got a couple of blog posts about this deal I still hold this rental
today and it was a non-performing note that we purchased a few years ago and um I had no intention of exiting through the property or holding holding the the property as a rental property but uh running the numbers it just was too good to to let go and so long story but we we uh you know ended up doing a deed in Lee of foreclosure actually in this case and got the property back and now it's a long-term Buy and Hold property for my own rental uh portfolio yeah that makes sense that makes sense there's there's always
multiple ways to look at an investment right um but it does sound you know is not something that that I've executed on myself but it sounds like this is an active business right and that's why you've put together an income fund for people that want to get involved passively um because as as everybody knows there's active Investments there's passive Investments if you're going to do something active maybe your returns are going to be a little bit better but you're going to give up a lot of time and effort to to get those returns
um so if you want to go to the passive side if you if you're still full-time in your career you're you're a full-time doctor or lawyer or or whatever you are you know these passive Investments are the way to go without having to know every single detail about a new business yeah and I don't know if you can see this but I I wore this specifically for your for this show there it is there it is passive income um you're absolutely right you know these gurus some of the some of the node investing gurus out
there will try to sell you know notes as passive um we have another blog post that talks about uh just the it's a spectrum there's active and passive on either end but at the end of the day if you're gonna node investing in my world is very very active and we have a non-performing note fund that's considerably more active than the Performing note fund so um you're dealing with foreclosures bankruptcies deed and L tracking delinquent property taxes do I have to physically go anywhere no but it is not passive um but
that's why we offer the passive investment to for you know people who like you said have maybe more Capital than time or energy and they want to put that Capital to work that's right there there are certain gurus out there that you know whatever it is that they are pitching it's they they tend to always pitch it as as passive even though it is an active business whether that's ma money yeah whether that's a mortgage note or I mean people pitch Airbnb short-term rentals as passive they're like well you can delegate this and you
can you know you can automate that and there's software for all these things but you still got to put all that stuff together you've still got to monitor all those things you you've still got to you still got to oversee all these different aspects of a business and that's what it is it's a business that you're running and it's not passive like it's not it's not and and it is on a spectrum some things are more passive than others but when you're inves in you know as a passive investor into some sort of a
fund or a syndication that's really leaning really far into the the passive side absolutely 100% and I and I'm as you are Seth I'm I'm I'm I I assume you are I know you're an active investor but I I do have passive Investments myself in other other funds other note funds and and my own my own note funds as well and so nothing wrong with doing both but I would say you need to be careful about you know you got to make a decision at some point do you want to scale this thing and and make this really a
business or do you do you are you satisfied with potentially a little bit lower return and you are giving up some control but much you know much fewer headaches and just a lot less work right right yeah and a lot of you know a lot of the listeners are high income earning professionals so they've already dedic put a lot of time and effort into being able ble to earn this much money from their W2 and absolutely that's probably your best bet to be honest with you I've been there I was in those shoes you're
probably better off putting your head down like let's grind for a few years let's let's not spend every single dollar that we make on all the new stuff on a on a new car every two years or every year in a bigger house that you don't need like let's set aside some of that and invest it passively and then maybe one of those will stick maybe one of those passive investments will be a mortgage note fund where you're like man I kind like this business like I like the sound of it I've learned about it
and then you start maybe progressing on the active side and maybe that takes over and and you want to get into that as a as a business as an entrepreneur but um a great way to kind of dip your toe in the water is to become a passive investor um that's the way that I did it into you know multif family syndications I invested passively in a number of deals first and kind of learned about it learned the ropes and I'm like I can do this and then that's when I made the transition yeah definitely it's it
really comes down to what you what your goals are and what your situation is for sure I I'll say I was too passive initially when I went into notes um because personally I just don't you're you're you were probably a little better student Seth not that I was a bad student but you know I I invest unless I'm actively in investing you know I'm just not going to learn a lot so the reality is yeah it's fine to learn about the asset class you definitely should learn about the operator for sure if you're putting Capital with them but
you're not going to once you're getting your checks and your dispersements you're not going to probably learn a whole lot about how to do that on the active side and so that's what we're here for yeah yeah it's more of like a spark of an interest right like may you already have that spark and then you invest passively then you're like okay well now I'm invested like let me learn about this you have to you have to actively go out there and educate yourself and network and talk to people that are in the business definitely 100
per. all right man before we jump into the Freedom Four you have one last gold nugget for our listeners oh man um I would say within when it comes to investing um you know take the long-term view um don't chase immediate returns um you know I do think just yeah it's certainly we all want to make a million dollars tomorrow but I think it's it's play the long game when it comes to investing I think that's critical love that man all right let's jump into the Freedom Four what's the best thing you do to keep your mind body
healthy yeah I mean one thing that I instituted this year actually um is breath work and it's um you know it's so it takes 10 minutes um and per day for me at least and it's been phenomenal and it's something that quite honestly as a as a you know athlete back in the day or even in the military I would have scoffed at something like this to be honest with you because it's just you know it's not manly or whatever it's like it is phenomenal so uh breath work I mean I do other things for sure but that's certainly this year it's been a
game Cher for me I just feel like it resets my central nervous system and it just gets me focused and uh I know there are other physiological benefits that you can ask uh Dr Andrew huberman or somebody else about cool I have to look into that actually have I mean obviously everybody talks about it's a Hot Topic I haven't gotten into it I haven't gotten into that plus like the cold plunges and that sort of thing um but I really want to explore that a little bit I don't know how much you can cut this out if we
don't have time but I had a I'm just going to be be open about this I just had a you know in late December I got a viral infection like a neuro virus and then I had I had a what I think was a pretty severe panic attack and it was super scary and so that's why I started uh doing this and somebody on my team actually sent me a a I guess we'll call it an implement or a tool that uh I use for the breath work it's BL there's a Bluetooth connection to your phone and it's pretty cool so it's structured and
back to that discipline right but um yeah so it's there was a reason I started doing it and um it's it's so accessible five to 10 minutes a day you can start doing it so yeah very cool highly recommend cool thanks for sharing that man um with all your success what is one limiting belief that you've crushed along the way and how did you get past it um I think just uh you know being afraid to you know that you have to be perfect right so um I used to be an editor back in the day and so many things would just not get done
or not get completed within our team our organization um because it had to be perfect and and it's like I think as I've progressed into more of the entrepreneurial lifestyle and and uh it's just it's not a it's not an option anymore um so um yeah I think just taking action has kind of overcome that limiting belief of of of chasing Perfection yeah yeah I can I can I can agree with you there done not perfect um as you know my background as an attorney I mean we're we're paid to be perfect like we can't make mistakes especially
in contracts and the way that we write things but when you kind of make that transition over to being an entrepreneur there's too much there's too much to to be to be perfect you got you just got to get it done good enough absolutely good enough has to you have to be open um willing to accept that for sure y what's one actionable step our listeners can do right now to start creating more freedom so I'll use the military here you can um which is where I learned U kind of reverse backwards planning reverse
planning so literally just and I'm not going to tell you I'm perfect at this um but you know think about what create a vivid vision for your life in in the next three to five years pick a pick three years out from today and what do you want your life to look like and then backwards plan and now I'm not saying you need to plan every minute of every day but you can be that will that will increase the urgency uh sense of urgency in your life and the intentionality of every every hour and every day because you realize this is
doable but I got to take ownership of of my current situation if I want this to be the reality in three years so I would say create a vivid vision and and kind of reverse or backwards plan to get there perfect perfect last but not least how has passive income made your life better yeah I mean I think in multiple ways but a big one that stands out is is giving me I guess we'll call it margin um to take some more risks on the entrepreneurial side and because I do have alternative sources of income
passive income um it's allowed me that kind of mental and financial bandwidth or margin to maybe invest in a company that even if it doesn't per go perfectly it doesn't go well it's not profitable that's okay I still have that cushion um for for me and my family so that's yeah it's a huge it's been a huge factor in that regard yeah absolutely Game Changer man it just changes your mindset changes your life in so many ways uh Jamie this has been incredible dude you've got so much great content to to share in your
brain man you got to get it out there um I know you've got an awesome podcast that I was on adversity to abundance everybody should check that out um other than that Jamie where else can people find out more about you yeah just two things I'll mention very quickly uh literally got my book delivered today like an hour before I hopped on here it's uh from adversity to abundance it is based on the podcast so I encourage your listener to check that out from adversity to abundance is the book that's out and then Labrador
lending.com l b r a d o r.com is where you can check us out all right man awesome I'll drop all that in the show notes thanks again for coming on brother thanks for having me Seth this has been great
Links from the Show and Guest Info and Links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6nU0TtMAFc
https://www.instagram.com/p/C2sKtrAPX50/
Seth Bradley’s Links:
https://www.youtube.com/@sethbradleyesq
www.facebook.com/sethbradleyesq
https://www.threads.com/@sethbradleyesq
https://www.instagram.com/sethbradleyesq/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sethbradleyesq/
https://passiveincomeattorney.com/seth-bradley/
https://www.biggerpockets.com/users/sethbradleyesq
https://medium.com/@sethbradleyesq
https://www.tiktok.com/@sethbradleyesq?lang=en
Jamie Bateman’s Links:
https://www.facebook.com/batemanjames
https://www.threads.com/@batemanjames11?
https://www.instagram.com/batemanjames11/
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