TME 14 | How To Quit Your W-2 And Never Look Back With Jamie Bateman Raise The Bar podcast

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TME 14 | How to Quit Your W-2 and Never Look Back with Jamie Bateman

2d ago 46:44

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Title: How to Quit Your W-2 and Never Look Back with Jamie Bateman

Summary:

In this episode of Raise the Bar Radio, Seth Bradley welcomes Jamie, a military veteran turned real estate and mortgage note investor, who shares his story of transitioning from a W-2 career into entrepreneurship and financial freedom. Jamie discusses the phases of his life, including collegiate sports, military service, and a long stint at the Department of Defense before pivoting to real estate and eventually mortgage note investing. He emphasizes how discipline shaped his journey and how shifting mindset, focusing on strengths, and leveraging his network were key to taking ownership of his life and finances. Jamie also dives deep into the mortgage note investing space, explaining how performing and non-performing notes work, the active nature of the business, and how he now offers passive investment opportunities for accredited investors. He closes by highlighting the importance of planning with intention, overcoming perfectionism, and using passive income to create margin and freedom in life.

Links to Watch and Subscribe:
https://youtu.be/nRyX8_YA9YI

Bullet Point Highlights:

Discipline builds freedom - Sports, military, and entrepreneurship all instilled the value of discipline, which Jamie says is critical for success and freedom.
W-2 life wasn’t the path - Jamie recognized through his commute and stagnant career trajectory that he didn’t want to follow the traditional path, sparking his exit plan.
Mindset shift was essential - He stopped consuming negative news and started focusing on education and his strengths to shift into entrepreneurship.
Mortgage note investing explained - Performing notes offer cash flow while non-performing notes offer the chance to add value, akin to fix and flips. However, both are active businesses, not passive.
Passive income fuels risk-taking - Creating passive income streams allowed Jamie to take entrepreneurial risks while maintaining financial security.
Action beats perfection - As an entrepreneur, chasing perfection isn’t practical. Done is better than perfect.
Reverse planning drives clarity - Backwards planning from a vivid vision 3-5 years into the future increases urgency and helps set clear, intentional actions.
Final advice - Start by investing passively to learn, and later you can decide whether to become active. Don't underestimate the transferable skills you already possess.

Transcript:

(Seth Bradley) (00:02.062)

What's up, builders? This is Raise the Bar Radio, where we talk about building wealth, raising capital, and all in all, raising the bar in your business and your life. This is the No BS podcast for capital raisers, investors, and entrepreneurs who are serious about scaling their business and living life on their own terms. I'm Seth Bradley, securities attorney, real estate investor, and entrepreneur, bringing you world-class strategies from the best in the game.

If you're ready to raise more capital, close bigger deals, build a better you and create true financial freedom, you're in the right place. Let's go. Jamie, what's going on, brother? Welcome to the show.

Thanks Seth, is awesome. 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 on that show and I think it turned out pretty good. I know we're going to deliver on this one as well.

Yeah, we're gonna try to try to I'll try to do as good a job as you did. So yeah, was that was a yeah, no, I that was a very, very good episode from adversity to abundance. highly recommend your your listeners check that one out to your episode on that show. So thanks for thanks for doing that.

(Seth Bradley) (01:20.086)

Absolutely, man. You're an incredible interviewer. I've net, that's the only, 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? Take it back as far as you'd like to brother.

Yeah. Man, I'd like to think that life has phases. So I've had a few different phases in my life. I come from a large family. I'm the oldest of seven kids and we always had a competitive background as far as team sports and things like that. So I played lacrosse in college. That was always a foundational piece of my life and just kind of

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 kind of a thread through my life and then got married and joined the military and actually joined the military technically before I got married, but seemed like I got married and then ran off and ran away from my wife. But it's not exactly what happened. But

(Jamie Bateman) (02:36.02)

I joined the military, was an officer in the US Army. I did miss my first three wedding anniversaries through deployment and things like that. 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 add value like I think we all want to do. I've obviously glossed over a lot of details, but those were a couple of inflection points, I guess, if you will, like you like to talk about, I know.

And so my military career transitioned into a career with the Department of Defense as a civilian, and did 14 years as a civilian with DoD at Fort Meade. And the first half, so the first seven, for all you math wizards out there, 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 real estate investing and mortgage note investing focus. So we can get into the details there. And then in 2022, I ended up quitting my job and now I have a few different small businesses that I run. And like you, Seth, I've got a lot of different things that I'm juggling and

You know, so, but yeah, I love talking about taking ownership of your financial situation and taking ownership of your life really. And I know that you and I have that in common. So yeah, that's a high level overview of my background.

Awesome, man. I appreciate that. There's a lot to unpack there. You know, going back to playing sports all the way up to the collegiate level, that's incredible. I always like to think even playing like popcorn or football back in the day, you need a way to instill discipline in yourself. And that's kind of the oldest memory I can think of where it was hard, right? Like it was like you've got a coach screaming at you.

(Seth Bradley) (04:38.134)

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 you had to earn that drink of water and all those sorts of things. But you you really learned what it's like 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 I would say that, you know, being in the military yourself, that takes it to a whole new level.

Right. It's like 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 being disciplined. And people, people shy away from that word, because it just sounds like work or no fun and no flexibility. But I found that having discipline in your life ends up adding more freedom in a sense, because you kind of have your foundational pieces set in stone, you don't have to think about those. And so, yeah, regarding

team sports, it's really a matter of, you know, everyone doing their part, right. And so there's a level of individual discipline and, and then just, and then also just kind of putting the putting the group ahead of yourself. Obviously, you know, you want individual, there's nothing wrong with individual accolades. And I was certainly chasing, you know, those individual accolades. It's not something I shied away from, I was definitely was wrapped up in

trying to be an All-American and that kind of thing. And did get that a couple of times, you know, but at the end of the day, nobody really cares about that. And the way I viewed it was if I was doing my part, and I got those, you 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. But yeah, that discipline is critical.

(Jamie Bateman) (06:36.73)

you know, even it's certain I played at a high level in college and there was year round your training your your your into it. It was a division three school but it but the reality was we worked just as hard as any any D one program and yeah, it's it's a these are skills that have paid off and are absolutely transferable to the rest of life.

For sure. Yeah, I think you've got to get those intangible things. You've got to develop them somewhere along the way, whatever that is, if that's sports or the military or from your parents. mean, you can get it from different places, but you definitely need it. I mean, we're in different stages of our life at this point. talking about a lot. We talk about freedom and flexibility and fun to try to get away from kind of the W-2 mindset.

But in order to achieve freedom, flexibility and fun in a successful way, have to be disciplined to be able to get there. You had to have done something successfully to be able to get there or maybe what separates you from the guy living in a van down by the river. That guy has freedom and flexibility. I don't know about fun, maybe fun, but it's a different, obviously it's a different outcome.

Yeah, and I, I think I still need, you I still use a lot of discipline today. It's still, still required, but it's, I guess it's self imposed. And, you know, I just love, love having that flexibility and that freedom that comes along with being an entrepreneur. So yeah, it's been a central piece to my success for sure. But 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. So yeah, absolutely. And as you said, 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 the lacrosse game, okay, you lost the lacrosse game, but military the stakes are a little higher. So maybe certain things are more important attention to detail or critic is critical and

(Jamie Bateman) (08:53.73)

But at the end of the day, it's, the same principles apply across both, I guess, sectors, if you will.

For sure. So let's dive into that transition. You started working kind of part-time there for seven years, so that seems like a transitional period. How were you able to progress from that W2? And what I've heard you say is call yourself a W2 quitter. I love that. 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 know a lot of people can identify with. So it just was Groundhog Day was the same thing over and over and over. And that's not me sitting here complaining about my family or having having the opportunity to work.

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 worked for the government and you look around and you say, who, okay, who's sort of ahead of me on this? Like you, like I think you probably mentioned on our, on your, your show and my, show, your episode, you look around to the people who are more kind of 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 it just just having that just super long term just you know, pot at the end of the rainbow, I guess, nothing driving me in the interim, 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

(Jamie Bateman) (10:54.934)

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 it just made a shift. And I, and I stopped watching cable news. I stopped, just, you know, stop 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 in my network that I can add value to and who can add value to me. So I started looking around and my father was a realtor for many years. My brother was a loan officer. We had one rental property at the time. I had worked at, 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 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. you know, 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.

know, bigger pockets and all the other real estate podcasts and different investing podcasts and started using that mental bandwidth instead of focusing on national media stories that I have zero influence over. Here's something that I can actually take action on. And so in mid 2015, I went part time and it just so happens that at

DoD is one of the few agencies in the in 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 well, I did. So that's what I did. And, and, you know, that's, again, decided to decide to start building my my other streams of income outside of my W two.

(Jamie Bateman) (13:15.752)

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 laddered approach, I guess, or tiered approach to kind of ripping off the bandaid.

Yeah, yeah, no, that's awesome. I love just the idea of taking ownership of your life, right? Like everybody has those moments where they're feeling sorry for themselves. But the successful people, they don't sit there and stay in that mindset. They move on. You're going to be there sometimes where you've got to get out of it. You got to say, OK, 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 you you're constantly blaming someone else or saying this happened to me rather than what can I do to get myself out of it, then you're going to be stuck there forever. You're going to be absolutely going to be spinning your wheels forever. 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. No, it's a waste of time. What control? What does that do for us? 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. I look at it like this is funny. Like I can, you know what I mean? You kind of analyze it like, this is funny. This guy's saying this in a debate. Right. This guy's saying that it's not taking it as a news and this is how I should live my life because of what they're saying.

sports almost.

(Jamie Bateman) (14:43.341)

Fact.

(Jamie Bateman) (14:48.078)

Absolutely. And it's not to say that none of these topics are important, mean, global war, politics, poverty, global warming, whatever, it's all very important, but I have zero control over it, almost zero, right? And then the other thing is fear sells and that's what they're selling. And so it doesn't mean that every story is invented and it's all fake news, but it's

it just doesn't serve me. And so I'd rather focus on, you know, go ground up and kind of just, I see it in people, maybe older people in my own life now who maybe are retired 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 you end up only focusing on

the negative really, and it just didn't serve me. yeah, during that lot, 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 BRRRR method that maybe some of your audience is familiar with. And so kind of putting that capital back into the rental property machine and expanding our portfolio. And then eventually last year, well, and

2018, made the pivot, I kept the rental properties, but made a pivot to also add on mortgage note investing. And that's been my primary focus as of late. And if you want, can tell the story quickly about how I actually quit my job in 2022. I think it's kind of a funny one.

Absolutely, let's do it.

(Jamie Bateman) (16:38.318)

All right. So, I, so I, two years ago, I was playing badminton and, I'd been doing now, mind you, I used to be like tough, you know, athlete. And like I did, you know, did jujitsu for three years right up before this. And, know, I used to lift weights a lot and still do it here and there, but, you know, I think I'm tough. Right. And,

ruptured my Achilles playing badminton. So that's an ego blow to add on to the physical pain that you know, especially with the recovery. So rupture my Achilles a little over two years ago today and I was out of work, it was my right right foot. And the reason I bring this up is not for sympathy, but 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, might've been at your, your big law job, but I was, I was checked out. mean, 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. was just a matter of, of when, not if.

That's right

(Jamie Bateman) (18:04.43)

I can tell you truthfully, I 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 podcast banned from something but yes, I'd been vaccinated to answer the question. But no one asked me how's your how's your recovery going? Like how you 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? 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 Air Force kid at my desk and long story short, they kind of moved 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 desk and, 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. My wife didn't know I quit, but I quit that day. Still worked for another month or two, but there was no question, zero question in my mind, I'm done with this place. So that was March of 2022. And ever since then, I've just focused on building out my businesses and having look back.

That's awesome. Sometimes you just know, right? Like sometimes it's done. You just knew. I love that story, man. For me, it was a little bit. You already know the story, but for me, it was a little bit more of someone else's decision. I got fired. mean, and you mentioned that, you you weren't the best employee at that point. Correct. 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.

(Seth Bradley) (20:21.292)

His output isn't what it should be. Like, he's got to go. mean, he's not the best employee. And as a business owner now, I have really good perspective of that and seeing that. And they were doing me a favor by being like, hey, your heart's not in it, it? And I'm like, no, it's not.

It's not. Yeah. The reality is for me, it's really hard to work. know, 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. But so, yeah, haven't looked back and just loved love the entrepreneurial

you know, day to day and freedom that you alluded to and just the multiple streams of income and certainly has its challenges. I probably work harder now than ever than I ever have. But it's by choice. So I love it.

Exactly. Same here, man. mean, it's, you my days are long. I mean, I get up way before I used to get up when I had a 95. I worked past when I would have worked a 95 and 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, it doesn't feel like you're putting that much time in.

Definitely. I wake up early. A lot of days not on purpose is because I'm just excited to get cracking.

(Seth Bradley) (21:55.886)

So, yeah. absolutely. Yeah. Well, let's kind of get into your current business. I know you mentioned that you focused on your strengths and your assets. Yeah. And, you know, I think it's important. just say it's important to take an inventory of what your strengths are when you're kind of considering going into something else, because a lot of our listeners are attorneys, they're doctors, folks like that. They kind of feel like maybe they're pigeonholed, right? Like, well, if I'm not an attorney, what the hell else can I do?

Right. And 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 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

to do. Definitely. And one thing I'd say is that, 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. You know, there's one quote about every man is my superior in something, right? So basically, it gives me a lot of comfort to know, like, just because an attorney listening to your show knows a

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 you know, that's, that's always comforting to me is to when I say look to your strengths, it's also looking to the people in your network who know, it can help you get to where you want to go. So yeah, I mean,

So many things we take for granted that we do know. 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 salary. 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.

(Jamie Bateman) (24:10.03)

trained in that in school typically, right? So, you know, you forget and so your your listener out there, the attorney, the doctor, guarantee they have a lot of life experience, not just from their professional world, but just life experience 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'll go back to life as seasons. I mean, you've shown that in your own story, Seth, like, you know, it's a, 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, it doesn't mean that's what I have to do for the rest of my life. So we always have options. 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, just make the most of it and just keep, think, keep learning constantly is critical. I just hired a business coach, we've had one call. But one of his mottos is, 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.

(Seth Bradley) (25:40.64)

the interruption, but we don't do ads. Instead, know that if you're raising capital for real estate, my law firm, RaiseLaw, is here to give you the expert legal guidance you need to raise capital compliantly and structure and close your deal. And if you're looking for a done-for-you fund-to-fund solution, Tribest is the industry's only all-in-one setup and fund administration solution. Visit Raise.Law and Tribest.com to learn more.

Yeah, I love that permanent beta. I haven't heard that before, but I like that. I like that phrase. like that phrase. So tell me about your current business. Tell me about MortgageNode Investing. Start with the basics. What is it?

Yeah, so and, and I'll try to keep it, 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, takes time to learn. We buy debt, so we buy a mortgage note, and that could be performing or non performing. The real high level version is, is a performing note is kind of like a long term buy and hold rental property.

but you're buying the debt and becoming the lender, becoming the bank, if you will. And so you're buying that performing note for cashflow. So I buy a performing note, the borrower now pays me through a loan servicer and I get monthly payments. So that's a great way to go. 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

principal balance goes down. So it's just, it's worth less than, you know, then, you know, then it would then it was when you bought it. Then on the other side, the non performing side of things, we buy those as well. And those are more like a fix and flip property. So 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,

(Jamie Bateman) (27:49.826)

I should say sell that asset, whether that's as a re performing note, or as through the the real estate itself, there are a few different ways you can exit a non performing note deal. And but, but back to your kind of one of the themes 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, I to start buying distressed, you know, multifamily debt, which I know you could probably help me understand better. But at that, you know, it's like, incremental progress and change isn't that scary. So I kind of expanded my, you know, toolbox, if you will.

and got into the mortgage note space. So we have a couple of note funds. One is open currently and they're all for accredited investors. the income fund that's open pays a monthly, aims to pay a monthly preferred return. I know you and a lot of your listeners are attorneys, so I gotta hold the line here. And...

So the fund is structured to pay, to aim to pay a monthly return of 8%. It's not a, there's no growth in that fund. It's literally a cashflow play and diversification play. You're putting your capital in. We buy assets across the country. We've bought notes in probably 25 states at this point. And so the investment is diversified across geographic areas, across borrower types.

And we buy for a certain yield, we take a small management fee, and then we ideally pay the preferred return that we're aiming for to our investors.

(Seth Bradley) (29:56.686)

Yeah, nice. 506c, you're able to talk about it. It's a credit investors only. Just want to that out there. yeah, I mean, so just going back to the basics a little bit and we'll get back into the fun. Like, how do you, how do you even find these things? mean, yeah, that's, 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 things that truthfully a passive investor who doesn't have time to develop the network to go find these assets, they're just not going to have success. They might here and there, but it takes time. It's a word of mouth industry, just like real estate itself is. so we've built out a network of sellers and that could be

quite honestly, I've never had luck buying directly from banks. It's really either a larger 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. 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, you know, where

they just, there's an opportunity to buy from them as well. And so there are other, you know, I guess we buy from hedge funds, note investors, other note funds. There are also note brokers as well out there. 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 paper stack and other exchanges as well.

And you can find assets there. But at the end of the day, have our 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 due diligence on the assets that they're selling. And so it's taken some work and it's a work in progress always. But it is the million dollar question is where do find these assets?

(Seth Bradley) (32:12.598)

Yeah. So that's the hard part, right? Finding these assets is the hard part. Have you ever had to foreclose on any of these notes and actually acquire the property? And I guess a follow-up question is, do you ever look at a non-performing note like, hey, I actually want to own that property?

So, great questions. Yeah, great questions. To be clear, we're not trying to kick people, you know, grandma out on onto the street or anything like that. You know, that's not our goal typically. Well, that's never our goal. But we're never trying to kick someone out of their home. But the reality is, some people honestly need a little bit of a kick in the pants. And oftentimes, that's not really the best them staying in the house is not often

the best scenario for them. know that might sound harsh, but at end of the day, if someone can't afford to live somewhere, sometimes these people are living in squalor and they really need a change of environment. To answer your question about do we target the property? Yes, sometimes we do. In fact, we just closed on to, they're called heckum loans or reverse mortgages, where the borrowers are deceased. The property is underwater, meaning, you know,

the loan amount is higher, than the property value. And it should be a quick exit through the property. So HUD will sell off these big pools 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 heirs or foreclosure and exit the property that way.

If your listener wants to go to my website, I've got a really good 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 I had no intention of exiting through the property or holding, holding the property as a rental property, but running the numbers, it just was too good to, to let go. so long story, but we, we

(Jamie Bateman) (34:22.51)

ended up doing a deed in lieu 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 portfolio.

Yeah, that makes sense. It makes sense. There's always multiple ways to look at an investment, right? But it does sound, you know, it's not something 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. as everybody knows, there's active investments, there's passive investments. If you're 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 get those returns. So if you want to go the passive side, if you're still full-time in your career, you're a full-time doctor or lawyer or whatever you are, 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 wear this specifically for your for this

There it is. There it is.

(Jamie Bateman) (35:29.272)

Passive income. You're absolutely right. You know, these gurus, some of the some of the note investing gurus out there will try to sell, you know, notes as passive. We have another blog post that talks about just the it's a spectrum, there's active and passive on either end. But at end of the day, if you're going to note 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

You're dealing with foreclosures, bankruptcies, deed and loo, tracking delinquent property taxes. Do I have to physically go anywhere? No, but it is not passive. But that's why we offer the passive investment for 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 are certain gurus out there that, know, whatever it is that they are pitching, they tend to always pitch it as passive, even though it is an active business, that's money. Whether that's a mortgage note or I mean, people will 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.

Mm-mm.

(Seth Bradley) (36:48.396)

You've still got to monitor all those things. 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 it is on a spectrum. Some things are more passive than others, but when you're investing in, you know, as a passive investor into some sort of a fund or syndication, that's really leaning really far into the passive side.

Absolutely, 100%. And I'm, as you are, Seth, I'm, I assume you are, I know you're an active investor, but 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 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. Yeah. And a lot of, you know, lot of the listeners are high income earning professionals. So they've already dedicated, put a lot of time and effort into being able to earn this much money from their W2. And 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 and like, let's grind for a few years. Let's not spend every single dollar that we make on all the new stuff 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 no fund where you're like, man, I kind of like this business. 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 you want to get into that as a business, as an entrepreneur. But a great way to kind of dip your toe in the water is to become a passive investor. That's the way that I did it in the,

(Seth Bradley) (38:53.186)

multifamily syndications. 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 really comes down to what your goals are and what your situation is, for sure. I'll say I was too passive initially when I went into notes, because personally, just don't... You were probably a little better student, Seth. Not that I was a bad student, I invest... Unless I'm actively investing, 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.

you're putting capital with them, but you're not going to once you're getting your checks and your disbursements, 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 maybe you already have that spark and then you invest passively. Then you're like, OK, well, now I'm invested. Like, let me learn about this. And you have to have to actively go out there and educate yourself and network and talk to people that are in the business.

Definitely, 100%.

(Seth Bradley) (40:01.71)

Alright man, before we jump into the Freedom Four, you have one last golden nugget for our listeners.

Oh, I would say within when it comes to investing, you know, take the long term view. Don't chase immediate returns. 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 a 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 form. What's the best thing you do to keep your mind and body healthy?

Yeah, I mean, one thing that I instituted this year, actually, is breathwork. And it's, you know, it's so it takes 10 minutes. 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. And it's like, it is phenomenal. So breathwork,

I mean, I do other things for sure. But that's certainly this year, it's been a game changer for me. I just feel like it resets my central nervous system. It just gets me focused. And I know there are other physiological benefits that you can ask Dr. Andrew Huberman or somebody else about.

(Seth Bradley) (41:26.153)

Cool. I'll have to look into that. actually have it. mean, obviously everybody talks about it's a hot topic. Yeah. I haven't gotten into it. I haven't gotten into that plus like the cold plunges and that sort of thing. Yeah. But I really want to want to

So 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 neurovirus. 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 doing this. And somebody on my team actually sent me a, I guess we'll call it an implement or a tool that

I use for the breath work. It's blue. There's a Bluetooth connection to your phone and it's pretty cool. So it's structured and back to that discipline, right? But yeah, so it's, there was a reason I started doing it and it's, it's so accessible in five to 10 minutes a day. You can start doing it. So I recommend. Cool.

Thanks for sharing that man. With all your success, what is one limiting belief that you've crushed along the way and how did you get past it?

I think just, you know, being afraid to, you know, that you have to be perfect, right? So 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, because it had to be perfect. And it's like, I think as I've progressed into more of the entrepreneurial lifestyle and

(Jamie Bateman) (43:02.35)

is just it's not a it's not an option anymore. So yeah, I think just taking action has kind of overcome that limiting belief of chasing perfection.

Yeah, I can agree with you there. Done not perfect. Yes. My background as an attorney, mean, we're paid to be perfect. We can't make mistakes, especially in contracts and the way that we write things. But when you make that transition over to being an entrepreneur, there's too much to do to be perfect. You just got to get it done. Good enough.

Absolutely. Good enough. You have to be willing to accept that for sure.

What's one actionable step our listeners can do right now to start creating more freedom?

I'll use the military here, which is where I learned kind of reverse backwards planning, reverse planning. literally just, and I'm not going to tell you I'm perfect at this, but, you know, think about what, create a vivid vision for your life in the next three to five years, pick it, 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

(Jamie Bateman) (44:20.876)

you can be that will that will increase the urgency, 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 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, House Passive Income made your life better.

Yeah, I mean, I think in multiple ways, but a big one that stands out is giving me, I guess we'll call it margin to take some more risks on the entrepreneurial side. And because I do have alternative sources of income, passive income, 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 go perfectly, or doesn't go well, it's not profitable, that's okay. I still have that cushion for me and my family. 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. Jamie, this has been incredible, dude. You've got so much great content to share in your brain, man. You got to get out there. know you've got an awesome podcast that I was on, Adversity to Abundance. Everybody should check that out. Other than that, Jamie, where else can people find out more about you? Yeah.

(Jamie Bateman) (45:54.924)

Just two things I'll mention very quickly. Literally got my book delivered today, like an hour before I hopped on here. It's 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. then labradorlending.com, L A 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.

(Seth Bradley) (46:26.978)

Thanks for tuning in to Raise the Bar Radio. If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs to hear it. Keep pushing, keep building, and keep raising the bar. Until next time, enjoy the journey.

Links from the Show and Guest Info and Links:

Seth Bradley’s Links:

https://x.com/sethbradleyesq

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://x.com/batemanjames

https://www.facebook.com/batemanjames

https://www.threads.com/@batemanjames11?xmt=AQF0nwaIL6JD_GK94lbTvHphHOmWwlUyt3TkeHLav-vXU_E

https://www.instagram.com/batemanjames11/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-bateman-5359a811/

https://labradorlending.com/about/

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/from-adversity-to-abundance/id1618672867

https://open.spotify.com/show/7JjGWsKVzzEI8UwXP9GONZ

https://www.youtube.com/@FromAdversity2AbundancePodcast

349 episodes

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