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Tactical Wealth is the podcast built to empower the military and veteran community to take control of their financial future.
From navigating the military to civilian life transition, to launching businesses, growing your income, and building long-term wealth, each episode brings you real stories and actionable insights from those whoโve gone from boots on the ground to building lasting wealth.
Hosted by Kaj Larsen, former Navy SEAL, award-winning journalist, and mission-driven entrepreneur. Kaj successfully co-founded a financial technology company and sold the company in 2024. The podcast features hard truth conversations with successful veteran entrepreneurs, CEOs, and top financial experts.
Whether you're still in uniform or already charting your next chapter, this podcast gives you the tactical tools to lead with impact in your finances and beyond. Letโs get tactical.
Tactical Wealth is a Gebbia Media production, brought to you by Siebert.Valor, a military-focused initiative from Siebert Financial. The Tactical Wealth podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. The views expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Siebert Financial. This podcast does not constitute investment advice, an offer to sell, or a solicitation to buy any securities. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Listeners should consult a qualified financial professional before making any investment decisions.
For more information and disclosures, please visit siebert.com/disclosures.
00;00;04;11 - 00;00;20;23
Unknown
Stay quiet. Be humble. Learn how to research. I also figured out that the world is a lot bigger than where you live. You can do what it is you want, when you want. If you get away from the status quo way of thinking, I would have a kid moment in my head because I'm still an adult kid and I'd be like, I cannot believe I'm here.
00;00;20;24 - 00;00;48;20
Unknown
Nothing can ever budge me from any fear, or I'm nervous about this. I don't get nervous. There's nothing to be nervous about. I got that a lot of that in the military. I would tell them those two things, leverage it as much as you can and don't chase money.
00;00;48;22 - 00;01;10;23
Unknown
Some people wait for others. Fight for it. Welcome to Tactical Wealth. The show were disciplined service and real world experience become pathways to financial power. I'm your host, Kaj Larsen. On each episode, we bring you the stories and the wisdom of those who have gone from boots on the ground to successful careers, from military to wealth and how they've done it.
00;01;10;23 - 00;01;21;04
Unknown
So you can apply those insights to your own mission and your own life. This is tactical wealth, from military to money.
00;01;21;06 - 00;01;43;18
Unknown
Welcome back to another episode of Tactical Wealth. I'm your host Kaj Larson, and this is the show where we translate your ribbon rack into dollars in the bank, where we talk about how you go from wearing the uniform to being successful in the private sector. And today, I am super excited to have an awesome guest. Maurice Philogene, is that right?
00;01;43;20 - 00;02;06;24
Unknown
Maurice Philogene is with us today. He is a former lieutenant colonel in the Air Force. And for those of you who don't know, that's that's pretty high up there in the hierarchy. And then he was actually a military special police officer, a civilian police officer. And then more importantly, he is a multifaceted entrepreneur. He is also a podcast host.
00;02;06;24 - 00;02;28;21
Unknown
He has his own podcast called Try Life, on which I'm super excited to dig into. And we were talking before the show. I think the thing that I'm most excited about, Maurice, is that you and I have been speaking about how to design your life around the most precious commodity that we have, our most important resource, which is time, time, time.
00;02;28;21 - 00;02;48;03
Unknown
So, Maurice, welcome to time to the wealth. Finally, after all this time, we've been trying to connect. Yeah. This is this is awesome. So tell me, like, where it all started. Where? Where are you from? And how did you come to military service? Yeah. Okay. So I like to go from the back. Okay. I'm 50. I just turned 50.
00;02;48;06 - 00;03;13;22
Unknown
I'm out of the W2 world now. I worked 25 years in consulting, IT consulting, although a lot of it was like DoD type stuff. And 25 years IT consulting, 22 in the military as a lieutenant colonel and special agent. So actually in the Air Force, it's like your NCIS. I was OSI in the force. Got it. And then somehow when I turned 33, I became a police officer and did it all at the same time.
00;03;13;22 - 00;03;36;22
Unknown
It's a long story, but my military career started because I needed money for school. That's like many of us, right? So my I had a very tight knit family, but we just didn't have a lot coming from Haiti. My mom pushed me to get a accepted to the Naval Academy, which I did, but I turned it down in favor of going to University of Virginia doing ROTC and playing football.
00;03;36;23 - 00;03;42;05
Unknown
This already proves that you're smarter than me.
00;03;42;07 - 00;04;05;27
Unknown
Right off the top, determined that you may have a better life decision making process than I did know. So UVA playing football, UVA playing football. And then when I graduated nationwide, there was too many officers coming out. They gave you options on how to deal with your military career. I took a very unique option. And then all that along the side of all that when I turned 21.
00;04;05;29 - 00;04;32;05
Unknown
It's a long story, but I figured out I really need to focus on financial freedom. So I've been investing in real estate since 21. And there's the story of chasing financial freedom in favor of having more time for myself in life. Yeah, that's that's fascinating because like, in contrast, again, you're obviously we're thinking about this at an earlier stage, like when I first, you know, when I went to the academy and I graduated, I went through Seal training.
00;04;32;05 - 00;04;53;29
Unknown
I was really like sort of lightning focused on being a gunslinger. And in hindsight, I wish I had taken 5% of my cognitive capacity and thought and did what you did, which was think about the future. What was it in you that even when you were in uniform, had you thinking sort of entrepreneurial and about building wealth? Two things.
00;04;53;29 - 00;05;14;13
Unknown
One, my dad sent me on a trip to France when I was 15 for 30 days to stay with the family of an exchange student who had stayed with me the previous year. So think inner city knucklehead kid from Boston. So my family moved to Boston from New York. I didn't know what the world was. All I knew was UMT raps and running down Blue Hill Avenue in Boston.
00;05;14;13 - 00;05;33;15
Unknown
That's all I knew. But I go out to France and we drove around the country for 30 days. French funerals, French wine, French weed, French, French, everything. Like it was just all of it. Like I was exposed to all this beautiful life in. What I figured out was that life was about emotions because I was having emotions I never knew at age 15.
00;05;33;18 - 00;06;02;14
Unknown
Fast forward to 21. I found the book Personal Finance for dummies. Remember that? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, sure. And it had a passage on passive income. Just one passage. So then I looked it up at another book and then I something clicked and what clicked for me was, if I can generate streams of income which don't require time for me to be somewhere, then I can always go back to those types of experiences around the world and just live my life that way.
00;06;02;14 - 00;06;25;19
Unknown
And I pick that up in my very early 20s and a hundred countries 400 times later. But it wasn't just money, it was I wanted experience. So, okay, so I wanted the money for alleviating my time. I wanted the special agent stuff for doing some cool stuff like Jason Bourne or James Bond and but I also wanted to work in typical work world because I wanted those experiences to.
00;06;25;20 - 00;06;52;22
Unknown
What I got right was just meshing it all, but understanding we need those cash flows later in life as well. So we could be here today. Yeah. And like, let's be honest, 99% of people are stuck in this trade your time for money paradigm, right. And so early on you had had this like 15 year old Francophile experience where you were trying to look for some kind of like a scape hatch of that wage versus time conundrum.
00;06;52;23 - 00;07;14;21
Unknown
Yes. And it wasn't so much escape hatch as much as, oh, we were all fed a story in formal schooling, I always say so. Grade school. Excuse me. Go back to kindergarten. We were very creative. Throwing paint, eating glue, all the things. Grade school compliance starts to set in. And, Johnny, take this home to your mom. Have her sign it.
00;07;14;22 - 00;07;32;10
Unknown
Susie, sit down in the back room. Stop talking. You get to high school and now we're competing with each other. I got to be casual to go to the AP class, or to get to Harvard or the Naval Academy. And the people go on a community college. They're less than because, like, we've been fed this story and I get into corporate world.
00;07;32;11 - 00;07;53;20
Unknown
And it was I felt the exact same thing coming of like, oh, I'm going to be an analyst, a consultant, a manager. I got to beat this person. I'm like, I don't like what this is telling me at all. And now I know it. To be conscious creation the way that I design my life. But back then I was doing what most people don't, which is follow that inner voice and that instinct.
00;07;53;21 - 00;08;17;02
Unknown
My instinct was telling me to live very different. So I just created all these different dynamics of my life, including being a police officer or started to buy mobile home parks and stuff. I just never told anybody. So, well, my first show, on the surface it looked like you're pursuing a semi conventional path. You're in the military for 22 years, you get a retirement, you retired out of the service.
00;08;17;04 - 00;08;43;27
Unknown
I retired, yeah, 1920. So you're getting like a retirement stipend out of the service as well. And 050 tenant colonel stipend. So you have a you have a decent base, very good base, which is interesting because that also helps alleviate your time in order to pursue other. Yeah, because a lot of entrepreneurs burn the boats. I didn't I think it's fine to burn the boats, especially if that's what you're passionate about, and tease that out for people so they understand.
00;08;44;00 - 00;09;05;16
Unknown
So what I mean by that is people will quit their regular job with their W-2 in favor of, I got to go all in on this thing. I think that's one path, but my path was to leverage the 9 to 5 more than it leveraged me to take those two very steady paychecks that came every month. That was a fair trade for my time, but one being your retirement and two being your police officer job.
00;09;05;17 - 00;09;21;21
Unknown
Those are the I had six checks coming in at 1.2 a month from consulting, two a month from the military to a month from the police department. But I stored that money, and as soon as I had enough to buy an asset, which was typically real estate, I just bought it. Yeah, I just knew to do it. Yeah.
00;09;21;22 - 00;09;41;25
Unknown
So the idea here, which I think is, is really important, is there's this sort of Horatio Alger like mythology and startup land that you have to burn the boats, you have to go all in, and your startup is the only thing you do. But the reality is that most startups these days are built 5 to 9 when people have their 9 to 5.
00;09;41;28 - 00;10;06;02
Unknown
Absolutely. And part of the reason is because it helps you. One is your people are more disciplined and have to execute in a different way. But I think the other thing that happens is even from a very tactical, practical level, right? You don't have to pay that salary to yourself out of your new venture. You don't. So you don't burn as much cash in your new venture.
00;10;06;03 - 00;10;30;06
Unknown
You can still lose. Like when. Oh eight came, half my tenants stopped paying. I think I own like 20 places by that time. And I was like, oh my God, what is happening? So I had to buckle down and do overtime at work to make it make it all stick together. But yeah, I think that staying at your corporate job, or whatever job you have is can be a very big benefit, not just for the paycheck either.
00;10;30;07 - 00;10;53;27
Unknown
You can imagine the corporate skills that I picked up and how I applied it to my life, whether talking to CEOs or building consensus or workflows and business process improvement and all that type of stuff. So it's very beneficial. Talk me through your first investment. So you're you're still in the service. You're you're doing the Air Force equivalent of NCIS, which in itself is a time consuming job.
00;10;53;28 - 00;11;13;15
Unknown
Right? That's a very complicated job. Sometimes requires you to go undercover like you're interviewing people. You're learning interrogation skills, right? So you're doing that. You're dedicated. You're obviously successful, right? Because you rose up like you made it to zero five in the service. So you're good at your job there. But then talk to me about what the parallel processing that's going on.
00;11;13;16 - 00;11;38;13
Unknown
What's that first investment you make? I bought a house to live in 2002. To live? Just buying a house, a condo. It was 135. And sometimes you got to get lucky. But be prepared for when the luck comes. It was the beginning of the real estate boom in the 2000 when I bought it three months later. The next, the same floor plan next door sold for 30,000 more.
00;11;38;15 - 00;12;01;06
Unknown
I asked my father and he said, you made $30,000. So what do you mean? I didn't know what equity was? Where do they teach us that? So I started going to library. IL six of the Fairfax County, Virginia library was my best friend every Saturday, and I figured out to store money. So for five years, I put money away until I had enough down payment to buy my first rental.
00;12;01;08 - 00;12;24;17
Unknown
Did it using a book at the closing table because I had no idea what I was doing. And then I pressed repeat for the next 17 years, for people who don't know, there's these things called books, their white pages with little black marks on them. And they used to keep them in one big house called a library. Like these days, you know, it's the whole corpus of human knowledge in your hand.
00;12;24;17 - 00;12;44;21
Unknown
But it wasn't always the case in a in a 32nd post. Right? No. There were very successful people who literally put all the secrets of what they've done in a book. And what I got right is if you there were five books I read, my entire, I'll say, my core journey, but I kept rereading them and rereading them and following what they did, and I could quote pages out of the books.
00;12;44;21 - 00;13;01;20
Unknown
So it wasn't that the books were the best to achieve my time, financial and geographic freedom. It's that I was the best at those books. I just became an expert at those books, and one of them was related to buying real estate and paying it off, and creating your own pension, and not having to wait for someone to do it for you.
00;13;01;23 - 00;13;19;16
Unknown
So I just never stopped. And even when it was inefficient, I didn't care. I knew I would get to a result. It was good enough. Yeah. So you started buying real estate in the early 2000, and did you do that on in the kind of in the, in the zero interest rate area? Yeah. Oh yeah. I got a lot of loans like that.
00;13;19;18 - 00;13;44;05
Unknown
Right. Which I should I mean, it should never have happened. Right. But those tools were available back then. I was getting them left and right. Right. So you use the tools that were available, you start to accumulate this empire. You eventually decided to retire from the service. And then tell me about your transition out of service. I did ten years equivalent of 12 years equivalent of active duty service, but a total of 22 I.
00;13;44;08 - 00;14;08;26
Unknown
I left in 2019, right at the three year mark of Lieutenant, right at the time in grade for lieutenant colonel. I was happy with that. But if I go back to 2014, so five years earlier, I had created enough cash flow from the single family residences that I had bought to be financially free. And for me, financially free is money is coming in with you without you having to go to work.
00;14;08;26 - 00;14;36;06
Unknown
That will cover your basic needs. So my mortgage or rent? Mortgage, rent, food. I had one son at the time and a little bit of pocket change for running around. I had it all covered it by age 38. But to show you what I meant, that work is good. I didn't leave, I left military at age four four, and then I left the rest of it at age 46, 42, and 46, something like that.
00;14;36;11 - 00;15;01;22
Unknown
And because I wanted all the all the skills or what have you, but again, underneath, without me saying anything to anybody. I never I was never I never had to worry. My basic needs were always covered. So the thing I was going to tell you before was my firm, corporate firm asked me to join the partner track. The military gave me a line to full bird oh six, Colonel, and for both of them I declined.
00;15;01;22 - 00;15;22;24
Unknown
And the reason I declined is there is a limiting there is a diminishing value. If what those things provide you no longer has meaning for you. I didn't want to go sit at headquarters and be in six and write policy similar. I didn't want to add another 40 hours of work to my week on the civilian side as a corporate partner, I had the money already.
00;15;22;25 - 00;15;44;00
Unknown
What I wanted to do was meet people like you, go do expansive experiences. I went to the Finnish Arctic five times in 2019, just over weekends. Right, I want life. Everything about me is a design life because I want to feel more about what's going on. Yeah, I want to talk about that design life a little bit. But before I do that, I'm curious.
00;15;44;03 - 00;16;11;04
Unknown
Your job in the military is actually quite unique. I think people are not sort of I mean, people have seen NCIS, but it's literally a special investigations department within the military because just like in the civilian sector, there's crime within the military and things have to be investigated. Were there things that you think you picked up from your position in the military that were relevant to the the entrepreneurial stuff that you did?
00;16;11;06 - 00;16;34;09
Unknown
Yeah. Stay quiet, be humble, learn how to research. I also figured out that the world is a lot bigger than where you live. So while my core, let's say investment journey was in the metropolitan Washington, D.C. area, Maryland, Virginia, DC, I was doing stuff with the military all over to include Turkey and Syria and all over Europe and stuff.
00;16;34;15 - 00;16;56;11
Unknown
So I was when I had an opportunity to invest, to try to do something with someone in Europe, it came up in 2020. I wasn't afraid of it at all because the opportunity is different now. You can make money anywhere in the world, and I think probably the best place to make money is the US. This is my biased opinion, however, think about the relationships that so I develop in Cyprus.
00;16;56;11 - 00;17;28;18
Unknown
Develop real estate in Cyprus, the island. Think about the relationships I've made, the experiences I've had, the fact that my Haitian immigrant family owns land on an island in the in the eastern Mediterranean. You can do what it is you want, when you want. If you get away from the status quo way of thinking. Ozzie, when I was a federal agent, gave me that because sometimes I would be doing things like in the head of the Turkish National Police Office as the federal agent in charge, who was responsible for the country.
00;17;28;18 - 00;17;57;05
Unknown
And then I would have a kid moment in my head, because I'm still an adult kid and I'd be like, I cannot believe I'm here. Yeah, we can have that emotion and do other things around the world. Or if you want, in your neighborhood, great. But if you want it on an island, don't be scared. Yeah. And I do think even going back to your experience as a 15 year old exchange student in France, there is something about like a breadth of exposure that changes the neurology of your thinking and it changes.
00;17;57;08 - 00;18;23;08
Unknown
It opens the aperture in in a way that people who are underexposed might not be comfortable with an emerging market investment or even an international investment. And so, by virtue of your military job, traveling the world, engaging with the Turkish police or like or, you know, international, our international partners, it seems to have given you a comfort level to invest outside the traditional tracks.
00;18;23;08 - 00;18;41;23
Unknown
If I could go with SOC forward with special ops in, let's say, Somalia and be with them is a good example for I know, I know you would relate. If I can roll out with those guys and have a level of respect from that, I miss them terribly. I was like one of the best times I ever had.
00;18;41;24 - 00;19;05;12
Unknown
But if I can roll out and do things like that on behalf of my country, but on behalf of the little kid inside of me too, who was just like, oh my God, I'm, I'm rolling with these men and women who are so dope. They're so good at what they do. When I go back to corporate life and someone's yelling at me about some document that's not done, like that's not a real world issue, that was a real world issue.
00;19;05;12 - 00;19;23;11
Unknown
So and then add that add on top of that. Being a midnight police officer, I've seen it all and then be in an inner city street kid. I've seen it all. Nothing can ever budge me from any fear, or I'm nervous about that. I don't get nervous. There's nothing to be nervous about. You know, I got that a lot of that from the military.
00;19;23;13 - 00;19;44;05
Unknown
Yeah. It's funny, your example is actually, you know, it's very close to home. I remember being in Mogadishu in the middle of one of the civil conflicts, and we had a special operations component in Mogadishu. And Somalia was a failed state, like absolutely failed. There was a point where al-Shabab had taken over like a large portion of the country.
00;19;44;05 - 00;20;16;28
Unknown
And then there's this interim like Somali transition government, but none of it was really functional. The only thing that was functional, I was living in a place called the peace, paradoxically, the Peace Hotel. And sometimes it was so dangerous at the Peace Hotel that you couldn't go outside at night because there was so much fighting going on. It was actually just me and these two Chinese Belt and Road kind of factory workers, and we'd play like ping pong all night, like among the shelling.
00;20;17;01 - 00;20;40;25
Unknown
But there was two things that I remember there, even though the government was like totally and completely dysfunctional, Commerce continued. So the things that worked were these Chinese infrastructure engineers who were at the hotel with me, and the Coca-Cola factory, which even during the war years, never, never stopped down, never stopped. Yeah, it is it is very thank you for saying that.
00;20;40;25 - 00;21;04;24
Unknown
Because there's nothing nothing makes me nervous ever. I, I've, I've run into houses with guns pointed at me. I've been in places like Somalia. I've. So you just then you start to realize that no life is just this wonderful big opportunity. Financial or not. You don't have to have so much fear about it. Just understand all the dynamics of what is going on.
00;21;04;24 - 00;21;23;25
Unknown
If Coca-Cola can still operate in the middle of a war zone, there's a reason they have relationships. People understand them, they're providing jobs, or they have some value to the community. Okay, do that in your own life, but maybe at a smaller scale, but do that in your own life, too. Yeah. I don't think I've it's an interesting point that I don't think I've really teased out on this podcast.
00;21;23;25 - 00;21;46;25
Unknown
I say it in my professional life all the time, like something's going awry at work or something. And, you know, I'll say to my colleagues like, hey, listen, nobody's shooting at me. It's all good, right? So when I think about, like, these military attributes that veterans bring to the table, it's by being in the service, whether you serve it in a combat zone or not.
00;21;46;27 - 00;22;10;03
Unknown
But having that like very, very deeply like tough perspective, right, of like, you know, this is really hard. This is war. The consequences are extraordinary. And it gives you perspective in the civilian world. Should we come out and still nervous because we don't know the subject matter. But I guess what I'm saying is just learn the subject matter.
00;22;10;04 - 00;22;33;27
Unknown
Yeah. Good. So you started to build your businesses and is the sort of is the top of that pyramid is Quatro o Quatro. Okay. So I started real estate on my own when I was like 25 ish, 24 ish. Quatro came about in 2019. I was at a so how old am I then? I don't know, I think I'm 40 for 39.
00;22;33;28 - 00;22;54;03
Unknown
So I was at a real estate conference speaking in Boston. My now partner Aaron comes up to me was like, hey, we should do a deal together. To that point, I had never done real estate with other not much real estate with other people. I liked being able to control. Like if the mistake was made, I knew it was my mistake and I kind of like that.
00;22;54;03 - 00;23;14;13
Unknown
But that changed when Aaron asked me to do a deal with three other people. At first I said no because I was like, I kind of made it on my own. But we all came together. We did this deal. It closed in January of 2020. It was a 30 unit, 36 unit apartment building in Knoxville, Tennessee. What got me about it was that it went so smooth.
00;23;14;15 - 00;23;42;20
Unknown
It was so smooth. And I was like, We just closed on 36 units. That would have taken me five years. So we got a business coach, not because of our skill set, but to merge us all together. And we ended up closing 25 apartment complexes in two years. It was nuts. And I've I've kind of moved up to the board now, but over my time, 200 million of real estate through Quattro Capital.
00;23;42;20 - 00;24;10;22
Unknown
So essentially it's buying add value apartment complexes with investor money, building a business plan, operating it, renovating it, putting it back out in the market, sending a return, that kind of thing. And but between 2020 and 2023, it because the market allowed it. We just went gangbusters. So Quattro was there. But my my at this point my life has started to shift a little bit.
00;24;10;22 - 00;24;31;21
Unknown
So I've started to take a little bit of a backseat. Yeah, yeah. And and one of the things that you have been pushing that you've been putting out in the public narrative is this, this idea of life design and having had achieved financial freedom, how what's your platform? How how are you doing that? So my platform is called Try Life On and it literally means the way it reads.
00;24;31;21 - 00;24;56;19
Unknown
You need to try life on when you want to try different things. You can be and not. Or I can be a real estate guy and a police officer and a federal agent and a guy who failed at coffee shops. We adhere to that status quo way of life constantly. Now, there is nothing wrong with the go to school, go to college, go through corporate or government or whatever it is for you.
00;24;56;23 - 00;25;16;01
Unknown
But we have to do a consciously. You don't just do it just because the guidance counselor said that Google is the right place for you to work, right? So I have in 2019, I went on someone's podcast, first time I ever got interviewed, and the guy just looked at me and my friend Jerome Myers, and he looks at me and he goes, why are you not telling people how you beat the system?
00;25;16;04 - 00;25;31;03
Unknown
And I was like, oh, he said, because you say you're a man of service. You did it in the military. You're doing a police officer, but you're not helping people. So I created the platform to coach people and lifestyle design. Tell them what I did, create a framework for folks to do their own thing. And it's blown up ever since.
00;25;31;07 - 00;25;53;16
Unknown
Yeah, I have I have a wonderful colleague from the Seal teams who's actually been on this podcast, and he always he always talks about this, this idea of chase pace pull. Right. So you need someone to chase, you need mentors in life. And then you need peers to pace with to run with you. The four guys you invested the three other partners from Quattro.
00;25;53;16 - 00;26;14;29
Unknown
Right. But a component of it, especially for those of us who have served, is to also make sure that, like you check your six and you look over your shoulder and that you're pulling somebody else through. And, you know, the funny thing is, when I'm having an off day, I go look for someone to pull. That's how I regulate myself, when if something's going off, I'm like, well, let me help somebody.
00;26;15;00 - 00;26;47;27
Unknown
Today. I actually noticed this the most when I was at the I think it's called Zatanna. It's the refugee camp in Jordan that was housing Syrian refugees. It was the world's largest refugee camp, million refugees, hotbed of extremism because the the rebels were recruiting in there. And all this and the people who did the worst in the refugee camp were most often the teenagers who were sort of, like, obsessed with the pathos of their life, like, oh, look at these other teenagers in America or wherever.
00;26;47;28 - 00;27;04;22
Unknown
Look at this good life they're living. And like the clothes they're wearing and the like, the shoes, the Nike's they got and all this. And what was me, I'm living in this refugee camp, and that's. That is a hard life. Don't get me wrong, I have empathy. I have tremendous empathy. But the people who were not doing that were the grandparents.
00;27;04;24 - 00;27;31;07
Unknown
Now, there wasn't as many parents because they were either, like involved in the conflict or they had been killed and stuff. There was young kids, there was teenagers, and there was grandparents. These are the primary demographic. But the grandparents, they didn't have time for all that BS, right? They were taking care of the kids. And because their affect was towards helping somebody else, they did not have this kind of victim narrative and mentality about their own life.
00;27;31;10 - 00;27;50;25
Unknown
You know, because they're engaged in service. It takes time to learn that. It does take time to learn that. But the way I like for my kids now, the way that I teach them, if you are seeing something that's bad in your life, you need to go figure out what's up with you. There's too much good in this world.
00;27;50;28 - 00;28;14;19
Unknown
From my perspective, there's just way too much good. I think the people that act out are the ones whose filter allows them to only see and feel the bad, so we just flip it. So now you're you're at this point where you have this very interesting life design. Like you, your time is your own. You control your own destiny, your captain of your own ship, or I guess, pilot of your own plane.
00;28;14;20 - 00;28;38;05
Unknown
In Air Force metaphor world, when you think about other young members in the service, more junior members in the service who might be inclined to to think about things differently, like what would you tell them? What is your advice for how to think about life and not necessarily follow this sort of standard prescribed track? I think there's two points.
00;28;38;05 - 00;28;59;10
Unknown
One, I'm just going to touch on money and then I'll touch on life. Money seems to be the dominant factor in the way everybody thinks, and I understand it because it's real. We need it to exist and all those kinds of things. My experience has led me to fully understand that when you chase money, it runs. If you're just like the war we used to always say in the Seal team, you can't chase the war.
00;28;59;11 - 00;29;34;11
Unknown
No. Yeah, you let it. You just got to do your job, do the good thing, and then it'll come to you. Yeah, I certainly made mistakes. But when I. When I review everything that I've done over the last three decades professionally, the mistakes that I made was because I left my why. My why was always to live life intentionally and to build legacy and time freedom for my family and the moments I had a little bit of ego when I would go chase a penthouse condo in DC, or there's a particular apartment building complex that I was, I didn't I never felt good about, but I couldn't quite get my partners to understand.
00;29;34;12 - 00;29;54;12
Unknown
Like in those instances we were doing the right things, but it was a little bit of a money chase and we paid the price for it. So I always tell people, don't chase money, chase the thing that fills you up, chase the thing that makes you feel alive, or because that's a purpose or whatever you're doing in the military can be purposeful, like it was for me, which was Ozzie.
00;29;54;12 - 00;30;16;06
Unknown
And I just love the work. Now, from a life design perspective, I will tell anyone, including a military person, you have to get strategic about it. You have coming out of the military, you have some people get disability, of course, but you have your potential pension that's coming and which everybody now has the TSP. So they have some like they have something, they have something.
00;30;16;06 - 00;30;35;12
Unknown
But the military is one of those things where, okay, you're changing duty stations by a small condo every single duty station. Well, Maurice, if it's 100,000, I do $20,000 down. If it's vacant, it's a lot of money for me to cover. Yes. So don't do 20,000 down. Do $50,000 down. It's going to take you much longer to save it.
00;30;35;12 - 00;30;59;28
Unknown
But then you're doing something. What I call with my clients peaceful investing. Your leverage is enough that we're just like. It's nice and easy. People have to, like, get intentional on using that 9 to 5, using that military service and prepping themselves for the day they come out. Now, it's not always easy, but as you said, find someone to model.
00;31;00;02 - 00;31;20;26
Unknown
Find someone who's done it before and go after them. And just because that Colonel is your boss's boss's boss doesn't mean that that is the version of success that makes sense for you, right? So when I left. Hey, Lieutenant Colonel, why are you leaving? Because that's not my version of success. I don't want to do that. I respect it, but that wasn't a path for me.
00;31;20;26 - 00;31;41;05
Unknown
So I would tell them those two things of leverage it as much as you can and don't chase money. Yeah, I do think there there can be a tendency within the military hierarchy to think very linear, right? Like even the progression of rank structure is sequential 0120 2 to 0 3 to 0 four same on the listed side.
00;31;41;05 - 00;31;57;22
Unknown
So it it can falsely give you the illusion that there's this sort of linear nature to life. And it's just not true. Life is this circuitous journey, right. And you can define the path that you want to take. You can and I think you've done that in very interesting ways. It's a playground. Go play in it. Yeah, yeah.
00;31;57;24 - 00;32;13;09
Unknown
We like to end the segment with something that we call rapid fire. I call it I say it's like shooting steel, right? Like ping. You get instant feedback. Okay. You got that one. The Aussie guy gets that one. I don't have to come up with some obscure Air Force metaphor. Like, I would try to think what it would be.
00;32;13;10 - 00;32;34;29
Unknown
What's instant feedback? I don't I don't know, why would you get the HUD on the F-15? I don't even know. We don't even have that many F-15s left in service. Very few there before. Before we do rapid fire, we just like we got to like clear up one thing. Like Air Force golf courses. What is the deal? Why are they so nice?
00;32;35;01 - 00;33;02;18
Unknown
What kind of waste, fraud and abuse is going on over? I don't know, but every base I've ever gone to has a nice golf course. Exactly. Air force takes care of its people. Nobody's business. Yeah, we do. We do say that now, actually, I do have one interesting question before we wrap up or something I'm curious about at OSI, would you describe I know you're an O5, so you led teams, but like, would you describe the nature of your job as, as a very like solo endeavor or was it.
00;33;02;20 - 00;33;21;00
Unknown
It feels like it to me. There's a documentary coming out called resilience. I got interviewed on there. My my friend is the is the director of it, and she asked me a question and because I just interviewed her on my podcast and I said, do you know that when you interviewed me in 2023, that was four years after I retired.
00;33;21;01 - 00;33;40;25
Unknown
It was the first time I had ever reflected on anything I had ever done in my military career, and I just emptied my last deployment bag from 2018 three weeks ago. Because we work in a clear environment, as you were as well. And by the nature of what I did, I was never I don't wear a uniform, I was always I do sometimes if I'm servicing a base commander.
00;33;41;03 - 00;34;01;18
Unknown
But in general, I was like this and I would have a gun on my side or not have a gun on my side or whatever, and we can't tell anybody anything about anything that we do now. People may, may, may have a general idea the way that you can understand ozone. As we grew out of the FBI in the 1950s, Air Force needed it's own agency.
00;34;01;18 - 00;34;22;13
Unknown
And then the culture took over. But by the nature of what we did know. Yeah, yeah. And I was just thinking about it. Yeah. It is a very sort of unitary, solitary component within the military. And I wonder if that sort of influenced how you attacked business because you didn't start forming partnerships till later on in your business career.
00;34;22;19 - 00;34;40;11
Unknown
You're used to working alone. I'm very used to working alone, and I quite I like working in teams, though. I very much like working in teams. But I love that the fact that I had a choice when I wanted. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. All right, well, let's get to the rapid fire. What's the best investment you ever made in me?
00;34;40;17 - 00;35;02;14
Unknown
Self-education. That library by far. Spending those hours on Saturdays. And I'll six of that library change the trajectory of my life, my kids life, and probably their kids lives. Amazing. Dumbest financial mistake you ever made. Condo I was alluding to. And I use it as a it's a DC penthouse. It was a DC penthouse. I bought it in zero six.
00;35;02;15 - 00;35;24;08
Unknown
It was like 700 grand and I didn't buy it for my financial freedom journey. I bought it because I wanted to be the dude that owned the condo, the penthouse condo in DC. It's like a vanity investment, 10 to 10,000%. Oh, and I lost. I was like 300 grand loss over time. Best mistake I ever made. Because what's the tactical lesson from that?
00;35;24;15 - 00;35;47;08
Unknown
You don't chase money, you chase money, it runs and always stick with your why, your original reason Air Force skill that you think has been the most helpful in business. Wow. Take care of your people. I'm not saying the other components don't take care of people, they do, but in my career it was so stressed. So let's say the last field office I ran was Turk.
00;35;47;11 - 00;36;10;22
Unknown
No, the last thing I ran was a task force out of Djibouti, out of Camp Lemonnier. I think I had, like, worst place on the planet. I know, but I was able I was on base all the time. But I had 30 people all over western and southern Africa, and I would look out for them and give them autonomy to the extent that I felt comfortable that they would maintain it.
00;36;10;23 - 00;36;27;13
Unknown
But my job as a commander wasn't necessarily to affect the mission as much as it was to make sure my people were good to affect the mission. So it's just taking care of people. Yeah, and I think people don't realize Lemonnier is our largest base on the African continent. I was at SOC, so I paid my dues at Lemonnier.
00;36;27;16 - 00;36;52;00
Unknown
How about a military habit that you won't drop 4 a.m. to 8 a.m.? What's that? I was always in the gym doing real estate or working on something between 4 a.m. and 8 a.m., even if I was patrolling as a midnight police officer. But. And here's why. And I'm not saying everybody needs to do for a m to 8 a.m., you can do 6 a.m. to 8 a.m., one hour at lunch and one hour after school before you get the kids, or one hour after after the kids get home.
00;36;52;00 - 00;37;12;29
Unknown
But that's 20 hours a week, 80 hours a month, 960 hours a year. That's 5.7 weeks of time. You add a Saturday and a Sunday. That's two months. So you've created a 14 month year. After five years, you've created an extra year. Well, Maurice, how do you have all the time to do the real estate and this and that?
00;37;12;29 - 00;37;36;20
Unknown
Because I created it. Military gave me that discipline. Yeah, I agree. Much to the chagrin of the people who work with me, they get a lot of 6 a.m. texts, you know, but it's just to say to give time to yourself. If you're I don't have time to do blank, but you're binge watching Netflix for four hours that afternoon.
00;37;36;23 - 00;38;02;10
Unknown
Don't work on yourself. Yeah. How about you mentioned those five books earlier. What are some books that changed your mindset? I'll go those five and then I'll give you two more. But those five was personal finance for dummies. Viktor Frankl. So the financial books were personal finance for dummies. Tony Robbins, money master of the game, Dave Lindahl, multifamily millions.
00;38;02;10 - 00;38;31;21
Unknown
So those are my three financial ones. Then I found Viktor Frankl, man, search for meaning, Changed Everything, and Tim Ferriss four Hour workweek for lifestyle design. And then now I have to tell people I found Doctor Joseph Murphy's power of your subconscious mind. Understand the relationship of how your mind works in relation to the world conscious creation. And I was like, so I was doing that the whole time, but unconsciously.
00;38;31;21 - 00;38;58;05
Unknown
So now when I think about my life and help people, I do it in very conscious ways. Amazing. And first thing you do in the morning? Meditate. Why you? We have a habit in today's society of opening our phone, looking at email, maybe even reading the newspaper for old school people or whatever. But what you're doing is you're allowing that information or that notification to be the metronome of your day.
00;38;58;08 - 00;39;17;03
Unknown
You are. So let's say you, you, you, you crank your eye open in the morning, you grab your phone. The first thing you see is an email from your boss. Now you're up at 6 a.m. responding to something related to your boss. They've hijacked you with their urgency if you meditate or read. And by the way, when I say meditate, I don't mean go Zen and all that.
00;39;17;03 - 00;39;36;13
Unknown
Although I do, it could be the gym, it could be reading a book. It could just be going out on your front porch with bare feet to ground yourself and drinking a cup of black coffee and start your day with you. Get with you. First, check on your excuse me, check on yourself first, and then allow the trappings of the day to catch you.
00;39;36;13 - 00;39;54;00
Unknown
But if you don't, then someone else's intention has become your priority from the first minute. I know I have more time and resources now, but in general I don't like. I don't even have email on my phone anymore. For the most part, I don't have social media on my phone. I don't want to be influenced by other people's thoughts.
00;39;54;00 - 00;40;16;26
Unknown
As much as I want to run the day from my own. So that's what I do in the morning. Yeah, yeah, what I what I've always thought of it. I also like reserved that early morning time for myself because you sort of constitutionally can be put into either like a reactive or a proactive mode. If you're responding to somebody else's agenda, you're in a reactive mode.
00;40;16;27 - 00;40;35;06
Unknown
And look, there are times in your career where that is absolutely necessary. But in terms of entrepreneurship and piloting your own plane, you need to control the rhythm and the flow of yourself internally and just real quick. It doesn't have just take a beat. It doesn't have to be an hour or two hours. It could just be five minutes.
00;40;35;06 - 00;40;58;12
Unknown
But then your nervous system will understand that you are in control, not the world. It's a very important dynamic that doesn't get taught. Yeah, amazing. I couldn't underscore and agree more. Amazing. And Morris, how can people connect with you and learn more about your philosophy? So my website is Try Life on. I have a podcast. That's the iPhone podcast.
00;40;58;15 - 00;41;18;21
Unknown
People email me at Morissette, try life on. Com and then I am. I used to be very, very active on LinkedIn and got to like some like 100,000 followers or something. But I left social media consciously. But I do check the LinkedIn email every once in a while so they can try there as well. LinkedIn direct message amazing every once in a while.
00;41;18;22 - 00;41;39;10
Unknown
Amazing. Well, Morris thank you. It has been incredibly fascinating as I knew it would. This was a long time coming. This this intersection. I think the way that our our philosophies are both like intertwined and parallel to each others is really beautiful. And I thank you for all the work that you're doing for the veteran community. My pleasure.
00;41;39;11 - 00;42;15;19
Unknown
Maybe previously subconsciously and now? Now consciously. Well, this is very much so. Yeah. This is the whole idea is to create inspirational models for people. So again thank you. Pleasure. Thanks for having me. Yeah. To our audience, I think you can see that Morris is the living embodiment of this idea that you can construct the life that you want to live, that you can take off the uniform, and you can design your life in a way to maximize purpose, to maximize purse, and to achieve true financial freedom while continuing to do so with that same sense of mission that brought you into service in the first place.
00;42;15;20 - 00;42;36;10
Unknown
All right. Thanks for walking in with us today. Shout out to Siebert and Siebert Financial for supporting our journey. We'll be back next week with another powerhouse conversation. More founders, more builders and leaders who are playing offense in life and in business. Make sure you're subscribed to our YouTube channel for exclusive content and extended cuts of your favorite episodes.
00;42;36;11 - 00;42;39;28
Unknown
Until next week. Stay tactical. Stay driven.