December 11, 2025 • 22 mins
The work is honest, the sun is relentless, and the clock on your knees is louder than you think. That reality sparked a straight‑talk conversation about converting today’s pool service income into tomorrow’s durable, low‑friction cash flow. We dig into three realistic paths—scaling your route into a managed operation, investing in the markets, and building a real estate portfolio—and break down the mindset, mechanics, and tradeoffs of each, without hype.
We start with a Rockefeller‑style principle: reinvest in what you understand. If you love building systems and leading people, a multi‑truck, manager‑led service company can move you out of the field and into an owner’s seat where cash flow compounds.
Then we get practical about real estate, the lane many service pros naturally excel in. Rentals offer a potent trio—appreciation, monthly cash flow, and significant tax advantages—while turning your local knowledge into an investing edge. You already read neighborhoods, solve problems in the field, and navigate city rules; those same skills transfer to finding solid properties, managing turns, and hiring vendors. We talk candidly about vacancies, repairs, and what “passive” really means, along with why buying within an hour of home often beats chasing distant deals. The through‑line is simple: start sooner, keep it simple, and let time do the heavy lifting.
• why pool work is finite and planning matters
• Rockefeller’s reinvesting mindset applied to service routes
• pros and cons of scaling a multi‑truck operation
• crypto, gold, and market returns in plain terms
• how compounding works and when it pays out
• why rentals fit service pros’ skills and lifestyle
• appreciation, cash flow, and tax advantages explained
• what “passive” really means in property management
• using local knowledge to choose neighborhoods
• starting early and building momentum with systems
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (01:03):
Hey, welcome to the Pool Game Podcast Show.
In this episode, I'm gonnadeviate a little bit from the
regular pool topics I talk aboutand talk a little bit about
investing for your future.
I always talk about thisindustry being finite, which
means that you have a smallwindow to make as much income as
you can, and then utilize thatincome to create passive income
(01:27):
for your future.
So I'm going to go over somethings to kind of consider and
think about while you're outthere working and to put your
money to work for you later.
Are you a pool service prolooking to take your business to
the next level?
Join the Pool Guy CoachingProgram.
Get expert advice, businesstips, exclusive content, and get
direct support.
From me, I'm a 35-year veteranin the industry.
(01:49):
Whether you're starting out orscaling up, I've got the tools
to help you succeed.
Learn more atswimmingpoollearning.com.
I recently finished a prettyfascinating book on Rockefeller,
and Rockefeller, of course, wasthe richest person probably on
earth during his time period.
It is a great book.
It's called Titan, and it goesover his life and kind of how he
(02:12):
made his fortune and how hespent his money, how he
invested.
Ironically, he didn't reallyinvest much in real estate.
He actually did something thatyou can do in your own pool
service business, which is hereinvested all his money into
his own company, Standard Oil,which by the way was broken up
into different companies lateron during the government's um
(02:35):
antitrust monopoly trials.
He actually quadrupled hisincome after that happened
because he had shares ofStandard Oil which were sold off
into these other entities, andthe price of his shares
skyrocketed.
But ExxonMobil is one of themthat's still here.
You have Chevron, and of course,these are all companies that
(02:59):
you're familiar with, and itreally just started from one
person.
It's a really fascinating bookon how he became the richest
person in the world.
I recommend it.
It's really thick though, it'slike 600 pages or so, or maybe
more.
So it's definitely quite a read.
It's one of those books that youcan use as a weapon.
But it really got me thinkingthat a lot of pool pros aren't
(03:21):
really kind of future-orientedlike he was.
And to be future-oriented, whatI mean is you're out there
working, you don't really thinkabout it when you're in your 20s
and 30s as much as when you'rein your 40s and 50s, but you
can't do pool service forever.
It's just a fact.
I mean, if you look at sports,you know, the f the most anyone
(03:45):
plays or the age they reach.
Maybe if you're a kicker orquarterback, you can get into
your 40s.
I think Tom Brady was like 43 or44 when he retired.
Very rare.
I think the average uh tenure inthe NFL is like three or four
years, whatever is really short.
And so your body kind of wearsout and you start to feel the
(04:05):
effects of being out there.
For example, about 10 years ago,I had to just wear knee pads out
there every time I knee downbecause my knee just got damaged
over the years from kneeing downon the cement to where every
time I knee down without kneepads, it would cause me sharp
pain.
And so I wear one knee pad atleast.
(04:26):
I can kneel down on one knee,and it looks it looks fine.
I think people understand thatyou have to have protective gear
out there.
I also wear my nitrile glovesbecause the chemicals really
have an effect on your handsover the years, so you
definitely want to protectyourself.
If you're looking for any ofthis gear, by the way, just go
to my website,swingingpoollearning.com, go to
(04:47):
the bottom, you'll see the poolguy gear, and you can click on
the links to the gloves that Irecommend.
But I I definitely think youshould be protected.
A lot of pool pros get skincancer out there, they get
cataracts, there's a lot ofthings the sun can do to you,
and so you don't want to be outthere for 40 years doing pool
service.
With that said, how can youtransition at a pool service?
(05:10):
I did mention that Rockefellerreinvested in his own company,
and you can do that yourself.
You can build up a pool empirewhere you have 10 trucks, two
managers, three repair techs,and you kind of step back into
the background and you can kindof run it somewhat passively.
Now, true passive income is kindof a myth.
(05:32):
I mean, it can happen, but thereis something that you have to do
every so often, even if you'reinvesting in you know anything
in the market, you do have tomake some pivots sometimes and
some changes.
So it's not entirely justpassive in most regards, unless
you have someone managing yourmoney, then of course it's
totally passive.
But there is something, somelevel of involvement in one way
(05:56):
or another of all theseinvestments I'm going to talk
about in a minute.
But you can reinvest in yourcompany, build it up to be
self-sustaining with themanagement team and employees,
and kind of just run that fromthe background, and you're not
in the field anymore.
You're mainly in the officedoing little things to keep
things running.
That's perfectly fine, andthat's a great way to be
(06:18):
successful in the industry andkind of get yourself out of the
field.
I think this is something thatsome people are are ideally
geared towards.
Others wouldn't be able tohandle running an empire, it's
just not their personality.
Nothing against anyone doesn'twant to do this.
I don't want to do this myself,I wouldn't find this enjoyable.
(06:39):
Some people love it, they don'tmind dealing with all the
friction that comes withemployees and you know having a
large customer base.
But to me, that's not thedirection that I went.
And again, it's just yourpersonality.
If you are like a Rockefellerand want to build up an empire,
you could definitely do that,and there's nothing wrong with
that formula to create passiveincome because you can actually
(07:03):
generate a huge amount of moneyin the background with everyone
doing the pool service that youbuilt up.
Not a problem.
That's why these giant companiescome in here and buy up all
these pool routes because theyknow that the bigger they get,
the more revenue they cangenerate, the more they can
offset losses and other things.
And so you have you knownational pool partners, you have
(07:25):
the SPS pool care buying upcompanies and getting bigger and
bigger across certain stateshere because it is lucrative and
it does make a lot of money.
Now, I don't want to make anyonesad right now, but if you didn't
invest in certain things andyou're trying to jump in now,
some things are gonna be alittle late, I would say.
(07:48):
Other things you may be able tocreate more growth, like for
example, Bitcoin is a goodexample.
If you jumped in in like 2018when it was at 3782 Bitcoin, if
you don't know much aboutBitcoin, it's super interesting
and super confusing.
And I've done a lot of researchon it.
I don't invest in it myself, butI do know pool pros that have
(08:10):
and do invest in it, and they'vehad some bad years with it,
especially 2022.
But if you held on to it and youhave it now, it's like$84,000,
you know, for the Bitcoin.
It's pretty crazy.
So that's an increase ofastronomical amount if you
invested in 2017 or 2018 when itwas$37.80.
(08:31):
So definitely that's a goodinvestment in some regards.
I don't know if you would wantto buy it at this point, but if
you bought it back then, you didpretty well.
I think the stock market isalways something, and I'll touch
on gold, I guess, but I don'tinvest in gold either.
But I do know people who haveinvested in gold.
I actually know someone who soldhis gold at like 2,000 an ounce.
(08:52):
He was like, this is the highestever gonna get.
It's like at 4,000 right now, soit's crazy that it's even higher
than he thought it would get to.
Uh, I don't really do thateither.
To me, it doesn't seem like ityou're gonna grow the money as
fast, although it has growndramatically, of course.
So I kind of missed that boat, Iguess.
But let's just go to the stockmarket.
(09:12):
If you in 2008 invested, if youbought stocks in 2008, the
market was like at 8,000 points,and now it's at like 45,000
points, 46,000 points, so that'squite an increase there.
(09:45):
Averages about 10 to 12% a yearin growth, which is a pretty
good amount of return on yourmoney.
And if you do any kind ofcompound interest chart, you're
gonna see that you know, whenyou turn 65 or 68 or 70 when you
draw the money, you're gonnahave a pretty good nest egg to
draw from if you invested earlyenough.
NASDAQ, same thing, it prettymuch skyrocket.
(10:08):
It's rocketed from you know2,000 points to I think it's
like 15 or 18,000.
It's pretty high there too.
I have very little invested inthe market myself.
I have some Roth IRA money, butI don't have a lot of money in
the market, and it's somethingthat I haven't really leaned
towards.
And of course you can do that,and it's a perfectly safe
(10:30):
investment.
I just feel like for what I'mgeared towards and kind of what
most pool pros I think would bes have a specialty towards would
be real estate.
Because I feel like the stockmarket, yes, you're getting
money and you're gettingretirement money in a Roth IRA
or just mutual funds or howeveryou want to invest it, but you
(10:53):
can't really draw on that moneyuntil you're much older.
And to me, I would like to haveincome coming in now as well as
later.
Now there are a few stocks thatpay dividends, but there aren't
that many of them, and you cando that as well if you want some
money coming in every year, butI find that waiting for that
nest egg later on is not the waythat I like to invest.
(11:17):
Everyone's different, Iunderstand that.
So I'm not gonna say that oneinvesting method over another is
better than one.
And by the way, I'm not afinancial advisor, I'm just
talking here as a regularperson, and if you really wanted
to seek financial advice, get afinancial planner.
Most of them will, of course, beheavily leaning towards
(11:40):
investing in the market becausethey get some money from you
investing in different productsthat they have for you in the
stock market.
But to me, real estate hassomething has been something
I've been doing since 2001 whenI got my first rental property,
or we got our first rentalproperty, I should say, me and
my wife, and it's something thatI've kind of stuck with.
(12:01):
And the appreciation in realestate in California, I mean, if
you look at just the medianprice, and the median price, the
median price, I'll pronouncethat correctly here, is
basically half the home sold forless than this amount, half the
home sold for more than thisamount.
So it's kind of like the middleprice of houses in your area.
(12:22):
So in Los Angeles County, whichis my county, the median price
back in 2000 was 198,000.
Now that's you got to alsofactor in that things were
cheaper back then, minimum wagewas lower, the cost of goods
were lower, and so it's allrelative to the dollar.
(12:42):
This is why real estate, in myopinion, is the best investment
because your investment usuallygoes up with inflation, you
don't lose any ground becauseyou know, gas back in 2000
probably was what two dollars agallon.
I'm not I'm just guessing here.
Now it's like 480 a gallon, soit's doubled.
So back in 2000, let's just goback to 2000.
(13:06):
I'll go to 2000, I'll skip aheadbecause there were some pretty
rough years here, but I'll skipahead to 2013 when things
started rising in California.
So in 2013, the median homeprice was 430,000.
That means that half the homessold under 430, half sold for
over 430.
Let's jump ahead to 2018, itwent up to 620,000, and then if
(13:30):
you go to 2022, it's at 850,000.
That means that half the homesin Los Angeles County sold for
more than 850,000.
That's pretty crazy.
Then we get to 2024, which wasthe last year that of course
it's 2025 now, it's at 910.
So it keeps going up.
(13:51):
I mean, it can't keep going upwith these giant leaps all the
time, but I would think thatit's gonna pass a million
dollars this year if it hasn'tpassed a million dollars yet for
the median price.
That means that half the homessold here were over a million
dollars, and that's prettyinsane.
But if you bought houses since2001 like I have, and I've even
(14:11):
bought houses recently, becauseyou get good deals sometimes and
you can snatch up a good deal,you're gonna make out pretty
well because there are threethings in real estate, and I'll
just cover this briefly thatgive you an advantage over the
other investments.
One of them, of course, isappreciation.
You have the house, if you don'tdo anything for 30 years, it's
(14:34):
gonna be paid off, and so youhave whatever that house is
worth 30 years from now, you cansell it or transfer it in a 1031
exchange for something bigger,and you have a huge amount of
equity that you've earned overthe years.
Of course, capital gains isgonna take a big chunk of that
if you don't reinvest it, butyou're gonna have this nest egg
(14:54):
to pull from.
So if you bought a house for$500,000 and it's worth a
million in 30 years, you've made$500,000 after capital gains.
If you wanted to sell thathouse, you probably would net
like$300,000 roughly.
So that's a pretty good amountof money.
If you had five of these, whatis that like five times three,
$100,$1.8 million you would havein the bank if you sold all
those and paid capital gains?
(15:16):
Quite a lot of investment.
But over that 30-year period,you are also doing number two,
which is getting some rentalincome.
Some areas you get more rentthan others, more income than
others, but you'll generateincome usually, could be$200 per
unit, or you know,$100, even$100per unit.
If you have 30 units, that's$3,000 a month times$12.
(15:40):
That's$3,000 times$12,000 wouldbe$36,000 a year.
Of course, there's more money tobe had there.
I'm just giving you a lownumber.
But if you had 30 units andyou're making$400, there's
$120,000 a year, you're makingan income.
So there's income being producedover that 30-year period as
well, as well as debt pay down,as well as appreciation.
(16:03):
And then you have that assetthat's yours again after 30
years.
If you don't do anything, the30-year mortgage will be paid
off by the people living in yourproperty.
And of course, the third benefitof real estate are the tax
deductions.
The government kind of rewardsyou for providing housing.
The government can't provideenough housing across the
(16:23):
nation.
In fact, like in LA County, whenthey try to provide housing,
it's a total disaster.
They'll spend like$500,000 forlike a one-bedroom studio
apartment and put someone inthere.
It's a total loss, and it they'drather not do it.
They'd rather have you do it.
And so they reward you with somebenefits on your taxes.
(16:45):
Now, of course, you can't avoidpaying property taxes.
So if you have as much as manyinvestment properties as me, I
pay a ton of property taxes, andI'm okay with that because
that's part of investing.
But as far as your income taxes,it's a great way to offset any
of your self-employed or W-2income.
(17:05):
And it's a great way to offsetthat because all those
deductions, your mortgageinterest, your property taxes,
your insurance, yourdepreciation of each each unit
you have, all the repairs youput in there, anything you do to
that unit, any kind ofmodification or improvement, all
gets deducted on your taxes.
(17:26):
And if you have enough of theserental properties, you can
potentially not pay any incometax, but you are paying the
property tax.
Mind you, so you are payingsomething, but you're not paying
your income tax on your earnedincome because of all the
offsets that the real estateinvesting offers you.
Because the government, again,is kind of rewarding you for
(17:47):
providing housing, somethingthat they can't do effectively,
and they there's not enough ofit.
And so they rely on theseinvestors to provide housing for
Americans that need housing, andtherefore you have these tax
benefits, and they're prettylucrative.
If you have an investmentproperty, you know how well that
(18:07):
offsets your income taxes.
So to me, you can't really beatthat.
Now, as far as passive, you canhire a management company to, of
course, manage your rentals.
That's that makes it morepassive, but you still got to
manage the manager of thatmanagement company, or you can
do it yourself.
And the only time you're goingto really be investing your time
(18:29):
and energy in is when you have avacancy.
And currently I have two that Ihave to fill, and then I'm gonna
have three more coming up by thebeginning of the year.
It does happen, it's somethingthat you have to kind of handle,
and then of course, remodelingthe property or getting it ready
is another thing that youprobably want to supervise the
people doing the work.
(18:49):
But other than that, the moneywill come in passively most of
the time, except for thoseinstances.
Of course, you have repairs thathappen.
I just had a mainline leak undera driveway.
That was a pretty expensive,pretty expensive repair to do.
I feel bad about it because Ifeel like I just buried, you
know, 3600 bucks that I couldhave used for something else,
(19:12):
and it's buried under mydriveway, one of my rental
units.
But, you know, what can you doas as part of having the
properties?
But I think the benefitsoutweigh the any kind of
headaches, short-term headaches.
And I mentioned that poolservice pros are ideal for
rental properties, and I thinkbecause of the way we deal with
customers, we have greatcustomer service skills, at
(19:34):
least a lot of us do.
And that translates really easywhen dealing with tenants and
vendors and contractors, and Ithink you can deal with the city
no problem.
I even dealt with the citytwice, two different cities when
I did a full remodel, taking ahouse that was built in 1887 and
making it very modern.
The city was really tough onthat one.
(19:55):
And then another one where I hadan ADU that I finished the
permitting on and the contractorgave up on it, and I was able to
deal with the city, and you haveto have that personality to
where you know when the BarneyFife shows up, hey, I got this
insulation, it's not right, andyou need to have this, and you
can handle that kind of personbecause you handle them every
day in your pool route, not aproblem.
Tenants you can also handlepretty easily.
(20:16):
And then the second reason, andI'll end with this, that you are
ideally suited for this, is thatyou know the neighborhoods and
the area you're investing in.
You know what areas, whatpockets are good, and what
pockets are bad, where youwouldn't leave your truck parked
there with the riptide on theback without chaining it and
locking it.
So you have that ideal advantageof driving around your city and
(20:37):
knowing those good areas andthose bad areas.
So ideally, you would want toinvest somewhere within a
50-minute drive to your home soyou can you know manage the
rentals closer is better, butsometimes you can't buy close
because it's really expensive.
But if you can drive within like50 minutes to an hour to a
rental property, not a dealkiller for me, I do it all the
(20:59):
time, and it's a great way tomaximize your investment by
buying a little bit out of yourarea, but knowing the areas, and
of course, ideally, you wouldwant to get to get started on
investing in any of these thingsI mentioned.
The sooner the better.
The great thing about poolservice is that you're getting
an income that gives you theopportunity to invest and invest
(21:21):
rapidly because the time, theclock is ticking against you,
your body can't sustain workingout there doing 70 or 80 pools a
week for the rest of your life.
So realize that passive incomeis something that you are
working towards building.
And if you don't startimmediately, if you're in your
30s, you should have startedwhen you're in your 20s.
(21:43):
But if you're in your 40s, youshould have started in your 30s.
You get what I'm saying here,and the sooner you start, the
better.
Looking for other podcasts, ofcourse, you can go to my
website, ZoomingPole Learning,and on the banner, click on the
podcast icon.
That'll take you to a drop downmenu of other podcasts I have
there as well.
And if you're interested in mycoaching program, you can learn
more at poolguycoaching.com.
(22:05):
Thanks for listening to thispodcast.
Have a great week and God bless.
Hey, welcome to the Pool Game Podcast Show.
In this episode, I'm gonnadeviate a little bit from the
regular pool topics I talk aboutand talk a little bit about
investing for your future.
I always talk about thisindustry being finite, which
means that you have a smallwindow to make as much income as
you can, and then utilize thatincome to create passive income
(01:27):
for your future.
So I'm going to go over somethings to kind of consider and
think about while you're outthere working and to put your
money to work for you later.
Are you a pool service prolooking to take your business to
the next level?
Join the Pool Guy CoachingProgram.
Get expert advice, businesstips, exclusive content, and get
direct support.
From me, I'm a 35-year veteranin the industry.
(01:49):
Whether you're starting out orscaling up, I've got the tools
to help you succeed.
Learn more atswimmingpoollearning.com.
I recently finished a prettyfascinating book on Rockefeller,
and Rockefeller, of course, wasthe richest person probably on
earth during his time period.
It is a great book.
It's called Titan, and it goesover his life and kind of how he
(02:12):
made his fortune and how hespent his money, how he
invested.
Ironically, he didn't reallyinvest much in real estate.
He actually did something thatyou can do in your own pool
service business, which is hereinvested all his money into
his own company, Standard Oil,which by the way was broken up
into different companies lateron during the government's um
(02:35):
antitrust monopoly trials.
He actually quadrupled hisincome after that happened
because he had shares ofStandard Oil which were sold off
into these other entities, andthe price of his shares
skyrocketed.
But ExxonMobil is one of themthat's still here.
You have Chevron, and of course,these are all companies that
(02:59):
you're familiar with, and itreally just started from one
person.
It's a really fascinating bookon how he became the richest
person in the world.
I recommend it.
It's really thick though, it'slike 600 pages or so, or maybe
more.
So it's definitely quite a read.
It's one of those books that youcan use as a weapon.
But it really got me thinkingthat a lot of pool pros aren't
(03:21):
really kind of future-orientedlike he was.
And to be future-oriented, whatI mean is you're out there
working, you don't really thinkabout it when you're in your 20s
and 30s as much as when you'rein your 40s and 50s, but you
can't do pool service forever.
It's just a fact.
I mean, if you look at sports,you know, the f the most anyone
(03:45):
plays or the age they reach.
Maybe if you're a kicker orquarterback, you can get into
your 40s.
I think Tom Brady was like 43 or44 when he retired.
Very rare.
I think the average uh tenure inthe NFL is like three or four
years, whatever is really short.
And so your body kind of wearsout and you start to feel the
(04:05):
effects of being out there.
For example, about 10 years ago,I had to just wear knee pads out
there every time I knee downbecause my knee just got damaged
over the years from kneeing downon the cement to where every
time I knee down without kneepads, it would cause me sharp
pain.
And so I wear one knee pad atleast.
(04:26):
I can kneel down on one knee,and it looks it looks fine.
I think people understand thatyou have to have protective gear
out there.
I also wear my nitrile glovesbecause the chemicals really
have an effect on your handsover the years, so you
definitely want to protectyourself.
If you're looking for any ofthis gear, by the way, just go
to my website,swingingpoollearning.com, go to
(04:47):
the bottom, you'll see the poolguy gear, and you can click on
the links to the gloves that Irecommend.
But I I definitely think youshould be protected.
A lot of pool pros get skincancer out there, they get
cataracts, there's a lot ofthings the sun can do to you,
and so you don't want to be outthere for 40 years doing pool
service.
With that said, how can youtransition at a pool service?
(05:10):
I did mention that Rockefellerreinvested in his own company,
and you can do that yourself.
You can build up a pool empirewhere you have 10 trucks, two
managers, three repair techs,and you kind of step back into
the background and you can kindof run it somewhat passively.
Now, true passive income is kindof a myth.
(05:32):
I mean, it can happen, but thereis something that you have to do
every so often, even if you'reinvesting in you know anything
in the market, you do have tomake some pivots sometimes and
some changes.
So it's not entirely justpassive in most regards, unless
you have someone managing yourmoney, then of course it's
totally passive.
But there is something, somelevel of involvement in one way
(05:56):
or another of all theseinvestments I'm going to talk
about in a minute.
But you can reinvest in yourcompany, build it up to be
self-sustaining with themanagement team and employees,
and kind of just run that fromthe background, and you're not
in the field anymore.
You're mainly in the officedoing little things to keep
things running.
That's perfectly fine, andthat's a great way to be
(06:18):
successful in the industry andkind of get yourself out of the
field.
I think this is something thatsome people are are ideally
geared towards.
Others wouldn't be able tohandle running an empire, it's
just not their personality.
Nothing against anyone doesn'twant to do this.
I don't want to do this myself,I wouldn't find this enjoyable.
(06:39):
Some people love it, they don'tmind dealing with all the
friction that comes withemployees and you know having a
large customer base.
But to me, that's not thedirection that I went.
And again, it's just yourpersonality.
If you are like a Rockefellerand want to build up an empire,
you could definitely do that,and there's nothing wrong with
that formula to create passiveincome because you can actually
(07:03):
generate a huge amount of moneyin the background with everyone
doing the pool service that youbuilt up.
Not a problem.
That's why these giant companiescome in here and buy up all
these pool routes because theyknow that the bigger they get,
the more revenue they cangenerate, the more they can
offset losses and other things.
And so you have you knownational pool partners, you have
(07:25):
the SPS pool care buying upcompanies and getting bigger and
bigger across certain stateshere because it is lucrative and
it does make a lot of money.
Now, I don't want to make anyonesad right now, but if you didn't
invest in certain things andyou're trying to jump in now,
some things are gonna be alittle late, I would say.
(07:48):
Other things you may be able tocreate more growth, like for
example, Bitcoin is a goodexample.
If you jumped in in like 2018when it was at 3782 Bitcoin, if
you don't know much aboutBitcoin, it's super interesting
and super confusing.
And I've done a lot of researchon it.
I don't invest in it myself, butI do know pool pros that have
(08:10):
and do invest in it, and they'vehad some bad years with it,
especially 2022.
But if you held on to it and youhave it now, it's like$84,000,
you know, for the Bitcoin.
It's pretty crazy.
So that's an increase ofastronomical amount if you
invested in 2017 or 2018 when itwas$37.80.
(08:31):
So definitely that's a goodinvestment in some regards.
I don't know if you would wantto buy it at this point, but if
you bought it back then, you didpretty well.
I think the stock market isalways something, and I'll touch
on gold, I guess, but I don'tinvest in gold either.
But I do know people who haveinvested in gold.
I actually know someone who soldhis gold at like 2,000 an ounce.
(08:52):
He was like, this is the highestever gonna get.
It's like at 4,000 right now, soit's crazy that it's even higher
than he thought it would get to.
Uh, I don't really do thateither.
To me, it doesn't seem like ityou're gonna grow the money as
fast, although it has growndramatically, of course.
So I kind of missed that boat, Iguess.
But let's just go to the stockmarket.
(09:12):
If you in 2008 invested, if youbought stocks in 2008, the
market was like at 8,000 points,and now it's at like 45,000
points, 46,000 points, so that'squite an increase there.
(09:45):
Averages about 10 to 12% a yearin growth, which is a pretty
good amount of return on yourmoney.
And if you do any kind ofcompound interest chart, you're
gonna see that you know, whenyou turn 65 or 68 or 70 when you
draw the money, you're gonnahave a pretty good nest egg to
draw from if you invested earlyenough.
NASDAQ, same thing, it prettymuch skyrocket.
(10:08):
It's rocketed from you know2,000 points to I think it's
like 15 or 18,000.
It's pretty high there too.
I have very little invested inthe market myself.
I have some Roth IRA money, butI don't have a lot of money in
the market, and it's somethingthat I haven't really leaned
towards.
And of course you can do that,and it's a perfectly safe
(10:30):
investment.
I just feel like for what I'mgeared towards and kind of what
most pool pros I think would bes have a specialty towards would
be real estate.
Because I feel like the stockmarket, yes, you're getting
money and you're gettingretirement money in a Roth IRA
or just mutual funds or howeveryou want to invest it, but you
(10:53):
can't really draw on that moneyuntil you're much older.
And to me, I would like to haveincome coming in now as well as
later.
Now there are a few stocks thatpay dividends, but there aren't
that many of them, and you cando that as well if you want some
money coming in every year, butI find that waiting for that
nest egg later on is not the waythat I like to invest.
(11:17):
Everyone's different, Iunderstand that.
So I'm not gonna say that oneinvesting method over another is
better than one.
And by the way, I'm not afinancial advisor, I'm just
talking here as a regularperson, and if you really wanted
to seek financial advice, get afinancial planner.
Most of them will, of course, beheavily leaning towards
(11:40):
investing in the market becausethey get some money from you
investing in different productsthat they have for you in the
stock market.
But to me, real estate hassomething has been something
I've been doing since 2001 whenI got my first rental property,
or we got our first rentalproperty, I should say, me and
my wife, and it's something thatI've kind of stuck with.
(12:01):
And the appreciation in realestate in California, I mean, if
you look at just the medianprice, and the median price, the
median price, I'll pronouncethat correctly here, is
basically half the home sold forless than this amount, half the
home sold for more than thisamount.
So it's kind of like the middleprice of houses in your area.
(12:22):
So in Los Angeles County, whichis my county, the median price
back in 2000 was 198,000.
Now that's you got to alsofactor in that things were
cheaper back then, minimum wagewas lower, the cost of goods
were lower, and so it's allrelative to the dollar.
(12:42):
This is why real estate, in myopinion, is the best investment
because your investment usuallygoes up with inflation, you
don't lose any ground becauseyou know, gas back in 2000
probably was what two dollars agallon.
I'm not I'm just guessing here.
Now it's like 480 a gallon, soit's doubled.
So back in 2000, let's just goback to 2000.
(13:06):
I'll go to 2000, I'll skip aheadbecause there were some pretty
rough years here, but I'll skipahead to 2013 when things
started rising in California.
So in 2013, the median homeprice was 430,000.
That means that half the homessold under 430, half sold for
over 430.
Let's jump ahead to 2018, itwent up to 620,000, and then if
(13:30):
you go to 2022, it's at 850,000.
That means that half the homesin Los Angeles County sold for
more than 850,000.
That's pretty crazy.
Then we get to 2024, which wasthe last year that of course
it's 2025 now, it's at 910.
So it keeps going up.
(13:51):
I mean, it can't keep going upwith these giant leaps all the
time, but I would think thatit's gonna pass a million
dollars this year if it hasn'tpassed a million dollars yet for
the median price.
That means that half the homessold here were over a million
dollars, and that's prettyinsane.
But if you bought houses since2001 like I have, and I've even
(14:11):
bought houses recently, becauseyou get good deals sometimes and
you can snatch up a good deal,you're gonna make out pretty
well because there are threethings in real estate, and I'll
just cover this briefly thatgive you an advantage over the
other investments.
One of them, of course, isappreciation.
You have the house, if you don'tdo anything for 30 years, it's
(14:34):
gonna be paid off, and so youhave whatever that house is
worth 30 years from now, you cansell it or transfer it in a 1031
exchange for something bigger,and you have a huge amount of
equity that you've earned overthe years.
Of course, capital gains isgonna take a big chunk of that
if you don't reinvest it, butyou're gonna have this nest egg
(14:54):
to pull from.
So if you bought a house for$500,000 and it's worth a
million in 30 years, you've made$500,000 after capital gains.
If you wanted to sell thathouse, you probably would net
like$300,000 roughly.
So that's a pretty good amountof money.
If you had five of these, whatis that like five times three,
$100,$1.8 million you would havein the bank if you sold all
those and paid capital gains?
(15:16):
Quite a lot of investment.
But over that 30-year period,you are also doing number two,
which is getting some rentalincome.
Some areas you get more rentthan others, more income than
others, but you'll generateincome usually, could be$200 per
unit, or you know,$100, even$100per unit.
If you have 30 units, that's$3,000 a month times$12.
(15:40):
That's$3,000 times$12,000 wouldbe$36,000 a year.
Of course, there's more money tobe had there.
I'm just giving you a lownumber.
But if you had 30 units andyou're making$400, there's
$120,000 a year, you're makingan income.
So there's income being producedover that 30-year period as
well, as well as debt pay down,as well as appreciation.
(16:03):
And then you have that assetthat's yours again after 30
years.
If you don't do anything, the30-year mortgage will be paid
off by the people living in yourproperty.
And of course, the third benefitof real estate are the tax
deductions.
The government kind of rewardsyou for providing housing.
The government can't provideenough housing across the
(16:23):
nation.
In fact, like in LA County, whenthey try to provide housing,
it's a total disaster.
They'll spend like$500,000 forlike a one-bedroom studio
apartment and put someone inthere.
It's a total loss, and it they'drather not do it.
They'd rather have you do it.
And so they reward you with somebenefits on your taxes.
(16:45):
Now, of course, you can't avoidpaying property taxes.
So if you have as much as manyinvestment properties as me, I
pay a ton of property taxes, andI'm okay with that because
that's part of investing.
But as far as your income taxes,it's a great way to offset any
of your self-employed or W-2income.
(17:05):
And it's a great way to offsetthat because all those
deductions, your mortgageinterest, your property taxes,
your insurance, yourdepreciation of each each unit
you have, all the repairs youput in there, anything you do to
that unit, any kind ofmodification or improvement, all
gets deducted on your taxes.
(17:26):
And if you have enough of theserental properties, you can
potentially not pay any incometax, but you are paying the
property tax.
Mind you, so you are payingsomething, but you're not paying
your income tax on your earnedincome because of all the
offsets that the real estateinvesting offers you.
Because the government, again,is kind of rewarding you for
(17:47):
providing housing, somethingthat they can't do effectively,
and they there's not enough ofit.
And so they rely on theseinvestors to provide housing for
Americans that need housing, andtherefore you have these tax
benefits, and they're prettylucrative.
If you have an investmentproperty, you know how well that
(18:07):
offsets your income taxes.
So to me, you can't really beatthat.
Now, as far as passive, you canhire a management company to, of
course, manage your rentals.
That's that makes it morepassive, but you still got to
manage the manager of thatmanagement company, or you can
do it yourself.
And the only time you're goingto really be investing your time
(18:29):
and energy in is when you have avacancy.
And currently I have two that Ihave to fill, and then I'm gonna
have three more coming up by thebeginning of the year.
It does happen, it's somethingthat you have to kind of handle,
and then of course, remodelingthe property or getting it ready
is another thing that youprobably want to supervise the
people doing the work.
(18:49):
But other than that, the moneywill come in passively most of
the time, except for thoseinstances.
Of course, you have repairs thathappen.
I just had a mainline leak undera driveway.
That was a pretty expensive,pretty expensive repair to do.
I feel bad about it because Ifeel like I just buried, you
know, 3600 bucks that I couldhave used for something else,
(19:12):
and it's buried under mydriveway, one of my rental
units.
But, you know, what can you doas as part of having the
properties?
But I think the benefitsoutweigh the any kind of
headaches, short-term headaches.
And I mentioned that poolservice pros are ideal for
rental properties, and I thinkbecause of the way we deal with
customers, we have greatcustomer service skills, at
(19:34):
least a lot of us do.
And that translates really easywhen dealing with tenants and
vendors and contractors, and Ithink you can deal with the city
no problem.
I even dealt with the citytwice, two different cities when
I did a full remodel, taking ahouse that was built in 1887 and
making it very modern.
The city was really tough onthat one.
(19:55):
And then another one where I hadan ADU that I finished the
permitting on and the contractorgave up on it, and I was able to
deal with the city, and you haveto have that personality to
where you know when the BarneyFife shows up, hey, I got this
insulation, it's not right, andyou need to have this, and you
can handle that kind of personbecause you handle them every
day in your pool route, not aproblem.
Tenants you can also handlepretty easily.
(20:16):
And then the second reason, andI'll end with this, that you are
ideally suited for this, is thatyou know the neighborhoods and
the area you're investing in.
You know what areas, whatpockets are good, and what
pockets are bad, where youwouldn't leave your truck parked
there with the riptide on theback without chaining it and
locking it.
So you have that ideal advantageof driving around your city and
(20:37):
knowing those good areas andthose bad areas.
So ideally, you would want toinvest somewhere within a
50-minute drive to your home soyou can you know manage the
rentals closer is better, butsometimes you can't buy close
because it's really expensive.
But if you can drive within like50 minutes to an hour to a
rental property, not a dealkiller for me, I do it all the
(20:59):
time, and it's a great way tomaximize your investment by
buying a little bit out of yourarea, but knowing the areas, and
of course, ideally, you wouldwant to get to get started on
investing in any of these thingsI mentioned.
The sooner the better.
The great thing about poolservice is that you're getting
an income that gives you theopportunity to invest and invest
(21:21):
rapidly because the time, theclock is ticking against you,
your body can't sustain workingout there doing 70 or 80 pools a
week for the rest of your life.
So realize that passive incomeis something that you are
working towards building.
And if you don't startimmediately, if you're in your
30s, you should have startedwhen you're in your 20s.
(21:43):
But if you're in your 40s, youshould have started in your 30s.
You get what I'm saying here,and the sooner you start, the
better.
Looking for other podcasts, ofcourse, you can go to my
website, ZoomingPole Learning,and on the banner, click on the
podcast icon.
That'll take you to a drop downmenu of other podcasts I have
there as well.
And if you're interested in mycoaching program, you can learn
more at poolguycoaching.com.
(22:05):
Thanks for listening to thispodcast.
Have a great week and God bless.
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