How to Build Wealth & Create Work-Optional Freedom with Justin Moy

What if financial freedom didn’t mean retiring at 65—but designing a life you love right now? In this episode, I’m joined by Justin Moy, commercial real estate investor and host of the Passive Real Estate Strategies podcast. Justin shares how he went from selling homes in California to hitting work-optionality by age 31—all by investing in cash-flowing commercial real estate.

We dive into the difference between the FIRE movement and true freedom, how to get started in real estate without managing toilets, and why being frugal isn’t always the answer. If you’re looking for a smart, strategic way to build wealth and break away from the 9–5 path, this episode is packed with value.

---

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

✅ What “work optional” actually means—and how Justin achieved it by 31
✅ The difference between saving your way to FI vs. investing for freedom
✅ How to start investing in commercial real estate (even without experience)
✅ What makes a great passive real estate deal—and how to avoid bad ones
✅ Why most people don’t know where to start with FIRE, and how to find your niche
✅ The two key traits that all financially independent people share
✅ How to align with your dream life by getting in the right rooms

---

Resources & Links:

🎧 Listen to Justin’s Podcast:  Passive Real Estate Strategies

💻 Download Justin’s Work-Optionality Calculator & Due Diligence Checklist → presidentsclubinvestors.com

---

Connect With Me:

💸 Check out The Manifestation March → Manifestation March!
🎙 Follow the Podcast on Instagram → @ManifestationAndMoneyPodcast

If you loved this episode, please take a moment to ⭐ rate & review ⭐ on Apple Podcasts or Spotify! Your support helps spread the messag

Episode Transcript

Jenni (00:00):
. Well, welcome to the manifestation and money podcast. Justin

(00:01):
I do my best to stay in my lane and control what I control. And just bring in good information that's helpful. So it's tough now though.
, and I knew I didn't want to go to college. I didn't know why I couldn't really explain it. I didn't really resonate with that path, but of course my parents being good parents are, well, you got to do something. And what's that thing going to be? . I was always very good at selling things. Like when I played football in high school and I was the number one athletic booster coupon book sales guy.
And so that's , the 10, 000 foot view kind of broad strokes of it. We can dive in wherever you'd like, but you've been in real estate really my whole professional life almost as a way to. Buy my freedom because I knew that I was always interested in that path.
You know, I just thought it was one, but , my ignorance, , and to me, that. Retire early, never really like felt what I wanted to do. And it's funny when I mentioned this to other people that were in the same situation as me pursuing the same goals, , had the same sort of drive to create the life that I wanted.
Yeah. Thanks for sharing that. Cause it's so true. The fire movement, , it's such a broad spectrum and you find the more you dig into it, it's like this fun little rabbit hole.
This is what I want. I had a certain, , passive income number so I was being you know more cheap than I am now because I just had this goal that I was really really driven towards but , you do read of some people taking it to the extremes where I can only have beans and rice so many times until I'm like, this sucks.
Yeah, definitely. So that one example that you shared, you're coming from that really contracted space. You're like, how much can I take away from my life to meet that end goal? Whereas the other path is so much more expansive where you're like, how can I live this life that I want to live? And create the income streams to support that life that I want to live.
And again, you can only save so much so you can only pull your quality of life down so much to save as much as you can. But when you expand and go to that mindset, instead you have everything open to you.
Now when I first started the average cash flow return that was an acceptable investment for an investor in a hot market and one of the most desirable markets in the country was five percent. Now the year after that it was like Three or 4 percent was okay. Then the year after that people were happy to break even.
So I naturally thought, well, how can I just hit scale? And commercial, on the other hand, it is priced as an asset. No bank will give you a loan, and no buyer will ever buy a piece of commercial property without a loan. The promise of cashflow. So to me, it made a lot more sense from an investor's perspective.
So can you share, , For somebody who's like, okay, I want to go into real estate investing commercial that appeals to me. Where's kind of a starting point for that?
You could do residential commercial, which are large apartment buildings. , that's what I tend to do a lot of, I think the average apartment. That I invest in is probably 160 units to maybe 200 units or so. , and those can actually be easier to do than the 10 unit or 12 unit. And then. If you go beyond that, you have things that I really like RV parks, mobile home parks, self storage units, parking garages.
Now, if you want to be active, that's fine. Go do that. But if you want to be passive, You want to be a capital partner. You want to invest in a group that's doing all the work for you in exchange for the money. And in my opinion, that's a much more risk adjusted way to do it because you don't have to do these things.
And it was me and a couple of , other friends. Now I had joined a mastermind group and it was fairly expensive. So everybody in there was pretty serious about these goals. And I met a guy who was a general contractor and a builder, and I found a deal that was. It was a piece of crap. It was garbage.
Contradictory information, like we would have some inspectors say, Oh, you failed inspection because you got to do A, B, and C. No problem. We fix it. The next inspector comes out and says, well, those are the old regulations. Now you got to do these ones. Now. I mean, we just severely underestimated all of those things.
I don't like it because of this. And I'm talking through the deal and then they would go, okay, , is this a good deal? Do you think? I said, well, yeah, I think so. I'm going to invest in it. I'm like, okay, well, can I invest in it too? And I said, well, yeah, , I don't see why not. Then eventually so many people ask you and you just think, okay.
In exchange, we want more profits share, or we want better terms. So we want something else. , if we come to terms on that, then I go to my investors and say, Hey, we're investing in this. If you want to invest in it, , I'll kind of raise the money and we all invest together. Now I make money by making a little bit of extra equity from the operating team and our investors get preferred terms into deals that they may.
They didn't even know what questions to ask. They didn't even know what they should be looking for. So to have somebody that is doing that piece of it for you and also investing with you.
Definitely. , that trust. You want to have that trust in the person that you're investing with and all investments come with risks at some point, but you want to know that the person that you're aligned with is in it with you.
They're going, like you said, I think earlier at uphill walk is you're walking uphill when you're stepping into them. And that's not a good feeling. You want to come from a place of. Being able to get some returns. So I appreciate you sharing that. Yeah.
Tend to study a lot. There's a couple trends that I like to pursue and see what what commonalities people have My first one is yes financial independence by whatever meaning that is for you And if you study fire moving a lot, , there's like fat fire lean fire, you know Whatever whichever one you want is fine But just when somebody has that feeling of I did it I hit my financial independence, whatever that means It's like this weight off of you.

(00:22):
, not that if you're not in that younger age bracket, like it's too late, like it's always time, but that's just so fascinating to me when somebody is able to do that. So when somebody is able to do it with those caveats, , I've met a lot of people that have done it before 40 and the common traits that I see.
And then second, I noticed a lot of investment in alternative assets, real estate, private businesses, some worked at startups where they invested in the startup and they had this big, , exit or this IPO, , something about it was just, they weren't just investing in, , our public markets.
Those are really valid points. And oftentimes, I mean, it's probably the same in the U. S. as it is in Canada, we are getting sold by the media, what we're expected to hear, what is happening with the markets, and that's the normal stuff you're hearing about. So this non conventional stuff, you mentioned earlier, it's all about getting into the right rooms, so to you, where do you think the average Joe should be showing up to hear and get their headspace into seeing what the other options are out
. I think if you look at the fire movement in general, very, very big world, I'm all about getting specific and what you want. I believe I have the saying that I like, I forgot who I heard it from, , or I'd give them credit, but it was, you can have anything in life you want, but you can't have everything.
If it's real estate, that's a great start. Now find out what that niche is. Maybe it's commercial, maybe it's residential. If it's residential, is it flips? Is it longterm rentals? Is it Airbnbs? Are you wholesale? What is it going to be? Then when you have that clear path, you can get into those circles, find the social media accounts that you want to follow, find the podcasts that you like.
So that's so valid. All of this is super fascinating, Justin. I would love for you to let listeners know where they can reach out and find you.