Special Ops to Real Estate Mogul

Mike Hambright (00:01.035)
Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. Today I’m here with Ashton Levarek and we’re gonna be talking about how to build a business, how to use real estate as a way to allow you to kind of design your life and build your best life. So Ashton, welcome to the show. Yeah, yeah. Happy to hear it. We started this conversation by you saying that you live full time in Costa Rica and you’re taking surf lessons and doing all that stuff. So I think the title is fitting here, like how to live your best life, right?

Ashton (00:13.912)
Thanks for having me, Mike. I’m happy to be here. Appreciate it.

Ashton (00:28.566)
Yeah, I mean, I hope so. think that’s what I think everybody wants to essentially do that. But, you know, on the same token, you want to inspire others to live to their full potential, too. So, you know.

Mike Hambright (00:40.405)
Yeah, yep. if you don’t mind, before we kind of get started here, you have a rich background of kind of how you got here, of time in the military and doing some amazing things. Would you mind just sharing your background and kind of how you got into real estate ultimately?

Ashton (00:55.98)
Yeah, so I joined the military at 18. We didn’t have the money to go to college. It was never even thought of. Like it never even can sit across my mind. There was just no way.

And I barely graduated high school, so anything to get me out of my hometown and independent and chasing adventure, I was all about it. So I joined the Coast Guard. I was a rescue swimmer for the Coast Guard for about six years. Then the war kicked off. I got into Para Rescue, which is a combat medic in special operations. I did about 15 combat deployments.

and about 2018, I was looking down the road, I’m like, okay, I’m gonna retire probably, because the war was dying down and there wasn’t much action going on and that’s what I was there for, so was like, what’s next? But I also had two little girls that I had, my wife was a full-time teacher and my brother had just lost some money in the stock market and he came to me and he’s like, hey man, I’m…

sick of investing in the stock market. I just lost this money. He lost like half his 401k and he’s like I’m thinking about getting into real estate and I and it it was weird because three years earlier it’s kind of a forward backward story but three years earlier I was on a hostage rescue mission in Afghanistan and this kid was making somewhere around like $20,000 a month. He was a was a flight medic on one of the helicopters we were on.

And he started talking about how he had all these rentals. And so I started picking his brain every night after every morning when we get back after missions and,

Ashton (02:33.966)
Yeah, so that’s how it started. So when my brother in 2018 said, I’m thinking about investing in real estate, it was like, had kind of been thinking about this over for three years almost. And I was like, let’s do it. And I had these notes from that conversation in my phone. And so within like 90 days, we got our first apartment or small apartment. Well, I guess it would call small multifamily. So Fourplex, my brother and I are very competitive and we basically made an agreement, like let’s get something under contract in the next 90 days. And we started

Mike Hambright (02:43.606)
Yeah.

Ashton (03:03.92)
reading every book, listening to every podcast, making the most ridiculous offers, all of them getting denied until that last one got picked up at day 75 of our 90 day challenge. And that became the biggest lesson in real estate investing and launched us into somewhere around 90 million in real estate transactions over the last seven years.

Mike Hambright (03:16.353)
Hmm.

Ashton (03:31.34)
You know, that’s not even the big part. The big part is I get to be home with my daughters. I’ve retired my wife. My wife and I had one of the most compelling or interesting conversations and they continue to do this. We continue to do this actually.

It was, well, I don’t know, two years ago and we were like, if we could live anywhere, where would we live? And so that’s when we started making lists and that’s how we ended up in Costa Rica. I’m a surfer. She’s a beach bunny and it made sense. And so now I surf half the week and the other half I’m working with other new investors and finding new real estate investments to be a part of. But

I think that has been the guiding star for me was always chase your passion. And real estate has never been my passion. It’s just enabled me to chase my passion. Same thing with the military.

Mike Hambright (04:21.931)
Yeah. How did you, so how did you make that transition? Cause a lot of people that get into real estate, they get, they get hung up in the, in the weeds pretty quickly with being in the operations, trying to grow, trying to get out of their own way maybe. But it takes, it takes something inside of you to know that like, Hey, this is just the thing that’s going to get me the thing. This isn’t really the thing. You know, a of people get caught up. They get, you know,

I say that I’ve said this before, like I used to be in love with real estate and now it’s just the vehicle that gets me to where I want to go. But, but how, is there something that happened or was it, you just went into it knowing, knowing that and feeling that already.

Ashton (04:58.798)
So I think the military played a huge part in this. I’ve been to driving schools, racing schools, to parachute schools, and every time… And same thing with with shooting. I was in sniper school.

it always comes back to target, your target. What is your target? And I don’t think people give themselves the freedom to actually identify their target because we’ve been conditioned in certain way to go to school. So good grades are the target, but that’s not really the target. Getting to college is the target, but that’s not really the target either. Getting good grades, going to college and then getting a good job is what they tell you the target is, but that’s not really it either. When you boil it down, what do you truly want? And I always tell people, can I cuss on here? I don’t know if I…

Mike Hambright (05:42.283)
Do it, yeah.

Ashton (05:43.342)
Alright, so I always ask people like, what the fuck do you really want? Like, and I like to stress that because like truly, what do you want? Because when you boil it down, it’s not money. It’s not hat. It’s not even happiness at times. It’s just freedom.

Mike Hambright (05:46.645)
Hahaha

Ashton (05:55.564)
Right? You want freedom. we tell ourselves, okay, this nine to five with a good retirement that I only have to work five days a week. We tell us ourselves that is giving us what we want, but that’s really not it. And you know it’s not it because when you talk to these people, well, some people maybe, but most people you talk to them and they’re like, I got to go back to that soul sucking job on Monday and I can’t wait till Friday. And like, that’s how you know, like you’re not free. You’re tied to something. You only get so many weekends a year of free time.

Mike Hambright (06:22.881)
Yeah.

Ashton (06:25.748)
Right and that’s you know how much gosh when you look at the statistics of what happens to kids without fathers, right? It’s unbelievable and you can be there and not be there I know because I’ve done it right you can be a father and not be there and your kids feel it their grades feel it their behavior feels it I mean, that’s what I get fired up about is helping other people get to where they really want to be identify what you really want

Mike Hambright (06:53.015)
Yep. Yep.

Ashton (06:53.334)
and go after it. And real estate has allowed me to do that. Rental income, right?

Mike Hambright (06:58.251)
Yep, yep. And how do you, then how do you…

Once you get to a point, and there’s some people that are like comfortable with where their life’s at and they don’t need anymore, they don’t want anymore, they just live a simple life, not that there’s anything wrong with that. And then there’s people that are doing maybe what you’re doing, but they’re still trying to build up something that allows them to do X. Like it could be, for some people it could be having more stuff, which as you and I both know, that doesn’t matter, it’s more about experiences and the time, right? Or there’s people that just wanna have a bigger impact so they can reach

more people to try to like share their message like what does that mean for you? What does growth mean for you?

Ashton (07:37.27)
Yeah, so that’s a great, I think, I love this topic. This is actually what I’m writing my book about right now. But I think this, you know, think, what is his name? Tony Robbins summed it up in a simple phrase, if you’re not growing, you’re dying.

And you know, like I could talk to you, tell me your daily life and I will tell you, you are stifling your true potential. You are, you are perverting it. You are diluting it or distracting yourself from it. And this comes down to accountability, right? When you get home, when you are home, when you have no free time or when you have free time, what do you do? Do you distract yourself from reality? And what I would say is every man

feels most alive when he is building something, when he’s chasing that woman, when he’s chasing that dream, that job, that income, whatever there. There is something about men that makes us want to build and and conquer and do these things. And when we’re watching TV and drowning ourselves in alcohol, drugs and porn and all that crap, that is stifling our true potential as men. Right. And you can see it in their eyes. Right. Like there’s a there is, you know, when you’re watching TV and you’re sitting back with a beer, like there’s so much more in life.

You’re watching some guy on TV score a touchdown and he’s living his best life and you’re living through him. But there are things that you could be doing. And I’m not saying that to say don’t drink, don’t watch TV. I’m just saying we have to be careful because…

I think that men, when they’re in their prime, which your prime could be for the rest of your life if you do it right, you are always growing because there’s something that makes you feel like… I was out the other day and it had been a while since the waves had been big and they were probably like five, six feet and they’re huge. I mean they seemed huge for the compared to the three to four feet that we’ve had over the last month and there’s something inspiring when you’re… it was risk or difficulty.

Ashton (09:37.63)
you’re facing that wave barreling down on you and you’re just like, yes, let’s do it. And men need that. We need that. That is what drives us. so if facing death, like when I went into the military, I loved it. Send me on the next deployment. That was my passion. I want to do it. But when you’re facing death or difficulty or risk, you get into this state, and this is one of my biggest pieces for people that get stuck, get out of your small mind

into something that challenges you or is risky because what that does is it pushes you into this flow state where you’re no longer in the small conscious mind but you you get into the they say it’s heart-mind coherence or flow state or meditation like there’s so many ways to describe this the Zen Buddhist call it no mind but when you do that you get into the state of perfection where you are growing but you’re also in your perfect state to be and build and conquer and but when we are drowning ourselves in

these other distractions we just we just don’t do that and you see it I mean you know it if you were to analyze your own life we would you’d know where you’re you’re slacking because you have everybody has 24 hours in a day Elon Musk does not have more but he’s somehow building more right so

Mike Hambright (10:38.78)
yeah.

Mike Hambright (10:48.775)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s amazing. Yeah, I think there’s a lot of people especially people that are not entrepreneurs yet that like are very adverse to like risk right and you’re like and I know based on everything you just said you’ll agree with this it’s like People ask me all the time. I mean, I just throw you just throw yourselves in risky situations because as an entrepreneur You’re paid by solving problems, right? So like give me some problems like give me something to go do I don’t want to just sit here and

Ashton (10:58.732)
Yeah.

Ashton (11:13.602)
Yes, yeah.

Mike Hambright (11:16.491)
Like you said, take it easy because that doesn’t help me grow as a human.

Ashton (11:20.994)
You want to see the level of a man, like I think look at the level of problems he’s facing, right? If guys are trying to minimize their problems, you can tell they’re trying to live a small life. And where does that come from? Probably from conditioning, something they learned as a kid, fear of failure, like that kind of stuff. But I get it, I’ve been there. But the other side, like everything you ever wanted is on the other side of that fear.

Mike Hambright (11:47.895)
So let’s talk a little bit about the importance of kind of where you get your advice from, like who you surround yourself with, because that plays a big role in a lot of things that we just said, right? Like if you’re around people that are just going to the bar every night and hanging out and taking the easy path versus those that are talking about bigger things, bigger challenges, how to solve problems, how to impact more people, it takes you down a very different path in your life. So just talk about maybe the importance of that.

Ashton (11:57.762)
Yeah.

Ashton (12:15.18)
Yeah, I think I can’t remember if it Alex Hermosy or somebody else has said it. And I’ve said it a couple of times. I’m not even sure if I quoted somebody else, but.

I love this quote, it’s like, don’t take advice from broke people. If you hang around five fat people, you’ll be the sixth. If you hang around five lazy people, you’ll be the sixth. The same goes with wealth and success and happiness. Who are you around? Who do you surround yourself with? And these are intentional, I don’t care. You can say, they’re family, I can’t write them off. They’re absolutely not.

your crowd. If you don’t want to be where they are, don’t hang out with them, right? And it does take, it takes a self audit, you got to audit yourself, like, what could I be doing? Who could I be around more? If it’s just like, if you’re in prison, and there’s nobody else, you know, put yourself in a hole and read books, those could be your biggest influences. I’ll tell you right now, like books changed my investment strategy over the last seven years, you know, dramatically. And those were my influences.

until I started getting around other people that were doing it. But that helped me identify who I needed to be around too. And then I started paying to be around other people in masterminds and other communities. But in the beginning, it could be just around…

some other people that are dreaming of other things, right? Just building that discipline, building that knowledge. But it does, man, it does take an effect. My mom used to have this analogy, like if you ever see crabs inside of a bucket, one will start to climb out and the others will just pull them back down in. And that’s how your crowd works, right? So if you’re trying to change your lifestyle, you’re trying to level up your happiness, your income, whatever, like get around those people that are already where you want to be.

Mike Hambright (13:55.96)
Yep, yep. So let’s talk about kind of designing your life around your passion. I think a lot of people, like they try to make money first, they try to like get to a point where like, when I get here, then I’ll do that, right? But you’ve just kind of thrown yourself into the mix by moving your family to Costa Rica, for example. But let’s just talk about, you know, having a passion and then building a business and a life around it.

Ashton (14:20.022)
Yeah, so, you know, one of the most debilitating thoughts is I don’t have the power to change, right?

And that comes from we build that around excuses. We build those around our excuses. Right. So if we get in, if we say, well, you look at somebody like Grant Cardone or Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or whatever, and you’re like, I don’t have those. I don’t have the opportunities they had. Well, that’s a bunch of baloney. mean.

I don’t care who you are. There’s a million, multi-million dollars worth of money out there available to you if you want to get started in something. There’s small business loans, lines of credit, personal lines of credit. There’s equity, loans against equity, loans against insurance. Like there’s so much money out there. And I just bring that up because that’s where most people stop. They’re like, I don’t have the money. I only make $50,000 to $70,000 a year because that’s the average in America, right? So how am I supposed to buy a rental that costs $400,000? That’s the average cost of a home, right?

Yeah, fair enough, but you don’t have to use your own money. You could use other people’s money. That’s how Elon Musk started, right? He took a loan against his PayPal stock. He didn’t use his own money. But the point is, lose the excuses. Lose the excuses and the possibilities are endless. There’s a great, I think Alex Mosley did say this one. He said, ask yourself what you believe.

And what of those beliefs are not beliefs are not true. Are there any of your beliefs that are not true for other people? And could you change those for yourself? Right? Like you have zero money, you have zero experience, you have zero in education on this. Can you get started? Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I think did that answer your question?

Mike Hambright (16:08.469)
Yeah, think a lot of people have a hard time identifying that one of their beliefs is wrong, because they believe it, right? That’s the challenge. But I think kind of going back to the last conversation we were having on surrounding yourself with the right people, is like you start to realize, you start to pick up on like, well, why are they not struggling with this? Like, well, they don’t believe that, right?

Ashton (16:15.276)
Yeah. Yeah.

Ashton (16:29.302)
Yeah, yeah. I think it’s a good, know, over the last whatever, eight, 10 years, the blame game has been really big. So we blame other people, other demographics.

And that is you know, that’s a sinking ship to be on you don’t want to be on the blaming ship because there’s you know You’ve just given away all your power when you say it’s because the rich don’t pay taxes that our taxes are so high You’ve essentially given up your power to learn how to be rich, right? Now yeah, they’re your whole problem or you saying I don’t have enough money or like there’s always a way around it And again, there’s so many books to inspire and push you to learn

because so many people have started from zero.

Mike Hambright (17:15.029)
Yeah, for sure, mean, there’s, yeah, it’s amazing. There’s too many people out there that have done this that it’s easy to make excuses, it’s just holding you back. Yeah. So talk about, like, how do people get there? How do they get from wherever they are now to kind of more freedom in their life?

Ashton (17:30.414)
So I think it does, it starts with like a self-audit and not in the sense that, how much time am I spending? I mean yes that’s important, how much money I’m spending, that’s important too. But I think…

I think what it really boils down to is like, what do you truly want? Like if in 10 years, right, you were living your best life and you and I sat down for a coffee, what had to happen over the next 10 years to live the best life? Something that is so inspiring that you cannot wait to get up in the morning, right? I see that with my kids, like they want to get up at five in the morning. Like, what are you guys doing? It’s Saturday, sleep in. We don’t have to go to school, right?

But something in them, they’re so excited for the day, they can’t wait. Like that’s the kind of thing that we need in our life. That’s the goal we need. What really inspires you? Maybe it’s giving a talk in front of thousand people. Maybe it’s just waking up to kiss your wife. Maybe it’s traveling the world. But maybe it’s just teaching your kid how to ride a bike. You have to write down what truly inspires you. And I posted this earlier today actually. I think part of the problem is people just don’t…

big enough goals. You need something. Here’s a great example. 9-11. 9-11. And it was a tragedy. But imagine how many young men and women it inspired to sign up and put their name on the line saying, I’m gonna serve my country for better or worse because this shouldn’t have happened. That’s the kind of inspiration you need. You need to be signing up for your dreams like that. Right? Like I’m willing to die for this or be successful.

And I think that’s the audit I’m talking about. What truly lights you up? It could be anything, but it needs to light you up so much that it propels you to commit to success or to learning along the way, right? Because that’s the thing, we always think, I’m so afraid of failure, but there is no failure when you’re truly committed. When you’re truly committed, there’s success or you learn. There’s success or you learn, and then there’s success, right? So that’s how I see it.

Mike Hambright (19:32.503)
Yep, yep, yep, yeah. I always say that failure is just a stepping stone to success. mean, it’s not failure if it’s not final. Like if you quit, and that’s what I see with lot of non-entrepreneurs, they’re afraid to fail, but as an entrepreneur, you’re like, man, I know I’m gonna get beat up, but I gotta jump in and I’ll work it out.

Ashton (19:44.909)
Yeah.

Ashton (19:51.672)
Yeah, all failure is psychological until death, right? Death is the only true failure, but everything else is psychological. Like you can lose all your money and come back. You could lose your health, come back. You you could lose your love, your family and come back, right? There’s, I mean, it’s terrible, but you’ll learn a lot.

Mike Hambright (20:11.553)
Yeah.

Ashton (20:11.694)
I mean, we learned a lot on our first investment property. I’ll tell you what, like we were pulling our hair out. We had to come up with $90,000 in the last 30 days because we had underestimated rehab. Like for most people that make, I made maybe 110,000 a year and I had to come up with $90,000 in 30 days. Like that’s, well, fuck it, we’re doing it. We better figure this out. And so like that’s the type of inspiration you need.

Mike Hambright (20:29.953)
Alright.

Mike Hambright (20:35.201)
Yeah.

Yeah, that’s awesome. So can you share your, I know you have kind of a three step strategy to the kind of financial freedom. Are you willing to share that?

Ashton (20:46.892)
Yeah, absolutely. and I kind of went through this actually, we kind of just talked through it, but the first step is you have to get clarity. I think clarity is the key.

Clarity drives inspiration, clarity drives commitment. when you’re truly, like we said, when you’re truly committed, there’s nothing that can stop you. When you’re truly inspired, you can have that commitment. So you have to backwards plan from that end goal. In the military, you get really good at this. This is something we do all the time. You take a no fail mission and how can we actually be successful without having a massive catastrophe along the way, right? And so you have to look at the end goal and then backwards plan for there. So like say, if you looked out five to 10 years and then you backwards plan, okay,

Where do I need to be in three years to know I’m on track? Where do I need to be in? 365 days to know I’m on track for my three-year goal. Okay Where do I need to be in the next 90 days to know I’m on track for my? 365 day goal and then back down and you can get so nitpicky with this that you know exactly what you need to be doing right this second the Some people call it your men’s your most important next step or win what’s important now? Like that is how you teach actual focus and make an impact. So that’s the first step you have to get clarity then the other the next step is

you have to get out of your small mind. So we’re all conditioned in some way, or form. And 99 % of the population…

is not living their dream life. So I would say 99 % of the population is conditioned to live small, right? And that means small income, small love life, small family life. Like that’s what I’m talking about. Small health, bad health, whatever. So you have to get out of your conditioned mind. And to do that, we take small risks to get out. And the more you do that, all of a sudden you build this faith in self. And that faith in self can carry you through everything, right? Because just like when me and my brother were facing that like, hey, you need $90,000. Otherwise this isn’t

Ashton (22:33.712)
of work. We believed we could do it so we didn’t back out, right? I don’t know why we believed we could do it. Honestly, we’d never done a real estate deal in our life, but we did. Maybe it’s because I’ve been to the gym so many times. Maybe it’s because I’ve been to combat. Maybe it’s because my brother was an IT specialist. I don’t know, but that’s the point. You have to get out of your comfort zone. The more you’re out of your comfort zone, the more you build faith in yourself. And now you can execute on that path, on that dream. And then the last step

And actually all of these can happen at the same time, but the clarity is the big piece, the kicking point, because the more clear you are, the easier the other two parts become. But the last one is getting around other people that are doing what you want to do, that are living the life that you want to live.

And I would say like, you gotta be careful with this because you may say, these are very wealthy people. I wanna be around these wealthy people because they built successful businesses. But what’s their love life look like? What’s their relationship with their wife? Are they all divorced? How’s their relationship with their kids? And I say this.

With full compassion because I know a lot of it like I come from a broken home I know a lot of it is not intentional like especially as men we get heads down We’re trying to build a life for our family, but we come home and we realize, you know We’ve neglected our family or we’ve neglected our health And so what I what I say there is like you it’s again goes back that clarity what you should build clarity around not just your finances But your health your relationships and your mindset right your mentality and that should all tie into that and then when you’re

picking the crowd you want to be around, they should match your your goal in the future, right? So you could be around a bunch of millionaires that have terrible love life, terrible family life.

Ashton (24:11.606)
that’s going to wear on you. That’s going to play into how you and your family interact and how your health is. so you, think those four realms are very important, but yes. So clarity, get out of your small mind and then, be around other people that are living the life that you want to, or at least on the path.

Mike Hambright (24:21.569)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (24:31.787)
Yeah, that’s great. Yeah. Just as like real estate is not the thing that gets you the thing. The business isn’t the thing that gets you the, like if everything else falls apart, like what’s the point of the business, right? Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, Ashton, thanks for sharing your story with us today and some insights. If folks want to connect with you, where can they go?

Ashton (24:40.502)
Right, yeah.

Ashton (24:50.094)
So I’m all over Instagram. I’m on tik-tok. I’m on LinkedIn but you can go to our website Valkyrie group comm and that’s spelled V al ke re group comm and You know, we’re always buying apartment complexes and we’re always we also have a coaching program for guys that want to scale their life their passion their purpose So that’s what we do

Mike Hambright (25:14.507)
That’s awesome. Well, thanks again for spending some time with us today. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everybody, hope you got some great insights from today. This is all about really just kind of designing your best life, right? I think, you know, as I get a little bit older in life, I realize just how important it is to live the best life that you want because you’re not getting any younger, right? Things don’t get, generally don’t get easier as you get older. So you might as well design that as early as you can. So thanks again, Ashton. Great to see you, buddy. Yep, everybody have a great day. We’ll see you on the next show.

Ashton (25:17.408)
Absolutely. Thank you for having me, Mike. I appreciate it, man. You got me all fired up.

Ashton (25:40.482)
Thank you, you too man, appreciate it.

Take care.