Why Great Investors Build Skills Instead Of Just Picking Investments

Russ Morgan (00:00)
Our company’s mission Q is to help a million people become financially free. Right. And that means that your passive income exceeds your monthly expenses. And so that’s what I’m up to. And we have a team that’s been working hard at this for the last 10 years to help people get there. We’ve helped several thousands at this point. And I’m excited every single time I get to come and share the message, because there’s usually just one nugget, one constraint, one missing thing that people

⁓ need to hear or need to learn that will help unlock them like it did for me. You talked about the origin story for me that unlocked was that Wall Street wasn’t going to get me

So when you hear my brand Wealth Without Wall Street, it’s intentional because I was an investment advisor.

Quentin (02:15)
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host Q Edmonds and I am excited to be here today. I have a fantastic guest and listen, y’all know me. I’m an active listener. I write things now, but this gentleman is a wealth of knowledge. He’s done a lot of different things. mean, 15 asset classes is what I heard him mention, right? So this gentleman is proficient in a lot of different areas. So I’m going let him explain everything that he do.

But I’m so excited that he’s here. We’re going to learn a lot today. And I’m so glad that we’re going to have a chance just to peek through his lens of some of the different things that he does. And so I love to introduce you all to Mr. Russ Morgan. Mr. Russ, how you doing today, sir?

Russ Morgan (02:52)
Mm.

Q, man, thank you so much for having me on. What a wonderful introduction. Excited to be here.

Quentin (03:05)
Absolutely,

man. I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you’re taking up space with us, time with us. I think time is our most precious commodity. So trust and believe I don’t take it lightly that you gave us your time. So I thank you for being here. And I am the type, Mr. Russ, I like to dive right in. So I would love for you to tell people what’s your main focus these days. If you don’t mind, give us a little bit of an orgy story. Kind of how you got into the space that you’re in.

And then man, tell them what part of the world you’re in. People love to know what people are geographically. So Mr. Russ, what you’re up to, your origin story, and where you are. Sir, you have the floor, Yes, sir.

Russ Morgan (03:42)
Yeah. Thank you. Well,

company’s mission Q is to help a million people become financially free. Right. And that means that your passive income exceeds your monthly expenses. And so that’s what I’m up to. And we have a team that’s been working hard at this for the last 10 years to help people get there. We’ve helped several thousands at this point. And I’m excited every single time I get to come and share the message, because there’s usually just one nugget, one constraint, one missing thing that people

⁓ need to hear or need to learn that will help unlock them like it did for me. You talked about the origin story for me that unlocked was that Wall Street wasn’t going to get me

So when you hear my brand Wealth Without Wall Street, it’s intentional because I was an investment

I was a certified financial planner. I had all the ⁓ accolades and achievements and awards and all the stuff to go with it. But unfortunately,

I realized in 2008 that the market had a different plan in mind and it wasn’t for helping me. And so Wall Street really is built more so for people who are on the other side of it and earning fees and everything else. And I started learning how to build passive income strings for myself the hard way. I’ve lost a lot of money. You know, I tell people I’ve lost more than most people ever invest. And that’s not something I’m proud of. But it’s the lesson that if I don’t share it with someone else, then I’d be pretty selfish.

So my business partner and I are focused on teaching people that the biggest obstacle to becoming financially free is lack of access to cash. And the greatest way to become financially free is that you got to become a great investor. And most people have just never learned how to do that. They try to pick investments instead of improving and sharpening their investing skill.

Quentin (06:17)
Thank you, Thank you for sharing. As you’ve been talking, I’m actively listening, so I’m writing. I’m scribbling. As you talk, I’m trying to keep up on scribbling. So thank you. Thank you for taking us through the journey. Thank you for telling us how you started, what you do, how you got there. What I like to do here, I of like to regurgitate, summarize what you told me, kind of give it back to you, because I want to make a statement and I want to ask you a question. All right? And so you’ve

The goal is to help a million people become financially free. I mean, wow. And you have a great team that’s helping you do that. Kind of what unlocked it for you, you know, you was on Wall Street,

kind of wasn’t getting you where you wanted to go. Right. And so decorated advisor. mean, you, well accoladed, decorated advisor, but still you was like,

This is still not the way that you want this to go. So learn how to build passive income, kind of learned it the whole way. You know, had some losses, but learned the whole way. But you’re not selfish. You learn and you’re not selfish. So pretty much that led to you wanting to help others. And so again, the goal help a million people become financially free. Is that a pretty good summarization? Yeah. Okay. And so Mr. Russ, I make this statement probably every podcast.

Russ Morgan (07:31)
Yeah, totally.

Quentin (07:39)
I say destiny has no wasted moments, right? If you look in your past, if you look, track your story and you know, this is everybody listening. You track your story. Momentum has been built into the moment that you’re at now and you’ve been borrowing from the journey and it’s reinforced your mindset. It’s built your wild, you know, why you do what you do. You can, you know, probably articulate your passion. And so what has the moments, what has the journey taught you about yourself?

Has it taught you discipline, resilience? Has it changed your outlook when it comes to innovation? Like, what has the journey taught you about you,

Russ Morgan (08:16)
Yeah, I saw this analogy one time and I think this is what it’s taught me is that if you took a you took a nickel, I don’t even know if they still make nickels. They don’t make pennies anymore. But if you took a nickel and you drew a circle around it, you move the nickel and you looked at that little circles tiny, right? If if everything inside of that circle represented my knowledge, right? And everything that touched the edge of that circle represent everything that I didn’t know. What I have learned over the journey is that

Quentin (08:26)
Bye.

Russ Morgan (08:46)
As I acquire information, right, as my knowledge grows, so is that that nickel becomes a quarter or that quarter becomes, ⁓ you know, the bottom of a cup and that circle keeps getting larger and larger and larger. The one thing I’ve learned is that now the things touching the outside edge of that keep getting bigger and bigger too. And so what I’ve learned is that I’ll never arrive in knowledge and I’m constantly trying to seek insight and information.

Quentin (08:53)
Mm-hmm.

Whoa.

Russ Morgan (09:15)
but also know that information doesn’t create transformation. And so it’s the experience, right? Knowledge doesn’t equal understanding, experience does. And so for me, I’m always trying to figure out how can I get more experience in the areas that I’m interested in, curious in, and I think that’s led me, unfortunately, to some of the mistakes, right? Because I chased some rabbits down too deep a hole I shouldn’t have been in, but it also has led me to meeting some of the most amazing people in the world, right? Being on podcasts like this with you and…

Quentin (09:37)
Yeah.

Russ Morgan (09:45)
and learning from people that ⁓ opportunity is a bound. And so for me, that is one of the areas I’d say it’s led to.

Quentin (09:53)
So beautifully said, man. So beautifully said. And I’m with you. The more that I learn and know, the more I realize there’s so much that I don’t know.

You know, the more is, you know. And I love how you’re so, and thank you for the gift of your vulnerability, willing to talk about the lessons learned, right? You know, I have a saying, listen, Russ, I thought I coined this statement that I’m about to say. I thought it was mine. And so what I was really sort of researching, because I was about to make some moves with this statement.

Russ Morgan (10:35)
Yeah.

Quentin (10:54)
I realized I wasn’t the only one saying it, but I still love saying it though. I always, I say, you know, failure is fertilizer, you know, failure is fertilizer. Like, and when you look at fertilizer, some of it is just dung, it’s mess, it’s stinky, you know, but that can be the best fertilizer. And if you allow yourself to grow from the failure, it gives you nutrients that increases your capacity. How you started, you know, talking about the nickel, like you will increase your capacity.

if you allow the hard situation or the failure to grow you. And before you know it, that fertilizer starts to change. It turns into greenery, the smell changes. It becomes much more tolerable. It becomes something that’s plush, right? It can cushion the fall. Like that failure that once was mess or something that you rather not dealt with, it becomes into something very, very great. And so I love the fact, you know,

What I’m synthesizing is you talk about the growth mindset, right? Like us growing into our capacity. And so I appreciate that man. So eloquently said, I appreciate you giving feedback on that question. And I try to tell people when it comes to our businesses, we are at the center of our businesses. Like one thing we can’t escape is us. And so sometimes just realizing where we are, where we came from, it just helps out the journey. And so, man, I appreciate you. Let me ask you, sir, what is the next real goal?

for you and your business. know we got, you know, 100 million people we’re trying to teach, you know, trying to reach, but what’s the next real goal? What are you looking to solve at Scale Next?

Russ Morgan (12:26)
Yeah, a million people. I would love to hit a million and then we’ll get to a hundred million, okay? Hey, I’m all right with that.

Quentin (12:31)
Listen, my bad, listen, listen, will you stop? So, okay, so maybe,

you know you say 40 million slips? Maybe I’m just seeing you how I see you, sir. So I know it’s a million, but listen, when your circle’s starting to grow, maybe I just seen 100 million attached to it. I’m sorry, sir, so a million, I got you, my bad. I’m just telling you how I see you, Russ. I’m sorry, let me tell you, I’m messing with you. Yeah. Yeah.

Russ Morgan (12:41)
Alright.

No, hey, that’s No, I appreciate that. Yeah. No, that’s good. Yeah. We

have two different businesses Q. So one business is focused on helping people build systems. Right? So one of the things I also learned again, I can’t remember who, who actually I should attach this quote to, but they say that you don’t rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems and

Quentin (13:10)
Yes, sir. That’s atomic

habit, James Clear, just to let you know. Yes, sir. Yeah. Yeah. Yes, sir.

Russ Morgan (13:13)
There you go. Yeah, James clear. And so I,

I, I believe that that’s true in money. And I believe that, cause after seeing thousands of people’s personal balance sheets, income statements, or lack thereof, I realized that people didn’t have a system around how did they actually accumulate money and how do they turn it in turn active income into passive income? And so our business partner and I built a whole program and a process. We call it the passive income operator system. How do we help people do that very thing? Because the,

the little components within there is what allowed us to start investing, which allowed us to ultimately grow that over a length of time. I think when you started podcast, you said in 2020, we started actually reporting on our personal passive income report in July of 2020, and it was $2,500 a month at the time. And now it’s grown to be over 50,000 a month. And it was because of building a system. So that’s one of the areas that I have the goal to, I know that people need that system. But the second part of our business, which is really the fulfillment of the mission, how are we gonna help?

A million people become financially free. They need the system. They need to unlock cash because the biggest obstacle is lack of access to cash. The second step is that they actually have to become a good investor. And I don’t know that many places that are teaching people how to become investors. Lots of places to invest in, right? There’s lots of groups, but there’s very few like hands-on labs. Like we’re going to get into the weeds and we’re going to force you through the reps. So I have a guy that runs this business for me, former,

you know, Army Special Forces. And this guy would tell me about the missions that he went on, right? Like the kind of stuff you see on movies. And he’s like, man, you would believe the amount of reps that we would do before we ever went and did a thing. Like they spent a week

practicing how to hold a gun and use a gun, but never pull the trigger. Like I’m talking about like when you get into reps, let’s think about that into investing. How can we help people get more and more reps?

so that before they ever go out and start investing, they feel so confident that the check is gonna come back to them, right? As compared to most people, really they don’t invest or they invest very little because they’re not confident. They don’t understand why it will come back to them. They hope it will, but they don’t have confidence. And so I always say that, know, investing is not hard, but decision-making is. So if you can build frameworks around that. So for me, you’re asking what am I excited about?

Quentin (16:16)
Yeah.

Russ Morgan (16:19)
I’m excited about that business. call it our passive income lab and we run groups of eight to 10 people through it, multiple every single month. And I’m excited because every single month I get to be a one or two of these graduation calls where I get to hear these people talking about what they’ve done. Hey, I’ve evaluated 30 deals, 50 deals. I pulled the trigger on two. I’ve got an extra thousand dollars a month of passive income as a result of this. Or I’m in three deals and it’s going to start producing $1,500 a month in the next six months, whatever their thing is.

Quentin (16:33)
Mmm.

Russ Morgan (16:49)
But more importantly, I see the smile on their face, the confidence that tells me that I didn’t show them where the fish was. I showed them how to fish. And that’s what’s really exciting to me. That’s where the opportunity is. Because once you can teach one, then you get one to teach one. And that’s how you multiply, right?

Quentin (17:08)
Yes, sir. Listen, man, you literally walked me right into my next question because I love just everything you just said. I love, know, how you said you get a chance. I think you said graduate, right? You get to watch these people graduate. Right. So one of the I often quote this proverb, when you refresh others, you in return will be refreshed. And so when I hear you talk about just watch people graduate, I know that’s refreshing to you because you refresh them. I know that comes back to you. And so I want to get your

Russ Morgan (17:20)
Yeah.

Quentin (17:38)
opinion on this word. When you hear this word, what do you think about? When you hear the word relationship, Mr. Russ, what comes to mind to you?

Russ Morgan (17:48)
Yeah, I think long term. Right? I mean that one we have a creed and our creed every single Monday we read it as a team. So it’s way about 35 people in our team. We get together every Monday, coordinate, connect, make sure we’re all alive. And one of the lines in our creed is that we believe in long lasting relationship based on mutual respect. And so when I think relationship, I think long term. I think, you know, my mentor when I met him was in his mid seventies.

Quentin (18:03)
Yeah.

Russ Morgan (18:17)
Now he’s long since passed, but he would tell me, said, Russ, you need to think, like plan as if you’re going to live forever, but act as if you’re going to die today. And he’s like, the relationships you’re building, right? You’re going to be impacting generations for generations, right? The Bible says a good man leaves inheritance to his children’s children, right?

Quentin (18:37)
Children’s children, come on, sir. Yeah.

Russ Morgan (18:39)
Come on. that for me,

it’s the way I think about, I think relationships. I’m thinking about relationships. How can I impact? mean, ⁓ it’s fresh. I’ll say it. know, this is where I’m here. I had a friend of mine, somebody that I’d gotten to know. I would say he was a mentor. Spent a decent amount of time with him over two or three year period of time. And unfortunately, he and three others died in a plane crash back in January, December. And it’s hard.

But what I think about is I was sitting there with, I mean, probably five or 600 people at his funeral is that the relationships that he had built, the impact he had made on people’s lives. And we know that we’re here like a vapor. And so, man, I’m just thinking about like, how can we make ⁓ long lasting relationships that will continue to impact generations? So for me, that’s why I think about it. And our community, we think of all those relationships and how can we deepen them? How can we grow them?

Quentin (19:39)
⁓ Man, you just said so many things. One of the first things you said was a line, that when you started answering this question, and I wrote down the word a line, and then you started talking about leaving an inheritance for your children, and then you started dropping the word community. And I love the word community. I always say community saved me. also say healing happens in community. And I get it from James 5-16.

when it says, you know, confess your faults one to another so that you can be healed. And so I just think when you are in community, you are in common unity. And when you are in common unity, everything has no choice but to come into alignment and starts to heal. Heal means to be made whole. And so when I think about you being in that room, 500, 600 people, even though it was, was definitely, I’m sure it was heavy.

but I’m sure there was celebration. I’m sure they was talking about his life, the legacy that he left, the seeds that he planted. And I’m sure even though it was heavy in that room, but I’m sure a lot of healing happened by the same community that was mourning together, the same community was able to start the healing process together. Not that you never forget, not that you ever get over, but you can heal in the midst of grieving. And so I love the fact that you talk about community. I love the fact you talk about alignment because that’s how I feel.

everything that I touch, it should be in a community type basis, because we all can heal in community if we’re really supporting each other. And so I love your mindset, man. I really do, sir. I really do. ⁓ Mr. Russ, is there any topic that I have not brought up that you would like to talk about? Is there any words of, let’s say, inspiration, motivation, education? Like, I don’t know. Maybe you came in with something on your mind.

that you wanted our viewers to know. I kind of want to create space so you can land that message.

Russ Morgan (21:37)
Yeah, I appreciate that. I mean, there’s a lot of pieces that when we meet people, they tend to come to us and they’ll ask the question like,

How do I get to where Q’s at, right? How do I get to where I’m able to spend more time with my family? How can I get to choose to work because I want to, not because I have to? And so for me, I’m always going back to the root, right? Like the opportunity starts with who you are and what systems you’re building. And so when people will look at our passive income report and say, man, I see you guys have produced $38,000 last month in that one specific asset.

Like I should be investing in that. I say, well, maybe. But the thing is, is that if you don’t know who you are as an investor, you won’t know if that’s the right thing for you. So when I talk to people, I just always want to encourage them that you’ve got to be able to inspect what you expect. So there’s the more you get, you know, dialed into who you are, the more you understand the things you’re investing in, right? There’s all kinds of great real estate opportunities out there.

I will say the first thing I invested in was not the right thing for me. I was invested in a long-term rentals. And for me and my profile, that was the exact opposite. was long-term boring, right? Like for me, that’s not who I am. I’m spontaneous. I like to be involved. And so I spent a lot of time in that space, but I was watching other people who were super successful. And I assumed, I will just follow them and be successful because they did the same thing. But then I was like, well, man, if I only have a couple of these, I don’t want a couple hundred of these. But then I,

I pivoted to things that I was interested in, things I could turn into a business. Like turning a short-term rental, like we had one short-term rental and before you know it, we had 25. Like buying and selling raw land and turning it into an owner finance thing. We did one and now we’ve done over a thousand. But for me, looking at things that I was interested in. And so all of that goes back to the investor DNA, building systems where I had access to cash to do the deal. So all of these things, I’m super…

you know, excited for people if they want to dig in in these things, just go to wealthwithoutwallstreet.com/realestatepros. And I’ll make sure we have links to the community to investor DNA, all these sorts of stuff. We’ve talked about.

Quentin (23:58)
Yeah, you have to inspect what you expect, sir. That’s going to be so my word for 2026 is curious. That’s my word. I’m curious about everything. I’m curious about why I overeat, why I get upset, why, you know, why I do the things that I do. And so being able to inspect what you expect, that is a line.

Russ Morgan (24:02)
Damn it.

Quentin (24:22)
that’s gonna sit with me. And so, man, I thank you, man. Thank you so much for the nuggets that you dropped.

So if somebody wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, collaborate with you, learn more about what you’re doing, how can they get in contact with you, Ms. Russ?

Russ Morgan (24:35)
Yeah, if you go to wealthwithoutwallstreet.com/realestatepros and on there you can join our community. So we have over 10,000 people in our own app. So if you go to the app store, you typed in Wealth Without Wall Street, you could download it inside of there. can direct message me. That’s I don’t spend a whole lot of time on social media, but I spend my time in that community, right? That’s my people. And so I’m going to spend a lot of time connecting in there. Obviously we have a podcast, what’s about Wall Street. We have a book, Wealth Without Wall Street.

I there’s lots of elements, but I would say join the community and any of these tools, resources. We have so many things that are for free. We’d love to just help you one step closer to your goal.

Quentin (25:15)
Yeah, yeah. Sir, let me just say again, I want to say three things to you. Some of it pivot on what I said earlier. So first, thank you for your time. Right? think time is our most precious commodity. I don’t take it lightly. So thank you for being here. I really, really appreciate you giving us your time. Secondly, thank you for your story.

Thank you for your narrative. Thank you for your, what I call it, a gift of authenticity, gift of integrity. And so thank you for the way you presented yourself today, but also the information that you gave. I really believe seeds, stories have a way of planting seeds in people. And we may never see the growth of the seed, but the seed is there. And at any given time, that thing can grow. And so I think you really planted some seeds today and we don’t know when this one grow.

But I believe somebody is going to help somebody along the way. So thank you so much. And lastly, man, thank you for your mindset. Thank you for the way you think and bringing that mindset to this platform. Mr. Russ, I greatly appreciate you coming on today, Absolutely, absolutely. Well, listen, you all heard Mr. Russ. I promise you the information he gave is in the show notes. Get in contact with him.

Russ Morgan (26:13)
All right, thank you for having me, Q.

Quentin (26:23)
Be one of the 100 million people, be one of the millions of people that he’s going to help. Like be one of them. You heard what he said. You know building systems. We need systems, right? And so get in contact with him. Let him help. But also make sure you are subscribed here because I promise you we’re going to continue to bring on amazing people just like Mr. Russ. So sir, I say thank you again. And listen, everyone else, you’ll have an incredible day.