We know your time is valuable, so the fact you’ve opened this email and given us a moment of your attention means the world. We promise not to waste it!

First, a quick intro.

We are Abundant Journey. Hopefully, that name rings a bell. If it does, great! You can go ahead and skip the next section if you like.

If not, allow us to introduce ourselves:

Abundant Who?

Founded earlier this year by Nick ‘James’ Zalk and Nick Aufenkamp, Abundant Journey is a rapidly expanding online community that helps you—along with countless others—obtain financial freedom while making the world a better place through entrepreneurship and investing.

Currently, the most active part of our community is The Abundant Journey Podcast, a weekly show featuring incredible stories of successful business owners and entrepreneurs from diverse backgrounds and industries. By sharing their stories, we aim to inspire our audience to take massive action and live with purpose, meaning, and abundance.

In short, if you think the world is made better by people starting businesses and investing in projects they're passionate about, you’re going to fit in great here!

Better yet, if you’re in the dreaming phase and feel you have untapped potential for what you can offer the world, Abundant Journey is here to help you take the next steps in realizing the life of your dreams.

Okay. Admittedly, that last line felt a bit over the top. But it is true. We exist to help you dream bigger dreams, battle limiting beliefs, and live an abundance-filled life. The process is a journey, though.

You could even call it an Abundant Journey.

On Tap Today

• Three Lessons from the Week: Top takeaways from conversations we’ve enjoyed, books we’ve read, podcasts we’ve heard, and other sources of inspiration.

• A Banker’s Perspective: Nick James’ advice on growing your business and ensuring it’s bankable.

• A Realtor’s Perspective: Nick Aufenkamp's observations on the latest real estate trends.

• Featured Pod: An episode of The Abundant Journey Podcast you don’t want to miss (and may even want to revisit!).

• Someone You Ought to Know: If your network is your net worth, one of the best ways we can help you is by introducing you to the best people.

Top-Three Lessons from the Week

1. It’s smart to be humble.

   This lesson comes from a business owner we connected with earlier this week. He was sharing about how early in his career, he falsely believed that to be respected and valued by clients he must assert himself as the smartest, most experienced person in the room. Over time, he realized that it was actually his ability to be personable, warm, and humbly acknowledge the limits of expertise that won him the respect (and business!) of his clients.
   
   We’ve found this to be true in our own lives and experience. Arrogance is incredibly off-putting and often comes from trying to compensate for our own insecurities. It’s far better to remain teachable, curious, and humble in your interactions with others. Doing so will help you better understand the problems at hand, which allows you to be collaborative in your response and display your intelligence in naturally productive ways.
   
   In summary, humility allows you to show your intelligence and expertise in a way your clients and colleagues will value far more than if you try and tell them all about how great you are and how much you know.
   
   Don’t be that guy or gal. Be humble.
   

2. Success is going to require more effort than you think.

   You’ve heard of Alex Hormozi, right? At this point, who hasn’t? This next takeaway comes from something he shared this week.
   
   Hormozi shared a story of a mentor who told him to put out flyers to generate leads. Hormozi put out 300 flyers and, after a month, didn’t get a single lead from his efforts. Feeling defeated, he went back to his mentor. His mentor laughed about him sending out only 300. He said, “We don’t even test with less than 5,000 flyers. Once we see results, we scale to 5,000 a day.”
   
   We tend to overestimate the amount of work we’ve done and our subsequent chances of success. The reality is, reaching our goals often requires 10x the amount of effort and consistency we assume. If you suspect you’re on the right track with an idea but failing to gain the traction you’d expected, rather than give up, double down on your efforts.

3. Take responsibility for your life.

   A little over a week ago, Jeffrey Holst was our guest on the Abundant Journey Podcast. Jeffrey has been on the top of the world—literally as a mountain climber and figuratively as a multimillionaire investor—and on the bottom as he lay in a hospital bed, seemingly moments away from death. Through it all, he has learned the secret of embracing life and making every day the best it can be (which you can read about in his new book, No Bad Days.)
   
   This hit home for us. We often blame everything and everyone else for why we haven’t reached our goals or achieved the life we dream of. We blame our kids for the messiness of the house, our boss for holding us back in our careers, or the government for taxing us so highly that we can never get ahead in our financial goals. While there may be some truth in such felt realities, we get to decide how we respond to each situation life presents.
   
   Rather than see yourself as a victim of your circumstances, take ownership. Take responsibility. Make the best of your situation and seek to overcome the obstacles between you and your dreams.

A Banker’s Perspective: Tips to Grow Your Business

As a Commercial Banker, one of the more common mistakes I see business owners make is failing to keep money in their company.

1. Companies often write off as much as possible, reducing their taxable income. This is a good tax strategy if they do it within the legal allowances.
   
   However, reducing the income on the financial statements reduces the amount of money the company has available to pay for debt. If the income is reduced, the ability to make debt payments shrinks, causing them to become un-lendable.
   
   If you have a big upcoming project and are planning on using bank debt, be sure that you don’t reduce your taxable income to the point of not being lendable!
   

2. Many business owners view their business as their own ‘bank account’ and pull the income out without considering all the consequences. As a business owner, you’re entitled to pull capital from your business, but each time you do, it makes the company look and be less profitable.
   
   If you’re planning an exit, be sure to consult with your business advisor, CPA, or attorney to have the company in the most healthy position so you can make the most money from the sale. Limit your distributions to what you need, and always ensure the company's health comes first.

A Realtor’s Perspective: A Quick Take on Market Trends

The real estate market continues to be battered by the highest interest rates in the past ten years. While rates are changing daily, the national average for a 30-year conventional loan has hovered around 7.25% this week.

Generally, you would expect that home values would drop to compensate for the affordability issues created by the historically high rates. However, this is not the case, as the supply of available homes is at an all-time low. Most existing homeowners refinanced in 2020-2021 and locked in their mortgages at an interest rate around 3%. Understandably, these homeowners do not want to part with their low rates and relatively affordable mortgages in exchange for a new loan with an interest rate over twice as high.

With so few homes available on the market, housing prices have remained stable across most places in the US. So, rather than waiting for a housing crash, there are thousands upon thousands of people waiting in the wings for interest rates to drop as their best hope of easing the affordability crisis.

The problem this creates is that when rates inevitably drop, a flood of buyers will likely enter the market and fight over a very small supply of homes. This will create upward pressure on housing prices and potentially create a frenzied market in which most homes receive multiple offers, similar to what we saw in 2021.

My takeaway is that you should act before interest rates drop if you’re looking to buy or sell a home. As a buyer, right now, you have the least competition and the most leverage to negotiate a fair purchase price with good buyer protections in place. As a seller, fewer homes are on the market vying for potential buyers’ attention. Since most sellers are also buyers, you’ll save yourself the stress of entering into a frenzied buyer pool by acting before rates drop.

It may be overstated at this point, but it’s much easier to refinance your interest rate than it is to find the ideal home.

Featured Pod

This week The Abundant Journey Podcast featured Kristi Kandel.

Kristi is an incredibly successful developer and real estate investor. Rather than take her wealth and ride off into a life of ease and luxury, she finds purpose and joy in helping others achieve financial freedom through real estate.

The episode features so many highlights, quotes, and profound insights, rather than read about it, the best thing to do is give it a listen!

Also, we’re pleased to tease Nick James’ new show, The Entrepreneur’s Journey. In contrast to The Abundant Journey Podcast, which is longer-form and shares inspirational stories, The Entrepreneur’s Journey offers quick, daily nuggets about actual, practical things you can do to grow your business! Each episode offers sales, marketing, and financial literacy tips to help you be more bankable and reach your highest potential in business.

Someone You Ought to Know

Adam Roberts & Emily Cortright were among the very first guests to be featured on The Abundant Journey Podcast (they were on Episode 4!). They are a husband and wife team who broke out of corporate America and dove head first into investing in real estate.

They first began fixing and flipping properties but quickly transitioned into taking down much larger multifamily deals.

Most recently, they’ve found an awesome niche in buying and selling private notes. They now offer a boutique education on this unique opportunity and are actively sourcing deals for their passive investors.

We love Adam & Emily for their generous spirit and incredible ability to adapt their business to perform best in ever-changing market conditions.

They are definitely people you should know, follow, and reach out to if you are seeking opportunities to invest. Connect with them at their website here!

What’s Next?

Thanks for reading! We hope you found at least one thing that made this email worth opening.

If that is the case, we ask that you do at least one of three things:

1. Forward this email to a friend and encourage them to subscribe.

2. Subscribe and leave an honest review of The Abundant Journey Podcast on your podcast player of choice.

3. Reply here with any feedback you have for us.

We’re excited about and grateful for the community forming here—and we’re incredibly honored that you’re a part of it!

We’ll be back with a new episode of The Abundant Journey Podcast this Monday, another newsletter next Thursday, and the brand new Entrepreneur’s Journey Podcast very, very soon.

In the meantime, you can keep up with all the latest by visiting AbundantJourney.net.

Onward & Upward, Friends,

Nick & Nick