Military Real Estate Investing, and Ending Veteran Homelessness and Veteran Suicide This Decade with Eric Upchurch: An EOFire Classic from 2023

0:01John Lee Dumas:Light that spark fire nation, JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire brought to you by High Level, the all-in-one sales and marketing platform. On today's classic episode, we'll be breaking down military real estate investing and ending veteran homelessness and veteran suicide this decade. To drop these value bombs, I brought to Eric Upchurch and EO Fire Studios. Eric is the co-founder of Active Duty Passive Income, the premier military real estate investing education platform and community in the US with over 62 ,000 military and veteran members. And today we talk about purpose and service, how life is short, house hacking, and oh, so much more.

0:37John Lee Dumas:And a big thank you for sparsing today's episode goes to Eric and our sponsors. Fire Nation, are you ready to make 2026 your best year yet? I believe it's time to start your transformation by attending the world's highest rated business growth workshop taught personally by Clay Clark and featuring football star and entrepreneur Tim Tebow and President Trump's son, Eric Trump at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire. Again, request life-changing tickets today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire. Stop duct taping your business together. High Level runs your website, your funnels, email, automation, scheduling, payments, and memberships all in one place.

1:13John Lee Dumas:And when you sign up at highlevelfire.com, you get a 30-day free trial, plus my exclusive bonus stack that includes weekly office hours with me and much more. Visit highlevelfire.com. Highlevelfire.com. Eric, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Yay. What's going on, Fire Nation? I am fired up. I'm glad to be here. I'm going to bring the energy. I'm going to add some nuggets of wisdom, hopefully, and provide some interesting perspective, I hope, today. Here's my answer to your question, and thanks for having me, by the way.

1:55I am going to say one thing that people think is that you have to have money to make money. No, you do not have to have money to make money. You have to know people, and you have to make an impact or add value to them. And they have to know you. So personal branding. And if you couple personal branding with one-time courage, especially for you introverts out there, that will separate you from the masses. So you got to get out there and network. Networking is a critical step in achieving anything you want in life.

2:29John Lee Dumas:You got to have money to make money is such a loser mentality. I really hate that. I mean, I have interviewed over 3 ,700 successful entrepreneurs, and so many of them came from literally nothing. It's actually sometimes an advantage to have nothing because then you take nothing for granted. You just make it happen. But you're Fire Nation. You don't have that loser mentality, obviously, but just feel bad for people that do it because, man, it's sad. And we're talking about military real estate investing today, but also ending veteran homelessness and veteran suicide this decade, which, of course, you know, Fire Nation is near and dear to my heart for obvious reasons.

3:08John Lee Dumas:So, Eric, you have a phrase, active duty, passive income. Tell me more. Yeah. I mean, active duty, passive income is a company, is our company. We have grown this company grassroots from a small, tiny little Facebook group and just putting together ideas and concepts that while you're serving or after you serve, that you can still achieve financial freedom, financial independence. So we've now created a group, a community of military real estate investors. There were 62 ,000 members, military and veteran members and their spouses and families, growing at about 5 % per month and maintaining, you won't believe this, an 82 % engagement rate.

3:54What does that mean to you? If you have 82 % of 62 ,000 people engaged, it means you're doing something right. so what this community is doing here and the reason it's important the reason it's transformational for people is because we listen so we've got all these subsidiary companies that i will not list right now but whenever our community talks we listen we have full-time people that are working on this and just saying what do you need as a military member to go achieve financial independence and we go create it whether it's lending real estate agents you ADPI Capital now, all these things.

4:29Actually, we have dozens of meetups worldwide now to connect military members to talk about financial independence and real estate investing. No matter if they're in Sicily or Japan, anywhere in the world, you can find our community and connect with like-minded United States military members to talk about this stuff. It's insane, the trajectory we're on right now. And we're so excited. You can tell by my voice, but active duty, passive income is just the heat and doing amazing things for people, changing lives and actually kind of correlating to what we're going to talk about here in a little bit, actually saving lives as well.

5:04John Lee Dumas:Yeah. I can't wait to get into that. That's going to be fantastic. And 82%, I mean, wow, that is such a special number, especially with that huge 62 ,000 number of military and veteran members within that group. So you have another phrase that I love, military house hacking. What does that mean? Yeah, everyone has heard about house hacking, right? I mean, I was just listening to a podcast of yours recently where house hacking is brought up. It's been over and over, right? It's a very common, if you're in the real estate investing world, house hacking is a very common concept. What we've done, we wrote a number one bestselling book called Military House Hacking, which is really when a military member understands and takes advantage of their earned benefits that are unique to military members, past and present, who've served, and how they maximize their cash flow opportunities, just keeping their head on a swivel, specifically with housing and even primary residences, but as they PCS around or even as they ETS and get out of the military.

6:04So it does apply to vets as well. So it's just, you know, sidebar, 13%, this is crazy. Why is this fact? 13 % of veterans have used their VA loan or those who are eligible to use their VA loan have used it. What my platoon sergeant didn't tell me was that I could go out there and buy a fourplex with no down payment. And then I could sell that property after I've added value. And you have to live in one unit, of course. It's an owner-occupied loan product. Then I could sell it, go to my next duty station, and do it again. So it's just this thing where there was this blue ocean for us to start teaching military members how to do this and educate agents in every niche across the country.

6:47and now literally people are just like, why would I rent an apartment? As soon as you're moving off post, you're buying a single family house and renting out those rooms to your buddies or you're buying a fourplex or duplex or triplex and you're renting out the other units, adding value to the property and then selling it or refinancing it down the road. So a really amazing concept and kind of soup to nuts in our book, which is free. It's a free resource on our website as well. So not selling anything there.

7:15John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, really cool stuff here. And as you can probably already tell by the title and what we've already talked about, we're taking a couple interesting turns throughout this entire episode. And one of them is coming up right here because I want to move from the military house hacking into finding purpose, finding passion in our lives. Why is it that you found it to be so important for individuals to find both of these things after the military? Let me give you a little segue here. Real estate investing was just my saving grace. It was my purpose. It was the thing that took me out of a dark place.

7:49It deployed six times. I buried six of my friends. I was the burial detail NCOIC in a special operations unit. And what real estate investing is, as silly as it might sound, it was the purpose that allowed me to find where I fit again. And so whether it's starting a Jeep club or investing in real estate, whatever it is, you need to have purpose. It's my belief that those who've served our country are some of the most diligent, capable, responsible, and obviously productive members of the society. But we've got to give them new purpose as we transition out. So whatever that is when we ETS and we exit our service, you can become successful in whatever you want and continue to serve and change lives.

8:42But you've got to find that new sense of purpose. Yeah.

8:45John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, we talk about this on Entrepreneurs on Fire. It is so critical. It is so key to have both excitement and enthusiasm and what you do combined with the value, the knowledge, the skills you're going to add to this world. And we have a lot to talk about around this topic and some other really important topics when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Fire Nation, are you ready to make 2026 your best year yet? Are you looking to learn the proven processes and success systems that have been used to create thousands of millionaire success stories. See thousands of success stories and testimonials from real people just like you who Clay Clark has mentored and coached into prosperity at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire.

9:27John Lee Dumas:Clay's proven business coaching program is month to month and it costs less money than hiring a minimum wage employee. Yes, it's month to month and it costs less money than hiring a minimum wage employee. Schedule your free personal 13-point assessment with Clay Clark himself today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EOfire. Because Clay only takes on 160 clients and only allows 300 attendees to each business conference, you will interact with Clay directly. See thousands of real success stories and learn about attending the Thrive Time Show two-day in-person workshop featuring football star and entrepreneur Tim Tebow and President Trump's son, Eric Trump, today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EOfire.

10:03John Lee Dumas:Become the next success story. Schedule a free consultation and request tickets to join football star and entrepreneur Tim Tebow and President Trump's son, Eric Trump at Clay Clark's next business conference today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire. Fire Nation, ideas are exciting, but systems will allow you to create freedom. That is where high level comes in. High level allows you to build and run your entire business from one platform, website builder and hosting funnel and landing pages, email marketing, automation and workflows, calendar booking, payments and subscriptions, even course and membership hosting.

10:36John Lee Dumas:Everything works together seamlessly. Plus, award-winning 24-7 support, so you are never stuck. And when you go through my link at highlevelfire.com, you unlock my full bonus stack, a 30-day free trial of High Level with full access, a private 50-minute coaching call with me, weekly live office hours with me, a digital copy of my book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, my 50 Days to Something execution roadmap, and more. Stop piecing tools together. Start building momentum. Visit highlevelfire.com and start building your something today. Eric, we're back. And as I mentioned, I warned Fire Nation.

11:14John Lee Dumas:We're going to be taking some really powerful twists and turns about this episode because I do want to talk about a real problem in this world. It's obviously very important to you and to myself being an officer in the US Army for eight years. And when I see it, it breaks my heart, veteran homelessness. and of course, when I hear about it, it breaks my heart, veteran suicide. You have a plan to end both of these, not in a hundred years. We're talking this decade. Tell me more. That means I've got about seven years left. I mean, let's go. I mean, making leaps and bounds towards this goal and you've got to have this on your vision board if you're out there as passionate as me.

11:52Let me break it up though. I love talking about this topic because this is a solvable problem when you really break it down. So let's start with suicide. Controversial. It's hard to even say suicide. And you've probably been on the phone, you personally, John, with friends who are considering it or you've buried friends. And I still get those phone calls late at night sometimes and it's terrible. But here's what you do. When we serve, we're given a purpose, as I mentioned earlier in the show. We're also provided a mission team. And actually, let me interrupt myself. I I want to paint a picture for all your civilian listeners who might be kind of wondering, not only what am I talking about, but what does that mean?

12:31Or like, why are veterans doing this? You know, what's going on? Why is it such a problem for the veteran community? So I'm going to paint a picture. I like to use my hands. If you could see me, I'm moving my hands around quite a bit right now. But when we're in the military, we're provided a mission, a team, camaraderie. We know where to be, when, in what uniform. we're given huge hits of dopamine serotonin oxytocin i'm no biologist i don't know all the other things or chemist all of that stuff all the good stuff right we're given that inherently we're that's just what we get when we deploy or we're on training missions or we you know we're given awards and pats on the back for all of our accomplishments we're given it all but now let me kind of this is where i'm going to paint the pictures here's why my brothers and sisters in arms continue to kill themselves.

13:18We exit service and all of that is completely stripped away. You picture a sports car, a highly, which is essentially a highly trained service member, speeding down a straightaway, 200 miles an hour. They hit a curve too fast. That's leaving the military. Now they might have a job where they don't have a team, kind of a team feel anymore. I'm sure you can relate to that where you're sitting, sitting in a cubicle, maybe not you, but someone out there sitting in a cubicle and going, oh my gosh, I do not matter anymore. Right. Certainly not in life dependent situations anymore. They don't have structure.

13:57No one cares if they're shaven or not. No one cares where they are, how well they do, or even if they show up that day, they're completely expendable. No more dopamine, no more of those amazing chemicals that course through your veins. and it becomes a problem. When you hit that guardrail as you're steering off around that corner, your internal body parts continue forward and leave wake in destruction. That is exactly what happens to a veteran, whether they're conscious about it or not. They don't know that it's happening. So when you see a veteran who has destructive behavior, they're getting arrested, maybe spousal abuse, alcoholism and drug abuse, um, you know, uh, uh, death-defying or thrill-seeking things, that is, that is the, the body's biological response to trying to get what it once had recently.

14:51So it's, it's almost like it happens to people, and I see families being torn apart because of this, it happens as an innate response to what the military provided. So it's, um, now we go back full circle to purpose. When you gave me purpose, when I had purpose in real estate investing and helping my community, my brothers and sisters try to get into financial independence, that changes lives. That gives somebody the purpose to wake up the next morning and go, I'm fine. I'm okay. I can help people. I can keep serving our community. Now for the homelessness piece to wrap that in, you start with purpose and you, you give a veteran a purpose.

15:36Maybe that's a job. And then you stop the problem from growing when you do that. Okay. Now we have 40 ,000 veterans that are already there. So how do we stop that? So we raise money for a veterans community project. It is a platinum rated 501 C three. They're, they're amazing. I'm actually going to go out to their latest community that we donated a house to. But they have about right now, I think eight tiny home communities across the US. They're built to code. They're beautiful inside and out slab construction, granite countertop, stainless steel appliances. They're 280 to 320 square feet and they're built for veterans.

16:15So facing the door away from windows, very secure. And then they have social workers in a 5 ,000 square foot or 3 ,000 square foot community center on site with beautiful interweaving sidewalks and fire pits. Anyway, painting that picture. They're building these. There's 3 ,000 cities on the wait list for VCP to come and into their town and end the problem. Anywhere that there's a Veterans Community Project location, the problem, the veteran homelessness problem stops. So actually, one thing that's cool, in June of this year, we just – I put together a campaign. and I gathered 12 of my real estate investing buddies.

16:53Many of them were veterans. And our intention was to hike 170 miles around Lake Tahoe's Tahoe Rim Trail. And our goal was to raise$1 ,000 per mile hiked. So$170 ,000 target. We raised$190 ,000. Every penny of that went to Veterans Community Project. And that right there, that one act, anyone can do this, you guys. that one act will build homes and house hundreds of veterans for years to come. So with purpose and service, those two things will end veteran suicide and homelessness. So when you see a veteran who's struggling, help them find a club, a meetup, mentor them, tell them that they can do something great, give them a new sense of purpose, and they will be amazing.

17:42John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, you know I end every one of these episodes by saying you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with, if we can get these individuals around amazing people, upbeat people, optimistic people who have hope for the future, this will have such an impact. So I love what you're doing, Eric. I mean, this is just something that, you know, these big, hairy, audacious goals that people need to take on because guess what? You can accomplish these things and you can impact serious lives along the way. Now you have a success formula to achieve whatever we want in life, which I now believe with the fact that you're going to end veteran homelessness and suicide this decade.

18:22John Lee Dumas:Break down your formula for us. Definitively ending veteran homelessness and suicide this decade. Absolutely. So I talk about my success formula all the time, not because it's something I read in a book or something. It's because this is what has taken me to where I am today. In real estate investing and in life and and everything I want to achieve, this is the formula. So write this down. I'm sure it'll be in the show notes, but this is going to be fantastic. So number one, learn all you can through books, podcasts, our resources, other resources. It's all out there. You can get information. Learn all you can.

18:57Number two, network your butt off at meetups, at conferences, virtual or in-person, wherever you are, network your butt off. Actually, I'm at the dentist's office. I'm talking about real estate investing. I'm at the gas pump. I'm talking about what my passions are. Everywhere you go, network your butt off. You never know where those opportunities are going to arise. Number three, add as much value to others as you possibly can. You've got to intentionally network, which means listen to their problems. See where you might be able to help. That's how you add value. You hear people saying, oh, how do I add value to you?

19:28You add value by solving problems. Everyone will naturally tell you their problem if you listen long enough and dig far enough. So add as much value to others. The fourth one is take consistent, decisive action. Don't get caught up in just learning. If you don't take action, this is the, I mean, critical. If you don't take action, if you don't put this into motion, you will not go anywhere. So you must take consistent, decisive action. So learn, network, add value, take action. If you do those four things with the intention of being only 1 % better daily, success will hunt you down.

20:03John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, so many value bombs here today. the two that I want to just circle back on here that we just talked about learn all you can you're doing that right now by listening to this but keep doing that and then take consistent decisive action like be decisive be consistent take action Eric of everything we talked about here today what's the one thing that you want to make sure our listeners really walk away with whatever it is you want in life you can go get it we live in an amazing if you're in the U.S. I mean for crying out loud. We live in such an amazing country with all these opportunities.

20:38Economy aside, it's irrelevant. If you want to be happy laying on a beach, go do that. Life is short. The older I get and the more I explore, the more I realize the only thing that matters is the smile on your face. So go do what you love to do and don't care what anyone else says about it. That's all you got.

20:55John Lee Dumas:And let's hear where we can connect more with you. Any call to action you have, let's make that happen. Yeah. Any veterans, military members out there, please connect with us at militaryrealestateinvesting.com, activedutypassiveincome.com. I am on Instagram at realericupchurch. Glad to answer any questions or help anybody that needs it. Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with EU and JLD today, so keep up the heat. Head over to eofire.com, type Eric in the search bar, E-R-I-C, and the show notes page will pop up with everything we've talked about.

21:29John Lee Dumas:Eric, thank you for sharing your truth. your knowledge, your value of Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you, brother, and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thank you, my friend. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Eric for sponsoring today's episode. And Fire Nation, over the last decade, I've interviewed more than 3 ,000 of the world's most successful entrepreneurs, and I've created a revolutionary 17-step roadmap to your financial freedom and fulfillment. I put it all into my first traditionally published book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, personally endorsed by Seth Godin and Gary Vaynerchuk.

22:05John Lee Dumas:The common path to uncommon success is the step-by-step guidance that you need to achieve the lifestyle of your dreams. Visit UncommonSuccessBook.com to order your copy and I'll catch you there or I'll catch you on the flip side. Fire Nation, are you ready to make 2026 your best year yet? I believe it's time to start your transformation by attending the world's highest rated business growth workshop taught personally by Clay Clark and featuring football star and entrepreneur Tim Tebow and President Trump's son, Eric Trump at thrivetimeshow.com slash EOFire. Again, request life-changing tickets today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EOFire.

22:44John Lee Dumas:Stop duct taping your business together. High Level runs your website, your funnels, email, automation, scheduling, payments, and memberships all in one place. And when you sign up at highlevelfire.com, you get a 30-day free trial, plus my exclusive bonus stack that includes weekly office hours with me and much more. Visit highlevelfire.com, highlevelfire.com.