Steve Davis is the CEO of Total Wealth Academy, LLC where he mentors tens of thousands of people on how to use real estate to build wealth and create passive income to live a life worth living. After working 60 hours a week for five years, Davis came home to a $20K pay cut after winning a national sales contest. He decided to quit corporate America and take control of his finances with no money and bad credit. 30 years later he is focused on helping middle America achieve financial independence through one-on-one coaching and his daily radio show, and he continues to share his insight as a member of the Forbes Business Council.
What is Total Wealth Academy all about?
I created Total Wealth Academy because my parents suffered massively from insecurities and fears about money. I suffered, too, until I was 27 when it got worse. I worked for a company that cut my pay by twenty grand a year after winning a national sales contest. This pay cut made me realize that the financial IQ of my parents and myself were extremely low, which is why we suffered financially.
- As a result, I started reading everything I could get my hands on by wealthy people. I found out that wealthy people teach their kids differently from poor or middle-class families.
- With Total Wealth Academy, members sign up, and they take courses where I teach them exactly what the wealthy teach their kids. The primary difference is that the poor and middle class teach their children to speculate in the stock market, and use their job as their primary source of income. The wealthy teach their children to invest in cash-flowing and income-producing assets, and think of their job as a sideline. That difference leads them to massive wealth.
- My mission is to eliminate the fears and insecurities of anybody who wants to learn about money. We use a holistic approach to teach people about building a second stream of income and include classes on fitness, nutrition, marriage, romance, and travel — all part of living a balanced life. We use real estate to build that second stream of income. We use everything from single-family homes to apartment complexes, self-storage facilities, senior living facilities, and so on.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you started your company?
Growing up with a poor and middle-class belief system, I did everything I was supposed to do. I went to college for about a year and a half and hated it. I mean, I was miserable.
I quit school and started a little burger business, but I was not a good operator and didn’t make much money. I finally said, “Maybe my parents were right, I should just get a job.”
I went out and got a job for five years and won a national sales contest where they sent me to Hawaii for a week. When I got back, they cut my pay, which woke me up to the ineffectiveness of relying on a sole source of income like a job.
That’s when I started reading every book that I could on building wealth. I got a hold of a couple of books by Warren Buffett where he said, “Never depend on a single income. Make investments to create a second source.” That woke me up to the fact that the rich are teaching their children different things about building wealth.
I started focusing on building a second stream of income and found that 70 percent of the millionaires in the US used real estate to do it. I’m not smarter than everybody else, so I thought, why don’t I do what’s the easiest and most popular?
I started studying real estate investing, and about two months after they cut my pay, I was able to quit my job and do wholesaling, which is a form of investing. I almost lost my wife while working 60 to 70 hours a week. With that time back, I was able to rekindle that relationship, and it saved my marriage.
Through that process, I discovered that my passion wasn’t managing real estate; it was teaching. That was when I created Total Wealth Academy.
What would you say are the top 3 skills needed to be a successful entrepreneur, and why?
- The number one skill is understanding that there’s only one way to make money in a capitalist society, and that’s to help and serve other people. A human being controls every dime of capital in the United States. If you want more money in your pocket, it has to come out of somebody else’s pocket. There’s no big pile of unclaimed money. The moment you develop the skill to forget about yourself and focus on how you’re here to help and serve other people, you start making money by default.
- The second skill is the ability to learn to read and study. Our high schools and colleges don’t teach anything about being a successful entrepreneur. Our schools are designed to put a cog in the machine and create employees. There’s a Jim Rohn quote that states, “Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.” He’s right.
- The third skill is to copycat. You’ve got to go out there and imitate those who are successful and set your ego aside. The ego wants to create something new, and the ego doesn’t like to admit that what they learned all their life was wrong.
How have the pandemic and lockdown affected you or your new business?
The shutdown didn’t affect the apartments. The people who lost their jobs due to COVID paid their rent on time before anybody else. We didn’t evict them, and they had this sense of moral responsibility. It was truly inspirational.
While it didn’t affect my real estate business, it did affect my mentoring business. They wouldn’t allow us to hold seminars with more than 50 people in the room. It shut down my company for two months, but they slowly brought it back. It did kill me for about 60 to 90 days.
What were the top three mistakes you made starting your business, and what did you learn from them?
I like to call my top mistakes LAG; laziness, arrogance, and greed. I was too lazy to take the weeklong boot camp on how to run apartments. I was too arrogant to think I needed it, and too greedy to pay the 20 grand to take it.
Tell us a little bit about your marketing process, what has been the most successful form of marketing for you?
The best marketing for me has been the radio shows, no question. I do a radio show seven days a week, which is the most effective marketing because people get to know you on the radio.
I can’t explain Total Wealth Academy and how to build a second stream of income in five minutes, but with an hour-long show, seven days a week, I can help people understand what we do. When we got on the air, we had twelve people from one show enroll.
What have been your biggest challenges, and how did you overcome them?
My biggest challenge was insecurity which came across as arrogance. When you meet an arrogant person who brags about themselves, you know they’re not arrogant; they’re insecure. That was me.
Can you recommend one book, podcast, and online course for entrepreneurs?
I read a book called “Unlimited Power” by Anthony Robbins, and I followed that book up with “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” by Dr. Stephen Covey. When I read those two books, it was a one-two punch.
I realized that my insecurities were holding me back. They were destroying my marriage, my business, everything — and Dr. Covey explains how to live a principally centered life.
If you only had $1000 dollars to start a new business, knowing everything you know now, how would you spend it?
That’s easy. I’d spend it on a seminar on how to start a business.
Abe Lincoln said, “If I only had an hour to chop down a tree, I would spend the first 45 minutes sharpening my axe.” Sharpen your brain, improve your financial IQ, and invest in your education.
What helps you stay driven and motivated to keep going in your business?
- I have three things that motivate me. The first is my wife. She’s a huge motivator and an inspiration; she’s hardworking, smart, and encouraging at all times. She believed in me when I met her. I was broke, but she saw something that I didn’t see.
- The second thing that motivates me are my kids and grandkids; I’ve got to lay out a path so that they don’t suffer from the same fears and insecurities about money that I did.
- The third thing is the reward of teaching. I have had people on the verge of suicide join my group, buy a little apartment complex, quit their job, and realize they no longer want to. I had a lady come into my office with a suicide note from her husband. He bought a gun and was going to kill himself because he was so miserable at his job. They were living paycheck to paycheck for 15 to 20 years. She said, “Because of you helping him get that little apartment, he now sings in the shower, we make love often, and we’re traveling again.” There’s nothing more rewarding than that.
What valuable advice would you give new entrepreneurs starting out?
My advice is to avoid LAG; watch out for being lazy, watch out for being arrogant, and watch out for being greedy. If you can control those three things, you can achieve anything.
I would also like to add reading to that list. Build your financial IQ, and invest in yourself and your education. That’s the key.
How can readers get in touch with you?
They can check out my radio show and our website Total Wealth Academy.
