88 : Build a Life You Don't Need a Vacation From with Maurice Philogene

 Welcome to the mindful fire podcast a show about crafting a life you love and making work optional, using the tools of mindfulness envisioning and financial independence. I'm your host, Adam Coelho and I'm so glad you're here. 

Adam Coelho: Each episode of the mindful fire podcast explores these three tools through teachings, guided meditations and inspiring interviews with people actually living them to craft a life they love. 

At its core, mindful fire is about creating more awareness and choice in your life. 

Mindfulness helps you develop self-awareness to know yourself better. And what's most important to you by practicing a kind curious awareness. 

Envisioning is all about choosing to think big about your life and putting the power of your predicting brain to work, to create the life you dream of. 

And financial independence brings awareness and choice to your financial life. Empowering you to make your vision a reality by getting your money sorted out and ultimately making work optional. 

 And here's the best part. 

You don't have to wait until you reach financial independence to live out your vision. 

Mindful FIRE is about using these tools to craft that life now on the path to financial independence and beyond. 

 If you're ready to start your mindful fire journey, go to mindful fire.org/start and download my free envisioning guide. 

And just 10 minutes, this guide will help you craft a clear and inspiring vision for your life. 

Again. You can download it for mindfulFIRE.org/start 

Let's jump into today's episode. Maurice, Welcome to the Mindful Fire Podcast. I'm so glad to 

Maurice Philogene: have you here, my man, Adam, it's so good to be here and I know it took a little bit of time to connect, but we're finally here together, so it's a good day,

We're 

Adam Coelho: doing it, man. And yeah, LinkedIn made this all happen. I, jumped into the LinkedIn game like two months ago and I came across one of your posts and it really spoke to me. So I knew we had to get you on the podcast and share your philosophy of life with the audience cuz people are, people that are listening to this want to live their life intentionally.

Yeah. And I think that trying life on is the only way to figure out what that really means. 

Maurice Philogene: Yeah. Yeah. 

Adam Coelho: Some, I'd love to start by having you share a little bit about who you are, your journey, and what you're up to these 

Maurice Philogene: days.

Yeah, man. Maurice Philippine. I am born in New York, raised in Boston, live in Washington DC I'm based here, but I split my time between here and the Mediterranean, which is part of your whole mindfulness and envisioning concept and my trying life on. But I'll start at the end. I am, I'm 47 years old.

I'm a father of two, a happy father of two. I am out of the W two world. I've retired from everything 25 year executive at a IT consulting firm. I loved it. I appreciated my corporate journey. While I was corporate, I was also in the military, so I retired after 22 years as a lieutenant colonel and federal agent outta the US Air Force.

I missed it. But I retired and then along the journey I added being a street cop in dc. So I was a midnight patrol officer all at the same time. Because I had this notion of trying life on and doing different things. I love the word Ann, as opposed to, or I think we can do a lot of unique things together.

So I was a street cop for 15 years. I retired last year as well. And then along the entire journey, I've always had two things with me. One, my love of travel because it's constant learning. And two, I've always been in the real estate space as a means to secure my own freedom. And now I work on real estate full time here in the US and overseas in the Mediterranean.

Adam Coelho: Very cool. 

Just in terms of the parallel careers, like how did you make that actually work with the number of hours in the day? 

Maurice Philogene: That's a great question. One, I genuinely believe if we really want to do something, we'll find a way. There's no way people like Elon Musk, he's not an anomaly.

We all have 24 hours in a day. So to suggest, he has what? SpaceX, Tesla, Solar City, whatever he's doing, it's the same 24 hours that Maurice and Adam have. So I was always an executive. They hired me right outta college in 1997 in the military. I was a reservist, but by the nature of being a federal agent, I was full-time.

So it was very interesting career. And I added the street cost stuff specifically at night, and that came from me wanting to give back to local community. So here's how it would work, and I never really told many people during the journey because I didn't want, how you say something at work and then, Oh, he's not at work today.

He must be tired from being a street cop last night. Yeah. So I never told anyone except for one person at my corporate firm. But I would get up during the day, go to the office, or go to the client site, come back, do stuff with the kids, homework put on my uniform, sleep or homework, sleep for an hour, wake up, put on my uniform, go patrol from 8:30 PM to 6:30 AM come back home, sleep for an hour, deal with the kids, run to court for work, for police, work testifying, court real quick, jump on the train, go back to Accenture, which is my co go out to the car at night or go sleep somewhere in the crevices,

And I would just I would just do it. And there were days when I would question myself why I was putting that, that level of stress on my body and on my mind. And then there were days, let's say, if I would save someone's life or yank a burglar out of some amazing woman's house when husband wasn't home, but the two kids in her were home and there was someone in her house.

And then I would be like, That's why I'm doing it, because I wanted to try life on. I could use my time for things that really didn't have meaning for me. Maybe going out to the bar with the fellows I'd go out, don't get me wrong, but not as a standard. I just use my time wisely to execute on the things that truly have passion for me.

And when things have passion, it doesn't feel like work. You just find ways to get it done. So I just mesh, I found ways to mesh all those things together and just didn't take no for an answer. Yeah 

Adam Coelho: that's incredible. Incredible, that you were able to do that and when you mentioned meshing things together, right?

, that's what I'm finding that I'm doing right. Yeah. Certainly a lot less and a lot less intense stuff for me. But I am meshing These various interests of mine together. I teach mindfulness so I work at Google. I teach mindfulness there.

 that area has grown for me. Now. I do the podcast on the same thing. I'm starting to do workshops for other organizations, things like that. And, trying to bring it into my parenting, which is a hit or miss for me some days, trying to be mindful with my three year old.

Adam Coelho: But it, that, that concept of meshing makes a lot of sense. as you said before, if you wanna make something happen, you're gonna find a way to do it. I love that. I'm glad you actually called out like what that schedule looked like. Cause it's one thing to say, 

Maurice Philogene: I did three things, just these things, right?

And like in there, I started acting. I was on some TV shows and movies in there. I was also Became an owner of a restaurant in there. I failed, starting a coffee shop in there. I was traveling to a hundred. Like, you can find ways to get things done when you have ultimate passion for them.

And you just have to mesh all these things together unapologetically and make sure you're only telling the right people, because everybody else who doesn't want to do all those things and there's nothing wrong with it. They, people may not subscribe to the concept of and I do, I subscribe to the concept of doing things, many things.

 And versus or, and they will throw their insecurities on you and tell you it's not possible. So I just never did that. And one other thing I wanted to note you talk a lot about envisioning. Yeah, man. I remember vividly, I was in Arun County, Maryland. This is like oh 4, 0 3. and there was a police car parked in someone's driveway. 

So obviously it's like a take home car or whatever. And I told my girlfriend at the time, that's gonna be me. I want to have a take home car outside my house, in my own neighborhood. And that happened in 2009. So you have to see it and you have to think about it, whether it's vision boards or in your head or whatever.

If there's no vision to go after, then how do you know where you're going? So I definitely had a vision for a lot of this stuff. 

Adam Coelho: Yeah. I think you, you had a post about that recently as well, where it's like you have to be able to see it in your mind before you can make it happen.

. And the powerful thing is if you just create space to actually dream big and think about what you actually want, you automatically start moving towards that because your brain is predictive. And taking that time to just think, what do I actually want is so powerful and that. 

That leads me to your philosophy, which you summarize as try life on, right?

Like tell me about 

that. Brother, you and I, and everybody listening in general. We all went to school, grade, school, high school, college, all that. 

Maurice Philogene: Do you remember when we were in kindergarten, my man, and we threw paint on the walls and we would color stuff and markers and eat glue, and we were dreaming, we were mobile, we were having fun, we were trying new things constantly in kindergarten and maybe first grade.

And then you get to middle school, your elementary school, middle school compliance started to kick in. Yes sir. No sir. Yes ma'am. No ma'am. Take this permission slip home. Sit forward. Johnny stops speaking. Please raise your hand when you have a question, something happens there. And then we get into high school and college and the worst thing happens in my opinion.

We need education. I'm not downing education. I'm downing certain the style that which it happens. What happens in high school and college is you and I compete with each other. , we gotta be the mvp, we gotta be the valedictorian. Who's the prom king and queen? Who's the AP class number one?

Who's going to the Ivy League school? So we start funneling ourselves into a system and it really does translate into adult life where Adam and Mo work for the same company and we're buying for the same position. So we compete with each other. We get so locked into these titles, getting these titles and salaries that I think we forget to try life.

The whole point of working in the first place was so you can go live as intended, so you could plug in and do things around the world as you were intended to do. When I tell you that I was a senior executive at a company, real estate investor, restaurant owner, failed at a coffee shop, traveled to a hundred countries, became a street cop, was a federal agent started being an actor, now built an investment.

I'm not competing with anyone. I was just creating life and building lifestyle and going after things unapologetically. And we forget. I love us as adult, but sorry, we forget the dream. We forget that the whole purpose of being here was to plug into life planet as intended. 

So that's my notion of try life on when people see my quote life resume, if you wanna call it that, they're stunned if I tell you, Hey Adam.

Last weekend I got on a plane and I went to Beirut for three days and I came back. That's far. No, not really. Adam. In 2019, I went to the finish Arctic five times and two or three of those times was just for two days from DC that's crazy. No, it's not crazy. It's trying life on it is going to the airport and getting on that bus, which is really a plane I call a plane.

A bus with wings and going to the place where you need to go do things. . So I demystified the airport. I learned how to travel hack to get all over the world. I am trying to express to people that you can try life on in so many unique and valuable ways. And I have developed hacks and tricks, and it's based off of five principles.

Time freedom, geographic freedom, financial freedom to execute your purpose, becoming a police officer just to exist, do some good things in my neighborhood, and freedom to build meaningful relationships. Brother, if we're in the office on K Street in those four walls from 7:00 AM to 9:00 PM we don't have the freedom to go connect with the Adams.

You don't have a freedom to go build a new relationship with someone outside of what you do on a day to day. So I encourage people to build those meaningful relationships. But those are the principles that push this concept of trying life on through lifestyle design, through forming what it is that you actually want to get done in this lifetime.

Cause we only have 28,000 days on average to do it. So that is the trial life on concept. And I have developed these methods to help people build into what it is that they're actually trying to do, building the lifestyle that they don't need a vacation 

Adam Coelho: from. There's so much there dude. There's so much there.

It's yeah, it's so good. I was nodding right along with you and then, when I was reading your bio, before this, I. Oh my God. I'm bumped. I just love the phrase try life on, right? . For me, it sounds like you have found ways to lower the barrier Yeah. To trying something and, I'll speak for myself. Like I, I'm a huge fan of envisioning, obviously.

, I talk about all the time on the podcast and I love dreaming big and having a big vision for my life, but sometimes that big vision. Overwhelms me and paralyzes me because I don't know how to get started. And and in a lot of ways I do try life on like the podcast, right? Yeah. I made it into a big thing.

And then I just, I have a good friend of mine, Rashaan, who ha has a real gift at hearing what I'm saying and then cutting it down to the absolute essence and says, Just start, just invite a guest, right? , just invite a guest. So I've done it in some ways, but I'm wondering, 

What have you found that's helpful to really reduce a big dream into something that you can just try and see? Yeah, Try it on. 

Maurice Philogene: So this is what I run through with the people that I coach. Nowdon't get me wrong, I didn't have this figured out over the 25 years of that journey that I've expressed to you.

 I had was a natural propensity to just do shit and course correct along the way. I didn't know what I was doing. I just knew that I wanted to try something, so I would just go do it. When I tried out for the nfl, I just did it and bombed, and then five years later, I wanted to do it again. And I found a way with my company support to go to grad school to try out for the NFL again at 26.

Maurice Philogene: Didn't make it. Doesn't matter. I found a way to give it a shot, but now how I formally help people do it is I get people to write down their perfect day in vivid detail. Where do you want to be? What does it look like? What does it smell like? Who are you with? So let's say, I'm thinking of one particular person.

She wants to be in Spain. It's 7:00 AM in the morning. The air is coming off of the Mediterranean Sea. It's coming through the sheer curtain. She hears her kids in the background. She's gonna go to the coffee shop, she's gonna sit down. She's gonna do four or five investor phone calls. She's gonna make a business deal.

It's 3:00 PM She gets her kids from school. Her great friends call her to come over for dinner. She goes home. She's still in the Mediterranean. There's more than enough money in her pocket, and she's living life. She's trying life on, adults forget to dream. That's what I was telling you.

Kindergarteners kindergartners. Don't we just do it naturally. You get an adults dream like that again, never fails. They're either smiling their butts off or they're crying because we just forgot because the dream all of a sudden became the title at work. . So if you can write down your perfect day, absorb it, and then you put your personal blueprint, your personal life blueprint, on top of that, meaning like my personal life blueprint.

I don't wanna physically be anywhere stuck anywhere. I don't wanna work in brick and mortar. I don't wanna have employees, I want to be mobile, I wanna have friends all over the world. I probably want to have five or six people that I'm extremely close to and I want to be trying new things on constantly.

So I know my personal blueprint. So I cannot work at a subway sandwich shop with that kind of blueprint. That's that is not a job I'm gonna take. Okay. Then I'm not going to date someone romantically who doesn't match that personal blueprint cause they would want something else potentially. Mm. Now that you have your personal blueprint, put your work blueprint or business blueprint on top of it, where are you gonna work?

Does that job match that personal blueprint? So when I was at Accenture in my company, it matched at the time. Now that I've built Quatro Capital, which is the real estate stuff that I did, I told my partners, I'm gonna do this with you guys, but I don't want brick and mortar. No employees, no titles, no internal promotions of any kind.

No, nothing. I need to be able to pick up this computer, go be across the world, live for four months in Cypress, and still execute on what our mission. People can build the lifestyle that they want based off of the perfect day. And one last thing, it's not that you are going to have a perfect day every day.

That's not the thing, but you have the framework by which you can have it. So if I feel like getting off this computer with you right now, grabbing my phone, grabbing this laptop, and going to the airport, flying to Isme or Turkey to read a book over the weekend, I have the ability to do that. I can live it day to day, anytime that I want to.

So that is how I help people build the lifestyle they don't need a vacation from, by setting up those frameworks, by intentionally making decisions related to time, financial, geographic freedom, and it, it has been powerful. And those are just concepts. We never, there's no place that we encounter the fact that we have the ability to do what we want in life, so that's a little bit of a formal description on how I help people, but, That's how I get people to try life on. Yeah, I 

Adam Coelho: love that. So just to make sure I'm fully understanding, it sounds like you start with your perfect day, and then you build your personal blueprint around that.

So like, what are the areas that are most important that make that happen, right? . And then the work blueprint is essentially like, how do I pay for it? And you got it. How do I do work that fits with that personal blueprint, which enables the 

Maurice Philogene: perfect day? You got it. So when I did leave Corporate Life and Amazon reached out and gave me a $450,000 offer to come work for them, I can't do that.

That didn't match my perfect day. It doesn't match my personal blueprint anymore. I'm, I was appreciative of the offer, but no, I had to go build my own company because it matches what I want my life to look like and feel like. So I can. Talk with you. And I'm on the Maryland coast today. I'm looking at the water today.

This is where I want to be today, but my blueprints are set up such that I can live this way. 

Adam Coelho: Yeah, no, I love that. I love that. the first post that I saw that you shared on LinkedIn was all about how you were building this corporate career. You were doing great. I kept offering you promotion after promotion, and you said, No thank you.

No thank you. I'm good. I don't want that more money. Or, I'll take a little more money if you wanna give it to me, but I don't want the promotion. And ultimately, you left and started your own thing.I'm in a situation in my career and I know a lot of people who are like this.

They're making good money. They have, decent work life balance they're doing. It's good. It's going well, but maybe it's not that ideal day most days or any days. And, there's the, the stock, that they, these companies give you and stuff like that.

Yeah. And so there's like a real, there's a real financial component to it. And, my father-in-law has this phrase, if the money faucet is flowing, grab a bucket. Cause it's not always gonna be flowing. Yeah. So this is a long way of saying, you got it, I've got it pretty good.

Most of the time I'm enjoying my work and I get to do all this side hustle stuff on the side and at work as well. But is it my ideal day? I don't know. I, No, I'll say no. I hear you. I hear you. Yeah. What do you advise someone in that situation? 

Maurice Philogene: Yeah, I got you. So there's a couple threads there.

The first thing, I think careers are careers and jobs should be one of two things. They're either a purpose being a police officer. Friend of mine graduated from Yale Law School. She's an immigration rights attorney. She probably makes about 80 grand. She's been offered 800 grand to go be at a private firm.

She won't take it because she has purpose. Her family has been supporting immigrant rights in California for decades, and she wants to continue. So a career and a job should be purpose or purposeful. So the reason I stayed in corporate for 25 years and I was relatively never stressed. It wasn't my purpose.

I really enjoyed it. But it was purposeful because those two paychecks were fueling my real estate and other ventures. So let me, I'll throw that thread out there. People are getting up, going to work not knowing why they're just executing. When you have reason behind it, it makes it very different.

That's the first thing. The second thing on what you referenced about the promotions and what have you, Cause I figured something out. So the post you're referencing, I said so I started working in 1997 and my track was analyst, consultant, manager, senior manager, partner. Okay. I made analysts, I want consultant.

Consultant, I want manager. Manager. I want senior manager. And when I got the senior manager and I was offered to go into the partner track, I always caveat because no, I, I wasn't offered partner. I was offered to go into the track because I wanna be respectful of my company, right? I said no because. My career at Accenture, I don't have a problem saying it now.

It was purposeful. I wanted those checks. I wanted to do good by the client and have impact with my clients, but I really wanted those checks to build my outside life. If I would've taken the partnership, maybe I make another 50, 60, $70,000. But what that's doing is taking away from my time freedom. So go do all those travels to go be a police officer, to go build my lifestyle, right?

So there are times when promotions just don't make sense at all. I saw a lot of my peers running towards those promotions without thinking through what it meant. And that was not my destination. My destination was not to be partner. We need partners. The people who are in those roles do good things, and I really appreciate them.

But that wasn't for me. What was for me was, Nope, I'm gonna have the greatest amount of impact in my current. I'm going to protect my time freedom so I can build Quatro Capital, so I can travel to a hundred countries so I can be a police officer at night. So I can have those meaningful relationships and find them with people like Adam.

And let's say my buddy Maha, who's in Lebanon, who's opened a winery and he's teaching me a lot about business. I needed my time. So that's why I shifted. And every time I made a title at work, Freedom didn't come. More hours came. So my whole focus and North Star has always been freedom. And I didn't see the promotions as a pass to that.

I actually saw it as a detractors. 

Adam Coelho: Yeah, I think that yeah. I really appreciate you laying that out because it, Yeah, it really resonates with me. The purpose or purposeful. And knowing why you're doing something is so important. Yeah. I had a friend at Google that, he was working there a couple years and he is like, I'm leaving.

I'm like, Why are you leaving? He's like, I got what I came for . Yeah. I like him all. I'm like, Yeah. oh my God. Like, Yeah. it's not rocket science, right? Nothing that we're talking about here is rocket science. It's just that we forget it and we don't do it. 

Maurice Philogene: Yeah. But you know why we forget it, It goes back to what I told you before, the competition, because there's where we are a herd, right?

You are. You and I are in the same society I look at you we're relatively the same age, probably. If you and I are in the same company, I, Adam, oh shit. Adam made manager. I wanna make manager. Man. Adam's a senior manager. I wanna do that too. There are societal comparisons that happen that really push people to being things that they don't want to be.

They never intended to be that, but when they see the herd moving in that direction, that's what naturally happens. , I want a caveat by saying I never crap on corporate or work or anything. I worked my butt off. I really enjoyed it. But what I'm suggesting is people are defaulting to what they see and taking that on as their goal.

It was never my goal. My goal was trying life on. So if I was getting paychecks from work, no, I was using those paychecks, but systematically by real estate because that would help me keep trying life on in the future. I was very aware of it. That is why I'm doing this Tri Life on Campaign of work. It's great, but understand why you are doing it and how it's going to help you live your way, not just default things because everyone says you gotta climb the ladder.

Yep. 

Adam Coelho: Exactly. I think that's the real difference. It's why am I doing it? And it's a means to an end, I really like that idea and if I apply that to my work at Google, I am doing it right now to earn a good salary that I can invest in. In my case, it's in stocks and broad based index funds and it's building up and it's allowing me to build this life with my family, and it's also allowing me to build these skills, the facilitation, the speaking, the mindfulness stuff Yeah.

That I'm trying on, and then I'm doing on the podcast as well to try it on and then I'm building from there. 

Maurice Philogene: Yes. And I understand the notion of entrepreneurial burning, the boats and bouncing and all that type stuff. What the military gave me and how is, how I was acting as a special agent in charge of field offices all over the world.

Phenomenal. My diplomatic ability interacting with foreign government officials, phenomenal. My ability to interact with the CEO at Accenture or get a client to trust me because I was generally trying to do the right things with them. Phenomenal. Those experiences really created the persons that I am.

My company nor the military, are responsible for me living my life. They paid me a fair wage in exchange for my time. It's up to us. It's up to us to have the realization that we have to utilize those things to create the lifestyle. We don't need a vacation from the challenges. Some people adopt it as their whole life.

For some people, like researchers, maybe a doctor who's a neurosurgeon, who just, that's it. But see, that's his purpose, right? That's different. But if you are just accepting of it as the thing to do because you see everybody else doing it, that's where people get off track and we see mental health issues and all that.

But I want it to be clear, I am not suggesting that working the standard nine to five is wrong. No. What I'm suggesting is knowing why you're doing it and how to apply it to live your way, and to try life on when you're living. Yeah. 

Adam Coelho: That's why I really resonate with your approach, right?

There's so many people out there saying, you gotta be hustling, you gotta be an entrepreneur, you gotta build your own thing, burn the boats, forget corporate, and I got caught up in that a few years ago or a while back effectively envisioned myself right out of a job because I thought success meant leaving Google.

And my job got eliminated. I got what I asked for and I then use envisioning to to overcome that and start creating from there. But, you have a much more positive approach to this, and I really appreciate that. Yeah, 

Maurice Philogene: man. Pleasure. And I'll add one more thing on top of that real quick.

Financial freedom, Check it. I'm a real estate investor. Real estate investors. Talk about financial freedom all the time. My original definition of financial freedom, when I found the book Personal Finance or Dummies in, in 2001, I found a passage in the book that said passive income.

But what I came to understand was that there was ways to make income without you having to physically be somewhere. That's to me, right? But mailbox money, you buy something, money just keeps showing up. I want some of that, right? So my definition of financial freedom was always more passive income than expenses.

Makes sense. It has evolved thanks to Covid and many other things, me coaching people. So I've been learning a lot, right? It's funny coaching. You're giving to people, but they're actually giving to you in a big way. And what I've learned is financial freedom can also come from a job that you have that allows you to have a freedom based lifestyle.

So the digital nomads were never wrong. They were right because they had jobs that was allowing them to float around the world because that was their value, right? So here we have Covid that has moved people out of the brick and mortar for, four walls and a ceiling thing. And you have executives who are leaving traditional work and they are picking up virtual jobs and they're living in Portugal or San Diego or Colorado Spring that is enabling their freedom based lifestyle.

But here's the catch. There's gonna come a time in life where you either can't make money that way or don't want to make money that way, and that's where assets come in. And that's why I preach so much about real estate is my asset. I've been buying real estate for 25 years. I got up to 35. Single family homes.

I've paid off 18 of 'em. It was 165 grand, 160 grand of passive income. And now I do large scale apartment buildings and development, all that. When you don't want to or don't have the ability to make money that supports a freedom based lifestyle, it is really important that you have purchased assets along the way that will then allow you to continue living your freedom based lifestyle.

You see what I mean? . So I've gone back on LinkedIn, another social platform, and corrected myself. I've said, yes, I talk about real estate a lot, it's not necessary to be free today, not in today's time. You can get a virtual job and be all over the place with kids, but you are going to need something later to take care of you.

And that's where something like real estate or stocks or some other asset comes in. And that's what I help people do in my try life. On mantra of, let's talk about time freedom, geographic freedom, purpose, relationships. Financial freedom. We gotta get you set up to maintain this lifestyle into the future.

Let's buy one asset or two assets a year for the rest of your life. . . 

Adam Coelho: Yeah. So it sounds like, you don't necessarily need to do real estate or Oh, stocks to get the, get this freedom in your life. Now you can just get a remote job if geographic freedom is high on your list or a job that you like.

And then you can use that to live your life as you see fit. But in reality, a time is gonna come where you either can't or don't wanna do that anymore. And then you need to live off assets. So along the way, you need to be investing in those assets with some portion of that income, which gets back.

Why we're working the job in the first 

Maurice Philogene: place, if you're being purpose. See now that fee, that's why the job is purposeful, because you're taking a bit of that money from that paycheck. You're storing it, you're buying an asset. You don't need the asset right now. The asset doesn't need to be perfect right now.

The asset needs to be perfect in 15 years when you decide to bounce, when you decide that you are exhausted by the thing that you've been doing, even if it's been helping people, Oh, thank God I bought 10 assets over the last 15 years, that now generate $8,000 of income for me so I can keep trying life on.

Yep. Yeah. Gotta think through it. 

Adam Coelho: I love it. All right Marie, so let's talk about the five freedom principles. It's financial freedom, time freedom, geographic freedom, relationship freedom, and.

Freedom to execute your purpose. 

let's talk about the second principle. Time freedom. 

Maurice Philogene: Sweet time. Freedom space. It's space and ability to access planet and life as intended. That's it. Its space and ability to access planet and life as intended for me means I can be mobile and disappear and go different places and impact a lot of people.

I need time to do those things, right? You can create time in many ways. You were asking before, how did I have time to, let's say, build real estate while I was being a three cop at night and exec during the day and what have you. Okay, 4:00 AM to 8:00 AM were pretty much my hustle hours. That's four days a week.

That's 20 hours. That's four days a day, four hours a day, 20 hours a week, 80 hours a month, 960 hours a year. That's 5.17 weeks per year created for you. If you add another four hour block on a Saturday and Sunday, it becomes two months of time you've created. You can create time. But the other thing you can do, like let's say you have a job and you need more time, we'll ask your job better questions, give them a solution to support, not a problem to solve.

So when I wanted to go back to the nfl, I need time. I need time to play football again. Get back in shape, try out. So I went to my job and I expressed that I wanted to go back to the nfl and here's what I was gonna do. How are you going to support it? Because I want to stay here too. They supported it. I asked them better questions.

When I wanted to go deploy for the military, I asked them better questions. When I wanted to be mobile inside of my company and work for international clients, I asked them better questions and they let me work seven years remotely. You can get time that way. There is a myriad of ways that you Pareto's Law focus on the 20% of things that gave you 80% of the results.

We allow Parkinson's law to define our lives where everything fills the nine to five, even though it's not even necessary. You're in this meeting at four 30, like, why am I even here? We need Pareto's Long said 20% gives you 80% result. So that's what I mean by time freedom. There's ways to focus on the things that truly matter and ways to create space such that you can go access the planet and life as intended.

Yeah, 

Adam Coelho: I think it sounds like it comes down to being very intentional about how you're spending your time. Hundred 

Maurice Philogene: percent. And finding and 

Adam Coelho: protecting it. And cut. Exactly. Protecting it. Cutting where you're wasting time so that you could spend that time in a better, more 

Maurice Philogene: purposeful way. Yeah, absolutely.

Adam Coelho: All right. Very cool. I love that. The third one, 

Maurice Philogene: Geographic freedom. 

Geographic freedom sounds like it is. Okay. But it's the concept of being mobile. It doesn't mean being in different countries all the time. I think people get that confused. It goes back to the analogy that I gave you about being in kindergarten where you and I were always going on field trips because it's learning.

It is constant learning. We tend to be happier when we have the ability to move. It's true. Now that movement can be down the street to the next city, to the next state, to the next country, but it movement is involved. So I get excited as an individual when I, Oh man, I'm gonna go to Lebanon next week. Oh man, I'm gonna be in the finished Arctic next week.

Or, Oh shoot, I just got an invitation for my buddy. I'm going to Colorado Springs next week. Mobility matters. So the ways you can get mobility, you can do things like virtualize your mail. I don't receive mail anywhere. It comes all online. When I constructed Quatro Capital with my partners, we created a business that operates virtually so we can move around.

We utilize things like WhatsApp, Skype Zoom Slack for communications. I don't want to have meetings for meeting sites at all. I do everything to make sure that I have mobility in my life. That geographic freedom allows me when something comes up to try life on. I don't have blockers that keep me from going.

It's why I don't buy a lot of commercial crap. I don't want it because it will weigh me down. I'll have to take care of it. So if I get a call next week for my buddy in Cypress and I need to go over, no problem. I'll be on a plane tomorrow. We need that geographic freedom to be able to move around the planet and live.

Yeah. Yeah. 

Adam Coelho: That makes a ton of sense. , I feel you on that material crap. I feel like I'm drowning the material crap. 

Maurice Philogene: It's what we do, man. It's ingrained in our society. Buy a house and you just 

Adam Coelho: fill it with crap. 

Maurice Philogene: More and more junk. And do you know every, unless you 

Adam Coelho: fill it with renters, unless you fill it with renters.

No, 

Maurice Philogene: I like that better. I like that better. I don't know where I got this, but so let's say I meet you, right? And I bring you a gift. I bring you a plant or something, right? As a gift and you bring it in your house. You've now accepted from me a debt because you will have to do something with that object.

In the future. . So when people bring me stuff, I don't accept it. I also don't give nominal gifts. I be it causes people to do things. If I do bring someone something, it is something very intentional that will be supportive of their life. But I don't just give people stuff just to give it, because you're creating a debt system, so you keep bringing stuff to my house.

Stop that because then I gotta go throw it away. I gotta donate it. I gotta reif it. You're creating a debt for someone. Yeah. Yeah. 

Adam Coelho: There's a weight, there's a very real weight to it. And a, it's like a job. You're giving them a job, yeah. And it feels bad, right? It feels bad to have it around.

It feels bad to waste it, to 

Maurice Philogene: throw it out. You feel guilty about it. It's, I've told people when they invite me to birthday parties and weddings and stuff, please don't ask me to buy something. It's against my, I'll do something for your kids. I'll, I will pay into their college fund. I will donate to a charity or something.

Something that has meaning, but I just don't like junk at all. I think it holds us down. I always say 

Adam Coelho: cash is the best gift. . 

Maurice Philogene: Yeah, . I love it. I can invest it. Yeah. It's make $1 into three. That's one of the loves of my life. 

Adam Coelho: Yeah. 

I wanna get to the other two, but I wanna ask, geographic freedom, how do you do that with a family where your kids are in school? I very much see the value of geographic freedom. A huge part of my vision is wanting to facilitate workshops around the world and bring my family along.

Yeah. And have the whole thing be a business expense. But How do you do that when your kids are in school? In New Jersey, 

Maurice Philogene: for instance? I got you. You incorporate them. My nine year old has been to 12 countries already. In times of Covid, the school system for my kid knows that I pull him out of school as a way to live.

There's no excuse anymore. If I go the school system and I say, Look, no one's gonna be out school for the next two weeks. He's gonna miss Critical. Yeah, but weren't kids out of school for the last two years. Give me the curriculum. I'll do it with him. So I'm just gonna throw that out there too. There are other families who are living with their kids in a remote capability.

There's a Facebook group called World Schoolers International Schools, Homeschooling People Potting Together if you want that for your kids. But consider the fact as a family, your kids from zero to six can be as mobile as you want them to be. There's no formal cool system from zero to. That is where you take advantage and you expose them to the world as much as possible. I think when kids get older, they do need some level of stability, but not for every family. There are families who feel that the world will teach their kids way more than school ever could, right? But if you want to be more traditional, take 'em out during school breaks, vacation, summertime.

Do the kids really need to have 12 activities during the summer at home, or can you be mobile with the kids and bring them to California where I am, there's a bird sanctuary down the street where I'm gonna bring my son to. There's just no excuse anymore. You have to find ways to be mobile with your family and your kids end up being better for it.

And that's how I started my travel. My, my father sent me to France when I was 15. I traveled around the country for a month with a family that stayed with me the previous summer, changed my life. And here I am a hundred countries later because I have the value system of you can learn a lot in the world because of something I saw when I was a kid.

So it's important. Yeah. I'm glad I 

Adam Coelho: asked because Yeah, you're absolutely right and that you just, you gotta make it happen. If, as you said, if it's important to you, you'll find a way to make it happen. And I was very fortunate growing up. My dad's from Portugal, so we would go, every other summer on a long trip.

And that seeing that they were able to build a business that allowed them to do that was a huge value for me. You know, Everyone's going on two weeks of vacation if they're lucky, and we're going for a month to Portugal because we can stay with family. And my parents had a business that allowed them to do that.

So 

Maurice Philogene: Yeah's very cool. It's valuable. It's very valuable. Yeah. All 

Adam Coelho: right. 

So freedom to execute your purpose. Tell me about that principle. 

Maurice Philogene: Yeah. So I know we have the last two. This one is a bit easier to understand than we can spend more time on relationships, but you don't need money to be free. I never want people to think that I'm espousing to that you don't.

If you have a career that just makes you plug into the ether and life being a street cop for me was not about money, just doing things here and around the world when I was a federal agent that people will never see and never understand. I can describe it as absolute fulfillment and me walking in my son's school and a father coming up to me and saying, Hey Officer Phil, do you remember me?

I'm like, No, don't I'm, I responded to his house because there was a road rage incident and some guys outta DC follow him to his house, had a gun and all that, and I was one of the responding officers was just course of business for me doing my job. But the impact that I had on that family, it changed them.

So when they saw me walking into school, they gave me hugs and were crying. Being a cop was purposeful to me. Now doing affordable housing in real estate is purposeful for me. Doing my philanthropy work in Lebanon in the Mid East is very purposeful for me. When it's a purpose you've won, you are absolutely winning.

And that's what I mean by freedom to execute on your purpose. If the nine to five is killing you and you're not executing your purpose, or at least finding it, you don't have that freedom. And that's what you gotta protect. Again we should be figuring out what our purpose is on this planet. Yep.

Absolutely. 

Adam Coelho: I love those examples. It makes a ton of sense. And you need to create some space to ask those questions. You need to create some space to act on that Yep. Yeah, that, that makes a ton of sense. 

All right, the last one. Freedom to build meaningful relationships. Yeah. Freedom to build meaningful relationships. Same thing. You need space to do it. I'm not talking about networking. That's garbage. That is superficial. What can you do for me? Type stuff. When I mean meaningful relationship, when I go, let's say to another country or even city in the us whatever, I will typically take the business card of a taxi driver and only call that taxi driver while I'm in town.

Maurice Philogene: No one else. You build a relationship with that person such that they're helping you understand what life is like and you are giving to them. Everything is about them. I go to the same grocery store, I'll probably go to the same restaurant. I will ask that restaurant owner how he or she started that business, and what it was like.

We need relationships to collapse the timeframe of what it is that we're trying to do in life. So when I was a federal agent in charge of a field office in Turkey in 2015, I fell in love with the Mediterranean. I said, I wanna live and work there. You know the story. It took five years until I was in a conversation with someone and I realized that a common friend's husband was Turkish.

He lived on the island and he was a real estate developer. I pounced on that opportunity. I got on a plane, it took a year and a half, and we're on our third development project in the island, and I'm a respected businessman there. Relationships did that. I barely know what I'm, I mean the documents are in Turkish, We transact in the British pound and sometimes I gotta send euros over there.

It's, how did I do that by myself in 18 months? I didn't. Relationships do stuff like that. And that's why you need freedom to build them, to find extraordinary people to plug into. It's not about you, it is about them. How can you enrich their lives? And typically something wonderful come of it. Yeah. 

Adam Coelho: That's powerful.

It's I've seen the effect in my life and, I've been very fortunate. A lot of the relationships I built have been through my career at Google. At having worked at Accenture for a long time, I'm sure you have a lot of wonderful 

Maurice Philogene: relationships. Oh yeah, definitely.

Definitely. And it's so powerful. 

Adam Coelho: I recently moved to a new place from San Francisco to New Jersey where my wife is from.

And I've been feeling this urge to like, have more community and more relationships. , I feel like I don't. Great friend network here and part of it's having young kids, part of it's having covid. All of those are excuses. I'm wondering what would you advise someone like me who's maybe in a new place or in any place that wants to go out and build, like in real life relationships 

Maurice Philogene: with it?

That's my With it. With it. That's my advice with it. You gotta, What do you mean? What is that with? It is what's in it for them? What's in it for them? There are people in spaces that you resonate with. Could be real estate, could be being a dad, could be baseball practice, could be, I don't know, building a business.

There are people out there or just, they're just good humans. You feel something connected to them. There is something that you can do for them, with them to them next to them. That it's something in it for them. You. That's how I look at relationships. How always, how can I help people? Always I got nothing, man.

I don't wanna take anything from anyone. When I connect with people, I think about what's in it for them. And then also I invest in those relationships so that my business partner now, really good friend in Cypress. I'm always on a plane to go see him. I always invest in those relationships.

My new mentor in the media space, when I met her, I was in DC on a Tuesday. I said, What are you doing Friday? I dunno, let's get lunch on Friday. What do you mean I'm getting on a plane. I'll reach you down there for lunch. I invest in that person. I'm all for Zoom, man. But that's not real. Like, if there's something that you and I need to do, or if we're vibing and we think we can connect this stuff, like, yeah man, I'll take the AM up tomorrow. I'm gonna go in this relationship. So that's what the, I would give advice on. No less than 30 countries where I would land right now and somebody would pick me up.

That's my greatest achievement. I'm all for the money. I get that, and the accomplishments and the title's cool, whatever. But I know I could land in certain places where I have deep relationships with people and I am more proud of those than I am most of the things that I've accomplished in life. And typically it has come from what's in it for them and me purposefully reinvesting in those relationships by showing up and doing outside of the box things for them.

So that would be my advice. Yeah. I love that. I love that, 

I have a lot of friends around the world as well, thanks to my work at Google and doing two rotations, which is in line with a lot of what we're talking about here. I was able to go to Portugal, live in Portugal with my wife and son, and my son had been to eight countries by his first birthday.

it was very much that, and I've built these friendships and I feel so good about that, knowing I have friends all over the world and like deep, meaningful relationships. So I resonate a lot with what you're saying. 

Maurice Philogene: So when you say that example of that son was having a birthday, I'm the type of person who would show up.

I'll be there, I'm gonna be there just for two days. I'm coming. It's so worth it, man, because we just don't, I think people are just looking everything, what's in it for me. Yeah. Nah, you go invest in other people's life and honor them and what have you. And then it builds very strong bonds. Yeah. And that's not, I'm not doing that because I want something from them later.

I'm doing it because it enriches my life, as well. So I go out of the way to do things like that for people where it makes sense. Meaningful relationships matter. 

That's all part of the whole thing. You see how that will help you try life on, like you have some strong bonds with people all over the place.

Oh, Adam's coming. Mo's come in. Oh no man. Get the car. We gotta pick 'em up at the airport. We're about to go live. Yeah, that's what you want. You do. You do the living 

Adam Coelho: with those people. 

Maurice Philogene: With them and you would their lives. So when they come, like I got friends who come to my, I'm at my cottage, They come to my cottage, they have the code to my house.

Like anytime you're on the East coast, call me. I'll meet you there, I'll have dinner for you. And then just stay there as long as you want. I love this stuff, man. It's all people. I love that too. Alright, 

Adam Coelho: so let's switch gears now into what I call the mindful fire Final four.

I love it. 

So the first question is about envisioning, right? It sounds like it's been a big part of your life. Yeah. I'd love for you to share a specific thing that you had a vision for, and you've touched on a few here, so maybe another one. I'm sure you have a hundred of examples, but what's something that you envisioned seemed improbable At first, but that you made it happen? 

Maurice Philogene: Man, there's a lot of them. 2015 working in the Mediterranean and now I'm a real estate developer on an island in the Mediterranean. That was a vision. Trying out for the NFL was a vision. That was a really young one. Being a street cop, when I got back from being deployed post nine 11 in the military, I got back from 2004.

I had the idea of being a street cop in 2008. How the hell are you gonna do that? And you're a senior exec. You're either gonna leave it or you're gonna do it at the same time. That vision turned into one conversation with an executive at my firm who quietly. Like, you're not leaving this firm, or there'll be a cop.

I'm gonna find a way for you to do both. She never told anybody, You know what she did for me? It was a day academy from 7:00 AM to 3:00 PM She's like, at three 30, log on. Do as much work as you can. If you only get four hours done, it takes four hours of leave. let me do that for six months and never told anybody.

But it's because I had vision about having that patrol car in my driveway. Yep. It led to everything, man. So I've had multiple instances, but to your point, if you don't dream it and write it down somewhere, it will never come to pass. If you do, your naturally, your natural state is gonna start taking you there.

Yeah. It's 

Adam Coelho: so true. I've had so many examples in my life as well, so thank you for sharing that. And one thing that, that highlights also is the relationships. Oh, big time. She's not just gonna do that for anybody who doesn't care about her. she's doing that because you have that deep relationship and that relationship with you put in that work to be such a value to the company that in her team that she was gonna help you with that.

So that's, 

Maurice Philogene: you know what's funny, real quick, I just saw her for the first time in 10 years in Florida. She's retired. I'm still that close to her that I went down. See, I'm still investing in that relationship. She's like 68, 70 now, and I flew down to go see her and hug her and like, Yo, Gail, this is what's happened in my life.

You started this. She's like, Oh man. So relationships. You're right. 

Adam Coelho: Yeah. So powerful

. All right, question number two. What piece of advice would you give to someone early on their path to financial 

Maurice Philogene: independence? Oh, man. Self education is huge. It used to be that people would go to library, but there's too much Google and everything.

Snap quick, all that type stuff. But self education and financial literacy is so important when you're on the path of financial freedom. I have a step process for it, but I'll summarize it real quick. Know your why. Go to work. Store money off your paychecks. Pay yourself first before you even pay your bills.

Let the electric go to, Hey, this is pass, Adam, Future Adam has to be the number one bill. Future Mo was always the number one bill I made. Investing life easy. I made day to day life hard. That's what I want. Sell people. You make your investing life easy. You make your day to day life hard shit.

I sent all that money to my investment account. Now I don't have enough money to pay the bill. Pay the electric. The next time you get paid. Pay the electric. Make your investing life easy. Be on autopilot and buy assets. Be systematic about it and be patient. None of this stuff is gonna happen quickly.

You just gotta let compounding happen for you over time. But it's important, right? Make your investing life easy. Make your day to day life hard. Love it. Love it. Makes ton of 

Adam Coelho: sense. 

The third question is, what piece of advice would you give to someone getting started with meditation and or 

Maurice Philogene: mindfulness?

Mindfulness comes in the, in different forms to different people. For me, it's not sitting silent and in my head about it. For me, it's the gym. I'm still a 4:00 AM guy, Thank you. Military . It will never go away from me. I'm up at 4:00 AM I'm usually at the gym at 4:30 AM It is my time to ground myself in the one thing that is constant for me all the time, which is working out.

That's my mindfulness. If I don't work out for a week, I feel like crap, everything, mentally, physically, morally I'm not right. So I would just tell people. Could be meditation, could be yoga, could be walking. For me it's that morning working out. So it just comes in different forms for different people.

Adam Coelho: And Mo the last question is how can people connect with you online and learn more about what you're working on? 

Maurice Philogene: Yeah, man. Try life on.com is just about to come up. So you can catch me there, especially if you're looking for coaching or if you want to design your lifestyle in a particular way.

I can help people there. I'm very vocal on LinkedIn as so just Maurice on LinkedIn, all the travels and the Tri Life ONMs, if you will. I show it pictorially on Instagram. So I'm not just saying that I do stuff. No, I'm literally all over the world all the time. Or, doing something related to real estate or what have you.

And I try to open my life up so people can see that. And then Quatro Capital, that's the firm that I started. We buy large scale apartment complexes. We raise money with investors. Beautiful affordable housing for our residents, better than average return for investors. Everybody wins. If you're interested in that, check me out at the Cuatro way, q u a tt, R O w A y, the cuatro way.com, and we can talk real estate and building.

Well,

Adam Coelho: Very good. Maurice, thank you so much for being here. It's been an absolute awesome episode and I feel like I learned so much. I really thank you for being here. 

Yeah, man. Thanks for inviting me. I appreciate it, bro. Thanks for joining me on today's episode of the mindful fire podcast.

Maurice Philogene: If you enjoy today's episode, I invite you to hit subscribe wherever you're listening to this, this just lets the platforms know you're getting value from the episodes and you want to be here when I release additional content. 

Adam Coelho: If you're ready to start your mindful fire journey, go to mindful fire.org/start and download my free envisioning guide. 

And just 10 minutes, this guide will help you craft a clear and inspiring vision for your life. 

Again. You can download it for mindfulFIRE.org/start 

Thanks again. And I'll catch you next time on the mindful fire podcast.