Peaceful Profits Podcast Ep. 76 - Scaling a Business Without Giving Up All Your Time
Synopsis:
In this episode of the Peaceful Profits Podcast, Host Chanelle interviews Ashton Levarek, a military veteran and real estate investor who—along with his brother—built a thriving business managing over 85 Airbnbs while helping others escape the 9-to-5 grind.
Ashton shares how their focus on systematizing and scaling created a lifestyle business rooted in freedom, family, and financial independence.
He walks through their transition from real estate investing to coaching, how they used a book and video course to replace hours of phone calls, and the mindset shifts that allowed them to stop trading time for money.
Ashton also shares powerful lessons learned through Peaceful Profits—like the importance of copy-paste models, strategic funnels, and building with vision rather than hustle. For anyone wanting to scale their business without burning out, this episode is full of practical wisdom and inspiration.
Transcript:
Peaceful Profits Review: Scaling a Business Without Giving Up All Your Time
[00:00:00] Chanelle: Hello, Peaceful Profits nation. I'm your host Chanelle Nielson here with an exciting client spotlight for you today. So today we are talking to our client Ashton Levarek. Ashton, welcome to the podcast.
[00:00:13] Ashton: Thank you so much for having me Chanelle. Pleasure to be here.
[00:00:15] Chanelle: Yeah, I am excited to talk to you. Your business, you and your brother run a business that has always just seemed so exciting to me.
[00:00:24] Chanelle: I love what you guys are doing and I would love for you to start off by telling us a little bit about [00:00:30] who you are, what you do and how you do it.
[00:00:33] Ashton: Sure. So my name is Ashton Levarek, my brother Chris Levarek. We both started back in 2018. I was actually in the military. He was an IT engineer.
[00:00:43] Ashton: And we were looking for a way to exit our W2s without contributing so much time to be away from the family. So I was in special operations in the military and I was gone anywhere from, I don't know, 265 plus days a year. So it was a big deal for me. I had two little daughters at the time I [00:01:00] was really focused on leaving the military, but.
[00:01:03] Ashton: Being there for my family. And so we started looking at investing in real estate and we bought a couple of rentals. It worked out. We bought a, we scaled our business raised capital from investors and bought apartment complexes. But in 2021, I think we bought our first Airbnb and This was probably the second or maybe third.
[00:01:22] Ashton: I don't know when you're building your business. There's a lot of aha moments, but the airbnb Model for us was a huge, [00:01:30] breakthrough because it's a property that we can use it creates cash flow every month It creates tax deductions. It creates You know, a whole lifestyle and you can build your lifestyle around Airbnb.
[00:01:39] Ashton: So at the moment we have about five Airbnbs that we personally manage that are our personal portfolio. And then we have about 85 or so in our fund that we manage as well. But the cool thing, again, like you get to use it, you get to you get tax deduction from it, you get cash flow every month and you can manage it in all under, under an hour a day.
[00:01:58] Ashton: And so that was a huge moment [00:02:00] for us and I had all these people reaching out to us. It was like, hey, how are you guys doing this? I see that you're traveling more, you're doing all this stuff with your family. How are you getting the time? And so we decided to build a coaching program for for that.
[00:02:12] Ashton: And we primarily focus on, W2 earners that want to exit the rat race and want to spend more time with family travel, have that kind of freedom. And so that's what the whole focus was. So we still do apartment complexes, but we also coach people on how to get their first, second, third Airbnb and make anywhere from 000 a year doing so.[00:02:30]
[00:02:31] Chanelle: Yeah. I love it. You guys can see why I say this is an exciting business model because it's so cool to hear the lifestyle that it is created for your family and then for others that you coach. So you touched on one thing that I want. I'd love for you to explain a little further, which is you said you have 85 Airbnbs in your fund.
[00:02:52] Chanelle: What is that part of your business?
[00:02:54] Ashton: Let me back up when we buy an apartment complex, we get a bunch of investors together. And then when you buy that specific apartment [00:03:00] complex we use that same model to buy Airbnbs. But So we can invest our fund, people invest in the fund, and then we take that capital and we diversify it across multiple Airbnbs.
[00:03:12] Ashton: We have, we partnered with somebody else to help with the management acquisition piece, so we're not doing everything, but now people can invest. In multiple assets across multiple markets across the United States and yeah, it allows, it's a great model because there's not a lot of [00:03:30] funds or not a lot of ways people can invest passively in an asset class.
[00:03:35] Ashton: Booming right now. And so that is having a fund has allowed us to do that. And then having the knowledge on how to pick the right assets and how to invest and how to pick the right markets and build a team obviously is a big piece too, but yeah.
[00:03:47] Chanelle: Okay. That is so awesome. So let's jump in then to. What was happening in your business before that brought you to Peaceful Profits?
[00:03:57] Chanelle: What did it look like? And what were you looking [00:04:00] to change that brought you here in the first place?
[00:04:03] Ashton: So we were we were looking at a ways to scale our business with the least amount of struggle because we've spent a lot of our time. I'm 43, my brother's four years younger than me. And we've spent our time in the workforce and we understand, what it takes eight to 12 hours a day.
[00:04:21] Ashton: Of grinding, to provide for your family. And didn't want to do that in our business. We wanted to figure out a way to scale our business and make it easy. I know a lot of [00:04:30] people in today's society want to say, and I get it. Like we think if it's not hard, it's not worth anything.
[00:04:35] Ashton: But I'm here to tell you that is a lie that. We tell ourselves for whatever reason, our ego or something, I think, I don't know, but the reality is, if you, there are ways to systematize, there are ways to scale without all that, daily grind without trading that time for money. And what happened was we were talking to somebody else who I think was also a client or was coached through the Peaceful Profits program as well.
[00:04:57] Ashton: And he was able to scale his business very well [00:05:00] and peacefully, to use your term And he mentioned, you should check out writing a book. You should look into writing a book as far as the education piece and building that rapport with your clients, with your students, with even your investors.
[00:05:12] Ashton: And so we wrote two eBooks initially. And those were for investors primarily, but when we started thinking about the coaching, having no background in the coaching, how do we establish rapport with people to make this worth our time? And I think writing a book. [00:05:30] Builds a lot of credibility, people read a book and they can reread it and understand it in the timeline that they need.
[00:05:37] Ashton: And that replaces thousands and thousands, if not millions, hopefully millions, we have that type of clientele of phone calls that we're on, we're on zoom calls all the time with investors, with potential clients with, whoever, so having a book that you can send people that is, limitless value because it's something that they own now that they can refer to over and over, but also builds [00:06:00] credibility for you and your business.
[00:06:02] Ashton: I think that is invaluable. So I really liked that model. It resonated with what we were trying to do. And I think me and my brother jumped on the program within a week or two of reading through everything. So it was we really liked it. Yeah.
[00:06:15] Chanelle: Yeah. Okay. That's so cool. And I love this idea. First of all, that you were very clear on what you wanted.
[00:06:22] Chanelle: You wanted systems, you wanted a business that didn't require more of you. And so the book then became a means to that [00:06:30] end. Like the book is going to replace. Phone calls. It's going to take some of what's in your minds and transport it to your clients so that they then have some of the answers. You don't have to give everyone individually.
[00:06:44] Chanelle: Now you can give out through a book. And I think that's genius to the way that you put that to figure out okay, this is a way to maximize my time. Now you mentioned that coaching was not something you had really done before. So let's talk a [00:07:00] little bit about your offer creation process and how you went from doing this yourself to then, okay, we're going to teach this to some other people.
[00:07:10] Ashton: Yeah. It happened organically, but at the same time, it was it took a minute because I think my brother and I are naturally, we resonate with other people that are trying to get out of the rat race. So people would reach out to us all the time. Hey, I want to invest with you guys, or I want to do what you're doing.
[00:07:26] Ashton: How do I get started? And so it was easy for us to tell [00:07:30] us, tell people like how to invest. But then how do we, when people started asking friends and family and then extended friends, they started asking like, how are you doing this? I want to leave my job too. I want that freedom as well.
[00:07:42] Ashton: We're taking these free calls and it was 15 to 30 minutes, multiple times a day and we're not getting paid for that. And I'm not trying to say that you should get paid. Like I'm not a money hungry like person, but I understand the value. Like you're asking me to. Take time away from my kids and my family to [00:08:00] walk you through this process that took us five years to figure out I need to make it worth something.
[00:08:04] Ashton: And so that was it. And it was a natural progression. We should probably start charging for these calls or figure out a way to systematize that. And so the book was a great answer. The coaching was a great answer as well. But then. The coaching for us was like, do we want to do one on one coaching and yes, you get paid for it, but that's, again, it's committing a lot of time.
[00:08:23] Ashton: How can we scale this? So we're always looking for ways to scale. So the video course made a lot of sense. We looked at [00:08:30] everybody's doing video courses, but we looked at Peaceful Profits that our model was very well, your guys model was, we. We're those kind of people like we copy and paste everything.
[00:08:40] Ashton: So we looked at what was successful and we said, let's do that. Let's make a video course. Let's sell that video course. Let's provide coaching calls one to two a week for questions and answers. Let's also have a Facebook group, so people can post their questions in there and we can answer that.
[00:08:54] Ashton: And then they can answer each other. And, so again, we're providing the space for people to learn and [00:09:00] grow without having to be there a hundred percent of the time.
[00:09:03] Chanelle: Yeah. Awesome. Okay. So as you put this coaching into practice, what are some of the wins and transformations you've seen in your business since adding this new coaching model?
[00:09:14] Ashton: Yeah, so it really did shift our mindset on how we talk about our business. And so when we started talking about how we're helping people do this. We actually got more people investing in the projects we were doing, which was a weird byproduct [00:09:30] because maybe people, we've had about a hundred million in assets under management at several times, which seems like a lot.
[00:09:37] Ashton: And it absolutely is. Although there's people that have way more, but it was a lot for us and it was a huge win. But now when we're telling people that we're teaching people how to do it, I think that brought a level of credibility to our business and people wanted to invest alongside us. And so it helps the growth in that way as well.
[00:09:57] Ashton: Additionally, it just helped. It gave us a point [00:10:00] of focus when we talk to people like, look, I will give you this 15 minutes. But there's a course where you're going to get my five years of experience plus all my special operations experience and leadership and all that. And you can just. That's yours.
[00:10:13] Ashton: You could take that and you can learn from it and, and the cool thing is, and I know we'll get to it, but like our book will be launching here shortly and that has everything, almost everything we put into the business in it. So it makes it even easier, but yeah, it was a natural regression, but it did take, a friend Hey, this [00:10:30] is what you should do if you really want to, because.
[00:10:32] Ashton: You give away a lot of stuff for free and it costs you time and money a lot of times.
[00:10:37] Chanelle: Yeah, that's so interesting. I remember when you were in coaching that happening, that you have this coaching program and you were excited to get that going. And meanwhile, the other part of your business is just growing the actual fund and investment side of it.
[00:10:53] Chanelle: And it's so cool to see it. To me, it's just really speaks to how we project [00:11:00] energetically. I guess that we're saying, Hey, we're open for business. Hey, look at what we have. And it's just people resonate with that and they are attracted to that. Now, like you said, we definitely want to get into the book side of things.
[00:11:14] Chanelle: And let's talk first about the process of writing the book and what that part was like.
[00:11:22] Ashton: That was You know, that was tough. I've written a book before, but it was an ebook and it was short. But this one was a little [00:11:30] bit tougher in the beginning because I did what I tell people to never do. And I sat myself in a room and isolated myself.
[00:11:38] Ashton: From everybody else and all their, input and I just did it. I that's, that's the typical man I'm going to figure it out. And so I did that. And then I also, at the same time, every now and then, when I got an inkling, I would go to the Peaceful Profits and go through their the coaching videos.
[00:11:54] Ashton: And I was like, Oh, there's a whole section on writing a book. And I, and it was so detailed. And it was like, this is how you [00:12:00] should lay out your book. And I'm like, I'm not going to cuss, but that's what I was thinking. Dang it. So I actually, when I wrote the majority of the book, then somehow got caught up on the lessons and went through the lessons and this is exactly how to do it chapter by chapter.
[00:12:15] Ashton: And I, so I had to rewrite it or restructure it. And so that was a frustrating part, but it's just one of those times. Like you, it's. That's the great thing about being an entrepreneur. There's a lot of aha moments. There's a lot of moments where your personal growth happens, [00:12:30] even, you're supposed to be the expert, but a lot of times like that is part of your growing.
[00:12:33] Ashton: And so I took that as one of those, it was just that was something, it was a blind spot that I had to get through. Look to the experts and follow their lead, and make it a lot easier instead of trying to do everything yourself. But yeah, that was my process.
[00:12:46] Chanelle: Yeah. That's so interesting, right?
[00:12:48] Chanelle: You had it all right there in front of you and it took that, but what a great learning process, in hindsight to see. See okay, it can be that much better and you weren't starting from scratch. And then [00:13:00] you mentioned that you are almost done with book edits and it's all coming out into the world.
[00:13:06] Chanelle: So what is your next what's the next step for your book?
[00:13:11] Ashton: So the click funnels are almost done. For the book it's really, it's just a part of, at this point, we're putting it on Google, or sorry, Facebook ads. So that's what we're working through. This week, we're doing that this week. We're focused on that.
[00:13:23] Ashton: Okay. Yeah.
[00:13:25] Chanelle: And I would, the other thing I
[00:13:26] Ashton: wanted to add too, is if you are in the process of writing a book, yes, [00:13:30] Peaceful Prophets offers an outlet. Like I, It's free advertising, obviously for you guys, but this is this was the frustration I had. They also offer the video calls and those were really helpful.
[00:13:40] Chanelle: Yeah. Those
[00:13:41] Ashton: were really helpful. So yeah, you get to talk to actual, book writers on how to do it.
[00:13:46] Chanelle: Yeah. Rather than being, like you said, alone in a room with a computer, it's able, you're able to bring your actual writing and be like, hey, I'm stuck on this part. This isn't flowing. What do I do here?
[00:13:58] Chanelle: And get the feedback. [00:14:00] Yeah, Good. I'm so glad. I'm so glad that was a good process for you after you figured out what was available and that you had those resources to be able to use. Now, what were some of your aha moments both in the book writing process, in this whole business building process?
[00:14:16] Chanelle: What are some of the things that you've learned?
[00:14:18] Ashton: So I'm a big follower of Jordan Peterson, and I've always liked how articulate he is. And it took me a minute. In writing, I have my own podcast as well, but, and we write our own, a lot of our [00:14:30] own content as well, but, and then writing the book, there were multiple aha moments.
[00:14:34] Ashton: But one of the things I came to realize was the reason people like Jordan Peterson can articulate their thoughts so well on live TV or a live interview. It's because they have written for years and in your writing and creating content, you're organizing your thoughts. And it makes you not just a good writer, but it makes you a good orator and a good teacher, because now you have a flow of thoughts that you can convey with [00:15:00] clarity to other people.
[00:15:01] Ashton: And I think that was a huge, that was a huge piece. So if you're looking to be a coach, I think organizing your thoughts in a systematic, Form of a book maybe or a lesson plan or something will make you that much better coach as well as that much better at just conveying ideas, you know for your business So consider it
[00:15:22] Chanelle: Yeah, I love that insight.
[00:15:24] Chanelle: I think that's so true. That's so good the more that you The more that you write and to your point, [00:15:30] it can be in a course or a book or very outlined, but even just journaling is a process that helps you with that. Cause you see your thoughts, you see where you're being redundant or silly or caught up in the weeds and recognizing your thoughts does help you to speak better, to teach better, to do all those things.
[00:15:48] Chanelle: So I love that. What other aha moments have you had?
[00:15:51] Ashton: And I, so I think that the. The click funnels. It's I loved I thought this was interesting and I, and now [00:16:00] every time I'm in the checkout line, I think about this, one of the questions they ask. In your sales processes, does it meet the junk food test?
[00:16:08] Ashton: And I had to think about that and, I can't remember where we finally found the information on what that was, I'm sure it was in the course somewhere, but the junk food test, if you're not aware, it's what's available as you check out, what's right there in front of you and does it entice you enough to buy it?
[00:16:22] Ashton: And so that's essentially, that's what ClickFunnels is. And it's just, you're upselling it's right there. As you're checking out and you have multiple things that go off for the [00:16:30] client. And it continues to upsell and build them into a new program or sell them more things and stuff. And now every time I'm in the checkout counter, I see that stuff and I laugh and I'm like, this is, it is, it's genius.
[00:16:40] Ashton: It is.
[00:16:41] Chanelle: Yeah. Yeah. It definitely makes you think about it differently. Like that Snickers bar is just so easy to grab, it doesn't take a lot of thought and that's how we want it with the order bump that easy to just. That quick of a decision might not be a good decision, but it's that it's [00:17:00] a quick decision that we don't have to spend time thinking about.
[00:17:03] Chanelle: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Let's, I, you have done so much with your business and it's been so exciting to see. What advice would you give to others who are looking to grow and scale? And specifically, one of the things that I think you and Chris have done so well is this focus on not trading your time for dollars, right?
[00:17:27] Chanelle: You have focused on building a [00:17:30] lifestyle business. So what advice would you give others who want to do something similar?
[00:17:35] Ashton: Yeah. So I, in building our junk food items, our items that we do for the order bump. One of the things we, we sell in there is a mini course on this millionaire mindset. And this kind of goes into what I was talking about before and organizing my thoughts.
[00:17:52] Ashton: I came up with this idea of this millionaire mindset. It could just as easily be called the CEO mindset or whatever, but [00:18:00] really what it is. Yeah. Learning how to think like a leader, right? The leader doesn't go out there. And I was in the military and for some reason it didn't click until I started my own business as much.
[00:18:09] Ashton: But you want to be, if you want to be successful as a business owner or even as a coach or whatever, like it doesn't matter. You want to be the person with the vision, and then you want to find the brightest and best people to go do the rest. And that could be a coach. That could be another coach that could be.
[00:18:28] Ashton: For us, it's property [00:18:30] managers, it's contractors, it's CPAs, it's accountants, like we don't try to figure that out. We want to go hire those people. And so that from that's what I would advise any business owner, any entrepreneur starting out. I think a lot of us in America, we are pull ourselves up by their bootstraps kind of people.
[00:18:46] Ashton: Just being Americans, but on the same token, think of the successful Americans out there that are really crushing it, like Elon Musk Steve Jobs or whatever, like these people, they would hire the best and they would leverage their [00:19:00] experience. And then, so long as they're meeting a certain quota, they're going to leave it.
[00:19:03] Ashton: They're not trying to do everything and be perfect. They're taking action first. They're hiring and partnering with or whatever the best and brightest to be able to build it. And that's what it is when you hire a coach that it, that's what it is when you hire an accountant. That's what it like, you don't have to do it alone.
[00:19:20] Ashton: And that is. Yeah, in building that, it helped me building the Millionaire Mindset mini course that helps me organize my thoughts around that. And then of course, apply it better even in my own [00:19:30] writing and coaching stuff. So yeah, that's what I would recommend. Okay. It's so good. That's such good advice.
[00:19:37] Chanelle: Where can people find you and learn more, possibly invest with you or get coached by you? Where is the best place that people can go for more?
[00:19:47] Ashton: We're all over LinkedIn, Facebook, Tik TOK where even, Instagram, all the social media platforms but you can go directly to our website and our website is www.valkeregroup.com, but [00:20:00] Valkere is actually an anagram of our last name and it's spelled V A L K E R E group. com. And we have everything there. We have all our tech. We have our coaching program. We have our investment properties, our our fund, all that stuff. And as well as like a ton of different information about us and our business and stuff we do.
[00:20:17] Ashton: That's probably the best, but if you're on LinkedIn, hit me up there too. Personally, it's easy. Okay, perfect. You guys definitely go check these two out. They're doing amazing things in their business. Thank you so much for being with us [00:20:30] today, Ashton, and for all the things that you've shared.
[00:20:32] Ashton: Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure. Thank you.
[00:20:35] Chanelle: Yeah. And thank you everyone for listening to the Peaceful Profits podcast, and we will see you next time. Bye.
