Latest / The Hannah Hammond Show / How To Stop Drifting and Start Thriving In Life | John Gafford

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How To Stop Drifting and Start Thriving In Life | John Gafford · The Hannah Hammond Show

• 0:00
  Why do we get addicted to pain? Easier to believe there's no
• 0:03
  solution than to take massive accountability in yourself and
• 0:07
  find the solution. How did you get on The
• 0:10
  Apprentice out of 1.8 million applicants?
• 0:12
  I launch into like, all of my great accolades, why I'd be the
• 0:15
  perfect candidate to work for Donald Trump.
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  I could just see the room slipping away.
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  I was losing them just rapidly. I knew I was cooked right.
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  I was like, that did not go well.
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  Yeah, He comes in and he goes, hey, they want to see you again.
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  So hit the mini bar, walk upstairs.
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  It's double doors. I kicked them as hard as I
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  could. Bam.
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  And they hit the wall, flung open.
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  All the NBC people jump, I said. How have you built your company?
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  When I bought it they've been in for 70 years and they had 42
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  agents. 18 months later I built it to two offices and 200 plus
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  agents. You get these top performers and
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  you'd recognize them. How did you build that culture?
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  I believe virtual companies great.
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  Good for you. The magic in your company is the
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  conversations that are happening within the hallways.
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  You could tell your 25 year old self one thing when you were
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  drifting. What would you say?
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  Just. Welcome back to the Hannah
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  Hammond Show. I am sitting here today with
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  John Gafford who is a real estate entrepreneur.
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  He owns one of the largest luxury real estate brokerages in
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  Vegas. He was on season 3 of The
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  Apprentice, chosen out of 1.8 million applicants.
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  I think I read and you're an author speaker and you're about
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  to release your new book that is so aligned with my mission and
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  my message message to called Escaping the Drift and how to
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  Build a life for you that happens for you, that you create
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  by design and not settle into mediocrity.
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  And this mode of just drifting through life and being
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  intentional about what you want to create.
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  So I'm super excited to get to know you and thanks for coming
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  on the show. Yeah, Hannah, glad to be here.
• 1:38
  Yeah. So let's talk about your origin
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  story. What?
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  Before you started, I had all your success.
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  Right? Now you have this thriving
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  company and you were on the show.
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  You got national attention. What was causing you to feel
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  like you were drifting? How did that show up in your
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  life before you had your success?
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  Well, you know, for me, I didn't have any massive success in life
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  until early 30s. You know, I had a lot of cool
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  jobs. I did a lot of cool stuff, but I
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  did wasn't really getting paid, wasn't building any wealth,
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  wasn't doing anything. And everything that I had going
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  was kind of at the control of others.
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  I was an employee. I was working for their people.
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  I was being transferred across the country at will a lot by a
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  major corporation that I work for.
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  And yeah, it just seemed like I was drifting along.
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  And I think part of that comes from just sort of the way that I
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  grew up child of the 80s where your parents got divorced young,
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  which so many people are. That's not a not a too rare of a
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  story, but kind of that hustler mentality of that when you come
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  home from school, there's nobody there.
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  So you kind of got to figure it out and start kind of hustling.
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  And for me, that became like, how can I figure out how to get
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  other people to do things for me from how can I get the neighbor
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  mom to make me a peanut butter and Jelly sandwich because my
• 2:52
  mom's not there to how can I hustle my parents to get for
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  them to both pay for the same bike part and then pocket the
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  money when they're not paying attention from one of them?
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  And you know, I just always had this thing that somebody's
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  coming to save me. And as a kid, it was always
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  like, well, my dad was always going to save me.
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  There was always a safety net. And I was like John C Reilly and
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  step brothers were even though I didn't go to law school, I was
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  always like, well, I'll get in the family business.
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  My father was like, you're not an attorney.
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  Like, what are you talking about?
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  But yeah, it went from my father's going to save me.
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  And then in my early 20s, it manifested into girlfriends.
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  It was like I would get a girlfriend and then move in with
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  them inside of like, two or three months.
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  And, you know, then they would be taking care of me.
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  And it was just always somebody kind of taking care of me.
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  And I think so many people drift through life with their their
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  life being designed by the whims of others.
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  And especially, you know, somebody asked me why I write
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  the book now. And I feel like since COVID,
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  right? I think COVID was the catalyst
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  for so much in our society and so many things happened.
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  But this level of apathy that has just drifted into all phases
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  of people's life since then. And I use the restaurant
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  business as an example. If your server don't take the
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  offense to this, but like back in the day, especially in Vegas,
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  we have every amazing restaurant in the world in Vegas.
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  We just have we're just lucky to have that.
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  And it used to be every time you went to a meal, it was like,
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  man, that was just exceptional. The service was exceptional, the
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  food was exceptional. And now those exceptional
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  moments in restaurants tend to really stand out because
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  everybody's just kind of going through the motions.
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  And I find that in the real estate industry, in the retail
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  industry, in the in, in, in the restaurant industry, every
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  industry, there's this level of apathy that's running through
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  and with AI coming and it's coming.
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  I last night I was laying in bed.
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  I don't know if you saw this yet.
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  See the neo robot thing yet? Did you see that?
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  Oh my gosh. You can buy a humanoid robot for
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  your house. It'll do all your choice.
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  It Yeah, it looks it's it'll, yeah.
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  Shipping 2020. Early 2026.
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  How much is it? 20,000 to buy or 500 bucks a
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  month. Are you kidding?
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  Yeah, it'll do all your laundry. It'll do all your choice.
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  I mean, we're here, we're here and if you don't take control of
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  the direction of your life and figure it out now, you're going
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  to have a real problem. So my mission has become, you
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  know, the book itself is kind of a, a user's manual to my dipshit
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  27 year old self, if you will. And it's kind of, if I could go
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  back in time and say just do all of this stuff, you'll be OK.
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  It's not hyperbole. It's an actual playbook and step
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  by step things you can do to to escape that and get to where you
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  want to be. I love that.
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  And it's. So it sounds like you weren't
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  raised in a low income family. Your dad was an attorney.
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  OK. So you had this sense of
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  self-reliance and this this safety net in some way.
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  Yeah. But it was a weird deal, right?
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  So my parents got divorced, like I said, when I was very young.
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  And I think one of the worst things you can do on this planet
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  if you are a young woman with kids is divorce.
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  A young, a southern attorney in a small Southern town in which
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  he grew up. My father buried my mother in
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  that divorce like she got. So we here we are.
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  We were living in like the ritziest neighborhood of my
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  small town, but we were broke. Like my dad was like, here's the
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  house and I'll pay the bills and I'll keep a roof over her head.
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  But my mom was scrambling and she was like essentially single
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  mom. And we didn't have any money.
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  So it created this weird dichotomy with us where it was
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  like here, it was like at an early age, here we are trying to
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  keep up with the Joneses. Like when most kids don't even
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  understand, you know, where you are on the, on the social
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  hierarchy as far as finances. We were very aware of where we
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  were. And so it, it manifested in me
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  in this weird thing where, you know, I just started.
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  I, I would kind of lie about anything and everything, right?
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  Just trying to justify my existence in this, in this
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  network of, of teenage kids or even sub teenage kids that I, I
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  assimilated into. And that was a habit that once
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  you start lying to other people, then you start lying to
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  yourself. And that's something that I did
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  well through my 20s, you know, always told myself this story
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  about myself that was not exactly true.
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  And it kept me stuck in life. And and that's also where the
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  book kind of starts is like really how to have radical
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  honesty with yourself is where everything really begins.
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  Yeah, and you have to have awareness and then be honest and
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  look at yourself in the mirror and be like, am I really living
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  in integrity with my values? Am I really being honest with
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  myself? And if we're not, we can't
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  achieve anything great in life. But usually there's like a a
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  rock bottom moment or a big failure that This is why
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  mediocrity is such a scary place because you're not really
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  miserable, but you're not really thriving.
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  You're just kind of drifting like you say.
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  So what was that push that was like your, your decision, like
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  I'm going to change my life. Was there was there a rock
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  bottom for you that that? No, I don't have, I don't have
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  the David Goggins horrible, horrible story.
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  I mean, were there times in my life when I was like, I'm
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  completely screwed, I don't know what I'm doing.
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  Did I demolish my credit like it was an Olympic sport?
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  Absolutely. Did I hide cars from the repo
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  man? Yes.
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  Did all of that necessarily? You know, I always figured out a
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  way to figure it out. It was always I could, I could
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  kind of get by to the next level.
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  And, and I, there's a movie out there called 2 for the Money
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  without Pacino in it, where he pays like a, a gambling services
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  guy and it's got Matthew McConaughey in it.
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  And they go to a, they go to a Gamblers Anonymous meeting.
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  And in that meeting, and I, this is such a metaphor for my life.
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  He's like talking to these gamblers Anonymous people.
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  And he's like, listen, you're not addicted to gambling.
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  You're addicted to losing because you're addicted to that
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  right on the edge of spinning into the abyss.
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  And like, like what you can do, the fact that you can always
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  kind of squeeze your way out of it.
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  And I live so much of my early life like that.
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  So I never really felt like there was a moment where it was
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  just like today is enough is enough, right?
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  Like like a drug addict was like, I can't do anymore today.
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  What the cattle. The biggest catalyst change for
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  me was was honestly The Apprentice.
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  And it's not because we were super famous for a hot 2nd or
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  because all of the exposure we got from, you know, that show.
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  It was the first time that I had ever been completely surrounded
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  by a group of people that were all hustling at a level far
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  beyond me. And it forced me to look in the
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  mirror very quickly, like, OK, you know, I'm very honest with
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  this is part of it's a little ego maybe, but it's an honest
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  statement, which I looked around and I was like, OK, I'm probably
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  one of the smartest people here. My, my, my, I'm probably top
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  five brains power. But I was probably because I
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  hustled my way to get on that show.
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  I was probably in the bottom percentile of overall net worth
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  at the time. And it forced me to look around
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  like, dude, you are underachieving, what are you
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  doing? So it wasn't really a rock
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  bottom moment, more like a more like an awakening that I had.
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  Yeah, yeah. And that's why it's so important
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  to be surround yourself around people that are are better than
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  you, right, That you can look up to and that they can pull you in
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  that direction and cause you to wake up.
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  And that's something that because we only know what we
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  know and nothing more. So if we're around people who
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  are below us always, then we're like, oh, we're doing really
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  good. But then as you get into bigger
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  and bigger rooms, you're like, I'm not doing shit to, you know,
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  compared to some people, right? And so that's cool that you had
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  that awareness. And how did you get on The
• 10:07
  Apprentice out of 1.8 million applicants?
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  So yeah, funny story evaluating risk and take it in real time as
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  I like to say it in a keynote that I'm giving right now
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  currently. But so my sister wanted to try
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  out. I didn't want to.
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  I didn't want to go. We went to an open call in
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  Jacksonville and then through that process, I just kept
• 10:26
  calling, kept calling, kept calling.
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  And I told myself if I just get to the top 50 right, which was
• 10:32
  the finals, because of the top 50 of casting, I'll call it a
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  win. So they call me and say, cool,
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  you made the top 50. We want you to come to
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  California and for the finals week.
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  And they said, OK. So we went to we're at the
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  Embassy Suite in Santa Monica, and they put all of us up in
• 10:47
  individual rooms. You weren't allowed to talk to
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  anybody. You could not leave your room.
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  You were like locked in and was like jail.
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  They let you out for like the pool and the gym and to go to
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  meals. And that was it.
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  So when you went to the restaurant, there were 50
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  tables, all one tops because we couldn't talk.
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  Because they want the first time that the real cast to meet to be
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  on camera. And right now, they're just
• 11:04
  trying to figure who's going to be there.
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  So you're taking IQ tests and sitting with, you know, a
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  psychologist and doing all the stuff and doing these
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  interviews. And as the week's going on, I
• 11:13
  start to notice less and less people at dinner.
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  I'm like, they're sending people home right as it goes along.
• 11:19
  So it comes up to the point where they're like, OK, you're
• 11:21
  going to meet Mark Burnett today, who was the executive
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  producer of the show. So I put on my best suit.
• 11:25
  And I go upstairs, and there's big double doors in, like, one
• 11:27
  of those conference room rooms. And I walk in, and he's sitting
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  there on the couch. And there's like 15 NBC brass
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  behind them, all NBC executives, and he's eating M&M's.
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  And I walk in. How you doing, Mr. Burnett?
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  My name is John Gafford. And I stick my hand out and he
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  takes looks at my hand, takes an M&M out of the bag and drops an
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  M&M in my hand. I'm like, all right.
• 11:45
  So I launch into like, all of my great accolades.
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  And I was totally embellishing on most of them and why I'd be
• 11:51
  the perfect candidate to work for Donald Trump and all the
• 11:53
  stuff and blah, blah, blah. And the whole time, like, I
• 11:55
  could just see the room slipping away.
• 11:57
  I was losing them just rapidly. And I was like, man, this is not
• 12:01
  going well. And you know, Burnett was like,
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  oh, I hear your girlfriend's going to dump you or something
• 12:05
  random or whatever. And I was like, huh.
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  But it just, it went terribly. And when I left that room, I
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  knew I was cooked, right? I was like, that did not go
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  well. So I go back and I'm literally
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  packing my stuff because I know what's coming.
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  I've seen it happen all week. So I'm packing my bags and APA
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  comes in and he goes, hey, they want to see you again.
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  And I said, OK, this time I'm doing, I'm doing a little
• 12:25
  different. I said, give me a minute.
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  I need to hit the mini bar. So I hit the mini bar.
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  I walk upstairs, there's double doors.
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  I kicked them as hard as I could.
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  Bam. And they hit the wall, flung
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  open. All the NBC people jumped.
• 12:37
  Brunette kind of looked up at me.
• 12:39
  And I said, buddy, before you say one more word about your
• 12:42
  little why I should be on your goofy little television show,
• 12:45
  just know this. When you make an investment in
• 12:47
  me, you get back 100 times the investment.
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  And I pulled a bag of M&M's and I'd taken out of the mini bar.
• 12:52
  I threw them in his face and I walked out of the room.
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  Oh my God. And that's how I got on the
• 12:57
  show. And it was just, and, and that
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  again, like that's, that's part of it's one of the chapters in
• 13:00
  the book is how to evaluate risk.
• 13:02
  And if you look at that situation, it's like, what's the
• 13:05
  downside 0 right. I mean, well, here's the two
• 13:08
  lessons from that, that you can take their own book.
• 13:10
  First of risk, risk evaluation. What's the risk zero?
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  I knew I was cooked. What's the upside?
• 13:15
  If I go balls out and create one ridiculous moment I could get, I
• 13:19
  could be on the show. Because part of what makes you
• 13:23
  successful in any situation is creating value for others.
• 13:27
  And when I went up there the first time and I started
• 13:31
  spouting all my resume, I was walking resume guy.
• 13:34
  They weren't hiring anybody. It's not what they were doing.
• 13:36
  They were casting. So what they needed was somebody
• 13:39
  that was potentially going to get some ratings and maybe do
• 13:41
  something crazy on television. So I went back up there and I
• 13:44
  said, I'm going to give you value by creating my little M&M
• 13:48
  rebellion, which is going to maybe show you that I can be a
• 13:50
  ratings goldmine for you, which is exactly coming up.
• 13:53
  What happened? That's fascinating.
• 13:55
  That's and were you like, were you actually angry and pissed
• 13:59
  off or were you just strategic about?
• 14:02
  It was strategic. It was strategic.
• 14:03
  It was, it was, let me make a moment that's going to show
• 14:06
  these people I can be good TV. That's awesome.
• 14:09
  Yeah. And did you have any TV
• 14:10
  experience before then? No, none.
• 14:13
  No TV at all. And you?
• 14:15
  Did you have a dream of being on TV?
• 14:16
  No, no, like, like, no. Then again, I think everybody
• 14:20
  back then was a little enamored with the idea of it.
• 14:22
  I mean, you know, kids today, they think and they're like,
• 14:24
  what? Dude, just get on YouTube, turn
• 14:26
  on Instagram. That didn't exist, right?
• 14:28
  And so, yeah, it was a huge deal to be on TV at the time.
• 14:32
  And when it came off, I'll tell you another funny story about
• 14:35
  that's one of my life lessons. And like people have, I love
• 14:40
  people in their offices that have trophies like here's my
• 14:43
  plaque from winning this and sales of the year and all these
• 14:46
  awards. Like I'm like a serial killer to
• 14:48
  my own finances where I have like trophies of failure all
• 14:52
  over my office, right? Like I have $100,000 bottle of
• 14:55
  vitamins that I talk about in the book.
• 14:57
  And one of my favorite trophies is after The Apprentice.
• 15:00
  I got a call and it was for it was it was a casting director in
• 15:04
  New York. And they said David Flibat,
• 15:06
  who's a dude that wrote all these super big hit sitcoms for
• 15:10
  NBC, like Will and Grace and a bunch of other ones that he that
• 15:13
  he wrote David loves you. He's seen you, he's watched you
• 15:16
  every week. He thinks you're great.
• 15:17
  He wants to fly you to New York. He wants you to read for his new
• 15:21
  pilot. And I'm like, but like, I'm not
• 15:24
  an actor. It's not what I do.
• 15:26
  And they, they were like, whatever.
• 15:27
  So I called my buddy and he's like, dude, you have to do it.
• 15:29
  Yes, that's that's legit. They're going to fly you up.
• 15:31
  Go do it. So I'm like, OK, I'll do it.
• 15:33
  So they FedEx me down the script and I get the script and it's
• 15:37
  called goodies place and I open it up and I get to like Page 3
• 15:41
  and it says in walks goody Valletta.
• 15:43
  And then there's the description of the character.
• 15:44
  Now keep in mind they wanted me to read for the lead of this
• 15:46
  thing, this guy goody Valletta. And it says the best of my
• 15:49
  recollection. It says in walks goody Valletta
• 15:53
  mid 30s kind of doughy boyish charm, but by no means man
• 16:00
  candy. And I was like, oh, and dude,
• 16:02
  this is like 20. I mean I was fit and looked
• 16:04
  great 20 years ago. I was like, bro, this is a
• 16:06
  terrible like this can't be me, right?
• 16:09
  I'm like, Oh my God, it was like the biggest ego crush ever.
• 16:12
  And then like 7 pages later in walks his cousin and it says
• 16:16
  loud, brash, tall think Vince Vaughn from swingers.
• 16:19
  And back then, if I had a nickel for every time I got compared to
• 16:22
  Vince Vaughn, I I wouldn't be here today.
• 16:23
  I'd just be still sending a bottle of money.
• 16:26
  But so I'm like, OK, I see what's happened.
• 16:28
  So I fly to New York and I go to this casting meeting in this big
• 16:31
  building in New York. And I walk in and there's a
• 16:33
  there's somebody sitting behind the camera and there's a casting
• 16:35
  director there with her, her pad or notes.
• 16:37
  And I walk in and I go, hi, how you doing?
• 16:39
  I'm John Gafford. She's like, oh, great, how are
• 16:40
  you? And I'm like, I think there's
• 16:42
  been a mistake. And she was like, I'm sorry.
• 16:45
  I was like, yeah, you know, you guys sent me this and you, you
• 16:48
  said you wanted me to read for this, but I think what you meant
• 16:50
  was this. So that's what I prepared.
• 16:52
  And I'll never forget to look on like the dude from the camera.
• 16:55
  It was like that South Park clip where the camera man's just like
• 16:57
  this from behind the camera and like, looks at you real slow
• 17:00
  motion. And then she goes, you can read
• 17:04
  for whatever you want. And I was like, oh, no, oh, no,
• 17:07
  no, no. I've just blown this before it
• 17:08
  even started. And sure enough, I never got a
• 17:10
  call back from that. And thank God they didn't make
• 17:13
  it. So I have to watch Nick
• 17:14
  Seinfeld. But the lesson of that story.
• 17:16
  And I called my buddy and told him what happened.
• 17:18
  He was like, bro, those lessons are just, those descriptions are
• 17:22
  just placeholders. They don't mean anything.
• 17:24
  They weren't looking for a fat dude.
• 17:26
  They wanted you. Just whoever.
• 17:27
  When he wrote that originally, that's just what he wrote in.
• 17:30
  But he saw you in that part. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I
• 17:32
  totally screwed it up. So the lesson of that is never
• 17:35
  assume you know what people want.
• 17:37
  Like you've got to go through life doing that.
• 17:39
  And, and again, I think if it like stories like that and
• 17:42
  learning the lessons of hyperbole, that's kind of how I
• 17:44
  wrote this book. It's not filled with it's not
• 17:47
  filled with a bunch of flexes of how successful I've been.
• 17:51
  More of more of it is, well, here's this disaster and here's
• 17:55
  what I learned. So you don't have to go through
• 17:56
  this or if you're living this disaster currently, this is how
• 18:00
  I got out of. It right.
• 18:01
  So what are some of the tactical things that people can do to
• 18:05
  aware that they be have the awareness that they are drifting
• 18:07
  and then start to transform their life and be living on
• 18:10
  purpose? Yeah, well, the first thing in
• 18:11
  the book we have is like a drift audit where it asks you like 10
• 18:14
  questions and says how where are you with these questions?
• 18:17
  You know, like, is everyday Groundhog Day?
• 18:19
  Do you feel like every day is the same?
• 18:20
  Are you constantly waiting for the right time to do something,
• 18:22
  but it never seems to be the right time.
• 18:24
  So in that first part of, of having radical honesty of
• 18:28
  deciding where you are and figuring out where you are,
• 18:31
  you're going to go through that audit and then you're going to
• 18:33
  figure out the next step is then figuring out where you who you
• 18:36
  want to be by really describing that life.
• 18:39
  And it helps you walk you through how to get that
• 18:41
  description of the, of the person you want to be.
• 18:44
  And that becomes your North Star.
• 18:45
  And then from that North Star, then we start to price out what
• 18:48
  it's going to cost and how it's how we're going to get you
• 18:50
  there. And then that we're going to
• 18:51
  build a plan that's going to get you there with actionable steps
• 18:55
  that are converted through KPISI know I saw in your bio how much
• 18:57
  you'll have KPIs, but actionable steps every single day to get
• 19:00
  you there. Because anybody ask me like at
• 19:02
  our real estate company, top performers, what makes a top
• 19:05
  performer in real estate? It's very simple.
• 19:06
  It's clarity of goal, specificity of plan and
• 19:09
  consistency of execution. Those three things all day long.
• 19:13
  Every top performer has those three, those three things.
• 19:15
  And you can use those same philosophies to anything you
• 19:19
  want to do in life. You want to get more fit, use
• 19:21
  the same philosophies. You want to be a better dad, use
• 19:23
  the same philosophies. Want to be a better spouse?
• 19:25
  Same philosophies. So that's what I'm trying to
• 19:27
  impart here. Yeah, I love that.
• 19:29
  Did you ever struggle with any like anxiety or depression or
• 19:34
  anything like that in your life or?
• 19:36
  Yeah, that's in the book too. So I have or I have been the
• 19:39
  victim of seasonal depression, I guess they call it where for
• 19:42
  some reason, like my wife calls it the funk is what we've
• 19:44
  decided to name it. You know, you give something a
• 19:47
  name, you give it power. But that's fine.
• 19:49
  You can also D power it if once you give it name power.
• 19:51
  But yeah, so I, I suffered 3 times where for whatever reason,
• 19:54
  I'll just get that melancholy feeling maybe once a year or so.
• 19:57
  And I talk about how I get through that.
• 19:59
  And and for me, it's about just accomplishing one thing.
• 20:04
  If I can just get one thing checked off my To Do List, even
• 20:08
  if it's the easiest thing to get done, you start with one thing
• 20:11
  and that starts to build momentum.
• 20:12
  And I find when I do that and I do it.
• 20:15
  You know, not just consciously or not just with intention, but
• 20:19
  with the assistance of my wife who's like, all right, we're
• 20:22
  doing, what are you doing today? Now we're doing two things
• 20:25
  today. And I find that what used to
• 20:26
  take a couple of weeks to snap me out of it, now I can snap out
• 20:30
  of it pretty quick. And I feel it coming on when it
• 20:33
  comes on. Yeah, something I'm talking
• 20:35
  about in the book, the book that I'm writing right now, which I
• 20:38
  haven't actually announced, but I'm writing a book right now.
• 20:41
  Welcome. To the club, yeah, I'm super
• 20:43
  excited. But it's, it's that, yeah, the,
• 20:49
  the Green Zone, living in the Green Zone.
• 20:50
  So living in a state of flow versus force, right?
• 20:53
  And creating life versus resisting life.
• 20:55
  And so one of the things that my, my first coach I ever hired
• 20:58
  when I was 25 taught me was doing energy audits, kind of
• 21:02
  just like you're saying, is being aware of the energy that
• 21:04
  the energetic state that you're in while you're doing the
• 21:08
  different activities that you're doing and around different
• 21:10
  people in your life. So you can start to have
• 21:11
  awareness of the things that fuel you and lift you up and
• 21:14
  keep you in a peak energetic state, in a state of flow versus
• 21:17
  the things that bring you down and suck the life out of you.
• 21:20
  And so I just totally lost my train of thought of what you
• 21:24
  were just talking about as I was talking.
• 21:25
  About that, well, let's talk about that what you just said.
• 21:28
  But because so often people don't realize, especially in the
• 21:32
  modern age with the phone in front of your face and the
• 21:35
  constant just feeding and the fact that those algorithms are
• 21:39
  designed to put you in an echo chamber.
• 21:41
  So you start liking the wrong stuff, you start interacting
• 21:44
  with the wrong stuff, you're going to get more and more and
• 21:46
  more of it. And, you know, people are so
• 21:49
  concerned with what goes in their mouth to be fit, right?
• 21:52
  But they're not nearly as concerned about what's going in
• 21:55
  their head because that has such an impact on you with the amount
• 22:00
  of energy you have, the amount of intention you have, the
• 22:02
  amount of excitement you have that just the fact that you're
• 22:05
  here today. Yeah.
• 22:06
  Right, I remember so the, the study showed that that my coach
• 22:10
  taught me, he said when you're in the state of flow, you're
• 22:12
  five times more productive than someone who's not in the state
• 22:16
  of flow. So you could work, you know, one
• 22:18
  hour and get 5 hours worth of work done versus somebody else.
• 22:21
  And he said the outcome can only be as great as the energetic
• 22:24
  state in which you initiate the action.
• 22:27
  And so he helped me see that a mission of mine and life and of
• 22:30
  core value of mine in life is to live in the Green Zone in the
• 22:33
  state of flow 90% of the time. Because if you die at the end of
• 22:37
  your life and you're wondering, do I have any regrets?
• 22:40
  And you can honestly say I lived in the state of flow 90% of the
• 22:44
  time. 10% is there's tragedies in life and failure and sickness
• 22:47
  and loss and all these things. But 90s in a right like it's a,
• 22:50
  it's as pretty much as good as you can.
• 22:52
  Get as good as you. Would get yeah and so I made it
• 22:54
  my mission to be able to master my energy, master my energetic
• 22:59
  state so I could truly live in the Green Zone 90% of the time
• 23:02
  because I'm results drip. I want to be happy, I want to be
• 23:04
  healthy, I want to be free, I want to be wealthy and all these
• 23:07
  things and so now my mission like when I get in a anxious or
• 23:11
  depressive state, I immediately go back to 90% in the Green
• 23:15
  Zone. This is creating negative
• 23:16
  results in my life. This isn't serving me or anybody
• 23:19
  else. And so it's how quickly can I
• 23:22
  get myself back to the Green Zone when something knocks me
• 23:25
  out of flow. And so that's what I've mastered
• 23:27
  now is when something tragic happens or something stressful
• 23:30
  happens or whatever happens that brings me back, I can
• 23:33
  immediately recognize that awareness and not drag out that
• 23:36
  state of, you know, not flow, right?
• 23:39
  Resistance, fear, anger, rage, depression, boredom, all of
• 23:43
  those negative low frequency states because it directly
• 23:46
  impacts everything in my life. And I think so many people, they
• 23:49
  get, like you said, they get addicted to the pain.
• 23:52
  And it's why, like, why do we, why do we get addicted to pain?
• 23:56
  Well, I'll tell you a funny story about that kind of
• 23:58
  rounding what your what your thought was, was I got a book
• 24:01
  review, right. And when you write a book to a
• 24:03
  publisher, it goes out to the there's like reviews for the
• 24:07
  people that buy books, right. And the person I got a call from
• 24:11
  my publicist, she's like, oh, so we got a, we got a review coming
• 24:13
  in tomorrow from Publishers Weekly.
• 24:15
  I'm like, great. And I read it and it was not
• 24:18
  complimentary. And I was like, man, that is
• 24:22
  ruthless. Stay with me.
• 24:22
  I'm not saying my book sucks. Stay with me.
• 24:24
  There's a point to this, but I, so I read it and I went to sleep
• 24:27
  and it bummed me out. I woke up the next morning and I
• 24:29
  read it again and I, and I was like, Oh my God, I love this
• 24:32
  review. I love it.
• 24:34
  I'm going to tell you why, because obviously it was written
• 24:36
  by one person who has an opinion and has sees the world through a
• 24:39
  certain lens. And what they said was they said
• 24:43
  that my advice that can come off occasionally as trite because I
• 24:48
  refuse to acknowledge the myriad systematic issues and I present
• 24:54
  all problems as solvable, meaning I refuse to believe that
• 24:59
  there's this the boogeyman, There's, there's outside forces
• 25:01
  that you have no control over that cause your problems.
• 25:04
  And I was like, you're damn right.
• 25:06
  I think that way. Like, I don't sit here and say,
• 25:08
  when my seasonal depression comes up, well, you know, it's,
• 25:12
  it's just part of my molecular makeup, but it's how it happens.
• 25:15
  I choose to take a situation that is physiologically inside
• 25:19
  of me. Like I can't control that.
• 25:21
  I, I have no control, but I do control how I react to it and
• 25:26
  how I manage myself out of it. I do have control that.
• 25:29
  So yes, I do believe every problem has a solution that's
• 25:32
  within you. And I think the reason that
• 25:33
  people would get addicted to pain to answer your question is
• 25:36
  it's easier to believe there's no solution than to take massive
• 25:41
  accountability in yourself and find the solution.
• 25:44
  That's exactly how I see things in the world.
• 25:46
  It's like, and all of the most successful people I've ever met
• 25:49
  in life, they have an internal locus of control.
• 25:52
  They take full responsibility for every single outcome in
• 25:55
  their life, regardless of the environment around them that
• 25:57
  they can't control, right? The people around the
• 25:59
  environment around the world, you have some control over that,
• 26:01
  but you know, you can't control where you were born or what
• 26:03
  country you were born into or what family you were born into.
• 26:06
  Like there's certain things like that, but you choose how you
• 26:09
  react and you choose how to take even the most painful things and
• 26:13
  how you react to those things and how you use those to turn
• 26:16
  them into something beautiful and something powerful.
• 26:18
  And so I do believe, and somebody could say, like that
• 26:20
  guy would probably say, well, what about somebody that's, you
• 26:23
  know, born with no arms or no legs?
• 26:24
  Well, look at the speaker who has no arms and no legs.
• 26:27
  And he, even though he couldn't control that, he controlled what
• 26:30
  he did with that and he created something beautiful and he's
• 26:33
  positively impacting the universe.
• 26:35
  And he chose to take accountability for how he was
• 26:37
  going to show up. And he could have just been, he
• 26:39
  could have just been depressed or suicidal or miserable, right.
• 26:43
  And so I think regardless the situation, yeah, some of us get
• 26:46
  handed better cards than others, but it's how we show up and how
• 26:49
  we react. And we, I think the more pain we
• 26:51
  have or the more chaos we have in our world, the more we have
• 26:56
  the ability to grow into our highest potential because we
• 26:59
  really can understand pleasure and pain and fear and greed and
• 27:03
  all of these things. Whereas someone who doesn't
• 27:05
  necessarily go through any of those things, they, you know,
• 27:09
  they, they may not have the full scope of the real challenges
• 27:12
  that people have, right? And, but I, I, I don't think
• 27:16
  it's about like comparing situations, right?
• 27:19
  And people always want to play the victim.
• 27:21
  And that leaves you stuck in a low energetic state.
• 27:23
  And that leaves you stuck, drifting and just surviving
• 27:25
  through life and then letting life happen to you, which is a
• 27:28
  miserable way to live. Yeah, well, well, much like,
• 27:30
  much like you with the podcast, I've been doing my my podcast
• 27:33
  for four years and I have had people sit in my studio with,
• 27:38
  you know, just wild tales of unbelievable success.
• 27:42
  And yes, the starting line is different for everybody.
• 27:44
  But these people, their starting line wasn't even on the track.
• 27:47
  It wasn't, it wasn't even in the country, right.
• 27:50
  I mean, coming over here as a refugee, not speaking English at
• 27:53
  21 years old to owning 1000 doors, I mean, that's wild,
• 27:58
  right? So yeah, I do believe that any
• 28:00
  problem is solvable. And I do believe with radical
• 28:02
  self accountability and belief in yourself, you can't solve all
• 28:04
  your problems because I've seen so many stories of that
• 28:07
  happening consistently. And if you're drifting along, if
• 28:12
  you're somebody that feels like every day is Groundhog Day,
• 28:16
  every day is the same. I mean, again, that's why the
• 28:18
  book is for you. But the first step is, as I say,
• 28:21
  you got to stop pointing the fingers, start pulling the
• 28:22
  thumb. In any situation in your life
• 28:24
  that's not going the way that's not going the way that you want
• 28:28
  it to go. The very first question you
• 28:31
  should always ask yourself is what did I do in this situation?
• 28:35
  What did I do to contribute to this?
• 28:37
  How did that happen? You know, like we both own real
• 28:39
  estate companies and when somebody wants to leave our
• 28:43
  company, which happens, agents come, they go, which is it's,
• 28:47
  it's nature of the beast when somebody wants to leave our
• 28:49
  company. I am really interested in the
• 28:53
  why I don't try to stop anybody from leaving our company ever.
• 28:56
  Like I, it's like to me that's like, if, if your girlfriend's
• 29:00
  breaking up with you and you're like, please, so go, I'm not
• 29:02
  going to do that, right? I, I'm always like, hey, man,
• 29:05
  you know, if it's not as green as grass isn't green, you can
• 29:08
  always come back. And I always want to leave that
• 29:09
  door open. But I'm very concerned with not
• 29:12
  what was wrong with our company, but what's so alluring about
• 29:15
  this thing, this opportunity that you have to go somewhere
• 29:17
  else. And then I always take that
• 29:19
  information and I always spin it back through our leadership
• 29:22
  group and say, hey, is this something we're missing?
• 29:25
  Is this something we should be doing better?
• 29:27
  And I'll give you an example of that.
• 29:29
  You know, I recently and ChatGPT is miraculous for this.
• 29:32
  Oh my God, it's great with this. I recently had a guy leave and
• 29:36
  then I ran through what he said and it obviously it knows me.
• 29:40
  So it knows everything we do to recognize all of our people.
• 29:43
  And it said, and because of the way that our business is built
• 29:46
  and the way that we built our business by design, which is
• 29:50
  really only focused on hiring successful agents, we don't hire
• 29:53
  new agents at all. And I'm a new agent training
• 29:54
  program and I'm any of that. It said, you guys are so focused
• 29:58
  on celebrating success that occasionally you forget that
• 30:02
  everybody's still trying to get better.
• 30:05
  And so you need to do a better job of, even though they're
• 30:08
  already successful, helping them become even more successful.
• 30:12
  And it was like, wow, OK, cool. And so, you know, we reached out
• 30:16
  to some of our top, top performers and we were like,
• 30:18
  hey, is there anything that you would want to learn?
• 30:21
  Like, you're making 1,000,000 bucks a year, you know, selling
• 30:23
  real estate, but what do you want to learn?
• 30:25
  And the answers were crazy. It was stuff that I would just
• 30:28
  assume that some of these people already knew how to do.
• 30:30
  And it was like, oh, we can put together circles and we can do
• 30:33
  this, like little masterminds. They were like, yeah, I would
• 30:35
  love that. And like, all of a sudden it
• 30:36
  went from people I couldn't drag to a happy hour because they
• 30:39
  don't care. They'd rather be home with their
• 30:40
  family are now like, I'll go anywhere to learn that.
• 30:44
  Right. Yeah, that's powerful.
• 30:46
  Yeah, you just got to be honest with where you are.
• 30:47
  Yeah. And we everything, the people
• 30:49
  that we attract, like whether we think we are or we think we
• 30:53
  aren't, we are creating every outcome in our life.
• 30:56
  We are attracting the people in our lives, the outcomes in our
• 30:58
  lives and people to say, you know what's happening to me.
• 31:01
  But no, they're still creating it one way or another, whether
• 31:03
  it's something good or something bad.
• 31:04
  So you might as well choose to take full ownership of
• 31:07
  everything and, and over the things that you control and
• 31:11
  create more those good outcomes in your life and continuously
• 31:13
  improve. Like that's one of my core
• 31:14
  values is continuous improvement, continuous growth,
• 31:17
  continuous learning. Every single day I learn
• 31:18
  something new and I teach something that I've learned and
• 31:21
  it's so critical and important and just always pushing that
• 31:24
  needle even with the top performers.
• 31:25
  And so that's cool that you said that because I think about that
• 31:27
  too is like, well, you know what, what are the top people?
• 31:30
  What can I bring value to the top people who are already
• 31:32
  performing well? But you'd be surprised.
• 31:34
  Well. You get to a point.
• 31:36
  I mean, our company is not to brag.
• 31:38
  Well, I'm going to brag about my company.
• 31:39
  It's awesome. So we have 550 agents.
• 31:42
  We have the highest average sales price of any large company
• 31:44
  in Vegas. We sell more homes or over
• 31:46
  1,000,000 bucks than any other firm.
• 31:48
  And it it we have a great firm with we have probably more 7
• 31:52
  figure owners than any other real estate brokerage in Nevada
• 31:54
  I would guess. And it's just a great, great
• 31:57
  firm and one of the things that makes a craft.
• 32:01
  I've got my train of thought I thought versus bragging.
• 32:03
  What were you talking about? Yeah, yeah, you're talking
• 32:05
  about, oh, the top performers and how they what they could
• 32:08
  learn to get better. We just got that and I skipped
• 32:10
  anyway. I forgot what I was going to say
• 32:11
  about Simply Vegas, but I forgot.
• 32:13
  Gosh, I forgot what I was going to say.
• 32:14
  It was going to be epic, but I started naming stats and I got
• 32:17
  it early in the morning today. Sorry, I know that's exactly
• 32:19
  what happened to me. I got that, yeah.
• 32:22
  It'll come back to me in a minute.
• 32:23
  But it's like, what? What?
• 32:25
  You'd be surprised of what the most successful people still
• 32:27
  want to learn or have to learn. Yeah, you know, always learning
• 32:30
  stuff, always getting better is what it is.
• 32:33
  You know, we're constantly improving our tech stack as you
• 32:35
  have and it's crazy how fast things are changing like in the
• 32:39
  real estate space in the last in the last 70 days has been
• 32:44
  insanity with some of the things that have happened with Zillow
• 32:48
  integrating into ChatGPT with you know the search volume now
• 32:52
  Google searches is now down 30% to the search engines.
• 32:56
  Wait what? Is Zillow integrating with
• 32:58
  ChatGPT? I haven't.
• 32:58
  Heard of that? Oh yeah, Zillow is now
• 33:00
  integrates directly with ChatGPT.
• 33:02
  And how does what does that mean?
• 33:03
  So here's what's happening now. So where it was before where
• 33:08
  like if say you were trying to sell your house, you would go in
• 33:12
  and you would say something like on, on the sales, on the, on the
• 33:14
  listing side, you would say something like you would search
• 33:17
  for the best agents in, in, in Vegas on Google.
• 33:19
  And it would pop up people that bought ads and you can see their
• 33:22
  Google, Google reviews their, their business pages.
• 33:24
  You can see all of that stuff. Now people are just going to
• 33:27
  ChatGPT and saying who's the best realtor in Scottsdale?
• 33:31
  And then it spits an answer out. And so many people don't realize
• 33:36
  that ChatGPT, grok, all of those things.
• 33:38
  A lot of times that information is not being based on anything
• 33:41
  that's real. They're just indexing.
• 33:44
  They're just indexing what you feed it from the Internet.
• 33:46
  So literally, you could start a web page or there's ways to do
• 33:49
  it and forget SEO. You need to be all about AEO
• 33:52
  right now. But making sure that what you're
• 33:54
  feeding the the bots is coming back is good because people are
• 33:58
  taking that as gospel and they're just making those calls.
• 34:01
  So making sure that you show up there, but with Zillow on now
• 34:06
  integrating with ChatGPT, things like a it's not good.
• 34:09
  I think they're going to have a massive problem because Zillow
• 34:13
  was allowed to use our data as agents to display on their site.
• 34:18
  They've now done a financial deal where that data is not
• 34:21
  going to a third party and we don't, we never agreed to send
• 34:23
  it to ChatGPT. So now they can use that because
• 34:26
  what they're trying to do is make real estate conversational.
• 34:29
  Hey ChatGPT, I'm thinking of buying a new house in Vegas.
• 34:33
  I like to go to the gym, I like to go to the park.
• 34:34
  What area should I be in? Well, based on what you're
• 34:37
  saying, blah, blah, blah, it should be this.
• 34:38
  I'm just pulling that data from Zillow.
• 34:40
  So I think we'd need 3 bedrooms, 2 baths.
• 34:42
  Is there anything available? And it would pull the listings
• 34:44
  directly from Zillow. But more to the point, what it's
• 34:47
  done is it's changed the way that you've got to think about
• 34:51
  everything in real estate. For example, listing
• 34:53
  descriptions like before, it was like, you know, magnificent,
• 34:57
  glorious, you know, epic. You know, it was every adjective
• 35:01
  you could think of in your listing description because you
• 35:03
  were just trying to flex on this luxury house right now.
• 35:07
  You've got to write that in a way that's conversational and
• 35:10
  very easy to index by the bots. Because if somebody says like
• 35:14
  I'm looking for a home with, you know, the best home automation,
• 35:18
  instead of saying control for home automation, you have to say
• 35:20
  this house has the best home automation.
• 35:23
  You've got to say that because you've got to start thinking
• 35:26
  like the consumer is using a conversational AI to shop for
• 35:30
  things. So it just changes how we do
• 35:32
  everything. And now, you know, being on
• 35:37
  being on Google is going to become less important.
• 35:39
  Google, like if your business is based on Google Adwords, which
• 35:42
  mine has been for years, right? For probably 20 years we've
• 35:46
  heavy Google Adwords that is shrinking because it's going to
• 35:50
  the pots. Have you seen a reduction in?
• 35:53
  Like 30%, yeah, I've seen it. Like, like for example, this
• 35:56
  month my spend on Google was probably 3 grand light.
• 36:00
  Like I'm trying to spend more money and it was $3000 less than
• 36:04
  I would have normally spent this month alone.
• 36:06
  So, you know, we're using other, you know, advanced things that
• 36:10
  we can do geofencing, which I love to do, hyper targeted stuff
• 36:14
  with display ads to fish where people are fishing, other ways,
• 36:17
  there's other ways to get around it.
• 36:18
  But yeah, the world is changing fast.
• 36:20
  Are you worried about AI disrupting the real estate
• 36:23
  industry from the broker's standpoint?
• 36:25
  No, I'm not. I, I think the way I think the
• 36:28
  lead capture side is, is harder. Obviously it's going to be
• 36:32
  harder to capture the consumer. There's other ways that we're
• 36:35
  doing that now, and smart brokerages are leaning into that
• 36:38
  by offering better tech and smart tech in a way that's
• 36:42
  different for people. We're constantly adding to our
• 36:45
  tech stack. But again, for the same reason
• 36:48
  that Expedia, Expedia, like, killed travel agents, right?
• 36:51
  And they've been saying that we're going to get killed by
• 36:53
  Zillow. We're going to kill by portals,
• 36:55
  we're going to kill by everything for 20 years.
• 36:57
  That's what they've been saying. Here's the difference.
• 36:59
  I don't need somebody to hold my hand to tell me it's OK to buy
• 37:05
  to book a trip to New York, but most people need a trusted
• 37:09
  advisor to tell them this is OK when making the largest single
• 37:14
  transaction of their life, and that's not going to change.
• 37:18
  I agree, and I think the same thing is like AI is a tool to
• 37:21
  help you grow and help you be more efficient and help you
• 37:23
  serve your clients better. But at the end of the day, life
• 37:27
  is relationships, it's people, it's connections.
• 37:29
  Like what are we all going to just live at home and have our
• 37:32
  AI bots do everything? We never talked to a single
• 37:34
  person ever again. Like that's a miserable place
• 37:36
  and we would all be so depressed.
• 37:37
  We would go nowhere in life and we'd be so isolated.
• 37:39
  So I, I agree 100%. It's like, how do you use it as
• 37:42
  a tool to provide more value and help you lever up and help you
• 37:46
  focus on the one thing that you do best and let AI handle the
• 37:50
  rest, right. And so it'll take AI can take
• 37:53
  some of the people team away from it from certain tasks, of
• 37:56
  course, but I don't think it's going to take the whole industry
• 37:59
  away of like, you know, no, no more people want to work with
• 38:02
  real estate. Brokers, Well, you have to look
• 38:03
  at it this way too. Like if you look at like AI
• 38:06
  starts with logic and is trying to get to emotion.
• 38:09
  Humans start with emotion and try to get logical.
• 38:11
  So there's this, the easiest way to describe it.
• 38:13
  It's like Star Trek, right? It's like Kirk and Spock having
• 38:15
  a conversation in the heat of a moment.
• 38:18
  Spock's like, here's the facts. Kirk's like, but no, they're
• 38:20
  going to kill us. Whatever.
• 38:21
  I don't know, my bad, Captain Kirk impression.
• 38:24
  But that's the problem is there's still always going to be
• 38:26
  that disconnect. And I don't know how quickly
• 38:27
  that gap is going to close. Yeah, yeah.
• 38:30
  Everything takes time and people, people are hard to
• 38:34
  change their habits or their way of thinking.
• 38:36
  And it just takes a long time. And especially, you know,
• 38:39
  there's going to be a lot of non adopters and then those are
• 38:41
  going to eventually phase out and then the next generation
• 38:43
  will all be born into automatic adopters and it'll continue to
• 38:47
  evolve. I mean, if AI doesn't take us
• 38:50
  out, you know, if we're still still around.
• 38:52
  Yeah, that's, I got to tell you, as I was sitting there having
• 38:54
  the like, literally, I was like talking to my wife last night
• 38:58
  about that Neo bot. I'm like, Ditto, clean your
• 39:00
  whole house. It'll take 24 hours to charge
• 39:02
  yourself up. But I'm like, I just don't know
• 39:04
  how I'm going to feel about the first time I turn around and the
• 39:06
  things just like standing in your room.
• 39:09
  Yeah. Why?
• 39:10
  Like, what do you like? That would just be weird.
• 39:13
  Yeah, just weird, right? I watch too much Black Mirror.
• 39:16
  Yeah, I know that's. What I'm?
• 39:18
  Yeah, that's what I was thinking of.
• 39:21
  So, So shifting gears into how you built such a successful real
• 39:26
  estate brokerage. I mean, I, so I own a real
• 39:28
  estate brokerage in Arizona also very, very small firm, but I've
• 39:31
  been doing that for, you know, 11 years before I got into
• 39:34
  finance. Now I have a finance firm that's
• 39:36
  a national company. I wanted to build a company I
• 39:38
  could scale nationally and so with a real estate brokerage, I
• 39:41
  see how hard it is. And in a mortgage brokerage too,
• 39:45
  it's the same concept, very hard to recruit and retain good
• 39:47
  talent. So how have you built your
• 39:50
  company to, you know, what did that journey look like from you
• 39:53
  from a bootstrap start? Were you a bootstrap startup and
• 39:56
  you just, you know, built over time?
• 39:58
  So yeah, so the story goes, I many, many moons ago, when I
• 40:03
  first moved to Vegas, we worked for a brokerage in Vegas.
• 40:08
  And they had two offices, one-on-one in the Green Valley
• 40:11
  side of town and one in the summer side of town, which most
• 40:13
  companies in Vegas. That's how it works.
• 40:15
  I was #1 very quickly through my team at the, at the, at the
• 40:19
  Green Valley brokerage. And my partner now was number
• 40:22
  one in Summerlin. And that broker decided to move
• 40:26
  our office and rebrand to another brand that we didn't
• 40:30
  care about. And he took me to his office and
• 40:32
  he was like, it took me to our new office and was like, here's
• 40:35
  going to be your new office, which was way smaller.
• 40:37
  And he's like, it's going to be 3 times as much and here's all
• 40:40
  your new fees. And I was like, whoa, like that
• 40:42
  was scary to me that I thought here I was building this
• 40:45
  business that I controlled and all of a sudden I was just being
• 40:47
  dictated to me that this is going to change.
• 40:50
  At which point I was like, you know, it's time for me to do my
• 40:52
  own thing. So I left there and I ended up
• 40:54
  buying into an existing Keller Williams franchise.
• 40:57
  And when I bought it, they've been there for seven years and
• 40:59
  they had 42 agents. And in 18 months later, I built
• 41:04
  it to two offices and 200 plus agents.
• 41:07
  But well, by just a, because I'm a, because I'm really good at
• 41:13
  talking to people where they are.
• 41:15
  I think it's so funny. And I've heard even here's 20
• 41:18
  years later, I still hear this to this day, right?
• 41:20
  People will come in to interview with me to come to our company
• 41:23
  and, and you should interview with multiple places where you
• 41:25
  go and they'll say, this is the first place that I went that we
• 41:30
  spent more time talking to me. I'm talking about me than
• 41:35
  talking about what you do here. It's always this presentation,
• 41:38
  right? It's like people like, let me
• 41:40
  tell you everything that we do with this company, blah, blah.
• 41:42
  When people come to our company, I'm seeing two things.
• 41:45
  Number one, are you a good fit for us within the dichotomy of
• 41:49
  who already works here? Are you bringing something to
• 41:50
  the table? And two, can we, can we help
• 41:53
  you? Is there something that we can
• 41:54
  bring to the table that can really help you?
• 41:57
  And there's times, you know, when we go through those
• 41:58
  interviews where I don't even talk about 60% of the stuff that
• 42:02
  we have because they're not going to use it anyway.
• 42:04
  So why am I going to throw up all of room with a bunch of a
• 42:06
  bunch of stuff? What's important for me is, OK,
• 42:10
  let's really narrow down on what you're doing.
• 42:13
  And what I find with most real estate agents, even the
• 42:15
  successful ones, is I always call it they're, they're failing
• 42:19
  successfully. They're like, yeah, I made 150,
• 42:22
  a $175,000 last year. Do you have a written business
• 42:25
  plan? No.
• 42:27
  How do you have KPIs? No.
• 42:29
  Do you know how many phone calls it takes you to get a deal?
• 42:31
  No. Do you know how many of this
• 42:32
  have to do you know what your ROI is?
• 42:33
  And your mails, none of them know.
• 42:36
  They're just really personable people.
• 42:38
  They're great salespeople, but they're not running a business.
• 42:42
  And so when I sit down with people, it's like it's my
• 42:44
  mission in real estate has always been, let me help you
• 42:48
  turn this from a successful hobby into a real business.
• 42:52
  And then you and then the last question I always ask, which is
• 42:55
  my favorite question, which is how many doors do you own?
• 42:58
  And then 95% of real estate agents go the one, the one I
• 43:01
  live in, it's like, dude, the commissions are not the gold.
• 43:05
  The commissions are the fuel for the rocket.
• 43:08
  That's how we're trying to build wealthier.
• 43:09
  That's what we do. That's how smart people really
• 43:12
  play this game. And that's what we try to do.
• 43:15
  And I've always been that way. But the Keller Williams thing
• 43:18
  was like, you know, class of Wednesday and I hate on Keller
• 43:21
  Williams. Great training.
• 43:22
  I've sent a million agents to them for training new agents.
• 43:25
  I'm like, go there. It's awesome.
• 43:26
  Good training. It's.
• 43:27
  That's where I started for sure. Yeah, dude, great place to get
• 43:29
  training. But you know the, the, the math
• 43:32
  is the math and 90% of people that get in real estate fail in
• 43:35
  the first year. That is the business I was in
• 43:37
  there. It was a revolving door of wet
• 43:40
  licenses stamped class on Wednesday around for eight
• 43:45
  months and out you go. And it was the same level of
• 43:47
  investment. I said I don't want to be in the
• 43:48
  90% business anymore. I want to be in the 10%
• 43:50
  business. So sold that out.
• 43:52
  Started the company with my partner Gavin Urdstone.
• 43:55
  Now it's been 16 years. I was simply Vegas.
• 43:58
  We were #3 in the market within three years.
• 44:02
  We've been #2 in the market now for several years.
• 44:05
  Funny thing, we were number one at the end of the first quarter.
• 44:08
  And we have no business ever being #1 like I tell people all
• 44:10
  the time I'm like, well, don't be #1 I'm like, no.
• 44:13
  And they're like, why? I'm like, because number one has
• 44:15
  1700 agents. Like it's just, do you have a
• 44:19
  pulse and can you pay my fee? Come on down.
• 44:21
  And it's the law of averages enough of them to do a deal to
• 44:23
  get there. There's nothing special about
• 44:24
  that today. So for me, you know, being
• 44:27
  select about who we have actually terminating agents that
• 44:30
  don't perform and, and working under those parameters, we
• 44:34
  should never been #1 but there was just this huge run on
• 44:36
  luxury. And that's really what we focus
• 44:37
  on. Like our, our, our #1 core value
• 44:40
  is luxury is our brand. And it doesn't mean we don't
• 44:42
  sell every kind of house, but every person that comes to our
• 44:44
  doors gets treated the same. Whether they're buying a
• 44:47
  $350,000 house or $25 million house, we have the same level of
• 44:51
  treatment. So what beyond that, to continue
• 44:54
  down the recruiting path, what worked for you and didn't work
• 44:57
  for you when recruiting agents? Like, how were you doing
• 44:59
  outreach? Were you working with
• 45:00
  recruiters? What?
• 45:01
  No, with us, a lot of it is a lot of us recognize people for
• 45:08
  success like there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a if
• 45:10
  you're a real estate broker right now, that's a tool you
• 45:12
  absolutely should have is called corded.
• 45:14
  It's something you should have corded dot IO and I'm not
• 45:17
  sponsored by them. I pay for it.
• 45:19
  It's a great, great tool. And essentially what corded IO
• 45:22
  done is, is something I've done for the last 17 years, which is,
• 45:26
  is what I would do is in the morning, I would wake up and I
• 45:28
  would look for any agent, the MLS, I'd pull the solds and I
• 45:31
  would see anybody that closed the deal over.
• 45:33
  You know, if this is 16 years ago, you know, it's called
• 45:37
  800,000, which was a massive deal in Vegas that at that time.
• 45:41
  And I would see who the agent was and I would just send him a
• 45:43
  quick e-mail saying, hey, dude, that's an awesome closing, great
• 45:46
  job. If you ever want to step up and
• 45:47
  really focus on working luxury, obviously you had this closing
• 45:50
  that showed you can do it. Call us.
• 45:53
  We'll sit down and see if it works.
• 45:54
  Because most of the time, like once people go work at a
• 45:58
  brokerage or even a this same in any company, How often do you
• 46:01
  hear from your boss? Great job, you know, like
• 46:04
  there's that one plaque that goes out the top performer, but
• 46:06
  that individual performance, that somebody that might be the
• 46:09
  biggest deal they've ever done and they don't hear about it
• 46:11
  from their their boss. And so with that corded system,
• 46:14
  not only does allow us to constantly every day identify
• 46:18
  very quickly and send out messages to all of our people
• 46:21
  internally, they're doing well, but I can also see the external
• 46:24
  people and send that same message.
• 46:25
  So what used to be done manually and take me a little bit of time
• 46:28
  every day is now just really runs quick.
• 46:31
  We can hammer it out very quickly.
• 46:33
  Which is great. That's awesome.
• 46:35
  Recognition. It's all about recognition,
• 46:36
  don't you? Don't you recognize for what you
• 46:38
  do? Of course, I mean, it's crazy
• 46:40
  how how much recognition drives the majority of humans.
• 46:45
  You know, like above so many other things.
• 46:47
  Like a lot of people prefer recognition over money.
• 46:50
  They just want to be recognized. Politically driven.
• 46:52
  Yeah, it's, it's wild. That's, that's a really cool
• 46:55
  strategy. Yeah, because there's not a lot
• 46:56
  of recruiters in the 100% Commission world and it's such a
• 47:00
  relation business. And that's where I'm at with HP
• 47:04
  Capital. We have so many leads, so much
• 47:06
  deal flow and I just need more amazing people to be able to
• 47:11
  service those leads to the highest quality service that we
• 47:15
  can. And then so there's, there's
• 47:17
  always that balance, but it's hard to, we don't have an MLS in
• 47:21
  commercial mortgage brokerage, right?
• 47:22
  We can't just see who's producing what.
• 47:24
  There's no data for that. You have to really like dive
• 47:27
  through LinkedIn and go through all the the firms and get to
• 47:29
  know people at the events and see who.
• 47:31
  Commercial such commercial such a mess.
• 47:32
  We have a large commercial department as well and
• 47:34
  commercial such a mess because you can put a property on
• 47:37
  Loopnet, lease it or sell it and leave it up there for five years
• 47:40
  and there's no governing board to make you take it down.
• 47:42
  So the data is not right. Like it's, it's really, it is
• 47:45
  the Wild West though. It's amazing to me that that
• 47:47
  hasn't consolidated. I know the boards try to do the,
• 47:50
  the, you know, the, the commercial part of the, of the,
• 47:52
  of the residential boards. Most commercial brokers don't
• 47:54
  want to be part of the residential boards.
• 47:56
  They want to do their own thing. And yeah, it's, it's such a wild
• 48:00
  business in the commercial. It's wild.
• 48:02
  It is, it is, it's, it's a wild, Wild West on the mortgage side
• 48:05
  and the brokerage side for sure. And So what does your culture
• 48:10
  look like at the kind of like, are you all in an office
• 48:12
  building? Are you remote?
• 48:13
  Like how do you train people? So once you, once you get these
• 48:16
  top performers and you recognize them, how are you retaining
• 48:19
  them? How are you training them?
• 48:20
  Are you doing one on ones? Are you doing group sessions?
• 48:23
  Like, how did you build that culture?
• 48:24
  Yeah, we, you know, we again, we try to meet people where they
• 48:27
  are. We have I, I, I believe the
• 48:30
  virtual company is great. Good for you.
• 48:32
  That's awesome. Do your thing.
• 48:33
  But I do believe the magic's in the hallways.
• 48:35
  I mean, Simon said that Peter Teal says that I totally believe
• 48:39
  that the magic in your company is the conversations that are
• 48:43
  happening within the hallways. So having great, beautiful
• 48:46
  office space I think is important, especially in the
• 48:48
  luxury side of the business. You got to have an impressive
• 48:51
  place for people to walk in. They want to feel like they're
• 48:54
  walking into some place that's substantial.
• 48:56
  Not meeting you at Starbucks like that doesn't work.
• 48:59
  So, yeah, we have great office, but we do do a lot of stuff.
• 49:03
  We're completely vertically integrated company.
• 49:05
  So every single thing that touches the real estate
• 49:07
  transaction, we own. We own mortgage, we own title,
• 49:10
  we own solar, we own everything. Anything you could possibly have
• 49:13
  to do with a house, we, we have a part of and it gives us the
• 49:19
  ability to have different space, different crossovers from those
• 49:22
  things. Obviously, like when our title
• 49:24
  company, you know, like people look at title reps in this
• 49:27
  business. And if you're not a realtor, I'm
• 49:29
  not going to bore you too much more with this.
• 49:30
  But like most title reps walk around and hand out, you know,
• 49:34
  chapstick and desk calendars. That's what they do.
• 49:39
  We don't hire for the marketing people at our, at our firm.
• 49:41
  We don't hire people that have any title experience.
• 49:43
  Like I, you don't, I don't care if you know anything about
• 49:45
  title. I hire the most badass digital
• 49:47
  marketing people I can find because they can walk in and
• 49:50
  say, OK, let me go through your digital marketing.
• 49:52
  I don't, I'm not going to bring a chapstick.
• 49:54
  I'm not, I'm not going to buddy buddy with you and buy you a
• 49:56
  coffee because you're busy. What I want to do is I want to
• 49:58
  improve your business. And so we hire these absolute
• 50:01
  savages at that level that then can run classes that train on
• 50:05
  things that people actually need.
• 50:08
  And, and that engagement has been massive.
• 50:11
  But, but we try to be where people are.
• 50:13
  We we're constantly engaging with them.
• 50:14
  Like we don't fight the flow of things.
• 50:17
  Like we haven't, we had an intranet within our back office
• 50:20
  system where we were communicating and posting and
• 50:23
  all of those things, our internal Facebook.
• 50:24
  But what we found was all of our top producers all have
• 50:28
  transaction coordinators. They're never in there and we're
• 50:30
  seeing it. So it's like, OK, where are you?
• 50:33
  OK, well, everybody's kind of scrolling Facebook still because
• 50:35
  they're marketing there. OK, great.
• 50:37
  So now we have a Facebook group for a company and it had for
• 50:39
  years, but all of our communication goes through that
• 50:42
  Facebook group then on a platform we don't even own just
• 50:44
  because that's where our people are.
• 50:46
  So don't fight where your people are.
• 50:47
  Talk to them where they are. That's good.
• 50:49
  And do you guys do structured trainings or you know, like or,
• 50:55
  or does everybody kind of just do their own thing?
• 50:56
  Everybody does their own thing. I have, I do have for me, I
• 51:00
  have, I have like a 45 day intensive that I do to kind of
• 51:03
  get people started again, get them out of the drift and snap
• 51:06
  them out of it. It's called the climb.
• 51:07
  I run that once 1/4 for people that work for us.
• 51:10
  I mean, the cost is minimal. I charge them like 200 bucks is
• 51:13
  stupid. I mean, I, I don't need the 200
• 51:15
  bucks. I do it because you got to have
• 51:17
  some skin in the game or you won't take it seriously.
• 51:20
  And it but yeah, that that's our main primary thing and everybody
• 51:24
  goes through that program. It's my biggest joy in this
• 51:27
  business. Like people say what's, what's
• 51:30
  your favorite thing about real estate?
• 51:31
  And it's like I get more joy in watching people develop and
• 51:36
  become, you know, massive players in the space with
• 51:39
  information and tools that we're giving them and guidance that
• 51:41
  we're giving them on one-on-one than anything that I ever do
• 51:45
  personally. I mean, I've had a personal team
• 51:47
  for, you know, now 17 years. I've got 10 agents within the
• 51:51
  company that work directly for me, you know, pretty much just
• 51:53
  handling all my business anymore.
• 51:55
  But I do that not because I need to do it.
• 51:57
  I do because I genuinely love to have people right there that I
• 52:00
  can develop. Yeah, because I just, I, I love
• 52:02
  that about if you don't really love people, I think getting
• 52:05
  into the in the development business is probably the wrong
• 52:08
  business. Right.
• 52:09
  Yeah, No, I mean, if you don't love people, it's, I mean, I
• 52:13
  don't know, I my whole world revolves around people.
• 52:16
  I, I think that relationships are everything, but there's
• 52:18
  different people that have different skills that aren't
• 52:20
  necessarily on the sales or the front end side.
• 52:22
  And they're really good at what they do on the back end and more
• 52:25
  the operator, the integrator type.
• 52:27
  But I love the relationship part of the business.
• 52:30
  I mean, that's what I live for, so.
• 52:32
  It's the best. Part yeah.
• 52:33
  How did, did you have a a clear vision and mission of where you
• 52:38
  were going to get with Simply Vegas, like with your business
• 52:42
  when you started or did you guys kind of just go and you just
• 52:45
  kept growing and it's just turned into this thing, this big
• 52:47
  thing? So what?
• 52:48
  So what happened was Gavin had actually already started the
• 52:50
  company. He started with two other guys
• 52:52
  and I ran into but so Gavin and I went to lunch and here I am
• 52:57
  grinding at Keller Williams, you know, got 200 agents and Keller
• 53:00
  was for for lover for for my experience with it was terrible
• 53:05
  business models and owner because when you make money, you
• 53:07
  got to give half of it away to your agents.
• 53:09
  When you lose money, you get to write a check.
• 53:12
  Terrible business model to to me, it was so I made no money
• 53:15
  doing that. We were at this big company, but
• 53:17
  it didn't it wasn't turning us any money.
• 53:20
  And then I watched Gavin struck this little independent company
• 53:22
  that's getting every big hitter in town in and I'm like, how's
• 53:25
  Gavin getting these players to come work for this?
• 53:28
  And so I call Gavin and we go to lunch and my partner's very
• 53:30
  English and which I think has unfair advantage.
• 53:35
  Literally, you could take the dumbest person from England,
• 53:37
  drop them off the United States, and everybody's all enamored
• 53:39
  with them. And you could take the smartest
• 53:41
  American and drop them off in London.
• 53:42
  And people like this twit, you know, it's terrible.
• 53:45
  But he's very English and he's like, well, I wanted to start my
• 53:49
  own company. I wanted to run it like a
• 53:50
  private club. You know, we don't hire
• 53:53
  everybody. We don't want to hire everybody.
• 53:54
  We want it to, I want it to mean something.
• 53:56
  And here I am. I hear this, that one sentence
• 53:58
  for me was like the biggest catalyst and change in, in my
• 54:02
  business philosophy in real estate.
• 54:03
  I'm like, because we would hire anybody, you know, it was just
• 54:06
  trying to hire people. And when I switched, when I sold
• 54:08
  out of the Keller, literally within two weeks of that
• 54:10
  conversation, I'd sold out there, bought out his partners
• 54:13
  and we opened the second office in Green Valley, which is where
• 54:15
  I live and, and never looked back and, and always ran it like
• 54:18
  the this is special. And I think part of that has to
• 54:23
  be you are who you project that you are.
• 54:27
  I mean, there's the fake it till you make it thing.
• 54:28
  I get, which I don't necessarily totally agree with, but I think
• 54:31
  part of that's valid because you, if you project and you, you
• 54:35
  just decide that this is who you are and you stay true to those
• 54:38
  values and stay true to that course, then more times than
• 54:43
  not, with enough effort and a big enough microphone, it's
• 54:47
  going to work. Yeah, how did he position it?
• 54:50
  Because I love that. And that's exactly how I am too.
• 54:52
  Is like we I've because I've learned because I used to be the
• 54:56
  same thing. Hire anybody because you you're
• 54:58
  desperate for resources. You're just like, I need people,
• 55:01
  right? But some of the what I've
• 55:03
  learned is some of the best deals in life are the ones you
• 55:05
  don't do. And you are only as strong as
• 55:08
  your weakest team member. Yeah, yeah.
• 55:11
  Yeah, back to my back to my trophies in my office of of
• 55:15
  misery and failure. You know, people don't don't
• 55:20
  think enough when they get involved with deals, when they
• 55:24
  get involved with projects, when they get involved with with the
• 55:27
  people. You know, there's so many ways
• 55:30
  that you can now test ideas so you can test different things,
• 55:33
  test people. I don't bring anybody in anymore
• 55:36
  to my team without a very definitive at any level where
• 55:40
  they are without a very definitive 90 day, first 90 day
• 55:43
  expectation plan. It's this is where you're
• 55:45
  starting. Like I don't care if you're the
• 55:47
  CEO of my title company, if I bring you in, it's here's the
• 55:49
  expectations of where you should be at day 30, where you should
• 55:52
  be at 60, where you should be at day 90.
• 55:54
  And if you're not here, we're not going to be in business
• 55:58
  together anymore. Because one of my favorite
• 56:01
  things that I learned about people, and this may sound
• 56:03
  callous, but it's not if you're going to be a really successful
• 56:06
  business owner, is my job as the business owner is to constantly
• 56:11
  be trying to replace every single person in my organization
• 56:14
  with better talent. That's my job.
• 56:17
  Their job is to make that impossible.
• 56:21
  And I, as long as we have that understanding and everybody's
• 56:23
  very clear about that, then magical things happen because
• 56:27
  it's not a threat. It's just respect.
• 56:29
  It's I'm giving you this job. I'm giving you this opportunity
• 56:32
  because I really believe after everything that I can kind of
• 56:35
  figure out with you that you're the best person to sit in that
• 56:38
  seat. Don't prove me wrong.
• 56:40
  Yeah. You know.
• 56:42
  Yeah, it's a. It's a command for people to
• 56:45
  rise to their highest potential. And that's how I show up.
• 56:48
  I command myself to rise to my highest potential and I command
• 56:51
  everybody around me to rise to their highest potential.
• 56:53
  And I will not be around people who aren't doing that.
• 56:56
  They're it's mediocrity. I don't want to be anything to
• 57:01
  do with mediocrity. And I don't understand how
• 57:02
  people live that way, but that's OK.
• 57:04
  Everybody's different. They're just not the people that
• 57:06
  are going to be in my my circle because they're not aligned with
• 57:08
  my values, right? And so that's a lot of the work
• 57:10
  I've been doing with one of my mentors lately is just deep
• 57:13
  values work. Deep, deep values work.
• 57:15
  Like if you don't that your values, your core values are the
• 57:18
  foundation of everything in your life.
• 57:20
  And so many people don't even know what their core values are.
• 57:23
  They're just operating. And they may feel things like,
• 57:26
  oh, I didn't like this person did this, or I didn't like this
• 57:28
  person did this, but they're not tying it to an actual value
• 57:31
  statement. And my mentor, he reads his
• 57:33
  values multiple times a day, every single day.
• 57:35
  And the action behind those values, like integrity, what
• 57:38
  does that look like? How does that show up in your
• 57:40
  people? What is a, you know, what does
• 57:42
  that mean to you? How do you, how is that an
• 57:45
  action? So you can actually judge it
• 57:46
  when you go to your team member. Hey, one of our core values here
• 57:49
  is integrity. This is what this looks like as
• 57:51
  an action. This is not aligned with what
• 57:53
  how you're acting. Is this one of your core values
• 57:56
  or not right. And so, and then just learning
• 57:58
  how to question people. So because everybody's character
• 58:02
  and everybody's values come out over time, but we don't want to
• 58:06
  make the wrong hires. And so when you I'm learning
• 58:09
  right now is how do I uncover people's core values through
• 58:12
  specific questioning that's conversational without asking
• 58:16
  what are your values, right? Because everyone will say, oh,
• 58:18
  I'm honest and I'm a high performer, all these things.
• 58:20
  And so that's a lot of the work. And so just being able to align
• 58:22
  and understand who, whose values are really aligned, because that
• 58:27
  is more important than just this person is producing this much
• 58:31
  that doesn't even matter, right? Is, is taking it out of what's
• 58:35
  the transaction or the result that I think this person can
• 58:38
  bring and could bringing it back to is there the true values
• 58:41
  alignment of this person and, and our company and, and me as a
• 58:45
  leader or the leadership team, right.
• 58:47
  And so that's been a very transformational for me is to
• 58:50
  start to reflect on who in the company, who in my life, who in
• 58:53
  my, you know, what relationships are actually aligned with my
• 58:56
  core values. And then having the the
• 58:57
  awareness of am I actually living in integrity with my core
• 59:01
  values no matter what? I'll tell you something, I
• 59:03
  learned that one of the beauties of a podcast, right, of, of
• 59:06
  having a podcast and having really high level people on it
• 59:09
  is you constantly get to learn cool things.
• 59:12
  And I learned something about core values that it was really
• 59:14
  fascinating and only because of the book, and I've done so many
• 59:17
  of these in the last five days, my brain is a little fried.
• 59:20
  So I'm not going to attribute this thought to anybody, but I
• 59:22
  will say this is not my thought. You can go back and figure it
• 59:25
  out about podcast and figure who it was because I don't remember
• 59:28
  who said at this point we were talking about core values and
• 59:31
  they said the best way to really analyze your core values.
• 59:33
  And he brought up integrity is one of them.
• 59:35
  And he said, everybody says they, everybody says integrity
• 59:37
  is a core value. I love, I love a value, but it's
• 59:40
  like, do they really like how Like how much like is it OK to,
• 59:45
  you know, cheat on your diet and grab a cookie?
• 59:47
  Is that breaking integrity is cheating on your wife?
• 59:50
  Like where's the line? And he says the best way to test
• 59:53
  your core values is look at the inverse of them.
• 59:57
  Like what's the inverse of that? Like if I said you like give me
• 1:00:00
  one of your core values. Well, integrity.
• 1:00:03
  I want to pick a different one. Just because I want to get on
• 1:00:04
  that road, pick a different. One, yeah, continuous growth.
• 1:00:06
  Continuous growth, OK. So what would be the exact
• 1:00:09
  opposite of continuous growth? If you had to verbalize what the
• 1:00:14
  polar opposite of that core value would be, what would it
• 1:00:16
  be? Declining.
• 1:00:17
  Declining growth where we're not learning anything.
• 1:00:19
  You're staying stagnant. Does the thought of you in that,
• 1:00:22
  in that type of situation just absolutely make your skin crawl?
• 1:00:25
  It does. So that core value is probably
• 1:00:27
  real. It's like, yeah, it's good to
• 1:00:30
  aspire to something, but if the inverse doesn't absolutely make
• 1:00:33
  your skin crawl, drive you crazy, it's fine.
• 1:00:35
  Like for me, he said, what's something that like?
• 1:00:38
  He asked me. He said, what's something that
• 1:00:39
  drives you crazy? And I said when people are late,
• 1:00:42
  it is one of my biggest things because it just shows a
• 1:00:46
  complete, you know, non value of my time.
• 1:00:50
  And he's like, so time is very, very important to you.
• 1:00:53
  And I said, yeah, he goes, so probably one of your core values
• 1:00:58
  is make every moment count. And I didn't have that on the
• 1:01:01
  sheet, but I haven't now because he's right.
• 1:01:03
  Because if the thing that drives you craziest the most, the
• 1:01:06
  inverse of that is probably going to be a core value.
• 1:01:09
  So I thought, I just thought that was super interesting.
• 1:01:10
  I love that. Yeah.
• 1:01:11
  And it's a good way to think about it because you know, and
• 1:01:15
  look, Garnett just wrote a book called 17 Runs.
• 1:01:18
  And there's this the whole value section in it.
• 1:01:20
  And so that you can ask that GBT, like, what is the whole
• 1:01:22
  list of all these values, right? And then you start writing
• 1:01:24
  about, OK, which ones are important to me?
• 1:01:26
  And then which ones are non negotiables and which ones are a
• 1:01:29
  little less important. And then those ones that are non
• 1:01:31
  negotiables become your core values for your, your not only
• 1:01:35
  your company, but your life, But you have to actually live by
• 1:01:37
  those values. If it's really a core value, it
• 1:01:40
  has to be something the way you show up.
• 1:01:41
  And so something happened recently to me where I had this
• 1:01:45
  awakening because I'm always questioning myself, questioning
• 1:01:47
  my beliefs, questioning my actions, questioning everything
• 1:01:51
  and all the inputs that are coming in, like, is this real?
• 1:01:53
  Is this fake? Is this my brain just coming up
• 1:01:55
  with this from fear or greed or whatever, right?
• 1:01:58
  And so I had to look honest myself and like one of my core
• 1:02:01
  values is health. Like I want, I want to be, I
• 1:02:03
  want to be as healthy as I could possibly be with this miracle of
• 1:02:06
  life in the body I've been given, right?
• 1:02:08
  And so yet I'm vaping and I'm like.
• 1:02:12
  Wait, that's not. Good for you.
• 1:02:14
  No. Yeah, so and, and I I, you know,
• 1:02:16
  I picked up that habit recently. This year.
• 1:02:20
  I picked up the habit and then I was looking at myself and I'm
• 1:02:22
  like I. How do you How old are you?
• 1:02:25
  29. How do you pick up vaping at 29?
• 1:02:27
  I know that's like something that's like a bad high school.
• 1:02:30
  No, I know, I know. Isn't it?
• 1:02:31
  Oh my gosh. I'll Yeah, I'll blame it on my
• 1:02:36
  first. Well, actually what it was is I
• 1:02:38
  that was. Like Tom Petty doing heroin for
• 1:02:40
  the first time at 60. Or no, I know whatever it was
• 1:02:43
  my, my friend, my best friend, her sister who's younger, she's
• 1:02:48
  20, had a vape and she's like, oh, here, try it.
• 1:02:51
  And I tried it. And then I went, yeah, I was
• 1:02:53
  like, it tastes so good. And so but then, and then I'm
• 1:02:56
  just like doing it for a handful of months and then I'm like,
• 1:02:59
  what, why am I doing this? This is so stupid.
• 1:03:01
  Like this isn't aligned with my values.
• 1:03:03
  So and that that's means I'm lying to myself and something
• 1:03:06
  I'm not an integrity of my values.
• 1:03:07
  And so I quit and I threw it away and done.
• 1:03:10
  But it's, that's The thing is so many people, they just, they let
• 1:03:13
  life happen to them, right? Oh, here's the circumstance.
• 1:03:15
  I took this opportunity and now I'm just going to do this thing.
• 1:03:17
  And we don't actually me stop and reflect is this in integrity
• 1:03:21
  with who I am and what I want. I'm like, I don't know what this
• 1:03:23
  is doing to my body. I could die in two years because
• 1:03:26
  of this. Like I have no idea why would I
• 1:03:27
  do this? For what?
• 1:03:28
  Because I like the banana flavor.
• 1:03:30
  Like that's stupid. And so, yeah, I think just
• 1:03:33
  having that awareness and and your non negotiables and how
• 1:03:36
  that and making sure that you are actually living by that
• 1:03:38
  because the truth always has a certain ring to it and your
• 1:03:40
  values come up over time. You know, you know, it's funny.
• 1:03:42
  It's it's, I remember the point I was going to make earlier
• 1:03:45
  about Simply Vegas, based on what you were just talking
• 1:03:47
  about, which is one of my favorite things, things is the
• 1:03:50
  only way to coast this downhill, right?
• 1:03:52
  And you're just coasting along like, hey, here, we're going to
• 1:03:55
  do this and blah, blah. And you don't even really notice
• 1:03:56
  this happening. And you just drifted right into
• 1:03:58
  it. And my point earlier from simply
• 1:03:59
  Vegas was, you know, here we have this company that's
• 1:04:01
  achieved all this great stuff. And I could be like, well, I'm
• 1:04:06
  just going to my beach house and hang out for a month because I
• 1:04:08
  can, because the, I don't need to be there every day because
• 1:04:11
  they do this. But we just made a choice, or I
• 1:04:16
  made a choice a long time ago that my great joy is continuing
• 1:04:19
  to watch that company grow. And if I'm not invested in it
• 1:04:23
  and I'm constantly innovating and I'm constantly trying to
• 1:04:25
  bring new tech to the, our tech stack and eliminate things that
• 1:04:28
  aren't working and listen to our agents and approve it, then it's
• 1:04:30
  going to coast downhill. And I don't want to do that.
• 1:04:33
  And so much like you with your vaping, you just thought, oh,
• 1:04:36
  no, let's do it. And all of a sudden you turn
• 1:04:37
  around and you have this habit you didn't even realize you were
• 1:04:39
  getting. And that's drifting.
• 1:04:41
  It's like Urban McManus was on my podcast and he made the, he
• 1:04:43
  made the comment. We're talking about the title of
• 1:04:45
  the book. And he was like, oh, my God, I
• 1:04:47
  love it so much. Because the problem with
• 1:04:50
  drifting is you're still moving. Like you feel the you feel like
• 1:04:55
  you're the inertia of the of the world going by you.
• 1:04:57
  But you don't realize you're going off target until it's too
• 1:05:01
  late. And you start vaping every day
• 1:05:04
  at 39 years old. Good.
• 1:05:06
  I know I may never let you live that down, by the way.
• 1:05:08
  Yeah. At least I'm honest.
• 1:05:11
  At least I'm honest. That's true, yeah.
• 1:05:13
  And. And.
• 1:05:14
  But I but I love that you recognize that that didn't
• 1:05:16
  recognize your core values and get rid of them.
• 1:05:18
  I'll tell you a story about our core values.
• 1:05:19
  We're one of our companies. We just recently had to change
• 1:05:21
  one because the way that we change our economic model
• 1:05:26
  changed of our business and and one of our core values had
• 1:05:29
  something to do with the economics of our company.
• 1:05:32
  And that statement no longer became true.
• 1:05:35
  And so we have this obviously on things and all our printables
• 1:05:37
  and all of our stuff and stuff. And as soon as we made that
• 1:05:40
  change to our business model, I told her director of operations,
• 1:05:43
  I go, you have to throw away all of this stuff.
• 1:05:45
  You have to take down all of this stuff.
• 1:05:46
  You have to get rid of all of these books, just put them in
• 1:05:48
  the shredder. And she's like, why can't we
• 1:05:50
  just get through them? Let's just go through the books.
• 1:05:52
  And when the books are gone, then what are new ones with the
• 1:05:54
  new stuff? And I go, no, because as of
• 1:05:56
  right now, that's not true anymore.
• 1:05:58
  And if that's not true, then none of this is true and we're
• 1:06:02
  not going to do that. So yeah, throw it all away,
• 1:06:05
  scrap it, start again, put this in instead of that, which makes
• 1:06:07
  all of this in line in alignment again.
• 1:06:09
  That was my way of quitting vaping.
• 1:06:11
  I love it, yeah. And we just always have to have
• 1:06:13
  that awareness and that honesty with ourselves and with others
• 1:06:16
  and be able to make sure like and especially as a leader, we
• 1:06:21
  are the standard. And that's what I tell other
• 1:06:24
  other leaders in my company and previous companies is if you
• 1:06:29
  show up, however you show up is how the team's going to show up.
• 1:06:33
  So you can't tell the team that they need to. 80% of.
• 1:06:36
  How you? Well, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:06:37
  They're never going. To be they're they're exactly
• 1:06:39
  but if you if you're showing up here, they're going to show up
• 1:06:42
  somewhere under there, right So you can't expect them to be
• 1:06:47
  showing up here and you're actually showing up here that's
• 1:06:49
  never going to work. You have to be the standard.
• 1:06:51
  And so as a as a leader, I have to be the standard.
• 1:06:54
  I have high responsibility. And if I, if I have high
• 1:06:57
  standards for the people in my organization, I have to be the
• 1:07:01
  best example of those standards. I can't be wavering those
• 1:07:03
  standards. I don't want to recruit a bunch
• 1:07:05
  of vapors, right? So like I want to be, I want to
• 1:07:08
  be the highest standard. I'll say this though about what
• 1:07:14
  you just said. You can show up less than your
• 1:07:17
  people under under 1 circumstance, right?
• 1:07:20
  If you are stretched to the limit with something else you're
• 1:07:24
  doing and you are honest with your people that you are always
• 1:07:28
  there for them, they will be there for you.
• 1:07:31
  And I'll, I'll say this like this book launch is a big, is a
• 1:07:34
  huge, it's, it's a lot. It's been more than I thought it
• 1:07:38
  would. It's constant, constant this.
• 1:07:40
  It's, it's way more than I thought it was going to be,
• 1:07:43
  which is distracted me from my daily stuff with some of the
• 1:07:46
  things I've done. And everybody around me that
• 1:07:50
  works for me has stepped up in ways that is amazing to help
• 1:07:55
  take care of where I'm not there and has really risen farther
• 1:08:01
  than I thought that anybody would.
• 1:08:03
  And they don't do it. But because of the business,
• 1:08:06
  they're doing it for me. So I think as long as you know,
• 1:08:09
  great if you, if you're like, I'm going to go play golf again
• 1:08:10
  today, you guys have at it, they're not going to do it for
• 1:08:12
  you. But if you have moments of
• 1:08:14
  crisis, if you have always been the person that's there for your
• 1:08:17
  people, they will. They will be there 110% for you.
• 1:08:19
  They'll go above where you. Yeah, but you're still living by
• 1:08:23
  your values. You're just, your energy is
• 1:08:25
  focused on another thing right now.
• 1:08:26
  But you're not like, you know, being unaccountable and all
• 1:08:29
  these things. You're like, hey, this is my
• 1:08:30
  priority. I have to this is taking my
• 1:08:32
  energy and attention right now. And the team steps up to support
• 1:08:34
  you just as you do for for them when they need help or folk have
• 1:08:38
  to manage something in their life, right?
• 1:08:40
  Because that happens, yeah. So that what are some of the as
• 1:08:45
  an entrepreneur, what are some of the the failures that you've
• 1:08:47
  had or the crisises that you've had that you've had to overcome?
• 1:08:51
  Oh boy, let me run right through the office of trophies, of my
• 1:08:53
  serial killer, of my own finances, of my trophies.
• 1:08:57
  Let's see my $100,000 vitamins many, many moons ago.
• 1:09:00
  This is also stories in the book.
• 1:09:02
  We tried to start a multi level marketing company about vitamins
• 1:09:05
  and we went out and got several marketing partners or partners
• 1:09:08
  that were going to be with us that were had ties to NFL
• 1:09:11
  players and thought this is going to be great.
• 1:09:13
  Went out and spent mine, it was $100,000 on a warehouse full of
• 1:09:16
  vitamins and nutritional supplements and we never
• 1:09:18
  bothered to ask anybody if they wanted them before they launched
• 1:09:20
  this company. So I will never launch a product
• 1:09:24
  or build a product before I know there's a market for it.
• 1:09:27
  Which now like people think Kickstarter is about really
• 1:09:30
  raising money for these prop for these these companies.
• 1:09:33
  It's not Kickstarter's about do we have an audience?
• 1:09:36
  Do we have enough people that actually really want to buy
• 1:09:38
  this? They're willing to pre buy it.
• 1:09:41
  That's what you do. And, and so many people I, I
• 1:09:43
  talk about, that's one of the dangers of entrepreneurship is
• 1:09:46
  people fall so in love with their own product or their own
• 1:09:48
  design or their own websites or their own funnels or their
• 1:09:51
  concepts or whatever else, that they just don't listen to the
• 1:09:55
  market. They ride them too quick, they
• 1:09:56
  ride them too far and they fall apart.
• 1:09:58
  You've got to pivot when the market says no, you have to, you
• 1:10:02
  know, we had, we had, for example, we had a tech firm that
• 1:10:05
  I was a partner in many moons ago.
• 1:10:07
  And that tech firm was designed for a very specific thing.
• 1:10:12
  It was back in the day, there was this piece of software that
• 1:10:14
  was enterprise software to major corporations like Coca-Cola and
• 1:10:17
  SAP. Every, all these major companies
• 1:10:20
  use this particular piece of software to manage their their
• 1:10:22
  networks, but it was incredibly expensive.
• 1:10:25
  So my business partner had convinced this company to let us
• 1:10:29
  have one master license for it and then we could go out and do
• 1:10:32
  sublicenses to medium and small businesses.
• 1:10:35
  That was the 100% business model of this business.
• 1:10:39
  That was the that was what it was for.
• 1:10:40
  This was designed and that business got sold out to a
• 1:10:45
  private jet company 2 1/2 years later because some random person
• 1:10:52
  that knew one of the developers that worked at our firm needed a
• 1:10:55
  Palm Pilot app for a school board to be able to do
• 1:11:00
  inspections for the for their janitorial people.
• 1:11:03
  And that app became something that then fire departments used
• 1:11:07
  for fire inspections, which then became private jet inspection
• 1:11:10
  software that they used. And then this private jet
• 1:11:12
  company end up buying it. So had we been like, Nope, Nope,
• 1:11:16
  Nope, we do this, we would have missed that.
• 1:11:20
  So you've got to pay attention to what the market is asking for
• 1:11:23
  and give the market what it wants.
• 1:11:25
  That is the biggest mistake that most entrepreneurs make is they
• 1:11:27
  go, they stay too long, they go, well, I can't quit if I just
• 1:11:30
  keep at it. If I just can't quit, keep at
• 1:11:32
  it. A bad idea is a bad idea
• 1:11:34
  regardless how much sweat you put into it.
• 1:11:37
  So you've got to find and before you go too far down the rabbit
• 1:11:40
  hole, make sure you have a market.
• 1:11:41
  Yeah, and don't be afraid to cut your losses.
• 1:11:43
  Yeah, you got to walk away. Yeah, I mean, I've started 10
• 1:11:46
  businesses and I have two now that are that are successful.
• 1:11:50
  And yeah, so but you'll, and like Kevin O'Leary says this,
• 1:11:55
  you only need one to really hit. Yeah.
• 1:11:58
  You see? 1.
• 1:11:59
  Yeah, one hit. Yeah.
• 1:12:01
  I mean, look, if you don't lose at least seven figures a couple,
• 1:12:03
  you know, once in your life, you're not entrepreneur hard
• 1:12:05
  enough is what I like to say. But you want to protect yourself
• 1:12:09
  as much as you can from that. One of the things I can tell me
• 1:12:11
  the biggest changes in me business wise is my wife is an
• 1:12:15
  empath, right? She just she picks up on people
• 1:12:19
  and she's like, that's a good person.
• 1:12:21
  I don't like that person. And I've lost north of seven
• 1:12:24
  figures twice in my life on two different business deals.
• 1:12:28
  Both times she told me not to do it based not on the deal, not on
• 1:12:33
  the terms, not on the market, not anything else, based
• 1:12:36
  strictly on the people. I did not get a good vibe from
• 1:12:39
  those people at all, right? And so now we have a deal that I
• 1:12:43
  don't do business with anybody unless she gets a look at them.
• 1:12:46
  And there's been times when I'm at like, I'll be at like the
• 1:12:48
  boardroom mastermind. Like wait, are you in boardroom?
• 1:12:51
  I'm taking a break right now. Oh.
• 1:12:53
  OK. I just joined.
• 1:12:54
  Yeah, I was just in Cabo last week.
• 1:12:56
  Yeah, I love boardrooms. Yeah, I'm on a private chat with
• 1:12:58
  all of those guys. I know everybody.
• 1:13:00
  I told Kent I had to take a break while I launched the book
• 1:13:03
  because my toxic trade, and you saw this, if you went to
• 1:13:06
  boardroom, my toxic trade is you get me in a room for a bunch of
• 1:13:09
  people to start talking about random ways they make money.
• 1:13:12
  I'm like, I can do that, I can do that, I can do that.
• 1:13:14
  And then I'm off to the races down this rabbit hole of doing
• 1:13:17
  this. I told Kent.
• 1:13:17
  I said, you know, I absolutely need to focus on all of this
• 1:13:21
  stuff for a while. I know I left there and I was
• 1:13:23
  like, I need to tokenize our real estate assets and our fund
• 1:13:25
  and I need to start this. I got to get on the blockchain
• 1:13:27
  all this stuff. So which I I do want to do, but
• 1:13:29
  I'm like OK. Right.
• 1:13:31
  Yeah. But yeah, like, but like we'll
• 1:13:35
  be there and I'll, I'll talk to somebody and, and they're like,
• 1:13:36
  OK, this seems like a good deal and we'll do this deal and and
• 1:13:39
  we'll move forward. I'm like, wait, hang on a
• 1:13:40
  second. I got to get my wife because she
• 1:13:42
  always goes with me. I'm like, I just she's got to
• 1:13:44
  get and I'm like, what do you mean?
• 1:13:44
  I'm like, she's got to get a look at ya, let's talk about
• 1:13:47
  your kids, whatever for a minute.
• 1:13:47
  And she'll be like, oh, and the good news about boardroom is
• 1:13:49
  most of the people there have always been good people.
• 1:13:52
  I think over the years there's only been one person that kind
• 1:13:55
  of didn't do the right thing and got booted out.
• 1:13:56
  So Kent does a pretty good job of screening everybody there,
• 1:13:59
  which is great. That's cool.
• 1:14:00
  I'll see you there soon. Yeah.
• 1:14:01
  I'll be back, I'll be back. All right, cool.
• 1:14:04
  Very cool. Yeah.
• 1:14:06
  So the the. And then that with your wife,
• 1:14:10
  with the empath and her intuition.
• 1:14:11
  And this is something that women have.
• 1:14:13
  They have this intuition like I I have this weird right brain
• 1:14:17
  and left brain are both very strong, which isn't very common.
• 1:14:20
  Like I'm an engineer, but I'm an entrepreneur, creative visionary
• 1:14:23
  type too. But I still follow my intuition
• 1:14:26
  and my gut over my logic and that usually always works out
• 1:14:30
  the better way. If there's a confusion between
• 1:14:33
  the logic and the gut, it's usually the gut.
• 1:14:34
  And this goes back to the core values like their energy and the
• 1:14:39
  way they respond to things that will highlight somebody'd values
• 1:14:43
  and the way they talk and the way they communicate and the way
• 1:14:45
  that they share things. And so generally the feminine
• 1:14:49
  energy can feel those underlying things easier.
• 1:14:53
  But that's where I was just saying how, you know, in these
• 1:14:55
  business opportunities, we see the outcome, we see the
• 1:14:58
  potential, we get the excitement, we're like, oh, we
• 1:15:00
  could partner together, we could do this big thing, we could grow
• 1:15:02
  this, and we could make money and we could do all these.
• 1:15:04
  But we're not taking enough time to really understand the
• 1:15:07
  person's values. And if there's a misalignment
• 1:15:09
  there, the foundation's already broken.
• 1:15:10
  Yeah, I think, well, that's what makes our relationship so good.
• 1:15:13
  I think in every in every good relationship, you need to have a
• 1:15:16
  sail and you need to have a rudder.
• 1:15:18
  And I am the sale. I am all gas, no brakes.
• 1:15:21
  Let's go. And she is the hey, maybe we
• 1:15:24
  should take a little bit closer look at these people and do
• 1:15:27
  that. And since I have made the
• 1:15:29
  commitment that I will no longer invest or do deals with anybody
• 1:15:33
  that she doesn't know like and trust and is met, that's fine.
• 1:15:37
  You know, for example, boardroom.
• 1:15:38
  Do you know Tim Herridge? Yeah.
• 1:15:41
  He was on my podcast a couple. A month ago, Tim's one of my
• 1:15:44
  dearest friends. I love Tim.
• 1:15:46
  I had a million and a half bucks with Tim and I just and I and I
• 1:15:49
  yelled at Gidget over her shoulder and my wife's name is
• 1:15:51
  Gidget. And I'm like, hey, I'm going to
• 1:15:52
  send 1,000,005 to Tim. She's like, yeah, fine, just
• 1:15:55
  because no problem. She loves Tim.
• 1:15:57
  Yeah, no problem. He's a good dude.
• 1:15:58
  And and she and for me, she knew I had vetted the deal enough to
• 1:16:02
  know that it was OK, but her vibe with Tim and his wife was
• 1:16:06
  good enough that we're fine. So there we go.
• 1:16:08
  Yeah, it's, I mean, there's a million opportunities.
• 1:16:10
  That's a harness for Tim. It's a good.
• 1:16:12
  Deal yeah, so many opportunities.
• 1:16:14
  It all comes down to the trust and and the relationship.
• 1:16:17
  We always talk about like the horse and the jockey and the
• 1:16:19
  racetrack. The the the jockey is the most
• 1:16:22
  important decision. You also need a good horse.
• 1:16:24
  That's your business, your vehicle, your product, your
• 1:16:26
  market, all that, that stuff. But ultimately, if the race
• 1:16:29
  tracks good, the dirt's good, the the team, the groom's team
• 1:16:32
  is good to take care of the horse and the business and make
• 1:16:34
  sure everything's smooth and it's up to the jockey to make
• 1:16:36
  sure that everything actually wins and the horse wins the
• 1:16:38
  race. So that's awesome.
• 1:16:41
  Well, cool. Well, we'll wrap up here.
• 1:16:42
  I always like to end with a couple questions.
• 1:16:44
  So what is one piece of advice that you would give to your
• 1:16:49
  younger self? If you could tell your 25 year
• 1:16:51
  old self one thing when you were drifting, what would you say?
• 1:16:53
  Buy this book because it is a user's manual to you.
• 1:16:56
  That's the exactly the reason I wrote the book.
• 1:16:58
  It literally is a user's manual for how to stop drifting along
• 1:17:02
  with life. Just buy the book.
• 1:17:05
  And how can people buy the book and get a hold of you?
• 1:17:07
  You can buy it anywhere you want.
• 1:17:08
  Amazon all over the place. You can find me at the John
• 1:17:11
  Gafford everywhere. That's my Instagram handle.
• 1:17:13
  That's everywhere at the John gafford.com has links to all of
• 1:17:16
  our stuff. Or you can check out my podcast,
• 1:17:18
  Escaping the Drift. Same name as the book.
• 1:17:20
  Available everywhere podcasts are available.
• 1:17:23
  Awesome. Well, thanks for coming on.
• 1:17:24
  No, thank you.