Episode 208 – Rod Khleif

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PBP THS EP 208
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[00:00:00] And I don’t say this to brag, but there’s a message in this. If you’re listening to Richard right now and you want success, you listen to these hero stories. You got blood dripping from your teeth. You want it so bad. Listen up. Okay. I was successful, but I was fulfilled. Tony Robbins calls it the science of achievement versus the art of fulfillment.

[00:00:18] Achievement really is a science. You want to learn multifamily, come see me in Denver, I promise. You’ll be glad you did. And you’ll have the blueprint to go. You just got to take action. That’s a science, but fulfillment is an art. You’ve got to find out what juices you, and so, you know, maybe it’s children like me or the elderly or animals or the environment, whatever it is, bring that into your life right now.

[00:00:39] Give back in some way right now, don’t say I’ll do it when I have money. No, you can always give your time. Here’s why you’ll be happily achieving instead of achieving to be happy. You know, we’ve been taught to achieve to be happy. But if you give back in some fashion, you’re happily achieving, and I know that’s a play on words, but it’s an important one.

[00:00:57] And I’m going to tell you, the success will come faster. Trust me on this. You don’t do it for that reason, but that’s just the way God of the universe, whatever you believe works, whatever you give, you give back tenfold.

[00:01:08] Heroes or an inspiring group of people. Every one of them from the larger than life comic book heroes, you see on the big silver screen, the everyday heroes that let us live the privileged lives we do.

[00:01:16] Every hero has a story to tell them the doctor is saving lives at your local hospital. The war veteran down the street, who risked his life for our freedom, to the police officers and the firefighters who risked their safety to ensure ours, every hero is special and every story worth telling. But there was one class of heroes that I think is often ignored the entrepreneur, the creator, a producer, the ones who look at the problems in this world and think to themselves, you know what?

[00:01:35] I can fix that. I can help people. I can make a difference. Then they go out and do exactly that by creating a new product or introducing a new service, some go on to change the world. Others make a world of difference to their customers. Welcome to the hero show. Join us. As we pull back the masks on the world’s finest hero preneurs and learn the secrets to their powers, their success and their influence.

[00:01:54] So you can use those secrets to attract more sales, make more money and experience more freedom in your business, I’m your host Richard Matthews. And we are on in 3, 2, 1.

[00:02:03] Hello and welcome back to the Hero Show. My name is Richard Matthews. I am live on the line today with Rod Khleif. Rod are you there?

[00:02:08] Yes, I am. Thanks for having me, Richard. Let’s have some fun today.

[00:02:12] Awesome. Glad to have you here. I know we were chatting just before we got on. You’re out of Sarasota right now, right? Which is that’s where our candle company is. So that’s pretty close. We’ll be back there at the end of the year.

[00:02:22] Nice.

[00:02:22] So maybe we’ll get to say hi or something in person.

[00:02:24] Yeah, no that’d be great.

[00:02:25] Rare thing these days. So for my audience, who’s following along with our travels. We are going up the Rockies right now. We’re in the great salt lake right now. And I’ve got bug bites all over my neck to prove it.

[00:02:38] But I guess where I want to start, Rod is with what you’re known for. So you are podcast hosts of Lifetime Cashflow Through Real Estate Investing. And you own multi-family mastery and you teach people how to do real estate investing, I would assume. So what I want to start with is what is it that you are known for? Who do you serve? What do you do for them?

[00:02:57] Sure. So, if you don’t mind, let me go back just a hair and go way back, because I think if you have a little bit of background on me, it’ll add some credibility and some framework to me answering your question. So I immigrated this country when I was six years old with my brother Albert, my mother’s Vantia.

[00:03:17] I was born in the Netherlands Holland, you know, wooden shoes and windmills. And we ended up in Denver, Colorado, and we really struggled initially. I remember we ate expired food from an expired food store. We drank powdered milk with our cereal in the morning, you know, trust me, it sounds better than it is.

[00:03:32] And I work close in the Goodwill and the salvation army all the way through junior high school, until I lied about my age at Burger King when I was 14, because I was tall. So I could get some money and buy my own clothes. And I’m sure you’ve got listeners that had it harder than I did, or have it harder now with all this COVID nonsense, but I knew I wanted more and luckily my mom had an incredible work ethic.

[00:03:54] And so she babysat kids, so we’d have enough money to eat. And with her babysitting money, she was a bit of an entrepreneur. She invested in the stock market successfully, and she also invested in real estate. And her first real estate asset was the house right across the street from us that she bought when I was about 14 for about $30,000.

[00:04:10] And then when I was 17, she told me she’d make $20,000 in her sleep that had gone up in value 20,000. I’m like, what? Screw college mom, I’m getting into real estate. And so I got into real estate, right when I turned 18, I was actually a real estate broker, which you could do with education back then.

[00:04:26] And now they got smart and you need some experience before you can have your own office, but I was a broker. And so my first year in real estate, I maybe made about eight grand, my second year maybe 10 grand thereabouts. Again, this is 44 years ago. But my third year I made over a hundred thousand dollars.

[00:04:41] And so what happened between year two and year three, it caused me to 10X my income. And this is what I’m known for. I’m answering your question with this framework. So, you know, what happened was I met somebody that taught me about the importance of mindset and psychology and how truly 80 to 90% of your success in anything is just that your mindset and your psychology and only 10 to 20% is the real estate knowledge that I teach on my podcast or at my live events.

[00:05:04] You know, if it was just the knowledge and there’d be a bunch of wealthy librarians and college professors out there, you actually have to take action with the knowledge and fast forward to today, I go into a couple of thousand houses that I’ve rented long-term, I’ve owned thousands of apartment units.

[00:05:18] In 2006, my net worth went up $17 million while I slept. And you might say, wow, well, I said, wow and I thought I was a freaking real estate god. And you know, my head got so big. I could barely fit it through a door. And when that happens, God might give you a nice little SmackDown. Well, that was 2008 and nine for me.

[00:05:37] I lost $50 million in 2008 and nine. And so what I’m known for is talking about the mindset and the psychology it took to have 50 million lose in the first place, but then maybe as important or even more important, the mindset it took to get back to the success that I’m blessed today. So we can take that any direction you like, Richard.

[00:05:55] That’s an incredible story. And you went right into my second question, which is your origin story, right? Every hero has a good origin story and yours is fascinating. You came over as an immigrant and your mom actually got into real estate investing, which I’ve never heard that story before.

[00:06:08] I worked with a bunch of real estate trainers and coaches in my business, and that’s the first time I’ve heard someone saying their parents were real estate investors instead of something they started themselves. So I’m just kind of curious about your mom’s real estate story and how that sort of translated into you becoming a real estate investor yourself?

[00:06:31] Nobody’s ever asked me that before, so that’s great. In fact, it’s kind of funny. I’ve got a bootcamp coming up in Denver. I was telling you about before we recorded July 29, 30th and 31st. And I did one Denver before COVID I had 800 people there and my mom, they brought my mom, she’s in assisted living.

[00:06:47] They brought her in a wheelchair. My brothers were there and I’m behind the curtain. Balling like a fricking two year old, because it was my mom’s a reason I got into real estate and I had to pull myself together to go out and it was pretty emotional moment, you know, a lot of tears and stuff, but anyway, but she was just driven, and again, she’s a bit of an entrepreneur.

[00:07:08] Unfortunately she’s a really struggling now she’s living with my brother, she’s 90, but she just decided she wanted more and she had to help support us cause we were struggling. You know, she just tried different things. And like I say, she invested in the stock market successfully, which I haven’t been able to do myself.

[00:07:30] Yeah, me neither.

[00:07:30] And she bought it. I dunno, she bought about seven or eight houses. And like I said, that story inspired me to do it. And so, that’s why, again, I was a mush pot behind the stage when my mom was out there a couple of years ago.

[00:07:45] So what, what made you want to take it beyond where she did, right? Where she bought 7 or 8 houses to have a miliion dollar through real estate?

[00:07:52] Well, I always wanted amazing things. Okay. And so, if you come to one of my bootcamps, one of the first things we do is a goal setting workshop. Really. I call it goal setting on steroids. And I’m happy to describe the process for you if you like, but you know, we spend an hour and a half figuring out what everybody there wants, because how the hell are you going to get anything?

[00:08:11] If you don’t know what it is, right? You need to know what it is you want, you need to have clarity. And so I knew I wanted more and back then, I wanted stupid stuff like the exotic cars, and I wanted to live on the beach and all of which I made happen, but I really believe your goals and desires change as you get older and you evolve.

[00:08:31] I mean, the things that interested in me back then don’t really interest me too much anymore. But you have to create what Napoleon Hill in his book Think and Grow Rich calls a burning desire. It’s the only way you’re going to take action to push through limiting beliefs or fear or to get uncomfortable.

[00:08:47] You know, a lot of people are in a comfort zone and it’s a nice warm place, but we both know nothing freaking grows there. Right. And my mom proud Dutch woman that she is thought it’d be a great idea. When I first immigrated, I was six years old, didn’t speak English. I found out what bullies were for the first time.

[00:09:01] And so I got my butt kicked regularly. I didn’t know how to fight back yet. And then. Like I say, my mom being the proud Dutch woman that she has sent me to school in wooden shoes and those leather shorts, the Germans were for October Fest, you know, the later hoes. And so I got my butt kicked again.

[00:09:15] And then, they chase me home from school and she chased them off with a fly swatter. Next day, I got my butt kicked again, and I created this limiting belief that I wasn’t good enough. And a lot of people have these limiting belief systems, you know, like I’m not good enough. I’m not smart enough.

[00:09:28] I’m not old enough. I’m not young enough, whatever. And there’s a reason. The acronym for belief systems is BS because 99.9% of them are BS, so you’ve got to have that burning desire to push through that stuff. And that’s what I did. I created a burning desire over the material things that I wanted.

[00:09:46] And like I said, my goals now have shifted, but that’s what drove me.

[00:09:51] That’s really fascinating. There’s a couple of things I wanted to just sort of pull out of that. One was the idea of having to have a goal of burning desire. And I know that for myself, we chatted a little bit before about like one of my next life goals is to go from the RV, traveling to yacht traveling.

[00:10:04] And I know right now, everything that my wife and I and our four kids are doing are all things that we wrote down and put pictures together and a whole vision board together 10 years ago and we’ve achieved every single goal we put out for ourselves and realize along the way that to your point, a lot of our goals and stuff changed and shifted over the last decade.

[00:10:22] And our goal for the next decades have all changed and everything. And a lot less has to do with revenue a lot more has to do with experiences.

[00:10:29] Well, that’s fascinating. And you know what, same here and also giving back, like I’ve got a green screen here we can see on the wall behind me, hundreds of thank you cards.

[00:10:40] The whole wall behind me is covered with them from students. And I’ve been teaching only about four and a half years, but that’s been a big part of what I do now and a big driver for me. My coaching students now owns somewhere over 60,000 units. And again, I’ve only been teaching a little over four years, so I’m really proud of that.

[00:10:58] Yeah, that’s amazing. And the other thing I wanted to just sort of pull out of that story was the idea that you have not just that you have goals and great burning desire, but you have laid of a framework for them. So if you would, I would love to hear that.

[00:11:11] Oh let me describe it. By the way, if you DM, if you’re listening and you DM me on any social channel, my team’s even got me on TikTok now, I couldn’t spell TikTok four months ago when I’ve had videos go viral 700,000 views for my little multifamily space, kind of interesting. But my point is, if you DM me on any social channel, I did this on January 1st. I usually do it around the first of the second of the year, depending on what day it falls on.

[00:11:35] But I did it on January 1st with music, with a guide you can download that you can follow along with. So if you DM me, I’ll send you the link to that. Just say, could you send me the goal setting session? I’ll send that to you, but I’m on every social channel, but let me describe it.

[00:11:53] So pick an hour when you have a lot of energy, make sure you’re well-hydrated, which sounds like I need.

[00:11:58] Yeah, I got mine here too.

[00:12:01] And don’t do it right after a big meal. And sit down and write down everything you could ever possibly want in life, all the stuff. And there’s nothing wrong with stuff.

[00:12:09] We need stuff. That’s how we share experiences with people, with our stuff. And so the houses, the cars, the boats, the jet skis, the planes in your case, the RVs, the yacht, ultimately, whatever it is. And by the way, take the lid off your brain. If you want a yacht, a private island, a jet, you write it down.

[00:12:26] That starts the process. The process that it starts is it triggers something in your brain called your reticular activating system. And that’s that subconscious filter. You’re not aware of it consciously, but it points your brain in the direction or points you in the direction your brain thinks you’re interested in.

[00:12:40] And I suppose the greatest example of that is when you first buy a car, you never really noticed them that much before then you buy it and you see them everywhere where they there before. Of course they were, that’s your reticular activating system. So write down all the stuff, write down how much cashflow you want from your investments.

[00:12:55] Say in three years, in 10 years, how much cash you want in the bank in three years, in 10 years, you know? And then once you can’t think of another material. Write down everything you want to do in this lifetime. So it’s not just the stuff, it’s everything you want to do, be and have. And so, maybe the places you want to travel behind my green screen here, I’ve got a travel vision board, you know?

[00:13:14] And so write down those places. Maybe you want to write a book, I’ve got a friend climbing every mountain, over 14,000 feet, I think he finished it actually, me I jumped out of a perfectly good airplane a few years ago. I’ll never do it again, but it’s off the list. So that’s the kind of stuff.

[00:13:29] Write all that stuff down to all that bucket list stuff. Then once you can’t think of another thing there, write down everything you want to learn in this lifetime. You want to learn a foreign language. You want to learn a culture. You want to learn a skill, write that down. If you don’t learn multifamily for God’s sakes, come spend three days with me in Denver, the end of July.

[00:13:45] I’ll tell you how to do that. I’ll give you a piece of hell of a deal if they’re interested, but the point is, write that stuff down if you want to. And then once you can think of another thing. Write down who you want to help. Here’s why we’ll do more for others than we’ll ever do for ourselves.

[00:13:58] And again, so write down, you know, like I bought my parents a house here on a canal when my dad was alive. Bought him a car, took them on cruises. Who do you want to do things for? Write that down, because again, this is the fuel. This is what’s going to get your butt up out of bed early in the morning.

[00:14:11] Stay up late work Saturdays to grind for a few years. Like most people won’t. So you can live the rest of your life like most people can’t. Okay. So this is that fuel. So once you can’t think of another thing, by the way, if you’re analytical, don’t stop and analyze it. You can always scratch it out later.

[00:14:26] Just keep that pen going. Okay. Write down everything you can think of. Okay. Once you’re done, there’s a couple more steps. You need to put a time limit on each goal. And again, don’t overthink this just guess at it. How many years put a one, a three, five, even a 10 or a 20, recognizing that as human beings.

[00:14:43] We’ll overestimate what we can do in a year. And we massively underestimate what we can do in 5, 10, 20 years. I’ll give you an example of this, and again, please know, I’m going to give you some personal examples. I am not bragging because again, most of the stuff doesn’t interest me anymore. I just want to inspire you.

[00:14:58] So when I lived in Denver, I always knew I wanted to live on the beach. Okay. And I would visualize the Palm trees and the sand and the surf and all of that. And 20 years later, I built this $8 million, 10,000 square foot mansion on the beach. And the reason I say that is because that was unthinkable really when I was 18, but I imagined it and I visualize it and I made it happen.

[00:15:19] And so, and I know you’re a kindred spirit in this. If you’ve got vision boards, Richard, I know you’re totally on board with what I’m talking about here. And you could call it prayer, you know, whatever, however you want to manifest these things into your life because it works. So anyway, take the lid off your brain, write it down and put a time limit on each goal.

[00:15:37] Then I want you to pick your number one goal. I mean that goal, when you get it like, oh my God, you know, you’ve arrived that goal. Put that on another piece of paper. And if there’s two or three to equally exciting, just pick one, it won’t matter for what we’re going to do next. So you’ve got your number one goal.

[00:15:50] Then I want you to pick your top three one-year goals. Okay. So you’ve got your number one goal and your top three one year goals and put some room in between them. Cause there’s another step. Okay. Now we’ll tell you once you’ve got that done, you are ahead of 99.9% of the people on the planet that spend more time planning a freaking birthday party than they do designing their lives.

[00:16:10] This is designing your life, but I want to take it a little further because the goals are super important, but the reason you want the goals is much more important. So you need to put a paragraph under reach goal, why it’s an absolute must for you to achieve it. And I want you to use emotionally charged words when you’re writing the description.

[00:16:28] So I can show my kids what amazing abundance looks like or what’s incredible success looks like. So I can show my husband or wife, what it means to live a life of unbelievable freedom so we can have the freedom to do whatever we want whenever we want, wherever we want, bring whoever we want. You know, whatever’s going to juice you write that down. Okay.

[00:16:47] And then once you’ve got some reasons why under each one of those goals, I want you to spin it and I want you to put some pain in there and make it hurt if you don’t achieve the goals. And here’s why, because as human beings we’ll do more to avoid pain than gain pleasure.

[00:17:02] And again, this is the fuel to get your butt up, to make this happen. Okay. So you might put, so if you don’t get the goal, so I don’t feel like a failure, so I don’t fail my kids, so I don’t fail my husband or wife. So I don’t live a life over regret.

[00:17:17] You know, there was this nurse in Australia, Richard who was a hospice nurse. And her name was Bronnie Ware and she asked her patients right before they were going to die, do you have any regrets? And she wrote a book about it’s called The Five Regrets of Dying. You know what the number one regret was, not living the life I could have lived, living someone else’s life, not doing what I know I’m capable of.

[00:17:37] I can’t think of anything worse than that. So this is what helps you prevent that from happening. Right? So the last thing once you’ve got your positive and negative reasons, why is you need to either make declarations, get pictures, get vision boards, do whatever you do to get this stuff in front of you.

[00:17:52] And I’ll give you some examples of this. A great public example is Jim Carrey, the actor you know a comedian he wrote himself a check for $10 million when he was flat broke. And he’d used to go up by the Hollywood sign. He’d visualize cashing it, and that’s how much money he made for Dumb and Dumber.

[00:18:08] Another more recent example, Demi Lovato, the singer when she was unknown, about 12 years ago, posted in social media one day, I’m going to sing the national Anthem at the super bowl. Not this last one. Go watch the one before that, she was singing the national Anthem. I’ll give you some personal examples for me when I was 18, I got my real estate broker’s license and I figured I had to have a four-door car to show people houses.

[00:18:29] Right? Well, I got this bone ugly piece of crap Ford Granada bench seat in the front. Just a real piece of junk. The guy that I worked for, in fact, I was dating his daughter that taught me about mindset and psychology, the first one you know, he had a couple of Corvettes and he let me drive one because I was dating his daughter and I’m like, oh my God, this is amazing.

[00:18:49] So I got a picture of a Corvette out of a magazine. This is way before the internet. And I put that on the visor of my Granada. So every time I sat in that thing, it was right there in front of my face, within a year or two, I had a Corvette. This is back when the TV show Magnum PI was out. I don’t know if you remember that Richard, it’s been a while, the actor was Tom Selleck. And he was a detective in Hawaii and he drove this Ferrari 308 and that’s the first time I’d seen an exotic car and I’m like, Oh my God. So I got a picture of that actual car put on the visor of my Corvette within a year or two at a Maserati looked just like it.

[00:19:18] Last example, I’m the guy that always wanted a Lamborghini. Okay. I’d had the posters in my room back then. It was the Lamborghini Coon Tosh was interesting is when my son was nine years old, he collected models of exotic cars and he had about 30 or 40 of them. You know, the Ferrari’s and the McLaren’s and the Porsche’s. And he had a Lamborghini modeled the exact same color and style that ended up getting which I wrecked.

[00:19:40] But anyway, in fact, let me show you something. You say you put these on YouTube, right? This is my planner. Yes, I’m a dinosaur. I use a digital planner. I mean a paper planner. I don’t use a digital planner, but in the back of this thing, I’ve got pictures that have been in here for 22 years.

[00:19:54] Now they’re all geared in plastic. The first pictures are my gratitude pictures. If you can’t see this, these are pictures of my kids when they were young, my kids are 30 and 26 now. So they’re my gratitude pictures. Why? Because everything you manifest in your life, you do it through gratitude. If you’re praying or if you’re just visualizing that’s the foundational emotion you need to use to bring this stuff into your life.

[00:20:17] And so, you know, the gratitude pictures, then I’ve got pictures like this top picture looks just like that house I had on the beach before I built it at 10 foot high glass like that 80 foot long travertine floors. What’s crazy. This bottom picture is here. You can see the white wall and those pictures of the Stonewall.

[00:20:34] Look behind me, that’s my backyard now. I live in a compound now, same Stonewall. I’ve got six buildings. I’ve got a big main house, a two bedroom guest house on the water, immediate building with a video studio that I built because I had to go virtual with my events back when COVID hit and just incredible place and big exercise facility.

[00:20:50] And because God’s got a sense of humor. See, I lost that big house, the mansion I was telling you about in there, all the craziness and it’s literally right across the bay for me. So I see it every day when I look at my backyard, but then, you know, I’ve got pictures of stupid crap like watches.

[00:21:05] I got a few hundred thousand dollars worth of watches. That’s still a vice, I’ll be honest that I still love. But then, you know, the Lamborghini before I ever got it, the Rolls Royce, the Bentley, all this stupid crap, I thought was important that I got at one time. So again, replace this with what you want, but get pictures, put them around you.

[00:21:21] Put them on your screen saver, put them on your wall, put them on vision boards because it freaking works right, Richard?

[00:21:27] Yeah. I would say, just like some examples from my own life. One of mine was I wanted to take my kids to see all 50 states. My daughter is going to be three by the end of summer. She have been to all 50 states.

[00:21:38] Wow. That’s crazy. You are a real adventure. You know, it’s funny. I spent 20 years following Tony Robbins around the planet and every human have driving forces in our lives, things that describe our most prevalent emotions and desires. And for you, it’s gotta be adventure brother, it says definitely.

[00:22:00] I can tell you, some of this stuff, and a lot of the stuff was on my vision board, but I’ve stood on all four quarters in the United States. And we’ve seen like for one of our anniversaries this last year or the year before my wife and I got to see the transient Orcas up in in Seattle, Washington.

[00:22:13] And we got to swim with the Tarpon in Florida and we’ve stood on the battlefields in a Gettysburg. And our kids got to handle the what do you call them? The cannonballs at the Alamo. And like yesterday my son comes up to me and he was all super excited. Cause they were talking about erosion in the geology class.

[00:22:29] And the example they were using was the narrows canyon and Zion, which we hiked last week. And he was like, I was in there. I was in the narrows, hiking through that. And that’s what our class was about this week.

[00:22:39] Your kids, their IQ is going to be off the chain because of these experiences, what an incredible gift to your kids, honestly.

[00:22:49] I love your framework. It’s pretty much exactly how I’ve gotten everything that I’ve got into my life. We have obviously vastly different desires that we’ve worked for, but it works.

[00:23:00] Yeah. It doesn’t matter what you want, if the principles apply and like most mornings I’ll sit in that recliner behind my green screen here and I’ll just do gratitude, gratitude for the things that I already have.

[00:23:13] My incredible supermodel, beautiful wife more beautiful on the inside than the outside. My kids, my foundation, my coaching students. Then I’ll do gratitude for the things that I want as if I already have them. And I know that sounds goofy to some of you analytical ones, but trust me, this is how I had 50 million to lose and how I got it back.

[00:23:32] Okay. So this stuff works, you know, don’t go like, oh, he’s in woo woo land. He might be, but it works. So, you know, gratitude, sometimes I’ll get emotional being grateful things I don’t even have yet. Okay. So that’s how far I take it because it freaking works. Anyway, yeah.

[00:23:50] So I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about how that might apply to your superpowers. Every iconic hero has a superpower, whether that’s their fancy flying suit made by their genius intellect, or the ability to call them thunder or super strength in the real world heroes have what I call a zone of genius, which is either a skill or a set of skills that you were born with or you developed over your career that really helped you to slay the villains in your client’s life.

[00:24:12] And the way I like to frame this for my guests is if you look at all the skills you’ve developed over the course of your career, there’s probably a common thread that ties all of those skills together. And that common thread is probably where you find your superpower. So over the course of building and losing and building again, a $50 million real estate business, what do you think your super power is?

[00:24:28] I have a couple. Okay. And I will tell you, I have built 27 businesses in my lifetime. I got the entrepreneur book from my mom and by the way, I don’t call them failures. That was a $50 million seminar. Okay. I call them seminars. So I’ve built 27 businesses, several worth tens of millions of dollars.

[00:24:45] Most were spectacular flaming seminars. But I have discipline. So that’s one, but really the super power is determination. It really is determination. That’s one of them, the second one, which might even be more powerful is my ability to communicate. I didn’t go to college, but I’ve got a library that rivals anybody I’ve ever seen private library that is thousands and thousands of books, and I’ve read a lot of them.

[00:25:12] And so I’m extremely well-read and I believe, obviously I’m sure as you do that, reading greatly enhances your, not just your, well, certainly your vocabulary and your IQ and everything else. And so my love of reading contributed to my communication superpower. I’m pretty darn good at communicating, so communication and just dog at determination.

[00:25:34] I love both of those. And just a couple of examples from my life that I think are pointing at the first one on communication. One of the things that I regularly tell my oldest son, who’s getting to the point where communication is an important part of schooling is I tell him almost every day when he’s going through a schoolwork, cause he hates English and he’s just like learning the basics of English at this point in his school career.

[00:25:56] And he’s like, why do I have to do this stuff? And I keep telling him, I was like, communication is the ultimate superpower. It’s like, if you can master communication, you can do anything you want in life.

[00:26:06] I hate English too, by the way, the whole verb, no pronoun. I mean, I know what a verb is, but most of those descriptions, I don’t even know, but if you can just get them to learn, to love to read, I got sucked in with a Hardy boys books and now they’ve got goosebumps and all sorts of stuff.

[00:26:21] He’s read all the Hardy boys.

[00:26:22] Oh he’s golden.

[00:26:23] He’s an auditory learners. So we get him audio books. His Christmas gifts for the last three years has been an audible subscription. And he gets super excited about his credits to come out every month. And the thing that struck me up about that is like every year we’re asking him, I was like, what do you want for Christmas? And he was like, I want you to renew my audible subscription.

[00:26:42] Wow. That’s awesome . Has he done the Harry Potter?

[00:26:46] He listened to the Harry Potter series so many times out loud that I had to panic from our house.

[00:26:51] Because they do a great job. You know, they’ve got the characters and everything, my sons you know not autistic oh God, dyslexic.

[00:26:58] And so, we would listen and I would use my finger on the book, which really helps, you know, so you can see it and hear at the same time, that was really powerful in helping him. But anyway, I digress. That’s really cool.

[00:27:12] That first one is just communication is such an important skill and everything from written communication to verbal communication, anything that you can do to enhance your communication skills.

[00:27:19] And I think just like your reading is probably one of the best ones ever, because we really were a story born people. And if you can learn to tell stories.

[00:27:27] The most successful people on the planet are the ones that are able to tell stories. The leaders that are able to motivate, empower, validate, and, juice others are the ones that can tell stories.

[00:27:38] Yeah, absolutely. And that’s why I think podcasting is such a good platform like this. Cause it’s really just getting on and exchanging stories with each other and practicing that muscle. So…

[00:27:46] Yeah, that’s really funny. I interviewed a guy yesterday. I helped him launch his book that got me podcasting.

[00:27:51] In fact, he called me eight years ago, Ron, I’m gonna to start a podcast. You want to do it with me? I’m like what? Talking to a phone for an hour. And they didn’t have the visual component then. And you know, now I’ve got the largest commercial real estate podcast in the world. We’re about to 13 million downloads is like, we laughed about it yesterday. It’s just crazy. You want to make God laugh? Tell Him your plans.

[00:28:13] Yeah, the other side of that which you mentioned was determination and determination, I think is such a huge thing. And it’s something that I learned a long time ago from one of my mentors. He said, there’s no competition for real men anymore.

[00:28:25] And what he was talking about is he was talking about determination. Cause we got into several discussions about it later, but what he was talking about, he was like, most people do not have the wherewithal to do the work and tell it’s done. Right. And you mentioned this earlier that we vastly overestimate what we can accomplish in a year and underestimate what we can do in 10.

[00:28:42] I say that all the time and one of the things that I think is super powerful about that is if it’s worth doing it’s worth putting 10 years of your life into. And most people don’t look at things like that. And they hop from thing to thing.

[00:28:55] They want the pill. They want the diet and pill, they think, it takes some work, but it’s freaking worth it.

[00:29:00] Now it doesn’t take 10 years. You know, I’ve got scores of students that have retired from very high paying jobs in three or four years, in fact, two or three in some cases. But they worked hard with families, with kids, with everything else. So listen, if you want more out of life, there’s nothing you can’t do, be, or have, you’ve got to be clear on what it is you want.

[00:29:20] Then you’ve got to make a decision, and the Latin root for the word decision means to cut off. If you’re going to attack the island, you burn your ships, you’re taking their damn ships home. Okay. So that’s a decision it’s done. Okay. And then, beyond that, it’s coming up with a plan and then it’s massive action, that’s it. And in own, if you hit a wall, you stay focused on that goal and you change your approach. You hit a wall again, you stay focused on that goal and you change your approach and rinse and repeat until you hit it. And that’s how it works.

[00:29:51] That’s it. You innovate you pivot. Like when COVID hit, I had 800 people scheduled for Orlando and I’m like, holy crap, what are we going to do? And so I immediately built a video story here on my compound. If you go to multifamily virtual bootcamp.com, you’ll see me on my phone, recording the video.

[00:30:09] It’s still on there. I need to change it. I’ve got professional capabilities now. By the way, if you’re interested in multi-family let me plug my bootcamp real quick. Cause I’ll give your peeps a heck of a deal. It’s going to be three days. It’s the 29th, 30th and 31st. If you text Rod in Orlando, I’m sorry, Rod in Orlando, that was last one. Rod in Denver to 72345 or go to RodInDenver.com. There’s the website there. And again, they always sell out. There should be about a thousand people at this one, but it’s three full days of training. And if the price has gone up, the price will ultimately probably go to about $700.

[00:30:50] It’s 197 now, if the price goes up, just DM and say, you were on Richard’s show and I’ll get you that 197 price. So 197 for three days, and it’s not a sales pitch. Okay. There’s no big sales pitch. It’s training is during a double firehose. I will say that every aspect of this multifamily real estate business and I spend time on mindset as well, because I want you to take action with what you learn.

[00:31:12] And that’s why my students are so successful. So it’s a lot of fun and we have a lot of fun. And if you go to that website and go to the bottom, you’ll see hundreds of tests, unsolicited testimonials. In fact, if you come and you don’t love it, I don’t mean like it. I mean, love it. If you don’t love it, I’ll give you your money back. No problem.

[00:31:27] So just out of curiosity, what are your requirements for people to come and actually like get started as they need to be in like a high paying position so they can afford to work in Real State?

[00:31:35] No, not at all. No, not at all. You know, you hear the whole no money down stuff in real estate. Well, there truly are several ways that you can buy multifamily real estate with none of your own money.

[00:31:44] And we teach them. And I have students that have bought thousands and thousands of units with none of their own money in them. Okay. Cause I’ll be honest. One of the biggest reasons there’s so much money looking for a home right now and multi-family is such a secure, safe, lucrative investment that money is pouring into it.

[00:32:03] So if you find a good deal, finding the money is the easiest way. So, I mean, I bought tens of millions of dollars worth of property in my twenties, I’m 50/50 with partners. They put up the money. I did all the work. I found the deals. I fixed them. I managed them. I sold them.

[00:32:18] Everybody was happy. And so, I did it in my twenties just cause I didn’t know any better. So, there are definitely ways to do this business. So there’s no requirements. You just have to want more. That’s the requirement. You have to want more out of life and be ready to take action to achieve it.

[00:32:33] That’s the requirement. Okay. I’ll help you get clarity on what it is you want. I’ll help you get clarity on why you want it. And then I’ll give you the map. I’ll give you the blueprint and you just have to do it. There’s no secret sauce here. You just have to take massive action. And it’s like that with any business, you know, if you dabble, you’re going to get your butt kicked. If you apply yourself and you learn, you take action. Success is ultimately inevitable.

[00:32:55] Yeah, you’ll win. So I want to talk about the flip side then of your superpower. So the superpower is one side. The flip side of that coin is generally your fatal flaw. Just like every Superman has their kryptonite or wonder woman can’t remove her bracelets of victory without going mad. You probably had a flaw that held you back in your business something you’ve struggled with.

[00:33:11] So for me, it was a couple of things. I struggled with perfectionism for a long time. I also struggled with lack of self-care, which I let my clients walk all over me.

[00:33:20] I didn’t have good boundaries with my time. It didn’t have good boundaries in my health, those kinds of things. And it wasn’t until I started fixing those things that I really started growing my business. So I’m just curious, what were some of your fatal flaws? And I think more important than what they were is how have you worked to overcome them?

[00:33:33] Sure. Yeah, the perfectionism, I get that with my students a lot, and it’s very often fear, fear of failure. So they’ve just got to check out. In fact, a lot of my students are very analytical. I get a lot of very successful people come out of the IT space, engineers, doctors, so on and so forth, and they have to check off every single box before they take action.

[00:33:51] And so sometimes they don’t take action. I feel like I fail anybody that doesn’t, you know sign up for our help because I really believe that. And that’s the thing we really push past, but anyway, my own so a big one is impatience. It’s one I struggle with a lot and I’ve lost a couple of key people in my organization because I moved so fast that I don’t sometimes stop and say, hey, how you doing Tom?

[00:34:16] How’s your day? How’s your kids? How’s everything? I’m just like, where are we at with this, this, this, and this. And so now it’s a double-edged sword, I get more done in a day that most people get done in a week. But that impatience is a big one, achilles heel.

[00:34:34] You know, my wife will tell you that I give too much, honestly, that it’s similar to your second one. It’s the boundaries thing and that people, you know, will take advantage sometimes. And I’ve gotten better at that. I will say that I have a hard time saying no. And you know, I go on podcasts sometimes that are brand new and time is all we have.

[00:34:55] And my wife’s like, why? You don’t have to. And I’m like, let me give these people a hand, you know? And so it’s those two things that are probably the biggest thing, my impatience and you know, and I teach this the value of saying no, and I don’t eat my own cooking sometimes as it relates to that one.

[00:35:12] But it’s an evolution. There’s no destination with any of this, yourself included. We get better, but I’m sure that perfectionism pops up for you from time to time and people push those boundary limits with you from time to time still. And I promise you that, I have to kiss my wife’s rear end on numerous occasions because my impatience has gotten in the way and then I’ve ended up on a podcast or on a Facebook live and there’s eight people there anyway, but listen, it’s all good.

[00:35:46] So, yeah, I definitely am with you there, I’ve spent a long time working on particularly the boundaries, self-care stuff and realizing how to say no. Cause when I started off my business 10 years ago, I said yes to everything. And you realize that, that is not a great way to run a business.

[00:36:00] And learning how to say no also focus you and helps you grow your revenue, it does a whole bunch of things. So it’s a powerful skill to learn. So I want to talk then a little bit about your common enemy. Every superhero has their arch-nemesis something that they’re constantly having to fight against in their world.

[00:36:16] In the world of business, it takes a lot of forms, but we like to put it in the context of your clients or your students that come to you and it’s a mindset or to flaw that bear constantly fighting to overcome. That If you could just have your magic wand and bop them on the head, and as soon as they went to one of your workshops and went through in your trainings, that they could actually get the result that they came to you for. What is that common enemy that you’re fighting against?

[00:36:35] It’s the antithesis of your perfectionism. It’s the antithesis of that needing to have every box checked off before you move forward on something. It’s the antithesis of that. It’s just taking massive freaking action. I could bop them on the head. It’s my students that just go out and do it.

[00:36:53] See here’s the thing. You can drive all the way across the United States at night with your headlights, seeing 50 feet in front of you. And you know you can make it, you might have an obstacle, but other people have made it. You know other people have made it, it’s the same way with my business.

[00:37:07] And when you realize that you don’t have to see the whole path like Dr. Martin Luther King said, you take that first step in faith. The next step will be revealed. Lao Tzu, thousands of years ago said the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. And so the point is, you’ve got to take that first step and I will tell you in my business, it’s the law of the first deal as well.

[00:37:26] That comes into play as well. Sometimes my students are at six months, eight months, they haven’t got a deal yet, they’re moaning. And then they get a deal. Next thing you know, they have six, like what does happen? And that first one, it’s the scariest, it’s the most stressful, it takes the longest.

[00:37:40] And then, like I said, after that, the rails come off. But the antithesis would be just to hit them all on the head to take massive action. That’s it. Because action mitigates everything, it mitigates fear. If you push you. Yeah. You might have some seminars. That’s okay. We fail our way to success.

[00:37:57] Honestly. Like I told you about my experience, I got to meet the billionaire owner of Spanx you know, Sarah Blakely, the women’s undergarments hold everything together. She started with $5,000 and she just sold her for several billion, I think. But she told me at a mastermind that we both went to that her dad used to ask her once a week, what have you failed at this week?

[00:38:17] Her and her brother. And I thought what a fantastic question to ask your kids. You need to write down one down. Richard. That’s a great one to not fear failure. My kids are too old for that now, but oh, what a great question to ask your kids so they don’t fear failure. But anyway, that’s the one it’s just to take massive action because that action mitigates just about everything seriously.

[00:38:36] Yeah. I love that question too. What have you failed at this week? I actually just had an issue with my staff this last week where I had a failed. And I apologize to them for all of that. And one of the things I say to my staff meetings every single week is, failure is a stepping stone to success. And so when I apologize for failing and everything, my staff all came back to me and they were like, hey, you’ve been telling us this whole time a stepping stone to success. And I was like, I’ll get my words thrown back at me, but yeah.

[00:39:03] And you love it when that happens. Yeah. My wife and my kids throw that stuff back on me all the time. It’s hilarious. I’ll tell you a funny story about that you know, I believe in affirmations and I am statement, so I’ve got I am statements here on my wall, I’ve got, I am success. I am a best in the world at what I do.

[00:39:22] I’m a business genius. These are not braggadocious. They’re what I’m aspiring to be. Right. And anything you put, the words I am in front of is an identity statement. There’s no greater force than human psyche than the need to remain consistent with how we identify ourselves.

[00:39:36] And so I yell those things out when I’m exercising used to do when I was running and that my kids helped me at my live events. And that’s the question they get most often. Does he really do that stuff? And they’re like, oh yeah. Yeah, he does. That’s funny.

[00:39:51] Oh, that’s awesome. So the flip side then of your common enemy, if you’re coming in is what you fight against and you fight against inaction.

[00:39:57] Your driving force is the flip side of that. So just like Spider-Man fights to save New York or Batman fights to save Gotham or Google fights to index and categorize all the world’s information. What is it that you fight for, with your business, your mission, so to speak.

[00:40:11] Sorry. I thought you made a political statement there to kind of derail my head for a minute.

[00:40:15] That’s awesome. Okay. I’m sorry. Could you repeat the last part of question? Cause that totally detrail my brain.

[00:40:22] Your mission for your business. What is your goal? The thing that you fight for.

[00:40:24] Listen, I love what I do and I’m changing lives. This is not ego. Please know what I’m going to say next is not ego, but I get love probably five to sometimes 15 times a day. Okay. I get a DM, I get an email, I get gifts. Like these cards, I get lavish gifts sometimes in the mail, credibly thoughtful gifts. And this is my greatest gift. And I’m sure you get that love and feedback as well for your podcast.

[00:40:51] And it becomes addictive honestly. And again, we talked about goals evolving over time and my goals now are really to make an impact and to change lives. I’ll tell you a little epiphany moment I had. I told you about that house on the beach and I worked for that thing for 20 years.

[00:41:10] Let me describe it. So there was a big waterfall from the second floor balcony into the pool. You had to walk through the waterfall to get in the pool pools in magazines, big spiral staircase up through the middle of the house, wine cellar, elevator, on the second floor, I had an aquarium that went around the spiral staircase.

[00:41:25] It cost me almost 200 grand. So this gives you an idea of the house. So two months after I moved in. So I worked for it for 20 years, two months after I moved in, I’m floating in the pool at night. And I’m looking up at this Testament to my ego, which is really what it was. It was approved the world I was good enough and I got depressed and I don’t mean just a little bummed.

[00:41:43] I mean, I was really bummed. I’m like, what the hell? How could I be depressed? I’ve like achieved success like times 10,000. And I had the Maserati and a couple of Mercedes in the boast jet-skis beautiful family in the house and an incredible mansion. And when I look back on it, there were several things happening, Richard.

[00:42:00] Number one is, It’s never about the goals. Okay. You know, like they say the happiest days of a boat owners, life, which you’ll learn when you buy your yacht, the day you buy it and the day you sell it. Okay. It’s never about the goals, but you need them to create that burning desire, but it’s really about who you become on your path to your goals.

[00:42:15] And the happiness comes from progress and growth. And I didn’t know what I was going to do next. Like the good book says without a vision, the people perish, I didn’t have a vision for the future. So I had no clue what I was going to do next. So that was one piece. But the second bigger piece was, I’d been totally focused on Rod. Rod, Rod, Rod, show the world I matter.

[00:42:32] Show him I’m good enough. Blah, blah blah. And so that was the year I went out and bought some books and one of them happened to be a Tony Robbins book. I got Dale Carnegie, Zig Ziglar back then, and I was going to get myself back. Right. So I liked Tony’s book and saw him live.

[00:42:47] And I saw that he fed families for the holidays. And by the way, if you ever offered an opportunity to see Tony, just do it, trust me on that. I’ve followed him for 20 years. His technology’s incredible, but I saw they fed families for the holidays and he’s done millions of families, I went back home and I’m like, Hmm, do something for someone else.

[00:43:03] What a concept. And I’m embarrassed to say I had to be 40 to get that memo, but I called my brother cause I was going to visit him in Denver for Thanksgiving. I said, let’s feed five families. So he went to his church and found five families that really needed help. We went and bought food. We bought toys for the kids, frozen turkeys and just had a lot of fun buying them this stuff.

[00:43:21] The third family changed my life Richard, we go up to this row house and it wasn’t even a one bedroom was a crappy one bedroom because you had to walk through the bedroom to get to the kitchen, which had the bathroom off of it. And there was a woman in there with five kids. She comes out and she sees this stuff on the porch and the food and the toys, and she starts crying, her kids come out, two the older ones start crying.

[00:43:39] I start crying and I’m hooked. And I’m blessed to say in the last 22 years, we’ve fed over 110,000 children here in Sarasota and Bradenton, Florida for the holidays. Now we do Christmas. Sometimes we do Thanksgiving sometimes we’ve done tens of thousands of backpacks filled with school supplies to local children that don’t have the basic supplies they need for school.

[00:43:57] Tens of thousands, even tens of thousands of Teddy bears, local police departments for officers to keep in their vehicles. If they encounter child has been traumatized, they can comfort the child. And I don’t say this to brag, but there’s a message in this. If you’re listening to Richard right now and you want success, okay, you listen to these hero stories.

[00:44:13] You’ve got blood dripping from your teeth. You want it so bad. Listen up. Okay. I was successful, but I was unfulfilled. Tony Robbins calls it the science of achievement versus the art of fulfillment. Achievement really is a science. You want to learn multifamily? Come see me in Denver.

[00:44:29] I promise you’ll be glad you did. And you’ll have the blueprint to go. You just got to take action. That’s a science, but fulfillment is an art. You’ve got to find out what juices you. And so, you know, maybe it’s children like me or the elderly or animals or the environment, whatever it is, bring that into your life right now.

[00:44:46] Give back in some way right now, don’t say, I’ll do it when I have money. No, you can always give your time. Here’s why you’ll be happily achieving instead of achieving to be happy. We’ve been taught to achieve to be happy, but if you give back in some fashion, you’re happily achieving, and I know that’s a play on words, but it’s an important one.

[00:45:04] And I’m going to tell you, the success will come faster. Trust me on this. You don’t do it for that reason, but that’s just the way God or the universe, whatever you believe works, whatever you give you give back tenfold.

[00:45:14] That’s awesome. I love that. I know we’re not at your level yet with our business, but I know one of the things that my wife and kids and I all do every year at the beginning of the summer or sorry, beginning of the school year is we go out and we do the same thing.

[00:45:27] We buy a backpack and fills it up with a school supplies and we go and donate a backpack because we have more than we need. So we give back that way, which is, I mean, that’s small potatoes at this point, but we do the same thing with all of my businesses have.

[00:45:42] It’s so awesome you’re showing your kids that buddy. And like I said, we do that right across the street from your candle place. It’s right there on Fruitville in that boys and girls club, the Lee Weddington boys and girls club, because we need a big jamais and we have hundreds of volunteers. We fill last time I think we did 1500 backpacks the last time we did it. And it’s a beautiful thing.

[00:46:01] My supplement company that we ran for a number of years, we did a whole thing where we work with Vitamin Angels and vitamin angels, which if anyone’s listening to this, they’re a fantastic organization, the leading cause of death in children around the world is lack of Vitamin A.

[00:46:12] Cause vitamin a keeps the immune system. So kids die from things that like you would normally die from. So things like common colds and diarrhea and stuff like that will kill you if you don’t have vitamin A, so it’s a leading cause of death in children under 10 in the whole world. And the amount of money it takes to get enough vitamin A, for a child is about 50 cents a year.

[00:46:32] And so we donated with our supplement company. Every time someone bought a bottle of our supplements, we donated the 50 cents. So it was basically, it was like a buy a bottle, save a life kind of program. And we always try to find ways to make giving back a part of what we do.

[00:46:47] That’s what’s life is about, I mean, contribution is a basic human need. If you look at everything in the universe, if it doesn’t contribute, it gets a little eliminated. And that’s a basic human need, the need to contribute. Unfortunately, in some cases it’s an underutilized need, but it really is a need in a relationship. You know, you need to contribute to your partner, but you need to allow them to contribute to you as well.

[00:47:13] You have to give and receive.

[00:47:14] That’s right. Yeah.

[00:47:16] That’s the hard part too, is learning how to do bith enad of that.

[00:47:19] Sometimes you have a tough time receiving, but you have to allow, you know, like my wife, I have to let her give me feedback on stuff. And sometimes I’m like, oh God, I want to bite my hand. Cause I’m like, no, I don’t want to do that. But you’ve got allow that contribution.

[00:47:31] Yeah, absolutely. And it’s like, I get questions all the time about this podcast, like, what’s your monetization strategy for this podcast? I’m like, I don’t have one because it’s not the point of this podcast. Point of this podcast is a narrative shift around entrepreneurship.

[00:47:44] And for me, it’s a personal give back that I want to have. This podcast costs me money every year. It does not make me money and that is perfectly finr for me.

[00:47:51] That’s good for you. Good for you. I will tell you, it’s funny. If you listen to early episodes, I started my podcast with the same thought process. Early episodes, I say, I’ll never sell you anything. I just want to add value, which was the truth. And I took hundreds of calls from listeners, 30 minute calls, book a call with me. I took hundreds of them and then I hit a million downloads like, okay, knucklehead, you probably got to do something with this.

[00:48:13] Or I wrote a book. I gave away 20,000 copies of the book. And then finally, I had so many people say, Hey, please create something so we can learn this. And then I did a course and now look at me now, thousands of people in front of my bootcamps.

[00:48:25] You created an audience first.

[00:48:28] Yeah. I never intended to let me just say that I didn’t start. I had really great intent. Well, I still have great intentions, but I never planned to monetize it, but it became like silly not to at some point.

[00:48:39] Absolutely.

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[00:50:08] Now back to the hero show.

[00:50:11] So I’m going to shift gears. Normally I ask the question about something practical, but we already went over your goal framework. So I’m going to ask you about your own personal heroes, every hero has their mentors, just like Frodo had Gandolf or Luke had Obi Wan Kenobi.

[00:50:23] Even Robert Kiyosaki had his Rich Dad, or even Spider-Man had his uncle ben, I want to know who were some of your mentors? Were they speakers, authors, peers who were a couple years ahead of you. And how important were they to what you have accomplished, so far?

[00:50:34] Sure. Well, obviously my mom was a big influence at least initially.

[00:50:38] A then her fears like, oh my gosh, you’re going to buy another property. Aren’t you afraid of something? What happens if something goes wrong? So at that point I had to shut down that influence because it became negative, but I’d say Tony Robbins was a big one for me, but I’m also, I will say lately, it’s been Elon Musk, man, what a freaking rock star.

[00:50:56] That guy is $3 billion startups, I mean, he just bought Twitter

[00:51:04] For $3 billion.

[00:51:06] Yeah. Cause he’s a proponent for free speech. I mean, I love that guy and I pray to God, nothing happens to him and he keeps going because he’s a rock star in my view.

[00:51:15] Yeah, absolutely. I was literally like just this morning reading that the offer got accepted buying Twitter for $44 billion. I was super excited that his goal is he’s like, I’m a free speech absolutist. And everyone’s freaking out. They’re like, we don’t want it to be free speech. And I’m like, that’s the only way to go.

[00:51:34] I read this morning. He said, there’s been a lot of haters. They’re asking them him. He said, great, stay on Twitter and hate, that’s what this is about. It’s about saying what you want to say. You know, we gotta be careful not to go down the political rabbit hole here, but I love that guy.

[00:51:48] So as far as heroes, he’s definitely he’s right there at the top for me.

[00:51:52] Absolutely. I actually had a a friend of mine who I worked with in my supplement company. I was just mentioning, we were just talking, it was like three years ago. And he was like, yeah, I met Elon Musk on accident. I didn’t know it was him. He was, they were in Malibu. He was at some sort of event. And they were sitting down at the bar drinking and Elon Musk was the keynote speaker, but he was just sitting next to a friend of mine and chatting with him and drinking. And he didn’t know who he was like, didn’t recognize him, like, he know who Elon Musk is, but he didn’t know his picture like his face.

[00:52:18] And then when they called him into the stage and he stood up and he was like, I was just having a beer with Elon Musk.

[00:52:26] Oh, that’s crazy. I love it. Love it.

[00:52:29] That’s fun. So last question I have for you here is about your guiding principles. Right? One of the things that makes heroes heroic is that they live by a code.

[00:52:37] For instance, Batman never kills his enemies. He only ever sends them to Arkham asylum. So as we wrap up our interview, I want to talk about the top one, maybe two principles that you regularly will use in your life, maybe something you wish you knew when you first started out on your journey several years ago.

[00:52:51] Sure. Well, I will tell you In my company, we have a code of values and their values based on the acronym FAMILY. Okay. Now the first one, which didn’t fit at the top of the list is integrity, you know, to do what’s right no matter who’s looking and even if it hurts, but the I’ll give you the what all the FAMILY stands for.

[00:53:15] The "F" stands for Family and fun that we’re a family, and we have fun doing what we do. The "A" is for Authentic. You know, I will tell you I drop profanity and I’m authentic. My bootcamps you’ll see me in flip flops and jeans and a t-shirt that said I did my first one in a suit. And I said, I can’t do this. I’ll never do it again. So that’s a word that used to describe me a lot, because I’m pretty transparent actually, to a fault.

[00:53:38] The "M" stands for Massive Action. We take massive action. Again, the "I" is for Integrity, the "L" is for love. We love what we do. We do it with love. And then the "Y" is yes to evolution and innovation.

[00:53:50] Every business is nothing really but marketing and innovation, that’s a Peter Drucker quote. And so, and that’s definitely our business. We’re constantly looking to make it better. In fact, I just sent an email to a whole bunch of my students and I said, Hey, what would you like to train?

[00:54:05] Because for me, I’m redundant. If I’m the one, always do the training and you can give a different spin on these different topics. Literally just sent the email to about, I dunno, a hundred of my students that are successful that I feel that could teach. Cause I’m always trying to make it better.

[00:54:19] I’ve written literally a dozen books. You can see ’em here. Dozen books that I give away for free about this business. Cause we’re always trying to make it better. So that’s innovation. So I say the top two for me are probably integrity do what’s right. Again, even if it hurts and, and innovation.

[00:54:37] Yeah, absolutely. I love that. I run my business. I actually love your FAMILY acronym. I have pretty much all the same values for our company, but I don’t have a cool acronym for it. I’m probably going to steal that, if you don’t mind.

[00:54:47] Please, please. It’s on my website, it’s on my website under the about it’s at the bottom of the about, and I did a video about it as well.

[00:54:54] But yeah, and, you know, it’s important with a company that you remind everybody of those values and then we operate from those values. And if we do something, it doesn’t fit into those values, then it needs to be nixed or certainly looked at.

[00:55:08] Yeah, that’s one of the things we do, the first topic at every staff meeting we do is just a review of our company values.

[00:55:14] So anyways, I like your acronym for it. That’s better than what I’m doing. So to the point of innovation, we’ll innovate and use yours, or I guess that would be more.

[00:55:27] Every great idea is emulated. There’s no new stuff out there. Very little anyway, it’s been taken and it’s been improved, you know?

[00:55:36] Well, that is really a wrap on our interview, but I do finish every interview with a simple challenge. I call it the hero’s challenge and I do this to help get access to stories that I might not otherwise find on my own.

[00:55:45] So the question is simple, do you have someone in your life or in your network that you think has a cool entrepreneurial story? Who are they? First names are fine. And why do you think they should come share their story with our audience here on the show? The first person that comes to mind for you?

[00:55:57] Oh God. It’s several of my female students. Who’ve just, you know, they came to me shy and scared and, Chat is one of them. Julie is another, Mandy is another that have just killed it in the business. And I don’t know why that popped into my head first, but I consider them superheroes.

[00:56:17] Cause you know, my mom was effectively a single mom and she raised multiple kids. And that’s the case with all of the examples I just gave you. Actually, no, Julie’s not, but she’s a rock star, but I have a big affinity for single moms that go out there and make it happen anyway. And so it would be one of them for sure.

[00:56:35] Absolutely. Well, reach out later and see if we can get introduction, maybe they’ll say yes and be able to hear their story, that will be cool. So in comic books, there’s always the crowd of people at the end who are cheering and clapping for the acts of heroism. So our analogous to that, as we close is where can people find you if they want your help?

[00:56:49] Where can they light up the bat signal so to speak.

[00:56:51] Go to RealEstateWithRod.com and and I just realized what time it is. I’m actually up against a hard stop RealEstateWithRod.com. Because nobody can spell my name Rodkhief.com is hard to spell. So you just go to RealEstateWithRod, you get to my website, everything you need is there or you could text ROD to 72345. You’ll get information that way. But check out my podcast. I do a clip every week called Own Your Power. It’s truly about owning your power, it’s five minutes. Whether you like real estate or not, I’ll juice you once a week. If you give me five minutes. Okay. I promise you, there’s music.

[00:57:26] They’re motivational. There’s hundreds of them there. I just did one today on the power of wisdom and how you grow your wisdom. Literally it’s going live today, but every topic you can think of that’s motivational, empowering and self-actualizing is on those clips. My podcast called Lifetime Cashflow Through Real Estate Investing.

[00:57:43] And I said, we’re about to break 13 million downloads. So I’m really proud it.

[00:57:48] Awesome. That is really cool. So thank you again, so much Rod, for coming on the show. I appreciate hearing your story and getting a chance to hear your story.

[00:57:55] It’s a pleasure to meet you, Richard. You’re a fascinating guy and your lifestyle is absolutely off the hook. It’s so cool. So if please, please ping me when you’re in Sarasota would love to grab a meal or a cup of coffee at the very least. Okay.

[00:58:06] Absolutely. And thank you so much for coming on the show today. And do you have any final words before I hit the stop record button?

[00:58:12] No, no, no. It’s just guys, just go make it happen if you want this and you know, you deserve, don’t be in the same place a year from now that you are right now, unless you freaking love where you are right now. Go make something happen for yourself.

[00:58:24] Absolutely. Thank you very much Rod.