HOW THE SUCCESSFUL REALLY SUCCEED | It’s All Life Episode 10 | Kevin Ray Ward with Preston Brown

Of the It's All Life podcast. I've got a very special guest with me today that I'm going to be introducing to you here momentarily. Well, I'm going to go ahead and introduce him right now. So, Preston, I'm super excited to have you on. Preston is, has become a great friend of mine over the last couple of years. I guess most people would call him a serial entrepreneur, a real estate broker. You own multiple companies. You're also a speaker, you are a coach. You have multiple businesses that earn seven figures or more of profit every year, including being the number one home builder in El Paso, Texas. And Preston is also going to be one of our key speakers at Millions Live. So if you don't have a ticket yet for Millions live, go to millionslive.com and get your ticket where you're going to spend three days getting the best of the best of strategy and approaches and mindset from millionaires and multimillionaires who have seven, eight and nine figure incomes. And Preston is going to be one of those speakers. But Preston, I'm just super honored to have you today. If I could describe Preston personally, the first word I would use for you is generous. Because your friendship with me over the last two years has just been a friendship of super generosity. Not just with me, but just the way you show up in the world. You're probably one of the most powerful, most optimistic optimists that I have ever met and one of those guys who is relentless on one hand. At the same time, the most laid back guy I've ever been around. It's like, how does he do all this and never seem to be busy? So, my friend, welcome and thank you for joining us today.

Thanks for having me, brother. It's real easy to be an optimist when you're a realist.

Interesting. So I want to hear more about that. So first of all, most, because I'm, you know, it's like we're never as famous as we think we are. Give us your background. Like if you can give us a 60 second version of like, where, where did Preston come from? Because you did not come from money. You did not come from, you know, a pedigree. Tell us about your background.

It's my background. Grew up broke in the most loving, beautiful family imaginable in a little trailer park in Canutio, which is right outside of El Paso, Texas. My dad wanted the dreams and the life that we watched on tv, not the one we had. And we had all the love you can imagine, but we didn't have any money. I mean, I remember times where we were struggling and maybe not hungry, but definitely not spoiled. And my dad opened his business, went to work, did that generous thing that entrepreneur entrepreneurs do and poured out from his heart. Didn't know how to build, didn't know how to charge, didn't know how to collect. One day my mom loses her job. Money gets scarce when there's only one income in a poor family and that income doesn't know how to collect. So my mom and my dad had that first fight. I remember. And she said, smarts.

I remember all of them.

She said a lot of them. I remember it was loud. I remember frying pan getting thrown across the trailer. He. He heard these following words that ring in my head to this day. And it's a real man can feed his family, go collect what you're owed. And if you don't, you know the implication. So I went with him. I was a charity piece. We went up to a house not far from where I used to live on the mountain. And, man, I'll tell you what, this guy that was all a 5 foot 8, 5 foot 9, gets up there with my dad at 6 foot 4. I knew what was going to happen. My dad could kill this guy with a napkin. But like any good story, I was wrong. And this guy leveraged money to turn my dad from the man into a guy compromising. And my dad beautifully made a choice that day. He understood that he needed to collect or not come home. My mom was never an unserious lady. So he took the change out of this guy's pocket. Not the thousands of dollars he was owed as a new entrepreneur. And he gave up on his business dreams. He quit his business that day. He didn't realize that I learned hatred that day. I hated that man. I became the most corporate son of a you'd ever meet. I started thinking money was the meaning of life. You come from love is the meaning of life. You go to money is the meaning of life. It's a. It's a big pivot that happened for, well, till about 2019. And I built big companies. I was ruthless. I didn't care who I put out of business. If you didn't like Donald Trump, you'd have hated me. And because it was all about the money. I was a father, terrible husband. But you know what? I knew how to make money. And I built formulas and all this. And 2019, dad sat down in his favorite chair. Dad went to sleep. Dad didn't wake up. I got to the House. That night, I looked around at my family. I never lost love. Never lost it. Came from an abundance of love. Never lost it. Here I was looking around at all these people that were broken. They were broken the same way I was. At least I had that entrepreneur training to step up, lean in, figure it out. But brother tore me apart. Like that day, I realized all my formulas for scaling, all my formulas for growth, all my formulas for everything didn't get me time with the man that was my hero, that taught me how to be who I was. So I pivoted everything. I said, hey, man, how can I change these formulas? You know, your worst day and your best day are off in the same day. How can I change these formulas and turn this into something that I can leverage, that I get time with the ones I love so that I can lift other people out of this trap, so that I can become something more? And the funny thing is, you want to make God laugh. Tell him your plans, want to make him smile, laugh with him, Joy. Walk a mile in the shoes he puts you in. And so I started walking, bro. And I pivoted my formulas to automation instead of scaling. And what happened was not what I expected. I was thinking my companies were going to get smaller, and I guess they did for a little while. They got a little smaller, and then they rebounded back and went exponential because all the formulas are about automation. And now I have time to into my kids. I'm no longer that father. I'm no longer that terrible husband. Now my wife and I have this compelling relationship, and we're. We're madly in love. But you don't get to get in love with a controlled landing. That's why they call it falling. Right? So you fall in love. You don't control landing in love. And normally when you fall, something breaks. That's why they call it a breakthrough. And I just learned love is the meaning of life, thanks to my dad being my greatest teacher. So I hope that was not too much over a minute, but I didn't want to.

Now that was. It's. This is perfect because. So you. You took literally the money piece and the love piece and have integrated that into this. So a lot of the work and when I first met you, a lot of the work that I found out you had done was personal development work. You've done a lot of work with Tony Robbins and stuff. So tell us about how you got into this concept of personal development. Because all of a sudden, this, you know, what's it Was it in 2019 was it. Was it the loss of your dad that kind of woke you up? And what this idea of personal development and that piece of the journey means to you, besides completely aside from the money piece?

So personal development probably started before I lost my dad. I think I got into it in 2015, 2016. I don't remember the exact time, but I was in competition with this big Keller Williams franchise. I had a brokerage. I mean, we were kind of rival for number one one. And, you know, they had these big conventions with Gary Keller and all these guys. And I needed some guru to come out and do a local convention, because I was a local guy, right, fighting a big national company. And so I called Grant Cardone, and I tried to get all the way up to the top to get him on the phone. And, you know, I. I liked him. I was reading all his books, and they. They passed me to somebody who could not sell at all. And his books had taught me some stuff about selling. So I was like, okay, well, maybe I don't want this guy. He me tells he can't sell. And. And I've met Grant since, and he can sell. I mean, that one guy should not be a reflection on. On his organization. But at that point, that. That shifted me. And so I was like, all right, well, now I'm gonna call Tony Robbins. So I literally dialed RRI and I tried to call Tony, and. And of course, I couldn't get as high at RRI as I. I was able to get with Grant. I think I got to their number two guy over there, Jared or something, and then they. They bounced me somewhere else. But they. They. They kind of, hey, do you know who Tony is? Well, why don't we send a speaker to your office? And so they sent a speaker to my office, and everybody at my office signed up for a Tony event. They all went to a Tony event. I. I was just blown away at the energy and all this, and even from that kind of corporate, cutthroat place I was in, I was like, okay, there's something good here. And I. I dove in. I dove all the way in, and I went and just learned. I mean, I joined their platinum group, and I learned massively. I mean, everybody was there for the friends and the people. I wasn't. I was there to learn. I think I made one friend in my first year of Platt, and, you know, year two, I. I joined their Lions group. I think Covet hit. I. I didn't want to stop traveling. They had stopped traveling. So I called a bunch of friends Said, hey, you guys still want to travel? Like, let's all put in a few grand and go traveling. And I guess I triggered somebody at RRI at that point. So, you know, then I. I opened this. This company, ybl, and I get sued by. By rri, Tony Robbins, my former mentor. And. And you know, at this point, like, that was right after my dad had passed. And so it's another kind of piece to the longer version of the story. I delegated a lot of that fatherly energy when I lost dad over to Tony because he was that great source of, like, love and beauty and purpose and. And all this that I'd seen in another man like my dad, who could be that loving, that generous. And so when this lawsuit came, it was almost a gift, and we've settled it. It's gone. Like, they've gone their way, we've gone our way. I don't think there's any bad blood, but it was beautiful, man. It was. I mean, I know Tony does a lot of breakthroughs. I don't think this one was intentional on him, but it gave me the ability to be my own leader that, like, when I delegated this fatherly leadership opportunity away from my dad and to Tony when I lost dad and then not even six months, a year later, like, I'm getting just. It was the David and Glad story. Apparently they didn't realize the tall guy doesn't win, you know, and so made me have the ability to lead me. Does that make sense? And it's total gift where I could step in, lean in, and. And have two types of confidence. I mean, there's self confidence that you can have self confidence or anything you've ever done. And there's God confidence, right? And God confidence is, you know, believing what he said. Like, he said, the faithful mustard seed can move mountains. Well, you should go move them. He didn't put you here to not move them. You don't need to move all of them. Go move one, pick one, one at a time. And. And a lot of people are like, oh, I don't know why I have so much self doubt. You might not. You might have God down. You know, faith is believing in the stuff you haven't done yet, not the stuff you have done yet. Self confidence is believing what you have done. That's why I say you can have all the confidence in the world if you're a realist. Every realist is an optimist.

So tell us, tell me more about this, this concept or this break group where you went from needing A leader, I. E. Your father figure, Tony Robbins. Almost like needing somebody to guide you to being free to be your own leader. How does that, how did that come about? And, and people are looking at, like they're looking for the answer. And they're always looking for the answer over there for this guru or that guru, and they're looking for the answer outside of themselves. And what I'm hearing you say is you found the answer inside of yourself and God and just trusting that God had you.

Well, yeah, I mean, look, you know, so here's, here's the concept. Most people, if you look at today, they need an enemy, right? Like we need a bad guy figure. Like every good story has a villain, okay? Your villain doesn't have to be a person. Your villain doesn't have to be a competitor. Your villain doesn't have to be a company. You're villain could be mediocrity, it could be anything. We all need a villain in one context or another that we're working to overcome. But it doesn't have to be something evil or something bad. It could just be something that is that you're fixing. I mean, every business is a solution machine that solves problems. Every sale is a solution to the customer that's willing to pay for that solution. So if you need a villain, you also need a hero. Okay? Now when you look at the world as if there is no good and bad, there just is. There's joyful and miserable and maybe I can go solve some of that miserable, then you don't need a villain and you don't need an external hero because all of it becomes you. Measuring against you yesterday, like, you know, if you really think you're the best, who are you going to measure against? You can't measure against anybody if you think you're the best. I think I'm the epic best in the world. And there's nobody I can measure against except me yesterday. And I don't come at that from a place of narcissism, even though I can kind of see where that would sound. But I try to measure every single day. And look at what did I fail at, what did I succeed at? And I don't try anything. I go all out and I do it. And if I fail, if I fall, that's a learning lesson. It's a gift. It's a problem. Problems are gifts. And so I don't need an enemy. I need a purpose. And I don't need a hero. I need me. I need my truth. I need like the truth That I can handle anything. That with the faith of a mustard seed, I can move mountains. I mean, you know, God said, hey, I made you in my image. I don't think that's some man on a cloud with a lightning bolt thrown at people. I think maybe he's a community of souls and I'm a community of cells. Billions of tiny little autonomous beings doing their jobs without necessarily a direct connection to some, you know, thing. And if we intentionally connect, we get an alignment and you can shift anything, you can create anything. You could do anything. Does that make sense? I hope I'm explaining that.

No, this is so. Because this. This little key that. How do you move mountain? Because so many people are just like, I'm just trying to move my bank account so I can pay bills. And you're talking about moving mountains. Like, mountains are epic. Mountains are, like, immovable, right? They're impossible to move. That's the whole point of the end of the. Of the metaphor or of the imagery that God created was he says, with the faith the size of a mustard seed, which is pretty small, the faith of a mustard seed, you can't move mountains. Faith in God, faith in yourself. You can actually do something that looks impossible. And everybody's looking for a strategy to move a mountain. And they're like, I just need a strategy to, you know, get a piece of the mountain. And you're talking about moving mountain.

That.

In that the secret to moving a mountain is not strategy, it's faith.

Absolutely. This.

So this has got me. This. Because this so much mirrors. And with my own background as a preacher and as a man of faith, and yet looking back at my life and realizing we didn't understand. In my experience in the church, we didn't understand what faith meant. Faith meant believing that God was there and God was all powerful, but that we could do things that were all powerful, that were impossible was like, no, no, no, no. That was back in Bible days. You can't do that shit today. And so hearing what you're saying, I'm like, it's your path to do, building what you have built more than anything else. Would you attribute that to just your belief?

Sure. I'd say I attribute it to purpose. You know, the greatest moments in your life and the worst moments in your life for the exact same moment. And if you think the worst moment in your life is not the greatest moment in your life, then you don't have belief, because belief is a root word. Belief is be love. Okay. I've been all over the world. I'VE been to the best countries, I've been to the worst countries. I've been to the nicest places. I've been to the worst places. I've been to the places where they don't have running water, where there's shit running down the streets. I mean, stuff that you don't want to see. And you know what I find? I find it's interesting that there's happy people everywhere. And the happy people, they're starting in here, and then that creates their experience out here. Okay? Now there's happy people in the best places, there's happy people in the worst places. You know what's interesting? There's more happy people, people in the worst places. And the people in the best places were so stuck on this false entitlement. Like, I mean, like, I love the word entitlement. Like, I own my airplanes, I own my house, I own my buildings, I own those. I'm entitled to those because I earned them. But that false entitlement, like that, that idea that, you know, I think the biggest problem that we have in the world is we think we shouldn't have problems. And that entitlement that we shouldn't have problems compromises our ability to believe. Because the meaning of the word belief is beloved. If you just look at the etymology and the roots of words, you can find out what language was intended for. I mean, there's a reason our world is at war with language right now. We're not allowed to call science science. Everybody needs to go inject experimental drugs into their body and, and just trust the government. Like, oh, the government definitely wants you to live 100 years and collect Social Security and all these things, even though they can't freaking balance their own budget. I mean, come on. Like, like we need to lean in and find a way to be loving and, and you can trust people, but trust them where they're at, to their agenda, to their motivations, to their goals. Right? Like if somebody like, like if I'm a home builder, my mission might be to build and sell homes and make a profit. Like, if you walk in saying, I'd like you to donate a free house, you probably can't trust me to do that. Unless you're the most compelling salesman with a good reason that aligns with something else I have going on in my life. Like, but you're not going to tell me whose modality is this to do something completely opposite and contrarian. So we need to get to the idea that belief equals be love. And anytime we're having an Experience or an emotion or anything in our life where we are not being loving that negative emotion that we probably wouldn't choose if we were able to go and like, check a box. Oh, do I want to feel joy or do I want to feel misery? Oh, wait, no. I would rather feel joy, but I am feeling misery. Well, maybe that's an indicator. Maybe that's time for us to say, huh? What am I believing that's not true? Because the moment you have truth, the moment you're a realist, you become the optimist. I only see the world as it is, as it really is, and then the future as I can make it. And then I go work to make it. You know what happens? It's funny. And Kevin, you've seen this, I've seen this. Like, leaders everywhere know this to be true. And the people that are following us, if we're real leaders, we want them to find the way to, for them to know this to be true. But, like, you're gonna go in whatever direction you're going, and it's not gonna work out. Something way different is gonna work out. The challenges are gonna change it. They're gonna adapt it, they're gonna shift it. Like, my dreams were so much smaller than my reality became. I've lived a life. I mean, if people were like, what would you do if you died tomorrow? I'd be like, well, man, I'm pretty grateful that I live more life than most people that make it to 110 years old. You know, my family's safe, everybody's set up. I've helped the world. I've blessed people. I've lived ups and downs. I've had the good story, the bad story, the good story, the bad story. I mean, you know, it's, I, I, I, I've enjoyed this process and I've left the world a slightly better place now. I don't want to die tomorrow. If I can live another 20 years, man, I think I can have a lot more impact. You know, I don't worry about what I can make anymore. Like, now my new goals are, what can I give? What can I give? How much can I give? Like, we built a five year goal for our company, Z. We're like, we're gonna make this the biggest company in El Paso. Check. By the way, that five year goal was in October. We hit the goal three months ago. So now we have a new goal. We're like, hey, we're going to take this company in the next five years and we're going to raise Enough capital to balance our balance sheet and our debt. That way we have the even growth trajectory. Then we're going to give half the company to God. We're going to keep the company, but we're going to set up a charter where whether I ever am here or not, there's voting members. 50% of the profits of the company, which are very substantial, will go to charities that, that charter believes in. Operations will follow the formulas that I've created. And we're going to get 50%, not 10%, 50% back to things that we think will bless the world. People are like, why would you build it to give it away? Well, I'm going to die. And 50% is about a hundred times more than I need. So. And I've got other companies, like, how much can you give? What, have you had better questions? You'd get better results with better questions.

Yep, for sure. So I want to, I wanted to. I'm going to go into the Zia homes because you meant, you brought that up and, and that's a big piece of your game. But before we go there, you mentioned twice this idea of being a realist. And you know, when I think of a realist, I think the average person thinks of a realist as being more pessimistic than optimistic because is, they, they think, well, this is real life. And. But their conclusion of reality is that reality is a limiter and we're kind of stuck with reality. What I hear from you is that you're like, no, no, no, no. Reality is simply what is. But when you add faith on top of realism, then it's like, this is what is. This is what can be. Where most people look at this is what is, and I'm helpless to do anything about it. And you look at it as this is what's real, and I'm totally capable of doing something about it. Am I, Am I, Am I articulating that correct?

Let me give you another analogy just to, just to compound it. So a realist is not a positive or a negative person. Okay? Like, let's imagine a garden, okay? If the world is a garden, there's going to be seasons where that garden is blossoming and blooming, especially if you're tending it and managing it. Right? Okay. There might be seasons where it's not okay. Sometimes you might have somebody that you are having handle your garden, and even in a good season, it's not blossomed well. All you do is when you walk out, you see maybe a few weeds here and there and you see all this soil. The realist sees the soil. I see the soil. But the pessimists see sees just a bunch of. I see soil. You know what I know about soil. Now I get to choose the garden I grow. And you know what's beautiful about that soil is I can take any seed, like that mustard seed we talked about. I put it about six inches deep in that soil, add some water, and in a few weeks. In a few weeks, women will lean down six inches above that soil and smell that flower. Yeah, I see the garden. That's it. Yeah.

So there's always potential. There's always something you can do to impact the reality and make the reality different.

Exactly. 100.

So let's talk for a minute about real estate, because you. Your background in business was in real estate. You're a real estate broker. You own a real estate brokerage. You own other ancillary service companies, hard money lending and so forth. And you own Zia Homes in El Paso. So tell us about what got you into real estate and why you see real estate as such a great game for entrepreneurs.

So I got into real estate, probably not for the right reasons. I wasn't necessarily that. I was. I was chasing money. Not my passion. Real estate's not my passion. I love entrepreneurship. I love formulas. I was a damn good realtor. But I was damn good at the money part. I got into real estate because somebody told me there's three ways to get rich. Right. And I wanted to be rich because of my story with my dad.

Yeah.

And so this. This friend of mine, and I'd say mentor to David Karami. So there's three ways to be rich. You go into banking and you can be rich. You go into medicine, and you can be rich, or you go into sales and you can be rich. Now, you know, I got kicked out of the Air Force for beating up cops. So the likelihood that I was going to be able to go into anything was you got a felony on your record. You know, my. My job would have been like, waiter, you know, so. So that kind of limited some of my options. Banking might not have been on my. My list. Plus, I wasn't very good with authority, so school was probably not my.

My great.

My great opportunity. I mean, I don't even have an associate's degree. I think I'm close to it. But I realized jobs were not an option for me. Right. So I was like, well, I better go into sales. And with my background, what do I sell that I can make money? And of course, drugs popped up. Luckily, I never went there and somebody said, you know, the people that formed this country, they put all the tax codes behind real estate. So you have a larger item I'd rather sell. You know, luxury margins come from selling luxury products. So I was like, okay, well, do I want to sell soap? No. I want to sell something that's hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. I can have a higher margin, right? Plus those luxury products could be invested in. And if there's good deals within that sector, maybe I can acquire them, maybe I can buy them. Like there's upsides there. The other side was a tax piece. Like, if I've got the tax piece in my favor, why not make more and have them take less? Like somebody that's doing high end automobiles, they're not getting the benefits. So I, I saw real estate for the tax benefits, the inflation benefits, the profitability benefits, the investment benefits. And people will tell me, oh, real estate's not liquid. I'm like, are you dumb? Then you don't know how to marry real estate and banking. I can liquidate so much real estate with secured and unsecured credit lines right now that I could have, I don't want to say how much, but millions in my account tomorrow so I can keep all of my cash, which is deflationary, in real estate, and have it all accessible in one minute. And I get the best tax benefits, the best inflation hedge. I mean, I loved covet. I got so much richer. Okay? And, and, and I love what's coming next. I'm going to get so much richer right now. I hope everybody's in real estate, I hope everybody's in gold, I hope everybody's in probably number one productive companies that are need based, not greed based. Okay? If you're in Campbell's soup, that's a need company. You know, if you're in Rolex, that's a greed company. Okay, interesting, interesting.

So when we, when I was, last time I was with you in El Paso, we were driving down the road in your McLaren and you pulled over to do, do a real estate, not a real estate, actually a stock transaction and to show me something. But after we did that, there you, you were showing me the money you were making from this one thing that you were doing, one strategy. But as we're driving away from that moment, you just said, I don't know, dude, I'm just, I've, I'm just a money magnet. I've always been a money magnet. And I want to, I want to just ask you about that as a Story that is a personal story, a belief about who you are. How does somebody develop that? People were like, I don't know. I just never seem to be able to make money. And your story is the exact opposite. How does somebody go from being, I can't make money, I can't figure out how to make money to, to actually believe it? I am a money magnet. How do you do that? How'd you do that?

You know, look for what's true, you know, And I'm gonna ask anybody watching this, you know, because this is truth. Please share this, because everybody needs this. If you're watching this right now, please share this. Everybody needs this. Truth. Or put a comment, you know, agree with us, Disagree with us. Tell us what you think on this. But look, I mean, as, as, as a Christian, you can take this Christian or you can take this in any other belief. I mean, they all have common beliefs. From, from what I've seen with every other religion on the planet. You know, I, I look at like it says, I was made in his image, right? Well, was he a creator or was he a slave? So he didn't make me a slave. He's the king of kings. Not, not the king of sheep, you know, and as, as, as a king, if he's. If he's the king of kings and I'm a king, then I should be able to tax my environment. And so I need to go look at my environment and see what soil is right for sowing seeds. And I just know, like, and, and now I've evidenced it. I believe that I'm a money magnet. And then I believe that money is within a formula. It is locked into a formula no different than our life, our existence, our universe is locked into a formula. I mean, we think the universe is comp, you know, complicated, right? I tell you what. Like, you know, all my friends that say universe, I think they say universe because it's way scarier to say God universe. If you look up, the meaning means one verse. What if there's an entire book of songs or an entire library of song books? And universe was only one verse and one song, so I, I believed it, that that was for me. Now, maybe it's true, maybe it's not. I don't know. Like, I, we don't get confirmation until we leave here, right? But I'll tell you what my evidence is now. Billions in sales and hundreds of millions in net worth and, you know, millions monthly in profitability. And every time I've looked at money in any way, shape or form, in anything, I can figure out the process of how somebody generated it. It's all a cause and effect system. So the same way God looks at the universe is a cause and effect system. And we say, oh, we can't understand that. I look at money as a cause and effect system, and there's always been a way to understand it. I've never found anything around money that I could not understand. It has all been dissectible. It's all been formulaic. It's all transactional. Does that make sense?

Totally. Yeah. Totally makes sense. So if. If somebody's looking at this and they're looking at you and like, okay, well, it's easy for you to say because you're. You've got all this money and you've built all this stuff. And by the way, going back, just to reiterate, something you said earlier is you have used business and money as a way now, through automation, to let you have a life and be a great dad, be a great husband, to spend time with your family, to be able to spend time with people that you care about. If somebody would just to say, okay, Preston, break this down for me. What are the secrets to true success, and why is it so elusive for most people?

So I'm gonna say it this way, and it just popped in my head, so I don't know, maybe it's for somebody that's listening. The secret to true success is you. And you're not telling yourself the secret. That's most people's problem. Like, they don't have that belief. They don't have that faith. They don't think they're enough. You know, when you start telling yourself the things you wish other people would say to you, you'll start hearing it, you'll start believing it. Repetition is the mother of all guilt. And evidence creates beliefs. You know, nobody starts perfect. Everybody starts on a journey. And, you know, it's funny, like kids. You know when kids can't walk yet, when they're still crawling and they're trying to walk, and one stands up and he's almost made it, and he falls down, we don't look at him and say, dumbass, you failure. We don't do that, but we do that to ourselves every single day, all the time. You're the secret to your success, and you won't tell yourself to do, and you won't allow yourself to fail, and you should fail forward. I fall down like my. I literally think love is the meaning of life. And just as love is the meaning of life, problems are the meaning of life. And here's how I prove that. I believe that if heaven was perfect, God would only send us here if this place is not perfect for one of two reasons. Either he doesn't like us and this is hell and we are being punished, or we had something to learn, and maybe it was how to be loving and joyful and fulfilled despite our prayers. Problems. What if the problems were the gift? What if the iron that sharpens irons were the problems in our lives? What if unconditional love meant that you could measure love? Because you only suffer when somebody breaks your conditions? So we measure love by suffering. And the more I would suffer for you, the more I love you because I'm willing to sacrifice my own conditions for you. What if that was what we were here to learn?

So how do somebody ask. Somebody would ask, so how do. How did you go from. Did you just always believe in yourself or did you learn that? Where does that come from? Somebody says, well, I just. They were raised and they were taught not to believe in themselves for whatever reason. How do you learn to actually believe in yourself?

Well, you take every problem and you find the beautiful meaning in it. You take every failure and you find a way to hone it and succeed. It's like entrepreneurs building businesses, right? Like, everybody thinks they're going to build this big, perfectly organized business. That's, that's never happened. Once you build a giant, discombobulated, disorganized business, then you go and you reorganize it, you hone it down. You, you, you, you restructure it, if that makes sense. So you, you, you grow big and inefficient, and then you hone down to efficiency. And, and so let me give you a staircase to, to belief, okay? I'm gonna give you a formula. And this formula is probably the most valuable formula. I normally only give this away to my, my coaching clients in ybl, okay? But there's gifts in the formula no different than Pavlov's dog. We will ring the bell every time we receive that gift of, you know, if we've received the gift of food, every time the bell rings, we'll come back to it, right? So imagine a certain case, okay? Level one being, okay, you get a gift of time. We should study our problems like we do our Bible, like we do our spouse, like we do our children. And as we study them and we understand them, we can solve them at a better way. Becoming gives you the gift of talent, because now you've decided to take action. You've truly studied something, you've learned about it. And when you take talent, you can measure what's moving. Because when you're moving, you can measure it and you can measure and adapt. You don't have to be perfect at first, you have to be perfecting. The goal is to be perfecting, not perfect. Okay? But you have time and you have talents in being and becoming. Next one. Once you've measured movement, believing. Believing gives you testimony. There's a reason the Bible's the best selling book every year, year over year. Why? Because of stories. We love stories. Facts tell, stories sell. So after believing, you get belonging. Belonging is treasure. That's the cars, that's the airplanes. That's the stuff. It's what all the people look at. It's the lifestyle. Everybody says, oh, I want that. But they don't realize the true gift is in this staircase that I'm telling you about. Belonging is treasure. After that one comes the next one. It's the most important one. So you have being, becoming, believing, belonging and last blessing. It gives you truth, okay. And it gives you trust. Truth sets you free and trust allows you to go forward and do it again.

So it's, it starts with you just taking where you are in life and time and looking at whatever comes your way and saying, okay, this is what is now. Let's make it better, let's make it right, let's make it.

And I left trust and tide. Sorry, I left that one out. I normally have my little documents in front of me when I'm coaching. I'm going off of memory right now.

Perfect. So this piece of developing confidence cannot come. Believing yourself cannot come without problems. It cannot come without adversity, cannot come without the struggle, without you looking at a problem, taking the problem and instead of saying, somebody helped me with the problem of looking at saying, okay, what can I do about this problem? I can do something about it. And things are going to mess up, you're going to make mistakes. But through all of that, you, like you said, you hone it down. You build something, it's a, it's a shit show. You build a business and it's all over the place, chaotic. And then you're refining, you're cleaning it up, you're restructuring it. And that process of overcoming the mistake rather than always looking for somebody else to bail you out is the path of growth, of both growing in your ability to solve a problem, but also your own ability to build your belief that you are capable.

Oh yeah. And every time you build your belief on I mean, even the smallest problems, a gift, because when you solve it and you build your belief. I used to do this exercise with agents, and I have an agent that doesn't like me much, that doesn't realize how much I added to her life with just this little system. I made her. This is probably 10 years ago, and now she's a competitor and I respect her so much. But I made her set two goals. One that was a reasonable goal based on past and one that was an unreasonable goal. And then we built back the levels to get there. She passed the reasonable goal in a month. What was interesting is that belief shifted. Three months later, she had passed her unreasonable goal and she had her first 70, $80,000 month ever in El Paso, which is hard to do at that point. It was harder because I think the average price point on a house was 130 grand. And she was like, I can't believe I've made this much money. And so overcoming the problem is, is the key. It's not about being perfect. It's about perfecting. And every time you do, you become more.

Yeah, yeah. And we're trying to look for the way to not have to go through the pain. How do I avoid the problems? How do I avoid the failure? How do I.

So. So it's funny because all the successful people I know, they have a similar simple difference, you know? You know how we avoid the problems? We run straight at it. Nine times out of 10, when I run straight at a problem, it runs away. One time out of 10, it stands its ground and I find out that I'm more than it. Okay, start with problems that are your size and you get bigger, and then you get bigger, and then you get bigger, the problems run away. Nine out of ten of them run away. All they need is for you to approach them. If you avoid them, what you resist will persist and it will grow. The longer it's allowed to feed on your energy.

Oh, yeah. And this is true at it, the.

Quicker it runs away or dies.

And this is the law of perspective, first law of nature. I mean, you look at this. If you're confronting a wild animal, the one that runs is the one that's going to die. The one that runs away. It's so funny. I'm down here in Costa Rica, right Wanna Caste coast, where you told me was the prettiest place. And there's iguanas down here. Well, the iguanas, when you have food, they're cut, they'll come up. And what's crazy is, as people Move away from them, they just keep coming. And when you move it, even an iguana, I mean, they're only like three feet long, just little things. But when they, when, when should you, but when you face them, they run away. If you move in toward them, then they run. If you run from them, they're like they're gonna take your food. And then they get conditioned to believe that, oh, I want food, I get food. And, and, and you're gonna run away from me. That's the same with dogs. It's the same with people. It's the same with any, it's the same with anything in life. I love that, that this is how we get, this is how we get believe is by. I love it because when you first said, you said this twice, you said your best, your worst day is also your best day. Well, that's the whole. The worst day is whenever you have the problem that sucks and I have the opportunity now to solve it. Because on the other side of that, solving it is not only problem solved, but there's also personal strength, that confidence, that testimony of like, I have become something that can do more and I can move the mountain. But you're not gonna, you're not gonna ever move a mountain hiding from the mountain.

Correct? Correct. If you hide in the shadows, you're what's been covered. If you cast the shadows, you cover everything else.

Yeah, I love that. I love that. So talk to us about one last thing and I appreciate so much your time today and I wanted to keep this tight for time and again. For those of you that are just joining us, Preston is going to be one of my main speakers at Millions Live. You can go to millionslive.com and get your ticket. We're sold out for in person tickets, but you get a virtual ticket. Millionslive.com Three days of insane power and, and productivity and strategy and content that you're going to learn from Preston. Others like him who have built seven, eight and nine figure businesses that will absolutely change the game for you. And so if this has had value for you so far today, make sure you give this video a thumbs up, make sure that you comment, any questions you have and all that, but also make sure you get your tickets. Come join us@millionslive.com so let's wrap this.

Thing up if it's okay.

Come on.

I have prepared something like I have, I have so much love for the real estate world because I came there. So I spent a bunch of time preparing something unique and very special for your team. That, I mean, especially the folks in the room, but everyone, everyone is going to get, I'm just going to tell you a value that they did not expect and did not come for. They are going to come for the business and they are going to learn something more and become something more in that moment. If they're authentic, if they're in willing to play. I've set something up that will work for real estate people. I've tested it on a few of mine and oh my gosh, bro. So if you're coming, be authentic, maybe bring some tissue because we're gonna go real deep and we're gonna send you away from that event with the ability to go change the fucking world.

That's beautiful. That's important. Millions Live is not just about making millions. It's about being able to impact millions. Our life has got to be more than just here for us to make money and put stuff in the bank account and have toys. So there's definitely more to it than that. I'm super excited you're gonna be flying in on your own private aircraft with another gentleman who is also a.

What's fun.

Very, very wealthy.

I'm, I'm having an event in El Paso when your event is starting and that guy's my keynote speaker on that event because he's coming to teach folks other ways to make money and teach leadership and teach all this because you know, no profit is a prophet at home. Right. And so I bring in all these greats like you, like him, everybody else that comes, comes and shares. And that's something funny about all these successful folks. They become this philanthropist that goes and gives back. And so, you know, I, I, I, I just told him, I said, hey man, I'm gonna go right after this event, we'll go have lunch with all the, the VIPs that paid a little extra for my event and then let's go get on my plane and, and go see Kevin and he's like, yeah, that'd be cool, dude, let's go. So, so a little, little bonus gift. Little surprise guest.

Oh yeah.

Coming. And 40 year old guy might have made 57 million bucks in the last few years. Gonna show you some leadership strategies that are gonna help. I mean, yeah, there's gonna be some, some bonuses coming there. And then he and I might, yeah. Stay and play in California for a while too.

100. 100. I'm super, super stoked about that and excited. So last thing I want to just kind of wrap this up is I want to talk about making Your whole life work. Because you've mentioned a couple times you, this ybl, which is your mastermind.

Yeah.

That is called your best life. Which I love that because it's, it's, it's even for somebody that makes the kind of money you make and attracts into it people who are. I didn't. I never even heard the term DECA billionaires and deca millionaires and sent a millionaires before I even met you. But you've attracted all these people who are worth tens of millions, some hundreds of millions, and some are billionaires that you've attracted into this called your best life. I just want to kind of wrap up with what would you say to audience. There are listeners about having their best life? Because this podcast is called it's all life. It's not business over here and life over here. It's all life. And if it's got to all work together. And that's what you have done and you've created. And not only in what you train and teach, but also in how you live your life. Because I've been to your home, we've broken bread together multiple times. And you have this beautiful family, this beautiful lifestyle, this beautiful life. Tell us about your perspectives of creating your best life.

So, well, I'm going to give you a simple hack. How about that? I'm the formula guy. I'll give you a formula.

Come on, everybody.

Everyone in your life is a customer. Everyone in your life is a customer. Your wife's a customer, okay? And if you don't think you transact with her, trust me, you transfer action with her. Because transaction, transfer action, okay? Your husband is a customer, your children are your customers. You provide something, they reciprocate that. The transfer of action. So if you want to understand marketing, find out what they want, go get it, give it to them. Okay, but, but people a lot of times stop there and they'll get the customer, but they don't know how to keep them. That's why we have a divorce rate. That's why businesses only sell a product once instead of reselling it. Reselling it, reselling it. By the way, this also factors in that you're your own customer. Okay? That whole belief thing. And so let's understand the three keys to customer acquisition, retention, and joy. That's marketing, sales, and branding. Right? So let's look at sales. If marketing is find out what they want, go get it, give it to them. Sales is find out who they want and go become that for them. Branding, nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care. When they bought your product, they were just buying a solution to a problem. When you brand, you create a relationship that can fail together forever. Find out why they want it. Go understand that. Go show them you care and keep bringing it to them. Now you build that long term beauty that creates your best life for everyone around you.

It creates it for you.

Like our mastermind. I'm so proud of it. Like, we've never had to advertise. We have several billionaires in the group. We have several Centa and Deca millionaires in the group. Like, we don't advertise. Like people go to our website, I think it's ybl now.com or something, I don't know. And they fill out applications. And I'm not going to lie, like, probably five out of six applications don't even get looked at. Like, I mean we look at all of them. But you, you don't even get a call. You don't even get a response. And that just kind of means not, not you don't get a call or response. You, you don't get an, an invite. Does that make sense? Like, like you, you get a great to meet you. And it's because we've created something so good, so unique, so beautiful, so perfect that we don't have to spend money marketing ourselves. We literally just created something beautiful and others will be attracted to it. When you learn marketing, sales, branding, whether it's a mastermind, whether it's a marriage, whether it's parenting, you have a brand as a father to your children. You have a brand as a wife to your husband or husband to your wife. You have a brand in everything you do. Find out what they want, find out why they want it, find out who they want that sometimes you might do that. You might find out they're not the right one for you or you're not the right one for them, that's okay too. But when you do all of these things, you create this thing called the law of attraction. I mean that's a real thing. Not that you go watch in the secret lair, money, money, money, and I.

Fall in your lap.

But, but the real thing, the law of attraction, like that beautiful thing that people will follow.

I call it the vortex. You literally, you attract into your life based on who you are being, how you were showing up. Marketing, sales and branding, it's who it's you're saying. It's like the message you're putting out there, but it also becomes who you are and how much you care about those that are brought into your life. I love.

Exactly. We've talked about that in that hot tub back there.

Oh, yeah, bro, I know. I remember. Well, I've been doing my Wim Hof almost every day.

Oh, it's so good.

There's no cold plunge here. There's nothing cold here. It's like I'm sitting here. It's just like the humidity is like 90 degrees and the temperature is about 90 degrees. So it's, it's swelling. But it is beautiful. But I. This journey that you are on is so inspiring.

Did I lose you, brother? Oh, I think we froze. Yep, looks like we froze. We just jumped in here. Hey, guys, I think we're about near the end of this. I think Kevin just froze a little bit. He's out in Costa Rica enjoying life and living his best life. If you're coming to the event to Redondo Beach, I look forward to seeing you there. If you're not, you need to look into it. You need to check out Kevin Ward. The guy is amazing. He's become a personal friend and a brother. More than just a friend. The guy is absolutely beautiful and he's just a servant hearted leader that wants to bless everyone in the world. So thank you guys for taking the time to invest in yourself to listen to this. Hopefully I see you guys in Redondo beach with Kevin. You all have an amazing day on purpose. Bye.