John Gafford - Building A Real Estate Empire Through Vertical Integration

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Welcome back to the Casey Adams Show. Today I am joined by John Gafford. We are here at the Blue Wire studios in Las Vegas. Thanks so much for coming on, John.

Yeah, welcome to Vegas, Case.

Thank you.

I hope you know we always love when people come in to do anything here, especially lose money. So that's what keeps the lights on for us locals.

Oh, my God. It's super excited to have you on the show today. I know our good friend Travis Chapel put us in touch. So super excited to dive into it. So for everyone that may not know who you are or about your background, I'd love for you to just give a high level of what it is you do and where you spend your time.

Oh, man. You know, everybody says real estate, and it's such a. When I say everything real estate, I literally mean everything real estate. We own. God. Let's run through the. Through the list here real quick. So we own the largest luxury brokerage here in Vegas. I've got about 580 agents that work for us. We do about 5,000 transactions here in Vegas. Locally, we also own. We're completely vertically integrated as a company. So we own title, we own mortgage, we own everything. Wow. And about two years ago, we decided we were really good at that. So we decided to vertically integrate other large brokers across the country. So now we have mortgage and title operations over like nine states, encompassing a total of about 140,000 transactions a year, which is great. I also flip properties. We've got luxury properties here in Vegas. We currently have about 60 million in projects going here locally doing, you know, not doing the $300,000 house. Put some lipstick and carpet on it. We buy the $2 million house and make it a $4 million house. Big, big risk, big win, but great partners and all of that stuff. So literally anything you can do in real estate, wow. I got it covered.

That's very cool. Love that. Born and raised in Vegas or where are you from?

No, man. I'm originally from Tampa, Florida. Not. I'm from a little town called Lake City, Florida, but I had moved here from Tampa a million years ago. I was on a. I was on a reality show a million years ago.

Okay.

And if you're wondering which one I.

That was me. My next question, I got.

I got fired by a US President on national television. Yeah, I was on the Apprentice years ago. And coming out of that show, I was in the tech industry prior. And the person that won my season was in real estate. And when we sold out of the tech firm, she was like, you can't just sit around Tampa and do nothing. I'm like, well, you don't know me very well. It sounds ideal to me. She goes, now get a real estate license and sell real estate with me. It'll be fun, right? So I was like, okay, I'll get a real estate license. And. And one thing led to another, and we started doing this during the boom. And we started doing condo conversion projects all over the country, one of which was here and came to Vegas. And like so many stories, you met a girl and started coming out here every weekend to see her. And we will been married now 15 years, coming up pretty soon.

So congrats.

It worked out. One of the gambles you can take in Vegas, that actually paid off for me, which is good.

Love that. Very cool. So growing up, like, did you go to college, play sports? What was your childhood?

Yeah, man, as a kid, you know, it's funny, I always. When I talk to other entrepreneurs, you always look for that early hustle, man. Yeah, that's what you look like.

What was your.

When did you know? What was the early hustle? What was it? Right. So I grew up, you know, I grew up in a very small town in North Florida. And, you know, my parents got divorced when I was very, very young. So you learn how to hustle. The first hustle is hustling your parents, right? It's like where the. Yes. One for the. For the money to buy something, and then you go ask the other one because they don't really talk too much. So you get able to get what you want in the pocket, the cash, which, you know, I'm not going to get divorced because I just don't want to deal with that hustle. My kids.

Oh, my God.

But I think my first hustle that I can remember was we would go out on the golf course and go out on the ponds, which in North Florida are full of things like water moccasins and alligators y and we would pull out golf balls and then shine them up and hang around one of the teas and sell them off to the golfers. And that was the first kind of hustle that I had. But yeah, that's great. It was cool. But, you know, went, went to high school and then my mother had moved to, to Tallahassee when I was in a junior in high school. So I went with her and then from there started going to college in, in Tallahassee. Majored in my fraternity. Was the only thing that I really cared about that freshman year was. Was my fraternity. And then I just kind of felt the institution had nothing further to offer me because I, you know, you know everything when you're 20 years old, as you well know. And, and I got in the bar business pretty early. So when I was in the bar business, I started out, you know, as a kid. I learned pretty quickly that you can make a bunch of. You make more money working for tips than you do working for an hourly week. And so, you know, started out busting tables when I was probably 14 or 15. By the time I was 18, I was a bar manager at a bar. By the time I was 20, I owned a third of a bar because I just, I wound up through sweat equity owning a third of a bar.

Wow.

In Tallahassee. It was funny. I was old enough to drink, but I was signing checks for 50 kegs at a time, which I thought was, that's great. Yeah, it was pretty entertaining. And so, you know, I thought I was going to go to school for hospitality. I owned a bar. I'm like, what am I doing? Why am I wasting time at school? Why am I doing this? And, and yeah, I just felt the institution had nothing further to offer me. So I called my dad. I'll never forget this. My dad's an attorney and I called him and, and told him that I wasn't going back to school. And I thought he was going to be super pissed at me, right. And he just started laughing and I was like, what? He's like, I just paid my last bill for my last child. He's like, do whatever you want, but I'm out. And he meant it. And he was. So, yeah, that's how, that's how that started. So that began kind of a long up and down career in the restaurant industry that, you know, went for years and involved some cool stuff. I wound up being a upper level management for Hooters of America. My early 20s.

Okay.

Which was a cool job in your early 20s. I mean, I'm not going to lie, it was a fun job then. I don't know. God, you put 20 year old me now in that scenario with the way the world works now, it would be a bad scenario probably.

Yeah.

But, you know, growing up a lot since then. Don't judge me.

Don't judge hospitality. How long was that time period of being specifically so focused on hospitality?

So, yeah, Mantilla was about 27. And I did stuff like I wound up running what Esquire magazine called the number one nightclub on the east coast, United States, in Atlanta, Cobalt Lounge, until Super bowl came. And, you know, we had a very famous person was involved in a murder there during super bowl, which is, I.

Feel me, I don't know this.

All right, well, this is back 2000.

Okay? I was born in 2000.

I know you were. Jesus Christ. So when you were, when you were an infant, right? When you were an infant. There we go. So the super bowl happened in Atlanta and Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Lewis, right, came to our club with some friends. There was an altercation. He didn't necessarily do anything, but there was a murder. And then he actually went on trial in Atlanta. And so I, we came to work the next day and I had like, you know, I was on Sports center, you know, for all the wrong reasons. For all the wrong reasons. You want to be on Sports Center? And. And yeah, that kind of nuked that club and did a couple of other things. And then when I was about 27, I kind of had bleeding, like bleeding ulcers. Like I was in trouble. And I went to the doctor and he was like, you know, tell me about your, you know, tell me about your work life. And I'm like, dude, 120 hours a week. And he's like, you know, what's your diet? I'm like, makers Market cigarettes. He's like, bro, you need a life change. You need to, you need a complete life change. So I sold out of everything that I had in the bar in restaurant industry. And I called my buddy who was the vice president at the time of a company called WorldCom, which imploded later. This is like a history lesson. When you were, when you were like two, this happened, right? Completely imploded. And anyway, he told me, he goes, man, he goes, I said, give me a job at WorldCom. He goes, because everybody always told me I should be in sales. And he goes, man, I can't hire you off the street to be in sales. I just can't, right? He goes, you got two choices. Go Sell cars or Kirby vacuum Cleaners. And if you do that for three months, you have a PhD in sales. And I was like, what? There's zero chance I want to sell Kirby vacuum Cleaners. So I'm like, all right, I'll go sell. Begrudgingly. I'll go sell cars. Yeah. And I. And I did. And he's right. It was, it was a, it was a PhD in sales.

Wow.

Working in that car lot.

How long did you work in the car lot?

I did that for exactly three months, 90 days. Exactly. I went in there, I was salesman of the month the first month, second month. They moved me from Nissan to their high line, which was Infiniti. Crushed it there and then crushed it again month three. And then my sister, who at the time was a high level person in Amway, she was the manager of some of the highest level people in Amway. And she's like, let's start our own multi level marketing company. I'm like, all right. So I quit the car thing. It was funny. I, I never really seen a grown man cry before. I quit the car place because the GM of the dealership was like, what do I have to do to get you to stay here? And I made up some goofy story like, ah, my roommates moved out, so I'm gonna move back to Florida. He's like, I'll be your roommates. I'll pay, I'll pay 5, 6 of your rent. You'll never see me to be great.

Oh my God, whatever.

And, and we, we tried the MLM thing. And, and man, that was, that was definitely some lumps we learned along the way there.

Yeah.

Which was one of my. And it's funny, I actually told this lesson yesterday in my desk drawer in my office. I have a 20 now 22 year old bottle of vitamins.

Okay.

Right. And I pulled that out. Every time somebody tells me they got a great idea they want me to invest in, I got a great idea. And I pulled these vitamins, send them to the house. They see this bottle of vitamins. This is a $200,000 bottle of vitamins. Vitamins. Because what we did was we went and developed all these products. We, we, we manufactured all these products, we put them in a warehouse before we ever bothered to ask anybody if they wanted to buy them.

Wow.

And so now it's like every time somebody comes to me with a million dollar idea, I'm like, you need to go sell it first and then you build it. Don't waste your money, don't waste your time.

Love that, yeah, solid lesson.

Yeah, it's a great lesson.

When, when was the transition to real estate?

Well, again, so after the MLM debacle during, during that process, my sister, who just, you know, we're floundering and my sister is brilliant, mba, CPA type, just CFO level, C level executive. She's like, you know, she had to pick up something else. So she picked up a consulting gig for this insurance company in Texas. And she calls me up and goes, we're opening insurance agency. Okay, cool. So I went, literally that was like a 30 hour course. I started it at 9 in the morning, I got done at 1 in the morning and I took the test two days later.

Wow.

Pass it. We were insurance, insurance business. And back then, what we got good at was learning how to get free medicine for old people. Because like old people would pay a certain amount for their insurance, but then like a thousand dollars for all their medicine. And there was a handshake amongst the drug companies in the US government which is like, if you don't screw with us, we'll give free medicine away to old people that qualify for it. But then they didn't tell any of the old people. Right. So we were experts in getting free medicine for seniors. And we'd say, okay, look, you buy our, our insurance and then we'll handle all of your getting your drugs for free.

Wow.

Which was in Florida. You can only imagine. We just, we crushed that. It was awesome.

Wow.

And that, that led me to Tampa, which led me to just meeting some friends, which led me to. Into the tech industry.

Yep.

Where you know, they just needed some operational management, some sales. So I became the CEO of a tech firm in Tampa, which, that led me to the Apprentice, which led me to real estate.

Got it. Very cool. How long were you in the tech space and what was it in the tech space specifically?

The tech space is so funny, man. Because if again, this is gonna sound ridiculous, but our big niche was there was a software at the time called Marimba. And this software allowed you, you're not gonna believe what allowed you to do, push solutions to endpoints on the Internet. So for example, before this happened, Casey, back when you were probably now three years old, or if you wanted to like upgrade a computer on a network from one operating system to another, you had to go in with an actual like CD and put it in every computer, which was not practical for a place with 500 computers.

Yeah.

So Marimba was software that you could now manage those computers from endpoints remotely, which is, comes in every single PC out of the box now.

Yeah.

But it was hyper expensive. So we had gone to Marimba and talked them into letting us sell it as one big license under our license to medium and small businesses so we could manage their endpoints. Anyway, so we started. That was the whole purpose of this tech firm.

Yeah.

And then, and this is a good lesson in business, man, which is never get too married to your original course. Just never get too married to it. Because as we're going like one of the developers was there and this cat had a friend at the Clay County School board in. In Florida. And this guy's like, man, if you could just build us something that we could do our school inspections with that worked with like a power, you know, like a. Like a handheld device that would sync and tell us what we were doing and work on gps. And we're like, no problem. So we built this thing like this random one off for this deal, which then all of a sudden it was like, this would be really good for fire inspections. This would be really good for this kind of inspections. This would be good for private jet inspections. And it just kind of grew and grew and grew and grew and grew till the thing that was just a joke that we did as a side gig became the main primary driver of revenue for this business. It was a really strange thing, but very cool. Yeah. But after the Apprentice, man, it was all real estate.

Yeah. I'm curious cause I have tech started myself. We launched last August. So it's interesting to hear stories like that. For sure. Don't get married to the idea, dude.

You can't. Because some the goofiest things sometimes will come falling in your lap.

We had that happen of like, we have a directed consumer tool, but we had the B2B part of the business just like organically fall upon us.

Yeah.

So I'm not sure if you're familiar, but my platform is called Media Kits. Yeah, I'm the easiest way for creators to share their creator analytics brands. And instead of these creators creating their media kit that we anticipated happening, which is the case back in like October, November, we had a lot of managers creating their media kits for their talent. And then they came knocking on our door like, hey, is there a way where I can manage my entire talent roster in one area with media kits instead of the talent creating it? So then it just spun up this whole B2B side, which has been super great so far. So it fell in our lap. We say that all the time.

That's the thing about tech is you just never know which direction it's going to go. You never know.

Totally. So when you get started, I'm curious about this idea of vertical integration. We like to say with media kits, like in two aspects. Like, we're very horizontal with the integrations because we're, you know, we're, we have to play nice with all the platforms. But when it comes to the vertical integration of your real estate firm, when did that happen? Or did you start it that way?

No. So, so here's what happened. So with our real estate company, Simply Vegas, we are very selective about the agents that you like. We don't take everybody. Ye most real estate companies are. Do you have a pulse? Can you pay this monthly fee? Welcome aboard. Here's your business card.

Yeah.

We have always run our business like a private club. And when you look at the producers, you look at the pool we're in in Las Vegas, there's about 20,000 realtors, which seems like a lot, but considering half of them never do anything.

Yeah.

And then of now you're down to 10,000 of half of those. Maybe do one deal a year. So now you're down to 5,000. And then the number seems to dwindle. So when you look at how many we have. 580.

Wow.

We got to a point where it's like there's only, there's only so much growth. I can do horizontally right there. Because there's only so many of these agents that we even want. So how are we going to generate more revenue for the company in a way that makes sense? So you start to look at where not just your spending money, but where your clients are spending money. Where am I sending my clients to spend money? And when you look at, when you look at the economics of a real estate transaction, you think the commissions and the broker fees, they're nothing compared to the title insurance, compared to the mortgage fees, compared to that stuff. The money that we make in mortgage and title laps, what we, in real estate, it just, it's so much greater. And we were giving that money away. And also when you send that out the door, you know, you look at this and it's not just about profit for the company. It's about a better experience for the consumer. Because there's nothing worse as, as an agent than when your client has, you know, you know, you're like, oh, God, our loan is falling apart. It's the 12th, it's the 12th, you know, the last hour, who's your lender? And they hand you a 1, 800 number. You're like, oh, God, we're screwed.

Yeah.

You know, if something's going wrong with one of our. Any, any place in the deal, you can pick up the phone and get my cell phone and call me at 11 o' clock at night and we can get to solving it. And that, that becomes the advantage.

I love that. And, and it's been like that over time in terms of, like, you launched these different companies within it or how did that play out?

Well, okay, so somebody came to us. I won't say the name of the company, but a large lender, a large lender in the United States had built an arm to open title companies with large real estate brokers as a way to have kind of a Trojan horse to get their lending in. Yeah, right. So they came to us with the pitch of, hey, we're going to open you guys a title company. You have to do anything. We're gonna do everything. You guys, we're just gonna print money together. We're gonna do it. It's like, okay, cool. And I call my partner, I go open a title company. So. All right. So after about maybe two months, man, we were doing everything. I mean, we, we were in there all day long, every day, trying to make sure this thing was going right. And then eventually it just gets to a point where we're like, they sent us, I'll never forget this. They were supposed to send us financials, like on a certain day every month. Never sent us a real P and L. It was always like a spreadsheet. And they sent us a spreadsheet at one point. And I looked down at the bottom. There's tabs on the bottom of the spreadsheet. And it's every other jv. They had all of them. So now I have the financials for all their JVs. All of them were losing money except for ours. Wow. So we were immediately like, okay, you guys are out. We bought them out.

Yeah.

And took it over. And. And that has turned into a business that probably, if I had to sell it today, is worth 15, 16 million. I'm actually, when I leave this, I'm gonna go entertain an offer for it, then I'm going to turn down because it's not going to be good enough.

Love that.

Yeah. It's literally my next meeting after this.

Y. I'm gonna say no to, but yeah, that's great. So when it comes to. I'm just curious, like when it comes to the team, the, like that private club aspect to it, like, for example, my. I wanted to give you some context My older brother, he's a realtor. First year, he did 12 deals. And, you know, like, for him, he's part of this firm, Better Homes and Garden. Same thing. It's not that private club aspect. Quite different. And I'd love to hear just kind of, um, how has that performed for you? And when you talk about Those, like, top 500 out of the, you know, the top 20, the 10, and 5,000, like, you're working with, like, the top 10 of that small pond.

Well.

And that must give you guys such an advantage over the entire market.

It does, but what it does is, you know, our company is built on a couple of foundational points, and one of them is an elite customer experience. And if I can't guarantee that across the board, then what am I doing? And once about every six months, we'll go through and do the purge. You know, we don't have the horns or sirens or anything, but we'll look. And, like, if you're not doing, like, not producing. No, like. Like, working for a company is a privilege. Not. Right. Like, it costs. I mean, we're cheap to work at. Honestly, it's really weird. We're inexpensive. From a realtor standpoint, as a place to work, it's only a hundred bucks a month.

Wow.

And then 499 a deal. That's all we get.

Yeah.

And it's like, I don't care if you do a $20 million transaction. Like, we actually did the largest single residential transaction in the history of Vegas. Wow. When Portis sold the Veer Tower. Veer Tower. All the vacant. All the vacant units Veer. Were. That was a multi. Parcel, multi AP. Or I'm sorry, it's a single parcel, multi multiple APN sale for $120 million. Considered residential, not commercial. We brokered that deal. I made 499 bucks from that.

The age.

The. The agent made a truckload of money.

Yeah.

But. But we only made. We made a small amount. And everybody's like, wow, how can you make money doing that? Well, when you do that 5,000 times a year.

Yeah.

And now you're also driving mortgage and title through, you know, competitive service and competitive pricing.

Yeah.

It turns into a pretty. Pretty large windfall.

Yeah, it makes sense. But.

Yeah, but as far as, you know, the private club thing goes, you know, it's one of the. You know, it's probably get set on every podcast in America. You are the sum of the five people you're around. I mean, if you're around a bunch of dipshits, you're going to be a dipshit. And if you're around a bunch of great people, you do better. And if you look and if you're especially we get a lot of people that were number one at their other company.

Yep.

Like they just, they're by a landslide. They're the best agent where they are and then they come to us because they want to compete.

Yep.

They want to have somebody like, okay, is somebody going to give me a run this month? What can I get? That's who we stand to attract.

I love that.

Yeah.

Very cool. I know in terms of scheduling, you're busy guy. Where do you spend your time day to day and how do you manage your time?

Man, I okay, first of all, I'm very concise with meetings. I don't know. I won't do a meeting unless it's, let's have an agenda. One of the things that I try to do is also delegate as much as I can to our high level people. I've finally gotten in now. I said I was saying this to my wife the other day, which was great. Is my days seem to be spent now making two to three high level decisions and that's it. I don't do have to. I've gotten to a place where I don't have to be.

Yeah.

Anywhere anymore. And I love that the places where I am, I'm really choosing to be like today.

Yeah.

Like how was I able to come down here on short notice? Yeah. Because I literally, I schedule my days where I only have two or like literally two or three high level decisions. And most of them are made before 9 o' clock in the morning on Zoom or like I said, we make them at Terrace Point Cafe, which is across the way. My partner. But I did that, man. I did that night. I did that 90 hours a week. That hustle and grind. And you just hit a point where you get over this hump where you start to say, okay, I now I'm earning enough money through these businesses to put really capable people in place that can take the ball where I have it and run with it. And even if they just maintain where we are now, I'm okay with that.

Yep.

Just keep, stay the path. That's it. And if they need to, if they need to be, you know, realigned or readjusted, I can step in and do that. But that's how I, that's, that's how I manage it.

Love that thinking. When it comes to travel, I know we were talking about before you hop in the Pod, you travel a lot or what does that schedule look like?

I do, man. I travel as much as we can. One of the businesses that we have, we actually have a little mini airline, which is nice. Yeah, we do okay.

Incredible.

We own private jets. We charter them out of. Out of Vegas, which is nice.

Very cool.

So this will be the first summer that we really are full. Full staffed on the airlines. And I've already told my wife, I'm like, every dead leg out of Vegas.

We're on.

We're just going. We're just gonna go. Because, like, why? Because, like, why? Because I, you know, I've never been to, like, Topeka, Kansas. I have no idea what's like, let's just go see the whole country. And what a better way to do it than on a private.

That's so great. Actually connected with one of my buddies. His name's Owen lapit, and he's the youngest Gulf Stream pilot here in the US One of my good friends, and I think you guys would really hit it off. He's great.

I love that. Sure. Yeah, I love that.

That's so cool, though.

Yeah.

How did that business come about? You know, I got.

I got a phone. I got a phone call my partner that I do the flips with the luxury flips here in Vegas, Nick Marietta, who's an awesome dude. Nick calls me up and he's like, hey, bro. The first thing we talked about when we got together was he. He had already bought. He'd already bought Plane One. He'd already bought it. And when you buy a private jet, people think, oh, it's like a car. I'm going to go buy this car. And I could drive it off the lot and drive around. Not how it works with jets. Right. So especially if you're going to. If you're going to run it as a charter business. So we bought. He bought Plane One. And it was already been. It had cleared faa, it had gone through all the inspections. The first set of pilots has already gone through training. He was in process of looking for the second set of pilots. Right. And I was like, dude, I want in this business because I look at the numbers. I mean, you know, right now is the first. It's really the first time in the history of modern aviation you've been able to make money with airplanes. Yeah. Because Covid did that. They pushed so many people into private travel. And it's kind of like once you do it once, people are like, well, you know, they get snobby about it. They're like, I'm not. I'm not getting back on the little plane. They're not doing it, or the big plane. And. And so I looked at the numbers and looked at how much it was, and it penciled out that it was great and inflation was coming. I saw that moving, and I'm like, man, I. I tried to deplete all of my cash, I wanted all of my cash into assets that I thought would do something or at least do something great.

Yeah.

So when I looked at the. When I looked at the airline opportunity I call it, that's my Airbnb. Right? That's literally. Is my Airbnb.

Yeah.

Because it's an investment. Yeah. We, you know, we shelled out into it, but it actually makes money. And, you know, we can either take a payout at the end of the month or accrue hours to fly on the plane. So either way, I'm good.

Very cool.

Yeah.

That's awesome. I'd love to talk about just how do you manage family dynamic with business? I think that's a topic that I always love bringing up. Oh, man.

Yeah. You know what, Suit? I've had some self realizations about this lately. I. I really, really have, and it's something that I actually kind of feel bad about, which is this. For years, I would go. I would get on stages in front of a bunch of realtors. I'm gonna get on the camera, get on everywhere and speak. And I would say, look, you want to make more money in real estate? Answer your phone whenever it rings. Answer your phone whenever it rings. And I feel so bad about that now. And here's why. Because I work all day. You know, I go. I go to meetings, I do things, I run like crazy. But when I get home, like, the one thing that I've screwed up, if I've screwed up anything in my life, is for probably the last 12 years, my. My wife and my children have not gotten the focus that they deserve. They got the time. I was there, but I wasn't focused on that. And a big part of that was because I was so married to my phone. Like, every beep, bop, boop, I was right on top of it, you know, going on, because I don't. I didn't know if my be money might be a deal, might be this, might be that.

Yeah.

And then I heard a couple things. Number one, I heard somebody say that the phone in your pocket is there for your convenience, not the convenience of others. And so now, whenever I'm home, when I go home, I mean, yes, things happen. 911s happen. It's fine. But when I go home, I will not sit down anywhere in my house without throwing my phone at least six feet away from me. If. If I sit at the table, it's on the couch. If I'm on the couch, it's on the end of the couch. It's. I keep my phone away from me because when my kids talk to me or my wife talks to me, I want to be able to focus on them and show them they're worthy of my time and my energy. Because my son now is 14. I got a couple of years left, man. He's at the door.

Yeah.

So. So that would be how I currently am managing that is trying to. Trying to be really focused on focus with my family.

Love that. Do you have any books on focus you recommend or that you have leaned into?

You know, pretty much? For me, everything that I try to read somehow gets back to modern stoicism. Ryan Holiday. You know, we all have.

Ryan.

We all have books that we give away to people.

Yeah.

Obstacles. The way is, you know, totally a little lost. What's here? Start with this. Start with this.

Yeah. He's incredible.

Yeah.

I've had him on the show way back in, like, 2019.

Yeah.

Great.

It's. It's amazing. And his take on modern stoicism is really. That was. That was a life changer for me. Yeah, it really was. I mean, I read anything that guy puts pen to paper. I. One of the. One of the only emails that I religiously read every day is I scroll through for the Daily Stoic. I read that. I mean, I'm. I'm religious about it.

Yeah. Daily Stoke was like my Bible. I have. It's like one book. It sits on my desk. Everything else, I try to keep off.

See, There you go. Kindred spirit. There you go. Go.

Love that. Well, cool. Well, John, last question before we wrap up. Just, like, if you were to go back in time, 18, 19 years old, what advice would you give yourself, and why?

Oh, there's so much. There's. There's so much. And this is, I think, the biggest mistake. And I'll tell you a story and. And we'll wrap it back to Cobalt. We'll talk about that. The nightclub. So here I am, I'm. I'm running this big nightclub, and, dude, it was celebrity every night, and it was all these people. And everywhere I went to Atlanta was full comp, and people were just falling all over me and blah, blah, blah, and this and that and then. And Then, like I said, the whole. The whole thing happened with Ray Lewis. That murder, and that club went nosedive to zero and was just done, shut down, finished, and I'm out. And so about three months later, a new bar was opening up in downtown midtown. And I was like, oh, let's go. Let's go to this bar. So we go, and the line is wrapped around the building, right? And like so many times I had done before, I just go traipsing right to the front door right now. Right, the front door. And I get there, and there was a guy working the front door that I'd never seen before. I did not know. So I was like, hey, man, you know, blah, blah, blah. What's up? I'm. I'm John. I'm, you know, from Cobalt. And guy looks at me and goes, bro, that club's been closed for three months. Mine's over there. And I know that sounds stupid, but it crushed me. And the reason that it crushed me is because I allowed what I did to become who I am. And if you're a young entrepreneur, if you are somebody that is building a business or doing things that's not, don't let that become who you are, because it will change, sometimes voluntarily, sometimes involuntarily. So you always have to maintain a center that is 100% within your control, that will be consistent going forward. And there was many times in my life when I got too married to what I was doing and let it become my Persona. So that love that.

I love that. I appreciate that, the honest feedback, John.

Yeah.

Well, last thing before we wrap up. For everyone listening or watching, where's the best place for everyone to stay in touch with what you're doing?

You can. You can find me@thejohngafford.com you can follow me to Instagram at the John Gafford. Listen to my podcast, which is the power move. Whatever you want there. All those good things. So, yeah, hope to see you there.

Awesome. Well, John, thank you so much for coming on today with such short notice. This is incredible. And for everyone watching or listening, thank you so so much for tuning in to the Casey Adams Show. And, of course, thank you so much for Blue Wire Studios for having us here today. And with that being said, I will talk to you guys soon.

Monarch Legacy of Monsters An Apple original series. The world is on fire. I decided to do something about it on November 17th. This place, it's not ours.

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Legacy of Monsters. Streaming November 17th only on Apple TV Plus.