Don’t Let Old Battles Keep You From New Victories with Jon Gordon

Welcome to the Smart Real Estate Coach Podcast, your source for actionable, real-life, practical investing advice. Each week we help you make a quantum leap somewhere in your business, your finances, and/or your life. Subscribe, leave a rating and review, and learn more at smartrealestatecoachpodcast.com. Hey, welcome back to the Smart Real Estate Coach Podcast. If you're new, we focus on 3 paydays. We focus on on cash now, monthly cash flow, and long-term wealth. And while we're doing that, we focus on equipping you with the other pieces of our, what we call Genius Model. The Genius Model sort of has 3 circles, if you can picture this. It has the mindset, the systems, and the skillset. Well, what I just said to you was more along the skillset side of it. Not going to address systems today, but what I am going to address is the mindset. We are going to have the most amazing conversation with Mr. John Gordon. There's not book that he's written that I haven't gone through. And many of his books that I've gone through have actually infiltrated through the whole team because they're that good. Let's dive in. All right, smart listeners, it's Chris Pre, your host again with another amazing podcast. And as a little backdrop with John, I want you now, John, to kind of go behind the green curtain and fill these guys in. What the heck you been doing for the last 5 years?

I can't believe it's been 5 years since we spoke. Well, I've written a number of books. Since then, The 7 Commitments of a Great Team. I wrote The One Truth. I wrote The Garden. It's been a journey. I've given a lot of talks, worked with the Rams, the Dodgers, the Miami Heat, Mike McDonald, the coach of the Seahawks, the Jaguars coach Liam Cohen, Corey Close, UCLA women's basketball, tons of companies and organizations. It's been a whirlwind.

I love it. And then I'm preparing for the show last few days and the team says, well, he's got a book coming out like next week as of the of this video, time of the podcast, rather. So, I'd love you to talk about that. Power of Positive Habits, right?

Power of Positive Habits. It's 93 habits that will exponentially grow you. This is not about the science of habits. This is not about helping you with your habits. This is giving you great habits that if you put these into practice, you're going to impact your life in a great way. In fact, my friend even asked, ChatGPT, what's the difference between this and Atomic Habits? And ChatGPT came back and said, Atomic Habits will help you build better habits. This book will help you build a better life. And so there's mindset habits, there's health habits, there's leadership habits, career habits, team habits, all sorts of habits that will help you in all different areas of your life.

What— I've got a few questions just with the book. What sparked that? Because I know you have so many, right? And they're amazing. Like every time you come out with one, I just, infiltrate the team with it. So what sparked this one?

Well, what happened with this one is years ago when I first got started, my journey actually began with me wanting to get better myself to be a more positive person because my wife almost left me. I was so negative. I was miserable and was not living a great life, and I did not have great habits. So I began researching ways I could be more positive after my wife's ultimatum because I wanted to stay married. As I was doing this research, I began finding these ideas and I began practicing them. One was you can't be stressed and thankful at the same time. So I began taking a thank you walk. I created this idea of a thank you walk where you walk every day and then you practice gratitude. That one habit, Chris, changed the course of my life. Just doing that day in and day out. Because when you're doing that, you're flooding your brain and body with these positive emotions that uplift you. Rather than the stress hormones that slowly drain you and over time will slowly kill you. And so by doing this every day, I was creating a fertile mind that was ready for great things to happen. I shifted my spirit. I got all sorts of ideas from my books over the years that came during that walk. So that habit is definitely in the book. So I began writing about what I was doing and I began a positive tip e-newsletter all the way back in In 2002, I started this e-newsletter. No one was doing e-newsletters back then. I was one of the first, and I began sharing it. I had 5 subscribers at the time, my mother, my brother, a best friend from college. Now that number's over 500,000, 600,000 subscribers who get that weekly positive tip. So here we are years later, and I just went back to my roots, just taking these complex ideas and creating simple habits. That allow you to see incredible results. That's my greatest gift. I take all these complex things and I actually make it simple so you can put them into practice. And I distilled it down into 93. These are like my greatest hits. If you read the book, it's like 1 or 2 pages per habit, and you can go through the book in a really short amount of time. You read through it, you decide which habits that you want to implement, and then the goal is you actually put it into practice. And here's the cool thing. I created a Positive Habits Developer. So what happens is you pick your top 3, you go to my webpage, you put those top 3 in, and we give you a 30-day customized plan for you to implement those 3 habits into your life.

I love it. It's like the John Gordon customized AI plan instantly.

Yep. Yep. It's my language. It's AI. We're using AI. We're using technology, but But it's your habits that you're picking and you put them into practice. Now, Chris, someone said to me, why did you choose 93? Like, why didn't you go to 95 or 100? You know, when I got to 93, I was like, well, that's all I got to say about that. I was like, I was done in that moment, like Forrest Gump. And I just said, I'm done with 93. It feels right, felt good. And I feel like I said enough for this book that will help a lot of people.

Yeah. Can I unpack the walk for a second? Because I know where some people's brains are going. I'd like to know, I know there's no wrong answer, but how long did you personally, like, how long is the walk? And then you literally the entire time stay focused on just flooding that, not zero interaction with anything else.

Right. The goal is as you're walking, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, it started with 10 minutes. Now it's an hour for me, but you could do it as long as you want.

Yeah.

And while you're walking, you're just saying what you're thankful for. The big things, the small things. You're thankful that you can walk. I'm thankful that I have my health. I'm thankful that I have this job. I'm thankful that I get to be on this podcast with you today. I'm grateful for that. It's raining outside, but you know what? I'm even grateful for the rain today because the lawns needed the rain. So you say what you're thankful for. And of course you might get distracted just like you do in meditation and other things. You're going to get distracted a little bit, but then you just bring your attention and focus back to gratitude and you do it as long as you can and you'll feel a shift in your spirit and you're literally rewiring your brain from negative to positive when you do this. Now, do it for a day. It won't do a ton. Do it for a week. You start to feel the difference. Do it for a month. Do it for a year. And now do it for over 25 years like I have done. Man, it has changed my life. And that's the power of positive habits is doing these little things that produce incredible results over time in your life.

Yeah. I started about a similar, I started about a year ago with the, just my daily and my journal. And I have to start over if I missed one. So I get up to 70, miss one, get up to 40, miss one. So today I shared, we just ended a training that I had in my classroom and today was like day 340. So I'm like, yeah, it's a game changer, but it's not a game changer like the first day or the first week. It takes time. It's magical after that.

Yeah, you are your habits. You become your habits. We focus so much on goals, and goals are great, but goals will not take you to where you want to go. Your commitments and your habits will. That's why my 2 latest books were The 7 Commitments of a Great Team, which is a really great book on commitments and doing it as a team, and then Habits that you can do by yourself to help you get better.

I love it. You know, it doesn't matter if you're brand new to real estate or if you've been doing this for several years or a whole bunch of years. I learned the hard way, back during the crash that doing creative deals is much better. It's a much better path in real estate in general than, let's call it, the old way— getting paid once, using banks, signing personally. 3 paydays— getting paid 3 times on a deal. It's better 3 ways, not one. Money now, money over time, and money long term. And I don't care if you're in an up-down sideways market, it doesn't matter. You can and should operate with the utmost confidence. There's literally nothing I love more. than helping people create systems and simple systems and processes to become massively successful with our 3 Payday System, and doing so in literally any market and doing it geographically literally anywhere. So if you've been learning and learning and listening and studying and not taking action, I'm telling you after going through it myself, it's costing you tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars by not taking action on the 3 paydays the way you should be getting paid. Many of the people that were brand new, just like you, that joined our community have fast-tracked their startup. Now, I mean, wouldn't that be ideal? If you said, okay, should I go fast or slow? Should I take action now or later? It's costing you too much money to wait. Each one of you are at a point in your life, I'm sure, where you want things to be easier. You want things to be better for you and your family. You probably realize that you not only want more, but you deserve more in this life. So, to be able to give your family everything they want, build a legacy, For you personally too, and to have time freedom to start enjoying life. Frankly, whatever else you're seeking. And for some of you, now's the time, for example, to just focus on security. Maybe it's building a big solid bank account for retirement. We take these things super, super seriously, and it's my life's biggest reward to help you achieve them. I want to give you a free discovery session with our team. It's free. It's 15 or 20 minutes. You have zero to lose and everything to gain. And to understand how you might fit into the 3 Payday System that we've done now in over 80 markets as of this filming, go to smartrealestatecoachpodcast.com/discovery for a free call with our team. smartrealestatecoachpodcast.com/discovery. Because it's not whether or not you can do it or whether or not you fit, you can do it. It's whether or not you'll take action and do what it takes, and we can guide you through that process. smartrealestatecoachpodcast.com/discovery. /discovery. We'll see you soon. Let's pick one out of the 93. You don't have to do— we're not going to do the whole book today, but pick another one that would maybe address the solopreneur trying to— because I look at today's economy and everybody's worried about AI and losing jobs, yet there's so many people that think it won't be them. And I always say, hey, your job is your biggest risk, guys. It's not the real estate, right? So maybe pick one that would help the solopreneur with that mindset of, Making that change, making that shift. Does that make sense?

Yeah. It's really my favorite piece of advice, and it's to talk to yourself. Don't listen to yourself. It's to become your own greatest encourager. When you're a solopreneur and you're out there working hard every day, trying to make it, you're facing rejection, adversity, and challenges, setbacks, the market conditions. There's so much we can't control, but every day we can become our own greatest encourager. and encourage ourselves. I say in the book, yes, I want you to encourage other people. That's actually one of the habits as well, but you have to become your own greatest encourager. And when you do, failure will not define you. Adversity will not defeat you and negativity will not sabotage you. Instead of being your worst critic, which so many of us do, we beat ourselves up. We feel guilt and shame. The negative thoughts just start to spiral. We actually winding up wind up really hurting ourselves and beating ourselves down. Instead, I want you to lift yourself up, encourage yourself as you go forward. And when you do, it's going to be a game changer. For me, I beat myself up for years, and now I realize when I make a mistake, I mess up, I don't beat myself up. I go, man, I wish I would've done something different. I wish that would've happened differently. But I go, okay, let's keep on moving forward and let's keep encouraging ourselves on this journey. Here's another great one. Don't let old battles keep you from new victories. As an entrepreneur, I had many opportunities to actually fight old battles, and I decided to leave it alone, let it go, and I moved on. I had partners that were stealing from me in the restaurant business years ago, and I basically sold back my shares to them, took my money. It was only about $100,000 at the time. It should have been $400,000.

Yeah.

But I took my $100,000. I said, that's it. I walked away. I'm not fighting these guys. And because I walked away, I took that $100,000, I put it into a Moe's Southwest Grill franchise, second mortgaged my home and $20,000 in credit cards, and then turned that into several restaurants, which I sold for $1 million. So I took the $100,000, turned into $1 million because I didn't fight the old battle. I could have argued with my with my former partners. I could have had a lawsuit. I probably would have won, but I would have wasted a ton of time doing that. And instead, I had the energy to create new battles going forward. And that's really a big thing for a lot of people. Also, forgive fast is one of my favorite, Chris, in this book. Forgive fast. So often we're holding onto that bitterness and that anger, and we get that hot coal that we want to throw it at someone else because we're pissed off, because we're angry. Someone hurt us, someone wronged us, but we're the one who's getting burned while we're holding onto that And I had another guy recently betray me and my wife. He needed a loan for an investment. We gave him $100,000. Here's another $100,000 and 13% interest. And he winded up just walking away, hasn't paid us back, is paying no one back, just being a slimeball, still on social media, trying to still raise money, acting like he's all great. It's crazy. I watched this and it really was bothering me. But I said, you know what? I got to forgive because I'm holding on to this and it's driving me crazy and it's affecting me in every other area of my life. And it's going to affect me from creating new success as an entrepreneur. So I basically chose to forgive. It doesn't mean I allow it. It doesn't mean I'm going to be friends with them, but I forgive it, let it go. And now I'm creating something new. And I feel that release. I feel that freedom. And now I'm free to create an amazing future. And that's what a lot of people mess up along the way as well. So, there's a lot of cool habits like this. There's also mindset habits in terms of playing to win, creating your big life plan, all these kind of cool ideas that are in the book as well.

What's the count right now of total books written?

Well, I've written 33, 18 bestsellers. Hopefully, this will be number 19. And we've sold, I think, about 6.5 million copies worldwide with all the books.

Amazing.

Thank God.

Absolutely amazing. Is each one your new favorite? I'm just curious, like, is this your new favorite or not necessarily?

You know, 7 Commitments of a Great Team is my newest favorite because of the story, because of the teammates in the book that I named after my teammates from college. So I had a blast writing that book. I wrote that book in 16 days. I mean, I say I've been writing it for over 50 years, But really 16 days is what it took to write. So it was a really special book. But this newest one, I think this new one is probably going to be my most read from a practical standpoint. I think people are going to dive into this and go, you know what? This is inspirational. It's encouraging. There's real tangible things you can do. You're going to see results from doing this. I think people are going to get the most out of this because like I said, a lot of these ideas are also in my, all my other books.

Yeah.

And I took all the best habits, all the best strategies, all the best lessons from all the books. And I put it into like this one book, which is like my greatest hits of 93 Habits. Now, the tough thing, Chris, is I woke up the other day and I'm like, oh man, I just got 5 new habit ideas. So like, why couldn't this come while I was writing the book? Like, I just got 5 new habits and I literally wrote them down.

Yeah.

So I'm thinking about maybe I got to write like some kind of supplemental PDF or something that I just give away when people get the book or something like that. So I'm going to, I'm going to probably work on that.

Is this one of the more recent ones that's not like a story-driven? That's what it's sounding like to me.

Yeah. 7 Commitments was a fable. This is like a how-to. And so you just, you know, you start out each chapter and you just go through like, you know, one at a time. It's like, it starts, it might start with a story, like a personal story, but it also starts with information and facts and research. Like here's one, Get outside and get some morning sunlight. I think we forget that our bodies are made up of the same organic elements found in nature. The human body primarily consists of oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen. We're basically like plants is what I'm saying in this chapter. We are like plants and we need sunlight and we need to absorb that sunlight for our growth. And so many people just stay inside and they don't go outside and get sunlight. So, it's a simple thing like that. And then, I have one area, tuning out distractions, and I talk about sea turtles and how sea turtles come on the shore, lay their eggs, and too often sea turtles actually go towards the artificial light that are in developed beaches, say in condos and high-rises, and that leads to their destruction. Well, we do the same thing when we allow distractions to affect us. So I share a story, an analogy, and then give a prescription, an idea, and a way to put this into Yeah.

I can't imagine there'd be a listener out there that hasn't read a handful or all of your books, but I got to say, for those that might not have stumbled upon it, it is by far the most fun, practical, and easiest reads. Like, they just flow phenomenal. So, I knew you'd have some really cool new ones coming out.

I love it.

Love it.

Absolutely.

John, how did you— I don't know if we said it. I'm going back to when you were on my show. That was episode 2-something, and we're in the almost 700 now. I don't recall, like, what was the initial— I'm going to go way back opposite now. What was the initial thing or event that got you into this path? Because you mentioned restaurants and you mentioned some other entrepreneurial things. What was the shift? Because maybe there's some things to glean there.

Oh yeah. So I sort of weave that into the book as well in different habits where I found my path, found my journey being an entrepreneur. And again, I wrote this in many ways for entrepreneurs. This is about exponentially growing you. And my thought was, if I could help the leader, the entrepreneur grow, that entrepreneur, that leader will grow everything they touch and everyone around them. They will really help them grow. So that was my thinking by it. What started me on this journey was when my wife threatened to leave me because I was so negative. It was during the dot-com crash. I was working for a technology company and I had 100,000 shares, thought I was going to make my fortune. And we went under. I lost my job and didn't know how I was going to pay the bills. And that's when I took that $100,000 and put that into the Moe's South Florida Grill.

That's good.

Yeah, a wing and a prayer, Chris. Like, no one had heard of Moe's. We were the first Moe's in Florida. I found a location, didn't know if it was going to work. I was so fearful and stressed. My wife was thankfully more positive than me. And Between me trying to stay married, stay positive, start this business. That's where I grew so much. But I remember asking myself this question, like, what am I born to do? Why am I here? And on a spiritual matter, I literally said it to God too. And in that moment, writing and speaking came to me in that moment. Like, I'll never forget. It was a really spiritual experience. I had a knowing in that moment, this is what I was going to do. I was going to write and speak. And make an impact that way. I still have an entrepreneurial mind and I apply it now towards all these ideas and strategies and ways to help leaders. But I knew this is what I was meant to do and that's what I've done ever since. And it's been a really cool journey. I got a cool tip, a strategy, a habit in the book that is to learn from everyone. Learn from everyone.

Love it.

I go down to Orlando to meet with Harris Rosen. I don't know if you heard of Harris Rosen, but he owns all the hotels basically in Orlando. He's got the Rosen Center, the Rosen Inn, and the Rosen Plaza. And so years ago, I go down there. I had just moved to Jacksonville. I had just opened up the Moe's. I wasn't even really writing yet. And a good friend of mine was good friends with Harris Rosen. It was actually my friend's father. And so he said, you got to meet Harris. You got to meet Harris. Harris wasn't a huge deal yet. So I go down there to meet Harris and I'm sitting in his office and he goes, and you are here because just like that. And I'm like, you know what, 29, 30 years old, just opened up this Moe's, young guy. And I go, well, I just like to learn from very successful people. And Mr. Berkley thought it'd be great to learn from you, and that's why I'm here. He goes, oh, okay. All right. He's like, so what are you doing? I told him, I own this restaurant, Moe's, and, you know, franchisee, and I've been marketing it and we're doing really well. We've been really successful. We've got a couple locations now and it just blew up, doing really well. And he goes, how are you marketing the restaurants? I said, oh, well, I started an email list where when we open up a new restaurant, I email everyone a free burrito and all they have to do is print out the paper from the email and bring that paper in with their free burrito and claim it. When we open, we have lines out the door because people email all their friends the free burritos. It's great marketing. He goes, hmm. He picks up the phone and he calls up his guy, I guess. And he goes, hey, uh, I'm here with John Gordon. He's got this Moe's. He's doing X, Y, and Z. Are we doing that? And the guy's like, no. And he goes, he looks at me and he goes, see, you never know. You never know. Basically he was saying, I never thought this would be a productive meeting, but I actually learned something and I'm going to implement it. And I never forgot that lesson. And now I try to learn from everyone I meet because you just never know who you're going to learn from and what you're going to learn.

Yeah. Follow the energy, huh? Amazing. What's on the horizon, John? I mean, I don't know if there's a stopping point for you with books. I'd probably not. What's on the brain for the next?

Yeah, I've got other book ideas. I'm definitely going to write a sequel to The Energy Bus called The Energy Bus Rides Again. That's my most popular book. And I never thought I would write a sequel. It's almost 20 years old, but I just got the idea this past year for a sequel. So I'm like, all right, well, I guess I'm going to I'm going to do a sequel. I got a couple other book ideas I'm going to write that I'm excited about, and those are on the back burner. And then we're really focused now. We started Certified Positive Leader. So basically, Certified Positive Leader is my leadership system, and we are now helping leaders implement my leadership system, whether it's their company, their organization, their nonprofit, their school, their hospital. We're basically giving them my leadership system to implement. And so Certified Positive Leader is that system to do that. And we have several programs within Certified Positive Leader for them to do that. So really focused on that. And then also our Certified Trainer Program where we develop people who want to develop leaders. So we give them the tools and the training to go train others on leadership. And that's going to be my mission for the rest of my life. It's to develop positive leaders who make a positive impact in every business, school, team, organization, and community to create a more positive world. So I got really big clarity this past year on what I'm here to do, what I'm now going to do for the next hopefully 20, 30 years of my life. God willing, I live that long. That's going to be the focus. How about you, Chris? What are you dialed in on now, Chris? What are you totally focused on for the next 20 years?

Yeah, thank you. You're not going to be bored, that's for sure. We're working on in the creative, as you know, we're in the creative world. So we're working on a big roll-up in the creative world because I think the creative real estate world needs to be, I'll say, righted. There's just a lot of junk out there, as you know, in education, and we do the right thing. And I want to make sure that everybody's doing that. And so we're on a pretty strong mission to do that and get more people in the right frame of mind in this space.

I love that. I love that. Yeah, it's cool. It's cool because, you know, think about it often, like my wife and I talk about it. We're building a house right now and like we're working harder than ever. My wife started Gordon Publishing, so we're helping people publish their books now.

Oh, nice.

And she's loving that. Like, we help you write the book, we help you publish the book, the COVID design, everything. And then we give you 100% rights and royalties to the book. So once the book is done, it's your book and we're helping you create that book, which she's loving. I never really was interested in doing that, but she's been doing it. And so what we're seeing is she's working like till 11 o'clock at night. I'm working till 11 o'clock at night every single night.

You're loving it.

Well, I think we're just on a mission. We love it, but we're on a mission and we don't have to be doing this. We could really pretty much retire right now, thankfully for all the books I've sold. But at the same time, it's never about the money. It's about making a difference in people's lives and that's going to keep us going forever. Yeah.

There's a woman I had, I don't know if you know, Yvonne Trost, super powerful in the mindset space. And she said, I was on her show and she said, what's the one, like if I could give you your wish, right? She was doing one of those live. And I said, just to be more impactful to my people, right? Because that changes lives. So it's good doing that every day. I love it. Uh, John, how can they learn more about the certified coaching, some of the leadership stuff and some of the things you mentioned, any links you want to share at all, but that sounded fairly new to me.

Yeah. On the certified front, just go to jongordancertified.com. That's the trainer piece. The Certified Positive Leader piece is certifiedpositiveleader.com. And you'll find everything on my website at jongordon.com, J-O-N-G-O-R-D-O-N.com. But if you want The Power of Positive Habits, just go to powerofpositivehabitsbook.com. So powerofpositivehabitsbook.com. When you go there, you get a copy of the book. You will get a free action plan, that Positive Habits Developer I also mentioned, which is really cool. You put in your Your 3 Top Habits. And if you get 3 books, which we ask you to invite 2 friends, colleagues, if you get 3 books, all 3 of you can join us for a coaching session. We're actually going to do 3 coaching sessions. Awesome. What I'm going to do, yeah, I'm doing 3 free coaching sessions to all the people that get 3 books and their friends, and I'm going to help you implement your habits in your life.

That's super over-the-top powerful. And I don't know as though anyone's doing that. And, and, um, is that the first for you? That's awesome.

Yeah. First time doing that in terms of like, I have a coaching program called Circle. I have my Circle where I coach high-level leaders, but this is something where I'm doing free coaching for anyone who gets these books. And I wanted to pour into people so that we're on this journey together. You get the book, you read all the habits, you decide your top 3, then you have support now where I'm going to help you put them into practice. And Chris, my hope is that this leads to more success with people. And their habits. We know too many people, they start, they don't finish, they give up, they get distracted. Hopefully this coaching support and having your friends do it with you will lead you to success, will lead to your success.

Super powerful. Really, really appreciate you. Love everything you're doing. I don't want to wait 5 years because you're going to probably come out with 10 more books for them. I got to get each one. So keep me in the loop, would you, on your new releases? You're awesome, John. Thank you so much. It was good to hang out with you again.

Chris, great to see you again. Appreciate you and all that you do, brother.

Thanks. Thanks, buddy. All right, that wraps up our time together with Mr. John Gordon. After 5 years of not seeing him, I promise you I'll try to get him back on here earlier. If this episode helped, make sure you're subscribed. And if you're serious about doing deals right now, head over to smartrealestatecoach.com. We're going to help you with the next step. You know, guys, for years I've been at the business now, 34, but for years we had some rent collection things in place. We had bookkeepers in place, we had marketing to go to all these different websites. Now we simply go to prosperity.io. It was built with us and you in mind. You can market your first property if you're brand new, you can scale if you're already in the business, but you can market your properties across 50+ platforms in one click for way less than hiring a pro. You can easily collect rent online, so it's like an escrow service for you. You can track payments, you can get monthly reports so you know how your investments are doing, or if it's your first investment. And no tech headaches, no guesswork, just smart tools to help you grow with confidence. Get started now at prosperity.io because every portfolio starts with a powerful first step. All right, thanks for tuning in to the Smart Real Estate Coach Podcast. If you got value from today's episode, guys, be sure to subscribe so you never miss a future episode. It literally takes one nugget To access some of the things we're doing. And when you're talking the amount of the size rather of the paydays, it's an opportunity cost that you can't let go. So don't miss an episode. And for goodness sake, share it with someone who needs to hear it. If you're ready to find your best path for getting started on your real estate investing journey in general, head over to smartrealestatecoach.com/getstarted. We're going to help you take the guesswork out of your next steps. See you in the next episode.