Mindset Over Skillset to Build Wealth, Confidence, and Mental Clarity with Jason Abell

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Good morning and welcome, Wicked Smart listeners, to another Wicked Smart Masters Class. It's Chris Prefontaine, your host again. Today we get to hang out and chat with Jason Abel. Jason's a speaker, he's a coach, co-founder of Rewire, which we're going to dig into. It's pretty cool where he actually helps leaders and teams achieve growth through emotional intelligence. This is cool, guys, because in mindset coaching, because this is such an important component. We teach what we call, we teach via what we call the Genius Model, which is 3 circles, 3 pillars, if you will, mindset systems and skill sets. Well, this is a lot on the mindset side. After 20 years in the mortgage banking industry, funding nearly, gosh, over $1 billion in home loans, he kind of followed his passion for this and for leadership development. He now coaches leaders. He facilitates workshops on sales, leadership, and emotional intelligence, which is my hot button with this conversation. And, he oversees Rewire's operations. And so, outside of work, just so you know a little bit about him, enjoys time with his family, outdoor adventures, and giving back through his nonprofit Sadie's Gift. Alright, Jason, with that as a backdrop, welcome to the show, buddy.

Man, happy to be here, Chris. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, you bet. For the Wicked Smart listener, in addition to what I said in the intro, kind of peel back the green curtain. You went from serious business in the mortgage world to this rewire. We're going to talk about it, but what, give us the prelude, like how and why, like how would that transition take place and why? Sure, sure.

Well, I'll take you back. I promise I won't take 20 minutes to answer that question, but I'll take you back to my childhood. My dad was a physician by trade, but he was a real estate investor on the side and he was really into going to all the seminars, workshops, And back then it was tapes, even 8-track tapes.

Yeah, I remember.

I'm a child of the '70s. Well, when we would go on family trips, literally there would be an 8-track in the car playing of people like Earl Nightingale or John Maxwell, and even people that preceded you, Chris, in the industry. John Schaub, Jimmy Napier, Pete Fortunato. I don't know if those names mean anything to you, but— But those are people that I was reading growing up. And so I got into real estate, but I also got into like, hey, there's people that lead these workshops and do this, and I'm looking up to them. And so even though I got into the mortgage industry and that was corporate America and the whole 9 yards, and I loved that, that was 21 years of my life and loved every minute of it. There was always something inside of me that said, boy, I'd love to do for others what those guys early on did for me. And I had a coach, I had an executive coach when I was in corporate America. And that guy, his name is Steve Scanlon. He's my partner now at Rewire. He left the coaching company he was with and he was like, hey, I'm going to do my own thing. I don't really know what that looks like. And even though things This was 2013, 2012, 2013, was going really well in the mortgage industry for me. Like, I, it was just very good. I loved the people that I worked with. I loved the organization. We were doing a ton of business. It was all good. That provided an opportunity for me to really take that little thing that was inside of me about, hey, maybe one day I'll go do this thing to let's go do it. And so in 2013, my partner and I started Rewire Coaching. And, um, and here we are. And I, I've, have never looked back, love every minute of it. And, uh, so yeah, that was, there's more obviously twists and turns to that story, but that's, that's the, the crux of it.

Cool. I want to unpack a little bit of that and then we'll talk about Rewire because I specifically, the Wicked Spot listeners trying to make that transition, you did it, right? But there's so many people, I, I rack my brain going, why would you stay with a W-2 or why? I just don't get it. So, and you made that transition. So are there any nuggets you can look back and go, yeah, if I'm talking, I'm talking to 10,000 Wicked Smart listeners on stage right now, what are the 1 or 2 or 3 nuggets to make that transition that, because you know that's blocked, what's blocking them probably.

For sure. For sure. So it's kind of like, you know, on my podcast, Chris, I interview a lot of people that are, help people sell their business. And one of the pieces of advice, it'll transition into answering part of your question here, which is, you know, hey, a lot of business owners want to one day sell their business, but typically they're just not ready. And so what the advice that these guys give me that help people sell their business is you should always run your business as if you were going to sell it, meaning having your books tight, Making sure that the business doesn't depend just on you, the founder, and all the different things that you do. Like that shouldn't be something that you do at the very end when you're getting ready to sell. That should be just a way that you run your business for a variety of different reasons. And so I would answer your question very similarly, which is whatever it is that's your W-2 job, if you are running your life and your, when I say your life, I mean your financial life. I mean your spiritual life. I mean your health and wellness life. If you're running all those things where you're giving yourself options down the road, that is something that's important as opposed to, oh, well, I can't just turn off my W-2 and go straight into real estate because I'm not ready. Well, if you are in an audience of yours and you feel like, man, I'm not ready, well, today is the right day to start getting ready. So it's that whole, the best time to plant a tree was yesterday, but the next best time is right this minute. And we can't really do anything about yesterday, but we can start now. And the book that I wrote in college, I don't know, 30-something years ago, was called Start Now. And that's something that even today as an adult, I'm just the biggest believer in. And that's how I run my life is we can't do anything about yesterday, but we can do something about now. And so start now. So what exactly does that mean as far as answering your question? Well, take a real hard look at your finances. And if you happen to be lucky enough to have a partner in life, whether that's a spouse or a partner or whatever, Like, go over those finances with that person. Get a professional to go over your finances. Because when I made the switch from W-2 into starting our own business, because the very first couple of years there was no income, right? I needed to make sure that I had a runway there.

Yeah.

But because I was, my financial house was in order, so to speak, I was able to make those decisions along the way. And by the way, I think another nugget would be there is no like line in the sand on and off switch. Like I had been investing in real estate all along the time I was in corporate America. I had been investing in other investments all along the time when I was in corporate America. When we had our first child in the year 2000, I opened up a 529 plan for her. I tried to do it when she was in utero, but they wouldn't let me. They were like, no, no, no, no, she has to be born before. So it's this preparation thing where you can do both simultaneously where, and I was just rereading a book by John Schaub where talking about real estate investing, your audience or your students, Chris, they can, get ready to get ready and go to another workshop and be prepared and whatever. But until they buy their first house, yeah. So the other nugget would be, yeah, buy that first house. Like do whatever you need to do to buy the first house and you can keep your job while you're still buying your first house. And so, I don't know, those are, there's probably 20 other nuggets, but making sure that you're life is in order. Like, just taking stock of everything around you is one thing. And then the other thing is just start now. Like, do something now, not just get ready to get ready and be a workshop junkie.

It's funny because I just did a solo cast. I love every piece of that that you did. I just did a solo cast on my show and I talked about, like, people come into the boot camps and they're like, yeah, yeah, I'm going to do it, but I got to do this first and this first. They're always saying, But I got to do this first. And I say, well, why don't you just stunt a little bit? So I love what you're doing. I call it kind of a little stacking, right?

Yeah. The baby stunts. Yeah.

Okay. So where does a, um, I just thought of this. Where does a, uh, sort of a coach or a mentor come into that in that play, in your mind, where do they come in in that preparation stage to, you know what I mean? To get ready to get in action.

One of the, one of the things that I've, I've observed throughout my whole life, and now as a professional coach, I see that is if you have a thought and you start getting committed to it, there's some very practical things that you can do. You can write it down to make it real. You can read books to make it real. But one of the things that is like no other that makes it real is telling someone else. And so whether that's your partner, whether that's friends, whether that's a mentor, whether that's a coach like you, like telling somebody. And I'm a big believer in mentors and coaches and that type of thing. And so coaching to me is just a big deal. Like if there's something that you want to do, whether it is, hey, I want to get back to being in shape, well, hiring a personal trainer is just a real good way to ensure that that happens. You pay money, you set up a time and a place to show up, and there's going to be somebody there waiting for you. And that's very different than, man, I'm just going to go to the gym and get myself back in shape. And it's the same thing with real estate. Telling somebody is a big deal because then even if your coach is your spouse or partner or friends, they're going to, next time they see you, they're going to ask you, hey, you said you were going to get into real estate.

Yeah. How's that going?

Right? And so that is really good. And when my answer includes coaching, it might, maybe it sounds self-serving, but even if it's not Rewire, even if it's not you guys at Wicked Smart, I'm just a big believer in if you can get community around you that will help hold you accountable and cheer you on, there's nothing as helpful as that. people around you in community, because when you're in community, there's a snowball effect that starts to happen. Yeah.

I mean, you and I, of course, are biased to our programs, but I always say what you say, like, whoever it is, just go find it.

That's right. Yeah. I'm a real big believer in that. I tend to operate, I don't always get this perfect, but I tend to operate from a place of abundance. And listen, I'm really biased to our brand of executive coaching, but if anybody is getting coaching anywhere, I'm a happy camper because that alone has already separated yourself from really the masses. And so, yeah, I'm a big believer in, I don't know, the way that the world works. There's just plenty of business out there and we tend to get a bunch of it, and I'm sure you guys do too.

Okay, who wants to be the next apprentice? Pretty interesting, guys. We started this apprentice program back as a July 4th, 2024 promo. That's where it started. And it was so incredibly effective. We were just gonna run it for the summer. It was so effective immediately, we kept it. It's in place now. And what is it? It allows you to get into the community, the Wicked Smart community, for less dollars than the QLS Home Study Course sells for right now on our site. In fact, When you go to smartrealestatecoach.com/apprentice-pod, apprentice-pod, when you go there, you're going to see that as an apprentice, you're going to get over $13,000 worth of coaching, the possibility for you to touch base with us if you want to, 4 or 5 times a week. And it doesn't exist anywhere out there, frankly. That's why we did it. We did it for 2 reasons. One, no one is giving you the support out there. We keep hearing feedback, which is how this was born, that other educators are not giving support. They're just selling stuff. So it doesn't exist anywhere and nowhere in the real estate education or coaching space. And we want to help you do one thing— deals. So we've wrapped the support mechanism around this. We've allowed you to get into a Slack community with the other associates who previously were protected in Slack. And now you get to jump in there and experience that for 12 weeks. You also get to come to the In the Trenches boot camp, which is private. It's a chance to hang out with the family team and one of the coaches for 2 and a quarter days in our conference room, roll up his sleeves, get calls done, get deals done. If you come with leads, you leave with deals. Absolutely incredible. I could go on and on. Go to the website right now, check out more information about the Apprentice, and I'm going to give you the In the Trenches boot camp site because you don't have to become an apprentice. It just happens to be free with apprentice and associate. So 2 links I'm going to give you, super important. smartrealestatecoach.com/ittb-pod. That's going to give you some information about the boot camp. If you want to buy a ticket to the boot camp, it's more expensive, but you can just come check us out. About 1 or 2 people every time we run it do just that or become an apprentice and it's for free. smartrealestatecoach.com/apprentice-pod.

Yeah.

Yeah. And I'm okay. So my, I'm going to get to Rewire in a second with the emotional. I love the emotional intelligence thing. My question next, I guess around this topic of coaches just popped in my brain because we just came off a bootcamp. And that is, I want to know your opinion because I think if everybody knew by engaging in anyone's coaching program, they would have success, like the belief thing, then there'd be zero stopping them. The stupid example you should give is if I I'd done it from stage. I'd say, here's $100. If someone can find a $100 bill and come up and they rush the stage, why? Because they want the $100. It's definite. I'm right here. So if they knew they could do a deal or they knew they could get the kind of the path from you guys, they'd join like that, right? So what if the, if financial is in their brain, it always is stopping them. What, what do you say to that?

Yeah, the, there, there, you know, the, the Buddhist saying, um, When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. I think, and maybe I didn't get that exactly right, but you get my point. That readiness is, it's all in it. It's within the person themselves. So one of the things that we do at Rewired, and this will come full circle to exactly your answer, is we have an intake where we do a discovery call with somebody and we've got some very specific questions and a lot of it is around their readiness to be coached because we can have the best coaches in the world, and I think we do. And that person can be a high-level person and they can have the money to coach, but if they're not ready themselves, we actually don't take them on specifically because it probably won't work. And I think the same thing for your brand of coaching was specifically with real estate. The person has to be ready. And if they're not ready, trying to pull them over the fence or push them from behind, what I find is it typically doesn't work. But when they're ready and they've made that decision, I think people like Tony Robbins or old Zig Ziglar, when you make the decision, well, then there's no stopping them. And then The coaching actually works really, really well. So when you combine a ready student, and we can't force them to be ready, like they, it's more of the law of attraction than it is this pushing or pulling type of thing when they're ready. And then you combine that with really good coaching or training or teaching or mentoring, whatever you want to call it. It does work. So back to your question, that is the guarantee. When you combine both of those things together, and the most important part is the student has to be ready. When they're ready and they've made the decision, oh man, you combine that with good coaching, it will be a success.

Yeah. Talk about Rewire specifically for a few bits here, Jason, and tied to the, I just love the emotional intelligence phrase, as I said in the opening. So just talk about that a little bit. And by the way, let's insert how they can reach you too.

Yeah.

Just so I don't forget to ask it.

No, I appreciate that. I mean, first of all, Rewire Coaching, we call ourselves mindset coaches. So the world is kind of divided in 2 pieces in the coaching industry of skillset and mindset. And I don't know, 80, 90% of the coaching is skillset coaching. So it's really mentoring, which is great. There's a big spot for that. Hey, you've been to a place that I want to go to, whether that's real estate, Or executives moving up the ladder or learning to be better communicators or whatever it is. I'm a person that maybe I've been an executive and I've been in those shoes and I can teach you, you're early on the path where to go. That's mentoring and that's skillset. How do I set up my day? What types of personality assessments do I need to take? How can I give best feedback? Like there's tactical skillset things to learn there. from somebody that is further along the path than you are. And very important, we're not that brand of coaching. We're mindset coaches. Most of our clients are already doing really well, but they want to either sustain that success, not to the detriment of health or spiritual or relationships or other things. We help them with that, or they want to go from here to here, but again, maybe in less time or better nuances or those types of things. So, We're just big believers in, and we've observed this over time and the data supports this, which is if we can help you change the way that you think, then you'll automatically help yourself change the way that you act from a sustainable standpoint without burnout and all that stuff.

In every area, right?

And that's every area. So that's mindset coaching. So that's what we do. We help the best of the best. We do a lot of mortgage and real estate just because Both myself and my partner came from the mortgage space, but we help all industries. Mindset. If you're a human being, you have mindset. And so it really doesn't matter what industry you're in. So that's, again, that's a very high flyover of our brand of coaching. We're at rewireinc.com. I can be found at jason@rewireinc.com. And then there's, you know, we're all over socials. I'm Rewire Jason. on any of the social outlets.

It's a cool name. I love the name.

Thank you.

Thank you. I had Brian Tracy on my podcast during COVID He was like 82 at the time. And I asked him, because we have a Genius Model, as I said in the intro, that has the 3 pillars that we have, 3 circles, mindset, skillset, as you alluded to, and then systems. And I asked him what he thought. And I think his number was like 95 or 98% is mindset. And he said, I've been wealthy, I've been broke. And no, it's mindset. So you guys are doing great stuff. Do you have, let's try to leave these guys with a nugget to tie this in. Do you have at the top of your mind, it's kind of like either a system or some steps that they could literally take and run with regarding either a business challenge or this taking action stuff to get to the next step? Anything related to that, that we could share a nugget takeaway?

Yeah. I mean, there's a couple of things. First of all, on On our website, rewiring.com, there's all kinds of free tools on there. So there's business planning tools, there's mindset tools. We have a reflection and planning guide that we do every year that we update once a year that's just on there for free. So first of all, there's all that. But what I think about with you in answering that question is this idea of a leadership mindset. And there's Gosh, if we had a ton of time, I could just sketch all this out. But if you think of an iceberg, there's the tip of the iceberg, which are the results that you want to get, and that's what everybody focuses on. Well, right below the tip is still the part that sticks out of the water. Those are the actions. Those are the observable actions that you need to take to get the results that you're looking Below the waterline are your thoughts and emotions. There, I would say for anybody listening and answering your questions, get some scuba gear on and go below the waterline. I don't mean therapy and I don't mean a lot of woo-woo sessions and that type of thing, but maybe it's a journal. Maybe it's writing some things down. Might be a meditation session or 2 that you can do for free, but Getting in touch with that aspect of your life will have much more lasting and sustainable effect on you with those actions as above the waterline types of activities. So there's plenty, again, the free tools, but that's the iceberg model is something that I think of when you ask that question.

I love it. So broad, broad 10,000-foot call to action here, guys. Get over at rewireinc.com and get a bunch of free stuff. Jason, super cool nuggets. We can and should do an encore visit from you because we could dive deeper into each one of these and reference this episode. If you're game for that, we'll leave that out probably for these guys to watch. I'm game.

I appreciate it having you on our show and this has been a lot of fun as well, Chris.

Love it. Thanks, buddy. Have an awesome week and we'll see you soon, I hope.

Thanks so much, Chris.

Okay guys, that wraps up our time together today with Mr. Jason I want to mention, I'd be remiss not to mention, we're sitting here at the end of August and we got the QLS Live event coming up in Boston, Massachusetts, October 6th and 7th. Go to QLS Live. I'm sorry, go to smartrealestatecoach.com/qfspodcast. That's smartrealestatecoach.com/qfspodcast. Guys, this event is unlike if you've been to real estate events, because this is where I hear my calls with people. Well, yeah, I've been to this event and that event and people pitching things. Look, we don't pitch. That's been against our, I'll say against our religion, but against our policy for a long time. We've been at this over a decade. I've been at this 3 decades plus. And I want to bring constantly higher level, higher quality content. And that's what we're bringing. We've got, for example, a speaker coming in talking about AI. That's something you should not miss. We've got a speaker coming in who's had a record. He's one of the top viewed videos in TEDx talks. Guys, these are not wimpy speakers. These are not people pitching. These are speakers bringing it for you. So smartrealestatecoach.com/qvspodcast. Make sure you get there, guys. Let me say this. I'm going to make my guarantee I make every year. When you come to the event in Boston for 2 days, I guarantee you it'll be the 2 days best time spent for you in your entire year of 2025. If you don't feel it was time well spent, come to me at the event and say, Chris, this wasn't what I expected. This wasn't what you said. We will refund you any and all travel expenses to get there. All right? How's that for a guarantee? You can't lose. smartrealestatecoach.com/QLSpodcast. We'll see you there, guys. Boston Maps, 10, 6, and 7. Hey guys, are you simply sick of juggling a dozen different software tools for your real estate business? I know I was, and I know I'm not a tech person, so it was frustrating. A subscription for this, you get a subscription for that, and they don't even work together out of the box. That's very frustrating, especially in the real estate world where your best time spent is going to be out in the field or on the phone with sellers. And now you're stuck hiring a tech guru just to make all that sync up. So let's ditch the chaos and let REI BlackBook handle everything. Automate your lead follow-up, track every deal, analyze things quickly for you, make offers all in one platform. In fact, with the Wicked Smart platform, we now have access, if you're in the Wicked Smart community, to all the other associates' properties. Can you imagine that? So you're brand new in the business perhaps, and your seller looks on your website and sees 20, 30, 40 properties, instant credibility. So you're going to get everything on REI BlackBook from our custom workflows for lead generation all the way to closing. It has it covered. Try it today for just a buck. $1, guys. Visit smartrealestatecoach.com/reibb-dd. smartrealestatecoach.com/reibb-dd. 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 work out of your next steps. See you in the next episode.