20: Learning Discipline with Rob Stein

Welcome to my podcast called you'd Must Be out of youf Mind. My name is Dr. Don Wood. Everyone has experienced some trauma at times during their life. These traumatic events and experiences create a significant impact on how your mind works on a day to day basis. At the same time creates long term effects on your emotional and physical health. It will interfere with your ability to stay present and in the moment. After years of research, I used my knowledge of neuroscience to create what I call a memory reset. This memory reset reduces and eliminates the impact of the trauma and allows you to experience peace and clarity. My podcast will share many stories of people experiencing similar symptoms to you and how their lives have been positively impacted by our TIP program. I can't wait to share with you how the impossible is possible and why you must be out of your mind. And there it is.

Well, welcome to another podcast of youf Must Be out of youf Mind. I'm your host, Dr. Don Wood. And as always, we always bring on some great guests that have some amazing insights, things that I think are important for you to know and learn. And today's another great opportunity to talk to Rob Stein, who's an expert in real estate and investing. So welcome to the youe Must Be out of youf Mind podcast. Rob, nice to see you.

Thank you. Dr. Wood, is it a pleasure to, to see you again. We had you on my show last week and that was such a blast and it's absolutely an honor to be here. So thank you.

Oh, thank you. I'm glad you're able to. I'm glad we're able to get it in before the end of the year. So. Yes, with all the holidays and everything. What do you got going on for the holidays?

Oh, we're, we're going to be taking a much needed break. The baby, this is her second Christmas, but I think the first one she'll really be able to participate in. So we're excited about that. And you know, we grind pretty hard throughout the year, so I am very intentional about taking the break when it comes up. So looking forward to that. That and just wrapping up the book writing my first book, Impossible to Fail, which we're aiming for release in quarter two, so I'm going to be putting the finishing touches on that as well.

Awesome. So, yeah, we talked about that. I love that title because it's such a great time. It's impossible to fail. It really is. If you keep working right, if you just keep working at it, you're going to eventually succeed. You just have to. The odds are in your favor eventually.

That's a. Yeah, that's 100. Right. I say frequently that failure is only failure if it's permanent. Otherwise it's really just a learning experience. And if you rewire your brain to look at unexpected obstacles or unexpected results as learning opportunities, then you realize that it really is impossible to fail. As long as you're doing the right things and you're doing enough of them and you're doing them for a long enough period of time, it really is impossible to fail.

Yeah. So before we go any further, why don't you tell everybody what you do? So everybody's familiar. I'm sure people are somewhat familiar, but maybe just give them a quick recap of what you do.

Yeah, absolutely. So I'm a multi business owning entrepreneur based in Austin, Texas. And you know, I'm just kind of a classic story of someone that was in that 9 to 5 grind that, that worked hard to get out of it. I started out as a middle school music teacher. Music is my first passion. I have a bachelor's in trumpet performance and a master's in education. And over the course of 10 years teaching, I built my first business in the music publication and composition space. And I built that quite significantly. It got me out of teaching into full time entrepreneurship. Around that time I really decided to make a commitment to get healthy. And I went from being real overweight and out of shape to being an award winning natural bodybuilder. Once I got through with competitions, that's when I got involved in real estate. Seeing that real estate is number one very common key to long term wealth. But I also just wanted to have an additional income stream aside from my music business. So we moved here to Austin, Texas. We started a real estate companies went really, really well. The educator in me always wanted to start a team. So I started a fantastic real estate team here. I coach agents now on my team and all over the and being able to help the person I used to be, being able to help that, that entrepreneur, that agent that really wants to take their life.

Get control of it, get control of their finances and really achieve the freedom they've always desired. When I can help people do that as a result of the things I've learned, there's just no better feeling than that. And that's really what I'm focused on now.

Well, I love that and what you talked about with your bodybuilding. So you went from that education then you started getting into, you know, fitness? Yeah, that probably is. I'm a big believer in sports and what it teaches us.

Yes, right.

And athletics. So the discipline that you would have to have to become an award winning bodybuilder, you just apply to the next trade. Right. Which is real estate. So it transitions very well. People go, well, how do you go from a bodybuilder to a real estate investor? Right. Well, it's actually just the same. It's just hard work. And if you're willing to put the discipline and time in, I mean, that's really what sports taught me more than anything else. It wasn't just winning and losing, it was that getting up at 4 o' clock in the morning and going out and playing on a frozen ice rink just to get skating time in. Right?

Yeah. That is 100% accurate. And you know, growing up, I mean, I played tennis, I was okay. I tried swimming for a year because all my friends did it. I sink like a bowling ball. I'm not built for swimming. And I was never really very athletic at all. Music was my sport, band was my sport. It wasn't until I was in my mid-20s that I stumbled upon weightlifting, got into bodybuilding and really found what I call my sport. And the thing that I love so much about it are all the things that you just said is that it is truly a 247 sport of the ultimate discipline, especially when you get into the competitive aspect of it. So sometimes people will ask, you know, what is a bodybuilder? What does that mean? I think it means someone that is really focused on achieving the best possible mental and physical health that they can in combination with achieving an incredible physique. And to do that, especially at the competitive level, it is a 247 sport because you have the, the training aspect where you're in the gym every day, working your muscles, doing your cardio. And then, you know, the body you build is in the gym, but the body you reveal is in the kitchen and through what you eat. And our bodies are not meant to get stage lean. That's way skin, that's way leaner than we're ever meant to be. Your body literally thinks it's dying and starving the closer you get. So you have every fiber of your being inside of you, saying, stop, go sleep, eat lots of food. You're killing yourself. And you say no. And you, and you keep going. I mean, I remember bringing my own cooler of cold chicken and vegetables to my best friend's wedding a week before a competition. And when they said, did you order the chicken or the fish or the vegetarian? And I said, neither. I brought my Own. And then when everyone was toasting with champagne and I held up my gallon jug of water. That's the type of discipline that bodybuilding really takes. And it worked out because I won my show the following weekend. But that, that discipline to achieve that, you know, bodybuilders make great entrepreneurs because they say, just give me a plan and I'm going to follow it. We thrive on discipline, structure, consistency. And so when you can do that at a high level in athletics, like you said, it's very easy to carry that over to another discipline.

Yeah. And may like when you had said that with the bodybuilding, I was just like, I instantly saw that that discipline would translate into the real estate business because it's the same kind of thing. You have to work hard. There's no everybody, I think. I'm not sure if I shared this story on the podcast we did together, but did I share the story about the tennis pro who, who had a big influence on me?

Because tennis, I don't think so, but I'd love to hear it.

My hockey was my number one sport, but tennis was my second sport and I became a tennis teaching pro at 16.

Wow.

Because the guy who was teaching me was my mentor. And so he, he taught me. And I would trade lessons for him by working out some of his students. So I'd run drills for him, he trade lessons with me. And so I was around him all the time. And he said, he sat me down one time and I was about 13, turning 14 that summer. And he said to me, he goes, and he had a Buddhist mentality. He was like such a chill kind of guy. He said, you really want to be a great tennis player, don't you? And I said, yeah. And he goes, he looks around to make sure no one's listening. And he goes, okay, I'm going to tell you the secret. And I'm like, and at 13, you think there's actually really a secret, Right? Okay, I'm getting it now. That's it. It's all over. I'm going to win everything.

Right?

He said to me, he goes, lose a lot. And I said, I don't understand what you mean. And he goes, he says, you're playing in the 13, 14 year old division. You can win in that division. Yeah. He says, I want you to play in the 15, 16 and 17, 18 year old divisions. You're going to lose a lot because they're bigger and faster. He says, but you're a good athlete. You will catch up to that speed. You've just never Seen it before.

That's right.

But in order to get up to that speed, you're going to have to lose a lot. And he says, and then the 13, 14 year old division is going to look like child's play. It's going to look slow to you. Right. But that was a great life lesson. And he said, don't be afraid to lose because you have to lose almost. When you're talking about the impossible to fail, failing is different than losing. Right. Losing is how you get right to winning. You have to lose before you learn how to win. And that's not failure, but people think of losses as a failure. Oh, I failed. No, you lost. Right. But that's how you learn. And sometimes you lose when you play your best and sometimes you lose when you. And sometimes you win when you don't play your best.

Yeah, yeah, that's absolutely right. And the thing is that everyone has experienced this in their life at some point, usually in their childhood. Because when you're younger, you're so excited for new endeavors that you don't really have that kind of mental restraint that you put on yourself of being afraid of to be imperfect at something you don't have experience in. So when you're learning how to ride a bike at a young age, you're just excited to learn how to ride a bike. You don't, you know, and if you fall off, you're not going to say I failed, you're going to say I fell and I'm going to do it again. And that's how it goes when, when you're learning a sport or any skill or even as a professional, or maybe you're in college and you're learning a new skill set for a job, you're just excited for that skill set. It's especially as we get older, older, I find, and we, there are new things that we want to try. We're used to being good at things and no one likes doing things they're not good at. So especially the older you get. And people that become entrepreneurs oftentimes don't start that way. Sometimes they do if maybe they have an entrepreneurial family or they have an influence in that. But, but oftentimes, and I'm a perfect example of this, and I know you are too from our conversation last week, is that we started in one place and then decided we want to stop working for other people and start building something for ourselves. And at that time, especially as an adult, it's easy to say, oh, but I'm scared. I don't want to fail because I'm afraid to mess up. But if you think back to any other experience where you have gained a high skill set at something, it came from experience, good or bad, it came from when you achieved success going, this worked, I'm going to do it again. Or if something didn't go as planned, you say, well, this didn't work. But now that leads me to know what does work. And I can now avoid making that mistake again because I'm going to learn from it. And a lot of my biggest personal and business developments have come from my biggest crashes or my biggest learning experiences, like when I decided to get fit. This is a true story, and it's in. It's in my book. I was just getting. I had graduated college. I was very busy, but I was very sedentary, and I was on the road a lot, eating junk, getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And so my belts were getting tighter and tighter and tighter. So I was getting ready to go judge a marching band competition. 1. One cold November day, and I'm standing in my bedroom and I'm wrestling with this belt that I typically worn four or three loops in, no problem. And gradually it gets tighter and tighter. Now I really can't even get it into the first loop. And I'm holding my breath and I'm sweating and I'm fighting. And I finally got the belt on. And as I exhaled this sigh of relief, the belt buckle popped off. The belt flew across the room in a straight line and made a hole in the wall.

Oh my gosh.

It was like something straight out of a sitcom. But it actually happened, and it was not funny at the time. My jaw hit the floor and I just couldn't believe that happened. And I said to myself, oh my God, that only happens to really out of shape people. Like, did that really just happen to me? The next day I went to a gym for like, the first time ever, because I didn't have a scale in my house. And I weighed myself and I was certain, certain I was going to be. I mean, I'm 5 4, I'm not a tall guy. I was certain I was going to be 170, 180 pounds at most. And it turns out I was about 210 pounds, which at 54 and no muscle is not good. And I was so ashamed of myself, of my weight. And the incident that happened the day before with the belt. And that was the thing that said I must take control because I'm going to eat my way into an early grave if I Don't change something here.

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And I took control of that. And then I achieved something I never thought I could in the bodybuilding world and building an amazing physique and living a healthy lifestyle. And I will never go back to the way I was before. But it took that event, that what many would call a failure, to turn it around and then achieve something great. And so if you, if you take those experiences as experiences and let them fuel you, those will be the best things that you'll be most grateful for in your life. Because if you take the opportunity to learn from them and don't fail because you don't quit, that's when you're really going to make the serious growth.

That's a great story and it's a great. People understand that because they always feel like they'll give up at that point. So the question is, do you give up or do you do something about it? And you decided to do something about it and everybody's capable of it, but at the time you're probably thinking, how am I going to do this right? And it's not going to happen tomorrow, it's going to happen after you, you work at it for a little while. Yeah, but everybody wants that instant success and, and it's not going to come in, so it's going to be hard work. And that's really what I learned. What sports taught me more than anything is that there's no easy way, right? You have to work at everything, no matter what level you get to. So you got to the professional level, right? The air's a Lot thinner up there. The competition's a lot tougher. Right. The, the separation between the best and the 10th best is so small. Yes, but it's that, you know, that extra hour you put in last week at the gym, or the extra time that you put in, or the discipline you have to go to a wedding and eat chicken and vegetables and carry water.

Yeah, that's absolutely right. And, and, you know, you hit on something that's very important to achieve serious things, which is delayed gratification, which is the opposite of instant gratification. And in today's world, I mean, humans have always wanted instant gratification. The problem is, up until really quite recently in our evolution, we haven't been able to get it even as, you know, 150 years ago, even. You want water, go to the river, get your water. Don't drop it on the way back. If you want to eat, go hunt. If you want somewhere to live, build a house. And now, in such a short amount of time, we are conditioned for instant gratification. You want to buy something, hit a button on your phone. It's going to be on your door in 30 minutes. You want food, go to the grocery store or go to a restaurant and have someone bring it to you. You want to know something, hop on Google and find out the answer to literally any question you could have in three seconds. And people are used to that now. And so the reality is, though, that that delayed gratification is essential if you want to accomplish big things. And when you're. The further you are from your goal, the more you need to flex that muscle of delayed gratification. So, for example, if a real estate agent were to come to me and say, I want to learn how to close an extra two deals a year, that's not going to take a ton of delayed gratification. That's really easy to do. But if they're closing two deals a year and they want to close 20 deals a year, that's going to take a lot of work. And it's not going to happen overnight, but it will happen if they do the right things for long enough. And the ability to have delayed gratification. There's never been an entrepreneur or anyone that's accomplished anything of note that has not been able to flex the delayed gratification muscle. And I've done some research on it because we've all probably heard the. The Stanford Marshmallow Experiment story. So I'll recap that real quick. In the 1970s, Stanford University took a whole bunch of little kids and they're in a room with a scientist and the scientist brings them a little treat like a marshmallow or a cookie or something similar. And they say, okay kid, you can have this one treat right now. Or if you wait 15 minutes, I leave for 15 minutes and I come back and the treat is still here, I'll give you another one so you can have two. And they used that experiment to track kind of the innate delayed gratification that kids had and where did it take them. And some kids couldn't wait. They ate it up right away. Some kids tried a few minutes but couldn't stand the pressure. And some kids had no problem waiting 15 minutes for the second treat. And they tracked these kids over decades. And initially they found that the kids with better delayed gratification were more successful. They had better education, they made more money, they had better body mass index, they were healthier, they were kind of better at life. And that's as far as it went. But actually, and I recently found this out, there was a follow up study done within like the past five years and they actually found 113 of those original people and said, where are they now? And yeah, and it was really very fascinating. And they took 11 specific principal measurements including income, debt to income, social status, health body mass index and similar things. And what they found is that while the original study did have some indication as to how delayed gratification would play out for these people in the future, it wasn't the only thing that mattered. Because a lot of the people that may be tested well for delayed gratification at a younger age didn't maintain it and didn't maintain the self development of continuing that and they fell off of those markers. But the people that continued staying on top of it and developing that for themselves actually scored very high in those 11 markers. So what I took from that and what all of the listeners should be very, really enthusiastic about here is that just like with anything, you may have an initial talent for it. Like, like for me, delayed gratification was very strong at a young age. I had no problem with it. Some people may not have a lot of delayed gratification innately, but this study proves you don't have to. Anyone can achieve it. Anyone can get better at that skill and develop it, regardless of if you're born with it or not. Just like I'm not naturally skinny or naturally easy to lose weight, I'm the opposite. I have a hard time losing weight. So I had to work harder than someone that just might grow up skinny. But I could still do it. And anyone can flex that delayed gratification muscle.

That's a great lesson because it's the same thing. Though one of the things that I'd like to add to it, because it's what we do, is one of the reasons why some of those kids probably couldn't delay that gratification is because of the home environment they're growing up in.

Yes.

So if you are constantly disappointed and let down. Right. I mean, I can. I can't tell you how many people I meet who will tell me that they sat sitting on their doorstep waiting for their father or their mother to pick them up for a visitation and they never showed up. Right. Or didn't show up for holidays or birthdays. So now you take that child and you put them in that room and you put a marshmallow in front of them and they eat it. Of course they would. Yep. Because their experience had taught them that you don't wait because you may lose out if you have to wait.

That's right.

That may not have anything to do with their innate ability. This is just exactly what you're talking about. It doesn't mean you're born with it and it doesn't mean you can't overcome it. So if you had had a lot of that kind of disappointment in your life as a child, it may be very easily in that kind of an experiment to look like you failed it, when in fact, your experience has told you, you better jump on this marshmallow right now, because chances are it's gone.

That's right. Yeah, you're absolutely right. And the beauty of it is, once you're old enough to be independent and be completely in control of your own decisions, that's when you're in control to really make the magic happen if you want to. Similarly, on that note, I have found a lot of people that are successful physique competitors on stage that I've met over the course of my life, since I got into it. Used to be very overweight as a kid. And in my opinion, you know, maybe you got some genetic things going on, but by and large, if you're overweight as a kid, it's usually because of your home atmosphere. It's the food that you're eating, it's the food that's put in front of you that that's just what you're going to eat. And you're going to eat as much as you want to. Or if your family eats a lot of fast food, then by default you're Eating a lot of fast food, and you don't have control because you're 8 years old to say, I don't want to eat this stuff, right? It just happens. And then as you get older and you actually have control and. And you're buying your own groceries and you're taking yourself to the gym, now you have a desire to improve something and you have the ability to do it. Whereas on the flip side, a lot of adults that start out with maybe as kids with fast metabolisms, and they can literally eat whatever they want and still be thin, and they never get made fun of for being fat, and that's just never anything that's even on their radar. Then they get older. Now they're in their 20s and their 30s and their early 40s, and now their body slows down. They never learned how to eat right. They never learned how to take care of themselves, and they just get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. But they have no desire to take control because it's never something that they had to worry about. And so to just to kind of piggyback along what you were saying. Sometimes your childhood environment will set you up for not ideal circumstances. But the beauty is, as you get older, when you learn enough, you have complete control. So if you're listening to this and there is any aspect of your life that isn't where you want it to be, the good news is you're in complete control to change that. And it may take longer than you think, but there is nothing that you can't accomplish with the right education and developing consistency in the right habits for a long enough period of time.

The consistency thing is one of the things that I'm really big on too. It's how you do everything. Like, what do you do? So it's not just in real estate. How do you do everything in your life? And this, to me, came back again. I always go back to sports is I only knew one way to play, and that was hard. And I remember as a great example, and I've shared this a number of times. I share it with my kids. I was playing, we were losing 11 nothing. And the puck goes back to the defenseman. I go racing out, he goes to take a slap shot. I go to block the shot, and I blocked it right in the stomach. That is so painful, right? And so I'm. I get over to the bench and I'm totally out of breath. I'm totally winded. And I'm sitting on the bench, and my teammate says to me, what are you doing? It's 11 nothing. Why are you trying to block a shot? And my answer was, because I don't want it to be 12 nothing. Yeah. That's the only way I knew how to play. I played it the same way. If you. And my attitude was always, if you walked into the arena and you didn't look at the scoreboard, you wouldn't be able to tell what the score was. By the way I played. Yep. You would think it was a tied game or we're down one nothing or something. The way I played, whether it was 11 nothing or 12 nothing. Right. I was going to play the same way. But that's that same kind of consistency that you're just talking about. So it's not just discipline, but it's consistency in everything you do. And I, I, I love the fact when you said, as a bodybuilder, it's true, it's 24 hours. You can't just say, oh, I really worked out hard, four hours at the gym, I'm going to stop by, you know, Dairy Queen on the way home.

I deserve it. That's right. Yeah. And.

The great thing that I love, I often make bodybuilding analogies to business and life. And one of the things I like about making bodybuilding analogies is a lot of people can understand it because pretty much everyone has had some experience with weight loss or weight gain or trying to do something with their health and their physique. And part of developing consistency.

With discipline is that it's, you don't always feel like being consistent. Just like discipline, by definition, you're doing something when you don't want to do it. That's discipline. Doing something with relentless consistency, regardless of how you feel, that is discipline. Right. So if you really are excited to do something, it doesn't really take discipline to do that because you're excited. Just like courage is doing something in the face of fear. If you're not afraid, you're not being courageous. If you're afraid and you do it now, you're being courageous. So consistency. One thing I think there's a big misconception out there, partly due to social media and just media in general, is I think a lot of people have the misconception that entrepreneurs, we are just constantly, ever fulfilled and our heart is full and we're so excited every day and we get up and say, I love what I'm doing 24 7, and my life is amazing and I have complete control and just spouting all of this positivity. And the reality is that that is oftentimes what the outside perspective is. The back end of being an entrepreneur is not like that at all. And quite often we spend our time doing things we don't want to be doing. But when that happens, remember that you don't always have to be passionate about what you're doing, and oftentimes you won't be, but you do need to be passionate about why you are doing it. And when you're passionate about why you're doing it, that is when the consistency comes. So trust me, as a bodybuilder especially, you know, typically when you see someone on stage, the better they look, the more they suffered. The word suffering is very common in the bodybuilding world because you can't look like that if you're not suffering to a high degree, and you really can't understand it until you experience it yourself. But when you get four to six weeks out of a contest, you are suffering all day because every part of your instinct, I mean, just literally moving is hard. You know, like dropping something and picking it up is hard because your body literally thinks it's on its way out. And. And to have every fiber of your instinctual being, right, like millions of years of evolution telling you, stop this, and you say, no, I'm going to take control, I'm going to suffer, I'm going to hate it, but I'm going to do it anyway because I have this goal that is the essence of discipline and bodybuilding, but that is also the essence of consistency. And it's okay to not feel like being consistent, but what's not as okay is if you let your feelings get in the way. But, you know, emotions are a very human thing, like animals do what they need to do, right? Who knows if they feel it or not. But with humans, a lot of times we let our emotions get in the way and say, I'm not feeling motivated today. Well, you're not going to feel motivated every day, and that's okay. What's not okay is to let that feeling stop you from taking action on the habits, on the consistency, on the things that you're supposed to be doing that you know you should be doing. And when you just take action anyway, even if you don't feel like it, that is what is really going to push the needle forward.

Yeah, well, one of the things I always talk about is the purpose of an emotion, is that that's the way the subconscious mind communicates, uses emotions as a call for an action, wants you to do something. The purpose of fear is to escape a Threat. The purpose of anger is to attack a threat. So if you have an emotion, you have to then say, what is my mind asking me to do? Just like you were talking about. It's either stop it, shut down. Right. Even pain is a message. Pain is a message to shut down. Right. Or stop doing something because we're going to get injured. So the only way the mind communicates is through emotions, feelings and sensations. That's how it communicates with you. And so. And what I do, which is the. The trauma side of it, is if you have an emotion, when you think about Something that happened 10 years ago, I say that's a glitch. It's an error message. Your mind thinks something's still happening. It's seen trauma in real time. And so the emotion is coming because the mind says, don't let them hurt you. Run away, do something. Because it's looking at old data in real time.

Right.

So emotions are purposeful. You just need to decide whether or not the emotion is going to call for the action that you want or don't want. Right. But like you said, chances are, if you're in pain, it's going to say, like, what are you doing? Stop this, Rob, you're hurting us. Like, stop it. Right. It's going to create an emotion. That's when you have to sort of try to override that.

Yeah.

And then the other thing, too, I wanted to hit on because I thought was really very valuable. What you had said a little bit earlier, and this may be before we even started, but you talked about. So we've talked about consistency and discipline. So, yes, you need consistency, you need discipline, but you also need education because you could go into the gym, right, and say, I'm going to really work all my right side. Right. Because you think that's the greatest. I heard this online somewhere. Somebody told me, if you strengthen your right side, you're going to be the best bodybuilder in the world. And you're doing it all wrong. Right. So you have to get education along with the discipline, along with the consistency. So I know you are big on education, so tell me what your thought was on that.

Yeah, absolutely. And I appreciate you bringing that up. You know, the Impossible to fail framework. That name came up because I was talking with my marketing team and we were just trying to figure out the right, you know, title for this thing. And I was just talking through my process of how I've been able to achieve success at many things that are completely unrelated to each other, like music. And then Fitness and then real estate and then coaching.

And it all came from just me saying, you know, the systems I provide myself with, I really just want to set myself up in a way that makes it impossible to fail. And they said, where did, where. That's, let's roll with that. Like, where does that come from? And really, it starts with the foundation of the impossible to fail framework is getting what I call the blueprint. And the blueprint is the, the education that is coming from someone that has achieved exactly what you're trying to do and has a track record of helping others achieve the same thing. So if we think to, let's say education, when people go through school or college, everyone will agree that when you are trying to learn a new skill set, you get a teacher, right? If, if you're going to college, you say, well, I want to learn how to be an electrical engineer. Great. You, you go to school and you learn from electrical engineers who have the experience, because only the experience can actually teach what it is that you should be doing. And yet, when it comes to self development, when it comes to entrepreneurship, for some reason, there's a complete disconnect there where people say, no, I don't want to do that.

I think part of it is when you go through public school or college, it's just the way we're programmed here in the United States to say, like, yes, I pay for those things. Yet when you're out of college, you know, 99 of people do not spend $1 furthering their education after college. They don't read nonfiction books, they don't go to seminars, they don't take classes. But when you, when you become an entrepreneur or, or even if you're, let's say you're like, you're like I was. And I'm out of shape and I want to get fit. What happened was I tried it on my own for a while and I had no idea what I was doing. And guess what? I got worked really, really hard burning my wheels in neutral. I would. First I started running because that's what you do when you want to lose weight, right? Well, maybe, but it's not great on the joints. You're not going to develop a good physique from running. You're just going to maybe burn some calories. But I would run and then reward myself with a Caesar salad with like 800 calories of dressing, right? So, so I don't, I, you know, I had no idea what I was doing. And I was, I spent about six months trying everything I would Go to the gym. And I'd say I'm going to use all the machines in this row, whatever that means. Like I don't, I didn't even know they look good. Yeah. And nothing was happening. I lost a little bit of weight, but I felt like I just wasn't gaining any traction. Eventually I found I saw an infomercial for P90X. I'm sure a lot of people remember Tony Horton. He completely revolutionized the at home, you know, gym workout with P90X. Transform your body in 90 days. And the thing that was intriguing to me about it was, well, you get DVDs in the mail and you follow along with the DVDs. I don't have to think about it. I just have to do what he's doing with the equipment that he's using. And then they give you this handy little nutrition plan. And I just follow the nutrition plan. So it seems like he knows what he's doing. It seems. And then they show before and after pictures and I say to myself, well, he doesn't just know what he's doing. It seems like all of these people that follow the plan have gotten results and I want to get those results. So I ordered the DVDs, they came in the mail. And I remember the first day I put it on, I couldn't do any of it. I mean this dude's ripped and he's like 30 push ups, 30 pull ups. You know, I do five pull ups and I. And my chest hits the ground. I can't even lift my heel off the ground for a pull up yet. So it actually took me 180 days. I did the 90 day program twice because it took me 90 days just to be able to do the workout in the first place. But the cool thing was after I finished the first 90 days and I'm able to actually start doing some stuff, I'm like, I see I've lost weight, I see a little outline of my abs. I didn't even know those were under there. I'm going to commit. Let's go hard, let's do it again. And then after this second set of 90 days. So it's been six months. In six months I accomplished something that I went 25 years thinking that was impossible for me to accomplish because I said my body's not meant to look like that. Of course everyone wants a beach body, but it's just not in the cards for me. And in six months from following the right blueprint, I did it. I lost 80 pounds, had a little six pack, set the beach. It was awesome. And then I got into the gym and found bodybuilding. And by then, I didn't mess around. I got a bodybuilding coach, I got a plan. When I started competing, I got a coach. And then I was like, man, blueprints are where it's at. I became a real estate agent from day one. I got a coach. When I started my team, I got a coach on hiring my team. When I started coaching people, I hired a coach that teaches you how to coach. Right? And the blueprint is where it's at. And earlier you said your tennis coach told you, I'm going to tell you a secret. And the reality is that when people tell you there's, there's. There's no secrets, there's no shortcuts, that's not entirely true. The reality is there is a secret and there is a shortcut. And the answer is education, right? Because you can try to figure it out on your own and you have no idea what to do, or you can guarantee that you're going to take the fastest path to where you need to go by avoiding pitfalls, by avoiding mistakes, and by doing the things that are guaranteed to produce the results you want. And how do you know what those things are and aren't? Through education, it's the only way to go. And especially when you are, in this case, an entrepreneur, you're trying to launch a business you don't have forever. Like, there's a certain amount of point that you have to make a certain amount of money or accomplish a thing before you have to stop doing what you're doing. And so, because time is of the essence, the only answer, in my opinion, is to get the education from day one. Because then, you know, you're on the fast track, you're doing the right things, you're avoiding the wrong things. You can fail faster and start achieving the success you want as quickly as possible, but you have to get the right blueprint to do it.

Yeah. And that's, again, just great advice. And. And one of the best things I think as well, is how do you know who's got that advice? That's one of the biggest problems, right? Because you can go out, hire somebody, and the guy has no clue. You know, he went out and got business cards at the local printing shop, right? You need to interview them, you need to check out their testimonials, talk to people who have done it. Like you said, when you saw, well, this guy, obviously, right, this Tony guy's got the body to show he's done it. But he's got the testimonials. Right. Then you sort of take that as some credibility.

Yeah, that's 100% right. And in the book, in the impossible to fail book, there's actually a whole chapter dedicated to how do you find the blueprint, how do you know who to get it from? And especially these days, it's easier than ever to figure that out because we have tons of ways to do due diligence on people. You ask them to verify that they've done what they're doing. If you want to invest in real estate and you're hiring a coach, ask him, show me your portfolio. Like, show me the documents, show me your tax returns, show me that you're actually doing this thing. Or if you see someone with a great physique, maybe they were just born that way, show me what you did and show me the other people. So you can do a deep dive on people. You know, if you're going to go all in on someone, I recommend, of course, how do you do your due diligence? Well, they should probably have a website. They probably have a one sheet. Most people these days have a YouTube channel with free content that you can check out and say, do I resonate with this person? Do I like the way they do business? Or like, if you want to learn from Dr. Don Wood, well, he's got a couple of incredible books and a best selling podcast that you can check out and see. Is this the person I want to learn from? Then before you really go all in, most people have some low ticket items that they do. They might have a 100 or $200 course or little online thing that you can do before you invest some more money in them. But I agree with you completely. You got to do your due diligence to see who do I want to get the blueprint from. And I do think it's ideal that you pick one person. Not saying you should ignore everything else, but some people tend to hop around. I'm going to do two weeks with this person. Oh, then I found this person. Then I found it. And you really just got to find that person that you resonate with, that has the track record, that has the results, that has the track record of helping other people and just go all in with them for a little while and just follow it to a T, implement it. Don't try to reinvent what they're teaching you because you don't know enough to do that. Just do exactly what they say, ask the clarifying questions and go as Fast as you can.

Yeah. I mean. And again, again, if you'd look at the best athletes, I'm a golfer now, so I love golf.

Right.

The greatest golfers in the world, including guys like Tiger woods and Rory McElroy and Justin Thomas, they all have coaches. Now, could their coach go out and beat them?

No.

Way. On the golf course, they're going to beat their student. Right. But they can see things that the, the student can't see. Tiger. And again, I use golf as a great example. You can take a golf swing and you can finish your golf swing and your coach could say, you closed the club a little bit at the top and you'll go, no, it didn't feel like that what you did, but it didn't feel like that. You can't see those little. And at their level, you know, it's one degree that can make the difference.

Yes.

Right. And so the more you can listen to somebody who's got the expertise just because, you know, they're not maybe super wealthy. Right. But they know the knowledge and they enjoy working with people. You have to really look at that as well, like who are people who are knowledgeable as well as successful. And sometimes the guys who are the most successful are not great teachers, are not great coaches. Right. So doesn't necessarily translate. You got to find the right, right person. And again, education I look at, again, from hockey. One of the best things that happened to me in hockey was again, just another little lesson. It's sort of the Lou Holtz message where he says, I never learned anything while I was talking. Yeah, but I had, I had a team that I played for and there was always this other team that was arrival. We were one and two all the time and. But I was a leading goal scorer in the league. They had a better team, but because I was a better goal scorer, we were very competitive. So they were tried to recruit me to come and play for their team and said, with you and our team, we could probably take everything. And so I, I thought about it and I was thinking, maybe I will. My team wouldn't release me because we signed contracts over there. And I said, well, this is an opportunity for me to advance my career.

Right.

You know, because I want to try to play in the NHL. He said, nope. And I said, well, that's not fair. I've played, you know, for the team. I played really hard. Give me an opportunity, they wouldn't do it. So I sat out the first 10 games and our team went one and nine.

So that was a little bit Satisfying. I kept watching this, this, the stats and what was going on. But then eventually I couldn't sit out the season. So I came back, not real happy to see me, even my teammates, but they're happy because they have a better chance of winning. But we had a new trainer on the team, and he wasn't the coach, but he was the trainer. But I remember I was warming up and he was the one guy would talk to me because he didn't have that bad feeling, right? And I'm skating around during warmups and he calls me over and he says, tell me what you're doing when you warm up. And I was like, wow, this guy's really green. He doesn't know anything. I said, we're shooting on our goalie, getting warm, skating, getting, you know, circulation going. He says, so you're shooting on your goalie, right? I said, yeah. And he goes, have you watched them shoot on their own goalie? And I was like, no. And he goes, their team's going to show you his weakness.

Boom.

What a brilliant concept. And so he says, so when you're skating around, watch to see what I see. You may only get one shot in this game. Don't you want to take your best shot? If. And so he says, I've been watching that goalie and he's actually pretty slow moving from to his right side right on low shots. Now. I said, maybe he's just being lazy in the warmups, but at least it's worth watching for. He says, if you get one shot, go low, stick side. And it was brilliant. I ended up 25% more goals and assists, even though I sat out 10 games.

Wow.

On that one little tiny piece of advice. Then I watched it all the time.

Yeah, it's amazing how really only one piece of advice can, can really change your life or the way someone says something or one tip that you learn. For me, the thing that got me, I'm a big advocate on spending money for education. I have a long YouTube video about it I just released. It's. It's really important because when you spend money on education, you're financially committed to it. There's something that happens rather than watching YouTube or doing something for free because you feel more obligated and motivated to implement what you're learning because you're spending money on it. The more money you spend, the more fire you have under your butt to say, I'm really going to implement this. So, you know, when I started going to high ticket events, three to $5,000 weekends, you know, I come back and I really implement what I learned. And they have dramatic shifts. But I didn't start there. The first time I ever really spent significant money was when I got into real estate and I had, I was getting ready to start my team. I had already achieved a top producer status as a solo agent and I was really trying to find the right coach that would help me start my team. And I happened to get just like an email blast from this local coacher who happened to be one of the top in the industry. I haven't heard of him at the time, but I did my due diligence on him and I was like, wow, this guy's like one of the top names in all of real estate. And it, and the, and the course was endorsed by someone who I did know who was a complete titan of the industry. And I was like, well, this guy must be worth it. He's got a group coaching course. It's just a few hundred bucks. If I get one deal out of it, I'll make, you know, a hundred times my roi. So let's check it out. And in the second week of his group coaching, he unveiled just a little technique with, with closing scripts, meaning when you're trying to set an appointment or get someone to agree to work with you. It was just, literally was a one paragraph thing, but it was just structure your sentence or your phrase in this way, in this order, using these words and this vocal inflection. Really, I mean, it was like a 15 minute lesson. It was, was, you know, it was just brilliant. I was like, I'm going to try this. I hadn't heard of this before. Within one week of implementing this technique, I got four new contracts which led to over $60,000 in commissions.

And so that was the indicator that said this guy, he told me one thing that made that much of a dramatic shift in my business. Imagine what I could do if I actually really bought into this dude. And so we set up a call and I asked him, do you do one to one coaching? And he said, yeah, you can spend a thousand dollars a month and work with one of my team members or you can spend fifteen hundred dollars a month and work directly with me. What do you. And at the time I said, holy smokes, I could. So that's a lot of money every month. Oh my gosh. But I also knew that, well, I paid a few hundred dollars and I just made 60 grand from implementing one thing. And so again, if I close one deal out of it, I'm going to pay for my whole year of coaching. But if I'm serious about starting my team, I need to invest in the best. And this guy has already proven that he is worth it. Within seven months of learning from him, I started my team and had my first hundred thousand dollar month as a team leader. And it didn't happen right away because month three and four the team wasn't profitable. And I remember having a conversation with him saying, dude, I don't know about this, I think I might bail because I'm spending so much money every month. I got a $20,000 commission in out the door to just keep building this thing. And he says, trust me, I've had this conversation before. You have what it takes. Keep your head down, keep pushing through. By the end of the year, your life is going to be way different than you could have ever thought possible. And I trusted him and I said okay. And that's exactly what happened. But it took investing in the right education and just hearing these things that maybe I've heard before, but the way he was able to tell me these things, the way he was able to teach me and the new things he was able to teach me were just unbelievable. And when I said I'm going to be hiring agents taking their career in my hands, they trust me. I want to go to sleep at night knowing I'm providing them the best value. And so I was able to do that through knowing I was getting the best education. And when I implemented it, it all came together. But you're completely right also in that just because someone has achieved something doesn't mean they're qualified to teach other people how to do it. But, and I think part of the reason where people have trouble spending money on education or coaching is pretty much everyone has had an experience that didn't turned out the way they thought it would. Someone promised them the world, they spend money and they didn't get what they want or expected. And they say, well, this doesn't work, I don't want to do that again. But the reality is it's just the cost of doing business. And that's really the definition of being an entrepreneur. You take greater risk than most people will take. Some things work out, some don't. But guess what? When something doesn't work out, well, now you've learned how to avoid that mistake and you've learned what not to do and you know better how to do your homework on people that you're going to invest in in the future.

Yeah, great, great advice. So if people want to work with you how do they do it? What would, what would they need to do? If they want to get advice from you, have you as their coach?

Yeah, absolutely. Well, the first thing they should do is check out my sales course. It was recently released. It took two years to build. It's called Earth to Orbit. For real estate agents that really want to get off the ground, get into orbit, take their career to a new level, and you can go to Earth to Orbit training dot com. That's Earth to Orbit training dot com. Now, before you're ready to do that, if you just say, let me just do a deep dive on Rob and really see if he's worth my time, which you should be doing, then go over to my YouTube channel and check out Rob Stein TV. That's S T E I N Robstein TV. I have a whole bunch of free content on there. And I also do a free real estate mastermind every Tuesday at 11am Central. And you can register for that at zoom with rob.com. it's completely free. Show up with your questions and let me add value to your business. Let me show you how I can help you make more money and decide if I'm the guy you want to work with. And I know that if you're willing to implement, you're going to see that we can do well together. Because the thing that really differentiates me aside from my real estate experience is the fact that I have a master's degree in education and I've been teaching and consulting for 20 years. And so I don't just have the real estate experience. I have that experience as a teacher, as an educator, to convey this information in a way that's fun, that's easy to understand and easy to implement. Because anyone that's involved in entrepreneurship in general, especially real estate, has probably gone to a workshop or seminar that they leave and they say, I don't understand anything. Like I'm motivated, but I don't know how to do what that guy did. He didn't teach me how to implement what he did. And I'm always going to teach you literally the tools that you can implement same day to start making progress, much like you do Dr. Wood, where people can come to you for that four hour session and they leave in their life is transformed. That's what I'm able to do for the agents that choose to align with me.

It sounds great. So you're listening to this and you don't take advantage of, don't take advantage of this. You must be out of your mind.

Couldn't have said it better.

So, again, I encourage you to listen to everything that Rob was just saying. Just check those things out, because that's the best way to get your education on what Rob. And then sometimes you're just going to resonate with that person. Right. Which I think a lot of people will after hearing this. So I appreciate you coming on and sharing your wisdom, and I'm sure a lot of people are going to benefit from it. And any other things you want to add before we finish up here?

No, I would just say, Dr. Wood, thank you so much for having me on. It's been an honor, and my mindset was dramatically transformed when you came onto my show last week. And just for the listeners here, I hope you realize the. The complete gem to humanity that you have here. And listening to Dr. Wood, because he really. He really is quite transformative, and I just appreciate the opportunity to be here. So, again, thank you.

Thank you for the kind words, and I hope you have a great holiday. And for everybody else who's listening, you listened to another episode of youf Must Be out of youf Mind, and there it is. Thanks, Rob.

Thank you, sir.