How To Stop Drifting and Start Thriving In Life | John Gafford

Why do we get addicted to pain?

It's easier to believe there's no solution than to take massive accountability in yourself and find the solution.

How did you get on the Apprentice? Out of 1.8 million applicants, I launch.

Into like all of my great accolades. Why I'd be the perfect candidate to work for Donald Trump. I could just see the room slipping away. I was losing them just rapidly. I knew I was cooked right. I was like, that did not go well. Yeah. Comes in and he goes, hey, they want to see you again. So I hit the minibar, walk upstairs, there's double doors. I kicked them as hard as I could. Bam. And they hit the wall, flung open. All the NBC people jumped.

I said, how have you built your company?

When I bought it, they'd been in for 70 years and they had 42 agents. Eighteen months later, I built it to two offices and 200 plus agents.

You get these top performers and you've recognized them. How did you build that culture?

I believe virtual companies. Great. Good for you. The magic in your company is the conversations that are happening with within the hallways.

You could tell your 25 year old self one thing. When you were drifting, what would you say?

Just.

Welcome back to the Hannah Hammond Show. I am sitting here today with John Gafford, who is a real estate entrepreneur. He owns one of the largest luxury real estate brokerages in Vegas. He was on season three of the Apprentice, chosen out of 1.8 million applicants. I think I read. And you're an author, speaker and you're about to release your new book that is so aligned with my mission and my message too, called Escaping the Drift and how to build. Build a life for you that happens for you, that you create by design and not settle into mediocrity and this mode of just drifting through life and being intentional about what you want to create. So I'm super excited to get to know you and thanks for coming on the show.

Yeah, Hannah, glad to be here. Yeah.

So let's talk about your origin story. What before you started, had all your success. Right now you have this thriving company and you were on the show, you got national attention. We what was causing you to feel like you were drifting? How did that show up in your life before you had your success?

Well, you know, for me, I didn't have any massive success in life until early 30s. You know, I had a lot of cool jobs, I did a lot of cool stuff, but I wasn't really getting paid, wasn't building any wealth, wasn't doing anything and everything that I had going was kind of at the control of others. I was an employee. I was working for other people. I was being transferred across the country at will a lot by a major corporation that I worked for. And, yeah, it just seemed like I was drifting along. And I think part of that comes from just sort of the way that I grew up. Child of the 80s where your parents got divorced young, which so many people are. That's not a. Not. Not too rare of a story, but kind of that hustler mentality of that. When you come home from school, there's nobody there, so you kind of got to figure it out and start kind of hustling. And for me, that became like, how can I figure out how to get other people to do things for me? From, how can I get the neighbor mom to make me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich because my mom's not there? To how can I hustle my parents to get. For them to both pay for the same bike part and then pocket the money when they're not paying attention for one of them? And, you know, I just always had this thing that somebody's coming to save me. And as a kid, it was always like, well, my dad was always going to save me. There was always a safety net. And I was like John C. Reilly and stepbrothers, where even though I didn't go to law school, I was always like, well, I'll get in the family business. My father's like, you're not an attorney attorney. Like, what are you talking about? But, yeah, it went from my father's gonna save me. And then in my early 20s, it manifested into girlfriends. It was like, I would get a girlfriend and then move in with them inside of, like, two or three months. And, you know, then they would be taking care of me. And it was just always somebody kind of taking care of me. And I think so many people drift through life with their. Their life being designed by the whims of others. And especially, you know, somebody asked me why I write the book now. And I feel like since COVID right. I think Covid was the catalyst for so much in our society, and so many things happened. But this level of apathy that has just drifted into all phases of people's life since then. And I use the restaurant business as an example. If you're a server, don't take the offense to this. But, like, back in the day, especially in Vegas, we have every amazing restaurant in the world in Vegas. We just have. We're just lucky to have that. And it used to be. Every time you went to a meal, it was like, man, that was just exceptional. The service was exceptional, the food was exceptional. And now those exceptional moments in restaurants tend to really stand out because everybody's just kind of going through the motions. And I find that in the real estate industry, in the retail industry, in the, in, in the restaurant industry, every industry, there's this level of apathy that's running through. And with AI coming, and it's coming, I. Last night I was laying in bed. I don't know if you saw this yet. See the Neo robot thing yet. Did you see that? Oh my gosh. You can buy a humanoid robot for your house already. It'll do all your choice. Yeah, it looks, it's little. Yeah. Shipping 2020, early 2026.

How much is it?

20,000 to buy or 500 bucks a month?

Are you kidding?

Yeah, it'll do all your laundry, it'll do all your chores. I mean, we're here, we're here. And if you don't take control of the direction of your life and figure it out now, you're gonna have a real problem. So my mission has become, you know, the book itself is kind of a user's manual to my dipshit 27 year old self, if you will. And it's kind of if I could go back in time and say, just do all of this stuff, you'll be okay. It's not hyperbole, it's an actual playbook and step by step things you can do to escape that and get to where you want to be.

I love that. And it's so, it sounds like you weren't raised in a low income family. Your dad was an attorney.

Yeah.

Okay, so you had this sense of self reliance and this, this safety net in some way.

Yeah, but it was a weird deal, right? So my parents got divorced like I said, when I was very young. And I think one of the worst things you can do on this planet if you are a young woman with kids is divorce. A young southern attorney in a small Southern town in which he grew up. My father buried my mother in that divorce. Like she got. So we, we, here we are. We were living in like the ritziest neighborhood of my small town, but we were broke. Like my dad was like, here's the house and I'll pay the bills and I'll keep a roof over your head. But my mom was scrambling. She was like essentially single mom and we didn't have any money, so it created weird dichotomy with us where it was like, here. It was like at an early age. Here we are trying to keep up with the Joneses, like when most kids don't even understand, you know, where you are on the. On the social hierarchy as far as finances. We were very aware of where we were. And so it manifested in me, in this weird thing where, you know, I just started. I would kind of lie about anything and everything. Right. Just trying to justify my existence. And in this. In this network of teenage kids, or even sub teenage kids that I had assimilated into. And that was a habit that once you start lying to other people, then you start lying to yourself. And that's something that I did well through my 20s, you know, always told myself this story about myself that was not exactly true, and it kept me stuck in life. And that's also where the book kind of starts, is like, really how to have radical honesty with yourself is where everything really begins.

Yeah. You have to have awareness and then be honest and look at yourself in the mirror and be like, am I really living in integrity with my values? Am I really being honest with myself? And if we're not, we can't achieve anything great in life. But usually there's like a rock bottom moment or a big failure that caught. This is why mediocrity is such a scary place, because you're not really miserable, but you're not really thriving. You're just kind of drifting, like you say. So what was that push that was like your. Your decision, like, I'm going to change my life. Was there. Was there a rock bottom for you that. That created that?

No, no, I don't have. I don't have the David Goggins horrible, horrible story. I mean, were there times in my life when I was like, I'm completely screwed. I don't know what I'm doing. Did I demolish my credit like it was an Olympic sport? Absolutely. Did I hide cars from the repo man? Yes. Did all of that necessarily? I, you know, I always figured out a way to figure it out. It was always. I could kind of get by to the next level. And I. There's a movie out there called Two for the Money with Al Pacino in it where he pays like a gambling services guy, and it's got Matthew McConaughey in it, and they go to a. They go to a Gambler's Anonymous meeting. And in that meeting, and this is such a metaphor for my life, he's like, talking to these Gamblers Anonymous people, and he's like, listen, you're not addicted to gambling. You're addicted to losing because you're addicted to that right on the edge of spinning into the abyss. And like. Like what you can do, the fact that you can always kind of squeeze way out of it. And I live so much of my early life like that, so I never really felt like there was a moment where it was just like, today is enough is enough. Right. Like. Like a drug addict was like, I can't do anymore today. What the cattle. The biggest catalyst change for me was. Was honestly the Apprentice. And it's not because we were super famous for a hot second or because all of the exposure we got from, you know, that show. It was the first time that I had ever been completely surrounded by a group of people that were all hustling at a level far beyond me. And it forced me to look in the mirror very quickly, like, okay, you know, I'm very honest with this. Part of. It's a little ego maybe, but it's an honest statement, which I looked around, and I was like, okay, I'm probably one of the smartest people here. I'm probably top five brains, power. But I was probably, because I hustled my way to get on that show, I was probably in the bottom percentile of overall net worth at the time. And it forced me to look around like, dude, you are underachieving. What are you doing? So it wasn't really a rock bottom moment. More like. More like an awakening that I had.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's why it's so important to be surround yourself around people that are better than you. Right. That you can look up to and that they can pull you in that direction and cause you to wake up. And that's something that. Because we only know what we know and nothing more. So if we're around people who are below us always, then we're like, oh, we're doing really good. But then as you get into bigger and bigger rooms, you're like, I'm not, you know, compared to some people. Right. And so that's cool that you had that awareness. And how did you get on the Apprentice out of 1.8 million applicants?

So, yeah, funny story. Evaluating risk and take it in real time, as I like to say in a keynote that I'm giving. Right. Currently. But so my sister wanted to try out. I didn't want to. I didn't want to go. We went to an open call in Jacksonville, and then through that process, I just kept calling, kept calling, kept calling, and. And I told myself, if I can just get to the top 50, right. Which was the finals, because it's not 50 of casting. I'll call it a win. So they call me and say, cool, you made the top 50. We want you to come to California and for the finals week. And they said, okay. So we went to. We're at the Embassy suite in Santa Monica, and they put all of us up in individual rooms. You weren't allowed to talk to anybody. You could not leave your room. You were, like, locked in. It was like jail. They let you out for, like, the pool and the gym and to go to meals, and that was it. So when you went to the restaurant, there were 50 tables all. All one, tops, because we couldn't talk, because they want the first time that the real cast to meet to be on camera. And right now, they're just trying to figure out who's going to be there. So you're taking IQ tests and sitting with, you know, psychologists and doing all this stuff and doing these interviews. And as the weeks going on, I start to notice less and less people at dinner. I'm like, they're sending people home right as it goes along. So it comes up to the point where they're like, okay, you're going to meet Mark Burnett today, who was executive producer of the show. So I put on my best suit, and I go upstairs, and there's big double doors in, like, one of those conference room rooms. And I walk in, and he's sitting there on the couch, and there's like, 15 NBC brass behind him, all NBC executives. And he's eating M and Ms. And I walk in. How you doing, Mr. Burnett? My name's John Gafford. And I stick my hand out, and he takes looks at my hand, takes an M and M out of the bag and drops an M and M in my hand. I'm like, all right. So I launch into, like, all of my great accolades, and I was totally embellishing on most of them and why I'd be the perfect candidate to work for Donald Trump and all this stuff and blah, blah, and. And the whole time, like, I could just see the room slipping away. I was losing them just rapidly. And I was like, man, this is not going well. And, you know, Burnett was like, oh, I hear your girlfriend's going to dump you or something random or whatever. And I was like, huh? But it just. It went terribly. And when I left that room, I knew I was cooked right? I was like, that did not go well. So I go back, and I'm literally packing my stuff because I know what's coming. I've seen it happen all week. I'm packing my bags, and a PA comes in and he goes, hey, they want to see you again. And I said, okay. This time I'm doing a little different. I said, give me a minute. I need to hit the minibar. So hit the minibar. Walk upstairs. There's double doors. I kicked them as hard as I could. Bam. And they hit the wall, flung open. All the NBC people jumped. Burnett kind of looked up at me, and I said, buddy, before you say one more word about your little why I should be on your goofy little television show, just know this. When you make an investment in me, you get back 100 times the investment. And I pulled a bag of M and Ms. That I'd taken out of the mini bar, I threw them in his face, and I walk of the room.

Oh, my God.

And that's how I got on the show. And it was just. And that again, like, that's. That's part of. It's one of the chapters in the book is how to evaluate risk. And if you look at that situation, it's like, what's the downside? Zero. Right. I mean, well, here's the two lessons from that that you can take their own book. First of risk. Risk evaluation. What's the risk? Zero. I knew I was cooked. What's the upside? If I go balls out and create one ridiculous moment I could get, I could be on the show. Because part of what makes you successful in any situation is creating value for others. And when I went up there the first time and I started spouting all my resume, I was walking resume guy. They weren't hiring anybody. It's not what they were doing. They were casting. So what they needed was somebody that was potentially going to get some ratings and maybe do something crazy on television. So I went back up there and I said, I'm going to give you value by creating my little M and M rebellion, which is going to maybe show you that I can be a ratings gold mine for you. Which is exactly coming up, what happened.

That's fascinating. That's. And were you, like. Were you actually angry and pissed off, or were you just strategic about it?

Was. It was strategic. It was. It was. Let me make a moment that's going to show these people I can be good tv.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

And did you have any TV experience before then?

No. None. No TV at all.

And you. Did you have a dream of being on tv?

No. No. Like. Like, no. Then again, I think Everybody back then was a little enamored with the idea of it. I mean, you know, kids today thinking they're like, what, dude? Just get on YouTube? Turn on Instagram? Like, that didn't exist, right? And so, yeah, it was a huge deal to be on TV at the time. And when it came off, I'll tell you another funny story about. That's one of my life lessons. And, like, people have. I love people in their offices that have trophies. Like, here's my plaque for winning this and Salesman of the Year and all these awards. Like, I'm like a serial killer to my own finances, where I have, like, trophies of failure all over my office, right? Like, I have 100,000 doll bottle of vitamins that I talk about in the book. And one of my favorite trophies is after the Apprentice, I got a call, and it was. It was a casting director in New York, and they said, David Flabot, who's a dude that wrote all these super big hit sitcoms for NBC, like Will and Grace and a bunch of other ones that he. That he wrote. David loves you. He's seen you. He's watched you every week. He thinks you're great. He wants to fly you to New York. He wants you to read for his new pilot. And I'm like, but, like, I'm not an actor. It's not what I do. And they were like, whatever. So I called my buddy, and he was like, dude, you have to do it. Yes, that's a. That's legit. They're gonna fly you up. Go do it. So I'm like, okay, I'll do it. So they FedEx me down the script, and I get the script, and it's called Goody's Place. And I open it up and I get to, like, page three, and it says, in walks Goody Valletta. And then there's the description of the character. Now, keep in mind, they wanted me to read for the lead of the thing, this guy, Goody Valletta. And it says, the best of my recollection, it says, in walks Goody Valletta, mid-30s, kind of doughy, boyish charm, but by no means man candy. And I was like, oh, and, dude, this is like 20. I mean, I was fit and looked great 20 years ago. I was like, bro, this is a terrible. Like, this can't be me, right? I'm like, oh, my God. It was like the biggest ego crush ever. And then, like, seven pages later, in walks his cousin, and it says, loud, brash, tall. Think Vince Vaughn from Swingers and back Then if I had a nickel for every time I got compared to Vince Vaughn, I wouldn't be here today. I'd just be still sending a pile of money. But so I'm like, okay, I see what's happened. So I fly to New York, and I go to this casting meeting in this big building in New York, and I walk in and there's somebody sitting behind the camera, and there's a casting director there with her pad and her notes. And I walk in and I go, hi, how you doing? John Gafford. She's like, oh, great. How are you? And I'm like, I think there's been a mistake. And she was like, I'm sorry. And I was like, yeah, you know, you guys sent me this, and you said you wanted me to read for this, but I think what you meant was this. So that's what I prepared. And I'll never forget to look on, like, the dude from the camera. It was like that south park clip where the cameraman's just like this from behind the camera and, like, looks at you real slow motion. And then she goes, you can read for whatever you want. And I was like, oh, no. Oh, no, no, no. I've just blown this before it even started. And sure enough, I never got a call back from that, and thank God they didn't make it. So now I have to watch Nick Seinfeld. But the lesson of that story. And I called my buddy and told him what happened, he was like, bro, those lessons are just. Those descriptions are just placeholders. They don't mean anything. They weren't looking for a fat dude. They wanted you. Just whoever. When he wrote that originally, that's just what he wrote in. But he saw you in that part, and I was like, oh, my gosh, I totally screwed it up. So the lesson of that is never assume you know what people want. Like, you've got to go through life doing that. And again, I think if, like, stories like that and learning the lessons and hyperbole, that's kind of how I wrote this book. It's not filled with. It's not filled with a bunch of flexes of how successful I've been. More of. More of it is, well, here's this disaster, and here's what I learned. So you don't have to go through this or if you're living this disaster currently, this is how I got out of it.

Right. So what are some of the tactical things that people can do to aware that they have the awareness that they are drifting and then start to transform their life and be living on purpose.

Yeah. Well, the first thing in the book we have is like a drift audit where it asks you, like 10 questions and says, where are you with these questions? You know, like, is every day Groundhog Day? Do you feel like every day's the same? Are you constantly waiting for the right time to do something, but it never seems to be the right time? So in that first part of having radical honesty of deciding where you are and figuring out where you are, you're going to go through that audit and then you're going to figure out. The next step is then figuring out where you. Who you want to be by really describing that life. And it helps you, walk you through how to get that description of the. Of the person you want to be. And that becomes your North Star. And then from that North Star, then we start to price out what it's going to cost and how. How we're going to get you there. And then that we're going to build a plan that's going to get you there with actionable steps that are converted through KPIs. I know, I saw in your bio how much you love KPIs, but actionable steps every single day to get you there. Because anybody asked me, like, at our real estate company, top performers, what makes a top performer in real estate? It's very simple. It's clarity of goal, specificity of plan and consistency of execution. Those three things all day long. Every top performer has those three. Those three things. And you can use those same philosophies to anything you want to do in life. You want to get more fit, use the same philosophies. You want to be a better dad, use the same philosophies, want to be a better spouse, same philosophies. So that's what I'm trying to impart here.

Yeah, I love that. Did you ever struggle with any, like, anxiety or depression or anything like that in your life or.

Yeah, that's in the book, too. So I have, or I have been the victim of seasonal depression, I guess they call it, where for some reason, like my wife calls it the funk is what we've decided to name it. You know, you give something a name, you give it power, but that's fine. You can also depower it if once you give it name power. But yeah, so I suffered through times where for whatever reason, I'll just get that melancholy feeling maybe once a year or so. And I talk about how I get through that. And for me it's about just Accomplishing one thing. If I can just get one thing checked off my to do list, even if it's the easiest thing to get done, you start with one thing, and that starts to build momentum. And I find when I do that, and I do it, you know, not just consciously or not just with intention, but with the assistance of my wife who's like, all right, we're doing. What are you doing today? Now we're doing two things today. And I find that what used to take a couple of weeks to snap me out of it, now I can snap out of it pretty quick.

Yeah.

And I feel it coming on when it comes on.

Yeah. Something I'm talking about in the book, the book that I'm writing right now, which I haven't actually announced, but I'm writing a book right now.

Welcome to the club.

Yeah, I'm super excited. But it's. It's that. Yeah. The. The green zone. Living in the green zone. So living in a state of flow versus force. Right. And creating life versus resisting life. And so one of the things that my. My first coach I ever hired when I was 25 taught me was doing energy audits, kind of just like you're saying, is being aware of the energy that. The energetic state that you're in while you're doing the different activities that you're doing and around different people in your life. So you can start to have awareness of the things that fuel you and lift you up and keep you in a peak energetic state in a state of flow versus the things that bring you down and suck the life out of you. And so I just totally lost my train of thought of what you were just talking about as I was talking about that.

Let's talk about that, what you just said. Because so often people don't realize, especially in the modern age with the phone in front of your face and the constant just feeding and the fact that those algorithms are designed to put you in an echo chamber. So you start liking the wrong stuff, you start interacting with the wrong stuff, you're going to get more and more and more of it. And, you know, people are so concerned with what goes in their mouth to be fit. Right. But they're not nearly as concerned about what's going in their head because that has such an impact on you with the amount of energy you have, the amount of intention you have, the amount of excitement you have. That just the fact that you're here today.

Yeah, right. I remember. So the study showed that. That my coach taught me. He said, when you're in the state of flow, you're five times more productive than someone who's not in the state of flow. So you could work, you know, one hour and get five hours worth of work done versus somebody else. And he said the outcome can only be as great as the energetic state in which you initiate the action. And so he helped me see that a mission of mine in life and of core value of mine in life is to live in the Green zone in the state of flow 90% of the time. Because if you die at the end of your life and you're wondering, do I have any regrets? And you can honestly say I lived in the state of flow 90% of the time. 10% is. There's tragedies in life and failure and sickness and loss and all these things. But 90s and a right, like, it's. It's as pretty much as good as.

You can get, as good as you would get it.

And so I made it my mission to be able to master my energy, master my energetic state, so I could truly live in the green zone 90% of the time, because I'm results driven. I want to be happy, I want to be healthy, I want to be free, I want to be wealthy and all these things. And so now my mission, like when I get in a anxious or depressive state, I immediately go back to 90% in the green Zone. This is creating negative results in my life. This isn't serving me or anybody else. And so it's how quickly can I get myself back to the Green zone when something knocks me out of flow? And so that's what I've mastered now is when something tragic happens or something stressful happens or whatever happens that brings me back, I can immediately recognize that awareness and not drag out that state of, you know, not flow. Right. Resistance, fear, anger, rage, depression, boredom, all of those negative low frequency states because it directly impacts everything in my life. And I think so many people, they get, like you said, they get addicted to the pain.

Yeah.

And it's why, like, why do we, why do we get addicted to pain?

Well, I'll tell you a funny story about that kind of rounding. What your, what your thought was was, I got a book review, right? And when you write a book to a publisher, it goes out to the. There's like reviews for the people that buy books, right. And the person I got a call from my publicist, she's like, oh, we got a review coming in tomorrow from Publishers Weekly. I'm like, great. And I read it and it was not Complimentary. And I was like, man, that is ruthless. Stay with me. I'm not saying my book sucks. Stay with me. There's a point to this. So I read it and I went to sleep and it bummed me out. I woke up the next morning and I read it again, and I was like, oh, my God, I love this review. I love it. I'm going to tell you why. Because obviously it was written by one person who has an opinion and has. Sees the world through a certain lens. And what they said was. They said that my advice can come off occasionally as trite because I refuse to acknowledge the myriad systematic issues, and I present all problems as solvable. Meaning I refuse to believe that there's this. The boogeyman. There's. There's outside forces that you have no control over that cause your problems. And I was like, you're damn right I think that way. Like, I don't sit here and say when my seasonal depression comes up. Well, you know, it's. It's just part of my molecular makeup, and it's how it happens. I choose to take a situation that is physiologically inside of me. Like, I can't control that. I have no control. But I do control how I react to it and how I manage myself out of it. I do have control. So, yes, I do believe every problem has a solution that's within you. And I think the reason that people get addicted to pain, to answer your question, is it's easier to believe there's no solution than to take massive accountability in yourself and find the solution.

That's exactly how I see things in the world. It's like. And all of the most successful people I've ever met in life, they have an internal locus of control. They take full responsibility for every single outcome in their life, regardless of the environment around them that they can't control. Right. The people around them. Environment around the world, you have some control over that. But, you know, you can't control where you were born or what country you were born into or what family you were born into. Like, there's certain things like that, but you choose how you react, and you choose how to take even the most painful things and how you react to those things and how you use those to turn them into something beautiful and something powerful. And so I do believe. And somebody could say, like, that guy would probably say, well, what about somebody that's, you know, born with no arms or no legs? Well, look at the speaker who has no arms and no legs. And he, even though he couldn't control that. He controlled what he did with that, and he created something beautiful and he's positively impacting the universe. And he chose to take accountability for how he was going to show up. And he could have just been. He could have just been depressed or suicidal or miserable. Right. And so I think regardless of the situation, yeah, some of us get handed better cards than others, but it's how we show up and how we react. And we, I think the more pain we have or the more chaos we have in our world, the more we have the ability to grow into our highest potential, because we really can understand pleasure and pain and fear and greed and all of these things, whereas someone who doesn't necessarily go through any of those things. They, you know, they. They may not have the full scope of the real challenges that people have. Right. And. But I don't think it's about, like comparing situations. Right. And people always want to play the victim, and that leaves you stuck in a low, energetic state, and that leaves you stuck drifting and just surviving through life and letting life happen to you, which is a miserable way to live.

Yeah, well, much like, much like you with the podcast, I've been doing my, my podcast for four years, and I have had people sit in my studio with, you know, just wild tales of unbelievable success. And yes, the starting line is different for everybody, but these people, their starting line wasn't even on the track. It wasn't, it wasn't even in the country. Right. I mean, coming over here as a refugee, not speaking English at 21 years old, to owning a thousand doors, I mean, that's wild, right? So, yeah, I do believe that any problem is solvable. And I do believe with radical self accountability and belief in yourself, you can't solve all your problems. Because I've seen so many stories of that happening consistently. And if you're drifting along, if you're somebody that feels like every day is Groundhog Day, every day is the same. I mean, again, that's why the book is for you. But the first step is, as I say, you got to stop pointing the finger and start pulling the thumb. In any situation in your life that's not going the way. That's not going the way that you want it to go. The very first question you should always ask yourself is, what did I do in this situation? What did I do to contribute to this? How did that happen? You know, like, we both own real estate companies, and when somebody wants to leave our company, which happens, agents come, they go. It's nature of the beast. When Somebody wants to leave our company. I am really interested in the why. I don't try to stop anybody from leaving our company ever. Like, it's like, to me, that's like, if your girlfriend's breaking up with you, you're like, please, so go. I'm not going to do that. Right. I'm always like, hey, man, you know, it's not as green as grass isn't green. You can always come back. And I always want to leave that door open. But I'm very concerned with not what was wrong with our company, but what's so alluring about this thing, this opportunity you have to go somewhere else. And then I always take that information and I always spin it back through our leadership group and say, hey, is this something we're missing? Is this something we should be doing better? And I'll give you an example of that. You know, I recently. And ChatGPT is miraculous for this. Oh, my God, it's great with this. I recently had a guy leave, and then I ran through what he said, and obviously it knows me. So it knows everything we do to recognize all of our people. And it said because of the way that our business is built and the way that we built our business by design, which is really only focused on hiring successful agents, we don't hire new agents at all. I don't have a new agent training program. I don't have any of that. It said, you guys are so focused on celebrating success that occasionally you forget that everybody's still trying to get better. And so you need to do a better job of even though they're already successful, helping them become even more successful. And it was like, wow, okay, cool. And so we reached out to some of our top, top performers, and we were like, hey, is there anything that you would want to learn? You're making a million bucks a year selling real estate, but what do you want to learn? And the answers were crazy. It was stuff that I would just assume that some of these people already knew how to do. And it was like, oh, we can put together circles and can do this. Like, little masterminds are like, yeah, I would love that. And like, all sudden, it went from people I couldn't drag to a happy hour because they don't care. They'd rather be home with their family. Are now like, I'll go anywhere to learn that.

Right? Yeah. That's powerful.

Yeah. You just gotta be honest with where you are.

Yeah. And we. Everything, the people that we attract, like, whether we think we are or we think we aren't we are creating every outcome in our life. We are attracting the people in our lives, the outcomes in our lives, and people to just, just say, you know, it's happening to me. But no, they're still creating it one way or another, whether it's something good or something bad. So you might as well choose to take full ownership of everything and, and over the things that you control and create more of those good outcomes in your life and continuously improve. Like that's one of my core values, is continuous improvement, continuous growth, continuous learning. Every single day I learn something new and I teach something that I've learned. And it's so critical and important and just always pushing that needle, even with the top performers. And so that's cool that you said that because I think about that too is like, well, you know, what are the top people? What can I bring value to the top people who are already performing well? But you'd be surprised.

Like you said. Well, you get to a point. I mean, our company is not to brag. Well, I'm gonna brag about my company. It's awesome. So we have 550 agents. We have the highest average sales price of any large company in Vegas. We sell more homes, over a million bucks than any other firm. And we have a great firm. We have probably more seven figure earners than any other real estate brokerage in Nevada, I would guess. And it's just a great, great firm. And one of the things that makes it. I've got my train of thought after Joseph bragging what we're just talking about.

Yeah, you're talking about, oh, the top performers and how they, what they could learn to get better.

Yeah, we just got that and I skipped. Anyway, I forgot what I was gonna say about Simply Vegas, but I forgot. Gosh, I forgot what I was gonna say and it was gonna be epic. But I started naming stats and I got it early in the morning today. Sorry.

I know that's exactly what happened to me.

I got that. Yeah, It'll come back to me in a minute.

But it's like what, what? You'd be surprised of what the most successful people still want to learn or have to learn.

Yeah, you know, always learning stuff. Always getting better is what it is. You know, we are constantly improving our tech stack as you have and it's crazy how fast things are changing. Like in the real estate space in the last, in the last 70 days has been insanity with some of the things that have happened with ZILLOW Integrating into ChatGPT with, you know, the search Volume now. Google searches is now down 30% to the search engines.

Wait, what is Zillow Integrating with ChatGPT? I haven't heard of that.

Oh, yeah, Zillow is now integrates directly with ChatGPT.

And how does. What, what does that mean?

So here's what's happening now. So where it was before, where like if, say you were trying to sell your house, you would go in and you would say something like on, on the sales, on the, on the listing side, you would say something like, you would search for the best agents in Vegas on Google and it would pop up. People that bought ads and you could see their Google. Google reviews their business pages, you could see all of that stuff. Now people are just going to chat GBT and saying, who's the best realtor in Scottsdale?

Oh, gotcha.

And then it spits an answer out. And so many people don't realize that Chat, GPT, grok all of those things. A lot of times that information is not being based on anything that's real. They're just indexing. They're just indexing what you feed it from the Internet. So literally, you could start a webpage or there's ways to do it. And forget SEO. You need to be all about AEO right now. But making sure that what you're feeding the bots is coming back is good because people are taking that as gospel and they're just making those calls, so making sure that you show up there. But with Zillow on, Now integrating with ChatGPT, things like a. It's not good. I think they're gonna have a massive problem because Zillow is allowed to use our data as agents to display on their site. They've now done a financial deal where that data is now going to a third party. And we don't. We never agreed to send it to ChatGPT, so now they can use that. Because what they're trying to do is make real estate conversational. Hey, ChatGPT, I'm thinking of buying a new house in Vegas. I like to go to the gym, I like to go to the park. What areas should I be in? Well, based on what you're saying, blah, blah, blah, it should be this. I'm just pulling that data from Zillow. So I think we do need three bedrooms, two baths. Is there anything available? And it would pull the listings directly from Zillow. But more to the point, what it's done is it's changed the way that you've got to think about everything in real estate. For example, listing descriptions like before it was like, you know, magnificent, glorious, you know, epic, you know, it was every adjective you could think of in your listing description. Because you were just trying to flex on this luxury house, right? Now you've got to write that in a way that's conversational and very easy to index by the bots, right? Because if somebody says like I'm looking for a home with you know, the best home automation, instead of saying control for home automation, you have to say this house has the best home automation. You've got to say that because you've got to start thinking like the consumer is using a conversational AI to shop for things. So it just changes how we do everything. And now, you know, being on, being on Google is going to become less important. Google, like if your business is based on Google AdWords, which mine has been for years, right? For probably 20 years we've heavy Google AdWords that is shrinking because it's going to the bots.

Have you seen a reduction in 30%?

Yeah, I've seen it. Like, like for example this month my spend on Google was probably three grand. Like, like I'm trying to spend more money and it was $3,000 less than I would have normally spent this month alone. So you know, we're using other, you know, advanced things that we can do. Geofencing, which I love to do hyper targeted stuff with display ads to fish where people are fishing, other ways, there's other ways to get around it. But yeah, the world is changing fast.

Are you worried about AI disrupting the real estate industry from the broker standpoint?

No, I'm not. I think the way I think the lead capture side is, is harder. Obviously it's going to be harder to capture the consumer. There's other ways that we're doing that now and smart brokerages are leaning into that by offering better tech and smart tech in a way that's different for people. We're constantly adding to our tech stack but again for the same reason that Expedia like killed travel agents, right? And they've been saying that we're going to get killed by Zillow, we're going to get killed by portals, we're going to get killed by everything for 20 years is what they've been saying. Here's the difference. I don't need somebody to hold my hand to tell me it's okay to buy, to book a trip to New York. But most people need a trusted advisor to tell them this is okay when making the largest single transaction of their life. And that's not going to change.

I agree. And I think the same thing is AI is a tool to help you grow and help you be more efficient and help you serve your clients better. But at the end of the day, life is relationships. It's people, it's connections. Like, what, are we all going to just live at home and have our AI bots do everything and we never talk to a single person ever again? Like, that's a miserable place. And we would all be so depressed, we would go nowhere in life and we'd be so isolated. So I, I agree. 100. It's like, how do you use it as a tool to provide more value and help you lever up and help you focus on the one thing that you do best and let AI handle the rest. Right. And so it'll take people. AI can take some of the people team away from it, from certain tasks, of course, but I don't think it's going to take the whole industry away of like, you know, no more people want to work with real estate brokers.

Well, you have to look at it this way too. Like, if you look at, like, AI starts with logic and is trying to get to emotion. Humans start with emotion and try to get logical. So there's this, the easiest way to describe it. It's like Star Trek, right? It's like Kirk and Spock having a conversation in the heat of a moment. Yeah. Spock's like, here's the facts. Kirk's like, but no, they're going to kill us. Whatever. I don't know. My bad Captain Kirk and profession. But that's the problem is there's still always going to be that disconnect. And I don't know how quickly that gap is going to close.

Yeah, yeah. Everything takes time. And people, people are hard to change their habits or their way of thinking, and it just takes a long time. And especially, you know, there's going to be a lot of non adopters and then those are going to eventually phase out and then the next generation will all be born into automatic adopters and that'll continue to evolve. I mean, if AI doesn't take us out, you know, if we're still. Still around.

Yeah, that's. I got to tell you, as I was sitting there having the knee, like, literally, I was like talking to my wife last night about that Neo bot. I'm like, dude, it'll clean your whole house. It'll do 24 hours, charge itself up. But I'm like, I just don't know how I'm going to feel about the first time I turn around and the thing's just like standing in your room.

Yeah.

Why? Like what? Like weird. Yeah, just weird. Right? I watched too much Black Mirror.

Yeah, I know.

That's what you.

That's what I was thinking of. So. So shifting gears into how you built such a successful real estate brokerage. I mean, I. So I own a real estate brokerage in Arizona, also very, very small firm. But I've been doing that for, you know, 11 years before I got into finance. Now I have a finance firm that's a national company. I wanted to build a company I could scale nationally. And so with a real estate brokerage, I see how hard it is. And in a mortgage brokerage to. It's the same concept. Very hard to recruit and retain good talent. So how have you built your company to, you know, what did that journey look like from you? From a bootstrap start, were you a bootstrap startup and you just built over time?

So, yeah. So the story goes, I. Many, many moons ago, when I first moved to Vegas, we worked for a brokerage in Vegas and they had two offices, one on. One in the Green Valley side of town and one in the Summerlin side of town, which most companies in Vegas. That's how it works. I was number one very quickly through my team at the, at the, at the Green Valley brokerage. And my partner now was number one in Summerlin. And that broker decided to move our office and rebrand to another brand that we didn't care about. And he took me to his office and he was like. He took me to our new office and was like, here's gonna be your new office, which was way smaller. And he's like, it's going to be three times as much and here's all your new fees. And I was like, whoa. Like, that was scary to me that I thought, here I was building this business that I controlled, and all of a sudden it's being dictated to me that this is going to change. At which point I was like, you know, it's time for me to do my own thing. So I left there and ended up buying into an existing Keller Williams franchise. And when I bought it, they'd been in for seven years and they had 42 agents. And 18 months later, I built it to two offices and 200 plus agents.

Wow. How?

Well, by just a. Because I'm really good at talking to people where they are. I think it's so funny. And Even here, this 20 years later, I still hear this to this day, right, People will come in to interview with me to come to our company. And you should interview with multiple places when you go. And they'll say, this is the first place that I went that we spent more time talking to me, I'm talking about me, than talking about what you do here. It's always this presentation, right? It's like people like, let me tell you everything that we do at this company, blah, blah. When people come to our company, I'm seeing two things. Number one, are you a good fit for us within the dichotomy of who already works here, are you bringing something to the table? And two, can we. Can we help you? You. Is there something that we can bring to the table that can really help you? And there's times, you know, when we go through those interviews where I don't even talk about 60% of the stuff that we have because they're not going to use it anyway. So why am I going to throw up all over them with a bunch of. A bunch of stuff? What's important for me is, okay, let's really narrow down on what you're doing. And what I find with most real estate agents, even the successful ones, is I always caught their. Their failing successfully. They're like, Yeah, I made 150, $175,000 last year. Do you have a written business plan? No. How. Do you have KPIs? No. Do you know how many phone calls it takes you to get a deal? No. Do you know how many of this have to do? You know your ROI is in your mails? None of them know. They're just really personable people. They're great salespeople, but they're not running a business. And so when I sit down with people, it's like, it's my mission in real estate has always been, let me help you turn this from a successful hobby into a real business. And then you. And then the last question I always ask, which is my favorite question, which is, how many doors do you own? And then 95% of real estate agents go, none. The one, the one I live in, it's like, dude, the commissions are not the goal. The commissions are the fuel for the rocket. That's how we're trying to build wealthier. That's what we do. That's how smart people really play this game. And that's what we try to do. And I've always been that way. But the Keller Williams thing was like, you know, class of Wednesday and not hating on Keller Williams. Great training. I've sent a million agents to them for training new agents. I'm like, go there. It's awesome. Good training. It's wonderful.

That's where I started for sure, dude.

Great place to get trained. But, you know, the math is the math, and 90% of people that get in real estate fail in the first year. That is the business I was in. There it was a revolving door of wet licenses, stamped class on Wednesday, around for eight months, and out you go. And it was the same level of investment. I said, I don't want to be in the 90% business anymore. I want to be in the 10% business. So sold that out, started the company with my partner, Gavin Ernstone. Now it's been 16 years. I was simply Vegas. We were number three in the market within three years. We've been number two in the market now for several years. Funny thing, we were number one at the end of the first quarter, and we have no business ever being number one. Like, I tell people all the time, like, well, don't you want to be number one? I'm like, no. They're like, why? I'm like, because number one has 1700 agents. Like, it's just, do you have a pulse? And can you pay my fee? Come on down. And it's law of averages. Enough of them do a deal to get there. There's nothing special about that to me. So for me, you know, being selective about who we have actually terminating agents that don't perform and working under those parameters, we should never have been number one. But there was just this huge run on luxury, and that's really what we focus on. Like, our. Our number one core value is luxury is our brand. And it doesn't mean we don't sell every kind of house, but every person that comes to our doors gets treated the same, whether they're buying a $350,000 house or a $25 million house.

Yeah.

The same level of treatment.

So what, beyond that, to continue down the recruiting path, what worked for you and didn't work for you when recruiting agents? Like, how were you doing? Outreach. Were you working with recruiters? What?

No. With us, a lot of it is. A lot of us recognize people for success. Like, there's a. There's a. There's a. There's a. If you're a real estate broker right now, a tool you absolutely should have is called Corded. Is something you should have.

What is that?

Corded.IO and I'm not sponsored by them. I pay for it. It's a great, great tool. And essentially, what Corded IO done is, is something I've done for the last 17 years, which is. Is what I would do is in the morning I would wake up and I would look for any agent, the mls. I'd pull the solds and I would see anybody that closed the deal over, you know, if this is 16 years ago, you know, call it 800,000, which was a massive deal in Vegas that at that time, and I would see who the agent was and I would just send him a quick email saying, hey, dude, that's an awesome closing. Great job. If you ever want to step up and really focus on working luxury, obviously you had this closing that showed you can do it. Call us, we'll sit down, see if it works. Because most of the time, like once people go work at a brokerage, or even the same in any company, how often do you hear from your boss, great job? You know, like, there's that one plaque that goes out, the top performer, but that individual performance that somebody that might be the biggest deal they've ever done and they don't hear about it from their boss. And so with that corded system, not only does it allow us to constantly, every day identify very quickly and send out messages to all of our people internally that are doing well, but I can also see the external people and send that same message. So what used to be done manually and take me a little bit of time every day is now just really runs quick. We can hammer it out very quickly, which is great.

That's awesome.

Recognition. It's all about recognition. Don't you recognize for what you do?

Of course. I mean, it's crazy how much recognition drives the majority of humans, you know, like above so many other things. Like, a lot of people prefer recognition over money. They just want to be recognized.

Politically driven.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's.

It's wild. That's. That's a really cool strategy. Yeah. Because there's not a lot of recruiters in the 100 Commission world, and it's such a relationship business, you know, and that's where I'm at with HP Capital. We've so many leads, so much deal flow, and I just need amazing, more amazing people to be able to service those leads to the, you know, the highest quality service that we can. And then so there's, there's always that balance, but it's hard to. We don't have an MLS in commercial mortgage brokerage. Right. We can't just see who's producing what. There's no data for that. You have to really like dive through LinkedIn and go through all the, the firms and get to know people at the events and see who.

Commercial. Such a commercial, Such a man. We have a large commercial department as well. And commercial is such a mess because you can put a property on LoopNet, lease it or sell it and leave it up there for five years and there's no governing board to make you take it down.

Yeah.

So the data is not right. Like, it's, it's really, it is the wild west. Still, it's amazing to me that that hasn't consolidated. I know the boards try to do the, you know, the, the commercial part of the, of the, of the residential. Most commercial brokers don't want to be part of the residential boards. No, they want to do their own thing. And yeah, it's such a wild business in the commercial. It's wild.

It is, it is, it's. It's a wild wild west on the mortgage side and the brokerage side for sure. And so what does your culture look like at the company? Like, are you all in an office building? Are you remote? Like, how do you train people? So once you, once you get these top performers and you've recognized them, how are you retaining them? How are you training them? Are you doing one on ones? Are you doing group sessions? Like, how did you build that culture?

Yeah, we, you know, we, again, we try to meet people where they are. We have. I believe the virtual company is great. Good for you. That's awesome. Do, do your thing. But I do believe the magic's in the hallways. I mean, Simon Sinek said that, Peter Thiel says that. I totally believe that the magic in your company is the conversations that are happening within the hallways. So having great, beautiful office space I think is important, especially in the luxury side of the business. You got to have an impressive place for people to walk in. They want to feel like they're walking into someplace that's substantial. Not meeting you at Starbucks, like, that doesn't work. So, yeah, we have great offices, but we do do a lot of stuff. We're completely vertically integrated company. So every single thing that touches the real estate transaction, we own, we own mortgage, we own title, we own solar, we own, we own everything. Anything you could possibly have to do with a house, we, we have a part of. And it gives us the ability to have different space, different crossovers from those things. Obviously, like within our title company. You know, like, people look at title reps in this business and if you're not a realtor, I'm not going to bore you too much more with this. But like, most title reps walk around and hand out, you know, chapstick and desk calendars. That's what they do. We don't hire for the marketing people at our firm. We don't hire people that have any title experience. Like, I don't care if you know anything about title. I hire the most badass digital marketing people I can find because they can walk in and say, okay, let me go through your digital marketing. I don't. I'm not going to bring a chapstick. I'm not going to buddy buddy with you and buy a coffee because you're busy. What I want to do is I want to improve your business. And so we hire these absolute savages at that level that then can run classes that train on things that people actually need. And that engagement has been massive. But we try to be where people are. We're constantly engaging with them. Like, we don't fight the flow of things. Like, we have an intranet within our back office system where we were communicating and posting and all of those things. Our internal Facebook. But what we found was all of our top producers all have transaction coordinators. They're never in there. They weren't seeing it. So it's like, okay, where are you? Okay, well, everybody's kind of scrolling Facebook still because they're marketing there. Okay, great. So now we have a Facebook group for our company and have for years. But all of our communication goes through that Facebook group on a platform we don't even own. Just because that's where our people are. Yep. So don't fight where your people are. Talk to them where they are.

That's good. And do you guys do structured trainings or, you know, like what. Or does everybody kind of just do their own thing?

Everybody kind of does their own thing. I have, I do have, for me, I have a, I have like a 45 day intensive that I do to kind of get people started again, get them out of the drift and snap them out of it. It's called the climb. I run that once a quarter for people that work for us. I mean, the cost is minimal. I charge them like 200 bucks is stupid. I mean, I don't need the 200 bucks. I do it because you got to have some skin in the game or you won't take it seriously. And. But yeah, that's our main primary thing. And everybody goes through that program. It's my biggest joy in this business. Like, people say, what's, what's your favorite thing about real estate. And it's like I get more joy in watching people develop and become, you know, massive players in the space with information and tools that we're giving them and guidance that we're giving them on one on one than anything that I ever do personally. I mean, I've had a personal team for, you know, now 17 years. I've got 10 agents within the company that work directly for me. You know, pretty much just handling all my business anymore. But I do that not because I need to do it. I do it because I genuinely love to have people right there that I can develop.

Yeah.

Because I just. I love that about. If you don't really love people. I think getting into the. In the development business is probably the wrong business.

Business, right. Yeah. No, I mean, if you don't love people, it's. I mean, I don't know. I. My whole world revolves around people. I. I think that relationships are everything, but there's different people that have different skills that aren't necessarily on the sales or the front end side, and they're really good at what they do on the back end and more the operator, the integrator type. But I love the relationship part of the business. I mean, that's what I live for.

So it's the best part.

Yeah. How did you have a clear vision and mission of where you were going to get with simply Vegas, like with your business when you started? Or did you guys kind of just go and you just kept growing and it's just turned into this thing, this big thing.

So. So what happened was Gavin had actually already started the company. He started with two other guys and I ran into. But so Gavin and I went to lunch and here I am grinding at Keller Williams, you know, got 200 agents and Keller for lover, for my experience with. It was terrible business model as an owner because when you make money, you gotta give half of it away to your agents. When you lose money, you get to write a check. Terrible business model. To me, it was. So I made no money doing that. We had this big company, but it wasn't turning us any money. And then I watched Gavin start this little independent company that's getting every big hitter in town in. And I'm like, how's Gavin getting these players to come work for this? And so I call Gavin, we go to lunch, and my partner's very English, which I think has unfair advantage.

Yeah.

Literally, you could take the dumbest person from England, drop them off the United States, and everybody's all enamored with them. And you could take the smartest American and draw, drop them off in London. And people like this twit, you know, yeah, it's terrible. But then he's very English and he's like, well, I wanted to start my own company. I wanted to run it like a private club. You know, we don't hire everybody. We don't want to hire everybody. We want it to. I want it to mean something. And here I am. I hear this. That one sentence for me was like the biggest catalyst and change in my business philosophy in real estate. I'm like, because we would hire anybody. It was just trying to hire people. And when I switched, when I sold out of the Keller, literally within two weeks of that conversation, I had sold out there, bought out his partners, and we opened the second office in Green Valley, which is where I live, and never looked back and always ran it like they, this is special. And I think part of that has to be, you are who you project that you are. I mean, there's the fake it till you make it thing I get, which I don't necessarily totally agree with, but I think part of that's valid because if you project and you just decide that this is who you are and you stay true to those values and stay true to that course, then more times than not, with enough effort and a big enough microphone, it's gonna work.

Yeah. How did he position it? Cause I love that. And that's exactly how I am too, is like, we, I've. Because I've learned, because I used to be the same thing. Hire anybody because you. You're desperate for resources. You're just like, I need people. Right? But some of the. What I've learned is some of the best deals in life are the ones you don't do. And you are only as strong as your weakest team member.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Back to my trophies in my office of misery and failure. You know, people don't think enough when they get involved with deals, when they get involved with projects, when they get involved with people. You know, there's so many ways that you can now test ideas, you can test different things, test people. I don't bring anybody in anymore to my team without a very definitive. At any level where they are, without a very definitive 90 day, 90 day expectation plan. It's. This is where you're starting. Like, I don't care if you're the CEO of my title company. If I bring you in, it's, here's the expectations of where you should be at day 30, where you should be at 60, and we should be at day 90. And if you're not here, we're not going to be in business together anymore. Because one of my favorite things that I learned about people, and this may sound callous, but it's not. If you're going to be a really successful business owner is my job as the business owner is to constantly be trying to replace every single person in my organization with better talent. That's my job. Their job is to make that impossible. And as long as we have that understanding and everybody's very clear about that, then magical things happen. Because it's not a threat. It's just respect. It's. I'm giving you this job. I'm giving you this opportunity, because I really believe after everything that I can kind of figure out with you, that you're the best person to sit in that seat. Don't prove me wrong.

Yeah. You know, yeah. It's a. It's a command for people to rise to their highest potential. And that's how I show up. I command myself to rise to my highest potential, and I command everybody around me to rise to their highest potential. And I will not be around people who aren't doing that. They're. I don't. It's mediocrity. I don't want to be anything to do with mediocrity. And I don't understand how people live that way. But that's okay. Everybody's different. They're just not the people that are going to be in my. My circle because they're not aligned with my values. Right. And so that's a lot of the work I've been doing with one of my mentors lately is just deep values work. Deep, deep values work. Like, if you don't that your values, your core values are the foundation of everything in your life. And so many people don't even know what their core values are. They're just operating. And they may feel things like, oh, I didn't like this person did this, or I didn't like this person did this. But they're not tying it to an actual value statement. And my mentor, he reads his values multiple times a day, every single day. And the action behind those values, like integrity, what does that look like? How does that show up in your people? What is a per. You know, what does that mean to you? How do you. How. How is that an action so you can actually judge it when you go to your team member, hey, one of our core values here is integrity. This is what this looks like as an action. This is not aligned with what, how you're acting. Is this one of your core values or not? Right. And so, and then just learning how to question people. So because everybody's character and everybody's values come out over time, but we don't want to make the wrong hires. And so when you. I'm learning right now is how do I uncover people's core values? Through specific questioning that's conversational. Without asking, what are your values? Right? Because everyone will say, oh, I'm honest and I'm high performer, all these things. And so that's a lot of the work. And so just being able to align and understand who. Whose values are really aligned, because that is more important than just this person is producing this much that doesn't even matter. Right. Is. Is taking it out of what's the transaction or the result that I think this person can bring and bringing it back to is there the true values alignment of this person and our company and. And me as a leader or the leadership team? Right. And so that's been very transformational for me is to start to reflect on who in the company, who in my life, who in my, you know, what relationships are actually aligned with my core values, and then having the awareness of am I actually living in integrity with my core values no matter what?

I'll tell you something. I learned that one of the beauties of a podcast, right, of having a podcast and having really high level people on it, is you constantly get to learn cool things. And I learned something about core values that was really fascinating and only because of the book. And I've done so many of these in the last five days, my brain's a little fried. So I'm not going to attribute this thought to anyone. But I will say this is not my thought. You can go back and figure it out of my podcast and figure out who it was, because I don't remember who said at this point we were talking about core values. And they said, the best way to really analyze your core values. And he brought up integrity is one of them. And he said, everybody says integrity is a core value. I love a value. But it's like, do they really like, how much is it okay to cheat on your diet and grab a cookie? Is that breaking integrity is cheating on your wife. Where's the line? And he says the best way to test your core values is look at the inverse of them. Like, what's the inverse of that? Like, if I said to you, like, give me one of your core values.

Well, integrity, let's pick a different one.

Because I want to go down that road. Pick a different one.

Yeah. Continuous growth.

Continuous growth. Okay, so what would be the exact opposite of continuous growth? If you had to verbalize what the polar opposite of that core value would be, what would it be?

Declining.

Declining growth, where you're not learning anything, you're staying stagnant. Does the thought of you in that type of a situation just absolutely make your skin crawl? Yeah, it does. So that core value is probably real. Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's good to aspire to something, but if the inverse doesn't absolutely make your skin crawl or drive you crazy, it's fine. Like for me, he said, what's something that. Like, he asked me, he goes, what's something that drives you crazy? And I said, when people are late, it is one of my biggest things because it just shows a complete, you know, non value of my time. And he's like, so time is very, very important to you? And I said, yeah. He goes, so probably one of your core values is make every moment count. And I didn't have that on the sheet, but I have it now because he's right. Because if the thing that drives you craziest the most, the inverse of that is probably going to be a core value. So I thought. I just thought that was super interesting.

I love that. Yeah. And it's a good way to think about it because, you know, look, Garnett just wrote a book called 17 runs, and there's this whole value section in it. And so that you can ask ChatGPT, like, what is the whole list of all these values? Right. And then you start writing them out, okay, which ones are important to me, and then which ones are non negotiables and which ones are a little less important. And then those ones that are non negotiables become your core values for your. Not only your company, but your life. But you have to actually live by those values. If it's really a core value, it has to be something the way you show up. And so something happened recently to me where I had this awakening because I'm always questioning myself, questioning my beliefs, questioning my actions, questioning everything and all the inputs that are coming in. Like, is this real? Is this fake? Is this my brain just coming up with this from fear or greed or whatever, Right? And so I had to look honest myself. And like, one of my core values is health. Like, I want. I want to be a hell, I want to be as healthy as I could possibly be with this miracle of Life in this body I've been given, right? And so yet I'm vaping and I'm.

Like, wait, that's not good for you.

No. Yeah. And I'm not good for you. I picked up that habit recently. This year I picked up the habit and then I was looking at myself and I'm like, how do you, how old are you? 29.

How do you pick up vaping at 29? I know, that's like something. That's like a bad high school.

No, I know, I know. Is it?

Oh my gosh.

Yeah. I'll blame it on my friends. Well, actually, what it was is I.

Doing heroin for the first time at 60.

No, I know, whatever it was. My, my friend, my best friend, her sister, who's younger, she's 20, had a vape and she's like, oh, here, you try it. And I tried it and then I went, candy?

Yeah, delicious.

I was like, it tastes so good. And so, but then, and then I'm just like doing it for a handful of months. And then like, what? Why am I doing this? This is so stupid. Like, this isn't aligned with my values.

So.

And that, that means I'm lying to myself and something I'm not in integrity of my values. And so I quit and I threw it away and it was good for you. Done. But it's, that's the thing is so many people, they just, they let life happen to them, right? Oh, here's the circumstance. I took this opportunity and now I'm just going to do this thing. And we don't actually stop and reflect. Is this in integrity with who I am and what I want? Like, I don't know what this is doing to my body. I could die in two years because of this. Like, I have no idea. Why would I do this? For what? Because I like the banana flavor. Like, that's stupid. And so yeah, I think just having that awareness and your non negotiables and how that. And making sure that you are actually living by that because the truth always has a certain ring to it. And your values come up over time, you know?

You know, it's funny, I remember the point I was going to make earlier about simply Vegas based on what you were just talking about, which is one of my favorite sayings, is the only way to coast is downhill, right? And you're just coasting along like, hey, here we're going to do this and blah, blah. And you don't even really notice this happening and you just drifted right into it. And my point earlier from Simply Vegas was, you know, here we have this company that's achieved all this great stuff, and I could be like, well, I'm just going to go to my beach house and hang out for a month because I can. Because the play. I don't need to be there every day because they do this. But we just made a choice. Or I made a choice a long time ago that my great joy is continuing to watch that company grow. And if I'm not invested in it and I'm constantly innovating and I'm constantly trying to bring new tech to. To our tech stack and eliminate things that aren't working and listen to our agents and improve it, that it's going to coast downhill. And I don't want to do that. And so much like you with your vaping, you just thought, oh, no, let's do it. And all of a sudden you turn around and you have this habit you didn't even realize you were getting. And that's drifting. It's like Erman McManus was on my podcast and he made that. He made the comment we were talking about the title of the book, and he was like, oh, my God, I love it so much. Because the problem with drifting is you're still moving. Like, you feel the. You feel like the inertia of the world going by you, but you don't realize you're going off target until it's too late.

Yeah.

And you start vaping every day at 39 years old. Good Lord.

I know.

I may never let you live that down, by the way.

Yeah. Hey, at least I'm honest. At least I'm honest.

That's true.

Yeah. And.

But I love that you recognize that that didn't recognize your core values and get rid of them. I'll tell you a story about our core values with one of our companies. We just recently had to change one because the way that we changed our economic model, changed of our business and one of our core values had something to do with the economics of our company. And that statement no longer became true. And so we had this, obviously on things and all of our printables and all of our stuff and stuff. And as soon as we made that change to our business model, I told our director of operations, I go, you have to throw away all of this stuff. You have to take down all of this stuff. You have to get rid of all of these books. Just put them in the shredder. And she's like, why can't we just get through them? Let's just Go through the books and when the books are gone, then what are new ones with the new stuff? And I go, no, because as of right now, that's not true anymore. And if that's not true, then none of this is true.

Right.

And we're not going to do that. So, yeah, throw it all away, scrap it, start again, put this in instead of that, which makes all of this in alignment again. That was my way of quitting faith typing.

I love it. Yeah. And we just always have to have that awareness and that honesty with ourselves and with others and be able to make sure, like, and especially as a leader, we are the standard. And that's what I tell, you know, other. Other leaders in, in my company and, and previous companies, is if you show up, however you show up is how the team's going to show up. So you can't tell the team what.

They need to show 80 of how you show.

Well, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But they're never going to be.

They're. They're. Exactly. But if you, if you're showing up here, they're going to show up somewhere under there, right?

Yeah, yeah.

So you can't expect them to be showing up here and you're actually showing up here. That's never going to work. You have to be the standard. And so as a, as a leader, I have to be the standard. I have high responsibility. And if I, if I have high standards for the people in my organization, I have to be the best example of those standards. I can't be wavering those standards. I don't want to recruit a bunch of vapors. Right. So, like, I want to be, I want to be that highest standard.

Getting a bad rap today. I'll say this, though, about what you just said. You can show up less than your people under one circumstance, Right. If you are stretched to the limit with something else you're doing and you are honest with your people, that you are always there for them, they will be there for you. And I'll say this like, this book launch is a huge. It's a lot. It's been more than I thought it would. It's constant. Constant. This, it's way more than I thought it was going to be, which has distracted me from my daily stuff with some of the things I've done. And everybody around me that works for me has stepped up in ways that is amazing to help take care of where I'm not there and has really risen farther than I thought that anybody would. And they don't do it because of the business they're doing it for me. So I think as long as if you're like, I'm gonna go play golf again today, you guys have at it. They're not gonna do it for you. But if you have moments of crisis, if you have always been the person that's there for your people, they will, they will be there 110% for you. They'll go above where you would normally be.

Yeah. But you're still living by your values. You're just, your energy is focused on another thing right now. But you're not like, you know, being unaccountable and all these things. You're like, hey, this is my priority. This is taking my energy and attention right now. And the team steps up to support you just as you do for, for them when they need help or folk have to manage something in their life. Right. Because that happens. Yeah. So that. What are some of the, as an entrepreneur, what are some of the failures that you've had or the crisis that you've had that you've had to overcome?

Oh, boy. Let me run right through the office of trophies, of my serial killer, of my own finances, of my trophies. Let's see my $100,000 vitamins. Many, many moons ago. This is also stories in the book. We tried to start a multi level marketing company about vitamins. And we went out and got several marketing partners or partners that were going to be with us that were, had ties to NFL players and thought this is going to be great. Went out, spent mine, it was $100,000 on a warehouse full of vitamins and nutritional supplements. And we never bothered to ask anybody if they wanted them before they launched this company. So I will never launch a product or build a product before I know there's a market for it. Which now, like people think Kickstarter is about really raising money for these, for these companies. It's not. Kickstarter is about, do we have an audience, do we have enough people that actually really want to buy this? They're willing to pre buy it. That's what you do. And so many people I talk about. That's one of the dangers of entrepreneurship is people fall so in love with their own product or their own design, or their own websites or their own funnels or their concepts or whatever else that they just don't listen to the market. They write them too quick, they write them too far and they fall apart. You've got to pivot when the market says no. You have to. We had, for example, we had a tech firm that I was a partner in many moons ago. And that tech firm was designed for a very specific thing. It was back in the day, there was this piece of software that was enterprise software to major corporations like Coca Cola and SAP. Everybody, all these major companies use this particular piece of software to manage their. Their networks. But it was incredibly expensive. So my business partner had convinced this company to let us have one master license for it and then we could go out and do sub licenses to medium and small businesses. That was the hundred percent business model of this business. That was the. That's what it was for. It was designed. And that business got sold out to a private jet company 2 1/2 years later because some random person that knew one of the developers that worked at our Firm needed a PalmPilot app for a school board to be able to do inspections for their janitorial people. And that app became something that then fire departments used for fire inspections, which then became private jet inspection software that they used. And then this private jet company ended up buying it. So had we been like, nope, nope, nope, we do this, we would have missed that.

Right.

So you've got to pay attention to what the market is asking for and give the market what it wants. That is the biggest mistake that most entrepreneurs make is they go, they stay too long. They go, well, I can't quit if I just keep at it. If I just can't keep at it. A bad idea is a bad idea regardless of how much sweat you put into it. So you've got to find, before you go too far down the rabbit hole, make sure you have a market it.

Yeah. And don't be afraid to cut your losses.

Yeah. You got to walk away.

Yeah. I mean, I've started 10 businesses and I have two now that are. That are successful. And yeah. So, but you'll. And like Kevin o' Leary says this, you only need one to really hit.

Yeah.

Yeah.

One hit. Yeah. I mean, look, if you don't lose at least seven figures a couple, you know, once in your life, you're not entrepreneuring hard enough is what I like to say. But you want to protect yourself as much as you can from that. One of the things I can tell you, the biggest changes in me, business wise, is my wife is an empath. Right. She just, she picks up on people and she's like, that's a good person. I don't like that person. And I have lost north of seven figures twice in my life on two different business deals. Both times she told me not to do it based. Not on the deal. Not on the terms, not on the market, not anything else based strictly on the people. Like, I do not get a good vibe from those people at all. Right. And so now we have a deal that I don't do business with anybody unless she gets a look at them. And there's been times when I'm at, like, I'll be at, like, the Boardroom mastermind.

Like, wait, are you in Boardroom?

Yeah, I'm taking a break right now.

Oh, okay. I just joined.

Oh, you joined Boardroom?

Yeah, I was just in Cabo last year. Right.

I love Boardroom. So, yeah, I'm on a private chat with all of those guys. I know.

Yeah, everybody.

I told Kent I had to take a break while I launched the book because my toxic trait. And you saw this. If you went to Boardroom, my toxic trait is you get me in a room for a bunch of people, start talking about random ways they make money. I'm like, I could do that.

Yeah, I could do that.

I can do that. And then I'm off to the races down this rabbit hole of doing this. I told Kent, I said, you know, I absolutely need to focus on all of this stuff for a while.

I know I left there, and I was like, I need to tokenize our real estate assets that are fun, and I need to start this. I got to get on the blockchain, all this stuff. So. Which I do want to do, but I'm like, okay.

Right? Yeah, but, yeah, but we'll be there, and I'll talk to somebody, and they're like, okay, this seems like a good deal, and we'll do this deal, and we'll move forward. I'm like, hang on a second. I got to go get my wife, because she always goes with me. I'm like, she's got to get in there. Like, what do you mean? I'm like, she's just got to get a look at you. Just talk about your kids, whatever, for a minute. And she'll be like, oh. And the good news about Boardroom is most of the people there have always been good people. I think over the years, there's only been one person that that kind of didn't do the right thing and got booted out. So Kent does a pretty good job of screening everybody there, which is great. That's cool. I'll see you there soon.

Yeah, yeah, I'll be back.

I'll be back.

All right, cool. Very cool. Yeah. So the. The. And that with your wife, with the empath and her intuition, and this is Something that women have. They have this intuition. Like, I. I have this weird right brain and left brain are both very strong, which isn't very common. Like, I'm an engineer, but I'm an entrepreneur, Creative Visionary, Type 2. But I still follow my intuition and my gut over my logic, and that usually always works out the better way. If there's a confusion between the logic and the gut, it's usually the gut. And this goes back to the core values, like their energy and the way they respond to things that will highlight somebody's values in the way they talk and the way they communicate, in the way that they share things. And so generally, the feminine energy can feel those underlying things easier. But that's where I was just saying how, you know, in these business opportunities, we see the outcome, we see the potential, we get the excitement. We're like, oh, we could partner together. We could do this big thing. We could grow this, and we could make money, and we could do all these. But we're not taking enough time to really understand the person's values. And if there's a misalignment there, the foundation's already broken.

Yeah. I think, well, that's what makes our relationship so good. I think in every. In every good relationship, you need to have a sale, and you need to have a rudder, and I am the sale. I am all gas, no brakes, let's go. And she is the. Hey, maybe we should take a little bit closer look at these people and do that. And since I have made the commitment that I will no longer invest or do deals with anybody that she doesn't know like, and trust and has met, that's fine. You know, for example, boardroom. Do you know Tim Harriage? Have you met Tim?

Yeah, he was on my podcast a couple months ago.

All right. Tim's one of my dearest friends. I loved him. I had a million and a half bucks with Tim, And I just. And I. And I yelled at Gidget over her shoulder. My wife's name is Gidget. And I'm like, hey, I'm gonna send a million five to Tim. She's like, yeah, fine. Just because. No problem.

She loves Tim.

Yeah, no problem. He's a good dude. And for me, she knew I had vetted the deal enough to know that it was okay, but her vibe with Tim and his wife was good enough that we're fine.

Yeah, there you go. Yeah. I mean, there's a million opportunities for Tim. A good deal. Yeah. So many opportunities. It all comes down to the trust and the relationship. We always talk about, like, the horse and the jockey and the racetrack. The jockey is the most important decision. You also need a good horse. That's your business, your vehicle, your product, your market, all that stuff. But ultimately, if the racetrack's good, the dirt's good, the team, the groom's team is good to take care of the horse and the business and make sure everything's smooth, then it's up to the jockey to make sure that everything actually wins and the horse wins the race. Yeah. So that's awesome.

Well, cool.

Well, we'll wrap up here. I always like to end with a couple questions. So what is one piece of advice that you would give to your younger self? If you could tell your 25 year old self one thing when you were drifting, what would you say?

Buy this book because it is a user's manual to you. That's exactly the reason I wrote the book. It literally is a user's manual for how to stop drifting along with life. Just buy the book.

Awesome. And how can people buy the book and get a hold of you?

You can buy it anywhere you want. Amazon, all over the place. You can find me at thejohn gafford everywhere. That's my Instagram handle. That's everywhere@thejohngafford.com has links to all of our stuff. Or you can check out my podcast, Escaping the Drift. Same name as the book. Available everywhere. Podcasts are available.

Awesome. Well, thanks for coming on.

No, thank you.