Why Building an 8-Figure Business Didn’t Bring Peace

What is going on, everybody? Hope everyone is having a wonderful Saturday. There's no place I'd rather be than here talking to you all about the inner work. As we all know, you can never shut me up about it, so here I am again on your Facebook, on your LinkedIn, and on your YouTube. So we're happy about it. Um, really excited about, uh, the guest today, good friend Nick Allerud. Uh, you know, we had both been in the real estate space We're both on this journey of the inner work now. And he is just, he's a wealth of knowledge. So I know this episode is gonna go great. Nick, for those of you who don't know who he is, actually before I get into that, Built For Impact School Community is live. If you are not there, we are on a 365-day challenge. We're on day 33. We're going live on TikTok every single day to help you all reprogram your subconscious patterns. And to do the inner work and to teach you that you can build a life from peace instead of pressure. You can have all the external success. You can get the big house and have the car and do the things, but you can do it from a regulated state of being. So if that's something you could get behind, join the community. It's free to get in there. And that's what we're talking about. We're normalizing the inner work. That's what we're doing. But back to Nick, because he's the star of the show. So hugely successful entrepreneur right here. This is like the epitome of it. Built an 8-figure business, lost it, built it again, right? And this has allowed him to radically rethink what success actually means, right? After years of chasing those external wins, burning himself out, right? He hit the point where he's like, well, maybe, maybe money actually isn't the answer here. Um, so we're gonna get into the inner work behind what real transformation is, how identity, beliefs, um, nervous system shape the way we build businesses and our lives, and what it actually takes to move out of this. Pressure-driven way of operating. Without further ado, Mr. Nick Allerudin.

Jake, good to see you, my friend.

What's going on? Good.

I heard the whole introduction. Gosh, I hope I live up to the hype.

This is great. I know. Well, you got the whole— you will, you will. My camera just kind of locked up there. That's fine. Cool. I'm excited to have you on. So, this show is really about— it's called Rewired Live. Initially, it was just me yapping on here. And I was like, you know, I yap enough. Maybe people actually want to see some other people. But I had a good idea from a friend to start to bring on people who have operated from that place of external chasing and have reached the external success and kind of realized that it's not really the goal and how they've begun to rewire themselves from the inside out. And so I'm bringing on people who are in alignment with that, obviously. I think you're one of the best cases for that because you had so much external success, right? And now you've done the inner work. But give me the one-two on you. And I know you've told your story a million times, but I guess my first question is, what do people think about success that isn't necessarily true?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, for sure. And thank you, dude. Literally, this is the— well, you and I both know this. This is like the most passionate thing that we can talk about. Yeah. Like, this is so cool. This is so much better than another real estate podcast. Thank you. Oh, there's so much to discuss. So level of success, right? My understanding now with what I've been through is that the United States specifically, right? Like from the moment we're born, like there's a level of success, of pride, of status. That our parents and our teachers and our friends and our spiritual community, like, everybody wants us to achieve. And what is that achieving? Right. Well, what I found is that in the United States, we're just so built on using what I call the almighty dollar as the benchmark. Right. The almighty dollar is essentially the new god other than whatever god we're also taught to worship. So our entire life is groomed. To either get a job or have the career, go into business for ourselves, be the entrepreneur. Then there's that lure of this thing called financial freedom, which is dangled in front of so many people with the wonderful purple book that we all read, Rich Dad Poor Dad. And then there's so many other coaches and strategies and masterminds that are all like, how do we make more money? And then finally, how do we trade our money back for time. But ultimately, that's just one measure. And now, with what I've been through, I can tell you, that's one of the very lowest measures that I can think of that is what success could really be if we were just to shift our definition of what success could look like. Because now, having been through it and having coached 100 people or so, everyone who has the money finally gets their goal, gets their target, gets the pride, gets the status, right? They get the house, they get everything. And their level of happiness or fulfillment is at like an all-time low. And they're still looking for answers, right? Wait, I got everything I was taught to get from the moment I was 2 years old. I did it. And like, now what? And other countries, Jake, right? Like, they value other things so much more than money. And it's funny because the United States even judges those countries, right? Like, oh, if only they did this, their GDP could go up and they would be happier because they'd all have abundance. And like, well, that's just one form of abundance. And what about family relationships? What about the feeling of satisfaction and fulfillment when we wake up in the morning, right? Like, there's so many other units of success now that I kind of measure. But we start there. We start with— we're taught to worship the almighty dollar. So we do everything we can to get that and to get the status.

Yeah, freaking hit the nail right on the head. It's like, I was going to say that exact same thing. I noticed that when I traveled to Europe and I traveled to South America, like, these people value other things. They're so much more passionate. And, you know, I was in Argentina and I was talking to someone down there, and, um, she's like, oh, where are you from? I was like, America, whatever. And she's like, oh, so you're a workaholic? And that was her first thought of what an American was. Oh, so you're a workaholic, like you don't have any fun? I'm like, whoa, all right. But that's how people see us in America. We're just running around like chickens with our heads cut off. And it's not what we want. I was like, I was thinking about the term the other day, financial freedom. I was like, everyone says that, right? I want financial freedom. No, you want to feel okay on the inside. That's what you want. And you think financial freedom is gonna give it to you. You wanna feel peaceful. You wanna feel loved. You wanna feel accepted. And you think that financial freedom will give it to you. Why is that? Why do we think that?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and freedom, right? Like, that is— you're right. Like, they're chasing a feeling, right? What is the feeling that we're going after? The feeling of safety or security, the feeling of being okay, the feeling of being accepted, the feeling of status and pride. But that's when I started, like, going through the archetypes and, like, what is freedom to me, right? This was when I was going through my redefinition of success. Like, what What does freedom even look like? And financial freedom being one of them, but there's so many others. There's emotional freedom, there's spiritual freedom, there's time freedom, right? There's sexual freedom, there's freedom of expression, there's freedom of like all of these figure in to having, right? Like I call life unlimited, like literally having unlimited version of you accepting who you can possibly be. You know, it's, and this is what you and I like, Pheloplatyans, like sharing with the world, right? Like our life is only what we limit ourselves to have it be. Yeah. Yeah. But there's so many other versions of freedom, I guess. And that's like the one that people resonate with so much, especially here, right? Because they're feeling that safety, that security, and then, oh, look at the houses and look at the experiences and look at the vacations. But like, here's a question. And this is just because we're so— work with so many Type A entrepreneurs, right? Like, you get there, you get the PFS that finally shifts, right, from $950,000 to like $1,025,000. I still remember, it was like 2011. It was when the first time I did my PFS for a lender. PFS finally hit over a million in net worth.

What's PFS?

Uh, personal financial statement, right? So to get like loans, right? So updating our personal— every single year we update our PFS, update our real estate schedule. That's how banks were lending to us as real estate investors. And I will forget, like, I finally did the PFS. It was just another task to be done to get this to the lender so I can get this to the loan. And $1,025,000. I'm like, huh, I did it. I'm a millionaire. And I felt zero achievement. Like, on to the next, on to the next, on the next deal, on the next team member, on the next opportunity. Like, what if it goes away? Like, what? I got to keep working. I got to keep chasing. I got to keep pushing it through because What if? What if? What if? And that was my inner story, right? Like, a bunch of us come from different places. One thing that I, you know, never really had was that feeling of safety and security from the moment— like, I had to leave home at 15, really, really young, because I was unsafe. So every single decision I made from the age 15 until probably the age 40 was running away from scarcity, was chasing something, chasing security, chasing enough. And when is enough? Enough was never enough. So that was me not being okay, right? And moving everything I could, moving every needle to do that.

Yeah, I want to talk about this concept of constantly chasing something outside of yourself to compensate. Um, I have this theory, or I talk about it two things. I call it compensatory success versus expressive-based success models. So Compensatory success is always chasing something because you have an internal lack. You don't work just because— I understand you gotta make money for a family, but that's not all what it is. Like, you're trying to reach a certain position or certain title so you can feel complete, right? And this leads to just consistent anxiety and burnout. You're always chasing, and then when you do get it, because your identity is wrapped up in it, then you're scared to lose it. And that's even more anxiety and pressure because you don't want to lose it versus expressing progressive-based success is you do it from a place of it genuinely interests you, it aligns with your values, and that's how you want to contribute to the world. Um, so for you starting out younger, chasing this thing, at what point— because I think that's a lot of people, a lot of people are chasing things and they might be listening to this saying like, yeah, I get it, but they still want the car and they want all this stuff— what shifted for you though? Because you can like conceptually understand this but still be going after the thing? Like, what does it take to make that shift, to really understand that that's not what it's about?

Yeah, I mean, that's an awesome question, right? So I'll start by acknowledging, right, like, we as humans, right, we're born into this world completely perfect, but it would be a really boring life if we didn't go through some shit, right? Yeah, it would be a really boring life if we didn't have to face challenges or traumas or stuff that happens to us, right? Our samskaras that happen in our life. And it's funny coming from that place because in high school, with all the shit I had been through, not knowing I'd been through shit, I used to judge all the kids that were leaving class to go and talk to the emotional counselor at school. Like, own your shit. Come on, people. I'm here.

Right?

Yeah. So, going through it, and I can only see this now looking backwards. I couldn't see it when I was in it. Right? But I'll share a little bit. About my personal story, if you're okay, because I think that's what people need to hear. So everyone goes through some stuff. I had, I grew up in a really middle-class family, like not necessarily poor, not necessarily rich, like had the opportunities, but I had a challenge where I, you know, I remember I had a fight with my dad over a toothbrush. I think I was 13 or 14 years old. And then like he left the house and I didn't see him again until I was like 23.

I didn't know.

So that's why, like, fucking internalize that, right? Like, oh, I did that, right? Like, I had that power, right? Like, I forced dad to leave the family. And then on top of that, you know, my mother had lots and lots of, like, of psychological issues where— and ultimately I won't get to the details, but there was a moment when I was 15, I dealt with a lot of shit, but this moment was just over the top and my life was in danger. I felt my life was in danger, so I grabbed all my shit in a big black trash bag and I left and I didn't come back. Right. So that was for me, right? Like working then 3 jobs, being overly pleasant. Like I now had a friend that I was living with and I remember like her and her mom. And I'm like, I have to be the best housemate ever, right? The absolute best. I can't have them think my— I have to overproduce my value. I have to overvalue everything that I am in this household so that I don't get kicked out, so I'm not homeless. So I did everything. I'm like, can I do the laundry? Can I cook? Can I clean? Can I do all these things? And that began this tension in my body of having to produce, having to do that to have value. And that became this first ingrained story that would transition and translate into my businesses and everything else. Right? I have to overproduce in order to even have value. That was a big one. And then as I moved forward, right, I started to have all these other stories to come in, like, well, I didn't have family, and I didn't even know this until, again, 5 years ago. But what can I do to have this voice where no matter what, I don't just have value, I'm like changing the fucking world. I am the loudest, biggest person that has all the impact where people have no choice but to like listen to me and see me. And ultimately, I didn't know this until 5 years ago, Jake. I wanted my parents to be like, holy shit, we fucked up. Like, look at this kid. He's now the president of the United States, right? Look at this kid. He's now like, he's taken off. He's like, he's the guy. And that carried with me. You know, I paid my way into college, worked 3 jobs, and remember getting my first car at the age of 18, 18 and a half, because I just took my sweet time to get my license because, right, I was doing it all myself. So $1,000, 1989 Ford Taurus, and get in that car, paying for it. I remember, I won't be homeless now. I've got a car. Like, there's my next benchmark, right? Like, I can at least sleep in my car now. I'm never going to be homeless. And every single move I ever made, so going to college, after college, realizing wanted to be in politics to become somebody, to have a voice, to be important. Right? And literally, someone gave me for graduation, it was a bumper sticker, and it said, "Politicians and babies must be changed frequently and for the same reason." And that had an impact on me.

Why?

Because one of my survival mechanisms was people pleasing because I needed to be safe. So, everyone else around me had to be okay. I had to have them be okay for me to be okay. So, part of that was I can't be a politician. No one's going to like me. Like, that's not okay. So, like, I'm like, well, how else do people have influence and have power? Oh, money. If people have money, they're respected, they're listened to. So, I went into finance. I went into investment banking and learned mutual funds and got a job on the trading desk at the Federal Home Loan Bank in Boston. And then I moved into Mellon Financial in Boston and Everett. Learned funds, learned trading, the day trading, technical analysis, fundamental analysis. And finally, that brought me to read. But I still had to be important. So I had like the LSAT and GMAT book out that I was studying because I'm going to be a lawyer and an MBA. I'm going to be everything, right? That was my way of operating.

Yeah. For a lot of people.

Yeah. Yeah. And they kind of close the story or at least bring us into the real estate world, right? Like I remember they overworked us like 50, 60-hour work weeks. And I finally, finally, something got me to read the purple book, right? The Rich Dad Poor Dad book. And for me, I was in finance mode already. I'm like, that's it. That's the ticket. I'm going to get out of corporate job. I'm going to become rich beyond my imagination. I'm going to have so much and have everything. But ultimately, the underlying program there was so my parents will finally see what they fucked up or for me to have value, right? For me to have enough value where I'll be safe, for me to never be homeless again. And it was intense, dude. And that's what brought me into the whole real estate thing and not just being a real estate guy and making some money. Nope, I had to be the fucking biggest and the best and the biggest team and the biggest profit margin and flying around the country and doing the national talks and being invited to all those things because that was giving me what I needed without knowing that You know, if that all went away, who would I be?

And it's like this insatiable hunger that's never quenched. Like, you got to do it bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and more and more and more and more because your identity and validation is wrapped up in those external things versus it being an internal thing. It's like, you can run on that treadmill all day long. You can run on it for— I mean, I ran on it for only 3 years and I wanted to freaking, you know, just not do anything ever again. You did it for like decades, right? So I can only imagine.

But You're a little more advanced than I am, Jake. 20 years it took me.

Yeah, I'm just saying though, I'm just like, I commend you. It's like, and I think, I think one thing too is, um, you can't help but just have compassion for that kid, you know, looking back at that kid like, man, you crushed it. Like, the situation that you were in, like, you absolutely crushed it. It's not like the guilt and the shame because, um, you know, so oftentimes like we're aware of our patterns but we are, we feel guilty for them and we shame ourselves for them, which puts us into more of a survival state attacking our system, and it really prevents us from changing. So it's being able to look back at those patterns, understand like, hey, you were just doing your best given the situation. That's okay, but let's move on. We're no longer in there. So it's the difference between self-judgment and taking responsibility for what you can do now. Um, yeah, but where you're at right now— so if we know that that's all not the stuff, like, that's not the thing, right? You've done all the external success you could possibly have. It doesn't work. So if that doesn't work, how does someone operate from— like, what is the flip side of the coin? So we know that's one side of the coin. What's the other side of the coin? And how does someone actually, like, live like that?

Live like in, in pursuit of, you mean, or to finally do the start to turn inward?

Is that what you— yeah, just turn inward, right? Because so you live this life of external chasing. Now you live a different life. Like, what is that different life? Because I think some people don't even know that that is an option, or what it is.

You know what's crazy though, Jake, is that— and I've come to just realize this and honor people in their process— most of us, you know, can't make that decision on our own. It takes pain, right? Because that's what humans do. We move away from pain more than we move towards pleasure, right? So for me, you know, that brings up another part of it. Like, I got so good at real estate, right? And they started—

I—

my whole ego, whole identity was built now around like teaching others and coaching other people and like success for my teams and building and expanding. And I remember the first time I like lost money on a deal. The first time wasn't— the first time, let me be very clear, my very first 5 deals in real estate when I was still at the bank, at Mellon Bank, I lost everything. Yeah. It was my money and my credit though, but I still like 6 months head in the sand. My life is over. Everybody else is still going out, you know, eating, Friday nights and the— at TGI Fridays, and everyone made fun of me anyway for starting this new thing. That was a beautiful lesson for me because it taught me how to get back on a horse really fast. But the biggest, biggest, biggest challenge for me, Jake, was when I didn't lose anybody else's money for a really, really, really long time until like a perfect storm happened with everything I had learned, and it like it really hit hard where I had to have my first conversations with people around stuff that I did. I meant well, I had good intentions, but it didn't matter. My whole value was now wrapped up in— I was no longer providing value to these investors. I actually was a drain on them. And I went through an entire cycle of, if I didn't exist, this wouldn't have happened.. And that's my, that's my shadow work. And we still, I still go through that, right? Like the same with my relationships, right? I've been through two divorces and that's really, really, really hard for them and for me. And I just remember to myself, like, if I, if I didn't exist, I wouldn't be causing this pain. Mm-hmm. And that, that for me became enough pain and holding all this stress and all this tension and all this anxiety where it was in 2020, like COVID. As my second divorce was really ramping up when my body just completely shut down. And I was in a parking lot, my chiropractor's office. I felt my left arm go numb. I was like, "Oh, shit. I've heard about this in medical studies. What is this?" And then my left leg goes numb. And then I remember feeling like I'm sitting there and I feel like I'm on a weight bench like at a gym and someone just drops a 1,000-pound plate on my chest. And I remember feeling that weight and then I blacked out and I thought it was like, before I blacked out, I'm like, oh my God, like 40 years and I die in a parking lot. Like after all that, like, I remember thinking that in my head, it's like, this is going to be ridiculous that this is how it ends. And I remember waking up in the ambulance and rolled me in and they checked me all out and I was for sure I had a heart attack or a stroke or something.. And then they discharged me and said, well, you've got some light scarring on your heart. It appears that maybe your mind made you think you were having a heart attack, so it started to like stop your heart at the same time. Here's a couple documents for how to reduce stress in your life. You had something called a panic attack. Yeah, I was like, that's a fucking panic attack? Like, people can die. Like, that's literally— yeah. And I didn't control it, didn't know it was coming. And I remember like in that moment I had a war with my mind. Like, wait, my mind tried to kill me.

Yeah, dude, that is freaking— you know, the more I look into this stuff, um, I'm really looking into the nervous system right now, um, really deeply into it. There's this thing called polyvagal theory that Stephen Porges came out with, just the different states of being that we operate in. Um, but our nervous system state dictates so much in our life, right? Just whether we're in a survival state or if we're in a regulated state. Like, we're in these constant survival states, man. We're like this, and it's just normal for us, this low-grade hum of anxiety and fear. When you're in that, man, your body can't heal, it can't do anything because it's spending so much energy just with the shields up. It's like Star Trek, it's like shields up, right? All the lights go dim in the ship. It's like you have no energy to do anything. And that's why we're getting cancers and getting these diseases, because we're just living in chronic stress. It's just, it's an absolute epidemic. In the freaking world, an absolute epidemic. And people just think that's the way it is. Oh, it's just the way it is. You know, you're in entrepreneurship? Yeah, you got to grind yourself into a pulp. It's just entrepreneurship. Yeah, you got to be miserable for 3 years. That's just part of the game. It's like, no, it's not part of the game. And that's like, that's my biggest thing. It's like you can build the business from peace instead of pressure. And we need to freaking normalize that message because it's just not out there. You got all the people, You just need more discipline. We got it. Listen, you're getting up at 4. You need to get up at 2:30 in the morning. That's when you need to get up. All right. You're going to need to run 10 miles and then you'll be ready. Then you'll be worthy of success. And it's like entrepreneurs are already hard enough on themselves. They don't need someone else coming in there and telling them they need more discipline. They need someone to come in with some fucking compassion, some love, and be like, you're okay, man. Relax. Hey, we're floating around on a rock in the middle of freaking nowhere. It doesn't even matter.

And it brings me back to the opposite. So I had the— like, I literally had a podcast called the Shut Up and Do It Real Estate Podcast, right? Like, I literally embraced this grind culture. I embraced doing the hard things. Like, if that feels hard, go for it. You're gonna do that. You're not gonna do the easy thing over here.

Like, yeah.

And, and I had another line, right? Like, your, your success in business is directly proportional to how well you can learn to embrace stress. I used to say that all the time. And by saying it, just like you mentioned, like having no idea, I thought I didn't know I had a body. Like I thought the mind was all I needed. I had a strong-willed mind and that the body was just going to do whatever the mind says.

Yep. And that's the biggest disconnect of, of change in the self-help space is like, there's so much research coming out on the physiology of our bodies and how our state, our state drives everything. So, we think that it's like, okay, I have an insight. I'm gonna take actions. I'm gonna get a result. That works when you're in a regulated environment. But when your body gets dysregulated and you fall into survival patterns, you're reverting to your most ingrained subconscious patterns. It literally bypasses the cortical system. It goes to the subcortical patterns. So, you could know all day long that, hey, I'm not supposed to respond in anger when someone flips me off. But if your most conditioned response is just to lash out, you do that, right? Um, and the other thing is like, that's absolutely blew my mind, is that when you're in a dysregulated state, like in that fight or flight, your prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for creative problem solving, nuance thinking, emotion regulation, it literally goes offline because your body's in survival mode. So you're sitting there in panic trying to figure it out and you don't even have access to half your freaking brain. So it becomes about state before strategy. You have to regulate your state into a calm state, only then can you think about the right thing to do and act in the right way.

And like, the awareness of that, Jake, like, people don't even have the awareness that they have been operating in this tight, you know, tension, fight or flight for their entire lives, essentially. Like, we're built for that. United States is specifically— we ingrain that, we reward that, right? We talk about it, hustle culture, grind culture. A great book around when I was starting to learn about my body, when I realized that my body was separate from my mind, which was separate from my spirit and my heart, like, had no idea. The Body Keeps the Score.

It's on my list. I'm reading it next.

Yeah. And it's a doctor, like, for people who were like, oh, it's a spiritual thing. No, this is a doctor, a psychiatrist out of Boston that started working with PTSD vets before PTSD was a diagnosis.. And he brought that diagnosis to the table because their bodies were just locked, right? And they're— which was retriggering traumas in their mind. It would lock them even further and they would be going down this path. And he found scientifically that even from a young age, even babies, he did this study where he had a, you know, one ba— like a newborn, like 2-week-old baby, right? Being like screamed at versus— I'm trying to remember the test, but from, from baby to now, like when we feel an emotion and it's— we don't feel safe enough to express the emotion, especially like men were taught to never express emotion, right? That's a weakness. It locks itself in our body. It locks itself either in hard tissue, in tension, in joint pain. It locks itself in a high— higher— but the heart rate is what he was tracking. And the heart rate, because the heart can't lie, right? When the heart rate rises or lowers, That is the state of our nervous system, right? Like, that is fight or flight, or that's at rest and relaxation. Yeah. So, it locks itself in our body, and it will continue to be locked until later, later, later in life, we get older, we're maybe able to express the emotions that never did get expressed. And that creates an entirely new way of reducing— you're no longer in that fight or flight. You can start to be aware when you're tight in your shoulders and your neck or your stomach has the GI issues, right? Or your— even your knee pain can be associated to a trapped emotion. Um, and it's just been a game changer for me to learn more about my body and seeing other people that are living in this fight or flight. Like, how do we even have it bring awareness to this isn't normal? You don't have to live like this. Like, you know, there's an awareness of that. It's crazy.

It's absolutely wild. And in my research, I came across the same thing. There's this, this field of research called memory reconsolidation, and it basically talks about that process. So memories are, are stored in two places. They're stored in the mind as a story, but they're also stored in the body as an emotion, just like Bessel van der Kolk talks about in, um, The Body Keeps the Score. And what happens is, for an emotion to naturally process, you need to be present and not resist it, just like Michael Singer talks about, right? Like non-resistance. And I understood that concept, but I realized like, oh, there's actually a bunch of science that actually backs this up. It's called memory reconsolidation research. And I was like, so what happens is for an emotion to release, like say someone does something that makes you angry, you need to be able to feel the emotion and not resist it. Meaning you don't try to push it down. You don't try to suppress it. You don't try to make up a story about why it is. You literally just experience it, right? Your shoulders are relaxed and you just sit there with the anger or the guilt and you literally just let it be there. You don't resist it. And if you just do that, that situation doesn't become a samskara, right? The energy just moves through. But it's when we clench up, oh, I'm not supposed to feel anger, because no one taught us how to deal with our emotions. It's like, oh, I'm not supposed to feel anger. I'm not supposed to feel sadness. Shove it down. That creates a— right? The system is like blocking it. So now every time someone cuts you off, even before you can consciously even say— like, you know consciously, like, I need to not react here. But that emotion is stuck down there. And the second you get triggered, it's boom, it's coming out. And then what happens? It comes back up, and then we just shove it back down. Comes back up, shove it back down. And it's crazy though, but there's— when that emotion gets triggered, they say it becomes labile, meaning it becomes editable. Like they used to think that emotions were just stored in the body and they couldn't be changed. But once it's triggered and it comes up, if you meet it with a pattern interrupt, meaning that you meet it with a regulated state, you can re-encode that memory into the body as something different. So that samskara, or like the thorn that Michael Singer talks about, no longer has control over you. So life becomes about like triggers are this amazing thing of emotions because you can, you can release that, right? And you can regain your capacity and external world doesn't have control over you. And that's my definition of freedom. Nothing in the external world has control over you.

Oh, I mean, amen. Rewiring the mind. And even your listeners who are watching this, right? Like we've been doing something a certain way for 20, 30, 40, 50 years. So one of our community members talked about, like, you're at— for those skiers out there, I'm not a skier. I decided because I like to do hard things, Jake, just to show everybody else another example. I don't need ski lessons. I'm 18 years old. I'm going to go to the top of Mount Snow in Vermont. I'm going to figure this shit out because I'm brilliant and I've figured everything out up until now. My life's been hard and I had to make up swears as I fell down the entire mountain. So I'm not really a skier still. Someone described it as, right, we get to the top of a mountain, you ski down, you've carved like some tracks in the snow. You go up to the mountain, you carve in more tracks. It gets deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper as we're carving these tracks. Those are our thought patterns, right? Our triggers and our immediate responses and reactions. So 20 years of that, 30 years of that, you're in what they call a rut. Very difficult. To pick up a ski and to change direction when you've been carving this into a mountain for 20 years. And, what's beautiful is that with work like trigger therapy or hypnosis or plant medicines, people are able to— it's like you're gently sprinkling soft snow in these ruts again to kind of bring them up just a little bit so that there becomes a pause. There becomes this beautiful this miracle pause that before we go into the same track, the same thought pattern, the same habit we've always done, the same reaction that we've always had with our partners or in our teams and ourselves, or the self-judgment and the shame and the guilt or the negative self-talk that most of us entrepreneurs have taught because that was helpful for us to keep building and keep grinding. What if there's like a beautiful pause where we recognize how that feels in our body? We're like, oh, wait a second. Maybe, maybe I can go this other direction today, just for today. And we meet it with compassion. I know that, mind. Thank you. But today, let's try something new. I know it's scary. Anything new is scary because the mind wants to keep you safe. You know this rut. You've been in it for 25 years. So the moment you stop going down this self-flagellating habit of whatever this habit was that has served you and kept you safe up until now, but no longer serves you. The brain's still going to react. That's not safe. We don't know that path. Nope. We're going to come back here. Come back here. And just like we can retrain by— let's brush our teeth with our left hand for a week. Like, our mind is purely a muscle. And the awareness that we do have the ability, even if it feels so impossible, to retrain, to have a pause, and to just— a whole different muscle and a different track is possible. Right? Like brushing our teeth with the left hand, or if there's a pattern, if you're in a negative thought spiral, I usually go to the body. Like, what does the top of your foot feel like right in this moment? Or what does your liver feel like, right? Like, this is what we do in hypnosis to kind of bring people into their body from their mind. Like, what do you— that doesn't make any sense.

Yeah, no, that's real. I love that analogy of like your neural patterns, right? The most— it's like Donald Hebb, he, you know, he was the whatever he was, but he said neurons that fire together wire together, right? So as you fire new neurons, you're starting to make, but it takes time. It takes repetition is what it takes. It takes repetition with emotion to do that. But yeah, those ingrained patterns, that's what you default to under pressure. So what I'm saying, like the physiology plays a factor because it's not enough to just cognitively change. Like, and this is why the self-help industry has it all wrong. 'Cause like you can read all the books in the world, all the books in the world about how to be positive and how you need more discipline and all that. But when you're in a stress situation, you're in a pressure situation, what's happening? Your prefrontal cortex literally goes offline. That's where you have all that information. So it's not even there, and you're revolt— and you're reverting to your subcortical patterns, like going down the, the ski trail. Those deepest patterns are where you revert. So like, if we truly want to change, we have to change those deep grooved patterns so that we're not defaulting to panic, we're defaulting to, you know, to peace or a grounded state. It doesn't mean that you don't encounter stress as a person. Like, obviously, you live a life, but you're able to return. That's like the true barometer of progress, in my opinion, is not not getting triggered. It's how quickly do you get back to the baseline? And what is your baseline?

I love— there's a— I know you know this book, right? Joe Dispenza, Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself. Oh yeah, another unbelievable beginning of this work of learning how to rewire. And it's funny because it gave me a different meaning. A lot of people have heard the term fake it until you make it, right? That's usually a business term, right? Yeah. And, and it's funny because there was a time when I did, like, I did a little bit of that at the very beginning, right? Well, I'm not a real estate investor, but I had to pretend to be one. Yeah, in order to do what I was doing. There's a new line that I now use, right? It's, it's, it's, uh, be it until you see it. And with that, like, with me carving the new, uh, ski mountain trails, like, it was, it was really hard, Jake, for me with 20 years of ingrained experience, right? Like, really difficult. And I had to go through a whole grieving process, like, lots of pain for me. To relate. If I'm not this, then who am I, right? If I'm not— I don't have importance over here, I don't have any value. What does that mean? Should I not be here? Like, I went through this entire arc of shitty emotions and pains in my body and understanding what this was. And then finally, similar to this specific show that you have put on for your people, you know, I started doing like a Monday call for myself.. And in doing that call for me, no one except me, people started to slowly join. And I would say things in that call and I would be saying it to whoever's listening, but I was saying it for me, right, Jake? So, I would come back and listen to my own words that week because I'm realizing I'm coaching myself and I had to listen to my own words over and over and over and over again. And for me, it took like maybe 8 to 9 months of doing that work of journaling, of doing those calls for me, saying words with my voice over and over again, for me to finally feel safe enough to like, I think I've hit a new, a little new track like this. I've moved a little bit to the left. And, but it took me a lot of discomfort and a lot of repetition, right? To, to move into that direction. And I wanna encourage anyone listening to this, right? With this amazing rewiring show, like you have, that ability, even when your brain says you don't. Your brain's going to scrape, just like lizard brain, at everything it can to keep you safe, which means it will give you the scariest catastrophizing scenarios because that's all it is, is the mind that runs the programs to keep you safe, right? It's going to give you the scariest things possible so that you don't move from your status quo. And be aware of that. Meet it with love. We can't run away from that. We just say, thank you, man, mind. We appreciate. You've kept me safe for this long. I know that's why you're doing it. And I'm running the show now. I'm the CEO. I'm the president. The heart, the ability to lead with what makes us feel safe, good, joy, calm, and peace. That is now the leader. The mind will follow eventually. It always does.

It always does. Yeah, I think Yeah, just resonating with a lot of that, that work about trying to, trying to keep you familiar and safe. I think that's— and I'm so— but think about how much, how incredible of a guide you are though, just from being in the trenches, just like going through the worst of the worst. I mean, you can pretty much relate to anyone, you know, like in a sense, like it's great though. It's like you don't get to be a good guide unless you've really been through the wringer. We wouldn't be good if it was like, oh, it was kind of something that kind of affected us. No, this is something that ran our lives and it was miserable, right? So I'm so passionate about it. People don't know this information. I want to be like, I gotta calm myself down every day. I can't believe, I love coming on these lives and doing social media because I'm just like, people can change their lives. And I know some people are like, what the hell is this guy talking about? But I'm like, listen, this is powerful stuff, powerful stuff. And just no one knows that it exists.

You're living your purpose now, dude. This is your journey. Some people could say our only work is to go through our own work, and then through going through our own work is sharing what we are learning with everybody else. Right? It is possible to live a life completely unlimited by our stories and our mind. But you have to sometimes go through the pain first. I have to honor people's process because you and I can't— this message won't resonate with people who are still, no, those guys are— I'm going to just grind my way through. Right? That's the thing.

Yeah. They're not ready. They're not ready for this yet. Like you said, you— if you can't be aware first, because in Built, it goes through 4 phases, right? It's a 4-phase transformation framework. It's awareness, right? Break limiting beliefs. Regulation, which is upgrade your operating system. Visualization, which is kind of rehearsing. Release. And then transcendence, right? Into that new identity. But if you don't have the awareness, you can't do anything. And even furthermore, I even talked to some people now and I can get a sense of what kind of state they're in, like what their nervous system state is, like just by the way they're talking, their facial muscles, how quickly they're talking, the tone of their voice, their body language. It's like if they're dysregulated, I'm not going to sit there and try to tell them anything because they're in that defensive threat scanning mode. Their body's literally in fight or flight. I could tell them something and they're gonna— it's gonna be met with attack. It's like, think about this, like think about how strong our identity is. Like our identity is a thermostat You know, it's like a cybernetic device. It's just like, you believe you're here, you get too much success, it brings you back. But also if you go too low, it'll bring you back. But our identity is like, you identify as, I am depressed, right? What they would call cognitive fusion in ACT therapy, meaning that you are fused with your thoughts and your emotions. There's no separation there. Someone says, I am depressed, right? And depression's a terrible thing, right? It's horrible. No one should have to go through it. It's debilitating. But if I were to come up to someone who's not aware, doesn't have that skill, and I'm just offering an objective suggestion like, what if— I understand all that stuff. What if depression wasn't something that you are and it's something that you experience? If they don't have that self-awareness, I'm going to get met with this visceral attack. Well, you don't know, Jake. You're an entrepreneur and you've never had depression and all this shit, blah, blah, blah. And they're freaking out at me. What is that? That's their system trying to defend their identity of being depressed. They're not even able to get past that to be able to be open to these ideas. So someone who's like that, you can't even— and it's not even them talking, it's them in survival mode. Because when you're in survival mode physiology, your brain's just threat scanning, threat scanning, threat scanning. Oh, that's a threat. Jake's a threat.

That's a beautiful way of putting it, dude. Yeah, that's a really, really powerful way to do it. Yeah, the, the— I, again, I, I'm open to when people are in that mode, right? Like, I— so, for what it's worth, right? Like, I needed assistance. My brain was so strong.

Yeah.

I needed— I was so committed to the old rut, to the old way of being that, you know, and I'll share it here on your show, right? I was looking for any answers that they possibly could give me. But, you know, and I saw a friend of mine that was also super wrapped up in his brain and ego and his success and identity. And he posted something on Facebook and he said, I just want my life to be flowy. I want 3 appointments a week and make the same amount of money I do now. And I was massively triggered and I reached out to him. I want to fucking be flowy. What's this about? And so I'm working with this new couple as a coach, like, give them a call. So I signed up for what I thought was a meditation retreat. 6 months later, you've heard the story. Your people have it. And, you know, I show up to this meditation retreat. It's 4 hours away from home. I'm angry because a lot of shit went down that week that I was not happy with. And these people don't know my story. I'm in the middle of custody battle and my businesses. I've got 7 of them and I'm very important and I have— they've changed the date on me. So like with that, I get there and I realize quickly that this is not a meditation retreat. I was at a medicine retreat with very gentle psychedelics. Being offered. And I freaked out. And, but I, at the time, I had only put sugar, caffeine, or alcohol in my body. Never even worked with THC before.

Nothing.

Yeah. And it was in that moment, that night, where I'm 4 hours away from home. It's a high-level room. They're all like high-level actors. And there was a big attorney from Wall Street there. And there was like all these nice people. So I surrendered, which was very hard for my brain to do. But it took for me, because I was so committed to my rut and my identity, finally, the most beautiful night of my entire world happened where that little voice that I thought was helping me my entire life, I thought that was my intuition, my higher self, right? Talking to me, "You can do more. You can be more. Come on. You can get out of bed. You got to go to the gym.

You got to do this." That is a deadly association, thinking that is your intuition.

Right? Well, who else hears voices? I did, right? All of a sudden, like that voice for the first time in 40 years, like sloth got soft and then went away. And I had this weird feeling I never felt before of just peace and warmth and connectedness and openness. I'm like, what the fuck is this? And what really completely sold me on this process was the next morning. And I had the most beautiful night. Remember everything, totally conscious, like I can, you know, pick up those feelings that I had that night. I did have a couple visuals, but in the morning, I'd been seeing a chiropractor for 30 years because of a car accident I'd been in, or 28, 5 years at that time. And I woke up the next morning, I had full mobility in my neck and back, and I had no pain, and I burst into tears. And, and for me, I say all this because, like, some of us are so committed where there are things out there that can assist. So I go back to what you were just saying is that when people are in that survival, when they're in this place of, you know, I now have the ability because I felt what presence actually is, but I wouldn't have known if I didn't have something to assist me in that. Right. And I don't need that now going forward. I just now know what the feeling is. So I can drop into that feeling. And when people— and I'm, I'm now a certified psychedelic facilitator. So if someone comes into that lizard brain, that survival, They're scanning for threats. I was taught in my hypnosis, right, we go to the body, we take them out of their mind, we go to the body, we ask them, how does this feel right now? Right, like a total pattern interrupt question. How does the top of your feet feel? What does your top of your roof of your mouth feel like right now? Why is it you feel pain in your right knuckle? Right, and it, it's, it's an interrupt. Or we can say something— this is a funny story, I know I'm talking a lot here, but like No, this is great.

Vale on, baby.

People who have issues with value or being enough or I don't do enough, right? Like, that was me, right? For people who have that, there is a fantastic reel that came out on Facebook and it's this big male lion, you know, huge, huge thing. But he's just— he's taking a nap. He's completely useless. And He's got, uh, his balls hanging out. I'm saying the word balls. I'm allowed to say that on your show, right? Whatever. He's just laying there, there's flies around him, but he's dead asleep. And all of a sudden, this female lioness comes over, starts circling him, starts like rubbing on him a little bit. And then his like partner lioness runs over, starts fighting. And these two lionesses that are like badasses, hunters, doing all the work, raising the kids, like, like essentially creating the whole household, are fighting over this dumb lazy lion that's laying there with his balls out, doesn't even know that they're there. And a pattern interrupt that a few of us have incorporated is that once you start to feel that value, right, as like, I'm not providing enough value, I'm providing— so now we say balls. A pattern interrupt. Like, you have value just by existing. Like, the fact— this is you and me now, Jake. I'm saying Michael Singer, right? The fact that we— 13.8 billion years of evolution, we're here on a planet that has air and water and dirt. We took the air, water, and dirt with our beautiful brains. We merged out of the muck as amphibians and became monkeys, or whatever, Adam and Eve, whatever you guys believe. And we're here now as humans with this intellect, this beautiful mind, this consciousness. And we've created air, dirt, and water. We took those three things with all the little minerals we found in it, created microchips, yeah, that created power, put us in a rocket to get off the Earth, to go to the moon, to go to another thing. We are fucking brilliant. But that's the same muscle that got us into spaceships, that got us to the moon, where we were 4 or 5 years old and we— something happened in our world that made us feel not loved or not supported or not enough. And we ask that beautiful muscle, the heart asks the muscle, the brain, "Hey, I don't ever want to feel that again. So, I want you to run every single scenario to protect so we don't feel this feeling anymore, this hurt, this not enough, this whatever it is." And the brain says back to the heart, this is like Michael Singer's, right? "Are you sure? I'm really good at running scenarios. In fact, I've created microchips from dirt, air, and water. I can do that. Are you sure you want me to do that? Yes. Yes, I'm sure. Please save me from these negative feelings. Save me from being hurt again. And from that moment when we're born, the powerful brain does what it does, and it's the program that we have programmed since birth to run every scenario over and over and over again. And then we start to create that voice of you can do more, you can be more. You know what's right and wrong. You can, you know, push yourself a little bit harder, fight through this. Or what the fuck? I can't believe you did that. Like, we punish ourselves 100 times for doing one thing wrong, don't we? Right? Like, we do something wrong, the negative voice steps in, but then we relive it and relive it and relive it. And that is something we've asked our brain to do to protect us from being wrong or not enough. So that was a big way of saying Right. It is trainable. We can use whatever we need to for pattern interrupts. But the awareness, just like in your Built for Impact, the awareness is number one. How can we even be aware of what our mind is doing before we move into the regulation?

Yeah. Yes. When we get to the first in-person Built for Impact thing, you're going to be there.

You're on the docket.

You're on the docket as one of the speakers. And it's going to be great. Um, we're going global. We're going global, Nick.

Um, I love it.

I'm talking about— people talk about generational wealth. I'm talking about generational impact. Generational impact, right? 4 generations from now, the whole game has been changed because we freaking graced this earth.

Um, I love it.

It's important.

I'm going to challenge one thing there though, Jake. So I had impact as one of our 4 core values at AA Real Estate. Right? Impact being we were going to change, we're going to make a million millionaires and including homeowners, landlords or teams. So I was then attached to the outcome.

Sure.

I do have to watch that. So now my new mission statement is, you know, I'm a beacon of light for those who wish to rise because I've said if I change myself and myself only in this planet, I did it. I'm the miracle.

Yeah.

And if anyone else listens to you, listens to me, like listens to our teachings, like so much the better, you know, but I no longer attach myself to having to change people.

Yeah, no, I agree with that. It's a slippery slope. Definitely being aware of that. I'm constantly checking myself because then impact just becomes a new performance goal. Oh, I got to have this amount of impact and it becomes about the results still, you know. So one of the things I'm— one of the frames in part of Imagine Your Future that I'm teaching is the shift from vision as motivation to vision as orientation. So instead of vision, right, being something that you have to go attain and it's like a whip you're just cracking against yourself to go get your vision, which just creates more anxiety, fear. Again, going back to your physiology, I center a lot of stuff around the nervous system. That identity gap is a threat to your system, right? Because what does your system want to do? Wants to keep you in the familiar. What's not familiar? The version of you with a million dollars. So what do you fear? Stress, anxiety, fear, right? And it makes you, and it puts you in that survival state, which makes it getting there harder. What we need to do is just orient ourselves. Just ask yourself, am I walking north today? Am I walking north? Where's my vision? It's just the North Star. Am I walking north? Great, that's a win if I'd walked north today. So it's just like when you use your vision as some goal to be attained, it's like trying to chase the sunset. So you're not gonna fucking catch the sunset. It's like way over there. Doesn't matter how fast you run, doesn't matter if you're on a freaking speedboat, speed bike, you ain't gonna catch the sunset. But if you're just walking in the direction of the sunset because it's pretty, that's the goal. So same thing with our vision. It's like, use vision as orientation instead of motivation. That'll keep you in a regulated state. It'll keep your prefrontal cortex on. You'll be able to think. You'll have emotional regulation, emotional bandwidth. And getting to your goal will be this beautiful journey instead of this freaking trophy to be attained.

Oh wow, there's a lot of quotables in there, Jake, for sure. We, you know, go back, going back to when we were kids, which a lot of us can't even do because we don't, we didn't have fun or we didn't know what that was. A lot of us don't even know what that feels like. But, you know, the only goal that we have in our tiny, short little 76 years of expected life expectancy on this planet, like how, how, how minute and minuscule is that for 13.8 billion years of evolution, right? Like we are here for less than a blink of an eye.. And so, when we have the anxiety or we have the guilt and shame or we have the negative self-limiting beliefs to moving into what brings you excitement or passion, like there's literally nothing else that matters. We're only here to grow as a soul and to expand as to who we are. And most of the time, it's pain or it's discomfort that allows that to happen. It helps facilitate that. Yeah. So, if that's our goal and we're going to have— excitement or pain and we're going to have discomfort to help us grow, then what's left? Well, what's the thing in your body? Like, what gives you this feeling of excitement or passion? What's a vision that you have? Maybe it's a charity, maybe it's running a sporting event, maybe it's, you know, I have a member of my community that wants to build this massive sports stadium in Haiti, right? The second most poorest country in the world. Like, there's what's exciting for you. And then, like you said, what's one step? What's one step? Not the whole thing. The brain loves to get involved in the whole— what's one thing I can do today towards that which brings me the most excitement or passion in my life? And here's the last part of it: without having any attachment to the outcome and knowing that it's about the step into excitement or passion, the step into the journey. That's the whole point. Yeah, it's cool.

The journey, it just creates so much less pressure. I mean, it makes sense. It makes complete sense that If you have this big scary vision, you know, this big distant vision, it can trigger you to go into a dysregulated state because it's like, oh my gosh, I live in a studio apartment, how am I going to be a millionaire? Like, how am I even going to get there? That's just like pressure and stress. Like, how am I going to do that? Versus, okay, what's the first step I need to take to do that? Okay, let's do that. Let's keep doing it, keep doing it, keep doing it.

And why do you want to be the millionaire in the first place, right? Like, what's the feeling that we're chasing And can we feel that now, knowing that if we feel that feeling now, we become— the universe will make the millionaire happen?

Exactly, exactly. Yeah, I think that's, that's, that's important too. I think the other thing too is like, because it is kind of a— I don't know the word for it— a juxtaposition, or it's kind of a, you know, I'm of both minds. Like, I do believe that you should have as much abundance as you want. Like, you should have all the money in the world. Like, you should have a Ferrari. You should, because why not? We're on this earth, why wouldn't I have access to that? That's like my mindset. But when you make that the primary— I think that— I think what the main thing is, it's like if you're using that to try to compensate for an internal lack, that's where the disconnect is. But as long as you're just like already whole and you're just like chasing it for fun, really, you're like, oh, Ferrari, cool. Like, I mean, that'd be cool to have, right? Like, whatever. But it's like if you don't have the Ferrari, you're like, all right, whatever, just have it or I don't have it. I think that's kind of the mindset of going after these things. It's just kind of an expression of who you are.

Oh my God. That was the last part that we just talked about with somebody else the other day. When we know we're like finally moving, like we're okay. Or as Michael Singer says, when we know we're finally okay, like when we're looking, when we're not running from anything, we're not running from scarcity or from unsafety or from being hurt, and we're not running towards something. That we're attached to. Like when we can just be here, we're not running from, we're not running towards, and we're in the present moment. And like, oh, that's exciting. I'm going to take a step towards that. Like, that's what you've made it. That's when we have that awareness and we're in regulation. We're moving into that vision space. I love that. That's a great way to put it.

Great. That is good. Yeah. I like what you said there. It's like, yeah, I just, you just go in there because, because why not? And that's almost the mindset. It's like, well, why wouldn't I go through that? It's kind of cool. Like it'd be cool to have, right? But it's not like I need this, right? But that's how we're conditioned. And I think it's like, again, it comes back to— I think a lot of the inner work becomes— and like, you don't want awareness to turn into like a new stick to beat yourself with because you're aware of all your limiting patterns, so then you just judge yourself and shame yourself for it. Like, that is not the point. That's honestly a regression of where we're trying to get to. So it's like responsibility without self-blame. I think that's huge. It's like, be able to Be aware and take responsibility for these things without blaming yourself for it because that is the very thing you're trying to get away from.

That's the quotable too, right there. Put that on X.

That's good, man. I appreciate you coming on here as always. It's a quick hour. So what are you up to these days though? What's your focus?

I can share that, right? When I was moving into discomfort, I literally had to start doing the opposite of what my brain was telling me to do back 5 years ago. So I stopped— instead of saying I had to do over 100 deals this year, and, you know, at our peak in like 2018 or '19, 2,000 units, 7 states, and 150 flips a year, and like, and we kept pushing and pushing and pushing the needle. And I remember like forcing myself to say I'm going to do less than 6 deals this year, pushing myself to say I'm going to get massage every month, especially when we had the challenge where we lost other people's money and I lost my value. Right. And I thought I didn't need to exist. I still get a massage, even though that was against everything I felt in my body. So, you know, my goals now are very, very different. Right. I am in this space now where I have an 11 and 9-year-old. I value my time freedom so much. And, you know, I went from a place of having like 26 Zoom meetings a week, like recruiting and management and asset management and then, you know, projects and new deals and seller appointments. And like, I went from this place where, like, you know, my goal is to have less than 5 set appointments a week. I'm able to, right, meet my kids when they get off the bus every single day. I'm able to go on like 3 vacations a year. They don't have to be big ones. And I still do real estate. Real estate's always going to be a huge part of my life. We still have like, I don't know, 200 units or so. We sold mostly everything. But I only work on projects that excite me. And like we have, I think, you know, Jake, like I have this passion project that like micro resort wellness retreat center that I have next to my existing hotel up in Bartlett, New Hampshire. Like, super stoked to see what that can turn into. And it's, it's pushing this work. It's like what you and I are doing. Like, it's literally the only purpose is to change who people are on a fundamental basis and change how they operate. So that gets me excited.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I'm like, why do it if you're not passionate about it? Why do it? You're only here for a blip on this human earth. Why do it? Why put any of your energy or time into it? We gotta, we gotta, we just gotta think about our lives, folks, and like understand that you can do whatever you want to do. All right, it's like I talk about, you know, Build for Impact or this or that. How did this come about? Because I literally just made a decision one morning. No one told me, Jake, you're worthy, you're ready to do this, you're ready to do that. No one comes in and tells you that. No one tells you you're ready. You gotta fucking wake up one day and be like, this is who I am. This is what I'm gonna do. And I don't care what happens. I don't care where I am. I don't care how far off it is from what I'm doing now. I'm gonna do it. And guess what? You wake up every day and you take one step forward, you'll get there and you'll be that person, right? But it's about the journey.

Oh my God. Anyways. Yeah. And you know, for those people listening, and I just, this just came to me. So in case someone else is thinking this, right? Oh, well, Jake and Nick are in a different situation. Like, they, you know, they've never— they don't know where I'm at. They, they have stuff to keep them in, like, out of survival mode, right? Like, I'll just reiterate, right, like, my story where it wasn't until I finally— work was my sedation tool. I could always go back on my laptop, go back on my phone, I could make a bunch more money. And when I started to go through this process of finding out who I was, like, the universe put so much shit in my way where I had no choice. I couldn't just bury my nose back in my laptop or computer anymore, and I literally had to go to negative zero. Like, all the things I had done for 20 years, all the things I had built, all the cash I'd put away— like, I— because I so trusted my grind and my sedation tool of work, the universe needed me to learn this lesson that no matter what on this life you will be taken care of. No matter how much that triggered me, because I used to hear that all the time from other people, like, no, no, no, no, I'm the one who makes shit happen. I'm the one. Shut up and do it. Like, we can do it. I went to a place where, like, I didn't know how we're going to pay the mortgage. I didn't know how I was going to do groceries. And like, all of a sudden, an escrow check from like 2016 would just show up. I had overpayment to like an attorney escrow from a deal that we did for like $800. And then, right, like a student had bought one of our complete deal flow systems it was a recurring thing. Credit card was in the system and $100. Things just came in to the point where I had to surrender and cry and like, okay, I will be okay, like, fundamentally. And it took me to go to negative whatever to have to surrender to that. So sharing that story with anybody who needs to hear it, like, even now in this moment, you are okay. You will always have your basic necessities taken care of. And you might not be able to feel it in your body yet, but through Jake's community, right, and through, through pattern interrupts, through training the mind and then training the body, you can get to a place where even right now, relax your jaws, relax your shoulders, deep breath in and feel presence. Like, that's the only place peace lies, is like right now in this moment. Not in the future, not in what we did and regret in the past, like right here.

So those things are powerful, powerful. Like relaxing your body, your face, your jaw, like speaking slower, not moving so quickly through your, through your environment, is literally sends physiological signals to your system to calm down.

Yeah, right.

There's an interesting concept called neuroception. Well, there's interoception, you know. Yeah, I'll get into that. That's a whole nother, whole nother rabbit hole.

That's another episode.

It's not an episode. Cool. Well, I appreciate everyone coming on. Where's the best place for people to connect with you?

Oh, sure. Probably Instagram. Instagram or Facebook. Nick Allerud. I'm on there. Post random stuff. And it's again funny because all my old real estate stuff, how to make, you know, extra $100 grand this year, got a bazillion views. And now with, uh, how to reprogram your mind gets like 4. So yeah, there's all your audience in real estate though, you know. Yeah, yeah.

So it's like, especially for myself, right, it's like coming out now with a lot of this personal development stuff is you gotta let your audience find us, or we do. So just us being consistent every single day doing that thing, like me doing these lives every Saturday, it's like people start to see me as that person now, you know what I mean? Like, they didn't see me as this person 5 months ago. They saw me as Jake the wholesaler, but now it's like, oh, Jake, like, oh yeah, Built for Impact. Like, it's starting to stick, right? But we just got to be consistent, and easiest way to be consistent is just to take another step. That's it. Take a step every day. This was my step for the day, so this is a win. I ain't got to do nothing else, right? You've done enough. I did enough.

You've done enough. You are enough, and now you can do whatever the fuck you want that's exciting or passionate.

Absolutely great. All right, man, I appreciate it. We'll be in touch. And, um, actually, just stick around real quick. I'm gonna end this real quick, but okay. Everyone else, till next time, all the peace, all the power.