1709: Emmitt Smith, NFL Hall of Famer, on Investing, Dancing With the Stars, Mindset & Why the Founders Thought the USA Was Doomed

Just invest. It's still a great thing to do. I know it can be scary to a lot of people. Jason's been doing this a long time. He's got a lot of knowledge. We're in an age of technology and everything's at our fingertips. You can do a lot of homework on your own, but in the end, make sure you're talking to professionals like Jason.

Welcome to the Creating wealth show with Jason Hartman. You're about to learn a new slant on investing, some exciting techniques and and fresh new approaches to the world's most historically proven asset class that will enable you to create more wealth and freedom than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine, self made multimillionaire who's actually been there and done it. He's a successful investor, lender, developer and entrepreneur who's owned properties in 11 states, had hundreds of tenants, and been involved in thousands of real estate transactions. This program will help you follow in Jason's footsteps on the road to your financial Independence Day. You really can do it. And now, here's your host, Jason Hartman with the complete solution for real estate investors.

Welcome to episode 17, 091709 Dodging Mortgage Payments. Well, I said it before. The people who get all the breaks are the people who have the mortgages, who have the high loan balances, the people who do the old version of the right thing, which was paying off your mortgage, paying it down, putting a large down payment on the property so you have a lot of equity. Those people, as unfair as it is, they get part punished. And this is the reason we have to play the game by the new rules that were announced 50 years ago in 1971. Fifty years ago, they announced the new rules. And still to this day, five decades later, many people have just ignored that announcement. Isn't it funny how that is? Oh, I tell you, human nature. It's a, it's just a funny thing. They're playing by the old rules, the rules that were before the announcement in 1971. Of course, you know what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the famous or infamous announcement by our president back then, Richard Milhouse Nixon, who said he was temporarily suspending the dollar's convertibility to gold. Temporarily, five decades ago. Yes, this is the anniversary year. That's why it's important. Well, guess what? Here is a story. One man who has managed to take advantage of this opportunity, right? He's getting all the brakes. As all the people doing the right thing are more burdened. They're not getting the brakes, okay? So here is a story by Josh Gardner. It is entitled, New York man is Still Dodging eviction. And after 20 years. Now, this is not a tenant. This is not a tenant. When it says eviction, don't confuse the two, okay? If you don't pay your mortgage and you go into foreclosure and you don't move out after the foreclosure, they have to evict you. They have to treat you just like a tenant. Right. So that's why you heard during the Great Recession, a lot of lenders were foreclosing on homes and giving the occupants, whether it be the owner or a tenant occupant, they were giving them cash for keys. Yes, cash for keys. So they'd knock on the door and say, hey, look, if you'll move out, we'll give you 2,000 bucks. Just get out of here. Right. Cash for keys. That was the deal. So that happened quite a bit. This man, his name is Garamert Hannispal. I'm sure. I'm not saying that. Right. He has made just one mortgage payment since 1998. Only one mortgage payment? Yes. Believe it or not. Now understand first off, that he is living in a socialist state, a state that is not friendly to the people that lent the money or the people who are the landlord. This is a socialist state that is friendly to people that, well, hey, they're not upholding the deal. So a New York man who hasn't made a mortgage payment on his Long island home in over 20 years has dodged eviction yet again. According to the New York Post, he was saved from being kicked out on the streets yet again last week when a judge agreed to delay his case because his lawyer claimed a co counsel had been hired just the day before the hearing. So records show that this guy has avoided eviction multiple times over the years by filing lawsuits and bankruptcies. According to the New York Post, he's 52 years old. He's made one mortgage payment since 1998. Wow. And by the way, if I'm not confusing what the article is telling me here, and I am paraphrasing, obviously, I think that was the first payment he made. Only the first payment. You can't make this stuff up, can you? As Yahoo News notes, the pandemic added to his arsenal of loopholes, technicalities, and thanks to a backlog of cases in housing court. Of course, this is New York, so we know the courts there are a mess. They're totally backlogged, and they're very tenant or borrower friendly. Right. The Home was foreclosed on years ago and it's currently owned by Diamond Ridge Partners, the company that most recently took him to court. An attorney for Diamond Ridge Partners told the judge last week that he has pulled the last minute attorney trick around 40 times. Oh my gosh, this is a nightmare. In addition to suing him, the company has reportedly also previously offered to pay him $20,000 just to get, although he seems to prefer to stay put. So that's a cash for keys if you ever heard one, right? $20,000 if he will move. You know what I would love to know? I'd love to know the address of this property so I could look it up, see what it's worth. I'd like to know what his loan balance was, what the fair market rent on the property is. That would just be interesting to have that data, but I don't have it. Okay. On the last episode where we had the the first part of superstar Emmett and we're gonna have part two today, I talked a little bit about history and how I was with some friends on the 4th of July watching fireworks and so forth. And we got to this discussion about history and a couple of them said they didn't think it was that important, you know, not that interesting to study history. And you know, hey, the time has passed, let's move on, right? That was, that was the opinion of two of the people I was with. I disagreed with that. I say it's super important to study history because it give you a framework, it gives you a backdrop, it gives you a context to understand the present and to more accurately predict or evaluate the future. Well, look, a lot of people right now, including yours truly in some ways or at some times think that the US is in decline, that it is doomed. And if you are one of the listeners from our 188 other countries besides the United States, we have listeners in 189 countries. If you were not in the US this is still super important to you. I'm going to play a clip from Reason TV, which is a great YouTube channel by the way. You should go and subscribe to Reason tv. And they used to have a magazine. I followed them for many years. They had really, really great content. So highly recommend this. This clip is entitled the Founding Fathers. Look, we just had the Fourth of July. We just had our Independence Day. This is the right time to be talking about it. It's always the right time to be talking about it, but especially now because we had that one holiday that kind of marks the spot, the Birthday. Right. The founding fathers thought America was doomed. And you know, I was aware of some of this, but definitely not all of it until I heard what you are about to hear. This is fascinating. There's some good research here. They interview the historian Dennis Rasmussen. It's just interesting to see how every generation, every time in history, they lament their problems. They think they are generally bigger than they are. Understand that that's a good point of reference and context. Last year, about a year ago, we had all sorts of people predicting the end of the world. We had all sorts of people with very dark thoughts, including myself. I indulged some of those too. Okay, I'll admit it. We had all sorts of people thinking real estate market was going to collapse. The complete opposite happened. And here we are. Remember the reluctant investors lament that great poem in 1977. He thought the market was so overpriced. Every time when you're just in that moment in time, everything seems heavier, it seems more profound, it seems scarier, it seems worse than it is. But somehow, someway, the market goes on, the economy moves on, new innovations occur, people get through it. People are so resilient. In fact, I believe that Darwin, who's an interesting historical character for sure, Charles Darwin, he is often misquoted by saying, you know, it's survival of the fittest, really. It's survival of the most adaptable. And now adaptability is a form of fitness, no question about it, at least in, in my humble opinion, adaptability is a form of fitness. Being adaptable is a measure of fitness. But just understand that everybody thinks it's so bad at the time and somehow some way people just, they just find a way. It's truly, truly amazing. So let me play for you this short clip and then I'll be back and we'll get to Emmett Smith, our superstar. Interview real estate investor and Dallas Cowboy superstar Emmett Smith.

For those who predict the American experiment can't last and who worry the social fabric is disintegrating. At a time of rising political division, it's worth remembering that back when the ink had barely dried on the Constitution, the Founding Fathers were deeply pessimistic about the future of the country they had created. Hamilton called the Constitution a frail and worthless fabric. Washington lamented the growth of political factions. Adams thought a lack of civic virtue doomed the Republic. Jefferson watched sectional divisions between north and south with horror, calling the sacrifices made by the generation of 76 useless because it would be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons. My Only consolation, he wrote, is to be that I live not to weep over it.

Their pronouncements seem almost histrionic to the modern ear.

In Fears of a Setting Sun, Syracuse University professor Dennis Rasmussen wrestles with the Founders near universal pessimism about the future of the country they created.

Partly, I think that's because they thought that so much was at stake. They really thought that the future of republican government and the future of human liberty was riding on this American experiment. And so the potential failure of that experiment, they thought, would be a world historical calamity. I mean, they did have really grandiose hopes. You read what they write, and they really think they're coming up with a new system that's going to secure liberty for the future that had never been done before. They're worried that what they think is this world historical achievement is going to fail. It's not just Washington, Hamilton, Adams, and Jefferson. Virtually all of the founders who lived into the 19th century became disillusioned for one reason or another.

Only one founder stood out as an exception.

So I'll confess, I assumed that Madison would be disillusioned too. I initially set out to write a book about five disillusioned Founders, but really his final years were ones of almost defiant optimism. Part of it is just temperament. He had a more even keel temperament than the other Founders did. Part of it was that he just expected less from politics than they did. He didn't have have the sometimes grandiose or utopian hopes that some of the other Founders did. And one of them really, I think, is just that he had lived so long. He's the one who outlives all the other Founders. He lives until 1836. By the end of his life, the country had weathered a half century's worth of storms. And he thought, well, the longer it endures, the more durable it seems.

Should Americans see the Founders disillusioned as a sign that America is flawed beyond hope? After all, we are still beset by many of the fears the Founders identified.

I think the fact that their worries are still with us, but that the country is still with us, the Constitution is still with us. You could take in either of two directions. On the one hand, you could say, well, the country has lasted this long despite these problems. It's probably, as Madison suggested, going to last a good deal longer. We can live with these problems in a way that we sometimes don't think we can. Right? We hear people pronounce the end of American democracy at every turn and the fact that it hasn't ended in the past 230 years suggests that maybe Madison was right and it'll last a good deal longer. On the other hand, these problems probably aren't going away. We sometimes seem to think that with the right tweak to the political system, if we just get rid of the electoral college or the filibuster or whatever the pet worry is, then all will be right. Then American politics will be fixed. But the fact that these problems have been with us since the very outset, since the founders themselves, suggests that, you know, they might be more systemic, more baked in than we sometimes dare to hope.

So I hope you enjoyed that. I hope it gave you some context for understanding today. Remember, it takes an awfully long time and an awful lot of bad things to happen to destroy a country founded on such great ideas. Great ideas that founded the good old US of A. Truly amazing what our founding fathers accomplished. But even they clearly were quite pessimistic. So check that out on Reason TV on YouTube. And one more thing before we get to Emmett Smith. I want to announce our next event. Live event in Orlando, Florida. Beautiful Orlando, Florida. Hey, those theme parks are open again. It's time to go check them out. Make it a holiday. And that will be save the date. Mark your calendar. September 10th, 11th and 12th. September 10th, 11th, 12th. It'll be kind of like Meet the Masters, but we might actually give this one a new name. We're talking about that. But anyway, it'll be a great event and we are trying to arrange a property tour On Friday the 10th, a Florida property tour. And then we will have all day Saturday and Sunday. We will have great speakers and just a great lineup for you live. A live in person event. Yes, it's time to get out of the house. Come see us in beautiful Orlando, Florida, September 10th, 11th and 12th. And by the way, we don't have a registration page up yet. We'll get that up and we'll get the link out to you. Without further ado, here is Dallas Cowboys superstar Emmett Smith.

A huge part of, you know, my core values as an individual is generosity. And not only financially, but with my time, with my resources, you know, to give back and share the wealth. As many people I've discovered in my own life, that the more I give, seemingly the more continues to come back to me. So what's your viewpoint on generosity? What would you say to the people who are, who are sitting here making money, starting to come into abundance and wealth, about the value of sharing that wealth and spreading it around and how that has ultimately impacted your long term.

I'm gonna go right back to what my mama told me. No matter how high you go, never forget where you come from. Forgetting where you come from is when you don't want to share. When you want to become selfish, don't ever become selfish with what you have because that's when you really going to stop growing. Dwight Thomas also told me, the day that you become satisfied is the day that the growing stops. I don't ever want to be satisfied. That don't mean that I'm being greedy. No, that means I'm going to continue to push myself to the highest level of potential that I can actually go to. It has nothing to do with the capital. It's all about the service that we're able to provide. Because I'm not worried about capital because it will come. If I'm providing great service, if I do great work, two people may hear about it. But if I do poor work, 25 people gonna hear about it. So my job is to continue to push the envelope for the service aspect of what we do. We are all in the service business. Think about it this way. When I played ball with the Cowboys and many you probably come to a game or so or wherever you may be at, you went to a professional game and you had to pay $200 for a ticket or $300 for a ticket. You had to pay $45 to get into the parking lot. Then you had to pay 35 for a damn hot dog and some Cokes and stuff like that. You paid a lot of money. Other words, you almost spent 500 just on that one day. And you go in with the expectation that your team is going to dominate. But when they don't dominate, you ticked off because you feel like you got robbed. They didn't provide the service to you. But when you come to watch the Dallas Cowboys in the 90s and they won, oh yeah, you can't wait to spend that next 500 next week. You're excited about it because the serve you feel like you got the investment that you put in, you got the return that you wanted. You wanted to see your Cowboys win. You don't want to see athletes making millions and millions of dollars and not performing. Nobody likes that. But everybody has this expectation that they are supposed to perform at that level, including an athlete. But at the end of the day, that to me is the service that we all offer to each other, whether it's in the hospitality space, whether it's in the multifamily Space, Real estate. Space. Investment space. You're taking care of people money, and they're expecting to get their returns. And, you know, I'm telling my kids right now, when you're an entrepreneur or you're an owner, you're the last one to get paid. The last one. If you're the first one getting paid, something's not right about that model. That's the way I look at it.

That's why I always say, don't quit your day job to the entrepreneurs. I'd rather you keep making three grand, four grand a month working at your main job. And then 6pm to 10pm you work on your side hustle until it becomes an actual company. Because let's say the three of us invested into Cole's company. We gave him a million dollars, right? 300 grand each.

Where's Cole? So I see Cole right up here.

Okay, so let's say the three of us, we put up 333,000 each, give him $1 million, and Cole goes out and he starts a new company for microphones. And he absolutely crushes it. Month three, does 100K, month four, 200K. By the end of the year, he does $2 million in sales. How much does Cole make? Zero. You know why? Everything that happened along the way, he's got to put back into his company, right? If you're profitable, you'd be an idiot to take the money out. Because if you went to 0 to 2 million, you can go to 2 to 10. If your company fails, you don't get paid. So in either version, you don't make any money as an entrepreneur. And so I try to instill in people to save up at least six to 12 months in the piggy bank before you start your entrepreneurial journey. Because even if he crushes and does 2 million, we're happy, right? We invest in his company and his valuation is higher. Everything's great. But he didn't make any money. He paid 800,000 in taxes. He paid $400,000 in production fees and 200 grand in marketing and 200 grand in staff and 200 grand and blah, blah, blah. And he's only actually netted 400k, and he's got to put that back into the company.

You say 6 to 12, I say 12 to 18, because you never know when a pandemic is gonna hit you. That's why I say 12 to 18, because any crisis can take out 6 to 12, because you now, you're at liberty of the market itself. But if you got 12 to 18, you got a whole year and a half to allow certain things to take place. And plus, we don't never know where we are in the middle of the cycle of a president. We could be in the middle of a transition of a president. So we don't know what's next around the corporation corners. So to me, I think I like a year to a year and a half. I just want to have that extra cushion to where I can figure things out and see where things are going in a year and a half.

Are there things outside of real estate that you like to invest in? Are there startup companies or other types of investors?

That is very, very risky. Startup companies. I've done it, haven't had a whole lot of success in it. I get it, I understand it. But the thing that I have learned is it is the people is beyond the concept. The concept can be solid, but it is about the people and the execution ability of those individuals that you're actually investing in a guy like Cole to.

Make 2 million the first year.

Yeah, Cole, 2 million first year. Let's do it. You going to turn 100, what, 333,000 into 2 million? Oh, yeah, that's a nice little multiple.

Do you like the stock market or cryptocurrency or art or sports cards or any other alternative assets?

I love sports cars, but what I don't like about sports cars is there is no quality level of measuring all the sports cars. I mean, you can have all of these different companies producing sports cars, but over producing sports cars. So you don't know what the scarcity really, the numbers really are. No one is documenting how many numbers that or how many sports cars that they're producing a year. No one is actually putting that in the marketplace. How many bins actually sold, how many cases and so forth they are. I'm missing it. But even then, you taking paper that can be reproduced in some kind of printing machine that looks just like a sports car, then filter right into the marketplace. That bugs me. There needs to be a numbering system to where we can qualify the number of cars that's being produced by a certain sports company, as well as the number of autographs being done by athletes. Because every athlete's signature that you have out there may not be real and you don't have a quality way of really verifying those things because there hasn't been a system actually put in place for you to do that up until the one I'm working on. But I hear you.

So I actually heard on the tour and again you can validate whether it's true or not that you have on your mantle with all your trophies, that you have the. Your. Your mvp, Super Bowl MVP is second. And they said, what do you think is first? And they said, oh, you know, the Russian title or whatever. And I said, no, it's dance. It was Dancing with the Star.

It's not true.

They going around telling this story on the tour.

Yeah, yeah.

But anyway, with Dancing with the Stars, what was the motivation for you to do something like that? And then with your competitive nature, obviously you wanted to do it all out, right? So you end up winning. Some folks may or may not know that, but, like, this had to be something that was so far out of your comfort zone. What made you decide to want to do it? And then what made you decide to want to win it?

Well, you can decide if you can go win it. You got to go compete to win it. But, you know, you asked a question earlier about extending your brand and extending your career and stand present. That was one way for me to do it. I really didn't have any desire to do Dancing with the Stars. They called in season one, wanted me to do it, and I had a conversation with my folks and. And we talked about it, and they like, it's a brand new show. We don't even know if it's gonna get picked up next season, so why don't we just pass? And so we passed on it. So I saw Evander Holyfield dance. Try to dance. Anyway, I saw him doing something. I don't know what it was, but he did something. And so I was like, okay, I see what they're trying to do. Then season two came around, and I got a call again, and I mysteriously got extra busy. Mysteriously. So I told him no, and Jerry Rice decided to do it. Then I watched the show with Jerry on. I'm like, okay, Jerry got some moves, but I know I cannot dance. Jerry Rice. And so when season three came around, I said, I cannot tell these folks know three times in a row. And I said, you know What? Give me 24 to 48 hours. Let me go talk to my wife, and I'll let you know. Then I talked to her about it. I told her that I wanted to do it. She thought I was missing the limelight. And I was like, no, this would be great for my brand. It puts me in a different genre, sports and entertainment. It cross over and all these kind of things. And the visibility is incredible. So I think it'll be great opportunity for me to do it. Decided to go ahead and make it happen. Now, once I got in it, Lord knows I didn't realize how hard it was going to be. And so taking what I learned and we talk about the processes of life, taking what I learned throughout life and through sports, I took that into the ballroom. Cheryl and I had a conversation about, about how I was going, how hard I was going to work. I already told her how hard I was going to work. But I said, listen, this is how to learn best. We got to break this thing down. We have a minute and 20 second routine. We need to break this thing down into 40 seconds spots or 20 second spots. However we got to do, we got to break it down. 30, 30, 30. I need to learn the first half, first 30 seconds, then I need to learn the second 30 seconds, then the last 20 seconds. How do we got to do it? We can put it all together and that's the way I Learned. We spent two hours in western England learning the first 30 seconds. And I was comfortable where we were moving around on the floor and understanding where I needed to be. And by the end of the first day of practice, I knew the whole routine. The next day it became polishing and we start polishing it up. Then within the routine, you start seeing moments to where you can allow your personality come out. Then by the time the show came around, I was ready to go. It was about performance then. And you know, when you're in front of 60,000 people every week, that's what you want to do, you want to perform. In this case, I was in front of 28 million and I had to get used to that because I was doing something that was completely out of my element. Never took any ballroom dancing at all. Everything I learned on the show, Cheryl taught me. And I had get used to dancing in three inch heels. That's not easy. But I had a great time. Had a great time. And the thing that I learned is the minute you're not thinking about what it is that you're trying to do is the time you can have the most fun.

Do you feel that it had the impact on your brand that you were going for?

By far, by far. I mean, I had grandmothers, I had people who did not see me play football, A ton of people that did not see me play football watch that show. I had kids that did not know me from football, knew me because of that show. My kids got more folks loving on them because of Dance with the Stars than anything I've ever did in football. I mean, it was crazy. It really was crazy, but it was satisfied. It was rewarding because it extended my brand, put it that way. Brands like this is sports oriented. When you do something like Dance with the Stars, it become more entertainment oriented. And then when you do things in business, then it goes into a whole nother genre or another space that you never thought about. And when you're successful in all of them, yeah, it's a recipe for greatness.

So there's different levels. We have amateur, professional, elite and legendary. What do you think happens in between amateur, pro, pro and elite?

I think it's all between the ears at that point. I think most elite athletes have a totally different mindset. They don't see things the same way. You hear Michael Jordan talk about competition, and some people don't like it because he's just that competitive. You hear Kobe Bryant talk about how anal he was about working out and training and preparing and pushing his body and being up in the middle of the night shooting free throws and shooting jump shots after they just lost. You hear guys, Tiger woods talking about his training regimen. You hear Jerry Rice and his training regiment, Walter Payton, his training regimen. Just the mindset of some of these legendary guys is, whatever I'm doing right now is not enough. I needed to work harder. I need to push myself further. I think that's why Tiger woods started doing a lot of the military thing, because he wanted to push his brain and challenge himself physically and mentally. The one thing I'm not sure he actually did do well was take control of his own life instead of allowing others to tell him what to do.

Same exact question for business entrepreneurs. There's entrepreneurs that kind of get by every single year. They're doing six figures. Some do seven figures, and all of a sudden other people, eight, nine figures and scale to be big business owners. What do you think is the difference between the guys that are just trucking along and the ones that go on to build big businesses?

The guys that are just chucking along are satisfied with where they are. They're not looking, they're not evaluating where they are and what's going on within their business to take them to the next level. Or fear of what's on the other side could be holding them back. The guys that are going on, they're not afraid. They're not afraid. They're assessing, they're evaluating, and they're retooling to go to the next level. They're hungry for the next level, and they're looking to correct the mistakes that they're making or the things that are limiting them right at this level, or they just don't know how to get there.

Let's end on this. What's next for somebody who has accomplished all that you've accomplished in these different areas of life, what are you excited about? What's the next big projects? What's the next area of growth in your life that you are tackling next?

What I have not experienced is grandkids. I have not experienced that yet. I haven't experienced my kids, kids getting married. I haven't experienced none of those things. And so to me, I'm not overly concerned about business because business is going to be here regardless what. But I want to see things happen for my children. And they've been around me for 20 some odd years, 22 years, 19 years, 17, soon to be 18 years, 10, 11 years. They've been around me and they hear me talk and to me it's all about that personal satisfaction. Because they are my children, they are my legacy beyond anything else that I do. Real estate, football, business is what I do, but it's not who I am. They are part of who I am and I want to see who I am manifest itself through them.

This is a question I've asked a few different times. It's so fascinating, the reaction and the response to the thought process. Have you ever thought about 10, 20, 50, let's actually call it 75 years from now, when your time is done here and you're gonna leave money, would you leave all of your money to the kids? A portion, a little bit or none?

I'll leave a portion. They don't need it all, but they need enough to get started. And if they have within them what I think they have within them and I tell them they all have a level of greatness in them, they have to find their passion and they have to go work at it because nothing's gonna be given to them for free. I want them all to think that they're getting nothing. I want them all to think that they're getting nothing. They got all that they going to get right now through college and everything, all the expenses and all that stuff covered. But at this point, y' all got to go to work now. But Daddy's heart is. I'm going to leave you something. I'm not going to tell you what I'm going to leave you and the rest. We'll figure it out.

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