221: Vision, Perseverance & Need to Provide Value in Relationships, Not Take Value

Welcome to the Heroic Investing Show. As first responders, we risk our lives every day. Our financial security is under attack, our pensions are in a state of emergency. A single on duty incident can alter or erase our earning potential instantly and forever. We are the heroes of society. We are self reliant and we need to take care of our own financial future. The Heroic Investing show is our toolkit of business and investing tactics on our mission to financial freedom.

Welcome to the Heroic Investing Show, a podcast for first responders, members of the military, veterans and anyone looking to improve their financial future and gain some freedom with their time. We teach America's heroes how to build passive income, build their startup business and safely grow wealth through real estate and other alternative investments. We help current and prior first responders put protections, systems and a team in place to help them build a life where they can focus on their passion, that service or product that they are uniquely gifted to share with others, making the world a better place for all of us. My name is Gary Pinkerton and I co host this show with Jason Hartman. This is episode 221. Episode 221. Well I gotta say I really love this episode. I can't wait to share it with you. This is part one of a video podcast that I did with my close friend Aaron. Aaron is a mortgage initiator. He's done a lot of my personal loans, he's done a lot of loans for those in the Hartman Network. We've become close friends. We've been together on a mastermind for a year or so. Very like minded on both using insurance based financial products, about legacy growing generational wealth for family members and about the value of real estate. And so he talks a lot in this part about creating a vision and about surrounding yourself with like minded individuals and having the foresight to be able to overcome adversity. He talks about the cabins that he built in Missouri for a business that he is starting and having to overcome a lot of adversity to get through that process over the last year or two, both financially just in headaches and just in time delays of getting the project completed. He talks about how he grew through that experience and what got him through it specifically again the vision about what it will do for people in the future that come and visit and go through the experience. I had an opportunity to go through this experience to somewhat give it a dry run with other close friends of ours and our mastermind and we learned that it's absolutely an experience that will change your life. So I really do hope that you enjoy this as well as part two that will be coming up here in two episodes.

So what we have here is one, an opportunity came about, right? It was put here by another person's vision. His love for the shepherd of the hills, his love for the Ozarks, his desire to be in the Ozarks where that was set. So he built this place and he put it here. And then a situation happened where I needed to get an office in the state of Missouri. I'd not ever needed to go to have an office. Well, to actually personally have an office here. We've. Every company I've had has always had an office here, except for I fall into that same problem one other time where we lost our brick and mortar. So I had an occasion to have to come out here, get my sister licensed. And I had written down in a vision two months and two days before I came out here that I wanted because I just closed on some property in the northern Ozarks of Arkansas. And I was thinking about this place, and I wanted to build the place out here and spend a lot more time in the Ozarks. Just fell in love with it years before. And because of my thinking of the Ozarks, it gave me the opportunity to buy those lots out there, actually a really reasonable price. And so I decided to write a vision. I got into the whole vision writing thing back in 2014. So it'd be five years ago in December, and actually in November. There's a big, big thing supposed to be happening to me in five years from when I wrote my very first one. So knowing how that works, I decided to write what I wanted to accomplish for 2017, which 600 transactions for real estate investors. I ended up starting writing that by putting myself in my rocking chair on my porch overlooking the Ozark mountain landscape. Thinking back on 2017, well, two months and two days later, I find myself sitting on a chair, a rocking chair on my porch overlooking the Ozark mountain landscape of these lots, right outside the door of the cabin you're in right now. So you're sitting in the office cabin right there. You can actually see the head of the deer I shot from that cabin window a couple years ago. And I'm here in the chapel. And it's really amazing to me that this is the first week I've been able to stay here after two years of coming out here once a month, watching the progress go very, very, very slow, writing checks to people for them to disappear and not get the work done, letting people promise me what their Plan is and then not fulfilling it, and then finally having one or two people just slowly fulfill their obligation and they're getting it done. They got one gear, which was a very slow gear, but it was a methodical gear. And it was. You can tell with the craftsmanship how well they work. And I just gotta, I just gotta express gratitude for those guys who dug in and made it happen because everybody else didn't. All these other people had grand plans. I'm gonna do this for you. Gonna look like this, I'm gonna take care of this. All they did was cost me money, time, headache, and really potentially my freedom because I want to go choke the hell out of them. But ultimately I'm sitting here now, there's a little bit still getting fish finished up. I'm paying for the roof twice. You know, this is. Now it's finally getting done. We just had the rain go through a little while ago. If you don't, if you didn't, if you heard or not, but that tin roof man was just singing to me. So there's a lot of really, really cool stuff going on here. I'm glad that I can now look at the same background that I would put up when I would talk to people while I'm out there. Now I can sit in a different background. It's really, really cool.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, it's. And it's such a, it's such a lesson for all the other stuff we've talked about this weekend and captured all of it on video, you know, and we talked about how like, you know, to quote the title of the book, you know, the Obstacle is the Way. And you know, that which doesn't kill us makes us stronger mentally. I don't know that it makes us stronger physically. But I mean, this, this project, this two year project is really just walking that out in one more example of life. And our businesses are that way, friendships are that way, personal growth is that way. I mean, it's not going to come simple. And when it, when it, when you have the challenges, it just makes you love it so much more. I mean, you have so much pride in all the little aspects that were so hard to achieve in that place, which is really, really cool to watch all that happen. And I think another thing too important to kind of explain to the audience is that the rocking chair overlooking the Ozark mountains, it's not even the same town you were thinking about. And that's something else that's going to often happen in life.

Right?

I mean, it's probably, it's probably too far for some of us to embrace or acknowledge. If you said no, I meant actually that property. I envisioned that exact property exactly like that. I envisioned that I would spend a couple hundred grand on a property that should have cost one quarter of that and I was going to be excited to do it. I mean, none of that stuff's true, but it led you down that path and it was close enough that you could see the vision and you kept moving it forward.

Well, and the vision was what made gave me the reason to keep moving forward. Because if I didn't have that, if I truly knew what I was going to go through to do this, and somebody said, hey, you can have all that you want out there, but here's what's going to cost you. I told them, pound sand, I'm out, right? But because of the vision of what I wanted, the price never came into into play. Just, let's keep going, let's keep charging forward, keep charging forward. And now I stand on this. It's kind of like climbing Everest. You're standing, you're looking back over, it's like, well, this is freaking cool. This view is awesome now. But if I knew I had to spend that much money, go through that much hell coming out here, maybe I would to come. But I'm glad I'm here now, right? What makes this awesome, what makes this place so phenomenal? Not only it's just a fact that it is, is that I know that there are so few people on this planet that have the balls to finish out what we just did here. This is not for the faint of heart at all. This is literally testing every bit of ability to stay out of prison I can possibly think of. I really want to do some damage to people over this, but I had to dig in and find that, Find the patience I had to find and really find the ways to express the gratitude for the things that I learned that brought me here. I've gotten such a great education while I've been here working on these two things and involved in this project. And now also how I know it's going to benefit other people, because that's the other reason I have this, is because this sacred ground that is here is going to do so much for those who are willing to come out here and put their emotions on the line and set down and actually dig deep into their brain and into their heart and put down on paper what they want to have happen in their. In their life and be willing to put that out there to us to see and then hold them accountable to get there. That's what I'm looking forward to. That's what this place is going to do for folks. It's just. I can't wait to get that off the ground. It's taking too damn long. Yeah.

So what we're talking about, folks, is what my. What I and our friends Brian and Tom did two other members of our Mastermind accountability group really back in October. And what we did was we walked out the process that Aaron did to five years ago or more than that now and then as he was thinking about what 2017 would look like, which resulted in creating the cabins where we're doing this work.

Right.

So it kind of comes full circle. We went and spent some time out in treestands and I wrote like a monster the first day and it was tremendous for me. But when I left that weekend, I went and read it to myself, typed it up because it was all on rain smudged paper. But I typed it up and then I read it to myself. And now I play it all the time because hearing my own voice reminding me about what the future looks like and it's super powerful.

And I told the story about maybe we'll go over that again in a bit but about how I saw some of it play out just a couple months after that. But what we're talking about is living that out and helping other people do that. Actually do the hard work to imprint this on their subconscious and get moving in that direction. Talk maybe Aaron a little bit about that process.

So what I had discovered initially was, you know, I had the opportunity to. And I explained this actually in a book. I have a book right now, four books and published. And they are referred to as the QJO Initiative. That's the series. And the series. I don't know how many are going to be in it right now. There's five, potentially a six ones get. Actually one six. One is in the process of being written. I'm possibly going to shoot for 12. But my books are designed a little bit different. They're not. They're not a full book. I started to do the full book. The problem with a full book is you start seeing that you have to fill in a lot, a lot of blank space just to keep the pages coming, you know. And Cliff Notes has made a very, very, very good business off of cutting out all the bullshit and. And getting you down to the bottom line of what that book's about. So I decided to do that. And if I'm going to have something called The QJO initiative, which is, which is basically quit jerking off initiative. I have to actually be willing to do that with my book. I'm cutting down every single one to 25 to 30 pages. That way nobody can say I can't read a book. And I'm going to dive deep into that one subject. I'm not going to put any more in there. That needs to be just enough so people know this is what needs to happen. So the first book is about this place here, how it came about, going into detail about that process, what I went through to get there, how I was educated on the vision process through a company who's looking to hire me. Years to go. Directed to me by my buddy Joel Moyes. He just bought a large real estate firm, directed me to this firm for the lending piece and they put me through the process of writing a five year vision. I had to dig deep. It's not something I've never done. What I did was I decided to write as a letter to myself as to what I did accomplish, not what I was hoping to accomplish. And so much of that has come true. Five years is November this year. That is five years. And so much of that has happened. In fact, beyond that, you know, I had it down that five employees, I have 15. I talked about the dollar volume of loans that I would close because of the amount of. Because at the time I was doing a lot of owner occupied stuff. I was doing quite a bit. And there was an Arizona where there's some higher balances. Now I just focus solely on real estate investors. Those are low balance loans. But Now I'm doing 700 transactions a year. So I've surpassed my thought process in that respect. And many other things have just gone through the roof for me. So now the exercise is to take people from across the country and put them in an environment that they're completely unfamiliar with, take them back, take them away from what the world is today. Get away from the latte kiosk laden streets of wherever they come from and put them in a tree stand or a ground blind or something like that on Ozark Mountain property and let them sit in nature and think and let them spend that time. And that's what we did with you guys. Now that first night was tough for everybody. I put you guys out there. I think it was like 3pm so you're out there on 3pm you don't come back till after dark, right? Well, this is October. It's a little bit chilly and it was raining. I remember you asking Me. So what do we do if it keeps raining? I'm like, lean over and right. You know, I'm going hunt. I grabbed my bow, I headed up to the freaking east side of the. Of the property, and I climbed in my tree stand. You guys went to the west side and went to your tree stands. And when you climb in your tree stand, you just sit there. Now, when I walked back after dark, the other guys were already there. They're already sitting there and asking how they're going, like, wow, we didn't do so well because we're just trying to figure out why we were here. We're just trying to use the fact that we're here. We're from New York, man. And I don't. But we don't see trees unless it's in a park. Well, then you came back even later, and you're like, dude, that was so awesome. At 10 pages written. And these guys were blown away. It literally changed them to see what you had accomplished. So the next morning, they came back with a completely different mindset. How are they going about this? From freaked out about I'm sitting in the trees in the dark right to now they're like, okay, I get this, what I'm supposed to be doing. And they sat down, they wrote, and then they had the next day to come back out and finish it up and really dig deep. And we get to check in with them every two weeks. And it's amazing to see their progress now. Have they become billionaires? No. Have they completely blown their business out of proportion from where it was? Not really. But are they different people? They sure as hell are. They feel a little bit better about tomorrow. They've got a plan for their tomorrow. Doesn't mean they got to accomplish it in two months. It means that they at least know where they're heading because they have. They have determined where they want to be. Be. So they appear. They're picking the path. Is the path can be easy? No. Was the path here easy? No. Do other people make it hard? They sure as hell do. People have an innate way of making it more and more difficult for us to accomplish what we want to accomplish. You know, one of the things that I have noticed, and I'm probably going to end up going on a rant here, and I probably. It may or may not be a good thing. And I'm guessing some people like, okay, rants. I don't do that. I'm shutting this off. And if you get offended by the rant, I apologize. No, I'm not apologizing, because this is. This right here is a big deal to me. Have you ever had somebody call you up and say, hey, what do I get if I refer you a deal?

Yeah, of course. Yeah.

What's your referral program? That's right.

You know, and for some reason, what I've experienced here with the guys that I've worked with that have not done their part, they've demanded certain things of me, and I have never made them wait on a paycheck unnecessarily. I mean, there's one guy here, Mike, doing a phenomenal job, and I misspelled, misdid his address. I got like four checks in a row sent back, and he was calm about it. If I got screwed out of four checks, I'd be jumping up and down. But we paid him, we squared them up. I don't like people waiting on money here, but the people have not. What's interesting, there's a lot of people that have not had to wait on money here, but yet I'm waiting on them. And it really frustrates me. The honor of some is really in question. And in our business world, I don't run into a lot of problems. You know, I don't run into a lot of issues with people like that, but I'm running into hearing people talking about that when they're talking about, let's say, the insurance industry. Like you to make. Well, you know, I'll go out and get my license and I'm doing the. I'll do the life insurance thing. And I, you know, that way they can pay me, too.

Yeah.

Why? Why, if you have that kind of time to think that you can go out there and spend time getting licensed and then figure out some engineer, some way to get paid for somebody else's work. When you're referring them over, apparently you're not doing your job right now that you were getting the client before to begin with. If your job is to rehab properties, do the best damn job you can and so good that you have zero time for anything else. But to rehab properties, right? If your job is to sell insurance, be very, very good at that. I mean, look what you did. You left the Navy for crap's sake. You wanted a path for a career in the Navy. He could have died in the Navy. They were buried your ass at sea. But instead you decide to leave. That a very, very, very cool channel. I love telling people I have a client who works at the Pentagon under the Joint Chiefs, directly for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who is also an instructor of the Pentagon and who is the captain of the nuclear submarine USS Tucson. That was a really, really, really cool thing for me. And you cut that off by going to selling life insurance, which really pissed me off. If you remember our conversation, I called you up, Gary, I heard you left the Pentagon and retired to do life insurance. Is that true? And I remember you saying, yes. And I'm like, so as your trusted advisor at your board table, your cfo, and what I hope is also your friend, I got one question. Are you freaking stupid? And it still cracks me up that you laughed about that. You didn't get offended by that question. Just like that. And then tell me. I'll answer the question if we get your wife on the phone. And dang it, if we didn't get my wife on the phone. Go through the process of infinite banking because you took the time, you took the energy, you paid the price to understand it so well that not only do I get it and the light bulbs go off, I mean, like Joe Dispenza says, I had all the neurons connecting on that, and it made tons of sense. Now, Rizzo didn't quite have every neuron correct connect on that. She didn't quite understand all of it, but she turned to me and said, and anybody who knows Rizzo knows exactly how amazing it is to hear something like this. He said. She goes, I don't know if I understand all of it, but I trust him. She would shank a person long before she'd trust anybody, you know? So it's amazing to me to have her say that and for us to move forward by taking a large sum of money. We're gonna invest in real estate and then start there has built up to being something actually awesome now that I've got, you know, a policy for me, my wife, each of my children, my children involved in our. In our investment business. We sit around on the couches like this at home once a month. We reconcile our investments. They give me a report on the investments. They put in 10% of their income. We have to reconcile their income, make sure they're involved in the trust and that they participate in the growth of that business. They remember they interviewed you. They had you on. On a Zoom call one time to talk about their. Their. Their life insurance policies and how they should treat the insurance and how they should treat the investments. They're involved. They range from 12 to 22 right now. And when they first got involved, my youngest, I think, was 10 years old. It's changed our Life. And I guess the reason I'm ranting about all this crap is when a person decides, I'm just going to run and get the license and then try and make a few bucks on the side, they're not changing anybody's life. Nobody's life is going to get changed in a situation like that. Nobody's going to benefit from that. They may think they're benefiting, but they're selling themselves short. They're not focusing, they're scattering their energy around. They're quite frankly, jerking off. They're not getting anything done of any value. So if you want to do life insurance, trade in everything else you're doing and do damn life insurance. If you don't want to do life insurance, focus on what you're doing now and be so damn good at, you have no time for anything else.

Yeah, it's like. It's like.

Banishing yourself to play in Little League when you're just jumping from one thing to the other and not adding true value. And people forget or maybe never learned that money is just. It's evidence of having created value. And so if you want to make big money, if that's a goal of yours, you need to provide big value.

Right.

And you can't provide big value by jumping from one thing to another and shorting somebody here. And like, hey, I want part of your craft. You're the master at your craft. I want part of your craft. Just because I brought you a lead or something, it's just. It's just literally bs, you know, like.

Yeah, I passed you a name and a phone number, so I deserve a buck for that. Oh, and if they have any family member or friends or if they live on a certain street and those people buy from you, you better pay me for that too, man. Just makes you. And all it does is makes you want to be away from that person. All that person does is alienate them from the rest of the world when they treat. When they do that crap.

Yeah, exactly. You know, and the other thing is that it's just dead on arrival to begin with. Like, you know, the biggest question I.

Always get is, well, how can I.

How can I do what you're doing? I think it's a wonderful idea. In fact, I want a lot of people doing this. Both using them like I started out, and also spreading the world to other people. I think it's awesome. I welcome.

The people around me to help out and do that, the company.

But you can't do that if you're not doing it yourself.

Right.

It's just a waste of time. That's true for anything.

Right.

I mean, you're not going to teach golf if you've never golfed. So it's just the first thing is walk in those shoes for a little bit and see if you, if you're drinking the Kool Aid. And if you are, then maybe look at that as a profession. You know, with any profession, I think it's huge advice.

Agreed. Agreed. And so, you know, and that's. That's probably the end of that particular rant.

Hey, heroic investors. Well, I hope you enjoyed that. It was a bit of a rant, as Aaron said there at the end, but we're passionate individuals and I hope you got some value out of that. Part two is even better, I believe. So you'll see that coming up here on episode 223. Thanks so much and we'll see you next episode.

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