CW 280: Leading A Passionate & Inspiring Addiction-Free Life with David Essel XM Satellite Radio Host

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Welcome to the Grading wealth show. This is your host, Jason Hartman and this is episode number 280. Boy, we're getting close to 300. Hey, you know every tenth show we do a non real estate, non personal finance topic. However, this show happens to fall on a time where we need to do a quick debrief on our Atlanta Creating wealth boot camp and property tour. So we'll do that for a few minutes here and then we will go to today's guest, David Essel, who is a dynamic radio talk show host on XM Satellite Radio and he is a life coach and an expert in addiction recovery. Now you may not think this applies to you and I didn't either because I don't feel like I have any addictions. Okay. Which is good. But we all have these little addictions, these little things that kind of control our lives in certain ways and David will talk about that and how they really impact every single one of us and how we can be more successful and more fulfilled. So the show is in two parts and we will talk about the tour first and then we will be back with David Essel in part two.

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I wanted to give you an update and kind of a debrief on our Atlanta Creating wealth boot Camp and our distressed property tour there. We just had an awesome weekend and just kind of wanted to share some of the things and frequently asked questions from that event with you. And since it was her birthday yesterday, maybe we'll start. I've got some of our investment counselors on the line but maybe we'll Start with Molly.

Molly.

So what was your impression of the weekend?

You know, I thought that Saturday was a great Creating wealth boot camp. We had so many people, the event was sold out. It was the first time we were on the east coast. So we were able to have people come from all different states on the east Coast. People that were local to Georgia and North Carolina were able to drive in. People just loved everything that you had to say, especially the things about Obama and Steve Jobs and Apple.

I know what you're getting at, folks. For those of you who don't know.

By the way, I forgot to mention on the bus tour on Sunday that you mentioned Jimmy Carter three times. And by the way, Jimmy Carter and I have the same birthday.

There you go.

So what Molly's talking about, it's a little bit of an inside joke, is she will be in the back of the room and she will do chicken scratches. Every time I reference something, I reference a lot. So that's what she's talking about. But good. Hey, Sarah, you're here too. What were your impressions?

Yeah, well, you know, I love your boot camp. I've been around for a while and I attend your boot camp every year and every year I sit in the back and I just think, you know, it's a great refresher course. Even if you've already attended and heard the content, you're always current bringing new information to the table. I take in information differently every time, you know, depending on where you're at in your investment horizon. You know, you hear a piece of information and it just has a different take on, you know, what you're doing. So I really enjoyed the content as always and I just would like to say thanks to all of our out of town guests.

Yeah, you know, we had people come from all over the country and even one foreign country this time. We've had people come to our events from Europe before and Japan. But this time Sarah mentioned maybe a couple of those that you wanted to share.

Yeah, well, we had Joel come in. I've been talking with Joel for a while and it was so great to put a face with a name and great to see Joel. And he brought his father Dave from Ontario. So that was great.

Good.

Yeah, that was, that was good. We had so many people come from so many different places and folks, we are going to do a lot more of these events that are on location in different markets and we're working on planning one now, so stay tuned for announcements on that. But Steve, what were some of your impressions?

Well, right along with what you just said about, you know, we're scheduling some new boot camps and things coming up, and it was very beneficial for people to come from all over the place and put their boots on the ground in Atlanta, you know, we always talk about how there are 400 markets across the country. There's plenty in Atlanta by itself. We huffed it, we got up, and we went out and saw properties all day on Sunday, and we barely scratched the surface on the east side of Atlanta. It was so good to see all these different communities and learn about what drives each of them. And I think the investors found that to be very beneficial to not only see the house, but look up and down the street and kind of get that feel of the neighborhood was a big benefit to everybody.

Yeah, no question. Just nothing takes the place in our high tech world. We sort of lose touch with high touch, I guess I should say. But nothing takes the place of actually boots on the ground, so to speak, and being there and seeing things firsthand. And not just that, really meeting people firsthand. I think we got to share so many meals together and spend so much time together with everybody. One of our attendees even drove me back to the airport and thank you for the ride. They were from Newport beach, and we had flights that were departing around the same time. And it's just great. But that actually leads me to another thing I want to talk about, like, frequently asked questions and things that people brought up that either we've talked about on the show and we just haven't made it clear and understandable enough. I'm always saying how we learn so much from our investors, but also things that maybe just need to be kind of repeated or understood or maybe it's a new question, too. So think about that. But I'll talk about one right now, and that is, you know, someone was considering, gosh, what should we do? Should we buy a home? They were renters now in Southern California, in Orange county, and they were thinking, you know, should we buy a property or should we buy investment property? Should we buy a property, a home to live in, or should we keep renting or buy investment properties? And so let me just kind of share this. This little equation and sort of scenario that was interesting. I said to them, how much would it cost you to buy the home you're living in now that you're renting? And they said, well, it probably cost about $450,000. And then I thought, how much are you paying in rent? And I believe they said they were paying about $2,300. And you know, we talk about, on the shows and at the various seminars that we do, we talk about an RV ratio of at least 1%, which you can obtain now, although that is declining as prices are rising. Remember folks, rents always lag prices. And so it's always the prices that go up first and the rents that follow later. And it takes a couple of years to get them to catch up. Well, they're basically getting the use of a $450,000 property now for $2,300 or so per month, which is actually a great deal. Okay. Because think about it, if you were to deploy $450,000 investing in property with us, first of all, you'd be diversified and that would be better than having all your eggs in one basket. The old saying, all real estate is local. But in addition to that, the RV or the rent to value ratio of at least 1% and probably 1.2, maybe even 1.4, maybe even for some of our markets, a little bit better than 1.4. We've seen them up to 1.8 in the past. And just on the 1% number, a $450,000 portfolio should yield a gross income of $4,500 per month or 1% of 450. So why would it ever make sense to buy a property that you're using as a rental to live in when, when you can gain control of that Property for only $2,300 per month? It's a much better deal to be a renter. There's then rent lower priced properties in diversified markets to other people. I mean, do you guys have any comments on that? I mean, that's sort of an interesting thing. You know, everybody is, you know, sort of always conned into thinking, if you will, that, hey, you know, you got to own your own home. I think you have to own property. But I'd rather have that property produce income because the house in which you live is just a liability, it's an expense. Robert Kiyosaki's points that out all the time.

Yeah, I'd like to chime in on that note because, you know, over the years I've been slowly following your footsteps and your advice. You know, when I first started, I thought it was crazy. You know, the thought of renting your house was crazy. But here I am five years later and I just turned my primary residence into rental and I'm renting a much nicer house for only a few hundred dollars more. And when I did the math of what the down payment would be to buy the same house and how long it would take me to make that money. I just, it was a no brainer. So I'm renting a great house here in Southern California as well. And I'm really thankful my landlords haven't been to your seminar.

And I am thankful because the penthouse I rent in Phoenix. I'm glad my landlords haven't been to my seminar either because, you know, I'm renting probably what is a, I would guess a $1.8 million property for a whopping $3,600 a month. And I mean, you know, it's, it's a great deal. That 1.8 million that I could deploy into properties through my own company's network. I mean, that would produce at least $18,000 a month. So I'd be crazy to own this place. And then, you know, on top of that, I'd have homeowners association fees, I'd be responsible for all the repairs. It's great to be a landlord if you own low priced properties, properties that have good rent to value ratios. But if you want to live in a high end property that most of us do, it's better to rent the high end property and buy low end properties to rent to other people. And the reason for this, folks, is because there's, there's something known as rent elasticity. There's very little rent elasticity when you move into higher end properties. So this was illustrated to me many, many years ago when I was 19 years old. I remember being at a seminar, the Doubletree Hotel in Orange, California. And there was a funny speaker. I think he's still around. I should get him on the show. The guy's hilarious. He's a CPA and most CPAs aren't very funny. But his name was Danny Santucci and he was talking about one of his clients who was renting a house on Balboa Island. Now, Balboa island is a very nice little quaint island community in Newport Beach, California. And it's very expensive. And the quote was, he said, you're a wealthy man. Why are you renting? You know, you're a multi, multi millionaire. What are you doing renting your house that you live in? And the client responded back to Danny Santosci and he said, hey, where else can I get control of a $1 million property for only $3,500 a month? Forgive me if I didn't get those numbers exactly right, but it was something along those lines.

This was like 20 years ago.

Okay, but yeah, it's just amazing. That it's just a better deal to be a renter. Any comments from Steve or Molly on that one?

I have one. Yeah.

Molly, I'll be done real quick here. But that's what the clients found is many of them came from more expensive markets. We had clients from California, east coast, and funny enough, we're talking about, well, you invest in the lower end properties. Many of these properties, however, didn't seem so low end. It was the pricing that was low end.

Right.

Not the property of the properties was amazing. I heard multiple comments throughout the weekend of people saying, geez, maybe I should move to Atlanta. I had a client purchase a property. I'm not kidding you. This thing foreclosed in 2011 for $311,000. That's 2011, that's not 2006.

Yeah, it's last year. In other words, that's amazing.

Right? Right. And it's 3,500 square feet. He bought it for $139,000. And it's a beautiful looking house.

Oh, yeah.

That's what you can do out here. So we say it's low end. It's not so low end. I mean, many of these clients were saying, I have no problem living in this neighborhood. I mean, that was a staggering fact that I saw time and time again.

You are so right. All of the properties we saw on the tour, except for one of them, and that was a nice enough neighborhood, the one I'm excluding from the mix there. But all of them were in these super nice areas. I mean, you walk into them and they've got beautiful entry monuments. They have swim and tennis. They have big lush lawns and landscaping. You'd never see graffiti in these areas. Okay, These are not cheap, crappy rental properties. I mean, these are. These are areas probably anyone listening, including yours truly, would certainly be willing to live in. So. Yeah, I can't believe that either. Hey, so, Steve, just out of curiosity, on that property you just mentioned, it was foreclosed for how much last year?

$311,000.

And they paid 139 for it. And that's like 3,500 square feet.

You said 3,500 square feet. And I'm trying to find the year built on this.

That's what I want.

It's very new.

You can tell it's a newer home. Oh, it's built in 2007.

Yep.

So there you go.

It's a beautiful looking house. I don't want my wife to see the Proforma. She's gonna want to move down there and live in it.

Yeah, it's amazing.

So it's impossible to address all of the frequently asked questions on this quick debrief from the tour because over two and a half days there were so many discussions and questions and meals together and times that we shared and so forth. But, Sarah, you had one client ask you about diversification, and I think maybe it's worth just bringing that one up here.

Yeah, so that's a question I get all the time. And, you know, really the question is, how much do you diversify? You know, do you buy a few in a market and then a few in another market? Do you buy in 3 to 5 markets? What is your recommendation?

Yeah, well, I will be the first to say that I made a bit of a mistake on my own portfolio. And my mistake is that I used to buy in every single market that we recommend. And I got over diversified and I would not recommend over diversifying, although I would recommend diversification for sure. But do it more, something more like this. Because, see, the more you diversify, you have a little less power with your property manager, maybe. Now, that's the great thing that we bring, is that we bring them all that business. So you can come to us for recourse if you have any trouble with your property manager. Because some of these property managers, more than half of their entire business is business we've sent them. They've really redesigned their whole companies to work around our clientele. But it's nice to have like few of the same insurance agents, a few of the same property managers. So you're just dealing with fewer parties. But you've still got to diversify to some degree. Okay. You must do that to protect yourself and get the maximum upside. So if someone was going to buy 10 properties, for example, or let me just make it a round number, let me make it 12. Okay. For purposes of this discussion, I would buy 12 properties in three to four markets. So you'd have three or four properties in each market. I wouldn't buy 12 properties in 12 cities or 12 markets. I would pick three to four markets and spread 10 or 12 properties around those markets. We've got clients that are buying 30, 40, 60, 80 properties. And again, I would try to be in, you know, if it's a large, large portfolio, like say 80 properties, no more than maybe six markets. I think that's enough diversification. And I want this portfolio to be easy enough for you to actually manage and run once you've gone through the acquisition and stabilization stages to where you can, you can you can just deal with a few enough parties that you can kind of keep track of people, if you will. Does that make sense, Sarah?

Well, yeah. But let me ask you this. What if someone has the intention of buying 12 properties but they're not able to accomplish that goal, stay within the year? Let's say they're able to only do three in the first year and maybe three in the next year. You know, they're doing it incrementally. So would you say they would do their first three in the same market? Because maybe that's a hot market. They're able to get a great deal and then put those three properties with the same property manager and then six months to a year later, when they're ready for the next set, do those in another market. Or how would you recommend they that if they're doing it over time?

Well, that's a good question. You know, there's never any guarantee that you'll be able to acquire the following properties. So if someone has a plan to acquire 12, for example, I think they should diversify from the beginning. So if they're acquiring three or four properties now, they should do that in two markets and then build the other markets. The other three, the other number three market or the number four market later as they acquire more properties. But maybe two markets to start.

Yeah, that sounds good. I tend to agree.

Good.

So, Molly, one of the clients who was on the tour, I just wanted to have you share some information from one of the performas on one of the purchases. It's pretty amazing, these numbers, but go ahead and share that with us if you would.

It is, it's amazing. And I'm going to bounce back to the couple that we were talking about from Orange county that's considering purchasing a primary residence in Orange County. I had dinner with them on Saturday night and we were talking about deploying money, as you discussed, and they ended up moving forward on a property in Atlanta. They're paying 118,900 for it. Their total cash invested is going to be just over $30,000, including closing costs. Property is going to rent for $1,200 a month. So that's a 1% rent to value ratio, which is their cash on cash return is 11% a year and their cash flow is over $3,300 a month. Their issue in purchasing a primary residence here in Orange county is they keep getting outbidded. They're in multiple offer situations. Even when they're bidding over and above the list price now, they're still not Getting the home. So the benefit of being able to purchase income properties nationally is they were on the ground. They were able to touch, feel, see the property. They were able to walk up to our local market specialist and say, okay, I want this property. And it was held off the market for them immediately. There were no multiple offers. They didn't have any of that high pressure stress. It was an amazing.

Let me just mention something about that, though, right at the beginning. So, first of all, when we do our tours, we ask our local market specialists to hold properties off the market for the attendees on the tour. So we have a waiting supply of properties. Now, one of the clients actually kind of did the opportunist thing, and I thought it was good. I got to give them credit for it. They went a day early and looked around at the properties and were able to buy one before anybody else got there.

So that was.

That was pretty good. But, yeah, our local market specialist for Atlanta said, as soon as we got on the bus on Sunday morning, said, we're not going to do any bidding wars. If you want a certain property that we see, just write your name on the Performa and hand me the Performa. And he was going to write the number of the people on the Performa, you know, the first one to turn it in, the second one to turn it in, and give them the property in that order. So, you know, he had a few of them with like, four people that had turned in the Performa and wanted to buy that one. But as the tour developed, they got to see other properties and they thought, well, I could take that one or that one. Didn't much matter. So that's a good point. But I do want to say to listeners, you do sometimes get outbid. That does happen on the tours. It's a little bit special because what we do is we get our local market specialists to basically close the market for us and not offer these properties to anybody else for maybe two, three, four weeks before the tour. So it does cost them more to keep those properties in their inventory, but they feel it's worth it because we bring them a big audience of investors on the tour. So, yeah, good points, good points. Thanks.

Well, can I just chime in there real quickly? I know you got to wrap up the call, but I just wanted to say that's one of the many benefits in working through our network. I get calls all the time from people who have been submitting offers on their own to different banks, and there's a lot of big hedge funds and cash buyers and Foreign investors coming in and eating up and overbidding this inventory. And some of them just say, I give up. Can you help me get my hands on a property? And I'm hearing that more and more every day. So you know, again, one of the many benefits in working with us because we can help you hang on to some of that inventory.

Yeah, we're getting in one of those, we're getting into one of those markets where it's pretty hard to operate to be able to be a buyer because the prices are escalating and the inventory is getting gobbled up like crazy. So. Yep, good points. Well, hey, thanks to all of you for sharing your thoughts and impressions on the weekend. It was a great weekend, just a big success and we so much appreciate everybody flying out from all corners to join us for our tour and we'll announce the next one soon. And again thanks to our investment counselors and our local market specialists and their team, we had the attorney speak, the settlement attorney, the property manager, the insurance person, the contractors rehabbers, the field people for the local market specialists. People got to meet them. Just all in all it was, was great for everybody to come and look people in the eye, shake their hand and really get a sense of the market and also get the Creating wealth boot camp information as well. And we just, we released our brand new 40 page workbook at that event and now we're making a few modifications of that for the next one. So we constantly evolve and we make these things better all the time and we appreciate all of you attending our events and we appreciate your continued faith in us. So thanks very much.

Yeah, thanks everybody.

Yeah, thanks.

Have you listened to the Creating wealth series? I mean from the beginning. If not, you can go ahead and get book one that shows 1 through 20 in digital download. These are advanced strategies for wealth creation. For more information go to jason hartman.com.

My pleasure to welcome David Essel to the show. He is a coach, he is a TV host, a radio host on XM Satellite Rad and an all faiths minister. An expert on life, success and talking about the one thing that will radically change your life forever. So I think you'll enjoy this interview today and very charismatic guy we have here. David, welcome. How are you?

Hey Jason. Awesome to be with you.

Good, good. And see you are charismatic. Look at that response, huh?

On cue, right on cue.

On cue, exactly. Well, hey, tell us a little bit about your work and what it is you do.

You know Jason, my work is, it's all about personal growth. I write books, I have the XM shows you mentioned. I've been a life coach since 1991. Back before they even called us life coaches. In 91, they called us lifestyle coaches.

Right, right.

That was before it was trendy.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. You know, so. But my work is. And I work in addiction recovery. And every area of my life, if I'm writing or radio or coaching, Jason, it's all about helping people move from where they are right now to where they really want to be. Similar to what you do in the world of finance.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, so why is addiction recovery such a big part of it? I mean, that seems, frankly, a little bit like an odd pairing to me. When you say the one thing that will radically change your life forever, life coaching, all this sort of positive stuff. I guess I would view that as. And then you say addiction recovery. That's positive if you can do it. But it sounds pretty negative. I mean, when people think of addiction, they think of people that are really down and out kind of contrast or maybe go into that a little bit, if you would.

Yeah, well, you know, it's interesting because while we have the image in our mind of what you said, you know, we think of addiction, we think the guy in the gutter or someone homeless somewhere strung out on heroin, in actuality, addiction is so prevalent in our society that I can tell you right now, Jason, without doubt, every person in this country is suffering from one form of addiction or another.

Give us some examples.

Absolutely. I mean, you know, we have the addiction to spending. We have the addiction to greed, power. We have the addiction to being right. We have the addiction to try to control others. We have the addiction to alcohol. We have the addiction to nicotine, to food. You know, right now, as you and I are talking, 70% of the United States of America is either overweight or obese. Now, 70%, that's a massive number. Within that number, only 10% have a genetic liability.

Right. So people try to use that excuse as, oh, well, it's just genetic. But that's only a small number.

Yeah, it's tiny. It's tiny. So 70% of the United States of America is overweight or obese. That means that 70%, just almost 70% of this country has an addiction to food. So when we talk about addictions, you know, addiction to gossip, addiction to negative thinking, you know, there's like, there's so many different forms of addiction. And when, you know, you mentioned, like, the premise of all my work in life is surrounded around this thing, this theory that I came up with called the one thing theory in 1996. And what we do now is we state this very blankly to everyone. There's one thing in your life right now that if you were to go after and take care of, it's the thing you've denied delayed or procrastinating on your life would radically change. For some people, Jason, it's an addiction. For some people, it's their finances. You know, they, they have their head in the sand. They don't want to talk about money, they're afraid to talk about money. And so they, you know, but if they were just to get a grip on money, their life would radically change for someone else. It's their love relationship. You know, they're in a dead relationship and they've been denying, delaying, procrastinating, working on that relationship. If they were just to attack that one thing, their life would radically change. So that's how we came up with this concept of the one thing that will radically change your life forever.

So I guess when it's in the field of these things, and especially in addiction, now that you've explained that a little bit more, oddly, you did not mention some addictions that have been in the news a lot lately, and that is sexual addiction with Tiger W and so forth and zillions of other people. It's just that he happened to be have the notoriety. But you know, also I tell you, I think another big addiction our society suffers from is this addiction to kind of like the caffeine culture, the energy drinks and stuff like that. It makes people so hot headed and short. I've really noticed that in the past several years as a real change since the Red Bull phenomenon started. So I guess, you know, the first thing here probably is to thine own self be true, to no one, to know thyself. How do we first identify these addictive behaviors or this one thing in our life that needs to be taken care of?

Well, you know, I can give you the short answer. The long answer, Jason, is going to be that within about the next two days on my website@talkdavid.com because this is such an important issue, we decided to put up three free training videos to help people find their one thing. It's not easy because most of us are in denial. When someone said to me at one time years ago, I think you need to look at that alcohol addiction that you have. And they were talking to me and I went right into denial. Like most of us, I don't have that problem. I don't have this problem. So what we're doing on our website is we're putting up three free training videos that people can take so they can narrow down, break out of denial and find their one thing. Now, you said something very interesting. When you're talking about the world of addiction, you know, a lot of times people think of that as a negative. But in reality, for most of us, if it's an addiction to caffeine, if it's an addiction to alcohol, sex, you know, who broke it out for the sexual addiction?

Well, Bill Clinton, maybe. Right.

Well, Bill Clinton, but he got caught. But the person. The person that came out and actually said, I have an addiction was David Duchovny, the actor.

Oh, okay.

A number of years ago from the X Files, you know, he came out in public and said, I have to take time off from filming to go to a recovery center for my sexual addiction. Like, that was mind blowing back then to have someone admit it. Right.

What year is this that he did that?

You know, I'm going to say it was probably 10 years ago.

Yeah, yeah, that is. That is pretty mind blowing that he just came out and said that. It seems to me like I have a friend that has trouble with alcohol. And like, some addictions are. They've got to be just tremendously hard to deal with because they're ever present in society. So when you take things like sex, alcohol, and I gotta bring another one up that you mentioned earlier. Gossip, the totally destructive force of gossip, which is just something we've all done. We all do it at times, but that just can ruin people's lives. It is. So it can turn out to be such an evil thing, really. And those things that are, like, ever present, sex is ever present in society. Right. Those have got a. Be particularly hard. Like, if you've got a drug addiction problem and say you can beat it, you've had treatment for it, you've done.

Whatever you need to do.

You know, you could sort of be away from drugs, but you can't be away from alcohol. You can't be away from sex, and you certainly can't be away from gossip, because those things are just. They're like the air. They're just everywhere.

Right. And then. Then you throw in food.

Well, yeah, food. Very good.

Thank you.

Right.

Obviously. Yeah, food.

But let me tell you something, Jason. Now, you know, I've worked in the world of addiction recovery for 20 years, and I can tell you something that's going to shock possibly you, but definitely your listeners, and that is we never allow someone to say in their recovery that my addiction is more difficult than any other. We never allow someone to go there because this is what clients love to do. They'll come in and say, well, you know, my sexual addiction is worse than heroin because I have to have sex. It's part of why we're here. My food addiction is worse than nicotine because I have to eat food to survive. My blank, blank, blank. However, here's the trap. If we start saying my addiction is worse than someone else's, we've just given ourselves a foot out the door to walk away from recovery.

It's an escape hatch. Yeah, absolutely.

So even though what you and I are talking about seems logical, the logic and intellect does not have a chance against addiction recovery. So we stop people right away and say, okay, that's maybe what you believed before, but we're gonna have to remove that from your vocabulary, because if you keep saying that food is more difficult to recover from cocaine, you'll never recover.

Fair enough. Fair enough. Makes sense. So no qualifiers as to the severity of the addiction. I was just kind of pointing out that those things that are just all around us in the culture constantly, those have got to be really tough. Because this friend of mine with the alcohol thing, I'm like, just every event, every social event involves it. What do you do? How do you avoid it?

Jason, let me tell you a great story. So when I was addicted to alcohol, I'm in recovery. Love recovery, by the way. I absolutely love it.

But you're addicted to recovery.

What'd you say?

You're addicted to recovery.

Which is a very healthy addiction, if you're going to have one. But, you know, and so here I am, you know, nationally syndicated radio talk show host, motivational speaker, author, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, minister, you name it. I'm all these things. I'm traveling around the country doing my gig, motivating people, and I'm full blown alcoholic, which for me meant that every night I drank. And so I would go to speak at a conference, and I would go up on stage, do my motivational speaking come off, and I'd be drawn to this table. I go over to a table, it might be at the left side of the room at one conference, the right side of the room on the other, and I'd start talking with some people. Next thing I know, we're all going out for drinks, and life is amazing. I get sober, I'm on stage, I'm doing my stuff, I'm drawn to a table. Left side, right side of the auditorium, doesn't matter. Well, Gosh darn it, they're all sober. And so the law of attraction is so powerful that when I was an alcoholic, I thought everyone drank. It's just what men do. It's just what you do when you're at a conference. It's just what you do when you're on vacation. However, when you get sober. And my one thing at the time was getting sober. That was the thing that was destroying my life. Even though I was wealthy, living on the beach, new sports cars, all that crap, it was destroying my life. But isn't it interesting that once I took care of my one thing, all of a sudden I see the whole world doesn't drink. And not every successful businessman drinks. As a matter of fact, we've changed the tide. And if you look at a lot of successful business people today, men and or women, alcohol is either non existent or it's minimal.

It's definitely minimal because I remember the movies and the hearing about the old days and the concept of the three martini lunch. I mean, nobody does that nowadays. Thank God they don't. But that used to be sort of the norm. I mean, it was common to get on an airplane and drink like a fish too. People used to do that all the time in the old days. But okay, so we all agree on that, and that's all true. What do you do to overcome addictions? I mean, how do you recover from them?

Well, the number one rule is that you'll never recover alone. The odds are no one recovers from an addiction to food, gossip, negative thinking, nicotine, cocaine, alcohol, greed, spending, or any other addiction in the world. Or one that we haven't talked about. Jason, that is the largest silent addiction in the world, and that is codependency.

Oh, yeah. Interesting.

And the definition of codependency is an unhealthy desire to be accepted by others or an unhealthy fear of rejection from others. So codependency is a massive addiction, especially in love relationships. Oh, my God. But the number one rule is you're not gonna recover by yourself. And the reason why is, is that for the most part, regardless of what the addiction is, maybe one of the ones you and I are talking about. It could be one of the other millions that are out there. Is because the intellect will try to justify just buying this shirt this week because it is on sale. The intellect will say, but it is my niece's wed. It's okay if I drink here. And see, we have to get outside of ourselves and be accountable to someone else or a program and here's the number one key to recovery. We must be willing to surrender 100% of the process of recovery to someone other than ourselves in order for recovery to last.

Now, is that the AA method?

You know what, it's Recovery's method. AA and 12 steps are awesome. But. But I will say this. They're awesome. However, they're 70 years old. And so the power of them has to be updated. And so in my work, I work with people one on one from all over the world to help them recover from any addiction whatsoever. We use the first three steps and in step number three, they talk about surrendering to a higher power. And what we've done, Jason, is we've said, look it, a higher power is great. We have to have that in recovery. But we even have to bring it down to earth and say, I must be humble enough to recover to Jim Smith's program or David Essel's program or the Willow Recovery center program. I must be humble enough on the human level, the physical plane, to turn myself over and follow what other people say even when I don't want to. And if we're not willing to do that, those are the people that keep struggling with recovery. They keep going back to the food, the alcohol, the nicotine, the gossip, whatever. But when you're really, if you really want, if any of your listeners really want to get clean from power control, the need to be right, codependency. We have to come to a place in life where we say, I'm going to Follow someone else 100% when we do that. Just like with myself, you know, I jerked around with my recovery for years. Here I am a recovery coach as an alcoholic. I'm helping other people get clean with all that, I knew I couldn't get myself clean, clean.

That's the shoemaker with no shoes type scenario. Yeah. So what other steps can someone take? So submitting to someone else is. Say that again. Just explain.

We must surrender 100% to someone else's program. So I'll give you an example. Almost all states in the United States have some type of a free tobacco quit line. Or the health department offers some type of smoking cessation program. So someone would say, I don't want to hire a guy like David Essel. I want to do it for free through my county health department. So great, go. But when you go do everything they say don't go. Well, I'm going to follow a, B, F and G of the program because the other letters just don't make sense to Me. You know, we've got to follow a program 100% in order for it to work. So no matter what the addiction is, you know, that's number one. Because I want to go back to this. Jason, you might be able to muscle your way out of an addiction to alcohol, nicotine, food spending, gambling, sex. Muscling means you might be able to stop the addiction for a while, but the odds are you're going to go back to it without help from the outside world that holds you accountable to a program. You know, it's like this. If I'm going to. You know, before the show, you and I were laughing about stock market, et cetera, et cetera, right? So we look at financial planning. If I don't surrender, I'm not a financial planner. That's not an area of expertise. If I want to maximize my potential, I want to go to someone who knows what the heck they're doing, who has a track record. Right?

Yeah, fair enough.

And I'm going to say I'm not going to. If I have to argue with a financial planner, it may not be the right financial planner, but I want to go to someone and say, please show me what to do to maximize my investment. It's the same thing with addiction recovery.

Right?

Right. Same thing.

Okay, so surrendering to someone, what else.

After that, you know, after that is making a decision to do what it takes to stay sober. And that might mean letting go of friends who. Who want to pull you into gossip or want to pull you into going out on Friday night for drinks or, you know, you may have to change who you hang around with. That's number two. That's huge. You know, so number one is surrender. Number two is you may have to change the people you hang around with. Number three is finding activities that will give you that same endorphin rush as your addiction that are healthy. So we say that, you know, for someone that eats food, well, the type of foods that satisfy the addiction usually has something to do with salt, sugar, fat, or carbohydrates, because all of those substances within seconds in the body alter brain chemistry. So we go, okay, we're going to cut out a lot of these foods that give you this high, but we have to supplement what, maybe meditation, maybe walking, maybe exercise, maybe tai chi, maybe taekwondo, maybe maybe on ballroom dance.

Yeah. So substitution. Yeah, yeah. So take. Take the bad activity and substitute it with another one. Now, that just sort of begs the question, David, what about the concept of substituting one addiction for another? And here's my Example, there are studies that say, and I don't know if they're true or not or how valid they are, but there are studies that say that when smoking started declining in the U.S. obesity started skyrocketing. So, you know, the argument there would be that people substituted one addiction for another, and who knows which one's worse? I think they're both bad. But what do you think about that?

Well, what you're talking about, we have a clinical term called cross addiction. And every addict, every alcoholic will cross addict. It's a fact of life. What we try to do is we try to intercept the addiction from something negative, degrading, etcetera, Into a positive addiction. So, see, what happens is with all addictions, Jason, there's juice, there's an endorphin rush to the brain. There's dopamine, that's increased in the brain. There's all these different chemicals that are released through cocaine, nicotine, food, alcohol, spending, sex, greed, gossip, even gossip. There is a flood of chemicals to the brain. When we think we are more powerful than Lindsay Lohan by putting her down again, there's chemical rushes. So cross addiction says, is that when I quit drinking, I'm going to start smoking, or when I quit eating, I'm going to start smoking, or when I quit drinking, I'm going to smoke pot. You know, like, there's all kinds of games we play. So cross addiction is. It's almost always going to happen. But see, and this is again why it's so important to work with a program or an individual. Because the individual can set us up and go, okay, now, now this is gonna happen. I'm gonna guarantee you your brain is gonna crave some type of influx of chemicals once you remove your known addiction. So let's be on the lookout and be ready to substitute something healthy for that cross addiction. The point you bring up is incredibly valid, which is, once again, Jason, why very few people ever recover by themselves.

We'll be back in just a minute.

What's great about the shows you'll find on jasonhartman.com is that that if you want to learn how to finance your next big real estate deal, there's a show for that. If you want to learn more about food storage and the best way to keep those onions from smelling up everything else, there's a show for that. If you honestly want to know more about business ethics, there's a show for that. And if you just want to get away from it all and need to know something about world travel, there's Even a show for that?

Yep.

There's a show for just about anything only from jasonhartman.com or type in Jason hartman in the itunes store.

I think if you had to pick an addiction, that's a good one. If there is such a thing, you know, I'd pick exercise. But I gotta tell you, I had a girlfriend who was really like addicted to exercise. And I mean, I wish I had as much motivation to exercise as often as she did. But I gotta tell you that that can be an addiction too.

Oh, absolutely. We have. Now I will tell you this. The percentage of people in the United States addicted to exercise, you could put on the head of a pen.

Small number.

Yeah. I mean it's so tiny. It does happen. It does happen, but it's incredibly small. We believe. Now the statistics are always tough to say because people lie during these surveys. But, but right now about. Even though they say it's 22, about 30 to 35% of Americans are addicted to nicotine, addicted to smoking. Anywhere from 40 to 45% are addicted to alcohol. Now let me tell you how we know this. The fastest growing form of alcohol addiction is binge drinking. Now what's going to blow many of your listeners minds right now, Jason, is that binge drinking means for a woman, three drinks or more in one evening or for a man, four drinks or more. And what we know is.

Here's what I want to ask you.

Yeah.

How long is the evening?

See, I'm already qualifying.

Exactly.

I've had more than four drinks in a night before.

Yeah.

And so you know someone. But you know, the honest truth of it is that someone might drink once a month and they could be an alcoholic because on that Friday night they have a six pack or two. And even if they only drink once a month, that's pure alcoholic behavior. Because what that says is I cannot control it. Once I start, I can't stop now. So what does the government and the national institutes for health have to say about any alcohol whatsoever? The most for a woman is one drink a day. The most for a man is two. So when we go past that, we have to say that we've walked into alcohol dependency at 3 and at 4. And I know people hate to hear this, but four drinks in one night, that's alcoholic behavior. And what happens, you have four drinks and you get pissed off at your partner and you say something you shouldn't say.

Yeah.

It all leads to. See, these lead to bad things. Yeah, exactly. Go ahead.

Yeah. Or you have two drinks. I'm working with a woman out of Washington, D.C. right now as a client, and she's gained 25 pounds in the last two years. And it's all. When she's drinking, she has two glasses of wine, forget it. She'll eat whatever's in front of her. And so all of a sudden, people have alcohol. And then I have other clients that when they have. After they have two glasses of wine, they start smoking.

Yeah, the alcohol. That one bad behavior leads to other bad behaviors because it lessens everybody's inhibitions and people become irresponsible. And God forbid it might lead to driving. That's probably the worst one of them all.

Exactly, Jason. So, you know, in this concept of the one thing that will radically change your life forever, what we say to people and to your listeners right now, write down the major areas of life. Relationship with myself, finances, career, my physical health, spirituality, relationship with others. You know, those are the main six areas of life. And then we go, okay, now look at all those individual individually and say, which one of those areas have I denied? Delayed, procrastinated, taken care of. Which of the areas has created the most chaos? You know, I mean, am I holding on to resentment so strongly against a former husband or wife that whenever I hear their name, I spit blood? You know, type of a thing. You know, am I totally irresponsible financially? Am I in a financial mess? Am I overweight and struggling with health issues? Is my career a mess? Do I totally disrespect myself, you know, like, because of my eating, drinking, smoking, whatever. We choose the one area, Jason, just one at a time. Never more than one goal at a time. And we apply ourselves to go after that one thing that is wrecking our lives. And when we do it, we often have to help, ask for help. You know, it might be trying to recruit a neighbor to walk five days a week, or it might be hiring a coach or going to a weekend seminar on financial planning. But we have to be honest with ourselves. What are we denying? Delaying, procrastinating, working on. What do we not want to deal with? That is your one thing. And if you take care of just that one thing and apply yourself for 90 days.

And in the past, all of our work since 1991 has shown that your life will radically change just by doing the one thing.

Yeah, because the one thing leads to so many other things.

Absolutely. Oh, my God, Jason. Absolutely. But when you decide. And here's the thing that's so different, you know, sometimes people look at me and they think that I've lost My mind because before we created the system, I used to do what all other goal setters would do. You know, we would go after multiple goals. Well, let's go after three days a week, your exercise, and then let's set up this financial planning thing and let's take a look at your resume for your career and let's get a path back to God. And we had people working on all these multiple goals, but it never works because once you hit some area of difficulty, you quit. And with our program, we go, when you choose the one thing, you have no other goal distractions. You can't start a new goal until you finish the one.

Makes sense. You got to do one thing at a time, stay focused. For sure. Just wrapping up here, David, what else would you like people to know about? Just the general life, success, you know, and I know it all in your work leads back to this concept we've been discussing about addiction. Because you're right, that is so critical. And everybody's got something, everybody's got their thing. It could be as minor as seemingly things like gossip or controlling nature or something like that. So there's just so many things out there. But as a life coach, like, pardon me, because I still think there's sort of this kind of negative view of the addiction concept. Right as we started out talking, what are some general kind of closing thoughts that you have on just greater life, success, living a fuller life?

Well, I love that question, Jason. Number one, it's never.

It's very broad.

Oh, it's fine. It's fine. It's never too late to change. It's, you know, you might be listening to this and you're 70 years old and you've smoked for 50 years. It's okay. It's time to change. It's never too late to save a marriage or relationship, at least to really give it a darn good try. It's never too late to lose weight. It's never too late to get ahold of your finances. You know, in other words, everyone listening right now, maybe in their minds they're thinking of the major thing they've denied, delayed working on. It's never too late. Now the cool. Number two, the coolest thing in the world is by doing this, you're going to increase your self esteem. So it's never too late to feel better about who you are by being responsible, by asking for help, by being vulnerable. And the last thing I would say to sort of wrap this up is we need to live more boldly. You know, we have this one life. Even if you believe in reincarnation or if you don't, let's just say we have this. We know we have this life. We're physically alive. We know it. This might be it. So let's live boldly. Let's ask for help. Let's be humble. Let's say we don't know. Let's attack that which we haven't wanted to attack so that our future will be so much brighter. And the final thought of all my final thoughts is that there are millions of people before us who have overcome greater obstacles than we will hopefully ever face by asking for help and have created the life they've wanted. So we can do it, too.

Absolutely. It can be done. It can be done. Well, David, thank you so much for sharing these thoughts with us today. And tell people when are you on XM so people can listen and give out your website once again, too.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. If people will go to talkdavid.com, they'll find all the information about the XM Satellite Radio show, which is every Saturday night from 6 to 9 Eastern, 3 to 6 Pacific. We have amazing guests. As a matter of fact, our own Jason Hartman is going to be a guest of mine in the future.

Hey, I heard he's good.

Yeah, no, Jason, I've heard he's phenomenal.

But if you go to talkdavid.com, you'll also be able to sign up for the free three training videos on the one thing, because I know that in a radio interview, we can only do so much, but there you got it all. And then, of course, there's information@talkdavid.com about my six books and all the other stuff I do. So please visit and take advantage of it.

Fantastic. Well, David Essel, keep up the great work and, and thank you so much for sharing these ideas with us today. Very powerful. Very useful to literally every person on this earth. So very broad appeal. No question about it. Thank you.

All right. Thanks a bunch, Jason. Have a great day.

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