Grappling with Joe Rogan with Founder & CEO Robby Clark

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm Larry Weddell, and before we get started, if you want to know exactly how to win again and again, go to Wydell on winning.com webinar now to watch something I've put together for you. Now let's get going into this episode.

Of Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm with Robbie Clark, and we're talking about winning. And Robby's had a lot of experience in figuring out how to navigate life and come out on top and learning how to improve, learning how to get better, learning all the lessons from other people. So, Robby, thanks for taking the time to talk. You mentioned something you'd like to have. You have a podcast, right?

Well, yeah, it's funny. I've been asked to do one for a while, but it's not a business podcast. It's called the Inside Fighting, and it's a podcast. I typically interview UFC fighters, mixed martial artists and boxers, things like that. And so, yeah, it's really just one that we have fun with a news media outlet. And then I do interviews with fighters as well, too. So, yeah, more of a passion project. But, yeah.

And people can find that on all the standard podcast locations called Inside Fighting.

Correct. Yeah, we just Inside Fighting MMA on Instagram, Inside fighting on YouTube, and we just, I think, got listed on Spotify and the other platforms. Like, the past week, it's just gotten back up and redid our site, inside fighting.com where we have about a dozen articles a week on what's going on in the UFC and mixed martial arts world.

And so say that again how they find that.

So, yeah, Inside Fighting.com is the website Inside Inside Fighting MMA for Instagram and Spotify, and I believe the other platforms it's on now over the past week has been listed.

Okay. And so talk about grappling. You said you want on your bucket list you would like to meet Elon Musk. I'm not sure how much in common I would have with Elon Musk, but one thing is you get an honest answer. I love his articles, his interviews, and his insight. I mean, he's right on the money. But you said Joe Rogan because you said you had grappled with Joe Rogan. Rogan. Grappling with Joe Rogan. That has to be an experience.

Yeah, well, I trained at 10th Planet Jiu Jitsu from 2005 to 2007. Obviously, he was there. It was run by. Still run by. By Eddie Bravo. He's got a bunch of gyms now. So, I mean, I'd go there and get my ass kicked by guys like him. I was in really good shape. But Joe's a beast. He's a black belt. He's, you know, about £200 or so, and, you know, he can crank you if he wants to. So, you know, I had a lot of. I had a lot of. Sorry, he's charging in. Yeah, I had a lot of fun there and worked with some great mixed martial artists. But it's not even that why I'd like to be in his podcast and talk to him. It's his knowledge and access to information and people. He has the best people in the world on his podcast. It's funny not to go down this road, but, you know, Dana White, the president of the ufc, just got Covid. He's got access to the best, you know, medical advice in the world. The first person he called was Joe Rogan and got his advice on what to do. So I've got a ton of respect for the way he handles things and what he does. And then Elon Musk is not even a bucket list. I would love to get a meeting with him in the next year, because I have an idea. You can't. You know, I would like to take all the properties we have in and put solar city solar panels on all of our roofs, and I have an idea on how that could. Could work and want to see if it's viable just to really make a big push in regards to that industry. And again, I've been following Elon for a long time, and he's one of the reasons. He's actually the reason I decided to kind of put myself back out there, because I've only really been networking and going on podcasts and things for about, like, six months now. And I was watching him on Spotify. I didn't have even an account on Spotify at the time, but I signed up because I knew he was on Joe Rogan. I'm there on a Friday night watching Elon, and I'm trying to laugh at his jokes just so I can relate to him, you know, And I'm like, this guy right here, you know, is. Look at how much attention he can draw for these different things that he's working on. And all of his businesses are actually not based on, like, it's nothing to do with profit. It's about bettering the world. And, you know, people don't even know he's got underground tunnels. He's been able to reduce the pricing for under underground tunnels exponentially. So that's going to be something that's coming in the future. That's going to help with traffic. He's got, you know, whether it's the renewables, from SolarCity to Tesla to Neuralink, which is, you know, pretty crazy to some people, but it's an incredible technology that, you know, basically we're going to be able to create new neurons in the brain and heal things like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, which is the, you know, Neuralink's goal. And I think that's, that's pretty cool. And it can advance so much further because it's just, it's a new way of doing things that seems to be much more effective, at least from studies and popping a pill or other things. So I'm just in awe of what he does. I don't think there's a human that, you know, you have some incredible people. There's, you know, a ton of incredible people. But there's. Elon is just like, he's built different, you know.

Now, now, when you have studied, what are things that. What first got you stuck out to you? You mentioned think and grow rich. Was it think and go rich, or was it the rich dad, poor dad?

Think and grow rich is good too.

Yeah. But to get yourself organized for success, what are some of the principles that you say to other people in the companies and your people? What are some principles that you say over and over, you know, they stuck with you? You know, I have certain things that I've been saying for decades, and I don't try and say them. It's just that they work over and over and over. You know, it's kind of like the keep it simple, you know, but it's grow or die. You know, you gotta be specific to be dynamic. You know, there's certain things it's just over, you know, you know, it's kind of like go big or go home. If you don't have a big goal, you don't have a goal. And a goal without a deadline is not a goal. And so, you know, it's a certain things that you have that you hear. One thing I heard early on in my career was great ideas, don't care who use them. And it's just, you've got to be exposed to it before. But, you know, it doesn't matter if you're evil, you're pure or whatever, you've got a great idea, you can use that idea and make things happen. And so what are some of the things that you find spring into your mind that you say over and over again to yourself and to people around you when you're dealing with life, dealing with issues, dealing with decisions.

Well, a new one I just learned is ideas don't care who use them. Which I think is pretty good, because I do say, you know, ideas are a dime a dozen. It doesn't matter about the ideas, the implementation of that idea, because you always hear all the time, oh, I had that idea for, you know, Vitamin Water. And you're like, okay, where was the next step?

Can I tell you something on that? I bought that guy's book 40 years ago. It's Joe Gandolfo, and he's got great ideas are a dime a dozen, but the people who use them are priceless. And he wrote a book on it, a little tiny book on it. And I think most people are forgotten about that. But that's, that's one I use over and over too.

Hey, that's, that's a good one. You know, I, I'm big on the problem solving side of things, right? Like, if you get into a business, you got to understand you're in the business of problem solving now. That's all a business is. And if you, like in real estate, people are always asking. I think, you know, paralysis by analysis is a real thing for most people who, especially when you grow up in the school system and you're like, oh, if you get a mistake, it's wrong. You get a mistake, it's wrong. Where in reality, in real life, you know, you're on the Internet trying to search for what could be writing, and you're trying to fail forward, so to speak. So, you know, people who want to get into any situation, like say somebody wants to buy real estate, one of my advices for them is to start cheap and to start, you know, not with a huge project. You've got no experience in construction. Don't be taking on a huge construction site, because you're going to have problems and you want, in order to, you know, as two or threefold. You don't want to be discouraged by jumping on problems that are too big for you to solve, but you do want to get started so you can start to see what the problems are and solve them. If you have a small house, it's relatively cheap, foundation is good, and you're putting people in there, you're going to deal with the smaller problems, like finding a good tenant, which is very important. You know, maybe little leaks and things like that there. And that's really good because it prepares you and gives you Confidence for the next stage. If you go out and buy an apartment and then you find out that the plumbing is wrong in the first place, thing that needs to be done is everything's getting torn out. You need permits and whatnot. That can be extremely discouraging if you've not been through that before. So start small, but start fast. And then understand that if you, if you, you know, everything is problem solving, you're not going to get better at anything in life without having these hurdles that you're going to have to jump by. Another one I just use is, you know, as an entrepreneur, as an athlete, you're doing this in any field you want to succeed in, but you're always walking into a room with not all the lights turned on. You're walking into a dim room, you might have some of the education to get there, but you're not walking in with all the lights on. You got to take that chance. And it's from there you need to problem solve your way in order to get all those lights on before you step into the new room. Because as an entrepreneur or somebody trying to succeed in anything to a higher level, you're going to be walking into a lot of rooms with dim lights. And then from there, you got to problem solve your way through it. So I just understand that and embrace those challenges and try to give that to our team. I know the goals that we have. I don't know all the problems before we get there, but we never change the goal. We change the plan to get to the goal. And if you embrace that mentality with anything, you're gonna do a lot better. Because instead of somebody giving me a problem and going, oh, I can't believe this happened. Like, what am I doing? There's not even that inclination. And I don't. Our team doesn't have that inclination. It's like, okay, what is the. What is the solution here? And that little shift saves you so much time and energy. You know, you complain too much, People don't want to be around you anyway. So talking about your problems is not going to help you in the long run.

So, yeah, talk about now how you decided we're going to start going to other cities, we're going to expand out geographically, and we're not going to be limited by where we are. Because I bet that thought has occurred to very few people. They keep driving around the same neighborhoods. All the good properties are taken. So what do we do about that? So where did that idea come from and how did you make it work?

Yeah, so My model always focused around finding homes that are far under the cost to build. And then again, as we renovate and do good things and get out, the bad landlords replace them with, you know, us and improved homes and nice areas. That kind of spurs on other people to do the same and more development. Then eventually, when the homes come close to reaching the cost to build, you have new developers come in there. And that's good for the entire economy because you know what the middle class needs. A utopic situation that'll never happen is homes are always kind of valued at 10 to 20% above the cost to build. That is never going to happen because you're going to go to Toronto or New York or Los Angeles where prices are jacked up because the demand is so high. And then you're going to go to the other areas where it's just been flat. And even if there's not a lot of vacancies, it's just there's not been any market movers or new development to spur those prices going higher. But what you have when prices stay flat too long is a recessionary environment. So I don't feel that going to Toronto and making a $2 million home, a $4 million home, is where the best value is. For me personally, I think it's going to these cities that need the capital in there to spur more development so that the current owners in there get some appreciation, because if they don't, then they would have been better off putting their money in stocks or renting. And the existing rental pool has homes that, you know, the landlords can actually afford to renovate and keep them nice. So they're not, you know, struggling either to find good homes or just dealing with the, you know, constant issues that nobody's fixing. So once we were in southern Ontario for a while, once I kind of started to reach close to the price of build, we were searching for other opportunities. And I looked at northern Ontario. Number one, I'm extremely bullish on the commodity metal mining sector over the next decade and beyond for a ton of reasons. I won't go into here, but we looked at the median income, there was strong, but the properties have been flat or gone down over the past two, three decades. And so it looked like a great area that it's like, hey, listen, we can come in here and we can invest, we can start to improve some of these homes. We can take care of some of the rental needs there. Not everything, because, you know, nobody's one person is big enough to do it. But you know they have waiting lists in Sudbury for, for, for housing. They have waiting lists in Niagara for housing. And it's a serious need across Canada. So if and when the prices in Northern Ontario start to reach the price of build where new developers can come online and start building new inventory, we'll try to find a different city that is now in need of the capital and maybe the fluffing that that's needed before the new developers can go there.

Hey listen, there's a lot of information online, but there aren't a lot of people who have actually done something. In my case, I've actually built a successful business, has accrued over $5 billion in assets under management and has done well even during trying times. Now if you want to know exactly how I've done this, go to Whiteellumwinning.com webinar Now I've compressed a decade of learning into five short weeks. Just for those of you who want to give yourself an incredible advantage and are tired of waiting and watching others move up.

And so you said that you, when you do expansions getting, you know, you started other businesses to handle some of this expansion. How do you do that? You know, you say you're not the operating partner in all of these things because there's a limit to what you can do. How do you set those things up? Because you have like sids, Reno sids develop RWC Management, Zack Files, Real estate. How do you set those up?

Zack Files was one of my first show I ever did where I was Zach and so that was. That's where that corporate comes from. But that's just a holding company. But the, the other companies, so they all support the business. So I am the CEO of SID Developments, which one extension is the construction team, which consists of site supervisors and project managers and engineer and then the property management side. So we handle everything in house because it's just more efficient. But we don't have the labor. So we work with local trades, the network of local trades in the city and then we manage them through our site supervisors that show up on site, make sure things are done. And then once the property is complete, we hand that over to RWC management and then it's their responsibility to make sure that they get listed and make sure the tenants are good, make sure everything's clean, make sure our care packages or whatever it might be are dropped off. So that's how it works as a unison to make it super efficient. And we don't do any construction sites that are not our own. So our focus is on the projects that we own and take care of. And we don't manage any sites on the property management site that are not our own. So we're not a retail company. And that allows us to keep our focus on making sure these assets and clients are taken care of to the best of our ability.

And.

I didn't realize meals was such a profitable thing.

You know, let me correct you there. It's not very profitable.

Okay.

But no, that is a, you know, that's a growing industry as well too. E Fresh Meals. And we delivered prepared meals across Ontario and recently B.C. as well, too. So we're trying to expand nationally. But yeah, no, that's a business we've had for years. It's not necessarily a super profitable business, but it is something that I saw was like a need for Canadian consumers in North America. As we continue to move towards more convenient ways of living. Prepared meals is. Has continued to increase in demand globally. Really?

Yeah. And it's a matter of the. What you're looking at that is like getting in on the ground floor and a market, you know, is going to expand. I guess that's what your thinking is.

But then.

Yeah, go ahead.

That was a great learning experience in how markets work. I kind of knew before, but then went in firsthand. So the problem with the prepared meal service is like any industry is that you start with the education phase. And the education phase is extremely expensive. So what happened when we started getting in is like, if you actually ask people five, six years ago what prepared meal service is, they'd be like, what are you talking about? With the exception of personal trainers, they didn't get it yet. Now everybody knows but that initial capital. So what happens is there's this hysteria everybody will jump into a new market, which is absolutely what happened. You know, Blue Apron was a big one in the States that, you know, I think they're still around. I think the pandemic saved them. But the reality is that those early entries are raising tons of capital to spend it on education, which is much more expensive than sales and marketing. It's the same thing with the Internet. It's the same thing with cryptocurrencies. This is how all markets start. And you need that money, you need that hysteria in to create money so that people can then spend it to advertise and market. But if you don't know the product or service, it's going to take a lot of times hitting you in order to understand it. So all the capital raised initially in the industry went to inefficient marketing, because you had to first educate the audience. Now that the audience is educated, you can now market more efficiently because you're not having to explain yourself 30 times. But we jumped in at the beginning, so we survived for sure. And. But I learned that. And it's like, you know, it's a very similar trend to every new industry and how they work. It takes a lot of time to educate the Model T, Ford. You know, when. When Ford and cars started becoming a part of everyday life, at first, people thought it was offensive to move faster than a horse and that cars were the devil. And there's so many things that it took time to educate the audience, regardless of how off they might have been.

Yeah, they thought. I mean, they had, you know, like Covid. We're just following the science. Well, the science was with cars is that a human being could not breathe oxygen traveling 30 miles an hour.

Yeah.

So fast you could not get breath into your lungs. That was the science. And so.

Without the education. It seems logical, though, but now you're like, no. You're like, yeah, yeah.

But when you go into these other. You know, this kind of proves you could study all you want, but until you get your butt into these things, you're not. There's 99% of them you're not going to learn. But you can learn 1 or 2% about things by somebody telling you. But it's kind of like someone telling you about a movie they went to see and this happened. They can give you the punchline, but they can't transfer the experience. And so if you really are interested in these different things, it's like I tell people, like, if you feel like you want to write a book, write the darned book, get it off your mind, and then get to the other side of something in you says, I need to put this information together in my mind, if only for myself, you know? And when that happens, you'll now be organized. You'll learn things in the process. But if you have an interest in an industry or. Or a town or any kind of thing, go for it and find a way to integrate it into your schedule so that you can learn what it is inside your gut that's calling out to you about that. One thing you did was lawn care. And where did that come from?

It's, in theory, an easy entry point into a business. A lot of learning curves there as well, too. Right. My wife, a very successful commercial and residential cleaning business. There's a lot of similarities to the two. The only difference is, you know, the amount of equipment and extra liability that you take on in the landscaping industry because you can, you can have a cleaning crew driving in a, in a nice new, you know, Civic and some cleaning supplies. Whereas, you know, to run a landscaping crew you need, you know, a 60,000 plus dollar truck and 100k worth of equipment in the back. So you know, it was one where it's like, hey, same thing. I'm always a volume focused person. And I was like, how do we, you know, just build this up with lawn cuts? Lawn cuts are easy. I know how to know how to cut lawns. So how do we scale this and you know, provide value to our clients? So the focus again was getting as many clients as we can. We had about like 500 or so year round clients in snow removal and, and weekly long cuts as well too. But again, like that, that balance, this is a challenge in itself too. That company doesn't make money some years and some years it does. It's not my full time focus. If it was, you know, it'd be a little bit different I think. But, but every business has challenges. And even just saying, hey, you got 500 year round clients like wow, it must be great. But no, I mean the, the equipment issues that you have to face the challenges in any industry are difficult. Right? So although I love the business and it was one that kind of helped me learn a lot of what's right and what's wrong, you know, that's a big thing to know with any business. Not all sunshine and roses in any industry. And you're going to have good years and you're going to have bad years.

But you did, you can't factor in the value of the education you got from being in and continuing to be in that, you know, you're, because, you know, when you get information, you get lessons. That's the great thing about being an entrepreneur. You can apply that information wherever you want the rest of your life. You know, and like you said early on, the important thing is for the person in charge running things to be growing, you know, just, you know, it keeps you fresh, it gives you, you're continuing to create options stowed away in your mind. So when you run into problems and the fast, you know, the more you grow, if you stay in business, you're going to be growing and you're going to have more decisions, bigger decisions and they're going to come at you faster. But the thing is you're going to be better equipped to handle those things.

You know, 100% you can fool the outside world. But you can't fool the people closest to you. And the closest people to you are the ones that are helping you with that success. So it's on you to ensure that they understand that you're putting in that work and they have that respect for you ongoing. Because if they see you slipping and things like that, even if they won't say it like I say, a lot of athletes and entertainers are surrounded by a lot of yes men, not all of them. Some of them have very good teams. That's why you see guys like Drake taking over the world. Because, like, although he's an incredible human being, you got to have a good support system around you as well, too, to make that successful. And that's the difference between athletes and entertainers who really make it, because they are the commodity in their business. So they're the only people who can afford to have people around them that may not be the best influencer or just yes, man, if I had those same people in my business, we're going to fail. We're not even going to make it to a small business. So I have to be honest with myself and my team. And then as you grow bigger and you have an executive team now, your team is cfo, lawyers, you know, you know, engineers. And you can't fool these guys, right? They have to know that you know what you're doing and that you're improving as well, too. So for them to work that hard, they got to respect you, period. Because people aren't going to put in that work unless they know that you're adding that value for something on the other side.

Absolutely. Right on the money. What would you say? I'm going to give you a chance to say a final word for people listening. They want to move up the ladder. And a final takeaway. If they were on your team, if they were your relative or brother or friend and they're moving up, one last final word for them.

Relative, brother or friend. It would be the same advice I get to everyone, which is, first, start educating yourself. And people are like, I don't have time to read, so start with audio books. If you want to learn about business or money, you have to start listening to these because you're not going to have people like, oh, my friend group is not there. Great. I didn't have multimillionaire or billionaire friends. I still don't have any billionaire friends. And the reality is those books are what changed my context. Those were my friends when I first started, when I had nothing, when I had no money, had no homes. I used those books as my friend group. And having that absorb that information two to three hours a day, I felt like them, I walked like them. And I got those euphoric rushes where you have during the day. And you're like, I'm going to make that. You need to put that energy out there to start getting things back. And then the second part of that is to get started. Get started small. I don't recommend doing something huge. I'm definitely on more Kiyosaki side for that. Then maybe a grant cardone who's like, hey, start with a 200 unit building. That's crazy to me. But start small. If you're getting in real estate or a business, start cutting your neighbor's lawn. If it's landscaping, because you got to learn. And if you do a small step into it, you're going to learn pretty quickly or not, if it's for you or not. And if you're having challenges there on those problems, well, thank God you started small. Because if you did something bigger, you. You're not going to be able to persevere through those. So educate yourself, get started, and then persevere. Because those, those three things, if you do them, you literally can't lose. You know, if you're going to the All Stars in baseball, you hit three for 10, you're an All Star, you hit two for 10, you're never making the big leagues. With business, you can make a lot of mistakes, and you just got to be right once and then not screw that up from there to do it. But the more mistakes you learn, like you had said, your education grows and you can't replace that with any kind of capital or money or anything. So your goal is to try and make these little mistakes and not crumple everything. But what did I do wrong? And it's not that you're trying to do something wrong, you're trying to do the right things. But most, a lot of times when you're doing something new, you're trying to do the right things, you're going to find a better way to do it, and you got to persevere through that. So educate yourself daily, fall in love with that, get started on something easy, and then persevere.

All right, thanks so much, Robby. I really impressed by what you've done so far. Your track record you're building, and looking forward to following you on the charts as you continue to move up. Man, this is exciting, Larry.

I appreciate that, man. I had a lot of fun with this one. So thank you.

If you enjoyed what you've heard and are dead serious about finding out for yourself exactly how this works in the real world. I've taken the most valuable business lessons I've learned over 40 years and put them into something for you to watch. Go to whiteellawinning.com webinar now in order to move up as fast as possible. I'm Larry Wydell, and I run the Million Dollar Mastermind. Go, go, go.