Living a Rare Life with Erik Rock [Part 2]

Welcome to Scar Tissue, the podcast. I'm your host, Melissa Dugalecki. And here we understand the power that lies within our pain, that lies within the scars and the wounds and the nicks and the burns that come with the experience of life. When we learn how to leverage this.

It is a powerful tool.

And capital is that not only can take you to your next level in your life, but can make massive impact on others as well in the most beautiful ways.

So here on Scar Tissue, we have.

Real, raw and relatable conversations that will show you that there is not one way to live. That the word should doesn't exist and doesn't serve us in the vocabulary of our lives. That you are meant to live and create your most authentic self, and that we are worthy of everything but entitled to nothing. It is up to us to create it and to create from a place of love, opportunity, possibility, and authenticity. Let's dive in.

Thank you. I appreciate that. You know, I had a bunch. One was that a story that I was being punished? Like, I had. Remember I told you earlier when we were jamming before I hit record, that I had, like, this story that I did something wrong or I ruined something. So that really came out very loudly after Layden died, and I really felt like I had done something wrong and I was being punished by God and I ruined it. And so that created a worthiness conversation in my head. Was, was I ever worthy of being happy? No, I wasn't. Like, I literally just got put in, like, happiness jail. You know, one was that if I was. Was happy or smiling and people saw that, they were going to think I didn't care that my daughter died. And one was that if people saw me building a business around gut health, which I began studying after Laden died of a sick gut, they were going to think, oh, she's just monetizing off her dead daughter. That one really, I get it. Struck deeply. And Eric, it was such a practice. I mean, this is stuff we talk about all the time, but it was such a practice. And, like, you know what, people are going to make up stories and whatever they see is their own actions. And I know my intention and I know my heart.

Powerful.

I know myself. And I also believe that Laden's lessons get to be taught to change lives. Right?

So good.

But it was hard. But what a. What a gift in the sense of really building the muscle of self, trust of mission, which I know is like your jam, right? We haven't talked about that yet. I'm like, how much more time do we have of mission and of really commitment to my purpose and my daughter, you know, and, and at a way that it, no one else got to have a vote. And this is something I say a lot. People only get to have a vote in your life if you give them a vote. So like you and I were talking earlier and we were talking about, you know, there, there are some people who might be, know talking a certain way or acting a certain way, but it's like they don't get a vote. I'm not giving them a ballot into the life of Melissa Dublecki. Like you're not giving that person a ballot into a grock. And I think that's important to look at, you know.

Yeah, this is everything. You know, if you really think about some of the fundamental reasons people don't go out and do the thing, start the thing, be the thing, the reason. There's probably so much regret at death, and I have a profound story about that too that really struck me that I can share. But I think this, this actually might be a greater thread to that than maybe anything is that we are so consumed with what other people think and that's what actually drives our decision making process. And sometimes we may be inspired and overwhelmed a little bit, but the imposter is a real thing. So I think what's going on in everyone's body is two things are happening. I think this is universal. Even in the people we all admire that are doing life the way we want to do it or achieving the way we want to achieve, they too have this. And I've been near all the people that I admire, which is really cool to get to a place in life where I can be near the greatest in the world at what they do, especially in the industry that I'm now pursuing. And so when you get near them, you realize they had the same irrational fears that you do, they had the same emotions that you do. But two things are happening. There's two voices speaking, there's a rational voice and there's an irrational voice. And you might liken it to an angel and a devil. And what happens is the angel might have a voice for a little bit, but that devil is a very powerful, manipulative son of a bitch. And it starts talking and it'll confuse you and it'll make you question things and what it usually does, it usually wins because it's so much easier to ride on the pessimistic side of a thought than the optimistic side, because again, going back to that thing, it's so much easier to ride the wave of the angel. The optimistic thought. When you feel good and so many people don't feel good on such a regular basis that it's so easy to stay lazy, comforted and sloppy. I'll be honest, it just is. The pessimistic voice is always going to win and that puts you in victim mode constantly. So again, how do you break through this? Go to the gym, get some endorphins, do hard things. Being in motion is the greatest. Just that alone, taking a walk, it's the greatest way to get you out of a stuck feeling that you don't like. And what happens is most people don't execute that as a system and a process in their life. They feel it and they wallow in it. And the voice gets louder and louder and then they do something irrational. They go eat ice cream, they go smoke some pot, they go drink. They create back end habits and systems to actually feed the negative voice or soften it or silence it. And sometimes it does both. It softens it and then it heightens it at the same time. It gives it more, a more powerful voice. You've got to find ways to develop systems and processes that heighten the angel voice, the optimistic voice, the one that's trying to help you break through scary feelings. That one usually only comes around, I'll be honest with you, those rare moments when you feel good. So for me, my peak decision making time will come right in that like few hour windows after I have my flow state taxed by endorphins. And that's usually when I'm taxing my central nervous system. I'm in the gym, I'm shredding up muscle tissue. That chemical process opens up my prefrontal cortex and I start believing the impossible. That that's when I want to make my decision. That's when I want to make hard phone calls. That's when I want to execute on things that normally I might say I'm going to procrastinate. That's scary. I don't want to do that right now. People don't have a system or process where they can connect the best window of time to make a decision. To hard things, to hard decisions and to scary decisions. We put so much pressure on this by having bad behavior that this becomes overwhelming voice in our head. This one doesn't have that much say. All this is, is they both have equal playing ground. But we are fertilizing this too often. We need to fertilize this. And the best way to do it is to Feel good, confident and illogical. Illogical meaning you start believing things that are. That might be possible if only you could do this, this and this. Maybe I could pull that off. Like those are the kinds of fun voices that you have. What happens though is that gets silenced really quickly with bad decisions. Bad decisions. The second you eat a meal, you. And you start feeling tired right there, boom. You're out of the flow state. You're out of that illogical belief state. There's a lot of value in having this conversation because we all have this battle and the people that master this are the ones that have very good systems and processes. The ones that don't master it, they are killing themselves daily 1.

Every time you just finish, I just want to be like mic drop. I wish they could see the video. So, you know, you, you hit something I think is really powerful. I mean you had a lot of things. But one thing that really stuck out to me. I would love to take the audience a little bit deeper in. This is what I see as the, like, I mean it manifests in many ways. It can manifest in the way of not having systems and processes, not having discipline, not having self trust. And I do want to get into how. I think discipline is the greatest form of self love, by the way, because I know we, we align that. But.

And, and it's the greatest connection of freedom truly.

100%. A hundred percent. But which to your point is why being, you know, a trust fund baby who doesn't ever have to develop discipline, it's rob them of the opportunity to anyway. But where I was going, this is what we always do. This is what we always do. I can't is you really spoke into this and I think it's, it's very closely linked to entitlement. I also think it's the biggest differentiator between people who generate results and people who don't. That has nothing to do with talent. And that's victim mode. I can't tell you how many people are in victim mode. And, and three words that drive me crazy that I get a lot. Must be nice. Must be nice. Like, must be nice to live in Mexico. It must be nice to be able to go work out. Like, must be nice to have time. Like I make time, you know what I mean? Like I'm working seven days a week, you know.

Yeah, we got your priorities. Listen, if you see, if you see anyone else doing it, you can do it too. If you see another mother with three kids that's thriving in, in her highest and best use in life, then so can you haven't figured out the right system and the right process for your life yet. And likely that's a reflection of your environment. And no offense to who you marry, but if you don't marry someone that challenges you, that pushes you, that has high standards themselves, it's very hard to be the one that's always pushing the needle when everyone around you sloppy again. Like, I mean there's so many deep threads we could go here in this conversation, but at the end of the day, what is the goal? It's to live and thrive as an authentic human right, to really live and thrive. And that means really you're after your dream achievement. You want to have these dreams fulfilled. You want to have a full life that is filled with fulfillment. I think part of that is making sure that you have a strong faith in your life. A commitment to God has sort of got to be this underlying tone that even if nothing else happens, I'm happy. Like what a beautiful foundation that if you're honest with it, it brings you to a state of gratefulness where now when you win, it's not tied to outcome, it's just for the sake of enjoying the process of pushing the limits. You love growth, you love the excitement of the process. You're not so hung up on outcomes. That's something that I've really learned to develop now because for so many I was always in the future that I would forget to be present. Biggest challenge for most entrepreneurs is really enjoying the process because you're so caught up in the future. Now there's value in being in the future and having clarity and seeing what you want. But when you can say, listen, if, if, if I gained nothing else in life, if this is all it was, if you could just say, oh my God, I'd be so happy. What a beautiful foundation for then to go build a blueprint for the rest of your life. Because I'm no longer tied to outcome. Like when I get there, I'll be happy. Then when I once I do that, then, then I'm going to feel good. Why not feel good right now? And again all we are our thoughts, like our whole world. What I'm looking at right now, I happen to be looking at a beautiful ocean right now. But it wouldn't matter if I was in a small apartment. I actually have the power to create a million dollar environment in a million dollar mindset right here. You can be incredibly grateful with nothing. And that is a beautiful way to live your life forever. If you. But again, it Means you need to systematize in your life gratefulness. And again, hard to do that if you feel like shit. I keep going back to it that I think it's America's biggest problem is they don't feel good and they're popping pills constantly, and there's remedies, there's prescriptions coming out of their ass everywhere you look. I mean, it's sickening, actually, what's. What's happening there. But if you get that right. And again, being around me, this is the value of it is I'm going to get you. Get you right there.

And.

And I'm going to try to connect it to money in the marketplace and really fulfillment in the marketplace and really gratefulness in the marketplace. What a deadly combination. Because if you're physically teeming with confidence, you have a daily hit of endorphins. I can get you to this illogical state of mind where you believe the impossible and the angel voice is winning. From there, I can start crafting an addiction and a system and a process is all it is. But you're addicted to it, to knowing you're to the gym. Not for body and health. That's just a simple byproduct. You go there to be inspired, to be confident, and to create actions in your life. Actions to be a better father, better husband, better, better worker, whatever you do. Better baseball player, if you're a baseball player, whatever. The best you can be is you want to connect that endorphin hit to something in the marketplace. People try to connect it to health. And that doesn't work good enough, because if it did, more people would do it. Like, you know what I mean? If health alone was a good enough resource, then more Americans would be doing it. I'm saying most people don't realize the power of that illogical flow state that happens no matter who you are. You can get there. And that is sort of the greatest. I think one of the greatest addictions that the highest achievers have is they have an addiction to a flow state where they're their most creative, they're their most inspired, and they have that voice that believes the impossible. And it creates enough courage to go try something, to go do something. You have to figure out how to get your mind to that place on a regular basis. And again, in a modern era, if you could be a fit CEO, a hungry, fit CEO that is just thriving, what a really cool vision of your life that you can cultivate a lot of meaning, you can have a lot of mission in your life. You can leave a lot of impact. You can give the world a lot of value. It's just fulfilled. And it doesn't have to be my dream necessarily. But at the end of the day, if all your listeners just close their eyes and they envision the best version of who they could become, the greatest version of who they could become, the greatest gift of their life that they could give the world, what would that look like? Like, deep down you know it. You're impacting the world. There's really no other path. And to be impacting it means you have to be an inspired human yourself. You have to have some gifts and some value to give yourself. There needs to be some rare foundation around you that has validity, that has meaning, that has, you know, has some. Has some clout to it. Because if you don't have it, it's going to be hard to have real impact. You have to be. The thing is my point. You can't expect to live a fulfilled life where you have meaning and impact. If you're not the thing. Preach. If it's not. If you're not the thing already that you're trying to impact in somebody else, does that make sense? And again, hard to do that if you have a huge belly hanging over your belt. It's very hard to do that. Honestly, it's just not that likely it's going to happen because deep down you don't. You cannot possibly feel that good about yourself because physically, you're tired all the time, you don't feel good. It's hard carrying around all that toxic baggage. It's just fucking hard. And it's so hard to call that out in America because you're such a bad person. You get canceled these days for saying anything that's against the grain. Listen, it is not okay to be unhealthy. It should. This should be the number one priority in people's lives so they could show up and live a longer life. At the very least, live a longer life for your kids. Be around a few extra years. You know what I'm saying? Like, isn't that enough? Like, what do we need to say here?

No, I think it's so. I mean, there's a couple. Couple different directions, I think, like, that we can kind of move with this. But one, it's all very powerful, super powerful. And it's. It's probably going to trigger some people who are listening and that's Right. And I just want to acknowledge that if you're feeling triggered, if you're feeling like, fuck you, like, we love you, we love you. Like period. I don't know. I don't know. Two people in this particular industry that we're in, like, I'm not saying in the whole world, but in our particular circle, our industry, I really don't know. Two people who love people purely and harder than we do. Like, I really don't.

So I see the potential. I just see the potential in people.

Me too. That's why I said I. We were talking, talking before. We should have recorded it, but it was like I'd prefer to be honest with someone than be a people pleaser. And that to me is love the same way. And so this might not be a people pleasing conversation if you're not feeling good in your health and fitness, but lean in because the trick the teachers. So if you're feeling triggered, lean in. And I will tell you like what I found when I decided to take like my health to a whole new level. It was taking myself to a whole new level. Like, it was taking myself seriously to a whole new level. And when I began taking myself more seriously, other people began taking me more seriously. And I really think like if you are a leader, if you are an entrepreneur, like people are going to not assess the number on the scale. But does this person take themselves seriously? Do they have standards? Do they value if they don't really value themselves? Like, if I'm looking at someone who I can tell that they don't value themselves, why would I value them? Why would I feel confident investing in somebody who clearly doesn't have standards, consistency and self value, you know, and it's a bigger conversation. And so that kind of really speaks to internal environment. But something I wouldn't mind going into, maybe closing out on unless you have something else you want to drop for the people. And I'll let you pick, you can pick. But that came up was like, there's also the, the value of external environment and who you're surrounding yourself with and putting yourself in those places. I don't know if that feels alive for you or if something else feels really alive for you, but I'd love for you to kind of lead where you want to go and, and take this before we close out.

Sure. Well, I would add, you know, to your, to your last point, you know, if you consider your. I love thinking about myself as a stock and really being clear on why would someone invest in me if am I a stock that's going to go up? The reason people invest in a stock is they think that the company is going to grow. They Think it's going to make good decisions, the board of directors going to make good decisions. They're going to think about their shareholders. Now me as an investor, I want to pick a company that's going to grow and rise over time. If you think about yourself as a stock, you really would consider, well, why would someone invest in me? And if your honest assessment, well, you shouldn't invest me. There's way better stocks to invest in. Like you have work to do and that's okay. This should be fun. None of this should be scary. All of it should be fun to get yourself dialed in, fall in love with the process. And the one thing I would add is the last point. You can't expect to be a stock someone invest in if you're not thinking long term about yourself. That means this can't be a 30 day thing. @ the end of the day you have to do, you have to start. It may be a 30 day program, but you have to consider, can I do this for the rest of my life? Anything you do in life, if it doesn't become your identity, it'll die quickly. Seven minute abs. You guys don't exist. We do abs for the rest of our lives. Just consider that. So one thing that's been helpful for me is if I do something even personal brand, I'm not so tied up on the outcome anymore. There is no end date. I'm going to do this for the rest of my life. I consider a cost of doing business. I write it into my marketing budget. I'm just going to bleed for the world every single day, seven days a week for the rest of my life. No expectation of return. I just want to commit to impact. This is the next chapter of my life. And I'm lucky enough that I succeeded in business enough to justify doing this and not really stress on outcome. I don't need money over this. Most of it's all gone to charity anyway or back to the building, the business itself. There's no real money that I put back to the bottom line. It's all away anyway. The point is, is I do this with identity as the connection to my greatest self. Meaning this is just who I am. I'm not doing this for one year. There's no goal here. This becomes a habit, a ritual, routine. It becomes part of my soul, part of my personality. Everything you do, you got to think till death do us part. And that will change your life. When you start considering how the best in class think and operate. From there you can start being a stock that Might be investable. And the greatest people are stocks that, that are like diamonds in the rough. They haven't been found yet because then I could put $1 on them and I might get 100 times return. So you really want to look for diamonds in the rough in life, but you want to consider yourself a diamond. The rough, it's a very cool place to be in life where you know the momentum's coming, the attention's come in, the growth is coming and you know it. No one else knows it yet. Now your job is to figure out how to get the world to know it. And that's really where personal brand, we can talk. That's a whole, probably a whole different segment here. But really the power of stepping in the light, which is what I'm doing now. Personal brand, it's become very important in now how I communicate to the world because I recognize that next next level of me came from once I revealed myself to the world. The scariest thing you can do in life is step in the light. They say public speaking as an example is a greater fear than death. Now I realize if I'm going to be a stock someone invest in, I have to pursue that lane. And I've been calling it lately the unfair advantage. If you want the greatest unfair advantage in life, then you need to build a life that's in the light. And the best way to build a light in the light is to be confident. And the best way to be confident is to be disciplined. And the best way to be disciplined is to have a system and a process that you live and die by for the rest of your life. That always puts you in advantage state of who you are for that particular day. It's all sort of a simple formula. Anybody can do it. But you have to decide that you're going to go through the pain of building the system and process until it's not painful anymore, until it's addicting. Once it becomes addicting, it's sort of like, oh, I need that to be this creative, amazing Eric. That feels like crazy good, like illogically teeming with energy. That's how I felt when I started this call because I just come back from the gym. Anybody can feel this way if you do it long enough. It is the greatest resource a human can have is to be able to tap into your own natural chemical process to get you to that illogical place in life. From there you can pursue a life of meaning. From there you can pursue a rare life like what are your dreams? We want all the physical Things in life. We want all the fulfillment in life. We want all the connection and meaning and love in life. We want to have the right humans in our life, the right relationships in our life. We want to have the right family. If you want all these things to be dialed in, well, likely you have to be the one that decides it. You have to. If you want a rare life, you have to decide it. If you want to live in Laguna beach, you have to decide it. If you want to live in Coeur d' Alene on a lake in the, in the, in the summer, you have to decide. I had to decide how I wanted my life to look. And I had to build a system and a process that would support that life. And then I wanted meaning. Well, I had to find meaning because I wasn't doing enough. I had to go find what was the lane that was going to create meaning. All these are decisions and I will be honest with you, every scary decision I ever made came from an inspired moment when I was tackling my central nervous system. And I had the courage to go try it. You know how powerful it is just to go try something and have the self belief that you can. That doesn't happen while I'm sleeping in bed in the morning. It doesn't happen when I'm hitting the snooze. It happens when I'm in motion, when I'm actively pursuing or when I'm taxing myself. When I'm stressing my body out. That's when I start feeling good. Get my point? I just hope that we've hammered this point enough because I think it's the greatest gift that you and me could give an audience. Yeah, any audience.

I agree. No, thank you for sharing in your passion and just your insight. I think, you know, something for people to think about too is just the word value. Because we often place value in the wrong places. For example, I'm talking food. Like we're placing value on like calories versus actually understanding chemicals. We're placing value on more, you know, versus like nourishment. Right? Or we're placing value on pleasure of food rather than like fuel of food. And in work, like, sometimes I see people get so transactional of breaking things down and like the value of this. But there are so many ways of looking at value. It's something you and I both always say is like, if you want to be valued, make yourself valuable. Like, it's really that simple, you know? But as you were really kind of speaking into that, I don't know, I just Want to invite. Like, I don't know if this makes sense, Eric, tell me. But I want to invite in like a more widened understanding of. There's so many ways of sharing value, of being valuable, of consuming value, of creating value. Like it's 2024. It's not that hard to generate income if you're valuable and you serve. But that's going to start with how you value yourself, right? Of course you can really do that. And so I don't know that that lands or what comes up for you.

Well, at the end of the day, I mean, getting down to sort of more practical, you have to have a vehicle in life that is going to generate, you know, ideally you want to live a passive lifestyle. Well, great. You got to earn it. Like it takes a lot of work. And I work and I do this for. I could, I could speak this for hours. Yeah, but first you're doing it right. You just want to build an engine. First you want to build an engine that, that has cash flow, that spits it out. And then you want to place those dollars carefully in the right places. You know, for, for many in the early years, you may just want to put it back in the business. Every once in a while you might be able to squeeze a piece of real estate out. And again, you do that over a 30 year period, you're going to be very wealthy by the end of that 30 year period, if you were able just able to squeeze a piece of dirt out here, a home here, a vrbo here, a property here, maybe a shopping center here. You know, you squeeze that out a little bit here, a little bit here, and you let those things cash flow and you just keep the business, the engine working. There's two ways you gotta look at it. There's the engine in your life where your earned income is. That's where I'm trading time for money now. I can scale that. And as I scale that, I have to become more valuable myself. That means I have to remove myself from more of the systems and more of the processes and let more people do the work. That's how you grow. But in the early days, it's just you, you, you door knocking and saying, hey, can I mow your lawn? You know, 100 bucks, I'll do it every week. Let's get you on a subscription model. What's your company name? It's called Rock's Lawn Mowing. I mean, it starts with one customer. That's my point. You just start with something or go work for a king. There's so many different ways to get wealthy in life. Warren Buffett's assistant was, was made $40 million last year. The point is this. She didn't need to be king. She doesn't want to be king. She doesn't need to be the face. She can serve the Lord, but you got to be valuable for him, then that means he can't live without you. You have to, you have to make someone else one first. Actually, even no matter who you are as a person, one of the best piece of advice I could give you is never be willing to make someone else rich first. Like for me so many years, I was always willing to let someone else win first. And that's what made me really valuable. A lot of people are stingy with their time, their money, their resources, and they don't want to make you win too much. Do you know what I mean? And that is not a good way to be in life when you're just so valuable everywhere you go and you bleed for people and you give it all away. I would do that for my customers, for my employees, for everyone. Doesn't matter. You'll start building something and you'll figure it out as you go. At the end of the day, like so hard to read how to do it. Just go fucking do it. You start and you'll learn. Trust me, you'll get really resourceful when your own skin is in the game. Now, it's your ass on the line. You got a payroll to make. Trust me, you get your shit in order quick. Okay? Now, pressure is not for everyone. If you can't handle pressure, you're not going to be a good entrepreneur. The greatest entrepreneurs, the greatest founders, just like the greatest athletes, they perform very well under pressure. So if you know that's not your temperament, go serve someone who does. Greatest way to gain value and wealth is become so valuable, rise through the ranks, go find a diamond in the rough and serve the shit out of them. Grow with them again, you don't need to be the guy at the top. You can earn a very good lifestyle enough to passively invest if you just connect yourself to the right resource. I talk a lot about this, but at the end of the day, the way it all really works to build wealth. If we're going to take it this direction and just to be a quick 1, 2, 3, maybe we'll have to do episode two. But the end day, you need an engine that works and you need a passive lifestyle that works. And oftentimes this slowly feeds this or this becomes so valuable that you have tax problems. Once you have big tax problems, you're forced to invest. And that's a good place to be. But it's also scary. You start getting to a place where you owe the IRS so much money that you're a fool if you don't learn how to start investing. That's oftentimes what creates the diversification in the first place. But most people get it twisted. They try to do 10 things at once. You need to be good at one thing, just be great at one thing, be a master at it, build a great fucking business, help serve someone to the highest levels, rise all the way to the top with them, and then make so much money that you have to go spend it. Meaning now I have to invest to get the write offs. I have to go take these, say I had 200k in earnings and I don't want to pay 40% that to the IRS. And I have no other write offs on top of that. Well, now it's probably time when I take all that money and I go buy a piece of property with it. Why I can depreciate and write off the entirety of that expense. And so now it looks like I made no money. On paper, I have an asset, but I have no cash. Like this is kind of how it works. But first you got to be an earner. People get it twisted. They think they could just do this first without this. I think the best way to do it is to become an earner first. Now that's not to say, and I could teach this as well, that you can't buy properties with no money. You could start right day with no money. Just understanding how the whole thing works. If I see a piece of my next door neighbor, if I become friends with him and I knock on his door 100 days in a row and I say, hey, if, do you want to sell your property? He says, no. Hey, do you want to say prices?

No.

One day. What if he said, all right, Eric, you've earned it, you've earned it. I'll sell you the property, I'll sell to you for 1.5 million. Let's just say random number. Now I know if I'm a good negotiator, I can get them down to 1.4. All right, so 1.4. The reason he gave me the deal and not didn't put on the market is probably I earned his trust. I found a deal that the world doesn't know about. So I put it under contract. Now I have the rights to that property. It's kind of like I own it in that short period of time during due diligence. Now, I could actually go take that contract. I could partner with someone on it. I could fund it a million different ways, or I could just sell the contract. I could quickly turn that property. What if it's really worth 1.9 million and I just got it for 1.4? Do you know how many deals are out there that are handed that are way below market value all the time? It is, but you have to really be active in this. You have to be savvy, have to speak the language. I've accidentally stumbled on deals that made me hundreds of thousands of dollars early in my career on accident. I've stumbled on deals that have actually put millions in my pocket. But I'm really invested in understand the market works. I know what comp values are. I'm always searching. So part of my morning system and process, I scavenger markets I'm interested in and seeing what properties are listed and what's not. I develop relationships constantly in the communities that I serve. I know the real estate community that's out there. People call me all the time with deals that are off market. Like, I've just built a name. That takes time, though. You got to start somewhere. I'll tell you one deal that we put together, it was genius. Just real quick, I found a piece of property that was off market, and I became really good friends with the guy that owned it. He thought he was never going to sell it. It was a generational piece of land. And I, you know, without being too brash, I rem. I asked him, are you ever really going to develop it? Are you just going to talk about it for the rest of your life? And it challenged him. Surprising enough. To my surprise, he came to me, goes, eric, I'm going to sell it to you, buddy. He goes, I think you're the guy that can get the deal done. Now, word had already leaked that this property might be for sale. It was 80 acres. This is a lot of land, okay? 80 acres, a lot of fucking land. This is a $10 million piece of dirt. And he goes, okay. He goes, we'll sell it to you. Well, the word had gotten out, and another developer from Las Vegas put an offer in. It was like a $1.4 million above. Above my offer. He still sold it to me. He didn't like the guy. The land was more important that it got in the right hands than it was to this guy. Now, this doesn't always happen, but I'm giving you an example. Yeah, that land. We ended up picking up that piece of property for way below market value. Now that's one plot of land. It was one 80 acre plot. We have been in the due diligence phase of breaking that land up. When you start going through the painful process of actually going through a development plan, breaking the lots up, individualizing them again, there's a lot of work, there's a lot of carrying costs because the land's producing no money right now. But the reality is is once these are broken up into different lots piece by piece, that lands worth $30 million. I mean the math doesn't lie. The comps are there instead of one big 8 acre parcel. Now, now I can get, now I can start trying to figure out how to get things rezoned. Re entitling different pieces of land. I we're thinking about a piece of like county property is another example that we might be able to get annexed into the city. I mean the difference between a comp in the city versus a comp that's a comparable in the, in in the county is like tenfold. There's so many clever ways. With no money to find deals that you know are good, lock them in a contract, now you have the rights to go negotiate that property like it's yours. People call that wholesaling. But the thing is I've. Most of the best deals I've had, I stayed attached to them. I'll negotiate myself into the next deal if I can't close it myself. The point is this. In real estate there's a lot of money to be made. There's a lot of. But again, I didn't just stumble upon this knowledge. I became really good at business. I tapped into all my customers. I would pick their brains again like these were just in my normal furniture business that I learned all these valuable assets of people, relationships, networking, communication, all this value. And then I learned tricks along the way. I mean I can't tell you how many times I've leveraged private appraisals that I would pair up with bank ordered appraisals. And this guy would just copy this guy's work and I'd get the appraisal I wanted. I mean literally the difference between one appraisal, another could be millions of dollars. I've seen it with my own eyes and I found systems and processes. Through every deal I did, I would learn something. This invaluable way to hedge my bet to gain the advantage, to gain the leverage to gain in many cases, asymmetrical leverage. That's where I put in very little. And I get out a lot. So think about it. If I was going to sell a piece of property and make 400 grand right off top, all I had to do was move around paperwork. Do you know how hard it is to. To clear in your business? 400k? You know, how much work, how many people you got to move, how much heart, soul, how much leadership you need? Asymmetrical leverage does not happen in your business. I promise you. Now, it's a good vehicle. It gives you a lot of resources. It's your passion, likely. Hopefully it is. If you're doing it right, it's your love. But the best asymmetrical leverage is not there. It's not. I promise you. There's a lot of better ways to make money if you're smart. Now, the guys that own the market share here, they have a lot of capital, they have a lot of resources. They're very smart. They don't just give away deals, okay? You have to fight for them. You have to become valuable yourself. So the greatest gateway in is to become a valuable person in the marketplace because you start getting access to things that that guy doesn't have. Now, here's one thing that I'm going to spice on to the end of this conversation. It's just going to tease your audience. You start building a powerful personal brand. You want to talk about unfair advantage? My unfair advantage now is that I'm making a name for myself that everybody knows about. Again, like, that's not why I'm doing it. That's not what drove me here. It's something I stumbled upon this reality. Ed Mylett has a massive unfair advantage. The Ed Mylett on stage has a huge unfair advantage to The Ed Mylett 10 years ago that no one knew about. It is insanely unfair. Like, it's so unfair that it makes my stomach hurt. And you wonder why you're. Why you shouldn't build one. Okay, well, then listen. You're going to be competing constantly for the rest of your life against people that do inside your business. A realtor here that doesn't have one versus a realtor here that does. This one's going to crush this one every time. Nobody knows this one. This one's pain. And this is old school going on here. Word of mouth, which is great. This guy can do the same thing. Same word of mouth, same great customer service, same all that. But he's got a personal brand. He will crush this person every time. Like, listen, like the way this person will compound over this person will be night and day as long as they're bringing the same value. I'm just talking about the same values proposition, same person. The only difference is this one has the courage to build a personal brand. That means they authentically and vulnerably put their heart out and they put out content out every single day. And then they build systems and processes around how to support the demand that inadvertently comes out of that personal brand. It may have nothing to do with real estate, by the way. This guy might talk about saving children as his primary objective for his personal brand. And he will feed his real estate business in ways this guy couldn't even dream. Makes sense. So I teach this now. I challenge people to step in light. There's a reason you need to have your story put out there. All this stuff matters. If you want to become the best at what you do. It all aligns. It creates a very deadly version of you that's inspired, that's powerful, that's impactful. But you have to decide and you have to start. And then it's got to be lifelong. Like, the thing that I'm aware of is in this personal brand is if I start and I do this all the time, I still do it. I just have to override the devil voice with the angel voice. I compare myself to other people and I feel like I'm failing because I'm so driven and I'm so always looking for good quality outcomes. There is no outcome here. This is identity. I'm going to do this for the sake of doing it for the rest of my life. Because I believe that I'm helping people. And I believe inadvertently that somehow the butterfly effect of the people that I help is directly fighting against the evil that's destroying innocence here and around the world. I believe that my mission is supported with a vision that actually helps innocence and humanity and children. I think it even helps animals because I love animals. Like, somehow I believe all this powerful work I do, it helps people. Like, I'm going to leave a mark that matters. And I'm just getting started because I'm going to do it till I die. And I want to end with maybe one last thought if you do something long enough. One of the things I teach inside, inside the personal brand workshop that I do, I can officially say I have a workshop on personal brand. It's consistency. Consistency is the key to everything in life. Most people quit, they quit, they start something, they quit, they start something, they quit, they start something, they quit. Carrot to carrot. To carrot. They kind of sink their teeth. They pull off. They have this perceived level of optimism when they start something and then they realize how hard it's gonna be and they pull the fuck off. They touch an oven, it's hot. They never touch it again. Me, I'll put a mitten on. Let me find it. I keep going after the goddamn thing. I didn't listen. I didn't start out this way. Although I would say most of my life I was pretty damn tenacious. But I will also tell you everything in my life that meant something to me that mattered. I was told no. I had to keep fighting for the yes. And you're supposed to get told no. If you don't get told no, it's no good. It's a ruse, don't bite. It's actually, you're getting scammed. It's supposed to be hard. If it's not hard, you don't want it. And if it's not hard, it's fake. Everything that has value is. Has dragons guarding them. You want to penetrate those dragons, you've got to fight through them. And they don't just say, yeah, come right in. You're at Bowser's castle trying to rescue the princess Peaches. And you knock on the door. You think the big dragons just can say, hey, come on in, here's the princess. Give her a kiss. Do your thing. No. You're going to have to fight through hell. There's going to be trenches and moats with alligators. There's dragons that are breathing fire. Now you got to meet Bowser. That's a big ass battle. You want to have rare things in life, you have to be willing to fight through hell to get them. This ain't easy. The house down the street from here is worth a hundred million. There's like 80 million dollar homes all around me. Right here. I'm in one of the most expensive communities in the world in Laguna Beach. This is filled with celebrities and famous people all up in these hills. You want to live here, you have to fight through hell. There's so many dragons you have to fight through. People want it so easy and then they get told no. And they. And they say okay. And they tuck their tail and they walk away. I've been told no my whole life. I just don't stop. Why would you stop? How can you stop? You have to think of it as identity. That's why I don't stop. I will just keep pushing till I die. It's so easy to fold when you get told no. My advice is just keep fighting. Find a way to get a yes or find a valuable lesson so that the next time you approach this dragon, you have a better offer, you have a better thought, you have a better way to connect. You have more heart, more value, more this is. Or start building a personal brand. Watch how many easier yeses you get when people already know who the you are.

Hungry?

Hungry.

So good. Yeah. Thank you, Eric. I mean, I just want to kind of, like, pull out there. I mean, there was so much. Right. But I want to, like, I do that one. Find a way to live with that much passion, guys.

Like, thank you. You too.

Yeah. Like, Eric is pure and he's passionate. He's not totally pure performance. Like, anyone listening, you can't see him right now. I can. He is not putting on the performance. This is who he be. And I don't quite yell like that, but like, I, you know, I get that lit up and that passionate. I showed a little bit differently, but there was a time in my life where I never even thought I'd be happy again. And the way I take care of my body and the way I take care of my mind and the people I surround myself with and everything that Eric and I went into today, I literally am as lit up as he is about life. I just showed a little bit differently. But. But it's. It's a beautiful way to live. And I think we're both a stand for possibility, Eric. I think we're both a stand for stronger than circumstance. I think we're both a stand for, you know, commitment. And to your point about hearing the no and stopping, I mean, one, I just have to say on a side note, can you please do masterclass on like, real estate and investing? Actually, I shouldn't say that. I don't want to learn it. I don't want to learn it. I want someone else to learn it or manage it for me. It's not something I have any interest in. I just hired someone to take on finances in my business because I don't want to. Like, I. It's not my thing. So if you're listening, you're like, ah, you got to know it. Or you hire someone who knows it for you.

Absolutely fine, too.

Because honestly, like, when you're saying it, I'm like, God, like, I. Like that's not anything that I. My brain doesn't really work like that. And it's not.

Yeah, you have to give it a. Yeah, you have to give it a lot of brain power. Unfortunately, and that's okay if you don't, if you don't want to. You can build a hell of a life without ever thinking about it. But just like I was obsessed with my business, I had to make time to be obsessive about real estate. It's so hard to passively find good deals when there's hungry sharks everywhere looking for them. You have to have access to people. And so one of my rare, I'll slip this in there. One of my rare qualities is when I built a retail business, I had access to some of the most famous people in the world, some of the richest people in the world. I was in direct connection. So my connector was great furniture. We sold really high end furniture, rare furniture, one on one furniture. We built a really rare furniture model. And so one of my great connectors to the communities that we served in our brick and mortar retail business was we'd have these great high net worth clients that we slowly started attracting. I didn't start that way. It started as a shithole. The whole business was a shithole at first. We slowly started attracting the best names in the business. And I did it through very clever marketing. I knew my audience that I wanted and I attacked them with vengeance. I went after them. I have some very clever ways of marketing that really started gaining traction. And before you knew it, we had changed the perception of what we did as our business. And we were serving some of the wealthiest families in America. And so having access to those relationships gave me a huge advantage. The draw and the magnet to them was I was doing business with their families, business with their wives, business with their designers. They were building homes, were furnishing, we were, we built relationships. And when they would meet me, I would never talk about furniture. I would say, what do you do? And I build these really beautiful relationships. I'd remember their kids names, I'd ask them questions like, listen, there's nothing an old guy that's wealthy or a guy that's successful loves more than being around a young hungry person who has passion like me. They want to give you their gifts away. They want to teach you. They're so eager to teach. People are so weird around people. But like I was so honest and vulnerable and loving and we, I would get the biggest sales I've ever seen in my life time and time again. And I would never talk about furniture once. They just want me to win and they'd want to buy furniture just because they knew was helping my business. Because we were barely surviving half the time. It's what it actually looked like to build a business, like every day you wonder if you're going to make it till tomorrow. Do we have enough bills and payroll to be able to pull this off or do you have enough cash flow to. It's felt like that for years. And you just keep pushing. You just keep waking up again, going to the gym and then going and being a leader. But you can't, you have to put on a smiley face every day, an optimistic face every day. You can't let your employees know you're struggling or you're suffering. You can't, you can't lead that way. It was very hard. I had to become really resilient. I had to build a face of the new how to handle pressure. And then when I finally get a customer, I would love on them, I'd care about them, I'd be willing to die for my customers. This is the type of anatomy that's in the greatest leaders that are out there. This is what you build. It's only now that I'm bringing it to podcasts or personal brand. I wish I would have been doing this 15 years ago, but this is how you have to become to succeed at the highest levels. And once you get there, you may have access to real estate deals, Melissa, that you never had. And you are, you're a great connector. Your personal brand and your business will connect you to great people. You'll find ways to win in real estate passively without having to be obsessed with it. If you don't want to be, don't fuck it. Don't waste time on anything you don't.

Want to do to someone. Honestly, you can it. Honestly, if I had my. I'd be curious to hear yours. But like if I had my dream, like, well, what I'm working towards when I have my dream is like I actually want my businesses like the lab, the VA agency that can run without me. 90 day CEO becomes evergreen, runs without me. And I just want to be like speaking and talking on grief, writing books, on stages. Like I don't actually see myself running businesses. I would love to have like, like I'm totally detouring here. We can edit this part.

I love it. I love it. No, I love it.

I would probably like even one business that I just do strategy for or work within that's not mine. You know how I work with people one on one right now or like consulting or whatever. Yeah, like I would love to have 90 day run without me, lab run without me, obviously my oversight. But like both run without me and Then maybe just one private client and then everything else is just speaking and, and writing on grief. Because I'll be honest, you talked about vehicle. I think right now these are vehicles for me to get to it. I think what I do is work. But I'm, I'm good enough at how to build it to run without me. That, that's kind of what I'm doing. So if you're listening to this, you're in at a good time because you're getting access to me that will not be accessible in a couple years. It just won't be like stock values going up, you know, like Eric totally. Like it really is a very good time to invest in Melissa. This is a very good time to invest in Melissa, to be honest. But I see like, honestly, instead of having multiple private clients, like just having like one and being able to be really like deeply hands on on that not transitioning back and forth between so many and then amplifying podcast book stages and really more on like grief and possibility because that ultimately is what I see as my, my purpose here. But see, we'll see, you know, but I will likely outsource any real estate investments because it just, it's not, it's like a boy job.

Yeah. When you. Yeah, you'll end up doing what you want. But I would just. The one last thought I would slipped in with what you said is, is you can have anything you want, but you have to earn the right to get to that place. You, you can't, you, you don't just get there. Like people have this idea that they're going to end up just being like Alex her. You have to earn your right to be able to go to live the way he does. So to live the way you want to live, you got to earn the right. The way, the way I live, the way I want to live. Like so I'm kind of in a unique place. I want to just live inside my personal brand. I don't want to really run any other businesses. I want those all to run themselves and me just be focused on speaking, doing kind of the Edmund model, following in his footsteps is my goal and to do it at the highest level. So. Yeah, you mean you were kind of in alignment. That's all I want to do. I've done all the other things. I've earned the right. I've stepped outside of it. This is what I'm pursuing now. This is what I'm going to do forever.

And I just think it's a beautiful way to end like you Got to earn it. Because I'm really glad you spoke into the fear of paying the payroll and the bills, because you know, anyone. That's true now. Like, that was me, too, and not that long ago.

It's everybody. It's. It's the way it works. Even my billionaire land development partner, he said for. For literally for 40 years, it felt like every year, the business barely surviving. Every year it was like, we're. We're so close to bankruptcy, and we might be able to squeeze out, like, one piece of real estate, you know, here. For every store they open, they might be able to actually mortgage one piece of real estate. I was the only real asset that was able to develop year and year. I was what it felt like. But he was always growing, growing his pain. And pain means you. Your bottom line is tight, and it puts a lot of stress on you. But 30, 40 years of doing that, it turned him into a billionaire. You don't see how the assets appreciate over time. It's all a game of compounding nature and about building real assets and how the business grows and appreciates. It's the bottom line that makes you feel like you're failing, because cash shortages are always a thing in business. You never have enough cash flow. That's why they say sales cures all ills. Anytime we had a big sales day, I'd sleep like a fucking baby for 10 years straight. If we didn't. We were. If we didn't have good sales days, which felt like most days. Oh, God, it was. It was so hard to sleep. And now I sleep great. But I had to earn the right to sleep. Great.

Great.

In business, you don't sleep good till you earn it. I'm just convinced of that. It's. I know so many entrepreneurs, and the story's always the same.

Yeah, no. And I'm in. It's interesting. I'm in a phase right now. I'm not sleeping super great. But it's not because of stress as much as my days are so packed anyways. That's a whole other thing. But earn it, earn it. Know that it's possible. And also, as you were saying, like, you know, there's that fire that happens when the bottom line is scary. And I want to bring that back to. That's the burn. And so I think as everyone's going through this, whatever you're pursuing in your relationships, in your travel and your investments, in your careers, maybe in navigating grief, like, I honestly had to earn my healing. And I hate. I hate saying that I know that can be hard. But my healing did not just happen. I worked. So my grief counselor told me she's never had anyone work harder than me.

Like, I believe that.

Like, I was so committed. And so I just. I hope that you know it, what anyone's hearing. And we went a lot of places, Eric, but I hope people are really taking away commitment, consistency, you know, standards earn it. Because no matter what domain of your life you're listening for, it applies to every single one of them.

I feel that. Yeah, you're right. That was fun. We gotta do this again.

Yeah. Eric, thanks for being on. Where can people find you?

Eric? Rock with a K E R I K Rock. Lol. Because it all started as a joke on my Instagram page. I think that's probably the easiest landing page to go from there. My website's there. All my different courses are there. How to. How to coach with me, connect with me, be near me. But I just think that's a good place where I'm putting a lot of the heart and soul of my daily messaging that's going out. Even just following it there is the easiest place. But I would be grateful if you do that. Thank you.

Absolutely. We'll link everything for you too. Eric. You are truly a gift. Your mission is a gift. You make this world better. You make me better. Thanks.

Let's go. Thank you. You do too. I appreciate. Melissa.

Thank you so much for tuning in and sharing the space of scar tissue with me. I hope you found value in this episode. That is truly my commitment and goal to bring what I believe will serve you in your life no matter what you're navigating. Again, this show is inspired from the loss of my daughter Laden and through my grief journey.

Journey.

Really understanding empathy, understanding empowerment. Understanding how to be the creators of our lives in whole new way that is stronger than circumstance, that focuses on progress, not perfection. That loves the process. Loves the process and lets go of attachment to outcome.

So whatever resonated the most with you.

Allow that to serve you and you elevating to your next level. And if you love this show, please share it, please pass it along, spread.

This work and would mean so much.

If you took a moment to even rate and review it on Spotify or Apple podcasts.

I appreciate being here with you all.

And it is an honor to witness your journeys and your greatness.