Here's Why You Need To Learn The Process To Create Your Formula For Success

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the land geek with your favorite niche real estate website, thelandgeek.com and on today's podcast, we have a really cool guy, almost like a James Bond type, an international man of mystery. But before we talk to our guests, I'd be remiss if I didn't properly introduce my co hosts. You know him, you love him. The brain, the professor, your flight school sherpa, Scott Todd. From Scott Todd.net landmodo.com, learn anything about anything. Investor ninjas.com Scott Todd. How are you, Mark?

I'm great. How are you?

I'm great. Hey, welcome to the club, my man.

What club's at? Oh no, stop.

The AARP club.

Not doing it. No, I didn't join aarp. No, no.

I think our guest is going to actually disagree with me because Robert Raymond Riopel is an international best selling author and app designer, entrepreneur and trainer who spent the past 18 plus years traveling around the world sharing his passion. He has also shared the stage with and trained many of the top trainers and thought leaders in the world today. With his high energy and heartfelt style, Robert draws on his journey from humble beginnings to financial freedom at the age of 32 to inspire individuals into tapping into their greatness, realizing that he is not the only person that struggles. Robert's clues open individuals up to possibilities that lie within them. And that is why he is a highly sought after presenter and podcast guest. Robert Riapow, Welcome. How are you?

I'm great, Mark, and great to be here and nice to meet you and Scott and look, I'm ready to have fun. If you guys are ready to have fun, I'm ready to have fun.

I think we should have a lot of fun. I think we should just rewind the tape. How do you wake one day, you know what? I'm going to start traveling around the world and helping others.

Well, you know, the funny thing is though, is that's not how I woke up in the morning. That's not how I thought it would be, man. I thought if it was, you know, my programming, I would be in a job right now, comfortable. But I'd be miserable. But because I was comfortable, the misery wouldn't matter because I was taught, you know, when it comes to work, do what you need to do to support your family, even if you hate the job. And I'll tell you, that's kind of the way my journey started. And when 21, all of a sudden I'm being laid off from my 30s third job because they're shutting down a factory. I'm starting to think, is it me? Every major job I get hired onto, all of a sudden they shut down. And I started getting one of those kind of complexes. But that led me to having to, out of necessity, start delivering pizzas for Domino's Pizza. And I'm a fun guy. I believe there's way too many serious people on this planet, Mark. And I don't know if you know anybody like that, but, you know, he's too short not to have fun. And just by having fun at work, I was able to then become a manager. From manager, my wife became my assistant, and we started doing that programming. We started working hard, seven days a week, open to close. Because we were working together. It worked. But I'll tell you, it was kind of mind blowingly tiring and out of necessity, because here we are a year and a half in, and that same scenario came up. All of a sudden, my franchisee comes to us and says, I'm getting out of Domino's. I'm selling the stores. And we knew that as soon as this franchisee sold the store, the managers were the first ones to let go because the new franchisees came in, wanted to do it their way with their own team. And I started freaking out, and I'm like, oh, what do we do? We better start phoning the other franchisees, see who needs managers. My wife's like, why would we do that? She says, we're qualified to be franchisees. Why don't we just buy the two stores he's got for sale? And I looked at her, I'm like, because we don't have any money. That's why we don't do that. And luckily, the one thing we do have, though, is we have passion. We started learning and making a lot of mistakes. And I'm sure your audience is something you share with them. Don't be afraid to make mistakes. You got to dive in. Some of the greatest lessons you get from is from what did not work. And we made a lot of mistakes trying to figure out, how do you get financing? How do you buy a business if you have no money? And after about four months of just really making a lot of mistakes, but learning from every. Every single one, guess what? We were able to actually buy both of the stores with 100% financing. And we became franchisees. And it was like, wow. Yeah. We were like, oh, we've got it made. We're successful. But the problem is, we knew how to run a Domino's pizza store, but we didn't know how to run a business. And I think you'll agree with me, there's a world of difference between the two of those. Right? And so for the first two years, we probably should not have been able to survive in business. But again, our tenacity, we were too stubborn not to make it work. And when we finally started figuring things out and started learning, started saying, okay, what is it we're doing wrong? What is it we don't know? And we started learning business, we started making pretty good money, but then again, going back to our programming, we started spending more money than we were earning. I know that probably shocks you. You've probably never met anybody ever that spent more money than they've earned. And you know.

Parkinson's law of money. The more money I made, the more money I spent. I know exactly what you're talking about.

Oh, my goodness. Eight years into being franchisees, we're now over $150,000 in personal debt and going down quickly. And that's actually when we were introduced to personal development. We walk into a three day training that we were introduced to $150,000 in debt, stressed out beyond belief. Three days later, we walk out with New Hope because we learned why we were in debt. More importantly, we learned to take ownership, quit playing the victim, quit blaming everybody else for our debt. And we started learning about things like passive income, which real estate, what a great way to get passive income, right? And we took and put into practice what we had learned and all of a sudden, next thing you know, nine months later, we go from being over $150,000 in debt to actually retired completely financially free at the age of 32. And our minds go, wow, that worked. If that information gave us this result, what would more learning do? And we just dove in, we became avid students, and next thing you know, I find my passion, which is to teach. And even though I'd never trained before, I was able to become the first protege of an amazing trainer. And 18 and a half years later, I've personally traveled around the world several times and taught over half a million people in live three to five day trainings that are very intensive and loving what I do and just loving to add value to people. So that's kind of how from not really understanding what it was to travel to where I am today, that was the journey that we took and still owned.

Well, you know, Scott, Todd loves to say to his flight school class, success leaves clues. So I don't know if you guys collaborated on this title, but I know Scott's got some thoughts.

Well, I mean, great story so far. I mean, so what, what is it like? What, what was the, I mean, I know that you were in debt and everything and, and, but what was that pivotal moment that you woke up and you're like this, this isn't working either. And more importantly, how did you not go down the rabbit hole thinking, oh, it is me, it is me. Why these it is me. Like it's me. I mean that's an easy thing to do, right? Like you start to get into your mind and go, three companies, is it me? And then you go, and you're like living the dream of having, you know, Domino's franchises and you're realizing that there's a difference between managing and owning. Being like a manager versus being a leader and owner. How did you not go down the rabbit hole thinking that it was you? And how did you end up like, you know, what was that moment?

Well, you know, Hindsight Scott, being 2020, I look back and now I understand why it happened. But at the time I didn't know what was happening. And I was blessed to be surrounded by growth minded people that weren't willing to let me fail, weren't willing to let me stop. And a difference between a like minded person and a growth minded person because we hear a lot, hey, surround yourself with like minded people. And, and I used to believe that for years until actually a mentor of mine last year gave me a paradigm shift on that. And he said, Robert, if you're surrounded by complainers, if you're like minded, you're going to be a complainer. He said, but what a growth minded person is, not only are they the person that's going to pick you up when you fall down, they're going to be your greatest cheering squad when you're doing well, but they're also and most importantly going to be the person that's willing to kick you in the ass when you're, and have those tough conversations with you when you're being a jerk, when you're being an idiot, when you're just not playing the game you can. And so looking back, I realized I had a lot of people around me that were like that and I didn't know it. When we got that three day training, it was out of sheer luck. My wife and I knew one of the reasons we were in debt, we weren't enjoying Domino's Pizza anymore and we knew we wanted out. But financially strapped, we couldn't even perceive what we were going to do. And so our minds went, oh, well, what do we know? We know franchises. Why don't we go to a franchise expo, see what other franchises are out there, and we'll just do a new franchise now. Silly thing is, we wouldn't have been able to afford to go to another franchise, but that's where our mind was. And we didn't see anything that resonated with us. But when we walked out two weeks later, we received a letter in the mail. And not aging myself, gentlemen, but this is the time when you still got regular mail, not emails, a lot, right? And in the mail it said, hey, thanks for visiting our booth. Here's two tickets to an amazing evening. $39 value on each ticket. And the only reason, and the reason I love to share people my flaws is I don't want anybody to ever think I'm perfect, that I've had a perfect life. Well, let me be clear. I've had a perfect life. All the ups and the downs, because it's made me who I am today. And so here we get these tickets, and the only reason we showed up is because, thank God, I could not waste $39 tickets. That's the only reason we walked in the room, and that's what changed our life. So that was a pivotal moment there. And then, you know, going from being where, you know, when we left that weekend, it was taking ownership was the biggest thing because we realized, wow, we had been blaming people. They lost our investment or because of them, this didn't work out. When we started taking the ownership ourselves, saying, you know what, they may have lost money, but who made the decision to give them the money to invest? We did. And if we didn't do our due diligence, that's on us. So especially today, I don't do a lot of my own investing. I have people who do it. But you better believe I understand enough to know if the person I've given my investment to knows what they're doing. And I take that full responsibility. So when I do have losses, and guess what I do, I don't have all just winning investments. When I do have losses, I still take ownership. And I hope that answers your question, Scott, but that's kind of where things have been at.

Yeah. So, Robert, getting back to the success leaves clues theme. So clearly taking full ownership for your life is one clue. What's another clue that Scott and I may not even realize?

Well, one of my clues I love in my book is if you want to reinvent the wheel, do it later, do it later. Because I believe the greatest way, and it's step number two in my book, is if you want to have success, find a mentor, find someone to model from. Chances are, no matter what you want to accomplish, someone's done it before you. So instead of trying to reinvent the wheel and figure it out on your own, find someone who's done it, find out how they did it, model what they did. But the biggest stopper and the reason I say, if you want to reinvent the wheel, do it later is because what do most people do? Someone can come and say, hey, you're successful. I see what you've done. And they look at the system, they go, I'm going to do it my way. And they try to make the reinventions, and then they struggle. So what I say is, follow the system, get the success. That's been proven by the system. So you now have the success. And once you've got the success, if you still want to reinvent the wheel, go ahead and do it then, because at least you've got the success instead of just struggling by reinventing it right away.

Yes. Scott and I see this all the time with our toolkit students, our flight school students, and we've got the recipe for them. And oftentimes they want to just do it their way. They struggle, and then sure enough, they go back to the Scott Todd method of the recipe, and then they have success. So it's definitely a common theme. What other clue would you say is something that we don't see a lot?

One.

That was a big one for me. I learned this while I was in India. I very first trip to India. And the clue is choose to be happy. You know, people don't realize they have a choice in everything. And I was my first trip. I finished the training. I want to before I fly home, I want to do some shopping, get some gifts for my wife. And so my partner said, well, let me send you with a driver and send you with one of our staff members, Amazing young lady by the name of Shweta. And we're in the car. And I love to get to know people, Mark. I want to know who they are, what they do. And I said, so what part you know, what are you doing with a success key? And she goes, well, right now I'm in marketing. And I said, okay, do you enjoy it? And her answer was one I hadn't heard before. She says, I do right now. And I looked at her, I said, okay, clarify, what do you mean you do right now? She goes, well, I'M getting married next year, and so then I'll probably become a housewife. And at that point, so while I'm here, I'm going to enjoy it. And I said. And I was clueless. Mark and Scott, both of you, like a lot of men, and I'm not gonna speak for all men, but like a lot of men, I can be clueless sometimes. And I didn't even realize it out of the first words out of my mouth. I said, oh, where did you meet your fiance? And she goes, I haven't met him yet. We'll meet for the first time at our engagement party and then at our wedding, because I hadn't even conceived of arranged marriages. And I said, look, I said, I'm an idiot. I apologize. I said, but I am curious. Can I ask you some questions? I've always wanted to know some stuff. She goes, absolutely, no problem. I said, how does that work? I said, arranged marriage? I said, how do you prepare for something like that? How do you get over the anxiety? Is there stress? Does it eventually become love in the marriage? And her answer absolutely blew me away. She says, in India, we have arranged marriages and we have love marriages. And my mom gave me my advice. She said, shweta, whatever you do, choose to be happy, because if you're happy going into the situation, it's going to impact it in a great way. But if you go in stressed out and uncertain, that's going to impact it as well. And I was like, wow, how many times have I put an energy into something that impacted in the way I didn't want it to go? But if I chose to be, you know what? It wasn't the ideal situation, but I can be happy in this moment. That would have taken another direction. So that's another one of the clues I love to give people.

Yeah, I love that. And I think I've talked to Scott about this as well. I've got three kids. I think I could do a much better job of finding their spouse than they could themselves. I'm a big proponent of arranged marriage. These kids don't know what they're doing.

But do we know what we're doing still?

We don't know what we're doing either. But I love the attitude of choose to be happy in every moment. You do have a choice. In stoic philosophy, they talk about reframing every situation. Scott, Todd, what are your thoughts?

No, I mean, I think that's the thing, is it's all about your mindset, right? Like, the mindset controls everything. It doesn't matter what you're doing. So, you know, if you. We talked about the recipe, for example. So if you come in and you think that you know a better way of doing something, and then. Right, right there. So let's talk about a paid program, for example. You come in, you go, hey, you know what? I'm gonna. I've been gonna do it my own way. I've been doing it like this for a while. Or I think I have better ideas. That's cool. That's really cool. Then, you know, ultimately, then maybe you shouldn't be in the program.

Right?

You know, like, I think that when you're going in to learn something, you have to go in and try to figure out, okay, let me learn it from what this guy is saying. Then, as Robert said, like, then as you want to put your own spin on it, great, do it later. But learn the process that someone's teaching you first. And then if you want to make notes along the side that say, hey, do it this way, then do it. And this is. I mean, like this. If you look at any good person who's like a good chef, for example, or a good. Good in the kitchen, a good cook, okay, they'll make the recipe the first time. They'll. They'll follow the directions, and then they'll make a note that says, this didn't make enough of the ingredient, or this. It should have cooked longer, Right? Like, it should have cooked for 30 minutes instead of 20 minutes. They'll make notes on that. See, that's how they're tweaking the recipe for the next time. But until you go through the entire recipe one time, if you try to change it along the way, it's probably going to be a mess. You're not going to want to eat that recipe. So make mental notes, make notes to yourself, then come back and try it again with your own spin on it. Now you got a formula for success, right? Potentially or disaster if you cook it too long going back to a meal.

But either way, you take total ownership and you choose to be happy with it and you learn from it. Yeah, but, Robert, I don't want to give all the clues away because I want people to read the book. What I'd like to know is what's the worst advice you see or hear given in your expertise of helping people grow and become, you know, they're the best version of themselves now.

Okay, Mark, were you in my head? Were you like, you read my thoughts? I know I'm aerodynamic and it makes it easier, but Man, Man. Because I thought you were going to ask for another clue. And I was going to say, here's the worst advice I was ever given by a mentor. The one advice I chose not to take. And because I've been blessed to train thousands of trainers around the world. Not only do I love training, but I love developing people and helping bring their message out in a way that they can deliver it to the world. And one of my mentors when I was becoming a trainer, he said this. He said, robert, no matter what you do, you can never let your students think they can be as good as you. And I looked at him like, what do you mean? He says, well, that's how you keep the competitive advantage. You've got to let them know that they can be good but not good as you. And I looked at him and said, thank you very much, but I'm going to not take that. That advice. I said, because in my opinion, you're right. I don't want my students to think they can be as good as me. I want them to think they can be better. I said, because I know the people I'm impacting around the world. So if they're better, that's, that means they're going to impact even more people around the life or around the world, which means that's a win for me. And so that's the worst advice I'd ever heard, was you got to try to keep people suppressed or below you. And it's not about competition, it's cooperation. When you cooperate with each other, instead of thinking you have to compete, then watch what you can create. It's mind blowing what you can create.

I love that. One of my favorite shows the last two seasons has been Ted Lasso. I don't know if you've watched this show or not on Apple tv, you'd love it. But one of the lines is there's a mentor, the big boss woman, and she has a young woman is her mentee. And the mentee has now gone off and she's going to go open up her own PR agency and build her own business and fulfill her dreams. But she's scared to tell or mentor. And essentially her boss and one of the characters says, you know, a good mentor expects one day you'll leave. A great mentor knows one day you'll leave. And so it made me, it really made me think of that. Yeah.

And you know, one of the things, because I love mentoring and taking trainers, you know, to seven figure, eight figure businesses and when I started mentoring relationship with them, I said, look, I'm going to be very upfront with you. There's going to be a point where our mentoring will end, because there's going to be a point where you enter what we call the starstruck stage, where it's. And it's not that you won't go through it. Everybody goes through it. The only question is, how quick do you get through it? And it's going to be the stage where all of a sudden you think that you're good enough, you don't need any more learning, and you're going to do it your own way. I said, at that point, I'm not going to mentor you anymore. I need you to have your own wings because you're going to learn some lessons. And then if and whenever you get through the starstruck stage, if you're ready to come back and continue our mentoring, and we will, because to me, I've learned if I'm trying to hold them back, I've got to let their journey be their journey. And so I've got to let them go through those ups and those downs, and I have to let them think that I'm brilliant, but then think I'm a jerk. And I don't know what I'm talking about. And I can't take it personally. It's one of my favorite books. I was just talking about it this weekend. Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. I love this book. And the one agreement, don't take things personally, because if you want to be successful, not everybody's going to like you. Hey, if you're unsuccessful, not everybody's going to like you. So if you're taking it personally, though, it holds you back and it keeps you from living your greatness.

So, yeah, I love that, Scott, you know, you and I, I don't know, back when last time we were in California, you and I were. We were walking somewhere and we were talking about how the whole world is fractal, right? You know, fractal meaning patterns repeat over and over and over again. And the example I was showing you was, okay, if you took a picture from the air of a. Of a river delta, for example, like, and how it branches out in a certain area. And you took that from the sky, it would look like a tree, right? And like, you and I were standing there and we looked at the tree versus this picture that I had on my phone of that same thing, and I'm like, see, look. And then we talked about how everything repeats on a big scale or little scale. And the thing Is. Is that very similar to what Robert was saying here? Right? You know, the. The ability to either let go or the ability to let someone fly and crash or do whatever. It applies to business just as it applies to life. You know, when our teenagers are coming up, they're not going to love us, okay? It's the way that it is. I shouldn't say they're not going to love us. They're not going to like us. They may not like us, but they'll always love us. And just like you may not always like your kids, but you'll still love them. Same thing with your spouses. Whatever. But the thing is, is that at some point in time, you do have to let people go. And the reason I'm even bringing this up is because the same thing applies to VAs, for example, right? Or your team. Because so many times, you know, like, your. Your VA will ask you a question, and you'll just swoop in, give them the answer, but yet you didn't accomplish anything. You just move the work down. They didn't learn anything. What they learned was, hey, I can come to Scott, for example, ask a question and get the answer, as opposed to, hey, go figure it out and if you're still stuck, come back to me. Or, hey, I don't know, pretend you don't know, just like you would with a kid. I don't know. See what happens. Okay? What are they going to blow up? Nothing that you can't fix because they're coming to you because you already know how to fix it. So let them go. Create the science experiment. Blow something up and go, now what? Now we rebuilt, right? Like, now we fix this thing again. Now they learned something, and you learned something, and it didn't require you to solve the problem until there was a real problem to solve. And I think that that's the thing is, like, look at what Robert's saying. Not just about, oh, coaching. How can you relate that to your own business?

Totally agree. Totally.

Absolutely. Well, Robert, your mentorship has been really phenomenal, this podcast. But now we're at that point, we're going to put you on the spot one more time and ask you for your tip of the week. Another book, a resource, a website, something else, actionable, where the art of passive income listeners can go improve their businesses, improve their lives. What have you got?

Well, one of my tips is going to be this. I believe the greatest gift anyone can give this planet, Mark, is to be themselves. Show up for who you are. Because when you do, either people are going to like you or they don't. And if they like you, that's awesome. If they don't, that's awesome. Because how much time do we waste trying to please people and be something other people want? So give that gift to the world, Truly be you. And, you know, that's for me, I'm blessed. I feel blessed because I think one of our greatest commodities is our time. And the fact that you two have taken your time to graciously invite me onto your podcast and allow me to be here and just have this conversation with you. Thank you for that. And I'm even more blessed that your listeners took the time, their valuable time to listen to it. And if it's okay, I'd love to give them a gift from us for taking their valuable time.

Absolutely.

Excellent. Well, my first book that I wrote is the international bestseller Success Left a clue that you've been referring to. And what I would love to do is if people just go to my website, robertreopel.com, just my name, nice and easy, they can actually download the entire digital copy as our gift to them. But I will say this, though, it does come with a caveat. It comes with a caveat. I didn't write this book for people to read it. Put it on the shelf and make it shelf help. That's not why I wrote the book. And people are creatures of habit. So I wrote it as a workbook. Which means, because step number three in the book is take action. From all my travels around the world, it's probably the biggest difference between successful people and non is successful people take action. So I've got action steps all the way through it. And I'll even say in the book, did you do the last action? If not, stop reading right now, go back, do the action before you continue reading. And so I would love for them to download it and then actually do the action steps. If they do, I guarantee it'll move their life in all areas. Because I don't just think of success as money. It's mental, emotional, spiritual, physical and financial. And so if they do the work, watch the results they will get.

I love that. All the spokes on the wheel of success. So before we get to Scott Todd's tip of the week, I just want to give a shout out to our sponsor, which is flight school. Learn how the next 16 weeks can transform your life. Start building that passive income without any headaches, no renters, no rehabs, no renovations, no rodents. And go up that mountain of land investing with Scott Todd, who's done it thousands of times. Follow the recipe. He's going to take you up there quickly, safely, efficiently. And that tuition ain't going to cost you nothing. Guaranteed you're going to make it all back 180 days or less. Just show us your work.

Learn more.

Go to land geek.com forward/training and schedule a free consultation. Call the land geek. The landgeek.com forward slash training. Scott Todd, what's your tip of the week?

Hey, mark a. Check out PageMaker IE and what is this thing? Well, this thing is a landing page generator. So think of like lead pages, for example. Landing page generator, that's mobile first. Okay, so you know a lot of people, a lot of people surf stuff on their web. We hear all the time from people. Oh well, you know, what do I need to do to get a website for my land business? I don't think you need one simply because of the fact that no one's going to go to it anyway. But if you created landing pages with all the cool stuff like, you know, countdown timers and stuff like that, well, now you got something that you can cook with and PageMaker IO, well, guess what? You can do it for free. Five campaigns for free. And you can even have your own custom domain pointed to PageMaker IO's page for you for free per month, by the way, forever. Not just a trial. So go check out PageMaker IO.

Oh, I'm getting it right now. And you can get a lifetime subscription for 69 bucks on AppSumo.

Well, when this comes out, might not be available anymore.

I'm on the. Oh, that's true. Yeah, never mind. That's, that's very true. Never mind. But it's still. You still get five for free. I want to thank the listeners, remind them the only way, the only way we're getting the quality of guests like a Robert Riopel from robertreopel.com Three Little Favors. Follow rate Review the podcast. Send us a screenshot of that review. To supportthelangeek.com I'm going to send you for free a signed copy of Dirt Rich. Please do it. It really helps Scott and I, our fragile egos. It really, really, really helps. Robert, are we good?

I'm just, I'm learning, I'm loving. You know, I resonate because one of my first passive incomes was from land banking and really love the concept and how it helps so many people. So I'm just glad we've been able to meet and I look forward to staying connected.

Same here. Scott Todd, are we good.

We're good, Mark.

All right, let's do this. One, two, three. Let freedom ring. Thanks, everybody.

Thanks for listening to the Art of Passive Income podcast. Are you ready to learn how you can start building a passive income without renters, rehabs, renovations, or rodents? Schedule a free consultation@thelandgeek.com training let freedom ring.