The Mindset As A Powerful Tool For Financial Success

Hey, it's Mark Panoski, the land geek with your favorite niche real estate website, www.thelandgeek.com. and I'm really excited for today's guest. I'm gonna put on my Ron Burgundy voice. He's a big deal. But before we talk to our guests, I'd be remiss if I didn't probably introduce my co host. You know him, you love him. Scott Todd from scotttodd.net landmodo.com automating your Craigslist, your Facebook postings. Posting domination.com thelandgeek learn anything about anything. Investor ninjas. Com. Scott Todd, are you ready?

I am.

All right. Because our guest is none other than the Rod Khleif, who is an entrepreneur, real estate investor, multiple business owner, author, mentor, and community philanthropist. And he's just a giver. He's one of the country's top real estate trainers, and he's personally owned and managed over 2,000 properties. You probably know him best from the Top Ranked Itunes real estate podcast, which has been downloaded more than 7 million times. The Lifetime Cash Flow Through Real Estate Investing podcast. He's also the author of how to Create Lifetime Cash Flow Through Multifamily Properties. Going to learn a lot from Rod Khleif. Rod, welcome.

Hey, thanks for having me, guys. Now, I was looking for pocket protectors. You know, you guys are geeks, and I figured there'd be pocket protectors, there'd be tape on the glasses, you know. Oh, wait, that's nerds. I'm sorry. I got it wrong.

Yeah, I mean, we are leveling up our geekdom.

Love it. Love it. Thanks for having me on the show, guys. Let's have some fun today. So super excited to see if we can add some value to your listeners.

Yeah, Rod. So let's just rewind the tape and let us know. How did you get started in real estate investing?

Yeah, it's a story. I can land the plane on it pretty quickly. So I immigrated to this country when I was six years old, actually immigrated from the Netherlands, from Holland, with my brother Albert, my mother's Vanche. We ended up in Denver, Colorado, where I lived for 30 years. And the reason I started my real estate journey was we didn't have a lot. In fact, I wore clothes from the Goodwill and the Salvation army all the way through junior high school. I remember we ate expired food. I remember my mom taking us to the Day old bread store because it was half price. And we drank powdered milk because it was cheaper than regular milk. And I'M sure you've got listeners that have it harder than we did or maybe had it harder than we did. But I always knew that I wanted more. And luckily my mom babysat kids so that we'd have enough money to eat. And when I was 14, with her babysitting money, she bought the house across the street from us for about $30,000. Now, when I was 17, she told me that it had gone up $20,000 in her sleep, that it was worth about 50 plus. I'm like, what? I'm getting into real estate. So forget college. I'm done with college. I'm doing real estate. So I immediately got my real estate broker's license when I turned 18, which you could do back then with education. They've now become. And you have to have some experience. But I was a broker right when I turned 18 and I was going to be rich. Well, my first year I made about 8 to 10,000. My second year I made about, I don't know, maybe 10 to 12,000. But my third year, I made well over 100,000. And so one of the things I like to talk about is what it took to 10x my income from year two to year three. And so, you know, if you'd like, I can dig into that a little bit. Because really, what it was, it was mindset. It was psychology. You know, I met a guy about that.

Yeah, let's, let's, let's delve a little deeper into that mindset. So what is the mindset that allows you to 10x your income?

Well, it's a focus. It's a focus on exactly what it is you want and why you want it. So, you know, I will tell you fast forward to today. I've owned over 2,000 properties like you said. In fact, we, we bought 100 doors. I'm sorry, 1,000 doors last year. We've got 500 under contract right now. This is multifamily. In 2006, my net worth went up $17 million while I slept. And there's a punchline. In 2008, I crashed and burned. I lost that 17 million and a whole lot more. I had what I call a seminar, a $50 million seminar. I lost everything. And again, it was mindset that got me back to the success that I enjoy today. So what it is, and I take my coaching students through this, I teach this at my live events as well, is the need to know exactly what it is you want with clarity, and then, as importantly, know why you want it. And so what I do is I take my students through this goal setting workshop and I could give you a high level overview. It's a little different than most, than most people do this. And if you'd like, I can share it with your listeners. Won't take but a few minutes.

Yeah, yeah, that'd be great.

Okay. All right. So what I want you to do, guys, if you're listening, ideally take some notes. If not, you can come back and revisit this. But what you do is you pick an hour when you have no interruptions and you've got high energy. Make sure that you're well hydrated. In fact, let me get a drink of water while I say that. And you make sure you got a lot of energy. Don't do it right after a meal and sit down and write down everything you could possibly want in life. Okay? All the stuff. Start with the stuff. And there's nothing wrong with stuff. You know, stuff was meant to be, to be obtained and shared with other people. So the cars, the boats, the jet skis, the planes, you know, the houses in other countries or other states, the farm, the ranch, you know, all the stuff. So write down and those of you that are analytical, and I'm sure you've got a lot of analytical followers, listeners on your show, Mark, don't stop to analyze this, guys. Just keep writing. Don't let the pen leave the paper. You can always scratch it out later. But I want you to just free flow everything you can think of. Don't think about it. Just keep writing. And you also want to write down all the, you know, how much. Let's talk about cash as well. How much money do you want in the bank in three years? Pick a number. How much money do you want in 10 years? How much cash flow do you want from your assets, say in three or four years? And then how much do you want in 10 years? Now remember, all your goals have to be measurable. So keep that in mind. But then also write down the things that you want to do in your lifetime. You know, maybe you want to climb a mountain. I've got a friend that's climbing all the big peaks. Or maybe you want to write a book. Maybe you want to jump out of a perfectly good airplane. I did that about six months ago, which I will never freaking do again, but I did it. Bucket list, check item checked off. But whatever you want to do, write that down also. Then lastly, or actually two more things, write down also what you want to learn in your lifetime. So maybe you want to learn a foreign language. Or you know, learn some skill. Maybe you want to learn how to flip and buy land or how to do multifamily. If it's multifamily, I hope you'll come see me. But the bottom line is write down what you want to learn as well. Me, I'm going to learn how to play the drums. My wife bought me a drum set. It's over one of the other buildings in my compound here. And I still don't know what end of the sticks to use, but I'm going to learn how to play those drums. And so what do you want to learn? Write that down. Lastly, write down who you want to help because as human beings we'll do more for others than we do for ourselves. And you want to use this to propel you, okay? To get you to take action, to get you to push through fear and limiting beliefs, to get you a little bit uncomfortable. The comfort zone is a warm place, but nothing freaking grows there. So you need to get out of that comfort zone. So this is the fuel. So write down who you want to help. Maybe you want to help children like I do, or animals or the elderly or the environment or your community. Whatever it is, write that down because that's your passion as well. You want to connect with your passion. Then once you can't think of another thing, just a couple more steps, I want you to look at that list and it's, and like I said, it's not real till it's measurable. I want you to write down how many years you think it's going to take you to achieve it. So put a 1, a 3, a 5, even a 10 or a 20, how many years you're going to take to achieve it. If it's a really giant goal, you know, go, go big, you can go bigger with it. And again, don't overthink this. Those you analytical ones, you know who you are, don't overthink it, just guess. And then once you've got that done, I want you to pick your number one goal. I mean that goal, if you got to be like, oh my God, the clouds parted is just amazing. That goal, put it on another piece of paper. Now if you've got two or three that juice you equally, just pick one because it won't matter for what we're going to do next. Then I also want you to pick your top three one year goals. So you're going to put four goals on a separate sheet of paper and leave some room in between them. Okay? Top three, one year Goals. And then I need you to also. I'm sorry. I got a call. I got distracted because my phone, my. Somebody tried to distract me here. Forgive me. In fact, let me turn off a notification here, okay?

It's another deal, Rod. You're going to buy another thousand doors.

Bring home the bacon, baby. So. So. So you've got four goals on another piece of paper, which is great. In fact, you know, you're already ahead of 90% of the people on the planet. Most people don't even get this far. They do a New Year's resolution. By February, it's gone. Okay? So you're already ahead of 90% of the population, but you're going to do one more step, and that is you're going to write a paragraph under each goal. Why it's an absolute freaking must for you to achieve it. Okay? And so you're going to write things like. So we can have freedom. Freedom to do whatever we want, whenever we want, wherever we want, bring whoever we want. You know, write it down and use emotionally charged words. Words are very powerful. They will move you. So you want to pick words that'll. That'll have an impact on you, like amazing and beautiful and incredible love. You know, these. These emotion words that will. That will help with this. And so write down why it's an absolute must, you know, and recognize that, again, we'll do more for others than we'll do for ourselves. You might put, so I can show my spouse or wife what success looks like. My husband, so I can retire my husband or my wife so I can show my kids what success looks like. So put all that down. And then I want you to take it one little step further. I want you to put some pain in there. Because as human beings, we will do more to avoid pain than gain pleasure. So you want to use that. So you might put. So I don't live a life if you don't achieve the goal. This is if you don't achieve the goal. So I don't live a life of regret. So I'm not a failure. Again, make it harsh so that I don't fail my children, so I don't fail my husband or wife. Because again, we'll do more to avoid pain than gain pleasures. You want to use this. This is the fuel. This is what gets you up early to go after your side hustle. This is what gets you to stay up late, you know, to make five more calls when you're done. Tired of making calls, whatever, you know, this is the fuel. And so once You've got that done. And by the way, let me say this about pain of regret. There was this nurse in Australia named Bronnie Ware. She was a hospice nurse, and she counseled hospice patients at the end of their lives. And she asked them a question, which was, what regrets do you have? And she wrote a book about it. It's called the Five Regrets of Dying. You want to know what the number one regret was, guys? It was not living the life I could have lived, living someone else's life. And I say, we don't want that guy. So this is the fuel to prevent that from happening. And this is what, again, this is what got me out from underneath the rock when I lost $50 million. I mean, you know, I thought I was set for life. And, you know, I thought 80 million baby boomers. I had properties up and down the coast here in Florida, And I thought 80 million baby boomers getting old and getting cold. You know, Florida was recession proof. And little did I know it was ground zero for that, for that contraction. But then lastly, I want to talk, if you'll humor me, for just another couple minutes, about visualization, because you got to know what it is and why you want it, but you have to also keep it in the forefront of your mind. So if you'll humor me, I can spend five minutes on that as well.

Yeah, absolutely. All right.

All right, let's do it. So let me give you some public examples of people that use visualization. Maybe you've heard about Jim Carrey wrote himself a check for $10 million when he was flat broke. Okay. And he used to look at it, sit up by the Hollywood sign, look at it. And it had on the remittance. And for those of you millennials, a check is something we used to pay. Used to pay for things, but he used to look at it and just Google check.

Millennials, right?

Yeah, just Google check.

Exactly.

And so he would look at it and visualize cashing it, and that's how much he made for Dumb and Dumber. I'll give you one more incredible example of visualization. I'll give you a couple of my own as well. So there was this millionaire in New Orleans that kind of adopted a classroom in a school that was struggling. School, where literally the number of kids that went to college was in the teens. I don't remember the exact number, but it was in the teens. So what he did was he paid to bus these kids to a college. I think it was Loyola in New Orleans. And they paired each one of them up with a college student. They did this for one day. The kid followed. These at risk kids followed the college, paired up with the college student all day. They went to classes, they went to the library, they went to the cafeteria, they walked around campus. They got to feel viscerally college life. Then they busted them back to the school, same day, back to their back home. Then all they did for I don't know if it was two or three years, every day in class they would close their eyes for a couple minutes and visualize going to college. Over 80% went to college. That's how powerful visualization is. So let me give you a couple of my own examples. When I was 18, I told you I was going to get, I was going to be a real estate broker and failed miserably the first couple years. But I bought this four door Ford Granada. Ugliest piece of junk you ever saw in your life. Bench seat in the front. But I figured I had to have a four door to show houses, right? Well, I had a friend that let me drive his Corvette. And that piece is important, that experiential piece. If there's a goal that you want, house that you want, go to open houses of houses like it, you know, go test drive that car, go experience it as much as you can. In fact, I want to get a yacht one day. I either want to own one or rent one. Because I took my wife to the Amalfi coast in Italy and I was just blown away by how spectacular that coastline is. And I want to do that one day. And so I went to the, literally a few months ago, went to the Fort Lauderdale Boat show and I BS'd my way onto some of these amazing yachts and sat in the captain's chair. Visualize myself, you know, owning this yacht, walking around, laid on the bed. Just got, you know, again, viscerally associated with it. But back to my car story. So I got a picture, this is before the Internet. I got a picture of a Corvette out of a magazine. I put on the visor of this bone ugly four door Granada and within a year or two I had a beautiful Corvette. I'll give you a couple more examples. But let me just say this, this is not me bragging because these things I'm going to share with you. I just want to inspire your listeners. This is really more to hopefully inspire you because this stuff doesn't even interest me anymore. But back then was the TV show Magnum P.I. and the actor's name was Tom Selleck. And he drove this gorgeous Ferrari 308. And I thought then that was the coolest thing I'd ever seen. So I got a picture of that actual car put on the visor of my Corvette. So every time I got in there, I saw it. Within a year or two I had a Maserati looked just like it. Last example, I'm the guy that always wanted a Lamborghini. I mean, I had posters in my bedroom of Lamborghinis and it was the Countach back then. But what's crazy is my son collected models of exotic cars and he had a model, he had like 30 of them. He had a model the exact same color and style that I ended up with. So again, do not underestimate this visualization. In fact, I've got my planner right here. It's on today. I'll show you. In the back of this thing I've got pictures that have been in here for 20 years. The first pictures are my gratitude pictures because everything starts from a place of gratitude. That's foundational pictures of my kids when they were young. And again, you see how dog eared these are. They're in plastic, but then these are the pictures, the houses that I wanted. I built a. You know, for 20 years I visualized building this house on the beach. And I built this mansion. 8, 8,000, $8,000,000, 10,000 square foot mansion. This was before I ever built it. And this is exactly what the living room looked like. Travertine floors with glass like this. Now I lost that house and you know, back when all that, everything crashed. But what's crazy is, is I live in a compound now. It's six buildings. I've got a giant main house, beautiful guest house on the water. And you can see these pictures below. I don't know if you see the wall right there, look behind me. Is that freaking crazy?

Yeah, it's beautiful.

20 years ago. It's the same wall 20 years ago. Okay. And then other stuff that I wanted, you know, stupid shit like watches. I got a few hundred thousand dollars worth of watches. You know, again, dumb stuff. The Lamborghini before I ever got it. The Rolls Royce, the Bentley, all this stuff that I got that really doesn't matter anymore. But I got it because I had pictures. So guys, if you're listening, get pictures of what you want, get them around you. If you saw my offices and my exercise room now, you'd see the pictures of the things that I want now, because it works. So anyway, that was a long explanation, but hopefully this is adding some value to your listeners, guys.

Well, I Think it is because, you know, and Scott, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but most of our guests are more how to in technical, and we don't really talk enough about mindset. Scott, Todd, what are your thoughts?

Let me say this, let me say this to you. It's 80 to 90% of it. The technical, the vehicle is easy. I mean, you just got to go take action and learn and study and do it. But, but, but to push through the fear is the hard part. You know, people have these limiting beliefs from childhood experiences that hold them back. Fear, you know, fear of fear that they're not old enough, young enough, have enough money, knowledgeable enough, whatever. And so it really is mostly mindset. You know, pick the vehicle, be it entrepreneurship, be it land flipping, be it multifamily, but you got to get your head right. And that's how I was able to recover from losing 50 million bucks and have 50 million to lose in the first place. You know, is that is the mindset?

Yeah, absolutely. Scott. Todd, what are your thoughts?

I mean, you know, I believe in the visualization piece, right? Because I mean, I've seen, I've seen an experience firsthand, the power of a vision board, right? Like, you know, you could do a vision board actually cutting stuff out, or you could put it in a notebook like Rod did, or put it on your phone, you know, create a, create an album called Vision Board. Whatever it is, you could, you can create all of this stuff that you want to. You can create it all. And then it always makes me think about like Lou Holtz, for example. Lou Holtz, when he was out of work, he was a laid off football coach, 28 years old, his wife is pregnant. He wrote a list of 107 things that he wanted to accomplish, right? Like, it's amazing. And like he went off and he accomplished like every single one of them. And when I heard about this whole Lou Holtz thing in his list, I'm like, that sounds pretty cool. So I made a list of 100 things that I wanted to accomplish. And slowly, you know what? Like, as years have gone by, I've.

Forgotten about that list.

But slowly, every now and then I'll be like, I think that was on the list. Let me go back and look. And sure enough, you start crossing these things off. And you know, one of the things that was on, one of the things that was on the list that I wanted to do is I'm like, I want to meet Lou Holtz, right? And I just put that on there. Why? Because he Created the list. I thought that was pretty cool. Well, guess what? I met him. You know where I met him? I met him in a Cracker Barrel.

Wow.

In Orlando. Because I lived in Orlando. He lived in Orlando.

Literally.

He lived in the neighborhood right next to me. And we were both at Cracker Barrel one night for dinner on a Sunday night. And I glance over, I'm like.

The universe works, man. This is the way the universe works, I'm telling you. That is so freaking cool, Scott. I got goosebumps when you told me that. That's so, so cool. That's how it works, guys. It is that simple. Believe God, whatever you believe, you know, that's how it works. By the way, I want to mention I've got a goals worksheet. If your listeners want to download it, it'll walk them through the process I just went through. And it's. They just text 2020 goals to 41411 and they can download it and walk through this process. But, God, that story's awesome, Scott. I love it, man. It's like a bucket list. And that's what's so crazy. When I look at these pictures, I saw that wall behind me. I'm like, holy shit. That was in a picture I got 20 years ago. It's just mind blowing, right? Love it, man. Absolutely love it.

So, Rod, I mean, what's some of the worst advice then you see or hear given in your expert, your area?

I believe in multifamily because I crashed and burned because I had too much single family. It was too spread out. So, you know, that's why, you know, I teach. That's why on my podcast I talk about multifamily. But I also do episodes on Mindset as well. Every week I do an episode on Mindset. So, you know, even if you're not going to do multifamily, you're going to do land flipping. I hope you'll check out my podcast because I'll motivate you every week. I mean, I've done hundreds of these little five minute clips about, you know, they're called Own youn Power. Different things that you want to own. They're already inside of you. You just have to own them. But worst advice, I would, you know, I don't focus on the negative. So that's a really hard question for me to answer. You know, I give lots of great advice, but it's, you know, what not to do is hard for me to answer. And full disclosure.

All right, so here's, here's. I'm going to reframe the question. All right. I've got a 45 minute commute to work and back. I'm miserable in my cube at Procter and Gamble. Rod, what would be the first action step you would take to get me a step out?

This is self serving. This is self serving, but I just gave it. Listen to my podcast or listen to other inspirational. Bring in the good stuff. Bring in inspirational stuff. There's tons of stuff on YouTube, tons of stuff on podcasts, you know, inspirational stuff to get. And then get educated on the vehicle that you're going to use. You know, build your competence in your side hustle, whatever it is, buy a franchise, do multifamily, do land flipping, whatever it is, and then get knowledgeable, educate yourself and build your competence, which will really equate to your confidence and then your ability to influence people, because you have to be able to influence people to be a success in anything. So that would be my advice on that one.

Rod, who's your biggest influence?

Who's my biggest influence? Probably Tony Robbins. I spent 20 years following him around the planet. And, you know, I've got lots of mentors over the year. I've got mentors and coaches right now for different aspects of my life. I have a story coach. I've got someone teaching me about digital marketing, you know, and I believe in them heavily. I'm a coach now, too. It's my greatest gift in life. In fact, you can see on the wall back there, I've got hundreds of thank you cards from people, and I'm sure you guys get them as well. That's why we love what we do, right? We add value and we get that love and feedback from people and, you know, just, just. It's a beautiful gift.

No, it really is the most gratifying thing I've ever done. And, you know, because, you know, sometimes I'll go on a podcast and like, well, you know, land flipping is so great. Why are you teaching it? I'm like, well, you know, no one ever really, after buying a piece of land from me, said to me, hey, Mark, you changed my life. Like, they like the land. But, you know, once you retire somebody, you know, really get them completely free. It's. It's transformative and, and to get that gratitude is, is priceless. So unbelievable. Rod, your mentorship has been invaluable and I really appreciate all the aspects that you walked us through with. Setting goals, visualization, you know, purpose. Why, I love the fact that, you know, we'll do more for others than we will for ourselves. I think that's so important. It's. And a lot of times I think that people lose that aspect. And Simon Sinek has a great book. Start with why. So I'm gonna ask you for another tip of the week. A website, a resource, a book, something else actionable for the art of passive income listeners to go improve their businesses, improve their lives. What have you got?

Oh, I've got so many. I'll tell you what, you know, if someone is an accredited Investor, we've got 500 deals doors we're buying right now and they're screaming deals. And we're super conservative. Text the word partner to 41411 and would love to talk to you about the deals we've got under contract right now in three states. Also, if you're interested in multifamily, I used to give away a 200 page book and I gave away 20,000 copies. Finally my team's like, hey stupid, let's make some money with this. So we put it on Amazon. So to replace it and it's a best seller in three categories. But to replace it, I created this tool book about buying multifamily. And so if that's an interest to you, it's free. It's awesome. It's 70 pages, like a due diligence checklist on steroids. Text ROD to 41411 and get that. But on my website, rodclief.com and again, self serving answer. But I've got so many resources, multiple books, videos, articles, and not just real estate, they're mindset related as well. You know, I was blown away. My YouTube channel got watched for 30,000 hours last year and. And a lot of it is the mindset stuff because again, I truly believe that's 80 to 90% of it. You can learn the technical, but you got to take action with what you learn. So, you know, I hope people will check that out. I have the largest Facebook community on multifamily as well. 31,000 people. If you have an interest, go to multifamilycommunity.com and join that group. It's awesome. We don't allow any promotion, so it's just total education. And lastly, I do three day boot camps and they sell out every time. I just did one in LA. 600 people and it's like a rock concert. We have a blast. You learn everything you need to know about multifamily and a whole lot more. And it's Rod's Bootcamp.com so anyway, long Answer, self serving answer. But I believe in what I do. So, you know, I feel like I'm, I'm letting people down if I don't bring this stuff up, frankly, that's my mindset.

All right, I love it. I love it. Scott Todd, what's your tip of the week?

Hey, Mark, I think that everybody should check out Mailtag IO Mailtag IO and basically you go there, check it out.

Because.

Basically what this thing does is we've seen tools like this before. But what I like about it is that you can set up a follow up sequence within emails that you send in Gmail so you can say, hey, if the person doesn't open the email, do this. Or if they did open this and they didn't respond, do that. So it's like ifttt, if you will, for emails. And so I think that that's pretty cool in certain applications. So check it out, see if it's a good fit.

Very cool. I mean, what scares me about this is, you know, can you be looked at as a spammer because you're doing it from your Gmail?

Well, I think it's more for, definitely for individual communication. So, like if I sent you an email and you know, it's like a one on one type of a thing, maybe we're talking about a property, for example, and I send it to you and you don't respond back, open it. I could send back and say, hey, did you, did you get the email? So, you know, I think that you got to look at it for certain applications.

All right, very cool. Well, my tip of the week is, you know, learn more about Rod. Just go to Rod Khalif dot com. I'll have a link in the show notes. We'll also have links to all the texts that Rod just discussed as well. So it will make it super easy to get all those, those goodies for free. Rod Khleif, are we good?

Oh, you guys are awesome. And I'm sorry that I monopolized the conversation. You know, I would love, obviously you guys are incredibly intelligent. I would love to have heard more from you guys, but, you know, another time. Love it, man. Thank you. And we could have talked multifamily till I'm blue in the face, obviously. But, you know, I felt like this was more important.

No worries. And we can always have you back. Or if you want, we can, we can come on on your podcast. I don't know if you do interviews.

Yeah, sounds good.

Yeah, no worries. Scott Todd, are we good?

We're good, Mark.

All Right. I want to thank the listeners. Just remind them the only way. The only way we're going to get the quality of guests like rod khleif@rodcliff.com is if you do this. Three little things. You got to subscribe, you got to rate, you got to review the podcast. Send us a screenshot of that review to supportlandgeek.com we're going to send you for free the $97 passive income launch day course and as well as the latest wholesaling course, how to double youe money 30 days or less. Today's podcast is sponsored by Flight school. Learn how 16 weeks up the mountain of land investing can literally change your life. And the only way you're going to know is if you have a free strategy call. Just go to landgeek.com training, get on a call and see if this model resonates with you. All right, Rod, Scott, you ready? One, two, three. Let freedom ring.

Let freedom ring. I love it.

There it is. Rod's like, man, if I knew they're gonna end like that, I don't know if I would have come. But thanks. Thanks, guys.

Take care, my friends. All right, we'll see you later.

All right.