FLA #81 CJ Calio - Creating Financial Freedom Through Real Estate Investing - Cultivating a Mindset of Financial Independence

Hello and welcome back to the show. So I am super excited to be sitting down today with my guest CJ who used to be an UPS driver, but has now turned into a real estate mogul who is living a life of financial freedom. And he has a really inspiring story that we are going to share with you guys today. And hopefully it'll inspire you to go out there, pursue your dreams, and live the life that you want to. But without further ado, cj, I want to welcome you to the show.

Yeah, thanks for having me, Colby.

Yeah, no, absolutely. Thank you for being here and taking the time out of your day to share your story with us. So before we get started, you know, would you mind just kind of giving us a little bit of background of, you know, who you are, how you went from, you know, being a UPS driver to now being this real estate investor who is inspiring other people to live the life of their dreams?

Yeah. So my story, I'm, I'm originally from Hawaii. I was born and raised in Hawaii, and I grew up an okay life. You know, I wasn't fancy, we weren't well off. We were in Hawaii. It's pretty common to have both parents work two jobs, if not three, and just to get through the cost of living opportunity that we have there. Right. So being born and raised, my parents heavily invested in my thinking around, you need to get a good, secure, safe job, get some good pay, get good retirement, medical benefits, the whole nine yards. Right? And so growing up with that mindset, that's all I looked for. And when I, when I got out of high school, an opportunity to have my oldest child at a very young age, which then gave me a decision to make to pivot away from college. And when I did, I went into ups. Like you mentioned in the beginning. That's. That's where I, where I started in my professional career, if you want to call that, because it provided good pay, good benefits, and I really needed the benefits. Having a kid at a young age, being in Hawaii, and I progressed through the ranks. I was one of the youngest UPS drivers ever in Hawaii at 21. I got my CDL license and I was able to proceed forward as a UPS delivery driver. And it was going well. And 10 years into the job, you know, having that, that consistency and the normality of a steady pain profession kind of just stopped being appealing. And in particular, it came down to the time of year where UPS drivers are, are most sought after, which is Christmas. And up until this point, I was. I was very satisfied with how Christmases Went, I was okay and content and understood my position where I don't get to see my family during this season because I'm, I'm needed more at work. Well, this particular Christmas was the heaviest Christmas I've ever experienced. It was the most packages we ever seen. We were under prepared, we had not enough drivers. And I found myself working 6, 7 days a week, 12, 14, 16 hours, and not seeing them for an extended period of time, like four to five months, which is not, wasn't normal up until that point. And it's funny, you know, when pressure is applied, you get, you, you get uncomfortable. And for me, the uncomfortableness was the fact I didn't have the freedom to just say, hey, you know what? This isn't for me. I want to go spend time with my kids. It's Christmas, come on now. Instead, I was out there delivering on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day. And it was very depressing. I was so upset and frustrated with, you know, am I going to tolerate trading my time for money for, for a job like this where I'm sacrificing my kids? First, second, third Christmas? Like I'm, I'm not seeing them enjoy this joyful time of year it's supposed to be. Instead I'm out delivering these packages. Well, through entire, this entire season of four or five months of working long hours, not seeing my wife or my kids, I got to a reality. I don't like this job anymore. No matter how much they pay me, how good the benefits were, there was too much sacrifice. I was giving up for this, this position. And I was missing out on these key moments in my family's lives. So after this season, I approached my wife. I'm like, you know what? I can't do this anymore. I'm stressed, I'm frustrated. I didn't see you guys for four to five months. I gotta move, I gotta get out of here. And the funny thing was is through this period she was feeling similar emotions and frustrations not being able to see me. And the kids were expressing to her, where's dad? Where's dad? And she was like, oh, all right, well, I'm okay with you leaving. I was caught off guard. I was like, isn't it the answer? I was expecting, you know, just to go walk away from a, a well paid union position, job with, with steady benefits and income to, yeah, you can quit. But she caught me off guard with this question. You can go, how are you going to replace your income? I wasn't expecting that. It was still emotional, still angry with how the Season went and I wasn't thinking clearly. So my response was, figure it out, I guess. And she's like, well, I've been looking into this thing called real estate, specifically cash flow, buying rental properties that produce income, you can replace your paycheck. And, you know, thinking now what I was thinking then, I wasn't in the right mindset. My wife was basically giving me the, the golden ticket or the direction we should be going into. And instead I chose into resistance, I chose into fear, I chose into frustration about it not being my idea or I don't understand real estate so it scares me or not going to do it. So I politely told her after she just said, you can leave and was on board with me. You go do real estate, let me go figure out my thing. And that's what I did. I went away from my biggest supporter and I went off trying out these new businesses and startups and, and so forth. And like most startups, some of them panned out. Six, eight, nine months later, I find myself more money spent, more, more exhausted, more frustrated, more angry, and in the exact same position I was right after that Christmas season. Still at ups, still trying to figure it out. And it was a humbling experience. And I don't regret that season as much as I know now that I could have shortcutted it to this way. I feel I needed that. I needed to fail to understand what opportunities really were meant for me. Well, going back to real estate between my legs, my wife's still looking into it, eager and ready to start her dragging his butt. Husband here was resistant to it is now finally coming along. He's like, are you ready? I'm like, you know what? We've tried all these businesses. I'm just as exhausted and tired. Let's give it a go. What do you got for me? And she's like, let's build some, go to some networking events. Let's start you off there. Let's get you into the mindset and understanding and caught up to where I'm at so we can do this together. And that's what I did. I was that resistant investor in the networking meetings in the background, arms crossed, like, don't talk to me. I'm just here to support my wife. It's really her thing. And I absorbed so much, even though I was resisted. The thing was, is the consistency of me showing up to these meetups, start to hear things that became common language and hear possibilities that I once heard of but thought it was a scam. These people are insisting me telling Me, they're doing it and they're succeeding at it and they're presenting on it in front of this room. This thing's got to work. Mind shift starting to happen in my head where I was changing the direction that I was thinking, and from that I got confident in and I supported my wife and I said, you know what, let's do this, let's try this. Let's just go and buy our first property, which we did. It was a turnkey property, wasn't anything special. We used our own money as a down payment and we really wanted a proof of concept and in the fear mindset, in the newbie mindset, in somebody that knows nothing about real estate, has no real estate background and needed to see it perform, we needed to see it perform. And that's what we did. We sat on it for six to nine months, made sure that this property was real, made sure the teams were operating, made sure the cash flow was coming in, made sure. And lo and behold, nine months later, we're like, this thing is really performing. Maybe we can do more of this. And the confidence just started to grow. So deal after deal after deal, we started getting better at what we do. We, we got consistent with our results and we slowly amassed a portfolio where me and my wife were both able to leave our jobs in five year span. And here we are today, now having the ability to be financially free and to live a life that I want, you know, one that I don't need a vacation from, like your line says it was. It's just a beautiful thing.

Yeah, absolutely. And thank you for that. I think everybody deep down inside wants to pursue that type of life where they don't need a vacation from it, where, you know, vacationing might just be part of their life. Right. And it's just part of what they're doing. So I think it's really awesome that you got to do it. And there were some bumps along the way, which is very relatable, I think, for a lot of people, because nothing is perfect. Right. Or very rarely is it going to be this perfect journey for somebody. So when you were starting out, cj, what would you say is, you know, for many beginner investors, probably the easiest or at least the best strategy to get started in real estate investing? I know there's multiple strategies out there. So what is the one that you used? Would you have done anything differently or would you suggest other beginner investors also use that same strategy?

Yes. I get asked this question a lot, and for us, our story revolves around my why? My why was to replace my income. And the solution to this could look so many different ways. Real estate as a whole, as a big circle or pie, whatever you want to call it, had so many slivers, so many slices you can choose from to still get to the same goal. So once I figured out my why, I started to look for the what and then the who. And it's from the Dan Sullivan book who, not how. And once I, once I knew what I was replacing, which is my income, and sought out a strategy or we sought out a strategy that would provide a solution for that and we stuck with it. So it's, it's a, it's a question that I always answer with it depends, what's your why? Why are you getting into real estate? You can get financially free from flipping, from wholesaling, from syndicate, you can do all these things, but what's the best strategy that fits what you're wanting to accomplish? And for us it was the cash flow. So we lend leaned into buy and hold rental properties in a cash flowing market because it would produce the income on a consistent stream which would produce comfort and security for my wife to know that we had this steady income coming in like a paycheck. However, we don't need to work it and we're not as active as a flipper is. And in that case we liked it. And we like the fact that we were 3,000 miles away from our market because it really allowed us to focus in on the skill sets around networking and team creation and managing things that I feel I would self do if I were in the market I was in. And it gave us good opportunity to learn and grow in that area. So for new investors you really got to figure out what you're wanting to accomplish. Not everybody wants financial freedom. Some people love their jobs. Maybe it's just creating that residual or extra cash to go and take bonus trips or to buy an extra car. You know, you, you get to figure that out. Once you figure that out. Research network, there's a lot of free stuff out there that gives you ideas of what could happen if you stuck with a certain strategy, right?

Absolutely. And that's a really good way I think to look at it is figuring out what it is you want to gain from investing in real estate. I think for a lot of people who are starting out, you know, they're seeing all these different strategies and people are coaching on different strategies. There's wholesaling, syndications, flipping, these seem to be very popular nowadays. But you know, for somebody who wants financial freedom? Right. Flipping is not necessarily the best strategy to do that because it's still an active income business, unless if you build it big enough, obviously, where you have an operation going. So that's a really good, I think, way to start looking at the situation, which is from the perspective of what is the end goal that I'm trying to get from real estate.

It makes me think of one of the quotes that a past mentor of mine would give me is when the student's ready, the teacher appears. And for me, the student aspect is really getting clear around what am I trying to learn. Does this person or is this strategy doing what I want to do and will I achieve or have what I want to have? Questions I always ask people when they're looking for mentors, are they doing what you want to do and do they have what you want to have? If they have those two things, it should be a good fit. If they only have one of those things, you may want to keep searching for somebody that has both. And if they have none of it, go a different path. You're. You're going against the, the current. You're going to be more exhausted and frustrated because it's not going to get you to where you want to be, right?

Absolutely. So I think there's another question that comes to mind when it comes to just kind of starting out and building out your real estate business to be able to replace your income so that you can have that freedom. I think a lot of people, especially real estate investors, who are in the beginning phases of their career and this is, I guess, potentially a good problem to have, which is when their business is growing and it's actually taking up potentially more of their time than when they were even working their 9 to 5 job or their W2 job. And they're in a kind of a weird position where, you know, they've done this to replace their income and have more time, but now they're finding themselves spending the same amount of time working on their business or even more time on their business now because they're trying to replace the income and the business is growing and they can't just. Just ignore it. So I guess my question for you is, did you ever see yourself kind of in that position when your business was growing and how do you think is the best way to deal with that and manage that. That problem, which is a good problem to have?

So, yeah, absolutely. And it's inevitable if that's the journey you're looking for. Like we were. There was a point where we grew so big so quickly while still working both of our jobs full time and my wife was pregnant and going to get her master's degree. Like there's all these, these things that were going on. And it was back to the why, why am I wanting to do this and having that as my foundation, my anchor point so that when the times got challenging, I was able to push through. And for me, the rich dad, poor dad before you quit your job book was what I was reading at the time. Which basically means put in the four years of extra work and effort on top of your 40s so that you can have the 40 years left. Right. That type of concept. So I chose to, to commit to extra hours of investing, very long days and short nights of rest for a short season to get to where I wanted to be faster. Now if my reason wasn't wanting to leave quicker, you can, you can stretch it out and now you can temper expectations around how quickly it's going to happen. For me, I wanted to happen quick and like Grant Cordone says, right. The 10x you, you do it 10 times more edmollettes that one more you want to just keep pushing on far beyond. And that's why I feel I did it in the speed I. Right. I achieved it at with you know, what if we originally had a 20 year plan but we did it in five because we kept increasing our consistency and, and expectation around getting a result quicker.

Right. That's a really good way I think to think about it as well which is, you know, if you're really looking to get out of that position, it's okay to put in more time. Right. It's a sacrifice that you're intentionally making in order to have more freedom for a longer period of time down the road. So it's, it's a good, it's a good mindset. Right. Would you say that's the, I guess that's what kind of, what it comes kind of comes down to is your mindset in those first couple of years as you're building up your business.

Absolutely. And like, like we, what we're doing in the real estate, I'm doing in myself, I'm investing in myself. So what I'm putting in today will pay dividends in the future. And I get to be patient and trust the process in it. And for us the growth process wasn't just a shoot up. It was high, low, high, low, high, low and steadily consistently. As we got better and being more experts in our strategy, we would increase the results and faster Speed that helped us. So back to what you're saying. The mindset, it was changing what I thought I was choosing to, to give up or sacrifice and, and redefining as investing in this future. I'm investing into my family, which goes back to my anchor, which is my why I wanted freedom with my kids, my time back. I wanted my, my ability to just travel and have a vacation when I wanted to without having to get a boss's permission, which then made me believe all this excess putting in that be playing with them right now was an investment to have the ability to play with them whenever I want.

Right, Absolutely. And I think for some investors that can be difficult as well because in real estate it is more of a delayed gratification business where you're putting in a lot of effort now and you're not seeing it come back immediately. But you know, I think for an investor who is getting into it, they should have that expectation like you were mentioning before, where you know it's going to take a couple of years of work. We are not seeing a direct result of the stuff coming back. But as far as, you know, building up your future and your foundation, you know, all that work that you put in earlier is going to pay off later on.

100% nothing worth having comes easy, right?

Absolutely. So that's really interesting as far as you know, the mindset of a real estate investor goes and understanding that delayed gratification. And I think another, you know, good point that you brought up was, you know, the fact that you guys had to invest out of state. Right. That you guys were almost handicapped or forced to not be, I guess so hands on with your investment business where a lot of investors who are investing in their local market, you know, they see themselves, I guess fall into the trap of working on these things themselves instead of creating systems and like you were saying, creating a team to be able to help them do that. So as far as, you know, understanding that strategy, what are some steps you think a newer investor or even a more experienced investor who does want to scale up should be taking in order to, I guess outsource a lot of their own work into systems.

And what I, what I see a lot being back when I was back in Hawaii a little while ago and being able to talk to some friends, you know, that that self managing mindset is a real thing, large part to the cost of everything. And I love bringing up Rich dad because Rich dad was one of the defining mentors through a book and podcast in the board game that taught me how to understand, you get to pay, right? You get to pay somebody. And if you're not paying yourself that property management fee or whatever, you're, you're self managing. Am I really running a business to the best of my capability? Because if I replace myself or if I'm ready to scale, like you were saying, get to the next level. Can't do everything. And Dan Sullivan's book who not how really taught me on finding those team members with unique capabilities and paying them well for their unique skill set so that we can scale. Because me doing what I do, and let's just use looking at property as an example, can only look at an offer on so many. But you take me and you, you multiply it by 10 others that are gifted in analyzing markets and making offers. Now I'm just 10 times my capability by leveraging and learning to work with others who are gifted and skilled in these arenas better than I am, which then allows me to step out of that position and go and work in something that I'm more gifted in and continue to find people and put them in their seats, which comes from that book traction, just having people be in those seats, that really allows you to grow and elevate your business and yourself. What's giving you back more freedom of time, which is what I needed to do when I was in those moments of working and having those extra real estate hours. I got to find different who's to delegate. So even though I may be doing 80, 90, 100 hours while I was at UPS, least the hour started coming down because I learned how to give it off to somebody else where that was their job. And I the perception of gaining back time was because I was able to delegate, right?

Absolutely. Yeah. You have to learn that skill. Right. As you know, any business owner knows, you know, if you're not giving it to somebody else, that job just becomes yours. And you're only able to work so much because you only have so many hours in a day. So if you're not duplicating outside of yourself, then you're really kind of just limiting your income. But I guess it's still very difficult for a lot of people to do that. Do you think it's because of a, you know, more of a trust issue? They think it's just they can do it better themselves or they're afraid something's going to happen.

It's a, it's a little bit of everything, I believe. And for me it was a lot of my, my upbringing. Right. Everything I saw my family do was I need to do it because I can't trust anybody type of a mentality. Right. And that was embedded in me at a very young age, which made it a growth opportunity to release that to others and allow them to flourish and, and find ways where we can create a win win. You know, one quote from a book that I recently read and it's. I'm drawing a blank. But wealth is a team sport. So who's on my team and how can we all become wealthy together? By me allowing and trusting that they're capable of running with it better than I am. Right. I'm great at a few things. Everything else I do because of the necessity of it needing to be done because of the business. Unless I can find that person who I can delegate and release it to. So new investors could face the beliefs, limiting beliefs embedded on them back when they were kids. Could be a bad experience. Could be the fact that, like you said, I could do it better and cheaper Again, are you shorting yourself? If you're gonna do this one job, you can't do a hundred more at the same time because you're only one person. So if you find the ability to delegate these things out, how can you get 100 things done with a skill set that you can do with just one? And it's the compound mentality that the 10x all of the books and podcasts and successful people out there, like you said, we all have 24 hours in the day. What's Grant Cordone? What's Robert Kiyosaki? What's Trump? What's Warren Buffett? And all these successful people doing that in the same amount of time that I have that I'm not in finding out those little clues that they're leaving. He doesn't do all the work. He has all these people doing all the little things, which frees him up to then do the big pressing priority things, right?

Absolutely. I think a story that I've heard before was that a lot of people have heard of Andrew Carnegie, who is one of the, you know, like the fathers of the steel industry. And he mentioned that he knew nothing about the making or the marketing of steel, but he knew how to manage people and put them in the right position. So that's a really kind of extreme case of somebody who was really successful and really wealthy that didn't really know much about the industry at all that they were in for. Just kind of really able to put the right pieces or the right people in the right positions in a successful operation or a successful business.

Henry Ford, too. That's another one. Just having the. The smartest guy on a button. Speed. Mile. You need an answer to this? I got a guy. I got a guy. So, yeah, beautiful.

Yeah, absolutely. And that's it. I mean, you know, a lot of people from, like you were saying, from their upbringing might see that as cheating or, you know, you know, whatever. But that's, you know, it's how the world works, I guess. Right. That's how you're able to duplicate outside of yourself. You can't be, you know, the jack of all trades. You have to understand what your role is as an operator or an owner of a business and what your role is not. And I think that's where a lot of people, I guess, make the mistake, is that they don't know what to delegate. Right. They don't know what they're not or they're supposed to avoid instead of what they're supposed to do. So that's an important thing to understand, I think, as well as just to what to say no to or what work or what positions. You have to really say, I can't do this, because if I do, I'll never be able to get out of this.

Yeah. And what you brought up saying no to, I feel that's so underutilized in what we do, especially in the beginning phases of Newbie. You say yes to one thing, you say no to everything else. And it goes back to when I was putting that. Investing those extra hours into real estate in the beginning and putting in more work than I may have at ups. I. I was saying yes to that and no to everything else, knowing the dividends will come in the future. And when you're saying yes to this, but you're saying yes to that, how are you gonna. Are you gonna do both? You're gonna be pulling yourself in. In two directions. Really generates exhaustion, frustration, confusion. You know, follow one course until successful. That's what the acronym we use for focus and. And set out that definition of what success is for what you're doing. For me, my initial success was leaving my UPS job. So I'm following this course of buy and hold rental properties until I achieve it. I didn't deviate or choose to go and do all these other things that could get me there. Stories and justification I can make around it, because they all could get me there. And I wanted to get and be the expert in this, and that's what I chose to do.

Yeah, I think it's, you know, for a lot of people, they think or they say that have a lack of clarity. Right. Whether if they own their business or their thinking of starting a business or starting into real estate or maybe they've been in real estate for a while. A lot of times you hear people say that they have a lack of clarity, lack of direction. I think it's really because they're not doing what you said just now, which is working backwards. Right. You have to work and think backwards from what you want, not forwards, which is kind of the way we've been taught to think, which is thinking forwards. And that is really, in my opinion, what creates all of this confusion and frustration and this lack of direction, if you will.

What I. What I talk about a lot with newer investors is be proactive. Like what you said last, that vision, know your why and work it backwards. Because you, you're capable, we are all capable of achieving that. We will set out the path that best fits us once we get clear on where we want to be at. Right. And if you're reactive now, you're. You're giving away all the power is what I like to say. Where, oh, well, the market did this well, the rates did this well. The buyer said no to this. That's reactive versus okay, when this happened, I'm proactive. I knew that it was possible that they'll say no to this. I knew that the interest rates could come up so I can pivot and choose to adapt into a new strategy that might be better fit for when this happens. Because I was planning ahead, I was proactive about, and I know my destination is here. And nothing external that I cannot control is going to stop me from getting there. Only I can stop me from getting there. So having that mindset of I can get through it, was it Thomas Edison? 10,000 Ways the Light bulb did not work until he found the one way it did. Most of us quit on the second, third try. I know I did with my startups. It didn't get past the first or second. Oh, man, I'm not making money. I'm gonna quit. Until I realized, man, I get to stick it out. I get to produce a result and then repeat it over and over and over. Right. The difference between the ordinary and extraordinary is just simply practice or more reps. By me putting in those more reps, I went from ordinary to extraordinary in what I do, which led to me achieving my first level of success, which is financial freedom for my job.

Right, Absolutely. And it's interesting that you brought that up, you know, because I think for a lot of people, they, you know, I I don't know the statistics on this, but there's probably been more, you know, more percentage of people who've tried to run their own businesses but failed, but that haven't done that. Right. So if that makes sense. I think everybody these days with Amazon and drop shipping and all these type of Internet businesses is really easy to start something, but it's really not easy to be successful. So from your experience and I guess some of your failed or quote unquote failed business ventures, what were you able to learn from those to actually, actually take and then apply it into your ultimate success, which is, you know, being an investor in real estate?

Yeah, that's a, that's a beautiful question for, for my perceivable failures that I choose now to look at as it was a tuition I got to pay and you know, what wasn't my focus, it was force feeding. What I learned from it is I could do these things. All my startup businesses was me, what I can do, what I physically can do, what I know. And it wasn't going to get far because I'm not the smartest guy and I'm limited to what I can do purely based off of being a single person. And I was able to take that and go, look, it didn't work here. So I get to shift something in the real estate aspect where I'm not the only source back to who, not how, and finding those team members that correlated a lot from my perceivable failures. The other thing was, was sticking with it long enough to create measurable result. Some of my businesses I ran for two to three months, I didn't even give it a year. So when I work with or I talk to new investors, I challenge him, stick with it for one year, give it one year undivided laser focus, attention rate, result after result, and then review it. At the end of the year, do a, do a preliminary report on your profits and losses or, or look at what you were able to achieve and what you may have expenditures on. Was it worth the time? Were you gaining, gaining experience? Were you improving in the processes and systems? Because when you start anything new, when you try anything new, you, you're gonna learn, you're gonna, you're gonna have many opportunities to learn what you don't know. Give it time. So another thing outside of the, the focus aspect was just allowing it to produce results that I could measure, giving me the time to decipher and refawn and conversate with my wife. Are we growing in the direction we want to grow? Are we moving at the speed we want to, the speed we want to grow at? Yes or no? Anyway, simple questions like that, right? Are we increasing our cash flow? Yes. Are we adding to our portfolio? Yes. If we increase it year over year? Yes. Okay. So now I'm, I'm refilling my tank per se, where I have more energy, more drive and more commitment towards my vision. Because I now seen the results are starting to add up and the success is, the little wins are starting to add up. And I'm ultimately, I was grateful, I was grateful I stayed committed to it long enough to be able to see the growth. Very easy to overlook success when you're only paying attention to what you're doing wrong.

Right? Absolutely. That's, I mean, it's so important to focus on even doesn't matter how small the win is, right. Even if it was just, oh, today I got up and I, I did the things that I told myself that I was going to do. Right. Even if there was no deal close or no leads came coming in. But you did all the actions that you told yourself you're going to do the previous day or in the morning and you finished out the day and that should be a win. Right. And you want to focus on that because it's going to give you, like you said, the energy to carry forward into the next day where if you do the same things, the action is compound and you do start getting more leads coming in or maybe you do start getting more deals closed or more properties added to your portfolio or whatever you, you know, count as success in your business. So it's so important, I think, right, to focus on the small wins because like you said, success doesn't happen like overnight. It's the compounding of all the small things that you're doing over a long period of time.

Yeah. Makes me think of one of the quotes that I love to, to read to my kids is people don't decide their future. They decide their habits and their habits decide their future. So it's essentially meaning it's the little things that add up to the what, what people like to use the iceberg analogy. Right. Success is the tip above the water. They don't see anything that happens underneath. Well, all that was habit formation, was discipline, was commitment, was intention, was persistence, was all these things that we, we gloss over, people gloss over. I glossed over successful people having to go and learn those, those, those four habits to become what we see at the top.

Right? Absolutely. So, I mean, from the outside looking in, right. A lot of times they can see something like that. So it's always good to have, you know, someone like yourself or anybody who's, you know, kind of in this space tell their stories and go over some of their struggles as well so that people can, you know, basically realize that, you know, struggle is part of the. Part of the process. Just keep pushing forward. Like you said, too many people quit too early. And I think that's, you know, I think that nobody really fails, you know, anything they do, they just quit. So failure is not a. Not a real thing, if you want to think about it. It's just people are just quitting and dropping like flies, if you will, out of the industries, out of their own businesses, you know, out of their own success, even. So, you know, like you said, keeping it, giving it a focus for at least one year and then evaluating it. Right. Just keep pushing forward. Because if the, like you said, if the why is big enough, then you will continue doing something over and over again until you're able to get there.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. That's awesome. So I think for one of the. One of the things that I see a lot of successful business, business people instead of successful entrepreneurs, especially in real estate, is that they do a lot of personal education. Right. If you guys are watching this on video, you can see CJ has a big bookshelf behind him. So if you don't mind walking us through a little bit, maybe just the development process, not just maybe in the industry and your skill sets, but also, how much of your personal development did you spend your time on in the beginning? And how much was this education was just building your mindset and building your, you know, the way you think and how you, you know, act and behave as a human being.

Oh, man. Going down that memory lane. Okay. Yeah. In the beginning, you know, personal development, mentorship, leadership training, sales training, anything to do with buying into a program was like, nah, I'll figure it out on my own. There's. I can Google this. There's a how to's in the library. Right. And to an extent, yes, that can serve you until you outgrow it. It's like saying, I'm going to stay in kindergarten my whole life because, you know, it's easy. You get to level up, and each level of success requires a new level of me, and it's usually a better version of me. So a lot of the shifting had to happen around the thinking of it being an investment. I say it a lot. Investment. I shifted it from. It's a cost. How much does it cost to what. What's my initial investment in this and what results are? What benefits will I make off of this initial investment? I started off small. I started off joining little clubs. I started off joining, you know, like BNIs and Toastmasters and these simple things where it's not necessary what I did in real estate yet there were tools and, and lessons and people I could network with that were just a little bit higher level than I was. And it's about the people you hang around with, right? Your network is your net worth. So by me increasing that, all of a sudden the shift started to come where it's no longer a plus, it's an investment. And what I thought was expensive at a hundred, now I'm paying a thousand, Now I'm paying 10,000. Where I believe this year alone, me and my wife have invested over a hundred thousand dollars in personal growth because we know the return far greater than that initial investment. Today, Warren Buffett, one of the most wealthiest men on the planet, says, the best investment you can ever make is in yourself. So if I'm not choosing to put that capital to use towards me, I'm always going to have that ceiling. And that's where I feel like you were saying a few minutes ago about people just quitting. They don't have the resolve, they don't have the understanding that, okay, just a little bit more, works a little bit further, be a little bit more consistent with stay disciplined to what I just said I was going to do. That came from all the different tiers and levels of growth we went through. And we covered a wide spectrum, both real estate, personal leadership, shoot, parenting, my, my trip, that was telling you off about offline, that was around parenting. Yet those same skills can tie into real estate. If I choose to change the end person I'm talking to, it's no longer my kid could be a team member, how I speak to my kid, how I speak to my team member, probably speaking to them similar, because how you do anything is how you do everything to a certain degree. If I'm frustrated and angry and not patient with my kids, it's a very high probability I'm, I'm doing that at some level to one of my team members. So having that mindset that what I'm learning, what I'm, what I'm investing in today, I can take and apply everywhere. Intellectual property, that's where I want to invest the most money in.

That is, that is awesome. That is a great piece of advice, I think, because like you said, what you're Learning in some of these cross industry personal development, you know, trainings or stuff that you're investing into, you can use them in different places. Right. So a lot of people I know, they outgrow their businesses in a way where maybe they're in one industry and they want to level up to another industry, or maybe they're, you know, I think people who are familiar with Tony Robbins know that he's, you know, invested in and helps run multiple businesses in multiple industries. And they want to be like him. Right. They want, like, how do I get, you know, dip into all of these different businesses? Right. It's because people like that focus on developing skill sets that can run across different industries. Right. I think for a lot of people, especially in the beginning, starting out in a business, especially in real estate, they're always the first question that comes to mind is like, how do I get my first deal? Right. Like, what's the best way to generate leads? Or how do I raise money? And these are good skill sets to have. They're important. But I think, you know, the most successful investors out there will tell you that it's really crucial that you start out with that foundation of developing yourself and developing your mindset, the way you communicate leadership. Right. These things that might not seem very practical, but once you really get into it, you're going to see that it, that's the thing that makes the biggest difference in your growth and your business's growth as well.

Yeah. And I'd like to add to that, having that intentionality that what you're seeking is going to produce a return in what you're wanting to do. So a lot of what I chose into early on, even though I was still in that cost mindset phase where 100 bucks is a lot of money to join Toastmasters at the time, my speaking capability about being able to present to my team members, my agents, my contractors, my property managers, the ability to talk to sellers if I needed to, the ability to raise capital like you're talking about and present opportunity to others came from my commitment to Toastmasters. And one of the things that I remember Robert Kiyosaki in his book talks about is you don't take a position for the pay, you take it for the skill you're going to get. And for me, that's what I started to look for. Okay, Toastmasters, does it make sense in real estate? Let me find a reason where I can take that to apply to real estate. And then I started labeling off all these things. Wow, I could better present, I could Better speak I can stick to all these things. Well, it's worth the investment initially and just keep moving in that intentional direction. Is it going to speed me up going towards that why? Or my marker of success? And once we shifted, once I shifted from cost to investment, that's where I saw the largest trajectory growth in what we were doing which went from 20 to 10 to 7 to 5. It was almost like that year over year starting to invest in myself. It went from 20 year plan to 5 years in a 4 year span kind of a thing. Right. So yeah, it's, it's crucial. I believe it's very valuable to invest in yourself.

Absolutely. And anybody who is listening or watching this is doing exactly that. So I could, you know, I applaud you for doing that. But cj, I really appreciate you being on the show, man. You shared a lot of value with us today. It was a really inspiring story that you have that shows us that doesn't matter where we start. We can, as long as we're persistent and you know, put our foot down, we're able to get to a life of financial freedom and prosperity just like yourself. So for anybody who is listening or watching this, where is the best way to connect with you? Maybe they want to follow your journey. What's the best way to follow you and maybe reach out to learn more about what you and your company is doing.

Yeah. Awesome. And Kobe, thank you for the opportunity to be on your show. It's been a pleasure for those listening, you know, resonate with my story. You have a little bit more interest in what we're doing. Want to learn more? You can check us out at @wn properties on Instagram the thing for a minute. I have a who for that and if you want like a free PDF that we we give out to investors who are just wanting to gather more information. You just go to why not now in realestate.com and you can collect your free PDF.

Awesome. We'll make sure to leave the links to that in the description in the show notes down below so that they can get to that easily. But cj, I want to thank you again for being on the show and before I let you sign off here, is there any last question, piece of advice that you want to leave with us today?

Cannot fail. You can only learn and grow.

That is awesome. Cj thank you so much for being here. I want to thank you for tuning in. We'll see you on the next show. Take care.