Preparing For The Economic Downturn: Don't Panic! Recession-Proof Your Life. EP 71
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from the art of the deal to keeping it real live from the simply vegas studios it's the power move with john gafford back again back again back again back again for another episode

of the power move it's more like an experience yeah you know what it is the power move experience don't say episode episode is terrible that's what star wars did yeah it is yeah i screwed the whole thing up see colt wouldn't know me about that would you speaking of colt well once again speaking to me my name is john gafford i am your host welcome to the power move it's the show we talk about business we talk about life we talk about lots of things that we can try to do to make your life a little bit better to the left of me as always is the one the only

Colt the real Dark Vader the real Dark Vader the Bulgarian mongoose Amadon give it up for that give it up for the polo Assassin the polo Assassin I was watching something today or last night with polo Assassins of course you are and on the couch across from us Chris the counselor Connell how are you counselor how are you living the dream living the dream indeed today on the show man you know I I gotta go I got a speaking engagement tomorrow

And that engagement is about, they called me up and said, we want you to talk about how to recession-proof your business in the real estate space. And oddly enough, as we've been doing these small chapters from my upcoming book, Escaping the Drift, today's chapter is kind of planning to win, is what we're going to talk about anyway. And there's a lot of what I'm going to talk about tomorrow night in this speech that I wanted to kind of lay out here as well. And we can discuss.

And we can talk about that today. But man, it's been a crazy week. The elections are over. Who's glad about that? Thank God. I can actually go through my mail without having 40 different things. And I can not look at my text messages of vote for me. Mailers were aggressive. Yeah, they were aggressive. I mean...

Mean I stopped my mailing my marketing stuff for three or four months really aggressive. I do. Yeah just gets lost into it I gotta tell you I was very confused about the election results here in Nevada because I kind of thought because you really kind of think that a lot of those votes a lot of the blue votes here come from from from my culinary if you look at Clark County the culinary union a lot of those votes come from the unions are based here in Clark County a lot and

But when you saw how they unpredictably swung some of these races to the blue side, were you surprised that it didn't also swing the governor's house? Was that a surprise? Yes. Well, so, you know, people vote in secret. You know, I always have this whole thing where,

A lot of times people say they're gonna go one way they get in that booth and they vote the other way how they really want That's how I think honestly Trump got and I think he spoke to people that couldn't publicly admit. They liked him Yeah, they were like no I don't like other things so I'm gonna go this way because no one can hold me accountable in a booth right now with Sisolak, I think he had the Call it fair unfair. He was before the state during the pandemic and

Now, I personally wasn't that offended with the shutdowns because I thought we opened up fairly quick relative to a lot of other people. But there were some people that thought, well, if it wasn't the Florida rate of reopening, that was malfeasance. So you think, because what I think happened is I think Culinary hung him out to dry for the shutdowns. I think they still voted blue for everybody else, but they hung him out to dry for the shutdowns. That could very well be it. Because like I said, they were like, no, you shut us down.

That was bad. Yeah. You're going to face the brunt of it. But I don't, I mean, I, that's a worse job ever. Like to be thrown as a governor or anything during COVID I'd hate to not saying he did the worst job. I would hate to be thrown. That was a no win situation. How much money do you think CISL heck has made from being governor?

God, don't they all just make it? I mean, it's just. They all just make it. I mean, you hear. And again, I don't know how much of this is true, but you hear things. You hear things. Like the location of parking lots prior to the approval. LLCs were open. Yeah.

Prior to the stadium. Now, I don't think that. That's not my opinion. Exactly. But you hear things. Opinions of Connell Law, 702 Connell, do not represent the opinions of anybody or there's no implications. No, but I think the biggest one I always hear is the land around the stadium prior to the stadium being entitled. I think I hear a lot of that. I've heard a lot about that during the...

uh opportunity zones yes a lot of a lot of that's been going on politicians were buying up all the land around the opportunity zones because they were the ones approving final opportunity zones and if you go look at who owns them it's both red and blue yeah they just know where i was going and they get the first bite of the apple look at the land harry reed own i was just going to bring him you know come on say it but don't look at everything magically happened around his land just

I just want, you know, if I ever, if I ever got into politics, my dream would be to that prime minister of England, just do what she did, man. Like what was that 14 days on job, but I'm out, I'm taking my pension and going to the sun. 14 days and out.

I mean, I love that kind of her where she's like, I am not a quitter 14 days later. Thank you. I'm out. Yep. This is not what I thought it was going to be. I mean, I'm on my way. That'd be a tough situation because you put yourself in that situation and you're not taking advantage of stuff like that. Maybe you wouldn't. Yeah. Um, no, I wouldn't. I wouldn't because there's a certain part of me.

If you heard something's going to maybe go down, would you not jump on it? As long as it wasn't illegal. Right. I have no problem getting a hand. But they say that Paul Pelosi has outpaced the best hedge funds in the world, like four to one. That should, and I know it does, but you should not be able, I'm sorry, that's one of those things where you should not be able to trade. You should not be able to hone public equities for that period of time. I don't care. Or blind trust. But you, by all...

I told you my opinion. I think we should pay Congress people $10 million a year. Yep. That's all you can make. But if you literally make a penny outside of that, there is like a hanging squad outside waiting to noose you up. I heard the one time they said that all members of Congress should be like NASCAR drivers where they have like- Sponsorships. Have to wear the logos of all the sponsors. People that bring us donors all over them as they go to the pulpit. There's 500 members of Congress. There's 500 and what? 500?

135 or whatever, you know, you take 500 by 10 million. It's like, it's really not a lot of money. No, like we're not talking, we're talking about cost of a couple of missiles. Right. And you start breaking that down. We need those. I'm pro America. So I don't like cost of missiles. But no, you take that, you pay them $10 million each. I'm serious. Make it so that it's like NFL head coach wages. Right.

Like 10 million a year. But that is literally it. And we're going to audit you forever. No, but let me tell you something. The truest thing you'll hear. That won't be enough. No. They get to 10, they'll want 11. They get 11, they want 12. It's a funny thing, man. You get around those people. I mean, I look at the change. But you can attract the top talent in the world with 10. Well, but here's the point, though. But I'm saying this. You look at the difference. Power is more than money.

It's more. It's an absolute drug and it's absolutely addictive. I look at, you know, people ask me all the time because, you know, look, we weren't golfing buddies, but I did spend a decent amount of time around the man to kind of get an idea of who he was even when the cameras weren't rolling. But being around Trump...

That's a totally different human being that I was around before the whole presidential shit started. I mean, and keep in mind, even back then, he was kind of a, I mean, he was obviously a giant egomaniac. That's who the guy was. But this is a whole nother level of who that guy is. And it's, power corrupts, man. I don't think there's any way. It's like,

In Gladiator, why was Marcus Aurelius going to give it to Maximus? Because he was the only one he could trust with giving it back to the people because everybody else would be corrupted by the power. 100%. What, Queen Phoenix? I don't think there's any dollar figure that stops that. But again.

But again, you get a certain amount of power and I'm not saying you're not going to get your pork where it comes. I'm not saying you're not going to get favors when you're in office. The minute it's out of in office though, you're fucking done. And guess what? The people won't want to be in there for 40 years. I was just going to say, you're going to make it. So go run a hedge fund, go do whatever. I don't, I don't care, but there should be a hard stop on things like that. That was my biggest thing with the whole COVID thing. Like my,

That biggest thing with the government was how much they made on fricking stocks before it shut down. Yeah. Like with all those people, I thought that was the biggest BS out of everything that happened. There was one guy sitting here though. I don't remember his name, but he said that, uh, all these members of Congress own stock and Pfizer and it wasn't true. I went and fact checked it. Yeah.

But they still made money. Wait, you mean something somebody said in here that's on the internet wasn't true? No. But like I said, I always want to correct and I always want there to be an honest narrative. They mostly own tech stocks. Congress shows what they own. They're supposed to be. But the Pelosi's, oh, my husband's brother's cousin seems to buy a lot of shares in this upstart company that whatever.

So a lot of it's energy tech, very, very big stuff, right? Which is fine. If you want to have a pension blind trust that you can't touch it, you can't actively trade it. But it's also stuff that legislation can move the needle with. Exactly. Government contracts can move the needle with. Right. Absolutely. So, yeah.

But man, you know what, enough talking about the lords and ladies of the land. Let's talk about us common folk. Well, I'm a lord, you're a lord. Well, Scottish lord, that's true. I forgot. So what's your, what are you talking about, this peasant? We'll talk about your people, Colt, you peasant. My people. Back to your people, Colt, you peasant. Don't talk to a lord. Anyway, sorry. But, you know, this recession thing is looming. Everywhere you see it, it's coming. And things are happening in a way where...

You know, you're going to have, you need to prepare to win through this. You can't just hope things come out good. You've got to take some definitive steps to survive this. Now, I was asked to speak at this event, like I said, tomorrow night. And they said, you know, we want you to give, talk for 30 minutes and then break down, you know, kind of your experience through the last downturn. Because when the last market fell apart, yes, I was doing this 16 years ago and shit hit the fan.

And they wanted me to kind of talk about how I got through that. Now, I thought it would be a wasted 30 minutes if I told them how to start doing BPOs, how to start doing short sales, how to go to REO conventions and start doing that because I don't think any of that is coming back at the scale it did. And I'll give you the reasons why later. But I think the principles that I used during that time, really three principles that I used every day got me through them. The first one was I got really educated.

I got really organized and I got really intentional with everything that I did. And I think if you can do that with those three things, I think you'll be fine coming out the other end of this recession. So we'll talk about this in the scope of if you were in the real estate business, but if you're not, you need to be in any business watching the same thing. So for example,

When it starts out, when you're talking about being educated, like in your business. Now, the good news is car wrecks for the legal business, those things don't follow trends. That's right. And that's why they're hard to plan around, too. Yeah. They don't follow trends. They don't follow those things. But I would think that from the angle of your business, let's break your business down first, there are things that are going to follow some trends. For example, if you wanted to advertise...

I'm going to guess that that might get a little cheaper because as people's budgets get cut and people start to shrink their budgets for all businesses across the scope, there's going to be some advertising opportunities that you may not have done a year ago that now would be on the table. Except in car accidents. Except in car accidents? Yeah. It is absolutely, we're the most expensive market in America, I believe. For that? For marketing, advertising. Someone's always willing to come pick up the...

There's an open billboard somebody will throw themselves on. There's a billboard someone's throwing it on. Wow. That's the most amazing thing ever. Every time somebody comes in town, that's the number one thing they say. I know.

How many? It's very, very particular. That's because I just think we have 40 million people that come here and drive here like crazy people, right? Yeah, don't pay attention. There's a lot of accidents here. Don't pay attention. Well, real estate, you know, for us, it's all about watching the trends. It's all about watching what happens. So on a daily basis, I'm very involved with...

MLS data, which is how many houses are on the market? How many new houses come on the market the average days on market? How many price decreases you do update yourself on that every day? Yeah, I look at it every morning every single take a quick peek every morning just to see where the market's going because you have to feel it there's a feel to it and You can look at the reports that LVR puts out as well But but you gotta have a feel for it if you're not looking at it every day It's impossible to feel it. You know when you look at every day you can feel the numbers move It's kind of when you watch your stocks, right? You can like you kind of have a feel for what's going on. So

But I watch that data. I watch, I look at the foreclosure notice of default data to see how many people are getting a notice of default. I look for, I look at mortgage rates every day because that's what's having the biggest effect on us right now. I want to know what the best rates are today. Not to mention that, but I'm also well versed on any new programs that come down the pike from our lender that we own. I mean, I want to know what those programs are because the reason you need to get educated in any business, especially with real estate,

is if you think you're in the house selling business, you're not. You're no longer in the house selling business, you are in the problem solving business. Because, you know, I said this the other day, where it's easy to sit on the sidelines, it's easy to sit on the beach and yell to people that have to sail out into those waters, "You're gonna drown!" I mean, it's easy to be that guy. - It's easy to tell Josh McDaniels how to coach. - Be the beacon of hope. Be the new playbook for Josh McDaniels. Be something, good Lord, help that dude.

Oh, man. Be something for him. No! There was a vote of confidence for him the other day. There was. Seems like players like him. Anyway, I didn't want to disrael you, but I was just sitting there on the ride home listening to the owner, Mark Davis, saying Rome wasn't built in a day. It's only been nine games.

Hey, I just wanted to work that in here somewhere just to annoy the people. Rome was not built in a day, but it also wasn't built on kindling and sticks and flooded zones. And built in the exact same place where when it was built there last time, it fell apart as well. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I'd say this, but same architect, same plants. New builder doesn't change anything. Yeah.

Maybe, maybe it's time for a new ownership would be very welcome, I think. That's so good. Sorry, I didn't mean to disrail you, John. Oh, you're fine. Is that what it feels like to be disreiled? Yeah, Colt, that's what it feels like talking to you all the time. But again, being able to- Colt, what's your favorite sandwich? I don't know. Speaking of polo assassin, what's the richest sport-

There is. Would pole be it? F1 be it? Richest to play? Just the richest sport. I think it's where you hunt humans on your random island in Qatari. The world's most dangerous game. I'm telling you guys. We didn't believe in the afterlife. That might be a fun thing to do.

sorry john you were saying my apologies what else you watch i don't know what i was saying i don't know i don't know what happened ready to uh i'll tell you what i watch i watch car no no no i'm being dead serious i'm bringing it back to what you're saying i watch car delinquencies like you can get a huge amount off of cars there are certain things that are so easy to watch foreclosures

the rates, the 10-year yield, right? But cars, you can watch how many people become late on their cars as a real good indicator. Well, look, all of those are performance indicators that are going to affect your business. I mean, you've got to find whatever those are for your particular business. You've got to understand what they are, and you've got to get your hands on them every day. Really good point. I was driving over. I was in the market for a new truck. I went over to an undisclosed dealership. I won't say which one it was. Okay.

And I drove around the lot and I looked and it still had the gouge price on it. MSRP is 45, but 6,000 dealer markup on the window. Still playing that game? November 2022. You're still playing that game. I've been looking. I've never seen another dealer. Every other dealer is going 4,000 off MSRP. The shift in that index performance, that index, Colt is 100% right. They were gouging when the chips were in.

No supply. People were selling used vehicles for more than new. So now I'm watching that trend because I was looking and it was in the market. I needed a new truck. So I've been watching and watching. Found a great deal this weekend and pulled the trigger on it. I love that. You've got to stay on the trends. You've got to know what they are. They lost a client because I'm like, you'd want to charge me more? Yeah, you're never going to get that. Than MSRP today? You're never going to get that. But if you don't understand the trends...

And the trends are more than just information. They're a roadmap to show you what to do, to show you which way to go. For example, a million years ago, during the first crash when I was here and the bottom fell out and we were like trying to figure out what to do, you know, I started noticing all these things called short sales pop up. I had no clue what they were, but I started doing a little bit of research and I realized, oh, this is what happens when you have no equity and need to sell your house. This is what happens. So I decided to get super educated on short sales.

And I found what I thought was the best guy. And this guy, I'll tell you what happened. This dude was having a seminar downtown at the Plaza. And he claimed to be a loss mitigator from a big bank. And he was having a seminar on how to do short sales. So I went to the seminar and I watched him do his thing.

And his program was like 599. And I didn't buy it because at the time I didn't have the money to buy it really. But I also had a better solution because my experience in real estate up until that point was selling from the stage. It was going to big real estate shows and selling condo conversions all over the country. That was my experience. That's what we did.

And I sent this guy an email and I said, "Hey man, I really believe that you know everything there is to know about short sales, but you don't know a damn thing about seminar selling, which is what you just failed at doing here. So come to Vegas, we'll spend half the day with you teaching me everything that you know about short sales, and then I'll spend half the day teaching you everything I know about seminar sales."

And that's what we did. And that's how I learned how to do short sales. But I knew to get into that from watching those trends. And then once I had that knowledge, which I went and, you know, I seeked out that knowledge, I had that solution for that marketplace. So it wasn't just me one day deciding that this is what I needed to do. I watched the marketplace. I saw that pivot. And then I went and gained the knowledge that I needed by any means necessary to get it done.

So you can't tell me, well, I don't know the 599. Think about this too. In 2006, 2007, what was like nothing? What didn't really exist? YouTube. YouTube. Yeah.

Right. So you have your source of information was going to stuff like the smoky ass plaza ballroom and watching seminars and paying for programs. You can literally get any kind of information you want off of YouTube. Now, why do I think short sales are not going to be a huge thing into this into this market now? Because there's too much equity inventory issues. Everybody has equity. Everybody has money. Right. Talking also about getting educated there.

Now is a great time to look for mentors, man. It's a good time to look for people to teach you what you need to know and what you don't know. Great time. And how do you approach and find a mentor? Like, what do you do? How do you get there?

a lot of people don't know how to do that i know i just don't want to say it right no no no no you don't that's colt's gig just you're not sexy enough to listen you don't think with this red blazer he's not sleeping with somebody for information i know i'll do whatever it takes and all of a sudden bam whatever it takes the worst thing you ever done for a freaking cell but again

Again, when it gets time, man, to go get or approach a mentor, give some, just like that guy, I had something of value I could give him. Right. Right. I had something of value that can make his life a little better. And there you go. You better figure out what you bring to the table. Now, sometimes the cool thing about real estate is, and what we do is, sometimes you can get around better people just by changing your scenery. Yeah. And that's the only commitment you got to make to that. Yeah. It's interesting. I,

I have to think about that because it's a really good question about how to get a mentor, like for what I do. I just, you kind of know people in the business. You have this situation because we're all kind of licensed the same, right? But there's people that know way more than I do and all these different things. So when something comes up, I reach out. Well, let me ask you a question. There's obviously somebody who's been in the business for a while that's probably taken a shine to you. Why did they take a shine to you? Why did they want to work with me? Why did they take a shine? And why do they take a call? Why do they give you information? Why?

Because I think I'm pretty earnest. I think I'm pretty authentic. I think because I tend to give things to people too when it goes around, comes around. Small community. I haven't burned any bridges that I'm aware of. I think my reputation precedes me. I like to keep it that way. And so one person, I just won't say names, said, hey, this guy is really smart when it comes to eggs. So I knew some people that knew them. So I went golfing with them. And then...

have, you know, case together. So now you have case together, but that brings up an interesting point. Cause one of the things that I've always used with great leverage is let's say, well, okay, let's back up again. We'll go back to the last crash real quick.

which is, so we were doing short sales and then the short sales became, well, every time you do a short sale, somebody does something called a BPO, broker price opinion. What's that? Well, they pay an agent to go out and then basically do an appraisal on this house. So we're driving by your house, 50 miles an hour. So at one point I asked one of these agents, I asked one of these agents, what's in it for you? Why do you do this? Like when they call me to do a BPO on a short sale, why do you do this?

guys like well you know that i mean they pay us like 35 bucks a rattle but if they foreclose on the property then i get the listing and i said oh and i said well what's how's the math on that work and he goes well like i don't know probably for every 20 25 of these i do i'll wind up with the listing nice okay so i immediately reverse engineered and became the bpo whore and we just went to every bpo company we could and all of those companies started that road of how i got in with asset managers and when i would go to these companies

This is what I would do. You don't just send a blind email to people as you're trying to pave a road. You don't just do that. You don't just try to apply here or there. You gotta find an in. My biggest champion, this one thing made me so much money in the last downturn, it was crazy, which was I was trying to find asset managers at different companies and I was doing all this research. I was looking at their MySpace. I was looking at all their likes, all their shit. - Just kept coming up Tom. - Yeah, whatever it was, kept coming up Tom. Hey, you know Tom too? I know Tom.

We have one mutual friend. We know Tom. No, but I kept looking for ways in. And I finally found Susan Spears that worked at Lender Processing Services, which was the biggest REO house in the country as an asset manager. And in her MySpace, favorite shows, The Apprentice. So I was like-

I got you know that could have been anything it could have been I love the cubbies it could be anything but when I sent that email when I sent that intro that that intro to her it was hey you know I was honest looking you know I've already tons of BPO experience for these companies my ball looking to break with you guys and oh yeah by the way in case it carries any weight I was on the third season The Apprentice like two seconds got an email back

So I found that little button. - Were you that mother? - No, but no, no. I found that little button I could push. And luckily that little button opened the door. We became great friends and she helped me tremendously over the course of my career. And I sold hundreds and hundreds of homes for them. But again, that wasn't just trying to bulldoze my way into where I thought the market was going. That was very strategic planning on getting to where I wanted to do. And I never could have gotten those doors open had I not educated myself on those processes. - You know what?

I'm not saying we call a spade a spade. We oftentimes live in the ether, though, on the show, right? We talk about high-level concepts, things that you should broadly do. Colt's been talking to me about getting back into golf, and I sit there and think back on it,

Unfortunately, if you suck at golf and you don't play golf, you are missing out on an opportunity to make connections with people, especially if you want, because people that are professionals and they go to their office, I'm like the exceptionist rule. I don't love to golf that much. I belong to a country club. I play once in a while. It's fun when it's fun. But a lot of guys in our profession or industry and women too, right? They really enjoy going out for a round of golf. Now, I don't know if it's cost you a couple hundred bucks.

Well, for me, it's more than a couple hundred bucks. It's five hours that I don't have. But that's fine. But you're talking about people that want to break into something, right? That's not just a five hours I don't have. That's an investment of time into somebody that you want to be near them. Say, hey, my buddy Chris and I were going to go golfing. Somebody mentioned that you like the golfer. However, you know that they're a golfer because people talk. Yeah.

You know, I know who is and who isn't. Hey, are you a golfer? Would you mind going to play around? Oh, sure, I'll come play. Yeah, they will always say yes to that. That's a huge in. I'm sorry to say it. Whatever it is, this is literally. There's small stuff that you could, and it doesn't need to be a $1,000 membership thing.

It doesn't. You can just go play around. Go sit there and play with somebody or, you know, sit there and cigars. Find out what they like. You know, I get that intro all the time. It's the best thing. Want to go have a cigar one day? We're here, you know. And I've met some cool people through just cigars. Sure. Yeah, you'll meet those cool people. But I just was kind of looking back and thinking back on some of these things. How do you know people? Yeah.

If you want to get to know somebody better and they play golf, just go ask them to golf. I don't know if that means maybe go get a little better at golf, John. Instead of the 10,000-foot view. I used to be really good at playing golf. Now I suck. But the 10,000-foot view is do all these things.

the two foot view is, Hey, go take some golf lessons. Cause I used to, I used to make some good money in Palm Springs and first coming out here because of golf. That's how we ended up. Not we mean you, but me on the REO stuff. We play golf with a, an exec for a huge bank. That's no longer there. And it was there. All right. Connections. I always kind of poopoo golf a bit. Like, Oh, come on. There's whatever. But that's a really good way to kind of be around people and see if they're cool. Cause I played golf with people that are duds and I never wanted to

around them i don't want to work with them because i don't want to be around them then you meet people where you have a lot in common they're a lot of fun to play with they have high ethics on the golf course does that make sense which

Which transfers, right? It does. If they're like, no, it's their person throwing their club balls. They use the hand wedge. Yeah, hand wedge. People are like, oh, what'd you get there? I got a four. It's like, and then how many on the green? Yeah. Yeah. You know? And anyway, I just think there's something to be said about that from a really practical sense. That's true. I'll give you that. That's true. But again, with real estate being educated, you know, right now, I talked about it earlier, people that can serve up solutions are going

you know somebody asked me like why won't we have reos again why is that not gonna happen again why aren't i gonna have this glut wave of foreclosures that people want i'm gonna tell you the two reasons why number one is because 16 years ago when this happened for the first time we did not have institutional investors that were commoditizing single-family homes as a matter of business i said we did not we did not have that you've got very you've got very large hedge funds now that

That is their goal, to buy single family homes and turn America into renters. That is their goal. So if you don't think these large hedge funds already have

backdoor deals or backdoor arrangements with the large banks for properties that go into default to just take them off their sheets, you're nuts. Because those banks do not want to fire back up those loss mitigation departments. They do not want to deal with those utilities. They do not want to deal with the field management. They don't want to deal with any of it. They just want to clear them off their books at market price right over these hedge funds that will buy them and turn them into permanent rentals. And then those properties, when that happens, you have to remember,

The average homeowner sells their house every seven years. When those properties go into those Wall Street funds, it's like the place burned down. It's never going to be on the market again. It's gone. They're not going to wake up and be like, you know what? Today's probably a good time to sell. Yeah, 9132 Oak Knoll Street. It is always going to be off the board, which is going to continue to stress...

our inventory issues. Now, here's the other side of the equation, which is this. I don't think a lot of properties even make it to those steps because right now, there's also something we didn't necessarily have back in 2006, which is you have an army of internet-educated real estate investors that understand creative finance.

And homeowners with equity with 3.25% mortgages that are in default, that is blood in the water to an army, an army of investors. They're going to be all in those houses, buying those mortgages sub two and getting it. So if you are a realtor and you do not have those solutions and you do not understand creative finance-

you're going to have a problem because all of those deals are going to come off the board. Shout out to Jamil Domingue. Yeah, Jamil, there you go. Jamil and Pace. You think that stuff's going to not be just gobbled up by you? No, dude, two dear friends of mine, Pace and Jamil. But yeah, that's the point. So you have all these other influences, which is why I'm not, you know, tomorrow night, I'm not going to get up there and talk about selling Oreos because I don't think it's going to happen again. Nobody in the world...

Look, I hate that the public would be harmed by it, but from a purely business standpoint, business was a booming when that happened for me. Don't you think though that, you know, with the ebbs and flows, people get hurt. Don't you think people are going to be more hurt by not being able to buy homes? What do you mean? Having a country full of renters? Oh yeah. Yeah. It's, it's dreadful. It's a, it's a terrible, that's how the middle class, right? It's decimate. Well, that's how they build wealth. It's the only way.

And that's why, you know, I'm not going to get into it, but that's why certain people that historically, if you've ever been prevented from being able to buy real estate or participate in real estate, it followed historical poverty. Yeah. Right. So participation in the real estate market is paramount. If you want to have a burgeoning, like a growing middle class, healthy middle class, the American dream for a reason. It is America. Fuck yeah. Sorry.

You just had to get that in. Love it or leave it, Connell. Love it or leave it. No, I'm just kidding. I'm such a patriot that not only do I scream nights louder than anyone else, I also feel a certain amount of guilt for interrupting that beautiful song with the night chant. But I do both. That's a little disrespectful, but whatever. Listen, again, everybody else out there might be preaching doom and gloom. I'm saying with some education in your field, you can be the light in the harbor at which they sail through the choppy seas. That's what I'm saying. Education. Yeah, to your point,

John, when you talk about people, farm and area and neighborhood, because they become an expert in the neighborhood. You talk about Eric, you talk about all these people that go, no, no, no, no. It's like, don't mess with the West side. That's Connie's, you know, whatever. Stay at the West side. Stay at the West side. But if you get, if you become right, an REO expert, right. Or, you know, I know you're saying the inventory won't be there, but there'll be some things that just fall through the cracks.

- There'll be some. - Maybe bankruptcy. - There'll be some. - Maybe stocking horse bidding and bankruptcies or chapter sevens or 13s or whatever, something, right? Become proficient at a thing and just make a name for yourself. - I think if you can offer creative finance solutions for sellers that gets them their number, I think,

you're going to do very well in this upcoming downturn with real estate. I think that's... I've got one deal right now, creative financing. I'm probably going to look at buying one myself, creative financing. You can make money at any point of history downturns. I love it. Well, let's talk about the second thing, which is this. If you want to plan for the recession, you got to get organized. You got to 100% go and organize top to bottom. And the reason being is this.

I must say this phrase five times a week, which is the answer is in the math. That's what I always say. I look at everything. When we're trying to make a decision, I'm always like, ah, it's in the math. And when you walk in my office nine times out of ten, I got like eight spreadsheets up with all this data on it that I'm compiling into this stuff. Is that what you call those, John? Yeah, spreadsheets that I call it.

Good looking spreadsheets. Delete the browser history is all I ask when I die. I'm just kidding. No, but when I'm looking at all those spreadsheets, trying to find, because the answer is always in the math. Because if you don't have the data, if you're not tracking everything you do, if you're one of those people that's just been flying by the seat of your pants-

You're going to start making decisions on an emotional basis. You're going to start making an emotional decision. And you can't do that. You've got to be, you got to make decisions based in the data strictly. And that's how it is. So here's some concrete things that I'm going to, you know, my advice for things you can do to get yourself organized. Like I just said, you got to start tracking everything.

Everything you do. If you're in business, I mean, you wouldn't open up a shoe store and never take inventory. You would never not understand your labor costs. You would never understand your cost of goods. You would never do that. And most people, especially in service slash sales businesses like this, like insurance, like these other businesses,

they don't track anything. They just, the leads come in, they make calls, they close deals, they do this. - Leads come in, leads go out, you can't explain that. - And that's it. And they just don't, they don't track anything. So, you know, if you are someone that is paying for leads, you should understand how much of your business comes from that lead source. - Conversion, yeah.

If you are someone that just gets on the phone for six hours a day or goes and sits open house does that you need to understand how much that time is Worth what it what actually comes out of that? What is that time worth? You need to start tracking all of these things because the biggest mistake that people make into a downturn with their business is they Continue to do things like they've always done it. Well, it's just how we've always done it So and also I'm gonna stop stops working. They're screwed. Yep, and

Yeah, no, I told you about that guy who I have 20 years experience in this business. Yeah. And the VP of the company goes, that guy's got one year of experience 20 times. He's got nothing to add to this conversation. He doesn't have all this experience, right? Yeah. Well, that's just the way we've done it for 20 years. Yeah. Well, that means you've missed out on things like the internet. The interwebs that are now here. You know, there's ways to communicate, you know, without smoke signals. Yeah.

Yeah, I agree. You got to stay with the times. Things change, material changes, price changes. My roofing company, I'm like, what's plywood right now? How much is that, right? Like you need to make sure you're on top of materials, smallest things. Like I know what my labor percentage is. I know what my material percentage is. I know what my insurance is. I can show you a graph right there that I'll have it down to a T of what my –

you know cost are and stuff and sometimes that changes if you're still selling plywood at 30 you know whatever when it went up to 90. yeah yeah but to your point cole like you have to also understand who you're working with in the businesses you're running you know in in the mba program when you're studying it you operate like every company is apple or target or whatever has middle management whatever so there's people that are doing these things trying to introduce slack channels

to like a roofing company and you got these guys that are like, I don't, I don't know. I'm, I'm, you know, or a truck driver. Hey, well, you know, let's get a Slack channel going to talk about this or that, the other, right? Like if you're not a high level professional business, right. Or, or whatever, you have to know that there's certain things that are going to help, like throw the guys who are, who are out there, you know, swinging hammers or whatever, throw them a pizza party once in a while. They're not going to get excited by a trip to the opera or whatever. Yeah.

You know, like it's just you have to know who's organization because I do that too There's I was working with these companies that were trying to always add this technology into stuff and it just it didn't work It was pointless people. Yeah, it's the hardest to intent with new tech in any business adoption adoption rate is terrible I had to drop some stuff yesterday, which is gonna bring us to our next thing, which is audit your expenses, man No, well actually it was last but it was a good segue so I just jumped on the list and

But now audit your expenses. You have to do this and not just, you know, your expense, your personal expenses. I mean, you go through audit where your business is spending money and ask yourself, do I really need this? Is this something I really need or can I renegotiate it down? Can I get a better deal? Is there another product that's similar, that's cheaper, that does the same thing? You know, during boom times, we're also used to just kind of, hey man, top line sales covers a lot of problems on a P&L. Life is good. We're just sailing along. But

The reality of it is, is if you blink, the bad times come, and all of a sudden those costs will eat you alive. Right. They'll actually eat you alive. Colt went out and got a new iPhone. Now he's missing that Samsung. It's like sometimes you've got to downgrade back to the old trash that you were used to. Dude, I'm telling you, this is the worst fucking phone ever, man. Don't get him started. Don't get him started. Look back at my tweet this weekend. They would give two Android users an iPhone for $0.40.

Fucking week, it'd be a good phone. The best part about auditing your expenses is that's why it's like I was telling somebody the other day, I love adversity because through adversity is when I get creative. It's when I get better is I get awesome. Nothing sucks worse than leaving your credit card somewhere and having to cancel it. We've talked about it. I believe my phrase was I'd rather be kicking the nuts by Kamaru Usman for six minutes. Yes, exactly, for six minutes. But when that happens, it gives you an opportunity to go through all of your charges. Yeah.

And audit what you use, what you don't use and cancel stuff. And again, you know, my coaching group, one of my favorites was, you know, one of my coaching students canceled $497 of stuff a month. That's big. That's a lot. Cause it was real estate stuff they weren't using.

So $500 a month that they can now reallocate that money somewhere else. Of course, my favorite will always be Mikey Gordon. It is $29 and 95 cents a month for American Airlines, unlimited wifi that he bought on the flight that he took two years ago. And as American Airlines said,

I'm sorry, but would you not find that out? I feel like I watch my stuff all the time. When times is good, man, you don't pay attention. Stuff like that will sneak up on you. I had to sue a doctor in town because he charged my personal credit card. My wife called in to pay for medical records for one of our clients. And this guy ended up putting my client's entire bill on my personal credit card.

because we're only allowed to pay costs up front we can't pay for the services of clients as attorneys and so the problem was i didn't notice it for two months because honestly it wasn't you know just a couple grand yeah and it's not you know when you run you know payroll you get these things comes out operating whatever didn't notice it and i looked back two thousand dollars but you did notice it right people called him back said you you did this and he goes yeah well i sued him in one for you

It's nice when you have no legal fees. I know when you have no legal fees. I would sue somebody at least once a week. And then he tried to file a bar complaint against me, and then the bar called me up, and I said, that guy's not a client. That's a doctor that stole money from me that I sued and won. They're like, okay, case closed. Moving on. Doctors since retired, by the way. I would sue one person a week. Doctors since retired, by the way. Oh, God. You know what cracks me up with realtors?

And this is something I've always said and one of the lessons that I always teach, which is, especially now, they just spend money on everything when it comes to marketing and they have no idea what's generating their actual money. They have no clue. That's why I don't buy billboards. Yeah, well, but here's the thing. It's fine to buy billboards. What's the one thing you got to have, though, if you buy a billboard? What are

What do you have? Like a tracking thing? You have to have a singular number for that billboard that rings to a singular thing. It's impossible because that number is not why people call. That's all a part of this grandiose thing about brand recognition so that when something does happen, they have back in their psyche, oh, I saw a billboard. Phone number. No, not even a phone number. They'll Google it. It'll come up. It's a part of ad impressions.

So if they see on the first five, but here's the point you're talking, you're talking about, you're talking about attorneys with 50 million billboards and craziness. Most real estate people will farm an area, they'll farm, they'll have a website and you know, maybe, maybe a TV commercial, maybe, or radio commercial, whatever grocery store, grocery store, right. But all of those things have the same phone number on them.

They all have the same website. They all have the same landing address. Like there's no reason for your marketing to not all have the biggest winner. Again, we've talked about this is the biggest winner from COVID was the QR code. I mean, screaming comeback for the QR code. It was dead technology. I'm here for it. Yeah. And now everybody from restaurants, you're so used to using it. Fine.

Use QR codes on your marketing to dis so you can figure out what's actually driving business to you. Cause if you, if you just throw it all in one pot, I promise you most of that pot is wasted money. You can send a different landing page or whatever. I, I could tell you, I've got three different landing pages for very similar marketing, but just so I know exactly where it came from. Yeah. I like that. That's good. Yep. Tracking your time is almost more important than tracking your money. Now,

Again, I say this because time is a resource you can't get back. You can always get more money. However, when there is a sense of urgency, when the markets have changed, your business is in trouble, the amount of effort that you place into whatever strategy you're using to generate revenue, you've got to make sure you're getting your maximum return on your time. There are people that will spend, for example, with real estate agents, it's the great, should I go door knock?

Okay, fine. How long is that going to take? Is there a more efficient way to touch more people? What are the results? What comes back? And again, this is where you have to track everything. You know, with my students, we do a one-page business plan where it has three different strategies they go from. And in that, they have to track all the strategies. And like, for example, yesterday we said Judgment Day, which was one month into the quarter. We said, okay, we're over a month into the quarter here. You need to understand, or their three-month quarter, whatever it was.

You need to understand which one of those strategies is working and what's not working. So I need you to run the math on it and see what's generating activity, what's generating business, and how many of you guys are going to stay the course with your plan and how many of you guys are going to pivot from something you're doing. But you're going to decide now. If it's not working for you, you're going to let it go and invest your time and money somewhere else. This is an interesting point. You started off with 100 people. How many are you down to? Honestly. 42? 42. 42.

How many people don't want to put in the work? Yeah. Well, yeah. And when you hold them accountable and when you say, I want you to do this, you go, I don't want to do that. It's funny through this process, because this first one, I've decided to do it for ages of work here. And I will say one of the biggest things about coaching is when you're doing it like I am for just to help our people. Right. Right.

There's a switch that goes off in your head when something's free. And let this be a good lesson to you if you don't value your services or value your time. There's a switch that goes off where they don't value it as much. So next time I do this, when I fire this back up next quarter, I'm gonna do our next round of it. The first thing I'm going to do. - Charge a fee. - I'm gonna charge 100 bucks, just $100, and I'm gonna hold it. And if you fail out or you stop doing what you're supposed to be doing, I'm gonna donate your money to Hop on a Cure.

And if you do do everything you're supposed to do, I'll give it back to you at the end. And that'll be the deal. But I got to feel like there's got to be some buy-in from that money. There's got to be some sort of emotional buy-in. How did I know that it was going to have that much drop-off? Well, I think that's anywhere. So when you whittle it down to the inevitable 10 people...

That are going to ride it out, right? No, I think the ones I got now are in it. They're in it to win. Sometimes you whittle down over Christmas, Thanksgiving. People start dropping off or whatever. It's like jujitsu. That's why there's very few black belts. But the ones that stick around are the ones that get black belts. I truly believe that. The growth that I've seen out of the people that have stuck it out has been really phenomenal. And watching them do things that they never were comfortable doing before has been...

really really really i'm glad i'm glad to hear that because glad to hear that that many because a lot of times people just drop off because quitting is so easy it's so easy to do it's so good because you don't want so good yeah you don't want something bad enough right i didn't want to go to jiu jitsu you could be a it's not hard i was thinking about i was trying to find any way i could get out of it i i was like

I got this fishing trip coming up. I'm going to a wedding this weekend. I can't hurt my arm. Oh, if I hurt my arm, it's a bill. Well, I'll tell you. So my workout deal that I'm doing, right. I've been telling myself, I'm gonna do the four months. I'm gonna do the first four months of this. And

and i even told you i'm like i got it now i totally got it like i know what i'm so i know the macros and i'm supposed to be doing i'm doing everything every day you know really i just talked to my trainer guy once a week for five minutes until you're not into five minutes no it ended on monday oh right it ended monday i guess i didn't even realize that it ended because i you know go be bopping in

There's nothing on my calendar. Hey, Ryan, my trainer. Hey, man, there's nothing in my calendar today. He's like, yeah. He goes, I have it in my deal that you're up today. You need to renew or do whatever you're going to do. I'll load something for you right now. And he loaded a workout for me. And I was like, oh, shit. So I sat down with Gidge because I was like, I'm not going to re-up this. I'm not going to. Because it was expensive. And I sat with Gidge last night. And I'm like, I'm terrified.

If I don't part with this money, if I don't have somebody watching what I'm doing, I'm going to quit. I have a personal trainer for that. That's what I told him. Only that reason. Not that I don't know how to lift a weight. He helps out stacking stuff. It's somebody I sponsor. I like him being there. He's a good guy to, you know, he doesn't have a big ego, so he's not there. He's just only helpful. But 95% of the reason why he's there so that I go. Yeah. I mean, I happily paid the money and re-upped. I happily did it because I just...

the results are more important to me than the money. But if I didn't part with the money, like if they had said, we'll just load it for free. Here's the thing. If he would have said, like you got to ask yourself, if he would have said, we'll just load the workouts in every day, don't worry about it, but Ryan's not going to talk to you once a week. He's not going to watch it anymore. I don't think I, I don't, I mean, I like to, I like to believe that I'd have the internal fortitude to get it, but I also,

There's a reason this is the first thing that in my entire 50 years of existence has worked. I like to operate under black and white. Yeah. I don't like, I don't, I know myself enough that I don't give myself room to negotiate my way out of things. Yeah. But if you sat there and actually screenshot a picture that you absolutely hated and looked at that daily, I think that would motivate you enough. Yeah. No, I've tried. Dude, I'm telling you, this is working. But anyway, long story short.

- I'm pretty sure people quit, people that stick around and do the hard work are the ones that win over time. So if you're wondering what to do in this recession, just like don't quit if you really wanna do this. And if you don't, then quit now and quit fast and go do something else. - But sometimes you do need to quit some things. No, no, no. Like if you have this marketing that's been working, the marketing that worked seven, eight months ago,

is we'll continue to work through but you bought you better be a lot more focused on what's working so you better quit some well you right like I'm not saying quick but again here's the case one of my students and I haven't had a chance to talk to her about this so she hears this before I talk to you I'm going to talk to you about this I'm not just I'm not gonna say your name

But I got a message today from one of my students in the deal. And she was like, hey, my dog is a big part of my brand. It's a very marketable brand. It's very popular in America. A lot of people have this dog. And it was really about my unique selling feature as an agent was this dog. And I read that and I'm thinking to myself, if I'm sitting in my house right now,

And I just know I'm getting laid off in two weeks. And I know I'm not going to be able to make the mortgage payment in 90 days. I need to get out of this house. I know the market's falling. Do I give a shit what kind of dog? And the answer is no. I want the most professional. The point is...

The only thing you should be marketing right now is solutions to people's problems. That's it. Everything else is noise. Everything else. But you don't think having, and this is, I totally 100% agree with that, but making yourself unique, right? DJ Khaled's big because he had good stuff, but he had singing, right? Like whatever, like if you can make yourself a little brand. What was I saying? We the best music. But if you could make-

Jay Gallen. But most, why do they, why does the FBI give a... Maybach music. But seriously, look at all that, right? Jason Derulo. Like you could go on and on. But why does FBI give the people that rob banks a nickname?

so that they remembered yeah because if you didn't like so maybe sometimes having a little catch but don't make that what would you your brand if you robbed banks called what would your name be what would your name be man I don't know Polo assassin being a polo killing it killing it no but I I get where she's going downtown the Ascot burglar in the tracksuit I am wearing that to a Christmas party I don't give a what you say I'm showing up in the tracksuit to Christmas party tracksuit shady

but don't you think like the gentleman but also you don't want to be too showy in times like that right like i remember having a nicer car when the market crashed and that was not a good thing going to kick people out of their houses they're crying you're getting a nice car yeah there are cars i would not be driving to listing appointments right now yeah i just would not be just fine yeah

But the last part about this, obviously, is being intentional with everything that you do. Because right now you have got, you can no longer drift, man. You cannot just drift your way through this and see what happens. You've got to wake up with a plan. You've got to know where you're going. You've got to do that. Like our good friend Seneca once said, no wind blows in favor of a ship without direction. That's the exact quote.

Got it. I looked it up. I highlighted it. I looked it up on a highlight. I like that. No, which means like if you don't know where you're trying to get to and you don't have a plan to get there, you're not going to get anywhere. So you know what? I'm just trying to do my main thing right now. What's up? It's trying to get verified on Twitter. Oh, that's hard. Have you noticed how everything's risk? Have you noticed? I think I got $8 in my pocket. Make that happen. I still, have we talked about the, oh,

That's why I wanted to bring it up before this. Oh, my God. Is that not the greatest? You talk about being intentional, John. This all comes down to, you know what?

um everybody people want to shit on elon now because he's obviously like a a pogo bozo the clown that just should be punched because he just doesn't know how to get out of his own way and maybe maybe i'm being insensitive maybe there's some level of being on the spectrum where he doesn't understand how to read the room because he's been so successful with paypal or whatever and maybe he was just the face of it and there were brilliant you know people behind it or whatever but spacex was ambitious and it's done some really amazing things and tesla was very ambitious and it's

Revolutionized the way our country's logistics and operations go the Hyperloop I had the fortunate, you know, I got to take the Hyperloop the other day. What it wouldn't in experience But then you got Twitter when you want to know about not overextending yourself for knowing what shots you should take and which should work Elon Musk or the rocket company makes perfect sense electric cars perfect sense because they don't talk back. This is where it's in the math and

social networks, social media, things like that. They talk back. Oh, they talk back very loudly. They get fired via tweet. Did you see like, as your attorney, I advise you don't fire people via tweet, even if you have a right to, it's really bad optics. Oh boy. How great was it? That company losing billions of dollars in one day. The, uh, the X imploding. Oh, um,

Yeah, the pharmaceutical company.

For diabetes. No. The insulin. You didn't see that? Somebody. Ellie. Lila Ellie. Lila Ellie. Bought or created a Twitter account. Paid the nine bucks to have it verified. They said we're giving away insulin for free. Just tank their actual stock. And people sat there and crashed. They've done it for a bunch of these things. And they had to come back and say, no, we're not. That was not us tweeting that.

they lost billions in one day because he didn't think it out because humans aren't robots. Like you can't,

we're not plug and play things you can't just be like x amount of people do this you have to have certain amount of sense about you to be in this i always said that's i mean just like the 15 000 you know people getting murdered or whatever that was because somebody with a blue check mark freaking started tweeting that that's not you know in iran yeah but again humans don't know how to fact check humans don't know how to do one of these things so

Just to John and your point about knowing your angles, knowing your shots. Don't be somebody with no direction. He bought that with no direction. Chris the champ, Connell, your local realtor and baseball dad, whatever. Maybe that's not the image I want to have if I'm pitching to banks. No. Right? Well, we all miss vacation. Yeah.

Had a pretty hefty I had a pretty hefty miss the other day you guys like to hear about that real quick Yeah, I'm gonna tell you this what's funny is this ends with some schadenfreude from personally, which is I'll tell you what I do So I had a pretty good gaffe Pretty good gaffe for the gaffe word. I guess a couple weeks ago so I went to my good friend Steve Sims book launch right and I

I love Steve, and one of the biggest charities that he promotes is something called Prison Without Borders, where it's like an entrepreneurial deal where they go to prison, and it's kind of like they do Shark Tank for prisoners that are about to get out and help them rehabilitate themselves through the process of coaching entrepreneurship. And Steve's been doing this for years. You go into prison with me, and we go judge, and we help them out. And anyway, the reason that's important is

is because his assistant was walking around with a camera, that's what I'm fast forwarding through right now, filming at the book launch. And when they got to me, I said something very nice and heartfelt about Steve. And then she said, no, no, no. Steve said you were funny. Say something funny. And I'm thinking to myself, there's no way that they're going to, I said something I thought, didn't think it through, that I didn't think was funny, or I thought was funny at the time without thinking it through, thinking there's no way they're going to put it in this video and they'll never use it. Here it comes. Millions of people. 50 seconds. 50 seconds.

Hang on a minute. Let me play it. I'll play. This is so bad. Here it comes. Ready? Here it comes. I mean, that's cute. I mean, but I made a joke about being a parole officer.

yeah and it was people yeah oh that's not it i i i thought i thought it was a pretty decent faux pas but when i do something stupid which happens a lot i'm not letting you get away with that that was totally fine i'm gonna but i'm gonna give you that okay if that's that's fine that's the sick totally on the table if that's the sickness to me i thought it was it was it was tone deaf to me anyway

But if you, when you do something stupid, right. And you screw up an interaction with other human, I'm gonna give, I'll give you the tonic to cleanse your soul. All you have to do, all you have to do is Google Bert Kreisner interviews, Adam Sandler. Oh, it was, it was during, it was during the, I literally just saw Bert Kreisner drink out of a Nazi. Hang on. No, no, no. It was during, it was during COVID when they were trying to raise money for comedians, whatever.

And Adam Sandler agreed to be interviewed on this Zoom call, Whitney Cummings. And Bert Kreisner just could not have said, just because he was such a big fan, he just got overwhelmed with himself and just regurgitated nonsense.

Out of his mouth like I think Adam Sandler in a 10-minute interview said three things. He just kept talking about oh my god We're great story this one time a bubble bubble bus. It's like Right, he's like it's like I can't wait to see your new movie precious gems or hidden gems or whatever He said the wrong name. He said the other day. I have my kids. They're watching a movie Happy Madison Which is not the name of the movie production company and just he kept saying and he's like what boys like? Oh, do you have Netflix? Yeah

It was, and Bert talks about that all the time, about how that being the worst interaction of his life. That's how I found it was him talking about how terrible it was. And when I watched that, so whenever I have a little gaffe like that or a faux pas, I go watch that four minute clip of goodness of him just, you know, slow train wreck. And then I'm better. The tonic to your quinine? Yes. And then I'm better. Everybody has those moments. Yeah. Oh, I've had a couple.

- Oh yeah. - You know, a good way, something you should probably get in this market to prepare is if you have trouble staying the track with getting yourself educated or doing the stuff that we talked about today or living an intentional life, if you have any trouble doing this stuff, get an accountability partner for this stuff.

Have somebody that'll keep you accountable that you can share. It's in the same field, maybe the same office, maybe a different company somewhere else. Get yourself the Ryan Holiday 366 Days of Stoic Wisdom. I love that. You journal in it? Daily Book of Stoicism. Yeah, I have the book in my office. And you write in the day whatever? Oh, the Daily Stoic. Yeah, I have it in my office. Where you write down your intentions for the day in the journal. I have an app on my phone to do it with.

I have an app called journal. There's an app for that. There's an app for that. Don't you think the app can get overwhelming though? Everybody's solution is on an app. Then I have to go through my app to find out all the things my app can do. Can they tell me you have to go online to do something? No, I love the journal app. I love the journal app. Do you use it? Every day. It starts with, it wakes me up in the morning because it knows what time I wake up because you tell it.

And it starts out with, let's make a great day. And it'll tell you, you know, you have to type out three things you're grateful for. And I really love it because you can also open your camera and take pictures. So like when we were at the wedding or whatever. Is that why you're taking pictures of me in Kabul? Well, yeah. No. It's because you're passed out. You're grateful. You're passed out, had a horse head mask on. One time. But yeah, I love my little apps and it keeps me on track. And then you can go back and look at things you're grateful for and talks about. But one of my favorite questions that I ask me every day is it says,

if you could go back in time and change something that happened today, what would that be? And it's a great way to reflect on how you could have done something different or better, but also it's an opportunity to let those things go. My answer every day would be this meme that I've seen. They always say this meme.

If women had time machines, what they do back. It's just, it's, I don't know if, if, if women had a time machine, they would go back and be like, Oh my God, you're my great, great grandmother. Right. That's who you'd go do. And for a guy, it's like you go back to the day before Harambe was killed and just prevent it.

Every single thing I regret is not being there at the Cincinnati Zoo or whatever the day before Harambe was killed. Because that's what started this on the worst timeline we could possibly be on. That was the catalyst that day. Ask anybody. Ask anybody for anecdotal evidence and they will say...

Harambee. Everything leads back to Harambee. I think you got to be honest with yourself too. I think that's why journal one is good because you're, you're just putting it out there. You're honest with yourself. You're not honest with yourself.

you might as well stop what you're doing i agree what's for you well guys i hope you got something out of this that helps you today um you know as always if you're watching us on the youtube please hit that like subscribe button give us a comment of anything you may have liked if you're listening to us on whatever subscription-based podcast service you're on of course a high review is always welcomed um

Yeah, I mean. Streaker, iHeartRadio. Whatever it is. Apple Podcasts. Whatever you're listening to. Crankbox, whatever you're listening to. No, there's a million of them, whatever it is. Voodoo, Crackle. We're happy, happy, happy. Guys, remember, if you've got to move, you might as well move forward. We'll see you next week. Connell Law.

Hey, it's John Gafford. If you want to catch up more and see what we're doing, you can always go to thejohngafford.com. We'll share any links that we have, things we talked about on the show, as well as links to the YouTube where you can watch us live. And if you want to catch up with me on Instagram, you can always follow me at thejohngafford. I'm here. Give me a shout.