Born to Win! Ep 39
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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, back again, back again. It is The Power Move. Yep, I'm John Gafford. I'm your host. To the left of me, Colt, regifter, Amadam.

I don't re-gift, I take your gifts. The king of the re-gift. King of the re-gift. Sloppy seconds. That's Colt's sloppy second Amadam. There you go, that's it. Thank you everybody. And again, John Gafford loves scotch. Thank you. Yeah, that's it. And of course, joining us, the counselor, Chris Connell. How are you, sir? Living the dream. Living the dream indeed. Well, today on the podcast...

among other things. I think, you know, I think there's a couple of things people don't know. I think, I think people think that there's some sort of secret to success or some sort of a formula. And I do, I agree with that. There is a formula to success. And we're going to kind of, we're going to kind of dive in today about what it takes to win. And what, I mean, people say, oh, you're lucky or this, that, that guy's a winner. Dude, what does it take to be a winner? And lucky for us, there's a cat out there named Zig Ziglar. I think everybody's probably heard of him. I don't want to, you know, we,

If you haven't read How to Win Friends and Influence People, shame on you. Stop right now.

go buy the damn book. Carnegie? Yeah, Dale Carnegie, starting there. And then Zig Ziglar. Yeah. And then who else? There's Zig Ziglar and then Napoleon Hill. Napoleon Dynamite? Napoleon Hill. Yeah, I mean, there's just some of these books that you should have read. You had to have read them. You just had to have read these books. Mastery by Robert Greene. Yeah, I mean, there's just some you had to have read. And so every week, once in a while, we try to jump on one of these books and make it go. And this week, we're going to talk about Zig Ziglar's book,

which is called Born to Win, shockingly enough. But before we get to that, guys, there's a lot of things going on. We're talking about porn to win? No, not porn to win, Colt. Born to win is what we're talking about. I was like, ooh, I got a lot to talk about today. No, just Born to Win. So, you know, a couple things that happened to me that I've realized, and if you have kids speaking about Born to Win, we'll go with Born to just drive me batshit crazy is what we're going to talk about.

So, you know, you see the videos online of the kids covered with like peanut butter. They come around the corner of the pantry. There's like the one-year-old like, I painted my brother peanut butter. It's cute and you laugh, right? Yeah. No fun. But this is what I realize. But really, who's inconvenienced by the peanut butter bath? Is it the little brother who's standing there covered in peanut butter looking like a swamp monster? Or it's the parent that has to clean him up. It's me. I have to clean him up. And the first thing I see in those videos is... Yeah.

All right, now you got to get the towels out, do a load of laundry, jam all over the floor. Yeah, now I have problems because of this, right? And as they get older, the problems don't change, but they get older. See, here's the problems. Possibly. No, here's the issue.

Lessons are taught until they are learned. If you don't learn, then the lesson will come back around again. That is a great phrase. It is. Lessons are taught until they're learned. And unfortunately, education comes with pain. And if there's no pain involved in the situation, or if the pain is not your pain, chances are you don't learn the lesson. You don't suffer it. Case in point this weekend, we're down at Newport.

And my kids are gonna go run around the Strand and have a little bit of freedom. They each had a friend, so they get to run down. We live pretty close to all the restaurants and stuff in Newport-Brunslaw.

And the kids are going to run down there. My daughter always carries a Vans backpack. My son barely knows if he has shoes on. So I say to my kids as they're about to leave, I pull, my wife goes, they can take my credit card. I look at my daughter, look at both of them. I mean, this isn't like over my shoulder. This is look into my eyes and understand the instructions, right? I say, this credit card goes into Roma's bag.

And then it comes out to go to pay. As soon as it's done paying, it goes right back into Roma's bag. When we all get back here, I'm going to ask you to deliver the credit card back to me out of the bag. I feel like I'm following this. Yeah, out of the bag. Right? You got it? Pretty good. Does everyone understand? Yeah, there is no deviation from said plan. I'm ready for a quiz. Yeah, this is the plan. So we go out. The kids come back. We get back. And what happens? I look at them and I go, hey, Roma, where's the credit card? First thing out of her mouth. I don't know. Hayden took it.

What do you mean Hayden took it? He picked it up off the table, wouldn't give it back to me. Hayden, where's the credit card? I put it on the counter. What do you mean you put it on the counter? I put it right here on the counter. Well, they ain't here now. Turn the whole house upside down. Where were you carrying said credit card back from restaurant to house? In my back pocket.

Where do you carry your phone? In my back pocket. Okay. Let me explain to you how friction and physics work. Sticky cases. Gone. Lost that. So that's the sun. So equally guilty for that. More leaning on the sun on that one. So now my wife has to, of course, go through the fiasco of canceling all of the online setup bill pay that she has on this credit card and get another one. Now.

Before we leave to go to the beach because they're taking friends, obviously I just got the new car. And when I came home, first thing, because I wasn't there, but Roma's friend had already shown up. First thing out of her mouth was, I really like your new car. Okay, so you obviously saw the car. I didn't even think twice about it. Just saw the car, packed the car, we're leaving, whatever, blah, blah. Go out this morning, get ready to go to a meeting, walk out. Car's dead. I mean dead. And...

Obviously, she got in there and left the lights on. Now, this is a, it's a relatively, there's only 300 of these cars running around apparently on the planet right now. Nobody has any idea how to get into it, how to start it. I'm calling the Maserati dealership. They're like, bro, we have no idea, right? It's like, let me call three different people. So it's like an Easter egg hunt to try to even figure out how to get the door open, which I finally did.

Then I get the front trunk open, and I can't get the engine hatch back. So hopefully now I have the information required to get my car back. How nervous are you to jump that car? I'm not. I'm going to trickle it. I'm not jumping that. So to your point, though, at which point in any of these stories has anybody suffered other than you? Well, okay. Well, here's the deal. So I taxed my kids over the credit card.

I said, how long is this going to take you to sort all this stuff out for mom? Mom's like, probably half an hour. I said, cool. And granted, mom's a little different because she doesn't have an hourly wage. So I just decided to tax it at $50. So I said, hey, they own the machines here. I said, everything you're going to get on the machine is going right back to mom for the time and trouble of doing this. There's your tax. The dead car, haven't quite got there yet. Yeah.

probably going to pay for the trickle charger is what I'm thinking. But yeah, there's gotta be some sort of pain. Cause if you don't have pain, you don't even learn lesson. And the lesson will continue to come until it's done. Until it's learned. And I think that like, I used to always get on my kids about stupid stuff. My wife's like, God, you're such an asshole. It's the stupidest thing. I'm like, no, it's not like this is going to lead to something bigger. If we don't treat them, um,

Right now and I think people just let little bit stuff go like most parents would be like don't do that again, right? Oh hell not. Yeah, most people do that and like you said you'll never learn that way Yeah, I do you've got to have some pain associated with lesson So if you have ever owned a credit card yourself individually adult, let me ask you a question Yeah, would you rather take a kick in the ass the ass meat in the buttocks all the

by Kamaru Usman. All day. Have Kamaru Usman just come up, give you one kick in the thick of the ass or have to touch and restart credit card payments. 1,000%. I would take that kick all day long. I would take a kick by an ultimate fighter. All day long.

In the ass. It's such an incredible pain in the ass. Maybe even in the ribs. Like, I'd have to really... There's very few things on this planet I would rather not have to deal with. It is such a pain in the ass. You have all this stuff, especially if it's your card that you have on auto payment on everything. I had an LVAC bill one time go delinquent. I'm like...

I forgot that. It's always that $2 one. That's going to ruin your credit. It's so stupid. Go to log into Netflix. All of a sudden, it's gone. Yeah. They're like, oh, yeah, you owe $8.10. Could you make that payment now? I'm like, I think so. I'm kicking the ass from Kamara Usman. We'll go away in a day or two. I'll deal with this credit card. It's terrible. So, yes. But you know what? That's failing, I think, is the credit card story. So let's talk about winning. Okay.

Because that's what we want to do. And a lot of this stuff, it's funny how this turns out. So I just want to get some high points from this book.

Again, Born to Win by Zig Ziglar. Check it out. But we're going to start with this one. One of the main reasons people fail to reach their full potential is because they're unwilling to risk anything. I just had that conversation Saturday. You know, my son was asking somebody, you know, why do you get paid so much? Who gets paid? You know, talking about that. And I said, you get paid off of risk, in my opinion. Hard.

Hard work, not really. You know, the landscape would make more money than anybody if you had to work hard work, right? It's risk in my opinion. And I don't think people comprehend the stress and risk that you take usually correlates with your income in my opinion. Experience and time too. And licensing and expertise. For me, even though they are synonyms a little bit.

I break it up into risk and hazard is what I break it into. Risk is something that's manageable. It's quantitative. I can gauge it against something else. Hazard, I use that word in my analyzation of things as danger. Like this is too far beyond my – like risk is acceptable, but once you get beyond a certain point, it's hazard and you're acting irresponsibly.

And that's where that line for a lot of people. Now, sometimes, you know, I have some partners and some things that I do that, that sometimes push the envelope of what they do to the point where I have to say, whoa, whoa, whoa, we were stepping out of risk now and we're stepping into hazard. And I don't, I don't operate a hazard. I have before and it is absolutely, it's blown up in my face, but yeah,

- So that's where your business and the value of what you do comes in, right? On a general scale, we talk about a brokerage. You have a real estate agent oftentimes for their expertise, but as well to defer problems to and to mitigate your own risk as a buyer. If I was out here and I had no real estate experience and I was gonna go buy a house from somebody, they got a pile of bricks there, okay, give me this much money and I'll give you that, great. When you involve brokers and agents, you have somebody that's responsible, right? So that's where sometimes people get

people think, oh, you guys don't even do this much work for what you got. But it's like, think of the risk I just took away from you for that value. Oh, yeah. 100%. And even getting into real estate, you're doing risk. I mean, a lot of times you're putting up. I remember when I got into it, I saved X amount of money. I was like, here we go. Either going to lose everything I own or it'll succeed. I mean, you put risk.

I mean, just taking a listing, I take risk with that. It cannot sell. And I'm out thousands and thousands and thousands of hours of your time. Well, not in that like commercials, not like we can't just put on an MLS and take nice photos and do stuff. It cost me every month to list something. So, you know, to me, it's a risky little investment. Sure. No, no, of course. Of course it is.

You know, the next thing it says, if you believe as I do that you were born to win, you're going to have to find, you're going to have to find your fears and start facing them, which means this. I know a lot of people.

that are borderline narcissists, I'll say. I like to try, and the reason I'm very hypersensitive to that is I'm always terrified personally, I'm gonna leap off that ledge, right? So I always try to understand my own limitations and always try to keep myself mentally in check that way.

But I think what it means is there are a lot of people that I know that are borderline narcissists that just assume the world should open up for them because they're special. Right. Because I should just be winning and I should just get what I can because I'm a special person is what they think. When the reality of it is if you can believe that you should be successful, you can do that. But it comes with the responsibility of facing reality.

Fears that go along with that of facing the trials and tribulations to get you where you are, right? So I think that's what he's trying to say there and that's what he's trying to do because there are far too many people that just think they're special and

Yeah, that's an interesting way of saying I don't know if you are born to win. I think very few winners exist, right? There's far more losers than winners in life. Well, one of my favorite quotes, the winners and losers both set the same goals. Yeah, right. Nobody goes to UFC like, I'm going to lose this fight today. Right, right. But there are fewer UFC champions than there are UFC participants, right? Sure, 100%. But you have to put yourself in the game, and they're all within a fraction. Yeah.

That's at the elitist levels, right? When you start talking about in business, you don't have to, there's not one title, right? When you're talking about real estate, you can all win in that. There's always going to be more losers than winners, but you can win because it's not a zero sum game. Right. And there's not one championship. Right, right, right. There's not one champion in business.

There's a Microsoft, but there's also Larry Ellison with Oracle, and there's also Elon Musk. There's multiple billionaires. There's not room for just one. It's not Highlander. They've all conquered their fears. Have you seen the Highlander cult? No, I think we talked about this. What is it? The Immortal Words of Ricky Bobby won the Academy Award for what? Best movie ever.

I've never what is it? I saw Highlighter it sucked no no no don't nah I mean I think we're gonna have to watch it a little late I feel like we should make you watch it though I know I'm still I'm getting a call from Barbara next card I never worry because I know who I am and I know whose I am hmm whose I am

Oh, that's, we've talked about that before, about if you kill off your masters and you're responsible to yourself. Yeah, exactly. Exactly right. So I think this means, you know, do you belong to yourself? Do you belong to others? Where, where are you mentally controlled for that? I think it could be, I think it could only mean one of multiple things. It could mean that, or it could mean some of the lines of be content in the fact if you are surrounded by loved ones. Yeah. I think you could look for whatever. Is it kind of going back to that? You know, a poor man is not someone that, uh,

a poor man is someone that wants for more, not someone that has less kind of that idea. But I also think being controlled by others is probably strong. Desire is the catalyst that enables a person with average ability to compete and win against others with more natural talent.

Amen. I've known a lot of people, especially in this industry, in the real estate industry, that just through sheer will of effort will outbeat the best salesman in this business. I mean, just because they're willing to go out in 118 degree heat in Las Vegas and bang on 400 doors and just go at it. And they're not the most attractive. A lot of, we've talked about that too, that, you know, having a pretty face or, you know, having a, you know, headband.

handsome jawline or whatever is not guaranteed for success, right? Some of the most successful. Are you talking about me? I'm not talking about me. I'm talking about jawline. I'm not talking about you. But you've seen them all, and I don't want to be gender specific or whatever, but there's that 60-year-old guy who's out there hustling and grinding and really puts himself out there. There's a 55-year-old lady who's just dominant in the market and focuses and takes it seriously. Those people will have some of the best numbers there are.

And you wouldn't think it's an appearance game. You'd think it's this and that. There's a good book called – it's more geared towards commercial real estate, but it's really geared for entrepreneurs – called Knowing Isn't Doing. I love that. Knowing isn't doing, meaning you can be as smart as you want. You can be the –

smartest guy in that room but if you're not doing the actions you're going to be left behind I think there's a lot to be said about like I always tell people I operate in real estate with a scalpel like you can either operate with a scalpel or a sledgehammer I'm much more of a scalpel guy

But that doesn't mean to say that if you want to use a sledgehammer, now it takes a long time to learn how to use a scalpel. But you can pick a sledgehammer up and start swinging it tomorrow. And I think you can probably get, I mean, if you think back to my career, I probably, when I was swinging the sledgehammer, got great results. I've just learned over time through education how to use a scalpel. So there you go. I like that. There you go. Next one. Good action today will produce good living tomorrow. How many times have we talked about this in here?

which is the decisions you make today affect your tomorrow, right? The people you choose to surround yourself with the actions, everything that happens, you know, it goes, I mean, you know, we talked about my countdown timer for, for trying to get in shape and, and,

How's that going? Because this is not going good for me. I think I'm up four pounds. No, I'm just saying. I look at the countdown, and I think I'm gradually coming down. I stopped getting on the scale every day because I just think it's bad for me. But, yeah, I think it's the little efforts every day. Yeah. That's what it is. Yeah, consistency over time is results.

Oh, always consistently over time. The depth of your spirit will determine the height of your success. That seems like a bumper sticker to me. I'm just going to throw it out there. Can we talk about bumper stickers? How annoying. How have we not talked about bumper stickers? God, I don't know, but...

Who puts bumper stickers on their cars? Who tattoos perfectly beautiful bodies? I don't know. No, I have way bigger problem with bumper stickers than tattoos. Oh, yeah. Have you ever seen a really bad tattoo? Yeah, but have you seen a good bumper sticker? Yeah. No, you've not. Honk if your horn is broken. I'm telling you. Honk if your horn is broken. Is that...

Could you be friends with somebody that pulls up with bumper stickers? I don't understand people that put political bumper stickers on their car. Crazy to me. It's bizarre. But it's always those people. 50% of people out there don't agree with you. And so you're just subjugating your car to whatever damage you're going to get. I cannot stand the bumper sticker. It bugs me. People still put two bumper stickers on. Oh, all the time. I see it all the time. Never mind. I'm not going to get there. No. I see it all the time in certain neighborhoods.

It just shocks me. It's certain cars. Just say Summerlin, bro. No, it's not Summerlin, though. Oh, I get it. Oh, I get it. Green Valley. Yeah. You're going to cause a lot of hate on this one. Well, we haven't been canceled at this point, so there you go. Bumper stickers. Don't do it, guys. Speaking of which, if you're listening to this on one of your podcasts. Oh, I got an announcement. I forgot to say this. We are now, which is actually hard to get, apparently.

It takes a long time. We're now streaming on our heart radio. Oh, we're streaming on our heart, which is great. So glad to be part of the I heart family. It took a hot second to get there, but glad to be part of that. Tell your sister to watch out. I know. Look out, but whatever you're listening to us on, give us a, give us a real quick there. Five-star review to please don't judge us by Colts contributions.

And yeah, if you're watching us on YouTube or however you are, push that like smash subscribe button. It does help the algorithm a little bit and try to get us some traction. Unless you're a bumper sticker person. Yeah. Unless you're a bumper sticker person, then just go ahead and put I hate Colt on the back. I will say this though. I hate Colt. I used to have a bumper sticker making kit.

that I would make bumper stickers. A bumper sticker making kit? Yeah, just magnetic bumper stickers. I would make magnetic ones, and you could put them on people's cars and see how long they drive around with them. Oh, we did that. That's pretty great. We did that to a kid in high school, and he went like three months. A really nice one. Do you hate bumper stickers more than people that put the whole description of their family, including the number of children they have and their relative ages on the back of the window? Oh, that's good. But that's a bumper sticker in itself. It's kind of more of a window decal. I get it, but...

People put too much... Personal information on their vehicles? Yeah, I mean... There's a lot going on. Have you seen some people? They got like eight or nine kids. Could you imagine? It'd be horrible to have that many kids. They're usually the big suburbans. As somebody that just went to Disneyland again last weekend, no, I cannot imagine. I mean, dude, we...

I have three kids. Oh, my God. Everything is so expensive. Three's too many. Three's too many. We went to Mimi's or Marie Callender's. Yeah. Ah, good pies. Marie Callender's. Good pies. Four kids, two adults. Top three pies. Top three pies. God, man. There you go.

I mean, you got to go with the apple pie number three. I mean, apple's in there. I give you that. That's a nostalgia. Yeah. That's why it's number three. It's not the best. Heavy on the cinnamon or light on the cinnamon? Oh, heavy. Heavy on the cinnamon. Look at good apple pie. Yeah, it's good. What else you got? No. Then you go. I mean, you got to go with. Pecan. No. Pecan.

are you kidding me pumpkin pumpkin number two you knew you knew pumpkin was coming that's amazing pumpkin was coming gross but did you say pecan like a butter oh gross god top three worse so i grew up with butter tarts i'll do like i'll do like i'll do like a chocolate french silk pie that's all i don't even know what that is you know you never worked in a restaurant then you never read the dessert the dessert number one chocolate salt ready for number one what is it

banana cream pie i i like it yeah i like it but you know who's got a good banana cream pie marie calendar every calendar's got one you know who else got a good one is uh what is it uh claim jumper got a good one oh really are they still open isn't it funny that the way we started this podcast colt was worried about the direction we're going to go and we end up talking about cream pies yeah we just was getting we knew it was going to be there top three cream pies

The depth of your spirit will be determined. No, I think we already read that because that's what we've got on bumper stickers. The next thing worry is the most significant factor that relates to the root of negative thinking. I totally agree with this. We talk about all the time. This again goes back to being rooted in classic modern classic stoicism. Don't borrow trouble from tomorrow. There is no good or bad. Only your perception of how things affect you and you suffer way more in your mind than you ever will suffer in reality from these situations.

And as I always, you know, the motto I live my life by, memento mori. I actually got a little charm that says it.

Basically means death comes for us all remember death memento mori and next to death. What is this? That's what I you know, it didn't kill me What is this gonna kill you and I think that's too many people get too caught up in small problems That they won't even and who was I don't know who this was somebody said this not too long ago And they said here's a cool exercise. I don't remember who it was if it's one of my friends and you see this I'm sorry I forgot which one of you said this they said next you have a major problem or a new major issue that happens write it down and

in a calendar appointment 30 days from now. Like put it on your calendar 30 days so it pops up on your phone. And then you'll be amazed at how little that actually affected you a month later or if you even remember what happened a month ago. That is the world I live in because as an attorney, right, I'm constantly managing the problems of others. And they become my problems, right, because I've got to figure out how to manage them.

Every time I look at a case that's closed, I go to my closed case files. We have to keep our files for seven years. And I'll look at it and I'll go, I remember when that case was actually bringing my whole world to its knees. And it resolved...

Quite reasonably, easily, good results, got paid, everything worked out. And I remember when that was the bane of my absolute existence. Yeah, the world was caving in on top of you. All the time. There's 40 cases like that where I looked at, and I couldn't wait for that case to be closed. Yeah.

And then by the time it was closed, I was already worrying about some other kids. And you don't even remember it, and you don't even remember it happening. Yeah, I've learned that one. You ever meet people that are the complete opposite, though? What do you mean? There's major issues, and I'm like, yeah, whatever. It'll work its way out. And it's like, eh, it can't be like that always either. No, but that leads to huge problems because they don't address them. Yeah, you got to dive into it. But, you know, it's funny. Me and my wife always laugh. I have a philosophy in my house. We're the even-out Gaffords. What?

Like if somehow something, if my car, what if something breaks, whatever, and it costs me five grand, somehow, some way five grand is going to show up. Cause it always does. Like I just, I just looked at the horizon and expected to show up and it's gotten to the point where I expect that kind of stuff. Yeah. So, you know, last year we're going to win there and just even at Gaffords, which is funny. That's life though. It is. You lose. Yep.

Oh man, this is a good one. When you stop planning and preparing, you stop winning. It's so fun. Man, I got to tell you, if you've listened to our podcast before and you've taught, you've heard us talk about books, you've heard us talk about stoicism, you've heard us talk about laws of power. You've heard us talk about all of these things.

there's no, there's no new information, man. It's the same stuff that's been going on for thousands of years. And like, you know, fail to plan, plan to fail. You know, if you don't know stoicism, if you don't know to which port you sail, no wind is favorable. It's all the same stuff. If you stop having a plan for your life, you're going to just, you know, you're drifting. And if you drift, you're going to fail.

and people people will it's funny how so many people will get so planned out and have everything going but once things get going they forget you have to plan out even when you're successful that's why mission statements exist right yeah that's why when you talk about business you talk about what are our core principles let's figure that out before we set ship or set our ship out to sail

Because if that's not my North Star, then we're directionless, right? Yeah. So you have that. And if you're true to those principles, right, you can always, if you have a question that comes up that's problematic, you go, what is our core value? What are we doing here? Yeah. Yeah.

Well, it's like, you know, we never do business plans more than a quarter at a time. You know, it's always quarter chunks because we revisit them every quarter. We see where we were to achieving our goals, what happened, and we revise and we pivot if we need to, which means I'm never on the wrong course for too long because things change, man. Things constantly change. And part of winning is understanding the trends and moving forward and changing when you need to change. That's why the show is going to be called next month. I don't want to be a spoiler, but

But the power move and NFT analysis with John Gaffney. NFT analysis, yeah. No, I mean, no, look, I'm sorry because we were supposed to have the Snack Daddy on today. And Snack Daddy, we'll get him with him. But yeah, Ari, some point, buddy, going to get you in here. I mean, he was at a Borg Ape Yacht Club party in L.A. or something yesterday. So he got held up. So it was that. I don't know. We'll get back to him. You can start from where – wait, hang on a second. Yeah.

You can start from where you are with what you've got and go to where it is, where, where it is you want to go. Okay.

Sorry. It's like, you ever read a sentence where there's a bunch of like three pronouns. Yeah. There's like three or two. The lawyer read that one. No, it's like, it's like, do I have dyslexia? It's like instantly I can't read. But again, what this is saying is it doesn't matter what you got. It doesn't matter how much you got. You can get, there is a path to get to where you want to go. And you've got to understand that. I think a lot of people will have limiting beliefs. Oh, I'll never achieve that because I didn't start from X.

How many people do you think in real estate, and I hate to keep bringing it back to just real estate, general business. Real estate is business. It is. It really is. How many people do you think legitimately suffer from imposter syndrome?

Oh, I think it's a huge amount. I think a huge amount. I think the reason that the majority of people in real estate especially only earn $50,000 or whatever it is, $48,000 is the median income, whatever it is this year for real estate. But I think the reason that that is is because they don't think they're worth any more money than that.

Right. They're not. I mean, there's a great story that one of my buddies, Steve Sims, told me. And was Steve Sims? I don't remember who it was. Maybe Steve. We'll go with Steve Sims. Steve Sims. Steve, I'm assuming you said this, but we're going to give it to you. Shout out to Steve. We'll give it to you. But it was at some point he was charging X amount of dollars to speak. And somebody called him and he just was busy and couldn't do it like so many other things and just decided to double his price. And they paid it. And after that, he never spoke for less than that again.

And it's just funny how we have this perceived value of ourselves in our own minds that we project onto others. I mean, how many times have you been in a negotiation about yourself? I don't care where you work. If you work at Dairy Queen, you have to negotiate how much you make at some point. At some point, you put a dollar value on your value. You put it on there. And how many people have sold themselves short by taking an hourly job, by doing whatever they're doing because they just don't think they're worth any more money than that?

right totally agree happens a lot and it happens in every part of me though too does appreciate when people suffer a little bit of imposter syndrome yeah it's a certain amount of humility right yeah there's times when i've gotten to the point where people will say hey um you know they have this question i'll say i have no idea yeah i have no idea because that's not the law i practice yeah well that's the best answer so that's about in our business especially that's the best answer let me put you in touch with someone who does but people say hey hey

Hey, can you do commercial? You're a residential. Okay. They fumble through it. I want somebody who's got enough imposter syndrome where they know their limitations. I mean, I just had this. Someone called me. We have meth house going up in Utah. I'm like, I know. What's that cost to build? Yeah.

Oh, it's a good return. What's the return on the meth house you're putting? We'll talk after the show. Thoughts and feelings of Colt Abaddon do not reflect the power. I said that. I'm like, I've dealt with it for 20 years. Give me a day. Let me reach out to four different people that I know in the meth world.

No, I don't, guys. No, but, you know, I know they've dealt with this kind of issue, so I reached out for different people, and I said, there's your answer. Just to clarify, somebody had a house that was previously used in the SMA. So it has to be remediation. It has to be remediated. Oh, it's such a pain in the ass. I'm shocked we don't...

Test for that a lot out here. Utah, it's a big-time deal. I think you can tell right away. No, you can't, though. I think the pit bull chained up to the wheel. You know what a lot of times it is? It's like an old grandma letting their grandkids in it. You'd never know.

Never know. Yeah. Anyways, off subject, but yeah. Yeah, but anyway, my point is that I like people with a certain amount of humility. John was talking about one of his other business partners, Nick. Yeah. One of his most endearing things is that, you know,

He asked him a question. He goes, I don't know the answer to that right now. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We were having a conceptual conversation. He goes, I don't know what you're talking about. I was like, okay, explain to me what you're talking about. Straight to the no bullshit. No bullshit. No bullshit meter. I don't know what you're talking about. Talk to me like I'm two. Well, you know, today it's funny. I was on the phone today. I was on a Zoom with a big hedge fund out of Irvine. And I was talking to this guy and he was saying some phrases to me that

That I was like...

Like just right over, like just, just the financial terms. Like I knew what he was talking about once he started talking about it. But when he threw out the buzzword, the hedge fund buzzword for us, it was over my head. I didn't know. A lot of terms are different in different areas. Yeah. They'll say stuff in New York that you'll never hear on the West coast and vice versa. And if you're gonna be honest, what's that mean? Oh, we refer to it as this. When a lot of times they just put words together. Right. Like today I got revolving mezzanine line. I'd never heard before. I'm like,

Okay. Yeah, okay. Sure. Revolving mezzanine line. Okay. Because you have so many projects that you just have to always say this is mezz financing. Kind of, yeah. Yeah, kind of. Kind of. Kind of. We needed that. So, I mean, granted, great meeting. It's going to come out in my favor. So it was great to do. But there you go. Value and purpose are about understanding the specific benefits you will help people receive if they receive what you have for them. This is...

This is the truth. If you want to win in business, figure out how to solve people's problems. Be the person that solves problems for others and you will be successful. Now, keep in mind, that doesn't necessarily mean, you know, I need to go out and learn how to get people root canals. No. So when they say I have a toothache, but it would behoove me to know the best way.

orthopedic surgeon, well, orthopedic surgeon in Vegas and have him in my phone and have a relationship with that guy. So when this person has a crisis, one of my people has a crisis at eight o'clock on a Saturday, I can call my buddy and see where we're at. Right. That would move me because there is, if there's anything more, there's nothing more valuable in business. You know, Bradley says, the more hands you shake, the more money you make.

I think there's no more valuable service than being able to connect the dots for people. Dan Fleischman says all the time, my superpower is my phone. My contact list is my superpower. I can connect people. Anything you need, I have the answer in my phone somewhere. Yeah, connectors do well. And I can connect this. Learn to connect the dots. If you're someone that you don't have a lot personally to offer because of where you are, maybe you're not at a school yet, maybe you're not in a position of power within a job, blah,

Learn to be the person that people go to to connect the dots. Oh, I need a new car. Oh, I got a guy. You should call for that. I need insurance. I got that guy. I got this. Collect people that are good at stuff. This morning when I was on with the hedge fund guy this morning, he asked me because the guy that had connected me with him said, how do you know this person? Like, what's the relationship? And I said, oh, you know, I've known this guy for years. And I said, quite frankly, when I met him, he is exceptional when it comes to building brand imaging. Just

just exceptional at it. The work. And he goes, Oh my God. Yeah. I love what he did with this project in, in, in, in California. And I said, yeah, you know, when I find people that are exceptional at what they do, I tend to hang on to them in my circle, whatever it is. And the guy's like, that's a great way to look at things. So when you find people that are good, stay connected with them, man, stay connected. Totally agree. Good way. You're good at that. You do. You always do. I try. Well, that's why you're here. That's why you're here. This would be boring if it wasn't for you.

Well, let's take a quick break, guys. Man, we're all over now. We're going to take a quick break. We're going to talk more about how to win when we come back. And Cole will probably – you know what? I'm going to let you hijack the show with whatever you want to talk about for five minutes. So we have that to look forward to when we come back. That's all I get? Five minutes? I can't wait. Well, yeah, because if it's good – We're going to start with five minutes and we'll go from there. And we'll see what happens. We'll be back in just a second. We'll get into the weeds. We'll be back.

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've 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. Back from the break. Part two today, we are talking about, of course, how to win.

Zig Ziglar's book Born to Win but more importantly some other things you know as you guys sit here and manhandle these cigars I feel the need I feel the need to do something and you need to understand why this isn't like the OnlyFans chick where she has the link to things you can buy her or whatever it is I think that's how that works I don't really personally know but you see it in Instagram that is how it

works and I just found that out and I'm going to do that see if just people buy me shit so I'm going to put an Amazon gift registry hang on here's where I'm going with it so I do tend to get because people are super gracious and super nice to me they tend to send me things a lot and I love that I appreciate every time someone sends me something but I feel the need to say this

I've said it before. I'm going to say it again. And only for this reason. Okay. Let's not talk about it. Cause I really, no, no, no, no, no. You shut your mouth. You shut your mouth. No, we're talking about this only for this reason, which is this.

I feel horrible when someone spends a bunch of money on something for me that I will never, ever use. All right. So for some reason, all right, people love to buy me two things. All right. I just want you to know this is what happens to these two things when you purchase them. When you buy me scotch or you buy me cigars, they go away.

to colt so thank you guys so no no thank you guys because it just i'm just saying this is where it goes so if you want keep doing it so if you want if you want to go to colt yeah you're actually because you know then if you think about it you're in a weird way you're you're doing something nice because you're getting a gift for me which i feel very grateful for and thankful and then it goes to colt which he feels grateful for as well so you're actually double whammy you are but

He loves Johnny Walker Blue. No, I do not. I do not. I drink and collect

Bourbon. Bourbon. Okay. Big difference. Not Canadian. It's like if you go into my office right now, I got Japanese whiskey, the best you can buy. I've got Canadian whiskey, the best you can get. What's wrong with Canadians and Japanese, John? Okay. See, now you're turning this on me, which is terrible. We got a Canadian in now, so I'll take to his fail. And again, this is not because I am ungracious. It is simply because I feel horrible. Like I feel like I shunned.

I should smoke the cigar and I should drink the Scotch. Be a man. That's why, because everybody assumes you're a man. That's what men do, John. Smoke cigars and drink Scotch and talk about girls from back in the day. We're just men. Colt is 100% right here. We assume you're a man, John. Colt, I think we found your... Before we get back to Born to Win, I think we found your topic for the day. Can we talk about...

What would be the best smelling candles that they don't make? I'm going to go with my top three, and I want your top three from each of you. I'm going to say cigar sandals. Oh, my God. They make bacon. Remember when bacon was everything was ironically bacon? Candles they don't make, but should. I'll tell you something off camera about bacon. Okay.

I'm going to say cigar stuff that doesn't stick to the walls, right? Humidor smoke? I am trying to get away from cigar smoke. No, cigars do. There are candles and smells, right? Okay, let's back up. Number one. I'm pretty sure they have candles that smell like everything. No. My number one, pasta water. You know when you make pasta, that water smell? It's amazing. It's amazing. Give me two more lifetimes and I wouldn't have guessed that. Pasta water.

Cigars smell amazing. Thanks. Who gave us these cigars? Well, I think I think a better thing is not candles. They don't make, I think it's odd smells that you love. I think is what it is. I'll tell you one of my favorite smells in the world is.

is no it's it's chinese plastic beads and what i mean by that is when i i know i love the smell of mardi gras beads because it reminds me of being at mardi gras when i'm cleaning up yeah it is memory inducing stuff you know it's interesting i actually have these in my desk and here's a little fun trip for you here's a fun tip for you kiddos um

You can anchor positive feelings with confidence, with love, with happiness, with whatever it is through smell easier than just about any other, any other senses. I think it's number one. I have, I have in my, in my office desk, I'll try to find it, put the link up. I'll put the link up in the bottom of the podcast where you're watching, or if you're on YouTube watching, I'll put it there. But I have these little sticks that have distinct smells. And what you do is you,

You basically project yourself into a place of, it's like a little mental, like a personal hypnosis deal you have to do. And you just kind of project yourself into like a great place. Like one of them smells like fresh cut grass, which who doesn't have great memories of that? Like going to the golf course as a kid. And literally you just bust this thing out and you just smell it and it will put you in whatever state that you have kind of programmed yourself to do. But I'm a huge, I'm a huge fan of that. I went and hugged my dog the other day. She was having a nap.

I went to give her a hug, and she had that dog smell, but not like bad dog smell, just a warm, comforting dog smell. And I immediately transported back to being eight with my grandpa's dog. Yeah. And like playing cards in their house in a different city, different country. It's crazy how quickly you transport you. Immediately transported. I'm like, I'd never noticed that my dog gave me the smell memory of my grandpa's dog. 100%. 100%. You know what candle we could make a million dollars, what we could make millions of dollars with?

If you could make a candle that smelled like a baby's head. Belle Delphine. You know how many women would buy that? No, no, no. Think about it. No, because my wife loves to smell a baby. The smell of that, it's a mixture of the baby whatever. It's a baby powder. Whatever. Yeah, it's just you make a baby head candle. It's a baby. Hold on.

And you can make it in your head? It's made of wax. Yeah, wax. It's not actually a baby's head. No, it's not a real baby's head, but it's, yeah, it's a wax. But I think if you did that on a contest. I know a big candle maker. We could probably make that happen. Yeah, just to smell like. Oh, her house smelled amazing. Yeah, baby smell. Baby smell candle. My wife would love that. My wife, every time we see a baby somewhere, like a real small baby, she's like. She just walks over and smells it. I want to go smell that baby. Pretty creepy.

Look, if you're broke and you got a newborn, you could go to the mall and be like, smell my baby for 10 bucks and you could probably make rent. You probably could. Baby camels. Just letting your baby. Yeah. You know what's so funny is I was cleaning out my room at my mom's house going through stuff and I found an old

cologne there and i sprayed it i'm like oh it took me back to high school yeah yeah did i ever talk about my my my how much you hate you oh no no no no better so we're out in dallas one night this is years ago we're out in dallas and we wind up

going to a club in Dallas. And one of the guys we were with is in the bathroom with stalled. He's using, he's using the urinal, right? So I look over the, there's always the bathroom. No, I didn't smell it. No, I didn't smell it. But there's always the bathroom guys sitting there and I look over, I see a bottle of you, right? So I grabbed the you and he's saying the URL. And I think I sprayed it like 20 times. I covered him in. No, but here comes the God smack. You're ready. Cause here comes the God smack. Cause again, this is years ago.

Daddy, I had a little bit too much to drinky, right? A little too many cocktails going down to me. So we get in the cab to take us back to the, to the, there was like six of us in a van. And it's like one of those things where like the heater was on about eight degrees too high in the cabin. You're just like, just roll down the window. And here comes. Yeah. So it actually made me see my God smack.

There you go. There you go. My own joke. God smacked me in the face. What is three things about you people would be surprised by? Like the smell thing remind me of this. And then people come up and they're like, you're funny. Is this your official hijack right here? You want me to hijack? Let's do it. I'm hijacking, but I need your, I want, I want to know. I'm curious. What are top three things people would be surprised?

If they've met you or they know you, they'd be surprised about. I'm an absolute fangirl of Sex and the City.

What? Yeah, watched every single one. Loved the show, not the movie. I watched the movie. You're a hand girl with sex in the sand. All right, that's number one. Because it gave me these positive memories. It was like something my sister and I connected on years ago. Oh, okay. It was just one of those things. And it was my first time when I was, and I'd moved out, and you're kind of trying to figure out how the world works, and you see people doing different stuff. I don't know, it just gave me kind of a warmth. Yeah, I get it. It was like a warmth to the show. Oh, yeah. That's warm. That's something I wouldn't, and I do hot yoga.

Hot yoga. Good to see you doing hot yoga. See, I'm not surprised by that. All spandex, I'm sure. No. I'm not surprised. I go gorilla style with it. Nice. What's your third thing? Shit, about myself, I wouldn't, I don't know. What about you? You got three things? Three things that people wouldn't know. That people wouldn't know about me? I'm kind of an open book. I'm pretty open book, otherwise.

Let's see all this with all this confidence that I sort of ooze. I was absolutely tortured as a kid when I was in like, Oh yeah. Eighth grade. I mean, chased around school by bullies, ostracized, like the whole thing, like tortured. Were you the big kid? No, no, no, no, no. I was the mouthy kid. And, uh, and, and, you know, again, God smack. I kind of, I kind of deserved it, but you know, so all my friends decided to pick on this one kid in school. And so I chimed in on it and he was like, Oh really you? And I was like, me?

And then, yeah. And then it turned like everybody turning on me. So I kind of had it coming, I guess. But yeah, I've completely ostracized for about a whole year through eighth grade. There's one of them. So yeah. So yeah, it has always been sunshine and rainbows there, kids. Yeah, I always think that. I'm like, people are shocked. Like for me, I love flowers.

To get flowers? Just to get them. Flowers. Not to get them. I mean, if someone wants to buy them, sure, I'll take them. But, like, just flowers. I could sit out and just stare at flowers all day long and smell them. I love flowers. You love flowers. I think that's wonderful.

Huge Nora Jones fan. I love Nora Jones. I don't know what else would be surprising. I love weddings. Weddings? You love weddings. I don't know what else, but yeah, that was just shocking because I've had people come up and they're like, they get to see a different side of us on this podcast and it just shocks people like, hey, you're not an asshole all the time. No, I just don't know there's anything about me that people be like, oh my God, I can't believe that. Like, that's shocking. That's why I'm trying to think about it.

No, there's no spiky face, but I'm literally sitting here trying to think, and I'm like, there's nothing that I can think of that would be like disaster. It would be like, oh, my God, I can't believe that. Well, no, not disaster. I think people just have a – like I said, I mean, people – multiple. I mean, three or four people have come up and like, you're funnier than what I would think because you're an asshole in business type of deal, I think. So I think people are just assumption of us that –

There's things that, I don't know, like to me, just weird. Johansson told me to go fuck myself one time. Did she? Did she really? She's a hot girl. I got a lot of those kinds of stories. Yeah. I don't think anybody wouldn't believe that. No. No, that's not not. I could see Scarlett telling him to go F off. Yeah.

But back to the candles. Let's get that baby head. Let's get that baby head candle. Colton, I'm going to tell you, that was not your best hijack. No, I was intrigued. That's not a light question. You asked me what's better, a Fig Newton, what's my favorite Oreo. I can tell you that. I was just curious. You want me to go real deep? No.

No, no, no, no, no. Bagels. You want cheddar cheese or cream cheese? Oh, um, cream cheese on a bagel. No cheddar all day long. Get back to the book. Back to the book. Back to the book. We're talking, we're talking about how to born to win by Zig Ziglar today. And this, in this, we've talked about a lot, which is this, which is if you're not, you know, it basically says when you've got a strong enough, why you can always find the how, uh,

you got to drill down and figure out why you're doing something before. And if it doesn't make sense to you why you're doing it, you're probably A, not going to be good at it, B, not stick with it very long, or C, put much heart into it.

So you better be able to attach a tangible why to what you're doing instead of just going on, which is why a lot of times with real estate, again, we keep bringing it back to that today. But we know when I coach my agents that work for me, I don't just put a dollar figure. Like if you put a dollar figure, it's empty, $25,000, $35,000, $40,000, $50,000, whatever it is in a quarter. It's an empty number, but you need to attach it to something that's going to happen because you get that money.

I can pay my kids tuition. I can buy a rental property. I can put money away and get a new car. I can get out of debt. I can do these things. And when you attach real tangible things to these, to these, these goals and real wise that are drilled down to you at a human, in a human nature, it really, really works. You know, I think not enough people take the time to drill things down to their core of what they are. And I'll give you a great example of this yesterday. So my daughter Roma is quite possibly the messiest human on the planet.

I don't know where she got it. Disagree. Because I'm not messy. I'm not that messy. And she just, I mean, literally just leaves stuff everywhere. Like, I mean, open a bottle, leave it there. If I open a package of like- It goes on the floor. It's everywhere. It's everywhere. But hang on. So we have been telling Roma for the last probably three months, babe, you're the messiest kid. Like you've got, you're too old for this. You've got to start cleaning up after yourself. And I really thought about what it was to be-

messy the other day. And shockingly enough, it's very similar to what it means to be late all the time. So I shifted the conversation from you are very, very messy to you are incredibly inconsiderate. Yeah.

You are being incredibly inconsiderate of everyone around you just expecting them to clean up after you. And that, you know, messy, whatever, dad, I'm not that messy. No, no, you're being really inconsiderate. And when you do that, it's showing a lack of respect and a lack of love to your mother in particular. And it was like, whoa. Like if you are someone that is late all the time, you're just not casually late. It's not funny. You're a dick. You have no concept of other people's times.

You think you're more important than they are. People remember that. You might not remember that you are late to meet clients or whatever. They remember that. And people that know the value of their time, which are the people you want to do business with, where you should be in that person, is they don't forget that. You can show up once late and they'll be, eh.

Twice, three times, they're done with you. Remember this, too. I told you at the beginning of the broadcast today that I said I'm pretty good at identifying traits of narcissism. One of the number one traits is people that are always late. If you are consistently late, that means you value your time over the time of everybody else on the planet. And I'm talking to you, doctors. Yeah. Yeah.

i went off on the doctor once and he put me in it was a probably worst time to go off on a doctor i'm like i've been here for an hour and a half i got to do you think your time's more valuable than mine blah blah blah he's like sorry the lady next door is still born death blah blah blah i'm like oh okay that is you know yeah i was like no no no they are like me and loris

When you're managing other people's problems, you can't predict things. If it's one of those things where I have meetings from 9 to 12. Let me back up. Let me back up. I normally try to book doctor's appointments first thing in the morning. What is your first appointment? So I'm sitting in a room for 25 minutes, and it's your first appointment? Yeah.

That's on you. And that happens a lot. Yeah. And that's not okay. I get it. I get it when you get somebody that comes in the office and they want more attention, you got to spend 25, 30 minutes and just backs the whole system up. I understand that. But when you're late for your first appointment, that's a good point. Yeah. That's the, that's the one I'm, that's the one I'm griping about. First flights out in the morning. Yeah. So no one gets backed up on those two. Yeah. That's the one I'm griping about. Well,

Man was designed for accomplishment engineered for success and endowed with the seeds of greatness. Sure I mean, I think yeah, this is Zig Ziglar's belief that you were born to win man You were actually you know, you are you have all the tools in the world I mean, what is it? How many sperms are there? What do you want in how many? Ten million or something dude, you made it you made you woke up today. You made it one in ten million eighteen hundred million or something Yeah, whatever it is, but you you want it you be you have beat the longest odds you will ever face. I

I'm trying to think of that lyric from a Deftones song. Have you seen the memes where it's like, got three sperms, one's a cancer doctor, one's this, and that's like me. There's you. You're worthless shit. Yeah, good job. Good job, buddy. But to your point, I like some of the rah-rah that a lot of these books promote because they're there for the individual reader who's reading them. And it's like, yeah, you have all the tools to win, but...

I think sometimes people don't have their priorities right to even know what winning looks like. I want to win. I want a Ferrari. Well, it's not necessarily winning. Ferrari is not winning. It's like you said, it's the poor man. Yeah. Doesn't have enough as opposed to having, you know, poor man wants rich man wants for once for nothing. Right. It's just, if you're, if you're somebody that's see success as having a loving family and you're that very kind to them and nice to them and you have an, I love you household and all that stuff, you know,

You're winning. Well, you know, and it's the same. Success is different for everyone. Like I have a partner currently in one of the businesses. The dude is a machine. He works seven days a week, constantly working, working, working. I'm not going to do that because to me –

That's not success. Success is spending time with my family and my kids. That's what it is. I only got them until they're 18. 90% of the time you spend with your children is before they're 18 years old. And then you're going to get sporadically the rest of your life and less and less and less and less until they come to your funeral. And I want to enjoy every day, every minute that I can with those kids.

Kids that you know they're determined to make my life more difficult on a daily basis by doing But that's like and to me that success is being able to do that You know that's what it is to me Isn't it funny when you think about that if you think about the logic of having kids right? You can't find to me much much logic in the process, right? It's one of the most expensive part-time jobs. You can never have oh, yeah, it is

one of those things where you just worry. You spend the rest of your life after having a kid worrying and stressing out and living for them and blah, blah, blah. And then they're out of the house and it's gone. And it's like, what is the tangible net benefit? Well, you're trying to see your genetic. Well, no, no. It's like hiring somebody to do a job.

In 40 years and you just pay for you pay them up front and be like come back in 40 years and take care of me do the job and you hope it happens and it doesn't but essentially that's what you're doing. You can have everything in life you want if you're just willing to help enough other people get what they want. Again back to connecting the dots I think that's it. Opportunity is walking through your life every day in the form of people you meet. Man how true is that?

You know, don't be afraid. I think this is, and especially in some of the circles that I started running in, and this is what I'm going to teach you a great lesson today. Here's what it is. As you level up in life and you surround yourself with different people, right? You are probably, you may be at, you may be at like, we'll just call it level four where people are starting to get up on the come up and they're starting to work. They're starting to get forward. Everybody on level four is faking it till they make it.

And they don't want anybody else on level four to know they have any problems. They don't want to let it up. By the time you get up to level nine or 10, the people that are up there, as soon as you talk to them in a course of conversation, they're going to say, this is what I need help with.

What do you need help with? And they'll just tell you because they're done fronting. They're done trying to impress anybody. They don't give a shit. They understand that there is a fast lane to success and it's through other people. You make connections with people that can help you. You can't help others. Now, again, it's like we talked about before. It's like a bank account. You can't just always make withdrawals. You got to make some deposits with these people. But again, case in point, sitting at my buddy Josh's house this weekend in Newport, and I'm like,

talking about something I got going on. He's like, what challenges are you having? And I'm like, this is what I need. Apparently revolving mezzanine line deck. And he literally sitting there over my kids making s'mores. He makes two people and I've assumed today and that's well on its way to getting done. He didn't have to do that, but he did it for me and it's the same thing. I would do anything I can do to help him. But when you get to those higher levels, people discuss problems because they understand somebody else probably has the answer.

Yeah. Well, and I think at that level, you are at that level because somebody helped you along that way. So I think you are obligated. But the point of it wasn't wait till you get to that level to act that way. The point is act that way now. Act that way now and you'll get to the level eight much, much faster. Because, dude, if I look back at my life, how much time I spent pretending to be something bigger than I was, it's ridiculous. I mean, dude, I could have got to where I am now 10 years ago.

If I just would have got out of my own way and quit acting the part and just started asking for help. Yeah. 10 easily 10 years. So yeah. Yeah. Very interesting. There you go. All right. Practice is simply preparation for success, which I agree. Um, if you're in sales, you know, I, you know, I'm going to spin off today, give you a little tidbit that I don't even know if I've given this on the show before. Maybe I have, because one of my standards, but I'm in the car today driving to the other side of town to a meeting and I get a phone call. Hello, this is John.

Hey, John, this is blah, blah, blah from blah, blah, blah. How you doing today? I hang up that call. Okay. I'm over it. So I said to the guy, I know you're a telemarketer. I'm not interested. What? Now here's the deal.

This is how your brain works, in case you didn't know this. Your brain is eliminating things out of the daily, your brain in its pure reptilian state is designed to keep you alive. That's really all it's designed to do. - We're teleological. - Yes, that's it. So basically your brain goes, your brain just goes, okay, the blender that's sitting on the counter, not gonna kill me, don't have to worry about the blender.

The ceiling above my head, not going to fall in on me because I've seen it not falling enough. And I haven't heard anything to make me change that. No, I haven't heard anything, so I'm not even going to think of it. So you don't even think about the ceiling. Right. So your brain is looking for ways to categorize things that you don't have to think about at all. Right. It's just looking to categorize. For example. The minute you say. Yeah. No, for example. How are you doing today? Hang on. But when you go to a clothing store, when you go to a clothing store, right, and you see the person coming towards you, salesperson, what are they going to say to you, Colt? How can I help you today? Yeah.

Can I help you find something? Blah, blah, blah. And if you know what you're looking for, you don't want to deal with them, are you already just waiting for them to shut up before you can say, nah, I'm good? I meet them at the pass and say, I'm just browsing. I'm not, whatever. Yeah, I'm good. I don't want you to come near me. I'm good. Right. But you see them coming and your brain has already programmed you to the point where you know exactly how this interaction is going to go. Right? I already know. I'm getting mad right now thinking about all these little things. Right. Just thinking about it. Just thinking about it. Right? So-

If you are working on the phone, as most realtors do, because we have to call leads, and you do the... It doesn't matter what you say on the front end. If you end it with...

How you doing today? That is every telemarketing script from the police benevolent association to an insurance salesman, to the solar people, to everybody in the world. How you doing today? So whoever you're talking to immediately characterizes you as somebody they don't want to talk to. I end that call now. Yeah, totally. It took me years to get up to confidence in the people pleasing this. I'm a bit of a people pleaser in my soul. Okay. It's that Canadian in me.

The minute I hear that now, I am quicker than...

fucking shotgun Willie like a quick drama girl you're doing you're doing you're doing them a favor by hanging up on what I do is what I do is tell them how terrible their pitch is I'm like bro as soon as you said how you doing today and that down tick and it's always it's the same temper the same tempo how you doing today I'm like I know you were telling market I was done with you before you even open your mouth doesn't matter what you're selling you can call me tell me you're gonna give me a million dollars I wouldn't even hurt it I've already hung up the yes because my brain is categorized so if you are someone that sells via the phone

When you, when is the last time, like, for example, again, when's the last time you called one of your friends and said, Hey, Chris, it's John. How are you doing today? Never. When I call you, I'm like, yo, what's up? Hey, what's happening? I mean, whatever. When you call somebody on the phone, build familiarity, put them in a positive state to receive whatever you're saying by talking to them in a way that their friends would talk to them.

Don't talk to them like a salesman because you're going to lose them. So that's my little tidbit for that. Did the police people call you at like 7.30 in the morning? Yeah, when did that become okay? It's like 7.30 in the morning. It's always a police fund. And I'm like, you guys. I always say I'm on a federal do not call list. I'm on the federal do not call list. Oh, I'm sorry. Thank you. And they're done. I don't do that. I hang up on them. But the point here, the rules of the slide. So what is your kind of, to get on that, build something constructive.

If I call you and I want to sell you whatever bullshit, I don't know. What am I selling you? Huh? It doesn't matter. Widgets. Call it widgets. We'll go right for business school. Widgets. You're selling me. Yeah. You would have to have something, you know, Hey John, what's going on? Um,

Do you have any interest in buying these fucking widgets I have? Like literally like I'm not. Okay, I have two techniques for that that I would say. Number one is build familiarity by talking to them like a friend, which is, you know, hey, I'd be like when you answered. Hey, dipshit. No, I'd be like Chris. Hey, it's John. What's happening, man?

And you're like, so now instead of thinking salesman, you're thinking that. You're thinking that. Who is this person? But now what are you subconsciously going to do to figure out where I go in the filing cabinet? You're going to listen intently to me to figure out who I am. Right? Now the second thing I would do is I call it a double question because it makes them skip a beat.

You know, it's like, Hey, it's John. I just saw your website is we're surfing for properties. I'm just calling to see what, you know, what we can do to help with your home search. What are you looking for in a home? Like I don't even give them a chance to respond and I damn sure don't waste their time asking how they are. How's the weather? What was go? I'm going to skip their brain by telling them who I am, why I'm calling. And then I'm going to ask them a question that does not end with yes or no. Yep.

And a damn sure is not, what can I do to help you? Because then it's like, oh, nothing I got. I'm just browsing. I'm done. I want to know what you're looking for in a home. I go right to that. Bang, bang, bang. Because now it's like, and it skips their brain. Because again, most times, if you use that technique, they're waiting for you to stop so they can tell you, I don't need any help. I was just browsing. But you're asking them a question that they cannot answer in that fashion.

Yeah, so for real estate, I think there's particular ones because you can be useful and people don't always need a home. They could be investors or whatever, right? So if you were to say, hey, did you check out this property on this? Like if you have something, right? Like can you have a little bit of a value add? It's all about familiarity. It's all about familiarity. I saw you were looking at this thing. Did you get a chance to look at this other one?

Yeah. Whatever. Something. Oh, I didn't do... Oh, is that a good deal? Something. You always have to have value add. If you don't have any sort of value add, if you're not bringing anything to the table, you're not... I mean, you can close deals, but, you know...

In real estate, some of the best thing is calling and just creating a database with them and, you know, how can I help you, that kind of stuff, and then go to the store. You know, it might be a year, but I know a guy, he made $300,000 his first probably 18 months, first year, did nothing but just create a database of value adding for him. And then in that six months is when he made $300,000. Yeah. Well, I mean, it gets back. People don't do that. The card we were reading was practice is simply preparation for success. Yeah.

If you are in any type of sales business, you should be running your scripts. You should have a written script. Now, again, I don't like A to Z scripts. I like, you know, we teach people here. It's like I teach them an A to Z script is checkers. We teach chess and every piece has a place. And this is when you play that piece. Right.

But you play 100% how you practice. If you don't bother to practice and you play like shit, you can't come up with anything, you should not be surprised. So if you are not in a team environment, find yourself in any type of sales agency, find an accountability partner.

And if you don't have an accountability, an accountability partner, at least do this. Call your voicemail every single day and read your script as fast as you can into your voicemail. Cause then at least you will internalize it. Cause the worst thing you can do is sound like you're reading something. Yeah. The worst thing you can do. Or say, hello, how are you today? Hello. How are you doing today? Yeah. How are you doing today? If anybody, yeah. If you hear this and you're still saying, how are you doing after this? I literally hate you and I don't want you to ever call me again. You're done. You're done.

Next card, winners expect to win. They expect victory and they expect success. Again, if you don't believe in yourself, why is anybody else going to believe in you? It's just not going to happen. Demand it of yourself. Demand that of yourself. Not for yourself, of yourself. Of yourself. If you don't believe in yourself, Jesus, you're in the wrong business of anything. No kidding. Encouragement and hope are the two most powerful qualities that any person can provide to others.

I love this because we just did our awards for Simply Vegas. And a big part of those awards are what we call the brand awards. It's our top 10 agents in the company. Yeah, I noticed I didn't win one. Yeah, you didn't win one. And it's the top agents. And the reason we call them the brand awards is because these people are running such huge businesses and doing so many deals that they really are the brand. They are a representation of the brand out in the marketplace. And I kind of read the same speech that I wrote every year for it. And a big part of it and the part that –

resonates and to me is, you know, as they are, you know, creating new paths, they're reaching back to pull others forward. And I think that with all of your success, if you're not doing something for somebody else, the success becomes hollow very quickly. I think so. People ask me why I still have a team. You know, why do you still have a real estate team? 15, you own the brokerage, you own this, you own that. Why do you still have a team? Because genuinely the team is where I find the most joy.

Taking these people and seeing my people from my team win awards the other night was amazing. It was so great. I take so much joy from that. And not only that, but just people that – so many people that got awards were on my team at one point or another. Well, it's funny because there's two or three people like you in our company. And it was funny. Another guy, Gorton, sitting back, like he got top three, whatever. I don't know what he was, but he was more proud of his team. Yeah. He was there for his team as a cheerleader, and that's awesome to see. Of course. I mean, you –

And that's it. Telling somebody, hey, you look good. Have you seen those stupid YouTubers just go by and say, oh, yeah.

Driving down the street you look amazing nice hat whatever you Make that make somebody's day the guy that did the like the muscle head dudes are leaning his car guys Excuse me guys save some chicks But it is like you make somebody's day, you know Just by do that to your clients and you'll have a client for life don't be doing here's the other thing though genuine

truly the eddie haskell syndrome lovely hat mrs cleaver right now the millennials are like who the hell is that what's he talking about i hate that i hate that fake oh look at you you look so good blah blah blah and it's no i hate that too it's this syrupy ingratiation thing like john john came in today chris looking good in that blue i like that blue today buddy that's that's sharp in the

blue. He means that, right? Like if you mean that, that means a lot from something. When John says, Colt, what the hell's with that shirt? That's stupid. I'm like, oh, thanks, John. Well, the best, the best, the best was as, you know, as, as boys will be boys as they do. Like we have text groups and everybody gets stuff. One of our guys sent a text group, the GQ article on, uh, on

on how to shorn your testicles, we'll call it, is what it was. And then Colt's response to it was, wow, warm shower, I would have thought cold. And my response was, dude, do not put a vet's purse in the shower because I know she's where she keeps those things. Such a dick. I know that's where she keeps them. But wouldn't you have thought cold showers? I don't know.

Are we going to go there? No, we're not going there. You had your chance. I'm sorry. I'm coming with the high. I'm hijacking 30 minutes next week. We're going to end the show because I think this little tidbit was the most important one that I saw. No, here it is. Ready? This is it. This is if you take nothing else away from this on how to win. Here it is. You ready? Winning isn't everything, but wanting to win is.

So I have a kid that just doesn't have a huge amount of competitiveness in her genetics, in her DNA. I don't know where it comes from because I would shoot through concrete and I'll lose. I don't like to lose. But she just doesn't have it. You can't.

you almost i don't know do you think that that's a just a do you think it's a learnable well it is a learnable trait to be competitive through sports we talked about this it's manufactured adversity because she's never got to worry about beginning eating bipolar bear right or having to hunt with a spear she's in sports she plays basketball and volleyball but i think even at that it's still not i think some people are just going to have that just maybe maybe

she'll find something in life that she does want to, right? Like if you don't... Maybe it's just not her thing. But it's just there are people though where your natural standing...

Blood pressure rate is lower than others. There are type B personalities. Oh, yeah. Do you know the difference between type A and B? People always kind of don't understand how that works. But type A and B is differentiated by locus of control. So a type A person feels a very internalized locus of control. I am in the center of my destiny. I control my destiny. Yes.

And it's not narcissism. It's just where does the control. Everything that happens in this world is from my control perspective. My decisions equal my future. Type B is this world is happening to me. Yeah, no, no. And so type A and B is a huge kind of figure out which one you are and how to work with that. Again, I think if you're not where you want to be, I mean, ask yourself, do you really want to be where you think you want to go? Right. Yeah.

Because I really don't want a six-pack. Everybody wants six-pack abs. We all know what it takes to get there. Do we really want to get where we are? It's seven-minute abs. Seven-minute abs.

No, man. Remember the Thighmaster? Thighmaster. Oh, man. Well, guys, as always, if you like what we do, make sure you like, subscribe, give us a little review. But if you like what we do, tell a friend. Have them listen as well. Join our army of over 10,000 subscribers now. But if you hate what we did, man, tell two friends because it doesn't matter if you're talking good or mad. What is it, Colt? As long as they're talking about you. As long as they're talking about you. Except for Tom Hanks. I'll see you next time. Except for Tom Hanks.

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 where we'll share any links that we've 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.