The Best Way to Recession Proof Your Finances EP 49
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From the art of the deal to keeping it real. Keeping it real. Live from the Simply Vegas studios, it's The Power Move with Jon Gafford. Back again. Literally, literally back again for the reunion tour 2022. The hiatus is over. The hiatus is over. Man, I got both.

I got Colt and Chris back in the studio with me today, which is amazing. So, hey, you know, my name's John Gafford. I am your host. Thanks for joining us today on The Power Move. With me, not, I say you stay with me as always, but it's not as always. Now it's almost like a special treat when everybody's here. So directed my left, as always, Colt.

the Bulgarian mongoose Amadan. Back at it again. Next time, don't do a podcast after a morning of drinking and golf. Yes. That was a bad move. Dude, it had to get done, man. It had to get done. And let's face it, could the podcast have been any zanier last week if you were on it? No. I don't think...

I wish I was there. Yeah, dude, I miss you guys always when you're not here. But halfway through that thing, I was like, holy shnikes. Am I glad that Chris and Colt are not here? Because this would just be getting my sober perspective. And speaking of Chris, back from his extended tour of Scandinavia and the subcontinent, or wherever the hell you were this time, the counselor Chris Connell back in the driver's seat to my car.

Nice to see you, gentlemen. So first of all, man, let's break into you. How in the world was scaling the three tallest peaks in the UK? So this is a good lesson for the Power Move. Preparedness is key. We went and we did the tallest one. Scheduling, we couldn't make all three as a part of the trifecta, but we did the tallest mountain in the UK.

How tall is that? So it's a 4,400 foot elevation gain. It took 11 hours. Now, it doesn't maybe sound like as much as it really is, but it was through about 12 different climate changes. It was snow and ice in Scotland in May. It's

cold and it wasn't fun and I immediately regretted it as soon as I was up there. Just were you not prepared clothing wise? So thankfully I had enough but I didn't

I don't want to get into the details, the specifics of mountain climbing, but you have to have certain gear. I underestimated it, which meant I wore some cotton, and that cotton got soaked immediately. So there's a little chafing going on. Just chilled for the whole time. Chilled to the bone. Yeah, so it was a lot more difficult than I thought. Let's just put it that way. But we've climbed the tallest mountain in Ireland, North Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England. So I'm basically the new king. That's it. See?

Did you happen to stop by and see my plot in Scotland that I'm Lord of? That you are Lord of. Did you happen to see that? No, I waved at both of ours for myself from the top of the Scottish Highlands. You waved from the top of the Highlands, and that was the extent of it. For Lord John Gafford. So what you're telling me is you couldn't make it last week because you're off climbing mountains in the UK. Colt, you were just too tired after golf. Yeah, too much drinking. You want to talk about Colt?

Like 60 degrees playing golf. It was cold. Was it cold? Yeah. For those of you that don't live in Las Vegas, you have to understand the weather here turns on a dime. I mean, it was like... A hundred a couple days before. No, it was in the 40s. Really? It was cold, man. It was really cold. And then you had like 60 mile an hour gusts. Yeah. Yeah.

It was. You guys play at Legacy? Yeah. Yeah, we played at Legacy. Trying to get the awesome one. Didn't come close. Yeah, so I get out there and they're like, okay, let's drive the car out to the hole. I'm in an Aston Martin Vantage.

Like brand new. I saw that. Like driving it through the dirt. Just off-roading. Touch off course? I'm like, oh, dude. He's like, just follow me. It'll be fine. I'm like, bro, no, it really won't. So was that Nick's? Yeah, it was Nick's. Nick Dosa at Vegas Auto Gallery. There's his weekly plug, I guess. Yeah, I know, right? He was nice enough to give that to us. Nobody want it? Hey, Nick, add me on Facebook, bro. Just kidding, though. Don't. I canceled my friend request. Oh, that's right. Oh, did you cancel? Good for you. Yeah, Nick, if you could. Yeah, he's receiving. Yeah.

Connell has officially rescinded his request to you, Nick. You can't be friends anymore. He's over. And Chili's is still bullshit. Yeah. Yeah. You know, yeah. Fucking Chili's. You know, I really didn't. It wasn't because of drinking and golf. A homeless person broke into one of my properties. So I was dealing with that. That's what it was. You were on Boulder Highway. That's what it was. Boulder Highway. What do you guys think of golf as a business tool? I know a lot of people feel very fondly of it.

You get four hours one-on-one with somebody, that's never a bad thing, right? Whether it's cigars, drinks, mountain climbing, you know what I mean? Four hours of one-on-one with people. But I think it's the worst of you, though. Yeah. I mean, do I really want a prospective client to hear me go, whoop?

Do I really want that out there? Yeah. I don't know. It shows your true character, right? Yeah. Which is not a bad thing. Let's face it. A lot of our true character, you probably want to keep it deep and dark and pressed down. I'm asking on a professional level. Yeah. I think it's not what it used to be back in the 90s, early 2000s, right? I think the problem with golf is it just takes too long. I mean, it's just too long, man. Yeah.

And it's like, and I think the nine hole hook has it. But I think it hasn't quite caught on because I think it's like, I think we're not quite there yet in the site. Like, we won't play golf. Oh, we're just going to play nine. You're going to play nine? Yeah, people think that's a waste of time, but to me, it's two hours. Yeah, it's perfect. And you can grab drinks after, do all the fun social things of golf, right? So we played at the Las Vegas Country Club. We played three days, and I actually saw...

The Bulgarian mongoose in his natural habitat. I was so confused because Chris was texting me, like being really precise about real questions. I know, he's like, dude, nice orange thong. What are you talking about? He was sitting there asking me about like where I live exactly. And I'm like right here about this. And it started with the monorail. So I was like, this, he's like,

That's a fucking far walk. And he's just going off. I'm like, what? I finally, what did I say to you? Something like, dude, you're getting real personal. Like what's going on? He goes, I'm playing your course. I'm like, you should start off. I just want to come by and jump in your back. John came by. Oh, John rode the monorail. I did ride the monorail. So Colt, I feel was a little deceptive about the monorail thing. He drives to the monorail. Yeah, he does.

He was talking like, hey, let's walk over to the monorail. He has walked home at night through that neighborhood. Yeah. One time? That's enough. That's enough. So I was under this thing. So I'm driving over there to play that course. I played the member guest there. It was three days. Each round was about six hours, six and a half hours. You want to talk about too much golf? Think about this. What do you ever want to do for six hours?

Very little I don't want to sit on the beach for six hours I don't have the best dinner of my life for six hours. No very little you you better be asleep for sleep I'm not there when it's happening. Well, you know what else I want to find Emirates for six hours. I find I'm rich for six hours. Okay, I

Take that back. There you go. One. I got one thing. I'll take 16 hours, Emirates. I'll take 16 hours, Emirates. What? Do you think the monorail stopped in my neighborhood? No, no, no. I just thought that I didn't know. We thought you lived in a tent underneath the monorail. I thought the neighborhood was situated in a way where you were a close walk. It is close. No.

It's not. I disagree. When it's 110 degrees out, you're not walking. You're not walking that. I know. But I don't need to at 110. I drive where I need to get to. No. So I was just like I said. I thought we were all going to go park over there, walk over for the football draft. No. No, we went to a space. Wasn't that amazing? No, dude, it was actually super handy. Then you drove over to it. Yeah, we drove to it. But it was super handy. It was super handy. Well, today on the Power Move, I want to talk about some stuff. I mean, obviously, we can sit here and talk about nonsense for as long as we want, but what

What I really want to talk about is...

You know, we go over a lot of books and stuff. We talk about a lot of other people's perspective on things. But today I wanted to kind of talk about my perspective on some stuff, which is all you got to do is turn on the TV, open a newspaper, if that is even such a thing anymore. It's not. Click on your phone, whatever it might be. It's a figure of speech, I guess. I'm starting to sound like... I just read Chuck Klosterman's book called The 90s. Yeah. You know, Chuck Klosterman is an essayist. He wrote Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs. He's one of the most...

kind of sardonic. He's such a funny writer. He's brilliant. He does a thing about why baseball is infinitely more American than soccer. Like it's just all these things that he's really, he wrote for ESPN and Rolling Stone and he's a very prolific writer, but he has these essays on things.

So he wrote this book of essays about the 90s. Literally goes over the entirety of the 90s. It was pretty awesome. I would actually like to read that. Yeah, and so the capstone of the book, the last statement, and you would love it, it's really brilliant, was talk about how at the advent, right before the Twin Towers fell, so he said his argument is that 9-11 ended the 90s. Right, just the idea of what the 90s were. You know, Y2K and then the Twin Towers coming down. From that point,

All newspapers kind of ran the same articles. Everything became electronic. It went from 55 million subscribers to actual physical newspapers to less than half of that within a couple of years. No time. So nobody reads the newspaper anymore. But the point being is this, wherever you get your information, you know, beam to you from some other planet as cold probably does osmosis, whatever it is, people are saying the economy's, you know, not doing well. Recession is coming, you know, lean times are coming, maybe time to tighten the belt and do those things. And, um,

What makes any successful corporation successful in the long run is they prepare for good times, prepare for good times and bad times. And I think not enough individuals do it. I mean, there's it seems like a lot of people don't realize that, you know, Godzilla is going to tear up Tokyo until he's outside their door breathing fire through it. So what we're going to try to do is, you know, while Godzilla might be out in the harbor bubbling a little bit, this is when you maybe go, maybe I should make some changes to to protect myself. So I want to talk about some stuff that we do here within our corporations.

that, you know, translate really to you and that you can absolutely use to prepare yourselves for whatever the, whatever the oncoming, you know, rainstorm will look like. Because, you know, the only thing that's sure is about things is they will change. This too shall pass. And the rain is a coming is what it is. So the first thing I would say is when we, when we look at times like this, as we analyze all of our income streams, you

For those of you who don't know, I own several companies here in Las Vegas, most of which are tied to the real estate industry, from Simply Vegas, which is a very large real estate brokerage. Actually, now, currently in Vegas, the number one and number three offices currently in the MLS we have.

which is good. And we also own Clear Title, which is a title and escrow company. And we own Streamline Home Loans, which is the number one rocket broker in all of Nevada. We have expanded these businesses over several states, nine states. And that's just kind of our core business of what we do. But all of those represent a different income stream.

So, so many times when you have different ways that you make money, and in the hustle gig economy, whatever it may be, you know, crypto bros, all this stuff, NFTs going up and down, you know, you've kind of got a little bit of money coming in from multiple places. If you are someone that only has money coming in from one place, we're going to talk about you in just a second. But if you hopefully have been smart enough to acquire more than one income stream, by whatever means it may be, I mean, if you're going to, if you're Gary Vee-ing it up at the, you know, finding stuff over at

you know, garage sales and flipping it and we know whatever you're doing, but what dude, but whatever you're doing, whatever you're doing, you know, you get paid $5,000 to go find bodies in Lake Mead. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. If your body, if your body searching in Lake Mead, now see, is that really fair? Cole? Cause like how many could you find before they start looking at you? Like this guy might know too many. I feel like this is the easiest way to catch people. They're like surgeon missing person as well as the bodies Cole found in

They're like, you know what? It's going to cost us like $20,000 to do a freaking whole thing on it. To get a guy off the street. If we get $5,000, they're turning on themselves for $5,000. That's way cheaper than the Crime Stoppers. It is, but if you have multiple income streams, and hopefully you do, you need to start analyzing those streams as far as the total pie of what they make up into your total pot.

if you will, because what I've found is, and I am a victim of this, is I tend to put energy into not necessarily my highest driving income streams. And so I make a point of what we're doing as a company to break down about every quarter. I'll stop and look at all those revenue streams, see where's my money really coming from?

Because if it's all kind of flowing into one account or flowing into one LLC, or if you're at home and you don't own a big company but it's just you, if it's all flowing into one bank account, well, you might not take time to see where this is really coming from. And you may be surprised, because the majority of your revenue may be coming from something that you didn't even realize. Now, if you are someone that has a, if you are a one-income earner, if you have a job, that's your job, you get money that comes in from that,

You know when lean times are coming I could not recommend Getting an additional source of revenue any way you can and there's a million ways to do it I mean if you just if you google side hustle on on Google like eight million things are gonna come up but essentially anything that can be done is

with a computer you can do. I'm not saying you got to get a second job where you go trade your time for money. Everybody that's listening to this, I don't care who you are, you got a skill. You know how to do something. There's something in your head that you know how to do that somebody else does not. Or that would pay you for. Yeah, that they would pay you for it. You can go onto Fiverr. You can go onto Upwork. You can go onto these sites and you can become a freelancer

That works when you want to work and accomplishes these things. You don't have to go get a second job and trade your time for money. That's a really good point. And I think people don't take inventory of their own skills and abilities. There's a lot of things that you do at your job that somebody like me, right, who's a small shop, a one-man shop or whatever, would gladly pay somebody a certain amount for, for me not to have to do it. Yeah. And I mean designing posters. I mean...

All these little tasks, right, that you may think it's not a big deal or it's not that marketable. I guarantee you just you having a bit of time and capacity is valuable to somebody. Somebody. Yeah.

That's a really good point. Like, even if you keep the books at your job, even if you do HR policy manuals, whatever you do, there's somebody that could use you on a, on an a la carte basis. Well, dude, I'll tell you, I'll tell you right now, that's a great example. What you just said, because we actually just wrote, rolled one of our companies over to a system called bamboo HR.

I get nothing for this, but it's a fully automated kind of HR system on the back end. It's really good, but you got to build it like anything else. Like they give you the, like, here's the framework and you got to plug your stuff into it to make it work. Right. So we did not do that.

So rather than try to figure it out, I just found somebody that knew bamboo and I paid them straight up consulting gig to just get it up and running. Whatever. A couple hundred bucks, thousand bucks. Yeah. No, it was a couple thousand dollars. It's real money. Yeah. And the difference is, you know, it saved me hundreds of man hours trying to get somebody to learn how to do that when I really just needed it done once. And there's a lot of things in life that you just need done once. I saw a guy, uh, he makes 200,000 a year by, uh,

going CRMs. So when you want to switch CRM and they're not linking up, data input, right? And he just sat there and he hired like a bunch of guys out of India and he charges X and then passes it on to them. And that was a good side hustle. He made his main hustle. Dude, if I needed a side hustle and I wanted to go get one right now, I created one this weekend that I guarantee I could do because I was sick on Friday. I didn't feel well.

Coming over a little everybody. It's been a crazy six. I feel like I'm sick the whole year this year. Yeah, everybody's No, I'm good. No, I'm on the tip. No, I'm on the tail end of it daughter got sick and I guess everybody got a little those sorts of our back without masks say wave your Wamba masks people weren't breathing their shitty air all over you so That's probably what it is. So so anyway, but but so I didn't come to work on Friday I stayed out of work because when I germs I stay away from people cuz thank you. I'm sick. I

And, you know, I tackled the beast, which is reprogramming my house. Cause we talked about it before where my home automation company that has, you know, all 90, whatever switches in my house decided to go out of business and just, just fall off the planet.

So I found an quote unquote easy to use solution, which was not, it was an absolute nightmare. And after about a full solid, like 12 hours of trial and error and just figuring it out, I got my house completely back up online. It works now with both, uh,

both Apple Home Assistant and Android, so I can tell Alexa or Siri. I can come over and use it. Regardless of which one of my robot slaves I'm talking to. Which wrong program you're using. Yeah, regardless which one, the house is now fully working again, which is awesome. But here's the thing. When you do something like that, like I got 12 hours invested in this, I could go set somebody else's house up the first time now.

So I guarantee you, I could jump on Craigslist right now and put like Insteon conversion. And I'm not the only idiot in town that had those switches. There's somebody that's Googling it because I know I went to Craigslist like five times trying to find somebody that could do this before I eventually said, well, I guess that someone's going to be me because I couldn't find anybody to do it. You could create the market. Yeah, I could absolutely create a market to do that. And I mean, I would have paid, if somebody told me that for $1,000,

They would have come over to my house and done this. I'd have paid it. $1,000, John? You bill your time at $80 an hour? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You're missing the point. I'm telling you. No, before I actually knew how to do it. I'm just saying I didn't know. But you would have paid $4,000 now that you knew it was going to take you 12 hours. Oh, God. If I thought it was going to be 12 hours, yeah, I'd pay $4,000. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, but I'm saying the perception of me going into it was I would have thought it had been a couple. I just didn't want to deal with it. Yeah.

So he told me for a thousand bucks because I had no concept of how hard it was actually going to be. Right. Now that you know. Now, see, again, now what I would probably do is I would probably not put a price. I would have him call and say, have you been trying to do this? And if they say yes, I'd be like, oh, it's four grand. Because I know that they're just, yeah, they're just. We call that.

Price differentiation. Yeah, exactly. They've hit a wall at this point. They're more desperate. But, you know, yeah. But that's what I would do. Because if you were to say, I'll pay you $1,000 to do it, I'd be like, okay, it better only be four hours. Yeah, but that's the point. The point is, as you learn new skills through necessity, understand there's probably other people that need those skills and you can market them. So anybody that says, I don't have anything that's not worth the side hustle, you don't. You don't.

So the next thing I would say that's important as you're doing your little analyzation of everything and preparing for the impending recession, as they're saying, is evaluate your staff.

Now, we look through and this is going to sound a little ruthless, man. This is going to sound a little cold, but there's two sides to this coin. It's true. When businesses are heading into times where they fear that it may not be as prosperous as it once was when the surf drops a little bit, if you will, you're looking for every way you can kind of cut your margins. So you're saying, okay, let's look at employee A.

Can employee A, can I get somebody else to do the same thing that employee A does for less money? Yes. So...

If you are somebody that doesn't have any employees, you do have employees. We all have dependents. What do we got? We got kids. Now, granny, I know you can't fire your kids. I tried. Lord, we've tried some days. You can't fire your kids. But when's the last time you sat down and asked yourself, how much money am I actually investing in my kids? And I'm not talking about in school. I'm not talking about in insurance. I'm not talking about in food and coverage. I'm talking about in nonsense.

I'm talking about it in stuff that maybe you don't need to. I have a particularly fortunate situation in that I don't. Yeah. Because my daughter's mother has taken it upon herself to oversupply her with things like clothing and stuff. So it doesn't come out of my end. Yeah, it doesn't come out of your end at all. But the point is- It's always been a great arrangement. But most people don't even realize how much you give your kids because-

It is one of my favorite places to spend money is on my children. And a lot of people don't even realize that, so getting your hands around that. In what way? Can you give an example? In general. Like, hey, can I have 10 bucks for this game? No, no, no. Like, we're playing lacrosse, so...

He goes out there the first time and as soon as he realizes he's going to get it, we started with the lacrosse "starter pack," but as soon as he gets serious about it and he wants to get better, now I'm asking the coach, "Would a new head on his lacrosse stick, would a new stick make him better?" Yeah, if it's done right and it's strung right, yes it would by this. So now I go from the $55 starter lacrosse stick to the $299 lacrosse head that's not strong.

But would that ever change recession or otherwise? I mean, no, it would because, because again, because again, I'm, I was making a purchase like that unconsciously, right? I'm not thinking about that. I'm just saying, well, he needs this for this, but in reality he didn't really need it. Yeah. And I think I just want him, if he's going to, if either, either they're going to do something, I want them to have the best resources that they can to try to do as well as I can. So I'm not saying, you know, cut back on your kids, but just be mindful of what you're spending. You

But also our volleyball camps. Yeah. But dude, but on the flip side of that coin, if you are somebody and this is you, if you are an employee that earns a truckload of money, you better figure out a way going into this to make yourself absolutely irreplaceable. And what I mean by that is like, don't let the boss see you taking vacation right now. This is not a good time for you to be gone for eight days when they can realize you're

Maybe we can do this without you. Yeah, the ship's gone. Yeah, not a good time. And I would probably be not necessarily up in their grill, but whoever's making these decisions at your boss, I would probably be, hey, what else can I take on? What else can I be doing? What else can I be doing to make the company successful? Because maybe instead of replacing you for a lower dollar employee, they get rid of somebody subordinate that don't really need and then put their workload on you.

At the end of the day, nobody wants more work, but you know what's worse than more work?

No job when you're single. And this is what happened in 2007, eight, nine, right? And say they sat there and said, well, we don't need a thousand employees. We can do this with 250 because what they realized is people sitting there fucking around on Instagram or Facebook back then and YouTube. And they're not even working that hard. So I, so they sat there, I've worked one corporate job for nine months and I

A week into it, I go, this is the stupidest thing ever. I could knock out in one day what you have me doing in a whole week. Like, this is stupid, you know? And it is. Like, you've got to make yourself... You've got to be a little brown-noser. You've got to be a little like... It's not about being a brown-noser. I don't think that's right. No, you've got to because...

Here's the thing. People do have emotional ties. Even some corporate boss still has somewhat emotional ties, right? If he prefers you. Yeah, prefers you over somebody. Yeah, he will. He might say, hey, look, I got to let people know. But you know who bosses prefer?

They prefer the guy that makes their life easier. Yeah. They prefer the person that makes their... That's Jack Welch's whole thing, right? Make your boss... Make her life easier and then your life is better. I hired the smartest people around me to make my life easier. That's it. So to that point, though, there's a couple of interesting caveats to what you guys are saying. Cole had a good point in that during the recession, they found out they didn't need all these people, right? And then during COVID, we learned we didn't need office space and co-workings. We didn't need a lot of that stuff. Yet...

Vacancies for corporate right now are several percent somehow for commercial units. Okay, well, let's talk about that real quick. And you can't hire anybody. There's nobody available for jobs right now. Well, I think that you're going to see, if you talk about you don't need the office space, that little experiment is failing. Yeah. I mean, I think...

It's definitely failing. They say the magic's in the hallways. That's where the magic of any corporation is, not in the meeting rooms, it's not in the office, it's in the hallways. But those offices are all full still. Yeah, they are. Everybody's talking about, oh, we're getting away from offices, offices. Then why are they all full? No, they're recalling everything. It's going back to the traditional 90s, early 2000 office, right, where people started going, well, Google and Facebook have these cool offices open.

And, you know, we works and we works total thing, right? Like that shit does not work. It works if you are, you know, a bunch of people try and build something together and you can go sit around a table and whatever. But normal 90% of 95% of companies and job needs just normal office spaces.

And you cannot have salespeople doing sales jobs from at home. Yes, you can throw an IT team at home, right? You can throw those people that are super analytical. They can work in a closet and they'll do their job, right? But that's 10% of your work, right? Yeah, I mean, 90% of your people, like you said, the hallways. Well, I think here's the difference if you want to run lean. And at Simply Vegas, we do run very lean. I mean, I think a lot of people that come and look at our company are very surprised. Doing what we do with...

the joint venture partnerships with other large brokers across the country. Like I go and the amount of staff they have is just mind boggling to me. It's like, Oh man, that is a bunch of people for what they do. Like yesterday I had a conversation with somebody last night and we were talking about them folding. They're fairly, you know, it's a large company. They were talking about, we had our first preliminary conversation about them folding their company into us, I guess, because somebody else did it last week. And this person just sparked their interest and,

So we started having a prelim conversation about that last night. And they started asking me questions like, well, what do you pay your recruiters? What do you pay this? I'm like, I don't have any of those people. Right.

Well, he's like, how'd you go to that? You know 600 agents? I'm like because we run a good company, you know We did we don't need people bothering everybody at work all the people that work for me advocate for yeah It's not what we do. Our employees are our recruiters I mean our employees but our agents are our recruiters and they're the ones that our biggest advocates and just a lot of these positions that the he was paying people to do like I would never even consider having those people because we don't need them because we've positioned ourselves as

in our business model to not require a lot of that stuff. Well, to your point, so before the show, you know, we're outside and the guy came up, hey, Cole, let me ask you a question, and you're all there, right? Yeah. But it's all professionals. It's not like you have a bunch of service staff doing things here. That's where the magic happens in the hallways is when you have access to your peers and access to people with knowledge. Because let's say that gentleman that had a question for you, whatever,

Uh, let's say he had to get on a zoom call, try to zoom you, right. To get that information as opposed to just putting arm around. Yeah. No, I, you know, and the one thing that you guys do really smart as a business that

And it shocks me a lot of real estate people don't comprehend this as you guys utilize you price per square foot really well. Like you guys know, we have 500 agents, I go into offices that have 40 to 50 agents, and they got twice as three times. Yeah, it's amazing. We're gonna we're gonna talk about that in a minute. We're gonna because that is that is one of the things we have to talk about is looking in that section. The next thing is analyzing budget.

I am constantly looking at our budget for things. Now, if you are someone that runs a budget at your house, here is a problem that people don't understand when they run a budget, which is they don't adjust for inflation. They don't adjust for reduced income. Like, for example, let's say you spend $500 a month on marketing, whatever it may be. If you're an agent, listen to this. Your budget for marketing is $500. Well, I can tell you just from the price of my Google ad clicks over the last 90 days that

$500 doesn't buy you today what it bought you then. It doesn't. And I can also tell you that as a percentage, if you are in the real estate business, you've probably felt a little bit of a slowdown as far as the amount of houses going to escrow. So your projected income is potentially going to be less. So if you continue spending that $500...

As a dollar figure, you're probably going to have a problem. Now, a better way to do it would be to say, I'm going to allocate 15% of my revenue back into marketing. Whatever that number is, it's going to be 15%. As your income grows, and pick a number, especially for marketing, Jesus, that's offensive money. I put everything in two buckets, offense and defense. I will cut everything.

everything defense, which is like, which is like the backend, the, the, the transaction coordination, all of those things. I would cut all of that first, right? Like if you're an agent and you're doing TC work,

And you're I'm sorry you're paying somebody do your TC work and you're slowing down yourself. You're stupid. You should do it yourself, right? That doesn't make any sense So cut your defensive stuff first always push with the offense or cut it last But if you wanted to be smart about it present it as a percentage of your sales not a dollar figure therefore as things change as The market changes the revenue changes as all these things that changes the same thing with your home budget, right? If you say okay, don't say we're gonna spend four dollars a month on entertainment. I

Figure out what percentage of that is your income. So if your income changes, you can just change the percentage, which changes the dollar figure, and you know exactly what to do. You're not scrambling. It's a smarter way to do it. I think that's a really good point because here's the other thing you're going to notice. This, too, in good times, if you keep it at 15% and it's generating more revenue, you

Right. Then it's going to have a compounding effect. Yep. No, for sure. Next thing, analyze your debt. This is something that I do a lot. I'm not, I don't think debt is bad. I don't think that's a bad thing. I think there's good debt and there's bad debt. Good debt and bad debt. But you need to analyze what you got. Unlike what that one guy says. Who the fuck is that guy again?

What is it? Dave Ramsey. Dave Ramsey, yeah. Dave Ramsey. Don't do whatever that guy was saying. Isn't that amazing? Good debt and bad debt. Now, here's the thing, too, which you have to understand when you look at the debt markets going into a potential recession. Ask yourself this. Is it going to be harder to get credit going into a tough market than it is right now? Absolutely it is. I am a huge proponent. I am a huge proponent. If you can get one at the right rate that you can lock, I'm a huge proponent of the HELOC.

Not going to pull one to buy a damn boat. No RV. If you pull a HELOC and you use that to buy a depreciating asset, you're an idiot. But if you use a HELOC properly to buy an asset that appreciates, that is going to appreciate faster than the rate of HELOC, that's fine. But it's going to be much harder potentially if it goes into recession to get a HELOC in eight or nine months than it is today.

So there's no reason, if you can, not to go. Just have the credit line available. Have the credit line available. Have it available. So if there is a run on assets or there's a run on something and you can get some good deals in dirt, you can buy us some real estate at a cheap price. Really good idea. You've got the levered money ready to go. It's called keeping your powder dry. Now, if you're somebody that is carrying a lot of debt and you've got some 16%, 18%, 24% credit card debt.

Yeah, you need to reel that in as quickly as possible. But I would also recommend not reeling that down at the expense of your reserves. I mean, I think everybody should have, I tell everybody, do not pay off your high credit card interest yet at the expense of your reserves at this moment. What I mean by that is everybody should have stored away a certain amount of months, I call it moles, months of life saved.

You should have a certain amount of months of life stored away that in case you lose your job, in case something terrible happens, you've got this money as your emergency fund that can get you through so you can get another job. So what, in your opinion, because I, just based on that, I haven't, we've never really talked about it, so I don't understand your analysis on that.

Having that, I would think that having high-interest credit cards, like I go the Susie Orman route on those. Sure. I carry a zero monthly balance. Well, of course. And I understand, but I would never have cash in the bank if I had credit card debt. But here's the point. Let me, we'll see, this is the difference. This is why tough times call for tough measures. And here's the thing. If you've got money sitting in the bank, right? Let's say you're 24%. Can you, are you going to go pull...

I mean, I guess you could go pull cash advance to pay your bills. That's why. You could do that. Yeah, I guess you could do that. They treat cash like king, but cash isn't king when my debt is crippling me, when my debt is at the gates. But what I'm saying is, and I'm not saying you need to have millions of dollars of debt in line, millions of dollars of cash. But for me, I tell everybody three months of life, three moles. Yeah.

You want to have three months of life there because if you lose your job tomorrow, something catastrophic happens. You're going to your credit cards anyway. You're going there anyway. I personally, and again, this is I feel strongly about it. This is what you would say. Pay off the debt to clear the pay off. Pay off shitty debt. I like good debt. I love good debt. And John, you and I both had that idea. I had a HELOC because I had an opportunity for a building that was cheap.

So I took it out because I'm earning nothing on my home. But I didn't drop it to my home where I have no equity. It was just a piece of it that came up because I'm going to refinance in the future. Yeah, and you bought an asset that makes sense. So I just took the asset now to get a cash while the deal was there. I bought it for maybe $60,000 less than market. So I got an opportunity, and I needed to move on it quickly. And I had the credit line available, so I did it.

Now, I'm picking up other units, and I'm using traditional financing through Streamline. Good. Thank you. Streamline home loans for all your home loans. We'll talk about that later, but I didn't even realize you guys did some of the things you did. Yeah. We do lots of things. So anyway. That sounds accusatory. I don't like that tone. I didn't realize you guys did some of the stuff that you did. Oh, my God.

I had in my mind that it was going to be for traditional single-family home purchases. No, no, we can do lots of neat things. Yeah, so I didn't. Including having a grand opening, which starts in 10, 15 minutes. Long story short, at the end of the day, credit card debt is evil because it's insidious and compounding, and people let it get over their skis. I agree. So I would never have kept the cash in the bank.

that is outstanding. But you have to have cash in the bank in case, you know, uh, in case worse. I mean, honestly, these guys, people have not two weeks. COVID showed how ill prepared people are financially. So I'd rather be paying 150 bucks, 200 bucks a month on just straight interest on a credit card. If shit got wild, then giving up my house or giving up,

But when the shit got wild, you couldn't do a cash advance. He's saying you can do a cash advance on your credit card. I'm just saying. And then default on it if you need to. You have to play the numbers and the math on what debt is costing. You know what? I'm going to go with that, Connell. I'm going to go with that. My initial thing to tell people was don't.

Go crazy. Keep some powder dry, but don't go too crazy. Because remember also, with inflation, the amount you owe shrinks every day. That's right. I mean, so if you started out two grand or owing 10 grand in credit card debt, that same $10,000. It's now 9,500 bucks. Yeah, it's less because inflation has shrunk the money. So there you go. All right, we're going to take a quick break. We're going to come back with things you should do in the face of recession. Hang on. We'll be right 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 where 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.com.

I'm here. Give me a shout. Back from the break. And this is also that wonderful time of the podcast when I always tell you if you're listening to us on YouTube, make sure that you like and subscribe and set that little notification for when new videos come up. And, you know, whatever podcast system you're listening to us on, make sure you give us the maximum amount of star reviews. It does matter. What do they do in Bulgaria?

I don't know. They have like this. They do. For the record, I've never been to Bulgaria. I don't know. Although, however, I do somewhat resemble a mongoose. So we'll go with that. We'll just go with that. We'll go with that. So today on the podcast, if you missed part one, this is part two. We're talking about, everybody's talking about recession coming. What should you be doing in the face of recession? So I'm talking about some things that we do within our companies and how they can trickle down and how you can use what big corporations do in the face of slowing times to affect and help yourself.

So far in episode one, I guess I'll call it, we talked about analyzing your staff. We talked about analyzing your budget. We talked about analyzing debt. We talked about really analyzing all of your income streams. So that's where we are. So jumping right back into it, this is the one I think everybody struggles with the most. And this is the easiest one to do. But there's a trick to it.

which is auditing your services and expenses. People do not do this enough. Now, if I tell you, Colt. Guilty. Yeah, well, here's the problem. They don't analyze what they're doing. This is why, honestly, I think when you lose your credit card, it's one of the best things that can happen to you. So we've talked about this. It's one of the best things that can happen. I'd rather get kicked in the nuts by Francis and Ghanian about six times than do that. I know. However. However. However. Yeah. There is this.

tertiary benefit that you're never going to understand until that day. Now, if you have an LVAC membership, they say too fucking bad. We're going to bill you and then hit your credit on it. By the way, it never did mine, but they were threatening it. One time I lost my credit card and my debit card. They're brutal about it. Like, okay, do you have a debit card on something?

So I used to. So again, I had a different experience. Is this the Canadian? Is this the Canadian? It was the Canadian thing. I didn't have credit cards. I had to, but now I have more credit cards than JJ. Oh, look at you, Flossie. No, no, no, no, no. Whoa. Whoa. Big credit card, Chris. Big credit card, Chris. What's up, buddy? They even have stickers on them. They even have travel stickers on them. Shout out to JJ, Todd. So yeah, yeah, no. You

You got to be aware of that stuff. And when it comes down, they say, hey, you haven't made your bill. It's like, okay, I'll pay. Wait a minute. I don't need rollup.com's $5 a month service that I didn't know I had. What is that? I've probably paid...

Some exorbitant amount of money, services. I totally don't even know. Okay, let's talk about that. So with us, within the company, the number one place I look for is SAS, software as a service. I look at things that we are currently utilizing. I try to negotiate better deals on all of those things. I mean, you should be doing this once a year, especially if, you know, when somebody does software as a service to a company, there's like a big setup period. Like there's some lift to it.

But then there becomes this period of like, they're not really doing anything for you anymore. Like you've got access to the backend where you go through and figure this out. And really it's just hosting, you know, at some point there's no value. So I'll give an example, like our simply Vegas website, which, you know, won an award several years ago. We designed it cause I helped design it. But part of the original design deal was that I own, I own the, the, the GUI code, right? Like I own look and feel the website. They don't own it. I do. Yeah.

And we're paying like 600 bucks a month just to host that thing. Really?

Yeah, and I mean, granted, it has IDX integration and all that, but honestly, anymore, for $3,000, I can have somebody rip the GUI down. Not even that. I mean, I'll call it $2,000. I can have somebody rip the GUI down, integrate me with IDX broker IDX, and customize the look and feel of everything so it works and looks exactly like it does now. I'm going to have to come out of pocket maybe $3,000, but then I'm hosting it on our own servers, and the cost is zero. Bluehost, $10 a month. Yeah, well, we have cloud servers that we own. I mean, it just costs us. It costs me nothing at that point.

So I said, you know, I told our tech departments, you guys need to start looking into getting this done because they just wouldn't budge. And I'm trying to help this company stay in business with us. I'm like, guys, there's no value here for me.

And they just, we don't get it. Okay, cool. You don't get it. Peace. I'm out. And some people will get it and some people will not. Because once you've been doing business with somebody for a while, like if you're somebody that calls them every five days, like I need you to change this. I need you to do this for me. I need you to do that for me. Okay, it's a pain in the ass to deal with you. If I would talk to you in a year-

And you've just been getting this money every month. And all of a sudden it's like, hey, I'm still trying to send you some money. I'm just not going to send you as much. All of a sudden it's like, well, it doesn't make sense. Hey, fair enough. Yeah, no skin on my teeth. I don't have to talk to this guy. And I think, I mean, just as if you only have a business, your car insurance.

Shop your car insurance every year. Look at you, Colt. Right here on the list. Sorry. Are you looking? No, I'm not. Because that's something I grew up in the car industry, right? Like you get insurance for brand new cars or whatever. Now, three years, four years later, your car is not a brand new car. You know, things are changing. So, yeah, shop insurance rates. I do all of that. When's the last time you, I mean, you just send that month. Did you really do it today? Okay. Well, good for you, Chris. You really did? Yeah, we're upping a bunch of stuff.

Right, but good for you. So, but we got it. Well, that's why. Good for you. No, that's totally coincidental. Yeah, but I need to do it more often. You have to shop. And people, this is stuff people don't. But back to stuff, software as a service. Yep.

The number one place where if you're at home, you're an average person where you're getting probably got is now all these damn streaming services. And there's a million of them. And here's the thing. Here's the problem. I'm going to tell you the problem right now. You have a streaming services and here it comes. Ready? You tell yourself, I got to batten down. I got to do the difference. And you start going through where you lose your credit card and you start seeing all the crap that you pay the monthly fee for. Right. You're like, oh, it's only $6. You tell yourself a lie. And this is the lie.

I'm probably going to watch it again when Yellowstone comes on. I'm probably going to watch it again when this comes on. I'll watch it again. Guess what? Here's the secret. You can unsubscribe and then resubscribe when you need it. Right? Don't just let it carry. It takes two seconds to resubscribe to this stuff. But yet you're like, you want to, oh man, maybe I have peacock. Dude, do this. If the NBA finals were only showing a game on it one time. Yeah.

I've been paying for it for 12 months. I forgot about it. Yep. And that's the same thing with the boxing thing. ESPN. ESPN Plus. Not that one. The other one that Canelo does. Whatever that is. But the same thing. But dude, go into your iPhone and look into your reoccurring subscription. You'll be shocked.

and how much stuff. I actually, you know, the one app that I do love, InstaRead, where I read the books quickly and decide if I want to read them. Dude, I had two subscriptions running at the same time. I don't know how that's possible. I have two Audible subscriptions I found out about. I don't know how that's possible. Right?

Right. Like dude, unsubscribe from everything and then just resubscribe as you need it. And I think you'll be shocked at how much stuff you just completely forget about and never go back to. Or borrow your friend's login. Which they've shut down, which is crazy. But yeah. Can you imagine though, you guys? It's about the business opportunity here. If you took all of the streaming services and put them all on one platform where all the channels are,

We're there at once. We just had a minute. What a world. Cable television. You'd have cable television.

Like I thought I was such a- You guys have Cox because my Cox is gone. I did. I hate it. Well, that's all expensive. It's $300 a month. That's why I joke around. Let's talk about that. How many people just have Cox cable at their house because they've had it forever? I canceled it. My cable bill at my house and I think we may have now found a solution with the YouTube TV thing. YouTube TV is infinitely better. Yeah, that might be a solution but we have so many TVs. I won't mention how many we have because it's egregious.

But we have so many different things. I had to have Cox cable because like DirecTV couldn't do it. Whatever else. I think our cable bill is like $700 a month. Probably because mine's three. Yeah, it's bananas. And we're right now we're leaning into into moving off of it because I think the YouTube TV is great. We need to talk about it later because I'm same thing. Oh, yeah. And here's the thing. Just like the subscription stuff.

You know, and I'm like, well, maybe I'll use it. I'm like, well, maybe one day we'll have a Super Bowl party and I'll need 19 TVs on at one time. Okay, number of times I have a Super Bowl party, zero. You come over to my Super Bowl party. I go to your house. As long as we're friends, I'm going to your house. Stupid, stupid. Telecom, you know, renegotiate your telecom. When's the last time you looked at your cell phone bill? I look at all of your bills and I'm telling you, you'd be amazed at what you'll get.

If you just try. I'll tell you a story yesterday. My son had something he was supposed to do for school. I don't know what it was. I mean, my son's an exceptional student. He had something he was supposed to do for school. And he couldn't get into it because he couldn't get in the system because he thought he could get into it over the weekend. And he couldn't because he's locked out of school. Whatever. And he's stressed out about this like crazy. Oh, my God. It's going to drop me. I'm going to get a B. He's stressed out all weekend. And here's the thing.

You know, if he gets a B and he tries, I don't care. He's eighth grade, yeah? Yeah, he's in eighth grade. But I don't care. But what I'm looking for is the effort. That's all I care about, right? And he goes, and he says to me, there's nothing I can do. And I go, all right, here's the deal. If you get a B in this class, I'm going to take away your phone for the entire summer. I'm going to take it away for the whole summer if you get a B. Eyes got real big.

Guess who figured it out? Hang on. And my wife goes, why don't you just email the teacher? He goes, I don't think I can do that. I go-

You're losing your phone. It's up to you, man. I would try a whole bunch of stuff. So, no. So, so he, he, he gets the email from my wife. He emails the teacher and she responds back with Hayden. I know the complexity of the novels that you read. Don't even worry about doing it. Don't even worry about it. Right. And the point was when he got done, I looked at him and I said, just so we're clear, I could care less about the B I

I care less. I care about the fact that you said there was no move because there's always a move. There's always a move somewhere. Always something you can do. Don't tell me there's nothing you can do. It sounds shitty to say, and I've said this before, and what I mean by it is less sinister than what it sounds like. I call it sinister. He knows where the bodies are buried, like me, apparently. I'm about to say something very sinister, but I think it has application, and I think it goes to your point.

Anybody who lies, you ever met a liar? Somebody that literally is a liar. Anybody who lies just means they're not clever enough to understand what the truth looks like. There's the truth and the truth. But it's true, right? Because you have to be an advocate for yourself. You have to frame things in a way that makes sense. You have to be able to figure things out, right? It means you're unclever if you have to lie. And I see quitting as like lying.

So you're saying he said, there's nothing I can do. Quitting to me is like lying. The universe has dealt me the cards that I have. There's nothing I can do. I'm stuck. There's nothing I can do. That to me is what happens. And then liars lie to try to get out of what they feel is a lack of other solutions. Yeah. Right? That's typically why people lie because they're not clever enough. Well, that's why people get into major trouble, right? Because there is a way to fix stuff. I have one that luckily didn't go south, but it was so close going south. And I'm like-

you guys, if you want to lie to me, I wouldn't have done another. The contract was going to be voided because the contract days just ran out and there was a thing that we're waiting on. We extended it another 60 days and then we found out somebody's lying to us. I'm like, great. Now we're going to lose $30,000 of earnest money because you lied to us, right? Like that.

Who was it? John Gotti or somebody said, I don't like, cause I'm not afraid of people. So that's, so you see what I mean by that? And it sounds like I said, the application, it sounds like, well, that's just deceptive in a different way. What it means is there's always a creative way to problem solve. Sure. If I came up to you, you'll find that 95% of people desire to be helpful. If you frame it in the right way, this is what I think. And again, I don't want to get political, but this is where the Democrats have absolutely lost control.

so many potential voters is that they don't know this. Well, no, I'm just saying I'm an independent. I'm a registered independent. Sure you are. I can Google that. But anyway, you can. I'll show up as a registered independent. But at the end of the day. Keep talking, Chris. Keep talking. He's Googling it. What people don't realize is that you need to let people feel good about helping you. You got to inspire people that want to help you. Sure.

When you point a finger and say, you do this, you're this, I'm never going to respond well to that. Nobody will. But if you ever ask people, hey, can you help me out here? John, if I came up to you and said, you know, I can't pay my rent. If I said, hey, let me do something for you. No. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Go ahead. If you frame it in a way, be like, hey, look,

Hey, John, I need to borrow $1,000 from you. Remember that one, you know, if you do that in a way, you'll find a way out of it. Or it gets uncomfortable or it's weird, right? If you frame it in a way where it'd be like, hey, can I do this for you? This is what I need, but I want to make sure I'm not taking advantage of you, so let me do this in return. Well, I'll tell you how to frame that if that's your situation. Whatever it is. But I know, but I mean,

There's somebody listening to this right now. It's not my situation. But there's somebody listening to this. He doesn't need $1,000. That is their situation right now. And I got this call. Do you see what I mean? But I got this call the other day from somebody. Somebody called me up and they said, hey, look, things are getting a little lean. I had some stuff fall apart. I don't know what I'm doing. I just wanted to know, is there anything that you, because you have so much stuff going on, is there anything that you think I would be good for to plug in as a side gig?

And I said, wonderful. And I said, yeah, man, let me call you back. And I made two phone calls and I called him back and said, I'm going to connect you with this guy and call him and he's going to sort you out. And I don't, I don't even came of it.

But I felt good for helping this person. It solved the problem that I had. And it did nothing. Because I think innately, I think to your point, I think people want to help other people. People want to help. People want to feel good about what they do. People want to be recognized, right? The average person, we've said this many times, but most people are living quiet lives of desperation.

If you come up to somebody and you make them feel special, how many times do people get on their high horse about, I paid for the guy's Starbucks behind me or whatever in line? You're talking about $5, $10, $20 worth of charitable goodwill or whatever, passing along down. Starbucks at worst. It's just one of those things where people, there's a desire for this, and there's a human nature. There's this human element that we want to help our tribe. We do. Our tribes are way too big now. That's that Dunbar's number or whatever? Yeah.

But when you give people an opportunity to help and you frame it in a way where you're letting them know that you recognize that they're special or helpful or have the ability to help you, 95% of people are going to step up and help. But I'll say this. If you want help...

appear to be helpable. And what I mean by that is very good point. If like you said, living, living, living in a state of quiet desperation, like I got to believe that you're, you're trying. Yeah. Like if you're, if you're, you're trying, I'm into, I'm into push the rock with you. Right. But if you're looking for me to push the rock for you, that's right. Then now, like for example, um, I don't know how this even came up last night. We probably should have talked about this, but I guess now the Starbucks employees are trying to unionize. Right.

You pour coffee. And you're talking about a company that is notoriously known. Notoriously. No, not historical. Notoriously known for overpaying employees. They're historically for college education. Yes, for paying for everything. Health insurance, everything. And now you're trying to unionize against the big bag Starbucks? Those people, to me, are not helpful.

bowl. There's nothing about that scenario that I feel sorry for any of those people. I don't feel sorry for anybody who's trying to form a union, but I will say this. That's because you're blue. No, no, no. Somebody framed it to me this way. I personally don't think unions... I think employers, when they're good, there's never an issue. So if you treat people well and you do whatever, most people will fight against it because...

unions have a lot of problems i've been in unions and i hated them personally just because somebody's taking money not doing for me it's just they get fat it's very political on their own but somebody said to me this phrase it goes he was a shop steward and he said what we're trying to do is you have units of labor and you have units of capital we're trying to commoditize we're trying to take greater power over the value of a unit of labor versus capital

Now, if we have the ability to do that, if there's something particular about our set of skills that allows that, then what is preventing us from utilizing our own units of labor to get a higher market value for them like you would if you had a scarce piece of real estate? But see, the way I understand it-

unions were formed out of a need in the 20s in the Industrial Revolution when employers were people with their brutal, terrible, dangerous, deadly working conditions. The Democrats? Yeah. Democrats, five-day work week. That's it. All these things, right? See, he pushes all the positives, doesn't he? No, no, but what I'm saying is... Republicans would have known four days, Chris. Well, here's the thing. I can dabble and understand both worlds, but if you're...

if you're somebody that isn't, you know, an owner of the means of production, I understand why you would want to empower the value of one of your units of labor. So I'm not, I don't begrudge that. Now me personally, as the owner of the means of production, if I was in that situation, I may shut them down and fire them all. Some people think their labor is more special than it really is. But you've got to understand the value of each in your market. If you're being overpaid...

then if you go to do that, you may be cut out. But if you're being underpaid and you do that, it may work out. It may work out. If may be the keyword. So that moves us to our next thing here that I think you need to do is audit your own efforts. Right. Um,

Here's a great, great exercise for you, especially if you are in the real estate biz or any sales biz where you are a non-paid, full-commissioned salesperson, which is this. I'm willing to bet that you don't work nearly as hard as you think you do. Who, me? Anybody that's in that position. Nobody bets in that position. I know you think you work exactly as hard as you do. I know exactly how I work. You're well aware of that. But no, I think people...

People will grind like a 40-hour week, and they'll really only do...

20 to 30 minutes of actual income producing activity, which is crazy. You know what? That's a great point. Cause there's so much distraction. Well, no, but it's not even necessarily distraction because sometimes the profits live in the margins, right? Let's say you go play golf for four hours and you end up getting the best commission deal you've ever had in your entire life from that relationship. Then you were working. No, but that's an income producing time because you're out with a client that's income producing. But,

So I was trying to explain this to somebody the other day that when we talk about going out for cocktails, that's a part of my job. I have that conversation all the time. I go, it's hard to go out four nights, five nights a week having cocktails, doing stuff. It's mentally draining. People sit there and think, oh, your life's so great, whatever. No, that's my job. It looks like a party. It looks like a party.

The reason that you have the connections you do or whatever is because if you're generally a gregarious and social outgoing person, you're going to meet people. And when you meet people, you generate goodwill and inertia. And again, all of that, I'm dumping into the category. But most people, all right, you go right now, go to any car lot.

Go to any car dealership. We'll take salesmen, car salesmen, which is where I learned how to sell, so I can comment on this. I'm not speaking from no frame of reference. Especially if they take your down payment that you put online. That's right. Yeah, $100. There you go. No, but the point being is you walk into a car dealership right now, and there's nobody on the showroom, no customers. There's two kinds of salesmen. There's a salesman standing around bullshitting another salesman about nothing, and then there's a guy that's on his phone calling everybody that's ever bought a car. Yeah. Right? Yeah.

One is utilizing income-producing activities, and one is burning time. But what did you do today? Oh, I worked for eight hours. I was at the office for eight hours. No, you didn't. But, dude, the point being is you were there. You were sacrificing your time. So the mental effect on you is the same.

Oh, yeah. It's exactly the same. So the point is when you're going into a period of potential recession or potential slowdown, you need to be very cognizant of all of your activities and make sure that when you are at work, you are spending your time on income-producing activities. Really good point. That's a very good point. I'll go ahead. I was just going to say one of my favorite quotes ever was from this company. I worked at a real estate development firm in 2005, 2006.

This guy, I don't know if I've ever told you this story, but the vice president of the company, there's always this guy who's talking about how much experience he has. I got all this experience. And the vice president of the company looks at me and goes, he says he has 20 years of experience. He's got one year of experience 20 times. And to your point, I worked for eight hours today. Or did you work for one hour, eight, and then, you know what I mean? And then repeat those seven hours doing the same thing you did in that non-income producing hour. And people do that all the time. I piss off more people because I...

say, Hey, you know, your clients are not your general. I don't know why when they say, hi, I say, go, go fuck yourself. I'm like, well, no, because, um, they sent me clients, right? And they'll sit there and say, this guy wants to go look at these five properties.

And I call the person, no experience. They have no income. They have no reserve set up, everything. I say, you're not ready. Call me later, right, when you're doing it. And they get so mad. Well, you couldn't even go show them? No. I'd rather go sit at the bar by myself for five hours than go drive around, waste time, gas. Like, no, I would rather sit by myself than waste my time. And that's where people don't realize that is your time is money. Turn a level of confidence and experience before you realize that, though. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I think most people don't realize that there's two types of people. There's innovators and there's executors, right? Wow. Well, there's probably more than that. There's two people. There's those that need a full explanation for things. And people that figure it out. But my point being is, my point being is, is that... Is that... Is that...

If you are someone that is just really good at executing, you probably need to figure out how to become an innovator because it's times like these that you need to innovate some things. You need to figure out how to do things differently. You need to figure out maybe different, better ways to get things done. You can't just execute. And I think, you know, I was reading an article in preparation for today talking about why big companies have such a hard time, you know, running lean. Why a lot of them, when they try to lean down, it really implodes.

Because most of the big CEOs that run those companies are exceptional executors. They're not necessarily the idea people. They're not the people that come up with the best ideas. They're just exceptionally good at running a machine that can involve 100,000 people.

which is a very difficult task. Well, that's where organizational design, like the MBA programs and stuff. So when we studied organizational design, you go through these things and you'll find a lot of the dead weight comes in when there's like siloing, right? So you'll have departments that do these things. There's a lot of repetitive tasks. There'll be 67% overlap here, right? So you only need two people doing it, but they're so siloed

and there's a breakdown of communication between the organization. So a lot of times they don't audit, to your point. They don't audit their own process. They don't bring the Bobs in. You've got to bring the McKinsey's in sometimes. And I don't always agree with cutting the fat because a lot of times you kill the nature and spirit of the company or there's intangibles that you can't account for in the X's and O's. But to your point, understanding and auditing is hugely valuable. I think Elon Musk is one of those greats that actually do that, right? He is. Like, I've got an idea. You guys go figure.

now. Yeah. I want a rocket company. I'm going to do that. You know, the next thing I would say, and I think about this every time I get gas, I literally think about this every time I buy gas now, which is you need to understand the ROI on your efforts, the return on investment for what you do. Now keep in mind,

Again, if you are someone that goes to a place and trades your time for revenue, man, there is nothing wrong with that. This is not about everybody needs to try to get on the hustle and be an entrepreneur. That's not about that. I mean, if you're someone that trades time for money, God bless. If you're happy and you love your job, I'm all about it.

But you need to, as things change, as inflation happens, as the price of things change, you need to understand your return on investment. And everything that you put into making that job go, that's an investment. And there's a thing about this every time I pump gas. Like, dude, if you live 30 miles away from your job and gas is now almost $6 a gallon and you're making $3,

12, 14 bucks an hour. How are you doing this? Like, how are you doing this? And I know that's a very extreme example, but there are people living like that. But it is, you monetize your, your activities. You need to break down and say like, look, where am I spending my money? And,

And the stuff, and again, I always break it down to offensive money and defensive money if you're in business for yourself or you work for somebody else. Everything you do is about, you know, if you spend money, if you have to buy clothes to go work at a place, that's offensive money. You have to have these clothes to go work there. If you have to drive there, you've got to buy gas. I mean, all of these little things go into that, right? So you need to look at this as that is an investment in your job. Right.

And you got to make sure that the money that you're getting back makes sense. And if it doesn't, you got two choices and everybody loves change, man. They love when they have to make a change, but you've either got to go to your boss and explain to them, look,

gas is up X. It's costing me. I'm filling up twice a week, driving over here. I can't afford to do this. I need some help. Yeah. Right. And if you are, I've done what we talked about in step one, back in video a and made yourself a, an invaluable value to employee that has taken on more than you probably should. And you're viewed as an asset in the eyes of your company that will figure this out for you. They'll figure it out. Yep.

Closed mouths don't get fed. Exactly. But that sitting in silence thing is not going to be good for anybody. Closed mouths don't get fed. Remember that, right? You've got to audit everything, right? Everything. Like I was just on the roofing side of stuff, right? I was talking to one of our guys, and he goes, man, I'm just burning so much gas. I was over here, over there, over here, over there. I go...

Every morning you need to wake up and have your day planned out. Understand your logistics. Exactly. Make one big-ass circle done for the day. Stop crossing this valley five times a day. It's stupid, you know, and that's costing you a lot of money to do that. And he's like, well, you know, but they want this. I go, you need to start enforcing times that you want to meet people. You know, as simple as that. And people don't do that. Yeah.

I mean, you've got to, I mean, I guess the lesson for today, if there is one overall lesson is nothing's off the table. You got to look at everything. And some of those things are tough from looking at the, maybe the current job you have looking at looking at how much time you invest in that, looking at everything, looking at what you spend your money on and being honest with yourself about canceling things, you know, storing some money away, tightening the belt a little bit. None of this stuff is fun, but you know, that's like, don't wait until it's too late. Yeah, dude, you think it's tough today? Yeah.

It's coming quick. Yeah, I'm just saying, wait until you're behind the eight ball and you don't know how you're going to pay your mortgage or your rent that month. That's going to be way tougher than making plans for this today. Sure. And unfortunately, procrastinating an economic change is something that you don't want to do because here's the best thing about it. Let's say you make all these changes. Let's say you do this stuff and nothing happens. Great. You just save some more money and that's good and who cares? But the one thing I will say is this, and it's my last little highlight on the page here and it says this.

Don't cut to the point where you sacrifice your core values. Right. Or don't change that. Right. Like everybody has certain things. Like you look at our company and you look at simply Vegas and there's things that make this company what it is. Right. And even last night, as I was talking to this guy about potentially folding his company in, there's some things that his company does that are not in tune with the brand name, the brand image that we do. And it's not the same lane. Right.

And I said to him, I go, you realize you're going to have to let that go if you want to come over here because it's just we're never going to do that. And then later in the conversation when he was talking about you don't have recruiters, how'd you grow so big? It was like because we're true to the lane that we chose and people want to be in that lane with us. And that's why we don't sacrifice those things. Now, if you don't own a big company, what does it mean for you? Dude, look at what's important in your life.

And if spending time with your kids at dinner is important, figure out a way to do that. Don't pick up a hustle that's going to sacrifice those core things in your life that's going to make you unhappy. Because look, this exercise is supposed to make you more responsible. It's supposed to make you more diligent. It's supposed to make you more balanced. But it's not supposed to make you miserable. No, no, no. That's not the point. It's how to do it effectively. It's just how to be conscientious of the efficiencies that can improve –

you know, your life in any situation. Yep. It is. There's only two kinds of people in the world. You guys, those who believe in binary. And with that, we're going to wrap it up for another episode of the power move. Unless Colton, you have anything else you'd like to share.

No, you know, I saw Tom Hanks out at the ball game with frickin' Chet, his son. The rapper, Chet. Can we give it up? White and perp, white and perp. Yeah, what's his name, though? They reference him as something summer guy. Did I tell you that Las Vegas, now we added another jewel? I don't know if you saw this, but if you didn't, you can Google it. We added another jewel to the crown of Las Vegas lore. We now have the best of something else.

We have the best, worst, first pitch in the history of baseball with Steve Aoki through one almost over the backstop in a pro game. Do you remember? Almost over the backstop, baby. How?

How are you that bad? It was like he was trying to throw it to the press box. It went up. Check that out. There was a first pitch one time. Who did it? Not as bad as it. 50 Cent? 50 Cent. Oh, no, this was worse. No, this is worse. Watch it. It's far worse.

How are you not prepared? If you're going to a big league game... Play a little catch before you go there. Yeah, a little. Like, go out in the backyard. Something. Something. He can jump off of frickin' his house into his pool, but he can't go throw a tennis ball against him? And you can't tell me his dad didn't play with him. His dad was Benihana. So you're telling me that dad can throw an egg into his hat with a spatula...

but he can't throw a baseball to his kid. Come on. I don't know what happened. I'm just kidding. Anyway, guys, so we'll be back next week again. And look, I'm curious about something. So let me hit something in the comments. If you, if you would, uh,

Do you guys like the show when we bring people in, or do you like it just when we're the three amigos? I'm curious what you think, so let us know. I mean, I guess it depends on the content. It depends. Yeah, I guess it depends on how much we can wind cold ups. Anyway. Nick and AJ and Jason, Egan, and they had some pretty interesting perspectives. Yeah, they did. That's a good point. All right. Well, if you liked what we do, tell a friend. If you hated what we did today, tell two, because it doesn't matter if we're talking good about you. What's the matter, Connell?

It's only if they stop talking about you. It only matters that they're talking about you at all. It's the only thing that matters. It's all that matters. 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.com.

I'm here. Give me a shout.