The Importance of Perceived Value EP 3
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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 Jon Gafford. What's happening everybody? Welcome back to another episode of The Power Move. With me as always, my man Colt. What's going on? And Chris Connell. Hey, how you doing everyone? What's up Connell?

We're going with the, we are going to go with the power of noise. He actually brought it on his phone. That's what that was. It's just ridiculous in its own way. That's a power move. And all that. Well, man, I got to tell you, there's a lot of stuff going on. I want to jump right into it. You know, do we, do we want to, I mean, you know, do we want to start and talk about, you know,

the, the elephant in the room, which is the Afghanistan thing, which, you know, I don't know when this is going to come out a couple of weeks, maybe a week and a half. It's still going to be a mess that it's a mess. Now it's going to be a mess. Then what do you mean? Well, a lot of progress last 20 years, apparently a lot of progress. Yeah. I mean, you know, I mean, of course everybody uses it immediately as a chance to jump on, uh,

you know, the president and everything else with what happened there. And look, again, remember that knows me. I am a conservative Republican. I get that. But, you know, part of me also thinks that, you know, the place fell apart in like three hours. So part of me is thinking maybe, you know, of course it's terrible. The Taliban took over, but maybe this is the government these folks want. Right. I'm not going to jump on some anti-Trump because me, I'm, I'm a fairly central centrist liberal just in terms of, you know,

Marry who you want. Smoke what you want. Leave me alone. Central, you know, sort of, you know, centrist, free speech, free, you know, everything. So Canadian, very Canadian of me. Well, in Canada, Canada, I'm right wing, which makes me just left at Bernie Sanders here. But Afghanistan, it's funny when the first thing I was seeing, of course, just like everything down party lines, all these people, Biden, you suck, you doing this. There was a treaty that was, it was supposed to have been done back in March. Well,

We've agreed to leave. Yeah. That wasn't under Biden. That was under Trump. And Trump agreed to leave. And I agree with Trump. I don't agree with a lot the man did, but I do agree with getting your country and the lives of your citizens. That's your job is to protect your soldiers, your people. Yeah. We have no moral obligation to nation build.

I think that was the thing I said, or somebody said today, they said, look, our goal in Afghanistan was to eliminate al-Qaeda's ability to mobilize and plan from there. And attack America. We were not there to nation-build. And we shouldn't have been, and I agree with Biden in that instance where he said at his press conference yesterday, we were not there to nation-build. And I go, you know what? It's about time after the United States has more than 250 military interventions in sovereign nations since World War II.

There are in excess of 250 independent military interventions by the United States military across the planet. Now, in some ways, that comes down to our

policing of the seas that protects the world. I'm not jingoist by any means, but the United States does play a role in global security, right? That's why it does. Was that jingoist? Jingoism. Yeah. Jingoism. Kids, that's like a triple letter word for you, right? Saber rattling. You need to write that one down. Jingoism. You know, I don't, I think you're talking over Colton. Yeah. I'm like, well, jingoism is the, you know, it's the, it's a sort of nationalism and the pride in your country, the best and blah, blah, blah. But,

But at the end of the day. So here in this country, we just call that America. We just call it daily life. America. We just go right from America. America is great. America gets shit on for unfair reasons. And America takes too much credit for other reasons that it shouldn't take credit.

The problem is we don't see things that are really impactful, like the United States' role in policing the seas, for example. Nobody ever talks about that. The reason we have safe and effective travel across seas is because the United States polices the seas and Somali pirates and, you know, pirates.

travel across the Pacific. Like sea piracy. Sea piracy. What happens to that as a career? Well, because of Americans. I could totally see you. Okay, swear to God, dude, it was so funny. I had a whole business plan about how I could just go be a pirate off of the San Diego shore, you know? And I figured just like one or two hits a pretty terrible idea. I feel like it was good. But you know what's so funny is, especially with the Afghanistan thing,

This has gone through multiple Democrat presidents, multiple Republicans, and they all just act like it was never their fault. Right? Like, I think that's what's so funny about. Well, I'm pretty sure that's, that's every president. Nothing's ever their fault. No, but it's so funny because it can be the exact identical thing that one president does and it,

It just turns into such a, oh, he's a piece of shit because he's doing this. It's like, well, seven months ago we were doing that. You guys did that. Yeah, yeah. And I thought that was, I find that hilarious and also a little bit annoying, right, at the same time. But this stuff in Afghanistan, it's been 20 years. We've made zero progress. I mean, it's zero. It's not 5%. It's not 10%. It's absolutely zero. Well, we made three hours of difference, as John pointed out.

Yeah. Give a three-hour head start. Three-hour head start on that. But again, it's one of those things where I just feel like, and it's so funny that everybody is so upset about Afghanistan today. I think if there was a Republican president and the same thing would have happened, which at this point, how can you say it would have happened any different? We were pulling the troops out. With a three-hour run through of the whole country, not much opposition from the Afghan people at that point. But I think that you're going to...

I think you're going to run the gamut now of it would be Democrats saying the same thing. They would be, you know, oh, this is a great failure. This is that. It's the same thing. Of course. Right. Of course. But I think I think the biggest tragedy of all of it, if there is a tragedy here, is it's going to be much, much difficult. Next time we have a place where we need to actually go. And I'm not saying and I'm not saying there's not there's plenty of atrocities in Afghanistan. There's plenty of things that are backwards. That's part of.

you know, right wing Islamic rule is just, you're going to have some backwards things that aren't good to a lot of people. Of course. But I think next time we have a place that is in, it's necessarily a danger zone that could plan an attack directly to our shores that has people that need to be saved by a violent regime. Okay. Say you're living in, we'll call it a Colton Stan is what we'll call it. You're living in Colton Stan and you,

The U.S. troops come in, and they need you, Chris Connell, to now help them translate and run their base. Are you helping out after this? No. But if you see those Afghanistan people hanging on the planes, the Afghans literally being –

thrown to the wolves. And now, believe me, I think pretty sure the Taliban was keeping score as to who was helping the United States. Oh, I mean, of course, right? They talk about the, you know, sort of Western sympathizers. That's why those people were fleeing. But look at what's going on in Somalia with al-Shabaab.

Biden's already bombing another country. That's what people think. You're already talking about, we're still bombing radical Muslim, you know, terror groups. Now it's just Al Shabaab. It's just no longer that we're going to always do it. And they're always going to take your help because you have another option, right? If you're living there and you're a citizen and Al Shabaab is coming in, or if it was, it's not just Hamas, if it's, um, you know, if it's in, uh, what was that one in Northern Africa? Um,

They came in just for massacring people with machetes. It was all Islamic terrorism. You're going to take whatever help you can get, even if there's a kick in the can down the road element to it. But I think what John's also mentioning is these guys were promised visas, we'll take you right out, we'll get you and your family safe. I mean, Las Vegas, shockingly, has a lot of these interpreters that are from Afghan. I saw it on news. I was shocked when guys were like, oh, there's a lot of us out here, which...

at that point, there's no way in hell I'm going to go help United States translate for the seals or whatever. When, as soon as they leave, am I going to really get that visa and be out of here? I'm going to be my head chopped off. And that's what's scary right now is they know who was doing it. I mean, it's a small country. They all know, you know, who's helping who and, uh,

you're leaving your family, which I don't, I don't think people are going to help out United States like it, like they were in the past. Well, of leaving your family's part of it, I think your family will volunteer you, you know,

- I got a good guy to help out guys. - I know exactly who you need to sign you up for this guy, Cole. - The Babel Arabic course, Cole. - No reason. - You need to call him. Well, earlier today, let's get off geopolitics and talk about something that I actually know a lot about. Because earlier today for a group of our agents here, we did a mastermind group for objection handling. And we were talking about objection handling in general and how to handle objections within the sales process.

And, you know, it was interesting to hear what some of our agents thought handling objections were and what they weren't. So, Kristen, your job, if somebody objects to you, not like an objection you're on, but I'm saying in general, what's your best system or best systematic for handling objections when you're trying to do business? Well, I just...

I don't want to go straight Chris Voss here. At the end of the day, negotiation is an art form. I just took the Harvard negotiation course. I just read Chris Voss' book. I'm very interested in negotiation. Couldn't get into Hooters University. I know. But when people have... They say...

What did you say last week, John, about trying to get to that first no? Because it's not going to be until a series of multiple no's that I get my yes, right? Yeah. You should look into no. Well, valuing the no. Valuing the no, that's right. Maybe you were talking about it insofar as you need 20 people to say no before 21st signs up. Law of averages. The average person, when you first throw your first counter out there, is going to say no. It's no, no, no. It's getting through the no's to get to the yes, right? But why are they getting to that yes? Make people do things that you want them to do for their reasons.

So when people have objections, right, you say, well, I can argue with you, right? You can say, this is a great house. Well, I don't want to do it. If you are good at asking people questions and finding out motivations and able to do those

what Chris Voss calls the calibrated questions. You're able to figure out what those are to get some answers to things that maybe you weren't even aware were affecting these people. You're going to find that those objections are oftentimes a great way to find out what they really want. Yeah. What about you, Colt? I totally agree with that. I mean, I think what people don't realize is negotiation. Everybody, especially in real estate, everybody thinks it's 100% the price. That's what the negotiation is, right? And I think...

When COVID hit, I told everybody, you better see what's going to happen because you had everybody losing their jobs and they couldn't go buy houses, right? And I just would watch my wife's clients say, don't worry, we'll get a two-day extension because they didn't know what happened. To me, I'm asking everybody, where are you going? Do you have your job? That kind of stuff, right? And I think with negotiations, people don't look at that. We just did a deal up in Salt Lake that our clients could not, they could not outbid anybody. Californians are very,

lining up like crazy. They could not outbid. I called the guy, go, okay, what does he want? And he goes, well, his problem is he's got 45 days to get somewhere and he can't go before then I go, okay. And I go, and everybody's just giving you high offers with 14, 21 day close. Yep. I said, how about I not going to be your best offer, but let me give you a 60 day free rent close. Oh,

okay, bam, we did the deal. I think people don't listen to objections. I think if you listen to objections, you can go from there. Well, it's a huge key to listen. But my thought was, and as we're hearing what people were having problems with, I mean, with real estate agents, a lot of it was price value. It was a lot of, well, they want me to do it for cheaper. They want me to do it for cheaper. Well, they always, you know, they want me to do it for 1%. They want me to do this. It's what seemed to be coming out of the conversation. And

my thought was if you're having an objection about your price, you did a really lousy job up front creating value and saying your value proposition. And I think this goes back to, you know, I preach all the time, elite customer experience is one of the things that I'm all about all the time. And I think that if you look at the, you know, just for example, the real estate transaction. So a person goes in a list of home talks to a homeowner and they spend so much time focused on the value of the house,

and what they're going to do to market the house. They spent, that's really, if you look at it, as we dug into some of these listing presentations today, that's really all they talk about. That's what. I'm like, you know what? People already can figure out kind of the value of their house. There's too much data online. They understand that. Yeah, you just go to Zillow and get a 100% accurate number. Jesus, no. No.

No, but you go on, but you get an idea between a hodgepodge of everything else. You can kind of figure that out. Plus, you know where people are going to syndicate it. You know everything that's going to go. You know where those things are going to happen, right? You just know. So-

I know how you're going to market it. I already know what it's kind of worth. So if we're spending a whole 20, 30 minutes talking about that, you're kind of wasting their time. I said, how much time are you investing talking about their experience, finding out what their particular needs are and how you were going to meet and solve their particular problems? Do you have a written customer experience plan that you're going through? Because that's the differentiator.

That's the thing that makes a huge difference. And we talked about, you know, if you don't have to argue with price, if you have a high perceived value. Now, one of the things about this company or Simply Vegas where we work is, you know, we spend a ton of money on perceived value. That's what we try to do here on having a very high perception of the company. And we said, look, when you drive around the 215 here, you see giant billboards that say Simply Vegas number one in luxury.

It doesn't say simply Vegas cheapest place to sell a house. It says number one in luxury. Because when you promote yourself as luxury, you're promoting client experience and you're creating great value for service. Concierge outlook. Concierge look. You're not creating cheap. Not that we do. And I told our agents, I said, some of you guys spend too much time and energy trying to promote your own individual brands. When nobody's ever heard of the Joe Schmoe team, when we spend...

tens and thousands of dollars a month to invest in the brand imaging of our company and leaned into that. And it was so funny because I think creating a high perception of value within your brand is important to matter whatever you do. It doesn't matter what you do. Absolutely. So what are some things, Colt, you do to try to create a high level of perception brand with you? Let's say you, Colt. I think what...

My thing is, is I tell people all the time, we all put our stuff a lot of times in the same stuff, especially residential, MLS, stuff like that. Commercial is the same way, right? I tell people my branding is about negotiation and I'm a problem solver. You know, that's something that you're paying for because...

Anybody gone through a real estate transaction, they know that there's a million problems that are going to pop up, right? That's what sticks me out different is that I'm different is my negotiation, my problem-solving techniques, and also on the commercial side, no one gives their cell phone number out. Just simple, stupid stuff like that. But I think at first glance, one of the things, and I'll give you credit. I mean, you every day are in a suit.

Every time you see cold, he's in a suit. He's never, this is, this is his uniform. It's what he is. It's what he gets. And I was trying to make the comparison today of, of like, did you know that like doors on, you know, like when you close the door on a high end car, like a Bentley or a rolls or something, it makes that distinctive kind of thunk. And it just feels heavy. Those doors are exactly the same weight as the door on a Toyota Corolla. There's no difference in weight on the doors. They scientifically engineered them to make that noise. That's a fact. Look,

Look it up. Wow. They do because that noise and that, that thunk and that sucking in creates perceived, perceived, perceived value. You, when you walk on in a suit, you are, you are perceived as if I want to work with you, I'm gonna have to pay for it. Right. It's not going to be cheap. It's not going to be free, which is fair. That's the first, that's the image brand imaging that you're putting out very quickly. And I think that,

I was young. I was 18 when I got into this. So, and I was young, probably doing deals I shouldn't have. Like, I look back and I'm like, what the hell was I, people giving me that type of property to sell or deal with? And I think that's where that came from is I just needed to- What do you mean, that type of property? That type of property. What do you mean, that type? Yeah. But we did. Like, it would sit there and-

You know, it's so funny how a suit can make you feel better. You preach this all the time. You got to feel good. I mean, John will literally redo his hair daily if he doesn't feel like it came out, which something small like that people look at. Which very rarely. One-time shot, right? But I think it's so funny that –

I'll go against some of the biggest brokers at the biggest brokerages, and they'll show up in golf uniform, right? And I will laugh at how they –

They're pretty much saying sorry to people of how they dress. Yeah. Like when they see me roll up with my clients. And it's funny because at that time, I just stepped now a power move on you. Right? Power. Like a power move. Fair, fair, fair, fair, fair. Can I get something? You got to get the noise. Here, get the phone. Get the phone out. It's a little delayed, but here it comes. Yeah, here it comes. Here it comes. Here it comes.

There it is. That's all I can say. It is a sense of value. I mean, and something that you guys do all the time is you fire agents for taking iPhone photos of their listings. Yeah. Because...

And I use that against clients all the time. I've got five things when I go into a listing that I show clients. I show them people's marketing and my marketing, right? And I think that's something that people don't realize that I learn a lot from you guys, especially on the high-end residential, is the commercial game, people just cheap out stuff. And I think that's hard to...

It's hard to tell somebody, well, I want 6% on listing, but I'm going to take my photos for free here. I'm going to put on a free site. You're giving everything free. Where's your value? Yeah, there's no value. So I think that's something that, you know, it's funny. The smallest thing is a suit. And me and you get this all the time. We walk into multiple places and people will start coming and talking to us because they want to figure out who the hell we are. Well, no, I think it's because they think we're dating and they're trying to figure out who's the big spoon. Big spoon, little spoon. Big spoon. Yeah.

I don't think anybody's wondering. Chris, what say you without a bill of value? For my value and everybody who's ever been a client knows this. I answer my phone. Like I answer my phone. And they send me texts and they get a response and they send me a voicemail and it gets handled and it gets addressed because, um,

I do my job from everywhere. I can work on my phone a lot of times. I'm at my home office. I'm at my official office. But no matter what time it is, if you send me an email at 10, there's a good to likely chance that I'm going to answer it and have a response for you. So people hate the fact that their lawyers don't get back to them. Yep.

Now, usually when I'm, now I feel bad because you guys are all suited up and I came in suited up all the other times, but I'm like, I'm going to wear a shirt today so I don't look so stodgy. No, you're fine. I don't want to look so stuffy. I almost did the same thing, but I just, I don't like going clothes. Like,

Like that, right? Like I really don't. It's a couple of, couple of, I'm always anxious. It's just one Versace robe. You know, and that's why all my, I don't think my neighbors are in the same situation too. They don't know him close either. That's why he has the one Versace robe. Just the one. That's it. You got to have your summer robe and winter robe. You know, it's funny. I got to tell you, I was, I had an interesting experience last week, two interesting experiences. So I go to the Wynn, because I got there an hour and 40 minutes for a meeting because I'm an idiot. And I'm like,

And I'm like, you know, man, there's this watch that I've been thinking about getting, right? This watch. And I wanted this watch. So I walked down and to the watch store and I tried it on. It was a, I can tell you what it was a Hublot big bang. It's about, it's a, it's a grip of money. It's not a cheap watch.

And I put it on. Man, I've been watching this thing for a while. I put it on and I really expected to love it. Right? I was like, bam. And I put it on and I just felt nothing. Actually, I felt worse than nothing. Because as I was sitting there with this, it was a $30,000 watch. As I'm sitting there with this watch on my wrist, and I'm thinking...

this does nothing for me, like nothing. And then instantly I'm like, Oh my God, all these other watches that I have that I've paid all this money for, they kind of instantly are doing nothing for me either in my head. I'm like, why, why, you know, I'm having this crisis in the store. Like why have I wasted money on the watch? Now, fast forward three days. I go to, um, some of my friends were in town. Um, it was Cody Sperber. He was a clever investor. It was his birthday. They invited me and the wife to come out to a party with them on Saturday at, uh, on

And with them was some people I knew and a lot of people I didn't know, but it was all Cody's friends. And in the process of doing that, I kind of just glanced around and I noticed like five of these guys had the same watch.

They're all wearing the same, different version of the same watch. So I wind up like just eventually this guy, David, I was talking to, I started talking about us and the watch, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he took off the way he's like, no, no, it's the best watch ever. Love it. Great. You know, try it. And he took it off and I put it on for a minute and I was instantly like, oh my God, I love this thing.

And I was like, I got home that night and I found myself like Googling these, this watch and looking up and trying to, there's no deal on it. It's ridiculous, but trying to find a deal on this particular watch. And, and I'm thinking to myself, man,

The fact that it was social proofed by these five dudes. There's the perceived value. All these guys are ballers that created a lot of perceived value to me. Right. The style of it wasn't very much different than the people I put on, but I don't know. I don't know anybody that has that watch. And now here's five guys that are all balling, have this one particular watch. Right now I'm like, no, I'm interested. And I think in business, you know,

you know what, bringing that back to business. It's so important to be social approved amongst people. There's nothing better than referrals. There's nothing better than other people saying you're awesome. Right. And if you're in any type of business, look for that. But also, you know, I don't think just look for that for yourself. Give that as much as you can. As many times you give shout outs to people on social media, do it.

Say, hey, this is great. If somebody's helping you, like if you're watching some of this and you think this is good, please say, yeah, this is great and help me out with that. If you're in a business and somebody does something well for you, say it's great. Now, in a situation like Chili's,

Not done with you, Chili's. Done with you in a situation like Chili's, you can feel free to call them out as well. But yeah, try to give as much proper stuff as you give. What do you think of that, though, in business? When you see these agents or you see whomever, attorneys, whatever, there's this desire to put out the image of being successful and whatever. How much of it is inauthentic, though? Now, as a consumer of things, now whatever, whoever it is, service providers, whatever,

A lot of people want to be perceived as, oh, I'm a luxury this or that. But how much of it is perceived as authentic? How much of it? I think there's a stream of people that just want that. They want the U-Blow so they could tell their friends I got a U-Blow. Yeah.

And then there's people that go, no, no, I actually want an authentic experience. I want somebody who isn't going to put money over my needs. Yeah. I mean, dude, I wish I could be that person to say that I make every decision that I make and I'm not affected by outside. There's been plenty of stuff that I bought, you know, like Gary Vee says, don't buy expensive shit to impress people you don't know. Right. It doesn't make any sense. I'm not.

I'm guilty of that. I've done that. I think everybody is a little guilty of that. I try not to be. I try not to do that. And you learn, right? You learn that...

There's a difference between buying shit that people want to see because you go, oh, I have a Louis Vuitton bag. It's like, do you like your bag? Yeah. Right. See, because to me, I have a Louis Vuitton wallet. Now it's got my name in it. It was a graduation gift from law school. Carries sentimental value to me. I didn't buy it. Hooters University, right? Hooters Junior College. It was actually Twin Peaks Academy. But, you know, there is something to be said about buying the things you do want, right? Yeah.

Like when you're talking about watches, like I've just got my pilot's license. And so to me, there's something about tradition of aviation. Sure. Or tradition of a French leather manufacturer. If you really wanted a Louis Vuitton bag, because you go, no, no, I really, I've been to the factory. There's something interesting about it. Then buy it. Then enjoy it. But if you're doing it so that other people think you have money and you...

have in your financing shit or you have credit card bills, you really need to look in the mirror and figure your life out. If you buy a Louis Vuitton bag and you finance it, there's something wrong. Or you put it on a credit card that you don't pay off every month. That's financing. Yeah, but you know what I'm saying? Some people don't see that that way. And they think, oh, I need this because I want to have a certain amount of cash. Yeah.

No, I would say the only exception I'm going to make to where that's okay is, you know, people is the realtor car. I think, I think, I think I get that one. I think if you're in this business, you need a nice car. I think people that say you can just have a Toyota Tercel and people, no, people will care. I think you're right. That's part of the package. I, there's times when I am going to certain areas of town where I will take a truck I bought for $5,000 that I, it's my, my, mostly my daily driver.

I bought a truck. I've seen the truck. Yeah, you've seen the truck. It's a great truck. But I'm not out trying to be a perceived value because if I'm driving up to see you, you're already my client. Yeah, no, 100%. Right? And if it ever pushed me to shut up. But if I don't go to business meetings in the truck, I don't pull up to new clients that I have to sort of discuss their new case with. Yeah.

in a in a truck but well it's like it's like me i'll leave a i'll leave a high-end sports car that sits in the garage more often than not because i'm driving around a 2013 jeep that i haven't had the top on in three years right and that's what i would rather especially when it's a i honestly i drive the jeep every day i'll tell you what my jeep's awesome i'll tell you why i'll tell you why i drive it because when i go out and it's 125 degrees outside you get in your car it's 180 i get my jeep it's 125 degrees i turn the air on i'm back i'm down in like two seconds i'm good it

And it can also go the opposite way too, right? Like I know people that are, they deal in the Hispanic community, right? And their average homes are $200,000 homes compared to somebody that maybe have a million dollars. And some of these people are pulling up in $150,000 car. Those people don't want to see that, right? That type of clientele doesn't want to see. So there's a big balance on that. And

You can't, you either do what both of you've done and have multiple cars, but you, you can't, there's been times I've walked in and I tell people all the time, they're not going to like me because somebody drags me on the last second appointment to go help them. This happened in Henderson on water street. I go, these people are not going to like me. They're,

old farmer. I love how he knows himself so well. No, but they're all... They're not. They're not. They're all... They're 90-year-old farmers from Idaho. I already warned... I wasn't... See, I warned most people at the meat cult they're not going to like it. They're not going to like me. But no, and I sat there and I go, they're not...

I am in a suit tie. I'm like undoing my tie, taking my suit off. I go, they're not going to like this. Right. And they're like, no, no. A month later, they're like, they didn't like you. You can't, you cannot appease everybody. Right. Like you can't go from one extreme to the other. And that's, I always tell people, I, you have to pick one side and kind of focus on that. Your marketing can't go for nothing but $10 million deals and try to be knocking out $200,000. Hey, I'm a local Joe with a Ferrari. Yeah. I'm here to help. Yeah.

You. Me. You. Yeah, no, there's a funny thing about that. I've said there's a couple different vehicles you can drive as a realtor or a lawyer or something that –

wealthy people understand. So you can have a Prius? Yeah. You can have a Prius. Oh my God, it's the best. Because you can... F-150. Leonardo DiCaprio drives a Prius. You don't look that. You don't look that as... Back in the day, back in the day when I sold REO property, I would go to these REO conventions. And one of my friends that worked in DC, we were talking about, because we were all...

killing it back then, making a ton of money. And somebody was like, oh, I just got this. I just got that. And you said to him, what are you driving? I drive a Prius. We're like, Prius? He goes, dude, Prius is the best realtor car ever. He goes, I go in the hood. Nobody messes with it. But if I go to a million dollar house, I'm an environmentalist. You're an environmentalist. No, it's brilliant, right? You can almost get away with that with a truck. There's some trucks that have utility, especially as a realtor.

So, you know, this is just my free unsolicited advice, but, you know, as a realtor, if you're hauling stuff, it looks like you were a worker. There's like subconscious things that go into car selection. If you drive a useless car, if you drive like a white Mercedes as a realtor, you're not going to fit in only on that side of the spectrum you're talking about. You're never going to be perceived as, you're going to be, in my opinion, and other people I've talked to, you're going to look like somebody that,

you know, wants to be in that lane. Well, I think, I think too, though, I think, I think, let me ask you a question. Is there a difference? Is there a difference between the C two 30 and having an S class perceived value wise? If you're, if you see somebody, they pull up in the smallest, cheapest Mercedes, you know what it is versus somebody pulls up in the S only at the highest level. And only those people know. Yeah. Cause you're going, you're going to sit. That turns into, uh,

wanted to be in that lane but can't afford that lane right yeah and there are people that uh like i'm not a car guy i know both of you are and that's why i always tell john don't ask me for car advice because i do not just don't like cars right but it takes it he looked it's a monorail

Oh, I do take the monorail. Are we going to hate on the monorail? Any opportunity I get to hate on the monorail, I'm going to hate on the monorail. If you ever want to meet Colt in real life, other than having a commercial deal. No, no. In between Davidoff bar at the...

at the Fashion Show Mall. You know what? Hey, look. Hold on. No, no. Do not give our David off. Do not talk about David off. We're not going to give out our secret. You can't get that out. That's a secret. That is a secret. Cut that out. We'll edit that one out. You are not giving out my local secrets, and that's how I feel about the monorail. Do you ever want to kill Colt?

Listen, you should want to talk about the monorail because you're probably the only person riding it. You need more people to ride it. Are they going to put it under out of business? It's been BK'd for what, 20 years? Yes. I worked on that BK. Did you? Oh, did you? They're like, no one wants it? I worked on that BK in law school back in like 2010.

I was working on the LV Monorail under Judge Markell. Really? Yeah. That's a great. That is the most. Let me give you underrated stuff, right? Oh, boy. Monorail. Android. Android phones. Wow.

Talk about falling off a monorail right there. I know we're going to get into something else, so I'm going to hold my most overrated stuff. Chicas Bonitas? Oh, Chicas Bonitas. Speaking of bankruptcy court that I externed at during the summer, during law school semesters. Chicas Bonitas is in bankruptcy. Every one of those. Remember during the recession when all the strip clubs were going bankrupt?

from the cab wars do you remember that no you remember that so what would happen is these strip clubs had this race to the bottom there was this absolute race to the bottom because if you drove up i think it's still like that today i wouldn't know obviously i think it's like that today if you pull up in a cab or something like that the strip club will pay yeah they pay the guys yeah right whatever so that was bankrupting all these people because they just okay i'll pay you 100

And it's like that in real estate, too. You see these guys, I'll do your commission for 5%, 4%, 3%. You think you're the first guy that can move on that, right? You're like, oh, I'm going to generate this great business model. We do 1% sales. Don't expect anything. It will literally be listed, and don't talk to me ever again. Yeah, that's it. Right? I don't want to talk to you. I will list your home and sell it. We will do the paperwork, but it's purely transactional. I mean, that model's been around forever. It was help you sell back in…

Late 90s, early 2000s. It failed then. There you go. So if you want to talk about perceived value, these things are all races to the bottom. If you're just going to compete on money, then anybody can offer $1 less for the next one, $1 less, until you're not making any money. Until you push people out, and then it'll come back up, whatever. So to John's point about...

people perceiving value, right? You have to almost, everybody, it's not collusion, right? Because you guys are so worried about in your business about the whole concept of collusion. Everybody agreeing it's 6%. It's like, well, that number kind of is where the economic market leads to a place where people are getting what they want back and forth between everybody. Yeah, sure. It's kind of where that number used to be 7%, right? It's 6% now.

It's kind of what it averaged out to be. So I think people are just setting their markets. Well, there is no set commission. They're antitrust laws. They're trying to smack me in the face. But I think at the end of the day, no, I'm not saying there are. But at the end of the day, there's still a market price. And just because prices fall within a market price doesn't mean it's collusion. It means that's what the market basically is. The market price is what the market will bear.

That's right. What the market will bear is based on your perception, based on how good you are at what you do. All right, well, let's take a quick break. When we get back, Colt's going to take his shirt off, and we're going to talk about a lady who put laxatives in the coffee creamer at work to prove a point. 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. I'm here. Give me a shout. What's up, everybody? Welcome back from the break. Scott's got more, uh, Colt got more scotch. I got a coffee. Connell got a coffee. Three days later, by the way, we're just kidding. It's the magic of television. No, it's what it is. I just got better looking. That's how that works.

So, before we went away, I told a story I read today. There was a lady that did this to her coworkers and recorded it and put it on TikTok. And this is what she did. She was mad that all of her coworkers were drinking her like international coffee, whatever it was, creamer, and put a bunch of laxatives in it to teach them a lesson. And apparently recorded it and put it on TikTok. That's right.

That is violently illegal. Well, yeah, there was apparently attorneys logging in to do it. So the question becomes a couple of things. Here's the questions that I'm getting from this. Number one, A, I mean, obviously, I don't think we have to debate, is there a better way to get your coworkers not to drink a coffee? Sure. I think that's done. But do you think she did this because she was genuinely mad about the coffee creamer, or did she do it because...

It was tick tockable.

She did it because she thought she was a genius who could do this thing, be petty and punitive. And get a million clicks. And be like, oh, go viral, right? So people want to go viral. But at the end of the day, it's like you can't do something knowing it's going to hurt somebody. Yeah. It's like, you know, you sign waivers. You go to like a theme park or you go to the bumper cars or whatever. You never sign away negligence. You can't just, you never get an unfettered right to go hurt people, even if they sign up for it.

Right. You have to still always heard that you have to do within the parameters of, you know, decency. Right. That's why spring guns, you know, one of the first cases you learn in law school are illegal. You can't have a gun pointed at your door. Right. That if you open or you break into a house, a gun goes off and kills you because it's just that it's not it's not commensurate with the crime. It's not legal.

it's not a way to run a decent society where you can just make people sign something and then hurt them. Right. Right. You can never do that. So if you know that people are drinking your creamer, you're, you're on notice that this is happening and you're entitled to just not bring creamer or whatever. You can't, I mean, God help you. My clam chowder. Wow. That's different. That's pretty petty though. I like, I like, you know, quahog clams or whatever. I don't like,

I'd be pissed if someone drank my coffee. I like coffee as much as I like my scotch. And it's annoying. And maybe say something to your coworkers. But here's a great example of...

maybe making the adult decision of trying to talk to people or say, you know what, you guys, it's very expensive. If you want me to pick up a creamer and bring it in, you know, let's have a kitty where we all chip in for it, whatever. There's a lot of common solutions that would be pretty obvious to me. And so, okay, let's handle objections here. Okay. So you tell me that and I say, listen here, come on.

You cheap bastard. It's just coffee creamer. Get over yourself. I like a little touch of my coffee. You're bringing it in. It's better than the rubbery coffee mate we have in here. I'm going to keep doing it. What are you going to do about it? Well, I mean, I would probably, if you actually did that, you're like a co-worker. That's probably where management should step in, I'd say, and be like, keep your hands to your own fucking creamer. Bob, bring your own creamer, you cheap bastard.

Bob, you cheap bastard, bring your own creamer if you want it. You like hazelnut? I'm going to start bringing in candy cane or whatever. Start bringing in that sugar-free stuff, which should be just as illegal. You think it's bad now? Wait until the pumpkin spice comes out. Then all hell is breaking loose. At that point, I think you get a pass. There's no rules with the pumpkin spice. You hate pumpkin spice, and I can tell you what.

I'm a white girl that fall. I love that. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I love the pumpkin spice. What I have said notoriously about pumpkin spices, it is like ether to real estate agents. As soon as the pumpkin spice comes out, they all go sleeping night, night time and just wait till it's time to make your business plan in January. And I always tell people, my team, we close more deals and make more money between October and January 1st because we are one of the few people that are actually still working. I,

I only buy my houses during November. Dude, I'm telling you, you want to make money as a real estate agent? Plan in your plan to bust your ass between October and January, and you'll make a ton of money because people, I'm telling you, the pumpkin spice comes out, nine-nine time for realtors.

That is hilarious. That should be a phenomenon. It is. Every year. You should name it. The pumpkin spice sleeve or something. Every year he does. I do. The same thing. But it's so funny because- You trademarked it, John? I always- I'm telling you, we do. The pumpkin spice sleeve. Every time I go buy a home personally, I guarantee, if you looked at all the homes I bought personally, I guarantee they fall in the November, December range. I honestly- Because people-

The buyers that are occupying stop looking at them because I want to change hands during Thanksgiving, Christmas. We have people coming. So they stop. And the realtors, I mean, it's funny. People, ghost towns in real estate. So that means it's like the best time to stay busy. People that want to sell, it's kind of like that whole thing, that nightclub so busy nobody goes there anymore? Yeah. You can just walk in. It's like this is the busiest club in town because nobody comes here anymore. Exactly. Exactly.

You know, I got an interesting text message last night. I thought this was interesting, which is I got a text message from one of our agents who's a young kid.

And Kumon Girls. Can we talk about that? All right, you can talk about the Kumon Girls. That's fine. Oh, my God. The best. It was Kumon. Kumon me. Kumon me. Kumon me. So we may or may not know somebody that may or may not have had their headshots stolen and... Appropriated. Yeah, and so we're sitting there just...

Chit-chatting in the office, and this girl comes into my office, and she's like, John, I need to talk to you. Something that's kind of maybe a little embarrassing. Of course, we go, we love embarrassing stories. Tell us. And she goes, somebody. In a non-workplace sexual harassment way. Yeah. No, it was total. She was freaking out because this is Las Vegas. Right. John has had probably two fire people for being prostitutes. I would dare say. Well.

Yeah. That's a tough, that's a tough, it's a strong way to say it. It's about reputational management. Yes. Okay. We have, we have parted ways with some people that we didn't necessarily like the product they were apparently trying to sell through their Instagram. I did not mean to throw that out. Is that fair? That's very fair. Well, that's very fair because like I said, you have a right to maintain an image in a certain way. And if it goes against that, you have the right to part ways with people and they have the right to quit too.

There's a girl that was on Facebook last night, real estate agent. Check out my tattoo. Going like this, her nipples hanging out. She knew damn well what she was doing. That's how, did you see that? No. I should have screenshot. No. But on Facebook, you know what you're doing. So we go back, back to the story, sorry. This girl goes, John, look at, like, this guy is freaking blackmailing me. Like, but it's just headshots, but I don't know what to do. She wanted to know how she could get.

Get her picture off. She was freaking out. And you happen in Connell. You happen to be here, the attorney. So I was, it's lovely. It's like, talk to my attorney and there you go. And John's very tech savvy. So anybody in the office that has anything to do with any technology, they go to John, right? And she goes,

I don't know what this is. I mean, look at the site. And John's like, nope, I don't want to look at it. You know, I don't want to look at porn stuff. And she goes, no, no, it's just my headshots. I promise you. And John's like, I don't want to. And she goes, just click on the link. Right. And so John's looking at the links like, well,

What is this? Anyways, Kumon pick. Kumon pick. What is this thing? Who cares? Kumon. Kumon my feet. Kumon my pick. Kumon my pick. She goes like this and just the energy drained. I thought there was some little Indian guy named Kumon my pick that was stealing everyone's. The energy, everything just drained in her head and she just goes. What happened to John when you realized? It's Kumon my pick.

John's such a sensitive. Yeah. Such a saint. I was immediately very embarrassed by that happening. This will be perfect character witness evidence one day. Yeah, exactly. You know, that brings up another point. I don't know if you saw this. Talking about appropriating photographs. Did you happen to see the FBI was doing a sexting?

And they were just randomly using pictures of women that happened to work in the FBI building as like the bait. Without any technology? They didn't get any of their permission to do so. Was there an excuse? Hey, I'm just Italian. Hey, we're Italian. It doesn't matter. No, that came out there. Can you imagine? You're just working away. I mean, who knows what you do there?

Yeah, you're human resources. Human resources. Pam and human resources. Pam and human resources. And all of a sudden, she's got to worry about her face showing up on Kuman My Pics. Kuman. Kuman My Secret Agent. His face. And you got to worry about that. I mean, yeah, it's a big deal. Stinging predators. I mean, I guess it's complimentary if the pics are. No, no, no, no, no.

No, that's not okay. See, I take compliments everywhere. I would take that as, thanks, guys. Did anybody respond? Can I see the response? How many guys did we catch? Was there a lot of guys that we catch? Were they good looking? Were they not? Did you see on the news today that they say,

they were doing every state of what you needed to make to live in that state. Las Vegas, $28,000. Where? To live where? Not Las Vegas, Nevada, $28,000 a year. Nevada, yeah. That includes Ely. That doesn't include Dragon Ridge. I understand that, but if you had zero debt,

Neither of you could live off of $28,000. I mean, I could. No, you couldn't. I went through the drive-thru at Wendy's. You know what?

Wendy's, you're getting close to getting chili'd. You're getting this close to chili's. This close, I'm telling you. Shots fired. This close. Now, I go through the drive-thru at Wendy's just because I'm in a hurry. That's because I'm fat. No, it's a good drive-thru. And I just want a spicy chicken sandwich combo. Small, small. Oh, okay. How much? So health matters. How much? How much?

Combo, that's like probably seven bucks now, eight bucks. $8.69. For small. I immediately called my partner and I said, dude, we got to give everybody that works for us a raise. This inflation thing is completely real. Our people, there's no way they're not feeling this. This is crazy. It's just...

Now, I don't eat fast food. I already have a desire to drink enough red wine to make up the calories for the fast food I don't eat. But at the end of the day, fast food places, we just don't go ever. Yeah. We just never go to fast food places. Same way. But this crispy chicken sandwich thing came around, and everyone's always talking about them. Yeah. So I went to Popeye's. I went to KFC. Popeye's is best. I went to one or the other one, Chick-fil-A. And I've had a crispy chicken sandwich from all three. Okay.

Popeye's is... Light years back. It's not even close. Stupid race. Light years back. It's like all the guys that were watching Usain Bolt's ass about 20 fucking yards ahead of him. It's like, never mind. No, I went down the internet hole the other night, the black hole. And I'm sitting there and my wife's like, what are you looking at? I'm like, which place has the best fried chicken? Crispy chicken sandwich with bees? No, and I agree with it. In the top three, we're like Hattie B's, which I love. No, no idea. Yeah.

At Cosmo, dude, Hattie B's Nashville Hot Chickens. No? You haven't had this yet? Like I said, we don't eat out a lot. It is a gift that we have this. It's in the food court at Cosmopolitan. It is a gift. Well, Hattie B's isn't really fast food. Hattie B's is a restaurant in Nashville. And they have a quick service counter in the food court at Cosmo. But it is a gift from the south that we have that here. You've got to check that out. I'll check it out. Hattie B's is amazing. It was like number three. I don't even recall what number two was. Oh, no, number two was Chick-fil-A. Chick-fil-A sucked.

Dude, number one, Popeye's. But Popeye's wasn't even close. It was just like, okay, I get it. And this was chicken in general. This wasn't even chicken sandwich. Yeah, I don't have a dog in a fight. I really have no dog in this fight. I just objectively ate the three sandwiches and went, Chick-fil-A is...

Third from KFC? KFC's not that bad. We grew up with Chick-fil-A. Did you? Yeah, I did. Yeah, me too. So this whole Chick-fil-A waiting in line for an hour is crazy to me. We got it at junior high. Yeah, when I was a kid at the mall. Yeah, I was at the mall. Yeah, we were kids. You got to remember, though, well, that was in Gainesville. That wasn't my actual hometown. My actual hometown in Lake City. It was funny. I was going through Facebook today. You have your memories. And like four years ago, the headline from my hometown newspaper was,

Dairy Queen is coming. That was the headline on the main page. And I'm like, you think where you're from is small? This is not like 25. This is last Thursday this happened. John, I want you to say it again with just a little bit more passion. Here we go. We're going to get a power move on it. Hang on. We're going to get a power move. Ready? I'm going to look right in camera two. So like, yeah, three years ago, you know what's coming? Dairy Queen's coming. Oh. You got to hit it faster than that. Yeah.

So you dropped it. Dairy Queen is awesome. There we go. Way too late. It doesn't work. It just doesn't work. It doesn't work at all. But no, but that, but that was the news. But you know, I'm glad you don't eat fast food because there's something I'm working on now. And we have the $50 fit club, which I think we've talked about in the past, but you know,

So I did that speaking gig last week and I looked at the footage on it and I was like, damn, dude, I got to do something. I'm looking a little chonky. And so I hired a trainer and the trainer came today to the house for the first time. It was awesome. AJ Massey was dope. And dude, for 45 minutes, the dude whipped me. He beat me like a circus monkey for like 45 minutes.

And no, we wouldn't really beat a circus monkey. People are like, oh my God, there's so much cruelty to animals. I hate this podcast. That's just a saying. We don't need to be canceled over beating circus monkeys. Although I do hate a monkey. We'll talk about that. How old did you guys feel after Thursday night speaking gig for you? You know, I, I, I don't feel, I love that group. It's,

Because that group to me is 100% why I never go to realtor events.

Like I don't go to realtor events ever because I've already heard everything because I hear it in the office every day. Sure, sure, sure. But you go to this place and what I thought was really funny was about this group and this, it's Sean Kelly's group. He doesn't meet up every, probably once a quarter he does them and they're great. And he brings together such an eclectic group of really high functioning, very, very, very bright people.

And they all do these really weird, niche-y things. - Very niche-y things. - Very niche-y things. And it's so funny because you'll talk to a guy that makes a couple million dollars a year, or made $800,000 flipping NFTs last week,

And he is just freaking out because the best Street Fighter video game player in the world is sitting at the bar. That's like his Michael Jordan. I know exactly who you're talking about. That dude was like Michael Jordan in that room. Yeah, Eric. Yeah, you talked to him. Yeah, I was talking to him because you know what's funny is that a couple of those guys were both canceled. Oh, they got canceled? They were canceled. I didn't know they got canceled. And one guy got canceled for something he said on Twitter four years ago. What did he say?

Okay, he explained it to me, and I don't want to obviously get into his business or his details or bring it up, but he made a comment that he was immediately sorry for, but it had to do with, like, it was something about girls and gaming, and he said something really shitty, okay? He said something shitty. Right.

And he profusely apologized for it. Sorry then, sorry now. And there's times in everybody's life where you say stuff because you kind of forget that there's real people in the end or you're playing a game or a character, right? You live in this online world and you can take it too far saying things you don't mean. And I believe that even if you think you mean it in the moment, you may wake up and go, man, that was really ignorant of me. I'm sorry. Whatever. Yeah.

Unlike a lot, just like a lot of people, there's no chance to improve or to learn or to get better or to apologize, right? You're just fucking canceled. You're just done. And the problem with that is when you take away people's ability to grow, what you do is you create something that's resentful and resentful of that thing, right? So he's got to try to fight his way back. Now, thankfully, he's an intelligent guy. He's smart. He's going to find his way, you know, in another path, and hopefully he'll find that, you know, way.

or whatever the fuck the world needs nowadays for when you make a mistake and the whole world falls apart. You are fucking done, one and done. You don't get a lot of that. It's one of my favorite things. I don't remember which one of the Beastie Boys said this. I don't remember which one it was, but somebody came out and said, do you feel bad now about...

misogynistic lyrics about women or whatever. And they were like, well, yeah, I don't think that way at all. And they're like, well, that makes you a hypocrite. And he's like, well, dude, I'd rather be a hypocrite than somebody that never grows and changes. That's right. Yeah. I don't remember which one said it, but it was like Churchill or Lincoln or whatever too. I don't, you know, like I said, the internet, you know, remember Lincoln's famous quote about the internet. Yeah. Um, it was one of those things where he said, you know, um,

Somebody called him a flip-flopper, and he goes, when the facts change, my opinion changes. Yeah. Okay? When the facts change or when I grow and I learn perspective, my opinion changes, right? Yeah. Growing up, you know, there was probably a time I thought that Muslims were terrorists. When I watched them on the news, because I grew up in Regina, Saskatchewan, and I don't think I knew a Muslim until I met a Muslim neighbor. And I go, oh, well, he's a nice guy. Right. So you go and you learn. Did you invite him over for a quick glass of syrup or what happened next? He was in Canada. He already had his own syrup.

But I'm saying, like, in life, you can't make assumptions. And you go through, and the more experience you have, the better you are at learning. Wait a second. So my assumption about the syrup, is that not fair or is that incorrect? I would have stopped you if it was wrong. You're lucky Canadians are nice because you'd be canceled. You'd be canceled. They're probably the only people you make. Well, let's face it. At this point, really all I'm trying to do is get huge in Denmark if I can.

Get canceled in Canada? I mean, like, I've heard we're coming up in Norway right now, and we're going to be reaching there. Actually, Norway just called the United States of America an underdeveloped country. Did you read that? No, did not. So Norway was talking about it was one of these pamphlets it was putting out. And this was, like, in the last couple days. It was like, if you're doing this or going to an underdeveloped country such as the United States, you have to do this.

And it was just this whole comment section of people going, well, if the shoe fits, you know, like, cause you talk about crumbling infrastructure, you talk about healthcare, access to healthcare as a tourist, you talk about all these things. And so some guy puts on there,

Yeah, they're bitching, but we give X amount of millions of dollars to their military and blah, blah, blah. And another guy posts down there another quote. It says, United States gives zero dollars to Norway for its military. It's just one of those things, right, where you lose a bit of perspective. Because we give everybody money, so we have to give them. Yeah, but it was just one of those funny things, seeing the United States being called an underdeveloped country. Speaking of crumbling infrastructure, what do you think about –

the infrastructure bill and rebuild in America and everything that it is, the BIPORs. What do you think about it? So my goal always is to invest in infrastructure, science, technology, education, mathematics, everything that makes this a great jumping platform, right? The citizens of the United States are what makes America great and always have been. Ingenuity, opportunity, freedom, you know, easy place to conduct business. But it's difficult to conduct business with crumbling infrastructure, right? Yeah.

So if you have things like high-speed rail, if you have good airports, if you have a lot of that stuff, it's just better for everybody. I would sink every dollar we spent in Afghanistan into America. Well, let me give you a counterpoint there, sir, as to why this is a disaster and why it's going to be a disaster is because of this.

We already have a global shortage of building materials, concrete, steel, wood. All of those things are already skyrocketing prices because of a shortage. In America, we already have a massive labor shortage for men down across the country because you make more money to stay home and collect extra unemployment benefits and you go to work.

So what you're going to do is you're going to unleash government contracts into markets that are already completely lopsided and upside down. Anybody that is in anything to do with real estate, the construction of homes, the flipping of homes,

any of that stuff is going to be a major problem so here's the thing do you think the average joe american is paying taxes would rather have a high-speed rail from a to b or would rather be able to afford a house that is now going to go through the roof because all these new home builders are going to just the pricing because of labor because of materials is about to skyrocket guess who's got a solution to go there guess who's got literally the perfect solution it's colt

Not sure. We'll come back to you, Cole. So what an amazing thing to parlay into this conversation. Yeah.

All those soldiers, you want to serve your country? We already have the largest standing military, like effectively. I mean, China does, but ours is, you know what I mean? You have all these people that are serving on Navy destroyers and filling up vending machines with chips. They're not developing skills. They're serving, but they're being bureaucratically administered in ways that they're not necessarily as productive as they could be, right? I think a lot of soldiers would tell you that. They're washing trucks in Afghanistan, Afghanistan.

You have a group of young, potentially talented, eager people that you could be developing skills with. You could be educating and utilizing your own country to make it great. You don't want to make America great. Utilize its own powers within its own borders. Mm.

We always look outside while inside is falling apart. Because we don't manufacture anything here anymore. But we do. But we could. Well, but we're not. And the problem is, like, you look at the lumber shortage and all that is coming directly from China. Guess who else just passed a massive infrastructure bill? Guess who else is doing the same thing? China is. So if China is the main manufacturer of a lot of the natural resources we need. Canada. That's true. We could just take over Canada.

We'll think about the forestry. So if the Taliban can take down Afghanistan in three days, what do you think we're doing for Canada? Two days tops. Two and a half? Two days tops, and that's what's stopping that. I hate to tell you what happened to Leningrad the last time someone tried to take over a frozen tundra. That's a good point. Hitler and Napoleon learned this the hard way, John. That's a good point. That's a good point. You think it will make it where...

People come and create new material. Well, you can, but no, I, you think there's going to be that niche. I think, I think that's an untouched, not an untouched. I think that that's where you're going to see the next 50 to a hundred years is people trying to read. But again, but again, the, the, the problem turns into this, which is if I can go take that job that that soldier wants to get, and I can make 50 bucks an hour, uh,

Full government pension. Give me four years and we'll pay you forever because it's eight point, whatever one point, whatever trillion dollars. And the government's bidding against the private sector to do manufacturing and

No, you can't make a plant that manufactures new materials because nobody's going to go work there because you couldn't afford to hire the workforce to run the plant. Because you're competing with the U.S. government now. It's going to crush small business in the construction industry. Think about what if you utilize, like I said, so you have this group of people that work in the United States military that are deployed elsewhere and not here. So if you redeploy here with the goal of teaching people marketable skills and future…

Like they're obviously going through leadership training in the military. So they're all capable individuals, men and women, that can use their hands to figure it out. That's not a job that's beneath them. I almost feel like people see that it's beneath you to be an engineer or somebody that's building something. No, that's how you serve America. Second point is,

Immigration policies in the United States are fucking the most backwards they could be. We don't hire for skill. We have a couple programs for wealth. But for the most part, immigration happens in the United States through familial relationships, meaning marriage. Or I bring over my parents who are 65 years old. It's not like you're bringing this fresh cadre of young blood, right? So you say, okay, we're going to have...

we're going to have this new program. It's going to be a manufacturing program. It's going to be a timber program. It's going to be a oil extraction program. What we're going to do is we're going to have facilities and you get to have a visa. You get to sign up for a visa. If you work in this factory in North Dakota,

Where land is cheap, minerals are cheap, everything's cheap to do up there. Or in Wisconsin or these places, Iowa, places that aren't expensive like California or New York. You have manufacturing facilities. You have developmental facilities. You have these things in the places that are the least populated and the most that could use some new blood and infrastructure, right?

You have that as a program. Work there for six years, eight years, whatever. Develop your roots there, and you will get a visa into America and stay. We seem to have a lot of land here in Nevada that could be well- I mean, seriously. But you still can't compete against-

I mean, pretty much not paying Chinese people to work in China, right? Like you can create a thing and put them in the cheapest part of America. You still can't pay them 10 cents an hour or 15 cents an hour. And I get what you're saying with, we got a lot of people like, I laughed. I saw a thing on, on, uh, they were pulling weeds. It's,

And they're part of the army. They're like, this is all we do, pull weeds all day long. You know, and it's like. You're serving your country. I don't look at anybody that. I don't walk into the 7-Eleven when I get my coffee in the morning and look at that person like they're any less. I just see you as a part of a system that I need everybody working in to facilitate. But you're different. You're different. Right. Most of the social media people, most of the younger crowd, and they do look at that, right?

right? It's beneath them. To go flip a burger. If you wanted to go Robbie instead, or I'm going to do this, like there's,

millions of jobs out there that cannot be filled and it's because people's ego is well no i think but i think but i think too i think a lot of i think a lot of those i think a lot of those jobs like you know talking about like mcdonald's and stuff i think there's certain jobs in america that were not designed to provide a quote-unquote living wage i see that argument my kids need a place like i need a place for my kids to go work when they're 60 i think that is a good argument if you talk to economists

most will agree to you that a lot of places are not, they're not supposed to be a career. No. Now it happens to be that a lot of people don't have the skills or abilities or, you know, whatever to maybe progress in a different way. But at the end of the day, you know, those balances tend to find themselves out in a free market. Well, I think I felt like you look at Vegas over the last year and you can just, I mean, my friends on the strip at like, they're like, dude, people are using EBT cards to like buy stuff on the strip. It's crazy. And I'm thinking, well,

don't come to Vegas, use that money, invest in anything that's going to prepare you for when this stops. It's such short, short minded thinking. But you're not ever taught that, right? Like in school, what do you talk? We laugh because how many of us play in the stock market in our office? Yeah. Three people maybe, right? Like,

Right. Like you got, no, there's more than that. There's, there's, there's much more than that. Yeah. But yeah, that's true. But you're talking about very smart people and these people, your agents are very smart agents. Right. And it's, I laugh cause it's, they don't understand that. And it's universities. Can I tell them what you did?

Oh, well, yeah. Well, you want to talk about one share of win. Oh, wow. One. So I can go get my parking spot. It was funny. And I didn't realize until I was telling the story, right? Like I went and I was like,

Nah, I'm going to watch overnight, and then I'll throw some money because I think it'll go down 2%, 3%, whatever. And I sat there, and I was just bored. I'm like, I'll just buy one share. I don't even know why. And I bought just one share. And so I said, I'm going to get it back. It's like Nana gave you the certificate. I almost ordered it, but it was going to be three times my one share to get it. On the Green Bay Packers. Congrats. But it's...

And I think that's – I don't think universities will be around like they are. I think they'll definitely still be around in 20 years. But I think things need to go more of a trade school. You know, universities – Love trade school. Right. Trade schools should be the –

People look down on those. Like you talk about when that should be, I think the number one thing to go towards. And I think high school needs to do a better job of explaining to people. I hate to tell you this. You know what real estate school is? It's trade school. That's what it is. I don't even know if you can say that to the, even if you don't learn anything in real estate school other than how to pass a test, you're not reading Chaucer. That's the whole thing about a liberal arts university or a liberal university or whatever you run the classics and philosophy, whatever.

I see a value in that. I'm a fan of liberal arts education. I think that it's good to have an understanding of different areas of literature and philosophy and business and chemistry and math, whatever. But at the end of the day, I think people are starting to realize that trade schools are excellent ways to make a really solid living. Yeah.

I see that as being way less stigmatized than it used to be. I remember when you were a kid, if you wanted to be a plumber, like, here I am. I was just going to say that. How old were you until you realized, especially in Vegas, the union jobs, like plumbing is a great job. Oh, my God. You know, but you look down and it's funny because I just think that we really need to force that and we really need to do better at just, you know, junior highs and high schools of getting really kids in line with. Maybe parenting? Yeah.

But is it? Are you going to change groups of people by just parenting? You can't because some parents aren't there, right? I know, totally. And I 100% agree with that. And you go talk to any teacher and they're like, it's all parenting. But-

I think that we got to look at the realistic thing of we don't have two parent households. We have parents that maybe shouldn't have had kids, and they got five or six of them. Have a finance class and have a class on –

and, you know, deferred income. How to actually run your life, not just how to do nothing. Yeah, I'm a big fan of that. I think that should be mandatory. Well, speaking of big fan, hopefully you guys are a big fan of this. If you like it, please tell somebody about it. If you hate it, tell somebody about it. Because to me, quite frankly, you know, either way is going to be good. It doesn't matter if you're talking good or talking bad. It's when they stop talking, you got a problem. Anyway, we'll see you next time.

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. I'm here. Give me a shout.