BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 157: A Simple Morning Ritual to Help You Dominate Every Area of Your Life with Hal Elrod

Episode Date: January 14, 2016

He was clinically dead for six minutes. No heartbeat. No sign of life. But Hal Elrod came back from this devastating event and has impacted millions in the process through his bestselling book, The Miracle Morning. Today on the BiggerPockets Podcast you’ll hear Hal’s full story, from the drunk driver that nearly ended everything to the lessons he learned that completely revolutionized his life. Hal’s story — and his advice on reaching your full potential — is sure to rock your life and leave you forever changed for the better. No matter what stage of your real estate investing business you find yourself in today, this show is about to help you get to the next level. Hang on tight! In This Episode We Cover How to raise your potential for success Who Hal Elrod is Hal’s devastating accident The first book he wrote Details on his second book and why he started doing his morning ritual Why he was depressed to the point of losing his house The Morning Rituals The 6 most powerful proven personal development practices How much sleep do we really need? The S.A.V.E.R.S. — and why you should let this guide your morning Two forms of meditation Potential problems with affirmation and how to do it right How to realize the things that you are and are not in control of The two parts of visualization Why there’s magic in putting pen to paper How to change your life beyond just the financial How to apply these learnings to your life as an investor And SO much more! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Keyword Alerts BP Podcast 005: Dealing with Death – A Financial Discussion with CFP Neal Frankle Forbes FastCompany Oprah SmartPassiveIncome The Rudder of the Day (blog) Omvana 7-Minute Workout App The Five-minute Journal The Miracle Morning Community (Facebook Group) Books Mentioned in this Show The Miracle Morning: The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life (Before 8AM) by Hal Elrod Taking Life Head On! by Hal Elrod The Miracle Morning for Real Estate Agents by Hal Elrod The Miracle Morning for Salespeople by Hal Elrod The Miracle Morning for Network Marketers by Hal Elrod Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss The ONE Thing by Gary Keller Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids by Dr. Laura Markham The Miracle Morning Journal by Hal Elrod The 10X Rule by Grant Cardone 10x Planner By Grant Cardone The Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco Tweetable Topics: “Your level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development.” (Tweet This!) “Start your day with peaceful, purposeful silence.” (Tweet This!) “Win the morning and you win the day.” (Tweet This!) Connect with Hal Hal’s Website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast. Show 157. This is the number one thing anyone can do to become the person that you need to be to create the success that you want. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing, without all the hype, you're in the right place. Stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from BiggerPockets.com. your home for real estate investing online. What's going on, everybody?

This is Josh Dorkin, host to the Bigger Pockets podcast here with my co-hosts, Mr. Lumberjack, Brandon Turner. That's Lumberg sexual to you. Come on. You know, I don't want to say it. I don't want to say it. There might be kids listening. How you doing?

Hey, man, you know, I'm good. I'm good. It's, you know, we're a couple days into January. I'm still fighting this cold that I got pre-Christmas. It's awesome. Yeah, good job. Awesome. I think you gave that to me.

Okay. No more making out between us, I guess. Yeah, hey now, you just shouted us, man. Way to go, buddy. I stayed at Josh's house a few weeks ago, and then we both, I got home and we both were sick. So we got it from somebody. But, yeah, that was fun.

Yeah. I cut my thumb. Did you hear about that? I saw it. I heard about it. I don't think anyone cares. He literally sliced off like a corner of his thumb. Yeah, I was kind of sliced apples on a what's called

mandolin and just, you know, yeah, nice. It's grotesque. It'll grow back. It is really nasty. That's what, yeah, that's what they keep telling him. So, yeah, man, listen, we've got a show that I know you are chomping at the bit. I have been trying to get this guy on the show for over a year now, or right about a year now.

We've been planning to get this guy on the show. And it did not fail to disappoint. No, it was great. It was great. Yeah, yeah, today's show was, I, I, I will go in saying, I go into this show somewhat a skeptic, and I walk away, we record intros and outros after we actually do our interviews. And I walk away saying, wow, this is pretty good.

And this is a different show than we normally have. And we'll talk about that in a little bit. But before we do, it is the New Year's. I just want to thank you guys for listening to Bigger Pockets. The show continues to grow, continues to inspire and influence people. And it's so motivating hearing from you guys. It gets us going. It gets us excited to continue to produce the show, to continue to look for great guests.

Because it's a fair amount to work to actually put this thing together. I want to read something really nice. One of the reviews that we got, it's from Mikey Silver. I'm so incredibly grateful to have found BP. A few weeks ago, a friend told me about the BP podcast, which led me to the full site. The fact that BP was created to genuinely help others learn about real estate investing for free is simply amazing and a testament to the generosity of Josh Brandon and the other experienced investors who post on the site. This podcast is a great way to hear

from the different topics discussed on the site and to get to know the community. Thank you guys. I plan to pay it forward. Big thanks to Mikey. And if you want to pay it forward, please take a minute, leave us a review on iTunes, on Stitcher. iTunes, particularly, we love iTunes reviews. And we randomly will read them. We read them all. But to everybody. We randomly read them. So, big thanks to you guys for doing that. Before we get forward, let's kind of knock out today's quick tip. All right, today's quick tip is we introduced about a week and a half ago or so a new way

to very quickly and easily set up keyword alerts on bigger pockets, on the forums, go to the forums, you start reading something and you see a word that you actually want to create an alert for. You just highlight. that word with your mouse and it'll give you the ability to add that term as a keyword and you're done really easy. The power of keyword alerts is really incredible if you're trying to learn about a topic or follow a topic for your business, whatever it is, set up keyword alerts and those will keep you in tune with what's going on on the bigger pocket site. Especially city names. If you have a keyword alert set up for all the city names near you, when somebody mentions

that they're from that city or they're asking questions about it, you get to be the first one notified about it, you'll get to hear about it, you'll be able to jump in. I use that all the time. I got keyword alert set for all my local cities. It's great. It's a great way to network locally. So, awesome. Most investors spend more time chasing deals than reviewing their insurance. But a quick coverage check can be fast, easy, and one of these smartest ways to protect and even improve your property's cash flow. As the months get colder, frozen pipes, icy walkways, and seasonal wear and tear can increase the likelihood of claims. And traditional insurance companies aren't always built to handle these claims quickly or smoothly. That's why more real estate investors are turning to

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It's just cleaner. Sign up at baselane.com. BP and get a $100 bonus. Base lane is a financial technology company and not a bank. Banking services provided by Threadbank. Member FDIC. You've upgraded how to buy properties, but did your insurance get the memo? When investors start scaling, insurance can't be an afterthought. Most policies were designed for a single property, not multiple rentals, LLC ownership, short-term stays, or properties mid-rehab. That's where blind spots can creep in. Enreg works exclusively with real estate investors. They understand portfolios, how risk compounds as you grow, and why insurance should protect your upside, not just a checkbox. One uncovered

claim can undo years of progress. Before your next acquisition, review your insurance. Talk to NREG and get investor-specific coverage from specialists who actually understand real estate at NRE.com slash B-P-Pod. That's N-R-E-I-G.com slash B-P pod. All right, guys, today's guest is Hal Elrod, author of the book The Miracle Morning, which Brandon listed as one of his five business books that changed my real estate investing life. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. as well as the Miracle Morning for real estate agents. So if you're a real estate agent, definitely want to check that out. While neither of these things are real estate investing books per se,

the lessons can really help how you guys approach deals, challenges, building your business, the process of growth, the process of personal and financial and business growth, your goals, goal setting, things like that. There's a lot of depth in here. And Hal is a absolutely phenomenal guy whose story will, without a doubt blow your mind. You blew my mind and I'm

really excited to have had the opportunity for us to interview him. So let's bring it on. Hell. Welcome to the show, man. It's good to have you here. As I said earlier, it is an honor. Well, thank you. Actually, let's bring some context. Earlier you said, it's an honor to meet you,

Brandon and Josh. Go shove it. Yeah. Yeah. And I said, yeah, I said, Josh. I said, you work the sound equipment, right? That's why here. Yeah. Hey, great mics think alike, by the way. Great mics think alike. Yeah.

High old 40, right? There we go. There we go. Nice. Yeah. Well, so the reason how we wanted you here today is so you're not a real estate investor, right? Let's get that out of the way first of all. I probably should be.

It's on my like, it's on my disgrace list of all the stuff I should be doing, but I'm not doing. Yeah. Okay. Well, I'm not going to listen to this damn show then. That's what people are thinking. Some people might be thinking, well, I don't want to listen then. But let me, I want to start out, very first question. Why should people stick around?

anyway. We're talking about waking up earlier. We're talking about setting goals. We're talking about the big picture stuff. Why should they listen to the show? Oh, man. I didn't know you were going to spring that on me. I know. So why should you listen to the show? I mean, there's so many different ways that I could answer that. But I think the best answer is not for me to try to sell anybody on why you should listen. But look at the social proof, if you will. So the book that I wrote The Miracle Morning, which I know we're going to talk about the content from that, it's become one of the best-selling in highest rated books in the history of books.

And I know that's a, I mean, that's a bold statement. That's pretty bold. I think Brandon Turner's book is higher rated, isn't it? I don't think so. No, it's not. You have like, hell, you have 800, five-star reviews, right? It's like 1100. 1100.

Yeah. I was reading your bio. You should update that. Oh, I need to update the bio. You're right. I know. But anyway, so yeah, so that's it. I mean, it's, and here's the crazy part.

When I wrote the book, I was at rock bottom. I mean, we'll talk about the story, right? I didn't write. I mean, I wrote it for average people. Like, hey, here's how you fulfill your potential. Here's like, this is the number one thing anyone can do to become the person that you need to be to create the success that you want. I never imagine that I would have my heroes, people that I had like read their books that had changed my life. Like Robert Kiyosaki, for example, just give you that as an example. His assistant emailed me and said, Hal, Robert's a big fan of your, of the Miracle Morning he wants you on his show. And I thought big fan meant that he needed a guest for the show and saw the book lying somewhere.

You know, and I was like, call this guy. He gets on. He says, Hal, I've read the Miracle Morning three times. I'm on day 60 without missing a day and it's completely changed my life. And my jaw hits the floor. So there you go. So that's why you listen. Don't listen because I say you should listen.

But it's changed, whether you're worth $85 million like Kiyosaki or you're at rock bottom, this applies to you. If you're in that range. Yeah. Hey, Hal. All right. So I'm going to go, Josh. on you, you're telling people how to reach their potential. What gives you the right? I mean,

like, you know, you're not, you're not this 65 year old guy who's lived, you know, to, you know, the decades of life here. Yeah. What, you know, what gives you the right to go ahead and tell people that? Yeah. You know, it's an interesting question. It's probably the question that got me, it took me six years to write the book and it was because of that insecurity of like, who am I? Right. I mean, quick context. I guess I got started kind of at a young age. When I was 19 years old, I started breaking sales records. So I broke I broke sales records where I was doing things that no one in the 50 year history of the company I worked for had ever done. So that kind of created like, well, hey, I guess I have something to teach people. I'm doing something right. A year later, I was hit had on by a drunk driver at 80 miles an hour and I died. I died for six minutes. I broke 11 bones. Came out of a coma six days later. They said I would never walk again. And I had permanent brain damage. And that, you know, I kind of defied the odds and came back from that and went on to run, not just walk, but run a 52-mile ultramarathon. So it was really, I'm 36 years old now.

So I guess here's the answer to the question is ever since I died, right? Yeah, because I'm going to have to ask about, you know, death. We could go more in depth on that. Yeah. But ever since I died, my life for 16 years has been dedicated to, I felt the sense. responsibility being given a second chance. Like, I have a responsibility to my friends, my family, the world to figure out how to fulfill my potential so that I can empower other people to do the same. And that's really been the last 16 years, you know, figuring that out and, you know,

I'm still learning, of course. Wow. Wow. So talking about death, first off, I got to plug a show that we did, podcast five, which was dealing with death, a financial discussion. with a guy named Neil Frankel. The listeners could go to BiggerPockets.com slash show 5. We did that as one of our earliest shows on Bigger Pockets because I think I'm one of these people who thinks it's best to be prepared

for everything that's going to come at you. And so, you know, I knew Neil. Neal's this really, really bright guy and we're like, you know, he and I had had these conversations about it and we wanted to bring it to the podcast. And the show's great. It really makes you think

and kind of helps to prep you as a real estate investor for, you know, what's to come. And really for anybody. But you died. So you got hit by a car. They pronounced you dead on the scene. Like six minutes later, were they trying to revive you for six minutes?

Or did you just wake up and say, holy, yeah, no. I'm alive. So what happened? I got hit head on at a, I don't remember the car accident. You know, my, I have about two weeks of my memory that's just gone. But I was, so I'm driving on the freeway, 70 miles an hour in a Ford Mustang brand new, a Chevy full-sized truck much bigger than my little Mustangs come and head on at me,

drunk driver. Don't remember seeing the car. We hit head on and we hit kind of off center. So we hit like if this is the, my driver's side hit his driver's side. And it sent my car spinning and the car behind me did most of the damage. It hit me in the door at 70 miles an hour. So everybody, if everyone is listening, look over your left shoulder and imagine a car is coming at you at 70 miles an hour and crashes into your door.

And I don't know if you can see on the video, but I mean like my whole left side. like my elbow smashed. I broke my arm. My femur broke in half, pelvis in three places. And what was the question again? I don't know. All right. I have brain damage. I pull the brain damage. Yeah, seriously. You're allowed to use it. You're allowed to use it. The question was on death. Oh, did you just like spontaneously wake up or were they trying to revive? So what happened was the car accident happened. You know, I'm immediately was in a coma. I mean, the Again, 11 broken bones, right? And unable to withstand the pain. My body and brain, I shut down, which I'm thankful for, of course. My best friend, Jeremy found me a minute later. And he, like,

he was a minute behind me in his car. And he pulled up and goes, oh, my God, that's Hal's card. He jumps out. He takes my pulse. And I'm, you know, I'm covered in blood. He thought I was dead because I'm not, you know, I'm not responding. And then he took my pulse and I was alive. Well, it took the rescue crew 50 minutes, 5-0, so almost an hour to use the, I was, was pinned in the car and they had to use the jaws of life, cut the roof off, peel it back, pull the door back and pull me out. And when, you know, I was bleeding for an hour and I was alive, when they finally pulled me out, I lost so much blood so quickly that my heart stopped beating. And that's when I died. And the six minutes was, yeah, six minutes of them working to revive me.

And I'm glad they didn't give up after five, you know. But luckily they cut. What is the protocol on that, by the way? Of reviving me? On reviving people. Like, is it seven, 10 minutes, five. I mean, like, are we lucky? Geez. I don't know. I'm just, yeah, I'm lucky, grateful. But to my knowledge, they said, they got me out of the car and they put me, they rushed

me to the, like the helicopter or something. I'm not even sure. Hooked up to an IV, defibrillator, the whole whole bit. And then I died two more times. Technically, I flatlined twice while I was in my coma. So I think my parents, I'm a dad now. I didn't really get it until I was a dad going, oh my God, what my parents went through was way worse than what I went through.

I mean, they're by my bedside. And, you know, and all of a sudden, I flatline again and they're rushed out. And I mean, yeah, it was, it was pretty rough for them. And then six days later, I woke up and I had to face this reality that I was told I was hit by a drunk driver. I broke 11 bones. I might never walk again. You know, I had no short term memory.

I mean, literally, Brandon, you could have come hung out with me for three hours and gone to the bathroom and come back. And I would have had in the hospital, I would have had no memory you were there for three hours. It was really bad, which Josh, you'd probably say it was probably a good thing. I would have just messed with you the whole time. Yeah. Here's the funny part. I actually, I, I, I, I had the brain damage that I suffered. It was the frontal lobe, right? That's from the head-on collision. And that's the same part of your brain that controls your judgment, your inhibitions, and your, your short-term memory. So ironically, I was hit by a drunk driver, but the damage caused me to be like I was drunk all the time. So I, because of the brain damage, I said anything that a 20-year-old young man thought. I had this hot nurse, Nurse Wendy, who used to have to bathe me like sponge bath. If you're 20 years old and there's a hot nurse bathing you, what are you thinking? Well, I just said it all. I'm like, hey, Mr. Windy, it's, you know, isn't it only fair if I get to

bathe you? And I mean, so my, the point is my friends used to come like Friday night. They're like, what should we do tonight? They're like, dude, let's go to visit Hal and ask him crazy stuff and just See what he says. And yeah, it was funny. That is great. Well, thank goodness you survived. And obviously that led to this transformation in your mind and led to this book. So let's kind of go from accident to book.

Why write a book? You know, what kind of got you there? Yeah. Well, so Miracle Morning was my second book. And both books were written for the exact same reason. And that was not because I wanted to be an author or write a book. not at all. It was because I literally felt a sense of responsibility. So the first book, Taking Life Head On, which we won't go into much detail, but the premise was, right, it was like,

wow, I overcame. In fact, a friend of mine, John is the one who told me, he goes, Hal, you take it for granted that, like, you what you went through, because it was your experience. You just think it is what it is. But he goes, dude, you died and you were told you'd never walk, and you ran an ultramarathon and all. He goes, if I were you, I feel like your number one focus should be committing to share that in a book. So that was the first book. And then the second book, it was similar. It was 2007 when the U.S. economy crashed,

and anybody who has anything to do with real estate was very aware of, you know, right, the adversity that created. But I just bought a brand, I bought a brand new house at the peak of the market in 2006. My first house was 25, 385 grand, short sold it for 186, right, for half price. And during that time when the economy crashed,

I got deeply depressed. I, you know, before it crashed, I had a six-figure business. I was a coach. I was a speaker. I was an author. I was like living the dream. I just bought a house, bought my car. Everything was great.

Economy crashes and I lose everything. And that's what inspired the second book was after six months of like a real downward spiral into a depression and feeling hopeless. Like everything I tried wasn't working. I was reading books. I was doing different things. Nothing turned it around. And to keep a long story short, the same friend,

that told me to write that first book. I called him. I said, dude, I'm going through a really, really tough time. And I haven't told anybody because I'm a success coach. So it kind of is counterintuitive to tell people, hey, I'm failing miserably. Do you know anyone that needs a good success coach? So I just kept it a secret. And I finally told him. And he told me, he said, if I were you, I would every morning go for a run and listen to a personal, like listen to a business book. and then go home and while you're, he goes, the point of the run is to put you in a peak physical, mental, and emotional state, and then educate yourself on what you need to do to improve your challenges.

For you, it's business, it's finances right now, while you're in that peak state and then run straight home and spend an hour implementing whatever you learn. And I, you know, I went, I hate running. It was the first thing I said. And he goes, what do you hate worse running or the life that you just described to me? What's going on? And I was like, all right, screw you.

I'll go for a run. And I went for a run the next morning. And I heard a quote, and this will kind of wrap up the story, is Jim Rohn. This is the quote that turned my entire life around. It's responsible for the Miracle Morning. I mean, everything faster than ever thought possible. And it was Jim Rohn said your level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development. And in that moment, I realized I'm not dedicating time every day to my personal development.

I'm not becoming the person that I need to be to create the success I want in my life. And I ran home. And the epiphany was, I need to. create a morning ritual. That's what like the world's most successful people, they do a morning ritual. But then the question was, well, what do I do to make it the most effective morning ritual known to man? And I kind of, I spent like an hour researching and, you know, it ended up being what is now known as the Miracle Morning. But it was never going to be a book. It was just that with two months of doing this morning ritual, which will go into what it is, but I more than doubled my income.

I went from being in the worst shape of my life physically to running a 52-mile ultramarathon. And I went from being deeply depressed to being the happiest I'd ever been, the most confident I'd ever been. And because my life changed so fast, I started calling it the miracle morning and sharing it with my clients and just seeing the impact in their life, the light bulb went off. And I go, again, I have a responsibility. I've got to write a book and share it with the world and the rest of this kind of history, as they say. Wow. I love it. That's awesome.

Yeah, go ahead, Brandon. Well, I was going to ask, you know, you had a lot of things going for you. You know, you mentioned like you had a business. You're making good money. You're a success coach. Like, do you mind explain it a little bit? Like, why do you think, like, why were you depressed then? I mean, like, I mean, obviously the economy was tanking and whatever. But like, you know, like, it seems like a guy would be like, oh, you got everything going for you. You have no right to be depressed. How did that work? Well, but that's the thing is like because I went from having been successful and maybe I didn't clarify that. But yeah, I don't think I did clarify that. Within a very short period of time, I lost over half of my coaching clients, therefore half of my income. Yeah. So that's what happened is I lost over half my clients. And it was not because I was a bad coach. I at least I don't think. It was just because the economy affected them. And it was the trickle down. It was like, hey, we either pay our mortgage or we pay you to coach us. And, you know, I let them out of their coaching contract, you know. And so I lost over half my income. And then I couldn't pay my bills. I couldn't pay my mortgage. I lost my house, right? Okay. That's right. Yeah. And then and I and I canceled my gym membership. So when I, when the,

Before the economy crashed, I was 5.7% body fat, 170 pounds, six feet tall, like best shape of my life, right? Six months later, I was 17%. So from 5.7% to 17% body fat in six months. So it was a literal physically, mentally, emotionally, financially, I was at the lowest point in my life. And as far as the depression goes, there's almost a perfect storm. And I didn't talk about this part of it for a long time because I was almost,

I don't know if embarrass is the right word, but before the economy crashed, a friend of mine had told me that I had ADHD and that I needed to go see a doctor. And I went and saw a doctor and I got on Adderall. This was back in 2005, I think, or six. And I didn't know any different. I thought, oh, this is cool. The doctor said I should take this. And then my dad sent me an article one day and he's like, dude, Adderall might be doing something really bad for your brain. And so I quit cold turkey at the exact time the economy started to crash. And so I believe I was going through physical withdrawal. that I wasn't even aware of and mental withdraws at the same time. So it's like it was just this perfect storm that really messed me up. Interesting. Yeah, I taught special ed for four years. And there was pretty much every kid that I taught was, you know, prescribed Adderall and, you know, a whole cocktail of stuff. And it's like, come on, really like, let's.

It kills me. Yeah. Yeah. It's bad enough to be in your, you know, mid-20s and decide to give it a shot you to try it. Yeah. But to be, you know, still developing and. developing the beliefs and now you have limiting beliefs. It says, I can't function in society without this medication.

So yeah. Yeah. Well, let's get to the miracle morning and rituals because I know that Brandon will annoy the living crap out of me by talking about, you know, hey, you know, this is what I do. You know, why don't you? And I'm like, really, you know, like here's my self-help teacher, you know, trying to prescribe more crap for me. And, you know, at the end of the day, I'm like, I don't have the willpower he has. I don't have the capacity. And I'm envious that he actually can go ahead and do this stuff. And,

you know, even though I give him grief about it, I want to be more like that. I know that, like you said, the most successful people out there create rituals, live by these rituals, and continuously work to improve themselves. It's something I've dedicated myself to starting about a year ago. And I've seen a drastic change in my life and my outlook and my perspective and my business and my friend and everything. And so for me, this is really exciting to, usually it's Brandon asking everybody, oh, well, I got this house and what should I do? And this is, this is me saying morning rituals, tell me about them. Yeah, yeah. First of all, I just want to say to the point of being jealous of Brandon and his attributes, I know you mentioned his habits and his discipline.

For me, it's his beard. Like I wish I could grow a beard. I mean, yeah. So anyway, yeah, most of it. There are things crawling in there. I wouldn't be very jealous of it. This is a very lumber sexual beard right here. If I try to grow it, it's just long whiskers, like spaced out like three quarters of an inch around. That's like Ethan Hawk style. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty bad. So the, uh, anyway, so morning rituals. So the, here's what happened is when I ran, like I had the epiphany. I heard that Jim Rone quote and I ran home. And my question was, what are the world's most successful people do for personal development? So the actual morning ritual part wasn't the, first part. It was like if Jim Rohn, I believe what he's saying, that your level of success will sell to exceed your level of personal development. The personal development is a very vague topic, right? It's like a very vague term. It's like, well, what is that exactly? And so I went

home and I was Googling things like, what do the world's most successful people do for personal development, right? Like, or best personal development rituals of successful people or whatever. And I spent about an hour. And what happened was I was looking for the one thing, right? Like, I was I want to find the best practice for personal development, and I'm going to do it every day. And as I'm going through reading articles on Forbes and Fast Company and Oprah.com, I can't narrow it down to one. As I'm going through, I'm like, oh, meditation. Some of the world's most successful people swear by meditation, right? And then I watch this video on the Ellen DeGeneres show.

I'm watching YouTube, and it's Will Smith talking about his number one key to success. and it was affirmations. So I'm like, well, I got to do those, right? And then I'm coming across Jim Carrey visualization, right? And then I talk about I see successful people talking about journaling and on and on. And I end up with a list of six practices. And I almost threw in the towel. It was one of those, what are they called paralysis by analysis, right?

I'm going, well, which one do I do? And I'm going and trying to figure out the better one. And then the epiphany, like the breakthrough was, I'm looking at this list I've got and I go, wait a minute, what if I did all of them? What if I did the six most powerful, proven personal development practices known to man? And what if I did, you know, if I did like 10 minutes each over a course of an hour, that would be like the ultimate personal development practice. And all of the research I was doing, I didn't see anyone that did all of them. Like maybe did two or three. In fact, I mentioned earlier, Robert Kiyosaki.

So this is what he wrote for me about the miracle morning. But he said before the miracle morning, no one did all six of the practices. He said he had never heard of anyone. And now they're part of his daily ritual that he does every day. And so the next morning I woke up, I did all sick. Now, I wasn't a morning person. So that was the other part of it. It's like, well, when am I going to find time to fit these in?

And people listening, right, you hear most people go, well, I don't, I can't fit in meditation. Or I can't fit in one of these, you know, will all. of them. So I thought, I'm going to wake up an hour earlier, even though I'm not a morning person. I'm going to try it. I'm going to give it a shot, right? Because that was another thing that kept coming across is successful people wake up before they have to. And let me, pause for a second. If you think about the reason that if you're watching or listening, the reason that you wake up in the morning, why did you wake up this morning? And it's one of two reasons. It's either because you had to or you wanted to, right? Meaning most of us wake up because we

have to be somewhere, do something, answer to somebody else, take our kids to school, right? And we literally think about how we set the alarm. We look at our schedule and we go, we ask ourselves, what's the last possible minute that I could wake up to not get divorced, fired, have my children taken away from me? Like, that's the definition of a mediocre morning. And it's how most of us start the day. And so the other side of that is, because you think about how negative that is, Like the energy, the alarm goes off and you're like, oh, I don't want to wake up. It's like, what are you talking about? Life's gifting you another day.

Why would you not jump out of bed, you know? And that definitely wasn't my mindset then. But I decided to wake up the next morning, not at the time I had to wake up, but the time I wanted to wake up. And it was such a different energy. The alarm went off and it felt kind of like Christmas morning. I'm like, this is great. I'm going to wake up.

I'm going to try this thing. And I did those six practices and I was horrible at them, right? I was the worst meditator ever, you know, I was the worst at all of it. But at 6 a.m., that was literally the morning that my entire life changed. And it was seven years ago. And it's never been the same because I went, if I start every day like this with this much clarity and energy and motivation and all, I mean, it's only a matter of time before my outer world reflects my inner world. And I didn't know what happened in two months. But, you know, it did. And that's where the miracle of the miracle morning title came from. I love that. And it's clearly not

working because your energy is terrible. Your outlook is pretty awful. I mean, yeah. Yeah. Well, so let me ask you this. I am one of these guys who like, I can't get to bed. You know, I got to, my head's always spinning and I got to shut it off before I can get to sleep. And I'm getting better.

It used to be, you know, two in the morning than 12. Now it's 10, 30, 11-ish. But I still, like, I'm up. I got to be up and at them for kids, family work. Everything is 6.30. Yeah. If I'm in a miracle morning, I got to be up at 5.30 or 5 o'clock. You know, well, that's really starting to cut into my beddy-by time. And that's going to make for cranky Josh, isn't it? Yeah. Well, first of all, I have lunch at 630. So when you wake up, we could do like a stipe lunch or something. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. But no. So, yeah, so here's the deal. I mean, right? Everything is it's give and take. You know what I mean? So it's going to bed an hour earlier than you normally would, right, so you can wake up an hour earlier. And there is a component in the book. There's a whole chapter. I talk about how much sleep do we really need. And I talk about the mind-body connection

and how some of the world's most, the greatest minds in the history of the world, like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Edison, were documented sleeping four or five hours a night. Right? So I'm like, if it was, now, who knows? Maybe they died 10 years earlier. I don't know. Then they would have otherwise. But you beat them on that. You've died three times already. So yeah, exactly. Big deal. And I'll tell you, I'll just, I'll give you my, what I personally do and then what other people have kind of found to work. So I go to bed at 9.30 p.m. and I wake up at 3.30 a.m. 7 days a week. Wow. The only time I don't wake up at 3.30 a.m., which was this morning, maybe that's why I have so much energy. But no, my wife and I went to a book launch, John Lee Dumas's book launch party last night. We were up late, you know, so I'm not going to sleep three hours or whatever.

But the idea that we need as much sleep as we believe that we need, if you think about this, if you go to bed and you have created a belief that says, I need eight hours of sleep. And maybe the belief came from experience. Maybe it came from because you, you know, that's the popular, you know, perpetuated a time frame. Then if you go to bed and you're only going to get seven hours or six hours, what are you going to tell yourself about how you're going to feel in the morning on six hours if you believe you need eight? You're going to be like, oh, crap, I've got to get up in six hours. Yeah, I'm going to be exhausted on six hours of sleep. And then it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Laram goes off and you go, oh, it's already 630 a.m. or whatever. So the point is that we'll talk to you specifically, Josh, is that getting up at 530 a.m. It's just a matter of shifting, right? It's a matter of making that commitment and making the change and going, is there more value between 530 and 630 or 5 and 6 a.m.

for what I can get done and how I can start my day and who I can become, right, then there is what I'm doing between 1030 and 1130 p.m. And I want to give one example. Another thing is I always would rather give a personal, you know, someone else's success story versus my own opinion. I'm obviously biased. I wrote the book, you know, but you guys know who Pat Flynn is. Yes.

So Pat Flynn, smart passive income.com, right? Pat is someone I'm a huge fan and I sent him a couple of, copy of the Miracle Morning, you know, a long time ago and never heard back from him. And like six months later, I got an email from him. And he said, Hal, I keep hearing from people that I've got to read this book, that I've got to have you on my show. He goes, and you sent it to me. I apologize and never responded. He goes, but look, I'm not a morning person. I'm a night owl. And I've got, I'm living the life of my dream. So I want you on the show, like, you know, not to debate, but like convince me. Like, I'm open. But I don't, I don't see how. So I mean, this is a guy who has a

seven figure business. He's got the one. life of his dreams. He's got two amazing kids. He lives an amazing lifestyle, right? And so I'm going, how in the hell am I going to convince this guy who's living the dream that he should change how, oh, and here's the hardest part. He said, I wake up, I don't set an alarm. I wake up when my kids run in and go, daddy, daddy, daddy. And I go, how the hell am I going to pop that, right? So keep a long story short, at the end of the interview, you know, and I'm literally nervous in the interview going, Right. But I made the case. I explained the Miracle Morning. And he said, Hal, at the end, he goes, I'm going to try this for 30 days. He said, you've convinced me that I might, as happy and productive as I am, I might be missing out on a level of fulfillment and productivity that could be attained if I wake up earlier and do these practices that you're talking about. He said, I'm willing to try it for 30 days. And it wasn't like maybe four days later, I see hashtag Miracle Morning. and he's posting pictures of himself at 5.30 at the gym and different stuff.

And long story short, he has now said he's done multiple episodes recapping how the Miracle Morning has changed his life. And he says it's four X his productivity. He said at a very minimum, he could quantify that his productivity has increased by four times. So again, if it could do it for Pat Flynn, who has a seven-figure business, Robert Kiyosaki's worth 85 million. And these are, you know, night owls. You know, that's all I would tell you is don't take my word for. for it is it's worth trying for 30 days. Well, and I can tell you, you know, like, we didn't talk about much about my story,

like, before we started this, but like the reason I wanted you on the show, first of all, is because I love the book, right? It changed. You know, I read it about a year ago now. And I said, I'm going to commit to this. And I said, for 100 days, I'm going to commit to this. And I sat down for 100 days. And during that time, I wanted a few things. I wanted to write a book. I said, I want to write a book on rental property investing. So I sat down. I was like, okay, well, I'll do that. I, you know, I committed to the six things, which I want to talk about the savers, which we'll get to. Yeah. And I said, I want to do that. And I want to make my real estate business less stressful.

You know, I had like, I was, I mean, I was so stressed to the point of being, you know, depressed, right? Like, I was so overwhelmed with everything going on. In those 100 days, I mean, completely changed my life. I mean, completely, that's why I talk about this book all the time because it completely changed my life. I mean, not only did I write one book, I ended up writing 120,000 word book. And then my wife and I co-wrote a second book together as another 100,000 words. So, like, in exactly 100 days just because of that. And it wasn't, like, we weren't getting up at three in the morning or whatever. We were getting up at five. That was my time. Five.

Sure. But it totally changed my life. So I will officially say thank you, Hal, for writing the book. And you know, you're welcome. Totally changed things. So, yeah, I mean, for me, too, I can testify. It changed my real estate business. It changed my, you know, business life. It changed everything for me. And it continues, too. And I'm not, I'm not perfect. Dad, I don't get up every single day early. But, you know, most of the time, like, I try to at least hit 6 a.m. if I can, because I know that I need that hour before, before my wife's up and and the dogs are freaking out. And I got a kid coming now. And I'm like, I'm never going to get any sleep then. But anyway, I just love it. So I think that's very cool.

So let's transition a little bit and talk about the savers. What exactly that means? You know, what do you do? You already mentioned a few of them like affirmations, but let's go through the all six that you do. Yeah, I'll go through all six and I'll give some kind of outside the box, you know, teaching on each one. So the savers is the acronym that sums up the six practices of the Miracle Morning for anybody watching or listening. And I do want to give my wife credit. She is the, she is responsible for this acronym savers in that I was writing the book and the six practices,

they weren't organized. And one day I was, she's like, what's wrong? You're frustrated. I said, sweetie, I go, you know, Robert Kiyosaki's got the cash flow quadrant and Covey's got seven. I go, I can't think of a way to organize these six practices. And she goes, why don't you get a thesaurus and see if you can make an acronym? And I was like, you're so brilliant, you know.

And so, and it really couldn't have been a better acronym than savers, or I call these the lifesavers, right? And they really are the six practices that are virtually guaranteed to save you, all of us, from missing out on our full potential, which most people miss out on, right? They go through life and they look back and go, could have done so much more, didn't fulfill everything I wanted. And I really believe these six practices are the savers. So the first S is for, actually, I'll run through them real quick and then I'll explain. So silence, affirmations, visualization, exercise, reading, and scribing. And I really owe the the thesaurus, because I didn't even know what the hell that word meant scribing before I looked it up in the source. So silence affirmations, visualization, exercise, and scribing.

So the essence for silence, and that is meditation and or prayer. So whichever works. And I mean, if you do any research on meditation, you realize I'd be silly. to not meditate. Like, I mean, the benefits are so profound and so proven. But so most people start their day with not silence, but chaos, right? Because you wait till the, because most people wait till the last minute, they jump out of bed and they're rushing around, they're running late, you know, versus the miracle morning allows you to start your day with peaceful, purposeful silence, which again, the benefits of lowering your stress, of improving

your clarity of, I mean, there's physiological benefits. You're, I mean, there's so many benefits of meditating, right? So starting your day with that. And also, I kind of joke in the book that how much easier does it get than you start your Miracle Morning by essentially doing nothing. You just sit there, right? You just do nothing. So as for silence, the A is for affirmation. Hey, Hal. Do you mind if I chime in and, you know, buddy on some of those things as we go through it? Okay, cool. So silence, meditation prayer. I want to step back a tiny bit. is the reason we're doing the reason we do this in the morning is because it's quiet it's pre-chaise it's pre all the madness and and and that's pretty much it correct uh not well not exactly so

that's part of it you know and that's when you and i meant to say that when you said i've got the wife i've got the kids i go dude you need a miracle morning more than in you're like if you have a wife and kids i got three girls man yeah yeah you need a miracle i mean i mean it's that and that's what people tell me is they go i thought i couldn't do this because i have to wake up with my kids and I realized once I did it like oh my gosh I'm a better mom I'm better dad I'm so because the kids wake up and you're not reacting you've already gone through this period of an hour of just you know and it's scalable miracle morning people do it in 30 minutes they do it and they just you know they they customize it but to your point of why to do it in the morning people ask me about you know

could I do my savers later in the day evening whatever and I actually have a chapter in the book on customizing the miracle morning and I do talk about you know if you want to do a miracle afternoon or Miracle Evening, you can. But here's the point. The benefits of the savers are so profound that if you do them in the evening, your day now has not been directly impacted by the benefits. Give you an example. Let's just take one of them, right? Exercise, for example.

The benefits of exercise, it gets your heart rate up. It releases endorphins and serotonin. You think clearer, you feel better. You have more energy. Well, if you do it in the morning, the energy that you generate, like a power plant generates energy, extends throughout the entire day. If you wait to exercise until the afternoon, well, you know, or the evening, you've missed out on those benefits.

Same thing with meditation, right? It lowers your cortisol levels. You think clearer. You have lower stress. Do you want to have that throughout the day or do you want to wait till the end of the day? So that's really it is that the all six of the, and same with affirmations. And we'll talk about those in a second, but it really directs your focus. So you want, if you want to optimize your day, you do a miracle morning.

If you want to optimize, you know, your sleep, you do a miracle. evening or whatever, right? So that's kind of the idea. If you did the savers at the end of the day, you'd be ahead of 99% of the world still. You'd still experience amazing benefits. But yeah, to optimize the day, it's kind of like win the morning and you win the day. That's what I, that's what I always felt like is like, like, even more than than anything specifically in the miracle morning that helped me achieve my goals. It wasn't so, I mean, it was that, but it was more of, like, I won. The first hour was mine. And I was victorious. And I was like winning the rest of the day. I felt like I already succeeded that day. And it was like a mental shift in my head. I wasn't

depressed all day and react. You said reactive, right? I wasn't reactive. I was being proactive in everything I did. Like, I even used that time to plan out my day. And I still do that today all the time. I plan out what's going forward. Anyway, I love that for the morning for that reason. Well, yeah, there's, I read it when I was researching the miracle, when I was writing the miracle morning and seeing what else was out there, I came out across this great article from Steve Pavlena.com. It was called the article title was the morning is the rudder of the day or it's called the rudder of the day. And he said like the rudder of a ship, right? Whichever way the rudder is pointed determines the direction of the ship. And he said, same as the morning. If you have a focus, productive growth oriented morning, you're going to

have that type of day. But if you do what most people do and you start your day with procrastination by hitting the snooze button, right, which is a lack of self-discipline. I don't have the discipline to get a bed in the morning, let alone all the other things going to do. You're starting your day with that and then the stress and the chaos of rushing, right? That sets the tone for the entire day. I got to share with you guys, one of my favorite lines from a comedian, Dmitry Martin. Yeah, I know this one. Do you? He said, hitting the snooze button in the morning doesn't even make sense. It's like you're saying, I hate waking up in the morning, so I do it over and over and over again, right?

Anyway, what was the question? Nice. Well, well answered. Yeah. I'll answer three questions before I get to the one that you answer my question. I want to really, really quickly jump to the silence. Oh, yeah. I feel like I'm cutting Brandon off, but that's okay. It's just fine.

You know, I got the beard. I don't need anything else. It's okay. Yeah, lumber guy. Meditation and prayer, where can somebody who wants to learn how to meditate? Go ahead and find that out. My favorite app for meditation. So that's what I tell people.

Like in the book, I say there's basically two forms of meditation. I mean, there's thousands, but right, but there's two. There's guided meditation, which is where you listen to, an audio typically, right? Or you could watch a video, but typically you listen in audio and that, you know, someone else is guiding you through what to think or focus on or how to breathe or whatever. Then there's meditation on your own, right, which is harder if you're new because you sit there and you're like, am I doing it right? You get all insecure. You're like, it's just, wait, aren't I supposed to clear my mind? I'm thinking. I can't stop thinking. I can't even,

you know, you're a mess. So, um, so my favorite app is called Om, Vana. It's O, M as in Mary, V, A, N as in Nancy, A. Am. Vana. That's my favorite meditation app. And there's a meditation on there called the, it's free. The app's free and the meditation's free. It's called the six phase meditation by Vision Lakiani. That's my favorite meditate. But that's a 20 minute one. I don't do it every day. I usually like a five minute throughout the day. So yeah, you can go to YouTube and just search five minute meditation and you'll get one. So that's how I reckon starting. Awesome. Awesome. All right. Affirmations. So this is my favorite to talk about because this is,

well, two reasons. Number one, the way that I'm going to explain affirmations right now is really a good example of how all of the savers are addressed in the book, which is they're very action-oriented and practical. And most of these practices are kind of elusive or kind of mystical or kind of like meditation is a great example, right? And I think one of the reasons that the book has resonated with people so well and that they've actually stuck to it is I'm not this great fancy writer. Like I just, I'm just very, I'm good at dumbing things down and making it really actionable and really simple, you know, and I think that's where it works. And so affirmations are my favorite part of the savers, first and foremost, right? People ask me, do you have a favorite saver? And I do. I'm biased. Affirmations are my favorite. Now affirmations, what's interesting is my community has told me that's the one that before the Miracle Morning, they had the hardest time with. And I thought, that's weird, because that's my favorite and it was a struggle for most. here's why I believe that is. The majority of, like, the way it's been perpetuated,

affirmations for decades, one of two ways that are really ineffective. Number one, lie to yourself, right? Like, if you want to be a millionaire, just say, I am a millionaire over and over and over until you trick yourself into believing it. Well, lying is never going to be the optimum strategy, right? The truth will always prevail. So when you go, I am a millionaire.

Your subconscious goes, dude, no. you're not. I'm not even a thousandaire. Like, you know, so, so that's the first part is the first strategy and people have tried it like, I am blank and they just, they, they reject it. Their, their subconscious rejects it. Yeah. And I was going to say, I'm going to guess most people think of affirmations like I do, which is Michael Jordan and Stuart Smalley. I'm good enough, I'm smart enough and got, you know, people like me, right? Yep. That's another problem, right? Is that, yeah, that is they were, and that's what I, how I knew them. The, the Stewart, we're dating ourselves with Stuart Smalley. But yeah, yeah, there you go. Of the, the,

the younger listeners are like, who? But no, but yeah, I'm good enough. I'm smart enough and doggone of people like me. So there's, so yeah, that's one problem. And then the other problem of affirmations is they use this, they're taught in this flowery passive language. And I'm still amazed that some of the people that I really respect and I've learned a lot from, they still teach affirmations these ways. The flowery language, here's an example. You've probably heard some variation of this, which is money flows to me effortlessly and in abundance. No, it doesn't. That's not how money works.

You don't sit back on your couch and do your miracle morning in a permit and it shows up, right? You got to put value into the world. You got to add value to your customers, your clients, your marketplace, your whatever. And then you're rewarded with money. And so the way that I teach affirmations, it's very action-oriented and practical. I'll give you just a real, like a quick synopsis of this, rather than lying to yourself and saying, I am something I'm not, or using flowery language that the, reason by the way some people like the second form of affirmations of money flows to me effortlessly

in abundance and in abundance is because it gives you temporary relief of your financial worries. You go, ah, money is going to flow to me. And every day, they have that period of affirmations where they feel better, but their bank account balance doesn't change. I want my, if I'm doing affirmations or any of these practices, I want my, I want my body fat to show, right? the percentage to decrease, my bank account to increase, my wife to tell me that I'm awesome, more off, right? Like, I want results. And so here's the deal with affirmations. Instead of lying to yourself or giving yourself this flowery passive promise that life's going to be okay, it's just going to work itself out, right? I focus affirmations in the book on teaching you how to make them

practical and actionable and results oriented. So here's a real simple four-step kind of process. So I teach you to affirm, number one, what you want. Like what are the goals, the big goals that are really important to you? Number one, what do you want? Number two, why do you want it? What are the top three to five reasons that are compelling and that are motivating enough for you to push through the challenges and obstacles because that reminds you of why you're doing what you're doing and why you're working towards what you're working

towards? The third thing is, what are the obstacles that have held you back in the past or could hold you back on the journey? Most people don't think about that. And then when they encountered those obstacles, they weren't prepared for them. And so they stopped them in their tracks. But if you already thought through, what are those obstacles going to be? And every day, you're reading those affirmations.

You're reminding yourself, this is what could go wrong, but I'm committed to do X, Y, or Z so it doesn't go wrong. And then that's the final part of the affirmation process is what specifically must you do and when specifically will you commit to do it to ensure that you achieve that goal. So the way that affirmations are taught in this way, it's not this fantasy, it's not this promise, it's not this I'm going to, you know, this lying to yourself. It's here's what I want. Here's why I want it. Here's what could get in my way and what I'm committed to doing to ensure that I achieve my goals and when I'm committed to doing them.

And when you recite that and you read that every day, you're setting yourself up for success. You're programming your conscious, your subconscious and your behaviors to be in alignment with your vision for what you want for your life. So those are the affirmation component. Awesome. Okay, so for example, if, you know, I've got my units, I might say, I, you know, I'm committed, instead of just saying I want 100 units, I'm committed, or I am going to get, like, or I want, would you say, I want it.

I like that work. I'm committed to 100 units because I want to be around to, for my kids, for every event that they go to when I have children. I don't want to have a job telling me what I, what I can and kind of be at their, you know, soccer game. And I know that it's going to be difficult to raise the money for that. I've struggled in the past with meeting people that could help me get that. So I'm going to, you know, commit to meeting more people, connecting with them, going to real life, you know, places, interacting on forums. And so that way, by the time my kids are five years

old, I will have 100 units. Is that? Yeah, I would, so the only thing I would coach you on there is I would adjust the, I would, instead of going to more events and this and that, right, I would say I'm committed to dedicating three hours a day from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. to work on getting closer to 100 units and clarifying my, right? Like that's, so you're very, it's, it's important to be so specific in, in terms of even timing, right? Like, so not just what I'm going, because if all you have is what I'm going to do, that leaves room for, I'll do that later. That leaves room for procrastination. But if your affirmations are affirming, I'm committed to doing this action from this time, this time on these days of the week.

Now there's no wiggle room. There's, oh, well, it's 8 a.m. on Monday. And I've been, every day, I remind myself that 8 a.m. on Monday, I'm doing X, Y, and Z. Well, then when 8 a.m. rolls around, your program to do those things. Yeah. Hey, Hal, are we reciting this? Are we writing this?

And are we doing the same thing every day of the week saying the same thing? Yeah, affirmations are written, you know, for sure. And that's why they're my favorite part. See, like, I'll be very honest, visualization, which is the next step in savers, the V, that is my least, of all the practices that resonate with me, it's the least. And I don't know if it's something on my brain or, but when it's in writing, I literally get to design my future, right? Like, I get to design it. And I'll say this, affirmations are always a rough draft. Like, it's always a rough draft. I'm editing my affirmations all the time.

When I'm reading a book and I'm like, ooh, I need to do that. I need to think that way. I need to remember that. I need to practice that. I literally go to my affirmations and I write word for word, I'll add that in there. So my affirmations are always being edited. And also I'll read someone and I'll go, dude, I got that down. I've been doing that for four months. Like, I don't need to read that anymore and I'll take it out, you know. So yeah, affirmations, they're always in rough draft form. So I do mine. I use an app on my phone called day one. And it's a journaling app. And I just use it. It just, I don't know, you could use notes. You could use anything. But I have, and I always have my affirmations there. So one of my

affirmations are my primary affirmations are called my 2016 goals and affirmations and they're dated for December 31st, 2016. And that way in the app, they're always at the top, right? Like, they'll be at the top until December 31st, 2016. And then I have most of my affirmations are in there. And then I have some specific ones around like, like how to be a better husband. It's its own affirmation because it's so important, you know, be a better father. Those are, yeah, so that sort of thing. That's cool. That's cool. Now, I wanted to talk about one thing. I had this question down later in the, in the, the list of questions we're asking you, but I think it fits here pretty well. And that is this, so you wrote The Miracle Morning and then you co-wrote or whatever, the Miracle Morning for

Real Estate agents and the Miracle Morning for Salespeople, correct? And the Miracle Morning for Marketers just came out. Okay, that's right. That's right. So you've got like these other ones. So one of them I read, the Miracle Morning for Salespeople, because I thought that would be a good thing for me to know, both in terms of my real estate investing and in terms of what I do at bigger pockets. I thought that'd be a good thing to know. So I read this book, and it was very much like the Miracle Morning, but had more specifics for sale stuff, which I thought was great. But one thing in there that stood out to me, and it was one of those like, you know, in life, there's these defining moments for me.

Like Rich Dad, Poor Dad, when I read that, it changed things for our work week, changed things for me. The one thing changed things. And it was this quote that you said in that book. It changed how I thought about everything. It said this. Every result that you desire is preceded by a process that is required to produce the result. When you define your process and commit to it for an extended period of time, the

results take care of themselves. And I remember that just like, I read that and then I read it again and I read it again. I read it like 10 times because I was like, that's like life-changing stuff. Like I was thinking in terms of like, if I want six-pack abs, I can hang up a picture on my wall of a guy with six-pack abs. I could do all these things that I want. But the end of the day, it's a process. It's something that I'm committed to doing. Like you said, I commit from, you know, three hours a day to work on getting those hundred units. Like if you have a process down, the results take care of themselves. Can you talk a little bit about that? I know I just did. but yeah no but it is i really believe it's it's one of like when i was in sales which i mean we're still

in sales right but i was i was a direct sales rep where i went to people's homes i sold them cut kitchen knives for five years you know that was my starting life 19 to 25 years old um but it was one night when i i had a bad night on the phone right like i called you know 30 people or whatever and i only got a hold a three and they were all really rude and like the last one like hung up on me and said don't ever call me again i hate you and like i just like had the feeling of my I'm like, I'm a nice person. Like, why would she, you know, talk to me like that, right? And that night, I was like going to bed, like tossing and turning going, I want to go

get like a regular job where I just like, I can't deal with this anymore, you know, the rejection and the emotional ups and downs. And I had this epiphany. I realized I'm emotionally attached to the results. But the results on the day-to-day basis don't matter because the averages work themselves out if you commit over a long period of time. And it was this epiphany where I went, I'm set up for this,

like I'm not set up to optimize the game that I'm playing, right? The business, the sales game that I'm playing because I'm emotionally attached to my results, which means good day of sales, I feel great. Bad day of sales, I feel like crap. And I'm writing this roller coaster.

And I thought, the only thing that I am in control of, like I'm not in control of how a customer decides to respond is, the process of how many times I pick up the phone and dial a number. And I realized at the end of the year, if I sell X amount, it's based on how many times I picked up the phone and dialed a number. And then I realized the epiphany was if I were to sell double that amount, it would simply meant that I picked up the phone twice as many times. And it was that, it was epiphany. I went, if I commit to the, like it was at that point, it was a theory kind of. I go, kind of the miracle morning. I go, I'm going to try something. I go, I'm going to set a goal.

I go, I'm going to make 20 calls for the next five days, and I'm going to see how that average is out. Like, how many sales do I make with that many calls? And then I'm going to determine how many calls I need to make based on how much I'm trying to sell this year. And I thought, and I'm going to, every day, commit to the process of making that amount of calls, and I'm going to have zero emotional attachment to my results. If I have another day where I have 30 calls and no one talks to me, I don't care as long

as I made the calls. Because I know that tomorrow or next week or whatever, I'll make 30 calls and set eight appointments and sell X amount of right. So it was this theory. And I committed to do it for four months, like an experiment where I'm going to every day set a call goal, my process. And I'm going to not worry about anything. And so it was amazing. My manager hated it because he always had to track the numbers. So you'd be like, well, what's your sales goal this week?

What are you going to commit to selling? I'm like, I'm going to make 20 calls a day for five days and I'll let you know how that works out. right? He's like, so he hated it. But here's the deal. At the end of the four months, it was the first four months of the year. It was 2001, I think. I was the number one sales rep in our company out of 40 or 50,000 sales reps applying that approach. So here's the beauty of it. Not only was I number one in sales, I was in last place for stress, right? Like all my competition, my colleagues were still riding the emotional roller coaster. If I made 20 calls and it didn't matter if I sold. It didn't matter. I made 20 calls and I patted myself on the back and I was done. And that was

it. And so that was the results. And I realized it applied to every area of life. Like you said, there is a process that proceeds getting in shape, making money selling real estate everything. Yeah. And really quickly, this, you know, our audience, real estate investors, you know, whether they're making calls on absentee owners or, you know, in their sales and their marketing, the same thing can apply, you know, to pull the emotional part out and use, you know, the emotionless, you know, quantifiable numbers, goals, things like that, they can accomplish the exact same thing. I mean, getting specific, like I'll tell you what, kind of what I, how I think of real estate,

I think of it in terms of a funnel very much like you have, you pick up the phone, right? So here's what I tell people all the time. I'm constantly telling people this. Like, how many deals did you buy this week? And people are like, oh, I didn't buy any. I'm like, well, why not? Well, I don't know. I didn't have any to buy.

Okay. Well, how many offers? did you make? Oh, none. Well, how many did you analyze? Oh, none. I'm like, okay, so if you want more deals, I mean, what just, I mean, these are like hypothetical numbers, but let's just say, if you were to analyze three deals every single day, every day, three deals, sit down and analyze the numbers out of them. That's roughly 100 in a month. If you were to analyze 100 in a month and you were to make offers, you were just going to write up an offer on 10% of them. Great, that's 10 offers a month. What if one out of 10 offers, which is my, about my record, one out of 10

offers gets accepted. So what would that mean? It means if I just analyze three deals a day and just work my process, I'd buy a house every month. I mean, I don't have to worry about the ups and downs of, oh, I got rejected again. And that seller said no, and this one didn't work out. And no, I just, I got a process. I analyze three deals a day. And I encourage people all the time to run that process or make up their own process and just run it. Yeah, you're exactly right. That's exactly, that's exactly it. You define the process. You commit to the process without being emotionally attached to the results. And at the end of the year, you go, and maybe you have 10 deals instead of 12 or maybe you have 14, but in general, right, you average about, you know, about what you're

supposed to average. So yeah. Yeah. And that's one of those things I said, like, just changed my life on how I think about real estate and like how I teach real estate today, what I write articles about, how I do it in my own life, because it's changed everything. So anyway, I love that. Most investors spend more time chasing deals than reviewing their insurance. But a quick coverage check can be fast, easy, and one of these smartest ways to protect and even improve your property's cash flow. As the months get colder, frozen pipes, icy walkways, and seasonal wear and tear can increase the likelihood of claims. And traditional insurance companies aren't always built to handle these claims quickly or smoothly. That's why more real estate investors are turning to

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Have NREG review your insurance with someone who gets investing at NREG.com slash BPPod. That's N-R-E-I-G.com slash BP Pod. Wouldn't it be great if your houseplants paid rent while you were out of town? I mean, they've got the whole place to themselves, lots of sunlight, zero responsibilities. But no, they just sit there waiting for someone to spray them with some cool mist like a bunch of leafy loafers. But guess what? Your home actually could be earning you money while you're not there.

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Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.com slash host. But we're going to move on. Let's go to V. What's the V on Savers? Oh, we're still on Savers. Visualization. And I will share one point about visualization.

And this is kind of similar to affirmation. It's kind of a shorter point here. But most visualization is typically taught by, again, these gurus, if you want, will as visualize your ideal result. Like the secret was a very popular movie and it was a great movie, you know, in a lot of ways. But basically the actionable was make a vision board. Like that was it.

Literally make a vision board. Put pictures of what you want on the wall and then sit back. And they literally showed a cartoon genie. They're like, it's like a genie. They go, you and then the genie goes, your wish is my command. I just watched it the other day because we're making a documentary and we're studying what they did well because they had some good, you know, production and stuff. But it's like, your wish is my command.

Right? They know, that doesn't work that way. This is why I'm, I mean, this is why a lot of people like myself, like have a really hard time buying into this stuff. Like, I, what we're talking about so far, everything. By the way, I haven't read your book. I try to go into these interviews completely blind, completely stupid. That's a great way to justify you not reading the book. You know, hey, now I go.

I strategically wanted to go in with zero knowledge. Yeah, yeah, I could live with myself. Listen, no, but I mean, I think a lot of people, and I know I'm not alone in saying, you know, oh, this, you know, this mumbo-jumbo crap is, you know, is just nonsense. Oh, I'm going to be a genie and suddenly, you know, wishes are going to be granted to me. You know, come on. Give me a break. So, you know, what we're talking about here, the savers so far, I mean, like, I'm buying into it.

I get it. You're selling me. You're doing a great job. I love it. I want to hear more. Let's keep going. Let's go. So here you go. So you're going to, if you're liking the tone so far, you're going to love this example. So visualization, the way that it's taught again, it's the genie. It's the visualize what you want. It magically happens. It doesn't work that way. So there are two parts to the way that I teach visualization in the Miracle Morning. The way that I break it down is part one is yes, visualize the end result, right? Like see your ideals coming to fruition. And here's why. Science has proven. What that does, is it establishes the belief that it's possible. Once you see something as what it would look like when it came to fruition, now you go, wait, maybe that is possible. I never, until you know what it looks like,

it's just an idea bouncing around in your conscious, surrounded by fear. Think about that. If you imagine all of your, we all have dreams and desires and goals, imagine that every dream, desire, or goal that we have is floating around somewhere in our consciousness, and it's surrounded by, imagine it like this little ball of unlimited potential, unlimited energy,

but it's surrounded by a membrane that is dark and cloudy that is fear and insecurity. And what happens is that keeps our goals and dreams from coming to fruition. But when we visualize, for the moments that we're visualizing, we allow that membrane of fear to open up and that unlimited energy, we see what it would look like if it were to be let free. And that increases the belief that, wow, that is possible. I now see it. Maybe I could create it. But the second part of visualization, that's arguably the most important part that's rarely taught, except for athletes, is visualizing what you have to do today to ensure that that long-term vision comes true. So athletes do it. They visualize themselves, you know,

running the marathon or playing nine holes a golf or 18 holes. I don't think many. Anyway, whatever. So that shows you what I'm not a very good golfer. I do nine-hole But it's all I have the attention span for. But the point is, right, athletes, they see, like they always say, I saw, like I'm a big fan of UFC, like mixed martial arts. And you see the best fighters usually go, I saw this fight playing out in every possible scenario.

I saw what happens if I get taken down? And then I visualize what I would do in that scenario on and on. So I'll give you a very real example. When I was writing The Miracle Morning, it was one of those unlimited balls of potential that was surrounded by fear of who am I to write this book? No one's going to buy it. No one's going to, I don't know.

People think they're not mourning people. Who am I to overcome that belief for them, right? And so every day, I visualize both of those parts. Number one, I saw the end result. I pictured this, right? And I literally had the cover designed like a year before the book came out so I could literally see what it would look like. And I pictured people reading it.

Then I pictured them telling their friend, you have to read this book. So that was the end result, right? If I would have left it at that, though, all it would have done was tricked me into feeling good like it was going to happen without my effort. So then the most important part is I visualized myself at my computer and I would see myself typing and I would picture an expression and feel an emotion of going, all the thoughts are coming. All the words are coming to me. And it was the vision not just of the end result, but of the action that got me fired up to open my eyes and open my computer and type. And the same thing when I was training for the marathon, I saw myself lacing on my running shoes, smiling as I headed out the front door because I hate running. So I visualized what it would look like and feel like if I enjoyed it.

And that got me emotionally in the state to go run. So that's the key to visualization and making it effective, in my opinion. Sounds great. When you say visualization, I mean, are you talking about actually sitting there and then closing your eyes and thinking about it? Or are you talking about making a vision board or what does that look like actionably? So for me, vision boards are fine. I think they're cute and they're fun more than anything. I mean, I think they're not bad, you know, but again, if you have a vision board and you have a vision of what you want, all that is is the end result, right? So if you see the end result, you see the family or the house or whatever. That's my vision board. I'm looking at, by the way, which I rarely ever look at.

But the, right, then, then you close your eyes and you see, and you maybe start with the question. I would say, what do I have to do today to ensure that I move toward that vision? and you close your eyes and you see yourself doing it. And more importantly, or as important, you feel what it's going to feel like to do what you need to do in an optimum state. And where visualization is powerful is the things that you hate doing. That's one of the best ways to use it, right? I hated running. So I visualized running. Like I said with a smile. I was scared to write. I had writer's blog. So you visualize yourself like an athlete performing in an ideal way today, today that will put the championship, right, you know, on your, on your trophy shelf. Cool.

I love it. I love it. Yeah. And it kind of indoctrinates the one thing that we're big fans of from Papazon and Keller. And, yeah, that's awesome. All right. So, E, exercise. You know, that's, that's Brandon's six-back abs.

Let's see it. Come on. Yeah. No, thanks. So super quick on exercise. Yeah. is that usually the question I get asked is like, well, does that mean I do this instead of going into the gym in the afternoon or whatever? No, whatever you currently do, keep doing it.

And then you simply add five minutes in the morning or it could be 10 of stretching, jumping jacks. And again, the reason is, goes back to the question, Josh, that you ask is the benefits of morning exercise are profound and proven. So to not get the blood flowing to your brain first thing in the morning would be silly. Like, why would you not do that? So what Kiyosaki said when he interviewed me on his podcast, Robert Kiyosaki said, Hal, I almost skipped over this part because I go to the gym in the afternoon. And I was thinking, I'm not going to do my exercise in the morning. He goes, but I'm glad I read it.

He goes, because all it did was I do three minutes of exercise during my savers. He said, it's it. I forgot what it was, like stretching, jumping jacks, or whatever. But all it is is get the blood to the brain, oxygen flowing through your body so that you feel better. You have more energy. You're more aware. you think clearer, et cetera. So that's it for exercise.

Just do a little bit in the morning. And a great app on the phone, by the way, is called seven minute workout. I was just going to suggest that. Yeah, that's a great way to do it. Or just like you said, even at the very least, one minute of jumping jacks.

That's all you need. One minute jumping jacks is a game changer in your mental and physical energy levels in the morning. Love it. Love it. R reading. The R is for reading. And again, it's a simple one.

I mean, you know, don't read 50 shades of gray or Harry Potter. I mean, not that you can, I think those are, right? But I really believe that we are all only one book away. Whoa. We're all only one book away from gaining the knowledge that we need in whatever area of our life we want to to take it to the next level. You know, the Miracle Morning was obviously that for me. If you're having trouble in your relationship, you know, go read the five love languages and go apply it and your marriage or your relationship's going to

improve, you know. If you're, if you're a shitty parent, go, pardon my friends, right? But go read the book. It's called Peaceful Parent Happy Kids. It's a game. game changer, right? Read that. Brandon, you're about to have kids. Give that to your wife or read it yourself, right? But anyway, so that's reading, right? It's just, is reading. And let me, let me just quantify this real quick. If you read just, let's say 10 pages a day, right? 10 pages a day. You know, if you're a slow reader, that takes you 20 minutes. If you're a fast reader, it's maybe 10. But if you actually were to quantify that, 10 pages per day over the course of a year, that's 3,650 pages. That is the equivalent of 18, 200 page books. If you're reading a book and a half a month

or even a book a month, that 12 books a year on areas of your life you want to improve, dude, you will be a different person after, you know. So, I mean, that really is the key. And when you read in the morning, right, you immediately get to implement what you read, which is kind of how I turn my part of my turning my life around was taking that advice from my buddy. Yeah, I do my reading in my miracle morning time. It's the last thing I do. And I always read one chapter of a business book. And so I've got like 15 books now, like my next 15 like land up. I just grab the next one on top. I read one chapter a day. When I get to the bottom, I do the next one. And yeah, that way it's the last thing I do. And so then I always like, I'm always like sending Josh

messages like, oh, we got to do this. And I just got this great idea. And this is going to be a great post. And because I'm always reading these books right before I start work for the day. Yeah, I get the 6 a.m. text. You know, I've got drool coming out of my face. And Brandon's all excited about something. Yeah, but that just goes back to what we're saying. When you do it in the morning, like it just fires you up for the whole rest of the day. It sets you up so well for the next eight hours or whatever you spend on it. Yeah, so that's the question is when 6 a.m. rolls around, do you want to be drooling like Josh?

That's your choice. I like this guy. I like this guy. I like the second time. Okay. Okay. You told me to make fun of Brandon. I thought I, yeah.

You're actually right. I was compliment. Brandon on his beard, you're right. I do need to give Brandon some shit. Yeah, a little, a little, a little bit of a hard time. All right. Scribing. I mean, you didn't know what the hell it meant, right? So what is scribing? So, I mean, journaling, right, is what it originally was, but the word savage didn't flow very well, right?

Jay, at the end. So, so luckily it's scribing. But, and actually, I do like that it's scribing because it really does enable, I mean, it's, when you put pen to paper, there's magic. I mean, right, there's magic. Because, and here's why. It forces you to articulate. your thoughts enough to form sentences, right? That's why. So journaling has been, you know, I mean, Jim Rohn, same guy that, you know, inspired this whole thing. He swore by journaling and a lot of folks do. But my favorite journal is called five-minute journal. It's F-I-V-E-5-minute journal.com. And it's a physical journal. Looking if I have one, I have one somewhere here, but it takes five minutes a day. In fact, I made a journal based on the best of all the journal. So there is actually

a Miracle Morning Journal on Amazon, but I always tell people, I go, look, the Miracle Morning Journal is cool, but I use five-minute journal. So that's the one that I use. And then if you like digital, like I said, I think Five-Minute Journal has an app coming out, but right now I use day one on my phone. So what are journaling? What are we writing? Yeah, good question. So I'll use five-minute journal as an example. It asks you, what are three things that you're great for what are three things that you need to do to to win today to make today great uh that's basically the morning that's it very simple right and and and and it's almost like if you were to boil down the essence of what to focus on every morning in your journal it's what are three things you're grateful

for which is taking inventory of your present life right and and then feeling as good about it as you can and then what are three things you need to do to make today great is about creating the future life right so i mean that's it that's all it does in the morning and then five minutes journal has an evening entry where it says, what are three things I could have done better today and what are three things that were great, three amazing things that happened today and three things I could have done better. So that's a real simple format, you know, that you can use for journaling. That's cool. So I got, when I read that, I read you or you wrote somewhere that the five minute journal. So I went and they were sold out of the time on their website. So I went

and got the app. And I really struggled. I mean, out of all the things on savers, like scribing is the one that I do not do very well. And I struggle with. So I just actually just the other day picked up, and I suppose I could go back and re-buy the five-minute journal now, but I picked up Grant Cardone's, the 10x planner. I'm a big fan of the 10x rule. So it's basically the same concept. I'm going to give this to try and see if I'm better at this than I was at the digital version of the app.

But I just wasn't good at like typing on my phone, like trying to journal. It was just weird for me. But yeah, see, I'm weird. See, I don't like to write by hand. I like to, even though I know science has proven that when you write by hand, it makes a deeper impression on your subconscious because you're physically forming letters versus going, this is all the same to your, right? The mind-body connection, this is all the same.

When you're forming letter, yeah, so there are benefits to writing by hand, but I actually see what's the opposite. I prefer to do it by hand or by digitally. And I will say another option for scribing. I just went last night to John Lee Dumas's book launch party for the Freedom Journal. And the Freedom Journal for people, you know, go to the Freedom Journal.com and kind of compare these different things. And there's a bunch now that are coming out on Kickstarter.

Everybody's got to do journal. But the Freedom Journal is how to achieve your number. one goal in 100 days and it's got a morning entry and an evening entry. And, you know, again, that's why I like scribing because it's, it's a, there's all different forms that you could, you know, that you could apply it to. Yeah, I got, I got a, I got one of those digital copies of John Lee, um, is, yeah, it was really good. I mean, I thought it was, it was, it was, it reminded me of the same thing. It's like, they're all kind of similar. And they all have their kind of strength and weaknesses, but the importance is just having one. I think it's,

it's powerful, but I just need to get better at it. Well, all right, so let's, let's bring this back. We started the show. We asked you the, the, the question. and why the hell are we having you on the show? You know, what's the point? You just gave us all this great stuff and all this guru, mumbo, jumbo. I'm not going to use the word guru, but all this mumbo jumbo that's supposed to help us out. And, you know, I think it's great. I, you know, like I said, I'm a skeptic and I think this makes sense and I'm going to give it a shot myself.

Yeah, before the podcast, he's like, who's this hell guy anyway? What are we talking to him about? How much real estate does he own? How much you pay you to be on this show? Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, shut up. Listen, we've got real estate investors. We've got real estate agents.

They can buy the agent book. We've got investors. We've got people in the business. So these are people who are trying to build better lives to themselves. They're trying to build businesses. They're trying to build wealth. You know, I think people who come through and listen to the Bigger Pockets podcast have already made the decision that they're trying to improve themselves,

at least on the financial component of their life. lives. I'm assuming that this is going to change their lives beyond just the financial. This is going to affect them across the board. The question we had was, how can listeners, investors, apply this stuff to themselves? Yeah, I think that the, well, here's, so to kind of bring it all together, if you look at the savers, right, any one of those six practices are game changers. Like, you'd be hard pressed to find someone, you know, anyone that's very successful in life that doesn't swear by at least one of those, you know? And to Kiyosaki's point, when you combine all six of them, you're, that's why I think people see a result so fast because they're doing the six most proven,

powerful personal development practices that have been done for like centuries by all these people, you know, and they're doing all of them. And that's where you see these amazing results. And so what I always tell people, like when I give, you know, I speak a lot, a keynote speaker. When I finish a speech, I always say, okay, everybody, you're all fired up. You have like, you know, Josh, you said, It's making sense. Like I'm, you know, I see the logic here. I always say, do not wait. Don't wait another day.

Don't wait a day to start this. Don't wait until you don't go, well, I'm going to wait until I've read the book. We always do that. We always go, I'm going to wait until the new year to actually, you know, be disciplined. I'm going to wait until I finish the book. I'll just settle for mediocrity for one more day or one more week. That's how we lit, right? And so the essence of the Miracle Morning is very simple.

set your alarm clock back 30 to 60 minutes right now. Like pause the show, set it back. And the first premise of the Miracle Morning is that you're waking up at a time every morning before you have to be up. That's the first part. That helps you become the person that you need to be to create everything you want for your life with the discipline and the motivation and the focus and the commitment. So that's part number one is set your alarm clock back right now. Wake up 30 minutes earlier tomorrow. you know, do it for the next, commit for 30 days.

I'd make a public commitment, by the way. In fact, go into everybody listening. Come into the Miracle Morning community. We have one of the most engaged online communities I've ever seen. We just crossed 30,000 members this morning from all around the world. Say again? That's on Facebook, right? Facebook.

Yeah, I'm part of that. I love it. Oh, you are? Yeah, yeah. It blows my mind. We have like 200 people a day that join from all around the world just that are reading the book, you know? So that's a great place, though, to go and get support and accountability.

And just if you spend five minutes reading post, you'll be like, holy crap like this is like either all these people you know there's 30,000 paid people to like say that this is changing their life or it's like a real thing you know so wake up 30 minutes earlier or 60 if you want to really go for it and during the first 30 minutes do something of personal development you don't have to mask don't wait till you master the savers a lot of people they just start reading the miracle morning during their first you know miracle mornings they just wake up 30 minutes earlier they read the book and then as they get to each of the savers they go oh okay here's silence, here's how I can try meditating. I'll put that in, right? So, wake up 30 minutes earlier and do

one of the savers. Meditate for half an hour, exercise, do half and half. Read for 15, exercise, whatever you want, but start right now and commit for 30 days. What do you have to lose? 30 days for now, I'm telling you, you'll be a different person because the essence of the miracle morning is that you wake up every morning and you become a better version of who you were when you went to bed the night before. And that's really what it's about. Wow. So after 30 days, I'll have a, thick beard like Brandon? No, I've tried. That's one thing.

It hasn't been in my affirmation. You know what? I'm going to take a picture of a shot. Put it on my vision board. There you go. Visualized. I have a beard and it's visualized. Growing my follicles. I'm going to see my follicles.

Growing everything. Awesome. Awesome. All right. All right. Well, before we get out of here, we have these four questions that we ask everyone. This is known as our famous four. All right. These questions we ask every single. We may have to tweak the first one a little bit because you are not a real estate investor,

and that's okay. But the four questions are, I'm going to ask you it directly, and then you can tweak it if you need to. Number one, what is your favorite real estate related book other than your own? Yeah, well, actually, I do have, oh, this, okay, that's my own. All right, so, no, but if the one thing counts, I mean, the one thing is absolutely, it's one of my favorite books. It's just a simple, but a game changer. Yeah, the one thing. Yeah, okay. Awesome. Awesome. Number two. Or two. Business book, non-real estate. So, you know, we should have shifted and had the first question be favorite, like, productivity book or self-help. Not true. I'll share a book that's pretty, it's not real mainstream, but it's kind of an underground cult, you know, classic, if you will. You ever heard of The Millionaire Fastlane by M.J. DeMarco? Yeah, I love the book.

Yeah, so I love that book. And it's one that, you know, yeah, it's kind of under the radar, but it's one of, it really shifted my mindset around creating, some passive, scalable, you know, business and income that could free up my lifestyle a little bit. So, yeah, the millionaire fast lane is one of my favorites. Kind of like having a book that's, you know, got 1,100 reviews that just sells itself. That is true, yes, yeah. Yeah, exactly. But it's funny when I was reading the millionaire fast lane, he said that. He goes, he goes, this book is an example of a, you know, millionaire fast lane where, right, while I'm sleeping, it's still selling copies.

So, yeah. Yeah. Nice, nice, nice. All right, cool. Hobbies, what do you do for fun? I mean, you've, you know, you're this energetic guy. I mean, what gets you excited? Well, love playing with my kids, but I'm probably most, you know,

most passionate about as far as, like, hobbies is UFC. I am actually a huge mixed martial arts fan. And not because I necessarily like violence. I mean, I'm like the most anti-violent person. You know, I can never hurt anybody. But the mindset that it takes to go into a cage, not to mention, you've got to master like seven different disciplines. You've got to be, you know, a black belt in karate.

in Taekwondo, you got to be a great, but all these things. So yeah, that's more than you need to know. But I'm a huge, last weekend we went to Vegas. I took my wife to the first UFC VIP experience. And I want to write one of my dreams. I want to blend my passions and write the miracle morning for UFC fighters. So I connected with some of the champions there and like got their cards. And yeah, I'll just show UFC right there. Nice, nice. Anyway, so yeah, there you go. That's cool. Wow. Awesome. That's great, man. That's great. All right. Well, my last question. The last question for Brandon. Number four, the famous four, what do you believe sets apart successful, maybe real estate investors, or I can just say people in general? What sets apart successful people from those who give up,

fail, or never get started? Yeah, I mean, it's hard to boil it down to one, right? I mean, there's so many components of, you know, they gain clarity on what they want, all these things. But if I did have to boil it down to one, I think it's the difference between doing versus becoming. So the world's most successful people, like the average person thinks the key to achieve. more is to do more. So they think, well, I got to work harder, I got to do more. But if you're doing more of the same thing, you're often not going to get, you know, very far. And I think that the epiphany for me, and it's kind of what the Miracle Morning, one of the foundations of the concept is instead of focusing on doing more, focus on becoming more. And when you focus on

becoming more, the interesting thing is not only do you achieve more, but you often achieve more by doing less, right? When you become more, you become more knowledgeable, become more skilled, become more emotionally intelligent, become more connected, become more resilient, right? When you become a better version of yourself, become more, you find that you attract people and opportunities and success that you never even imagine possible for yourself. And it wouldn't have come by just doing more of what you already knew. You had to become more so you could do things that you didn't even realize were possible, you know, at one point. Awesome. I love it. That's great. That's great. All right. Where can people find out more about you, man? I know you've

chatted about it. I think there's this thing called The Miracle Morning. Yeah, yeah, Miracle Morning. So, no, if you want to get the book, Amazon is the best place to get it. And, you know, you can do audiobook, Kindle or paperback. They also, if you're an Apple user, which I'm a huge, huge Apple fan, of course, iBooks. You know, it is on I books. You know, it is on me. Go to Hal Elrod.com. And my podcast is there. You know, we do live events now. That, you know, that's the hub. obviously, H-A-L-R-O-D.com. And then last but not least, like I said earlier, man,

everybody, I encourage you come join the Miracle Morning community on Facebook. Like, I don't make money off that. I don't get anything from it, except the amazing sense of, you know, fulfillment of seeing people support each other.

It's really cool. It is amazing. I mean, as somebody who runs a outstanding community, my chance to plug bigger pockets to the bigger pockets audience. I mean, you know, I mean, hundreds of thousands of people,

you know, coming together, doing the exact same thing with this passion, excitement for real estate. There's nothing like it. I get it. It's really rare. It's really hard to find a great passionate community. And so kudos to you on building one. That's fantastic.

You know, gosh. Brandon, thank you guys. Yeah. Well, listen, man, thank you so much for coming on. We really, really appreciate it. I'm excited. I hope to report back to you with success on my savers. episode called like Josh's 30-day Miracle Morning Challenge results.

I feel I'm in rehab or something. I don't know. My name is Josh and I'm a saverholic. Newsolic, that's right. Thanks, man. Appreciate you. All right. Thank you.

All right, guys, that was Hal Elrod. Was it everything that you'd hope to be, Brandon? It was everything I hope it would be. Yeah, you know, the Miracle Morning is not a complicated book. It's not a long book. it's a very simple book. And I think Hal would admit that as well. Like it's not like overly complicated, like do these 50 steps in your life and you'll get better.

It's like wake up a little earlier. Focus on yourself. You know, set your morning. And like he made that quote in there about or that he talked about, it's like, you know, Christmas morning. It felt like that. That's what I feel like when I'm when I'm like on the miracle morning like kick where I'll go like a month or two on.

Then I'm like, I'm tired and I'll like get off of it. And then I have to reread the book and I'll get back on it again. I do that quite often. But like that's what it feels like. It's like when you wake up for vacation. you wake up for Christmas. You're never exhausted. You wake up because you're excited to get up. And that's what it feels like I'm excited to get up and tackle the world. Wow. I'm excited to get up just to talk to you. Good. I'm excited to listen to you talk.

Yeah. And the drool that comes from my mouth is just a natural, you know, it's a physiological problem that I have. Good to know. But yeah, big things to Hal. I mean, this was an incredible show. He's a fun, he's a fun guy, a great talker and, you know, knows a lot of stuff about personal development. So yeah. And next time we interview him, I'll pay him a little more than you paid him to give me crap the whole show. You may have to. Nice, nice, awesome. Well, guys, thank you so much for listening. I hope you got something out of the episode.

I know what I did. I definitely encourage you to go out and try it. You know, read The Miracle Morning. Try out Howl's methods. Try out Savers. See if it helps you. See if it, you know, gets you motivated, gets you clarity, improves your life. I think it will.

And I'm really excited. And at the end of the day, you know, this show is about real estate. This shows about building your business, building wealth. But if you're miserable and unhappy and your life is not going the way you want, regardless of what you do, it's irrelevant. So get out there and make a change. And that's it. Thanks so much for being a part of the community.

If you're not already part of bigger pockets, get out there, jump in, get active. We've got thousands. And I can say that. Thousands of new posts on the forums. every single day, thousands of posts a day. I mean, there's a ton of activity from people just like you, getting together, communicating, connecting, interacting, interacting, sharing, helping one another.

It's unbelievable. If you haven't experienced it, just take a moment and go to biggerpockets.com slash forums, and you'll see why people are so ecstatic about what we've produced in our community. But that's it. Get out there and make it happen. wake up early tomorrow morning and good luck to you guys. I'm Josh Dorkin. Signing off. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small.

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