BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 435: Why Successful People HATE Losing, But Aren’t Afraid to Lose with Scott McGillivray (Part 2)

Episode Date: January 17, 2021

Scott McGillivray is back for this second part of his amazing interview. Last time we talked about the nitty gritty of Scott’s investments, how he started to acquire houses, and building his empire. Now we’re touching more on the mindset of what makes Scott so successful, and how you can put yourself in his shoes. Many people may know Scott from his HGTV shows, but maybe you didn’t know he was once in a boy band. Seriously. He took dance classes, convinced his friends to join him, and sold out some shows, but the takeaway from this short-lived boy band was priceless. If you see someone else finding success with something, use their blazed trail to find success yourself. From his boy band, to being on student council, and even the passing away of a loved one, Scott learned valuable lessonsthat he took with him for the rest of his life, and now gets to share with the BiggerPockets audience. Scott goes on to share a story that made him pivot the direction of his life as a teenager, and lead him to become the real estate mogul he is today. Scott goes through his top pieces of advice for young people and proves how planting seeds for investments early leads to acres upon acres of residual fruits for decades to come. In This Episode We Cover: How Scott manages his hectic life between companies, shows, and family Why successful people aren’t afraid of failing What young or inexperienced investors should do when they feel scared of taking a risk Why Scott says you “can’t lose money in real estate” The importance of talking to those who are older and have more experience than you Scott’s top pieces of advice for young people just starting out their careers How Scott runs his companies and what he’s doing to be a better leader How you can be the MVP of your company  And So Much More! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Podcast BiggerPockets book store Books Mentioned in this Show: E-Myth by Michael Gerber Built to Sell by John Warrillow Click here to check the full show notes: https://www.biggerpockets.com/show435 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 435. The difference between successful people and people who just dream about having success is that successful people hate losing, but they're not afraid of it. Whereas unsuccessful people are afraid of losing. When you're afraid of losing, you're too scared to try. When you hate losing, you never give up. 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 height, 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 everyone? It's Brennan Turner, host of the Bigger Pockets podcast here with my co-host. Once again, Mr. David the Man Green. What's up, David the Man?

How's condo shopping in Hawaii? It's been really good. I got one under contract. I put a second one under contract late last night. And I had a third. The seller actually decided not to move forward because they lost the 10.31 they were going after. So I almost had three, but I got two and they were the two that I like the most. So I'll be working on that. How close are they to my my house? That's the real question here. Seven and a half minutes. Really close. All right. We have a five minute rule. As long as you're five minutes away from me, we're going to be fine. Well, we do make magic together when we're in that C-Shed. I'll tell you what. I know. It's going to be good. It's going to be nice having you around more often. And it's going to be weird having you like kind of split time between California and Hawaii more often. But it'll be awesome to, you know, see what you do with that. I'm really, really looking forward to that for many reasons, which we could get into later. But I have really big plans for 2021. And this is the most excited I've ever been about business in my whole life. That's awesome. I think a lot of that is because of how much I know you.

I think a lot of your excitement comes the more you come like you were in Hawaii. a few weeks ago and you were like, you go back home, you're like, I'm going to take on the world. And then like, you go to the few months and you're like, I haven't been to Hawaii in a while. And you like go back. It's like your energy like this. It's like your crystal, your magical crystal. It gives you out this energy. I think there's something to that.

And it's funny you mentioned it. That's why I want to buy a lot of these condos is I want to be able to send people who have not been to Hawaii to because everybody needs that. Right. Like it's one of those things like Hotel California. I think once you live there, it's very hard to ever want to leave Hawaii, you know. But it's nice if you can. just get in and out and get recharged and then go back and do what you're doing. So thank you for being the Vanguard that got out there and brought the rest of us. And speaking of Vanguard's,

we've got a pretty impressive one that we brought back on the show today. Yeah. So we just launched a show, I believe it was last Thursday with Scott McGilory, who is the host of HGTV's a bunch of stuff, but most famously known for income property, which is show that my wife and I were obsessed with for years and years and years. It was like probably my favorite show of all time. And it teaches people how to house hack essentially. And Scott came on Thursday and it was a phenomenal show. We talked all about his real estate and how we got into that. But after that show, I'm not kidding.

We got done with that show. We're talking with Scott afterwards. And I was like, Scott, we didn't even cover like half of what I would love to dig into, like your mindset and your brain and your like, how would you be able to do all this stuff? And so I was like, hey, would you be willing to come and do, let's record another episode of follow up for the weekend edition where we go into more of the business and mindset behind what you've done. And he was like, heck yes.

So that's how Canadian said, heck yes. And he came back on. So that's what today's show is. It's completely different from the last episode with him. But phenomenal. I might even say, I might say better. For some people, it might be a lot better in that it's not like here's how to buy a property or here's what he did to buy that first property or second or third.

This is like how he got the right mental attitude and the right fortitude and the right persistence to reinvent himself over and over. He goes into like that exact idea, the mind. that you need. He talks about the meetings he had with some 80 year olds at a restaurant that changes his life. He talks about being a leader. Like the show, we talk a lot about leadership and ownership and how

to get your team to take more ownership. And then make sure you guys listen for David's genius business idea later in the show. He comes up with it on the fly. And if somebody runs with this idea, it's going to make them, I don't know if they're going to make any money, but it is, I would definitely buy this service. So listen for that. That's all I got. Let's kiss to today's quick tip.

All right, today's quick. tip is very simple. Scott gets some advice on the show today you're going to hear about talking with people who are a generation ahead of you. So what I want to encourage you to do is in the next seven days, set yourself a goal in the next seven years, seven days, not years, seven days, to go find somebody who is at least 20 years older than yourself and who is in a, at least in one area of their life, they are exactly where you would like to be someday. So maybe it's in a relationship, like the way they treat their spouse, maybe it's the way they look at that age, maybe it's their wealth, maybe it's something else, and then try to sit down with them,

take them out to coffee. It doesn't be a celebrity or an influencer. I'm just talking about somebody that you might know that's in your circle and your area and try to get some coffee or get on the phone with them and just talk to them and ask them the questions that Scott suggests later in the show to ask them. So I won't tell you what those are, but you can hear them a little bit later. And that's today's quip. For decades, real estate has been a cornerstone of the world's largest portfolios. But it's also historically been sort of complex. time-consuming and expensive. But imagine if real estate investing was suddenly easy,

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Banking services provided by Threadbank, member FDIC. All right, big thanks for our sponsors as always. And now I think this is a long enough introduction. We better get to today's show. Anything you want to add, David, before we jump in. Negative, sir. Let's go grab Scotty. All right.

Now, I will actually say this real quick. A few weeks ago on the show, I think it came out already. David and I recorded an episode where we talked about some of the mindset shifts that people need to have to become a millionaire. Yeah, it did come out already. It was the one right after the new year. And in there, we talk about four things. or ways of habits, maybe you could call it, that millionaires have. And that was, they are decisive.

They track their information. They have momentum. And they have mastery. I want you guys to listen today on today's show about how Scott just perfectly exemplifies these four traits. So listen for that as we get in an interview with Scott McGivory from HGTV. All right, Scott, welcome back to the Bigger Pockets podcast, man. It's awesome to have you here.

It's good to be back. We got a lot of unfinished business to discuss. I know. I think we've only done this, maybe one or maybe twice, maybe once ever in the Bigger Pocket's history. Brought somebody back right away because we're like, yeah, that wasn't enough time. We need to dig more. Last time we covered your real estate, your story, how you got started. So if people have not listened to that, go back and listen to that episode. And here Scott's like history of how we got into real estate, what he's doing today. And a lot of really good just wisdom nuggets about real estate investing. But today we're going to take a little bit different focus. And specifically, I want to know how you think. I want to unpack

who Scott is inside that head. And, you know, this might be, this might be tragic. It might be a lot of fun. I don't know. This could be dangerous. This could be dangerous. That's good. So why don't we start with just in case people did not listen to the last episode,

a quick 30 second. Who are you? What do you do? What's your story? Yeah. I mean, I got into real estate investing when I was in college as a matter of necessity, really. That was the mother of all invention for me.

I bought a place with my student loan. I put a down payment on a property, rented out all the rooms to my friends, was able to basically live there free based on renting out the other rooms. Love the business model so much. I continued to kind of push and extend my student loan and take equity from properties and built up a portfolio of rentals. And then within several years of building a portfolio, I got the opportunity to be on a TV show.

which turned into income property, a few hundred episodes of that on HGTV. And I'm still doing shows today, still investing in real estate today. I do it because I love it and I love it because it's profitable. Yeah, I like that. That should be a T-shirt. That's on the back of my shirt. All right. So let's start with how you manage that stuff right now.

Because, you know, a lot of people are trying to balance 10 different things at one time right now. And that sounds like a lot of what you're. doing. So how do you manage that? What's your team look like right now? What is your, I guess, who does what? How much do you actually do? Like, what's your thing that you're just really good at that you do and everyone else does other stuff? There's like 10 questions in there. You know, it's a very difficult question. I think that there is an art and a science to being an entrepreneur. Being an entrepreneur, I think is something that was natural to me from a young age. Like I always just wanted to push my limits. I kind of found a thrill out of putting

myself in difficult positions. I remember when I was in high school, you know, I ran for student council president. I'd never done anything political. I'd never been on student council. And I just felt like our school was not keeping up with some of the competing schools in terms of everything that was going on. So I was just like, I'm going to run for a student council president. And everyone's like, you can't do that. You don't know anything about student politics. You don't, you know, you're not in these courses. You're supposed to start, like, you know, as like a grade wrap and then blah, blah, blah. I'm like, no, I'm just going to go for a school president.

That's where I just want to make the decisions. And I remember I was like, I felt really unqualified, but it was just a matter of like, go for it. Throw yourself into the situation. What's the worst that's going to happen? You're not going to get it, which is pretty much where you are now, right? But I ran for student council president, and I remember I got it. I won by like a massive, dare I say a landslide. But I won by a good threshold.

And I was the most shocked at it of anyone. I'm like, I can't believe people voted for me. And, you know, and then it was just like I kind of got addicted to this idea of trying, you know, sort of seeing something or someone and learning. And again, this isn't stuff you're taught in school. But a great skill set that I think people could have is. you know, finding a mentor or finding someone who's in the position you'd like to be and admire and appreciate and learn from them rather than to feel jealous or, you know,

like they're entitled or some or privileged or inherited it, you know, like I think the big, one of the big breakthroughs for folks, anyone, especially in the climate we're in now where I feel like there's a lot of the victim mentality, everyone who's young feels that, you know, like, oh, it's, I should deserve this and deserve this. And, you know, I have to take it from someone else. You got to kind of look at the people who have established themselves and say, I admire, I appreciate. And I'm sure you had struggles as well. Let me learn from that, right?

One of the big things that I do is I love to talk to people who have accomplished the things that I could only dream of accomplishing. This morning I woke up and Elon Musk was the wealthiest man on earth, right? And I was on social media and I hesitated for a second because what I wanted to say was you're worth $183 billion. Congratulations. See if you can get to a trillion, because I would love to see a trillionaire in my lifetime. That's what I want. That's how I feel.

And then I look on social media, people like, no one should have that much money. And this is a disgrace. And there's people who are hungry. I'm like, I get that. But come on, man. Give this guy some credit. Like I am,

I gravitate towards people who have accomplished incredible things. And you got to surround yourself with like-minded people. If you want to, you know, if you want to fly with the Eagles, you don't hang out with the turkeys. Yeah. Yeah, that's, it's funny too, about the, the billionaire thing whenever I see things about Bezos or Elon Musk. And everyone's like, they got so much money, they could give, you know, money to every single

American and or every single person on the world. And I'm like, well, first of all, they'd give like $20 each person. But even more, even more than that, like those people, they don't have that money anyway. Like, it's not like it's just sitting in some bank account that they're swimming in. Of course, it's all in stock. Yeah. And in their companies, which is the company valuation, which is based off crazy numbers anyway. especially today.

So like, I don't know, obviously they're rich people, but I think people overinflate how rich they really are and how much they can do with their money. But I kind of love it, though. I do love it. I'm like, go for it. I wish he was a trillionaire because then in my mind, I'd be like, that's the new high watermark that I got to aim for.

Do you want to be a trillionaire? That's not necessarily my goal. We'll get to my goals later. But it's always easier to achieve something. once you've seen someone else do it, right? That's exactly what I wanted to say. The four-minute mile is the great example that I'm sure we've all discussed. Yeah, they're paving a road that makes it easier for other people to go through,

which is why I think it's great you're a cheerleader of other people's success. Because you're like, hey, you want to go blaze that trail, cut down all the foliage and leave me a nice pavement road that I can follow behind you. Go get it, buddy. Like, I'll gas up your truck. Yeah, I love that. It's true. It's so true.

And I mean, you try to analyze it and say, why am I the way I am or why are some people successful and some people not? The idea of kind of looking up to somebody and admiring what they do and taking that blazed trail, I would say that the luck part for me, because I don't believe that luck is the key to success. But there are certain things that can help is that I had an older sibling. I had an older sibling that I learned how to follow in his footsteps. in order to get away with things that he had to like climb mountains to achieve with our parents, right? And then once he had broken them in and had basically suffered all the carnage that came with that, I'd be like, yeah, I want a curfew of a midnight as well. And they'd be like, fine.

And he's like, are you kidding me? I took me years to get there. And I'm like, yeah, you blaze the trail, man. Do the hard work. Like, you can let someone else do the heavy lifting. It's not rocket science. Yeah, that's exactly how it was in my family too. I was the oldest boy.

And so I blazed that trail. Yeah. You're in the hard. Me too. Yeah. Absolutely. There you go. Now, Scott,

one thing I've noticed about you is it appears that you are not afraid to take action when you see that you want something. Like you said, what's the worst thing that could happen is I don't have it? Well, I'm in the same boat I'm in right now. So I'm basically playing with house money. And when you have that mentality of playing with house money, it's much easier to make decisions. One of those routes you took or trails you blaze from my understanding. led you into a boy band. Can you share what that experience was like and how that led to clearly you being an amazing real estate investor? Oh, boy, here we go. You really, you really dug in.

You did your homework, David, which is what I like. I like that you did your homework. Yeah, that was another thing I did when I was when I was in my late teens, early 20s is I was in a boy band. And you know what the funny thing is? I remember I was sitting, I was. living off campus. I think it was like first year and I was with, it was with a bunch of us, we're just hanging out. We were watching TV or something. And we flipped through and like we, I think we were watching like music, right? Like music videos. And it was like boy band after boy band. And someone that's sitting there is like, oh my God, it's just boy band stuff. This I hate these boys. Like someone just had a huge hate on boy bands, which a lot of us guys do. It's like, are you

kidding me, you know. And I was sitting there and I'm listening to him hate on him. And I just said, yeah, but if you were in that boy band, wouldn't that be kind of awesome? He's like, well, yeah. And I said, guys, we play instruments. We sing. Why be in a rock band when we could be in a boy band? Our chances are much higher. It was literally like a, I hate to sterilize the art of music because I love music and I'm passionate about it. But it was really, I just said, guys, I mean, this is what we're going to do. Instead of trying to play in a rock band and being paid, you know, free beers to play, why don't we start a boy, but there are no boy bands around.

Like, we would be the only one. And we're boys. And we're in a band. I said, all we need is a couple dance moves. And everyone is like, you're crazy. like we can't learn dance moves. I'm like, I'm going to find a way for us to learn dance moves. And I grabbed like a yellow pages because the internet probably was new.

And I looked up dance studios in the area. I called one and I said, we're a group of five guys. We were actually four guys at the time. We gained a fifth later. So we're a group of four guys and we need to learn how to dance. And the lady was like, are you kidding me? And I went in, went to go see her. And I said, we want to take dance lessons.

the four of us. She was in total shock. But she was like, this is actually good because all of our instructors are like our older girls have no guys to dance with. If you guys will do the dances with the girls, we'll train you guys for free. So we took dance lessons for a year. That's awesome. Dance hacking. This is brilliant. Dance hacking. Free lessons for a year. All four of us. We would go two days a week. We had them choreograph routines for us. We learned to. it. And we went from like literally a nobody group of musicians to we were playing venues with hundreds if not thousands of people buying tickets. And we were like, holy smokes. Everyone was like, this was genius. Like we're making money now. Record labels are are like interested. We had a

manager. Like we went from a nobody band to a year later. We had we could work full time as a boy band. It was crazy. Yeah. And to this day, those guys were still friends and they're like, I can't believe we're sitting on the couch and you made us all take dance lessons. I'm like, but how awesome is that? Well, Scott, I want to ask, how much is that is because you saw there's a road that's already paved. Let's just go.

Like, all we have to do is change ourselves. All we have to do is add the word boy. Yeah. To the front of what we are. And it's a huge marketing shift. You know what, David, I freaking didn't answer your question, but I was thinking about something. You asked about not being afraid of trying things. And I've really thought about this over the years.

I've never heard it put this way, but I'm going to spell it out like this. The difference between successful people and people who just dream about having success is that successful people hate losing, but they're not afraid of it. Whereas unsuccessful people are afraid of losing. When you're afraid of losing, you're too scared to try. When you hate losing, you never give up. It's not that I'm afraid to lose. I don't mind losing.

I'm the type of guy that's like, let's play again. I just lost. Let's play again. Let's go again. I don't mind losing. I just hate it. I actually thrive on the failure in order to work harder. And that's probably the first mindset change that someone needs to have

in order to take themselves to the next level. And it's the simplest, it's just a small tweak. It's like we still, losing is still a negative thing, but it's not that I'm afraid of it. I'm not afraid to lose. Go ahead. I want to lose. I'm excited to be the loser.

I just, it gets me boiling. And I'm like, I can't stay here. So I need to try again. So the real answer is it's not so much fear as it is a disdain for losing. As long as you hate losing, you're going to find a way to win. But if you're afraid to lose, you may never try. That is like the death sentence of success. That is so deep.

If I could, I would rip this out of this podcast and make that what people listen to when my phone is ringing. That's so good. I just tried to figure it out because I'm like, nobody really likes losing. Yeah. Right. So how is it that, you know, some people don't even try? And I'm like, it's the fear. It's the fear of losing versus the hate of losing.

And people get them mistaken to be the same thing. Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, you've worded that so perfectly. I was thinking the pain of losing creates an. emotion that you can't stand. No one likes it, right? And that's what motivates you to look at what you did wrong and fix it. So this applies real estate investing very easily. You jumped in and you bought in a bad market based on someone's advice that you read in the forum and you didn't research it and you lost money or you ended up with a headache deal. That stings. It's not too hard to look and say,

hey, this is why I made a mistake. I took a shortcut. I should have looked at this myself and let that completely change your whole personality. So now you brand yourself or you become known as the due diligence person. I research everything so I don't make this mistake again. And that money that you lost on that first deal can become the motivating factor that you make millions with because you change. But if you're afraid to ever make the mistake, you never get in the game, you never learn anything, you never improve. I mean, Scott, I think that's brilliant. And I'll say if anyone can back that statement up at you doing a boy band, I can't see myself in a million years ever being able to go through that. Brandon probably could. I'll tell you guys this. He has a secret.

affinity for boy bands. I think in another life he may have been in a boy band. Yes. Like Brandon knows every song to the in sync and backstreet poison because he's a... Not everyone. Well, listen, hold on, Brandon. I'm going to sign one of these for you. Oh, please do. I love it. Could you turn that into like a pillow?

Brandon can lay his head on it. Oh, I would love to see this. No, what we need though is we need you two to come hang out in Maui or we go out in Canada, but I think it's more fun to hang out in Maui. And we're going to choreograph us song. And we're going to record it and we're going to put it out there. And we're going to be the new boy band. It's going to be a man band at this point. But I'm good with that. That has such a better ring to it. I could possibly deduct into that. And we've been interviewing all these

musicians, right? Seth Mosley could write the song, Manifest, could produce it. We've got all these people we've had on the show. Yeah, we go. We're good. All right. We need to find a way to be a huge. It's going to be huge. Before we move on, can we just acknowledge one of the most genius things David Green here has ever said. And that was a business idea where instead of like a ringback, when you call somebody, it plays like a motivational or any kind of thing. Because I hate when people call me, right? I hate it when they call me. So we should punish people who call us by making them listen to like five minutes of

something. It doesn't matter what it is. It can be like five minutes of like, I don't know, Oprah or something like that. If you want to call me, you got to go through that pain first. And if Brandon doesn't answer the phone, he can tell himself, I did them a favor by making them listen to something that will change their life by not answering their call. It's like an initiation. Yep.

You got to pay the Piper in order to. talk to me. That's how this is going to be. It's a new business model. We're going to, we're going to build this, David. All right, moving on to a slightly different point. We talked, you know, a little bit about fear. And I think it's really good. So I as you even say it's a different point. It's really the same point. But I was wondering if you can address the people listening to the show right now who are stuck in that fear right now. Let's just go with real estate as an example, right? Yeah. But they're saying like, I don't know what to do. Like I just, I have analysis paralysis. I just keep thinking about it,

about it, listen to the podcast, I'll listen to 100 of them, 200 of them. I just, I don't know to do. What do you tell those people? Well, the two things that I would say. The fear thing we addressed, which is you have to transition from fear of failure to just hate of failure, because hate of failure is a little, little better to deal with. But it's also, you know, having enough information to make strategic decisions. And one of the advanced strategies that I teach in real estate. And, you know, I might be doing, I might be doing us all a huge disfavor rate now

to put this out to everybody without qualifying them first. But here's a statement, a pretty bold one, that I'm willing to say, and I'll back it up. You can't lose money in real estate. Now, that's, there you go. Like, people who are scared of losing money in real estate, they're like, I'm scared. What if I lose money?

something that I learned probably after a few years, I flipped a property and I lost money. I was down like 25 grand. And I remember how frustrating it was. And I was like, I can't believe it. I lost, I did all that work and I lost 25 grand. And I sat down, you know, at the end of the year with my accountant, I'm like, this is brutal. I can't believe I lost money in real estate. And he said, well, theoretically you have a loss, but you can carry that forward against a future gain. I said, wait a second. Wait a second. What you mean? I didn't actually lose this. He's like, you lost that money, but then you get to write it off against a future gain, so you'll be net zero when it's all said and done. It's like, oh my gosh, this is brilliant.

How come we haven't, we don't teach people that as long as you keep working at it and you find a way to eventually make money and real estate, even if you lost money, you're going to get it back. You're going to be able to write it off against a future game. So I say this to a potentially unqualified audience, but if you are a serious investor, if you have your LLCs and C-Corps or S-Corps or whatever company structure you have set up to invest in real estate, if there is a deal that is not profitable, there are ways to write off that loss against a gain, a tax, what would have been a taxable gain moving forward. And therefore, you never really lost the money. Yeah, it's a good way looking at it.

So you kind of have to find ways to, I call it, like disarming people's obligation or people's hesitations with real estate, right? Like, how do we disarm some of these bombs that people think are going to go off in their face? I'm going to lose money. I'm like, well, if you do 10 deals and you lose money on one, you're going to write that off against the other nine and you didn't actually lose money. And people are like, holy smokes, I never thought of it that way. But if you just try it once and you have no guidance,

no information and you never try again, you will actually lose that money because there will be nothing future to write it off against. Yeah. That's really good. And that goes to all of life, right? If you try something and fail at it and you never do anything else, well, then you lost. But if you let that failure teach you something and then you go succeed in the next thing that you can't lose from trying. you'll always be learning. Oh gosh. Yeah. I mean, listen, there's, you bring out, it's funny, you brought up like the boy band, right?

Where's the boy band today? Right, write it off against one of the things that I tried that didn't work out. Like I'm not a successful multi-million dollar platinum record boy band. We can fix that. I don't regret it for a second though. I'm like, I needed all of that. I needed all that boy band because it, you know, it basically, hardened me up to be the person that did the next thing. And I took something from that process and I was

able to optimize the next thing than I did. So that leads me to the question I really want to ask you, Scott. Because if we haven't mentioned this, Scott owns over a hundred rental properties. You are very successful. You're very good at what you do. You've managed to stay humble while doing it, which makes it even more impressive. So you're a guy we want to learn from. When I talk to successful people or even when people ask me, how did I get where I am? There's usually, points in my life where I had to go through a process that typically was painful at the time. It doesn't have to be. I think I probably made it painful. But it changed a piece of my character. I got over my fear of talking to people. I got over this belief that money should be hard to make

or money should be easy to make whatever it was. It changed how I thought. So even though that element of my life, I may not have been successful, just like you said, it prepped me to go on to the next thing and then to be able to be successful. Can you highlight specific turning points? in your life where you went through an experience that changed you, that primed you to then be successful at the next thing. Absolutely. This is, this goes into a pretty deep conversation. However, happy to, happy to go there because, you know, there's, there's good and bad things that will happen to you that aren't in your control in your life. And for that, I, you know, I sympathize with people and I feel bad for people who go through difficult things. If you put yourself,

in a certain situation, you lose my sympathy because you are now, you know, have control of it in some capacity. So people are like, oh, feel sorry for me. My job sucks. I'm like, well, you know, that job didn't, you know, find you and make you work there. Like, I'm not feeling sorry for you. You go get a better job. So those things are all things we have to sort of, you know, overcome ourselves. But for me personally, yeah, there's a few big turning points. Some of them really great, like, you know, running for student council. That, you know, taught me a whole new discipline and I had to learn trial by fire. You know, I won this position, no idea what I'm doing. And then I had to really speed learn the whole thing so that I didn't mess it up.

That was a great exercise. But there were other elements like my father passed away when I was fairly young, all things considered. That's something I would never wish upon anyone. It's not a decision that I made. It's just a really shitty situation that happened, you know, no matter what you look at me or think of me as like, oh, you know, he's lucky or he's whatever, I'll tell you right now, not many people would want to trade positions with me in terms of what's happened in my life. But the way I look at it and is that you can go down two separate paths when something tragic or major happens that deals with relationships, health, or wealth, the three most important things in our lives, right? And there's a lot of,

lot of energy that gets expended in those moments. And I remember, you know, I was pretty much paralyzed after my father passed away because it was very sudden. I won't get into it, but it was like he was a healthy man. He was young and all of a sudden just gone. And we were all just in shock. Like I didn't even believe it. I could, I would go to bed at night and I'd wake up in the morning and I'm like, was I dreaming? Is this real life? Like, what is going on? on. And it probably put me what I would say, in a really bad place for several months where I just had no motivation to do anything. I just felt sorry for myself. And I think that was good. That was part of the morning process for me. But then I kind of realized, you know, I started to realize

I'm not the only person that's been through something like this. And although it's negative, there's, you know, I dug deep and I was like, what, you know, what is it that I can do from this? How can I change all this negative energy into positive energy? How can I do something that would make him proud or how can I best use my life? Because one of the things that happens when you lose somebody close in your immediate family, especially when you're young, is you think, well, that's when I'm going to die, right? Like, that's it. This is the only, this is the amount of time I have. So that's something that's kind of, that was apparent to me as well. I'm like, oh my gosh, like life is short. Don't waste time. Learn from the mistakes, you know. He wasn't a perfect man. He never achieved, you know,

his full career potential, never got to retire, never got to see his kids grow up, never got to see any of these things. And I was like, I need to make sure that I front load my life. Like, I need to do all the things now. There's no waiting. Like the sense of urgency that that put on my life, it's hard to, it's hard to explain that to anyone who hasn't been through it. But my only real attempt would be to just, you know, put a time constraint or a limitation to be able to realize that time is so valuable. That's sometimes the pressure that people need in order to go out and start doing something different. I find the people, you know, you would think young people are the, you know, teenagers and millennials are the ones who are most ambitious. I personally working with people

who want to be entrepreneurs and real estate investors, the average age of somebody who will sign up for one of my courses or one of my events is 51 years old. 51 years old is the average age. And a lot of that has to do with right around that point, you realize if I keep doing what I'm doing, I'm not going to have the things that I always thought I was going to have. Like you're starting to realize that you're running out of time to make that turn. So there's all kinds, you know, maybe it's when you turn 50 or maybe it's when somebody close to you gets sick or passes away. Or maybe it's something to do with a relationship. A lot of people go through a divorce and then you see they're actually happier afterwards,

even though the pain of the divorce was devastating to them. There's all kinds of these moments in people's lives. But for me, you know, being young and trying different things, I mean, public speaking, I was petrified of public speaking, but I threw myself up on stage. I figured it out. And then I went to go watch other people do it. And I was like, oh my gosh, there's a system to this. This is how you do it, right?

And just continuing to evolve, just realizing, you know, as soon as I get to where I was planning on being, I'm like, now it's time to evolve to the next level. So there's all kinds of things that get thrown at us. But it's often when you're shown how bad things can be that you will find the most motivation to rise yourself back to the top. Yeah, that's really good. What do you think about that? Is there any moments in your life you can point to? I mean, a hundred of them.

But before I say a couple of them, but I'll just say like what you said about the sense of urgency. And I don't have an answer for how to make somebody feel more urgent other than just like, like this sounds so morbid right but contemplate death like when you contemplate the fact that like I like no one gets out alive like this this ends and it could end sooner rather than later. It just, it yeah, I don't know. It gives you that 50, 60 year old urgency at maybe 20, 30, 40 years old. And so whatever you got to do. I mean, I guess I get it. I have got no no advice there. Just literally like that's so good to contemplate that. And I like how Scott. You took a situation that is horrible to go through.

And you found, I don't want to say good even. Maybe that's not the right word. Silver lining is the word. Yeah, silver lining. Yeah, there you go. There's something you pull out of that. That's working for you. I like the phrase people often say, like, things don't happen to me.

They happen for me. And I think that's a good example of that is that, yeah, like the world, like, yeah, bad things happen. And it's when they happen, they happen for me. In other words, there's things I can pull out of it. And so I think that's just super interesting. And the fact of to bring back the boy band thing, like if you would not have like done the boy band,

you probably wouldn't have had the confidence to do the public speaking. If you don't have to public speaking, maybe you wouldn't have got the TV show. Wouldn't have the TV show, wouldn't have the money to buy the real estate thing. So each of those things, even the failures in the, even the hard times that you went through,

all those things changed you to get to that next level of you, kind of reinvent yourself every time. Yeah. And it's funny because we try to be strategic, you guys are, you guys are successful guys. And, you know, how much energy it takes to get to where you are and to establish what you have.

And we would all love to be able to strategically write it out and say, here's the recipe from zero to 100% of what you have to do. But the truth is you kind of need to get to about 80 or 90%. And then you have to have, dare I say, like a little bit of faith or leave room for creativity and say, and there's 10% of what's possible. we don't even know yet until we try these 90% of these. Like, we have to try these nine things to figure out what that 10th thing is going to be

because you just don't know. Like, you'd start a boy band and you realize, you know, the guy, the guy who was your manager, turns out that he works for a production company and pitches you for a TV show.

And you're like, whoa, we never met this guy if I didn't take dancing lessons. Like, you know, the little things you do can have such a huge impact down the road. You just have to leave a little wiggle room for them to happen. You know, it reminds me of the analogy, I'm sure we've heard it before, but like a plane that

takes off from like New York, let's say, to L.A., right? And if they just get off like two degrees and they stay that two degrees out by the time they get there, you know, they're not in L.A. anymore. They're in San Francisco, let's say, right? Like just a small thing. So I've been working this concept in my head the last few weeks about like a pivot year. Like we're here we are going to the new year. And like a pivot meaning you just alter direction a little bit. And in In life, we don't see when we make these choices, like, I'm going to start eating a little better. Like, that is a small pivot in your life that you don't see right now, but five years down the road, you might be 30 pounds lighter, right?

So each of these moments in life are like pivot moments, which allow you to pivot. And we just do it throughout our entire life. But I guess I would encourage people to ask themselves, like, is this going to be a pivot year? When I think back, like a pivot year was the year I started this podcast, like changed a little bit. Like, I just had a little podcast. A few people listened to it. Nine years later now, whatever it is, like, look where it's at.

when I bought my first rental property, you know, when I went to college, met my wife. Those are pivot years that if we continue on the path that they do and trying to, I guess, trying to like lean into those things. Like it's just amazing what happens five, 10 years down the road. You look back and say, that was a pivot year. And you never know you're in a pivot year until you're in it until you're in it. Until you're in it. Years later.

I do have an exercise that I would suggest that absolutely anyone can do. And there's absolutely no risk involved. And it just requires a, like you said, a small pivot. It's one thing that you can do. And if I were to look back on something that changed the trajectory of my life without me knowing. And I'll fill you in with the story and then I'll give you this tip on how to do it, which is I worked in a restaurant when I was in when I was going way to school. I was a waiter, which by the way is a job that I recommend everybody does at some point in their life.

you have to work in this service industry and just appreciate what that does. But I worked doubles on the weekend, which is the lunch rush. And then I was the guy that stayed through to the dinner rush to service the like two or three tables that would show up between two and five. And I worked in this restaurant and these two old guys, these two like 80 something year olds, would come in like every Sunday afternoon. I still remember this day, right? they would come in and they were like usually the only table.

It's like two in the afternoon. They'd sit down. They'd each get a chicken souvloci and they would order a pitcher of sangria, right? Which is like a red wine mix. And I get these guys as sangria. Sometimes they'd have a second thing of it. Like they would just get hammered. And then by 4.30 when the table started coming in, they're like, we're out of here.

And they were coming in for months and months. Nice guys. whatever. And one day, they got really hammed up, right? They were, they were into it. They were thick. And there was no one else in the restaurant. And I come over to the table and they're like, Scott, they're like, sit down. I'm like, why not? I pull up a chair. I'm like, what's up, guys? They're like, we've decided to help you. I'm like, oh, am I thinking how I'm getting a big tip? And they said, we're in our 80s. And we're looking at you running around. You're work every weekend you're here working.

We've never had another waiter other than you. And they're like, how old are you, right? What do you do? Going to school. I filled them in. They're like, here's what we're going to do. We're going to tell you all the things that we've been talking about when we come here that what we would do if we could go back and be your age.

And at the time, I was like, okay, I'll humor them, whatever. But these guys, like, had a list. They literally had made a list. And they're like, if we could go back 60 years, you know, and be your age, the first thing we would do is travel. And they're like, why aren't you traveling? Why are you here all the time? You need to go. They're like, you have to go and book a trip and just go.

Like go for a month or go for two months. They literally were just telling me you need to go on a trip, right? And I thought that was interesting. They're like even skip school for a year. like just go travel right and they're like do you have a girlfriend i'm like yes they're like you need to break up with her you cannot have a girlfriend at your age you need to go out and have lots of girlfriends even the girls who you don't find super attractive now you will regret when you're 80 years old that you didn't go out with them i'm like what he's like i would date any girl your age if they would

date me and they gave me like this they this kind of funny but like like guy to guy, 85 year old to 19 year old insight into these are the things that you're going to wish you did when you're our age. So why don't you start doing them now? And the one funny thing is, they said, you should invest in real estate. And I'm like, I can't invest in real estate. They're like, stop that nonsense. You borrow, beg, or steal money from anywhere you can and you buy as much real estate as possible and you keep it until you need to sell it. I was like, that's a silly plan. And they're like, that's the basics. But trust me, just buy it. So they gave me this list, which I didn't take seriously. I was like, drunk old guys. But as time went by, I couldn't shake

like this advice that they had given me. And I was like, you know what? I did break up with my girlfriend. I was like, these guys maybe are on to something, you know. And then I booked this trip to Costa Rica for a month. Best thing I ever did. So, and then I got into real estate. I remember when I got into real estate, I was like, yeah, those guys, I started doing these, these guys gave me like a time machine. This is a gift that anyone can take advantage of is talk to somebody who's at least a generation,

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Scott, how old are you? Like what, 30, 31? 42, bro. All right. So 42. You're sitting right now at a coffee shop and some guy comes up. He's 21. And he's like, God, oh my gosh, it's you. You know, tell me what are the five things that you would do if I, if you were me at this age right now? What advice do you have for those people who are 20 right now, 19, 20, 21, 21, 22. You know what? You ask, that's a genius reply to my, to my thing. And it's not the same answer for everyone. However, however, you definitely want in your 20s, what do you have to lose? Like, really, in your teens and in your 20s, like I say, spend your teens just being a teenager. Don't worry

about the future so much. It really doesn't matter. I hate to say this. It doesn't matter where you get your degree. It really doesn't matter what your grades are. Nobody's ever asked to see my degree other than when I bought a car. I got a discount once. And nobody's ever looked at my grades ever, ever. No one's ever. There's no job interview where they're going to say, you know what, before we hire you, we want to see, you know, your grade eight report card. Never is that going to happen. So just have a good time in your teens. And then when you're in your 20s, you still don't have to know what you're going to do when you grow up. But you have to kind of throw caution to the wind and get experience. Take the job, go on the trip, you know, date the people. Don't try to be super. Some people get too caught up.

Like you said, they're almost overeducated. They're 22 and they've got three degrees and they're like, well, I have an MBA and a doctorate and a, you know, a bachelor's degree and I need to start my career. I'm like, no, you don't because in 10 years from now, you're probably going to want to change your career and you're going to start from scratch anyway, right? You need to just get life experience and relationship experience. The people that you meet and have a relationship with in your 20s are the ones who are going to open all the doors for you in your 40s and 50s, right? You need to get to know people. And you need to hustle too. You really need to hustle. Like you need to try. Like I say, if you can get you. your hands on a piece of real estate, whether it's buying the whole thing, partnering with your parents, getting together with five friends, get your hands on a piece of real estate that cash flows. Everything else doesn't matter. It can be in Timbuktu for all I care, but get yourself a property, ideally a primary residence, so you pay no capital gains on the profit eventually, right? But get yourself into a piece of real estate where you can start at least have it paying for

itself, if not generating a little bit of profit to cover the expenses. and that one piece of property will probably, if all goes well, it will outpace your income in your lifetime. For the average American worker, they can make just as much, if not more, off of one good property investment as they will save off their entire income in their lives. That's outlandish. And the fact that that isn't taught to us in our education system is mind blowing. mind-blowing.

Yeah, well, high schools are too busy teaching you how to, like, do like the pyegrim's theorem or whatever that. It's true. It's another thing that they never asked you later in life about. Yeah, man, that's really good. I was thinking, like, when I was 23, I think my wife and I, we had, you know, been married. We got married young. I think that was 22.

So, 23, we just packed up and went for a month, almost a month over to Europe and put the whole thing on credit card. We had had a couple real estate deals at the time. Like, my mother-in-law looked after him. we were gone. And at the time, we were like, well, we don't have the money for this. And I'm not giving advice here because I don't want people to go and just max out their credit cards. I put the whole trip, though, on a credit card. And we did it cheap. I didn't go crazy. We did the whole trip, including flights and everything for five grand total for almost a month.

But I don't regret a second of that $5,000 credit card because like that's something to, I think about it every day. I still think about that trip. Every day we talk about that trip. Like, it was amazing. Build memories in your 20s. Like, plant the seeds for your investment. build your memories, go out and try all the things. By the time you get to your 30s, yeah, you want to have something substantial. I always tell people, by the time you're in your 30s, it's kind of critical that you have an investment or an entrepreneurial investment of some sort or a rental property. Because I've done the statistics.

You know, with the public speaking engagements, what's amazing about going around, you know this, you guys train people in real estate. and we do a tremendous amount of data digging, right? We know everyone who registers. We know their income. We know their age. We know their zip codes or postal codes. Like, that's just the way it rolls.

And it fascinates me that people who are interested in investing in real estate, if you look at it in a graph, there's a bump. Like you see kind of a 19-20, you get these people interested in real estate. And then by about the age 30, you see this huge drop-off. It's the weirdest thing. sudden people in their 30s aren't really interested in real estate investing. And then by 45, you see like the hockey stick effect. The amount of people looking for real estate information skyrockets from 45 to 70 years old. Those are the hungriest people. And for the longest time,

I was like, what is wrong with people who are in their 30s? Why aren't they interested in real estate. And we started to actually send questionnaires out to the people who weren't registering or weren't showing up. And it turns out they were too busy. They had young kids. They were trying to establish their careers. They were distracted by life, which is really what puts this important emphasis on if you can set yourself up in your 20s. If you have a couple investments, then you get to actually live your 30s and come out in your 40s. And you're 40s. with something that's killing it. Like that 10 years, even for me, you know, I got married at 29.

I had my kids in my early 30s. All of a sudden, here I am 42. I am just starting to now look at my career, which I, you know, I've been busy. I've got five or six companies, a few hundred people working for me. Like, we've done well. But now I'm sitting back and I'm saying, okay, it's time to hockey stick this. This is next level stuff. I want like double digit exponential growth for the next few years because for the last 10 years, we've had, you know, 10% annual growth, 20% annual growth.

I want 300% growth now because I got the distractions are gone. My kids are doing online learning right now by themselves. Like that's mind blowing. They're seven and eight years old and they can now for hours kind of independent learning. and I am like, oh my gosh, I don't have all this extra energy. It's time to crush it again. So you have to be really strategic about your 20s in that enjoy them like crazy. Plant those seeds.

Get a couple of investments going. Then while you're busy in your 30s, by the time you're in your 40s, you're like, huh, look at that. I made $400,000 on those properties that wasn't even paying attention. It's like, I think that's a good example of the whole pivot year thing, right? If you can do one of those little pivots when you're in your young 20s, And even if you're in your 30s right now, fine, when you're 32, 33, at least then when you're 43, 45, 50, like, you still might shave off a decade or two off of your retirement.

Absolutely. Yeah, making those choices right now, no matter where you are in life. Man, this is so good. Well, real estate works that way. It works better over time. It's like planting a tree. It starts off really slow. And then, I mean, all of it gets that way.

Rent increases going up, builds your cash flow, exponential return. Equity, it could go up, it could go down. it's going to go up over time. The loan, the way a loan gets paid off, the longer you get into that, the better return you start getting. And that's how what you said, Scott, was brilliant. Your investment will outpace your income.

It won't do it in years 1 through 5. You get into years 15, 20, 25. It's flying past you. And if you planted more of those trees when you were younger, like you said, you got the swell behind you. I mean, that's the big regret I have from my 20s is I was out there trying to outwork everybody in the restaurant industry thinking I'm making more money than all my buddies because I was making

30 grand a year and they were making 12 grand a year. What did any of that mean now where we can make that in a week? You know, I should have been learning, getting better at building relationships, talking to more 80-year-old people, putting those pieces in place so that when I got to this point, I was primed. I was a little bit behind. So I think that's fantastic advice. That's what I would tell everyone I know in the 20s. Don't worry about what you're earning. Worry about what you're learning, the time to earn will come when you get a little bit older. I wanted to pitch a show. So with our production company, we put together a show pitch. And again, it's not dead yet, but it's been hard to get some traction. And it was called

a thousand years of good advice. And it was 12 interviews with people over the age of 85, all wealthy, successful individuals. And it was compiling a thousand years of good advice into one hour and basically saying here's like the top 10 things, you know, that you should know from some highly successful people who have got a thousand years of experience combined. And it was, you know, we started with the casting and we talked to a couple people and even my mind was just blown. I'm like, this is such a good idea. I mean, I might just run with the show anyway and then try to sell it afterwards. Usually we get it. Yeah, I feel like Netflix would pick up that thing. They should. A thousand years of good advice, man. It's genius.

That's really good. That's really good. All right. So before we get out of here, I got one more topic I want to hit. You said you have hundreds of people now that work for you. You have five businesses or four or a bunch of businesses. How do you, how do you structure that? When I'm wondering is from a from a standpoint of like there's you, do you have like a C.O that kind of runs your life? Do you have an assistant? Do you meet with these people regularly? What kind of like, how does that look from a tactical standpoint? Yeah, and I think, you know, transparency and honesty is going to, is going to be the theme here versus, you know, take what you want from what I will reveal because it's not necessarily, I don't necessarily think I have the best system, but this is just the way I do things. I do not have an assistant. I have no assistance at all. I tried years and years ago, but I just found it was, it was like an impossible frustration for me. I'm like, I'd rather do you send me an email. I'll send you an email. If you DM me on Instagram, I'm going to probably be the one to see it, right? Like, I like to be in charge of my personal life, and I don't like impersonators of me.

So I have a, but that being said, I do have a team, and there's certain people who reply and organize different things, and everybody's got their role. But I kind of act as the CEO of all the companies, whether it's McGilver Entertainment, which is our production company. And then I have a VP who basically does a lot of the, you know, overseeing of the company. Same thing with the real estate business.

You know, the real estate training side. We have Key Spire, my business partner there. He runs the day to day. I do the branding, marketing, and also obviously contributing to content and doing all the events. But that's a company where depending on, like in a pandemic, we've really had to tighten up because live events is a huge part of that, of that organization. But we've, you know, we kind of accordion up to.

300 people when we're really ramped up working at Key Spire. And then we can, you know, recently we've had to compress that down to almost half that amount of people just because all the live events teams are basically on a temporary leave. And then there's the McGilred group, which is the branding and the endorsements. And my brother is the president of that company. Oh, that's cool. He's awesome. And he is like, I always say my brother is like the number one, number two guy. You know what I mean? He keeps me in line. He's like always, you know, dotting the eyes and crossing the T's. And so I have a lot of trust in him as well to be able to really make big decisions on how we represent ourselves.

And then I have the real estate investing company, which is my portfolio of properties, which, believe it or not, doesn't require a lot of employees. it's a lot of managing of property managers and service providers. You know, it's keeping up with, it's like a massive spreadsheet and somebody just making sure that all the payments are being made, all the rents are coming in. It's like a property manager managing all the remote property managers across North America who deal with my portfolio in those locations. So those are the four primary companies.

as you know running any business there's going to be hold coes and s corps and LLCs like there's hundreds of those that are just kind of all reporting up to the the primary trusts but there's always a few things in the works too right i've got a couple startups on the go and i i thrive on that stuff i'm like i need to be pushing myself so i say this i say this with a grain of salt i am the mad scientist for sure, right? I'm always like, why don't we do this? And everyone's just like, oh my gosh, we just got everything organized. I'm like, yeah, I know, we just got everything organized. But if we don't evolve, we are going to go extinct, right? We need to be trying something new. So I do, I probably have like a lot of strategy type personalities running the organizations,

giving the reporting. And I manage from a financial side, the P&Ls mean everything to me. I look at the P&Ls. Once a week, I spend at least a day just looking at numbers and making sure that that's where I build my confidence. I'm like, okay, I feel confident. Everything's happened. And then we have our conversations. What's going on?

What do we need to know? What decisions do we need to make? Where do we need to be? But it's an evolving process. And each company has its own personality. It's like kids. You raise your kids all the same way, but they're completely different. It doesn't matter how you raise them.

You're going to have one kid that's crazy outgoing and one that's super shy, one that's street smart, one that's book smart. Like you raise your kids the same. Same way, I raise my company's the same, but they evolved to be their own things. And you have to, you have to ebb and flow as the top guy. I have to, I have to be plastic, right, and kind of morph here and there and do wear a lot of hats. So there's no, there's no magic recipe for me. I do read a lot of books, as I know you guys do. You guys are huge on the education side.

So anytime you're kind of running into a big hurdle, I usually look up like a book from somebody who's figured it out and read it or I'll watch an episode on YouTube or listen to a podcast about it and try to find a strategic way out. What's the best tip you can give for people on leadership when you're trying to build a team, trying to get more people to follow them? What's your best leadership tip? Gosh, I mean, I think I think my, the ultimate recipe for being a successful leader, I haven't figured out that recipe yet. I'll be, I'll be the first one to be honest to say I'm not the best leader I could be yet. That's the most important thing. I always put the word yet behind something that you haven't accomplished. So I'm not the best yet. I'm, I've tried. I've tried several different things. I've tried to be like the company culture first guy. Like,

you know, try to just please everybody. And that led to like basically an impossible mission of trying to keep everybody happy. And I've also tried to run like in the, it's my way or the highway, like everybody get on board with it. And that's a whole different kind of company culture that creates where like, you know, basically you get your nine to fivers and then you lose everybody. Nobody's invested after that. I think the real magic's going to be in finding a balance. between the two, finding a way to keep people motivated, but not at the cost of the company, right? If I could say what the perfect situation is, and I still haven't been able to achieve it, but I've seen it. And it's being able to have the staff act like owners. And it's like, I don't

know, there's got to be some sort of compensation method plus rules and regulations. In one of my companies, you know, we did two years ago, we said, we're no longer doing vacation time. Everybody's like, I want four weeks vacation. I want six weeks vacation. Here's what we said. We said, you take as much vacation as you want. Unlimited vacation for everybody. But if you don't get the job done, you're fired. Yep. Right. Did you find vacation time went up or did you find it went down? Because I know a lot of them, people just stopped taking vacations. Some people just basically took that as I will never come into the office. again, literally. And then I found that some other people, like my VP at the end of the year,

she said, Scott, I just wanted, before I review, I just want to let you know, I've taken three vacation days this year. And I need to take more next year. I'm like, you have unlimited vacation. She's like, I know, but now I just don't know when to take it. Like, there's no sense of urgency. So it really helped us find the people who were, you know, you've got to promote the people who are just working harder in that situation. And eventually you've got to, you know, kind of shed the weight of those who are taking advantage of it. But it's, I haven't found the perfect recipe.

If you guys have a book that you could recommend, right? I would, I'll eat it up. You know why I think this is so hard is that what you just described, do whatever you want, just get the job done. That works because that's how life works. That is how everything else that you do works. Yeah, do you want to get in good shape? You can go to the gym as much as you want.

I'm not going to make you go. You run your personal budget that. You can spend your money on anything you want. Just don't go broke or you're not going to work here. The structure that we've created, I believe it comes from like the industrial revolution where we needed to get people standing in an assembly line doing a thing, right? And now we've brought that into the business world that we have now in this environment. And it creates this expectation that employees should have all their needs met.

They should get to go on vacation and not have to work regardless of what's happening in the company. there's no connection. Like you're not working together. Can you imagine a player on a sports team that's trying to win a championship who says, I think I'm just going to take the fourth quarter off in the playoffs. That's when I want to take my vacation. You would never do that if you cared. So what I love is when Brandon asked you,

what advice do you have on leadership? What you really answered is, I have to try to make leaders in my company. You said they need to act like an owner, which is just another word for a leader. And so if you're listening to this and you want to do better in your company, I promise you, your boss is dying to see you step up and act like you own the company. What you would do if this was your money.

I mean, this question comes up in my own businesses every week where someone says, hey, David, they countered us at this. What do you want to do? Like I'm buying condos in Hawaii right now. And they'll come back and say, hey, what decision? I'll say, well, if this was your money, what would you do? And they say, oh, I'd ask the lender if he can do better. Like, well, why don't you do that, right?

That wasn't a really hard thing to do. But when you're in that W2 mindset, you're not thinking like it's yours. And man, you want, you want to get to the top of the heat be the one person in that company that does that when everybody else is just, well, when can I take my vacation? When can I clock out? When can I absolve myself of any responsibility that's going on as fast as possible? Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, I've seen, I've seen some incredible people and I've seen the worst in people as well. Like I'll be the first to admit, not everybody has potential. I just don't believe that. I've seen a lot of duds.

And some people just haven't tapped into it yet. And then other people have just mastered it. I think one of the best job interviews, I remember hiring this guy who still works for me. And in the job interview, when it came to compensation, his whole thing was, it doesn't even matter what you pay me now because I am going to earn whatever you're going to pay me. So my number one job is, how do I make your life easier?

and how do I make you more money? And then we'll talk about what I'm worth. I was like, oh, yeah, that's right. I don't even know what you're worth right now. Whereas most people, they just come to you and they're like, I want to raise and I want more vacation time. And when you say that to the boss, the only thing the boss can think of is,

so you want more of the profits of the company and you want to do less work. Explain to me why this is a good idea for the organization, right? Yeah. It would be great if people were like, hey, listen, I would like to make the company another $100,000. And therefore, if I made an extra $5 to $10,000, I really think it would be justified. But that's just not how people think.

They don't think like an owner. People are typically thinking, me, me, me, how do I get more time away? How do I do less work and make more money? And that's, I don't know how that got taught to people. I don't know where that's, that behavior is learned from. But, you know, you got to, my advice, even for me, like, I might be the boss, but I still have to go out and get business.

I still have to negotiate with broadcasters and sellers and, you know, sponsors. Like, I'm out there hustling. And I think the most important skill for people to have is sales, believe it or not. I think everyone needs to know how to sell. But, you know, I would never go to a broadcaster and say, hey, you need to pay me more as a host and I want to do less shows. I usually go to the broadcaster and I say, I'll do as many shows as it takes for you guys to generate enough revenue to pay this license fee for my shows. And if I am not, if we can't bring in the ad revenue, then please go get, you know, go get a different host. I've been the first to say it.

I actually right now I'm developing shows for some other talent because I've said to the broadcaster, he said, my ultimate goal now, is to be able to find somebody who's better at these shows than me and to get a higher license fee from the broadcaster for them, and I'll produce it. Like, I don't necessarily need to be the guy on camera. Like, if there's someone else who's better on camera, which there's lots of them, let me develop those people.

Let me get the advertising revenue coming in for them. And everybody makes more money, right? Like, that's the ultimate goal. Like, you have to sell, I have to sell the business to other companies, that pay us, whether it's B to B or B to C. And I think employees need to find a way to make themselves, dare I say, irreplaceable, make yourself the most valuable player, right?

It's just like you were referring to sports, David. It's like, you know, when you look at, I don't know who your favorite team is, but you look at the star player on your favorite team, when they're scoring, when they're making all the, getting all the goals, it's hard not to pay them the most. You know what I mean? because they got leverage. So as an employee or an independent contract or whatever it is, if you can get the company winning

and prove that you are the most valuable player on the team, you're automatically going to be brought up the ranks because they can't afford to lose you. And there's an objection to that where people say, well, what if I do that but they don't pay me? What if they take advantage of me? So I'm not going to try hard because if I do, then I can be taken advantage of.

And what I would say is, well, if you're the star player on your team and you go crush it and they don't want to give you a new contract, you become a free agent and you go to the team that does want you. And maybe they even give you some control over the other players they bring in, right? There's some synergy now that's created where you get to be an even better situation. There's no good business person out there who's saying this person would make our team better, make us more money putting people in the stands, give us a great reputation because they're a class player. But I don't want to pay them that much money. so let's not bring a mail. The successful people did not get to owning a team if that's how they think. So that's always what I say with.

Someone says, well, I don't want to be good to my spouse because they might not be good to me. They're going to be taking advantage of me. That is just the worst attitude to take. When you're the good one, you find yourself in the driver's seat in so many things in life, Scott. And I just want to personally thank you for coming on the show again and sharing your perspective on these things because this is what I think our country needs to hear.

And I guess you're a country too, maybe in the same. same position. I think there's an opportunity for everybody to learn, right? And trying to see, trying to be the best. It's not, it's not the easy way. It's easier to suck. It's easier to complain. And it's easier to do nothing, right? And that's for some people, that's a choice. And that's fine. But it's hard. It's hard to, it's hard to be good. It's hard to succeed. It's, it's harder to do these things, but it's better. I'd say the reward, it far exceeds the reward of doing nothing and getting little. I'd rather do a lot and get a lot. So you're right. You're right. There's something in our culture for some reason is either teaching people to do nothing or do everything, but we're kind of losing

the in-between, which is do a little bit of both. Like, you know, you can have a job and have five rental properties. Like, there's nothing wrong with that. That's like the ultimate plan that I think 99% of the population would be happy in a career that they enjoy, even if they don't make a ton of money. And then, you know, a little bit of extra side hustle to manage their five rentals so that they make sure they've got two million dollars in retirement, even if their job was just because they loved it. Yeah. Right. That's so good. Man, Scott, we got, that's been, phenomenal. We got to get you out of here, though. So normally we go to the famous four, but since you just did that with the other episode, I want to ask just the first question of

the famous four, which we alter on these weekend episodes. And that question is, what habit or trait are you trying to build in your own life right now? Well, what I'm trying, something that I'm trying to do right now, I don't know if it's necessarily a habit, but I'm trying to build long-term value into my companies. For a long time, I've been focused on cash flow, right? You got to be profitable now. But now I'm looking at building equity into my companies. I'm trying to build long-term value.

So this is a, you talk about a pivot year. My pivot this year is to go from just keeping the cash coming in to reinvesting in systems and structure that will be scalable no matter who's running it. You know what I mean? So dare I say, I'm trying to. to remove myself or my need to be the face and the brand behind some of these things as they go. So really empowering other people. I think you guys really hit the nail on the head.

Like, I want to fix what's not working in my life, which is I don't know that I've been the best leader for the last few years. I've just been getting the job done. This year, the habit I'd like to improve is learn how to be a good enough leader that I can be proud of of the teams that I work with and and have all the trust in the world in them. Yeah, that's awesome. So you're saying I want to go from being the face of the boy band to being the owner of the record label. I like it. Bam! You got it. You got it. I would bring that full circle, David. That's awesome. By the way, have you read the book? If you

the book. There's a really good book called Built to Sell, I think John Wardlow or something like that. Have you read that one? I haven't read it. I know it though. Yeah. Yeah, it's good. It's really good. Even if you don't want to sell your businesses ever, it's one of those books that's just really good on like how to get your business running like a machine. I mean, it's just like the E-myth, but it's a little bit more fun to read than maybe the E- myth, which is also phenomenal. But yeah, check out that one. Built to sell. I think out of that. I think you'll like it. I love it. I am going to read that. Cool. All right, man. I think everyone's got to read that. Built to sell. Well, where do people, connect with you at. Where do they find you? Oh man. Well, hopefully they're watching the shows on HGTV because we got lots of those coming. But definitely find me, you know, I'm most active on Instagram and that's just at Scott McGilvery, Scott underscore McGilvery. And then, you know, find me in all the regular places, Facebook. I've got my podcast, the real estate rebel, and my website, Scott McGilvery.com. I mean, Google me, you'll find me. So you're saying Scott without the underscore on Instagram, McGilvery was taken. So you had to go with the underscore? Yes. All right. We need to go and find that guy. We need to find that guy. I bet he's got a lot of

followers or organically, though. I bet he probably does. Yeah. All right, man. Well, thank you so much. David, I'll let you get us out of here. Thank you very much. This is David Green for Brandon in sync with Real Estate Turner. Signing off. 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. Be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from BiggerPockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online. Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast. Make sure you get all our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

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