BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - Apolo Ohno’s “Patient” Real Estate Investing Approach for Financial Freedom

Episode Date: September 30, 2026

You don’t need to be the smartest person in the room to build wealth through real estate. But you do need patience, discipline, and a willingness to play the long game. Real estate won’t make you rich overnight, but it’s incredibly forgiving—meaning you can make mistakes, lose money in the short term, and still come out on top. Apolo Ohno understands this concept better than most, having dedicated his entire youth to becoming a short-track speed skater. He reached the pinnacle of the sport, competing in three Winter Olympic Games and taking home several medals. But when his skating career ended 16 years ago, he faced a challenge he hadn’t trained for. He calls it the “great divorce”—separating from an identity that had shaped nearly every part of his life. Thankfully, many of the skills he had spent decades honing translated to real estate investing. Now, Apolo operates at the intersection of high-performance business and wellness, helping entrepreneurs achieve their goals in a more sustainable way. And today, he’s sharing the lessons that helped him weather tough times, why your investing network is your single greatest advantage, and how to avoid burnout on the road to financial freedom. In This Episode We Cover Essential skills and habits of successful real estate investors How to “hard pivot” from one career to real estate investing How to find the best real estate deals through your investing network Investing mistakes that cost Apolo money during the Great Financial Crisis Why real estate is one of the “most forgiving” asset classes And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠h⁠⁠t⁠t⁠ps://www⁠.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1337⁠. Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You don't need to be the smartest person in the room to build wealth through real estate. But you do need patience, discipline, and a willingness to play the long game. Apollo Ono understands this concept better than most, having dedicated his entire youth to becoming a short track speed skater. He reached the pinnacle of the sport competing in three different Winter Olympics and taking home eight medals. But when his skating career ended 16 years ago, he faced a challenge he hadn't trained for. He calls it the Great Divorce, separating from an identity that had shaped nearly every part of

his life. Thankfully, many of the skills he had spent decades honing translated to real estate investing. Now, Apollo operates at the intersection of high-performance business and wellness, helping entrepreneurs achieve their goals in a more sustainable way. And today, he's sharing the lessons that helped him weather tough times, why your investing network is your single greatest advantage and how to avoid burnout on the road to financial freedom. What's up, everyone? I'm Dave Meyer, chief investment officer at Bigger Pockets. And today, we have a very special guest, eight-time Olympic medalist Apollo Anton Ono. Apollo has devoted a lot of his time to investing since retiring from speed skating 16 years ago. And he's going to share

the key business lessons he's learned here on the show today. Let's bring on Apollo Apollo Ono. Apollo, oh no, thank you so much for joining the Bigger Pockets podcast. It's great to have you here. Yeah, thanks for having me. I remember your Olympic run very well, but for people who might not know of you yet, maybe just introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your backstory. My name is Apollo Anton Ono. I was a short track speed skater. I competed across three winter Olympic Games. I had a very blessed career. I was able to walk away from the sport with eight Winter Olympic medals. I retired 16 years ago, believe it or not, over 16 years ago. It sounds crazy just to say that. There's been multiple reinventions, both inside of the sport that I was so

passionate and I love so much. And then obviously when I retired, there was the big transition or something that I call the great divorce from the previous identity into forming the new one. I spent a lot of time now focused on high performance at this kind of center of high performance business and wellness. And I'm sure we'll talk about all the investing stuff in our combo today. I'm curious about this great divorce. Tell me more about that. I imagine after dedicating your entire life to a sport, transitioning to doing something else must be really difficult. I think every Olympic athlete probably goes through some format of this, you know, in their each own kind of way or story, or even just people who've done particularly one thing for a very long

time that the world has signaled your check in the mail has signaled, your fees, whatever, have showed that this is what you're really good at and this is what you were put on earth for. And then sometimes either by force or by choice, particularly in the world of sport, it's usually you age out or you get injured or you decide to go on another path. And it feels like that. It feels like a finger snap in which everything you've done has revolved around this one particular thing.

And you've said no to effectively every other thing and opportunity that's not out. allocated towards. Does it make me faster? Does it make me stronger? Does it help me recover better? If no, then it's not in the sphere of where you operate. And then seemingly overnight, after you get back from the closing ceremonies at Winter Olympic Games, and the calls start to get more quiet, perhaps the agent stops calling as much, people stop working for you as much that you think is this kind of endless supply of deals and opportunities. But more importantly, you just don't really know what the hell you're good at. So for me, there was this great divorce from the previous identity. I had this person who I thought that I was. The world

had signaled to me that this is why it thought that I was going to be on this earth. And that was gone. That version of myself had no longer or was no longer going to serve me in the same way. Wearing spandex and going in circles is not exactly the way I want to run my business. I think there is relatability here to people who go from a W-2 job or just following one path and then figuring out, like you said, by choice or by force, time to do something different. It can be a really jarring experience. For you, Apollo, were you ready when you retired from speed skating? Like, was that by choice or by force? I thought that I had been prepared. You know, I had went to university. I didn't pay any attention when I was there. My mind and energy was totally spent on the

world of speed skating. And so when I had really had time to come the terms with what I call the inner voice, right? The inner voice is really when no one else is around and you're not putting on the facade or the smile or playing the game of poker to show that you're fine and okay and transitioning. It's really just you and your own thoughts. So as a young man, when that voice started to get louder because the world became quieter for me, I really had to come the terms with I don't have the skill sets yet. I need to identify what I'm going to do in my next pivot. Were you after something financial? Did you want to build something for the sake of building it? What was driving your next steps? Were you able to use a goal to sort of narrow down what you did

next? It was financial in the beginning. But I think that pure drive of financial also was a big part of why I made mistakes because I was more willing to say yes to certain types of risks that perhaps didn't resonate with me as an individual. And everyone has their own story, right? So this is not in any way, shape, or form advice anyone. But for me, what I've noticed is that when I chase something purely on a capital basis versus trying to have synergy between does this make sense financially and does this fit with the synergy of the attributes that I bring to the table, does it fit within the sphere

of the thing that I think that I could do even for a couple years or three, four, 10, whatever it might be, if those are totally mismatched, Almost always, it has resulted in a complete failure. And forget about misallocation of capital. That tuition that I have paid was very expensive. More expensive than all the universities properly that you could add up many times over because of either rushing, wrong business partners, wrong timing. And something that I had to learn that many folks would probably resonate with.

You know, coming from the world of sport, one of the key skills that you develop is never giving up, having this insanity of work ethic, drive and grit to create resilience over long durations of time and never stopping. And eventually, you will compound that into having an amazing result at the Olympic Games, which is a four-year cycle, sometimes an eight-year cycle to getting there. In business, you need to learn how to spot when to pivot very quickly, cut your losses, and then begin again. I was not accustomed to that, nor was I accustomed to asking for help.

And that's another part, that's my second part, Dave, where looking back, you know, if I could speak to a younger Apollo, it would be like, dude, you don't have to do all of it alone. There is so many resources out there and mentorship. I mean, I'm such a big believer in mentorship and guidance and community because that's how you learn. People are there and they want to help, they want to teach, they want to guide to help you, you know, sidestep those landmines. And for me, I was like almost playing whackamol. Like, let me step on every single landmine known to man. Let me figure this out. All right. So we've got to take a quick break, but we'll be back with more from Apollo Anton Ono right after this. There's a point where basically every investor realizes traditional financing stops scaling with you. At first, it works. You qualify with your income, your job, your tax returns. But as you grow, that model starts to break.

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If you want insurance built to protect your investment, when it matters most, Visit nr-eig.com slash B-P-L-C and learn more today. Welcome back to the Bigger Pockets podcast. Let's get back to my conversation with Olympian Apollo Ono. You talk about this divorce and making a lot of mistakes. How did you go from trying out different things and experimenting a little bit into finding your calling and what you feel you're good at in business and as an investor?

It took me a long time because even though, I cognitively understood the concept, behaviorally, I still found myself to be making the same types of mistakes. So, for example, blind trust, right? My father had told me at a very early age, he's like, trust, but verify. I heard the words, I didn't feel the impact of what that meaning could really be. In real estate, I think it's pretty, almost pretty cut and dry, right? You can get every piece of information you need to get before you go to any type of a closing, right? You can really dig deep. And I was not sure what that was like because I was not willing to do those things. So just to give you backstory and context, I started investing in a real estate back in 2006, 2007, and 2008,

right before this like devastating. Yeah. So I was buying real estate through a fund. I was writing promissory notes. I was running loans. And unbeknownst to me, because of my blind faith in this particular group, they had been doctoring and changing. They were doing all of the mortgage. do not dues. Like full on fraud. Full on fraud. And they have, and they kind of survived the coming out of the crisis. They had survived. They kind of changed the names and done their thing. And they had gone through bankruptcy. And I only found out about this because someone that I knew in the state of Utah had called me and said, hey, do you know those guys that you're investing with?

They actually both filed for personal bankruptcy. And you're not listed as a creditor. And I was like, oh, you know, I was such in denial. I was like, oh, I don't, how can that be Because I had consoled some of these people on their darn marriages, and it was a gnarly time. And so I got completely eviscerated and blown out while I was still training and competing. It was much more of a passive investor. But I didn't understand the concept of understanding how to bring in the right type of legal teams to monitor, to adhere to the right type of principles that are required when you do these types of deals. So I learned the really, really hard way. And it was painful, man.

It was really painful. I bet. And so the moment that I went from pointing the finger to then saying, well, this was your decision. This was your making. And yes, like, did I get take advantage of? Sure, all those things. But at the end of the day, I had to radically own that mistake. And only upon then could I really say now I'm willing to move forward. And do I want to allocate my time towards something that's going to be potentially really negative on a mental perspective that I have no control over? Or I'm going to use that that mental space to progress in a way What is the hard life lesson here? How do I move forward in the right way? And how do I make moves so that I can compound my next generational move in the same way? And so I look at that as we all love to hear about these overnight successes, right? These people that like, oh my God, like, I want to do what they did.

But we forget to peel back the layer of that onion to see like it was really hard and really difficult for long duration of the time, but they didn't do anything. They stayed with it. And I think that was to me has always. stood as the test of truth, especially for folks that decide to go into real estate, is it will not fail you if you stay with it long enough. It's a really powerful asset class. It's a beautiful story, too. You're a steward of capital that provides immense value to this country. Yeah, it really does. And you're totally right. Like, real estate people see it as risky,

and it is capital intensive. So it's totally understandable when people say, putting in my only $50,000 or $20,000, that is scary. But it is. But it is. a much more forgiving business over the long run than I think people give it credit for. You can make mistakes in this industry and if you stick with it, I mean, I can tell you I've made plenty of mistakes as well. Apollo's talking about mistakes he's made. If you stick with it, it is pretty forgiving over a long period of time. But Apollo, you must have liked something about real estate, right? Like even during that negative experience, was there some kernel of it that got you excited and helped you endure through that difficult time and get back on your feet and say, I'm going to try

this again. Yeah, I mean, I would say the following. I mean, first and foremost, like, real estate is not what I do on a day-to-day basis, but it's something that I believe in. I would say 80% of the Olympic athletes that I know from my cohort that have since retired, the ones that have gone on to be successful are in real estate today. They're either in development, their commercial real estate brokerage down in, you know, so in California, my really good friend who works for Cushman-Wa He's named Rusty Smith. He does amazing work down there in the Long Beach area. Chad Hedrick does, he's a residential real estate agent in Houston in the surrounding areas.

Ryan Bedford owns his own real estate development company. I mean, all of these great people that I train alongside with, what they did really exceptionally well was they applied the same rigor of hard work, discipline, consistency. And they just went like this and took those attributes and just said, I'm going to do real estate. This is where I'm going to go. So for me, I have so many different interests. I mean, my real passion is, like I said, living at this intersection of high performance business and wellness and trying to communicate and get not only the current American business community to understand their own reservoir potential that has not yet been tapped into, but also the next generation, the kids that are in youth sports, the kids that are in K through 12 to realize and recognize entrepreneurship, critical thinking, learning how to get stronger, better, faster, more resilient, not even through sport, but through. their own decision-making process needed. That's what I get excited about. And I take those monies that I earn from those companies that I work with and then I'd reinvest them back into

really two categories. One, which is health and wellness technology companies. And the second would be companies and or funds with people who I have built long-term relationships with, like my friend's company that focuses mainly on industrial real estate. They call it it. It's almost like the bond portfolio of real estate. Like it's consistent. If you believe, in the American economy and that people are still going to do specific types of things and behaviors, which I would agree that we will for a long period of time. It's an amazing, it's amazing asset class. I have learned tremendously a lot about what's happening here. But what I love more importantly, Dave, is the interaction, because I've been to some of their

off-site meetings and some of their meetings when they bring their AGM, all their general partners and all their investors and their LPs, and I get to meet them. And I hear about the story. It's this doctor from Northern California. It's this optometrist. It's this person who's also in real estate. It's this person who runs a family office. It's this person who just started. They just let the W2. They're trying to get into real estate.

They're learning their ropes. They're doing it this specific way. And it's just, it's fascinating, right? Like that spirit of entrepreneurial activity in the United States is still very vibrant and strong. It is capital intensive. It's not easy. Rates don't help.

But there are deals, I think, to be had. And opportunities will always present themselves. So that's where really. I try to keep my eyes peeled as much as possible for those opportunities. Couldn't say better myself. There are always deals to be had. You know, the cycles change, residential, commercial, industrial, all these different things. They cycle in and out. There are different opportunities. And the whole goal is to spot what the market's giving you. Like at certain points, it's giving you cheap deals. At certain points, it's giving you negotiating leverage. At other times,

it's giving you runaway appreciation that's going to make everyone look like a genius. Like, There's just different things, and that's why you need to stay informed and understand what's going on in these individual markets. But, Paul, I'm curious, you know, I think obviously not everyone in our audience is an Olympic athlete. But I do really see a lot of corollaries between your story and people in our audience who are trying to shift. Even if they don't want to quit their W-2, they want to build something on the side. They want control over their financial future, and they're turning to real estate. state to do that. You've obviously invested in real estate. There are some lessons you can help teach us, both as an investor and as an Olympic athlete, maybe just personality traits or skills

or habits that our audience could learn from you that you think will help them in their business. There's something that we call the gas principle in athletic performance. So it's general adaptation syndrome. So it's alarm, then resistance, then exhaustion. Growth happens when you recover a little bit before the complete exhaustion. So we don't train as athletes 100% every single day. Okay. We basically use periodization, large blocks of volume of training, followed by large blocks of real recovery. Many entrepreneurs, and I have been guilty of this too, retiring, we run never-ending block cycles until we start to see the quality of our decisions begin to fall apart and we don't actually notice it because we're so used to grinding.

Real estate people typically are grinders. Like they are up early. They go long hours. I know the type. I'm around them. And I love that aspect of it. But something that I've learned from sport is that you with a refreshed mind, it's almost like if you've been writing something for a long period of time, you get eye fatigue when

you see the same thing over and over again. If you're looking at like homes, it's a purchase for yourself as a single family, right? after like five or six homes, they all start to look the same. That's just eye fatigue. You need to refresh that system in the same way. So that's something that I've learned as you transition or as you go into this next phase, know that your ability to persevere to go do long periods of work need to be followed because you're a human being. You're not a robot, right?

So you need to follow with some formats of recovery. Also, performance is cyclical, just like in stocks, just like in any other market in the world. It's not linear. sports was identical to that. What do you mean by it's cyclical and how do you sort of counteract that or how do you mentally prepare yourself for that kind of up and down life of an entrepreneur? You zoom out, right? It's the number one reason why I think we see folks either overtrade if they're in the markets,

right? They overtrade themselves. They exit positions they shouldn't have. It's actually like this, right? Where you have an uphill swing. you fail, you revert back, you learn, you begin again. Right, it's not like hills, it's like circular. It's like small little circles, right?

Where you feel like you're going backwards, you take a couple of steps forward, maybe two or three steps backward, but you're getting momentum again and you're going up in the same cycle. Because that performance is cyclical, we have to, I think we have to realize when you press and when you start to, I think, either coast or have the ability to be, I think, not resistant, but be patient. Patience is a key attribute towards a sport like short track speed skating. and the same thing in real estate.

And then the last part I would say, Dave, is like for all the people that are making a big transition, I believe deeply in the physiological change. So if you want to have a big change in your life, the fastest way to do that is you change the body's feeling first, then your behavior will follow. So sleep, fueling, training, breath, all those things you can control. All the other stuff that's happening, either in the government, in the market, you cannot control those things. You are always going to be defensive and moving and dynamic based on that information that comes towards you. So the things that you can are when you're optimally performing,

like when I was an Olympic athlete, my mental acuity and processing was so high. Man, I was like reading information so quickly. At all, I felt like I was Neo from the Matrix, right? Everything was slowing down. I was in flow state. It was amazing. And that was because we had a combination that I was living a life that was really attuned to being at my physiological best. And so my brain was also had the ability to make really, really good decisions in the same way. And so I'm no longer competing as an athlete. I'm 16 years tired. And I still take it really seriously because I want to perform my absolute best. And I know that my behavior can be predicated upon the way that I make those moves and that energy forward. So for those folks that have not yet made that

change, you know, do so. And no one trying to be Olympic athlete. I get it. Like just being consistent with your movement, your food, your sleep and the like. 100%. I think it just gives you a lot of self-confidence, too. I, in college, gained a lot of weight that was not in a place I wanted to be, and then just dedicated myself to go to the gym every single day. I've lost 60 pounds. I've been doing the same thing every single day since then. And I, you know, I don't really care about the weight anymore. It's just the self-confidence. Like, I can do something that takes a lot of discipline over a long period of time, which is exactly what entrepreneurship is. Right. Like it's just, you got to grind it out. Some days it's going to suck.

Some days you're going to feel on top of the world. You get a great workout in. You do a good deal. You're going to feel great. But it does give you that sort of ability to balance your emotions over long periods of time. And I think for me, it's just been like the absolute confidence boost that I needed to succeed in my career. I understand not everyone's doing that right now. But I'm with you personally. for me, it's been probably the biggest difference maker in my life over the last 15, 20 years. Yeah, same. I would say in the same realm, my consistency of trying to take care of my mind and my body have resulted always in me feeling better. And when I feel better, I usually perform better. And then I would say in addition to that, something that I've learned over the many years of competing

was that if I can shorten the decision time or what I call the negotiation time between do and do not. So for example, when you get up in the morning and you don't really want to go do something and you're like thinking about, well, what should I wear? And what kind of shoes should I wear? Like that should be all pre-planned the night before. So that's one less decision in your mind space. And you just pick it up, you put it on and you go. And the faster you do that, the shorter that that really is. And I used to do that. When I was competing, I had Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday training outfits for the morning already folded and ready. I would do it every Sunday.

Had my bandanas folded. Everything was ready to go. And it was just like it was completely automatic robotic clockwork. And so there was, I would wake up and there was no thought. I never gave myself space to think like, I don't want to go today. Or the bed is too warm. It's just like, okay, it's time to get up. Now it's time to go to the rear.

Automatic. Step one, step two, step three. And I think what we can realize is over time, that habituation and consistency, start to form real behavior patterns. And I think we all know someone in our spheres of relationships who we're like, I wish I was like that person. They make it look so easy. And maybe genetically it does come easier to them,

but it doesn't mean that we also can't rise the level of our potential. And that's what I'm passionate about reminding people is that your inner power is incredible. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if you've read that book, Atomic Habits, but they talk a lot about this. It's been the best-selling business book for like, 10 years in a row for a reason. It's a fantastic book, but it's this same kind of thing. Like, you kind of are what your habits are. And if you, you just take the decision making out of it

and habitualize it, you don't even think about it. It's no longer like, oh, I got to go do this. I got to go look for deals. I got to call three contractors. It's just, I call three contractors every day. That's who I am. And like, that just becomes who you are. And it really does make a difference. And I know if you haven't started that yet, it feels like a grind. But in a couple of It actually, it really does reform your brain a little bit. We got to take a quick break, everyone, but we'll be right back with more from Apollo Ono. You know, when I first started sharing my real estate journeys online, I didn't have a website.

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This and other information can be found in the fund's prospectus at fundrise.com slash flagship. This is a paid advertisement. buying real estate has a funny way of making the future feel very real. You start thinking about mortgages, cash flow, tenants, and suddenly you realize, if something happened to me, would the people I love be okay? That's why life insurance is one of those things that's easy to put off, but is super important to actually deal with. Ethos makes getting life insurance fast and easy, 100% online. You can get a quote in seconds, apply in minutes, and potentially get same day coverage. There's no

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between putting in a lot of effort for something that you genuinely care about and also finding the space to rest and recover because that will help your next grind, right? Like, is that kind of how you think about it? The one piece I think that's perhaps missing that we don't talk about enough is I think burnout is a direct reflection of doing long durations of hard work and failing repeatedly without feeling like you have progress. That is when you feel burnt out and you start questioning your existence and if you should continue on in business in general. So the rest of recovery is really a defense mechanism against that. So if you are in this situation. And perhaps you've got debt service and you've got all these things that

it's hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel. You need to have times where you can have these micro moments, even if it's not like you're going to take a week off. Obviously, well, not many people have that luxury. But you need to find times to create recovery, micro recoveries throughout your day, throughout your week. And you have to discipline the schedule to a lot that in order to be your best. And your body will compound that rest period. We can churn and burn for long periods of time, but eventually, I believe those decisions will start to falter in terms of the quality. And so the goal is to maintain that consistency of good decision making and good thought process. Yeah, like you said something earlier about your efficacy,

your decision making goes down at a certain point. And this sort of narrative that's in, I think a lot of modern entrepreneurial culture is like just keep throwing time at the problem, bang your head against the wall as much as possible. And I respect the hustle for sure, but it's not helping. It's actually hurting you. And you can realize, you know, rather than throw in another three hours at a problem when you're not at your best to take a step back, say, I need these three hours to go do something else. And then next week, when I hit it, I'm going to be so much better at this. And I'm going to solve the problem in an hour instead of three hours.

And you're just much more efficient at problem solving or whatever it is that you're trying to accomplish. it's a fine line, right? Like there's times where you need to tap into your internal David Goggins, your internal Jocka Willink, right? And like, you know that it's time to use, you know, these guys as amazing aspirational and inspirational figures for what they stand for and what they do. But then I just believe there's also time

where you have to treat the body and the mind and you've got to give it a bit of relief. I love that advice. Any other advice that you have, like you work with a lot of successful businesses. I know you do a lot of coaching and mentorship and advising. What are some of the traits that you see in successful businesses that our audience and mostly small entrepreneurs could apply to their own businesses?

The things that I felt have helped me the most are, number one, if it's uncomfortable or it doesn't come natural to you, you should probably either identify someone who can do that job for you or learn to force yourself to do those things when you have to. I used to hate networking. I'll give you an example, right? I used to go to these conferences, and I just like, I was like, this is a waste of time. I don't want to spend time with these people. I don't like this.

I don't want to introduce myself. I don't want to shake him to his hand. And then I realized very quickly, it doesn't matter. It just, like, it doesn't really matter what you really want to do. If this is a prerequisite as a part of your business, you need to treat it as if you you hate running, but running is a really big part of your training cycle. And therefore, it has a spot in the system. It doesn't matter if you're excellent at it, but you're going to do it and you're going to do it

consistently. And over time, I think someone who I really look to a lot of his great writing, Tim Ferriss wrote about fear setting, right? The thing that you were the most afraid of by stating it, by writing it down, by really saying like, okay, what is the absolute worst thing that could happen here? How would I deal with that? You actually articulate that your body can respond in a much different way versus like, I'm so scared of the thing that may happen, which may probably or could never happen. And the last thing that I really try to tell a lot of folks is the way that you show up is a really, really big, I think, leading indicator of how people want to do business with you. Whether we like it or not, the first initial five to 10 minutes of you interacting with

someone, you've already prejudged. Does this person fit into my sphere of can I do business with this person? Do I like this person? Does this person like me? Do we fit together synergistically? So if you show up and subconsciously you were in a really bad place, that's going to effectively reflect upon the other person. So I think whether you're going for a networking event or whether you're going to go do a deal. Always remember, this is the first time someone is meeting you. They don't know anything about what you're going through. They have been. They probably just don't really care either, right? That's the reality. Everyone's thinking about their own stuff. Yeah, right. Yeah, sure. So when you show up and you go through this, everyone has a bad day.

I get it. But I think the more that we can be mindful about how we are showing up to these meetings, how we're showing up the deals, we're showing up even to our own families, it goes a long way. I love that advice for real estate investors in particular because we say it a lot on the show, but it's a people business. I know you can look for deals on Zillow, but the best deals, the best opportunities come from your agent. They come from a contractor, a property manager, a friend. And if your agent gets a good deal, they're going to call the person they like. You know, the person who has treated them well, who has shown up for them when they need something in the past, who has treated them as a member,

of their team. And I could tell you, I'm sure this is true of you, Paula, like, those are how you find deals. It's through networking. It's through being a reliable person to bring it back to what you talked about in the beginning, to being someone that you can trust, to be a trustworthy person in this industry. You will find trustworthy people if you're trustworthy yourself. If you actually go out and show up in the way that Apollo is talking about, I think that's, that's fantastic advice. And probably even more important than like the task. practical stuff we talk about on the show. It's like, you know, obviously running your business well is important. But I think you'll get a lot further just having a great network and great community.

And to your other point, just forcing yourself to get through some of that initial discomfort, because a lot of the things I personally found uncomfortable at the beginning wound up being some of the most rewarding parts of my business. So thank you for sharing that with us. I saw this front center. I went to I went to ICCS a few years. years in a row in Las Vegas. It's like a commercial real estate mainly for retail. And it was amazing. Everything that I saw with the big booths, the big presentations, everything was actually all about people handshaking, going to grab a drink, going to grab a meal and talking. How is your family? How are your kids? Like humans are still highly receptive. And we would much

rather do deals with people that we like versus, you know, kind of like some unknown large scale corporation that has no soul. That's my personal belief. I agree. And especially if you're someone who is an entrepreneur and you're not dealing with institutional grade capital yet, this is like your superpower. So learn the niche, carve that personality, showcase to people who you are. And I think you'll be really surprised at how much can be done. That doesn't seem like it's work, which actually turns out to be amazing deal flow. I know you haven't been, but we'll get you next year to BPCon. It's like our big event, similar. I've heard it's amazing. That's the whole thing.

People do deals right there. You know, the amount of progress you make in these in-person things. Like, it's great to listen to the podcast. Like, that's how you get a foundation and background and knowledge and inspiration. That stuff is important. But transacting comes from meeting people. Like, if you want to actually go out and do a deal, you got to go meet those people. Face to face.

That's why I always recommend, even if you invest long distance or passively, go meet the person face-to-face. Like, that's an investment in your business and in yourself that you need to do. All right. Well, thank you so much. This has been super helpful. Any last advice for the audience out there? It's not really business advice. I would say, listen to your true north. We have a finite amount of time on this planet. And many of us, me included, we live and sometimes we operate as if we have an unlimited amount of time. Know what your purpose is. Identify where you receive fulfillment from. If you're in real estate, I think it's a really great start. And really, I think when you

do the right thing consistently when you show up as your truest and full self, you will have success. It may not be in the time frame that you dreamt of, but it'll be faster than you think. I think that understanding that you'll pave the way towards everything that you want and more, but you got to step up and you got to show up. Well, thank you, Apollo. It was super fun hanging out with you and thanks so much for sharing your story and experience and advice with the audience. People want to connect with you. Where should they do that? I write a lot on LinkedIn. A lot of my kind of thought, my brain dumps for the week. I spent a lot of time there. But I'm on all the regular social channels at Apollo Ono. You can find me. But really, LinkedIn, for some reason, it's been my outlet a little bit longer form. I find a lot of business folks that I interact with and I partner with are on that.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much again, Apollo. And thank you all so much for watching this episode of the Bigger Pockets podcast. We'll see you all for another episode in just a couple days.