Escaping the Drift with John Gafford - Escaping the Drift - The Weekly Drop: Aligning Career Goals with Personal Values Ft. Jason Griggs

Episode Date: January 17, 2025

Stuck in the relentless cycle of fluctuating commissions, I found a turning point in my real estate journey through a shared passion for lacrosse with Jason Griggs, a colleague whose friendship has been a source of inspiration. Together, we unravel the complexities of transforming your career by making strategic choices that align with personal values and goals. From our own experiences, we share how critical it is to evaluate the activities that truly propel us forward, both financially and personally.   Join us as we explore how Jason's leap from a devoted lacrosse coach to a successful real estate entrepreneur showcases the power of transferable skills. His incredible story of growing from 12 to 39 rental properties is a testament to turning passion into substantial real estate success. Delving into the intricacies of balancing professional ambitions with family commitments, the episode highlights the profound satisfaction that comes from aligning business strategies with life priorities. Get ready for a conversation filled with insights on leveraging your unique strengths to fuel both personal and financial growth.   💬 Did you enjoy this weekly drop? Tell us all about it in the comment section below!    ☑️  If you liked this video, consider subscribing to Escaping The Drift with John Gafford  ************* 💯 About John Gafford: After appearing on NBC's "The Apprentice", John relocated to the Las Vegas Valley and founded several successful companies in the real estate space.   ➡️ The Gafford Group at Simply Vegas, top 1% of all REALTORS nationwide in terms of production. Simply Vegas, a 500 agent brokerage with billions in annual sales Clear Title, a 7-figure full-service title and escrow company.   ➡️ Streamline Home Loans - An independent mortgage bank with more than 100 loan officers. The Simply Group, A national expansion vehicle partnering with large brokers across the country to vertically integrate their real estate brokerages.   *************   ✅ Follow John Gafford on social media:   Instagram ▶️ / thejohngafford   Facebook ▶️ / gafford2   🎧 Stream the new Weekly Drop here: Listen On Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7cWN80gtZ4m4wl3DqQoJmK?si=2d60fd72329d44a9 Listen On Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/escaping-the-drift-with-john-gafford/id1582927283    *************   #weeklydrop #johngafford #jasongriggs #realestate #career #passion #lacrosse #strategicchoices #personalvalues #financialgrowth #transferableskills #rentalproperties #businessstrategies #lifepriorities #consistentincome #success #coaching #mentoring #timemanagement #familycommitments #personalfulfillment #professionalnetwork

Some of the agents get caught on the, they get caught on the commission hamster wheel, right? Where it's like they make a bunch of money and they don't do any work and then, yay, I'm rich. I'm rich. No, I'm broke. I'm broke. I'm broke. I'm broke. It's the rollercoaster up and down. And if you can just work consistently in the business and put forth the right effort in the same, the right amount of effort compared to what the market is doing in your KPIs balance, well, now you have a steady stream of income. And then you can turn those commissions instead of the end goal into

the fuel that really fires the rocket ship from the podcast to get you from where you are to where you want to be escaping the drift. This is the weekly drop with John Gafford. No matter what platform you're watching or listening to us on, make sure you like subscribe and comment and now the drop. Welcome back to the program. Everybody. This is the weekly drop. This is normally my little solo pod that I do on Thursdays.

And this week, man, I'm doing it with somebody. I got a guest on the weekly drop. So I'm not doing a full escaping the drift. We're not gonna go for 40 minutes. This is still gonna be like 15 minutes, but there's something that I want to talk about that this dude is kind of the walking, talking example of this.

And I wanted to bring him in. And if you're somebody that finds yourself burning the candle at both ends, you've got all kinds of things that you do, all kinds of stuff. There's an exercise that I do once a year and I just went through this. And I didn't really sleep last night, not because I was still doing the exercise,

just because when I get done doing this, it's such an introspect at your life. And it's such a way that you have, you're forced to go deep on looking at the things that you choose to do and whether or not they continue to serve you in the best possible way. And sometimes that requires some very tough choices and some choices that are still out there. For me, you know, I ran numbers like crazy all day yesterday,

looking at the expenses I have in things, looking at return on time, how much time I spend on things and whether or not those things serve me or continue to serve me. And this goes from, I mean, you know, angles in my business, it goes from overall businesses that we spun up, exhilarates that we spin up or spun up around the company. It's this podcast, it's relationships with groups I go to, it's all types of different things. And if you are somebody that just kind of says yes to

everything, which I like to say, yes, I'm easily excitable. That sounds a good idea. Let's do that. I definitely feel like I'm smarter than everybody else, unfortunately. So when I hear somebody being highly successful, something I'm like, if that dude can do it, I know I can do it. I know I can.

And like I said, we're gonna get a little more on my personal journey on it, but welcome to the program, ladies and gentlemen. This is one of the guys that works at our company and he is one of my aces. This is Jason Griggs. Jason. Round two. round two, buddy. You've been on here before. And again, I grabbed you with this. Um,

I'm going to, I'm going to get to your story a little bit before I get to mine. But when we met, right, we met and you were essentially, I sent out an email. That's actually, no, I got on Facebook cause I walked to my son's room one night and he was watching lacrosse, like college lacrosse. I'm like, what are you watching? And he goes, I'm watching lacrosse. And I go, he's like just randomly found it on a channel.

And he goes, I think I want to play this. And I said, okay, cool. I've never played lacrosse. I'm from Florida, dude. We just play football, baseball, basketball like America. We don't play use for foreigners for whatever it is. So they do now obviously, but back then I never played the cross. So, you know, I get on, I get on the interwebs and Hey, who do I know that could tell me anything about the cross? And, uh, and Jason hit me right up. He was a realtor to another company

and he hit me right up and said, uh, yeah, man, um, I can help you, dude. I actually coach, uh, the, the middle school team here and used to be the high school coach and I can help you with that and literally helped teach my kid lacrosse and got him into it and helped us. And I'll be forever grateful for that. Um, you know, medically DQ'd Hayden is kind of a short with the bad angles. Okay. That's okay. That's all right. Um, he had fun. He did have fun. He had a great time. And when, when we met, you were, you were doing, you were running your lacrosse business as a business and it's your passion, dude. You've been doing this forever. Like you play lacrosse forever. Yep. Live, eat, breathe, die lacrosse and still do.

Cause I see your sons who are like little still running around with lacrosse decks, right? Still. But you know, you were doing this, chasing this passion, doing this thing you loved in real estate was kind of something you did a little bit of, and you made a very difficult decision to let go of the lacrosse stuff, to let go of it. And dude, we were just laughing before we got on here. Cause if we'd had a reality show with how some of these parents treated him, it was amazing.

I saw some of the worst behavior I've ever seen in my life out of adults at some of those meetings, and I don't miss them. I don't miss, I mean, very rarely do I sit in a room and just kind of move speechless. There were times that I was just absolutely speechless in those rooms, but you took a lot of abuse from those folks.

I did. And you let go of something you loved and you got headfirst into real estate and you've just had, I mean, I'm talking about nuclear results. Yeah. So I want to talk about that. What was that like giving up something you loved? Hard. It was very hard. I think you saw how you were there.

You saw the emotion of it. But I had a conversation with some of the parents on the team who are mentors of mine, business owners, and they were like, you got to let this go. This is not going to get you to where you want to be at the top of your game of real estate. And when you coach sports, youth sports, it's like you don't do it for money, you do it for the passion of the game and I love mentoring kids. That was the real reason why I did it. But when I met you and I saw you, I wanted to essentially be you. I wanted to be what you were doing. Oh look at that. Because what you do here is what I do with the lacrosse team. Yeah, it is mentor 600 700 agents a year every single year.

Don't have to deal with their parents. No, without the parents. Oh, thank God. So we had a conversation and you're like you could do basically the you'll you will get the same fulfillment out of the coaching just with business. Yeah. Once you said that, I was like, you are so right. So let's talk, I wanna talk about, when you made that decision, I'm not gonna talk about income, because that's just annoying.

Trust me, I see his checks, I see what he's doing, but I'll put it in framework of this. When you made that decision, how many rentals did you own at that moment? I think 12. How many do you own now? 38, 39. 39.

Buy my 39th next week. Closing your 39th next week. So in a very short amount of time, you did that. And you took that passion for coaching. And what I love about your team in particular, your group, and this is not an infomercial for Jason's group, which just shows how he took his passion to something that makes more money.

When you took that passion for what you're doing and put it towards real estate, your agents on your team, like how to sell real estate. Cause you're basically using the same systems and process I use, which is great, but you're taking it for your people and putting your own spin on it, which is teaching them how to actually invest in real estate. Yeah. And that's the most important thing because we see so many agents, they could do this business for 50 years and if they don't own assets.

It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. That's the real win in the real estate business by owning the homes. I learned that very quickly. Right away I learned that. Well, some of the agents get caught on the, they get caught on the commission hamster wheel, right?

Where it's like they make a bunch of money and they don't do any work and then yay, I'm rich, I'm rich. No, I'm broke, I'm broke, I'm broke, I'm broke. It's the roller coaster up and down. And if you can just work consistently in the business and put forth the right effort in the same amount, the right amount of effort compared to what the market is doing in your KPIs balance, well, now you have a steady stream of income. And then you can turn those commissions instead of the end goal into the fuel that really fires the rocket ship. You nailed it. And I, you, you've taught me so much about just business of organization, numbers, KPIs, all the, so what I did, I went back and I looked at how much my real estate portfolio has

made me each year since I started. The number is staggering. It's like an extra half a million dollars a year that you don't even think about that you are just earning every single year as that real estate goes up. What I'm teaching my agents is look, we're going to be the best serving real estate agents on the planet. And what we're going to do with that compensation, we're going to go buy real estate smartly. And in my opinion, there's no better place to buy real estate in Las Vegas. Yep. Got it.

I love it. So I mean, again, you look at all those things and what my process of stuff, a lot of it is in the numbers as well. Because I think, you know, you look at things and unfortunately with me, like the decisions that I make, a lot of it is very intertwined. Like I do this because it needs to lead to this

and I do this because it goes with this and I do this. And so it's these connected inner webs. And so it's, he's connected in our webs. And so, you know, for example, this podcast, this podcast is really designed and it's a lot of work to do this, man. It's not easy. It's a lot of work. It's monetized, but it doesn't make me a ton of money,

but the effort we put into it, but this is totally designed and totally put out there as an avenue to promote my book. Right? So we're having the final bids come back on the book, which are coming back next week. Actually, actually. Yeah. They'll be back by 21st. All the people that want to publish it. And if none of those beds are to my liking, I'll probably just go to self publishing route because why would I pay a VIG?

I'll just go to self publishing. I don, unless any of them are what I want, and then I don't know that I need this. So it's like all of this stuff kinda goes together, and I love doing it, because I love the give back, but if it's based on driving sales through a publisher, and if I don't need the publisher, then I don't need this. And I think sometimes as much as you love doing things,

you have to ask yourself, is that serving you still? I think the main decision was I started my own family. Yeah. So it's like, my poor wife, Sammy, God bless her. She never saw me during the week. It was like, that was the full-time job. And we were kidding around the other day. Like I never went to dinner during the week in 15 years ever. Cause you're with the kids. I was coaching from five to nine every single day and going to the golden night scheme. So it's like another part of my life has like now opened,

but the real thing that hit me was how could I go and be on a field all day and not be with my own kids? And that was like the real turning point where I was like, you know what, this is the right move. Yeah. Money aside, real estate aside, when you start your own family, I'm like, because there's coaches out there that don't, that aren't with their family. But you get 18 summers.

That's it. 18 summers. That's what you get. And with the lacrosse team, I had amazing mentors, amazing. Over the years, awesome. Not everybody, but some really good ones, you're included. And that decision was made partially on business, but family, I wanna build my own family.

I think that's part of that is this serving me, is this particular thing serving me. And you look at like right now, I've got some things in front of me and some things that are out there where it's like, you know, what you focus on grows always. Oh, when you're, when your focus is too scattered, nothing grows. Right. And there were some things that looked at last night that I've been maybe a

little lazy at looking at numbers on, but I was like, Whoa, that ain't good. Right. Whoa. Yeah. Okay. We got to get this in line fast. And we got, you know, and steer the ship. And it's stuff that for years would have just been fine. Like I just assumed it was fine. All of a sudden you're like, whoa, I gotta give that some attention.

And, you know, dialing back on the amount of things you're doing and going less wide and more deep sometimes. And this comes from like, I'm the king of vertical integration. I get that, but really going deep on certain things you're doing, focusing on, and asking yourself, how does this serve me, not just financially, but like you said,

with your family? Yeah, it needs to be. How much, like for example, all of the mastermind groups that I'm in, takes me out of town four days at a click all the time, gone all the time. Like, am I getting a return? Like, I love all the guys there. I love everything

happens there. I love the information I get, but am I really getting enough out of it to justify not just the financial investment, but the time away from my now ticking down to one more summer on Hayden and two more summers around? Yeah. I think the scariest part for me was the lacrosse team was my network. That was my real estate network. I remember you saying that. I was like, oh, I'm going to lose everybody. I didn't lose anybody.

Not one person. No, they still come to me. I'm still the real estate guy at Henderson that everybody trusts. Yeah, but here's the thing. But here's what people don't realize also. If you're scared to move out of one situation, because there's a lot of people in real estate too that work a job and they're like, well, that's where I get my contacts and my clients. That's my network. Well dude, the only way it dies is if you let it die.

Correct. Just cause you're not there doesn't mean you can't keep in the loop with people. Doesn't mean you can't have a checklist to interact with them mathematically through social media, a checklist to call in, a checklist to send them a handwritten note, a checklist to remind them you so exist. So true.

Checklist to drop in on people. That's on you. And then the second part of it was I elevated my, the people I was working with too. Yeah. So now you're working with, yeah, now that I don't have to, you know, normal people. Right now I like working with athletes. Yeah. That's like my, one of my niches.

So I like going and going to the UFC fights and represent a lot of the UFC fighters. Yeah. That's like my, that's my new network. Yeah. I'm in those rooms every time. I'm going to LA this weekend to watch Marab and he's going to be still going to be in LA. Still going to be in LA. Wow. And so he's going to bring me in all these different rooms with Aljoe of it. And that's my new network now. And I realized that, so I'm at every single UFC event and it's, it's been a game changer.

And you have time to do that. Yeah. Time. I've never gone to a UFC fight at a state, I'm at every single UFC event and it's it's been a game-changer and you have time to do that. Yeah time I've never gone to a UFC fight Add to the out of state with coaching. It's hard. I'm telling you dude this week. Listen if You are again, I'm gonna sum this up cuz I you know, yeah I think we just reached a point where we made our point which is Hey, don't be scared to say no to stuff I mean for me like I think of it this way, one of my

one of my New Year's resolutions, if you will, was if any hell, yeah, it's got to be hell no. Like if you think of like, think of like the yes on a meter, right? Where like you have like the the green like, like a meter in a car that you would see like on a dashboard of a car. And over here, you have the green where you have the yes, right. And then over here you have the red, which is no. And like the very bottom is like, hell no. And the very far right is like, hell yes.

And right in the middle is like, I mean, I don't know, maybe yeah, okay. Yeah. Right. How much shit do you say yes to? It's in that middle. Ah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Why not? Like, dude, if you just, if you just look at things like

it's gotta be all the way red line and hell yes for me to say yes, how much better would your life be? Because we get inundated with all this crap that we just kind of agree to. This doesn't really do it for us and then it doesn't spark any type of energy that we put into it. And I know there's way too much of that stuff in my life.

I know there is. And I guarantee there's too much of it in yours. Every time I think about I'm busy, I think about how busy you are. And I'm like, I reel myself back in. Well, dude, yeah, but it's stupid. Sometimes it's just stupid. Right, it's too much.

When you look at some of the numbers from last night, you're like, you start asking, why? Why am I this busy on some of this stuff? Like I could just clip this off and who cares, right? I mean, there's nobody listening to us anyway. If I stopped doing the podcast tomorrow, nobody would care. I'm just kidding, you better care. I better, if I ever stopped doing this podcast,

there better be public outcry. That's what I want. I want public outcry. Well, anyway, dude, Jason, thanks for joining us. I think you're the walking epitome of that story. And I hope he inspired you to look at the things that your life and maybe cut out some stuff, to have the balls, if you will, the wherewithal

to cut out some stuff that isn't serving you. See you next week. What's up everybody. Thanks for joining us for another episode of Escaping the Drift. Hope you got a bunch out of it, or at least as much as I did out of it. Anyway if you want to learn more about the show you can always go over to escapingthedrift.com you can join our mailing list

but do me a favor if you wouldn't mind throw up that five star review give us a share do something man we're here for you hopefully you'll be here for us but anyway in the meantime we will see you at the next episode