KGCI: Real Estate on Air - From the Great Poker Crash to Building a Massive 2500+ Real Estate Agent Team with Connor Steinbrook

Episode Date: May 7, 2025

And today we are super thrilled to have Connor Steinbrook with us. Connor is a massively successful serial entrepreneur. He's the founder of the Wolfpack organization at EXP Realty, which he has grown into one of the largest organizations in North America, with over 2,300 agents and growing. He's also the founder of the Investor Army with over 40,000 subscribers on YouTube. And recently he launched a brand-new YouTube channel focused on entrepreneurship, leveraging his decade-plus of business knowledge and experience,

to help other entrepreneurs grow, start, and scale their business, teams, and organizations. Fun fact about Connor that I learned from Shane is he's also super big into fishing. So as an aspiring fisherman myself, I'm pretty excited to one day, you know, get on a boat with these guys and catch some good stuff. So with that, Connor, welcome to the podcast. Well, you know what they say, the bigger the best, the bigger the bass, the bigger bank count. I'm just kidding. Yeah, there you go. There goes fall water fishing.

I might as well move to Texas. You catch the big ones out there, Shane. Yeah, I mean, like, it is a weird thing. So like, you'll notice that there's numerous hobbies that wealthy people and successful people take on. Golf is one of them. Tennis could be another one. But hunting and fishing is a very common elite, high-level entrepreneur hobby. And it's also that, I mean, it's expensive to do these things, but it's also I think that people that are naturally inclined to be attracted to those.

Like, for example, fishing is very frustrating thing. You have to have a lot of patience and you have a lot of adversity and you're putting a lot of time in. You can go fish for eight hours and get sunburn sick and feel not great and not catch a fish, right? So I think it's that type of mentality that's attracted to those types of hobbies is also aligned with business. And a lot of the things that go into business, if that makes sense. That's why you kind of see those commonalities where you go into like wealthy people's house and they've got like giraffe and lion things that they've been shooting. But that's kind of why you see a lot of successful people, I think, do that. But anyways, let's get in the real estate stuff.

guys. How can we help? How can I help the audience? Well, so one thing about our podcast is we're really focused on real estate, helping real estate production agents, right? Take their business to new levels. And Connor, like I recently got a chance to view your podcast on your new YouTube channel, your story about kind of rising from the ashes. And it was just a super powerful story that maybe we can start off and just have you cover that a little bit because I feel like often, you know, agents, when they hear these interviews and these different podcasts, you know, they see where you are now, right? But they don't really see the story behind it.

They don't really get the chance to pull back the curtain and really see how you got to this point. So maybe we can just start off with that story of yours. Yeah. So guys, the story is incredibly important because when we're on our rise up in the business world, when we face adversity and we come across struggles, which you will, you will find your story and other people's stories and you see that they pushed through and they came out at the back in and had success.

It allows you to kind of have the confidence that when you hear yourself trapped in the same kind of situation they were in and you feel that kind of adversity that you can push through it and have the result that you want. So I had a weird background and it was one kind of like where I kind of took off, had a great life and then it disappeared for a long time and then I had to rebuild again. So I went off to college in 2003. I put $20 in a poker site for fun. And just like every industry, including XP, this is even decades ago, everything's moving from brick and mortar to technology driven business models, right? And so online poker was a big boom or there's a big online poker boom. where everybody realized instead of having to go to casino and play a few hands a day,

they could play on the internet, multiple tables at a time, tens of thousands of hands a day, sometimes even, and accelerate the learning curve. So I was able to play a lot of hands quickly at a low limit stake, whereas I could buy in for pennies and dollars. Where at casinos, you have to buy in for a decent amount of money that I didn't have the ability to do at the time. So I was able to buy in a low amount, play large hand volume, work my way up, and became a top online poker player for about eight years.

And then what happened was government regulation stepped in in 2011. and these websites were probably doing all sorts shady things, but they were regulated outside of the U.S. on islands or something like that, and the U.S. Department Justice shut them down. This is a tough time for me. And because I woke up on that day to find out that my one skill set that I'd spent a decade building, no longer had a monocization side of it, meaning it was no value to what I've spent a decade of my life doing.

And where was I going to go now? And I had no identity. So it wasn't just that I lost my career. It was I lost all my friends, their careers, Our entire world disappeared. Been like if the real estate industry disappeared tomorrow. It was crazy. People are killing themselves.

It's very tough time. I made a bunch of bad decisions. I gambled off all my money is as embarrassing as that is. I lost it all at the casinos. I gambled it off at Blackjack and craps. And I built Winstar Casino is what I say. It's why it's so nice because I basically lost everything. I had to move back home with my parents.

So if you guys are in a situation right now where you're living at home with your parents, I want to talk to you because this is not the end of your future. I thought it was for a long time. I was like, oh my gosh, I was here, had cars, diamond watches. Now I'm living at home. My parents, you know, like my best days are behind me. My future is not worth living. And I got caught in a bad mental spot doing that.

And I know a lot of you guys lost your careers or your career's being hit hard right now. So just know that if you're not doing what you want or you're stuck living at home, your future can still be great because what happened was I decided to kind of play for me for two years. And then I've stumbled into self-development accidentally. I realized I needed to start a different path in life. and I came across Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich, and his 17 principles of success. And it kind of sent me down the rabbit hole of personal development.

And I read, you know, Rich to Man Babylon, As Matt Thinketh, and then a lot of the modern leaders and I started following Jim Rome, Bob Proctor, Les Brown, Ziggs, and I began to educate myself and create enough courage to decide that I'm going to become a real estate investor. And along my education path, I discovered a term called passive income, which is what you guys should all be chasing. It will change your life. and I decided I was going to do this to rental income. And I jumped into the real estate industry.

I put up 35 grand. I borrowed this on credit cards to go to this rip-off guru company. They scam me. And it didn't work out. Before I knew it, I was 50 grand in debt, then 60 grand before I knew it, it was almost 100 grand debt. And this is where I realized businesses can be built with time or money. And since I ran out of money and had less than no money, it was when I had money that

I ran out of money. It was when I started looking at time strategies that I actually got myself out of the situation. So Google had just acquired YouTube at the time. And I was taking private YouTube channels and linking them to my websites in Texas. And I built the number one house acquisition websites in North Texas for Weba houses, sell my house fast. And I did this all for free, watching free YouTube videos, teaching myself how to optimize videos. And I went from 100 grand debt to generating a lot of leads on the internet.

Started a wholesaling. That went into flipping, built a rental portfolio, went into creative financing, owner financing. I would create notes and sell notes. I bought mobile homes on land and did land deals. And then that investor army channel kind of grew a little bit. And that's when everybody started reaching out to me about EXP. and for like two years I blew everybody off. I was just busy and I really didn't know what was going on.

And I had the mentality that I'm sure it's a great opportunity, but there's great opportunities everywhere. I didn't realize it was like the opportunity that was going to change my life and change many people's lives. And so for two years after making a bad mistake to not take a deeper look and really look at it with an open mind and really run the numbers and things like that, I was speaking at an owner financing conference in Mississippi. The number one agent or company was speaking at the same event.

And I was put into a small speaker's house. for three or four days with this individual. And I couldn't really escape. And it was literally like the Wolf of Wall Street movie when it's like, you prove to me you make 72K month, I quit my job at work for you. I was like, he showed me he was making over $100,000 a month in residual income with the revenue share model and barely been here for over two years. And I was like, Rob, you proved to me that you're making over 100K month net residual

income with no tenants, no toilets, no termites, no backing management system with a multiplier scalability component to it and not a linear growth model like rentals, then I'm going basically pivot and do get my license and go build this around the country with you. And he did. And that's what happened. I got my real estate license. I wasn't even licensed agent. I was a full-time successful investor for years.

But I got my license, joined XP. My first year, I recruited like 40 people, ended the year with over 150. And the second year, we overdubdle. Third year, over doubled again. The next year, we added like a thousand agents. And now that we're starting pick up, we are now over 2,500 agents now, actually. We're adding about 150 a month, which is kind of crazy. So that's kind of how it all got here.

And there is a lot of adversity along the way and a lot of struggle along the way. But it doesn't matter what your past is, guys. Your future is not dictated by anything that you've done in the past. It's the belief that their past controls our future. So if I dwell in my past instead, my best days are behind me, I never would have attempted to build that future. So what you need to understand is you need to know what you want first. And then once you know what you want, then you create a plan to go get it. But you have to know that you can become what you want, meaning,

I want to be a professional bass fisherman. Fish is a tournament. I want to be a professional real estate agent. We're top rock star like Shane and icon agent. You have to know what you want first. And then you have to believe that you can become that. Because if you don't know what you want, you don't have the ability to even decide if you can believe that you can become it.

So you're never going to achieve it. So you don't even know what you want. Second thing is once you want it, you have to believe that you can become it. Because if you don't believe it fundamentally, it's your core. When life gets tough and that business gets tough, you'll sit down. And then you'll start having the price is too high pay questions.

The price is too high to pay, meaning I'm spending too much money doing this. Or what if this doesn't work out? Or I've been doing this for years and I haven't had to pay up, you know, those types of questions that make people weary and talk about their goals and things like that. But that's my story. And hopefully that kind of helps you guys a little bit. But what do you all want to take? Take the call now.

Like what was the time period? Like that was like from when you moved into mom and dad's, I was like, how long did it take you to go from there to signing up with the XP? Yeah. So I when I so this is this is important for you young entrepreneurs to listen to this because we are in a world of quick pace and one immediate results in entitlement and in business this is not a get rich quick scheme type of thing. It's a get rich guaranteed if you do the right thing in business over a long enough period of time. And I think people quit way too soon and they have expectations. It's going to be way way easier. So this is my real story. So when I moved back home, I had about $27, $28,000, I think,

in my bank account left. And I remember when I put up money for that training company, I put up, I paid like 35 grand. So I remember going into debt to do this. So I basically had no money. And when I started this process, when I went, when I went to 100 grand debt, from the day I started my business to where I went down deep into debt and came back out and broke even was about 1,100 days. So I had set a goal. And this is also guys take this lesson. Don't let anybody tell you what you can and cannot do. So I paid all this money for this company. And like the beginning initial stage of it was here, fill out your goals and tell me what you want to accomplish, right? The cliche type of thing. And I wrote on there that, you know, my vision was to get to where I'm going as fast as possible.

So I'm going to work a thousand day straight. And I wrote my goals. I'm going to work a thousand day straight every day for the next thousand days until I get to my goals. And basically my mentor that was supposed to motivate me and inspire me, was like, well, it's good to think. big and you know, I'm glad that you have that goal, but don't you think it's probably something that should be more realistic that someone can do? And I about flip my shit because I'm already, like, in a bad spot in life. And I'm like, are you to tell me because you don't believe you can do it doesn't mean that I cannot do it. And I did it. I didn't just work 1,000. I worked 1100 days. Now, I didn't do that to be cool at the time. I did it because I was surviving. It was out of fear

and terror because I was going bankrupt. So like if you swim for two weeks straight because someone threw you in the ocean off a cruise ship, it's not because you're like a, a great swimmers because you didn't want to die, right? It's a little bit different type of motivation. But, so it was 1100 day window of every single day, 12 to 16 hours a day without a single day off. Now, there were days I took like sometimes a four to six hour work day. But that was just to get back to breaking even. Think about that.

Most people try business and quit within six months. That's like starting college and dropping out freshman year of college for your own goals. But people got to college for five years. So I joined the XP going into 2018. And I moved back home, I think it was like in 2013 or something like that. Does that make sense? So on the poker went out, 2011. I kind of stumbled around, stayed where I was at.

And then before I went broke. And then I realized I had to go back home. I kind of tucked tail. And then it was right around. Yeah, so I was basically full-time real estate investor five, six years, seven years going into when I got my license. Now I've been at EXP now since 2018. So about just five, just now five years.

But the beginning of that, yeah, beginning of that window, guys. So just now you need to sacrifice at front business. And I wanted to quit many times during that 1100 window day. Even after that, I wanted to quit a few times. But if I had, where would I be now? So I want you guys to think about that. If you're weary and you're struggling, you're frustrated right now and you're thinking about quitting, what are you giving up on?

What is, what's five years from now? What, whose life are you going to change? Like, you know, what are you going to do to change your life? Just because you can't see it right now doesn't mean it's not real tomorrow. And if you had asked me, did I, would I become who I am right now? At that time, it was a stretch to see that vision. And I wouldn't have believed it, right? So even if you don't truly believe that you can become someone, you still can.

That's why it's so important that you have that belief that you push through when things get tough. Because I think that's the biggest part of it is once you stop losing the belief that what you're doing is the right thing or that you are the right person to do that thing, that's when people quit. that's when struggles and that's when all the problems happen. So it's interesting you say that, Connor, and I want to dig into that a little bit more because when you're saying, when you're sharing your story, I go back to your YouTube video when you're talking about picking up the BBs on the ground and having a report to your 18-year-old boss and then like kind of working your way up from there. Like, and you talk about kind of having this mindset, but like what are some tactical ways?

Like I feel like with entrepreneurship, you know, there are people that like naturally to come to them. They're super motivated that know what they want. They're just going to go after it. And for others, like they might have a goal, they might get discouraged. And you talked about, you know, like continuing to motivate yourself. But what are some other tactical like steps or like skill sets like people can develop for themselves along the way to kind of help them through that process when they do feel discouraged?

I think one is just accepting the fact it's like along the way I just realized like one moment, why am I? I thought that like I wanted to work so hard and become successful so I could become a happy person. I think a lot of people do. And then along the way, I just realized one day is like, am I even supposed to be happy? What means why are we even supposed to like be on the pursuit of happiness? Like, is happy even something that's attainable? And can you be happy 24-7?

And I think that like a lot of times people are chasing something that's not real or attainable. And then that's what causes their misery or their unhappiness. So for one, I just, I took the pressure off and said, you know, I'm not going to tie my happiness to my results. Because if I cannot live a fulfilled life, whether I'm broke or whether I'm wealthy, and I've had the perspective of them, be on both sides and cycling through them, then I'm not really living a fulfilled life. So when I had all that money in the beginning and I lost it all, it made me realize that the money never made me happy. It was the things I did with the money that I could do for others that made me happy.

It wasn't the cars. It wasn't the jewelry. It wasn't the dropping thousands of dollars at the bars and stuff like that. So I realized that after I lost it and you hear this, you hear people talk about new money and old money, meaning new money is they make it quickly, then they lose it all because they made the mistakes and then they start over and they don't lose it the second time. I just, I think people in the first time doing it realized that, um, you know, a lot of their mistakes that they made so they don't make them again and also how they want to live their

life differently. So it was, that's a little bit of it. And then also just understanding that everybody is in the same journey that a lot of times in business that I think people feel lonely, that they feel their problems or their problems and that they're the only one dealing with those types of problems and at that level of their problems. And then they don't stand the shoes of everybody else's problems. So once you kind of realize, oh, wait, we're all at the battlefield together and this war together and we just, you know, we're all facing our own similar problems. It creates a collective mindset that means, you know, that it's like the world's not attacking you. You're not the cursed one. It's just normal. It's just part of business. Like you're going to

go through problems guys. Like in fact, anything in life that you go through that's tough with that you push through is what grows us. Think about the gym. You push against resistance. You know, anything that's tough is going to grow you. So I think, understanding that when you're dealing with adversity. It's not an attack on you from the world. It's not God hates you. It's not everything's coming down on you. It feels like that because it's you're living in your body and it's the thing that happened to you. Right. So I think understanding that also that you will have many adversities to go through that like if as an investor like I would, I know I'd have X amount repairs, X amount tenants move out each year. And so I used to get very

frustrated at the lifetime moment. So let's say like because of the surprise of it. And so I try to think of how can I eliminate surprise? So surprises when they're good are great. Surprises when they're bad are brutal. And so if you're going through the day and you're already having a bad day and guess what, your tenant moves out and you get the product back and the HVAC is gone. Surprise, that's going to frustrate you, right? So what if you knew that at the beginning of the year, there's X amount of surprises.

And you committed to this knowing this. So X amount of years, you're going to have X amount of deals fall out, X amount of contractors steal from you, X amount of tenants move out. So I put it into my mindset as a sunk cost. Like I know that I have this is kind of this stuff that's going to hit me each year. So that when it happens seven months into the year, oh, well, this is normal. Like, this is already already budgeted for this. This was not a surprise.

This was not a net negative. It was already given, if that makes sense. So I think maturity in business and understanding, you know, that things don't go perfect all the time and being prepared for when things do go bad, the preparation of how to under handle them going into them helps you handle them as they happen to you, I think, if that makes sense. So these are all little things that you guys can probably think about that will help you kind of push through like adversities.

because you will have them. And then the last thing is, I would think of them as opportunities. I shifted at one moment because I was a very negative person. I was always complaining and whining and felt like the world should just be given to me. And I was always thinking that when I was going through these adversities that they were hurdles or roadblocks or problems for me. And later I realized they were opportunities and that they were what I needed to become who I am now. And it's just like the gym, the weight bench is not a problem. You don't, you're not running from the white bench.

You're running to it. It's not a problem, but it's going to cause you some stress. It's going to cause you, you know, some pain potentially, but you're going there to grow. So like when you're dealing with these issues, it's not a problem. It's a given. And then the next, the last thing is, you know, believe whatever you want to believe. I don't tell people to believe what I believe, but I am a man of faith. I believe God's watching me.

And I realize at one moment, um, there's my belief on this that if, let's say I have like a 10 person team and I'm whining, complaining, and I'm literally acting like this is overwhelming. I can't handle 10 agents. Why would I have the entitlement to ask God or the universe or whatever your belief system is to have 100? And if I can't have 100, why would I ask for 1,000? So what I realized was when I'm in these problems that I need to handle myself with an honor and pride

and do it in a way that if someone is watching my life, that they're going to say that he knows he's up against something bad. He could handle it in this way, which was the way most people do, or he can handle it in this way. And when he hands it in this way, I'm going to decide that I want to promote him to a bigger problem to have later, meaning a bigger team or more because the bigger you get the bigger problem. But the relationship on how heavy that problem feels is the same. And I'll make this make sense.

So let's say your max is 100 pounds and you can do it once. Same resistance. What if your max is 300 pounds? That 300 pounds, if you got stronger, it feels the same, but it's a one one rep, if that makes sense. So as you grow, your business and your problems are going to get bigger, but you're getting stronger and you're getting bigger. as well. So you're going to, it's going to feel the same and equal resistance, if that makes sense. So don't think you're just going to get all these more problems that you can't handle. And so that was one is that I wanted to start, I knew ahead of time when I fought adversity and

handle problems that if I could do it in a way that if there was a someone watching my life that would watch how I handled it, I want to handle it in the way that I would be promoted, if that makes sense. And then the last thing is just realizing to every time I put a thought or dwell on problems or things that are negative along the way. Those are, that's time and thoughts that could not go into things that could get me to my goals faster. So I'm actually complaining about being upset, which is slowing my path down to getting to where I'm trying to get to, which is increasing the time of what I'm going to have to be upset. So I have to complain more about being upset.

That makes sense. So I realize if I just get over it and just become a man and just be like, whatever, I deal with it. I'm just going to deal with it and not even think about it and just put it through, then not dwell on it. I'm going to have more time on my business, which means I can put more time on business, which means I grow faster. which means I get out of the things that are already frustrating me faster, if that makes sense. So those are all different thought-processed ways to think about things that could help some of you guys in different ways.

That's awesome, Conner. It's like, no, because one thing, because obviously, you know, we've known each other now for about two and a half years. And I was actually talking to Michael before we even set this up, just saying that I love, like, like a lot of people out there are always talking about, like, tips and tricks and how to, be more productive and here's what you need to do and stuff. And you're one of the only people in my circle that has, you know, pulled back from all that. Not necessarily pulled back, but just you don't focus on that. You go and focus at the root, like personal growth, knowing yourself, like all about, like, that foundation.

And too many people focus on everything on the front side. They don't think about someone's mental disposition. I mean, trust me, like, when you share your story, like, you and I actually have a lot of similarities, you know, and like eventually I really want to write a book. And, you know, I feel like a lot of the things you say, like, I've been there. Like, I know exactly what that feels like. But what's interesting is that even though I've been through that, when I'm working with even agents that look up to me for guidance, you know, I'm taking it back as far as to, You got to want it. You got to know what you want because you can achieve something that you don't know.

And you got to believe you can do it. I take it about to that level. You take it back like five levels deeper, which I love. Because that, I mean, that's really where it's at. And I think that I personally, in the more and more people I want to guide and help, because I want to bless people and help people be successful as well, that's what makes me happiest. I'm not, you know, like I'm not super materialistic. I want to have this pile of money and all these fancy things.

I'm all about helping other people be successful. And so it's super inspiring and, you know, working with you weekly, you know, and really just improving, like, working on improving ourselves and working from the inside. And so I just, I wanted to also thank you for being so transparent, you know, and vulnerable because, like, I'm someone that's willing to be vulnerable, but I know that a lot of people have a really hard time sharing their stories. People only want to put wins out there, which is really common on social media. It's like everybody has the perfect life. I like that you're willing to to really always be transparent and be real. And that's much appreciated. Well, thank you. I do appreciate

that. And I mean, like my goal, you know, I've kind of now got the financial side. My goal is I get more benefit from helping people. And I think also like one of the things is, you know, to kind of go back to we talked about for Michael on that last question is like, once you've gone through adversity and come out of it, you can now help others do the same. And so it is kind of a test that any of us have to go through. Same thing with just like any, any teammate or anything. Let's just say leadership position. And you can't teach someone how to do something or understand how to move through something unless you've experienced it yourself. So it's kind of like you have to go through these rites of passages in a way. And then when it comes down to like what Shane's talking about

I was like, this is what I've seen in business since I've been in business, that the push for people is to acquire skill sets. They think that if they, and this is very important. I'm not saying it's not. They, they, they, they, they, they, they're in a pursuit of skill set acquisition, meaning how do I optimize YouTube videos? How do I learn this new marketing strategy? How do you do this? They're looking for fundamentals. Now, there's two things that I've identified that build any business.

Number one, the quality of the product service or opportunity that's being sold to the marketplace. So you can't have a bad product. If nobody wants to eat your hamburger, no one's going to go there. Can't have a bad broker. Nobody's going to go there, right? And then you have to have this skill set and the quality of the person that's building that business. So we can take the same vehicle, product or service, and put someone over here, Shane, and then put

some random agent over there and then say, who's going to use that vehicle the best, right? So it's the skill set of the person selling that product or service within that vehicle and then the vehicle to get them there. And if you do not have a belief in yourself, a self-esteem high enough that you can be successful in life. Like, let's say you're at rock bottom right now and you're just giving up on life and you hate your life and you tell yourself you tell yourself you can become someone more in 10 years from now or five years from now and you start the process today and you're going to be patient to let it happen. You believe that you can get there. It's the belief that creates, hey, let me actually start taking some motion forward.

So the first thing is you need to have a belief in yourself. That's the most important thing because the second most important thing is the belief in what you're doing. If you do not believe in the vehicle, let's say you expies your path, then it's not a work. real estate, maybe go to insurance or maybe start a non-profit, like a hair salon or something or a taco truck, right? You have to believe in the vehicle, but even if you believe in the vehicle as much as you know, like you know each few works, you know people are making seven figures a year or more, multiple seven. But if you don't believe in yourself, when the vehicle that you know works, you sit down, if that makes sense. So it's the most important thing is to work on ourself

first because if you build a person strong enough that they believe in themselves enough that no matter what they go and do that they're going to figure it out over time. That's the only thing that matters, guys, is that you believe no matter how long it takes that if you stay on that path every single day, that you're going to figure it out at some point. It doesn't matter how long it takes or we're going to get just knowing that if you believe that if you stay in the game every day or over a period time, that it's going to happen. That's what keeps energy. So when the self-esteem is high, you believe in yourself and you believe in the vehicle is high, that creates the energy. That energy creates the action, meaning now we're going to acquire

skill sets. Now we're going to sit on the mastermind calls because now we believe it makes sense. Now it makes sense to invest the time to hop on a call and learn how to optimize videos because I believe I can use this to get to my end goal. But if you start with the skill sets and they don't have this side first and the fundamental belief and it doesn't matter how many skill sets you pour into that person because if the person's not strong enough to build the business, they're never going to do it. So if you build the skill set or if you build the person from inside, the business will build itself around that person because the person is what builds a business. If that makes sense, anybody can acquire skill sets.

And it is a skill set working on yourself, by the way. But I think people need to spend more time developing from within and then going and acquiring skill sets. And they're going to get to their goals a lot quicker. And then when they have all those things that are tough to learn and they're trying YouTube and not getting views and things like that, then they don't beat themselves up so bad. And they don't start saying, oh, this is not going to work.

They have the mentality that it's not working right now. What do I need to do to make it work tomorrow? And that's the difference of people that win in business versus that don't is that Some struggle and decide how do I find something else that's easier. Some struggle and say, what do I have to do to figure this out? There, I'm just going to keep tweaking trying things and I'll figure it out, right? And I'll keep trying until I figure it out. So that's, that's kind of like why I spend so much time working on the mindset.

And it's also because I had broken my mindset for so long. And I knew that when I had a broken mindset, I was not worth anything to anybody for any reason. And so I, as I fixed my mindset, I realized how important it was. And that I also realized that, you know, a lot of the problems that I had caused early on in my life were done by myself. Yet I thought it was done by other people. I blame the poker sites. I blame God. I blame government.

I blame everybody. But really, a lot of it was myself. I didn't have to gamble all my money off at the casinos. I could have invested it and never worked again at my mid-20s. So those self-responsibility thoughts that you take in on yourself help you now have control. Because as long as because when it's government's fault, when it was a poker site's fault, right? Then I had no control to change it. But when it's my fault, now I can start the process to change. So take blame for everything, even stuff that's not your fault because now your brain

starts figuring out how to fix it because it's your fault. Now you are the one that has to fix it. But if it's that person's fault or they did it to me or that institution did it or this one over here or it's the president, then you're putting too much control in the external world. It's going to overwhelm you, it's going to frustrate you and it's going to break your mindset. You're going to have a lot of stress, anxiety, and frustration as you're growing. you said Connor I've been so I've been through this right and it's interesting because another thing to add onto that is that you have to like you obviously got to the point where like you just accepted it and you took the responsibility too many people I've been guilty of this you get caught in the cycle like oh man I messed up why didn't I just do this why didn't I just do that and you get caught up in that mindset instead of actually just accepting it and moving forward I've even caught myself like because I feel like I feel like out there in the world that everybody I've met, like there's certain traits about me that are super extreme.

I mean, people have known me for at least 10 years know that I always say go bigger or go home. That's how I live life, man. It's go big or go home. Like, I'm like crazy. Like you see I'm with fishing. Dude, like anything is like overdone. So you can only imagine like when I'm down or something's not working or I hit a bad spot.

Like I mean, heck, you and I have had some intimate conversations just because we do have a lot of the same. It just, I learned when I went through like a divorce and some rough times during the market crash. It took, it took like, I don't know, a year and a half, maybe almost two years just to get my mind right to finally accept everything that happened and then realize it's like, hey, you can make this back. You can make this happen. But along the lines of this, another thing I learned later now that I have been successful too is that I always want to put my fill.

on other people. You know, it's like even in real estate being a top producer being super successful, because I can do it and have this certain mindset, I think that I've also been guilty of expecting too much from other people. And so I think that it's important to make sure that you help your agents or other agents, people that look to you for guidance, make sure that you help them kind of with their mental mindset. But one thing you brought up that I've also learned is that, look, this is not going to be for

everybody. Like, at least I've known when I've crashed or gone through some bad times. At least I know that I'm passionate and this is what I wanted to do, right? But you got to understand, too, that some of these people, maybe it's not for them. And I like the fact that you give them the out that, hey, maybe it is something else, right? Because if honestly, in this business, if you're not completely passionate and committed, I mean, why even try to fight through the tough times or why you even try. So I don't know. Michael? Well, I can like I can totally resonate with what you guys are saying. Like, and I think the big thing is, is for me is like the taking personal responsibility. Like that's something that like I've like I've also had to learn. Like I think I

have the Asian feature so I look young. But this is only something I've, I mean, I've only shared this with Shane, but and Shane knows this. But like, you know, I've gone through my own divorce. And, you know, it was, it was only really through the process of that, that, like, you, like, I hit, like, so I kind of know what it feels like to hit rock bottom. And, like, I found myself going through that process, like, what you were saying, Connor, like, blaming everybody else, you know, like, it wasn't my fault. The marriage fell apart. You know, it was, it was my ex-wife's fault, my parents' fault. It's, you know, other people who weren't there to help us, right, along the way. And ultimately, what got me out of it was, you know,

I didn't have anybody to blame anymore. And I had to just look myself in the mirror and say, like, no, it's like, there are things that I could have done better. And, you know, it was really as a result of that. Like, that's when I really got into the whole like mindset, self-development, getting into like, okay, like my family of origin, right, history. How my upbringing and my upraising, like, forces me to like train me to respond to different situations.

And then it's interesting. like when you start taking responsibility for yourself and your reactions, then you really can dig more into like, okay, like I reacted to this certain situation in the past a certain way. Now, why was that? And it forced me to dig into that and then apply, okay, so if I want to go forward and I don't want that same result, how do I go about changing my mindset, my reactions, you know, what was my emotional state and how do I do things differently going forward? And it's interesting because this whole taking blame thing, I also work in corporate. And it's tough because it's tough. in corporate a lot of times, you know, you do a lot of finger pointing.

And it's a very different like environment and mindset, Nick, like now trying to build out my own real estate business and being an entrepreneur. It's like, you have nobody else you can point fingers at. The only person you can point fingers at is yourself. So it's, it's been a powerful lesson. So anyways, I just wanted to share that and kind of like I fully like echo what you guys are saying, like that personal development mindset, like taking responsibility is really key. Yeah. So responsibility is like the big first step. And then I'd say like the second step that I think would really help is just the letting it go for like forgiveness side of it. So like I just I mean guys we've all been wrong.

We've all had people steal from us. We've all had people cheat on us. We've all had government, you know, government regulation change and take our careers away. Like I spent so much time hating the government for taking my career away and saying like, why did you all shut these websites down? I didn't do anything to you guys. You're supposed to be protecting me and you destroy my life. Right. Like in and I would blame all these things. So what you what I realized at one moment, was I don't feel very good in my body.

Actually, I feel like, right? I actually am very angry. I don't like how this feels. And the people that are making me feel this way, I'm mad at it. And yet they don't even know. I exist probably, right? So basically, like I'm thinking like, it doesn't matter to these people how mad I am. I'm literally living in my own internal mind causing myself all this own misery.

It doesn't matter how mad I get or how upset I get is not changing anything over here. So I'm like, they already caused me this problem. And now I'm causing my own problems dwelling in it. So why do you even think about it anymore? Just forgive and go on. So I was just like, at one point I realized like, if I just forgive and let go, I can move past it. So it's not that, you know, hey, it's the right thing. That's not, it's, you know, someone stole from you.

Okay. It's not the right thing to do, right? But guess what? The wrong thing to do is dwell on it forever. Just let it go. Either decide that you're going to go after that person and try to get indemnified and go after and pursue them. Or if you're not, just let it go out of the mind. Because what happens is we get so fixed in all these things we want to get back on.

all the problems and people that, you know, that this, like, I think we talk about this shame with like a weight bench, you can lift it. And then all of a sudden, each problem or person is like a little five pound weight on. And then another one, as we go through life and as we go for 20s to 30s, eventually we get to a breaking point where we have too much baggage on us and it breaks us and we can't stand up. So we have to start taking these little weights off. And every time you're just like, okay, John owes me a thousand bucks, whatever, done. I'm just writing off. I'm taking out of my do-lis and whatever to think about John. I'm not going to get it anyways. The time and stress and effort to try to run down that $1,000,

and which I'm probably not going to do is worth, like, it's not even worth it, right? So just get over it. So forgiving others that have wronged you. And then also yourself, another one is asking for forgiveness from people that you felt you've done wrong. So many times also like when you guys are having people wrong you, it causes you not to be your best self. And then you take that negative energy and do something you wish you wouldn't have done

to someone close to you. And so it's going and asking for forgiveness from people that you know you should and being mature about it. And then on the flip side, letting it go. And then the last one is to just forgive yourself. Like, because that was what I had to do because I did a lot of things that like I wish I'd done differently and how people are always like, well, you don't want to have regrets. Well, you don't have regrets if you forgive yourself. And you can only regret something that you haven't forgiven yourself for because if you just get to this mindset that's like, nobody's 100% perfect.

There's nobody perfect. So everybody makes massive mistakes. So when I make my massive mistakes, if I hold myself, if I like put a gun in my head and like, why, you know, it's bad and beat myself up. then what's the point? It makes no sense. Since everybody's doing this, nobody's not going to do this. So it's like, it made no sense. So I just was like, you're going to admit to have problems. So when you do, just figure out how to solve that problem as fast and as best

possible, but don't beat myself up saying I'm a bad person or because I did this, I can't go on and because, you know, like people really beat themselves up. And then the last one is just like responsibility and forgiveness in all fronts and then the gratitude side of things. I think as adversity and things pick up in my life and like, struggles, I have to bring myself to a moment of gratitude where it's like, okay, yeah, you know, I'm having a $50,000 deal fallout or whatever it is, but I still have money in the bank account where half the world is off $4 a day in the process of just putting things in perspective

because it's easy that we get emotionalized. We feel emotion in our own body. We feel the problems that we feel personally. And it feels like we're the center of the world because it's kind of, that is the case, but we forget there's this really big world. There's eight billion people supposedly on it. And a lot of these people you would not change to trade your life with at that moment in a heartbeat, right? So it's the gratitude that will pull you out of those pity parties, the forgiveness that will take the pressure off and responsibility that will give you the ability and the mindset to go through and actually fix these problems that will lead you to that better future. And I know, I know we're kind of wrapping up so I don't want to get too deep into the weeds here,

but the whole forgiveness aspect and not holding a grudge. I've learned over the years, you know, from other people and just, you know, like it's actually harder on you, the person that holds the grudge. Sure. And it just destroys people. Like, what you were saying with the weights on the bench, adding to five pounds, adding five pounds. I've been really good at not carrying that. And for sake of not calling anybody out in my world, because I know the world's going to watch this. You know, there's a certain important person in a past relationship that, you know, a lot of people in my circle don't care for.

and really wronged me, and they still don't understand, like, all these years later, how can you be friendly or how can you, why are you not holding it? I'm like, you don't understand. Like, I mean, I have my reasons. Like I said, I don't want to, like, call out what situation this is, but it's like, it's so peaceful. Like, there's no weight on my shoulders. And those first couple years, it was just like, it impassions you.

It just wrecks you. And then recently I probably had one of the biggest wrongs of my lifetime. and for about three or four weeks, I didn't, you know, I was kind of in that hopeless state. And, you know, then I spoke with someone who's important in my life who really just kind of got me right. And I've been able to move on from that. And that's like massive. And you and I Connor spoke about it. But it's, it's crazy.

Just to give you an update, I've been so calm. Like, I'm back in the game. Like, I don't, it's like if that didn't even happen, you know. And so I just, that's. that's super important and that's something that I'm glad you brought up that a lot of people don't think about or too many people automatically just want to hold those grudges but that's so big to be able to do that. So anyway, I know running out of time. I don't want to go in any deeper, but. Yeah, I mean, I think about it like this. I got maybe 10 minutes guys. So we can go a little bit long.

So like do you really want to live in a world where people don't forgive and move past? I mean, like, do you really like think about what we're dealing with in this world right now? We got all this cancel culture. I mean, like, what type of idiots in this world literally think you have, it makes sense just for you decide that your view on life is so great and your belief system is so powerful that you decide that if you have enough people like you that you can combine to cancel somebody. Like, what a pathetic person. Seriously, like, what a pathetic person, right?

Because if we live in a world where we don't have a second chance and you can't mess up and come back from it, who wants to live in that world? You guys are creating that world if you're those type of people, by the way. So if you're listening to this, right? you're the problem in this country, your problem in the world. You are the people that don't let stuff go. And if you do, guess what? So all the people around you.

And then nobody's going to hold over you. And if you don't hold over them, guess what? Now we can all be friends again and not every hit. Don't even get me started. Don't even get me started. Like, and it's just, and it's like this mentality that like if I can't have it, you shouldn't either. Just freaking bad.

Like, you know, especially since the people that want what other people have, aren't willing to do what they did to get there. Do you want to work 10 years straight? Like I did have it? Oh, you don't? And shut up. up, right? Don't sit there and try to take something from me and vice versa. But a lot of this cancel culture and a lot of this frustration and a lot of this, you know, infighting and division that we're

dealing with is because of this lack of forgiveness and this lack of like, hey, people are normal and they're flawed and they're going to make mistakes. And let's let's not hold shame did this. And let's not just like 10 years from now still hold it over his head. We cannot live in a world where people just don't move past things. Guys, if we're going to change the course of history for the last 400 years, because all of a sudden it's up to us to change the history for the last 400 years today. Like, yeah. It's just like people just, I get it the pandemic. I mean, it's been this way. It's been increasing this way for decades. But if people cannot learn to accept others for whoever they are, whatever their belief system is, we will always,

always be frustrated with each other. It is not that difficult, but people make it difficult. Like, I don't hate people, but I'm told I do all the time. I'm told that like people hate me because us, so like here's just crazy thing. When I didn't have money, I didn't hate wealthy people. I want to become wealthy. So if you hate wealthy people and you don't have money, you'll never become a wealthy person. Why would you ever, why would your mind ever let you become something that you hate? So you're like, oh, these evil rich people are here, these bad people. Well, you'll never become one yourself because your brain will block you from becoming a bad evil person.

If that makes sense. So when I was not having money, I was looking at everybody saying the things about people that do. And then on the other side, when I'm looking back, it's just like, it's not true. Most of these wealthy people are the people that are doing things in the community. They're donating money. And so it's like this demonization of buckets of people without knowing buckets of people personally is where a lot of these problems are coming from. And I think social media is a very powerful tool. And it's a great thing for some reasons, but it's also a very negative thing for certain reasons.

And but ultimately, like, it comes down to this regret thing and then like forgiveness. If Shane just forgives everybody that's ever wronged them, then there's no problems if everybody else is doing the same thing. It's only when everybody else is trying to get revenge and trying to get back at people and not letting things go, that we live in that. this like highly tightened frustrated pent up world that everyone wants to get everybody and that's not a world that i don't know about you guys listen to this you haven't fun living this right now i'm not i don't like that people are trying to do these things why not just let it go if someone on social media you don't like them just don't watch yourself does mean you have to go like take them down yeah right right when covid hit everything else hit it was the politics it was COVID it was fires

it was you know just you know all the police brutality just so many things in the last three years the last three years have been I've never had a period in my life with such a concentration of so much chaos it's crazy well it's like what we were talking about earlier in the podcast like people need something to let the negative energy in their body release to so they have to point the finger at the government or these people look different than me these people make more money than me these people are older than me or whatever it is so they're looking for the external to remove from the personal responsibility they don't like that they're not doing well in their business because there's a pandemic and all things messed up stuff. So instead saying, how do I get better? You know, this is like when I was like in poker, I was my thoughts were on the government took it from these poker sites instead of maybe I shouldn't go gamble my money off. Maybe I should invest it, right? So they're thinking about the wrong thing. They're trying to put the external blame when if they slow things down and realize what can I do to do the best at this current situation and why I can fix my problem, it's not other people causing me my problems. But like when you start looking at that group or this or that, that president

or this, it's always an external issue. And it will never change. If it's just, as long as you're blaming the external. It's also what creates that frustration with inside of us because if you can't control something and you feel out of control because you can't control it, how do you guys feel when you feel out of control? Not great. That's when we're in our bad emotion patterns. So taking that self responsibility inside brings the internal control and then letting just like not keeping so much pressure on other people. Our partners or friends or family or girlfriends, husbands, spouses, like employees at companies we work in. You know, if everybody just backed off everybody, I think it would, overnight, we'd see a big pressure release in this country.

But this message is not getting out to enough people. And the wrong one is and it's just cycling, if that makes sense. So more messages like this, because people will, they'll just back off. They can make sense. I'm just done. And then they just go back to having friends and not enemies and things like that. Yeah. So I think to wrap us up, like, I just to touch on that forgiveness topic one last time, like for me, one of the big things I, one of the big like ideas,

learned about forgiveness was like if you don't forgive, you're basically poisoning yourself to death slowly. And the other person that is just out there enjoying their life and they have no idea that you're feeling this way. And like, and I'm glad that we, I had no idea where this conversation, this podcast today was going to go, but I appreciated the direction that we went because like, Shane, to your point, like, to change 400 years of history, it's not going to be one big action, right? It's going to be conversations like this and getting this message out to people. And so like that that's really awesome. And so, Connor, like, to end our podcast, we always want to ask our guests one question.

And that question is, so if you can take all that you know today and what's helped you become a top entrepreneur and let's say you're going to take all the skills and you're going to start your own real estate production business today from Ground Zero, how would you go about doing it? Yeah. So we are talking about mindset. That's crucial. But as far as like actual skill set communication is the most important because I think

every skill set is secondary to communication because it comes from communication. So like, if you can't communicate, then why are you going on YouTube? If you can't communicate, why are you cold calling people? If you can't communicate, why are you a sales listing presentation, right? And so, for example, like how I went into debt, I focus on lead generation was my first major skill set. I thought the fastest way to get money coming in was to generate leads. And I did.

And I spent a lot of money. And then the phone would ring. And then I realized I could not take the phone to a contract. So I realized I didn't work on my communication. process first, which didn't matter how big, how well I could generate leads if I couldn't take the phone. And then I really started working on communication. But the three things that I got my model right there, consistency, persistence and patience. These are the three things that I see the most commonly shared across high level entrepreneurs is consistency for one. If you're not, for example,

like think about YouTubers, you're not consistent every week, you're never going to blow up. If you don't, if you are not there all the time working your business, putting time on a consistent, you never build a minimum. So consistency, if you're running mastermind calls, and you're running for a month and you stop for a month. Who's going to show up next month? Nobody. So consistency is crucial for building momentum and getting to your goals quickly. And then the persistency side of it is as you're staying consistent, that means you're in the game a lot, which means if you're in the game a lot,

you're going to deal with some BS from time of time. So when the problems come up, how fast is your bounce back time? How fast do you stand up once you got back down? Or do you push through it? Is it a big problem? And then the last one is patience because we talked about this is also in the beginning, 1,100 days to break even for myself. That's a true story, guys. So be patient with yourself.

Don't beat yourself up because you guys might probably like a year in and you're thinking your price is too high to pay. It's not most successful entrepreneurs, five to 10 years of grinding on the same path to get there. It's just how it is. So consistency, persistency in patience. And then communication would be the skill set I focus on primarily learning how to communicate, the right questions, ask, how to close, how to enter conversations, move through conversations. And then, but ultimately fundamentally, fundamentally, your personal education and thinking correctly and starting from the mind first. Awesome. Well, Connor, thank you so much.

Really appreciate you having you on today and getting a chance to talk with you and get to know you a little bit better. So for folks that listen into our podcast, if they want to connect with you, what's the best way for them to do that? Yeah, I mean, so I got the Investor Army channel. I will be more active on it. I'm going to start posting more on it. I've been mostly focusing on my other stuff. So my new channel is over on entrepreneurship, just my person named Connor Steinberg. And then if you guys follow me on Instagram, those are really where to reach out to me.

And then if you are interested in looking to join the XP with us, partner with us, you just reach out to Shane and Michael, and we'll hop on Zoom and we'll meet you on there and we'll kind of show you behind the scenes, things that we do. But a lot of what we do is working on these types of entrepreneurial skill sets and understanding of business and mindsets and things like that and how to help people transition from different stages of their career and move through these blocking

window or stages and really just kind of scale a business long term. But thank you guys. me on here. I had fun. I like the way that we guys are doing it with the two-on-one setting. It's pretty cool. It's the first time I've done this in a while. But I think it's going to, I think it's going to work good. No, really really appreciate you, Connor. Thank you so much, man. Have a great day. We'll be talking to you soon.