KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Mastering Mindset and Gratitude for Real Estate Success

Episode Date: March 16, 2026

Summary:This episode explores the fundamental roles of mindset and gratitude in securing long-term success and stability within the real estate industry. The discussion is primarily motivational, urging agents to transform their perspectives, embrace professional challenges, and maintain a positive outlook. While it covers high-level concepts like focusing on controllable factors and the impact of a grateful attitude, the episode lacks specific, actionable tactics or concrete real estate examples. This makes it more of a general self-help session than a targeted business lesson.

You're listening to the John Kitchens' podcast experience. This is your host, John Kitchens. Get ready to gain clarity, build confidence, and uncover the framework to become the CEO of your real estate business. Your journey to seven figures. Success starts now. What's good, fellas? One big fire under the turkey. Happy Thanksgiving, boys. Happy Thanksgiving.

I am grateful for both of you. Ah, indeed, I am grateful for both of you as well. Same. And, you know, I was like, man, Al nailed it, man. Gratitude Edition. And I was talking about, I think we had maybe we had GoGo on, you know, last week, Alby. And we were talking kind of kind of through gratitude. And then I threw something else out there.

But had a few people reach out. I made a post about from gratitude. We've all known, right? You know, B-MOS would always hit us with, you know, the struggle ends when gratitude begins and really focusing on some type of gratitude practice. And the post that I threw out there was along the lines of, you know, we tend to default back to gratitude and struggle. Why can't we be more present with gratitude in times of abundance, in times of really the things that we have? And, man, I'll never forget.

And I've really been really good about this ever since Stumann chaired Kentucky Derby Mastermind. We were in Cincinnati. I think it was Cincinnati. It might have been one of the first times after Key West, after we made the move to EXP. And, you know, that room, Tammy Pack, you know, Michelle Sayward, Go, Go, like just the who's Who. was in that room, you know, Gove, just everybody, you know, because we went to the Kentucky Derby, you know, right after. And I remember, might have been, I think we had Stumann in there, right? And he talked about his gratitude practice every morning in his notes. The first thing he does into his,

you know, when he pulls up his phone, man, I adopted that thing immediately. And gratitude and wins, right? How you start the day and how you book in the day. And, man, it's one of the best things that I've ever done is the moment I wake up, I just start typing or I'll voice what I'm grateful for. And it just, what a way to kind of start the day, puts things into perspective, you know, where you wake up, you get to travel, who you get to see, you know, grateful for the obstacles in my path, grateful for, you know, you guys, grateful for my inner circle, grateful for kids, family, health, mindset, right, just everything that kind of comes to mind. And I'll never forget, man, you know, he shared that that was like one of the best little nuggets from a gratitude perspective and a

gratitude practice to be able to have man it makes a world a difference in your mindset um especially starting the day so do you keep a digital like journal of this um yeah it's on my notes on my iPhone it's on my notes and I just have a note that says gratitude and wins 2024 I have one from 23 from 22 21 um and I just like November 26 2024 great for and then I'll just start, you know, everything that comes to mind. Like, what are you kind of grateful for in the moment? And it's just been really cool, man. You know, you know, Stumann's full of nuggets and wisdoms,

but that was one of the best little, you know, nuggets that I'd be able to pull from them. Yeah. I do remember now that you're saying that, um, didn't Stumman have a, uh, a little app that he, that he, uh, created? He used to do it in. He did. I think he did create the app. G-code

app. And so we had that. I think at the time when he shared, he was using Evernote and then just Evernote got too slow. As I was just notes is easy. Just pop up notes and just go at it. But he did have the G-code app, you know, to kind of work through that. But one of the G's obviously is gratitude.

Right. Oh, I didn't know. Okay. Yeah. I never studied the G-code. I saw him talk about it, but never really. dove into it. It's really, really good. I mean, you know, Garrett, Garrett White has, you know, something, you know, similar with warrior, you know,

faith, freedom, finance, fitness. You know, so it's just kind of the combination of the different equities. Yeah. But it's putting it into a process. It's like, you know, one of my favorites is, is Howls, right, from the Miracle Morning and his savers. And, you know, part of that silence could also be gratitude, could be prayer, could be meditation, could be mindfulness. But it's one of those things that you want to incorporate as a habit. And that's a really healthy habit, especially for us mentally. And, you know, it's really the first thing.

And we talk about it all the time, right? And Al, we were talking with GoGo, right? Just the last week, you know, the personal development side of things, but really the personal development around the mindset side of things. And I'm so grateful for the work that we all did. um in that run you know 12 13 14 15 time frame run that we all went through and doing the work man carol duick you know bair and katie marley marley adams you know um who the mentors and coaches in our life at the time clay mask in our life just just the challenges on our on our mental being

inside of things and and um you know having access to being able to connect with his coach right you look back at those at that time i mean wow you know a decade ago that, that, you know, and we damn sure put the work in, like we all did. And we challenged each other. And it's deep. It's some heady stuff. But, you know, to be able to sit here and kind of the mindset and I tell you what it does for me. And I've really been, you know, kind of talking with Leanne through a lot of this. And the visual is that you've got to be the calm and the chaos. And you've got to be still. And when you have a gratitude practice, a mindfulness practice, silence, prayer, when you have that, it allows you to be able to be centered and be still.

And the visual, think about that visual, right? It's just like the chaos in the world is exploding around you, but you're dead still and nothing can mess with you. That's what it means to me when you talk about gratitude, mindfulness, silence, prayer, having that skill set, having that mindset and having that, you know, practice, you're able to just sit in it. and it doesn't bother you. I love it. I've tried meditating so many times, bro, and I struck out. But the times that I've been successful were only when it was a gratitude-based meditation. It's so much easier for me to just kick into a relaxed mode.

Takes away anxiety, stress. It just almost magically just evaporates when the center. is, you know, because I studied Buddhism and everything, and they, they, they, they, what they kind of teach is to think about nothing. You really shouldn't be having the thought enters in. You just let it go back out the other side. I struggled with that. Yeah. And what's funny is I, you know, I've ADHD and, um, and it's hard to focus on anything. But when you, when I try to focus on nothing, I can't focus on nothing, but I can focus on gratitude so much. it's just so much easier. And because it is a central force of, you know,

central place of peace. And it can be the difference. I don't know if you told the story, but just in the last year I heard the story about the, you know, the Holocaust survivor who was, was literally in a, imprisoned in this cage with about three or four other women.

And they were, you know, literally being treated like dogs. They literally were, and it was infested with fleas. They weren't even allowed to like read their, their scripture and stuff like they had to hide that from the guards because they would get beaten again. And there was just all these things.

And when they asked her 20, 30 years later, you know, what got you through it? She said it was gratitude. And they said, what were you grateful for? And she said, I was grateful for the fleas. Yeah. And they're like, what do you mean you were grateful for the fleas? John, if you can tell the story better, jump in.

It is. My coach was the one that actually shared that story with me. That came from you. Okay. And he, because that's just kind of where the mindset side of things goes. And in every moment you can find a piece of gratitude. And it's just because, you know, you got to look for it. And I saw the reel the other day.

It's funny, right, how the algorithms work, right? You start looking at things and talking about gratitude. Those things start showing up. Adisanya, the UFC champ or whatever, but he talked about his gratitude practice. And at the end of the day, right? So that's what Dan Sullivan talks about, you know, right down at the end of the day, the three things that you were most grateful for the day. And so Stylebender was doing that practice.

but what he would do is that it forced him now he was looking throughout the day for three things that he could write in his journal at the end of the day. So he started, it's the reticular activator. Yeah. Right. You're now looking for it. Right? Like black G wagon, right?

Like you might not see it. You might not think you have seen a G wagon for years in your market. But all of a sudden now you see 23 black Gwagons because now that's all you're thinking about. And it's the same thing, right? His reticular activator. was fired for gratitude. So he would go throughout the day. And he said his life changed just because he was looking for things to be grateful for.

So he could write it down in his journal at the end of the day. And I'm with you, bro. Man, the gratitude practice is probably one of the most powerful, powerful, you know, habits that you can really develop because you just start to see things. And that's what, that's what, you know, the story about, you know, you can even be thankful for fleas. you can even be grateful for that because that was you finished that out though john like yeah so so what she said was she said was that well why and she said well because if it wasn't for the fleas the guards would have came in they would have found our our scripture and they would have taken it

away and we would have never had that moment to where we were able to bond and share scripture and have that time that really got us through that period and and so she goes, if it wasn't for the pleas, that would have never happened. But nobody would go in there. The guards wouldn't go in there. Nothing. So they had that time. They were able to keep the scripture.

They were able to have that time amongst themselves to keep them, you know, one day at a time, you know, during that period of their life. Yeah. So powerful, dude. And so like my follow up question to that would be because this is what I'm asking. I love this podcast. I write a page of notes every time we do this podcast for real.

Like, you know, selfishly, I'm looking at like, if it can help me, then I figure that it can help someone else. But my next question to myself is, is what today are my fleas that I should be grateful for, right? I mean, thankfully, I don't have fleas

running around this house, but, you know, what are my fleas? Like, when you burn the boats, what boats are you burning? Yeah. What, you know, what are you saying? What are you saying no and no more to, right? But what, what are you grateful for?

Are you grateful? Like, the real, when you go to the next level of gratitude, it's like, are you grateful for those boats you had to burn? You know what I mean? You know, what you said is he, your reticular activators always looking if you, you know, in this practice. And I'm doing it. I'm committed.

I'm committed to, because I already have actually. have the journal. I carried around me already. I just got to get into the habit of every morning. I'm not going to go just get a cup of coffee. Or maybe I will get a cup of coffee. I'm going to sit down, hit that gratitude journal. But it's not always just going to be the positive good things. Of course, we're always going to be grateful for our children, grateful for our spouse or significant other, you know, maybe it's our parents or someone that we look up to in our life. Those are all positive things. But what about the ones that fuck with you? What about me? What about those things that are like, man, like, if you can figure out a way to be grateful for the flea

that's in there biting at your foot. What am I, what is it teaching me? Wow. What am I learning from this? And Hermosi, Hermosi talks a lot about this too, right? It's like if you were to give your kids certain traits that you would want them to have, and I've seen a lot of, a lot of, you know, I want, I want X. So God gives me Y.

And you have to go through that to be. able to get that whatever it is. And Hormosi talks about that too, right? So like if you want, you know, you want strength, well, what has to happen in order for that to be true? You want peace, what has to happen in order for that to be true? And so the struggle, right, because life is uphill and you're either growing or you're dying. And so complacency and not the sacrifice and the tradeoff, those things are never possible. And so I think. that's to your point is like what am i learning here right so these are all great questions and i think this goes back to what you know just so freaking grateful all the work that we put in and and and in just being

able to change change the way we think and just ask better questions and and um better mental models and um i think i told you out because i hand about i'll tell you man i went back and i'm not done yet but um i went back and started rereading the four agreements. Thank you. So good. So good. And in that, you know, putting, putting that thing into perspective and where, you know, not taking things personally, never, never assuming.

And, you know, I'm grateful I didn't assume this today. Right. Like you can kind of work through, like you said, those fleas. They're biting at us every day. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And the other thing since we brought stuming up is the force of average, which, you know, is that that invisible force that that pulls us back to mediocrity, pulls us back from our, our version of our elite self that we're, at least most of us are striving for on a daily basis. And then we get dragged right back down. You know, there's no success without the struggle. A muscle can't be built without. that tension of tearing it down so it can build back up. And we just kind of forget about that sometimes.

You know, it's not just about all the, you know, the, the fairy tale life that, you know, we all, you know, seem to have compared to other people in the world. We have to keep keep in mind that it's the struggles. It's the tough months in business. It's the, man, I can't even believe I'm saying this, but I'm thankful for 08, 09. Yep.

Literally lost everything. and went deep into debt. But why am I grateful for that? Because in 2010, two short years later, through that pain, I met you guys. And if I hadn't gone through that, I probably wouldn't have hit so low the bottom where I felt like, okay, all right, time out. I can't do it no more. You know what I mean?

Like, I need help. And I may never reach that had I never hit that depth of a low. and lost everything. So it really is. And I used to say it all the time, but now, I don't know, this just gave me a whole new perspective

on being thankful for 08-09. We say, well, there's lessons learned, but we don't have to learn them again. That's true. But being thankful for 08, 09, shit. It took me a decade to get to where I can be thankful for it.

Right, right. But like, Like when you really for real get to it, not just say it, but like when you feel it in your heart that you're thankful for the, for, you know, the recession that we went through 0809 where everybody lost their wealth and everything and their money, you can take on anything. Exactly. That's exactly. You realize, man, if I can make it through that, I can do whatever's in front of me. Like everything that you have to do gets so much easier when you've gone. through something that hard and came out and survived it.

I mean, it's, you know, that, that is something to be grateful for. No question. Yeah. That is, man. It's, it's, um, things don't, things that like cause anxiety. And so, you know, part of that other conversation that that Matt was having kind of sharing with, with the fleas. He also talked about state of flow and where anxiety comes in and, and, and.

skills match is where flow happens. So you got the challenge that is great, but you've got the skill set to match it, that puts you in a state of flow. Where you fall into a state of anxiety is that the challenge is greater than the skills you have to be able to overcome it. Yeah.

That's where anxiety comes in. So that should be a trigger. this should be an awareness of, okay, why am I anxious about this? Why am I concerned about this? What skills do I not have to be able to match this? That's the skills I need to go develop. That's who I need to associate with. That's the who I need to make the hire to. That's what I need to do. I need to match my skill to my challenge and now I'm back in a state of flow. The opposite is when my skills are greater than the challenge I'm facing, I get bored. And, you know, idle time, right, is not a good thing.

And what's that Nipsey quote? Lyric, you know, on a mission, you know, the worst enemy is idle time. And we find a lot of idle time when we've got skills, but we don't have the challenge to match it. And so, you know, kind of being grateful for that understanding moving into the new year, you got anybody listening, I would tell you that if you're bored, You need a bigger challenge. You need a bigger challenge. And if you're anxious, you need to focus on the skill set to be able to match that.

So good. Yeah. And we're not just talking about sales skills or or business strategy skills and things of that nature. We're talking about life skills, skills and empathy, being skilled, a skilled listener. you know, being skilled at becoming aware of a situation as it develops. And the two of you do an outstanding job of that, I feel. Like I've always, you know, kind of looked up to both of you guys as, you know, and we all have our moments.

But, you know, for the most part, like, that's something I know, I have to have a better. It's like hitting the pause button, right? It's a skill. Yeah. And you guys have, you know, I'm giving you props. You guys got, you've gotten like, kinder, especially you. I mean, dude, you, you're a different person. You know, I've seen you handle some stressful-ass situations recently where I'm like, that's Jay?

Normally, he'd be throwing a boombox off the top floor of a hotel right now. How the fuck is he, he's calm as a cucumber? Damn. It might be the psychedelics. Those do help. There you go. That's a real thing. Look it up.

Yeah. So, man, so I was at, you know, at Grant Cardone's WealthCon last week, right? You're talking about grateful. And, man, they're just, you know, billionaire speakers, one after another, after another, after another. And I want to share a couple of nuggets that the biggest takeaway from the whole event, outside of the fact that everybody's bullish on Bitcoin and there's a lot of really interesting people in the room.

They're bullish on Bitcoin and they're super bullish on multifamily. But this one guy that spoke Bob Duggan, he went from $4 billion net worth last year to $13 billion in one year. So he had a really good year. But he had a couple things that I thought,

you know, he was just talking about his journey, you know, his journey, right? And going through it. It's like, man, that's so true. It's so true. It's so true. you know, you said it earlier out. So you have to go through, you know, the only way to success is through failure, that's the path. There is no, there isn't a strait to. You have to go through failure to get there.

But he was talking about your willingness to take on challenges, get knocked down and get back up. Another thing, you know, he talked about was focusing on impact, making a difference. But one of the things that I really liked was, you know, he talks about wealth and, you know, like money doesn't buy you happiness. You have to be productive. overcoming barriers and challenges, knowing that good things are coming and that good things are happening to you right now. And so, like, his mindset around all this stuff was really, was really good. Another, you know, thing he said, and I think this goes back to what you were saying earlier,

John, is like, you got to educate to activate. So, like, if you want to get activated, get that education, seek what it is that you don't, that you don't know. Whatever's giving you that anxiety, if you educate it activates you. Like, once, you know, when you learn something, you're like, Oh, damn, I didn't know I could do that. That's amazing. That's a killer.

That's a hack, right? And so, like, you have to, in order to get activated, you have to learn something. You've got to keep moving towards what it is you're trying to solve. But I thought there was some really great speakers and doing some big things out there that, that, you know, I was great. I was grateful to be in the room. There's a guy. I want everybody to write this guy's name down because everybody needs to go do this. What was the Duggan guy before you moved on?

Bob Duggan. Bob, okay. Bob Duggan, yeah. Great, great, dude. Just a great, you can just tell a great human being. So this guy, write this down, Carlton Dennis, K-A-R-L-T-O-N, Dennis. And so you might, you know, probably two, it's been almost two years now, knowing that, you know, the living on the island is, you know, at some point going to come to an end and I'm coming back to the States and I have to have a plan for, you know, number one for me was, you know, what's my philosophy on how I'm, I'm investing money. You know, we make a lot of money. What's my philosophy? So I start asking

people that question. What's your philosophy? What's your philosophy? Trying to learn, you know, what are people's philosophies on it, invest in money? And then, you know, coming back to the States, primarily, I'm just wanting to make sure I pay the least amount of tax. The biggest expense every person has individually and as a business is taxes, period. So, you know, that's the, you know, the first place, you know, let's try to, is this like looking at a brokerage? Where am I going to be able to keep the most money? Well, the exp you get to get paid to be here. So it's the best brokerage to be at period. But this Carlton Dennis guy is a tax strategist.

And this is something I realized in dealing with a lot of investors that are investing in some of these properties, these multifamily deals that we're putting together. Most people have a CPA. And so as I talked to someone about the opportunity, the investment, then they go to their CPA and they'll tell them something that generally isn't true or isn't helpful in terms of what they're making the investment. And most everyone has a CPA. They don't have a tax planner or a tax strategist. There's a big difference in the two. And so this guy, Carlton Dennis with a K, he's on, he's on YouTube. You go to his YouTube channel.

It's tax alchemy. But you can set up a call with them. And I did already did the calls. The first thing I did, then I sent it to my dad. I was like, you need to do this. It's always joke about, you know, my dad, I'm going to inherit basically a bunch of damn tractors and fucking trailers and all this shit because he goes to the CPA every year. He's like, oh, you need to go buy some.

equipment and shit. I'm like, dad, listen, like, there's got to be a better way, bro. You're killing me with all this shit. I don't need up. We don't need any more tractors and trailer. A big ass auction is wrong. You got a 12,000 square foot shop full of just shitty used to ride off, you know, to ride off on his taxes, which is fine if you need that stuff. But if you don't need it, it's not, it's not, that's not a strategy. And so, so there was a couple things in there that was really, really helpful. The first, one, not to get into IRS code, but it's called 469-9. It's your ability to, if you lease, if you have an Airbnb that you rent for less than seven days to two people in a year,

you can bundle everything and that allows you to become a real estate investor, a full-time real estate professional per the IRS code. And you can write off, you know, in any and every investment you make into multifamily. This is something that people make these investments and they don't qualify for the cost egg, which in years past, if you put a hundred grand into an investment into multifamily, you could write off as much as 80% the first year. That's insane, right? Like there's huge, huge deduction. So, you know, so this, this guy that you know, when you have your call with them, they're going to go through, you know, all of your income, all your investments, everything that you're doing. And then he broke down basically into three, you know,

your three buckets. Let me see if I have good enough. Oh, wait, I did a call with him later than the event. Let's see. So you're going to want to hear this. This is a good shit. This is gold right here. So basically you have your, you know, your business owner bucket with your, you know, your vehicles, write off, expenses, things you can write off within your business, salary, all that kind of stuff. And your retirement bucket, 401K, you know, any type of health insurance, all these different things you can use for that bucket. And then, you know, the last bucket is, is real estate. which they're they're big on investing into real estate and multi-family, even single-family and cost segregation and doing all that.

We said anything you have left over rather than pay tax, there's multiple investments that they look at that you can invest in that are deductible. So you can invest in oil and gas and oil and gas investments, you can write off 90% of the investment the first year. Another one is you can invest in, some of this is crazy. Gas stations, if you invest in gas stations, you can write, you know, know, 1.6 was, you know, what did I write? 1.6x write off is what I wrote on that.

Another one is one and a half times what you invested. That's what I wrote down. I would have to confirm with them on that. But gas days, so they have relationships with all these different investment, different companies that they work with in all these areas. So if you have, you know, if you're trying to get a deduction, but you want to, you rather make an investment than just buy some shit. All of these were ways that they, that they look at.

for how you can do that. So they have another one that's Hollywood movies. And then you can invest in Hollywood movies. Believe it or not, I have no idea why that's tax deductible, but it is. The heavy machinery one, which I just found, I found out about that from John Womberg. Yeah. Right before ConnectCon where you can invest, if you buy a million dollars worth of equipment that's in this pool, and then you lease it. So you put, let's say you put, you buy a million dollars with the equipment, you put 10% down. So you put 100 grand in. You get the right off a million. and then they lease that equipment out and it cash flows. And then they guarantee to buy the equipment back at 75% of the value.

So that's another potential write off. And there was one other one. Well, I guess. Now, then they had another one that was leasing business equipment. And you can write off 10x what you put into that. So if you put $50,000 into leasing this business equipment, you can write, you can write off $500,000. $500,000.

you can ride off $500,000. So these are all vehicles that are legal by the tax code, but this is a tax strategist that's helping you look at, here's your income, here's all your expenses, here's what you're probably going to end up paying in taxes. Let's have a strategy for how we're going to invest money so that you don't have to pay as much in taxes.

And you know, you're talking, getting down to 10% or single digit income tax bracket. This is not tax advice, seek your legal professional or call this guy, Carlton Denison, he'll help you. But so that was probably the highlight of the entire event,

was just, you know, I don't think enough of us spend enough time. You know, we just, you know, we get the end of the year and we're, you know, you know, okay, what can I do? Well, it's a little bit late. So, you know, getting, getting with this guy, maybe not for this year, maybe for this year, if you have the ability to do some of these things. But certainly getting set up for next year was my biggest takeaway from that entire event. Fantastic. Great, great speaker and just a great, overall strategy. And it just resonated with me because I'm, you know, I talked to a lot of people that have money to invest, all of them are using CPAs. None of them had a tax strategist, even some of the wealthiest people I know. So if you don't have a tax strategist, I don't know what this

guy charges yet. I think I'll find out on my next call, but I promise he's not paying it. So starts with, you know, you got to start with, you know, generating active income. You got to do something to make money. Get out there, sell houses, do whatever it takes to make as much money as you can. And then you got to learn how to not pay as much of it as possible legally and taxes and invest that safely. And you know, over the years, you know, it's funny because I, you know, You know, I used to, you know, we, John, we flip. How many houses you think we flipped in our day? Probably at least 100, if not more.

I don't know where that money is, but I don't think I, I don't think I haven't. I don't think I don't think I, I don't think it. But I brought two elements as well. Right. You know, so we made a lot of money. But, you know, you look up and you're like, well, you know, 500,000 to GTAT that went to zero. And you got, you got all these different things that you've made, you know, know, poor decisions and investing.

Hell, it's hard enough to make money. You can't afford to invest and lose it. So what are the safest ways for you to invest, reduce your taxes and build wealth? And, you know, we landed on multifamily as that main strategy. But having a tax strategist, I think for everyone is by far one of the things you can do that can, you know, allow you to keep the majority of money. You're keeping up your, your biggest. Because as you're kind of talking through there, you know, a default back to it's all about the team, right? So it's building the life team that's an alignment.

So we know what's what's the goal, right? What's the vision? What's the goal? What's kind of the model that we're going to operate within? What's our biggest problems? We're going to have the right strategy, right? Right. Strategy, bad strategy.

We're solving the right problem. And then what's the team have to look like in order for us to execute the strategy within the current business structure model that we're operating within the institute of the goal and the vision? It's an up and down ladder. But those people, when you say, team, they just think about their business. You've got to have the life team. And the tax strategist has to be a part of your life team. Yep. Along with the CPA, along with the bookkeeper,

along with, you know, head of marketing, also your fitness coach, your spiritual advisor, you know, your relationship dynamic, right? So you just, you just start to look at the things that are important in your life. You got to have the right who. And this is where I keep coming back to Jim Collins, right? It's the who. He hit me with that question the other day. They're like, do I do the business model on the strategy or is it the who? I was like, it's always the who. It's always the who. 100%. Another little takeaway. So they handed these out, how to get how to get super rich for kids, which this one's rigs, rigs and Kenley. So I've got, I've got, if y'all don't have,

y'all, y'all's kids are old enough now. It might not be helpful. But for anybody listening who has younger kids, there's a credit card company called Greenlight, super badass. So I set up my kids with their own credit cards and I'm in control of either depositing money based on the chores that they have and things like that. They get paid. I can pay them interest on the money that they leave in that account and save it or they can invest it into the stock market. So they can choose what stocks they want to invest in.

And I can tell them how much they have to invest or not. so I can kind of control what how much they're saving versus how much they're spending. And so, you know, I gave them this, these book, this book to read both, both. And I incentivized them by telling them I was going to get rigs, you know, he filled out the whole, he did the whole thing, man. And Kenley, she hasn't really given me her. She's done with it. But they did it all in one day, which I was shocked, by the way.

But I pitted them against each other. I said, whoever gets done first is going to get 500 bucks, which is a lot. But I didn't think they were going to do it. And so they both went to work trying to get. done first. And so I gave them both 500 bucks to set it up. But they got their own credit cards. They can control their own investments. And they're starting to learn how to, you can't, you can't save money and become wealthy, but you can invest money and become wealthy. And so teaching them these principals that they don't teach in school, I think is, you know, something that we want, you know,

I didn't, I learned I, I've literally lost millions and millions and millions of dollars. Like if I, I would, I would hate to sit down and see, you know, I can think of three things that cost me $500,000 in the last, you know, in the last 10 years. So like how much, how much, you know, is it cost to me by not having a good strategy around money? You can't afford to spend your whole life just to get money to lose it or to not invest it, you know, safely and lose it, you know, tax people. 500K we spent to, you know, work with, what was the guy's name, Joe Garza, one of the top tax, you know, tax, you know, attorneys in the state of Texas. And we find out the IRS is, you know,

or basically the FBI is, uh, raiding his office one afternoon. It was on the news and we're like, fuck, that can't be good. Right. So the IRS is like we paid him 250. Plus we had to pay all the back taxes because his thing wasn't legit. You know, so, you know, there's, you know, all these things that, you know, I'm super conservative now. And, and I used to be super high risk because money has always kind of come somewhat easy, you know, to make. But, you know, now I'm like, Now, what, give me that safe. Where's that safety, you know, the safest way to invest and create wealth? And, of course, I got a lot of high risk stuff too.

But, but, but yeah, anyway, so I think that's super important. And so another great book, 10X for kids. I think that's, it's not on Amazon. I think you have to go to his website to order that one. But green light, green light is the credit card company. You can set up for your kids. It's really cool, super efficient, easy to use. The kids have their own little debit cards they can use on whatever they want.

a buy or whatever, but they're also, you know, making choices on what stocks they're going to invest in and stuff like that. That's super cool, man. You know, it was funny kind of kind of thinking through. I don't know, because I don't even think I've shared this with you. I've shared it with Al. I've shared it on a couple other podcasts and stuff. And, you know, just, just reflecting as a coach and, you know, just kind of a thought exercise for us, right? You know, October was 20 years for you and I. And, you know, I was like, you know, if I was our coach and I'm coaching these two 27-year-old knuckleheads, what would I coach them on? And, you know, I keep coming back. You know, I run different scenarios, different thought experiments, different thought exercise, but I always keep coming back to this.

Our business is a vehicle that's moving us to freedom. And what I would have beat us over the head with was, listen, y'all quit chasing status. and focus on freedom. Here, let's get clear on what freedom means to the two of you, and let's design and build the business in pursuit of freedom. Now, grateful that we didn't do that because we wouldn't be sitting here today. So grateful that we had to go through that 20-year journey to get to this point. However, I love to share this story, especially with younger.

I was on with Gay Dash's crew last week, and I shared the whole story with them. And the problem that we were in is just, I think, I think it's age maybe and maybe both of us just as competitive as we are. I think because we wanted to just beat the shit out of Pam and Barry. And so whatever it took and it took sacrifice, it took, it took our health, it took our relationships. It was just, it was not good. And it was chasing status. And I think getting through, you know, Bet David's book. And I remember you were on the flight leaving the land from agent to CEO.

And you said, hey, would you rebuild with this, with beyond entrepreneurship 2.0? And my answer would have been yes until Bet David's book came out. And I think I honestly believe you can build an empire off of Choose Your Enemies Wisely. Just off of that book alone, in my soul, I believe you can build an empire just off of that book. And the framework that he talks about of going from survival to status to freedom to legacy, has just really resonated with me. And that's the dynamic that I would coached us differently on. And I would have been really hard on us about,

dude, that's status. Get out of status, get to freedom. And then because once you get to freedom, and this is where you guys are at right now, is now we're focused on legacy. And,

you know, just both of you guys are building, you know, the Kinder brand, the Stasic brand and really changing, changing the kids. I mean, just think if you think about this,

like, like, like Braden and Carson, but now, like what you're doing with, with with with with with kynley right like just changing the whole dynamic and the psychology of how they look and think about money right and and so the man i can't explain that to enough people like don't be chasing number one in your market don't be chasing number one for your company

like that's that'll come if it comes but you need to be designing your vehicle and your life team that's going to get you to freedom and because once you're at freedom bro like I know, you know, a lot of freedom is mindset, but also being able to have the financial means to do whatever you want, whenever you want with whomever you want, you know, as often as you want. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's so funny because I think back to like, you know, when we were, you know, 27, 28 and and, and, you know, there was so much ahead of us, you know, that, that, you know, it's like, yeah, we'll get to that shit later. We're over here building something, you know, like, but, you know, and, and, you know, and, you know, to a certain degree. I think that, you know, we put in an inappropriate amount or maybe the appropriate amount of hours in, you know, to get us there faster. Like, but I think we just did it the hard way, you know, but by not understanding, you know, when I, when I, when I, when I, you know, anytime I'm listening to, you know, I get pitched ideas all the time and, you know, there's always, you know, this little thing that's going to make money or, you know, but I'm always trying to get down to like the, the thing that I learned and looking at all the businesses that we've been in is. is, you know, the time investment and the lifetime value of a customer. Because it's really easy to go, I'm going to go sell this technology thing for,

I mean, that's how we started, right? We started selling over the web, over the web, where, you know, we walk out on somebody's website. Remember when Mike said that to me? I drove straight to Texas. That shit was so funny. But we're going to sell, you know, $15, you know, over the web video, right? And then what did we learn? And we learned, well, the barrier to get one of those videos was you had to go to a studio where somebody had video equipment, does that long ago it was.

And, you know, get this video shot and take a couple hours. And so you can't, you know, you can't sell very many of those because of the barrier for someone to get it done was so high. There's some, you know, most people didn't even know a videographer back then. It's like all of these things that you learn along the way, when I come back to like, you know, the business model that makes the most sense is going to be the one where the customer pays you the longest, right? So, you know, Carson was, you know, he was, you know, funny story. Y'all, I don't even think y'all have heard the story. So Carson texted me the other day, right? He was working for me, you know, and, you know, I fired him because I can't, you know,

he wasn't ready. So, you know, but I said, listen, but I don't hear what you do. Just fucking do something. You know, go do something, find something and get excited and go chase something. Like, figure out what you wanted to be. You're not going to know what you're going to love. Anyways, he ends up landing on somehow or another gets invited to, it was Patrick Bet David's company,

PH something, so whatever. Yeah, PhP, is that what it is? I think it is. I think it is. I think it is. It's pH something. I think it's Ph.P. Yeah, Ph.P.

Yeah, PHP agency. So this is a crazy story. So, and I said it to you, Al, when we were on the call with him the other day, I think I mentioned it to you. But that morning, you know, the night before he had sent me get a text about PHP and then I got on with the guy from from PHP that that this is Patrick Betts company that he had sold and they had a tiered compensation plan similar to EXP right so you know he was all excited about it he's wearing a suit and tie every day he's worked

until 10 11 12 I mean he's learning right now like this is the best thing it could ever happen to but he's in it you know and he's you know trying to make sales and you know trying to reach little tiers of you know opportunity or whatever and they're this same kind of things that we plugged ourselves into and got coached and trained and, you know, along, along, you know, our own paths. But he ends up, you know, now he's selling life insurance. Well, I love life insurance. I think it's great because, you know, why people don't fucking cancel it? Like anything that you can sell that people get paid for, you know, you get paid for a long period of time is a good business to be in. And, you know, we went from selling a lot of real estate and you always tell

the stories like, man, it's great. We know, we sold, you know, 50. We had, I remember, I don't remember, I don't remember where exactly, when exactly it was. I remember where I was when we erased the board and it was like 55 closings and it was like we had to start over again. And it was one of those months where it was a fucking ass whipping. And it was just like, damn, man, we got to do this shit again. Like it started over the clock started every 30 days. And, you know, there just had to be a better way.

How do you get paid, you know, a higher, you know, a higher per customer than just one move on to the next one, one cell move on to the next one. You know, and we evolved and we kept looking for a better way. And at EXP, the bottom line is there's multiplication to it where we recruit one agent. And as long as I say with the company, seven years, we get paid for seven years with that customer. There's no coaching product, no residual product, no technology product, very few that people will keep for seven years. It's just a lifetime value of a customer is better at EXP. And so when you go through all of these things to get to a place where, well, okay, now there's multiplication.

We got somebody who tells somebody who tells somebody who tells somebody, that's not you're doing. That's leverage. Now I got all my time back and the amount that I'm getting paid per person is the longest of anything that I've seen in my business and any of the business I've been a part of. You know, an average agent stays five to seven years. You've got literally your time back and you've got the multiplication factor and you've got the lifetime value of customer. That's why this business model of DXP makes the most sense. All these going out selling widgets, this, any other. That's great. You can go sell something for $69 a month or $50 a month. You might sell a whole bunch of them, but guess what? In six months, you know, the churn

starts coming in, right? And now I lost 25 customers. Now I've got to sell 25 to stay where I was at. And that, we experienced that in coaching. It was like residual income is the best thing we've ever done until a year two when we started having, you know, 10 people canceled. Now you had to sell 10 just to stay back where you were at. And so, you know, I'm grateful back to the whole point of this podcast today. I'm grateful for all those lessons along the way. And if there was something I would tell anybody to pay attention to, it's looking at where you get leverage with your time and the lifetime value of a sale

or a customer is the highest number or the longest period of time is where you're going to find the best business. That's my two cents. Love it, man. Well, we're going to wrap up here. As we wrap up, I want to share one more thing I'm grateful for. I think when I was in my late 20s, started getting to real estate, struggled for a while. But when I started seeing a little bit of success, so I would probably be mid-30s, I was like,

you know what, I want to go back to my high school. And I want to talk to the high school seniors and I want to speak to them about the things that I've had to learn that nobody was talking about in high school. and I have not done that, but I got invited by one of my high school alumni that I graduated with. She's a teacher at a different school that's like one suburb away from me over here. So at 9 o'clock this morning, I went and spoke to a math class. And this is a vocational math class. Like these people are not going, these kids are not going to college.

You know, they did not have good grades like me. You know, like they were, they're not college bound, right? Like they're going into trades, which I love because I connected with. them and they wanted me to go talk about why it's important to buy a house versus renting and i kind of went into it you know a bit of a different spin on it of course i touched on why it's important i look i put a picture of my first house i bought how much i paid for it how much it was worth when we sold it just to give them real high-level visuals i didn't get real deep in the weeds but at the end of it i ended on on taking care and understanding your money

understanding that leaving your money in a savings account is losing money. And when I said that to them, they looked, they looked cross-eyed at me. And the teacher backed me up. He's like, you know, remember we talked about inflation class? I'm saying all that to say this. I'm going back at two o'clock. So it's, it's almost one. I'm going to go back and I'm going to do it again.

But what I left them with at the end was, is that freedom, they're never going to experience freedom if they don't learn how to take care of their money. I never learned how to take care of my money until way late in life. And so we kind of had some like, because one of the lessons that was in buying houses, well, how do you save for money and how do you make sure your credit score stays okay so you could get a mortgage and this and that? And so I ended it on a couple interesting things that had nothing to do with buying houses. One was if you hear nothing that I say today, except one thing is just understand no matter how much money you make or how much little money you make. I said, I've been broke and I've been rich. And I can tell you this, I'm going to choose

rich every time from the movie, right? And the truth of it is, is because I wasn't understanding money. And it doesn't matter what you choose. You could be a plumber. I said, anyone in here looking to get into their trades? Good. Because I just, a friend of mine just sold his plumbing business for $10 million. A plumber. Everyone used to look down at plumbers. No, the plumbers are getting rich right now. I saw all their eyes now start to be like, oh, okay. And the teacher didn't pull me in for that. And I'll end with this. The second thing that I told them was, I said, raise the hands in here. You hang out with some losers. You can admit it. I do sometimes. I hang out with some degenerates, right? And, you know, when I was your age, I hung out with a lot of them. And they were my best friends. I love them. And sometimes, you know, today I still love them. But I said it's who you surround yourself from this point forward that's going to, that's going to put you in a great position where you can be free one day or you're going to

be trapped. Learn the money game and surround yourself with people who are lifting you up, not dragging you back down. And that's how I left it. I know it was supposed to be about, you know, selling, you know, how to buy your first house and everything. But these kids need to hear this raw and real. And I was just like I was, I was emotional walking out of that school because it was,

I was just grateful that I was allowed to do, be there and do that, which is what I wish someone would have came into our, our senior math class and smacked me over the head with the two by four. And like, this is what you need to be focused on. You know, and those are the moments where I will listen when someone gets up into my head and my soul, you know, and you got to really talk to them, you know, at the same level. so. I love that. So good.

Love you guys. Love you guys. Appreciate you. Hi. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody. Thank you. Thanks for tuning in. If today's episode inspired you,

follow for more conversations like this and gain valuable insights from the leading experts in the industry. If you want to dive a little bit deeper, check out johncitchens.coach to find the ways that we can work together. Once again, this is your host, John Kitchens. Keep making it happen.