The Mindset Mentor - Ep 13 - What Living on a Couch Teaches You

Episode Date: September 18, 2015

Jake Bailey has an incredible mindset.After he lost everything, he ended up living in his office, sleeping on a couch in his office and showering at the local gym. Not once did he ever get down on himself during that time. He sees life as an adventure and that point in his life was just another road bump on his journey to success. He now runs one of the most successful real estate offices in Florida and in this episode he shares his definition of a champion's mindset. Want to learn more about Mindset Mentor+? For nearly nine years, the Mindset Mentor Podcast has guided you through life's ups and downs. Now, you can dive even deeper with Mindset Mentor Plus. Turn every podcast lesson into real-world results with detailed worksheets, journaling prompts, and a supportive community of like-minded people. Enjoy monthly live Q&A sessions with me, and all this for less than a dollar a day. If you’re committed to real, lasting change, this is for you.Join here 👉 www.mindsetmentor.com My first book that I’ve ever written is now available. It’s called LEVEL UP and It’s a step-by-step guide to go from where you are now, to where you want to be as fast as possible.📚If you want to order yours today, you can just head over to robdial.com/bookHere are some useful links for you… If you want access to a multitude of life advice, self development tips, and exclusive content daily that will help you improve your life, then you can follow me around the web at these links here:Instagram TikTokFacebookYoutube

Welcome to the MWF Motivation Podcast. My name is Rob Dial. I am occasionally joined by my co-host, Dean DeVries. And growing up, our moms always told us that we had the perfect faces for radio. So here we are with our own podcast that comes out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. And we compress a massive life topic into about 10 to 20 minutes to help you take control of your life and mind, become the best version of yourself, and follow your passion. Buckle up, because the podcast starts now.

Hey, this is Rob Dial. I'm with Jake Bailey, one of my extremely good friends that I actually haven't seen in a couple years. To tell you a little bit about Jake, I met Jake when we were both selling Cutco. He was a manager. I still specifically remember the exact time that I met him because he's six foot six and extremely goofy and hard to miss. And I thought the guy was awesome because he completely doesn't sugarcoat anything, which is exactly the same way that I am, but he is much more of a non-sugarcoater than I am. Jake Bailey, to give you guys an idea, we both sold Cutco together. Like I said, he was a killer sales rep and was the number one person in his category his first year out, won a Silver Cup.

As far as Jake just as an individual, he's so much fun to be around. We're actually sitting in his hotel room. He works with Keller Williams, runs an office with them. And we were in the room with his boss and his boss's daughter, who wanted to be around for the podcast. And I thought it'd be a good idea to have them around. That would be fine with me. And the thing about it was she actually called me a couple weeks ago,

actually probably about two months ago now. And I was in the grocery store and she said, hey, you know, she was very discreet and she said, hey, I'm thinking about having him help us with some investment stuff. And can you help me and tell me a little about Jake? And I said, Jake Bailey, probably one of my favorite people on the planet, is 100% the funniest person I've ever met in my life. And no one even comes really close to him. So I'm excited to have Jake on the podcast. We'll

talk a little bit more in depth about his story. So Jake, how are you doing? Doing great, Rob. Thanks for having me on your podcast. How are you doing? I'm doing great. So Jake, give us a little bit of a story. Give me your Cutco story, and then I want you to give me your story after Cutco and how you found yourself in real estate and doing really well in real estate after. Sure, no problem. So when I was in college, I played college baseball, Sure, no problem. So when I was in college, I played college baseball. And when I saw that baseball wasn't going to be my career, I had an option to make it my career. I opted out. I decided I didn't want to wear pajamas and throw baseball on a dirt hill while people eating hot dogs were watching me. So I decided to opt out of that career path and took a job selling knives. My junior and senior year in college, I was actually at University of Central Florida at the time studying criminal psychology. And I said, you know, I'm going to do something

entrepreneurial. I want to do something where I can negotiate and have a business opportunity. So in 2002, I took a job selling Cutco in Port St. Lucie, Florida, which is my hometown. I've been there since 1986. And I had a lot of connections there. And the model back then was to start off with calling people that you knew. And those people obviously, and this is, in my opinion, how most business owners have to start their businesses at their personal network. And a lot of business owners starting out, unfortunately, don't realize that because school doesn't teach you that. School teaches you the basic mechanical functions

of running a business in an administrative standpoint, but not in an actual application standpoint. And so that's one thing I really appreciated about my Cutco background is it taught me how to start a business from A to Z and how to facilitate a business and how to execute on your plan. So at Cutco, we were encouraged to start off by calling friends and family, asking them for appointments, and we would administer the appointments. And from those

appointments, based on whether or not we got a sale, wasn't necessarily the objective. The objective was to grow your business by asking for referrals at the end of the appointment. And I was lucky to be successful that year. I was the number one sales agent in my office in Port St. Lucie in 2002. And in 2003, I was asked to pursue a career in leadership and management. And I took that opportunity in 2005. I was awarded basically a franchise to keep it in layman's terms. We were given the opportunity to be an operating principal of an office. And in 2005, I was in charge of hiring and recruiting and training and managing sales reps to sell the product.

I was in charge of taking on all my own expenses. I paid for the office, the secretaries, the staff, the supplies, the literature, everything that entails running and operating a business. We were given that responsibility. And in 2006, I was lucky to be in my category, as you said, Rob, fortunate to be the number one franchisee in the country out of, I think, about 500 in my category. We did 1.1 million in product sales that year, and we recruited just under 500 sales reps that year. And we were also, from 2005 to 2008, we were the first office in the history of the

60-year company's history to do a million dollars in business our first three years out, which was pretty rewarding. And I tend to rant, and I'm not going to apologize for that here. So, all right. So with sales and with being in baseball, obviously baseball, you actually drafted into the major major league weren't you by the Toronto Blue Jays is that correct see I remember I still remember we were in probably about seven years ago I watched you throw like a 96 mile an hour fastball but obviously with baseball and then also with sales obviously a lot of people who want to get motivation are going to listen this type of stuff and people who need motivation are salespeople. So tell me about hardship with baseball, hardship with sales, how to overcome

those types of things and what you did to overcome them. Okay. Baseball is a game of failure. If you can bat 300, you're in the hall of fame. So that means 70% of the time you're falling flat on your face. It's a game of character. It's a game of, of testing your metal and testing whether or not you can handle adverse conditions. So I think that's one thing I'm thankful for learning with baseball. And now to this day, I'm a coach. I coach high school baseball in a very competitive arena. And South Florida, in my opinion, is one of the more dominant baseball markets in the world.

And I coach at a very competitive high school team there. So I really love encouraging and training and motivating, you know, the young men who are trying to better themselves and are going through that really critical stage of development. They're deciding who they are and what they want to do with their lives. And I like being, I guess, a voice of reason for them, because if it weren't for the coaches that I had growing up, I don't think I ever would have learned what I learned today. And business failures, in my opinion, it's kind of similar, right? If you take on a sport and you fail at it, I think it's great training. I think some of the best business people in the world were at one point or another athletes

and still to this day might be athletes. I know that's a loaded opinion, but that is my opinion. I think sports is a very nice... It's a great parallel and it's a great training tool growing up or anything else, you know, whether you're involved, involved in any extracurricular activity going up, I think it's really important because it teaches you, you know, the importance of handling failure with grace and handling failure with humility. Um, and business, you know, I, I took a nosedive after Cutco. I didn't really know what I wanted to do. Cause I've done that when baseball didn't work out, Cutco. I didn't really know what I wanted to do because I'd done that. When baseball didn't work out, Cutco was the only other thing.

And then when Cutco didn't work out, I didn't know what I was really going to do. So my wife and I sat down, and I'm really glad to have met my wife because when I met her, I was sleeping on my couch at my office, and I was showering at the beach every morning, and I traded my dad straight up. I had a Mercedes AMG. Do you remember that car? showering at the beach every morning and I traded my dad straight up my I had a Mercedes AMG remember that car I traded it straight up from for a 2002 Hyundai Sonata with 180,000 miles on it and rust all over it it was one of the better things I could have ever done with my life because it was a humbling experience and it helped me remind myself of you know the importance of starting

at zero and the importance of humiliating and humbling yourself and not getting attached to certain things, but being more attached to your mission and the reason why you're going through what you're going through. I think it might have been the best thing I could have ever experienced in terms of self-development and character building and maybe character revealing. I meet my wife. I tell her everything that I was going through at the time. I tell her the full kit and caboodle. I tell her the truth. I tell her everything that I was going through at the time. I tell her the full kit and caboodle.

I tell her the truth. Instead of looking down on it, she embraced it and said, well, we're both in a similar situation. Let's both just start at zero and rebuild. So we made a mutual decision to get into real estate simply because my entire background before was direct sales, hardcore beat-the-pavement sales or sales training or sales recruiting. And I hate to admit this, but as I'm watching all the goofy reality TV shows about real estate and I'm looking at the people that are making a lot of money in real estate and having a lot of success in real estate and realizing they probably don't have nearly the difficult background I had.

They probably haven't gone through the challenges I'd gone through. And at the time I realized I'm probably going to immediately do really well in real estate considering everything else I've ever done. It's probably going to be easier than anything else I've ever done. And I don't want to disrespect the industry. I have a lot of respect for real estate. I have a passion for it. I'm going to be in the real estate industry the rest of my life. I do believe it's my calling, but I will have to admit that it's one of the more easier things I've ever done based on everything else I've ever done, real estate came naturally. And I'm thankful for making that decision. So no, it's good. I like it. And you also said, before we started,

we were talking about quotes that you might want to go over. And you talking about starting at zero was perfect for the leeway or the perfect for the segue for the quote so the quote you wanted to share and it ties perfectly with baseball as well now they're talking about baseball it says winners make things happen losers let things happen to them so break down exactly what you were talking about how you i remember you said when you had nothing and you were sleeping on your couch in the office it was an adventure for you versus you being one of those people who felt bad for yourself because you were sleeping on a couch. So go ahead and dive a little bit deeper on that.

Okay, so the quote came from my father. He has his PhD in philosophy. And he taught me. I was in ninth grade, and I got cut from the high school baseball team. Just so you know, my high school team was not very good growing up. And we had a ninth grade team, a JV team, and a varsity team. I didn't even make the freshman team as a freshman. And I came home screaming and kicking and crying.

I was the consummate victim. And my father sat me down on the couch and looked me in the eyes and said, Son, I want you to remember this quote. I don't ever want you to forget it. And I don't forget it. And I always re-quote it. And he said, losers, you know, winners make things happen. Losers let things happen to them.

Don't ever sound or act like a victim ever again, especially when you're in my house. And although I was taken back by the curt nature of his comments at the time, now looking back, that might have been one of the better things he's ever told me, because it makes sense, right? So your typical victim is, woe is me, this happened, that happened, and they're always blaming external circumstances and external factors that they feel are out of their control. but wait, however, everything we do in life is based on decisions and actions. And I believe that, and I believe that to my core,

every decision you make, it's going to create some sort of result, whether directly or indirectly. For instance, I'm going to decide to walk across the street at two in the morning. If you get hit by a car, that wasn't the driver's fault. You shouldn't have walked across the street without looking both ways and making sure you're walking across the street at an opportunistic time, right? So if we can use this in business terms. So I'm on a couch in 2011 in my hometown of St. Lucie County, Fort Pierce, Fort St. Lucie. And instead of being on that couch saying, oh, poor me, I don't have my business anymore. I'm not making all kinds of money

anymore. I'm not doing this. I'm not doing that. Oh, I feel so bad for myself. My life is over. I really genuinely at the time didn't feel that way. And any of my closest friends could tell you, I still stayed in contact with all of them. I loved it. I embraced it. I was happy. I said to myself every day, this is great. I'm going through this for a reason. And I don't know what the reason is yet, but one day it's going to come out and I'm going to look back and be really grateful for this experience. Because the next time around, if I do happen to experience success at something again, it's going to taste that much better. It's going to feel that much greater.

It's going to feel a lot more accomplished. And I'm not going to abuse it this time around when I have success. Because I hate to admit this, but everything always kind of came naturally to me growing up. I don't know why. I just always, I guess, had a lot of luck. And this is the first time in my life I was really knocked flat on my back. And I think it was probably the best thing I could ever go through. And to carry me through that, I want to reiterate, I wasn't a victim. I was reflecting on all the decisions that led to that moment and realizing the importance

of not making those same mistakes again. And it was the best learning experience I could ever go through. And I'm really glad learning experience I could ever go through. And I'm really glad and thankful I went through it because I'll never make the mistakes I made when I was in my 20s and I was careless and irresponsible with money and made frivolous decisions, knee-jerk, impulsive decisions that were based on emotion and not logic.

And now that I have a family and a wife and kids and responsibility and opportunity in front of me, I will never make those decisions and those mistakes ever again. So I'm quite grateful and thankful for them. So just to kind of go back to what you said, when you're talking about, you said something about society and what is your, I want to know you're the most honest person that I know. What is your honest perception of society when you look at people?

Because me and you, I think we're a lot alike. I've talked about this in other podcasts where I think that a lot of people just kind of let things happen to them versus actually going out and deciding that they're going to kick ass every single day. So I want to know what your perception is. So, you know, from the person who's super successful, it's driving a Ferrari down the street or to the person who, you know, might be working at some normal job that they probably hate. And, you know, it's the thing that, that I tend to notice. And I hate saying it is that I feel like some people just kind of wake up and then they go to work and they don't really use all of the potential that they have.

And everyone has potential and all of them have some type of – you're already reaching for the mic because you want to talk. So people have so much potential, but they just don't know what the potential is and they don't feel like reaching down inside them to find out what it is. So what is your perception of society and people that just kind of let things happen to them versus successful people people are afraid of public scrutiny they're afraid of what everybody else thinks they're so consumed and afraid of everybody else thinks that it it it handicaps them your thoughts as a person in my opinion are very powerful they're powerful enough to either stop

you in your tracks or push you forward what's more important than that is other people's thoughts. If you let other people's thoughts get to you or other people's opinions get to you, it could stop you dead in your tracks and potentially prohibit you from doing something that could be quite meaningful or influential. So if you are so consumed and worried with everybody else's opinions that it debilitates you, I think you should choose new friends. I think you should choose a new circle of influence. The people who are unafraid of scrutiny and unafraid of public criticism, in my opinion, are the most successful people in the world.

People like Richard Branson, who owns Virgin. Everybody's, oh, that guy's crazy, that guy's crazy, that guy's crazy. He's worth like $20 billion because he's never given a crap about what people think about him. And there's boundaries to that, right? You can't go out and run around the streets naked and yelling. You've got to have meaning and purpose behind your initiative, right? But if you believe in something strong enough and you're believing something and you have so much passion behind it, then sing it and sing it loudly and be unafraid of what other people think. Because if somebody else has a problem with who you are, what you do, what you think, or what you say, that's their problem. That's their concern. That's not your concern.

Why would that be your concern? Why would that be your concern? So if you're in sales or in your in business and you're out there and you're trying to Accomplish whatever it is that you're trying to accomplish but you're letting that one little thing get in your way and the one little thing is other people's opinions I Question whether or not you really want what it is you're pursuing because other people's opinions shouldn't matter They just shouldn't. It's Theodore Roosevelt said in 1910, it was called the man in the arena. There was a speech he gave in Paris and I don't have the speech memorized or the quote memorized, but the premise of his quote was, it's not the critic who counts. It's not the weak person who points out how the strong

person stumbles. It actually says it's not the weak man who points out how the strong person stumbles. It actually says it's not the weak man who points out how the strong man stumbles, but we're in a politically correct society now where I should be gender equal, right? So I switched it around a little bit. It's not the weak person who points out how a strong person stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the person who's in the arena, whose face is marred with dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who comes short, who fails again and again. They fail, they fail, they fail. But the person who's failing, the person who's stumbling, if they spend themselves in a worthy cause,

at the very least they fail, but they at least fail while daring greatly so that they can never rest with the cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat because all they do is make fun of, but they never actually go in and get their face dirty they're never in the muck they just they just they just scrutinize but they don't actually ever do and that's why i love coaching high school baseball because i teach these young men how to go out and throw a baseball and i teach them how to go out and be in a position to be judged. And that's a scary thing. And that's why I have a rush for teaching salespeople. That's why I have a rush for teaching baseball players

because I know they're in a position to be made fun of. And I know what that's like. And I like helping guide people through that to help them develop kind of like a battle armor so that throughout their life down the road, they become impenetrable because they're not worried about what other people say about them. They just go out and let it fly. And that's what I'm passionate about. I feel like we should talk more often. Like you get me fired up whenever I'm just talking to you,

just in general. So, so, uh, one thing that I noticed about you and you kind of, just by the way you spoke, just made me think of it. For you, it seems like everything's an adventure. So when you were talking about how you were sleeping on your couch, it was an adventure. Now you're in a new thing where you've been in real estate for a while. You're doing really well. And now you're in a new position in real estate. And this is a new adventure for you. And you're kind of, you know, you're at this conference.

You're ready to learn a whole bunch of new stuff. It's a new adventure. And it's something that's exciting for you. So it seems like your personal view is that this 80, 90 years, whatever you get on this earth is just one big adventure, and it's just kind of your playground. So talk to me about your perception and the way that you – not your perception, but necessarily the way you think and the way you wake up each morning and what drives you every single day okay good question

so when you die in there on your tombstone if you get buried or some people get cremated but so we'll use tombstone on your tombstone and it's born this year dash dead, dead this year. What do you want that dash to represent? And the only, in my opinion, the only real way to impact the world around you is for people to look back and remember something you might have done, said. Otherwise, what was the purpose of your life? What did you do looking back?

Did you impact anybody? Did you impact anything? Did you create any movement? And if you look back and say, I never really did anything because I was so bloody afraid of anything, I never really stepped out of my comfort zone, then why did you exist? Why did you live?

So I guess I have this burning desire to make a difference. And I don't know necessarily what the difference is. I'm not perfect. I don't have all the answers. I'm just a real estate professional in South Florida. I run a real estate office. So I'm not saying that's good. I'm not saying that's bad.

I'm not saying that's amazing. I'm not saying it's not amazing. But I want it to be. I want people to look back and say, Hey, if it weren't for that tall, goofy guy, I wouldn't have done X and I wouldn't have done Y. And I don't do it for recognition. I do it for improvement. I do it because I have this competition in me that I can't explain that. I just want people around me to be better. And I don't even care about whether or not I'm better. I just want people around me to be better. And I, maybe I get it from my father.

Who's a preacher of a really large, well-known church down in South Florida. He's the same way. He lifts others up for a living. And I've seen that man answer his phone at two in the morning and leave the house and go to the hospital because somebody he cares about in our church is on their deathbed. And it's more important to him to not get sleep and go comfort that family who's crying and upset over their loved one who's about to move on to another realm that's more important to him to go there and lift

them up and comfort them than it is to get his sleep and that i guess growing up and seeing him as an example and seeming as my hero i never want to look back and say i wish i would have i don't want any wish i would have i don't want any regrets. I want to look back and say, I'm really glad I did. And that's what I want to influence people to think like. I want to just simply influence people to go all in and play above the line and look back and say, you know what? I did everything I could have possibly done. That's all I could have done. That's what I want people to think. That's how I want to influence others around me is I want to encourage them to go all out and be unafraid to let it go. And so in recap

of your question, the dash, what is it going to mean? What are you going to look back on your life and say that you accomplished? And it doesn't have to be a financial thing. In my opinion, it's a matter of what kind of difference did you make in the world around you? Are people going to remember you? Or are you just going to be another statistic in some textbook somewhere that's taught 100 years from now? I don't know. I don't have the answer to that. But that's what drives me is to have some sort of difference or some sort of impact.

All right. So the last question I'm going to leave you with. There was a quote that I posted today. And don't look ahead. Just hold on. You can't be prepared. It's all off the cuff. There's no preparation allowed. So you said your purpose and this quote is Pablo Picasso and it says, the meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away. So you spoke a little bit about it, but what is Jake Bailey? What is his gift? And what are you going to give away to the rest of the world by the time that little dash ends and there's a date? Giving people confidence to do

things that they normally never thought they could ever do. Motivation, inspiring people, thought they could ever do. Motivation, inspiring people, getting in their head. My gift is discernment, looking at someone and talking to them and knowing exactly what they need. I know that's what I'm supposed to be doing. I can look at somebody, shake their hand, ask them two or three questions and know whether they need a hug, whether they need an encouraging sentence or two. Maybe they need me to dig down deep and ask a couple questions that nobody else has ever asked them before. But I have this crazy, weird ability to be clairvoyant with people and know in a weird way what they need, when they need it, and why they need it. And that's what I feel like I'm put on this earth to do is see and cut through to the core of people and find out what makes

them tick and find out what they need to help them push themselves powerfully forward so they can become a valuable member of society. In a nutshell, that's how I feel. That's what my gift is. That was great, Jake Bailey. Thanks so much. I appreciate your time. And so that is it. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you like what you hear, please share with a friend, spread the love if you think it's something they could benefit from. If you want the show notes from today, you can get it at mwfmotivation.com, which is also where you can download our free ebook, which is called Hack Your Goals, The Step-by-Step Process to Achieving Success. And if you want to keep in touch with us, you can follow us on Facebook or Instagram.

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