← The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #66 Featuring John Gafford! ESCAPING THE DRIFT... Becoming the best YOU, Overcoming Complacency, Never accepting mediocrity, Finding your Purpose, The Journey vs. The Destination and more!
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Hey, everyone. Dylan Gemelli here today with an extremely exciting announcement. I am now on the Minec app as an expert. That is Patrick Bet David's app. So you can hire me today. You can ask me questions about hormones, PE peptides, neuroscience, cardiology, cellular health, finances, faith, religion, whatever it may be. I am there. You can book me for your podcast and you can also apply to be on mine. But go over download the Minecraft app, find Ylan Gemelli. I will answer either by audio, by text, you can get video responses, you can even book a phone call with me. I'm extremely excited to be available to work with all of you and I thank you all for your support. So check me out on today. Today's episode is sponsored by my good friends at Timeline. Timeline is now offering the world's first ever longevity gummies powered by MIT Appear. You've heard me talk about the importance of cellular health and our mitochondria, which is why I have Timeline as my favorite and most trusted sponsor. These are the only clinically proven Urolithin a gummies for strength and healthy aging. We may be living longer lifespans, but are we truly living better lives?
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We.
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What if the key is not just adding years to your life, but life to your years? This all starts at the cellular level. As we age, our mitochondrial health starts to decline. And one of the keys to living longer and healthier is keeping our mitochondria healthy and strong and might appear targets this for us. Take control of your health now and live the life that you not only desire, but you also deserve. As a gift to all my listeners, you can save 20% off today by going to timeline.comdylan to get started. Started. That's timeline.combackslash Dylan, I assure you your cells will thank you. All right, everybody, welcome back to the Dylan Gemelli podcast live on set. Always, always blessed to have guests come in and see me. So first of all, thanks for stopping in and making your way out here. It's. It's an honor to have you on here. I. The more that I've learned about you after I met you and talked to you, I've gained a really deep amount of respect for everything that you do. And we're going to get into the whole backgr story and I normally read these scripted intros and everything, but I don't think you're that kind of guy. I really don't come come to that conclusion with you. I. I'm just going to say this. He does speaking, public speaking. He's got a Brand new book coming out that I am one of the first people to get a hold of. So thank you. My man, Escaping the Drift. His podcast is amazing. It's very, very popular, very well followed, very well talked about. He's an entrepreneur. He's on the Apprentice. He does a lot, and we're going to get into everything. One of the things that I love about this man is the impact that he has on people's lives and the ability to change and help people, and that. That's what you desire, because that falls in line with everything I'm doing, brother. So, without further ado, my friend, John Gafford.
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What's up, man? Glad to be here.
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Thanks for coming, brother.
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Glad we can make this happen.
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I talked about some of the things that you do, but you have a backstory a little bit, and I don't like to do that. Well, we were talking about that. How'd you grow up? Yeah, I don't. I mean, I care about that, but I want to talk about your story, like, your perseverance. That's the stuff I care about. That's the stuff that fires my ass. Like, what do you. What, Talk about it. Fill us in.
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Well, I think, you know, somebody asked me on one of these things the other day. They said, what's your biggest regret?
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Right.
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And if I had to put it down to one thing, it's simply that I didn't take control the trajectory of my own life faster. Like, where would I be if I would have just drifted through my whole 20s, like so many people do? And my backstory is so obviously kid of the, you know, child of the 80s, born in the 70s, grew up in the 80s. First of all, somebody said this the other day. They go, was there a better time ever to be born? Like, you got to be a little kid in the seventies. You got to. You got to be a teenager in the 80s, and then you got to be in your 20s, in the 90s. Like, what a cool time to become of age, right? But, you know, but child of divorced parents, as so many kids were. Mom had to work. So you're raising yourself, essentially. You come home, nobody's there, and. And, yeah, you kind of always just kind of look for people to take care of you. And I think that became this weird cycle in my life. It went from my mom taking care of me, thinking my dad was always going to save me if I got in trouble. Then I hit my 20s, to glomming onto girlfriends that I was dating. Like, oh, we've been dating for, like, A month. Oh, I should move in with you. That's what we should do. Like, there was always somebody that was going to take care of me.
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Right.
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And it wasn't until I realized that I had to start taking care of myself, that I didn't have any type of real transformation and really push forward into any kind of success.
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It's wild how that works. And we have a similar type of thing. I mean, I went to prison, got in trouble, and had to start from scratch. But that interdependency on everybody else, I always was like, well, mom and dad are gonna get me out of trouble.
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Yeah.
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Nothing's gonna happen to me. I'm invincible until it does. Yeah, right. And then what? Yeah, I think that's what happens. I think that's the type of thing that shapes the successful from either the mediocre or not successful is how you handle. Because everybody has a moment. Yeah.
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And it's funny, you know, I was just asked earlier that somebody said, why don't people take control of their lives more? Why don't they have that radical accountability and do this? And it's because there's comfort in the failure. Right. There's solace there. I love. There's a movie called Two for the Money. Right. It's a. Another thing I'm talking about one of my favorites, for those of you who haven't seen. It's an Al Pacino movie with. In part of. It's about. They run a gambling operation. And at one point, Al Pacino goes to this Gambler's Anonymous meeting, and he says to the people in the Gamblers Anonymous meeting, he goes, you're not addicted to gambling. You're addicted to losing. Losing. Cause you never feel more alive than when you just figure out a way to skip by. And what happens to people that are in this perpetual state or this hamster wheel of just existing is they have those moments continually where, oh, my God, I'm paycheck to paycheck. I got to figure it out. The car broke. I got to figure this out. And success starts to look like getting yourself out of these jams that you're perpetually in, that becomes success to you. And until you reset what success really looks like, you're always going to be stuck on hamster wheel.
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Dude. That is like the. The perfect, perfect description. Because I. I do that with people when I'm explaining to them when they're negative or they're stuck, I always tell them it's like a gambler, you. There's something internally where you don't want to lose on the surface, but you do inside.
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It's.
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There's a rush there, and you almost expect it. And. And I lived that. I worked for a bookie, so that movie is one of my favorite movies, like, ever. I mean, and that whole. At that time, it was the. The services, the tout. Services to go pay for the picks. Yeah, we're always bullshit, you know.
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Oh, yeah, flip a coin.
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Yeah. That's all it was. What a good comparison. So, you know, you go through all of this, all of this happens to you. What. What was it for you that got you to say, okay, time to take control? And just describe that moment, how it happened.
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Well, say it was a gradual process. Right. So when I first got out of the bar business, which I had been in for a really long time, the bar and restaurant business, and it was the first time I had ever flown without a net per se. So when I trans, when I transitioned into sales, because somebody told me I should always do that, it was the first time I ever realized that, man, if I'm just really good at something, I have a high skill level, then I can create my own future, create my own income. And that 90 days I spent at the. At the. In the stories, in the book, at the 90 days I spent on the car lot learning how to sell. I did get a PhD in sales. But more. More than that, I started to realize I could rely on myself to do what I wanted. I still wasn't setting the bar high enough. Right. I was still doing okay. And there's still some other stories of things that happen, but it wasn't really until I was on the Apprentice, and not because, yes, it's nationwide TV and all that stuff, it's because it was the first time I'd ever been surrounded by 18 other people that were really getting after it.
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Right.
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And that was probably the first time I had radical. A radical honesty moment with myself. Because I walk in this room and I'm looking at these 18 people that were chosen out of 1.8 million. I was probably in the top five smartest people there. I could figure that out pretty quick. But I was probably in the bottom three net worth or. Or how much money I was making. So I was like, okay, here's this disparity that there's all these people that. I know I'm smarter than them, but they're making so much more money. Yeah, there's a disconnect here. And that disconnect is me. I've got to figure out what's going on with me that's causing us. And that was probably the biggest catalyst. If I had to pick one catalyst moment in my life, it'd be that one.
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All of these times I'm in these moments and I'm like, how in the hell is this person doing better than me? It just doesn't make sense. What is it? For me, it was more spiritual side. It was when I kind of put God first and changed my whole mentality on everything because I was so pro Dylan, and now I'm like Dylan last. And that, I guess for me, that was a lot of it was getting out of that, being full of yourself, being obsessed with what everybody else thinks and what everybody else wants of you and kind of doing your own and leading it that way. I mean, but for you, when getting onto the Apprentice, how did you even get into that scenario to get on there?
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Well, okay, so first of all, I do realize that it's 20 years now, and talking about this is kind of like talking about how many touchdowns you scored a polka dot. But. But it is. It is. It is an important part of the story, right? Because. Yeah. And it's in the book for the very reason of it taught me how to do two things in the moment, which were create value and evaluate risk. So the story goes, you know, I didn't want to try out for the Apprentice. My sister did, and so she's like, let's go to this open call. And it kept going. And they kept calling and kept calling. I kept filling out applications until it got down to the top 50, at which point they said, hey, we're going to have you come to LA for finals. I'm like, cool. So you go to la, and during that week, you're staying in a hotel. You're sequestering your hotel room. All the other 50 candidates are there. You can see them, but you're not talking to anybody. It's like, you go to dinner, there's one person. Every table is very strange because they want the first time you to meet to be on the show. And as the week's going along, you're taking, you know, psychology tests and personality tests and IQ tests and doing interviews, and the room is dwindling, and I can see the room getting smaller. Like there's less people at dinner. Like they're sending people home. So it got towards the end of the week and they. They came and they said, okay, today's the day. You're going to meet with Mark Burnett, who was executive producer. Yeah. And we walk upstairs and the doors open into one of those conference room suites, the Embassy Suites. And Mark Burnett is sitting on a couch, and he's got, like, 15 of the NBC brass people sitting all around him. And walk in. How you doing, Mr. Burnett? Stick my hand out. My name is John Gafford. Nice to meet you. And I. And he looks at. And he's eating M and Ms. Looks at my hand. It doesn't shake my hand. He just places an M and M in my hand, and I'm like, okay, I'd be throwing off this, or I can just roll with it. So I just roll with it, and I burst into, like, all of my resume stuff. I'm probably embellishing a lot as to why I'd be the perfect employee for, you know, Donald Trump, and he should hire me and this and that. I'm going through this, and he's listening, and he's asking questions like, well, I heard your girlfriend's about to dub you. And I'm like, what? And, no, but I'm just still giving them the resume. And I have a really high eq, so I know exactly when I've got people, when I'm losing them, right? And I'm looking around the room and I'm losing. I. I'm. I'm losing the whole room. The room is lost. And I'm like, well, that was a good run. So I go back to my room downstairs and I start packing my bags because I know what's coming. I've seen it happen all week. They're going to put me on a plane and I'm out of here. And the PA comes in and says, they want to see you again. And I was like, really? Yes. Yeah, well, they want to see you again. I was like, all right, well, hang on, buddy. Because if I'm doing this again, I'm doing it my way. So, like, I gotta hit the mini bar. So I hit the mini bar, walk upstairs, get to those double doors, and I kicked them as hard as I could. Bam. Doors hit the wall. I walk in, I look at Burnett, and I said, before you say one more word to me, let me tell you why you should put me on your little television show. Because when you invest in me, you get back a hundred times that you invest. And I reached in my pocket, I pulled out a bag of M and Ms. That I'd taken out of the mini bar, I threw them in a space, and I walked out. I didn't let him talk to me.
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No shit.
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And that's how I got on the show. But. But the reason I tell that story is because such a part of escaping where you are, escaping the drift, as I call it and getting to that next level is understanding how to build value is huge. And when I went up there the first time, I was going in it like it was a job interview.
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Yeah.
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It was like, here's all my accolades and I was walking resume guy. They weren't hiring, they were casting.
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Right.
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So I'm like, okay, I've got to create value for them by creating a moment that's showing them that I could be a dude that might do something crazy on television and create ratings for the show.
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That's right.
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And then I looked at the risk of that. So now the second part of his risk evaluation. So what's the downside? It's zero. Because I just cooked myself up in that room. I'm dead right now. I'm. This is over. So I have no downside for this whatsoever. And what's the potential upside was, you know, changing the trajectory of my life by getting this opportunity. And so, yeah, I went for it in that little balls out Eminem rebellion. Accomplished both of those things.
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You know what? One of the things that I've always tried to convey to people that you just said right there. And, and I went through this with bodybuilders and people I was training because they have no concept of anything. Right. It's like no concept tomorrow. And I'd always do this, just lay me out the risk versus the reward. Just lay it out for me and tell me if it makes sense. How does that equate? Which you just said. Right. You had no risk because if you lost, what the hell were you going to lose? You had nothing going in. Right. You had nothing to lose going in. But you, you had everything to gain.
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Yeah.
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So I mean, is that one of the concepts that you try to convey and teach to people?
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I do more than that. I've got a GPT that'll help you evaluate every risk you have. Really? Yeah. This is how I do it. I mean, it's a mathematical formula, but I built a GPT so you don't. It's free. So you can actually go to get the GPT I think is still up.com and really have access to it. Yeah, It's a mathematical formula like anything else. The truth is in the math is what I always say. So when I look at any situation right down the middle. Right. Like zero to five. Yeah. Zero is complete catastrophe, which is a total loss either reputationally, financially, whatever it is, it Is a disaster.
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Right.
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10 is an absolute home run. Smoked it out of the park. Right. So I look at the downside first, and I say, okay, based on all the information that I have, I can extrapolate about this and all the analysis that I can do about this particular thing. What is the probability that the wor. Like, what is the worst thing that can happen? And where does that rank on the 0 to 0, on the 5 to 0? Let's call it a 3. Is the worst that can happen. Okay, well, what is the probability that if all that all of the bad stuff would happen to make that happen?
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Right.
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Well, if everything went wrong, literally, if all of this stuff happened, probably a 70% chance of all of that happens. I have a 70% chance of getting to a 3. Now looks at the other side of the equation, which is, all right, what's the maximum upside? Let's say it's a home run. It's a 10. So for everything to go right and make that 10 happen, what's the probability that's going to happen? Well, if everything's going right, there's probably a 65% chance that all of that's going to get me to a 10. And I just plug that number in the math, and if it comes out north of 50, 50% of the middle comes out north of 5, I move forward. It comes out below 5, I stop, and I either retweet the plan, readjust to change my odds in my favor, or I walk away. Because some of the best deals I've ever done are the deals I've walked away from.
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I feel like, especially with sales or just certain things, there's certain things you just can't teach. Like, you can give somebody the tools, but you kind of got to have a certain something inside of you to do it. Why do you feel about that? And how do you overcome somebody that wants to do sales that maybe doesn't. You know what I mean?
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Yeah.
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They weren't born with the. The way to speak to people and do it well.
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Okay. So you got to teach people where they are. Yeah. Right. And so I'm a real big fan of, like, the desk test. Especially when I hire salespeople, I want to see what I'm working with. And for those of you, listen to this. If you've never taken that personality test, it's free anywhere online. You can take it. Yeah. And it really gauges you in four different things. It gauges you and how dominant you are. Very, very high. D means you're super. Like, I Want to be in charge. Very low D means you're very passive. Think there's nothing wrong with any straight saber, right? And nobody gets it, all, right? You get a little bit. The I is influenced, which if. If you have a high I, that means you've never met a stranger, you'll talk to anybody. Low I means, hey, man, I'm a little bit of a wallflower. I'm. I'm introverted. It's. It's where I'm at. Then you have the S, which is security. Your need for security. High S would be like, you really need. Like, I need to understand exactly how much money I coming in every month. I can't fly without a net. Low S is like your no risk aversion. Like, you're like, hey, man, let's just go for it. And then your C is your conscientiousness, which means, like, people with high C have like, every T is crossed, every I is dotted. The people with low C are like, close enough, right? And the good news is, is nobody gets it. All, right? So just so me personally, like, I'm 99D, 99I. I have very little risk aversion, and I'm very much close enough. So I understand that. So I've got to backfill my deficiencies with quality people that handle all the. Of the minutia that I don't. Right? But if you're listening to this and you're thinking, okay, salespeople, right? High D, high I, that's like less than 2% of the population has that. That's like Michael Jordan level basketball ability, right? That's who you are. You're LeBron James. As far as raw ability and sales, right? If you have that disc, you need to get in sales today if you're not in it. But if you were lacking in one of those other places, like, for example, people that have a high S, I find getting into the sales positions, those are the people high s. I C, people that are like, well, I need to understand every single scenario before I make the first call.
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Right, right.
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Like, well, I. Well, what happens if they do this? Well, what happens if they do that? What? And, dude, that's okay. You can still get there. But just understand, you've got to understand that you are limiting yourself by believing that way. And once you understand, you're just programmed to think that. But it doesn't have to be that way. You can overcome that. Yeah. People that are low I, that have a lower eye that a little scared of people normally have are much Higher in the S or the C. So giving them really good scripts. And I don't mean like checker scripts where it's like you say this, I'm talking about chess scripts where like most of the scripts that we teach are like, listen, I'm not going to say A to Z. I'm going to tell you all of the pieces to play. Depending on what this person is doing, then you need to play this piece. Or if they do this, you play this piece over here. So it's more like chest and checkers. But if you can get them very, very scripted to the point where they're comfortable, really comfortable going off of those things, they won't have a problem. They can overcome their deficiencies in those personality types. So anybody can do what you want to do. But again, I'm also a firm believer that in part of the book and where it really starts is, you know, having a rat. Having a radical conversation with yourself about honesty, about where you are today, but then establishing the person you want to be or the person you want to become, and then really understanding why you want that. Because that why is a very. It's the most powerful thing in your life. Why you're trying to become this person, why you want to achieve this, why you want to make that amount of money, why you want to do all of these things. If that's not in line and really true to you, you're going to fail. But if it is true, like, I don't care if you're the biggest introvert in the world, if you're making sales calls because you're, you're trying to like, pay for your kids college education so they can walk off the stage with no debt. You're not thinking about your fear of talking to next person. You're thinking about your daughter walking on that stage.
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Right.
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That's what you're thinking about.
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Yeah.
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So you've got to appeal to something higher within yourself that can overcome those sometimes personality type deficiencies.
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You know, I, and I'll relate this to myself and then we can expound on a little bit. I spent so many years making a lot of money, but making it such a priority that I honestly didn't know what I wanted it for. Yeah, I didn't. If I'm being honest. Yeah, I, I would get it and I, and then I would be like, man, I got all this, like, what, what am I doing? I'm gonna just buy a bunch of. Yeah, you know, I went and bought out the whole Gucci store like the first time I made six figures in a month.
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Yeah.
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Because I was like a window shopper most of my life and I didn't know what to do. I had no idea. Instead of paying off houses, paying off cars, putting the money in the savings, I blew it for months. And then you know what happened? One of the businesses, it got shut down. And then I'm sitting there going, what the hell just happened? And then, then you're screwed, right? No plan, no nothing. So I said, that will never happen again.
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No.
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And then when we bought our new house, it was, I told my wife, I said, watch me roll this time because now I learned my lesson. Everything was going into savings. Everything was sitting there ready to pay for our landscaping, for this, for that, this, for that. And I think sometimes you got to learn a hard ass lesson.
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I think what people realize, especially when they're first having that first run to success, is the things the, the finish line is not the point. When you look back, the journey and the process is where the joy is. You've got to fall in love with the process. Yep. You, you look back at those moments. I always tell people like, joining fraternity. For me, when I joined my fraternity as a pledge, like back in the day, you know, you hear about those guys getting kicked off campus now for hazing. That really wasn't happening back when I was a place because we were getting haze like crazy.
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Yeah, exactly.
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But the most fun I ever had in my fraternity was that first semester as a brother. On the other side of the equation wasn't nearly as much fun. It was more fun getting picked on relentlessly because of the brotherhood and the bond you built with the people going through it. So that process was more fun than the actual result. The same is true in most working environments when you're working so hard at something and yeah, there's a sense of accomplishment and a sense of relief. But somebody asked me earlier, they said, what does it feel like? Because that's one of your first copies of the book to come out hard. When I opened that case and I had that book in my hand, they said, what did it feel like? I said, it felt amazing for 15 minutes. And then the goal, and then the goal instantaneously changed. It was not like it was a letdown. It was like, okay, now I got it. Now we got to get it out there.
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That's it.
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It just changes. And it wasn't that I wasn't disappointed. No, I didn't have. But I had no expectation of a feeling of reaching that. I just knew that I've been through this enough to know that the goal was just going to change to the next goal.
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That's. Dude, that's it. So I hate the word complacency. I despise that word. And what I always teach people is, okay, we get there, we celebrate real quick and then what's next? Because getting there is actually the easy part. It's the maintenance, it's the consistency, and then it's having the actual, you know, wherewithal to go. What's next? What can I do next? Because you, if you get complacent, you rest on your laurels and like what you said, celebrate the 20 year ago touchdowns. Where are we going? What's next?
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Only one way to coast, man. That's downhill.
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That's right. That's it. And I struggle with this so much in people. So like when I first got out of prison, it's like, what am I gonna do? Why nobody's gonna hire me. I got all the credentials in the world. What am I gonna do? So I ended up getting a job selling cell phones in Hawaii on the island, local because they didn't do a background check. And for me it was like, well, once we hit, once we hit our quota, that's when we roll, that's when we drive because that's when we make the real money. So I was making all this money selling cell phones, these shitty 20 cell phones on this island thing. Boy, I was watching everybody else hit their quota and then coast and do nothing.
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Yeah.
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And it's like, you know when you hit something and you see you can do it, man, that for me, that makes me so hungry. I want to do way more.
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Well, that's okay, let's talk about that. Because you probably were at a place where obviously you went to prison. So your identity got smashed.
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Yes.
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Your ego was completely crushed. You came out and you're like, okay, this is the only opportunity I can get. So rather than look at it as the only opportunity, you're like, I am going to over excel at this opportunity. Because it wasn't about proving to your boss or anything else. It was ever proving to yourself you could smash this.
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That's it.
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That's what it was.
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That's it.
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And it's so funny that people get caught up. Like I have the. I have a chapter in my book talking about playing the. Playing the. Understanding the rules to the game, what it is. And I talk about, talk about restaurants in the game and waiters and a lot of people do the same thing. When I used to wait Tables. I did the same thing. Here's what it is. Well, how do you make money in a restaurant as a waiter? How do you make money?
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Well, what do you do for me? Because I did the same thing you did.
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No, but how do you do. How do you make money?
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Well, try to turn over as many tables as you can.
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Right. But why do people give you money? Why?
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Because of the service.
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Because they give you. Because you. The impeccable service. Yeah, right. Impeccable service they want. But what's. So, what makes up impeccable service? What makes it up?
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Well, being on time and checking on their drinks. Checking. Making sure their food is hot. Making sure they are full.
- [25:03]
A
Everything comes out right. Yeah. Right. Okay. Right. Notice that. How good their memory is. Ever feed into that equation? No, but yet what so many people that wait tables do is they'll come to the table, no pen, no pad, and they'll say, I gotcha. Let's go.
- [25:19]
B
Yeah.
- [25:20]
A
And I have a friend named Eric, and he does. So we go out. I think it's amazing. And I think it's such a. It's such a people. Like, I posted this, and, like, servers were up in arms over it. But it was a good lesson, because Eric will say this, especially when we're a lot of people. He'll say, listen, I'd rather wait for a second while you grab a pen, because it's really important to me that everything comes out right. And the Pete in the server will be like, oh, no, no, no, it's okay. You know, I'll remember it. He's like, okay, but if you want to. I'm happy to wait a minute. But if you want to go that route, we have an agreement that if anything comes out wrong, I don't have to tip you. I'll wait. And they always go back and kind of get it. And it's so funny because it's like, there's no points for that. There's no score. There's never. Have I gone home and been like, the memory on that waiter was incredible. Never.
- [26:09]
B
You ask my. Because I don't go out to eat a lot. But you ask my wife or my mom, every time they do that and they come up to the table, I'll tell them, I think you should get a pan out.
- [26:18]
A
But here's the thing. But the point being is. Because that's ego.
- [26:21]
B
It is.
- [26:22]
A
But for me. For me, it was like, I'm waiting tables. But I'm better than waiting tables. So I'm gonna do this parlor trick because I Want to impress people that I don't know when all they give a shit about is their food is. Right. That's right.
- [26:35]
B
I never did that once when I waited on.
- [26:37]
A
Oh, I did it constantly.
- [26:38]
B
I never did it. I.
- [26:40]
A
It was stupid.
- [26:40]
B
I never wanted to screw anything up.
- [26:42]
A
Yeah, it was. I just. For. For whatever reason, I had this innate need that people I didn't know have a higher opinion of me than I had of myself in that particular moment.
- [26:51]
B
Yeah.
- [26:51]
A
Ridiculous. I get it. It's. You're. You're. You're trying to win the wrong game.
- [26:54]
B
You're catering to somebody that doesn't care.
- [26:56]
A
And the energy that you're expounding trying to win the wrong game is causing you to stay stuck in that.
- [27:01]
B
That's right. I love it.
- [27:03]
A
It's nuts.
- [27:04]
B
And. And people that have never really been involved in that, they don't get it because, I mean, I waited table. It's hard. It's hard. It's terrible.
- [27:10]
A
Yeah.
- [27:11]
B
And you get. You get treated pretty bad.
- [27:13]
A
Yeah.
- [27:13]
B
There's a lot of gossip and things that go on in the back that you got to deal with.
- [27:17]
A
And.
- [27:18]
B
And it's not such a glamorous job. Like, in terms of when you're done, you got to do all that grunt work to even get out of there and get checked out. And it's. It's a rough job.
- [27:26]
A
Yeah.
- [27:26]
B
It's really not great.
- [27:27]
A
It's. It's a. It's a hard job. But there. But how many instances, like, other instances in life. I use that as an example. Yeah. And I'm not picking. But. But how many other times in life are you, like, trying to win the wrong game?
- [27:39]
B
Always.
- [27:39]
A
People do it all the time. It's crazy with. With doing things like. Like you said, you know, you're buying all of that stuff at Gucci. Was it. Maybe it was for you because you're always a window shopper, but you were really trying to buy it because you thought it was important for what people thought about you. It was going to change the image that other people had about you. So, Tom, when in reality, it's like you would have been better off to take that money and buy doors, and then, you know, then you don't give a shit what people think about you.
- [28:05]
B
Exactly. I. I'm actually thankful that I did it because it actually made me have a deeper appreciation of the money I made later and the value on it. And then it made me take a hard look in the mirror at myself and go, who are you living for?
- [28:18]
A
You know, Brother, brother. You take it like you're talking about a Gucci store. I bought a damn jet, right? And you know, we bought it as a business, but.
- [28:27]
B
Right.
- [28:27]
A
So allegedly it was a business, but, man, what a massive, colossal mistake that was. Oh, I'm sure not just because of the expense that went with it. And we ended up selling it for a profit, thank God. But the image like. Like that did not jive with my image about who I am in the workplace. To the people that. That look at me like. Like my reputation in my market for what I do is all of a sudden, like, what in the hell does Gafford have a private jet? Like, really? He's got private jet? What is this dude doing? Right? Oh, yeah. So, yeah, you've got. And again, I don't. I bought that because that was something I thought I. I always wanted and I always wanted to have, and I didn't need that.
- [29:11]
B
No.
- [29:11]
A
And we got out of it pretty quickly because I realized, man, this is not good.
- [29:16]
B
I did that with the. The most most expensive car I ever bought was a Range rover. Was like $125,000, and it was the worst car I've ever owned in my life. It was the biggest headache and the biggest mistake I ever made.
- [29:27]
A
I used to get a Range Rover in Vegas. I think they had a picture of me on there. My wife had one and literally, I picked it up from. It broke down all the time. I picked it up from service one time and I didn't make it out of the parking lot.
- [29:39]
B
Really.
- [29:40]
A
And it was like that scene from League of Their Own where. Yeah. Where Tom Hanks is, like, shaking and seething with anger. And the poor service manager's like, I don't say it really smart. I hate this car. I hate this.
- [29:52]
B
Oh, my gosh. I've been there. Okay, so escaping the Drift podcast book concept, Right. It's just a concept that you believe in. What. What does that mean? What is it? And why is it so effective?
- [30:06]
A
Well, again, it's. So many people are living lives that are designed by the whims and of other people.
- [30:12]
B
Right.
- [30:13]
A
And the thing about drifting, it's not. You're not stuck. Nobody's stuck. Because if you say you're stuck, it means you're stacked. You're not doing anything. The reason I go adrift is in. The scary thing about drift is at all levels, if you're. If you're trying to come up, if you've found some success, even high level people are. Can drift. And the scary thing is because you're still moving. You feel the movement. You're like, oh, I'm making progress. I'm doing things. But if you're not steering the boat, if you don't have your hand on the rudder deciding where it goes, you're going to look up one day and realize, man, I've drifted so far off. Of course, how did I get over here? How are we here? And the reality of it is for most people, they don't have a North Star by which they're navigating. Yeah. They haven't decided who they want to be. They don't have, you know, I'll go into a room full of high performers in the real estate industry, and I can have high performers. And I'll say, okay, great, all you guys are high performers. How many people have a written business plan or written goals? And maybe 20% of the room will go up? And I'm like, great. Most of you guys are. I call it failing successfully because what could you be? Because. Because really, ultra high performers in any business, in any aspect, in anything, have three things. They have absolute clarity about where they're going. They know where they're starting. They know where they're going. Absolute clarity. Two, they have a succinct written plan that includes a way to get there. And then three is the frequency of execution of which they execute that plan. Yeah, that's really as simple as it is. If you've got those three things, you're going to be ahead of 99% of other people. Because, I mean, most people spend more time planning their vacations than they do their lives.
- [31:50]
B
Yeah, I know, I know. Why is that?
- [31:55]
A
Because planning your life involves self introspection that most people don't want to do. Because, man, doesn't it suck to admit that you are where you are because of you. Yeah, because the choices that you made. You know, I talk about in the book, people would rather when they're, when they're drowning, grab a brick than a life raft. I know. And it's like, what do you mean? What do you mean by that? It's like, okay, let's look. Let's take somebody that ruins their. Ruin their credit. I can say this because I ruined mine like it was an Olympic sport in my early 20s. But you got somebody that ruins their credit and then they're okay, so let's, let's chase this down the rabbit hole a little bit. Their credit's ruined. They want a new car, so they go get a new car with a 26% interest rate. They can't afford the payment.
- [32:41]
B
Right.
- [32:41]
A
And so the repo man takes the car when in reality, that's grabbing a brick.
- [32:45]
B
Yeah.
- [32:46]
A
When in reality. What you should have said was, my credit is. My credit sucks. I can't get a decent loan. I'm going to really, really dedicate the next year of my life to cleaning this up and fixing.
- [32:56]
B
Yeah.
- [32:56]
A
I'm going to challenge and have removed. I'm going to get with the credit repair service. I'm going to pay off the debt. I can. I'm going to get removed what I can. I'm going to get this fixed before I do this. That way you're no longer perpetuating the problem. But that same person that's hiding from the repo man, somehow it's the finance company's fault because they gave them such a crappy rate that they can't afford. No, dude, you earn that rate. And so people just don't want to be honest about where they are. Think about this. We've all gotten our phones out. You're getting like directions to somewhere, and you start in the parking garage where your phone can't link up to the satellite, right? Well, it can't start to give you directions to get to where you want to go until it knows where it is.
- [33:31]
B
Right.
- [33:31]
A
And the only way to know where you are is to be completely honest with what you were responsible for to get you there.
- [33:38]
B
Talk about this all the time. It's the lost art of accountability. Nobody wants to have. One of the other reasons when I became a lot more successful, when I was willing to look in the mirror and go, it's on you. You did this. It's. It's all because of what you did. But you can fix it. And how are you going to fix it? Instead of being in this place of it's, everybody else did this to me, or this happened, or it was. I'm justifying it because it's a reason, it's not an excuse. The reasons, excuses, they all kind of correlate most of the time. And when you start doing that to yourself, you never get ahead. But when you actually look and say, okay, this is every little instant that I did wrong. What can I actually do to fix it? It's all fixable. Right? But so when you tell yourself it's fixable, then you can do it. But most people do what you just said, they just don't want to do it.
- [34:27]
A
Well, and I think that that idea, that concept permeates so much through our society. I gotta, I got. I got A review on the book. And when you write a book and use the publisher, there's a company called Publishers Weekly that reviews the book for buyers. So I got a review from Publishers Weekly, and it was not kind. All right, now keep in mind, why is the guy trying to sell books telling you you got a bad review? I'm gonna tell you why in a minute. Cause it's very, very important. I love this. Bad. I love it because the reason I love it is if you read the review, it says that my advice can come off trite because I do not acknowledge the myriad systemic issues and I present all problems as solvable. Okay? And I thought to myself, you bet your ass I did.
- [35:16]
B
Exactly.
- [35:16]
A
And if you really believe that there is some force, pressure situation that is the limit that makes your problems not solvable, then that is the. You are the problem. You are the problem. And whoever reviewed my book, I guess it kind of made me upset that they didn't turn them around. But I guess some people aren't savable. But yeah. That you are the problem. If you want to believe that, step one is understanding that you can do that. Now I get it. The starting line may be different for different people. I understand that. But how? Why do I have this unwavering belief that you can accomplish anything? Because much like you with your podcast, I'm sure you've had people sit in this spot that have unbelievable levels of success that they have no business being anywhere near based on where they started. Oh, oh. I came to this country. Country at 26, did not speak English at all, had $5 in my pocket, and now I own a thousand doors. Yeah, well, what about the myriad systemic issues that didn't make that happen?
- [36:18]
B
Right.
- [36:19]
A
This is a person decided. None of all that bullshit doesn't matter. Yeah, I'm going to bootstrap myself up. I'm going to make it happen for me. No one is coming to save me.
- [36:27]
B
That's it. Everybody now has a built in excuse somehow. And that's societal. And that's been passed down and it's been promoted. And that's then given people that concept in their head that, well, it's because of X, Y or Z as opposed to, no, maybe I'm just inadequate or wasn't good enough at what I did. Right.
- [36:45]
A
Well, I think also Covid did a number.
- [36:48]
B
It didn't.
- [36:49]
A
On the. On the American public. When you could literally have your entire life upended that way at the whim of the US government the way that it did. I think that that burned a Lot of people. And, and I think even on a subconscious level a lot of people have not recovered from this. That I again, not to harp on restaurants, but in Vegas we have the best ones in the world. And it used to be you could go to any restaurant and just like at the end of it it was like, man, that was exceptional service and the food was amazing. The mater d was great. Everything was amazing because it was just amazing. But now it seems like those experiences stand out and they're fewer and far between because people are going through the motions.
- [37:23]
B
Yeah.
- [37:23]
A
And that's not just a restaurant business. That's in retail, it's in real estate. It's in every business, every interaction you have, people are just kind of floating through this, this kind of apathy that's out there. Yeah. And here's the real problem with that. That, that plus AI that's coming down the pipe. There's going to be a massive issue with people and you've got to do it now. I just saw it, the Neo robot that came out. Yeah. Did you see that thing?
- [37:49]
B
Dude?
- [37:51]
A
For $500 a month you can have a humanoid robot now in your house shipping Q1 that will do all of your chores, never complains, works 24 hours, might wake up, get, you know, aware and kill you at some point, I don't know. But we're here, man. I know we're here. So if you're, if your future is being decided by the whims and the ideas of others, you got to take that back. You at least have got to figure out a plan B from what your plan, current plan A is or you're going to have a massive issue.
- [38:21]
B
I know there was a million people saying the reason for this. I don't actually know. Maybe you do. But it seems to me for, for a while there, nobody wanted to work. Nobody was working. People were desperate to hire people. I don't know how they were getting away with not working. But you know, it was like for two years.
- [38:38]
A
Yeah.
- [38:38]
B
All these fast food places are paying 20, $25 an hour all of a sudden just to get anybody.
- [38:44]
A
Yeah. We were laughing. It was, my wife used to say, is there some like secret money club that we don't, we're not members of or you just go get like, what did I, what are we doing wrong? Yeah, I get that. You know, I think the problem with, especially like you just said, some of those low hanging jobs that are, they were having to pay 20, 25 an hour, I think eliminating kids from the workforce. I think a Lot of these jobs. And the problem is with a lot of those things, and this is just my opinion, no offense to anybody that works at one of these places, but I don't think McDonald's was ever designed to be a job that you had where you supported your family on it. No, it was a job for high school kids to get here. And again, I think McDonald's is at fault for that. When they started being open 24 hours open for breakfast, and now you've got, you know, 20 hours worth of shifts you gotta fill or whatever it is. But I still, I think there's certain jobs that just don't create a lot of value and are going through the motions. That. And those are the ones getting automated.
- [39:42]
B
Yeah.
- [39:42]
A
More and more kiosks.
- [39:43]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [39:43]
A
More and more stuff. I mean, I think. What is it? They have a. Was it a whataburger or Taco Bell where there's no employees here now, really. Which tells you how healthy that food is for you. But there's no humans at all. It just comes out.
- [39:55]
B
That's a whole other time.
- [39:56]
A
Yeah, that's a whole nother thing.
- [39:58]
B
That's one of those. It. Everything has just progressively getting to the point where it's dangerous for a lot of reasons. Right. I mean, but between the foods, the additives, but being reliant on machines and machinery and that, no human interaction, it's really trending in a bad direction. I mean, you know, you can buy a house over text message. The realtors half the time don't even want to talk to you on the phone. I make everybody talk to me on this.
- [40:22]
A
Yeah, that's crazy.
- [40:22]
B
I don't do that. I don't do any business by text.
- [40:25]
A
I, I hate that. Yeah, it's. It's one of the things we teach our people is you're always trying to elevate communication.
- [40:31]
B
Yeah.
- [40:31]
A
Somebody. If somebody sends you an email or text, you got to get on the phone with them. And, and at no point, at no point. Like the two things I teach are, at no point should a deal point or an issue ever be discussed on text ever. Or an email ever. Because there's no context to it.
- [40:46]
B
You don't even know if you're talking to a person or not.
- [40:48]
A
Any. You have to get them on the phone and you have to, you have to be able to deal with emotion because this is a high emotion situation. But also at the end of every conversation, then you send a written follow up as to what you talked about. So you become impossible to misunderstood.
- [41:03]
B
That's Right.
- [41:03]
A
Because there's nothing worse with a client you're dealing with. Then when they call and say, well, wait a second, you said this, you said that. And it's like, well, hang on a second. Refer back to the email on November 10th and you'll see we talked about. And then it diffuses it instantly.
- [41:17]
B
Right.
- [41:17]
A
Because the. The prize for winning an argument with a client is losing a client.
- [41:22]
B
Exactly.
- [41:23]
A
That's the truth.
- [41:24]
B
It is.
- [41:24]
A
That's the prize. It's true.
- [41:26]
B
I do a lot of stuff like you said. I make everybody talk to me. I leave voice notes, I do it in writing. I make it so hard to not understand. Because you can't read someone's tone on text. No. I think sometimes people are being one way and they're being the total opposite.
- [41:39]
A
I've ever seen that Key and Peele sketch where it's like, do you want to. Do you even want to hang out today or not? He's like, do you even want to hang out? This dude. It goes. Yeah, it goes back and forth. It just told it. That's completely how it.
- [41:49]
B
I hate that because that. Everything gets lost in translation.
- [41:51]
A
Yeah, you can't.
- [41:53]
B
I always want to. I want to see, like when I have a meeting or something, I always actually go into any business negotiat or anything. If they want to do this, I send them video emails so they can see exactly how I feel when I'm trying to convey the message. I feel. So if I'm pitching you, you know, to bring me on board with, which I do with the companies that want to bring me in, I'll sit there and record and my wife will be like, making another one, hon. And I send a full visual. Yeah, you're gonna see me looking at you and you can see in my eyes what I mean. And if I'm full of shit or not, which I'm not, if I'm doing that, but I wanna see that.
- [42:31]
A
Well, yeah, I'm a full, full. Big believer in like the Bombbomb software, the video software. And as a good real estate agent, you should send an update to every listing you have once a week. What has all the market data, what you've done, the showing feedback, all of that stuff. Because I always say if a client ever calls and says, what's going on with my listing? You've already failed.
- [42:49]
B
That's right.
- [42:49]
A
So once a week. But rather than send that email, like for us, it's a video email of us explaining the comp, showing the stuff, explaining everything, blah, blah. And it's like, okay, cool. If you have any other questions, please call me back. But at least my client gets to see me every week. And then that they're busy. They don't have to call me back. There's just like, thanks. But if they have a question, they can. They can call us back. But it's all about relaying information, especially if it's bad news in context.
- [43:12]
B
Yeah, I agree. I love it. So for you, on top of the businesses that you have, do you do teaching and courses? Do you motivate? Like, what do you do?
- [43:22]
A
Yeah, I mean, that's the thing about, you know, the real estate company. We've got 585 agents that work for us, and. And they're all producing. And we're one of the. I think I'm the only brokerage in Vegas that actually lets people go if they're not producing. No offense. It's not a bad thing. Yeah, it's mutual. If we could. If you're a zero, if you're not doing anything and you're trying, we'll get behind you and fix that. But in Vegas, as so often, it's like, oh, well, I took a job at the Wind, so I'm not really focused on that right now. Okay, then we're going to invite you not to be part of the company anymore, because we want to be surrounded by people that are focused on what we're doing. But, you know, like, somebody asked me, when did you become a speaker? And it was like, well, if you train salespeople and you lead a sales team, you just. You're always a speaker. The crowd just gets bigger. You're always. You're always doing the same thing. And I can tell you, like, my greatest joy. There's nothing anymore that really I accomplish personally that gives me more joy than seeing the success of the people that we mentor.
- [44:16]
B
Yeah, I love that.
- [44:17]
A
Right? And I talk to people all the time because there's. There's agents are like, I want to start a real estate team. I'm always like, okay, let me ask you a couple questions. The first one is, why? And it's normally some version of leverage or trying to scale or get bigger. I can't grow beyond my current confines. And my next question is, okay, cool. And this is the most important one. Are you willing to train your future competitor?
- [44:40]
B
Good question.
- [44:41]
A
And some people are like, whoa. Well, I don't know. I mean, I don't know about that. No. But, like, because if you're really going to train somebody, if you're really going to do it. You got to give them everything. You can't try to hold back the secret sauce. You've got to teach them everything you know how to do and let the chips fall where they may. They either stay with you because they like your systems and process and it makes their life easier, or they go out on their own and do their own thing. And so many. I've been at it so long in Vegas. I mean, there's other companies that exist from people that started on my team. There's mega teams from people that started on my team. I am constantly training my future competitors. Yeah, constantly. And I don't hold back because I think to what makes a great coach at your heart is two things, is you've got to really want to see other people win. But two, you got to have a little bit of ego to you, which is, I'm going to give you my whole playbook. And escaping the drift, that's my whole playbook. Yeah, but if I go head to head with you on the field, I'll still beat you. Yeah, right. I mean, you don't see Deion Sanders worried about training the next quarterback and that dude's got half a foot.
- [45:41]
B
Now, I was going to say, I mean, the Belichick tree, right? Yeah. I mean, they, every single coach, they always say, well, it comes from a certain tree of.
- [45:49]
A
Yeah.
- [45:49]
B
Of where they fell out and then, you know, however works it may. But generally, you know, he used to always beat his coaches, you know. You know, if you think back. Yeah, they, they pretty hard.
- [45:59]
A
Well, Tom Brady, in retrospect, now, Tom Brady might have had something.
- [46:03]
B
I think he had everything to do with it. It's just. Yeah, yeah, that's another one. No, I would always give him the credit.
- [46:11]
A
He's got, he's got a mid-20s girlfriend and he's like 80 years old. He lives in North Carolina. He's not having a bad life.
- [46:17]
B
I think he's doing okay. I think he's doing okay. Aside from them getting smoked every week.
- [46:21]
A
I don't think he cares.
- [46:22]
B
I don't think he does either. I really don'. No, it's. That's awesome, man. No, but you're right. I mean, that was a really good point that you have to be prepared for that and you have to be willing to do it, but you should be confident in yourself. Like, as you said, that you're still gonna, you're still gonna win. If it came down to it.
- [46:40]
A
If you're somebody out there that's a little. That's a Little lost. And you, you want to find and seek it out. Something I also talk about in the book is how to find a mentor. How to find something. Like my book is a roadmap for how to get you from where you are to where you want to go, which is always the theme of our podcast as well. But you've got to find some people to get involved with you in this. And a huge part of it is finding somebody that's willing to do that for you. But it's not just about asking somebody to be your mentor or asking for help. It's about how you can create value on a two way street. Because people will mentor people that they see great ability in. Yeah. Like if I. They take a look at something, they're like, okay, I see something in this person that has sparked something in them. Because as you get to a certain point, we spend so much time in business or in life striving forward and you get to a point where you want to start really reaching back to pull people forward with you. But they've got to earn that.
- [47:31]
B
Yeah.
- [47:31]
A
And they got to show that they're worthy of that, of that type of a deal. My friend Ari Rastagar, they call him the oracle of Austin. He lives in Austin and he's amazing. Amazing real estate dude. Massive, poor. He has like, I think it's $8 billion portfolio they built in four years. Crazy and really good. But his mentor, New York, how he got him was he met this guy who was a huge investment banker in New York when he was very young. And he just said, I just want to walk you. I all I want to do is walk with you from your apartment to your house or to where you work, because the guy walked every day where he lived in midtown to his, to his office. And Ari would go and he would walk and talk with him and he'd be like, I'll come back at 5 and walk you back. And some days he would be there and some days he would not. He never said, are you going to be here tomorrow? Or he said, we're going to be. Or he just was always there. And it showed that guy, that's how serious he was about getting knowledge from him that he was willing to do that. And I love that story because so many people want to get knowledge from other people. But what are you really, really willing to do to show that you are right? And how many people, like I talk about, don't be an in the book, which are. I loathe. Wonder what an asshole is. That's the person who literally says, hey, I had this problem. And you go, oh, my God. Same exact. I've had the exact same problem. This is exactly from A to Z, how to fix it. And then they go to the exact opposite.
- [48:50]
B
I thought you said. And it. It falls right in line.
- [48:52]
A
Yeah, it's Cole, is what it is you asking that you do the exact audience. So, yeah, you've got to get people, like, getting to the next level, escaping the drift, getting from where you are now to where you are. It's not a solo mission.
- [49:06]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [49:07]
A
It's got to be a. It's got to be a tribal mission. And you. It's up to you to find your tribe. Nobody's going to come knock on your door and go, today's the day I'm gonna start mentoring you on how to do this. Today's the day we're gonna start talking about how to invest in real estate. Today. Today's the day we're gonna teach you some sales skills so you can elevate the amount of money you make. You've got to go seek that out.
- [49:26]
B
This entire concept and this kind of movement in this mindset, in this book, this whole escaping the drift, do you. Do you quantify that as to, like, being your kind of life's journey that you came up with this? Is that kind of how it is for you?
- [49:39]
A
And yeah, I. I mean, I did so many cool things in my early 20s, but I didn't have any wealth and I have any money. Yeah. And there were times, even by cool jobs that I was working, you know, paycheck to paycheck. There were times when my entire identity was wrapped up in the job that I had. And then that job was pulled out from under underneath me because I just became expendable. And all of a sudden, my complete ego was crushed and my identity was out the door. I lived this book. I mean, the stories that are in it are real stories from my life and the lessons that I've learned. You know, I love when you go to somebody's office and they have tons of, like, trophies and awards and plaques and stuff. My office, I'm like a serial killer of my own success. Or I was in my early 20s, so. Because it's filled with trophies of failure is what it is. Because I'd rather look at those things that taught me lessons rather than other things. I have a hundred thousand dollar bottle of vitamins that sits on my desk and people like, how did I just pay $100,000? Like, well, here's the story. Here's what I learned. I have a script from David Flabat that sits on my wall that I have framed. And what you learn from that, and it's all about learning from those failures. And I've taken some big swings and taken some big falls and hopefully through my story and the lessons that I've learned along the way. The book is designed to do one thing for you. It's compressed time. It took me a lot of years to figure this out, a lot of years to figure out these things, to learn these things. If you simply read this stuff and you do the actionable items that are within the book, it's not, it's not hyperbole, it's a workbook. But if you do the work, it will move the needle in your life.
- [51:14]
B
You're the type of guy that I like to listen to and that I trust because you're. You're openly honest to admit every mistake you made, how to fix it.
- [51:21]
A
You.
- [51:21]
B
And it's just a real drawn out, true story as opposed to so many people that try to act perfect and try to act like they did everything right, never made a mistake. And you get these lecturers and these people that nobody will listen to, kids won't listen to, nobody trusts, everybody wants to just shut off. I could listen to you all day because I know, yeah, that it's real. And I'm like. And I'm quantifying it to things I went through, but it. We all.
- [51:45]
A
I don't.
- [51:46]
B
I hate this. The, you know how people will say these, these gatekeepers. How do you get to people? How do you get to people? These people that act like they're so gosh damn special because they got a lot of following or they got a lot of this or they got a lot of that and they don't act human. Yeah, I hate that because it's just not. It's just not accurate. You, me, next person, next person, you make a million dollars. Next person makes 20. They're still human. You're still human. We all go through the same, well.
- [52:11]
A
Again, radical honesty, being honest about where you are. Somebody asked me, you know, what do I want to be known for? Like what? What do I want to be known for? And I didn't even think about it. Two words, great father. That was all that came in mouth. And they said, okay, are you a great father? And my response was, I don't think the survey cards go out till they're 25. I think right now I got two teenagers, I get mixed reviews depending on the day because I had two teenagers, so I don't know yet. I like to think that I am. I'm trying every day to get there, but I'm not going to measure success until my 25 year old children look back and say, dad, thanks. You're a great father.
- [52:45]
B
Yeah, right.
- [52:47]
A
I don't know.
- [52:48]
B
Hey, it's a marathon, not a sprint, man. You know what I mean? And that's the thing too. Everybody wants everything right now and they want it to happen right now. And that's just not how it works, man.
- [52:57]
A
No, it's. I always say everybody knows how to get abs, dude. But nobody wants to do the work.
- [53:02]
B
Exactly, exactly. And it's the maintenance anyway. It's the hard part. Like it's. It never ends.
- [53:07]
A
Yeah.
- [53:07]
B
You know, because there's always something changing. You got to be able to adapt to something at all times. And I think adaptability is one of the key points to staying successful a long time is you get stuck in your ways. You're not going anywhere.
- [53:21]
A
Well, a big part of the book is it's not just developing a North Star, finding your why. It's then it then teaches you how to come up with a plan. Right. How to create accountability around that plan. How to measure the success of that plan as it's going. And if the plan is not working, to pivot.
- [53:36]
B
Yes. So gotta be ready.
- [53:39]
A
Yeah. So many people look at pivoting as like quitting. Like I'm gonna quit. But if it's a product and the market is not responding to it, you've gotta let it go. And the biggest problem that a lot of young entrepreneurs have, and I have made this in my life, is they fall too in love with their own stuff.
- [53:54]
B
Yes.
- [53:55]
A
It's like, I love this. This should work. So I'm gonna just write it to the end when they don't listen to the market at all. Great story about that. A tech firm that I was associated with back in mid 2000s, we opened that tech firm designed to do a specific thing. It was, there's this big enterprise piece of software that's incredibly expensive, that's used by Coca Cola, SAP, Ford, all these giant companies. So we're gonna go license this software and then bring the abilities of the software to mid sized companies to manage their endpoints. That's what they. That was it. That was the mission of the company. That's what we had. Three years later, I think that company got sold because of an app that was built on Palm Pilots designed to do inspections for Clay County School board that turned into inspection software for fire people, which turned into private jet inspection and then the company got acquired by a private jet. Nothing to do with the mission of the original company.
- [54:51]
B
Right.
- [54:51]
A
But through the course of just listening to the market and picking things up and like, okay, this is working, it was hard pivots towards those things. So kudos to my old partner Dan Tharp for making those pivots and doing probably well.
- [55:03]
B
That's where that complacency term falls into place again. And when I. A lot I know when people do spiritual and they pray, like I started to pray for vigilance so that I'm always ready, so that I'm never complacent, that I'm never too comfortable, you know, and, and vigilance, you know, you can relate that in biblical for sure. But you know, if I always tell.
- [55:22]
A
That worries me though.
- [55:23]
B
Well, if you, when you think about it, you woke up one day and you got shut down and couldn't leave your house.
- [55:29]
A
But here's the thing though. Okay. I'm going to tell you why that worries me. So if you pray for a vigilance every day, what is God going to give you? He's going to give you things to be vigilant about.
- [55:40]
B
I just want to be ready and prepared.
- [55:42]
A
But I genuinely believe that's how the universe works. Right. So if you pray for. I want to be ready for a fight at all times. That's not what I beat. No. But what I've done. Not really. But, but in general. But I think the universe is going to serve you up fight.
- [55:56]
B
I, I just know that there have been times in my life oftentimes where I get too damn comfortable.
- [56:01]
A
Yeah.
- [56:01]
B
And that's my concern that I never want to happen again is being too damn comfortable because you just gotta be ready.
- [56:07]
A
Yeah. So I, I would, I would change that to I want to get. Instead of vigilance, I would probably ask for the grace to be better so I can serve others or serve.
- [56:18]
B
That's a good point.
- [56:18]
A
That's probably what I'd ask.
- [56:19]
B
Maybe I might re reword my effort.
- [56:23]
A
Probably like have I been getting all this stuff smashed in my face because I need to be village vigilant? I was like, yeah, no problem. There you go. Yeah, be vigilant. Oh, vigilant again today. There you go. No problem. Here you go. Exactly what you need, man. I'm going to give it to you. Because how would you know if it's working? You know, if you don't get stuff to be vigilant about.
- [56:43]
B
I. Listen, man, I get curveballs seven days a week. My ass is always ready.
- [56:49]
A
I think you could get what you asked. Yes, exactly. You're. You're. Look, you're rising to the occasion, so it's working. But maybe you're by yourself.
- [56:58]
B
My pray for a little bit less stress.
- [57:00]
A
And that's it. That's it. Maybe a little bit.
- [57:04]
B
So before we wrap up, just tell me about your podcast a little. Because we haven't even talked about it.
- [57:09]
A
Oh, yeah. So the podcast been going for four years. I love it like you do. It gives me the opportunity to have incredible people come through.
- [57:17]
B
That's it.
- [57:18]
A
And really, it's funny. There's so many. Often so many times kind of like this. I. I love how you do it the same way I don't have written questions. I don't know. I go where the conversation goes, and I have top performers that'll come in and we'll never even make it to what their core competencies, because they'll just happen down some line of like, that they're really successful at. It's crazy that I'm like, wait, whoa, whoa, let's go down. Let's go down that road. Yeah. And like you said, pulling threads, and you just. It's like, we're gonna get to that. And I always find that I've learned so many great lessons coming out of that thing. I'll tell you. I'll give you an example. I Glazer on who's a great dude, has a great newsletter called Ford Friday and wrote a new book about how to build values. And he taught me something that was profound the other day. I'll share it with you. This is not mine. Take it for me, because it's easy. Which was. He was talking about core values with people, and he says, people just like to create core values for themselves because they feel like it's something they read somewhere and they should do. But so often they're just like one word, integrity, you know, whatever. And it's just one thing that doesn't really mean anything. Yeah. He goes, this is how you really measure your core values. And if they're good, he goes, for example, what's something that drives you nuts? And I said, I cannot stand when people are late. There was no hesitation. I'm like, I can't stand when people are late. And he goes, why? Because it shows a total disregard for my time. My time. He goes, okay, so time is very important to you. And it says the most important thing, says one of your Core values is probably. They make every moment matter. And I was like. I mean, it wasn't until you just said that, but. Yeah, because that's. He goes, if the inverse of what your core value is makes your skin crawl, then it's probably real.
- [59:01]
B
Yeah.
- [59:02]
A
If not, it's probably just hyperbole.
- [59:04]
B
That's. That's.
- [59:05]
A
And I learned that I never would have. I never would have heard that had I not had a conversation with him on my podcast. And everybody that comes through, I learned something profound like that. So I love it.
- [59:14]
B
Sometimes you just get blown away and you learn so many new things and things you would have never dreamed of learning. And that's why I like to do this.
- [59:21]
A
Yeah.
- [59:21]
B
I like the conversation because I get to meet people I would have never probably met. And I have. I don't know how you feel about this, and Because I don't know how many different types of people that you interview, but I try to really, as I've gotten older, become super versatile in my knowledge base and my ability to acclimate to situations and talk about anything.
- [59:40]
A
Yeah.
- [59:41]
B
You know, I might be in a health and fitness category, but, like, we. Can we talk about this all day. Finance money.
- [59:46]
A
Sure.
- [59:46]
B
I like to be able to learn about different people, like, different attitudes, different demeanors, and then different topics. And this is so cool because, man, we could. We could probably talk about anything, you know, and go on and on. But I think that's the. That's the beauty of this. That's what people want to hear. I want to tell you something, man. I knew this was going to be fun, and I was tired, and I was like, it's Friday, dude. This was so much more worth it than I would have ever dream.
- [60:11]
A
I appreciate that, bro.
- [60:12]
B
I mean, I knew when I talked you, I was like, this is my kind of guy. But, you know, and I'm not. I'm not just saying this because you're. I don't have to say shit. I don't do this. You're the man, dude. I love you already. And I think this was amazing. And I want more people to know you, what you do, who you are.
- [60:26]
A
Yeah, they can. They can find me at the John Gafford on all socials. Thejohn gafford.com. you can buy the book anywhere, Amazon, all over the place. Barnes. And when's it released? Comes out? November 11th.
- [60:38]
B
November 11th. Yeah. And. And let's make sure everybody's watching your show. Escape Adrift podcast. I would highly recommend it. And, yeah, check my man John out dude. Thanks for coming out here and seeing me, dude.
- [60:50]
A
So glad.
- [60:50]
B
So awesome. Really appreciate the time to Vegas and sit on mine. I'd love you one. I'd love to. Count on it.
- [60:56]
A
Yeah, there's.
- [60:56]
B
I mean, we're only a few hours away.
- [60:58]
A
That's it.
- [60:58]
B
So I'd be honored. All right, everybody. Well, that wraps up another one. Make sure you check out my man John Gafford here. It's been a pleasure. I hope you learned a lot from this, and I really hope that it. It helped to change different aspects of your life, and that's why I have guests like this on here. We had fun, but I think that what we did here was also make a potentially strong impact on everybody. So that wraps up another one. Stay tuned for Moneyborne to come. Dylan Gemelli and John Gafford signing off.