Transcript of He Lost $50M and Didn’t Quit: The Mindset That Rebuilt Everything | Ep. 315 with Rod Khleif Founder of Lifetime Cashflow Academy New

So, Rod, it's really great to have you on. I've always wanted to know what it's like to really be out there with Tony Robbins, on tour, doing things, not just experiencing at one time. And I was mentioning to you earlier, so I just came out with a book, and I was at the Bookstore, and I asked the people there, Do you have this book? And they're like, Yes, we have this book by Tony Robbins. Because Because Tony Robbins and I have the same last name. So funny enough, good thing, people think my book was also written by Tony Robbins. So I'm going to play on that. I think that's cool.

I would. He's a billionaire, so yeah, there you go.

Be like the person you want to be. So I love to understand. And you have an incredible story, like losing 50 million, rebuilding, one of the largest podcasts on commercial real estate, sold out events. Take me back to your time with Tony Robbins.

Sure. Well, actually, it's funny. I was working on myself, and I'm a work in progress. We all are. And so I went to one of his events, and I was just blown away candidly. It was in Fort Lauderdale. Went with my brother. And it was an epiphany for me around giving back as well because I saw that he fed families for the holidays, and we can talk about that if you like. But I'll just briefly say in the last 26 years now, I fed 150,000 children for the holidays at-risk kids. So he had a huge impact on my philanthropy. But before then, I was totally focused on Rod. So that was a big impact. And what I found, a lot of people think it's a cult or some other crap like that, but he's the best in the world at emotional mastery. He's the best in the world of relationship mastery. He's best in the world of business mastery. And he teaches all these things. And so I was just blown away. And I signed up for his whole thing. And I was actually with him in Hawaii when 9/11 happened. And that was extraordinary to see his ability to take 3,500 people and have them focused on the positives of what was happening.

By the time we woke up, both towers had fallen. It was extraordinary to see his brilliance at work at that event, and that's when I really saw it. But I kept going to his events every year for literally 11 years in a row because I was working on a different part of me every year. I had this picture where I literally have hundreds of lanyards from his events and other events around my arms, hanging from my arms, around my neck, because I'm always doing that. I feel like if you're not growing, you're dying. If I just went to a boot camp two weeks ago in play at Carmen, I've got two coaches right now. So I believe in that continual education. But I'm on my 11th year of doing the same event that he teaches called Date with Destiny. His head of security is like, dude, why don't you just join the team and you can just come and work with us? And you see behind the stage and all that stuff. And so I did that for eight years until I had a bad car accident. I couldn't do it anymore because you got to stand for a long time.

But I got to see what he does, and I got to see how extraordinary his pitch is. He does a sales pitch, obviously, to sell his courses, and he makes tens of millions of dollars in like 45 minutes. And so that really helped me build what I do in the multifamily space, because, again, he's the best in the world. He uses neuro-loguistic programming. He'll stand on one side of the stage and say, this is our common sense corner. And he anchors that in. He's just brilliant at how he does that. I've been to his resort in Fiji twice. He's a magnificent human being. He's a human being, though. He's not perfect. But again, he's had a huge impact on every area of my life. I mean, my health, I'm 66 years old. I work out every day. My relationships, extraordinary business class that he does called Business Mastery. I got to meet Steve Wend, Tony Shade, the owner of Zappos, unfortunately, is no longer with us. I got to John Paul DiGioria. I mean, these billionaire people that he brings in. And so it was a real treat to be in his presence and be around these luminaries.

What is something? I can imagine that must be really exciting. And I'm glad you clarified the fact that... Because I always wondered, if somebody is going every year, are they just never learning to change? But what you're saying is you go every year because there's a different thing that you're you're focusing on. So then you're really changing that one thing versus trying to change everything, which is nearly impossible. When you-We're always evolving.

Yeah, we're always evolving, right? Always evolving.

Sorry to interrupt it. We're not evolving. We're dying. When you think back to spending that time with him, when you look at the sales, the connection ability, building rapport, was there something that stuck with you since then, that even today that you use?

Well, one thing that I learned partly from him and partly from a story coach is to connect with your audience, you need to be completely vulnerable. So I do a boot camp every month and a half. In the first five minutes, you're going to hear about the worst moment in my life. And so that authenticity, that vulnerability connects you with your audience and helps you and mitigates the salesy component and all that. I think the word, and this is not ego, this is just fact, the word that's used to describe me most often is authentic because I share all the dirty laundry. I mean, to a It's my fault, honestly, everything that's happened to me. People respect that. I'm not taking pictures in front of my Lambo, which I've had, or my Rolls-Royce, which I've had, or my Bentley, which I have. I'm not doing that stupid stuff. I'm real. I think people, and Tony's good at that as well. He talks about coming from nothing and the trials he's gone through and the pain he's gone through. I think that helped connect him.

Well, I've heard that you lost $50 million.

Conservatively, yeah.

Conservatively, maybe more. So I don't know if that was your lowest point, but I love to hear about that moment in your life, because I think people go into business with the fear to lose, right? And obviously, people like yourself who have lost and then regained or rebuilt. And if that also was not the lowest, I'd like to understand what was the lowest on top of that.

Well, the lowest was probably my first divorce, telling my kids we were getting a divorce and hearing my daughter scream no and just that pain of that. That was probably the lowest point. But 50 million sucked. I'm just going to say that, okay? It wasn't fun. I call it seminars, and that's actually from Tony. I think Tony does the same thing. He calls this failure of seminars because if you don't get back up, you don't get the lesson, then it's truly a failure. Otherwise, it's a seminar. I will tell you, it was an expensive freaking seminar. Don't get me wrong, okay? 50 million. But I've built 29 businesses so far in my career, several worth tens of millions of dollars, two right now are. But most were spectacular, flaming seminars. We fail our way to success. I'm going to tell you, if you're listening and you're one of these analytical people that fears failure, don't fear failure. Fear two things, being in the same place you are right now, unless you absolutely love where you are right now a year or two from now, or fear regret. There was this nurse in Australia, Dan, a hospice nurse.

And so she took care of patients. She took care of patients that they're about to die. And she asked them a question. And the question was, do you have any regrets? And she even wrote a book about it. It's like a national best seller, something like the Five Regrets of Dying. You know what the number one regret was? Not living the life I could have lived, living someone else's life not doing what I know I'm capable of. Fear that. Don't fear failure. Again, we fail our way to success. It's only a failure. But I will say this, there are incredible opportunities right now. Incredible opportunities. 10,000 people a day turning 65. They've got businesses they want to sell. There's a ton of opportunity in real estate because a lot of deals have gone south because of the interest rates. With crisis comes opportunity. So you need to select something as a side hustle. Pick what you're going to do to take advantage of what's coming, but don't let it be your identity. It's your vehicle. If losing 50 million would have been my identity, that'd be one of those guys that jumps off buildings like in the great crash or that crypto guy that shot himself in his Lambo a few months back.

They made it their identity. Don't let it be your identity, because if your vehicle fails, you're not a failure. If it's your identity, then obviously, you'll consider yourself a failure. So just as an aside.

I like that. And I'm with you because I've lost as well. And I learned at that moment when really, for me, it was 2020, I said, You know what? I'm going to give myself a personal mission, and I'm going to fit everything into that personal mission. So it could never really be a failure, because if a business fails alongside, that was just the business. I have a personal mission. And shockingly, everything that I've done since then just ugly fits into that versus before it was chasing money, chasing success, chasing titles. For you, I know mindset is massive, and many would say that mindset is way more important than anything else when it comes to success.

Myself included. Myself included, yeah. I think it's 80 to 90 % of your success in anything. Only 10 to 20 % is the real estate stuff I talk about in my boot camps. But I spend time on mindset as well, because that really is 80 to 90 % of it. You've got to actually do it. There's a reason my students now own upwards of 300,000 multifamily units under my tutelage, tons tons of senior housing, tons of self-storage, mobile home parks, industrial flex space. Every commercial asset class you can think of, they own a ton of it. And those 300,000 units, we believe that's what it is. We're counting and we're in the 270 plus range, but we know we're missing a bunch. I mean, that's more than all the other people that do what I do combined. So it's something I'm very proud of. But the reason I believe that they're so successful is because I spend so much time on mindset. You come to my boot camp, the first thing we do is goal setting on steroids, because how do you get anything if you don't know what it is, right? You got to know what it is you want, and more importantly, why you want it.

So that's the first thing we do. And by the way, if you're listening and you're not interested in real estate, go to my link tree, rodslinks. Com. And at the bottom is my goal setting workshop. Here's the thing, Dan, people spend more time planning a freaking birthday party than they do designing their lives. And if you go to Rod's Links, doing your goals is designing your life. If you go to Rod's Links, at the bottom is this workshop. It's about an hour. There's a guide you can download. I'm not going to try to sell be anything. Do it. Have your spouse do it. Have your kids, if they're over 10 years old, do it. Design their lives. You'll leave so motivated you'll be coming out of your skin. So again, that's it. My linktree, rodslinks. Com. But that's the first thing I did when I I lost everything, Dan, was I reassociated with my goals. Because you've got to have goals because you've got to create a burning desire or a hunger. And that's how you push through fear. That's how you push through limiting beliefs, or that's how you get uncomfortable. The comfort zone is a nice warm place, and nothing grows there.

But it starts with goals.

Thinking back to 2008, I remember for myself, I lost the ability to buy a home. I was fired, and I literally lived in a tool shed. I converted a tool shed with a bed, and I lived in there for a year. And I was like, This is horrible. I never want to go back. It wasn't 50 million, but I think a lot of people were in that place. Now, on the flip side, I remember 2010, I started seeing so many opportunities, but I didn't have any cash, nor did I have the know-how to even buy real estate. I wish I did. So what do you suggest? We're there again.

We're there again. I mean, we are there in the commercial multi family space, okay?

The proverbial- How can I play here? How can I do?

You got to get up to speed, okay? Bottom line is get up to speed. Whether you learn from me or somebody else, I've got a virtual boot camp coming up literally in three weeks. I don't know when this is going to air, but then I do another one in five days. And I don't sell anything there. It's two days of training with nothing being sold. Hell, the bonuses are worth thousands of dollars because you get my evaluation software, my document library. But regardless, whether you learn from me or not, get up to speed fast because the deals are coming. I mean, a trillion dollars in debt that's going to be due by the end of this year. A lot of it's already due. My SEC attorney that does syndications, which is how you buy these big apartment complexes through a syndication, he got six new apartment complex foreclosure clients in one day three weeks ago, he was telling me, okay? There's a lot of stuff hitting the fan right now. So I just interviewed a guy on my show, my podcast, that just bought an asset at 40 cents on the dollar. And that's what's out there.

And it's hitting. It's going to keep hitting. And so if there was ever a time to get into this business, it's right now. Warren Buffet's famous quote, because people are fearful right now. It's like, be fearful when others are greedy. It's been a lot of greed these last few years. I'll give you an example I'll example that in a second. But the other side of that quote is be greedy when others are fearful. And there's a lot of fear right now. So be a contrarian investor. I've got an asset. We call them assets. It's an apartment complex in San Antonio, 200 units. It's on a lake. It's beautiful. There's one right next door that's on the same lake. It's 300 units, 300 and a handful. And it's sold for 43 million, I think in either 21 or 22. Okay, 43 million. Bank owns it now. It's down to 28. I'm not even interested unless it gets to 24. 43 to 24. Okay, that's what's out there right now. But the interest rates don't make it viable for me to get that property until it comes down some more or the rates come down. And that's a Let me preface this by saying cash flow is everything.

I don't care what it's sold for. I'm just using that as an example. Cash flow is everything. So focus on cash flow if you're going to invest in real estate and businesses as well, anyway.

We had somebody who's an executive at Raymond James on the show a few days ago, and she said that they are looking at around $80 trillion in wealth transfer in the next 15 to 20 years. It's the largest largest ever, most of it going to millennial Gen Z, which is fascinating. Like you said, from businesses to 401ks, IRAs to homes, all this property from baby boomers that are obviously passing away. What is a syndicate And how does one even get into commercial real estate?

By the way, that's the reason I'm getting into senior housing as well. There's 10,000 people a day turning 65. I think about 9,000 are turning 75. This baby boomer, this generation is insane. It's impacted everything since pampers, diapers to suburbia to now it's going to be senior housing. So I bought my first assisted living facility a few months ago, and I'm gearing up to buy a bunch of them. If you see an apartment building or an office building, or a strip center, or or a big senior housing facility or any commercial real estate, chances are it was purchased in a syndication, meaning somebody pulled a bunch of investors together to buy it. It's not one rich person, okay? It's an operator, which is what my They pull investors together. They've raised hundreds of millions of dollars, so have I. And I know it sounds intimidating as hell. Come to my boot camp and I will demystify it for you because if you hire an SEC attorney like the guy was just talking about. He does all the paperwork and you just dot the I's and cross the T's. And I raised $12 million for my last deal.

And you might say, well, that's you, Rod. Well, my students have raised hundreds of millions of dollars to buy these deals. But that's a syndication. It's a pooling of money. You've got a handful of people that put the deal together, sometimes. Sometimes it's one or two, and they raise money from other people. And then they go out and they buy these big assets. And again, any big commercial building you see, that's how it was taken down. Now, some of these syndications get all the money from big private equity funds or family offices of wealthy people. But the rank and file, the people I teach do it 50 to $100,000 at a time from private investors. To take down these beautiful assets. So that's a syndication.

So how does one then make money from that? So let's say they have this- Sure. They have this. They put it together. You said something about the cash flow. How do you make money, though?

Sure. Well, there's several ways. And of course, that's one of the first things I talk about to get everybody excited when they're on the boot camp. So the first thing is to put one of these things together, you charge an acquisition fee. Investors expect it. And it's anywhere from three to five %. And I mean, to give you an idea, even a small multifamily would be three million dollars. That's 150 grand at a five % acquisition fee. One acquisition fee can change your life. So that's the first thing. Second thing is asset management fees. You're going to charge fees to manage the property. Even if you get a property management company, you have to stay on top of them. So I typically charge two % of the gross collected rent asset management fees. In fact, I just saw my property management company just sent me an email saying she just put like 4,300 in the account from one of the properties. But the name of my podcast is Lifetime Cash Flow, because that's really what you're building. Our business model is like a big version of the bur method that maybe you've heard about. Buy, renovate, refinance, repeat.

Okay, that's the bur method. Buy, renovate, refinance, repeat. See, the beautiful thing about commercial real estate is it's valued based on a multiple of the net income. So if you get that net income up, the value exponentially goes up. I'll give you an extreme example. I have a 296 unit asset in San Antonio, and we had a towing company paint numbers on the parking spaces. Then we told the tenants, the towing company did it for free because they wanted the towing contract. And so they painted them. So we didn't pay for it. And then we told the tenants, Hey, first come, first serve. You can get a parking spot right in front of your unit. We had 100 people take it. Here's the math. So 100 people at $25 is $2,500 a month, right? You annualize it. That's 30,000. At that time, that property was trading for, meaning that's what it would sell for. Trading is the word, the nomenclature, was trading at a four cap, 4 % capitalization rate, okay? That's what it was worth. And it's a little higher than that now, but it was four %. Divide 30,000 by four %. That was a $750,000 instant increase in value.

We didn't even pay for it. Okay? That's an example. And that's the beautiful thing about what we do, is It's through your efforts, you get the rents up, you get the expenses down, you get that NOI, Net Operating Income, up. And it's exponential increase in value. It's extraordinary. I'll give you one more extreme example. I had a 101 unit complex in Dayton, Ohio, Beaver Creek, Ohio, a suburb of Dayton, rich suburb. 101 units, just sold a few months ago. It got destroyed by a tornado. I mean, devastated. Okay, destroyed. All 101 families had to move. Thank God, nobody died. A couple of people had to have surgery. No kids got hurt. Thank God. But we were able to rebuild it, and we got $600 to $650 rent bumps. That was a $10 to $12 million increase in value on 101 units. Okay, I know that's an extreme example. That's my biggest example, actually. But any version of that, that's what you're able to do in this business. Very exciting. You can't do that with residential, like houses or duplexes. Anything under four units or lower is residential, and the value is based on comparable sales.

But five units or higher, it's based on a multiple of the income. And so you can make a lot of money. Taking a shopping center, for example, putting in a big tenant, instant increase in value, getting the rents up on a multifamily property, or on a senior housing facility, or on self-storage. Any increase you get to that income, it to a big value increase. For every dollar in income, it's typically 17 to $20 in increased value.

I was going to ask you, why are you not residential versus commercial? But now it makes total sense. So I I've worked in different states, and I feel like in different states, it gave me the ability to see things of opportunities that I would have never seen because I worked in New Mexico. I never had been to New Mexico before I worked there. Then I started to see opportunities. I always wondered about, how does one find opportunities if you're not physically there all the time? Because I hear all these time, these states upping, Dallas is now, or Austin was the thing, but How did you know Austin was the thing before everyone else?

Well, Austin's hurting right now because they built a lot of stuff. Same as San Antonio where I have two assets- I was doing the example back in the day.

Yeah. Yeah.

San Antonio is hurting as well because they built so many units. It's going to come back. I mean, they're both beautiful towns that are going to continue. They'll bounce back, trust me. But I have assets in seven states, or I did. I've sold some of them off now. And I teach this. I mean, I give you lots of different examples. I give you websites that you go look at to look at demographics. But I I teach this at my two-day boot camp. But you select an area, you select a city, and I tell you what to look for in that city, population, gross income, gross job growth, and no one-horse towns, things like that, an airport with a main carrier. I mean, so many pieces to this. And don't be overwhelmed. How do you eat a whale one bite at a time? And you don't have to know the whole business to do it. See, my business, luckily, is a team sport, okay? And you're not going to do it all by yourself. I bought 2,000 houses by myself. I rented long term. You can do that, but I would never try to get an apartment complex by myself or a decent-sized property.

And so you could be the person that finds the deals. You could be the person that's analytical that underwrites the deals. You could be the person that raises money from investors. You could be the mouthpiece like me. You could be the asset manager that has some construction experience, project management experience, really any management experience. You could do the asset management where you manage the property management company after you buy it. So it's just a lot of different hats you can wear in our business. And I would just tell you, figure out what you love and play to your strengths. Your strengths are your greatest assets. And then you hire a line or partner for your weakness The reason my coaching students are so successful is because most of those 300,000, we believe, deals or units were done between my warriors. They're called my warriors, my students. And so they align with other people that are the yin to their yang. And so that's how it works. In fact, the best partnerships I see are an analytical, introverted person with an extroverted, outgoing person. Because the business is a lot of numbers But it's also building those investor relationships so you can raise the money for these deals.

I remember doing... I've done a few residential homes, and we did Airbnb, which I think will be totally illegal in the US in the next decade.

It's hurting right now. Airbnb is hurting right now. My brother's got some cabins, and he's hurting. But I would tell you, what is doing well is midterm rentals to nurses and things like that, traveling nurses.

Anyway- When you think... I'm really fascinated by all this because I never even thought this was a thing that somebody could just do without having 40 million in the bank.

I've got single moms with three kids that own a thousand units, okay? I'm more than one, okay? Or more than a thousand. I'm not exaggerating. One's a pharmacist. Another one was a school teacher. I mean, these are single moms. I mean, of course, I've got a lot of men as well, primarily men, actually, but I've got a lot of very successful women. I'm sorry I interrupted, but anybody can do this. They just have to want it. I will tell you, The successful students that I have aren't the ones that are the wealthiest. I've had NFL, NBA players, famous actors. I've had people that live in Manhattan and people that live in a town of 2000. It's not money, it's not pedigree, it's not race, it's not education. It's the people that just take massive freaking action and go do it. That's the secret to success. There's no secret other than you just got to go do it. And that's why I think I'm successful is because I push them to actually go do it with the mindset stuff.

I'm wondering If AI, the ability, because obviously we have a lot of LLMs like Claude and ChatGPT and such that can do an immense amount of research, are you finding the ability now that we can do such extreme research open up a lot of opportunities that we wouldn't have had before.

The opportunities are going to be there regardless. However, what that does is allows you to filter them much faster, much easier, and hone in on the ones that make sense. You still have to do that yourself. Ai can do that for you now. It's extraordinary. We're in the midst of evaluating and doing that right now.

Sounds like a lot of opportunities. So when is your next boot camp?

Okay, my next one is March seventh and eighth. It's a weekend, okay? And it's two If you go to Rod's Links, the link is there. It's $47, I believe. It's more than that. Let me know on all my social media is on Rod's Lynx as well. Just DM me. Let me know you saw me on the show. I'll give you that $47 price. And it comes with my deal evaluator software, which does that for you. My document library, I spent tens of thousands of dollars. My finding deals course. I think there's even more than that. If you don't love it on Monday, you tell me you didn't love it, I'll give you your money back. I don't mean like it, I mean love it. I've never done it, but there's a first time. I think about 18,000 people attend my events. And I've never had anybody ask for their money back. So it's first time for everything, I suppose. But you'll leave so motivated you'll be coming out of your skin because I spend time on mindset. I help you create your identity statement that pulls you in to that identity you aspire to be.

The goals are powerful. And of course, you learn the real estate. I mean, we go through, you'll even know how to pick a market. We just asked me about how to evaluate that market, how to find deals, how to evaluate the deals, how to raise all the money you need for your deals, how to syndicate, joint venture, and a whole lot more.

Amazing, Rod. I know. Lifetime Cash Flow Academy. I could tell you you're a very good teacher. You're a very good coach. Thank you. I enjoy the fact that you're not just teaching about something. Like you said, you can have the skills and you can have the knowledge, but if you don't have the mindset, then we know, especially if you're talking about going into business. You could work for anyone. It's pretty easy to work at a job, but it's really, really hard to be a business owner, in my opinion. It's not super easy when it comes to the mindset.

You have to take off the employee hat and put on the entrepreneur hat, bottom line. And if you're an employee, if you're not the leader, the view never changes, right? And I'm going to tell you something else. Ai. Let's talk about AI for a second. I don't know if you heard Elon Musk on Joe Rogan's latest interview. He basically said that every job in front of a computer is pretty much going to be gone within a couple of years. And at programmers, receptionists, administrative assistants, even surgeons. I mean, I've got one of my most successful students is an orthopedic surgeon, dentists. But a lot of these jobs are going to go to robotics. But the fast ones that are going to go are these ones in front of the computer. So if that's you and you're listening, I'm not trying to scare you, but don't sit there with your blinders on, think it's not going to happen because that shoes going to drop. So decide what your vehicle is going to be. Maybe you go buy a business, build a business. Again, 10,000 people a day in turning 65. Many of them have businesses. If you want to do real estate, get your ass to my boot camp.

I promise you'll be glad you came. But whatever it is, decide now. Decide on your side hustle. Start learning it now because it's going to take a while to get up to speed and get comfortable. You got to have confidence, and that confidence won't come until you're competent. Competence, then confidence. So get busy now. Don't wait if that's you. And you know that that shoe could drop. A lot of people are burying their head in the sand. I even program programmersers and IT professionals. I've talked to somebody like, oh, yeah, it's okay. Well, it's not going to be okay when you get that notice that you're out of work. Metta just laid off, I don't know, tens of thousands of people, Amazon. They're on the forefront of this stuff. The rank and file is going to hit pretty soon. And I'm not trying to scare you if you're listening. Just open your eyes to possibility. I like to be prepared and be ready in case that stuff happens. That's all. And I've had to reinvent myself several times. And you may have to, if you're listening, change is scary. You may have to reinvent yourself.

So start with a side hustle, decide what the vehicle is going to be and get going.

Don't wait. I mean, I've been fired more than one time, so I can relate to that. And we've had some incredible AI experts on here that have been doing it for many years. All of them has said basically, most jobs will be eradicated at some point. And I think it's moving way faster than we expect mixed with robotics. It's crazy. 50 % of it. It's crazy. Two years might be eliminated. Who knows?

Elon's Everybody's going to have a freaking robot within two or three years. I mean, he's going to be mass producing these things.

Yeah, we all need new opportunities, but start now versus starting later. But Rod, Cliff, I'm excited to do the boot camp. I can't wait to get started. I've been thinking about commercial real estate for a very long time, but never knew how to get started. So I guess I'll see you in March.

You'll love it. And guys, if you're listening, go to rodslinks. Com. If you're driving, text the word links to 72345, and just bring your A game, okay? Because we're going to pack a lot. Rodslinks.

I love the URL, man. I love that. I'm going to go get danslinks. Com. Rodslinks. Com. Thanks for joining us today, Rod. Thank you so much, too. I learned so much today, and I appreciate that.

Thanks, brother.