Transcript of 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!

Hey, everyone. Dylan Jameli here today with an extremely exciting announcement. I am now on the Manect app as an expert. That is Patrick Bet David's app, so you can hire me today. You can ask questions about hormones, 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 Manect app, find at Dylan Jameli. 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 Manect 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 Mitapier. 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?

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. Com/dylan to get started. That's timeline. Com/dylan. I assure you, your cells will thank you. All right, everybody. Welcome back to the Dylan Jameli 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 an honor to have you on here. 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 background and the story. I normally read these scripted intros and everything, but I don't think you're that guy.

I really don't come to that conclusion with you. I'm just going to say this. He does 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. Without further ado, my friend John Gaffard.

What's up, man? Glad to be here.

Thanks for coming, brother.

Glad we can make this happen.

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. We were talking about that. How'd you grow up? 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. What do you talk about it? Fill us in.

Well, I think Somebody asked me on one of these things the other day. I said, What's your biggest regret? If I had to put it down to one thing, it's simply that I didn't take control of the trajectory of my own life faster. Where would I be if I would have just drifted through my whole 20s like so many people I do. My back story is, so obviously, kid of the 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? You got to be a little kid in the '70s. You got to be a teenager in the '80s, and then you got to be in your '20s and the '90s. What a cool time to become of age, right? But child of a divorce parents as so many kids were, mom had to work, so you're raising yourself. Essentially, you come home, nobody's there. Yeah, you always just look for people to take care of you. I think that became this weird cycle in my life. It went from my mom taking care of me, think that my dad was always going to save me if I got in trouble.

Then I hit my 20s to glomming on to girlfriends that I was dating. Like, Oh, we've been dating for a month. Oh, I should move in with you. That's what we should do. There was always somebody that was going to take care of me. 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 success.

It's wild how that works. We have a similar type of thing. 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 going to get me out of trouble. Nothing's going to happen to me. I'm invincible until it does. Then what? 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, it's funny. I was just asked earlier, somebody said, why don't people take control of their lives more? Why don't they have that radical accountability into this? It's because there's comfort in the failure. There's solace there. I love there's a movie called Two for the Money. You know the movie I'm talking about? One of my favorites. For those of you who haven't seen it, it's an Al Pacino movie. It's about they run a gambling operation. At one point, Al Pacino goes to this gambler's Anonymous meeting. And he says to the people in the Gamble Anonymous meeting, he goes, You're not addicted to gambling. You're addicted to losing because 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 of 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 That becomes success to you. And until you reset what success really looks like, you're always going to be stuck on hamster wheel.

Dude, that is the perfect description because 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. There's something internally where you don't want to lose on the surface, but you do inside. There's a rush there, you almost expect it. I lived that. I worked for a bookie. That movie is one of my favorite movies ever. At that time, it was the services, the tout services to go pay for the pics were always bullshit.

Flip a coin.

Yeah, that's all it was. What a good comparison. You go through all of this, all of this happens to you. What was it for you that got you to say, Okay, time to take control? Just describe that moment, how it happened.

Well, I'll say it was a gradual process. 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. 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. That 90 days I spent in the stories in the book, the 90 days I spent on the car lot learning how to sell, I did PhD in sales. But 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. I was still doing okay, and there's still some other stories of things that happened. 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.

And that was probably the first time I had 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 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. 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 this. And that That was probably the biggest catalyst. If I had to pick one catalyst moment in my life, it'd be that one.

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 put God first and changed my whole mentality on everything because I was so pro Dylan, and now I'm like Dylan last. I guess for me, 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 doing your own and leading it that way. But for you, when getting onto the apprentice, how did you even get into that scenario to get on there?

Well, okay. First of all, I do realize that it's 20 years now. I'm talking about this. It's like talking about how many touch downs you scored a polk eye. But it is an important part of the story, right? Because 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. The story goes, I didn't want to try out for the apprentice. My sister did. She's like, Let's go to this open call. I 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. You go to LA, and during that week, you're staying in a hotel, you're sequestered in 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, and there's one person at every table. It's very strange because they want the first time you to meet to be on the show. As the We're just going along, you're taking psychology tests and personality tests, IQ tests, and doing interviews.

The room is dwindling, and I can see the room getting smaller. There's less people at dinner. They're sending people home. It got towards the end of the week, and They came in, they said, Okay, today's the day you're going to meet with Mark Burnet, who was executive producer. We walk upstairs and the doors open into one of those conference room suites, the embassy suites. Mark Burnet is sitting on a couch, and he's got 15 of the NBC brass sitting all around him. I walk in, How are you doing, Mr. Burnet? Just stick my hand out. My name's John Gaffard. Nice to meet you. He's eating M&Ms. He looks at my hand, he doesn't shake my hand. He just places an M&M in my hand. I'm like, Okay, I can be thrown off this or I can just I just rolled with it. I just roll with it. I burst into all my resume stuff on probably embellishing a lot as to why I'd be the perfect employee for Donald Trump. He should hire me in this and that. I'm going through this. He's listening and he's asking questions like, Well, I heard your My friend's about to top you.

I'm like, What? No, but I'm just still giving them the resume. I have a really high EQ, so I know exactly what I've got people when I'm losing. I'm looking around the room and I'm losing. I'm losing the whole room. The room is lost. I'm like, Well, that was a good run. 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. I'm out of here. The PA comes in and says, They want to see you again. I was like, Really? He goes, Yeah, they want to see you I was like, All right, well, hang on, buddy, because if I'm doing this again, I'm doing it my way. I got to hit the minibar. I hit the minibar, 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 Burnet, 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.

I reached in my pocket, I pulled out a bag of M&Ms that I had taken out of the minibar, I threw them in the space, and I walked I didn't let him talk to me. No shit. That's how I got on the show. 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. It was huge. When I went up there the first time, I was going in like it was a job interview. It was like, Here's all my accolades. I was walking resume guy. They weren't hiring, they were casting. I'm like, Okay, I've got 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. That's right. Then I looked at the risk of that. Now the second part of it is risk evaluation. What's the downside? It's zero because I just cooked myself up in that room. I'm dead right now. This is over. I have no downside for this whatsoever.

And what's the potential upside was changing the trajectory of my life by getting this opportunity. And so, yeah, I went for it in that little balls-out M&M rebellion I accomplished both of those things.

You know what? One of the things that I've always tried to convey to people that you just said right there, and I went through this with bodybuilders and people I was training because they have no concept of anything. It's like no concept for tomorrow. 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 what you just said? You had no risk because if you lost, what the hell were you going to lose? You had nothing going in. You had nothing to lose going in, but you had everything to gain. Is that one of the concepts that you try to convey and teach to people?

I do more than that. I've got a GPT that will 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 it's free. You can actually go to get the GPT, I think is still up. Com. Really? I have access to it. Yeah, it's a mathematical formula like anything else. The truth is in the math is what I always say. When I look at any situation, right down the middle, like zero to five, zero is complete catastrophe, which is a total loss, either reputationally, financially, whatever it is, it is a disaster. Ten is an absolute home run, smoked it out of the park. I look at the downside first, and I say, Okay, based on all the information that I have, that I can extrapolate about this, all the analysis that I can do about this particular thing, what is the probability? What is the worst thing that can happen? Where does that rank on the five to zero? Let's call it a three, is the worst that can happen. Okay. Well, what is the probability that all of the bad stuff would happen to make that happen?

Well, if everything went wrong, literally, if all of this stuff happened, it's probably a 70% chance of all of that happens. I have a 70% chance to get into a three. That 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. 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 10% chance that all of that's going to get me to a 10. Then I just plug that number in the math, and if it comes out north of 50% in the middle, comes out north of five, I move forward. If it comes out below five, I stop. 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.

I feel like, especially with sales or just certain things. There are certain things you just can't teach. You can give somebody the tools, but you got to have a certain something inside of you to do it. Why do you feel about that? How do you overcome somebody that wants to do sales that maybe doesn't... You know what I mean? They weren't born with the way to speak to people and do it. Well, okay.

You got to teach people where they are. I'm a real big fan of the diss test, especially when I hire salespeople. I want to see where I'm working with. For those of you who listen to this, if you've never taken that personality test, it's for you. Anywhere online, you can take it. It really gages you in four different things. It gages you in 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. There's nothing wrong with these traits. Nobody gets it all. You get a little bit. The I is influence, which 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 introverted. 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... I need to understand exactly how much money coming in every month. I can't fly without a net. Low S is like, you're no risk aversion. You're like, Hey, man, let's just go for it.

Then your C is your conscientiousness, which means people with high C have every T is crossed, every I is dotted. The people with low C are close enough. The good news is, is nobody gets it all. Me personally, I'm 99% D, 99% I. I have very little risk aversion, and I'm very much close enough. I understand that. I've got to backfill my deficiencies with quality people that handle all the minutiae that I don't. But if you're listening to this and you're thinking, Okay, salespeople. High D, high I, less than 2% of the population has that. That's like Michael Jordan level basketball ability. That's who you are. You're LeBron James as far as raw ability in sales. If you have that disk, you need to get in sales today if you're not in it. But if you were lacking in one of those other places, for example, people that have a high S, I find getting into the sales positions, those are the people, high S, high C people that are like, Well, I need to understand every single scenario before I make the first call. What happens if they do this? What happens if they do that?

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. Once you understand you're just programmed to think that, but it doesn't have to be that way, you can overcome that. People that are low I, that have a lower I, that are a little scared of people, normally are much higher in the S or the C So giving them really good scripts, and I don't mean checker scripts, where it's like you say that. I'm talking about chest scripts, where 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, and 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 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 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, I don't care if you're the biggest introvert in the world. If you're making sales calls because you're trying to pay for your kid's college education so they can walk off the stage with no debt, you're not thinking about your fear of talking to the next person. You're thinking about your daughter walking on that stage. That's what you're thinking about. You've got to appeal to something higher within yourself that can overcome those sometimes personality type deficiencies.

I 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. I didn't. If I'm being honest, I would get it and then I would be like, Man, I got all this. What am I doing? I'm going to just buy a bunch of shit. I went and bought out the whole Gucci store. The first time I made six figures in a month because I was 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. Then you know what happened? One of the businesses, it got shut down. Then I'm sitting there going, What the hell just happened? Then you're screwed, right? No plan, no nothing. I said, That will never happen again. Then when we bought our new house, 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, for this, for that. I think sometimes you got to learn a hard-ass lesson.

I think what people realize, especially when they're first having that first run to success, is the finish The timeline 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. You look back at those moments. I always tell people, like joining a fraternity for me. When I join my fraternity as a pledge, like back in the day, you hear about those guys getting kicked off campus now for hazing. That really wasn't happening back when I was a pledge because we were getting hazed like crazy. Yeah, exactly. But the most fun I ever had in my fraternity was that first semester. As a brother, on the other side of that question, it 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. Yeah, there's a sense of a 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 on my end, they said, What did it feel like? I said, It felt amazing for 15 minutes. Then the goal instantaneously changed. It was not like it was a let down. It was like, Okay, now I got it. Now we got to get it out there. That's it. It just changes. I wasn't disappointed. No. 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.

That's it. I hate the word complacency. I despise that word. 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 wherewithal to go, What's next? What can I do next? Because 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? Only one way to Coast, man. That's downhill. That's right. That's it.

I struggle with this so much in people. When I first got out of prison, it's like, What am I What am I going to do? Nobody's going to hire me. I got all the credentials in the world. What am I going to do? I ended up getting a job selling cell phones in Hawaii on the island, local, because they didn't do a background check. For me, it was like, Well, once we hit our quota, that's when we roll, that's when we drive, because that's when we make the real money. I was making all this money selling cell phones, these shitty $20 cell phones on this island thing. Well, I was watching everybody else hit their quota and then Coast and do nothing. It's like, when you hit something and you see you can do it, man, for me, that makes me so hungry. I want to do way more.

Well, okay, let's talk about that because you probably were at a place where, obviously, you went to prison, so your identity got smashed. Yes. Your ego was completely crushed. You came out and you're like, Okay, this is the only opportunity I can get. Rather than look at it as the only opportunity, you're like, I am going to over-excell at this opportunity because it wasn't about proving to your boss or your boss, it was about proving to yourself, you could smash this. That's it. That's what it was. That's it. It's so funny that people get caught up. I have a chapter in my book talking about understanding the rules to the game, what it is. I talk about restaurants in the game and waiters. A lot of people do the same thing. When I used to wait tables, I did the same thing. Here's what it is. How do you make money in a restaurant as a waiter? How do you make money?

What do you do? For me, because I did the same thing you did. How do you do?

How do you make money?

Well, try to turn over as many tables as you can.

But why do people give you money?

Why? Because of the service.

Because they give you impeccable service. Yeah. Impeccable service. What makes up impeccable service? What makes it up?

Well, being on time and checking on their drinks, checking, making sure their food is hot, making sure they are full.

Making sure 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 got you, let's go.

Yeah.

I have a friend named Eric, and he does, so we go out. I think it's amazing. I think it's such a... I posted this and servers were up and arms over. 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 server will be like, Oh, no, it's okay. I'll remember it. He's like, Okay, but if you want it, 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 get it. And it's so funny because it's like there's no points for that. There's no score. Never have I gone home and been like, The memory on that waiter was incredible. Never.

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 pen out.

But here's the thing. But the point being is, because that's ego. It is. But for me, it was like, I'm waiting tables, but I'm better than waiting tables. So I'm going to 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.

I never did that once when I waited.

Oh, I did it constantly.

I never did it. It was stupid. I never wanted to screw anything up.

For whatever reason, I had this I might need that people I didn't know have a higher opinion of me than I had it of myself in that particular moment. Yeah, I get it. It was ridiculous. You're trying to win the wrong game.

You're catering to somebody that doesn't care.

The energy that you're expounding trying to win the wrong game is causing to stay stuck in that. That's right.

I love it now.

It's nuts.

People that have never really been involved in that, they don't get it because I waited tables. It's hard. It's terrible. You get treated pretty bad. There's a lot of gossip and things that go on in the back that you got to deal with. It's not such a glamorous job in terms of when you're done, you got to do all that grunt work. You can get out of there and get checked out. It's a rough job. It's really not great.

It's a hard job. But how many instances, other instances in life, I use that as an example. I'm not picking on servers, but how many other times in life are you trying to win the wrong game?

Always.

People do it all the time. It's crazy with doing things like you said, you're buying all of that stuff at Gucci, 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 tough. When in reality, it's like you would have been better off to take that money and buy doors, and then you don't give a shit what people think about. Exactly.

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. Then it made me take a hard look in the mirror at myself and go, Who are you living for?

Brother, you take it like you're talking about a Gucci store. I bought a damn jet. We bought it as a business, so allegedly, it was a business. But man, what a massive colossal mistake that was. Oh, I'm sure. Or not just because of the expense that went with it. We ended up selling it for a profit, thank God. But the image, that did not jive with my image about who I am in the workplace to the people that look at me. My reputation in my market for what I do is all of a sudden like, What in the hell does Gaffer have a private jet? Really? He's got a private jet? What is this dude doing? Again, I bought that because that was something I thought I always wanted and I always wanted to have. I didn't need that. We got out of it pretty quickly because I realized, Man, this is not good.

I did that with the most expensive car I ever bought was a Range Rover. It was $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.

I used to get a Range Rover in Vegas. I think they had a picture of me 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 park at all. Really? It was like that scene from League of Their Own where Tom Hanks is shaking and seething with anger, and the poor service manager is like, I don't say I'm really sorry. I was like, I hate this car. I hate this car.

Oh, my gosh.

I've been there.

Okay, so Escaping the Drift. Podcast, book, concept, It's just a concept that you believe in. What does that mean? What is it? And why is it so effective?

Well, again, so many people are living lives that are designed by the whims of other people. The thing about drifting, it's 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 with drift is, and the scary thing about drift is, at all levels, if you're trying to come up, if you've found some success, even high-level people can drift. 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. They haven't decided who they want to be. They don't have... I I'll go into a room full of high performers in the real estate industry, high performers. 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. I'm like, Great. Most of you guys are, I call it, failing successfully. Because what could you be? 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. Then three is the frequency of execution of which they execute that plan. 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.

Yeah, I know. Why is that?

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? Because of the choices that you made? I talk about in the book, people would rather, when they're drowning, grab a brick than a life wrap. I know. And it's like, what do you mean? What do you mean by that? It's like, okay, let's take somebody that ruined their credit. I can say this because I ruined mine like it was an Olympic sport in my early 20th. But you got somebody that ruins their credit, and then Okay, so let's chase this down the rabbit hole a bit. Their credit is ruined. They want a new car. They go get a new car with a 26% interest rate. They can't afford the payment. And so the repo man takes the car. When in reality, that's grabbing a brick. When in reality, what you should have said was, 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. I'm going to challenge and have it removed.

I'm going to get with the credit repair service. I'm going to pay off the debt I 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 hiring 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 earned that rate. 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 directions to somewhere, and you start in the parking garage where your phone can't link up to the satellite. It can't start to give you directions to get to where you want to go until knows where it is. The only way to know where you are is to be completely honest with what you were responsible for to get you there.

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 all because of what you did, but you can fix it. 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 reason's an excuse is they all correlate most of the time. 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.

I think that idea, that concept permeates so much through our society. 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. I got a review from Publishers Weekly, and it was not kind. Keep in mind, why is the guy trying to sell a book telling you got a bad review? I'm going to tell you why in a minute, because it's very, very important. I love this bad review. 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. I thought to myself, You bet your ass I did.

Exactly.

If you really believe that there is some force pressure situation 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 made me upset that it didn't turn them around, but I guess some people aren't savable. But yeah, 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 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 business being anywhere near, based on where they started. I came to this country at 26, did not speak English at all, had $5 in my pocket, and now I own a thousand doors. What about the myriad systematic issues that didn't make that happen. This is a person who decided all that bullshit doesn't matter. I'm going to bootstrap myself up. I'm going to make it happen for me.

No one is coming to save me.

That's it. Everybody now has a built an excuse somehow. 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.

I think also COVID did a number 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 burned a lot of people. I think even on a subconscious level, a lot of people have not recovered from that. Again, not to harp on restaurants, but in Vegas, we have the best ones in the world. It used to be you could go to any restaurant, and just at the end of it, it was like, Man, that was an exceptional service. 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. 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 floating through this apathy that's out there. Here's the real problem with 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. Did you see that thing? Dude, 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 aware, and kill you at some point. I don't know. But we're here, man. I know.

We're here.

So 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 current plan A is, or you're going to have a massive issue.

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 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 it was for two years. All these fast food places are paying $20, $25 an hour all of a sudden just to get anybody.

We were laughing It was my wife used to say, Is there some secret money club that we're not members of? Or were you just going to get free? What are we doing wrong? Yeah, I get that. I think the problem with, especially like you just said, some of those low-hanging jobs that 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 and open for breakfast, and now you've got 20 hours worth of shifts you got to fill or whatever it is. But still, I think there's certain jobs that just don't create a lot of value and are going through the motions. Those are the ones getting automated.

More and more kiosks, more and more stuff. I think What is it? They have a... Was it a Water burger or a 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. That's a whole other time. Yeah, that's a whole other thing. That's one of those.

Everything has just progressively getting to the point where it's dangerous for a lot of reasons. Between the foods, the additives, but being reliant on machines and machinery and no human interaction, it's really trending in a bad direction. I mean, you can buy a house over text messages. The realtors half the time don't even want to talk to you on the phone. I make everybody talk to me on the phone. Yeah, that's crazy. I don't do that. I don't do any business by text.

I hate that. One of the things we teach our people is you're always trying to elevate communication. If somebody sends you an email or a text, you got to get on the phone with them. Always. At no point, 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. You don't even know if you're talking to a person or not, anyway. You have to get them on the phone and 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 what you talked about, so you become impossible to misunderstand. That's right. Because there's nothing worse with a client you're dealing with than when they call and say, Wait a second, you said this, you said that. It's like, Well, hang on a second. Refer back to the email on November 10th, and you'll see what we talked about, and it diffuses it instantly. Because the prize for winning an argument with a client is losing a client.

Exactly. That's the prize. It is. That's the prize.

It's true. I do a lot of stuff like you said. I make everybody talk to me. I leave voice notes. I do 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.

Have you ever seen that Key and Feel sketch where it's like, Do you even want to hang out today or not? It's like, Do you even want to hang out? This dude, he goes, It goes back and forth. That's completely how it is.

I hate that because everything gets lost in translation.

Yeah, you can't.

I always want to see. When I have a meeting or something, I always actually go into any business to go share 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. If I'm pitching you to bring me on board, which I do with the companies that want to bring me in, I'll sit there and record, and my wife will be like, Are you making another one, hon? I send a full visual. You're going to 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 want to see that.

Well, I'm a full big believer in the bomb bomb software, the video software. 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. That's right. So once a week. But rather than send that email, for us, it's a video email of us explaining the comp, showing the stuff, explaining everything, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, Okay, cool. If you have any other questions, please call me But at least my client gets to see me every week, and then if they're busy, they don't have to call me back. They're just like, Thanks. But if they have a question, they can call us back. But it's all about relaying information, especially if it's bad news in context.

Yeah, I love it. So for But you, on top of the businesses that you have, do you do teaching and courses? Do you motivate? What do you do?

That's the thing about the real estate company. We got 585 agents that work for us, and they're all producing. I 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. It's mutual. If you're not doing anything and you're trying, we'll get behind you and fix that. But in Vegas, so often it's like, Oh, I took a job at the win. 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 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're always a speaker. The crowd just gets bigger. You're always doing the same thing. I can tell you, 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. Yeah, I love that. I talk to people all the time because there's agents who are like, I want to start a real estate team.

I'm always like, Okay, let me ask you a couple of questions. The first one is why. It's normally some version of leverage or trying to scale or get bigger. I can't grow beyond my current confines. My next question is, okay, cool, and this is the most important one. Are you willing to train your future competitor?

Good question.

Some people are like, Well, I don't know about that. No. 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 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. I've been at it so long on Vegas. 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, constantly. I don't hold back because I think 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. Escaping the Diff, that's my whole playbook. But if I go head to head with you on the field, I'll still beat you.

You don't see Deion Sanders worried about training the next quarterback, and that dude's got half a foot now.

I was going to say, the Belichick tree, right? Every single coach, they always say, Well, it comes from a certain tree of where they fell out, and then how it works it may. But generally, he used to always beat his coaches. If you think back, they pretty hard.

Tom braided, in retrospect, no. Tom braided might have had something to do with it.

I think he had everything to do with it. It's just... Yeah, that's another one. No, I would always give him the credit.

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.

I think he's doing okay. I think he's doing okay, aside from them getting smoked every week. I don't think he cares. I don't think he does either. I really don't. No, that's awesome, man. No, but you're right. I mean, that was a really 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. As you said, that you're still going to win if it came down to it.

If you're somebody out there that's a little lost and 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. 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. A huge part of 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 a great ability in. If they take a look at somebody, 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 So they got to earn that.

And they got to show that they're worthy of that type of a deal. My friend Ari Rastegar, they call him the Oracle of Austin. He lives in Austin. He's amazing, amazing real estate dude. Massive portfolio. I think it's $8 billion portfolio they built in four years. Crazy and really good. But his mentor in New York, how he got him was, he met this guy who was a huge investment banker in New York, but he was very young. And he just said, I just want to walk you. All I want to do is walk with you from your your apartment to your house or to where you work. Because the guy walked every day. Or he lived in Midtown 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: 00 and walk you back. And some days he would be there, and some days he would not. And I never said Are you going to be here tomorrow? Or he said, Are you going to be? Or he just was always there. 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 willing to do to show that you are? How many people, like I talk about, don't be an asshole in the book, which I loathe assholes. When you're an asshole, that's a person who literally says, Hey, I had this problem. You go, Oh, my God. I've had the exact same problem. This is exactly from A to Z how to fix it, and then they go do the exact opposite.

I thought you said asshole, and it falls right in line. Yeah.

It's cool. It's what it is. You're asking that you do the exact opposite. Yeah, you've got to get people Getting to the next level, escaping the drift, getting from where you are now to where you are, it's not a solid mission. It's got to be a tribal mission, and it's up to you to find your tribe. Nobody's going to come knock on your door and go, Today is the day I'm going to start mentoring you on how to do this. Today is the day we're going to start talking about how to invest in real estate today. Today is the day we're going to teach you some sales skills so you can elevate the amount of money you make. You've got to go seek that out.

This entire concept in this movement, in this mindset, in this book, this whole escaping the Drift, do you quantify that as to being your life's journey that you came up with this? Is that how it is for you?

Yeah. I did so many cool things in my early 20s, but I didn't have any wealth and I didn't have any money. There were times, even my cool jobs, that I was working 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 underneath me because I just became expendable. All of a sudden, my My complete ego was crushed and my identity was out the door. I lived in this book. I mean, the stories that are in it are real stories from my life and the lessons that I've learned. I love when you go to somebody's office and they have tons of 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, 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 $100,000 bottle of vitamins that sits on my desk and people are like, I just made $100,000. I'm like, Well, here's the story.

Here's what I learned. I have a script from David Phlebot that sits on my wall that I have framed. What did you learn from that? It's all about learning from those failures. I've taken some big swings and taken some big falls. 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 a hyperbole. It's a workbook. But if you do the work, it will move the needle in your life.

You're the type of guy that I like to listen to and that I trust because you're openly honest to admit every mistake you made, how to fix it. 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. You I get these lecturers and these people that nobody will listen to. Hids won't listen to, nobody trusts, everybody wants to just shut off. I could listen to you all day because I know that it's real, and I'm quantifying it to things I went through, but we I hate this. You know how people will say 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. I hate that shit because it's 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 shit.

Again, radical honesty, being honest about where you are. Somebody asked me, What do I want to be known for? What do I want to be known for? I didn't even think about it. Two words, great father. That was all that came in my mouth. They said, Okay, are you a great father? My response was, I don't think the survey cards go out until they're 25. I think right Now, I got two teenagers. I get mixed reviews depending on the day because I have 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. I don't know.

Hey, it's a marathon, not a sprint, man. You know what I mean? 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. No.

I always say everybody knows how to get abs, dude, but nobody wants to do the work.

Exactly. It's the maintenance anyway. It's the hard part. It never ends. Because there's always something changing. You got to be able to adapt to something at all times. 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.

A big part of the book is it's not just developing a North Star or finding your why. 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.

Yes. Got to be ready.

Yeah. So many people look at pivoting as quitting. I'm going to quit. But if it's a product and the market is not responding to it, you've got to let it go. 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. It's like, I love this. This should work, so I'm going to 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. Here's this big enterprise piece of software that's incredibly It's relatively expensive. It's used by Coca-Cola, SAP, Ford, all these giant companies. So we were going to go license this software and then bring the abilities of this software to mid-size companies to manage their endpoints. 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 Lake County School that turned into inspection software for fire people, which turned into private jet inspection.

And the company got acquired by a private jet. That had nothing to do with the mission of the original company. But through the course of just listening to the market and picking things up, I'm like, Okay, this is working. It was hard pivots towards this. Kudos to my old partner, Dan Thorpe, for making those pivots and doing it, brother.

Well, that's where that complacency term falls into place again. I know when people do spiritual and they pray, I started to pray for vigilance so that I'm always ready, so that I'm never complacent, that I'm never too comfortable Vigilance, you can relate that in biblical for sure. But I always tell you- That worries me, though. Well, when you think about it, you woke up one day and you got shut down and couldn't leave your house.

But here's the though. Okay, I'm going to tell you why that worries me. 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.

I just want to be ready and prepared.

I genuinely believe that's how the Outline universe works, right? If you pray for, I want to be ready for a fight in all times- That's not what I beat. No, but not really, but in general, but I think the universe is going to serve you up bites.

I just know that there have been times in my life, oftentimes, where I get too damn comfortable. That's my concern that I never want to happen again, is being too damn comfortable because you just got to be ready.

I would change that to, Instead of vigilance, I would probably ask for the grace to be better so I can serve others or serve. That's a good point. That's probably what I'd ask.

Maybe I might re-.

Chris would probably be like, Have I been getting all this stuff smashed in my face because I need to be vigilant? I was like, Yeah, no problem. There you go. Yeah, be vigilant. You're going to go, Oh, vigilant again today. There you go. No problem. Here you go. You did exactly what you need, man. I'm going to give it to you. Because how would you know if it's working? If you don't get stuff to be vigilant about?

Listen, man, I get curveballs seven days a week. My ass is always ready.

I think you get what you ask me. Exactly. Look, you're rising to the occasion, so it's working, but maybe you're putting it on yourself.

I might pray for a little bit of less stress than a rest.

That's it. That's it. Maybe a little bit.

Before we wrap up, just tell me about your podcast a little bit because we haven't even talked about it. No.

Yeah. The podcast has been going for four years. I love it like you do. It gives me the opportunity to have incredible people come through. That's it. Really, it's funny. There's so many times, it's like this. 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 will in, and we'll never even make it to what their core competence is because they'll just happen down some line that they're really successful at. It's crazy. I'm like, Wait, let's go down that road. Like you said, pulling threads, and you just It's like, We're going to get to that. I always find that I've learned so many great lessons coming out of that thing. I'll give an example. My Glazeron, who's a great dude who has a great newsletter called Ford Friday, and has wrote a new book about how to build values. He taught me something that was profound the other day. I'll share it with you. This is not mine. Take it from your memory because it's really... 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, whatever. It's just one thing that doesn't really mean anything. He goes, This is how you really measure your core values and know if they're good. He goes, For example, what's something that drives you nuts? I said, I cannot stand when people are late. There was no hesitation. I'm like, I can't stand when people are late. He goes, Why? Because it shows a total disregard for my time. He goes, Okay, so time is very important to you. I said, It's the most important thing. He says, So what are your core values? It's probably make every moment matter. I was like, I mean, it wasn't until you just said that. But yeah. Because he goes, If the inverse of what your core value is makes your skin crawl, Then it's probably real. If not, it's probably just hyperbole. I learned that in my... I never would have heard that had I not had a conversation with him on my podcast. Every day that comes through, I learn something profound like that. I love it.

Sometimes you just get blown in a way, and you learn so many new things and things you would have never dreamed of learning. That's why I like to do this. I like the conversation because I get to meet people I would have never probably met. I don't know how you feel about this because I don't 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. I might be in a health and fitness category, but we talk about this all day, finance money. Sure. I like to be able to learn about different people, different attitudes, different demeanors, and then different topics. This is so cool because, man, we could probably talk about anything and go on and on. But I think 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 heard between you.

I appreciate that, bro. I knew when I talked to you, I was like, This is my guy. I'm not just saying this because you're not going to 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.

Yeah, they can find me at thejohngafford on all socials, thejon johngaford. Com. You can buy the book anywhere, Amazon, all over the place, Barns & Wilts. When's it released? Comes out November the 11th.

November the 11th, yeah. Let's make sure everybody's watching your show, The Scaped Out Drift podcast. I would highly recommend It's great. Yeah, check my man, John, out. Dude, thanks for coming out here and seeing me. Dude, so glad. It's so awesome. Really appreciate.

Turn to Vegas and sit on mine.

I'd love to. How do you want? I'd love to. Count on it. Yeah, there is. I mean, we're only a few hours away. That's it. I'd be honored. All right, everybody. Well, that wraps up another one. Make sure you check out my man, John Gaffard here. It's been a pleasure. I hope you learned a lot from this, and I really hope that it helped to change different aspects of your life. 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 Moneyfulter. Com. Dylan Jameli and John Gaffard signing off.