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If you approach a problem from a negative space without gratitude, but with frustration and anger, your ability to problem solve is diminished completely. But if you approach it with a more positive sort of outlook, with more gratitude kind of coming. Through the entire process, all of a sudden additional opportunities and additional answers and solutions open to you cuz your mind is open to ’em as opposed to being closed off.
Cuz you’ve already made up your mind that it’s all bad and it’s not gonna work out. What would your life look like if you could replace all of your working income? With simple and conservative investments that could do it for you. Over the last 13 years, we’ve helped thousands of clients transact over half a billion dollars in simple and conservative real estate transactions, allowing them to begin replacing their work income with real estate investment income.
Each week we’ll be pulling back the curtain on the ins and outs of real time retirement based real estate transactions that will transform your financial future even if you have no real estate experience. This is Replace Your Income with me, Kevin Clayson and Steve Earl. Hey, welcome everybody. To Replace Your Income podcast with Kevin Clayson and me Steve Earl.
Uh, today you’re hearing a little bit of a different voice. I’ve never introduced, uh, the podcast before, but I’m kinda taken over today because I have a special guest that I’m super excited to introduce. He’s somebody that you may or may not know, um, by now, and I’m super excited to have this conversation with him because he’s a good friend of mine.
He’s an, he’s a speaker. He’s just a tremendous all round good guy. And to boot, he knows a little bit about real. And so I’m super excited for the opportunity that I have at this time to introduce you to the one, the only. Kevin Clayson, How are you doing today, Kevin? Oh, hey, Steve. Thanks for having me on the show.
What a, what? A, what a surprise. It’s so good to be here. I can imagine that you’re quite honored to be on this podcast. I, I super honored to be on the Replace Your Income podcast with the Steve Earl, and then I think there’s some other ball, dude, that you do it. So excited on the one and only one of the nation’s leading real estate podcasts replace your income.
What a blessing This. Yes, absolutely. Well, one of the reasons why I’m so excited about this, Kevin, is because one of my favorite holidays of the year is coming up and it’s Thanksgiving. And so, you know, I approached you about maybe me interviewing you because you wrote really quite a, an impactful book, Flip the Gratitude Switch, and I’ve had a copy assigned copy for a few years now, and I know that you know this, but I wanna tell our listeners that, um, that your.
I know that it’s impacted many, many lives, um, not just, you know, here locally, but across the entire United States, and I believe in several dozen countries. And I have to tell you, Kevin, like even my own children, I’ve given them all of this book. They’ve all been impacted in a very positive way, and we talk about it as a family, and it’s been, it’s been phenomenal.
And so I, I just, you know, I have to thank you for. Having been inspired to, you know, to write that book and, and it, it’s made me want to ask you this question, Kevin. So why did you write this book in the first place? Why this subject? And what kinda drove you to do it? I mean, this was a multi-year project for you and you literally took a sabbatical from work.
And you spent and sacrificed time and money and work and the whole thing to make this happen. Tell, tell, tell us. You know, Tell me, tell the listeners a little bit about, you know, how did this come about? Well, thanks Steve and I gotta, you know, listen guys, we’re, we decided to do this topic today because it’s Thanksgiving week and this is something that, you know, it seems like a lot of people talk about gratitude in the month of November.
I like to talk about it every single month because this is a topic that is, 100% transformed my entire life, the entire way I approach life, the way I approach real estate, the way I approach work, the way I approach family. What we’re gonna talk about today has literally shifted the entire trajectory of my life.
And Steve, you just said some really kind things, but let me tell everybody listening, this book would not have seen the Light Day had it not been for Steve. And the reason why I say that is Steve was right. I kind of took a sabbatical from the company to write this book, and I don’t know how many people would’ve been willing, leaders in a company would’ve been willing to take somebody who had some responsibilities like I did and say, Kevin, I know this is important.
I know this. You’re feeling inspired to write this book, Take time. To write the book, you could still come in and use the office, come in and be here, but take the time to write the book. And Steve, I don’t know. I need to interview you one day. I don’t know why you f soft fit to do that, but I, I’ll never be able to say thank you enough because the fact that you gave me that space, Meant that this book was able to be written and see the light of day.
And you’re right, it was a multi-year project and I did, I ne Steve, you know this about me. I never intended to be an author. That was never, I didn’t, I think, you know, I think all of us maybe want to write a book one day. Like it sounds cool, like, hey, it’d be cool if I wrote a book, but I never thought that I would actually do it.
You know, I also think that smart people write books, so how could I write a book? And, but I literally felt compelled. To write this book. And the way it kind of came down is, Steve, we, we had this company and it was growing. And you remember I was traveling all over the country. I was on planes like every week or two and I was traveling.
You know, we had this sales force that was growing at the time. It was a little bit of a different model, even though we were still doing real estate transactions and we had all these people all over the country and I was, you know, on paper, dude, I mean on paper when I was a kid. On paper would’ve been like, I wanna have an awesome job, maybe own a company.
I wanna travel for work and speak and I wanna, and I wanna have a family and a house and a thing and whatever. And on paper everything was there. And uh, but for some reason I wasn’t able to find joy in the middle. Of what on paper was exactly the life that I thought that I wanted when I was younger. And, and you know what’s crazy about that dude is I think that there’s a lot of times when we set expectations for our life and heck, expectations for our real estate.
And, and whether our life or even the real estate meets those expectations or not. If we don’t know how to fundamentally be happy from the inside out, then it never matters how much money is there. It never matters how well the real estate does. It never matters how successful we are on paper or in the, you know, the eyes of the world.
If we can’t find that joy and fulfillment from inside, then no amount of money, no amount of result, no amount of accomplishment will ever fill that hole. It just won’t. And, and I realized that as I’m sitting here living in the middle of a life that I thought was frankly the life that I wanted, and I was tired, I was feeling frustrated.
Uh, you remember Steve, We had, we had hired a guy to run our marketing at the time, and he and I did not see eye to eye. I hated working with him, and it was so rare for me to hate working with someone. Right? But I did, He and I didn’t see Ida. I felt like. Hadn’t. I’d achieved some things, but it wasn’t enough.
Right? We weren’t making enough money as a company. We weren’t doing well enough. I wasn’t, I wasn’t as successful as I wanted to. Wasn’t the right kinda was driving or whatever was this day, was the most pivotal day maybe of my life, and I remember getting in my car. I drove to the office and I, I parked in the parking spot that I usually parked in.
And you remember what the office we were in at the time. I, I would walk down some stairs to kind of get into the basement. Cause that’s where we, you know, it was two levels and you could enter the basement from the outside. And I, I was sitting there looking to those stairs, looking down at the office I was about to walk into.
And Steve, I just, The only thing, the only emotion that was sort of prevalent was, No, I don’t want to. I just didn’t want to. And, and you know what, That was kind of, it wasn’t just that I didn’t wanna go into the office, it was that I just didn’t want to period. I was just done, I was done with all of it. I didn’t really know what that meant.
Like I couldn’t, I couldn’t give you some sort of a tangible definition of what it meant that I was done. Like I. Having thoughts of taking my own life or anything like that. But it was just, for me, it was kind of a rock bottom. And you know, we do this thing as people where we hear that phrase rock bottom.
And we either judge our rock bottom against somebody else’s, or we think we’ve never hit a bottom because maybe we haven’t struggled addiction or some of the things that are sometimes the thoughts that are associated with that phrase, rock bottom. But for me it was a rock bottom because at rock bottom you only have two choices.
You hit the ground and you bounce back. Or you simply give up, and I knew I couldn’t give up, but I knew that something had to. And I was sitting in my car and I was feeling this way, just feeling like I wanted to be done, just feeling like I just, I didn’t know what to do. I was literally, I, I clueless. And it was at that moment that I, and you know, Steve, uh, you know, I have a very strong belief in God and you do too.
I believe it was God that inspired my mind. And gave me one word, and it was a word that I didn’t expect, especially stewing in what I thought was self. Now I know it was my self-imposed misery at the time. I was just stewing in my victimhood and my own misery. I did not think of this word, but the Lord gave it to me and he said, Gratitude.
That’s the word that came into my mind, was gratitude. And my initial thought, dude was, what? How could I possibly be thankful? Like nothing is the way that I wanted. Even though on paper everything looked good. It, it’s still in my mind. It was like, No, gosh, how could I be thankful? And, and I just, I knew that I didn’t know what it looked like, but I had to get outta that car.
I had to walk down to that office and I had to begin a journey. Of figuring out how gratitude could play some kind of a role in my life. I had no idea what it would become. I had no idea the research I would do. I had no idea that I would write a book that has now sold copies, as you indicated, in more than two dozen countries.
I had no idea that it would sell thousands of copies. I thought I was writing the book for me. I had no clue that I’d be able to go and share this message on a. Format like this, or on other podcasts or in schools or at rehab and recovery centers or with church youth groups or in any of the, The scenarios that I’ve been able to share it in, I didn’t know that was coming.
All I knew is I needed to find gratitude in the middle of what I thought was life’s most difficult moments, and that maybe that would change my momentum and change my life and, you know, um, with good reason that it totally. Well, Kevin, I, you know, I have to say, I mean, I’ve known you for, uh, you know, going on 13 plus years now, and, uh, we’ve developed a, a great business relationship and a great personal relationship and, you know, your family means a great deal to me.
And I have literally seen the transformation, you know, of your persona and when you came back to work full time and, and we, you know, had the opportunity to, you know, associate on a very regular basis every day. It’s just, it’s just been. A fairly significant change. You’re al you were always a great guy before, even before you wrote the book, but I do know that you were kinda struggling that way and you, I mean, you’ve come back full force and here’s the, here’s the most impressive thing to me, Kevin, is that you didn’t just write the book.
And then try and sell a few copies, and then you kinda move on. Like this has become, you know, a part of who you’re, and you truly personify and exemplify this concept of gratitude as I’ve watched you, like literally continue to, to travel to many different locations across the country, typically on your own dime to.
Present to schools to teach, you know, our youth about the concept and the power of gratitude. And I even had you come and speak to a youth group that I, I work with and, um, it’s just phenomenal. And so that’s been one of the most amazing things for me to see is you run with. This concept, and not only make it a part of your own personal life, but to help others see the, the power and the influence of, of gratitude in their lives.
Well, thanks man. And you know what, I, I appreciate that so much, Steve, and hearing those words from you means a lot to me, and it, it really has transformed me. I mean, I. You asked just earlier, like, Why did I write the book? Well, I shared with you the whole story of like how I got to the point, but the book, I mean, it still wasn’t on the radar like you.
What ended up happening was I started to do all this research, dude. I’m like, if I’ve gotta find gratitude for me to kind of pull outta this tail spin that I, that I, this. Self-imposed tale spin, like, how do I do that? And so I started to read books and I started to do research and the same thing kept happening.
There was all of these books that were saying, Gratitude is good. You should have an attitude of gratitude, You should be thankful, you should do a gratitude journal. And those were all great thoughts. However, none of them were working for me, and I realized that the missing component, the missing piece, How do I go find gratitude in the middle of the lows?
Not at the peaks, but in the valleys. How do I go when I descended to my low point? When the car gets repossessed, when the job gets lost, when the cancer diagnosis comes through, when the tragedy strikes, when the home gets, were closed on. When the business. When something doesn’t work out the way you wanted, when it seems like you’re at your low point or the worst, is there a way to find gratitude in that moment?
That’s what I needed to find, and it wasn’t out there, It wasn’t in books, and so I had to kind of discover it on my own and. The reason we call the book Flip the Gratitude Switch is what I started to do is I started to just, I, it was actually, I was flipping through a journal of mine that I’d written in.
I love to go hear speakers and I’d heard this one speaker talk about, and I remembered sitting in this moment of like, Okay. I mean, gosh, I need gratitude. I remembered I’d heard this speaker talk about gratitude, so I like went and looked up the notes that I’d written down, but nothing really stood out to me.
Well, fast forward a few months after I’d read books and done research, I went back to that journal and there was one word that I had glossed over when I started my journey, and this one word is what changed everything. And the word was frustration. See, I remembered that this guy had talked. Keep a gratitude journal, but he didn’t just say, Just keep a gratitude journal.
Cuz by the way, if you’re listening guys, let me tell you something. It’s easy to be thankful when things go your way. But what about the times when they don’t see, See being thankful for things that are already awesome. That’s like going to the gym and live and doing bicep curls with a one pound weight.
I mean, it’s, you could do it. It’s better than nothing, but it’s not going to give you the, the kind of life altering shift and change that you’re looking for. But I’m looking at this journal and here’s this word frustration and it says, How do you keep a gratitude journal about a frustration for 21 days or whatever it said?
And I was like, Oh my gosh. First time that that had opened my, my mind to that possibility. So here’s what I started to do. All of a sudden I was like, Maybe it’s not some big philosophical idea. Maybe it’s inside of daily simple. Actions and, and moments. And so what I would do is I would go and like, you know, the guy would cut me off on the freeway.
I mean Steve, I dunno, like I used to be an angry guy. I mean, I remember one time driving to a Utah jazz game with my, at that time, girlfriend, maybe we were engaged early, probably were Melana and we’re driving and this dude cuts me off and I get so fly off the handle furious. That I get outta my car and I go and I walk up to his window and I’m pointing in his window and I’m yelling at him and I’m like, Who is that guy?
Like, I look at that guy now, who I was, and I’m like, this is so far from the choice that I would make today. But I just had like this, this hair trigger, and I was kinda angry. Well, all of a sudden it became, now when I’m on the freeway, if somebody cuts me off instead of flying off the handle and sl and you know, laying on the gas and then getting close and laying on the horn and then using sign language to tell ’em how I feel about.
Maybe what I do instead is I just go, Okay, he just cut me off. I don’t like that. I don’t, That didn’t feel good, but maybe there’s a way to be thankful for this little bit of frustration that I have. And then I would go, could for this, I’d go, didn’t. My car is still in good shape. I’m still headed to wherever I’m going, and you know what?
Maybe he’s in a hurry and he didn’t see me. It would totally change the entire momentum of that moment by just giving my brain this idea and suggestion that when I felt frustrated. I would just ask, Okay, acknowledge that I’m frustrated, and then just go, Why am I frustrated? And then answer the question, what could, what could be thankful of about the thing that I’m now frustrated about?
What, what could I be thankful for about that thing? And what would happen, Steve, is it was like, This light would come on inside me and I started to call it flipping my gratitude switch. And the analogy that I love to compare it to is like if you were to go into a new room you’ve never been in before and there’s all kinds of tears and chairs and tables set up, and you were supposed to navigate from one side of the room to the other and it was pitch black, and you have no idea that what the layout of the room is.
It would be fairly difficult to navigate that room without stubbing a toe, without running into a chair or a table. Well, with, with the simple flip of a switch, the room and the layout itself doesn’t change, but your ability to perceive and navigate it does. And that’s what was happening with me. I’d flip this internal switch and the situation around me didn’t have to change, but the way I now viewed it and my ability to navigate it.
Far greater. And so that’s why I called it flipping the gratitude switch. So we were doing a bunch of trainings at the time, Steve, I was on with our sales team every single week, right? And I was doing these trainings and we were just kinda keeping everybody motivated. And I started to share some of these principles and the response was always the same, Dude, you gotta put that in a book, dude.
You gotta put that in a book. I just kept sharing it. I kept living it more. People kept saying, Dude, you gotta put that in a book. So finally I’m like, Well, maybe the reason God inspired me with the word. Of gratitude was, so I’d go on a journey and discover something that apparently was not already in existence in terms of the research that I did to find it so that I could learn the princip.
Embody the principle and maybe I am supposed to put it in a book. And so I did. I took two years to write the book and uh, and it was an incredible experience. And the best part is once the book was published, it wasn’t like it was an immediate, you know, massive bestseller. I hadn’t come back to done for You real estate.
I was still trying to make it work. I, in the sabbatical trying to make the, the sales of the book work, just trying to kind of like make life work. And the reality was, We’d lost everything We, we’d spent all the money that we had. The book was out into the world now, but it wasn’t like it was an immediate best seller.
And my wife and I went through tremendous financial struggle, and that was just because it wasn’t time for me to come back to dfy. I was still kind of on this walk about journey and, and I had to make it work. I mean, we found ourselves, Steve, I’m not afraid to say it. We found ourselves with a car repos.
Our home and foreclosure and I was trying to just work an hourly job for an hourly wage cuz we’d sold off the real estate that we’d had. Like we just, I just didn’t have anything left, right. It was just how do we make this work? And the book got published in August of 2016. By November of 2016, I was at our kitchen table with my wife talking to a representative from our church so that we could get a small food order.
So we had, we had food for Thanksgiving. So that we can maybe have a present or two for the kids. That Christmas, it was the leanest Christmas and Thanksgiving ever, and it was the most profound because even in the middle of this, what some may perceive as this tremendous struggle, I mean it wouldn’t it have been pretty easy for me to just shake my fist at the heavens and say, God, you told me to write this book.
You told, you gave me this word, but now I’m sitting here stewing again in misery, and now I don’t even have financial ability to put food on the table for my family. Like it was this insane turn of events. But what was crazy, Steve is in the middle of that. I found more gratitude. More ability to find joy in the middle of this crazy circumstance.
I mean, it was my, my brain had a new chemistry. My, my overall disposition to life and difficulty had shifted dramatically. And it turned me into someone new. It turned me into someone that I was like, Well, wait a second, I’m just gonna do whatever it takes. So how do I learn marketing? How do I get the book into the world?
What can I do to just make it work? And it was during that journey that you and I, we stayed in touch that whole time. And then the time came for you and I, where you looked at me and you said, Listen, you know, we’re, we’re, we’re not working with some of the partners we’ve worked with in the past. We need you back here at the company.
You’re this entirely new human. Let’s do this thing and do it right. And Steve, we got back together full time. In 2017, about a year of after I published the book, it was a year full of turmoil and struggle, but it was also one of the most joyous years of my life. And then now you and I have been able to, to do this thing here at dfy, and it’s transformed the company.
It’s trans. Form the customer experience. It’s transformed your relationship and my relationship with each other, with our customers, with our families. And now we’ve got this message in this book and we’ve got this company and there’s all these amazing things that are happening. And it all came because at that moment of rock bottom, instead of giving up.
You gave me the space to make a different choice, to do the research, to write the book, to get back to who I was always meant to be. And it was the simple, infinite, amazing power of gratitude, especially in the middle of life’s most difficult circumstances and frustrations that totally shifted who I was as a human.
That has now shifted every aspect of our life’s, my life, my wife’s life, my kids’ lives, and I know it’s had an impact on you. And that is because you are just this incredible man who said, Look, I. You went through it. Let me see if I, And Steve, you have had tremendous difficulties and struggles in your life that you rarely talk about, but you are one of the most noble, humble, incredible souls on the, on the face of the earth.
And I know that there are principles like this. Simple one that God delivered to me that have shifted who you are and how you interact with difficulty and struggle. And you are this incredible ambassador for good in your life because of simple ideas and principles like this that you choose to live.
And so it’s been this amazing evolution in literally every way from the simple idea that we can be thankful in the middle of difficulty and frustra. Love it. Kevin, that’s such an inspiring story and appreciate you getting a little bit personal and sharing that with everybody. I have to ask you, well, a couple One thing real quick.
First, one of the things that I like about the book the most is yes, you know, it’s a great tool. For when big things happen, right. To help you understand and be able to, uh, get back to a, a sense of gratitude. But what I like most about it is the concept of, hey, you can stub your toe on the, on the bed post and, and find gratitude for, for that experience, right?
And you share a lot throughout the book. And, and I love that because throughout the day, every single day, we all have experiences that kind of take us up and take us down and so on. And if we have the ability, if we have the tool, if we. Have shifted our brain chemistry such that we perceive and view the different things that happen to us each and every day a little bit differently.
Our days just get to go very differently and in the book, in a practical manner, teaches. People how to do just that. And so I love it for that reason. Now this is a real estate podcast, right? Yeah. And, uh, lemme ask you this question. So how, so how does this concept of gratitude being that it’s Thanksgiving coming, how does gratitude have anything to do with real estate?
That’s a good question and you just alluded to it. So in the book now, and this is what everybody needs to know, this idea of flipping the gratitude switch and turning the light on internally so that we can have a better ability to navigate life’s difficult circumstances and maybe even failures. I give it a formula in the book that goes along with F L I P.
And by the way, Steve and I were talking, you know what, the book is on Amazon. It’s on Audible, but we’re just gonna, if you’re a podcast listener, we’re just gonna give you the audio book for free. You just go to dfy real estate.com/gratitude and then you can just, We we’re just gonna put the, the book up there.
You can listen to it as a six hour audio book. I read the book and you’re welcome. To it, right? There’s some other resources we’ll put on there just as a gift because we love you, ok? Um, if you wanna get it on Amazon or Audible, feel free, but, but we’re gonna give you the audio book, dfy real estate.com/gratitude.
But in the book, and we talk about this formula, and the formula goes along with F L I P and it’s f find the frustration l look for what’s awesome. I initiate in the book, I call Initiate. When I go and I speak to students, I say, install g. And P Power up with Grata fuel. Steve already kind of alluded to it, but here’s the way that this works.
When you stub your toe right, you get frustrated. I used to get so frustrated. I stub my toe every day, and instead of just being frustrated and kind of rolling through and steam rolling over the toe stub and just kinda being angry until the next thing happens, you know, and then you’re more angry, so on and so forth.
Our brains are like these trains and they roll down these tracks, and so if we feel like things are going bad in. We have a tendency, our brain draws connections. It’s like our brain is tuned to the FM station and, and the FM station is, everything is terrible. And so then we just look around the world and we go, we, our brain draws conclusions.
It’s like, you know, when, uh, you know, when you’re thinking about getting a new motorcycle or you’re thinking about getting a new car? And you’re doing research on that car or you bought a car, you start to notice how many other cars like that are on the road. That’s cuz our brain can tune into things.
And so what what happens is for a lot of us, our brain tunes into negative things and then we draw additional negative conclusions. But when we can switch the train track of our brain, it shifts the momentum of what our brain goes and finds and gives back to us. Cause we change the tuner in our brain.
So when we get frustrated, when we stub a toe, if, if we could take a moment and say, Oh my gosh, I’m frustrated. Let me acknowledge that I’m frustrated and let me find the frustration by saying, okay, why am I frustrated? Well, I’m frustrated cuz I stubbed my toe. Listen, I know that’s all like super, it almost seems silly cause it’s so like just dead obvious.
All we do is we’re putting, we’re slowly applying the break to the train so that we can flip the switch and switch the train track so that our train can start to pick up momentum along a different path. So when we go, Okay, why am I frustrated? I’m frustrated cuz I stubb my toe. Then we go to L, which is where we look for what’s awesome.
Then we start to do this, we go, Okay, well what could possibly be awesome about stubbing my toes? What would happen when somebody would cut me off on the freeway? And now we’re going, Okay, well at least I have a toe. At least I can fill my toe. Hey, I stubbed it on a bed. At least I’ve got a bed. You know, for me, I’d look over in the bed and I’d see my amazing wife.
I’m like, Geez, I sleep next to an angel. That’s pretty cool. And then it would make me think about my kids. Ah man, at least I’ve got these kids. So all I’ve done is I’ve slowed the train, switched the train track so that I can look at things that are awesome, embedded in the frustration, and that’s where.
Power is. Then you move to I, which is where you initiate or install gratitude, and here’s how this works. When we want an. On our phone, like if we wanna download a new game, we go to the app store and we hit install, we install that app. And now something that just a minute ago was an idea and was intangible, becomes tangible.
When we hit install, it now becomes a part of our phone and therefore it’s this tangible thing we can utilize. Gratitude is much the same way, but the app store of life is words. So when we use words, And we go, Okay. Now let me say I’m thankful for the thing that is awesome. Inside the frustration, I’m thankful I have a toe.
I’m thankful I have a bed. I’m thankful that I have this beautiful wife. I’m so thankful I’ve got these kids. I’m thankful we have this home that we live in. Ugh. I’m thankful I can fill my toe. You know, we go through, What it does is that starts to pick up some momentum down the new train track, and this is what Steve alluded to, and this is how it applies to real estate.
When. Can find the frustration, look for what’s awesome, and initiate or install gratitude inside of little seemingly insignificant moments throughout the day. What happens is after we install that gratitude and say what we’re thankful for about the thing, that’s awesome, embedded in the frustration, our body changes, our literal body chemistry shifts.
Our body releases dopamine, which is the reward chemical. Our body releases oxytocin, which tells makes us feel love. So we feel like we wanna give a high five and get a high five, and we feel like we wanna give a hug and get a hug. And all of a sudden, that’s an entirely different way of looking at the world as opposed to letting that cortisol kind of wash over us and everything is bad and it’s fight or flight and oh my gosh, the world, the sky is falling.
And when we do that, what’s crazy is our brain starts to forge new neural pathways. And this is kind of the analogy that I like to use, and then I’m gonna apply it specifically to real estate. The analogy is, if you’ve ever been to a 3D movie and you’ve taken off your glasses during the 3D movie, uh, you, you could see the screen still.
You know what’s going on. The story is the same. The movie itself doesn’t change, but your ability to view it. Shifts when you put on a pair of glasses. Those glasses, all they do is they give you a new filter, a different lens through which to view the existing movie. Well, all of us already have a movie that’s playing in life.
It’s our real estate movie. It’s our relationship movie. It’s our, it’s our work movie. It’s our money movie. We have this movie that’s playing out in front of us. We don’t have to change the movie in order to change how we interact with it. That’s what we can do when we shift on a pair of different lenses and we view it through a.
Set of lenses. And what happens when we do that is we train our brain that when hard things happen, when difficult things come, we don’t have to look at it the way we used to see our brain starts to forge these new neural pathways. We literally can over time. By flipping the gratitude switch inside of little things that happen on a daily basis, we can become predisposed to joy.
There’s new neural pathways. We forge new connections inside of our brain so that we react to things that happen in an entirely different way. And it’s kind of like you no longer need to set, you know, put a pair of of new glasses on to view it through. It’s like LASIK for your soul. It’s like LASIK for your brain because you train your body and your mind to interact with things differently.
So then when it comes to real estate, here’s the. If you get a piece of property, And it doesn’t, Maybe you hit bumps in the road through the financing process. Well, instead of getting mad at your loan officer or getting mad at the bank or being really frustrated with it, how about you go? Okay. All right.
Well, I’m frustrated. The loan’s not working out the way that I want, but. Man, interest rates are really low. You know, man, when I get this thing, I mean, if I would’ve bought this, you know, a year ago, my interest rate would’ve been a full point and a half higher, that would’ve totally impacted my cash flow.
So even though this is frustrating, when I get through it, cash flow’s gonna be a little bit higher, and man, I’m gonna be owning this property with only. Some money outta my pocket, my tenants are gonna be paying for it. Right. Well, the same thing. What happens when the tenant doesn’t pay the rent? Instead of just being super frustrated, like, Oh my gosh, these stupid tenants.
Get ’em out. It’s like, Well wait a second. Hold on. You know what I mean? My home that I just bought, Steve, I was just looking at it. It grew in $10,000 of equity over like the last two months. So you’re telling me if I were to own that home as an investment property, now that’s cuz we’re in Utah. It’s a hot appreciating market, but.
Your home is appreciating. If you’re sitting in it and you’re not even collecting the rent that month, and you’ve gotta maybe fund it with your own dollars for that mortgage, it doesn’t mean that the home didn’t still grow in equity. So instead of focusing on the fact that the rent didn’t come, you flip the gratitude switch, go, Well, hey, at least I’ve got rent for the last three months.
I had cash flow for the last three months. Frankly, if I didn’t spend that cash flow, that cash flow alone. Funds my mortgage this month if I didn’t collect the rent check and, and then you think, Man, I’m actually, it’s pretty cool that I’ve got a property manager that’s already on it to get somebody new into the property.
So you don’t have to change the fact that you didn’t get the rent check. You don’t have to change the fact that the deal didn’t work out exactly the way you want. You don’t have to change the actual real estate, but by shifting the way you view. It shifts your attitude and your overall ability to problem solve.
And that’s probably the biggest thing with real estate. And you know this, Steve, if you approach a problem from a negative space, Without gratitude, but with frustration and anger, your ability to problem solve is diminished completely. But if you approach it with a more positive sort of outlook, with more gratitude kinda coming through the entire process, all of a sudden additional opportunities and additional answers and solutions open to you.
Cause your mind is open to ’em as opposed to being closed off. Cause you’ve already made up your mind that it’s all bad and it’s not gonna work out. Cause our brains are like, And you can ch along one train track where you look for the things that are positive and you bring those into your life and you pick a momentum in that direction, or you ch on the train track of, of the sky is falling, it’s chicken, little, everything is bad.
Oh my goodness, what the heck was I doing? And then you sell your real estate too early and you take a loss and then you have a story for the rest of your life that says, uh, real estate doesn’t work, but it all could ship. Deal. The, the equity, the rent, none of that has to change, but your ability to interact with it can change completely, which over time changes the real estate.
Robert Kiyosaki has this line that I love, and he says, uh, he says every something to the effect of, there’s never a bad real estate deal as long as you hang onto it long enough. Something like, Right. And if you have that right type of mindset, then you’re, you’re in it for the long run and now it shifts the way you interact with that portfolio and it shifts the results for you over time.
Cause you didn’t react from a place of fear and anger. Yeah. That, that’s amazing, Kevin. Um, the, the connection between the two really is phenomenal. You know, you literally can have a hundred people in the same room listening to the same person. Where the experience that is happening happening in the room is exactly the same.
It’s like the, like what’s going on. However, there’s a hundred different experiences happening based on the filter through which each individual person is. Is watching or listening, you know, to that speaker or to whatever was is, is going on. And so it’s such a powerful concept. I, you know, as we kinda wrap up the podcast here, Kevin, in of, than Gratitude, I’m for the opportunity that we have to work so many amazing clients.
You know, Kevin, I think we have the greatest group of people that we get to work with, both in terms of, of staff, but as far as our, our clients. It’s pretty fun to attract like, like-minded people. Um, the vast majority of our clients are just so phenomenal and, and it really is a great opportunity, such a great blessing to work with them to see the impact the real estate is having in their lives.
It, it’s one of the, the coolest things. In my overall life is, is working in this company and working with people who, who, uh, you know, who many of whom are listening to this podcast right now. So I hope each of you who are listening, uh, know how much, uh, gratitude both Kevin and I have for you. We hope you have a tremendous and a wonderful Thanksgiving.
Kevin, before we wrap up, I know that you, you mentioned where people can go to download your book. Can you go through that again real quick? Give us any final words and wrap things up. You bet. So guys, I would just, if you wanna download the audio book for free, we’re making it available for free. It’s on a SoundCloud, you could download it from SoundCloud.
So just go to dfy real estate.com/gratitude and you’ll be able to download the audio book for free. And I think I’ve got some videos and stuff that I’ll put up there too that hopefully you’ll be helpful. But if you want it in your Audible account, you can go to Audible. If you want a physical copy of the book, you could go to Amazon and just look up, Flip the gratitude.
And Amazon will be able, it’s on prime. Amazon will ship a tee in a couple days. So thank you so much Steve, for wanting to talk about this topic. You know, you know that this is really, truly such a passion for me and I’m so thankful cuz here’s the cool thing with real estate. Our ability to have this company, Steve, to buy real estate as a company, to own the company, to help others buy real estate has largely become, for me, the funding mechanism to be able to share this message with the world so that I don’t have to go to schools and demand some large checks so that I can go and volunteer time at rehab and recovery centers to share this message with recovering addicts so that I can go and, and talk to church groups, and I don’t have to be.
To the financial aspect of it, because real estate gives us the ability to do things like this, Steven. So I am so thankful for that. To me, it’s such a testament of why real estate in your life can fund some of the ability you have. You need to do more and more of the things that you love and that you feel called to do in this life.
Real estate’s the most incredible tool for. The last thing that I would share is a, is one of my favorite quotes from a man named Dierdorf, and he talks about gratitude in this way. He says, Could I suggest? Well, he starts and says, Many times we think that gratitude is what happens after the storm has passed.
Could I suggest that we see gratitude as a disposition, a way of life that stands independent of our current circumstances? In other words, I’m suggesting that we learn to be thankful not just for things, but in our current circumstances, whatever they may be. And I love that idea. So the simple idea that in the middle of life’s common, seemingly insignificant moments and circumstances.
And, and when those frustrations come in those moments, if we can find a way to be thankful for the frustration in that little circumstance, in that seemingly insignificant moment, it will change who you are. It will change how you view the world, and that will change the way you experience the world around you.
It is 100% in your ability to do. It’s just with your brain, just with some words, just with some thoughts, but it can shift the entire trajectory of your. Which is truly profound and one of the most profound things that I know I’ve ever discovered in my life and something that has transformed me as a human and has had an impact on my family.
And for that, I am eternally thankful for the concept, but also for you guys listening, thank you for listening. Thank you for being a part of this. Replace Your Income family. We love doing these. And Steve, thank you for always believing in me for supporting this message, for letting me come and hang out.
And. To kind of stuff with you. I love what we get to do and I love what we get to do as a company, and I love working with you. You are one of the best guys in the on the planet. Steven, I’m so thankful for you. Thanks for even wanting to talk about this today. As you know, it’s something I might be a little passionate about.
Absolutely, Kevin, thanks for your time today. Thanks for sharing and kind of bearing all to our, you know, to our listeners here today. So thank you for, for listening everybody out there today, we appreciate you being a part of the Replace Your Income podcast. We’re going to go ahead and sign out now. Hope you have a great Thanksgiving and wish you and your families the best throughout the rest of this week, and we look forward to talking to you next.
Take care. Bye everybody. Thanks so much for listening to Replace Your Income with Kevin and Steve. Do you have a question you want us to answer on the show? Head over to Apple Podcast and do three simple things. Leave us a rating and review and tell us what you think of the podcast. Then in that review, ask us anything you want related to real estate or income replacement.
Then sit back and get ready to have your mind blown, and if you wanna shout out, leave your Instagram handle or. And that’s all. Then listen in to hear your question answered, live unfiltered and uncut. Thanks for joining us on Replace Your Income and just remember income replacement for you and your family may only be one property away.
See you next week.