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Problems will come up in real estate, problems will come up in life. And if the problem is the focus of your energy, right, that what you focus on grows. So if you focus on the problem, you will find more problems, right? It becomes this cycle. But if you understand that problems are nothing more, Then opportunities for solving.

That’s what a problem is. 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. All right, well, hello everybody and welcome to Replace Your Income with Kevin Ann.

Steve. Hey Steve. So just a second ago we were talking about how at some point we’re gonna have your rap debut. I don’t know if we’re gonna do it on the podcast or on a video on Instagram or on TikTok. Are you ready for your rap debut? Hey, bring it up, man. Can I tell? Okay. So you guys, this is so cool. So a couple years ago we do, a lot of times we do these company Christmas parties, right?

And it’s always super fun. We always just kind of hang out. But a few years ago, Steve came to me, he was like, Ke, I want you to help me with something. And I was like, What do you want Steve? And he’s like, I wanna do a rap at the Christmas party. And I was like, You wanna do a what? And I thought that was the coolest thing ever.

And he had already. Rehearsed and memorized. Who sings that song? Do you remember who sings that song? I don’t even remember anymore. It’s like this song that, it’s the alphabet rep. It’s the alphabet, but there’s like all of these words that are a, words that are strung together in a sentence that slide into b words that are all strung.

And it was so cool and he did this in front of the whole company and people did not expect it and it was awesome. And so I’m trying to get him to, uh, I’m trying to get him to, to resurrect that. Maybe one day, . So Steve, we’re gonna talk today about, uh, thank you everybody for listening, by the way. Thanks for joining us on Replace Your Income.

Uh, we know that last week’s episode. I hope it didn’t feel heavy. I hope it felt happy. I mean, you know, gosh, you know, we feel like we have a new catch phrase in life. Normal is boring, but boring is exciting when you do real estate like this. That’s kind of how we’ve been thinking and feeling. But, uh, but man, today this is an episode and it’s really all.

Well, it’s about me, Steve. It’s about me. Well, everything’s about you, Kevin. Well, yeah. It needs to be, I think. But here’s why it’s about me, because I identify as a big fat problem in your life. I know that, and I probably, my wife and kids would say the same. We are gonna talk about problems today, and I’ve got 99 problems, but this podcast ain’t one to.

The historic philosopher Jay-Z. Okay. But we are gonna talk about problems, but not just problems, but problem solving strategies. Now, here’s why this is really critical. I was at, uh, I, I get this cool opportunity to be a part of like the coolest mastermind on the planet with, uh, Russell Brunson from Click Funnels.

And the entire room. It’s like a hundred people that own multimillion dollar companies, right? And we just, we, we talk and we talk about life, and we talk about business and we talk about strategies. And it’s so cool to interact with these people and we all do these presentations from stage. It’s like a hot seed.

Like, hey, here’s kind of what I’m facing, what we’re trying to do as a company. And somebody got up and shared this, and as soon as they shared it, Steve, I. That is a really cool problem solving strategy. And I started to think about what we do and we utilize this strategy. And then we started to talk about is this something that is really just a mental shift on how to approach problems so that solving is the operative word as opposed to sort of marinating only in the problem, only to never go and seek solutions.

And this is what they said. This is so cool. They said they were talking about their employees. They were talking about their. And they said that what they do is if somebody in the company has a problem and that person comes to them with that problem, they don’t just say, Thank you for your problem, have a nice day.

They say, Okay, if you’re gonna come to me with a problem, articulate the problem, then give me three potential solutions to that problem and your one recommendation on how to proceed. And I thought that was really cool. So then I started to think about us. And I started to think about all the conversations we have both on and off the microphone and when there’s problems that arise.

You and I, I think generally don’t have a tendency to just marinate in the problem, right? There’s times when I’ve been marinating in a problem and I feel a little down, and then you’ll come in and you’ll be like, Dude, and you move into solution mode. There’s times I think, where I’ve done that for you as well, where you’re like, Oh, what do I do?

And then I come in with solutions and this has really become a way. That we view the world and we view business, which is a problem, is nothing more than an opportunity for solving. And, and I think that that’s a really critical thing for people to understand. Problems will come up in real estate, Problems will come up in life.

And if the problem is the focus of your energy, Right, that what you focus on grows. So if you focus on the problem, you will find more problems, right? It becomes this cycle. But if you understand that problems are nothing more than opportunities for solving, right? That, that’s what a problem is. Imagine the reframe in the reshift.

I remember a few years ago I had a mentor tell me that, don’t go buy lunch anymore. Invest in lunch. And I was like, Wait, what? And the idea was when you spend money for food, that’s an investment in your body continuing to function as opposed to just, I’m buying lunch. There’s reframes that can happen when we look at words that are all really common, but that reframe changes the way we interact with that.

And so today we wanted to talk about reframing the idea of problems in business, in life, and in real estate as opportunities for solution creation as opportunities. For solving problems that focusing on the, I’d even take that one step further. And problem solving is nothing more than an opportunity for growth because every time you solve a problem, you learn a little bit more.

You become a little bit wiser one way or another because the solution that you come up with for that problem may work and it may not work right, But one way or another, you’re gonna learn whether it worked or not. And let’s say that it doesn’t work well, then you come up with another solution, and if that one doesn’t work, then you come up with another solution until you find one that actually works.

Then when you. Now you’re that much wise and you have the opportunity to help your clients avoid that issue. And that’s been one of the big things in this company is in the very beginning stages when we began this company, we made quite a few mistakes. Oh yeah. And because we always kinda go first before we like bring our clients into something.

We get to experience the opportunity for growth and for learning before we impose that upon our clients, which has allowed us to learn, find solutions, and then be able to allow our clients to avoid kind of some of many of the pitfalls that we experienced as we learned that thing. And so in life, in business, in real estate, it really is nothing more than an opportunity for growth and.

What I like to always call like become bigger, better, faster, stronger. Yeah. This is so critical. So like, imagine this, I always thinking this is the visual that comes when I think about problem solving. Okay? And if I’m in a circular room, alright, there’s a circular room in like Harry Potter five, that’s the room that I visualized.

If you’re in a circular room and it’s surrounded by doors, you’re in the middle of this room and, and you just came into this room and this one door flies open and you’re really excited to go through that door. And just as you get to that door, that thing closes in your face. In my experience, when one door closes another one or two always open, it’s automatic and if you understand that a problem is a door opening to a new solution.

That is a great way to look at problems. It’s why sometimes people get really bugged with feedback, right? Like they don’t want feedback on their character, on their person. I have absolutely, you know, been guilty of this a and that’s because I sometimes am way more prideful than I need to be, and it’s something I continue to work on.

But I’ve started to realize that. Feedback coming to me is a welcome opportunity to solve a problem because the feedback, if it’s negative feedback, it means that somebody’s perceived a problem or maybe they see that I’ve got a problem that I’m not aware of, but if I welcome that feedback as an opportunity to solve a problem, now that feedback is not a negative, it’s a positive reframe.

If you look on my window right now, Steve, can you describe what’s on my window right now? Yeah, I was actually gonna bring that up, Kevin. It looks like, uh, you were having a beautiful mind moment. Yeah. If you’ve seen the movie A Beautiful Mind with Russell Crow, he like, you know, writes on or like, uh, you know, it kind of looks like the board in Goodwill Hunting.

It’s just with way less smart stuff. Right. I. Encountered a problem earlier this week that had been sort of festering, right? And it was something that I felt like we probably needed to approach and address, and I was like, I’ve gotta solve this problem. But I have no idea how I’ve got limitations, both in terms of my time capacity, and my mental capacity to be able to know how to do something.

But I sat in this room for like three hours and I wrote all over my windows and I erased, and I wrote and I erased, and I got something here that I am now working on. That is a way to solve a problem that we’ve had, and what I thought about that is in the past, When problems would be brought up to me, I would be like, Oh my gosh, I’m just the worst thing ever.

I can ever figure anything out. And now if a problem comes to me, I go, Okay, I may be the worst thing ever, but I also may be able to turn into something good now because the problem is a reframe. It’s an opportunity to solve as opposed to an opportunity to commiserate or to just talk and dwell on the problem.

And so when we were talking about this, Steve, I thought, how is this applicable in one’s individual real estate portfolio? So, so let me share a recent example. So, you know, we have a client who was having an issue in, in one of the markets, and they, like, literally their tenant actually found them and contacted them because the, for some reason the property management company was not being responsive to them and they had a fairly significant issue that was coming up that could have caused damage to the property and could have created a massive mess within the.

And so our client reached out to the property management, they’re having trouble as well, and it was like, Man, I’m gonna switch property management companies. I don’t like these guys, and da da da da da. And, and they ended up contacting us. And within, you know, a few short hours, it escalated to me. I was able to reach out to, you know, to the owner of the company.

And very quickly we got things kind of resolve. And what was festering and becoming something where it’s like, I want to change property management companies. These guys are horrible. I wanna switch. I want to go to do something completely different. Came back full circle to where the property management company was able to kind of rectify the problem.

They took care of it. They, you know, they made apologies. They, they helped explain what was going on. Why as to why they weren’t being responsive. And they ended up having a pretty good, you know, reason for what, you know, what was going on. Sure. And the communication just wasn’t happening. Yeah. But the bottom line, Once we got to the solution and we went through the problem solving steps, and sometimes you do have to escalate things when problems aren’t getting solved.

It turned out that it’s like, Oh, okay, these guys actually are pretty good. They’re doing a good job, and, and so on and so forth. And, and I don’t know if that’s, This is without jumping into all of the details, What was interesting is what the end result of solving this problem, the conclusion that we came to, is that all was well, right?

Yeah. The tenant was fine, the client was fine, The property management was fine. We did need a whole new set of solution solving entities, which would’ve included a whole new property management company, which would’ve include. Having to break the contract and go through that, through the whole process of doing that and, and finding a new property.

Like it, it’s interesting when you go through those steps and you, you actually find the solution that things aren’t quite as bad as you once thought they were. So here’s the reframe, right? I think that what if you could, and this is just like theoretical, right? I want you guys to think about this. If you’re.

What if you could eliminate the word problem and swap it? What if you could do a find and replace? And the find and replace was opportunity, right? Like imagine if every problem was an opportunity. Now here’s the thing and there’s something interesting that happens with our brain. And then just real quick.

Yeah. And here’s what the opportunity was. Is is that a relationship that was strained became strengthened and improved. Yes. And it could be a process if there’s a process breakdown, the problem in the process or, or maybe, uh, the bad experience that was triggered because of the process is now an opportunity to grow, to get better, to get bigger, better, better, faster, stronger, like you said, right.

So the reframe of a problem into an opportunity also has an impact on our brain chemistry. So if you think about this, so when we perceive a problem, our brain generally has one of two responses, Fight or flight, right? We either get a hit of adrenaline, which makes us wanna fight, like, oh my gosh. Or we get, Oh, what’s the one that we get?

I can’t think of it. What’s it called? It’s a, ah, it’s the one that makes us feel like worried and fearful. What’s the, what’s the neurotransmitter that does? It is. Oh, I always forget what this si one is, but I know what it is. Dog gone it. I’m gonna think about it. I’m gonna get back to you. But there is another neurotransmitter that makes us wanna fly, right?

It, it scares us, right? Ugh. It’s gonna bug me so much that I can’t think about this. But anyway, so here’s what happens is when we perceive a problem, we’re either gonna have a fight or flight response, right? So we’re either gonna wanna get in there and fight and just solve the problem that way, and there may be some bodies that are left behind trying to fix that problem, right?

Or if we have the other response, that’s the flight response that we’re like, I just gotta get outta here and, and we’re just like, I’m gonna fix the problem by just burning it all down. Right? I’m just gonna burn it all down so I can get away from it. If you can reframe the problem as an opportunity, you get a different neurotransmitter.

The neurotransmitter that comes now is more like a dopamine, right? It’s more like, Ooh, I’m gonna be rewarded for the solved problem, for the opportunity to solve. I’m gonna be rewarded. Or you get a little bit of serotonin, which is the mood changer, right? And uh, I keep almost thinking about that other neurotransmitter.

It’s like right there. And then it goes, Wait, , it’s gonna driving nuts. Ah. Anyway, so, The point here is by reframing problems to opportunities, what can happen is you’re sitting at home, you get a phone call from your property manager, there’s a problem, okay? You could sit in that stew of misery and be so frustrated and mad at your property and mad at the tenant and, and mad at the property manager and mad at done for you real estate.

If we helped you do the. You could do all of that. You’re, it is your right to do cortisol. That’s what it is. Cortisol, I knew it was coming. You may have that cortisol, which makes you wanna fly away, or adrenaline, which makes you wanna fight through. So you could have that cortisol, which is gonna elevate your levels of stress, and all of a sudden your, your heart’s not, you know, uh, in beaten, in, in rhythm with the way your brain is thinking about things.

And you feel this cognitive dissonance and you feel bad. And that’s what cortisol does. And so it makes you feel fearful and bad, and you may feel that, and you may sit in that. And if you don’t immediately shift into opportunity and you don’t immediately shift into solution mode, sitting with that cortisol and those elevated levels of cortisol will have an impact on relationships.

It’ll have an impact on your mood. It’ll have an impact on the people that you interact with. But if you could reframe and say, from now on this day forward, I no longer perceive problems as negative. But purely as positive opportunities to solve, it will shift your real estate portfolio and it will shift how you interact with that real estate portfolio.

Just the shift in mental sort of approach the, the intellectual and emotional approach to your money and to your real estate means that you make different decisions moving forward. Okay, So here’s a great example of this. All right? I do the marketing for our company. Okay. And so I’m constantly thinking about messages and messaging.

Now, when we started this podcast, it was called Replace Your Income. It still is called Replace Your Income because that’s what real estate does over time. But a big reason why we called it Replace Your Income is we knew that if you owned enough real estate, you could have enough residual income to be able.

To replace your income, okay? It was heavily based on the idea of cash flow. Well, now we have high inflation. We have interest rates that are rising in cash flow was diminished. Now, if we looked at that and we went, Oh my gosh, I’m gonna have a cortisol approach. I’m gonna have a cortisol attack, I’m gonna be, This is a problem.

What are we gonna do? The company’s gonna fall on its face. How could we possibly do this? Nobody’s gonna wanna do mortgages or buy real estate because the interest rates are gone up and inflation and everything is terrible. And that’s how we’re feeling, right? Because we’re allowing that cortisol to kind of course through.

And we’re like, I just wanna get, I’m gonna sell the business. I just wanna get away from it. I don’t want the real estate. Just forget it. This is too hard. If that’s how we’re. What is that good? Is there anything positive that will come from that approach to your real estate? If you’re worried about real estate, or for me as a marketer, if I’m worried about the interest rates and how it can communicate that, here’s what I know.

I know that real estate works no matter what. It’s why we’re writing a book on it. It’s why over the long run, we know that real estate changes your life and can replace your income. And so if I see interest rates go up, and I’m not an immediate opportunity seeker as opposed to a problem. Observer, right?

Cause that’s really what we are. Sometimes we’re problem observers more than we are. Problem solution, you know, makers, right? Problem solvers we’re problem observers. If I observe the problem and I don’t move in a solution mode, then that fear takes over and we want to get away from it all. And that does not put us in a good place.

But when I saw that happening, I. You know what’s cool about this? Sure. Interest rates are going up and cash flow is diminishing. What are the other aspects that we love about real estate that we talk? Well, there’s principle paydown and there’s tax benefits and, and there’s still appreciation that could take place.

Just cuz we’re losing some of the cash flow doesn’t mean that real estate’s all of a sudden a negative investment. And when you look at it that way, now, it gives me the ability to tell a different story to people like you guys listening, to help you understand the value and benefit of doing and owning real estate as opposed to what if Steve and I just freaked out when something goes different in the market than expected.

How many people don’t have an opportunity to change their financial life cuz we’re reacting from a space of fear because we’re problem observers. Instead of shifting into problem solution mode and problem solving mode and looking at it as an opportunity. Because let me tell you something, real estate is always gonna work over the long run.

If you react as a problem observer, you wanna sell the property you want, get outta the property, you wanna ditch the portfolio. Steve, if we had clients in the past, then when something goes wrong, they just want out the investment altogether. Occasionally, yes, there’s been times. And you know what if those people who just said I’m out, Like I think about a lot of what happened in like oh nine and oh eight.

Not necessarily with our clients cause we were buying, but people that were like, Oh, I have these investments. I’m just gonna dump ’em. I gotta get out of ’em. I gotta get out of them. Or, or somebody that owned a Bitcoin for a long time, right? And when it plummeted they just sell it all. And had they continued to own it, maybe they would have a lot more money today.

I don’t know. Same thing with real estate. If you react to the problem and observe the problem and. To simply move away from the problem as opposed to looking at it as an opportunity to solve and solution create. It can actually negatively impact your real estate, your portfolio, your financial life. And so the idea here is reframe problems to opportunities.

Anything that you wanna add to that, Steve? No, other than I think in business. That’s what business is all about. It’s problem solving. That’s what life is all about. Problem solving. One of my favorite men, I, I have, I keep it on my phone. There’s a quote from one of my favorite, uh, movies. And I always, I don’t know why I always forget is a forced Gump.

I feel like it could be Forest Gump. No, it’s not Forest dams, Forests Gump. But that’s a good one. It’s with, uh, Matt Damon. He’s stuck on Mars. Uhhuh. Oh, it’s called The Martian. Yeah. I love that one. And at the very end he’s finally, he’s back to earth, right? Yes. And he’s talking to his, his students and he’s kind of telling them about his experience being stuck on Mars.

And he says, This space is unforgiving. And it’s gonna try and kill you. But when you’re in a situation that I was in, what you do is you solve one problem and then you solve another problem. Yeah. And then you solve another problem. And if you solve enough problems, you get to go home. Oh, I love that. And I absolutely, like, I actually, I’ve got it in my memos.

I recorded it uhhuh because it’s one of my favorite things, and that’s, You know, ultimately, you know, that’s what business is about. That’s what real estate is about in real estate. If you solve enough problem, You get to replace your income. That’s right. And in life, if you solve enough problems, you get to live a happy life.

That’s right. And you get to go home, so to speak. So I, I love this concept. I love this philosophy, Kev. And, uh, those are my last two bits. So problems will come, but if you can reframe ’em to opportunities. And solving and, and opportunities to solve cuz then you solve enough problems and you get to go home.

You get to experience all the joy and the good that you wanted to experience. But if you dwell in the problem, if you marinate in the problem, if you’re nothing more than a problem observer. Then things may not go as well as you want, which is why I love the idea that if you’ve got a problem, you should immediately have three potential solutions you think through, and then your number one recommendation and then you act.

Because acting on that opportunity can change the trajectory of your future. All right you guys. Well, thank you so much for tuning in. We appreciate you. Hope that you enjoyed this little podcast. A little bit different than what we do, but we thought it was super applicable and important to discuss this.

So we hope you have a wonderful day, and we’ll talk to you real soon. Thanks so much for listening to replace Your Income with. Steven, Kevin, if you’re not subscribed already, be sure to head over to your favorite podcasting platform and do that now. If you enjoyed this episode, we’d love it if you could do us a quick favor and rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts.

This lets the platform know that we’re doing something right and that people like the content. It’d be a huge help and we would. Super grateful. Also, be sure to head over to dfy real estate.com and request your free income replacement estimate. We’ll jump on a quick call and put a free and personalized income replacement estimate report together for you.

Your report will show you a step by step plan of how you can begin replacing your income one property at a time, starting right. With the resources you already have, it only takes a few minutes, but could change the trajectory of your entire financial future. So until next time, just remember income replacement for you and your family may only be one property away.

See you next week.