"No Bad Days": How To Cultivate Ultimate Gratitude In Life & Business w/ Jeffrey Holst

All right, Jeff Holst. How are you buddy?

I'm doing really well. Thanks for having me.

Thanks for coming out of podcast retirement, man. I'm excited to

have you. Yeah, no, I'd been a minute. Actually. I've recorded only a few podcasts in the last year I used to do. 'em like three, four a week now I'm only doing 'em once in a while.

Shaking the cobwebs off how's the year been without the podcast. Was there anything else that you gave up to just have more freedom or what was your kind of Mo behind it?

Yeah, honestly this year I've been traveling a lot, so that's part of the reason why I haven't been doing as much. So I went to. Five continents so far this year. Wow. It's August right now. So pretty solid. Solid start to the year, yeah, I've been to Africa, Tanzania Europe. I went to Germany and Amsterdam. I went to Antarctica. I went to south America, Argentina. I'm in Puerto Rico right now. I've been here. Six times this year now I rented a place year round in Puerto Rico and I've just been I've been spending like, two, three weeks here and then going back and taking care of my real estate business. And I come stay here for as long as I can. And then when I have to go sign something or have to look at a building or something, then I leave and go for a while.

God, man, that sounds nice. Must be nice for you on this podcast. We hate traveling. We hate freedom. Yeah. know? Yeah.

Traveling's terrible. It's terrible. It's terrible problem. Yeah. You

lose your bags in the airline. No, it's dude, that's awesome. And you and I just just met like five, 10 minutes ago and , I was instantly like, oh, this is the guy. This is either, you're a freaking show, man. I'm so excited to get into. The 30, like I just joked about the 30 different ways. You've overcome adversity in your life to create this beautiful life of freedom and travel and fun that you have now. I really wanna just give you the pilot seat. Like I'll give you the hunting license and just walk us through your story and we'll go from there.

Yeah I could, I could take up the whole show talking about my life cuz you know, I like doing that and I won't belabor that cuz it will be unfair to your listeners that we spend all of the time on my life story. But the short version is I was a bankruptcy attorney by trade. I went into bankruptcy law. Mostly because I didn't like doing other laws. So like I said, when you go to law school and you just, I went there to make money. I. I don't know what I wanna do with my life. I'm gonna go become a lawyer cuz they make money. And that just made sense to me. And I did make pretty good money. So there was that. It wasn't really fulfilling me, it was like I'd show up, do the work first. I was doing criminal law and I was like, man, I don't wanna deal with criminals anymore. And then I was fighting over kids and I'm like, I don't wanna deal with people fighting over their kids anymore. This is like really soul sucking, terrible work and bankruptcy law wasn't that much better. But at least we, I felt like I was helping people. I

was about to say that was your positive end to all that. You're like, ah, divorce. No, this no, but

bakers. Yeah. See why I should have you see why I should have never been a lawyer? I make this habit of talking people out of going to law school, but really if in my dream world, I would've went to law school and never prides law. Cause I met so many great people in law school. One of my main business partners was was a friend of mine in law school and he was flipping houses to pay his law school tuition. And I was like, I need to know that guy, right? Like I need to hang out with more people like that. So we became really good friends and now we own couple hundred units together. So it's really worked out well, but. But what happened really was I, I went to law school. I went through this period of time in 2007, I started doing only bankruptcy law, which was like, actually really good timing in retrospect, right? Cause 2008 hit and everyone was going bankrupt. I lived in Michigan, in grand rapids area and the GM plant there went bankrupt and then just caused this cascading effect of bankruptcies and. I mean in 2008, the first half of the year, I probably made more money than any year until the last couple of years for me. We just were just stacking up cash. And I was only four years outta law school. I'm not even, I was 30 years old and I was like, just like I had TV commercials and it was like these ridiculous TV commercials, like bankruptcy stuff. And, I felt I was like better call Saul of west Michigan or something, on the side of the bus. Yeah, I wasn't on the bus, but I actually was on the back cover of the phone book too, actually. Ooh. And so we had television commercials and like phone book ads and those phone book ads, man, they were not cheap. They were like, I think it was like a hundred thousand dollars a year to be on the silly phone book, which seems ridiculous now, but with the internet, like no one even looks, I don't even know if I have a phone book, but I don't know that I don't think I've seen a phone book in a decade. But at the time it was like this really good marketing strategy. And we were actually about to get billboards too. I was negotiating with a contract to put billboards up all around town, and that was gonna be really fun. We had this cool idea that we called it T happens and we had this wheel and things would spin around and then bad things would happen to you. And then it would be. Divorce happens or whatever bankruptcy happens, and then it would be like T happens.com. It was like , it was so ridiculous. It was like this giant wheel, like a prices, style wheel with bad things happening on it, and it was gonna be really fun. But then 2008 I decided to take I've always loved traveling. So I decided to go to Peru and go to Machu which honestly was one of the last things on my bucket list. Like back in 2000 or 99, somewhere around there. When I was trying to decide what I wanted to do with my life, I went to on a backpacking trip around Europe and I I went to see the specific sculpture and I had this idea that it was one of, it was one of Michaelangelos works, its public Moses and Mike Angelo had this thing where he. When he unveiled it for the Pope, right? Cause it was the centerpiece of Pope innocent, the second or Julius, the four, I don't one of the popes, right? It was the centerpiece of the Pope's grave. He unveils it for the Pope. And he just sits there, staring at it and doesn't say anything. And the whole crowd's like awkward. And finally, like one of his students is Hey man you gotta say something and he just takes his chisel and he throws it at the Moses and he screams out moves, like he's put so much of his life into this marble sculpture that he thinks it should just get up and move. And I was like, there's nothing in my life. I'm that passionate about? So I'm gonna go see this thing and see if it solves. My that's essential crisis. So I go back backing around Europe. I climb the stairs to this little church that sits on a hill above the Coliseum. And I'm looking at this thing and I'm like, it's really nice, but it didn't change anything. So I walked outside and I sat down on the front steps in the church back then I was young and dumb. So I lit up a cigarette and I'm smoking a cigarette, looking down at the Coliseum and I'm like, I'm just gonna go to law school and make some money so I can travel and see old. Like really that's all. I just, that was the whole plan. So I made a short list of old things off the top of my head. The pyramids in Egypt Machu, couple others. I made the shortlist, Petra and Jordan, and then over the next 10 years, that's what I did. I went and saw those things. I went to law school, I made money. I went and saw the things I wanted to see and watch Peche was the last one. And I remember sitting on the top of the mountain and ma Peche looking down over. Over the city and thinking to myself what do I do? Like I'm, I'm done like I'm 30 years old and I've just finished my bucket list. Wow. And literally two. Yeah. And literally two weeks later I was in the hospital, diagnosed with leukemia and told, you might not make until the end of the year, what. Yeah, literally like that fast, like two weeks I'm at the top of the world just finished my bucket list. I'm on television commercials, phone book, ads, everything. And I literally climbed off the mountain check my voicemail called the on a payphone. Cause it's still old, back in the old days called the payphone, check my voicemail. I had this other attorney that worked for me, but in his two week notice like a week earlier, but I hadn't, I've been traveling so I hadn't heard it. So he had a week. And then I got back and got diagnosed with leukemia, like all in the same, like two week period. So I went from having two attorneys to zero overnight. Like I couldn't work. He was quit. He quit. And I, and and I went from literally feeling like I had just done everything I wanted to do in life to being like, oh, maybe that is all I'm gonna do in life. And it wasn't awesome obviously. But when I was 17, I made this decision that I would never have a bad day again. And I was really stubborn about it for 13 years leading up till that day. And when this stuff happened, I went, okay, how do I make this positive? My brain is trained to find positive things. So one thing is like the first night my, like my brother came to the hospital and he goes, oh, I bet today's a bad day. He's almost trying to prove it's not possible to never have bad days. So he says that and I go actually, I didn't find out until 10 o'clock at night. Most of the day was pretty good, and that was literally how I thought about it. And the thing of that is it's good and bad stuff happens to everyone every day. And it's, right now, somewhere in the world, someone's having the best day of their life. So somewhere else in the world, someone's having the worst day of their life. So the day is not good or bad. It's just how you perceive it. How you receive the day. That's what matters. And so that day was fine for me because I felt like most of the day was pretty good. And then the next day was a little bit harder. And I remember it was. One or two o'clock in the afternoon, there was a ship change and this nurse walks in and she looks at me and she goes, oh my God, Jeff, I'm so sorry to see you here. And I went, oh my God, Shelly, I'm so happy to be here. I think she thought I was nuts. But the thing is this girl was like my childhood babysitter and hadn't seen her in a decade. Wow. And I was really excited to see her and that made my day. Okay. For me, it was like, this is a good day. Like I gotta to see she. And like, yeah, I still had to deal with leukemia. I still thought I was gonna die. I remember telling my mom, I said, I just hope I make it till Christmas. And this is in September, september, 2008. And I'm like, I hope I make it till Christmas. That was the thing. Fortunately, there were no symptoms

before

Yeah, I was, so I had a, so I have CML it's chronic myeloid leukemia. It's very slow moving. And what happened is like over time I became more and more fatigued and what really set it off was when I was in the in Peru, I went up into the mountains where the, the oxygen's lower and my white blood cells were so high. It was suppressing my red blood. So I wasn't able to adjust very well. And I thought I had really bad mountain sickness, but really I just didn't have enough oxygen in my blood. And then I was getting myself even less oxygen. And so my vision started getting blurry and I like passed out a couple of times and I developed this like persistent cough and I had these like bruises all up here and a really short period of time. Oh, wow. And yeah, it was Yeah, it was pretty dramatic and they couldn't figure out what was wrong. Like they thought I'd, maybe I'd been in the Amazon for a little bit, right before that they thought maybe I'd picked up like a parasite or something. And so we did all these tests but then it was routine blood work came back and my white blood cell count was like 250,000. So supposed to be like 4,000. . And the only thing I knew about leukemia at the time was I had a cousin who had died of leukemia and her white blood cell count had got to 120,000 when she died. So I was like double what she was at. And I was like I'm toast. So even before the doctors were telling me, Hey, this doesn't look good. I was going. Yeah. There's about three days there where we really thought it was you done. And that is a way to change your perspective too. And the funny thing is in retrospect, that was probably the best period of time in my life. Because that's when I went, why am I practicing law? Never really holy crap. You know what I mean? Look, I might die. Having never done something I love, even though I'm happy, I'm not as happy as I can be. And what ended up happening was. Yeah, go ahead. You

had something I said happy but not

fulfill. Yeah, exactly right. Happy but not fulfilled. And so I started thinking about that stuff and then, the phone book ads and the TV contracts and stuff, they pushed me into personal bankruptcy. So I'm a bankruptcy attorney and I go bankrupt. And I remember sitting there at the bankruptcy hearing, they do this thing where they, you have to swear under oath that you're telling the truth and everything. And I had drawn the one trustee. I didn't wanna get the one that I like. I never liked go in front of him as an attorney. And I really didn't want to go in front of him as a debtor. And I remember he started his recording and then stopped the recording and he just said, Jeff, I'm really sorry that you're here. And then he started the recording again. And I went, man, this could have been the worst day of my life. And I was like, in that LA that moment, even though this was like really tough to like, it was worse than getting leukemia in a lot of ways. Cause it felt like failure. Cuz I knew like I'd been interested in real estate since the nineties. I read rich shad port when it came out in 97 or 96, whatever it was. And I never bought any real estate. I always went, I'm gonna do it later. I'm gonna do it later. I made friends in law school with people that are doing real estate so I could get into it later. I never did it. And I knew while I was sitting there at the bankruptcy table, the, I just started buying real estate. When I first started thinking about it, I. And so I walked out of that meeting with two things. One, this guy who I was terrified of was a human and he cared about me. So I felt good. I had a good day because of that. And two, I knew at that moment, I needed to figure out how to buy real estate sooner rather than later. And I walked out of there and less than six months later, I did my first real estate game. So let's put a pin in that. Yeah. Zero credit, no money. And I still bought real estate and it was 2010. The hardest time to start real estate almost. So

let's, I wanna get into the real estate here, but I wanna circle back to a couple key concepts here. So first and foremost, what happened at 17 years old to where you say I want, I'm not gonna have a bad day ever again.

Yeah. Okay. Great question. Something I've avoided answering for years. But I wrote it in my book. That's forthcoming called no bad days how to make every day. Great. So I'll share it with you anyway. I don't know that I've ever told it on a podcast before, so welcome to the beginning of my story. So to 17, I I had a girlfriend that I was serious with. I thought I was gonna marry her cause I was 17. And you have these grand ideas. My parents split up We were we were having trouble between my girlfriend and I, and I just I walked into a bathroom with a knife planning to kill myself. I had a Zu knife. Actually. You knew these old or miracle blade, 2000 or some crazy thing like that. What are these like infomercial Knifes with a blade. And I really believe the ed blade probably saved my life because I walked in there and I put this knife on my wrist and it kinda hurt, and I was. I don't think I wanna do this. It hurts. And then I just, something clicked in my head and I don't, I don't know if I was really gonna do it or not. It's hard to even imagine for me now, but something clicked in my head and I went, this is really dumb. I'm young and healthy. And I live in America. Like my life is pretty good. Yes. There's stuff going on. That's bad. But I get to choose how I respond to those things. And that's when I started the journey towards self development, personal development, this is like before the internet, right? I It wasn't literally before the internet, but I Google didn't come around until 99. This is 1994. Yeah, so I, there was no YouTube. There's no, Tony Robbins existed, but I didn't know who he was. So I didn't know any of this stuff, but I just went, I'm just gonna tell myself today's a good day. And I'm just gonna say it out loud a whole bunch of times. So positive affirmations. Worked really well. So I looked in the mirror and I said, today's a good day. Today's a good day, 10 times. And then I, and for the next two months, every time I saw a mirror, so I'm getting my car. If I'm by myself in the car, I said it out loud. If there are other people in the car, I thought it, every time I saw a mirror, I said, today is a good day for 10 times out loud. If I could. And hundreds of times a day, right? Today's a good day. Today's a good day. And I remember this really clearly. I walk into a seven 11 and the guy behind the counter. He. He says to me, how you doing today? And I go, I never have bad days. And I went, holy crap. I never have bad days. I realized, oh, say it, Jeff. Say it. Holy shit. Good. Yeah. Holy shit. Holy shit. I dunno, man. I don't want you to have to believe me or something. Holy shit. Yeah, no, a, one of your former guests, Matt fair club actually dropped an F bomb on my show oh yeah. He dropped on Amada. I left it in there for color. Yeah, I did too. I was like, yeah. Why not? Just let's just go with it. Throw on there. So anyway, I met the seven 11 and I go, holy shit. I never had bad days. Like I realized it had been like a couple of months since I'd had a bad day and I just went, I like this strategy. I'm not gonna have bad days anymore. And I haven't had one since. So it's been like 26 years. Yeah, ups and downs, obviously cancer, leukemia. I actually ended up with melanoma a couple years ago. That one actually when it happened, the very first thought that happened to me was like, shit. If you have more than one cancer, that's really bad, right? You always know people had P cancer. like, when you, that's your first cancer, it's man, that's like game over. So my first it's a diversified portfolio. Yeah. First I was like, oh crap, diversified cancer. That's not good. And then the second thought was this is gonna make a great story on a podcast. Like I can't wait to tell this podcast people about how I have another cancer, so that's the kind of crazy messed up. Stuff going on in my brain is everything's positive. It doesn't nothing's negative anymore. And there's science behind it. Tony Robbins calls it the particular activating system, but the real science behind it is the Baer mind H effect it's been known for a hundred years. And the Baer mind H effect just says your subconscious mind defaults to what's familiar. Wow. And the science the other science behind it, there's PhDs that are doing like neuroscience research on it. The more you use certain channels of your brain, the stronger those those neuron pathways become and the easier it is for them to fire. So you can do this thing. The sky wrote a book called hardwiring happiness. And I can't remember his name right now but he was like, if you wanna be happy, if you see a Bluebird, just stop and smile. And if something bad happens, try to. Cuz you'll train your brain over time to focus on the positive stuff. Sun hits your face. You go, oh man. It's so nice. Starts spraying. You think, oh, I don't have to water the grass. Like it's just about framing everything to the positive. And then after a while it becomes subconscious and you can't do anything about it. Like you started calling me names right now. I'd be like so awesome. So much to this guy, he cares enough to call me names. It just ly matter. Like I just stay positive on everyth. It's almost impossible to rattle me as a result of that. But it took a while, right? If I had been diagnosed with leukemia, like the second day after I decided to give up bad days, I don't know if it would've worked. Cause it takes time. You gotta, but I had 13 years of muscle memory built up in my brain. By the time I got diagnosed with leukemia and now it's man, like. When bad stuff happens now, it's almost laughable, right? COVID happened. And I'm thinking, man, this is crabby. The world's got all this bad stuff going on, but think of all the positive that can come from this, because the thing is I believe when people go through hardship they, some percentage of them come up much better. And as a world we've gone through this difficult time. I We're good about, how we think about the effects of it or whatever but what we know is it suck. It just, it wasn't great. There's all kinds of new regulations and people are dying and people are fighting over stuff, but when we come through all this stuff, collectively, some percentage of the world is gonna have learned and grown from that. They're gonna start in new businesses. They're gonna have started new charities. They're gonna have come up with new ideas and those things are gonna change technology the world for a better, yeah, the technology. I mean the fact of the matter. It's easy to forget this, but five years ago, it would've been difficult for us to do this interview cause you're in, Italy and I'm in Puerto Rico. The te was here, but Puerto Rico had very unstable internet before COVID so even nothing changed. Now I can use the internet regularly.

Whoa lot to unpack there. Holy shit. So first and foremost wanna say sincerely I appreciate you opening up and your story is beautiful because of the things that you've went through, the only person that I can even compare. What you've been through with is Hal IRAD miracle morning. You familiar with

how? Yeah, I know. He's he keeps trying to one up me leukemia then he's I gotta get leukemia, yeah.

Car. Have you gotten into car

crash? Yeah. Yeah. That's guy. That's what I'm saying. Like he, he died, I didn't die. I only almost died. So yeah. No, exactly true. And actually I told Hal that when I met him, I was like, dude, I was like, man really feel like you're the only person I know that has gone through more crap than I have. I know. And he's super positive about it and it's the same kind of stuff, right? Like he just leaned into his own mindset. And actually I quote him often because one of my favorite quotes of all time came from him and of course I'm gonna Butch right now that I brought it up, but it's basically the moment you. Complete responsibility for everything in your life is the moment you can change anything. Yeah. And not my fault that I got leukemia, but it's my responsibility to deal with. And to

react to it. You can show, you have complete control of how you go moving forward. And then, so his thing was, he was like, no matter what, there is no other option. I'm going to do everything in my human power to be able to beat this every single day, no matter what, there's no other option. He didn't say he didn't sit there visualizing himself. Just being like, oh, I'm gonna sit here in positive affirmations my way out. Out of leukemia. He's of course not, no I'm going to do everything. That was his affirmation and that's why I relate to it. Yeah. Yeah. And he, he's

out there doing it and yeah. And you know, know, the thing is like that to me a lot, because when I got leukemia, like a lot of people get a diagnosis like that, they go curl up in a corner and died. Literally. That's what they do. They're like I'm dead. I might as well just accept it. I was like, Hey. If you were diagnosed with the exact leukemia I had what doctor would you talk to? And I'm asking all my doctors this, and I got consistently one name and they were all like, you can't get in to see her cuz she doesn't take new patients, but she's like the foremost expert on it. And I'm like, I'm gonna go see that doctor. And I did. Yeah. I had to harass them a lot. I called them all the time. Hey, I need to come see her. I need to come see. And it worked. Yeah. And it's crazy. It turns out it wasn't necessary cuz she recommended the same course of treatment as my other doctors. But Hey, you know what? It was power reassuring for me and it could have made a difference. It's possible, yeah, there's the

new thing that I've been implementing called the the UDA loop. And it was from the book, the Buddha and the badass. I did a podcast episode about it, and I forget what the hell UDA stands for. It's like observe orient, decide an act, I think is what it is. And it's essentially whenever you get punched in the face by life or a situation that really sucks in the it's a Naval combat. Tactic to where as soon as you, as soon as enemies start firing, there's that four step process that they follow so that they don't just freak out and just being like ah, fire bullets. It's okay, bullets are coming at me. Okay. What am I doing right now? Okay, let me get my body. Everything. Let me get this nervous system back in control. Now I decide, okay, what am I gonna do? And then you act. And before I was super hairpin, like if something happened, something went wrong. Like first it would ruin my week, let's just call it what it is. Like it'd ruin my freaking week. Then it would ruin my day. Then it would ruin like an hour. And now I've gotten it down to about 10 minutes, 10, 15 minutes of just being like perfectly

reasonable. And when I say I don't have bad days I don't say I don't have bad moments. Sure. Yeah. I can be shocked. I can be pissed. I can, I can freak out. But no bad days does mean I don't have bad months or weeks or years. So I love that, the it doesn't go the other way though. It doesn't mean I don't have bad seconds. There are like cause that's why my dog got hit by a car in front of me that's not gonna be my favorite minute during that day. That would really be a sad moment. But I would also look at it and I felt this way actually, when, and I love my dogs when we had to put one down last year, we had a great Dan that lived to 13 and a half, which was probably a world record it old. Yeah. It was definitely the oldest great Dane in America at the time she died. We know that for sure. But we had to put her down. I We didn't have a choice and I was very sad about it. I was sad for a while. Still sad about it. Like I would trade it, I'd trade it to cab her back right now. Like I would do it if I could, but but I also recognized at the time, the reason I felt that pain was because of how much love I had gotten for her over the years. Wow. Yeah. So I look at things like pain and sorrow as a positive thing. It's if you don't feel sorrow, then that means you didn't have a real connection, whatever that was. And that could be a, an animal or a person for sure. Those are the obvious things, but it could also be like, When you leave a job that you love, because you want to pursue real estate, you might feel sorrow about that. You might you regret that you're gonna miss certain people, right? Or even something like when I sold my house, like we sold our house this year because the market's just crazy. It went up so much. And I was like I'm hardly over there. What do I need a giant house for? I'm spending half my time in Puerto Rico. And, I'll just rent a place in Puerto Rico and in, in Tennessee where we lived and, but I was sad to sell my house, but I knew it was the right decision, and the reason I was sad is cuz I had a lot of positive memories there. So I just tried to lean into the reason I'm feeling. This is because of how great my life is and how great this experience.

Contrast. Yeah. Contrast creates clarity. And when I'm looking back right now this is sound, this sounds so stupid and superficial, but I'm gonna say it anyways, because it's just if you're in corporate America, still listening to this, which a lot of you are on your path to financial freedom. We have, what's called, president's club where you're the top sales rep, top 10% of the country. And whenever you hit that, like that's the goal. That's what everyone's working towards. It's the one day hit president's club and I hit. But then, and then I hit past that and I hit diamond level. I got to the very top. I was like in the top 10 people in the country, in the company, and you're supposed to have this massive, like week long vacation and an award ceremony and a red carpet and they walk you down and everyone's clapping. And every single day, Jeff, I visualized that for three years. Working that job outside of college, I visualized that moment of walking up and receiving that award whenever I would eventually hit. And I finally got to the moment where I hit and then what happens? COVID. Everything's canceled. Everything's shut down. They took away a $70,000 bonus that I was supposed to get. Oh. And this all happened. And then they canceled the trip. I got a PowerPoint slide as my, thank you for the contribution in the blood, sweat and tears oh, congratulations. Brian Lubin sales rep of the year for the company. And I was. Oh my God. And then I was so upset about it. I went to a depression and then the worst part about all of this is that was back when everybody believed like COVID was like, actually like COVID it was like in the first couple, like months of it. Yeah. Where things were actually like serious. And we were all

everyone was scared, man. Yeah. And I was just

by myself, like in my house, like essentially quarantined sitting there watching a PowerPoint slide, congratulating me on achieving that goal. That I, that was my entire life's identity. Yeah. And I say that now, looking back, because that was one of the lowest points in my life was I was just like all this things, all this stuff that I just worked my ass off. For this company. And now this is the least fulfilling thing ever. And now I say that because yesterday they just had their ceremony for this year's winners and award recipients for the first time. So I get to see all these pictures of people like achieving and getting their awards and everything. Now I thought back, the reason I say this, people, if that had not have happened, I would not have gotten on my path to being like. Corporate America is not for me. There's something else. And I wouldn't have gone harder in the real estate and I wouldn't have bought that next rental and bought that next rental and bought that next rental. And I wouldn't have quit that job. And I wouldn't have been here today.

That's so exactly right. That's the leukemia moment for me, right? If I didn't get forced into bankruptcy, I would be a happy, but unfulfilled, bankruptcy attorney. I have a few I'm, 15 years later I might have a few rental properties, but I would not be here. Instead. What happened is I started buying real estate and in seven years I was able to quit my corporate job, walk away and not have to worry about anything. And then that freedom allowed me to go, oh wait, I can like. Do all this other stuff. And the other stuff for me was helping people buy real estate. Teaching people about real estate, doing some coaching, all this stuff. That's super fulfilling that I've never been able to do. Plus it also got me to where I went, you know what I wanna grow. I wanna do bigger deals. We had 50 single family properties when I quit working. And now I have like less than that, in single families. And we bought, 10 units, 20 units, 30 and 50 unit buildings, and we just we've been ramping up the whole time. And it's just been amazing. And all that happened because of that moment that I call those pivot points, where something happens in retrospect, you look at it and go, that thing was probably the greatest thing that happened to me. And the cool part about what we were talking about earlier about ha not having bad days is if you match this no bad days, mindset. Into that stuff. When you get to those pivot points, you're more likely to recognize the significance of it at the time. Yes. Cause your mind's gonna be more clear cause you're not gonna be sitting around going, oh man, this is so crappy. Like all this bad stuff's happening. You're gonna be like, what's the positive. And so you have this pivot point and it changed the trajectory of your life. And we all have. If we wanna grow, we have to have, but if you can have those and remain positive at the time that, that, that challenge is arising, then it just freaking it. It's like pouring gasoline on your future and lighting it on fire. It's so amazing. They talk about the fire stuff all the time, this retire early stuff. It's cool. I there's nothing wrong with that, but like holy crap, man, like the real fire is when you're like super positive and energized about everything you. Dude. Yes, you be best friends. Yeah, we can be best friends. Okay, cool. I don't know. I have to talk to, I have to call Matt and see if he's okay with it. Matt,

I'm also best friends okay. We'll just do it the old fashioned way, fist fight to the death. And then

that sounds, yeah, that sounds good. I'll let you and Matt fight over who gets to be my best friend. Perfect. I don't wanna fight. So you guys do that. Perfect. I'll take down. I'll take down direct I'll as soon as we get off and I'll be like,

I'll take down Darosa group, but no, exactly what you said. Another phrase that comes to mind is things are either a blessing or a lesson. And so I'm religious. So I always think I'm like, I always have a little laugh at myself because whenever something goes wrong, I, before let me put some context in color to this before I was the person that was looking for that thing. I'm on hyper alert all the time, super stressed, super anxious, constantly thinking what could go wrong because. I was a B2B enterprise sales rep to where we were conditioned that the deal was not done until it's done. And there would be everything to go wrong and you could poke holes in it to see what was gonna go wrong. And that used to be me, but now whenever things are cruising and something goes wrong, I'm like, alright, that's God just testing to see how bad I want it. I'm like, it's like a little test, like just a little

minute test, that's the thing. If you believe everything happens for a reason, right? God has a plan for you then, like that makes it, that's the other part of the, I don't always explain it, but for me, that's a big part of the no bad base thing. It's it's also about having faith that whatever you're going through is okay. And

it's supposed to happen when it's supposed to happen.

Yeah. Yeah. Even when you're trying to make hard decisions or whatever, all this stuff you're not sure if you want quit your job or whatever it might be, you're not sure if you want get married, it doesn't really matter what the decision is. Like you just gotta be okay with not being, not knowing. There's only three, anytime you're facing the decision, there's three possible solutions. Yes, no. Or I don't know. And if you can go I'm okay with, I don't know, because I'll know when I know. And you, then you're, there's no, it takes away all the angst in that stuff. And then you can just like, whenever, and that's okay. That's when you know yeah. And you're

supposed to know when you're supposed to. Yeah. That's such a, that's such a huge thing because there's people that are listening to this right now that, I've had people say, Hey, I was listening to all these podcasts before, and then I heard this one episode, say this one thing that on your show, and it just completely clicked for me. And we all have those

click moments and they, yeah, exactly. That's just like those pivot points when something traumatic points. Yeah. And I believe in, I believe that most of our progress in life comes in discrete moments like that. To keep be on your real estate investing, you go to conferences all the time and you're meeting up with people and learning stuff and then you walk into one conference and one person on the stage or one person sitting next to, you says that one thing that changes your whole strategy, yeah. I had this happen to me at a conference once in 2016, 17, somewhere around, I think it was 17. They started talking about. How bonus depreciation worked and I went, I dunno what they're talking about. Yeah. And then all of a sudden I was like, I need to figure this out. And within like months of that, I had never paid federal income tax again. It's ridiculous, like literally that one concept of cost segregation and bonus depreciation eliminated my federal tax for the last five years. Yeah. I went to

a GoBundance event and I paid 10 grand a year to be in GoBundance and I go to an. Last fall. And one of the guys I'm golfing with goes, he's like, how are, how am I good friends with you right now? He's most people can't even get in touch with me yet. I view you as a good friend. He's you've got like a gift of connection. He's you need to start a podcast, man. I was just like, nah, I'm not gonna start a podcast. Nobody wants to listen to me. Yeah. So now here we are to where now I'm literally building an entire company around my podcast and it's literally my life's defining. And the ultimate source

of fulfillment that's right. Those little tiny things, just they matter. And now but lean into this too, you pay $10,000 a year to hang out with quality people. Yes, those things are important. That is something that most people choose not to do. See, it's easy for us to forget because cuz guys like us, like we do that kind of stuff. Yeah. But most people don't. So if I were giving advice to your audience, I would say, keep listening to the show. Keep absorbing quality content, but don't be afraid to pay for access. I don't know if you do a mastermind, but if you do, they should pay for your mastermind, right? Like whatever you should be going to these things and hang out with the people. Whether it's GoBundance or whether it's some multi-family mastermind, it doesn't really matter. But whatever it is that you wanna work on, you want to hang out with people that are working on that project.

Yeah. Speaking of multifamily I'm buddies with Geno from Jake and Geno. Sure. And he was on this podcast and he

said, no barrel profits and all that. Their

stuff's great. Yeah. He said a quote where he was like he said it really well, it was pay to play or seek to serve that's the two ways. So get in contact with people that are worth their salt and here's another stress test people. If there's someone that you reach out to, and they're just like extremely easily access. Eh, probably not worth their salt too much.

It's full full transparency. Hey if someone doesn't value their time enough then that anybody can reach out to ' brian: em. Yeah. And it's not a nice, it's not a nice or last asshole, probably. They're not doing good stuff with their time. Yeah.

So you either have to pay the play or seek to serve. So it's either you pay to be a part of whatever organization or pay for the. Pay for the coaching, whatever have you, or you find a very specific and tangible way to provide value in which they're like,

wow. Yeah. Cause, and if you're sitting here listening and you're talking to coach and they're telling you, it's gonna be 10 grand to talk to me or whatever, and you don't have 10 grand then take the other strategy. Figure out a way you can help somebody in some way, because that's the other thing, like most people I know that are successful. I know this is true of me. But most people I know that are successful. I actually wanna help other people being successful. That's a big part of what makes you successful in the first place. So that service mentality by itself will make you more successful, even if you never even connect with anyone because you're helping people and helping people. I really believe that God, the universe, however you want to believe it. Rewards people who bring. Like the more value you bring to the world at scale, the more you get back, right? Yes. So if I help you, I get a little valued. If I go on your podcast and I help a bunch of people, I get even more value, right? If I, yes, if I can scale out huge, I'm gonna, it's even more and more value. Like people like hell Elrod, perfect example that him telling his story over and over again has helped millions of. and as a consequence, he's received millions of dollars back, right? I don't know how well it's a problem. Know exactly what its, but it's not million. He didn't do it. He didn't do it for the money. He did it to help. And when he do things from the right place, the money follows. Yeah. And

I used to think that I had such an edge. It's a recurring thing that I keep bringing up. But I used to think that I had an edge with all this information, all this network, all this community that I have I thought that it gave me like in the battle of business, I was like, okay, you go against me. You're gonna lose plain and simple because I have, I'm better connected. I have more information and more resources. And that's how I used to. Until I joined the freaking mastermind and I got around people that were years, decades, and, multiples passed where I was with my net worth and with my journey and maturity and growth in general. And they were like, Hey dude, everything that you think is completely wrong. And I'm like, okay, say more, cuz obviously you're, you've got it figured out. I don't. And they're. You're thinking, this is like a zero sum game. He's we can all win together. And then the faster you pivot to that and be that guy and like just pour everything out into others. They're like, that's gonna exponentially grow you faster doing it that way.

I was just like, oh my God, it's also more rewarding enjoy to live and all that stuff. And the truth is I don't work very hard. I really don't like, actually. I might be the exception. If people reach out to me, I'm actually pretty easy to get ahold of. I like talking to people. I have enough time to do it, but the reason I have that flexibility is cause when I, yeah, but it's not even just that it's when I find things to do with my time that's productive. That brings value. I always share those things. Always and as a result, I made a lot of money without having to put that much effort in because I would find deals and I would talk to people and I'd put deals together. It's like syndicating in a way, right? Like when you syndicate, you're able to do bigger deals than you would've done by yourself. But I was just like, naturally, like I, I've never done a deal, a real estate deal ever without a partner, even when I have the greatest deal. And I know I can do it on my own. I find someone. That I wanted to do something with, for a while. And I offered to them like just the other day, I'd want duplex. I hardly ever buy duplexes. It was such a smoking. It was such a good deal. I was like, I have to buy it. I was getting ready to buy it. I'd already talked to the bank about it. And then I went, my one friend he's always wanted to start investing in real estate. Let me call him up and tell him about this deal. Deal with him. And then afterwards I went, oh crap, I have something wrong with my brain because I literally am incapable of doing deals on my own. But the reality is I believe that because I brought people into it, I've benefited way more than they have without even intentionally doing that. Like my buddy, who I brought into this deal now flashboard a year he's on the board of a credit union. I never saw surprised all of a sudden he's on the board, like on the board, the credit union and and now he's lawyer and stuff. So I knew him for a long time, but now he's on a board of a credit union. He's telling me like how, like underwriting works from the inside, and like I'm getting this insight that's a thousand times more valuable than half of a duplex. Oh my God. And then

that's just a matter of perspective because I had rod CLE on the show too, and he gave me something that was a Tony Robbins quote, actually. But it's just remember these quotables. And he said, it's about the science of achievement and the art of fulfillment. And I love that. So yeah, you've heard of, you've got both. Yeah, you've got both of those figured out now, brother, but as I'm looking at this right now Computer is about to die my chargers in the other room. So this is at our time anyways. So brother you mentioned a book that you're about to launch.

What stage is this in? Yeah, it comes up. Yeah. So it's yeah it's it's written have a publisher. The release date is in April, so it's still ways off, but the preorders available on, Amazon Barnes and noble and all that, it's called no bad days. How to make every day. Perfect. And

where can people go to find you and get some more positivity in their life?

I'm not hiding, so if they Google Jeffrey Holst, they'll find me. But I have a Facebook group called last life ever, where we just share positive things about living the best version of our lives. So that's a cool place. Otherwise Instagram's good. I've post on there frequently at Jeffrey Holst on Instagram. I love

it, brother. So everyone, if you want a little bit more positivity in your day, go and join these groups and freaking pre-order the book, yeah. Dude, that, that would be awesome. Order it for 50 more people too, for the heck of it, just to keep spreading and be that

I actually, what, if you order the book and you, if you pre-order the book and you email me or screenshot it to me on Instagram, that's probably the easiest I will. I'll find something fun to give you. I don't know what it is yet, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna create a bonus gift for you and get it out. There we

go. You heard it here first people. And we didn't talk real estate at all.

we didn't. So didn't, we'll come back again. We'll do time. We'll a real estate. Yeah,

it's all good. But this is like infinitely more helpful. And this is stuff like this and shows like this episodes like this this is what this is worth. 10 real estate shows. I'd say it over and over again, because I've been through both of 'em and I know that people are still listening at this moment because of how free and powerful your story is. So thank you for sharing it so openly. So candidly, and thank you for allowing us to have a peek and open up the window to see your lessons so that we can take stuff away. That's greatly appreciated. Thank you for the authenticity and the transparency. Yeah.

Thanks for having me on. I enjoy.

It was awesome, man. So this has been Brian Lubin and Jeff Holst, the globe trot and happy guys signing off with the action academy podcast. See you guys.