because we don't have the visionary here.
I hope he's well.
I hope that Chad, who's supposed to be on the show,
didn't have like a family emergency or something
and that all is well with him, but he's not here.
And we're gonna explore what it's like to be a visionary
when you have confusing assets in the market as well
and what this happens.
So Chad's gonna have the opportunity to do a video
and showcase whether he's a great leader
or whether he has an inferiority complex about what occurs
because we're in a position to where this happens
so often in our market
where visionaries don't express clarity.
They don't put their brands out there
the way that they should.
And it leaves the market confused.
And what happens with a confused mind?
The confused mind says no.
And what's really cool.
Welcome in to Vision Pros Live.
With Jackson Calame, I'm your show host.
We will be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs
and guest leaders who are building
fantastic visions out there.
All right, welcome into Vision Pros Live.
What's up Jaime?
You didn't know you're coming back on screen.
Awesome.
Very cool.
I'm your show host, Jackson Calame,
founder of First Class Business,
host of Vision Pros Live, obviously, here we are.
And I wanna give a quick shout out to our sponsors.
I Come Maker Live, we just had an excellent conference
hosted in Charleston, South Carolina,
but also more than 300 people
tuned into the event throughout the world
and got to learn about seven figure podcasting.
And Tom Matzen and Sheryl Plouffe
did an excellent job of running that.
I don't wanna take any credit away though
from Danella Burnett, who also was part of that,
is part of that founder crew.
They have such an amazing system
and process for helping people,
not just launch a podcast,
but build a profitable business model in the process.
And their decades of experience are something that,
when you meet them, when you get to see them speak,
when you get to see what they do,
you can see that they use their time super, super well
and life to understand how the game of business works.
CapShow, our other additional sponsor,
oh, my fingers no longer reach that brand,
the capshow.com, C-A-P-S-H-O, phenomenal tool
for getting your content marketing out there.
I highly recommend it.
Our team utilizes it to create show notes
and to create social media posts from the content
that we talk about in this show right here.
Now we've got Chad Whitfeld.
I think that's how I pronounce his last name.
Chad, go and give me a thumbs up if that's the case.
So Chad and I have not had the chance to meet yet.
He was a little late to the show.
So Chad, I'm not trying to throw you into the bus.
Just the reality that's there.
And we will see what types of leadership attributes
come out as we do bring him onto the show.
Now I had to figure out, all right, how do we name this?
Because we've got somebody who is young and ambitious
and has a great vision in mind
and I'm excited to hear about that.
And so we called this episode,
Exploring the Vision of a Young,
Self-Proclaimed Real Estate Tycoon.
Because we looked through his LinkedIn,
we see one brand that we can't find on Google.
We see the ability to help real estate agents
with their marketing.
And we see a, let's see here.
Let me look in the notes one more time here.
It was, oh, it's on a Google document.
Partnered on over $30 million in real estate syndications.
I mean, I would consider that tycoon level.
And at the same time, we've learned through hard truths
that a lot of real estate people,
if they even touch the name Robert Kiyosaki
and have read the book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad,
they make similar claims.
So what's really cool is Chad's gonna get to come on here.
He's gonna get to expound his vision
and help us see why it is
that people should follow his vision.
And I'm not here to challenge him and say,
hey man, you're wrong.
I'm here to help facilitate transparency
and to make sure that he's supported on his efforts to,
I'm assuming his intent is to do good
and to help people in this world.
And so if that's the case,
this is gonna turn into a beautiful conversation
that moves from a state of discord to a state of harmony
as we get to know each other.
So Chad, thanks for being my victim today,
as much as my guest.
And let's have some fun with this.
How are you, man?
Good, how are you doing, man?
I'm doing really well.
I love the freedom hat.
Do you know Tony Lopes?
I don't.
I had to ask.
He wrote a book called Freedom at Risk
and he is also one of those real estate tycoon
individuals, he's a good friend of mine.
And he does know a lot about real estate.
So I'm excited to dive into your vision,
see what you're all about.
Sure.
And we'll hit it hot and heavy.
So let me give you your first question here.
So Chad, who should be listening today?
Why should they listen to you?
And what are they gonna get out of today's show,
do you think?
Yeah, for sure.
I think anyone who really has been in a place in their life
where they've been told they couldn't, right?
Why you should listen to me,
that's really up for you to decide
because the truth of the matter is,
I'm not a real estate tycoon at all.
You're good.
I'm just a boy from the Midwest
trying to make my mark on the world
and live the life that everyone I grew up around
told me I couldn't have, right?
So that's really nice.
That's really my story.
You and LeBron.
Sure.
That's his story, that's what he says.
So that's good, man.
And I'll take the pressure off quite a bit too.
So the goal, I appreciate you letting us know that again.
We were getting creative with titles,
we didn't have you here.
So we had to come up with a title on our own.
And again, I do see in your LinkedIn profile
that you help real estate entrepreneurs automate
and dominate their markets as industry leaders.
So without being a tycoon,
how do you help them dominate their markets?
What's behind the process, so to speak?
For sure.
So I got my start in real estate
by building out acquisition systems
for money and for deals, right?
And so that's how I had my value prop
into my first syndication of an apartment building.
From there, we've gone through a lot of iterations, right?
I've done deals on the passive side of things
quite a few times.
And ultimately I partner with funds and other syndicators
who want to dial in their systems and processes.
And that's what it allows me to get a piece,
a chunk of the deal.
So, yeah.
Nice, okay.
So systems operations back in support
for the fulfillment side
or for the initial onboarding of prospects?
This is gonna be for acquiring accredited investors,
whether it's into a reggae fund or a 506C,
as well as managing and developing broker relationships
and pipeline flow of opportunity.
Okay.
And let me see here.
Ah, that was the one that also got me.
So I totally forgot about the crypto renegades thing.
So crypto renegades,
while I was Googling that as well,
I saw like a crypto renegades.com, is that yours?
I don't, no it is not.
We've had some iterations with website stuff.
Okay, there's a crypto renegade.com.
That's what I was like, shoot, is this his or not?
But do you have a website for crypto renegades?
I have a funnel.
You have a funnel, okay.
Do you wanna send that link over real quick?
It doesn't hurt to pull that up on the screen
while we chat about it.
So what's your primary focus these days?
Are you Richard Branson building like multiple focus points
that you're totally fine?
Or is it crypto or is it real estate, is it both?
It's both.
Yeah, it's both.
So I have a team around me, you know?
So I'm allowed to,
I'm allowed to triple down on my superpowers
in a lot of different places.
But the crypto got started at a pretty young age.
I had a really, really geeky friend
and we bought Bitcoin together at about 300 bucks a coin.
Oh, nice.
That was the very first iteration.
From there, I went and visited him.
One of his rental properties
turned into an entire mining farm.
From there, I bought my first mining rig for 15 grand.
Within three months, we had a $2.5 million warehouse
of Ethereum mining GPUs with a partner.
That was probably one of the most positive investments
I've ever made.
The cash on cash return was absolutely outstanding.
The appreciation on the hardware at that time,
we had a connection in China and we had, you know,
buying power.
So not only the amount of money we made on cashflow
for mining, but also the appreciation on the hardware,
easily one of the best investments I've ever made.
Very interesting exit strategy.
That is a whole nother story.
Yeah, we do.
Yeah.
I like-
You mind going into that?
Cause that was awesome.
That's, you know, man, it would have been,
it would have been awesome.
How old were you when you started that?
This was, I just turned 30.
This, I made my exit out of that about three years ago.
So I'm starting to remember.
How old were you when you started the crypto mining?
When I first started crypto mining?
Yeah.
Let's see here.
So I mined, that was three years ago, five years ago.
So I was 25.
25.
Okay.
That's awesome, man.
And you, all right.
So yeah, the exit strategy,
you alluded to some whole other thing there.
Do you mind expounding upon that?
Because I think a lot of people who are listening in,
you know, there's just, there's so much,
there's so much skimming through the process
of talking about crypto
that I think people feel uncomfortable with it
because they never really get to know the details
of like what happened, why, how it works.
And I'd love to hear, you know, your experience,
because you did get to play pretty big in that market.
Yeah.
I mean, for a guy like me, yeah, I was big,
but in the grand scheme of things, we were small time,
but nonetheless.
Oh, and you're on Ellen DeGeneres' show.
Yeah, that will make sense, but I'm not Ellen.
Right.
Or Jimmy Tellan.
Yeah, no, for sure.
For sure, man, go on.
Yeah, so when it came time to make the exit, right?
Like there was a lot of chatter
on the crypto community in general.
The mining community is pretty tight knit.
There's a lot of hobbyists, right?
A guy with a couple of GPUs, you know,
he might make a couple hundred bucks a month,
not really a big deal.
At the height, we were doing six figures a month, right?
So we had quite a bit bigger operation than the average guy.
I was personally reading every single word
that the development team from Ethereum was putting out
because the most profitable mining was Ethereum.
Nothing even came close to it.
And so I knew that Ethereum was moving from proof of work,
allowing it to be mineable by GPU to proof of stake,
which would eliminate its mineability, right?
I also knew that the amount of hashing power,
once that is gone, is gonna go,
it flood into all the other alternatives,
raising the difficulty rate,
in turn causing lower profitability.
I needed to time my exit.
I knew the party was gonna stop.
I knew the music was gonna stop
and the chairs were gonna be gone, right?
So I was very, very perspicacious around what was going on.
Meanwhile, an overwhelming majority of the community
didn't want to admit that the party might end, right?
The talk around town was,
hey, they've been working on this for four years.
They're never gonna get it.
We're gonna mine this till the day we die, right?
When you've got something plugged into your wall
and it's making you a small part-time salary
at whatever hobbyist level,
you don't want the party to end.
Right, so you validate that information
with biases in the market.
And so when it came time to make my exit,
I had a lot of hardware to move, right?
And so my assistant's posting this stuff
everywhere she possibly can to get it sold
because I wanted out.
And the amount of backlash I got for that
was quite interesting.
That I was a fraud, that I was a traitor,
that I was giving up,
this, that, every mean name under the sun.
Now here's the fun part.
Two and a half months later,
crypto moves into a massive correction.
The appreciation of the hardware goes pretty much
all the way back down to baseline of where it was.
And Ethereum became officially proof of stake
and no longer mineable with GPU.
So I couldn't have timed my exit any better than I did.
Good for you, man.
Well, I think it's huge.
And I think it's, you know,
to kind of correlate that with a real world experience
that I think everybody here understands is,
I look at Water Burger.
Water Burger is a big fast food chain in Texas.
And you know, they're like the Texas chain
that everybody loves here.
Our burgers are better than In-N-Out.
You know, like it's a big old fight.
In-N-Out and Water Burger.
Well, they sold two, three years ago now.
It hasn't been that long.
And you know, this is a family owned operation.
So now they've sold to, I don't know,
it's like, I think it was the umbrella that owns Chipotle.
But you know, the backlash they got, right?
All the haters come out of like, you know,
oh, you guys are selling out.
You know, you guys are frauds.
You know, how can you do this?
Like, yeah, people are gonna have their opinions.
You know, naturally their emotions are invested
in a certain way things are done, et cetera.
But at the same time, like,
there was a couple of us Texans who were silently applauding.
You know, like, hey man, like good job.
You guys lived the dream.
You built something amazing for us.
And you knew that it's time to cash in on this
and pursue whatever other dreams you want in life.
Don't let the world tell you what to do.
So I think it's really cool that you knew
what you were supposed to do.
You had the power to stand up for your principles,
your vision for this, and you took action.
Have the positive repercussions of that outweighed,
you know, the negative cons and how long did that,
does that still follow you?
Does it still bother you at all?
Like the backlash or where even now?
It never, I got thick skin, man.
I mean, you know, like I said,
I grew up pretty middle-class Midwest, you know,
you get bullied, you get in fights, you get beat up.
Like that was how you grew up as a kid, right?
So I got pretty thick skin.
I thought it was comical.
I laughed about it the whole time.
I never put any energy into it.
And, you know, it's really hard to validate
somebody's opinion when you have a $2.5 million warehouse
pulling on, you know, six figures a month, some months,
and some guy with three GPUs worth $1,000
is trying to validate his thoughts onto you.
Like I couldn't care less, you know.
Good for you.
I love that.
And I hope more of you visionaries hear that
because that's probably one of the greatest challenges
a lot of you face is just not being comfortable
with owning your vision and what you see.
So moving forward, Chad, in 30 seconds,
what's your vision for those that you serve right now?
Yeah, I think just opening my journey,
opening my journey and living my truth, you know.
I don't have any, the thing is, man,
I don't have anyone to sell.
I don't have anything to sell anybody.
That's the beauty of where I'm at in my life, right?
And so I think just by sharing what I'm doing
and hopefully inspiring other people to go against the grain,
live differently and take on challenges head first
is ultimately what led me to my highest place of fulfillment.
Nice, so what is that vision?
What are you doing currently?
I'll let you take that drink first though.
Yeah, for sure.
I mean, I think the reality is, especially as a young man,
you go through iterations and seasons of life, right?
So at first, you know, and you really have to go
and become somebody of accomplishment, right?
You don't get to be truly fulfilled and happy
by posting some inspirational quote on your Facebook
or your Instagram.
It might make you feel good for 30 seconds
and give you that dopamine hit,
but the reality is we're born to conquer and accomplish,
right?
And so first, I think my story was actually becoming
somebody of value and having real accomplishment, right?
And in turn, what comes from that
is typically gonna be financial gain, right?
So being at that place, now that I have, you know,
abundance in my finances in life, right?
From there, while I was building that,
I let my health suffer.
So then I had to go through a new iteration of season
and become a man of physicality.
I had to get in shape.
I had to learn how to, I'd gotten to jiu-jitsu,
gotten to the gym, gotten to walking 10,000 steps a day,
eating right, right?
Having a solid foundation in my morning routine.
Okay, great, I got those two pillars down,
but I'm lonely.
I don't have an amazing woman in my life, right?
So then I go through the next iteration
and become more emotionally intelligent
and go find the most incredible partner in the world, right?
So now I have an amazing woman by my side.
Okay, now what?
Well, I haven't really spent a whole lot of time
working on my faith and finding something
that's a higher being than me.
So I've go through these iterations
in these seasons in life.
And at this point, you know, 30 years old,
going through quite a few different rounds of this,
now having something where I feel very, very well sound,
happy, fulfilled in all of these pillars in my life, right?
Interesting, so how much did Mazel's hierarchy of needs
have an impact on that or did it not at all?
You know, I think reality for me, man,
it really comes down to the money.
It really comes down to the money
because when I had no money, I was broke.
You can't even start to think in a frame of abundance
when you're broke and just barely getting by.
You're thinking about the necessities, right?
How am I gonna pay my rent?
How am I gonna put food in my stomach?
How am I gonna, you know, fill my piece of junk car
with fuel to go make 30 bucks an hour or 20 bucks an hour,
whatever it is, right?
And at that point in your life, especially as a young man,
you don't have anything to offer the world, right?
You don't necessarily have anything
to offer an incredible woman, right?
So, you know, you don't necessarily have those things.
And so for me, it was the money first.
I had to make the money first.
I had to be somebody who could at least provide for myself
before I could even consider providing for other people
around me.
Gotcha.
Well, you're right, Beth.
It sounded a little bit like, for those who aren't familiar,
Marla's Los Hierarchies of Needs begins with oxygen.
You don't have oxygen.
There's nothing else you really want in life.
That's it.
And then once you have oxygen, if you're starving,
you want food.
If you need water, you need to get your water in.
There's these elements of essentials building up towards
like, okay, now I have that.
Now I want safety.
Now I've got safety.
I want friendship.
I got friendship.
I want fulfillment.
I got fulfillment.
I want to transcend, right?
And that's kind of how you described this ascension process
of kind of where you're at, where you're going.
And I just thought that was really interesting.
But you don't have a need right now.
You don't have anything to sell people,
but do you have an audience that you serve?
And if so, what do you bring to the table?
What is it that they would get out of,
I guess, following your path?
Yeah, I mean, I have a small audience on social media.
It's not something that I validate myself through, right?
Sure.
And so for me, it's really,
I really just show up and speak my honest truths.
What I'm going through in my life,
the challenges I face, the iterations I go through,
the successes I have,
and really what it means to me at not only
at the highest level of my internal belief system,
my emotions, the people around me, et cetera.
But I think, I think especially for me growing up,
it's really hard to take advice
and listen to somebody who's not like you.
Yes. Right.
And I think there's a lot of young men out there like me.
I think there's a lot of young men out there
who grew up in middle-class Midwest.
They spent their entire life being told,
hey, go to school for four years,
go get an engineering degree,
and you're going to make 40, 50K.
As you get your raise, you might buy a boat one day
and you're going to be living it up.
Right?
Like I think a lot of people,
like to make up their story
and whatever that looks like, right?
But like, I think just speaking my truth and my journey
and being transparent along the way,
I think a lot of people can resonate with it
just because they see themselves in that same path
and place that I've been through.
Yeah. Well, I see that.
And so they see the inspiration.
So as, you know, and I'm trying to think about
to correlate this, but it sounds like your vision
is more of like living your best life
and that if people want to kind of join you in the process,
they can get in touch and things might come of it
because they want to be involved.
Is that correct?
Yeah, more or less.
I mean, personally, like the selfish reason behind it,
like I get a lot of enjoyment and fulfillment
out of having people message me,
and it happens all the time,
especially when I documented my health journey.
I had people messaging me every single day,
thanking me for being public about getting in shape, right?
Showing me, hey man, I just did this, this and this.
I've been in the gym for the last three weeks.
I feel incredible.
I can't thank you enough.
Like I have a selfish fulfillment
and I just personally feel like
God gave me this opportunity in my life to be in this place
where I don't need to sell anybody anything, right?
And so being able to document my process
and help other people along the same path,
I just get personal fulfillment and enjoyment out of it.
And then I also find that when I speak on it,
I learned something new, right?
There's been multiple times I'll be,
I mean, I don't even go on social media anymore.
I have a team who goes and films me and cuts everything up
and puts it all on my social media,
replies to everything, manages my entire thing for me.
However, when those wins come through or I'll go
and I'll go approve their final edits
and I'll say something, I'll be like, oh, wait a minute.
Just trigger something when you hear yourself
reiterate it back to you,
and it makes you think a little bit differently sometimes.
So it's fun.
It's clear as well as you play with it, as you look,
just like any vision.
If you stand on a hilltop and you look out for 10 seconds,
you close your eyes, turn around, you're gonna have a,
and then you turn back around and look,
you're gonna catch different things,
depending on the landscape in front of you.
The same is true of your vision and direction in life.
So I like that, I appreciate that a lot.
I would say then that it's sound,
I'm not trying to put you in a box as much as just trying
to help the audience understand what to attach themselves to
and relation to.
And so you seem like you're living
the creator influencer economy within that,
or the creator, they call it the creator influencer economy.
And there's people who are kind of leading the way for,
life doesn't have to be the way that it was,
we were betrayed.
It had to be, like you said, go get a boat,
live your happy life on a boat and consider that good,
versus being able to kind of experience and do more,
Tim Ferriss style, right?
Is that accurate or is that still inaccurate?
I'm not sure, I don't really consider myself an influencer,
primarily because I don't really care that much.
I mean, you can ask anyone around me,
I don't live through Instagram,
I don't live through the lens.
At one point in a very short period of my life,
everything, all my experiences were curated
for an Instagram story.
And I realized that led me nowhere but to feel unhappy,
unfulfilled and flat out silly, right?
And so I don't really care that much
to validate myself on social media,
primarily because I have real accomplishment in my business
and my relationship and everything else around me.
I just, yeah, it's just fun to me.
I just, I like filming.
Okay, so there it is.
So it's fun to you.
Yeah, it's just fun, you know?
It's just fun.
Doing these interviews,
talking to people about talking shop,
mastermind ultimately.
Talking shop, man.
And then ultimately, you know,
when people see what I can speak on,
the experiences I've had, the things I've done,
I only work with people on an extremely high level, right?
So ultimately it has led to some high level
business arrangements as well.
But for the average person, like, you know,
when you get off a podcast, someone says,
oh, where can people find you at?
And then you plug in your website and you do this
and you try to send them to a lead magnet
to get their name, email and phone number.
I don't, cause I don't care.
Like if you like what I have to say, what's that?
Well, you already know the truth too,
that it all is a lead magnet as it is, right?
Your lead magnet is your word, your story.
You know, people are going to gravitate towards that
because you have a success story
and naturally they're gonna find a way to connect with you
because you do have those profiles and your assistants
are gonna take care of that.
So your presence is your lead magnet.
Yeah, to a degree, to a degree.
I think what I was speaking on specifically
is peddling some low level $97 crappy ebook, you know?
Yeah, no, I agree.
It's, there's both of those things,
it was contrasting the two, the positive with the negative,
I mean, I'm like, hey, don't overthink this.
If you've got value, give the value
and you bring that value with what you do
because you've had that success.
Yeah, 100%.
So what's your worst business experience ever?
Yeah, I love that question so much.
Every, I mean, there's been multiple,
but all of them revolve around bad partnerships
at a young age too.
My first business failed at 20
and my next business diverted at 24.
And it was all because of partnership alignment.
And I think at that age,
I really didn't know what I know now, obviously.
And if I were to do it over again,
and the advice I would give
is understand that equity is expensive.
You might be starting a business today that has,
you have no revenue, right?
So you think, okay, let me give somebody 50%
of this partnership.
However, what about 10 years down the road
when that business is doing 100 million?
That 50% equity just got a lot more expensive, right?
And so for me, what comes to mind
is getting to a cash position as quickly as possible,
whatever that looks like.
If you're 20 years old,
you don't know what you wanna do,
you know you wanna start a business.
I personally think getting six figures in the bank
as quickly as possible is goal number one
before as you're growing that business,
primarily because instead of partnering, you can hire, right?
And when you have that cash position of liquidity,
you're gonna be in a much better place
to not be in an equity crunch,
trying to sell equity off to get help.
Number two, later down the road,
when it does time, when it might make sense
to become partners or partner on something,
understand the dynamics of the partnership, right?
Obviously you have the basics,
very, very clear upfront roles, obligations,
what they bring to the table,
clawback provisions if they're not non-performance clawbacks,
all that good stuff, super important.
But I think psychologically and internally,
the most important thing,
you never wanna partner with somebody who's like you, never.
That's the worst thing you can possibly do.
Let's say for example,
let's just use an arbitrary example.
Let's say that you have five years of experience
running a Fortune 500 sales team.
You're responsible for over half a billion dollars
in revenue through that sales team.
You're a rock star.
Everything you need to do about sales,
you know how to manage, you know how to bring everything.
Why on God's green earth would you go partner with John
who had the exact same role with your competitor's company?
You have the exact same superpowers.
I guess it feels good.
All you're doing is wasting your equity.
You're right.
And I see this happen time and time and time again.
And so yeah, never partner with anybody who's like you
because it's completely pointless.
Dude, these are golden.
I'm like letting you just go because they really are.
And anybody who's listening right now,
like you want that yin yang experience in business.
Somebody who's going to not understand,
excuse me, everything that you do.
I mean, on your side and there's plenty of weaknesses
that you have as a visionary as well that need to be,
the gaps need to be filled.
And there's a lot of business gaps to fill.
So wow, man, very, very well said.
So it sounds like you've had some ups and downs
in the business world, which I'm grateful for.
I'm grateful to hear about as well.
It's, you know, it's the devil's in the details
as is the divine, as are the dividends.
All three of those reality, you can't,
it's only superficial if you don't go deeper.
So the, how many businesses have you had?
I'll have to count, man.
I've gone through a lot of iterations.
My very first business was a landscaping company
at the age of 16 years old.
I learned a lot from that business.
During, through college, I had a arbitrage electronics,
which is essentially me just buying every single person's
iPhone, laptop, tablet.
I could possibly get my hands on college campus,
flip it on eBay, right?
That business, funny, you know,
I talked to people today, right?
They're 25, 30 years old.
They're trying to, you know, start this business.
They're doing a couple grand a month.
Man, that business in college,
it was a six figure business.
It was doing over 10K a month.
And why?
Because I hustled.
I see that.
And I hustled.
I'd put up flyers.
I'd put up Craigslist ads, Facebook.
I would do everything.
And my phone all day, every day.
All I did was walk around campus buying stuff.
And I just kind of feel like if you're not within,
if you're not at six figures within your first year
and a half to two years in business,
that you have one or two problems.
One, you don't have product market fit,
meaning the market doesn't actually want your offer, right?
That probably tell you,
let's get into a different opportunity vehicle.
And that's if and only if you're actually doing the work.
All right, you're probably not working that hard.
I think a lot of people put merit
that they work so hard and ultimately end up
just playing the mental tickling game.
Oh, I wanna start learning how to do real estate deals.
I'm gonna go to five different real estate conferences
over this year.
And guess what?
You do the same thing every single time you get home
from that real estate conference.
You put all your notes in a binder,
put them under your bed,
and go back to what you were doing
before you went to the conference, right?
Yep.
Same thing over and over again.
That's number two.
I mean, James Malinczak is a goofball, by the way.
He's a speaker, trainer, wonderful guy.
And he actually had some super wisdom in this session.
He talked about how, you know,
he was one of the best three-point shooters in college.
And he talked about he was working his butt off
to get that three-point thing down.
He could not make it for the life of him.
And some little man came and told him
about the mechanics of geometry,
kind of how it works and like how he should put his arm
in an L shape and shoot that way.
And it changed everything for him.
And he had this concept.
He said, don't work smarter, don't work harder.
Do the right work.
And I was like, dude, you almost nailed it, you goofball.
Like work smarter, work harder, and do the right work.
So I think there's that element of, you know,
you've also got, you know, can't just take those notes
and then, you know, go do the wrong thing.
You still have to learn how to do the right thing.
But if you can combine those three elements,
like you said, then your vision is likely to get built
if you have that product market fit too.
So excellent, excellent addition there.
What's your best experience in business?
My best experience is I connected two people,
two people in my network and CCed them on an email.
And I made about $27,000 in 30 seconds.
That was really fun.
I enjoyed that a lot.
And it made me really passionate.
It caused me, it was the easiest money I ever made.
And I think this is a really good speaking point
because it doesn't get merit enough, in my opinion.
Everybody wants to go post on their Instagram.
Your network is your net worth.
But 99% of people don't actually know how to cultivate
real opportunity from their network, right?
And here's three simple steps that I do
to cultivate my network and actually have it be
a seven figure plus network.
Number one, celebrate, right?
If you're building a network, I can guarantee you,
you can go on Facebook of people in your network
and they're gonna say, oh, I just closed this deal.
Oh, I just bought this rental property, right?
Instead of just liking the post or whatever
and moving on, call that person.
Say, John, I'm so proud of what you've accomplished
over the last three years.
Like, it's incredible to see your journey.
If you ever need anything at all,
please don't hesitate to reach out.
I'd love for our paths to cross in the future.
Right, which leads me to point number two,
be a person of accomplishment, right?
Be so darn good at the thing that you're an expert in
so that when your network has a problem,
you're the first person they think of.
Because being somebody of accomplishment,
all it is is solving problems and putting yourself
in the flow of money by creating solutions.
That's life, right?
That's business in general, right?
Number three, create merit.
Creating merit, super simple, guys.
This is when you see it's somebody's birthday,
don't just brush over it.
Like, if they're in your network
and you know it's their birthday, call them up.
Send them a gift card to their favorite restaurant, right?
Do something so that when the time comes around
for your opportunities, paths to cross,
they think of you, they trust you, they like you,
they wanna work with you, right?
And plot twist, this is a long-term game.
This isn't something that you fordicate in two weeks
because if you do, or if you try to,
that just means you're a sleazebag, right?
Like, this is the truth about cultivating your network
is genuinely caring and inputting real deposits into it.
And from there, your network
can actually become your net worth.
Not a lot of people do that because it does take effort.
No, they don't.
And that's brilliant.
It's brilliant, it's important, it feels right.
And it's what we should be taking care of our relationships.
I cannot tell you how much I appreciate that, Chad.
That celebrate aspect too.
One, so many people want to hype things up
and they wanna get in this excitement or this fun mode.
One person, one mentor in my life, Glenn Morschauer,
who's been in like 200 something movies,
Star Trek, Transformers, et cetera.
He's the one person that I've ever heard
teach the concept of celebrate.
That is his main thing, is celebrate, right?
Enjoy things.
You're the second person.
I've ever heard, and as I listened to your story
of what you've done, where you've gone,
what you've accomplished.
And anybody who's listening right now,
the IQ that Chad has is through the roof
and I'm gonna ask you about that next.
But first guys, if you didn't write it down,
write it down, celebrate.
Authentically call those people and celebrate them, not you.
In that case, celebrate what they're up to.
And as you mentioned,
think of meaningful birthday opportunities
rather than just jump on the bandwagon
and slapping that stupid GIF that nobody cares about.
Like actually tell them what you're grateful for about them.
What types of experiences you've had in the past.
Give them a memory or something.
But I like what you said too, give them a gift too.
Actually do something for them.
They're just extremely brilliant,
important relationship aspects
that I probably learned way too late in life.
And I haven't even done,
I haven't done the call to celebrate thing.
I'm like, shit, I need to be a better friend.
All of this came from my own experience.
I had a great network, but I was broke and I was pissed.
Like I have all of these people
who are multi-multi-millionaires and I'm broke.
Why?
And it upset me and yeah.
Well, you did something about it.
Exactly.
You put a formula together.
You started following it and that's awesome.
And as you keep doing that, like you said,
it's cultivation process long-term.
You'll have your ups and downs,
but hopefully you'll have more ups and downs
as you stay true to that process.
So how the heck did you get so smart?
That's a good question.
Go way back.
I mean, none of you study.
It's obviously study.
It's obviously you keep going.
It's obviously you're working your tail off,
but like go way back.
Like where did this,
where did you start to unlock your wits and your intelligence?
I really enjoy that question because I was,
I never did well in school.
I hated school.
I absolutely hated it.
And even through college, I hated it.
However, my first job was at the age of 50.
This is my first and only job I've ever had.
And I used this job to put myself through college
along with my electronic business at the time.
But I started working at a pretty affluent country club.
And pretty quickly I went from bus boy to bar back
to bartender, right?
Down in the men's grill.
And the men's grill is this bar attached to the locker room
where the high rollers would go
to get away from the wives and kids
because they weren't allowed in there at that time.
And I learned pretty quickly, pretty quickly,
the better conversations I had,
the better questions I asked,
the more I got people talking about themselves,
the more relationships I built,
it was directly correlated to the amount of money I made.
Right, and so here I am, 20 years old,
working four to five months out of the year,
making 50, 55 grand bartending
because I was building relationships
and getting really good tips, right?
And the tips were a very, very small percentage of it.
I quickly began to realize, you know,
these very successful men quickly start offering me positions
at their companies, quickly start offering me
all sorts of opportunities, right?
And so I took that with me to college.
And essentially what I realized after college was during it,
my friend and I had very different spring break schedules.
They were about two weeks apart
and we loved to travel together, right?
We never got to see each other much
because we're away at two different colleges.
So at the end of every semester, every year,
we would go on a spring break trip together,
which put me in a position to go to my professors and say,
hey, I need to take my exams maybe a week or two early.
Is that okay?
And the amount of times that my professor would say,
don't even worry about taking the exam, dude, you're good.
It was very profound.
And I started to think and wonder why,
after people would ask me, what'd you get on your exam?
I didn't take it.
And of course we would start to unpack that.
And the reality was during class,
I was simply asking questions of merit above the curriculum
that they did not wanna derail the class to go over.
And so they would say, Chad, just come talk to me
after class, we'll go over that.
And some of my professors was the COO of Enron,
running oil through the ocean.
Of course I wanna learn from that guy, right?
So I'm asking these questions, right?
Go up to him after class.
And oftentimes I would ask them out to dinner,
to a coffee, to go have a beer, you know?
And so I quickly realized that it's not that I didn't like
education and learning,
I just didn't like traditional education.
I didn't like being forced to read junk
that I wasn't ever gonna use.
And so I quickly learned how to ask questions.
And you really don't need to be that smart.
You just need to be articulate enough
to find the information and be likable enough
that people who are smarter than you wanna give it to you.
And I've just ran that way my entire life.
And it served me really well.
The other thing that really goes well with this,
having that as a superpower and having that as a skill,
our selfish pleasure in life is talking about ourselves.
If I can ask you very profound, well thought out questions
that tickle that, your accomplishments,
ultimately you're gonna like me.
You're gonna like me a lot more because you're smiling,
you're talking about yourself.
I'm genuinely interested, listening, learning.
It's such an easy way to fortitude
an incredible relationship with somebody.
I love that you use the word fortitude as well.
You could certainly use it to fabricate.
You could use it to try to facilitate,
but fortitude is the appropriate word there.
You're talking about utilizing that opportunity
to get to know somebody at their depth.
And in the process, of course,
you're gonna earn their trust.
And then what you do with that, if you continue to utilize
that to uplift their life,
then you're building a true relationship.
So this turned out to be an amazing episode.
And I hope you forgive me for the beginning.
I love it, man.
And I know it's gonna create a little bit
of controversy for people.
So it'll be fun.
People will get to play with that.
And Vision Pros, I want you to know that this only happens
when you're talking to somebody who's a true leader.
You know, where this flip occurs.
And I will always strive to protect our audience
and situations.
I will always try to make sure
that the most transparent conversation comes out
so that you guys get the most out of this.
And I'm super highly impressed, Chad,
with how our conversation went.
I learned a lot today.
And I look forward to the day somebody falls on their face
during that experience a little bit
so that we can also lift them back up.
I hope nobody ever runs.
I know that will happen at some point.
Some people eventually like just slam it off.
They're like, how could you present me like that?
But Vision Pros, this isn't about that.
This is about unlocking visions.
It's about making sure that, you know,
we can utilize these stories to validate our experiences.
Somehow you systematize that exam process.
Bro, that blows my mind.
I got lucky and I never caught
that that was part of the system.
I had a 0.33 GPA my first semester of college.
4.0 in dating, 0.33 GPA, everything else.
All right, I wasn't doing too well.
And I only got a 0.33 GPA
because my international politics teacher loved me.
And I was going to his class.
I was asking the great questions.
We were talking afterwards.
I didn't turn in the final paper.
I did not go to the final exam and he still gave me a C.
But I think he looked at my record and was like,
this kid is like ruining his life right now.
Let me see if I can help a little bit
because he at least cared enough to go.
It was the hardest class we had.
But I didn't catch the systematic reality that you're right.
Like they're people, they're human beings
with excellent track records in life
and they're there to help you succeed.
And if you're willing to play ball and, you know,
do your part, then they're going to do what they can
to help you succeed and win.
Absolutely, man.
I hope youngsters hear this, man.
Like this is huge.
So Chad, thanks for your time.
We've gone over a little bit of vision pros,
but it was absolutely worth it.
Any final thing you'd like to share
with the audience channel,
just give you one more chance
to throw another gold nugget at people.
You are never a product of your own environment.
It doesn't matter where you grew up.
Doesn't matter what projections and labels
people put onto you.
Doesn't matter.
You'll never become a product of it.
You are only a product of your decisions.
Well said, man.
Vision Pros, y'all have a fantastic day.
Chad, if you don't mind sticking around for a minute,
everybody have a phenomenal week
and we'll see you on the next show.
Take care.
Thanks for having me.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions
as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is going to get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
I invite people to participate in the show and.