The 5 Factors to Leaving a Soul-Sucking Job

David:
This is the BiggerPockets Podcast, Show 648.

Pat:
But the difference is most people think that when they jump off a cliff, they’re just going to fall straight to the ground if they don’t prepare an airplane on the way down. You’ve heard that ad. It’s entrepreneurs jump off a cliff, and then they build an airplane on the way down. Well, most people think I’m not going to be able to build an airplane. So I’m not going to jump off the cliff. And what we’re saying is, look, it is scary to jump off the cliff and we’re not telling you to jump off the cliff. We’re telling you to jump off the cliff, but we have a bunch of trapeze swings that you could grab onto.

David:
What’s going on everyone? This is David Greene, your host of the BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast here today with my co-host and good friend, Rob Abasolo, interviewing two mentors of mine. In today’s show, we bring back Tim Rhode and Pat Hiban, both OGs and juggernauts in the real estate space in their respective rights, who are incredibly successful agents at the top of the world in their prime and walked away from that job, quit it to find a better life for themselves that centered more around giving back to other people, working in nonprofits, pouring into others’ lives and making a whole bunch of money investing in real estate passively.
In today’s show, we dive deep and they share their story of the obstacles that they faced when trying to overcome their fear of quitting, as well as the audit that they did on their lives, that they call the soul-sucking audit to determine how happy they really were and what could be different. It is a fantastic episode. I think this is going to resonate with 99% of the people that are listening, who are here because they have their own soul-sucking issues in their life. And they don’t know how to get rid of those leeches that are dragging them down. Rob, any thoughts about the show before we get into the quick tip?

Rob:
Yeah, two thoughts. First one, this was really fun because we get to hear the David Greene origin story about how you started off as a gold miner for Tim Rhodes, with some clarification there later. And then two, this was really fun for me as someone who just quit my job about 16 months ago or so, because a lot of the systems and the tools that they talk about and the terminology is all a very official way to put everything in perspective for me when I was doing this, when I was getting into this, I mean, it was just crazy scattered brain thoughts in the ether. I wish I had talked to them so that I could at least have placed some sort of system in my mind to how to approach this because everything they said, I was like, oh, I did think of that. Oh, I didn’t think that. It was not nearly as organized or as cool as you just said it. I had to sort of figure that stuff out by myself.
So I think for anyone in their journey right now, who’s thinking about quitting and becoming a full-time, whatever it is they want to be, self-employed person, this will be a really good episode for you to really put things into, I don’t know, into tangible steps, I guess would be the best way to describe it.

David:
Moving on to today’s quick tip, consider BiggerPockets’ newest book written by Tim Rhode and Pat Hiban, The Quitter’s Manifesto. They’ve actually written a book that spells out tactical steps to quit where you’re at and get to where you want to be. This is not a feel good self-help, get y’all jazzed up and then say, go float your way into the ether and figure this out. No, this is actual step-by-step things that you can do, how to take an audit of your life, to decide if you’re happy, how to make changes so that you will be happy and get from where you are to where you want to go just like they’ve done and have helped countless other people, including myself to do the same. You can get that at biggerpockets.com/quittersmanifesto, or if you don’t like spelling, just go to biggerpockets.com/store and you can find it there.
All right. Let’s bring in Pat and Tim. Tim Rhode and Pat Hiban, welcome to the BiggerPockets Podcast. Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast. We’ve got some return guest action going on.

Pat:
Yeah, man. Good to be here. Wow. Been a while. I was trying to figure out when I was on last.

David:
Yeah. So we had you on episode, I believe it was 188 and Tim, you were a little more recent on 353. Both of those were very highly downloaded episodes. So BiggerPockets saw it fit to have you two, write a book. And we’re going to talk about that a little bit later in the episode. But before we get into it, why don’t we start with how we know each other and what your backgrounds are in real estate? You want to start off there, Tim?

Tim:
Sure. My background is in real estate, started selling real estate, my goodness, in 1986. I sold actively till about 2000. And this is when I met David Greene, right around that time when he was actually working at Isadore’s Restaurant and then came to work for me as a prospector. So, that’ll be a funny story within all of this. But yeah, and then I went, gosh, I’ve been a quitter for some time now, quit many different careers. And now I’ve kind of quit my way to the top, if you will. So it’s been a long, fun ride all the way.

David:
And Tim, can you tell us briefly about your real estate holdings at this time?

Tim:
So my real estate holdings at this time, I probably have about 50 different income streams, anything from my gut, I think I’ve got like 15 apartment complexes with our gap acquisitions, and then a bunch of businesses, bunch of investments in other people’s assets, because I don’t believe in working myself and haven’t for about the last 20 years. So I have about 50 different income streams at this time.

David:
Pat Hiban, former podcast host of Real Estate Rockstars. I believe you were also the former number one real estate agent in Keller Williams at one time. Tim, I’m sure you’d be able to say the same about PMZ Real Estate, where you dominated the market. But Pat, tell us a little bit about your history and your background in real estate.

Pat:
Yeah. So real estate’s my life really or has been, I should say. It’s like in one form or the other. I graduated college with a degree in sociology. I got a 2.3 GPA and no one would hire me. So I went into real estate sales because there was no barrier to entry. I spent 25 years selling, slinging and I was at probably five different companies over 25 years, RE/MAX, KW, Long & Foster, everything you think of. I had my own company, I had my own mortgage company, title company. Just real estate sales, until I quit. I quit, I bailed, I collected the money off of the craps table and I went back to the room and I hid it under the bed. And that’s really what happened.
So after that I started investing and I invested in a bunch of single families. Then with Tim, we started investing in multi families. I think we’re up to over 2000 units now, multi-family wise that were on a GP level on. We had a shopping center that we just sold. We’re kind of on, not a lot, but a little bit of a selling spree. We’re selling some things. Then, of course, I had that podcast, which I sold to Aaron Amuchastegui, the only person in the world to ever be able to monetize and sell a podcast thus far, that I know of. What else? Started GoBundance with Tim and David and Mike McCarthy. And so, yeah, that’s where I’m at. I’ve got about 67 lines of horizontal income, which is income that’s coming in sideways, all different types of stuff. I’d say 55% of it today is real estate. 45% of it is random other stuff.

David:
Just to be clear, that was David Osborne you started GoBundance with, not me. [inaudible 00:08:30].

Rob:
Yeah, I was like, wait a minute. David, you’ve been holding this from me for so long.

David:
No, I’m not one of the godfathers. I’m like second generation there. That’s funny. But we do have two godfathers of real estate here with us. And I will say this, you two have both been a little modest there. Tim was a legend at selling real estate in Manteca where I grew up and that’s where the Isadore’s Restaurant he mentioned worked. If you guys want to hear more about my story there, you can look it up on the BiggerPockets Money, episode number 12. I get kind of deep into actually what I learned in that restaurant. And then Tim reached out to me from what he had heard about my work ethic and offered me a job. And that is why I am here today in real estate et al.
And then Pat was also one of the top real estate agents in the country. Like he was sitting at the top of the leader board for the biggest brokerages ever. And it’s a little odd that each of you sort of like Barry Sanders in his prime, just decided I don’t want to do this anymore. It’s not uncommon to see people quit when they suck. They just can’t get it going. They’re struggling. They’re not very good at it, but you two had empires that were built and you walked away. So why don’t we start by asking with you, Tim, what was the motivation to quit? And what were some of the fears that you had when you were thinking about it? How did you get to that point?

Tim:
I think mentioning Barry Sanders is really interesting, because he was at the top of his game when he decided to just tap out. I think he wasn’t even 30 years old yet. So from 26 to 35, I loved selling real estate. It was so amazing. I never thought I’d be in a place where I’m making a lot of money and doing the things I wanted to do. And then it started to oxidate. It was kind of like the rust had gone on and I just didn’t feel like doing it anymore candidly. And I looked up, I was in Belize and I was 40 years old and I was a millionaire and I was kind of like, whoa, dude, for once in your life, I’m proud of you. How did you get here?
And I went for a minute of kind of looking back through my career. And it was like, well, what do you want to do next? And it was like, I never want to sell another home. And it was like a just boom. It was like a punch in the face. And it was like, well, what are you going to do? And it’s like, well, you just flipped a home and you made a lot of money doing that. Why don’t we have a new game? I’m never going to list another home. I’m only going to invest. And I’ll only be my best client. I won’t have to worry about sellers. I can do this my way.
And I went back and I did that and it hadn’t happened overnight. It took a while from like 35 to 40 to get the courage to quit. But once I decided to do that, I never looked back and I did never sell another home after that. I invested for one more like from 2000 to 2007, and then I played another new game. What if I tap out and sell everything into the craze and never have to invest again? And then from 2008, till today, I’ve never personally invested in a property. I only water ski in other people’s lakes. So I’ve had a lot of fun kind of being the original quitter and then keeping, figuring out how can I use those tools to develop the next incarnation for whatever’s next in my life.

Rob:
Yeah. So Tim, let me ask you something because a lot of people, we’re all going for that big M goal, right, becoming a millionaire and you quit right at the cusp of realizing this. So when you did this, were you at a point where you said, yeah, I’m going to quit and I can sort of coast on this or was there a financial motivation to keep pushing on? Or was it more of just a personal self-fulfillment? Was money a big factor in making more money? Or was it just, hey, I want to go out and do this as a self-employed person and just keep crushing it?

Tim:
I’ll be honest. All the things we talk about in the book, which is very practical, very tactiful… tact… We’ll redo that.

Pat:
Tact, not strategic, tactical.

Rob:
There you go. Okay.

Tim:
Thank you.

Rob:
Teamwork makes the dream work.

Tim:
But all the things that we talk about in the book, I did not do. I tapped out when I didn’t have a lot of money behind me and I just kind of depended on me moving forward that I’ll figure stuff out, I’ll find ways to make money, but it wasn’t what it was about. Candidly, I went from working full time to skiing 100 days a year, to spend a lot of time up on the coast, abalone diving and just what I called getting the goods in the woods. And I’ve always played that game from then on just trying to figure out how can I make money, but that’s certainly wasn’t what it was all about for me.

Rob:
Yeah. That’s really great. Thank you so much for that. Pat, what about you? What was your motivation here? Was it similar? Was it different? Walk us through that journey.

Pat:
Yeah. Rob, that’s a good question. And I think mine’s a little different than Tim’s. So I was in real estate sales. I was on a listing appointment and I fell asleep. I was talking to this lady and it was like, I had a big fat lunch and it was hot. And literally, I just fell asleep. And she goes, “You just fell asleep.” And I said, “Oh! Oh! Oh!” And you know it. And then I went into the bathroom, I threw some water on my face. Then I came back and next thing you know, I like… You know how kind of fall off a cliff, like you put on the brake in a car, but you’re sleeping or whatever. So I put on the brake and I like kicked her chair. And I was like, oh god, I’m not getting this listing. So I rolled out of there and I’m driving back to the office and I’m like, man, I fell asleep twice on this lady. I was like, that is it. I’m out. I got to get out of this business.
As Tim said, I’m oxidated. That was terrible. I just wasn’t happy. The problem is that like, I went from such a manic state where everything I touched turned to gold. You know what I mean? We were doing television commercials and we would just do commercials. And immediately we put the commercials on the people would just start calling and say, “Come list my house.” It was so easy. And it was so fun to like everything stopped, and then all that happened was I was dealing with agents that were complaining about, why I wasn’t getting any leads for them and sellers complaining, why don’t I do an open house and all this stuff because the house is not selling at the price they wanted it to. And I was just like, you know what? I’ll just quit. I’m getting out of this. And so it was more of a visceral thing for me than it was for Tim, I think.

Rob:
I can already imagine the lady there was like, cutting to her and she’s like, “And this is the home that I saw my kids grow up in. Are you asleep?”

Tim:
That’s where my daughter took her first step, right there.

Pat:
I’m telling you, man-

Rob:
No, no, I was just resting my eyes.

Pat:
Yeah. I blamed it on the pizza I had for lunch and the heat and the house, because she wouldn’t turn on the AC. But anyway, so at the end of the day, I could still see that lady’s face. I could describe her. Like if you hypnotize me, I could draw a picture of her.

Rob:
And so was this something that you were, I know you said it was visceral, but had you already considered this for years? Were you one day kind of wiping everything off your desk and like, I’m done. And you’re like, no, not really. I’m going to give it a little bit of time or was it truly like a flip switch and, hey, I’m out of here?

Pat:
Well, I think it helped. So what happened was, like 2008, all the units were down, right? Which is something that is a whole nother subject, a number of units, because that’s what people don’t talk about enough, number of units. But that’s what happened in the last crash, right? The number of units just stopped, like the number of pendings and settlements. And I still had a lot of rent and I still had a lot of overhead and I had a lot of things that I was paying for because we were crushing it. I had a $5,000 lease payment on copiers that made postcards and stuff. That was like eight years long. I had a longterm lease on an 8,000 square foot office. I had all kinds of stuff. I had to wait like two years for all that stuff to expire and me to get out of it and out from under it, because I’d signed personally from it.
So then finally when I was done that and I was liberated from the pressure of all that, that’s when I wrote my book 6 Steps to 7 Figures. And then what that required back then was a book tour. We didn’t have podcasts. So I had to go city to city and talk to real estate agents. And I did a seven-month book tour, 53 cities in seven months. And basically I came back and my top agent, Mike Sloan at the time had been running everything while I was gone. And I was like, “Dude, you just take this. You know what I mean? This works without me. I don’t like it anyways. I’ve been free for seven months. I don’t want to come back in.” So, it was good for me. After the seven-month book tour, I was like, I’m not coming back in.

Rob:
And so, David, if I’m not mistaken, I believe that these guys were responsible for you, quitting your job as well, right? I mean, I know that you started with Tim and you were mining for gold for him as a prospector, AKA cold calling. But what was it really? I mean, what was your turning point here? Because I know you had a similar experience as well.

David:
Yeah. As they were talking, I started thinking about this that when we explained why we did what we did and we’re sharing the story, there’s this tendency after you’re on the other side of it to express all the logical reasons why you did it. Well, I wasn’t that happy and I wasn’t making that money and the industry had shifted and I knew that I wanted something to happen. And sometimes you do have a moment like Pat described where you fall asleep and you’re like, okay, this is not for me. But I feel like the more accurate way, at least in my life that it’s happened is for years we’re knowing, I don’t like this. I’m on a treadmill. I’m selling a lot of houses. I’m making a lot of money, but this is sucking my soul and you don’t really know how to get out of it. But you’re just kind of running this marathon that you’re like, when is it going to end? When am I going to get to the end of this thing? And there really isn’t an end in sight.
And emotionally, your heart’s not there. It’s different when you first get into it. I look at it like that’s God in my life. When I’m super excited about something, I’m passionate about it, I have these very strong emotions that I can’t describe so often because I feel like he’s putting me in that position. He wants me to be learning it. Then when that goes away, I perceive it like he’s telling me it’s time to move on. There’s a new challenge. There’s something new to learn. He has a different plan for where I should be. The problem is I get scared. I get greedy. I don’t want to move on from the thing I’m comfortable with, from it’s better than what I used to have, right? I’m more worried about getting sucked back into being broke, not moving on from being a cop. I’m getting a lot of my needs met, like Tony Robbins six human needs. They’re all being met in the law enforcement world. And to think about leaving that is actually scary.
And so you get this weird tension of, I hate going to work every day. What it was like for me is I would get a call for service, that there was a person with a tummy ache. And all I have to do is drive there, get their name and date of birth and wait for the ambulance to come pick them up. And I’m done. The easiest call you could ever get. And I’m so mad that I have to go do this dumb thing that I’m just cussing out the world the whole way there. I should have been grateful like, oh, I got a easy one, but there’s this feeling like if I have to fill out one more listing agreement, which at one point was I’m on top of the world that I got a list, that’s the best feeling ever in real estate sales. You’re like, oh, another client wants to buy a house and give me money. Gosh, darn it. I didn’t want to do it.
So you have that feeling going on, but then there’s the fear of making the jump and it just grows and it grows and it grows. And I think a lot of people listening are like, that’s how I feel every day, going to work in my cubicle at this job I don’t like, but I got to make a car payment. I got kids to feed. I got a mortgage. I have to stay here. Well, the role that Tim and Pat played was they actually were involved in a intervention of sorts where we were… Tim was there for this. Pat came in a little bit later, but we were at our buddy Daniel Del Real’s cabin and he, and a bunch of other GoBundance guys were like, “David, you’re too smart to be a cop. You’re doing too good in real estate. You’re leaving this job. Like it’s happening. You’re not healthy. It’s not going well.” And I was like, but, but, but, and I had all these reasons and they basically were like, pick a date.
What the deal was, was that I was not allowed to work overtime for one year. That wasn’t mandatory. I could not. Because I was addicted to overtime, that was like the drug. That was how I was making good money. You’re not allowed to do it. You’re going to get your real estate license. You’re going to give it a try. After a year, if you can sell homes, you’re leaving completely in law enforcement. And I had to be held accountable to those guys. Now I hated every second of that because I was just internally afraid, but I needed that to get over that hump of making the jump. And so I ended up getting my license. My first year selling houses, I was the top agent in the Keller Williams office that I worked at. And then from there I just grew and grew and grew it. And then I built the David Greene team.
That’s how I got here, but I guess what I’m saying is that it’s not always a super logical thing. It’s a lot of emotions that you’re feeling, that the world is telling you it’s time to move on. And on the other side I was not strong enough to make that jump myself. I needed a support group, especially of people like Pat and Tim, men that I looked up to and respected, that were mentors in a sense that were telling me you have what it takes and you’re better than this. Quit acting like a little coward. It’s time to make the jump.

Pat:
That’s an awesome story. I forgot that story. That’s great.

Tim:
And David, I don’t remember it quite like that.

David:
How do you remember it, Tim?

Tim:
Yeah. I remember it more like, yeah, it was Aaron West, I believe, saying, “David, are you quitting Monday? Or could we give you till Wednesday when you turn in your resignation?” And I thought it was like, boom, next week we’re going to hear from you that you’re done with the force.

David:
He started it that way. I just didn’t agree. So Daniel Ramsey stepped in and said, “Fine, we’ll give you one year and you’re going to have to work both jobs, but you can’t work any overtime.” And that was sort of the compromise that I took on to give myself some runway, because I doubted that I had what it takes to sell houses.

Tim:
Yeah. I think it’s such a great story though. Because people know how successful you’ve been, but didn’t know how scared you were before that and how much you hated your job. We have a thing called the soul-sucking meter and it’s a thing of one to 10, how much do you love what you do and what would you say on this soul-sucking meter, if we had you on there, if it looks at number one to 10, how much are you making versus one to 10, how much do you love what you do, would you say you were a six and above or below six at that point?

David:
Oh, I was at like a two, man. I was-

Tim:
I’m asking you, David.

David:
Yeah. I was sleeping two and a half hours a night, working seven days a week, eating fast food nonstop. I was at like below a six. Every day was just dragging myself, how do I get to the next one?

Pat:
We look at five things. Number one, your compensation, which is all people usually think about. You’re probably making so much overtime and all that stuff that your compensation was holding you back. But we look at your respect, your respect of yourself and the respect that your boss gives you, right? Your fit, right? Whether you’re fit for your team or fit for your organization, the police force, whatever, your prospects for growth, how quick are you going to become the fricking police chief or whatever it’s called, and do you even want to be the police chief? And how do you feel in the morning every day? And we have you rate them on a scale of one to 10 and based on your results it really comes to fruition really fast, how bad you want to quit, how important it is for you to quit.

Rob:
Now, is there an actual numerical value that you’re looking for? Like if you were to rank 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10 on all these different bullet points, is there a number that’s like a failure score or is it really just more for self-reflection?

Pat:
7, 8, 9, and 10 is what you want. So anything below that… 7, 8, 9, 10, well, [inaudible 00:26:22]. If you can’t clear a six on average, then your job sucks and you need to quit. So if you can’t clear a six, you need to quit. If that makes sense. And so what Tim and I did with this book, just so you guys know is we found that a lot of people were at that stage where they were afraid, they were facing the truth like David was that day and we know that it’s scary and it’s like a jump off of a cliff. But the difference is most people think that when they jump off of a cliff, they’re just going to fall straight to the ground if they don’t prepare an airplane on the way down. You’ve heard that whole ad. It’s entrepreneurs jump off a cliff, and then they build an airplane on the way down.
Well, most people think I’m not going to be able to build an airplane. So I’m not going to jump off the cliff. And what we’re saying is, look, it is scary to jump off the cliff and we’re not telling you to jump off the cliff. We’re telling you to jump off the cliff, but we have a bunch of trapeze swings that you could grab onto. And throughout the book, we’re like, this is a trapeze swing. Here’s another trapeze swing. And if you complete and grab on eight of these trapeze swings, you’re going to successfully have quit and you’re going to be happier in your life and have a better job or have a better circumstance than you had before. Does that make sense?

Rob:
Yeah, it sure does. I think this is really interesting because a lot of people, quitting your full-time job, it’s a very emotional thing. And so there is no hot or cold… Or sorry, there is no lukewarm. It’s just hot or cold, your feelings on it. And I remember for me, when I quit my job so much was at stake for me, I hadn’t… Well, really the one thing that I was so scared of losing was health insurance, because I was like, it was going to cost me $2,000 a month. And I was like, I just can’t lose… I make so much more money with all my different side hustles and my Airbnb business, my real estate business, but I just could not get off of the $2,000 a month.
But I think, looking at the scale you talked about or the different bullet points, certainly being a fit in the organization was what I was really starting to realize at a very alarming rate. Because for me, I was a creative copywriter and I was good at it, but I was never going to be great. And I was always really nervous about that truth when I was in my job, because I knew that I just wasn’t going to be the can award-winning creative copywriter that’s producing the best commercials in the world. And I kind of saw this train heading for me that was years out where I eventually would get kicked out of the industry.
But luckily for me, I felt at that time that I had already started the real estate stuff and content creation and stuff. And I was like, I think I can be great at this. And that’s sort of where it started coming to life for me was this industry and this career, it’s a fine fit, but it doesn’t fit like a glove, right? It’s not me. It’s not who I am. And then eventually when I did quit, it was a very emotional day. I cried to both of my bosses and they were like, “Are you okay?” And I’m like, “Yeah, I’m just quitting. That’s all.” And they’re like, “Oh whew, thank God.” And I was like, “I know.” I felt so good. I was like, oh, whew. All right. That was it. Because I could really go full force into something that I was a fit for.

Pat:
Yeah. In the book, we have people give the worst case scenario, kind of like you did Rob, which is like, what is the worst case scenario? Like the worst case scenario is you’re living in your car and you’re going to die from starvation because you can’t buy any food or whatever. And we all know when you analyze it like that and you dumb it down and you reduce it to the ridiculous, you basically realize, well, truth be told, if I fail, I could probably go back to my boss and he’d probably hire me back in a heartbeat. Or truth be told, I can get another job. It’s not going to be the worst case scenario like I think it is. But the process of taking yourself through this failure path and saying, this is what it looks like if I do fail, and then asking yourself a really important question and that is, am I failing now?

David:
You mentioned a little bit earlier this idea of the trapeze, moving from one thing to the next. Do you mind sharing some stories either from your life or other people that you’ve seen pull this off and what that looked like?

Tim:
I think a good analogy is you, David. If you look at the trapeze for yourself, the first one was making your own real estate team and then keeping up your investments, and then getting with BiggerPockets here. And then you’ve just taken it from one trapeze to the next, to the next. And then the piece that goes with that is the net below. And that’s just to make sure you don’t fall and that you have something to catch you if you do fall. And that’s a great piece of our book is that net below. But the trapeze is what gets you from one step to the next. And the tough part is you have to have trust to know you’re going to let go of the trapeze and land on the next set of rungs. And that’s the scary part.

Pat:
Yeah, one thing leads to another.

David:
So Pat, how did you see that working out with your career? What were some of the steps that you made and what was the net you had in place?

Pat:
During my career? You mean like from the beginning?

David:
Well, I know you didn’t become a top producing realtor just on accident. There’s probably several steps that you had to take to get there. But then I would imagine the biggest release was after you went on that book tour and you got all this like, I’ve made it to the pinnacle of selling homes and I don’t want to be here. I need to climb another mountain. I believe that’s when you started Real Estate Rockstars and you got more into GoBundance and you started doing more investing. Would you say that was your biggest release on the trapeze?

Pat:
Yeah, that was a big one, but here’s the thing contrary to how you think the story might go. I had a lot of little things that I did that didn’t work out like right at that time. I had been doing real estate for 25 years and then I got out and I’m like, okay, what am I going to do now? And one of the things that I wanted to do is coach. I thought that I wanted to coach and start a coaching company of other real estate agents. And I started doing that. And then I realized that I hated it. Real estate agents, they take your advice and they write it down, but then they don’t do anything in between calls. And I was like, this is exactly what I was doing as a broker when I was dealing with other agents.
So I quit that. And then I did this… David Osborne was friends with Ricky Williams and he wanted me to be Ricky Williams’s whatever you want to call it, agent. And I flew him around the country trying to put him with marijuana companies so he could be an endorsement to the marijuana companies. I really thought that that was going to be my identity. And after like eight months, I was like, this is just not working out. The juice is not worth the squeeze. And I quit that. And then I probably did three or four goofy things, like started writing a book about how to be a boss and all this stuff and it didn’t work.
So finally, I did Real Estate Rockstars, and I said, I could do this. And the trapeze was my mentor, Howard Brinton had kind of done podcasting before it was podcasting and interviewing agents. So I kind of felt like I was taking the reigns from him and it made a lot of sense. And then I did Rebus University, which is where I was training agents in video courses. But what happened with that, too, David is, number one, it grew to a grind for me. And number two, I wasn’t making any money at it. And a lot of people might disagree with this, but I own… Part of what gives me joy in my work is making a lot of money when I work. And if I’m not making money and I’m working, I can’t stop thinking in my head I’m wasting time. I’m trading time for not even money, for like… I just can’t go. I just can’t do it.
Those companies were losing money for me every month and I wasn’t having fun doing them. So it just didn’t make sense. And it just made it even more smart for me to quit it. And then with the apartment buildings, that made sense, and we were making money and I was getting paid. With the rental properties, it made money. I was getting paid. With GoBundance, in the beginning we didn’t make any money, but then eventually we started getting paid and getting money. So it just made it for me 10 times more exciting that I was getting money and I liked doing what I did.

Rob:
Yeah. So you mentioned earlier, you had about 47 streams of income in the present day today. And I’m wondering, did you have any of those, were any of those present when you did quit your job? I know you said you had a couple of companies that were losing money, but outside of those, had you already been sort of forging the way for your financial future?

Pat:
I had single-family homes. That’s all I had, single-family homes that I rented. So they did pay me, but it wasn’t bombastic. You know how single-family homes are, especially if they’re older, you think you make 10 grand a year, but then once you do your taxes, you’re negative three grand.

Rob:
Yeah. Yeah, we do know.

David:
I’m laughing because there’s so many people that think that the way they’re going to get out of the job they don’t like, or the life they don’t like is cash flow from real estate. And there’s always a guru that’s going to come along and say, cash flow, cash flow, cash flow is going to change everything and you can bake on cash flow. And then all the guys like you, Pat, that own a lot of real estate, I know we’ve all been there that we realize it’s very unreliable. You could have a great year or you could have one thing break and it crushes your whole year. So, that’s a very good point.
And I think that just goes to strengthen the argument that investing can grow wealth, but it shouldn’t really be your foundation that you’re living on. There’s got to be other things that you’re doing and quitting your way out of the ones that don’t work and getting into the ones that do is probably what’s going to bring more joy into someone’s life. So where did you settle? Where did you realize, okay, this is what makes me happy, this is what I like doing?

Pat:
I’ll tell you what, where I learned a lot, David and Rob, is COVID. I was very unhappy at points during COVID and I came to a realization of really what I like and what I need are people. I had no idea. Like I’ve always been a party guy, right? I’ve always been gregarious and liked to go to parties and liked to talk to people. My wife will invite one couple and then I’ll go and text like three more and tell her, “Hey, I invited these guys too.” And she’s like, “What the hell did you do that for?” I’m like, “It’s just natural. I can’t help it. I want a whole bunch of people around me.”
And so during COVID I realized that’s what I miss. I just wanted to go to the coffee shop and talk to randoms. And I couldn’t. And so now I realize that at GoBundance, I just got back from Detroit, there was like 75 GoBundance guys there. I talked the whole time. I was energized the whole time. I just loved that. But I don’t think I actually was conscious of that until I actually had an opportunity to have it taken away from me.

David:
Yeah. What I like about that is you often, it’s not going to be like a clear, like the trapeze transition, right? Sometimes life works it out to where your next, whatever the bars are called that they swing on in the trapeze world, comes right up to you, you let go of one, you grab the other one. There’s a brief period of like, oh, I hope that I catch it. Otherwise, I need that net. Other times, you’re just letting go and flying through the air and hoping that something shows up or hoping that you like the trapeze you grabbed. And then you realize I don’t like this one either. And you’re swinging to another one. It’s not 100% success.
When we tell the story with hindsight, we’re like, oh yeah, I was here and I jumped over and now look where I am. It’s amazing. But there might have been 10 to 15 different attempts before you found the right one to be swinging on. And I like that you’re sharing it’s okay that it’s messy. It’s okay that it’s ugly. You work these jobs that didn’t make money or there’s opportunities that didn’t fulfill you. And so you kept swinging and then you realized what your thing is, is people. That’s probably why you did so great at real estate sales. It wasn’t the real estate. It was the people. And when it wasn’t fun and you realized I’m letting people down, I’m falling asleep in the middle of a listing appointment is when you knew it’s time to move on. And now you’re finding another way to connect with people, just it isn’t selling houses.

Pat:
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And like I said, people and money, like it works, right? I did a lot of little things after I got out of real estate that didn’t work. And I think we all do that, but nobody hears about them. And then we buy an apartment complex and after three years we sell it and then you make a couple hundred grand and you’re like, hey, this is good. I’m going to stick with this. I’d be stupid not to. You know what I mean? Or whatever. And so, yeah, people, and then obviously the benefits that come with that. Because you could always find people, you could find people anywhere, but I guess it’s, here’s the answer, like-minded people.

David:
I would say, Rob, would you agree that getting around like-minded people, people that are on your frequency is a huge component to being happy in life?

Rob:
Oh my goodness. Yeah. I mean, that’s how… Well, like-minded, but preferably significantly smarter than you. So like-minded to who you want to be kind of thing. Because I think for me, I’m thinking through the trapezes, right? And it’s very easy to say, yeah, like side income, side hustles. All those different income streams to me seems to be the only trapeze you need, because if you make enough money, you’re going to be fine if you quit your job. But in reality, I think the people and the personal and the social component is really as equally important, because those people can help you establish a lot of those different side incomes and businesses and everything that you want to go with.
So for me, when I was quitting, I had those people that I basically talked to like four or five different CEOs and quote, unquote, quitters, if you will. And I would Zoom with them and they were all founders of relatively successful companies. And they would say, “Wait, you’re taking a call right now during your… I didn’t know you had a job. Why are you still working?” And I was like, “Oh, I don’t know, because of health insurance.” And legitimately every single one of them, they told me, they said, “I watch your YouTube channel. I know how much money you make because you talk about it and you make good money. So I think it’s time to quit, pal.” And I would go and I’d report back to my wife all the time. And I would say, “Hey, this person said I should quit.” And she’s like, “Yeah, they’re right. You should quit.” And I was like, “No, no, no, don’t be silly.”
And I was hoping that my wife would be the one that was telling me no, that I couldn’t quit. But everyone in my sphere of influence, they were encouraging me to go full force at the thing that I love the most. And so getting to know them really, after I quit has shaped who I am. We were kind of talking about the messiness, right? Well, a lot of people see me and they’re like, “Oh, you got it down. Your success is going well. I’m really happy for you.” But what they don’t necessarily always realize is that it’s still really hard. And the only reason I have any level of success today is because of all the catastrophic failures I’ve had over the last year. Finding the people in my influence that could relate with that, that’s how I grow because we can all fail together and be honest with each other and help each other grow.

Pat:
Hey, Rob, I got a question. How minuscule does that seem now that you were worried about health insurance?

Rob:
Honestly, it was instant because my bosses, because like I said, I was a little crybaby on the Zoom call and my bosses were like, “Well, are you going to be okay, like financially?” I kind of looked up and I was like, “Yeah, I make way more money doing this other stuff.” And they’re like, “Then why are you crying?” And I was like, “I don’t know.” And so I really instantaneously mathed it out and it is very funny and you know what, I still pay that $2,000 a month because I carried that over for my company. It’s a funny thing to have gotten hung up on because it really wasn’t the $2,000 payment, it was just that little… I think it was symbolic of the safety and the stability in my life, knowing that I had health insurance. And so if I ever got super sick or anything that would cover me and I felt by losing that, I now had no safety net. Obviously in retrospect, yeah, it’s funny. Yeah. It’s funny that that’s what held me back for about four or five, six months.

David:
Pat, you mentioned some tools to evaluate where somebody’s at. I think a lot of the emotions that Rob was just describing the stuff, I felt you get used to it. This is just life and you don’t think about it. You’re like the frog in the water that slowly gets hotter and you’re not aware of it. And then you and Tim are talking about how people can kind of audit their life and figure out where they’re at and maybe find if they’re happy or not. So can you share what some of those tools that you’re using to evaluate are?

Pat:
Well, there’s the soul-sucking audit, which is basically the one that we talked about where you got to get a six or more. And what we’re encouraging people to do is to kind of stop not quitting, right? Every day you don’t do something that’s not different is essentially a commitment to not changing. And so what people are doing is they’re just not quitting. Every day that Rob wasn’t there, he was not quitting. So the tool would be to sit down and journal and look at your life now and say, what am I not quitting? Right? And just stop, not quitting. Look at the worst case scenario and the worst case scenario for him as ridiculous as it sounds was he wouldn’t have health insurance. He seems like a young guy, so I don’t know how big of a deal that was. Me, I imagine he didn’t have six kids at the time or something he had to worry about health insurance. You know what I mean? It just comes out to be absolutely ridiculous.
One thing that we talk about, David, is creating a quitting team and we actually have a chart that we have everybody fill out in the book that is a square and with four blocks and in there are stakeholders, partners, mentors, and coaches. And what a stakeholder is, is like your wife, like your loved ones, your spouses, your family. So, that would be one. So you want to fill up that box with loved ones who say, David, I got your back. Rob, I got your back. I’m with you. I think you should quit. I think you’re going to do great. I believe in you, that sort of thing.
Then the other is partners. These are going to be actual partners like investors, suppliers, maybe general partners of your business, whatever you’re going to do. These are actual people’s names that you’re going to go into partnership with. Then you fill in five or six mentors. And a mentor is not like this Rip Van Winkle type guy that sits under a tree, that’s like a long beard and a mustache. The mentor is like, whatever business you’re going to go into, this is someone who’s actually been there, cut their teeth, got their head kicked in, and has tactical things that they could teach you of how to do it. The American way is to go to work for somebody else and then copy them and start your own company. That’s essentially what a mentor is, someone you’re going to learn exactly how to do your specific business, who’s going to teach you how they did it.
And then the last box that you fill names in with is coaches, and these are actually people that you pay money to, right? We’re starting a coaching company to coach people how to quit. BiggerPockets is a coaching company, right? You pay your dues to BiggerPockets and you can go in there and be coached by a million different people that are already doing it. And so once you have those boxes, once you have that team built, your chance of success is so much higher. It’s incredible.

Rob:
Yeah. You can’t do it alone. You really can’t. I mean, that’s what I’m saying. The financial aspect of it, that was solved for me. But in retrospect now I realize that it’s exactly what you’re saying, all those people along the way that are on your team, that’s, what’s changed my life, not the financial stuff.

David:
Well, I could second that. I would say I knew I wasn’t happy and I knew, I knew real estate, but I was not going to let go of that one trapeze bar. I had a white-knuckle grip on that thing, unless I had Tim and Pat and these other guys prying my fingers off of it. It was like, we’re going to break your fingers or you can let go on your own. I think there’s some personalities that probably need that. That’s probably the same reason I’m good at the stuff I do is because I commit really hard, but that makes it hard to let go. And there’s other people that have an easy time bouncing from job to job, but they have a hard time committing to the job that they’re at. Pat, what would you say is the right person to read a book like this? If they’re listening to this show, what thoughts would they be thinking? What feelings would they be feeling?

Pat:
Somebody who knows deep down that they’re unhappy, who doesn’t like going to work. I saw this graffiti. I couldn’t believe it. I just saw this yesterday, it was on Instagram. It said, “It’s not Mondays that suck. It’s your job that sucks.” It was on a bus stop. Yeah, it’s someone who just hates Mondays and you hate Mondays because you hate your job, right? If you have a job you love, then Mondays is like sweet. And someone who just can’t get over the fear, right? We put a quote in the book, we put, “There’s no risk-free plan that will get you what you want.” So someone who really knows what they want. They want to teach art to kids, but instead they’re an accountant, right? They know what they want. They know what they would love, but they just can’t get there.
And so this book takes you, again, like Tim said, it’s not a strategic book. You’re not going to look in this book and it’s going to be a bunch of cliches where we’re requoting other people and giving you inspiration. It’s not that book. Specifically, it’s a tactical book. It is a one step, two step, three step, four step, all trapeze swings. And you could just like fill them out right there on the pages. And you could just write it all out. So when you finish the book, you’ll be ready to jump off the cliff because the plane’s already built for you. You didn’t have to build it on the way down. The trapezes are there and not only are they there, but they’re locked in with handcuffs so you really can’t fall off the trapeze because you’ve written it all out and you built it all out. So, that’s the person.

David:
Oh, that’s so good. Yeah. I love what you’re saying. There is no risk-free path from where you are to where you want to go. And you got to accept that, especially if you’re listening to this podcast because you want to invest in real estate and it works the same way. There is no risk-free way to invest in real estate. There is no risk-free way to do anything that is of any kind of substance in this world. And so reexamining that relationship with risk, making peace with it, rather than just running from it is big, not just to build wealth, but to live the life that you really want to live because you only get one of them. Thanks for sharing that, Pat.

Rob:
Pat, as someone who is obviously very pro quitting, are there any things that you believe you shouldn’t quit in life?

Pat:
Yeah. Rob, that’s a great question. And that’s kind of hard too. There’s cliches that I could say, like relationships and things like that, but there’s always exceptions to the rule. I think that what comes to mind is hobbies. I think that hobbies make a lot of people happy and I think that everybody has a different hobby. Like some people just love gardening. Some people love music. And other people love sports. And I don’t think that any of those three are right or wrong. They’re all right, because everybody’s an individual. And the reason that they chose those hobbies probably wasn’t because their mother put them in gardening classes when they were two years old, like piano and told them that they had to learn it. Right? They chose them hobbies naturally. Just kind of their soul gravitated one day to picking a weed and planting a flower. And they’re like, I love this. I’m going to do another one. So I would say to them, do not quit a hobby unless you replace it with another one that’s just as joyful, if not more joyful.

Rob:
So Pat, with all that in mind, what are things you wish you would’ve quit or left behind a little earlier in your life?

Pat:
From a financial standpoint, I wish I had not spent as much money on non real estate investments and just stuck with real estate. I think that all through the ’90s, like I got licensed in 1987 and I bought like three houses between 1987 and 1990. And then from 1990 to 2000, I didn’t buy a single house. And I often look back on how flat that time was. Like the market didn’t go up. It didn’t go down. It was just flat. Nobody really bought rental properties. Very few people did. And it was easy to do, right? You put 20% down and you just bought it. And the 1% rule worked all day long. It was easy to do, but no one did it.
I wish that I had not quit buying like I did when I first got my license. I wish I had bought at least a house every six months or a house a year, one little single-family a year I could have easily done rather than investing the money in the stock market or something. And I didn’t. And I look back on that as a mistake. I really wish I had just dollar-cost averages houses and just had them because I’d be killing it now. Those things would be worth so much more and the rents would’ve just gone up so much more. It would’ve just been nice and I regret not doing that. I wish I hadn’t quit. I quit too soon. Now, granted in 2000s, I started buying again, but there was that whole decade I didn’t buy.

Rob:
Okay. So a follow-up to that question, what are some of those things for you, Pat? Like what are your actual hobbies?

Pat:
That’s great. I set myself up for that. My hobbies are working out. I got three hobbies: working out, which I do regularly. I have a house in Maryland and a house in South Carolina and I have a trainer in Maryland and a trainer in South Carolina. I just pay them both two grand a year in January, and I could just text them and show up to them sometime that day or the next day. I’m also a hiker. I just love hiking. I just clear my head. I just feel so much at peace with nature. And I like to hike. I just get out there and explore. I’m always on an adventure.
And then the third hobby, and a lot of people might not find this a hobby, but I find it a hobby because so many people don’t do it, so it has to be a hobby and that’s counting my money. It sounds like a joke, right? And you can cut this out if you want, but I’ve always been a counter, like mathematically something in my left brain is always counting. So I’m always counting my net worth, counting the rental income, counting things. And I get a lot of dopamine from that. And I just enjoy it. Like, I’m constantly looking at my bank accounts. It’s just something that I enjoy doing. I don’t know what else to call it, but a hobby. So I would say those three things.

Rob:
I like it because it is honest. And a lot of people try to pretend like they don’t do that. Not even from the financial aspect of it, but it’s just a way to feel proud of what you’ve accomplished. So thank you for that.

David:
Yeah. I would say [inaudible 00:57:27].

Pat:
You’re welcome.

David:
Definitely it keeps you motivated to keep going. Sometimes I’ll go look at my portfolio and I’ll just look at all the properties that I have in it, and I’ll see what’s performing and what’s not, and I’ll see the equity that I’ve created and I’ll see what’s cash flowing and it’s not necessarily so I can twirl my mustache and say, look at the… It’s more of, man, that feels good. And then I want to go buy more houses.

Pat:
Twirl your mustache. Is that what you do?

David:
I’ll actually… Little known fact, that’s why… Yes. Just like that. Brandon does that with his beard. That’s the only reason he grew it is so that he has something to twirl when he counts all his money like Scrooge McDuck.

Pat:
Oh my goodness.

David:
All right. Well, we have lost Tim to technical difficulties, but we still have you here, Pat. This has been fantastic. I really appreciate you guys bearing your soul and sharing what your experience has been like, as well as your heart to help other people to quit the life that they don’t like to start one that would be a much better fit for them. Any last words about who should get this book and who you had in mind when you wrote it, that we can leave our listeners with?

Pat:
I feel for the people who are at that bus stop or are at the Monday morning checking in or waking up on a Monday and just being like, I hate this. You know what’s funny, my kids are 26 and 28 years old, and I talk to them about their parents. I guess I have this comparison thing going on, it may be good or bad, but they’re like, such and such and he hates his job or she hates her job. And I think to myself, man, that is so foreign to me. Having somebody that hates their job or being a kid, knowing that your parent hates their job, it’s so foreign to me, right? Because I’ve always been lucky enough to pretty much love what I do or at least find something within it that I love that I could just go to.
And so this book is for anybody who has ever had a Monday morning that they woke up and just dreaded that it was the start of the work week, that’s who this book is for. Again, so we’re going to map out how you can do it. Whether you do it or not is up to you, but if you know how to do it, maybe you’ll think twice, and maybe you’ll feel stronger about quitting, should push come to shove and you decide to quit.

David:
You can find the book at biggerpockets.com/quittersmanifesto. That’s Q-U-I-T-T-E-R-S-M-A-N-I-F-E-S-T-O. And if that’s too much to remember, just go to biggerpockets.com/store, and you can find the book there. And that was our show with Tim Rhode and Pat Hiban. Rob, you got to meet my friends. What do you think?

Rob:
I think I got a really beautiful glimpse into the early years of David Greene. It’s really nice to hear the origin story. We see the origin stories on superhero movies all the time. And I feel like I got to finally see the origin story of my real estate superhero, David Greene himself.

David:
What an answer. I’ve never heard anyone describe it as an origin story, but I’m not mad about that.

Rob:
You should have asked me that. You know how you always ask me at the end of the podcast like, “Any last words?” And I’m like, “No.” I guess this was it for me. I did it. I gave you a profound answer.

David:
You did. And see, the only key was I had to ask you after the show ended in an outro, not right before the outro.

Rob:
Right.

David:
I’m learning where you like to get the ball so you can score. I wanted to ask you, because we kind of briefly touched during the interview about the emotions that go behind when you know it’s time to quit. And I wanted to see if you could dive a little bit deeper into… You explained the emotions when you actually quit the job, when you had to show up on Zoom and you admitted it was so emotional that you actually cried, because it was such a big thing. But what emotions were you feeling up to that point that you knew was a signal that it’s time for you to leave and go full time into your content creation project?

Rob:
Well, if you just break down my actual schedule every day, I just had my daughter, well, my wife had my daughter. I was just there for support, but I was a new dad, right? So that was really tough because I was working a full-time job and this was during the pandemic. So it’s like work from home and you’re sort of figuring out how to do that with kids and then the dogs and everything. And I would basically get off of work at 5:00. And I had just started my consultation business back when that was going that no longer exists now, but I was booked out basically, at first, from 5:00 to midnight every night. And I would take like a 30-minute break at one point so I could go put my daughter down, give her a kiss and read a book, all that kind of stuff. And I remember that it was wearing on me every single day. And then I was like, you know what? I can’t stay up until 1:00 in the morning, consulting people anymore. This isn’t going to work.
And so I cut that in half and I thought, okay, if I cut that in half, it’s still really good money. I’ll raise my rates and I’ll be okay. But just day in, day out, it was the same thing. I would wake up early because newborn and then I would get ready for work. I would go to work and then I would take consultations during my lunch break and then I would go to work again. And then I would take consultations all night. And just after doing that for several months, I was just physically getting drained and I said, something has to change. And that’s when I sort of mathed out, if I went full force at my consultation business, I was actually making a lot more than I was at my other job, but I wasn’t working nearly as much.
And I think I just was so, so tired. I was so tired and I was so anxious and I had been putting off quitting for so long, until finally, like I said, a bunch of those CEO and founders of the companies that I was talking about, they just sort of kicked my butt a little bit and they said, “You need to quit.” And then I was like, “Okay.” I was very anxious, very, very anxious when my bosses answered the phone. It was really awkward because one jumped on the Zoom first and they’re like, “What’s up? How you doing?” And I was like, “Oh, you know, good.” And it was clear I was trying to stall. It was clear probably where the conversation was going to go. And then the other boss joined and then that’s when I started crying. So it was really weird, really weird, but really fun in retrospect to psychoanalyze myself.

David:
It sounds like you had mentors, too, that were saying, hey, it’s time for you to move along.

Rob:
I did and that made it a lot easier. What about you, man? I know that you were sort of, it sounds like you were forced into quitting.

David:
Yeah. And that’s what I needed, to be fair. I have that personality that I really think long and hard before I jump into something. But when I jump in, I have just like a vice grip on whatever I’m doing. I want to be the best if I’m going to do it. If I’m going to sell houses, I want to sell them as good as I can. If I’m going to invest in real estate, I want do it as tight and as good as I can. The One Brokerage, I want us to be the biggest loan company in the country at some point. And so I have to be careful about what I commit to, because I don’t let go very easily.
And I had committed to law enforcement with everything I had. I was trying to be super cop. I was wanting to take every single course that I could, learn every single thing, get certified in all of it, trying to lead the department in the different stats that we used to measure our performance, but my soul was dying. It was more than just practically speaking, oh, I could use my time for something else. It was more, the relationship with the community had deteriorated so badly, that’s not a surprise to anyone who’s listening to this that watches the news, and you weren’t really able to do the good that I thought I was going to be doing when I got there. And the people that I worked with were so negative and so cynical and it wasn’t getting better. The writing was on the wall that every year was going to be worse than the year before.
It was like buying an investment property that your cash flow shrinks every year. It’s the opposite of what we’re looking for. Like, you still got to manage it. You still got to do all the work, but the return is smaller every year doing it. And I knew I don’t want to be here, but I was just terrified of what it would look like if I left. Would I still be able to buy rental properties? I was making very good money. I think my best year I worked, I took like two days off for the whole year. I worked 363 days. And most of those days were between 15 and 20-hour shifts, but I made $300,000 and that was like 2015 era. So it was very good money to be working in law enforcement.

Rob:
Wow. That is. Yeah.

David:
Could I do that anywhere else?

Rob:
Wait. That was as a police officer?

David:
Yeah. And that was in 2015. So that was like seven years ago or eight years ago before inflation. So that’s probably more like 400, 450,000, I’d say by today’s dollars. But that was when I was sleeping in my car. All I did, like I only took time off to go wash my uniform and just be… I was like a firefighter. Just lived at the police station. I would buy properties from work. I would sign the documents on my lunch break. I’d have a notary come to the station and I would just sign the paperwork. It was 100% all in.
And when these guys saw the Tim Rhodes, the Pat Hibans, the Daniel Del Reals, Aaron West, Daniel Ramsey was, if you put that same effort into this, it’s going to be so much better for you. And I’m glad I listened. I don’t listen to everyone, but I’m glad I listened to them because that put me in this position of BiggerPockets where now I want to have the best podcasts in the world. And when I write books, I’m trying to write the best book that I can possibly write. And real estate pays you back for what you put into it more than anything else. Outside of God, real estate’s the only thing I’ve seen that pays me more than I could ever put into it.
I remember what those emotions were like. And you know, this is funny. Last night, I actually had a dream and I get these all the time where I’m back working in law enforcement or I’m back working in restaurants. And I’m getting all of the former anxiety that I used to have. It’s like, oh, this sucks. Like in my dream, I have to go back to work as a cop. And I’m like, I was so close to getting out of this. I’m getting sucked back in and I wake up and like, oh wow, wait, that’s done. My life isn’t like that. I’m never going to have to go back to it.
And I think sometimes that happens just as a reminder like, key, don’t forget where you came from. And those risks you took were worth it. So that now where I am, I will continue to make those jumps, right? There’s some new jumps that I have to make in my career, getting out of my comfort zone, starting new companies, getting out of the weeds and letting other people do stuff and letting people fail that I think I’m the same David. I’m scared of what would happen if I make the jump, but I need to quit it. I need to move on.

Rob:
Wow. Well, I hope you don’t ask me for a final word after that, because that was a truly profound statement from you.

David:
Yeah. We just don’t talk about this very much, right? We’re usually focused on tactical stuff.

Rob:
Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s the tough part is sometimes we just want that. We do try to be metaphorical and symbolic and like, hey, the bigger picture. But I think the small nuts and bolts really, at the end of the day, that’s a lot of the stuff that we legitimately need to put into practice before we quit outside of the actual mindset of it. So this was really fun.

David:
Yeah. And the messiness of it, right? We’re not perfect. We make mistakes. There’s people that don’t get the service they want from someone in one of my companies. There’s times where I record a podcast and think, oh, I didn’t do a very good job with that, or I didn’t explain that well. We are making mistakes and feeling pain or knowing that we could be doing better in areas of life and holding back just like everybody who’s listening. We’re actually all on the same journey. We just may be on a different part of the mountain than where they are, but we’re on the same mountain and we’re dealing with the same stuff.
So if you’re listening to these shows and you’re thinking, oh, I wish I could have Dave and Rob’s life. Like we, at one point were thinking the same thing about the Tim Rhodes and the Pat Hibans and the David Osborn’s and the people whose lives that we saw that we wanted. And there’s still people that we look up to and think, oh, I wish I could have that person’s life. So don’t be discouraged. It’s okay that it’s messy. It’s okay that it’s hard. Sometimes you got to quit. And sometimes letting go of that trapeze bar that you’re hanging onto is scary and you’re not doing it wrong if it feels scary. Rob had so much apprehension about letting go of that job that it expressed itself through tears. And I remember I’ve been in situations that was just like that. Having to tell my boss I was quitting was the hardest thing ever, because so much of my heart and soul was wrapped up in that. But I’ve never looked back and said, that was a mistake.

Rob:
Oh, man, I really don’t know a lot of people who have done this, who have quit to pursue their passion and went back to their nine to five.

David:
Yeah. That’s a good point.

Rob:
Usually it works out because people find out how to make it work. Because I think once you break out of the nine to five, it’s sort of a… Like when it’s your choice, I think it’s just one of those things where you’re like, wow, this is hard, but it is really gratifying. You would never want to click into someone else’s life. You don’t want to look at someone else’s life and say, oh, I wish I could just push a button and be there because you wouldn’t enjoy it. You didn’t earn it. For me, I can look back at all the hardships I’ve had over the past two years and I’m really proud of where I am because of how difficult it was and how many things I had to overcome along the way. So that’s what makes it more gratifying, not the actual number in the bank account. But as Pat said, once you’ve done it and you can go count your money and you can be happy and you can be proud that way too. But I think that’s also symbolic of just the hard work you put in.

David:
Well, I’m proud of you too my man, because I get to record podcasts with you and you get to be a part of my life and that never would’ve happened if you wouldn’t have made that jump on your own trapeze. So thank you for doing that.

Rob:
Thank you.

David:
And to everybody listening, keep listening, keep fighting the good fight, keep inching forward and then taking the leaps when you can. You will never regret what you pour into real estate. This is David Greene for Rob “still paying his own medical insurance” Abasolo, signing off.