The Power of Resilience with The Humble CEO EP 28
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From the art of the deal to keeping it real. Live from the Simply Vegas studios, it's The Power Move with John Gafford. Back again, back again, back again for another fun-filled episode of The Power Move. I'm your host, John Gafford. Unfortunately, you know, hey, look, some of you guys may want to shut this off right now because we actually sent...

Colt to equestrian school for the week. No, I'm just kidding. He didn't go to equestrian school. Colt is off to Utah to spend time with family and friends. So sitting next to me today is the one, the only, you're not getting a nickname. The counselor? The counselor. Esquire.

That's what you're getting. I'll take it. Chris Connell, Esquire. So next to me and sitting in the hot seat today, a guy that I have, you know, I've got to know a little bit and I dig this dude and I think he has a good story. And for what we're going to talk about today, I thought he'd be a great guest to have in. This is my man, the humble CEO, Ben Humble. Yo.

In the studio today. Good to be here, man. Good to be here. I'm liking Vegas minus all the bullshit. Yeah, dude. We always love to have you here because you just look like a dude that spends money. So on behalf of Vegas. Looks are deceiving. Looks can be deceiving. But Ben's got a story that's a little near and dear to my heart because we have some shared past heritage. So today what we're going to talk about, man, and what I really want to get into is resilience. Okay.

And I'm going to tell you why. Honestly, man, I didn't know. It's like the show right before Thanksgiving is going to come out. We're not going to do a Friday show, so you might as well just ease through this one because it's all you're getting this week, ladies and gents. That's it. But I didn't know what we were going to talk about today. I figured we'd talk, you know, and I don't want to do stupid turkey stuff, but today something happened, Connell. It happened. It happened.

As I'm walking through the hallways here, there's somebody that works here that occasionally we have. This is a person that always wants more space in the office. And in our offices here, space is a premium. It is definitely expensive real estate. It's like every inch of it is like Monopoly or like Boardwalk or Park Place. All of it is. It's super premium. And I said to him, he came up. He's like, hey, man, I want to put somebody at that desk. And it's a desk in my media director's office that actually our director of operations sits at when she comes in.

And the answer to that was, well, I said, that's the director of operation desk. When she comes in, this is where she sits. And he's like, oh, she's never here. And it got me to thinking. And, you know, I shut it down pretty quick, but it got me to thinking. And here's what it is. The key to being resilient, the key to resilience in life, if you had to break it down, is making the resources you have work instead of being consumed with what you don't have looking forward. Right.

And, you know, for me, resilience is a big deal. You know, when I was on The Apprentice, we were talking about that a minute ago. Yes, we were talking about that. It always seems to come up with new people when that comes up. But one of the things that I'm actually most proud of about The Apprentice when it happened was,

I was told by Dr. Liza Siegel, who wrote a book about all of the contestants after it called The Sweet Life. You can check it up, I guess. It was a psychology of all of the contestants. And she told me when she was writing that book that I tested higher in resiliency than any candidate ever had. And when you look at the high-functioning people that are on that show, I took that as a great compliment. I thought that was really solid. And Ben's story, I think, is a story of a lot of resilience. And one of the things that I love to have people on this show on

are people that you listen to their stories, you listen to the history, you listen to the background, and you say to yourself, what the fuck is my excuse? I'm going to take some more excuses off the table today. So, man, humble man, tell us the origins. I mean, I heard it all at dinner, but tell the folks about you, man. Let's hear about you. Yeah, so before I just jump into that, I'm just going to chime in on you real quick. Resiliency, man, I hit you with my thought for a second here. Resiliency, to me, starts

it starts with emotional resiliency and then everything else. You got to become a kind of person that I believe that you are willing to become resourceful, independent, moving forward. Everything is a choice in life. Let me hit you with the backstory. I'll give you the abbreviated version. Cool. Yeah. We'll get, we got an hour. Take your time. Let's go. I'm going to start coming up with cold ass. So when I was born, I was a young man. No, no,

I was born in a communist country in 1985. Which one? Romania. Romania. Yeah. I've been there. Okay. You've been there. I have. All right. Probably post-communism. Like two years ago. All right. So, yeah. A lot different spot. Yeah. A little bit different. Yeah. So, born under communism and, you know, and I think people don't realize what communism really is. Right.

communism is, you know, you've only got a couple of choices in communism. You have to play by the rules, which means you have to sacrifice your personal belief system, really your personal desires and any real creativity. That's what communism does. It strips out all the creativity or you play by the rules in the shadows in hiding. Right. So, you know, my dad's a Christian. Our whole family's a Christian. We're faith-based people. And we grew up in this society where, you know, by the time I'm four or five years old, my dad had three or four kids and,

And, you know, they're doing church underground. They're doing different things underground. They're doing missionary work underground. Everything is underground. But my dad's labeled.

He's labeled as this Christian, right? So he can't go out and do all the things that regular communist people do. The people who are following all the basic rules and doing all this stuff. So, you know, forget getting the best jobs. And those are, by the way, those are government jobs. And everything is hand to mouth. Meaning like every single thing in a communist society requires an envelope. You know what an envelope is? Oh, sure. This is Vegas, baby. We all know what an envelope is. Very aware, very aware.

That's how it plays out. Law does not endorse the use of envelopes for occurring special favor at any point in time. That is the real currency, right? Because in a society that says everybody's equal, well, the truth is there's capitalists in that society as well. So you want to give birth to your child, you got to go to the hospital with an envelope. You don't show up with an envelope or some kind of gift or some type of barter. You're going to sit there and you're not given labor. And if you are, nobody's helping you.

And that's the reality of the communist system is it strips away your creativity, your incentives and everything else. So dad decides early on, he says, I can't live here for my future and my children's future. So at 27 years old, he makes the decision, which is to run. Everything he knows is in Romania. Everyone he knows is in Romania. He says, I'm out of here. It's a different language too than a lot of the other Slavic countries that surround it, right? Yeah, but we're not Slavic. No, but what I'm saying is it borders...

Serbia and like all those. It's a different language base too, I believe. Yeah. So we're one of the romance languages similar to, let's say French or Spanish. So we're right next and we're neighboring Hungary. Hungary, which is Asiatic. And that's, yeah, that's my heritage. Yeah. So we had to, so my dad, basically this was just a beautiful story. If you're a person of faith, you'll really appreciate this. My mom had a vision.

There was these couple of guards that were stationed, you know, during their time in service on the border. And they literally approached her one day and said, I've had a vision that you guys need to leave and we're going to help you do that. So they arranged a small caravan of people that literally run. And dad had to make a tough decision. Dad had to make a decision at 27 years old where he's got these children and which ones can he take? Because he can't physically carry everybody. Sophie's choice. So I'm the oldest. I can walk.

And I have a brother and a sister. And, you know, I've got these other two little baby brothers and sisters. And they strapped two kids by the arm. They grabbed me and they left the most independent kids. The ones that basically went to a neighbor and said, I need you to watch my kids for the night. Turned around and said, it's the hardest thing I've ever had to do. And they just ran. We ran. We hid basically during the day. And we would cross over at night between the guards, between all the stuff, the dogs, all the stuff that happened.

A car would pick us up on the other border, drive us to the next border, drop us off. We'd hide again and cross another one. So after a couple days of travel, we walk up to a refugee camp in Austria. We had to get to Austria because if we didn't get that far, we'd get turned around. Turned around, captured, whatever else. Prison, all that stuff. And nobody was running with kids back then. It was usually guys. Guys would run and hopefully later come and get their families. My dad ran. We ran.

And he had faith that if he got- How old were you at this time? I was four. You were four. Jeez. So dad ran and he said, and he had faith that if he got to the destination, hopefully someone, the Red Cross or somebody would intervene and hopefully reunite our family. So we get to the refugee camp. We finally make it. And everybody's looking at him like, you're crazy, man. You ran with your entire family. You came here to this refugee camp. You made it. By the grace of God, you got here. Now what? My dad's living in his faith-

living in faith his entire life that's that's just that's the only move he has so he gets there doesn't speak the language you know i i i break a leg while i'm there just messing around i have to go to the hospital he has to leave me at the hospital because they won't allow him to take me home my mom's looking at him like why did you leave my son at the hospital can you imagine the trauma no 26 27 year old kids basically with three or four little kids in this refugee camp they do that and it

Most amazing day would have been a few months later. They actually execute the president of Romania on live television. Communism. What year is that? 89, 89, 89. Yeah. 89 to 90 in that region. So they execute this guy. Mom was pregnant at the time goes to give birth to my sister at the hospital comes home. And as she comes home with this little baby, there's all these kids obviously running around the refugee camp.

And my dad walks in with these two little kids. And my mom says, don't bring any more people here. I got all these, you know, all these little kids and everybody. And he says, that's your son and daughter. Oh, he wouldn't God. So that day able to get them over. Somebody brought him over. Like how, like how soon after the, after soon at the revolution, it was, it was months after we left. So in the morning they had three kids with them in the evening. They had six. We were reunited. I mean, can you talk about being 27 with five kids?

- Good Lord. That's a hero in my book. - I'm 41 with two and I'm like, oh God. - Yeah, I mean, that's a hero in my book as it is, my God. - Yeah, and that's how you start. That's life, right? We applied to America and Canada and dad just goes, "Wherever's taking me, I'm going." I don't know why the US turned us down. I mean, shoot. - Oh, you went to Canada? - We went to Canada. - Oh, jeepers. - We went to Canada. We went to Windsor, Ontario, Canada. - You can say Detroit. - Sure, we're basically, look at me. I mean, I'm like from Detroit. - So did you live in a strip club

Windsor or like what is that because last time I checked it's casinos and strip clubs for Americans that's what it is because you guys just rape and pillage everything okay this is a comedy show I'm Canadian I am Canadian how she

Are you guys going to talk about syrup for the next 25 minutes? No, in hockey. This guy doesn't understand these things. Beaver tails. He doesn't understand about any of these national treasures. I'm talking about Justin or the other thing? No, no, no. Beaver tails. Beaver tails. Same thing, right? Beaver tails is the detritus of all those poor girls he left behind in his wake. Okay, let me finish your question real quick. Yeah, keep going. We get the Canada...

That has three more kids. I'm the oldest of nine living in Canada. And mom and dad are just figuring it out. The oldest of nine. The oldest of nine at this time. Nine. In Canada, mom and dad are working two, three jobs to put food on the table. Roman Catholic. Well, it was Romanian Pentecostal. That's what we are. And that's the life we grew up in. So just a life where nothing is given to you. You got to go and get it. You got to live in some kind of faith. And there's no, like, there's no, no, no is not an answer.

No is a response we create for ourselves. People who are resilient, to your point, we just remove the word no. You don't have a choice. That's it. What are you going to do? You're either moving forward or you die. There's no like I'm going to sit in comfort when a man with nine kids working two, three jobs to put food on the table and try to be the best man that he can for his family and a woman of incredible faith with nine kids. There is no going back, man. If you were lucky enough to get to this mile of life, you got to keep going.

Well, see, I got to tell you that what you just said is one of my biggest fears because I believe that adversity builds grit, grit builds resiliency. And like you look at like the lap of luxury that my little –

My little offspring are living these days. You know, it's hard. And I think, again, as much as you try to create some sense of adversity, it's not real. You know, we try to do it through sports. Sports is manufactured adversity. It's not real. My kids will, you know, God willing, never know what it's like to be hungry, never know what it's like to fear where they're going to sleep, never know what it's like to not have –

their sibling there not by choice for months at a time. These are real world problems.

You know, yeah. So I think that's a challenge. Well, I would just add one little caveat here. To me, the way we think about life is those aren't problems. That's my story. And everybody has a story that you're doing something with, hopefully, because I believe your greatest gift that you have in life is your story. What you've gone through, you turn that adversity you talked about. It's a weapon of mass destruction. You either point it that way towards the world and you go conquer with it or you point it towards yourself and you create a self-defeating victim attitude. You get two options.

So I believe like your story is your power, man. If you have a story, that's amazing. Share it with the world. Don't live in embarrassment or fear or whatever guilt and all that. Make it great. And your kids, if they have all the luxury in the world, the story is going to be amazing, dude. It's going to be amazing. Well, I keep pushing. I've always said, I've always said my son, they're both, don't get me wrong. My kids are not loafers. They're exceptional kids. They're straight A kids. I've always said my son is going to go to an incredible college probably and have an incredible career and work in a beautiful building owned by my daughter.

That's what I've always kind of said is my daughter, she got she got the hustle. She's got she does loan him money sometimes. Yeah, no, dude. Yeah. So yeah, he's talking about my daughter because they own the vending machine here in the office. And that's their business, right? They run, they run the vending machine, and they own it and they have to do accounting and marketing and all that stuff and all those things. And one day we're home and I need to change for 100 right.

So I send Roma who she's got quote unquote fat stacks upstairs. I'm like Roma go give me change for a hundred She's like no because she likes, you know the stacks of money. Yeah, of course. Why not? I'm like go get go give me change so she goes upstairs and she comes to begrudgingly goes upstairs comes down hands me a stack of money I start counting I go babe. This is 97 bucks. She turned around he goes service fee. I

And I was like, what? And she goes, would you rather go to the store? And I'm like, no, I would not rather go to the store. Would you like to eat dinner tonight? Yeah, fair enough. I mean, hey, I needed something. She had a solution. There's juice involved. Don't fight with that thinking. You have to. No, you got to celebrate. Is she an immigrant, dude? She's supposed to be an immigrant. No, no. Her name is Roma, but she's not an immigrant. There you go. Yeah.

you guys are talking about resilience is like almost a choice. I don't know that it's a choice. Everybody I met who was resilient, it's almost like they, it's not, it's, it's intrinsic. See, I don't know if it becomes intrinsic over time, but the people I know that are resilient, they don't think for a second, what if, you know,

Yeah, like you said, it's a foregone conclusion to them. They're like, I'm going there. I don't know why you're having a discussion about it. I'll give you my take. My dad taught me that everything is a choice. If I don't have a choice in the matter, then I'm a victim by some capacity. I'm a victim of resiliency. I better be resilient. And then you have a horrible attitude about it. I believe everything is a choice. You get slapped in the face. I'm going to slap you in the face. Look.

That's your choice to get upset and to react. It's literally a choice. Yeah. But you can go, well, I have no choice. I have to react and slap you back, right? My personal belief is if I wake up and I have free agency over myself in this world and I get to make a choice every single day, that that means that I can choose to win today and I can choose to be defeated. But if you never choose to be defeated, are you ever choosing? You're still choosing.

I think you're still choosing, even if you tell yourself that I'm winning. If you choose not to make a choice, you still have made a choice. Quote Rush. See, now I'm Canadian. Jesus, I'm quoting Rush after this thing. Good Lord. All I'm saying to you is I believe when you look at it as a choice, then you have the control, right? Because by some circumstance, when somebody strips your control away, that's communism, right? Yo, I have no choice. I got to do this. No, no. Dad made a choice. Dad didn't say, I have no options, no opportunities.

I'm out. Peace. But I think what he's trying to say is, is it innate in people to be this way or is it a learned skill? Because at some point, I think it's probably a blend of the two. Like everything. No, like for me when I was a kid, like it never occurred to me that, you know, my parents were split up when I was young and then my mom was always working. So we were kind of left to our own devices at the house pretty young, you know?

So I just kind of adopted the neighbor's family as my family. Like that peanut butter and jelly mom, the one that makes all the peanut butter and jellies for the kids playing hide and seek. I just adopted them. And it never even occurred to me that like, well, I wasn't getting what I wanted at home, so I just went and found it somewhere else. I just...

I just solved the problem, what I lacked, through the cards on the table. And without pontificating on this, I just want to be clear. Oh, we pontificate for a living here, buddy. You pontificate. We got time to pontificate. Let's not exacerbate. Let's do all the other stuff, minus the other thing. Oh, yeah. I'm saying, it might be the chair. It might be the chair. The chair. We just...

- Here's my thing on this. Like when you make a choice and you'd move forward, whatever capacity that is, and you achieve something, that's when confidence gets built. Confidence only happens once it's done. Hey man, I did it, I'm confident. Not some manufactured desire and hope and whatever. We don't believe in all that stuff.

My point is this. You make a choice, you win. You make a choice, you win. You make a choice, you win. That level of commitment or resolve develops your character. And then that's you go, I made choices to be here. I made choices to do everything. So for me, if we can say that it's a balance between conditioning and nature versus nurture, I'm like 98% conditioning. That's right. That's what it is, man. It's not like you were born into it, so now you have to do everything.

Again, 98%. I made a choice, move. Made a choice, move. Made a choice, move. That's how I have my agency back. That's how I know that I get to make my own future isn't dependent on some random circumstance. That's why I don't believe in some rocks colliding and it busting up and some random shit happens. I just don't believe that. I believe that something was ordained. Somebody made a decision. There was a choice. And as a result of the choice, there's an outcome. And that was achieved. Well, see, I think that's one of the scariest things. If you look at American politics right now,

And you look at when Trump was in office, you had all of these people that this man is doing something to me personally that I cannot control. Now you have Joe Biden in office and you have the other end of the bell curve saying the same stuff. Because if you think like that, like, for example, like when I look at government policy, whatever it may be,

I'm going to figure out a way to work through it. I'm just going to lay it out to me. I'm going to figure out how to navigate through it, and I'm going to get through it. But it's not going to affect the way that I live my life. It's not going to have any type of effect. And I think when you get to that place where you surrender your free will and thought process of how you can get through something to a political ideology, be it communism, be it left wing, be it right wing, whatever it is. Yep.

I think when you surrender that, and way too many Americans right now are surrendering their free will and their free choice and their freedom

The innate ability for them to navigate that path, they'd rather go stand on the side of the corner with a damn poster board and complain about it. That's funny. What you're saying, I'll just touch on that real quick. That to me, surrendering your identity, that is communism. Yeah. We have no identity. We have no agency. We just have we the people. See, that's interesting. The way I look at it, and again, this is just perspective and semantics.

but i almost look at what john is exactly saying and you know we're politically kind of close but sometimes fall on different issues but we both are under the same impression that it's not only that so i'm not giving my agency to them what i do is i dispossess them of their agency over me

So in politics, I don't care who you put in. It's like Jay-Z said, put me anywhere on God's green earth, I'll triple my worth. Like, I really don't care. But I'd go to China and I'd be successful because like I said, and that's what I mean by free will and resiliency and agency. I'm very resilient. And when I was a kid, I was 12 years old playing football with 16 year olds and getting fucking murdered.

My dad's like, why don't you quit? He's like, you don't have to do this. Why are you doing this? Right. It's, it's suffering, right? It's like Sisyphus pushing a rock. It's because in that process of suffering, if you have chosen that I'm not giving people agency over me,

then at that point, you know, you will never succumb to their agency. Well, but you also, if you're not going to let them have agency over you, you got to take responsibility for your own shit. There you go. That's exactly it. But that's where independence gets formed. Like we need to have an independent mind to be able to move forward in life, regardless of, see everybody's blaming environment and circumstance. Number one,

I'm going to put it out there and some people are not going to like this, but life is actually not that complicated. It's actually relatively simple because life is slow. Everybody does the same shit every single day, complain about the same problems. They take the same approach. They hang out with the same people. They never are willing to move because comfort is

is a greater motivator than growth. Simple. Growth is scary. Dude, if you got $10 and I say, let's go make $10 together. Okay, that's cool, man. And you'll kind of half-ass do it. Dude, you're about to lose that $10 if you don't move your car from that spot. You're going to get a ticket. Your ass is running to the streets so they don't lose your $10. So losing is a greater motivator than winning. Well, they've all said that human beings will move faster

faster away from pain than they will quickly towards the point. I believe that if you want to develop resiliency, embrace the pain, man. And pain is not a bad thing. Pain is a motivator. Just stop being a wimp about it. Right? Oh man, I got to live in this shitty society. Dude, move, move. If it either hurts or doesn't hurt, you're not a tree. You gotta be able, you gotta be willing to move. And that's where it comes back to that agency. The price in Southern California is too expensive. You know, it's cheap. Wisconsin,

How about it? Well, I don't want to live in Wisconsin. That's your choice. You can't have an opinion and an action. That's my belief. Like you can sit here and debate all day about all this stuff. You're never going to actually do, which is why education doesn't work. And I'm an educator. Education by itself does nothing until a person is activated. It has to be multiple factors to get you off your butt, get you working, get you moving forward. So I just look at everything with a negative consequence. Like,

You got to be able, what I do, I take a forecast of my life and I look forward to 50 years and I'm sitting in this rocking chair. It's probably read like this one. I'm 80 years old sitting in this bloody rocking chair. It's because you're saucy. I'm sitting there, right? And I'm in this rocking chair and I'm going to ask myself one question. With the things that I was given, did I do the things I should have done? Right. Dude, that question haunts me. That's the definition of success in my book. That's the definition.

definition of stewardship in mind. That you're moving out, yeah. God gave you all this stuff, your family, your parents, the people around you, all the positive stuff that you had in front of you. Did you do with the positive that you could have or did you just focus on the negative your whole life because that one was maybe more prevailing or more in the news or more in the media? We're all going to feel like idiots if we're 80 sitting in that chair going, well, I could have done more but little Jenny from grade six made fun of me and gave me a complex. Nobody cares.

Your mission doesn't care. Your purpose doesn't care. And your legacy doesn't care. So we got to tell Jenny to piss off. And we all got Jenny's from grade six, right? Sixth grade if you're American. I don't know. Maybe you guys are understanding. Oh, I heard you. No, no. I didn't even blink when I heard grade six. Real quick. I had a Jenny in grade six. She was in ninth grade and we were dating. That's what I'm talking about. Okay. Got a little flex there. That's right. Dude, that's fine. It is what it is. A power move. But we all got one, man. That's a power move.

You create your own adversity, man. You got to use it as that weapon. Well, today when I was leaving the house, as I'm leaving, I hear the unmistakable sound of NHL 2021 coming from upstairs again because my son plays it all the time. And as I'm walking out the door, I stopped and I turned back around. I came in and I yelled up the stairs. I said, come here, come to the stairs. He comes to the edge of the stairs. And I said to him, I go, bro, let me ask you a question. If you found out at five o'clock today that you were going to, you was it, you were going to be dead tonight.

would you say to yourself, I wish I would have done some things different yesterday. And he goes, well, yeah. And I said, you're doing exactly the same thing today. You did yesterday. Why don't you maybe invest in something different? Well,

Yeah, but catching a Hattie at NHLPA 21. Yeah, okay, no, no. Bro, 13 at 13, that's how you die happy. Jesus, it's Canadians. Any other support would have been fine. You are a hardcore dad. You're shooting at an immigrant. I know. No. This show brought to you by Tim Hortons, I guess is what we're going with. Large double-double. Call me Tim Hortons. I will drop it. That's it. You're so much better than Chili's.

Okay, hang on a second. We have to get y'all to bed in a while. Listen here, Chili, Salt Lake City. You're playing a lot of ball now. The letter's in the mail, baby. The demand letter is on its way. Serve me six margaritas and then tow my car? Tow my car, Chili? Coming for you. Six margaritas. Sorry, that's a necessity for every show. I'm wearing the wrong colors in this beef, man. You guys are rocking blue. I'm rocking red. This is not good. Yeah, exactly. We're going to have an East Coast, West Coast beef in here. She's the one you're going to beef with.

Yeah, that's a good point. Hey, man, I live in the beef. That's a good point. Oh, man. All right. So back to the story that we – was it a segway or a digress? It was a digress. It was a development. A development. That was an off-topic development. Okay, cool. Americans got set your way with words. I know. No, no, this guy literally – Sescapadalia. Dude, it's –

We thought it was the chair. No, we thought it was the chair because literally, you understand, the other guy that normally sits in this chair is special in the best possible way. He says the things that you think but can't say. That's the guy that sits in this chair normally. Sometimes delivers it like bubbles. It's to the point where, I'll give you, I'll give you an example because now here we talk about him. He was completely convinced because he'd never seen any Star Wars movie that the bad guy's name was Dark Vader. Dark Vader.

and then when he found out it wasn't dark vader proceeded to argue why it should be dark vader he was apoplectic about they're like dark he's like dark how is it not obvious that he's dark vader yeah that's it so that's what that's what you're replacing today what we're normally working i got you so standards are really high yeah but exactly super low his sister what are the ratings on this show anyway

We actually had in the apprentice. We actually know. I don't know. We actually, we actually have over 10,000 subscribers to this fiasco. If you can even believe that you should be. That's what a good day. That's what a good guest does. Coddle. They badger you halfway through the show. They just start badgering. That was amazing. Life is too hard to be serious guys. He,

Comedy is my relief, man. You want to develop resiliency, develop comedy. I love that. No, we want to talk about adversity, and he just comes on and starts badgering us. I'll take a roast. Yeah, I'll take it. Let's go. Works for me.

So let's do this, man. Let's take a quick break. We're going to take a quick stop. And when we come back, man, I want to hear how you go from nine kids, because we literally just got to Canada. So I want to hear how we got from Canada with nine kids. I'm sure it went through with Tim Hortons at some point. And then we wind up back where you guys are today. I want to talk about what you're doing now. So we'll be right back in just a second. Get an Astro van full of nine kids.

Hey, it's John Gafford. If you want to catch up more and see what we're doing, you can always go to thejohngafford.com. We'll share any links that we have, things we talked about on the show, as well as links to the YouTube where you can watch us live. And if you want to catch up with me on Instagram, you can always follow me at thejohngafford. I'm here. Give me a shout. Back from the break, back from the break, sitting here in studio with Chris Connell, Esquire, as always, and my dude, Ben Humble, the humble CEO.

And today we're talking about resiliency, man. If you missed the first half of this, it was awesome. Yeah, you got to go check it out. If you're just catching this on YouTube, you're just catching the second half, you probably want to go back and hear the whole story. Especially if you're feeling sorry for yourself. Yeah, if you're feeling sorry for yourself. We're picking this back up where Ben and his family, nine kids have just escaped Romania with his parents. They escaped to Canada, which is where we are, Windsor.

I've never been to Windsor. It's a great place. No, I'm just kidding. No, it's fine. Is your family still in Windsor? They're still there? Yep. Still there. So escaped to Windsor, and that's where you're at. So where do we go now? Now you're how old in Windsor?

So I'm six years old Windsor kept growing up nine kids, you know by the time I'm nine I'll get some nine that by the way There's one every year for nine years. So we figured out what mom was pregnant for about seven years if you had it all up together I received a septuplets or something. Yeah. Nope. There's literally one every year for nine years God just blessed her like oh you're pregnant again pregnant again set the clock on January 1st all your wives need to stop complaining No kidding. Yeah, my wife would have more kids up. No one that's yeah good. We're too old for that. So it's fine. I

My wife would have 10 kids if we could, but we just got started too late. So there it is. All right, so six years old, growing up in Windsor, what happens? Yeah, so mom and dad are working two, three jobs to put food on the table, and dad is just this steadfast man. He's moving forward. Every day he's just moving one step. And I watch dad basically incrementally grow his mindset, his

grow his life, grow just everything that has to do with abundance and watching dad never give up, never quit. Mom too. Mom is the hardest worker I know. Mom launched a restaurant and for 10 years she worked 14 hours a day. Was it, no, quick question. Was it the standard? Now listen,

Was it the standard immigrant story where they were just working circles around every single other person? Which seems to be the tale of America. You look at immigrants that are great successes in America, they just come here and they just outwork everybody else that's entitled and grew up here. With one big caveat to that. What is that? Yes, they did work, but never lost sight of their mission, their faith, and their purpose. So around all the work was bringing other families from Romania. Dad launched two churches.

He would drive to Toronto for years every Sunday with all of us kids in the car to go and preach in the evenings because he preached in the morning in the Windsor church. So he's doing this back and forth thing to Toronto every Sunday for years. So they never lost sense of their faith, never lost sense of their mission in life. So add all those together. It wasn't mom and dad were just working to ignore us kids. No, no. We had amazing Sundays. We had family over all the time. We were always at church probably six, seven days a week.

In fact, we were at the church so often that dad said, "You guys should all go to private school." And we ended up going to private school in the same building where the church was. - See, I think that's a great point because so many people think that they're going to bury themselves in their work. And this is an immigrant thing. This is just a hustle culture thing, if you will. So many people think they're gonna bury themselves in their work. They neglect their family, they neglect their health, they neglect everything else. And then at some point there's this mythical pot of gold or this finish line

that is just never really there. And they think when I crossed that finish line, now I can come back and now I'll be the family guy. And now I'll take time for myself. And what happens is that finish line is never there. It just keeps moving. And you end up, you know, you wake up one day and your kids are 17, 18 moving out of the house. And all of a sudden you're like, you know, whoops, I did that. So I love the fact, I love the fact that your dad and your mother were working hard to

to simultaneously create the life that they wanted. Yeah. There was no finish line. Weaving family, weaving mission, weaving the church, weaving all that stuff together. And so I just developed tremendous respect for them for watching them do that. Now, like every kid, I had my problems and issues and whatever. Growing up, I actually wanted to be a musician. So I remember like they would go and do the part-time jobs at the church. They would go clean, vacuum, take out the garbage.

Well, my way around that as a lazy-ass 15-year-old was to go, Mom, I'll go practice the piano in the main chapel. So they would let me literally practice and play while they sat there and vacuumed. You rebel kid, you. I was the worst, man. Yeah, you're the worst. Could you imagine the audacity of playing to try to learn a skill on your own? How ridiculous. Well, listen.

I got to be honest, it was the greatest... For me, it was the greatest gift I ever got was mom and dad having that second job because I knew that I had to go and help them. That was just the right thing to do. Yeah. Because mom and dad work in two, three jobs. And even as a young kid, I understood the sense of responsibility, especially being the oldest. But...

That to me was an outlet. Mom and dad were so gracious that they would stay extra. And I had other siblings there with me working and stuff like that too. So I'm really thankful that they were like, there's a piano, go ahead and play it. As a result of that, when dad's church, he's like, you got 30 people in the church. Hey, you, you play, you're the piano player now.

Yep, congratulations. So you made me sit there every Sunday. Welcome to the big time. And accompany everybody. So I learned music by ear, listening to a bunch of Romanian hymns and songs that, frankly, I didn't know how to play other than, like, listen. And somebody would sing these crazy songs, and I would just sit there and try to figure out. And I got really good at picking up the notes. Yeah, the melody and all that stuff. Smoke on the water.

Well, not quite. That's what happened during communism. That's in the movie. That's a different thing. But I watched him do this stuff, so I learned to play music. And growing up, I wanted to be a musician. So even in high school, I took all the easy classes. I actually failed math two times because I was extremely bored and didn't pay attention. I got a good ass whooping for that, rightfully so. So I go to university for music in a couple years, and I'm doing all this stuff. And I realized halfway through, like, hey, the greatest thing you're going to accomplish is to become a high school music teacher.

And I had a conviction moment. I was like, this ain't what I want. It was my own personal thing. Not that it's wrong to be a high school teacher, but it was wrong for me. It wasn't you. It wasn't your path. It wasn't me, man, because my family had all this push and all this stuff and all this big storyline and whatever. I'm not okay with a career. I don't want a career. I don't want a job. I don't want to fit in a box. I need to keep growing. My need for expansion and growth, I saw a job as my outcome, and I said, I'm out. And I literally dropped right out.

I dropped out and I did the only thing that I knew how to do. You want to guess what it was? OnlyFans? The Charleston. Not quite, not quite. Tim Hortons, he told us. No, bro, I started cleaning. Cleaning. Oh, because the church. I literally watched mom and dad clean all throughout my youth. I swear to God we're paying attention and the test shouldn't be this hard. OnlyFans. It's not that hard. I just was looking at the phone.

- I don't know, who knows? - The shit was cleaner when I did it in Michigan, by the way. - You know what's funny? I don't want to like stop your story, but it is funny though how different things are now. 'Cause if you're a kid and you learn music, get on YouTube and do your own shit. - Yeah. - We didn't have that opportunity. - Wasn't a thing.

It wasn't even in my purview. No, it literally didn't have the option. But it's worse than that. You just tattoo up your face, put a stupid hairdo on, and then mumble something into a YouTube video, and then you go make a record. Sorry, yeah. I'm not mentioning them by names, but we know who I'm talking about. I do. Can these guys go away quickly? Quickly, can they please go away? No, but it's funny because kids nowadays may not understand that

Like, well, what do you mean? You're a talented musician. You can go make beats. You can go DJ. You can go do all this shit. And there's so much more availability for that. It just wasn't a thing. And I didn't know. And again, I take responsibility. It was my own fault for going to a music school that promoted just becoming a teacher. No, you were following a passion. But we just... Anyway, I don't continue on, but I just... Yeah, and you're making a very valid point. I think that's just interesting how... Because had it been today, it may have been a different mindset, right? Maybe today...

Maybe you don't start a painting company. You actually go, you know, you're playing Raider Stadium with a stupid fucking helmet on. How many marshmallows do you think there are? There's like, yeah, he's got this guy. I need you to hit play on my iPad, bro. Yeah, I'll pay you 75 grand. Oh, okay. By the way, if you listen to this marshmallow, I'm down. No, no, I'm not. I'm not. Sorry. I'm down for that gig whenever you want. Oh, sure. I'll wear the helmet push play. I'm fine. Pay me whatever you want. I'm good.

So this guy, cleaning company. Yeah, I started cleaning company, cleaning the floors, cleaning carpets, all that. And the benefit with doing that was I started thinking about how do I make money? I got really industrious real quick. I was already entrepreneurial because of my music and stuff like that, but I never really made any money. I had a paper route as a kid and all this other stuff. And I used to actually make paper origami and charge my siblings 10 cents a piece and I would make them a bird or a boat or whatever else. The junior hustle, man. I knew that game, right? I'm like, I can't sell origami as a 21-year-old. It doesn't play out. But I can clean.

My first job was my mom. She gave me a hundred bucks to clean my own room. She gave me a hundred bucks to clean my own room where I was living. What? Yeah. I was like, mom, I have a carpet cleaning business. This carpet is dirty as hell. How do I know I'm the one making it dirty? Let me clean it and pay me a hundred. And mom was like, okay. If

If my kids are listening to this, then it happened. Do not even think about wrecking your house. I think a part of her, my mom is a hustler. My mom saw the immigrant, the struggle, the entrepreneurial hustle. She was fostering the hustle. She's like, I see you. Yeah. Right? She was like, give me like one of these. Like, yeah, bro. She's like, you got this. So I cleaned the carpet and then a second one and a third one and a fourth one. And, you know, six, seven months later, I'm cleaning, like, I'm literally cleaning all the dirty ass nightclubs in Windsor after everybody parties at 2 a.m. After all the Americans come in.

and they just drink all of our booze and ruin our whole downtown scene. My ass is going in there with my little floor scrubbing machine and scrubbing beer off the floor. Let me tell you something right now on behalf of America. You're welcome. You're welcome, buddy. I've never cleaned more Bud Light off a floor in my whole life.

Molson Canadian, you mean. Molson whatever it was. Americans are drinking Canadian beers, by the way. You guys are still drinking American stuff. It was me. I'm thankful for my little brother, John, because my little brother would come and work with me. Like this kid's in high school, and I'm like, yo, bro, we got a job. Let's go. I'll pay you in Big Macs and a few bucks, and he would come out. He would literally come out at whatever he was, 13, 12. I probably shouldn't say it because, you know, a Canadian guy. But he would come out. He was a bigger kid. He was trying to play football, so he'd come out and help me and –

I hired my cousin. I hired whoever. Whoever I could figure out. I just got resourceful. Here's what it did for me. Every kid should have a service-based business. Every kid should do a paper route.

By the way, I don't think that exists anymore. Do you ever know a kid with a paper route who didn't go on to do something? I had a paper route for three years, bro. Every kid I know that had a paper route went on to make money. Everybody we talk to, every single entrepreneur we talk to always says the same thing. It's the, I was taking candy bars to school and selling erasers and doing this. Crack, whatever. Yeah, whatever. It's a Windsor. Yeah, it's a Windsor. Right to the crack, yeah. Yikes. Right to the crack, no. But it was always, you know, it's...

10, 12 years old, you're hustling. And it is what it is. And that's a good question because is that built in or is that innate or is that learned? No, and I think hustling, I could replace that word with learning. You're learning. Like I'm a street smarts guy. Almost zero book smarts. That's why I married somebody with an MBA. I was like, I'm dumb as hell.

But when it comes to street smarts, making money, talking to people, getting out there, hustling, that's all street stuff. And there's a level of resiliency you build just working, just talking to people, just figuring stuff out. There's a very quick feedback loop. Hey, man, can I clean your floor? No, man, I got somebody doing 50 bucks. Shit, bro. I'll do it for 49. Yeah.

Really? Yeah, I'll do it for $49,000. And I'll put this other chemical down for you. Okay, cool. Then you learn very quickly. You learn about cost-cutting. You learn about being efficient with your resources. You learn about how to sell yourself. You've got to learn sales in life, man. And if you don't want to learn sales, then you better find somebody who knows sales because, to me, everything in life is a level of sales. Of course. Yeah, I mean, think about everybody who is sitting in a cubicle. I don't mean to shit on that lifestyle because it is what it is. It's comfortable. But a lot of those people have no interest in selling themselves.

right ask they don't ask for a raise yeah people well they're working the same job forever they haven't sold themselves to that employer for a simple raise for themselves let alone you know to move up in life and take ownership or whatever i think i don't blame most of them because i tell you why they never saw a different narrative for their life mom and dad maybe were in a cubicle their cousins in a cubicle being a cubicle is the thing to do and for them it's cool you got a couple weeks off success and that's success and it's not wrong dude

I'll tell you one thing I learned about life, and this maybe resonate with your entrepreneurs in the audience. If everybody was like me, this shit would be a lot harder. Oh, no, for sure. I need 90% of them to be what we call sheep because lions need to hunt. Like I need to go and do my thing. I love working in a socialist country because I'm the only capitalist in a socialist country. Straight up. That is a huge advantage people don't realize. They'll complain about it. I love Canada, bro. I was able to build wealth and make millions of dollars in Canada because most people weren't.

Somebody had to solve the bigger problems. People who live in a socialist country don't want to solve them. Solving housing, and we'll get to that. I solved some issues in my town. I made things affordable. I raised capital. I did a whole bunch of stuff that people weren't willing to do, and I'm thankful for it. So how old are you with the cleaning business? Yeah, I'm 19, 20. You're 19, 20 years old, and you're banging down how much?

Was that how much money? Yeah, what are you making? Probably first year was like 60 grand gross. Before all expenses, I probably net maybe 15, 20. At 19 though, man, I think I was slinging $5 foot longs.

It's still our team. No, no, no. I was, no, I was, I was knee deep in a puddle behind the bar already. Already. I was already slinging. You got it right. So I did 60. Then I did 80, 85. My second year, I thought it was killing the game. I finally got one big customer. I never forget. I went to this condo building, a bunch of old people. And I was so polite. I had my Christian self with me. I'm like, Hey, how are you? I just want to help you guys out. I want to do some work. And they let me clean their apartment building while I was actually still finishing up whatever university courses. I tried business for a semester and,

They pay me $4,000 to clean the carpets in this old people apartment building in Windsor. Wow. Shout out to you, Solidarity Tower.

Change the game for book for grand in one week. I was like, I'm out I literally went back to school like yo anybody want to go to dinner me I got you I was in accounting class and I'm like, yeah, you know what's better than accounting $4,000. Yeah Kelsey's I do Yeah, I had seen for everybody we going out for for dim sum and all that I had almost the exact same experience when I left school because I owned a bar when I was 20. Yeah, and I

I was in a beverage class. I was in a school for hospitality administration because that's what I thought my life was going to be because I've been in restaurants since I was a kid, right? And I'm in this class and they're teaching you how to pay Florida beverage tax is what they're talking about, liquor tax on keg beer. And they're like, well, for every quarter barrel, you got to pay X and this, that works. And I'm like-

I raised my hand. I'm like, that's not right. He's like, what do you mean? I'm like, well, state of Florida lets you write off like a gallon per quarter per half barrel for spillage and foam. And then you can deduct that from your total amount and pay taxes on this. The professor was like, no, you can't. I'm like, I did it two days ago. And then I was like, you know what? Maybe the institution has nothing further to offer me. And that was it for me in schools. I had similar experience, man. Same thing. Other than Hooters University.

Hooters University. I'm never going to live down Hooters University. I do have a degree from Hooters University. That sounds very promising. That is a story for another day. All right. So you didn't graduate from Hooters University. No. I got good at cleaning up shit. Other people's shit. I really, like, I think everybody should clean up some shit sometimes. Go do some hard stuff. I literally cleaned up shit this morning because my dog took a shit on the carpet. It is what it is. Mm-hmm.

Go clean some shit, man. Go get your hands dirty. Go and be offended by the smell of other people's odors. You need that in your life. You need a little bit, right? To be humbled. Like...

To get humble, that's why I wear this. That's right. I get it. This thing is nothing more than a daily reminder to myself that it doesn't matter where you start. You decide where you end. You have a decision every day to move forward, to lower your ego, and grow your purpose. That's it. That's humble. Real easy. So I'm cleaning this stuff. I'm 21. I joined this little B&I group, business network groups, and I started going there for lunches. And there's a guy who's like, I got a property for sale. I'm like, good. I need one.

I'm living in mom's basement, cleaning my own carpets for a hundred bucks. I need a house, right? Yeah. I'm better than making any money. I'm making 15 grand a year. I'm not bankable. I can't get the house. So I asked the guy, I'm like, dude, show me the house. Shows me this duplex that used to be a convenience store. The outside still looks like a convenience store. He's like, I'll sell you this place for 126,000.

Shit might as well been 10 million dollars. Yeah, because you can't get the one you can't get the one I can't get it. He can't get it And he's like he's like have you ever read, you know, rich dad poor dad in a bunch of these books I'm like, yeah, man. I've been reading books. I've been going to events. I was like, can you help me do some creative financing? He's like, yeah, i'll help you. I was like cool So he was a broker He actually got me he got me a mortgage from I think it was a b lender or c lender or something like that Had to put a couple dollars down which I was able to borrow and all that

And, you know, mom gave me a gift letter and mom gave me some cash. And I was like, okay, mom, give me this money and, you know, I'll buy this property and mom helped me and all this other thing. And I bought this property. I closed on the deal. I assumed the tenants on the bottom and I was paying 156 bucks a month plus utilities. To live. Yeah.

To live. Because your tenants were there paying all the bills. Yeah, I moved in. I moved in. First thing I did, I went to the store. I bought five different kinds of cereal. I bought two gallons of milk. Because when you're growing up in a house of nine kids, that's gold right there. I called my brother. I was like, bro, we dining tonight.

I got a meal. I got a Cap'n Crunch. I got it all. I said, we're going to make all this. We put all this cereal in one bowl. We were just scooping it out like it was going out of stock. It's like making swamp water. That's it. Okay. All of it. It was next level. As soon as I did that first real estate deal, I was- Well, see, I want to back up about that, though, because that is a lesson that I preach all the time to people that are looking to buy their first deal, which is it doesn't- The only thing that matters what it looks like at the deal is the numbers. No.

nothing else matters. You moved into a convenience store. I moved into a convenience store. Yeah. Because the numbers made sense. Yeah. It was, that was like, did you grow up as a child dreaming of living in a convenience store? No, I would add one more caveat. Not only did the numbers make sense, but I could do it. You could do it. See back then I could have been a $200,000 or 80,000. I don't, I didn't care. The fact that it was there and everybody else walked by it because it was a convenience store. I was like, I live in a convenience store, man. Yeah.

I'd like to point something out just real quick and not to shit on something, but we live in a day and age where people always make excuses. Yeah. Everybody makes excuses. Sure. Some people will say, oh, your mom gave you part of the down payment.

Right. But like, you know what I mean? Get a gift letter, do all that stuff. Mom helped out with a couple grand here and there. Right. But what people don't realize is that money exists. I don't care who you are. Who cares? I don't care who you are. Who cares? You could be a kid from D street. If you come up to the right people, if you talk to people, if you're motivated, you're talking to this, this guy, this broker with the deal, right? Yeah. He's going to help you with the deal because you show an interest because you put yourself out there. I did. So he's going to now take you under his wing because people will help.

Yep. People will help others do things. And they're incentivized, man. He's financially incentivized. Totally. He just wants to help another young kid who he sees working and doing his thing. But let's say, for example, that couple grand wasn't there. There are people, and if you're the kind of person that shows initiative and you're the kind of person that gets out there and talks to people and just asks the question, there's people that will give you

of that yeah they may charge you some points in the no no no no you've been cast everywhere yeah a big lie we can get into real estate investing because like listen i don't want to be overly aggressive but i'm the i'm the freaking best at real estate education in canada i've never said that before but i'm telling you right now because yeah well whoa whoa whoa so question why would you have never said that before well i mean it's not that i have i just haven't said it in that context or in those words but now with the way you're speaking i'm telling you i'm the best that's it the reason why i'm the best the reason why i help people the most

is because I'm such a believer in the outcome. And dude, you gotta be willing to do whatever it takes to get to that outcome. And if you're not planting seeds with people, go, hey man, you got a property? I'd love to own a property. How do I do that? Show me how to do that. We're all assuming everything's a no. Life starts at no, bro. Right. Everybody, my only point is that is day in, day out, day in, day out, I hear people complain.

about everyone else's privileges. And I don't mean, I'm not talking about race or gender, but everybody says, well, my parents couldn't help me with that. I'm like, you don't need your parents. Let's get tactical just for one second, then we'll get back to the storyline. Sorry, I like to point out. No, I want to hit on your tactical nature. Listen, mom grabbed it from a credit card to give to her son to buy a house. Everybody has credit. And if you don't have credit, go get credit. Your cousin got credit, your mom and your dad. Everybody has access to capital. They just don't want to do it. Right, and make it worth their while for them to help you out too. Yeah, I mean, again,

It's not a freebie. It was not a freebie. It was not a whatever. I'm not even implying that, but I don't care who you are. Yeah, but here's something else interesting to what you just said was you said plant seeds out there. Keep planting seeds with people because here's an – I saw something the other day that was shocking to me. This was shocking to me. And it was a TikTok video with about 180,000 views maybe, and it was a dude explaining how to fill out a check.

I know. And here's the moral of the story. The moral of the story is smart people that know how to do things. We kind of assume other people know how to do them already. Yeah. So if you're around smart people that do are doing smart stuff and you're in the room and you're, you have their attention, they're around you. Part of them in their brain thinks you already know what they know. Yeah. Yeah.

So it's up to you to put it out there that I don't know this. Push down the ego. Push up the humble. And say, I don't know this. Can you help me? Can you help me with this? Let me add one piece to that. I want to validate that a little bit here. So people are like, how do I do this? How do I get started?

Go clean shit. The only answer I have for you is I started cleaning shit. I started carpet cleaning business. I was cleaning other people's garbage. Literally six months later, I joined and I paid $500 to be in a group in a room with people that were better than me and knew something about business because I was hoping I could learn a thing or two. I happened to be in that room where that mortgage broker was there. And that's the only reason why I bought that property. Think about what that $500 bought you. Yeah, approximately his power. $125 a month rent.

No, but it brought him the beginning of a new career. And that's what I'm saying. People say it all the time. I can't afford mentorship. I can't afford mentorship. Bullshit. Just get in a room with somebody who has more than you and just ask questions and be vulnerable and be open. It's scary. But dude, there's many more things that are scarier. That $500 got me that deal. The ROI on that $500 is huge. It's just millions and millions of dollars. It's gone.

It's epic. See, that $500 investment led to me raising over $40 million privately to buy and sell real estate. Right. Because at that time, I bought that first property and I'll just keep moving on this piece. Three, four months later, I'm hooked, bro. Yeah. All my friends, I can't buy a house, man. I'm like, I have a house. My name's on title and everything. I got a house, man.

Four or five months later, I'm like, I'm literally door knocking, looking in the paper all over again. There's another guy. He's got a house for sale. Same thing. I got up. I was like, hey, can you help me finance? Can you help me do some seller financing? I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad, OPM books, a bunch of books. I'm like, I don't know how to do this, but can we figure it out? Figured out the second deal. Six, seven months later, I bought the second property. Also had a preexisting tenant. I moved out of the first one, rented it out, moved into the second one, rented the upstairs. Now I got three tenants and two properties. And what's your monthly nut?

What's your LA? I was actually breaking. You went from 121, now you're breaking even? I was breaking even or making just a hair. Yeah. Right? So you're living for free now. I'm living literally for free after two properties. Under one year. Keeping my expenses low. I was driving a 94 Dodge Caravan because that's what I had for my business with no air conditioning. The windows didn't work, so every stoplight I'd stop and open the door and fan that shit out just to get a little bit of air in here. The ceiling was even falling on my head.

My buddy John, who was in the cleaning business, and I was working for him as a subcontractor, would tease me. Hey, man, you got this old van. You got this thing, whatever. I'm like, yeah, bro, but I got two properties. He's like, I got five. I'm like, I know you got five, but I'm coming for you. I got two. Bought that. I met a beautiful girl, Romanian girl, doing my thing at church, playing music, all that, because I was still traveling with dad and doing that. I take her to the property. I was like, look at this amazing home. Oh, my God. She's like, oh. Wait, wait. So you're telling me you landed her with the caravan?

I landed her with a 94 Dodge Caravan, bro. She was paying for my meals. That is a keeper, sir. That is a keeper. Let me clarify. I had a van, but I also had a Cavalier, right? Oh, okay. You had a Cavalier. I forgot to mention, I had two cars.

I had two cars. Who can't pick up chicks in a Camelier? Come on. It wasn't even a Z24. It was just a regular black two-door. But, man, that thing had a son of a... That car slapped, bro. We used to sit there. We used to bump two hosses. Duh. Duh, hoss. You got 15-inch stock rims on that bad boy. Oh, yeah. Fire.

They were alloy. I think they were alloy. Nice. Was it the Rammstein he was bumping out that thing? Yeah, Rammstein. It was Rammstein and then on the weekends it was Christian music. I mean, just hearing this story, I'm thinking if you guys break up, I'm in. I'm there. Yeah.

But she challenged me. She said, this is nice and it's a nice property. And she's like, what about we buy something for us? And I was, I had literally just bought this probably a month before. And I'm like, I'm living good. And I'm like, this is exactly the push I needed. Thank you. So we went shopping for another property. I found a beautiful duplex, like, you know, just a mile up the road. And it was like three bedroom, each side, all hardwood, gorgeous thing with a full basement, two car garage, all that.

Because I was like, if you move to Canada, I'll get you a nicer property, right? Were you in Romania? Was she in Romania? So she was actually in Michigan. I'm living in Windsor. So we met at a Michigan church. And I mean, trying to convince a Romanian girl to leave her mom and her family and move to Canada wasn't easy. So I had to bring my A game, right? You had to bring the Cavalier, buddy. You had to bring the Cavalier. Right? Followed by the van. I mean, it is what it is, man. Yeah.

But that was the move. So she directly, indirectly challenged me. And I'm so thankful for that. We bought that third property. So we bought that third property. We closed on it like two days before we got married. We got married. We went there after we got married, like the day after. And we're like, we're going to go on our honeymoon in five, six days. We didn't have hydro turned on, nothing. We literally just mattress, floor, candles. What is hydro? What is that? Power. Sorry. We got Yankee on the call. All right.

All right. I got you. We didn't have power. It was the middle. It was September, so we didn't have heat or any of that stuff. We didn't need it. We just slept on a mattress for three, four days, and then we went on our honeymoon. He wasn't wearing a toque yet. No toque. He wasn't wearing a toque. Can I say Jeepers? Is that a thing? Jeepers. Not a thing. That's a different. Did I make that up? Yeah, that's another thing. I feel like that's offensive. Canadians are going to start boycotting this show. I'm like, I'm pretty sure it's Minnesota. I just make that up. I don't know. I don't know.

So now we're cranking. We got three. We literally got three properties and I'm 23 years old, beautiful bride. Three properties, 23 cashflow, positive, still cleaning carpets. Nice. Did you see the hustle in him or what? What was the, yeah. Yeah. Just saw that in his eye. I went to school for business. So when I saw him and he's doing business, I'm like, okay, what's up?

What can we do? I mean, she married me for my money. It's that simple, right? The cavalier and the money. No, man, it's cavalier. Just the cavalier. Listen, when we were dating, she was my sugar mama. It cost me $8 to get to Detroit and back all the time just in toll. And by the time I pay gas, it was $20 every single time. So I'd go over there and I'm like, yo, you got a job, right? You work at the library. Maybe you could pay for dinner every once in a while. She was my sugar mama even back then. It was amazing. I lived at 13 Mile and Ferris in Detroit.

I did. Yeah, I used to drive to 12 and John R. Yeah, it was a... See, I don't even know where I was going. I made it literally one winter in Detroit, and I called my boss, and I said, hey, man, I'm moving back to Orlando or Atlanta in two weeks. And he goes, you're quitting? I go, that all depends on what you say next. And he called me back, and my temperature was Orlando. I said, hey, that's what I wanted to hear.

Good enough for me. So when did you stop cleaning cars? Does that business still run? No. So we did that. And then we got married in 2008, 2009 happened. 2009 happens and my immigrant brain is like, oh my God, I'm salivating like Pavlov's dog. For those of you that are young, don't know what he's talking about, 2009, that was a financial crisis when the foreclosure crisis ran through.

rampant across North America and the price of properties plummeted. We're the brother and sister to Detroit. So Detroit took a massive hit. Windsor took a big hit too because we're a big automotive city. But relatively less in Canada. Canada's such a very stable... Relatively less, but Windsor where I was got hammered. So prior to that, every property, I couldn't find stuff for less than about 90 grand on the MLS that was for sale. And I was always in that kind of 90, 100, maybe 80 if it was whatever. 30? Yeah.

The very first property that I found in 2009 was $29,000. It was actually $39,000 was the asking price. And it was by CMHC, which is the government insurance company, kind of like you guys have Fannie and Fanny. I worked for them. I underwrote for them. Oh, you did? Yeah. I'm sorry to hear that. I get it. Apparently, that's hilarious in Canada. I'm not sure. $25,000. $25,000. $25,000. They looked at me. The house was... Just give you some context real quick. I know we can't smell anything in this room, but...

This was the cat house. Meaning everybody in the neighborhood who did crack and whatever else, they would migrate all the cats to this area and just let them percolate.

Right? So they would live in the crawl space on the furnace duct inside the house. I walked in and there was cat piss on the ceiling. Oh, God. Imagine the crazy party those cats must have had. Like, yo, cat, what's up? Right? That's aggressive. So cat piss on the ceiling, on the floor, in the ductwork, everywhere. And if you've ever been in a house like that, you know the stench. Oh, yeah. Carpet everywhere. I have flipped that house. Well, it's trick or no. It's...

It also carries really bad bacteria. Oh, yeah, 100%. What did I know? I'm an immigrant. I'm used to bacteria. I ain't got none of this problem. Your whole period cleaning shit has prepared you for this. I was prepared, bro. You're prepared for this, dude. This is your Super Bowl. I'm like, boom. I'm ready to take down the bin Laden of cats over here. I'm rolling. I'm a Navy SEAL. Tom Brady. Yeah, sure. I'm the Justin Bieber of hot. Never mind. We've done that a lot.

The Celine Dion of singing. I don't know. That's all the Canadians. So I walked into this cat pee house and the lady had passed away, was living there and she was hoarding all these cats, probably throwing them and eating them, whatever. You never, never straight up Simpsons. 100% bought this place. I made an offer for 25 grand and they accepted it. And I was like, yeah, but I didn't have 25 grand. No, no. Who's going to have 25 grand in 2009 when there's not actually not a lot of capital floating around and nobody really knows how this game works. The liquidity kind of dried up back then, right? Remember the crisis? No, for sure.

I go to the bank and they're like, nope. So then I'm like, crap, what do I do? By the way, the guy who wrote the offer was also in that same BNI group. Just a little moral to the story. Just join a $500 little group with whatever business owners and just start there. Just get to know people have been doing anything for 10, 20 years in business, chamber of commerce, whatever, anything. So you can just get a sense of like what your city is doing and who's doing what. And that's the fastest way I find to just get started. But anyways, I go to my mother-in-law and I was like, Hey,

I married your daughter. I moved her to Canada. Yeah. I robbed her from you. I didn't even give you a dowry. They don't have anything to give. You can have my van. Well, see, please don't take my Cavalier. I was going to say, notice it's the van, not the Cavalier. Cavalier's not offering that one. You can have my van, but I need 25 grand. At first, she was worried, right? She's like, oh, I don't know because...

Every immigrant parent worries. That's just the way that it is. You're taught to live under scarcity and all this other stuff. So you save everything and you scrimp and save your whole life. She's like, I don't know. I don't know. But she had faith in me and she believed in me and she said, okay, I'll do it. She gave me the money. The full house cost 25 grand. Mm-hmm.

I'm like, yeah, buddy. I pulled in every favor I had. My wife's dad was there. My dad was there. My mom was there. My brother was there. We're there Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day to get this property ready for the tenants that were moving in January the 1st. Even the tenants came by and painted their own

place I can give him $500 off. It was a $500 rental. I spent 25 grand on the rehab with everything that I figured out. And I'm talking like the tiles didn't match the grout was 16 colors. I use mortar for grout because I didn't know the difference. We didn't have like YouTube and all that really back then. So I slapped this thing together. The 25 grand from the rehab came from whatever line of credit I could get because I would call every three months like, Hey, what's my line of credit? They're like six grand. I'm like, can you make it seven?

Just give me more. Right? But you're sorry, you're not using the other amount. I'll need it at some point. Slap this thing together. January 1st, I hand these tenants the keys. They move over. It's $500 for the rent. By the time I paid all the expenses out of about $200 cash flow. $200 cash flow. I go to the bank and I said, I have a property. This is immoral. I have a property and it's paid out. I paid cash for it. I have tenants and it's positive cash flow. I'm a business owner.

I want to restructure this debt just like that. And they're like, okay. They did an appraisal or appraise for 62,000. They gave me 65% loan to value. I got 40 something thousand dollars back in my pocket. I paid mother-in-law. I paid most of the renovation budget. Right.

And now I'm back to square one. And I'm, yeah, buddy. But you're on title. It's my fourth property. I'm on title. New set of tenants. This is 2009. I'm living life. Subject to FERPTA. And that was the cascade, man. It was literally the cascade. 2010, I bought 11.

Every single month. I gave up my 2010. I punted that whole year. I saw my wife one day a week. All I did was work. I cleaned carpets. I fixed houses. Every month I was buying, doing lipstick stuff, renting, refinances, rented, refinances. Burr is what that's called. Burr. I burred it. Buy, rent, refinance, restore, repeat, retarded, whatever. I mean, it's all the same. It just felt like that. Like all the burrs. And that was my 2010. It just cranked.

You know, that's one of my biggest regrets from that time was at that time, I was an agent here in Vegas. I wasn't a broker, didn't own a company. And I was one of the number one REO agents in the country. I mean, just taking my 3% on hundreds and hundreds and I mean, thousands of properties that were priced like that. And what I should have been doing was

with somebody, creating an LLC and buying all of that, all that inventory is what I should have been doing. And a lot of people did do that. And a buddy just like you from high school helped me buy 60 of these houses and he watched me buy them all. Yeah, and he just made three points. And he just made his money, made his money. Then years later, he's like, man, I should have bought some houses with you.

Yeah. Because at that point, at that point, you know, you go from, I was, I'd walk in the office with flip flops and board shorts on, turn my computer on and there'd be 30 new listings sitting on my, on my computer. That's what it was. And that's what it was every, just every day like that was crazy.

Let me hit you on the resiliency thing just real briefly here. I didn't know what was going to happen to the market because back then hindsight is, hey, that would have been great. I would have bought it knowing where the market is. Back then we just thought the market was either going to zero or it was going to come back at some point in some capacity. I didn't know it was my first real bear market.

I just realized that 25 grand is less than a Honda. At some point, these things got to come back to 50, 60, 70. I didn't know. That's my only hope. And then came 11 in the hedge funds. Here they come. And then came the roaring 20s all the way back. All the way back. So we bought those properties and then that led to buying more properties. And in 2013, I launched a mortgage company. So I launched a private lending company. I used to ask my tenants, why don't you guys own a house?

And they're like, well, we can't get credit. We can't get this. We can't get this. My dad bought his first house making $12 an hour working in a factory. And the bank had mercy on him and let him buy a house. So I have a real soft spot for housing. So I'd find my tenants and go, why don't you guys own a house? And they give me all the excuses why. And I just sat in my brain for months and months and months. And one day I look at my wife. I said, I'm launching a mortgage company. She's like, how? You don't have any money. I was like, yeah, but I have intelligence. I'll figure it out. So what I started doing was...

Market started going up. I was buying houses and I decided to buy a house and fix it and put it out for rent. But instead I tried to sell one house. Yeah. My first house ever. And exactly. And I put it back out. Some dude came and actually he's like, I'll just pay cash. 89 grand.

And I was like, crap. And I took the money. I took the money, put some cash in my pocket. The very next deal I bought for 45, spent 45 to fix that 90 into this property. And I found that beautiful old lady who was in a retirement season of her life. And I was like, listen, I'll sell you this thing, but I want to be a mortgage lender. She's like, I need a mortgage. And I sold it for 120,000. Yep.

How much down? 10 or 20%. My cost basis was 90. I had zero down. You gave her zero down? Zero down, just pay all the legal and closing costs. Okay. Which I capped at about 4,500 bucks. Okay. So she had to pay for, in the way, so I sold the property. If you want to get technical, I sold the property, brought a first lender in, another private guy. They gave her 75% of the new purchase price, who was the same guy that gave me the money when I bought the property the first time. I held my entire profit in a second mortgage. I made $356.77. Wow.

on my very first mortgage deal. And I was like, yeah, buddy. Profitable. Profitable. I removed all of the maintenance and all this stuff. And if you guys track with Ontario, became extremely tenant friendly. So I literally got out of the landlording business and got into the mortgage business back in 2013. I never bought another rental after 2013. I sold all the ones I had because they had a bunch of equity by that point.

And I just started doing them. And we did hundreds. Yeah, I love that. I love that owner will carry model when you go cash because you can, if you do it right and you do it with the right people, you can get a decent enough down payment to take your position completely out of the realm of being speculative or being anything you should worry about, which is great. And really, essentially what you're doing is even if you do a three-year note with a balloon,

right, whatever it is, and they get to a point where they can't refi out of it, all you're doing is getting your guaranteeing your tenants going to stay there for as long as you want, because they're

they're not going to leave their down payment. They're not going to be like, oh, we can't get it. Can we extend the terms? Yeah, I can extend the terms again, which is great. So I love that owner will carry model much more than I love the rental model. I think it's great. I love it too for many reasons. Like the cashflow is great and there's zero headaches. In Canada, especially in Ontario where we're from, you want to be a lender. You do not want to be a landlord. Because there's no roofs. Canada and the US, right? A little bit backwards. So in Canada-

You don't want to be a landlord because it's so tight against landlords. There's so much crap that people got to deal with. But as a lender, as private lender, it's basically unregulated. There's nothing going on. You create the rights you want so long as you don't violate. You can do pretty much whatever you want. You can charge 15 points, 20 points, 30 points. It doesn't matter. It just goes. You do whatever you want to do. Whereas over here, you have Dodd-Frank and a bunch of other stuff. So over here, it's harder to be a lender. In Canada, it's harder.

It's easy. Pretty easy. So what if I'm somebody, man, we're running deep now. So if I'm somebody, I hear this, man, I go, man, this humble guy's on to something. Like you said, best real estate coach in Canada. Best. Same techniques will still work here in the States. So if I'm somebody and I want to find you, man, how do I find you?

If I'm somebody listening to this, and believe it or not, people do. It's shocking. You mean you want to find a guy like me? No, if they want to find you, man, I'm trying to help you right now. I got you. Hey, humble.ceo. Humble.ceo, nice and easy to find you. And you do coaching for new real estate people? Yes, we've got a whole education company. We help people get started, build $1 to $5 million real estate businesses or investor capital. That's what we do 24-7. All those things. Yep.

So, man, if this sounds like something that you might be interested in, and I got to tell you, after hearing that story, I don't know how you're sitting there with any excuses in your pocket. Because you're not willing to clean up shit. Yeah, because if you're willing to clean up shit and you're willing to hit my dude, I think you can probably head to some success. I don't want to hear people talking about how they want to. And here's another quick lesson. How I know Ben, we're in a mastermind group together. Yep. That's how we know each other. So there you go.

Anyway, man, well, it was a pleasure to have you on today. Thank you so much, man. If you're listening to this, man, happy Thanksgiving to everybody as that comes up tomorrow. Spend some time with your family and friends. Hopefully you'll be safe. Do you know that tomorrow night, Wednesday night, is the busiest bar night of the year in the United States? Did you know that? Oh, yeah, because a whole bunch of people get together with some family. More than New Year's Eve. No, no, because people go home.

And then they meet all their friends at the bar. So it's busy. Tomorrow is more booze sold than actually. You guys want to start a flooring business? Tomorrow is going to be a good day to clean the floors. Let's go clean some shit. My good day to clean some shit up. His kids are 13. Yeah, we can put them to work. Works for me. Works for me. Well, guys, as always, man, if you like what we do here, make sure you tell a friend. And if you hate it, tell two, because it doesn't matter if they're talking good or bad. As long as they're talking about you. As long as they're talking about you. See you next time.

Hey, it's John Gafford. If you want to catch up more and see what we're doing, you can always go to thejohngafford.com where we'll share any links that we have things we talked about on the show, as well as links to the YouTube where you can watch us live. And if you want to catch up with me on Instagram, you can always follow me at thejohngafford. I'm here. Give me a shout.