Welcome to The Get Real Podcast, your high-octane boost and in the trenches tell-it-like-it-is reality therapy for personal, business and real estate investing success with your hosts, power-preneurs Angela and Ron. It’s time to get real!

Angela: Hey everybody, welcome to The Get Real podcast. I’m Angela Thomas and I’m here with Ron Phillips. Hey Ron.

Ron: Hello. Hello.

Angela: Hey. So we wanted to take just a second for any of you who’s been following along and listening to some of our, you know, other podcast shows we wanted to just real quick, take a second and let you guys know why we do this. Ron, you were kind of reacting about it, so go ahead.

Ron: I was talking to somebody the other day, you know, people that I know, they say, you know, I really like your podcast. And I’m thinking, oh wow, that’s really cool. I didn’t know that you’ve listened to the podcast. And I had a business friend and he, he was asking me, you know, so what’s the intent of the podcast? Like, what are you trying to accomplish with the podcast? You’re trying to get business, you’re trying to sell something ultimately, like what are you doing?

Angela: It’s actually funny.

Ron: It’s going to sound really strange, but like Angela and I really never thought about this as being a way for us to monetize anything. Really it’s an outlet for us. I think, Angela, correct me if I’m wrong, but I mean this for us, this is an outlet to be able to share things that we think are really important with the business community, with investors, with people in the real estate world who we think that we can impact and we think we can, we think we have something to provide for them, for you, right.

Angela: Most of the time, although I think it’s also just a forum for us to just ramble on about stuff that we’re interested in. So I’m sorry for that, but it makes it fun for me.

Ron: Some of these shows will make less sense. In addition to that, you’ll notice that the order of these shows, I mean if we were trying to monetize this thing, we probably would have thought it through a little bit further. We have a whole bunch of things we come up with things that we want to talk about all the time and we dump them in a file where we show up in and do shows and sometimes we go, you know what, today we’re not going to do that we’re going to do this because this is on my mind. You know, Angela’s like, I think we really should talk about this because I heard this from a client or I heard this from somebody else and it’s really important right now. So we apologize, I guess for the scattered nature of the show, if there’s an apology necessary, but we’re not going to change it.

Ron: So if it offends you, then, you know, so be it. Where we talk about the things that we think important. If it works for you and if it’s having a benefit for you, then we appreciate you listening and…

Angela: Yeah thanks for listening.

Ron: And sharing it and yeah, we’re going to, we’re going to try to do another one today that’s going to be, that’s going to be great for you. Actually Angela, just if you guys noticed in the other, this is completely off topic and has nothing to do with what we’re talking about, but those of you have the video of these, like if you’re actually watching the video, because my daughter watches the video, she actually listens to my podcast, which I think is really pretty cool.

Angela: That is cool.

Ron: Yeah. None of my other kids do, but my daughter does. She noticed that on my whiteboard the other day. I texted this to Angela, she noticed on my whiteboard that there was a Kool-Aid man it was drawn on my whiteboard behind me. She said that it looked really, really professional. So I just wanted to state that we don’t even clean this up in here for the show.

Angela: We had no idea it was there. We talked for, we talked for an hour and didn’t even see it.

Ron: We may have recorded two shows that day with the Kool-Aid guy. So if you guys see the Kool-Aid guy in the video and there are two of them, just you’ll know that we recorded those on the same day. Anyway.

Angela: Our attention to detail is legendary. So you’re welcome.

Ron: Now we’ve, I don’t know how many minutes we’ve blown doing this.

Angela: Yeah sorry about that.

Ron: We should probably dig in right now.

Angela: Anyway. All right. So what we want to talk about today are the three different forms of freedom that kind of drive your success in life and also kind of give you a why, because really when you come down to it, when we talk to our, our customers, our clients, our friends, our own why, it always is connected to freedom in some way, right? So yeah, we just want to talk about how to clarify what those are in your life and connect them to your why, to kind of give you a little more purpose. For, you know, for those of us out there that are parents, their a huge part of your why, but there’s, there’s kind of three different sides of this. So sorry Ron, go ahead.

Ron: No, I think that this is important. Like we talked to everybody and ultimately when you get right down to it, it’s freedom and it’s however you define it. So we’re going to define it some specific ways. Today we’re going to give you some things we think are important, but ultimately when asked, people have different beliefs about what freedom is to them, right? For me, it’s to be able to do what I want, when I want, with whom I want and with basically no limits. That’s what mine is.

Angela: You said want a lot there. I’m like thinking of, you know, Charlie and The Chocolate Factory. I want the whole world, that song, you know, sorry if I’m aging myself, but yeah.

Ron: And why not? That’s my definition of freedom. Angela’s is probably different. Yours is probably different, but ultimately it comes down to being able to spend time with family, friends, you know, to help, to serve, to make things better in the world. That, I mean ultimately that’s kind of where people get almost everybody when we talk to them. And so anyway, we have some things we want to chat about.

Angela: Yeah. So the first one on here, Ron, I don’t think a lot of people actually think of this as a freedom, but this one’s really important to me because, oh man, let’s go way back. So I was homeschooled for most of my…

Ron: Angela’s really old people. So we’re going way back.

Angela: I know way back, way back. I was homeschooled from first grade through junior high I guess, because I started college right after that. We’ll just gloss over that, go back and listen to this story in previous podcasts if you’re curious. It was like the second one, but my point is I was homeschooled and that gave me a little bit of a complex, not with schooling. Because schooling is, you know, I mean that’s just taking tests, learning the material, no big deal. But it gave me a complex socially, because there’s kind of this reputation, a stigma that homeschoolers have, that they’re weirdo’s, you know, that they don’t have a lot of social, I’m sorry for anyone else that’s homeschool.

Ron: If the shoe fits, Angela.

Angela: I’ve accepted this that people think that, so it’s okay. But I think it gave me a little bit of a complex once I actually did get out into, you know, normal school and started college. I just felt like everyone was going to think I was weird and there was no real reason for that. I had, you know, I had friends growing up and everything, but I just felt like I was a weirdo and you know, that’s okay. Maybe I am a weirdo. But the freedom to be yourself is so important. I think I spent a lot of my young adulthood trying to fit in and not be the homeschool weirdo. And man, it’s way more fun to just be your weird self, you know, so like what you like and to have opinions that you actually have and to not try to conform to what everyone else does. I’m not giving an f what’s that book? The Subtle Art of Not Giving a f I’m not going to say it on here. Sorry.

Ron: Yeah then we have to put an e and explicit on our thing.

Angela: I know it’s by Mark Manson. I’m sure most of you guys have read it already. But I love that attitude, you know.

Ron: I think that it’s really, really important, especially now like in today in our society today because it is getting so difficult to have an opinion without getting completely nuked.

Angela: Attacked, blown up.

Ron: By whatever side it is that you’ve irritated, right? And I think that is so damaging because what it does is it makes the little robots out of everybody, and we don’t get to be ourselves. This is really, really important. The freedom to be yourself and, and to be okay with it in your own skin. And I try really hard to get my kids to understand this. It is look you to care less about what other people think of what you’re doing, of what it is that, who you are or what you’re trying to accomplish and be yourself.

Angela: Yeah. And you know, all the freedoms that surround that I, social media is really messing people up with this too. You know, one thing I did have when I was younger is I had the freedom to be ugly, you know, like no, I’m just kidding. But like, it wasn’t a huge deal in northern California. Like makeup wasn’t a huge deal. I dyed my hair all kinds of weird, ugly colors. My mom was always like, why are you trying to make yourself ugly? But social media, sorry to get on that. 

Angela: But social media has this, you know, it’s not just that they’re trying to make everyone robots, but there’s all these crazy expectations for how you should look, your outfits, how your kid’s birthday party should be. I mean dumb stuff, but why are we all trying to live up to that, you know? It’s way more fun to just be yourself and not give an f what people think. So that’s what I want to say on that. Also, I think it helps you be successful because nobody wants to follow, you know, a robot that’s just saying what everybody else is saying.

Ron: Yeah. Authenticity today is so lacking out there that if you are authentic, people will be drawn to you. May not be the people that you thought were going to be drawn to you, but they will be drawn to you for who you are. You know, I could give examples, but I’m not going to do that. So anyway, they’ll just be authentic, be who you really are and people will be drawn to you because of that, so.

Angela: Exactly. I also want to touch on listening to your inner voice. I think we doubt that a lot and whatever you want to call it, you know, your inner voice. And you know, sometimes your inner voice is crazy and says weird things, but when you get a gut feeling about something raw, Ron I wanted to touch on this because Ron and I ignored our inner voice a lot with hiring in the company and.

Ron: And firing.

Angela: And firing and who we worked with partners. And I think it’s really, really important to believe your feelings, your inner voice, whatever you want to call it. When it’s telling you, you know that you don’t, you shouldn’t work with somebody or that, you know, it’s warning you of something. That’s another part of being brave enough to be yourself is listening to that voice and not doubting it so much, you know, at least combining it with logic.

Ron: We just had this conversation the other day about a higher, and you know, from you business people out there, this is really important because, you know, we’ve talked about core values, we’ve talked about all these things that are supposed to make it so that it’s easier for you to hire. Well your still going to have people that come in there and they kind of check the boxes, but for whatever reason, it just, they’re just kind of, you just don’t feel, your just not feeling it.

Angela: You just don’t like them and you don’t know why, right.

Ron: Angela called the other day and she said, yeah, you know, this guy, he’s really good with yada, yada, yada. And then…

Angela: He had a great recommendation and everything.

Ron: From people that we, from people that we trust.

Angela: We really like.

Ron: We know that we really love and are good partners of ours. And Angela said, but man, I just, yeah, I just don’t really like him. And I’m like, and this was like a weird moment for me because usually I would be talking, you know, the opposite of what I’m getting ready to say so. But I think I said something to the effect of, well then what the hell are we even talking about this for? I mean, if we don’t like him…

Angela: Yeah. You did. You did.

Ron: This is, we, we’ve done this enough. Like we’ve touched the fire enough times. We know it burns, don’t do it. So all of you out there who have businesses and you’re trying to fill a position, especially when there’s so few people out there to hire, and you get somebody in there and they check the boxes and then something inside your spidey sense starts going,

Angela: Yeah, it doesn’t feel right.

Ron: But everything else says it is just don’t.

Angela: Just listen to it.

Ron: Just take us into it. Just take our word for it. Just don’t do it. Here’s the other thing too, is all of you business owners out there, how many times have you fought in your mind? Man, I should fire that person. But you talked yourself out of it and then you go, you know, however many weeks or months, and then you think about it again, I should probably fire that person. And how many times do you talk yourself into keeping them on do you ever have it ended up working out, right?

Angela: Yeah. We never think, oh, we’re going to fire somebody. And then they suddenly turn into an amazing employee and a great member of that team. That is never happened. Never.

Ron: So what’s the moral of the story, Angela?

Angela: Listen to your spidey sense.

Ron: Just cut the cord.

Angela: Cut the cord.

Ron: The first time you think you should fire them, you probably should just fire them, right?

Angela: Yup. All right, so last note on that. So let go of the fear, be yourself. Be Weird and listen to spidey sense. I like that. Because, what’s, I don’t know who said this quote, but if you’re trying to be someone else, you’ll miss the person that you actually are. And there’s a lot of joy and freedom in getting to know that person that you actually are. You might find out you really like yourself and that other people do too.

Ron: And bonus, other people will probably like it too. More than the inauthentic, weird…

Angela: Boring robot.

Ron: Thing that you were trying to be that isn’t you. So make it happen.

Angela: All right, so, okay, enough on that one? Yeah. Yep. Cool. Sorry, Ron, you were cutting out there. Okay, so number two, the next freedom we’re going to talk about is the freedom to provide for family and friends. So this one’s, I mean, it’s kind of obvious, but I still want to talk about it. I think this includes the freedom. So obviously providing for your family and spending more time with your family. You know, when you’re, when you’re not successful and you’re, you know, working several jobs or you know, running just to get by, you don’t have a lot of time to spend with your family and they can feel neglected, especially, you know, in the beginning of starting out a company that tends to happen a lot. So yeah, this freedom is really important to be the best, you know, spouse, parent, friend that you can be. You want to have the freedom to actually, you know, take the time to care about people, to love the people in your life, build relationships, support your friends. So that’s kind of what this ones all about.

Ron: It’s about experiences, right? It’s not about stuff, it’s about experiences. And you know, sometimes I want to have experiences that involve stuff and that’s okay too, but it’s about the experience, you know, and you’ve…

Angela: And who your having it with, right?

Ron: You got to be present in the moment with whoever it is that’s there. I mean, I saw this social media post the other day. Oh my gosh, I didn’t comment because I really I didn’t. I know the guy. Anyway, what he was saying was a good thing. He took this picture of him with his son or somebody else took it. I don’t know who took it. Anyway, he was on his phone. He was sitting with his son. It must’ve been, I don’t know, it must’ve been somebody else who took the picture of whatever. Anyway, he was supposed to be spending time with his son and he was on his phone sitting there with his son.

Ron: What good does that do if you’re supposed to be like hanging out with your boy or your girl or your wife or whoever it is, right. Or just in a business meeting. And one of the things that I’ve stopped doing, which I sometimes still find myself doing is sticking my phone on the table. I now kind of really hate that because what difference does it make if you put your phone in your pocket, if you’re not planning on answering the stupid thing, if you’re at a lunch appointment and you’re supposed to be focused on the other individual or you’re just on a lunch date with your kids or your theory wife or whoever, right. And you stick your phone on the table. It basically says, hey, your important, unless this thing over here lights up, if this lights up, I’m going to take a second and just make sure this isn’t more important than you. So stick your phone…

Angela: That hurt.

Ron: In your pocket and leave it there while you’re supposed to be present with whoever it is, right.

Angela: Yeah. And I have a really hard time with this Ron. And I know you do too because I’ve seen you do it.

Ron: I do because I just said it.

Angela: I know. And when we look at our watches, which you think isn’t a big deal because it just like, you know, it ticks on your wrist, but that makes people feel like you’re in a hurry. You’re sick, you’re bored of them talking, whatever it is. And it’s really hard not to do because it’s like a distraction. But I have been working on this so hard because I mean my friends, my sisters, my husband, everyone feels like I’m not paying full attention to them. I’ve heard this feedback from people. So I’ve, what I’ve started doing to try to prevent this is I’m blocking out my time very carefully. So blocking out productive hours where I’m working on projects and also blocking out family, personal time, time with friends where I just try to keep that dang thing, that tame phone and watch out of that time and it’s hard. I have to make a conscious effort to do it. And, but you know what? I’ve never, you know, had something really bad happen because I didn’t look at my text immediately or respond to an email within five minutes.

Ron: I mean, look at this thing, it’s sitting here, but if I, you know, if I search and scroll through everything that’s on here, then I can’t fully focus on what’s going on in front of me right here. I can’t focus on you while you’re out there listening to this. So I turn the phone on mute and I set it aside so that I can fully focus on trying to make an impact here with what I’m doing. It’s the same one when we’re with our kids or whoever we’re with, right. If the person isn’t worth your time and it’s not more, they’re not more important than your phone, you probably shouldn’t have gone to lunch with them or you probably shouldn’t be hanging out with them anyway. So I’m just suggesting that you think about that because when someone, I think it was in a book I was reading, actually, I can’t remember which book it was.

Ron: When I heard that, I was like, oh my gosh, that is so true. And the dude makes a joke about it in the book. I think, I think he makes a joke about it or maybe it was, maybe it was a post on Facebook, but the joke was I’m going to, hey, I’m going to take this and I’m going to put it face down because that’s how important you are.

Angela: Oh my God.

Ron: Face down that’s what big time right there. Like, I mean it still probably will vibrate the whole table and we’ll all know that it just vibrated and then everybody will stop for a second and just make sure that you know, you’re not going to look at it. Just put the stupid thing in your pocket. We flogged that one pretty hard, but it’s important people.

Angela: We did, but I, and I know it seems like a pain. I just want to say one last thing to time block your day. But man, that helps in the calendar like every day. And you can do it even in the morning before you start your day. It helps you get more done and have the time to actually spend with family and friends, so.

Ron: Here’s another tip for you. Business owners out there think, you know, I spent x amount of dollars on some kind of media. My phone’s going to ring. If you haven’t figured out yet how to outsource some of that so that you can have your time back and provide some job for somebody else. If you haven’t figured out the logic and the numbers behind that man, you need to start studying that out because I promise you, you will make more money if you turn the stupid phone off and have someone else taking those calls who can be present. In addition to that, you will not irritate your wife or your husband or whoever you’re with by answering calls. Oh, this is so important. I’m just going to, I’m going to be back before the food comes out I promise.

Angela: Oh man, I’ve said exactly that. That hurt.

Ron: Not going to happen. Their going to bring the food out and the food’s going to be there. People are already trying to figure out whether they should eat because it’s rude to start eating before you get back any who. Just stop it. Freedom means that you’re not tethered to that stupid phone, so.

Angela: So yeah, you should be able to get help with that, Ron, with, you know, answering phones, branding like social media. If you have a business, it’s important. You’re on social media. It’s a pretty big lead source. And it builds up your brand, but you shouldn’t be posting that yourself everyday. I mean, you can outsource that one for cheap content. You know, it’s important to have new content all the time. 

Angela: Obviously a podcast you have to do yourself, but there’s a lot of that you can outsource and then even things around your home, like chores and stuff. So anyway, if all you do is, you know if transforming your financial life helps you be a better parent or friend, that is, that is real success. So figuring out how to grow your business or whatever you’re doing, grow your career find more success in the world, you know, invest, whatever it is you’re doing. You know, the goal of that should be to have more freedom to spend with, you know, real time with your family and build relationships. That means you’re actually successful.

Ron: Yeah. And you’re having an impact on other people other than just yourself.

Angela: Oh, well wait a sneak in the word impact Ron.

Ron: Love it.

Angela: Yeah. Guess what…

Ron: And we talk about this a lot? And so, I mean, we probably don’t need to spend a ton of time on it, but I do think that it’s really important that we think about the, I mean, everything that we’ve talked about so far, Angela has been about impact. It’s impacting you by you being authentic and impacts other people by you being present and being free while you’re with your time, you’re able to impact those around you. And then it just gets a little bit bigger, right? It’s, how can we expand the impact, which is kind of why we’re doing what we’re doing here. You know, we don’t get paid to do this. You know, we hope that you guys enjoy it and ultimately it impacts your lives. But we don’t do sales pitches on here. We’re not going to do that. We don’t get paid to do this. But it’s fun for us. And hopefully it’s a channel by which we can actually do this last freedom, which is freedom to impact the world.

Angela: Yeah. And, you know, impacting the larger world is the goal. But a lot of times you, like Ron kind of said you can’t start out. At least I can’t, by impacting the whole world. I mean, we haven’t traveled around and built schools in Africa or anything yet, although that is super cool and I hope to do it soon in the future. But I think it’s really important to start with impacting your family like we talked about. But also if you’re starting out a business or trying to figure out how to be successful, it’s not, you know, how am I going to make money? Although we like money. It’s how am I going to blow people away with value and change lives with impact. You know, every successful business that’s out there it’s providing some kind of value. It’s improving someone’s life. If it’s not, then it doesn’t last.

Ron: Yeah. It won’t make any money and it won’t last. And ultimately, if you’re successful and you have this freedom, you have time freedom and you have financial freedom at that point, you’re able to go out and serve more and more and more people. You can serve them through your business. You can serve them through, I mean, we created a charity out in Salt Lake and we serve people that way while we were serving people in our company. Yeah, I think a lot of times we, you know, we think we’ve got to fly to Africa to use your example. There’s people all around you that need help all around and usually, they’re right in front of us and we don’t, we, you know, all we have to do is just get out of our way, put the phone down and think about it.

Ron: There are people around that need help. And some of that help doesn’t even cost any money, right? It’s just having the time to sit and think about how we can serve on their individuals. And you get that from the freedom that we’re talking about it frees you up to be able to think through how you can have a bigger impact on the world. If you’re tied down by finances, if your tied down by your time, you just don’t have the ability to do the same thing that you would if you were free. So there’s a bigger reason why you want to be financially successful, why you want to have time, why you want to figure out these things we’re talking about with business so that you can have time to be able to focus on other things other than just business all the time, or just your job all the time, or just money. How the heck do I get it all the time?

Angela: Yeah. This one can be really fun if you have the monetary resources that you need, it’s a natural step to want to help other people. And for me, it’s a driving on why I want to become successful, right? As I want to be able to impact, you know, hundreds, thousands of people out there that need it. And like Ron said, you got to have the resources to be able to do that. So we are huge believers in giving. And you know, I think that one’s kind of the most fun of the three, but they’re all extremely important and they’re kind of a holistic approach to getting freedom through, you know, the success in your life. So.

Ron: And give first. So if you’re not in a position to where you can give financially, give some time. If you’re not in a place where you can give time but you can give a little bit financially do so and then whatever it is that you can’t figure out a way, spend some time figuring out a way that you can get that so that you can give it. I’m telling you when you start giving and giving and giving the world opens up to you and allows you to be able to give more and give more and give more. I’m telling you first, don’t wait to be able to give. It doesn’t work that way. Give first, give often help serve. I’m telling you, you’ll be blessed for having done it.

Angela: I love how you said that, so I’m not even going to add to it. That’s perfect. Yes, go Ron. Woo. Okay, so I think that’s it for today, you guys. Thank you so much for listening and check us out on GetRealEstateSuccess.com. Make sure you subscribe to our podcast. Give us any comments or feedback you have or any topics you’d like to hear about. You can also check us out on Facebook. It’s Get Real Podcast and yeah, we would love to hear from you and we hope to see you next time. Thanks Ron.

Ron: Yes.

Angela: See You.

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