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: Oh man, it’s going to be fun today.

Angela: Oh yeah, we’re super excited, pumped up. So yeah, today we are going to get extra, extra real. I know we keep saying that but, but seriously, this may cause some controversy so watch out. We want to talk about something we’ve been seeing on social media a lot forever that kind of has been bugging us. So we want to talk about a myth that’s out there that feeds into it and what we’ve been seeing. And then we want to talk a little bit about what truly successful people do and what that looks like. So I’m excited.

Ron: I don’t know if like upset is the right word, this pisses me off. And the people who actually know me know this pisses me off. And he had does on a whole bunch of levels and I, and I get really sick of the fact that this is taught out there like it’s gospel when it’s, when it’s really not.

Angela: Yeah. There’s this, there’s this entrepreneur mindset and like, I don’t want to call it a cult, but it kind of feels like a cult sometimes.

Ron: Yeah I think that’s a really good word.

Angela: Yeah. It’s an entrepreneurial cult. And it’s accepted and I see it all around to on my social media and you know, I hesitate to say anything because I think it’s just accepted as the truth out there. If you’re an entrepreneur, this is how you are. And I don’t know nobody…

Ron: I’ll get on and I’ll jump on posts and I’ll actually say the exact opposite. And you know, the crazy thing is as soon as I say something, you know, four, five, six other people jump on there and they’ll say this, they’ll back me up, you know, and these people, I think these people were just like, what are you guys talking about this? This is what you do. I mean, this is how it’s supposed to be.

Angela: Right? Obviously, you’re not a real entrepreneur if you don’t agree. So I don’t know what…

Ron: And what we’re talking about guys, is the hustle and grind 24/7 days a week 365 grind, grind, grind, all the time, all the time. Grind, grind, grind.

Angela: I worked more hours than you.

Ron: Yeah, I was up at two. I went to bed at midnight and I’m going to do it again today and you can’t outwork me. And yada, yada, and okay, great you’re a stud. Thanks for beating your chest all day. You’ve worked really hard, congratulations. I think that’s the only reward you get now. I don’t even understand what the hell they’re talking about. Why would anyone want to work that hard at anything ever. And I love what I do. I love what I do, right. I have these guys and they’ll, they’ll, they’ll comment. Well, yeah, but it’s not even work if you love what you do. Okay yeah but I love my wife too. I love my kids too.

Angela: That’s not your only love, right.

Ron: And occasionally I like to ride a mountain bike. And I kind of like to go shoot guns. I like to do a lot of other things other than grind, grind, grind, hustle, hustle, hustle, 24 hours a day, 365.

Angela: Yeah, me too Ron. Maybe that’s the mentality that like, you know, they’ll do this for however many years and then I think a lot of them think they’ll have fun, you know, 10 years down the road right after they hustle, hustle, hustle, grind, grind, grind and build an empire. Isn’t that what they say?

Ron: Crazy thing is, is that they built the empire hustling and grinding and so guess what? They have to keep hustling and grinding and keep the empire going because they didn’t actually build a business. They built this hustle and grind factory where you have to hustle and grind and tell everybody how busy you are. And I’m going to tell you what right now. I’m only impressed by the people who can get exactly the same amount or more done in less time and with, you know, more resources and I mean that impresses me. You want to impress me, stop telling me how many freaking hours you’ve worked and how hard your hustling and grinding and tell me that you made the same amount last year in half the time, then I’ll be impressed.

Angela: I love that Ron. I love that because every time somebody says they’re working 24/7 I you notice they never say exactly what they got done. That’s a great point.

Ron: It just floors me.

Angela: What did you do in the, you know, 365 that you are working?

Ron: And here’s the other thing too is, is usually it’s the same people. And just because we’re being real and we’re being a little blunt and upfront and I’m doing that on purpose, hopefully to like hit you in the forehead and wake you up just a little bit, but maybe this will hit you in the forehead and wake you up because there’s the same people get out there and they start talking about how you know, they’re a beast and they’re not going to be sheep, their lions or their whatever the hell animal they want to be this week, right? But they’re not going to be a sheep. Dammit. We’re not going to be a sheep.

Angela: Don’t be a sheep, you guys.

Ron: And here’s the thing guys, I don’t know. And listen, I’m not, I know that the people who post this stuff don’t mean it this way. But, you got to understand that 98% of the population are not entrepreneurs so hence they are not lions according to you if you post that right, they are sheep. In addition to that, if you ever want to have a business or any help at all, you have to hire these people. So why in the hell if you need their help to grow your business and don’t get me on that tangent either that you’re a self made, whoever, because you’re not a self made anything, okay. It takes more people than one person to do any business than I’ve ever seen, okay. Even prostitutes have pimps. So you didn’t do anything by yourself, all right? You had other people who helped you. So stop with the whole self-made grind, grind, lion crap and start to understand that there are other human beings you need their help. And if you call them sheep and talk down to them

Ron: I don’t even understand what kind of relationship you can have with your team if, if that’s how you feel about them. Now, I don’t think consciously people set out when they’re posting these memes to denigrate 98% of the population. But I’m here to tell you that’s exactly what you’re doing. So it’s cool if you want to be a bad to the bone human being, just stop talking down to everybody else in the process, right. Go be bad and let your work and your success and everything else speak for you. You don’t have to talk down to everybody else.

Angela: Yup. And you know, I hate that whole them and us thing anyway like them, like were lions and their sheep even if you were using, you know, animals that made sense or a different metaphor, the whole them in us. Like, you know, you need everyone as a team. You need all those different, you know, those different personalities and those different skill sets to make you successful. And not to mention, is there any of you out there, Ron? Anyone that hasn’t been a, so called quote unquote sheep? I mean, have we not all worked in those jobs?

Ron: Hmm. I mean, I guess, man, I really feel bad for you if you’ve never had one of those sheep jobs because if you haven’t, then you really don’t, you don’t even understand what it’s like to be a person that’s on a team with someone who is Elian calling them a sheep.

Angela: Right.

Ron: And maybe that’s the problem. Maybe that’s the problem. I don’t know. Maybe these people never had a real job.

Angela: And then that’s not a true, that’s not a leader mentality. I do see, I see a lot of memes out there, I’m sure you too about, or a lot of info graphics about, you know, being a leader versus a manager or a boss. And no true leader is going to take down their team like that or anyone like that.

Ron: And look, I got a lot of friends who post who posts lion memes I get it. It’s psychologically, it’s psych’s you up. And I don’t think anybody that I know anyway is trying to denigrate anybody else. I’m just trying to tell you the reality to the other side of this, right? Because let’s talk just really quickly about what lions do. Let’s just be real about what lions do, okay. Here’s a meme the other day as I see this, this lion meme, right? It says it’s better to live for one day as a lion than a thousand years as a sheep okay. You told all your teammates, a bunch of, you know…

Angela: That’s a good one.

Ron: And then another one is, everyone wants to be a beast until it’s time to do what beasts do. Here’s a lion with blood all over. So apparently the sheep either got eaten or it already ate it’s cub because it didn’t want it to grow up and be a leader so ate it. So that’s what lions do. In addition to that, lions are about the lazy, laziest freaking people. It doesn’t go along with the 24/7 hustle, hustle, hustle crowd anyway, because they’re freaking lazy.

Angela: Nope.

Ron: I mean, the majority of their life they lay about until they get hungry enough that they need to chase down the weakest of the animals to eat it.

Angela: And then just because I’m the girl here, I have to point out it’s actually the females that go chase down those animals and bring them back. So you’re not even that, you know…

Ron: And Angela, here’s the other thing too, is that the people who usually are the ones who were saying this, they’re the same ones that are the self-made people. Well, I hate to break it to you, but lions live and hunt, are you ready for this? Not alone, they don’t do it alone. I know this is going to come as a shock. They actually they hunt as a team, right. Okay, I’m sorry maybe I’m wrong. I think we have now beaten the whole lion thing to death. I would apologize at this point, Angela, if I were sorry for what we’ve said, but I’m not so.

Angela: No, and there’s a ton of, you know, a ton of the self help books and entrepreneurial books that everyone loves out there, kind of feed into this whole mentality in this whole cult as I called it earlier, so you know…

Ron: And again guys listen, I don’t think most of the people who are posting the memes mean any of what I just said. I think it’s just every now and again it’s good to have a reality check about what it is that we’re just sharing for the favor of the, I mean just because we want to share it, right.

Angela: Ron, that sounded like an apology but I’ll let it slide it’s cool.

Ron: No, I just want to let these guys down a little bit easier because I know some of them, I know some of them personally and I know that they’re not trying to do that. But I mean check yourself in the mirror and just, I mean why are we posting it? Because is it just, because you want to be bad to the bone? Well then go to the gym and freaking bench press a whole bunch of weight and video and then post it and show everybody how bad to the bone you are or go do something else cool and post that. You don’t, you don’t need to call everybody a sheep.

Angela: Okay. So we’re calling for less pictures of lions and more selfies. Got that?

Ron: More pictures that I would recommend if you’re doing a bench press, not to do a selfie. I’d actually… Although If you’re talented enough to pull off a selfie while bench pressing, I would like to see that.

Angela: Your going to need some really good talent.

Ron: Yes. That’s the one arm bench press because you’ve got your phone in the other, that actually…

Angela: That is bad to the bone. Wow.

Ron: I may do that, I may do that tomorrow at the gym. It’s chest day anyway for me, so I may do it.

Angela: Alright, so Ron, let’s talk about like what, so we beat that to death. What do real successful people do and you know, how do you make this switch here? I mean we’re saying that it’s us, but.

Ron: somebody right now is out there saying, I’m sorry, but really successful people do hustle and grind all the time and work, work, work and work, work, work and they’re not wrong. Financially successful people, there are a whole lot of them and they work themselves to death. Absolutely hundred percent I’m not even going to, I’m not even trying to say that’s not true.

Angela: And the most famous of those would be Elon Musk. Everyone knows he doesn’t have a life he works 24/ and he is amazing. I’m not saying he’s not, I mean, wow. Can you believe what that guy’s accomplished?

Ron: Although, although how cool would it be is we actually had a life outside of his work and did all that really cool stuff?

Angela: And is that possible? I don’t know if it is in his case, but I think…

Ron: It is because there are a bunch of people out there that do it. And look right this, all this all starts by how you define success. So if you define success by being Elon Musk, then God bless you. Go out there and grind and hustle 365, 24/7.

Angela: And please do not have a heart attack at 45, all right.

Ron: Well just you do, you right, if you want to have a heart attack at 45 go, God bless you I don’t even care, have it. If that’s what you want and that’s how you define success, then go chase after it and get it, but stop teaching the entire population that that’s what you have to do to be a successful human being because it’s not true.

Angela: And we know it’s not true because there are plenty of examples of how we define success out there. So I mean, Ron, for you, you already talked about your family, you’re working out.

Ron: Yeah, I define success a little bit differently than that. And in just a second, I’ll tell you, but look, there’s a whole bunch of people who define success as growing their wealth as big as they can get it, for whatever reason it is. And that they, they have to be able to do that by outworking everybody else and out grinding everybody else. And if that’s what you want, I’m not saying that’s wrong, I’m just saying it’s not the only way and stop shoving it down everybody’s throat that it is. That’s all I’m saying.

Ron: I personally did not get into business so that I could work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, screw up my personal life, screw up my family life, get divorced a bunch of times and completely fail in every other aspect of my life except for business. That’s not why I started my business. I don’t know about everybody else, but that’s not why I did it, Angela.

Angela: Nope. And you don’t have to do that. I mean, I think to most of us out there, I mean, I don’t want to speak for everybody, but certainly to me time, more time, quality, time to do the things I really want to do are why I want to be successful. And yes, you get a lot of enjoyment out of your career if you’re in the right career and I love it and I don’t think of it as work. And you, you have to keep moving forward in your life, so that’s great. But more time with family and more time to do things that you really enjoy, to help people and to volunteer and that kind of stuff. That’s what really, that’s what really drives you when it comes down to it, at least for me.

Ron: And that’s why we work so well together because it will, because our visions are very much aligned, right. I very much believe in the mission of our company, which is through service we build people. I believe that as a real leader, I don’t want to get, I don’t want to get hung up on this line thing again, okay. But the whole, the human being can start out as a sheep and become a lion. Okay if we’re going to use the same, we’re going to use the same animals, okay. You can actually, as a lion, you can be a cool lion. You can go down to the sheep and instead of kill it, you can actually say, hey, you want to come be, you want to come be a lion? I’ll teach you how to do it, it’s really cool. Come on up here and you can, you can hang it up here. And you know when you have your kid you can lift it up like Simba and the light shine down and everything will be really cool.

Angela: Oh man, I love your visual there. That’s great.

Ron: Everybody knows how lions live by watching the lion king, so.

Angela: Of course. Yeah.

Ron: So what I’m saying, Angela, is that if you’re a real leader, then you don’t see everybody on your team as sheep, you see everybody on your team as a potential leader. You see the potential inside of them and your job as a leader is not to call them sheep every day it’s to help bring the leader in them out. There’s some really cool things that happened when you do that. Number one, well you get to be a really cool human being and help somebody out, it’s pretty cool, try it out, it’s really neat. You get to feel really, really awesome inside for helping somebody else out. But selfishly, I mean, because I know that’ll speak to all the lions out there. Selfishly, if you create more leaders in your team, then you can grow and expand. You can multiply your time you can multiply your time by multiplying yourself throughout your team.

Angela: Right. The only way you have more time in your life and you have a business that runs when you’re not there, is to replace yourself and level up the people around you and yourself so that you know, they can do some of the tasks you’ve been doing that previously you were the one man show. And then you have more time to go do all that stuff we talked about that really drives you. So that’s huge. And that’s, you know what you’ve done a lot in your company, Ron.

Ron: And I’m not saying either that you should stop growing. I’m not saying that you should stop hustling. I’m just saying that if you’re the visionary and you’re the leader, you read a book recently I haven’t read it yet Angela, because it’s not on audio book and I don’t do real books.

Angela: Yeah. So I had to read it and share all the ideas from it, but it’s called a Hustle and Float. And it’s fascinating, most of the book is actually is research, you know, a bunch of studies on what our hustle mentality has done to people and where that hustling mentality actually came from. They talk about in this book, how are measures of productivity that we’re still using and trying to perfect actually are based off the continuous output model, which was designed to track how productive factory workers are.

Ron: It’s so stupid, it’s so stupid.

Angela: It’s how many, how many widgets can you produce in this amount of time, right. And we’re still doing that. It’s all about, you know, it’s all about, you know, the things that you can track that you can see that you’re getting done, which is really just busy work, which should be, you know, it shouldn’t be something entrepreneurs are doing. Hopefully you have somebody to delegate, that kind of stuff too, right.

Ron: And then hopefully you can figure out what your genius zone is and you can operate in it and you can operate it in an efficient way, which, which will give you more time because you’re not doing the other tasks that’s in someone else’s genius zone.

Angela: Yes. And most likely if you’re the visionary entrepreneur, your genius zone is actually creative work, which cannot be tracked. The productivity of it cannot be tracked with that factory continuous output model that we use to track busy work kind of stuff. But it is the most important work, the visionary creative work is how you move your company forward and innovate and change industries and change people’s lives that creativity requires floating, hence the name hustle and flow, right? So there’s hustle on the, you know, getting menial tasks done side and then there’s floating on the important, highly praised and needed work, the creativity work is floating and relaxation. So like Ron, have you ever, I mean, where do you get your new ideas? Do you get them when you’re typing away on a word doc? I mean…

Ron: That’s really cool, because I get the majority of mine when I’m at the gym. And you know this because I texted you.

Angela: I do know that I’m at the gym with you.

Ron: Right after, or whenever I’m at the gym or if it’s really, really important and I’ve got to write it down, I really want to talk to somebody but I don’t want to lose my pump, I text Angela and I’m like, Hey, I just, you got to remind me to tell you about this thing.

Angela: Yeah. And then you also, you get new ideas when we’re on break. Like you take a couple of days off for Christmas, you come up with a crap ton of ideas and end up in here at 6:00 AM drawing all over the whiteboard, right.

Ron: I do, I do. And I’ll get them in the middle of the night too, you know.

Angela: Or your in the shower.

Ron: All of that comes because I’m feeding my brain constantly and I’m trying to get better and I’m trying to continue to grow. But I mean if you’ve, if you have so compressed your life to where you have to hustle and grind, you have no room for more growth. You have to get out of your own way and you have to let everybody else on your team level up so that they can take the pressure off and you have time to personally grow. And I’m a firm believer in the fact that you can hustle and grind until you die physically. And most of the people who do that, they don’t take care of themselves physically. I’m a big believer that if you take care of yourself physically, then you’ll be able to enjoy the money that you’re making.

Ron: And so I take time and during that time I don’t answer my damn phone. I only send a text if I have too really quick to Angela so that she can remind me later about something. But usually I don’t even do that. I’m in my zone in there and I am not thinking about anything except for lifting those weights. And that’s why, because my brain has the room now to be able to except any of this that comes to me. That’s why, that’s where I get my ideas. I don’t give my ideas when I’m talking about this on a podcast, my brain doesn’t have room for it.

Angela: No. And that’s why a lot of people a lot of very successful people actually use meditation along with physical activity and working out because it takes your brain away from all of your everyday menial crap that loads down or that weighs you down and allows those new ideas in, you have to create room for them. And it doesn’t come from hustling nonstop. So that’s great. Ron. So I know Ron you wanted to talk about, you know about sheep dogs. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Ron: Mainly I wanted to because my favorite movie, if you guys haven’t seen American Sniper then shame on, you should repent right now, you should go rent it.

Angela: American Sniper is awesome.

Ron: American Sniper is one of the greatest movies ever I absolutely love it. But I do, I love at the beginning of this, he has a conversation with his kid and he says this, he says there are three types of people in this world, sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs. Now, some people would prefer to believe that evil doesn’t exist in the world. I actually, I know that it does, right? Those people are sheep, okay. So he actually calls out the sheet, but he defines them, right okay. And then you’ve got predators who use violence to prey on the weak, which is a lion. I’m just, okay. And they’re…

Angela: Lion, wolf.

Ron: Same thing, they’re hunters, right? And incidentally wolves hunt in packs too, okay. And then there are those who have been blessed with a gift of aggression and the overpowering need to protect the flock. These men are the rare breed that live to confront the wolf. They are the sheepdogs. I absolutely love that because that’s what a leader is.

Angela: Yeah. It’s the gift of aggression coupled with the overpowering need to protect. That’s so cool. It’s not one or the other it’s, you know, it’s together.

Ron: And in this scenario, Angela, we can add to it because what I’ve just said is, since we actually aren’t animals, we’re humans, we can actually do better than just protecting the flock. We can take the flock and we can help make them into sheepdogs. We can create leaders out of the flock or out of the team, right. I love that so much more because it’s not one or the other. It’s not a zero sum game. You don’t have to go kill the sheep to eat.

Angela: Thank goodness, right.

Ron: And you don’t have to kill your own for hell’s sake. Lions eat their own cubs. Oh, what’s wrong with the whole lion thing? Okay sorry.

Angela: Yes. So just, you know, summing the whole thing up. I think we beat that to death, lions are the wrong metaphor, sheepdogs are so much better. But we’re not saying, you know, continue growth as a bad thing. That’s actually the key without grinding, although, you know, having to focus and productivity to accomplish a lot of things in a short amount of time, that kind of hustling. That’s good. You need that, but it doesn’t mean hustling 24/7 nonstop.

Ron: Okay. And listen somebody out, there’s going to be going, yeah, but when you started your business, you had to hustle and you had to grind and yada, yada. Okay, great I get it. Continued growth is the key to this and yes, there are times when you have to grind and there are times when you have to grind 24/7, 365 I get it. But the people I’m talking about have been hustling and grinding now for years, 365 days a year, and they’re still doing it, which means A, they really think people give a crap or B, they haven’t figured out how to get actually have a business yet. In either case, they’re F it up, okay. Just own the fact that you are and try to fix it. Go get the help that you need so that you can fix the problem because you shouldn’t have to do that forever.

Angela: And sometimes it’s help that you need or sometimes it’s restructuring the way you’re working. Because I know Ron, when you and I first started together, we were hustling and grinding and traveling the country. And we had to kind of restructure how we got leads and how we, you know, set up the whole business to, allow more time with family and to allow us to live the kind of labs we want it.

Ron: Oh, but you remember the key to this, Angela, when we started this thing over again, right. When we started this thing over again, that was the goal. So yes, we did we had to hustle and grind because we didn’t have any money. We had to, we had to go out and we had to make money. But the intent the whole time was to make it so that we had a business and that it wasn’t the Ron Phillips Show out there that the merry band went out there and we went traveling all over the freaking country forever and ever and ever, that wasn’t the goal. The goal was to have a business that operates so that everyone in the business can have a life and we can all continue, excuse me, continue to grow because that’s really, really important. Growth does not equal hustle and grind. It doesn’t, not the same thing.

Angela: Nope.

Ron: In my opinion it’s measured by how much output you can achieve in less time, right.

Angela: Amen. And like you said before, how many leaders you can help create leveling up the people around you. That’s what really drives us, so.

Ron: Hopefully, Angela, what we’ve done, hopefully by like smacking people in the head with a two by four is look, if you get pissed off about what we said, then I would encourage you to sit down and really think through what we’ve said. Just think through and if your goal is still to hustle and grind until you die of a heart attack at 45, God bless you, go make it happen. If not in something actually resonates after you get done being pissed then change it. Because here you have two people at least, and I know hundreds of other successful entrepreneurs out there who do not do it the way that you’re currently doing it.

Ron: And then when I would invite you to do is to reverse what you’ve done online. Get out there and change what you’ve been telling all of these poor young entrepreneurs that they have to hustle and grind themselves to death for their entire lives and help them become business owners and business leaders rather than freaking coffee grounds.

Angela: Yeah, and we would be happy to continue this conversation with any of you that have comments on it or want to, you know, rip apart our ideas, whatever it is. If you want to visit our, uh, our Facebook page or our website as a GetRealEstateSuccess.com, you can leave us comments there.

Ron: I dare you.

Angela: I dare you let’s go. So, we would love any ideas for future topics that you guys want to hear about and any comments you have. So thanks for listening.

Ron: Like our podcast shared with all of your friends. And go subscribe. Make sure you subscribe, leave us five star rating and leave us a review. Do it well, we really appreciate it guys.

Angela: Thanks guys. See you next time.

 

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