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 this is Ron Phillips. Hey Ron.

Ron: We’re here.

Angela: Hey. Our a topic today was inspired by Ron because he’s a great example of this…

Ron: Very scary. Everybody out there, very scary.

Angela: It’s good. I like having an inspiration. So real quick, so there’s a quote I love by William Arthur Ward. He said, “adversity causes some men to break and others to break records”. It’s pretty cool.

Ron: It’s sexist, Angela.

Angela: No. Men meaning all, not a guy girl thing.

Ron: It said men, not women.

Angela: No. There was no not women in there.

Ron: I thought it was inferred in the statement.

Angela: Men as in people, Ron. Don’t get me all fired up this morning. I’m going to have the vein come out. Ah, so speaking of setbacks to adversity… No, I’m just kidding. Okay. So today we are gonna talk about adversity and setbacks and what happens, and this is, I mean, we are like as a culture, I think more and more all the time we’re looking for an easy fix. You know, we set goals, but we believe that there’s some magic thing that’s going to happen to us that’s going to bring us success. I know you even, you shared someone’s post recently about the chances of winning the lottery and how that’s like… Winning the lottery is, I mean, there was some statistic in there, I can’t remember, but…

Ron: Now I’m going to look it up. I wanna give a shout out to my buddy Tim Broads, he’s the one who posted this and he, oh my gosh, it was a great post. I did reshare it.

Angela: But while you’re looking it up, I mean, everyone will relate to this. You, whether you know you do it or not, I think most of us, if we’re being honest with ourselves, we’re hoping there’s some kind of magic, easy fix for something in our lives. Like, you know, a weight loss pill or something that’ll work, you know, that makes it quicker and easy.

Ron: Something that works better.

Angela: Yeah. Like something’s going to come out and just make things that are hard in our lives suddenly be easy, when the truth of it is success is supposed to be hard.

Ron: Ready for the stat?

Angela: Go for it.

Ron: The odds of winning the lottery are one in 258 million.

Angela: Which you know, when you say it fast, you’re like, okay, that’s not too bad. Right?

Ron: Yeah. But to die from being left-handed and misusing a right-handed product, one in 7 million. Almost the same. Right? Win an Olympic medal, one in 662,000. President one in 10 million. I mean, it’s really cool. Actually, the best part of this I think it’s down here at the bottom. Odds of becoming a billionaire with a B in the US are one in 559,000. That means you’re a 461 times more likely to become a billionaire by working hard than winning the Powerball.

Angela: That is crazy. Let that sink in.

Ron: I mean, so everybody knows that the odds are crazy. But Tim broke it down so ridiculous and in such a way that it was… I mean it really hit me and I was like, wow, that’s really cool. That actually was not even what we’re going to talk about. I don’t know.

Angela: It just kind of went with it though.

Ron: But it really does. It speaks to everything else we’re going to talk about today, because it’s true. Everyone’s looking for the easy button.

Angela: A lot of the products that are popular today, that keep, you know, exploding in the market are things that make our lives easier. Because that’s what we’re all about. We’re looking for the easy fix for everything.

Ron: Yeah. Look, I’m not opposed to things being easy all the time. Right? I mean sometimes you want to have things easy and there’s nothing wrong with that. And sometimes you can buy things and make your life easier. We have, on this show, talked about how hiring people training them. It’s harder in the beginning, but it makes your life easier if you’re a business owner. Right? So, I mean, we’re not opposed to…

Angela: Definitely not.

Ron: Doing things that make your life easier in the long run. I mean, nobody’s opposed to that, right?

Angela: Yeah, yeah. Definitely not.

Ron: But adversity causes some men to break and others to break records, Angela. So.

Angela: Yeah. So you know, you make this big goal, you have big dreams, you get obsessed with achieving them and you don’t think about what the road’s going to look like to get there a lot of times. So it’s easy to, you know, when you hit a roadblock or, you know, adversity on the path, you think something’s wrong with your path and you, you know, shift gears or make excuses to yourself as to why you’re not hitting this goal because of that adversity.

Angela: So we’re going to talk about that today and kind of, you know, our thoughts on it and Ron’s story. So first off, like I was saying, we look the easy fix, but seriously, look around you at anyone that’s successful. They will tell you it was not easy. Success, major success especially, is supposed to be hard. It’s not… If you want the easy life, you shouldn’t have big dreams and be reaching for the stars cause that’s not the easy life.

Ron: Go grab a one way ticket to The Bahamas. I have met a dude who, I mean, he basically lived under a lean to shelter on the beach and ate food that people gave him and he surfed all day, every day. Okay. Easy life. I mean, that’s what you want. You can go get it.

Angela: Okay. We’re not going to go on about how surfing’s actually pretty hard, but no, I’m just kidding.

Ron: It is really hard.

Angela: And you’re not, you don’t reach your full potential living the easy life; struggling is how you grow. Just like Ron lifting weights, you know, you struggle at first, they get easier, and then you have to up the up the resistance. Right. Life does the same thing to you. Adversity keeps making you stronger. You grow every time you solve something. Right.

Ron: I love it. Yeah. When you’re lifting weights, you’re actually tearing apart your muscle fibers. I mean, that’s really what you’re doing. You’re creating a tear, small micro tears in your muscles.

Angela: And you don’t just keep lifting the same amount of weights, right? That doesn’t get you the results.

Ron: You feed your muscles the appropriate nutrients. Then they heal and they’re stronger than they were before. So the adversity actually rips them and tears them, makes them weaker, and then what you feed into them lets them repair and grow stronger so that you can lift more next time. And you know, it’s really weird that, I mean it’s just like life, you, you, you kind of get torn down by adversity. But if you’re constantly feeding good into you and hanging around with good people, they pull you up.

Angela: They give you the right mindset.

Ron: You come back stronger. But I think even when someone goes through that cycle, sometimes we have the… I see people at the gym, they’re constantly lifting exact same weight all the time, like they’re trying to maintain, and I’m thinking to myself, you don’t get to maintain.

Angela: Nope. You’re going up or down.

Ron: Yeah. So it’s really unfortunate because if they just knew they could become so much better, but unfortunately, you know, nobody’s told them and you know, you kind of turn into a gym creeper if you give advice.

Angela: If you know any of those people, just tell them to listen to this, and it’s a nice way to tell them. So Ron, do you mind sharing your story? What inspired this? This was a Facebook post you did.

Ron: Yeah. No, I mean, not at all. It’s, I think I told everybody a few weeks ago when I was wearing my cool metal things on my fingers… Now I have KT tape that I’m using. Incidentally, I went in and told the doctor that I was wearing KT tape instead of the stupid metal things that he gave me cause I hated them, and he goes, well, I guess we’ll see how they’re healing and we’ll see if you can do that. And of course I’m healing ahead of schedule. So yeah, he told me it is okay to use the KT tape. It’s way more fun. Way more colors. Okay.

Ron: So I mean, I broke my fingers. Oh, it’s gotta be like five weeks ago now. Right, Angela, six weeks, something like that?

Angela: Yeah, something like that.

Ron: And I was on youth trip, I was out, you know, doing high adventure, crazy stuff and I broke them on a rope swing. That story is not important and we don’t have the video to go with this, but let’s just suffice to say it was fail army quality.

Angela: Oh, it sounds so funny in my mind. I wish we could’ve put it on YouTube.

Ron: It’s really, it’s really solid fail on this one. And in the process I broke four of my eight fingers.

Angela: … Of your eight fingers?

Ron: I have two thumbs, Angela. Come on man. Catch up.

Ron: That was weird. Okay. All right, I got ya. So I’ve been teaching my son that we have 10 fingers but eight, that’s cool, I’ll go with it.

Ron: You might want to reteach him. He’s gonna tell everybody that he has ten fingers. So anyway, I broke my fingers and I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to experience life or do anything that you’re normally equipped to do with four broken fingers, but it is really difficult. I mean everything like, I can’t put much pressure on these fingers sideways or they hurt like crazy and I rebreak my fingers. So I had these big huge metal things on my fingers, which were really stupid, and I couldn’t do anything. I actually, when I told one of my buddies and he was like, yeah, you’re going to have to use the feature on your computer where you can dictate. And then I’m like, Oh wow. I didn’t even know they had that feature, but wow. So the handicap accessible features in your computers. I had to use those to send emails and texts. It was really a joke.

Ron: Anyway, the part of the story that Angela’s talking about is I’ve been three weeks not going to the gym cause I can’t even pick the plates up to do legs. I mean, there’s nothing at the gym I can do really. At least that’s what I told them. In the three weeks I’m at my mastermind leadership boardroom, you guys all met Sean McCloskey… I’m sitting there and it wasn’t, this didn’t come out on my turn or anything like that. I’m just sitting there, I’m listening to people and I, and I in the, in the middle of this, it just hits me: you are a lazy punk because you have let your fingers, you know, make it so that you can’t go to the gym.

Ron: Now the week prior… So I get back and I start running cause I’m like, well you can do something dude. I mean do something because you’re getting fat. And you know, cause I didn’t obviously didn’t change my diet, I just kept eating the way I normally am.

Angela: You kept eating like you were working out, right?

Ron: Yeah. So I decided I’m going to just go run in the morning on the beach, watch the sun come up, it’ll be awesome. And it was, the first day I did I ran was great, no problems. Second day got out there and ran, my foot started hurting about, I dunno, 6.6 of a mile. So I started walking and I walked back and I thought, man, this is weird. Well I’m just going to, you know, I’ll come back tomorrow and I’ll run.

Ron: Well tomorrow came back, I like got out of bed and it felt like my foot was breaking in half. And apparently this is plantar fasciitis, I learned.

Angela: It’s another word for old.

Ron: Definitely, definitely. So now I can’t go to the gym and lift weights, which I love. I hate running. I literally hate running, but I was gonna do it anyway. Now I can’t run cause I’ve got, my feet are hurt. So now I’m sitting there crying in my beer that I don’t even drink.

Angela: Near beer.

Ron: And finally like one day I just wake up and I go, man, you are such a punk. Go to the gym, find a way. There’s always a way. Always.

Angela: It’s awesome.

Ron: So I go to the gym and… My post was of me, I actually took these straps that you put your elbows in and you hang, and you don’t have to hold on anything with your fingers. So I go to the gym and I’m just going to go find something I can do. So I, these things happened to be hanging up when I get there because someone was doing abs and I thought, well I bet I can do use those to do pull ups. So I get up there and sure enough, I can’t do the same type of pull up I would normally do, but it was very effective. The next day I was sore so I did that.

Ron: In addition at the gym, I just got some weights and put them on the ground, and I used them to do pushups because I can’t have my hands all the way out. So if I put them on the little handles of the weights then my fingers can be below it and it’s all good. I can do pushups.

Ron: And then they got these two machines that are usually dedicated to chicks… No offense Angela, but they usually…

Angela: It says ‘chicks only’ on the machine?

Ron: It doesn’t say it, but it’s implied. The only people who use it are girls!

Angela: If you see girls using it then it’s girls only.

Ron: Yup. So I actually asked permission to use it, got permission from all the ladies in the gym. And they’re the ones where your feet go out and then your feet go in. Abductor and adductor apparently is what they’re called.

Angela: Cool. I use those. I didn’t know they were for girls only.

Ron: Yeah. So I did that. And you’d be shocked, I’m sore using that.

Angela: Us girls work hard, man.

Ron: I came back from the gym and I was like super sore the next day and I felt good. Because where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Angela: And your post, your post really hit home for me because I started thinking about all the things I’m doing that with in my life. You know, just, you just make little excuses to yourself. Well, this happened to me, so I guess I’m gonna, you know, I’m not going to be able to do that thing I wanted to do because now I’m, you know, Ron was handicapped. He can’t do it. Or I didn’t sleep well last night, so I’m not going to get up early and do what I was planning on doing. You know.

Ron: Tell me something you can do at the gym with no hands and no feet.

Angela: You found it.

Ron: I found them. They’re actually at the gym. You can find them.

Angela: So you believed in your capability, or at least you came to that point where even though you were, you know, you had this adversity you believed you could still do it. And that’s the first step. It’s mental. It was, you had to wake up and say, I, I can still do something. There’s gotta be something I can do because this is important to me and I’m not going to whine like a little baby anymore. Right?

Ron: Yes. Solid choice of words, because… Then we would have had to put an E on our thing, so.

Angela: Okay. Yeah. I gotcha. Yeah. So I mean, it’s really true. It’s such a cliché, but you know, if you believe you can do it, you can. If you believe you can’t do it, you’re right. You know, I said that wrong.

Ron: It’s this other thing too, right? I was just talking to one of the youth… One of my kid, one of my kids, my actual kids, or if it was one of the youth at church, but I was talking to them about the difference between motivation and commitment. And there is a big difference; because motivation can get you up and can take you to the gym the first time.

Angela: Yeah, yeah.

Ron: Then when you break your fingers, you’re like, Ooh, motivation is gone at that point. And then when the motivation comes back and allows you to go run on the beach and do something you hate, well that goes away when you get plantar fasciitis and your foot feels like it’s breaking in half. So then what, what makes you go to the gym the third time? It’s commitment. The only thing it can be is commitment because motivation is…

Angela: Honoring that commitment because your motivation is gone. Yeah. Motivation is so short term.

Ron: Yeah. Mike Tyson… one of my favorite quotes is Mike Tyson said, “Everybody’s got a plan until I punch him in the face”. I mean, if you picture Mike Tyson, his life, and he punches you in the face, you always have a plan until you get punched in the face. So the question is what do you do after Mike punches you in the face and you get out of the hospital?

Angela: I dunno. I dunno. That’s ever happened to me. So.

Ron: Probably if it was really Mike Tyson, you would get some elective surgery on your face to make it go back to normal. But if it was just life, then you know, there’s any number of things you could do.

Angela: Yeah. So Ron, you had to let go of expectations you had for how you were going to accomplish this goal. You know?

Ron: Absolutely.

Angela: You had to, you had, you know, these plans and you had to adapt and change them and find a new way to do it, which takes real determination and commitment like you said. So that’s the moment when that happens to you, that’s when you have to be creative. You have to believe in yourself, get the right mindset and then let go of any expectations you had and figure out how you’re going to do it now. Just change your plan, adjust course and, and all of that starts with, you know, your plan, your, your vision for your future. And you know, Ron has one, so he was able to hold onto that even when his, his plan was completely, you know, thrown off course.

Ron: Working out isn’t just a cool thing that I do to keep my body in shape and, you know, look good.

Angela: I mean, you do look good.

Ron: I do… So if you guys haven’t been on the video yet, you should really jump on, check that out. I mean, I don’t want to pat myself on the back or anything. But… I actually need the gym. It’s not like, cause I felt like crap for three weeks.

Angela: Yeah, no, and I talked about that on here too. Like yeah, it’s a mental thing even more than looking good. It puts you in the right mindset and releases stress and it just, it makes you feel good. So.

Ron: Here’s the other thing I didn’t put on the post. Everything was going the wrong way. I started to sleep in because why get up? I got an hour and a half I don’t do at the gym anymore. So why would I get up? In addition to that, the gym is where I’m, I told you guys, I’m audio book guy, so I do my books at the gym.

Angela: So that’s where your personal development was happening and that all got cut off, huh?

Ron: I mean, just think through how things spiral out of control. Because just from the one thing that I couldn’t do anymore, now I’ve affected my entire day, my personal and my business, financial growth, I’m sleeping in which means I’m sluggish, I’m not getting up and I’m not getting my blood flowing, which is really, really important for me. And that’s the time of day I need it to happen. Right? So if I don’t have that happen, my whole day goes slow. It’s like I’m in slow motion the entire day. I would get tired earlier. Everything was a mess and I could actually feel that it was a mess.

Ron: You know the other thing that happened? This is crazy, I didn’t put this in the post either, but the other thing that happened to me was I started to eat worse. And, you know, you think through the rationale of this in your brain, it makes no sense. But I’m like, well, I can’t go to the gym anyway, so I may as well pound the candy down.

Angela: What’s the point? Yeah.

Ron: And I hear that from so many people, but here I am the guy who tells other people they shouldn’t do that. Here I am, because this happened to me, I went through a small little period where this, he gets exactly how I felt. And you’ve got to shake yourself out of that and get back into the commitment zone. Right?

Angela: Yeah. But you took a minute, I mean when that was happening to kind of regroup, it gave you a second to realize what was actually important to you. It kind of helped… I don’t know, I think that kind of kicked you in the butt and helped you realize, you know, what you really wanted and that that’s kind of what helped you decide that you could do it no matter what. I mean, because you realize that that’s not how you want to live… I mean during that time.

Angela: So I think that’s good. I think when you have a big setback, you do need to kind of pause for a minute and you know, reevaluate the goal you’re heading towards and how you’re going to get there and then take positive action, which is what you did. If you sit around whining and playing the victim card, you’re never going to solve the problem and you just won’t reach your goals and you’ll have an excuse, but…

Ron: Sometimes when life gets in your way, there’s some specific things that you can do to fix the problems. Sometimes there’s not a whole lot you can actually do, right? I mean, but almost always there are little things you can do. Like this plantar fasciitis. I thought, okay, I’ve had stuff happen to me before and there’s professionals out there who know how to fix this stuff. I don’t know how to fix it, but there’s people out there who do know how to fix it. So I go to this massage therapist. I went and I called her up and said, Hey, can you help with plantar fasciitis? Can you help me figure this out? Absolutely. So I go in; next day, I feel a little bit better.

Ron: And then from my post, I remember my brother’s actually a physical therapist. Okay, idiot. You could call your brother. I mean your brother knows a little something about this, right? And he gave me all kinds of things that I could do to strengthen my foot back up and give me some ideas of what I need to do to not make it worse and to help better. Right? And it’s because I’m just like, I’m not just gonna sit here and let this thing take me down. I’m going to do everything I can to solve this problem and I’m going to use all the resources around me to make that happen.

Angela: And whether you realize it or not, everyone has that same choice. You can be a victim and say that you had these excuses and maybe they’re real things that happen to you that are horrible, but there’s always some kind of positive action you can take if you get creative and you’re determined and committed to your goal. There’s always something. I’ve never heard of a time when there wasn’t something you could do. And that’s where you grow; figuring that out and you know, with that commitment and determination, that’s how you grow into the successful person that makes things happen.

Ron: It’s critical.

Angela: And like Ron said, don’t go it alone. You know, there’s resources around you. If you get creative, especially that you’re maybe not thinking of, and having those people around you and you know, tapping into your support of people in your life. That’s hugely important for getting where you want to go.

Ron: We rip on social media a lot because it takes a lot of people’s time from doing things that they could otherwise be doing that are more productive. One thing it’s really good at though, is you can, because there’s so many freaking people on social media, you have a lot of resources there that you probably don’t even realize you have.

Ron: On my post, I got all kinds of suggestions of things I could do, right. One from my brother, which was kind of like, Hey, stupid. Not only is he a physical therapist, he’s a physical therapist for the bad to the bone military pararescue guys who have things happen to their bodies, right?

Angela: Yeah.

Ron: Anyway. I mean, so there’s all kinds of stuff around you all you have to… But you do have to get out of your pity party just a little bit, right? You gotta get out of that thing and you got to go and seek it because nobody’s going to show up on your doorstep and go, Hey, I heard you had this problem. I know how to solve it.

Angela: No, that would be the easiest solution. And that never happens. So yeah. I mean this was good. Thanks for sharing that, Ron. I think it’s important we all remember that you know, these setbacks are speed bumps, you have to readjust. Very few are… It’s like, they’re not insurmountable. You have to face them. Get creative, use your support group and be committed to what that goal is and you’ll find a way.

Ron: Commitment, not motivation, commitment, commitment, commitment!

Angela: Thanks for listening everybody. Thanks Ron. And make sure you guys give us any feedback you have or comments, questions on GetRealEstateSuccess.com or a visit us on Facebook at Get Real Podcast or on Instagram at the same name.

Ron: Give them the email address for the questions too, because we’re gonna do that Q and. A.

Angela: Yeah. Once again, we’re going to do a lightning round of questions. Anything you want to know, you can email your questions to invest@RPCinvest.com and we’ll look forward to seeing you guys next time. Thanks for listening. This has been the Get Real Podcast. To subscribe and for more information including a list of all episodes, go to GetRealEstateSuccess.com.