The market goes through cycles and where we’re headed is not looking too good for business owners and investors who don’t know what they’re doing. Here to share how he bounced back from $50M loss and amass even greater financial success is Rod Khleif. Rod is a multiple business owner, philanthropist, and top real estate investor and performance coach. He is also the podcast host of Lifetime Cash Flow Through Real Estate Investing. In this episode, he joins Matt Fore to discuss the mindset that allowed him to survive the 2008 recession and come out the other end with even more than what he lost. Rod shares practical tips for investors as well as valuable business insights to help guide you on the journey to success and fulfillment. Don’t miss out!

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How To Survive A Recession And Bounce Back From A $50M Loss With Rod Khleif

I am super excited because we have the man, the myth, the legend, Rod Khleif, with us. Rod is a multiple business owner, a philanthropist, and is passionate about real estate. As one of the top real estate investors and peak performance coaches out there, Rod has owned over 2,000 homes and multiple thousand apartment buildings and doors. Over the years, he has built 24 businesses. In this episode, Rod is going to walk us through the mindset required to recover from a $50 million loss in the 2008 recession and talk about how he enjoys the success. Rod, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me, Matt. Let’s have some fun. I’m only a legend in my own mind but thank you for that. It has been 27 businesses. I need to update that bio. I don’t call them failures. I call them seminars. That was a $50 million seminar. It was an expensive seminar. Several of those businesses were tens of millions of dollars. Most were spectacular flaming seminars. We fail our way to success. I’m glad you have me here. I’m looking forward to having some fun with you.

We like to start with the difficult questions here. What’s your favorite ice cream?

A Häagen–Dazs Rum Raisin is the bomb. I’ve probably got several gallons in court sizes or pint sizes in my freezer.

Knowing a little bit about your history, I thought you were going to give us a healthy option but rum raisin it is.

That’s my advice. Rum raisin is my Achilles heel or my kryptonite.

Tell our listeners what’s the scoop. What do you do?

It ties into my story, honestly. Let me start with the story, and I will back into the scoop because it will lend credibility to it. I immigrated to this country from the Netherlands, Holland. I was six years old. I was with my brother, Albert, and my mother, Svantia. We ended up in Denver, Colorado. To give some framework to everything, we struggled. I remember we ate expired food. We went to this expired food store. We drank powdered milk with our cereal in the morning, which I promise you sounds better than it is. I wore clothes from Goodwill and Salvation Army all the way through junior high school until I lied about my age at Burger King when I was fourteen because I was tall. I got a job there flipping burgers so I could buy my own clothes and then ultimately buy a car.

I’m sure you’ve got readers that had it harder than we did but I knew I wanted more. Luckily, my mom had an incredible work ethic, so she babysat kids so we would have enough money to eat. She was a bit of an entrepreneur. She invested successfully in the stock market and IPOs. She also invested in real estate. Her first real estate acquisition was a house right across the street from us when I was fourteen. She paid about $30,000. When I was seventeen, she told me she made $20,000 in her sleep. I was like, “You didn’t do anything and made $20,000? Screw college. I’m getting into real estate.”

I went and got my real estate broker’s license when I turned eighteen, which you could do back then with education. They got smart. You need some experience first to be a broker. I was a broker. I could have my own office. I was going to be rich selling other people’s houses. In my first year in real estate, I made about $8,000. In my second year, I made maybe $10,000 to $12,000. In my third year, I made over $100,000.

What happened between year 2 and year 3 that caused me to 10X my income? What happened was I met a guy. I dated his daughter. He taught me about the importance of mindset and psychology. 80% to 90% of your success in anything is your mindset and psychology. Only 10% to 20% is the real estate stuff we talk about on our show here. It’s the do and keep doing it. It’s about taking that first step. It’s about pushing through fear and limiting beliefs. It’s about getting uncomfortable. That comfort zone is a nice, warm place but we both know nothing grows there. It’s that mindset and psychology that pushes you through.

Fast forward, I’ve owned a couple of thousand houses that I rented long-term in three states. I still own thousands of apartment units. In 2006, my net worth went up by $17 million while I slept. You might be like, “Wow.” I was like, “Wow.” I thought I was a freaking real estate god. I thought I could do no wrong. When that happens, God, the universe or whatever you believe in will give you a nice little smack. That was 2008. That’s when I had my $50 million seminar.

We will get into the scoop. I’m known for my mindset and psychology. It took that $50 million to lose in the first place and then the mindset it took to get back to the success that I’m blessed to have now. I started a show to tell people about my story and say, “If you are going to invest and hold real estate, for God’s sake, do multifamily. Don’t do single-family because it was a single-family that pulled me down in ‘08 and ‘09.”

When the show hit a million downloads, I was like, “Okay, knucklehead, you probably ought to do something with this,” so I wrote a book. I gave away 20,000 copies. It’s the number one bestseller in multiple categories. I still give it away for free but you got to pay the shipping if you want the hard copy. For a couple of years, I took hundreds of free 30-minute phone calls from my audience for a couple of years. I didn’t have anything to sell. I just wanted to help. The people that add the most value in this world are the most successful, and that has been my mindset. It is to add as much value as I can.

They were like, “Please create something so we can learn how to do what you do.” I then did courses, and now, I am coaching thousands of students around the country. I do sold-out live events. In fact, my next live event is in Denver. I will give your peeps a heck of a deal. It’s three full days of training. It’s not a sales pitch. I talk about my coaching for maybe 30 minutes. If you want to do it, that’s great. If you don’t, that’s great. You will leave with more than enough information to kick ass in this business.

It’s not a sales pitch. It’s three days of drinking through a fire hose about this business. I will let your peeps know how they can come for $197. That’s $197 for three days of training without a big sales pitch. It’s a no-brainer. There should be about 1,000 people there. It’s on July 29th, 30th, and 31st, 2022. Text my name ROD to 72345. You can also go to RodInDenver.com.

Remember this code. I will give you a special bonus. If you put the word BONUS when you check out, you pay $197 but you also get my document library, which has tens of thousands of dollars worth of documents in it that I use in my business. You will also get my deal evaluator software so you can evaluate a deal quickly. Those two things alone are worth $2,000. You are getting that immediately and can come to my three-day event for $197. It’s a duh if you are interested in this business.

This business is a team sport as well, so there will be 1,000 like-minded people there. A lot of people build or connect with other teams at my events. The networking is off the hook. We do three panels a day with $2 billion to $3 billion represented by the panelists that I have on stage to answer your questions. It’s a lot of work for me. It’s three full days. I have an SEC attorney that does the SEC piece, and I have a finance guy that does the finance piece but all the rest of it is me. It’s a lot of fun.

If you know me, I spend time on mindset and psychology too. You should take action with what you learn. I’m proud of something, and that is my coaching students own somewhere between 60,000 and 70,000 doors that we know of, and I have only been teaching for four and a half years. I’m super proud of that. That’s the scoop. Come see me in Denver. I promise you will be glad you did. Remember to text ROD to 72345 and then use the word BONUS when you check out to get those two bonuses. If you come and don’t love the event, I will give you your money back after it’s over. It has never happened but there’s a first time for everything.

I love the intro and the backstory. I would say $197 is a steal because I’ve paid multiple thousands of dollars to attend a very similar conference with half the people and probably half the expertise that you have.

It’s probably half the content as well. The manual is 250 pages. This business has a lot of intricacies. I don’t want you to be intimidated by it if you are thinking of doing it because you learn as you go. You don’t have to check off every box before you take action. The first step is to start that knowledge process.

If you want to be a passive investor or an LP investor in this business as well, I would encourage you to go to these types of conferences because that’s where you learn the SEC regulations, how deals are structured, and also the underwriting. I’ve seen deals come across my desk that look like home runs but the execution isn’t great because you don’t understand the underwriting. You just might invest in them. I love that part of it.

The manual is enormous. Since you are talking about LP investing, let me mention that I’ve got a free resource that I will give your peeps as well. These are questions to ask a general partner in syndication before you invest. What you said is critical. Why would you give your hard-earned money to someone if you didn’t have some basic understanding of the business?

I see this happen all the time. People invest in the stock market. They will invest in real estate deals and know nothing about it. That’s crazy. You spend all that time and energy making that money. Don’t squander it. Come to my bootcamp. Plus, there will be dozens of successful operators there. You can meet them, break bread with them, and get to know them.

If you want that list of questions, text GP QUESTIONS to 72345, and I will give you the book. What you said is accurate. Don’t dabble in your investments. Don’t squander your hard-earned money. Dabblers get their butts kicked. There’s a lot of super-aggressive stuff happening in our world. I see what some of these properties sell for or trade for, and I’m scratching my head. I’m like, “There’s no possible way that the returns that these guys are promising their investors are going to happen,” even in this market.

We are heading into a recession. The head of Fannie Mae said it. A lot of big hitters in the space are saying it. I feel it. I got my butt kicked in 2006 and 2007, and this feels like that again. Is it something to be afraid of? No. It is something to get excited about, honestly. It’s the best time to learn this business as well because if you are trying to learn it in the middle of the crash, it’s too late but if you are ahead of the curve, you’ve got those relationships built, you know how to raise money, and have relationships with brokers and potential investors. There will be exponential opportunities.

Go check out my show. It is called Lifetime Cashflow Through Real Estate Investing. I’m blessed to say we are about to hit thirteen million downloads, which for my little niche in multifamily is pretty impressive. If you listen to enough of the episodes, you will start to hear a pattern. A lot of the people that have over 5,000 doors started in ‘09, ‘10, and ‘11. That’s a clue. There’s a real opportunity coming. It’s not something to fear. It’s reality. The market goes through cycles. It’s like the seasons of the weather. We have been in summer for a long time. We were in fall, and what comes after fall? Be aware of that.

I would agree with the choppy markets ahead or the choppy waters ahead but as a guy that has been in the business for many years, I got to ask, why do you see that? What are the factors that are you seeing out there that make you think that?

If I were a sage in predicting things, I would be on the back of a yacht but I’m not. I did a YouTube video talking about the coming crash in 2021. I was dead wrong and got so much hate for it but because it’s negative, it was my most highly watched YouTube video ever. I probably had over 100,000 views on YouTube. There is a huge pent-up demand for real estate.

It’s still there and going to be there in 2023. We won’t take this down the political rabbit hole but there’s going to be a reckoning. It’s insanity what’s happening administratively. It’s inevitable. Is it going to be as bad as ‘08 and ‘09? God forbid, I don’t think so but inflation is insane. The flip side of the inflation argument is what benefits from inflation because rents go up too. You are in the right place reading this show.

I like to say real estate goes through its cycles. They are like, “Is the real estate market high right now?” “I don’t know. Compared to what? It’s what I always say. “What’s your timeline on the back end of that?” If you are trying to flip a home in six months, I don’t know whether it’s IRR or not but I know that if your period is 30 years, you are going to be fine.

Real estate goes through cycles but over the long run, it goes up to the right. I want to take us back to your time in Colorado really quickly. You mentioned breaking $100,000 in your third year. To put a little asterisk on that, it was back in the ‘80s, which is a lot of money at that point. You then decided to get into the investing side, so you were selling real estate on the front end.

Those two things happened at the same time. That $100,000 is because I got into the investing side. I pushed through the fear and took action. I started buying real estate. I ended up owning 500 houses in Denver at one time. If I still had them, then I would all be free and clear. I would be on the back of my yacht because I would be netting $1 million a month.

Let’s talk about the mindset it takes to have that $50 million to lose. Here are the components of it. The first thing is if you come to my Bootcamp in Denver, the first hour and a half are going to be goals. We are going to go through that and do goal setting on steroids because how the heck do you get anything if you don’t know what it is? You got to know what it is you want with clarity. You have to create what Napoleon Hill, in his book, Think and Grow Rich, calls a burning desire. You got to want it. That’s how you are going to push through the fear and the limiting beliefs to take action.

You got to know what it is you want with clarity and why you want it. We go through this goal-setting process. It’s very powerful. Get clear on that. That’s the first thing. That’s how I was able to recover from losing $50 million. How I had it in the first place was knowing what I wanted, why I wanted it, and I went after it but then when I lost it, it was re-associating with what I wanted and why I wanted it. It got me back on track again.

When something negative happens to somebody, it’s very easy to get caught up in the pain. We connect through pain. It’s crazy. We get camaraderie through pain. If you came up to me and said, “Rod, how are you doing?” I said, “I’m fantastic. Thanks for asking.” You will take a step back and say, “Rod’s off his meds.” If you came up to me and said, “How are you doing?” If I said, “My back is killing me. I lost $10,000 in the market,” you will put your arm around me and say, “I feel you. Let’s go have a drink.” We connect through pain.

If you are tuning in to Matt, you are a leader. As a leader, it is critical that you pay attention to what you focus on. It’s critical that you bring in the good stuff. Don’t get me started on the fake news. The news is not there to inform us. It’s there to startle and scare us. Stand guard at the door to your mind. Bring in the good stuff. On my show, I do these clips every week called Own Your Power. I hope you will come to check them out even if you are not interested in multifamily, although I don’t know why you would be here if you are not.

They are five-minute clips. They are motivational. You give me five minutes a week, and I will juice you. There are hundreds of them there. That’s the stuff you want to bring in. If you don’t want to listen to me, then go to YouTube university and listen to some of that motivational stuff but bring that stuff in. That’s another piece of this whole success triangle. Whatever you focus on is going to get larger, positively or negatively. If you focus on the pain, loss or news, that’s going to get bigger.

They asked Mother Teresa if she was anti-war. She said, “No, I’m pro-peace.” That’s what I’m talking about here. I get people to call me and say, “How do I get out of student loan debt?” I’m like, “That’s the wrong question. How will you make so much money that the debt is irrelevant? That’s the question you should be asking.” Focus is super critical.

I’m going to say something else about this. The most successful people on the planet are the ones that have the best focus. Do you know what’s killing our focus? It’s these PDAs. I don’t know about you but I will be sitting and watching a movie and scrolling social media. That’s terrible because it kills your ability to focus. You are making these little micro-decisions every split second that kill your ability to focus.

I get excited because I’m about to hit thirteen million downloads. I saw a show by a guy named Tim Ferriss. You’ve probably heard of him. He does about thirteen million a week. He deconstructs the best of the best in the world like the best athletes and actors. He had Michael Phelps, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Hugh Jackman, Ed Norton, Jamie Foxx, and billionaires like Ray Dalio. He deconstructs their success, and I start to hear a pattern. They all meditate. What does meditation enhance? It’s the focus. Focus is a critical piece.

Let me go back to goals for a second. It is critical that you do that regularly. I did my goal-setting workshop on January 1st, 2022. If you DM me on any social channel and say, “Goal-setting workshop,” I will get you to link to that goal-setting session. It’s got a guide or workbook. I’m not trying to sell you anything. It’s awesome to do with your spouse or teenage kids to get aligned on what you want. That’s super important. I’m happy to describe that process if you want but I don’t know how much time we got.

I want to pull one thing out that you said, which is micro decisions. I am a huge fan of consistency. I’m an Ironman athlete, which is a long-distance triathlon. You can only do that through consistent actions every day. What I took down from that was micro-decisions lead to macro results. I don’t want to breeze over the fact that when you are talking about not being focused or present in what you are doing, that’s the micro decision. That’s not taking you closer to your goals.

I do want to come back to the goal-setting exercise because one of the things that I see or have conversations about is coming out of the past a couple of years, there are a lot of folks that don’t know what they want. They understand they need to get going towards a direction to achieve the goal that they want, etc., but they are not sure what that goal looks like. How can we give them some prompts or exercises for them to start defining what they want in their life?

I will blow through this as fast as I can. Here’s what you do. You pick an hour when you have a lot of energy. Energy is critical. Don’t do it after a meal. Make sure you are well-hydrated. You drink. Make sure you are uninterrupted. Sit down and write down everything you could ever want in life, whether it’s the houses, cars, boats, jet skis, planes, jewelry or clothing. Take the lid off your brain. Imagine that if you write it down, you are going to get it but not outside the realm of reality because there’s nothing you can’t do, be or have. You got to decide and take action.

Write down what you want. They got to be clear and measurable goals. It shouldn’t be, “I’m going to lose weight.” It should be, “I’m going to lose 10 pounds by January 1st and feel great about it.” That’s clear, concise, and measurable. Also, write down how much cashflow you want from your investments. Write down how much cash you want in the bank in 3 or 10 years.

By writing it down, it triggers something in your brain called your reticular activating system, and that’s the subconscious filter. You are not conscious of it but your brain will point you in the direction of what it thinks you are interested in. The greatest example of that is when you first buy a car. You never notice them but when you buy a car, they are everywhere. That’s your reticular activating system.

The same thing works for your goals. It’s critical that you don’t do this in your head. If you are in your head, you are dead. You got to write them down. That’s very important. Once you can’t think of another thing, there are a couple more steps. Write down everything you want to do in this lifetime, whether it’s all the places you want to travel to or if you want to write a book.

I’ve got a friend climbing every mountain that’s over 14,000 feet. On my list, it was to jump out of an airplane. I did that a few years ago. I will never do it again but it’s off the list. Write all your bucket list stuff. Watch the movie The Bucket List, and it will give you some great ideas for that. Write down everything you want to learn in this lifetime. It’s not just the stuff. It’s everything you want to do, be or have.

Here’s what’s sad. People spend more time planning a birthday party than designing their lives. This is designing your life. This is super critical. Write down everything you want to learn in this lifetime, whether it is a skillset or a foreign language. If it’s multifamily, come see me in Denver. The $197 price is a duh. Lastly, write down who you want to help. We will do more for others than we will ever do for ourselves. You use that.

I bought my parents a house on a canal. When my dad was alive, I bought him a car and took him on cruises. Who do you want to do something for? Write that down. Once you can’t think of another thing, there are two more steps. You need to put a time limit on each goal. That makes it real and measurable. Put a time limit on how many years it’s going to take you to achieve it. Put 1, 3 or 5, even 10 or 20 years.

Recognizing that as human beings, we will overestimate what we can do in a year and massively underestimate what we can do in 5, 10 or 20 years. I will give you an example of this. When I was eighteen, I lived in Denver but knew I wanted to live on the beach. There’s no beach in Denver. I visualized the palm trees, sand, surf, and waves. Several years later, I built this 10,000-square foot, $8 million mansion on the beach, which was unthinkable when I was eighteen. That’s why I’m saying take the lid off your brain. I made it happen, and you can too.

You got to make a decision. Put a time limit on each goal for how many years it will take. Don’t overthink this. There’s no perfection here. After that, pick your number one goal. When you get that goal, you are like, “This life is amazing.” You know you’ve arrived when you achieve that goal. Put that on a separate sheet of paper. I then want you to pick your top 3 one-year goals. Put those on a separate sheet of paper and leave room in between them.

You’ve then got four goals, which are your number 1 goal and top 3 one-year goals on a separate sheet of paper. I’m going to tell you that at this point, you are ahead of 99.99% of the people on the planet that make a New Year’s resolution that’s forgotten by the middle of February. There’s a little bit more I want you to do. I want you to write down underneath each one of those goals why it’s an absolute must for you to achieve it. You have to achieve it no matter what.

Use emotionally charged words. Words are very powerful. Words like beautiful, incredible, amazing, and unbelievable. Use words like that to describe your why. You might say, “I can show my kids what incredible abundance looks like or I can show my wife what it means to live a life of unbelievable success so we can have complete freedom to do whatever we want, whenever we want, wherever we want, and bring whoever we want.” Whatever is going to juice you, write that down.

Once you’ve got a positive reason why you are going to spin it a little bit. You are going to put some pain in there if you don’t achieve the goal and make it hurt. “I don’t feel like a failure. I don’t fail my wife, husband or kids. I don’t live a life of regret.” If you are out there, fearing failure and regret is a whole lot worse.

There was this hospice nurse in Australia that took care of patients when they were about to die. Her name was Bronnie Ware. She asked them a question. The question was, “Do you have any regrets?” She wrote a book about it. It’s called The Top Five Regrets of Dying. Do you know what the number one regret was? It was not living the life I could have lived. I was living in someone else’s life. Not doing what they knew they were capable of. I can’t think of anything worse than that. This prevents that from happening. Write down the positive and negative why.

Lastly, get pictures of your goals. Make declarations or announcements. I will give you a couple of public examples. Jim Carrey, the actor, wrote himself a check for $10 million when he was flat broke. He used to go up by the Hollywood sign, open it up, and visualize cashing it. That’s how much money he made for Dumb & Dumber. Another example is Demi Lovato. Years ago, she posted on social media, “One day, I’m going to sing the National Anthem at the Super Bowl.”

I have some personal examples back when I was eighteen. The guy whose daughter I was dating I was telling you about had two Corvettes, and he let me drive one. When I was eighteen, I bought this four-door car. I figured I had to have this four-door car to show people houses. It was this piece of crap Ford Granada. I drove this guy’s Corvette because he let me take his daughter out in it. I was like, “This is the bomb.”

I got a picture of a Corvette out of a magazine. This was before the internet. I put it on the visor of that Granada so that every time I sat in that piece of junk, the picture was right in front of me. Within a year or two, I had a beautiful Corvette. I’m going to give you some more examples. I’m not bragging about these house examples because this stuff doesn’t interest me anymore but I want to juice you.

Replace what you want with what I’ve got here. This is when the TV show Magnum PI was out. It was a series about a detective in Hawaii. The actor’s name was Tom Selleck. He’s still around. He drove this Ferrari 308. It was the first time I had ever seen an exotic car. I got a picture of that actual car out of a magazine, put it on the visor of my Corvette, then a year or two, I had a Maserati that looked like it.

This is the last example. I’m the guy that had always wanted a Lamborghini. I had pictures of Lamborghinis growing up. I had posters of it on my wall. What’s interesting is my son collected models of exotic cars. He had about 30 or 40 when he was 9. I’ve got them in a box in my attic. He had a model of the exact same color and style Lamborghini that I ended up getting, which I wrecked.

I have a planner. In the back of it, I’ve got pictures that have been there for years. The first pictures are my gratitude pictures. Everything you get in life comes through gratitude. This is how you manifest it. You can call it prayer or visualization but how you get, it starts with gratitude. That’s a critical piece of this. I have pictures of the houses I wanted.

I have one picture that looks like the house I built on the beach. I had a 10-foot high glass like the one on the picture and travertine floors. I lost that house in all the craziness. I live in a compound. I have six buildings. I have a big main house. I’ve got a beautiful two-bedroom guest house. I have a media building with my video studio on top that I built. I have a theater room, exercise facility, and five garages. It’s incredible.

I also have pictures of stupid crap like watches. I still love watches. I’ve got a few hundred-thousand-dollar watches. I had a picture of a Lamborghini, a Rolls Royce, and a Bentley before I ever got it. I got all the stuff that I got because I had pictures. This stuff doesn’t interest me anymore but replace it with what interests you. Get pictures and put them around you.

The only thing I would say to that or add to that is you have to find what you are looking for. Most people wander through life not looking for anything, and what they find is nothing. I love that you have that mental picture. I would encourage everybody to read this exercise again, as I will do later, because I go through this every single day.

Ping me or DM me on social media, and I will take you through it with music and a guide. It’s very professionally done. I’m proud of it. You’ve got to know what you want. Otherwise, you will never get it. That’s it. Focus on the next thing. You then got to make a decision and take massive action. The Latin root for the word decision means to cut off. If you are going to attack the island, you are burning your own ships because you are taking theirs. That’s a decision. It’s not what is towing the water. It’s not one foot in and one foot out. It is freaking done. You then go take massive action. Success is inevitable.

I got one last question before we shift to the last round. You are a big philanthropist as well, and you have some causes that you give to. I wanted to give you an opportunity to talk through some of that.

Let me give you a little framework for that. I built a house on the beach. This place was magnificent. I owned the beach on one side. I had my boats on the backside. It was called Gulf to Bay. It was a slice through an island. To describe this outside, I had a giant waterfall from the second-floor balcony into the pool. You had to walk through the waterfall to get into the pool. The pool was like the ones in magazines. I had a big spiral staircase up through the middle of the house. I had an elevator and a wine cellar.

On the second floor, I had aquariums built around the staircase, and in my office, that cost me almost $200,000. It gives you an idea of the house. I worked for this thing for twenty years. Two months after I moved in, I’m floating up in the pool at night. The pool is changing colors. It’s got fiber optic lighting. I’m looking up at this testament to my ego, which is what it was. I got picked on in school because I didn’t speak English and got beat up a lot by bullies. I had this experience on the playground with this girl I had a crush on that demoralized me in front of other kids, that I came up with this belief that I wasn’t good enough. I built this thing to prove to the world I was good enough. It’s embarrassing to admit that but that’s the truth of it.

I’m looking up at this thing. My family is inside and asleep. I’ve got the Maserati, a couple of Mercedes in the garage, the boat, the jet-skis, and this place. I had achieved success times 1,000 and got depressed. I don’t mean a little depressed. I was like, “What the hell is going on? I’ve achieved all this stuff. How could I be depressed?” When I look back on it, there were several things happening. Number one, it’s never about the goals. They say the happiest days of a boat owner’s life are the day they buy the boat and the day they sell the boat. You need them to create that burning desire. Happiness comes from progress and growth. That’s a key piece.

The bigger piece for me, in that case, was I had been focused on myself. I was always like, “I have to show the world I’m the best. I must show the world what I’m doing and that I matter.” I decided I had to get my mojo back, so I bought some books. One of them was the Tony Robbins book. I was impressed with that. I didn’t even read the whole thing. I went and saw him live and found out that he fed families for the holidays.

If you have an opportunity to see him, do it. Trust me, he’s fantastic. I spent twenty years following him around the planet. He’s the best in the world at what he does. I found that they fed families for the holidays. I was like, “What a concept to do something for someone else.” I’m embarrassed to say I had to be 40 to get that memo.

I went back home and called my brother in Denver because I was going to visit him for Thanksgiving. I said, “Let’s feed five families. He went to his church and found five families that really needed help.” We went and had a lot of fun. We bought frozen turkeys, toys for their kids if they had kids, and the complete holiday meal.

The third family changed my life. We get up to this house. This was a row house. It’s a 100-year-old fourplex with one-bedroom units where you walk through into the living room and walk through the bedroom to get to the kitchen, which has the bathroom. It’s not even a one-bedroom. It’s a crappy one-bedroom. The woman was in there with five kids. She comes out, sees the food and the toys, and starts crying. The kids come out, and a couple of the older ones started crying. I started crying and was hooked.

I’m blessed to say that over the years, we’ve fed over 110,000 children here in Sarasota and Bradenton, Florida. We’ve done tens of thousands of backpacks. I was talking to my sister. We are planning our next backpack brigade. Those are tens of thousands of backpacks filled with school supplies that are coming right up. We also gave tens of thousands of teddy bears for officers to keep in their patrol vehicles when they encounter a child that has been traumatized.

I don’t say this to brag either but there’s a message in this. You might be reading this with blood dripping from your teeth because you want this success so bad. I was successful but unfulfilled. We have been taught we can’t be happy until we’ve achieved but if you give back in any fashion, you are happily achieving. Tony Robbins calls it the science of achievement versus the art of fulfillment. Achievement is a science. If you want to learn multifamily, keep tuning in to Matt’s show but come see me in Denver if you can. There’s a blueprint. You got to go take action with that blueprint and make it happen.

Fulfillment is an art because you have to figure out what juices you. For me, it’s kids. I want to help kids. Maybe it’s the elderly, the animals or the environment. Whatever it is for you, incorporate it into your life, and you will be happily achieving instead of achieving to be happy. I know it’s a play on words but it’s super important. You will get to success faster. That’s the way God or the universe works. Whatever you give, you get back a thousandfold. Give back. Don’t say, “I will do it when I have money.” Do it even if it’s just your time. You will get the success faster. You will be happily achieving. You will be fulfilled.

I love that idea of fulfillment versus achievement as well because fulfillment comes from giving back to others, having responsibility for things, and also the person you become along the way in achieving your goals. Thank you for walking us through that. I want to take us into our last round. We are calling this the Five Toppings. Our first one is, what is your favorite book or what is a book you’ve read that’s given you a paradigm shift?

My love language is giving gifts. There’s a book called The 5 Love Languages. I had the author on my show, which was a real treat because I’ve given away thousands of copies of his book. You need to get that book if you love anybody. I gift a lot of books to my students. One of them is Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield. Stop being an amateur and be a professional.

Another one is The Slight Edge. There are little decisions you make every day that moves your life up or down. They don’t mean much that day but over time, they make a big difference. Another one is Gary Keller’s The ONE Thing. I had Jay Papasan, his coauthor, on my show. That’s a great book. Another one is The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod. It’s about starting your day off right, so you kick ass that day. That’s a great book. I had him on the show. He is a beautiful guy.

For those that don’t know him, Hal’s got a great story too. Our second one is I believe the person you become is directly correlated to the habits and the things that you do every single day. What are some of the habits that you have?

Every day, I will sit in my recliner and do gratitude for my supermodel, beautiful wife, my kids, my coaching students, and my foundation. I will then do gratitude for the things that I want as if I already have them. I know I’ve lost some of your analytical ones but by doing this foo-foo stuff, this is how I had $50 million to lose and got it back. I do gratitude for things I don’t even have yet. Sometimes, I will get emotional being grateful for things I don’t even have yet. Why? It’s because it works. That’s a great habit. Get in the habit of gratitude. You could call it prayer if you want.

That’s how I start my day every day too. I have gratitude for the things I don’t have yet so I will add that in there. Our third one is, what’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

Don’t wait to buy real estate. Buy real estate and wait. I also had an old guy tell me once, “The best thing in the world is real estate. You will have buckets of money,” and that always stuck with me.

Time in the market matters more than timing the market. Our fourth one is, what’s the thing you are most proud of in your life?

Besides my kids, the fact that my students have 60,000 to 70,000 doors. I have hundreds of thank you cards. I have only been teaching for a little under four and a half years, and I’m super proud of that. There are lives that have massively changed in my student base.

Our last one is if you could sit down and eat a bowl of ice cream with anyone, dead or alive, who would it be and why?

I love Elon Musk. He’s a rock star. It would be him.

He is the most commonly answered person on that question so far.

I’m not surprised

Rod, we had a fantastic conversation. If somebody wanted to reach out to you, where could they go?

They can go to RealEstateWithRod.com. Nobody can spell my name. That takes you right to RodKhleif.com but it has all my stuff on it. I’m on every social channel. My team and I respond to every single request. If you’ve got a question about this business, I’m very responsive. My podcast, Lifetime Cashflow Through Real Estate Investing, is very well received, so I’m doing something right. I hope you will check it out.

Rod, thanks for coming to the show. We will see you out in Denver.

You are going to be there. That’s awesome.

Important Links

• Rod Khleif
• RodInDenver.com
• Lifetime Cashflow Through Real Estate Investing
• Think and Grow Rich
• The Top Five Regrets of Dying
• The 5 Love Languages
• Show – Lifetime Cashflow Through Real Estate Investing Past Episode
• Turning Pro
• The Slight Edge
• The ONE Thing
• The Miracle Morning
• Hal Elrod – Lifetime Cashflow Through Real Estate Investing Past Episode
• RealEstateWithRod.com
• YouTube – The Coming Real Estate Crash of 2021
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/rodkhleif/
• https://www.Youtube.com/RodKhleif
• https://Podcasts.Apple.com/us/podcast/lifetime-cash-flow-through-real-estate-investing/id1097449598
• Text ROD to 72345. Enter the code BONUS when checking out
• Text GP QUESTIONS to 72345

About Rod Khleif

Rod Khleif soared from humble beginnings as a young, impoverished Dutch immigrant to incredible success. Khleif’s experience involves both remarkable triumphs, and spectacular failures, which he affectionately calls “seminars:’ Rod brings incredible authenticity and insight to his approach to real estate, business, success and life. Rod can talk about the psychology of success, and any real estate and business topic in great depth, contributing incredible first-hand, technical, and motivational knowledge and skills to any real estate, business or success based discussion. Rod also founded The Tiny Hands Foundation, which has benefited more than 85,000 community children in need.