#043: Black Belt Leadership: How to Succeed in Life & Business

Welcome to The Accelerated Investor Podcast with Josh Cantwell, if you love entrepreneurship and investing in real estate then you are in the right place. Josh is the CEO of Freeland Ventures Real Estate Private Equity and has personally invested in well over 500 properties all across the country. He’s also made hundreds of private lender loans and owns over 1,000 units of apartments. Josh is an expert at raising private money for deals and he prides himself on never having had a boss in his entire adult life. Josh and his team also mentor investors and entrepreneurs from all over the world. He doesn’t dream about doing deals, he actually does them and so do his listeners and students. Now sit back, listen, learn, and accelerate your business, your life, and you’re investing with The Accelerated Investor Podcast.

Josh: So, hey, welcome back to Accelerated Investor Josh Cantwell here with you. And thank you so much to all of you who are engaging with Accelerated Investor, sharing these episodes on social media, leaving us ratings and reviews. I just want you to know how privileged and how grateful I am for you that I get to come into your ears and your home and your headphones, whether you’re at work, whether you’re at the gym, out for a walk, or in your car, and hopefully the guests that I’ve been bringing to you and the different solo casts that I do are having an impact on your life and on your business and on your investing. You know that I love to bring guests onto the show who I personally want to get to know better people that are connected to my other guests that are friends.

Josh: So I can just continue to grow my network and my spider web and learn more from them. So I can selfishly pull that into my own investing in my own businesses and my own relationships. And that’s exactly what I have in store for all of you today. My guest, his name is David Wood and I met him, he is personal friends, very close friends with Jack Canfield. Many of you have heard our episodes, you’ve been in our live events or Jack Canfield has spoken. And David is close personal friends with Jack and we’re excited to get to know David better. His website is PlayForReal.Life. He’s a former consulting actuary to fortune 50 companies. His businesses have previously been ranked as number one in Google for life coaching. He spent his entire adult life building businesses as well as training other leaders and business owners. And today is giving back a tremendous amount of his time and his energy in coaching others, coaching entrepreneurs, coaching investors as well as in some of his free time giving back and actually coaching and training prison inmates. And so David Wood, thank you so much for making time for our crowded Accelerated Investor and for joining me today.

David: How is it going Josh? I’m good. Today feels like a good day and I’m excited to see where we’re going to go in this conversation.

Josh: Absolutely. So David we talk, we have this connection with Jack Canfield. Jack obviously has taught so much for so many years through his books. There was leadership books through Chicken Soup For the Soul. So just, let’s start with that connection, right. So tell me a little bit more about your relationship there and just some of the things, some of the leadership lessons that you’ve taken away from Jack and some of the leadership lessons that you’re focusing on today in passing along to your audiences.

David: Well, that’s a big question with at least three parts. I don’t know if I’d call Jack a close personal. Actually I would, I’d call him that. He might not call me that. But I first talked to Jack because I saw him at a conference and I heard him speak and I was really struck by his presence by his gravitas on stage. And I’m like, wow, I, you know, I kind of want some of that for myself. And I went over and I said hello, and then I kind of stoked him over the years, just wanted a connection with Jack. I was so impressed with him and I was fortunate enough to be voted into the transformational leadership council, which Jack started. People like Don Miguel Ruiz and John Gray and some people, people who I really admire. And but even that didn’t do it.

David: You know, even that doesn’t get you friends with Jack because everybody there, there might be 60 people at each our van and everybody wants time with Jack because he’s the Mack Daddy. I was, I don’t know, I think it was just persistence and also his one thing that might’ve made a difference is truth. It’s one of the things that I’m very passionate about. Truth bearing and caring are the three pillars of playing for real and living a regret free life. And I was honest with Jack, I was always like, even when I asked him to write the foreword in my book, I said, look, I’m going to be honest, I’m asking Richard Branson first. And if he says yes, I’m going to go with that. But I’m wondering if he doesn’t, would you be willing? And Jack said, well, you’re going alphabetically I understand that, you know, props to him.

David: So I was always honest with him. And I did the Byron Katie Turnaround House, Byron Katie’s is an amazing teacher of mine and I paid $20,000 grand to go and sit with her for a month. And I told Jack that I was going to do it and he was interested in it. And while I was there, he lives close by. I said, you want to have lunch and I’ll tell you about this, this whole thing and how it’s going. And he ended up saying yes and I just love who he is. I ended up getting to spend some time with him and Inga, his wife who was just so friendly and wonderful. So I feel a high connection with the two of them. And Jack’s done so much for me. He, you know, I don’t know if I’ve helped him much, but he came and spoke at my live event in San Francisco and he was kind enough to write the forward my book.

David: So I don’t know if I’ve told him this, but he can have my first born child if he ever wants it. I just feel so grateful to, you know, someone with such media presence and such success, I mean is in the Guinness Book of Records for having the most number of bestsellers at one time. Like he had seven or eight out of 10 on the New York Times list were his. So to have someone like that giving someone like me a leg out 15 years ago is really amazing. And I think perhaps one of the lessons I get from that aside from truth is generosity. You know, Jack was able to give and he did and that had an impact on me.

Josh: That’s fantastic. So as you’ve gone in and taken some of the principles and different things that you’ve gotten out of your leadership and consulting with these big fortune 50 companies and now you spend a lot of time coaching and training people to be a bigger, better version of themselves. You have these three pillars, truth, daring and caring. And it’s the backbone and it’s the philosophy of what you teach. So give us the high level background about what does that mean? Truth, daring and caring. And why is it important to you to project that forward into your audiences?

David: Well, you’re going to get an answer that no one else has gotten. I mean, I’ve done over 30 interviews like this and I’m just, something’s coming to me in a way that I haven’t said it before. So I’m excited to see how it’s going to come out. Truth, you know, I was raised not consciously, my parents didn’t deliberately do this, I’m sure, but I was raised learning to hide stuff. Basically if I’m feeling sad, I may not tell people. In fact, how sad is it? I might not even tell myself. I may not even be tracking my own emotions and now that I’m sad. If someone upsets me, I may not tell them because I tell them they might go and I’ve heard this from my mother. You’re being too sensitive, right? So I don’t want to be too sensitive.

David: So we learn. And now I’m expanding to the, I learned and I think we’ve all learned to hide parts of ourselves because we’re worried about how it’s going to go over. And this is tribal, like going back is evolutionary. We had to fit in. If you didn’t fit in, you’d be kicked out of the tribe and you would die. So it’s natural and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it I just want to name it. Let’s all start to realize how much we’re hiding from our partners, from our customers, from our coworkers and from ourselves. That’s the tricky bit because we’ve just learned to stuff it all down. And unfortunately it means that we’re kind of like one teacher of mine said, we’re all like billiard balls. We’re living in a billiard ball universe kind of bouncing off each other. Well, that makes sense.

David: If I’m not going to show you Josh the real me, I’m not going to show you my vulnerable underbelly right then. You can’t really know me and I can’t actually have true connection with you. You’re going to see my front. I’m going to see your front and we’re all basically turning to, if we get deeper, you’re turning to addictions. Like let’s have just a couple of drinks at night. Let’s have some caffeine for some stimulation. Let’s eat some sugar or play some video games and I watch some TV and I include myself in this because I think we crave deep connection. And this includes connection with the people who report to us and the people we’re leading. We want connection, they want connection. And unfortunately we’ve been taught to hide stuff. So I’m an evangelist of counteracting years of hiding and the antidote for this is truth.

David: We need to start revealing our experience first to ourselves, tracking out body, tracking our emotions, realizing what’s going on for us, and then are we willing to be daring to share that with others. And I’m not saying you just dump everything out in the world and that if you killed someone earlier in your life that you go to the police. I’m not saying you do that or that you say to your staff, I’ve got no idea how to run this company and sometimes I cry myself to sleep. I’m not saying you go that far, but we’ve definitely gone way too far the other way. And the more you are willing to be daring and authentic and be you, you might lose some stuff. But I say that’s the stuff you’re meant to lose. And the flip side is you’ll gain some stuff. You’ll attract the people around you who want to be around you. So that’s the first part, and I’ll take a take pause for breath and see how that lands for you. But that’s the truth part.

Josh: Well, that lands deep for me in a lot of ways because sometimes when you feel like to peel back the onion, when you’re, for me doing real estate deals and you’re having success with it like we’ve had over the last 12 or 14 years, and then you become a real estate speaker trainer. To peel back and be truthful is you have to tell your audience about the good, the bad and the ugly. You’ve got to tell your audience about the good and the dumpster fires of your investing. And then the dumpster fires of what’s happened financially and with relationships relative to your business. And often, you know, I see it all the time. I see it in some of our own marketing that you make things seem like it’s just all unicorns and rainbows and roses and every deal goes perfect. No contractor ever steals money. You know, every deal gets done on time and on budget and cashflows just perfectly and it’s just not, that’s just not the truth. Like there is negativity. There’s things that go wrong.

Josh: And what I’ve realized is the more that I tell my audience just exactly how it goes, the more they respect that. And they don’t have to hear, they all know we’re all adults. We know that every deal is not perfect. But what stuck out to me, David and what you said was tracking. So when you said truth and not hiding yourselves, but the key to just kind of start to be truthful with yourself, with your relationships, with your staff is tracking. Help me understand what did you mean by that? Are you talking about writing things down, truth journaling because that seemed like an important part of what you just said?

David: Yeah. And this is a big topic in itself. When you said that, what do you mean by tracking? I became more aware of my body and as I put more attention on my body, I notice there’s like an energy running through my arms and my legs and I feel better than I that I’ve noticed in days. I didn’t know that I wasn’t tracking that. So that’s an example. And this is new to me. I’m not pretending. I’ve been doing this for 20 years. This is in the last six months I’ve gotten really interested in how much information does our body giving us. Like you know when your body, when your belly hurts your guts tight and you know and I get a sharp pain. I sometimes get a sharp pain in my gut, I can override it. And if it’s 7:00 o’clock at night I can go for a beer and that’ll handle it. Or I can just be aware, oh hey, my bodies tight right now. I could use some yoga or I could use a 20 minute walk or maybe I could use a green smoothie.

David: Like that’s one level. If we get really ninja about tracking our body then to that sensation, but then there are feelings. What if someone says something and you feel there’s a contraction inside? For me, it used to happen so fast I didn’t notice it. I contract inside I’d feel small I’d feel start to get defensive and then what would come out of my mouth would be a defense and I’ve just missed all these layers of what’s just been going on. If I can track it and slow down and go, wait a minute, I’m feeling a contraction here. Oh I notice, I feel like I’m feeling criticized and I want to defend myself and so now I get to choose. Will I defend myself or do something else?

David: I might choose something else now that I’ve slowed it down, hey, let me understand more about what you’re saying. Tell me more about that so I can get it before I go into trying to justify my position. Now that in itself as a leadership move, that’s a game changer. That’s being curious about getting someone’s world instead of projecting my world. So I’m getting a little bit off the topic of tracking, but this is what starts to become available. I just noticed in speaking that my breath was tight, I wasn’t breathing. I’m getting my energy up here because I’m getting excited and that allows me to just, you know, take a breath and kind of come back and be more with you. There’s one level of tracking.

Josh: That’s fantastic David. So when you’re working with your clients and you’re coaching them and training them, is there, is there a tactical way for tracking? Are you encouraging your clients to write these things down so that they can look back and see like this is a thing I was feeling or this is an experience we had in our relationship or this is an experience we had in our business and we wrote these things down? Like in our, in our business, we tell our staff, if it’s not in the software, it didn’t happen, right? It’s like it’s a form of tracking. It’s a form of truth to be able to say this is something that went well for us.

Josh: Whether it was buying an apartment building or whether it was funding an apartment building for somebody else, whether it was a rehab property an income property that we bought or things that went right or things that went wrong with a contractor. The way we structured the deal, we force our team and ourselves as leaders to put everything in the software and we basically say, if it’s not in the software, it didn’t happen because there’s no way to track it. And there’s no way to like remember the truth, right. Because that was the truth of what actually happened with that deal. If we don’t memorialize it somewhere, we can’t learn from it. So what are your thoughts around the, you know, the tactical way to make that something that you can use in the future?

David: Yeah, I like the way you’re thinking. I’m a systems geek. So it’s like, yeah, what’s the system for that? Or one thing that I do with some of my clients is we do retroactive tracking. So it’s a bit of a black belt move to be aware of everything that’s happening as it happens in interaction. Might need some working up to that. So we’ll, you know, there’ll be an incident at work and I’ve got an executive director and he might think that his boss is a bitch. All right. So we go into that and we look at what happened and then we look at, I like the expression on your face right now.

Josh: I love it.

David: We go into what happened and we look at what he’s, we look at what he’s believing and there’s a process I take people through, which is from Byron Katie, called The Work. And we have that thought my boss is a bitch. And what we might get too, for example, is he does the work and he comes out with, oh, I’m a jerk. And boy, could he find that he hadn’t realized it, that he can be a real jerk. So retroactive tracking. I do recommend The Work by Byron Katie looking at what happened, what am I believing, what was happening in my body? And then when you’re aware, if you’re able to do it and catch it in the moment, oh hey, I notice I’m not really feeling open to talking about this. In fact, I’ve had people talk like I’ve shared something that I’m upset about. They’re telling me their defense and I’ve said, can I stop you? I’ve realized I’m not even listening. I don’t seem to be able to have headspace for that.

David: I’m still with my feeling. Can we stay with that for a little bit before we go to that? And that’s a black belt move. Now you brought up journaling. I think that’s a great idea. You know this is, you know, I’m upset with my brother or I’m upset with my coworker. I’m upset with my staff member because they did this and this is how I’m feeling about it. That’s a great way to slow it down and start to reveal to yourself your own experience. And I say this is a big leadership move. If you’re leader and you’re not aware of what’s happening in your body and you’re not aware of what you’re feeling, I’m probably not going to trust you. I don’t want someone like that leading me. I want you in touch and integrated is a great word.

David: So I just brought up the nine characteristics of inside out leadership that I value nine things I value in a leader. And the first one is reveals, revealing what’s happening. And again, you used a sermon, you’re not going to say everything to everybody, but revealing. You know what, I think a lot of you are worried about the changes that are happening. I’ll tell you I am too. Now that creates connection.

Josh: Right? Right. Yeah. Kind of revealing like almost putting it out what everybody’s thinking. Like let’s just get our thoughts and feelings on the table here. And if you’re a leader, obviously you want to do it in a tactical way without freaking everybody out. but revealing like I can tell there’s anxiety here about this initiative or this project or there’s some uncertainty about what we should be doing next. I feel that in the office, I feel that in the room. Sounds like you guys are all feeling that way. I am too. So there’s a connection and then, okay, let’s talk that out. How does everybody feel? What’s on your mind? And then going into some sort of a next step of peeling that back because often if you’re feeling it as a leader, what I found, if you’re feeling some sense of uncertainty or anxiety in your team or uncertainty, anxiety in your family, in a relationship just by opening it up allows you to peel back the first layer of the onion.

Josh: But there’s always more. You can’t go right into a solution, right? Because there’s always more layers just because you’re feeling it. Somebody else has probably been feeling that already for days or weeks or months and there’s some sort of security or anxiety building up and they’re feeling that way deeper than you are because you just recognized it. So reveal is step number one, but what do you, when it is revealed, what kind of advice do you give to your owners your founders or leaders about what to do next after that’s revealed by their team or their, you know, whatever relationship that is?

David: Well this is really interesting because I’m very solution focused and that question sounds solution focused as well, like what are we going to do with it? I think it’s important to recognize that just listening and just naming what’s happening. If someone says like, I’m a guy, right? Someone’s got a problem, I want to fix it, and there’s a great YouTube video with a woman who has a nail sticking out of her forehead and the guys, she’s like, I’ve got this pain is throbbing pain in my forehead. He goes, yeah, you’ve got a nail let’s get that out. She goes, you’re not listening to me. He goes, I am listening. You got pain, you got a nail, let’s get out. She said, you always do this there, and I’m a guy, right? Let’s rip the nail out. But there’s value in being heard. There’s value in someone saying, I get that that does sound tough without any solution happening. And then I, you know, I don’t have a magic answer for what’s next, but I think that once everyone feels really heard, then that might be a great space to talk about what are we going to do about it? Let’s get some ideas.

Josh: Yeah. You know, it’s interesting. When I interviewed Jack Canfield for this podcast, he made a joke that I’ll never forget about how he does date nights with his wife or date days with his wife and they’re together and he just keeps asking his wife, tell me more, honey, tell me more honey. Instead of as a guy, as a dude, it’s like, okay, what’s the problem again? You’ve got the nail on your forehead. Here’s the solution, let me pull it out. Let’s get a stitch, you’re done. It was Jack very similarly, in a slightly different way said, you know, tell me more. Like there’s value in being heard. There’s value in learning more and peeling back the onion to another level and letting people just get it all out as opposed to, okay, problem solution. No, there’s problem peel back the onion let me be heard. Then when they’re heard they’ve got it all out. Then at that point maybe then we can start, talk about a solution or talk about what are some bullet points? What are some things that we need to solve for, right.

David: Yeah. And when was the last time someone said to you when you’ve got something, say it’s an upset, someone said, tell me more about it. Who does that, right?

David: Yeah. Normally it’s arguing, right? Like you fight with me, you punch me in the face, I’m going to punch you back instead of you punch me in the face because you have a problem. Hey tell me more about that. Like punch me again. I’ll take some more. Like let me keep hearing you. Tell me more. What’s on your mind. Because oftentimes, right David, I don’t know how you feel when you’re coaching your audience, but the first time somebody punches you in the face with an argument or some sort of like they lash out, that’s a lot of times, not even the real reason, right. It’s not even the real problem. There’s something else.

David: Yeah. Just recently I was in a car with a couple of people and I was feeling activated and triggered and nervous. I felt like she was driving too close to the car in front and I’m an actuary. I studied risk and I’m like, if they jam on their brakes, I’m going through the windscreen here, but it’s awkward to say to someone, can you drive slower? Would you be willing to leave more gap in front? Now initially there was defense, but after a while she said something amazing to me. She said, can you show me how far behind the car in front is comfortable for you, I want to actually know.

David: I was almost I was almost in tears.

Josh: Because then she knows how close and saw…

David: She wants to know my world.

Josh: Is this comfortable for you? Tell me more. Tell me more.

David: It’s that she wants to know…

Josh: My wife and I, you know, we’ve got young kids, we’re busy, we have businesses. She’s very active with them and taking care of everything with their school and with their sports and just engaging with them. But she butts heads with my son all the time because my son thinks he knows everything as a seven year old and is about to be eight. And they’re very similar. I know my wife and my son are very similar and when she butts heads with them. If I come home and she just says, Dominic did this or Dominic did that and Dominic’s, you know, I’m like, oh, okay. Tell you know, tell me more. What else happened? Dominic did this and all right, tell me more.

Josh: What else happened? Did he do anything else? If I immediately go into I’m going to provide the solution or I’m going to discipline Dominic or you know, or if I come back at my wife and say, well I’m sure he didn’t do that, honey, I’m sure you know, it’s partially your fault. Like none of that works except for right. Tell me more like what else happened. And oftentimes by the time she’s done talking, the whole conversation will go from here to here. Like way high, way elevated, way anxiety to way down here to the point where it’s like, okay. And then when it’s all come out, then I can just go talk to Dominic, which is what she really wants me to do because I’m his father. I’m the man of the house. I can talk to my son, discipline him in a way that he realizes that he has to be respectful to his mother.

Josh: Dominic seems to take a lot more reminding than my other kids about that piece. But you know, jumping in with the solution or fighting back never seems to be the answer. But listening, tell me more until the point where the tone, the speed, the elevation of anxiety drops. Ultimately we can get to some sort of ultimately some solution listening and it goes from there. So I find that in my own relationship that to be. And it’s again, something that I’ve had to realize over the years and it seems to change every couple of years, right? New season of life where I’ve got to act differently, but I’ve got to be aware of it. I’ve got to see the truth. I’ve got to track it in order to, you know, to really memorialize it and say, well, how am I going to handle this situation next time?

David: Yeah. Well that’s a black belt move you’re doing there. Tell me more. It’s like leaning in versus leaning out and getting their world. And we’re teaching this right now in prisons actually, to prison inmates. And the first step we teach is breathe and listen and tell me more. And then the next step is reflection because how do they know you really got it. Yeah we settle this stuff. How do you know that we’re listening? How do you know they heard what you said? Like they might have heard something else. So an example of this, my landlord, I called him up and I asked for something and he said No. And then he said, why? And he talked about everything that’s going on in the yard and the packing and the moving and all this kind of stuff. I listened and I skipped over the first step tell me more, because I didn’t have a lot of time.

David: And I did the second step, which is reflection. I said, you know, as I listened to all that, it just sounds overwhelming. Does that sound like the right word? So I kind of added in another step is checking in, I’m reflecting, but I’m checking, did I get it right? Does that sound like the right word? And he said, you know, that’s the exact word. I didn’t think of that. But when you said that, well, that’s exactly how it is. I said, I got it. And then, you know, then we talked about it and we came up with a solution. But yeah, I love what you said, ninja, tell me more. And then the next step would be a reflection. And so that they know you’ve got their world and then a lot of things are possible from that.

David: And I hope everyone’s listening is thinking, yeah, all right, I’ll do this with my partner. I’ll do this with my kids. I mean, can you imagine if a kid actually got listened to? Like, tell me more about that. What’s that like for you? Like get curious about the world and then you reflect and say, let me check, I got this, you’re doing blah, blah, blah, blah. And either they’ll go, yeah, that’s exactly it or they’ll correct you. I’ll tell you, well, not quite that, it’s this. Alright, let me check I got that. Blah, blah blah blah, blah blah. Yes, that’s exactly it. So this is a, we call it emotional like kedo, through these authentic relating international to nonprofit. We train in prisons and this is the name of it. Practice Emotional Kedo to become a black belt. With your staff too. I mean, I want everyone to have great relationship with their families, but I know a lot of people listening are entrepreneurs and they’ve got teams. So this is some black belt leadership stuff.

Josh: Yeah. Love it. Breathe and listen. Tell me more. Check-In. Love it. Um, step two in your leadership training and entrepreneurial life training at PlayForReal.Life is to be daring. Now this David hits right between the eyes for me. I don’t know if you’re aware of the story, but I’m a pancreatic cancer survivor. And when I was 35 years old I was diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer. And long story short I had an amazing surgeon who saved my life. He took out all of my insides, my stomach gone, my gallbladder my spleen gone. Most of my liver gone. Most of my pancreas gone. The cancer mass was as big as a basketball. He was able to remove it. Gone. I spent 10 days in the hospital, I lost 50 pounds. But about six weeks later I went to meet with my oncologist and his name was Dr. Ali and Dr. Ali sat looking at the computer, much like we’re looking at each other now.

Josh: And he looked at the computer. He read the surgery report. And he looked at me and he said, Josh, he said, you know, Dr. Walsh, who did your surgery is a daring surgeon. And I looked at him and I said, what do you mean? And he said, you know, reading this report, he’s like, 95% of the surgeons would have opened you up, saw how complicated it was, how the cancer was wrapped into all your organs and crushed your arteries and you know, all these problems, you know, and they would have sewn you up and sent you home and they want to send there. There’s nothing that we can do.

Josh: But Dr. Walsh, he’s, you know, he’s amazingly skilled and talented surgeon, but he was daring enough using Dr. Ali’s. Exact words was he was daring. And he said he was daring enough to try a surgery that probably nobody else ever tried. And he saved your life. And so this step two of your, you know, your process hits me square between the eyes. And so I relate this back to my experience, but when you’re coaching other folks, step number two, be daring. What does it mean to you? What does it mean when you teach it to your audience?

David: Well, what I’m thinking of right now is the Truman Show, and I’m thinking about how he grew up in this world and they were limits to his world. Well, but some of them he could kind of see, but a lot of them, he didn’t even know that there were boundaries and he had to stay within this comfy bubble. Literally, he was in a bubble. And I think all of us are in some kind of a bubble. Now, a lot of people listen to this podcast are probably quite daring in many areas of their life. And my question is, where do you get stopped? Because we’ve all got some kind of fear of rejection or fear of failure. And I don’t think that’s wrong. I think that’s fine to have those and it’s fine to not be daring. The thing is, I believe it leads to regret.

David: If you, if there’s something that’s right for you and could be fun for you and could bring great joy or rewards for you and it feels in alignment with your values and you don’t do it because of a fear, you may lie on your death bed and regret not having done it. And I don’t want that for anybody. Now, some people I could say to you, you shouldn’t be daring because you’ll be successful in business. You should be daring because that woman or guy is going to say yes to a date with you and you might end up getting married.

David: You should be daring for all these reasons of success. But that’s not my primary driver. I want you to be daring in alignment with your values because it feels good and you’ll feel good about yourself. And on your deathbed, you’ll say, I gave it everything. I fully lived this life. I suck the juice out of the orange. I gave it all. That’s why I want you to find your edges and to be as daring as is appropriate for you. We can also talk about going to far, but a lot of people aren’t going far enough.

Josh: Yeah. And so how do people find that balance? If there is balance in being daring, how do they find where the edge is? Because I think what most people are afraid of, and this is definitely for me too, is financial like collapse. Most people think when they think of starting a business, being an entrepreneur, being daring, starting investing, real estate, etc. etc. Like, well what if I screw it all up and I go bankrupt? You know, I have nothing. I’m homeless. You know, and what I’ve told people is look, taking risk is about being comfortable with worst case scenario. And when I look at worst case scenario, I think, okay, if I do this thing, what’s the worst thing that can happen to me financially? If I’m wiped out, what does that look like? If I take this risk or buy this building or invest in this deal or whatever that might be.

Josh: Start a company and if it doesn’t work out. And I borrowed money and I go bankrupt, I file, you know, people lose money. What does that all look like? Am I comfortable with worst case scenario? Maybe not comfortable with it, but if that were to actually happen, can I dig out? Can I work with investors instead of paying them back in a year, maybe pay them back over 10 years? What does that look like for me? That’s how I’ve learned to deal with it. I’m not sure. Help me understand. What do you teach your audiences and your clients about that balance?

David: Yeah. Well first I think you brought up the idea of how do you find, like how do you find where your edges are? And then the second bit is, is that can you handle that risk? Can you self-insure by saying, I used to be an expert, so I was always sure. Can you self-insure this risk. Let’s take this in reverse order. So is it an inappropriate risk for you? That’s a great test. I want to ask this celebrity to endorse my business. What’s the risk? I might feel stupid. All right. Am I willing to handle that? Yes. Okay, great. Now go and do it. So that’s a great way to kind of bring to the light of day what you’re actually afraid of. What is the worst case scenario? I like that as a technique. Now the question or is, so I wouldn’t risk my, you know, if I’ve got a property, I’ve got to say I’ve got quarter of a million equity in a property.

David: I’m not going to risk that whole thing on a business venture because I can’t self-insure that I need that as my mistakes. I’m just not going to do it. So there are many risks on undo. I just gave up paragliding because I realized I was willing to bear the risk of out paralysis or death. I’m not anymore. So it’s gone motorbike gone. So you’ve got to be smart about it. But how do you find where your edges are? If I asked the fish, how’s the water? The fish might respond, what water? Because you can’t see the water. So sometimes you can’t see our edges. You grab a pen, grab a piece of paper and pick an area of your life. I hope that one area you’ll pick is relationships because deeper connection. I just listened to a study, it’s a longest study ever done.

David: It started in 1938. It’s the only study that’s been this long and they found that the thing that predicted happiness and good health was quality connection with people. So I hope you’ll pick relationships and then go through and say, if I was more daring, what would it look like? And where my mind starts to go is you don’t have any charge with, you don’t have any upset with who would I not want to see on the street? Who am I pissed about? Who am I , you know, any awkwardness. And you could just look at it. If I was more daring in that relationship, what might I say? I might be willing to be more truthful, to go back to the first pillar, you know, in your business. Yeah, that’s a great area. If I was more daring, I might call 10 people or approach 10 people who have some kind of celebrity status and invite them to be clients.

David: Say, I want to coach you. Let’s do one session, see how it goes. I think you’re going to love it. That would be super daring and edgy for me. So look at what that looks like. You could look at in life generally, like what do you want to truly say on your death bed that you did? Do you want to paraglide with a tandem instructor? Which is more safe than doing it with me. Is there something in your life generally, if you were more daring, for some people it would be public speaking. It would be maybe creating a podcast, like you have. But the piece of paper and the pen, that’s one way to do it. Now, if you really want to put this on steroids, go and do a course where you’re immersed in the conversation of breakthrough, right?

David: Like, I love Landmark Education. I did that and that changed my entire life. Landmark Education has got a course called The Landmark Forum. Go and do that two or three days. Boom, you’re going to see areas of possibility you never saw before. The other way to do it, get yourself a coach, I’m probably biased since I am a coach. But it makes sense to me. A coach can help you check and say well have you considered this, he checked that. I noticed you’ve mentioned that a few times. What would it look like if you doubled that? It’s like whoa, wait a minute. I can’t double that because, so it’s an ongoing conversation with someone can kind of help you spot the water that you can’t see.

Josh: I think being daring to doesn’t have to be like one huge, massive step. It’s just got to be really, it’s got to start with doing one thing differently. You know, like let’s just say you want to get in better shape, you know, and you’re, you don’t have a lot of time. You already kind of eat like crap and you have spouse and kids and you got lots of obligations. It’s like, well what can I do? Just something small, something different. Like, instead of driving to the corner store to pick up milk and bread, can I walk today? Can I ride my bike today? Instead of going to the same restaurants all the time, can I go somewhere that’s slightly more healthy instead of going to the same places all the time, meeting the same people? Can I visit a different coffee shop, a different bookstore? Can I go to a, you know, a meet up that I’ve never been to before?

Josh: Even if I go to the meetup and don’t really say anything, can I go to a homeowners association meeting or you know, a Chamber of Commerce meeting just to start because people might be thinking like, I need a coach or I want to be part of a big mastermind, but maybe coaches out of my price range or a mastermind that, you know, everybody in the room is more successful than me, so I’m scared to jump into those higher level things. So what can you do to bridge the gap? What can you do to make one step and do something that’s not right in your comfort zone? But this one, layer two layers outside of your comfort zone. Do something a little bit different to be daring and say, you know what, that wasn’t that bad. That was easy. And you take another one, right, slightly more daring.

Josh: You know, you don’t have to be Dr. Walsh. You know, Dr. Walsh didn’t save my life on his first day as a surgeon. You know, he was 25 years of, you know, of working on smaller cases and building up and maybe trying something, clinical trial, some sort of surgery that was a minor tweak to what they did before in order to build up to the point where he could literally have his hands inside of my body trying to get this cancer out and tying up my intestines, not my intestines, but the arteries replacing, you know, this artery with that artery and removing most of my, you know, most of my liver, it didn’t start there.

Josh: He built his way up. He was daring a little surgery at a time to save other people before he got to me. You know, that’s what allowed him to have the confidence. And he studied and he worked. He put in more time, more effort in his skill and his craft so that he could be more daring. You know, you’re not going to jump into real estate investing and just go buy a property with no education. So part of being daring is doing some of the research, whether it’s hang gliding, whether it’s, you know, jet skiing, whatever that is, climbing a mountain, whatever it is, do the research and get comfortable with that risk and then go.

David: I agree. I don’t want anyone to go beyond like, yes, go beyond your comfort zone and you said it really well. Go one step two steps beyond your comfort zone. Don’t go to five. And I found that out the hard way. I push myself, I’ve probably done a couple of flights over the Himalayas that I shouldn’t have done. And I was afraid. I’ve been afraid of abandonment for a lot of my life. It’s, I lost someone when I was young. And so I get triggered by the fear that I’m going to lose my partner and I would be like I know I’m going to be daring, I’m going to date in open relationships, I’m going to date a woman who’s in love with somebody else and I’m just going to be daring and open my heart. Hey, I found my limits.

David: If you go five steps beyond your comfort zone, we’re talking about trauma and there’s no need for that. Just parent yourself as you would parent a child and nudge them, encourage yourself and get out there and do the things that feel right for you. And if it feels way beyond where you’re at right now, you don’t have to do it. Work yourself up to it or never get around to it. That’s fine. It’s the mindset of I want to do what’s right as a self-expression so that I feel better about myself. And then if I get a result from it, that’s a bonus.

Josh: That’s fantastic. So David, step number three is caring. Truth was one, daring was two, caring is three. So help me understand again, when you’re talking to your audiences, you’ve talked to over 150,000 coaches from around the globe. Caring, right? Caring about other people, caring for self. Tell me more about what this means to you.

David: Yeah. Well, correction, I haven’t talked to all of those coaches around the globe. That was my mailing list. So those are the people that that wanted information from me.

Josh: But you’ve served them, you’ve emailed with them.

David: I’ve served them, yes. Talking to all of them would have taken some time. With the caring and this came from my lesson when I like when I explore these open relationships to see where my limits were, to see how open my heart could be, to see if I could not own someone or feel like I’m possessing someone. I wanted the experience. I went into deep depression and anxiety. And that’s how I realized that I’ve been the spiritual warrior. But I had to honor myself as well. And I had to honor the limits. And I like to think I have no limits, that I can do absolutely anything.

David: And now I feel like I’ve taken on more humility. That’s not true. My psyche will whack me over the head with a big piece of wood if I go too far outside of my comfort zone. So that’s where the caring came in. And I also realized this applies to business and relationships. If you don’t care for your business if you’re not doing your taxes, you’re not keeping systems in order and you’re filing an order. If you’re not keeping in touch with your employees and ask them how they are doing every now and then, you’re going to lose that business. You’re going to have things bite you on the ass. This is a fairly common sense principle that we just might miss in the excitement to be more truthful and more daring. And they’re like really take on growing things and creating things.

David: There’s a time for nurturing and completing and caring. And this includes my body. I’ve now revamped all my nutrition and I no longer eat sugar and I might green smoothies for myself and includes taking walks and getting some aerobic activity. This is how I define it. You define it however you want, but how can you care for your body so that it’s not going to bite you on the ass in five or 10 years and you’re going to have some real problems? How can you care for the people and the relationships around you to deepen the quality of them so that you have a deeper connection which leads to happiness and health. We think it’s success, I understand that it’s kind of a myth. It’s a myth. We think if I’m successful, things will be good and I’ll be happy. It doesn’t happen that way.

Josh: It doesn’t happen that way. I mean, you see so many people who are successful that are worth hundreds of millions of dollars who are divorced, depressed, go through abuse. They do self, you know, deprecating things to themselves. They do, they’re not happy because I don’t know why for them. But the overarching theme is they’re often alone, right? They’re not taking care of themselves. They’re not taking care of other people. There’s no relationship there. So then all of a sudden they’re, you know, way out of shape, their body’s breaking down they’re, you know, they’re hundreds of pounds overweight.

Josh: They’re just not doing all the things that they should do because they gave up their life for business or their life for money or life for success as opposed to I’m going to take care of the business, I’m going to take care of the people around me in the success will come, it might be a long game, which is great. I’m playing the long game. and it will come. I had a friend, David that once told me, he said the cure that we was talking about personal self care was talking about anxiety, depression, self doubt. And he said the cure for anxiety, depression and self doubt is self care, right? Self care. So you get back to, you know, alcohol, caffeine, sugar, working out and being in very healthy relationships is what that all comes back to. What are your thoughts around that?

David: Well, I just love that the, you know, the whole idea that the antidote for self doubt, self care. I think that’s beautiful. A way to wrap this up and I know at the time I have to go in a couple of minutes and prep for, but a way to wrap this up is three pillars, truth, bearing and caring. These are three, these are not the only principles in life that are going to have your life be great, but these are the three that have resonated the most for me and I’ve seen it in others. So pick one. If you want to make this conversation practical in your life and real and not just entertainment, then pick one and say, all right, I’m going to increase my truth and pick a way that you’re going to do that. Maybe someone will help hold you accountable for that.

David: Or you might pick daring and say, I’m going to do that exercise with a pen and the paper and see where I might be holding myself back. And maybe I’ll circle one or two and I’ll do them this week. Or you might pick caring. So you know what, there’s a relationship that could use nurturing, there’s a part of my business is not being cared for or there’s a part of my system that is not being cared for. I’m going to pick one thing of self care. That’s, I’m a coach. I’m biased towards action and making this be practical in your life. So I invite you to take one of those on and I really hope your life gets even better than it is now.

Josh: Fantastic, David. So if anybody wanted to reach out to you, the website PlayForReal.Life. Check that out. Any other places that our audience can connect with you, whether it’s a social media platform, email, website. If people want more information, where can they get ahold of you?

David: Thank you. Well that’s the one place PlayForReal.Life and I want listeners to know that I love doing discovery sessions with people. I don’t charge for these. I can’t say yes to everyone, but I can say yes to most people who apply. And there’s a big button on the website that says request a session and it’ll take you through a process that’s valuable in itself before you even get to booking my calendar and we’ll create a plan for your life and business. And if you want to go and implement that on your own, I hope you’ll let me know how it goes. And If we both agree that coaching could make a big impact on your life and work, then we can talk about how that works. Fantastic. So there you have it. David. Thank you so much for being with us today on accelerated investor. My pleasure. Thanks Josh.



You’ve been listening to Josh Cantwell and the Accelerated Investor Podcast. Leave a comment on our iTunes channel and let us know what you want to learn next, or who you’d like Josh to interview. While you’re there, give us some five star rating and make sure to subscribe so you can be the first to hear new episodes. Follow Josh Cantwell and his companies, the Strategic Real Estate Coach and Freeland Ventures on all social media platforms now and stay up to date on new training and investment opportunities to start your journey toward the lifestyle you’ve always dreamed of. Apply for coaching at JoshCantwellCoaching.com.

Finding success in your professional and personal lives is no easy feat; and it’s an endeavor that takes continuous learning and effort. So, while David Wood may not have all the answers to creating a successful life, he comes pretty darn close. 

Among many things, David is a business coach and motivational speaker who has been in the industry for more than 20 years. He started business consulting with Fortune 500 companies, and has expanded his horizons to include 1:1 life and business coaching. 

Along the way, David has acquired an impressive collection on insight on how individuals and businesses are able to achieve their versions of success. In this podcast, he shares some of these strategies and tips. 

He also explains some “black belt” leadership skills that are necessary for any manager, entrepreneur, or business leader. And, regardless of whether you are a real estate investor, a business owner, a parent, a spouse, a friend – or anyone in between – David has advice to help you practice “emotional Kendo” in your life, to strengthen your relationships and achieve your goals. 

Tune in to hear more about David’s three pillars for strengthening your relationships and pursuing your business goals…

What’s Inside:

  • David’s most important leadership lessons
  • Details on the 3 pillars of success: truth, daring, and caring
  • How David teaches his clients to use retroactive tracking
  • The 9 characteristics that David admires in a leader
  • David’s listening techniques for creating stronger business and personal relationships

Mentioned in this episode​