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.

So, hey, welcome back to Accelerated Investor and today I just want to talk to about something that’s been on my mind and something that’s really been to kind of tearing at me something I want to get done and I really focused on the last couple of weeks of doing. And the theme for today and what I want to talk you about is decide what you will stop doing. I remember my dad, you know, when he was really successful and running his employee benefits company, he told me, Hey Josh, you know, I’m going to volunteer at Patawah high school, the high school that I went to, which was a private Catholic Franciscan high school. And my dad said, I’m going to, you know, I’m going to volunteer to be on the board. When he was really proud of it, he was really happy, was going to be on the board, help set up kind of chart the future for that school.

Well, eight months later, 10 months later, or 12 months, and it came back to me he said, Josh, you know, being on the board at Patawah was not all. I thought it was cracked up to be. Matter of fact, there’s really nothing happening different today than a year ago. So I’ve decided to stop being on the board. I’ve decided to stop doing that. And it’s resonated with me now 15 years later to think about, you know, what am I going to stop doing? What am I going to eliminate from my life that is just not helping me fulfill my longterm goals? So in order to be successful, you have to eliminate things, okay? There’s many different books, there’s many different podcasts and different, you know, things that you may have heard.

But you know, to me, when I think of things that are not helping me fulfill my purpose, things are not helping me along my journey, I started to call those things leeches, right? Things that are leeching my time, leeching my energy, leeching from me and my family and leeching from our team. Things that just aren’t in aligned with what we want to do and who we want to be. So what leeches do you have in your life right now, right? If you sat down and wrote down all on a piece of paper on the left side, all the leeches that you have, things that you could just wish you could just give up and all the positive things that you’re doing or things that you want to do. There’s a direct correlation between the leeches in your life, in your business and the things that are positive. The leeches are pulling time, energy, and money away from those positive things in your life. So you need to decide today what are you going to stop doing? What leeches do you have that you’re going to get rid of? Literally chop off, cut off, stop doing so what people?

The first category of leeches or the first category of things that you need to stop worrying about or stop thinking about. The first category, there’s four categories is people. So ask yourself what people that you’re associating with, what people you spending time with that you need to just simply stop, stop spending time with, stop hanging out with them, stop associating with them if at all possible, okay. Number two projects. What projects are on your to do list that are not giving you energy that you’re not excited about, okay. What projects do you have that are things that you’re thinking like, this is just, I got started with this, like my dad who volunteered to be on the board and just thought this is not worth this anymore. That’s a project, right?

Number three, habits. What habits do you have that you need just stop things you need to stop doing? You know, do you smoke? Do you overeat? Do you have over anxiety? Maybe you’re not reading as much as you’d like to drink too much. You’re associating with the wrong people. You’re not getting up early enough. You’re not eating healthy enough. What habits do you have that’s a leech in your life? What habits do you have that you need to stop doing? And number four is activities, okay? Activities you need to stop doing right? Or activities in this case that you need to start doing right. And this, for me, comes down to energy. It comes down to movement. It comes down to body physiology. What can I start doing that’s different? And I’ll give you an example.

You know, when I started having kids couple of years ago, my kids started getting a little older. I found myself like I wanted to get back in the gym. When I first met my wife, I was 230 pounds I was 6% body fat. I was working out all the time strong as I’d ever be in my life? And I thought, you know, here I am. That was back when I was 30 now here I am at 43 years old. I had my 43rd birthday, a couple of about a month ago, month and a half. And I thought to myself, you know what, like I kind of get in the gym and do the same workout every time. And not only is it boring as shit, but it’s not helping me to rejuvenate my body, push my muscles, give me energy. And it’s just not enough variety, right? So I changed my activity and I said, this is an activity that I’m going to stop doing.

I’m not going to go to the gym without a plan. I’m not going to go to the gym or go for a run or go into my, workout room in my house and I’m not just going to go in there and flounder around. I’m not going to go in there and look at Facebook. I’m not going to go in there and watch TV. I’m not going to go in there and overly, you know, just lay on the floor and stretch around and kind of delay what I really need to be doing, okay. So instead, now I’ve got my plan that I rotate between four workouts, a chest, shoulders, and tricep workout, aback buys and calves workout, a legs workout and a cardio workout, which usually involves basketball, running agility. I do them one, two, three, four. Then one, two, three, four, then one, two, three, four, okay.

And every time I do like a chest, shoulders and triceps workout, I do something different. Every time I do a cardio workout or an agility workout, you know, typically with my basketball, I’m in my gym, I do something different. Instead of showing up and just saying, I’m going to go through the motions. I’m going to do something different. So what are you going to stop doing related to people, projects, habits, and activities? You know, what activities are you doing in your business, your investing business that are not producing a high rate of return? It’s not producing a high rate of return. Get rid of it. Stop doing it, okay. What activities or things are your team doing that’s not producing a high return? Stop doing it. Get rid of it, okay. What groups are you associated with that are stagnant or making very little progress?

What habits do you have related to eating drugs, alcohol, what time you eat during the day, what you’re not eating that you should be, what supplements you should be taking that you’re not, what vitamins that you’re should be taking that you’re not, okay? Instead of, you know, just ordering a pizza and then eating leftover pizza for three days. There’s so many different services out there that will allow you to just order premade foods, have it delivered to your house, add some water and throw it in the microwave, okay? Or premade foods that you just open up and you stirred up and you eat it, right? There’s so many ways to get good nourishment, good foods, vegetables, fruits, vitamins, minerals without just being like, aw man, I’ve got to have this can of soup again, or I’ve been so busy I get to eat yesterday’s leftovers again.

There’s so much technology out there. There’s so many options. There’s no reason for you to stay in that habit, okay? Now, one last thing I want to tell you about is, guys, this is a lifelong battle, right? We’re all like on this roller coaster of life, and you’re going to have a seasons of life where you do better at this than others. You’re going to have seasons of life where you feel like you’re totally dialed in. You’re going to have seasons of life that you feel like you’re associating with all negative people, all negative groups. You have tons of negative habits and you’re doing tons of negative activities. What’s important is that you recognize that you snap out of it and you make a plan for change. For me, that was my 43rd birthday, okay?

I had my 43rd birthday I woke up and I just said, you know what, I’m just going to start doing everything different. I’m going to go to different restaurants. I’m going to go to different workout facilities. I’m going to do different things with my kids. I’m going to go on different date nights with my wife. We’re going to go to new hotels, go on different vacations. We’re going to just do everything different and because we decided to stop doing the old boring, stagnant stuff, all of a sudden life is exciting. There’s lots going on. It’s cool, it’s fun, and it was just a decision to stop doing the things that we didn’t enjoy anymore.

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.