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 your investing with The Accelerated Investor Podcast.

So, hey, welcome back to Accelerated Investor. I am excited to be with you just by myself today. I just got home a few days ago from the Tony Robbins event, Unleash the Power Within down in Miami and I got to spend an awesome five days with just me and my wife connecting and having fun and sharing goals and talking about the good, the bad and the ugly in our relationship and in our lives and our businesses. And I wanted to just pass along to you my two big takeaways from this five day retreat. And I went to UPW in New Jersey back in August, 2017 had an absolutely amazing time and learned a ton of great stuff. And then actually beginning in the early part of 2018 a bunch of things in our personal lives, relationships and in business started to kind of go wrong. My wife got sick. Has had multiple surgeries.

I broke off my business partnership with my brother. Some of our businesses were flourishing and other parts of our businesses were really hurting. And for the past two years it’s been quite a bit of chaos actually. But in the middle of the chaos, we’ve accomplished a ton. We’ve raised over $35 million of private money. We own over 2,400 units of apartments. We’ve created 9%, 10% and 11% returns for our investors, quarter of a quarter, a quarter for the last four years in a row. It’s been an amazing time to be in the middle of what I consider the abyss of business and the abyss of my relationship with my wife and the abyss of my relationship with my brother. But at the same time accomplish a tremendous amount of positive things. And so I was reflecting back on what I learned about Tony Robbins and Unleash the Power Within two years ago.

And then reflecting again on what I learned this time around. And the, the funny thing is, is it was the exact same material two years later. It was the exact same content, different experience, different venue, different arena, different people, but the pretty much the exact same content, other than the Pitbull concert, which we got to see, which was pretty awesome. Pitbull by the way, is an amazing story. I encourage you to learn more about him and his upbringing as an immigrant and all the things he’s accomplished in the face of tremendous adversity. And that’s what leads me to what kind of sticks out about these two events. And also, I’m going to tell you the two notes that I took that kept coming back to me over and over and over and over those five days down in Miami and then over the last two weeks since I got home.

And the first one is that I was going to decide that I was going to live in a positive state. I was going to live in a beautiful state, a positive state of mind no matter what. And it’s interesting over the last two years generally I’ve been pretty positive generally, even though there’s been a lot of chaos and things going on. My dad has Parkinson’s, my kids are growing up and both my daughters, you know, have to have therapy, physical therapy now for some things that they’re dealing with physically. So we’ve had a lot of different things going on, but generally I’ve had a pretty positive state of mind. So what resonated with me was that even though I didn’t really know it, I had made the decision to live in a very positive state of mind in spite of all of the challenges.

And the second thing that Tony said that resonated with me was this comment. When he said, well, what if everything that happens to you and for you is a gift? Whether it’s from God, if you believe in God, if you have a religion, whether you’re spiritual, you believe it’s the universe, whatever it is, what if everything that happened to you was a gift? Everything that was good was a gift. Everything that was a challenge was a gift. Everything that was negative was still a gift. Everything that some new diagnosis, some new relationship, somebody does you wrong, somebody steals from you, somebody talks behind your back. What if everything that happened to you was a gift? And I started thinking about, you know, in August of 2017 like everything that was going on in my life seemed just absolutely perfect. We’re making just boatloads of money.

We’re impacting thousands and thousands of people. We’re doing live events with Damon John and Kevin O’Leary and Barbara Corcoran and Jack Canfield and Donald Trump Jr and you know, Kevin Harrington, all these amazing speakers that agreed to come on our stage and on our podcast. And we’re flipping properties and all these things is great. That was the first time I went to UPW in August of 17. Now here we are almost two years later. And the whole time in between the whole two years in between, it was almost pure chaos. And during that time, you know, definitely was living in a positive state, but there were days where I just was like, God, this really sucks. And I found myself, you know, drinking a little bit more scotch than normal and maybe not jumping out of bed with a ton of excitement, maybe not, you know, staying at work as long as I should have.

And even though I was living in a positive state, you know, the circumstances around me were so piled up and so negative and so many different things to deal with that, you know, I didn’t really know how to deal with them. So I’d often leave work early or show up late or drink too much scotch or, you know, take more time off and just generally wasn’t as positive as usual. But so there’s two lessons here, I think. One is, even though I wasn’t as positive as I used to be, I was still living in a positive state, which allowed me to battle through all of that negativity. And the second thing is now that I look back over the last two years and I feel like we’re coming out of the muck in my personal relationships and some challenges in business, that everything that I learned over the past two years now, all the things that I thought were negative, all the things that I thought were a challenge, all the things that I was really upset about, all the things that I didn’t want to go through.

Now I look back and think, wow, first of all, like, good job, right? Good job to you and your wife and your business and all your employees and staff to get through all that. And secondly, it takes me back to everything that happens is a gift because now I have a whole new set of rules, a whole new set of principles, a whole new set of things that we learned over the past two years that I didn’t know two years ago. So every single one of those challenges, good, bad, ugly, whatever is something that I’ve learned from. And as I go into 2020 I realized that now that’s a gift.

And so again, the two things that stand out to me is I made a decision that I was going to live in a positive state no matter what. And secondly, everything that happened is a gift. And because I was living in a positive state and I was learning as I was going and now because I’m still in a positive frame of mind, a positive state, that everything that happened over the last two years, I can truly say with all authenticity that really was a gift because of all these things that happened to us that I can now implement into my life, into my businesses, into my relationships and into my partnerships going forward that I know that are creating new guardrails, creating new frameworks for future investments, future relationships. And I thought to myself, you know, if I continue to live in this positive state of mind, this beautiful state, no matter what, what would happen to me, what would I have going forward? If I hit another part of my life where I had this positive state of mind and I realized that everything happened was a gift, but maybe these challenges don’t all pile down on me at the same time, maybe there maybe there aren’t a lot of challenges.

Maybe we’re on the upside of the roller coaster ride. Maybe things are going really well and I’m still continuing to live in a positive state. What would happen if we were on the other end of the chaos, which I feel like we’re on an upward trajectory and I was still living in a positive state of mind and I was believing that everything that happening was a gift. What would actually happen in that frame of mind? I started to write down some notes I wrote down and have a better, more fulfilling relationships. I’d have a closer, even more engaged relationship with my wife. I’d be less critical of others. I’d be less stressed, I’d meet cooler, more fun, more successful people that’d be more open to ideas and strategies and dialogue. My family would be closer.

The people I’m around would be able to trust me and talk to me more openly about their issues because I was living in a positive state of mind. I’d be a better problem solver. My wife and my kids and I would all have more fun. I’d make five times the amount of money I’d be able to impact more people. I’d be able to lift other people up who are having problems, confidence issues or self esteem issues. I’d feel free. I’d feel successful and I’d be excited about the future. Those are all things that I just wrote down in my notes. I was taking notes throughout the event and the two weeks since I came back and I started to continue to think about and ask myself the question, what if you continue to just only live in a positive state? Number one and number two, what if you continue to believe that everything that happened to you was a gift?

Everything that happened to you was something you could learn from every time an employee did something right or did something wrong or you hired a new person or you fired a new person or somebody resigned or you made a big sale, or you spoke at an event or you totally bombed on a podcast or did well on a podcast, or you had a big affiliate promotion or an affiliate promotion that bombed, or you made money on a real estate investment or lost money, or you invested in a new apartment building. Every single one of those experience you could say is either good or bad, like losing money on a deal is not good, but what if everything that happened was a gift? You know, I had a contractor this past year that’s still $40,000 from me, set up the project back almost six months and stole $40,000 of real money.

What if that was a gift? What if me breaking off my partnership with my brother Mark is a gift. As much chaos as that sort of caused in our personal relationship. And I’ll tell you more about that some other time, but what if that was a gift? What if my dad’s Parkinson’s, like people think like, Oh my God, your dad has Parkinson’s. How could that possibly be a gift? Well, I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s a gift. It certainly doesn’t feel like a gift. But what if I continue to tell myself and truly believe that it’s a gift?

What if I believe that, you know, you know, I haven’t traveled really much for two years and there’s a lot of business opportunities that I’ve missed out on. There’s a lot of business opportunities in places I could have sold more products or had more influence or had a bigger following. I could have been on more stages and more podcasts and done more speaking, but that would have required more travel. And so what if me staying home for the past two years and spending time with my kids and coaching their volleyball, their basketball, their football, being there for them when my girls needed to go through therapy and being there for my wife when she wasn’t feeling well and being there for my father, what if not traveling and giving up some of the business opportunities became an incredible gift because I was able to engage with my wife and kids, engage with my parents, talk to my brothers.

So what if you decided, let me ask you a question, and this is, you know, one of the questions that Tony Robbins asks at his events. I’ll just pass this along to you because I think it has an enormous impact on me in my life is what if, go ahead and write down what if you lived in a beautiful positive state no matter what, what would happen in your life and what if everything that happened to you was a gift. And if you looked at everything that happened to you in your life as a gift, how would that impact your life? That’s your homework. Take those two questions. Again, they’re not, my questions are actually questions I learned at Tony Robbins event, Unleash the Power Within, but I thought they had a hugely impactful, you know, a huge, they were hugely impactful on my life and I really wanted to make sure that I pass those along to you as your friend, as your mentor, as somebody that just cares deeply about you and about our community.

I just want to make sure that I pass this along to you because it meant the world to me. So what if you made the decision to live in a beautiful, positive state of mind no matter what, what more could you accomplish? What more could you have and what if everything that happened to you was a gift? Think about that. Write that down. Let me know. I hope you enjoyed this podcast and this solo cast. It’s really been important to me to think about this and deliver this to you today. And if you’ve enjoyed it, let us know. Let us know what questions you have. I can’t wait to meet you, speak with you. Don’t forget to join our Facebook group and we’ll talk to you soon. Take care..

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