Josh Cantwell: So, hey there. Welcome back. This is Josh, your host at Accelerated Investor. And today we are going to talk about values and the values that you have created for your own life, the values that you project out to the world through your company, the values that you give to your residents at your properties, and the values that you hold dear with your own family. My guest today is Devin Durrant. Devin is a retired NBA basketball player, successful entrepreneur, real estate investor, and leadership expert. He is the author of the book called The Values Delta: A Small & Simple Way to Make a Positive Difference in Your Personal & Professional Life. He was a leadership consultant, teacher, and professor at BYU University. He played basketball for the Indiana Pacers. And today his focus is not only on continuing to optimize and develop his commercial real estate portfolio but as an inspirational speaker where he’s spoken around the world for the past 40 years. He helps leaders and entrepreneurs to help define their values, determine what they value, and then how to make that part of the fabric of their company through their culture.

And as we talk about in this interview, I heard a quote once from Dan Gilbert, the CEO of Quicken Loans and the owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, who once said, “If our team knows who we are, then they will know what to do and that is all about values.” Here we go with our latest interview on the Accelerated Investor Podcast with Devin Durrant.

[INTERVIEW]

Josh Cantwell: So, hey, Devin, listen, thank you so much for joining me today on Accelerated Investor. I’m super excited to have you on the show. I’ve been looking for this interview for a long time, so thanks for carving out a few minutes.

Devin Durrant: Oh, great to be with you, Josh. I’ve been involved in real estate for about 30 years, and I just wonder where you were 30 years ago. I love your podcast. I love your content. I had to learn a lot of things through trial and error that I could have learned through listening to you gathering tidbits of wisdom. So, I look forward to visiting with you today.

Josh Cantwell: Oh, man, I’m blushing. Thank you for that, Devin. I appreciate that. Thanks for saying that. So, listen, Devin, the book is out, The Values Delta. We’re going to talk about that. We’re going to talk about adding value to people’s lives but I just would love to hear when I’m getting to know somebody new and have them on the show, something that they’re personally passionate about, something that gets them up in the morning, something that they’re working on that really just gives them energy if they have to put in a long day 12, 15, 20 hours is the one thing that they’re passionate for that they could just keep doing, right, without any sleep. What’s that for you right now? What gets you going? What are you passionate for in today’s market?

Devin Durrant: My passion right now is helping others succeed. And I know that sounds a little cliché but let me give you some background. I’ve been very blessed as a real estate investor. I started full-time back in 1993, so almost 30 years in. And I was very driven to build and create something of value through my company. But now I’m at a little bit of a different stage in that my two sons work for me now and my passion is helping them succeed, helping them build their net worth, and give them all the knowledge that I can. And eventually, I guess I’ll have to cut them loose. I certainly don’t want to do that but that’s really my passion is, how can I help my sons be successful and provide for their families and for other people, and at the same time do similar things for my employees and other people that I associate with face-to-face or through the written word through my book? That’s my passion today is sharing the knowledge that I’ve gained, sharing the experiences that I’ve had that may be helpful to someone else.

Josh Cantwell: I love it. And, Devin, what about today’s marketplace? Like, from a real estate perspective, obviously, the cost of debt is higher. We’re in this inflationary market. But just overall, from your perspective as an entrepreneur, as an author, as an investor, as a father, what do you make of today’s market, and how has it impacted your investing strategy or your strategy in running your companies?

Devin Durrant: Yeah. Thank you for the question. I’m sure this has been said many times on this podcast is I think in every market there’s opportunity and it just looks different from year to year. So, how can you in a high-interest rate period find good opportunities? And it may be a little more difficult but, again, this is a tough business and oftentimes we’re looking for needles in haystacks but they’re still there. They’re there in up markets. They’re there in down markets. Personally, for me, I’m more in a hold pattern right now because we’ve been in a growth pattern for the last, let’s see, about five years. And so, right now, just take care of the assets, take care of our people, provide a great product, and to serve our customers best we can. All the while, we’re always looking for a new opportunity and probably not as aggressive as we normally are, but right now, still with eyes open but most of all, focusing on providing great service.

Josh Cantwell: Yeah. You mentioned in your book, The Values Delta, about adding value. We’re going to talk about that a lot. And from a real estate perspective, when you start to kind of have one of your pencils down moment and the acquisitions slow down, it’s a great time to begin adding value and really dialing in the operation of the business that you currently have. I also look at, just to add to your comment, that there’s always opportunity. Maybe three months ago, four months ago, I was talking to a commercial broker down in the Columbus market, just got off the phone with him, talked to him this morning. And three or four months ago, six months ago, he would say, “Yeah. Hey, Josh, write your LOI, and then we’ll do a tour.” Today, the message is, “Yeah. Come on down, man. Come down for a tour and then we’ll worry about the LOI.” So, months ago there probably would have been 100 possible buyers to these assets that we’re going to go see today.

Obviously, that’s changed but we have to keep in mind, right, Devin, that this interest rate environment, the Federal Reserve typically will start to reduce interest rates about 27 months after they first raised them. And they’re sort of raising rates back in February. So, we’re roughly six months in, let’s call it. So, we’ve got about 21 more months left. Then they’re going to start to reduce rates back down to spur the economy. So, if you can make it through this 27-month window and still buy the asset, if you’re a long-term investor, if you’re three years out, five years out, seven years out, ten years out, you like the asset, you like the area, this short-term debt structure really is just a short-term thing. You acquire it with a little bit higher cost of debt, but you plan on owning it for the long haul, that’s the kind of mindset that I’m in right now. That’s how the market’s affected me. But I love what you’re talking about with adding value, especially to your properties today, your team today. So, let’s pull back the onion on that, Devin. When it comes to value-add to the real estate, we talk about adding amenities, turning units, a better product, adding granite, stainless steel, dog parks, dog washing stations but really it goes well beyond that.

When you’re building a company, it’s really as a CEO is about adding value to everybody that’s in your organization from your residents to your staff, to your vendors and contractors. And ultimately, you’ve tried to capture that in this book, The Values Delta. So, when we talk about adding value to people, let’s first define that. When you think, Devin, of adding value high-level, what does that mean in your own words?

Devin Durrant: You know, let me back up just a little bit. For years, I lecture at Brigham Young University on how to add value to a real estate asset, to the property from single-family home to apartment complexes. And I would lecture on a semester-by-semester basis. So, I gave a lot of thought. How are the different ways that we might add value just to increase profit? And so, I had 100% financial focus. Over time, I thought maybe I’m missing part of it. Maybe what I need to think about as well is how do I add value to my employees? How do I help them become successes when they move on? How can we keep that human element and add value, build character, and help them again prepare for the future? And that was really the genesis of the book was how can you take it away from the physical asset and help people make a difference in their lives? The word delta for those financial people out there is simply the difference between two numbers. So, the delta between 100,000 and 150,000 is 50,000.

So, how are we essentially creating delta? How are we adding value? How are we making a positive difference in the lives of those people that we work with and that we serve? And so, that’s been one of my focus is to emphasize that because one thing, too, that becomes very clear is that as you add value to the people that you work with, there’s really a financial element there as well. You know, it’s much more important that we help our fellow human beings succeed and progress and grow but the natural outcome of that is you’re going to enhance the success of your company.

Josh Cantwell: No question about it. Devin, one of the talks I give is what I call the nine traits of elite entrepreneurs. And the ninth trait is what I call the business of business is the people. We all talk about I got to run my business. I got to run my business. Well, yes, you got to run your business but running the business is actually providing value to the people, whether it’s in the form of automation through software, that’s a form of adding value, whether it’s in a kind word of encouragement is adding value, whether it’s in maybe your staff that might be a lot of employees in the 50,000 to 150,000 range were worried about retirement. Maybe it’s in educating them about how to properly invest and save. Maybe it’s in, obviously, giving them more vacation time. They love that kind of thing but doing more company work functions and culture events so they feel more connected. Because anybody can go get a job, they make 100,000 now, go to the next job, and go make 115, right? But people are going to stay in your organization if there’s the added value, whether it’s work from home, maybe they have young kids.

So, these are all just some ways of adding value to people but really it starts with paying attention, right? As a CEO, each one of those employees in your business has a different need. And if you have your finger on the pulse of what they need, each one of them, you can add value to each one of them, but you have to care first, right? You have to care about the people in your organization to say, as a CEO, as a leader, “I’m going to pay attention to what this person needs versus that.” So, where does it start? Like, when you think and peel back the onion on the book, the values delta, and begin to create value for other people, other organizations, other properties from a CEO or a leadership perspective, what is the first thing or second thing or third thing that we can do to identify where and how to add value to somebody else’s life?

Devin Durrant: A beautiful question. That’s essentially what I try to do in the book is I ask three questions. The first question is, what are your values? And I’ll talk about that here in just a second. And then what do you value? You know, one’s a verb, one’s a noun. And then how do your values impact the things you value? And I want to go back to what you just said. You mentioned the importance of just a kind word to those you work with. I think that’s one of the things I’m trying to do is elevate the value of kindness. It’s a very simple thing but sometimes we struggle to simply have a kind word for one of our customers or one of our employees. Why not be more generous with the kind words that now sometimes we withhold? And that’s one of our company’s priority values is simply kindness. You also mentioned connecting with other people. And again, that’s another one of our priority values, the importance of connection. Again, it’s a value that is slipping. We clearly see that with the separation that sometimes takes place in the social media world and how can we create that personal connection?

So, those are values that we strive for. Most of my business is student housing and so we have a lot of coming and going and these people need to feel like they belong. These young people, they need to feel connected to their roommates, to the management of the property, and certainly connected as they pursue their educational goals. But those are two simple values that we have that have proven to add value. But I think the first step is just to take some time and say what really are our most important values in our company or just to an introspection experience? And what about myself personally, what are the most important values in my life and how are they impacting things that are near and dear to me?

Josh Cantwell: I love it. So, Devin, a lot of companies have talked about our mission statement, our values. Your question, though, around what do you value, right? So, if you were kind of a leadership consultant, let’s say, to my company or any of the listeners on today’s show, is that one of the first questions that you would ask us to begin thinking about in our organization is what do you value? Is that the way to create values that your company then hangs their hat on? Do I have that in the right order?

Devin Durrant: Yeah. Spot on. So, we think about that. If someone asked you, “What do you value?” well, generally, we’re going to say, “I value my family. I value my friends.” But there’s also going to be we’re going to arrive at a spot where I value my company. I value my business. And so, then the next question becomes, “Okay. What are your values and how do they impact your family? How do they impact your friends? How do they impact your business?” And going back to a thought I had earlier is what if one of your values is simply just cheerfulness? How is cheerfulness going to impact your relationship with your children? What about with your peers? And if you have a cheerful atmosphere in the workplace, how does that resonate with those that you interact with? And very simple thing, “Hey, look, let’s try to be more cheerful around here.” It will have an impact. It may be small but that’s my book is about is making small, positive differences with minimal effort, frankly. But from my company, one of our priority values is cleanliness.

And so, we’re constantly emphasizing on the cleanliness of our properties, how do the walks look, how do the landscaping look, how does the exterior of the property look? And then inside the property, how are we maintaining a cleanliness level that’s going to be pleasing? And for us, again, we’re trying to please our direct customer, which is the student, but we’re also trying to please the mother of the student who may be wanting to know how does this apartment look? Will it stand up to the standards of some of the parents of our residents? So, as we do that, that cleanliness value it’s small but again ultimately that’s going to land on the bottom line because people are going to think, “Hey, this is a desirable place and I want to live there,” and we’re going to fill up and get the returns that we’re hoping for.

Josh Cantwell: I love it. Devin, I actually have a quote on my desk, which is just on the other side of my office over here. It’s from Dan Gilbert, right? I’m a big fan of Dan Gilbert. They won a championship with LeBron James, Cleveland Cavaliers.

Devin Durrant: Sure.

Josh Cantwell: Quicken Loans and lots of other companies. I think he owns like 30 or 40 companies or 50 companies, some entrepreneur incubator that he started over Detroit that led over to Cleveland. So, I’m a huge fan of Dan Gilbert. And once he said, “If our team, if our staff, if our culture knows who we are, then they’ll know what to do.” Okay. I had that sitting on my desk right over there. So, this conversation’s reminding me about that quote. If they know who we are, they’ll know what to do. So, for a direct example of what you just described, if they know who we are, meaning we want to have really clean buildings, cleanliness is a value of ours. We want to have the grounds be cleaned, the landscaping edged, the commons vacuumed, smells like Clorox, it smells clean. The units are clean. Well, then, if the staff, the property management, the landscaper, the cleaner know that that’s one of the core values that’s permeated down through the organization.

And they’re just there on a random Tuesday at 10:43 a.m., and they’re walking the grounds and there’s no leadership there. There’s no boss there. There’s nobody to oversee them. There’s nobody telling them, “Hey, go pick this up. Go pick that up. Go pick that up,” but the value that’s been permeated, that’s been talked about, that’s been accepted within the organization is cleanliness then that person, the property manager, the leasing agent, the cleaning person, the landscaper, they’re going to know this is important to the organization. This is important to me. It’s important the leadership. I’m not going to step over that cup. I’m not going to step over those cigarette butts. I’m going to clean them, right? And then you don’t have to worry so much about being the boss that’s just sitting over top of somebody’s shoulder, over their shoulder, telling them what to do every day because you’ve educated them about the value. I think that description sounds like exactly what you’re talking about, right? We teach it at the company level. We want it to bleed all the way down through every employee so that then when they have a choice to make, they’re making the choice that leads back to the company value. Right?

Devin Durrant: Yeah, absolutely. Two quick stories. My son one time he said to me, “Dad, I was at the supermarket the other day and there is a piece of trash on the floor there. So, I reached it down and picked it up just out of habit.” And so, those kinds of things become part of us that we want the world to be a better place and not just on our property but look out for other people’s properties as well. I remember a time when I was considering buying some properties, it was a $10 million plus acquisition. And I was walking and doing a property inspection with the chief maintenance guy. And as we walked along, there was a piece of cardboard there on the walkway and he reached down, picked it up, put it in his pocket. And I thought, “Okay. I’m going to do this deal.” Because of that one simple act, I knew that there was a culture there that cared about the property and it was reflected in these properties that we eventually buy. But it was that one small act that nudged me and said, “Yeah, I’m going to spend over $10 million to buy this place because I want to continue those kinds of values but now I know I’m not starting from zero.”

Josh Cantwell: Got it. I love it. So, we’re starting to kind of take a couple of steps back here. So, I asked the question earlier, like, we’re having trouble in an organization creating our value, principles in our organization. We’re going to ask ourselves and our team and our staff just to brainstorm around this idea, what do you value? Starts with that. So, again, if you were a leadership consultant in an organization or talking to one of our listeners, we would sit down, and then actually execute on that meeting or that talk, that discussion. What do we value within our organization? Again, cheerfulness, cleanliness. What are some of the other responses that you’ve heard within your own organization or other organizations that you’ve coached and led? What are some of the things that they value? Give us some examples or maybe some examples that are out of the box that maybe you heard from one organization, you’re like, “Wow, that’s a new one.”

Devin Durrant: Yeah. I’ll just share a few quickly. One value is competence. You know, we are a company of competence. And how can we help each other be more competent? Because generally, when we bring someone new into the organization, they’re going to have a certain skill set. But how can we help them develop their skill set and then add to that? How can we help them be more competent? Another one might be communication. Again, I marvel at how often I don’t communicate clearly, and I think, “Wow. That was so clear in my head. How did I not convey that better?” So, I’m always striving to enhance my communication and I see that so much in other people, in other organizations. And I think we struggle sometimes in our verbal communication but maybe more important in today’s world is through our written communication so much through emails and text messages. What kind of feeling do we convey about our company as we communicate with them both verbally and written? You know, I mentioned earlier the importance of connection. How are you connecting with your customer? We emphasize a lot the importance of first impression.

So, when you walk through our doors, what is your first impression and how do we connect with you in a way that’s meaningful to you, in a way that’s sincere? And those are just some examples of values that could be embraced by a company or individuals. I think if any individual that I would talk to, I would hope that communication would be part of their list of priority values. I just think it’s critical in all aspects of our lives but it’s an easy way to advance your career. I’ll give you one quick example. You know, my son, we talk a lot about communicating clearly and eliminating things like “like, like, like” and the “uhms” and the hesitations, and the “I means,” and speaking clearly. So, when he was coming out of college, he graduated in finance and he ended up being hired by Google, Intuit, and Facebook. He went through their interview process, which is an extremely difficult process. You can imagine the people that apply for jobs at those companies and he ended up spending some time at Facebook more than anything else. But he feels like the reason they hired him was because in the interviews, he was able to communicate clearly, communicate in a professional manner. And so, that’s a value that we talk about a lot in my company.

Josh Cantwell: Yeah. I also relative to communication, for me personally, one of my pet peeves is the word “always” and “never.” Those doesn’t exist. Like, you walk on our property like, “This is never clean.” Like, no, it’s clean. It was probably cleaned yesterday actually but just today there’s a Frito bag on the ground or there’s a solo cup that just didn’t make it to the trash. Or “always” like you’re always mean to me or you’re always negative. People are not always anything and they’re not never anything. So, I’ve tried to eliminate those two words from my communication because things are, oh, and this is really advice from my mom. My mom’s very wise, 75 years old and she’s seen a lot and lived through a lot. And she’s married to an entrepreneur, my dad, for 53 years before he passed. But she said, “Look, just there is no always and never. In 75 years, people change, things change, properties change, things change. There’s no always and never.” So, by removing that, you start to soften some of these, I guess, more violent or aggressive words because you say like, “She’s never on time.” Well, that’s probably not the case. She’s probably on time most of the time. Maybe she’s late twice a month. And that’s the time you recognize that she’s late. Or the day that she’s late, she also might stay late and put in extra hours later, right?

So, you don’t know. People are not always anything. So, communication to us is a big deal, too. And I think eliminating those two words is key to being a good communicator, is to recognize people’s value, what they do. And also, when there is fault to be found, it’s not an always or never game, right? Generally, if people are competent, like you talked about, Devin, they’re doing a pretty good job most of the time. So, let’s eliminate some of that stuff from our language. Anyway, I just had to go down that…

Devin Durrant: That’s a great point, Josh, and very well said. It reminds me, Ben Franklin wrote a book called Book of Virtues and he talks a lot about communication and in a similar vein with always and never just about being humble as we express our opinion that we might be wrong on occasion and always recognize that don’t be so definitive in some of the statements that we make.

Josh Cantwell: Right. Agreed. So, let’s say we have this conversation with our staff or with our family. Maybe it’s our spouse, maybe it’s our kids. We’re creating some values around our family or around our organization. And we ask ourselves, okay, what do you value? And we come up with a group, let’s say maybe 3 to 7 values that our organization or our family or even ourselves are going to kind of hang our hat on. These are our values. What, again, kind of advice would you give around implementation of that or delivery of that so that it really becomes part of the fabric of your organization, your family, yourself? Because a lot of people will take and say, “Oh, this is our mission statement. Here’s our values.” They put them up on a wall and then they never look at them again. And the organization acts the exact opposite of the values that they just wrote down. So, what about the implementation, the execution, and then having that become part of the fabric of the company? What does it take to actually make that happen?

Devin Durrant: Josh, I feel like I could hire you as a PR consultant for my book because that’s exactly what the book is, is it lays out the pattern to do that and understand what we value and what are our values. And there’s a story in the book that talks about an executive and he’s asked, what are your corporate values? And he’s able to name a couple but he can’t remember the rest. He said, “Look, but they’re posted on the wall in our entryway.” So, oftentimes, we outline our values and then pretty much forget about them. And so, what I try to do in the book is to say simply, “Take one thing that you value and let’s say that’s your customer base, and then take one of your values, which might be gratitude.” So, we’re a company of gratitude. One of the things we value is our customer base. All right. For the next week or two or month, we’re simply going to focus on how we can be more grateful to our customer base. How are we going to do that internally? How are we going to express that to the customer? How might they recognize that?

And so, just take a small bite rather than to say, “Hey, we’re going to focus on these ten values,” well, we’re not going to focus on any of them. But it becomes very simple when we have a list of, say, five things that we value. And again, one is our customers. And then we have a list of maybe five values, one being gratitude. So, for that brief period, we’re going to make sure our customer base recognizes how grateful we are for their business. And we’re going to do it in several different ways. And we’ll have a conversation together and we’ll outline all the different ways that we can highlight and prioritize this value of gratitude during this brief period. And at the end, we’ll assess that. And what we’re looking for was, did it make any difference or was delta created? And in the book, there’s a grading system, very simple grading system where you say, “Here’s our starting point. This is the grade we give ourselves as it relates to this value and this thing that we value being our customers.” And then at the end of that period, whatever you designate, you give yourself a grade. And did that grade improve?

And hopefully, obviously, we hope there’s improvement. There may be times when it makes no difference. But generally speaking, simply by focusing on one value as it relates to something that we value, you’re going to find deltas created, positive things are going to happen. Some things will be measurable. You might even see a difference on the bottom line. And some things they won’t be. You won’t be able to measure it, but it’ll just be a feeling of, “Hey, that was a positive thing.”

Josh Cantwell: I love it. Devin, listen, this is a big question I just thought of just as we’re talking. So, I don’t know. This might be a whole another podcast we have to record around this topic.

Devin Durrant: Let’s do it.

Josh Cantwell: We might have to keep this one short but the world is in a weird place, right? And I think every five years you could say that. My mom said, “Hey, Josh, every five years I was married to your dad for 53 years before he passed and every five years I felt like I was married to a different man.” In our country, in the world, every five years, political cycle changes, feels like the country’s changing. United States is changing. The world is changing. Sometimes I feel like our country in the world in general has no values. Like, we don’t know as a country what we’re about. And I’m starting to think was we’re talking I’m like, man, if there was ever a way from a political perspective or a country leadership perspective that we could identify values as a country that the country believes in, whether it’s education, right, education of the young especially, but continued education, that’s how you lift people out of poverty, that would probably solve a lot of some of this back and forth conversation of the rich are paying all the taxes. We’ve got to use that money to help other people get educated.

I don’t know why I just thought of that, but I just think like our country, if you’d ask what’s the United States all about, people are going to say freedom, freedom of choice, freedom to make our own decisions. And then sometimes I think that goes so far to the left or so far to the right that we forget about what do we value as a country? What can keep us connected? What can keep us on the same path? You know, probably let’s say the middle 50% of our country is generally in alignment. We value a lot of things. Then it might be 25% to the far right, 25% to the far left. They have different types of values. You can’t please everybody. So, you look at the United States as a whole, the world as a whole. Getting these people to now rally around values and I use this as an example because if we can do it in a smaller organization, 5 people, 10 people, 20 people, 30 people in our organization, we can have a larger impact on the world, right?

So, this is really to me about how do we have a larger impact on the world by identifying values within our own family, within our own lives, within our own organization, and then taking that out to the world and saying, “Here’s what we value. If you do business with us or if you’re part of our family, here are the things that we care about.” That’s the way you ultimately change the world is one small bit at a time, right? Because changing the world as a whole is just so difficult. So many people go in so many different directions. But ultimately, I do think kind of under a little bit of a rant here but I ultimately think that if we could hang our hat and say, “In this country, our values are these seven things, plus maybe these other things that everybody else cares about. Here’s what we really are about,” I think we’d be marching in a much more seamless way together, right, even on that big of a scale. So, sorry to rant there but what are your thoughts on those comments?

Devin Durrant: I love what you just said. That’s again in my book that one of my invitations is let’s have more conversations about values. And I think simply by highlighting our values, it makes us step back and think a little bit, “How am I living true to my values?” And we can do that on a small basis, certainly in our own lives, in our own groups, in our own companies. But I love the broader picture. How do we do that across the country? How do we do that across the world? And just for one example, we are called the United States of America. That’s a value, unity. And, boy, I’d love to hear that conversation about, yeah, we have our differences and I think our differences can be healthy most of the time but where’s the common ground? Where are the values that we share? And what are the things that we all value? And how can we use these common values that we share to enhance what we value again? If we value freedom, what are the elements? What are the values that will lead to freedom or unity? You know, you think about the value of service. Well, what if we all had a greater desire to serve our neighbor, to serve our fellowmen? How would that impact unity?

The conversation is endless because values, that’s a long list of values that we could discuss but that’s part of the conversation. I love your idea to think about. Oftentimes, Josh, what we do is we say, “Well, these are our values and our values are important to us.” We use the term values a lot, but then we never define what are the values that are behind the word that you keep using, which is values. Let’s look at those one-by-one and how might we magnify them and what impact are we striving for as it relates to the things we value. But again, on a broad basis, I love it because I think it would make a difference. It would create delta down to us as individuals. Sometimes we feel a little bit helpless. You know, what can I do to make a difference? Well, this is just a simple formula where you can make a difference in your own life. And as that happens, those people that are near and dear to you, they’ll feel that as well and benefit from the efforts that you might make individually. But thank you for going down that path because I feel strongly about what you’re saying.

Josh Cantwell: Yeah. I’m even thinking kind of as we wrap up about, yeah, I coach a lot of sports. I coach a lot of club volleyball, a lot of young girls, high school and middle school, and have this conversation with them. I’m about to come up on my next club season and we’re going to start tryouts at the end of October and then we go into the club season. The club season is pretty long. It’s actually about anywhere from 7 to 9 months long. I’m with this group of ten young girls coaching them and I’m thinking now like, “Well, what are our values as a team? Like, are we going to be a great serving team? Are we going to be a great communicating team? Are we going to spike the volleyball really hard? Are we going to pick each other up when somebody is like on a bad streak?” And if you come up with that at the beginning of season and say, “These are the five values that we have as this team for the next eight months,” then when you’re playing really well, my bet is that you’re playing in line with, in sync with those values. And when you’re not playing well, when you’re losing a lot of games or losing tournaments, I could go back to those values and say, “Girls, listen, these are the things we identified that these were all values as a team. And we’re not doing that right now, and that’s why we’re failing.”

And you could look at that as an organization or as a family and say, “One of our values as a family is communication. And lately, we’ve been yelling and screaming at each other. We’ve not made time for each other to talk. We’ve not made the effort to hear each other out. Everybody thinks they’re right. Nobody thinks they’re wrong.” All these things come up. We’re out of line with our values. If we get back in line, the system is going to be more connected. The family is going to be more connected. The organization’s going to be more connected. The 15-year-old volleyball team is going to be more connected because this is what we’re all about, the values. That’s what I see the benefit of this conversation. So, listen, for our audience, the book is called The Values Delta: A Small & Simple Way to Make a Positive Difference in Your Personal & Professional Life. The website is TheValuesDelta.com written by our guest today, Devin Durrant. Devin, listen, fantastic stuff today. I really appreciate you carving out some time for our audience and sharing, and look forward to having you back on the show again soon.

Devin Durrant: That sounds great. Good luck with that volleyball team. I have a 14-year-old granddaughter who’s playing volleyball. I wish her team would sit down and have that conversation. What are our values? What are we striving for? And so, if you need a second witness there, Josh, just one with the team, give me a call. I’ll give them a little pep talk on the importance of values and working together as a team. And thank you for the opportunity to visit with you today. I’ve enjoyed our time together.

Josh Cantwell: Yeah, absolutely, Devin. I’m going to take you up on that. The trials are coming around the corner. We’ll have our team formed up in November. We’ll have you on a Zoom call with the girls. That’ll be great. Thanks so much for being here, Devin. And to all of our audience, thanks for joining us today. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Leave us a rating, review, comment. We so much appreciate that and we’ll talk to you next time. Take care.

Devin Durrant: Thanks.

[CLOSING]

Josh Cantwell: Well, there you have it, guys. Listen, I so much appreciate you hanging in there for that entire interview. And if you’re serious about your own life, your own family, your own business organization, take this conversation very seriously. Go ahead and get Devin’s book, The Values Delta, at TheValuesDelta.com and learn how to not only define your values that you live by personally or within your family but also how to use those values to build a better, bigger, more profitable organization. If you enjoyed this interview, please open up your phone right now. I would be so grateful to all of you who have given us ratings, reviews, comments, wherever you get your podcasts, wherever you get your videos. Go ahead and do that right now from your phone. And also, don’t forget to smash down on the subscribe button so you never miss another episode of Accelerated Investor.

So, for those of you looking to take your real estate investing portfolio over to the next level and looking to pivot from residential investments to cash-flowing apartment buildings, go ahead and apply to be a member of the Forever Passive Income Mastermind at JoshCantwellCoaching.com. There you’re going to find more information and be able to apply to be interviewed, to be accepted into my Forever Passive Income Mastermind, Coaching, and Partnering Program. Go visit JoshCantwellCoaching.com.