Practical ways to Teach Values and Raise Future Leaders with Cody Hofhine

Imagine giving your 12-year-old child the chance to share their family's values on a public stage. Cody Hofhine, a successful entrepreneur and owner of Joe Homebuyer, did just that and joins us to share the journey. This father of four talks about balancing his booming business with his biggest role yet - parenting.  Cody shares how he instills principles like humility, honesty, hope, and hard work into his family's everyday life, and the challenge of being present as a parent, and bringing them into your daily routines, even when you can't physically bring your kids to work.

The art of parenting comes with its fair share of trials. Cody shares his insight on letting children make mistakes in a supportive environment. We delve into the importance of teaching kids how to grow up while we're still around, and the transformative power of a loving, shame-free environment. Tune in as we navigate the tricky terrain of parenting, from teaching kids how to be adults to the idea of allowing them to fail forward, and becoming better individuals in the process.

In our fast-paced, success-driven world, we also touch on the elusive state of 'flow', the power of pausing before reacting, and the potential of positive affirmations to build confidence. Cody shares his belief in letting children discover their passions, the value of taking imperfect action over perfect planning, and maintaining a 'white belt' mentality. We wrap up with a practical discussion on instilling values in children. Don't miss this meaningful discussion with Cody as we explore the intricate journey of parenthood.

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Transcript

Cory Moore: 0:00

Welcome to the gentlemen project podcast.

Kirk Chugg: 0:03

And I'm Kirk Chugg. Cody Hofhine joins us today in the podcast studio. He is a referral from one of our best friends and great advocate for the gentlemen project, Randy Garn. Thank you, Randy, for continuing to send us just rock star people to be on the podcast. We have great expectations. Corey and I met Cody this morning and we're super excited already just to get into what you do, Cody, what you've done to become who you are, how you're connecting with your kids. He's an avid listener of the podcast, Neighbor to Tyler Dobbo, who's also been on the program before. Like I don't know how we don't know each other already, but now here we are.

Cody Hofhine: 0:43

And I need a suit.

Kirk Chugg: 0:44

So this is going to be a good day, a commercial construction project bit out, or whatever you need, we've got it.

Cody Hofhine: 0:52

We've got it. Yeah, Cody welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much. It's an honor to be here. Like I said, I've been. I was just referred to you to the podcast just a short time ago by Tyler Dobbo and ever since then I'm like man, this is. I got to meet these gentlemen Like this is a work that needs to be done, so I'm great Cool. Thank you.

Kirk Chugg: 1:10

Thank you. That means a lot. Hopefully hopefully more people feel that way than we know. We don't hear from you guys a lot. So if you're listening to the podcast and you like it, drop us a review, because that actually really helps us. Because people are looking for a new habit. They get over there to Apple podcasts and they'll find you find the five star ones right and we've got some great reviews. But if you're listening to this and you feel the same way Cody felt when he started listening to the podcast I'm going to do it at the beginning of the podcast this time and not the end Drop us a rating and a review. We really appreciate it. It helps more people find the podcast. So, cody, tell us a little bit about your family. I know you've got four kids right.

Cody Hofhine: 1:48

Four kids, yeah, four, no more. I think that's a that's put up for no more Nice. God sent us the ones that obviously have no manuals and a lot of energy. They have a ton of energy. So four kids 15, 13, 10 and six and it went boy girl, boy, girl. So there's some some nice little split there. Me and my wife we will be 19 years, married in December this year, so some fun stuff going on there.

Cory Moore: 2:16

Very cool.

Cody Hofhine: 2:17

And we live in South Jordan, utah, so here nice local and we love Utah, we love being here.

Kirk Chugg: 2:23

We have a lot of cool people in Utah.

Cody Hofhine: 2:24

Like we have a lot of cool people.

Kirk Chugg: 2:26

We've brought some people from out of town and they've come to the podcast studio. But there's just such a huge group of really great people that are qualified guests to be on our podcast, that live here. So we're like super blessed. I don't know that we could do this to the level that we've done it with local people. We're lucky in many other places, so that's awesome. Tell us about your business real quick. What do you do for a living? Where do you spend your hours outside of the home?

Cody Hofhine: 2:56

Yeah, outside of the home, right now, our focus is a company called Joe Homebuyer, so that is just a home buying business throughout the nation and then we franchised it, so this is something we've been doing since 2015. We're doing it just local and it's kind of like that. I'm the guy that when I eat something great or I buy a pair of shoes and they're just fit amazing, I'm the person that goes to the next day Like my business partner. Everything he wears now is because I come in and I'm like this excited guy is like you got to try these shoes or you got to try this food and in 2015, we came across something special in real estate.

Cody Hofhine: 3:32

We got a lot of market share here pretty quick and what we're doing and I'm just that guy that's like, hey, if this is working for us, let's test this in other markets, let's see if it can work in another market. If so, let's let's share this with people. I believe we're here to bless other people's lives, not just our own, and that was our whole mentality. Behind Joe Homebuyer was once we found something that work. We had the process, the system, tons of failure to get there. We wanted to share it with the world. So we now have about 80 franchisees throughout the nation that bought into our system and that we help provide all the process, the system and support to help them have those same blessings in their lives to serve their family and those that they want to serve.

Cory Moore: 4:12

Cool man. I like the name. It's pretty clever, super easy to remember, very easy, very straightforward.

Cody Hofhine: 4:18

The average Joe the average Joe in my home. That's super cool.

Cory Moore: 4:22

So you've always been a plumber right, you've always been entrepreneurial. Is that something that? Where did that come from?

Cody Hofhine: 4:29

That's a great question that comes from a mom and a dad that my dad was a small time contractor that just worked his tail off, but I got to see my dad when I needed to see my dad. He controlled his schedule and that was special to me. And I say this now with my eyes now. At the time it's just like you only know what life is right. But hindsight, looking back, I had so much time Me, my brother, my dad we'd always be at the sand dunes.

Cody Hofhine: 4:56

We'd always be out like also need come home and he has a motor home Like what my own is, like wait, what are you doing? He's like I sold the trailer, we're doing a motor home and we're going to Mesa Verde this weekend and he just planned. We'd always hang out and he had control of his time and freedom and he worked hard but he played harder, he loved. He loved making memories with, with all of us and my mom too. And so that's where it started is just watching him be able to control and have his freedom.

Cody Hofhine: 5:23

And then he would have us on the job at like eight years old and it could be just picking up screws and stuff from the job site and he'd pay us like a penny of screw and things like that, but then quickly he would get us up on ladders and start painting, and then he'd get us to the point where he's like we're not using tape. I want you to be so good that you're like a master at this, so I want you to cut in freehanded. And then he'd come in and he'd never get mad. He'd be like hey, you got some of that wall paint on the ceiling, you're going to have to touch up the ceiling again. Or hey, some of the ceiling paint got on the wall, you're going to have to touch up that wall again. And he just let us make mistakes and fell our way forward, and to that I owe my mom and dad a lot for just having us on the job site at a young age and learning with love behind what we got to do.

Kirk Chugg: 6:03

Yeah, that's that's cool experience, man. I wish more kids had that experience. So talk to some of the people who may be listening to the podcast, for, like, I can't bring my kid to work. We don't do manual labor. What do I do?

Cody Hofhine: 6:20

That's a great question. Let me think through this for a second. If I I get the blessing of having my kids join me and sometimes I'll go speak on stage I'll bring, like I just recently brought my daughter's 12 years old 13 now, but at the time 12. And I gave her the opportunity to come on stage and speak to 250 people and she shared just our offline family value and she just shared what that is our motto and she just nailed it. It's like hard for me to follow it because I was like teared up. I was like man, you nailed it, that was perfect.

Cody Hofhine: 6:51

But for those that can't do it, I believe the biggest thing we hear this quote all the time I love that kids spell love T, I, m, e. It's just how do you be present with them and and how do you have conversations that help build them up to become someone better? I think it's just being present. I think there's an easy way with distractions. We all have phones here, for example. We all have computers and I think it's easy to get caught up in distraction. So it's having a better awareness each and every day. So for those that can't bring him to work, have an awareness every day. That better awareness will lead us to better choices. Those better choices lead us to better results and do the work. It's not going to be easy. It could mean that I personally have to put my phone away and it's gone. It's not in my pocket, it's not sitting anywhere near me. I just put it away so that I can be present. Am I perfect at it? No, but kids need that perfect presence.

Kirk Chugg: 7:45

I like that. That was a sound effective Cody throwing his phone on the table that's right, wait there, it is there, you just really want to use that.

Cody Hofhine: 7:56

I just really wanted to push that button at least one time.

Cory Moore: 7:59

So I want to say to the listeners be creative too. Yeah, right, even if you can't take them to work, can you do something at home that shows them what you do at work? Or, right, I think if you got creative, most people could come up with a way to show their kids what it is they do at work. So your parents sounds like they taught you hard work. Sounds like they taught you family times Super important. Sounds like you know there's been some really instilled values. And then did you just say your daughter stood on stage and talked about the family values. Is that what you said? She did? Yeah, so tell us about that, tell us about the family values. Where did that come from? How did you come up with it? What inspired you to do that? Yeah, talk about that a little bit.

Cody Hofhine: 8:39

This is something I owe to a mentor. I'm always. I love this concept. It's called maintain a white belt mentality. Right as you go through life, you start to graduate belts and there's a point where you get to the black belt, but you still need to maintain that white belt mentality, meaning be humble enough to be coachable. Be humble enough to say I don't know everything. There's always a better way to get to learn more. Be more.

Kirk Chugg: 9:00

So that's what you do, right.

Cody Hofhine: 9:02

And so I've loved that concept and I haven't always had our values, me and my wife this is last year for a few weeks for our date nights. Instead of going out to dinner or going out to a movie, we sat at her mom and dad's place. It's like a 50 plus community. They have this. What's that little like shared space?

Cody Hofhine: 9:26

the sheet or whatever yeah like where you'd have like office space and like a pool and stuff like that. We'd use it because no one uses it. And so we'd sit there and we just started thinking, okay, what helps us succeed, what helps us win? And we just pulled out a journal and we just started writing down all these words. And then, because our last name's Hoffine, we're like how cool would it be if we could find like four, three or four values that start with an H? And so we came up with our values. And it's humble, honest, hopeful and hard for others, and all these words that we were writing all fit within these categories. And then we took time to break down okay, let's not look at what the definition of the world is for these things. What's the Hoffine's definition for each one of these values so that they hang up now in.

Cody Hofhine: 10:09

Like if you walk in our house, no matter what door you come in, you're seeing these values. They're big on a canvas, print on the wall, and you see these four. In fact, I can pull up a picture. And what we were? I was going back to a mentor. A mentor of mine said his name is Robin Sharma. He wrote the 5 AM club or the monk who sold this Ferrari. He says Cody, so much of the world measures their winning by the car they drive the home they live in or how much money's in the bank account.

Cody Hofhine: 10:39

He says but if you don't have money in the bank, you're gonna feel like a loser, like that day, you're gonna feel like you lost. He's like, but why not measure your winning by how loyal you are to your values, so that you can set yourself up to win every day? And so me and my wife, my kids, at the end of the day we stand in front of those posters, those pictures, those canvases on the wall and we say, well, we humble. Today I won. Did I have a heart for others? I won. Was I hopeful? Today I won. And we just go through our family values and measure if we're winning by how loyal we are to those values Love that.

Kirk Chugg: 11:15

So you do that every night. Not perfect, no, nobody's perfect.

Cody Hofhine: 11:19

No, with kids, but yes.

Kirk Chugg: 11:21

We tried to do that. That's part of your bedtime tradition or your routine.

Cody Hofhine: 11:25

Yes, and with school it gets a little bit trickier, right? Because?

Kirk Chugg: 11:28

you've got some that's been a little bit late. If your kids get older, it's gonna get harder and harder.

Cody Hofhine: 11:33

So we do the best we can, but they do have a picture of it on their phone that they can also do that themselves.

Cory Moore: 11:40

That's what I was gonna say. As my kids become teenagers and we don't have the same schedules that we used to have, or it was easy for everyone's home or that kind of thing we started using the phone more texts and pictures and reminders and that kind of stuff. So you can keep doing it as they grow up. You just have to be creative again.

Cody Hofhine: 11:59

We have a daily huddle text thread and it's just when we find something inspirational, we'll post it in the daily huddle that everyone in the family can look at, look at, share their thoughts and give a little feedback. Or hey, this is what we're gonna be talking about tonight. Prepare for it, read this and see what comes to your mind. Let's share it tonight.

Cory Moore: 12:14

That's awesome.

Cody Hofhine: 12:15

That's cool. So the phone does work.

Kirk Chugg: 12:16

Very purposeful. That's awesome. So you also brought a journal with you today and gave one to me and Corey. Talk to us about what journaling has done for you and what these journals are, and maybe how people can get their hands on one if they feel like it's something that they wanna implement in their routines.

Cody Hofhine: 12:37

Yeah, in fact, craig Manning was the inspiration behind this. He's a sports psychologist for the Milwaukee Bucks. We had him speak at one of our events for Joe Homebire and we asked him hey, we want personal development to be big, because I love the quote from Jim Rohn rarely does a man or woman's income exceed their level of personal development, meaning, as we become better, our income rises to match us, and so I wanted everyone to start working on themselves to become someone better. And this is where the inspiration came from. And so it's just simplistic.

Cody Hofhine: 13:08

It asks you what you're grateful for each day. It asks you what's one thing you're gonna work on for personal development, and then build out a game plan to make sure that you're able to do it. And then three big needle movers what are three things you're gonna do before your head hits your pillow at night? And I think too many times we overcomplicate this. We give ourselves 10 things to do, and when we don't do 10, we kind of feel down on ourselves. And I think it's not that you need to feel down, I think it's just you overachieve, you overpride, you overpride yeah.

Cody Hofhine: 13:36

But three. What is that? Three times 365, if you did that, each and every day, you're moving a needle a big way personally in your business, however you wanna use that One percent a day, One percent a day in the marginal gains. Are we talking atomic habits?

Kirk Chugg: 13:51

right there, james Clear.

Cody Hofhine: 13:53

Yep, and then I heard it. It was from John Maxwell. We had a lunch with him and he just talked about how your awareness is key. Everyone uses the philosophy that experiences the mother of all learning. He says they missed the key part there, cody. He says what they missed is its reflection on the experiences. That's the mother of all learning. He's like if every 80 year old, if they have more experience, they've had more years on this life. There's some people that just don't wanna receive their information because they haven't took time to reflect on that experience that they had. So this gives us time to the journaling to go back to. That is we reflect every night too. So at the end of the day, it's set up that journal that we take time to reflect what were the experiences we had and what did we learn from it. Now you're gaining wisdom.

Kirk Chugg: 14:43

So you're journaling in the morning for a few minutes talking about what you're grateful for, what your plan is to achieve, your personal development, your big three needle movers, and then in the evening you go over what happened that day your strength, your wins.

Cody Hofhine: 14:57

That's exactly right and look at the smallest one. The smallest one is the one on the bottom. It says what you can improve on, cause sometimes it's easy to get down on ourselves, so we just leave a little bit of space Like what's one thing you can improve on, but let's not make it a whole page.

Cory Moore: 15:11

I actually really like this a lot. I like that it's so simple because you're more apt to do it. What a great thing for to teach your kids to do.

Kirk Chugg: 15:19

I don't know if you do that with your kids, but I'm thinking to myself.

Cory Moore: 15:22

That's so much better than just saying hey, kids journal Like. I think not that that's bad. Reflecting on your day and journaling what happened in your life is a really good habit. This habit is a little more still super simple, but a little more forward thinking. You know a little more on purpose, I guess I would say.

Cody Hofhine: 15:41

Yes, yes, agree with you and yes, we keep it simple that way, so that it makes those habits obtainable and something you're able to do. That's cool.

Cory Moore: 15:50

So it sounds like you've had quite a few mentors. You're obviously a book reader. Talk to us about some of your, the mentors that have affected you, and how, and maybe some favorite books and how you know. Give the listeners some. Get in Cody's head, kind of stuff.

Cody Hofhine: 16:06

I look at mentors in a simplistic way. I think there's many people I wish I would have met. Jim Rohn was one of them. I wish I could have shook hands and just give that guy a big hug because of so much I learned from. But I consider my mentor because I've read all of his books. I just I love the gentleman, like he's just an incredible individual Darren Hardy.

Cody Hofhine: 16:24

I remember at 30 years old I'm in the office trying to strum up business for insurance and I'm in this office and this guy just has a bunch of books. And I asked him I said, hey, do you read a lot? He's like, oh, if you want to be a leader, you have to read. And we've heard that quote not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers. And he just said, yeah, you have to read it. And he gave me Darren Hardy's, the compound effect, and that was the first book. Really, at 30 years old I mean, I've read Hit and Miss, but from that book it was like, oh man, I want to read another book, like that was a great book and it had so many insane like simple principles. But it just resonated with me and I was ready. I was ready, I was ready and the mentor appears right when the student's ready and I felt like that was my time at 30 years old.

Kirk Chugg: 17:13

Cool. You've got a pretty good cross section of ages coming up in your family with the four kids boy, girl, boy, girl, boy, girl, boy girl. What's something you're struggling with right now as a dad.

Cody Hofhine: 17:27

Oh, my goodness, that would be my own flaws. Like I have to think of this natural human that I still am Quick to anger is so easy, right, it's so easy to have some arguing or hitting or punching going on and the first thing is not like go and try to understand and seek to understand. First it's like knock it off, knock this stuff off, like we don't have to do this, and then afterwards I'm like oh, that wasn't the right approach, that wasn't the right approach. Grateful that kids are so quick to forgive. That's one of the greatest things I get to learn from my kids each and every day is Dad's not perfect, he's trying, he's trying his best, he's trying to perfect himself. It's going to take some time, it's taking stages, but because they're perfect forgiveness that I get to witness every day I'm like, oh, I get another shot tomorrow, I can do better tomorrow.

Cody Hofhine: 18:18

But yeah, the struggle's real. It's hard and I think what's hard is coupled is some of the things that are out of our control. Right, it's necessary that we give our kids phones, but then by doing that, it's like giving them a load of gun. I mean it's like you just don't know what's going to happen on the back end. So you do the best you can to control some apps, but also I also have to say that I'm not here to be the controller either. If they're going to make mistakes, I want them to learn to make mistakes. I want them to learn, in a house of love, to make mistakes and under our care, how they can overcome those mistakes. And so we're probably a little bit against the grain on that one. I know it's very easy to try and take away the rights and the privileges and responsibilities for kids, but man.

Cody Hofhine: 19:02

I've been blessed enough to see in my life some of the maybe the results of that kid that had things taken away from other relationships. I've watched and then them making a big mistake. For the first time they get to finally make a choice for themselves, because they're 18 years old and they have this hard decision and they don't know how to do it themselves because all their decisions were made each and every day for them, and so I've been blessed to be able to witness some of those things to say, ok, cody, don't do that, because it's easy for me to probably say, hey, don't do that, take away those and have a controlling hand in there. But I actually welcome the failure, I welcome the mistakes and I believe life is perfectly happening for each one of us and those experiences are here to help us grow and become better individuals.

Cory Moore: 19:47

Yeah, I think you hit on something big there that we've talked about before in the podcast, but not for some time, and that is like allowing your kids to make mistakes, get bruised and beat up in, quote unquote life not physically, right, sure, sometimes physically, but to be there, as you said, with love and support, right. You can't just have them turn 18 and then finally be autonomous yeah Right, finally just be on their own, and they've never had any bumpers, right. So I feel like that's a huge, huge part of helping our kids grow up. I think who was it? Brandon Steiner probably hit on this the hardest lately on the podcast, so there's one for you to listen.

Cody Hofhine: 20:31

OK.

Cory Moore: 20:32

And it was just this idea that, hey, you've got to teach your kids how to be adults while you're there, because if they just become adults in a, you know, the first time they move out of the house, they could really get themselves in trouble and not understand how to handle it all. Phone's a perfect example, right? It's like let's, let's open it up a little at a time while we're sitting next to them. Why were there? Why we can check on it tonight and let them learn how to be responsible with their phone, versus just you're not getting anything and then someday they've got everything Right.

Cody Hofhine: 21:03

That's exactly right. Yeah, that's it.

Cory Moore: 21:06

It sounds like your parents did that a bit for you.

Kirk Chugg: 21:10

Maybe not with technology. Yeah, we didn't have it.

Cody Hofhine: 21:12

We're older. Yeah, we didn't have it.

Cory Moore: 21:14

We didn't have it Just we're so old, but your dad letting you paint and make mistakes? Yes, right. And it wasn't like, oh, you can't make mistakes. It was no, I'm going to let you make mistakes on purpose so that I can show you how to do this.

Cody Hofhine: 21:26

Yes, my parents loved me, they, they loved us. They loved all of us Me, my brother, my sister. They loved us. I don't know if we could come to them and share when we made mistakes, because I think it's easy and I received as a kid it's like you get shamed instead of my wife. My wife has been saying this quote so often. I love it. It's so simple. It's just.

Cody Hofhine: 21:49

People change when they feel good, and so I have to keep thinking about it. When they make a mistake. Am I going to be the dad that shames them, or can I use that as a moment to help them feel good so that they still want to change and become someone better, cause shame is going to do nothing but send them further down that journey. So I wouldn't say I think what I've learned is because of maybe is a little bit more opposite. Actually, in my household we didn't feel comfortable telling our parents when we'd made a mistake or we did something wrong, because it was directly a result to more time in your room or or getting yelled at.

Cody Hofhine: 22:25

Now I hesitate to say that because my parents, they're incredible individuals. I learned so much from them, but parenting has changed as, as as life goes on. You start to find these different ways that these little pivots, these little teeny little shifts that we can do, that can make all the difference and that's that's one of them is help them be, help them feel good. That's going to help them change. But shame it just. It just doesn't help.

Kirk Chugg: 22:47

Sure, why have been reading Brittany Brown?

Cody Hofhine: 22:50

Uh, possibly she reads. She reads just as much as me. She's like a book a week and anything parenting. It's just, it's in her Rolodex. She knows exactly where to go.

Kirk Chugg: 23:01

That's awesome. I really liked that. We've talked a lot about giving our kids the environment to be able to admit their mistakes and fail and fail forward, as like like Cody said. But when we're emotional, I think that's when we have to, like, count to 10 and realize the opportunity that's before us and how we're going to react to it. The first words out of our mouth, the first reaction that we have when a child comes to us and has made a mistake and is opening up to us, what love do we show them?

Kirk Chugg: 23:38

Instead of anger or impatience or frustration, you can feel all those things, but at the same time, you you have this great opportunity. It's like when your kid loses a game, right, and he's super down on himself and down on his team and feels like crap. What's the car drive home going to be like? Is it going to be you coaching him about all the crap that he did and he was so bad and horrible? Or is it going to be what did you learn from this experience? How can I help you? Right, he's hard enough on himself, that's right. He doesn't need a parent heaping on.

Kirk Chugg: 24:19

So I love the idea of just taking a moment when I think you said, one of your struggles was patience. I think we all would probably sign on to that. When, when we feel impatient or quick to anger, when we just give ourselves the ability to pause for a moment before we say or do anything, nobody's going to be like, hey, I remember this time that I made this mistake and my dad paused for eight seconds, like they're going to remember the first word out of your mouth and I wish I could do that. That's important.

Cory Moore: 25:01

That pause is really hard, it's really hard.

Kirk Chugg: 25:03

I'd like to be better at it. Well, corey, corey, here there's a journal.

Cody Hofhine: 25:07

right here I'm going to write every single day in the same goal.

Kirk Chugg: 25:14

I'm grateful for my ability to be patient. I'm going to plan to be patient and I'm going to move that needle every day. There you go.

Cody Hofhine: 25:25

Now there's some power to what you just said. Whether you're going to be patient or not, like this is something like was game changing for me. How many times have we heard positive affirmations are great. I've heard this my whole life. Yeah, me and my wife Wendy, we're actually telling our kids positive affirmations.

Cody Hofhine: 25:39

For most people, it's useless because if there's that seed of doubt that you actually don't believe that you're that person that you're saying like I'm fit or I'm this or I'm smart or I'm great, and you have this seed of doubt that says, but you're not great, your body doesn't listen to it. Positive affirmations are. For most people it's going to be useless. But if you can change it into a question and say, why am I going to be in flow state today? Why am I going to be an incredible father today, what happens is you start to wake up now your mind to go on your behalf, to go on your behalf, to go find the evidence, to bring it back, and that builds your confidence. That builds your belief. Think about when I know, when my wife was pregnant. She's like everyone's pregnant Now.

Cody Hofhine: 26:18

Granted, we're in Utah, a lot of people are pregnant in Utah, right, but it's front of sight, front of mind. Or you're at a dinner table. How many times have you been at a dinner table and four tables over someone yells Corey and all of a sudden you turn your head and they're talking to a different Corey. But your mind said, hey, someone said your name and it wasn't you listening to it. Your mind was already aware of it. So if we can get our mind working on our behalf, in our favor, and say, hey, why am I going to be incredible at business today? Now your mind goes and finds the evidence, brings it back and builds your belief. It builds your confidence and sends you forward. So actually we use that instead of affirmations now.

Cory Moore: 26:52

That's good. That reminds me of Think and Grow Rage. For some reason you know. What does he call auto suggestion? Auto suggestion, which is in that same vein. You mentioned flow state, which probably comes from some kind of a book. I don't know what that is. Talk to me about flow state.

Cody Hofhine: 27:06

Flow state's hard for like for my mind. For some they can get into it quick. For me it's being in the zone. Right, it's being in the zone. Yeah, your flow state is like your when you feel like man, I am, I am in my zone and I am cracking. I'm seeing it, I'm seeing the whole vision behind it. I see how we're going to do it and you're you're, you're able to maintain a focus like no other. It's hard, it's very hard.

Cody Hofhine: 27:32

I don't hit it often and I will say what's interesting is like when I'm on stage, my, my brain is at like it's, it's relaxed and it's go time.

Cody Hofhine: 27:42

And all of a sudden, all these quotes or anything I've read, and I can even see like the page number of the book when I say the quote, it comes to mind and I can just start going and I'm in my flow state.

Cody Hofhine: 27:52

But in the office it's actually hard for me to get into flow state because there's so much distraction. You got, you got your team that's going to come in every now and again and every time they say for every distraction, they say every 14 minutes, you're getting hit with another distraction, a major distraction, an email pops up. The worst thing we could do is have our email sitting on our screen so that when people send an email they get the right to have response right now. Like we have to set boundaries and say I respond at noon, I respond at four. After that I just shut my email off and I'll see you at noon or I'll see you at four for my, for my responses. But that distraction is hard because then it takes another 25 plus minutes to get back into flow state. So very few people spend time in flow state because of how much distraction is readily available at their hand.

Cory Moore: 28:33

I don't think I have the flow state the same way you do when I'm on stage, when I'm speaking, but I do have it in that same way.

Cody Hofhine: 28:39

Yeah.

Cory Moore: 28:39

You know, I don't do it professionally other than every day. I'm not in my company, right, but I do love that, that feeling when you're just like going right, yeah, nothing can stop you.

Cody Hofhine: 28:51

I'm like, I'm there.

Cory Moore: 28:52

I wish I could have that in my office.

Cody Hofhine: 28:53

That would be awesome Me and you are the same person.

Cory Moore: 28:56

I'm telling you everyone's not allowed to happen in the office. I think early in the morning sometimes I can do that Like if I get up super early and then just really focus without all the distractions, right, there's nobody coming to my office, there's no emails popping up because it's four AM and I'm going to town. That's probably the other time I can get into what you call flow state.

Kirk Chugg: 29:14

Something it probably am not a psychologist, but probably some of it has to do with the stress chemicals that are released when you're expected to perform right, like Michael Jordan probably wasn't in the flow state in practice, but he was definitely in the flow state game seven of the finals right. It makes you focus. So I don't know, maybe there's some chemicals that are released that we could.

Cody Hofhine: 29:38

That would be a good thing to teach your kids, though, is how?

Cory Moore: 29:43

to get in the flow state, absolutely I like to even think about that. And just because you know, because you know they, you, they have probably as much or more distraction than we do.

Kirk Chugg: 29:51

You think about a thousand percent.

Cory Moore: 29:53

Yeah right, they're friends and their text messages and their social media as they become teenagers and you name it, the thousand things that are going through their mind. You know, I can barely get my kids to play their instruments. Like, can you just please play your instrument in the morning before you go to school? That's like pulling teeth. I don't know if that's the same way for you guys, but it, or if you have any tricks in the trade.

Kirk Chugg: 30:17

we lost that battle. You lost that. We did, we did, we were, we were doing piano and then COVID hit and the teacher was, you know, like in her late seventies and she stopped doing in-person lessons and my kids were like, yeah, best thing about COVID is I got to quit piano.

Cody Hofhine: 30:35

So I don't know, we lost that, I didn't say, for us, I think it's trying to find and again, not perfect at this, it's trying to find truly what our kids like. And for us, if it's something that they're just fighting against, we just, we just roll with the punches and it's okay. Like my daughter hates math, I don't expect an A from her in math. I just, I just don't. I I'm one of those guys that's like, yeah, you're probably not going to pick a career that requires math because you don't like math. And she's gonna. She's incredible aerialist, she does these silks and she'll go up 25 feet, she's flipped down and make my heart go like crazy, but that's her jam. And so we go all in on that because that's her, that's her, that's her jam.

Cody Hofhine: 31:17

That's what she liked, but some of the things that she doesn't like, we're pretty easy on saying, hey, that's not you, that's okay, that's okay, let's go find out what you are and let's go. Let's go double down on that.

Cory Moore: 31:28

I mean, don't we? That's a good. I think there's two lessons in there, right? Number one is you don't have to force them to do what you, you know, like try to find something. Our oldest same kind of thing. We put it in everything we could think of, like swimming and dance and piano and violin and anything, and she found theater finally, and she's all in yeah, Like she can't she, she self signs up for stuff and goes to stuff and is, learns the scripts and works really hard. And it was really hard to find something like that. And we kept telling her it doesn't matter what you do, we just want the effort, the effort, the effort. Well, she didn't find the effort until she found the passion.

Cody Hofhine: 32:12

There you go.

Cory Moore: 32:13

Right. And so I think all of us, as parents, want the effort from our kids, like just work hard, even if you got C's. If you worked hard and you got C's, do I really care? Not really Right, but it's trying to find the balance between effort and passion and I think that's, you know, some all parents probably deal with.

Cody Hofhine: 32:32

That's phenomenal. I love the imperfect action right. Like just take action. Like we can't become someone better without action. This is everything in life to become better. It's it's going to take action. You can't sit there and become someone better and there's going to be imperfect action. Be okay with that. Fail your way forward, learn from those sakes. It's not that I'm looking to fail or I want my kids to fail. It's just you don't have to build a perfect plan. Very rarely can you prepare for life through sitting there and planning. And I will tell you, imperfect in, in fact, in our business atmosphere, in real estate specifically, those that take imperfect action are further ahead than the person at home sitting and building a perfect plan, taking no action at all. Imperfect action Trump all day long.

Cory Moore: 33:12

Yeah, that's good. Where did your continuous improvement? Humble type of attitude, the white belt white belt mentality where did that come from? Did you always have that when you were growing up, or is that something that was a learned behavior for you?

Cody Hofhine: 33:26

I had to have it. It was something that I'm always curious and, as a naturally just being curious like I want to learn, I want to become someone better. It was. It was actually a local leader that's no longer here, died years ago. But Gordon B Hinckley said the best definition I ever heard was of humble, and he said coachable. And so at a young age I just for whatever reason that I can remember where he said it, how he said it, I can remember everything about that night and I remembered that quote be coachable. And then I would hear this message over and over.

Cody Hofhine: 34:02

So, as I built an insurance agency and sold that off, there was a transition where I was building a coaching program and there was an individual that had built a massive empire well over 100 million and I'm sitting in his home and to me I was like in my eyes I'm like I'm a nobody. I don't even know why I'm in this home or how I'm in this home. And he said something that was along the same lines, but in a different way Cody, there's nothing worse in life than a, than a know it all that doesn't know it all, and ever since then, those things I just there's messages that I always hear in a mic. Cody needs to hear this, always needs to maintain the. And then Robin Sharma.

Cody Hofhine: 34:38

He's the one that said maintain a white belt mentality. It's like it's not a coincidence that Cody keeps hearing this specific message. And just do your best at maintaining that coachable white belt mentality, humble mentality. That's cool. Am I perfect? No, but I am aware of it. And because I'm aware, I do make better choices. Those better choices lead to those better results.

Cory Moore: 34:59

And I assume you talked to your children about the same thing. You just said to us like you're, like hey guys, have this white belt mentality to your kids.

Cody Hofhine: 35:07

Yes, as much as they'll listen. Right, like if the students not ready, the mentor can never appear. So it goes. It goes like that double edged sword. So all you can do is lead by example. But when they're ready and they ask the questions and those are my favorite conversations and to show some of the imperfections. This was about three or four years ago. My daughter and I hope I don't choke up my daughter that's 13. She, we found a note in her backpack and she said that people don't recognize me at school and no matter what I do, I try to be nice and kind, they just don't recognize me. And I was thinking, oh man, and then I keep reading. And then when I come home I feel the same thing. I feel like I'm not getting recognized at home. And me and Wendy just broke down. We're crying.

Cody Hofhine: 35:52

And I'm like no, I don't want my little girl to feel this way and so one of the practices I do in the morning, thanks to, again, mentors he says when you wake up, this is Warren Rustan Individual. It's a pedigree that when you look at like this guy was, I mean he was like the on the on the what we'd call it, the presidency for Ford. He was played for the Golden State Warriors. I mean this guy has this pedigree and he is one of my mentors. And he says, cody, wake up every morning and this is right after this morning, I see this letter. He says and just ask yourself. So ground yourself, put your feet on the ground and just sit there for about five minutes and say who needs me on my A game today? And I just sit there for five minutes and Kenley came to mind, my little girl that just wrote that note the day before. So now I have awareness throughout the day to now hopefully make better choices so that I get better results.

Cody Hofhine: 36:47

Hayden comes downstairs, kenley's over this is right when they're going to school. Kenley's eating breakfast. She's eating cereal. Hayden comes down the younger brother, and he says dad, did you see me at that baseball?

Cory Moore: 36:57

Did you see when I swung that bat? I hit that ball so hard and I was like oh my gosh.

Cody Hofhine: 37:01

and all of a sudden awareness Kenley needs you on your A game today. Do you know who else has incredible talent like you? Hayden, your sister Kenley, she's incredible. You should see what she does at her thing. So I know how you're feeling right now, because I've also seen it, not just in you, I've also seen it in this winner over here, and I see Kenley, this little girl, look over and just smiles from ear to ear. But if I didn't have that awareness to sit at the beginning of the day to know that my daughter needs me on my A game today, would I have made that decision? Probably not. So it's just being more aware.

Cory Moore: 37:34

Yeah, awareness is huge. Actually, I feel like, as leaders and as parents, awareness that sounds easy, but I think most people forget that one. I have right. Like I think it's easy to be unaware, and I think you have to get centered, you have to find yourself in prayer, in deep thought, in order to be aware a lot of times, right, and to really think where are my blind spots? What am I not thinking? Who am I not talking to? Who am I not showing love to? What am I disregarding? Right? But awareness is huge and I think some people don't either don't want to be aware or they're humble enough to be aware I don't know but I think awareness is such an important learned attribute of a parent and certainly of a leader. So I'm glad you brought up awareness. I don't think we've talked about that specific word before in the podcast, but I think it's an important one.

Kirk Chugg: 38:30

I love that word, I love this idea of grounding and I love the practical part of the podcast. That's what I pull out of it Like slowing down, becoming aware, grounding yourself for five minutes. That's practical for me. What else do you do like that that you can share with us today?

Cody Hofhine: 38:53

One thing I think that strengthens us, and this is just a new change. So this is not something we've done for years or even months, this is just something recently, like a week ago, and we're already seeing some cool results, like pretty dang quick. And that is with our older ones. Because we put our kids to bed early. We know their next day is a result of how good their night routine is. So our 10 year olds in bed by 8.30 and our six year olds in bed by 7.30. So two of them are out of the way at that point.

Cody Hofhine: 39:22

And then we have our olders, our 13 and 15 year old, and about 9, 9.30 during the week, because weekends, again, the schedules get a little bit messed up. But during the week we have been for about last week, we come together and we switch off who's gonna say the prayer that night? And we just ask, not anything more than hey, does anyone specifically have someone we need to pray about? And the first night my 15 year old was quiet. Second night he was quiet, didn't have anyone. Kenley had a bunch of people, my wife had some people, I had some people. And now I see my 15 year old thinking, yeah, this individual could use a prayer tonight, and it's just fun that this prayer is not about asking for anything for us, but it is just a heartfelt prayer in behalf of others that could use a prayer that day. And so that's one practical thing that we've only been doing it for a week and I'm already seeing some incredible results by just doing that one thing, that one shift in the prayer.

Cory Moore: 40:19

That's awesome. Plus it creates awareness again, it does it does.

Cory Moore: 40:23

Who do we need to pray for? Who needs our help? Who do we need to be kind to? I can't remember where I saw this. I don't remember if it was on one of our body ass or if it was on my red but I had a somewhere. I saw this and I thought it was good and talked to my kids about it. I'm like every night, ask your kids who was someone who was kind to you and who was someone that you were kind to. And it creates this awareness that all day they're thinking who can I be kind to and who was kind to me? Right and just. That's so simple. But think about how that would change your kids During the day. They're looking for kindness.

Kirk Chugg: 41:02

You find what you look for Exactly. So, similar kind of similar to that right.

Cody Hofhine: 41:07

So true, awareness all creates awareness. And reflection, right Reflection is the mother of all learning. It's not the experiences, it's the reflection on those experiences. So the more you can create time for them to reflect. And if it takes five minutes, it takes five minutes. But who was kind to you? That's reflection, that's true reflection.

Cory Moore: 41:23

Yeah, that's a good point reflection. Sometimes when we go out to, I'll be like, okay, let's look at how the customer service was or was this person kind? Or you know, just again, creating awareness. When you're with your kids, you can create awareness in any situation. You know, was that person kind to the waiter? Was the waiter on their game? You know, was whatever it is right, you can always create awareness around your values, right? Does that person humble or is that person honest? Whatever, anyway, that's great. That's kind of like a reawakening for me that I need to do some more of that with my kids.

Kirk Chugg: 41:59

I've been listening to the news in the truck with my kids as I pick them up and take them, and I'll listen to a news story and I'll look for an opportunity to teach a value based on what's happening in the news. And it could be something you know, like anything in the news cycle that's based on human behavior, and then I turn the radio off and I talk and I ask questions and those have been some pretty cool conversations recently. I haven't done that before because I don't think my kids were ever interested in the news, but they're a little bit more interested in the news now that they're teenagers. But that's been kind of a cool practical thing where you can.

Kirk Chugg: 42:38

I'm listening to the news, thinking what value Could I teach right here based on what's happening in their world, in the world right now. What's what's something I could teach them? And you know we were having conversations yesterday about politics and the legal system and abortion and like all of these things that get mentioned in the news, and it was. I was like, well, I kind of work, so sorry in case you might be listening to a little bit more news.

Kirk Chugg: 43:11

Those are some deep conversations by well, and my kids are really smart and they're at the age that, like I, want to instill values in them, and you can't gloss over stuff anymore. They're old enough to understand what everything is and they're either going to learn it from somebody else or they're going to learn it from me, love that.

Cory Moore: 43:30

So Well, that's a good question. How about this one? So we're always teaching our kids or we're trying to write, but sometimes it's us. They want, they don't they want to hear from us all the time, right? So if you guys found ways, what are other ways? Who are people in your lives that your kids will listen to, that you want them to listen to, right? Like, is it grandparents? Is it friends? Are there books that you have your kids read? Where? Where else would you propose that you have your kids getting great Feedback content in their lives?

Cody Hofhine: 44:02

Great question. As you see, clarity, awareness this is just because it's fresh on my mind Like I have to put work in this. This is not easy for me, this is hard for me, but as we are more clear what we want out of life, it leads us to that certainty of intent. Certainty of intent, this is huge, like intentions, massive. This is how are? Why am I waking up today? Am I just going to go and let the world handle me or am I going to control my day, or is the world going to control me today? And it's because of that certainty of intent. What am I? What do I want? I have to get that clarity so I can have that certainty of intent.

Cody Hofhine: 44:35

One thing that we do is the environment is huge. You have to protect the environment and I believe strongly in this. So, jim Rohn again going back to the guy I wish I could shake his hand he said you're the average of the five closest individuals you spend the most time with. I love that quote. So who are we spending our time with? Randy Garn said I think you actually titled the podcast like who you? Who are you hanging out with, or something like that, right yeah his second one.

Cody Hofhine: 44:58

Right, that's a that's. It's huge. You have to protect the environment. So what we do is we get clarity.

Cody Hofhine: 45:04

We have great families that we love the mom, the dad, we love their parenting style that just fit within the way we do things, fit our culture, fit our morals, fit our standards, and we plan Vacations at Lake Powell or Newport Beach and we plan these vacations with great families so that there's this side chat going on and we're both aware.

Cody Hofhine: 45:27

So us, the parents, we get together and say, hey, I'm here for your kids. So if there's any questions, I'm going to go in and I'll do my best to like share what they ever asked me things, and because we surround ourselves and try to put ourselves in the right environment. It takes a village to raise a kid and I'm learning more and more just how true that principle is, because they don't always want to hear from dad, they don't always want to hear from mom. So when you can have a great family that you can pair yourself with, and then now, during those little offset moments that they're saying oh man, isn't it cool that we're here doing this? And they come back and like dad, you would believe this principle that Blake just shared with me, or Mark just shared with me, and you're like son of a gun.

Cody Hofhine: 46:05

I've been telling you this for 10 years, but all sudden it resonates right when they hear it from the witness of two or three voices. Right by the power of two or three witnesses shall the word be established, so they need to hear it from more than us, and that's where it starts to resonate and sink deep.

Kirk Chugg: 46:19

I love it. That's cool. I like that. I need to be more purposeful. Who I hang out with, the families that I hang out with You've got to get rid of me in your life You've got to set boundaries.

Cory Moore: 46:30

You need poor boundaries man.

Kirk Chugg: 46:33

I've been asking Corey to come up fence, but he just has so much going on.

Cory Moore: 46:37

Yeah, if I brought it would be a good. That would be a great activity with my kids actually.

Kirk Chugg: 46:44

Yeah, Be a good one.

Cory Moore: 46:45

I got plenty of hard work and fence and some good talking time. Nature.

Kirk Chugg: 46:50

Yes.

Cory Moore: 46:51

How about last question before the last question?

Kirk Chugg: 46:53

Oh.

Cory Moore: 46:56

How do you find quality time or where do you spend? What do you do with your kids to create quality time with them?

Cody Hofhine: 47:03

Man, that's good. Well, there's a couple people I could quote. If Oprah Winfrey says, it's got to be true, right, I love her basic analogy of being present. She just says be where your feet are. So then there's another individual, bednar, that talks about just a local leader here in the church. He talks about how there's no such thing as balance. Like there's no balance. What there is is being present where you are. There's no equal time for say, but it's be present, be where you are. If you're at office, be at office. If you're at home, be at home. And so it's those little moments. They don't need a ton of time, but they need quality time, and that can be done in 10 minutes, five minutes, 30 minutes, whatever you have, but be present.

Cody Hofhine: 47:48

I just got back from Disneyland last weekend. Me and my wife. We do one-on-one, so this was just me and my 10-year-old, hayden, and so we went for two days to Disneyland. Because he loves Disney, he loves trading pins, he loves he got to build one of those lightsabers and he just had an incredible experience. Well, for that time my phone is off, like I don't need to respond to work. I'm here, I'm not at work, I'm at Disney with my 10-year-old and so I was focused on him the whole entire time and it was so cool. I captured it on my phone.

Cody Hofhine: 48:21

I was filming him trading these pins and he's really into like getting all seven dwarfs on these Disney pins. And he came to this guy that's not works there, like he just had a bench and all of his pins and he went up and he saw Sleepy and like Dopey I think, and he went up and he says, hey, here's what pins I have. Is there one that you would want for the seven dwarfs? And the guy took two pins and then traded him seven dwarfs and I captured this. He turns around and he does oh, and his eyes were massive. And he does yes, and I instantly send it to my wife and she calls me just teared up. She's like did you hear how cute it was when he said yes? I'm like yes, that's why I had to send it. So it's just being present with the time we have, we work, we have careers. That is part of it's necessary. That's how we provide for our families. But there's also a time where each one of us had those moments saying why am?

Cody Hofhine: 49:17

I here, like I'm not doing what I'm supposed to be doing, and I think we're all aware enough to know to have those instincts to say I shouldn't be here. I need to be at home and listen to those instincts. Am I perfect at it? No, but I try to do my best that wherever my feet are or wherever I'm yeah, wherever my feet are be there, don't carry over the other items.

Kirk Chugg: 49:37

We're going to have to ask Scott O'Neill if he said that or if Oprah said it.

Cody Hofhine: 49:43

Hey, Oprah's going to win that battle and.

Kirk Chugg: 49:45

I don't know. Scott wrote the book Be when your Feet Are, so yeah actually I wrote that book. I read that book. It's an amazing book, yeah.

Cody Hofhine: 49:54

I was given that by a podcast. By the way he was, he was on the podcast. I love that.

Cory Moore: 49:58

I think Chad Lewis said something similar to that a coach had taught him so good, good thing, all right. Well, it's the last question. Unfortunately, we could just keep going. You're a great, great stuff, great guy, and it's been a great podcast.

Cody Hofhine: 50:13

Well, you're an incredible host, so thank you.

Cory Moore: 50:16

Yeah, but last question that we always ask is what does it mean to you to be a gentleman?

Cody Hofhine: 50:20

It won't be a coincidence. I mean, go back to this same phrase that we've said a couple of times. I think a gentleman is aware when you're walking out of the store, a gentleman looks back to make sure is anyone else walking out that I can hold this door for? Is there anyone coming in that I can stay in? Extra three seconds, 10 seconds, maybe a minute, because someone is a little bit further away and they have a walker or a wheelchair and it's going to take them a little bit longer to get to that door. But I'm going to be the one holds door. A gentleman is aware and that's going to take us getting out of our comfort zone.

Cody Hofhine: 50:55

Arguments happen all the time between relationships. Are you going to be the one that has an argument with your wife and then you're supposed to go somewhere and you're like well, tonight, since we're in argument, I'm not opening your door for you? I mean, you have this arrogance right, or we can be aware and say, no, I still love my wife enough that, regardless, if we just had an argument, I'm opening our door. And I can imagine my grandpa, who's no longer with us. He was a gentleman, he was the last to eat and women always got their food first, and so we carry these little traditions. And it's just having awareness and making sure how do I serve people, how do I give them the best version of myself? So, to simplify it, a gentleman's aware I love it.

Cory Moore: 51:37

Thank you, yes, thanks for being on the podcast.

Cody Hofhine: 51:39

Thank you, cody, thank you guys.

Kirk Chugg: 51:41

And thanks for listening to the Gentleman Project podcast. There's lots of good stuff in this one. Share it with somebody that you love.

Cory Moore: 51:47

I'm Kirk Chug. I'm Corey Moore. Have a great day, be aware, thank you.