The Mirror Test

If you had to answer one question after every hard call, what would it be? We keep coming back to a simple standard: can we look at ourselves in the mirror afterward. That “mirror test” shapes how we handle business ethics, friendships, marriage, parenting, and the messy middle where you are trying to grow but you are not sure you are doing it right.

We talk about why real self-reflection is uncomfortable when it is honest, and why “you’ve changed” is not always an insult. Sometimes it is proof you are evolving, and sometimes it is a signal that someone preferred the old you because it was easier for them. We share what vulnerability looks like at home, how support works when mental health is part of the story, and why long-term love is built through intention, not autopilot.

Then we tie it directly to entrepreneurship, sales, and leadership. The best operators we know ask more questions than they answer. Whether you are pitching an idea, serving a real estate client, hiring a coach, or choosing a business partner, curiosity is a competitive advantage and a trust builder. We break down accountability, how to admit mistakes without spiraling, and how to avoid taking on guilt that is not yours. We also share a personal real estate investing lesson about selling assets instead of refinancing, and what we learned about flexibility when life hits fast.

If this conversation helps, subscribe, share it with someone who is building something hard, and leave a review so more people can find the show. What part of your life needs a clearer mirror test right now?

Transcript

Opening And Show Welcome

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Built this empire from the ground. Never backing down. Never bound.

SPEAKER_01 0:12

Two hearts, one vision, we stay true. In the fig of it. In the fips of it.

SPEAKER_06 0:26

Welcome to In the Fips of It. I'm Natasha Phipps.

SPEAKER_03 0:29

And I'm Rodney Phipps.

SPEAKER_06 0:31

Welcome to our podcast.

SPEAKER_03 0:33

We're here to talk about life, love, our pursuit of authentic happiness.

SPEAKER_06 0:38

We are married, we work together, we're parents to two amazing kids, and we hope you enjoy the show. All right. Good to go.

SPEAKER_02 0:48

Yes. Welcome back.

SPEAKER_06 0:49

Welcome back. We're

The Mirror Test For Decisions

SPEAKER_06 0:52

going to talk about self-reflection, self-improvement.

SPEAKER_03 0:57

The mirror.

SPEAKER_06 0:57

Looking in the mirror. Yes. And how that relates to entrepreneurship and business and life in general. Relationships. But relationships, yeah. Yeah, I think this is an important one about growth and constantly improving. Yes. Moving the needle.

SPEAKER_03 1:12

Yes. And in relationships, personal relationships, but maybe especially work relationships, how you do business. You're not going to make friends all the time. And I'm sure there's, you know, people out there that have different views about us than we have about ourselves. And that's okay. But we will continue to make our decisions based on can we look at ourselves in the mirror afterwards? Can we sleep at night with the decisions that we made? Have we done right by the people that we're doing business with? Or learn from mistakes. Yes. Can we learn from that mistake? Can we try not to make it again? Can we reflect on the decisions we made and the people that we worked with and the our relationships, our friends, our our kids? I mean, the the mirror, the reflection, the the self-reflection, whatever you want to call it, whatever language you want to use is a huge part of growth, personal growth, business growth, relationship growth, building a team. I mean, I think that's a great, maybe, you know, your your your FIPS group team has evolved over over time. And I think one of the biggest about the ref the growth of it was additional reflection, self-reflection, but also intention, those sort of things. So it's something that's very, very tied into our work and our life.

SPEAKER_06 2:32

Yeah. The goal to always, you know, do better and improve and and obviously that can be a daunting thing. It can seem like a huge thing, right? And and it really does apply to every part of life in terms of relationships. Something brought up to me recently in a in a conversation about like, you know, how it can be almost used as a negative when people say like, well, you're not who you used to be, or you're different than you used to be. The goal is to improve the goal is to change and improve. And I've noticed that people who tend to communicate that really want you to stay the same.

SPEAKER_02 3:12

Yes.

SPEAKER_06 3:12

Whatever that might be in a marriage, in a relationship, in a friendship. They want you to stay just as you are and not push that envelope too much.

SPEAKER_03 3:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 3:22

People who push and grow and are constantly improving and changing, don't speak like that.

SPEAKER_03 3:26

No. Yeah, and not at all. And that term, you know, this this might kick off a debate, but you know, you're supposed to love me for who I am now.

SPEAKER_04 3:35

Right.

SPEAKER_03 3:36

And and I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and gosh darn it, people like me, which is great as a self-empowerment thing. But if you've hit a point and you say, no, I'm as good as I'm ever gonna be, and if you don't like it, that's your problem. And I don't need to change, I don't need to grow. This is who I am. Right, that's problematic for a variety of reasons.

SPEAKER_05 3:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:55

Most importantly, like, what does that mean for the rest of your life? Like self-reflection and growth, personal development, that's a huge why in living a good life, I believe.

SPEAKER_06 4:05

There's a reason the personal development space is so massive in terms of like business is huge because but there is that fear around growth too.

SPEAKER_02 4:15

Yes. Yes.

SPEAKER_06 4:17

You have to look inside, you have to look around you, and that could mean a lot of different things.

SPEAKER_03 4:22

And it's just it's uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable when it's done correctly, when you're honest with yourself. We all make mistakes. We read people wrong, we make mistakes about ourselves, we make mistakes in business. We can let our biases get in the way, our ego get in the way, all these sort of things. So to look yourself in the mirror and fully acknowledge something you did wrong is an uncomfortable thing, which there's a whole bunch of psychology around it, and and there's all these terms, confirmation biases and things like that that creep into how people live their lives. And it's generally to protect themselves from having to acknowledge their mistakes, having to look in the mirror to really go, I fucked up. And that's it's not a comfortable process. I in some ways, the one of the benefits of my mental health issues being bipolar is I'm forced to constantly look in the mirror. There isn't a day that I don't look in the mirror and have to look at myself staring back and question so many things about you know who I am and what I am and all that sort of thing. But I would take that over the opposite ten times out of ten.

SPEAKER_06 5:36

And like, why wouldn't you want to improve? Why wouldn't you want to improve for your partner or for your business or for your clients or for whoever? So I think that's something that you know we spend all the time talking about.

Vulnerability Starts At Home

SPEAKER_06 5:49

But let's kind of maybe talk about like areas of growth that we have maybe done some work on. Yeah. I think it starts in like right in your home, right? Like right how you look at the most close relationships to you. And if you're not willing to improve those ones, you're on what could if you're not willing to like work on those ones, you know, what what hope do you have looking outside? Because there's a lot of vulnerability at home. And and that vulnerability can teach you a heck of a lot that you can apply in other ways.

SPEAKER_03 6:21

Yeah, big time. And I think that was a big step for me understanding what vulnerability meant. You know, I don't know, uh a dozen or so therapists later helped. But like you said, it started at home. It started what grace you gave me and time and patience, but then work that we put into each other. We're fortunate, we've been together almost 20 years, or just past 20 years since our, you know, since I professed my undying love. And our relationship is stronger now. We have more fun now, all those things. But it does not come without the work and the time and the intention to get grow together individually and together. You are great with my mental health, encouraging me to find help, to seek development, but also just to not do nothing, pushing me to ensure that I just didn't do nothing. And that's a hard, I think that's a whole other subject, and we'll have a whole episode around not how not only mental health, but the support person in that person's life and how it affects the family and and and everything. But that's the that was that standard of like you continue to push yourself, you continue to work on yourself, and only through that can our relationship together get stronger. It doesn't mean it's easy. And it doesn't mean there's a you know, there's ebbs and flows and ups and downs of our relationship. It's not like it was a straight line.

SPEAKER_04 7:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:45

But we've been able to build something where we can work together, live together, spend all 98% of our time together and be better for it. And I think that's the key, that's the key underlying piece is the self-reflection and self-growth and looking at the things that we need to do for ourselves and then for each other.

Entrepreneurship Needs Honest Reflection

SPEAKER_06 8:04

I think too, in tying this into like entrepreneurship, the most successful people I kind of look up to have made this a constant part of their life in terms of who they're surrounding themselves with, how they're working on themselves. And that could mean their, you know, physical health or spiritual health or whatever it is, constantly trying to improve and evolve. And the people who are uncomfortable with that, you know, that is maybe that won't make the best entrepreneur over 50 years. Like, you know, and so if you want to be in this space of entrepreneurship or grow a business or start a company or whatever, I think you need to get pretty comfortable with that's what you're gonna need to do. Yes. Because there's just a whole lot of stuff you don't know.

SPEAKER_03 8:48

Exactly. And then it's also a way to analyze relationships, business relationships. If if you're looking at potentially going to work with someone and they're unwilling to acknowledge anything but the rosies, yeah, that should be a pretty red flag. And I think we learned that, and sometimes the hard way, but in just in general, to your point, the the most successful people often are self very self-reflective, both for their business to understand the conditions that they're working in, what is the market dictating rather than what do I want to put out there? And the startup community is hilarious. All these startup companies, 98% of them fail or whatever. And so many of them go, I have this great idea. Why doesn't anyone like it? Yeah. You didn't spend the time to reflect on does anybody care? Is this useful? Is it solving a problem? There's all these questions that you can ask. That's huge.

SPEAKER_06 9:39

That is huge. Asking questions is huge. And and I think that was something I learned early on after becoming a realtor. Like, I think when you get your your real estate license, a lot of the training is on like creating your perfect guide or your perfect like presentation or your pitch or your, you know, your your you know, presentation. Really the most important thing is to ask questions. Yeah. When you get in front of a client is to just start asking questions because you can never assume what's is valuable to somebody else. And very rarely is it that it's this flyer looks this exact way, and someone, you know, it's usually more about how you make someone feel.

SPEAKER_05 10:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 10:19

And if they feel like you're listening and understanding what is important to them. And that was, you know, a big one. And so people get stuck there.

SPEAKER_03 10:28

Yep. Big time. You know, there's a bunch of jokes about realtors out there for sure. And there's a bit of a stigma around the profession and a little bit with good reason. It doesn't have a very high threshold of entry, which can be a determinant factor, but also it just seems to attract a certain type of person sometimes. And what you mentioned there is really important as well because one strategy doesn't work for everyone. So if someone goes, This is how you do it, this is how I do it, so this is how you should do it. That's not very self-reflective because they're not asking the question, does this fit for that person? You've got a team, all your team has a different approach. But if they start with asking questions to their client, they can then determine how their personality and their approach fits with their client's needs. And you've built up some really long-term relationships and you've been a successful realtor for a very long time in a relationship that, in a sorry, in a professional space that has a lot of turnover, a lot of short-term part-timers, a lot of short-term relationships. It's always the next sale, the next sale, the next sale. So you've cultivated these long-term relationships and these long-term client relationships, business relationships, because you started with the questions. And that goes into all businesses. If you can sit down in a meeting, this is the startup space and whatever space, the music business, you sit down and you go, This is how good I am. This is what I have. This is this is this is, and you're talking to someone, like, say it's Dragon's Den or something. How many pitches do these people hear? Pick one of your favorite person off the Dragon Stand. And imagine you have 30 seconds with them in an elevator. How many elevator pitches do you think they've heard about this great concept, this great thing? I did, I did, I did. How many times do you think that person was asked, what can I do for you?

SPEAKER_05 12:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:14

How many times? One out of a thousand, maybe. And how easy is it for that person to switch off their brain as soon as you start telling the person how great you are? That's and I understand it. It's a human, you're excited about your idea, you're excited about what you're doing, you've got passion, great, all super important things. But if you don't stop to ask why or how about you, or is this fit for what you're doing? Does this solve a problem for you, the person that you're trying to get investment from or access from or whatever? If it's not providing them anything, why the fuck should they give you the time of day? Yeah. Why? They don't owe you anything. Nobody owes you shit. No. So if you're not stopping to ask why is this important to this person, or what can I do to develop a relationship, then that allows me to prov present what I'm doing.

SPEAKER_06 13:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:04

Maybe that's smart.

SPEAKER_06 13:06

Well, Nikita is to try to be irreplaceable in a world where we are all replaceable. Yes, you know, and the only way to do that is to build that personal connection and that personal relationship and that personal trust in you. So, you know, but also understanding like we are all replaceable. People are on to the next thing. And one thing too, in the like kind of like personal development kind of world is to your point, is there's a lot of coaches. And they

Beware One Size Fits All Advice

SPEAKER_06 13:36

my my problem always with a lot of these business coaches is exactly what you're saying is they teach the one way that worked for them or the one thing. And and it will work for a lot of people, but it's not necessarily going to work for everybody.

SPEAKER_04 13:47

Exactly.

SPEAKER_06 13:48

And so you do need to think about who you are as an individual and make sure you're like like aligning those things with what makes sense for you.

SPEAKER_03 13:55

Exactly. And so I'm I'm doing a course right now in university. It's called critical thinking. And the whole underpinning is how to live a rational life, a good life. Right. And that's part of that evaluation. If you don't know for yourself, if you don't know your own goals, your own personality traits, your the things that you prize, whether it's being good or kind or successful, whatever it is, those things that you want. You don't know how to evaluate them. If you don't, if you don't know how to evaluate them for yourself, how are you able to evaluate if you're on the right track? Are you putting the right people in your life? Are you making those evaluative decisions about everything you're doing? So there's a certain amount of rationality that goes into it. That's great. There's a big part of personality, right? If you don't know your own personality, then you don't your own rational decisions. How do you slide it into those things? Because some of those coaches, you might be able to cherry pick certain things out. Great, that fits for I like that. I don't like that, but that's okay. That's that's important. Then you're building, you're asking a question, does that fit?

SPEAKER_04 14:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:56

Um, and that questioning fits for whatever it is that you're doing out there.

SPEAKER_06 15:01

Yeah. That's a big part in your development, is just that is because it can feel like if you go into some of these rooms or conferences or trainings or whatever, if you don't fit whatever is being presented to you, that you are not going to be successful either. And that's not the case either. It's more just what piece does work for you and how can you take it away rather than letting that, you know, completely take the wind out of your sails.

SPEAKER_03 15:28

Exactly. And you're getting the most out of that weekend, regardless if it was meant meant necessarily for you and your way of doing business. That the the 4 a.m. cruise, right? Like that thing. Like you gotta get up and seize the day at 4 a.m. That's bullshit for us. It may be awesome for other people to get up and run around. It's not for us. But that doesn't mean there isn't some energy out of that that we can take into when we do get started, when we do have time.

SPEAKER_05 15:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:50

And how do we take that forward? And then using that same rationality to develop relationships, choosing the people you want to do business with, the deals that you want to take part of. There's always another deal. If you don't ask enough questions about that deal, that opportunity, if you're not questioning, does it fit for my goals and myself? But also, is this person able to answer questions?

SPEAKER_05 16:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:14

Do they do they get scared when you ask too many questions? We know people that, oh, I didn't, I this person asked too many questions. I don't like it. So that's crazy.

SPEAKER_05 16:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:23

If if I'm not able to ask the answer the questions, I don't think somebody should be investing in something I'm doing, just purely ethical, moral standpoint.

SPEAKER_06 16:31

Yeah. Well, and if you don't and if like so questions kind of I think of two things. People may ask you a question they don't know the answer to.

SPEAKER_05 16:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 16:39

But that's okay.

SPEAKER_05 16:40

Yeah, it's great.

SPEAKER_06 16:40

But that doesn't mean you should discourage questions.

SPEAKER_05 16:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 16:43

Like those are two different concepts.

SPEAKER_05 16:45

Yes.

SPEAKER_06 16:45

Questions are good. People asking you questions good because that means they're actually interested in whatever you're talking about. So being okay with that, but also being okay if you don't know the answer. Absolutely. You know, this comes up in our team training things too. It's like people can put you on the spot. It's like, I don't know everything about everything. There's lots of things to get questions I don't know the answer to. And that's okay. But I did have to grow to the point of being comfortable with that as well. That wasn't just, I didn't just start that way. So people may ask you questions. Questions are good.

SPEAKER_04 17:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 17:16

That shows people are curious. And you showing and and you asking questions is also good.

SPEAKER_03 17:22

Yeah, because as soon as you get a question you don't know, that grows your understanding. Because then you go figure it out. Yeah. And then that's now another tool you have in our bag. With Welshare, for example, I mean, we were one of the only issuers that showed up at the Alberta Securities seminar that they put on. And they're they're kind of going, We're not, we're not trying to scare issuers. We're not the big bad beast. We want to make sure that what we're doing fits expressly within the guidelines, and we want to ask questions about the parts we don't know and understand that these guidelines and things are out there for a reason to protect investors. Those are you see so many issuers out there that are avoidant. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 18:00

You don't want to look at it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:02

That's a that's a slippery, slippery slope that gets you into a difficult place. And if you ask the questions early, you challenge yourself early. You're gonna avoid the mistake later on. But it's hard. It's hard to answer a question that you don't know or get a question you don't know the answer to. It's hard to say, I don't know. Let me find out.

SPEAKER_04 18:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:19

It's hard to get a question wrong. We've both answered questions wrong. We will again.

SPEAKER_05 18:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:23

We've made mistakes and we will again. We've made mistakes on deals, on people, on whatever else. So that's hard, but without that, you're not gonna grow. Your business isn't gonna grow, your relationships aren't gonna grow, and you'll stagnate. And if stagnation is fine, that's what you're looking for. And you can look yourself in the mirror and go, I want to be stagnant because this is where I'm comfortable, this is why, and you can rationalize it. And if you don't want the hard, yes, that's that's fine.

SPEAKER_06 18:49

Gary V posted, I think, like yesterday or recently about how he's like, if you want to grow a business, you have to understand that hard is good.

SPEAKER_02 18:56

Yes.

SPEAKER_06 18:57

If it's hard, that means you're like on the right track. You're you're doing what you need to be doing to grow in whatever way you're trying to grow.

SPEAKER_03 19:04

Yeah. The hard is good. Be comfortable being uncomfortable, which we say a lot, which is part of self-reflection, part of self-growth, part of challenging yourself, challenging your business. It's uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_06 19:15

It absolutely no two ways about it. Well,

Accountability Without Taking Extra Guilt

SPEAKER_06 19:17

and that kind of goes into accountability, right? What do you do when you do something wrong or you make a mistake or you say the wrong thing or you do the wrong thing? And you know, this is something that with my sort of people-pleasing nature and wanting to always do things right is something that I've spent a lot of time thinking about. And taking accountability, first off, is I think 90% of the of what's important when you do something wrong. Absolutely take accountability for your mistake and recognize it like verbally to whoever it matters to, right? This could be your kids too.

SPEAKER_02 19:53

Yes.

SPEAKER_06 19:53

Um, we just had an episode talking about our kids and like parenting and taking accountability for what you, you know, did wrong is uh like 90% of it. Yeah, like and then learning from it, of course.

SPEAKER_03 20:05

But absolutely. And we all know, everybody knows, listening to this, though there are people out there that refuse to take any sort of accountability and they will constantly act like they have never made a mistake and that if there was something that went wrong, it was because of XYZ, it was the market, it was this, it was that, yeah, it wasn't anything that they did. And and sometimes that may be true, but it doesn't take people that long to see through that. And so if you even want to be just mercenary about this, purely from a relationship or business standpoint, most people see through that. Most people recognize that as a bit of a red flag. If you're not able to at least take some accountability on what happened, you can there is such a thing as taking too much accountability, and that's something as well, but you got to take some. And that's that's how you build a 25-year relationship, not a two-year one.

SPEAKER_06 20:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:57

Long-term.

SPEAKER_06 20:58

Because things are gonna go not as you hoped.

SPEAKER_03 21:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 21:00

Results are not gonna be what you wanted them to be.

SPEAKER_03 21:03

And sometimes you can do everything right and something else will fuck it up.

SPEAKER_06 21:06

That's right.

SPEAKER_03 21:07

That's possible. Things that you didn't account for or that you couldn't account for. Like COVID was a wild one. There's so many people that got completely wiped from that. Yeah. And we're not gonna get into a COVID debate about how it was handled, but it it affected people without an ability to determine it was coming.

SPEAKER_04 21:24

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 21:24

So yes. So now what? Now how do you deal with those things? How do you deal with the fallout? How do you deal with the relationships? How do you deal with whatever comes with it? It's an ongoing, evolving process.

SPEAKER_06 21:34

Yeah. Well, and I think when you take accountability in a relationship on something, how the other person responds to you is a is a big thing to indicate whether they're willing to do that for you as well. Right. Like if if they like I'm the type of person, it's pretty easy for me to move on from things, you know, if there's an issue or or whatever, but I do notice accountability or if someone You know, who has like made a mistake is just blaming rather than taking accountability. Or if I take accountability, how do they respond? Like all of that gives you really important information to people you're doing business with or that you're in relationships with. And if they are aligned in that kind of growth mentality, because people who are growing and changing and evolving often will like highly appreciate accountability and give you a positive response, not a negative one.

SPEAKER_03 22:26

Yeah, exactly. And that also goes to like one of the things we both always say is as much as possible, we want to be the dumbest person in the room. Cause that's the same thing. It's growth, challenging yourself, asking questions, learning from people that have either been there before or are smarter at that thing or have more experience, have a certain level of success that you want to potentially emulate parts of. If you're constantly putting yourself in that room, if you're constantly trying to ask questions and grow and develop, that's the rooms that you're going to be in because you're not always going to be the big fish in a small pond. And I think there's a lot of people, their human nature is part of it. They get very comfortable being a big fish in a small pond because they like the maybe it's the influence that they have, the power, the the elbow room that it gives them, the ego feed, those are fine. It's not necessarily any of that is bad in and of itself. Once again, I feel like if you can look yourself in the eye in the mirror and go, yes, I like this and I like the power it gives me and I okay with it, and I can rationalize it to myself, great, go with God. If not, that's potentially problematic because now you're not properly assessing does that fit with who I am and does it fit with how I want to treat people.

SPEAKER_05 23:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:39

Because those that's part of the questioning, right? That's part of the self-reflection. Am I treating people the way I want to be treated?

SPEAKER_06 23:45

This this, even with like we're sort of talking about like parenting, but and going too far with accountability. Like I know for our daughter, we've had conversation. It's like don't also own what's not yours, right? Like Brindley might be recording this, so she'll she will give me her two cents. But like when you're a caring individual and really care about the the people around you, you can also only be accountable and hold, you know, dear way what is yours and what you have contributed to something. So also not carrying the guilt about what other people have done is a big part of it too, right? And that takes self-reflection and that takes a look inside, like, okay, in this situation, did I do anything I could have done better? Or am I, you know, kind of attaching myself to something that wasn't necessarily mine?

SPEAKER_03 24:34

Yeah. Are you taking someone else's guilt? Are you taking out someone else's trauma? Are you taking someone else's issues? I think that also falls into some mental health debates because you can see there is a desire for people to take, even in social media and these big places, they almost want to take someone else's pain and make it their own to make themselves be a feel a part of that thing or whatever. And I I don't want to get into that, but you can see it. And even in friendships, yeah, friendships, exactly.

SPEAKER_06 25:02

It's like take on, or just yeah, I've certainly done.

SPEAKER_03 25:05

Yeah, and and and and that's kind of that person's grief to a degree. Yeah. You can be supportive, but if you start taking on, it's a little condescending too, but yeah, but also like to to the parenting side, there's like classroom effect or the team effect, like coaching or or in a class where the teacher might get frustrated and there might be a four or five kids that are causing the whole disruption. And then the teacher has a either a momentary breakdown or it's just not a very good teacher. Yeah. A reaction, whatever you want to call it, and yells at the whole class. Well, it's very easy for every kid in there to feel responsible, but it was really four or five kids that they were talking to, being able to distinguish well, I don't want my teacher to be upset, but I wasn't contributing. Therefore, that's not really my right.

SPEAKER_06 25:51

That's the first question. Was I contributing? And if I was, then what can I do better? Yeah. Or what can I do about it?

SPEAKER_03 25:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 25:56

And it I wasn't, then it's like just even just working through that in your mind.

SPEAKER_03 26:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 26:00

Rather than just going to the one extreme, right?

SPEAKER_03 26:03

And that's a tough thing in coaching too. It's like going to the going to the club the team and going, okay, well, six or seven kids were completely half-assinate.

SPEAKER_05 26:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:13

But the rest were really trying their best. But for a team to be successful, everybody's got to kind of be pushing. Yeah. So then how do you communicate that to the room without a bunch of kids going, well, I thought I was, you know, I thought I was trying hard. Yeah. And so I try to preface when I communicate some of that stuff. What if you felt you were doing the best you possibly could, this is this is not for you. But I need to be able to communicate this to the team because it's a team responsibility.

SPEAKER_06 26:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:37

So that's kids to adults to whatever. And you can see adults that have never really had that conversation. You know?

SPEAKER_06 26:43

That's very true.

SPEAKER_03 26:45

And you can see adults that just don't self-reflect at all. And I think for our kids or our us, you can identify is that what you want to be? Do you want to be like that when you're older? When you're older, you know, at any point in your life. Do you want to be that person that is blindly shutting out feedback and stagnating themselves personally or professionally or in relationships? That you know, thing we were taught, I think our generation got it maybe the most was like you are special, right? Like everyone is special. Nobody's special. No one's owed anything. You have to you have to choose your own adventure. No one deserves more space than anybody else. No one has more specialness or or deserve something, even if you do everything right, doesn't mean you deserve the result. The result's gonna be the result, whether you want it or not. You're gonna put yourself at the best position for that result, but sometimes things happen. Yeah. So then can you ask, can you sleep at night with the decisions you made? Can you can you go? I did what I could, I made the decisions with the best of my knowledge to the best of my ability. This is how I can make better decisions next time. And this was what was out of my control, and this is how I can manage the things out of my control next time. Great. Then you can move on with that thing. But if you don't do any of that, how do you Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 28:07

How do you exactly? Yeah. Decision

Decision Making And Learning From Mistakes

SPEAKER_06 28:10

making, and you just mentioned that, and it kind of that's something I'm personally working on right now, is being more decisive and not kind of wavering, or once a decision is made, it's made, you know, like you kind of gotta l live with it, whether it was right or wrong, or you know, and I think that's something that I can go back to like, well, maybe I should have, or those woulda could's, right? Like, how do you deal with those through growth and through self-reflection and not beat yourself up about it or you know, like let it take too much of your energy. Because that's the other part of this stuff, is like as you're growing, you can't just carry all this baggage with you of all the things you wish you would have done differently. You can learn from it and move on. But you know, once a decision is made, that's that's what it is, and that's okay.

SPEAKER_03 28:59

Yeah. Yeah, that decision's been made regardless. Yeah, it's it's already been made regardless. So whether it was right or wrong. Exactly. We'll find out. You're gonna find out. Yeah. And you're gonna make wrong decisions, that's the thing. Yes. People sometimes assess people with varying degrees of success. And I how you classify that is up to every person's success. What is their success metric? But often they'll look at that like it's been a straight line, it's been without losses, it's been without bad relationships, bad things happening or mistakes, and that's just simply not true. Every successful person's made mistakes and they've either grown from them or developed a different process or what have you, but it's those mistakes that often are what teach you. So if you can't learn, you can't question through your mistakes, then you're not learning. You're not growing. You're not sure.

SPEAKER_06 29:50

It's a critical part of growing is to make mistakes or errors or things you wish you wouldn't have done differently or whatever.

SPEAKER_03 29:55

And it's human biology, it's like an evolutionary trait. You you you grab that thing that hurt, you stop grabbing it afterwards, you learnt by grabbing the thing that didn't hurt. You didn't know until you grabbed the thing that hurt. It's very basic, you know, lizard brain biology. So the the mistakes are going to teach you the best, but only if you're open to learning.

SPEAKER_05 30:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:14

And growing and pushing. And I'll say it again, it's not comfortable. I a good life doesn't come with just comfort and positivity and and pleasure. It comes with hard moments and difficult self-reflection and uncomfortable days and nights. And that's okay.

SPEAKER_05 30:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:38

Like that's a big part of it. Whatever there's, I think hopefully there's some people listening that are potentially having those challenges of like it's it's hard. It's harder than it should be, it's harder than I wanted it to be. That's okay.

SPEAKER_05 30:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:49

You you if you're doing it for the right reason, if your why is clear, if you've identified the things, it's okay to be hard. It's okay that there's long nights. It's okay if if if you're on the right path and if you're doing it for the right reasons for yourself. No one else can decide that for you. Yeah. No influencer can decide it, no parent can decide it, no, no, nothing. You have it has to come from you, but you have to be able to identify it.

SPEAKER_06 31:11

Well, and there may be ebbs and flows as life progresses to what when that push of something hard is worth it.

SPEAKER_04 31:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 31:18

Like you're never going to be 100% consistent all the time in this like growth space or reflective space. Hopefully it becomes more of a habit, let's say. Yeah. But it that hard or that discomfort also is hard and dis and hard and uncomfortable. So if there's a lot of difficult things going on in your life, you may kind of not work on it as much that week or that month or whatever if there's other challenges going on in life. And that's also okay. You can go back to it.

SPEAKER_03 31:45

Yeah. So maybe we'll tie this up with a reflective story or lesson learned.

Real Estate Lesson And Listener Questions

SPEAKER_03 31:49

And something that we I think we kind of kick each other a bit over is we had some assets early on in a relationship. And instead of refinancing them, we sold them. And as real estate people and later on learning the refinance game and model, this was, you know, mid-2000s. We maybe could have made different decisions that would have helped us now in a bigger picture. However, we made those decisions fully aware that it was the best decision for us. We had you had major health issues at the time.

SPEAKER_04 32:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:18

Um, I was dealing with my own mental health challenges. We were figuring out our career, our relationship, a lot of things. So it wasn't necessarily a bad decision. I don't, there's there's there'sn't really a regret around it outside of if we had a different knowledge base, we maybe would have made a different decision. And different things. And then we can learn from that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 32:38

Around us.

SPEAKER_03 32:39

Yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 32:40

What upsets me most about that was all the brokers and bankers and people around us that that could have given us another idea.

SPEAKER_02 32:47

Yeah, just some feedback.

SPEAKER_06 32:48

And that's something that as I got my real estate license, that was the first things I started talking like with people about is more thinking about it. Like what are all of the options, which is what I love about real estate, is there's always usually multiple options. Yes. But that's one of those things. Certainly, we probably would have been better off in some ways, but that is what it is.

SPEAKER_03 33:08

And also that's also why you have invested in these things and these hard assets because life happens and it can come at you fast, right? Yes. So you've got clients that have had to sell an asset that they didn't necessarily want to and they did really well off of it, and that's great. That's the win. Yeah. Because now they've got capital that can go to a major life sickness, death, whatever it might be. These life-changing events, if you have an asset, if you have an investment that can protect you in that, then it's working as intended. Yes. It's not to build the big collection and then have all the toys. It's so that you have the option and the flexibility in those moments and those hard moments in life and be a part of building something, that's great. But do you have that option? That's that's a differentiation to a lot of people, how they get to deal with those hardest parts of their life. So that's a lesson we've learned. That's an example, and I'm sure we have many more gazillion. We're happy to share touch on some of those. Yeah. So that's a thing. If you ever are listening and have thoughts and questions, fire them in. We love to discuss things. We like hard questions. And we'll kind of go from there and tune in and wrap it up. Yeah, that'll be it for today. And look forward to our next discussion.

SPEAKER_06 34:19

Very good. Thanks.

SPEAKER_03 34:20

Thanks for tuning in.

SPEAKER_00 34:25

Built this empire from the ground. Never backing down. Never bound.

SPEAKER_01 34:35

Two hearts, one vision, we stay true. And the figure of it, in the flips of it.