Joe is a very successful entrepreneur. He’s the founder of drop the armor wellness, AKA drop the armor dojo and Joe is on a mission to help other men. And when I say that, listen guys, before. And the women, we didn’t want to leave the men out this week. We did not want to leave the men out. That’s why Joe’s here.

Okay.  help other men feel love and freedom that he learned to cultivate when his life fell apart in 2013, Joel lives in Washington, DC, as we were talking about before with his partner, Natalie Joe also leads transformational men’s initiations in the mankind project and is involved in showing up for racial justice, DC chapter healing team, which is really cool.

 it’s important to ask the question, you know,  who are. And what do you want out of life? Joel helps you to answer those questions. It’s also important to think about your mindset and habits. As we said, going into 2021, it all starts here and here and here, right here and here it starts there. So,  it’s that time of year to hear from someone like Joe,  let’s get your story first, Joe, you have an interesting journey.

Self-help journey from old Joe to new Joe, can you break down your story for us? How you got involved in self-development and now. As a really successful life coach. What happened? What’s your story? Well, thanks man. I appreciate being here and for the record, I’ve actually never gone skiing in my entire life.

So I won’t charge 50 grand, like Tony Robbins. We were telling us in the big, big names of my industry and how a lot of what they give is powerful. And sometimes doesn’t have all the substance, but anyway,  so I’ll tell you about me. I grew up really, really in a comfortable. That’s not the way I’ll put it security.

 middle-class suburban right outside of the DC Metro parents together, family attack two sisters.  and for all intents and purposes, a very loving and. But like many households, many families where you have all of your material needs taken care of. There are some times a lot of emotional turmoil and in my family, that was a case, both my parents to this day love with every shred of their being.

But love for them comes from scarcity and fear and stress and worried. So I got all those messages in the world about how to stay safe. How not to take risk and really how to create a life that was pretty tense, even when you have everything you actually need. And so essentially I bodied those messages.

My parents, they bickered, they fought, there was no physical violence or with no addiction, there was no gambling. There was emotional violence all the time. Like we, a lot, a lot of us actually experience our parents’ generation, the generation before them and every generation past. They weren’t given a lot of the tools that we have today.

A lot of, you know, the option to go to therapy, the capacity to read the Tony Robbins book, if that actually helps you or the giant Gottman book or whatever it is that you’re getting into. Right. And so from a very young age, I just embodied all of that stress and all of these beliefs about not taking risks.

And some of the time I was four or five years old, I was what the medical industry would call obese. I was teased and bullied all the time. I have some learning disabilities. So when you grow up in a, in a kind of wealthy ish suburban neighborhood, and you’re taught that you have to get great grades and you have to go to an Ivy league school or else there’ll be nothing professional.

It starts to eat away at what you see possible for your life. So by the time I’m 16, 17 years old, I’m over 300 pounds. I literally believe like I’m never going to have success when it comes to love and dating, because I believed all the teasing and all the messaging. I saw my parents go through all of their toxic co-dependencies and I believe what the world told me about people who are heavier, that you won’t be attractive.

No one will love you.  and you know, I did okay in school, but I really didn’t have the discipline to apply myself. I just assumed I wouldn’t do well in college. I assumed I wouldn’t get a great job. I kind of had this, my mindset on mediocrity, unfortunately. And the worst part. I mean, I really thought that the way you grow up as the way you’ll always be.

So I really thought that I would just continue to gain weight and probably die young forties or fifties of like health-related issues related to obesity. I mean, it sounds bleak, but that’s kind of the reality that I. Now what you believe you create. You know, I see this every day of my life where you believe you create some of the time.

I’m 25 flash forward. I failed out of college. I hadn’t dated in five years, actually. I didn’t even kissed anyone since I was 19 years. And I didn’t have ambitions for my, my actual professional life, but I found myself actually in a career, I stumbled into a sales career with Bose corporation and their retail stores.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a Bose store, especially back in like the two thousands and maybe like the early part of 2010. We had all these beautiful presentation technology. It was like an experience. Right? And so I excelled at service. I excelled at sales. I excelled at some of the basic elements of motivating and leading teams.

So I’m already at 25, I’m successful professionally I’m winning awards. I’m running multimillion dollar stores. So I have got that one little piece of life. So I decided, let me go out there and try and date, you know. Okay. I got a little bit stuff together. But again, what you believe about yourself is what you create.

So I ended up getting married, found myself in a really challenging relationship where I compromised integrity. I played the nice guy. I never rock the boat. And over time it all fell apart. And I’ll tell you about 2012. I’m literally 30 years old and I’ve lost a little bit of weight. So I’m like around 300 pounds, even though it’s all the way up to three 50, at one point, I’m going through a health crisis.

I have kidney stones because of the way I eat and the way I don’t take care of my body. And I need a surgery for it, which was really excruciating and terrible. I realized that I’d started to slow down in my progression. I’ve gotten comfortable in my career. I wasn’t taking risks. I wasn’t going after promotions anymore.

I didn’t want my bosses job. So I hit this point where I’m 30 years old, 10 years succeeding in the career. I have no idea what the heck I’m going to do next. And I’m falling flat. And then my wife at the time walks in the door and says, you know, I haven’t been happy. Cause just like my parents, we fought all the time.

We were just at each other’s throats and she says, I’m one foot out the door. So lucky for me, we did try and put things together. We went into a little couples therapy. They gave us some practices, some books I for the first time have a little bit of self-awareness and I start realizing, wait, there’s people out there in the world.

Writing books, selling programs, teaching us how to love, how to take care of our bodies, how to communicate, how to shift the way we see the world, which was a new horizon for me, that marriage fell apart 2013. And that was the best thing that ever happened to me. So I’m 30 years old. I’m already a failure at marriage and my wife walks out the door.

I wanted to keep it together. She didn’t, I realized my career is stagnant and I’m not moving from. And,  I’m at the crossroads when it comes to health 30 years old and still put it back together, or I could let it all fall apart. So that’s sparked, that was lit. You know, I still remember who here is red, like show of hands.

You could show your hands on the camera or pop it into the reactions. Who’s read the five love languages. Yeah. Mo like a lot of us have read that book. It’s a classic. You go to a couples therapy yourself, or a friend goes through a divorce, something you hear about that book. I got that book. I’m inspired.

I’m enlivened. I pick up another book about relations. And then I started to pick up a little bit of reading and going on online forums about men and how we get into these codependent relationships. And by the time my ex-wife says I’m one foot out the door. I have a new perspective on this perspective that we can learn how to be when it comes to how we relate to ourselves and to others.

So I was there. I was at that crossroads. I thought to myself, like I could see the vision of like, shoot. I might never be in another relationship. My health might deteriorate. I might get stuck in this career. There was an aha moment. I’m sitting there on my bed and I’m realizing, wait a second. If there’s this material out there in the world, that’s teaching people how to change.

Then it means that people have to be able to change. And in my retail career, selling for bows and leading stores for. I was really, I had this positive mindset. I focused on company values and mission. I taught it to everyone. That those would be the things that drive you forward and success in your career.

I took full responsibility for all our outcomes and results. Anything that happened in the store, doesn’t matter if a customer is walking in crazy, it’s going to be our job to figure it out. Doesn’t matter if it’s the middle of the recession, which we’ve been already experienced, it’s our job to figure it out.

Almost like a switch flipped and I realized, wait a second jail, you could apply this way of being and your professional success to your personal life. Everything changed at that point, I had a fire lit under my butt. I changed the way I eat. I changed the way I go exercise. Start, go to the gym every day.

And I really started digging into work around the nervous system around emotions and around communication. Now August, 2012 was when the wake-up call really hit August, 2013, I’d lost a hundred pounds. I was dating multiple women that were out of my league and my stores were actually doing better as well too.

And my social life was on fire. I had this whole change in outlook and how I see the world and my beliefs about what was possible and how I relate now communicate to myself and others. And the rest is history. I kind of woke up one day going like, look, if I can change this much with simple things, These aren’t secrets.

These are just things that were not being taught in school. You know, we’re not being taught except for if you work for GPG by your bosses and your leadership at your corporate companies. And I’ve got to be able to turn around and teach others just became a calling. And at the time I was very engaged in a lot of what’s called men’s work to reclaim healthy masculinity.

And I said, I got to help other men. So, you know, I’ll jump in and just kind of cut out a bunch of the other stuff. But essentially I put together a two year plan to get out of retail. To figure out how to get into the personal professional growth world. And I just jumped, you know, hired coaches, got into masterminds, dug deep and studying and realizing what it took and just made it happen.

 so now I spend every day working specifically with men, but I also do a lot of work presentations podcasts. My Facebook group that I help cultivate every day is for men, women, or anyone of any gender identity, really learn how to do a few things. Get clear on a vision, clear on values and clarify the head, opened the heart and solidify the guts.

You know, like I talk about guts as we can have as much access to our heart and our emotions as we want. We can have as much clarity in our mind as we want, but we have to have the guts to go against the grain and make the choices every day, which create the life that lights us. So I’ll stop there, David.

I know you’ve got a lot more questions and I could dig deep. There’s a bunch of little pockets in my story,  that can unfold, but I’ll stop for there. That’s great now,  as time permits, you know what, we’ll break that down a little bit, but that your story is really important to set up the next few questions.

Right? You had some history in sales, you had, you know, some failed,  ventures in life, right. And then fast forward. That’s how you’re in. You know, that’s why you’re such a successful life coach today. So before we look forward to 2021 and, you know, mindset and goals, and we’re going to talk about, you know, simplifying and all that kind of thing, but,  what did 2020 teach us from your perspective?

Yeah, I can tell you, I can tell you what 2020 taught me. It taught me that we can’t rely on all of the comfort that we have in life. We can’t rely on things staying the same, but just like when I experienced 2013, a partner that walked in and set up done. Things can change like that in a moment for all of us.

And so the money that we have, the structures that we set up, the relationships that we’re in and they can all change. So what’s really important to me. I think that we’ve been shown. Is that we understand how to work with this, you know, how do we understand how to work with our own inner experience, how to pivot, how to adapt, that’d be resilient, how to handle stress and how to handle emotions.

You know, I, I, people joke a lot about like the COVID 15.  look, we, we have statistics that show alcohol sales skyrocketed. I don’t know about Canada, but the U S alcohol sales skyrocketed with bars and restaurants closed. I know that DC, Maryland, Virginia sold record level, the amounts of alcohol just in stores alone, which tells us that we have not built skills to learn how to actually cope with the stresses in life, with changes in life.

And that maybe the most important thing in our life is what happens at home. ’cause, you know, I don’t know if y’all been lifts. I have a new client. Who’s actually a epidemiologist. He’s an infectious disease epidemiologist. And he works for, he used to work for the federal government. He says, this is someone else’s this, this is, this is, this is the first pandemic that we’re going to experience in our lives.

Things will change. The environment has changed. We have to be a lot more adaptable. So I hope that people are learning how to, how to develop their skills, to connect themselves and to communicate at home. So that we don’t go through such a challenging experience. If we’re ever in a situation like this.

Again, we can’t rely on the happy hour and the sports team, and we can’t rely on the long commute to blow off steam, but also to allow us to spend and, or maybe even waste time so that we’re not dealing with what we need to at home within our physical health, within our relationships, maybe stuff with our kids or our community around us, you know, home is where the heart is.

We’ve been saying that for generations and generations, and I think this year we learned this. Yeah.  that’s a great thought. Now I’m going to roll. I actually, I’m going to ask you two questions in one, one has to do with resolutions. Do they work? And then your perspective on,  results based goals and markers.

Now you don’t believe you should focus on that, right? Like, you know what I’m saying? Like metrics, you know, certain numbers and things like that. So, so what brings happiness? What marks success, if you don’t have, you know, results based goals and markers, you know, Yeah, those are great questions. And, and one thing I teach is to,  I can’t remember.

I think it was Joseph Campbell, anyone who? Joseph Campbell, his hero’s journey.  I think he was him. Mr. Hammer Kroll, young that talked about that’s deep. You can’t, you can’t tell people to look up Joseph Campbell. That’s a, that’s a rabbit. It is a rabbit hole, but do it.  and if you do, and if you don’t want to spend a bunch of time in a rabbit hole, like there’s a, there’s a movie called fighting Joe at seventy-five minutes.

I swear. It’s not about me. But it’s about Joseph Campbell and the hero’s journey. And it’s beautiful and you don’t need to go down the whole rabbit hole, but essentially, you know, either him or Carl Young two guys, I study a lot. One of them I can know which one said the ultimate technology in life, especially spiritual technology in life is embraced a paradox.

So everything I share, you understand this paradox, there’s black and white, there’s different shades of gray in between. And so. I do think resolutions for work work, but for a very small percentage of people and for certain types of shifts and changes, look, we all know that one friend who has all the willpower in the world, they decide they’re going to quit drinking.

Boom, they’re done. They decide they’re gonna start going to the gym. Boom, they’re done. They lift heavy things. They make a lot of money. They do that stuff, right. We all want to be like them because that’s what our world has propped up for generation after generation after generation and put on TV in front of us.

Those are the outliers. Let’s just get real for a second. Those are the outliers. Most of us don’t just decide we want to change. And then we change like that. So I do think resolutions can work, but I don’t think they work for most people. It’s time to actually get a little more clear on what we truly value and dig down deep.

Just like I do think we should set results based metrics outcomes are met. We’re chasing after, when it comes to certain things. If it comes to business. Yeah.  if you don’t have goals and metrics are chasing after it, there’s probably going to be some problems in your business, but when it comes to what we want out of our life, we can’t necessarily apply what I want to, what I lovingly, but kind of,  with a smart call capitalist thinking to our personal life.

To our health, to our relationships, to our relationship with ourself, to our self-talk, we’re not going to be able to just weigh and measure our way to change when it comes to habits and behaviors and relationships, et cetera, in our own personal mindset and energy. So what really works? I think what’s really, really important that a lot of us, a lot of us have in mind, but we don’t really clarify as it’s getting really crystal clear on what we most value in life.

And when you do set a goal. We often think about that outcome that result, right, David, like we think about, well, I want to lose 50 pounds. Trust me. I knew all about weight loss. Not only have I lost honor 50 pounds myself kept it off eight years. One of my coaching trainings is in eating psychology in my money, nutrition.

I know all about it. And this is a great example. You could say you want to lose 50 pounds, but at the end of the day, that’s actually not something you’re necessarily going to control. You could say that you can. You can make, you know, you want to make $4 million in sales this year, but you don’t actually control when things close.

And when things don’t, how much comes in, what we do control is our habits. Right? We do control is our behavior. And what we do controls our mindset. So I often work with, I won’t, I won’t give a cookie cutter. I don’t believe you’re a cookie. So I’m not giving you a cookie cutter approach. It’s just one of my sayings.

And one of my beliefs is I work with clients specifically on one of the most value. And when they have goals, what are they really. What do you want to feel? What do you want to heal? What do you wanna experience? What do you wanna create? And we set markers that are based on their own value system for that specifically.

So again, weight loss. If we talk about that, what do we really want? Well, we want to look better or more importantly, we want to feel good about how we look. That’s an inside job based on competence, mindset and emotions, less so than it is on what your actual pants size are. We want to actually be more energy.

Well, that’s something that you can actually measure, whether the scale’s changing or not. We literally want to feel less encumbered by, you know, thinking about all the little things that we do. All the choices we make around how we eat. We don’t necessarily want to be spending tons of time feeling like a failure because I set up a goal and then I didn’t.

So it’s about getting really clear on who do you really want to see yourself as through this goal? What do you want to feel from this goal? What are you going to create for yourself or others for your relationships in this goal? And let’s just short circuit. It let’s just go right to that and then track the feeling.

I’ll give people like something here’s a cookie cutter. Here’s here’s a cookie. Got it. Right. Do start doing for yourself no matter what goals you set start doing when you, especially when you set a big goal or you’re coming in after some big change in life. Do I call a PI’s check-in every morning or every night, get a journal and write pies, physical, intellectual, emotional, spiritual.

And give yourself ratings on what that day or the day before felt like tracking things like that. Tracking what we want out of life, tracking how say connecting, we feel to a partner or how confident we felt in our sales presentations or in our connection with our clients or showing them their dream home.

Those are things that technically they’re not measurable, but we can, then we can take, and we can apply metrics. We can clear our little scorecards for ourselves that are customized, based on what we want. So,  again, I think it’s really like each person needs to figure out their own exact way of measuring what’s important and just cut right to the chase rather than always focusing on the metric.

Yeah. Yeah. That’s such a incredible breakdown. So you mentioned,  pies, which you do at the end of the day. I’ve never heard that before. That’s really interesting. So PIs stands for physical intellectual, emotional and spiritual, right? So there’s pies, what other, and of course the role that habits play both good and bad effect your life, obviously.

Right? So it’s all about habits and this is a recurring theme you’ll hear with very successful. Entrepreneurs sales professionals, whoever it might be. It’s all about the habit. So what daily habits do you have that play a role in your success? Well, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s terribly played out, but I do think morning routine is so important.

Yeah. I do think morning routine is so important. How are we priming our nervous system? How are we priming our mind? How we priming our body, how we priming our energy. For what we do in the day. So I do teach this idea of three M’s for morning routine mindfulness movement and mastery. So finding a way to get in mindfulness, it could be typical like Vipassana meditation.

It could be a journaling practice. It could be yoga because yoga can be very mindful, especially if you’re really work at it with the breadth, especially it could be body scans or guided visualizations, but something to actually work on the mind muscles in the morning, really important. And especially with real estate agents, most people here are face-to-face with clients.

Okay. So your capacity to be present to listen. So important. And to hear how many people are like listening, but not really hearing the messaging underneath, not really hearing the emotion, not really hearing what the person values. They’re just looking at the details. So cultivating presence is really important.

Moving our bodies is really pointing, physiologically. There’s so much that you can create as far as like beautiful, happy brain chemicals just by moving your body. You have a 20 minute walk. I recommend getting in there and like getting some intensity, breaking a sweat, but even a 20 minute walk shows in brain scans that just lights your brain on fire compared to just waking up and trying to work.

And then mastery being something you can learn. You know, you could listen to a podcast, a book on tape, you could practice something like when I have a client who is,  like a part-time musician or artist set a timer for 10 minutes in the morning and, you know, whatever, play your instrument, do your art, get that piece of your mind, engaged your creativity engaged or your learning muscles engaged every morning.

So I think morning routine is.  but the other things that I didn’t list in there that I figured are vital for people I know that have changed their, whether it be their relationship life or their health or their professional life are actual gratitude practices, which there are tons that you can choose from, which are really important.

And some version of. Catharsis, whether it be journaling, whether it be a men’s or a women’s group, whether it be that you have a couple of friends that you like every Friday, 1:00 PM. I’ll talk to my homie, Paul, you know, Paul and I do a bunch of deep men’s work together. We’re both coaches got to have that person in your life that way to act.

Get your emotional energy out and to share what’s on your mind with someone that you can trust or with yourself. So those are some, some of the specific habits, the other things are really going to be related to what you want in your life. You know, if people have kids and they feel like they’re not as connected with their kids, we’ll set up, we’ll set up habits for that.

We’ll set up. Okay. You know what, at the end of the day, when you get home, before you do it, Set your 30 minutes to hang out with them to connect with them. It doesn’t, it really depends on what you want in your life. And we set up habits around that because a lot of the time we say things like I’ll spend more time.

My kids, like I’m gonna be more present with them, but unless we set up a practice or a habit, what are the chances that you’re actually going to do it? The inertia is going to keep moving patterns and habits and routines are deeply wired. So we’ve got to shift them with, with intention, with action. Yeah.

 you touched on something,  that’s profound for real estate agents. And I don’t know if you caught it, but real estate agents talk too much real estate. You talk too much. We do. Like, that’s just what we do. We’re in sales, we talk too much, but you, you talked about something pretty profound, which is actually.

To your clients, you know, connect with them on that level, find out what’s important to them, right?  more often than not, you know, as real estate, even when we’re, you know, listing a house,  you know, we’re talking about,  the features, the features, not the benefits, right? Like, think about how this will benefit your client.

That should be projected in your marketing, right? When you go to market, what are the benefits? Not the features. Nathan, I’ve talked about that numerous times, but really listen to your clients. This is going to be more important going forward.  in 2021 and beyond, I think people are going to have to really pay attention to the needs, wants aspirations of their clients, and then speak to them the way they want to be spoken to.

It’s so important. Right?  now,  we, we reflected on,  20, 20,  we’re talking about motivation,  habits, et cetera. What, what do you say to someone?  you know, there’s some agents out here that have been in the business a long time. A long time, maybe they they’ve plateaued or they’re looking for inspiration to pick up their career again.

Or they’re looking forward to an ambitious year ahead, but they’re a little stuck, you know, what would you say to them? Or what advice would you give them to get them going again? So we say stuck a lot. Yeah. You know, it’s like a big thing and. I would drill down if I was talking about drill down and find out like what that really means, right?

Because sometimes we think we’re complacent, but that’s just the mindset, right. We can be really content, things are working, but we have been indoctrinated with this idea that things have to grow every single year, or I’m not sure. Let’s check and see if you’re actually okay. Right. And if you’re actually stuck,  but if you are stuck, I’ll tell you what my car is stuck in the snow out here in the Western mountains, you better believe in calling a tow truck.

 if I twist my ankle and I can’t walk from point a to point B, you better believe I’m going to the doctor. So the first thing I want to say is get help. You know, you obviously have a great community right here. You literally have a corporate culture. Yeah, I’ve listened to the podcast and I’m here today.

So he’s pretty legit. So, you know, connecting with David, connecting with leadership, connecting with other people that are here in the GPG world. I really do believe that I believe that having a community, you know, David and I met, we, he joined the community cadre and I’ve been in for a couple of years now.

And it’s so vital. It’s so important. If I’m stuck. I reached out to someone I know who’s, who’s beyond where I’ve been and I go ahead and I ask them like, can I have a little bit of your time? Can we just connect? Don’t be afraid to hire help, like your life is your business.  I’m not big on compartmentalizing and just saying like we’re so grit, you’re going to hire people to do marketing for you to do graphics for you’re going to get into a sales mastermind.

Why wouldn’t we do the same when it comes to what we’re really working for? I don’t know about you, but I’m working so I can have a great life with my family, not just so I can win, you know, at selling things. Right. Not just so I can look at the numbers of my Bitcoin rise, which Bitcoin’s been a pretty cool year by the way.

But,   but anyways, so that’s it, I think, to be willing to get in there and do the. On the parts of your life that are stuck sometimes when we’re stuck, it’s really not necessarily about learning a new professional skill. It’s not about marketing ourselves differently. It’s about getting connected to who we are, so we can be more present with ourselves so that we can understand our emotions.

So we can clarify our values, check out and make sure that you’re actually on your 2021 vision and your 2021. A lot of people operate based on a vision they put together when they were 22 years old or when they were, you know, or when they first got married or when they first became an agent. Right. So check in with your vision and trigger your values and make sure that it’s really aligned with who you are and where you want to go today.

Look, a lot has changed 2020 was a wake up call for a lot of. So refreshing what’s important and getting clear on that. That’s the first step to me, you know, if we’re spinning our wheels, trying to do what we thought we wanted 5, 10, 15 years ago, that’s, that’s going to be trouble. And even if you get there, you may not be feeling what you want to feel anyway, you may not be experiencing, you want to experience anyway.

So that will be my first step is like, take a step back, stop looking at strategy, start looking at what’s really, really. And then move from that place rather than just going for that next tier of income or, or accomplishment or accolades, et cetera. That’s yeah, that’s a good point.  yeah, you, you know, we’ve said this before, you know, that the agents that do the best are kind of clipped into us the tightest, right?

So I’m on the phone weekly,  with certain agents and team leaders and whatnot, and they’re the most successful. So we’re literally begging you. To join, you know, to be on these masterminds, to participate in this, it’s really important, right? Like this is our community. This is our family. We call it our GPG family.

A great support group. I mean, you, I mean, Joe speaking to us as in-house only, right, this is for. GPG agents. I mean, the bootcamp is something different, but having Joe on here clipping into this, it’s really important. This is your support system. It’s going to be even more important going forward. We really believe that that’s why Joe was here.

 secondly, to Joe’s point, graphics is in house at the GPG. You do not have to pay for that here.  graphics and marketing, and there’s a number of benefits being here. You do not have to pay for it. And then the coaching program, this is your coaching program. Right. Where are your coaches? You know, the leadership or your coaches?

You’re here, you have the coaching programs, you have the marketing, you have in-house graphics, it’s all in house. And just had to point that out. That’s awesome.

We’re proud of it. Okay. Now, now, listen, here’s another question kind of on the similar,   wavelength, but,  you’re brand new to the real estate industry. You just getting licensed or, you know,  you, you know, you starting out your young person, you’re starting out your career or you’re pivoting, right.

You’re, you’re reinventing yourself. Right. Maybe you’ve quit that job. And you’re taking that leap now. Right. And you’re nervous about it. Right. You’re nervous. You’re leaving a career behind and you’re moving towards a new career. What advice would you give that person? Or what do they need to think? Yeah.

Yeah, you did it. You did it. I did. You know, so, so, so there’s a few things that,   I would, you know, ask them to do,  it’s a bit of a broken record, but your capacity to grow something new. Like, I don’t care if it’s a business or what relationship. I don’t care if it’s changing how you look at the world, how you engage your social life.

We passed the, we knew it was going to have a lot more to do with your capacity for mindfulness, for presence, for resilience, for understanding your emotions, for learning, how to connect with yourself and other people, then it will like knowing all the details of the. No, you could spend a lot of time figuring out how to do a lot of the nitty gritty, or you can be really good at asking for help in a way where people love to give it to you.

You know, like there’s just a great example, but when it comes to being new, especially I want to talk to the person who’s transitioning, right. They decided to come on real estate agent because they’ve been somewhere else before and that career didn’t fulfill them. It didn’t work. It didn’t give them what they want or whatever reason, or they just thought, Hey, it’s working, but I want to try something new.

 get home. Like it’s okay to be a beginner. Everyone understands your new. We think that we can’t share that. We think that we can’t own that. We think that we can’t speak to that, but even your clients. Thank you for trusting me. I’m new at this. I’m working really hard. I’m working with Dave and I’m working with Nathan, right?

Like they, they, we got, they got my back. Be honest about with yourself, about who you are and where you’re at and build those inner skillsets. And the last thing I will say is you never knew, you know, Ken will. As a man who is known for in the personal growth world for integral somebody called integral theory and  theory.

I don’t even know it that well, but I do know one of the things he talks a lot about is transcend and include. We’re never just moving to the next level and letting go of everything. That’s where people make mistakes. They let go of everything that they had before they think that they’re just the beginner, but whatever you did in your previous career, whenever you experience you had in your life before.

That is powerful resource and that’s powerful knowledge, information, skill, wisdom to draw from going forward. And that’s really a mindset thing that’s realizing you’re not just brand new at talking to people. At living in homes or understanding the value of homes are our understanding what people want, especially if the transition from a previous sales, sales role of any sort like, or anything that you’re working with, people, those skills aren’t new.

So include that, take a look at all the things that you were straight up a bad-ass masterful at what you did before and incorporate that into your sense of who you are to. Yeah, I do this process with people and it doesn’t matter if they’re new at what they’re doing, or if they’re going through like a little bit of identity crisis, and they’re really good at it, but they’re just not that excited.

And they’re thinking about pivot,  where we do their authority process. I haven’t put together a resume. You could do this, put together a resume, but more in like essay or bullet point form and look at not just your typical resume stuff, but like what have you done? What, like inner work, personal growth work.

What? Adversities obstacles, tragedies, traumas challenges. Actually made you stronger in your. Put it all together. Put it on funny. We don’t do this very often. We don’t look at our whole life resume at lunch, but if you can actually see who you are, you’re going to see someone who survived to this point was probably thrived to this point.

Even if you’re new at something you’re not new at life, and you’ve got skills, bring it with you and take that confidence with you as you go. So that’s one of the things I think is just really important. If you’re, if you’re transitioning, if you’re new at something is to know that you’re not new. You’re just, just doing something new for the first.

Yeah. And we, we tell new agents this all the time is ask questions. Like there’s nothing worse than getting into, you know, into a binder, into some trouble,  trying to fake it. Right. So if you have a question, ask it, right. Like every, I mean, no two deals are the same. We all know that. But clip in, ask questions, you know, don’t be afraid to ask sometimes, you know, especially being new there they’re, you know, they’re worried about the perception, like I’m new at this.

That’s okay. Tell your story. You know, like you have instant content every week on these masterminds, right? Like, you know, Ricky just posted, I think just two seconds ago that he’s on this mastermind, his clients are paying attention to that and they know he’s learning from the. Right. They know he’s learning from the best his clients see that, right.

He’s doing this. So you have content every week. You need to post this stuff, share it, tell it, tell your story. That’s instant content, especially as the new agents. I think that’s important. Okay. I got two questions here, left Joe two questions. And this, this one’s interesting because you know, we’re sole proprietors, you know, we’re our own boss as real estate agents, as team leaders and things like that.

How do you find accountability when you’re a sole proprietor? When you work for yourself? Right. Like if you don’t get up and, you know, put on your shoes in the morning, you don’t get paid. Right. So how do you find accountability when you’re a sole proprietor? Yeah. Well, I think a lot of the time we, we, we look for outside accountability and I do believe if again, paradox, right?

Like get support, find that, find the five agents that you connect with, like socially and decide that we’re going to get them together once a week and check in with each other, you know, get support. But ultimately you can’t outsource accountant. Alright, accountability is literally about doing what we say we’re going to do or owning it and following through when we haven’t.

Right. So we can’t outsource accountability. We can’t outsource it to. That again is why I truly believe that we can orient towards our values and we can actually make that a daily practice. If you have in front of you, what you most value, what you most care about. If you have in front of you, something simple, a two sentence mission statement about who you are as an agent, who you are as a provider, who you are as a connector and entrepreneur, and you ground back into those every day.

I think it’s really hard to not follow. Right. Accountability. You have, if you don’t do the work, you’re not going to make some money. And you know what I mean? So like it’s there. So it’s really about, what’s going to, what’s going to light you up. What’s going to excite you. I’d rather talk about setting up your emotional, physical, and an actual investment.

For you to feel passion every day. When you wake up then to talk about how to keep you accountable. Accountability is when you’re not following through passion and vision and values is what’s going to have you show up every day and not even need accountability partners, you know, I agree with you.  accountability is subjective, right?

Like I remember one of our committee member, Nathan T TW, you remember our guy TW you’re going to hold you accountable. Accountability is up to you. You know, you want to call it an accountability partner, get a different career is kind of what was his opinion. Right? Little harsh, a little harsh, but I got the point, right?

I got the point. Okay, Joe, last question. Last question. What advice would you give a real estate agent going forward in 2021, a post endemic world? What’s the most important thing they need to think of? You already said it actually.  truthfully, I, I watch people, you know, my work is people. My work is seeing what motivates you, what they want, what they secretly desire, what their true experiences are like, what their relationships are, are about why they do what they do.

And what I’ve noticed is people are much more aligned with living differently. People are much more invested in their homes at this point. So, so what you do as an agent is actually really, really, really important. Like if it wasn’t for 2020, the pandemic, I wouldn’t be sitting in this west Virginia House, you know, that we dropped some cash on that.

We’re putting a bunch of money into now more than we realize, but point is like, I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t, we wouldn’t have this vacation home. And so what you’ve got to realize. More and more and more. We know that we’ve been in the attention economy for a while. Right. But I believe that we’re no longer in a place where people buy things, just because they’re commodities.

I believe we’re really in a place where people buy things because of connection and because of the way, the most value. Like I said already get, get better. If anything, get better at listening to your clients, get better asking them about their lives. Get better at hearing through their language, what they really value, what they’re really looking for.

And I remember even back in the day, this is not a new 2020, but when we were selling, even on the Bose sales floor, people would come in with this list of features that they want. And if you were really good, you asked the right questions and you listen deeply to the experience they want and you tell them, okay, well, I’ve got a product for you.

That’ll meet X need this need, and that need, and here’s this thing you told me that you’d like to enjoy, but you didn’t even mention it as a feature. If you can listen to them, if you can connect with them, if you can actually hear what they value and reflect that to them, I think that’s really more and more and more going to be.

What connects people? What has them buying from you? What has them feeling motivated? And again, we can do like a show of hands. Anyone ever been with someone trying to sell something, it could be anyone and it’s like, it just, you just, they just feel off. Maybe they feel creepy or you don’t connect, or it just doesn’t like the conversation doesn’t flow.

Right. We don’t buy from them. We just don’t. So again, at the end of the day, I think it’s going to really, really about how do you connect with yourself, which is how you connect with other human beings. More and more and more it’s what’s going to be what’s important here, you know? Yeah. I, that that’s well said, listening is going to be incredibly important going forward.

I really listening to the needs of your clients. The other thing that’s going to be important as sales agents is, is your skills, right? How you’re talking to, to people and, and presenting to people because now people are, you know, You know, telling people they’re making the biggest purchase decision of their lives or partying with big chunks of money, your skills are going to have to be important, how you talk to people and listen.

Right. So that’s super important, Joel. I can’t. Thank you enough. What a profound conversation. I got a ton of value out of the last 45 minutes or whatever, a big round of applause for Joe.  Joe, maybe if you want to take a picture,  do the double guns or something like that. If somebody wants to get pictures,  but,  thank you very, very much, Joe.

I really, really appreciate your time today.  that was fantastic. Now, Joe, where can people find you,  where do they,  you know, a clip into you, maybe they, you know, maybe they want to eventually get involved in your coaching program or your Facebook groups, or, or just take a look at your website and your, your content.

Got it. Well, I’ll drop right here. A link,  for drop the armor dojo drop the armor dojo. I like face, but I’m still, maybe I’m old school. I still like Facebook. So I’ve got a Facebook group that I’m cultivating and every day we get in there and we look at how we align the head, heart and guts, and we look at three choices that you can make every day.

Love over fear, courage, over comfort creation, over consumption. Those to me is how you simplify life. So come hang out in there. You can also just go to my websites. It’s easy as pie, Joe Bernstein, coaching.com. If you want to read more, look at it more,  and I can drop, you know, I can drop my. My email in here as well, because I am a human being that also responds to emails.

You don’t need to, you don’t need to just go through like, so like Facebook and Instagram, et cetera. So Joe at dropped the armor. Dot com. So you can just reach out to me in various ways. Messaged me on Instagram, Facebook.