RG 262 – What to Do When You Hit Rock Bottom – w/ Kent Clothier

The path to building a successful business is often riddled with mistakes. You will lose your footing at some point, but there are a lot of ways you can avoid the wrong moves. Listen to Kent Clothier and me as we talk about his journey to hitting rock bottom and rising to where he is today.

Kent Clothier grew up in an entrepreneurial world, having been raised by parents who ran a successful grocery business. Despite this upbringing, Kent lost what he worked so hard for when he decided to part from his multi-million dollar organization. Having hit rock bottom, Kent had nowhere else to go but up.

Now, Kent is the founder and CEO of Real Estate Worldwide, a company that focuses on helping other entrepreneurs and real estate investors unlock their potential and live their lives on their own terms. He is one of the few people that has been through hell and back to meet their entrepreneurial goals. And today, we are lucky enough to get to hear this story and learn valuable lessons from it.

Listen as we talk about the importance of valuing your time as an entrepreneur and how to build a business that works around the most important things in your life. At the end of the day, your family, your friends, and who you are as a person are more important than your business, and Kent is here to show us how you can focus on the core pillars of your life while building a successful business on the side.

Be Bold, Be Brave and Go Give Life a Crack!

Kent Clothier (00:00):

If you knew you only had seven days to live on this planet, 168 hours, what would you do and be very visual? What would you do? You know, I would, uh, call my friends or I would record videos from my CR my kids and my grandkids, my great grandkids. So they knew who I was and what I stand for and what I stand against. And you know, why, you know, I would do all these things, you know, what would I do? Because that’s what you should be trying to do now create that right? Create that, where that can become a reality for you. And if your business isn’t on a path to creating that, well, there’s the gap. Here’s why I am. This is what perfection looks like. And right in the middle is where all the magic happens. How can I start creating a situation where I can live my perfect day?

Reed Goossens (00:55):

Welcome to investing in the U S a podcast for real estate investors, business owners, and aspiring entrepreneurs looking to break into the U S market join Reed. As he interviews go getters risk-takers and the best in the business about their journey towards financial freedom and the sheer joy of creating something from nothing.

Reed Goossens (01:15):

Get a good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to another cracking edition of investing in the U S podcast from Los Angeles. I’m your host, Rick, Goossens good as always every with us on the show. Now, I’m glad that you’ve all tuned into learn from my incredible guests and each and every one of them are the cream of the crop here in the United States. When it comes to real estate, investing, business, investing, and entrepreneurship, each show, I try and tease out their incredible stories of how they have successfully created the businesses here in the U S how they’ve created financial freedom, massive amounts of cashflow, and ultimately create extraordinary lives for themselves and their families. Life by design. As I like to say, hopefully these guests will inspire all of my cracking listeners, which are you guys to get off the couch and go and take massive amounts of action.

Reed Goossens (02:02):

If these guys can do it. So can you now, as you know, I’m all about sharing the knowledge with my loyal listeners, which is you guys, and there’s absolutely no BS on this show, just straight into the nuts and bolts. Now, if you do like to show the easiest way to give back is to give us a review on iTunes, and you can follow me on Facebook and Twitter by searching at Reed Goossens. You can find the show wherever you podcast on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and Google play, but you can also find these episodes up on my YouTube channel. So head over to Reed goossens.com, click on the video link, and it’ll take you to the video recordings of these podcasts. You can see my ugly mug of the beautiful faces of my guests each and every week. All right, enough of me let’s get cracking and into today’s show.

Reed Goossens (02:49):

Pleasure of speaking with Kent. Kent is a CEO of the real estate, worldwide software training company for real estate investors. And he’s a founder of boardroom mastermind, most elite real estate investor networking group in the country. He has flipped thousands of homes over the last 15 years and has helped tens of thousands of people learn how to do the same. He’s passionate about teaching what he’s learned in simple ways, so they can easily for anyone to connect the dots as a husband and proud father of three amazing kids. Kent has built an ultimate life for himself and his family to top it all off. He’s recently published a really great book called this works. The book is a mix of Ken stories and the lessons he’s learned over the years, he’s lays out three incredible proven strategies for consistently generating income in today’s real estate market. I’m really pumped and excited to have him on the shutter diet, but nothing. I mean, let’s get him out of here. Get, I can’t walk them back to the show. How you doing? Sorry, mate.

Kent Clothier (03:41):

I’m doing great. Reed. Glad to be here.

Reed Goossens (03:43):

Well, it’s been a long time coming. I have a, I remember back in the data center where I was when I saw you and your brother on stage from when I first moved to the United States way back in, uh, actually when I first moved to LA, I went, I think it was at a networking event. I saw you and your brother. I know you’re in the, uh, the turnkey space. So it’s really awesome to have you on the show maybe before we get into the nuts and bolts of what you do, let’s rewind the clock and tell me how you made your first ever dollar as a

Kent Clothier (04:06):

Kid. My first ever dollar was probably, I was raised in an entrepreneurial family. And so I, my father owned grocery stores and convenience stores when I was a kid. And I can remember working in those stores for him, kind of a growing up in that business. And so I’d have to say the first dollar I ever made was most likely right there, right on the front lines, kind of working side-by-side with my dad when I was probably 11 or 12 years old. Right. Awesome.

Reed Goossens (04:31):

And walk us through the journey of what you’ve built, because for those people who don’t know who you are, you do have a pretty big following in the turnkey space, uh, you and your brother actually. And so maybe walk us through those journeys to get to where you have today. Cause obviously this didn’t happen overnight.

Kent Clothier (04:48):

Yeah. So as I said, I was raised in this grocery industry and when I was 17, my father and I started a business that was, um, kind of an offshoot of that business, uh, where we were buying and selling truckloads of groceries, uh, kind of out the back door of, uh, most of the largest, you know, the larger retailers and wholesalers in the country. So what, what most people don’t realize, you know, I’m sitting here drinking a Fiji water. Most people don’t realize that this bottle of Fiji water, uh, that little 10 digit code on the bottom of it, a little UPC code, basically that signifies that that bottle of water is exactly the same everywhere it’s sold, you know, in the unit or in the world. But what is different is the manufacturer sells it for different prices all over the world. And so we kind of stumbled into an industry where we could buy truckloads of groceries, um, and one market turn around and, you know, a single item at a time turn around and put them on a truck and ship them to another part of the country where they were being sold at a discount and kind of make that spread right.

Kent Clothier (05:47):

We would, uh, we would pay for the shipping, but outside of that, we weren’t manufacturing anything or making anything. We were just buying surplus inventory or discounted inventory in one market and shipping it to another. And that little business that we started when I was 17, by the time I was 23, I was running a business, was doing the better part of $50 million a year, about 27, a much larger competitor came in and to Memphis, Tennessee, where we were located and, you know, moved me and my family or my wife down to Boca, Raton, Florida, and effectively threw me the keys to this $800 million year company. And so by the time I was 30, I was sitting here running a $1.8 billion year organization. Um, you know, seventh, largest privately held company in the state of Florida doing hundreds of millions of dollars every single month.

Kent Clothier (06:32):

And it was, uh, you know, it was a heck of a ride getting, getting to that place. Now, how I eventually arrived at real estate is that, uh, I left that, uh, organization in 2000, got a little run in with my partners at the time and decided I was going to walk out of there and a half and decided I was done. Um, and I was going to go build my own company, rebuild my own company in spite of them. And as fate would have it, uh, when was something else in store for me and what else was in stores that I needed to go through and basically lose everything I’d ever worked for over the course of about two years. Um, basically, you know, I’d been raised in an industry. I knew everything about this one particular industry that helped create the industry, um, doing billions of dollars a year.

Kent Clothier (07:15):

And if you can imagine being at the highest mountain, the highest peak there and losing everything over a two year period was extremely humbling. And, uh, you know, I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. It was really, really powerful moment in my life. And it was a heartbreaking, uh, lost everything lost and, you know, family, friends, relationships the whole way down, but ultimately it got to the rock bottom and kind of turned to real estate because I had nowhere else to turn. Uh, I didn’t know any, it didn’t know how to do anything and what was a product it’s one of those late night infomercials guys talk about how you can flip houses with no money and no credit and all that kind of good stuff. Um, you know, I, I, I bet. And, uh, I went down there and figured out real quick that what they were actually doing was flipping contracts on houses and they were getting properties under contract and turn around and flipping those contracts on ever closing on a deal, which is something that kind of spoke to me because it was very similar for in my previous business.

Kent Clothier (08:14):

Um, and you know, one thing led to another before you knew it. I was slipping hundreds of houses a year, um, you know, and on top doing very, very well, turned it into a big business partner with my brother and my father and turned it into a turnkey business. It’s, you know, as you mentioned earlier, still flips 800 properties a year right now is now done close to 7,500 transactions. And then ultimately led me to a path where I get the opportunity to sit here and teach people how to do the thing that I’m so excited about is showing people how to kind of unlock their potential, whether that’s in real estate or whatever. Ultimately, you know, letting people know that entrepreneurship is something that they can, uh, they can really Excel at it. They have the right tools, right. Trainings, right. People in there in their corner.

Reed Goossens (08:53):

That’s an incredible story. And just before we keep going, I want to just rewind back, what is it like to flip out of a business and get to rock bottom? And what were some of the biggest lessons you took away from that? Because that seems like such a pivotal time in your life.

Kent Clothier (09:07):

Yeah, I was devastated. I mean, like I said, it was, you know, when you’re in it, it’s very hard to appreciate the value of it. You know, it was pure and utter desperation. It was the, you know, just wanting the pain to stop. I don’t mind telling you I’ve shared this with others. So I’ll share with you that at that point, I mean, I was, I was absolutely suicidal. I mean, I was one of these guys that was, I didn’t, I wanted it all to stop. I had lost everything. I could not, I couldn’t lose any more than I’d already lost. I was now divorced. Um, all of my friends, all of my friendships, all of my associations were all tied up inside of that business because when you pour yourself into a business like I had, right. Every fiber, every moment, every opportunity that I had, uh, I was in the inside of that business, that real relationship I had.

Kent Clothier (09:52):

So when all of that has gone on, you’re kind of left there, shattered and beaten and bruised. It’s, it’s a really, really challenging place to be. Now. I’m extremely lucky because getting in that place, uh, and like I said, hitting a place where out of desperation, I had to do something else that kind of put me into a Headspace where I had no options. Right. And I think that’s extremely powerful as an entrepreneur. I try to revisit that moment as often as I can, because I think some of the best decisions are made when you don’t feel like you can go backwards and go rely on anything that feels safe or secure or anything that you have to move ahead and you have to persevere. Those are, those are really powerful emotions to tap into. So answering your question, I think that learning that I have survived a hundred percent of my worst days and that there’s, nothing’s going to kill me inside of business.

Kent Clothier (10:42):

I’m going to be able to, I will figure it out. That’s a really, really valuable lesson to learn as an entrepreneur. I’m learning that the value of what is most important that, uh, time and family are the most important things. Money is a by-product of both of those that never get lost inside of a business to where you’re so consumed with it. As oftentimes, I find a lot of, especially in men, we caught ourselves into believing while I’m building this and I’m sacrificing all this time and you know, all these things away from my family and I’m doing it for them, which is the biggest con job out there, right? Because I promise you, your kids, your wife, your significant, significant other, when it, boy, they will not sit there and say, well, you know, dad, you know, if you’re on your death bed, they’re not going to sit there and say, dad was really great because he may not build businesses.

Kent Clothier (11:30):

They’re just not going to do that. They’re going to say dad was great because he spent time with me, right? He showed me this. He showed me that he invested time with me. So understanding that that is really what matters and that you can have both, that you can build a business, you can build a life, you can leave a legacy, you can create impact in the world. You can do all the things that matter your discipline. Those are really valuable lessons. I didn’t have those lessons. The first go round. I, uh, I was consumed with being the best and that came at all costs. And I have learned too, that there are levels to this and that you do not have to sacrifice who you are at your core in order to become somebody that you won’t even recognize. And

Reed Goossens (12:09):

I don’t want to pry too much into it, but like, it seems a lot of this, you mentioned men and, and men is very synonymous with ego. Right. And what was, did you have any times where you stopped and said, these are the three things I’ve got all move away from, or was it approved that you could build it and build a big company and that you invested in, you were so identified with this company. Now it wasn’t there that you shut it and you’re feeling empty. And again,

Kent Clothier (12:40):

It was all the buts. Clearly my, my self-worth was 100% tied up inside of this organization that I’ve built since I was a kid. For sure. Wrote out questions. Right. I mean, um, it’s, it would be the equivalent of if, you know, if you spent, think about what you experienced between the ages of 17, till 30, right. Whether that’s going to college or, uh, new relationships or getting married or all of these things. Right. And of all of the things that you had invested in from 17 to 30 were suddenly all of them, uh, yanked away from you. And you had to rebuild yourself from the ground up. Not only personally, but professionally, you can imagine how, how dramatic that would feel and, and doing. And then couple that, with that, in that process of losing those things, you had done it. So publicly inside of an industry.

Kent Clothier (13:36):

And then so profoundly, you had been at the very, very top of the ladder. So you were the guy, the star, the star of the show, and everybody loves a good, you know, everybody loves a good train wreck. So all of that compounded all the way down. I mean, thank God there wasn’t social media back then, but all of that tumbling, tumbling down the hill side, uh, and figuring out real quick, who your friends are and more importantly, who your enemies are, all of that was a, that’s a lot. That’s a lot. There’s a lot of people that right now they’re going through, you know, some form of desperation because of maybe they’ve got a business that’s suffering because of COVID or they’ve got they’ve recently lost a job or whatever the case may be. All of those things all wrapped up. Uh, and then times 10 was, you know what I can tell you that not only had I lost my job and I lost my family, I lost my, my identity, my self worth, my cry, my ego, everything that I had placed a value on was suddenly what I figured out was worthless.

Kent Clothier (14:31):

And then not having gone to college, not having ever had a job, not having a resume, not knowing where to turn, not have any, you know, all my experience was tied up in something else, feeling like, uh, you had no place to turn was a really, really challenging situation. Now I say all that, but it was the best thing that ever happened to me. Right. It was exactly what I needed at that point in my life. I didn’t know that. Uh, but you know, I was the guy at the time that, um, all of the success of that business was because of me, all you had to do was ask me, right. I was that guy. I was the guy that, you know, I believed every, every news clipping about me, every, everything that was written that was glowing about me. I completely believed it.

Kent Clothier (15:13):

And so I needed to be humble. I needed to suffer. I needed to understand what it looked like to rebuild. I didn’t know I needed it, but, um, it was the best medicine that I’ve ever I’ve ever received because I’m a much better man today, a much better father, a much better leader, much better husband having gone through all of those experiences. You can, that’s the best education you could ever have. And I’m lucky that it happened to me. It’s such a young age. I mean, all of this happened to me when I was 30 years old, such a young age that I had plenty of life ahead of me to go and get a second lease on life and, you know, get remarried and have two amazing daughters that I pour myself into. And, you know, get the opportunity to rebuild businesses, have followings by millions of people. Now, all of that stuff is a product of, because of what happened there, right? If I hadn’t gone through that, I wouldn’t be appreciative of anything I have today.

Reed Goossens (16:04):

It’s a powerful rod. I usually so many people in this show where they have the pillar is the main pillar in life is supported by their business. And when the business doesn’t go away, when it goes away, they don’t have anything else to support them. Family love, wealth, health, all that stuff. It’s so important. And when you go through a tragedy in life, whether it’s through personal loss, whether it’s through a loss of a business like that, it creates a callous on your hand that you can’t describe. And it puts you in such a better head space to know what you need to change, to move forward. So in that saying that, what did you change when you pivoted with your brother and your dad into the house flipping business,

Kent Clothier (16:38):

What did you do differently? Well, family became the priority. Family was first, right? And I’m not even talking about extended family as it relates to my father and my brother. I’m talking about my immediate family. Um, my wife and my new little girl were on the way. Um, I had just been in the real estate business for three years. So I was in the hustler phase of, of business where it’s not really a business, the businesses needs income and it’s a lot of income, but at the end of the day, if I take my foot off the gas, um, the business stops, right? And so I was, I can remember very, very clearly thinking to myself that I don’t own a business. I own a job. And then I was going to change that. And so I became very, very driven on time. Like I want to invest as much time as I can in collecting moments, not collecting crap, right.

Kent Clothier (17:27):

I was the guy before collected the cars and the houses and all the other stuff. And none of that stuff matters to me anymore. I’m in the business of collecting moments. I want to make sure that the time that I get with the people that matter actually means something. And so I set out to build my businesses with time and family, right at the very, at the forefront of everything we do. And you could see it on the sign behind me for those of that are, I can’t see that there’s a sign behind me. It says the time is now, you know, it’s tattooed on my arm for God’s sakes, right? I believe this with every fiber of my body that you get this moment, and it’s the, it’s the only one you’ve got and you owe it to yourself to make the most of it.

Kent Clothier (18:04):

And you do not need to sit around and believe that success in life and all these other things are just something you’re going to get to. You need to get to these things. Now there’s an opportunity to create impact in the world or to create, you know, moments with your children or your wife. Then you have to build and design a business and a life that allow those things to happen. If you back to yourself into a corner as so many business owners do, it is it’s cliche. It’s, you know, it’s the norm. It’s not the exception that so many people become a slave to their business, um, because they’ve never embraced the idea of what’s really valuable. And that’s time if time is what’s really valuable, then you have to find all the leverage points that allow you to create more of it. And so that’s what I, that’s the biggest takeaway that I’ve I took out of that entire experience is that I’m never going to allow myself ever to, uh, waste a moment and not try to collapse time and create time at every opportunity

Reed Goossens (18:58):

They’ve gone about doing that in this sort of second phase and all of your business in your entrepreneurial Jenny.

Kent Clothier (19:06):

Well, you have to, like I said, you have to embrace leverage, right? And so a lot of people hold on to, um, not they hold onto a business so tight that they’re afraid to put systems in place, processes, people, automation, things that, that seem like hard pills to swallow coming out of the coming out of the gate, whether that is financial or whether that is investments in time, whatever the case may be. People for one reason or another entrepreneurs have a tendency to hold on to something they hold onto good in and forget about. Great. And what greatness comes from owning your own time, freedom comes from owning your own time. Possibilities come from owning your own time. You cannot do that without leverage. And so you have to immediately out of mentor showed me a long time ago. Your job now becomes to fire yourself as often as possible.

Kent Clothier (20:01):

And I’ve never forgotten that my job inside of my businesses to fire myself at every opportunity, I want to create options. What can I, what can I get off my plate to do that? I have the option of doing, but I don’t have, I don’t have the business does not require me to do it. And there’s a big difference there. And that kind of mental shift is really big in the game. And it’s really bids, right? It’s played a pivotal part in my journey is that I want to create as many options as I can. Right. And that means that if we have to bite the bullet and invest in new systems and hardware and software, that is going to allow us to get results quicker, right. Get us to the outcome faster than I’m willing to do that. If we need to hire staff and hire, you know, executive teams and middle managers to come in here and kind of run the business, that allows me to kind of step back and give me the option of playing in the business, but not necessarily having to I’m all in on that.

Kent Clothier (20:55):

You know, as far as I’m concerned at this point in my life, and it’s been this way for quite a long time, is that the most valuable asset I have is an hour of my day. And to me, it’s priceless. You know, if I was in my last 168 hours, you know, when you came to me and said, Ken, I want to buy an hour of your time. Clearly that hour would not be for sale. Right. I would never smell it to me. It’s priceless. And so the reality of it is, is that I have no idea if I’m in my last 168 hours right now. And so if I have something right now that is priceless an hour of my time, then my job is to go find ways that I can buy those hours back for anything less than priceless. Oh, I can pay somebody $18 an hour to do that job. I can pay somebody $25, anything less than priceless. It’s a bargain as far as I’m concerned. Right.

Reed Goossens (21:43):

I hear a lot of impact on the world, but I also hear a lot of being present. It sounds like you’ve, you’ve come a long way of trying to be present in what you do from a day in day out, whether it be your family with the business and intentional about that. Because without that intention and so many business owners are just like, oh, once I get here, I’m going to be good at once I get there, I’m going to be good. And they spend so much time in the future and never in the now any comment on that, I just noticed that in industry, which speaking is that?

Kent Clothier (22:09):

No, no, no, no. I think that’s a very, very, you know, uh, I think you’re dead on. And I think that most, most, um, business owners, like I said, it is a, it is a, this is a very, uh, um, you know, seductive lover business, right? It pulls you in and you get seduced by the money you get seduced by the ego, the pride, the recognition, the adoration, all these different things. And the reality of it is, is that, you know, you can fall in love with that. All, all of the wrong elements of it and forget about what really matters. Why are you really doing what you’re doing? So taking a step back and understanding what, what is the business designed to do for me personally? And I think most people, I believe most people that I work with when they actually take that moment and they decide what they want it to look like, they quickly become, uh, very decisive.

Kent Clothier (23:04):

And to your point, very intentional in the actions they take every day, you know, I’ll share this with you. It’s an analogy I’ve used before, but it, I just find it to be extremely true is that if you think of the Bible of we, we, if you and I were, we’re going to meet somewhere. Um, and I said, all right, man, you know, I’ll meet you in LA, let’s meet at this address. The very first thing I would do when I got into my car is I would type the address and type some type of navigation system, right? GPS would guide me, turn my turn all the way there. Starting with the end in mind. My wife calls me tonight and says, Kenneth, on the way home, will you stop by the grocery store and grab a few things. I’m not going to just stop with that comment.

Kent Clothier (23:42):

I’m literally going to ask her, tell me what you want. In fact, be more specific. Can you take a picture of the item out of the pantry that you want me to get? Because I want to be correct what I wouldn’t do in either one of those cases. I certainly wouldn’t walk up and down the grocery store and go buy 50 random items and come in to the house and dump them all on the kitchen table and say, is any of this stuff, what you want? Or I R would, I certainly wouldn’t just drive around LA and say, well, I, you know, I’ll just look and you know, maybe I’ll see you on the street and I’ll recognize you. But people do that all the time with the biggest decision in the world, which is what do you want your life to look like? What do you want your business?

Kent Clothier (24:22):

Right? So these little decisions, every single day, we, we get very, very specific and we say, Hey, this is exactly what we want the outcome to be. But when it comes to the biggest decision in the world, what do you want your business to look like? What do you want your life to look like? What do you want? You know, starting with the end in mind, most people I would, I would say upwards of 90% have never actually taken the time for that one thing. And the reason why I’m intentional, because I’ve done. Got it. What

Reed Goossens (24:51):

Advice do you give to the people out there who maybe not necessarily know what they want? They’re starting your entrepreneurial journey for one, two when you’re 30, when you had it, all right, you had the fame, you had the accolades, you had the wealth and it went away. So they were at 30 P you were at a space at 30 where people will only dream off. Right? So what advice do you have now? You’ve been two times around the block that you give to a bus stop on someone,

Kent Clothier (25:14):

Starting out, sit down and lay out. Here’s a couple of exercises. I would tell people to do. Number one, I would sit down and write out what you, what your perfect day is. In other words, if geography, circumstances, finances, you know, family, friends, if none of that was a, uh, hindering fact whatsoever, none of that had played any kind of impact. If you could do anything you wanted to do like Groundhog day, like the movie, you can live any life you wanted to live the exact same perfect day. And I’m not, I didn’t say mediocre day. I didn’t say average day. You can live the exact same day over and over. What does perfection look like? That’s a really good place to start. Why? Because life is meant to be lived. And if you can create that perfection of you can clearly wrap your mind around men.

Kent Clothier (26:01):

If I could, if I could hang out with my friends or travel with my family, or I could, you know, whatever that is, whatever your thing is, I’ll tell you what it won’t leave. A, I’ve never had anybody say in my perfect day, I’m going to get up in the morning. I’m gonna go to work at 6:00 AM and I’m gonna get home at 7:00 PM. And I’m going to miss my kids all day. That’s not, you know, nobody does that. So, you know, your mind is extremely powerful. If you give it something to, to absorb and understand and visualize and understand, this is what perfection looks like. That’s a really powerful place to start. Another place that I would tell you to start. And both of these by the way were shared with me by mentors is the same, you know, uh, an offshoot of what I said earlier.

Kent Clothier (26:39):

If you knew you only had seven days to live on this planet, 168 hours, what would you do and be very visual? What would you do? You know, I would, uh, call my friends or I would record videos for my, my kids and my grandkids, my great grandkids. So they knew who I was and what I stand for and what I stand against. And, you know, Y you know, I would do all these things, you know, what would I do? Because that’s what you should be trying to do now create that right? Create that, where that can become a reality for you. And if your business isn’t on a path to creating that, well, there’s the gap. Here’s why I am. This is what perfection looks like. And right in the middle is where all the magic happens. How can I start creating a situation where I can live my perfect day?

Kent Clothier (27:24):

And I can tell you, those are really, really powerful places to start, because again, your business certainly has requirements, and there are certainly things and functions that have to happen every day. Um, if they all are relying on you and you’re looking for freedom, well, clearly you don’t have freedom. So now there’s the gap. How do I start correcting this? Where I can create the outcome. I’m looking for the income. I’m looking for the progress. I’m looking for the notoriety, whatever it is, how can I create that outcome without me necessarily having it, the entire business dependent on me? What are the levers that I can start pooling? Or the, the rooms I can start getting into the relationships I need? You know, whatever it is, there’s always actions that you can start being taken. But if you don’t understand what you’re trying to get to, it’s really hard to create a remedy to get there.

Reed Goossens (28:15):

I think that’s so important and being good, but go back to being intentional about your direction in which your business is going for. So can you tell us what the business looks like today and what does your day-to-day look like in your ideal world now that you’ve come, you know, I assume you’re in your early forties and you’re coming. You’ve done a couple of times, right?

Kent Clothier (28:33):

Well, I appreciate the compliment, but I just turned 50. So I can tell you that, you know, I have a, um, our investment company, I have literally nothing to do with my brothers and my father would run that company. I kind of sit on the board and help them out. So, but I, and I get paid out of that company, a dividend, but every, every, all the day-to-day transactions that happen inside of that company, those were not a part of my perfect day. It was not something that I wanted to do. That’s not something I was necessarily passionate about. The flipping of the houses. I became really, really passionate about helping other people to achieve results. And so I built real estate worldwide, uh, kind of out of this exercise back in 2006, I started the company, uh, and now we have a, we basically have two divisions of our company.

Kent Clothier (29:23):

We have our coaching and mastermind, the boardroom coach coaches, real estate investors, and helps real estate investors achieve their results. And then we have our software company, which basically has about 20,000 people from around the country that use it, uh, uh, and all the training programs that are inside of there to help them achieve results as well. And the two kind of played very, very nicely together. My day to day is, you know, I get up, I work out in the gym every morning. I meditate every morning. I spend time with my daughters every morning. I try to get to the office somewhere between, you know, eight 30 and 9:00 AM. I definitely don’t wake up with an alarm clock every day. When I walk in the day, my day is planned out to the minute. I’m very intentional with my time. My team knows that I’m not to be, uh, disturbed with any emails or texts or anything for the first two hours in the morning.

Kent Clothier (30:10):

Cause I’m not in the business of putting out fires. I want to be, I have people that do that for me, I’m going to be in the business of being in control. So, uh, you know, my week schedule my day in about 15 minute increments, but my day is highly time blocked, right? So where I get the opportunity to focus on the software company, I get to focus on our community project to get to focus on our coaching business. I get to focus on our growth. We get to focus on our investment company. We own a couple of headphones as well now. Um, and you know, things that really, really interests me. Everything is time blocked and quickly put it into action quickly, but it’s put into my day as best as humanly possible. Now, is it perfect far from it far from it? I mean, we still have meetings that run over.

Kent Clothier (30:50):

We still have things that get in the way of course, but I try to be as intentional as I possibly can with my day, uh, including, you know, making sure that my daughter’s come up here to the office and we have lunch and we hang out and we do what they want to do and then go home and do the exact same thing. I try to spend a lot of time, um, with my kids cause they won’t always be here, uh, travel, do my wife and I do a lot of traveling and do a lot of the trauma with our kids. And then again, as I told you earlier, kind of collecting moments, not collecting crap. So, you know, I like to think that, uh, I’ve gotten a lot better at it. Uh, as I’ve gotten older, I’m very, you know, very, very, you said it earlier.

Kent Clothier (31:27):

I’m very, very lucky. I got a second lease on life and I’ve tried to be very aware of that and don’t allow the business or anything else to get in the way. But the businesses here to serve hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people out there, but ultimately it’s there to serve me. Um, I’m not there to, you know, get, become a slave to the business where I somehow feel like I I’m, I’m not in control. There are highly, highly educated people all around me and we invest in them and invest in our teams to make sure that we’re putting our best foot forward, but it’s not, doesn’t always hinge on Kent Clothier having to do it all.

Reed Goossens (32:04):

I love it. Absolutely love it. I think it’s incredibly important. Do I become a slave to your business? I think it’s super important. So I guess the question for you to having 50, uh, what does the next 10 years hold hold for you?

Kent Clothier (32:16):

Well, you know, I have, um, I love what I do, you know, and I would love to sit here or I shouldn’t say I would love, but it would be, it would be very cliche for me to sit here and say something to the effect of, um, you know, I’m building this thing and I’m going to retire from it or anything. You know, the reality of it is, is I’ve designed something that really serves me and I’m really, um, I’m very, I get lot of joy, a lot of fulfillment out of being able to unlock what somebody has inside of that probably very much like, like you do right when I’m around somebody and I understand kind of what’s going on in their head and I can help them connect dots very quickly and help them achieve their own entrepreneurial journey. That’s really exciting for me, uh, really fun for me to do that.

Kent Clothier (32:59):

It’s really exciting for me too, to be able to create impact, you know, around the world and to whether that is through dollars or time, to be able to know that, you know, look, I, I live in some form of fear of relevance, right? I want to make sure that it very limited in the amount of time that I have here, that I’ve done everything I can to matter. And that is something that, you know, I’m extremely painfully aware of that. I just do not believe that there’s a moment that can be wasted if there’s an opportunity to do something, to create impact and others, then, then you know, I definitely want to be a man of contribution for sure.

Reed Goossens (33:38):

Awesome. That’s awesome. We’re coming to the end of the show here. I want to quickly dive into your book for the last five minutes of the interview. So tell us about the new book. This works, love the title. Love, love a good, I love a good curse word being Australian. Tell me a little bit more about it. What was the impetus to write

Kent Clothier (33:53):

This book? Well, I mean, we’ve talked a lot about it. My journey has been been, uh, a lot, right? It’s been, you know, I talked about that. I’ve had a couple of other really profound experiences in my life. Having my mentor passed, uh, very, very wealthy man. And as I was holding his hand and he passed away, um, you know, sharing with me that he just wished he had more time. And so that had a really hard, um, you know, profound impact on me that somebody who was so wealthy as money couldn’t buy him, the only thing that he wanted, right. Which time, you know, and then my wife and I were in a pretty crazy, um, plane wasn’t actually ended up being a plane accident. But we were told, you know, we were on a plane that we had to make a crash landing or, uh, an emergency landing, I should say, better than that plane at a dove with smoke.

Kent Clothier (34:43):

And we were told to brace for impact and effectively. And the challenging part of that is I was sitting apart several rows apart from her and my daughter. And so having to kind of embrace my mortality in that meeting and in that moment was really, really impactful. And so I share a lot of those stories and how, you know, time’s not on any of our sides. And so I tried to not only share my journey and share my story, but turn around and put it into real relevant terms. Like here is a blueprint. Here is something that if you want to go start a business right now, here are three very strategic ways. Whether you want to do something very passively and create income for yourself, or you want to do something very actively, you want to just get away from your nine to five.

Kent Clothier (35:24):

Here’s three things that I’ve been able to do inside of my life. Here’s the exact blueprint on how to follow it, paint by numbers. Here’s all the tools, all the resources, everything you need to go, just do what I’ve done. I’m not, I am not, uh, you know, I barely graduated from high school and never went to college. I’m not, I’m not some kind of phenomenon out there by any stretch. I’m just an entrepreneur from the very beginning. And I wanted to share that wisdom wanted to share those experiences and wanted to kind of help rattle everybody’s cage. And, you know, I speak in very real, raw, authentic terms. I’m not afraid of, of, you know, punching somebody in the face and telling me this is exactly what it is. And so therefore the title kind of expresses that, right? I, if you need somebody to kind of, um, sugarcoat it and pat you on the and tell you, you know, everything’s gonna be okay and sit around in a circle with you and sing kumbaya. I’m probably not your guy, but if you need somebody that’s willing to, um, you know, lay it on the line with you and show you exactly what it’s going to take. And wouldn’t be honest with you and upfront, you know, I think this book will create, you know, what will have a big impact on awesome.

Reed Goossens (36:24):

And where can people get the hands-on?

Kent Clothier (36:27):

Uh, you can go to grabs grabs, grab Kent’s book.com and that’ll just take it straight to the Amazon site there. I would love for people to go grab it and they will hard cover a paperback or on Kendall. And I would love even more of you guys after you read it, just give me a review, let me know what you think. I love reading them. And also

Reed Goossens (36:46):

Most of my, well, I want to thank you for jumping on the show today. I want to summarize some of the things that I definitely took away. Did I want, firstly, I want to thank you for being here, your vulnerability that you brought to the show. I think it’s hugely impactful on the audience. When you can be vulnerable. You speaking from a place of authority that you’ve gone through some really tough times in your life, and it’s absolutely changed you to your core. And I can see it today. And I want to say a softer side, but had to realize things needed to change. Otherwise you’re going to end up in a pretty bad spot. What you ultimately ended up doing a, I just loved what you say, man. Doug be a safety business and you are leading with intention on the fact that time is the most powerful thing we all have.

Reed Goossens (37:24):

And if you’re backing yourself into a business that just creates a job, what the hell are you doing? Because you only live once. And I personally gone through loss recently and that’s changed the way I think about my entire business. We all go through things and whatever a journey is, but we have to always come back to being intentional. And I love what you said about making sure that your, the last seven days on earth, what does that look like? And what does your business look like to help you live those last seven days to the most fullest potential? So that has been what I’ve done. Don’t

Kent Clothier (37:53):

Leave anything out. No, that’s great, man. I think you’ve summarized it. Perfect. I’m glad I really appreciate

Reed Goossens (37:58):

You having me on here sharing some of this stuff and um, you know, it’s again, it’s been my pleasure. Sure.

Reed Goossens (38:03):

Awesome. Angela. I want to thank you again for taking the time Eddie day, enjoy the rest of your week and we’ll catch up very, very soon.