Paralyzed to Success

Today I’m here with my buddy TJ Kosen, who is also in the Dallas-Fort Worth market and is a member of our Investor Fuel Mastermind. We are going to talk about how to go from being paralyzed to being successful. Literally, TJ broke his back and was paralyzed and had to overcome all that and learned a lot of things along the way. So whether you’ve physically or figuratively been paralyzed in decisions and growing your business, you are going to get a lot of value out of today’s show!

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FlipNerd Show Transcript:

[00:00:00] Mike: [00:00:00] Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the show. Really excited to have my buddy Shawn Thompson on today. We were friends for a long time, and we’re going to talk about kind of a mindset for success. I think, uh, Sean, you know, grew up, uh, I don’t wanna say poor, but without a lot of means I did too. And sometimes we struggle with how to break through and hit new levels of success.

And, uh, so it’s gonna be an exciting topic. I think probably a lot of you will resonate with that.

Tj Kosen: [00:00:30] Professional

Mike: [00:00:31] real estate investors know that it’s not really about the real estate. That real estate is just a vehicle of freedom. A group of over a hundred of a nation’s leading real estate investors from across the country. Meet several times a year at the investor fuel real estate mastermind to share ideas on how to strengthen each other’s businesses.

But also to come together as friends and build more fulfilling lives or all of those around us on today’s show, we’re going to continue our conversation, fueling our businesses [00:01:00] and our lives. I’m glad you’re here.

Hey, Sean, welcome to the show.

Tj Kosen: [00:01:12] All right. Thanks Mike. Thanks for having me on.

Mike: [00:01:14] Yeah, good. I don’t know if I just said that. I’m glad to have you here, buddy. I don’t know if I did. I just kind of made that up. I’m like, I don’t know if Sean grew up poor or not, but I mean, I kind of understand, uh, you know, like we all aspire probably to have a better life than we did growing up.

Right. And so. And, uh, I think you just have these, I know you’re probably gonna talk about this a little bit, some limit limiting beliefs on what’s possible. Right, right. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today. And I think if you asked me what was possible when I was growing up or when I was even 15 years ago, 10 years ago, five years, it changes all the time.

Right. And to the point to where now I know that almost anything is possible. I don’t know that I want to, you know, some, at some point you have to, um, you know, you gotta decide when enough is enough for how far you want to go or how much balance you want to have in your life with. Chasing dreams and goals or enjoying it, or there’s, you [00:02:00] know, all those things there.

So I’m rambling at this point, my friend, but excited to have you here. And before we kind of jumped into this. Um,

Tj Kosen: [00:02:06] why

Mike: [00:02:06] don’t you share your background a little bit, how you got started in real estate investing?

Tj Kosen: [00:02:11] Well, my real estate background started with you actually. Um, the real, the real start was with you.

I, um, I’d been wanting to be a real estate investor for years and years and years. Uh, I thought that was the path to my success and the dreams that I had in my mind. I didn’t know how to do it. And, um, my first house, I bought a house and, uh, decided to buy this house with the intention of making money on it.

So I was going to buy it, improve it and flip it. Eventually I was moving my family into it. That was kind of part of my strategy and my contractor at the time. Um, he had just bought a home visitors’ franchise at the same time he was doing my rehab. So Kenny. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, so Kenny was

Mike: [00:02:52] from the past, what year was it?

That was probably like 2010 or so.

Tj Kosen: [00:02:55] 2011, maybe it was the end of 2011, beginning 2012. [00:03:00] Okay. Yeah. So, um, he was doing my remodel and the whole time we’re doing this remodel process, he was kind of getting his business started and he was telling me about it the whole time I was doing this house, you know, and he and I got to know each other.

He was a friend of a friend. He’s a friend of mine, my partner, actually. Um, so I had been looking for, yeah, anybody can buy one house, fix it and make money. Right. That’s that’s, that’s not that hard to do really. Yeah, but to do that every day, you know, repeatedly and have a business. Yeah, I do do it as a business repeatedly.

That’s where it becomes hard. Right. So a HomeVestors what he was telling me was that the, the system of buying houses consistently, so. Um, I went down and bought a franchise right away. He introduced me to, you got me signed up. And so I went through the Homebase, uh, process. Um, I don’t know. I think it was there maybe three years total, but, uh, the homeless was, and I had kind of a difference of how things should go.

And so

Mike: [00:03:56] that’s not what the show is about, but yeah,

Tj Kosen: [00:03:58] yeah, exactly.

Mike: [00:03:59] There’s a little more to the [00:04:00] story, but we’ll, we’ll, we’ll leave that for an, a. Oh, that’s gotta be a happy hour conversation on

Tj Kosen: [00:04:04] that. I hope your car stays exactly. But, um, so that, you know, it was great getting me started and I really thought it was a great education, you know, working with you.

I learned a ton, you know, there was a Tim heritage was another guy that was in the VA business and he did a ton for me getting me started. So having guys like you and him around me just helped me get, get going, you know, and I was a little late to this whole thing too. You know, I’d been working my whole life.

Uh, so for me, I wanted to accelerate the process, you know, my wife and I want to retire at some point, and I knew it takes, you know, it takes a long time to get a good business going. So I was really in a hurry to get started. And you guys shortcutted a lot of that for me, but, um, once I left home investors, um, I was kind of out on my own.

And then you, uh, started investor fuel and, uh, asked me to come, you know, um, take a look at that and see if it was something that I would like to do. And it’s turned out to be an amazing thing in my life too. But you had, uh, Corey Peterson come and do a talk and ever since I was younger, I [00:05:00] would always drive by apartment buildings and think to myself, man, if I could just have one of those, if I could just have one of those, but in my mind, I always thought it was out of my reach because it was hedge funds and RIAs and, you know, big organizations that had that own, those things.

I didn’t know, individuals could do that. And Corey came in and gave a talk and talked about his business of owning apartment buildings. And it, it, I could hardly take contain myself from jumping on the guy and saying, Hey, you got to show me how to do this. You know? So, cause this is exactly what I’ve been looking for pretty much.

My whole life, you know, really is, is these apartments. And so that’s kind of where I’m at now is I’ve shifted my business from my single family business into a apartment buying. Um, the goal is to have, you know, properties that I earn income with and appreciation and depreciation for my income and all those other things.

Mike: [00:05:45] Yup. Yup. No, that’s great. I. I have a different path than you, but, um, you know, we’re, we’re doing apartment investing as well, and I know you and I’ll be working together soon on some stuff. And I do deals with Corey and, you know, it’s the same thing for me. Like I always wanted passive income or [00:06:00] cashflow, like your shirt says there and yeah.

You know, for me, um, you know, flipping hundreds of houses, like, but that was a means to kind of like in the process of doing that, you, you kind of. Get to keep something right. You can’t keep them all. Cause you gotta feed the monster. You gotta pay advertising. You have overhead, you have all those things, but it was a way to, you know, I buy by three, keep one by four, keep on whatever it might be here.

Right, right. And some months you can keep once on once you can’t and um, no, but it’s hard to scale by houses. One at a time it’s hard to scale it. Wholesaling and rehabbing are good businesses, but yeah. They’re very transactional in nature. So when, when that’s gone, it’s gone. Um, and the beauty of multifamily is like, for us, the deals that we’ve been involved in so far are, um, you know, some of these properties you’ve never been to.

Like, they just, they just, they just kind of work and yeah. When, when you do big deals, I know where sometimes when you say multifamily, people like assume like, you know, Four six doors, whatever we’re talking like a hundred unit plus apartment complex is generally, [00:07:00] but there’s some that were like $25 million purchase price.

Right. And so we’re talking about bigger properties where you can afford to hire a professional management team and have all sorts of resources because, you know, in the single family space, like we still manage our manager. And there’s stuff that they can’t do that we have to deal with. And it’s it that starts to change when the deals are big enough.

Right. Or you have, even if, I guess if you have enough single families, you could get there too. But, but yeah, so that’s great. So I think we’re on the same page. It’s like someday you don’t want to work as hard as you. Work now, or I’ve had to work over the past years, right?

Tj Kosen: [00:07:33] Yeah. Yeah. That’s the goal you want to work?

Your, you want to work your tail off now so that you don’t have to work that hard later. Right? So in my case, I just want to be able to retire comfortably and have freedom. Right. So, so for me, it’s, it’s a matter of, I’m willing to do whatever I need to do today to get to where I want to be tomorrow. So.

Mike: [00:07:49] Yeah. So let’s talk about that. So what, what drives you? What drives you? Uh, I mean, I know you’re working with your daughter now is getting out of college and all that stuff is, is amazing, but what, what kind of drives you [00:08:00] to do what you do every day?

Tj Kosen: [00:08:02] Well, initially, you know, initially, like I said, it was just, it was just a way to retire.

My wife and myself is why I got into real estate as a business. But, you know, I’ve always, since I was younger, Well, I’ve had this dream that, that I, you know, you want wealth, right? You want a, you want freedom. You want to be able to take care of yourself financially. You don’t have to, you don’t want to have to rely on or worry about anything.

And I’ve, I’ve felt that way since I was a kid, you know, I’ve had jobs since I was 12 years old. That was, I was raking leaves in the fall and, and mowing lawns all summer. You know, at the age of 12, I would take my lawnmower and, and drag it around behind my bike and go cut people’s lawns, you know? And, uh, so since then, I’ve always thought to myself, if I could just, you know, if I could just have $10 million or, you know, whatever these dreams are in your mind, uh, I’ll be fine.

You know, that’ll, that’ll be, that’ll make my life perfect. Right. Um, one of the problems is that I’m the youngest of eight kids. Uh, and I was a bit of an accident, right. So I came very late in my life. [00:09:00] Yeah. And, um, you know, my parents were born in the twenties. They went through, they went through the great depression.

They went through world war II. My dad was in world war two. You know, my, my family lived in, uh, before I was around, they lived in Germany for 12 years, you know, they never had any money. So they’re. Their way of looking at the world was completely different than what you would need today to be successful.

Right. They were, they were worked very hard, save all you can, you know, and just hope, hope for the best. Right. They were just, they were lucky to get food on the table and a roof over their head. They weren’t thinking about, you know, leveling up any dollars. Right. Then $10 million was not on the list.

Mike: [00:09:38] Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Well, these are we, you know, we, we don’t, uh, There’s no doubt about it. We we’ve got, first of all, problems here that we’re talking about here, for

Tj Kosen: [00:09:46] sure. Yeah. And that, I think about that all the time. I tell my family that I said, look, you know, you live in a 10% world. You’re you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re better off than 90% of the world, the population of the planet, you know, as we sit right now, you and I are both in a [00:10:00] 10% world.

And what we’re asking for from the universe, I guess, or whatever you want to call it is we’re asking to go to 95%, right. We’re asking to get to that next 5%. Yeah. And that next 5% is a completely different world that it gives us financial freedom, financial independence. It allows us to do whatever we really want to do.

I’m perfectly successful today. And I have a beautiful little family and I have great, you know, I have a great life, but I, I would really like to try and get to the next level. And I, I think it’s kind of my responsibility in life to do that. Yeah.

Mike: [00:10:29] Yeah. That’s that’s powerful. I love that. You said it’s my responsibility.

I believe that too, our responsibility, like people sometimes look at us or as investors or, you know, we do this ourselves sometimes with social media and just like. Look how awesome this thing is for me, or here’s a copy of my check or whatever. I don’t post checks, but, um, but people do right and just kind of bragging on stuff.

And so, but I do think, I think we have a responsibility to be successful. We have a responsibility to teach our kids those lessons. We have a responsibility to teach those around us. I have a nephew coming down here in a [00:11:00] couple of weeks that grew up much like me in the same. You know, I grew up in a, where I grew up in Illinois is very blue collar.

He’s just never seen. Um, entrepreneurs and that’s at the level that I have now. I didn’t see it then either, but we’re, I’m gonna bring it to invest your fuel, where he’s going to be in a room with, you know, a hundred, 150, like successful real estate investors. And I’m hoping that just being, to, being able to see that, I mean, I wish I could have seen that when I was 17 and he’s like give out there, be a senior in high school.

So I think we have a responsibility to teach those around us and. You know, we employ people. There’s lots of other things we do. So I like that we have a responsibility for success. I believe that too.

Tj Kosen: [00:11:38] Yeah. Yeah. My daughter’s joining my company too, so she right around the same time I was looking at transitioning my business into, into buying apartments as opposed to single family.

Uh, she came to me and said, Hey dad, you know, I wanna, I want to have some freedom in my life. I wanna be able to travel and things like that. And I said, well, you’re gonna have to figure out how to do that. Um, and she said, well, that’s why I’m talking to you. I said she wanted to learn kind of the [00:12:00] game that I was playing.

And so it kind of transitioned or morphed into this. Hey, why don’t we just go into apartments together? Um, and so she’s been helping me because, you know, I’m not a very organized person. I’m, I’m a very, um, hardworking hustler type guy, you know, I’ll get up and go do work, but I won’t figure out, you know, how to write everything down in a process.

Right. Yeah. And so she’s really good at doing that stuff and she’s, um, She’s really picking everything up. She’s learning more, uh, outside of college going to invest or fuel, uh, you know, learning from Corey and those sorts of things that she isn’t in college. Really. I keep asking her if they’ve taught her how to make money yet, she keeps saying now, you know, and she’s in a finance, he’s learning finance with a specialization in real estate and marketing.

So I mean, if they’re gonna teach anybody how to make money, it should be her. But you know, they just don’t do that

Mike: [00:12:48] column. Oh, in college they teach you, you know, I went to, I went to college, I went to grad school and when I look back now, it’s like, They were pretty much teaching me how to be

Tj Kosen: [00:12:57] marketable

Mike: [00:12:58] to somebody else that wants to hire me, [00:13:00] but there was never any discussion on how to be self sufficient or how to, you know, how to be an entrepreneur for sure.

And I even took entrepreneurship classes, like then it was more about raising money and kind of more like tech entrepreneurship, not really like there’s a lot of ways to make money that are not being a Silicon Valley tech company for sure. But yeah. For sure. Yeah. So talk about, a little bit about, we talked about that.

We’re gonna talk about mindset today. And, and so one of the things is I know, uh, based on what you said about your family and your upbringing, and my thing was very blue collar, a lot of factory workers and, you know, stuff like that, even the town I grew up in

Tj Kosen: [00:13:33] and

Mike: [00:13:35] unless you get, you know, it’s just. They kind of programmed your mind sometimes to like what’s possible.

Right. And I know we’ve talked about it. I mean, clearly you and I have both had to program our minds a few different times. We had the client like see something happen or experience something or get around people that had a different viewpoint to kind of reprogram what’s possible. Right. So talk about some of the challenges that you have that other people probably have and how you’ve [00:14:00] overcome those type, overcome those

Tj Kosen: [00:14:01] things.

Oh, well, I’m still overcoming a lot of it too. Yeah.

Mike: [00:14:05] Yeah. It’s a journey, right? It’s

Tj Kosen: [00:14:06] not that yeah. Every day. And um, yeah, so I did, like I said before, I grew up with parents that just didn’t have that sort of mindset. They didn’t have that. Um, they were very, um, hang on to what I have kind of mindset. Right.

And, um, which is fine. There’s nothing wrong with what they taught me. That’s great. And then when you go to school, the schools don’t teach you. Um, the value of assets they teach you, they teach you the value of becoming an employee or, you know, whatever. And so I, I live my whole life thinking that if I work hard, uh, eventually it’ll come to me.

And, um, you know, I read the, I read the pivotal book that everybody reads, which is, you know, rich dad, poor dad. Yeah. And that was probably, it was probably 30 years old before I read that book. But, um, That book, you know, sort of pointed out to me that I was doing everything wrong. Right. So I started from that day forward, I started [00:15:00] sort of rethinking about how I approach life in general.

And since I’ve become, you know, an independent business owner, real estate investor, and all those sorts of things, you really have to kind of think hard about it. Cause I think one of the biggest struggles that all of us have, um, is just waking up every day and convincing ourselves to get out there and fight again.

Right? So every day you have to say, Hey, you’re going to make it today, buddy. You know, and you have to convince yourself that it’s worth doing right. Cause it’s, it is a struggle, you know, we work, um, more stressful, more difficult jobs than just showing up. You know, if you just show up at a corporate job and you collect your check, or you’re really not, the stress you’re dealing with is your boss is a pain or something like that.

But as long as you there’s a

Mike: [00:15:42] possibility of getting fired, but you know, the check is probably coming for some people they lose out eventually like I did, but for most people they can drift along and do okay. But

Tj Kosen: [00:15:53] you don’t feel the same pressure to succeed every day that you, you do on your own. And you kind of, you kind of have to convince yourself [00:16:00] to get up every day and dust yourself off and get back in the fight.

Right. So yeah, finding techniques or tools, you know, mentally that, that aligned to do that is a big deal. And so for me, um, you know, it’s every day, every day, uh, of trying to try to make sure that I. I’m doing the things that I know are going to get me closer and closer and closer to my goals. And it’s personal things too.

Like I have to look out for my health. I have to look out for my relationships, you know, things like that, that aren’t business directly related to your business, but you have to do those things also, you know, I first started in real estate. I gained 60 pounds, you know, four or five years. Cause I, I just, I gave up on looking out for my health.

I was so focused on getting my business going that, uh, I had this thought while just give up, I’ll just give up all these things that I like, you know, riding my bike or taking care of my fitness and I’ll just go look at houses instead. And that was a terrible idea, you know? Cause now I’m fighting to get all that back.

Yeah. So [00:17:00] for me, it’s been, especially the last couple of years, it’s been a journey of, um, Just identifying, um, those things that are holding me back or keeping me from getting to the next level and those things that are kind of stopping me from just being happy every day and in my business and being grateful for what I have, and also wanting to move forward.

So

Mike: [00:17:21] that’s awesome. You said T like you said, techniques or tools to help, like any, any, anything you could share that you, that you do or that you use to help with that?

Tj Kosen: [00:17:32] Yeah, it’s all basic stuff. I mean, you want to, you want to try and sleep good. I struggled really hard with that, but I, I do my best to try and sleep good every day.

Um, diet is another thing that I really struggle with. I’m refining those things right now, but you want to try and eat as good as you can. And then exercise, exercise. I’m pretty good about, you know, I get out and ride my bike every day. I did an hour before we got on the podcast here on the bicycle. I do weight training and stretching and all those sorts of things.

Yeah. And you want to read, you want to read as [00:18:00] much as you can, either audio books or printed books and trying to educate yourself. Um, and always, always refine your techniques. You want to get coaches, you want to get into groups that help you with a mindset, um, like investor fuel and just dealing with, um, being prepared for the day and being prepared for your business.

So all those things are good. Um, and then just. Focusing on a lot of it is starting with yourself, right? You want to start with, am I prepared to, um, take on the challenges that my business is going to is going to ask me to take on so that I can be successful? Am I happy with where I’m going? Am I learning the things I need to learn?

All those things are important. Yup.

Mike: [00:18:40] Yup. Hey, one thing, a little, a little secret about you that not a lot of people know is you, you, you were a. A manager for the us Olympic cycling team. Right.

Tj Kosen: [00:18:49] Yeah.

Mike: [00:18:51] Trying to just call that out. It’s a really kind of a fun fact for you. Right. But it’s interesting. Cause you were around some like ultimate success, uh, for athletics [00:19:00] maybe, maybe kind of share, just to kind of tell a little bit about what that is and then maybe how that had an impact on you in terms of, you know, cause most Olympic athletes do things that most people don’t think is possible.

Like physically, right.

Tj Kosen: [00:19:12] Clearly. Yeah. So, uh, yeah, being around athletes like that, the focus that they have, the commitment that they have, you know, what they’re willing to give up and what they’re willing to put up into achieving such an, um, an Epic thing, you know, they’re all there. All they’re really getting is a little.

Metal. I mean, I look at Catholics, they’re not retiring because they want to go metal. That that’s right. That’s not the end of the line for them.

Mike: [00:19:38] Yeah. Unless you’re Michael Phelps, but yeah. Or a few people, but it’s very, very, it’s a very small percentage of people that. That’s a can that into something else?

Yeah.

Tj Kosen: [00:19:48] Yeah. Even Michael Phelps, his star is going to fade at some point. I mean, he’s got to have, he’s got to have a plan. He’s got to have a plan to keep that going. Yeah. But yes, especially in cycling, cycling is not a big world, you know, to be the best cyclist [00:20:00] in the world does not, does not get you very far financially or anything else other than just I’m the best, you know?

Yeah. And to see those athletes, what they’re willing to do, I’m going to, I think I’m going to have one of them on the show, actually my podcast. Yes. But, um, and we’ll talk about some of that, but it’s, it’s amazing. And to just watch them go through this, you know, they started as young kids and they’re just committed to it for them so long.

Yeah. And it’s, uh, it’s, it takes everything they have, you know, and I think the same thing with entrepreneurs, it takes everything you have, you know, for us to go from where we are to, where we want to be is, is not that far, but it is a, it’s an Epic leap in terms of. Um, scale, right. And it takes everything you’ve got to, to get to that place.

So if you’re not prepared to. Learn everything you can and give everything you can and be committed to it. You know, it can’t be just, I think I want to do this. It has to be, I’ve got to do this commitment. If you’re not prepared to do that, then you might want to just stay in your job really, because it’s to be successful as an entrepreneur, [00:21:00] it is tough, you know, and you gotta be ready to be tough, tougher than the day’s gonna be.

Yeah. And

Mike: [00:21:04] I’d say, you know, as not to be a successful entrepreneur always depends on your definition of success. Right. But success is financial freedom. You know, not that everybody doesn’t aspire to have more than this, but if you’re, if the kind of baseline of financial freedom is I can do what I want with what, with whom I want, you know, whatever I want.

And I don’t have to worry about, you know, punching the clock, doing the nine to five, those types of things. If that’s kind of the baseline of financial freedom, like, like you replace your income, um, with ’em with your, you know, your business or your profits in your business. Um, that doesn’t take now. I’m not saying it.

I think what you said is true, like. Being an athlete, like be the best you can be. But the truth is, is you don’t have to be a world class Olympic entrepreneur, if you will, to achieve financial freedom, like it’s, it’s there for a lot of people. Right?

Tj Kosen: [00:21:56] Well, I think, yeah. It depends. Right? So [00:22:00] it just, like you said, it is about what your goals are, but I think even just to have any success as an entrepreneur, you’ve gotta be prepared to be

Mike: [00:22:07] no doubt, no doubt, no doubt, but it’s not as much of a stretch to say, well, there’s only a couple of people in the world that will ever get there, you know?

Tj Kosen: [00:22:15] Yeah. There’s not just one winner of the race there. Yeah. There you go. There you go. Thousands of winners of the race. So everybody, everybody can get a gold medal if you try hard enough, right. It’s not like there’s only one. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That’s right. That’s awesome. That’s a big difference for entrepreneurs.

Everybody has, um, as a chance, right? To, to be a gold medalist, I guess you could say, or bronze medalist or whatever you want to call it, but whatever, whatever your level of success is that you right. But, but I think either an any of them just to run the race, you better be prepared to give everything you’ve got, you know?

Mike: [00:22:47] Yeah. So, Sean, uh, we talked about you, one of the things you talked about was, was being around the right people, you know, and you, you were, I think he joined investor people almost right at the beginning. Maybe the first or second meeting with this actually coming up on our third year here.
[00:23:00] Tj Kosen: [00:23:00] I was there day one.

Mike: [00:23:01] Would you that’s right. Would you mind kind of sharing, um, you know, what investor pupil has meant for you or your business or life?

Tj Kosen: [00:23:09] Yeah. So, um, you know, right at the time that you were putting that together, I had been a little bit on my own with, um, after leaving home investors and, you know, real estate can be a very lone Wolf type business, you know, you can be kind of on your own and there’s answers all over the internet for any question you have, but to be able to call somebody or to be able to interact with somebody that you know is in the same trenches that you’re in every day.

It changes everything. Right. And to be in a room with those people and have a conversation and get to know them, you know, I have some great friends down because of investor fuel that I know I can count on to call and say, Hey, I, I’m just not feeling it today. Here’s what’s happening in my life. And they’ll help me through that process.

Right. Or they’ll, they’ll say, have you tried and tried this, or here’s a book you should read or, Hey, watch this YouTube video. [00:24:00] It’ll change the way you’re thinking about that. You know, so those little things in life, and like I was saying before in giving everything you have to your business or in your life, um, to be successful, to have those people around you that are doing the same thing, it really guides you closer and closer to success all the time.

You know, and, um, you, Gary Harper was one of the people that, um, was, I guess, the founders or instructors with you in investor fuel. And Gary was pivotable pivotal in my, uh, transition, I guess a couple of years ago, he had this one, um, CEO training program and he asked, you know, they said, you need to come down to this thing and just have me one of his, um, speakers speak and working with Gary.

And it, it, I didn’t understand the fears that I had in my life and the anxieties that I had my life, you know, I’ve lived my whole life. Just kind of think I’m fearless. I’m Bulletproof. I’m just kind of, okay. And the reality was, is I kept stacking fears on top of fears and they were, they were weighing me down.

They were keeping me from [00:25:00] succeeding and just having him talk me through this and, and having his, um, his lecture that they gave. Opened up this whole thing for me. So I started to address those things in my life. You know, I wrote them down, I took action against it. I started putting a plan in place to deal with them and it’s it.

It just sheds you, so dealing with those fears and getting those off your back it’s shed, you have all this weight that you’re carrying around. So now you can run faster towards your goals, right? So if you just, I kind of equate it to people just kept piling suitcases on me or luggage on me. And I’ve been able to put some of those bags down because I, I I’ve been able to deal with them.

And, you know, Gary was, was instrumental in making me see that. Right. So, and then Corey, uh, you know, he opened up the whole idea that this is possible for me. And then I can become what I wanted to become the whole time, you know? So just seeing him meeting and being around those people. It has easily 10 acts to my, uh, my happiness for sure.

And I, and my [00:26:00] business may be a hundred X at this point, you know, uh, compared to where I was headed with single family. So, uh, you know, having a group like that, that, um, is full of people that you can count on, that you can trust that believe in you and that you believe in them. Um, and the, the motivation is giving of yourself to others.

Being in a group like that is, is, uh, incredibly powerful. It’s incredibly powerful for, for you as an individual. And then just your business is going to, it’s going to change your business completely also for sure. Find something like that. It’d be, it would be something that would tell everybody

Mike: [00:26:34] appreciate that, Sean, I appreciate that.

Thanks so much. So if folks wanted to connect with you, I know you’ve got your own podcast. Now. Maybe tell us how to find that, uh, you’re focused, uh, More on multifamily now. So looking to raise money and partner with people on deals, like where can people go to learn more about you and connect?

Tj Kosen: [00:26:52] Oh man, I’ll have to give you all the notes because I’ve got a ton of them, but we’re on social media.

You know, Thompson multifamily group is our new, um, [00:27:00] uh, company and we have a Facebook at Thompson multifamily group and, uh, Thompson multifamily group.com is our website. You’ll also find our podcast on Facebook at next level, American dream podcasts. So you’ll also find our podcast on our [email protected].

And then you can find me personally, just Shawn Thompson, or sometimes in apartments. Um, on Facebook come, usually. They’re so

Mike: [00:27:27] awesome. Awesome. We’ll have these links down below here in the show notes. So good to see you, my friend as always, we’re actually, you know, you know this, so I don’t have to stay up, but we’re right here in the same market.

So Sean and I see each other as regularly is a COVID. Rabid, uh, uh, policies allow, but anyway, um, awesome buddy. Well, Hey, I appreciate you. And I’m excited to see where you go on your journey and honestly, yeah. Looking forward to doing some multifamily deals

Tj Kosen: [00:27:52] with you. Yeah, that sounds good. Thanks, Mike.

Thanks for having me on. I hope somebody got something out of that. Yeah,

Mike: [00:27:58] for sure. Now, Hey, the biggest challenge [00:28:00] that we all deal with is mindset. There’s no doubt about it, right? I mean, the sky is the limit. If you, if you tell yourself you can’t do it, you certainly can’t. Right. So put out about it. Yup.

Awesome. Everybody hope you got some great value today. Um, if you haven’t yet, please go to you. Go to dot com. You can watch all of our shows there. You can find all of our shows on flipnerd.com and you can subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, Google play, anywhere we could possibly find a podcast. Of course, YouTube.

Um, We’d love it. If you subscribe, give us a positive review and make sure you join us on the next episode. Take care.

Are you an active real estate investor? If so, and you want to latch onto the power of surrounding yourself with over a hundred of the nation’s leading real estate investors. All

Tj Kosen: [00:28:42] committed to building

Mike: [00:28:43] stronger businesses and live richer fuller lives. You should jump on a call with us to learn more about Bester fuel.

Simply visit investor fuel.com to get started. [00:29:00] .