5 Mindset Shifts for Real Estate Triumph with Clifford Walker

Mike Hambright (00:01.922)
Hey guys, today we’re gonna be talking about a mindset for success. I’m here with Clifford Walker, the cowboy closer. Say that five times fast. Hey Clifford, great to see you buddy.

What’s going on brother it is an honor man an absolute honor and a privilege to be here and I appreciate you being here fellow Texan. yes, sir. Born and raised. Just down the road. So awesome to have you here man. And I know your story. We talked about it a little bit and I hope that today what we’re going to talk about will inspire a lot of people to kind of push through obstacles that are in their way.

give up. think that’s part of what we kind of talked about a little bit upfront. People are real quick to give up on their dreams.

So hey before we jump in you have everybody that I have on has a unique story We all have unique stories, but tell us about your story like how you got into real estate And how you found your way here. know you do some coaching of real estate investors now as well But how did you find your way here? know you didn’t start there sure What’s funny is I was a truck driver before I got started in real estate investing. Yeah, and so I Had absolutely no experience whatsoever first off. I’m gonna say that getting started. Yeah

But I was driving ironically in West Texas, and I remember it like it was yesterday, where I was listening to a podcast on the the road. And what’s so funny is because I wasn’t even into like personal development like that during the time. It’s just that I was in the middle of nowhere and that’s the only thing that was on. But it was a guy out of New York.

Mike Hambright (01:42.638)
talking about how much money he was making in wholesaling real estate. And so I remember just being glued to that steering wheel because I hated truck driving. I hated it with a passion. So shout out to all my truck drivers there. But I even came home to my wife like, hey babe, we’re gonna start wholesaling real estate. But I just went down this rabbit hole to where I finally ended up attending like a three day

in-person seminar and getting some coaching and yeah, it’s been history ever since. Do you remember whose podcast that was? The from New York? So it was a it was a guy. His name is Mark. I don’t remember his last name. OK, but I keep telling myself like I need to reach out to the guy and I never do. I never do. I really need. It’s a relatively small world. And I was one of the early podcasters. And so I don’t there’s so many that I don’t know, but I do know a lot of them. So, yeah, that’s great. I mean, I think honestly,

I would say this is I used to be in love with real estate. I used to love to flip a house, like the transformation or wholesaling. make it 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 grand, whatever it is. And then I got to a point where I was like, know, it’s not actually our buddy Matt Andrews has said this quote. Some people think that I quoted this. I’m actually quoting Matt Andrews now. So there’s an asterisk next to it. I’m recycling this quote. Real estate isn’t the thing. It’s the thing that gets you the thing.

And so it’s like for me, it’s changed my family tree. But I’m not in love with the transformation of real estate anymore. just am in love with

It’s so funny. I was just telling somebody something that very similar the other day because I would say the same, like even for me, like real estate is just a means to an end, right? To create a lifestyle. But my passion is in serving. Like we have a nonprofit that real estate fuels a lot of the stuff that we do within our community. And so yeah, it’s typically just a gateway. Yeah. If you could make that, if you could make

Mike Hambright (03:52.244)
that kind of money selling tacos I would do that too yeah agree tacos I love tacos more than I love real estate maybe seriously but you can’t but you can’t make tens of thousands of dollars selling a taco yeah and I think that’s a good point for people because

it allows you to really create the life you want create the the impact that you want to make because there’s people that are doing real estate or maybe maybe they’re not doing real estate but they’re interested in getting in it but they know they have ministries in them they know they have books in them they know they have nonprofits in the end that they want to start well allow that real estate to fuel those passions for you yeah

Yeah, it’s a means to an end, like you said. So tell me about this transition, because I told you we were talking about our backstories a little bit ahead of time. You were a truck driver. But you had to make a leap of faith to kind of leave something that maybe you didn’t like, but at least they say that sometimes they say that the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know. And a lot of people are stuck doing what they do because they don’t necessarily like it, but they know what they’re going to do each day when they get up and they don’t have to worry.

it’s not going to be there. Truth is, I used to think that in corporate America. I worked for a $5 billion company and I was the golden boy. Everybody knew I was the crowned prince until my boss got fired and then I was dog shit. I was dead. And I was like, how did that happen? And I went from being so comfortable to like.

literally getting fired. Anyway, the reason I say that is a lot of people think their job is safe, is anybody’s job really safe these days? Not at all. Even in the truck driving industry, at some point you’ve got to believe that’s going to be.

Mike Hambright (05:41.902)
going to be using Tesla trucks and driving those around. I mean, nobody’s job is really safe anymore unless you take a little more initiative. But you do have to make this leap of faith of, I’m going to be proactive, and I’m going to find another path before I’m forced to. So tell us about your leap of faith.

Yeah, but you actually hit on a point. It’s so insane to me, you know, about the devil you don’t know and the devil you know. People will fight and claw to keep what they currently have. Whatever their current situation is, even no matter how bad it is, quote unquote, but they won’t put that same energy into chasing something new. It blows my mind. And so for me,

when i was truck driving i absolutely hated cuz i’m married i have two daughters and so i did it for seven years over the road and you think i’m big now like that house a hundred plus pounds then and you will be surprised how just sitting in driving takes a toll on your body yeah and so when i saw that this could be

a way out for me that would get me out of the truck that would help me be home with my family and start to create a life that I want a life that I’m proud of like there was also these like little god tugs if you will that told me where I felt like okay I’m meant for more there there’s I can do more I can be more than just sitting here and driving a truck living this isolated kind of life yeah so for me that leap of

faith was just being so miserable honestly in that current position and I know not everybody’s gonna be there but I was like I have to change for the sake of my life it was really one of those type of situations and so yeah when I saw it I gladly took it I was afraid you know I was terrified I didn’t know what was gonna happen but I did say what’s the worst that could happen

Mike Hambright (07:48.046)
I get into real estate and I fail and just fall flat on my face. Well, I can always go back to driving a truck. Yeah. can always go back to I think most people can say that too. The worst thing that could happen is I could just come right back to where I’m at. Exactly. Or something similar. Most people are unhappy with where they’re at. So you could find something else you’re unhappy doing. Exactly. Worst case scenario, right? Seriously. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, and people.

I mean, you can even take that a little step further. Like, I got a house, so if I lose my house, so I’ll get an apartment. It’s not like you’re gonna, for most people, if you get started in real estate and you fail, you’re probably not gonna be on the streets dirt poor. You’re probably not. You know what I mean? And I think that when people give themselves that grace and understanding, like,

You know, you’re right. I can go back to my corporate job. I can go back to driving a truck. I can go back to being a nurse or whatever you were prior to. Yeah.

Some of this is commitment, commitment to your own success. A lot of people, I kind of use this analogy of Amazon. It’s so easy to get something today. I just order it, and it’s here the next day. Same day, right? People are so used to having this immediate gratification of, well, I want to get into real estate investing or something else. They’re like, if they don’t see immediate results, they give up.

That’s just not how the real world works though. You’ve got to be committed for some period of time before you can see that. But I think people are quick to not commit to their own success today because it’s not the path of least resistance. The path of least resistance is to stay where you’re at and not commit. Whatever you do, don’t ever try to make yourself better. People are just kind of committed to mediocrity.

Mike Hambright (09:39.596)
Yeah, it’s insane. But whatever you do is going to take work. It’s going to take a commitment. It doesn’t matter whether you’re trying to change your financial situation, your health, your marriage. It all is going to take commitment and work. We talk about my health, for example. Like last year, yeah, I probably could have taken some dietary supplements or something. I don’t know to.

get me quicker results, but I know I want lasting results and I want to be healthy from the inside out. So I was only losing like a pound a week. You know, from week to week, it really doesn’t seem like much. But last year over the entire year, now I’m 50 something, 55 pounds down. And it just adds up over time with just staying consistent and showing up. Yeah. You can say that about a lot of things, right? mean, commitment to health, right? A lot of times people’s

miraculously gets better when they are backed into a corner when something really bad happens you yeah have a heart attack or get cancer or something then all sudden people like they finally drop that weight or they finally get better or in my case honestly I had thought about real estate for a long time I went to some boot camps and read some books and did some stuff but I was too comfortable in my job at the time

And then I didn’t have enough money. And then it’s like, well, I do have a little bit of money, but I don’t have time now. And then I lost my job, and I lost my income stream. And I was forced to have to do something. And that’s the path that I went down.

you that’s why I say I got fired from my dream job but it’s the best thing that ever happened to me because if that hadn’t happened I probably would have just stayed there because it was the path of least resistance. Yeah but it’s funny I think how and I’m a man of faith too so I think it’s interesting how God works sometimes or whoever you know the listeners believe in but

Mike Hambright (11:34.09)
I’m a firm believer that if you’re doing the thing you’re not called to do, it will lead to the thing that you’re called to do, right? Because even, and I’m just guessing, all of those corporate jobs and all that experience that you had prior to actually helped you with where you are today because you were able to lean into that experience. Like imagine starting…

in real estate without all of that corporate experience that you had prior to it would maybe be a different story. Yeah, for sure. And honestly, for years, even when I was in real estate, I mean, even when I for the first several years I was in real estate, I basically because my wife and I met in grad school. So we have MBAs from a top 20 program or whatever. University of Texas in Austin, by the way. We go and you know, I have some executive education from some Ivy League school because the corporate corporate America path was sending me

to get more education and stuff. And I was like, man, none of this matters now that I’m a real estate investor. I didn’t need to any of that stuff. And for years, I kind of made fun of, you don’t need all this education. And you don’t. Most people in this industry, I know people that are wealthy, have done super well, huge impact and all that, and they don’t even have a college education, let alone.

grad school or something else. However, I think I’ve kind of wised up over the past few years. And there are things that I learned there. And some of it is just thinking bigger. I if you work for a big corporation, it’s like I had a very small role in that. And so it’s like one of the big lessons there is how to build a team. Like, have a team. You can’t do it all. lot of are, lot of real estate investors for sure, small entrepreneurs are wearing.

That’s a job. That’s not a business. And if you’re OK with that, that’s fine. But that probably wasn’t your goal when you got in. You wanted to start a business that ultimately gave you some time freedom. Anyway, there’s some lessons I’ve probably learned from corporate America.

Mike Hambright (13:27.612)
absolutely. And what’s funny is because you’re going to have to learn those lessons one way or the other. Like hearing you say that, I’m the complete opposite. So I don’t have a fancy college education. In fact, I don’t share this a lot, but I’m actually a high school dropout. I even struggle with reading. Like now, even to this day, when I read a book, I play the audio book and I follow along. Yeah.

just because I struggle with reading there. But anywho, to your point, all of those lessons that you’ve learned now, now that I’m an entrepreneur,

striving to be a business owner, like I still have to learn those lessons and get that education just not in the traditional sense. I think that’s where places like your mastermind really comes into play because I still have to get the education. It’s just in a different format. And that’s a great thing. I think that there’s so many ways these days to get educated. mean, you could take classes online. You could learn anything online.

There’s not much you can’t learn online. And that’s okay. That’s kind of funny. I was the first person in my family to go to college, let alone grad school, and now my son is going to follow a non-traditional path too. He’s about to get out of high school and he’s…

not a good student, just barely squeaking by in high school, and we’re not gonna force them to go try to follow that traditional path, because one of the things I’ve learned is there’s a lot of ways to make money, and they don’t require a traditional education, but you do have to build a skill. Yeah, I think that’s important, too, just build a skill. Yeah.

Mike Hambright (15:08.59)
So we were talking a little bit about just kind of commitment to success and you kind of brought up marriage. so I guess there’s probably some parallels with marriage, like committed to a marriage. And there’s some people that, I’m not here to knock anybody, but I’ve been married for 20 years. I think you said you married for 13 years. And there’d be lots of opportunities to just quit on that or give up. And I’ll be frank, I’m sure my wife has thought about it bunch of times. I forced her into a position. And fortunately, she’s stuck with me and we worked

any issues we have out but I think it’s real easy to give up on your dreams with your business and just kind of quit because things get hard and if people committed to I know you and I talked about this a little bit up front if people committed to their career their business or their entrepreneurial journey like they did to their marriage and not everybody can listen to marriage yeah but to the level that we have it’d be a different world right it’ll be a completely different world like

I got so many little points that I want to bring up. Number one, we have to stop quitting. That was a thing for me. I’m going to take you all the way back to elementary. So I used to do play basketball and I used to do the safety patrol at the elementary school. And so it was the same coach that was over the basketball and the safety patrol. What’s safety patrol? Where we like, we let the kids in at the door and like we were like a little, a little vest or whatever. But any who

you

I quit the little thing, the safety patrol, and then not too much longer I quit basketball. And he’s like, I guess quitting’s just a habit for you. Is that what you do? You just quit everything that you start? And I was like, wow. Somebody said that to you? Yeah. yeah. That’s like a punch in the gut. Yeah. Mr. Robinson, I’ll never forget him. And it’s crazy because he is the only teacher that I remember that made that massive of an impact for me. And so there is a level of commitment that I think.

Mike Hambright (17:08.24)
people should strive for, right? Like a local pastor here in Dallas said, he was doing a marriage counseling and he said, when it comes to marriage, you come home when you’re in love, you come home when you ain’t in love or you ain’t gonna make it. Like it’s a commitment, right? And I think that people need to get out of the filling side of things because you’re not gonna be in lovey-dovey love every single day. Like sometimes, I don’t know, it’s just different.

boot in my mouth here and yeah my wife’s gonna hear this show but yeah but yeah the same thing with with starting a business man it’s been some tough months I wish that I could tell everybody it’s it’s been a piece of cake and smooth selling for me over these six years no I felt like I got kicked in the face with a boot four or five or six times but I’m like

What’s the worst that I do? Go back to driving a truck? I don’t want to do that. So I need to keep moving forward. You know what’s funny? I’ll say about relationships. This hasn’t happened to me because I’ve only been married once. But there’s a lot of people that they do all the things they should have done on their second marriage and their first marriage. And it’s like, you could have just made that work if you had just done that. Exactly. Exactly. It’s the same thing for business, though, right? Don’t either go start. Obviously, there’s a lot of entrepreneurs

just go to the next shiny object. I’m going to do the next business. I’m going to go into that next venture. But it’s like, if you’re taking the same bad habits with you, you’re going to have the same results. Yeah.

And it’s funny because speaking of real estate investors, we got a whole lot of shiny objects. yeah. You know, somebody will start out with either wholesaling or flipping or single family, and then they’re jumping over to commercial or multifamily. And you know, it’s, it’s crazy how many even people in my community, Hey, Clifford, do you do multifamily? I do not. Hey, do you do a mobile home parks? I do not. I specifically stay in my lane. Now I’m not saying there won’t be a time where I

Mike Hambright (19:15.522)
veer into another lane but right now I need to be hyper focused and committed to mastering what I’m doing now. Yeah and for a lot of real estate investors and newer people for sure that if they allow themselves to get distracted like it’s because they do it because they think it’s easier. Yeah. It’s like that’s hard too. It might seem easier right now but

you’re going to get to a level where that’s going to be hard too. So just get used to doing hard things. Yeah, exactly. I think Les Brown said, if we do what’s hard, our life will become easier. But if we always focus on what’s easy, our life will become hard. Yeah. There’s no doubt about it. Yeah. You know, another thing is that a lot of folks that will start something, they have enough information. Like I said, you could learn anything online. what often you don’t get online is the blue.

The information is online, but it’s not in the right order for implementation. I use this analogy of when my son was younger, he was great at putting Legos together.

Mike Hambright (20:27.31)
play with Legos, it comes with a direction. Sometimes the bigger sets are in individual bags. So this is like bag one, and this is like the first five steps, and then bag two as the next five steps. And everything is there, just put it together exactly like this. But at some point, all those Legos end up pulled apart and in a big box or a bin or something. In our house, we were just talking about, were doing some, my wife was cleaning out a…

toy closet, my son 17 doesn’t play with any of this stuff anymore. We have this huge Ikea bin that just has a billion Legos in it. those were all in sets. What a point. There’s no way to put that back together. So all the pieces that are needed for all those sets are there. They’re there, yeah. But nobody could ever put those back together again. And not to knock, people are watching this show right now on YouTube, by the way. But it’s not necessarily in the right order of how to put together the

Yeah, even though all the pieces are there and so my point in saying that is sometimes people like they want success and they tried really hard But they’re not willing to go either invest in themselves to get that owner’s manual like the blueprint the steps are how to do it or they don’t want to Admit that they’re struggling until it’s too far gone and ask for help, right? Yeah, I think too that was That was my saving grace. I thank God for giving me kind of that that

maybe humbleness, if that’s the right word, for me to look at myself and say, I don’t know what I’m doing, I need help. Because to your point, I literally asked myself, Clifford, have you ever ran a seven figure company before? No. Do you know how to run a seven figure company before? No. Okay, you should probably find somebody that runs a seven figure company and get coaching from them and try to figure out what does that look like. And so many people don’t ask them,

ask themselves that simple question. Like, and it’s not to be ugly or funny, but if you do not have a seven figure company, then what makes you think you know how to run it if you haven’t gotten proper coaching from somebody? Or if you’re not in the right communities to where people can pour into you. And so again, it goes back to the education. You’re going to pay one way or another. Right? Like,

Mike Hambright (22:49.966)
spend the time and get somebody’s blueprint because if you pay the hard way where you keep bumping your head, well now it just took you twice as longer if you just would have joined the right community, you would have fast-tracked around the right people, Exactly. Yeah, just get around people. It’s not get around people that have never failed. It’s get around people that have failed a lot. Yeah. Because the whole idea is like our Mastermind Investor Fuel is like,

What I say is when you’re around peers or people that are a few steps ahead of you is like.

it’s easier it’s better to learn those lessons from somebody else that’s already learned it than for you to have to do it as well exactly and there’s some people and we my wife says it’s about my son like you could tell him the stove is hot don’t touch it but he’s still gonna touch it because he just wants to see I don’t know if you ever go to a restaurant like don’t touch that plate it’s hot first thing I do is touch it let me see yeah let me see how hey we’re like barely the curse of entrepreneurs right but you know I think you know along those lines of learning from other people is is that a lot of people are

afraid of failure instead of failure being a stepping stone to something. it’s like, in the whole world, if you think of, I’m not a scientist, but if you think of anything that’s kind of being tested by scientists, it’s going to feel like.

99 % of the time. And they know that. But they have to do a lot of tests. In the entrepreneurial world, people fail one time and they quit. It’s like, no, we’re testing the stuff that doesn’t work to see if we find out what does. And so I think that’s one other thing we can talk about here with people that need to have this leap of faith to go in is don’t quit when you fail. That’s just the way to not do it and learn how to do

Mike Hambright (24:36.955)
agree. We really have to change our relationship with failure. I mean, we really have to change it. I think that…

The more you fail, I’m trying to think of who said that. was Max Maxwell, right? He said, success is failure, test, test, failure, test, test, failure, right? And he’s doing this analogy where every time you fail but you keep testing new ones, it just keeps elevating you up to a higher level. Right? Like the more you fail, the more you’re going to learn, or you should learn. Yeah, for sure. I mean, we all have that story of like when you even when you just learn to ride a bike, right?

you would never, people have talked about this example before, you would never have your baby starting to learn to walk and they took a couple steps and they fell down, like no, don’t ever try that again. It’s like you gotta fail, you gotta bump your head, you gotta get some bruises, you gotta get some scrapes and then you learn how to do it differently next time and you build your confidence, Yeah, so anybody that’s looking to get into…

Real estate investing or just business in general. I’d definitely say change your Viewpoint with failure. Yeah So Clifford if folks want to learn more about you what you got going on, how do they connect with you?

Social media, Clifford the Cowboy Closer, can find me on Instagram, YouTube, things of that nature. I’m not hard to find. Awesome. Awesome. Well, thanks for spending some time with us today. man. It was a blessing to be here. It really was. We’re fighting the Texas winter. It goes from 80 to like 15 today or whatever it is. Exactly. It’s ridiculous. It’ll be 80 again next week. I prefer that. Yeah, me too. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thanks for sharing some lessons with us today. my pleasure. Awesome. Everybody. Thanks

Mike Hambright (26:25.892)
for joining us today. I think if there’s a summary here, it’s be willing to fail and be willing to take a leap of faith and bet on yourself because honestly, nobody wants your success more than you want it for yourself. So appreciate you guys for joining us. We’ll see you on the next show.

Mike Hambright (26:45.304)
Cool, I should have asked what camera to look at. I was trying to look at these different.