Travis Bader: I'm Travis Bader, and this is the Silvercore podcast.
Silvercore has been providing its members with the skills and knowledge
necessary to be confident and proficient in the outdoors for over 20 years.
And we make it easier for people to deepen their connection to the natural world.
Very often when a podcast ends, the conversation continues.
That was the case here, and we decided to press record on a candid
conversation where Sean asked me questions he was curious about.
If you'd like to hear that, make sure to download episode 108, which is
the follow up to this conversation.
If you enjoy the Silvercore Podcast and you'd like to see more, the biggest
thing that you can do to help us grow is to like, comment and share with others.
It's a small effort, but it makes a massive difference
to the growth of the show.
Thank you.
The underlying goal of the Silvercore podcast is to share
positivity and highlight people's passion in a way that brings value
to the audience and each other.
To that end today, I'm joined by a man whose parents left
communist hungry in the seventies.
Is a former professional MMA competitor, is an accomplished sheep hunter, has
almost gone bankrupt twice, and is now the co founder of the multi billion
dollar sales company, Stonehouse Realty.
Welcome to the Silverquart podcast.
Sean Zubor: Thanks for having me, brother.
I'm excited
Travis Bader: to be here.
I am excited.
It was, uh, you know, a couple of technical difficulties right at
the beginning, making sure we have a hard drive on scene is always a,
a good thing if we want to record.
Usually helps.
Audio and video.
So before we get things rolling too far, Like we're talking spit balling
back and forth, all of these different things that we can chat about.
And that's kind of the, the, uh, I find the Achilles heel of
podcasting is the best conversation will happen before a podcast.
And when you press stop, then the best conversation comes in because
everyone's feeling comfortable.
Yeah, totally.
Right.
And then the other one is if we talk too much ahead of time, before we get into
a podcast and we feel like, well, we've already told this story, but there's
one thing that we didn't bring up.
Yeah.
That you and I were talking about on the phone, which I totally off
topic of really anything here, but you met somebody pretty cool down at
Venice beach when you're working out.
I want to hear
Sean Zubor: that story.
So long story short, the last couple of weeks I've been incredibly busy.
So I've been everywhere from LA to New York.
Sorry, before that it was in Kelowna, LA, New York, and then
Oregon down getting at the bow rack at my, uh, new, um, bow there, but.
When I was in LA, I'm like, I've always growing up as a kid, my parents
obviously have that funny accent.
So, um, my dad's still to this day, you can barely understand a word he says.
So I always admired, obviously Arnold Schwarzenegger.
So I'm there.
The only reason, well, I'm there for work, but the only reason I drive or Ubered
about 30 minutes outside of where I was staying was just to work out every single
morning at the Venice beach goals, right?
The Mecca of bodybuilding.
So, so there I am just working out, getting my pump on, looking around,
just flashing back to every single Arnold movie I've ever seen, he's
plastered all over the thing as long as well as all the other champions.
And I'm just about to leave.
So I'm literally grabbing a protein shake from the vending machine.
I look back and I have never been, I've been lucky enough to meet some
really cool people in the fighting world and all this other kind of stuff.
Right.
Um, I look back and like a little school girl that just saw Justin
Bieber or something, I'm freezing.
I can't even like get out my phone to take the picture.
Cause there comes Arnold with three of his buddies, right?
One of them, I'm sure is his bodyguard on his bicycle, just driving it
right up, walking right towards me.
In the Mecca of bodybuilding.
I'm like the reason that place is famous because of this guy.
And I'm just like, in shock.
Finally, I managed to snap some shots and what do I do instantly?
I put everything away.
I'm like, can I go back in?
And I start working out with them, like beside him, like a stalker.
And I can overhear their conversations and all these things.
He was really nice enough to say hello.
I couldn't take a picture with him and I don't blame him
because at the end of the day.
You'd never be able to get a workout in.
I'm sure all the 500 people working out that day would be wanting to take
a picture with them, but I can tell you it was one of the craziest experiences.
I don't get starstruck very often, but it's
Travis Bader: Arnold.
It's Arnold.
No kidding.
That'd be a pretty cool experience.
I watched his series there.
Yeah.
Did you watch out on that?
I did.
Yeah.
Interesting fellow.
A lot of drive.
Really, really hard worker.
You can tell that it's just been ingrained in him from his, uh, from an early
age and from his family upbringing.
Uh, glossed over some of the difficulties that he had, I felt, um.
Sean Zubor: Yeah, for myself, like honestly, today.
We have a lot of differing opinions in the world and politics and so on and so forth.
But I I'm the kind of guy that you can never take away from what you've
accomplished and done and his rise to fame, what he's accomplished, like, and
that was the biggest, like the biggest takeaway, like I said, I've been lucky
enough, like I've sat with Dana White like this and he's a billionaire and
an amazing guy, multiple George St.
Pierre and all these other kinds of guys when it came to the fighting world.
And I never really had this like, Oh my God, kind of moment type thing.
Right.
But when sitting beside Arnold, listening to him, talk to his son,
uh, listening, talk to a couple other people and just like, wow,
this guy really is flesh and blood.
And that was the biggest takeaway of that entire meeting, right?
Was.
He'll never remember it, obviously, cause I'm just one out of the
billion people he's ever met, but.
What if he does?
Oh, that would be insane, but I doubt it.
Well, maybe he would, maybe he like did a police report.
Cause I was like the stalker beside him.
That's possible.
But, uh, I just, I just remember thinking the whole time I'm like,
wow, I'm like, he's lifting weights.
Like I am, he's right there.
Like, it's just.
It puts into reality that even though he is bigger than life in many cases, right.
That it is truly possible.
Like he is, has exact same blood, the exact same fat, the exact same
muscle, muscle tissue that we do.
It's just what he's done with it is significantly more than the
Travis Bader: average.
And I like that.
And you know, when I say the difficulties they talked about, uh, but didn't
delve that deep into, there is.
A tendency in individuals, humans are negatively biased.
We'll drive by a car accident.
We're rubbernecking to see what happened.
I, I think that's just an instinctual thing.
So we can look and say, um, maybe I shouldn't speed.
Maybe I shouldn't do this.
Maybe I can learn from their mistake and maybe some people look at it and
it's, uh, it's a leveling process.
Well, I guess I'm better than them right now.
Right.
But there is also a piece to that puzzle of the difficulties and challenges
that people have and is how they work through it, because we all are flesh
and blood and those who will strive for greater things will tend to have
more eyes on them and they'll tend to fall harder than those who don't.
And you had a really cool quote on your Instagram.
I've heard it before.
It's by a man who has a, uh, an elk named after him.
Sean Zubor: Who I just literally visited his house in New York, which
is where he was born, which was really, really interesting to see.
So
Travis Bader: I'm going to read this one because this is what really intrigued
me about our conversation that we had.
We can talk about hunting.
We can talk about a number of things.
You're good friends with, uh, past podcast guests at Blavois who says.
Sean is a hell of a leader and talking about leadership in your
role and your work and what you do as well as in the outdoors
world, in the hunting and angling.
And there, there's a, a need for people to understand the.
Amount of agency that each individual has and the effect that each
individual can have on their personal surroundings and those around them.
And this poem, it's not a poem.
It's just, well, does it rhyme?
Is it a poem?
What would you call it?
It's a.
It was a speech actually.
A speech.
Yep.
So, uh, Theodore Roosevelt, of course, president 1901 to 1909
has this one man in the arena.
It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong
man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose
face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly.
Who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort
without error and shortcoming, but who does actually strive to do the deeds.
Who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself
in a worthy cause, who at the best.
Knows in the end, the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if
he fails, at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never
be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
I like that one.
And that is sort of what I felt is the crux of what you're going through at the
moment and kind of what your journey is
Sean Zubor: taking you.
Yeah.
I mean that, first of all, I wish I had your voice cause that sounded amazing.
Second of all, um, yeah, that's basically been more or less that
type of mentality has been something that has really stuck with me.
Um, So Theodore Roosevelt, along with many others, and I've kind of found
myself along this has really got into like stoicism and it's, and it's
understanding our place in this world, understanding where, and it's not a
religion, it's just understanding that today is just today and we cannot take
ourselves too seriously, but we can also not take ourselves too lightly.
Right.
And unfortunately, a lot of us get stuck in this thought process of we are
who we are today based on our past or where we are going to be in the future.
The reality is, is some of that is true.
Of course, you know, the way you look, the way you act and what you do.
It does reflect a lot of what you have done in the past.
However, um, the past is done.
It is no longer here.
It's a complete illusion.
Tomorrow I could get hit by the bus.
We could hit, hit by an asteroid.
So if I'm looking for happiness, if I'm looking for something that's going to
fulfill me based on an accomplishment in the future that may never come right.
So.
And I feel like, and I, what, what he talks about really in this poem
or in this speech actually, is he's talking about the fact that we allow
ourselves to criticize ourselves.
We allow ourselves to criticize others.
We, we get whatever we do get affected by others, the
thoughts and opinions about us.
Right.
Instead of taking all that in ourselves and just creating action.
Right.
And jujitsu, for example, which seven I've trained together for, we're not together,
but that's how we actually met each other.
Um, they have a saying that they say all the time.
It's like you either win or you learn and that's about it.
There is no losing, right?
Your loss just teaches you something to do better.
And unfortunately this day and age, and this is really when it comes to this
leadership aspect, this day and age, we are looking for instant gratification.
All of the time.
Right.
And it comes to everything even in like the hunting and, and whatever you may be
looking at, you want to compare yourself and, and it's difficult for like my
boys my age or that I have, for example, they're eight and four years old, hunter
and Jack and Hunter looks at YouTube and he's telling me like he wants to watch his
macros and he wants to whatever, and he wants to be a YouTuber and he wants to get
this and jacked and so on and so forth.
So obviously, do I promote healthy lifestyle?
Of course, but it is.
We are constantly looking for affirmations.
We're constantly looking for positive reinforcement, and we're
comparing ourselves to what most of the time is not even reality.
Right.
Majority of the things we see on Instagram, all these
other types of things.
A, they're filtered their hair, you know, or it is their peak of that
person's personal conditioning ever, or, you know, they're flashing.
And this is one thing I talk about all the time, people that have done
well financially, they're flashing all their watches and their cars.
And 90% of the people that I know that do that don't have a pot to piss in.
You know what I mean?
Like they're leasing all of it.
Whereas a guy that I know is legitimately a billionaire, you
would never know from the, you know, meeting him, he's driving a, uh,
1990 something, you know what I mean?
So yeah, this is, this is kind of that poem's just really where that speech is
really something that's resonated with me and that type of mindset of action first.
Um, obviously it's thoughtful action, but action first, don't let other people judge
or, or really guide you unless you are looking for that specific guide, right?
It's unless that's somebody that's a mentor, maybe a mentor.
Um, I don't give a shit generally what people think about me.
Right.
And it's not something that it's like, I only care what I think about myself.
That's not the case.
And do I have to listen if I'm doing something wrong?
I care about what the people that are close to me think about me, right?
Because obviously that's a reflection on how I'm treating them and how I'm
at, uh, what I'm offering them and what I'm giving back to the world.
But in general, if I was continuously looking at what other people's
thoughts of were me or about me, sorry.
I would be all over the map.
You know what I mean?
Travis Bader: Some people want me to.
Yeah, you'd be paralyzed with indecision.
Exactly.
There's, um, flew into Smithers and you can always tell the anglers, they got
their, their rods and now they make, uh, ones that can pack down pretty small.
So it's getting a little bit tougher, but, uh.
Uh, older gentleman there and he had some, uh, old Patagonia luggage
and Patagonia gear he is wearing.
And yeah, definitely looks like an angler.
Anyways, I was meeting with a, um, buddy of mine and he owns a, uh,
uh, Esquina Spey Lodge up there.
And we're, uh, over dinner, we're talking about some stuff.
He says, Oh yeah, you know, the owner of Patagonia is actually up here right now.
He just flew in.
I'm like, Oh, what's his name?
And he gives his name.
And I, I should know his name, but I forget like, can I see a picture of him?
I saw him on the plane, he was on the airplane.
And you would never know it.
This guy owns multi million, billion dollar company, clothing
company, and he's wearing like gear that hasn't been made in years.
And because there's a different motivator there, there's something
that motivates an individual who is, um, just trying to impress others to
the one who has something a little bit deeper that's driving them.
And I've seen, I've seen people who are highly successful in life.
And there's, there seems to be a common trend.
There's one where people come from backgrounds of, um, affluence and
influence and they're kind of born into it, but the ones who really
kind of go are the ones who.
Weren't born into it.
And I don't know you very well, but I get the sense that you've had to fight
Sean Zubor: for it.
Yeah.
So definitely.
So I've always been ambitious as a kid, but my mom's an esthetician.
She's just retiring.
My dad was a long haul truck driver.
Um, both of them fled communist Hungary in the seventies.
Um, I was born in Edmonton.
My dad worked on, at NOSCO, um, driving truck on the, on the oil line.
On the oil rigs.
So no, I've never, I wouldn't say I was in poverty or anything like that.
They were always hard workers and they're really the people that have instilled
that hard work ethic, uh, into me.
But, um, I've, I've always had this vision of becoming something greater.
Right.
It may sound messiahic or something.
I don't know.
It's just always been inside of me to be very honest now for.
For myself, it's never been necessarily just because I want money.
It's not, we're briefly talking about this earlier.
I have lots of people that, a lot of my friends, coworkers
drive Lamborghinis and Ferraris.
It's not really my thing.
I'd rather go take off for three months in the mountains and go find me a sheep.
Right.
But, um, for myself.
It's about the same price.
These days, yeah, tell me.
Yeah.
I, I, I'm still too cheap to go on a guided hunt.
I'm going to have to do that one day, but, um, it's.
For me, it's, it's about what I can do with that money.
It's about the constant accomplishment.
It's about the growth.
It's about watching the more that I grow.
Like, for example, when we started the company in 2017, we had 12 agents, right?
So it was myself, my business partner and our teams.
And so, and we had one admin now we have, you know, we're pushing
500 agents, give or take doing billions of dollars in transaction.
20 odd full time employees.
So...
The scope of what I am responsible for has grown as well.
So you grow with that, right?
And so where I'm envisioning and where I want to go next is more
growth to be able to help more people.
And I saw, I know that sounds kind of weird, but it's beyond this money.
It's creating maybe it's legacy.
Maybe I'm not sure what it is, but it's this passion that
has nothing to do with money.
And I know that sounds funny because I have money and I don't mean to sound
like an egotistical maniac, but I'm not poor, but I feel like as humans,
what we, once our basic necessities are covered, you know what I mean?
The lifestyle that we want to live, live hits, it hits a point.
Either we stagnate or we find another reason to grow, right?
And for me, that growth, the other reason to grow has been
to help society change society.
Or just have another positive, uh, outlook, another positive voice out
there, um, for change and what I feel like we're heading down a little
bit of a disastrous route right now.
Travis Bader: You know, Rockefeller was once asked.
You got so much money.
How much do you really need?
Asked this by a reporter.
And he says, just 1 more, always just 1 more.
And was he covetous of the money, um, perhaps, or was it the process
of building that intrigued?
Him to want to continue doing this.
Cause I can see that creation process, but if you're always looking for the dollar,
like I'm going to be happy when I have X amount of money, studies have shown there
is, there is a bit of a point, right?
Where money will bring happiness, right?
If you're not eating, if you don't have shelter, if you don't have
your basic necessities, Matt.
You probably not going to be quite as happy as if you've got a full belly and
a roof over your head and you're warm and you're, and you've got these necessities,
but beyond that, studies have shown that money is a de motivator for human
performance, unless the task is you build one widget, you get 1, one token, whatever
you build two, you get two money has a direct effect on Motivator for that.
Anything that requires a level of creativity or some sort of personal
satisfaction or gratification that's involved with it.
Money has the adverse effect on the individual that the more money you want
to throw at that person in order to create more, be a better artist, right.
It actually has the opposite effect.
Sean Zubor: Yeah.
And I can totally see that for myself, as I mentioned before, it's, and
it's kind of comes back to that whole Stoicism, uh, concept is, you know,
if you look at Marcus Aurelius, who's one of the great Stoics, this guy was
an emperor and emperor of Rome, like.
It's very hard for us in today's time to fathom the power of an emperor of Rome.
Like he will look at your wife and be like, that's my wife now.
And that's his wife.
You know, he would go off with his head and off with his head.
Like it's a different level of power yet.
He literally had to tell himself daily that I'm just a man.
Right.
That I will die.
Right.
That I have mortality.
That what's the point of being a man if I'm not doing something useful in life.
Right.
And so one of the, and I'm paraphrasing because it's saying it completely
different, but one of the things that stands out that I love about what he would
say is as human beings, we are the only species on the planet that can wake up and
decide to keep the duvets over her head.
And go back to sleep when a B wakes up, what does the B do?
The B does B shit.
When a grizzly bear wakes up, what does a grizzly bear do?
Does.
Grizzly bear is being a grizzly bear and every other life form.
They're not thinking about tomorrow.
They're not thinking about yesterday.
They don't even have the concept of time, which is a blessing and a negative to us.
Right.
But we are the only ones.
And so what ends up happening and why one of these reasons that I've seen so
many people that are depressed, that are, it, it is not even depression.
It is boredom.
We are not finding ourselves useful to society.
We are not giving anything.
So we do not feel accomplished.
And instead.
Our society is turned into a world where we expect the government to give
to us, we expect others to give to us.
We are wanting to feel that we are taken care of instead of having
this personal responsibility.
And if you generally want to feel amazing about yourself,
go do some hard shit, provide.
Give and you are going to feel like the person you're supposed to be, right?
And I think this is probably one of the biggest issues we've had in the
previous decades is this cultural shift of Take instead of give and no matter
what you know, I don't know the exact Percentage but it's incredibly high
It's something like 70 or 80 percent of the people that win the lottery end
up going bankrupt within five years
Travis Bader: Yeah.
And, and, and more than just bankrupt, like serious, uh, depressive issues,
uh, uh, substance abuse, um, just don't know how to handle this.
And this one thing that they thought would bring them happiness.
Yeah.
Sean Zubor: And, and it's funny, it's so bad that the fact that the British
Columbian government, once you win the lottery, they automatically send you
towards people with financial services and all these other things, because people
are so inclined to blow it all and go.
And the reason for that is it's not the money that makes you happy, right?
For me, it's not the fact that I have a little bit of money.
It's the fact of I created this money, right?
It wasn't given to me.
I know what I had to do.
People always ask me, why do you like doing this hard shit?
I'm running ultra marathons and, you know, fighting him or was fighting
MMA and, you know, training and all this other kinds of stuff.
Why do I put myself through this?
This is, this is what actually makes you feel good in life, right?
Like I use this as an example all the time, but when you sit down.
At Thanksgiving dinner with your family or Christmas dinner or whatever, right?
What are you bragging about?
Are you bragging about, or talking about the couch watching Netflix?
No.
What are you bragging?
You're bragging about the accomplishments that you've done.
You went for a run.
I lost 20 pounds.
I did.
Is it the 20 pounds of loss that makes you feel good?
Sure.
You look better in the mirror, but it's the fact that you did
shit you weren't doing before.
You ate better, you trained better, you did whatever it took
to make you a better person.
This is what makes us feel good.
And I feel like, unfortunately, right now we're relying on the
doping hits and rushes of outside sources, video games, whatever it may
be, instead of doing it ourselves.
Travis Bader: Well, that's not really a new trend either.
I was watching, I think it was Dragnet and this, uh, old, old, Dragnet episode.
And they're one of the guys, I forget his name, is lecturing the
young whippersnappers about how they like everything so instantaneous.
You pick up a phone and dial it and you're able to get a hold of a friend and you
have, you turn on the radio and you can hear things are coming in right away.
And, and it's.
It's funny how it's exact same conversation that's happening now, just
with different devices and a different speed, um, that was happening back then.
Like there is a natural inclination for humans.
And for creatures in general, whether that be game animals, there's a
reason there are game trails, because there is a path of least resistance.
Other people have traveled it.
It's probably going to be safe and okay.
That's the place where I'm going to set up.
If I'm hunting, it's going to be on a game trail, people are the same way.
And that level of safety and security that people will travel down
doesn't lead to great innovation and what you're pointing out as well.
It really doesn't lead to a great sense of self accomplishment or
Sean Zubor: happiness.
Yeah.
And just to put it in perspective, like what you just said, so if you're
the game and you're going down the game trail, where did you just set
up your, uh, your hunting stand?
You got it.
On the game trail.
So where are you going to pop that deer or whatever it's going to be?
It's on that game trail.
So it now, are there obviously reasons and what?
And ways and why you should take that game trail in life and certain
reasons a hundred percent, but there has to be a portion of your
life that you can be proud of this.
These are the things that get you out of depression that gets you
moving one step forward in front that actually make you have self worth.
And that's really what you cannot be given self worth.
You cannot be handed self worth, you have to create that amongst yourselves and I
feel like that is probably the biggest issue we're having right now and I look at
society in general is, you know, we always hear that saying good men, uh, what is it?
Well, help me out here.
So hard times make good men, good men make good times.
Good times make weak men, weak men make hard times, right?
And so right now we're in a place, if you look at society in general, is
they've never suffered as a society in the last 20 years, 30 years, 50
years, really since the Vietnam war, when there was a draft, there really
hasn't been an extreme hardship.
Now don't get me wrong.
Obviously there's been individuals that have been on frontline and gone to war
and so on and so forth, but it's never been forced on the general public.
People do not know what famine is.
People do not hear anyways in North America.
So we are now searching for reasons to feel bad about
ourselves, that this is our heart.
This is our generation's hard time.
You know, like, I don't know what, uh, gender I am.
Look at me roar.
Like this is my generation's hard time.
Right.
And instead, we can, we don't need to have global hard times, which was
unfortunately, it looks like the way we're heading in many cases to be
able to make ourselves good men and women, we just need to continuously
be responsible for ourselves and put ourselves through these tests and
put ourselves through these tests.
Forcing ourselves to do things that we may not want to do, but it's a betterment
of not just our country, ourselves, our family, our society in general.
And I feel like that's kind of where we've lost in translation.
And unfortunately, this is one of the main reasons I love coming on these
podcasts and talking about this kind of stuff is because this is what I'm
trying to help and try to solve if I could at all, this would be the one,
the one motivating factor that I really
Travis Bader: have right now.
So Jim Shockey was talking with him recently and, uh, he says, you know, Trav.
I've worked hard.
I've had some pretty cool stories, great successes.
I've enjoyed it along the way with my family and I've shared the trappings
of my success with my family.
And I'm wondering if I didn't do them a disservice, if I didn't do
my kids a disservice of allowing them to succeed or fail on their
own accord in certain places.
And it was a very interesting thing that he was talking about.
You work so hard to provide for yourself and for those that you love those
around you, but are you doing them the.
Disservice by not allowing them to struggle.
And you're just, you're mentioning, you know, the, the human struggle.
There's always going to be a struggle.
It's always going to be relative, right?
Um, you could have everything taken from you and still be happy and
struggling alongside individuals, just like in concentration camps,
Victor Frankl and his famous quote, and I've said it here before.
One thing you can't take from me is the way I choose to
respond to what you do to me.
Last of life's great freedoms is one's ability to choose your own
attitude in any given circumstance.
But that attitude is going to be, um, tempered by your past life experiences,
by the social norms of what's going on.
I would think that the, the, the hardships that people are
encountering perhaps aren't as.
This shouldn't be diminished, whatever those hardships might be, but they should
be shown a path forward to something that maybe will provide them with something
that's going to be a more desirable outcome because, you know, devil's
hands, idle hands make for devil's work.
And when there's too much idleness going on, I think you find yourself in what you
and I were talking before on the phone, where you feel that there's a direction
that some of the world might be heading.
That is, um, It's not a good, it's not a good place.
Sean Zubor: To add to that too.
And I, and I don't like, I'm not even speaking really even
politically, you know, I'm not the left, the right, whatever it is.
There are a lot of people on both sides generally that are going down this
path of lack of self responsibility.
And what I mean by that is, is, you know, you have the far right, for
example, I'll use them because I'm sure most people are going to consider
us right in, in, in most aspects.
Right.
But there's a lot of those guys that are, you know, you would call
conspiracy theorists or whatever.
And even if they write or wrong, they're looking for, uh, a Messiah
amongst a leader to take care of them.
You know, they're like, okay, well we need to get rid of this guy.
We need to get rid of Trudeau.
We need to get rid of all these other guys.
And this guy is going to save us.
Right?
And on the polar opposite, you have socialists, communists,
whatever it may be, right?
And these guys are like, okay, well, we need to all be equal and this
person's going to save us, right?
So both sides on many aspects.
Are looking for something outside of themselves to really save them.
Why do you think that is?
Because it's easier.
Sure.
Without a doubt.
That is the only reason I am generally.
And the reason why I say that is, is because is there a lack of guidance?
So do I believe in mentorship?
Sure.
I coach tons of people and mentorship is something that.
I'm, I'm a huge believer.
And I think that's really the only hack in life is to learn from somebody else
that you want to emulate or be like.
That's a huge life hack.
Huge.
Um, but I also feel like it is a lot easier to say, Hey, that person over
there can make everything better.
Whereas the reality is I want to be the man personally, that I'm
the only one that's responsible for making my life better.
Right.
And so it's a difference in mentality that I've seen.
And most of these successful people, like look at the people that have
come from actual hardships, right?
And I'm not trying to diminish people's hardships.
There's definitely depression.
There's definitely a lot of things out there.
But if you look at people that have literally grown up in the streets, I
have a friend of mine that now, um, is in Kelowna multi million dollar realtor.
He was homeless.
Nine years ago, living in the streets, right?
Went through, you know, parents had alcohol abuse,
all this other kinds of stuff.
Like that is a nasty story to begin with, right?
But he took responsibility for the position where he is right there.
Obviously that he start.
At a negative, for sure, but him being on the streets, there's only one person
that's going to take care of that.
And if somebody came along and helped him off the streets, right, that, that's
always gracious, great thing to do, but he's gonna end up back on the streets
unless he does something to kind of fix what originally was that problem.
So I feel...
That's, for myself, it's understanding that the responsibility is solely mine
is the first step to being, and even if it, one of my clients, she's, um,
I won't go into too much of it, but, but she, famous model, extremely famous
model, um, especially within Canada.
So she has a horrific backstory, horrific, but she's very much into
stoicism and all these other things.
And what I mean by horrific backstory growing up as a model,
she was raped multiple times, all kinds of crazy situations, right?
Or twice, she said.
And so she's telling me this story and she's sitting down with her
psychologist and her psychiatrist, and they're basically telling her
that, you know, it's okay to cry.
Like, I can't believe he did this to you.
In her minds, in her words, not mine, they were enabling.
The victim mindset, you see that a lot, tons.
So what she said to them is she's like, listen, it never will change the fact that
what these people did to me was horrific.
It will never change that.
They did that.
That's on them to worry about.
That's on their conscience.
That's on them.
Right.
However, if I want to live in peace.
I need to take responsibility for my portion of the action.
Right.
And so most of us, when she was thinking, saying this, like, all I
can think about is hanging these guys by a noose, you know what I mean?
Like, I think most men would think the exact same thing.
What do you mean take this responsibility?
How could you take responsibility for getting raped?
Like, how does that even make sense?
But then she says, you know what, Sean, I was drunk.
I was in bad spots.
I was hanging out with the wrong crowds.
I put myself in this place and this is what she's telling me.
And she's like, this doesn't diminish what they did to me.
However.
If I don't allow myself to take some responsibility for it, how can I have
control going for, uh, going forward every day, moving forward, I would have
to be like, okay, anybody can attack me any single time they want anything.
And I would live in continuous fear.
So this was this groundbreaking moment for me when she's telling
me this, because it makes sense.
It doesn't make sense, but it makes sense at the same time is that she's
enabling herself to take control.
Simply by the fact that she's enabled, she's telling herself, well, these are
the things that could have changed.
These are what I'm taking responsibility for in these parts, which was
something that I'm talking about today.
I've never really forgot ever.
Travis Bader: Yeah.
It's, it's a very powerful tool for somebody to be able to use
if they want to try and control every aspect of their life.
But there's also another side to that, which is the water is going
to reflect your image, right?
Did you make it reflect your image?
Well, maybe you stepped in front of it.
Maybe you have to be there, but sometimes some things just happen and we just
have to understand that, um, maybe.
As we move forward, having that level of control will definitely give you,
uh, that sense of control, but in the same breath, being able to let go of
certain things too, because if you try and control absolutely every aspect
of your life, you're going to be, you're going to be a nervous wrack.
Totally.
The victim mentality that's talked about is one that, um,
that we see a lot in society.
And one of the things that you and I had talked about before was just, you know,
um, In let's say the listeners to the podcast, a lot of people own firearms.
A lot of people are in the hunting community.
A lot of people are looking for that savior to come out and say, who's going to
be the one who comes and changes the laws so we can get what we want or makes it so
we can hunt in whatever area it might be.
Empowering the individual to have a sense of agency as to what they're
actually able to affect around them.
I'm, I'm not entirely sold that everybody will, uh, wait for somebody
else to do it because they're lazy.
I definitely think that's part of the puzzle.
But I, I think there's a lot of people who are also afraid.
They're afraid to step up and put their neck out or be in the forefront because
they know when you're out there, you might look behind you and see a whole bunch of
people like, yeah, you're doing great.
You're awesome.
But the second things go sideways, you're out there in the wind.
So that takes a certain amount of mental, emotional strength for an
individual to, to, to make these.
Sean Zubor: I agree a hundred percent and yeah, it, it's a combination of,
it's easier to vote for somebody or to be that somebody, a combination of fear.
A lot of times though, especially in business.
And I would say it's even to do with this as well.
Fear is based a lot on ego.
And what I mean by that is not confidence.
It's not that type of ego, but fear and ego play a role.
So I'll give you an example when it comes to even what you're
talking about right now, but.
More so, even in like real estate and sales and real estate, we're
always out there door knocking, cold calling, doing things that
make most people uncomfortable.
Right.
And why do they make you uncomfortable?
Because somebody is going to reject you.
Right.
Somebody is going to, in your mind, think differently of you.
And why does that affect you?
Because it hurts your ego.
It makes you feel like less of a person.
And this is the same kind of thing is why don't we stand up
for our gun rights personally?
Why don't we post something on social media?
You know, why aren't more?
Cause funny enough, I know tons of business people that all own firearms
that are very more of like vote conservative or whatever you want to say,
but they would never post any of that kind of stuff on their public forums.
And the reason for that is.
Like you said, it's fear of loss.
It's fear of I'm going to lose customer base.
It's fear.
I'm going to, you know, um, say something that will, uh, jeopardize my business.
It's a fear of loss of losing my, my, my home.
It's an all fear relates to death in one way or another.
We cycle through all these things.
And, you know, one of the clear things they say is like, okay, well, if I
say this, and this is how our minds.
Subconsciously work, if I knock on this door and they reject me, I'm
never going to get another sale, which means I'm never going to have money,
which means I'm going to go bankrupt.
I'm not going to be able to eat and I'm going to die.
Like this is how we cycle through these processes if we like it or not.
Right.
And so to back to what you're saying, and I, and I'm in a complete agreement
is why is it that we are afraid?
To, to make a stand or not even to make a stand, just make a personal statement.
And I feel like it's because we have this fear of loss.
And then the other reason is unfortunately, because we don't own a lot
of the media stations and we don't own like what I say, we is like the people
that in the same type of thought pattern that we're talking about right now.
And so we don't have a lot of standard backing.
And we don't back each other as much as we should, and as much as a lot of the
others do, or the opposite opinions do.
And so, like you said, there might be a be like, oh yeah, go for it.
Go get them guys.
And then all of a sudden you're on TV and now you become some sort of
gun toting maniac or something like that because you support firearms,
all of a sudden that, that choir that was behind you silences pretty quick.
Travis Bader: There's a guy who was seeing him recently, I guess
he's got quite the following and.
I'm not sure who he was.
Maybe I should have known who this guy was.
Asian fellow says, um, I tweeted or posted saying, you know, I,
I like the Joe Rogan podcast.
Right.
And I
Sean Zubor: just reshared that one.
That's so funny.
You said that.
Travis Bader: So there you go.
So I don't know who that fellow was.
Should I know who that person is?
No.
Okay.
So he says, I like the Joe Rogan podcast.
I immediately lost like 15, 000 followers.
And people are like, you got, you got to take that post down.
You can't put that, uh, hit the people he does work with
or telling them to change it.
And he's like.
No, they, they're calling them racist.
They're calling them right wing.
I don't agree with everything the guy says.
I just enjoyed listening to this episode and I, and I liked it, but
no, no, I'm not going to change that.
I'm not going to take that post down.
I'm, I'm not making a stance, so to speak, but I'm also not going
to just kowtow to the masses so that it makes you feel happy.
If someone's got a fire in them and they've got a.
A desire to share something with the rest of the world or their close
friends or whoever it might be, who is it for everybody else, provided
they're doing this in a positive way, they're not hurting other people,
they're doing things that are going to be, uh, hopefully moving towards.
A better place.
Who's it for everyone to say, well, we like that you're trying to be positive,
but here's the proper way to do it.
Right.
Sean Zubor: Well, and, and the unfortunately what it is too, is,
and I agree with you, everything you're saying is unfortunately right
now, there's, there's not enough support for people that do that.
Right.
And I'll give you an example, right?
I am, everybody in my brokerage knows I'm very conservative, vote conservative,
not to get too political, but whatever, but that's my political stance.
Sure.
I have somebody that ran for the NDP MLA.
In one of our constitutes and I have no problem with that.
I'm, I'm the kind of guy that if we can have an intelligent debate
or talk or whatever, or decide not to talk politics, I'm okay.
I'm a human being, and I'm going to treat you like a human being.
Right.
Unfortunately, right now we're so polarized.
And I'm not going to blame one side or the other, but we're so polarized that we
can't even have an expression of thought.
And once we lose this expression of thought, then all of a sudden we
start going downhill into so many different things that lead nowhere good.
And I think like the first thing, just like that gentleman said, is that there
needs to be more people that just stand up for the freedom of expression of thought.
And the freedom of expression of verbalizing, those things
that you're thinking and getting your opinion out there one side.
It's okay to do the other side.
Not so much apparently right now, but we need to also support those that say,
and on both sides, if you agree or don't agree with them, it doesn't mean we need
to tear everybody else to bring them down.
You know what I mean?
We just need to have everybody have an opportunity to say what
they think equally without Okay.
Automatically throwing labels into it.
For example, like now, you know, and he's an Asian American guy.
Now he's racist.
Now he's a bigot.
Now he's whatever, because he watches the show and unfortunately we take
too many things on both sides.
And even, you know, I'm, I'm just going to play the devil's advocate on this, even
the right side, as soon as somebody says something about universal healthcare or
whatever, and this is just their opinion, they're automatically a communist.
Do you know what I mean?
And obviously on the other side, if you like Joe Rogan, you're
a fascist or whatever it is.
Right.
I think we need to stop labeling these things and just understand
this conversation and support the
Travis Bader: conversation.
The art of civil discourse seems to be a bit of a lost art.
The ability to separate the.
Argument from the individual seems to be lost.
And I don't think that's an unintentional consequence.
I think there is, I think there's a lot of power to having people sidle
up their personality, their persona, their ego and all the rest with whatever
their, their thoughts are at the time.
Um, it's a good way to be able to, um, affect change, whether that's positive or.
Or a negative change in the masses is to be able to have people identify
in certain groups where you can start separating and dividing.
And it's not always coming from a place of, of, uh, of evil.
Yeah.
Quite often it's coming from a place of, of wanting to do the right thing.
They see.
Here's an altruistic idea of where society could be, or what we should be able to do.
Wouldn't it be great if we didn't have any guns?
Wouldn't it be great if we didn't have any drugs and we wouldn't have drug
problems, we wouldn't have, uh, violence in the streets that are firearms related.
And that, that sounds fantastic, right?
But the reality is a lot more nuanced than that, than that.
And the reality of the effect of that is never.
Never seems to prove out in the way that an individual
tries to, to push it forward.
So.
Separating you as an individual from some of the things that you
might be saying, I think is a skill, which, and you're talking about
stoicism, which is starting to come back into fashion out of necessity.
Sean Zubor: Yeah.
And you can see that with, you know, Joe Rogan, for example, I mean, he gets
more views than CNN does now, right?
So you're starting to see some positive momentum, even friends.
I was like, as I mentioned, I was just in LA.
The gentleman I was meeting with, um, staunch lefter, if you want to call
it that, um, he's now started, he considers himself middle because, which
he says in terms puts him to the right.
And it's just because he's seen.
All the looting, all the things that are happening.
He's going through a court case right now because of the civil laws in California
that just make absolutely no sense.
And he literally is going to have to pay somebody a hundred thousand us, um,
for hiring somebody that lied to them.
But the only reason he has to do that is cause he's going to win.
But if he loses by 1, if he's owed this person 1, he's got to cover both
legal expenses, which is 600, 000.
And cost.
So.
For him, he's just like, okay, this is, you know, we've turned into a
society where I can literally get a job, sue somebody and live off that.
That's now my new job is suing people.
So I feel like you're starting to notice that where that original idea
came from of, you know, those end costs and so on and so forth, like you said,
altruistic idea, you don't want the poor not to be able to afford to do justice.
Right.
But what we've done is we've attached too much emotion.
To a lot of these processes, right?
We've attached too much emotion to politics.
We've attached too much emotion to most things.
And it's based on our feelings, not based on logic anymore.
Right.
And I feel like that is one of our biggest differentiators.
I feel like growing up or I'll give a perfect example.
This is a little bit, uh, off topic, but right now, so.
Our grandparents, the population was about two and a half billion people
back in like the forties and fifties.
Now we're close to 8 billion.
Um, now because the population, because you would think that the
competition would be significantly higher to do well in business.
Right.
But then also you have now 8 people, 8 billion people, half of which are
in middle class, maybe one third of which are middle class to sell to.
Right.
So.
In this specific time, you would think it would be more or less even
on how easy it is to become wealthy or how easy it is to create a business.
The reality is this is the easiest time it has ever been to become wealthy.
And it's not just because of social media and the fact that you can become famous.
Basically on your own accord, you don't have to go through whatever it's because
of the mentality of these people and where, where the majority of the masses
are not willing to disassociate their emotion are not willing to disassociate,
um, the things that make them feel upset and just do the work, do the actions,
do the things to become successful.
So that's why you're seeing a massive.
A wealth gap between the, you know, the percenters and everybody else
is because they're taking a massive proportionate advantage by outworking,
creating these systems and doing the things other people don't want to do.
And so I, my general opinion is, is that if we can shift that
mindset and you're right, there is a shift coming, you can see.
It, it, it happening, people are starting to get fed up with, you know, like the
laws in California where I think it's under 50 bucks, you can steal anything
and you're never going to get charged or whatever it is like all these,
yeah, it's literally people are walking in and stealing 49 worth of stuff
and they can't do anything about it.
Hmm.
You have major institutions moving out of Calgary or sorry, major
institutions moving out of California.
You're seeing that there has never been such a massive shift from
California to places like Texas and Florida and so on and so forth, because
this governance is creating right.
And it's, and remember, we always blame government.
And we always do, but the reality is it, government is our blame, right?
We're the ones that voted that in.
That's the lifestyle.
That's the society.
That's what we asked for.
Right.
So we got to be very careful what we ask for and what we're going to put on the
government versus what we're going to have to take responsibility for, for ourselves.
Travis Bader: So my mind's racing.
I've got a few different things, perhaps what I'll do is I'll just
follow up on a few things that you said previously, and you're talking
about, you know, fear of death and ego, and that's causing indecisions.
Have you heard this story?
There is no tiger.
No.
Okay.
Um, guy goes, has a terrible day at work, does a sales thing with
his boss watch and absolutely dive bombs, crashes, burns, right?
On an out of town trip.
And anyways, at night he goes down to the bar.
Empty place, except for the bartender in there and talking with her.
She's a real tough Polish woman and makes him up a, uh, makes him up a martini.
And, uh, he looks, he says, you know, this is a time when people
haven't tattoos, particularly women, it wasn't a common thing.
And she's got a, it looks like basically a prison tattoo she gave herself.
And, uh, and, uh, he says, oh, what is that?
He says, oh, it's this.
There is no tigers, what we say and where I'm from.
She says, he says, I don't get it.
She says, well, you know, back in the day, people were running
from tigers and getting eaten by bears and falling through ice.
And death was a very real consequence of day to day living.
She says, there is no tiger.
There's no longer a tiger.
And he's like, you know what?
Totally applies to me and my situation right now, where I
was absolutely devastated and everything was falling apart on me.
Okay.
I bombed that sucked.
There is no tiger.
Right.
And so, and that's something that, uh, I'll, I'll say to myself
or I'll say to others, right.
If they're having a bad day or something's going, not the
way they figured it should be.
There is no tiger.
Sean Zubor: And that's awesome perspective.
I love that story.
It's, it's funny that you mentioned that.
So, uh, getting into my.
You know, mid thirties, things are changing, obviously, uh, body wise,
hormonal wise, all that stuff.
So I went to go get blood tests.
And in my blood tests, it showed up that my cortisol levels were pretty high.
And this is before I kind of got back into the training and
everything like that as well.
So the doctor that I have, awesome guy, I go to him.
I'm like, Hey, so what does this mean?
He's like, it means simply you're stressed out.
This cortisol is more or less like the flight or fight
response chemical for your body.
And.
He was giving me this, I did some research on it as well, but he was
giving me this entire backstory on why this exists and you know, why it
is brought up and so on and so forth.
So it was basically when we were getting attacked by those lions,
tigers, bears, whatever it was in the past, this was a hormone that was
released to kind of protect us, give us cushioning, do this, all this store
fats, all this other kind of stuff.
And in certain doses, it's absolutely necessity that we have to have.
Right.
But majority of us, it ends up killing us faster than more or less anything else.
And it's funny being of Hungarian heritage.
One of the things that they invented was the theory of stress.
So I figured I was like genetically prone to it, I guess, if we do all
about, about stress in and of itself.
And the funny thing is, is I genuinely don't ever really feel stress.
Like even when I went out to fight, a lot of the guys used to call
me ice man as a joke, because I just had a very stoic face on it.
I wasn't, I was not really scared or obviously you have some nerves and
stuff that would be lying if I wasn't, but I was never really stressed.
But apparently business life, everything in general plays a subconscious stress
even on you before you think about it.
So.
Understanding, and this is what I've been able to lower my stress
levels through exercise, food, as well as just mental talk, right?
Is I did a lot of like transcendental meditation and all these other things,
and they work, everything works as long as you, you do it, right?
I do the cold showers and all that kind of stuff now too, but.
Uh, for myself, it's understanding and being real with your situation.
And one of the things that I say, um, and one of the things that's
in, uh, um, stoicism is that understanding that your fate,
understanding that you will die, right?
Memento mori.
Exactly.
Memento mori.
And so.
Once you understand that, and you realize, and it's a lot to do with
this story, that, okay, this is, you start noticing the things you say,
this is the worst day of my life, oh shit, everything's collapsing, like, I
can't believe this person did that to me, all these other things, this self
talk is something that we're all of a sudden spiking our cortisol levels,
we're spiking this, we are creating more than they've even done to us.
So it is very rare.
And obviously you have all kinds of awesome guys, like Seb and so on and
so forth on here that have had guns pointed at them that are in front lines
that are having to be shot and shot at kind of thing, or shoot at shot at.
The reality is even those guys, it's few and far between, they're, they're training
to remove that stress from their lives.
And to be consistent and in that process, but do regular people, quote unquote,
do us as business professionals train and learn how to manage that stress
and how to manage, you know, like the story you were just saying to have a
realization that everything's going sideways, but I'm still breathing.
Do you know?
And I think that is something that once you start managing that, it
gives you a clearer picture to be able to make decisions down the line.
Travis Bader: So with the yin and yang of life, the highs and lows, the ups and
flows that will take place, if things are going really well for you at the moment.
And they definitely seem to be, um, what do the lows look like?
And how'd you deal with that?
Sean Zubor: So as you, I think you mentioned before, I almost went
bankrupt twice early in my career.
Um, I've never had real financial backing.
I can say my dad wants, cause I just have a different mentality.
He saved me.
I was, I had a 27, 000 credit card debt when I was like 25
years old or something like that.
So I just told my dad, I'm like, listen, I'm going to go into this work.
This is how I'm going to do it.
Pay off my card, I'm going to pay you back a monthly payment at 6% interest.
And so next to that though, the entire time it's all been on my own.
It's every dollar I've spent from the cars I bought, et cetera.
So there were times where without a doubt, cause I'm, I'm kind of
like a little bit of a hypomanic.
So I do have highs and lows.
I don't need much sleep.
I, I enjoy work.
I enjoy being, um, out there and doing things, but.
I try to keep everything now, even keel.
And what I mean by that is the highs that I may be experiencing
right now, or the highs that I may be experiencing in the future.
I understand that these are just moments in time right now as well, right?
There is a possibility as we're talking about right now, I'm just in the process
of basically putting all my cards into one basket or all my eggs into one basket.
I'm just about to, you know, buy out my, my business partner.
Um, so it's all in it's, it's, it's.
You know, most of my wealth or whatever I've accumulated is
going to be put into this project.
So I may in two years from now, start working for you.
You know what I mean?
It may happen, but the point is, is that.
I feel like when you're in those lows, having the understanding that
you can kind of work through this and continue to go and be more in that
moment of what I need to do today, not worry about where I am today.
And then at the same time, when you're in those highs, understanding that, you
know, I shouldn't be out there partying.
I shouldn't be out there.
It's not that you can't enjoy your success.
It's just also understanding that it could be limited and this
success does not define who you are.
You are you.
Right.
What defines you of, if, if any portion of success that defines
you, it's the fact that what you did to get to that point, right?
The work, the daily habits, the things, it's not the car, it's not the money.
Cause we talked about that before.
If I go win the lottery tomorrow, are people going to, people aside, am I
going to respect myself as a millionaire?
Absolutely not.
I didn't create that, right?
So I think that, that is the, the differential point, like the, I've
had lows within the last couple of years and I'm just like, okay, the,
the good thing about success, the good thing about doing difficult things
and overcoming those difficult things, once you've done enough of those.
You also start getting a pretty good understanding that, Hey, I've
gone through difficult things.
These are things that I've overcome.
These are the things that I'm the most proud of, you know, was
I proud of fighting in the cage a hundred percent, but it wasn't
the cage that I was proud of.
It was all the work leading up to it.
Right.
So I feel like.
I try to purposely put myself through as many difficult things as I possibly can,
even daily going, you know, I did 20 K run this morning, all this kind of stuff.
It, it just primes me for like, wow, that is truly difficult.
You know, going through work in the day to day life, that is not
difficult as what it could be.
I think that's kind of my mentality when it comes to the ups and ups and
downs is just keeping a more even keel and realizing that the things that have
actually made me happy is the journey, the process, the work along the way,
not the outcomes or results either way.
If
Travis Bader: you make money, you're a motivator and you're chasing the
money, you're always going to be behind the money, whatever it is that you're
chasing, you're always going to be behind.
If happiness is your motivator, I want to be happy.
It's got an inverse relationship where you'll never be happy because you're
already presupposing the fact that you're unhappy in the, in the moment.
So what is success to you?
Sean Zubor: Well, success is, you know, raising my kids, good family.
Those are all things that obviously most people want.
So that's, that's success.
But I think.
Being able to enable others for success, um, being able to be a good guide one way
or another or a, uh, a voice that they can, you know, resonate with, um, these
things are actually the things that make me probably the happiest right now next
to obviously my family is the fact that I get some pretty cool Instagram messages
is like, Hey man, you made me wake up this morning and go do some hard shit.
That's the kind of stuff.
And now they feel, you know, incredibly, I've had a couple of
people that, you know, we're going down that negative path and route.
And I was able to kind of, they did all the work, but just at least give them
a little bit of guidance along the way.
Those are the things that I think are successes.
How do you, how do you give back to society?
How do you help?
Those are the things that actually make you feel good,
Travis Bader: right?
Would you say that's an ego driven?
Perspective?
Sean Zubor: Partially sure.
Yeah, of course.
Like, um, and I don't think ego is a negative thing, right?
I agree.
Uh, at the end of the day, we all want to feel good about ourselves.
And that inherently is some ego perspective in there.
Um, I do.
Travis Bader: Well, what's, what's difficult for you?
Because if you run a 20 mile marathon and you do it again, and you do it again,
and you do it again, after a while.
You know, you can do 20 miles, right?
It was like, I jokingly said to, uh, Sean Taylor, ex JTF2 and, uh.
Yeah, great guy.
Fantastic guy, right?
And he says, uh, was talking about the 24 hour relays or not
really 24 hour solos on a mountain bike, you're going for 24 hours.
I said, why haven't you done a 48?
I mean, I've never done a 24, obviously it's an accomplishment in its own right.
Yeah.
And.
But I'll be, I'll be a bit of a wise ass.
How come you haven't done a 48, but there's always that more difficult thing.
What, what is difficult?
Sean Zubor: Difficult.
For me is going to be difficult for somebody else is everything's going
to be, you know, there's perspective to whatever difficulties, but I'll
give you an example for myself.
It's just, I'm trying to just be 1% better than I was yesterday.
And there's going to be days that I'm 10% worse, but my goal and what
I'm, my actions and what I'm trying to orient myself is to be 1% better.
That, that goes, that's what's it.
And if I can just challenge myself to be 1% better.
So I'll give you an example.
I did run that a hundred kilometer ultra.
I timed out on it.
So I only, I did 90, 91, 92 kilometers, something like that.
I've got a 50 kilometer ultra, the 10, 000 foot elevation coming up August.
I just like doing challenging, difficult things.
It doesn't necessarily have to be better per se than the last one I did.
I'm just consistently trying to find growth and find challenge.
Um, and it's not necessarily, it's not so much of an ego thing that, Hey,
I can run a hundred miler or I can run a 200 miler because you're right.
There's always going to be something crazier.
And I know I'm not going to be a Cameron Haynes.
That's not really even my goal.
I'm not going to, I'm not, he runs a marathon every single day.
You know what I mean?
Or David Goggins, that's, that's theirs.
For me, I'm trying to continuously be challenged.
And so my business, I want it to grow.
I want to be challenged amongst that.
I want to be able to help people grow, be challenged amongst that.
I want to make sure my kids, cause they're going to be their own people soon.
Right.
I give a good guide and path there.
That's kind of what I'm looking for when it comes to difficulty.
So
Travis Bader: in that whole concept of difficulty, and I should ask Sean this
one too, but if I were to be the reporter.
Talking to Rockefeller, I would ask how much is enough?
Sean Zubor: Yeah.
So
it's a tough question because for me, when it comes to difficulty, it's, it's
never really going to be enough, you know, it, and that is always 1 more.
And it's, and it's obviously for me, it's not the financial portion, however.
It is, I want, this is what makes us feel alive.
We, the one thing I know, and we've talked about this and is I know I'm going to die.
There's 0% chance I'm going to live forever.
Right?
So why not maximize my time on this planet?
When I'm 70 years old, I'm probably not going to be running.
Hopefully I will, but I probably won't be able to run a marathon.
So why not do that now?
But when I'm 70 years old, what am I going to be able to do that's
going to be able to challenge me?
Maybe it's a crossword puzzle for all I know.
I don't know, right?
But I feel like it doesn't necessarily have to be a bar of challenge.
It just needs to be a challenge consistently.
And that challenge makes us feel useful.
Right.
It makes us feel alive.
It makes us for, I'm not, I'm not that person that's in bed,
putting the duvet covers over me.
Right.
I'm out there creating, being of use to myself and the world.
Travis Bader: So you were talking to before about, uh, and specifically back
to, uh, firearms, hunting, uh, advocacy, people looking for others to pick up
the torch and walk with it in front.
What advice would you give to those who are dissatisfied with.
Let's say the, the local gun clubs and hunting communities, which also
that same advice would apply to individuals of all walks of life.
What, what advice would you give to them to start making positive,
progressive change in an area that where they feel it needs
Sean Zubor: to be made?
Yeah.
So one thing, Jordan Peterson came to Vancouver and so literally I landed,
I think it was like 5 PM for my flight from India, got off the plane,
went and took a shower at my buddy's place and went, walked, watched him.
I was up for 36 hours.
So while I'm trying not to fall asleep, because one of the things
that came up was obviously that audience was very pro conservative.
Like how do we get rid of Justin Trudeau kind of thing.
Right.
So, and I know this is not directly with the question, but it applies to it.
So what he said that really stood out is he put every, he asked
everybody in the audience, he asked, Hey guys, so who here wants Justin
Trudeau out and the entire audience.
And I don't know how many thousand people were in that audience,
but everybody put their hand up.
His next question was who here is part of the conservative party.
And then there was maybe like.
A hundred of us, right?
Who here has done volunteer work at the conservative party?
And there was two people out of the thousand people that
wanted Justin Trudeau out.
Two people and myself included.
I was not in those two people.
So I take full that I have not done the volunteer work.
I donate, but I have not done the volunteer work.
The point that he said is like, listen, it starts here.
The numbers clearly show right.
That.
There's just as many people, if not more that believe that he should be out, that
there should be, uh, um, gun reform in, in a positive way towards us, that there
should be advocacy on that portion.
There should be a lot of different things that happen, but how many
of us are even taking one step.
And this is part of the program when it comes to being successful, being
anything it's not, you don't go from making, you know, 50 grand a year
to making a million dollars a year.
It's a step by step process, gun advocacy, you know, um, you know, the CCFR,
all these different types of things, all these different, it, it, there is
so many opportunities for us just to take one step in the right direction.
If you're having an issue with your gun club, they're not doing enough.
Why aren't you at their meeting?
What are you saying at their meeting?
What are you doing to help them?
Maybe they need help doing whatever you want them to do, right?
Instead of like, we talk about everybody finding the Messiah,
like I'm going to vote that guy and he'll change everything, right?
If all of us just did one thing.
Right.
How much more powerful could that be ever comparatively to one guy?
Right.
And it's the same thing.
If you see, you know, personally, one of my objectives in this upcoming future is.
And I don't mean to get, you know, political again or whatever it may be.
But if you look at what's happening in our schools right now and what has been
happening for the last 20 years, right, is you have a lot of indoctrination,
right or wrong, believe in it or don't believe in it, but you have tons of
indoctrination that's been happening in the last 20, 30 years for certain things.
I had as a perfect example in grade two or three, I think it was three, I wrote,
we had to write a piece of literature.
Basically on our position on something.
Right.
So, um, my dad helped me do this.
I remember this and I created a period of anti gun control.
So, and basically I just gave my opinion on why gun control doesn't work.
And I used a lot of different stats and so and so forth in
it, and it was well written.
Anyways, long story short, I went into class, right, and presented that.
And my teacher who was from England originally was completely anti gun, did
not allow me to present this presentation.
In fact, I had to take it out.
I had to now do the, uh, thing on the amalgamation of
Maple Ridge and pit metals.
Travis Bader: Grade three, you're like, what?
What
Sean Zubor: exactly?
Right.
Um, and so, so much so maybe, maybe it was great for anyways, but so much
so that my dad was absolutely furious.
Right.
So my dad sent it to field and stream, and I think he still got a
copy and they actually printed that in there, which was kind of cool.
Yeah.
But what I'm trying to say is this indoctrination of.
If we look back to like the forties, fifties, sixties, you know, I'm talking
to some of the older guys at, uh, the older instructors at, you know,
mission gun club and so on and so forth.
And they're talking about how they went to high school with a
shotgun in the back of their truck.
Do you know what I mean?
And there weren't school shootings there.
There weren't all these other things.
So.
If you want to make a difference, right?
We need to start, and I don't want to say indoctrinize, we need to start
bringing those principals back into the schools, back into the families.
How many kids are you taking out shooting?
Both my kids have started shooting when they're like four or five years old.
Do you know what I mean?
And creating gun safe practices, creating all these things, it's one step.
It, it, instead of trying to change the entire country and world
all at once, what have you done?
For your immediate sphere, what have you done for your family?
What have you done for the one step out your close, best friends?
How many of them have you taken out shooting?
Right.
Even, even if they are the same belief as you are, as far as like political
standing, what are they contributing when it comes to, you know, standing
against what they believe is wrong.
Right.
So I feel like instead of always looking for.
One vote to change, what are we doing and what can we do different?
Travis Bader: I think that makes a hell of a lot of sense.
I think the fear part that we talked about earlier, maybe not so
much laziness will play into it.
Like myself, I will re I would rather do things myself than rely on somebody
else because I know what I'm capable of.
I know if I fail that I've got one person to blame and not everybody's
of the same mindset, but I do think that there is a large social.
Fear that we've seen, and we saw it in the last few years during a pandemic of not
people, not wanting to stick their heads out and say things that might be contrary
to whatever the public narrative might be.
And that fear has been something that's been implemented for a very long time.
It's sort of an instinctual thing for people to survive.
They want to belong to their tribe, but when you talk about indoctrination in the
schools, whether it be from an altruistic standpoint, because people want it.
But I think inherently people want to be good.
I'm of that mindset and inherently, um, um, maybe if I went a little deeper,
they're neither good nor bad, but it's, it's how people will, uh, perceive it.
But you know, you say, I've got a government system, we voted them
in, we've got a school system, we voted them in, we've got certain
ways that we want them to be taught.
And once those.
Processes are in place.
I think that's when the laziness and the fear of wanting to stand out
kind of kicks in because people are like, ah, the school will teach them.
Oh, you know, the government will, will take care of, the
police will take care of them.
If the police will just come in and give my kid a stern talking to man,
they'll, they'll start flying right.
Right.
Yeah.
And, and that's where that personal responsibility, and
there's going to be a fight.
There's going to be a fight there because those who are now in a position
of governing, whether that be within the school or policing or whatever
it might be that represents their livelihood and their jobs, it represents
a system of others that are in there.
It's neither good nor bad, but thinking makes it so right.
But they're going to want to be able to propagate and make sure that
there's some, uh, continuity to their, what they know in their existence.
So I think that's where the fear from individuals starts
coming in and the laziness.
Sean Zubor: Yeah.
I think it's just going to become, it's got to more or less
come to a time and place that.
You, as an individual are going to have to decide what do you fear more,
the fear of being publicly humiliated or ostracized because you believe
what is right is right, or the fear of the consequences for not doing that.
And that's really the point we are at in the civilization right now.
You know, it's, and to your point, I, and I don't disagree with this.
I genuinely think most people have great intentions, even the people that
I have absolutely, you know, zero in common with or thought politically.
Right.
And, you know, um, but they feel they're doing the right thing.
Of course they are right.
Right.
Like, you know, And, and many of them come from a good place of thought, but
the problem is, is they don't realize what the consequences are, right?
So, um, I was just watching Tim Kennedy and I reposted this this morning.
I don't know if you saw this, but he puts four out of 10 Americans,
42%, I think was the exact number believe socialism is a good thing.
They've never experienced socialism.
And he talks about it completely.
Go talk to somebody that escaped communist Hungary or that
escaped Russia during communism.
Go talk to somebody that lived in that.
Go, go, they can't even make a trip, but I've been to Cuba several times.
I've never been like, Hey, why don't you?
And I've never heard once somebody say, you should immigrate here.
It's awesome.
Never once people have been fantastic.
Every single person that I ever spoke to in Cuba wants out.
And that's one of the longest standing socialist countries in the region, right?
Look at any of the communist countries that are successful right now, AKA
China, really they're successful because they're not really communist.
Do you know what I mean?
They are, you can't have billionaires in communism and they do, right?
The point is, and I'm not trying to get.
Uh, political again, it's the fact is right now society is
testing waters because they don't know what they're looking for.
They're looking for an easier way out.
The rest of us that feel like we're on the, the side of what should be
or the right side or our opinion is, whatever it may be, unfortunately,
because a lot of us have created jobs, a lot of us are now entrepreneurs.
A lot of us are working as police officers are actually out there working.
We have more to lose by voicing our opinions than those that
have the same right to vote.
Right.
But are on, uh, social subsidies or whatever you want to call it.
Right.
So I feel like we really need to come up with, and I don't want
to tell anybody what to do, but we all have to, as individuals.
Come up with and think about what is more important to us, the fear
of, you know, being ostracized or the fear of where we're heading.
The fear of the consequence.
Well, and truthfully, like, do you, and do you have a right, and this is something
we need to ask ourself as well, and I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but do you
have the right to blame others when you're not willing to do something yourself?
And so myself personally, I feel like I don't.
Right.
So I don't have the right to say, well, this country sucks, but
I've never given anything to it.
Right.
I don't have the right to say, um, you guys are doing it wrong.
This leader is absolutely horrible, but I've never done anything to provide
anything otherwise or another option.
Right.
So these are the internal questions that I have for myself
and I hope others do as well.
Where do you see your role in all of
Travis Bader: this?
Sean Zubor: I, I'm just trying to live.
So I'm trying to lead by example.
That's my biggest role.
And trust me, I'm a sinner.
I started off as a gangster when I was younger.
I graduated when I was 27 years old.
I got kicked out of school.
So by no means, am I some like saint by any means.
And I definitely don't want to be portrayed that way by any means.
That being said, I feel like now I've come to a point in my life that
I have to live by my moral compass.
Right.
You know, some of my friends have gone through amazing things that have been,
you know, police officers have been military veterans have been whatever.
And these guys have actually sacrificed and given for this country
and the betterment of society.
So what can I do in my part?
Well, I know how to create business.
I know how to feel good about myself by doing difficult
things and leading by example.
So that's the best that I can do.
And I, and I can go out there and I can spread a message of there's opportunity,
like there's never been before.
Right.
There is an opportunity for you.
If you truly want to be wealthy, there's an opportunity.
If you truly want to make change, there's an opportunity, but it
has to start with you first.
Right.
And so for myself, I never ask anybody to do something I'm not willing to do myself.
And every morning, you know, business related, my specific real estate
team, because I have the company and the real estate team, there's nobody
on there, my real estate thing team that thinks they work more than I do.
Hmm.
They know they don't right.
I, I literally take them on runs.
I take them on stuff and I'm, and I'm not doing this to be like a dictator.
I'm doing them.
So they have a transformation and they can feel what it's like
to feel good about themselves.
Right.
And so that's, that's kind of like my role, if any, and it might be a super
minute, hopefully the message goes across and it's all I can ask for.
Travis Bader: Who mentored you?
Cause you mentioned that
Sean Zubor: earlier.
Yeah.
So I've, I'm, I've been really lucky and I've actually been
mentored by a lot of people.
Um, so I couldn't give you one specific, but you know, my work ethic, my, my drive,
a lot of that has come from my parents.
Like my dad, long haul truck driver worked his ass off his entire life.
Right.
Um, even though him and I have a different.
Philosophy on money.
His is still very much like penny pinching and saving.
And, you know, he'll calls me up once in a while and be like,
son, tuna is 75 cents off.
You should go grab 20 cats.
Um, but he's also done well for himself.
Right.
Um, but along the way I've been mentored by real estate professionals, by guys
that are gurus in, in, you know, created millions of dollars in real estate.
And the funny thing is with those guys, it's very.
I literally called them up and said, what can I do for you?
I need to learn from you.
And I did a bunch of stuff for free for them, help them out, but they're
always willing to give for people that want to succeed and actually
do what they tell them to do.
Right.
Travis Bader: So if you graduated at 27, would I be going out on a limb to say
that you didn't always possess, although they may have been in front of you, your
father's work ethic, your family's work ethic, the rest, you're shown the way,
but you weren't always implementing that.
Sean Zubor: Yeah.
So up until grade eight.
So in grade eight, I was actually doing grade 10 math and English.
So I was an accelerated school.
So I skipped some grades.
Basically what happened, this is, and I don't blame my parents by any means.
It's definitely not their fault.
It's 100% mine.
But, um, I was going to a school, that school had some very affluent
people and being 16 years old, it's Thomas Haney in Maple Ridge.
Okay.
And so at that time, it was actually 14, 15 when I started there.
Um, That time it was a self paid school, like university.
So you just had to do these learning guides and you have to show up
for seminars the rest of the time, you can go do whatever you want.
I lived across the street.
So obviously I was chasing tail and everything else.
Instead of doing my work and then, uh, you know, at that time, that's when
testosterone kicks in, you don't, you're trying to find your place in your world.
Um, I came from an immigrant family, so, you know, my friends were of all kinds
of different ethnicities and we different cultural things and so on and so forth.
And I just found myself like, Hey.
That guy over there has a BMW and he's getting hotter chicks.
Cause that BMW, what am I going to go do to get a BMW?
Right.
And of course I did stupid shit that I shouldn't have
done to go try to get a BMW.
Right.
And so I wish, and this is one of the things that I'm trying to do and kind of
what I've talked about as I wish there was a mentor in state to be like, Hey
man, like you can get a thousand BMWs.
You just have to do this, this, this, and give it a little bit of time.
Right.
And implement this and look what I've done.
Right.
My dad, and like I said, not to blame my dad, but the mentality of the
mentors that were around me at that time, even though I had this grandiose
vision of what I wanted to be, right.
There were so in Hungary and Europe, they kind of have this.
Saying, which is like similar to get your head out of the clouds kind
of thing that we say here, but it's like, basically don't be a cosmonaut
because you're living in space.
So, um, and it's not that he didn't encourage me, but you know, I'm
like, I want to be a millionaire.
I want to be whatever.
Even when I got into real estate, he was always worried for me.
That, you know, it takes you five years to make any money.
And this is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Now that's obviously gone, thankfully.
But the point is, is at that time, I'm like, well, I'm not
going to listen to these guys.
That guy over there is making a ton of money.
I'm going to do what he does.
Right.
And so I'm blessed and lucky that I never really got into any trouble.
I have, I had people pass away that were close to me that were
involved in that kind of stuff.
And so.
When I was in my mid twenties, after I got kicked out of school, I came
back and I'm like, okay, I'm either going to get into real estate cause
I was selling cars, doing all this other stuff back in the normal path.
I mean, they're going to get into real estate or I'm going
to become a firefighter.
And so both of them needed high school graduation.
So I had to go back and graduate when I was 27 and then I applied
for the justice institute.
With my good buddy Ziggy.
And, uh, that was a couple months process.
In the meantime, it was already a realtor.
And then my first two months, I did six transactions and made
more money than I've ever made.
And I'm like, you know what, I think I'm going to go down this path.
And that's kind of how it all
Travis Bader: happened.
So if you can go back and talk to 12, 13, 14 year old, you, what would you say?
Sean Zubor: And you know what the funny thing is, I wouldn't
say much, I would show.
And I think that's really the difference is I think too many times as leaders, we
talk too much and we don't show enough.
Right.
So if you look at the guys that inspire me, the guys that would have inspired me
back then is guys that inspire me right now are like guys like Galkins, Jocko,
you know, like, uh, Cameron Haynes, what, what inspires us about those guys?
They're out there on video doing it.
Right.
And so.
If I could do anything, I would go to these guys and be
like, look what I have done.
This is how I've done it.
And I can show you how, and I think having actual, because the
problem, number one priority or issue with school systems in general.
Okay.
And I, and I'm not, I'm not here to beat down schools by any means,
because they're essential part of our, our learning and society.
In certain parts, right?
Travis Bader: We can talk about that one.
Sean Zubor: I agree.
But the point is, is that you are being taught by somebody,
I'll give you an example.
Okay.
You go to Harvard, right?
You pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for a university degree.
And let's just say you're going to get your MBA.
The top professors are making 500 grand a year.
Right.
I have agents in my brokerage making 2 million a year.
So why would I learn from somebody?
That has never done what I want to do.
And that's the, one of the major issues with our schools is we're being told,
not shown, told, this is what you do.
This is how you do it.
And we're being basically taught how to memorize more or less and work at
a certain thing and work for somebody, not work with somebody we're not
talked, taught about basic finance.
We're not talking about any kind of life skills anymore.
We're not taught about any of those things.
What ends up being is, is there's very few students that look up to their teachers.
Very few these days, right?
And the fact is, is because none of them want to be like that person.
Who do they want to be like?
And so now they're following their social media influencers.
They're following all these other guys that are driving Lamborghinis
that are doing all these other things, which I'd rather have them do that
than follow drug dealers, right?
But the point is, is who these guys are imitating or who these kids are
imitating is incredibly important.
And unfortunately those schools don't provide any of that.
That's
Travis Bader: a good point.
Who wants to be like their high school teacher?
I don't know anyone that.
There's some, and there's some great high school teachers out there.
There are some fantastic teachers.
The whole system of education that we currently have, I think is, is in
need of a massive overhaul, um, served a purpose in its way and its time,
and it still has some good purpose, but, uh, I'm not here to disparage
the school system, but I come from a.
Uh, background was five different high schools that I went to.
Yeah.
Sean Zubor: So, you know.
Well, and the thing is, is like, I can think of two teachers,
maybe three while I was in school.
One of them was Mr.
Bugler and this guy, if anybody went to me for a secondary,
they would know who he is.
Um, and I think he passed away a while ago, but he, um, dressed in a cape.
And was extremely eccentric, extremely like as like a chalkboard
professor, a cape, a cape, like a full on, like university gown,
cape, whatever it is in high school.
And he was teaching, and this was, I think I had him for grade eight, if I remember
before I switched to the self pay school.
And so he was teaching a class for gifted students or whatever.
So people that were accelerated.
So you're just calling yourself gifted.
Got it.
Well, I don't, it could have been special gifted for all I know.
That's just what they called it anyways.
But, um, so, but what he continuously did was challenge me and what he
proved, right, was my ignorance in history, my ignorance in so many things.
And he, he proved that I should be questioning everything and
understanding why I'm questioning and why these answers are what they are.
So there's a lot of things I took from, and him and I had screaming
matches, just to be clear.
Like it was not that he was like some, huh, figure, figure to me, like we had
butted heads just as much as we agreed.
However, he was challenged.
He pushed and he was a great teacher.
My other teacher, Mr.
B actually just communicated with on Facebook just recently after not talking
to him since elementary school, basically.
I remember him vividly because, and obviously this would probably
never happen these days is.
Pulling outside my elementary.
He knew I was hunting because I started hunting, I got finished
my core test when I was 10.
So I was out there right at the hop and I was, he knew it was big into hunting.
So when he came home, it was Monday and he just came home from a hunt, went straight
from the hunt to, to school to teach.
So he's like, come check out what's in the back of my truck.
I went there and he's got his camper and sure enough, there's
a three point buck in the back.
So I remember that vividly talking about hunting and fishing and all those things.
And these are memories.
So that's somebody that I would.
Look up to more or
Travis Bader: less.
You don't usually hear stories of teachers taking kids to the back of their truck.
Yeah,
Sean Zubor: exactly, exactly.
But, um, so yeah, I mean, now.
Our schools, you know, to go down that path, our schools are, we're
more, once again, focused on people's feelings versus the actual things that
need to be done and taught, right?
Like even with all this, I was just told a couple of days ago, and I don't
know if it's rumor or not, so I don't want to spread whatever, but I've heard
it multiple times now that they have like, um, in washrooms, they have,
um, like what you have for your cat.
Because people are dressing up as furries.
So, yeah, now they're squatting, they're squatting in boxes.
So, um, my mind is, I don't want to say it because I'm not going to confirm
it, but I've been told multiple times from the high school that I went to.
And so for myself, I'm, I'm thinking, I'm like, okay, listen, I want all kids to
feel inclusive, like, don't get me wrong.
But the reality is why are we focusing so much on this stuff when.
And this is one thing that absolutely pissed me off, to be very blunt.
I go into my kid's school, and every single, every single, and this is
an elementary school, and I'm in...
You know, the back end of Maple Ridge, right?
So it's more redneck y, if you would call that, right?
By all means.
And every single school door has a rainbow on it.
Every single school door has a rainbow flag.
And so, to be very clear, Like if, if whatever your sexual
preference is, I care less.
Like you do you, if you're an adult, I want you to be happy.
Right.
However, the one thing that stood out to me is there was not one
provincial flag, not one Canadian flag, not one thing was taught.
My kid who is now eight years old has been taught all of these things.
I took a globe and asked him where Russia was.
He could not point out the largest country on the planet.
So it's not the fact that what we're teaching our kids, I agree or disagree
with, which a lot of it, I obviously disagree with, but it's the fact
that we have no priorities, right?
If our kid can't even point out the biggest country on the
planet, but he knows you can be 72 genders, don't you think we have a
little bit of a priority issue on
Travis Bader: this planet?
You know, the issue with inclusivity and hyper inclusivity.
The natural outcome of that is exclusivity because you can't think outside of that.
And it's, it's a very, you know, you take that to its natural progression and
perhaps it's something that should maybe not be emphasized in school in the way
that it currently is, because you will end up excluding other opinions that
are contrary to what, what the norm is.
In a way that they're trying to combat in, in the get go.
So well intentioned, good way to go for it, but it does create an
exclusive environment where if you do not subscribe to this way of
thinking, you are now out and maybe.
Take it to
Sean Zubor: whatever you are.
Yeah.
Right.
Travis Bader: And it's, and that that's changing.
I do see.
Sean Zubor: It, well, it's just gone so crazy that it's, like you
said, it's gone a full circle.
We are invoking racism now.
It's like it, it, it there's a, there is a teacher, a principal, I believe
that got expelled, that got kicked out.
I don't want to tell you what state cause I can't remember,
but this is just recently within this year, you can Google it.
And basically what she did was, is she separated.
Blacks and whites.
This old experiment.
Separate.
No, she separated it and basically created an apartheid because
she felt that black youth should hang out with more black youth.
Travis Bader: Interesting.
So it's not like the teacher that separated the blue eyes and the brown eyes
or the brown hairs and blonde hairs and, and created that whole social dynamic.
They, she's saying birds of a feather should flock
together and, and she's trying
Sean Zubor: to.
And she was black.
Gotcha.
And she's saying, she's like, listen, like, um, black should
experience more black culture with black people and so on and so forth
and ended up creating an apartheid.
In her own school.
And so one of the.
Whoops.
But, and this is the whole point of what I'm trying to say is this, and
what you're, what you're saying is this, this inclusivity, all of a sudden we're
like, we're back to 1940 and Rosa, Rosa Parks would be like, you know, rolling
in her grave right now, seeing that we are doing this to ourselves again.
Well, the plot's been
Travis Bader: lost at that point.
Sean Zubor: It's crazy.
It's crazy.
And it's just.
I think this once again comes down to the part that is there racism in the world?
100% it will never go away.
Is there, you know, sexism are there all these isms?
Yes.
Right.
But in general, We are 1000% better than we have ever been.
And so now we are searching for things that will make us
like, I got a hard time too.
You know, like I'm a ZZ, ZZ, ZZ, whatever, don't you know?
Right.
Instead of, because I have nothing else.
I have food, I have a shelter.
I have, you know, I get to go to work.
I can go to university.
I get, I can get free drugs.
If I go down to East Hastings.
Right.
So much so that they're giving out free drugs and they're
trading it in for fentanyl.
My wife's a nurse.
These people are still ODing from fentanyl because they're taking
the clean drugs that they're getting from the government, right.
And trading it for street fentanyl.
So it's just come to this point that we.
You're not talking about kids here, are you?
Kids.
I'm not talking about kids.
No, but the whole point is, is that right now, these days.
Life is so good that we need to find some excuse that and hardship
that our generation's going through something we're having issues.
Look at me.
And instead of focusing on how do we better society, how, you know,
one of the things growing up is, and I remember these ads, like, what
can you do for your country, right?
How many of our youth, how many of, you know, even my generation and
old, how many of us are thinking, what can we do for our country?
Versus what can our country do for us?
And I think, you know, when you ask, what can we do to change things?
What can we do to, you know, help, um, you know, our cause when it comes to,
um, firearms and all these other things, it's like, what the fuck are you doing?
You know, what are you doing?
And that's the first question we should always be asking ourselves, because back
to this whole stoic philosophy, what is the only thing we have control over?
It's what we do.
I can't, I can't force you to do anything, but if I want you to do
something, I can tell you the best way to do it is watch me do this.
Travis Bader: So if the first question is, what are you doing?
What would the second question be?
Well, what effect is that having?
Because I think there's a lot of people out there that will do things that
have minimal effect, but they look at, look at all the things I'm doing.
Yeah.
Look at how fast I'm running.
My arms are going
Sean Zubor: so fast.
And, and so like business, right.
I have a philosophy on how I kind of do things.
So I plan.
So I, in my life and in business, I kind of have a CEO hat, and
then I kind of have a worker hat for lack of a better word, right?
Or realtor hat or whatever it may be.
So my CEO hat, I'm planning.
These are the things I'm going to do.
This is how I'm going to execute it.
This is what I'm going to do.
And that could be for a week, month, quarter, year, whatever it may be.
Excuse me.
Um, and then I go into worker and I just execute.
I, I, I no longer, like, if you look at my schedule, it's completely booked
out sometimes in 30 minute increments.
I'm not, I don't plan what I do today.
I've already planned what I'm doing, so I'm not thinking
about what I should change.
What I'm just executing, right?
So it's the same thing.
Like I'm planning to help my gun range build an association.
Okay.
This is how I'm going to plan the rest of the time I'm going to execute.
Now, while I'm executing, I track relentlessly.
So what that means is when it comes to business, I know what my expenditure
is, what's coming in, how many in real estate related, how many calls does
it take to convert an appointment?
How many appointments does it take to convert a sale?
And I, now I'm, now I can look and track all of those things.
Now, most people, what they do wrong.
It's the day two of calling, let's just say there, they've been cold
calling strangers and they've got nothing but a bunch of hangups
and FDs and so on and so forth.
Right.
And they're like this script, this thing doesn't work and they give up.
Right.
But really you don't have enough data to know if it does or doesn't work.
So I track, keep that data at the end of the week or week two or month, a
quarter, whatever that that timetable is.
I review that data.
And so to your question, like a lot of people are running with their arms, but.
I've had this question asked more than any other question in real estate ever.
When an agent comes to me, they always come to me, Sean,
I did 10 deals this year.
I want to do 20 next year.
Right.
And everybody at my brokerage is going to laugh if they hear this.
Cause it's Herbie said a million times, 10 deals.
I'm going to do 20 next year.
I'm like, okay, fantastic.
How are you going to do that?
The most common thing I hear is I'm going to work harder.
Well, you're probably going to have to, but that's great.
Right.
So let me ask you a question.
Okay.
If you were Elon Musk in front of your million shareholders and you said,
Hey guys, next quarter, we're going to do an extra billion dollars in sales.
Right.
And they said, Oh, that's awesome.
Elon.
How are you going to do that?
And you said, I'm going to work harder.
They'd all laugh.
And your stock would probably, well, maybe you'll, it would go up,
but everybody else would go down.
Right.
So instead I always tell them, it's like, listen, first of all, what is harder?
Your perspective on harder versus my perspective might be two different things.
I might think hard is 500 calls a day.
You might think five is hard.
Right?
So everything I do is I plan, track, or execute, track while I'm doing that, and
then reevaluate at a certain point in time that I've planned to, to see what
is working, what can be done better, and how can I reevaluate that to plan again,
execute, track, and do it all over.
And that's kind of been my methodology for business since day one is
if I don't know what I'm doing.
Right.
And I don't know what the consistency is and how it is.
And what are the numbers in front of me?
How do I know what to better change?
Totally.
And that's kind of, unfortunately, what you're talking about is a lot of
these people are super busy, right?
Have you tracked what you're actually doing, right?
What was your end goal in that?
What was your purpose for doing that right now?
I'd rather have somebody busy arm out there doing something rather than nothing.
Right.
Cause I feel like that's most people in cases.
Right.
But I feel like there's a way to do it.
That's obviously going to yield a better result.
Travis Bader: I love that.
Yeah.
That gives a lot of takeaway for people who are listening.
Sean Zubor: Well, it, I think understanding and knowing that
you have the ability to do this.
Massive.
It's huge.
And don't underestimate.
The power of your voice and the things that you do.
And I know this kind of sounds preachy or whatever it is, but it is the truth.
Like entire, the reason that we don't have slavery in North America is
because people started changing and it was one, two, three, four, and
they continuously grow from there.
Right.
The reason why a lot of the things we don't like right now that are
happening in this is because those voices are louder than ours and
there's more people doing action.
Then we are right.
And so I know we have this fear of loss and it is a true fear.
And I'm not going to belittle the fact that you can lose your entire company
by saying the wrong thing these days.
Right.
Usually easily.
And I'm not going to belittle that that is the fact, right?
However, we all have to have this internal conversation.
Like I mentioned before, is that what is there a greater fear?
And what is your purpose?
Is it to leave your kids with something different, right?
Or something that you will be proud of, that at least I did something right.
Or is it, it doesn't matter how much money you have, how much things you
saved, but if all of a sudden, and I'm not saying we're going down this
route, but all of a sudden we turn into communism, what does that worth anyways?
Travis Bader: Is there anything that we haven't talked about
that we should talk about?
Sean Zubor: Oh, that's a good question.
Um,
there's, there's lots of things I'd love to talk with.
This is a great conversation.
We're definitely going to have a cigar night and talk more.
Um, I think, I think one of the things too is, is, um, that I try to instill as much
as, as possible is, and you see this word being tossed around a lot, but I'm trying
to be as grateful as I possibly can.
And I think this is something that in business and these motivational
speakers, like, Oh, I'm so grateful.
I'm so this, I'm grateful for the fact that I always tell myself, like, I have
two legs, I have this, I, I, it allows me to ground myself into the presence, right?
Like, I'm grateful that.
I'm here having this conversation with you.
This is an opportunity.
And I really appreciate that.
A lot of people can't get just because of time or whatever the scenario is.
Right.
And so for myself, trying to be more grateful and understanding,
if you're looking to succeed, it's very difficult to succeed.
If you're not grateful for what you've already done and what you already have.
And I feel like.
We, you know, one of the reasons we have lost so much is because we weren't
grateful for what we had and we didn't put the right things in place to enable,
to keep those things that we've had.
Right.
So I feel, I feel gratefulness is something that I try
to be as much as possible.
How do
Travis Bader: you do that?
People talk about it.
They say, Oh, Hey, I'm grateful.
They'll write it into a text.
Yeah.
Hey, I'm really grateful.
How do you, do you show your gratitude?
Do you internalize that gratitude?
What is, what does that look
Sean Zubor: like?
So.
You know, obviously I'm grateful for everything people do for me for, you
know, being able to even, I think the grateful that I'm talking about
more or less is just truly being, and this comes back momentum, uh, mental
Mori again, it's just, I'm alive.
You know, and when we talk about like, you've been in your lows of your lows
and your highs, your highs, right.
It's grateful to have money in your account.
Right.
But on the lows and lows, that's the time where you have to
be the most grateful, right?
That's the time that if you really want to get out of that funk or
wherever you are in that time and world is the easiest way to do that.
It's like, okay, like, and I'm sure you guys have all seen that GIF is, you know,
there's, there's a guy that's looking up.
And the guy has no feet or no legs.
And he's just looking at the guy with the legs and the guy with the legs and
looking at guy with shoes and the guy with the shoes, looking at guy with
the bike and the guy with the bike is looking at the guy with the car.
We're always one step upping where we're trying to be right.
I think if you want it to be an actual impactful thing to yourself.
And I'm not just talking about like, you know, hashtag grateful,
but actually having some importance where you can feel the chemical change
it does in your body is you need to actually be, look at yourself and be
like, what am I truly grateful for?
Like I.
I sat down yesterday with my kids and I got a new black puppy, a
black lab puppy, and I'm sitting there and I'm just like, wow, I'm
like, I got the dog that I wanted.
My kids are healthy.
Like I have lots of kids, like a friend of mine, his kid passed away.
Like these are unimaginable things and these things still may happen.
You know, like we don't have control of what will happen in the future
when it comes to those things.
So being grateful when you, when you practice it properly, and I'm
not trying to say there's a right or wrong way, but you will know how
you feel when you think about it.
Travis Bader: You know, there's that, uh, saying a rich person wants many things.
A sick person wants just one.
Yeah.
Sean, it was absolutely amazing having you on the podcast.
Thank you so much for coming on here.
Sean Zubor: Thanks for having me, brother.
I appreciate it.
I'm Travis Bader, and this is the Silvercore podcast.
Silvercore has been providing its members with the skills and knowledge
necessary to be confident and proficient in the outdoors for over 20 years.
And we make it easier for people to deepen their connection to the natural world.
Very often when a podcast Ends, the conversation continues.
That was the case here, and we decided to press record on a candid
conversation where Sean asked me questions he was curious about.
If you'd like to hear that.
Make sure to download episode 108, which is the follow up to this conversation.
If you enjoy the Silver Core Podcast and you'd like to see more, the biggest
thing that you can do to help us grow is to like, comment and share with others.
It's a small effort, but it makes a massive difference
to the growth of the show.
Thank you.
The underlying goal of the Silvercore podcast is to share
positivity and highlight people's passion in a way that brings value
to the audience and each other.
To that end today, I'm joined by a man whose parents left
communist hungry in the seventies.
Is a former professional MMA competitor, is an accomplished sheep hunter, has
almost gone bankrupt twice, and is now the co founder of the multi billion
dollar sales company, Stonehouse Realty.
Welcome to the Silverquart podcast.
Sean's Zubor.
Thanks for having me, brother.
I'm excited to be here.
I am excited.
It was, uh, you know, a couple of technical difficulties right at
the beginning, making sure we have a hard drive on scene is always a,
a good thing if we want to record.
Usually helps.
Audio and video.
So before we get things rolling too far.
Like we're talking spit balling back and forth, all of these different
things that we can chat about.
And that's kind of the, the, uh, I find the Achilles heel of
podcasting is the best conversation will happen before a podcast.
And when you press stop, then the best conversation comes in because
everyone's feeling comfortable.
Yeah, totally.
Right.
And then the other one is if we talk too much ahead of time, before we get into
a podcast, and we feel like, wow, we've already told this story, but there's
one thing that we didn't bring up.
Yeah.
That you and I were talking about on the phone, which I totally off
topic of really anything here, but you met somebody pretty cool down at
Venice beach when you're working out.
I want to hear that story.
So long story short, the last couple of weeks I've been incredibly busy.
So I've been everywhere from LA to New York.
Sorry, before that it was in Kelowna, LA, New York, and then
Oregon down getting at the bow rack and my, uh, new, um, bow there.
But when I was in LA, I'm like, I've always.
Growing up as a kid, my parents obviously have that funny accent.
So, um, my dad's still to this day, you can barely understand a word he says.
So I always admired, obviously, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Yeah.
So I'm there, the only reason, well, I'm there for work, but the only reason
I drive or Ubered about 30 minutes outside of where I was staying was
just to work out every single morning at the Venice beach, Gold's, right?
The Mecca of bodybuilding.
So, so there I am.
Just working out, getting my pump on, looking around, just flashing back to
every single Arnold movie I've ever seen.
He's plastered all over the thing as long as well as all the other champions.
And I'm just about to leave.
So I'm literally grabbing a protein shake from the vending machine.
I look back and I have never been, I've been lucky enough to meet some
really cool people in the fighting world and all this other kind of stuff.
Right.
Um, I look back and like a little school girl that just
saw Justin Bieber or something.
I'm freezing, I can't even like, get at my phone to take the
picture, cause there comes Arnold.
With three of his buddies, right?
One of them, I'm sure is his bodyguard on his bicycle, just driving it
right up, walking right towards me in the Mecca of bodybuilding.
I'm like, the reason that place is famous because of this guy.
And I'm just like, in shock.
Finally, I managed to snap some shots and what do I do?
Instantly I put everything away.
I'm like, can I go back in?
And I start working out with them, like beside him, like a stalker.
And I can overhear their conversations and all these things.
He was really nice enough to say hello.
I couldn't take a picture with him and I don't blame him because at the end of the
day you'd never be able to get a workout in and I'm sure all the 500 people working
out that day would be wanting to take a picture with him but I can tell you
it was one of the craziest experiences.
I don't get starstruck very often but it's Arnold.
It's Arnold.
No kidding.
That'd be a pretty cool experience.
I watched his series there.
Did you watch out on that?
I did.
Yeah.
Interesting fellow, a lot of drive, really, really hard worker.
You can tell that it's just been ingrained in him from his, uh, from an early
age and from his family upbringing.
Uh, glossed over some of the difficulties that he had, I felt, um.
Yeah, for myself, like, honestly, today, we have a lot of differing opinions in the
world and politics and so on and so forth.
I I'm the kind of guy that you can never take away from what you've
accomplished and done and his rise to fame, what he's accomplished, like.
And that was the biggest experience, like the biggest takeaway, like I said, I've
been lucky enough, like I've sat with Dana White like this and he's a billionaire
and an amazing guy, multiple George St.
Pierre and all these other kinds of guys when it came to the fighting world.
And I never really had this like, Oh my God, kind of moment type thing.
Right.
But when sitting beside Arnold, listening to him, talk to his son.
Uh, listening and talk to a couple other people are just like, wow,
this guy really is flesh and blood.
And that was the biggest takeaway of that entire meeting, right?
Was that he'll never remember it, obviously.
Cause I'm just one out of the billion people he's ever met, but.
What if he does?
Oh, that would be insane, but I doubt it.
Well, maybe he would, maybe he like did a police report.
Cause I was like the stalker beside him.
That's possible.
But, uh, I just, I just remember thinking the whole time I'm like,
wow, I'm like, he's lifting weights.
Like I am, he's right there.
It's just.
It puts into reality that even though he is bigger than life in many cases, right.
That it is truly possible.
Like he is, has exact same blood, the exact same fat, the exact same
muscle, muscle tissue that we do.
It's just what he's done with it is significantly more than the average.
And I like that.
And you know, when I say the difficulties they talked about, uh, but didn't
delve that deep into, there is.
A tendency in individuals, humans are negatively biased.
We'll drive by a car accident and we're rubber necking to see what happened.
I, I think that's just an instinctual thing.
So we can look and say, um, maybe I shouldn't speed.
Maybe I shouldn't do this.
Maybe I can learn from their mistake and maybe some people look at it and
it's, uh, it's a leveling process.
Well, I guess I'm better than them right now, right?
But there is also a piece to that puzzle of the difficulties and challenges that
people have, and it's how they work through it, because we all are flesh
and blood and those who will strive for greater things will tend to have
more eyes on them and they'll tend to fall harder than those who don't.
And you had a really cool quote on your Instagram.
I've heard it before.
It's by a man who has a, uh, an elk named after him.
Who I just literally visited his house in New York, which
is where he was born, which was really, really interesting to see.
So I'm going to read this one because this is what really intrigued me
about our conversation that we had.
We can talk about hunting.
We can talk about a number of things.
You're good friends with, uh, past podcast guests at Blavois who says, Sean is a hell
of a leader and talking about leadership in your role and your work and what you
do as well as in the outdoors world, in the hunting and angling and there, there's
a, a need for people to understand the.
Amount of agency that each individual has and the effect that each
individual can have on their personal surroundings and those around them.
And this poem, it's not a poem.
It's just, well, there's a rhyme.
Is it a poem?
What would you call it?
It's a, it was a speech actually.
A speech.
Yep.
So, uh, Theodore Roosevelt, of course, president 1901 to 1909.
Has this one man in the arena, it is not the critic who counts, not the
man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of
deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose
face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly.
Who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort
without error and shortcoming, but who does actually strive to do the
deeds, who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself
in a worthy cause, who at the best.
Knows in the end, the triumph of high achievement and who had the worst.
If he fails, at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never
be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
I like that one.
And that is sort of.
What I felt is the crux of what you're going through at the moment and kind
of what your journey is taking you.
Yeah.
And I mean that, first of all, I wish I had your voice cause that sounded amazing.
Second of all, um, yeah, that's basically been more or less that
type of mentality has been something that has really stuck with me.
Um, so Theodore Roosevelt.
Along with many others.
And I've kind of found myself along.
This has really got into like stoicism and it's, and it's understanding our
place in this world, understanding where it's not a religion.
It's just understanding that today is just today and we cannot take
ourselves too seriously, but we can also not take ourselves too lightly.
Right.
And unfortunately, a lot of us get stuck in this thought process of we are
who we are today based on our past or where we are going to be in the future.
The reality is, is some of that is true, of course, you know, the way you
look, the way you act and what you do.
Does reflect a lot of what you have done in the past.
However, um, the past is done.
It is no longer here.
It's a complete illusion.
Tomorrow I could get hit by the bus.
We could hit, hit by an asteroid.
So if I'm looking for happiness, if I'm looking for something that's going to
fulfill me based on an accomplishment in the future, that may never come.
Right.
So.
And I feel like, and I, what, what he talks about really in this poem
or in this speech actually is he's talking about the fact that we allow
ourselves to criticize ourselves.
We allow ourselves to criticize others.
We, we get whatever we do get affected by others, the
thoughts and opinions about us.
Right.
Instead of taking all that in ourselves and just creating action.
Right.
And jujitsu, for example, which seven I've trained together for, we're not together,
but that's how we actually met each other.
Um, they have a saying that they say all the time.
It's like you either win or you learn and that's about it.
There is no losing, right?
Your loss just teaches you something to do better.
And unfortunately this day and age, and this is really when it comes to this
leadership aspect, this day and age, we are looking for instant gratification.
All of the time.
Right.
And it comes to everything even in like the hunting and, and whatever you may be
looking at, you want to compare yourself and, and it's difficult for like my
boys my age or that I have, for example, they're eight and four years old, hunter
and Jack and Hunter looks at YouTube and he's telling me like he wants to watch his
macros and he wants to whatever, and he wants to be a YouTuber and he wants to get
this and jacked and so on and so forth.
So obviously, do I promote healthy lifestyle?
Of course, but it is.
We are constantly looking for affirmations.
We're constantly looking for positive reinforcement, and we're
comparing ourselves to what most of the time is not even reality.
Right?
Majority of the things we see on Instagram, Facebook, Tik TOK,
all these other types of things.
A, they're filtered their hair, you know, or it is their peak of that
person's personal conditioning ever, or, you know, they're flashing.
And this is one thing I talk about all the time, people that have done
well financially, they're flashing all their watches and their cars.
And 90% of the people that I know that do that don't have a pot to piss in.
You know what I mean?
Like they're leasing all of it.
Whereas a guy that I know is legitimately a billionaire, you
would never know from the, you know, meeting him, he's driving a, uh,
1990 something, you know what I mean?
So yeah, this is, this is kind of that poems just really where that speech is
really something that's resonated with me and that type of mindset of action first.
Um, obviously it's thoughtful action, but action first, don't let other people judge
or, or really guide you unless you are looking for that specific guide, right?
It's unless that's somebody that's a mentor, maybe a mentor.
Um, I don't give a shit generally what people think about me.
Right.
And it's not something that it's like, I only care what I think about myself.
That's not the case.
And do I have to listen if I'm doing something wrong, I care
about what the people that are close to me think about me.
Right.
Because obviously that's a reflection on how I'm treating them and how I'm
at, uh, what I'm offering them and what I'm giving back to the world.
But in general, if I was continuously looking at what other people's
thoughts of were me or about me, sorry.
I would be all over the map.
You know what I mean?
Some people want me to.
Yeah, you'd be paralyzed with indecision.
Exactly.
There's, um, flew into Smithers and you can always tell the anglers, they got
their, their rods and now they make, uh, ones that can pack down pretty small.
So it's getting a little bit tougher, but, uh, uh, older gentleman there and
he had some, uh, old Patagonia luggage and Patagonia gear he is wearing.
And yeah, definitely looks like an angler anyways, is meeting with the, um.
Buddy of mine, he owns a, uh, uh, Skeena Spey Lodge up there and we're, uh, over
dinner, we're talking about some stuff.
He says, oh yeah, you know, the owner of Patagonia is actually up here right now.
He just flew in.
I'm like, oh, what's his name?
And he gives his name.
And I, I should know his name, but I forget like, can I see a picture of him?
I saw him on the plane.
He was on the airplane.
You would never know it.
This guy owns multi million, billion dollar company, clothing company.
And he's wearing like gear that hasn't been made in years.
And because there's a different motivator there.
There's something that motivates an individual who is, um, just
trying to impress others to the one who has something a little
bit deeper that's driving them.
And I've seen, I've seen people who are highly successful in life.
And there's, there seems to be a common trend.
There's one where people come from backgrounds of, um, affluence and
influence and they're kind of born into it, but the ones who really
kind of go are the ones who.
Weren't born into it.
And I don't know you very well, but I get the sense that you've had to fight for it.
Yeah.
So definitely.
So I've always been ambitious as a kid, but my mom's an esthetician.
She's just retiring.
My dad was a long haul truck driver.
Um, both of them fled communist Hungary in the seventies.
Um, I was born in Edmonton.
My dad worked on, at NOSCO, um, driving truck on the, on the oil line.
On the oil rigs.
So no, I never, I, I wouldn't say I was in poverty or anything like that.
They were always hard workers and they're really the people that have instilled
that hard work ethic, uh, into me.
But, um, I've, I've always had this vision of becoming something greater.
Right.
It may sound mosaic or something.
I don't know.
It's just always been inside of me, to be very honest now for.
For myself, it's never been necessarily just because I want money.
It's not, we're briefly talking about this earlier.
I have lots of people that, a lot of my friends, coworkers
drive Lamborghinis and Ferraris.
It's not really my thing.
I'd rather go take off for three months in the mountains and go find me a sheep.
Right.
But, um, for myself.
It's about the same price.
These days, yeah, tell me.
Yeah, I, I, I'm still too cheap to go on a guided hunt.
I'm going to have to do that one day, but, um, it's.
For me, it's, it's about what I can do with that money.
It's about the constant accomplishment.
It's about the growth.
It's about watching the more that I grow.
Like, for example, when we started the company in 2017, we had 12 agents, right?
So it was myself, my business partner and our teams.
And so, and we had one admin.
Now we have, you know, we're pushing 500 agents, give or take, doing
billions of dollars in transaction, 20 odd full time employees.
So, The scope of what I am responsible for has grown as well.
So you grow with that, right?
And so where I'm envisioning and where I want to go next is more
growth to be able to help more people.
And I saw, I know that sounds kind of weird, but it's beyond this money.
It's creating, maybe it's legacy.
Maybe I'm not sure what it is, but it's this passion that
has nothing to do with money.
And I know that sounds funny because I have money and I don't mean to
sound like an egotistical maniac, but I'm not poor, but I feel like.
As humans, what we, once our basic necessities are
covered, you know what I mean?
The lifestyle that we want to live, live hits, hits a point.
Either we stagnate or we find another reason to grow.
Right.
And for me, that growth, the other reason to grow has been
to help society change society.
Or just have another positive, uh, outlook, another positive
voice out there, um, for change.
And what I feel like we're heading down a little bit of
a disastrous route right now.
You know, Rockefeller was once asked, you got so much money.
How much do you really need?
Asked this by a reporter.
And he says, just 1 more, always just 1 more.
And was he covetous of the money?
Um, Perhaps, or was it the process of building that intrigued him
to want to continue doing this?
Cause I can see that creation process, but if you're always looking for the dollar,
like I'm going to be happy when I have X amount of money, studies have shown there
is, there is a bit of a point, right?
Where money will bring happiness, right?
If you're not eating, if you don't have shelter, if you don't have
your basic necessities, Matt.
You're probably not going to be quite as happy as if you've got a full belly and
a roof over your head and you're warm and you're, and you've got these necessities.
But beyond that, studies have shown that money is a
demotivator for human performance.
Unless the task is you build one widget, you get 1, one token, whatever you
build to you get to money has a direct.
Motivator for that, anything that requires a level of creativity or
some sort of personal satisfaction or gratification that's involved with it,
money has the adverse effect on the individual that the more money you want
to throw at that person in order to create more, be a better artist, right.
It actually has the opposite effect.
Yeah.
And I can totally see that for, for myself, as I mentioned before, it's, and
it's kind of comes back to that whole stoicism, uh, concept is, you know,
if you look at Marcus Aurelius, who's one of the great Stoics, this guy was
an emperor, an emperor of Rome, like.
It's very hard for us in today's time to fathom the power of an emperor of Rome.
Like he would look at your wife and be like, that's my wife now.
And that's his wife.
You know, he would go off with his head and off with his head.
Like it's a different level of power yet.
He literally had to tell himself daily that I'm just a man.
Right.
That I will die.
Right.
That I have mortality, that what's the point of being a man if I'm
not doing something useful in life.
Right.
And so one of the, and I'm paraphrasing because it's saying it completely
different, but one of the things that stands out that I love about what he would
say is as human beings, we are the only species on the planet that can wake up and
decide to keep the duvets over our head.
And go back to sleep when a B wakes up, what does a B do?
The B does B shit.
When a grizzly bear wakes up, what does a grizzly bear do?
Does this grizzly bear is being a grizzly bear and every other life form.
They're not thinking about tomorrow.
They're not thinking about yesterday.
They don't even have the concept of time, which is a blessing and a negative to us.
Right.
But we are the only ones.
And so what ends up happening and why one of these reasons that I've seen so
many people that are depressed, that are, it, it is not even depression.
It is boredom.
We are not finding ourselves useful to society.
We are not giving anything.
So we do not feel accomplished.
And instead.
Our society is turned into a world where we expect the government to give to us.
We expect others to give to us.
We are wanting to feel that we are taken care of instead of having
this personal responsibility.
And if you generally want to feel amazing about yourself.
Go do some hard shit, provide, give, and you are going to feel like the
person you're supposed to be, right?
And I think this is probably one of the biggest issues we've had in the
previous decades is this cultural shift of take instead of give.
And no matter what, you know, I don't know the exact, uh,
percentage, but it's incredibly high.
It's something like 70 or 80% of the people that win the lottery.
End up going bankrupt within five years.
Yeah.
And, and, and more than just bankrupt, like serious, uh, depressive issues,
uh, uh, substance abuse, um, just don't know how to handle this.
And this one thing that they thought would bring them happiness.
Yeah.
And, and it's funny, it's so bad that the fact that the British Columbian
government, once you win the lottery, they automatically send you towards
people with financial services and all these other things, because people are
so inclined to blow it all and go, and, and the reason for that is, it's not
the money that makes you happy, right?
For me, it's not the fact that I have a little bit of money.
It's the fact of I created this money.
Right.
It wasn't given to me.
I know what I had to do, right?
Why people always ask me, why do you like doing this hard shit?
I'm running ultra marathons and, you know, fighting him or was
fighting MMA and, you know, training and all this other kind of stuff.
Why do I put myself through this?
This is, this is what actually makes you feel good in life.
Right.
Like I use this as an example all the time, but when you sit down at
Thanksgiving dinner with your family or Christmas dinner or whatever, right.
What are you bragging about?
Are you bragging about, or talking about the, you spent three days
on the couch watching Netflix?
No.
What are you bragging?
You're bragging about the accomplishments that you've done.
You went for a run.
I lost 20 pounds.
I did.
Is it the 20 pounds of loss?
That makes you feel good.
Sure.
You look better in the mirror, but it's the fact that you did shit you
weren't doing before you ate better.
You trained better.
You did whatever it took to make you a better person.
This is what makes us feel good.
And I feel like, unfortunately, right now we're relying on the dopamine
hits and rushes of outside sources, video games, whatever it may be,
instead of doing it ourselves.
Well, that's not really a new trend either.
I was watching, I think it was drag net and this, uh, old, old.
Dragnet episode.
And they're one of the guys, I forget his name is lecturing
the young whippersnappers about how they like everything.
So instantaneous, you pick up a phone and dial it and you're able to get a
hold of a friend and you have, you turn on the radio and you can hear things
are coming in right away and, and it's.
It's funny how it's exact same conversation that's happening now, just
with different devices and a different speed, um, that was happening back then.
Like there is a natural inclination for humans, for creatures in general,
whether that be game animals.
There's a reason there are game trails, because there is
a path of least resistance.
Other people have traveled it.
It's probably going to be safe and okay.
That's the place where I'm going to set up.
If I'm hunting, it's going to be on the game trail, people are the same way.
And that level of safety and security that people will travel down doesn't lead to
great innovation and what you're pointing out as well, it really doesn't lead.
To a great sense of self accomplishment or happiness.
Yeah.
Just to put it in perspective, like what you just said.
So if you're the game and you're going down the game trail, where did you just
set up your, uh, your hunting stand?
You got it.
On the game trail.
So where are you going to pop that deer or whatever it's going to be?
It's on that game trail.
So it now, are there obviously reasons and what?
And ways and why you should take that game trail in life in certain
reasons, a hundred percent, but there has to be a portion of your
life that you can be proud of this.
These are the things that get you out of depression that gets you
moving one step forward in front that actually make you have self worth.
And that's really what you cannot be given self worth.
You cannot be handed self worth.
You have to create that amongst yourselves.
And I feel like that is probably the biggest.
Issue we're having right now.
And I look at society in general is.
You know, we always hear that saying good men, uh, what does it help me out here?
So hard times make good men, good men, make good times, good times, make weak
men, weak men, make hard times, right?
And so right now we're in a place, if you look at society in general is
they've never suffered as a society in the last 20 years, 30 years, 50
years, really since the Vietnam war, when there was a draft, there really
hasn't been an extreme hardship.
Now, don't get me wrong.
Obviously there's been individuals that have been on frontline and gone to war
and so on and so forth, but it's never been forced on the general public.
People do not know what famine is.
People do not hear anyways in North America.
So we are now searching for reasons to feel bad about
ourselves, that this is our heart.
This is our generation's hard time.
You know, like, I don't know what, uh, gender I am, look at me roar.
Like this is my generation's hard time.
And instead we can, we don't need to have global hard times, which was
unfortunately, it looks like the way we're heading in many cases to be able
to make ourselves good men and women.
We just need to continuously be responsible for ourselves
and put ourselves through these tests and put ourselves.
Forcing ourselves to do things that we may not want to do, but it's a betterment
of not just our country, ourselves, our family, our society in general.
And I feel like that's kind of where we've lost in translation.
And unfortunately, this is one of the main reasons I love coming on these podcasts
and talking about this kind of stuff is because this is what I'm trying to help
and try to solve if I could at all, this would be the one, the one motivating
factor that I really have right now.
So Jim Shockey was talking with him recently and, uh, he says, you know, Trav.
I've worked hard.
I've had some pretty cool stories, great successes.
I've enjoyed it along the way with my family and I've shared the trappings
of my success with my family.
And I'm wondering if I didn't do them a disservice, if I didn't do
my kids a disservice of allowing them to succeed or fail on their
own accord in certain places.
And it was a very interesting thing that he was talking about.
You work so hard to provide for yourself and for those that
you love, those around you.
But are you doing them the disservice by not allowing them to struggle?
And you're just, you're mentioning, you know, the, the human struggle,
there's always going to be a struggle.
It's always going to be relative, right?
Um, you could have everything taken from you.
And still be happy and struggling alongside individuals, just like
in concentration camps, Victor Frankl and his famous quote.
And I've said it here before.
One thing you can't take from me as a way I choose to respond to what you do
to me, last of life's great freedoms is one's ability to choose their own
attitude in any given circumstance, but that attitude is going to be, um,
tempered by your past life experiences, by the social norms of what's going on.
I would think that the, the, the hardships that people are encountering, perhaps.
Aren't as the, shouldn't be diminished, whatever those hardships might be,
but they should be shown a path forward to something that maybe will
provide them with something that's going to be a more desirable outcome
because you know, devil's hands, idle hands make for devil's work.
And when there's too much idleness going on, I think you find yourself in what you
and I were talking before on the phone, where you feel that there's a direction
that some of the world might be heading.
I think that is, um, It's not a good, it's not a good place.
It, to add to that too.
And I, and I don't like, I'm not even speaking really even
politically, you know, I'm not the left, the right, whatever it is.
There are a lot of people on both sides.
Generally that are going down this path of lack of self responsibility.
And what I mean by that is, is, you know, you have the far right, for
example, I'd use them because I'm sure most people are going to consider
us right in, in, in most aspects.
Right.
But there's a lot of those guys that are, you know, you would call
conspiracy theorists or whatever.
And even if they write or wrong, they're looking for a Messiah amongst a leader.
To take care of them, you know, they're like, okay, well, we
need to get rid of this guy.
We need to get rid of Trudeau.
We need to get rid of all these other guys.
And this guy is going to save us.
Right.
And on the polar opposite, you have socialists,
communists, whatever it may be.
Right.
And these guys are like, okay, well, we need to all be equal.
And this person's going to save us.
Right.
So both sides are many aspects.
Are looking for something outside of themselves to really save them.
Why do you think that is?
Because it's easier.
Sure.
Without a doubt.
That is the only reason I am generally.
And the reason why I say that is, is because is there lack of guidance?
So do I believe in mentorship?
Sure.
I coach tons of people and mentorship is something that.
I'm, I'm a huge believer.
And I think that's really the only hack in life is to learn from somebody else
that you want to emulate or be like.
That's a huge life hack.
Huge.
Um, but I also feel like it is a lot easier to say, Hey, that person over
there can make everything better.
Whereas the reality is I want to be the man personally, that I'm
the only one that's responsible for making my life better.
Right.
And so it's a difference in mentality that I've seen in
most of these successful people.
Like look at the people that have come from actual hardships, right?
And I'm not trying to diminish people's hardships.
There's definitely depression.
There's definitely a lot of things out there.
But if you look at people that.
Have literally grown up in the streets.
I have a friend of mine that now, um, is in Kelowna multimillion dollar realtor.
He was homeless.
Nine years ago, living in the streets, right?
Went through, you know, parents had alcohol abuse,
all this other kinds of stuff.
Like that is a nasty story to begin with, right?
But he took responsibility for the position where he is right there.
Obviously that he start.
At a negative for sure.
But him being on the streets, there's only one person that's
going to take care of that.
And if somebody came along and helped them off the streets, right, that that's
always a gracious, great thing to do, but he's going to end up back on the
streets unless he does something to kind of fix what originally was that problem.
So I feel that's for myself.
It's understanding that the responsibility is solely mine is the first step to
being, and even if it, one of my clients.
She's, um, I won't go into too much of it, but, but she, famous
model, extremely famous model, um, especially within Canada.
So she has a horrific backstory, horrific, but she's very much into
stoicism and all these other things.
And what I mean by horrific backstory growing up as a model,
she was raped multiple times, all kinds of crazy situations, right?
Or twice, she said.
And so she's telling me this story and she's sitting down with her
psychologist and her psychiatrist.
And they're basically telling her that, you know, it's okay to cry.
Like, I can't believe he did this to you.
In her minds, in her words, not mine, they were enabling the victim mindset.
You see that a lot.
Tons.
So what she said to them is she's like, listen, it never.
We'll change the fact that what these people did to me was horrific.
It will never change that.
They did that.
That's on them to worry about.
That's on their conscience.
That's on them.
Right.
However, if I want to live in peace, I need to take responsibility
for my portion of the action.
Right.
And so most of us, when she was thinking, saying this, like, all I could think
about is hanging these guys by a noose.
You know what I mean?
Like, I think most men would think the exact same thing.
What do you mean take this responsibility?
How could you take responsibility for getting raped?
Like, how does that even make sense?
But then she says, you know what, Sean, I was drunk, I was in bad spots.
I was hanging out with the wrong crowds.
I put myself in this place and this is what she's telling me.
And she's like, this doesn't diminish what they did to me.
However.
If I don't allow myself to take some responsibility for it, how can I have
control going for, uh, going forward?
Every day moving forward, I would have to be like, okay, anybody can
attack me any single time they want.
Anything, and I would live in continuous fear.
So this was this groundbreaking moment for me when she's telling me this, because it
makes sense, it doesn't make sense, but it makes sense at the same time is that
she's enabling herself to take control simply by the fact that she's enabled,
she's telling herself, well, these are the things that could have changed.
These are what I'm taking responsibility for in these parts, which was
something that I'm talking about today.
I've never really forgot ever.
Yeah, it's, it's a very powerful tool for somebody to be able
to use if they want to try and control every aspect of their life.
But there's also another side to that, which is the water is going
to reflect your image, right?
Did you make it reflect your image?
Well, maybe you stepped in front of it.
Maybe you have to be there, but sometimes some things just happen and we just
have to understand that, um, maybe.
As we move forward, having that level of control will definitely
give you, uh, that sense of control, but in the same breath, being able
to let go of certain things too.
Totally.
Because if you try and control absolutely every aspect of your life, you're going
to be, you're going to be a nervous wreck.
Totally.
That victim mentality that's talked about is one that, um,
that we see a lot in society.
And one of the things that you and I had talked about before was just, you know,
um, In let's say the, the listeners to the podcast, a lot of people own firearms.
A lot of people are in the hunting community.
A lot of people are looking for that savior to come out and say, who's going to
be the one who comes and changes the laws so we can get what we want or makes it so
we can hunt in whatever area it might be.
And empowering the individual to have a sense of agency as to what they're
actually able to affect around them.
I'm, I'm not entirely sold that everybody will, uh, wait for somebody
else to do it because they're lazy.
I definitely think that's part of the puzzle, but I, I think there's
a lot of people who are also afraid.
They're afraid to step up and put their neck out or be in the
forefront because they know.
When you're out there, you might look behind you and see a whole bunch of
people like, yeah, you're doing great.
You're awesome.
But the second things go sideways, you're out there in the wind.
So that takes a certain amount of mental, emotional strength for an
individual to, to, to make these changes.
I agree a hundred percent.
And yeah, it, it's a combination of it's easier to vote for somebody or to be
that somebody, a combination of fear.
A lot of times though.
Especially in business.
And I would say it's even to do with this as well.
Fear is based a lot on ego.
And what I mean by that is not confidence.
It's not that type of ego, but fear and ego play a role.
So I'll give you an example when it comes to even what
you're talking about right now.
But.
More so even in like real estate and sales and real estate, we're always out there
door knocking, cold calling, doing things that make most people uncomfortable.
Right.
And why do they make you uncomfortable?
Because somebody is going to reject you, right?
Somebody is going to, in your mind, think differently of you.
And why does that affect you?
Because it hurts your ego.
It makes you feel like less of a person.
And this is the same kind of thing is why don't we stand up for our gun rights?
Personally, why don't we post something on social media?
You know, why aren't more, because funny enough, I know tons of business
people that all own firearms that are very more of like vote conservative
or whatever you want to say, but they would never post any of that
kind of stuff on their public forums.
And the reason for that is like you said, it's fear of loss.
It's fear of I'm going to lose customer base.
It's fear I'm going to, you know, um, say something that will.
Uh, jeopardize my business.
It's a fear of loss of losing my, my, my home.
It's an all fear relates to death in one way or another.
We cycle through all these things.
And you know, one of the clear things they say is like, okay, well, if I
say this, and this is how our minds.
Subconsciously work, if I knock on this door and they reject me, I'm
never going to get another sale, which means I'm never going to have money,
which means I'm going to go bankrupt.
I'm not going to be able to eat and I'm going to die.
Like this is how we cycle through these processes if we like it or not.
Right.
And so to back to what you're saying, and I, and I'm in a complete agreement
is why is it that we are afraid?
To, to make a stand or not even to make a stand, just make a personal statement.
And I feel like it's because we have this fear of loss.
And then the other reason is unfortunately, because we don't own a lot
of the media stations and we don't own like what I say, we is like the people
that in the same type of thought pattern that we're talking about right now.
And so we don't have a lot of standard backing.
And we don't back each other as much as we should, and as much as a lot of the
others do, or the opposite opinions do.
And so, like you said, there might be, it'd be like, oh yeah, go for it.
Go get them guys.
And then all of a sudden you're on TV and now you become some sort of gun
toting maniac or something like that, because you support firearms, all of a
sudden that, that choir that was behind you silences pretty quick, that support.
There's a guy who was.
Seeing him recently, I guess he's got quite the following
and I'm not sure who he was.
Maybe I should have known who this guy was.
Asian fellow says, um, I tweeted or posted saying, you know, I,
I liked the Joe Rogan podcast.
Right.
And I just re shared that one.
That's so funny.
You said that.
So there you go.
So I don't know who that fellow was.
Should I know who that person is?
No.
Okay.
So he says, I liked the Joe Rogan podcast immediately lost like
15, 000 followers and people are like, you, you got, you got to.
Take that post down.
You can't put that out to people he does work with or telling them to change it.
And he's like, no, they they're calling them racist.
They're calling them right wing.
I don't agree with everything the guy says.
I just enjoyed listening to this episode and I, and I liked it, but
no, no, I'm not going to change that.
I'm not going to take that post down.
I'm, I'm not making a stance so to speak, but I'm also not going
to just kowtow to the masses so that it makes you feel happy.
If someone's got a fire in them and they've got a.
A desire to share something with the rest of the world or their close
friends or whoever it might be.
Who is it for everybody else?
Provided they're doing this in a positive way.
They're not hurting other people.
They're doing things that are going to be, uh, hopefully
moving towards a better place.
Who is it for everyone to say, well, we like that you're trying to be positive,
but here's the proper way to do it.
Right.
Well, and, and the, unfortunately what it is too, is, and I agree with
you, everything you're saying is, unfortunately right now there's.
There's not enough support for people that do that.
Right.
And I'll give you an example, right?
I am, everybody in my brokerage knows I'm very conservative, vote conservative,
not to get too political, but whatever, but that's my political stance.
Sure.
I have somebody that ran for the NDP MLA.
In one of our constitutes, and I have no problem with that.
I'm the kind of guy that if we can have an intelligent debate or talk or whatever,
or decide not to talk politics, I'm okay, I'm a human being, and I'm going
to treat you like a human being, right?
Unfortunately, right now, we're so polarized.
And I'm not going to blame one side or the other, but we're so polarized that we
can't even have an expression of thought.
And once we lose this expression of thought, then all of a sudden we
start going downhill into so many different things that lead nowhere good.
And I think like the first thing, just like that gentleman said, Is
that there needs to be more people that just stand up for the freedom of
expression of thought and the freedom of expression of verbalizing those
things that you're thinking and getting your opinion out there one side.
It's okay to do the other side.
Not so much apparently right now, but We need to also support those that say,
and on both sides, if you agree or don't agree with them, it doesn't mean we need
to tear everybody else to bring them down.
You know what I mean?
We just need to have everybody have an opportunity to say
what they think equally without automatically throwing labels into it.
For example, like now, you know, and he's an Asian American guy.
Now he's racist.
Now he's a bigot.
Now he's whatever, because he watches the show.
And unfortunately we take too many things on both sides and even.
You know, I'm, I'm just going to play the devil's advocate on this, even the
right side, as soon as somebody says something about universal healthcare or
whatever, and this is just their opinion, they're automatically a communist.
Do you know what I mean?
And obviously on the other side, if you like Joe Rogan, you're a
fascist or whatever it is, right?
I think we need to stop labeling these things and just understand this
conversation and support the conversation.
The art of civil discourse seems to be a bit of a lost art, the
ability to separate Argument from the individual seems to be lost.
And I don't think that's an unintentional consequence.
I think there is, I think there's a lot of power to having people sidle up
their personality, their persona, their ego, and all the rest with whatever
their, their thoughts are at the time.
Um, it's a good way to be able to, um, affect.
Change, whether that's positive or, or a negative change in the masses
is to be able to have people identify in certain groups where you can
start separating and dividing and.
It's not always coming from a place of, of, uh, of evil quite often.
It's coming from a place of, of wanting to do the right thing.
They see here's an altruistic idea of where society could be
or what we should be able to do.
Wouldn't it be great if we didn't have any guns?
Wouldn't it be great if we didn't have any drugs and we wouldn't have drug problems.
We wouldn't have.
Uh, violence in the streets that are firearms related.
And that, that sounds fantastic, right?
But the reality is a lot more nuanced than that, than that.
And the reality of the effect of that is never, never seems to prove
out in the way that an individual tries to, to push it forward.
So.
Separating you as an individual from some of the things that you
might be saying, I think is a skill, which, and you're talking about
stoicism, which is starting to come back into fashion out of necessity.
Yeah.
And you can see that with, you know, Joe Rogan, for example, I mean, he gets
more views than CNN does now, right?
So you're starting to see some positive momentum, even friends.
I was like, as I mentioned, I was just in LA.
The gentleman I was meeting with, um, staunch lefter, if you want to call
it that, um, he's now started, he considers himself middle because, which
he says in terms puts him to the right.
And it's just because he's seen.
All the looting, all the things that are happening.
He's going through a court case right now because of the civil
laws in, uh, California that just make absolutely no sense.
And he literally is going to have to pay somebody a hundred thousand us, um,
for hiring somebody that lied to them.
But the only reason he has to do that is cause he's going to win.
But if he loses by 1, if he's owed this person 1, he's got to cover both
legal expenses, which is 600, 000.
End cost.
So.
For him, he's just like, okay, this is, you know, we've turned into a
society where I can literally get a job, sue somebody and live off that.
That's now my new job is suing people.
So I feel like you're starting to notice that where that original idea
came from of, you know, those end costs and so on and so forth, like you said,
altruistic idea, you don't want the poor not to be able to afford to do justice.
Right.
But what we've done is we've attached too much emotion.
To a lot of these processes, right?
We've attached too much emotion to politics.
We've attached too much emotion to most things and it's based on our
feelings, not based on logic anymore.
And I feel like that is one of our biggest differentiators.
I feel like growing up or I'll give a perfect example.
This is a little bit, uh, off topic, but right now.
So.
Our grandparents, the population was about two and a half billion people
back in like the forties and fifties.
Now we're close to 8 billion.
Um, now because the population, you would think that the
competition would be significantly higher to do well in business.
Right.
But then also you have now eight people, 8 billion people, half of which are
in middle class, maybe one third of which are middle class to sell to.
Right.
In this specific time, you would think it would be more or less even
on how easy it is to become wealthy or how easy it is to create a business.
The reality is this is the easiest time it has ever been to become wealthy.
And it's not just because of social media and the fact that you can become
famous, basically on your own accord.
You don't have to go through whatever it's because of the mentality of
these people and where, where.
The majority of the masses are not willing to disassociate their emotion,
are not willing to disassociate, um, the things that make them feel upset
and just do the work, do the actions, do the things to become successful.
So that's why you're seeing a massive.
A wealth gap between the, you know, the percenters and everybody else
is because they're taking a massive proportionate advantage by outworking,
creating these systems and doing the things other people don't want to do.
And so I, my general opinion is, is that if we can shift that
mindset and you're right, there is a shift coming, you can see.
It, it, it happening.
People are starting to get fed up with, you know, like the laws in California
where I think it's under 50 bucks, you can steal anything and you're never going
to get charged or whatever it is like all these, yeah, it's literally people
are walking in and stealing 49 worth of stuff and they can't do anything about it.
Hmm.
You have major institutions moving out of Calgary or sorry, major
institutions moving out of California.
You're seeing that there has never been such a massive shift from
California to places like Texas and Florida and so on and so forth,
because this governance is creating.
Right.
And it's, and remember, we always blame government and we always do, but the
reality is it, government is our blame.
That's right.
Right.
We're the ones that voted that in.
That's the lifestyle.
That's the society.
That's what we asked for.
Right.
So we got to be very careful what we ask for and what we're going to put on the
government versus what we're going to have to take responsibility for, for ourselves.
So my mind's racing.
I've got a few different things, perhaps what I'll do is I'll just
follow up on a few things that you said previously, and you're talking
about, you know, fear of death and ego, and that's causing indecisions.
Have you heard this story?
There is no tiger.
No.
Okay.
Um, guy goes, has a terrible day at work, does a sales thing with
his boss watch and absolutely dive bombs, crashes, burns, right?
On an out of town trip.
And anyways, at night he goes down to the bar.
Empty place, except for the bartender in there and talking with her.
She's a real tough Polish woman and makes him up a, uh, makes him up a martini.
And, uh, he looks and he says, you know, this is a time when people
having tattoos, particularly women, it wasn't a common thing.
And she's got a, it looks like basically a prison tattoo she gave herself.
And, uh, and, uh, he says, oh, what is that?
He says, oh, it's this.
There is no tigers, what we say and where I'm from.
She says, he says, and I don't get it.
She says, well, you know, back in the day, people were running
from tigers and getting eaten by bears and falling through ice.
And death was a very real consequence of day to day living.
She says, there is no tiger.
There's no longer a tiger.
And he's like, you know what, uh, totally applies to me and my situation right
now where I was absolutely devastated and everything was falling apart on me.
Okay.
I bombed that sucked.
There is no tiger.
Right.
And so, and that's something that, uh, I'll, I'll say to myself
or I'll say to others, right.
If they're having a bad day or something's going, not the
way they figured it should be.
There is no tiger.
And that's awesome perspective.
I love that story.
It's, it's funny that you mentioned that.
So, uh, getting into my, you know, mid thirties, things are
changing, obviously, uh, body wise, hormonal wise, all that stuff.
So I went to go get blood tests.
And in my blood tests, it showed up that my cortisol levels were pretty high.
And this is before I kind of got back into the training and
everything like that as well.
So the doctor that I have, awesome guy, I go to him.
I'm like, Hey, so what does this mean?
He's like, it means simply you're stressed out.
This cortisol is more or less like the flight of.
Fight response chemical for your body.
And he was giving me this, I did some research on it as well, but he was
giving me this entire backstory on why this exists and you know, why it
is brought up and so on and so forth.
So it was basically.
When we were getting attacked by those lions, tigers, bears, whatever it was
in the past, this was a hormone that was released to kind of protect us,
give us cushioning, do this, all this store fats, all this other kind of
stuff and certain doses, it's absolutely necessary that we have to have, right?
But majority of us.
It ends up killing us faster than more or less anything else.
And it's funny being of Hungarian heritage.
One of the things that they invented was the theory of stress.
So I figured I was like genetically prone to it, I guess, if we knew all
about, about stressing it of itself.
And the funny thing is, is I genuinely don't ever really feel stress.
Like even when I went out to fight, a lot of the guys used to call
me Iceman as a joke, because I just had a very stoic face on it.
I wasn't, I was not really scared or obviously you have some nerves and stuff.
That would be lying if I wasn't.
But I was never really stressed, but apparently business life, everything
in general plays a subconscious stress, even on you before you think about it.
So understanding, and this is what I've been able to lower my
stress levels through exercise, food, as well as just mental talk.
Right.
Is I did a lot of like transcendental meditation and all these other things.
And they work, everything works as long as you, you do it right.
I do the cold showers and all that kind of stuff now too, but.
Uh, for myself, it's understanding and being real with your situation.
And one of the things that I say, um, and one of the things that's
in, uh, um, stoicism is that understanding that your fate,
understanding that you will die, right?
Memento mori.
Exactly.
Memento mori.
And so.
Once you understand that and you realize, and it's a lot to do with
this story that, okay, this is, you start noticing the things you say,
this is the worst day of my life.
Oh shit, everything's collapsing.
Like, I can't believe this person did that to me.
All these other things, this self talk is something that we're all of
a sudden spiking our cortisol levels.
We're spiking this, we are creating more than they've even done to us.
So it is very rare.
And obviously you have all kinds of awesome guys, like seven, so and so forth
on here that have had guns pointed at them that are in front lines that are
having to be shot and shot at kind of thing, or shoot at shot at the reality
is even those guys, it's few and far between they're, they're training to
remove that stress from their lives and to be consistent and in that process,
but do regular people, quote unquote, do us as business professionals.
Train and learn how to manage that stress and how to manage, you know,
like the story you were just saying to have a realization that everything's
going sideways, but I'm still breathing.
Do you know?
And I think that is something that once you start managing that, it
gives you a clearer picture to be able to make decisions down the line.
So with the yin and yang of life, the highs and lows, the ups
and flows that will take place.
If things are going really well for you at the moment, and they definitely
seem to be, um, what did the lows look like and how'd you deal with that?
So as you, I think you mentioned before, I almost went bankrupt
twice early in my career.
Um, I've never had real financial backing.
I can say my dad wants, cause I just have a different mentality.
He saved me.
I was, I had a 27, 000 credit card debt when I was like 25
years old or something like that.
So I just told my dad, I'm like, listen, I'm going to go into this work.
This is how I'm going to do it.
Pay off my card.
I'm going to pay you back a monthly payment at 6% interest.
And so next to that though, the entire time, it's all been on my own.
It's every dollar I've spent from the cars I bought, et cetera.
So there were times where, without a doubt, because I'm, I'm kind of
like a little bit of a hypomanic, so I do have highs and lows.
I don't need much sleep.
I enjoy work.
I enjoy being out there and doing things, but.
I try to keep everything now, even keel.
And what I mean by that is the highs that I may be experiencing
right now, or the highs that I may be experiencing in the future.
I understand that these are just moments in time right now as well, right?
There is a possibility as we were talking about right now, I'm just in the process
of basically putting all my cards into one basket or all my eggs into one basket.
I'm just about to, you know, buy out my, my business partner.
Um, so it's all in it's, it's, it's.
You know, most of my wealth or whatever I've accumulated is
going to be put into this project.
So I may in two years from now, start working for you, you know what I mean?
It may happen, but the point is, is that.
I feel like when you're in those lows, having the understanding that
you can kind of work through this and continue to go and be more in that
moment of what I need to do today, not worry about where I am today.
And then at the same time, when you're in those highs, understanding that, you
know, I shouldn't be out there partying.
I shouldn't be out there.
It's not that you can't enjoy your success.
It's just also understanding that it could be limited and this
success does not define who you are.
You are you.
Right.
What defines you of, if, if any portion of success that defines
you, it's the fact that what you did to get to that point, right?
The work, the daily habits, the things, it's not the car, it's not the money.
Cause we talked about that before.
If I go win the lottery tomorrow, are people going to, people aside, am I
going to respect myself as a millionaire?
Absolutely not.
I didn't create that.
Right.
So I think that, that is the differential point.
Like I've had lows within the last couple of years and I'm just like,
okay, the good thing about success, the good thing about doing difficult
things and overcoming those difficult things, once you've done enough of those.
You also start getting a pretty good understanding that, Hey, I've
gone through difficult things.
These are things that I've overcome.
These are the things that I'm the most proud of.
You know, was I proud of fighting in the cage?
A hundred percent, but it wasn't the cage that I was proud of.
It was all the work leading up to it.
Right.
So I feel like.
I try to purposely put myself through as many difficult things as I possibly can,
even daily going, you know, I did 20k run this morning, all this kind of stuff.
It, it just primes me for like, wow, that is truly difficult.
You know, going through work in the day to day life, that is not
difficult as what it could be.
I think that's kind of my mentality when it comes to the ups and ups and
downs is just keeping a more even keel and realizing that the things that have
actually made me happy is the journey, the process, the work along the way,
not the outcomes or results either way.
If you make money, you're a motivator and you're chasing the money, you're
always going to be behind the money, whatever it is that you're chasing,
you're always going to be behind.
If happiness is your motivator, I want to be happy.
It's got an inverse relationship where you'll never be happy because you're
already presupposing the fact that you're unhappy in the, in the moment.
So what is success to you?
Well, success is, you know, raising my kids, good family.
Those are all things that obviously most people want.
So that's, that's success.
But I think.
Being able to enable others for success, um, being able to be a good guide one
way or another or, uh, a voice that they can, you know, resonate with, um, these
things are actually the things that make me probably the happiest right now next
to obviously my family is the fact that I get some pretty cool Instagram messages
is like, Hey man, you made me wake up this morning and go do some hard shit.
That's the kind of stuff.
And now they feel, you know, incredibly, I've had a couple of
people that, you know, we're going down that negative path and route.
And I was able to kind of, they did all the work, but just at least give them
a little bit of guidance along the way.
Those are the things that I think are successes.
How do you, how do you give back to society?
How do you help?
Those are things that actually make you feel good, right?
Would you say that's an ego driven?
Perspective?
Partially sure.
Yeah, of course.
Like, um, and I, I don't think ego is a negative thing, right?
I agree.
Uh, at the end of the day, we all want to feel good about ourselves.
And that inherently is some ego perspective in there.
Um, I do.
Well, what's, what's difficult for you?
Because if you run a 20 mile marathon and you do it again, and you do it again,
and you do it again, after a while.
You know, you can do 20 miles, right?
It was like, I jokingly said to, um, Sean Taylor, ex JTF2 and, uh.
Yeah, great guy.
Fantastic guy, right?
And he says, uh, was talking with the 24 hour relays or not
really 24 hour solos on a mountain bike, you're going for 24 hours.
I said, why haven't you done a 48?
I mean, I've never done a 24, obviously it's an accomplishment and it's all right.
And.
But I'll be, I'll be a bit of a wise ass.
How come you haven't done a 48, but there's always that more difficult thing.
What, what is difficult?
Difficult for me is going to be difficult for somebody else is everything's going
to be, you know, there's perspective to whatever difficulties, but I'll give
you an example for myself is just, I'm trying to just be 1% better than I was
yesterday and there's going to be days that I'm 10% worse, but my goal is And my,
what I'm, my actions and what I'm trying to orient myself is to be 1% better.
That, that goes, that's what's it.
And if I can just challenge myself to be 1% better, so I'll give you an example.
I did run that a hundred kilometer ultra.
I timed out on it.
So I only, I did 90, 91, 92 kilometers, something like that.
I've got a 50 kilometer ultra, the 10, 000 foot elevation coming up August.
I just like doing challenging, difficult things.
It doesn't necessarily have to be better per se than the last one I did.
I'm just consistently trying to find growth and find challenge.
Right.
Um, and it's not necessarily, it's not so much of an ego thing that, Hey, I can run
a hundred miler or I can run a 200 mile.
Cause you're right.
There's always going to be something crazier.
And I know.
I'm not going to be a Cameron Haynes.
That's not really even my goal.
I'm not good.
I'm not, he runs a marathon every single day.
You know what I mean?
Or David Goggins.
That's, that's theirs for me.
I'm trying to continuously be challenged.
And so my business, I want it to grow.
I want to be challenged amongst that.
I want to be able to help people grow, be challenged amongst that.
I want to make sure my kids, cause they're going to be their own people soon.
Right.
I give a good guide and path there.
That's kind of what I'm looking for when it comes to difficulty.
So, and that whole.
Concept of difficulty.
And I should ask Sean this one too, but if I were to be the
reporter talking to Rockefeller, I would ask how much is enough.
Yeah.
So
it's a tough question because for me, when it comes to difficulty, it's,
it's never really going to be enough.
You know, it, and that is the truth.
It's always 1 more.
And it's, and it's obviously for me, it's not the financial portion.
It is, I want, this is what makes us feel alive.
We, the one thing I know, and we've talked about this and is I know I'm going to die.
There's 0% chance I'm going to live forever.
Right?
So why not maximize my time on this planet?
When I'm 70 years old, I'm probably not going to be running.
Hopefully I will, but I probably won't be able to run a marathon.
Right?
So why not do that now?
But when I'm 70 years old, what am I going to be able to do that's
going to be able to challenge me?
Maybe it's a crossword puzzle for all I know.
I don't know.
Right?
But I feel like it doesn't necessarily have to be a bar of challenge.
It just needs to be a challenge consistently.
And that challenge makes us feel useful.
Right.
It makes us feel alive.
It makes us for, I'm not, I'm not that person that's in bed,
putting the duvet covers over me.
Right.
I'm out there creating, being of use to myself and the world.
So you were talking to before about, uh, and specifically back to, uh,
firearms, hunting, uh, advocacy, people looking for others to pick up
the torch and walk with it in front.
What advice would you give to those who are dissatisfied with.
Let's say the, the local gun clubs and hunting communities, which also
that same advice would apply to individuals of all walks of life.
What, what advice would you give to them to start making positive,
progressive change in an area that where they feel it needs to be made?
Yeah.
So one thing, Jordan Peterson came to, uh, Vancouver.
And so literally I landed, I think it was like 5 PM for my flight from
India, got off the plane, went and took a shower at my buddy's place
and went and walked, watched him.
I was up for 36 hours.
So while I'm trying not to fall asleep, because one of the things
that came up was obviously that audience was very pro conservative.
Like how do we get rid of Justin Trudeau kind of thing, right?
So, and I know this is not directly with the question, but it applies to it.
So what he said that really stood out.
Is he put every, he asked everybody in the audience.
He asked, Hey guys, so who here wants Justin Trudeau
out and the entire audience.
And I don't know how many thousand people were in that audience,
but everybody put their hand up.
His next question was who here is part of the conservative party.
And then there was maybe like a hundred of us, right?
Who here has done volunteer work at the conservative party?
And there was two people out of the thousand people that
wanted Justin Trudeau out.
Two people and myself included.
I was not in those two people.
So I take full that I have not done the volunteer work.
I donate, but I have not done the volunteer work.
The point that he said is like, listen, it starts here.
The numbers clearly show right.
That.
There's just as many people, if not more that believe that he should be out, that
there should be, uh, um, gun reform in, in a positive way towards us, that there
should be advocacy on that portion.
There should be a lot of different things that happen, but how many
of us are even taking one step.
And this is part of the program when it comes to being successful, being
anything it's not, you don't go from making, you know, 50 grand a year
to making a million dollars a year.
It's a step by step process, gun advocacy, you know, um, you know, the CCFR,
all these different types of things, all these different, it, it, there is
so many opportunities for us just to take one step in the right direction.
If you're having an issue with your gun club, they're not doing enough.
Why aren't you at their meeting?
What are you saying at their meeting?
What are you doing to help them?
Maybe they need help doing whatever you want them to do.
Right.
Instead of like, we talk about everybody finding the Messiah, like I'm going to
vote that guy and he'll change everything.
Right.
If all of us just did one thing.
Right.
How much more powerful could that be ever comparatively to one guy?
Right.
And it's the same thing.
If you see, you know, personally, one of my objectives in this upcoming future is.
And I don't mean to get political again or whatever it may be, but if
you look at what's happening in our schools right now, and what has been
happening for the last 20 years, right?
Is you have a lot of indoctrination, right or wrong, believe in it or don't
believe in it, but you have tons of indoctrination that's been happening in
the last 20, 30 years for certain things.
I had as a perfect example in grade two or three, I think it was three, I wrote,
we had to write a piece of literature.
Basically on our position on something.
Right.
So, um, my dad helped me do this.
I remember this and I created a period of anti gun control.
So, and basically I just gave my opinion on why gun control doesn't work.
And I used a lot of different stats and so and so forth in it.
And it was well written anyways, long story short, I went into class, right.
And presented that and my teacher.
Who was from England originally was completely anti gun, did not allow
me to present this presentation.
In fact, I had to take it out.
I had to now do the, uh, thing on the amalgamation of
Maple Ridge and pit metals.
Grade three, you're like, what, what?
Exactly.
Right.
Um, and so, so much so.
Maybe, maybe it was great for anyways, but so much so that
my dad was absolutely furious.
Right.
So my dad sent it to field and stream, and I think he still got a
copy and they actually printed that in there, which was kind of cool.
Yeah.
But what I'm trying to say is this indoctrination of.
If we look back to like the forties, fifties, sixties, you know, I'm talking
to some of the older guys at, uh, the older instructors at, you know,
mission gun club and so on and so forth.
And they're talking about how they went to high school with a
shotgun in the back of their truck.
Do you know what I mean?
And there weren't school shootings there.
There weren't all these other things.
So.
If you want to make a difference, right?
We need to start, and I don't want to say indoctrinated, we need to start
bringing those principles back into the schools, back into the families.
How many kids are you taking out shooting?
Both my kids have started shooting when they're like four or five years old.
Do you know what I mean?
And creating gun safe practices, creating all these things, it's one step.
It, instead of trying to change the entire country and world
all at once, what have you done?
For your immediate sphere, what have you done for your family?
What have you done for the one step out your close, best friends?
How many of them have you taken out shooting?
Right.
Even, even if they are the same belief as you are, as far as like political
standing, what are they contributing when it comes to, you know, standing
against what they believe is wrong.
Right.
So I feel like instead of always looking for.
One vote to change, what are we doing and what can we do different?
I think that makes a hell of a lot of sense.
I think the fear part that we talked about earlier, maybe not so much
laziness will play into it like myself.
I will re I would rather do things myself than rely on somebody else
because I know what I'm capable of.
I know if I fail that I've got one person to blame and.
Not everybody's of the same mindset, but I do think that there is a large social
fear that we've seen and we saw it in the last few years during a pandemic of not
people not wanting to stick their heads out and say things that might be contrary
to whatever the public narrative might be.
And that fear has been something that's been implemented for a very long time.
It's sort of an instinctual thing for people to survive.
They want to belong to their tribe.
But when you talk about indoctrination in the schools, whether it be
from an altruistic standpoint, because people want, I think
inherently people want to be good.
I'm of that mindset and inherently, um, um, maybe if I went a little deeper,
they're neither good nor bad, but it's how people will, uh, perceive it.
But, you know, you say, I've got a government system, we voted them
in, we've got a school system, we voted them in, we've got certain
ways that we want them to be taught.
And once those processes are in place, I think that's when the laziness
and the fear of wanting to stand out kind of kicks in because people are
like, ah, the school will teach them.
Oh, you know, the government will, will take care of, the
police will take care of them.
If the police will just come in and give my kid a stern talking to man,
they'll, they'll start flying right.
Right.
Yeah.
And, and that's where that personal responsibility, and
there's going to be a fight.
There's going to be a fight there because those who are now in a
position of governing, whether that be within the school or policing or
whatever it might be, that represents their livelihood and their jobs.
And it represents a system of others that are in there.
And.
It's neither good nor bad, but thinking makes it so right.
But they're going to want to be able to propagate and make sure that
there's some, uh, continuity to their, what they know in their existence.
So I think that's where the fear from individuals starts
coming in and the laziness.
Yeah.
I think it's just going to become, it's got to more or less come to a time and
place that you as an individual are going to have to decide, what do you fear more?
The fear of being publicly humiliated or ostracized because you believe
what is right is right, or the fear of the consequences for not doing that.
And that's really the point we are at in the civilization right now.
You know, it's, and to your point, I, and I don't disagree with this.
I genuinely think most people have great intentions, even the people that
I have absolutely, you know, zero in common with or thought politically.
Right.
And, you know, um, but they feel they're doing the right thing.
Of course they are right.
Like, you know, and, and many of them come from a good place of thought,
but the problem is, is they don't realize what the consequences are.
Right.
So, um, I was just watching Tim Kennedy and I reposted this this morning.
I don't know if you saw this, but he puts four out of 10 Americans,
42%, I think was the exact number, believe socialism is a good thing.
They've never experienced socialism.
And he talks about it completely.
Go talk to somebody that escaped communist Hungary or that
escaped Russia during communism.
Go talk to somebody that lived in that.
Go, go, they can't even make a trip, but I've been to Cuba several times.
I've never been like, Hey, why don't you?
And I've never heard once somebody say, you should immigrate here.
It's awesome.
Never once people have been fantastic.
Every single person that I ever spoke to in Cuba wants out.
And that's one of the longest standing socialist countries in the region, right?
Look at any of the communist countries that are successful right now, AKA
China, really they're successful.
Because they're not really communist.
Mm hmm.
Do you know what I mean?
They are, you can't have billionaires in communism and they do, right?
The point is, and I'm not trying to get, uh, political again, it's
the fact is right now, society is testing waters because they don't
know what they're looking for.
They're looking for an easier way out.
The rest of us that feel like we're on the.
The side of what should be or the right side or our opinion is, whatever
it may be, unfortunately, because a lot of us have created jobs, a lot
of us are now entrepreneurs, a lot of us are working as police officers
are actually out there working.
We have more to lose by voicing our opinions than those that
have the same right to vote.
Right.
But are on, uh, social subsidies or whatever you want to call it.
Right.
So I feel like we really need to come up with, and I don't
want to tell anybody what to do.
Sure.
But we all have to, as individuals.
Come up with and think about what is more important to us, the fear
of, you know, being ostracized or the fear of where we're heading.
The fear of the consequence.
Well, and truthfully, like, do you, and do you have a right, and this is something
we need to ask ourself as well, and I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but do you
have the right to blame others when you're not willing to do something yourself?
And so myself personally, I feel like I don't.
Right.
So I don't have the right to say, well, this country sucks, but
I've never given anything to it.
Right.
I don't have the right to say, um, you guys are doing it wrong.
This leader is absolutely horrible, but I've never done anything to provide
anything otherwise or another option.
Right.
So these are the internal questions that I have for myself and.
I hope others do as well.
Where do you see your role in all of this?
I, I'm just trying to live.
So I'm trying to lead by example.
That's my biggest role.
And trust me, I'm a sinner.
I started off as a gangster when I was younger, I graduated
when I was 27 years old.
I got kicked out of school.
So by no means am I some like Saint by any means, and I definitely don't want
to be portrayed that way by any means.
That being said, I feel like now I've come to a point in my life that.
I have to live by my moral compass, right?
You know, some of my friends have gone through amazing things that have been,
you know, police officers have been military veterans have been whatever.
And these guys have actually sacrificed and given for this country
and the betterment of society.
So what can I do in my part?
Well, I know how to create business.
I know how to feel good about myself by doing difficult
things and leading by example.
So that's the best that I can do.
And I, and I can go out there and I can spread a message of there's opportunity.
Like there's never been before.
There is an opportunity for you.
If you truly want to be wealthy, there's an opportunity.
If you truly want to make change, there's an opportunity, but it
has to start with you first.
Right.
And so for myself, I never ask anybody to do something I'm not willing to do myself.
And.
Every morning, you know, business related, my specific real estate team, cause I
have the company and the real estate team.
There's nobody on there.
My real estate thing team that thinks they work more than I do.
They know they don't.
Right.
I, I literally take them on runs.
I take them on stuff and I'm, and I'm not doing this to be like a dictator.
I'm doing them so they have a transformation and they can feel what
it's like to feel good about themselves.
Right.
And so that's, that's kind of like my role, if any, and it might be a super
minute, hopefully the message goes across and that's all I can ask for.
Who mentored you?
Cause you mentioned that earlier.
Yeah.
So I've, I'm, I've been really lucky and I've actually been
mentored by a lot of people.
Um, so I couldn't give you one specific, but.
You know, my work ethic, my, my drive, a lot of that has come from my parents.
Like my dad, long haul truck driver worked his ass off his entire life.
Right.
Um, even though him and I have a different.
Philosophy on money.
His is still very much like penny pinching and saving.
And, you know, he'll calls me up once in a while and be like,
son, tuna is 75 cents off.
You should go grab 20 cans.
Um, but he's also done well for himself.
Right.
Um, but along the way I've been mentored by real estate professionals, by guys
that are gurus in, in, you know, created millions of dollars in real estate.
And the funny thing is with those guys, it's very.
I literally called them up and said, what can I do for you?
I need to learn from you.
And I did a bunch of stuff for free for them, help them out, but they're
always willing to give for people that want to succeed and actually
do what they tell them to do.
Right.
So if you graduated at 27, would I be going out on a limb to say that you didn't
always possess, although they may have been in front of you, your father's work
ethic, your family's work ethic, the rest.
You're showing the way, but you weren't always implementing that.
Yeah.
So up until grade eight, so in grade eight, I was actually
doing grade 10 math and English.
So I was an accelerated school.
So I skipped some grades.
Basically what happened, this is, and I don't blame my parents by any means.
It's definitely not their fault.
It's 100% mine.
But, um, I was going to a school that school had some very affluent people.
And being 16 years old, it's Thomas Haney in Maple Ridge.
And so at that time, it was actually 14, 15, when I started there, um, That time it
was a self paid school, like university.
So you just had to do these learning guides and you had
to show up for seminars.
The rest of the time you can go do whatever you want.
I lived across the street.
So obviously I was chasing tail and everything else.
Instead of doing my work and then, uh, you know, at that time, that's when
testosterone kicks in, you don't, you're trying to find your place in your world.
Um, I came from an immigrant family, so, you know, my friends were of all kinds
of different ethnicities and we different cultural things and so on and so forth.
And I just found myself like, Hey.
That guy over there has a BMW and he's getting hotter chicks.
Cause that BMW, what am I going to go do to get a BMW?
Right.
And of course I did stupid shit that I shouldn't have
done to go try to get a BMW.
Right.
And so I wish, and this is one of the things that I'm trying to do and kind of
what I've talked about as I wish there was a mentor in state to be like, Hey
man, like you can get a thousand BMWs.
You just have to do this, this, this, and give it a little bit of time.
Right.
And implement this and look what I've done.
Right.
My dad, and like I said, not to blame my dad, but the mentality of the mentors that
were around me at that time, even though I had this grandiose vision of what I wanted
to be right there were so in Hungary and Europe, they kind of have this.
Saying, which is like similar to get your head out of the clouds kind
of thing that we say here, but it's like, basically don't be a cosmonaut
because you're living in space.
So, um, and it's not that he didn't encourage me, but you know, I'm
like, I want to be a millionaire.
I want to be whatever.
Even when I got into real estate, he was always worried for me.
That, you know, it takes you five years to make any money.
And this is the blah, blah, blah, blah.
Now that's obviously gone, thankfully.
But the point is, is at that time, I'm like, well, I'm not
going to listen to these guys.
That guy over there is making a ton of money.
I'm going to do what he does.
Right.
And so I'm blessed and lucky that I never really got into any trouble.
I have, I had people pass away that were close to me that were
involved in that kind of stuff.
And so.
When I was in my mid twenties, after I got kicked out of school, I came
back and I'm like, okay, I'm either going to get into real estate cause
I was selling cars, doing all this other stuff back in the normal path.
I mean, they're going to get into real estate or I'm going
to become a firefighter.
And so both of them needed high school graduation.
So I had to go back and graduate when I was 27.
And then I, uh, applied for the justice institute with my good buddy Ziggy.
And, uh, That was a couple months process.
In the meantime, it was already a realtor.
And then my first two months, I did six transactions and made
more money than I've ever made.
And I'm like, you know what, I think I'm going to go down this path.
And that's kind of how it all happened.
So if you can go back and talk to 12, 13, 14 year old, you, what would you say?
Hey.
And you know what the funny thing is, I wouldn't say much, I would show.
And I think that's really the difference is I think too many times as leaders, we
talk too much and we don't show enough.
Right.
So if you look at the guys that inspire me, the guys that would have inspired me
back then is guys that inspire me right now are like guys like Galkins, Jocko,
you know, like, uh, Cameron Haynes, what, what inspires us about those guys?
They're out there on video doing it.
Hmm.
Right.
And so if I could do anything, I would go to these guys and
be like, look what I have done.
This is how I've done it.
And I can show you how, and I think having actual, because the
problem, number one priority or issue with school systems in general.
Okay.
And I, and I'm not, I'm not here to beat down schools by any means, because
they're essential part of our, our learning and society in certain parts.
Right.
We can talk about that one.
I agree.
But the point is, is that you are being taught by somebody.
I'll give you an example.
Okay.
You go to Harvard.
Right.
You pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for a university degree.
And let's just say you're going to get your MBA.
The top professors are making 500 grand a year.
Right.
I have agents in my brokerage making 2 million a year.
So why would I learn from somebody?
That has never done what I want to do.
And that's the, one of the major issues with our schools is we're being told,
not shown, told, this is what you do.
This is how you do it.
And we're being basically taught how to memorize more or less and
work at a certain thing and work for somebody, not work with somebody.
We're not talked, taught about basic finance.
We're not talking about any kind of life skills anymore.
We're not taught about any of those things, but what ends up being
is, is there's very few students that look up to their teachers.
Very few these days, right?
And the fact is, is because none of them want to be like that person.
Who do they want to be like?
And so now they're following their social media influencers.
They're following all these other guys that are driving Lamborghinis
that are doing all these other things, which I'd rather have them
do that than follow drug dealers.
Right.
But the point is, is who these guys are imitating or who these kids are
imitating is incredibly important.
And unfortunately those schools don't provide any of that.
That's a good point.
Who wants to be like their high school teacher?
I don't know anyone that.
I'm sure there's some, and there's some great high school teachers out there.
There are some fantastic teachers.
The whole system of education that we currently have, I think is, is in need of
a massive overhaul, um, served a purpose in its way and it's time and it still
has some good purpose, but, uh, I'm not here to disparage the school system, but
I come from a, a background, I was five different high schools that I went to.
Yeah.
So, so, you know.
Well, and the thing is, is like, I can think of two teachers.
Maybe three, while I was in school.
One of them was Mr.
Bugler, and this guy, if anybody went to me for a secondary,
they would know who he is.
Um, and I think he passed away a while ago.
But, he um, dressed in a cape.
And was extremely eccentric, extremely like as like a chalkboard
professor, a cape, a cape, like a full on, like university gown,
cape, whatever it is in high school.
And he was teaching, and this was, I think I had him for grade eight, if I remember
before I switched to the self pay school.
And so he was teaching a class for gifted students or whatever.
So people that were accelerated.
So you're just calling yourself gifted.
Got it.
Well, I don't, it could have been special gifted for all I know.
That's just what they called it anyways.
But, um, so, but what he continuously did was challenge me and what he proved.
Right.
Was my ignorance in history, my ignorance in so many things.
And he, he proved that I should be questioning everything and
understanding why I'm questioning and why these answers are what they are.
So there's a lot of things I took from and him and I had screaming
matches, just to be clear.
Like it was not that he was like some, Oh, figure it figure to me.
Like we had butted heads just as much as we agreed.
However, he was challenged.
He pushed and he was a great teacher.
My other teacher, Mr.
B.
I've actually just communicated with on Facebook just recently after not talking
to him since elementary school, basically.
I remember him vividly because, and obviously this would probably
never happen these days, is pulling outside my elementary.
He knew I was hunting cause I started hunting.
I got finished my core test when I was 10.
So I was out there right at the hop and I was, he knew it was big into hunting.
So when he came home, it was Monday.
And he just came home from a hunt, went straight from the
hunt to, to school to teach.
So he's like, come check out what's in the back of my truck.
I went there and he's got his camper.
And sure enough, there's a three point buck in the back.
So I remember that vividly talking about hunting and fishing and all those things.
And these are memories.
So that's somebody that I would look up to more or less.
You don't usually hear.
Stories of teachers taking kids to the back of their truck ending.
I mean, yeah, exactly, exactly.
But, um, so yeah, I mean, now.
Our schools, you know, to go down that path, our schools are, we're
more, once again, focused on people's feelings versus the actual things
that need to be done and taught.
Right.
Like even with all this, I was just told a couple of days ago, and I don't
know if it's rumor or not, so I don't want to spread whatever, but I've heard
it multiple times now that they have like, um, in washrooms, they have,
um, like what you have for your cat.
Because people are dressing up as furries.
So yeah, now they're squatting, they're squatting in boxes.
Come on.
So, um, my mind is, I don't want to say it because I'm not going to confirm
it, but I've been told multiple times from the high school that I went to.
And so for myself, I'm, I'm thinking I'm like, okay, listen,
I want all kids to feel inclusive.
Like, don't get me wrong, but the reality is why are we focusing so much on this
stuff when, and this is one thing that absolutely pissed me off to be very
blunt, I go into my kid's school and every single, every single, and this
is an elementary school and I'm in, you know, the back end of maple Ridge, right?
So it's more redneck y if you would call that, right?
By, by all means.
And every single school door.
has a rainbow on it.
Every single school door has, uh, a rainbow flag.
And so to be very clear, like if, if whatever your sexual preference is, I
care less like you do you, if you're an adult, I want you to be happy, right?
However, the one thing that stood out to me is there was not one provincial flag.
Not one Canadian flag, not one thing was taught.
My kid, who is now eight years old, has been taught all of these things.
I took a globe and asked him where Russia was.
He could not point out the largest country on the planet.
So it's not the fact that what we're teaching our kids, I agree or disagree
with, which a lot of it, I obviously disagree with, but it's the fact
that we have no priorities, right?
If our kid can't even point out the biggest country on the planet,
but he knows you can be 72 genders.
Don't you think we have a little bit of a priority issue on this planet?
You know, the issue with inclusivity and hyper inclusivity.
The natural outcome of that is exclusivity because you can't think outside of that.
And it's, it's a very, you know, you take that to its natural progression and
perhaps it's something that should maybe not be emphasized in school in the way
that it currently is, because you will end up excluding other opinions that
are contrary to what, what the norm is.
In a way that they're trying to combat in, in the get go so well intentioned
good way to go for it, but it does create an exclusive environment where
if you do not subscribe to this way of thinking, you are now out and
maybe take it to whatever you are.
Yeah.
Right.
And it's, and that that's changing.
I do see.
It, well, it's just gone so crazy that it's, like you
said, it's gone a full circle.
We are invoking racism now.
It's like it, it, it there's a, there is a teacher, a principal, I believe
that got expelled, that got kicked out.
I don't want to tell you what state cause I can't remember,
but this is just recently within this year, you can Google it.
And basically what she did was, is she separated.
Blacks and whites.
This old experiment.
Separate.
No, she separated it and basically created an apartheid because
she felt that black youth should hang out with more black youth.
Interesting.
So it's not like the teacher that separated the blue eyes and the brown eyes
or the brown hairs and blonde hairs and, and created that whole social dynamic.
They, she's saying birds of a feather should flock together
and, and she's trying to.
And she was black.
Gotcha.
And she's saying, she's like, listen, like, um, black should
experience more black culture with black people and so on and so forth
and ended up creating an apartheid.
In her own school.
And so one of the.
Whoops.
But this is the whole point of what I'm trying to say is this, and what
you're, what you're saying is this, this inclusivity, all of a sudden we're
like, we're back to 1940 and Rosa, Rosa Parks would be like, you know, rolling
in her grave right now, seeing that we are doing this to ourselves again.
Well, the plot's been lost at that point.
It's crazy.
And it's just.
I think this once again comes down to the part that is there racism in the world?
A hundred percent.
It will never go away.
Is there, you know, sexism?
Are there all these isms?
Yes.
Right.
But in general, We are 1000% better than we have ever been.
And so now we are searching for things that will make us
like, I got a hard time too.
You know, like I'm a ZZ, ZZ, ZZ, whatever.
Don't you know?
Right.
Instead of, because I have nothing else.
I have food, I have a shelter.
I have, you know, I get to go to work.
I can go to university.
I get, I can get free drugs if I go down to East Hastings.
Right.
So much so that they're giving out free drugs and they're
trading it in for fentanyl.
My wife's a nurse.
These people are still ODing from fentanyl because they're taking
the clean drugs that they're getting from the government, right.
And trading it for street fentanyl.
So it's just come to this point that we're not talking about kids here.
Are you kids?
I'm not talking about kids, but the whole point is, is that right now, these days.
Life is so good that we need to find some excuse and hardship that our
generation's going through something.
We're having issues.
Look at me.
And instead of focusing on how do we better society, how many, you
know, one of the things growing up is, and I remember these ads, like,
what can you do for your country?
Right.
How many of our youth, how many of, you know, even my generation and
old, how many of us are thinking, what can we do for our country?
Versus what can our country do for us?
And I think, you know, when you ask, what can we do to change things?
What can we do to, you know, help, um, you know, our cause when it comes to,
um, firearms and all these other things, it's like, what the fuck are you doing?
You know, what are you doing?
And that's the first question we should always be asking ourselves.
Cause back to this whole stoic philosophy, what is the only
thing we have control over?
It's what we do.
I can't, I can't force you to do anything, but if I want you to do
something, I can tell you the best way to do it is watch me do this.
So if the first question is, what are you doing?
What would the second question be?
Well, what effect is that having?
Because I think there's a lot of people out there that will do
things that have minimal effect.
But they look at, look at all the things I'm doing.
Yeah.
Look at how fast I'm running.
My arms are going so fast.
And, and so like business, right.
I have a philosophy on how I kind of do things.
So I plan.
First.
So I, in my life and in business, I kind of have a CEO hat, and
then I kind of have a worker hat for lack of a better word, right?
Or realtor hat or whatever it may be.
So my CEO hat, I'm planning.
These are the things I'm going to do.
This is how I'm going to execute it.
This is what I'm going to do.
And that could be for a week, month, quarter, year,
whatever it may be, excuse me.
Um, and then I go into worker and I just execute.
I, I, I no longer, like, if you look in my schedule, it's completely booked
out sometimes in 30 minute increments.
I'm not, I don't plan what I do today.
I've already planned what I'm doing, so I'm not thinking
about what I should change.
What I'm just executing.
Right.
So it's the same thing.
Like I'm planning to help my gun range.
Build an association.
Okay.
This is how I'm going to plan the rest of the time I'm going to execute.
Now, while I'm executing, I track relentlessly.
So what that means is when it comes to business, I know what my expenditure
is, what's coming in, how many in real estate related, how many calls does
it take to convert an appointment?
How many appointments does it take to convert a sale?
And I, now I'm, now I can look and track all of those things.
Now, most people, what they do wrong.
It's the day two of calling, let's just say they're, they've been
cold calling strangers and they've got nothing but a bunch of hangups
and FUs and so on and so forth.
Right.
And they're like this script, this thing doesn't work and they give up.
Right.
But really you don't have enough data to know if it does or doesn't work.
So I track, keep that data at the end of the week or week two or
month, a quarter, whatever that, that timetable is, I review that data.
And so to your question, like a lot of people are running with their arms, but.
I've had this question asked more than any other question in real estate ever.
When an agent comes to me, they always come to me, Sean,
I did 10 deals this year.
I want to do 20 next year.
Right.
And everybody at my brokerage is going to laugh if they hear this because it's
Herbie said a million times, 10 deals.
I'm going to do 20 next year.
I'm like, okay, fantastic.
How are you going to do that?
The most common thing I hear is I'm going to work harder.
Well, you're probably going to have to, but that's great.
Right.
So let me ask you a question.
Okay.
If you were Elon Musk in front of your million shareholders and you said,
Hey guys, next quarter, we're going to do an extra billion dollars in sales.
Right.
And they said, Oh, that's awesome.
Elon.
How are you going to do that?
And you said, I'm going to work harder.
They'd all laugh.
And your stock would probably, well, maybe Elan it would go up,
but everybody else would go down.
Right.
So instead I always tell them, it's like, listen, first of all, what is harder?
Your perspective on harder versus my perspective might be two different things.
I might think hard is 500 calls a day.
You might think five is hard.
Right?
So everything I do is I plan, track, or execute, track while I'm doing that, and
then reevaluate at a certain point in time that I've planned to, to see what
is working, what can be done better, and how can I reevaluate that to plan again,
execute, track, and do it all over.
And that's kind of been my methodology for business since day one is
if I don't know what I'm doing.
Right.
And I don't know what the consistency is and how it is, and what are
the numbers in front of me.
How do I know what to better change?
Totally.
And that's kind of, unfortunately, what you're talking about is a lot of
these people are super busy, right?
Have you tracked what you're actually doing?
Right.
What was your end goal in that?
What was your purpose for doing that?
Right.
Now I'd rather have somebody busy arm out there doing something rather than nothing.
Right.
Cause I feel like that's most people in cases.
Right.
But I feel like there's a way to do it.
That's obviously going to yield a better result.
I love that.
Yeah.
That gives a lot of takeaway for people who are listening.
Well, I think understanding and knowing that you have the ability to do this.
Massive.
It's huge.
And don't underestimate.
The power of your voice and the things that you do.
And I know this kind of sounds preachy or whatever it is, but it is the truth.
Like entire, the reason that we don't have slavery in North America is
because people started changing and it was one, two, three, four, and
they continuously grow from there.
Right.
The reason why a lot of the things we don't like right now that are
happening in this is because those voices are louder than ours and
there's more people doing action.
Then we are right.
And so I know we have this fear of loss and it is a true fear.
I'm not going to belittle the fact that you could lose your entire company
by saying the wrong thing these days.
Right.
Usually easily, and I'm not going to belittle that.
That is the fact, right?
However, we all have to have this internal conversation.
Like I mentioned before, is that what is your greater
fear and what is your purpose?
Is it to leave your kids with something different?
Right.
Or something that you will be proud of that at least I did something right.
Or is it, it doesn't matter how much money you have, how much things you
saved, but if all of a sudden, and I'm not saying we're going down this
route, but all of a sudden we turn into communism, what is that worth anyways?
Is there anything that we haven't talked about that we should talk about?
Oh, that's a good question.
Um,
there's, there's lots of things I'd love to talk with.
This is a great conversation.
We're definitely going to have a cigar night and talk more.
Um, I, I think, I think one of the things too is, is, um, that I try to
instill as much as, as possible is, and you see this word being, you know,
tossed around a lot, but I'm trying to be as grateful as I possibly can.
And I think this is something that in business and these motivational
speakers, like, Oh, I'm so grateful.
I'm so this, I'm grateful for the fact that I always tell myself, like, I have
two legs, I have this, I, I, it allows me to ground myself into the presence, right?
Like, I'm grateful that.
I'm here having this conversation with you.
This is an opportunity.
And I really appreciate that.
A lot of people can't get just because of time or whatever the scenario is.
Right.
And so for myself, trying to be more grateful and understanding,
if you're looking to succeed, it's very difficult to succeed.
If you're not grateful for what you've already done and what you already have.
And I feel like.
We, you know, one of the reasons we have lost so much is because we weren't
grateful for what we had and we didn't put the right things in place to enable,
to keep those things that we've had.
Right.
So I feel, I feel gratefulness is something that I try
to be as much as possible.
How do you do that?
People talk about it.
They say, Oh, Hey, I'm grateful.
They'll write it into a text.
Yeah.
Hey, I'm really grateful.
How do you, do you show your gratitude?
Do you internalize that gratitude?
What is, what does that look like?
So.
You know, obviously I'm grateful for everything people do for me for, you
know, being able to even, but I think the grateful that I'm talking about more or
less is just truly being, and this comes back moment, momentum, uh, mental Mori
again, it's just, I'm alive, you know?
And when we talk about like, you've been in your lows of your lows
and your highs, your highs, right.
It's grateful to have money in your account.
Right.
But on the lows and lows, that's the time where you have to be the most grateful.
Right.
That's the time that if you really want to get out of that funk or wherever
you are in that time and world is the easiest way to do that is like,
okay, like, and I'm sure you guys have all seen that GIF is, you know,
there's, there's a guy that's looking up and the guy has no feet or no legs.
And he's just looking at the guy with the legs and the guy with the legs and
looking at guy with shoes and the guy with the shoes, looking at guy with
the bike and the guy with the bike is looking at the guy with the car.
We're always one step upping where we're trying to be right.
If you want it to be an actual impactful thing to yourself,
and I'm not just talking about like, you know, hashtag grateful,
but actually having some importance where you can feel the chemical change
it does in your body is you need to actually be, look at yourself and be
like, what am I truly grateful for?
Like I.
I sat down yesterday with my kids and I got a new black puppy, a
black lab puppy, and I'm sitting there and I'm just like, wow, I'm
like, I got the dog that I wanted.
My kids are healthy.
Like I have lots of kids, like a friend of mine, his kid passed away.
Like these are unimaginable things and these things still may happen.
You know, like we don't have control of what will happen in the future
when it comes to those things.
So being grateful when you, when you practice it properly, and I'm
not trying to say there's a right or wrong way, but you will know how
you feel when you think about it.
You know, there's that, uh, saying a rich person wants many things,
a sick person wants just one.
Yeah.
Sean, it was absolutely amazing having you on the podcast.
Thank you so much for coming on here.
Thanks for having me, brother.
I appreciate it.