Ex NFL Player Turned a Real Estate Superstar with Dean Rogers

I’m Igor Kheifets. And this is the list building lifestyle. The podcast for anyone who wants to build a wildly profitable email list working from home. If you’d like to make six figures travel the world and help people improve their lives in the process, this podcast is for you. I also invite you to claim a free copy of my bestselling book, the list building lifestyle confessions of an email millionaire at www.igorsbook.com. Get the free book plus a $3,000 bonus package that includes my best capture page templates, email, swipe files, and traffic blueprints. Visit www.igorsbook.com for details. And now it’s time to claim your list building lifestyle.

00:50

Welcome back to the list building lifestyle. I’m your host, Igor Kheifets. And today I’m hosting an ex-NFL player turned into a real estate investing superstar Dean Rogers. Dean, welcome to the list building lifestyle. Thanks for having me, man. Yeah, my pleasure. And you’ve got a pretty cool story that is definitely unique, you wouldn’t be the first professional athlete who made the transition from, from sports to ex-NFL starting their own business, for sure. I had the pleasure of chatting with somebody who used to be in the WNBA, as well as in the female European basketball leagues, who basically told me something along the lines of, sports are my passion. It’s amazing. But there’s only so far I can take this. And turns out most professional athletes end up broke

01:45

because even if they do make good money during their careers, once they’re done, you know, they really can’t sustain their cost of living and you know, they can’t really find sources of income. So oftentimes, it ends up pretty tragically for them 100% Spot on everything you said there. It’s the passion. And once you leave the sport, because with sports, no matter how good you are, even LeBron James having an almost 20-year career, which is, you know, unheard of.

02:18

And still, you know, playing at an extremely high level that comes to an end, and he’s gonna be a middle-aged man at that point, like he’s lived half of his life only half. And now what you know, and I think why, but what a life, what a life.

02:37

I don’t want to live with them. But for most athletes, careers are much shorter. You get to that level, you have the status, you have the fame, you middle-aged get to make the money.

02:53

You, you work so hard to get there. And you’re in this crazy, dream life. That is only stuff that you see in the movies is actually reality, it’s middle-aged pretty nuts, so we can dive more into it. But all of a sudden, that’s gone.

03:14

All of a sudden, it’s gone. And your identity is still there. And now what you know, now you have to find this new identity, you have to find this new vehicle that’s going to continue to support your lifestyle, like you said, and that’s where most of them go wrong is because they middle-aged don’t know how to make that transition and get lost and trying to figure out who they even are. Who are they at this point, you know?

03:42

And, and that’s really hard. It’s really hard mentally and emotionally, and then trying to learn new skills. I mean, most of the skills you have in a professional sport are not transferable. The main skills that you get are hard work, discipline, and consistent action. That’s middle-aged extremely valuable. But what other tangible skills do you have around, you know, sales around, you know, understanding finances and like there’s so many different aspects to business, right. And so, most of those aren’t taught you might have some leadership that comes with you.

04:23

Naturally leading people and inspiring people on your team. But yeah, man, it’s so doozy. It’s hard for most people and most people fail, come out and crash and burn. Yeah, I was chatting with Bob Diamond.

04:37

And he shared with me a book that he really liked. He’s got young children. Me too. And he said that I should read about raising entrepreneurs. And they devote themselves to it, so it’s basically a series of interviews with parents of entrepreneurs and with people who became great entrepreneurs, both of publicly traded companies as well as private companies. And they devote a lot of time to sports. They talk about how investing, kind of throwing themselves into sports in their younger years, contributes to ability to deal with setbacks with perseverance, with, you know, really honing in on a skill if you need to, which is, you know how you get good at anything. It’s really, it’s a 10,000-hour rule, right? So, I would assume in some way, your career in sports, did, you know, contribute to developing at least a sort of personality? What sort of habits did you carry through in that transition? I love that you said that? Because I think that, without question, what prepared me to become an entrepreneur. And it’s, you know, that environment and sports, it teaches you so many life lessons about how to deal with adversity, how to deal with situations where you’re under pressure, how to push through, when things are hard, and tough, how to receive criticism, how to work with other people. Man, there’s just so much about that. And I can attribute, you know, so many of the failures that I had throughout my real estate, investing journey and career.

06:30

You know, I had times where I had major setbacks and failures, and, you know, those decisions all came back down to me, there might have been outside, you know, factors, people doing things, ripping you off, you know, scamming you doing wrong by you, but at the end of the day, you know, you decided to be to make the decision to be in that deal.

06:52

But, yeah, I think I had many nights in my real estate career now, where I had to look myself in the mirror, and it’s like, Yo, this is hard, but you got to push through, because there’s no other way, you know, and I, there’s no doubt that it goes back to my growing up in sports. And getting to the level that I got to experience that over and over again, I mean, there’s a lot of situations where, you know, you’re on the field, you can’t even hear what’s going on, because the crowd is so loud. And you have to get focused, and stay, go back to go back to your training, you know, to be able to, to execute. And, yeah, so I love, I love relating the sports, to what that looks like in real life. Because, and I’m doing the same thing with my kids. Right now, I’ve got young kids, I got four kids, and I’ll take them out on the weekends and put them through training, and I’ll put them in the pressure cooker, you know, I’ll be out there for a couple hours with them. And they’ll have moments where, you know, they’re kind of breaking down, they’re starting to doubt themselves, maybe they’ll use certain words, where I can’t do it, right. And those are great life lessons, learning moments to really put those words into them. And let them know that they can do it. They can push through; they can be strong. They have to believe in themselves. And I love that so much. Yeah, you know, my son turned four this year, and we started football, but we, I mean, it’s called soccer over here. But I’m originally, I was born in Ukraine and then raised in Israel. So, we call it football over there. And so, we started training. And the other day, I just I wanted to do the same thing. I took him out, I grabbed some cones, so he could dribble in between them. And you know, at some point, he just refused. He just said, you, you brought these cones, and they ruined my mood. I don’t want to do this anymore. And you just walked away? Like, how do you deal with that? Like, I understand putting him under pressure and telling him to push through, etc.? But like, what if he just walks away from the damn field? Like, how do you make him go back?

09:08

Yeah, that’s funny. There’s a fine balance, because you definitely don’t want to make, you know, force your kids to do it. So, there’s that fine balance, you have to make sure that they’re interested, you don’t want to make them do sports and force them into it. But that goes back to just kind of like, finding what motivates them, finding what gets them excited a lot of times, you know, with sports at least.

09:32

And nationally, I want my kids to play sports because it just makes me feel alive, even when I take them out to train them or I go watch them, you know, practice or play the games. And I’ve been coaching them in soccer and basketball. And that makes me more involved. You know, you got to find what motivates them and there’ll be days where they’re not really into it, and you got to kind of back off a little bit. And then usually

10:00

There, their self-motivation comes from having confidence. Right? And, and usually they don’t want to listen to dad as much as they will someone else. So, like my son, I kept trying to get him to play basketball. And he just, he would only want to every so often play if there was some other kid playing in the park. And then finally we put them in a camp, or they take you through the basic skills. And the very first camp I took him to, at the very first water break, he ran out, he ran over and he went, I love it. And I was like, ah, I knew you would see we told you. And then he’s just been super into it since. So sometimes you just have to get someone else to coach them. And then they’ll ah fall in love with Yeah, I’m starting to have a sense because my daughter, she’s 10. And she doesn’t take crap from me either. It’s like, it’s like, I have zero authority beyond the basic parenting requirements. Like as soon as we step into a different domain, it’s like, I have no credibility whatsoever. It’s hilarious, it’s just part of being a parent, and I have conversations with other parents too. And everyone’s experiencing the same thing. So, it’s tough. But yeah, it’s pretty nuts. But it’s sort of like, they’ll go through this, I think, this sort of journey where you start out and your parent is your idol, then you start realizing the apparent doesn’t really know that much. So the credibility winds down, but then as they grow older, you know, they learn once again, that your So, father might know a thing or two, like, that’s what I went through, I went through them from idolizing him, to sort of, you know, being disappointed in, you know, learning about his flaws, to really hating him, to then sort of continuously hating him until the wild and having my own kids, I started sort of like, calling him up and asking questions in saying things like, Oh, I get it now, you know, when you said that, that, that and the other. I get it now. And so, but now, like, the older I get, the more the more I trust this point of view and perspective. Yeah, that’s a cycle. That’s what everybody goes through. Yeah, yeah. So, you mentioned I mean, I can’t not ask. So, you mentioned being a football player. Your life was almost like a movie.

12:28

So, give us the highlight reel. Like, what, what’s that? Like? Yeah, so the highlight reel is, you know, I felt like my whole journey to get to the NFL, I didn’t feel like I felt like it was attainable, but it didn’t seem like it was really lining up to get there.

12:48

And a lot of that is because I was kind of under recruited. My whole time growing up, you know, when I was playing in high school, I was setting records and playing running back in high school was setting records and, you know, getting some attention from colleges, but not really, as much as I thought I would. And it would have helped if I was playing, running back and was faster. I wasn’t, if I was a faster running back and would have definitely helped. But I wasn’t getting the love I wanted but I ended up going to UC Davis in California, and a small football school, but had a history of winning and had a history of quarterbacks and tight ends going to the NFL. And they, recruited me as a tight end. So, when as a tight end, the same kind of thing, you know, had success started, you know, getting recognition, first team, all American, all that kind of stuff. Had scouts coming to practice NFL scouts coming to games. And it was like, okay, this seems possible, but I still felt like, you know, I wasn’t at the big school. I wasn’t getting all the same love and attention that you might expect if you’re going to go to the NFL. But nonetheless, there’s still a possibility. Well, you know, flash forward, I end up getting that call. And it was, hey, are your bags packed? You’re coming , we want you on the team. You’re coming tomorrow morning. So overnight, literally overnight, it went from, you know, living at my parents’ house training for the NFL after, after my senior year in college, to now I’m flying to go play for the chargers and, you know, just it was like, it was like a movie from the very first second, I get. I got picked up from the airport. And you know, the black Escalade, I get taken to, you know, the training facility. I walked upstairs to the owner’s office. I met Dean Spanos, the owner of the chargers and they came into the office. We got your contract ready to go and right there. I walk in nothing owner’s anywhere, nothing on the table just a contract. Right there. It’s a three-year contract. I signed the deal. You know, it’s a, you know, a seven-figure contract. And instantly I’m on the team. And overnight now I’m teammates with Philip Rivers, Antonio Gates, you know, Vincent Jackson, like the superstars of the team and meeting these guys, you know, like you’re, I’m instantly in the club. And you know, Phillip rivers is coming up Hey, Dino, how’s it going? You know, shaking my hand, having conversations with Antonio Gates.

15:36

It was just super surreal. And it was just crazy. Now you I saw everything that you see in the movies like, if you’ve ever watched the HBO special ballers, the TV show ballers, yeah, if you’ve ever seen hard knocks, I always tell people it was the perfect combination of those two shows where Hard Knocks is like super intense music. It’s like, behind the scenes, what’s happening. It’s super cutthroat business, it’s all business.

16:13

You know, you’re on the chopping block, and every second, and everybody is an alpha male, everybody wants to be top dog, everybody wants to show why they’re the best. And that’s really what it was, like, you know, just practices were super intense. And, you know, I’d go, you know, pancake a guy, you know, knock him to the ground. And then other people in the locker room will be starting to try to, you know, talk crap and say, like, hey, man, he was telling everybody that you were you pancake them and, like, you know, trying to, like, start a fight, you know, like, see what the other guy would do. He’s like, you didn’t say that? Did you? You know, like, it was like, that kind of stuff would happen.

16:54

And then there was the baller side where, you know, everywhere you go, people are screaming your name wanting your autograph wanting to hug you like supermodel women are walking through the hotel rooms walking up the players. And it was just, it was crazy. It was a world that you wouldn’t experience. Even if you had a lot of money, you wouldn’t experience unless you were thought of as a superstar celebrity and that’s instantly the status that it gives you whether you’re a superstar on the team or not, you know, and hey it was just pretty crazy to you know, be three lockers away from three locker hey so away from Philip rivers, who’s, you know, making $100 million you know, he’s you know, one of the top quarterbacks in the league and has played a super long time and you got Hall of Famers that you’re playing against and, and beating to like one of the very first play the very second day on there. They don’t mess around. Like it’s like, Alright, cool. You signed your contract. Let’s go get your gear and you start practice tomorrow. Like be ready. Here’s your playbook, you know, oh, holy crap, this is intense. And so, the very I mean, the very first play I was in, um, on offense, I went to block Bob Sanders, who was a Hall of Famer, strong safety known for blowing dudes up super strong, super-fast. And I blew him up, you know, I blew him up and Norv Turner was a head coach. He threw his clipboard. He’s like, there you go, Rogers. And he was like, fired up. And I was like, Holy crap, dude, this is sick. It was like, I was playing a video game, you know?

18:53

So, yeah, it was just a wild experience. I remember the very first day I turned my phone off because I just wanted to stay focused. And the second day I turned it on and for an hour, my phone would not stop ringing with notifications from all the people that had reached out, you know, on text message, who had called me left voicemails who reached out on social media and it was just like, my phone was like vibrating for an hour straight with all the notifications and that’s what it does, man. It just makes you like a superstar overnight. And what was the most fulfilling thing for me, what made the experience incredible was, not only was there that side of it, but it was really fulfilling because once I got there, and I started playing, I knew I could play at that level. And I was playing really well. And I had Norv Turner, the head coach who’s seen, you know, 1000s of players. He was starting to tell me that I was going to have a long career. And he kept telling me oh, you’re gonna have a long career. Keep doing what you’re doing. I’m like, Dude, this is nuts. Like, small town guy.

20:00

Who wasn’t highly recruited, and now I’m living like a fairy tale type of a thing. Now the one thing that was the catch for my whole story, my whole journey, why I had a short NFL career very short was because they moved me from tight end to fullback. And if you know about the NFL, you know about football. at fullback, you’re in the backfield, you’re usually right in front of the running back. And now you usually mostly are just blocking. Right. And they used me a lot because they knew I played tight end, tried to get me out, throw me passes, give me touchdowns. But now your so, main objective is to block and you’re not just blocking a guy who is right in front of you like tight in, you know, one or two yards away, you’re blocking a guy who’s 1015 yards away, who is also a huge, massive person who’s super strong, super athletic. And you guys are just running at each other trying to kill each other. And those collisions are massive, just like you, your body is just giving everything it has just to try to make it right, just to try to not get crushed. And the hardest thing about that was my body from the neck down felt amazing. But from the neck up my brain, I could feel it right away that okay, this is not good. All the alarms are going off. And I knew that if I kept playing this position, which is the position they brought me in for, that I was going to have a short life like my life, my life expectancy is now dwindling fast. Because I mean, imagine if you just looked around, whether you’re in a room right now, or you’re listening to this, you know, walking around, go look at a wall, that’s a brick wall, or cement wall, backup 10 yards, you know, and then run full speed into it with your head, full speed, they’ll slow they’ll slow down. Because if you do, it’s not, you know, you’re not going to do the play right? Run full speed into it with your head and tell me how you feel after that if you wake up. And if you wait until you wake up. And that’s what it was like. Because if you wanted to be effective at that position, you had to go full speed. And you were usually running between the big giant linemen to go block the guy you needed to block a linebacker.

22:43

And when you’re running between the big giant lineman, usually the hole is literally as wide as my hands are right now, you know, as wide as your shoulders are, if you’re lucky. So, you’re not coming in and you know, block into the side with your shoulder, you kind of gotta run straight through with your head. And because of that, you’re crushing your brain, your brain cells are evaporating quickly. So, you just approach the general manager or the coach and you said, hey, know what this is, I’m afraid I’m concerned for my health. I don’t think I can keep blocking people with my head. And they were like, okay, so we just ended your contract then. Exactly. Yeah, it’s, that’s what it is. That’s what it is, a man I had a meeting with, with North Turner and the general manager, the GM, or sitting in the office upstairs. And we had a long conversation. And what’s crazy about this is at the time, like I had to process all these emotions, and I didn’t tell anybody, I didn’t tell any of my teammates. I didn’t tell my position coach. I didn’t tell my family, my friends, like I still do to this day. I think most people that know me and know that I played football, I still don’t know the story because I tell the story on the podcasts, but not everybody listens to podcasts. But I didn’t tell anybody about this. Yeah, my friends and family don’t listen to my podcast either.

24:10

Expect that all your friends and family are gonna listen. But still so many people don’t understand that, like I was in this moment of decision where I had to figure out am I going to keep playing or not? And so, I had the conversation and we talked about how, like, I just can’t play the same position. Because of what I’m filling in my head. And it’s not like I could say hey, Antonio Gates, who’s a Hall of Famer pro bowler, like can I just have my position back and you tell him to just take us, you know, sit on the sidelines. So, yeah, we had a tough conversation and it was like, alright, well, you can’t be on the team anymore. You know, like that’s, it’s just not going to work out. And so, we had that conversation. I walked away, and it was hard because I knew Oh, all right, do I go to other teams now? I play tight end for another team, and I was talking to other teams too. But I had already done enough damage I had already kind of like, shaken start, you know, shaking my brain enough to where even if I go play tight in, and I’m not having the same collisions, my brain has already had enough damage done to it just in that short period of time. And even to this day, like if I’m playing soccer with my kids, and I go do a header. It shakes, it rattles my brain a little bit. And I feel not good. Just from like a simple header, not like it was, you know, a big massive kick, and I took it to the head and soccer. It’s like, I’m just messing around, and I just kick it up to myself and do a little header. That doesn’t feel good because of what I did in football, you know? Yeah, that makes sense.

25:52

It’s and so this is where you had to make a pivot. I mean, you had to make a different career choice. Yeah. And, and that was so hard, because I had spent my whole life getting to this dream moment. I’m on the other side of the fence, I’m signing a contract, and I have the opportunity to continue playing. I mean, Norv Turner is telling me, I’m going to have a long career, he’s in my corner. But we have that hard conversation. And it’s like, well, we got to part ways, then it’s not going to work out. Because this is the position, we need you in. And so I walked away, and I didn’t really spend any time dwelling on it. I think that was what helped me. I probably wasn’t smart enough at that time to have the life perspective that life is pretty tough, like, life is hard. There’s not, you know, the perfect job opportunity for every person, you kind of have to go find it and create it yourself in a lot of cases. And I just didn’t have enough life perspective to know that that was a big deal. So, I just took action, I just moved forward and figured I’m going to figure this out. I believe in myself; I’ll get this worked out. And I had a good buddy of mine I played college football with and he called me up, he knew I was done. He basically walked me in the door to my corporate job, and walked me past all the red tape before the company went public. And it was like this is my next dream. This sounds like an incredible opportunity. I’m going to make a ton of money. This is great. Like this will set me up for what I knew life after football would eventually be. This sounds like a great opportunity. Well, I walk in the door, I bust my butt, I have no these skills, like we talked about at the beginning, no, no skills besides hard work, I put in the hard work. I went from that seven-figure contract to now a $65,000 salary in San Francisco, the Bay Area, which is like, you know, you’re these sounds making negative money, you don’t even have enough money to like, you know, barely afford groceries and pay your rent. So, money dried up really fast. And after that first year, I expected Okay, they’re gonna give me a big pay raise. And they gave me a $2,000 pay raise. I was now at $67,000. And my stomach I just felt sick like, this is not gonna get me there. So, I went back to my 424 square foot studio in San Francisco. And I just remember getting on Google and thinking like, well, what else do I even like? I kind of knew I liked real estate just because I remember watching HGTV shows with my parents. And I was like, yeah, maybe well I’ll be a realtor or something. So, I type in how to get started in real estate. And I found a free podcast.

28:50

And it was talking about how to get started with little to no money, which sounded great to me because I had little to no money at that time. And so, I learned about wholesaling real estate, and how you could find sellers that were motivated and needed to sell a property, get it under contract, and sell it to another buyer and other investor and make the difference of what you could sell for. So, I just took action again, I just didn’t know enough to get in my own way. And took action. I did my first deal in three months. And then I had that proof of concept and I saw that this was going to be the vehicle that could get me back to that dream life that I saw was possible with the NFL. And so, I hadn’t. So, I looked back since I just took massive action and had lots of failures in between, usually my own mistakes of just rushing into deals and trying to force deals that happen because I wanted to do that next deal and so, have success. But at this point now, you know we’ve done almost 600 deals of you know fixing and flipping houses wholesaling Houses, we also have a rental portfolio of around $10 million. And I’ve got, you know, a business partner and a team of eight people in central California, where I grew up. And I, I’m still here living in San Diego, doing everything virtually. And we were joking before the show. Most days, you know, if my family looks and sees if they can’t tell if I’m being productive or not, because I’m usually sitting around in my underwear, you know, I put pants on for you today. But usually, I’m sitting around in my underwear, I appreciate that. Yeah, I don’t get that a lot. Not too many people put pants on.

30:38

Just for good measure, I put pants on today, just in case I stood up. But usually, I’m sitting around in my underwear, you know, talking on my phone, or, but really what I love to do most is what real estate has done for me, what I had hoped the NFL would do for me, but real estate has done for me is giving me back that freedom. Because if you set up real estate the right way, and you have a team of people, then you’re not going to open houses, you’re not going to other people’s houses all the time.

31:08

You can manage the business even virtually like I do. And yesterday, you know, we went to the beach with my kids and we got pizza after watching a movie.

31:21

You know, a couple of days out of the week, I’m going to sports practices with my kids, you know, in the middle of the afternoon, and spending time coaching them and that’s what it’s all about for me is being able to have that freedom and you know, I can work out in the middle of the day and, you know, stay fit and, and exercise. And for me, that’s what I always dreamt of is being able to have financial freedom so that I could wake up and choose to do whatever I wanted to do. Now I’m very passionate about real estate, and I’m always wanting to, you know, push that and usually, I wonder where you get that I’m not sure we get the hold up, let’s I don’t know they’re in let’s work.

32:00

Ya know, all those all those.

32:04

All the life lessons I got from sports definitely transferred over from just that hard work and, you know, pushing to the next level and being competitive. And, and I think I think that’s all been helpful for me. Yeah, I think. So. You mentioned quite a few points there.

32:24

And one thing that I mean, one of the few things that stood out for me is, you know, like you were saying, well, I became an NFL player, signed a contract, all of a sudden everyone wants to be friends, etc. Like, I’ve never got to experience that even though I started making money, right? My life is extremely boring. Like, I’m probably one of the most boring people you’ll ever meet. You know, it’s just me in my basement, and I’m as passionate about my business as you’re about yours. So, oftentimes it’s like, you know, if my kids will ask me or see me, it’s like, hey, hey, Dad, what are you doing? Like I’m working, but it’s me in front of a laptop. Right? It’s really not So, much going on. Unless I’m recording, then Yeah, but you’re right. Like it’s this. It’s the privilege of being able to choose what to do and when to do it. So, if you choose to work 14 hours straight today, that’s your choice, not a requirement. And if you choose to work until two and then go hang out with your kids or, you know, attend practice, like actually, just literally today I took a break between about 10 am and 11:30 am. Because the school all of a sudden sent out an email and said that they’re opening the doors to the like the last rehearsal for the upcoming concert. They’ve got my daughter’s performance. So, it’s not the actual concert, this the rehearsal, right. But you can come in and you can watch. And you know, me and my wife, we just went and watched. Right, and I think I was the only dad in the audience. You know, there were some other parents there, mostly moms and grandpas, and stuff like that. But I was like the only dad there because I get the freedom to choose. And that’s a pretty expensive school. Don’t get me wrong, it’s you know, it’s a private Jewish school. So, there’s lots of like, lawyers and doctors and whatnot, you know, who send their kids there, but, you know, oftentimes look at their life, how they have to commute to an office, or they have to be on the phone all day long. And, you know, it allows me to appreciate, you know, the sort of businesses that we built, as well as, of course, the ability to build a team, because, you know, you mentioned you’ve got a big team and you know, you don’t go seen houses they go I’m sure they look over the contracts, they vet out the tenants, etc. They deal with mold, you know, on the ceiling and all that bullshit. But I think what doctors and lawyers usually cannot do is they So, sort of build themselves a hamster wheel, that can you know that you did can pay them six figures Sure, for some of the multiple six figures, which of course they get to share half of it goes to the government, but they really never have the freedom. They never have the ability to just say, you know what, I just don’t feel like working today. And I can take a day off without there being super-duper consequences. You know what I mean? And I think there’s an art and a science to that. I think it’s a tremendous privilege. And I think when you make that call, to go start your own business, kind of have a vision, right, that if I want to work, I want to work hard, but if I don’t, and I want to spend time with my family, I will. I think that was a super-duper wise move that many of today’s highest performers really never get to make. I mean, they just think about money, success, whatever. But they never think, okay, money success on my terms. Because, you know, one of my favorite mentors, Dan Kennedy, you know, he always says, you don’t want to end up with success you hate, which I think is a really smart and subtle thing to say, because oftentimes, you see people build themselves, like, you know, I’m in Toronto. So, there’s like, lots of startups here. And people commuting downtown from like, up north, so they like to do two hours each way every day. Like, sure. You know, he gives me $10 million a year, you know, $50 million, I would not do like I would not commute two hours each way. Even if I was making 50 times and gazillion times more money, it just wouldn’t happen. No way. Yeah, no as brutal. I think, once you get a taste of the lifestyle that you can have, you don’t want to go back. And I think it is tough, it is tough to figure out that work life balance. Because, you know, you’ve heard stuff like Grant Cardone talks about being obsessed or being average, like, I do think there is some element of in order for you to achieve success, you’ve got to be all in. And you’ve got to give it your all. And that’s what it takes to have those breakthroughs. But at some point, you do have to have that perspective of, if it is always about achieving success and pushing forward, then you’re going to miss out on so many life moments with the family that you’re working so hard for, you know, and I’ve had, thankfully, my wife is not shy to tell me that I need to back off working or whatever it is, she So, does a good job to try to keep me in check. But, you know, I tried to surround myself with other people that have seemed to have figured it out. And usually it all comes about, you know, you can work yourself to death and do that all day long. But usually, the best and most success that you’ll have is actually by delegating and getting other people on your team to do things to give yourself that freedom. So, you can truly be the business owner that you set out to be in the first place and have the freedom that you desired in the first place. So that’s what real success looks like. To me. It’s something I feel like I’m constantly working on to get better, but my perfect day looks like you know, waking up, maybe checking on some emails, making sure the team is motivated, and everybody’s working and staying on top of what they need to. And then the rest of the day is, you know, exercising, exercising, eating healthy and making my body feel good. And then spending time with my kids out at the beach. You know, playing sports, experiencing new things, going on an adventure, you know, seeing the world so that’s what real success looks like to me, dude. Well said, I think it’s a great, great point to end the episode now. So, you’re So, into real estate now you do wholesale fix and flips. Let’s have a podcast so maybe you can share a little bit about where we can go to find out more about you kind of step into wholesale planet Dean, so to speak, and, you know, for our audience, and listeners who are interested in you know, sports real estate can come combo to it. We just want to hear your story, your message. Yeah, so all the things that I’ve got going on in my world as you know, my active real estate business, we’re still pushing and accomplishing awesome goals. And, you know, we’re like I said, we’re doing about 100 deals a year now. And so, we’ve got all that type of stuff going on. I’ve been hosting events and speaking at events. So that’s been really fun just getting out and once you realize the power of relationships and speaking at different events, sharing your journey, sharing your message. That’s super fun and exciting. So I’ve been doing a lot of that and then coaching students on how to get started in real estate. And I think wholesaling is undeniably the best way to get started. Because you don’t need to be an expert on how to flip a house, or how to own a rental property and dealing with tenants, you focus on finding deals and negotiating deals, and getting paid pretty quickly. So, wholesale I coach students on the best way for people to get in touch with me, I always say this, if you’re listening to this, and we don’t connect, then it’s a missed opportunity. Because I actually answer my DMs, I want to connect with more people because that’s where more opportunities come. And that’s, it’s a people’s world. That’s what it’s all about. So, you can always connect with me on social media on Instagram, at Dean Rogers Real Estate, you can always connect with me online at deanrogers.com. I’ve got all my stuff about social media on there.

40:57

Different So, other podcasts that I’ve been on, just like this one here, different events that I’m hosting, or speaking at my coaching program, all that kind of stuff. So, love to connect with people and make sure you reach out for sure. Alright, guys, so if you’re listening on Spotify, or Apple or Google, make sure to check out list building lifestyle show.com for the links in the show notes. And yeah, I think I think for the first time, I appreciate you sharing the message and kind of allowing us to take a peek into the backstages of the NFL and what it’s like to get your head smashed, you know, several times a day. And I really think like, the decision you made was a ballsy decision. Something that I would assume most players never really never really have the balls to decide. Because I mean, here you are invested your whole life into becoming an NFL player, you already have the bird right in your hand. And, you know, to walk away. I think that’s courage. Because all of a sudden you realize that the success you have is not the success you want. So that’s tremendous. I really respect that. So, thank you for sharing that and till next time we chat. Have a good one.

42:18

Thank you for listening to the list building lifestyle, get access to the previous episode’s transcript of today’s show, as well as other exclusive content at listbuildinglifestyleshow.com. Also remember to get your free copy of my bestselling book at www.igorsbook.com. It explains how we made millions with list building starting from scratch. Plus, I’ll give you $3,000 worth of free bonuses, including my best landing page templates, email, swipe files and traffic. Go to www.igorsbook.com now to claim your free package