Brant Phillips Show 25: Brant Interviews Joost Janssen, Navy Seal

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Brant: Hello guys. I’ve got a special guest with us here today and some of you know a little bit about my endeavors into the world of studying about Navy SEALs and just really trying to sharpen my mindset to become the best person that I can become and the best entrepreneur I can become. I’ve got a special guest on the show today who was a former Navy SEAL. His name is Joost Janssen. I know that’s American pronunciation Joost but Joost Janssen and he has a very, very accomplished military career, background as a Navy SEAL with over 12 years of service. He has extensive experience in oversees deployments and serving our country.

One of the things that’s really cool is since that time also in addition to a very decorated military career, he’s an entrepreneur, he’s like us. He’s delved into the world of real estate so he’s got investing experience he can share with us. He’s currently working in Hollywood as a trainer and adviser, a stunt performer. He’s been on some really, really big movies I’d say Blockbuster movies for that matter. You can read his bio here on the website in the podcast notes and he’s got a lot to share. You guys know me, I’m all about mindset and how our mindset and our attitudes and how we handle adversity directly contribute to our bottom line either in a positive or not so positive way. I’m excited to have Joost on and to share a little bit about his story and help you guys improve your lives and go out and create better results in your life, in your business. Without further ado, I’d like to introduce Joost to the show. How are you doing my friend?

Joost: Hey Brant, awesome introduction. Thanks man.

Brant: Thanks man. Thank you for coming on. We met so to speak through a mutual friend Nick who works in my office went to an event and he heard you speak and we’ve got an event coming up here in the next week, two weeks that you’re flying into town to speak at. He started to tell me a little bit about you and he was like, “Man, have you heard about this guy named Joost Janssen?” I’m like, “No, I don’t think I have but tell me about him.” He’s like, “Well, he’s a Navy SEAL. He spoke at this event and he was just like incredibly powerful speaker.” He’s like, “You should look him up.” I did. I looked you up. I’ve got, man, so much respect for Navy SEALs and military in general. I started looking you up and I listened to some of your podcasts and I went back to Nick, I’m like, “Do you think he can get in touch with this guy?” He did and here we are and I’m excited to have you come down to the event next week.

I’ll tell you one thing man that I heard you talk about and I’ve told like half a dozen people. I shared it in a team meeting with our team just about being strong and strong-willed and this mindset stuff that they hear me talk about a lot, but man, you shared a story that took the cake from me, which was a story, when you were going through BUD/S and you injured your neck, I think you tore some ligaments and maybe tendons, maybe even bones and continued without function of being able to lift up your neck for a couple of days and continued and made it through man. I just want to tell you that I got a lot of respect for you man after hearing that story.

Joost: It definitely wasn’t a smooth journey for me going through SEAL training. This is probably a good time. I’ll tell you some of the things I had to overcome personally. By the way, I don’t know anybody that had a smooth journey all the way through the SEAL training. There’s always something or someone or your buddy or something is trying to take you out and prevent you from finishing. I remember training before I went to go and said, “I want to be a Navy SEAL.” Back then in the ‘90s, there’s no YouTube, there’s very few books out there and no information but I had read somewhere that the Navy SEALs run in boots so I decided to strap on some boots and start running on a pavement every day. You can guess what happened after a month or so, I had the worst shin splints in the world but I kept on running.

It got so bad that six months later when I went into training, I couldn’t run at all. I made a commitment, December 23rd, I am showing up for boot camp and I’m going to go. I had every reason not to because I’m like, “I can’t even run.” My shins are just, I had stress fractures and shin splints going so bad but I decided just to go anyway just based on my commitment. Then I went to training and while I was in boot camp I visited doctor after doctor and finally got some relief or a solution to it with some orthotics but they had a negative effect of messing my knee up.

Then I got over the shin splints and then I entered SEAL training with a knee injury called ITB, Iliotibial Band Syndrome where the outside of your knee is so inflamed it squeaks when you even move it. I had to come up with a solution for that. I remember sitting in training thinking, “I am not going to make it a week in training but I’ll try to make it to the next day.” I started class ahead of me doing some cool evolutions that were on the boats going through the [surf storm 00:06:27]. I am thinking, “Well, I just want to get to that day.” They were like in week three or something. Like, “If I could just get to week three and go through the surf storm and see those boats getting tossed around by the waves and bodies flying everywhere, at least I got a good story when I leave.” That was my goal at the time when I went into it.

Brant: Man, there are some pretty big takeaways from that where a lot of guys when going on a mission whether it be to go to successful business or some type of physical feat like that, it’s so many people try to think about the finish line and they mentally beat themselves up and defeat themselves because the pain or whatever they’re dealing with is so difficult and that finish line is so far away but if you can just break it down into those mini goals and taking literally just taking the next step rather than really focusing on the finish line just taking the next step, that’s really all you have to focus on.

Joost: It is true. Most people quit. I came back later as an instructor. I got to see like for three years see these young guys going through training. One thing I learned that it’s not the actual physical pain or the in the moment stuff that makes most people quit, it’s thinking about what’s coming next. We used to play tricks on them. We would get them all warm and feed them and they’re all cuddly and warm and they’re eating MREs and then they start talking and the sun is starting to go down and they start talking about what’s coming up later and how badass the next shift of instructors was coming in and are drinking beer and how they’re all drinking Red Bulls waiting to come down there and kick their ass. The next thing you know you’ve got 15 people lined up ringing the bell because of something they’re thinking about rather than something they’re actually experiencing.

Brant: Some people know, I went through my little, to you guys it’s probably a cake walk but to me it was pretty brutal which was the Kokoro Camp which was a 50 hour thing. I went into that thing and a back story with that, I couldn’t, whenever, we’re going way back to high school. By the time I got out of high school, I had had multiple surgeries. I had a plate and screws in my ankle, pens in my knee. I wanted to go in the military. One recruiter was basically telling me to lie and I could get in, I wanted to be a marine. The other one was like, “Well, you could be caught [inaudible 00:09:17] and go to jail because you’re lying, you’re falsifying blah, blah, blah. I didn’t go. I went into law enforcement. That was kind of my thing.

Since that time, I’ve had two ankle surgeries, three knee surgeries, my knees bone-on-bone. Four or five years ago, my last surgery my doctor’s basically is like, “You need a knee replacement.” I already have arthritis blah, blah, blah. I listened to him for a while and so I got down, stopped exercising. I’m like, “Well, I guess this is where I become an old man, I’m almost 40.”

Then I went through it for a while, I’m like, “Screw this. If I need a new knee, why don’t I just speed up the process and do what I got to do?” The last few years I’ve went on this journey where I’m fighting in MMA, fighting in cage fights. I’ve done multiple Ironmans, I went through all this whole SEALFIT stuff and CrossFit competition but that’s one of the things that led me to SEALFIT was I’m like, “Let me experience life and let me just deal with the pain. My knee hurts already and I’m not doing anything. I might as well be fit and enjoy what I’m doing and say I’m an Ironman or say I went through the SEAL stuff and enjoy it while I can.”

The SEALs take it to a whole nother bundle though. I’m not even going to lie. I start Mark Divine and going through the SEAL training and I saw what you’re talking about though. When I went to Kokoro, so we started out at like 6:00 AM in the morning, everybody is showing up. When I went, it was one of the largest groups they had. I think they had like 50 guys that showed up and eight finished, seven or eight. That morning, psychologically these trainers and these SEALs are, they’re getting into us like, they’re tearing you down, they’re trying to find out who’s the weakest link and that kind of stuff.

Throughout the day, I’d say they were really honest in terms of letting people kind of get their money’s worth so to speak because guys pay a lot of money to be there and everybody is sizing each other up. I remember this one guy in particular he was probably 28/29 freaking just body like kind of Tarzan, looked like, I’m like, “This guy looks pretty legit. Like he’s going to make it up, make it fine. This guy, I don’t know.” You’re sizing people up.

Then the sun goes down and the first night when we were there, they put us in the water and the water is freezing and this guy happens to be next to me who I’d seen earlier and just mentally made a note like, “I think this guy is pretty good.” Some of these guys are BUD/S candidates. I guess they’re using this as a precursor to going into what you guys do. This guy is next to me in the water and they’ve got us, basically, I forget what they call it but we basically have to lay down in the water, kick our feet up over our heads, touch our feet behind our heads and come back up. It’s pretty much impossible to do without like sucking in water and getting water in your nose and it’s freezing cold.

The very first time we did it, the guy essentially rang the bell, he quit after that. There is like four or five guys next to him. This one guy was with me, he was like 50 and we looked at each other like, “Holy crap.” We just started and this guy tapped out but it was just interesting. I’m not going to go far into that because I want to get into some of the real estate business stuff but just that whole psychology of how important your commitment is and everybody’s got a plan to get [crosstalk 00:13:04].

Joost: It’s definitely all in your mind. It is true. You can’t look at somebody and go, “Wow, this guy looks like a SEAL. He’s going to make it.” You’re usually going to be wrong. Generally speaking the physically gifted people don’t do as well as the mentally tough. I remember when I was an instructor, this kid showed up for training and checked into our phase. He looked like Woody Allen but a miniature version, glasses and all. We thought that somebody was playing a joke on us. This guy showed up ready for training and your whole instructor staff just burst out laughing for minutes thinking like, “Somebody’s playing this huge joke,” and this guy kept standing there like he wasn’t joking. He couldn’t even start training because he got to get the PRK surgery before you could start because of the glasses and everything so he helped in their office. The running joke is that he’s the nerd that helps us in our office while he’s going to start training and he’ll last an hour. You know what? That guy, one of the toughest students I’ve ever seen in my life and became one of the best SEALs with 40 combat deployments and did some amazing things. That you can never look and tell because the mind is stronger than the body.

Brant: Yeah, for sure, for sure. I learned so much about myself when I saw that play out during Kokoro. We actually had a guy die during Kokoro and it was brutal but there was a kid, I call him a kid, he was like 17 or 18 but he looked like he weighed like 115 pounds. I think everybody sized him up not to make it a few hours and he did not make it the whole event but the kid had so much heart and grit to where he was passing out and they had to relieve him but I saw that coming to play for sure. Let’s talk a little bit, let’s tie this conversation into real estate a little bit or just business and entrepreneurship. Talk a little bit about your real estate experience and how some of these conversations that we’ve had in your experience as a SEAL, how those tie in to the real estate and entrepreneur world.

Joost: Let me start in the beginning for real estate for me. When I was 18, I’m an immigrant from Holland to Canada. I was 18 when I came to the US and I went to school to be a paramedic and ended up staying there. I started getting interested in real estate. I came from an immigrant family, we never had much money but I watched my parents, they would buy a house, a piece of crap house, they’d fix it up and nine months later we would move again and get a slightly better piece of crap house and fix it up.

I watched them do it and I helped my parents do some of the work. I had a little bit of that entrepreneur. My dad worked at an auto dealership as a mechanic and eventually manager but on the side he was always doing something to make a little extra money, whether it was buying old cars and fixing them and selling them or doing real estate so I always wanted to look for something. Real estate fascinated me. I wanted to own something that was mine. I remember the first house I bought was a HUD home. Do you guys still have HUD, like Housing and Urban Development Homes?

Brant: Yeah. Yes we do.

Joost: It was a sealed bid. It was a four acres and it was probably about 1,800 square foot house in really rough shape. The starting price was $25,000, which had needed to get out of it and it was a sealed bid. I sat there and I wrote 27,500 because that’s all I could afford. I could sell one of my vehicles and get $5,000 for the down payment and I was approved for the 22-5. That’s it. At 18/19 years old, that’s all I had. That’s all I could manage to liquidate.

Brant: Sure.

Joost: And I didn’t get picked. I wasn’t the highest bid. I go, “Oh I’m not worried about it.” The weird thing happened a month later, HUD contacted me and said, “The number one bidder fell out because they couldn’t get financing, you’re next up.” I’m like, “Wow.” Suddenly, I became an owner of my first house that cost me $27,500.

I ended up fixing that up over the course of a year, a year and a half, and eventually after I went to SEAL training, I kept the house thinking it’s like if something goes wrong, I could always go back to Michigan and I’ll still have my house. Once I got near the end of training, I called my real estate agent and I said, “Hey, go ahead and sell it.” By that time, it was already paid for, the loan was paid off and I was able to sell it for like $92,000, which doesn’t sound like much nowadays but back then I bought it at like 19 and I was 23 when I sold it. At 23 having $100,000 net worth was what propelled me into where I am today financially because money when you’re young, you can multiple it. Now, if you’re trying to do it at 40 and starting from scratch, it’s a lot harder, do it when you’re young.

Brant: Yeah, for sure.

Joost: And get a good win, get some hard work, get some experience in. By the way, I lost my net worth several times since then and had to rebuild it again but it gave me a skill set, a knowledge, and perseverance and now even just the last six months, I’ve taken some huge hits in my new business and it just gives me more like determination like I’m going to come back and I’m going to figure this thing out and I’m going to succeed because like maybe I’m doing, I started cryptocurrency business and six months ago, I knew nothing, so I’m spending 18 hours a day playing catch up and making mistakes and learning and then not making that mistake again and then just keep going.

Then also, I’ve had the huge wins, I’ve invested in four different countries in real estate and Thailand was really good to me. I would go and buy both houses and condos off the plan 18 months later they’re built and by that time they’ve already doubled in values so I can just come back and sell it and do it again on another one. That works until it doesn’t or the market flattens out and it stops working you got to figure something else out.

I also invested in your neck of the woods. I had two properties in Galveston and that was, I bought one in 2005 and one in 2006. Our plan was to move out there after I got out of the military because I always wanted to live on water and have a boat. We were all ready to make the move and then I’m sure you remember what happened in 2008.

Brant: Yeah.

Joost: Galveston and AIC did not get along very well. It was a disaster. It took years to recover from those two properties being demolished and the insurance companies fighting amongst each other and not paying and no rent being collected on them and you go down the list. You deal with it and you accept it. I like to people, “Accept your new reality quickly.” Once something happens, it happens. You can’t pretend you can go back in time and change it. You just accept it and say this is my options right now.” One of them is not crawling up into a little fall or doing nothing. You got to be decisive and make decisions.

Brant: Also, I’ve got a beach house in Galveston. I haven’t heard a lot of guys from San Diego wanting to move to the Galveston Beach honestly but Galveston’s home, it’s my beach so we got what we got. Yeah, that’s really good stuff man, really good stuff. What is it you think that helps to drive you and push you? I can’t even put a finger on it myself, like what causes me to want to go out and create new things and be able to bounce back like you said about crawling in a ball and crying in the corner or whatever because we all have, as entrepreneurs, real estate investors, we all have deals that goes bad.

One of my good friends and he’s a private lender, one of his kind of mottos and things that he uses to screen potential borrowers or investors is he says he won’t loan money to anyone who claims that they’ve never lost money because he either thinks they’re inexperienced or they’re lying. I guess can you put your finger on some of the things that help drive you and motivate you into keep coming back and fighting for more whenever things go sideways or don’t work out?

Joost: Yeah. I still haven’t figured out that this is something you’re born with or something you develop as you grow up but for me, I’ve always hated pursuing things that have a guaranteed outcome. For example, let’s say I want to be a surgeon. There’s a clearly defined path that as long as you put the time in and study at the end of it, you will be a surgeon. That sounds boring to me. To me, it’s like I want something with minimal chance of success. Like for example, I want to be a Navy SEAL.

Now, if you run the numbers on it, I would bet against myself because chances are you have maybe a 10% chance of making it considering just getting to training and starting and all the physical stuff and the fact that you might quit or you might get hurt and you go down the list, the chances of success are small and that gets me interested. I want to do something. The same with pursuing Hollywood. Most people would tell me I can’t do it. When people tell me I can’t do it, I want it even more and I pursue it even more.

Real estate, like I had some major losses on real estate and really big successes as well. You need both to drive you. If I know where I’m going to end up already, I’m bored. I don’t want to get up and do it anymore. I want the unknown. I want the likely event to be I won’t succeed. That just gets me motivated. I keep trying new things. I just six months ago started a whole new business in a new area I know nothing about that the chances of success are not necessarily guaranteed at all and likely you will lose all your money but that excites me.

Brant: I’m very, very similar into my real estate endeavors and business endeavors. We just closed down a business last month that a few months ago I’m like, “This is just, it’s a failure. It flopped, it didn’t do what I intended it to do, now it’s just, it’s taking a time, energy, money, it’s like let’s take it out to pasture and put a bullet in it.” I’m not beating myself up about it. I learned a lot from that like, “Okay, here’s where we went wrong, here’s where we went wrong.” Even in the beginning and the thought process behind it but to me it’s one of the lessons I learned.

Hey, this is Brant and I hope you’re enjoying today’s show. If you’re in a place in your life or your business where you just feel stuck or you just don’t know what actions to take to help you get unstuck or on to the path to creating the results you truly desire, please take a few minutes and go to my website brantphillips.com. There are some really valuable resources and information that may be able to help you out. If you’re interested in really speeding up results with the help of a coach or mentor and adding true accountability and guidance to your life and business, please reach out to me from my website as well at Brantphillips.com or going to www.brantphillips.com/coaching. Now, let’s get back to the show.

My Martial Arts MMA experience was that you either win or you learn and that’s got to be the mindset is if you win, like deals go good, you make a lot of money, dude, it’s awesome, it’s great. If you lose, like is that really losing? You learned something. By far, whenever I lose I learn so much more and it’s something about the losing and the pain or whatever it is that the loss, the financial loss, the personal loss, whatever, I just feel it more. Those feelings and the lessons and the reflection on what went wrong is so much stronger and so much powerful than whenever I win.

Anytime I lose, I wouldn’t say it’s completely auto responsive or I do it naturally because we have a tendency like you want to get pissed off, you want to yell, curse, punch the wall, whatever, get angry or upset and I do that, but I’m really good to look for the lesson, extract the lesson on what happened here and learn from it and that’s been really big for me. It’s like, “No, I did like it. We didn’t lose, we lost on that particular deal but we’ve gained so much more because we can use that to keep moving forward on the next deal.” Yeah man, that’s really good insight for our listeners and real estate investors and entrepreneurs. Let’s talk about the Hollywood thing real quick. How did all that transpire and what’s exciting you in that field and what are you working on in that area right now?

Joost: That started about 10 years ago. I was still active duty in the SEAL teams. They were looking, Michael Bay was looking for a couple real life Navy SEALs to put in this Transformers movie. At the time we were doing something called Special Ability Extra so you’re an extra but with no lines or dialog or anything like that you’re just running around but then the special ability side goes like, “We’re doing tactical work, sliding transformers up and Downtown LA.”

It looked and sounded like fun. One of my childhood dreams is always to be in a movie once and that turned into, when I showed up I got to start doing a little stunt bubble work for Josh Duhamel who’s one of the leads in the movie. Then at a certain point, Michael Bay gave me a couple of days where I had some lines. Now granted, that didn’t make it into the movie but I still got paid as a full-fledged actor and to this day, 10 years later, I’m still getting quarterly residual checks from the movie because I had a couple of lines that ended up not making it.

Brant: That’s pretty cool.

Joost: I just really enjoyed the process and enjoyed the people, this learning and it’s just brand new to me. For those years in 2007/’08/ and ’09 I floated around, I did a reality show, funny it’s called SOCOM Hell Week, SOCOM is a video game that Sony did. Sony paid for its reality show called SOCOM Hell Week Season 2. You can look on YouTube and see what we did. It’s very similar to what you went through with Mark Divine but it was in a reality show. We took the top gamers in the US for SOCOM and invited them to try to go through a real Navy SEAL Hell Week. We had 1,100 applicants.

Brant: For a full week?

Joost: It was a full week.

Brant: No sleep?

Joost: But also it was designed to, so it was actually maybe four days but it was designed to look like it was a full week on the reality show.

Brant: But without sleep?

Joost: No, we gave them sleep. It wasn’t a real Navy SEAL Hell Week. Put it this way, when we started filming, we started with 28 people, 45 minutes into it, we had four left. We had to stop filming and start it all over again. They were like, “Dude, this is not going to work.”

Brant: You tone it down.

Joost: This is supposed to last a week. We had to start all over again and dial it way down and then when we haven’t had a quitter in 10 hours, we ramp it up a little bit and get a quitter. It was a little hokey in that regards. Interestingly, we still ended up with four people making it in the end and it was the same four people.

Brant: Really?

Joost: One of them was 50, like 51 or 52 and at the time he was going through it, his son was in the army serving in Iraq, so he had this no quit attitude. Two of the guys that made it ended up going through the real SEAL training process. Neither of them ended up making it but they made it pretty far. Then it was just a cool little thing to do. It’s one way to do the Hollywood and then in 2009, I took a little break from doing that and ended up working for one of the government agencies as a direct hired contractor and then deploying. There were about 15 or so deployments during those five years all over the world and took a real break from Hollywood.

It was a dangerous situation, I lost a lot of friends out there doing it. I got to the point where I was done. I wanted to, I still enjoyed the work but between the risk level and the time away, inadvertently I just made a decision, I’m not going to do it. I’m going to stop doing it but I’m also not going to go get a job. I’m like, at the time, I still had some small businesses, some real estate going on and things like that and I’m like, “I’ll just pursue Hollywood.”

Then I did a little bit of work here and there and then I heard that Michael Bay was doing a story about 13 Hours in Benghazi and that was the story where two of my close friends were killed. It was on the project I was on even though I was in Yemen while that happened I was flying back from Yemen during that whole incident. I remember I flew home and the agency calls me and says, “Keep your suit ready and don’t go anywhere.” I’ve not even look at the news or anything yet and then I realized there was something that went wrong. I had to do next of kin notifications for Glen Doherty who died on that rooftop and him and I graduated SEAL training together. The other guy Ty Woods, him and I were instructors together for years. Also real estate investors together in Thailand and other places, so that hit, that hit pretty hard.

When Michael Bay decided to make the movie, I was very fortunate to be part of it. I got to be an adviser, we got to train the lead six actors, a full week of very intensive live fire training before we went over to Malta and started filming. I got to be a stunt bubble for John Krasinski and then I was also cast in the movie as my own character so that was really an awesome experience and since then I’ve never actually been in a project that was that extensive from the very beginning to the very end. Since then recently I did movie, the American Assassin. I worked The Mummy over in Africa filming that. Primarily, I work as a trainer, adviser, consultant whatever you want to call it, the technical ways, it was technical adviser, military adviser and that sometimes leads into other roles either being cast as an actor or doing some stunts and things like that. It’s a lot of fun.

Brant: It sounds like it. It sounds like it. It sounds like your motivation was similar to mine when I left law enforcement. I was just tired of working weekends and holidays and things like that and I didn’t want to have a job anymore and so it was more like a motivation. I went to corporate world for a little bit. Yeah man, that’s really powerful especially what you shared about your friends and with being able to help tell their story about 13 Hours on the screen of being a part of that, that’s powerful stuff man. Let me ask you this, so, listening to you, talking to you, you inspire me and I’m sure that you are inspiring people who are listening to this and just sharing what you do. What are some things that inspire you or some people that you look up to to get motivation from?

Joost: I’m not going to give one name or anything like that but typically it’s people that are doing something with their lives, doing something great. I don’t care if our politics agree with each other. I know that what really pisses me off is the armchair quarterbacks criticizing people who are trying to do something. If you’re doing something, I could totally disagree with everything you believe and respect the hell out of you for going out there and doing it. Whether you’re ultraconservative or ultraliberal, I don’t agree with everything Trump’s doing but I respect the fact that he’s doing it his way the way he thinks, he doesn’t need to do anything, he’s rich. Elon Musk could just stop working tomorrow. He is building our future for us. It’s just people like that that care enough to leave the world a better place. Whether it does or not … It doesn’t matter, it’s the fact that they’re out there trying.

Brant: Yeah, I agree. I agree 100% with that. Man, what are the plans for the future man? What is on the horizon for you and what are you building for 2018 and years to come?

Joost: The goal settings, I always have a list and my wife and I will get together every year and take account of what we hit and didn’t hit over the past 12 months and then set some new goals. We are doing, every little area, I’m not looking to hit home runs. I’m looking to pursue deeper into areas that I’m getting a lot of satisfaction from. The Hollywood stuff, I have a plan of not achievement but I have a plan of what I need to do to get better so I’m going on that. I need to get out more, I need to network more, so I need to get more people working for me out there finding stuff for me. I have a plan for that and whether it works or not, doesn’t matter, it’s I’m actually doing it and setting myself up for potential more opportunity.

With the businesses, I’m just saying I need to shut one down. It’s not because it’s hard, the market changes rapidly and the idea and the business we had isn’t as viable as it was a year ago when we started it. It’s not quitting, it’s just being smart going my efforts and resources could go somewhere else. I have a few businesses that actually bore me to death but they pay my bills and I try to hire somebody and delegate the responsibilities that bore me to death because most people enjoy the predictability and the reliability of a fixed income and tasks and they know one rural area well and they just want to do it and make their money and I don’t understand those people but I’m glad they’re there because that means I don’t have to do it. Just learning how to delegate and things and just release. I’m not a control freak so just releasing some responsibility to others to manage and freeing up more time.

We have a goal that we did six months ago as a family, my kids are 10 and 11 right now, about to be 11 and 12, two boys. It’s annoying, the last couple of years I’m pissed off at how much electronics and TV and PlayStations and Nintendos have crept into our lives. We made it a point where we need to do something amazing with the likeliness of success being very low. As a family we are, we have started already about six months ago, we’re going to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico all the way to Canada. That’s 2650 miles. The likeliness that we’ll finish with our schedules and the kids’ school schedule and the fact that it’s a family doing it, it’d be a lot easier for me to do it by myself, we just want to finish by the time they graduate high school we want to hit the end. We want to give them something, the feeling of achieving something that very few people in the world have ever done. Then we want to do it as a family so it means something even more than just doing it by yourself.

Brant: Have you mapped out how many miles you need to hit each year like reverse engineered? How did you all do that?

Joost: Yeah. Technically if we do four to 500 miles a year, we should hit it. Also knowing that real life’s going to take over and prevent that I guess. We’re past the 100 mile mark at the start and we’re still figuring stuff out. I remember our first trip, we went on and we started on the Mexican border, it was a three-dayer. We did everything wrong. We carried way too much water. The forecast said nice and sunny, San Diego weather and it ended up being a rainstorm and miserable and cold and the kids had shorts. We didn’t have long pants worn, exactly. We totally were unprepared. The bags were actually too heavy. We carried the wrong stuff, everything that could go wrong did go wrong.

We didn’t even plan, we thought we could Uber back to our vehicle at the end and not only are there no Ubers that come out in the middle of nowhere to pick you up, on top of that, I took a solar panel with me to recharge my cell phone on the way and with three days of rain, we had a dead cell phone so we got to the endpoint, pouring rain and I got 10% battery left trying to call taxi services to come pick us up, but a lot of lessons learned and the next one went a lot smoother. Then we dialed in so we’re trying to push the distance on every trip now a little bit more and more and get into the flow of it.

Brant: Man, that’s really, really good stuff. Not only personal goals, business goals but family goals that are, that’s scary that you may or may not hit. That’s really good stuff and then talking about businesses that you have and I think that one thing I was thinking about when you were talking about that is talking about you have businesses that are successful that make money but you don’t really want to spend your time there.

To me, energy is so important. I remember when, my whole goal when I got into real estate, I wanted to make a lot of money but I really just wanted to, I wanted to be my own boss. I wanted to control my time and I wanted to do things that I enjoy doing, things that inspire me, working with other people that inspire me and not what I experienced part time during law enforcement and the corporate world of just being in a box, doing the same things over and over again, didn’t excite me. I wanted to be doing podcasts like cool dudes like yourself and just enjoying life and doing events and working with people and doing deals and just enjoying life man.

Joost: I like that too. For me, my boring businesses are important because they afford me the freedom to pursue my passions and my dreams. Without those boring, like I had one business, it’s a window and door wholesale company. I’d rather stab myself in the leg with a fork than work on that Monday through Friday but it takes me, I’ve got it down to about 82 minutes a week average I need to work on it to keep it going. On the Saturday when my employee logs out their server, then I just go in and just do 82 minutes of work and I’m done for the week and my part is done.

Brant: That’s awesome.

Joost: I do it because that affords me 40 hours of freedom that week. I need to stay involved. You can delegate a lot but eventually somebody needs to steer the ship. They need to stay on steering the ship and have a good top-down view so you know you’re making good decisions and I love it. I value that business as boring as it is because of the freedom it affords me.

Brant: 82 minutes sounds pretty dialed in my friend, 82 minutes is pretty good.

Joost: I’ve been working a year and a half to get it lower and lower every week.

Brant: Yeah? Yeah? That’s good. I like it man. Man, I appreciate you coming on. It’s been very, like I said man, much, I have so much honor and respect for you and appreciation for you to come on and share your story. I’m looking forward to actually meet you in person next week here in Houston and you coming out to the event man.

Joost: I’m really excited for the event and I appreciate the invite and you guys taking care of everything for me. I’m looking forward to it.

Brant: Thanks man. I appreciate everybody listening to this show. Check Joost out. Joost, is there a website or anywhere that you want to steer them to to find you online? Tell them about…

Joost: Unfortunately a lot of my life I try to keep under the radar basically.

Brant: Got you.

Joost: I’m not a big … you can find me online and you can see some of the stuff I’ve done. Recently, I did a lot of promo events for the American Assassin movie. You can see me and Dylan O’Brien doing some training together with live fire. You can see some stuff I did with Military.com recently things like that. Just using my name in the internet, you’ll find some of the stuff I’m doing. Although I’m not trying to build a big connection. I’m not selling anything. I am here talking to you Brant because I like doing it. I love it.

Brant: Got you.

Joost: I’m just speaking at your event because I enjoy it. I enjoy talking, teaching, meeting people that are likeminded. Other than that, this is not a financial side of anything I do other than my own enjoyment.

Brant: Yeah. Man, I appreciate you coming on, I appreciate you sharing your time and looking forward to meeting you next week. Thank you everybody for listening to the show and I think we’re going to call it a wrap my friend.

Joost: Awesome, thanks man.

Brant: Thank you.

Joost: I’ll see you next weekend.

Brant: See you next week.