Posted on / by Brant Phillips / in Podcast, The Brant Phillips Show

Brant Phillips Show Podcast 2: My Story

[powerpress]

Welcome everybody to The Brant Phillips Show. The show dedicated to helping you create results in your life and business. I promised you in the first podcast that I was going to tell you a little bit about my story. Tell you a little bit about my story. I’m going to do my best. I’m going to do my best my friends to only share information that’s pertinent to tell the story about who I am, why I am, and so that you can hopefully be able to gain some insights that you can use in your life and your business to create results.

I don’t know any other way to do this except to tell my story. Yes, I was born in the very early age as we all are. I’m going to start with the high school years. Actually no, I’m not. I’m going to go back a little bit. Now that I started in this, I wasn’t going to bore you with some details but I am. I grew up in the Dallas area, a little suburb outside of Dallas called Raleigh, Texas. At the time, it was a very rural kind of area. It’s not that way anymore. It’s pretty big. I had a great childhood. I played sports all-year long. I had some really good friends and we … Just a very solid middle income neighborhood, very healthy home life. It was really, really cool.

Then however, things changed a little bit. Around the time I was in middle school, it wasn’t around that time, it was that time. I was in sixth grade. It was a little bit before the Black Friday Fallout. Long story short, the industry my father was in which was tied and connected to oil and gas, my dad was just a high school graduate kind of guy. He had learned how to draft and draw. A guy took him under his wings and he was gainfully employed for a really long time, until 1986 came.

He eventually during this bust if you will, he lost his job for a long time, a couple of years he was without work. We eventually lost everything. We were broke. We had to move. We eventually even lost the house that we moved to. Our parents couldn’t pay the bills. We lost our home. Parents went into foreclosure, bankruptcy, the whole nine, and we eventually moved to Houston.

The only reason I’m sharing that story is because some of those things that happened way back then have affected who I am and why I am the person I am because of those things. Some of the “Pain” that was experienced and just really some of the things that I saw my parents going through and the look in their eyes I knew that I didn’t ever want to be in that situation that they were in. I certainly didn’t want my kids going through stuff that I went through. Granted, I know people have things and childhoods and a million times worse than that but that was my experience. It was difficult therefore, one. I’m like, “I want to create a life where I don’t go through that again.”

Let’s fast forward. Now I’m in high school. I’m going to be honest with you guys. I struggled in school. I had no plans or thoughts of going to college. I was just like, when I’m done with high school, I’m done. I was going to be done. I didn’t apply for college. I had no plans to go and parents couldn’t really afford it. I didn’t really want to take out a student loan to go pay to go to school. Although to me at the time, that thought was just ludicrous. Whatever, I managed to get through high school.

I remember the day after I graduated, I packed my bags and told my parents I was moving back to Dallas. I had one of my good buddies from high school. He wasn’t going to college. He was in the same boat, struggled just to get out. We were like, “Let’s figure something out. Figure out what we’re going to do.” We moved up to Dallas. We went and got this job working at a warehouse. It was rough. We were loading and unloading 18-wheeler trucks for about 10 to 12 hours a day at least. I was 18 years old at the time. I’m not going to lie, it was really grueling, grueling labor. Picking up and setting down boxes all day long, loading these trucks on Pallet Jacks. This was in the Dallas, Texas area so it was hot.

We did that for maybe five or six months and it sucked. It sucked, sucked really bad and was really hard. The good thing, and I’d have you guys consider a little tangent real quick, is that there really is no experience in your life that can be all bad if you are committed to finding the positive lesson from that. This was just one of my introductions into the world of positive focus and learning how to glean insights and things like takeaways that I can use from any situation.

Here is the deal. I just remember some of the older guys that were working. I’m not even saying like they were really old. Some of them were like mid to late 20s or 30s. There were some 40 and 50-year-old guys working in the warehouse. I just saw that there were guys there who were older than me. I was just looking into my future. I’m like, “I don’t want to keep doing this.” Some of these guys were friends. I was beginning to consider them friends. They were like, “Dude, get the hell out of here. What are you doing?” I’m like, “Yeah. You’re probably right. I need to,” I’d ask myself that question, “What in the hell am I doing?”

After that, soon after I decided, let me check out this college thing. Let me talk to my buddies and maybe it’s not so bad. I really had nothing else to do. I didn’t really have any direction at that time. I decided to go to college. I did. I went to a junior college. I didn’t take out the loans and that kind of stuff. I eventually got a criminal justice degree to become a police officer. The only thing that really excited me at that time was to be a police officer. I’m like, “That seems like a pretty cool gig. I think I can do that. I think I’d be pretty good at that.” That’s what I did.

I went to work at a police department after I graduated college and I enjoyed it. I really did. At least for the first five or six years. I worked for a couple of years in Dallas and moved back down here to Houston. I had a great time. I was single. I had a lot of buddies, a lot of good times, a lot of fun and got to do some really cool things in terms of my job.

I got promoted to sergeant. When I was in Houston, I worked in the medical center area which is one of the largest medical center areas of the world I believe, centers of the world and maybe the largest now. I’m not very sure on that. I used to run VIP details for celebrities and dignitaries and things like that. I used to work with the Secret Service a lot, do details for George Bush, for the governor of Texas and just a lot of cool people. I did details for Henry Kissinger. There were other celebrities, Lance Armstrong. There were some actors and actresses and Rick Perry the Governor, I think I mentioned that. Just helped to set up the Secret Service and security setup details, entrance, exits, things like that. It was cool.

Whenever things changed and those things did change. In my last couple of years, I got married and we had our first child. The police department got a new chief and there was a lot of politics going on. Things again began to really suck there for a while. This was where I was really getting my first wake up call to this life of really having a J-O-B. Because my first five or six years, yeah I had to show up at a certain time and it wasn’t true freedom, but I was single. I didn’t care if I had to work evening shift or late shift or holidays. I didn’t care. I was hanging out with my buddies and just doing whatever I wanted to do with my other time so I didn’t care.

Whenever I began to have a family and these politics started to come down the line that I didn’t agree with things and I could see where things were going. I had no control of my time. I was having extra mouths to feed so I was having to work a lot of overtime and different hours and night shifts and weekends, all that kind of stuff. That’s where it was beginning to be a tough pill to swallow. I’m like, “Wait a minute. Wait a minute here. This is not the life that I desire at all.” I wasn’t getting rich doing it.

I remember there was like a long period of time, like a long period of time, I was working evening shifts. I would go into work, I’m sorry like at noon or 1:00 and I would get off at around 10 o’clock at night if I was lucky, if I was lucky. A lot of nights I was going home later than that or I was working a double shift and staying all night long. If I got off on time, maybe I get home at like 11 o’clock at night. My wife would be asleep because she had to get up in the morning and go to work. She had to take our son to childcare because the daycare place that was over by where she worked at, which was on the complete opposite side of town where we lived and where I worked. She’d be asleep. I would get home and they’re asleep. I would wake up in the morning. She’d be hurrying up to get ready and leave. I’d be exhausted. I would most days get to say bye to them, my wife and my son, and they were gone.

She was a hairstylist. Hairstylists’ busiest days are typically Fridays and Saturdays. Those just happened to be my days off were Friday and Saturday. It was cool because I got to hang out with my son those days. My wife would come home and she was deadbeat exhausted. She’d been working all day on her feet. Here we are, like Friday and Saturday, not really seeing each other, not very connection time. On Sunday morning, I’m going back to work. We get to go to church in the morning then I’m like back at work. Other than that, Sunday morning being pretty cool, it sucked. That’s how it was. It was hard. That’s where I began. The seed was planted in my mind at that time. I was like, “I’m not going to do this forever. I’m not going to do this forever.” Then I mentioned there’s the income thing so I wasn’t getting rich doing it.

I had also seen my father and others that were living this J-O-B lifestyle where they’re just grinding it out in this very middle class life and just struggling or just discontent with life and not really ever getting ahead. Look, there’s nothing wrong with that first off. Let me just say that there’s honor and integrity and nobility even if you will in working a job and having a career and a lot of the life that the middle income, middle class lives. That it’s a great life comparatively least speaking to the rest of the world. I’m not talking down on anybody. I just want you to know that, especially not my father who I love and respect.

I just had to acknowledge that it wasn’t something that I desired. It wasn’t something that I desired but I was at a point where I didn’t know what to do. I knew I wanted to create a better lifestyle. Check, I knew that. I knew I wanted more money. Check, I got that. I knew I wanted it. I knew I wanted more freedom. All those things I knew that I wanted. I wanted freedom in what I did and I wanted freedom for my time. I damn sure wanted to make more money. I really wanted to make a lot more money.

What I was doing wasn’t getting it done obviously so not knowing what else to do, I didn’t have like a long-term plan. Often what happens is when we fail to plan, there’s someone else who’s going to be there and plan for us. If we fail to plan, someone else is going to be there to plan for us. If you’re at that place working at your job, you’re not committed to leaving or starting your own business, guess what? Your employers are creating a plan for your next five, 10, 20 years of your life in the ways that you’re going to help them increase their net worth and their freedom and their lifestyle by having you plugged in as a widget performing some type of little job there.

I fell into a trap of I began to have these thoughts, these seeds of thought about I wanted freedom. I wanted more money. I wanted to do something I enjoy but I didn’t know how to do it. I got to the point where the politics and lack of time with my wife and son had got the best of me. I got a corporate job. I got a corporate sales job because the grass is always greener on the other side. Saying that I got a sales job is not really shedding the proper light on what I was doing. The company I went to work for, yes, it was a Fortune 500 Company. It was a good company. It was a big company. It was a financially strong company.

My father-in-law worked at that company and helped me to get the interview. I don’t think he helped me get the job. Quite frankly, I think I did well in the interview. Anyways, I got the job. What I sold was I sold chemical cleaning chemicals, chemical cleaning chemicals, that sounds good, for the industrial services industry like hospitals, hotels, long-term care facilities, restaurants. I basically sold soap. Let’s just put it like that. I sold soap. When we sold soap, our customers got complimentary dispensers so they could use a bunch of our soap. I sold the stuff, which was cool.

When you sell stuff, you have to service it. That was the deal with this company. When you’re servicing things, you respond to calls. I would literally be wearing like nice clothes to work, nice shirt, ties, sometimes a suit and jacket and all that kind of stuff the whole nine.

Then I would have this lab coat thing in my car where I would have to throw that bad boy on and go install equipment and respond to calls. I’d literally be on a sales call appointment with somebody and then maybe half an hour later, I’d be underneath a dishwashing machine at a dirty restaurant on the ground with a wrench and screwdriver in my hand installing some piece of equipment or fixing something that’s broken. There’s like steam and water and like dirty dish machine with food dropping into my face. It really sucked when I wasn’t wearing my goggles. Not to mention it was like 110 degrees in the Texas heat, those hot Texas restaurant kitchens is like burning up. I’m sitting here wearing like a shirt, a tie, slacks, sometimes wool and a lab jacket. I’m just sweating my you know what off. It was not enjoyable my friends. It was not an enjoyable place to be.

I remember even the very first day I took this job, we had to go through all these meetings and corporate whatever indoctrination. I remember I got home and my wife was like all excited. Was like, “I’m so proud of you. This is going to be so exciting. You’re home at a reasonable hour, over the weekends and things like these. How was it?” Yada, yada, yada. I remember looking at her and just saying something to the effect of, “You know what, I absolutely hate it.” I said it in a positive way though. I said, “But look, here’s the thing. Don’t worry. I’m going to stay at this company. I’m going to do well. I’m going to do really, really well until I can find out what it is that I’m really going to do with my life because I can guarantee you that this is not for me and this corporate world was not for me.”

I knew right then and there that that was not going to be the life for me. At that point in time, I had to figure out what to do while still working my job, while still working my job. Like I said, having this job for some people, it’s not bad. I just knew that it wasn’t what I was called to do. I began having some thoughts, began having these thoughts into just beginning to consider deeper, really considering deeper what I was going to do.

The thoughts were different. When I first had the thoughts of, “Oh freedom. I’m going to do something that I enjoy and create life.” Yeah, it sounds really great but let’s be specific. When it came to the thoughts about specificity, I had none. The thoughts began to be different. It’s like, “I know I’m going to do something else.” I know I’m going to do something else. I didn’t know what it was. At that point in time, listening to me speak right now, I looking back, I was the average middle class white dude American. Like I mentioned, I was raised in the family in the lineage of just a bunch of middle class dudes and average folks. They were really good, down to earth people, blue collar hard working American people. That’s to a certain extent who then and now I see myself as.

Hey, this is Brant. 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 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 directly to www.brantphillips.com/coaching. Now, let’s get back to the show.

I got to a point I didn’t want that anymore. I’m not talking negatively about anybody, but I did not want that for me. I wanted something better. I was just to the point I was pissed off. I was pissed off at the way that my life was. I was pissed off at what I was doing. I knew that this company wasn’t going to provide for me what I wanted. Really, the big question was that it was time for Brant to look in the mirror and just have this conversation with myself like heart-to-heart, man-to-man, eye-to-eye with myself. “What was I going to do to make a change? What was I going to do to do something different? Because if you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’re going to keep getting what you’ve always gotten.” I wanted different results. I wanted different results.

At that point in time, I didn’t have any business experience. I didn’t even know other people were really entrepreneurs. I certainly didn’t know real estate investors. Looking back at that, I lived in an apartment when I started working at that job and didn’t know anything about real estate, being an entrepreneur. What I did though from just beginning with those thoughts on my mind, just considering other possibilities, I just really held on to and believed, wholeheartedly believed even when I didn’t have a lot of facts to surround it with quite frankly. I just began to believe that I could do something big with my life. I could begin to create a lifestyle that I wanted. I could find a way to get rich. Those were some absurd thoughts coming from where I came from, my family had come from.

I began to grow this burning desire inside. I’ll tell you what, I’ve never been afraid to work and I’ve never been afraid to grind. That’s what I always wanted to do. This part of my life when I’m in my early 30s now and so I’m looking at I’ve been out of college for like 10 years. Quite frankly, my wife and I, we didn’t have anything, asset wise, to the point where we started a family. We’re paying off our credit cards. I did end up taking a small student loan when I was in college. My wife had a student loan. We’re doing the Dave Ramsey thing and paying that off. Just getting to a place where we could be debt free, the Dave Ramsey, “I’m debt free.”

I just look at it and I’m like, “All right, 10 years, this is where we’re at. 10 years and we have nothing, asset wise.” I’m like, “This does not look good for my future if I don’t make some drastic changes.” I wasn’t playing the victim or anything like that. I was just like, “This is not going to work. I want to have assets. I want to make money but I want to have fun. I want to do other things. I want to wake up every day and be excited with what I do.” That’s eventually, look at my life now. I write books, I do seminars. I have The Breakthrough at the Beach event and do private coaching with my students and help them to do the same things. I’m literally living the life that I really desired. Of course, what I desire is to motivate and educate others.

Going back to my story and how I got involved with real estate is a question you may be wondering about and it’s a question I get from time to time. Here’s what happened. I’m working this job and hating it, but I’m doing well. I’m finishing number one or number two every single year in sales. At that time, that equated to what? Like 50, $60,000 was my salary. We’re talking about the early 2000s, 2000 what? 2003/2004 at this point something like that. It was okay income I guess. We could pay the bills.

Around this time, my wife had a family reunion. My wife is an East Coast girl. She’s a Philly girl. She had a family reunion that we were going to go to. It’s out on the East Coast. We flew out to East Coast. She had told me about one of her family members. It was like some distant cousin or something like that. She didn’t even know him really well but she told me that he was an entrepreneur. She knew that he was mega wealthy and did some real estate stuff. That’s about all she knew.

I’m like, “All right. I’m going to find this dude and pick his brain because I was just hungry for information.” When the student is ready, the teacher appears my friends. I went to this reunion. I’m just like, “I’m going to meet this guy and see what’s up.” I met him. He wasn’t even there that long which sucked. We didn’t even talk that long. It was like a punch bowl kind of conversation. I remember we’re in this living room and at this house that we’re at and we’re just talking, trying to make small talk. I just start coming out a little bit blunt with him like, “Hey man, I hear you’re an entrepreneur in real estate, doing pretty well. I’m in the corporate world, not digging it too much. What advice would you have for someone who wants to start a business and leave this life that I have right now?”

He started telling me about real estate. He basically started telling me what I’m doing with you guys. He started telling me about his story and how he got started. He was probably in his mid-50s I guess at that time. He said that he started by investing in real estate, buying some rental properties. Eventually bought some apartment complexes and now he’s doing massive developments and stuff like that.

I’m like, “Dude that sounds incredible. It’s really hard for me to even see myself as a real estate investor. What should I do?” He was just like, “This is so just personal development turn it up kind of stuff.” He’s like, “You have to take action. You have to take your destiny in your own hands. You can do anything that you set your mind to.” It was just small talk like that. It’s something now that I’ve heard like a million times. I never really heard anybody speak to me that way where not that they were, sure I’d had heard people speak that way and like, “Oh, you can do it.” It wasn’t people who were also experiencing results.

He was saying these things to me but they had a weight with them, the words that he spoke. That started it for me on real estate. Like a million light bulbs began to go off on just real estate, real estate, real estate. There’s a million ways to make money in real estate. I’m like, “What do I do now?” I was like, “What am I going to do now?” I began to read books. I began to read books about real estate. That’s where it started. Really, just one or two books and I began to take action.

There was immediately a lot of things I loved about real estate. I think one of the biggest things for me was the real estate offered the ability to create something from nothing. Basically, I had no money at that time. Real estate provides this creative option to do deals with no money down. I know that they don’t all go that way, with doing no money down deals although most of ours do these days, but that opportunity existed, it was there. I was like, “This is for me because of its ability to just get out there. I could start hustling and putting deals together and have the opportunity or the ability to do zero down deals.” Even that that possibility existed, my mindset was just, “I’m going to find a way to make that happen.”

There was the ability to create passive investments. There were deals that month after month were going to put cash in my pocket. My tenants could pay a principal down. There was all these things, the ability of leverage. Leveraging money, leveraging time, leveraging knowledge, all these things that we could leverage in this business that began to just really excite me. This creating something from nothing. Of course, probably number one reason everyone is attracted to real estate is because you can get wealthy. I was like, “I could get rich. I could get wealthy. I could live the American dream. I could leave my job and invest and do things with houses. I love houses.” Everybody loves houses. Just so many aspects of the business resonated with me. That is where it all started, at the end of 2006.

I literally went to a real estate networking club January of 2007 and bought my first house before the end of that same month, in January of 2007. I bought my first deal with, I used a credit card believe it or not. One of the credit cards we had just finished paying off. I used a credit card to use as my down payment. I bought a total of 10 houses 2007. I bought 10 more in 2008. Soon thereafter began putting partnerships, raising private money and all those types of things. I had about 25, got about 25 rental properties at the beginning of 2009. That’s when I quit my job. I have been blowing and going since 2007 when I bought that first deal and still buy rental properties today. We flip more than we rent. That’s all depends on a market. It depends on a market. We’re going to take whatever opportunity that each market gives us.

Today, what do we do? We have a construction company that I started in 2009 that specializes in investment property construction. We do new construction development meaning we’re building new homes and selling those. Of course, I do coaching and teaching, mentoring live events and things like that, Breakthrough at the Beach.

Here’s the deal. I just feel called to motivate and educate others man. Inspire and equip others to create results in business but also really equip them with things that they need to go out and create success in life as well because, I don’t want you to become what I became. What did I become? I became what I would call myself as a one-dimensional douchebag quite frankly. I’m sorry if that’s offensive to some but that’s what I was. I got on this path where I just got really focused on making money. Really bottomed out in terms of my marriage, my relationship with God. I was drinking way more than I should have. That was getting to a really dark place.

Long story short, I didn’t want that to be who I was. Really, it was who I was seeing a lot of the people that I was involved with in business. Even coaching because I was doing real estate coaching at that time. I’m like, “This is a pretty common thing where people are focused on making money. Money is going to solve everything. They find out it’s not. Unfortunately, at that point in time when they find out it’s not all sunshine and rainbows when you’re just focused on making money because you are really neglecting these other areas of your life. It’s really dark and it’s really ugly, and it’s really messy.

Look, if you only get one thing from me, listen to this podcast, you never listen again, that’s cool, but just consider, there is so much more to life than just making money. There is so much more to life than just making money. When I was down, the path I went on was putting it all back together. I knew that I was going to continue to do business and make money but I was like, “How can I make money, generate the income and the net worth that I want and make a lot of money? But also incorporate those four pillars, the four that I mentioned on the first show, faith, family, fitness and finances? How could I intertwine and incorporate all these things to do?” Because the financial part of my life was doing really well.

Like I said, those are the four legs of a table, the four pillars. I had this really strong financial leg and it’s well-built. At the same time, I was so disconnected in the other areas of my life. I don’t care how strongly you build one leg of your table. I’ve seen dudes who are in great shape and that’s about it. There is not much depth there when you talk, talk, start talking to them about spiritual things and they’re broke and their relationships suck. Guys who are really well-to-do financially, they may think like that’s a security. If you’re broken spiritually, you’re just hollow on one side. I don’t care. If your marriage is on the rocks or you get divorced and your children don’t want anything to do with you when you get older, I don’t care.

This is often how many times that men will lose it all. We talk about or I will talk about in my podcasts about a have it all kind of lifestyle. Having it all, not just the money, all areas being connected in your faith, family, your fitness and your finances, having it all. The path of being the one-dimensional dude, we just make a lot of money, that is often times the path of losing it all because all that you have is money. That’s when guys fall into affairs, sedation with drugs and alcohol and they end up losing it all because they didn’t take the time to invest in those other areas of life.

That was really just what I came to the realization of and really what I want this podcast to be about is my path. I’m putting it back together but helping you out there. You may be struggling in one or more areas of your life and business but I’m here to encourage and to impress upon you that when you begin committed to creating results and taking the actions that are correlated with creating the results that you desire that you can have this have it all life, this have it all life. It doesn’t mean you’re going to be a millionaire tomorrow. It doesn’t mean that you’ll ever be a millionaire. It just means that you can daily make a commitment and invest and strengthen and improve all areas of your faith, family, fitness and your financial situation.

When you begin to do that, when you do what I essentially did and I chose, my wife was leaving me. She was on the brink at least. My mother-in-law, other people were telling her, “Leave Brant. You need to get out.” It was the bottom. It was a dark place. When I was there, I chose to fight. I chose to fight.

I’ll tell you and this is part of the entrepreneur type of mindset is when your back is against the wall, when your back is against the wall, you need to be wired and create the mindset that you’re coming out swinging. That you’re coming out swinging. You’re not going to stay there long. I chose to fight. I chose to fight for my marriage. I chose to fight for my relationship with God, find a new connection and reestablish what my purpose really was and what my calling on this earth really is. I began to realize that I was made for a lot other things than just making money. I want to help serve. I want to help lead. I want to help follow from others.

I want what this podcast is about. I want to share my message with the world in hopes of inspiring others and equipping others. Even if it’s just one, maybe it’s just you, to consider you can be more. You can do more no matter where you’re at with your life and with your business that you have choices. You and only you my friend can change your reality. You and only you my friend can change your destiny if you would just take time to consider those thoughts. That those same things and possibilities that I told you about that I began to consider, that they exist for you as well, if you will first make that commitment and then begin to take action. It’s all about taking actions in order to create results.

For me, coming from that place of darkness, I simply made a choice. I made a choice to fight. I made a choice to be committed to living a life that was not one-sided, not being that one-dimensional dude that I talked about, just making money but rather to live by this code. This code that I call the F4. Go out and create results. Go out and create results. That’s it.

That is my story my friends. That is what this podcast is about. I would love for you to continue to listen, take a few minutes out of your day. Some shows will be shorter than this, some will be longer. I don’t really know. This is a new venture for me. One thing I know is that I love and appreciate each and every one of you. I appreciate you listening to the show. Until next time, I look forward to helping you create results in your life and your business.

Leave a Reply