How Cody Sperber Completely Screwed Everything Up & Still Got Rich: An EOFire Classic from 2021

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like The Product Boss. Today, we're pulling a timeless EO Fire episode from the archives, so the giveaway may not be active. And we'll be breaking down how Cody Sperber completely screwed everything up and still got rich. Who is Cody? Well, he is a real estate investor. He's completed over 1 ,500 deals. He's a founder of Clever Investor and co-founder of the$100 Million Academy. It's an online education platform for investors and entrepreneurs.

0:37and has over 1.2 million Instagram followers. And today, Fire Nation will be talking about how it's not about one big win. It's about stacking little wins along the way. It's developing your core skills and capabilities on your journey. And Fire Nation, proximity is power. Leverage is power. We'll talk about that and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Cody and our sponsors. Online Marketing Made Easy podcast, hosted by Amy Porterfield, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with a focus on online business, including digital courses, list building content, and more.

1:12Online Marketing Made Easy breaks down big ideas and strategies into actionable step-by-step processes. A recent episode that will help you get more results with a whole lot less stress is on four ways to avoid burnout. Listen to Online Marketing Made Easy wherever you get your podcasts. Leveraging fractional staffing might just be the key to unlocking growth for you and your business. Get started today with an exclusive offer from Belay. Download their latest resource, The Power of Productivity, for free. Just text FIRE to 55123. That's F-I-R-E to 55123 to get started. Cody, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something interesting about yourself that most people don't know.

1:56Yeah, first off, what's up, John? Thanks for having me on. What's up, Fire Nation? Um, something that's a lot of people don't know, which, which is actually, I'm kind of a, it's funny because I'm a huge germaphobe and I have some weird OCDs, uh, where I can't leave the house without turning off some of my lights. If I walk out of the house and I see, uh, like the closet light on, I will literally get, if I know it's on, even though I'm trying to leave and I'm in a hurry, I will literally go back in the house and turn the closet light off. and the germaphobe thing which doesn't really help me during a pandemic or maybe it really helps you during a pandemic well i you know it's funny is i actually kind of i'm swinging the other way now because i also have that entrepreneur challenge inside me where i hate being told what to do so i went from being like super germaphobic like if you went to my office there was like you know and i back everywhere and i was always washing my hands to now i'm almost feeling like I'm swinging the other way where it's like making me frustrated that I have to wash my hands and use it in it back so much.

3:01Yeah. It's the interesting thing about germs. I mean, I was actually just camping in Joshua tree last weekend. And one of our friends that was out there has a two-year-old and this two-year-old was just crawling on her hands and knees all over our campsite, going under the picnic table, just like picking up dirt and scraps of food and like all this other crap that was falling and just putting it into her mouth. And I was just like, Vanessa, said, do you want your daughter to be doing that? She's like, oh yeah. Like that's how they build their immune system. They like eat dirt and all that crap.

3:30And I'm like, okay, not my kid. Totally go forward and make it happen. But it is one of those things you do here. It's just like, you can definitely go way too far in the other direction of like, oh my God, everything is like killed. Everything's sterile. Your immune system never adapts to being able to take anything on. And then again, something like this global pandemic happens and you're like, uh-oh, is my immune system where I need it to be. So definitely a couple of cool shares, Cody. We'd appreciate that. And one thing that I'm pretty fired up about is just this topic, you know, about how you completely screwed up, not just something, but everything, and you still got rich.

4:08And this is a fascinating topic because I know having spoken to now, you know, well over 2 ,500 entrepreneurs on this show. And, you know, speaking to entrepreneur fire nation a lot, um, that a lot of people who have never quote unquote made it or gotten rich, they seem to think there's just like this one chance they get. And if they don't hit it out of the ballpark and just hit a grand slam on that one first try, they're doomed forever. They're living under a bridge or eating out of some trash can that's on fire. Like they just have literally, that's the perception. But the reality is that you know, and that I know, and that all the past guests that I've had on have tried to share and get across to my audiences.

4:48Listen, you can literally screw up everything for years and years and years. Then you get one thing right, just one thing, and you can become filthy, stinking rich. So break this down for us, Cody. How can you screw everything up and still win at this game of life? Just think about your own personal journey, John. I can only imagine you've interviewed so many people. When you first were starting out, you had this vision of kind of what you wanted to do. But as you started taking steps to actually, you know, put in the work and make it happen for yourself, how many new things constantly just unfolded in front of you?

5:24I mean, literally, ignorance is absolute bliss when it comes to something like this, because if I had known what was going to be involved with growing this media empire, like I probably would have been too scared to start, but I didn't know. So you're right. I I just had to start and I found out a bunch of things along the way and just had to keep knocking them out. If you don't have ambition or passion for whatever it is you're doing, you're not going to make it through the fire. So, I mean, that's a core thing that you got to have. And if you don't have it right now and you're working a dead end job and you're one of those people that says, oh man, I don't want to go to work today or it's the weekend.

5:54I can't wait for the weekend so I could take off and chill and barbecue and stuff. You're in the wrong profession and you need to do whatever it takes to find what your purpose in life is because I never feel like I'm going to work. I'm so obsessed with what I do. It's all I think about all the time. And I love it. I actually get irritated when things get in the way of me living my life's purpose. So that's kind of the preface of it. But it's not about one big win. It's stacking little wins along the way. And it's about developing your core skills and capabilities as you're on your journey. I can envision trying to start a podcast.

6:32I don't have a podcast, but I can envision starting a podcast and realizing, oh my God, I got to know how to get listeners. I got to learn how to do graphic design. I got to learn how to talk properly and be concise. And there's so many other skills, sales skills, business skills that go into being able to do what you do. I can only imagine how many little steps unfolded in front of me. So for me, I've always been the underdog. I've always been that person that uh when I when I was a kid I had extreme hyperactivity disorder what they called it um I was on Ritalin my dad was a really he's a he's my hero he's an amazing human being he used to walk into my room and tell me hey don't listen all the teachers and doctors and everybody don't listen to your mom you shouldn't be taking this crap and he would switch out my Ritalin with a multivitamin, like a little, so awesome.

7:24And tell my mom, Oh yeah, I gave it to him because he always told me that's your superpower kid. Like, don't ever forget that. Like, that's going to be the thing that's going to take you far in life. And, and so I was always, if I was into something, I was obsessed with it. Otherwise I totally neglected it. And that's why I did poorly in school. And I'm sure a lot of people listening to this can probably relate to some of this. I was always passed over, pushed around. I was bullied. I was sidelined. I was the underdog. And I didn't understand it as a kid. But as you grow up, I got used to being with my back against the wall.

7:59I got used to being in a pressure situation where I was always trying to perform. And as an adult, as an entrepreneur, it's the greatest thing ever. Were you like that on any level, John? Absolutely. I mean, for me, I was just that person who was always struggling to truly envision like, what is that passion that I have in life? And I didn't find it in my teens. I didn't find it in my twenties. It was literally all the way to my early thirties before I was like, oh, okay, I don't have to do this job that I know I'm going to hate for the next 40 years. So it absolutely took time. And so that's why when I talk to people that are, you know, 15, 20, 30, 15, they're like, you know what?

8:37Like, I still don't feel like I found my thing. I'm like, Hey, sometimes it just takes longer. And sometimes we're not all born as entrepreneurs, but we grow and develop into entrepreneurs because that was me for sure. I wasn't selling baseball cards at 12 years old. I wasn't running around like, you know, selling newspaper. I wasn't doing anything entrepreneurial at all until I was 32 years of age. So it came to me later in life, not late in life, but later in life. And I really do love Cody, how you talked about stacking little wins. And for me, two game-changing books that I read back in 2012, when I was getting my entrepreneurial journey going, is The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson and The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy, because those books talk about just that, stacking these little wins.

9:22And when you stack these little wins over time, they give you this slight edge, which turns into a massive edge. They compound and they give you this compound effect into massive, massive wins. So Fire Nation, when you look back over a month and you're like, I didn't really accomplish anything big this month. Hey, what are the little things that you did? Like what are the little things you're stacking that are over six months, 12 months, 24 months going to cause massive, massive wins. So I want to kind of move into Cody a little bit, you know, about why this game is rigged. I mean, you know, I know that you screwed everything up in your life at least once and you're still winning and you're still able to be financially successful.

10:02But you were able to identify because of that, that this game is rigged. So talk to us about what exactly that phrase means. And of course, how we as Fire Nation can beat that rigged game. I got into real estate about 16 years ago. And as an investor, I know Money Down create a real estate investor. And so I have very little resources. So I was looking around trying to figure out how to make money and what I was going to do with my life. I was just coming out of the Navy. And I was like, okay, I got to figure something out. And I, at a certain point, I wanted to be a history teacher. And I went and talked to the history professors down at San Diego State University.

10:39And I said, how much do you guys make? And they started laughing and they said, look, kid, we got to have two jobs just to survive. And so I was looking around for something. And that's when I discovered no money down real estate investing. It was because a friend flipped a house and made$80 ,000. And, you know, a couple months before that, we were partying and he had nothing to his name. And now he's driving a brand new Mercedes and had all this money. And I was like, how did you do that? He's like, I did this, this process called wholesaling, where I flipped a house and I made this money and I didn't have to have a real estate license.

11:09I didn't have to have, you know, deep pockets. I didn't have any previous experience. Somebody showed me how to do it. And I, I did it. And that was the first, like one of the first times where I realized like, what don't I know about making money? What don't I understand? What wasn't taught to me in school? And unfortunately, a lot of people grow up, they don't have financial intelligence. We're not taught how to be great at making money. Not really making money. We're taught to get a job, you know, and that whole spiel where, you know, you're conditioned from your teachers and your parents and your church and school that get a good, you know, good grades and get a good job and you work your way up the corporate ladder.

11:50And so once I discovered that there's this whole world of creative real estate out there, I just went down the rabbit hole. And when I say the game is rigged, there's a million potholes and hurdles in your way. But financial intelligence takes energy and effort. I'm horrible at math. I love to make money. And the two aren't required to go together. And I look at this thing and I go, all right, there needs to be more education out there taught, especially if we go upstream and and work with young kids, uh, which is a lot of the charity work and stuff that I do, um, works with underprivileged kids.

12:27But, uh, it's because I got to get them young and I got to change their language patterns. Their relationship with money needs to change. They have to understand that people that are, you know, running like a big corporate businesses, they don't want you to break free and go and start your own business and be their competitors. They want you to follow the rules and sit in the seat. And it's kind of that old school mentality where they just want you to follow the rules. And for me, second, I started asking better questions. Why? Why did these things happen? Why aren't they teaching these things?

13:03And I started going down the rabbit holes and I started finding some good mentors in my life. Everything started to shift. And what you'll find is once you start down that path, it's impossible not to stop. Your whole life changes. So I love that phrase that you use, Cody. Financial intelligence takes energy and effort. And it does, Fire Nation, it really does take energy and effort. And that's why I look back and I was so financially illiterate when I graduated high school and when I graduated college, both. It took me literally to go into John Hancock and be in corporate finance before I was able to get some financial literacy in my late 20s, which is pathetic.

13:41And I mean, the fact that we allow everybody to graduate high school knowing algebra, but not how to balance a checkbook or even have any money management skills, there's no other word for it. It's just disgusting. And like, I'm not a big conspiracy theorist, but the reality is it's like, why? Why do we not even have those basic life skills in high school? Basic, basic life skills. I mean, do they want us to get into debt? Because once they get us into debt, then we're stuck. You know, we're stuck doing this crappy job or that crappy job. And we're just under a weight of debt. And it's just absolutely sad.

14:17Like I was free to launch Entrepreneurs on Fire, which brought me to financial freedom because I was debt free because I went to college on an army scholarship. So I graduated with no debt there. and I was able to save up some money as an officer in the army for four years. But man, all of my friends that got massacred in debt for college, like they couldn't get out of that and they had to take jobs they don't want and a lot of them now have careers they don't want and they hate and they dislike all because of that. So again, I don't like to do conspiracy theory stuff, but I mean, to me, it's just unbelievable.

14:50And I'll give another shout out to my time at Joshua Tree just this past week because you sit around the campfire a lot, you have a lot of conversations, but one thing, you know, I was hanging out with a couple of people, you know, speaking of San Diego, you're, where you're, you're located at Cody. St. A's is, is a, is a high school in San, in San Diego and it's a private high school, but guess what? They had this middle term semester that for one month they had this class called life skills. And it is exactly what it sounds like. Like you learn life skills in high school. Like who would have thunk it?

15:23Like, why does it take like a private school in San Diego to come up with this idea that's not mandatory in all public schools? Like it's absolutely baffling to say the very least. So big, big, uh, shout out to St. A's. You know, we got some great teachers over there, obviously, and they're doing some good things. Let's now talk Cody about the proximity effects. I mean, I'm a huge proponent and I've talked about it a lot on this show, why mentors matter, how my mentor, Jamie Masters, back in 2012, guided me through the launch and how I've had mentors since then, Lewis Howes and others who have guided me in different parts of my business.

16:02But talk about that. Talk about the proximity effect and break down why mentors matter. There are certain power principles out there that just you got to adhere to. Proximity is power. Leverage is power. You've taken yourself as far as you can take yourself. You got to where you're at because of your personality and your ambition and your skill, current skill set and all your core capabilities and all that stuff. So you made it there, but there's different levels of life that you're going to be constantly unlocking. And the way that you get exposed to a new set of principles is typically through a relationship and principles are just a fancy way to say, you know, rules of the game.

16:46Right. And if you want to unlock that next level of life, you've got to get exposed first and foremost. So you've got to get around the right people that are already playing the game at that level. And then when you get there, what's going to happen, and this has been my journey every single time, is first you get exposure. Then you start to get obsessed with it, and you start to try to mirror and imitate it, and you try to learn from those people. And then something really weird happens. You actually go backwards for a small period of time. and it's a really odd feeling and this is the part where you've got to have the courage you've got to have the commitment and the laser-like focus of no I know this is what I'm meant to go through this pain I'm meant to get put underneath this pressure because it's going to mold me and make me stronger and make me more capable because when you try to do new things that are outside your current comfort zone you're going to screw stuff up and you're going to get that childlike feeling inside where oh my god I'm not good enough I don't know if this is going to work and you're going to start listening to all the voices of the people around you and all those little voices in your head, those self-limiting beliefs.

17:50And you're going to start to take steps backwards and it's going to feel really odd, but that's exactly where you want to be. Because what happens over time, you start to figure things out and start stacking those little wins. And then boom, you start propelling forward. And next thing you know, you're at that next level. You unlocked it. And mentors have moved the needle more than anything else in my life. A guy named Lyle Wall, I was really struggling to get my creative real estate business up off the ground for months and months and months. I was flying all over the country. You got to go back 16 years, no social media.

18:22Uh, you know, if you wanted, there was very limited information online. Um, and I had to fly over the country and go to these events and workshops and bootcamps to try to figure this thing out. And I was struggling big time. I could not put, put a deal together to save my life. and it wasn't until I met Lyle, this is the stuff you can't learn in books. This is the stuff that you really need to be focusing on. And he, he added a layer into my life of accountability that I never had, uh, except for, for my dad. And so, uh, when I say proximity is power, when I say you got to leverage other people's skills, resources, time, money, energy, it is the number one thing that has got me to where I am because I am a C &D student.

19:07Like I said, I have ADD. I still have ADD. I'm not the fastest, not the most talented, but I win. And people look at my lifestyle now, they see the cars and the mansions and the millions of followers and all that stuff. And they're like, geez, this guy's got his stuff together. I'm a hot mess. I just have gotten really good at putting the right people around me in the right seats of the bus, working on the right activities, and at the same time, I've gotten good at serving my way into proximity of powerful people. And when I did that, and I put all that together, magic started to happen. I'm a hot mess, Fire Nation.

19:45If there's one quote I'm going to pull out from Cody, that's definitely the quote. And I'm not going to bore you with my mentor story, Fire Nation, because you've heard it before. I mentioned it briefly as the intro to this question, but you just know how much I believe in this as well and proximity too. It's so, so key. So, so important. And Fire Nation, we have some amazing, amazing content coming up as soon as we get back from thinking our sponsors. If you're a sales leader, then you know that expectations are at an all-time high these days. You've got cold calls to make, relationships to maintain, and deals to close.

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22:01Text FIRE to 55123. That's F-I-R-E to 55123 to get started. With our first baby on the way, there are a lot of things on my mind I haven't previously put a ton of thought into, like life insurance. And getting covered is fast and simple when you use policy Genius. Policy Genius makes it easy to compare life insurance quotes from America's top insurers to find your lowest price fast. With Policy Genius, you can find life insurance policies to start at just$292 per year for$1 million of coverage. Some options offer same-day approval and avoid unnecessary medical exams. And Policy Genius works for you, not the insurance companies, so they don't have an incentive to recommend one insurer over another.

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23:24And the reality is everybody listening is going to get crushed or ridiculously wealthy. Like there's just literally, there's no in between. It's one or the two. So let's talk about how Fire Nation can get on that ladder, which is ridiculously wealthy. Well, think about the absurdities that are going on right now, you know, without getting political without getting into policy or belief systems. Everything is out of control. Everything is moving at warp speed. And we're opening up right now a whole new set of opportunities. This transfer of wealth that's occurring right before our eyes. I was lucky enough to be getting into the real estate business pretty heavy during the 2008 crash.

24:12I made tens of millions of dollars buying foreclosures. I made a ridiculous amount of powerful relationships that have catapulted my education businesses to whole new levels during that time of extreme transformation and adversity. I didn't know if I was going to ever have that again in my life. I kind of looked back and I think, wow, thank God I was there. And I had that opportunity to do something with it. And here we are again. And because of COVID, we're there again. And there is a massive shift. And you're seeing it with companies like Zoom, where their stocks are just, you know, going through the roof because everybody's moving online.

24:53And there's a whole digital economy that's opening up because of social media, because of what's going on. People are now being disconnected from their workplaces. They're working remote and they're going online. They're shopping online. They're doing their business online. They're meeting relationships. Everything's online. And so, So this is the story of the haves and have-nots. This is the story of two types of people. I think somebody is listening to this. They're going to be sitting there, and they're going to be uncertain. They're going to be paralyzed in fear. They're not going to take massive action.

25:24They're not going to take advantage of this opportunity. It's going to be like a train going down the track, just like when Apple stock came out or Amazon stock came out. They're going to be sitting there, and they see it. they see the opportunity but it just goes right by them and they witness it and they say oh man i missed it maybe next time and they're going to continue to get pushed around and beat up and and sidelined or there's another group which i think is probably the majority of your listeners that's going to see and feel this opportunity and say you know what i might have missed out on some other things in the past but not this i'm going to get prepared and i want to help people get out in front of the wave of what's happening because I know real estate really well and the tsunami of evictions and defaults and issues that are coming just on the real estate side, let alone student loan payments, credit cards, you name it, everybody's in default right now.