Episode 162: Empower Your Freedom, Create Your Future & Build a Life Worth Living

[INTRODUCTION]

 

[00:00:31] Jon Berghoff: Achieve your goals podcast listeners, Jon Berghoff here standing in for Hal Elrod, I got to spend some time with Hal last week in Austin and happy to tell everybody he is on his way to recovery, healing. He’s got great support, a lot of positive things around him at this important time in his time. If for some reason you are tuning in and you don’t know why I’m standing in for Hal or who I am, you are always welcome to go back and listen to episode 152.

 

Today, we have a treat for you, you are about to listen in on a conversation that was recorded at our Quantum Leap Mastermind, live mastermind meeting that took place just a couple of weeks ago in Austin. This is an interview that I did on stage with David Osborn. You are going to hear David’s story in this interview. You are going to hear him sharing his wisdom which super exciting you can find that wisdom not only in this conversation but in his book Wealth Can’t Wait, which depending on when you are listening to this episode it releases well I’m saying tomorrow but if you are listening to this, it’s either today or whenever. That’s all confusing, you get my point. This episode is releasing the day after his book, Wealth Can’t Wait is going live. So, go check out Wealth Can’t Wait, you are going to love this episode.

 

I first met David… It was kind of a funny story. It was through Hal and Hal wanted to get both David and myself interested in the UFC. I wasn’t an UFC fan, many of you know Hal has been an UFC fan for a long time.

 

[00:02:03] Jon Berghoff: So, in classical Hal Elrod fashion, he flies me to Vegas. he says I’m just going to pay for you to come so that you can’t debate whether or not this is worth your money or you time.

 

So, he flies me in and that was my first time meeting David Osborn was Hal, myself, David a good friend of ours, watching a Conor McGregor fight in Las Vegas. I remember from that trip, the fights were cool, it was great, but I had a lot more fun the next day hanging out with David and his awesome wife Traci.

 

By the way congrats to David and Traci, they just celebrated the birth of Luke who has an older sister Bella, they are an incredible family. He cares a lot about not only the success of his business but the health and well-being of his family. You are going to love this conversation at least I hope you love this conversation, enjoy.

 

[INTERVIEW]

 

[00:02:51] Jon Berghoff: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, how about a big round of applause for our special guest David Osborn.

 

[00:02:56] David Osborn: I was talking to Hal just now back in the room and you know really what I do for Hal is I get him food because I’m really into eating healthy and I was talking to him. You get way too much credit in life for just getting people food.

 

If you just give people food they love you right? like you can be dating a girl, I don’t know if you remember there was a guy back in the day you are like, “She’s not very nice she treats my friends terribly, she doesn’t look after the house but the food is amazing, I think I’m going to marry her, it’s incredible.”

 

Because good food man it’s like so, I mean I love Hal and Ursula and it’s just great to know them, but I don’t know that I do that much. We get him food, we are just there for him. I’m going to stand for Hal I told him that when it happened. I’m very goal driven, I actually have you on my goals, I don’t know if I’ve ever showed you that but it says be there for Hal Elrod and the Elrod family and Sophie and Ursula and Howie.

 

Really all I do is whatever I’m asked, but the one thing I thought I could do was you know, sir we got a great vegetarian organic chef and she makes me food. So, I just, soon as I heard about this I said hey, just whatever you make for us, make double. That’s what we’ve been doing now for a while and it’s pretty good food and so.  

 

[00:03:57] Jon Berghoff: That’s awesome.

 

[00:03:57] David Osborn: Food goes a long way.

 

[00:03:57] Jon Berghoff: That’s awesome, that’s really cool, it’s a testament to either you were here this morning, Hal was sharing some of his strategies which are on one hand sophisticated, on another hand very heartfelt and they are bringing love to his relationships. It’s something he’s always cared about and it’s really cool to get to see how that’s reciprocated.

 

[00:04:18] David Osborn: I don’t know that anyone has impacted me as quickly in my life as Hal. As you get older in life they say you’ve made most of your friends, it’s not that easy for new people to get in, you have a full life. But I met Hal just like a year and a half ago it seems like. We were keynote speakers together at a conference and I would tease him constantly about who is better, but I actually know he is way better than me.

 

But he responded like, I was better than you, they clapped longer when they clapped for me. We were teasing each other but then I got to know who he is and I got to know the man’s heart, and he’s got just such a good heart and that’s really what makes it easy to love somebody and easy to care for somebody.

 

He did weird stuff like sent me a pair of track pants. I was trying to find them I was going to wear them today. They got like a P on them like what’s that brand? Like he just love that brand…

 

[00:05:02] Jon Berghoff: The perfect pants.

 

[00:05:02] David Osborn: …The perfect pants right, you are going to wear these pants and these shoes I’m wearing now because of Hal, he’s like, “Oh, you got to get these thin shoes. He’s like got to have these thin shoes. They are cotton comfortable unless you wear them too long, then you kind of like start hurting.” All these weird things Hal does then he’s like a kid, like whatever he said to me super excited like, “We got to have that.”

 

We live near each other and I have a boat dock and I’m looking at this ridiculously expensive ski boat that is second hand so it’s like 90 grand, it was 150 grand last year and Hal was like, “We’ve got to have it.” I’m like, “Are you sure we’ve got to have it? Can we get like a $30,000 boat?”

 

He’s like no man, “We’ve got to have the $90,000 boat.” That’s Hal, he’s just like a big kid, he lives life to the fullest so it’s very easy to love a guy like that. So, Hal and Ursula you guys, great to have you in my life and anything I can do for you I will stand for you.

 

[00:05:51] Jon Berghoff: That’s awesome, can we give that a round of applause. That is so cool. Well David thanks for taking time to be with us today, as I’ve gotten to know you through Hal and through Mike and the GoBundance crew, it’s been really cool to see you being willing to share with anybody your life lessons about how you’ve chosen to live your life, how you’ve approached setting goals, achieving them in a really big, big, big way.

 

I’ve got in my hand here, this is an advanced reader’s copy of a book Wealth Can’t Wait: Begin Your Future Today. I would love for us to have a conversation and just hear about the journey that led to this book, the wisdom that’s in this book and I’m sure we’ll have time for some questions as well. Are you guys fired up?

 

[00:06:42] Audience: Yeah.

 

[00:06:42] David Osborn: I have the opposite of Hal’s story, like how long did it take you to write the Miracle Morning?

 

[00:06:46] Male: It took me around eight years.

 

[00:06:47] David Osborn: Okay all right. Someone the other day like told me like I wrote my book in two weeks, I’m like, “Two weeks, you are insane.” So, this has been a seven year project for me. Like I saw Sam Zell, does anyone know Sam Zell? He is a real estate guy, I’m a real estate guy so he is one of my heroes, he’s just a feisty little immigrant from Poland I believe and he’s worth like $5 billion.

 

But he said, “I just wrote a book, I think it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” And I’m like oh, I had to go up to a preference like thank you for saying that because I just wrote a book too and I think it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. This took me seven years, I’ve read it firstly 12 times. I don’t want to read it again, I’m so sick of reading my own book.

 

But I am proud of it and the impetus from this book was, a few years ago my dad got cancer actually in 2006. He was a great brave colonel and we were very close, we travelled around the world together military brats. As he was sitting there dying, like I knew he was going to die, I just took three years and as I sat with him he had like metastasis cancer in his bone and his lungs and in his brain.

 

So, it was already like there was nothing. I realized like he had so many stories that he was going to take with him and I wanted to hear those stories forever. I got a videographer to come and video him, so I got like a big bunch of those stories which he hated. He was like, “Oh you think I’m going to die?” I’m like, “Well, I’m not sure dad, but you got metastasis cancer, it might happen.” “Well I’m not going to die.” Anyway he did it for me.

 

But I thought to myself, “What if I got hit by a bus tomorrow, like what if I got killed?” Well, I’ve got young kids what would they know about me. So, I wrote this book from the perspective of like what will I leave behind for my children? What would they have that would know who was dad and how did he make it work? So, that’s really where I came from, from this.

 

That’s why probably I was so perfectionistic and Hal said that quote earlier what was it? “Stop being perfect and start being authentic right.” So, I’m really happy with it but it’s been a labor of pain and love and I’m glad it’s finally done but I am proud of it.

 

[00:08:42] Jon Berghoff: Yeah, congrats.

 

[00:08:42] David Osborn: Thanks.

 

[00:08:44] Jon Berghoff: There is a quote right here, it’s the first quote of the book on chapter one, the title of the chapter is A Matter Of Choice. ‘Every decision you make takes you one step closer to being wealthy or one step further away.’ Before you wrote this book, you made a lot of decisions in your life that qualified you to write this book. Give us a taste of that journey that led up to having this kind of wisdom to share.

 

[00:09:05] David Osborn: So, I was kind of a goofy kid, I was also military, anyone in here a military brat? Anyone a corporate brat, somebody you, or somebody, you moved a lot, anyone move a lot? So, I moved like 10 times by the time I was 13, right that’s what you do in the military, you just move all the time.

 

So, I was kind of a rolling stone a little bit and then I got to America and I’d lived mostly in England and Germany by the time I was 14. So, I was very like kind of goofy, I wasn’t really connected. I didn’t really have a culture to fall back on, I didn’t know what cool was, I didn’t know what uncool was.

 

So, I just got into America I actually had a British accent back then. Through my life there has been a lot of like ups and downs. But the one thing that I’ve always been able to count on is sort of me if that makes any sense. Like if I listen to my inner voice and I follow the wisdom from that inner voice and I make good decisions…

 

By the way, sometimes I totally ignore it and I make terrible decisions. But generally speaking the more of I listen to the inner wisdom, the more my life has become successful if that makes any sense. So, I believe there is an inner wisdom that you have that everyone of us has, call it God, call it meditation, call it whatever you personally want to call it.

 

But if you just tune into that and listen to it more often than not, because no one listens to it all the time, but listen to it more often than not, that voice will guide you to a place where life becomes more and more successful. It’s not massive change overnight, it’s actually millions of small incremental decisions that will lead you to a very positive outcome not in six months or one month, but in 10 years, 20 years and 30 years.

 

Today I would say my life is the best it’s ever been in my entire life so far and it’s because of just a thousand small tiny decisions that I built on, in spite of my detours and my bad decisions. But I built on the good decisions and I’ve self-corrected from the bad decisions and today my life is pretty epic and pretty awesome so far, I could screw it up tomorrow.

 

[00:11:01] David Osborn: I think it goes from just 1,000… Your commitment is to living a great life. If you make that commitment, then you will get answers to your questions and you follow those answers and your life becomes great. I think it’s inevitable but it all starts with that decision.

 

[00:11:15] Jon Berghoff: So, you are talking about making decisions, what is one of the best smartest decisions you’ve ever made?

 

[00:11:21] David Osborn: Well, everyone here is already making it that’s to be learning based for a lifetime, to commit to knowledge for a lifetime I would say is the number one most important thing, reading a bazillion books. Like when I was in high school, I was a Dungeon master so, anyone else in here a Dungeon master? Like people won’t even admit this, right yeah I was but there is no way I’m going out there on that whim with you buddy.

 

So, I played fantasy word playing games and I also used to read a ton of scifi and fantasy and I did that all the way up till I was about 19 or 20 and then I just put it behind me and I started reading sort more self-help books, like Think And Grow Rich, Tony Robbins Unlimited Power I remember was one of my first.

 

All of a sudden I found that instead of living in this alternate escape of space universe, I can actually live in the real world and learn things, and apply those things and as I apply them my life got better. It really was like, and again I should add to this that I was a bad student too. I got thrown out of multiple high schools.

 

So, I went to school and I had a really great father so authority was already like, I had an idea what authority was and it was a lot more impressive than the teachers that I had in school. So, I was like, “I’m not really scared of you in any way at all,” and unfortunately I was a rebel without a clue, so I also would push back a lot.

 

If I didn’t like a teacher I was pretty mouthy and so obviously teachers don’t like that, I was at private schools and they tend to ask you not to come back if you are a highly disruptive influence. So, I was disruptive. I got thrown out, I didn’t see the value in learning, I hated hypocrisy, I had no real fear of authority.

 

Then I got out of that stage too and I went to college, I didn’t really get that either but once I got into business and I saw that if I read Unlimited Power and I applied some of the concepts from Tony Robbins, or I read Think and Grow Rich, and I started holding myself accountable, I got immediate outcome in my life that was positive.

 

I made more money, I felt more confident. I had better friendships through my master minding. As soon as I saw that I got addicted to learning. Today, I’m like one of the most learning based individuals you will ever meet. Like, give me something new and I will put it to work right away. I can’t wait to learn to be a better husband, I can’t wait to be a better father, a better friend.

 

[00:13:25] David Osborn: Manage my time better, to keep my health better, and that’s all because I finally realized how applied learning can transform your life and I transformed mine. I really did, I was a lost, goofy, naughty dungeons and dragons playing kid that did a lot of drugs too in my 15 through 19 age. Today, I’m the opposite of that. I’m purposeful, I’m committed, I try to do a lot of good in the world, I love business, I love making money, I look after my health, I try to be a great dad, I try to be a great friend. All of that is from going from learning stuff that I obviously, A, didn’t value or like really honestly knowing how to kill a red dragon doesn’t serve you that much in life. So, I had a wizard character that could kill a red dragon, and it was great.

 

It seems so easy but now I’ve learned how to start businesses and how to employ great people and how to create a vision for my life and how to follow that vision and how to spend quality time with my loved ones. All these things you learn from books. I can pick up a book, what was the one Mike you recommended the other day?

 

It was the board meeting, The Family Board Meeting right, so I read that. Anyone parents in here, parents? All right, we’ve got some action there. So, what’s amazing about being a parent, I don’t know if you feel this, but you feel like you are screwing up all the time, you are like…

 

[00:14:36] Jon Berghoff: You are screwing up.

 

[00:14:36] David Osborn: …I am going to screw you up kid, I just don’t know how yet, I’m trying not to really. You have anxiety over that like it’s funny. “Am I being too nice to my kid, am I being too hard on them? Am I being too generous, am I not being generous enough?”

 

[00:14:53] Jon Berghoff: That’s awesome. I love that. One of the best decisions you’ve ever made is a commitment to lifelong learning. Any favorite books or resources currently and then…

 

[00:14:59] David Osborn: You mean other is The Miracle Morning?

 

[00:15:03] Jon Berghoff: Yeah.

 

[00:15:03] David Osborn: I love The Miracle Morning and you know what I love about it is you could be like a kid just out of high school, you could be a homeless person or you can be the CEO of a fortune 500 company, you can be the ruler of a country. You could be any of those things, read that book and apply it and change your life. Like I loved it from the simplicity of that.

 

I had a morning ritual but the miracle morning has not only improved that ritual but it’s given me that in acronym S.A.V.E.R.S. When I wake up in the morning ideally at 5:30 and I’m sitting there going okay, “Let’s see how many of these S.A.V.E.R.S I can knock out before I get out of bed.” So, I do like my silence, my affirmations, my visualizations and like out of bed at 5:45 and I’ve done three of the six.

 

So, I love The Miracle Morning, I think it’s been great from that message, it’s so powerful, so simple, so straight forward and it benefits every single person that does it. So, that’s, I’m a raving fun of that. Think and Grow Rich of course, what’s better than that. Then the other one for me is the Cashflow Quadrant anyone read Kiyosaki’s books?

 

To me business is this. You have the possibility of being financially free in the United States of America. So, you can be financially free, that means you can do almost whatever you want. There is not a lot of countries where that’s true by the way, at least 60% of the world probably don’t have that opportunity. So, that’s like 4 billion people that don’t have the opportunity we have in America.

 

Then even if you add in Europe which is a wonderful place, obviously an amazing quality of life, the possibility of succeeding above the average is much harder in Europe than it is in America. We have a giant market place, we have fairly low regulations, we have fairly low taxes compared to like England where yeah, it’s 50% in England but it kicks in at $50,000 or $60,000 a year right. So, they hit you early over there.

 

So, you do have the opportunity to be financially free and the Cashflow Quadrant shows you clearly in my opinion that you can either be an employee, self-employed business owner and investor and that’s really the journey you should be on. Employed, self-employed, business owner and then investor and ultimately you want to be that investor quadrant.

 

That means you are financially free and you have that possibility. I think Kiyosaki captured that. Again simple truth that you can see. I can see that quadrant at all time and I’m always asking myself how do I get more and more on the I quadrant, how do you become more of an investor.

 

[00:17:16] Jon Berghoff: So, you talk about that in the book, you talk about the difference between cashflow based living and asset based living.

 

[00:17:22] David Osborn: Right, yeah.

 

[00:17:23] Jon Berghoff: Share a little bit about that.

 

[00:17:24] David Osborn: So, every one of us should ultimately be asset based living. There is something called the Forbes 400, the 400 billionaires in America. Every single one of those guys on that list is on the list because they have a billion dollars of assets. Now, I don’t want to get lost in money and whether it’s good to be a billionaire, there is a lot miserable billionaires.

 

Tony Robbins said, “I met a bunch of billionaires and half of them are miserable.” So, and I met people that are so competitive and so driven they seem miserable too. But I’ve also met people that seem to have a lot of fun that have money. I think you have choices around that as well, but I think given the choice between rich and poor, rich is better than poor, that’s just my viewpoint.

 

Asset based living means you live off the cash flow from your assets, it’s actually right out of the Kiyosaki’s book. Kiyosaki says, “The rich buy stuff from their asset based income, the poor buy stuff from the money they’ve earned, therefore the poor or the middle class never get ahead.” So, if I want to buy this $90,000 boat with Hal which we would split some percentage, I would buy it using the money from my passive income.

 

So, to me it’s not harming me. But if you earn $200,000 and then you spend 50 grand on a boat you are probably insane. Because if you earn $200,000 and you are paying taxes of $60,000 now you are going to buy a $50,000 on a boat, that’s a 110 grand you are spending too much of your money.

 

But on the other hand if you make $200,000 earned and then you have property that generates $100,000 in a year, you could probably take all of that 100 if you wanted to and just spend it on living and you would never necessarily go backwards. You can never get ahead living off earned income. If you stay below the money you earn from passive income or horizontal income as we call it, you can never fall behind because the assets are always there and they are always growing.

 

I liken it to a guy that wins a lottery, he wins a million bucks in the lottery. One guy chooses $100,000 a year for 10 years and he lives off of it and he lives large and he has a great life. The other guy takes the million dollars and he goes and buys 10 single family homes, 200 grand a piece so he puts some mortgage on them.

 

So, now he’s got a million just like the other guy had, that he has $2 million worth of real estate. Now, because of taxes and managing that, he has to live on $60,000 a year because it’s a little bit less money, there is a little bit more expenses. So, he lives on $60,000 a year but he puts them all on 15 year notes.

 

[00:19:38] David Osborn: In 15 years those houses are all paid off. Now he has $2 million in assets, they probably appreciated in 15 years at least double so they are probably three or four million in assets. Now, with no mortgage payments he’s living on closer to $150,000 a year and that’s the difference between assets based living versus living off of your earnings.

 

You should look at every dollar you earn as 10 cents a year in income. So, every $10 you earn is one dollar a year on income. If you really get that from my perspective you are on the beginning of that pathway to financial freedom. So, every $10 you earn is one dollar a year in passive income forever.

 

So, if I earn $100 and I go spend it on a latte or like a dinner, I just gave up $10 a year for the rest of my life in income and that’s okay to do that. But just understand what you are sacrificing. So, if you earn $100,000 and you blow $50,000 of it on a boat like we just discussed, that $50,000 could be $5,000 a year for the rest of your life in income at a 10% return.

 

So, if I was looking at this boat off of earnings I would never buy it. But if I’m looking at it off of income, of my passive income sources, then I can always be growing my asset base without sacrificing my future wealth because you want to be financially free at some point in America. You want to be financially free, the sooner the better in America because you had that opportunity.

 

So, the question is how do you get there? The way you get there is you respect your capital and you invest it wisely. You may sacrifice a little bit in the short term, but in the long run you will be financially free. If you put aside say $20,000 a year over 10 years, that $20,000 because $200,000 but with compounding is now $500,000. If you invested it with that 10% return, you are earning $50,000 a year passive, that’s in 10 to 20 years.

 

So, that’s a tiny example of what could occur but if you have $50,000 in your passive and you are still earning 100, or 75, or 150, you are changing your entire lives destiny by creating assets that create cash flow versus living off your earned income.

 

[00:21:39] Jon Berghoff: That’s awesome. You talk about wealth traps in the book.

 

[00:21:43] David Osborn: Yeah.

 

[00:21:43] Jon Berghoff: Talk about some of these wealth traps that we can fall into.

 

[00:21:46] David Osborn: So, the biggest one is the cushy job trap and to me the cushy job is like you are working at the post office or you are a skiing instructor in Vail. I know a skiing instructor in Vail that works like 200 days a year he goes to Australia. He is one of the best skiing instructors in the world and yet he is turning 50 now. His knees aren’t feeling that good anymore.

 

At his peak he was making probably $120,000 a year as a skiing instructor. He owns one house, guess where the majority of his net worth is? In that house right. So, he bought one house, it’s probably worth $120,000. He paid it off, he’s super conservative. I’m like, have you ever thought of buying another house?

 

He goes I’ve thought about it a bunch, I’ve just never been able to do it. I’m like, well imagine if you just bought one more house, you would have doubled your net worth. So, he’s had a cushy job, he loves his job, his not financially free because he got so committed to that cushy job that he never found a way to break away.

 

I think that’s what I see a lot of people doing is they fall into new job, they are making $100,000 a year, they think that’s enough and they don’t have any tactics or strategies to build their financial freedom. So, that’s one of the big ones is the cushy wealth job.

 

[00:22:51] Jon Berghoff: You are talking about risk avoidance?

 

[00:22:53] David Osborn: Being afraid of taking risks. The biggest risk in life is not taking risk in my opinion. I used to be terrified of some of the risks I took. Opening a business is terrifying, anyone here opened a business before? So, you never know what’s going to happen, you think you are going to fail. You wake every day and that fear of failure is energizing you, it drives you.

 

Really the fear is good, it’s fun, it’s energy for your soul. But my first real estate office I opened up I remember like, I would just not be able to sleep at night, I would be able to wait watching them, we do a lease. Like my company would make $300 on our side of the brokerage fee, but at least I be like, “We got a lease, thank you Lord for the lease.”

 

But that was because my overhead was $15,000 a month, I had to cover that every month, I had $35,000 in my name back then. So, two bad months I could be out of business, I didn’t have partners. So, you’ve got to take risk in life, you gotta step out, what’s the risk really like?. In America very few people starve, it’s hard to starve in America.

 

If you have family they will usually feed you, there are people out there that will look after you. So, you are afraid of the risk but especially when you are young the big risk is shelter. How many people live on the streets? A lot of people do but a lot of them are mentally disabled or it’s a choice like they don’t want to live.

 

So, we work with the guys that do a lot of, they are trying to take all the homeless off the streets of Austin. One thing I didn’t know that I learnt recently is that a lot of homeless people they don’t want a roof over their head, they want to be under the stars, whether they are expats or they just want to be outside. So, there is a lot going on with the homeless.

 

But generally speaking if you failed in business you are probably not going to starve and you are probably not going to be without shelter, so really, what are you risking? You are not risking that much, so from my point of view risk aversion stops a lot of people. I met this really smart guy the other day and I really liked him and I was heartbroken.

 

He said, “I bought all of these real estate books 15 years ago and I read them all and they made total sense to me, but I never bought a house. I just thought it was too expensive,” and this is about Austin 10 have gone. I’m like, “Oh man, Tommy I wish you bought two houses, your life would be so different if you bought one house because Austin is more than doubled in 10 years.”

 

Just that one house you could have bought, just that one house would have doubled in social security. Like that’s risk aversion just embodied in that person an incredibly intelligent guy, smarter than me, did all the research, just could never bring himself to take action so, that’s a trap.

 

[00:25:04] Jon Berghoff: One of the things I’ve learnt from you is you are very conscious of who is in your circle of influence, your social circle, talk about that.

 

[00:25:11] David Osborn: Who are the five people you hang out with the most? That’s from Napoleon Hill so, you want to…

 

[00:25:16] Jon Berghoff: You heard it from Hal Elrod let’s just be clear on that.  

[00:25:20] David Osborn: Yeah, Hal Elrod yeah. Yeah, you want to be… It’s so difficult to be an eagle if you are surrounded by a bunch of ducks, not that I got anything against ducks. It’s very hard to achieve at a very high level if you around people that don’t have any expectation for themselves. On the other hand if you are around people, Olympic athletes or world renowned authors or amazing consultants and coaches, then it’s like you almost feel like it’s just normal to be successful.

 

So, you really want to hang out with amazingly successful people. I wasn’t that athletic as a kid, I was not un-athletic but I was not that athletic, but now I hang with people that are always up to something. They are always physically doing stuff and guess what, I’m more athletic today than I ever had been in my entire life.

 

I work out with the trainer, I do 240 workouts a year. I hike, I ski, I do all this and I go heli-skiing with people like Mike McCarthy who’s an amazing skier who kind of hurt me the other day because if somebody said, “what’s better, your golf game or your skiing?” I said, “Well, I think they are about equal.”

 

Mike said, “No way dude, you are way better at golf.” I’m like, “Oh man that hurts.” That’s why I didn’t go heli-skiing this year no. So, I’m around athletic people which forces me to be. It doesn’t force me to be more athletic, we are like clay, we move towards whoever we’re around. If you are around successful people you will be successful, it’s hard not to be.

 

If you are around people with integrity you will have more integrity. If you are around people that are crooks, you will have more. I noticed when I was in college and I was with guys, they were always talking about chicks and chasing women, I was kind of trying to do the same thing in a naughty ducky kind of ineffective way.

 

But I was like, “Oh, yeah she’s hot, yeah.” Then when I’m around straight upstanding family people I’m more of a family guy, that’s the human nature right. So, you want to really protect who you hang out with. Make sure you are with winners in all areas of life. Great family people, people that look after their health, people that are successful in business, whatever you choose.

 

If you want to give and spend your whole life in contribution like my friend Scott Harrison from Charity Water who is not driven by money but by fixing all the water in the world because there is not enough clean water, he’s an amazing human. If you want to do a lot of philanthropy I’m sure his best buds are all filled in philanthropic based.

 

That’s inspiring to me and I think I’m going to move that way as I get older. So, it’s whoever you choose to be, if you don’t surround yourself with like-minded people you will probably fail, you maybe the exception. But people will either tear you down or lift you up. I’m just very protective of being around people who lift me up.

 

[00:27:37] Jon Berghoff: Yeah, that’s awesome. I got two more simple questions and then we will open up for the group. When you think about your future and your own dreams and goals, which I know it’s always been important to you, what kinds of images or dreams do you have for yourself looking ahead however far you want to give about that give you the greatest sense of energy and fuel, and motivation?

 

[00:27:56] David Osborn: Well, so I think the reason why I’m so driven to goal setting is you go back to when I was 19 or 20 and I was going through all that stuff. One thing I realized by taking all these classes is you could kind of craft your own future. You can’t script it exactly. But if you choose something it’s a matter of choice, if you need to choose something you can get to that eventually.

 

You just have to keep plugging away and applying yourself. So, became addicted at scripting my own life, like I’m very goal driven and maybe a little OCD about it. But I have all my goals back here, I carry them with me everywhere I go, there they are. They are like a living breathing document, I call it the eight gardens of life.

 

So, I have relationship first, spiritual contribution, physical nutritional, intellectual health, lifestyle, adventure, environment, tribe, personal, material and then my business goals. So, you can find me on Facebook or Davidosborn.com and if you ask me for this I’ll send you a copy of the template. But I can script anything. So, what excites me is just whatever I put in here and then I fall short in my areas but I add to it.

 

So, the other day I noticed my daughter kind of liked Shark Tank. Now I think being an entrepreneur is the greatest opportunity you have in America. So, I immediately added a goal of watch Shark Tank 10 times with my daughter. So far I’ve failed, that I haven’t done it once but it’s on here and the odds are that in December she and I will watch 10 episodes of Shark Tank back to back.

 

She’ll be like, “Dad!”, “Just shut up and watch the show. I got to check off my goals.” That’s about where my dad comes in but so, I’m doing everything I can understanding that she is her own being and she is going to be whoever she is going to be. I’m doing everything I can to expose my daughter to entrepreneurism or what that looks like.

 

So, I just kind of crafted this and in the answer to two other things. So, it’s so important to me who I hang out with that I have a group now in Austin called the nines. To get in the group you have to be worth over $100 million. I always have to caveat this, money isn’t everything. I totally get that. But usually if you are worth $100 million, you are up to something. There is like a certain characteristic type.

 

[00:29:48] David Osborn: They are not just like eating Doritos and watching reruns of Days Of Our Lives all day right, they are up to something. So, I set a mission of masterminding with them twice this year, I got them in one so I just invited these guys. You think about prospecting and how you take a risk and I used to be afraid of prospecting then I got good at it, I wasn’t afraid of it.

 

But I’m nervous emailing like nine guys worth over $100 million, a couple of them are $50 million or $80 million and say, “Hey, would you guys like to get together for four hours to mastermind,” where I’m exposing myself to possible rejection. I’m exposing myself like nobody shows up, I’m just sitting there all by myself like, “Oh, this failed.”

 

The way I get those people around me going back to, because I want to be around people that I can learn from, that I can expand from. The way you win with those people like anyone in life is serving them. So, it’s like how can I be of service? What could be so compelling that they are willing to sit in a room for four hours and that’s how I approached that.

 

I’m always trying to find something new, whether it’s how to start a foundation or the last time it was something called conservation easements which is kind of a tax opportunity that also buys a green land for the future. So, it’s always like what can be interesting to a person worth $100 million that is bombarded constantly.

 

The reason I do that is because I know that if I hang out with better and smarter people constantly then I’m going to be forced to grow. Then lastly in terms of my vision like I have a five year vision, I keep it. This is my work journal, but at the very back I have my five year vision and I keep it with me everywhere I go and I read it, not as often as I probably should.

 

I really enjoy writing it more than everything. So, every year or so I rewrite it and it’s right here and I’m like five years from now I’m 54 years old, my wife is 47. I put in here my boy Jackson is four, well I named him Luke so I got to change that right so I got Luke. But I put in here, here is the basics, we are in great physical shape we eat very well.

 

I hired a nutritionist and an organic chef because I wanted to improve my diet. By having that person cook delicious food for me, I’ve improved my diet, we’ve been only doing it for about a year. But so, what’s amazing to me now is I’ve started noticing I go to restaurants I used to love and it tastes so salty, because they use so much salt at restaurants.

 

[00:31:51] David Osborn: I eat and I’m like almost I can’t eat this anymore and it’s so sad because I used to love eating out. I work with my personal trainer who focuses on bio-mechanics I have a killer trainer I love her, she teaches the stacking order. My relationship with Traci is great, she does her projects which keeps her happy.

 

Relationship, I have to work at a lot because I move so fast sometimes my loved one is like, “Hey, what about me?” And I’m like, “What about you? What exactly can I do for you?” She is like, “Don’t be so intense.” I’m like, “Okay, hey honey.” It’s like, talking about a lot of work. But it’s a beautiful thing and when we are getting along well like we are right now, I’m like “wow!” I’m just, I mean it’s working and it’s working in a different way than everything else.

 

My intensity does not serve me in my relationship, it’s more like companionship. What I put up here is, ‘Always remember your focus determines your reality,’ and that was written by George Lucas, any other Star Wars geeks in here? I put here Luke is a fireball, he has lots of energy, he is constantly moving.

 

But what’s funny is he’s not really like, so I’ve got Luke and now he’s just like this chill baby, he’s like, he just smiles. That’s all he ever does. He never cries or anything except when he is hungry. Contribution is a main stay of my life we give away millions of dollars every year, we support a lot of projects from charity water to scholarships to health and microfinance.

 

My friendships are amazing, I’m incredibly lucky enough to have amazing friends around me, champions of business and life. We live in three locations, my private equity fund now has a billion under management, the team is going strong, blah, blah, blah. So, I put all these stuff in here, and I’m super excited about all of it.

 

Even though it may change radically Jon, I got to craft that and script it and that’s what I enjoy. I enjoy engaging fully with life, choosing the future I want. Then sometimes it goes my way and sometimes it doesn’t, but one thing is for sure I’m participating as fully as I can. If I fail I get up recraft, rescript and go back to work.

 

[00:33:41] Jon Berghoff: I said I had two more but I just thought of another one, you will be okay with this. You just talked about how important it is for you to contribute and do that through people that you want to be around. One of the ways that you created a way to do that and I know Mike McCarthy is a big part of this, is through the GoBundance tribe.

 

I’d love to hear for this group and a number of them know about GoBundance, but some of the lessons that that journey has taught you and about surrounding yourself and creating environments for others to learn with. Because there is a lot of folks in this room who I know they have a desire to build their own tribe. So, you’ve done that in different environments, and the GoBundance one is one that has been really successful.

 

[00:34:20] David Osborn: Well keep in mind, we are terrible at social media, we just have like 130 guys that show up on a regular basis. One thing I’ve learned in my journey is this, you got to have accountability. I see a lot of really smart people miss this and I don’t know quite how to phrase it, you need tough love. I’m like enough to have a friend for 20 years called Pat Haiben and we would share our goals.

 

Pat’s got like a mean streak, like a dark side to him and if I didn’t do what I said I would he would send me an email, “Hey dude are you just going to talk the talk and not walk the walk like so many people in life, or you are going to actually do what you said you are going to do.” I’d receive that email I’m like ouch, that hurts.

 

But it helped to get me back on track and on purpose. So, Pat and I for 20 years have held each other accountable and by the law of reciprocity if he was ever falling short on his goal, guess what? I would be like, “Yo! Do you walk?” So, and then we added Tim and Tim brought health into it. Before that we only focused on business and financial freedom.

 

Tim brought us health, we added adventure, we then added family and being an authentic family person. Then we did this for like 10 or 15 years and the accountability grew each one of us. We all got stronger because of it and then about 5 years ago we just said, let’s see if anyone else wants to do this and like Mike showed up.

 

Mike went and climbed Kilimanjaro with us and immediately we bonded with Mike and he loved it, he’s like thank you for this accountability, let’s talk. Every time we get together, how are you on track, how are you off track? Where are you doing a good job as a family man where are you not? Where are you doing a good job with your business where are you not?

 

Each person would present and then get feedback, like a board of directors for their life. Then Mike joined us and then we invited more people and it kind of blew up and suddenly we had 130 members. That’s what we do, we get together we have what we call extreme accountability. Each person talks about their life on something called the one sheet to a table of maybe five or six guys and they all give him feedback.

 

What’s amazing to me is how effective it is, I was taught it, so we didn’t invent this, we were taught about it by a guy called Fred Gross. Very few people in Fred’s class actually did it because Fred was pretty soft on accountability but we built our tribe around doing it and actually being accountable. What’s it’s shown me John is that this stuff really works, it works.

 

[00:36:26] David Osborn: I got an email, so this is funny, I was coaching a guy yesterday, it wasn’t an email, it was a voice conversation and he’s come so far. He owns three martial arts school up in the Carolina’s and he said to me I have a picture of five guys on my wall, like my five mentors. He said, “One of them is my pastor, one of them is Tony Robbins.” He said, “One of them is you, one of them is Hal Elrod and the last one is Jesus,” then I go, “Wow!”

 

Like, “I hope you have Jesus higher and then Hal right below me.” He’s like, I’m like that is so touching and this kid has come so far. When I talked to him two years ago he said, “I want to have a date night with my girl like six times,” whatever, a certain number of times. He reminded me that I said to him, “Okay, that’s great, I love that you want a date night with your girl.

 

I want you to have a date night with your numbers as well, every month because you are so bad at your numbers and you are just talking gibberish.” And a lot of people do, they talk gibberish. They confuse gross with net which is a very important distinction. You ask people how is your business doing? Great. What’s the revenue? A million dollars, is that net or gross revenue we are talking about? Well, what?

 

I brought in a million dollars from my sales and then I gave $700,000 to the affiliates and I had $300,000 and then I paid my assistant $200,000 so, you really made $100,000 right. So, let’s just clarify that distinction, it’s very important you know your numbers. So, this guy has come so far like the first conversation was like he is speaking Chinese and I’m speaking Japanese, we are not connecting.

 

This time I’m like well, you’ve come so far I’m really impressed with how far you’ve come and so that’s super awesome that it works. More importantly I was honored, I was shocked honestly that he had those five people. I really think there is, but it’s really cool to have that kind of feedback that we are pouring it out, we are giving everything we can and some guys are changing their lives because of it and that’s incredibly rewarding.

 

[00:38:24] Jon Berghoff: That’s awesome, I have a feeling what you just shared about extreme accountability can be great inspiration for what you do with your pods. They are sitting at tables that they formed last night, and they get to choose to what extent they would hold each other accountable for the rest of the year, so thank you for that.

 

[00:38:38] David Osborn: I have some advice for you then like, don’t just listen as a friend, we all have friends in our world, we don’t come here for friends. Listen from a point of view of may I share something with you. When you spoke I noticed you were confusing gross revenue with net revenue, could I encourage you to really learn that distinction, may I share something with you?

 

Listen and ask permission first, on a scale of one to ten, Debbie, tell me how authentic do you want me to be with you, would you like me to be a one and lie to you to your face, or a ten which is ruthlessly honest, one to ten what’s your comfort level, what would you like?

 

[00:39:11] Debbie: Eight.

 

[00:39:11] David Osborn: Eight, okay that’s very honest.

 

[00:39:18] Jon Berghoff: That’s awesome.

 

[00:39:18] David Osborn: So, then I will give you feedback from an eight perspective and that’s… That accountability is how you can serve one another, and you don’t serve someone by just saying, ‘Hey, great job, oh great you got a million in gross revenue dude, that’s awesome, you are so incredible.” You don’t serve someone with that. We get that all the time most of us are pretty successful we get a lot of compliments, we can hide from ourselves.

 

The number one thing to being successful for me like the reason I think I’ve come from a goofy dorky kid to a fairly successful guy, is I’m committed to authenticity, I’m committed to ruthless honesty and you serve me much better by saying to me, “Hey man I noticed you were a little short at that party with your wife the other night, is that who you want to be?”

 

“Or I notice you’ve been travelling for three weeks this month, how much time are you getting with your kid.” Or “I notice by the way you’ve put on about 40, you are looking out of shape compared…” You serve me far better by being that person, than by somebody who just pats me on the back, a lot of people pat me on the back.  

 

I thank them for it, but I don’t really need that and you need to be that stand for one another. Stand for one another is greatness, don’t stand for one another’s mediocrity.

 

[00:40:26] Jon Berghoff: Awesome, give that a round of applause. I’m certain there is a lot of question, what I’m going to do is offline is see if I can talk David into doing one of our master class webinar so you can ask him everything. I think he doesn’t know what he’s agreeing to. But I want to be respectful of everybody’s time.

 

David I just want to finish by, on behalf of Hal and this group telling you that I really believe that your presence here today and the highest compliment I could attempt to give is, I think people are going to have quantum leaps in every area of their life because of what you shared.

 

It’s not as much because of the wisdom that’s fantastic and it’s tremendous. But just getting to see who you are as a person is really the most valuable thing that we got to experience. So, thank you for being here.

 

[00:41:13] David Osborn: Thank you.

 

[00:41:13] Jon Berghoff: Can we give David Osborn a big round of applause? Thank you man.

 

[00:41:20] David Osborn: That was really great.

 

[00:41:21] Jon Berghoff: Thank you.

 

[00:41:27] David Osborn: Yeah, you can buy the book online Wealth Can’t Wait.