In life, everyone is called to respond well in business and their personal lives. That is why if you make a mistake, you need to step outside and take a minute to think of your response and learn from your mistakes. It’s the only way you can grow your business and as a person.

Join Glenn Bill as he talks to real estate expert Brent Gove about how to respond to losing everything in life. Brent almost went bankrupt, but now he’s successfully selling real estate in the Sacramento area. He and his team sell hundreds of homes annually! Aside from being a real estate agent and an in-demand speaker, Brent is also the author of the newly published, Momentum, the definitive resource for becoming a super-agent. Learn how he bounced back in life and found real estate. Discover why you need to help and encourage others who are in need. It’s time to be the light enhancer, not the well poisoner. Start responding well to your mistakes today!

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How To Respond Well To Your Mistakes With Brent Gove

We are in season three, Carry The Light. We are bringing to you another unbelievable guest who not only brings light to the people that he meets, but he brings light to some of the biggest rooms in America. He brings light to some of the biggest events that are held in America. He is an entrepreneur, a speaker, a trainer and an author. He’s probably one of the biggest real estate brokers in America when you talk about his organization and the number of homes he sells. Most importantly, this guy is a pretty humble guy. He’s a caring person and is here to help you bridge the gap from where you are to where you want to go. Also, to help you bridge the gap from who you are to who you want to become. Ladies and gentlemen, I want to bring on to the show, Mr. Brent Gove. Welcome to the show.

Thank you, Glenn. It’s great to be here.

We are so happy to have you. I believe you are in Puerto Rico. Is that correct?

I am in Puerto Rico. I could see St. Thomas and St. Martin out on the horizon on most days. It’s beautiful out here.

I need to know you’re smiling. I know you had to have already played 18. How did we shoot this day?

I did. I went out to the El Conquistador, a beautiful resort. I love that golf course. It is a kick in the pants. I had 43 on the front and 42 on the back but we played the chips in my defense, so 85 from the chips was not bad.

We’re so fortunate to have you. You’re very tough to get ahold of. Our followers, we call them GAPers, are in for a treat because many of them are entrepreneurs like yourself. My guess is many of them started with a mindset that was much like you. Many of them are trying to get to the results and accomplishments that you have now. I always start with this with our guests. What does attitude mean to you? What is your definition of attitude and who were your first attitude coaches?

The first thing that comes to mind is you’re about as happy as you make up your mind to be. Attitude is you decide, “I’m going to respond well.” Respond well in life. When your neighbor lights you up or when your wife or your husband lights you up and you want to respond badly and maybe it’s not the best moment for you, respond well. To a client or a competing competitor, respond well. Be bigger than that.

Attitude is everything. It’s contagious. We know people with bad attitudes. Avoid those people with negative energy and bad juju. Become the guy that walks in the room and lights it up. When you enter the room, people are excited that you’re there because you’re loving and caring. You’re focused on other people. You’re adding value and giving hope to people because they can do it. If they want to fight, scratch, crawl, suffer, struggle and make it happen. That’s how I got to where I am. I went to all those seminars and I struggled. I fought through it and you then pop out the other side going, “This is awesome.” That’s where I am now.

When you think about attitude, who had the biggest influence in your life on your attitude?

I would say, my dad. My mom was a real estate broker and she’s a killer. She could meet someone in an open house and they were going to buy a house from my mom. I love my mom. She for sure helped me. I’ll never forget this. Our family is Christian and I got this job working in a gas station. It was a rundown gas station. He was like, “Son, who are you working for?” “I don’t know. I’m working for Mr. Rogers.” He says, “No, son. You’re working for Jesus. We’re Christians. If Jesus owned that gas station, would you clean the bathrooms? Would you pick up the litter? Would you wash the windows?” I go, “If Jesus owned the gas station, I would, but that is Mr. Rogers’s.”

He says, “No, son. The Bible says, do all your work as unto the Lord.” I was eighteen. That day, I cleaned the entire parking lot of the gas station. I scrubbed toilets. I got rid of the cobwebs. I found a black widow spider. I washed the windows inside. He showed up later that day and it transformed his gas station because I was no longer working for Mr. Rogers. I was working for Jesus. He immediately made me the general manager. He put me in charge. I immediately got promoted once I realized who I was working for. There’s a little life message for you. If you’re agnostic or atheistic, figure it out. That worked for me as a Christian. I’ll leave that in your court there, Glenn.

What a powerful message and for people to ask themselves, “Am I giving the best of myself to the people that I am serving?” When you do, you’ll look at the 10X results that the good book promises. It’s our challenge already. I usually don’t start challenging people but I knew this was going to be good. One challenge is to do this. Think about Brent. Go to whatever part of your life that needs to be cleaned up and clean it up as Brent discussed and look at what will happen to your life. That is so beautiful. What’s your father’s and your mom’s name?

It’s Tim Gove. He is still alive and doing great. He is super healthy. We’re still playing golf together. My dad is Mr. Attitude. Everybody loves my dad. He was that dad. He was always playing basketball and football with us. He was in the game. I was very proud of him. My mom is amazing too, don’t get me wrong. She’s a certified killer. She’s a high D driver.

One thing I love to dig into the people that are carrying the light in their life and the world is this generation before mom and dad. I always love to ask. If you knew your grandparents, and you had four of them, did one of them have a unique story? Did one of them exemplify something that you carry with you now? I would love to know that story.

I think my grandfather had a huge impact on me. My other grandfather passed away from a massive heart attack when I was very little. He lived far away so I never got to spend a lot of time with my other grandpa. My other grandpa is Dwight Timmerman Gove and I’m Brent Timmerman Gove. In 1935 in the middle of the Great Depression in San Diego, California, he formed the Dwight T. Gove of Insurance and he crawled his way out of the depression. He built a very successful insurance company. I think they were doing $250 million in premiums or something. Long story short, he built a huge company.

His wife, Hazel, was his second wife. His first wife passed away. It happens through cancers. It was sad and tragic. I was a baby when she passed away, but Hazel was always my grandmother. They were married. She got diabetes so she couldn’t travel. He had this motor home. He called it the Beast. He would be like, “Let’s go fishing.” He would pick me up at 10:00 and we would go fishing for 30 days. Every summer, my grandpa took me to go fishing for 30 days until I was 18 and went off to college.

Have you heard the song I Wish Grandpas Never Died?

I love that man. He was so good to me. We fished all over Montana. He taught me to fly fish on the Madison River on the Yellowstone. I am pretty fortunate.

I won’t make you suffer anymore through that, but this is what the show is. It begs the question if there were one or two lines that your grandfather taught you regarding attitude after those ten summers, if you could sum up all the knowledge, is there one mantra? Is there a sentence that maybe he always said that you take with you?

He would always say, “That was the best breakfast I’ve ever had in my life.” If we go to lunch or dinner, “That was the best dinner I have ever had in my life.” He was the most positive grandpa ever. He wasn’t grumpy. He had a sense of humor. He loved to laugh. We would be going through Nevada, Idaho or Montana, and at 5:00 he would pull off to the next off-ramp.

It didn’t matter if it was in the middle of nowhere. We’d pull off. He would put out the awning with two chairs and it was happy hour. He would always stop at 5:00. I get my hot chocolate and grandpa would have his bourbon and Coke. He had made himself a little highball drink. He would have one drink and I would have my hot chocolate and we look out across the prairie. It was magical. I loved happy hour and I was ten.

I think the message or the moral of the story is to claim your appreciation and gratitude. What is wrong with anybody? To anybody that’s tuning in, here’s exercise number two out of this show. I want you to say, “That was the greatest breakfast or the greatest lunch I’ve ever had,” and see how you feel. See if it changes your attitude and claims how great whatever the food in front of you is. Try that for a day and let’s see if that changes your attitude.

We find our most emotional, engaging and wonderful stories are found in the generation before the parents, with a lot of our people. When you tune in to this, you’ll learn that several people talk about the power of their grandparents. Let’s talk about your attitude now as we see so much friction, turmoil, political change and economic change. What’s your attitude towards change as an entrepreneur even in general?

You have to embrace change. You have to grow. If you’re like, “I’m not using an iPhone or a smartphone. I’m not going to do DocuSign. I’m not going to learn about podcasts or Instagram or YouTube,” you’re like that guy who says, “I’m not driving one of the cars. I’m going to take my horse and buggy.” Embrace technology, learning, growing and changing. I have to push myself to do it. It’s not natural for me. What’s natural for me is a good cup of Puerto Rico coffee, a yellow notepad, and hanging out with my wife, but technology is amazing and its leverage.

As far as change and what’s going on, do not participate in the recession of the talking heads on TV or the people in your industry, whatever industry you are in, “It’s going to be this. It’s going to be hard.” Step up and say, “I’m not participating in the mental recession.” You can go kill it. Get out there and lead. Whatever it is you do for a living, it’s a massive lead generation and then you can get the clients that you want because you have so many choices and you’re succeeding. Lead generation in every industry is vital.

We’re going to talk about your successes because people need to know, “This is an extremely successful person,” but before we get there, was there a time in your life when you stood at the edge of the bridge and you went, “I think I’m better than this. I think there’s more for me.” What was the toughest time of your life and what did you do to get out of it as far as a mental exercise or your mentality? Do you have that or did that never happen to you?

It did for sure. I went bankrupt when I was 29. I turned 30 and I was bankrupt. What a wonderful present to give yourself at 30. It wasn’t what I had planned but I got a fresh start. We were buried in a failed business and then everything was great. In 2005, I made $3.8 million in a single year. I owned lots of real estate. In 2009, I sold all that real estate. I had created capital gains issues. I had thirteen full-time employees that I kept way too long because I was 39 when that shifted. I didn’t have the maturity and I’m like, “I’m responsible for these people.” I kept them on for years when I should have let them go and find something else. What I did was I devastated my family’s finances.

By 2009 and 2010, I was short-selling my own home. I sold property after property. I had capital gains and IRS tax debt. I remember meeting with bankruptcy lawyers and attorneys going, “How do I go bankrupt?” They’re like, “You can’t. You make too much money. You have to do nothing for a year.” I go, “I’m not willing to sit around and do nothing for a year.” “They are not going to offer a compromise with you because you make $285,000 a year even in a bad time.

This was back in 2009 and 2010. I was making $285,000 and $350,000, but it was horrible in the middle of the crash or the bust. I spent years digging out. I did not pay off my taxes three years ago. I owed hundreds of thousand dollars compounding at 50% penalties and interest. I almost made the front page of The Sacramento Bee in Northern California. They did an article on Northern California’s deadbeat taxpayers. All these heroes and titans of business that are my friends were on the front page of that paper. They were celebrated stars until the market changed. Now they’re somehow deadbeat tax losers. I’m like, “We all got caught.” That was a big punch. Everyone gets punched in the face.

Thank God, I missed it by $20,000 of tax debt. They listed it. It’s a public record. I worked so hard for so long. We’ve rebuilt everything and now everything is great. If we were out there and your life got tanked and you have tax debt, I was able to rebuild it, get it all back, and then 10X it with a great attitude and an amazing work ethic. Also, surrounding myself with people like Glenn Bill and his show, the YouTube channels, the TED Talks and the events.

I’m always growing. You’re a student of life. Be a student of life. I love the saying and I’ll give it back to you, “The biggest room in the world is the room for improvement.” You’re not stuck being you. If you are stuck being you, you’re dead. Always learn and grow. Kaizen, constant and never-ending improvement. It’s a Japanese term. You can do this.

I want to delve back in because I hear it all the time, “I’m drowning in debt. I got too much tax debt. My business is terrible.”People are stuck. Some of us have this natural ability to bounce back, fight through and keep going. I have a feeling that’s where you were, but when you think about your comeback, can you give me one or two principles? Was there a mantra that you told yourself? What was your attitude? What was it that jolted you out or kept you getting out of bed to keep fighting? There are people out there that are just done. They don’t feel they can fight. What’s your advice to them? What can you do to light the fire?

Get on your knees and pray to God if you believe in God. If you don’t, then pray to the stars or whatever it is you do. That’s up to you. I learned a lot of things from Tony Robbins. He’s got three life rules. Number one, life isn’t fair. Number two, you’re entitled to nothing. Number three, and nobody is coming to rescue you. You better bootstrap it. You better suck it up. Everybody struggles. Glenn Bill struggles. I struggle. I’m in marriage counseling. We’re married for many years and we still do marriage counseling every week. Is our marriage in bad shape? No, but I want to have an amazing, awesome and great marriage. We’re constantly working on it.

That Kaizen thing is the same thing too. You may be a good golfer, but can you improve? Yes. Can you improve as a dad, a mom or a business person? I learned to fall in love with accounting, to do monthly P&Ls, to constantly improve and to show up and respond well. When someone flips you off on the freeway and tries to run you up the freeway, how do you respond? “I’ll swerve them in and I would flip them off.” That is not responding well. “Yes, it is.” What’s that get you? Total road rage and maybe arrested. You’ve got to respond well and put in massive action.

I love this one, “Progress before perfection.” Everyone is like, “What script do I say?” Just get out there and do it. Glenn and I will hand it back to you, the key to success is failure. Most people aren’t willing to fail. It’s the stepping stone to success. I was so worn to face flat again and again, but I was relentless and moving forward while loving God, loving my wife and loving my five kids. We adopted three more. I have eight.

I am a soccer coach. I go into men’s camps, men’s Bible studies and couples retreats. Every couple retreat, I always went. I sign up and go. Every couple’s retreat that we would do helped our marriage. It’s not easy being married. A lot of people don’t make it and I’m not going to say that it has been so easy. It hasn’t. We’ve never had a cross word. It’s not my story. I don’t know. I’m just being honest. We have struggled but it has been great. I love my wife. She loves me. I’m confident. She’s confident, but we fight for our marriage. We fight for our business.

You’re in a battle. Wake up and you can whip it so quick. I could change anybody’s life in the next ten days and radically alter your life. Let’s say you’re an architect, a commercial real estate agent or a stockbroker. Talk to ten people tomorrow about hiring you as an architect, about buying or selling buildings, about retail, or about buying or selling businesses. If you’re a commercial agent or a stock broker, talk to ten potential clients tomorrow, then do it the next day and the next ten days. You talk to 100 people and have actual meaningful conversations for the next ten days.

You’re like, “I talked to so many people.” No, you don’t. You talked to 100 people in the last six months. Talk to 100 people in ten days. “Who would that be?” Hunger is your greatest asset. If you want it bad enough, you will figure it out. If you talk to 100 people in the next ten days, your business, your architectural firm, your software engineering firm, your stock broker business, your financial planning business, your commercial real estate or your residential business will explode.

Every single person who does this has a complete breakthrough. The key is, don’t stop. Do ten more days and then ten more days and get it done in the morning. If you’re in your head, you’re dead. I’ll end with this and I’ll hand it back to you. Seneca noticed this thousands of years ago, “It is not because things are difficult that you do not try. It is because you do not try that things are difficult.”

That is the show. Understand, hit rewind and listen to it 10 a day for 110 days. I don’t care what business you’re in and your life will change. I totally believe it. I want to get back very quickly to respond well. What does to respond well mean? I know what it means. I think everybody knows what it means, but help those who are like, “Respond well, I can’t figure that shit out.” What do you say to yourself? What questions are you asking in order for you to respond well? I’m sure you’re eloquent enough to figure it out. Give us three quick bullet points on responding well.

I’ll do my kids. When your kids do something crazy, this and that, you want to light them up and be like, “That’s going to be good for them.” There’s a way to deal with the situation without giving them a tongue lashing and beating them down. You turn red and you say things you regret. You have to stay calm and maybe go walk out in the backyard. Calm yourself down, do some breathing, think about it, and then go back and deal with the situation.

I’m not saying you wink, you look the other way and you don’t call it out. There’s a way to parent that’s not screaming, yelling and losing your stuff. That is an area of responding well and it takes patience with your loved ones, with your husband, with your wife or with your children. It’s the easiest. That’s why domestic disputes are the most dangerous disputes for police officers.

In business, I have lots of employees that work for me. When they make mistakes, I can light them up and dress them down. You’re going to pay for this. It’s coming out of your paycheck. I’m always super encouraging too, “What do we learn from this? How can we correct this? I love you and I believe in you. We got this.” I respond well to my staff because here’s the deal, “Do your staff, your clients and your friends know that you love them?” “That’s a little corny. I don’t know. I love my clients and they know I love them. They know I’ll go to the mat for them.” Your clients may not and you may wonder why you’re not having success.

The final thing with your clients is responding well when they lose their stuff and you stay calm. People attack you for something you didn’t do. You could yell back at them or whatever. We’re called to respond well in business and our personal lives. When you blow your stack, name one time that it has ever been good like, “I felt good for a second.” When you’re embarrassed, it’s not your best self showing up. I don’t know if I answered your question.

As I was listening to you, I created the formula. You can do this when you’re on stage or whatever. Responding well first means staying calm. As a football coach and if I watch the Wimbledon match and the guy is going crazy in Wimbledon, I’m like, “There’s no way that guy is going to win.” Step one is to remain calm. Step two is to change your proximity. Whether that’s in your mind or physically, change your proximity as you’re calming, and then three is deal with it and I put in parentheses, love on them. Stay calm, change your proximity and deal with it. It means let’s just start loving people more. That’s the way to respond. Respond in love, not in hate, jealousy, greed and whatever else there is.

Brent, it’s so good. Thank you. My GAPers, you can apply this to your life. You can apply this to your business. I want you to go to BrentGove.com. He is having a huge seminar in Dallas, Texas. It is called the Build Conference. It’s mostly for real estate agents but I promise you, whether you’re in real estate or not, it will change your life. Brent pays Tony Robbins out of his pocket to come and speak at this event. Tony does not speak at events anymore for other people, but he does for Brent.

Even if you can’t go, just promise me this, go to BrentGove.com. Look at what he’s doing. Look at his events. If you’re in real estate, you need to be following what he is doing. He has built one of the biggest organizations. We haven’t even talked about the enormity of the organization that you have. Now that people know and have heard you talk about mom, dad, grandpa, and your philosophy of life, how many people are in your organization at eXp real estate?

I’ve been very fortunate to have over 30,000 agents and brokers worldwide in 21 different countries, all 50 states and every province of Canada. It has been an amazing ride and I’ve never seen anything grow like this in my life. I got up to 45 agents on my team at RE/MAX and 18 at Keller Williams to all of a sudden 30,000. That thing is on fire and eXp has become the largest real estate company in the world, both residentially and commercially, in a matter of a few years. We are agent-owned and broker-owned. The revenues are shared with the owners and it’s crazy.

Brent is a super leader and influencer of this juggernaut known as eXp Realty. Look him up and you’ll see what he does. I don’t want to embarrass him, but he was a guy that was bankrupt many years ago. If you’re reading this, I don’t care who you are, where you are or what you do. You follow Brent and he’ll show you the light. He’s going to get you where you want to go.

Brent, we’re going to finish up our show with this thing that we call Knowledge Through The Decades. We want you to walk through life and we’ve probably gotten to some of these but that’s okay. Wipe it with a clean slate. What we’re looking for are instances, stories or accounts of your life as you go through that changed your attitude or created an attitude lesson for you. The first thing we talk about is his birth. I know you probably don’t remember being born, but maybe you remember your kids being born. What do you think the attitude lesson is about birth or being born?

It’s adapting. You come out of this environment where you have food, oxygen, water and nutrients. You come out and what do babies do? They start crying. They’re like, “It’s cold. It is not warm out here. I’m going to go back in there.” I think you have to adapt. We learn when we were born that we must immediately adapt to our environment.

Adaptability and childbirth, we’ve never had that answer. When you think about this, GAPers, your ass needs to adopt like a baby on a daily basis. Nobody is asking the baby to adapt. A baby is not going through courses to adapt. A baby is not measuring the environment to see if it can adapt. It’s something that happens. It’s natural. Natural adaptability is certainly a strength that I’m sure you possess. That’s a great answer.

I want you to think about being ten and growing up in California. You’re probably in third or fourth grade. I don’t know if you were bullied. I don’t know if a teacher gave you detention. I’m sure plenty of stuff happened. Was there a story or an instance when you were ten that you felt changed things for you or created an attitude lesson for you as a ten-year-old?

I think of neighborhood friends and having a good time, playing flag football out in the street and all that. I think of getting into the Little League and starting to play for the Astros and realizing, “I’m a pretty decent shortstop. I could pitch and I could hit.” I started getting some self-esteem. I had an older brother and my dad. We’re always playing catch in the backyard, basketball, soccer, football and throwing the ball. There was some hand-eye coordination I had. I remember at ten being on the Astros and going, “You’re a decent little athlete.” I didn’t know I was an athlete. I think that was a positive experience for me realizing that I had athletic ability and feeling good about it.

That would be called self-awareness. The ability to say, “I am actually good at something.” If you’re reading this, maybe it’s time for you to start recognizing that you’re good at something. My guess is you said, “I probably got a golfer inside of me in about 40 years.”

I was not thinking about golf at all back then. It’s just the snack bar at the Little League. The little hot dog or the red vine licorice things. The snack bar is what you live for or at least I did it when I was ten.

Did you guys do walking tacos? You open up the Frito bag and then you dump taco meat and squirt the cheese in it. That was called a walking taco at our Little League.

You’re from Indiana. We weren’t that smart in California. We just had hot dogs, chili dogs or pizza. The pizza was my favorite.

When’s the last Little League game you went to?

It has been a long time. I coached my kids. I was the coach. One year, I made the mistake. I had my secretary sign me up and she didn’t sign me up for Little League. She signed me up for the other one. What’s it called? It’s for professional Little Leaguers. It’s people with their kids to be professional baseball players. It’s not Little League. It’s called PONY League, maybe.

A travel ball is what we call it.

She signed me up for that. I’m used to Little League. All the parents are nice and their kids are. We go to PONY League and I’m coaching five-year-olds. I got dads lighting me up because I’m not doing practice properly and these kids got to be the next Johnny Bench. I was freaked out. I’ve never seen parents this serious. It was the last time. I always went back to the Little League. We’re just here for youth soccer. We have a good time. We’re going to tell our kids how amazing they are. I’m not the guy who’s like, “Everybody gets a trophy.” They got to learn. We lost. I want you to learn from that. I’m not like, “Everybody is the first place.” We took second or third place. You needed to fight and work harder if you want to be in the first place.

We just did an episode with the owners of Wrestling Mindset, they work with kids that are burned out. They help families and coach athletes to succeed by not putting so much pressure on them. Gene Zannetti was his name. He was a big Italian Catholic and he was unreal. Brent, you’re twenty years old. I don’t know if you remember your 20th or your 21st birthday, but when you think about the attitude lesson of being twenty, what was the lesson from that year or two?

One of the things I learned when I was that age was that I needed a job. I heard this guy who was a contractor. He said, “You need a job. You can get a job. Anyone can get a job. It’s easy to get a job.” I’m like, “I need a job. I need to make some money.” He gave me this advice. It was spot on and it worked. I copied what he said verbatim and I got a job paying triple the pay with benefits.

What he said to do was, “You go up there and you start interviewing with employers. You tell them, ‘Hire me for two weeks but don’t pay me. I will show up early and stay late. I’ll work 40, 50, 60 hours a week or whatever you need. I will have the best attitude. If you say, ‘Jump,’ I say, ‘How high?’ I guarantee you that I will be the best employee you’ve ever had. I’m going to let you take me for a test drive. You can try me out for two weeks and if you’re not impressed, don’t hire me.’”

You’re sitting there going, “What if he doesn’t hire me and I worked so hard?” He was like, “How long have you been needing a job?” “Six months.” “We haven’t made anything in the last six months. We’re going to take a chance.” It was a sales position for office equipment. I was 20 or 21, plus I read Zig Ziglar, Og Mandino and all kinds of great stuff. I’m very goal-oriented. I’m super positive, “Give me a chance. I promise you, in two weeks, I will have the best attitude. Let me show you what I can do.”

The guy said, “We can’t do that. There’s a minimum wage. We could be sued.” He then goes, “You’re the guy we’re looking for.” There were 28 applicants and he hired me on the spot. Do you know what I was doing prior to that? Washing dishes. I went from a dishwashing job back in 1988 to $2,800 a month plus benefits plus commission. I was rich overnight because I took this guy’s advice, “I’ll work two weeks at no charge.” You show up early and stay late. You give it 110%. They’re not used to hearing people talk like that. That was something I learned at twenty that worked.

We got a lot of people in their twenties just coming out of high school. If that story was not worth the whole time you just spent with Brent Gove, I don’t know what was. That is the key to success. Now, you turn 30. Do you remember turning 30? Do you remember where you were on your birthday? Where you were in America? What the hell were you doing at 30 and what was the attitude lesson?

I went bankrupt at 29. By 30, I was broke. I was living in one bedroom of my brother’s house. We moved from Chico, Northern California to El Dorado Hills. This was like moving to Newport Beach or Manhattan Beach. El Dorado Hills is the place to live in Sacramento, maybe that and Granite Bay. They were like, “You are moving to El Dorado Hills.” “Yeah. I’m moving to El Dorado.” “You’re doing so well.” I didn’t tell them I was moving to my brother’s house because I couldn’t even afford the security deposit for a house.

I’m married with two small children. He had a three-bedroom, two-bath home. He takes one of the kids out of that second bedroom. He made them share a bedroom and a family of four moved into a bedroom that was maybe 12×12 feet. We got a queen mattress and two little toddler beds. There was nowhere to stand. You have to walk across the toddler beds. We lived there all summer with my brother. That’s what I did when I was 30.

We went out to dinner with some other friends and went to the movies. My car was stolen while we were at the movies. I called the police and they were like, “Mr. Gove, your car was repossessed.” It wasn’t stolen. It was repossessed. I lost my car and we had to get a ride home. That was a little embarrassing. I guess I’m a little behind on the car payment. I was in bankruptcy and they hadn’t gotten it so I kept driving it.

My lesson at 30 was a humble pie. I started over. We moved into a house, finally. I had no money to turn the phone on. We used the neighbor’s phone. They would feed my kids frozen wonder bread. They thaw it and put some peanut butter and jelly. They were feeding my children. I was like, “This is not okay.” I went to work like a maniac. I was so hungry to succeed. Within four years, I was making $400,000 a year in real estate. I’m like, “Is this even legal?” I freaking went after it while reading Dale Carnegie, Zig Ziglar, Tony Robbins, Jim Rohn, John Maxwell, Dr. Dennis Waitley-type stuff and all those things. I was learning about success, what it takes, and the good old-fashioned hustle.

GAPers, if you’re feeling Brent right now, understand that it’s time to cross the bridge. It’s time to bridge the gap. He has given you countless nuggets and bullets to put in your gun to bridge the gap from who you are to who you want to become. That’s so good. Let’s go to 40 years old. Tell us about where you were living at 40. What were you doing at 40? What was the attitude lesson for you when you turn 40?

I believe 40 was 2004 or 2005, right in there. I remember in June, I closed on 55 homes in a month. I sold and got paid 55 times in a month. That was the year I made $3.8 million. Life is great. I own lots of real estate. It was the dot-com bomb. You’re all in technology. You got your clock cleaned. I am all-in real estate like everybody else. In 2005, everyone is doing subdivisions and investing. I had it all and it was so great until it wasn’t. At 40, the wheels went off for me. Again, I got to the point where I was begging to go into bankruptcy. I was in a far deeper hole because I kept selling real estate and getting capital gains.

I always tell people jokingly. I was a victim of Zig Ziglar. My thought was, “I will turn. It will be better in 2006. It will get better in 2007.” I kept going, “I’ll pay back these capital gains. I’ll make it next year.” It was corrected in California in the summer of ‘05. I closed 55 homes in June and on July, 19, 17, 16, 14 and 12. By December, I closed nine homes. People will go, “That’s a lot of money,” but not when you’re overhead is about $128,000 a month, not a year.

I was in contracts and I was getting buried $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 to $60,000 a month losses. Not annual losses but monthly losses, which is why I had to sell my real estate. I didn’t lose them to foreclosure or short sale. I’ve made massive profits, which was worse because now I have capital gains that I can’t bankrupt out of. I could have bankrupted out of those mortgages and all that. You don’t bankrupt out of the IRS. You can’t offer a compromise if you do nothing for a year. I have no income, but they would not. I went to tax lawyers and everything. Turning 40 was not as fun as I thought it was going to be it was the beginning of my struggle. I struggled. If you look up my name in Gallic, Brent means an uphill struggle.

I can’t help but think that most people have never made $3.8 million. Brent makes more than $3.8 million or maybe double $3.8 million. They got to be saying and I’m sure you use to sit by a lake, ponder and go, “If I made $3.8 million, I got the world by the short and curlies. I’m good for the rest of my life.” What’s the advice that you have for somebody that is either newly rich so they don’t squander it?

I get that you struggled, but you’ve made it through. What did you tell yourself to keep going after you lost it all? Two questions there. Number one, is making $3.8 million or $6 million as great as you think it is? What’s the lesson in making that? In case one of our GAPers hits it big, how did you mentally get through the demise? That’s number two.

I always believed I would bounce back. It’s like riding a bike. If you know how to ride a bike, you’re going to do it again just like you can be a successful person again in sales. This is a rotten time. I didn’t see this coming. I’m 39. I’m a conservative free enterprise, small government, and less taxation. I’m not that kind of person, but unfortunately at 39, I ran my business like a bleeding-heart liberal. I kept everybody on the payroll for years.

I suffered and my family suffered. I have an obligation, but I didn’t realize it was devastating my family’s finances. I had to do it over. I didn’t have the money. I mortgaged our future to pay these people. They could have gotten other jobs and done other things. That wasn’t my responsibility. I’m a bit more conservative fiscally now. I can afford a Rolex, no problem. I don’t have one. I think I have a $150 Invictus watch. I have nice cars. I live in a nice home, but I can afford anything I want right now.

I can buy a $40 million house on the ocean. I’m here on the ocean right here. It’s late in the day in the Caribbean. It’s $2.1 million. I can afford $40 million. I’m not buying too much stuff. I didn’t do that last time either. I’m more of a giver. I believe you should give. We do a lot of charities, but now I could say this. I own multifamily. I have residential, but we have certain stocks we buy and different venture capital and different things. We’re diversified in fifteen different areas because the last time, it was all real estate.

When real estate was corrected, I got my clock cleaned. It could all go away again, but I’m cool because my hope is in heaven and eternity and down the road or whatever. It comes and goes. My job is to respond well, love people, and be a bright light in the room that I walk in. Be a room lifter. Be a life enhancer, not a well-placener. I think a lot of people are well-placeners. I’m not. I’m a life enhancer. You’re a life enhancer, Glenn. Everybody that’s reading this, you are called to be a life enhancer. You’re called to encourage people. Everybody has somebody they can encourage. If you spend your life encouraging and lifting people up and helping people, you’re going to be very happy. You will have a great life.

In the words of one doctor, “We’re all not meant to be doctors, but we all are meant to be healers.” One of my favorite things is those people who when they walk into the room, they light up the room. There are people who when they are walking out of the room, they light up the room. You know what I’m saying.

I’ve never heard that way. That is hilarious. It’s like, “Thank God, they’re gone.”

I got to respect your time. Let’s go to 50 real quick. Do you remember turning 50? What was the attitude lesson when you turn 50?

I had eighteen agents on my team. My world was 3 full-time employees, a couple of part-time employees and 18 agents. I was in charge of 6 listing specialists and 12 buyer specialists. I’m doing $100 million a year. I got a $100 million a year sales team. I’m taking Friday, Saturday and Sundays off, a three-day weekend every weekend. Life is good. I’m going to ride that out until I’m 70 and do that for the next twenty years. I love people. I love real estate. I get paid well for what I do then.

At 51, eXp entered my life. It’s like discovering electricity. I don’t take a boat to Europe. I could get in a jet and be there by tonight. I didn’t think there was a better company than Keller Williams. I’m not saying it’s a better company. It’s different. I was at RE/MAX for thirteen years. I liked it but didn’t have any equity. I was at Keller Williams for nine years. I loved it. It went from like to love, but I didn’t have any equity. People offered me franchises at RE/MAX. I franchised at Keller Williams. The ones I wanted though were taken so I passed on those RE/MAX and Keller Williams franchises.

It wasn’t that I didn’t have the opportunity to get equity, but they were in areas that I knew would not be super successful market centers. A lot of them opened and failed and shut. Enter eXp and there’s such an opportunity because it is agent-owned. There are five different ways to acquire stock. I made the decision to make the move. I’ve moved two times in 27 years. I don’t move around much.

It was a big deal to leave Keller, but it was the best decision I ever made in my life times a hundred. I went from 18 to 30,000. I’m going to be at 57,000 by 2026 and it’s pretty cool. We’re changing lives. It’s not about me. It’s about helping those agents. Glenn, as you and I help other people, our life is enhanced a hundredfold. That’s what it’s all about.

Brent, you’ve been so giving, insightful and real. I can’t help but think we did some good in the show. What I always want to do is have our guests in the theme of carrying the light deliver your message of hope for those people that are walking on the beach, sitting in their car, walking their dog right now and learning from Brent Gove. There are going to be people all over the world learning from you. What’s your message of hope and carrying the light in their life? That’s what we’ll end with.

There are two things. Number one, maybe you’re like, “I need a career change.” Maybe you are in pharmaceutical sales or you’re a software engineer and you feel like you work in a prison. You’re a sheriff or a police officer and you’re burned out. You’re a school teacher and you’re like, “There’s more for me than this.” I want you to consider real estate as a career. It’s amazing. There is no ceiling. I remember the first time I made $100,000 in a month. It was like, “Are you kidding me?”

If you want to know about real estate, I’m going to send you somewhere. It’s called www.TheModelExplained.com. It explains real estate. It explains what eXp is. That’s what I’m a part of. If you watch that and you like it, I want you to reach out to Glenn Bill and talk to him. He could connect you back to me or other people. You’re welcome to reach out to me, but please go through Glenn. I would say that’s number one. If you’re an agent or a broker from an independent or another big box brokerage, check it out. We’re going to have 500,000 agents in the next few years. No one has ever gotten past 188,000. It’s a movement.

Number two, final words to encourage you and spread hope. I would say to go help someone. Who can I help now? You go, “I’m poor. I’m this. I’m that.” There’s someone poorer than you. There’s someone surfing on a couch. My youngest son who is eighteen and I drove by a woman at a bus stop. She had two big suitcases. There were some hotels behind her and she had her hands covering her face. She’s sobbing. We drove by and I’m like, “That did not look good.” She’s sobbing with two suitcases. It’s a bad situation. Whatever it is, it’s bad.

I go, “Son, did you see that?” He goes, “Yeah.” Do you think we should keep going or maybe we should make a U-turn and go check on that young girl? What do you think, Ty?” He goes, “We should turn around, Dad.” I want to see what he will do. I’m like, “I was definitely going to turn around,” but I want to see what my son would do. We turned around and parked in the parking lot. I go, “Do you want me to go down and check on her?” It’s awkward and weird walking up to a stranger who’s bawling on the street. “Do you want to do it son? Do you think you could do that?” He goes, “I’ll do it, dad.”

He goes down there. I was in the bushes. Through a little crack, I filmed him talking to her, “Are you okay?” It tuned out she was a Ukrainian refugee. Where she was staying, it didn’t work out. It was a bad situation. She made an emergency call. Someone is coming to get her. She’s sobbing. I go, “No matter what she says, give her $100. Let’s give her some money, but if it’s bad, come back and get me. Let’s do something.”

She goes, “I’m okay. Someone’s coming to get me. I can’t take the money.” He’s like, “Please, my dad says it’s for you.” He came back and I said, “Son, what if your sisters, Megan, Sarah, Christina or Alyssa were in Nashville or Miami or Austin and someone was driving by and saw your sister Sarah bawling at a bus stop with two cases and they freaking drove by?” It’s not acceptable. There are people today that could stop and start asking questions. You could pray for them. You could hug them. You could help them get a job. You can do so many good things. You do that and you’re winning like you’ve never won in your life. Go help somebody. You will feel joy and peace in your heart. Go do that and you’re winning big in life.

Ladies and gentlemen, that is Brent Gove. He is a life-giver. He is an entrepreneur, a leader and an influencer. Thank you so much, Brent, for being here. GAPers, don’t forget. Make sure you say, “That’s the greatest breakfast I ever had.” I’m doing that at every meal. Brent Gove, it was great to see you. Thank you for giving to our GAPers.

Important Links

• Brent Gove
• Wrestling Mindset
• www.TheModelExplained.com
• https://GlennBill.com
• www.JasonAaron.pro

About Brent Gove

Since 1997, Brent Gove has been successfully selling real estate in the Sacramento area, following the example set by his parents, both long-time real estate agents. He and his team now sell hundreds of homes annually!

Having sold over 4,000 homes in the past 23 years and the #11 World Wide Agent for his former home, Re/Max, along with running one of the largest Keller Williams franchise in the country, he is now with eXp Realty.

He’s the popular host of a Top 10 radio show “The Real Estate Report with Brent Gove” on KFBK. A world traveler and in-demand speaker, Brent is the author of the newly published, “Momentum”…the definitive resource on how to become a super-agent.

Brent is passionate about both inspiring and teaching agents to not just be great ‘Sales’ agents, but actually build a lasting Real Estate Organization through eXp Realty’s platform and be an ‘owner’!! He currently has over 11,000 agents in his Organization.

eXp has changed the way agents and brokers are compensated by owning a piece of the company through stock acquisition and participating in Revenue Share.

Brent has been able to create a legacy that will go on for generations. His greatest and proudest achievement is his 28 year marriage to his amazing wife, Kathy, and their 7 beautiful children.