EP11 David Lindahl, Author, Mentor, Speaker, Iron Man, Real Estate Mogul

“Ignore the media when they focus on national real estate trends: The
only cycles that count are LOCAL ones.” - Dave Lindahl

Links from the Show

• Dave’s Book - FREE for Business of Life Listeners!
• Book: The Checklist Manifesto, by Atul Gawande
• Book: Body for Life, by Bill Phillips
• Book: Super Brain, by Deepak Chopra
• Audio Book: Lead the Field by Earl Nightingale
• Book: Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

You’re listening to The Business of Life podcast. Practical advice for creating the life you love to live. Here’s your host, Keith Callahan.

INTRODUCTION

KC: Alright, welcome to the business of life Episode number 11. Keith here and I’m excited to bring with you someone who has really just exploded with the idea of passive income. So, I used to do a little bit of work in real estate and when I first got started, I had this guy who gave me a little bit of mentoring. He was having some success with real estate. He helped me out. His name is Dave Lindahl. He’s our guest for today. Here’s the deal though, 14 years ago Dave was really a paycheck to paycheck, week to week landscaper and he now has a controlling piece. I don’t even know how to say it because it’s so crazy. He owns 8,000 real estate units. So, 8,000 units 14 years later, so really just an amazing guy, amazing story, so much stuff that we touched on in this episode. We don’t even really talk that much about real estate because he gives you a free offer. He’s going to offer that up and I’m going to tease you, I’m going to let you wait until the end but he’s giving away his new book for free and he’s authored a bunch of books. He’s co-authored a book with Donald Trump and, yeah, just an amazing episode, amazing man and true success story and someone that has really stayed humble along the way. If you want to get the show notes again after you listen to the episode or anytime during it, send a text message to 38470 and type in the word LINDAHL, again L-I-N-D-A-H-L. That’s Dave’s last name. So again, 38470 and type in LINDAHL or you can always go to KeithCallahan.com/episode11. Alright, without further ado, let’s get Dave on.

[02:42]

INTERVIEW WITH DAVE

KC: Alright, so I am super excited to introduce today’s guest, Mr. David Lindahl. Dave, how are you?

[02:49]

DL: Doing good.

[02:51]

KC: It’s great to have you on the show, man. I was thinking about, it was probably almost 10 years ago last time I saw you and it was a quick little luncheon. I got a bunch of nuggets and you sent me on my way and it’s been an amazing experience since.

[03:08]

DL: Yeah, I remember that. That was over Crystal’s in Brockton and just in the middle of our conversation I looked up and I saw my very first girlfriend from junior high and I hadn’t seen her in like 20 years and I think I left you guys, you and your partner while I looked at her, I was like, “Mary!” I walked right over so I was talking to her and like 10 minutes later I looked back, I was like, “Oh my gosh, I’m supposed to be on lunch with these guys.”

[03:31]

KC: I remember that. I remember that and prior to that I don’t know if you know this but I had gone to a bunch of your seminars and the premise of this podcast is it’s called The Business of Life and it’s about, it’s about really creating the type of life that you want to live and, you know, not just starting a business to have a business. It’s about really looking at a business and looking at how it can serve your life and the type of lifestyle that you want and I have to credit you because one of the very first things and we’ve done some work in real estate and that’s really how I got started but the most important thing that I learned from you, Dave, was the concept of systems and passive income. And, man, that has absolutely changed my life. So, I want to thank you for that.

[04:17]

DL: Yeah, my pleasure. Those are the 2 keys to success and 2 of the most important for sure.

[04:22]

KC: Yeah and if you’re willing, I’d love for you to share your story about how you got started because you did have a business of your own prior to really getting started but it wasn’t really serving the type of life that you wanted. So, I was wondering if you could share that story.

[04:39]

DL: Yeah, the short version of my story is from 16 to 24 I was in a rock & roll band and I was having a great time trying to make it and it was a lot of fun but I realize I wasn’t going to make it at about age 24 and I was broke and I was tired of living broke. I was living in a one-bedroom apartment and I left the band in April in Boston and that’s when the grass starts growing. So, I started a landscaping company to try to get some money and, you know, I literally went door-to-door, knocking on doors to get accounts, the people that had high grass and it worked pretty good because the first year I get 41 accounts and then the winter came and I struggled. And then, the next year I got a bunch more, I was up to like 70 accounts. So, that was good while the grass was growing and then I struggled. And then, in the, you know, most of the money I made during the year went towards getting through the winter where I do odd jobs. And then, a friend working for a bank asked me to repair some properties that the bank was taking back in foreclosure. I said ‘Yes’ because I needed money.

[05:37]

KC: Yeah.

[05:38]

DL: Yeah and he made sure that I won the bids, I didn’t, I had no idea how to do the repairs. I just knew it was an opportunity. So, he made sure I won the bids. I did that and I kept those jobs done literally by hiring contractors and subcontractors because I couldn’t do it. And then, I fell into real estate investing. Well, but first of all, I mean talking about lifestyle, my lifestyle was I was either mowing lawns or I was out there working on houses regularly. When I started doing real estate investing and I had a choice to go between either single family properties or multi-family properties. I thought, “Damn, you know, I can do a bunch of single family properties and keep doing single family properties and collecting checks or I can buy a bunch of multi-family properties and buy them once and then have those checks come to me on regular basis without having to do anymore work.” That’s actually why I tried to do the multi-family and that’s what I focused on.

[06:25]

KC: So, what I’m hearing is you really went into the multi-family market because of the passive income that came with that, right? And, how has that allowed you to create the type of life that you want to live and create more businesses at the same time?

[06:41]

DL: Yeah, the great thing about the passive income is the fact that in terms of lifestyle, you can literally do this business from anywhere in the whole world. So, I could be going like I fell in love with Hawaii. So, I spend a lot of time in Hawaii now, in this place called Hanalei Bay in Kauai and as I’m there I can, you know, I’m pretty much running my business from Kauai because it’s a business that you’re an Asset Manager and you don’t go on site and deal with tenants and cash flow comes in. And, the cash flow comes now goes automatically in the bank accounts so you just watch those bank accounts get bigger every month.

[07:13]

KC: Yeah.

[07:14]

DL: Yeah, it’s a good thing and for me, my first part of my lifestyle that I really wanted to change was the fact that I was broke and then I had money coming in. Then, I could start taking care of people. You know, I could take care of, first it was my mom and dad. When I first started I was single no kids, So, it was my mom and dad. And then, after, you know, I really could take care of my mom and dad who was very blue collar. My mom was a fish cutter in the fish piers of Boston. My father always worked 2 jobs to support us. Then, it was my brothers and sisters and their kids and I taught them how to invest in real estate and they started building other businesses. Like you said, once I got the real estate down and I had that passive income coming in, I had more time in my hands and I thought, “Alright, now what else can I do?” And, I started a real estate brokerage company and I ran that the same way that I run the apartments, where I got a manager in there to deal with the brokers and handle the transactions. And then, I started an education company where I was teaching people how to buy and sell real estate and how to build businesses. And then, you know, there was a point where I actually was referred into a program in Harvard Business School called the OPM program, 2-year program that taught me how to put business models on to my businesses to make them even perform better. So, in that I had to take 2 years off to do that program and I was able to do that because I had all this money coming in, so. And, I just recently trained and completed an ironman triathlon and I mean it’s freaking a lot of hard work. I mean you’re working out for 2 and a half, 3 hours a day and then on weekends it’s like 7 to 8 hours. You know, it starts of slow but then, as you’re about, it takes a year and a half to train for it. But, the closer you get, the more you’re working out and the only way I was able to do that and maintain my businesses was through the systems and the cash flow I was getting in. So, in terms of lifestyle, I’m doing what I love. I mean I was spending time in Hawaii and I’m going all around the world. I think I’ve been in like 50 something countries right now. So, I love to travel and I love to work out and I mean one of the biggest challenges for me was doing that ironman. Then, I had the time to do it. I took on the challenge and I did it in 14 hours and 56 minutes.

[09:15]

KC: That’s crazy, man.

[09:16]

DL: Yeah, it was 146, 140.6 mile race.

[09:19]

KC: That’s crazy. There’s so much stuff that you brought up there and I want to bring up your family and I want to bring up the ironman but prior to that, I was wondering if you could just take a little bit of a deeper dive in because some of the people, you know sometimes we hear all of the things that you’re saying and it’s like, “How does he do it, right?” And, I was wondering if you could sort of lay the groundwork for us really to understand in the simplest way what happens when you set up that first system and how it removes you from the process.

[09:53]

DL: Well, the whole idea and I’m not a systems guy in the sense that I’m not detail oriented. I’m not an engineer. I’m the ‘big picture making mess, clean up your mess, don’t make the same mistake twice’ type of guy. So, for me, creating these systems allow, you know, the system is all about doing something over and over again the same way. And, if you don’t have a system and that means that you can replace anybody inside of this system with anybody else and it will still get done the same way. That’s the most important thing in a system. So, once you develop that system you can now replace yourself and go after other things. Like, for instance, I didn’t realize that I was doing this but I was in my landscaping company. I had one guy that was working with me mowing lawns and I thought, “You know, if I could hire another guy to mow these lawns I could go out marketing and maybe getting more lawns, you know, lawns for the business.” But then, I thought, “Well, how are these guys going to, you know, how are these guys going to do it, you know, to make sure that they’re done right?” So, I created the systems of what a complete job is like, I call it the complete job system and I said, “You are not to leave a site until these things are done.” And then, I handed them the system and then I knew that, you know, and they had to check off every yard too. You know, you learn along the way. First, I told them what it was and they said, “Yeah, sure.” And then, I get a call from my clients saying, “Hey, you know, they didn’t do this. They didn’t do that.” And, I was like, “Hey, you know, you didn’t do a complete job.” He was like, “Oh, we forgot. Oh, we forgot.” I was like, “Alright, so the system has to be written down, you know, and then you have to check off certain parts of the system after they get done.” I learned all of that. But then, when I was able to do it, I mean I went from I think 20 accounts and I immediately doubled with only like 6 weeks left in the season here in Boston and that’s when everybody pretty much has their, you know, their lawn service done for the year. So, I was doing all kinds of marketing. I was learning all about marketing. I was able to double that and then the next year I doubled that again. So, that’s, you know, and the system’s allowed me to go after the market. And then, I created marketing systems, you know, because I would have constant needs coming in on a regular basis so that was a matter of converting the leads. And so, I would get better, I would spend my time getting better at converting the leads instead of, you know, running out there doing a bunch of marketing because the marketing was already working.

[11:59]

KC: Yeah, it’s so important to understanding those 2 pieces, the systems and the passive income, so. And, I just want to throw out there, there’s a book that I just read. It was called, I don’t know if you’ve read this one, Dave, it’s called the Checklist Manifesto, real, real simple book and we’ll put that in the show notes, guys and with the author and a link to that. But, a real simple book on putting together checklists and the power of checklists and they actually go through and they talk about how doctors use checklists for the simplest procedures because those are the things we forget sometimes, it’s those simple things.

[12:34]

DL: Well, yeah, and you know what, some of my, some of the guys that have the most successful businesses are pilots, you know, and the pilots know that they have to go through this checklist and make sure that everything is right on this plane or else that plane’s going to fall from the sky.

[12:50]

KC: Yup.

[12:51]

DL: You know, so they bring that into every other aspect of their life and I notice that, you know, when somebody comes to me, they say they own their own plane or they’re a pilot, I was like, “Oh.” I know that whatever business I do with this particular person’s going to be very thorough.

[13:02]

KC: Yup. So, you had mentioned really taking care of your family and I’ll never forget, I was sort of following you from a distance and then, geez, this was probably 10 years ago. There was an even that you did It’s about studying different markets for real estate investing.

[13:20]

DL: Yeah, the Emerging Markets.

[13:22]

KC: Okay. So, yeah, and it was one of the first ones you did and there’s probably like 700 people in the room and it was somewhere right up on the north shore in Boston. Do you remember where that was on a golf course?

[13:32]

DL: Oh yeah, I remember that event. That was the event that was a local event but, yeah, they couldn’t sleep at home and go there because it was on the wrong side of Boston. So, I actually had to stay at the hotel which I wasn’t happy about. That’s why I remember that event.

[13:45]

KC: Yeah and it was an amazing event, you know, there was so much information that I got from the event but the people running the event was all of your family members and even when I used to call into the office, the people answering the phone were all of your family members.

[13:59]

DL: They still do.

[14:00]

KC: That’s awesome.

[14:02]

DL: Much bigger company now but they’re here. Can I just say something about that as well because people ask me all the time, you know, “How do you do it?” I didn’t plan on having my, all my family in here. I planned on showing them how to invest in real estate so they could be free, you know, they wanted to but they, as I was growing this education company they all kind of like gravitated in somehow, you know. It grew so fast that, you know, I didn’t realize that when I was done it was going to be full of family members. But, there’s a couple of rules that we have and the first one is when we walk through the door, nobody talks about family and the second rule is when we’re at a family event, at dinner or anytime we walk outside of the door, we don’t talk about business. And, we hold that rule steadfast and I think that’s why it works is because we do that and we don’t mix the 2 of them together. Everybody, you know, does their job. They perform properly. Everybody knows there’s no nepotism in my business, you know, you got to get to work. You know, I actually fired my youngest brother many years ago out of my construction company and it was because we were doing clean house for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and you had to get them done by a certain time and he was working for me part-time on a Saturday and, you know, we used to do some really bad areas and I told him, you know, “If you ever get to a bad area or a bad house you don’t feel comfortable, you call the police and the police will walk inside for us, make sure there’s nobody in there and then they’ll have a patrol car coming by every once in a while.” He was like, “Okay, okay.” So then, he came back from the job and said I couldn’t do that job I was too nervous. I was like, “Did you call the police?” And, he said, “No.” He says, “I just didn’t want to do it.” I’m like, “Alright.” I said, “But, in the future you have to, I need this job done when I tell them we’re going to get done and you have to call the police.” So then, like a month later same thing happens, he goes, “I went to this job. I wasn’t comfortable.” I was like, “Did you call the police?” He says, “No.” I said, “Dan, you got to, you can’t work for me anymore.” I said, “Because people are relying on me. I’m giving my word. I tell them that these clean ups are going to be done, you know, and they got people coming in behind them. Blah, blah, blah.” He’s like, “Fine, I don’t want to work, I don’t want to go to these places anymore. Blah, blah, blah.” I was like, “Alright.” My mom calls me like an hour later, “Did you just fire your brother?” I’m like, “Mom.” And, I explained the story. My mom’s always been had a good business sense, you know, she’s always been a very competitive person even though she was a fish cutter for all those years, and she listened to my story and she said, “Well, I understand but he’s still your brother.” I’m like, “Oh well.” That brother actually came back to work for me and do all my IT here, like many years later, so. And, that’s the guy, that’s my brother that I finished the ironman with. But, it wasn’t like I ended our relationship, I just, he couldn’t do clean ups for me.

[16:27]

KC: Yeah and it really is a testament to the type of business that you guys run to be able to do that and, you know, keep the relations and I appreciate you sharing the piece about keeping business and family separately too.

[16:44]

DL: Yeah, you got to.

[16:46]

KC: So, I have a question about the fitness aspect of it. So, when we, you and I connected a couple of days ago and we hadn’t talked in a while and I was telling you what I was up to and we had caught one with P90X and then just hearing about you now talking about the ironman, how important is it to you in your life now with what you’re putting in your body and then the types of exercise you’re doing and different things like that?

[17:14]

DL: Well, you know, it’s so important to fuel yourself properly. When I was training for the ironman, I had to fuel myself properly because I was doing, I was like burning 7,000 calories some days on the workouts. But, you know, the way you think during the day is going to be based on what you’re putting in your body and people don’t realize that. You know, if you’re putting in like chicken parms and a bunch and all that crap and trust me, I love that crap, you know, I just buy it all the time just like everybody else, you know, when I’m going to eat it, when I’m not. One of the best books I ever read was by a mentor of mine, Bill Phillips, Body For Life, have you read that one?

[17:50]

KC: It’s an awesome book, yeah.

[17:51]

DL: Yeah, so I was just following that and knowing that and his whole philosophy was, “Hey man, you just, you eat right to fuel yourself for 6 days and then eat whatever you want on the 7th.” And so, that’s what I would do. I’d be like, “Alright, so I can have that chicken parm but I’m going to have it on Sunday or I’m going to have it on Saturday, whenever my day is.” But yeah, you know, you want to get your body in an alkaline state and that is where you’re eating a bunch of greens. Like in the morning, I’ll have this green smoothie of spinach and kale and all that and because it puts me in a place where I can think really, really clear. And, if you don’t, if you’re having like the bacon and eggs and the toast, you know, right away you’re starting to think a little bit foggy and the more you eat that crap, the foggier you’re going to get. So, it’s not only performance for your body but it’s also performance for your mind.

[18:39]

KC: Awesome. I appreciate you sharing that, so.

[18:42]

DL: I’m getting old now.

[18:44]

KC: You’re young, man.

[18:46]

DL: To preserve myself.

[18:47]

KC: You just ran an ironman, right?

[18:51]

DL: Yeah, yeah.

[18:52]

KC: Geez.

[18:52]

DL: I thought I was too old to do it right and then I do the sprint one which is the smallest one. It’s like, I don’t know, a 20 mile race and this old guy beats me and he must be like 70 something and I said, “So, you do this sprints often?” And, he goes, “No, I usually do the ironman.” I’m like, “Oh, ****, he’s like 70 years old. He’s doing the ironman?” I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to swear on your show.”

[19:14]

KC: Oh, that’s fine.

[19:16]

DL: But yeah, so he said he’s doing it. That was the catalyst, I think, if he can do it, I can do it.

[19:21]

KC: Yeah.

[19:22]

DL: That’s when I started training for that ironman.

[19:23]

KC: Was it more physical or more just mental?

[19:26]

DL: It’s both. It’s definitely a mental game. The whole time, one half of your body is saying ‘Quit’ and the other half is saying ‘Move forward’. The physical aspect is you have to have, it’s called your Cardio Engine and you have to build the cardio engine that’s going to sustain you for 15 hours. It’s, actually, if you finish within 17 hours you’re considered an ironman, if you finish it after, no ironman.

[19:50]

KC: So, you did?

[19:51]

DL: Yeah, I did it. I thought it was going to take me 16 hours. And so, I was actually an hour and 10 minutes off my time with that. But yeah, man, it was awesome. It was one of the best feelings in the world. You know, because you don’t know if you’re actually going to finish that race and I’ve always had a problem with cramping. I was afraid I was going to start cramping in the run. Like, I did the Boston marathon 10 years before that and I cramped really badly at mile 25, I mean my whole, both my legs, both my arms cramped up. I couldn’t move. I had to walk like a half a mile and for a good 15 minutes I couldn’t walk at all. I was just all bonged up. But, fortunately, everybody in the stands, it was right outside Fenway Park and everybody was just screaming, you know, “Come on, you can do it. Come on.” So, that got me motivated and I finally got walking again and then finally I actually got to jog down both and then cross the finish line but that’s all I thought, “Holy crap, if this happens to me during the ironman, what am I going to do, you know?”

[20:40]

KC: Yup.

[20:41]

DL: And, there was a point where I calculated, I think it was mile 12 in the marathon, after the bike and the swim where I calculated that I could literally crawl at that point and still make it within the 17 hours and as soon as I realized that, I hit that point, I turned to my brother and I said, “I’m living the dream. I’m living the dream.” I kept repeating that because for a year and a half that’s all I dreamed about was finishing this race and I knew I was going to finish.

[21:05]

KC: That’s so amazing and all of that goes back to the one piece of setting up your business from the start to be able to do things like that.

[21:13]

DL: Yeah.

[21:18]

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KC: Okay, before continuing, I want to quickly let you know about our sister podcast, All About Beachbody Coaching. So, partnering with Beachbody, the makers of P90X, Insanity, the 21 Day Fix, Shakeology, you know, the Shaun T, Tony Horton Company. It’s played a huge role for Amy and I in creating the freedom to do what we want, when we want with who we want and not only has it helped us t achieve our goals, it’s how I’ve mentored hundreds of others just like you to achieving their goals and ultimately living the life they love to live. So, if you’d like to learn more about how you can partner with me and be mentored one-on-one by me for free, check out the All About Beachbody Coaching podcast. Alright, back to today’s episode.

[22:09]

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KC: So, if you look at completing the ironman and is it a certain type of person that is having success with things like that and it’s having success in business? And then, my follow up question to that is if it is a certain type of person or whatever it is, can anybody get there?

[22:30]

DL: Well, certainly, anybody can get there. That’s no doubt. I mean if you just set your mind that you’re going to do it, you can do it and you can’t let anybody tell you ‘you can’t do anything’ because anything is possible in this world. I’ve seen, I’ve just seen people do remarkable things, like the 70 year old guy that was doing ironman. I was just like, “Holy crap, if he’s doing it.” You know, so the first question is can anybody do it? Anybody can do anything they put their mind to. Life is a mind game. The people that make it are the people that are optimistic. I mean if you want to boil it all down to one thing, it’s the people that are optimistic and tell themselves that they can and the people that have self doubt and the people that don’t think they can do it, they can’t. And you know, this is where I get this from as well because, you know, there have been, I mean we’ve coached I don’t how many thousands of people over the years that we’ve been doing this business education and real estate education and you’ll see people coming in and you just know. You know, “Oh, this person’s going to be great” or “This person, this is going to be a struggle. We’re going to have to help them turn around their attitude” because that’s what, you know, if you have a negative attitude, you can certainly change it. There are some great books out there. There’s a book called Super Brain, written by Chopra and a Harvard professor on how to rewire your brain. There’s another book written by a navy seal called Unbeatable Mind. I mean these things, you know, because your mind automatically defaults to the negative. So, that means you’ve got to train yourselves to recognize that and then default it back to the positive and when you start doing that, I mean the first thing that turned me onto this was many years ago when I was doing clean ups for the bank and I cleaned out and I saw this cassette set called Lead the Field by Earl Nightingale and I brought it home and I plugged it in and Earl Nightingale was all about, you know, the power of positive thinking and what you say to yourself, what you feed your brain on a regular basis will all come to fruition but you got to feed yourself positive stuff and you got to keep the negativity out. And, I started doing, it was a 6-set cassette set and I started doing what he said and I started seeing changes in my life and I was like, “Holy crap, this stuff actually works.” And, I started, you know, I listened to that like every 3 or 4 months and I started buying books called Raise the Bar, The Magic of Thinking Big, you know, I read Tony Robbins book, Awaken the Giant Within, I mean feeding myself all that stuff and anybody can do it. Listen, I was in a rock & roll band for 8 years, I was partying hard for 8 years. I had a lot of negative things inside of my system, you know, and I looked at life negative. When you’re hung over 6 out of 7 days of the week, you know, you look at life kind of negatively most of the time. So, this turned my whole attitude around. When I turned my attitude around, it turned my business life around and it turned my whole life around and that is the thing that I attribute to my success. And, the thing that I was going to start out by saying is about 3 months ago or 4 months ago I was watching this documentary on Auschwitz, oh because I read this other book, Man’s Search for Meaning.

[25:30]

KC: Is that Viktor Frankl?

[25:31]

DL: Yeah, Viktor Frankl, yeah, Man’s Search for Meaning. That is an awesome book. You know, so I was watching an interview from somebody that had survived the Nazi prison camps and they’re talking about that book. And then, they’re talking about, you know, what does it take for somebody like you to survive the camp? And, he said, “It’s all about attitude.” It was all about attitude. He says, “You could see the people coming in and you could tell how long they were going to last depending on what their attitude was. If their attitude was that they could do it and they were going to last and, you know, this didn’t suck as bad as it seemed, then they were going to last. And, if they thought, you know, ‘Oh, this is terrible, you know, why me’, they didn’t last long at all.”

[26:07]

KC: Dave, you just fired off a bunch of stuff and for everyone listening, in the show notes, we’ll have all the books, all links to everything that Dave just talked about. I want to share one quick story with you though, Dave. When you started bringing that up, I have 3 kids, so I have a 5-year old, a 3-year old and a 1-year old and my 3-year old, we had this amazing thing. I do this with all the kids but we had this big sledding hill right by our house and one of the things that I told her. I was like, “I’ll pull your sled back up but you got to walk back up.” So, she’s walking back up and as she was walking up, she’s like, “I can’t do it. I can’t do it.” And then, I literally, I was just saying, “I can do it. I can do it.” So now, my 3-year old, every time she gets to that point, like whatever she’s doing, if it’s you know, we’re out for a walk and she gets tired and she can’t walk back anymore, she does it on her own now. She just says, “I can do it. I can do it.”

[27:04]

DL: That’s one of the best things you can teach your kids. You know, the power of tenacity.

[27:09]

KC: Yeah, she’s a little go getter.

[27:11]

DL: Let me just add. I think the main point to what we were just talking about is the fact that you can teach yourself to do this as well. You know, you can change whatever you want to change in your world, whether it be financially, whether it be emotionally, you know, anything in your life that you want to change, you can change. You just, you go out to get the resources to do it and you learn and you evolve. That’s what so great about life. I like to say when people say to me, “Oh, you know, I screwed this up” or “Oh yeah, this happened to me and blah, blah, blah.” I look at them and say, “You know what, the best thing about life is life is forgiving and you’re forgiven for whatever happened to you in the past and then, now you just move forward.” And then, the other thing too is, when I was at Harvard and my leadership professor, now this was a guy ad trust me I went to Harvard in my late 30s because when I was in my 20s I was like, you know, I was in that rock & roll group, no way I was going to get into Harvard, you know. And so, I was accepted into this program and my professor for leadership, his name is Robert Kaplan and he was a Vice Chairman over at Goldman Sachs for a number of years and at 52 years old he retired and because of the work he had done, they gave him a 300 Million plus walk away package. You know, it was like, “Hey, thank you very much for what you did for us.” So, he was our guy on leadership and he said, very first class, he said, “I want you to know this.” He said, “As the head of an organization, the leader of an organization or even the head of a family,” he said, “You’re always going to be asking yourself ‘Am I good enough? Can I do this?’” He said, “And, as the head of the family or the head of the organization or the leader of whatever, you have no one to talk to because everybody comes to you for the answer so you feel like you should have the answers but in reality you need to go search and get the answers and typically, you need somebody to talk to.” And he said, “The more people you get to talk to or that confidant, you just really need one, you know.” He said, “It doesn’t matter if it’s a psychologist. It doesn’t matter if it’s a best friend, you know spouse or it doesn’t matter who it is but you need to talk these things out with people because everybody has these self-doubts.” The other thing he said was, which I have on my wall, he said, “It doesn’t matter what you screwed up in the past. It doesn’t matter what you did in the past. “He said, “What matters is that you think about winning. Always think about winning. Don’t be thinking about what happened in the past. Always think about winning. I was like, “Wow, man. It’s really good stuff.” And, I thought, “This is going to be a great class” and it was.

[29:36]

KC: That’s awesome. And, as you’re talking, I’m writing all these quotes down. That’s awesome.

[29:41]

DL: Yup.

[29:42]

KC: I really appreciate it. So, it’s interesting because I think that led right into the final question. You’ve written a book with Donald Trump. You’ve share the stage with Trump and Robert Kiyosaki and Tony Robbins. Who’s been the person that has had the biggest impression on you and your life and what was it that they impressed you with?

[30:06]

DL: Well, here’s the deal. When I was, I was a really troubled teen. That’s probably why I entered that band, that I did all kinds of crazy stuff. I tried to hide from the life that I was living. And, there was actually a guy in my hometown. I was at the drugstore picking something up and this guy started talking to me and at first I was like, “Why is this guy talking to me?” And, he ended up being a monk, as Benedictine monk and he lived like 2 streets away. I didn’t realize it at that time and we evolved in this friendship. I don’t know, he pressed some buttons in me where I remember I walked out of that drugstore and then the next thing I know, I’m over at his house and I’m like bearing my soul to him and he’s giving me great advice and he has been my friend and a mentor. He’s never been married so the only thing he can’t mentor me on is relationships.

[30:55]

KC: Yup.

[30:56]

DL: He’s like in his late 70s now and he now lives in Phoenix, not in Boston. But, he’s been the one, you just you know and here’s the biggest piece of advice he gave me. I was done really wrong one time, I mean really wrong and I was going to have to confront the person. I found out where the person was that did this to me. So, I told him about it. I said, “Look, I know where this person is. I’m going to go, not only am I going to go over there but I’m going to have to face this person anyways because he was going to be, he was going to intersect like with a part of my life. I still would have to face him anyways.” And, he says to me, “So, what are you going to do?” I said, “I don’t know.” I said, “You know, I don’t know what I’m going to do. What do you think I should do?” I asked him. And, he looked at me and he paused and he looked up, looked up at the sky a little bit and then he looked back at me and he says, “You got to forgive him.” I was like, “What?” He said, “You got to forgive him.” I said, “I told you what he did to me. It was pretty horrendous. I told you what he did to me.” I said, “How can you forgive anybody for doing something like that?” He said, “It doesn’t matter.” He says, “You need to forgive him because if you don’t he will always be living in your mind and he’ll be living there rent free.” He says, “But, if you forgive him, you have just freed yourself off him and you no longer have to think about him or what happened.” And, I thought, “Oh my God.” At first, I thought, “I can’t do that.” You know, and I thought about it and then it was probably like a day, day and half later, I thought to myself, “Well, this guy’s given me pretty good advice, you know, through different parts of my life and I’m going to try it.” So, I happen to see the guy. I didn’t go looking for him because I didn’t want to forgive him but I happen to see him and I walked out to him and I said, “Hey, remember me?” He was like, “Yeah.” I said, “I just want you to know I forgive you.” I said, “I don’t like you for what you did but I just want you to know I forgive you.” He’s like, “What are you talking about?” I said, “Just know I forgive you.” And, as I turned and walked away from him, it was like this huge thing had been lifted off my shoulders, you know, I’m really free. It was like, “This is awesome.” And, it was, I think it’s probably the single best advice that I’ve gotten in my entire life. And, anybody that does me wrong it’s like, “Hey, I forgive you. I don’t forget but I forgive you.” Now, get out of my life.

[33:06]

KC: That’s awesome and, Dave, I appreciate you taking the time out and catching up a little bit here and sharing with us and we didn’t get a chance to really dive into all the different services that you have, the different mentoring and stuff like that. For people that are looking to get a little bit more, learn a little bit more about you, what can we drive them towards? Where can people go to find more about you?

[33:30]

DL: They can go to Davesfreebook.com and I got a most recent book that I wrote, I’ll give it away free, just for your listeners and they can get some great information on real estate investing and creating systems to build a business. So, it’s called Davesfreebook.com. You’ll see the book right there when you click into that website. Get the book. I’ll send it to you and, you know, he’d buy it, make some money.

[33:54]

KC: I love it. Alright, well, I appreciate the time again and have a beautiful week and we’re doing this recording on Friday and I thank you for staying in the office a little bit late and chatting with us.

[34:06]

DL: Thanks, Keith. It’s been a pleasure. It’s great talking to you again.

[34:09]

KC: Thanks, Dave. Alright, I hope you enjoyed that episode as much as I did. Dave is truly a legit rock star, right, he brings it in everything he does with life. If you want to get the show notes for today’s episode, the easiest way to do it, just send a text message to 38470 and then type the word LINDAHL, L-I-N-D-A-H-L within the content of that text message. Again, send the text to the number 38470, type in the word LINDAHL, L-I-N-D-A-H-L, that’s Dave’s last name, and we’ll get you the show notes and all the different things that Dave mentioned. Also, you can always shoot over to KeithCallahan.com and for this episode it’s /episode11, KeithCallahan.com/episode11. Alright, well, that is it for today and ‘til next time.

Thank you for listening to The Business of Life podcast. Apply what you learned today and you’ll be one step closer to creating the life you love to live.

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