What is one thing millionaires desire, but rarely find? What is one form of wealth that isn’t attained with financial freedom?
Our guest, Brad Chandler, shares his journey from successful investor to acquiring even greater wealth than his real estate could provide. Tune in to find out what he did!
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The One Aspect Of Wealth Many Millionaires Miss
I’ve got a special guest here, Brad Chandler, with whom we’re going to have a fun conversation. Like many of our guests, Brad has been in real estate for the last twenty-plus years. He has been doing that for a long time. He got interested in real estate by reading a book when he was in ninth grade, learning how to buy houses. He’s been doing that ever since.
He has a company called Express Home Buyers. He’s bought and sold over 4,000 homes across the country. His primary impact is helping develop his team. What we want to talk about today is how to make an impact rather than making a lot of money, which is the whole message of being a rippler and having that ripple effect. We’re going to talk to Brad about that today. Brad, welcome to our show.
Thanks for having me. I’m excited.
Fill in the gaps a little bit. Tell us more about the story because there are not that many ninth graders who said, “I want to read a book about real estate.” I’ve got a lot of teenagers in my family. Most of them don’t even want to read a book about real estate investing.
The funny thing is I hated reading. When I think back, I don’t even know how I got my hands on that book. It might’ve been a Christmas gift. I read a book by Robert Allen, who’s now in one of the masterminds we’re in. I knew from an early age that I wanted to do real estate because there was a lot of money involved. We’ll get to that in a little bit later and what was important about the money.
What was your first dabble in real estate? How’d you get started?
An investor bought my neighbor’s house in the summer of 2002. The house was run down. I’m outside one day. It was fixed. There were a bunch of people in the yard. I went and talked to the guy. He goes, “I bought this house. I’m getting ready to flip it. I buy houses at 20% to 30% below market. I fix them up and resell them.” It’d been a long time since I was in ninth grade. I was like, “Did I forget that in the book? That’s what I’m going to do.” I was working for a real developer.
On my first deal ever, I bought a VA foreclosure. The realtor made more money because he double-ended. He got me on the buy. He was like, “You got to re-list it with me.” I made $9,000 or $10,000. He made $13,000. That was my first deal ever. I bought it. It didn’t need a lot of rehab. I put a little rehab in it and sold it. It is boring. The second deal was a subject-to-deal. I had no idea what I was doing but I pulled it off and got the lady what she wanted. She was days away from foreclosure. That was a little better and juicier story.
You jumped right in. It wasn’t even like a simple transaction. You had to go and make it a little bit more complex.
The guy who told me that bought my neighbor’s house, I kept in touch with him. Months later, I call him. I’m like, “I got this deal under contract.” He goes, “Put it in a land trust and subject-to.” I’m like, “What the hell did he say?” He was like, “Call this title company.” I called the title company. The guy was helpful and we pulled it off somehow. I made $30,000 or $40,000. I was only making $60,000 a year at that time.
At that point, you said, “Why am I working this job again?”
I bought my first house in July of 2003. I bought six houses in July and August of 2003. It took me eight months because I decided in December of 2002 that I was going to do this, Chris. It took eight long months to find my first deal. I bought 6 in 2 months. In October, I went to my employer at the time. I said, “I quit.” I came home. I told my wife at the time. She’s like, “Are you kidding me? We have a newborn son. I’ve got two kids. What are you thinking?” I was like, “It’ll be fine.” Sure enough, it’s fine. 20 years later, I have 4,000 houses. We’re not still married but it’s fine.
You’ve made millions in real estate. You have thousands of transactions. I want to talk about your journey because there are a lot of people reading this. Most of these people are passive investors but there are some active investors. People may want to have the success you’ve had. What was that turning point for you in 2021?
I was trying to get my son help for anxiety. I realized that I had my childhood programming issues that were not only severely affecting my life in all areas but were also partly the cause of his anxiety and my daughter’s anxiety. As I was reaching out to try to get him to help, the person said to me, “You might need some help. Do you want to come out and work with us?”
I went to Park City. Over the course of a weekend, it was a three-hour session, Chris. I walked out of that Airbnb bedroom, a different human being. My life changed profoundly. When I came home, I was like, “I figured out the secret to life. I’ve got to give this gift to other people.” I know that God put me on this planet to do this work because I’ve helped 50 to 75 people transform their lives. It’s been quite an amazing couple of years for me.
It hasn’t even been any Joe Shmoe off the street. These are guys in our mastermind groups who also make tens of millions of dollars in their businesses. They’re having these huge perspective shifts in their lives because I know for me the measurement of success. It took me losing everything to figure out what I had to get it all back and have to rebuild again after I went broke and got to where I am today.
I know for a fact that your perspective on life and how you see the world. We talk a lot about abundance mentality versus scarcity. Even how you respond to events creates that emotional intelligence that helps you in all areas of life, especially in business. It helps you create more happiness.
Every single problem you have in your life is created by a thinking problem. Here’s a secret to life. Every single problem, whether you have obesity, a crappy marriage, infidelity, drink too much, smoke too much weed, have an addiction problem, depression, and anxiety, everything comes down to one thing and that’s a thinking problem. None of us were born with these thinking problems. These thinking problems were created when our brain did what it was supposed to do through a stressful time in our childhood that gave us meaning to get through that stress.
Every single problem you have in your life is created by a thinking problem. Click To TweetThis is as bad as happening to me because I must be bad. Therefore, if I’m good, I can get relief in the love that I want. Your brain is doing its job. The problem that people don’t understand is that I am bad. It gets buried in your subconscious mind, which controls 95% of your daily behavior. I can’t tell you the number of clients, even in the last 30 days where we’ve gone into the hypnosis session, which is a deeply relaxed state where we can access your subconscious mind.
I had a client. He unearthed 3 memories from 3 to 4 years old. I said, “Have you ever thought about those before?” He goes, “No.” We’re walking around with memories that we remember but we can’t recall. Our body remembers them. They control our behavior. They cause us to drink, yell at the wife, or kick the dog but we don’t know why.
The secret to life is you go back and figure out what are the beliefs that are driving your behavior that you want to change. Number two is you rewire the brain by listening over to a recording. It’s called neuroplasticity. Your brain has the natural ability to regrow new neural pathways. You can change your thinking and your behavior.
The third and as critical as the first two is conditioning. Now you know the problem and you’re rewiring. Every day, you have to practice. When you feel a negative emotion and you deal with that emotion, you’re one step closer to liberation. In my life, my goal is to get to a point in life where no one or no situation can negatively affect me or positively affect me. That’s liberation. That’s complete freedom. I’m closer. If I’d heard this three years ago, I’d have been like, “You’re crazy.” Now I am close. My sixteen-year-old daughter is the one person left that I’m trying to conquer that continues to trigger me regularly.
There’s always got to be one.
It’s your family members. It’s always the closest people to you where it’s the last to release but it’s okay. It’s all going to happen in time.
I had a trauma response after getting in an auto accident. I caused the accident. I see the car seats and the car in front of me. That trauma response triggered in me. I realized I even brought up other memories of times I felt that way. When I was country dancing and doing a lift with a girl, and she kicked too hard, all of a sudden, I was bending backward almost in half. She lands and hurts her knee. That same feeling I had of hurting someone I cared about showed up with my wife breaking her wrist. It showed up with the people that were there, even though I didn’t know them. That same trauma response came up again. I’d forgotten that memory. There it is.
Chris, what you said is the essence of most arguments. When you argue with your spouse, it never has to do with the argument at hand or the situation at hand. It always is what your brain did in the accident. It does its job because when you go into an upset mode, your body is in fight or flight. Your brain is saying, “You’re in danger. We got to go back to the danger.” It goes back to a time in your life between the ages of 1 and 10 when someone made you feel the same way your wife is making you feel. You bring that into the current argument when it has nothing to do with it.
Part of that component three, the training of the mind, is I give my clients this daily emotional tracker. We’re rebranding it to call it the Joy Regenerator. Anyone can grab that for free at BradChandler.com/Tracker. What we do is short-circuit, going back to the past. I will teach you a method. You breathe and get present. You give yourself compassion. You identify your emotions.
They’re like, “Where’s this come from?” “When my dad didn’t show up to my soccer games, I felt unloved. That’s what my wife is doing to me. Am I six years old, and does she not love me? No, I can be grateful for her because she’s healthy and she loves me. I throw in three grateful things.” You’re right back to your joy.
Instead of with my ex-wife, it escalated to a three-day period of me being cold to her and turning it on her because I had to. I felt so bad about myself that I had to protect myself. I had no idea why I was doing it. I didn’t like it but I had no control. My girlfriend of a year comes to me, I process it and I’m like, “I feel this but it’s not real. Let’s talk about it.” We had a great conversation. Conflict brings us closer together instead of pulling us apart.
You’re able to acknowledge what you’re feeling versus saying, “It’s your fault.” It has nothing to do with them and the situation.
If someone pisses you off, it has nothing to do with them or a situation. It has to do with something inside of yourself. Unless your kids are getting attacked by a bear, you don’t have to get upset about anything. You choose to get upset based on past programming. If we can teach you how to go back and figure out what that programming was and rewire, you can rewire the brain. That’s freedom in life. That’s what I feel like I’ve gotten. That’s why the last two and a half years of my life have been exponentially better than any period of my life and translating to business.
Now that I know that I’m enough, Chris, I don’t have to make $1 million every month or try to because I’m enough. What have I done? I’ve shifted my focus to making an impact. Over the last two and a half years, my net worth has grown way more than ever before. Is it where I want to be? No, because as part of my old programming, I made five business mistakes that cost me $9 million. That was old Brad. New Brad is not chasing every shiny object because he doesn’t have to.
A lot of entrepreneurs in business are trying to make a lot of money. You’ve seen them. I was in there. The masterminds are full of them. They’re like, “How can I make more money than the next guy?” I used to go to those things and compare myself all the time because I felt inferior if someone made more money. Money, to me, was a measure of love and worth because that’s what my dad taught me. He showed his love through money.
I was going to bring it up. How often do you run across this? Other guys are successful like we’ve been. Do you ever get resistance from them saying, “What is all this happy crap you’re talking about and mindset shifting?” They’ll all acknowledge that mindset’s important but at the same time, they almost separate that from emotions. I’ve noticed. They’re almost driven. They think that they’re going to drive their way to success. What have you seen? What resistance or fears do you run across commonly?
It’s way deeper than mindset. I don’t love the word mindset because it’s overused. Change your mindset. Look at my reviews and the people who have gone to all the Tony Robbins events. They’re like, “I knew what I had to do but I couldn’t do it until I met you.” We went back into the subconscious mind and found out what was holding us back. It’s way deeper than mindset.
Whether they’re a successful entrepreneur or they make $10 an hour, it doesn’t matter because some people aren’t ready. To get to freedom, you have to move through the pain of the truth. We each have a unique history of our childhood. A lot of our unique histories are keeping us in an invisible prison. Some people are comfortable and familiar with that prison. They are scared to look and be like, “Let me deal with this issue.” They don’t know the unknown. Our mind likes the misery of uncertainty better than the certainty of whatever. It’s like the devil that you know.
Take me through that. If you do happen to find somebody who’s open, what commonly do you have to address first? What’s the first step usually for somebody?
I can’t work with someone. The first thing I have to address is are you ready for a change? Are you ready to go through a couple of hours of pain? That’s the first thing. The second thing is an awareness. You can’t change if you don’t know. If you’re stuck in prison and you want to escape, what’s the first thing you’ve got to do? You got to realize you’re in prison.
You can't change if you don't know if you're stuck in prison. Click To TweetI had no idea I was in prison, Chris. For 47 years, my 2 marriages that didn’t work out were their fault. I drank not every night but I smoked weed for years every night. It helped me sleep. That was my excuse. I didn’t always eat healthy. It’s okay. My kids had behavioral problems. That’s your mom’s fault because their mom has issues. It was always someone else’s fault. I thought, “I make okay money. I can vacation a lot. All these failed relationships are not my fault.” It wasn’t until I went to get my son’s help that I stumbled into this.
If you are sitting there reading this saying, “I got my s*** together,” I developed this question quiz at BradChandler.com/Quiz. It will tell you your level of self-love. You either score extreme self-love, mild self-love, or lack of self-love. If you score mild self-love or lack of self-love, I promise you that every area of your life, including your relationship with your spouse, partner, kids, health, and business is negatively affected. Don’t take the test and be like, “I’m bad.” No, look at it like, “Like Brad, my life can profoundly transform.”
For you, what was that a-ha moment? You went to Park City and stepped out for three hours. It wasn’t three hours total for you. You’ve been progressing through this but what was that moment for you? Like you said, “I didn’t even think this was a problem before and I thought it was fine.” What shifted for you? What got you to see that it’s me and not everybody else?
We went back to my childhood and unearthed times when I had no control or I felt stress from some type of trauma. A lot of it revolved around my dad hitting me with a belt and my dad making fun of me. I had a big head when I was a kid. People would tease me and call me all the names, like pumpkin head. I’d come home and have to endure from my father. I had no safety. When a kid is bullied, they’re bullied because the perpetrator knows they don’t have a safe place to go home. It’s like when people target kids for sexual abuse. They know who to go to because they don’t have someone safe.
What was that a-ha moment for me, Chris? It was when I realized there was nothing wrong with Brad. What was wrong was my father and the way that he felt about himself. In hindsight, he’s no longer with us but I’ve developed compassion for him because he was such a hurt human being. He was doing the best he could with what he had. That was the a-ha moment.
After doing this and watching thousands of people taken through similar processes with my mentor, Chris, the one underlying thing that most of us have to some degree is I am not enough. Most of the suffering in this world is self-inflicted. You can’t suffer when you live in the truth. We love to live in the untruth that there’s something wrong with us because this s*** happened to us in our childhood, or this teacher said, “You’re worthless.” Your dad said, “I wish you were a girl instead of a boy.”
Whatever that thing was for you, it made you feel not enough. Most of us keep that our entire lives and it affects everything in this world. From the war in Ukraine to our prisons being full to hospitals to sex trafficking, you name it. I can tie it back to an individual’s lack of self-love, which comes from this I’m not enough feeling.
Ironically, you’ll see what seemingly on the outside successful people will have this issue.
Yes, because that’s what drives them. Let’s determine success because it’s not about money. Let’s say the people who thrive in business, athletics, and Hollywood. I’ve got to prove Tiger Woods and Tom Brady. After my seventh Super Bowl, within two minutes of beating Atlanta, I put out a video that put down all my naysayers. If that guy thought he was enough, who’s going to waste their time making a video to prove something?
This is an amazing segue. When I was talking about impact someone was like, “Okay.” I’ve only had one client who was unsuccessful. This gentleman was financially successful. He was worried that if I stopped beating myself up and thought I was enough, I was going to lose my business drive. It’s the opposite. When you can wake up every day and live your purpose and that’s to impact people, you are going to make more money.
Many people get into business to get to this place where I have a lot of money and I feel this certain way but you’re never going to feel this certain way if you feel that I’m not enough. The trick to life is let’s get you healthy. Once you get healthy, you can get to that state that you thought $10 million was going to bring you but you’ll never get there without it. Now that we’re feeling enough, you have a better chance of getting to that $10 million place than you ever did before because you’re not doing stuff to make a lot of money. You’re doing stuff for the good of other people and making an impact.
If you can tell that I’m passionate, I am because I see this everywhere we go. I see so much suffering, addiction, obesity, and crappy relationships. It all comes down to this. Within 3 to 5 hours, and that’s the sweet spot with my clients, people are like, “I finished, two hours ago, a hypnosis session.” I go, “How do you feel?” He goes, “I’ve never felt like this in my life. I can’t believe that you did this for me.” I go, “I didn’t do anything. I let your subconscious mind, which knows the source of all of your problems, unearth them. That’s it.”
Here’s the question I want to talk about. You talked about neuroplasticity. It reminds me a little bit of epigenetics and things of that nature where I know that even emotionally speaking, we passed down some of those same things, like you did from your father. He might’ve got it from his father, for all we know. It can be something passed down like health things passed down.
Many people believe you can’t change it. You can’t change their stripes. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks if you’re older. All these things come up right. For this, breaking the patterns generationally from receiving it from family members and friends but also for your children, have you noticed an effect that maybe even creates a break in your generation?
The greatest gift that any parent can ever give a child is to break the multi-generational curse that most of us are involved in. How do you do that? You do that by teaching your kids to love themselves unconditionally. How can you teach a kid how to love themselves unconditionally? If you take the self-love quiz and you score a lack of self-love or mild self-love, you can’t.
When parents come to me and they’re like, “My child has issues, can you fix them,” we can fix them but as soon as they go back into the environment they create, nothing is going to change. I love Joe Dispenza and Dr. Gabor Maté. They talk a lot about this. There are few things that are passed down genetically.
People are like, “Alcoholism and depression run in my family.” That’s BS. It doesn’t run in the family. Do you know what runs in families? It’s the trauma that’s associated with being the child of an addict, an alcoholic, a depressed person, or an anxious person. That’s what’s passed down. One hundred percent, you can change it. I’m getting into this more.
The Way of Miracles is an amazing documentary on how unresolved childhood programming messes up your health. There’s a 500-page book by Dr. Gabor Maté called The Myth of Normal. The whole thing is about illnesses and diseases. The doctors love to say when they can’t figure out something, it’s either autoimmune or idiopathic. Idiopathic means no known causes. Autoimmune means your body is attacking its immune system.
That doesn’t just happen. There’s a reason for that. What is the reason? It’s stress. The stress isn’t caused by you driving to work in traffic. The stress is caused by you being in a fight or flight mode from when you were six years old and your dad hit you with the belt and made fun of you. That’s where it’s from. Western medicine likes to diagnose, label, and give drugs. That never works. You’ve got to go to the source. Why did this first happen? No one is born with depression, anxiety, eating problems, or addiction problems. It’s all learned. Therefore, it can be unlearned. If you go through traditional therapy and medicine, it’s often a long road to hoe.
That’s the ripple effect we’re talking about right there. It’s not even about helping you be happy. It’s the fact that it can create a whole new generation, a ripple effect through your family of those same patterns of happiness. You could pass on money but joy and happiness, you can’t put a price tag on that.
If you have kids, you owe it to them to do this because they didn’t ask to be brought into the world. You brought them into the world. It is the greatest gift that you can ever give a child.
Brad, thank you so much for joining us. This is awesome.
Thank you. I love it. If I can help you or anyone in any way, please reach out to me.
I guarantee. I’m taking your quiz. There’s no doubt. I look forward to that and everybody else. I recommend the same for you. We teach a lot about money, financial strategies, and wealth but the ultimate wealth is happiness and joy. What can you do to have more of that in your life? If you can solve some of those issues, a lot of times, the money issues also go away. Make sure you’re not just a hero of the word but a doer as well. Go and make it a wonderful and prosperous week. We’ll see you later.
Important Links
- Express Home Buyers
- BradChandler.com/Tracker
- BradChandler.com/Quiz
- The Myth of Normal
- BradChandler.com/Contact
About Brad Chandler
Brad first got introduced to real estate when he read a book in 9th grade on how to buy houses. In 2002, an investor bought his neighbors house in Vienna Virginia and after talking with the investor he decided to start Express Homebuyers. 20 years later Express Homebuyers has bought and sold 4,000 homes across the country and runs primarily without his involvement.
Brad’s main focus is making an impact on the team members and the clients they serve. In early 2021 he went through a major life transformation and found freedom and happiness through self-love. In 2022, because of the profound shift, he felt obligated to share this path with others and started Brad Chandler Coaching.