I released the Jackrabbit Factor book in 2005, and then in 2006 the real life lessons began.
Some of what you’ll hear has not been shared anywhere else, and I hope I don’t regret doing this. However, if it helps YOU avoid some of the pain I’ve dealt with, then it will have been worth it.
After you listen in, let me know what you think below.
Links Mentioned:
- www.ProsperTheFamily.com – the Mindset Mastery 12-week Program
- www.PortaltoGenius.com – the sequel to the Jackrabbit Factor
Originally published January 14, 2010
TRANSCRIPT:
Announcer: Welcome to the rare faith podcast. Where the solution to every problem is only an idea away and where the same activity, with just a little more awareness, always yields better results. Award-winning, best-selling author, Leslie householder, brings some of her best information to this inspiring series of life-changing episodes, that you won’t want to miss! Show notes for this episode can be found at www.ararekindoffaith.com
[Music]
Leslie: All right everybody! Welcome to tonight’s call, lessons learned, since I wrote The Jackrabbit Factor. I’m astounded at how many of you really want to know my dirt! It’s kind of funny. You know, less than a year ago, I would have put on a teleclass and hope to see maybe 30 to 50 people sign in, to you know, to sign up to listen, and tonight we have about 800 people registered. So that’s amazing! It also puts a lot of pressure on me to give you the kind of information that isn’t just fun to listen to because, let’s face it, something about hearing other people’s struggles can be comforting, but it just helps us feel like we’re not the only ones who had to deal with junk and it can also make you come away feeling a little more grateful for the life you already have. I’ve heard it said, that if we could all put our challenges in the middle of the room and then go pick up the challenge that we’d rather have, we’d look at everything there is to choose from and just go right back to the one that belonged to us in the first place. And you know, I look back on the stuff we’ve been through and I’d probably feel the same way, so, perhaps this will just be an exercise in helping you find some gratitude. But, more than that, what I hope it does is to give you a candid look inside the life of someone who’s done what I’ve done and come to realize that we’re probably not all that different from each other.
The things that I’ve learned through my challenges can be used to help you navigate more successfully through your own, I hope. That’s the point of this call. Now, what I wouldn’t have done, to be able to listen to one of my mentors get this honest with me back when I was trying really hard to fix the financial problems that we lived with for, like, seven really long years. I’ll tell you, one of the reasons I’m doing this, is because of what I’ve learned from Garrett Gunderson. Garrett is my co-author for the sequel to, The Jackrabbit Factor, and I’m going to tell you why. Hopefully, I can really give/do justice for that later in the call. I just need to make sure we have time for everything that I’m hoping to cover.
Our first major breakthrough, for those of you who don’t know, occurred back in the year 2000 and here it is 2010! It feels like a blank. I can’t believe it’s been ten years! The Jackrabbit Factor came out of that! I was so amazed by the principles and how they worked and the impact they had, that that’s why I wrote the book. But, it was between 2000 and 2005 that things were going pretty good and they’re pretty predictable. Those are the years that I got my seminar business off the ground and we released the jackrabbit factor but it was in 2006 that the real lessons began and it was almost like life or God was saying, “all right you really believe this stuff. Let’s see how much you believe it. Let’s see how much you can utilize these principles if things went bad again for you. You know you got through those seven years, but what if you were thrown some curveballs? What would you do then? Would you really put them to the test or would you throw them out?”
So, at the beginning of 2006, with a long list of ambitious goals and dreams and the passion and intention to see them through that year, and with too many good opportunities showing up to do any due diligence on any of them. I tell you how when you see a rabbit or when you catch a rabbit all of a sudden you see him everywhere, and there is truth to that, and in our case they were everywhere! We’re like, oh it was like a kid in a candy store! We didn’t know which ones to take and which ones were better than the others and instead of wondering if we’d ever see an opportunity, there was too many!
So, it was about that time that my husband and I determined that it was time to take the leap of faith and have him leave his job to become a full-time investor, and help me with my seminar business.
Our first major investment wasn’t in anything that you might suspect, like stock or property or something like that. Our first major investment was a hundred thousand dollars to pay for business training, coaching and mentorship at the time with Bob Proctor. Now, I know that sounds like a lot of money but we knew that that’s what we needed to do at the time. It was just one of those gut feeling things and we knew we had to do it. It was obvious that if we were going to take a leap away from his employment, we really needed to hire someone who knew better than we did how to fine-tune this process of using these principles to achieve your goals and really utilize the Laws of Success.
So, the plan was to take the jackrabbit factor to New York Times bestseller status that summer. Now it is a best-seller and it is award-winning, but not on New York Times. So anyway, we knew that in order to do that, it would probably require really rigorous campaigning. With six kids at home, I knew I wouldn’t be able to do it without Trevan’s help, and he had worked in IT for years and I needed him to create the online systems that would support the business demands that would have come from having a New York Times bestseller.
So, in February of ‘06, I discovered that I was expecting baby number seven. Now, we always knew that we wanted one more, but her timing was a lot sooner and we expected. Now, you may or may not know this about me. If you’ve been on calls or at seminars before, you probably do know this, but when I’m pregnant I am no fun to be around. I’m not just saying no fun. I’m saying scary! We’ve joked that on the day that that kid broke my broom, I lost my mode of transportation! So, not only am I no fun to be around, but I lose all interest in doing anything business-related. I don’t care anymore. It can all just fall apart and I don’t care, and as far as I’m concerned, I’m done. Done, done, done!
So, well, if you remember, just two months before this, Trevan quit his job to help me take the book to New York Times and suddenly I’ve gone to bed! I’m hating the world. I’m hating my business and mad at Trevan for not providing better! Okay, so you can see the irrationality that comes in. (And, if you’re a health nut and you know exactly what I should have been taking at that time, don’t worry, I’ve heard it before. But, see, you know that’s in the past, so it’s like too late.) But, anyway, sometime I’d like to have Trevan pull his own teleseminar, called, “Lessons learned since marrying Leslie.” That would be interesting and I hope we can do that sometime.
To make matters worse, I contacted our high paid mentor to complain and at our next meeting Trevan was raked over the coals for not providing better. He was asked, “so what are you going to do to pay the bills?” It was awful! My husband felt betrayed. He felt angry. You can imagine, we felt like we had just made the biggest mistake in the world, but at the same time, we remembered how we felt about making that decision and knew that we had done the right thing. We just couldn’t make any sense out of the results that it was producing. You know, you’re supposed to make the right decision and have things go well, and we were having a hard time making sense out of it. So in hindsight though, I understand completely. I understand what that was all for, but in the middle of it, I felt like the whole world was crashing down.
So to hold things together, we lived on savings and Trevan started earning commissions, bird-dogging for a friend who was finding people to rescue, who were in pre foreclosure. He’d go door-to-door and show them how to stay in their home. He earned a pretty good commission doing something completely out of his comfort zone, and you know, I don’t know if you can imagine what that would be like, to be thrown into a thing that you haven’t done before and have your income depend on how well you did it. Now, some of you know what that’s like because you’re already entrepreneurs. Or, you’re already commissioned sales people, or whatever, but this was new for my husband. And, it was new for me ,watching him try to do that while I’m angry and upset and frustrated at life!
Anyway, that lasted about a year and at the end of 2006, we also bought a couple of spec homes for a quick flip. We had, like I said, these opportunities kept coming our way and we found this one that was one of those deals of the century kind of a thing, so we moved heaven and earth to get those two properties! In fact, we used the principles to obtain those properties. We didn’t have what they said we needed to pull that off, but we used the principles to get what we needed. We were also refinancing our home at the same time and so when they got wind that we were trying to come up with three new mortgages all at the same time, they kept throwing us higher qualifications. Saying, “well now you have to show this much money in the bank,” and “it has to be seasoned,” and, and, and, and, and. It finally got to the point where we had jumped through every single hoop using the principles. You know, seeing it done, feeling it done, and moving our feet and doing all we could do, and then it would happen. Until we got to the complete end of all we could do, and it was down to the wire, and we were like well, I guess, I guess we can’t. You know, and as we were sitting there brainstorming, and just as soon as our minds relaxed and we stopped trying to push, push, push, our minds relaxed and it came to me. That spark, and it said, “you don’t have to come up with what they’re saying.” “All it would take is for one person in underwriting to have a change of heart.” I’m like, “oh, well that sounds so simple. I could, I could ask for that.” So that’s how we ended up getting those properties.
But, and I’m going to kind of fast forward a little bit, I’ll tell you that was one of the biggest mistakes we’d ever made. Those became massive albatrosses on our backs because they didn’t flip. Right about then, the market crashed and we were stuck with them and had to carry them for about a year. Trying to keep things together trying to use the principles. Trying to build a business. Trying to stay afloat.All this stuff. All the while, trying to keep our minds from wondering what’s going to happen if the savings runs out. What’s going to happen if all the things that we’ve worked so hard for don’t happen.
So that was a true test of our faith. You know, the lesson I learned from that, is we went into those properties still kind of feeling cocky about the principles. We’d seen them work. We’d seen them work many times. We’d gotten to where we had confidence that we could accomplish anything and we did! What we failed to do, was check and find out if that was the right decision to make. So you know, I think we’re all going to end up learning that lesson one way or another. And that is, I believe in God and I believe that he is interested in our success, and I also believe that he is there to guide us and steer us to the right decisions. And if we ever get too frantic or too busy to check in with him and find out, “is this a good thing for us?” Then, we’re going to make some mistakes that will be painful. Now, there have been times where I’ve said, “is this a good thing for us?” and the answer’s been yes, and it hasn’t turned out the way I thought it was going to, but it taught me some tremendous lessons that I needed in order to face the next thing that was coming my way. You know, so it all works out one way or the other. Whether you make a mistake or whether you don’t, you’ve got to be willing to learn the lessons from those and apply them to the next things that come along.
So anyway, back to the story. At the end of 2006, we bought those homes. We carried them a year. It was during that year that I began to blog again for the purpose (now here’s one of these confession and you’re going to want to go back and read all my blog post now that you know what was really going on) it was during that year that I started blogging for the purpose of coaching myself through our challenges. I’d start feeling fearful or overwhelmed and I’d write about how I knew I should think, and how I should feel, and by doing so, I was able to test the principles in tougher situations than we’d ever faced before our first breakthrough.
We had a rental in California that we were trying to sell to help float the spec homes. One day the realtor went to show the property and when he turned on the water the ceiling over the kitchen caved in with a flood of water! The pipes had burst that winter and nobody had known and we were selling it to get more money, but instead it began to cost us. So you know, every time we turned around it seems like we were getting hit with one more thing. One more thing. One more thing, and I’m blogging. Talking myself through. Coaching myself through. We spent a few thousand dollars fixing it, and the roof, and then our plan was to sell it and roll the profits into a different property with a better positive cash flow. That’s accomplished, if you don’t know, by using something called a 1031 exchange. It’s so, it’s a way to defer the taxes until you finally sell your properties and cash out. So long as the proceeds of that home go into another property within a couple of months, you don’t have to pay income tax on it. So that was what we were trying to do, but things were too busy for us to have time to go property shopping and we decided that we needed those proceeds, which at the time, it was $22,000. We needed that in cash just to keep things going, even if we had to pay the income tax. So we called the 1031 exchange company to say, “Hey never mind. Go ahead and release the funds because we weren’t able to find a property in time. We’ll go ahead and pay the taxes.” and we got a recording that said, “Our company has filed for bankruptcy. If you want more information please visit this website.” Okay, so they had only held our money for something like six weeks and no, not even that long, and suddenly it was gone!
When I tell you that our challenges are a gift, an opportunity to practice the principles, to receive the benefit that each challenge contains, I’m not just talking theory because in the last four years we have had more opportunity to practice these principles in the face of hardship than anybody else I know. This is what I mean when I say the greater your challenges, the luckier you are, because we’ve tested the principles and have seen the results. The test was several years in the making and as we were in the middle of it, I’d wonder, “I wonder if I should be talking about this?” “I wonder if I should tell my list what’s going on so that they can watch this process.” And we just kept coming to the conclusion that we needed to wait until we could prove to ourselves that they still work and that’s why we’re talking to you now, because I can say that it does still work and the challenges have a purpose. It’s all been worth it and actually, the challenges I’ve shared so far were only just the beginning. When the market crashed and when some of our friends began to lose their jobs and they were facing the greatest fears they’ve ever had to face in their life, I looked back and I realized that God allowed us to experience it all about two years ahead of everyone else. We’ve been documenting our lessons learned and now I can see how valuable that information is now that millions of people are reeling from the effects of this economy. I know we can help now more than ever. If we had just written Jackrabbit Factor and had been smooth sailing on it to Easy Street, we would have been useless to helping anybody else.
That’s one of the things I’m talking about, is when you have challenges, you can turn them around and profit from them and help other people because of what you’ve been through. When we were in the middle of it, we weren’t ready to be candid because we had to prove to ourselves all over again. The principles work.
Now, it’s funny because I thought that what I had discovered and shared through the Jack Rabbit Factor was the end-all solution to every problem. I didn’t see myself ever writing another book and I could scarcely see myself keeping up on a blog. It just sounded like too much work, and to be honest, I was bent on creating something that could run itself completely and from which I could disengage and then just settle in as the kool-aid mom and scrapbook and do stuff like that. Now, most of my pain and suffering stemmed from wanting to walk away from helping others because every time I got close to the big financial breakthrough that would allow us to just live in the lap of luxury, it was as if a big rug would get yanked out from under us. I was angry. I was frustrated. I was cynical. I started to even feel like a pawn, knowing that I was helping thousands of people achieve their goals but that I couldn’t even achieve my own.
It wasn’t until I threw up my hands and said, “Okay Lord, I guess this is what I do. I am a mom and a teacher.” I decided to love what I do. Did you know that it is a choice? You can love your life or you can choose to hate it, even as things are. They don’t have to change before you can choose to love the way things are and the quicker you find happiness right where you are, the sooner life softens to you again. You might want to write that one down. The sooner you can find happiness right where you are, even if nothing were to change, the sooner life softens to you again. And you know, the things that you really want, begin to flow to you more naturally, because you’re not in resistance to the way things are.
It reminds me of the time when we moved into the house that you see on our website. I was in the middle of writing the jackrabbit factor and we sold two other homes to afford it. Technically, we only needed one of the homes to close but I didn’t want the larger mortgage. Both homes were in escrow at the time and we loaded up the u-haul from California, headed for Arizona, and we parked the truck outside of Grandma’s house and spent the night in her basement, expecting the homes to close, like the next day. Then we’d get the key to a new house we can move in.
This was the dream, you know? This was something that we’d been working hard for. The house we were coming from was two bedrooms. We had six kids and we were in two bedrooms! All the kids were in one room, except the baby was with us. It was a fixer-upper that we fixed to flip. My husband was working two and a half hours away, commuting. I was writing jackrabbit factor at the time. I remember, when we moved into that home, we had to pull out the carpet and start all over and we were on tack strip for quite a while, with the babies and it was crazy!
And you know, as you can imagine, the marriage has been tested too. Hopefully we’ll do a call about that sometime, but when we were at the grandma’s house, I was really disappointed when the house that we were selling didn’t close the next day. I was disappointed that we couldn’t move into the new home. We made phone calls and we tried to see what was holding it up. The homes had actually been in escrow a long, long time, so it really was going to happen any day.
After three days, I was starting to get a little frustrated. We had six kids cooped up in one bedroom and most of the things we needed were deeply buried in that u-haul outside. In fact, the truck was due to be turned in and we started racking up late fees for every day we were keeping it, but it would have been ridiculous to unload everything into a storage unit just to have to rent another truck a day later to move it all out again. And, this was in Arizona summer, so you don’t, you don’t voluntarily unload a big u-haul truck into a storage unit with expectations of hauling it all out again right away if you don’t have to.
But you should have seen me by the end of the first week! I was irritable. I was going stir-crazy, with nothing to do but wait for the phone call. By the end of two weeks, I was furious! No longer! I didn’t even care if both homes closed anymore. I just prayed that one of them, either one of them, any one of them, just one of them, would hurry up!
Okay, so it didn’t happen during the third week. I wondered if it would fall through all together. I mean, that u-haul truck was still sitting outside and we’re in the third week. The seller was getting anxious and we were with the prospect of having to start all over again looking for a place to live, and if you’ve ever looked for a home and found the right one, that is no easy task. It’s taxing. It’s exhausting. It’s emotionally draining.
So anyway, finally, out of sheer exhaustion, I collapsed. I, not, not like unconscious or anything, but I collapsed on the bed and I cried, and I cried until I had no more tears. And then I decided that it just didn’t matter anymore. I didn’t need that house. I would have been thrilled to be in a mobile trailer. At that point, all I wanted was to be in a place of my own, that I could call home. I released my grip on what had to be and I found peace without it. And you know what? Within hours, we got the phone call and we were able to move in to the house after all, but it didn’t happen until I relaxed my grip and found peace without it. And you know, and I think, I believe that that house could have closed the first day or two if I had already been that person who had found peace without it.
So, yes. You know. Set your goals and you put everything you’ve got into achieving them, but if it’s a really big goal, that really wrestles with your subconscious mind and it’s, it’s a whole new world for you, I predict that you’ll probably face a moment where you have to prove to yourself that you’re okay without it. And more than once, I’ve seen that it comes through shortly after that. I’m not going to say every time, because I’m still learning. I’ve got a lifetime of lessons to learn.
One thing that I’ve learned, is that I’m never going to be done learning, alright? No matter how many books I write, the next book is always,… No, did I just say that? I don’t have plans for another book, okay, but if I learn enough lessons, then I’ll probably write another one. But the point is, is that there is no end to what we can learn, and life is going to continue to deliver challenges, and lessons, and the sooner we can embrace them and learn from them and help others with the lessons we’ve learned the better.
So here’s a lesson: Learn to be happy as things are find acceptance in your life even if nothing were to change and only then can things really begin to change.
It’s funny, because at that point you think, “but really it’s okay. I was happy without it,” and that’s when you really feel overcome with gratitude. Because you realize that it’s a merciful God who is not just interested in sending you blessings, but is even more interested in your personal growth and spiritual maturity.
All right. So, back to the story. After we lost the $22,000 in March of ‘o7, it became clear to me that I needed to put together a program that taught people all the many things that we were learning. (And I haven’t even been able to give you a fraction of it yet.) Most of which there just isn’t time in one sitting to share them all, even if I wanted to.
And, so what we learned has been put into the 12 weeks mindset mastery program, which has 300 pages of documented lessons learned for people who have read The Jackrabbit Factor and loved it, maybe, but need help applying the principles for real results. And like I said, we practiced them and we’ve seen them continue to work in the face of all of our setbacks. Life became our living laboratory to test whether or not they were really true, or whether it was all just a bunch of hooey, really. There, there was a point where I thought, “oh, I put this book out called The Jackrabbit Factor and I wonder if we should pull it from the shelves, because I’m not sure it’s true anymore.” It really tested me. In fact, as I struggled to create the 12-week program, halfway wondering if I was just no longer qualified to teach the principles, but deep down knowing that I was doing exactly what I was supposed to do.
I don’t know if you’ve ever been in that kind of a position, but life through one of the toughest lessons my way. Now I call it a lesson, but most people would call it a disaster. Your disaster, depending on how you respond to them, will either be just a disaster or they will be a tremendous lesson from which you can profit tremendously.
So, some of you have heard this story before, but my question at the time was, “why does it seem like everything is going wrong? Yeah, we’re still alive and all, but is it really all that wrong to wish for things to be abundant again? Should I just quit teaching until we figure it all out?”
It still continued to be clear to me, that we needed to teach what we already knew to be true, because they were principals and we weren’t making them true or false by how well we were living them ourselves. Obviously, we were doing something wrong. We didn’t know what it was yet, but the things that we did know to be sure principles, we continued to talk about.
Now, Bob Proctor, about that time, shared a story with us that helped me understand. He said, that when you set a goal, life doesn’t just deliver the goal. It delivers an experience, that if you respond properly to it, you will then become the person who is capable of receiving the thing that you asked for in the first place.
So in other words, without the challenge there can be no victory. It’s the challenge that delivers the victory. As you respond to it properly. How do you respond to it properly? By thinking according to these laws of thought that the 12-week mind that mastery program talks about. The challenge itself is often the very evidence that proves you’re on the right track. So these people who watch “The Secret” and then get all mad because the Ferrari didn’t show up in their driveway, as they’re sitting on the couch daydreaming, they didn’t stick around long enough to find out that those principles are true. They work, but there always is a trial that you’ve got to face and overcome before you get the prize.
Now, I’m not going to say every time, because sometimes you’re already the person who is capable of appreciating and receiving the thing that you’ve asked for. But the big things, the things that really stretch you, those come on the other side of a challenge. And so when a challenge goes up, you can look at it like, oh I’m failing! Oh, this is horrible! Oh everything’s going wrong! Or, you can look at it like, oh, okay then, I’m going to come out on top of this because something on the other side of this is going to be amazing! We had to start really practicing that through these situations.
So, you know The Jackrabbit Factor it’s not all about getting. It’s about becoming. And the more you learn to live by the principles, the more you’ll be showered abundantly with everything God has to offer because you will have learned to respond correctly to the challenges.
So my question at the time was, whether or not we should just give up, and the experience that Life delivered to answer that question was this: I was in my office when I heard my youngest son yell from downstairs, “mom, Bethany’s lips are blue!” I raced down the stairs, into the backyard where my seven-year-old son had found her three-year-old little body floating, facedown in the deep end of our pool. I ran to her side and there was no heartbeat. She was not breathing, and immediately I instinctively threw her over my knee to Pat her on the back and dislodge whatever she was choking on, except of course, she wasn’t choking. I knew that, but, but you see how subconscious programs will kick in. I goofed up. I, I tried to Pat her on the back and it did no good. So I rolled her over and, and her head accidentally hit the deck pretty hard, but there was no complaint. I wish she would have been able to complain! I made another mistake. I hit her head on the deck. I tried to give her mouth-to-mouth, but it only came rushing out of her nose. There’s another mistake. So I closed her nose and tried again. This time it filled her chest and then just kind of stayed there. It didn’t naturally expel. So it reminded me to press on her chest. So that reminded me about chest compressions. You know, I knew that the oxygen was in her lungs but that’s not where it needed to be. It needed to be in her brain. So, I gave her a few compressions. I gave her another breath, another round of compressions and then she began to revive. Now, nobody knows exactly how long she was there, but after an overnight stay in the hospital, she fully recovered. I’m really grateful for that, but it wasn’t until about three weeks later that it finally hit me. God had sent me an answer to my question through this extremely traumatic experience!
I believe he knew she was going to be okay. I think everything was orchestrated so that she’d be fine, but he was sending me an answer and I could finally see it! I could see that I had failed time and time again with her. To keep her safe in the first place, and then by making all those mistakes trying to bring her back. Hitting her head, coming out her nose, hitting her on the back, just all these things that didn’t work. I kept failing and suddenly I could see that our financial situation was much like her. I realized that while I was trying to help her, I kept making mistakes, but that there had been no time to mole or mope or bemoan them. You know? I wasn’t going to sit there and say, “Oh you know, I tried to give her mouth-to-mouth but it came rushing out her nose. Darn it. Gee! Things never go my way. Nothing ever works out for me.”
There wasn’t time to do that! There wasn’t time to do that! Each mistake actually provided the feedback I needed that helped me ultimately get it right. If I had stopped for even a second to bemoan my mistakes it could have resulted in her death or long-term handicap. And because of that experience, I learned that even our finances, failure is just feedback, and that so long as we have breath to give there’s still time to breathe some life back into it. If we take too long to bemoan those failures, it can mean death or long-term handicap with our finances too.
I learned, through that experience, to bounce back quicker from setbacks. Yeah, we’re supposed to learn from our mistakes. We’re supposed to be sorry about them. We’re supposed to try to make them right. But, to dwell on them is death. To not stay in action is death, or long-term handicap. You’ve got to stay in motion. I learned to bounce back quicker and focus on what we could do in the moment. I learned that no matter how bad things may seem, you always have all that you need to do the thing that needs to be done today.
It’s when you start thinking about what you’re going to need next Tuesday or next month or next year or whatever, that you can get all locked up and useless. You’ve got to put the blinders on and stay in the moment. If what you need to do in the moment, is to avoid problems in the future, a certain problem in the future, then do that by focusing on what you’re doing and not focusing on the disaster you’re hoping to avoid. Stay in the moment. Do what you can do in the moment.
Even after the experience with my daughter, the hardships weren’t over. We spent nearly six weeks out of the summer with a broken air conditioner because the repairman would put us on the calendar a week away and come fix it and then it would break again the same day. And then we’d have to wait another week and so forth, and here in Arizona the temperatures remain over 110 degrees regularly. And this was in the summer. You know, if you haven’t experienced that, you’re probably thinking, oh yeah big hardship. Whoop-dee-doo! I cannot tell you how hard it is to maintain a good attitude when you’re feeling that kind of heat. I remember jumping into the pool with all my clothes on once and walking inside to sit back at my computer, just to finish what I was doing. I don’t have to worry about water damage on anything, because it just evaporated that fast!
Something else I learned, is that when we face and conquer new challenges, we become more valuable To be able to help others more effectively. We gain more compassion and understanding for people who face tough situations.
You know and remember those properties we bought? After Trevan left his job, those ended up going to short sale in 2008. All the while I’m continuing to promote Jackrabbit Factor, after having let them go. That was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, because again, I do not make the principles true or false by how well I live them. I’m telling you. We’re not perfect, and I’ve learned that none of my mentors are perfect either, but I’ve also learned that if you wait until you’re perfect before you turn around and help someone else, you will never help anyone.
So with all I’ve shared with you, my son was walking down the street after school and somebody drove by and threw an orange at him. Sounds harmless. Sounds like fun, but what happened is, it ended up hitting him in the eye. It blew out the bones in his eye socket. It lacerated his cornea and he was blinded by that at first. He did get his sight back, but you know, life’s going to throw you challenges, and every one of them is an opportunity to respond.
In that case, I had an opportunity to get angry and mad and chase the snake that bit me and poison myself, or to finally just come to peace with it. Help him. He ended up okay, but how do I respond to that? Am I going to let that negativity consume me?
On another occasion, we went up to Utah and we did a seminar in Salt Lake City. I believe it’s the one where Garret introduced me and it’s the one that’s on the web site. Well, as we came home from that seminar, we got back and found that one of the cars that we had left at home (we had cracked the windows so that the heat wouldn’t ruin the leather) well, while we were gone, there was a freak torrential rain that filled our car up with water. And then of course the heat evaporated everything and the leather just shrunk and all the seams were ripped out, and the insurance company even totaled the car for how much was going to cost to repair it. So you get home, and again, an opportunity. What am I going to do with this? Am I going to be all upset, or am I going to stay focused on what I can do?
Those four years we had consistently, consistently, consistently done everything we could to keep the principles forefront in our minds. Sometimes I’d read my own stuff just to keep my head in the right place and it always worked out. It always worked out. Not always when we wanted it to, but it always did.
Let me tell you how it happened. Things really finally started turning around again, and by the way there’s a part near the end of Portal To Genius, which is the sequel to The Jackrabbit Factor, where Richard and Felicity go to a restaurant. When you read it, you’re going to think, oh okay, sure, that wouldn’t happen in real life. Because it’s a story. It’s fiction. I’m able to create different experiences in there, and while all of it is based on true stories, it’s fiction. Okay, but this experience at the restaurant that they have is true! You’re going to think, oh that would never happen, but I want you to know that that part of the story is there because it’s exactly what happened at Trevan and I, and you’re going to have to read it to know what I’m talking about. People think that because I’m The Jackrabbit Factor lady, everything is just smooth sailing for me, and I think it’s important for you to know that every new goal that I’ve ever set stretches me to my limits, just as much as the last. It’s stretching you to a new level and we get to the point where you understand the process and it becomes okay. Challenge got it. Cover it. Conquer it. Move on. It’s the process, and remember, even when you get what you want, the real prize is who you’ve become in the process.
I’m a different person than I was in 2005 and I wouldn’t trade my experiences for anything because of who I’ve become and who I’m becoming. Through the process our marriage has endured tremendous stress and yet, our relationship is now deeper than it’s ever been in 19 years.
Anyway, I need to tell you how I met Garrett Gunderson for the first time in 2008, because it’s important for you to understand this. It’s what we’ve learned from him that has helped us turn everything around.
Early in 2008, I got a phone call, or I got an email from somebody who said, “Hey, would you be interested in being a guest on this radio show?” And it was Garrett Gunderson’s show. And I said, “Sure.”
You know, I didn’t know who he was or anything, but I was on the show. We found out that he was a financial advisor, I believe, that was requiring Jackrabbit Factor as required reading for all of his clients, and he wanted me to come on the show and talk about the principles and everything. And so, I did and then later I think he had me on again and I didn’t think much of it. And then that summer we were coming up to Utah to do a live seminar and he asked us about that. Where we were going to do it and everything, and he says, “Well, how about we have you come back on the radio show and we’ll help you fill the event? We’ll help you get the word out so that you can fill up the seats.” And I said, “Well, that would be great!” Free advertising. In the back of my mind I’m wondering, “Okay, what did he want? What’s he looking for in return?” You know, what favor is he going to be asking from us later? You know these suspicious thoughts. He had me do this other radio show and he says, “Oh, and by the way, what are we going to do about all the people who can’t get in because it’s full? Would you like me to bring my camera crew in and record it? We can pipe it in as a live feed for people on the internet.” And I’m like, “Oh, okay. That would be great!”
I mean I know how much that kind of thing can cost to put that on if you’re going to hire someone to do that and here he was just offering to provide his services to help to help the cause and I was amazed. So we did that, and that’s actually the stick man video that we have on the internet right now. That was from him. He’s the one that put that together for us. We put the event together. He’s the one that taped it and then he invited us to come to one of his events up in Utah, and we got to find out what he was all about, and what he was teaching. And I tell ya, I…
Oh, he sent me his book, Killing Sacred Cows, and as I read it, I was amazed because he had basically taken The Jackrabbit Factor, (now he didn’t do this because of Jackrabbit Factor it’s his own book, but this is how I looked at it, was Jackrabbit Factor 202) it was how to apply these principles and how they show up in real finances. In real life. In the financial world. Not just theory. Not just dreams. Not just rabbits and sandwiches, but real money and how to look at your investments and all this kind of stuff. And so it was real world application and I was impressed. And then he had us come up to this event in Utah, and we attended it and we had some serious breakthroughs of our own.
In that event, and you know, I lose track of what happened, when and everything, but one thing he taught us that is huge. I think you should write this down, if you haven’t written anything, is that, if you’re looking for financial capital, most of the time we focus on where we’re going to get the money. Where is the financial capital going to come from? How are we going to get the money? Financial, financial. That’s what we’re looking for, but the formula for creating financial capital goes like this: Relationship capital, plus mental capital, equals financial capital. And I don’t know if it’s a plus or a multiply but you put those two together, and you’ll end up with financial capital!
So, when you’re out of money, when you need money, when you need to create some money, you get your mind off the money and over into one of these two areas and either build relationship capital by finding someone you can serve, finding someone you can help, finding someone who you can help them get what they want and/or focus on increasing your financial literacy, increasing your education on how to apply these principles, increasing your knowledge, you focus on one of those two things and the financial capital becomes a byproduct.
We put it to the test, and when we were looking like, oh all we have to work with, there’s nothing left to draw from, what are we going to do? We would push aside those fears and we’d get focused on how we can serve. And by putting those principles to the test we have had some of the greatest success we have ever ever had, and I can say with confidence that the breakthrough we had in 2000 was nothing like the breakthrough we’ve had since then, but only after the challenges that we’ve faced since writing the Jackboot Factor.
So this is why we have been so grateful for Garrett. I learned that he wasn’t serving because he was looking for something, and that it was going to have to be a favor returned or anything. He sure has created an atmosphere where we’ve wanted to serve him though. We’ve wanted to help him do what he does because he’s authentic. He doesn’t put on a front. He is who he is and he lives these principles and not only that, but his focus is not just on how you can get what you want, but finding out what your sole purpose is. What contribution you are uniquely equipped to make to the world, because as you find that and as you start living it, that’s when these principles start falling in place together. You know, like I said, most of my struggles, most of my pain came from resisting the thing that I know I’m here to do and the service that I’m uniquely equipped to render humanity at large.
Now, am I still a mom? Of course I’m still a mom. I’ve got seven kids at home now. We’ve turned this into a family effort. The kids are learning what means to be a producer and what it means to set and achieve goals and what it means to face challenges. They know what it’s like to do without because sometimes you have to. Sometimes you have to. You don’t want to face those times with a scarcity mentality and there’s ways that you can look at it without going in that energy.
So anyway, it was in talking with Garrett that we realized, you know, what with everything we’ve learned, there needs to be another book. That’s why I have co-authored The Portal To Genius with him. It takes things to a whole new level! It’s a whole new experience. It backs up ten years before Richard and Felicity’s first argument and then it filled in the gap between the end of Jackrabbit and 12-year epilogue.
I’ve gone back and I’ve read through some of my older materials and I see places where I said something that I’m like, oh that’s not quite how I see it anymore. There’s no way I can go back and remember every place I’ve written stuff, so I just have to keep writing new. You know what I mean? Somewhere, I’ve said, “You’ve got to forge ahead.” They focused on the goal and do not entertain any thoughts of failure.
My husband and I actually called a friend who was a family therapist, because we felt like we needed marriage counseling, and so we called him up, and our first appointment he shared a story with us.
He had a couple come into him just that week before, I believe, and they were at each other’s throats. They were frustrated because there was like a $36 utility bill that was due and their heat was going to get shut off, that week, if they didn’t come up with some money. And they didn’t have the money, and so it was turning to anger towards each other.
This was the cold part of the country, and so having the heat turn off was just, you know, not cool. And so he said, “No, wait a minute, wait a minute. Your subconscious mind is designed to keep you safe. It’s the part of you that keeps your heart beating all day long and breathing through the night and it’s designed to keep you alive and well. And when it sees potential danger, it asks the question, ‘What if that happens?’ And if you don’t give it an answer, the default is, well then, I couldn’t handle that.” And so he said, “For crying out loud, give your subconscious mind an answer!”
If you’re afraid of running out of money, then just stop and say okay, well, like in their case, what if the heat gets turned off? What are you going to do? Well, you could see the fear just cr… he says, “no wait a min., calm down. Just, let’s talk this through. What are you going to do?”
Well, if the heat gets turned off, we just, I guess we’d pull out some more blankets and we’d boil our water for the shower… And as soon as they addressed it, as soon as they said what they would do, they both relaxed and that anxiety was gone. And he said, “Great. Now you’ve answered the question. Let’s focus on the goal and do what we can to keep that from happening.”
And so, I no longer say avoid any thoughts of failure. I say, go ahead and answer the question, unemotionally, put it to rest and move on. And I tell you, that one thing right there has saved us more than once. And so that’s something else I’ve learned since I wrote Jackrabbit Factor.
You know, my husband and I, through this, had to answer that question and say, “Okay, what if we run out of money? What if we lose everything?” We went through that. Would we stop doing what we do? And the answer was no, because we found the thing that we feel like we’re here to do, and it brings us joy, and it helps people. And if we had to do out, out of the back of our car, that’s what we’d do, because this is how we’d rebuild. You know, we’d start over. And if that were to happen, how much more valuable we’d be to people who’d been through that! I don’t want to go through that and I don’t expect to go through that, but we’ve answered the question.
Leslie: So I am going to stay around on the call for any questions. If you have a question press *6. Kevin do you have a question?
Kevin: Actually, I just wanted to congratulate you on sharing. I went to your seminar in March of 2006 and I could vouch for the fact that if you learn it, it works, but you’re going to be reminded over and over and over again that you’ve got to keep applying the principles. That the bigger the goal and the dream is, the more your subconscious wants to battle with you.
Leslie: Yep. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. And the good news is that the more practice you have with it, the less fearful you get. The next time around, would you agree with that?
Kevin: I totally agree and I understand the thing about the money showing up the next day. It happens all the time.
Leslie: Yeah, thank you. Yes, who’s this?
Rich: Rich Hale.
Leslie: Hi Rich.
Rich: Hey, I want to thank you again for all the wonderful lessons you keep teaching me and for your honesty and integrity and coming out with the information tonight. You know, I read The Jack Rabbit Factor & Seven Laws CDs, I bought through you, as well and many of your emails have helped me but I haven’t had that great launch into the stratosphere, so I keep studying.
Leslie: You know, right there, that’s the mental capital. You keep building that mental capital and the financial capital becomes the byproduct.\
Rich: And we don’t know the timeframe of that always. We just have to keep doing and doing until we get there.
Leslie: Two reasons for that: sometimes it’s because that’s how much time it takes for us to become that person and sometimes it’s because the processes that are in motion just haven’t quite completed yet.
Rich: Right. One thing that has happened in some of this, is I’ve come across some incredible lessons of my own and in the process of that, I’ve been helping people and talking to people about some of my experiences. And in the process of discussing this with somebody just a couple of days ago, a thought occurred to me, that I need to write a book. And then the next that occurred to me was the exact title of the book, and a little bit of what I want to put in it. And it was just like a sudden, very strong thing. And I have no idea what I’m doing, and no idea how to do it. I just started writing down ideas and within the last couple of days as to what I want in it and how I kind of want to do it, but I don’t know anything about it. About six or eight months ago, you sent out an email, Do you have a book in you? And at the time, I really didn’t have a book in me, I was just curious.
Leslie: Yeah, I sent a message like that out. What I was doing was book writing retreats and things and we do have recommendations to help authors who want to get the book out of their head and into print. So I did receive your email and as soon as I can…
Rich: Oh.
Leslie:I’ll respond back to that, okay? All right, thank you. Any other questions? Yeah, Lynette?
Lynette: Hi. I have read your Portal To Genius and it is absolutely incredible.
Leslie: Thank you.
Lynette: I’ve started the other program and with Christmas and a lot of things going on I kind of put it to the side. And I’d picked up the book and started reading it and it is really motivating! It puts it into real life and it’s like, okay, I can do this!
Leslie: Good. Thank you. Thank you for letting me know.
Lynette: So, I’m just really excited.
Leslie: Good. Good. So, do you remember the part about the restaurant?
Lynette: I do.
Leslie: That was real.
Lynette: That is amazing!
Leslie: I know! It’s funny, because I started writing that book a year ago, December, and my goal (I have this into setting amazing goals and trying to make it happen in amazing frame of time you know and life keeps humbling me) but in December, I decided okay, I want to write this sequel and I want to have it done before January. Ok. This was in December and I wanted to have it done in a couple weeks because I had heard of how you can just sit down and have it flow and all at once, boom, there you go! I know that can happen and I got about halfway through it and the whole motivation was because I remembered what it took out of our family for me to write the first book. It took me two years and it was while my husband was working two and a half hours away and we were in this two-bedroom house. I mean, it was nuts and I was not really eager to go through anything similar to that again.
I went up to my mom’s house and I just spent some time getting as much done as I could and I hit this major block. And January came and I didn’t have more than half of it done. I only had probably a couple chapters done. Really, maybe a quarter of the book. And the thought came to me, and it struck me strongly, as you know one of those ideas that come from outside of you. It is not of your own creation and the thought said, “You cannot write the end of this book because you haven’t lived it yet.” I thought, “Well, okay then.” I put it down and I braced myself.
Lynette: Wow!
Leslie: And I thought, “All right.” Okay, so I waited and turns out J… let’s see, June. It was June. What happened at the end of Portal of Genius happened to us! And then the next month turned out to be, I think, the revenue we had that month was the biggest month we had ever had in the history of our business! So, like I said, it tests you to the end. And if you pass the test, there it is, and sometimes you don’t know how long the test is going to take. I feel like the test which I wished had only taken two weeks, was a four-year test for us.
Lynette: Yeah, I’m going through tests right now myself. So this has been great! Well, I appreciate all that you’ve done and all that you’ve shared and it’s really motivated me. And I’m building a business that almost crashed, and I kind of let it go and it’s doing better, and it was like we would lose everything! And it’s been a huge growth and I’m also looking at writing a book.
Leslie: Very good.
Lynette: Thank You Leslie.
Leslie: Thank you for comments.
Lynette: Leslie?
Leslie: Yeah. Who’s this?
Lynn: This is Lynn again. I just wanted to just to thank you. You’ve been a real inspiration to me. I’ve been going through some really major breakthroughs lately, that have been very painful.
Leslie: Yes.
Lynn: And very difficult. I’m also building a business and it’s up until this point been failing, however, I can see where doors are opening to me now. They’re going to give me some amazing growth and it’s been worth the journey. It’s been difficult, but it’s been worth it, and you’ve been just an inspiration to me. And having the courage and the tenacity to tell your story, you know, to give us the down and dirty details of what you’ve been through and how you and Trevan handled it and how you just hung in there. Because, that the thoughts of failure come up a lot lately.
Leslie: Yeah.
Lynn: And that’s an amazing way of handling it. It makes sense, because once you answer the question, what if you realize that it’s not so bad? What if, well, what if it doesn’t work out this time? I’ll just try again. I haven’t stopped trying yet. Long as I draw breath, that God has given me, he’s going to continue supplying my every need as he has done for the last 60 years. Something that I keep hanging on to, through a lot of this, is God is never late.
Leslie: Yeah.
Lynn: Ever. He meets our needs every single time. Sometimes, he comes through at the very last minute, because it takes him that long to put things together for us, because we sometimes give him so much resistance, there’s not much he can do.
Leslie: Yeah. Yeah.
Lynn: And I hang on to that. Sometimes the pain that I’m going through now is really, really tremendous. I’m growing really, really big through this whole thing.
Leslie: Yeah.
Lynn: You know, the what if, what if any of it happens? Oh I’m not going to go back to the way it was. I’m going to continue growing. I’m going to continue moving forward.
Leslie: And you’ll never be where you were before, because now you have experience and knowledge. You know, and you’re not starting from zero. You’re starting from just where you are.
Lynn: Your life has just been such an example to me. I just want to thank you for sharing it.
Leslie: Good. Thank you. Thank you for letting me know. And I really, really encourage every one of you, who after I tell you what I’ve got tonight.
That is the 12-week mindset mastery program. Two very important phases.
Number One. It walks you through an experience where you see an absolute direct connection between your thoughts and your results. With something that does not mess with your subconscious. Something that does not mess with those thoughts of, “oh, well I’m not sure I’m worthy of that or I don’t know if that can happen for me.”
Now this is something that’s kind of neutral and benign about those things. You’re going to see a connection between your thoughts and what happens and once you’ve seen that happen, once you’ve experienced it for yourself, I can tell you about it all day long but until you experience it for yourself, you really aren’t going to dream and select goals that you can believe in. Until you have this kind of experience, are you going to be able to say, “Oh, because I’m setting this goal now, I know, I know that I can see this through. I know it can happen.”
Phase two takes you through an experience that does wrestle with your subconscious mind and I walk you through that.
Now, I know some of you who don’t know anything about program are wondering how much it costs. And after spending more than $150,000 in coaching training and seminars to understand and learn how to apply the principles with success in my own life, even when things are disastrous. I’ve taken everything I’ve learned and created the most effective, most straight shot materials I could. For helping you learn it faster and less painfully. For just $847, now you know the information is worth it because thousands of people over the years have used it to create fortunes, but maybe you’re still thinking, “Dang $847, that’s still too high.” And if so, I want to introduce you to something that we’ve created and it’s called The School of Life Mastery. It’s an online program and it delivers a very close copy of the eight hundred and forty seven dollar program in a digital format, for just a fraction of the cost.
We realized that the bigger price tag has been keeping a lot of people out. Some of the people who need it the most. And you’ll find yourself doing things that you didn’t know you could do. And I can tell you that they work. No matter how hard. No matter how heavy. No matter how deep the pit is, that you’re coming from. And I realize that the online version isn’t for everyone. Some people just can’t sit at their computer and they just do better with the physical materials that come in a box to their house. So this online option is cheaper simply because you do give up some of the convenience and benefits that come with the physical version of the program.
So I’ll tell you more about in a minute but I wanted to make this option available for those who haven’t been able to get involved any other way. So, it’s so cool about the process. It works. No matter if you’re a bum on the street, or if you’re already a billion-dollar business tycoon, because it takes you to the next level of wherever you’re at.
We’ve found that those who succeed best are those who are solidly living by the principles. Who have adopted those mindsets and thought processes. So, imagine what your life could look like. Imagine finally paying off those bills and spending more quality time with your loved ones.
Do you want to retire? (And when I say retire, I really hope that there’s nobody on the call that sees themselves just putting themselves in a rocking chair on the porch.) If you want to do that, do it for a little while. But you’ve got so much to offer! You have been through so many experiences of your own that people can learn from. Nobody has been through what you’ve been through, and so I hope retiring means you’re free from the daily grind, to get busy doing what you’re here to do.
Do you want to find a better job? You want people to look at you and wonder what you know that gives you the ability to come up on top no matter what?
Avoid the mistakes I’ve made and the ones that Garrett has made. You can go a lot farther faster and that’s what we want for you. If you really take to this information and want to develop an income from what you’ve learned, graduate with honors and you can become eligible for mentor training.
Mentor training is a special high-level program where I take you step-by-step to develop an automated income stream around helping people discover these principles or something else. I’ve had people come through mentor training who wanted to take different information to help people and that’s fine too.
You know you’re going to face challenges. Your challenges may not be over yet, but these seasons of plenty and the breadth that you’re allowed to take before you go under again, they come. They come and they go. They come and they go. And what I can teach you, is how to stay in production. Stay happy. Stay producing and stay on top of things.
How many times we thought we were at the end of all the money, and what we did to have the money show up the next day. That’s what I’m going to teach you. We’ve seen it happen again and again and again and I know it’s by principle.
I want to thank you for joining me on this call. If you don’t do something different you’re destined for more of the same. And if that’s not okay with you, just take one step in the right direction, and I’ll help you from there.
So, prosperthefamily.com describes the Mindset Mastery Courses I mentioned earlier and learn all about it at prosperthefamily.com. Whether you keep learning for me or you go learn from somebody else, just keep learning.
Goodnight Everybody.
[Music]
Announcer: This concludes today’s episode of The Rare Faith Podcast. You’ve been listening to Leslie Householder, author of The Jackrabbit Factor, Portal to Genius and Hidden Treasures, Heavens Astonishing Help with your Money Matters. All three books can be downloaded free at ararekindoffaith.com, so tell your friends, and join Leslie again next time as she goes even deeper into the principles that will help you change your life!
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